Subject: He's pretty excellent at throwing shade.
Author:
Posted on: 2018-11-17 16:18:00 UTC
Not only when it comes to ripping into that movie (Oh gods it had that coming), but when it comes to blasting queerphobes who attack him for his writing.
Here's an epic comeback to a parent who tried to shame him for including LGBT+ characters in his books.
If you've ever read the Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, you'll have run across Letter 210, in which Tolkien comprehensively deconstructs and slams a prospective Lord of the Rings movie script. He pulls no punches, and along the way manages to give us an excellent view of both what he thinks is important in his books - and what Zimmerman thinks is. (They don't really match up.)
If this is a genre of letter that interests you, good news! Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians &c) has just shared his own version:
Memories from my TV/Movie Experience, by Rick Riordan
Featuring scathing comments on the Lightning Thief movie like:
"The dialogue needs to sparkle. I’d like to see it be fresh and original and funny. Right now there are some good areas, but mostly it is flat, tired, and uninspired. It’s certainly not funny. I’m not expecting lines to be lifted from the book verbatim, but it would be nice if they resembled the source material at least in tone and spirit."
"These kids are the seed audience for the movie. They are the ones who will show up first with their families, then tell their friends to go, or not go, depending on how they liked it. They are looking for one thing: How faithful was the movie to the book? Make Percy seventeen, and that battle is lost before filming even begins."
and of course:
"If the script goes forward in its present form, I don’t need to be the Oracle of Delphi to foresee what will happen. You will lose the fans of the series 100%, but more importantly the script will fail to impress even regular moviegoers who haven’t read the book. The movie will become another statistic in a long line of failed movies badly adapted from children’s books. No one wants that, and a year from now I really would prefer not to be saying: “I told you so.”"
hS
Not only when it comes to ripping into that movie (Oh gods it had that coming), but when it comes to blasting queerphobes who attack him for his writing.
Here's an epic comeback to a parent who tried to shame him for including LGBT+ characters in his books.
He once declined an invitation to receive an award from Texas lawmakers because they were discussing a bathroom bill at the time.
~Ak
I remember wossname from the Magnus Chase books (Alex, maybe?), who as a child of Loki has total mythological justification to be gender dysphoric, but... who else is there? I remember several gay characters in the Greek series (Nico, wossname in Last Olympian, the ladies in Apollo 2... plus, y'know, various gods throughout mythology), but I don't think 'gay' is a subset of 'gender dysphoria' (unless there's been another linguistic shift I missed). So am I forgetting someone/s, or does that person just REALLY dislike probably-Alex?
I guess it could be parsed as 'less of the gender dysphoric character', but really the natural intepretation is 'fewer characters with that trait'. So there MUST be more than one, right?
The only alternative is that twittercommentor19024 did not fully consider the logical soundness of their tweet, and that is simply inconceivable.
hS
Ignoring the gods, who have been shown multiple times to not be very picky: Magnus himself is at least bisexual, (and yes, you were right, it was Alex from the books who was genderfluid), Nico di Angelo and Will Solace are gay, there's a pair of lesbian ex-hunters of Artemis who left so they could be together... and I know I'm missing a lot trying to think of them off the top of my head.
The Trials of Apollo books have been pretty great throwing Apollo to the front and center narrating them, because he literally does not care and thinks humans are really silly getting hung up on the gender of their partners. Hell, he's even got a demigod daughter with a mortal man, so make of that what you will. :P
Scathing? Downright destruction of the plot and what was wrong with it.
I was apart of that age bracket that he talks about when it came out.
And damn was I disappointed in the movie.
So, Rick Riordan has been doing this thing called Rick Riordan Presents, which is basically him saying, "I don't know enough about other culture's mythology and I don't want to be disrespectful so I am going to hire and showcase other authors to write about their respective mythologies".
The reason I'm mentioning this is because the upcoming showcase novel, Dragon Pearl, was given to me in an advance copy, and having read it, I'd like to recommend it here, and the whole showcase series itself. It's not Riordan's writing, but he's using his name as a way to help build up and promote other authors. I think that's pretty cool.
Oooooh sick burn.
I was so excited when that movie came out. I watched it in theaters on opening day with some of my family, and then promptly filed it into the "not notable" folder in my brain.
That is my mood, right there. I Love This. XD
... And so I don't clutter the Board by starting a new thread right away, have a NSFW, utterly hilarious series of snippets of what sex would look like written by aliens.