Ooo...

I think its a really interesting take if you interpret Gortash as being genuinely surprised that Karlach is so angry with him.

"By the Black Hand! I'd recognize that voice anywhere." - Karlach Origin, Gortash speaking through the Steel Watcher. He sounds surprised and happy to hear her, he laughs fondly. ‎‎ㅤ

"Were you hoping for something else? A word of wisdom? A hug?" - I like this line the way it is usually interrupted because it shows how much of a bitch Gortash is. But - his tone is also very familiar here. It makes me think of Gortash trying to diffuse the situation by falling back on their old dynamic - teasing and ranking on each other, and then being surprised when Karlach responds with full venom.

The progression of their interactions also supports this idea, and demonstrates just how immature/defensive Gortash is. When he realizes she's furious with him and he's hurt her - instead of taking responsibility, his tone smooths over into the very measured politician voice - and he begins talking about how she should've realized her potential, pushing all the blame onto her.

It highlights how much he's lied to himself about his own trauma, and also how he's truly deluded himself into thinking Karlach could have benefited from the situation.

This does not absolve him of anything and it is still incredibly important to acknowledge his responsibility for his actions. I just think that this take adds a few additional layers to the situation which make it narratively interesting.

Sorry if this is kind of a loaded or unorganized question but I'm interested in seeing your observations: similar to how you've talked about how some viewers tried to absolve Kendall of his responsibility in the waiter's death, do you feel the scene with shiv and the threesome gets interpreted too 'sympathetically' as shiv trying to deal with her own orientation in a straight marriage instead of the more prominent power dynamics in that scene? I don't discount her as being attracted to women especially since the show plays with gender dynamics but I feel like focusing solely on that, makes her seem more powerless than how she actually is in that context.

And as you said before, Shiv is backed into corners and has less power than her brothers' due to misogyny, but coupled with some takes about her ending on the show I think this 'zero agency' interpretation is too unquestioned, not helped probably that the mainstream audience has also mostly unquestioned ideas about feminism and imperialism/capitalism (and also related to that, and on a more personal note, I find the meta posts people make about Shiv coupled with Andrea Dworkin excerpts a bit silly)

yeah i talked a bit about shiv's threesome here; to me it's very clearly supposed to recall other examples on the show of homoeroticism and homosexual desire that are only able to be expressed through power-bound relationships: tom and greg, roman and the personal trainer, the way kendall talks to lawrence. the violence and imbalance of these relationships (employer–employee; more to the point, capitalist–labourer) are the necessary preconditions for homosexuality to exist. it's the explicitly erotic extension of how logan can talk about 'fucking' someone in a business sense, even though the thought of actual homosexuality disgusts him.

specifically, shiv pursuing a yacht employee is supposed to recall the cruises scandal, which we know involved covering up sexual violence and the deaths of sex workers and migrant workers, and is pretty heavily implied to have also involved the 'wolf pack' engaging in outright sex tourism. shiv chooses a yacht employee specifically for this threesome because, like the others in the upper echelons of power at waystar, she sees this woman as disposable and as a tool for shiv to use as she wishes. the woman's 'consent' becomes ambiguous with this framing, and with the fact that the show excludes her perspective to indicate how shiv and tom take into account their own desires but not her agency. to them, she's a body, to be used for their sexual gratification; again, this deliberately echoes the way the cruises scandal involved the use, violence against, and then discarding of vulnerable bodies: those of dancers, sex workers, migrant workers, &c.

so, there is homosexual subtext in this scene, the same way there's homosexual subtext between roman and the personal trainer. and in both of these cases, the expression of homosexual desire is specifically enabled by these relationships being made structurally continuous with the larger patterns of violence and exploitation that the show discusses: capitalist exploitation, racism, misogyny, and so forth. homosexuality can exist if it's an articulation of violence; to analyse these scenes without reference to the violence of the social forms is missing their central function in the story.

in regards to the second half of your question: i really haven't spent enough time with dworkin's work to have a confident opinion on it, besides disliking the obvious issues (her anti-porn stance, transmisogyny / bioessentialism, &c). what i can say about shiv the character is that, whilst the show does portray her as being subjected to misogyny in her family and in the company, it also portrays her as benefitting from capitalist patriarchy insofar as she can leverage her wealth and whiteness. a lot of analysis of shiv fails to take this second part into account, or to contextualise the roys generally as capitalists (not just 'rich people') who are trying to consolidate a 21st-century empire. also, i don't think a framework like dworkin's is really capable of accounting for the way patriarchy deals with, eg, roman's effeminacy; the figure of the 'sissy' and the functioning of transmisogyny are actually, i would argue, critical to understanding how gender functions for the roys, waystar, and capitalism writ large.

Heya, I've been pondering over Haladriel a lot lately, and i'm wondering what you think Sauron believes he has to gain, specifically, by being bound to Gal's light? I.e. surely he can achieve/enact his vision for ME with his power alone. But maybe it's more about how her light makes him feel, as opposed to what it can do for him? Idk I loved your understanding of what was going through his head in that last ep (per your fics) and i thought you might be able to shed some light (hah) on this...

Sorry my reply to this is so late! I spent some time thinking about this.

So, the thing is, I don't think Sauron believes he can enact his vision for Middle-earth by himself. At least, not the idealized version of it.

Sauron freely admits he's done evil, he is aware at some level the pain he's caused. He professes to want to heal Middle-earth, and I think a lot of character interpretations are contingent on your view of this claim - is he truly repentant or just afraid of punishment? I personally think it is the much more interesting character choice to believe him; I believe he wants to right his wrongs, wants to atone. I think he truly believes that restoring order and perfection to the world will absolve him of his crimes.

However, the question then arises, how does he do all this without infringing upon his pride (which we know is what stopped him from submitting himself to the Valar for judgement)? How does he balance his thirst for power with his will to do better?

Following this thinking through to the end of the line, the answer is he doesn't. In the end, his lesser demons overcome his better angels. Sauron becomes the greatest evil on Middle-earth, covers the world in a second darkness, yatta, yatta, yatta.

So it seems like we meet him at this crossroads moment - trying to legitimately think of ways to right his wrongs while refusing to compromise on his ego and desire for power. And because he doesn't know how to navigate this cognitive dissonance, he's adrift - both literally and figuratively.

Enter Galadriel, who does not let him fade into obscurity and mope, but instead pesters him until he rises to the challenge of who she wants him to be and takes responsibility for the Southlands. Galadriel is the one who shows him the path forward, and he says as much to her in ep 8: "I'd all but given up, but you...You believed in me. You saw strength in me. You pushed me to heights no one else could have."

I think Sauron is self-aware enough to know he needs Galadriel to "pull him back" when his tendency for darkness overtakes him. I think he knows he will be unable to resist the temptation for self-gain and power without someone there to keep him in check. And Galadriel is the strongest being around capable of doing that, one whose support has "pushed him to new heights." And, importantly, one who is currently exiled from her own people - just think, an incredibly powerful ally in a vulnerable position!

To me, there also seems to be an angle of legitimizing his efforts through binding himself with Galadriel. She is, in many respects, a stand-in for the Valar on Middle-earth. So if she believes in him and supports him, then his work cannot truly be evil, not when it is A+ Noldor Certified!

I also just really vibe with a lot of what @liminal-zone has discussed about Sauron needing a new dom leader. Morgoth had a "clenched fist" around him for ages, and Sauron did his bidding. Now, he needs someone else to boss him around and give him guidance, someone like Galadriel.

Or, you know, he could just want her light to make himself, like, uber powerful. rip to charlie vickers' mentions but my readings of this character are different lol

In Defence of Kal Skirata, Part 2

In my last post, I addressed the general accusation of child abuse that's often levelled at Kal Skirata. This time, I'm going to start dealing with the specific accusations made about him based on the books. This post will cover three of the five accusations that I remember, so there will probably be a Part 3 in this series at some point. Now, without further ado, let's dive into the analysis. Beware, for here be spoilers!

Accusation 1: Kal talks down to and infantilises the Nulls.

Evidence Given: The scene in Triple Zero where he shows up to ARCA Barracks and calls Ordo by his nickname in public, and treats the situation like the Nulls are naughty little boys instead of grown men who’ve shut down an entire military barracks in direct defiance of a Jedi General’s order.

Interpretation From Context: Remember here that the Nulls are holding an entire barracks hostage because they don’t want to go into suspended animation. Kal says they’re terrified of it, and the narrative gives us no reason to doubt him. What Kal does here trivialises the situation (not the Nulls!). He’s not acting like the Nulls have broken every military regulation in the book, he’s acting like they stole some cake or something and he’s teasing them about it. That does two things: it reassures them that he at least is not angry or intending to punish them, and it tells them that he’s here as their dad, not as their sergeant. I can’t think of another thing he could have said that would have gotten all that information across so efficiently or reassured them so well.

Accusation 2: Kal denies love to people until they do what he wants.

Evidence Given: I think this one is based on his treatment of Etain when she’s pregnant. I’ll deal with that in its own section because it deserves a little more detail, but the short version is I don’t think this is typical of his treatment of children he adopts. Keep in mind especially that Etain is an adult at this point. Young, yes, but an adult, and Kal is not her father.

Counter Evidence: Shall I start with the scene where Darman loses his temper and beats the living daylights out of Kal and gets no retribution except a hug (after which I don’t think the incident is ever brought up again, certainly not by Kal), or the scene where Ordo, as far as Kal knows, destroys the data that will save the clones from their accelerated ageing, and Kal actually blames himself for the incident and entirely absolves Ordo (and then, again, never mentions it again)? Kal takes on responsibility for six little boys who have done nothing to earn his approbation except exist, and then he spends the remainder of the books devoting himself to trying to get them the chance to live full lives, and helping them survive the war long enough for that to happen. He rescues Laseema out of a dangerous and potentially abusive situation because she was there and he could help. He continues to protect and help Etain, albeit in flawed ways (see item 3 for details), even after she’s completely shattered his trust. Even when he is at his angriest, he clarifies that he likes her, and what he has an issue with is the way that she’s acting like she always knows what’s best for everyone else in a situation where she really should have consulted others (i.e. Darman) before acting.

Accusation 3: Kal acted cruelly towards Etain.

Evidence Given: His loss of temper towards her when he finds out she’s pregnant, followed by assumption of control of the situation and culminating in taking her child to raise him himself.

Alternate Interpretation: Does Kal lose his temper pretty nastily in this scene, from Etain’s perspective? Yes. Is this abusive behaviour? No, I don’t think so. And, frankly, I find it very understandable behaviour when you step outside of Etain’s very emotional perspective on this scene. So let’s flip the situation around and look at it from Kal’s perspective.

Kal has just found out that a Jedi General, forbidden from committed romantic relationships, is pregnant by a slave soldier who is almost certainly forbidden by regulations from that type of fraternisation with an officer. That’s the sort of thing that could get Etain expelled from the Order, but that would definitely get Darman sent back to Kamino for reconditioning (i.e. murder). And she didn’t even ask Darman if he wanted to try for a child before she did this. Of course Kal is furious! Etain is the one who wields all the power in her relationship with Darman, and as far as Kal knows, she’s abused that power horribly for nothing more than her own gratification. We as the readers know that the Force was guiding her to do this, but Kal doesn’t, because she never actually says so. I don’t think he’d find that to be a good reason anyway, because frankly a woman with a new lover saying that the Force (which she picks up by way of intuition and feelings) told her to get pregnant sounds a lot like she wanted this herself and decided it must be what the Force wanted too.

Now we get to the part where Kal takes Kad to raise him himself. This is also often raised as proof of his cruelty. However, taking into account the context we just got, I think it’s a product of something else: Kal has just lost all trust in Etain. Why should he trust the woman who abused her relationship with Darman like that? So he goes into damage control mode. How can he salvage this situation for everyone? Etain, even if he trusted her, couldn’t keep the child without getting attention, which might turn into an investigation, which could find Darman and get him reconditioned. Not to mention what the revelation could do to Darman and Etain’s relationship if Etain handles it wrong, and again Kal doesn’t trust Etain to handle anything right now. If Darman breaks up with his pregnant girlfriend, he has no emotional experience to help him deal with that, and it could very well distract him badly enough to get him killed. Therefore, someone else has to raise the kid, and Darman can’t know about him, at least not yet.

So who should raise the kid? Well, without sending him away entirely, which would probably both sink Etain and Darman’s chance of having any kind of normality in their family (something which I think Kal wants them to be able to have, even now), there aren’t a lot of ways to conceal Kad’s parentage. The only person in their immediate circle who could and would conceivably acquire a random child and then keep it is…Kal himself, and pretending that Kad is his biological grandchild averts all the questions about Darman and Etain. There weren't a whole lot of better options around.

Tag list: @leias-left-hair-bun-again, @peonysink, @rhodeythebetta. Anyone who wants to be added to or removed from that tag list, just let me know!

1/ Okay, this is going to be a bit of a long reply, but do you honestly think Jaime is comparable to Cersei? Cersei has never done a single good thing in her life, has been murdering kids since childhood, and hardly regrets a thing. But Jaime? Like, pre-AGOT, what great crimes has Jaime committed with Cersei, besides incest? It’s pretty clear from Cersei’s POV that she’s been acting autonomously on everything besides conceiving Joffrey. Jaime hasn’t been involved.

2/ Getting into ASOIAF, Bran: yes, totally unforgivable, but a classic trolley situation in which GRRM states most people would do the same. And Jaime has said he’s ashamed in-text, more on that later I presume. Arya: his absolute lowest point, and he acknowledges it as such. It comes at a time when he’s practically out of his mind following Bran, and disturbs the hell out of him later. But hold him to account for sure, this is the closest he ever gets to being like C.

3/ Baby Tully: personally, I think it’s pretty clear in-text that Jaime isn't going to do this. If you look harder at Jaime’s whole relationship with bluffing, the way bluffing is being discussed in these chapters, and Genna, an insightful character, saying Jaime is NOT like his father, it becomes obvious that this is just an ugly attempt at imitating Tywin, complete with trebuchet. It’s dark to threaten this at all, sure, but Edmure is expecting dark so Jaime serves it.

4/ Slut-shaming Cersei - I mean, his thoughts are pretty fucking unpleasant, but… he’s human? This woman has cheated on him, multiple times (and not just as a means to an end, see Taena) whilst asking him to throw away his entire life since he was 15 to remain loyal to her. But sure, let’s just call it slut-shaming lol, Jaime should obviously be proud of Cersei and support her in fucking whoever she likes?

5/ Jaime and consent: GRRM is appalling at writing consent, I totally agree (look at Asha and Qarl)… but he has outright said that the twins’ sex is consensual, whether it looks it or not. You are going to have to use death of the author here if you want to argue that it’s anything otherwise, but by all means call GRRM out for his bad portrayal of it. Tysha: Jaime already knows he was wrong, and it’s plagued him his entire life. But let's not hold him accountable for his dad's extremes.

Oh boy, ok, let’s unpack all this, shall we? Honestly if someone had told me even yesterday that I’d be reciveing Jaime anons out of all the characters, I wouldn’t believe them. Because, again, I’m no renowned Jaime expert and my investment in him extends to... he’s interesting alright, I hope he stays alive long enough so that Bran gets to fling some shit at his face at some point or another in the next two books, but that’s really it.

1. So on the “Cersei has never done a single good thing in her life, has been murdering kids since childhood, and hardly regrets a thing. But Jaime?” part of your ask. I don’t believe there’s much difference on when someone starts committing crimes and it makes it somehow less bad of you don’t begin in your childhood, Jaime could have been attempting to kill/maim children at 13 or at 33 and guess what I would still believe he’s an asshole for it. He’s made choices that involve harming others in the name of maintaining his precious affair with his sister and upholding his family’s crimes, and it doesn’t matter to me when he started on it. This is not a fucking “evilness” point accumulation and Jaime doesn’t get a pass just because Cersei got a head start.

2. “Bran: yes, totally unforgivable, but a classic trolley situation” Sorry, nonny, but did you just compared Jaime pushing Bran from a window so he could continue with his toxic relationship... to the fucking trolley problem? WTF? Jaime, a goddamn adult with critical thinking skills, chose to continue that affair for years and years while having full knowledge of what the consequences of being discovered could be. He chose to be reckless and take his chances anyways. He was between the sharp object and the hard place because he chose to put himself there, and he doesn’t get to say “well I had no other choice” now because he fucking did, for years, he had a choice, and he went ahead with the most selfish one and when the consequences of his actions almost caught up with him, he again choose to be a selfish jerk and harm an innocent bystander, a child, that had no part in any of it. And you could argue that he did it to protect his own children but lmao, Jaime really doesn’t care that much about his children, lbr; just remember how he thinks of Joffrey. Cersei never gave him the opportunity to connect with them that’s true, and he only starts to bond a little with Tommen during aFoC, but I just think that if Jaime truly, sincerely, cared that much about his children’s well-being he could’ve oh idk stopped having sex with his sister??? Instead of being in a position in which he has to ruin a little boy’s life so that he can go on his merry way, even if he feels bad about it, that will never be good enough for me. Jaime had a choice, Bran didn’t.

3. “Baby Tully: personally, I think it’s pretty clear in-text that Jaime isn't going to do this.” I mean, given Jaime’s track record of shoving children from windows so that he can cover his and his own family’s ass, I’m not so sure about that, but fine, that still doesn’t mean that threatening someone with killing their baby so that they will submit to your will any less of a jerk move. I also think you’re kind of missing the point: Jaime here wants to have his cake an eat it too. He tells himself he’s upholding his oath to Catelyn (he really isn’t) while at the same time siding with the fucking Freys and aiding them, he’s basically giving legitimacy to the Red Wedding, the one thing most people agree was a hideous unforgivable act. I just think that if I make the active choice to defend and side with criminals, then I’m not less of a criminal myself.

4. Lol, I made that slut-shaming comment with a clear tongue-in-cheek intent, I obviously know their relationship at present is far more complicated than that, and I do think Jaime has the right to feel betrayed, I just also think that Jaime has this tendency of glorifying Cersei without actually truly seeing her for what she is. At times I almost feel like he considers her the fair innocent maiden to his noble knight, and that’s a big farce to both of them. When Cersei inevitably fails to live up to his expectations he’s shocked, as if he hasn’t known her all their lives.

5. “GRRM is appalling at writing consent, I totally agree” yes of course, he’s the same guy who considers Dany/Drogo consensual, that doesn’t mean I can’t still call it out and see it as a flaw. But even more than that, as you say next: “Tysha: Jaime already knows he was wrong, and it’s plagued him his entire life. But let's not hold him accountable for his dad's extremes.” like, again Jaime recognizing something is wrong and feeling bad about it doesn’t magically absolves him of it. Of course he’s not responsible for his dad’s fuckery but he’s guilty of withholding the truth from his little brother, whom he claims to love, with the full knowledge that it was an extremely traumatic experience for him, and that it had plagued him all his life, while patting himself on the back thinking that’s the right thing to do, and Jaime rationalizes it believing that of course Tysha couldn’t possibly care for Tyrion, so she was doing it for the money, which makes her no better than a whore (because Jaime, too, can be a misogynist UwU). You know, Tyrion has a lot of bad going on for him, but my god he’s 100% right in being furious with Jaime in this situation.

Like as you said, Cersei’s big problem is her lack of empathy, but Jaime’s is his apathy. With some big exceptions like when he killed Aerys and protected Brienne, Jaime’s apathy towards what he fully well knows is wrong and yet choses not to do anything about it is my biggest qualm with him. It’s something I believe GRRM is working with his development, but so far as the story goes, he hasn’t really made any significant turn, so I’m not giving him a gold star for participation. I mean, I realize that I’m the minority here when it comes to my opinion of Jaime, and maybe, nonny, how you and other fans interpret him is how he’s meant to be interpreted, but I don’t care lol. Writing this made me remember what GRRM said...

“Sometimes he felt like showering after writing a chapter about Cersei, though, as her world-view is quite unsympathetic.”—In this article.

I honestly wonder why he had to take a shower for Cersei torturing people (who yes, is a horrible evil person, I’m not trying to defend her), but not for Tyrion strangling a woman or Jaime crippling a child for life, but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Post season 8 fix-it headcanon/Jonerys fanfic outline

For Daenerys Resurrection Week, Day 1: Resurrection and forgiveness

A long time ago I commented here that I had written an outline for a post season 8 fix-it fanfic. And I did write some things, mostly about the political situation in the story, and character's motivations. As far as actually coming up with a proper story and proper scenes though, I didn't really go very far. And to be honest I really don't feel like writing fics, I'd rather spend my energy on metas. But I wanted to share my headcanon anyway.

To start, my headcanon is canon-compliant. I appreciate fix-it AUs, but I have a problem with them because I always feel the need to acknowledge canon. So I acknowledge everything that happened in season 8. But in my headcanon, I completely absolve Dany of everything. Instead, I tend to think Bran warged into Dany and made her burn King's Landing, urged by Sansa. So yeah, this is not for Stark fans. My headcanon is pretty much anti everyone but Dany and Jon. (By the way, if anyone has seen any fic with this premise, and that follows season 8 canon, can you please tell me? I don't know why, but it seems no one has thought of this so far? Or maybe I just haven't seen it, since I don't read a lot of fanfic, but I would appreciate reading a fic like this)

Ok, but now you're probably thinking, but why would Bran do this? Why would Sansa tell him to do this? Isn't it OOC? That's where my complete reinterpretation of Bran and Sansa's characters start. I'm sorry I had to vilify them, but I see no other way to completely absolve Dany.

First, Bran: When Bran had met Bloodraven, Bloodraven had hoped that by teaching Bran his abilities, he would have someone to help him look into the past and find an easier way to defeat the Night King. Probably, the children of the forest told him about something (like, maybe, some hidden magical artifact), but they didn’t know where this magical artifact was. So Bloodraven thought having another person with the Three Eyed Raven’s powers would help defeat the Night King. Bran followed Bloodraven’s instructions faithfully, but in the end, he didn’t find anything that would help, and that’s why he was useless in the War for the Dawn. The reason why the Night King was going after Bran was because the Night King knew Bran had the powers to find out his secret and destroy him easily (ie, without a battle). But Bran wasn’t able to do this in the end.

But Bran’s journey to become the three eyed raven wasn’t meaningless to the story. As Jojen once warned Bran, if he spent too much time inside the mind of a wolf, he would lose himself. And this is what happened. Bran spent most of his time warging on ravens, wolves, trees, trying to find the answer. He had seen in his future visions that the Night King would be defeated, so he wasn’t much worried about that (which explains his calm behavior when the Night King came to kill him), but he didn’t know exactly how, he thought he would be the one to do it, so he worked tirelessly and warged tirelessly (btw, Bran’s future visions are more flawed. He can look into the past easily if he knows what to look for, but the future isn’t as clear and it changes constantly, it is based on possibilities). Bloodraven had time to adapt before he spent most of his time warging. Bran didn’t have that time, because the need was urgent, so the time spent warging animals and trees made him start losing his humanity, in the sense that he stopped caring, and stopped having as much empathy. He loved his family to some extent, and he still had some sense of self preservation, but he had almost no empathy left for others.

Now, let's talk about Sansa. Sansa, during her journey, became a hardened woman. Unlike book Sansa, who keeps her kindness, show!Sansa has absorbed the lessons her abusers taught her: don’t trust anyone, look out only for yourself, take any advantage you can manage. This is what Sansa has been doing for quite some time. She doesn’t tell the truth about who killed Lysa Arryn, and the reason for this isn’t that she’s afraid of Littlefinger and sees no other choice. No. Sansa has entirely embraced Littlefinger and his plans. She later resents him for selling her to the Boltons, but this experience just leaves her more traumatized. So Sansa becomes a different person: her trauma makes her look out only for herself. She had always wished for power (since season 1 she wanted to be queen), and this hasn't changed, but now, it's also tied with her traumas: she wants power as a way for her to feel in control after lacking agency for so long.

So here's how I would interpret Sansa's actions since she escaped the Boltons. In season 6, when Littlefinger reminds Sansa that Jon is a threat to her, and only her half brother, Sansa starts plotting against him. She secretly corresponds with Littlefinger, and doesn’t tell Jon about the Vale army. She does this for different reasons: she thought that by doing this, Jon and Rickon had more chance to die, and she could become queen without Jon there to threaten her power. She also wanted to be seen as the hero of the battle, the one that saved them at the last minute, so she could have more chances of becoming queen. Not only that, but she didn’t want the Wildlings in the North and saw them as expendable. They were only a tool to her. She wanted to use them to get her lands and titles back, and used the fact that Jon saved them to try to convince Jon that they should fight (Sansa does say in season 6 that the Wildlings should fight for Winterfell because they owe Jon their lives). So she saw them as expendable tools to get Winterfell back, but she also didn’t care that they would die because she withheld information about the Vale army: the less foreign savages in the North, the better. When she doesn’t get her position of Queen in the North, she starts undermining Jon deliberately. Jon asks her to stop, but she continues doing it. When Bran returns, she offers Bran the position of Lord of Winterfell, and is relieved that he doesn’t want it. When the lords talk about putting her in Jon’s place, she doesn’t reprimand them. In her conflict with Arya, she was indeed going to kill Arya. After all, she sends Brienne away after Littlefinger reminds her that Brienne is sworn to protect both her and Arya. She only doesn’t kill Arya because she goes to Bran and learns that Littlefinger was manipulating her, and she realizes that Littlefinger is a bigger threat than Arya. She was fine in keeping Littlefinger as an ally before, she didn’t care about all the horrible things he did, but she realizes that keeping him alive would be more dangerous than advantageous. So she makes a sham trial to kill him, while also omitting her involvement in Littlefinger’s schemes in the Vale and the fact that she knew about them.

So by the time Dany gets to Winterfell, Sansa is a person that only cares about her position and privileges. When she hears Dany talking about her reforms in favor of the smallfolk, she is scandalized. Unlike book!Sansa, show!Sansa never lived as a bastard, and keeps her classism. Sansa is against Dany not because of pettiness or stupid distrust, but because she feels her power threatened, and because she thinks Dany is a tyrant for wanting to take away the privileges of the nobility. So Sansa tries to undermine Dany in every way she can: publicly telling Dany that she and her armies aren’t welcome; badmouthing Dany while Dany is fighting for her. When Sansa sees Dany giving Storm’s End to Gendry, she hates seeing it because she thinks giving Storm’s End to a bastard is an absurd (after all, she was usurped by her bastard brother) and also because if the Northern Lords see Dany’s generosity, they might not be so against her, especially after Dany fought for them. Finally, Sansa betrays the oath she swore to Jon in the godswood, telling Tyrion Jon’s secret, not necessarily because she wants Jon to be king, but because she wants to overthrow Dany. And she knows that if her plans succeeds, Dany will end up dead and no longer a threat. She doesn’t care that this could spark a civil war and that innocents could die. She doesn't care that she's plotting the death of a woman that just saved her. She only wants to retain her power, and she wouldn’t be allowed to do that if Dany actually “broke the wheel”. She continues not to care about anyone but herself by humiliating Edmure when he speaks (because she wants herself to be queen), and when Tyrion suggests Bran, she undermines him as well: first saying that Bran can’t rule because he doesn’t want it and can’t have children, and later by asking for independence, knowing that asking for independence would just lead to political instability and possibly war, but not caring about it, because she wants to be queen. So these are Sansa’s motivations.

So how would the idea of Bran warging into Dany work? Well, Bran has future visions. He doesn't choose to have them, they happen to him, and they are uncertain. But as we did see twice, Bran saw a dragon flying over King's Landing, and he saw the throne room destroyed. He later tells people in the Dragonpit that he knew he was going to be king. This implies that he didn't just have a vision of a dragon over King's Landing, but that he also had more detailed visions of what would happen later. He also tells Jon that Jon was "exactly where he has supposed to be", which implies that he knew Jon would kill Dany. So Bran knew many things: knew a dragon would fly over King's Landing, knew the throne room would be destroyed, knew Jon would kill Dany (meaning that he probably knew Dany was going to be responsible for the destruction), and knew the political ramifications of all that (he was going to be king). I think that, despite the fact his visions of the future are not as exact as visions of the past and present, every evidence seems to point out that Bran knew Dany would destroy King's Landing. So I choose to believe that he saw Dany, at the back of a dragon, burning everything, and all the subsequent events that happened with it.

So maybe, Bran started looking into the future and saw Dany becoming more and more depressed. He thought this would make her burn King's Landing. And he has seen how much Sansa craves power, and he still has some loyalty to his family. So he really has no interest in preventing an outcome that gets his family on top, and given that he has lost much of his empathy due to too much time warging on animais and trees, he doesn't really try to do anything to prevent the burning of King's Landing. He doesn't warn Dany or Jon. He tells Jon the truth about his parentage even though he knows that the truth would cause chaos. And so on.

At some point, he tells Sansa what's going to happen. And Sansa also does nothing to prevent it, and instead, wants to make it happen (like when she tells the truth of Jon's parentage). She takes Bran's visions of Dany burning King's Landing as a confirmation of her bias against Dany, which makes her feel righteous in her actions. And she wants House Stark on top, so she doesn't really stop to think that maybe, just maybe, she should be trying to prevent this from happening.

So when Dany marchs south, and attacks King's Landing, Bran watches over things to see what's happening, and Sansa waits by his side for him to tell her the news. But as time passes, nothing happens. Dany is not burning King's Landing as they expected. She is only attacking the soldiers, and is close to winning without bloodshed (This did, in fact, happen in the show. Dany never attacks any civilians before the bells, she only attacks military targets). Sansa starts to get anxious. Sansa was already expecting that she would become queen, and she becomes nervous when this possibility starts to be threatened. Then, when King's Landing surrenders, Sansa gets more desperate, and asks Bran to do something, telling him that they shouldn't allow Dany to stay in power. Bran, dispassionate as he is about everything and not really caring about people, tells Sansa that the possibility of warging into Dany exists. Sansa asks Bran to do it. He asks if she is certain, and in the desperation of the moment, Sansa says yes. So for Sansa, this was about seeing the power that she craved slipping through her fingers once again. For Bran, he was simply doing what Sansa wanted. He didn't particularly care about becoming King, but he didn't really have much empathy for the people of King's Landing, so to him it didn't matter.

Dany doesn't really realize what's happening. She is in a very emotionally fragile state, and she is already feeling certain things like anger and despair. This makes her vulnerable to Bran. A person with the mental strength to resist Bran’s warging could have done it, but Dany couldn't. So when we see Dany shaking her head in episode 8x5, before she starts burning King's Landing, it's because she was fighting against Bran's invasion, but in the end she couldn't resist it. So everything we see from that moment in episode 8x5 until Dany's death, Dany is only vaguely aware of the things she is doing, but is actually being controlled by Bran. And Bran is doing everything to make sure the outcome Sansa desired (Dany's death) happens: after Dany's attack, Bran makes her land with Drogon and makes her give Grey Worm the order to kill the Lannister soldiers that surrendered. He makes the speech about world domination. And Bran's warging is also the explanation why Dany acted so weird in the last episode. It's also the reason Dany didn't have anyone to protect her when Jon came to kill her: Bran made her give orders to her soldiers to leave her alone, and to let Jon come in without taking his weapons. When Jon stabs Dany, it's when Bran finally leaves her mind, and it's the first moment of full awareness she has since Bran warged her. So the betrayal and heartbreak she feels is even worse. She wakes from a trance and sees the man she loves killing her.

Now, you might wonder, why did Bran and Sansa have to go to such extreme lengths? Why didn't they warg a random soldier to do the job and kill Dany, instead of making her burn thousands of innocents to make Jon kill her? Expecting that Jon would make the decision to kill Dany is risky, because he could decide not to do it, and Bran and Sansa's plan would fall apart. But the problem is: they didn't simply want Dany to die. They wanted to destroy her reputation, to make sure that none of her followers could seize power. If Dany simply died, the throne would go to Jon, and measures to break the wheel could still happen. Sansa didn't want this to happen, she didn’t want to lose her privileges, she wanted the herself in power and Dany's forces neutralized. By warging into Dany, they could destroy Dany's reputation, make Tyrion and Jon kill her and destroy their own chances of seizing power, and destroy the chance that Dany's allies could seize power instead of her. With Dany burning King's Landing, Bran and Sansa could spin the narrative that Dany is a radical extremist, and that her wish to make reforms is what made her a tyrant. And so on. So this is why none of them thought of warging someone and making them kill Dany, or warging Dany and making her kill herself. (Besides, I headcanon that warging someone is easier if the person is in a fragile mental state, so maybe trying to warg someone else wouldn't work).

So this is my headcanon to explain Dany burning King's Landing. From this point, everything happens as in the show: Bran and Sansa get their crowns, Arya sails west of Westeros (and dies in a storm because I have no creativity to think of a story for her and I started to hate her show self anyway), Tyrion becomes Hand and Jon is exiled. Drogon obviously, takes Dany to Volantis to resurrect her.

In exile, Jon is miserable. On the one hand, he tells himself he did the right thing. After all, Dany seemed intent on "liberating" more cities, and could maybe kill his family. And regardless of whether she would burn more cities or not, or kill his family or not, he thinks that anyone who would burn innocents for no reason and call it "necessary" shouldn't rule.

On the other hand, Jon blames himself for all the ways he failed Dany. He thinks that he was so caught up in his own angst about his parentage, about how he and Dany were related, that he didn't notice how much she was hurting. So while Jon tells himself he did the right thing in killing her, he also blames himself for not comforting her, for disregarding her fears about the dangers of his parentage coming out and telling the secret to his family, for not standing up more for her. He wonders if he only could have comforted her, then maybe she wouldn’t have ended up like that. He also starts to doubt his decision to kill her: if Dany did what she did because she became mad with grief, then maybe he could have helped her come to her senses. Maybe he didn't have to kill her. Maybe he could have helped her heal. So I headcanon that Jon would be really hard on himself and start to hate himself for killing Dany. (By the way, it's also important to consider Jon's state of mind when he kills Dany. I'm sure seeing thousands of innocents burned by dragonfire must be pretty traumatic, and would push him to decide that killing Dany was necessary).

But not only Jon blames himself, he also starts to blame his family for what they did to Dany. He starts to hate Sansa for conspiring against her (and almost leading to Dany's death, since Sansa telling the truth made Varys try to poison Dany). He blames his family for being so cold to Dany, for using her for her resources and then discarding her, and thinks about how things could have gone differently if they hadn't done these things. And at some point, Jon will remember Bran's cryptic line about him being "exactly where he was supposed to be", and start to get suspicious that Bran knew what Dany would do, and that Bran knew Jon would end up killing her, and did nothing to prevent it. But Jon will brush off these suspicions by thinking that "his family would never do this to him".

Meanwhile, Dany will, obviously, be resurrected. Drogon will take her body to Volantis, but since he is an animal, it's not like he knows what to do with it. So he will rest with her body and mourn her somewhere in Volantis, and some slaves will find him. Said slaves will recognize Dany. They have never seen her, of course, but seeing a silver haired woman and a black dragon, it's not difficult to guess who she is. And they will also mourn her, of course. Dany was a hope to many slaves. These slaves also hoped that Dany would come to save them, so seeing the dragon queen dead is the death of those dreams. They try to get to Drogon, and Drogon, slowly, comes to trust them to get near Dany. They bring a red priestess to where Dany's body is to make the rites usually done for the dead and honor the dragon queen. They don't really tell this to anyone, because they don't want her body to be found and desecrated by slave masters. So the ceremony is done in secret. But something they didn't expect happens: as the priestess gives her the last kiss, Dany is resurrected.

Oh, and as soon as Dany is resurrected, something terrible already happens: she has a miscarriage. Dany had found out she was pregnant very recently, and didn't have time to tell Jon. But since he killed her, the baby died, and didn't come back when she was resurrected. (I don't have the link right now, but I remember reading GRRM say that people who return from the dead are those who feel a strong sense of purpose, and I think a fetus wouldn't have that, so I don't think the baby would be resurrected)

Well, with all of this, Dany is incredibly traumatized. She doesn't know she was being warged by Bran, and she feels guilty for what she thinks she did to King's Landing. She has lost another child, she has lost her hope for the future, the love of her life has killed her. So she falls into depression, and starts to live hidden in Volantis (the red priestess that resurrected her helps her with a spell to prevent Bran from using his powers to see her). She has given up on the idea of helping people. And she doesn’t want to fly on Drogon anymore, because she has horrible flashbacks of what she did to King’s Landing, and because she doesn’t trust herself with a weapon as powerful as Drogon.

But after some time, Dany will start coming back to her former self. She’ll see the suffering of the slaves in Volantis, she will hear the news about Volantis going to war against the cities of Dragon’s Bay in order to re-enslave everyone, and she will hear about how some of the Dothraki have come back to their old ways and are enslaving again, and she’ll decide that she needs to do something about it. This is when she decides to ride Drogon again.

*by the way, here’s a parenthesis about the political situation in Essos*

Volantis has slavery, and is preparing for war against Meereen and Astapor. Meereen and Astapor are still strong and anti-slavery, because Dany left former slaves in the government, and she also left military forces to avoid her new governments being overthrown (like what happened the first time in Astapor, so Dany learned from her mistakes). Daario is still loyal to Dany, because he really loved her (and also because the Meereenese government is paying him to protect the city, so he really has no reason to turn on them). In Yunkai, however, Dany had wanted to do the same thing she did in Astapor (kill all the masters), but Tyrion convinced her not to do it, opting for only cutting the throats of two of the Yunkish leaders. This means that even though Yunkai is being watched by Dany’s army in the region, and they don’t openly sell slaves anymore (lest they provoke a war against Astapor in Meereen, which would be bad now that Yunkai is weakened), the Yunkish leaders are still conspiring to bring back slavery, but this time, instead of funding the Sons of the Harpy (once again, they’re not doing this anymore because Astapor and Meereen are aware that they were the culprits, and the resurgence of the Sons of the Harpy would mean war as well), they are secretly negotiating with Volantis, asking for help (since the end of slavery in Dragon’s Bay meant that the price of slaves went up, and Volantis’ economy was suffering because of this).

Meanwhile, some of the Dothraki returned to Essos. Of the ones that returned, some Dothraki believed in Dany, meaning that they didn’t return to the old ways and some even have hope that she will return, since she’s the Stallion that Mounts the World. While others have made up their own khalasars, and started enslaving and raiding again (even selling slaves to Volantis and other slave cities that remained). These khalasars that returned to the old ways are allied with Volantis.

I don’t  really have a headcanon for cities like Pentos, Myr, Tyrosh, Lys and others. I don’t know if they will still have slavery or not. The show doesn’t really mention it as far as I remember, so it could go either way.

*end of parenthesis about Essos*

So Dany starts by seeking for her khalasar, the ones that are in Essos. Some of the Dothraki (the ones that didn’t go back to their old ways and didn’t go back to being slavers) eagerly accept her back. Together with them, Dany starts again her army, and they end up defeating those other khalasars that started enslaving again. So once again, Dany unites the khalasars in Essos. But there are still some Dothraki left in Westeros, so Dany hasn’t reunited all khalasars yet.

After uniting the khalasars in Essos, stopping them from engaging in slavery, and stopping them from selling slaves to Volantis and other cities, at some point, Dany will reunite with the Unsullied. Together with her new khalasar, the Unsullied, and Drogon, Dany will start a war against the slave cities that remain in Essos. She will liberate Volantis and many other cities. She will go back to Slaver’s Bay and destroy the counter-revolutionary movement in Yunkai. She will reunite with Daario too, and things will happen between them, because I ship Dany and Daario, and also because I think Dany deserves to have some physical and emotional comfort before she reunites with Jon.

So with all that Dany is doing in Essos, news of Dany’s resurrection will reach Westeros, and they will greatly worry Bran, Tyrion and Sansa.

*And here’s another parenthesis, about the political situation in Westeros*

Tyrion is now theoretically Lord of Casterly Rock, but the Lannisters of Lannisport are opposing him (and unfortunately, ableism is a part of it). Tyrion has support from some of them, with whom he had a good relationship in the past, but not from most of them (and that fact the he killed Tywin is obviously another reason why many would oppose him). However, most of the Lannisport Lannisters start to die or disappear mysteriously - through suicide, through murder, or simply disappearing. This isn’t Tyrion’s doing, though. He doesn’t know why this is happening, but in the end, only his allies survived, and Tyrion starts to get a better hold on the Westerlands. (What is actually happening is that Bran has spies/ravens and is ordering the killing of those he views as opposition. He does this because he sees no other choice, because the situation in the Six Kingdoms is very chaotic)

In the Reach, Bronn is now lord, which is pissing off many lords (they think it’s an absurd that a sellsword was given Highgarden when many of the Reach families had better claims to it). He has the support of the Tarlys, because Sam’s family wants to support the new regime. But the region is in a chaos. Many lords are rebelling, the smallfolk are rebelling because Bronn is greedy and exploits them, and doesn’t give them justice (They aren’t necessarily hungry, because it’s the Reach. But Bronn is trying to indulge some lords to gain their alliance and be able to contend against the lords that are against him, so he let’s them do whatever they want with the smallfolk and offers the smallfolk no protection). Outlaw groups start to form to fight against Bronn and his allies, but he answers with brutality to those who oppose him or that try to ask him for anything better for the smallfolk. Bronn keeps his own sellsword army, that he rewards greatly to help him stop the smallfolk from claiming for more rights (and spending so much money on sellswords gains Bronn the enmities of some lords and smallfolk). Some of the Unsullied didn’t go to Naath (only Grey Worm’s closest friends went), and stayed in the Reach, and they help the outlaw groups.

The new prince of Dorne doesn’t have any allegiance to Bran. As soon as things calm down, he declares for Independence, given that King Bran gave independence to his own sister. He stops paying tributes, and Bran sends troops (composed of soldiers from the Crownlands, the Westerlands, Riverlands and the Stormlands) against them. The prince of Dorne answers, ready to fight for his independence. Bran brutally crushes his opposition.

Yara and the Ironborn want independence. Yara also resents the Starks for killing Dany, and also for making her brother die for them. She has taken back the Iron Islands from Euron in season 8, but now, without Dany’s support and the fear of dragons, some of the Ironborn don’t want a woman as their queen, and they want to go back to the old ways as Euron promised (while Yara, still loyal to Dany, has decided to uphold her ideals, decreeing that there should be no more raiding and raping). So the Iron Islands declare independence, but they are divided. Yara still has more support (since many of Euron’s supporters died in Dany’s attack to King’s Landing), but the few that don’t follow her start to raid the Riverlands, Westerlands and the North.

Edmure is a good lord, but the Riverlands have suffered greatly from the wars and the winter. When he tries to ask the Iron Throne for help to feed his people, the Iron Throne doesn’t send much. His niece Sansa is not going to help either (as she has her own concerns with food and can’t share), and Edmure starts go get disillusioned with the new regime and with his own family, who won’t help him, and who will also make his people fight in another war (against Dorne), while his people are being attacked by the Ironborn. And he doesn’t forget how Sansa humiliated him at the Dragonpit.

Gendry is loyal to the Starks, but only because he knew Arya and Jon. With both of them gone, his loyalty to King Bran is weak. He cares more about his own smallfolk. Gendry was a lowborn bastard after all, so he wants to do everything he can for them. But with time, he sees that the new regime is not interested in helping the smallfolk, just like they weren’t interested in listening to Sam’s idea of democracy. His loyalty also starts to waver. He also has problems with some lords from the Stormlands that don’t like that some bastard is now in charge, but it’s less than Bronn, since Gendry is indeed trying to be a good lord, and he is indeed Robert Baratheon’s son (he was recognized as such by Stannis Baratheon, and later by Daenerys Targaryen, so now it’s common knowledge).

The North also suffered with the War for the Dawn and the winter. Sansa is regarded as a competent lady by the Northern lords, but she has no love in the North. The Northern Lords kinda just got stuck with her. Sansa had stored grain in Winterfell to feed the castle and her armies, but that only means that the smallfolk in other parts of the North had to give up part of their harvest to send to Winterfell, and now, with the Winter, they are starving. To quell discontentment, Sansa tries bringing food from White Harbour, and Bran also sends her food. The fact that Bran is sending food to his sister for lower prices than usually done when trading with other foreign lands makes the lords of the Six Kingdoms angry. Bran stops sending so much food, so Sansa starts demanding more tributes from White Harbour. This angers Lord Manderly more and more, and Lord Manderly decides to demand for independence. Sansa had publicly complained many times about Dany being a tyrant for not giving her independence, so he uses the same argument Sansa used in the Dragonpit: White Harbour had suffered too much: they had sent their troops to fight the Night King alongside the Starks, but not only that, they had been the ones that most contributed to feeding the North. Because of this, he thinks he deserves independence, just like Sansa argued that she deserved independence from the Seven Kingdoms. He argues that what Sansa did created a precedent for independence, and that it would be tyranny if she refused to give it to him. Sansa is outraged, and sends her troops to make Lord Manderly bend the knee and force him to send food again.

The Vale will stay loyal to the Starks to the end, since they have mostly been left alone, and are not having as much problems with food (they weren’t very affected by wars, and their land is fertile). Nepotism also helps, because Bran won’t demand too much from his family. Edmure, also Bran’s family, was asking for help, but Tyrion advised that Lord Royce, the regent of the Vale and Sweetrobin’s advisor, was a proud man and their most loyal ally, and that angering him and making him send food to the Riverlands would be bad for them (Tyrion was wrong, as always).

By the way, winter isn’t over. Book speculation often said that the Others were the cause of the long winter, but in the show, we saw that there was snow in King’s Landing even after the White Walkers were defeated. So here, we’ll accept the fact that the seasons being long is just a normal thing for their world. After they kill Dany, Westeros goes through a few months of “false spring”, but winter returns stronger than ever after that. Crops die, hunger spreads through the land.

So basically, everything is chaos.

*end of the parenthesis about Westeros*

So with the chaos that is happening in Westeros, and the news of Dany’s return, Bran, Tyrion and Sansa start to get nervous. They pardon Jon, and Sansa sends men after Jon to bring him back from beyond the Wall, because she believes having Jon in Winterfell could serve as a shield in case Dany attacks (she thinks Dany might still love him, or that Jon might be able to negotiate with her. In a last case scenario, she could deliver Jon to Dany to make Dany leave her alone), and also, because she feels lonely, since her entire family left her.

Jon comes back to Winterfell. At some point, he overhears a conversation between Sansa and Maester Wolkan. Maester Wolkan was in the room when Sansa asked Bran to warg into Dany, and he knows the truth. Sansa sworn him to secrecy, but now, he comes to her with news of Dany’s resurrection, and asks Sansa if Dany would want revenge for Bran having warged into her. Sansa answers that she is not sure that Daenerys has memories or if she is aware that she was being warged, and if Daenerys doesn’t remember, she might not seek revenge.

So when Jon overhears this conversation, he learns that Daenerys was innocent, and that she is alive. He is horrified by what his family did, and also feels guilty for not believing in Daenerys, for having trusted his family and dismissed Dany’s fears, and so on. There’s a lot of angst. Jon then pretends he didn’t hear Sansa’s conversation, and pretends that everything is ok. He runs away from Winterfell in the middle of the night, without warning, with the intention of going to Dany.

From this moment on, I’m not really sure of what happens. I like the idea of Jon spending some time in the South, helping outlaw groups in the Reach, and learning about his brother’s tyranny. On the other hand, I don’t know how Jon could escape being seen by Bran’s ravens. So maybe Jon simply takes a ship and goes to Essos. But before he manages to take his ship, I still like to think that he talks with the smallfolk and hears what has been happening in Westeros (since he didn’t hear anything about it when he was exiled beyond the Wall).

Jon and Dany eventually reunite. Jon is brought to her in her war camp (because Dany is still at war with the slavers in Essos). While on the one hand Dany feels angry at Jon for killing her, for not supporting her and for giving up on her, on the other hand, she feels ashamed of what she did in King’s Landing and thinks she deserved to die (after all, Dany herself would have killed a person that burned innocents for no reason). So she accepts to meet Jon, but only with her guards around her, because while she still loves Jon, she is also afraid of him. Dany doesn’t have any intention of getting revenge against Jon, since she feels guilty about what she did. She is curious about what could possibly be the reason for Jon to look for her again, and thinks that he wants to kill her in the name of his family.

Jon is still very confused and tormented, and while a part of him believes that Dany is innocent, another part of him doesn’t want to believe that his siblings would have been capable of doing such an atrocity. So when he and Dany talk, he starts by asking her why she did what she did to King’s Landing. Dany answers that she doesn’t really know. That before she realized, she was doing it, like she couldn’t control herself. She tells Jon that her memories of King’s Landing almost don’t feel real, and that she is ashamed of what she did. This convinces Jon that Dany is indeed innocent, and he tells her the truth.

And this causes a lot of angst, of course. Initially, it makes Dany angry that he didn’t believe in her innocence and that he gave up on her so easily. She accuses him of having betrayed her, of having abandoned her. She also tells Jon that she was pregnant, and that because he killed her, he also killed their child (and this of course, makes Jon feel even more guilty). But with time, the anger passes, and she starts to see Jon as another victim of his family’s machinations (unlike Jon, who was hesitant in believing the worst of his siblings, Dany has a very low opinion of the Starks).

So Dany forgives Jon. They don’t return to their romantic relationship, but consider each other friends. And Jon starts to help her in her fight against slavery in Essos. This makes them content, since neither of them wants to ever return to Westeros. But unfortunately for them, news of Dany’s resurrection have started to reach more people, and lords from Westeros come to her to ask for her help in deposing Bran and the lords loyal to him. Listening to all the things that are happening in Westeros and how much the people are suffering only angers Dany. And it angers Jon as well. So they make plans to return to Westeros. Dany leaves a big part of her army of Unsullied and Dothraki in Essos, so that they could keep on with their fight against the masters. She returns to Westeros mostly with the army of their Westerosi allies (and her dragon, of course).

Dany has in mind a new political system, with a council of noblemen and a council of the smallfolk, so she negotiates with her allies with this in mind, making it clear that if they want to support her claim, they also have to support her reforms She has decided that she won’t hesitate to use force against the lords who don’t accept her reforms.

*another parenthesis*

Since I said I didn’t really have everything figured out, here are some alternatives to the things that I just described:

Maybe the reason Jon went back to Winterfell wasn’t because Sansa called him, but because when Jon was beyond the Wall, he saw that the White Walkers weren’t entirely gone. So maybe, what makes Dany return to Westeros isn’t that she wants revenge or because the lords are asking her to return, but because of the White Walkers. This would leave her conflicted, because the last time she tried to help those people she was betrayed and killed.

Or maybe Dany’s motivation to return to Westeros are just that she wants revenge. In this case, maybe she won’t even accept the alliance with the Lords, because she wants to change things for the common people. Or maybe she makes alliances with lesser lords promising them more political influence and that lesser lords would have as much sway as high lords in her new system (as well as smallfolk would also have more power).

*end of parenthesis*

Whatever Dany’s motivations for returning to Westeros are, she returns to Westeros, takes back the throne, and takes revenge. Dany is no longer the trusting soft person she was when she first went to Westeros. She comes with fire and blood, uses force when she needs to. Bran dies, because he is way too powerful for Dany to keep alive and trust that he won’t warg or spy on anyone again. As for Sansa and Tyrion, I could see different endgames: they could be exiled, imprisoned and kept as hostages, or Dany could kill them both for treason: Sansa because she revealed Jon’s parentage against Jon and Dany’s wishes, and also because of her part in the plan to make Bran warg into Dany; and Tyrion for telling what Sansa told him to Varys without Dany’s permission, which led Varys to try to poison Dany, and Dany could have died due to Tyrion’s actions; though I could see Dany being more lenient towards Tyrion than Sansa, since Sansa’s crimes are more grave. But I don’t see Dany ever accepting him as an advisor again.

Jonerys will reconcile and rule. There might be some conflict with Jon because he doesn’t want to see his family die (which is why there could be the possibility of keeping Sansa alive but as a prisoner), but in the end they get back together, marry and have children. Dany creates a new government in which both smallfolk and lords can have representatives and create laws, and she creates laws that limit the powers of the lords and stops them from abusing the smallfolk. She could also give some autonomy to each of the kingdoms: she doesn’t fully give them independence, but this greater autonomy helps quell the growing wishes for independence from each of the kingdoms.

So that’s my post season 8 headcanon. Dany was entirely innocent, the Starks were the villains, and Bran warged into Dany. Btw, if anyone wants to use this headcanon to actually write a fic, feel free to do so. Just please tell me because I’d love to read it.

Liar Revealed! A Bug’s Life Essay

A Bug’s Life is my favourite Pixar movie and thus, it turns out I have a lot of thoughts about it. In this case, what was originally my interpretation soley in response to points I’ve seen raised on YouTube and TV Tropes has spun off into this mega essay.... all focused on a single scene.

But hey, it works with one of the film’s main messages; that something big grows out of a small idea!

The scene is the most notorious in the movie, at least from what I’ve seen, and I’m inclined to agree it’s the weakest part of this giant clock. But why is it like that and how could it have been handled better?

As I’ve said, this is actually my favourite (albeit not what I consider their very best) of Pixar’s output, and I wouldn’t have been able to go into such depth without a huge amount of love for the finished product, flawed as it may be.

It’s also possible I’ll write a more generalised thing on what I love about the film in the future, but I won’t promise anything o7;; 🐜

The Lie is ...laid

Actually, I should talk about two scenes. First is where the Lie is established:

After the humourous mutual misunderstanding between the Circus Bugs and Flik, the former are quite horrified to discover they’re expected to fight the Grasshoppers off themselves instead of putting on a show. Ahh, that old classic~

But no, they want out and Flik, who has just been informed by them during the welcoming shindig, is understandably rattled and despairing over this addition to his list of failures. He says the fallout will not only brand him, but his hypothetical grandchildren as a Terrible Loser and even says he’s as good as dead as soon as the other ants find out. Owch.

Before things get too heavy, the focus shifts around until The Bird becomes the main immediate threat. The whole Bird scene leads the ants to become convinced the Circus Bugs are really amazing warriors and, as this is the first time in what could be years that they have a crowd cheering for them it’s the success and Flik’s later idea to make a Giant Mech in the shape of a Bird instead of planning any actual combat that convinces them to play along.

So, that’s the lie set up and solidified. Now for the eventual fallout:

During a fun party after the Bird has been built, an ominous force arrives... PT Flea, the Jerkass ringmaster who had fired the Circus Bugs. This local bug promptly ruins everything by literally shining a light on the Circus Bugs and their nature as such, and then Flik is accidentally outed as the Guy Who Thought Up The Bird.

The Liar Revealed Trope

I would link the TV Tropes article here, but as tungle doesn’t like external sites I’ll just quote the more relevant parts from it:

“Liar Revealed in the Internal Reveal of The Lie, the facade maintained by a protagonist which provides the primary dramatic tension for the plot. This usually sets up the third act where the protagonists are forced to deal with the consequences of the lie on top of any external threats.

There are a few usual ways this ends up. If the lie was for selfish reasons, the protagonist will doubtless face the wrath of those he lied to, but along the way end up having a change of conscience, and try to redeem themselves through good acts and An Aesop about "what really matters". If the lie was well-intentioned, the protagonist may still find that others turn their backs on him, but go on to carry through with what they said they'd do anyway, proving themselves a hero after all.

It's worth noting that this trope is particularly easy and common to misuse, either in the tendency of the protagonist to Maintain the Lie for reasons that make no sense except for dramatic tension or of the deceived to turn against the protagonist for the deception in spite of other considerations that should by all rights absolve him.”

And in the folder there’s a specific entry for this film:

A Bug's Life has Flik supposedly finding "warrior bugs" to save his colony after misconstruing a situation. When he realizes his mistake (that they're circus performers rather than trained warriors), he's forced to keep the lie going in order to not cause panic among the other ants. Once the colony finds out, it inevitably results in one of the most painfully Played Straight examples of this trope in animation history... 

As you can see there, the dislike for this scene has seeped into the entry. Of course, TV Tropes is pretty informal and I like that, but it’s telling that this is a general perception.

Continue reading below the Cut! ✂

What I don’t like

So, I think my main issue with the scene boils down to... it’s very nebulous and unclear as to what’s so bad about Flik lying. Between the Council, the Queen and Atta, there seems to be a jumbled, confusing motive traffic jam that somehow results in what TV Tropes refers to the Liar Reveal Trope being played “Painfully Straight”.

But uhh, what’s the problem? Yes, Flik lied, but we know that wasn’t something he’d planned on doing, it was his attempt at damage control. The other ants don’t know that part, but still, what are they objecting to, specifically? That the Circus bugs are Circus bugs? That the Bird Plan was Flik’s? That.... lying is treated at an absolute moral failing regardless of the circumstances??

The council dudes are like: “OH WHAAAAT, the defence plan was by Clowns??” [No, it was Flik] “OH WHAAAT, we don’t have our mafia money prepared what if Hopper finds out we nearly sicced a fake bird on him!?”

The part about objecting to Clowns drafting the defence plans is actually the more reasonable explanation, but I guess they presumed warriors habitually made Decoy Bird plans instead of fighting themselves? There’s already a hole in their objections but it only gets worse.

The Queen is like: “Wow Flik evidently you’re a self serving prick. Anyway the best thing to do is pretend this never happened and no we’re not going to tell Hopper.”

Why the fuck would that happen? ‘Oh sorry Hopper we got sidetracked doing a ...thing... so we’re still picking your food no please don’t break my legs’

But also, why THE FUCK is this the plan? Some ruler you are, you old prune. ‘We have the bird all made and ready to go but oops the idea came from a DIRTY LIAR so we’re going to return to the doomed harvesting racket even though we’ve been set an outrageous amount and we can’t possibly hope to catch up and even if we had been picking the food the entire time it was established earlier on we won’t have time for our supplies on top of all that.’

Fucking.... astonishing lack of logic. YOU MORONS HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE, GO WITH THE BIRD! Flik himself says something to a similar effect lol

But noooooo, his arguably selfish lie [which is more Omitting the truth once he knew it, really] has forever doomed everything, apparently. Honestly it comes across more like they just hate Flik and see anything he invents as doomed to fail, so the second the truth emerges that he spearheaded the Mech Bird they dismiss it as a lost cause. Even though everyone worked together to build it, and Flik’s inventions weren’t the issue but him being awkward and clumsy. But seeing how Flik’s mere presence in his first scene seemed to drive the Council members into a quivering fury, it really does feel like their objections are from them refusing to give him a chance.

And then there’s Princess Atta. Hoo Boy.

In this scene, she comes off as being ridiculously vindictive, petty and hypocritical. This applies to the Council too, but it’s more galling coming from Atta as by now she’s realised that Flik gets a lot of flak [yay wordplay] from the others and she had resolved to give him more credit. BUT OOPS, that didn’t last!

She takes the Lying thing so personally, acting like he was cheating on her or something. “You lied to MeEeEee” well golly gee whiz, was there any particular reason why he would tell you the truth? Other than his rather obvious crush on you, that is? Cause that would still be a weird reason, seeing how the ‘lie’ was after he’d finally got a bit of decent treatment from the others, why would he wanna upset the apple cart?

He probably feared coming out and confessing to Atta [or anyone else] that they’d lose all faith in him and scrap a valid plan that was the only way out of the grasshopper racket mess. Which would be a bit silly and probably the result of someone with low self esteem and confidence issues overthinking the situation but it’s Exactly what actually happens!

It wasn’t a personal slight against you, Princess! To quote Helen Parr: THIS IS NOT! ABOUT! YOU!!

And wooow, you must be awfully chilly up there on your high horse, Miss “Lied to Flik to get rid of him earlier in the film”! Did you ever feel like fessing up? Like ‘hmm I’ve grown much fonder of this doofus, maybe I should be honest with him before engaging with some more light flirting’ ? Maybe if you had, he woulda been honest in return!

I don’t even see why she and the Council bothered lying about their Snipe Hunt ploy, seeing how now they act like he crossed a moral event horizon. Why even bother making a phoney baloney decoy idea to get him away, when they clearly dislike him enough to play the Brutally Honest card without fretting over his feelings. They coulda just ordered him to stay in a corner away from interfering but instead they’re willing to risk his life on a wild goose chase.

...And she then Banishes him! For what?? Lying? About what, the circus bugs or the bird plan? Both?? It really feels like her taking undue personal offence and the Council hating him and the Queen being old and senile.

So yeah, wow, this scene has what I think is the Unintended side effect of making me hate the stupid jerkface Ant colony as every named ant in it except for Dot fucking suck and throw Flik under a bus the second they deem him to be untrustworthy. In spite of, like, that the plan itself was solid and that the Circus Bugs have all been proven to be Good Eggs. They don’t give him a chance to explain and made their own bed to lie in, so I feel dark joy and satisfaction when the grasshoppers do arrive and kick them around some more.

Wow gee, if only you dumb ass ants had some sort of already made contraption to fall back on?

Why is it like this?

I can only make guesses here, be warned!

From what I’ve gathered of an older version of the story, mostly via Wikipedia, I kinda feel like the exposing would have fit that take better. In the beta version of the story, instead of Flik the lead would have been “Red”, who was a red ant and circus bug from the start. The first draft Circus lot woulda been out to scam the ants initially and I guess would have grown genuine fondness with time. The idea of an outsider flim flamming his way into the good books and later being exposed makes the overblown outrage a lot more understandable. But that’s my hypothesis for the direction they ultimately didn’t go in. Also look at how Red looks like a fuckboi here:

But in the final version, Red doesn’t exist! Flik is a part of the colony from the get go, but also apart from it cause no one likes him as, again, his ideas were good but poorly executed and he seemed to be a hindrance. But the ants should at least see that Flik is genuine in his attempts, that he’s trying his best and they should maybe cut him some slack.

The way the ants have their knickers in a twist doesn’t gel so well with the “Well meaning screwup” angle, especially compared to a possible “Opportunistic so-and-so who doesn’t have real attachments to the colony” route.

Also it may be worth noting up there where I put a TV Tropes excerpt, I bolded the relevant half of the run down, but it seems the other half applies much more to this first draft. Interesting...

So I don’t know, but I got the idea that the scene in the movie is basically a holdover from earlier that didn’t get sufficiently updated. The Liar Revealed Scene is the first thing I’d change if I were rewriting the script, and I might go back and change it again after other parts had been redone too, cause the story needs to flow from point A to point B etc. smoothly or else viewers will get annoyed and point it out in Youtube videos or overly long tumblr text posts.

How could it be fixed?

I’m not saying I’m sitting on the perfect idea of a rewrite. But the main thing is what I already touched on, the jarring disconnect between what happens and how the stupid ants respond.

Like, Atta’s sudden grabbing of the Jerkass and Idiot Balls in this scene. Wouldn’t it have been better if she was instead unsure and conflicted? She had lied to Flik earlier and, unlike the Council, was shown to actually realise Flik Has Feelings Too and apologised for the general lack of faith. She didn’t come clean about the Snipe Hunt Lie, so that could be weighing on her during this scene, maybe she would have been the only Council member to Not want to kick him out but felt pressured into it and hasn’t got into the groove of being the Future Queen enough to pull rank and talk them down from being hate filled twats. Maybe someone will mention the flirting that had been happening as muddying her judgement?

That’s my main idea, compare that with her barging in and taking undue personal offence and shooing him off. She’s supposed to feel like she’s doomed to fail too, so her facing a moral dilemma and falling on the wrong side of the fence could tie into that! (To be honest, her arc is kinda undercooked so hey, I’m killing two birds with one stone here!)

Flik being banished at all is a casualty of The Narrative, that he and the Circus Bugs have gotta go away temporarily for the finale to be cooler and more exciting. It’s a Necessary Weasel of writing and you’ll find them in every story ever made. Sometimes things have gotta happen cause Story Structure. The trick is having them more organic and concealed.

So yeah, have the Old Fogeys be in the wrong [which is so far unchanged] but also the majority of the ‘voting’. Make it difficult for Atta to choose between loyalty to the colony as a whole and her sense of duty versus trusting in Flik, who she now knows to always have his heart in the right place. She comes close to standing up for him and herself, but ultimately falters and gets pressured into the call made in the movie. She’s still ultimately responsible as leaders are, but in a much more sympathetic way.

Summation

This got way longer than I had initially imagined, and that’s even after I cut stuff in the editing process! Let’s quickly review the three main points I’m trying to make.

The Issue with the scene - A big song and dance is made over The Lie, but no reason why it’s such a terrible thing is offered. A perfectly sound plan is dismissed nonsensically.

Suspected reasoning for the writing - The tone matches a potential alternate story much better, where someone would have lied for self serving purposes instead of for the greater good.

A suggestion for a rewrite - Make it much more nuanced and fitting the character arcs. Give the characters a reason to react the way they do and have different responses per person. If the ants are going to drop the Bird plan, at least offer a more viable alternate route than going back to what wasn’t working before.

Does it really matter?

Well, I don’t expect a 22 year old film to suddenly get a rewrite, no. And I maintain that it’s a real gem which deserves much higher praise with the other Good Pixars instead of being so constantly overlooked.

Part of what spurred me to think about the scene and what I’d alter is seeing it referred to as ‘Kinda Bad’ in a youtube video that was talking about another Liar Reveal scene in another movie, and that is a bad take, but the point about how clunky this part is isn’t wrong. I don’t want people to dismiss the whole, beautiful image cause one section of it doesn’t vibe!

It doesn’t ruin the picture, but when people have something negative to say it’s this which is the magnet. And I’m kinda guilty of doing the same thing here, haha. But I wanted to really dissect and examine it, to figure out why it’s like that and to guess how simple it may be to rework. It’s bittersweet, but there ain’t such a thing as a perfect movie.

This has been fun for me to go into though, and it’s nice to get thoughts out from just swirling around inside my head, so even if barely anyone sees and makes it through this whole dissertation, I’m glad I wrote it out. It’s a funny way to derive enjoyment from the bumpy part of a beloved movie, but hey, I’ll take it~

Isn't Rhaegar absolved from his actions due to the fact that the prophecy is true and his son with Lyanna is the savior of the human race? Isn't Jaehaerys II absolved from his since the prophecy was true and TPTWP, in fact, is born of Aerys and Rhaella's line? I know we can mull over how Rhaegar could have done things differently to get his third child, but it seems that it was destiny. With Jaehaerys II, there wasn't even another option but to force the marriage to fulfill the prophecy.

Neither is absolved, no. Because the ends do not justify the means, and destiny is only what we make of it.

So many characters in this series act on the rationale that the greater good merits any number of sacrifices made in its name, which is also often used to justify and minimize blatant atrocities. Varys plays with people’s lives and maims children on the thought that King Aegon will right all the wrongs in Westeros. Mel argues that burning children alive is a necessary price for the survival of everyone else. Rhaegar treats the thousands of lives lost over the course of the rebellion as an acceptable collateral damage for a prophetic enterprise. Stannis is on the path to fall to that same viewpoint of a necessary sacrifice (”we do not choose our destinies” You do, Stannis. You do. You’re the only one who can choose). Robert’s council tries to frame Dany’s assassination attempt in the context of how ending two lives would spare thousands. Tywin tries to spin the Red Wedding as something that spares countless lives that would have fallen if the war continued. Mirri Maz Duur kills an unborn child on a crime he has not committed. Bloodraven may have honed Euron’s magical abilities on the notion that it would be worth it in the end, and he has a history of working on the basis of “the ends justify the means” during his tenure as Hand (e.g, killing Aenys Blackfyre in a breach of safe conduct, letting the Greyjoys pillage and reave as they please because he was too focused on the Blackfyres, etc). Though there is an obvious variance in the overall morality and sincerity between these character, all of them give the same rationale of a necessary evil done in the name of a greater good. If you have to sacrifice a few to save everyone else, if you have to sacrifice one person to save everyone else, it’s a no brainer, right? What is one life opposite everyone else?

The answer is “everything”

Human lives are worth so much more than being means to an end. Putting people on the chopping block for “the greater good” dehumanizes them by reducing them to sacrificial lambs in the name of a higher purpose. But ASOIAF has always advocated for the recognition of the value of life and respect for the sanctity of human life. Though the methods may vary, the text remains loud and clear in its refusal of dehumanizing ideologies, whether the source is human characters like Tywin Lannister, Robert Baratheon or Randyll Tarly, or supernatural creatures like the Others who are the literal embodiment of dehumanization. ASOIAF is about the fight for our common humanity, for recognizing that humanity regardless of things like class or race or which side of a magical wall you were born on. But you can not fight for our common humanity by devaluing people’s lives. You can not use the argument of “doing it for humanity” to disregard the humanity of those being sacrificed. That cold ruthless pragmatism is not the point of this series; the fight against it is. That’s been the point from the first prologue when Wymar Royce stared the abyss in the face and charged at it.

That’s why the support of the narrative lies with characters like Ned Stark and Davos Seaworth who refuse to give into the idea that the cruelty and dehumanization is necessary for the greater good. Through them, GRRM delivers the point that every single human life matters. That saving one person can mean everything. That it’s not naive to think that one life is worth everything. Protecting the one is not inherently inferior to protecting the many. The greater good can just as well lie in saving one person. Which it did in the case of Ned and Jon.

I think it’s pretty significant that Ned had no idea about the prophecy or what role Jon would play when he protected Jon, while Rhaegar who did know made everything exponentially harder. There’s a rather underappreciated irony in the fact that Rhaegar (and Jaehaerys) had little to do with fulfilling the prophecy; in fact, they jeopardized it. They may have orchestrated the circumstances under which Jon and Dany could be conceived, but a closer look shows that Jon and Dany were born mostly in spite of them and their actions. I mean, Jaehaerys married Rhaella off so young it impacted her health and her ability to bear living children. She almost died at Summerhall along with Rhaegar in an ill-fated attempt to hatch dragons, and while that’s mostly on Aegon V, I expect that Jaehaerys was fully on board as well considering the measures he took for the prophecy. Rhaegar impregnated a teenager and left her to give birth in less than ideal circumstances, and spurred a civil war thing that weakened the realm and put his entire family at risk and got a few of them killed. I can only describe their efforts as counterproductive.

But I find it extremely fitting that they ended up doing little and less for the War for the Dawn, because Rhaegar and Jaehaerys embraced the metaphorical cold in their quest to fight it. Jaehaerys reduced Rhaella to an incubator for a savior as if her humanity and her worth are narrowed down to her womb. Rhaegar was willing to see thousands of people die for his vision of what the prophecy required. They allowed themselves to decide people’s worth. Rhaella, Elia and Lyanna mattered only as much as the children they could bear, and those children mattered only as much as their prophetic roles. Rickard, Brandon, their entourage and the rest of the casualties of the rebellion mattered not at all. But that’s not how it works. Rhaegar and Jaehaerys don’t get to decide people’s worth. They don’t get to decide which lives matter more. They do not get to devalue other people’s lives because these lives are not theirs to decide what to do with. Individual lives matter, not because of a prophetic destiny but because of their humanity.

That’s why I don’t see the prophecy as Rhaegar and Jaehaerys’ absolution, but rather their hubris.I get the sense that they acted on the assumption that the prophecy would make everything alright in the end, especially Rhaegar, and so ended up missing the entire point. They got so entangled in their interpretations of the prophecy that they did everything wrong. Got a lot wrong too since Rhaegar wasn’t even trying to get the Prince that Was Promised from Lyanna; I doubt her was even aiming for a boy. Hatching dragons in Summerhall ended on a tragedy. And of course, no one ever accounted for Tyrion. But the prophecy, true as it may be, doesn’t make things go a certain way; people do.

Which brings me to what you say about how it was destiny that Rhaegar acted like he did instead of other alternatives available to him. This argument fundamentally misunderstands a rather significant theme of this series - that it’s our choices that define who we are. Through the political and magical plots alike, individual choice is held up as immensely important to the point where many characters’ existential victory lies in that choice, the clearest case of all is how the three heads of the dragon have to contend with some version of this dilemma.

It all goes back and back, Tyrion thought, to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads.

Does Dany have “the taint” of madness? Is Jon’s decision to fight his or is it an inevitability orchestrated by prophecy and Rhaegar Targrayen? Can Tyrion break free of the toxic legacy left behind by Tywin? Do they get to define who they are on their own terms or are they beholden to their lineage and their ancestor’s legacy? That’s for them to decide.

“Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.”

Maester Aemon lays down the bare bones of this recurring theme in Jon’s arc. Across multiple books, Jon faces the choice of keeping to his watch or leaving several times which only frames the significance of how his destiny as one of the saviors of Westeros lies in him making that choice. Jon’s “chosen one” status has always been linked to him taking control of his future and deciding for himself. It’s him choosing to stay in Castle Black despite his appalled discovery of the reality of the Watch and to take his vows despite his frustration with the appointment to the stewards. It’s him going with Qhorin Halfhand of his own accord. It’s him picking the Wall over deserting for Robb or Ygritte. It’s him making a conscious decision to be the leader of the fight at the Wall over Stannis’ offer of Winterfell. It’s him taking responsibility of the free folk and recognizing that the commonality of being human is what matters. Jon is on the forefront of the text’s central conflict by virtue of his choices.

Dany is also fighting for our common humanity over in Slaver’s Bay. Her arc is basically a hard fought battle for autonomy, whether hers or the slaves’. Dany fights for freedom, for people’s right to choose, for them to be recognized as people not things to be gifted and sold. “Have you asked them?”, she challenges when Xaro Xohan Daxos argues that slaves have no use for freedom because they were made to be used. But Xaro Xohan Daxos doesn’t get to decide others’ fates, neither do the slavers of Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen. They don’t get to deprive them of their right to choose. People’s lives do not belong to them to decide what to do with. They don’t get to strip them of their free will or dehumanize them by treating them as things to be used to their satisfaction.

Because that’s what the Others are doing. They are supernatural slavers coming with their ice cold chains and stealing every single choice from humanity, right to the choice of dying. You can’t even die. They will resurrect you and force you to be their undead puppet.Mankind can’t even choose death because they will rip death from your grasp and drag your corpse up to join their army. The real threat in this text is a supernatural embodiment of dehumanization and taking away people’s choice. The War for the Dawn is nothing if not a fight for freedom, for the right to choose and to be human.

So the idea of “destiny” controlling how things go? It goes against the very heart of the series. Destiny is nothing but a series of choices deliberately made by individuals to shape the future. There is no fixed inescapable narrative that they can’t deviate from, or some all powerful cosmic power dictating how they should act. Even in the presence of magical visions, it remains the characters’ choices that decide their future. They get the prophecies but what they do with it is on them because the prophecies do not decide who they are. For all the magical elements and prophetic visions in this narrative, it remains that one of the things that the story emphasizes again and again is that our choices matter. They have meaning and they have consequences. Nothing is inevitable unless we make it so.

And that needs to hold true for the story to have any kind of meaning. Acting as if there is some kind of predetermined destiny that compels people to act in a particular way means that literally no one is responsible for their actions. People were just always meant to do what they did. Everyone is bound with chains of magic, lineage and a mystical force that has free reign to manipulate them. Free will is only an illusion fed to pawns that have no control. And if that’s the case, you can no longer hold anyone accountable. How can you call a person good or evil if no one has the capacity to choose their path? How can you hold anyone responsible either for their heroics or their atrocities? And if there is no good and evil, if honor and corruption get tarred by the same brush, if you have no basis to distinguish between the true knights and the false ones, then the only choice is truly “you win or you die”. Which is bullshit. These are false binaries and are far, far from being the measure of triumph.

ASOIAF has never been a story about the futility of ideals but rather about the fight to hold onto those ideals. About how“the battle between good and evil is fought largely within the individual human heart, by the decisions that we make”.  It all comes down to a choice and to the accountability for that choice. This series is rife with people trying to sidestep responsibility for their decisions, from Tywin maintaining plausible deniability to Robert willfully closing his eyes to corruption and transferring blame onto the next convenient target to Roose cultivating “a peaceful land, a quiet people” to Littlefinger keeping “clean hands” to Barristan Selmy and Arys Oakheart hiding behind their vows to justify their inaction in the face of tyranny. But they don’t get to outrun their responsibility for their own decisions. No one gets off scot-free, not because of vows of obedience, not because of corrupt systems, and not because of some notion of an inescapable destiny. The narrative won’t let them.

You must make that choice yourself, and live with it all the rest of your days.

The Hunger Games has genuine literary merit beyond the fandom reactions to it

Arguably, it was one of the most influential franchises of the 2010s. However, it suffers from being both extraordinarily overrated and criminally underrated when closely examined. It was a conversation in my Literature class that led me to wonder: does this series truly have literary merit? The question became inescapable as I was swept up in thought and nostalgia, and the deeper messages of the series are indeed clear to me upon revisiting the beloved childhood saga. 

The response to the films and even the books themselves reveal that Suzanne Collins’s critique of current society was right all along. The real merit of The Hunger Games series is painfully overshadowed by the elements that “sell well” within mainstream media. Because The Hunger Games is a story that features popular cinematic elements such as violence and romance, including a classic love triangle (see the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Twilight, Star Wars, Mission Impossible, Divergent, etc, etc), the series is devalued from its real message. The fans of the series place little value with any deeper meaning, and it is therefore lost to the menial focuses of the general public.

To begin, the focus of the book begins with the concept of the Hunger Games, wherein children are pitted against one another in a fight to the death. While this is portrayed in the books, the cinematic approach further visualizes the violence that is apparently so entertaining to audiences. Where scenes that give greater meaning to the series are not included or inaccurately shown, the theme of violence and gore is left to rise. Unfortunately, this undermines Collins's commentary on the prevalence and glorification of violence within our society, including in popular media and the news, especially when it comes to the normalization of such horrific acts such as the deaths of children, murder, and war itself. When these events become political fodder or are reduced to headlines, they lose their significance and real meaning: people are suffering and something must be done about the matter.

long post below the cut. I wrote this as a full essay rip

Furthermore, the series also satirizes the upper class and those with enough privilege to turn a blind eye to the suffering of those with not enough luck or initial privilege in their life to absolve themselves from danger, violence, and poverty. The Capitol is a society of wealthy people and the main audience for the games, yet they do not have to send children them to themselves. This isolated, secure part of an impoverished, divided nation, represents how, in our society, the wealthy and powerful take advantage of the lower classes through the exploitation of workers, unfair tax cuts and overall societal imbalances that systematically keep minorities at a disadvantage. While the 1% profits off of suffering, the rest of the world is left to suffer.

  It must also be addressed that most of the symbolism in the series, at least the books, is subtle and only hinted at by Katniss. Why these messages were not revealed even after the movies were released can be attributed to Suzanne Collins’s silence on her own series. With each cinematic release comes press tours and interviews about the meaning of the books and movies, but Collins notably has largely remained silent on the matter. In today's society, it is not uncommon to see authors such as JK Rowling, EK Johnston, Rick Riordan, and more take to Twitter, Instagram, or other websites to elaborate on the messages within their books and clarify what they meant, even retroactively adding to the meanings and characters featured within the books. But this neglects the death of the author, wherein readers are allowed to form their own opinion, regardless of the author’s intentions. The post-publishing contributions to a finished work can be done for profit or maintaining fan interest beyond the completion of their series. Yet, not letting their work exist as its own product, up for reader interpretation, devalues their work. Collins’s refusal to participate in this culture is admirable. Her words are placed in the hands of readers, continuing the legacy that existed for thousands of years before Twitter was invented. 

Even so, the pitfalls of this are her target audience of young adults, who often fail to understand the real messages embedded within the work. The literary analysis above is, unfortunately, necessary to prove the symbolism within the series because society instead chooses to focus on the elements of romance and violence present within the series. As a result, Collins's genius is truly underappreciated. Her writing and the literary merit therein flies over the heads of her readers. Again, the true value of the series has been lost in the glorification of violence and romance. Collins herself is arguably not advocating for these values; it was only by accident that her books became so popular for the wrong reason. Her other series are relatively unheard of but just as profound. The Underland Chronicles possess the same poignancy and significance as The Hunger Games, but its subject content is considered too outlandish by society to be thrust rapidly to the same heights as the latter.

Even so, the generalized reaction to The Hunger Games movies and books prove this point. The first of the series is the most popular and by general consensus, the most interesting. The following two books, especially the conclusion of the series, are considered to be boring. Yet this is the point. Mockingjay, the final book in the trilogy, depicts the dangers of war and the society that has been allowed to evolve from the ashes of a long-past conflict. The country erupts into civil war, but audiences consider this to be boring because of the emphasis on battle strategy, power struggle, and Katniss’s mental health, rather than outright violence and romance. And still, it is these ideas that contain the most literary value. These points, which I will elaborate on later, are superficially less interesting than the elements of a love triangle and kid-on-kid murder but must be acknowledged to find the true value of the series.

Even Collins’s portrayal of romance within the series subverts the expectation of modern love. The stereotypical gender roles between Katniss and Peeta are flipped. Where Katniss is tough, coarse and even unfriendly, Peeta is likable, charming, and charismatic. Katniss, especially in the first book, is seen taking care of Peeta who repeatedly gets injured; she is his protector while he is frequently criticized for his softness as a character. Yet in the end, Katniss chooses Peeta for his gentle nature and care; these are the qualities that she needs to balance out her own anger and roughness. She loves him for “feminine qualities” because she seeks a true balance of her own personality. Peeta is one of the few characters who remain uncorrupted and pure even with the horrors of their society. Few acknowledge this; the debate over Katniss’s romantic life is reduced to a love triangle between the baker boy and childhood friend. But in Collins’s own words, “Katniss isn’t just deciding on a partner; she’s figuring out her worldview.” The books do not portray a simplistic love triangle. It is the choice between optimism and a surrender to violence.

Katniss herself is unwilling to participate in violence and the idealization of murder unless it comes down to the survival of her family. Katniss’s defining qualities are her loyalty and love, rather than blatant heroism and the want to make change in the world. Unfriendly and hardened, she is static in remaining a fierce defender of her family. Again, this is purely realistic considering the hardships of her childhood. As a result, she is forced to act differently as a popular idol for both the Capitol and the rebels. Whenever she appears as a figurehead, she softens her personality to be likable and charismatic. The Capitol wants to see that she is still feminine, lovely, and unharmed by her upbringing in the districts. The threats against her family still motivate her; if she does not perform well, everyone she cares about will be killed. It is only when she has nothing else to lose that she acts out in rebellion. At the climax of The Hunger Games, she suggests to Peeta that they both kill themselves instead of killing each other. As one of two tributes left, she cannot bring herself to kill him, as her humanity defines her in that moment. Over the course of the games, she comes to care for Peeta, and she refuses to sacrifice that humanity, even if it means that she can go home to her family. Her next move beings a continuing trend; when she does not have the option to protect her family, she acts out in rebellion against the Capitol. She or Peeta will die in an act of defiance. By trying to kill herself and Peeta, she shows her true genius. If all tributes die or if more than one live, the Capitol loses, and she forces their hand on this matter. This moment displays her true, underrated intellect. 

Thus also begins the battle for control against the Capitol. As the series progresses, Katniss combats the urge to do the right thing for the greater good of Panem. In District 11, she tries to make up for the losses of their tributes by donating money and speaking from her heart about those who saved her life. But in the end, she is forced again into silence by the threat against her family. She will not compromise their safety even for a rebellion that could potentially liberate the country. Although she has inherent goodness, Katniss is the ultimate reluctant hero. In her own words, “all I want to do is protect my sister.” Unlike most heroes, she does not fight for the greater good, but for the protection of those who she cares about. Also unlike the archetypal hero, she is constantly restricted by her own inhibitions about what she personally has to lose. While this subverts expectations, it also emphasizes her humanity. Despite her cultural reputation as the girl with the bow and arrow, Katniss is a tangible character with real fears and doubts. 

Also, the symbolism of the loss of innocence is degraded because the series so popular for its violence and romance culminates in a book that emphasizes other points and uses action and love sparingly. They no longer have great narrative significance, meaning that the mass commercialization of the book became harder and its subject less interesting to consumers.

Other themes in Mockingjay display the corruptive nature of violence and power. Alma Coin, the president of the rebellion, rises to power as a direct result of extreme violence and brutal tactics. Even without her final act of bombing children, her true leadership is the result of violence, bloodshed, and long-standing war. Her presence suggests that violence breeds violence, even with good intentions. Because Coin is forced to wage war, as there is no other way to overcome the current circumstances of the country, war and violence become her expertise. The longevity of war implies that once the mindset of violence is adopted, it can never fully be washed away. While Coin has good intentions, she eventually becomes violent and even senselessly cruel.

This is further demonstrated in the scene, when after the war is won, she suggests that they hold a symbolic Hunger Games using the children of the capitol. This is an act of revenge to emphasize that the Capitol no longer has power. However, Coin continues the same vile methods of control, propagating the cycle of violence and bloodshed within the country. Katniss is one of the few people who recognize this; she is consequently the only one left to act on this knowledge. When asked to vote whether or not to hold the games, Katniss decides two things. The first is to vote yes, and in doing so, she recognizes that she has been used as a pawn by both Coin and President Snow, who need a figurehead to maintain power. She is intelligent enough to comprehend her powerlessness, and at that moment, resolves to do something about it. During the scene, she is depicted as having an almost silent conversation with Haymitch, in which they both agree to comply with Coin because they cannot currently do anything about their circumstances. Haymitch says “I’m with the Mockingjay,” signaling to Katniss that he understands the reality of the moment and will support her temporary compliance and future resistance. Katniss's intelligence is truly revealed with this scene, although most interpret her decision as her want for revenge. In reality, she has decided to kill Coin and effectively break the cycle of violence within the country.

When Katniss finally has the opportunity to kill Snow, she instead aims for and kills Coin. It’s never explicitly explained why, but it still reveals Katniss’s true perception of society. This gives her true power, with the responsibility to take action. It can also be noted that at this point, she has lost her sister and feels as if she has little else to lose in her life. She is no longer motivated by love for her family; now, she has nothing left to lose and this makes her all the more powerful. She knows that killing the new president and leader of the rebellion that brought them to victory and “liberation” is a fatal action, but when she does so, she damns only herself. She is free in the sense that no one can be used against her anymore.

Even so, when she is arrested for the murder of the new president, Katniss’s struggle with mental health is further emphasized as she rejects her medication and treatment, starves herself, and saves up her medicine in the hopes of overdosing and killing herself. She has nothing left to live for. She is described as inhuman and miserable, yet, almost abruptly, a change occurs. Katniss chooses hope. She begins to sing, experiencing untempered joy. It is random and it is beautiful. Those who struggle with mental health know that hope is not simply achieved; it can become a choice. Those with good resources can find hope more readily, but at the lowest point in one's life, there remains a decision to fight for change and the betterment of one's life. Katniss is forced to reconcile if she wants to remain living and succeed, despite any struggle that lies ahead in trying to get better. For no particular reason, she chooses to continue fighting and this is what makes her a true hero. She has lost her sister and her family and any chance at a normal, peaceful life. By killing Coin, she has ruined her reputation and prospects, yet she continues to live, and as a result, she ultimately achieves the life she had been seeking from the beginning. She is free, she can choose peace. From the beginning of the series, Katniss emphasizes that she never wanted a life in the public eye, and now with most of society failing to understand her action and rationale, she can escape. She never sought glory nor fame, and she pursues peace. This is the ultimate loss of the Capitol: the one who stood against them, who fell prey to them, who fought in their games not once but twice, choose hope and calm demonstrates the true beauty of Katniss as a protagonist. It is her simplistic wish to hang up her bow and arrow and go home that sets her apart.

At the beginning of the novels, Katniss says that she will never have a family because she does not wish to bring children into such a corrupt world. Modern circumstances including climate change, the current state of global politics, and general abject hopelessness parallel this feeling in our own world. But after overcoming this in her own universe, Katniss achieves true happiness. At the end of the novel, she has two children. At first, this may seem out of character or included merely because it is the stereotypical happy ending in media, but this is what truly emphasizes how far Katniss has come and the security that she has made for herself. With her intelligence and bravery, she has remade society into someplace where she is comfortable enough to have children, to raise them and settle down with the man she loves. Again, her choosing Peeta represents how she no longer has to give in to the roughness of her personality to defend those she cares about. She can be gentle and kind as she never was before. She can be a mother and pursue her own definition of happiness. Suzanne Collins's decisions as an author mean that there will be no sequels or spin-offs, no midnight Tweets to corrupt this joy. Most of all, Katniss’s solitude in this journey depicts the uniqueness of such intelligence and clear perception. Because she was the one with enough clarity to see the corruption and violence of the country, she has the power to remake it in her own image. This elevates her beyond a typical protagonist, and beyond the simplistic interpretations of teenage fans.

It is impossible to realize these things and not wonder what Suzanne Collins thinks of what has become of her series. With its influence severely devalued, such a great critique on humanity and all its complexity is lost. Ironically, the society that Collins was criticizing failed to understand her true message. The importance of these ideas cannot be stressed enough: we live in a society where there are daily power struggles between classes, and consumerism is controlled by monopolies of major companies. Not only that, but Katniss is reduced to a girl in love who is good at archery. And in the movies, she is played by Jennifer Lawrence, who dropped out of middle school and has repeatedly come under fire for offensive comments. Collins’s intelligence and that of her main character are criminally underrated. The public reception to The Hunger Games severely devalues the complexity of the series. Elements of violence and romance take place of deep symbolism and criticism of our world; movies are made to be entertaining and sell well rather than represent a good story. One can only hope that is the love of a beloved childhood series that will lead to them being revisited to reveal these truths with more meaningful clarity. 

Meta: Personality Analysis

Disclaimer: I, in no way, am a psychologist nor claim to be good at this. This is purely for fun, and for character growth. Also, this is based on the way I write Kamui/Corrin. Some of her personality is divergent from canon, due to past interactions in the four+ years I’ve written her. 

Edited: August 15th, 2020

Also this got even longer and I’m sorry.

Enneagram: Nine

Nines are accepting, trusting, and stable. They are usually creative, optimistic, and supportive, but can also be too willing to go along with others to keep the peace. They want everything to go smoothly and be without conflict, but they can also tend to be complacent, simplifying problems and minimizing anything upsetting. They typically have problems with inertia and stubbornness. At their Best: indomitable and all-embracing, they are able to bring people together and heal conflicts.

MTBI: ENFJ “The Protagonist.”

Protagonists are natural-born leaders, full of passion and charisma. Forming around two percent of the population, they are oftentimes our politicians, our coaches and our teachers, reaching out and inspiring others to achieve and to do good in the world. With a natural confidence that begets influence, Protagonists take a great deal of pride and joy in guiding others to work together to improve themselves and their community.

Four Temperaments: Sanguine

Your temperament is sanguine. The sanguine temperament is fundamentally spontaneous and pleasure-seeking; sanguine people are sociable and charismatic. They tend to enjoy social gatherings, making new friends and tend to be boisterous. They are usually quite creative and often daydream. However, some alone time is crucial for those of this temperament. Sanguine can also mean sensitive, compassionate and thoughtful. Sanguine personalities generally struggle with following tasks all the way through, are chronically late, and tend to be forgetful and sometimes a little sarcastic. Often, when they pursue a new hobby, they lose interest as soon as it ceases to be engaging or fun. They are very much people persons. They are talkative and not shy. Sanguines generally have an almost shameless nature, certain that what they are doing is right. They have no lack of confidence.

Moral Alignment: Chaotic Good, "Rebel"

A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society.

Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit.

Chaotic good can be a dangerous alignment when it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who do well for themselves.

Astrology: Taurus

Strengths: Reliable, patient, practical, devoted, responsible, stable

Weaknesses: Stubborn, possessive, uncompromising

Taurus likes: Gardening, cooking, music, romance, high quality clothes, working with hands

Taurus dislikes: Sudden changes, complications, insecurity of any kind, synthetic fabrics

Practical and well-grounded, Taurus is the sign that harvests the fruits of labor. They feel the need to always be surrounded by love and beauty, turned to the material world, hedonism, and physical pleasures. People born with their Sun in Taurus are sensual and tactile, considering touch and taste the most important of all senses. Stable and conservative, this is one of the most reliable signs of the zodiac, ready to endure and stick to their choices until they reach the point of personal satisfaction.

Taurus is an Earth sign, just like Virgo and Capricorn, and has the ability to see things from a grounded, practical and realistic perspective. They find it easy to make money and stay on same projects for years, or until they are completed. What we often see as stubbornness can be interpreted as commitment, and their ability to complete tasks whatever it takes is uncanny. This makes them excellent employees, great long-term friends and partners, always being there for people they love. Earthly note makes them overprotective, conservative, or materialistic at times, with views of the world founded on their love of money and wealth.

The ruler of Taurus is Venus, the planet of love, attraction, beauty, satisfaction, creativity and gratitude. This tender nature will make Taurus an excellent cook, gardener, lover, and artist. They are loyal and don't like sudden changes, criticism or the chase of guilt people are often prone to, being somewhat dependable on other people and emotions they seem to be unable to let go of. Still, no matter their potential emotional challenge, these individuals have the ability to bring a practical voice of reason in any chaotic and unhealthy situation.

Taurus – the Wandering Bull Being the one who betrayed their best friend, goddess Hera herself, this is an unfortunate being that has to wander the Earth in order to find freedom. As if something was always poking them behind their back, reminding them of happiness that once was, stinging and pushing forwards, they close up in their own worlds, lonely and separated from their core. To find love, a Taurus has to travel the world, change perspective or make a shift in their entire belief system and their system of values.

Conclusion:

There are some contradictions in these results, but overall, it is her at a basic premise. She tends to be very strong with her foundations, doing whatever she can to keep by them. Most of the time, she will listen to what others have to say, for they can hold more wisdom than her. However, there are just some things that she won't change on. Her Nohrian family knows this the most, and there are some thing that they've tried to change about her. Especially Leo ( sorrcerii ).

When it comes to the vices, she holds those in as much as possible. The insecurity, the side of her that may be uncompromising -- her reaction to sudden change that isn't what she planned for. Things like that. As a tactician, she likes to be as many steps ahead of her enemy as possible. In mundane life, she tries to put that side of her away. But there's always going to be a part of her that takes notice of every little thing. She notices how someone reacts to a gift, a conversation, and logs it away. However, unlike the standard, she tends to be rather lenient. She's also like clay; she picks up on traits. For example: because of Jeanne's ( noircisaint ) influence, she has more of a backbone than the 'standard' Avatar. With Zero ( echoedfates ), more of her playfulness comes out. He’s shown her that it’s OK to be a bit of a prankster -- well, more than she was before -- and it’s OK to put the title away when it’s just them. That there’s a difference between ‘princess’, ‘general’, and ‘wife’. 

In her Type Moon verses, Makoto ( dekirukoto ) and Yi ( einhcrjars ) have taught her it’s OK to let her guard down. Especially while in Chaldea, and around them. That it’s OK to love, and even though it may hurt when they are returned to the throne, that things don’t have to stay at a standstill. That, hey, it’s OK to be you -- even more now than you were. 

However, that doesn't mean she'll bite the bullet on it's first fire, and will always try to resolve a conflict before it arrives. Her anger is one of a slow fire, unless you pour the right amount of gas. 

Kamui also holds in a lot more than most people. Even around those she calls her confidants and her retainers, she rather watch herself burn and suffer than those around her. She's very much a 'the world must be saved instead of myself'. Yet, over time, she's grown to understand that some people don't deserve it. Later on in the game, and depending on what route/verse, she will show some aggression to those who she deems deserves it. Which, as we know, is extremely small. ( Base game alone, Anankos, Hans, Garon, and Iago are the ones who get no special treatment from Kamui. And if she's acting nice, it's an act. ) 

There are times where she’ll return to a child-like state as well. There were many things that she didn’t get to experience, which lead her to have an imaginative mind and, at first, such a naive personality. Even during and after the war, she still retains it, since it’s so ingrained. It’s hard to ignore, hard to hide, but over time she comes to accept it. This is why she’s always reading; always wanting to learn; always wanting to experience what others have. A void can only be filled so much.

However, even though she may not seem it, she is rather intelligent. Because of lack of human contact outside of her retainers and teachers, she can come off as an 'airhead' or 'aloof'. Over time, that fades, and her true colors begin to shine more. She's able to find hoops she can jump through, but only will if the time seems right. Calculating outcomes begins to come second nature to her.

This is especially true when in Conquest, where she goes and knocks out almost all the Hoshidan soldiers she fights, just to put on a show for King Garon. In the end of that route, TECHNICALLY, she committed treason and blasphemy against Nohr. But thanks to Xander, she was absolved, and history wrote it to be that King Garon was dethrone on the basis of madness and insanity, dying in a battle in the Hoshidan capital.

And that’s it on this segment of, “Carrie adores Kamui too much, and has a problem.” Back to your regularly scheduled fluff! Thank you for reading this, and I’m sorry this turned out so long. asdfg

BnHA Bonus Rant #4: Bakumom

Okay guys. This is my post about Bakugou Mitsuki. This is actually my third attempt at trying to write a post on this topic; I tried to do one back when I was getting ready to post the recap for chapter 96, but wasn’t able to coherently get across all of the thoughts I wanted to convey, so I ended up deleting it. Then in response to one of the comments on that recap, I ended up writing another post, and this time I managed to get out almost 1200 words on the subject! But during the editing process, I realized that it just wasn’t something I had the energy to discuss. The topic of “is this character abusive” is obviously a very sensitive one, and something that a lot of people have very strong feelings about, and I realized that my post wasn’t going to convince anyone one way or the other, and that it was more likely to lead to a discussion that I had absolutely no spoons for. Like, all my spoons went into the post itself, and that was it. So in the end I scrapped that too (and my apologies to @temperatezone, who made a very reasonable point very tactfully, which I basically ended up just ignoring because at the time I wasn’t ready to get into it).

Before we start -- regarding spoilers, I’ve done my best to keep this post spoiler-free so long as you are caught up with the anime (or have read up to the manga equivalent, which is around chapter 125 or thereabouts). There is, however, one manga spoiler in here from chapter 165 (which, if you’ve read the chapter, you’ll know why it was unavoidable, seeing as it pertains directly to the subject at hand). It is not in any way a plot spoiler; it’s basically a single line from one of the characters, and the details regarding where and when that line is said are irrelevant, so I’ve left that out. So if you are anime-only, it’s up to you whether you want to skip this post or not, but that will be the only spoiler in here.

So now that I’m on my third attempt, I’ve done a bit more thinking on how I want to approach this. Basically, I think the problem I kept running up against before is that as far as I can see, there are two ways to look at this. The first is by looking at the author’s intent. “Okay, the scene is clearly presented in the context of humor and is a classic example of the well-established Tough Love style of anime parenting (see also: Izumi from FMA, Reborn from KHR, Isshin from Bleach, etc.) and not meant to be taken in an overly deep way. The scene immediately afterward with her ruffling Katsuki’s hair and thanking Aizawa for his understanding and mentioning her worry and relief during and after the kidnapping and asking his teachers to help guide him is meant to serve as a contrast to the violence and shouting and insults to show that contrary to that initial impression, she loves and cares about him just like any other mother. The scene is meant as a lighthearted way of showing where Bakugou inherited his loud and angry temperament from, and kind of jokingly implying that he’s more or less just a clone of his mom.”

Whereas the other approach is to look at what the author is actually portraying. “It doesn’t matter if it was intended to be a joke or not; she is abusive. She smacks him repeatedly for basically no reason, and screams at him and insults him to this degree even when there are other people present. Perhaps more disturbingly, she implies that him being kidnapped was his own fault, because he was ‘weak.’ Later on we learn that he genuinely believes this and has internalized it, and blames himself not only for getting kidnapped, but for what it led to with All Might losing his powers as a consequence. Even further down the line, Bakugou makes a throwaway remark to the effect of ‘[violence is] how I was raised.’ This implies that it wasn’t just a one-time thing and that his mother is like this all the time, to the point where violence is basically the norm for him and he doesn’t even realize how fucked up it is.”

So those are basically the two perspectives here. And for me, I realized that the problem that I had was that both of these perspectives are valid. At least I think they are. If I were to try to argue the former -- which was my first instinct -- I would in all likelihood have to try and refute the latter. And honestly, I don’t think I would be able to do that, because that argument is a completely valid argument. Not to mention I don’t have much of a leg to stand on as far as trying to argue that Horikoshi’s intentions matter more than his end results, because if you’ve read any of my recaps, you know that this is basically the one and only time I’ve ever said that, lol. I’ve never particularly cared about his harmless intentions when it comes to Mineta, or overly sexualized teenage girls, or Ochako being comically poor, or any of the other topics I’ve occasionally bitched about. So it seems a bit hypocritical for me to suddenly start arguing that now.

So I won’t. Instead, I’m going to go ahead and acknowledge that it’s a valid interpretation. Regardless of what Horikoshi was going for, if you’re looking solely at the end result, then yeah. What he showed us can definitely be taken as abuse. I don’t think it’s an overreaction, and there is a lot to back it up.

That being acknowledged, what I’m going to talk about instead is why I have such a strong desire in this case to ignore the clumsy way the relationship is presented in canon, and to instead view the relationship the way I believe it’s intended to come across. Why do I so badly want for Bakugou to have a (more or less) healthy relationship with his parents? Why does the idea of him having a bad home life leave such a bad taste in my mouth?

And I think this is what it is: one of the key things that draws me to Bakugou’s character is that he doesn’t have A Tragic Past. There’s this tendency in shounen manga to give virtually every important character a sad backstory (looking at you in particular, Naruto and One Piece), with the level of tragedy gradually escalating as the series goes on, until you get to a point where the fandom is literally having debates over whose past is the most tragic. And this has kind of indirectly given rise to several beliefs that I often see articulated and/or implied in fandom:

That there must always be some observable external reason for a character’s personality and temperament, rather than that just being who they are.

That there is a direct correlation between the severity of a character’s past and the validity of that character’s actions. In other words, the person with the more tragic backstory has the moral upper hand in any dispute, simply because they’ve been through more bad shit.

That a character’s potential for redemption is directly tied to how sad their backstory is.

I see this all the time, and not just in shounen fandom for that matter. The basic idea seems to be that if bad things have happened to a character in the past, then it means any bad things they themselves have done are not their fault, and they should be forgiven and given a second chance. The thing is, I’ve always disliked this way of thinking, because to me it strays from what I think is the most crucial element of any redemption arc: taking responsibility. 

Redemption, to me, shouldn’t simply be about whether we feel sorry for the character, or whether they have suffered enough and been punished enough for whatever it is they did, or even whether or not they had a good reason for it. To me, it’s about one thing and one thing only: is the character trying to be better. Do they want to change? Are they making the same mistakes over and over, or are they actually learning and trying to grow? 

To me, redemption is an active process. It’s something the character has to seek out themselves. It’s not something that’s granted to them (key difference here between “redemption” and “forgiveness”), nor does it matter whether or not anyone else thinks they deserve it. For me, at least, it’s simply a matter of whether or not the character is willing to take responsibility for their mistakes, and whether they actually take action toward becoming better.

That being said, this is the main problem I have with the “Mitsuki is abusive” line of thinking: from what I have observed (and not always, mind you, but often enough), this headcanon tends to overlap with the idea that Bakugou’s violent behavior is not his fault, and that he’s only like that because of the way he was raised. In some cases I’ve seen it taken even further than that, with basically Bakugou’s entire backstory basically being rewritten to make him out as just a poor traumatized kid who would never have abused Izuku if it wasn’t for Mitsuki’s abuse, and so the blame actually falls on her and not him. And that, right there, is probably the biggest problem I have with this. That shifting of the blame. Making it so that Bakugou is absolved of responsibility for his own shitty actions, because it turns out that he was just a victim too. 

And actually, it’s even more than that: it’s also the implied suggestion that this is the only way he can be redeemed. That he only qualifies for redemption if he had a good reason for his actions. That we can only feel sorry for him if he’s not to blame for the mistakes that he made, and if it Wasn’t His Fault.

And damn it, but I just take so much issue with this. Because to me, ironically enough, this narrative robs Bakugou of the agency that I personally believe is key to him getting the redemption arc he actually deserves. Does that make sense? Basically, I want Bakugou’s mistakes to be acknowledged as his own mistakes. Because they are. I want him to be able to take ownership of them and to realize what he did wrong. I want him to learn from those mistakes and to grow as a person because of them. I don’t want it to be all “oh sweetie it’s okay, it’s not your fault.” I want it to be “oh fuck, I really screwed up, and I hate the way I feel now because of it, and I never want to feel this way again, so I’m going to do better.” 

Because that’s the only way that real change actually happens. When it comes from within, from the character’s own desire to change. I don’t want a “he was never really bad, just misunderstood” narrative; I want “he fucked up, but he is learning from it, and he is growing.” That’s what I want.

So that, I think, is why the whole thing bothers me so much, and why I just can’t get behind the idea. Again, I won’t deny that the evidence is there. I just choose to interpret it another way. And it is just that: a choice. It’s a conscious choice to read between the lines and to add my own headcanons where necessary and insert little justifications and explanations for things when needed. 

Because to me, Bakugou having grown up in a supportive -- if chaotic -- household is important. It’s important because it shows that even people who grew up in healthy environments with no obvious trauma can fuck up regardless. And those people are still worthy of redemption.

I hope that all makes sense. (Particularly since if it doesn’t, I've just gone and pissed a whole bunch of people off, probably.) Anyways. So with all that being said, I’ll wrap this up with a list of my own personal headcanons about Mitsuki’s and Katsuki’s relationship.

First and foremost, if any of you have ever seen Malcolm in the Middle, I can very easily sum this all up by just saying that Mitsuki = Lois and Katsuki = Malcolm, Francis, and Reese all rolled up into one. That’s it. That’s the dynamic, right there.

But if you haven’t seen MitM, basically what I’m saying is that Katsuki is a precocious little brat who’s headstrong and rebellious and extremely independent and prone to only learning things the hard way, and Mitsuki is the stern and stubborn mom who is still caring and loving but also overbearing and aggressive. The two of them are always butting heads because they’re both extremely prideful and view themselves as always being right, and because Mitsuki’s overbearing tendencies clash directly with Katsuki’s independent streak.

Mitsuki actually is right more often than she’s not, which only fuels her own stubbornness as well at Katsuki’s teenage resentment towards her. She spent a lot of time when he was younger just trying to keep him from setting the house (and himself) on fire, and because he hardly ever listens, the two of them end up getting into a lot of screaming matches with each other, and nowadays that’s just kind of their dynamic and they’re just used to it.

She doesn’t actually think he’s weak, and she only said that because she knows that’s one of the few insults that rankles him enough to actually make him listen, and she was trying to get him to hush up and be respectful to his teachers, who were guests in their home and also his teachers, one of whom just saved his life and the other of whom defended his honor in a nationally broadcast press conference. And also this was part of the whole Japanese culture of being overly humble, and since she knew he was never gonna do it, she was kind of doing it for him. You know, like “thank you so much for saving me, I apologize for inconveniencing you.” Even though it wasn’t actually his fault.

He didn’t internalize the guilt about All Might because of what she said. I honestly think he barely even processed what she said because they’re always just yelling bullshit insults at each other that don’t actually really mean anything. He’s always been terrified of being weak precisely because he never has been. It’s the unknown. He wouldn’t know what to do if he wasn’t strong. It’s a fear he’s always had, and one that had been secretly growing stronger since he first started at U.A. What happened to All Might simply exacerbated that fear. It was already there, and he’d just kept it hidden for a very long time. His mom didn’t put the idea into his head, and never would have said it if she had even the slightest inkling that her cocky, arrogant, loudmouthed, forceful son was secretly harboring insecurities about that very thing.

Any violence in their household is the comedic shounen type of violence where no one is actually hurt in any way. But mostly it’s just loud.

They are so used to this being Just The Way Things Are that ironically, Katsuki would have been much more unsettled if, after he returned home following the kidnapping, his mom had been tender and affectionate. Mitsuki, being a smart mom, picked up on this, so in an effort to make him less uncomfortable, she took deliberate care to behave The Same As Always around him so that he could feel more normal. In fact she was actually still very freaked out herself for days afterward, much more so than she let on (because she’s just as bad at showing vulnerability as he is).

It actually helped. He will never ever acknowledge this out loud, but he realized what she was doing, and he’s grateful.

And I could go on and on, but I think this more or less summarizes how I view the two of them. They basically have their own language by this point, where phrases like “fuck you too” mean “I love you”, and so forth. She loves him to death and worries about him constantly and is so, so proud of him. He loves her too and she doesn’t piss him off nearly as much as he pretends, and he would be devastated beyond words if anything were to ever happen to her. He actually thinks she’s the strongest person he knows, maybe even tougher than All Might, and he would never, ever say this out loud.

Sooo... yeah. I’m trying to think of a good way to end this post now, but I can’t think of anything lol. I think I’ve said everything I wanted to. Tl;dr, I’ve made a conscious decision to view Mitsuki as a highly combative but loving parent to her troublesome tsundere son because I want Katsuki to man up and take responsibility for his own shit, because I love him. The end.

The Linguistics of Bumbleby III

Alright, we’re on the home stretch, y’all. This is the third and final part and it includes V4-V6 because it didn’t seem worth splitting them into two separate parts. That does mean this one is slightly longer, though, just so you know 😅

PART THE THIRD

Here we have Volumes 4 and 5, a.k.a. the conversations that Blake and Yang have with other people about each other.

One, Blake and Sun's talk in V4C11. This one's fairly simple. Blake says that she loves her team like she never thought she could love anybody, and that she thinks about them every day. Her voice only cracks when she says Yang's name, indicating that though she means all of them Yang is the person she misses the most. 

Two, the initial RWY conversation and Yang and Weiss' talk afterwards. Yang claims not to want Blake around, but then admits that she "needed [Blake] there for [her]." This contrast between want and need highlights that although she’s conflicted Yang would still rather Blake were there if she had the choice. Then Weiss explains why she believes Blake left, giving Yang greater perspective on why Blake did what she did. But this is all fairly straightforward, the noteworthy part is...

Three, Sun's "[...] and I can promise Yang would say the same" and Weiss' "[...] and I'm willing to bet Blake feels the same way." More clear parallels; a friend of theirs reminds Blake and Yang that the other person does care about them despite the literal and metaphorical distance between the two of them. Most striking, however, is that there is no precedent for Sun bringing up Yang here. Immediately before he says that he makes the very romantically charged declaration of "I would do it all again if it meant protecting you"... and then instead of following up on it he kills his own romantic moment by referencing Yang. Combined with the fact that he is flagrantly conflating his own (widely accepted to be romantic) feelings for Blake with Yang's feelings for Blake, this scene is meant to tell the viewer that Sun has realised that Yang has those feelings for Blake, and he wants Blake to be aware of Yang's feelings too so that she can fix her relationship with Yang.

The summary of this third part can be mostly boiled down to: Blake and Yang both pine for each other and are angsty about the idea that the other one doesn't return their feelings, and Sun and Weiss become best wingman and wingwoman respectively.

PART THE FOURTH

Okay, we're near the end now, I promise. The last scenes I want to cover are from Volume 6. This section might not go quite as deep with the analysis since a lot of things became much more obvious by this point, but hopefully this part will still be fun with a few interesting observations nonetheless.

One, the conversation on the train in V6C1. Not too much to go over here. Yang is awkward. Blake is awkward. It's a whole mess of awkwardness. But there are two things I would like to briefly touch on.

First, the way Yang says "Blake, you don't have to do that." This line could have been delivered in an angry or bitter tone to show Yang's lingering doubts about Blake rejoining the team, but it isn't. Instead it sounds almost sad, and a little uncomfortable. What the viewer is supposed to take from this line in particular isn't so much that Yang is still mad at Blake for leaving, but that Yang doesn't want Blake bending over backwards and doing things for her to try and make it up to her.

Second, "I'm fine... we're gonna be fine." Yang initially frames her answer only in terms of herself, but then shifts to referring to both her and Blake. It's not just their individual wellbeing she's talking about, it's the state of their relationship. This is an olive branch, if you will, letting Blake know that even if she's hurt she does still want to see if they can fix their bond.

Two, "Good to see you're not rusty." This comment serves two purposes: 1) it shows that Blake and Yang's dynamic hasn't been irrevocably damaged as they're still able to share the playful banter they did before, and 2) it establishes that Yang's still casually flirting a little.

Three, each of them calling out the other's name first in V6C2. In a moment of panic and fear, Blake and Yang are each other's first thought. Take from that what you will, but it emphasises how much they care about each other even after everything that happened during/following the Fall of Beacon. So far all of these moments are telling the audience that there is something to be repaired here; Blake and Yang's connection is presented as weakened, but far from broken.

Four, the barn scene in V6C5. Oh boy, oh boy. First there's Yang answering Blake's "Are you okay?" with "I don't know", which is not at all the same "I'll be fine [...]" she gave Weiss in V5C6 and "I'm totally fine, I'm great" she failed to convince Ruby or Weiss with in V5C8. Even just earlier in V6 when it's in front of the others she tells Blake "[they're] gonna be fine", but when it's just the two of them she admits that none of those answers were true where she didn't with anyone else. Combine that with the fact that Blake starts opening up about what her relationship with Adam was like later in this scene when before she didn't even tell Sun he was more than someone she worked with and only vaguely described what he was like to the rest of the team after Yang's fight with Mercury, and it's pretty obvious that both of them only really feel comfortable discussing their most intimate feelings with each other. Lastly, also compare the sharp "We're fine" Yang gives Blake here to the reassuring "We're gonna be fine" in C1; while this scene demonstrates the strength of Blake and Yang's bond, it is also its lowest point. From here it can either snap completely, or be mended to become stronger than ever, which is what we get starting with...

Five, V6C10 a.k.a. the gayest scene in RWBY so far. This exchange is just as awkward as the one in the first episode, but for somewhat different reasons. It's flirtatious and lovestruck - there isn't really any other way to describe it. Blake is shy and almost bashful; she teases that "stealth isn't exactly [Yang's forté]" then panics and immediately backtracks with "I mean, you're great, and I'll hurry back." It's all totally unnecessary to reach the objective of the conversation (which is just to convey that Blake is going to disable the tower alone) and it can't be reasonably interpreted as anything other than romantic. The most striking part for me, however, is Yang's "Go." It's one tiny word, yet it serves perfectly to make it clear to the audience that by now Yang trusts Blake not to leave again, and not only that but she trusts Blake to leave and then come back. This interaction is needed in order to move their reconciliation forwards so that they are a united front when...

Six, Adam happens. If subtlety was set on fire and thrown out the window never to be seen again before, then now its remains have also been trampled on by a raging bull just for good measure.

Adam is exceedingly open about the fact that he sees Yang as a rival for Blake's love, and hates the fact that Blake has, as he perceives it, chosen Yang over him. He tries to manipulate Yang by arguing that Blake "made a promise to [him] once that she'd always be at [his] side", but when Yang instantly sees through him he resorts to asking Blake if he "just wasn't good enough for [her]" to which she very rightly replies that "it was so much more than that." Adam's jealousy reaches its most undeniable, though, when it culminates in him screaming "What does she even see in you?!" at Yang. It's a phrase that is never used except in the context of romantic interest, and it removes any remaining doubt that this isn't a personal conflict for Adam. It could make sense for him to hate Yang because she's a human, but he never brings that up and instead repeatedly highlights himself that it's her connection with Blake that he despises.

The other part worthy of note here is Blake's "[...] we're protecting each other" speech, which serves as a direct counterpoint to her earlier declaration to Yang of "I'll protect you", and completes their V6 trajectory from the start with Blake's guilt putting them on an uneven footing to this moment in which she recognises that they need to stand as equals instead. (And I'd like to clarify that this issue was never about Blake seeing Yang as weak--heck, her word for her is "strength"--it was about her feeling like she owed Yang something in truth for the loss of her arm to Adam and needing to let go of that unhealthy mindset.)

Seven, the aftermath of the Adam confrontation. It's only a couple of lines of dialogue, but it says an awful lot. The fact that Blake's first instinct is to reassure Yang that she won't leave again or go back on her word when Yang is already holding her demonstrated just how deep Adam's manipulation ran, and Yang's response is equally significant. She could say "It's okay" or "I forgive you", or something else that would validate Blake's guilt in the process of absolving it, but she doesn't. She says "I know you won't", which is infinitely more powerful because it demonstrates that she isn't just offering Blake forgiveness, she's also making it clear that there was nothing to forgive in the first place since Blake's actions were well-meaning and a result of past abuse.

Eight, and last but very very far from least, "we were there for each other." This is the conclusion of this whole arc in Yang and Blake's relationship. This line emphasises that they are closer than ever before, and that they're finally back in a healthy place from which they can move forward.

The summary of this fourth part can mostly be boiled down to: yeah, they’re in love.

Well, there we are, guys. We have reached the end. Sincere congratulations to anyone who stuck around this long, because this got very very long, but I hope it was worth it 😊

on “having it both ways”: thinking about S2 and looking ahead to S3

So apparently once a year I end up latching on to Riverdale pre-season promo and having WAY TOO MUCH to say about it.

Image analysis, pop-culture riffing, S2 criticism, meditations on resistant reading, my own discomfort with “wrongfully accused” narratives in this particular historical moment, and some hopes on the literal eve of the S3 premiere, below the cut...

So, last week when this piece of promo dropped, the very first thing that I thought of was the visual reference to Chicago and the Cell-Block Tango.

(I didn’t do it! - but if I’d done it? - how could you tell me that I was wrong?)

HOW perfect is that homage? The red lighting, the raised arms? The promo still just FEELS like a snapshot from a Fosse dance routine. (A little more on legendary choreographer Bob Fosse here.)

It’s a defiant pose, right in the center of the frame, but a slightly vulnerable one at the same time. There’s nothing hidden here; everything’s on display. The pose draws the viewer’s eyes inescapably to the body - a muscled body, but one which here seems like a gymnast or dancer’s body: lithe figure, tapered waist, power that is channeled into performance.

(this is tasty; this is plenty; this is hungry work)

So, on a first pass, insofar as it puts this demonstrative male body on display, it’s a little bit of a subversive image, I think. And that’s well in line with the way that Riverdale so often courts the female (and/or gay male) gaze, and at its best does some really unusual stuff with masculinity. 

I thought about all of this - and then, silly me, I saw that this piece of promo was NOT a still, but is, instead, a short clip. 

Archie doing pull-ups on the prison bars, as another heavily muscled dude saunters behind him, reads to me like a completely different type of performance! To the degree that it invites the eye, it sends the message: don’t fuck with me. In motion, we have purely the pursuit of greater strength, the purging of weakness in favor of the means of self-protection. 

Instead of Chicago, my mind jumps to 3x01′s title source: Fortune and Men’s Eyes. Dominate or be dominated. 

Realistically, I’m willing to believe that the ambiguous interpretation here between “still” and clip is just a quirk of how it happened to be uploaded to Twitter by a social media intern. 

Still - the interpretative gulf between the still image and the image in motion got me thinking how often Riverdale seems to want to “have it both ways,” and what that does to the audience’s experience and expectations of the show.

For instance:

Other people have written at length about how Riverdale’s pursuit of aesthetic homage or plot contrivance has created character inconsistencies that occasionally baffle. Cheryl is alternately a tragic Gothic heroine and a lacquered, ruthless Mean Girl; Jughead is both a sensitive loner writer and also a bad-boy gang leader; Betty is both Betty and Dark Betty. (GOD.)

Other folks have discussed how the show needs to really play out the consequences of conflicts between the characters. It’s not that the show shouldn’t drop bombshells like the Bughead breakup(s) or the conflict between Betty and Veronica/Jughead and Archie, but it seems all too willing to reset back to milkshakes in a booth at Pop’s without doing enough work to explain WHY things are okay again. (See also: resolving major conflicts between characters literally with a song.)

The desire to “have it both ways” also really shows up in the show’s tendency to engage complicated issues (racism, sexism, colonialism, the prison-industrial complex) on a shallow level - thus getting credit for mentioning them, without really taking the time to explore them meaningfully or to explain the characters’ investment in them. 

The result of this, in terms of storytelling, is that you leave a lot of room for resistant (even combative) readings of the text to emerge. To name a few of my own:

frustration with Jughead’s acceptance of what feels like a suuuuper patriarchal role as “the Serpent Prince” (and later King)

the fact that it’s really hard to sympathize with Veronica throughout entire swathes of season 2

a profound opposition to a storyline that sexualizes Betty’s mental health issues in a really exploitative fashion

And then... there’s Archie.

In the “Cell Block Tango,” the murderesses of Chicago (bar one) get to justify their crimes. Conversely, as we open the third season of Riverdale, the audience knows that Archie’s being blamed for something he didn’t do. Despite bragging about it (!!) to a bunch of mobsters (!!!!), Archie is not guilty of the murder of Cassidy Bullock. 

...but he IS guilty of so! many! other! things! across Season 2. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but aiding and abetting a criminal, covering up a murder, blowing up a car, and forming an extralegal vigilante militia group - TWICE - all come to mind. 

The last bits of S2 offer us a version of Archie’s amends-making that comes in the form of defending the Serpents, turning on Hiram, supporting his father, et cetera. And then the very last image of S2 - Archie being clapped in cuffs right at the moment that he’s supposed to be sworn into office - is meant to distress us.

But a season of watching Archie embrace fascism leaves some marks, y’all. And a not insignificant portion of the audience, still frustrated with the character’s choices, couldn’t help but say - well, he had it coming.

So, yeah. It’s been a few months between the close of S2 and the open of S3, and in most cases that would be enough time for me to sit with the story in and of itself, to consider more broadly where it had failed or succeeded, and to allow some of that “resistant reader” response to drain away.

But real talk, you guys: I’m finding it really hard right now, at this moment in American history, to connect emotionally with the story of a young man trying to fight the charges of which he has been wrongfully-yet-ever-so-plausibly accused.  

[Please note, I am NOT trying to say that RAS is somehow trying to weigh in explicitly on the SCOTUS debacle. The S2 finale laying the groundwork for this plot aired this spring, and S3E1 has (presumably?) been in the can for a while now. And, to its credit, Riverdale has in both seasons explicitly criticized a sexual culture that objectifies young women and reduces them to “points” (the football team’s playbook) and to prey (Nick St. Clair).]

But, for me personally, I can’t help looking at this plot and hearing echoes of “It's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of.”

Here’s the interesting thing: I think RAS knows this, and I think the promo around this plot is partially designed to try to dispel these connections. 

(For me, at least, it’s having mixed results.)

(source)

For instance, I can’t look at this still (young man, formal suit intended to project good character and youthful vulnerability, sullen face, flanked by counsel) without thinking, “Wow, this feels....Brock Turner-y.” 

I don’t know if anyone’s written about courtroom photos and sketches as a genre of visual composition, but I feel like I’ve seen variations of the Riverdale still a million times, often printed on the front page of the local university newspaper, discussing the controversy over the conviction (or NON-conviction) of a promising young athlete accused of something awful that no one who knows him EVER would have suspected he would do. (Nice boy, nice family, so many extracurriculars, such good grades!)

Of course, there’s a major difference between the photos above: Archie’s defense team is entirely female. 

Obviously this makes sense because Mary Andrews and Sierra McCoy are both major supporting characters who are also lawyers - but it also makes sense in trying to dismantle some of the potential gut reactions to this visual framing. There’s some “innocence by association” going on here, I think. And after all, Archie IS innocent of this particular crime!

This still lands with mixed effect for me though, because any defense strategy that suggests the intentional composition of a visual tableau feels inherently cynical, even when the character is sympathetic or innocent. 

For instance: I just watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which features a scene where the main character shows up in the courtroom in full Upper West Side respectable regalia to try to get the obscenity charges against her dismissed - she fails and ends up having to plead guilty, because she mouths off at the judge. Anyone who’s familiar with Amy Sherman-Palladino’s work will recognize this bones of this plot point in the courtroom scene in Gilmore Girls: Rory’s grandparents’/lawyer’s attempt to portray her as a naive little angel backfires, and she ends up getting a ton of community service as penance for stealing a boat. It’s important to note that the characters are both guilty of their charges - although, as another favorite show of mine might note, “the situation’s a lot more nuanced than that.”)

(source | source)

Another way in which the pre-season promo is distancing Archie from both his actions last season, and the present context external to the show, is to emphasize his profound contrition. In this teaser from Riverdale 3x01, we get Archie declaring that “whatever happens to me in the courtroom on Tuesday - that is what I deserve.” This a statement of universal guilt and responsibility (one might say martyrdom?) that goes well beyond the scope of his actual infractions.

Now - I really, really appreciate that we’re getting a sad Archie rather than a mad Archie. And I want to acknowledge that he’s so definitely a kid here, trying hard to “man up” and to grapple with the fact that he screwed up big time and that there are consequences for his actions. After a season of doing the wrong thing over and over and OVER again, he’s trying to do the right thing. 

But here’s the thing: Fred responds to this confession of near-universal guilt with what (in this snippet) feels like a pair of universally-exculpatory statements: “You are a good kid. You got manipulated by a mobster.” (Mary is more nuanced: “You do not deserve to be framed for murder.”)

Archie does not deserve to be framed for murder, and he certainly did get manipulated by a mobster. In fact, I would like to formally start a petition to have Archie not fall under the control of an unscrupulous adult in S3!

However. 

Instead of accepting guilt for anything and everything and being immediately absolved for non-specific sins because of his inherent “goodness,” I really want to know that Archie understands what he actually DID do last season. He climbed wholeheartedly on board with the plan to Make Riverdale Great Again, and in that process, he did things that were NOT AT ALL commensurate with being “a good kid.” I think both the character and the show would benefit from a more explicit meditation on exactly why Hiram’s manipulation was so effective, and why Archie moved so quickly past being merely Hiram’s pawn, and voluntarily embraced the role of Hiram’s very ambitious accomplice. 

One of the specific preconditions of restorative justice is that the offender has to acknowledge their actions and the hurt that they caused. Reconciliation and vagueness are incompatible for so many reasons, but one of them is because a BIG part of learning from your mistakes is thinking precisely about what you did so that you can choose not to do it again.

I read a bunch of the new Archie comics over the break, and I think I now have a greater appreciation for the trope of Archie as a schlemiel. Despite his best intentions, the Archie archetype keeps making the same goofy, klutzy mistakes over and over again. This is fine, even funny, when it means that Archie just keeps accidentally ending up with a bucket on his head. Whoops! 

It is super not okay if it means that Archie just keeps finding himself supporting fascists. ...whoops?

(At present, my entire country is being “manipulated by mobsters.” Clearly, I have some feelings about this.)

I don’t actually know how to wrap all the loose ends of this analysis up meaningfully and coherently at the finish here - but then again, that probably puts me into good company with our showrunners. Optimistically, I’m going to hope that that’s intentional - that I’m judging in media res, and that plotlines and character arcs in S3 will weave together in a way that will surprise and delight me! 

But mostly, I’m going to reiterate my hope that S3 makes meaningful choices. That the people in charge don’t waste their actors’ time filming oodles and oodles of material that gets sliced and diced to ribbons. That they make choices EARLY about major plot points; that they stick to them; and that they let the rising action and falling action of your narrative reflect those choices, and the consequences that naturally accompany them. 

I hope that the people in charge of S3 will resist the ever-present temptation to “have it both ways” - which ultimately works out to really no definitive way at all. Telling a sturdy story is risky in a totally different way than courting controversy - but it’s so, so worth it. 

1) Thank you for answering! I hope that you don’t mind my continuing this conversation despite not disagreeing with your points - the misogynistic undertones of that forgiveness were heavy enough to drag anyone’s mood down. It’s just that I feel the need to clarify that I’m in no way trying to absolve Horikoshi for writing these people on those circumstances in that way nor to guess if any nuance we extrapolate from it is intentional or not, just to say that an in-universe lens makes it really

(cut for length again and more discussion of fictional dv)

2) easy to empathize with the reactions of the Todoroki women. Maybe even more so than with Natsu’s perfectly natural hope than having their abuser at least recognize how shitty his action were may bring closure, since that puts healing on the hands of said abuser which isn’t constructive. And then there’s Shouto who has been trying to not do that anymore for a while and has felt pressure to work with/under that asshole to achieve his full potential (which, another sadly realistic thing) so of

3) course he can see that for now, regardless of how HE feels about it, the best hope for their mother is that their father’s action reflect this supposed change of heart regardless of genuinity. And I think we are actually supposed to side with that but whether that’s intended for the sake of the victims or the abuser depends on how charitable you are feeling with Horikoshi’s writing. I mean, in the absolutely most hopeful interpretation of his writing we may see that flower thing as a parallel

4) of something the Joker canonically did for Harley and hence a hint of not seeing Endeavour as redeemable but not being the time for his comeuppance since right now their world really needs effective heroes whether they are good people or not… but that wouldn’t have been such an issue if he hadn’t written Endeavour to be as consistently useful at law enforcement as he did. I very much do not feel like dismissing the Doylist readings of complex subjects, that just facilitates the propagation of

5) harmful messages, but I believe that complementing those readings with Watsonian ones can help us more fully tackle said subjects and avoid detrimental “moralizing”. We understand the world through stories, which is why fostering empathy for fictional characters is still used to teach empathy for certain groups. And like you’ve said, at least on the West victims who haven’t ‘fought hard enough’ get thrown under the bus (Cinderella being a great example of a fictional case) so to me

6) encouraging others to see things through the victims’ eyes in fiction too is important even when the author won’t. TL;DR: please do go off on any author that punches down instead of up but why miss out on appropriating representation for those who are down while we are at it?

i’ll say in advance that i know it’s hard to submit long responses through an askbox, so if any of the things i’m focusing on below were just a result of the character limit/poor wording/misinterpreting, then please do let me know and send a follow-up.

there’s one major thing that i think we have to get out of the way first:

i don’t think it’s fair to characterize natsuo (or any other person who refuses to forgive their abuser) as placing healing in the hands of their abuser. being angry and resentful towards the person who abused you is not predicating your healing on that person’s future actions; it’s claiming your emotions and experiences which your abuser has no control over, it’s setting boundaries for what you will accept from that person, and on what terms you will interact. it’s saying “if you don’t get better, then you will not have my love or support” and that’s totally fine! no one is owed our love, thus it isn’t hurting us not to give it to someone who doesn’t deserve it.

i’m not gonna lie, phrasing a survivor’s choice of dealing with their trauma as placing agency in the hands of their abuser bothers me a lot. it also sounds a lot like the things people say when manipulating a survivor into forgiveness, like: “you can only control your actions, so why don’t you forgive them for your own sake instead of waiting around for them to become better people?? :)” not that you’re trying to manipulate anyone, anon, but wording like that can be easily misconstrued and i would be mindful of it in the future.

now, for the rest of your ask: again, i fully believe it’s your right (and everyone else’s) to headcanon rei and fuyumi however you want to fulfill a satisfying watsonian reading for yourselves. the problem with watsonian readings, however, is that they’re all down to interpretation. you may say that fuyumi wants to reconcile for many complicated reasons, while another reader might say she’s just forgiven her abuser, plain and simple. it’s even more open to different interpretations than doylist readings, so why would i just pick one of them to incorporate into my analysis? how would i choose it? what would my biased choice lend to my meta?

i’m also not sure why you say sticking to a purely doylist reading would be ‘moralizing.’ a doylist reading places nothing on the characters themselves—it’s about using narrative cues to figure out what the author intends to convey, and in this particular case, it’s about criticizing the way horikoshi wrote the pro hero arc based on the way he framed the actions of the tdrks’ abuser and the perspective from which he decided to tell the story, all of which only add depth to the abuser’s character. there is no evidence to argue that this arc was meant, canonically, to condemn that character—in fact, all the evidence points to the contrary—and i disagree with the idea that our criticism targeted at the author and at the narrative must be filtered through a watsonian perspective. unless you believe that people adhering to a doylist critique of the tdrks’ narrative is somehow promoting a lack of sympathy towards rei and fuyumi, then what purpose does it serve except for doing hori’s work for him?

there’s a time and a place to discuss headcanons, and for me, within my metas isn’t it. most of them are geared towards a specific message that analyze the narrative at an authorial/doylist level, for instance “this is why hori is so damn shitty at writing abuse.” they’re not about “hori’s shitty and i’m correcting him with these headcanons based on this canon evidence and these real life examples.” if you want to do the latter, then by all means, be my guest! it’s just not a task i’m interested in undertaking, and, again, i don’t believe they’re necessary for message i intend to convey, and i don’t believe it’s actively harmful to survivors to exclude watsonian explanations.

i think it’s fine to feel sympathetic towards rei and fuyumi. i encourage it! i also understand if there are people who don’t want to get involved with them because they’re badly written and because hori uses them as his abuse apologism mouthpiece. it’s very dispiriting, and people are allowed to not interact with messages they feel are dispiriting or harmful.

i think it’s fine for fans to write rei and fuyumi however they please. they can write them as avenging furies or they can write them as complicated abuse survivors with conflicting desires. as i said in the post you’re referencing, i understand that fans themselves are coming from a complicated place, and i sympathize with that.

i think it’s simultaneously important for fans to remember real abuse victims, who don’t always make perfect choices, and who already get a lot of flak from society regarding what they do and don’t do. we must extend our sympathy to these real survivors, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have complicated and negative feelings about the ways fictional survivors are written.

lastly, i want to say quite simply, if you want to encourage people to sympathize with abuse survivors, there are better works than bnha. there are creators who work their commentary about abuse into the text itself instead of making fans invent an interpretation to convince other fans. i think it’s far more straightforward and a better overall experience for someone to read or watch a piece of media that intends to have a statement on abuse than to be left to flounder in the mess that bnha is.

Vampire Sla-yer-very

Whilst this episode is stunning for it’s narrative, depicting the climax in the tension between these two characters as Robin tries to kill Spike as an act of vengeance for killing his slayer mother, it also has deeper interpretative depth. Perhaps being burdened with too much post-colonial anxiety, Biscuit found it impossible to shake the racial subtext of this conflict between Robin and Spike and felt that the episode was trying to communicate contemporary dialogue about the relationship between slave-owning ancestors and slave ancestors. On the surface, the episode is Spike vs Robin Wood and a lot of obstreperous blows to the face, which we’re unused to in BTVS where the audience has been conditioned to expect kung-fu over brute force. But interpreting what each character represents, rather than how each character appears, reveals a different conflict. I think it’s important to first point out the obvious; Robin is black. In contemporary television, this wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, but BTVS is a show that has often been criticised for its ethnocentric cast, so it could be argued that for writers to make a U-turn here was essential to the message they wanted to convey. Moreover, the audience is already aware of Robin’s desire to kill Spike, but in this episode it is clear he wants something more too. For example, he doesn’t try to murder Spike swiftly, which would be easy having fought side by side with him – instead, he makes the conflict personal demonstrating that he wants an apology. >Now, the singular experience of this character fighting against a white male would not be corollary to any racial message, but place him in a room with a 19th century English Romantic; the epitome of cultural superiority and imperialism and the racial tensions should be unbearably obvious. This is what Spike represents in this episode, and to make it obvious to viewers who may have forgotten, the episode has flashbacks of Spike’s past as a Romantic poet! So, maybe there’s a racial element now, but is it slavery the show is specifically referring to? Enter: Nicky Wood, Robin’s mother, who also appears in flashbacks. She is presented as some combination of proto-Punk and fallout from the Black Panthers, both movements inundated with subversive angst and a desire for civil equality. Moreover, she is the Slayer and a particular theme throughout the season, but particularly one that returns in season seven is that being the Slayer is a curse; it’s something that the person does not choose, but is forced to do. For example, Robin says in the episode “You know I love you, but I’ve got a job to do. The mission’s what matters right?”. In this sense, slaying here can be related to slavery. Nicky is forced to perform a duty for others at the expense of her liberty. This is really important to the episode too because Robin feels that he is personally affected, psychologically so, by this. He, too, suffers from slavery, despite never having experienced it, and he blames Spike for his role in this too. So the characters fight – in a room full of crucifixes I might add – important because both slaves and slave owners used Christianity to justify their claims. But the subtext is striking if the characters are understood in this way. Robin is fighting with Spike because he blames him for the things that happened to his slave mother. He wants Spike dead, but really he wants recognition, apology, maybe even some sort of compensation for the wrongs that his ancestors have felt. He feels that they have affected him also, transmuted to him by some hereditary osmosis. When Spike argues that Nicky knew what she was ‘signing up for’ when she fought a vampire, his riposte is that ‘I didn’t sign up for it’. He later complains that Spike ‘took his childhood’. Interestingly, Spike has a soul in series 7. This makes the battle so much more ambiguous in these terms because he is technically not responsible for the crimes of his past. The crimes were committed by a vampire in his body that he had no control of. When describing how a demon usurped his mother’s control when she was made a vampire, Spike demonstrates how vampires are absolved of responsibility once turned. He says; ‘When I sired her, I set loose a demon… but that was the demon talking, not her’. What is more interesting is that Robin seems to understand this on some level – he refuses to fight ‘Spike’ and uses his trigger to awaken his primitive vampire side before fighting him. Perhaps more interesting is that Spike displays very little sympathy for Robin’s suffering during the fight. This is consistent with Spike’s monochrome views on history – in Pangs he describes imperialism as a relationship between superior Invaders and those Invaded, and here he justifies what happened between himself and Nicky as a natural destination of their roles. He plainly retorts; “I don’t give a piss about your mum. She was a Slayer. I was a vampire”. The conflict strongly parallels the dialogue between post-colonial countries against their previous masters. Caricom countries such as Jamaica and the Caribbean have called for compensation to help them recover from the scars of slavery, both politically, economically and psychologically. The response from Imperial counties has been varied. Some, like Spike, denounce any ongoing impacts of slavery and even argue that the Paternalism received in the form of culture and infrastructure outweighs any damage caused by slavery. Softer views that acknowledge the evil of slavery are louder, but still contain disdain for being asked to bear the financial brunt of paying compensation for the actions of one’s ancestors. If we agree slavery was wrong and acknowledge that some still suffer, then surely something should be done to help? If so, who should be the one to help? These are the same complex moral questions that are being screamed in the subtext of this Buffy episode. The episode doesn’t provide an answer. It leaves Robin, broken and bruised on the floor, as Spike leaves carrying Nicky’s coat; the trophy of his kill. There is no resolution or panacea. Only the silence in which to speak.