#hero in peril

[shironezuninja]

I’ve got mixed feelings about this year’s October 3rd. But I think my 5 year long lack of recovery is also revealing signs that I’m punishing myself from enjoying the things that used to make me smile and laugh.

[endlessartpumpkin]

Day 25: Fairy 🧚‍♀️

When battle has made you weary, please come back to see me.

[sodamnbored]

Jason, jumping back aboard: So turns out the Legion wasn’t so thrilled about me teaming up with a bunch of Greeks and their warship.

Leo, going for the controls: Guess we’d better vamoose then.

Jason, anxiously: Can you hurry it up? The Legion are coming with everything they’ve got. Even the War Elephant.

Leo: You’re gonna have to hold them off while I get us mobile.

Jason, when the projectiles start flying: How am I meant to do that?!

Leo, harried: Bribe them. Blackmail them. Seduce them! - Have I taught you nothing??

[driftingballoons]

He’s not buying it

[some-pers0n]

I don't get people who hate any member of the Jade Winglet. All they did was be traumatized teens who learned to be themselves with their friends what did they do

[saggernooseai]

gallows trio / variations

[wonder-vixen]

[thisisnotthenerd]

for those of you who like spreadsheets as much as i do:

xp leveling chart:

the bad kids' xp progression in spreadsheet form:

freshman year:

oneshots:

sophomore year:

night yorb quest:

bad kids' overall totals:

the rat grinders' xp progression in spreadsheet form:

all of the arithmetic has been standardized; any errors from the original post have been corrected.

i hope this is useful.

[villainanders]

Anders would be SO into Wyll if you thought he put Hawke on too much of a pedestal this would be worse

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Irritatingly, I only have Zelda ambience in my stash But here's the one I've been using most recently :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spwTFg9nW88

I am glad to throw Youtube links in people's faces

“Ah, this is so nice!”

Abel hummed in agreement as he held Link tenderly. Tilieth continued to chirp different phrases of happiness as she swam about the hot spring. Link slept, as per usual, but the color of his skin was far less pale. Abel remembered being told time and again to always soak in hot springs when available as they had healing properties. He hoped it might help his boy, however minimal.

“Oh honey,” Tilieth sighed with a smile. “I didn’t think we’d ever find a place that is actually this—oh!”

Abel glanced up to see his wife staring up at Death Mountain. When he followed her gaze, he saw what must have caught her attention.

It wasn’t easy to see from here, but the mountain had a dark figure hugging its side, coloring similar to stone, still as a statue.

“Is that…?” She whispered.

A Divine Beast? “It was.” Now it was nothing more than a memorial to their failures, a tomb for its Champion. Abel held Link all the more.

Tilieth bowed her head, as if in mourning or respect, and then she sank into the water some more. Abel slid over to her, letting her lean against him and play with Link’s hair.

“We won’t get close enough anyway,” he reassured her. “It’s too dangerous for Hylians.”

“But Link came here before—before everything, right?”

“Sometimes,” Abel reluctantly admitted. He’d never enjoyed the thought of his son near an active volcano, but he hadn’t exactly had much say in it. The Gorons were friendly, but that didn’t make their home safe.

“I wonder what it’s like,” Tilieth thought aloud.

Abel rolled his eyes. “We’re not exploring.”

“But what if their are shrines—”

Goddess, this is why the children always gave me heart attacks. “Til, it’s a damn volcano, we are not getting near it!”

[shironezuninja]

I wonder if the new MAU under Disney+ will change the character design of Blade the Vampire Hunter. I’ve heard that not many fans liked the 90’s design in Spidey’s animated series.

[rowanthestrange]

Assuming Rogue is close to the Chuldur (which seems a solid guess, he makes sure the gun’s out of the way the second there’s a risk it could actually get used on them) then they have such a good character setup right now. So good for why dancing with the Doctor’s so dangerous.

The birds have been hopping through places resembling their favourite ‘shows’, that’s what their “Season” as they called it is - we know it’s not just Brigerton, they don’t seem to have been here long and frankly don’t seem to have the attention span either, this is only the setting for the “season finale”.

We know they’ve watched Doctor Who (‘the Duchess’ knew the Doctor’s name without being introduced, and that he’d come back for some reason once the wedding/screaming at the end started).

So now you know all the birds are now thoroughly excited to play Doctor Who, cus this didn’t count, they barely saw him. And Rogue kissed him, squeeing ensues etc. ‘And it’ll be fun to have a cool character who isn’t just played by you, no offence.’

And Rogue knows he’s got a great hook to see the Doctor again. Wants to. He’s got the whole plotline sketched out.

…But he also knows that his fam only like to play their Baddy Characters Pretending To Be TV Characters, because honestly they’re not great at the roleplay thing, and even if he tries to convince them they’ve got to stay super-duper-undercover they probably won’t, and the Doctor has told and shown him directly that he will worse-than-kill them if this goes sideways.

When he’s the devilish Bounty Hunter, or Pirate Hunter, or Vampire Hunter trying to catch them, that’s one thing. He’s quick, he’s clever, he’s always two-steps ahead of them. But that’s easy, because they’re idiots. The Doctor isn’t. The Doctor is an actual threat. But they won’t want to be left behind when he plays alone either, and who knows what they’ll get up to if one of the others decides to take up his dungeon master mantle in his absence. So the question is, will he be able to balance them all and keep them safe next time too?

(My endgame would be: Ideally the Doctor has since become convinced that Rogue is the Master just pretending, but he wants to keep the pretence up cus their relationship now is working isn’t it? But either way, we get a reprise where the Doctor gets into Oncoming Storm Mode which while he usually tries to keep a lid on in front of companions, he thinks Rogue already saw so might not have the mask on so well where he’s concerned, and especially if he thinks this is the Master that could bring out the worst in him. And now the birds are actually going to die, and finally Rogue breaks character- all of the characters, for them and us as the audience- and screams for them, by name, to run. Has to throw himself after them to save them. And does he? If I was writing it, with nothing else to guide my hand, no, he wouldn’t. Those are the dangers of playing pretend in real life. Playing villains. Playing with the Doctor. And if he wasn’t the Master before, maybe now he is.)

[sodamnbored]

Arguing about the death prophecy again:

Jason, finally: No arguing. This time - it’s gonna be me.

Leo, rolling his eyes: Okay, okay. You don’t need to get all NSYNC about it.

[chernobog13]

CAPTAIN FUTURE #12 (vol. 4, #3) (Fall, 1942). Cover by Earle K. Bergey.

[aroaceleovaldez]

Okay these tags on this post reminded me of a HoO/TOA thing that I complain about a lot but I don’t think i’ve ever elaborated on here:

[Image ID: Tags from @fr0zenpepsi​ reading - “#and jason fUCKING DIES before he even get fixed like #you dont know how excited i was when the diorama thing was mentioned like #make him artistic too!! make him be into architecture too! #and he plays lacrosse???? #like his character has sooo much potential yet hes just a boring white guy :< #thats prolly why his death is pretty lame #it meant a lot to the plot but like do we even know who we lost?? #more than half of the fandom doesnt even like him bc hes just so plain :/ #also hazel is a queen and i love her shes literally the best” /end ID.]

One of the big issues I take with both HoO and TOA is that literally every death in both series feels cheap because death has lost consequence. For the majority of HoO it’s at least somewhat still of a risk, but even things like Tartarus feel extremely lackluster when we actually encounter them - Tartarus especially after we saw how much it affected Nico, but then Percy and Annabeth’s plot armor kind of negates all of the threat and it feels like they don’t actually experience much more than their usual threats down there or that it has any lasting effect on them. And after Leo’s “death” we’re basically solidified into “Death has no consequence” because we just finished a series with at least SIX INSTANCES of major or minor protagonist-aligned characters notably directly cheating or miraculously avoiding death (Jason, Hazel, Gwen, Frank, Jason again, Leo), not including also miscellaneous minor antagonists. Which is aggravating because you can make a “Hey, these characters can’t die!” plot work, especially if that’s the root problem they’re trying to solve! It does work in TLH and SoN! And we’ve even seen it before in Battle of the Labyrinth when Percy fights his half-brother!

But HoO basically nullifies all consequence the characters face from MoA onwards and post-BoO “death” carries no weight, because by this point we have so many excuses to get around it or avoid it or come back from it that who cares! And this continues to be a thing post-TOA! Even just in the plot summary of Chalice Of The Gods we’re introduced to YET ANOTHER “Cheat death!” item! And I’d bet we’re gonna get one in TSATS too cause we’re almost guaranteed to see Damasen again, and the like one singular myth that exists referencing Damasen also specifically mentions an herb called “the flower of Zeus” that can revive things from the dead.

And it’s extra annoying because in TOA we keep getting character deaths shoved in our faces and told we should care about them, but either they’re characters we have little to no emotional connection to (such as, like, All Of Camp Jupiter in Tyrant’s Tomb when the camp is threatened and we’re told we should care, but we’ve barely seen the camp at all besides beginning of Son of Neptune and beginning of Mark of Athena, and the only living characters we get to actually see in Camp Jupiter from before TOA are Gwen, Dakota, Don the Faun, and our HoO protagonists.)

And Jason’s death is particularly annoying because a.) He’s essentially cheated death twice already [Piper bringing him back from either death or near-death when he accidentally witnessed Hera’s true form, and then his whole spear injury that was slowly killing him but was healed with [checks notes] the power of friendship], and b.) the scene DIRECTLY PARALLELS HIS FIGHT WITH MIDAS. Which, you know, he WON. VERY EASILY. And you can’t even argue “oh but this time Piper and Apollo were right there so he couldn’t have done the same thing!” because PIPER AND LEO WERE THERE WITH MIDAS. Heck, so was Lit! Who also survives and comes back in TOA! So not only is there no excuse for Jason to have not somehow miraculously avoided death (alongside every other TOA character, basically), but he SHOULDN’T HAVE DIED IN THE FIRST PLACE because THAT’S NOT A FIGHT HE SHOULD HAVE LOST! Him losing that fight is directly contrary to what we know about his character! And “he shouldn’t have lost that fight and died” doesn’t feel tragic here, it’s just aggravating! It’s just bad writing! And there’s no way around it because nobody cares about characters dying by that point in the series anyways because it doesn’t mean anything! We’ve had too much random death fodder in HoO (like the Hunters) directly alongside characters experiencing little to no consequence when they should from their experiences (Percy & Annabeth in Tartarus, literally every character nearly dying, etc.). The only characters we do see experience any kind of lasting consequences from near-death experiences are Hazel having blackouts in Son of Neptune (which are magically erased by Mark of Athena) and Nico being heavily implied to be permanently physically disabled after Tartarus (which is half-ignored when not plot relevant in TOA and completely ignored in the short story Un Natale Mezzosangue, which gives me reason to suspect it will also be ignored in TSATS). Not to mention Frank’s curse is also randomly erased in Tyrant’s Tomb, which is extra stupid because by following the logic of that scene his curse should have been lost back in Son of Neptune when he freed Thanatos, because he was using his curse for the same exact reasons with the same exact mindset. He literally did his character arc twice. Whatever.

HoO and TOA are just such a mess writing-wise of Rick trying to haphazardly incorporate as many myths as he can with zero attempts at cohesiveness that it doesn’t make any sense (I invite you all to read just the Team Statue chapters of BoO and take a moment to process how absolutely nonsensical it is) and he fails to consider the consequences of including certain myths, both in terms of how their aspects will impact the larger plot and also the historical context behind those myths and if how they’re being applied is offensive.

TL:DR: Jason’s death is stupid from literally every angle and HoO and TOA have a problem with literally any kind of narrative consequence.

[saggernooseai]