You Matter

listen I ended up regretting saying anything about this on my old blog because people will interpret literally any and every statement maliciously on this hellsite but I want to start like. a helpline for people who are like “hey I pretty much only read YA but I’m like 22 now and don’t relate to teenagers as much, it’s such a shame that there are no fun books written for adults :(” because boy HOWDY are there some fun books for adults 

Ada Limón, “Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance”

like sorry it was a good episode i liked it but they missed like. the deeper meanings of some choices and actions like luke genuinely trying to kill percy and almost succeeding. like sally choosing to defeat her monster.

writer: this is one of my male characters! he cares about his guy friends and loves them deeply.

tumblr: oh! so he’s gay!

writer: uh…no, he’s attracted to women.

tumblr: ….so he’s bi!

writer: uhh…no…….he loves his guy friends but he’s not romantically/sexually attracted to them.

tumblr: ….so you’re homophobic.

writer:

suzanne collins is such a genius... the cultural phenomenon of her series leading to the hanging tree house remixes, mockingjay being milked for two (bad) movies, the capitol-inspired makeup palettes, the halloween costumes, the explosion of the market for dystopia, the butchering of her characters and removal of disabilities, disfiguration, and racial tension + representation to sell more tickets, the extra gale scenes to fuel discourse, and the audience showing up to cinemas to watch what was pretty honestly marketed to them (the jacob vs edwardification of the symbolic love story and also to watch children fight to the death) it's just so ridiculously ironic i would say you can't write this shit, but she did write about it... in The Hunger Games published 2008

that was the best episode by FAR and here’s why:

1. annabeth instinctually knowing he’s alive and refusing to lose her faith in him even when grover, the one with the empathy link, didn’t believe so.

2. the hug. the overwhelming relief on her face. his pleasantly surprised reaction. us being able to see everything visually click in grover’s head once he realized what he’s in for. percy teasing her about it when they’re hiding on the highway bc he assumes that’s why she’s being standoffish. grover heaving and rolling his eyes when percy suggests that. i can already envision the MoA parallels in my head of them running to each other.

3. percy and annabeth referring to each other as friends on multiple occasions like FINALLY you’re getting it

4. percy telling annabeth and grover about his revelation that the quest goes deeper than they think and annabeth and grover being light years ahead of him

5. percy’s renewed faith in his father contrasted with annabeth’s dwindling faith in her mother

6. annabeth seeing the fates cut a string and mentally preparing herself to sacrifice herself for her friends and the quest bc she’s so ride or die for them it’s insane even if she’ll deny it and say it’s for the sake of the quest.

7. none of them talking to gods with the deference they’re supposed to. annabeth cooly staring down ares like she couldn’t be blasted to smithereens.

8. annabeth casually mentioning she’s never seen a movie ever to an appalled percy, speaking to how sheltered camp life has been for the last 5 years, making her unaware of general pop culture. percy promising to catch her up on what she’s missing out on. cut to their interrupted botl movie date that’s most definitely not a date. cut to MoA when she mentions roman holiday is her favorite movie bc she watched it a lot with her dad after they somewhat reconciled…also due in part to percy.

9. annabeth getting distracted by the beauty of the machine at the entrance while percy thinks he is actively going to die. her love for design will never not be endearing.

9. percy and annabeth riding down the tunnel of love seeing hephaestus’s story play out and annabeth insisting that sally prepared him the best way she could’ve—with unwavering loyalty to his loved ones, the antithesis to the gods.

10. annabeth being so ready to sacrifice herself for him, especially after probably being ridden with guilt and self-hatred for letting him get the best of her at the gateway arch, and understanding he would never let her do that. his pure faith in her as being the most capable—“You’re better at this than me. You just are.” with the utmost conviction in his voice. both of them tearing up and percy begging her to do what he originally chose her on the quest for. annabeth fighting back every instinct within her that despises standing back and letting someone else take the fall. him turning to her and saying “i need you to promise me something” and her immediately swearing if she’s able to save anyone on this quest, it’ll be his mother, knowing that’s the most important thing to him in all of this. him asking she come back for him and her scoffing “you think you had to ask?” and his sad watery smile back, knowing he didn’t need to….ALSO the ever-iconic “seaweed brain”. PEAK cinema i’m telling you

11. percy trusting annabeth with riptide as his parting gift and thing to give her strength and remember him by. paralleled with how she’ll (hopefully) untie her camp necklace and tie it around his neck before his final fight with ares as a token of good luck and entrusting him with the home she wore around her throat…

12. the well-written conversations with the gods, though unexpected. grover being FAR more clever than he’s given credit for, manipulating ares’s tendency towards anger, bitterness, and pride to get what he wanted out of him. annabeth rejecting hephaestus’s promises of power and glory and the renewal of her mother’s favoritism and pride, something annabeth used to crave with her entire heart. annabeth echoing to hephaestus what she said to percy in the tunnel about him not being like the rest of their godly family and telling the god that she refuses to be like them too. that the way they treat each other and their children isn’t right, the same way percy insisted to her last episode. hephaestus being one of the only gods capable of empathizing with her and telling her “you’re a good kid, annabeth. i’ll put in a good word with your mom for you.” no one speak to me i’m unwell

13. timothy omundson in general…although i keep hearing him as lassie in my head 😭

14. ares negging on them and warning percy his dad’s mind is as fickle as the sea itself and percy won’t be able to hold down his father’s favor and percy responding by threatening the literal god of war in the most percy-like fashion

15. ares didn’t call twitter X. but now we know who’s behind the mentally ill stan wars

things they really didn’t need to change:

1. the one thing i am really miffed about it is them robbing thief annabeth from my cold, dead hands. i wanted to see her raid a store without a second thought and be a little gremlin!!! she has hermes’s influence all over her (thanks luke/being a runaway), let us see it!!!

2. percy and annabeth being slightly awkward at the entrance of the thrill ride of love didn’t carry the same humor as the book scene because they’re such children about it in tlt and annabeth is extremely flustered but we don’t see that here.

3. aphrodite’s scarf. it was a fun detail they could’ve kept. seeing percy making heart eyes would’ve been funny (and maybe a glimpse into future seasons)

4. percy seeing a clip of gabe being gabe and saying “im going to kill him” is merely a NUGGET of the hatred we should be seeing from percy for that man. especially in area’s presence which feeds off of and amplifies everybody’s anger and hatred and bloodlust. there still needs to be more build up to turning gabe to stone at the end of all this

5. percy blacking out from using his powers to get him and annabeth out of the water. while he’s nowhere close to being a master at his craft at this point in the books, and he is known to lose control, even as a more seasoned warrior, i don’t think what he did warranted a blackout. i feel like they’re underselling his innate strength a little bit.

6. overall, although it kind of worked out, there was just a lot of plot deviation from the books—grover not going to waterland, no mechanical spiders, percy and annabeth not jumping out the ride into free fall and being saved by grover wearing maia, although they crash into a billboard etc etc.

never bothered watching the movie but I feel this frame on a spiritual level

I hate when I tell people I like the hunger games and then their immediate reaction is “team gale or team peeta?” Like what. Team paying attention to the main point of the book which is an extremely moving comment on society and the world we’re heading towards, on classism and the patriarchy and the government and all the evils that go on in the world with the privileged turning a blind eye. On death and suffering and cruelness just because we can. On being corrupted by power on everything being unfair, on our minds and how they shape the world and our minds and how they can change the world and the good and bad and love and hate and brainwashing and revolution. But sure, team peeta.

Jesper: Why's Kaz in the corner?

Inej: he's in time out.

Jesper:...why?

Inej: he just pitched th idea that instead of discarding amputations, we should let cannibals have them, and that we should legalize cannibalism.

Wylan: ...he had a po-

Inej: CORNER.