Blurr

Professional Rick Riordan Trash Follow me on YouTube shorts @hanblurryface8605, AO3 @Blurryface_77 and Wattpad @MyNameIsBlurryFace42 They/them

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I really don’t know why, since I actually have a great relationship with both of my parents, but I really love writing scenes where a woman with mommy and/or daddy issues watches the parent they never felt loved by interact with their newborn baby and tell this tiny grandchild how amazing their mother is and how proud of her they are.

I’ve written a scene like this twice.

Maybe I just like fixing things that are broken, I don’t know.

Scene numbero uno (written as a high school senior):

“Dad? Why are you still here?” She asked once she turned around and noticed him.

“I figured I’d stick around a bit longer. Spend some time with my Kit-Kat.” He winked.

Kit almost started to cry again. He walked over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders for a brief hug.

“Do you uh, maybe want to hold Malcolm?”

“I’d love that,” Tony said, genuinely and took his grandson from Kit.

“Support his head,” she said nervously.

“I know how to hold a baby, Kit.”

“You caught him at a good time,” Kit said. “He’s almost never awake.”

“Yeah, I remember those days. With you and Morgan both. You just slept all the time.”

“I didn’t know you remembered baby me,” Kit said.

“Of course I remember. You were my little girl. You still are.”

Kit’s eyes welled up with tears again.

Malcolm reached for Tony’s face. “Hi Malcolm,” Tony said. “I’m your grandpa, if you didn’t know. You’ve got an awesome mom, although I might be biased since she’s my daughter. And your dad isn’t too bad either,” he added.

Scene number 2 (written as a college senior):

“What are you doing here?” Annabeth asked.

“Well, I couldn’t let Poseidon meet this little one before I got the chance,” she explained, although it sounded more like an excuse than her actual reason. Maybe she really just wanted to visit with her daughter and granddaughter.

Annabeth repositioned Lucy in her arms so Athena could see her better. “This is Lucy Grace.”

“Well, hello there, Lucy Grace,” she said and took one of the newborn’s tiny hands between two of her fingers, causing Lucy to hold onto her finger. “I’m your grandmother, Athena. Your mother is quite possibly the bravest and the wisest of my children, and I am very proud of her.”

Tears filled Annabeth’s eyes for the fifth time that day as she listened to her mother’s praise, and watched her tenderness with the baby.

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are you still considering writing the essay about how Alex has anorexia? If not np, just curious

Alright, so here’s the sitch on that:

I wrote the essay like 2 years ago. Except for the conclusion paragraph. I have literally been procrastinating writing that one single paragraph for like two years!

This might just be enough motivation for me to finish it though, let me go see about that…

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Alright, I finished it. Idk where my work’s sited page is and it’s definitely not my best work (it really needs a beta reader and a couple rounds of editing), but here it is!

Alex Fierro, a genderfluid Mexican-American teen in the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series by Rick Riordan, is described in various scenes as thin, lythe, and underweight. This gave me a theory, so I started to look into it. Turns out, the science backs up my theory. A 2022 study on eating disorders among college students, found that disordered eating is significantly more prevalent among transgender and gender nonconforming youth, especially trans people of color, than among their cisgender peers, and even among their gender nonconforming and trans peers who are white. Alex Fierro has an eating disorder, specifically anorexia nervosa, and in this essay, I will explain - with sources [insert jazz hands] - why I believe this to be the case.

In Chapter 17 “I Did Not Ask For Biceps” of the first book, The Sword of Summer, the protagonist, Magnus, explains the physical transformation he underwent when he became an einherjar. He went from having the concave chest and translucent skin he’d had since he was a little boy with asthma, to still being thin and pale, but much more muscular and healthy-looking. Alex, however, having presumably undergone this same transformation upon becoming an einherjar, is still regularly described as underweight. This is most obvious in Chapter 37 of the third book, Ship of the Dead, when Magnus tells us “She was all skin and bone, as wiry as her garrote. I wanted to chide her, Eat, eat! You’re wasting away.” [Riordan, pg. 321] Now, assuming that Alex also received the physical “upgrade” that all einherjar appear to undergo upon reaching Hotel Valhalla, in order for Alex to have been that underweight as an einherjar, he would have had to have been especially thin prior to his death, and likely would have needed a pattern of disordered eating after arriving in Valhalla to maintain such a state. Although Alex was homeless for about two years prior to his death, she was involved in many programs for at-risk youth, regularly stole from her father, and appears to have to relied heavily on homeless youth shelters. Because of this, it seems unlikely that she was so food-deprived as to cause such severe malnutrition, especially since Alex is never described as having gained weight since his death.

On a similar note, in Son of Neptune, part of an adjacent series by the same author, a primary character, Frank Zhang is told by his grandmother that body dysmorphia is common among shapeshifters, a gift which Alex Fierro also shares. “You have always said you are not comfortable in your own body. We all feel that way--all of us with the blood of Pylos.” [Riordan, pg. 372] Although Alex inherited her shapeshifting abilities from her mother, the Norse god, Loki, and Frank’s shapeshifting abilities came from the Greek God, Poseidon, his distant ancestor, it stands to reason that the body dysmorphia associated with the gift of shapeshifting would likely occur across pantheons, similarly to how chemically distinct medications used to treat the same conditions will often cause similar side effects.

Eating disorders are also exceptionally common among trans and gender-nonconforming people. According to a 2022 study by trans man and competitive swimmer, Schuyler Bailar, nearly 40% of gender non-conforming and genderqueer college students reported having been diagnosed with an eating disorder. This is believed to be due to the inherent similarity between body dysmorphia, and gender dysphoria. “College years are an important developmental period, and a time during which many students have the autonomy to explore gender identity, some for the first time. For TGD students—defined as people whose gender identity and/or expression exists outside of the cisnormative gender binary—this exploration may lead to an increased focus on body shape and distress from potential gender dysphoria.” [Mckoy, 2022] The study also found that among gender-expansive students, those who were people of color were 84% more likely to have an eating disorder than their white gender-expansive peers. As a Latino gender-fluid teen, this means the chances of Alex Fierro having an eating disorder, even without my previous arguments would be at least as high as of Alex not having one.

Finally, within the article, study coauthor Sarah K. Lipson points out that: “Eating disorder risk can be exacerbated by situations that take the control and autonomy from individuals, as is the case with restrictive healthcare policies and practices that prioritize binary sex assigned at birth, rejecting gender identity and expression.” As shown in the series, Alex Fierro has been bullied because of his gender identity since childhood, even being kicked out by her father around the age of 14, largely because of her gender identity. Alex then spent two years as a young, transgender teen of color, living on the streets of Massachusetts, undergoing unknown amounts of harassment, bullying and abuse. These experiences could easily translate into a desire for control that many people attempt to fill via disordered eating patterns.

I fully believe that the character Alex Fierro from the Magnus Chase series by Rick Riordan has Anorexia Nervosa. As a gender nonconforming teen of color who’s experienced a lack of autonomy throughout her life, the odds of Alex developing an eating disorder are already very high, even without the evidence provided by the author. Between Alex’s in-text descriptions, Rick highlighting the link between shapeshifting abilities and body dysmorphia, and the numerous risk factors for disordered eating that Alex has, this theory is worth noting as not just plausible, but probable.

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are you still considering writing the essay about how Alex has anorexia? If not np, just curious

Alright, so here’s the sitch on that:

I wrote the essay like 2 years ago. Except for the conclusion paragraph. I have literally been procrastinating writing that one single paragraph for like two years!

This might just be enough motivation for me to finish it though, let me go see about that…

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Imma just settle the Percy fell first vs. Annabeth fell first debate once and for all:

While tessa.chb did give us admittedly glorious answer of “that’s so funny” *plops down MoA* “I seem to remember them falling at the exact same time”, I have decided to do an actual real breakdown of the Percabeth feelings timeline and give you the most scientifically/canonically accurate answer.

Annabeth says in Mark of Athena that she’d had a crush on Percy since they were 12, so Lightning Thief, but that in the past year (so, Last Olympian and on) that her feelings had grown painfully intense.

In contrast, Percy doesn’t do this kind of self reflection, but we do spend the first five books inside his head. In Lightning Thief, he’s mostly just intimidated by her and learns to see her as a friend, no signs of any romantic feelings yet. In Sea of Monsters, he really cares a lot about her, considers her pretty much his best friend, and is perhaps a bit attracted to her, but doesn’t really seem to have a full crush on her.

Enter Titan’s Curse, which I feel is definitely the turning point for Percy’s feelings for Annabeth. Here, at age 14, he’s fiercely protective of her, wants to violently murder a 10 year old for asking if she’s his girlfriend, is extremely distressed at the thought of her potentially joining the Hunters of Artemis, and admits that for a moment, when she smiles, Aphrodite looks like Annabeth. At this point, the boy is absolutely down bad. He loves her so completely that he would rather burn down the world and everyone in it than risk losing her.

In BotL, when they’re 14, almost 15, Percy and Annabeth spend all of their time together, even if they’re just doing camp chores. The entire camp ships them. They were literally going to go watch a movie together (based on my carefully designed timeline designed to limit anachronisms, I believe they were going to see the first Avengers movie), and Percy is mortified when Sally calls it a date. Annabeth’s brother literally ignores a camp rule designed to prevent demigod teenage pregnancy and lets the two of them be alone together in the Athena cabin. They disappear for what to them feels like 5 minutes and the entire camp thinks that they ditched capture the flag to make out in the woods. Both of them get really jealous when they feel like their potential future relationship is being threatened (either by Percy thinking Annabeth has a crush on Luke, or by Rachel thinking she has a crush on Percy).

Annabeth kisses Percy and he literally forgets his own name! If it weren’t for the life or death situation, he admits he probably would’ve just stood there in stunned silence trying to get his brain to reboot for a couple hours.

I forget if this is BotL or Last Olympian, but at one point they get in a big fight where Annabeth accuses Percy of running from his feelings and calls him a coward. It’s clear at this point that she’s picked up on his feelings for her, even though he hasn’t really figured them out for himself yet. (Yep, Annabeth knew Percy loved her before Percy knew he loved her.)

Percy admits that the year where they’re 15 is pretty tense between them. They both have feelings, they’re under a lot of stress, Annabeth’s pretty sure Percy’s gonna die because of the prophecy, and on top of all that, Percy’s best mortal friend is a girl who keeps flirting with him, so every time he needs a reminder that the mortal world actually exists, or just to take a break and feel normal for a while, he’s hurting Annabeth further. It’s messy, it’s complicated, and they’re 15. When they finally get together at the end of the book, it feels so right, so easy, simple and ultimately inevitable, because once all the perceived competition is gone, and the life threatening prophecy is over, there’s nothing left in their way but teenage hormones and awkwardness.

Looking at the way that Percy’s feelings for Annabeth progress throughout the original series and Heroes of Olympus, there’s honestly not much of a difference between Titan’s Curse and Mark of Athena or House of Hades, except that by then, there’s less uncertainty and complexity, so he’s able to think about them having a future together. This suggests that he more or less skipped the crush phase and his platonic love for her just evolved into being romantically in love with her.

So, based on this we have the following timeline:

12: Annabeth is crushing, Percy is not

13: Annabeth is crushing, Percy isn’t really but might be starting to?

14: Annabeth’s crushing, Percy’s in love with her but doesn’t realize it yet.

15: Annabeth’s crushing and suspects that Percy has feelings for her. Percy’s in love and is maybe starting to catch on?

16: Annabeth falls in love, Percy fully catches on to his feelings, and they get together.

So, the answer to the question of who fell first?

Annabeth crushed first, but Percy fell first.

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Concept: the Percababies playing hide and seek with their mama, but there’s a twist.

What’s the twist, you ask?

She’s wearing her Yankees cap.

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People who don’t spend as much time thinking about the Hunger Games as I do will never understand how impressive even the most minor seeming character can be. Like bro… this man from Mockingjay who didnt even make it into the movies WALKED from Oklahoma to Ontario in a POST APOCALYPTIC landscape in a country under the rule of a TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP without getting CAUGHT OR LOST!!

Anyways, mad respect to Dalton, the biologist/cattle rancher/wedding-officiant-that-one-time from District 10.

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You ever been just driving down the highway, listening to a song, thinking about how hey, this song totally fits with the relationship of X and Y character in whatever book/show/movie, and then you remember that the song was literally written about the person who plays the character that the song could be about??

… anyways, there will be an anti-everthorn edit to Midnight Sky by Miley Cyrus on my youtube channel pretty soon.

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I’ve said it before a million times and I’ll say it again a million times, because I need to know the answer to this question:

Whose idea was it to take the best character in all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the best character from the entire DC cinematic universe… take those two actors… and make a biopic about Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding?

Like literally whose idea was this????

Having Sebastian Stan and Margot Robbie costar in a movie? Genius decision. But why not make it like… a John Wick spin off or like something set in space with astronauts on the first manned trip to mars or something? Why choose I, Tonya of all movies???

Like I completely get that the decision to make I, Tonya, the decision to cast Margot Robbie and the decision to cast Seb were almost definitely 3 completely separate decisions but still you’ve gotta wonder if there is a higher power what the heck was going through their mind on that one.

Anyways, that’s whats on my mind at this particular moment.

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Imagine being 15 and going to comic-con to find out more information about an environmentalist cult that wants to kill all humans to save the planet and finding that there is such a thing as fanfiction - in MANGA FORM - about your life, including you x your currently ex-girlfriend smut…

This book is wild…

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Random thought:

Season 4 episode 17 is The Big Bang Theory’s equivalent to The Titan’s Curse.

Explanation: Everybody’s talking about how their smart friend isn’t there to tell them annoying facts, and then sharing those same facts.

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It’s 3 in the morning and my brain is rapidly flitting back and forth between Oh Canada (aka the Canadian National Anthem) and Backslide by twenty one pilots while I brush my teeth.

This is normal right?

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Things I’ve said in the last week with little to no context:

*Disappointed voice* “Phillip… grow damn it!”

“You know, Circe was right.”

“My building’s on fire.”

“Ooh, he’s starting to smell like dough!”

“Cuz her middle name is Melissa.”

“Phil has now been conceived.”

“I drew my favorite Christmas ornament holding my book.”

“Percy… No.”

“Oh, honey bunny.”

“Is parchment paper edible?”

“I cannot feed my sourdough starter a pbj unfortunately.”

“It’s giving Gale Hawthorne.”

“To make fun of it.”

“I know it’s safe, my nervous system just thinks its gonna start yelling at me again”

“I mean, you have a child so you’re clearly winning”

“Ooh there is one!!”

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What If S2:E3:

“The day you’ve been dreading has finally come. The day you face off with Tony Stark’s greatest adversary.”

“Greatest adversary? What are you a wealth tax?”

Maria Hill seriously has some of the best lines in the entire Marvel Multiverse. There’s a reason she’s one of my favorite characters.

Seriously!

The Avengers:

“When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?”

CA: Winter Soldier:

“Ah. That thing was squeezing my brain.”

Age of Ultron:

“*cough* testosterone *cough*”

“The news is loving you guys. Nobody else is.”

“He’s fast and she’s weird.”

“Steve! He said a bad language word!”

Ignore me, I just needed to rant about my obsession with Maria Hill for a second and I have no friends.

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Wandavision spoilers + my hot take:

Wandavision is absolutely fascinating because everyone is treating her as this villain for accidentally making everyone else feel HER pain. Everyone’s like “your grief is poisoning us” and “when we sleep we have your nightmares.” They say she’s torturing them with her pain, that its excruciating, terrifying and violating. They’re even acknowledging that its her pain they’re feeling but they don’t seem to care. They don’t care that before this she was drowning in that same pain. They don’t care that it was an accident. They don’t care that she desperately needed a break from that pain and now for a brief time, she’s getting it. All they care about is that she’s causing them pain. They don’t seem to care that what they’re unintentionally being forced to endure is what she’s been enduring for a long time and what she will have to continue enduring for the rest of her life once the hex comes down.

As badly as they want it all to stop, SHE DID TOO.

Now I’m not saying that Wanda’s in the right or that she shouldn’t listen to the townspeople’s feelings, or even that they shouldn’t be allowed to be upset about the situation. But I do think that the citizens of Westview are in the wrong for not recognizing that everything was an accidental and unconscious way for her to escape the pain that they’re all feeling.

Tl;dr: Wanda was suffering and she made a horrible mistake that wasn’t her fault. Everyone is experiencing first hand how she felt, but instead of being sympathetic, they treat her like a villain. And I don’t think that’s entirely fair.

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You know what hits different?

Listening to the love song a couple wrote when they were together, immediately followed by the break up song about the same relationship.

I’m serious, both songs just hit so much harder, when you hear the relationship progress from “2017 Bonnie and Clyde” “this is my ride or die, for you i’d take a life” “swear most likely Imma die with you” “in the end, its him and I” to “I’m so glad I never ever had a baby with you cuz you can’t love nothing unless there’s something in it for you”, “I feel so sorry, i feel so sad.” “You should be sad”.

Don’t believe me? Go listen to Him and I by Halsey and G-Easy, immediately followed by You Should Be Sad by Halsey. It’s W I L D.

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I’m just going to put these Hunger Games character names headcanons here, since some of them might get vetoed by the canon next week:

Katniss’s dad: Daniel Grey Everdeen (I’m a firm believer that Maude Ivory is his mother, so I gave him a first name derived from not one but two ballads (Oh, Danny Boy, plus a man named Daniel is known to have sung an old Welsh ballad called “The Miner’s Doom” which is particularly relevant, given his death) with Grey, after Lucy, as his middle name, rather than a second first name)

Katniss’s mother: Carine (NOT pronounced like Karen) (its a fairly common headcanon from what I’ve seen, sort of like Kentwell being Clove’s last name, and Hadley being Cato’s, and I like it)

Peeta’s father: Ruben (technically a sandwich, not a bread, but its a DAMN good sandwich, and its incased in bread so who cares)

Peeta’s mother (aka “the witch” by her future DIL): Nessa (meaning “second” as she was Ruben’s second choice, or “not gentle” which fits beautifully since she’s known to be physically abusive to Peeta)

Maysilee’s twin/Madge’s mother: Mirabelle Undersee nee Donner

Peeta’s brothers were Graham and Rye.

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Actual scene in my THG fanfic:

Khione: you have a boyfriend?

Ivy: yeah, you don’t?

Khione: ew, no.

Ivy: you’re 18 and you still think boys are “ew”?

… She’s a lesbian, Ivy.