(x)

(this is a pls stop blaming juliette lewis for nat’s arc and death post <3)

Thinking about how Jamie left Richmond with friends on the team and probably came back expecting to have to prove himself but to still have a few friends just to come back to everyone openly hating him and mad at him and not wanting him there or to acknowledge his

Thinking about how in that interview when he was on Man City he was his usual cocky self talking about carrying his team, but he actually didn’t say anything bad about anyone outside or Roy and Ted. He talked about how all of the players on Richmond were good lads except for Roy Kent and called Ted a rodeo clown and Nate showed the team it and they all hated him enough to start throwing shit despite the fact that he wasn’t saying anything he wouldn’t have to their faces if he was still on the team and despite the fact that he was actually nicer to all the players except for Roy than he ever had been in person

Thinking about how Isaac went from being his friend and starting shit with him to breaking a TV because of his hatred toward him when Jamie really hadn’t even done anything to him and Jamie coming back to Isaac hating him as if they weren’t getting up to the exact same shit together when Jamie was there and if Isaac thought he himself was a way better person now and so was Colin but there was no chance that there could be anything redeemable in Jamie

Thinking about how Jamie left and DIDN’T talk shit about the team or make weird personal comments outside of the ones about Roy and Ted that he would have made to their faces if he was still there

Thinking about the way Nate left of his own volition and talked shit publicly every chance he got

Thinking about how Nate came back trying with everyone letting him that easily when HE was a dick in person too, left them of his own volition, and slandered them and made them a public joke for fun

Thinking about how Jamie got kicked out, DIDN’T talk shit about his friends, had to beg Ted to come back against the whole team’s wishes, and then got iced out by everyone whether it was people with a right to it like Sam or people like Isaac and Colin that had been friends with him and decided to treat him like the worst man alive to distance themselves and make themselves look better by comparison

Thinking about how Jamie think his friendships are all dependent on his spot on the team and he’s seen them disappear when he got kicked out before

Thinking about how Jamie still calls Isaac his best friend after this because he thinks he deserved all of what he got and that he was the one and only problem in that situation and how really we never see Jamie and Isaac as close again as they were in season one and there are plenty of other teammates I would have expected him to say over him

Thinking about Jamie watching Nate come back and forgiving him and knowing what it’s like to be in his place but also Jamie watching everyone else forgive him and care about him as a person that easily again while he had to fight for even Ted to let him come back and had to fight to have people even accept him being on the team again and to get them to acknowledge his existence long before he earned their friendship

disliking specific real life trans people for their abusive or hateful behavior isn’t transphobia or transmisogyny lol

spoilers for ep7 below the cut, beware that I discuss power balances, abuse and assault with book spoilers. I mostly discuss siuan, moiraine, rand, lan and elaida.

sooo much discourse about siuan and it’s personally very disturbing that people think it’s alright for the show to radically deviate from her established characterisation* (1. which is specifically, purposefully IN CONTRAST to elaida in the books 2. violates its own canon about siuan trusting Dreams, foretellings and prophecies wrt to the dragon more fervently than moiraine herself) or that she was reaping the consequences of her actions when she was deposed in tsr, ignoring how siuan isn’t unique in keeping secrets as an aes sedai or how gawyn and galad are intentionally treated like spoiled, privileged children who think they’re cleverer than they really are when they act without considering the consequences of their actions or how the books frame the whole sequence as a tragedy of errors on all sides. I’m pretty sure @/amemoryofwot made the breakdown on the black ajah to non black ajah sisters in the hall and it was very revelatory about the exact significance of the stakes set up against siuan. I also think it’s important to not ignore the gender dimension involved in the way people approach rand and mat as opposed to moiraine or egwene or siuan - male characters are always better tolerated when they make morally questionable choices while women are systemically taken apart and derided for being foolish.

that said. it’s very telling that the show is solely interested in moiraine almost to a fault; we’ve had 5 different expositions with significant screentime about moiraine pushing people away from alanna, anvaere and verin - and at some point it just becomes very bad writing. viewers are not juvenile. they don’t need to be rapped over the head over a concept that the show catches and chooses to explore.

this analysis segues into another conversation that we should be having - I do understand that framing lan and siuan in context of their relationships to moiraine as the protagonist of the series is inevitable, smart writing. but after laying the foundation for their characters in s1 and establishing their motivations there was absolutely no need to continue to frame them in context of their relationship to moiraine almost to the exclusion of all other facets of their characterisations. liandrin was clearly afforded a lot more generous writing and screentime and it’s a Problem and also very bad writing when an antagonist is afforded more screentime than your ACTUAL PROTAGONISTS. some of these writing choices are really racist, period.

with regards to discussions about assault and abuse in this episode I will say this once, and only once:

moiraine transferring lan’s bond to myrelle in the books was an act of desperation undertaken only because lan’s life was at stake. moiraine ACTUALLY asking alanna to forcibly take lan’s bond is akin to threatening him with assault. it’s bad writing meant to make her seem a lot more colder to justify the intervention that we see later on. lan offering an apology to moiraine at the end of the episode without any apology in turn displays the writers’ sheer lack of sensitivity in handling the whole conversation.

the show using the oath rod flippantly is another angle that really boils my blood because it clearly would’ve enabled worser amyrlins to exercise power with impunity. ELAIDA was famously the amyrlin who wanted to extract oaths of allegiance from her sisters.

ELAIDA was also famously the amyrlin who gave orders to have rand transported to the tower so that she could use him as a weapon and deny him any agency. the tower *has* no rules for dealing with the dragon in the books and the show chose to manufacture it to no real benefit except awkward, badly executed conflict. siuan and moiraine may have often attempted to control rand in the books - and they were at least partly right sometimes because they had more worldly knowledge and experience than he did - but it’s important to the story that they choose not to deny him his agency and give him plenty of leeway and that elaida specifically thinks of him only as a tool. rand also being physically restrained by the shielding weave and possibly sleeping in that position uncomfortably reminds me of the box sequence in lord of chaos.

siuan compelling moiraine to follow her orders, as a partner she’s been intimate with, is akin to assault. rosamund pike made very specific acting choices that are jarring and difficult to ignore. moiraine gave that oath to siuan in 1x06 implicitly trusting her with her bodily and psychological wellbeing and siuan specifically chooses to violate it. it’s a step away from using the weave for compulsion (which is explicitly also stated as being forbidden btw!)

rand’s scenes when he’s shielded by siuan being juxtaposed against egwene’s scenes with renna was a very bad choice and the editing was so fucking awkward. if the choice was intentionally meant to generate conversations about autonomy it was a very bad one to make.

you know what the kicker is? lan’s exposition to nynaeve about the damane deserving to be free in WH (or was it CoT or KoD? I don’t remember very well) because it was every human’s right despite the harm that they might be capable of causing explicitly positions ELAIDA as a bad person. what does it say about siuan after this episode? any person able to wilfully participate in taking away another person’s autonomy is not a good person, full stop.

theories about siuan being under compulsion (by liandrin) are. fine. it doesn’t explain the showrunners basically speaking from moiraine’s perspective of the tragic turn that the romance took or ignorantly comparing it to the kind of assault ishamael performed on moiraine without any selfawareness or the disconnect in liandrin apparently trying to get rand back in the tower because lanfear and ishamael clearly want him in falme but whatever (unless speculation that another forsaken is free is true). I won’t dismiss it right now, but I don’t think they’re correct. there’s enough clues in the show to make it a plausible theory, but not necessarily a probable one - and it doesn’t explain siuan’s faith in her judgement about treating rand like weapon earlier in the episode.

I’m just…. lol. exasperated. I’m indifferent to her but there’s a very obvious sense of people condemning tuon for being a horrible person in the fandom - and like yeah she IS a horrible person but that’s still textually acknowledged. what is also textually acknowledged is the difficult process involved in deprograming people. when your show can’t understand the textbook definition of assault I’m a lot more unlikely to trust the showrunners actually!

*characters like ishamael, lanfear and min obviously needed overhauling because they were very badly done but their fundamental, core characterisations and motives still remain intact so they work. siuan and lan aren’t even afforded the grace of well-considered changes to their characterisations.

I very very rarely get upset on this blog, but this email pissed me the FUCK off. I’ve gotten quite a few messages with this tone before, but this one really set me off. It's been a shit week for me, and I didn't need this.

I spend hours a week trying to write shit for free for all of you, because I genuinely enjoy it and love it so so so much. Your ideas and comments make me so happy. But sometimes I need to take a fucking break.

Three days ago one of my birds suddenly went from alive and happy to seizing and dying in my arms while I comforted her the best I could, so I'm taking a few days off. Sorry if that's inconvenient for you.

Jesus Christ. And you guys fucking wonder why so many other writers are so fed up with the 'content' grindstone and just quit or hide in private discords. You don’t update something for a bit and you get people knocking at your door like you're fucking Wal-mart. If you can’t be bothered to add a few more words to your comment, why should I be bothered to write more.

Put some basic fucking human effort into communicating with the people who spend hours creating your self indulgence pieces out of kindness and a love of the community. How about instead of saying "MAKE THIS" you say hello and put some effort into your ask. You're asking someone to spend hours of their life writing something for you, not ordering chicken nuggets.

And if the person who sent this comment sees this? I'm sorry I'm this angry and you're the unfortunate target of it, but maybe next time you notice something hasn't been updated in a few months you remember that there's a human being with a life behind it before sending a one word demand for more. Shit happens. I highly doubt you can't find something else to read.

some tragic love stories be like: if i could bottle the galaxy, i would pour it into a cup so it would be easier for you to drink. do you want them? do you want the stars? or do they suit you better as adornments for your eyes than glitter on your lips?

but they don’t want the stars. they don’t want the galaxy. but how can they not? is that not enough? (it’s too much, that’s the problem. it’s too much.)

the dr fandom cant handle wlw ships in any other context than background fluff with no depth

i like sakuraoi and tsumioda ect but they always get woobified and mellowed out like did they SEE 1-4??? aoi did not pull all that to get sidelined as a supportive background lesbian in your ishimondo fanfic

and don’t get me wrong. my girls need a break sometimes fluff is great i don’t have a problem with it. but it’s the constant sidelining of wlw ships in favour of het/mlm ships in pretty much any fandom that gets to me.

and how wlw ships are only acceptable in the community when they don’t have any dysfunction or toxicity, and if the ship does have even the slightest hint of the above qualities it is either mellowed out to the point of being unrecognisable or dumped on with thinly veiled misogyny and homophobia and when i say slightest hint i mean the literally slightest hint. like the girls will argue once and the fandom will label the ship toxic while shipping. fucking kuzupeko or something.

wlw ships are seen almost entirely as a way to get female characters out of the way of mlm ships. in het ships the female character is a tool to develop the male character. they show significantly less depth and probably dies to forward the male character’s development (sound familiar?)

in any situation female characters are characterised by their relations to male characters. a female character’s (usually romantic, or at least interpreted as such) relationship with a male character is their defining characteristic. if said female character is in a wlw relationship they are reduced to their most basic traits while male characters are explored and given depth, and exist in the story only to offer support to the male characters.

i haven’t even mentioned how female characters must be in a relationship to be even remotely relevant in a story, but that’s a rant for another time.

grrah the way that female characters mirrors how wlw ships are treated by the community, and that characters/ships that aren’t completely perfect and deemed acceptable by the community are dumped on by the larger dr community while worse ships or characters are welcomed because they happen to contain a male character is gonna be my 13th reason istg.

anyways this rant is getting long but in summary danganronpa fans hate women and they hate wlw relationships that they can’t jerk off to.

kinda frustrating how so much aspec content (esp stuff published in like mainstream outlets) is literally just made for allos. like it’s always some article that’s just going over aspec 101 terminology and explaining various concepts and words aimed at a clearly allo audience.

i’m not saying those aren’t important because part of the issue aspecs face is how invisibilised we are and yes! it’s super important to raise awareness and let people know we exist! but it’s also kind of frustrating how it feels like 99% of not only our time but also all wider coverage about us is spent explaining our identities and giving ted talks to allos instead of like . discussing aspec issues and identity with any sort of depth or nuance.

Angela Chen (who wrote a book on asexuality) talked about thinking about aro/ace-ness not just as an identity but also a viewpoint or a ‘lens’ to examine issues through which i thought was interesting! like how does aro/ace identity intersect with our ideas of feminism, or of race? how does aromanticism inform our critique of the nuclear family and the institution of marriage?? how does asexuality play into our view of sexual politics? how does lovelessness deconstruct our ideas of ‘humanity’? there is so much to get into and so much ground that has never been covered but we are stuck!! on giving definitions!!

idk i don’t really have a solution here! because i know that on the one hand we need these kinds of articles that give streams of ‘aspec 101’ definitions because any visibility helps, but also i am so tired of having to dumb everything down instead of having actual discussions about aspec identities and what they can tell us. like hopefully we’ll get to a point eventually where we don’t have to do this but i’m still just. kinda tired :/

Got my first meeting with a psychiatrist in over a year since the last one demanded details about trauma when I was visibly sweating and shaking! Let’s hope today goes much better and that I have the prefrontal cortex online enough to leave if necessary instead of tolerating that kind of thing again

Hello praying people, I'm not doing well and would really appreciate your prayers right now <3

ok i’m calm now :)

me when i hear the voices

I think it’s narratively interesting - if sad - how Angel leaves Buffy to give her a chance to have a full life, and she becomes progressively more isolated - even from her best friends and family - as the series goes on; whereas Angel, who has been isolated except for his relationship with Buffy for decades, gains a found family with multiple levels of emotional connection and growth after he leaves.

In all honesty, while I will always love Angel and Buffy and Angel’s relationship, it’s one of my aggravations with his reasoning for leaving. If he’d left because the relationship was hurting *him* (and I believe in some ways it was, at that point), I would think it was tragic and beautiful. But leaving for *her*, ignoring her wants and needs and removing one of the few people Buffy truly felt comfortable opening up to and being vulnerable with, ends with Buffy having fewer options in her emotional tool belt and feeling as if she is the part of their relationship that was the freak show.

Buffy felt comfortable opening up completely to Angel because Angel makes it clear to Buffy that he loves her, all of her, always, in ways her other long term emotional support pillars don’t always manage to articulate (even if they feel the same). She’s Xander’s hero, and Xander *can* and has been judgmental, so she’s not always comfortable being vulnerable in all aspects of her life with him. She and Willow are close, and Willow isn’t judgmental, but it does seem like Buffy feels the need to be alright for her, especially when she’s spiraling in season 6. She doesn’t want any emotions she has from Willow’s actions to hurt *Willow*, and she prioritizes protecting Willow over being honest with her. Dawn is her dependent. And Giles? She opens up to him and he leaves anyway.

And I think in a majority of these situations, Buffy would be better off being honest - or, in the case of Dawn, more if not entirely honest - with her loved ones. Xander can be judgmental, but he makes it clear in season 5’s Intervention that he can be empathetic and kind, and that his primary concern when it comes to Buffy is Buffy’s health and happiness. Willow is going through her own problems in season 6; but in general, she is also open and empathetic and kind, and her primary concern when it comes to Buffy is also her health and happiness. Buffy puts up these walls because she feels responsible for her friends’ emotional responses, and I do think part of that is her feelings of guilt stemming from her parents’ divorce ( her ‘father’s’ monologue in Nightmares is both horrific and a bit funny); and then Angelus’ murders; and then Angel’s and Riley’s (and then Giles’) exits from her life. Because the people she’s opened up to leave, she becomes convinced that she loses people when she shows them her imperfections and her flaws and her hurts.

Angel gains friends and family once he leaves Sunnydale. He doesn’t always open up to them, and he makes a lot of questionable decisions, but his world expands considerably post-break up. I love that for him. And it’s not on him or his issue to fix, either, but I do ache for Buffy that her circles get smaller and seem more brittle as the seasons go on.

full offense but fandoms are unbearable because y’all are unlikable. y’all are so weird and i will die on that hill.

this is like the third time i’ve been in a fandom where a white male SIDE character is heavily favored by the fandom and they start jumping through hoops, and grabbing reasons out their asses, to prove why the main poc character is a terrible person. they will also ignore any wrongdoing of the side white male character.

it’s so fucking weird and exhausting.

queer characters are allowed to die in media. and it isn’t inherently A Problem or homophobic when they do.

i understand that it hurts seeing queer people die in shows and books and movies, especially if you’re queer and you saw yourself in those characters.

but the thing is, if you want better queer rep in media you have to be ok with queer characters being treated the same way cishet characters are treated. and that means letting them die sometimes.

Bury Your Gays is a problem, I’m not going to pretend like it’s not. but Bury Your Gays isn’t synonymous with every death of a queer character that happens. you’re allowed to be hurt and devastated by a character death, but i don’t think it’s fair to act like that character death is part of some wider issue just because that character is part of a minority group.

not every queer story is sunshine and rainbows with a happily ever after. some queer stories are violent, some are devastating, and people die in some of them. and that is OK.

if we act like queer people can’t die in media we’re contributing to the othering of our community. it’s saying “queer people are this special group you can’t ever do a bad thing to in media because if you do it’s homophobic.” which is not a true statement.

we can’t act like every death of a queer character is homophobic or has capital I Implications about the writer’s opinions on queer people. if we keep pushing that specific narrative queer stories are going to be stifled. writers need to be able to tell the stories they want, even if that includes a queer person dying. and acting like they can’t is doing more harm than good.

you can dislike a writer’s decision, you can stop watching a show because of that decision. that is OK. but you don’t get to go around saying the writer is homophobic because they did something you didn’t like to a character you loved.

something about these audric and grim pieces make me feel so ?? at ease ?? I CAN’T FUCKING EXPLAIN IT BUT AUUFJDHFJGJFJ,,, I LITERALLY MADENTHE FIRST ONE MY WALLPAPER AS SOON AS I SAW IT AND IT’S SO . 😢😢😢 do NAWWTTT PERCEIVE ME!!!!!!!