tried to re-read HOO series again and I’m hit in the face at how awful and forced all the new ships are. I feel like if Rick wanted us to get invested in the characters as individuals, we could have had more focus on their journeys without cluttering them down with rapid and poorly thought out romance.
the reason percabeth remains so appreciated to this day is that despite a few OOC scenes or frustrations readers may have, we can all read how Percy and Annabeth are a partnership who love, tease, and respect each other-their values and flaws mesh well to each of their benefit, set steadily against a tumultuous time and their own growing pains. below are the major complaints I have with the other ships and how quite possibly none of them should have been made canon. Not to mention a majority of the series takes place over like 3-4 weeks. (SON-BOO)
Jason x Piper: foundation is built on a lie so Jason feels an immediate obligation to Piper (and we know how seriously he treats his duties) and Piper feels shackled to a guy-due to some kind of time invested/sunk cost fallacy and his good looks-that doesn’t love her the way she wants or needs; if Rick wanted this to happen, they could’ve created a stronger bond as Jason and Piper over the books, not maybeboyfriend!Jason and maybegirlfriend!Piper. Idk, any romance with them felt super forced.
Frank x Hazel: oh my god NO, they are babies, infants in fact! two incredibly young and isolated loner/rejected feeling children who hung out together for some sense of companionship and comfort should not automatically be paired off just because they are both kind, available, attractive, and with deep seated sense of shame in their own being. No. I would have accepted hints towards a future romance maybe once they developed a bit more, acknowledged and made progress on themselves etc. Side note: screw you for the Leo x Hazel x Frank juvénile love triangle. I had to skim/skip those parts.
Leo x Calypso: well, aside from the fact that this just plays into Leo’s issues about needing a girlfriend as a symbol of success and recognition of his own worth…I never got the sense that either of them even LIKED each other. Calypso is always annoyed with Leo and berates him and Leo thinks she’s pretty. She wants an escape that Zeus didn’t give her (ignoring Percy’s requirement) and Leo wants to not be seen as a 7th wheel. But okay, for argument’s sake, let’s say they “love each other”. How do we know that she loves him of her own accord and not just because of the curse that forces her to love whoever lands on her shore? How do we know that Leo isn’t just riding the high of a beautiful woman “wanting him” and calling it love? I mean, a generous estimate says they knew each other like a week/month…and they weren’t chatting and braiding each others hair during that period.
Tyson x Ella: but why though??? There is literally no narrative need to put a romance here. Nothing changes in their dynamic if they were just friends and if we were calling Tyson a BABY in TLO, then I don’t think he’s grown up enough since for a relationship. Stupid and forced.
***Nico and Reyna are both going through no-good, very bad years and should not have to worry about unrequited love on top of it.
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Michael, the Ruined Prince
Michael, having used all of his power to seek out God, had failed as the Prince of Heaven. He had abandoned his people, absent for centuries on a fruitless search filled with unheard, increasingly desperate prayers and an unrelenting, bone-deep exhaustion that is now permanent. His grief grew day by day, and an angel in isolation begins to wither, to warp – they must be with one another lest they twist into their extremes, retreating into their divine purpose until it becomes self-destructive parody. And Michael had already been scarred long ago by his role in banishing Lucifer, by God’s own ever-mounting wrath that ate away at the mercy he was meant to feel alongside it. Michael had already been insular, something had already pulled at the seams of his soul, and now centuries of failure consume him. He would return to Heaven with nothing for his people. Nothing for the siblings he swore to protect.
So his final thought in a deeply troubled mind urged him to try one last time. That if he could not find God, then he must bring God to himself. He must sin, he must beg for punishment, and then God will come to deliver it onto him. Just as He once did to Lucifer. It disgusted him, to think he had to debase himself to be as the sinners he held nothing but vile contempt for ever since he couldn’t cope with the guilt of the first fallen angels. But his prayers have failed, his days of weeping have failed, he moved Heaven, Earth, and all of Hell to come up with empty hands. Less than that. Not even a feeling. So Michael, even as a Cherub who could not, did everything he could to replicate his memories of when he had witnessed God Himself tear the light from His angels. Michael had seen it every time, it was he that had to bind any fallen angel that survived it to their place in Hell. He knew, implicitly, what the ritual was even if God seemed to enact it in one beautiful, elegant motion. And he did just that. Imperfect pantomiming, flawed execution, but the same ritual as best as Michael could copy it. All to himself.
But only God and the high Seraphim can sever an angel from their light.
His soul was rent from his body. His light was torn to shreds by his inexperienced hands. The agony that it screeched resounded all the way back to Heaven in unintelligible, muted whispers of nauseous grief no one could understand. Michael felt himself die, but it was incomplete. He was left in a corpse, a body destroyed and succumbing to all it meant but with him still inside of it. God did not come, and Michael was trapped a ruined body, bereft of a soul, of his light, giving way to rot and deterioration yet fully functional. He could do nothing but take this as a sign from God, one that he will not be punished no matter his crime for being such a loyal servant. Even as his body falls apart, as plants begin to burst from his remains, he believes himself to be blessed – see how he grows God’s garden. See how his crown remains pristine. He adorns his exposed bones with gems and finery, ostensibly as thanks to God for keeping him alive, keeping him sinless when he had so despised his impending fall from grace. But. Michael is, in the back of his mind, highly aware of what he’s become. He knows he is rotting, he knows he is in a dead body, he knows, somewhere, God had nothing to do with it. It was just a mistake, it was just his own foolishness with catastrophic consequence. He is more noxious than a fallen angel now, a botch job shambling numbly back to Heaven when he feels the death of Gabriel.
Upon his return, he largely attempts to hide the rot of his body, at least from the citizenry – he cannot hide it from Raphael or Uriel, nor does he try. To Michael, it proves his devotion, it shows God’s still present love for him, and it is a testimony to how he cannot fall, that he can never lose his place in Heaven. Raphael begs for him to be healed, Uriel pleads reason to him, but neither had ever been as strong as Michael and ultimately, he is their leader. No matter the state he returns in, he is the Prince of the Archangels and truthfully...they both fear him now. He is not the Michael they loved, not the one that had been quiet and stoic yet still loving in return. The Michael that would have done anything for them, that never wanted to lose another like he lost Lucifer. He commands them now to join him in binding Gabriel, his tangible grief the only thing that seems to be left of who he had once been.
Internally, Michael sees their fear, he feels the crushing guilt of Gabriel’s fall, he is violently ill with one true look at himself. He had gone wrong a long, long time ago, when he lost Lucifer, and now all of that was being made manifest, but he can’t face it. As flesh falls away, he covers it more and more with jewels as if that could hide the decay he can feel spreading night and day, the only thing he feels now. He must retreat into his purpose, he must not allow such devastating failure to be his legacy. So he turns on Gabriel. Gabriel, whose light had been severed. Who walks freely in an abandoned Hell. Who still has a living, breathing body. Michael’s vitriol toward the damned hones in on Gabriel, consumed with being sure he is left nailed to the lowest pit in Hell for his treachery. All the love he once had turns to hatred and in it, the other three can see that Michael has been left shattered, that nothing in him truly believes God made him this way. God’s most loyal, left to rot.
Additional information:
Michael now always exudes the Odor of Sanctity, but there is a distinct undertone of mold to it
The opalescent webbing that runs through his body is the angelic brain - normally it is iridescent and transparent with a strange glow, but Michael's is opaque and dull
Michael now prefers walking, something noted as unusual when he returned to Heaven, but it's simply due to the fact that his body has been left entirely numb and so it's difficult to maneuver in the air properly
He is very protective of his crown and dragon-skin bag, as they seem to be the only things left uncorrupted on him
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I don’t usually make posts like this, but I’ve been seeing a lot of anti-intellectual junk lately, and I really think we need to put the word “pretentious” up on a shelf until people learn what it actually means.
It doesn’t describe someone who likes artsy-fartsy deep meaning media. People who are pretentious are fake. They’re posers trying to be sophisticated and unique, not like other girls. They pretend to only like stuff they think will make them sound cool when they talk about it. They want to act like they know something you don’t, and they want attention for it.
By definition, if you genuinely enjoy something, you can’t be pretentious. If it resonates with you, and you analyze it, and you don’t care what people think, that’s the polar opposite, actually. If you love obscure experimental prog music, if you watch underground high concept indie films through English teacher eyes, if you spend hours in a modern art museum reading each piece as a vessel for storytelling, if your backpack’s full of poetry books that inspire you, if you play underrated games that were someone’s passion project, if you have an interest in studying the classics or the masters, you are not pretentious.
Of course, some people just don’t like some stuff, and that’s fine, but that’s not what this is about. Don’t let anti-intellectuals shame you for enjoying things just because your interests are inaccessible to them, because they refuse to be brave and put effort into critical thinking. You’re not stuck up for refusing to overlook the craft of artists.
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Important follow up to this poll:
Out of respect for Aladdin's landslide win in the first poll and subsequent crowning as the King of the Blunt Rotation, he has been removed from the bracket and replaced with Kristoff who frankly I think fits into this bracket much better.
Once again, apologies to the other Disney princes who have been snubbed. I only get ten slots per poll and honestly I don't think Hercules would have been invited. Robin Hood and Quasimodo probably would have been but they're too busy cooking meth Breaking Bad style to partake of the devil's lettuce, and Milo Thatcher is currently taking as much Adderall as he can buy on a linguist with a focus on lost languages' salary.
We here at Prince Blunt Rotation Inc. wish them and our contestants the best of luck and the highest of highs. May the worst nightmare blunt rotation invitee win.
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How do you say worcesteershsire sauce
Idk why ur asking this but unfortunately i studied linguistics in college so im gonna send a pointlessly specific answer.
I speak general american english & i usually say it like one of these (rough IPA transcription in brackets; closest word approximation in parentheses, but this may only work to read if u also speak gen american english):
[wʊs.tr.ʃɑɪr] (wuss-ter-shire)
[wʊs.tr.ʃir] (wuss-ter-sheer)
sometimes [wɔr.tʃɛs.tr] (war-chess-ter), but I think I mainly said that as a kid? I don't think it's an uncommon pronunciation in america tho. idk i might b wrong.
I think [wɔr.tʃɛs.tr.ʃɑɪr] (war-chess-ter-shire) and [wɔr.tʃɛs.tr.ʃir] (war-chess-ter-sheer) are possible pronunciations ive heard here too
None of these are how it's pronounced in the UK, i think. iirc I think it's [wʊs.tə] (wuss-tuh). I dont know much abt british eng tho so idk.
Sauce is [sɑs] (the "a" sound in "father").
Tbh i dont eat worcestershire sauce (i dont like most condiments) so i dont really say this word often LMAO;;
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