One of the both interesting and annoying things with Trials of Apollo is Apollo is an unreliable narrator who will entirely straight up lie to the audience.
Like, on one hand, yes technically that is what an unreliable narrator is, but generally with unreliable narrators you are able to parse that they’re being unreliable entirely within the contexts of the narrative and also parse the truth. A good example is actually Magnus Chase - he’s also an unreliable narrator. But he doesn’t wholly outright lie ever about random details. Magnus is somewhat coy when it comes to details about himself or his feelings, but its also generally very easy to see through his pretenses. When we’re introduced to him, he talks a lot insisting that he’s some type of tough loner guy on the streets, and isn’t super into touchy-feely stuff. Then we’re immediately introduced to his found family and spend the next two books seeing his found family grow and finally him literally win a fight with the power of friendship. He claims he’s totally independent, but then also talks about how he keeps sneaking into his uncle’s house and again, has two adoptive dads. We’re presented this information almost side-by-side, so while Magnus is an unreliable narrator, we as the audience are still receiving valid information. And then comparatively Percy is just almost entirely a truthful narrator. There’s never really a question of having to dispute the information he gives us.
Meanwhile, Apollo will exposition at the audience and we genuinely have no way of confirming or denying it, and we do know that he is blatantly lying about at least some of it, which makes basically all of the information entirely useless. The most notable example of this is Apollo spending three whole books referring to Artemis as his younger twin sister. Without contextual knowledge of Greek Mythology, specifically relating to the myth of Artemis and Apollo’s births, there is no reason for the audience to dispute this or not take this as fact when Apollo is presenting it as such. Then, in Tyrant’s Tomb when Artemis actually shows up, Apollo completely 180s into being truthful and referring to Artemis as his older twin. It honestly almost reads as just narrative inconsistency or textual error if you aren’t aware that Apollo is intentionally supposed to be lying to the audience.
And it’s annoying! Because we can’t take anything he says as fact most of the time! Like, we can presume it’s true, because we have nothing saying it’s not true until we do. But also, sometimes we do! Like with Artemis! So there’s a ton of little instances of having to go “Is this a retcon, new information, consistency error, or is Apollo just straight up lying and it will never get addressed?” We don’t know.
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I don't consider Ramattra difficult to draw, just very time consuming due to all the details.
... Excluding his ELBOWS, of all things.
Try extending your own arm and twisting your wrist and then entire arm. How in God's name do those kinds of motions (or in my case, poses) translate to a robot arm without a ball joint at the elbow???? I swear whenever I pose my arms to get a better idea on where the elbow itself points, which side of the hand has the the thumb, etc etc, then translate the information onto him, 99% of the time he ends up with dislocated elbows...
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my niece is staying with us for the whole weekend for the first time. until now it's always been one night only, not two.
it's the second night now and I have already decided this is not happening again anytime soon. I'm so fucking exhausted. it'd be less exhausting if it was my nephew, I think - he's older and also doesn't need as much help (even when he was her age).
I love my niece but she just asks so many questions. like when we're watching a show or a movie, even if it's one she has seen before (even multiple times), she doesn't understand what's going on and constantly asks me to explain everything. I don't mind it, really, but it does take a lot of energy. plus tonight it took over two hours for her to fall asleep because she was scared by the noises of the house and the nearby road. I get it, but damn I'm so fucking tired, I just want to sleep 😭
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[kicks door down]
Autistic Nishiki whose special interest is fashion and not only considers what's trendy but also looks out for fabrics that aren't a sensory nightmare, however sometimes he will force himself to wear something that isn't comfy for appearance's sake, which leaves him more vulnerable to getting overwhelmed and therefore 'emotional'
Also means he has his collar popped like Kiryu's for sensory reasons too and slutty reasons, which would once again make me correct in saying if he undid his collar in Kiwami he'd be normal again because if I were constantly experiencing sensory discomfort I too would be fucked up and evil.
Cause like here's the thing, autistic Kiryu and Majima headcanons are more obvious (especially the former), whereas Nishiki probably comes off as the most 'normal'; he can likely maintain eye contact and talk to people 'normally' and not like, go off on some random tangent about a special interest or hyperfixation. And then you remember masking is a thing.
And okay, so I actually think it's unfair a lot of fandom considers him a 'crybaby' right, cause he's cried in situations MOST PEOPLE WOULD RIGHTFULLY CRY OVER!
BUT, I can use this to my Autistic Advantage and have this be he actually struggles to regulate his emotions, and considering he's been exposed to the yakuza world since a young age where ANY emotion that isn't 'respectable stoicism' or 'righteous fury and indignation', he's seen as even MORE overly emotional. Hence the need to start masking so early, PLUS having to protect Kiryu who couldn't mask if his life depended on it because he doesn't realise he may HAVE to (speaking from personal experience, Kiryu definitely went his whole life unaware there was anything ""wrong"" with him (for lack of a better word) and had people just like "oh yeah he's just Like That dw bout it" and went on with his life), so Nishiki takes up the mantle of I'm The One Who Knows What We're Doing
Lad's desperate to gain acceptance and will change whatever he has to but people still somehow pick up that Something's Off About Him and so they tend to be disdainful or brush him off. It's easy charisma that can win over hostesses and brief encounters with civillians but can't carry across in the yakuza. Kiwami is him trying his DAMNDEST to act neurotypical even at the cost of his own comfort, and the worst part is it's not working
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Hewwo everybody! first of all: happy Juneteenth to all my African American friends! Second, I have update on the semifinals: i am traveling for a convention (anime ohio) and don’t have access to a computer, so semifinals will go up next weekend, not this weekend. Had a lot of stuff going on including con crunching so I kinda.. forgor to make the next bracket round….. so it will have to wait til I get back. sorry. Please be patient with me 🥲
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I'm two episodes into the new ATLA show and I literally love it oh my gosh skjdfhakdsf
I'm really not the biggest fan of season 1 of the original show so this is honestly a massive step up for me I'm incredibly impressed
M. Night Shyamalan better be taking some serious frickin notes here like this is how you adapt a show hooooly cow
Some slight spoilers in the tags beware sdfdsf (also since I'm only on episode three please don't spoil aahh-)
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"are you really telling me that susy homemaker started spouting a death prophecy and you just packed her bags and sent her on her dream vacation?"
"i. dont. remember! and even if i did, what does it matter. we have bigger problems. that wasnt just a death prophecy, sis, that was doomsday talk. the end of all things. and i dont know about you but i dont really look forward to returning to the primordial abyss. i dont really like being more than a 4 hour flight from paris. we've wasted enough time, we need to get this situation under control"
begrudgingly dragged to the good side bc too much of a hedonist to let earth be destroyed. i think matska and missy have spent more than an evening together. i think they meet up semi-regularly to get away from the tedium of evil business and hang out for a long weekend with someone who gets it
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oouuuggghhh I want to resub to FFXIV right now so bad. and 90% of it is because I literally just want to dress up my character in outfits. like yeah there's the most recent patch of MSQ and the new alliance raid to do and maybe, I don't know, Island and relic weapon grinds? but god I mostly just want to dress my character up.
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Anyways after watching s5-8 and even New Blood, I can safely say that the show should have ended in after s4 because it doesn't actually matter if Decter gets caught, or if someone kills him, or both at the same time (new blood lmao) cause that doesnt even mean all that much to him anyways. S4 was perfect in encapsulating how everything he could have ended differently had he not been an arrogant, self-centred asshole who spent his life deluding himself into believing to be above any other serial killer. None of the wannabe profound b/s they attempted in the later seasons hit as hard as the moment where Dexter realized he fucked up, knew that he had fucked up, yet did nothing until the consequences destroyed everyone around him. And he finally felt shattered by remorse.
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