Nico is autistic he told me himself

Aro/ace Leo Valdez is a p cool headcanon yo

[aroaceleovaldez]

while i still write fic for (particularly niche parts of) the rrverse fandom i gotta say the wider fandom no longer feels like its for me or that i really fit in there. some of that is probably my age since i read the books when i was ten and i'm now twenty-one but it does feel so different than it did in the later 2010s when i started getting into the fandom

I don't think it's an outgrowing the series thing for most people - the PJATO (first series) books still hold up (though they're obviously still middle grade reading level, which admittedly some people have less tolerance for than others, but it's not the nails-on-chalkboard style of middle grade that some series at that reading level have). The quality of the franchise has genuinely decreased dramatically with recent installments, and the community shifted very dramatically around 2016 (most of the fandom leaving due to having no interest in the other series/new books). It's literally a different fandom landscape/different community for the most part. The quality decrease in the series hasn't helped the community shifting either.

[aroaceleovaldez]

ik you left the fandom but i've followed your blog since early covid so do you think the fandom has gotten less queer, less neurodivergent, less racial awareness (basically WAY fewer minorities and minority voices) since the show came out? i noticed this since i started interacting with the ig reels fandom and it's such a far cry from the earnest, kinda cringe but good hearted fandom i grew up in

Oh it was way before the show/quarantine - the majority of the fandom left around 2016 during the break between HoO and TOA (since a lot of folks didn't actually read MCGA/only had interest in the main series - many didn't even end up reading TOA, they just went to Voltron fandom and then maybe My Hero Academia or She-Ra). There was a revival in 2020 but it was very mainstream due to quarantine and the show, which means we had a lot of people joining the fandom who had little to no experience in fandom environments. Just due to the nature of fandom vs mainstream audiences it does result in a discrepancy in demographics as well. But also the writing of the recent series and the show doesn't help, because the more the quality of the writing degrades and the source material gets more underlying bigotry, the more that pushes out diverse voices in the community and it becomes a sort of ouroboros effect.

I think the last straw around that 2020-ish time period specifically was when Rick tried doubling-down on his writing of Piper and Samirah when people were (very rightly) criticizing his racist writing of them and other characters of color (and only a month prior to that, me personally pointing out aphobic tropes to him and the community ending up in a big ol' turmoil of aphobia and biphobia that's never really gone away). That's obviously going to drive out a lot of the community that is those demographics, and we did see a lot of people kind of drop the fandom around that time. And the writing in the source material (both books and show) has only degraded worse with more elements like that, which means the fandom is self-filtering, and obviously the filtered demographic left remaining isn't going to pick up on the writing going downhill in those ways, and it will continue to self-perpetuate.

[aroaceleovaldez]

I know you left the fandom, so sorry for asking, but I'm very curious about how you feel regarding Rick Riordan's new book series he announced, and his plans to end Percy's story for good? (Which I'm personally VERY thankful for!! Give my boy a BREAK lmao)

THAT'S WHAT HE SAID SIX YEARS AGO

DON'T TRUST HIM!! HE'LL KEEP BEATING THIS DEAD HORSE UNTIL HE DIES!!!!!!!

also i think the new series sounds... meh at best, mildly bad concepts at worst (not feeling enthusiastic about a trans son of Aphrodite who uses charmspeak to get by...). I need ReadRiordan to finally just admit they're pulling an Erin Hunter/Warriors at this point and just have a collective pen name and have authors writing under that for new books about whatever the hell. I think I'd feel a lot better about it in that format because it would at least feel more honest about their intentions with the series, rather than lugging Rick's name around everywhere. The series is already dying, they need to either let it die or let it break off from Rick and become the million spin-offs they want it to be. I honestly wouldn't even mind if they went full Warriors with it, if they at least genuinely committed to it.

[aroaceleovaldez]

yknow if Rick is gonna vague-post about me in his newsletters i'd appreciate if he'd just go ahead and say my name

[aroaceleovaldez]

hey remember when Rick said the series was over? good times.

[aroaceleovaldez]

i dunno what the fuck has been going on recently but i am increasingly glad i left the fandom

[thefairytaler]

some of you guys are going to have to start internalizing and accepting the fact that you will not be able to tell some indigenous people apart from white people at a glance, no matter what their 'blood quantum' [gag] is, partially because genetics is wild, and partially because there are indigenous groups that are naturally paler than whatever you're thinking right now.

[chilipowder9]

I'm not in the know like at all when it comes to indigenous things, may I ask why the "[gag]" with every "blood quantum"

[thefairytaler]

Yeah no worries!

Blood quantum is a nightmare concept. It is essentially how much 'native blood' you 'legally' have according to the government.

It is not traditional, it is not cultural, it is not something Indigenous nations ever used to measure belonging.

It was created by colonizers as a tool of erasure. It literally exists so the government could mathematically subtract us out of existence over time.

Think of it like this;

instead of letting Indigenous communities define ourselves, the U.S. government came in and said, “Your Indigeneity is only valid if we can quantify it like livestock breeding papers.” It was meant to break apart families, stop us from passing on identity and land rights, and eventually reach a point where they could say, “See, there are no real Indigenous people left! So we don't need to think about them!"

It weaponizes nebulous and often finicky genetics against culture, community, lived experience, etc.

It ignores the fact that Indigenous identity is about kinship, belonging, survival, language, tradition, and responsibility to our people.

Blood quantum turns those things into a number. A number designed to shrink until there is nothing left.

Many nations are still stuck dealing with blood quantum rules because of federal pressure and resource control, not because we chose it or approve of it.

And it harms us every single generation. It pits relatives against each other, creates disenrollment fights, and tells half of Indigenous kids they are somehow less real than their siblings because of paperwork.

It also lets the government give a 'good reason' for why we shouldn't have mixed race marriages or 'interbreed' with other races, because then the blood quantum 'goes down' and we may legally not be considered indigenous under the government anymore, which means they can deny us things like certain assistance programs, medical care, etc.

It's literally government mandated eugenics.

In short, it is is a colonial tool invented by the government to eliminate us. Which is why I gag when I say it.

[creatingblackcharacters]

So to clarify: no I'm not watching the parry hotter show and I no longer support that evil white lady. But I did grow up reading it, so I know what happens, and I say that to say I need y'all to hear from me how bad a decision it was to make Snape Black.

Because I feel it in my SPIRIT people make the excuse "well he's a nuanced villain- I thought you wanted those for Black characters!"

This is coming from the all time lover and supporter of Black casting: No.

There were options. There were more sensible options. Not the white supremacist-symboized incel character "turned good". Not the one that bullies the poor white baby MC who is just trying to Do The Right Thing, while simultaneously revealing he was in love with his White Mama and jealous of his White Daddy. "He has other roles-" don't care, these are central to his character.

That actor- who, I guess, I doesn't see it- is being or going to be used as a diversity shield, a token, against negative feedback about the show. Because there'll always be people who are wrong because they are Racist, and they WILL lump anyone else in there who disagrees with both the show and the stupid ass choice. It's telling to me, the environment under which this casting took place, that NO ONE with any saying power questioned this choice.

[creatingblackcharacters]

I said the same thing about Epic the Musical, but this is one of those things that is solved by SOMEONE ELSE of equivalent stature and importance being Black as well. Someone that ISN'T an antagonist, so that it would show some true range, rather than "you can play but only if you play someone we don't root for".

Harry's mama or daddy coulda been Black, because then you'd have a dynamic of a Black person in a higher position of power with one of a lower position (which happens! It sucks, especially with children, but it could be a story!) McGonagall. Sirius. Lupin. Hermione.

SOMEBODY ELSE in the cast to balance out that decision, and you maybe could have made the argument that "oh they're showing range". But I haven't heard about that. Nah, I don't buy it, I'm sorry. 🤷🏾‍♀️

[aroaceleovaldez]

Hello, I love your disscussions about disability and your character design artwork for PJO Series . I hope you don't mind me asking a few questions. Mist represents masking. Sally and Rachel can see clearly through the mist, does this mean they can see through demigod masking? In a post you mentioned that Ares Cabins curse is iron skin. What/How is iron skin a curse in relation to Ares? I saw design of a camper called Dogchow. What book to they appear in? Would love to know more about them.

Of course!

a.) Yes! Or more, they can identify when a demigod is masking more so than the average individual. Demigods are also affected by the Mist, so it's not like if you are aware of the Mist/can see through it that you're 100% immune. In terms of the masking metaphor, think of it as a sort of familiarity with disability and the community. Sally and Rachel are either familiar with or part of the community, so they can identify or recognize common types of masking.

b.) My hc/concept with "skin like iron" being a special Ares kid ability akin to Hephaestus kids with fire powers is based on how Ares/Mars kids can get the Blessing of Ares/Mars, and various mythological figures who have impenetrable skin (Achilles, Caeneus, etc). I imagine it's not a total immunity (the curse of Achilles or Caeneus' form of it aren't either, anyways), but just functionally they might as well be constantly wearing armor. It's part of my larger hc of each of the main Olympian cabins (sans Big 3 kids) having a rare "cursed power" in the same vein as the Hephaestus kids.

c.) "Dogchow" is my nickname for an unnamed son of Apollo who briefly appears in The Last Olympian, during the Battle of Manhattan. All we know about him is that he gets dragged away by a hellhound and dies <3 ergo the name

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Any tips on training media literacy

I just worry I’m missing things others are getting and I wanna actually be able to describe why I like certain things without sounding like a broken record.

I can’t analyze to save my life but I wanna learn

I think the place to start is with the consciousness that all media is a collection of choices. All of it. Everything that is in a piece of media is a decision that someone made, from the big themes to the individual pixels on the screen in a video game, those are only there because someone made a decision that caused them to be there.

With that as the foundation, you can start asking the needful questions.

I find a useful place to start asking questions is "why X rather than Y?"

In any given piece of media you want to analyze, pick a choice that is being made and imagine what it would be like if a different (or opposite) choice had been made.

Say, in Star Wars, what if Luke had decided to join his father and overthrow the Emperor? If the movie had made that choice, how would it have changed the film? What would it feel like is the point the movie is trying to make then? What if Vader was not Luke's father?

Or, what if the good guys' lightsabers were red and the bad guys' sabers were blue? What does that change? What are the things you instinctively associate with those colors, why would swapping them around feel wrong? (or would it actually feel really right? If so, why?)

You can do this for the very big questions, like themes and entire plots, but you can also do it in the very minute. Read a poem and ask yourself why the author picked this word rather than one of its synonyms. Maybe it's for the meter, maybe it's for the tone, maybe it's to match vocabulary. Imagining a different word or a different phrase in the poem, how would that change how it feels to read? What it feels like to hear it spoken out loud?

The answer to many questions you'll ask about a piece of media are entirely banal. Like, in 3D animation, some things look the way they do because that's just how a particular software suite handles that particular task. Light reflections, physics simulation, motion blur, etc. Plenty of video games look the way they do in no small part because they are built within the constraints of their engines. Sometimes paintings have the colors they do not because an artiste is imbuing every choice with profound meaning, but because those are the colors the painter could afford, or which were available at the time. And those banal answers are still useful, even if they don't sound deep.

But the important bit is, the more questions you ask (however banal), the more answers you'll learn, and the more you'll understand about the mediums you're interested in, and the more you'll become able to interpret the choices that are made and work towards building an understanding and constructing a reading.

If you start from the understanding that everything (everything! literally every single thing!) in a piece of media is a choice, a decision that could have been made differently, and you ask yourself why it wasn't, you'll be in a decent position to start to interrogate the art you enjoy.

Outside of that, there are lots of books on art appreciation, and tons of people doing videos on media literacy on YouTube. I think Crash Course has some high-school level courses in English and Theatre and Film on their channel, which can be another good place to start.

Also, just, generally... Media literacy is a skill, not a trait. It's a thing which you practise doing, and in practising it you inevitably become better at it. Nobody starts out good at it, literally everybody is improving with practise all the time, and literally the only way to get any better is to try to do it to the best of your ability as much as possible, working the muscle so it will start to grow.

[aroaceleovaldez]

Hey, I love ur posts about disabillity in pjo. One thing I've been thinking about is if using Yysons identity as a cyclops for coding for his Downs Syndrome is offensive. as monsters in pjato although they are tragic victims of the oppressive system, they also kill demigods & are also at times agents of bigotry/ableism (e.g Miss Dodds). To say it plainly the monsters in pjo are actually evil, not just this misunderstood type villian. So tysons discrimination at chb, although yes it's unfair, its not a clear parallel to ableism because of course demigods are gonna dislike the people that literally kill their kind everyday? So wouldn't it be offensive to cast tyson as having Downs Syndrome as coded from his cyclops identity? Hope this makes sense soz for the long ask

It's complicated, but not for the reasons you're suggesting.

Monsters in PJO are not inherently evil, full-stop. We already know this prior to Tyson, but Tyson is our very explicit "No, a lot of monsters are just trying to live their lives just like demigods and humans" and this is a theme continued throughout PJatO and even into the next two series (which is part of what makes the plot of TSATS2 completely nonsensical, because this is already an extremely established part of how the mythological world works). We're even explicitly told that cyclopes specifically aren't particularly more prone to being evil or anything - that's literally just Annabeth's preconceived notion and biases based on her own trauma (literally what you describe here as "of course demigods are gonna dislike the people that literally kill their kind everyday" - the demigods bullying Tyson at CHB aren't bullying him and Percy because they think Tyson's evil, they're shaming Percy for having a visibly disabled brother. Annabeth and Grover are the only ones particularly voicing the opinion that cyclopes are inherently dangerous and they're explicitly wrong), and the majority of cyclopes just hang out with Poseidon and are perfectly peaceful. Ergo why one of the central arcs of Sea of Monsters is unlearning bigotry.

In the themes of disability, monsters in PJatO are not always agents of ableism. Themes of ableism just tend to be present surrounding them. A lot of the time they are exhibiting ableism, but in Tyson's case he's a victim of it (from humans, demigods, and monsters) and the arc surrounding him is Percy unlearning his internalized ableism and guiding Annabeth through dismantling her own ableism as well. Often when we see a monster as an agent of ableism in PJatO they're in a position of power over Percy (teachers, adults, older students, etc - highlighting how systems of power and power dynamics can often spur on ableism). Tyson is explicitly the same grade as Percy and placed in the same position as the other students Percy protects from bullies at his school. Similarly, the humans bullying Percy and Tyson have no idea Tyson is a cyclopes - they are purely bullying him for his disability. Same as we see for Grover and Percy.

Now the part that is iffy is equating disability as monstrous, even if that monster is good. There's a very long history in that, both in general ableism in media, intentional metaphor of disability (Rick is not the first person to have used this type of metaphor, obviously), and particularly the bit that Rick is referencing with his metaphors which is 2000s framing of disability as "superpowers"/fantastical (in PJatO's case, mythological, but also actually taking a much more nuanced approach with it than usual and actually addressing disabled struggles, which is good!). It can be done well if handled carefully, but it's a delicate line to balance on and some people will always inherently be uncomfortable with it, which is valid.

Ultimately - in the books, Tyson is disabled (particularly coded as having Down Syndrome). That is the metaphor that exists in the books and is central to the arc of basically all primary central characters in Sea of Monsters. In my singular opinion as a singular disabled person, I think the metaphor is handled with the necessary nuance and is done well for it's time. There are absolutely bits that could be updated and getting writers and actors with Down Syndrome involved in that process would be best. But erasing Tyson having Down Syndrome/being disabled is absolutely not the way to go, because that is inherently ableist in itself.

Now would I trust the show writers to handle those disability themes with the same nuance and care they're shown in the books? No. They (and even Rick and Mark in recent books - TSATS/TSATS2 I'm looking at you) have pretty evidently proven that they cannot handle those topics and/or have no interest in it. Which is also bad and is one of my primary complaints these days. But Tyson having Down Syndrome is not inherently ableist in itself.

[aroaceleovaldez]

Hi op! I was hoping if I can repost your AU post (the one explaining) them on insta? I feel like more people should get to see it

Sure! Thank you for asking! :D

[aroaceleovaldez]

the titan's curse

[aroaceleovaldez]

Piper family & co hcs I never posted:

Piper's uncle is Tristan's identical twin and his name is Tatum (cause Tristan means "Sad" and "Tatum" means happy [more or less], and I thought that was fun). Also implies that T-names are a tradition in their family.

Tatum is a historian and his wife is a teacher. Tatum works at the Cherokee Heritage Center and his wife works at a local school. They have three kids (Piper's cousins).

Shel's family was neighbors with Tom/is neighbors with Tatum, so Shel would babysit for Tatum's kids and they're generally family friends, which is how Piper knows Shel. Shel volunteers at the Little Cherokee Seeds program.

Piper's dog that only got mentioned once is one of those little fluffy crusty purse dogs. Like totally potato sized. She can literally hold it in one hand. Tristan had missed Piper's birthday one year cause of work and got her a dog as an apology gift. Piper has conflicted feelings about it and claims to hate it on the principle of "this is a purse dog and I'm not a purse dog person" (She does not hate it). She does also absolutely dress up her absolute dust mite of a dog.

[aroaceleovaldez]

ok so you said the mist is an analogy for masking, and i was wondering how that could relate to hazel? if at all? since shes able to control the mist in a much stronger and different way than other demigods, would that like- translate any different with the neurodivergent/masking analogy?

- @reefs-camp-blog

Unfortunately those themes got largely dropped by HoO and the Mist completely retconned purely for the sake of giving Hazel a "special unique ability" (which doesn't work when the Mist has already been established as an all-demigods ability... i have Words about that. Especially because Hazel already has access to the entire same breadth of powers that Nico does but we never see her use them?? We know she can. We were actively told she can. She's rarely allowed to do ghost stuff ever when the Argo II crew is actively having ghost problems and Piper is solving them for some reason???)

ANYWAYS that being said, I do think there is good opportunity to continue the metaphor and elaborate on it with Hazel. We already see the difference between Thalia and Percy in terms of their abilities to control the Mist vs their masking - Thalia is able to mask better than Percy can, and so can control the Mist better than Percy can. Percy's attempts to mask don't work nearly as well and generally frustrate him, and he's subject to a lot more problems regarding being more visibly neurodivergent than Thalia who is given preferential treatment compared to him.

With Hazel, obviously the metaphor extends to intersectionality of race and disability, and how Hazel has to navigate masking because of that and the way she navigates masking manifesting as having more nuanced control over The Mist. It's a very interesting topic that has a lot of potential, but because of Rick dropping the theme it never gets covered.

[aroaceleovaldez]

i will be so honest, i still think Rick doesn't know about hazel eyes

[aroaceleovaldez]

And related question, completely comprehension based on my part: how are the monsters being both good and bad work thematically under this framework (the newer projects are depicting both demigods and monsters as victims of the gods, zeus specifically because they're pretty much blaming every bad thing to ever happen on him)? tyson and ella and others are exceptions to this monsters being bad thing, but how do you think that fits?

[Cont. from this]

Again, from mid-HoO onwards the disability themes of the franchise are basically entirely dropped (which i have words about, but i digress), so those can be disregarded in terms of how the retcons/recent material and such affect the metaphor. We're just focusing on PJatO when the disability metaphor was the central focus.

It's more of a "monsters are associated with themes about ableism" rather than "monsters literally represent ableism in that they attack demigods" metaphor. It's not that monsters = evil = ableism is evil, it's just generally that monsters crop up when ableism or metaphors of ableism are being discussed. Tyson's entire plot in SoM is about Percy learning to overcome internalized ableism and discussing the ableism that Tyson experiences. Sometimes it's a lot more literal - figures like Mrs. Dodds and Dr. Thorn and Kelli/Tammi and the laestrygonian giants are all pretty overt in "these are ableist authority figures/bullies." But like with Tyson we see it also go the other direction, where its generally addressing in-community ableism and discussing how demigods (disabled individuals) are just as capable of being ableist as abled people.