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kitskiis · 3 days

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I think the saddest part about secret life Joel is just how futile all of his actions are in that season. On a surface level i mean stuff like all of his more careful gameplay being cancelled out by a singular failed tnt trap but on a deeper level i specifically mean how that character contrasts with last life Joel. Joel is undoubtedly at his lowest point in the life series in Last Life. He goes down to red in session 2 and spends the majority of the rest of the season alone (and when he does have allies it’s only bc of a shared bloodlust). The red bloodlust completely takes over and this festers for nearly *8 sessions*. Not only that but the one time he is given a chance to restart and go back to yellow his old alliance member goes to red, leaving him alone again, and he is made boogeyman the next session. This, overall, has lasting consequences (he actually wanted to be fairly friendly at the beginning of LL, a stark contrast to how bloodthirsty he was at the beginning of DL or Lim L), and gained him a reputation that has never fully gone away. This is especially bad bc most people agree that LL was the most violent season (despite the lower kill counts in comparison to LimL) and was generally the worst and most traumatizing experience in the games for most people involved. Compare this to secret life, which everyone agrees was definitely the happiest season for Joel (or at least the most normal. His life is a tragedy no matter the season.) he has allies that (for the most part rip mumbo) stick with him until the end, he is friendlier with a larger group of people, and when he initially has to deal with the loss of some of them he has people who can ground him (bc as much as I adore the bad boys, grian was not qualified to do that). He was so hopeful that season, and was generally in a much healthier place mentally. And yet, despite how much he seemed to have grown, those 2 seasons ended so similarly for him it was almost comical. Joel engaged in a fight at the end, watched his ally get killed by scott, and is then forced into a 2v1 against Scott and another player that results in Scott taking his final life and him finishing 5th overall. I was describing both of those seasons here. After everything he did to grow, after all the improvements he had made, everything ended *exactly the same*

Making this about the bad boys for a second (because I’m me) they kinda suffer similar fates. Grian learned in the most tragic way possible that his allies were doomed to fail as long as he was with them no matter what, that this was not something that he could control by simply avoiding killing them himself. Even when he actively tries to save them (“let Tim do it he needs the time” “Joel you can kill me!”) he’ll still lose them in the end. I think this realization is also what made him stop trying to fight it, which resulted in him killing or almost killing his allies from previous seasons immediately afterwards (stabbing scar in the back and that one scene where grian kinda ominously jumps with a sword like he was about to crit and kill bigb after finding out he had 50 seconds left on his timer). It’s sorta like a way of telling the universe “fine. You win”

Similarly Jimmy. Well. I don’t think I need to explain that one. Even when he was given hope that things could be different, that he could break the curse, he died only a few minutes later. I still hold on to the narrative that the watchers only allowed that to happen to give Jimmy false hope that things can be different only to rip the rug out from under him and drive home the point that he is in a losing battle because by the time of secret life Jimmy was one of the only few people who genuinely still believed he had a chance. Obviously this is not something that can fully be a reality until he goes out first next season so if he doesn’t that’s a little awkward but just work with me here

TLDR; here is reason number 672 on why I believe the bad boys are the most doomed motherfuckers on this server and their alliance is a modern tragedy

#no one will ever hate the bad boys more than the narrative #trafficblr #life series #smallishbeans #joel smallishbeans #grian #solidaritygaming #jimmy solidarity #the bad boys #secret life #limited life #last life #can you tell the brain rot has gotten really really bad

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thesublemon · 8 hours

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best picture

For the first time in a long time, I watched all of the movies nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars this year. Partly on a whim, partly for a piece I’ve been working on for a while about what is going wrong in contemporary artmarking. I cannot say that the experience made me feel any better or worse about contemporary movies than I already felt, which was pretty bad. But sometimes to write about a hot stove, you gotta put your hand on one. So. The nominees for coldest stove are:

Poor Things. Did not like enough to finish. I always want to like something that is making an effort at originality, strangeness, or style. Unfortunately, the execution of those things in this movie felt somehow dull and thin. Hard to explain how. Maybe the movie’s motif of things mashed together (baby-woman, duck-dog, etc) is representative. People have been mashing things together since griffins, medleys, Avatar the Last Airbender’s animals, Nickelodeon’s Catdog, etc. Thing + thing is elementary-level weird. And while there’s nothing wrong with a simple, or well-worn premise, there is a greater burden on an artist to do something interesting with it, if they go that route. And Poor Things does not. Its themes are obvious and belabored (the difficulty of self-actualization in a world that violently infantilizes you) and do not elevate the premise. There’s a fine line between the archetypal and the hackish, and this movie falls on the wrong side of it. It made me miss Crimes of the Future (2022), a recent Cronenberg that was authentically original and strange, with the execution to match.

Anatomy of a Fall. Solid, but not stunning. The baseline level of what a ‘good’ movie should be. It was written coherently and economically, despite its length. It told a story that drew you along. I wanted to know what happened, which is the least you can ask from storytelling. It had some compelling scenes that required a command of character and drama to write—particularly the big argument scene. The cinematography was not interesting, but it was not annoying either. It did its job. This was not, however, a transcendent movie.

Oppenheimer. Did not like enough to finish. But later forced myself to, just so no one could accuse me of not knowing what I was talking about when I said I disliked it. I felt like I was being pranked. The Marvel idea of what a prestige biopic should be. Like Poor Things, it telegraphed its artsiness and themes and has raked in accolades for its trouble. But obviousness is not the same as goodness and this movie is not good. The imagery is painfully literal. A character mentions something? Cut to a shot of it! No irony or nuance added by such images—just the artistry of a book report. The dialogue pathologically tells instead of shows. It constantly, cutely references things you might have heard of, the kind of desperate audience fellation you see in soulless franchise movies. Which is a particularly jarring choice given the movie’s subject matter. ‘Why didn’t you get Einstein for the Manhattan project’ Strauss asks, as if he’s saying ‘Why didn’t you get Superman for the Avengers?’ If any of this referentiality was an attempt to say something about mythologization, it failed—badly. The movie is stuffed with famous and talented actors, but it might as well not have been, given how fake every word out of their mouths sounded. Every scene felt like it had been written to sound good in a trailer, rather than to tell a damn story. All climax and no cattle.

Barbie. Did not like enough to finish. It had slightly more solidity in its execution than I was afraid it would have, so I will give it that. If people want this to be their entertainment I will let them have it. But if they want this to be their high cinema I will have to kill myself. Barbie being on this list reminds me of the midcentury decades of annual movie musical nominations for Best Picture. Sometimes deservingly. Other times, less so. The Music Man is great, but it’s not better than 8 1/2 or The Great Escape, neither of which were nominated in 1963. Musicals tend to appeal to more popular emotions, which ticket-buyers and award-givers tend to like, and critics tend to dislike. I remember how much Pauline Kael and Joan Didion hated The Sound of Music (which won in 1966), and have to ask myself if in twenty years I’ll think of my reaction to Barbie the same way that I think of those reviews: justified, but perhaps beside the point of other merits. Thing is. Say what you want about musicals, but that genre was alive back then. It was vital. Bursting with creativity. For all Kael’s bile, even she acknowledged that The Sound of Music was “well done for what it is.” [1] Contemporary cinema lacks such vitality, and Barbie is laden with symptoms of the malaise. It repeatedly falls back on references to past aesthetic successes (2001: A Space Odyssey, Singin’ in the Rain, etc) in order to have aesthetic heft. It has a car commercial in the middle. It’s about a toy from 60 years ago and politics from 10 years ago. It tries to wring some energy and meaning from all of that but not enough to cover the stench of death. I’d prefer an old musical any day.

American Fiction. Was okay. It tried to be clever about politics, but ended up being clomping about politics. At the end of the day, it just wasn’t any more interesting than any other ‘intellectual has a mid-life crisis’ story, even with the ‘twist’ of it being from a black American perspective. Even with it being somewhat self-aware of this. But it could have been a worse mid-life crisis story. The cinematography was terrible. It was shot like a sitcom. Much of the dialogue was sitcom-y too. I liked the soundtrack, what I could hear of it. The attempts at style and meta (the characters coming to life, the multiple endings) felt underdeveloped. Mostly because they were only used a couple times. In all, it felt like a first draft of a potentially more interesting movie.

The Zone of Interest.Wanted to like it more than I did. Unfortunately, you get the point within about five minutes. If you’ve seen the promotional image of the people in the garden, backgrounded by the walls of Auschwitz, then you’ve already seen the movie. Which means that all the rest of the movie ends up feeling like pretentious excess instead of moving elaboration. It seemed very aware of itself as an Important Movie and rested on those laurels, cinematically speaking, in a frustrating way. It reminded me of video art. I felt like I had stepped through a black velvet drape into the side room of a gallery, wondering at what point the video started over. And video art has its place, but it is a different medium. Moreover video art at its best, like a movie at its best, takes only the time it needs to say what it needs to say.

Past Lives. I’m a human being, and I respond to romance. I appreciate the pathos of sweet yearning and missed chances. And I understand how the romance in this movie is a synecdoche for ambivalent feelings about many kinds of life choices, particularly the choice to be an immigrant and choose one culture over another. The immigrant experience framing literalizes the way any choice can make one foreign to a past version of oneself, or the people one used to know, even if in another sense one is still the same person. So, I appreciate the emotional core of what (I believe) this movie was going for, and do think it succeeded in some respects. And yet…I was very irritated by most of its artistic choices. I found the three principal characters bland and therefore difficult to care about, sketched with only basic traits besides things like Striving and Being In Love. Why care who they’d be in another life if they have no personalities in this one? It’s fine to make characters symbols instead of humans if the symbolic tapestry of a movie is interesting and rich, but the symbolic tapestry of this movie was quite simple and straightforward. Not that that last sentence even matters much, since the movie clearly wanted you to feel for the characters as human beings, not just symbols. Visually, the cinematography was dull and diffuse, with composition that was either boring or as subtle as a hammer to the head.

Maestro. Did not like enough to finish. Something strange and wrong about this movie. It attempts to perform aesthetic mimicry with impressive precision—age makeup, accents, period cinematography—but this does not make the movie a better movie. At most it creates spectacle, at worst it creates uncanny valleys. It puts one on the lookout for irregularities, instead of allowing one to disappear into whatever the movie is doing. Something amateurishly pretentious in the execution. And not in the fun, respectable way, like a good student film. (My go-to example for a movie that has an art-school vibe in a pleasant way is The Reflecting Skin). There’s something desperate about it instead. It has the same disease as Oppenheimer, of attempting to do a biopic in a ‘stylish’ way without working on the basics first. Fat Man and Little Boy is a less overtly stylish rendition of the same subject as Oppenheimer, but far more cinematically successful to me, because it understands those basics. I would prefer to see the Fat Man and Little Boy of Leonard Bernstein’s life unless a filmmaker proves that they can do something with style beyond mimicry and flash.

The Holdovers. Did not like enough to finish. It tries to be vintage, but outside of a few moments, it does not succeed either at capturing what was good about the aesthetic it references, or at using the aesthetic in some other interesting way. The cinematography apes the tropes of movies and TV from the story’s time period, but doesn't have interesting composition in its own right. It lacks the solidity that comes from original seeing. (Contrast with something like Planet Terror, in which joyous pastiche complements the original elements.) The acting is badly directed. Too much actorliness is permitted. Much fakeness in general between the acting, writing, and visual language. If a movie with this same premise was made in the UK in the 60’s or 70's it would probably be good. As-is the movie just serves to make me sad that the ability to make such movies is apparently lost and can only be hollowly gestured at. That said, the woman who won best supporting actress did a good job. She was the only one who seemed to be actually acting.

Killers of the Flower Moon. The only possible winner. It is not my favorite of Scorsese’s movies, but compared to the rest of the lineup it wins simply by virtue of being a movie at all. How to define ‘being a movie’? Lots of things I could say that Killers of the Flower Moon has and does would also be superficially true of other movies in this cohort. Things like: it tells a story, with developed characters who drive that story. Or: it uses its medium (visuals, sound) to support its story and its themes. The difference comes down to richness, specificity, control, and a je ne sais quois that is beyond me to describe at the moment. Compare the way Killers of the Flower Moon uses a bygone cinematic style (the silent movie) to the way that Maestro and The Holdovers do. Killers of the Flower Moon uses a newsreel in its opening briefly and specifically. The sequence sets the scene historically, and gives you the necessary background with the added panache of confident cuts and music. It’s useful to the story and it’s satisfying to watch. Basics. But the movie doesn’t limit itself to that, because it’s a good movie. The sequence also sets up ideas that will be continuously developed over the course of the movie.* And here’s the kicker—the movie doesn’t linger on this sequence. You get the idea, and it moves on to even more ideas. Also compare this kind of ideating to American Fiction’s. When I said that American Fiction’s moments of style felt underdeveloped, I was thinking of movies like Killers of the Flower Moon, which weave and evolve their stylistic ideas throughout the entire runtime.

*(Visually, it places the Osage within a historical medium that the audience probably does not associate with Native Americans, or the Osage in particular. Which has a couple of different effects. First, it acts as a continuation of the gushing oil from the previous scene. It’s an interruption. A false promise. Seeming belonging and power, but framed all the while by a foreign culture. Meanwhile potentially from the perspective of that culture, it’s an intrusion on ‘their’ medium. And of course, this promise quickly decays into tragedy and death. The energy of the sequence isn’t just for its own sake—it sets up a contrast. But on a second, meta level it establishes the movie’s complicated relationship to media and storytelling. Newsreels, photos, myths, histories, police interviews, and a radio play all occur over the course of the movie. And there’s the movie Killers of the Flower Moon itself. Other people’s frames are contrasted with Mollie’s narration. There’s a repeated tension between communication as a method of knowing others and a method of controlling them—or the narrative of them—which plays out in both history and personal relationships.)

Or here’s another example: When Mollie and Ernest meet and he drives her home for the first time, we see their conversation via the car’s rearview mirrors. This is a bit of cinematic language that has its origins in mystery and paranoia. You see it in things like Hitchcock or The X-Files or film noir. By framing the scene with this convention, the movie turns what is superficially a romantic meet-cute (to quote a friend) into something bubbling with uneasiness and dread. This is not nostalgia—this is just using visuals to create effects. It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen anything that uses the convention before, although knowing the pedigree might add to your enjoyment. The watchfulness suggested by the mirrors and Ernest’s cut-off face will still add an ominous effect. It works for the same reason it works in those other things. Like the newsreel, it is a specific and concise stylistic choice, and it results in a scene that is doing more than just one thing.

In general, the common thread I noticed as I watched these nominees, was the tendency to have the ‘idea’ of theme or style, and then stop there. It’s not that the movies had nothing in them. There were ideas, there was use of the medium, there was meaning to extract. There were lots of individually good moments. But they tended to feel singular, or repetitive, or tacked on. Meanwhile contemporary viewers are apparently so impressed by the mere existence of theme or style, that being able to identify it in a movie is enough to convince many that the movie is also good at those things. The problem with this tendency—in both artists and audiences—is that theme and style are not actually some extra, remarkable, inherently rarifying property of art. Theme emerges naturally from a story with any kind of coherence or perspective. And style emerges naturally from any kind of artistic attitude. They are as native as script, or narrative, or character. A movie’s theme and style might not be interesting, just like its story or dialogue might not be interesting, but if the movie is at all decent, they should exist. What makes a movie good or bad, then, is how it executes its component parts—including theme and style—in service of the whole. When theme is well-executed it is well-developed. Contemporary movies, unfortunately, seem to have confused ‘well-developed’ with ‘screamingly obvious.’ A theme does not become well-developed by repetition. It becomes well-developed by iterationand integration. Theme is like a melody. Simply repeating a single melody over and over does not result in the song becoming more interesting or entertaining. It becomes tedious. However, if you modify the melody each time you play it, or diverge from the melody and then return to it, that can get exciting. It results in different angles on the same idea, such that the idea becomes more complex over time, instead of simply louder.

Oppenheimer wasprobably the worst offender in this regard. Just repeat your water drops, crescendoing noise, or a line about ‘destroying the world’, and that’s the same as nuance, right? Split scenes into color and black and white and that’s the same as structure, right? That’s the same as actually conveying a difference between objectivity and interiority (or another dichotomy) via the drama or visual composition contained in the scenes, right? When I watched many of these movies, I kept thinking of a behind-the-scenes story from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The story goes that Joss Whedon was directing Sarah Michelle Gellar in some scene, and when the take was over he told her how great she was, and that he could see right where the music would come in. And Gellar replied that if he was thinking about the music, he clearly wasn’t getting enough from her acting alone. This conversation then supposedly informed Whedon’s approach to “The Body,” a depiction of the immediate aftermath of death that is considered one of the best episodes of television ever made, and which has no non-diegetic music whatsoever. Not to imply that music is necessarily a crutch, or to pretend that “The Body” is lacking in other forms of stylization (it is a very style-ish episode). But more to illustrate the way that it is easy to forget to make the most of all aspects of a medium, particularly the most fundamental ones, once one has gotten used to what a final product is supposed to feel like.

And that’s why most of these movies don’t feel like movies. They create the gestalt of a movie or a ‘cinematic’ moment—often literally through direct vintage imitation—without a sense of the first principles. Or demonstrating a sense of them, anyway. Who needs AI when the supposedly highest level of human filmmakers are already cannibalistically cargo-culting the medium just fine.

[1] “The Sound of Money (The Sound of Music and The Singing Nun).” The Pauline Kael Reader. (This book contains the full text of the original review, rather than the abbreviated review that I linked earlier.)

#posts: art #movies #am rusty at blogging and don't have all the virtuous nuance i would like in this but we will go with it

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crimeronan · 1 day

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Oh, the great maker of trauma for the beans that are part of Princess Luz Au, heed my query and answer me:

Did Luz get any big bad evil guy energy or skill from being raised by the waste of space previously known as Belos?

I mean as we all know Luz is a precious bean, but I think she deserves to be a little evil towards bad people, like I assume that Hunter is already planning how to murder (or worse) Amity's parents, even if he isn't fully aware of it/is in denial that he is planning the horrors on the for making Amity, but I stay with me for a moment and imagine the verified cinnamon roll Luz Noceda Wittebane putting the fear of Titan into Odalia after learning that she abused Amity.

Also, her snapping out of it after Odalia faints out of fear (and pain), and panicking that she is just like below only for her parteners to be like, 'nooo~ it was hot normal and perfectly sane thing to do'.

this answer Might be disappointing in some ways, mainly: i don't Think luz would be physically violent with them without provocation, and i also don't think she's likely to lose emotional control around them. she'd want to be just as poised around amity's parents as she always was around belos and always is around the coven heads.

HOWEVER. as for the questions of "does luz know how to be scary" and "did she learn that from belos": UNEQUIVOCAL yes. to both.

i've been wanting to play with luz in this space with amity's parents for A While, actually, so. have a little fic :)

"Oh, Amity is my pride and joy," Odalia says, placing a hand over her heart. "I taught her everything she knows."

"Yes, I did get that impression." The Empress smiles, rising to her feet. "It's incredible how much she's accomplished in spite of you."

Odalia's breath catches around a shocked, bitten-down laugh. "Your Majesty, begging your pardon, I believe you meant 'because of-'"

"In spite of," Luz repeats, very firmly. "It's fortunate that Lilith Clawthorne has taken such an interest in her wellbeing."

Odalia's smile doesn't waver, but it does remain frozen for several seconds before she says, "I suppose Amity feels the need to invent an adversary. Some great trial she overcame to earn her place here. It's understandable. Children often lack the foundation to understand the sacrifices their parents make. She had a very privileged upbringing."

"Amity has never spoken unkindly of either of you," Luz says, although this she seems to mean more for Alador, whose face may give more away.

She steps lightly down the stairs from the throne, joining the pair of them on the ground. "Amity rarely speaks of either of you at all, actually. That isn't why I've called you here."

Odalia's voice turns cool, corporate. "Then how can we help you, Your Majesty?"

"Did you know that Blight Industries has a higher rate of workplace accidents than..." Luz slides a folder out of her tunic, flips it open, and raises her eyebrows. "...any other company on the Isles?"

This time, Odalia's laugh covers something else. "That's - that's preposterous. Our workplace safety records are excellent. Why, we haven't needed a single intervention by the Healing Coven in... oh, is it three years?" She taps the side of her mouth, frowning. "Four? Five?"

"That's fascinating," Luz says. "Not even for a scrape?"

"Abrasions heal quite well by themselves, given time."

"Absolutely fascinating," Luz repeats. "Did you know that it's illegal to purposefully deny people healing services?"

Odalia scoffs, incredulous. "For scrapes?"

"I know," Luz says pleasantly, "I was surprised, too. There are a lot of laws like that, it turns out. Text on paper that hasn't been enforced in half a century. From what I understand, this one is a holdover from early Empire anxieties. People were terribly worried about not having access to personal healing magic anymore. So healing services had to be protected."

Odalia's smile has become more teeth than pleasantry. "What a fun little history lesson. I'm sure you know all sorts of facts about the early Empire."

"It turns out that it's very easy to put laws in writing," Luz says, "without the intention to enforce them. My father, may the Titan bless him, had precious little interest in the rights of individuals to be seen by healers. But this isn't his Empire anymore. And I find the topic just captivating."

Odalia has stopped trying to hide her impatience, now. "So you'll fine us for not having healers on hand to wave away every little paper cut. That's fine. I apologize for the oversight. We'll settle up and make sure that going forward-"

"Mr. Blight," Luz says, ignoring Odalia entirely, "would you kindly remove your gloves for me?"

Alador startles.

Odalia doesn't glance at him. Her eyes are fixed unblinking on Luz. She speaks through her teeth, nearly a hiss. "Don't feel compelled to do that, dear."

"I assure you, I can compel him to do that," Luz says. Then, in a tone that would almost pass for apologetic if it wasn't so practiced, "I am sorry to compel it of you. I try not to compel my subjects very often. But if you find it difficult to remove your gloves, my scouts would be happy to assist you."

The scouts around the base of the throne don't move. Odalia's eyes slide uneasily over them anyway.

"That won't be necessary," Alador says, speaking for the first time. He pulls the gloves off without fanfare, holding up his hands.

Half of his left ring finger and pinky are conspicuously missing.

If Luz is uncomfortable with this revelation, she sure isn't showing it. "Oh, that's so interesting," she says, leaning forward to get a closer look. "The Healing Coven keeps meticulous records, and I'm certain a partial amputation was never reported to them. You were born with all five fingers, yes? I'm sure Amity will attest to that."

"This was from an accident in my personal lab," Alador says, with the mechanical precision of something rehearsed. "The severed digits were not... salvageable."

"It's so amazing that you were able to make that determination," Luz says, "without even needing to consult the Healing Coven. You must be a very proficient magician."

Alador blinks.

"Regardless," Odalia interrupts, "it happened outside of Blight Industries. The company isn't liable. You haven't 'gotten' us."

"Do you ever test Blight Industries products in your personal lab, Mr. Blight?"

"Prototypes," he says.

Odalia makes a sharp, exasperated gesture. "Alador!"

"That seems like company business to me," Luz says, still pleasant, still conversational. "Now, I will be fully transparent, before you accuse me of anything with regards to prejudice - it is true that I hate you both. It is true that I've hated you both for a while now. If you feel like I'm targeting you because I hate you, then you're very astute."

Odalia's fingers twitch, threatening to curl into fists.

Luz continues, "However, it's also true that there is no bias where my judgment is concerned. Not legally, anyway. So it doesn't matter whether I hate you or not. Whatever I decide to do with you is the Titan's will. Government is amazing."

Odalia exhales sharply.

When Luz doesn't waver, she shakes her head. For the first time, her voice cracks - properly cracks. There's a tiny tremble in her hands.

"Amity won't forgive you if anything happens to us," she says - but there's no bravado, no power, only pathetic uncertainty. "Regardless of any... petty grievances she may harbor. Family is everything to a Blight. She won't forgive this."

"I know that," Luz says. "I promise, I have no intention of doing Amity any unkindness. It's not her fault you two have chosen to be what you are."

Another sharp exhale. Odalia's breathing is ragged, audible. She's clearly not a woman accustomed to fearing for her own safety.

"That's fantastic news!" she chirps.

Luz's smile is beatific, magnanimous. The serene expression of someone who's never questioned the divine right of kings.

"Unfortunately, I'm not wholly opposed to doing an unkindness," she says, "if we can't seem to reach an agreement. It's really up to you how this goes."

She looks from Odalia to Alador and back, tilting her head.

"So. How badly do both of you want to live?"

#luz is obviously bluffing in some places here re: her willingness to abuse her own power #but you wouldn't know that without being close to her. she knows what kind of impression matters.#if you want a little fic about her making odalia actually literally fear for her actual literal life. Here We Go!!!!#toh #princess luz au #my writing #lumity #odalia blight #alador blight #luz noceda

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qpjianghu · 1 month

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(...but what if I was?)

Li Lianhua / Li Xiangyi | Mysterious Lotus Casebook (2023)

#mysterious lotus casebook #li lianhua #li xiangyi #lhl #my mlc gifs #thanks to the folks who helped weigh in on that last gif!#specifically thank you to:#the-surreptitious-albatross #lianxiaojie #and an apology...#to our dear a-fei #for including him in this gifset #I still believe that the feihua relationship is one of the most devastating tragedies of this show #because of the way that di feisheng grows subtly but significantly over the course of the show #and he comes SO CLOSE to loving and accepting llh/lxy for who he is and who he always was #and maybe he in fact DOES get to this point internally #but his last words to llh are inviting him to fight him like times of old #showing (in llh's eyes at least) a regression to their previous selves #a “self” that maybe llh feels he never actually was #which is why I specifically wanted a feihua scene in that last gif to juxtapose with the more obvious shan gudao scene #the subtext of that feihua scene is very sexy of them (I am looking disrespectfully)#but the text of the scene is brutal and tragic:#as di feisheng violently lashes out at li lianua for his perceived weaknesses #and while llh's initial reaction was at most faintly irritated up until that point #you can see that spark of genuine hurt and sadness in his gaze as dfs holds him at arms length #anyway this has been “things about mlc that make me want to tear my hair out at 3AM”#thank you for coming to my ted talk

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velolceraptor · 25 days

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Me thinking about Ben: teehee he looks like such a silly goofy guy °v° He's kinda dumb but that's okay :) and hee hoo hee hoo silly silly little redheaded fellow tee hee!

Also me: Ben looks like he gets verbally beaten by his family for his low intellect and probably has a lot of pent up rage while dealing with it in unhealthy ways. He also seems like the type to fear falling behind and whenever he's showed up (embarrassed; put to shame) he takes it in the worst way possible since he's dealt with it so many times, quickly growing tired of it. But he's also probably insecure about himself and was probably shamed for it so for most of the time like school, family, and after school clubs, he probably puts on a face and lies about everything, trying to suppress his emotions and not make a scene. He probably and maybe constantly tries to prove his worth but ends up mucking things up and making things even worse than before. And another thing is-

*GETS SNIPED*

Me, now a ghost: hee hoo silly sad ginger boy

(sorry I listened to 'I bet on losing dogs by mistake while thinking about him')

#me thinkz #scriblscrabl #epithet erased #epithet erased ben #ee ben #epithet erased banzai blasters #banzai blasters #haha projection go brrrrrrrr #dude i can just tell hes insecure and angry and sad as hell #also he looks like a prep but with insanely strict parents #they probably hate him #and he hates too #maybe #bro has so much middle child energy its not even funn #and i wonder why does ge have a schedule #like is it something he made or his parents #dunno bro #buts soemthing tells me he DEFINITELY doesn't trust adults #but hey im just spitballing #anyways i like the violent ginger and i want him to be sad and ugly cry #... that's it #ok bye bye #actually one more thing #he definitely reeks of insecurity #ok bye bye for realsie #if Jello finds this i think i might die #jelloapocalypse's epithet erased #jelloapocalypse #curse you brendab blaber for making me attached to him and five other background cucks/j

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fisheito · 2 days

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Imagine you have to set up yakumo's enclosure for the next couple months. How do you set it up and what do you put in there?

oh NO.! THE PROPPHECY HAS BEenm FUFILLED

i am standing in my room, leggies rooted to the floor. i am in shock .frozen and i have no idea how to proceed. there is a perpetual pathetically sobbing serpent under my blankie.

#stares at the camera and stage whispers #i can't be responsible for another living creature. i can't. or . er. i can. but I SHOULDN'T #i'll have to suppress every violent urge in my body to keep this thing alive for several months #i CANNOT fling him out the window. i WILL NOT grab his entire face and squeeze. I SHALL NOT chew on his tail.#now i'm reminded of that post where it's a pretty princess cage on the floor and comments go [that aint big enough for a dog]#and OP is all [it's not FOR a dog 😀]#yeah. that's me right now imagining a full grown yakumo in a cage by my bedside #SO FOR EASE OF MY IMAGINATION AND TO increase yaku's chance of surviving these next months #i'm going to try real hard to imagine him exclusively in pocket snake form (scrunches up my face in valiant effort)#his enclosure (crib?!?!) is flanked on all sides by eiden plushies #since yaku is an adult there is a smaller chance of him suffocating on eiden in his sleep. wait. actually #arranges the eiden walls to give some pockets of air. i don't trust him. he WILL suffocate on eiden given the opportunity #he gets one of those tiny dollhouse cooking sets for enrichment LOL #or i'll give him a bunch of those make-your-own gummy kits with elaborate setups and tiny egg gummies #crying yaku is the excuse i need to finally get a humidifier #i can survive not misting myself.. usually... but yaku will cry himself into dehydration. it's misting time #he gets an entire alcove closed off in the corner with his basic needs met. i cannot perceive #he can lurk in privacy as much as he wants. there are at least TWO hot rocks in there with garukaru's faces painted on em #there is a duplicate open-space alcove next to it for when he actually wants something from me LOL #is he a free range snake? can i take him to a bunch of restaurants and shove food into my sleeve for him? he wants to sample the delights..#tempted to put a bell on him just so if he gets loose in the basement i'll know to fish him out #but he's pretty cautious... he won't get into any fatal situations in the house right? ...does he know how to swim?!#at least one day is reserved for testing yaku's swimming capabilities.#he is going into the bathtub while it has a film of water. gonna test his traction. i hope i won't get panic-strangled #asks

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hella1975 · 1 year

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ur making it pretty hard to not be curious about aftg like what is going on can you infodump ur worst to me

so basically it's about a guy called neil who's not actually called neil bc turns out he's the son of a HIGHLY abusive mafia hitman and him and his mother have been running from this guy for years which ofc means changes in identity and a SHIT ton of issues ranging from good old fashioned paranoia to lighting cigarettes not to smoke them but to let them burn down bc the smell reminds you of your mother's burning corpse. but neil is obsessed and i mean OBSESSED with this made up sport called exy which is like lacrosse but with the violence of ice hockey and he joins a pro-team despite aforementioned ABUSIVE MAFIA DAD AFTER HIM and guess what! the guy who signed him is called kevin and his ex-team are affiliated with the mafia too! including neil's dad! neil just screwed himself over big time! but who cares when you have exy! enter: andrew minyard. andrew is a blonde, 5ft, ex-juvie, under-court-surveillance-for-grevious-bodily-harm goalkeeper currently working unofficially as kevin's bodyguard and, while we never get an actual diagnosis bc god forbid we handle mental health properly in this thing, it's implied that he has some kind of psychosis and, as part of his plea bargain, is legally obgligated to take incredibly mood-altering medication that makes him manic in exchange for being allowed to stay on the team (aka with kevin who he's VERY possessive of), done entirely for the wellbeing of those around him and effectively against andrew's will. does he stick to that deal? fuck no! but it doesn't stop there! andrew proceeds to spend the entire book being as violent and unpredictable and generally cunty as possible in order to figure out What Neil's Deal Is bc neil is capital S Shifty and andrew is convinced he's from kevin's old mafia cult team trying to hurt him. we spend an entire book watching the three of them wrestle between neil's paranoia, andrew's protectiveness and kevin's desire to Please Can We Just Play Exy. there are some keys involved. someone dies. there are two more books. inexplicably two of the characters can speak fluent german purely from high school classes.

#aftg spoilers #just for book 1 but still BIG spoilers lmao #ill also tag this as:#hella reads aftg #bc i told people to block that tag if they didn't want spoilers so it's more likely to be effective #but yeah! arent you so glad you asked gloomy! this is the abridged version!#i genuinely havent even mentioned more of the insane parts bc i couldnt even explain if i wanted to #also i know i touched on andrew's meds here but i actually do have Views on all that and i was NOT getting into that here lmao #also just andrew's mental health as a whole. i could write essays #ask #aftg #the foxhole court spoilers #tfc spoilers #tfc #rereading this is making me laugh bc i come across as such an andrew-anti #as if he hasn't been one of my all time fave characters for six entire fucking years like do you know how hard that is and yet he's there #so just to clarify i am mad at a lot of the things andrew does but im also mad about the court-mandated-medication #and every therapist that gave him some shitty diagnosis and also nora for going down the 'violent psychopath' trope #andrew is a victim of his own books i would give my life for him <3

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doodlboy · 11 months

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Om tag ramble

#my hate 4 solomon is festering bc of that post bc its infuriating that #every1 was so scandalized that he was doing shady shit 2 lucifer from before but bc its asmo suddenly its okay #like- he's fine as a character ig but im tired of the hypocrisy in this fandom. if you're gonna b pissed off at him dr*gging lucifer #then be angry at him taking advantage of asmo while he was drunk too. its bullshit #ik hes a fictional character and its not a real issue but come the fuck on #its also bs that suddenly theyre all scary demonic demons who are evil and need to be contained and controlled #bc one second ppl are treating them like just some guy but when they need to make excuses for why bad things happen #to the characters its all 'well they're bad people sometimes and they're strong demons so its okay to treat them like shit'#its not. absolutely fucking not okay.#suddenly they deserve to have their basic rights taken away from them bc they do bad shit sometimes.#idc if theyre not your favorite character or what species they are or if they aren't a good person 24/7 NOONE should get taken advantage of #like- im more angry about the hypocrisy than i am the actual game content now. solomon does shady shit all the time #but when its done 2 golden boy lucifer its a fucking outrage for everyone #but when its asmo hes suddenly this violent hostile murderous creature that should be chained down or tamed #its just fucking UGHHHH #im not putting this in the main tag bc im not gonna have 10 different ppl tell me im fucking stupid for being upset abt this again.#elliot rambles #rant in the tags

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zanathan-aisling · 4 months

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pisses me off so much much that i’m not immune to people arguing about steven universe

#what is it about that g-dforsaken cartoon that makes my bones weep for blood #its like. the perfect combination of well intentioned progressive storytelling bungled themes antiblackness fandom culture and shipping bul #bullshit queer community physiology kids show and actually-good-except-all-the-bad-parts #anyways any defense of the show that starts with ‘lily orchard is full of shit huh’ immedialy into the trash you fucking go #not all criticism of the fucking thing stemmed from one annoying youtube skank. people have been hypercritical of SU since before that vide #was a glimmer in orchard’s eye - people have been making great and godawful points about it since steven fucking two #STEVEN TWO?!?#SEASON #like some points made against it ARE bullshit! but not all of them! and when real life seems to have spat out a few strawmen for yall to ar #argue against you’ll never make actual progress on the genuine fucking issues people have on it! its useless!#also it really irritates me that bc some people escalated criticisms of the diamonds to ‘su condones nazi redemption’ all responses to the #shows approach to justice just get countered with ‘but RS is jewish’.#like YEAH and actually her jewishness does inform the shows approach to justice abd punishment but that doesn’t make the end result GOOD #also judaism isn’t. spiritually speaking. 100% about reform and self-reflection rather than christian damnation barbarity or whatever #there is in fact harder edges to our shit its just unlikely steven universe would include WD getting hanged along with all her sons orchang #changing her mind at the last second because she hasn’t earned an uncomplicated admittance of fault and she sends and army after the #escaping stevenites only for said army to get drowned alive as the sea closes around them #lol #(or that it SHOULD have #imo while the diamonds did escape proper justice from just a tonal and like. thematic cohesion standpoint a violent execution of the #dictatorial class really would NOOOOT fit the show in any sense)

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switchcase · 1 year

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what got you& into punk fashion?

Product of the times.

Emo and punk kids were poor as hell and had opinions and ideologies I agreed with. They were also the kids who didn't look twice at long sleeves in summer or wearing the same clothes 4 days in a row. You didn't have to explain anything. The fashion and the music was sort of just a product of the situation...it was "your only pair of jeans got ripped when you got the shit kicked out of you, but the school doesn't allow rips in jeans so you need to patch it or at least not make it a blank hole otherwise you'll be sent home and that's Worse" or "this shirt is from the 3rd grade and worn to hell but you can't ask for new clothes so uh?"

More than likely if I didn't grow up when I did I would have found some other subculture that was more time appropriate to when I grew up. I think the newer version of "children with shit lives band together and call it a culture; becomes formative to their development" is centered on bedroom pop and the Sufjan Stevens brand of "folk punk". Maybe I'd be running around dressed in muscle tanks and a mullet or long green/brown skirts with an array of quartz on my windowsill.

#Does anybody remember schools not allowing rips in jeans until distressed jeans became trendy?#I remember when we all made fun of people for buying pre-distressed $70 jeans #I don't consider uh...the new wave of folk punk to be actually folk punk #Not in the 'this new music sucks' way. I just don't think they are the same genre #Folk punk for me is Pat The Bunny and Flogging Molly and Violent Femmes #To name some of the more well known ones #I feel like it's become kind of like the alt rock category where there will be blatant pop bands put in there and you are confused #If that makes sense #That is...one thing I feel sad for with this generation #Not to become an old man for a second #But it appears to me that a lot of 'subcultures' are strictly aesthetic based and a good majority of them are not their own subcultures?#It's rehashings of the same subcultures as before. Not that revivalist stuff hasn't existed before but you know...#There was more Blatantly By/For Children subcultures alongside I don't know...teens trying to revive the 70 #*70s #Do I make sense? Nobody was Lisa Frank before Lisa Frank. Emo and Scene didn't exist before the 00s #An adult wouldn't be caught dead in the 2000s with Lisa Frank merch. Whereas if someone is doing scene revival they could be 30 or 12 #I just wish kids had more Strictly For Children things. More of an individual identity #This became a tags rant my apologies #As an aside please do not use you& for me. Didn't upset me I just do not like it for me. Thanks!

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angorwhosebabyisthis · 1 year

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i think it would be a lot easier to examine the morality and effectiveness of setrákus' cause (spoiler alert: It's Bad), and the irl worldviews/rhetoric it's critiquing, if the books came out and acknowledged that the entity:

a) is working from the exact same fundamental principles, just glowier and prettier and has Nicer Neighborhoods about it, and ultimately gets away with it, and

b) in its own right is just plain fucking evil

#lorien legacies #setrákus ra #LL entity #there is a MAJOR running theme in this series of poisonous 'help' being offered by people who position themselves as Selflessly Benevolent #and wanting nothing more than to pile you with generous gifts out of the goodness of their hearts #too-good-to-be-true offers when you need them most #they just need one little thing from you. they just need you to do the work of spreading their Help for them.#whether through direct violent subjugation (hi loric history!); or cutting off their options so they get more and more desperate #until they have no option but to give in. until they have no choice but to suffer and die or Choose Peace #or through just y'know terraforming the entire fcking planet and changing the biology of its sapient inhabitants to make them Better #without asking a single person on it first let alone any of the humans #it shows up with setrákus; it shows up with what five goes through; it shows up with mogpro; and it shows up with the entity #but the entity and the loric acting in its name are The Actually Benevolent Ones This Time You Guys #and they don't even show ANY harmful effects from past instances of garde pulling ancient-aliens shit to ~help advance human cultures~#the moral of the story should have followed through on 'power does not make you a god'#and taken the next step to 'if any objectively sapient being with the agency to tangibly affect the world; in a way you cannot opt out of'#'tries to position themself as a god because they are powerful; or should be powerful'#'tie on a bib and eat them'#i have a lot of words in me about this and it really sank in when i realized the way sandor talks about life on lorien under the entity #and the culture around it sound E E R I L Y like how five talks about ethan and the mogs when he's being groomed and indoctrinated #lorien was some warren of the shining snares shit back in the day and it's both fascinating and absolutely chilling #your neighborhood isn't less racist because it has breweries and brick pizza ovens etc etc #ANYWAY #LL tag #LL crit tag #the crit files

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dirt-str1der · 1 year

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Kazu/maji is soooooo different than sae/maji this is because saejima and majima are best friends who go together everywhere and frequently close the toilet door in each others faces because they keep trying to follow each other inside and the other guys like No. im going to take a shit and kiryu and majima are like guys who are knotting each other every time they meet and conjoined at the groin , like majima will carry kiryus baby and saejima will raise it with him you know what i mean theres a lack of commitment (but no shortage of passion) with majima and kiryu theyre each others one night stand every single night but saejima and him stick with each other through thick and thin come hell or high water

#Yakuza loveblog #i just realised with horror that whenever i say kazu/maji without censoring it like that it actually appears in the tag itself #so thats why i have a typing quirk now #anyway you guys get what i mean #im not saying kiryu and majima dont love each other im just saying they dont love each other like saejima and majima do #kiryu is gentle and kind but he cant be loyal when nobody has ever sucessfully pinned him down before #saejima ... he is faithful. at the end of the day he will always come back to majima #and its the same for majima. saejima Gets him like no one else does ... they love each other the same way #i always say this but majima starting to wear his eyepatch less around saejima makes me explode fire and brimstone because he was hiding #damn near everything about himself his past his injuries and trauma because those arent for anybody but saejima. and saejima forgiving him #actively liberated him from those shackles. he waited for him every day and kept his head high until the day he could lower it to saejima ..#he bared himself to him then. showed him the life he was owed because saejima owned him then and had every right to strike him down where he #stood. nobody else was supposed to see his wounds because it was For saejima to judge if majima had been punished enough had suffered enough #for his sake .. the payment for his betrayal .. and saejima of course he forgave him. thats his bro ... the person he looks up to the most #so he forgives majima and majima is free to be his own person again not bound by honour or repayment. and he chose 2 remain by saejimas side #till death do them part or something like that #... the body text of this post implies that majima is an alpha. hes not jsyk hes literally omega coded ‘but hes so violent’ yeah.#hes meant to be like that.#saejima is levelheaded unlike kiryu so hes beta coded and he and majima fuck like rabbits #this is all FYI btw things i believe to be true backed up by source material

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bumblingbabooshka · 2 years

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Was trying to design a telepathic alien child that is the embodiment of ‘kills you with my mind’ - and I succeeded! So here’s my daughter, Jeepers!

Alt Color(?)

#My main design influences were 50's sewing guides on pinterest - Jake Sisko - and The Jetsons #This alien telepath child with the urge to hurt others is me fulfilling a promise (by which I mean random post) I made a while ago #saying I wanted to give Tuvok and Lon Suder a violent girl ward - so here she is v_v #her race does not have arms! Nothing bad happened to her arms - she was just born like that as are all her people #My thought is that Jeepers was abandoned on a planet by her people and the shock/trauma of that abandonment + having no one to guide her #led to her basically taking over that planet and banning all adults from it as she views adults as untrustworthy and terrible!#When any ships with children aboard enter into the planet's air space she uses her powers to disorient/distract the adults and sends #her little army of children aboard the ship to cause havoc and bring whatever children were on it back down to the planet #the planet is full of crashed ships because if anyone tries to go down to get the children back she disorients them enough to crash the ship #I have an entire episode idea but long story short is that Tuvok - the ultimate dad - fights through all attempts to scare him away in order #to rescue the children - and when he sees that their attacker actually IS a child herself he wants to help her as well #and she desperately probes his mind for the hatred/anger/fear she's felt from all the other adults but finds none #and then she cries and he picks her up and soothes her like any good parent would v_v #I think they eventually return her to her people! Tuvok and his telepath daughters whom he has to say goodbye to v_v #Jeepers cannot actually telepathically influence people to do things - she can only make them hallucinate but she's VERY good at doing it #however as a child she often has trouble keeping the hallucinations realistic or logical #which works for fear but not so much for trickery #also she'll bite you! So watch out for that #bea art tag #star trek oc #Jeepers #Her eyes go spiral-y when using her telepathic abilities #her people also age very slowly so she's probably pretty old in human years but she's still a child if that makes sense #like - say her species lives to be a thousand years old. 200 years old would still be a small child.#she remembers her parents being 'really tall' and when you ask her how tall she says 'outer-space big'#her name is from Jeepers Creepers by the hi-los:#jeepers creepers where did you get those peepers? Jeepers creepers - where'd you get those eyes??#How did they get so lit up?? How'd they get that size???? <- it's a pretty disconcerting song

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navree · 1 year

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I think if they are going to make an Aegon a full on rapist they should do the Brothel Queen(s) so that the Black's image can suffer a similar blow because let's be real, people are already justifying B&C so there's no way they are going to be viewed as bad people. I feel sorry for Alicent obviously because I love her a lot and honestly I will cry if the BQ end up happening because she really can't catch a break (and I would also feel terrible about Helaena because she did nothing wrong, but it just makes no sense for her to be made to suffer it too).

But who am I going to lie to, they'll probably manage it terribly like they've done Alicent's rapes to date and they'll still find a way to make Alicent love Rhaenyra which makes no fucking sense

I think I've been open about my not wanting the Brothel Queens to happen, and honestly that's not going to change. It's a personal thing mostly, I genuinely don't care if it's a good narrative choice or if it would balance out bad portrayals and offer a more grey view of Team Black; any positives I might potentially feel about it are going to be washed away a million times over by how sick the whole thing makes me. I have no, none, zip, zilch, zero interest in watching scenes of two women imprisoned into literally sex slavery and forcibly raped for days on end in any situation, especially when those women are a) characters I like who're already going to be going through some heavy traumas and b) are 1) a woman who was a victim of marital rape since age sixteen and 2) a woman who's had a full psychological breakdown and is completely incapable of taking care of herself in any way let alone performing in a sexual situation. This could be the most well crafted storytelling with the most profound message and the utmost narrative consequences and I won't care, I do not want to see it and I will never want to see it and I get bile in my mouth even thinking of the fact that Mushroom even thought about making it up (which I'm gonna be honest, I'm firmly in the camp that he 100% did) because he found it hot.

And honestly, I don't think it'd be good storytelling, I think it would be really cheap. This show's parent series was notorious for using rape and sexual violence for titillation and shock value, something that HOTD has really shied away from (there's one on screen rape to the best of my recollection, Alicent's, and I actually didn't mind how they handled that in the show, starting it with the shot of Alicent's ruined fingers on the bed as she starts doing her nervous picking and then makes herself stop was incredibly haunting, it's the fandom's reaction to that scene that's insufferable), and going back to it is just gonna feel lazy and unoriginal to me, and more like the writers going "look how awful this is! aren't we so edgy and groundbreaking! aren't you shocked!" over and over. It'd just feel lazy to me.

The thing is, Team Black fans are going to justify anything their faves do, and that would likely include the Brothel Queens storyline, likely under the guise of Alicent deserving it or it being a just punishment for calling Rhaenyra's kids bastards. And listen, no shade, Aemond's gonna be committing war crimes right and left in the Riverlands and I'll be there in my full "you're doing amazing sweetie dot jpeg" era, I get it. But anyone who isn't a full stan, any casual watchers or anyone who's on the fence or just watching the show for the Hell of it, even them Burlington Bar folks, they're going to see the Blood and Cheese scene (provided it stays book loyal in its entirety and doesn't cut away from anything, which I'm hopeful for) for the horror that it is, and for the stain on Team Black that it is. We don't need gratuitous and graphic sexual violence to hammer the point home, especially when Rhaenyra's rule over King's Landing is already filled with a bunch of butchery that made the people turn on her and her family, and even more especially when we know what'll happen to Helaena eventually.

Listen, at the end of the day, you can give me any excuse in the world, that it'll make people realize Team Black are not morally superior, it'll make Team Green more sympathetic, it'll be good drama, it'll be a good storyline, it'll be a compelling narrative, it'll be profound, God himself could descend from the Heavens and tell me that he's ordained that if we get a Brothel Queens scene the entire viewing public will become fanatical Greens supporters, and it will not ever change the fact that I do not want this storyline to happen. Ever.

#personal #answered #anonymous #i'm genuinely sorry if this sounds like i'm annoyed anon because i'm not #i'm just a) rather hungry and b) this is just a shpiel i've honed rather well #because i've been asked this a few times #people are gonna justify anything their faves do that's the way of fandom #violent rape won't change that they'd probably cheer for it #i remember sansa stans saying that dany pointing out she was raped was cringe #and that she didn't actually have it that bad and that she should quit complaining #just cuz they didn't like dany or jonerys as a ship #it's a personal thing for me i don't want anything like it i hate it #i don't care if it 'whitewashes' rhaenyra (in between the peasant murder and child murder #and extrajudicial killings and the torturing and the demanding a teenager be murder because her husband groomed her #and all the other stuff she canonically does)#that's a trade i'll gladly take one hundred percent no questions asked #like i'm honestly even sus about why george included it in the book at all in the first place #that alone makes me ill #i've no wish to see it on screen in any way no matter how many positives people give me #i hate it!

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