#crit anon

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

ngl the "im white so i dont talk abt any characters' race ever bc im afraid of accidentally saying something racist" approach to fandom is like. very weak. imo.

like first of all: i get that "i dont incorporate race into my media analysis because i'm afraid of messing up" comes from a different place than "i don't incorporate race into my media analysis because I Don't See Race 😊 there is only The Human Race." but it has the same functional effect, right? that effect being that your analysis of [INSERT MEDIA HERE] ignores the very real way that race impacts people.

second of all: it feels kinda lazy! like ur saying "i dont know enough abt race to feel comfortable commenting on how race affects this show and i dont care enough to learn." the only way to become more comfortable discussing race is to actually practice discussing race. but when i see people saying this it feels like they're saying "i'm white, which means i don't know how to talk about race, and i don't have to know how to talk about race, and i don't ever have to know how to talk about race, so i'm choosing to never learn how to talk about race."

third of all: just because you don't openly talk about race doesn't mean you're any less likely to accidentally say or do something racist. implicit biases run deep, y'all. it's probably already there in your interpretation of the show. but the "i don't want to accidentally say something racist" implies that you are positive that your interpretation of the show isn't racist. and i'm not saying you're wrong. but i'm saying that if a person of color tells you that something you said about [INSERT MEDIA HERE] was racist, you better be prepared to actually listen and not just brush them off because "i can't be racist! i purposefully never talk about race just to make sure i'm not racist!"

which brings me to my final point: if you do accidentally say something racist... literally just apologize. if someone says you've been doing something racist, apologize and stop doing that thing. it's literally not that hard. i've done it. i've seen other people do it. "i'm scared of being called racist!" is such a weak excuse im tired of it. getting called racist is not the end of the fucking world. calm the fuck down and grow a spine. jesus.

[ofswordsandpens]

circular discourse, criticism being met with death threats... pjo fandom we're so back baby

[percabeth4life]

I feel like rick missed an opportunity when he made Frank closer to Percy's age instead of Hazel's. Like, I'm sure there are reasons (It's been a while since I read HoO, so I can't say what they are, but they're probably there(I hope)), but can you imagine Percy, on a quest with two kids that are 13-14 (I can't remember how old she is in SoN, can't find it either, so guessing low it is).

Even without his memories, he'd be halfway to feral, but once he got them back, I can't see him doing anything but going from protective to absolutely destroying anything that hurt them.

I also think it would have been hilarious to have Percy and Annabeth at like, 17-ish? And have the rest of the seven at like, 14 max. Percy and Annabeth are trying to keep this group of 13-14 year olds alive, and they're both screaming internally half the time. Sometimes, it's just screaming, but sometimes, they scream about how toddlers shouldn't be on quests.

(Side note this popped into my head while I was writing, so have a- thing

Annabeth: There's a bunch of babies, Loose on a quest! No one knows what the babies are going to do next, least of all the babies! They've never been on a quest before!

Narrator: The babies in question are 14, and they have, in fact, been on quests before. (She is right about them not knowing what they're going to do, though.))

Then again, maybe I just like big brother/protector Percy too much. (Reluctant and screaming big sister/mentor figure Annabeth is also fun.)

(And on a sadder note, Annabeth realizes this must be what Luke and Thalia felt like and almost starts crying.)

To start, you're absolutely right that it was a missed opportunity. Percy is, without knowing it, the most experienced of the questers, except Frank is nearly his age in comparison to Hazel (who should be 14 by math, but is 13 by Rick's declaration). I think it's less that he made Frank closer to Percy's age and more that he was trying to make Hazel younger than Nico.

But yes, it would've been super interesting to see him basically mentoring the other two, especially after he regained his memories. I feel it was a major missed opportunity to not have Percy and Annabeth trying to watch over the younger quest members, instead he aimed for weakening the two to make everyone else their equal. It's a shame cause it missed the opportunity for the younger questers to be major boons for their skills, rather than raw power.

And also, the two of them looking after younger ones and wanting to protect them but also having to risk their lives to save the world- and the rest being alone when Percabeth falls with Nico to help except half of them find him freaky- would've allowed them to grow into their own more.

It would also show how Percy and Annabeth really ARE the most experienced, how their quests haven't been the norm so even Jason who is remembering some quests hasn't done anything this insane before but Percabeth just takes it all in stride.

[mrfleshwizard]

The feminine urge to beat stolas with a stick

I have both feminine and masculine urge for that.

[where-are-the-spooky-gays-2]

"Where are the spooky gays" this and "where are the spooky gays" that

WHERE ARE THEY ALL AT???? WHERE DID THEY GO?? WILL THEY EVER RETURN???

APPARENTLY ITS BEEN 4 YEARS SINCE THE WEDDING EPISODE??? AKA THE LAST SIGNIFICANT PLOT POINT??

I miss them

I feel like im in my Steven Universe era where the show was in a everlasting hiatus. Where are they, Mr sanders??? What have you done with them/lighthearted

-🐀

They're all trapped in the secret Beach episode /joking No but controversial take that will absolutely get an angry mob at me but I don't give a shit at this point and this is not directed to you at all 🐀 Anon I've just been in this fandom for 7 years and I'm tired of biting my tongue /genuine But y'all need to understand that if we didn't have the Asides/Short vids, The Incorrect Quotes, The Photoshoots, Bloops, etc. then we would have not seen the Sides at all in the span of 4 years (That's 1,475 days) and even through said 4 years there was a pandemic, a hurricane that quite literally flooded the shit out of Thomas' old office, and a stress related condition that quite literally made this man not even wanna look at himself (If you think this is 'babying' him actually touch a dictionary) I know this might come as a surprise especially with the old memes I used to make on this blog and with how most countdown blogs are now but I'm probably the only one in this fandom who honestly doesn't care for the wait due to watching literally everything he makes. He's juggling different projects, he's preforming in more theater stuff, he's making a lot of music for a 4 part season finale along with a possible prologue, he's trying to get back into the swing of things and getting over his intimidation of doing main series characterization of the Sides and all we can do is wait and continue making more beautiful content for the fandom to enjoy and gush about the characters and ships we love. I'd rather watch something that was written with time and patience than rushed and hear more bitching from the fandom for something they wanted.

[ruegarding]

Hey, quick question if you don't mind me asking but what are your thoughts on Drew Tanaka as a character and how she was portrayed in HOO?

canon drew...well. i rbed this post that says "drew was not written as a character but rather a human obstacle who needed to be feminine so the ‘not like other girls’ could defeat her," and i think that summarizes it perfectly. she exists exclusively to make piper look good, which is a real shame bc drew could've been interesting. as-is, drew is not only uninteresting, piper is also uninteresting by extension. it'd be like if nancy was one of percy's greatest obstacles in tlt.

more under the cut bc i'm incapable of keeping things short.

here, in her introduction, not only is drew, a feminine girl, vain, she's also weak and unintimidating, a triple whammy right away! she has no reason to be antagonistic towards piper here, they literally just got to camp. piper's crime right now is *checks notes* not looking cute and existing next to a "good-looking guy." oh, yeah, btw drew likes jason for being hot and powerful.

this triple whammy isn't even restricted to drew, it's the entire aphrodite cabin. they all giggle when drew flirts w jason and when piper is uncomfortable being "gorgeous" and are too scared and weak to stand up to drew. the two exceptions are a guy who got in trouble for saying piper "might not be so bad" and a girl who's afraid of ugly shoes. what an uninteresting take.

anyway, moments like this

are everywhere. now, let's remember for a moment that the aphrodite cabin (including drew!) fought in a war where they were outnumbered and won. but yeah, their biggest strength is their ability to "make an orange t-shirt glamorous" bc piper is the only one out of them who can *checks notes* uhhh run? charmspeak on a quest? carry a knife? she doesn't even know how to fight in tlh! she wasn't at camp for more than two days, she never had any fighting experience! the fact that she's being called tougher than ppl who fought in a war makes me grit my teeth. and thalia was there when it happened!

and it doesn't even makes sense bc we see aphrodite like this is ttc

and she says this in tlh

(also sidenote: why is aphrodite's claiming so egregious and uncomfortable then? it's like rick has a moment of clarity and realizes he's being stupid and then immediately fucks it up again.)

this is interesting! and some of these kids (including drew!) would have met this aphrodite during the solstices. so portraying drew and the aphrodite cabin as a bunch of shallow kids obsessed w makeup that need to be saved by piper "not like other girls" mclean is so contrived. and constantly bringing up how piper's so much better than those shallow and weak aphrodite kids makes piper's entire character grating. rick brings up aneaus repeatedly throughout tlh, a son of venus/aphrodite that founded rome. why are we acting like aphrodite children are weak and stupid when we could be exploring literally anything else? like, you know, how they're traumatized?

and the thing is, he brings up silena! and it's done terribly. piper, who never knew silena and never will, lecturing drew, someone who knew silena and was betrayed by her, has always pissed me off. piper relating to silena bc she feels like she's in the same position? good, that's fine, i have no problem w this. but acting like she knew silena to ppl who actually did and then preaching abt what silena believed should've gotten her smacked (rick didn't even addressed the actual important part, which is how the other campers feel abt silena or how they feel abt surviving a war).

then when piper challenges drew, again, drew fought in a war while piper hasn't trained for a single day, why are we acting like piper could beat drew in a fight? piper can't even use charmspeak bc drew's resistant to it! that's the one advantage piper has! writing it like this comes off like piper is only strong as long as everyone else is weak. she's not rising to a challenge, her competitor is just so pathetic that she can overpower them. she didn't earn her strength. that's not good character development! so we're throwing two entire character arcs away for this!

what really gets me abt all of this is that piper didn't need to be a counselor. piper needed a place to belong. making drew nothing more than a stepping-stone was completely unnecessary, and making the aphrodite cabin weak and vain was redundant bc we already had an example w silena (and again, all the kids that fought in a war). as it is in canon, drew's character is a great example of some of rick's biggest writing flaws.

[aetsiv]

What do you think about Percabeth or Perachel?

hi, thanks for the ask!

i personally prefer perachel over percabeth. my main reasoning for this isn't that i absolutely despise percabeth, i in fact think there was a lot of good potential in the ship and richard just messed all up. i could get by some of annabeth's treatment to percy in the early books since they were still rather young but i feel she just didn't mature that much throughout and kept calling stupid and what not and generally not showing much appreciation to him.

once again, i don't believe annabeth to be a bad character but instead a product of riordan's shitty writing for female characters. i honestly won't even get into the whole judo flip scene and everything percabeth had going in hoo because there were so many problems with it-- if you want to see anything relating to problems on hoo relating to percabeth, I'd recommend checking the "anti percabeth" or "hoo crit" tags as there are tons of posts relating to that. the most i'll say about percabeth on hoo is that i feel like annabeth generally got somewhat more abusive and possessive, starting treating percy even more so like he's stupid, percy's character was for the most part reduced to him being annabeth's boyfriend.

like i already mentioned, i much prefer perachel. i mainly enjoy it because rachel and percy's relationship both platonic and romantic is so healthy. percy enjoys being around rachel and feels like he can relax around her, doesn't have to worry all the time about what she'll think if he says or does something. rachel sees percy's intelligence and doesn't constantly berate him for small things, shares things in common with him (unlike annabeth and percy mainly only bonding over being demigods), and sees him as more than a demigod. they also have a well developed friendship and have actual bonding time unlike percabeth who only bond when they're forced to go on quests (i.e. them going to the beach).

i don't have anything against percabeth shippers (unless you think the judo flip was cute and romantic) and i think people should be able to ship whoever they want since it doesn't affect anyone else. i'm really sorry if this is a bit incoherent or has mistakes in grammer and sentence structure, i'm pretty tired right now so i'm not exactly thinking straight.

[rakkuntoast]

yeah, it's all so dumb because i can excuse philza not knowing the lengths of missa's personality given his limited perspective and all of what he has seen is not helping with those "wet cat" allegations, tbh. but fans, especially crows, don't have that excuse; they can watch any of missa's streams at their leisure, they can watch clips or something! even if it's not in their main language, well, they should still try, you know?

nonnie fr like,,, looking for English translations of missa's streams are not hard at all (considering yk,, crows)

Sadly it is pretty common to see people just not bother to actually research at all and just rely on whatever the hell rehash ppl are saying (which yk the interpretation some people have of his character is definitely... A choice)

atp I've resigned myself to just "if it isn't in their language they don't care" so idk (shrugs) I do wished the view on qmissa changed cuz god they don't bring him any justice at all. and it's sad that most of his content that I have personally seen are from crows and idk love you guys but ehhj que les digo ajdjsjdj

[qtubbo]

It’s kinda frustrating how everyone will say oh we want more egg drama, we want character conflict, we want more infighting, but when it makes their fav cubito look bad suddenly we’re taking everything too seriously and ruining the fun. It’s not just a block game to the characters, because they live there, so making critiques on behavior that is bad or toxic isn’t an attack it’s what happens when there is character conflict. Correcting, or discussing is perfectly normal, but you can’t say you want conflict and then turn it into something lighthearted because that means you didn’t actually want any conflict. You wanted conflict now here’s your conflict and sadly when there is conflict it will make characters look bad, it makes Tallulah, Leo, Foolish, Phil, and Tubbo all look bad it’s what happens.

You can’t tell people to stop making analysis or critiquing behavior because you’re viewing differently, or choosing to change the story to make it more lighthearted. Like I understand saying don’t cross in to reality people often do with ccs, but is anyone actually doing that with the admins?

[greenconverses]

Richard saying, "we're going to end up in the same place, it doesn't matter how we get there" pissed me off so much ISN'T "HOW WE GET THERE" THE ENTIRE POINT OF STORIES?! ISN'T THAT WHY THE ENTIRE DAMN BOOK EXISTS?!

So, shocker, I have Thoughts about this post of his. My knee jerk reaction when I saw it last night was an eye roll and an urge to rant, which I kept contained because I'd already ranted and we gotta space that stuff out from time-to-time.

And now that I have had a full night's sleep and I am slightly less cranky, I'm gonna have to go on record and... DEFEND part of his logic, gasp.

For those not in the know, RR wrotes this reply to question on Threads (lol) a few days ago about changes to the plot in the sixth episode that apparently bugged a lot of people:

And like, I'm deeply annoyed about the "it won't change anything" bit because OH MY GOD STORYTELLING which is a whole other thing but I do have something to say about the man's logic and the difference in the show premise vs the books that I think is flying over a lot of people's heads.

The plot of the show is Percy saving Sally and doing a quest along the way. Sally and Percy's relationship is the A plot, the mythology and conflict among the gods is the B plot. Percy knows from 1x02 that his mom is alive and that changes his priorities immediately; we see him start to care about the overall quest and his place in the world in 1x05, but he's still pushing forward because of his mom. You have to add another pearl to pay off that A storyline, to promise audience members that Percy is going to succeed until he doesn't.

Percy in the books has a feeling his mom is alive or that he can get her back from the Underworld, but doesn't know for sure. The quest and the setting up the overall Big Three backstory is the main plot of the books and what we the readers are focused on. I wouldn't even put saving Sally as a B or C plot in the original TLT. Percy doesn't get confirmation that she's alive until they're down in the Underworld and Hades reveals he took her for leverage, so then only having three pearls becomes a brief but important conflict.

This is where we're seeing a lot of the issues with the show's plot come to a head. It's fine to change the priority of the story from returning the bolt to saving Sally, because it delivers the same result in the end anyway, like Rick says. But you have to bulk up other parts of the script in a way to make up for it and the show has not delivered on that part. (See exhibit A: my rant about any lack of mystery with the monsters.)

I think the most egregious change that he says doesn't matter is the trio missing the deadline. In the books, we're told that natural disasters and weird things have been happening since the bolt disappeared as Zeus and Poseidon fought, and stuff was getting worse the closer the deadline came. We are briefly shown this in 1x05 with Ares and in 1x06 with Luke saying things are "bad" at camp, but imo, it doesn't feel super heavy. The consequences of missing the deadline is that gods go to war and bad shit happens! Lots of mortals are gonna die! Doesn't that matter?

The show could've stepped outside of the Percy and Sally storyline for little bit to give more of a perspective about what was happening at camp or the outside world to bring that weight - you're not limited to just Percy's POV storyline in the medium of a TV show! (Of course, we can step outside of it to give a LMM cameo/stinger because priorities but I digress.)

They didn't and I'm not sure how they're going to "solve" Zeus's response to Percy missing the deadline 'cause like... this is the unreasonable king of the gods that Rick has started yet another series based on the premise of him being a petty bitch who wants to ruin Percy's life. Is the guy gonna walk back starting a war? Is he waiting to start because Poseidon asked nicely? What's the consequence to the world going to be? Clearly nothing, since Rick said the story is going to end how it was always going to end, which is just poor storytelling.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

okay I'm this is a tall order but I am so confused about Taika. Does he support Israel? I've seen so many posts about people spreading rumors about him and other people saying he does support Israel, so what's the haps??

so the rumor that taika supports israel comes from the fact that he (and like 200 other hollywood ppl including some very famous names like mark hamill or jack black but for some reason ppl only are talking abt taika) signed a letter thanking biden for working to release hostages and fight hamas. the language in the letter does not acknowledge that israel is a settler colonial state and that hamas exists as a direct result of settler colonial violence.

the letter is bad but it’s bad in the way that someone who is not informed about the conflict probably would not pick up on. it’s a letter that on its surface just looks like concern for civilian hostages, which is a good and normal thing to be concerned about. the letter was also probably about as effective as when all those celebrities sang “imagine” during covid lockdowns, which is to say that it most likely did nothing. i doubt biden is making global decisions based on what 200 rich people in hollywood think (if anything he’s probably making decisions based on what 200 oil executives think ahaha)

ppl have also connected taika signing this letter to guz khan getting fired from ofmd. there was a rumor that he was fired bc he supports palestine, which is almost certainly not true. guz was fired bc the show got a 40% budget cut for s2 and his character was the easiest to write off. guz has said he wouldn’t compromise his morals for a job but that this wasn’t the job where he had to do that, and he has blocked the person who started that rumor. ALSO several actors in ofmd have since posted supporting palestine so like?? this one is pure antisemetic conspiracy theory. if taika had a problem with guz supporting palestine why was guz even hired in the first place.

anyway signing the letter was a bad thing that taika should not have done but it is impossible to determine his stance on israel based solely on the fact that he signed that letter. he has also liked posts about freeing palestine so like, who knows. i personally have much better things to be doing than scrutinizing everything a famous poc does to try and prove if he’s a good or bad person

tl;dr there is no hard evidence that taika supports israel ppl just hate him for being a wildly successful brown jewish man

[ofswordsandpens]

im sorry but I do think its a little funny that there's maybe like... a handful of people actively critiquing the show compared to the overwhelming praise its receiving, and yet there's a portion of the fandom acting like they're either being held at gunpoint and forced to read every criticism, or that they've personally been appointed by RR himself to defend the integrity of his works, and I promise you, you really don't have to do either lol <3

[percabeth4life]

Does anybody else find it kinda fucked up how Rick said that the Romans knew there had been Greek demigods at one point and that the reason they thought there weren't anymore is because they thought Rome "Perfected" the gods? Like, sir what the fuck?

So true- it's such a mess like that is literally not how it worked the Romans were an entirely different religion and set of beliefs- they just associated with and "borrowed" from the Greeks a whole lot. It's both fucked up and a gross misunderstanding of how that worked.

[mrfleshwizard]

I keep up with VivziePop critical Tumblr as someone who hasn't seen Hazbin Hotel or Helluva Boss, and your post about Adam not being the biggest misogynist in the Hellaverse made me curious. Who do you think is the biggest misogynist? /gen

I wouldn't say that there is the biggest misogynist in hellaverse, but there are other characters who act sexist, but get the pass.

Blitzø constantly is using "bitch", "slut" and a "whore" towards women he doesn't like (I don't remember him using these words towards men), steal his girlfriend money and shuts her up as well as ignore her feelings when she brings it up, insulted woman with disablties, insults and stalks Mille and use her to degrade her husband, also he treated to r3p4(?) Mille and Moxxie in episode one.

Lucifer degraded Eve and Lilith. He talked about to Adam like they were sex toys/prize to win, to piss off Adam, in the middle of the battle. POSSIBLY he took advantage of Lilith (and maybe Eve) vulnerable state when she was in eden. She was freshly born, she had no parents and no peers. Adam was her only equal, but also her husband and he wanted to control her (if we say that the book was true), than Lucifer appeared out of nowhere. Lucifer had authority over this situation. He didn't talk to Adam about his behavior instead he decided to have sex with Lilith and after Eve.

Alastor isn't a misogynist, he treats everybody horrible. but he did slap Vaggie's butt in the pilot and push her on the floor, which the first one might count as a sexual harssement. He is seeing Charlie's project as a joke what will fail and doesn't hide it (like Adam).

So yeah, other characters can act sexist, but when character we weren't supposed to like does it, it's wrong.

[atthebell]

Why are the qsmp family allegations on twt such a bad thing? /genq I'm genuinely curious, I'm not a fan of people found family claiming everything these days, but I was wondering about your reasons for this specifically! Feel free to ignore this ask if you want o/ cheers!

i think there's a few big issues i and many other people have with this:

usually it's based on nothing, or on nonsense jokes. like cellbit clearly jokingly calling phil dad. that's not basis for anything. putting that dynamic on the wiki after one joke is fucking insane, and i think the fandom wiki editors are actually nuts for that and all the other stupid shit they pull like this.

it's used to avoid shipping people pretty often, which frankly is ridiculous in the first place and is also often an issue of dumbass misogyny/cooties bullshit. you can maintain a creator's shipping boundaries (if they even have them, which, sometimes they don't even!) without having to family code them with every other character. phil does not need to be techno's dad for you to not ship them. and on the cooties/misogyny angle, it's used CONSTANTLY to avoid shipping women with men. like, firstly, people's insistence against shipping female characters with men serves to continuously sideline them in fan content. 90% of the time the most popular ships are m/m and women in canonical relationships with popular male characters get treated like garbage for "being in the way." secondly, it's cooties shit, like i said. women and men can be friends and don't have to be related for you not to ship them. just don't ship them if you don't want to. this goes for any set of characters. if you don't want to ship phil and cellbit, just don't do it. and don't get pissy with other people when they do want to do that.

for phil in particular: it serves to infantilize characters who are grown adults and pushes phil into a constant parental position with people. like, phil is very dad, he's just like that, he's very responsible and good with people, but he's not EVERYONE ON THE PLANET'S DAD and acting like it's his responsibility to care for everyone he interacts with sucks. case in point, the way people treated him during dsmp when fans would not let go of family sbi dynamics, even when he said that tommy wasn't his kid and was not his responsibility. phil does not owe any other character anything, and that expectation is a sore spot for many people, especially phil mains. and the agency it takes away from the characters that people child-code is annoying and shitty.

people make it super nuclear and weird when that's almost directly opposed to the notion of chosen family in real life

basically i think it's a really weird practice that people have fallen into that often feels regressive and annoying and removes character agency and independence. like, i enjoy family dynamics when they're actually relevant and when they don't ruin character's individual personalities, but the automatic reaching for that when it's not true and the insistence that family dynamics are somehow morally better than shipping is obviously very stupid and very much fandom purity culture.

[phantominzie]

Read your ts criticism post and thought I should add - he hasn’t written anything in years. There’s no script even near ready to film.

He’s stringing everyone along and using all monetary support to go clubbing every weekend.

He’s not working on anything else besides shorts and cheap quick content. Ever since the real writers left, he’s done nothing. That’s why nothing that he’s said he’s been working on ever got done. RSWR only got done because he wasn’t the writer, and from the looks of his recent post - he let that writer go.

He literally just wants to profit and party.

oh shit dude.....like fuck. we are fucked as a fandom huh?

like, I've seen his posts about comic con and stuff like that and the more you think about it the sadder it gets. I mean, had he actually written a whole script within six months when he made a post about starting filming?

i mean good God, we prolly aren't even getting this until the end of this year at the earliest (LIKE HE FUCKING PROMISED BTW), it's likely we aren't going to be getting any word of this until next year.

fuuuuuuck.