#But the thing is we have to make our own characters for our own writing. And you already know who im horrendously focused on right now
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hello! so i just found out about you (better believe i'm going to be reading those cannon law recs) and i need you to answer/reply this for me in a way that doesn't sound absolutely stupid because all i came up with was "awoiaf is fetishised to hell and back with way too much institutionalised pedophilia even for medieval times"
in respect to me posting that "" i think GRRM write way too much child bride/rape/miscarriages etc than i thought was reality""
for context, this is regarding aemma arryn, a character who in book cannon has miscarriages since she's like 12/13.
feel free to disregard, thanks!
Hello! I feel like the Hostiensis of the ASOIAF universe and I'm into it, honestly. FWIW, I don't read ASOIAF/GRRM as fetishizing child marriage, but I do think that we are supposed to read the marriages of adolescent girls/young women as part of "the dark and middle ages" (tm) as imagined.
I also think (this is part of the answer, I promise) that it is a real problem that the world of ASOIAF does not have (as far as I can tell?) a legal age of majority. This is another reason we need Fantasy Canon Law, George!! I was particularly struck by this in the case of Sansa. Her adoring parents are perfectly ready to have her betrothed to a boy of approximately her own age before she hits puberty. Sansa is also not upset about contemplating marriage at this age, as a noblewoman. The women at court treat menarche as socially/legally/medically equivalent to adulthood for her. When she does eventually get married, getting married to Tyrion, who is 10+ years older than she is and also kind, intelligent, and sexually patient/experienced is clearly a much better option than the 14-year-old psychopath. This is super-legal, also. But also also, once she's out of the dress that is clearly designed for a grown woman (which she technically is! right? right George??) her husband is frankly alarmed by her youth. Make up your mind, George! Make up your mind! Is Sansa legible in court society as a woman or a girl? Clearly it is the former at least most of the time? This really, really matters, I think, to assessing the experiences and attitudes of the characters, and yet we're never given a coherent in-world answer about it (at least, not as of the first three books. Yes, I am actively mad about this.)
ANYWAY. The average age for marriage in medieval Europe was slightly higher than that in the southern United States, where I currently teach. Yes, I looked this up for the sake of comparison to make my students' jaws drop. So there's no such thing as "institutionalized pedophilia." For approximately 1% of the population, it was often desirable to have the scions of royalty/upper nobility legally married off before consummation was possible/desirable. So, for this tiny percentage of the population, again, it was not uncommon to have marriages that were unconsummated, or consummated one (1) time for legal reasons (another reason we need Fantasy Canon Law™ if this is going to matter in ASOIAF), between teenagers. One example of this would be the arranged but very loving marriage between Elizabeth of Hungary and Ludwig of Thüringen; she had lived in his parents' household from early childhood onwards, as part of their betrothal. The legal age for consent to marriage was 12 for girls and 14 for boys, and yes, that's super young by our standards, but it's also something that was only very gradually raised (the legal age for girls was raised to 16 in late Victorian England, for example,) and again, had very little effect on most people's lives in the European Middle Ages, except insofar as any marriage made without the full and free consent of both parties was invalid under canon law (the real kind.)
As the exceptional case of Margaret Beaufort makes clear, this was rare in part because of the recognized medical risks of early pregnancy and childbirth. Picking one (1) infamous case of traumatic adolescent pregnancy as a prototype ≠ being "incredibly well-read", wtf. (I know that's not your view.) I know I've done this before, but I'm going to cite a saint's life, since such stories were used to communicate moral values and reflected (to a degree, albeit shaped by narrative tropes) social realities. So. This one is from Italy, shortly after the moment when Real Canon Law codified that underage marriage was illegal. The person in need of help in this story (which you can find here) is an adolescent girl who had been married and whose marriage had been consummated. The author uses circumlocutions for this, but he is clearly both shocked and disapproving of what, implicitly, amounted to marital rape or at least irresponsible conduct. But as a result of this -- and possibly a miscarriage -- the young woman in the story was suffering medical complications, and came to a doctor who, because of the tropes of the story, referred her to a saint who was also a young woman. I love that: the implication that St. Trophimema, who had died as a victim of male violence, was posthumously helping other girls in similar situations, with the help of the nuns who managed her shrine. Anyway! the girl was healed, and may also have joined the community of women (that's unclear too; the point of the story is the healing.) This got long again, but it's another Real Medieval Example of how both legal and social realities were complicated, and how some men being abusive assholes (technical historian term) did not mean that their behavior was normative or normalized.
#fantasy canon law™#a medievalist does got#asoiaf#grrm critical#bad medievalism bingo#i will answer to fantasy hostiensis thank you
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We Are: Queer Found Family and Romance
Or the meta I didn’t intend to write.
It’s taken 9 eps (of me admittedly watching We Are through gifs and clips on Twitter, because I have yet to pay for iQIYI and I am bad at grey watching) but I think I have figured out the central conflict/plot of We Are and why the mostly linear narrative of Phum and Peem with the in media res relationships of our other three pairings made this impossible to fully tease out until we got all the pieces.
The through line that connects all of these stories about how incredibly hard it can be to be part of a queer friend group when the lines of friendship and romance blur, especially when there’s a real aspect of found family to that group.
Two things really cemented it for me this week: Tan telling the gang (and therefore the audience) the full scope of his background with Fang, as well as the beginning of Phuwin’s IG live where he talks about why he likes Kluen as a character is that he’s very direct with people he likes and isn’t blurring the lines between friends and possibly fucking up the friendship.
Because that’s the central problem that all four main couples of the show grapple with in different ways. I���m gonna get into all of that under the cut.
I’m going to start with Tan and Fang because aou contains multitudes and is my beloved while going for Fang could have always messed up his relationship with Phum, we find out in episode 9 that Tan met Fang first. Unsurprisingly, it’s not a great first meeting between what are seemingly two known fighters of what appear to be rival high schools. But then Tan finds Phum and Fang being jumped by a group from his own high school and saves them and eventually becomes friends with them sometime two years+ before the start of our story. Within this time, Tan falls so far in love with Fang, who can both out bitch and out fight, him that Tan goes full simp instead and cuts out the fighting(love that for him).
And mixing his reveal to his friends of how he met Fang and how Fang eventually consumed his waking thoughts to the point he would wish to order Fang as a pizza topping (my love for Tan is immeasurable).
But take us back to episode 2 (which is now on YouTube for US watchers for how long I don’t know) and Tan has clearly not seen Fang in awhile. He asks Phum to invite Fang out where Tan will happen to be. At the time, it was taken as Tan and Phum are university friends and Tan and been obsessed with Fang ever since and needs Phum to make the connections. But the clues that Tan and Fang were also close were already laid down. Their exchange goes:
Tan: Hey. It’s been awhile. Right?
Fang: I thought you were dead.
Tan: Come on. I haven’t seen you in ages either. (That’s the English translation, but the flow of the conversation connotes that Fang hasn’t sought him out either)
At which point Phum makes the face he always makes when Tan is in Fang hyperfocus mode of looking away and sighing. And Fang pointedly asks why Phum invited him out and what is going on.
Which is a weird exchange when you think Tan is Phum’s friend who is obsessed with Fang. It is a less weird exchange between friends that have been avoiding each other for an unspecified amount of time. And we can assume Tan started avoiding Fang because he was madly in love with him and didn’t know how to handle it and didn’t tell Fang why he was avoiding him.
In the episode 9 speech to his friends, Tan outlines that he didn’t think Fang would ever reciprocate his feelings (that it was impossible) and didn’t want to fuck with the friendship (at which point Pun sends a longing look to Chain but we’ll get back to that later) with Fang and Phum and he buried it. Until he couldn’t live with it any longer and decided to do something about it.
Which with the limited information we have, his feelings were already fucking with his friendship. He already didn’t know how to approach Fang because of his feelings at the start of the show, so is it better to not try and hope the romantic feeling dies while avoiding your friend or shoot your shot and maybe get a boyfriend out of it or maybe continue to fuck up your friendship. Tan chooses to roll the dice and it’s clear from the moment they leave the bar in episode two that Fang likes him back.
They both watch each other when they think the other isn’t looking. Fang is the one who sends Phum and Peem home together and sets himself up with a taxi ride with Tan. It’s particularly interesting to me after episode 9, this exchange, because Fang looks at a passed out Peem, mouths Peem? And proceeds to ask Phum if this is the guy that hit him while Tan snickers and Peem looks like the saddest wet cat. It’s only after the affirmative from Phum that Fang is essentially like “well, you can take him home Phum. Take home your drunk friend who hit you and I will go home with Tan.” Which our besotted Tan jumps at.
And considering the parallel between Tan and Fang meeting and Tan immediately sassing him and Fang throwing a punch leading to a fight, and Phum ruining Peem’s painting which led to mutual sassing and a kick to the nuts and a fight…I don’t know if Fang is a mastermind and connected the dots because these brothers need someone who will occasionally not be afraid talk back if need be and sees the potential for Phum to care as much about Peem as Fang does for Tan. Or if he just wants time alone with Tan and doesn’t see it. Look, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fang is secretly a long game mastermind.
Once they’re alone, Tan and Fang steal glances and flirt in the way that Tan makes very loud attempts at flirting and
Additionally, Fang is reserved like Phum, and seemingly as isolated as his only friends seem to be Phum’s friends. We don’t know if he is just not paying attention to other members of the architecture faculty or knows stuff about Kluen he won’t share. As previous parts of this narrative are folded in later episodes, we may find out. What we do know is he’s either ever only appeared alone or in connection to Tan and Phum and Phum’s friends. Even with the flashbacks, Tan points out that the head of the Fang, head of cheer club, approaches him alone and later it’s just Fang and Phum when Tan finds the group of guys jumping them. We know he and Phum adopt Toey who is bullied in high school. It makes sense why he’s potentially reserved about pushing things with Tan if Tan becomes his first real high school+ friend that he has outside of his brother.
Which is why by the time we get to episode 5, Fang says yes before Tan finishes talking. He’s been waiting but also wasn’t willing to be the first to put himself out there. And considering how much Fang and Phum seem to live in their heads and not in the world with everyone else, I can see why he needed Tan to be the one to commit to it first, especially with Fang’s later comments about not understanding why hanging out with him is a preference of Tan’s. I do hope we cross his “don’t tell tan how gone I am on him” bridge later in the narrative. Cause I think Tan knows, but also it’s nice to hear.
Let’s go back to another long-suffering pair where only one half really knew why they were suffering, and the other got a nasty shock, QToey.
I know the guys are all team if Toey loves Q and Q loves Toey then why is Q so hesitant? And I get it, but let’s talk about the double shock Q suffered and the potential layers of risk Q is facing.
It’s not just that Q is cautious with his heart. That is a factual truth. It’s why he ghosted Milk Frappe Boy, because while he fell in love with Milk Frappe Boy I think there was a deep worry, and a self esteem issue that the reality of Q, instead of Pencil Senior, would not be enough for Milk Frappe boy. So Q bolted and then deeply regretted said bolting enough say so to both Toey, not knowing the truth, and to Peem.
But the fact that he learned that Toey was indeed Milk Frappe boy at the same time he learned all of his best friends, his family for all intents and purposes, also knew and no one told him. And the way the confrontation is staged between Q and Toey, it is Q against Toey and everyone else is behind Toey.
And that, friends, that’s the real third rail for Q.
It’s one thing to know that he loved Milk Frappe Boy and that he loves Toey. And that is scary enough. The fandom loves to joke about how Toey is everyone’s little brother and they’ve all adopted him: and that is a correct assessment. But that means if Q fucks it up with Toey, he stands a chance in his mind of everyone else choosing Toey over him.
That fear doesn’t even feel that unfounded when everyone calmed Toey down mostly before Peem, Q’s true bestest friend, came out to be with him. Like Peem caught Toey before going after Q. The next episode nearly every character but Q (aside from Fai who is at all connected to this group) shows up to plan how to support Toey in getting Q.
And while I know my brain cell-less brain trust fully believe they’re helping Q, no one actually seems to ask what Q wants. Aside from Peem trying to get him to come to some that first night on the curb, no one ever asks. And that night all Q wants is to sleep in a pile with his four best friends, because that’s his family. Losing them is even scarier than losing Toey. In essence he’s lost Milk Frappe Boy once. He could do it again. But if they chose Toey…IDK.
We don’t know anything about their families really, aside from Peem’s lovely aunt and the fact that Phum doesn’t get along with his dad. And I get why when the focus is really on these large groups of found families (that are becoming one large found family) that the audience is really in love with. The bonds between the friends are just as much a part of the romance as the actual romances. Because the friendship is where the complications come from.
And while I can’t speak to mlm spaces, as I have never identified as a man, within queer wlw and non-binary spaces there are jokes about dating yourself out of friend groups. There are people you used to know who you don’t anymore because you dated someone in the friend group and were too new and got bounced. Or you date and the way it ends make everyone choose one side. Or, a person in the friend group has a crush on another person in said group, that is an open secret but when the person who was crushed upon gets a new relationship people get mad at them for not dating the person in the friend group who liked them all along because didn’t everyone know. (None of these are from personal experience I assure you 🙃)
And it doesn’t always happen like that. Sometimes the people figure out a friendship or a queer platonic solution when they’re not attracted to each other anymore. Sometimes they orbit around the friend group like two comets on opposite trajectories, occasionally crossing in awkward moments. Sometimes everyone gets past the weird. Sometimes no one does.
But that’s the risk that we’re playing in this show. I can choose the romance, but if it doesn’t work out, I am gambling this safe zone.
Which is gonna bring me to our last two pieces of this: one has had the most development and one the least but both are struggling.
I’m gonna start with Chain and Pun who are the most unhinged, gay yearning codependent besties that exist in the middle of the week and give Potae and Payos on Only Boo a real run for their money. (Both have lips touching earlobes and I don’t have a platonic answer for either) The thing is, I think both Chain and Pun are very aware of the mutual feelings. They both have moments where you know they’re aware but neither will do anything about it. And they are in the case of the story, the most embedded in one single friend group, and have the potential to explode their core group of five if things go sideways.
Now, they’re also the pair that has been effectively dating this entire time without actually dating. The ear biting and the blowing on things in the other’s mouth and the…I don’t have platonic explanations for their behavior okay? I don’t. Not naming it keeps it from being real though. It’s a collective hallucination or the biggest game of chicken.
Eventually, though, one of them is going to cross the line in a way that can’t be erased or the line redrawn. And it’s gonna have to be big because their friends watched them gaze longingly into each other's eyes for 20+ seconds and thought it was normal. Because this is how they are.
And that brings us to not quite friends not quite lovers and not quite enemies, Phum and Peem. The risk is, as discussed in many other metas, mostly on Phum’s side here and it’s why he spent the episode so hesitant. Yes he started off particularly entitled and rude. His and Peem’s relationship started as a fight (but so did Tan and Fang) and Phum feels incredibly comfortable with Peem. He’s definitely neurodivergent coded my Phum, which doesn’t make his assholery okay, but it explains his hesitancy to try new things and his struggle with making friends and expressing his feelings.
He’s got friends but he doesn’t feel particularly deeply connected to them. Yes, Beer makes time for him and actively seeks him out to give advice. He and Fang have a level of sibling codependency that hints at neglect and Fang protecting Phum at all costs. We see Tan approach Phum most of the time and while some of that is angling to get to Fang, Tan does genuinely care. But Tan is also incredibly loud which seems to be a lot for our neurospicy Phum, and Tan also has his large found family with Peem. Same with Toey, who Phum and Fang adopted long ago, and clearly Phum adores him, but he’s also the little brother of the art faculty.
And Peem is a very loving and giving soul and he makes time and space for Phum even though he’s annoying and high handed and gets Phum out of his ruts and comfort zones. And Phum clearly wants Peem to choose him, because Phum has already chosen even if he hasn’t said “I like you and want to date you.” He’s said other very direct things about how safe he feels with Peem and how connected he feels to other people by hanging out with Peem. And Peem is this safe space for him to go out and connect with the world without it being overwhelming and he even feels more connected to his own friends.
And that’s the danger that Kluen represents and what Phum struggles with. He wants Peem to choose him, but he also doesn’t want to force Peem to make a choice and not choose him, and then lose out on the experiences he’s building with Peem as well as a break in some of the connections he has with the people closest to him as Fang and Toey find love within Peem’s group. And so again, the question comes around, is it better to stay in this limbo where no one says anything and maybe Peem dates Kluen but I get to keep him as a friend, or do I roll the dice like Tan and maybe win.
I think it’s been a hard thread to pull because without the context of Tan & Fang meeting first, and Phum and Peem mending their relationship to become something akin to friends who kiss sometimes and don’t talk about it, and the lingering feelings of betrayal for Q by his friends (where they learned about his largest secret/mystery and NO ONE TOLD HIM) which are later revelations in the course of the show, they feel like different types of love stories without the mess of friendship blurring the lines. The story feels linear, because we start in a school year with the meeting of Phum and Peem, the connections between the other characters are older than this year, leaving some of their stories in media res.
And it’s an interesting core struggle taking a risk when the line between who you’re friends with, who you depend on, and who you’re attracted to blurs and the potential for rifts in your safety net are everywhere. It’s not the first show with this as a central tangle nor is it specific to queer television. But the reality of the deep ties that can exist within queer friendships and how they form deep supportive communities makes the stakes higher. And that’s why the friendships are developed nearly as much if not more than some of the romances. That’s where a lot of the risk lies for these characters.
Anyway, that’s nearly 3K of thoughts I didn’t know I had in me about We Are until today. But here we are.
#we are the series#we are series#we are#phumpeem#qtoey#tanfang#chainpun#thai bl#thai ql#gmmtv#gmmtv 2024#we are meta#we are the series meta#queer media meta#doublel27 talks#doublel27 meta#I know I rambled here#sorry if it’s not coherent
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Helluva Boss and its consistent dedication to portraying those who are financially disadvantaged or female as one dimensional bad guys
There is something so genuinely insidious to me in how HB treats financially or otherwise socially disadvantaged characters and makes them the bigots and villains of the show.
Striker is "just a bigot". The one who consistently recognizes and verbally calls out the sham that is the classism of their society, hes selected to be the bigoted character. The one who recognizes that imps are at the bottom despite farming everybody's food and who recognizes the higher classes fetishize them like toys, he's the problem. He's the villain that needs to be defeated.
Striker DOES exert toxic masculinity, no doubt. But toxic masculinity can often be the result of poverty. In my eyes, while they're not excused, it is easier to understand why working class men would believe in toxic masculinity (I say this as a feminist). Their living conditions mean either be masculine or you can't provide and you let down others relying on you. You don't survive, while the most masculine survive the best. Striker has likely learned that being better off relies on frequently exerting toxic masculinity and violence. Does the show humanize him and show this? No, it does not. Instead he is reduced to being a bigot that gets tormented with sex jokes against his will, "like he deserves".
You know maybe there could have even been a plot or something in which he gets hurt and needs to be cared for and he's treated kindly and that makes him realize the value of not always being hyper masculine. Or maybe we could even get to see how him being softer lead to someone he used to care about dying GASP. Oh wait, but they would never extend that kind of humanity or development towards him. Why? Because he antagonized Stolitz, he pointed out the fucked up things about it - an unforgivable crime. Send in the hounds sex jokes.
Striker being treated as just a joke ultimately weakens the writing as it would have been far more satisfying for him to be an antagonist with a point, that really challenges our leads and makes them think. But to do that he would have had to be taken seriously, and there's no way someone in the way of an mlm ship can be taken seriously in this show.
The only way a character can get away with antagonizing Stolitz without becoming one dimensional plot fodder with no humanization is if they're something like Fizz and Ozzie - aka a gay pairing in their own right (that also later make up with Stolitz anyway). It is so telling that out of all the antagonists we've had, Fizz and Ozzie were the first to be redeemed.
Now lets talk about Ozzie. Ozzie, who is a lord with boatloads of money and a sex toy production and club empire, is humanized and seen as a good guy. He is even contrasted by Mammon as "one of the good ones". I will admit I love Ozzie, he is fun. The show at least doesn't guilt you into seeing him as a poor victim like it does with Stolas. But what is it with HB consistently presenting wealthy rich men like they're not part of a larger system of oppression? Why does the show twist itself into knots to ignore their contributions to classism and the harm they do? Ozzie can threaten his worker imps and that's fine/understandable. Meanwhile the only way imps are worth having their own lives and stories explored seems to be if they're paired with one of these rich ruling class "good ones" men.
And aren't they cute, these imps and their ruling class lovers? Just don't think too hard about how, while Ozzie's love may be able to lift Fizz, one single imp, out of being lower class, the system as a whole is designed to keep imps down. If Fizz didn't have Ozzie then he'd still be exploited for profit by another member of the ruling class, he had to rely on a member of the oppressive class falling in love with him to save him - no no, don't think about that, focus on the cute gay!
Verosika is another notable example though I will only talk about her briefly as we don't know too much about her yet and she doesn't tie into the shows thing with those who are financially disadvantaged like Striker (and someone else I'm going to talk about after Verosika). Though Verosika hasn't been totally made into a one dimensional villain with the Ozzie's episode showing her sympathetically (for which I am very thankful), she also has barely been explored. Fizz has had so much time dedicated to showing us his own life. Practically more than Millie has gotten. I do understand he had a huge impact on Blitz's entire life and Blitz is the main character. However, Verosika is still a big chapter, and was wronged by Blitz due to his issues. She was hurt by that, which haunts him. And then she got screwed over again by him in Spring Broken with the bet. So now where is she? Why does Fizz get all extra stuff about the life hes now built for himself while Verosika only exists to be drama in Blitz's past? Oh, right. Verosika's a woman, not a man with a sexy bf. So while she can show up, shes never going to be explored outside of Blitz.
A lot of this strange standard of one dimensionalism being applied to characters depending on whether they either appeal to the shows weird mlm fetishization or gets in the way of it can also be seen with Stella. Stella's treatment is honestly appalling to me.
Just like Stolas, she was also trapped in an arranged marriage from childhood. She had to have sex she didn't want and had to get pregnant and produce a child with a man she didn't love. Except, its not just that. Everything that could be said about Stolas applies to her, and on top of that EVEN MORE does - due to her financial status.
Andrealphus states that now shes produced an heir, she "would get nothing" if Stolas died. So this basically confirms Stella has no real assets. Despite them both being forced into the arranged marriage, its Stolas that owns everything. Her home is Stolas', and without the marriage, she has no home. Now I'm sure there's a good chance she could go and live with Andrealphus or some other relative and would be allowed to do so. But is it really so crazy to still see that her situation is demeaning and awful? From what we can see in the show, the way the Goetia seem to operate is like how it used to be in olden times for women - men own everything. If you don't have a husband who gives to you, then you own nothing. So Stella is even more disadvantaged by the arranged marriage than Stolas is. The only reason she has her wealth and privilege is because she was married off to him and used as a tool. All of her assets belong to the men in her life and she never had any choice in it being that way because she was set up to be put in an arranged marriage with a man that would own everything from childhood.
And yet the show thinks instead of exploring how Stella feels about all that, given the very real world parallels to what women throughout history have faced, apparently it was more appropriate to make her one dimensional so that she could exist for the male characters. She sticks around to torture Stolas with no motivation beyond being hateful for seemingly no reason - because that's all her character got to be. Something for the show's obsession with Stolas torture porn, something to make us feel bad for him, so that Stolitz looks better. If she's a one dimensional abuser then that means we don't have to think about her lack of property ownership and how she was a victim of the arranged marriage even more so than Stolas was. Now we don't have to feel guilty when Stella is left with nothing to her name in the divorce, and she deserves being cheated on too! Yay! Phew! That saved us from thinking about a female character for more than five seconds and from being critical of our rich male fave, thank God!
This show refuses to humanize any characters that oppose Stolitz in any way, especially not if they're female. And its noticeable and obnoxious. The consistent way in which it makes its one dimensional bad guys impoverished or women while also churning out "one of the good ones" woobified rich men that benefit from hell's class system is. Well, its really fucking annoying and skeevy, in my eyes. It reveals that this show at its core is about its mlm pairings and nothing else - the class struggle stuff is there just to add flavour and drama to the mlm pairings. Women are powerful and accomplished but only so they can build and be used for the male characters stories. If you have all this time and all these resources to over and over again show another side to the guy who lauded Blitz's business over his head and said "Continually have fuck sessions with me or I'll end your business" then you can also bother to humanize impoverished imps fed up with the class system and women with no property rights trapped in arranged marriages.
#hb critical#helluva boss critical#vivziepop critical#anti stolas#anti stolitz#stolas critical#hhhb critical#hbhh critical#dayum this is a big post. But I really needed to shit out these points Ive been thinking about#my little minature tumblr magnum opus of rage or whatever#i just do not understand str*ker and stella being treated the same as like. hh's valent*no#str*ker kills ppl just like our main cast and stellas also an arranged marriage victim#why did you write them like that HB staff. Why. What warranted a Valent*no tier portrayal of one dimensionalness#Oh right. God forbid. They challenged St*litz.#Its just fucking ridiculous ITS POOR WRITING!#critical stuff
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☕️ Leverage / Leverage: Redemption!
I feel like my adoration of Leverage is well-documented, so let's talk a bit about Redemption!
A lot of people have said that it's not as good as original Leverage, and I don't dispute that! Original Leverage was lightning in a bottle, the product of certain times and circumstances, and because it wasn't owned by Amazon, it had license to be a bit more pointed at times. I think in all of our minds, from the way the original show ended, what we wanted was Leverage: Black Book, where more and more crews signed on and they dealt with bigger problems, all of which is implied to be going on in the background but which doesn't get the focus in Leverage: Redemption.
But I think a lot of things are going on here that make people like it less, and I think some of them are really interesting!
So to start: there's no Nate (which, to be clear, is a good thing, given why the character was eliminated). And Nate was very much The Main Character. He had a team, but Nate got season arcs and the last word, he was the heist leader, and his abrasiveness and cynicism made for really specific character dynamics. They replaced him with Harry, a completely different character, which was wise, and Harry's first season arc in particular was a really cool one for the show to do, but he sort of moved the Shenanigans Window (like the Overton Window but for Shenanigans) in a totally different direction to Nate. So just by virtue of that, we've got a different show. (And actually a thing I really like about Redemption is that the first season was Harry's arc about his redemption and the second season is Sophie's. I'm really interested to see who comes up next, and it's going to be Very chewy when we get to Eliot.)
While we talk casting changes, we all of course miss more regular appearances from Aldis Hodge desperately. Brianna is great and I adore her, but also she's very much like Hardison as he was in the early days of the show, the youngest and most naive on the crew and often in need of protection, so it feels like the hacker hasn't matured at all when the rest of the team is in a totally different stage of career and character development.
And then there's the central problem, which is that things have gotten so much worse in the decade between the end of Leverage and the start of Leverage: Redemption. Everything sucks so much, corporations have incredible amounts of power, it's all So Bad, but Leverage is dealing with the same size of story. It's implied that Hardison isn't, and he's the window into the world's bigger problems, but again, he's a small part of the show due to actor constraints. So while the show has gotten a little sillier under Harry's influence (and quite possibly under the influence of the writer's room, they are choosing what to write for Harry, after all), the real-world stakes of the stories have gotten significantly more real to all of us, and it can be jarring!
There are other problems, things that don't quite fit characterizations, but I think the biggest problem is that Leverage: Redemption got pulled a little lighter by team dynamics when the world we live in got pulled a lot darker by Everything, so it's no longer really on the cutting edge and pushing the envelope the way it was a decade ago, and never will be because Amazon owns it.
And that sucks! I'd love to see a Leverage that went deeper and didn't have the corporate shine on it! But I think I'm also more forgiving of it than a lot of passionate Original Leverage fans.
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The hate Taryn gets is way too exaggerated and disproportionate. It’s just straight up misogyny at this point, in my opinion. The fandom needs to get over it.
I could literally write a treatise about Taryn-hate at this point lmao. I’m going to share some thoughts (this actually got quite long), but I want to include a big ole disclaimer: at the end of the day, everybody gets to engage in fandom in the ways they want. everyone is free to love or hate whichever characters they want, for the reasons that feel valid and real to them. that being said, the treatment of Taryn specifically is really troubling and bizarre to me.
I think it’s worth pointing out that when we say Taryn-hate seems misogynistic, that means a lot more than just “people who hate Taryn hate her because she’s a girl.” in my opinion, fandom misogyny toward her often gets couched in broader terms. some examples of what I mean by this are:
(1) Taryn does things that are bad and I don’t like that - uhhhh okay. everybody in these books does shitty things, so let’s think about why specifically the actions of Taryn (a 17-18 year old girl being manipulated by multiple men in her life) fall into the category of unredeemable for you. the reason we might point to this being misogynistic is because it’s a double standard that doesn’t apply to other characters—we’re willing to forgive Cardan his cruelty, or centuries-old Madoc for the trauma he's inflicted and his ongoing need for bloodshed, but Taryn is just a stupid, evil girl for trying to secure her place in Elfhame through the levers of power that are available to her. she can never be forgiven nor redeemed no matter how loyal she is to Jude moving forward. why is that? what sin of hers are so particularly evil to warrant this response? and we have to answer these questions in the context of Elfhame & its moral code, not in the context of our own world.
(2) I could never see myself acting in the way Taryn does and therefore I don’t like her - okay? I can never see myself acting like Madoc, or even like Vivi (don’t get me started on Vivi & the fact that she gets passes Taryn never does), but that doesn’t mean I can’t have empathy for them. I understand that we experience the books through Jude’s perspective, so we’re automatically more prone to rooting for her—and to be clear, I love Jude! but fiction challenges us to experience the world through other perspectives, and it’s my opinion that Taryn acts in a way that is completely consistent and understandable with her experience of Elfhame. “I’m not like you,” she tells Jude. “I want to belong here. Defying them makes everything worse. You never asked me before you went against Prince Cardan—you didn’t care what it brought down on either of our heads.”
while Jude’s defiance is held up as girlboss behavior (by me, too! I love a “get worse” arc), Taryn’s more traditionally feminine approach to finding her place in Elfhame is reviled (@slightlyrebelliouswriter23 has a great post on the fawn response to trauma & on passivity). more on this point below.
(3) Taryn isn’t a “girl’s girl” - I am begging fandom to think critically about why Taryn betrays Jude & what that says not just about Elfhame, but about our world. these girls live in a world that affords them little power and agency. we meet them on the cusp of adulthood, and they’re both hyper-aware that they need to secure their place in Elfhame. Jude refers to knighthood as “earning” her place and is uninterested in marriage, but Taryn seems aware that she’s more likely to secure her place through the latter option (and also expresses the fear that Jude is going to leave her behind). it’s an oversimplification, but a useful one for the sake of this conversation, to point out that Jude chooses a more traditionally masculine approach, while Taryn chooses a more traditionally feminine one.
the tragedy is that this world—and particularly the men in their lives—pit them against one another. Locke offers Taryn the thing she wants most, requires a vow of her secrecy, and then begins flirting with Jude (and that's not even to mention him being a gancanagh!). at a point in her story where Madoc and Oriana are the only family who are still around for Taryn, Madoc capitalizes on Taryn’s ignorance (and also her awareness that she's never been the favorite daughter) & uses her to betray Jude. I almost never see these complexities brought up in conversations about Taryn, which is just gross to me, and echoes the ways that patriarchal power structures pit women against each other in the real world.
I’ve seen people argue that while Jude’s approach is also flawed, she at least doesn’t betray Taryn. and like… kind of? she certainly doesn’t betray Taryn as directly as Taryn betrays her—but some of that just strikes me as dumb luck. consider what might’ve happened if Dain hadn’t died at the end of book one. what lengths might he have asked Jude to go to in order to prove her loyalty to him? or if we rewind even further—it’s honestly just dumb luck that someone didn’t harm or kill Taryn (Valerian, for example, could've chosen the wrong window). Jude’s antagonism of Cardan & his friends had a direct effect on Taryn’s life, and even though Taryn begged her to stop, she bullheadedly charged on. the difference is that Jude’s risky decisions ultimately work out for her, while Taryn has to face the consequences of hers not panning out the way she wanted them to.
this isn't exhaustive, and there’s so much more I could say, but this is already so long. so in conclusion, the reason all this matters to me personally is twofold:
at its best, fiction teaches us empathy. part of why I love tfota is because it takes characters & dynamics that are really messy & helps you, the reader, understand where everyone is coming from & why. the fact that we love Madoc is a testament to fiction’s ability to do this. so why is a teenage girl treated like the true villain of this story? what about her makes us incapable of empathy? why, in the mind of the fandom, is she not allowed forgiveness (or even just a chance at redemption) for the harm she's caused, while other characters are? I see people stanning Nicasia, who actively tortured Jude (over a boy, no less!!) ffs
fandom misogyny reflects our world. why are people eager to forgive toxic male love interests, yet hold the bar impossibly high for girls? why is there such a narrow set of choices & behaviors that we consider acceptable for female characters? Holly wrote a story about two young women carving out places for themselves in a world hostile to them, hurting each other in the process, and ultimately deciding to forgive, love, and root for one another—and fandom has taken that complex narrative and pitted them against one another, upholding one as the girlboss who can do no wrong while treating the other as scum. misogyny thrives on women treating each other like the problem, so if this is our attitude toward a fictional story where we’re afforded direct looks into characters’ thoughts, how much worse are we going to be in the real world, faced with real, imperfect women?
anyways, in conclusion: you're entitled to dislike taryn, but if you feel such vitriol toward her that you're literally making hate posts (or commenting under fanart of her!! holy shit), I invite you to interrogate where that hate actually comes from. fin.
#if you want to argue with me that’s fine - I just ask that you’re respectful#one critique i do have is that holly didn't allow jude & taryn to have a good convo in qon#taryn didn't have the full picture until pretty late in the narrative#and i think allowing them to hash things out would've really helped with a lot of fandom's shitty behavior towards taryn#because instead what we get is her repeatedly *acting* in ways that support jude#like she's pretty ride or die for all of qon#and i read that pretty redemptively#but it's not explicitly stated/talked through#so#thanks for the ask <3#will anyone read all of this?? we shall see#long post#tfota#the folk of the air#taryn duarte#tarynposting#jude duarte#taryn discourse#taryn hate#fandom misogyny#tcp#the cruel prince#twk#the wicked king#tqon#the queen of nothing#anon
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I love the way you justify any sick shit just because you like it. Ships with violence against women (Darklina, Reylo) - yes, ships with pedophilia (SebaCiel) - yes, just because you like these particular characters, you are ready to look for "depth" and "complexity" there, but only because YOU PERSONALLY do not like Aegon or Aemond or anyone else, they cannot be complicated and interesting characters in someone's perception. Hypocrisy and stupidity. You accuse people of justifying violence and consider your opinion the only true one, even though you do exactly the same thing yourself, instead of admitting, "yes, I think these characters are hot, so I'll turn a blind eye to what they do."
Darkling and Kylo Ren / Ben Solo = Canonical gray and complex characters. (Oh and Kylo Ren / Ben Solo is a real victim of grooming)
Aegon II and Aemond = Canonical villains (besides being rapists).
“The groom was fifteen years of age ; a lazy and somewhat sulky boy, Septon Eustace tells us, but possessed of more than healthy appetites, a glutton at table, given to swilling ale and strongwine and pinching and fondling any serving girl who strayed within his reach.” - About Aegon II.
“Thus did the flower of House Strong, an ancient line of noble warriors boasting descent from the First Men, come to an ignoble end in the ward at Harrenhal. No trueborn Strong was spared, nor any bastard save... oddly... Alys Rivers. Though the wet nurse was twice his age (thrice, if we put our trust in Mushroom), Prince Aemond had taken her into his bed as a prize of war soon after taking Harrenhal, seemingly preferring her to all the other women of the castle, including many pretty maids of his own years.”
What doesn't click for you here in terms of simple differences ? These characters literally have nothing to do with each other. Not my fault if you are not able to understand this simple fact of how they were written. It's not me who ready to look depth or complexity in them. They are literally written like that, but not really the Greens by GRRM.
In addition, what you say is false, because I always said that I liked the original Aemond, as a pure villain within the dance obviously, due to the context of his writing, namely that Aemond is Daemon's foil (the real gray and complex character), a dark reflection of this latter, and that's quite fascinating, complex, and cool for me to analyze (and that is the reason why I don't like Aemond in the HOTD version, because he actually loses that essential narrative feature that basically makes him who he is in Fire and Blood).
But sorry to say, nothing about Aemond's original characterization as a person is deep or complex, much less the rest of his later actions. Literally he is presented as a little devil from childhood and stay like that until the end.
It's Aegon II, indeed, who I don't find interesting at all, even as a villain. He's just pathetic and disgusting, and anyway it seems to me that these are canonical traits of him...
But some people like this type of villain and good for them, it's just not my personal cup of tea.
I prefer Aemond, and more particularly Alicent, in the group of villains among the Greens, especially because as I said, they are more interesting for me to analyze.
I still remind you that Alicent, from Fire and Blood, is one of my favorite villains in all categories. She's that type of villain that you never get tired of loving to hate. She's a rotten woman with rotten motivations, but she's interesting to watch / reading because she's still the one running the whole Rhaenyra usurpation operation, not Otto. Alicent, in canon, is an intelligent villain who will do anything to achieve her selfish ends at the head of operations. And it's always satisfying to have this kind of villain to face the protagonist.
But I have no problem with people liking Aemond and Aegon II for what they are ; which is again villains.
My problem is those who try to turn them into gray characters, or worse justify them, things that happen far too often among stans / fans of these characters what are Aegon II and Aemond.
Because yes, there are fans who actually justify the violence and bad actions of these characters by finding tons of excuses supposed to make them complex for their fans while the original text does not do so. They indeed exist (even though not everyone is like that and I never said they were all like that).
I've already talked about it a thousand times. But you, their fans, seemed incapable of getting these simple facts into your skulls.
Plus it's cheeky to accuse me of "yes, I think these characters are hot, so I'll turn a blind eye to what they do." when all my posts about the Darkling and Kylo are analyzes due to their complexity / actions, and it doesn't even seem to me that I've already addressed their physical. While once again, there is a great sexualization of the characters of Aegon II and Aemond by certains of their fans.
Seriously, how many posts have I seen saying that "Oh my god, they couldn't resist Aegon II because he's so hot !!!" and we're still talking here about a disgusting alcoholic rapist (and pedophile on top of that according to Fire and Blood) who likes to watch children fight in an arena... while then saying first degree next to what they think that "Aegon II needs hugs to better manage his emotions, and that the rape of Dyana is not really a rape because after all we did not see her with our eyes, if that turns out there was not of penetration !" The complete wtf of that...
So don't come and give me this type of speech, with the number of individuals like I have just described who exist in the community of fans of these two characters that are Aegon II and Aemond.
Afterwards, I am not saying, there are surely people who do not understand the characters of the Darkling and Kylo Ren / Ben Solo, seeing them as pure villains and therefore only see their romantic relationships with Alina and Rey as negative, but who, following the fact of finding the actors / characters attractive, one says"yes, I think these characters are hot, so I'll turn a blind eye to what they do." After all, many do it for the Greens, surely others do it for the Darkling and Kylo Ren / Ben Solo, due to a poor understanding of these last two characters. So obviously what you describe probably exists.
But that's not what I do.
Sorry. I don't ignore the horrible actions of the villains I love, or the gray characters I love. I just don't receive them / don't treat them / don't see them in the same way, because their actions as villains and gray characters don't have the same scope. It's just a fact.
Also, I imagine that what you hear complex about Aegon II from Fire and Blood is that he"didn't want the throne in the first place, because he only did it to protect his family, because he been forced" ?
Bullshit reported by Eustace, a pro greens, who obviously will manage to embellish the people he propagandizes, what surprising !
Especially since this stupid speech from Aegon II never wanted the throne... is quickly revealed be bullshit when we see how much he enjoyed sitting there, ready to reign alone and refusing to be controlled by Otto, all while refusing to abdicate in favor of Rhaenyra, who had nevertheless proposed that his brothers and sisters would be safe, and that he insults her of whore in the process for free, it seems to me. Which... oh yes seems so much like the mark of a deep and complex character / person who don't want be king !
And then it's still really cheeky to tell myself that I like "sick shit with violence against women", when you literally like / found deep interesting, complex and complicated, you know... RAPISTS ?! (But who mostly deny being rapists in the Aemond and Aegon II fans / stans community OF COURSE !) Probably the worst form of violence against women ?! Hospital ? charity ? in your speech ?
Although it's again not really a problem that you love them, as long as the problematic aspect is recognized by you fan. (Even if, objectively, I find that there is nothing interesting about Aegon II as a villain, both as a person and in his character construction and his role, but anyone is free to think otherwise)
As I said, I like Aemond, who is a rapist, as a villain for his narrative role, which I find interesting to analyze. But I also like Kilgrave, another rapist, because I find him interesting, in his way of acting in relation to his power, and the way he can be obsessed with something. We are clearly dealing with a particular psychiatric case. Without forgetting the charisma of the actor and the terrifying aura that he manages to exude from the character. Moreover, these two characters have the particularity of dying because of the women who were the victims of their mistreatment, and that is very very enjoyable.
Or the Dracula of 1992, who also rapes Lucy, Mina's best friend, but who remains presented by the story as a figure similar to Lucifer having fallen and who in his love for Mina allows him to find redemption in death when 'she kills him at his request, all without that stopping him from being the villain of the story in the movie.
But is it because I love these villains that I support their evil actions ? Absolutely no. Of course not. They are monsters / villains that I enjoy watching (while hating them for their disgusting actions) at work generally against the protagonists, but I like even more the moment where they are destroyed. It's exactly the same as the Disney villains of our childhood. We love them for different reasons, but we recognize who they are, that what they do is bad, with no real explanation for the most part, and we mostly love seeing them be defeated in the end.
Besides, it's not because I like gray and complex characters that I'm going to defend / justify / agree with their dark actions either, under the pretext that they have a part of light. On the other hand, we can explain their actions, reflect on their complexity. These characters may have good reasons for doing what they actually do, perhaps originally noble causes, like the Darkling, with wanting the protection of Grisha from normal people and the countries Fjerda and Shu Han, because of centuries of mistreatment and discrimination ? Or the fact that they've been groomed since they were fetuses in their mother's womb, manipulated through unbearable voices in their heads to influence them to do bad things, like Kylo Ren / Ben Solo ?
Or those being described as being made of equal parts light and darkness, but who will only direct their dark side against the people they hates / are they enemies and who... let's be realistic, mostly look very little or not sympathetic in our eyes as readers, even if the actions against these ennemies themselves are not very synonymous of kindness on the part of these gray characters either, like Daemon Targaryen in Fire and Blood.
One thing his introduction in Fire and Blood proves :
And that GRRM himself confirms through his words :
It's not as if the author says something about the character and the text doesn't follow. On the contrary, the text of Fire and Blood completely validates the author's words about Daemon.
But hey, if Green stans prefer say that Daemon is a pure villain and monster and therefore to appear illiterate in order to justify liking / preferring Aegon II, that's their problem. People who know how to read and analyze will know what it's all about.
Anyway, all these characters are only gray and complex who in their respective stories have people worse than them, the real villains, whom they generally face with the protagonist.
No, the true problem here for you, is not that you like the villains Aegon II and Aemond, but is that you bother to send me an anonymous message implying the defense of the honor of these horrible villains fictional character by comparing to other characters (who are gray characters, not villains) who have nothing in common, in order to make you appear more morally just under the pretext that you will put them all on an equal footing, even if they are once again not written the same at all...
But again, the difference between these characters is simple. Like I said :
Darkling and Kylo Ren / Ben Solo = Canonical gray and complex characters. (Oh and Kylo Ren / Ben Solo is a real victim of grooming)
Aegon II and Aemond = Canonical villains (besides being rapists).
So there is no comparison to be made between these characters, or even that any equality of treatment is applied between them. Period.
And what the hell do you care if I imagine a scenario where an adult Ciel gets fucked by Sebastian after they surprisingly fall in love ?
It's literally an imaginary scenario of a purely fanon ship, therefore which has nothing canon, which in fact does not really fit into the framework of pedophilia, since I imagine an adult Ciel in this scenario, like I already said it to an anti in another post !
It's just as stupid to say that Sareth and Sessrin are pedophile ships, because the characters knew the young lady when she was a child, when literally nothing happens or is even suggested in this sense when they are children, while one is a story about the sexual awakening of an adolescent girl through her fantasies and the other, nothing happens until she is an adult (i.e. the guy develops feelings for the girl), for the norms of the society in which she lives !
I repeat, canonically, Sebaciel does not exist.
Sebastian does not have pedophilic sexual urges for Ciel, and Ciel does not fall under Sebastian's manipulation to do things with him. This scenario simply does not exist (nor do I imagine this kind of scenario when I personnaly imagine scenarios for this ship).
Canonically, it is simply a complex and deep relationship between a human and a demon, which therefore exceeds human norms, due to their pact which binds them.
But there is certainly a homoerotic subtext by the author, which can be fun (or not, it depends on how people feel) to see and understand. It's a particulary choice to make, but that doesn't mean that the author supports a real pedophilia and sexual relationship between a child and an adult since anyway... well that never happens in his work canonically speaking. Demons are often linked to lust / perverse things, and are anyway... inhuman. So obviously they will not have normal / moral thoughts or actions. But once again, in reality, there is nothing happening between the characters canonically, and for my part, I not imagine any pedophile or ephebophile scenario.
Love scenarios are common between human and demon, it's one of the many known tropes that many people love. Much like being an immortal falling in love with someone he actually knew as a child (and this without entering into the domain of pedophilia or grooming as many antis people like to automatically and stupidly think).
It's nothing new.
But if you automatically think that this kind of twisted pedophile scenario come in my head when I think to Sebaciel, well... maybe you're the real problem.
To conclude... I would say that there are two possibilities for the person you are.
Either you see Aemond and Aegon II as pure villains but don't know the difference between villains and gray characters, or simply refuse to see it so as not to feel guilty for liking villains (or other obscure reasons), which is... ridiculous because we should not be ashamed of loving villains. Since the dawn of time we have loved them when they are well written.
Or, you refuse to see Aemond and Aegon II as the villains they are and try to put them on the same level as any type of grayer character who would do negative actions to make them also appear as complex characters, or you try to insinuate that these other characters are actually maybe worse than the characters you prefer and love, trying to forget the fact that you like real bad guys (which again, is not something something that someone should shame or hide).
These two possibilities can be linked to the fact that you wish in all cases to appear morally acceptable.
One because you will put all the characters on the same level under the pretext that they have all done morally questionable actions, although these characters in fact have drastic differences and are not treated the same way in their respective stories. All to give you the impression of being morally good, because you will not try to differentiate any of the bad actions committed by these characters, when once again you have to make the difference. Because we cannot put a villain and an anti-hero / gray character on the same level. Thus avoiding you taking the risk of really defending or showing your love and preference for a character who has done bad actions in particular to a certain audience. You appreciate and enjoy watching these characters, but still make no difference between these famous characters who have committed bad actions and you put them all on the same level of atrocity. You don't differentiate between them, just saying that they are all bad and therefore on the same level. What could be more morally correct than that on the surface ?
And the other, because you're trying to pretend that you're the person supporting the gray characters in the story against the real bad guys (even though it's actually the complete opposite that the story is telling). And isn't it also a way of appearing morally superior to pretend that you don't like the villains of the story, but gray characters with a real share of light ?
Or that you try to pretend that the characters you like, the villains, are in fact misunderstood gray characters, in the same way that their adversaries in the story are the real gray characters, therefore trying to make people believe that they is no real villain in the story you are consuming, bringing us back to the concept of putting everyone on the same level, but in a less drastic way than saying that everyone is bad.
That, or you're simply a person who doesn't know how to properly analyze the media you consume.
And whatever the truth, I have to say that none of them seem very positive.
Anyway, once again, I actually have no problem liking villains, without trying to justify them so I can feel entitled to like them.
Again, I particularly like Alicent and Kilgrave, villains who are not gray characters.
But I also have no shame in recognizing gray characters and not putting / treating them on the same level as villains, especially such as the Greens. Quite simply because it is the logical order of things when we analyze these types of characters.
The Darkling and Kylo Ren / Ben Solo have nothing to do with Aemond and Aegon II. And that's a simple truth that must bother you a lot for you to take the trouble to send me an anonymous message.
I'm not stopping anyone from liking the characters of Aemond and Aegon II from finding them interesting villains, because most people like villains that are well written, and GRRM wrote the Greens well. I've always said that. I just don't like those who try to make it seem like these are gray and complex characters (or complicated, as you like to say, because what the hell is complicated about the Greens ? I'm not saying that complicated and complex villains don't exist, on the contrary, there are, but we can't really say that the Greens objectively belong to this type of villain, whether Alicent loved her children, and whether Aegon II tried to build statutes for his brothers or not. Because yes, caricature villains still capable of love, that exists. And however that doesn't make them gray, complex and complicated. Just watch the movie “The Frighteners” and many other fictional programs to understand that). Because they simply aren't. This is the reality of their writing by GRRM.
Best wishes.
#hotd#anti hotd#house of the dragon#anti house of the dragon#fire and blood#f&b#f&b spoilers#team black#team blacks#pro team black#pro team blacks#anti aegon ii targaryen#anti aegon ii stans#anti aemond targaryen#anti aemond stans#anti greens#anti green#anti greens stans#anti green stans#reylo#darklina#sebaciel#the darkling#aleksander morozova#kylo ren#ben solo#daemon targaryen#pro daemon targaryen#the rogue prince#daemyra
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not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go
(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)
#today's gone Badly and i'm upset but instead of venting abt it i'm gonna channel that energy into doing a bit of tag rambling abt Boothill#well. less abt Him and more abt uh. self-analyzing my anxiety surrounding contributing to fandoms. he's just today's catalyst#like. i know it's mostly a me thing. i'm hypersensitive to criticism and very conflict avoidant + socially anxious + perfectionistic etc.#so I'm the one that keeps myself from posting more stuff out of fear of being criticized or called-out for what i've made#bc inevitably Someone's gonna see it and think its OOC or a problematic take or they'll misread my intent. etc etc what have you#but like. that's inevitable. there's no way to communicate every single thing with all of the nuance required to avoid misunderstandings#and other times it's not a misunderstanding it's just a difference of opinions and that's Fine!! there's no accounting for personal taste#there's no accounting for several things actually. taste‚ bias‚ lore-knowledge‚ differing levels of chronic-online-ness‚ etc#so this isn't me complaining abt the state of fandom culture (although i do think. sometimes. ppl take shit a bit too seriously)#but anyways all of this is mostly just anxiety-fueled. it's not like i very often actually even receive negative feedback or anything#if anything ppl tend to tell me that i'm overthinking it and killing my own fun and worried that my stuff is more OOC than it is#which like. yeah. Yeah u right :) but that's just the way that i am! always losing the idgaf war i suppose#anyways what's Boothill got to do w this ur wondering. well. i've been thinking abt the quickly emerging concept that he's illiterate.#and it just. has me feeling a lot of ways. and watching ppl disagree over it has me feeling some Bad ways. bc it's def a loaded topic!#if you'll pardon the pun there. and i don't rlly have anything new to add other than that i'm conflicted abt it.#like yeah i saw the leaks days ago. of him mentioning 'not hitting the books' much as a child when we ask him why he sends voice messages#or voice Transcriptions ig. ykwim. and like. *braces for impact* ...i liked it? like. it doesn't feel right to call it endearing#i'm not trying to infantilize him. ok that's not the right word either but ugh. you know? what i mean?? who am i kidding even i don't know#it's not quite right to say that it feels like Representation either. but it's something close i guess#as a southern person myself who didn't receive a 'complete' education due to factors that weren't to do with my intelligence#the concept of seeing him as a capable force to be reckoned with and respected who also happens to have not received much formal education#i like that. i do. but there's so many issues w it at the same time. like. as i said‚ being southern myself has me Wary of the way Hoyo is-#writing him. as well as of the way that the fandom is taking the bits of his lore and running away w them. and i'm Very aware of how ppl-#will see a southern character and be All Too Eager to agree that they're lacking intelligence based on our Redneck™ stereotype#sigh. and before we even go too far with this. it's not even confirmed that hes completely illiterate. which is a valid criticism i've seen#there's Multiple reasons that could make him prefer voice to text. but regardless. i'm just worried that ppl will misconstrue my intentions#like. example: that edit i made the other day of him saying 'no thanks i can't read'. wasn't me playing into the stereotype of-#'haha dumb country boy can't read!' it was. in my eyes. something he'd say as a joke to make light of a potential insecurity#like. i think there's far more depth to Boothill's character if ppl could look past the surface. and i dont wanna contribute to the problem#but sometimes ppl Will have stereotypical traits and i wish the same could apply to characters as long as it's done Thoughtfully.
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I think Cedric and Calamus should be friends and join the club of teenagers with way too much weight on their shoulders because holy shit they deserve good things.
I mean, one of those small details that I always felt were kind of sad was that line Cedric has about not knowing Calamus or Alula... which makes sense in a way, because it was the Author who knew them better. And yet both Cedric and Calamus feel close in age and have similar personalities I am genuinely surprised they weren't friends.
And now considering their circumstances... Both of them need to be the proactive sibling, ready to react to situations that are beyond what teens like them should be doing.
We... never get told what happened to Rachis, although context probably tells us he was one of the NPCs lost to the squares. But even if Calamus and Alula were not aware of that truth, they're both still functionally orphans, and Calamus has made it his responsibility to make sure Alula is okay because she is all he has left.
Cedric is one of the few people aware of being in a simulation, and this by itself is already really isolating. Cedric is also the one responsible for... pretty much ensuring that Niko made it to the city and fulfilled their mission, having to make up plans as he goes. Not to mention the knowledge that his father is gone for good now, and the grief that is tied to it.
And besides all of this, I just really think that these two are alike in personality. Both are really polite, hardworking and responsible. The only big differences are their sets of skills and that Cedric is more willing to take risks on the spot, while I feel like Calamus would be more cautious in his place.
But gosh they could be good friends.
#oneshot game#cedric#calamus#analysis#i am not the most skilled writer but boy do i wanna do something about this yknow#Something something i wonder if Rachis and the Author had a similar dynamic at some point#Oh. another aspect im considering too as a bit of a crack theory. or a way to get some conflict potential#like. we know the cedric we meet is technically a robot.#my personal take on that is that he is made from code and contains as many memories as the original cedric was able to transfer#but when it comes to have actually experienced those things... our cedric knows those are memories. but are not /his/ own. in a way.#calamus and alula have memories that were coded in them but without awareness of their situation they see all of that as real#but cedric knows he is code and thus. he has existed inside. but whatever came before was the memories he inherited but not his own actions#so he recognizes those names. but is actually not sure he really knows them the same way his memories know them#and cannot guarantee he can be the friend they have known him as. because he is who cedric was#but also his own thing#this is a mess to explain but do u see what i mean#like how real he sees himself and how real the future ahead is and who he is aaslkfja#ok im done with my break ignore this rambling. this probably makes no sense.#im just figuring out how i wanna write characters#fic: write your own path forward#< for personal organization
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i fear some day i will eventually write about my ocs and ill want to post it
#So. Im taking a creative writing class cause i am so bad at plots & thought i could use the help#But the thing is we have to make our own characters for our own writing. And you already know who im horrendously focused on right now#I already made him known to my teacher *gets scared*#I also wrote about my robots for our first assignmwnt ummm. Oh well#And if i ever do end up posting it ill die actually because i feel like my writing is boring without pictures so thats why i make comics#but i hate drawing comics so um watever. Goodnight its 4 am😨
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When I first started in fandom, for whatever reason I decided making fankids was like… too cringe for me. Like that was the arbitrary line I drew of what was too deep into fandom for me.
Anyway, think of this when I post my fankid drawings later because they represent me surrendering what is left of my dignity and fully surrendering to the cringe.
#honestly a lot of this was just that my early fandom experience was being surrounded by people who were ONLY into their fankids#to the point where they barely cared about the canon characters or killed them off entirely#and I felt like then what even is the point of being here if you're like that?#and no judgement if you're OC obsessed it's just like I have a whole back catalog of original characters so I personally didn't Get It#but then I needed to create some for narrative necessity and i was like eh this might as well happen#but you'll notice even my fankid stuff is still fully from the pov of the canon characters bc they are the ones I care about most#but I understand the OC / fankid thing better now in that it's training wheels for a lot of people#and it's great a great way to test drive until you're ready to create a character from scratch#or for people who have no interest in making content to contribute to the fandom space by commissioning art of their little guys#or to play in the fandom space without the confines of canon by making it their own#so be cringe and free everyone and have fun#though I will forever think about the time someone joined one of the non-fandom writing servers#and asked why we didn't have a channel to talk about OCs#and we had to gently explain that we were all writing original fiction all of every single one of our characters were 'OCs'#fandom is really a different world sometimes
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when your favorite character makes it to the finale
As a fellow Danganronpa fan, I'd like to imagine that if Pre-game Shuichi wasn't, you know, gone forever because he'd given up his life to become an anime character like a dumbass and could somehow witness our Shuichi kick So Much Ass in Trial 6, he would be the one cheering him on the loudest. After all, Shuichi is his perfect little detective guy and the person he once hoped he could become. That's why I can hear the "You tell them!" in his voice in my head so very clearly. And in spite of being responsible for ending Pre-game Shuichi's favorite TV show in the world, at the core of it, Shuichi was ultimately fighting on behalf of his friends for what was right all the way to the end.
And who wouldn't want to get behind that?
#I drew this so I would have a visual reference for writing about him because man there is so much to go over /#/ if we take tsumugi on her word that Shuichi signed up for that madness himself#but its not the same person right? ingame shuichi has a writing credit!#Id like to think that OUR Shuichi is an sort of like an OC created partially by Shuichi himself#like team danganronpa would exploit people and get them on the show by allowing them to become the characters theyve always wanted to be#and I dont know how common this is but I hold my OCs very dear to my heart even if I make them go through Hard Stuff#tbh if my own character got to be in my favorite show and they would totally SLAYED it in the finale while also killing the franchise#I dont think I would be mad you know#even if that character is fictional its still real in a way that matters#thats what the ending is ultimately about anyway#but for now Im just glad I finished this little thing oh my god I CANT DRAW this was a loong struggggle but Im glad I have a visual aid now#shuichi saihara#pre game shuichi#post game shuichi#drv3#ndrv3#danganronpa#danganronpa v3#💜#and yes I gave him an identical dr pin to the one I have as well hank you for asking#drv3 spoilers#ndrv3 spoilers#art
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sorry to ffxivlovepost always anyway Man the way the devs & game did so good in making an mc that is Basically a blank-slate for the players, and there's so many opportunities to make your oc However you like but. the game itself adds so much story and character to that blank-slate guy. amazing
#⋯ ꒰ა starry thoughts ໒꒱ *·˚#⋯ ꒰ა ffxiv ໒꒱ *·˚#i think abt this a lot. and also a lot of other ffxiv stuff LMFAO#it's amazing ..... drk is a huge example of this i think#bcs it plays into the guilt and whatnot the wol feels and all that. spectacular#endwalker !!!!! shadowbringers!!! the way the game uses the concept of hope is just always so beautiful and fascinating to me#and yeah bunch of games may have like. mc you create & design but not always can you like. ehvejfhsjf idk how to explain LOL#it is 4 pm i woke up 2 hours ago but priorly woke at 7 am after havingn a rlly. weird sleep.#to which my twin told me 'i wont tell u what time it is' as we went to sleep so it def was Really late#bcs we were going thru re2 and she was also playing games on steam i've been telling her to play#(to which i got her fav characters right and knew fr how'd she'd like the game LMFAO. twins amiright.)#actually that is also smth so fascinating to me bcs. i always have had someone w me in my life. i am literally never alone.#to which what i'm getting at here is Wow... it's like having a sleepover every single day. and i was a kid always sad never to have#sleepovers bcs my parents were strict (they r cool tho!) but i was a kid who wanted to experience all the kid things#but i didn't rlly but that's fine :P i am a grateful person LOL anyway back on track back on black#ffxiv... the game that u are.....#it's the 1st game that rlly actually made me invested in the ocs of others and also make a fully fledged oc that wasn't just originally mine#but for a fandom or something. and also it got me back into writing and Into making poetry and prose so. yeah.#it's amazing how much. oc x canon ???? yeah. ffxiv is so Wow#like eveyrhhting w themis or graha and how u can AAGGGHHH shit w your oc . so many possibilities#and that character. those possibilities. are already in game but also expanded by the player and the fanbade and#idk it's so beautiful to me WHAGHSGDJDH. and yes me saying themis or graha up there is self-indukgent bcs#both of them are so Insane it's so. insane!!!!! i will never forget what happened in abyssos in particular that Broke me#and anabaseios... :)) i cried so much it is almost embarrassing. and wow. asphodelos. wverything w themis just. yeah#anyway graha... self-explanatory if u know..... idk he's the character of all time to me. simply said. but themis is crazy bcs going thru ab#yssos made me think for a bit 'hey themis might be my fav character in ffxiv now' but No but also Wow. wow#kinda cute bcs me and my twin have a thing where she has a certain type of chara she likes and me too#so sometimes. most times. all times. we have our own characters we like anyway but sometimes they overlap but either the case we kinda#lowkey 'segregate???' idk if that is a good word but we do that w our fav characters. so like emet is her fav elidibus is mine.#and that was all the way in arrr alr and we barely knew spoilers so that's kinda crazy! anyway
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chan rejecting azula is a good thing though? azula is a lesbian
Anon, my post was not about Chan rejecting being good or bad but rather that she got her feelings hurt. Anyways, Anon, Azula being a lesbian is a hc just like her being bi. Her sexuality was never clarified in the show. you can believe her being a lesbian that it valid, I’m not going to berate you or anything since there is nothing to berate. Everyone can have their hc about her sexuality. I’d just recommend you not to push your hc on others and say then they are canon. I’m not saying that was your goal with this anon ask, I’m just mentioning this for the future since it makes you look like an obnoxious rabid fan and I already saw some of those on twitter. Since we are on the topic I’m going to just throw in that I see Azula as Bi.
Edit: btw everything I’m saying is from my experience, I don’t deny that others are pushing their hc on people who like the lesbian Azula hc or that they are the only ones doing it.
#pd answers#azula#sexuality headcanons#her sexuality doesn’t make her whole character and I personally dislike it when it’s the case#I spoke with friends yesterday about it that some rabid Azula fans push their hc on others while oppressing other voices since they believe#being loud about it makes it true#I’m rolling my eyes at the people that write under Hicks twitter comments to make her a lesbian#jfc her sexuality is the least important thing Im worried about#Im more concerned about her portrayal#but I digress#I have friends who just feel annoyed by the constant push of the lesbian hc down our throats#it’s not like other fans do the same#we justs mind our own business but get harassed nonetheless#okay#screaming in the void is over#just don’t be a douche to others and let them like what they want#headcanons are cool#but don’t be obnoxious about them when others don’t believe them#pd talks#it was 2005 and they wrote her as straight girl but fans can do whatever they want with the characters#just let people be#her sexuality is such a non factor#to me
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Idk why everyone is saying you're a loop kin. you remind me more of a siffrin
Excuse you, we're way hotter than that guy. We've aged out of being a socially anxious nerd in a cloak. Now we're a hot nerd in a trench coat and/or several different layers of jewelry and/or an outfit that has people say to us phrases like "you look like a time traveller who figured that the 1980s are basically the 2020s in the grand scheme of things and is only now realizing that the time periods are very different however you are indeed very hot" or the perhaps more descriptive "you look like harry dubois".
Actually, was nerd the one that originated from the guys biting chicken's heads off with their teeth? We should use that one. We're the guy doing that but hotter and also more likely to torment fictional characters for fun.
#asks#we speak#not liveblog#anonymous#these are phrases we would consider compliments btw we are very attractive in browns and greens its part of why we're a mantis#you could make this comparison about us when we were seventeen maybe we were like way worse about things then we're better now#siffrin has way more problems than us now. lol lmao et cetera. we are no longer seventeen years old so we are no longer Like That#our condolences to them on their apparent continued issues. we wish them a very no moth in their brain hoarding their memories#we find it generally helps to get more insufferable and start becoming a worse person instead of worrying about if youre inherently good#we had character development and now we're aroace and random teenagers at the queer alliance ask us how we got so confident#the trick is that lying to people with your immense knowledge of how to talk to people will have them view you as unreliable#but writing about people with your immense knowledge of how to talk to people just makes you a very good author#we still own more than one cloak though. we never throw shit out.#we don't know if any of these phrases make this more or less convincing honestly we're saying normal words
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#that disappointing game post is so fun and interesting to me good god#people will mention a game i like and it makes me go >:0#but also idk i'm very up for criticism of the things i like. like all the mass effect games? you're so right lmao#i love mass effect but every one of those games is flawed#i will defend mea but also. it IS super flawed#the only ones i find truly annoying are when people are like 'ur baby brained if u can enjoy this' like ??#idk i 100% agree bg3 is flawed and there are a lot of frustrating and disappointing aspects#also i like it 😇#a lot of the writing is good. a lot of the characters are good. that doesn't mean im like. sacrificing my son to it and saying it's perfect#but also i said this before but it's just neat to see how different people's experiences are#like whiskey-trio it makes 100% sense that you were disappointed by ztd#i'm way newer to the series and wasnt anticipating and waiting for a third game#also tbh 🫣 vlr didnt really hit for me the way it seems to have for most ze fans 🫣 so i was already in a place of like#yeah these games are fun but 999 will probably be untouched#so. all that and all this to just say. i think it's neat how different people can be for no real reason other than. we have our own tastes#my siblings + i can be raised in the same environment by the same parental figures and come out of it so absurdly different#and why???? what makes people have the tastes + preferences they do??????? idk!!!#like vlr wasnt a knockout for me but i will slam my fists on the table and howl about aitsf. aitsf my beloved!!!! there's nobody like you!!#anywayssss pardon me#i think. thinking about things and talking about things is fun#tagged: ignore me
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I am so sorry for sending like 500 asks a day BUT it must be said your tags about Alison Gordon are completely correct, she literally is such a good character and people are SO mean to her for no reason and it breaks my heart!
Don't ever apologize for sending asks, I love them <3
But for real!!!! Like she never deserves this much hate!!!! So many depictions of her make her adversarial to Lawrence and like a huge Bitch and nothing else. Which just like. Breaks my heart.
Prepare for a long ramble about her, bus especially in the context of Chainshipping.
Like the reality of her?
She is a strong protective woman who cares about her child and her husband and wants her relationships to be valued and she's just trying to do her best!!! Like I'm all about Chainshipping, but like. To make Alison the Evil Bitch who stands in the way of that is hmmm. Not where it's at.
My favorite versions of her (in the context of Chainshiping) is someone who may (or more realistically, or may not!) initially understand Lawrence being gay. If she immediately understands great! More power to her, if she was married to him, she would most likely be the first one to pick up Lawrence is gay. If she doesn't, equally understandable!
Because, (Gasp! A woman side character with complex feelings???) any feeling of being betrayed or lied to when a previously long and lengthy relationship ends because of said partner's self discovery of sexual orientation is an immediate real human reaction, especially within the context of a relationship that has a child involved.
And I'm not saying it's the kind or accepting or most correct instinct, but it's an understandable feeling to have, and Alison, depending on your interpretation of her, is absolutely allowed to have such complex feelings. She's human and complex and allowed to think wrong things and make mistakes.
But, Alison doesn't strike me as a person who would hold that sort of resentment for long. She might be confused at first as to how Lawrence could have claimed to love her (but, deep down, she knows he didn't) and how he could have had a child with her (As, unless you are familiar with hetronormative closeting and family building, it would be confusing!), but she'd educate herself and move on.
She would never want Diana to pick up resentment or hatred of her father from her. She fought and bled and attacked a man bodily to protect her daughter, so why would she ever want to damage her daughter's relationship with her father? She wants the best for both Diana and Lawrence, as well.
She would be, in the end, I think, supportive and happy for her ex's happiness. Like that's literally all she wants!!! She wants Lawrence to have passion!!!! To be happy!!! She literally says that!!!
She's willing to accept Lawrence's hatred of her as long as it inspires some genuine feelings within Lawrence!!! She wants him to be fully alive and feeling and living!!! She wouldn't stand in the way of Lawrence achieving that!!!
And we, the fandom, forget that about her.
It's a fine line to walk when there's a canon straight ship that 'gets in the way' of a fandom popular gay ship, but please, please, please, everyone. Value and stop demonizing Alison Gordon 2kforever.
#cai says things back#jack once again upholding my habit of making my replies to you mini essays#but seriously can't tell you how many times i've backed out of fics because someone writes alison off as mean and spitful and close minded#like plsssssss have some creativity and tact and maybe you don't have to use one of the only two woman characters in the first movie#as a vehicle for your weird internalized homophobic views???? maybe don't???#i will defend alison with my life fr#also what's even better is when lawrence's gay awakening triggers alison's own exploration cause like. we love lavender marriages#long post#i keep on thinking ohhhhh i should put these long rambly ask replies under a read more but uh. nope. if i furiously pound this out#y'all are gonna look on my work and despair too#oh my god i said there were two characters who were woman in saw (2004) alison and mandy but THERE WERE THREE!!!!!#how did i forget kerry our queen#getting controversial in my takes a lil bit.#saw#saw meta
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