#RR crit

[edains]

Rick Riordan constantly trashing the movies for not sticking to his books then releasing a show in which he rewrites everything and loses the spirit of the books entirely

#pjo #pjo show crit #rr crit #im throwing down for the films ok #they were a horrible adaptation but they were entertaining #watching the kid actors in the show with garbage writing & directing is depressing #rebekah rambles #*actors doing fucking amazing btw

[percabeth4life]

Something that is confusing me is how many people are defending the changes Rick made and defending Rick himself in regards to the show.

He lied to us.

He got the entire fandom to hype up the show, got the show made on the basis of getting a book accurate adaption. This was supposed to be something accurate to the books, including the book characters, the book scenes, the book stakes- we were supposed to get to see our favorite moments in the books on screen.

And then he went and rewrote the book.

This adaption isn't the book we read. The characters aren't the characters we read. Grover's personality was wholesale replaced. This is something entirely new-

And whether you like it for itself is a different matter entirely, but the point is that... this isn't The Lightning Thief that we read years ago.

He lied to us.

#pjo show crit #life speaks #rr crit

[aroaceleovaldez]

okay last one for the night but. honestly i really hate how the franchise has been using loyalty to Rick as a shield for so long. If Rick was involved in a project or not doesn't matter, especially not anymore.

ReadRiordan and the publishing for the franchise has been using this tactic for ages - they obscure if any writing related to the series wasn't written by Rick unless it's special circumstances. It's near impossible to find out who the ghostwriters are (Stephanie True Peters and Mary-Jane Knight). TSATS was promoted as the first time we got a non-Riordan (Rick or Haley) author working on one of the companion novels despite having seven already existing ghostwritten books in the series. The only reason Mark Oshiro was emphasized so heavily for TSATS was because they also work as a sensitivity reader for topics such as queer identity, and Rick had received backlash in the past for being a Straight Cis Old White Guy repeatedly falling into bad habits (that he hasn't broken out of) with certain characterizations that he kept doubling-down on or retconning into oblivion. The show emphasizes that Rick was involved, but the LA Times article brings into question exactly how much he was involved, and it doesn't even really matter either way. The ReadRiordan site actively avoids putting any writing credits on their articles (or art credits...) or anywhere on their site.

Practically the entire fandom unanimously agrees the musical - which had zero involvement from Rick - is the best adaptation of the series so far, including the TV show. Some of the best writing to come out of the series recently was the stuff ghostwritten by Stephanie True Peters (Camp Half-Blood Confidential, Camp Jupiter Classified, Nine from the Nine Worlds, etc). And yet when promotional stuff is posted about CHB:C, there's clearly coded language used to hide the fact that Rick himself didn't write it. Yes, that's how ghostwriters work, but at this point we should really stop pretending "Rick Riordan" isn't just a pen name for a group of authors like "Erin Hunter" and that Rick is actually writing everything in the series. I can easily look up and see which Animorphs books were ghostwritten, and who those authors were. I can find every "Erin Hunter" easily listed on official sites. And yet most people don't even know the Riordanverse franchise has ghostwriters at all.

And the franchise is still trying to use the "Tio/Uncle Rick" stuff. Author loyalty and marketing parasocial relationships isn't going to save the franchise when the author himself can't hold up his own original themes or even keep basic series bible details straight, and especially not if the editors are barely if at all doing their job. And please at least get a goddamn series bible by this point.

#pjo #riordanverse #rick riordan #readriordan #pjo tv crit #rr crit #< this isnt just rr crit im coming for the whole brand #readriordan site also cant center their webpage footer properly. thats just kind of sad #@readriordan staff make sure your </center> code has the closing angle bracket in the right spot. check for spaces. #mary-jane knight #stephanie true peters #< more self organization tags cause i like talking about the ghostwriters. unsung heroes #long post //

[believesinfairydust]

“i’m disappointed in ricks portrayal of certain minority characters and think he could’ve done way better” and “i love the riordanverse it’s my favorite series” are two statements that can both be true for you

#you don’t have to start hating it just acknowledge that maybe rick was in the wrong for a majority of the time #riordanverse #pjo #hoo #toa #magnus chase #percy jackson #rr crit #rr critical

[poisonpercy]

Hot take but if an author’s main motivation for a screen adaptation of their book(s) is to do what they wished they had written in the first place, then maybe a screen adaptation shouldn’t be made. People fell in love with what already existed and that’s what they want to see. Isn’t that enough? Anyways, if you like seeing what-if things went differently for stories, fanfiction is right there. There are so many fanfics that do exactly that

#yes this is about rick riordan #yes this is also about rick’s dick riders who think major changes are ok #i’m bitter #pjo will never win #pjo show crit #pjo adaptation #rr crit #skys post

[gethimbackpdf]

i still think that percy should have remembered sally instead of annabeth in son of neptune. don't get me wrong, I like percabeth too and i understand that they had a deep relationship or whatever.

but come on, sally literally put up with gabe for percy, you know the kind of courage that would have required? especially after what she went through previously? she was always the one constant in his life and she should have been acknowledged (grover too should have had a larger role in hoo but that's a whole seperate rant)

look I'm not saying that annabeth isn't important, she is a very big part of percy's life... but sally should have been remembered

#and don't even get me started on that judo flip in moa I could rant about that too #pjo #hoo #son of neptune #sally jackson #percy jackson #annabeth chase #percabeth #grover underwood #scheduled post #rr crit #come on rick you could have done better in EVERYTHING #it's not like the annabeth thing was important to the plot either but sally should have been acknowledged #at least jason remembering thalia makes sense #him remembering annabeth was just a way to remember chb which he could have remembered bc of sally too

[frogdisco2021]

How much better would it have been if instead of saying "shut up emo nerd no one ever pushed you away, you imagined all the rejection" Will said something like "listen, those people are judgemental jerks, but there are people here who want to be your friend! *I* want to be your friend, if you'll let me! There are people here who would be happy to see you stay, myself included!"

Cause him saying that no one ever pushed Nico away is literally just not true, we see from other characters perspectives that they see Nico as weird and untrustworthy. He has no cabin to stay in before the Last Olympian and many people are disturbed by the sheer fact that a child of Hades is walking around. There's literally a scene where the seven, including Jason who later becomes one of Nico's closest friends after he begins to understand him better, debate on leaving him to suffocate to death alone in a jar. For real I don't know how it was seen as a good idea to make Will borderline gaslight Nico and have that be seen as like....tough love??? What Nico needed to hear???

Isn't a better explanation that Nico WAS rejected by some people at camp, but there were others (including Will) who tried to befriend him but Nico always thought they were just trying to mock him so he'd respond by being mean aka "pushing himself away"? That's a really common thing with kids who are bullied or feel rejected, if someone is suddenly nice to you, you don't trust it. You think they're just trying to get close to you so they can make fun of you.

It would be especially fitting since Nico along with all half-bloods have ADHD, the fact that ADHD also often comes with rejection sensitive dysphoria could've been leaned into. Nico WAS rejected, and because of that, any time someone would make a legitimate attempt at befriending him he'd push them away. That actually makes sense and validates the feelings of the most depressed and isolated character in the series instead of turning it into him just imagining the years of people acting like he has the plague.

#percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #nico di angelo #heroes of olympus #pjo #the heroes of olympus #pjo hoo toa #solangelo #hoo crit #rr crit

[ruegarding]

the entire point of the blue food was that it was the only way sally could consistently rebel against gabe without getting her or percy punished. sally is not and never was submissive in the books. percy himself says sally has "a rebellious streak, like me." however, sally and percy were under threat of serious abuse from gabe and therefore had to pick their battles. blue food was sally's way of telling percy "i am here and fighting with you" and "there is hope in the world still."

#whenever sally wasn't around gabe threatened percy with physical violence and percy is regularly scared of ppl physically harming him #even before training at camp half blood which is likely bc he was actually physically abused #also part of gabe's abuse was insulting percy's intelligence and i know y'all don't realize how serious that was #bc percy being stupid is a fandom joke and a punchline in rick's newer books #so yes ppl commenting that they changed* gabe's abuse is not just ppl pointing out sally's sassy comebacks as a little strange #thanks for coming to my tedtalk #percy jackson #sally jackson #percy #sally #pjo tv #rr crit #pjo show crit #min talks pjo #*ppl are acting like all abuse is the same so if u comment on gabe's abuse being changed it means ur saying he's not abusive #which isn't at all what is being said here but that's the current level of comprehension we're dealing w at this point

[annamaryllis]

Richard wrote misogynistic portrayals for most pjo women into his books, then went off and repeated it onscreen but worse

literally. girlbossified and fucked up sally's character, athena is unnecessarily villainous (while poseidon is sanitized...coincidence I think not!), frederick's actions are blamed on his new wife (and they literally didn't address that whole annabeth having regrets thing but I have a feeling it was about annabeth not reaching out to her dad...it's not the child's responsibility to reach out and try to mend the relationship...like richard's handling of their relationship was already bad enough in the books), thalia adding onto annabeth's trauma and "making her work for it" like wtf was that, annabeth getting stripped of her personality and turned into the stoic child soldier smart girl who struggles with emotions because how dare she act like a 12-year-old girl, percy "saving" her from her incorrect worldview and Showing Her The Way and how to act like a human (BOOOO annabeth is literally his mortal point, what reminds him of his humanity! she is the idealist! she's the one to not give up on luke, not him! like no the point is not that he's always been Not Like Everyone Else; percy spends the whole pjo series building up his worldview which is the accumulation of all of the lessons he's learned from all of the other characters and his experiences throughout the series. but ofc in the show he just shows up with it. I'm sure he'll be talk no jutsuing everyone soon enough ughhh), no goddess appearances, etc etc. and to think they thought they ate with that medusa redemption...athena is criticized for her actions and yet poseidon is never really scrutinized for assaulting her and is redeemed to be a loving caring father...

#...I hope this is understandable to people other than me #I went on a bit of a rant sorry #also this was not proofread #pjo tv #pjo show crit #rr crit #✏️ #💌

[tagthescullion]

"normalize bad movie erasure" rick, cry all you want but those films got a bunch of people into the books, stop being such a bitch ffs

#like i get it he's frustrated but then again he sold the show as 'so accurate' and then changed the whole fuck ass plot #rick riordan #rr crit #pjo show crit #pjo show #pjo disney #pjo films #pjo movies #idk how that tag is tbh #tagthescullion

[xx-ames-xx]

i think it's reductive to take "its not like the books" in it's most literal face value interpretation. it's not bad bc it's "not like the books" it's bad because it discards the books for something worse

#pjotv crit #rr crit

[once-upon-an-animation]

Things I would like to see fixed in PJO S2:

- More worldbuilding, but do it in a way that isn’t heavily reliant on dialogue. Show us more of the camp, maybe let us meet some of the other characters.

- More humor. PJO is supposed to be a fun adventure story where the dark and serious elements are balanced out by the humorous moments. S1 felt so somber and cynical, and I feel like that isn’t the right tone for Percy Jackson.

- More whimsy/campiness! Mr. Riordan, your books got really weird and silly sometimes! Let your show be weird and silly sometimes too! Not everything needs to be dark and gritty. It doesn’t have to be super childish, but there needs to be more magic and charm in this world.

- Let the trio be vulnerable to traps. Yes, I know it makes sense for them to know the myths or whatever, but if you want the monsters and traps to feel like they’re a serious threat, you can’t have them be this easy to explain and maneuver. Conceal them better; make them tougher to figure out. In addition, show off more of Percy’s street smarts. We love this character because of his ability to think fast and improvise a bad situation even if he doesn’t know all the details of the relevant myth. Emphasize that more; it’s not everyday that he needs to be a walking encyclopedia.

- Luke and Annabeth’s relationship needs more oomph. Their relationship felt kind of hollow in the first season, and y’all need to tighten that up in future seasons because their relationship is only going to get more integral to the plot. It’s okay if you want to leave out the crush, but man, you should have given them something.

- For a story that was inspired by a boy’s struggles w/ ADHD and dyslexia, the impact of these conditions felt kind of absent during the actual quest itself. I’m not saying that they need to go overboard with this or anything, but if you’re going to do neurodivergent representation, I feel like it should have a stronger presence during the actual quests, yes?

- The action scenes are kind of weak. Sea of Monsters has a lot of action going on, so y’all will have to really think out those action sequences so you can capture the excitement within them. I’ll be disappointed if the action in S2 feels as flat as it mostly felt this season.

- Annabeth is not a stoic character. She’s actually quite expressive; she’s just selective about what she discusses, and sometimes she chooses to convey emotion through action, behavior, or cryptic words instead of explicit words. But she was never stoic, so please allow her to actually show more of this emotion. It’s okay to let her be vulnerable; that’s what endears most people to this character in the first place, and that’s why that chair scene stuck with people. Therefore, this need to make her this mostly unshakeable girl boss should go away. The girl is a sentimental character; let that stay.

- Please fix the dialogue. Less exposition, more characterization.

#rick riordan #annabeth chase #percy jackson #pjo #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo hoo toa #pjo series #pjo tv show #grover underwood #pjo tv crit #anti pjo #rr crit

[latinoperce]

rick riordan you became the thing you swore so much to destroy. why change some of these things in the show??? the thing im most angry about is that the changes are either purely nonsensical or just done poorly

theyve completely eliminated the books sense of urgency, like theres no stakes on anything. you can miss the deadline and everythings fixed with a little talk with zeus. you recognize medusa and crusty and the lotus hotel right out of the gate, and obviously the only conclusion is that kronos is behind everything even though hes supposed to be locked in the deepest part of tartarus and youre a 12yo who just got thrown into this life and is just learning that monsters are real. fights are over in 30 seconds and theres no injuries or consequences except for an off screen comment on how you lost your bag or maybe a new stain on your shirt. theyre 12 but also they know everything there is to know about the greek myths.

in the books they learn and realize things as they go! its the experiences that change percy and grover and annabeth and things are supposed to be HARD because theyre kids!!! and they were sent on a mission they shouldnt have been sent on, but they get through it with each other and with a sense of comedy because theyre fucking kids! yea theyre gonna almost die and then say hello to gladiola the pink poodle, and play hacky sack on the bus stop, and stuff themselves with cheeseburgers every chance they get bc kids arent supposed all knowing and mature all the time

you cant promise a faithful adaptation of a book and then change the basic things that made the book be loved in the first place

#i could complain even more and i will tbh #i can still complain more abt the tone of the show and the pacing before even getting started on the characters themselves #like rick fell into the stereotypes he obviously was trying to destroy #annabeth became an all mature girl who knows everything and had her kid traits basically erased #percy now knows everything too to show hes not as dumb as ppl say he is #and grover is divided in this weird amalgamation of comedic relief and manipulation mastermind to do exactly what? #everythings been sanitized to all hell and all violence has to be shown in a controled setting that erases any actual evidence of it #rr crit #pjo show crit #pjo tv show #pjo tv series #pjo tv crit #pjo #rant

[aroaceleovaldez]

im really not a fan of Rick's recent trend of recycling bits of his writing that got a good reaction the first time and acting as if that's a valid substitute for. actually bothering to write something original a second time around. It's clearly just there as a callback and nothing more.

It's "Nico's rage exploded" and "Percy's rage exploded" with the exact same paragraph formatting. It's CoTG having titles like "My Singing Makes Things Worse, and Everyone Is Totally Shocked" (reference to TLO, when Percy says he thinks his singing would cause an avalanche) or "Pretty Much the Best Good-Night Kiss Ever" (reference to TLO "Pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time") or any other number of near word-for-word references to the first series. It's Nico calling Percy "seaweed brain" in Un Natale Mezzosangue (when Percy says in TTC that anybody but Annabeth calling him that is a major offense). It's Nico and Will falling into Tartarus in TSATS word-for-word referencing Percy and Annabeth in House of Hades, despite it not making any sense for their characters (and otherwise being written as Percabeth 2™). It's the show making huge changes but keeping random "fan-favorite references" (mostly overusing "seaweed brain" and "wise girl" and emphasizing percabeth) only because they're popular in-jokes and considering that a faithful enough adaptation to market it heavily as such. It's lazy writing.

And it's a disservice to the series and to the audience, because it clearly shows Rick doesn't have original ideas anymore (though given all his writing is heavily derivative to begin with, it begs the question how much was original in the first place and how much he has difficulty when he doesn't have a structured mythological plot to work from) and that there is an expectation that the audience will just sit down and accept that behavior hook-line-and-sinker. Everything recently is clearly such lip-service to the audience, either in retcons that are overt speaking-to-camera acknowledgements of things he's been criticized on or wink-wink-nudge-nudges of community in-jokes that have no business in the actual text (see: over-use of ship names in canon). Especially since Rick tends to be about 5 years behind on the fandom uptake. It's just so disappointing to see.

#pjo #riordanverse #tsats crit #pjo tv crit #rr crit #< OH BOY A TRIPLE #MCGA's reference to Jason's concussions in the chapter titles is on thin ice but can stay for now #callbacks can work! in-jokes and references can work! see: Percy's dam joke in Son of Neptune #or Percy in the musical making the joke about his singing causing an avalanche as a reference to TLO #or any other number of references in the musical #but you need to know when they belong and when they ABSOLUTELY DO NOT #and when it's a fun nod and when it just feels like you're copying your own homework #a great example actually - i was recently reading an *excellent* fic by @vivitalks #and in it Jason uses the phrase ''you knock me out'' as a fun nod to Jason's ''you're a knock-out'' in TLH #that's a good little reference! that's how you do it! #a character who has already used one phrase uses a similar phrase. because theyre the type of person to say that phrase. #that's already been established. and it highlights something about their character that they return to that phrase #in that fic it highlights that Jason is a total dork especially when it comes to romance #Percy's ''dam'' joke reference in SoN works because it's only used once very briefly and it's very quickly brushed by #and it's literally Percy making a reference to his own past and acknowledging that he's doing that. it's his own in-joke! that's reasonable #it's not reasonable to expect FOUR DIFFERENT PEOPLE to have the EXACT SAME REACTION to FALLING INTO SUPERHELL #especially when they're established to all be EXTREMELY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS with DIFFERENT DYNAMICS #long post //

[southasianpercy]

don’t watch the percy jackson show on disney plus. rick is a zionist and so is disney.

and for those who say they’ve “waited forever” for this show…you went your entire life without it, i’m pretty sure you can continue living without it.

free palestine 🇵🇸

#pjo #percy jackson #anti rick riordan #rr crit #fuck disney #boycott disney plus #free palestine

[percabeth4life]

I feel like rick missed an opportunity when he made Frank closer to Percy's age instead of Hazel's. Like, I'm sure there are reasons (It's been a while since I read HoO, so I can't say what they are, but they're probably there(I hope)), but can you imagine Percy, on a quest with two kids that are 13-14 (I can't remember how old she is in SoN, can't find it either, so guessing low it is).

Even without his memories, he'd be halfway to feral, but once he got them back, I can't see him doing anything but going from protective to absolutely destroying anything that hurt them.

I also think it would have been hilarious to have Percy and Annabeth at like, 17-ish? And have the rest of the seven at like, 14 max. Percy and Annabeth are trying to keep this group of 13-14 year olds alive, and they're both screaming internally half the time. Sometimes, it's just screaming, but sometimes, they scream about how toddlers shouldn't be on quests.

(Side note this popped into my head while I was writing, so have a- thing

Annabeth: There's a bunch of babies, Loose on a quest! No one knows what the babies are going to do next, least of all the babies! They've never been on a quest before!

Narrator: The babies in question are 14, and they have, in fact, been on quests before. (She is right about them not knowing what they're going to do, though.))

Then again, maybe I just like big brother/protector Percy too much. (Reluctant and screaming big sister/mentor figure Annabeth is also fun.)

(And on a sadder note, Annabeth realizes this must be what Luke and Thalia felt like and almost starts crying.)

To start, you're absolutely right that it was a missed opportunity. Percy is, without knowing it, the most experienced of the questers, except Frank is nearly his age in comparison to Hazel (who should be 14 by math, but is 13 by Rick's declaration). I think it's less that he made Frank closer to Percy's age and more that he was trying to make Hazel younger than Nico.

But yes, it would've been super interesting to see him basically mentoring the other two, especially after he regained his memories. I feel it was a major missed opportunity to not have Percy and Annabeth trying to watch over the younger quest members, instead he aimed for weakening the two to make everyone else their equal. It's a shame cause it missed the opportunity for the younger questers to be major boons for their skills, rather than raw power.

And also, the two of them looking after younger ones and wanting to protect them but also having to risk their lives to save the world- and the rest being alone when Percabeth falls with Nico to help except half of them find him freaky- would've allowed them to grow into their own more.

It would also show how Percy and Annabeth really ARE the most experienced, how their quests haven't been the norm so even Jason who is remembering some quests hasn't done anything this insane before but Percabeth just takes it all in stride.

#anon asks #rr crit #life answers #percabeth #percy jackson #annabeth chase #frank zhang #hazel levesque #nico di angelo #jason grace #the seven #hoo #pjo