#like... an actual letter he wrote

[unclefungusthegoat]

You know you're either in too deep (or just really tired) when you start getting all emotional and overexcited at a picture of a letter your fave historical guy wrote. Especially when so very little information about him survives - no known birth date, no known burial site, all his letters to his greatest love were burned. But there it is... an actual piece of paper, with his handwriting on it.

[shitpostingkats]

Me: See, when Cloud asks Aerith if she and Zack were serious and she responds "Not really", she's not actually lying. While obviously she loved him and he loved her, Zack wasn't really a loadbearing part of her life, and with the hindsight of being an adult she can look back and acknowledge how little their lives intersected. However, Aerith was and is a much more important person to Zack, because she was basically his only friend outside of Shinra, and representative of the life he should have been leading instead of being a child soldier. Their interactions throughout crisis core are baked with a sense of normalcy, something Zack is in desperate lack of, so he views his relationship with her as the only thing "safe" from being in the military. That's why, when his life of being a SOLDIER crumbles around him, the only thing he can really think of is reuniting with Aerith. Aerith is the only haven he had away from it all, and stands for the domesticity he has been so violently robbed of. Aerith is the personification of his dreams, in much the same way Cloud is the personification of his honor, and his mindless chasing and protecting of the two represents Zack trying to cling to the last shards of his identity he has left.

My coworker Jeff: I see. And those reports I asked for?

Me: Irrelevant.

[legobiwan]

"First, let's get something out of the way: a human's ability to grasp reality is painfully limited. You don't even have free will! Don't believe me? Okay, rip a dollar in half right now. Didn't do it? Didn't think so!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"PS: Look what I just ripped in half! Suck it!"

~~~~~~~~

I love Stan so, so much for this.

[heybiji]

how nice it is to meet people as oneself.

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.

[kalied0skull]

I'm just getting this out there before i panic over not getting it done today .. . :3

would like to thank @broareweabouttoviberightnow for feeding the brain with another banger song to think about stevepop to .. specifically with transfem soda ... .

the song in question : Look At That Woman — Role Model ♪

and as always ...

★ ramble under the cut !

i picked the worst time to actually get to this because i am actually so exhausted i think i could pass out whilst writing this AND OH MY GOODNESS CAAAAT okay sorry my friends cat came to say hello

anyhow, i did NOT stick to the proper order of lyrics here (because I trimmed some out to fit the comic better) and I don't know how much i enjoy that fact 💀

but these sets of verses had the biggest visuals to me, and i definitely just ran with it

when thinking about this song, i thought a lot about how i could kind of twist the story and make it fit a bit and came up with a really silly au sort of storyline:

I'm not the best with storyboarding obviously, and the comic definitely shows that bc it seems a bit .. .. weirdly organized BUT LET ME EXPLAIN IT OKAY MAN

i love to imagine this song as transfem soda going off and doing her own thing while steve's off for college, their relationship is going steady and yet steve can't help but overthink about the distance — the fact he has to send letters to soda now instead of just seeing her every other day at the DX or the curtis home. it makes him anxious, and he kind of just throws himself around over missing his girlfriend

the rest of the song is very descriptive well in terms of visualizing transfem soda, and i wish i could've focused on it but unfortunately it seemed a bit silly to just make a drawing purely only for her outfit for this comic 😭 (i probably WILL make a drawing though, nonetheless)

there's just something real entertaining about the idea of steve being the one leaving, and feeling overwhelmed with some kind of guilt because he misses his gal. he's definitely not the type to enjoy long distance relationships, and he's gonna have to whether he likes it or not!!!

thankfully though, soda is a loving girl and cares about steve nonetheless no matter the distance, and she's constantly sending him letters. she doesn't even mind if he doesn't reply to them (he overthinks the replies, too (see the papers on his floors /silly))

the "memory" scene was kind of just me trying to figure out how to display the lyrics in an organized way, and it ended up being a bit of a 'goodbye' scene between the two as soda drops steve off at the airport with his first ever letter — and i like to aaaalso imagine that letter absolutely ruins him permanently in terms of just REALIZING how much he's gonna miss her 💀

steve's got a bunch to stress over — missing his girl, not being able to see his girl, college work, his dorm mates, his dad bitching his ear off still, the guys who might try and dig at his girl — he'll worry about all the stuff soda sends in his letters, and even though soda tells him and reassures that he doesn't have to reply back, steve will ALWAYS send home something to her.

'trying to call, but the leaves start to fall' is a major line for that, just because i think he absolutely does just... struggle with words – and of course, it's fall !!!

iiii dunno, I'm kind of droning on here since I can't form proper sentences at the moment (I'll probably be sleeping right after this 💀) but i really thought this song was pretty neat ... and i had a lot of fun making something way more extra than necessary for it ... hehehe

[cheaploafs]

woe wips i forgot about be upon ye

[myreputatioooon]

okay but can we see Wuthering Height's side on the fallout of Heathcliff being Doomed by the Narrative in World of U Corp?

manor reconstruction is in order, golden boughs are secured, some more years and Heathcliff will be invited back home

some years too early an uninvited guest requests an audience with somebody he only knows by the name of Cathy to give news regarding Heathcliff

Catherine, deprived of her love for so long demands the same, demands he tells everything he knows about Heathcliff, to know the name of whom Heathcliff has spent the last of his years with

"I've beaten around the bush for too long, I came here because Heathcliff loved you dearly, so much so he had a coffin made for the moment of his inevitable demise.

"I'm inviting you, and anybody you wish to take with you, to my love's funeral. Please forgive me for not having the funds to host it in a Nest," is spoken from Yi Sang.

whom Heathcliff has spent the last of his years with

it can't be him

[intricate-ritualz]

fics where connor is written as just a strange fucking guy >>>

[coquelicoq]

i just don't understand what milady has done that was so bad. sure she killed and she kidnapped, but who hasn't? sure she's a terrifying demon of vengeance, but she deserves it? good for her??? all these men treat her so reprehensibly and she's smart and talented and she should kill them all if she wants to. i support her.

[fitzrove]

i have two academic identities: one is most geniusest prodigy ever that's soo monumental and going to change everything everywhere with this one paper alone

and another one is incompetent circus clown about to fail out of clown school😭

[rosie-tyler]

This is Daniel reading Silver's apology letter while Kreese is reading his to Johnny

[mournmage]

Fucking CRYING reading the HOF letter in Inquisition Emyr wouldnt say ANY OF THAT

[baronessblixen]

he is so old with his emails please 😭

He is, but it's so cute! I love it. This is DD writing emails in my head 😂

[moliathh]

[alutegra/alucard x integra, hellsing]

[bumblingbabooshka]

Chakotay being a person who (while of course being willing to follow orders to a point) ultimately puts what's morally right and wrong in his eyes over Starfleet protocol while Tuvok is shown to be a person who will follow Starfleet protocol (and more accurately Janeway's word) over what he personally thinks is right is something that could have been so interesting if the three of them were actually shown as a triumvirate instead of it usually being Janeway-Chakotay and even then mostly just Janeway.

It would be an opportunity to explore more about the Maquis v Starfleet dynamic, about how Chakotay & Janeway's different leadership styles work and don't work with this new crew and with different people, to interrogate what exactly Voyager should look like - to incorporate more leniency and Maquis tactics into its operation so that they really do become a blended ship instead of the Maquis simply becoming subsumed into Starfleet. It'd also give more opportunities to let all three characters shine and introduce more moral quandaries that they can have differing ideas about and how does that affect them? At one point Tuvok is willing to go against Janeway's orders because she wants to do something but can't due to Starfleet protocol. In another episode he also follows Janeway's orders to assist in killing an entire ship of people despite that being against both Starfleet protocol and certain moral standards because she feels strongly that they should. He protests this but once she rebukes him he doesn't object again or attempt to stop her (like Chakotay - though they both know at that point that she's crossing lines). This sort of implies to me that he's much more loyal to Janeway herself than he is to Starfleet as a concept. Meanwhile Janeway is shown to be staunchly and strictly Starfleet - adopting the code AS her moral compass a lot of the time. She sometimes has to go off-script due to the nature of their situation but most of her decisions are made depending on how Starfleet would feel about it. If she wants to do something but Starfleet would disagree, she rarely if ever questions Starfleet protocol and instead will go with what it says is best even if it's painful on a personal level. She also tells Tuvok in the episode aforementioned that he is "Her advisor, her moral compass" and having a moral compass/advisor that's either a bunch of rules written by the space government or a person who is mostly just going to agree with you no matter what they actually think and not challenge you if you rebuke them isn't the best idea. Enter Chakotay. Chakotay's willingness to disagree with Janeway and not back down is something I wish had been shown more. When he says "I don't care about logs or reports or whatever - I care about person to person shit. I care about what's right and what you're doing is wrong." it's something that could be so interesting and so necessary when contrasted with the other two. A good example is of course 'Equinox' but also 'Manuevers' where he goes off against literally everyone's orders and friendly advice because he feels responsible. And that's important - he's doing it because he feels responsible. That's different from Tuvok (who doesn't feel) and Janeway (who would most likely try to find comfort in protocol) - because Chakotay feels he's responsible and that he needs to protect the crew since he (in his eyes) is the one who put them in danger. He's a person who's shown to be willing to go against everything anyone says in order to do what he feels is right if the wrong is too great to allow. Voyager if these three were actually allowed to argue and be equals and figure out how to work together as sort of a microcosm of how this new blended crew is going to be able to fight and work and band together.