shunnedmorlock

[shunnedmorlock]

the story im working on will be the first ever OC x rudolf von habsburg fanfic in the history of mankind, such sights to show you and all

[shunnedmorlock]

I get that most people exclusively play 5e and 5e’s design makes it pretty hard to get your character killed after like, level 4, but more ppl should give at least opening your table to the threat of character death a try. I myself was once a nonbeliever! I spent several years running games on the assumption that character death was such an important storytelling beat that it should only be done with some preplanning and everyone’s consent. Then I ran a Delta Green campaign, and a beloved officer of M-Epic got his skull crushed to a pulp by a Gnoph-Keh in the Manitoba wilderness. It was fucking awesome.

The hush in the discord call as everyone saw the result of the lethality roll. The way death went from something we had all been warned about and made jokes around to a real, tangible, possible consequence.

Later on, the player made his next character that character’s mother, who became another beloved party member. They had visions of his death in the endgame mythos dimension, it was excellent.

Sure, if you’re playing a game that allows for such things, talk to the player (or your GM, depending on who you are) afterwards to see if they want to make a new character or to look at a way for the character to come back. If so, discuss the implications. I get the sense that lots of groups are pretty averse to having death be on the table, and if that’s you I encourage you to test your comfort zone in this area. You’ll always remember it if it happens.

[shunnedmorlock]

The "idle housewife" was a phenomenon unique to the middle and upper classes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, yet its shade continues to haunt us.

a phrase that kinda bothers me when talking about women's historical roles in europe is "cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children." you hear it so often, those exact words in the same order even. and once you learn a little more you realize that the massive gaping hole in that list is fiberwork. im not an expert and have no hard numbers, but i wouldnt be surprised if fiberwork took up nearly as much time as the other three tasks combined, so it's not a trivial omission.

it's not a hot take to say that the mass amnesia about fiberwork is linked to the belittlement of women's work in geneal, but i do think there's a special kind of illusion that is cast by "cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children." you hear that and think "well i cook and clean and take care of children (or i know someone who does) and i have a sense of how much work that is" and you know of course that cooking and cleaning were more laborious before modern technology, but still, you have a ballpark estimate you think, when in fact you are drastically underestimating the work load.

i also think that this just micharacterizes the role of women's work in livelihoods? cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children are all sisyphean tasks that have to be repeated the next day. these are important, but not the whole picture. when we include all kinds of fiberwork—and other things, such as making candles or soap—women's work looks much more like manufacturing, a sphere we now associate more with men's work. i feel like women's connection to making and craftsmanship is often elided.

[shunnedmorlock]

genuinely i think the way hotd fandom discusses the women on the show as flawless angels who can do no wrong and are always the best and favourite characters 10/10 inadvertently gives the show a crazy pass on extremely shallow writing of specifically the women. baelas writing in season 2 was bad she doesnt have clear motivations beyond being a nice generic brave girl and jaces girlfriend because the writers dont care about her and this is a reallyyy bad sign considering if they want anyone to give a fuck about the show after the leads start dying they NEED to establish baela as a character shes one of the main survivors. they get away w not caring and writing her very shallowly bc its considered taboo to point out that shes written shallowly it implies you think she might NOT be girlboss queen best and most interesting character on the show (yayy this week she got to tell jace to be bold and remain loyal to the cause. again)

[shunnedmorlock]

you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

[shunnedmorlock]

you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

[shunnedmorlock]

I thought this was about Dean Venture for a minute

i dunno its been said before but something about. late seasons dean with his silly little socks and his apron hes baking birthday cakes and hes putting cas in silly hats and hes nerding out over horror movies in silly little outfit but at the same time its the cruelest hes ever been like it gives me whiplash i cant handle it

[shunnedmorlock]

Not the point here but I actually do math for pleasure despite being a humanities guy. And it's ironic how the problems facing math and letters are sort of the reverse of each other. Math suffers from people taking it too seriously, people seeing it as this extraordinarily complicated, unpleasant thing that's not really relevant to most people's lives. Literature suffers from the opposite - people barely see literature as something that requires real effort and intelligence to study, so people don't take it seriously.

This ironically leads to similar societal problems: mass illiteracy AND mass innumeracy. Nobody bothers to learn how to read long, complex books because reading is easy and barely needs to be taught, and nobody bothers to try in math class because math is irrelevant and just "too hard."

It’s honestly really distressing to having people saying things like “actually as an English major, this children’s book IS my favorite novel and my most important influence”

I don’t know something about it just strikes me as cheapening the entire value of an education in literature and the written word. Like I get on some level what people might mean by this. In a way Harry Potter is the most influential book in my life because it’s the first one I read all the way through.

But I just keep comparing this to my own field, math and physics. And there is none of this infantilizing where people can say stuff like “well as a physics major I actually think it’s fine if students only want to do arithmetic.” That would be absurd. The assumption is that if you’re studying physics, it’s to study up until the hardest physics you possibly can wrap your brain around.

I don’t know there’s just something here that I can’t quite capture, a lack of respect for the written word and literature as a real field of study. Perhaps it’s because reading is also an activity people do for pleasure, while math rarely is, there’s this sense that being too academically minded about literature is elitist and exclusionary when saying similar things about mathematics would strike people as absurd.

It’s just anti intellectualism I suppose, at the end of the day. A disregard for the value of thinking about things in an academic way, as opposed to pure pleasure

[shunnedmorlock]

Every time a dude suggests doing something to win the war and bring an end to the conflict, the women of hotd are like

[shunnedmorlock]

i am so SICK of these writing choices. no one wants to go to war and everything is an accident and everything is set in stone and the characters and dynamics are underdeveloped and taken at face value and no one is loyal. the fact that it was all for nothing and that war is futile and everyone will end up dead shouldn’t be a conclusion reached by the characters themselves BEFORE THE WAR EVEN PROPERLY STARTED? why should i even be watching at this point?

[shunnedmorlock]

The best thing for Westeros would be a National Convention ruling a Republic of Virtue directly from King's Landing (renamed Virtue's Landing after the Revolution) with no local autonomy whatsoever and in fact the full force of the burgeoning state unleashed on whatever reactionary Vendee the petty aristocrats of the North and Dorne attempt to foment.

I'd say the best option for the Seven Kingdoms, actually, is that each kingdom decides what is best for itself, rather than listening to the dictates of a central authority, no matter how worthy that central authority is.

(post referenced)

I get what you mean, but I think if that central authority is a parliament made up of representatives of each region, then the central kingdoms of southern Westeros can actually benefit from a political union (sort of like a confederation?) because they are almost culturally homogeous, not separated by significant geographical barriers (save the Vale) and tightly connected by trade networks and a road systems. Almost all of their interests are shared interests. It might easily increase efficiency and accountability of local authorities, and a central authority could function to mediate land or other disputes (Brackens and Blackwoods...), while the parliamentary system counteracts the risk of despotic unilateral decision-making and favoritism (Aegon with the Brackens and Blackwoods...).

So with the exception of the North and Dorne, who are culturally and geographically very distinct AND have a strong cultural desire for independence, this is an option that makes sense.

The point is that the regions would voluntarily choose to do this, rather than having it dictated to them by an invading conqueror.

[shunnedmorlock]

I just think. women who react to their victimhood and trauma with anger and bitterness and desperation deserve to have their stories told too. that was alicents story. fire and blood was full of lies and half-truths but not enough for that to not be the reality of who she was. she was the definition of “everything i’ve ever lost has claw marks on it”, her last words made that very clear, and I was so ready to see her story told in more detail. the mourning period begins now fr

[shunnedmorlock]

what kills me actually about this season adding in a deeply internal (which is not to say good, but focused on his motivations and psyche) arc for daemon that didn't exist in the book, featuring milly and all these characters relevant to daemon's past, not inviting back emily, and giving alicent a plot that was so clearly an afterthought and culminates in a "i actually no longer have a purpose" frolic, is that the story of hotd is called the princess and the queen. not the princess and the rogue prince, not the princess and aemond one-eye, the princess and the QUEEN.

rhaenyra and ALICENT are of equal importance to this story and should be leading their own camps with equivalent drive, power, and sympathy. it says so right in the title. criston and daemon, as their right-hand men, should be secondary characters on the same level of value and development. then next should come aemond/aegon/helaena and jace/luke. larys and mysaria. and so on. the narrative foiling was all right there. but when you compare them side by side it becomes so clear how greatly the story has been maneuvered into a fundamentally different premise where neither woman has true motivation or power, and how they have both been removed from the conflict to the greatest extent possible. the only difference between them is that one gets an arbitrary "good" label and the other the "bad."

i said earlier this season that i think condal would write rhaenyra out of the story if he could get away with it, and that he's not interested in the true premise of what he's adapting. i still think this, and even more so of alicent. he holds nothing but disdain and the lowest judgment for women who want anything in life or even slightly inconvenience men. i don't know what more proof you need. he has completely changed the motives and traits of both rhaenyra and alicent and then reframed it as a war between evil mennies who want power for... reasons... and drag their helpless (except the occasionally nefarious alicent, who is a foolish shill who wants nothing for herself but also a power-hungry gender traitor usurper responsible for the entire war) women associates into it carelessly

[shunnedmorlock]

Me to Ryan KKKondal

[shunnedmorlock]

"Oh Alicent was a bad character in the book too!" Ok. I don't care. Maybe I want a good character.

[shunnedmorlock]

hi! so i started reading when christ and his saints slept (your recommendation, it's great btw) and wow george really dropped the ball on the dance cause what is this going on. like older sister against brother?? why would that work George??

i've seen tb make arguments that the usurpation set women's rights back for centuries, and that seems kind of silly cause the rule of (bloody) mary i still led to the rule of elizabeth i. personally, i think the issue of women's rights has more to do with the lack of queen dowagers and regents which are more common in real history but less in asoiaf who use their power of being mothers of the king to advocate for women, and lay the groundwork (e.g. margaret beaufort, nurbanu sultan, anne of austria, etc)

but, also what are the greens meant to do because if viserys did not settle inheritance for his sons (through heiresses) whilst he lived there's no reason why rhaenyra would do it when she's queen.

for me the greens have three options : take the throne through conquest, ask for a great council (they have vhagar they can make demands), or three literally die.

like as much as i am green supporter if i was rhaenyra and i peacefully ascended to the throne and my half-siblings who are brothers with sons of their own well, they just have to die ottoman style, because allowing them cadet branches undermines her own and in the end you get a house bourbon supplanting house valois situation (something catherine de medici committed war crimes to prevent); you can't let them leave because well 6 dragons outside of targaryen control — you might as well be asking for trouble ; send them to the citadel —well two are married to each other, one has vhagar with clear anger issues, the other has tessarion and can just leave when he wants and, not even talking about the kids with their own dragons.

the truth is the greens can't just sit and do nothing. if viserys doesn't want the trouble of his sons ,and wants rhaenyra has queen then simply don't remarry or do you your duty to the sons that you have sired.

reading christ and when his saints slepts its actually comical how house targaryen don't have mistresses and they began to have them when the dragons are dead

this was a long rant but the greens don't have much options especailly cause their living in an environment where sons inherit before daughters. i would ask how would you make the story more compelling and logical causing reading penman the dance is not.

also, big can of your writing ofcir and akab are holding me down since hotd has been feeding us crap.

Anon I've had this reply sitting in my drafts and should have answered ages ago, so my apologies for the late reply!

I'm so glad you're reading When Christ and His Saints Slept. It's my go-to recommendation for historical fiction about the Anarchy, and Penman in general is just my absolute favorite historical fiction writer. I hope you continue the series that follows Matilda's son, Henry II, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their brood of children.

You're right that the greens didn't have many options if they wanted to stay alive. The show has downplayed that aspect this season but Alicent's sons and grandsons would always be a challenge to Rhaenyra and Jace's rule. You only need a basic understanding of the world to see that they were in an impossible position. Ultimately, Viserys is the one who destabilized his succession and deserves a lot more blame than the show is willing to give him.

As for the matter of powerful women, queens regnant, and women's rights, irl history is full of powerful queen consorts like Eleanor who exercised power, defended garrisons, negotiated peace, and sometimes, as in Eleanor's case, even rebelled against their own husbands. In the Anarchy, Stephen's wife, Matilda of Boulogne, was a force to be reckoned with, besieging Dover castle and making a treaty for Stephen with the king of Scotland. When he was captured in battle, Matilda raised an army, and when her army captured Empress Matilda's half-brother, Robert of Gloucester, who was one of her biggest supporters, Matilda of Boulogne negotiated a hostage exchange and secured Stephen's release. And this isn't even a Westeros problem because we see politically powerful women who are not queens regnant in-world-- Cersei as regent for her children, Catelyn, who was basically running the war effort before Robb set her aside, and even book!Alicent, who exercised a good deal of power. In fact, somewhat ironically, show!Alicent was well set up to exercise even more power than her book counterpart. It's clear Aegon actually listened to her and valued her counsel, even seeking out her advice and guidance. Having the ear of the king is no small thing, and if she'd done anything other than belittle him she could have ended up as his most trusted advisor. Look how easily Larys moved in! But the show instead had Alicent alienate Aegon and then treated her disempowerment as if it were a function of her gender rather than a result of her inability to provide useful counsel.

So no, a lack of queens regnant is not keeping Westerosi women out of powerful positions, and you're right anon, in that HotD seems to have decided that powerful women didn't exist as consorts, dowagers, and regents even though that's not true irl or in Westeros. As for women's rights, unfortunately having a queen regnant historically has done very little for women as a whole. Royal women tended to align their interests with other royals or nobles rather than with women as a whole, that is, solidarity is formed along class lines more often than it is formed along gendered lines. We see this even in our world today, where companies with women as CEOs in fact tend to hire fewer women in lower management positions. Rhaenyra being denied the throne doesn't mean much for the average Westerosi woman, but civil wars caused by an unstable succession can make everyone's lives demonstrably worse.

[shunnedmorlock]

This is no joke a GOATed Rhaenyra characterization which is why you know they won't do it

emma d’arcy for british gq