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#which sounds as boring as fuck
lagosbratzdoll · 8 months
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On Daenerys, Colonisation and Race Discourse within the ASOIAF Fandom
This has been on my mind for a good long while and honestly, as much as I would like to leave discourse in the pits, it has been bugging me intermittently over the past few weeks.
Far too many of you get on here and call people who like the fictional dragon-riding family, neo-Nazis and that sentiment is so prevalent, that white people feel comfortable telling me a black woman that I am a neo-Nazi for rooting for Daenerys Targaryen. I am upholding neo-Nazi power fantasies for wanting to see a little girl live at the end of a story. I am a neo-Nazi for wanting to see the rape survivor have the family she aches for and children with the man (or men) she loves.
Then, those same people go on spiels about how the systemic erasure of those who sing the song of the earth and other old races is not colonialism. That their removal from their home is not displacement but an agreement between two equal parties. The fact that the only place where those who sing the song of the earth exist in the present timeline is north of the wall, surrounded by the bones of their dead, is not a travesty. That the expulsion of the old races from their home isn't that bad and should not be condemned. 
Instead, people argue, completely seriously, that the harm that the First Men and Andals have caused is centuries in the past, so essentially the slate has been wiped clean. The logical leaps that are required to arrive at such a boneheaded conclusion are truly mind-boggling, and those who make such arguments are not good people. 
I am unsure how one could read those books and come away with the impression that the old races do not mourn the loss of their home. I am unsure how one could read The Last of the Giants[1] and Ygritte’s reaction to both the song and Jon’s dismissal of the ethnic cleansing of the giants then believe that the old races and the free folk have moved past their displacement. 
In Westeros, from the Wall to the broken arm of Dorne, they all speak one language despite the fact they are all different ethnicities and they all landed on the shores at different times. That is not the case in Essos, we have been introduced to at least six languages and in A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion notes that the Valyrian spoken in the Free Cities has evolved into nine distinct dialects, and they are well on their way to becoming different languages.
How would a continent as large and diverse as Westeros maintain its hegemony over the people if not for forced assimilation, discriminatory practices and violence? The brutal repression required to keep one house in power for thousands of years is nothing to sniff at. The suppression required to keep the vast majority of Westeros worshipping one (or seven) gods. The systems in place ensure that language does not grow or evolve amongst the highborns at least.
Centuries before Aegon's Landing the maesters were the definitive educational authority and even now centuries after, nothing has changed. The grey rats still decide who learns what and when they learn it. There's one in every highborn home, all correspondence passes through them, they are the healers and the councillors.
The circular logic gets even more blockheaded when you factor in the fact that Daenerys is far from the only white character in the books. She is not the only character who wishes for home. She is not the only character who draws strength from her ancestors, her bloodline and her magical creatures. 
Cersei draws strength from her family’s iconography, and the Stark children (Jon included) all draw strength from their direwolves, their home and their blood. Sansa, Arya and Bran wish to return home and their home was built on the indiscriminate murder and displacement of the indigenous peoples. Their home is built on centuries of rape, murder, exclusionary practices and sexual slavery. 
However, if we give the nonsensical argument that time erases crimes air; the Starks, Lannisters and Tullys are warring to settle personal grievances in the present timeline. As a consequence of that war, thousands (a modest guesstimate) of small folk, minor nobles and even some major ones have been raped, tortured, maimed and killed.
Despite all this, no one writes meta after meta about how Sansa and her siblings must surely die for justice to be had for those who sing the song of the earth, the free folk, the giants and all the old races that fled beyond the wall.  
People write meta about Cersei and how she must die, but those are typically more misogynistic nature. They typically argue that she must die not for the “crime” of being Lannister, but for the “crime” of being Cersei and “ruining” Jamie. 
I would not mind criticisms of Dany and her peace-focused approach to ending slavery because the approach is naïve and she gives the slavers far too much ground. However, she is learning, growing and self-critiquing. At the end of A Dance with Dragons, she has decided to embrace fire and blood, her knight is breaking the false peace which is a necessary step forward.
What I find offensive is people saying that she should have planned better before she abolished slavery. And that the death, violence, and sickness that arises from her quest to eradicate slavery is somehow worse than the death, violence, and sickness that already existed in Slaver’s Bay. 
This argument often downplays the horrific conditions and suffering that exist(ed) under the slave system in Slaver's Bay. Such arguments are often in poor taste and prioritise the lives and comforts of the slavers more than the people they have enslaved.
I would not mind criticisms of Dany if people applied that same critique even-handedly. The same people who believe that Jon and Bran have done much to rectify the evil that their ancestors perpetuated believe that Dany has not done anything to right the wrongs of her ethnic kin. They praise them for the non-existent steps that they have taken, but in the same breath, they condemn Dany for not being able to immediately end the plague that is slavery. 
It is perfectly alright to not like fictional characters, no law requires you to like certain fictional characters over others. However, what is not right is making broad accusations about those who do, it is beyond the pale. It is disgusting, and annoying, and trivialises real-world issues to score cheap points against fictional characters.
Equating the survival of a teenage survivor to the restoration of a fascist house or neo-Nazi power fantasy when such designations do not exist in the world of ice and fire is strange behaviour. Saying that the teenage survivor will eventually be manipulated and raped (again) before ending up dead on her manipulator's blade is also strange behaviour. 
Dismissing the horrors of colonialism, especially when the text shows you that the involved parties are still affected by it, is not normal and often veers into real-world imperialism apologia. While criticism and analysis of characters and their actions are valid and even encouraged, it is essential that we do not resort to sweeping generalisations about other people and that we keep criticisms of characters grounded in the text. 
[1]  
Ooooooh, I am the last of the giants, my people are gone from the earth.
The last of the great mountain giants, who ruled all the world at my birth
Oh, the smallfolk have stolen my forests, they’ve stolen my rivers and hills.
And they’ve built a great wall through my valleys, and fished all the fish from my rills
In stone halls they burn their great fires, in stone halls they forge their sharp spears.
Whilst I walk alone in the mountains, with no true companion but tears.
They hunt me with dogs in the daylight, they hunt me with torches by night.
For these men who are small can never stand tall, whilst giants still walk in the light.
Oooooooh, I am the LAST of the giants, so learn well the words of my song.
For when I am gone the singing will fade, and the silence shall last long and long.
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vulpinesaint · 23 days
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listen i am geralt of rivia hater number one but one thing i actually CANNOT stand is when the fandom mischaracterizes him. took one look at this man who speaks very straight-forwardly and matter-of-fact and is a little recalcitrant with his words sometimes and went "haha he communicates in grunts! man who only says 'hm'!" and then won't even write him to speak in full fucking sentences. hello???? hello???????? yes the netflix show was a bad influence on everybody because they were trying too hard to depict geralt as a stoic manly badass but we CANNOT let that distract us from the REAL thing to make fun of geralt for. which are his Constant Unprovoked Monologues
#also the fact that he fakes his dumb stupid little rivian accent because the man was NOT raised in rivia. but i digress#'haha he only says hm!' where were you for every episode when he launched into a speech about the lesser evil. that's like. the whole thing#geralt of rivia will do nothing But talk once you let him. don't give that bitch a chance! he'll start up about honor again!!!#convinced that most of this is because netflix show insisted on showing us him around jaskier so much#and jaskier does not shut up. love him to death. but geralt genuinely does not have time to get a word in edgewise#i will admit that this is something that i had to learn by reading the books and paying more attention to it#but it's not like he DOESN'T do it in the show. if you ever sit with a witcher episode transcript for whatever reason#and really take a look at geralt's lines. man he talks a whole fucking lot.#again cannot emphasize enough that he Monologues. HE TALKS HIS WAY OUT OF SO MANY SITUATIONS.#me when i look filavandrel of the elves in the eyes and 'hm' at him and he lets me go. no bitch he monologued!!!!#terrible. terrible. let this man speak. if i see you fanfic bitches continue making him talk in sentence fragments again i'm gonna kill#as for my own fanfic. i will always prefer a geralt who talks too much to be believable over a geralt who barely speaks at all.#both because i believe in letting him speak his mind which he OBVIOUSLY likes to do. sideeyes him.#and because it's just fucking boring and a little annoying to read speech patterns that don't sound like how people talk.#cough cough lan wanji the untamed. man i'm not sitting here and reading this motherfucker's two word sentences#let him speak!!!!!!#anyway.#geralt of rivia#the witcher#fanfic
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i have a teeny, tiny superiority complex because i didn’t watch the atla live action.
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oh-meow-swirls · 5 days
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it's kind of weird to me that they didn't bother releasing sushi and tempura internationally at all but at the same time i'm kinda glad they didn't cuz like. yo-kai watch was financially failing in the west by the time 3 released. i feel like if they had released sushi and tempura the franchise would've completely tanked before we got sukiyaki which would've sucked. honestly if anything i feel like it's more surprising that we got all three versions of 2 instead of them just releasing psychic specters but tbf i think yo-kai watch was doing well in the west when 2 released. 2 is just inexplicably what killed the franchise despite being a masterpiece-
#puppy rambles#yo-kai watch#yw3#yw2#idk. i have a lot of thoughts on this stuff#still upset i didn't find out 3 released in america until a while after it did :/ could've gotten a physical copy if i'd found out earlier#but alas. i'm just stuck with a boring digital version. i mean the digital versions of yo-kai watch games are better but like. still#i never got maginyan in blasters even though i could've. the code or whatever was on the receipt but my mom bought it for me#from the nintendo website. and i don't think she checked it and i don't think i found out that was where it was until a bit after i got it-#i did get machonyan and jibanyan t/komasan t's codes entered though so i can get them on any playthrough now#unless i put the sd card in another 3ds since apparently it's system-based instead of sd card based??? which is really stupid#but you can probably bypass that with cfw and i do plan on modding my 3ds eventually#it'll just be a process cuz i don't have an sd card slot on my computer and idk if my moms would be willing to help#so i'll probably have to get a separate sd card reader or whatever. which i do think my moms would be okay with i mean#it's my system and they're cool with piracy lfskdjfjkfsdkljfd-#my moms are so cool <3 i just wish i could get them interested in yo-kai watch but they don't seem to care lfskdjfkjsfdjlksfd-#they determined the battle system doesn't sound fun but i might've just described it badly#i mean tbf. it is very annoying sometimes. especially when my healer just will not heal the other yo-kai#''DO YOUR FUCKING JOB TATTLECAST STOP LOAFING'' -me playing 2#that being said if 1's switch port ever releases in america i am totally playing it on the tv#i WILL force my moms to watch me play funni ghost game whether they like it or not /lh#if we do ever get 1's switch port i hope they make it a collection of some kind with 2 and 3 remasters too i would buy that in a heartbeat#i mean obviously i will buy any american-released yo-kai watch stuff in a heartbeat aside from maaaaaybe y-school heroes#(i'm sorry y-school heroes fans i just cannot get into it. from concept alone it sounds like i would not enjoy it)#maybe sangokushi too if we ever get that but i feel like we probably won't#idk if the franchise it's a crossover with is popular enough in america for that#i hope we get more english yo-kai watch content once ghost craft releases. kinda feel like it's testing the waters tbh#i know it's seemingly just a spiritual successor but still#i do hope that it being a spiritual successor doesn't mean yo-kai watch is over. i doubt that it will since like#punipuni still gets semi-frequent updates
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arctic-hands · 1 year
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The subject came up today and I can't decide so I'm throwing it out there because I don't give a fuck and also having survived all of this kinda makes me sound like a badass
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anotherpapercut · 8 months
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sorry if this is extraordinarily pretentious but I do think it's wild that lobe piercings count as piercings in the same way a lip piercing does. it feels wrong. I have never thought of ear piercings as real piercings it seems like you should just be born with those right like they should be just in there naturally
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new-wave-worm · 2 months
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i'm sorry the last dinner party cover of this town sucks so bad
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themyscirah · 2 months
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Going to try and finally get this essay rough draft finished (due 13hrs from now) and beat writers block through the power of comics blorbo. Will update on success when done
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dragoncarrion · 2 months
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may have to get a job this summer
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molluskzone · 16 days
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eve and her family were initially written to be catholic (because that is the ONLY religion i have any personal experience with) but im kind of enraptured (LOL) by the very concept of rapturing. so i think i might make them evangelicals instead? that will be such a pain though i have 0 experience with evangelicals. or really protestants of any flavor.
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marley-manson · 11 months
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I think writing fic is mostly making stuff up, even the most canon compliant fic is technically made up and therefore not canon in the traditional sense. And with that logic all fic is made up, and I release you to go wild in your fanfic writing dreams.
Yeah like I definitely agree, it's all just a case of degrees of separation from canon - unless you're writing for the show you're not writing truly canon fic, and even some of the show writers kinda fail at canon compliance lmao.
But tbf different people have different limits for how far they'll go and in what circumstances, and we all have our different preferences in terms of canon compliance (and our own different interpretations of canon to comply to, for that matter. Like straight Hawkeye is technically more canon compliant in terms of creator intent lol but you won't catch me reading anything where Hawkeye is straight.)
So yeah, everyone should definitely write whatever fic they want regardless of canon! But I do have my own personal limits in terms of what lines I want to cross, what's more flexible vs what I can't change without losing interest, even if it's in service to an otherwise interesting scenario.
Like to put my preferences another way, I would be more inclined to write magical AU dubcon featuring a love potion or smthn as a way to facilitate trainwreck Hawk/BJ/Peg, than I would, say, write Hawkeye agreeing to that triad because he's naive enough to think it's actually a good idea, or he loves BJ so much that he'll accept an unbalanced relationship, or he doesn't think he deserves better, etc. That's not My Hawkeye.
(Actually tbf the one non-AU way I think it could work is leaning into Hawkeye quitting his career post-canon in passive giving-up-on-everything depression, maybe his dad dying to make it even worse, and BJ innocently taking advantage, believing he's taking care of him and helping Hawkeye recover when really he's just emotionally manipulating him into becoming his second wife and giving up on his career forever.)
(Or maybe if Hawkeye lost his license...? Alcoholism, or being outed could do it easily. I feel like that could destroy him enough that he'd just cling to anything anyone offered. At least for a while.)
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avrilsboy · 25 days
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decided to sit through taylor's album while i do rly boring work today and i'm just. perplexed. like for the most part it all sounds the same and she sounds fucking bored and it's very "boo hoo i'm taylor swift" but then she'll drop these lyrics that make me actually laugh out loud because they're so absurd. i'd say that she needs a five year break from songwriting at the very minimum because there's no way this is sustainable but it's sustainable because she's taylor swift and she could snore into the microphone for an hour straight and ppl would be like omg fireeee she's in her sleepy era 😴🌛🛌
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jellogram · 28 days
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you fucking cowards
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mossiestpiglet · 9 months
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Just saw a professional, full length skirt with normal ass belt loops at the top like any pair of slacks would have and I was immediately overcome with gender euphoria and also what I can only describe as textile lust
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stellerssong · 3 months
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HOW am I supposed to fit "doesn't actually like musicals" into the existing Swan lore. It's too early in the morning for this
oh i can answer this! when i say i "don't like musicals" i mean it in the same sense that people who have written hundreds of thousands of words of star wars fanfic say "i hate star wars and i wish it was good" or when people who can pinpoint down to the run, issue, page number, panel, and speech bubble where you should start reading their favorite comic say "one day i'm going to burn down dc headquarters and i'm not joking." hope this helps!
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nomaishuttle · 9 months
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sometimes u put yr playlist on shuffle a song comes up and you have to put another song in the queue immediately as soon as it comes on bc it makes you think of that song
#this is abt aura by ghost and pals Sry everytime i hear it im like a fiddle This is just like devil went down to georgia and then i have to#put devil went down to georgia in the queue#i think its a fiddle innit.. it sounds like a fiddle but im also NOTORIOUSLY bad at telling instruments apart. <- guy who once couldnt tell#if something was a guitar or a piano i actually rly rly rly rly dont wanna get into it okay.#i guess you didnt know it but i am a fiddle player too 😏😏#sry. the other thing this post is abt is kiss me and ladies in their sensibilities sweeney. obviously those r connected#but if ladies in their sensibilities comes on by itself i quite literally couldnt be assed so everytime i have to put kiss me on instead an#add lits to the queue. bc them together is like the best song i ever heard its just that the beginning of lits is just kind of boring It#does get stuck i my head sometimes but the supreme part is the end thats Basically just a reprise of kiss me#but also theyre kind of the same song anyways at least o wowww i was just typing in tempo with the fiddle that was awesome. at least on the#2012 soundtrack aka the best one talk to the hand or dont i dont wanna hear it. well i do want to hear it it being the 2012 london cast#recording of sweeney todd starring michael ball and imelda staunton. ANYWAYS!! in that one the songs lead in to eachother#ive listened to all the other soundtracks but idr if they do that.. well ill tell u the movie doesnt bc it doesnt have kiss me. which is#just so. the johanna anthony romance doesnt rly have much substance in the first place and yr taking away like. their duet together. ok....#AND yr taking away the end part of lits? the best part of that song? whatever its fine its fine.#if anybody is curious my ranking of casts is 2012 > obc > movie > 2006 i fucking hate 2006 or 2005 or whatever i hate it sm it makes my#blood literally boil im sry. i fucking LOATHE it idk what it is well i do but this post is already 5000000 years long. idt the new one is#out fully yet... i was ok with the songs i have heard but idk where id rank it yet. i should prolly check if the full things out yet omg so#me and my lampstie (way of saying my siblings name if theres something deeply wrong with you) can listen :]
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