Yes Please Thank You. I Need My SandRay Endgame.

Yall I really don't think they were written that out of character. Nico in tsats is a lot more like he was when he was first introduced to the series, I'm sorry that he doesn't want to stay in a dehabilitative traumatized state for forever but like let the dude heal and feel some joy for once damn. Also idk why people are saying "ToA Will is so much different from Tsats Will" I fear you might be delusional. ToA Will was perceived through the rose colored lens of Apollo. Tsats is the first book that we get to peak inside his head. He is a head counselor and the head medic, of course he's going to appear cool, calm, and collected from other people's pov's. Given the whole "embracing the darkness" motif for him throughout Tsats, I don't think it's that weird for his flaws to be put on display. It's not contradictory to his character, it's deepening to our and his own understanding of himself.

Also I'm gonna need y'all to stop bashing on Mark for a minute. I really don't want to know how this book would've turned out without their input. Rick does not have the best track record with approaching more sensitive topics (ahem the blatant fatphobia with Frank and Lester- cough- the reduction of Annabeth's character as soon as she is officially in a relationship with Percy- honestly Clarrise's entire depiction throughout the series raises many concerns- cough- the rascist stereotypes sprinkled throughout the rrverse, etc etc)

I think that this could've been a lot worse if Mark weren't a part of the project. So please stop diminishing the writing to "bad fanfic". Some of you are just being unnecessarily cruel and unfair. The book has been out for literally 2 days and you weren't the target audience. Cry about it.

i think it's funny that some people would use maomao as an example of a 'strong female lead' to put down other shojo girls who are traditionally more girlish and feminine and emotionally sensitive (or 'crybabies') as if maomao wouldn't be the first one to jump into their defense if they're in the same universe. maomao is literally the most girls' girl, empathetic, understanding girl you'll ever see and she'll hate you for putting other fmcs down to lift her up

like. how do you like maomao bcs you're supposedly a feminist but you hate like a man??

i've never felt more like part of a family when i check to see if ao3 is down, and see how we all gnaw at the bars of our enclosure

biggest reason i make so many flop posts on here is because everything i do reeks of the desperation to make a popular tumblr post. this is deliberate, because it is what protects me from ACTUALLY making a popular tumblr post. so long as i crave it, tumblr fame will never find me. it is only when i turn away, and accept my fate of obscurity, that people will lay their eyes upon me. and it WILL be because i tripped and fell on my stupid face while i was turning

welcome to the “its not gay?” series

hard on sk8 orv and nana

i refused to read orv because for a long time i thought it was a poorly written bl

i got baited so hard for nana

What if Ray is the one who finds Mew's change problematic after he gets over Mew that is. right now he's too blind to see what's happening. ray didn't fall for this new, he fell for his mew, the one who saved him. This one looks like someone who will leave him to die after using him. Maybe this is what gives Ray an epiphany and he finally sees sand. but at that point sand is done with him , so ray goes after him but sand doesn't want to anything with him ( understandable) and then we get the line from the trailer. i am not going to let you go after you have come into my life.

maybe in the middle of this comes the boeing plot , ( that chekhovs gun has to fire sometime ) and ray getting jealous, and ray going berserk on sand, claiming ownership. and sand is like I can choose aka do you think I don't have any dignity ?

what if mew goes back to top and ray finds out, but he's not that mad as he taught he will be , hes mad but he's more mad when he sees sand with boring. hes mad, sad, confused and on top of that he's drunk and high, maybe this scenario could be what gives clarity to ray on who he actually likes. except this is going to happen towards the ned of the show and sand has moved on and we don't get a raysand ending, then what I am I going to do.

( i would be happy if ray goes to rehab instead and sand stays away but the heart wants what it wants)

Mew trying to become Ray let alone date him was not on my bingo card for this week but I'm no professional bingo card designer, let's talk about this anyway

We all went into this show knowing it was going to be messy, asking for it to be messy, we're all weak for SandRay so RayMew is upsetting because we want Ray with Sand, sure, but setting all of that aside, the thing that is really concerning to me about the fact that Mew is choosing to rebound with Ray is the fact that he is very creepily BECOMING RAY while doing it. He's putting on a persona to handle his life right now and it's really unhealthy and boy needs to cut it out and get some therapy. (they all need therapy.)

At the beginning of the episode, before the confrontation with Boston, Mew is dressed more or less as himself. He and Ray do dress similarly on a base level- they both wear a lot of patterned, unbuttoned shirts over a second shirt, but Mew normally wears stripes over tshirts, and mostly light colours with a lot of blues and greens. Ray wears a lot of darker colours and patterns with shapes and designs, with a lot of reds, tans, and oranges.

After blasting Boston into the pool and delivering one of the most satisfying kicks on television, before going for his confrontation with Nick, we get the creepy tub shot of Mew sinking into his misery and his upcoming revenge era-

To put on his Ray cosplay, he's gotta sink down into the deep. This isn't a rebirth or an emergence of a new, stronger version of himself; this is him descending, covering himself and his hurt with someone else's aura and attitude so that he can cope with the path he's decided he needs to go on to burn his enemies and get his revenge.

He tries it out when he goes to see Nick and it works for him-

This is his soft launch, where he's up against someone else who has, or feels he has, been done wrong by Boston and Top (and done wrong, obviously) but that Mew knows is vulnerable. Mew pushes on Nick to help getting his revenge on Boston, and Nick crumbles. Using this persona, this attitude, is working for him.

He uses it to hunt down Gap next, another trial run, that goes flawlessly for him as well.

He's got the black tank, the necklace, and a black, white, and grey shirt this time, another test of borrowed confidence. And he's successful: he pulls Gap with almost no effort, he gets the file, he's ready to go now. He's used the Ray based persona twice with people he doesn't know, his confidence is up, which means he's ready to use it on someone he does know.

So when he gets ready to confront Boston, we get a whole sequence of him preparing for the battle, and checking all the details. There's a lot of very close up shots of his face and eyes here that I left out of the gifs because this scene was already long, and a lot of focus on each detail.

The necklace like Ray wears, a tanktop like Ray wears (but black! because this is Mew in his angsty villain era!), a patterned button up shirt like Ray wears, check the hair and go. Armored with this other persona, he's ready to handle Boston, and he does. Much, much better than Ray himself, mind you, compared to when Ray went and confronted Boston in the last episode.

The next big outfit switch we get for Mew in this episode (I'm not counting the whole big Top punching Mew confrontation since Mew and Ray are both just wearing their school clothes there) is Top's daydream about dancing with Mew. This whole sequence is so soft focus and Top looks so sad and there's no one else there which implies to me he's imagining this and it's not an actual memory, but either way we're back to Mew in stripes, with Top in stripes as well.

What's different about Mew and Top matching versus Mew matching himself to Ray? Mew and Top don't really MATCH so much as coordinate. They're often in different colours, different styles, different material shirts, etc. Like here, Mew is wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt with vertical stripes over a tshirt, while Top is wearing a collared polo shirt with horizontal stripes, AND they're wearing different colours. They work together without fully matching, and they're distinct to the characters as well. Even when their styles get a little closer, like Top wearing some solid colour button up shirts in episode 6 instead of polo shirts, he styles them differently than Mew does and I at least can't really picture them switching clothes and having the outfits really look right.

Meanwhile, the last scene of the episode, with Mew dancing with Ray, we get this-

Mew is dressed as Ray again, even shifting into Ray's common colour schemes with the flowers on this one. His first outfit when he went to see Nick was a trial and the pattern still had a lot of blues in it, but he's been shifting into darker colours with the tans and oranges we see Ray in pretty often with this.

(Ray, meanwhile, is wearing a shirt that looks like something Sand would have chosen for him, of course.)

Ray is reckless, Ray is fearless, Ray is bold, Ray is confident, Ray is wild and sometimes unpredictable, or he at least seems to be to the much more conservative Mew, so slipping into Ray's clothes and taking on what he thinks is Ray's persona is a way for Mew to push himself in ways he hasn't before. There's no way Mew could have handled his whole spy mission to get the video file from Gap as himself the way he has been; that's not in his wheelhouse.

From the preview for next week it looks like Mew is sliding into more of Ray's persona with the partying behaviors, and I don't think it's going to end well for him. But being with Top has taught him that trying to get someone to change is useless because they're still the same mess on the inside, so his decision to slide down the same path as Ray and let go of his inhibitions instead of trying to fix Ray is as unsurprising as it is self-destructive.

Seeing Mew take some kind of power over his life should have been satisfying, and in some ways it definitely was, like watching him burn the notebook page and try to put his foot down with Top, but then seeing him do it while spiraling mentally and slowly covering himself with Ray's outward persona at the same time was incredibly unnerving. Adding in him deciding to get involved with Ray romantically and it just speed ratchets up the unhealthy factor by a million miles a minute.

It also shows how well Mew actually knows Ray now compared to how well he thinks he knows Ray and who and what he thinks Ray is, that he could send himself down this path without seeing the writing on the wall about who Ray is trying to be and what Ray is trying to deal with behind Ray's substance abuse problems and everything else, but I imagine that will be part of the inevitable explosion that THIS impending disaster will also turn into, potentially very soon.

You can't fix your problems by pretending to be someone that you're not, especially if who you're trying to be is someone you know who is incredibly problematic and unhealthy themselves. It's a whole toxic situation even BEFORE you start trying to DATE THEM AT THE SAME TIME.

We wanted a mess and boy are we getting it.

What's funny is that it's coming from the same group of people that were hell bent on making mew the manipulator but they can't deal with him actually being toxic.

are there people actually blaming ray for mew doing drugs like are you people serious

Completed tsats, in the middle of exam week, guess I have my priorities straight. Okay, let's get into the pro and con opinions of mine in this book.

Pros

1.Nico got over his trauma. Not completely of course, but he is on the right path. And the cocoa puffs are really cute ( send me fanart).

2.I am glad nico is more emotive in this. We saw him smile more, make jokes and generally be more optimistic then the other books. I felt like titan's curse nico is coming back and i love it. I love that nerdy side to him.

3.We see him cry it out. After so long of seeing him being described as emotionless, cold and scary, it was nice to see him letting out his emotions.

4. I love that he is so affectionate with will. We already know that nico is physically affectionate with the people he cares about, like hugging Jason, reyna, and kissing hazel on the cheek. It makes sense that he will be affectionate with his bf.

5. I love that the entire story revolves around how kind nico is. Like we knew that nico was the only one who saw and talked to hestia. His selflessness is the most important trait of his but also the most overlooked. But it's also the trait that got him in the most trouble. I am glad that he told nyx to f**k off, it means he is learning to prioritise himself and i am so glad for that. Also it felt so good to see people and deities acknowledge that, too the point that a primordial goddess was threatened by it. Listen up kids, KINDNESS IS YOUR BIGGEST STRENGTH NOT A WEAKNESS.

6. I liked will's characterisation. He's exactly what I taught he will be, kind, daring, supportive and brave. And he learns, accepts his mistakes and meets nico in the middle, what more can i ask. ( I feel like a parent giving their blessings to their child's so)

7. Nyx felt threatening, way better then gaia. And I really liked the way the final battle was more psychological then physical. And the new development in wills powers, that's a head cannon that felt validated. He can use plague powers, powerfull sunshine boy, nico, powerful sunshine boy.

8.Bob and small bob, they are the best. And them being happy and enjoying their freedom, ah, I was crying. I love them.

9.The deities crying over solangelo. I get it, they are so cute. Kind of shows a human side to them. And that talk about lost souls with gorgyra, yeah, another scene that brought me too tears. The fact that they still have hope. Warmed my heart.

10.Loved the talk about change , and being true to yourself and having the option to choose. It read nicely and it's a great message for the kids out there, not just LGBTQ kids, to everyone. And even bitter adults can learn this lesson. So be open minded people.

As a literature student, I am done with all the nihilist, Existentionalist, tragic stories that I had to read. This was the cheesy, funny, pure, and sweet book that I wanted to get rid of all this stress. And that's what I want from a percy Jackson series book.

Cons

1.It was rushed. But I think I understand. I mean they had to put nico's solo tartarus plot, the actual plot of the story and also address their trauma, add fanservice, create a believable story for why nico had to go to tartarus again ( sideyes hades) , yeah way too much for a spinnoff.

2.I would have love to know more about will. Don't get me wrong, as I gushed about it, I really like their interactions. But it felt like he was made for those interactions, like will solace is still not an individual character but nico di angelo's boyfriend. To me it felt like Rick was telling," look at this sunshine boy, I would tell you why he is perfect for nico", hence the earlier blessing comment. ( you have my blessing will, you have my blessing). But I don't care about it much, for me I was looking forward to Nico's story and I got it so I am happy.

3.There were inconsistencies, like bianca and his mother. It felt like a retconn, but it's also a story about gods, so it makes sense that hades will do it.

4.The tartarus parts didn't hit as much as I thought it would, nicos past solo trip, that is. Maybe it's because the story was written by two authors. I cried but it didn't tear my heart out. Maybe because I know nico gets out. Hmmm, something to think about.

5.Please dont take this the wrong way, but I didn't like how they constantly kept saying boyfriend. Like I get it, I know you are a couple, I want you to be couple, but it felt like the authors didn't think they would come across as a couple and kept on reminding us. This is one nitpick I have in this book.

Oh another nitpick. I wanted to see the other characters, like hazel and reyna and how did I forgot apollo. I need more apollo. I really wanted to see nico's reaction to reyna joining the hunters. Not much just a tiny reference, like when they were talking to gorgyra, like she also abandoned me, something like that.

And that's it. I can't think about any more cons.

TLDR: This book left me feeling like a proud mama who's watching her son grow up to be a hero. And that's exactly what I wanted. So, this book is a 10/10 for me. Cherished forever.

I 'll miss my messy people. I love this show so much. A toast to the end of 12 weeks of agony people, 🍷.