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this post includes info about the hotd s2 finale leaks so beware

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i was fully behind alicole at first but in hindsight it’s so clear that their relationship turned sexual to rub salt in the wound once criston inevitably chose aemond over her. team green is a little more open to the idea that criston wasn’t loyal to alicent just for anti rhaenyra reasons but out of genuine kinship and affection but the general public isn’t so his choice in the small council wasn’t just insubordination to alicent but -from her pov- a romantic rejection.

and their whole story is very messy because on one hand you could take away that it was purely sexual for her and that’s why it’s so easy for alicent to all but sentence him to death (nevermind it includes her brother whom she seems to love very much) but then you get scenes like their farewell in 2.06 and her referring to him as “my lover” and it’s like… i get she’s disappointed by him and isn’t interested in resuming their affair but i don’t think she hates him -or is afraid of him- enough to sell him out like that.

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coming out of retirement just for the hotd s2 finale SPOILERS

but alicent selling out the greens isn’t even the problem for me, sure let her divorce her sons, they suck. but i’ve seen people talk about how she’s finally choosing herself and helaena over the awful men surrounding them (and kinda choosing rhaenyra?) and she’s liberating herself and that’s not even what’s happening???

like, i can see her disowning aemond completely but shes not even fully turning her back on aegon. she clearly cares enough about him to still ask rhaenyra to spare him. but she’s going about it in such a stupid way that relies purely on rhaenyra being a saint (she’s not and she spoke the truth when she said she still has to kill him). no, alicent is not separating herself from all the men in her life, she’s still asking for mercy for them in a very dumb way that’s frankly ooc for her. considering she’s been living with the fear that her children will get killed for 15 years.

also, i feel like many alicels see her renouncing her sons as some moral triumph (apart from the freedom of it all) and i’m sorry to tell you this -as an alicel- but she already knew aegon was a rapist in s1 and she still crowned him. he has done nothing since 1.09 that’s much worse that would warrant her turning her back on him (the rat catchers don’t count since clearly she and otto saw jt mlre as a PR disaster than an actual atrocity).

i guess what im saying is that im not fully against this direction but so many details contradict each other and the whole thing falls apart.

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Thinking about Kendall becoming Logan for Roman and Tom becoming Logan for Shiv in Season 4

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That “7 year old” line really opened my eyes to Kendall’s character. After that I completely understood why he was hysterical, and I think I now view his connection to the role of CEO in a different light. Of course, to the siblings the CEO is the ultimate way to gain Logan’s approval and therefore affection. But the way I see it, for Kendall it’s just a little deeper than that. He was a child when his universe of a father promised him the lead role of one of the most important companies in the world. He made his entire life around that. He studied business, went to Harvard, did what Logan wanted.. because he was told that it would be his. The entitlement breakdown of the finale is hard to watch but it makes sense, every single moment of Kendall’s life led to it. “I’m the eldest boy!” was his last resort. He was basically told as a kid that his purpose was to have the company, so ripping it out of his hands is leaving him empty and without a purpose. When he said he might die without it it’s so true because, in Logan’s own words (!!!!), he is a fucking nobody.

And fuck…. in the end, Kendall will never even be free; because he will always be that child who was promised something, built his whole life around that promise, and then simply never got it. He’s empty.

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I know in my soul Sue Ellen Ewing would be a Lana fan

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#MICHAELCORLEONE: doing something unholy

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how criston sees alicent and rhaenyra

just wanna add my two cents to the criston cole discourse and say that i think his pov of how things happened circa rhaenyra's wedding is very interesting #tome. i see the fandom reducing his view of alicent-rhaenyra to the madonna-whore complex for criston, and while there's some of it there, i think it's more complex than women having sex=bad.

beyond being one-time lovers, him and rhaenyra were close they bonded and talked about their upbringings, their hopes, anxieties, etc. and due to this she knew that honor was a big freaking deal to him. and she still "took" it. and then there's alicent, who by that point has barely interacted with him and has no real reason to care about him. she sees him at his lowest and yet she shows him so much mercy and trust to the point of making him her sworn protector.

is his pov regarding rhaenyra bad??? of course. he felt entitled to her so that he could save his honor (i do think his proposal was more about saving face than true love) and as much as there are a lot of power dynamics at play in their night together she didn't deserve his scorn for decades. but i still think it's interesting. for him rhaenyra was a friend that had no problem disregarding what was important to him while alicent was a stranger that could've have him killed without a second thought and instead gave him a second chance. of course he revers her, he sees her as the best humanity has to offer. and again, this is not a justification of his actions but just me trying to understand his motivations beyond lol incel.

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this is probably not going to be popular headcanon, or for everyone in that matter, because alicole is pretty “vanilla” ship, but if you think about it there is possibility to explore a darker side of that relationship.

criston cole could be possessive and obsessive and his devotion towards alicent can turn really dark, we saw that with beesbury. and in turn, alicent could be manipulative when she wants to and there is power imbalance as well.

just a thought.

i love the ‘pure forbidden romance’ and ‘parents of four’ tropes but i also like dark and messy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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#RHAENICENT: let’s exchange the experience

wether you like them romantically or platonically you can’t tell me there’s not something special in how each of them thinks the other got a better deal at life than they actually had but they’re so far apart now that they don’t realize it.

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i just know that if in cold blood was published today dick and perry would be the biggest ship on ao3

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Something something “don’t make me choose, Shiv, it’s a man’s right not to choose” but then choosing to leave work on his first day more than once to be with Shiv (despite knowing that this is going to hurt his workplace rep). something something Shiv refusing to actively choose to sacrifice Kendall on the yacht and yet still implicitly choosing him by refusing to sacrifice Tom. Neither of them are willing to make sacrifices boldly, both of them are trying to hedge their bets and play the field, but up until season 3, when the rubber really hits the road - when there is no way to choose both at once - they do choose each other.

Tom is the first to stop choosing Shiv, but he does it only after believing that Shiv won’t choose him, hasn’t been choosing him, even as - in his mind - he keeps giving her opportunities to choose him and she doesn’t. Shiv doesn’t realize that the choices she’s making are in fact choices. If Tom wanted something from her he would tell her, she thinks, not realizing that for Tom asking for those things is his own vulnerability, and he can’t ask for them in the same way she can’t express her own fears and desires and vulnerabilities. So she doesn’t choose Tom - but she also never consciously stops choosing Tom in the same way Tom stops choosing her.

On the one hand, Shiv would never betray Tom in the same way Tom betrayed her - but on the other, in Tom’s mind, she already has. The wedding night is a betrayal, accepting the CEO position is a betrayal, not standing up for him on the yacht is a betrayal. If she loved him she wouldn’t have done those things, if she loved him she would have seen how upset he was, if she loved him she wouldn’t have forced him to say it out loud. Each of those is, to him, an immense betrayal, two of which specifically involve choosing Logan over him. Is his betrayal really all that different? Of course, Shiv doesn’t know these are betrayals. The idea that to Tom, these are not just wounds, but fundamental betrayals of the very foundations he believed their relationship was built on, never once crosses her mind; and for his part he can never really tell her, not in those words. To admit just that he’s hurt is painful enough. So she goes to Logan for him, and she thinks that this has settled the score, that Tom understands now that she loves him, and she doesn’t realize that it hasn’t, that she needs to prove that she does love Tom enough to undo the pain of those betrayals or else her entire marriage will fall apart. (And even if she did know - could she? Is there really any length she could go to that would undo those hurts? Can the ‘score’ ever really be settled, or is she facing an audition she could never possibly win?)

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#JANCY: im in love with an uptown girl

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omg i’m also a hanleia and that’s how you do belligerent sexual tension right because their personalities clash and they’re getting to know each other. and you’re right about joyce needing to make the first move in s4. the first two seasons make it seem like something’s brewing between both of them and then s3 is all about hopper being pushy and treating joyce like a madwoman as if he wasn’t fully on her side the other times. joyce feeling anxious about jumping into a relationship because of bob would’ve been enough to create tension 😭. and like i said, im still firmly a jopper but i try to ignore most of their storyline in season 3. i’m glad they turned hopper into his more gentle self in s4. i think they worked together as a team in the same way they did before and their kiss felt earned after years and years. now let’s hope they don’t feel the need to mess with them next season.

my problem with jopper in s3:

first off, i’ve been a jopper soldier since day 1, i was seeing their potential since the first scene they ever shared and are in my top 2 stranger things ships. and that’s why i absolutely hated their arc in season 3. prepare for an essay.

hopper and joyce’s bond was so different from every other couple in this show because of their age. the teens and kids have angst and miscommunication because they’re hormonal and most ships are people getting to know each other. jopper doesn’t have that. they’re old friends who have known each other for decades. they came of age, grew up, built their own families and in the end life dealt them a bad hand. they’re hardened by life but within all that bitterness and resentment they feel they have a soft spot for each other. and they don’t need to put up a façade because they appreciate each other for who they are and trust each other the way two soldiers at war do. the trust that you only develop with years of knowing someone.

but come season 3 and the writers are finally going for the jopper relationship in a romantic way and and think that the only way to sell it is through belligerent sexual tension. and i love that trope, i love it when people fight instead of admitting their feelings. but that’s not jopper. i get that their dynamic gets a little more complicated when feelings are involved but we didn’t need to see them acting like teenagers to understand that they like each other. their build up was already there. they have always been a great team and all of a sudden we throw away two seasons of love and understanding for cheap jokes.

season 4 kinda salvaged their relationship by having them come back to that tenderness and trust from earlier seasons but tbh i did lose some love for them because of s3. i’m still rooting for a happy ending for the hopper-byers family but i wish s3 had been completely different for them.

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my problem with jopper in s3:

first off, i’ve been a jopper soldier since day 1, i was seeing their potential since the first scene they ever shared and are in my top 2 stranger things ships. and that’s why i absolutely hated their arc in season 3. prepare for an essay.

hopper and joyce’s bond was so different from every other couple in this show because of their age. the teens and kids have angst and miscommunication because they’re hormonal and most ships are people getting to know each other. jopper doesn’t have that. they’re old friends who have known each other for decades. they came of age, grew up, built their own families and in the end life dealt them a bad hand. they’re hardened by life but within all that bitterness and resentment they feel they have a soft spot for each other. and they don’t need to put up a façade because they appreciate each other for who they are and trust each other the way two soldiers at war do. the trust that you only develop with years of knowing someone.

but come season 3 and the writers are finally going for the jopper relationship in a romantic way and and think that the only way to sell it is through belligerent sexual tension. and i love that trope, i love it when people fight instead of admitting their feelings. but that’s not jopper. i get that their dynamic gets a little more complicated when feelings are involved but we didn’t need to see them acting like teenagers to understand that they like each other. their build up was already there. they have always been a great team and all of a sudden we throw away two seasons of love and understanding for cheap jokes.

season 4 kinda salvaged their relationship by having them come back to that tenderness and trust from earlier seasons but tbh i did lose some love for them because of s3. i’m still rooting for a happy ending for the hopper-byers family but i wish s3 had been completely different for them.

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it speaks volumes of this fandom’s media literacy that the conversation around jonathan is focused on him not being “worthy” of nancy and how she should drop him because he’s a bad boyfriend instead of the fact that he’s clearly going through a crisis and is depressed.

jonathan hasn’t always been like this and the show has made it very clear that he’s basically spiraling and pushing people away so it baffles me that everyone is ok with his character arc being him starting the show off as a loner with trust issues who slowly starts to let people in and to follow his aspirations only to go back to being a loner with one (1) friend who will essentially give up on his aspirations.

maybe him and nancy will break up but that’s not even the main point. the main point is that so many people seem ok with letting him drift away when as far as i know he’s one of the good guys, so why aren’t y’all rooting for him to get out of this rough patch the way you are rooting for the other characters??? i know it’s mainly the writers’ fault for sidelining him so maybe people don’t have a lot of reasons to care at this point, but still, you think the endgame for him is being back to square one???

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THIS IS IT, this is the love triangle summed up. I’ve never bought the argument that Nancy would take Steve back if she just saw how much he grew because she fully dated reformed Steve™️ (but pre-babysitter Steve™️) for a year. We’re talking, monster-hunting, monster-fighting, life-risking Steve. He wasn’t perfect but he was caring and loved her and guess what??? She still couldn’t love him, at least not the way he did.

I might eat my words next season but Steve could take a bullet for each character in the show and a Nancy still wouldn’t love him that way because that’s not how love works. Meanwhile Jonathan spent an entire year avoiding her and she still couldn’t shake him off her mind. The minute they reunited she felt drawn to him and it happened once again in s4. From her pov Jonathan was emotionally distant while Steve was right there and the minute he set foot on Hawkins she was drawn to him once again even if things are awkward. You can’t earn someone’s love and I don’t even think Steve is trying to earn it. There’s no “intention” to his kind-heartedness, he’s just like that. But that’s not what wins Nancy’s heart because no one is winning it through merits. It’s a matter of feeling a connection.

Said this on twitter and you know what? People here are gonna have to look at it too