Hi!! I’ve been reading through your pjo crit posts and they’re very smart and you’re very smart and I like reading your posts a lot but the ableism w Solangelo/Nico stuff didn’t really make any sense to me? And I was wondering your personal opinions/could you explain it to me (sorry) on it? + any other posts that may explain it differently (sorry I read your other posts on it but my brain just doesn’t click on them idk why) Also do you have any Disabledpjo blogs to rec otherwise? Because I generally knew about the other issues but didn’t catch any of the ableism. Also do you have any personal thoughts on the ableism in pjo/any disabled hcs?
hi! you are very sweet and i'm growing you an orange tree
(also let me preface this by saying you don't have to apologize lol all my slngl posts were made in response to Very Specific Happenings in the slngl fandom so without That context they don't necessarily make the most sense)
with that out of the way, let's get this show on the road
first of all and most importantly, this is very much a listen-to-disabled-people-first situation, taking into consideration that different people will have different needs and opinions and want to see representation done in different ways, etc. my opinion as someone who is relatively able-bodied(? does that make Any sense as a phrase) is limited in its understanding—i just won't have the depth of knowledge and experience that disabled people will
for starters wrt this specific situation, i recommend reading urs' slngl crit tag as it's very comprehensive and urs is the king of disabled nico analysis. xe's also disabled and a lot better educated on ableism than i am!
additionally, i think this post sums up slngl crit on the whole pretty well.
if you want to learn more about ableism in general, i recommend imani barbarin, a communications professional & disabled activist who is pretty well-known on tiktok.
that being said, i'll try to explain my personal #thoughts below the cut!
first things first, since this is a point of frequent debate:
is nico disabled?
yes. he has adhd and ptsd and is coded as autistic.
he is also magically disabled. specifically, because the usage of his powers regularly (as in almost every time) results in overwhelming fatigue, loss of consciousness, incapacity, and so on, his powers are disabling.
(for the record, since this gets brought up as a counterpoint sometimes, if every other demigod experienced similar backlash, that would in fact mean that their powers were disabling, too.)
now, let's get into it like a suit and fuck a stock up like a—anyway.
what's the deal with solangelo and nico and ableism?
to understand where we’re going, let’s talk about where we’re coming from—the introduction of solangelo.
in heroes of olympus, rick riordan takes on a bad habit of using romance subplots as substitution for character development.
caleo is infamous for this, because leo’s difficulties with loneliness and understanding others and being understood and feeling unwanted and rejected and inadequate seem to completely disappear when he enters into a relationship with calypso. riordan never actually made leo confront those difficulties; he just gave him a girlfriend and called that a resolved character arc. it was a shortcut that felt jarring to the audience because it didn’t actually solve anything or work through anything but pretended that it did.
in a lot of ways, this is also what happened to solangelo.
nico is miserably lonely and desperate for connection, but he feels that that connection is forever out of his reach because people frequently react to him with fear and discomfort as a result of his parentage and ““vibes””. he’s terrified of rejection and he’s constantly on the receiving end of it. he hates feeling distrusted but he does things that make him harder to trust because they need to be done. he’s sensible, but his situation is pretty much always dire, and so his actions are pretty much always extreme.
and the insane part is that riordan actually wrote a solid arc that did a LOT to develop his character and teach him that he was capable of connection, and that some people would be able to see past his lineage and the “scariness” of him and his powers, and that some people wouldn’t reject him even if they were afraid of him, and that some people would choose to trust him and understand him. he did that! all of that! in blood of olympus, no less! when he made nico and reyna become friends!
but then, right at the very end, he tried to tie up loose ends by... introducing a romance subplot. and what he actually did was... pretend that... none of that arc we just talked about... ever happened or mattered. and he used will to do that.
when nico gets to a point of frustration where it spills out of him (to octavian of all people... like damn) that he feels rejected, will point blank tells him that that isn’t true, and that nico was the one who pushed everyone else away. which would be fine, if either:
that was actually true, or
will was just wrong
but instead, the narrative very clearly wants us to believe what will’s saying, despite every scene we’ve read that lets us know otherwise. it makes nico out to be unreasonable for ever believing that his entire character arc over the course of eight books occurred. (side note: when i call this gaslighting, it is in a jokey way in reference to my friend’s reaction to reading this scene for the first time, which was, and i quote, “don’t gaslight him in the text :/”)
this suggests that nico is solely responsible for his isolation/mistreatment and that it’s... his fault that he feels bad? as though he could just... decide not to? this left a bad taste in a lot of readers’ mouths.
the thing is, though, not only is the audience meant to go along with this—nico is. and he does.
so now let’s talk about solangelo’s dynamic.
will is. very insistent. and stubborn. and he has a tendency to be set in his belief that his opinions are objective truth. and none of that is necessarily a bad thing! these are traits that could give him dimension as a character, but they’re weirdly disregarded and denied in the text. we’re shown these characteristics, but told they’re not there: will is only ever described as generous and easygoing.
will catches nico off guard and kind of overwhelms him into going along with his suggestions—in his opinion, for nico’s own good. the problem with this is that, again, he’s convinced that his opinion is objective fact, and when it comes to nico, he enforces his opinion by... pulling rank, in a way?
i said earlier that nico’s really very sensible, but goes to extremes due to the severity of his circumstances, and i meant that. he’s managed to survive on his own, outside of a camp, as a child of one of the big three, for years. that’s unheard of. he’s learned to manage his powers and their backlash to such an extent that he’s able to transport himself, reyna, coach hedge, and the athena parthenos halfway around the world when, just the year before, he could barely manage to transport himself and percy across the country even with mrs. o’leary’s help. there are times during the athena parthenos trip where he outright acknowledges his limits, and he only pushes them when absolutely necessary.
my point here is that nico is well aware of what he can and cannot handle. he only relies on pure luck when he sees no other option.
there is no reason why will, who has never dealt with another hades kid and therefore wouldn’t have experience with the specific backlash caused by hades-associated powers, would know better than nico how to handle that backlash. but riordan needed a quick and easy way to make nico take better care of himself (again, something that he’s fully capable of and only fails to do because of the fact that he’s basically always in dire straits), so he wrote in a character to convince him to do just that (again, not nearly as necessary as rr thought it was). that character was will. and in order to make sure nico would have reason to actually listen to will, rr gave him whatever the chb equivalent of medical authority is—essentially, will knows what’s best for nico better than nico does, because he’s a healer and nico isn’t.
this brings up the issue of saviorism, the idea that a marginalized person will not know how to handle themself or their situation without the help of someone who is not marginalized in the same way. it’s demeaning and infantilizing.
when disabled people speak against this particular writing decision in rr’s works, it’s because disabled people are regularly not trusted to know or understand their own conditions, and seeing that reflected back and romanticized is. uncomfortable, to say the least.
then, as we get into toa, riordan leans into the disabling effects of shadow travel much harder—nico can only shadow travel fairly short distances, now, and he often completely passes out immediately afterward. he also, in toa, has nico depend heavily on will for care as a result.
upping both the backlash of nico’s powers and his dependence on will exacerbates the previously-mentioned issues, and the text validates will at almost every turn. the text itself believes that nico can’t take care of himself or make sound decisions, despite that being demonstrably untrue.
and more than i take issue with the text, i take issue with the way some solangelo fans treat nico like he’s incapable of doing anything without will, and the way they romanticize the concepts of dependence and saviorism. i ESPECIALLY take issue with the way some solangelo fans have been validating literal eugenics, but i’ve written more about that a little later in this post.
a few disclaimers:
i don’t hate solangelo, i literally don’t think about solangelo until prompted to do so.
i don’t think it was written well, but i think that about all the romantic relationships in hoo, which i also don’t think about until prompted. the specifics of the way it was written, though, do bring up issues of ableism and saviorism, and that’s just. the text. that’s how it was written.
i don’t hate will. i actually think the exact traits of his that i’m criticizing could be really interesting if they were treated as flaws or at least points of conflict, but instead the text treats him as infallible. this is what i have a problem with. not the blond kid himself. he could be fun if rr wasn’t so invested in making him “perfect”
and to address the last couple questions directly:
do you have any personal thoughts on the ableism in pjo
i don’t think richard russell riordan, like, set out to be ableist the same way i don’t think he set out to be racist or islamophobic or misogynistic or homophobic or—you get where i’m going with this. he just didn’t think about it and didn’t spend the time or energy necessary to avoid it. but that doesn’t stop it from being problem.
people are taking his more recent worldbuilding developments regarding healing magic and running with them until they end up spouting eugenicist rhetoric. that’s beyond terrible. a person saying that gods are perfect and therefore can’t be disabled and that that means their children can’t be disabled either is sickening, and extremely telling as to what that person thinks of disabled people. like. that’s straight-up eugenics. and that’s a take i’ve now seen more than once.
other than that, it’s also worth noting that there have been discussions regarding chiron and grover pretending to be disabled—the idea that disabled people are faking their disabilities is a MASSIVE issue that leads to people getting denied benefits, getting harassed, and being outright abused.
there’s also discussion surrounding the treatment of characters with noticeable scars/injuries (specifically, the fact that the characters with significant facial injuries, luke and ethan, are, well, evil. up until they literally die)
/any disabled hcs?
i will literally never let this go but for some reason when i first read the original pjo series i could have SWORN there was a scene in either botl or tlo where kids were described as coming home missing limbs and no it didn’t actually happen but yes i thought it did for 10+ years and honestly? given the specific type of predicaments demigods are facing? i do think we should be seeing more amputees and honestly i’m going to make it happen for fic purposes
also annabeth! i don’t think her leg ever made a full recovery after she broke it and then had arachne hanging from it and then also walked through tartarus on it. i think she can have a weighted cane a la kaz brekker. she deserves it.
and more glasses wtf i know you don’t ALL have good eyesight (not you jason and meg never you jason and meg) wtf no way
additionally i agree that demigods generally having adhd should also mean that a significant proportion of them are autistic! and i am SET in my belief that if greek demigods are often dyslexic due to the different alphabet, roman demigods should often have dyscalculia due to the different numbering system
on top of that, the hephaestus cabin could build some VERY interesting aids so the lack of physically disabled characters is really untapped potential on that front
also i just think eyes are interesting structurally so personally i’ll be giving someone an eye injury at some point in a fic (well. also in the magnus archives au but iykyk that’s just necessary for plot purposes)
Crosstagging is annoying and I hate doing it but I feel like this must be said
JASON IS NOT 3 YEARS OLDER THAN NICO. I dont know where yall keep getting the idea that jason and percy are the same age, but it explicitly says in the books that jason was 15 and turned 16 in MoA. He was also 16 when he died and it was confirmed the nico is 15 in trials of apollo. The age difference is a year in a half. Stop calling jasico gross for their non existent age difference.
If jasico is problematic for their age difference then so is valdangelo (leo and jason are around the same age which means that the age gap between leo and nico is similar)
Also jason and nico having a brotherly relationship isnt canon either. We only ever see the start of their friendship in BoO, then jason dies and we never see them interact again. Theyve only known each other for like a year and no amount of saying “oh theyre like brothers” will actually make them brothers. Even if it was canon, a bromance turned romance doesnt have the same moral weight as actual incest. Don’t equate the two.
Jason and nico were canonically close friends, and generally intimate friendships are a good base for both ships and sibling headcanons. You can personally hc them as brothers all you want but people are allowed to have different opinions than you.
Again super sorry for crosstagging and shoving discourse in your face. I’m just tired of seeing ppl hate on jasico bc of canon and it being problematic when its “problematic” aspects is just shit they made up. Please reblog this
not going to lie i am kind of obsessed with annabeth at 12 years old watching one of those "is megalodon still out there?" bullshit ass documentaries and she wholeheartedly buys into it because she's 12 and still thinks that if it airs on animal planet or the history channel it must be accurate, so she tells percy all about the totally real facts and figures and percy's like "that's bullshit. if we had giant sharks we'd know. that's such bullshit" and there's like..... you know how they canonically email each other when they're not at camp? there's like half the email dedicated to "here's what i did this week" and then 15 paragraphs about their megalodon argument. neither of them do any research about it because annabeth thinks she's done the research by watching the documentary, and percy is a) dyslexic, and as much as he wants to stick it to annabeth he will not be reading anything he does not have to, and b) why would he READ he can just ASK THE FUCKING SHARKS. but he's stuck in NYC so he can't ask any sharks until the summer, and the fact that percy is disagreeing with her means that annabeth is digging her heels into this argument and refusing to budge, so it's a completely inane back and forth argument because both these 12 year olds are just making up their own arguments to try and own the other, and eventually percy defaults to going i am a SON of POSEIDON i think i KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT SHARKS i am BASICALLY KIND OF RELATED TO ALL SHARKS EVERYWHERE BECAUSE MY DAD MADE ALL OF THEM TOO SO SUCK IT. and then he hits send on that particular email and has an existential crisis because, if his dad is the ocean, and made all the things in the ocean, and also horses, are they all his siblings? or were the first ones of each species his siblings, and now it's kind of questionable? how many genetic steps away is he from a fucking manta ray? he can't ponder for long because sally reads his email to annabeth over his shoulder and grounds him for telling annabeth to suck it, and makes him write an apology email.
and then they get to camp and naturally the megalodon argument falls to the wayside because of the fact that percy and annabeth's lives are a mcdonald's playplace for gods and titans to do what they want. but i'd like to think during the downtime in sea of monsters, annabeth resurrects the argument and percy's like I'M ASKING THE FUCKING SHARKS and marches to the bay and patiently waits for a shark to answer his I'm The Son Of Poseidon And I Have A Question call, and it does happen to be a traveling great white that answers. percy's like "i've gotta win this argument please tell me megalodon is extinct" and after crossing the language barrier, the shark explains that yes, megalodon is extinct. they don't call their ancestor sharks megalodon, sharks have their own words for their ancestor sharks, and because percy as tiny lord of the ocean is technically partially their god he gets to understand special shark language. but nobody else does, so when percy is explaining this interaction to annabeth and tries to repeat the shark-word for megalodon, he opens his mouth and makes a rumbling-clicking-bad-ear sound, and annabeth calls him a liar and swears he's making up this entire shark interaction and he can't prove anything. percy is so mad. he goes back to the ocean and talks to another shark because he's like I'M RIGHT AND SHE WON'T LISTEN and this shark, a bull shark, helpfully suggests that cannibalism might be the answer, because he's a shark. the conversation kind of devolved into percy nervously asking if all ocean life everywhere is technically related to him, and the bull shark is like no, no, no, that's not how it works, son of poseidon. you're not related to US. you're related to the WATER. and the bull shark sounds so happy that he could help that percy just beams at him and goes "thanks!" even though internally he's more confused than ever, and he has to sit at the bottom of the ocean having an existential crisis
cut to many years and near-death situations later, after percy's gap..... years, in which he just did not care for the prospect of college, and annabeth kicking her own ass during undergrad and now moving on to graduate school (shhh the chases can afford it), percy's wandered into a marine biology track. the megalodon argument has been buried by less fun arguments, like percy arguing that annabeth should help do his laundry because she pretty much only wears his clothes anyway. percy has made College Friends, and he's really excited to introduce his beautiful, wonderful, best friend-girlfriend to his College Friends. annabeth starts the conversation by going "i think megalodon is still out there" and percy's Marine Biology College Friends all turn to stare at percy while percy chokes on his own spit and tries (read: fails) to breathe
hi! I've had to make posts like this a few times, but hopefully this'll be the last. my family and I are going through a rough situation financially, after my dad got sick with covid. we're now struggling to get groceries for this week, plus we have two (small) dogs to take care of. we're very worried, since we have a 30$ Internet bill to pay, and we don't have enough food for the next three days.
Saw your posts about Anthony Mackie. Can you please explain what's going on? I don't really ship Sam and Bucky and I'm not the best at keeping up with drama in the Marvel fandom. What happened?
basically variety interviewed anthony mackie and asked him about sam and bucky (the ship) and he said that he doesnt ship them. which is well within his rights to do lmao??? and he said a bunch of other stuff too which tbh he was 100% right about (how ppl fetishize men in mlm relationships (ESP men of colour ESP Black men) how right now the current status quo is to tokenize queer relationships but never actually commit faithfully to actual rep etc etc) and compound that variety took. all of his reasonable statements and kind of just smashed it together in the headline etc to make it look like he said that gay ships are inherently fetishistic and bad.
and white marvel twitter (and some of u on tumblr) have decided because of this its open season #anthonymackieiscancelled2021 which. is so embarrassing it takes what. one interview headline for you to show ur true colours? this man has consistently and openly supported the lgbt+ community he's been a fantastic fucking ally for years and years and the moment you are able to misconstrue his words for shock value you turn your back on him. it's literally not what he meant and you are all too eager to condemn this man. dont think we forgot that random unwarranted post last month where someone was like i think anthony mackie is homophobic because "he gives off those vibes" or something. we all know what "those vibes" mean for u
also to the "its not about race" crowd. its always about fucking race you people just think white = default so you can put blm in your bio but refuse to address your own obvious antiblackness. embarrassing
Brazil is suffering from the worst COVID outbreak there is, and no one is talking about it. This is not just in terms of the number of cases, but also the government’s active refusal to do anything and in fact hurting attempts to help. 1 in every 4 COVID deaths in the world is in Brazil. There isn’t enough access to vaccines. Food is unaffordable, let alone masks. People are actually starving to death. Hospitals don’t have enough beds or oxygen. And if this is not enough of a reason to talk about it, the variant that is sweeping through Brazil is twice as contagious, and has also been seen to infect people who have already been infected with other variations of the virus. The variant has crossed borders already.
These Twitter threads give all the details that i know. Please go through this and share widely.
The second twitter thread provides details of how to donate. Here is a link. It is in Portugese, but google translate is working fine here and also, the author of the thread will translate to guide donation if contacted.
Please share with as many people as possible. The people of Brazil need international support.
if you’re from a developed country, specially the US, please ask your leaders to allow the mass production of vaccines in the global south. we’re suffering through a great shortage of the vaccine bc richer countries are basically hoarding them.
This was something we talked about in Polysecure book club tonight. Lots of good discussion about healthy attachment, how to communicate needs related to attachment, and how to have healthy talks with connections about safe haven/secure base desire. Attachment shouldn’t be something that’s expected or assumed in relationships, it should be something agreed upon, and continuously mutually invested in.
i am allowed to be angry with people when they hurt me, even if they are sensitive and cant cope well with being told they did something wrong. their sensitivity does not mean i have to bottle up my feelings & their lack of coping skills does not make me expressing my anger abusive.
friend who has read receipts on: *reads my message at 8:00 and still hasnt replied at 8:02*
me: i get it. nothing ive ever said has or ever will matter to you. i understand now how foolish i was to think our chats were pertinent, important, significant to you. i hope you have a nice rest of your life because i am finished with these mind games.
like, I get this is your brain feeding you paranoia, or you’re making some kind of joke, but if you care about your friend at all, do not use your paranoia to guilt trip someone
jeez
I had a friend who sent me this kinda stuff every time I got distracted, on a program where you couldn’t turn read receipts off. you may notice the past tense there. by the end of that friendship, I flinched every time my phone went off. maybe this is supposed to be a joke, but some people do this for real, and it sucks
If there's one thing I have learned about the Marvel fandom these past 8 weeks from watching Wandavision, it's that Marvel Fans can't handle moral complexity, grey ethics, or character development.
Anti-Tony fans, Anti-Wanda fans, Anti-Steve fans or whoever all the arguments amount to the same thing. "Oh no the character isn't perfect and makes mistakes to further push the conflict of the story. Why can't they be perfectly good and the lesson black and white."
That's it. Rinse and Repeat. Doesn't matter which character, it's all the same. Someone has to be the 'bad guy' and since the franchise doesn't give you clear cut villains but just flawed characters with competing interests/needs then the fandom must demonize someone and according to said fans you must either be on the team or not and it's exhausting.
Like do you people not understand how storytelling works?
Conflict has to happen. Characters have to be flawed. I can still like Tony and Wanda just fine while acknowledging that they both did bad things. I don't have to pick and choose between them and I don't have to further demonize them or demand more comeuppance than what the story already gives to them.
And no, me pointing out the stupidity and hatefulness of your so called critiques does not make me a 'stan'. It just makes me a decent human being with a brain.
Y'all are even more toxic than the Star Wars fandom.
Jason Grace is here and he’s Queer, an essay by me.
The probably unnecessary analysis of how I believe a few key scenes fit the puzzle of Jason’s sexuality and how it influenced his relationship with a few people. I apologise in advance.
I’ll start by saying that the House of Hades, Chapter 36, better known as The Cupid Scene, is the center piece of this arrangement.
I believe this scene is pivotal, not only to Nico’s development but to Jason’s. The absolute homoerotic undertones of this scene and the implied notion that Jason has seen love but it isn’t as straightforward as he thinks it is (which I will get into later) make this scene the cornerstone of my whole argument.
So let’s go through a few specific jigsaw corners.
