#I also stan Clytemnestra

[specialagentartemis]

in middle school during my Intense Greek Mythology Phase, Artemis was, as you can likely guess, my best girl. Iphigenia was my OTHER best girl. Yes at the same time.

The story of Iphigenia always gets to me when it's not presented as a story of Artemis being capricious and having arbitrary rules about where you can and can't hunt, but instead, making a point about war.

Artemis was, among other things--patron of hunting, wild places, the moon, singlehood--the protector of young girls. That's a really important aspect she was worshipped as: she protected girls and young women. But she was the one who demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter in order for his fleet to be able to sail on for Troy.

There's no contradiction, though, when it's framed as, Artemis making Agamemnon face what he’s doing to the women and children of Troy. His children are not in danger. His son will not be thrown off the ramparts, his daughters will not be taken captive as sex slaves and dragged off to foreign lands, his wife will not have to watch her husband and brothers and children killed. Yet this is what he’s sailing off to Troy to inevitably do. That’s what happens in war. He’s going to go kill other people’s daughters; can he stand to do that to his own? As long as the answer is no—he can kill other people’s children, but not his own—he can’t sail off to war.

Which casts Artemis is a fascinating light, compared to the other gods of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is really a squabble of pride and insults within the Olympian family; Eris decided to cause problems on purpose, leaving Aphrodite smug and Hera and Athena snubbed, and all of this was kinda Zeus’s fault in the first place for not being able to keep it in his pants. And out of this fight mortal men were their game pieces and mortal cities their prizes in restoring their pride. And if hundreds of people die and hundred more lives are ruined, well, that’s what happens when gods fight. Mortals pay the price for gods’ whims and the gods move on in time and the mortals don’t and that’s how it is.

And women especially—Zeus wanted Leda, so he took her. Paris wanted Helen, so he took her. There’s a reason “the Trojan women” even since ancient times were the emblems of victims of a war they never wanted, never asked for, and never had a say in choosing, but was brought down on their heads anyway.

Artemis, in the way of gods, is still acting through human proxies. But it seems notable to me to cast her as the one god to look at the destruction the war is about to wreak on people, and challenge Agamemnon: are you ready to kill innocents? Kill children? Destroy families, leave grieving wives and mothers? Are you? Prove it.

It reminds me of that idea about nuclear codes, the concept of implanting the key in the heart of one of the Oval Office staffers who holds the briefcase, so the president would have to stab a man with a knife to get the key to launch the nukes. “That’s horrible!,” it’s said the response was. “If he had to do that, he might never press the button!” And it’s interesting to see Artemis offering Agamemnon the same choice. You want to burn Troy? Kill your own daughter first. Show me you understand what it means that you’re about to do.

[idamante]

"Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon what a queen!" Damn who the hell cares she abuses her kids

[saintarmand]

8, 17, 21 & 22 for the iwtv ask thingy! 🤍

8. Who's your favorite actor?

jacob anderson. come on now. they're all great but he is ethereal. second place assad zaman

17. Have you read or watched anything because it was referenced in the show?

oh just a few things

love's coming of age by edward carpenter

chéri by colette

nausea by jean-paul sartre (louis was reading this in ep6 when lestat and claudia are playing chess while talking about nicki. you can't see the full cover but i went detective mode and figured it out)

madame bovary by gustave flaubert

a moveable feast by ernest hemingway (s2 first look "esurient hearts beating as one, the rumbling beast of the moveable feast")

iolanta (tchaikovsky opera)

don pasquale (donizetti opera)

pelléas et mélisande (debussy opera)

a doll's house (henrik ibsen play)

a streetcar named desire (tennessee williams play) + the movie with marlon brando

i didnt read the full text but i did hunt down and read parts of "de masticatione mortuorum, the chewing dead" that claudia mentions, full title "dissertatio historico-philosophica de masticatione mortuorum" by philip rohr (1679) (view the original manuscript here + english translation here)

i havent finished all of emily dickinson's poems yet but im getting there! (some of these i had read before ofc but im reading them all in order now)

ive also previously watched nosferatu (and rewatched it for iwtv) and the trimph of the will (NOT rewatching 💀 that was for a film history class) and ive read dante's inferno which louis mentions ("if i was to join dante's wood of the self-murdered...") and i highly recommend it!!! absolute fav

there's also stuff that wasn't directly referenced in the show but the fandom has drawn parallels to, that i've read and watched for that reason.

anne carson's an oresteia (to better understand all the agamemnon iphigenia clytemnestra electra comparisons people make)

giovanni's room by james baldwin

rebecca (1940 film)

theres def more movies but i cant remember lol

and theres some nonfiction books i've yet to finish bc im slow at nonfiction

the vampire: a casebook by alan dundes (cited by writers as s2 inspo! about irl vampire folklore)

black new orleans 1860-1880 by john w. blassingame for historical context

the theatre of fear and horror by mel gordon, on the grand guignol aka the inspiration for theatre des vampires (i did finish this one except for the summaries of all the plays, i decided to skip that there's so many. very engaging read and gives a lot of insight into the some of the bts stuff we've seen about the theatre)

louis's favorite movies from the tale of the the body thief!

la belle et la bête (1946)

the company of wolves (1984)

the dead (1987)

i may be forgetting some stuff. there's also so much more on my list that i mean to get to. a prayer for owen meany by john irving, of "memory is a monster" quote fame is locked and loaded for example

if anyone's interested to hear my thoughts on any of these feel free to ask i would love to talk about it!!!

all this and i've still only read the first 6 of the actual vampire chronicles. and im still procrastinating starting merrick

21. What was your favorite monologue of season one?

HMM the obvious one is louis's confession. ive watched the whole sequence from the funeral to the end of the episode a truly unhealthy number of times. also claudia's coffin monologue

22. Who's your favorite character? Why?

LOUIS. probably because i relate to him so much. instant connection. tricked into loving myself. also like hes literally louis how could i not love him do i need to even explain this

when i started reading the books i didnt care for book louis that much lol but i did become an armand stan. possibly bc i also relate to him im selfish like that i guess. also just his whole backstory and the way it informs everything he does is so fascinating to me. ppl say hes incomprehensible and hes literally not. everything he does makes sense when you consider his life experiences

iwtv ask game

[11x13kyle]

Greek mythology anon here. I can totally see Cartman - Oedipus in a world where he tries to redeem himself and still ends up being his own destruction, (a more interesting post covid perhaps), but Oedipus seems more like a Kyle character to me? The self righteous hubris and downfall caused because you couldn't stop picking at the answers even when everyone told you to drop it. I can absolutely see Kyle - Antigone, though, and Stan - Orpheus you get me!!! (Meanwhile I think you could have a fucked up played for laughs absurdist comedy of errors Creek - Eros and Psyche parallel) Also, goes without saying but Randy is Agamemnon (Shelly is Iphigenia, Stan manages to straddle Electra AND Clytemnestra somehow, Sharon is Chrysothemis)

RANDY AGAMEMNON MAKING ME FEEL MILDLY INSANE RIGHT NOW .

[coloricioso]

The fact act that even after death Clytemnestra worked against her son, summoning the Furies (which means that Orestes Will be punished in life but also after dearh, eternally) summarizes well her character, she is a "with me or against me" type of person, as a mother too, and it seems she only cares for her dead girl while the remaining 3 children are neglected, mistreated and threatened. Like, yes, she's interesting, but she's not without fault as these "feminist writers" want us to think.

I LOVE YOU ANON!!!!! And this brings to mind, this paragraph from an amazing essay called “I, WHOM SHE DETESTED SO BITTERLY” Slavery and the violent division of women in Aeschylus’ Oresteia" by Denise Eileen McCoskey:

Finally, I wish to use the murder of Cassandra to comment more broadly on feminist theory—and the flawed perspective of any feminism that leaves Cassandra invisible. I apply this warning specifically to feminist appropriations of Clytemnestra. Sally MacEwen, for example, in the introduction to her volume Views of Clytemnestra, Ancient and Modern writes generally, “Our sympathies, in the end, usually end up with Clytemnestra” (1990, 14). Later, in her essay within the volume, MacEwen examines whether Clytemnestra is the “victim” or the “villain” more fully, but does not bring the murder of Cassandra into the equation (31).25 As feminists, however, I believe that we should be wary of any uncritical valorization of Clytemnestra’s transgressions and power, since she becomes in many ways a prototypical “Superwoman,” who attempts not to tear down the system of patriarchy, but to become its sole exception. As Audre Lorde so poignantly asserted, “(t)he master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring genuine change” (1984, 112).

I mean, for me, the thing is that in Aeschylus' play, Clytemnestra uses her daughter's death as an excuse for her own power lust. That's pretty obvious in verse 1551 where once Agamemnon is dead, she jokes and makes fun saying Agamemnon's ghost will be welcomed by Iphigenia's ghost in Hades, who will kiss him and hug him as a loving daughter.

Whether this is sarcasm or not, it shows pretty well what is Iphigenia's death to Clytemnestra: a tool.

The average "Clytemnestra's stans" always erase Cassandra's murder and Electra's mistreatment (and death threats), and also, conveniently forget how Iphigenia's death is erased as soon as Agamemnon dies. Was it really about justice? A justice that includes using a daughter's death as a joke to rejoice over the husband's death? It's despicable.

So, Clytemnestra IS NOT A FEMINIST ICON. She doesn't care about any other woman, but herself alone. Not even her daughters (NONE of them).

And also, there are other essays and analyses, and how Clytemnestra especially abuses and mistreats Cassandra, humiliating her for her foreign and slave status. And she objectifies her and insults her by calling her a whore. So, is this feminism? Wasn't feminism supposed to be intersectional? Because in this play, Cassandra belongs to a minority group (foreign, slave), and guess who is the one who looks after her and asks for her to be treated kindly because slavery is something terrible to bear???? Yeah, Agamemnon, who is, a man. So, fun fun. But no, every single modern "feminist author" and all the "Clytemnestra stans" conveniently forget this part and make Agamemnon the villain and Clytemnestra the badass understood woman boss uwu! What it's interesting about Clytemnestra is that she is smart, she is is skilled and she uses technology and plans like a strategist, but that doesn't make her "a feminist icon".

[la-pheacienne]

Something that irks me about Green stans is that they tell us Black stans “not to judge the story with modern standards,” but then they judge it with modern standards when it’s convenient, like to victimize Alicent by calling her a child bride, when in Westeros Alicent would not be viewed in that way. So basically, they want us to accept the patriarchy because “That’s just the way things are in Westeros.” While at the same time excusing Alicent by viewing her with modern standards. It’s extremely hypocritical. It’s also disturbing how much these Alicent stans want the character to be defined by nothing but her victimhood. They don’t want her to have any real agency. Every messed up thing she does, they always scream that she had no choice.

No honey we DON'T judge the story with modern standards. We judge the story with the fucking standards the author of the story put there. Misogyny, that's the standard, and it's fucking there. The misogyny that the greens weaponize to kill a woman and steal her throne. We're not revising the literary text, altering it's meaning to fit into a modern ideology. We are merely underlining its true a very obvious meaning that the author deliberately put there for us to see.

When we say that in ASOIAF, GRRM criticises the social exclusion of bastards, we don't apply modern standards to the story. This is the story. It's a criticism of the social exclusion of bastards. If you say for example that Clytemnestra is a girlboss and 100% justified in her actions and Aeschylus is misogynist, that's what "judging the story with modern standards" is, because Aeschylus didn't have that in mind at all. If you say that dragons are nuclear weapons, that's judging the story with modern standards, because GRRM didn't have this in mind at all.

(And I know about the ridiculous comment he made on the war of Iraq and Dany, but no guys that's not what you think it is. He didn't say that Dany's arc in Essos parallels the war of Iraq. He literally said that he would understand if people made the connection Americans, only Americans could make that connection and maybe both will have a similar outcome, but, quote, it's definitely not a parallel). But dumb fans Americans who don't know how to read saw this text and immediately went like OH THAT'S LIKE THE WAR IN IRAQ DRAGONS ARE NUCLEAR WEAPONZZZ do you even realise that the only reason you still scream of nuclear weapons in Iraq is because your country literally used that as an excuse to basically annihilate another country when there were zero nuclear weapons, well I guess not, if you did, you would realise it's not that cool and progressive of an argument as you think it is

That's why it's so dangerous to "judge a story by modern standards" it will eventually make you look like a clown.

[rhaenyras]

I just saw the gifset associating Alicent with Helen of Troy (btw, Clytemnestra > Helen of Troy), and it’s the fact that in episode 9, Alicent had no idea her father and the Council were planning to crown her son all along. And that she only wanted to crown Aegon because according to “it was the last wish of the king”, when in fact she’s the one who arranged the marriage between Aegon and Helaena to strengthen Aegon’s claim, emphasize his Targaryen-ness, and have 100% pure Targaryen heirs (unlike Rhaenyra and her brown-haired children), and berates Aegon in episode 6 for being friends with his nephews, “If Rhaenyra comes into power, your very life could be forfeit. Aemond’s as well. She could move to cut off any challenge to her succession. You are the challenge ! You are the challenge, Aegon ! Simply by living and breathing ! You are the King’s firstborn son and what they know, what everyone in the realm knows in their blood and in their bones is that one day, you will be our King.”

How does all this narrative work ?? HOTD has absolutely no logic nor consistency.

precisely what i meant when i posted that. i also like clytemnestra better but i still believe helen was the convenient scapegoat and catalyst for the inherent unchanneled misogyny of her contemporaries. she didn't actively cause the war and couldn't have done anything to avoid it. the men waging the war solely to safeguard the patriarchal ownership of women at the bottom of society, on the other hand, well... but it's always easier tracing the casus belli back to a single woman, by absolving the men who wanted to appallingly own her like cattle in the first place.

anyway alicent is not helen in this scenario, not by far. she didn't take the blame undeservingly for a war that the men waged on their own, over their own sordid motives that she didn't share. as you pointed out, she was gonna push her unwilling son to usurp rhaenyra's throne either way, regardless of what the men on the council and her own father were plotting behind her back (she also knew she could count on their support and loyalty though, or it's very likely that she wouldn't have dared.)

why she did this, it's easy to imagine. self advancement, a personal feud with rhaenyra, an inbred repulsion towards defiance of patriarchal order and moral values.

and if only alicent or her stans had the decency of owning up to it, i would still dislike her but at least i would tip my hat to her. but no, she has to shelter herself behind the men and pretend the thought of her son being king only dawned on her when viserys died and expressed cryptic words that she wasn't even equipped to understand.

it's the presumption of moral righteousness that fazes me and makes me dislike alicent so much.

besides, it's truly unnerving the way her fans just won't see that one can have a favourite character that's like... everything you would hate in a woman irl, but you still like her character because it's fictional and it provides much better entertainment compared to characters with solid motives and principles that are always on the right side of every conflict

[sapphic-theatre-fan]

I’m rereading The Odyssey and I have been reminded that Clytemnestra has done absolutely nothing wrong ever

[jessakaldwin]

i have used all of my niche Classics knowledge to present to you this: Which Powerful Woman From The Classical Tragic & Epic Canon Are You?

[beepfuckingbeeprichie]

Some Greek god hot takes and unpopular opinions

Apollo is a Nice Guy™️

The next person I see who writes Dionysus as a drunk and sloppy man who only cares about about partying WILL be catching these hands

We get it, Heracles had a bunch of trials, okay Perseus is the only Greek hero to get a happy ending, yes I know that Orpheus did this and Achilles did that and Theseus was a hero, I’m just so goddamn tired of hearing about it

“But don’t you like Greek tales?” Yeah but I don’t wanna bear the SAME SHIT about some dudebros saving the world or proving some bitch king wrong

“Then who do you want to hear tales about?” PASIPHAE. ARIADNE. ATALANTA. CIRCE. CASSANDRA. MEDEA. ANTIGONE. CLYTEMNESTRA.

Cassandra was so much more than just another lover cursed by Apollo The Nice Guy, she actually played a part in a lot of shit that went down and stubbornly refused to stop trying to warn people about the impending doom even though she knew that because she was cursed, no one would ever believe her

Back to Dionysus for a second— he’s also the patron god of minorities, the LGBT, and the mentally ill, so yeah. He’s underappreciated.

There’s are many versions of the same myths sometimes, the big ones, and yes I’m talking about Hades and Persephone but that’s a whole post

Hermès should be recognized as a trickster god more often

Whenever I hear someone say Hercules when talking in the context of Greek myths I want to Die™️

Why is Icarus referenced so much in pop culture??

There are a lot of modern day Apollo stans that probably exist solely because uncle rick wrote a series about Apollo who are gonna try and come for my blood about this post because Apollo this and that blah blah

[kashuan]

Hey, I've been meaning to check with you bc you're like THE Aga stan that I know: are there are novels out there that center on the HoA curse? I know Laura Gill has that Oresteia trilogy I need to get to, and Toibin has a Clytemnestra novel. Anything I'm missing? (Good, bad, doesn't matter.) Thanks!

>_> I wouldn’t recommend the first, she pulled a “not to me, not if it’s you– oh and no homo” SO… I can’t really recommend any books that involve that subject tbh, they’ve all been varying degrees of bad in my experience, which is one of the many reasons it appealed to me as the area I want to focus my energies on putting out (hopefully) Better content. Warrior in Bronze was slightly better but also had a great deal of the usual issues. Maybe someone who follows me could give a rec? 

[la-pheacienne]

“κλύειν δικαίως μᾶλλον ἢ πρᾶξαι θέλεις”

You wish to be considered righteous

but not to act with justice.

Athena, Eumenides, Aeschylus

Ι don't understand this new leak (it's kind of implied in the trailer) that shows Alicent preparing the coup solely because of Viserys' last words. Like, how could she believe Viserys was talking about his son? And let's suppose she did believe it, because Viserys never talked to her about anything really. What now, the show would have us believe that Alicent didn't have any agency or ambition of her own, she didn't want her own son to be king, she wasn't literally preparing him forcing him his whole life to be king, she didn't deliberately try to maim Rhaenyra's reputation for a whole decade so that her own son would be king? Noo, this idea just spontaneously came to her BECAUSE of a misunderstanding? WTF is this.

Friendly reminder that having multiple POVs is a good thing, and that two characters who are directly opposed could both have valid reasons for their acts, and that's good writing. Sympathising with Alicent, understanding her motives and contextualising her evil, treasonous acts, IS a good thing. What is NOT a good thing, is believing she is actually right in her claims and also depriving her from any agency. This is something that green stans do, and now the show itself does : treating Alicent like a precious doll with no agency. This particular approach also directly contradicts the script of the previous episodes that CLEARLY shows Alicent's ambition and obsession with Rhaenyra's morality and who enters or doesn't enter her vagina.

I will remind the basic facts, again, according to the show. Rhaenyra is the fucking heir to the throne. Her sons are born "out of wedlock" they're not but whatever and they are immediately legitimised by their father Laenor, their grandfather Corlys, and also the fucking King. They have the name Velaryon and they are not bastards. Otto, Alicent, Aegon, Aemond and Larys are traitors and they should be executed for this. This DOES NOT stop you from sympathising with the traitors and contextualising their actions. You can BOTH sympathise AND understand who is right and who is wrong. Medea killed her own children to avenge her asshole husband and she is a monster for that, that didn't stop Euripides from writing an entire tragedy over her character that tries to contextualise and sympathise with her because she had her reasons. Clytemnestra killed her asshole husband for sacrificing her daughter to the gods and she absolutely had valid reasons for that but at the same time she was still an ambitious, self serving selfish bitch who wanted to usurp her husband's power with her lover and killed his sex slave Cassandra in the process who was literally innocent still love her but the facts are facts . Point is, you can sympathize with literally ANYONE, ANYONE has reasons for what they do, and these reasons are worth analysing and layering but that doesn't make their actions RIGHT or JUST. These are two separate things. Alicent and her sons are usurpers, and none of this would have happened if Rhaenyra was a man. People that stan alicent (by "Stan" I mean "believe that Aegon is the rightful heir, Alicent is a saint and Rhaenyra should just disappear") either don't have basic skills to understand the story, are extremely politically conservative OR have a weird fantasy/kink with lesbians destroying men around them (except that she doesn't destroy any man she's only destroying a woman that has done nothing to her) and now the show itself is backing this stupid mentality and I just don't fucking understand it. And yes I'm tagging Alicent Hightower because these are facts, if you don't like to read facts, just scroll.

[julio-claudian-saberface]

I’m suddenly thinking about back when I was blitzing through the Trojan War-related fic on AO3 and kept coming across this one Agamemnon stan in the comments who wanted everyone to know how hard-done-by and misunderstood he was. One time the portrayal of Agamemnon was actually pretty positive, and yet - as if at a loss - they kept banging on with their copypasta. 

“Hey, it’s nice to see a fic where Agamemnon isn’t EVIL.”

“Hey, thanks.”

“And furthermore Clytemnestra is JUST AS BAD and ALL YOUR FAVES ARE ALSO PROBLEMATIC -”

Look, when your problematic fave’s first scene is him threatening and gloating at a worried father, you’ve gotta expect some people are going to have trouble getting past that. 

(Though TBF I agreed with them about that one fic where Achilles was a modern-day war criminal and we were still supposed to see him as a troubled woobie)

[aeide-thea]

guys i'm pretty sure i've forfeited the right to think anything but deeply grateful thoughts about G— ever again

i have been in SUCH an anxietyknot about this seneca paper, you don't even know, it got very badparalysisland

and today was exam day and i went off with an ache in my gut knowing i had neither prepared enough nor slept enough, plus i was theoretically supposed to finish this paper by the end of the day, when i was presumably going to have post-exam sludge brain…

and then it turned out the quote IDs weren't totally brutal after all, even though i hadn't reviewed worth a damn; and of the passages in the explication section, not just one but two of them were ones i was thoroughly familiar with and comfortable writing about; and then one of the long essay questions was stuff i'd been thinking about for my paper; and i ~managed my time~ with such success that not only did i finish all sections of the test creditably (which i very much did not do on the midterm), i actually had time to go back and read the whole thing through and make a slightly better job of the one quote ID i'd fumbled?

anyway i always have belated Doubts about whether what i had to say was sophisticated enough but i did have one line of argument i was pleased with about, like, clytemnestra being bad at assigned gender roles/relating to people, in the sense that like, when agamemnon leaves she's supposed to, like, 'keep a chaste bed as a wife and hold her widow's scepter in unsullied trust' (pudicos coniugis quondam toros / et sceptra casta vidua tutari fide), which whole notion of course she, you know, crumples up and sets on fire with the whole aegisthus thing; and then she brings up femininity but only in conjunction with deceit (femineos dolos), which like, you'd think was going to be makeup or something but in context turns out to be, uh, murder, since she cites medea (ardens impia virgo face, / Phasiaca fugiens regna Thessalica trabe), which is obviously a very, um, ideolectic understanding of femininity! and so the passage as a whole ends up being (among a whole lot of other things) a sort of loose recasting of maiden/mother/crone, substituting wife for mother both because clytemnestra has barely any maternal/familial instinct (she really shies away from using possessive pronouns for family members, which, like, i don't want to over-read, latin can be elliptical without meaning anything by it necessarily, but helen isn't soror mea but just unadorned soror, and then later she asks electra 'ubi sit natus, ubi frater tuus,' and of course you can supply the possessive from the parallel but still, i think i agree with G— that it's no coincidence natus is the connection that goes unclaimed) and because of course her daughter has been killed, though even that she doesn't seem quite to have the proper feelings about, insofar as the whole line of argument is that it 'shames and grieves her [in that order, not to mention that some texts have not dolet but piget, so like, 'irks' or 'displeases' rather than 'grieves'] that she, a tyndarid, of divine stock, was reduced to calving a lustral sacrifice for the doric fleet!' i mean the 'was reduced to' is me editorializing but like. that's the sense i get. so anyway, that was a fun line of argument to follow out and i had a good time with it. also i love clytemnestra and her proud unsympathetic unwomanly steeliness!! we stan one (1) gnc murderbot.

but so afterwards i go up to G— and i'm like, so uh, about this paper... which, you know, i do give myself credit for doing, because even though i should've come to him a week ago it's frankly Harder to angle for an extension when you're doing it inexcusably late, because you know it's inexcusable and so you have to climb over all the shame about that in addition to everything else... but anyway he made some extremely nonjudgmental inquiries abt where i was with the thing and finally was like, okay, look, i'm going to asia for two weeks, how about you have it done by the time i get back?

so, in conclusion this paper is now due june 1st, i was angling for like, a day or two at most so this is absurdly luxurious?? and as i said initially i'm pretty sure i've now forfeited the right to ever say anything but good things abt G—, because i was so stressed about this this morning/all of last week and now it's just like, the whole knot's been undone, i get to take the evening off and have a lounge and read a detective novel and start again tomorrow in a calm thoughtful way and i'm just. really lucky and desperately grateful. wishing all of you even half as much luck with salvaging yrselves & being salvaged, in whatever proportion you need. <3

[apriki]

SAW INFINITY WAR and as you must know, there is much to be said... under the cut!

I WAS MORE UPSET ABOUT HEIMDALL THAN LOKI TBH

and with the time stone in play I take nothing as solid until part 2 is over. Though I hope they stick to their guns and actually have the deaths in acts 1 and 2 be permanent

pray to God valkyrie survived she didn't even get a look in 

I love how they didn't make any of thanos' other children's character designs memorable in the slightest. I've already forgotten them. why were they all that strange blue-grey colour? mediocrity is greige 

I also love that at the end of the first avengers or whenever thanos was like 'fine... I'll do it myself' and he... DID NOT DO THAT and sent his kids instead lmfaaooooo

I am like.... The furthest thing from a tony stark stan and I don't like him most of the time (and he was really trying it in this movie!!! his relationship with Spiderman always misses the mark with me and I hate that the films obviously love it) but Thanos being the terrifying PTSD Goliath of his nightmares is a Good storyline 

I've said before that nebula and Gamora should have been the emotional heart of this movie and they weren't because thanos was with a side of Tony and it's like..... I guess.......

how much better would this whole thing be if thanos was a woman? That's a thought that just occured to me and now it's going to haunt me 

i would very much like to run away to scotland with Paul Bettany and have him kiss my hand and tell me to read his mind 

cap usually does nothing for me at all but seeing him with that Fugitive Beard.... for the first time, I felt things. Things were felt he should always have facial hair

THEY LITERALLY DIDNT EVEN SHOW ANTMAN ABD HAWKEYE BECAUSE NO ONE CARES DJDJJDKSKSK

though a shrink machine... would have been helpful? 

i was about an hour into this film and still not connecting with thanos until, like a eureka, it hit me that HE IS AGAMEMNON 

THANOS IS AGAMEMNON

THE SOUL STONE SCENE WAS IPHIGENIA AT AULIS AND NOW, UNFORTUNATELY, I MUST CARE

i literally was sitting there in my seat BELLIGERENTLY DELIGHTED it's a goddamn GREEK TRAGEDY 

THE HOUSE OF ATREUS IN SPACE

SPACE ATREUS

GAMORA WAS TOO GOOD FOR THE GUARDIANS we deserved a solo movie with her and nebula

who is now the CLYTEMNESTRA I CANNOT BELLLLIIEEEVEEE

Thanos as an environmentalist is... so funny the EPA as a villain? okay trump administration

was that the bad guy from Captain America the first avenger? Like.... The Nazi????? Why on earth did they bring him back lmao 

SHURI IS THE SMARTEST PERSON ON EARTH, WE KNEW THIS 

it is so fucking funny that marvel realised, belatedly, that they have more than one female hero now and so gave them a fight scene together

19 films in. 10 years later 

okay look i know that giving up the time stone is The One Timeline that ends in them beating thanos and that it had to be done but like

I AM SO FUCKING PISSED THAT HALF THE /////UNIVERSE///// DIED... TO SAVE TONY STARK LMFAO

LIKE I KNOW THATS NOT THE REASON BUT NARRATIVELY IT WAS THE REASON and it's.... some bullshit 

case in point: MISS WANDA WHO DID WHAT FUCKING NEEDED TO BE DONE 

they really made her kill her boyfriend... her gentle boyfriend who is Paul Bettany.... theyre really trying to make me care about Wanda and vision

why did the wakanda battle feel like that fight between the gungans and the droids in phantom menace?????? Jajsjdhhdhdjjdjfj

having people fight hand to hand on the ground against a massive alien army invasion was ridiculous 

wakanda forever though M'BAKU IS TOO BEAUTIFUL

HE CALLED TCHALLA HIS BROTHER!

OKOYES SIDE EYE AT BUCKY DJDJDJDJDJEJ  

the guardians humor felt mad out of place this whole movie lmao

is it wrong I didn't care if Drax was dead dead when thanos turned him into rubber or whatever? 

I'm cool with thanos' culling if it kills off all the annoying dudes. Marvel is too full of them  

if thanos is agamemnon - and he is - that makes Steve hector and again, I for the first time in my whole life, Felt Things for him in that last scene. you really did it Kevin Feige

AND THANOS SMILED, FOR THERE WERE NO MORE WORLDS TO CONQUER 

AND I LOOKED DOWN UPON MY NEW DOMINION AS MASTER OF ALL; AND I THOUGHT IT GOOD.

okay my brother is of a different opinion on this but:

THAT ENDING WAS CHEAP AND STUPID AND I LOATHED IT

you kill off half the characters including ones with films we already know are yet to come out so we KNOW their deaths will never stick

it was cheap ploy and bad storytelling

You know that bit in breaking dawn 2 where they kill everyone in a huge fight but it turns out it's just a premonition Alice shows aro? THAT IS THE END OF INFINITY WAR

it would've made much more sense to kill of the original avengers imo - that way there was at least a chance their deaths would stick

but my brother thinks they've done this specifically so the og avengers will turn around and sacrifice themselves instead in part 2

which... I guess....

so my criticisms on that are partially on hold but I dont Like It

can't wait to see ten thousand metas about Steve watching Bucky disintegrate and then brushing his hand through the ashes 

thor's new Phallic Imagery hammer is ridiculous and his whole side mission felt wasteful

there were so many logical fallacies in this movie I know I know, it's a superhero movie! Suspend disbelief! but you're telling me Thanos has the power to disintegrate a moon and he wouldn't just aim.the gauntlet at tony or the guardians and disintegrate THEM? and how can Wanda's power which is only a small offshoot of a stone destroy another stone? MAKES NO SENSE FAM

what is the soul stone's power even

the thanos fight scenes all had that brutal winter soldier intensity but the wakanda battle was wayyyyy too bloated

the captain marvel post credits scene was dumbbb lol 

I kind of wanted it to be just Hawkeye and antman eating their breakfast

and then they turn to ash 

I'm like 90% sure you wouldn't understand this film if you haven't seen like at least 10 other marvel ones before it lmao