#🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

[buckydeservesthebest]

I'm going to write my own general response since some Sam Stans have started with absurd posts about how in their distorted version of reality Bucky "has been a bad friend and betrayed every black person he has ever met"... *sight* this could not be more stupid, untrue and unfair.... 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

On the subject of Bucky and the rest of the New Avengers "working for Valentina", I already wrote a long rant explaining that there is NOT a single shred of proof of this. And that at the end of it all, the OG Avengers literally were formed by a government organization (SHIELD), Sam was going to form his own team of Avengers at Ross's instruction and was going to work alongside him had the Red Hulk scandal not happened and Ross not ended up in prison. THE AVENGERS WORKING TOGETHER WITH THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT SOMETHING NEW. BECAUSE WORKING WITH THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T MEAN BEING SUBSERVIENT TO IT.

Bucky having his own team literally does NOT in any way in the remotest way affect Sam, because literally nothing detracts from him or minimizes him as Captain America or in any other way, nor does it somehow prevent him from being able to form his own Avengers team and operate as he sees fit.

So this description of "traitor" to refer to Bucky COULD NOT BE MORE STUPIDLY FALSE AND BE FARTHER AWAY FROM REALITY.

And for those who complain that one of Bucky's team members is John Walker, does everyone forget that they already worked together briefly at the end of TFATWS to capture the FS and there was no problem??? Bucky does NOT hate John, literally the only disagreement from Bucky and Sam towards Walker was over the possession of the shield, and that problem is over, so don't come whining that Bucky can now be his ally, because there is literally no moral impediment of any kind for them to be part of the same team.

And do people forget that, again, Sam was going to work alongside Ross?? The same guy who ordered the extrajudicial execution order (which is literally illegal) against Bucky, convicted him as guilty for the UN bombing without a fair trial, which is literally also a violation of his human rights, and on top of it all lamented that the SWAT team couldn't kill Bucky. Ross is a horrible person (no better than Valentina) and literally ordered Bucky's murder, and I don't see anyone calling Sam a traitor because he was going to form an Avengers team under his instructions and was going to work in conjunction with his government.

So don't come with your shitty double standards calling Bucky a "traitor" either, when no one called Sam a "traitor" for allying himself with the one who ordered the murder of his friend.

It's almost funny how no Sam Stan has ever wanted to acknowledge the ableist and victim-blaming attitudes Sam directed at Bucky. All those horrible jokes and tasteless comments like "cyborg brain", "bionic looking machine that killed almost everyone he met", "we're not assassins" "you're going back to your frozen rat diet of your time as the Winter Soldier", that only in the mind of imbecile could be funny. All of this disgusting shit is ableist.

Sam literally held Bucky responsible for what he was forced to do as the Winter Soldier ("you were stopping all the wrongdoers *you* enabled as the Winter Soldier" ep. 5) and gave him "advice" that is exactly the same as Dr. Raynor's, and is nothing more than re-victimization.

There is absolutely nothing healthy about telling a victim of abuse that they should "make amends" for something they were a VICTIM of. Let alone showing up with the other victims of the same abuser and apologizing as if Bucky was the victimizer and not another victim. This is extremely dangerous and damaging to both parties. Already a real life therapist created a Twitter thread where she explains absolutely everything that is wrong with this.

Sam is NOT a victim of abuse or mind control, nor is he a therapist trained to talk to people who are victims of this situation, so he can NOT go around pretending to give advice on something he knows absolutely nothing about. That is unethical.

If you think that telling this truth is "racist", let me tell you that there are people in the black community who think exactly the same thing. Are they racist too??

...

Oh and regarding the Wakandans issue...I've talked about this a lot before, but in light of some Sam Stans wanting to revive this ridiculous issue as an excuse to try to vilify Bucky.. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

*sigh* first of all the reason T'Challa offered Bucky assistance in removing the Winter Soldier's programming from his brain, was not because of how magnanimous T'Challa is in wanting to help a poor man who had suffered too much, but rather that that assistance was given in the form of an apology for having spent it trying to kill him without being sure if Bucky was the one truly responsible for his father's death, and also in the form of thanks because thanks to him and Steve, T'Challa was able to get to the one truly responsible. The canonical comic Avengers Infinity War Prelude literally said so:

So while Bucky is grateful for the assistance Wakanda offered him, he does NOT owe them lifelong loyalty nor is he limited to only doing what feels right to them and did not represent a damage to their pride, because that is a stance worthy of an abuser.

So NO. In absolutely no way did Bucky betray Wakanda because Zemo's temporary freedom does NOT affect them in the slightest. Literally Bucky always intended to send him back to prison and literally Ayo understood this and that's why he gave him the 8 hour deadline to come back for Zemo, and literally Bucky NEVER objected to this.

Regarding Zemo. Literally the plot gives Bucky the reason to enlist his help and assist him in his escape, because as "the foremost expert on Hydra and the super soldier program" his knowledge was needed to figure out how the serum was recreated to get to Karli. This is what canon book The Art of TFATWS says, and it literally also says that Sam knew this and agreed.

People deliberately and conveniently forget that Zemo is NOT only responsible for the death of T'Chaka and the other dozen people from the UN bombing. Zemo was also an ABUSER of Bucky and one of the people who hurt him the most in his life. Zemo framed him for the UN bombing causing everyone to try to kill him, put him in the crosshairs of any Hydra member that still existed, had him imprisoned in cell that was electrocuting him all the time, subjected him to mind control and forced him to kill people and fight his friends which caused more charges to be added against him, etc, etc, etc. Now it turns out Wakandans know more about their own abuser than Bucky himself?? This is bullshit.

In just world part of Zemo's sentence should have been for all the damage he caused Bucky.

And the point is, again, Ayo understood and agreed with Bucky's plan and that was why he gave him an 8 hour deadline to come back for it. Ayo was NOT upset about that. Ayo didn't handicap and dehumanize Bucky because she felt "betrayed" but because she was upset that he had stopped her from committing unjustified murder against Walker. Bucky tried to reason with her and only defend himself with non-violent techniques, Ayo disconnected his arm in a low and dishonorable move, and now it turns out that Bucky is to blame?? 🤡

"Bucky betrayed the Wakandans" say the same people who always planned to betray him by putting a kill-safe (on a prosthetic that he didn't even request to have in the first place, but was given to him by T'Challa himself for him to fight for his nation) behind his back whose unawareness could have proved fatal to him, in case by sheer bad luck something could activate it when Bucky was hanging on to it for his life...

IT IS NOT JUSTIFIED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TO REMOVE DISABILITY ASSISTANCE FROM A DISABLED PERSON.

BEING A BLACK PERSON DOES NOT GIVE YOU A FREE PASS TO HAVE ABLEIST AND VICTIM-BLAMING ATTITUDES TOWARD ANOTHER PERSON.

And yes, people in the black community also think Ayo's attitude was unjustifiable.

Are they "racist" for daring to say this?? Of course they are NOT.

[icepandawarrior]

It's the way that the women get hated on for no damn reason or for the dumbest fucking reason then turn around and stan (low honor Arthur), Dutch and worse of fucking all Micah...

[for-my-reasons]

Why do I let this man dress himself?

[riaspeaks]

You've gotta be joshing me

[djuvlipen]

be so for real..

[lemonhemlock]

i get what you’re saying but i get what dany stans are saying too, what is the difference between dany taking back kl and sansa taking back winterfell? at the end of the day, monarchy sucks and none of these characters are truly "worthy"

I approached this topic more in-depth here and here.

The difference between Dany taking back King's Landing and Sansa taking back Winterfell lies in the construction of legitimacy. When engaging with medieval fantasy, rejecting its political framework and ignoring its limitations in absorbing more egalitarian ideology (and the socio-technological constraints that inform those political/philosophical limitations) is going to prove a fruitless pursuit. Westeros is roughly based on feudal Europe and has a recognizable European political thought inheritance and recognizable medieval technology and means, so I think it would be reasonable to employ political philosophy that could be plausibly applied during the period from which it takes inspiration.

~unnecessarily long essay no one asked for below~

In this regard, what makes for a "worthy" ruler in medieval times might differ with the passage of centuries, as socio-political practices transform. Which is why I feel like the validity of monarchy as a form of government was never truly under question in this setting, even though it has certainly been criticised and points have been made about social injustices arising from wealth disparities and the segregation of social spheres (I hesitate to call them social classes as I don't think the Westerosi have developed class consciousness yet).

I think that this is ultimately an element of disappointment for some readers, who are trying to project onto the text something that is not there, instead of switching to progressive fiction that addresses their concerns and presents alternative political systems. What I mean to say is that dismissing all types of monarchy as illegitimate is not useful within the text, as it renders all differences between the characters null & ignores the entire historical evolution of the concept of legitimacy. So you end up with takes like "it doesn't really matter who sits the throne". It matters very much to Martin, because that is the type of story he is trying to tell, that's... the entire point of the series. He is a boomer writing about dragons and knights in the 90s, not a transformative political thinker who is going to smack us with a new social order at the end of the series. That doesn't mean he can't critique the system or the characters' approaches to ruling. That's why he keeps killing the unfit kings & punishing those who rely on wanton brutality.

Coming back to the question, Dany's family was deposed, meaning that, legally-speaking, she doesn't have any "birthright" to the throne of Westeros anymore, no matter what she tells herself. Is deposition legal? John Locke certainly thought so in his Second Treatise of Government, chapters "Of Tyranny" and "Of The Dissolution of Government". Below we have Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Discourse on Inequality":

OK, these are Enlightenment thinkers, but the concept was not new. The Magna Carta of 1215 certainly has a provision for this. That's medieval enough, I feel.

(Ralph V. Turner, "Magna Carta Through the Ages", Harlow, Pearson Longman, 2003 - the original article was too long lol but anyone can look it up for themselves).

Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologica", 1274:

etc.

You will find these ideas under the term "right of revolution".

Many medieval kings IRL have been deposed or lost their crown. Richard II, anyone? There's an entire play about it. So, yes, Robert Baratheon is the legal king of Westeros at the start of AGOT and Viserys / Daenerys simply are not. There is no birthright to speak of, that is just Dany's entitlement that goes unchecked and unquestioned.

Of course, crowns can be won back by the right of conquest, which is what Dany is trying to do. GRRM's plan for her seems to either be rejected by the people of King's Landing for whatever reason (a la Rhaenyra maybe) or for her to commit such an atrocity on the city in her attempt to seize it that it disqualifies her as a potential ruler because she breaks the normal rules of engagement to a horrifying degree (i.e. dragonflame). Dany's entire plan is questionable from the start, since she intends to mount an invasion on a people brutalised by several years of war already, on the onset of winter - essentially extra suffering. The conditions are there so that the Westerosi might not interpret her actions as liberation, but merely as another pretender to the throne, who is only after her personal betterment - basically no different from what they've seen before, so no reason to join her cause or believe in her propaganda. She will bring fire-breathing monsters, Dothraki and Unsullied warriors to their lands, whom they fear and for whom they have no kinship. They have no particular attachment to the old Targaryen kings either. In short, Dany's father was deposed and she will end up deposed herself because of her own actions (or never recognised in the first place). I'm not saying this because I have beef with Daenerys, she is not a real person who did me wrong, she is a fictional character the author is using to illustrate a political idea.

Whereas the people of the North maintain a very favourable view of the Starks and of Ned Stark in particular. They are seen as the legitimate rulers of the North and their replacements (the Boltons) are almost universally hated. The text is littered with "the North remembers" and "there must always be a Stark in Winterfell" and general Stark-fawning. The people of the North were very eager to name Ned Stark's son as their king. The people of the Night's Watch voted for Ned Stark's 15-year-old bastard as their leader. Ramsay Bolton pretends to marry Arya Stark to consolidate his legitimacy as the ruler of Winterfell and the North. Many other characters covet Sansa for the same reason. The Starks have not been deposed, unlike the Targaryens, they're just missing / presumed dead and Winterfell is up for grabs. None of our Northern characters think how lovely it would be if we had a Targaryen restauration. These things may seem like candy floss to the modern reader and they may not resonate, but they mattered a lot in the past. So when Sansa takes back Winterfell, it will be with the backing of the majority of the Northern population and with the help of the Knights of the Vale, who are seen as honourable and are of Andal descent, so will not be perceived as foreign invaders. No one in the North will be contemplating their right-to-revolution against the Starks, because they will be revolting alongside Sansa to free themselves from the abusive Bolton rule.

Sansa rebuilds Winterfell out of snow and thinks of it warmly as her home, feels kinship and connection with the place she grew up in, whereas Daenerys feels possessive over a land she's never seen and wants to take it with "fire and blood". True, these are not actions, not crimes for Dany and neither acts of benevolence for Sansa. They haven't done anything yet. But they are images. Framing. Hints. That's how literature works.

Could Dany be given a narrative of Westerosi restauration? Could GRRM write her as gaining popular support and as not breaking the social contract while installing herself back on the throne? Had only Book 1 been published, these questions would have had more validity. But after Book 5? Not when Martin frames her like that and literally kicks her out of the city she conquered.

[testure-1988]

It's 1999 all over again

[mortifying-macaroni]

Need to draw Gretchen, Andrei and Victoria again. I NEED to. They're the cuntiest of the L.A. Sabbat. Gonna play dress up with them probably after the next piece or whatever.

[joongdunking]

[echoes-of-a-life-well-lived]

Vin after two conversations with Elend: the underground movement network exist.

Me:

[clovermoonspell]

🤡💚💛🤡

Someone tell them what this means.

[silassstingy]

adam??? judgment day???? lollll

[tilltheendwilliwrite]

Nothing makes me so mad as watching a movie and hearing "you have a proximal tibia fracture" only to be shown A DISTAL FEMUR FRACTURE!!!

Do better people, come on!!

[redrosydiaz]

me, 2 hours before normal bedtime, literally falling asleep trying to read fic: oh man okay maybe its time to call it a night, wow look at that going to bed EARLY tonight.

me, two seconds later after closing out the fic and turning off my fairy lights and settling in: WOW i am suddenly WIDE AWAKE. going to bed early WHOMST

me, two hours later: ugh. what the hell. just wasted two hours doing NOTHING. i could've been sleeping. what is wrong with me.

[pickleddginger]

I just bombed the second interview for a job I was really interested in and thought I’d be great for.

Can I skip the sick to my stomach, smacking myself in the forehead part and skip right to the “live and learn” mentality?

[lapin0522]

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