#the calypso problem

[marsconer]

i hate how this fandom treats calypso. like we know why percy forgot about his promise, we know all of this but she doesn’t. she’s trapped in a island with no sense of time and when a hero she loves promised her he would free her, all she knows is that he didn’t when she was naive enough to believe he would. and about the curse, girls are allowed to have nasty cruel thoughts and the way some people expected percy to act around her is really telling to how they see his character.

[tunguszka20]

My sister: Why was Odysseus on Calypso's island?

Me: Well, it was a punishment.

My sister: A punishment for who? Odysseus or Calypso?

[ruegarding]

some of percy's thoughts abt the gods in tlt

and one bonus som

[miraikowai]

I don't post art on this account and haven't really thought to do so in years, no, but when I do it's because twitter has completely failed me for the last time and I am feeling some kind of way about a crusty little meowmeow from a 25 year old game. Don't even worry about a thing.

[deepfriedtrout]

tfw when the woman you just slept with reveals she knows you've committed five million war crimes then offers you a pretty sweet faustian? you will die five million times if you agree bargain if u work under this one company.

but what happens next will surprise you:

what happens next is that I haven't written it. sorry.

[robinico]

i was binging thru the house of hades and read for several hours. and then i got to leo's ogygia arc and...just put my bookmark in and stopped reading lmao.

i'm glad enough people have written about the problems with caleo that it woke me up from the delusion i had as a young teen that "everything canon is good"

the verbal abuse calypso spews at leo and the way his self-esteem is so poor that he's forced to make a joke out of everything and the fact that it's framed as romantic banter...

[cuwalli]

idk all I'm saying is I'm an Elder Queer, at this point, and all I hear when I see some fuck claiming that David J or anyone on the staff of OFMD is """homophobic""" or some other such tripe is "I'm an ungrateful twat who doesn't know anything about how bad shit used to be for the LGBT community"

[nikkywrites]

Someone tell me that I don’t need to do another Calypso thing

I’ve had an Idea for like. A week and a half and I’ve tried ignoring it but it’s still here but she’s already got 3 big wips under her name (4, if you add Davy Jones’ pov). She doesn’t need more. And I’d say that this thing shouldn’t be long, but LAWLB wasn’t supposed to be either and it’s over 50k, so. Cannot promise.

[livingprophecy]

it wouldn’t be a normal day without flora roasting me in some way

[mopcleaner]

Calypso and Tiara 😊😊

[emmaoftoomanyfandoms]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers (ू•‧̫•ू⑅)♡

(´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

1. My mutuals♡♡

2. My cats beau and grim and the cat that might be a stray or someone’s outdoor cat (I think it’s a stray but I’m not sure) that I call sweetie (their attitude reminds me of cat I was tempted to call them that at first lol)

3 Rook Hunt (idk why he’s my favorite but he is brain just saw him and latched on)

4. Ranpo from bungo stray dogs(I’ve been hyper fixated on bsd lately so this quickly came to mind)

5.Mimi m&m's idk why but (to me at least) their superior to normal m&ms (maybe because when you’re done you can put the tube containers together like a marker cap sword)

[seagull-yuri]

Wow, I love dealing with blatant misogyny. So fun.

[100blueberries]

Odysseus: the Gods have allowed me to live another day and I’m going to make it everyone’s problem

The Gods, getting ready to boot him to Calypso’s island: actually we did not allow that

[wolfythewitch]

May I ask what you don’t like about the Calypso song snippets?

Love in paradise is fine, it comes across creepy enough and you can tell Odysseus doesn't want to be there.

I'm not sorry for loving you is a bit iffy to me. You can sort of tell there's meant to be a gaslighting sort of undertone to it but that's only if you've read the Odyssey/know the story. The comments on the snippets are full of people who sympathize Calypso and go "omg poor Calypso 💔". I also am very wary of the line "I love you, but not in the way you want to" which I Get might be him trying to placate her, but according to the snippet it's like a last word kind of thing. Like he says it and then he leaves, Calypso singing after him in despair. So it doesn't really feel placating, more like a confession

I get that he might not want to make the musical as dark, which is perfectly fair, (and it probably won't come across well to a modern audience that hey. All the enemies he comes across on his journey are either monsters, gods, or evil magic women) but well. Calypso is Very much a rapist and it feels weird to have her be viewed as sympathetic by so much of the fan base. (This is also my problem with her pjo)

[fantastic-nonsense]

I think people who genuinely wanted Percy to rebel against the gods and overthrow the system kind of...miss the whole point of the series

The question is not whether or not the gods deserve to rule; the books are kind of unambiguous that they don't! That the gods are generally undeserving of their children's loyalty is the one thing that Percy and Luke both agree on! But PJO is less about divine right to rule vs. ruling via consent of the governed and more about improving dysfunctional family systems. It's not about whether unfair rulers deserve to continue ruling; it's about forcing the gods to be better, fairer rulers and a better, fairer family given limited alternatives.

Because what are the alternatives, as presented to us within the scope of the original PJO series?

Option 1: allow Kronos to topple Olympus and take over. Clearly not a viable alternative for all of the reasons the books show us.

Option 2: the demigods overthrow the Olympians and rule the world themselves. Okay. How's that going to work out long-term, given demigods are mortal and cannot control or protect their parents' domains? Demigods will die out within a generation or two, so that's potentially a one-generation short-term solution, and then everyone's right back where they started. Except worse, because now the world has been out of divine balance for a century and the gods have a completely legitimate bone to pick with all demigods. Materially worse outcome.

Option 3: demigods ignore the gods and their will entirely. They integrate into the mortal world, refuse to participate in quests or talk to their parents, and pretend prophecies don't exist. Except that's clearly not a viable option, since we see that demigods usually can't safely exist in the mortal world without monsters coming after them, the gods are cruel enough to use blackmail and engage in hostage situations to get demigods to act as heroes, and prophecies have a way of coming true regardless of everyone's best attempts to circumvent them. Again: materially worse outcome.

And for Percy, for the demigods at Camp Half-Blood, for Luke and for everyone else who defected....for the most part, they don't actually have an inherent problem with the gods ruling them. They just want to be acknowledged, valued, and loved by their families, to be treated as more than a tool for their parents to wield whenever their services are needed. That was the core thesis of the demigod rebellion, which was wholly separate from Kronos' specific motivations for overthrowing the Olympians, and it's why Percy's asks at the end of TLO were what they were.

The point was always that had Percy grown up in a slightly more dysfunctional family environment...had he grown up with Frederick Chase's seemingly conditional love or May Castellan's madness instead of Sally Jackson's steady, quiet, unconditional love...he could have turned out like Luke. Like Ethan. Like the dozens of demigods who defected from camp to join Luke's cause. Percy could have turned out just as a bitter and angry and vengeful. Just as ready to tear down the system. Just as willing to betray and kill his own family for the sake of making a point.

But instead, Percy openly reprimands the gods for abandoning their families and using them as cannon fodder in their own petty disagreements. He forces them to acknowledge and claim their children. He demands that everyone who is part of the godly family be recognized and accepted, not just those related to the Twelve Olympians. He asks for those unjustly punished (like Calypso) to be set free and accepted back into the family. Because that's the point at the end of the day: not forcing bad rulers to step down, but changing an insanely dysfunctional family system that the gods and demigods are all members of into a better, safer, and more accepting environment for demigods to grow up and live in.

Overthrowing the gods wouldn't solve the problem at the heart of the series, which is the gods' shitty parenting and family management skills. It would only exacerbate the massive familial fault-lines that Kronos exploited and leave the demigods open to more godly manipulation. Which is why the series ends as it does, with Percy using his wish to tangibly improve the lives of his family instead of selfishly improving his own life (via accepting immortality/godhood) or overthrowing the gods. Because the conflict isn't about the gods as rulers. It's about the gods as parents.

PJO's core thesis is Percy, who grew up knowing unconditional familial love, looking at this whole world of children who didn't and saying "that's not fair. Gods should be better than this!" But instead of destroying them the way Luke wants to, instead of overthrowing them and putting himself on the throne, he instead challenges them to be better parents and family members. To be part of the solution instead of the problem. And Percy's demands don't solve everything, but they were necessary first steps! Without forcing the gods to acknowledge a bare minimum floor of inclusion, the cycle would simply begin all over again the next time a major conflict popped up.

So that's the problem Percy solves and how he successfully fulfills the prophecy: by believing that the gods had the capacity to change and forcing them to break the cycle of familial abandonment, he preserves Olympus and takes the first steps towards a new status quo, one that is objectively better for demigods than the one he grew up in. That's why he succeeds, and it's why Percy overthrowing the gods would have made for a much less satisfying ending than what actually happened.

[teeny-tiny-revenge]

It's home cinema manufacturing time! 🏴‍☠️ Gonna put my pirate show on my shelf! (I'm doing an Arts and Crafts Project and I'm making it everyone's problem.)

After seeing how much they cost, I abandoned the idea of getting a Blu-ray writer for now. For the time being, good old DVDs is what it's going to be! My TV is old and not very big, so DVD resolution is gonna be fine.

It's been ages since I last burned a DVD. For the full experience, I'm gonna create nice menus and pretty sleeves for the boxes. Graphic design is my passion! Um.

Well. First needed to find a program to do stuff with. I'm a Linux guy, so I'm using Devede. (Which is free, btw. In case someone else wants to do a low cost spot of putting pirate show on the shelf.)

DVDs fit a maximum of 120 minutes of video. So, four episodes, I thought. But after a quick attempt, the program refused to do more than three (maybe because of the menu also taking up space, and four episodes cutting pretty close to the 120 min mark?). Anyway, three episodes per disc it is. It's a pretty nice runtime for watching the entire disc, IMO. An hour and a half, and then you can return to reality to realise you should probably eat something, or go to bed because it's midnight.

OFMD with its current two seasons has a total of eighteen episodes, which is divisible by three. You get the following setup:

Disc 1: Pilot, A Damned Man, The Gentleman Pirate - That's pretty good, Stede's introduction to piracy all on one disc!

Disc 2: Discomfort in a Married State, The Best Revenge is Dressing Well, The Art of Fuckery - All bangers. Great to watch together, our boys meet and shenanigans happen!

Disc 3: This is Happening, We Gull Way Back, Act of Grace - Many romantic moments, lots of great scenes, shit hits the fan at the end there. Alright!

Disc 4: Wherever you go, there you are, Impossible Birds, Red Flags - ... Pain and angst! What have I done!?! The disc of horrors. Gotta make sure to have tissues at hand when I watch this. But hey, it also has messy bun Ed! Small mercies.

Disc 5: The Innkeeper, Fun and Games, The Curse of the Seafaring Life. - Another disc with all winners. I love all these episodes so much! (You can watch this disc to recover from the trauma of the previous one!) But seriously, this one slaps.

Disc 6: Calypso's Birthday, Man on Fire, Mermen - Great combination again. Season finale! Love and excitement!

... Honestly, except for the psychological damage of putting all the most painful episodes together, this is coming out pretty cool. Says a lot about how good the show is. I actually really love all the episodes (yes even the painful angsty episodes of massive depression). Thinking about this little project really reminded me how much I love this entire show.

So, we got a tracklist, now menus, then we can burn this stuff!

I did the menu backgrounds in GIMP. Realised I have a big folder full of screenshots I took myself, screenshots someone else took and posted on Tumblr, official promo pics for the show, and I have no idea anymore where most of them are from, because I named the files according to what's on them. Which is useful for when you want to find pics (Need a picture of cursed suit Stede? I have files named that, easy peasy!), but not so great if you wanted to give credit to whoever took a given pic you used. (It's probably @sherlockig or @ofmd-ann or @blakbonnet. Please feel credited, your beautiful screens and gifs brighten my day, and some of them are now probably part of my DVD menus. Shrunk down and cropped, but, yeah.)

I originally wanted to structure my menus as having the title of an episode, then some pics from it, then the next episode, then pics from that, and so forth, but I couldn't convince the program to give me the necessary padding between the menu items, so I ended up just putting the episode images below the menu. Still like it.

Anyway, DVD menus can also play sound! Behold a crappy video of my beautiful creation (provided entirely for sound):

It plays Gnossienne N°5!

More crappy pics of my other disc menus:

Gonna make them some nice sleeves next. Some day. Gotta make sure they all work properly first. So. I'll be on my sofa, watching my DVDs. With menus! (Edit: here are!)