#Order Validation

[babykittenteach]

No but fr having an indigenous family broken up for its own good by the state and one of them leave her homeland to go get a Real Education is not just counter to the original story's characterization, it's not just erasing the colonialism commentary for the sake of failed feminism presumably based on the girlboss objection to portraying women as caretakers and the classist objection to blue collar jobs, it is an act of colonialism.

It is in fact so ridiculously an act of colonialism that it should come off as such to anybody able to think about media critically for a few moments, but to anybody familiar with what the US did to many indigenous peoples via the faux benevolence of boarding schools, including to native hawaiians, it's fucking revolting.

Like, shoutout to removing Pleakley's gender exploration, to removing the cop villain in lieu of just having the mad scientist remain one, to removing some of Cobra Bubbles's nuance, to removing commentary on race and colonialism, etc etc, but mainly: this did a colonialism.

[drenched-in-sunlight]

mom vs dad incantation class

(also no thought… just Marika with her little daughters)

[mako-neexu]

CRYING they gave her mekakure and a smaller side ponytail to differentiate her better from dako bc they knew CN would do this skebddjdbdbdnd

[shellminded]

IT'S PRIDE MONTH EVERYONE! And BD-1 is here to say that TRANS LIVES MATTER, full stop. If you have any flag requests, please let me know and I will tag you in the post!

[synchodai]

HBO's Continued Insistence on Dumbing Down Westerosi Politics

So there have been countless thinkpieces already on how GOT simplified the feudalist politics of Westeros (by giving a lowborn sellsword lordship over The Reach, by having no consequences for destroying the Sept of Baelor, etc.), but I haven't seen a lot of people talking about that for House of the Dragon.

The worst being that the show presupposes that Rhaenyra is the lawful heir when the books showed there are plenty of lawful arguments why she wouldn't be.

Mind you that I've been enjoying the show a lot so far. This is just to vent out my frustration with the writers' failure to fully engage with the values and protocols of the Middle Age-inspired setting. The show seems uninterested in laws of the Realm in a story ostensibly about politics, save for when they're using it as an excuse to amplify depictions of sex and violence.

Blacks vs Greens wasn't a matter of misunderstanding of who each side thought Viserys wanted on the throne. It was the Targaryens' belief of their absolute authority clashing with the Realm's established traditions. Everyone always knew who Viserys chose as heir. In Fire and Blood, Grand Maester Orwyle said as much when he was parleying with Rhaenyra on behalf of the Greens.

Rhaenyra heard his terms in stony silence, then asked Orwyle if he remembered her father, King Viserys. "Of course, Your Grace," the maester answered. "Perhaps you can tell us who he named as his heir and successor," the queen said, her crown upon her head. "You, Your Grace," Orwyle replied. And Rhaenyra nodded and said, "With your own tongue you admit I am your lawful queen. Why do you serve my half-brother, the pretender?" Munkun tells us that Orwyle gave a long and erudite reply, citing the Andal law and the Great Council of 101. Mushroom claims he stammered and voided his bladder. Whichever is true, his answer did not satisfy Princess Rhaenyra.

(For non-F&B readers: Munkun is the Grand Maester who served Aegon III, the king who came after this civil war. Munkun's book, The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling, is one of Fire and Blood's source texts. Mushroom is the King Landing court jester from Viserys I to Aegon III's reign. One is a source written with academic rigor but is secondhand at best. The other is a firsthand eyewitness account but is from a literal fool who will take every chance to make things more scandalous and sexual to please the crowd.)

In House of the Dragon, they replaced Orwyle with Otto and Orwyle's discussion of legal precedent with Otto handing Rhaenyra a book page from Alicent. It's quite evident here that the writers, much like Mushroom, thought a discussion on the actual laws of the Realm were negligible in this story about a succession war.

Even Alicent made no pretense that Viserys chose Rhaenyra over her children and I have no idea why the HBO writers decided to make her mistakenly think otherwise. Maybe they thought a queen regent pushing her son to take the throne over another woman made her appear unsympathetic as a character, but if anything, this only makes show!Alicent less politically savvy and more delusional than her book counterpart, fully believing an addled king's vague muttering on his deathbed was sufficient grounds to change heirs last minute.

Book!Alicent following Andal laws instead of her husband's wishes makes sense given her Andal upbringing, her devotion to the Faith of the Seven which enforces said laws, and her desire to protect her children from Rhaenyra given that Rhaenyra has shown she's not above murdering family (see: Laenor).

In the books, there was a long discussion between the former king's council on who should succeed Viserys.

Here are the arguments for Rhaenyra:

Rhaenyra was older than her brothers and had more Targaryen blood

the late king had chosen her as his successor, that he had repeatedly refused to alter the succession despite the pleadings of Queen Alicent and her greens

hundreds of lords and landed knights had done obeisance to the princess in 105 AC, and sworn solemn oaths to defend her rights.

Here are the arguments for Aegon II:

many of the lords who had sworn to defend the succession of Princess Rhaenyra were long dead [...]

Ironrod, the master of laws, cited the Great Council of 101 and the Old King’s choice of Baelon rather than Rhaenys in 92

the hallowed Andal tradition wherein the rights of a trueborn son always came before the rights of a mere daughter

Ser Otto reminded them that Rhaenyra’s husband was none other than Prince Daemon, and “we all know that one’s nature. Make no mistake, should Rhaenyra ever sit the Iron Throne, it will be Lord Flea Bottom who rules us, a king consort as cruel and unforgiving as Maegor ever was [...]”

Should the princess reign [...] Jacaerys Velaryon would rule after her. “Seven save this realm if we seat a bastard on the Iron Throne.”

Once again, the show chose to cut out this long political discussion. Instead, the council had already made up their mind and decided to stage a coup (when in their perspectives from the books, it would definitely not be a coup).

For all their marketing how two sides are equally grey, HotD is actively delegitimizing Aegon II. The strongest argument for him is how his claim follows the laws of the Realm, but the show doesn't seem to care about the laws of the Realm or the political need to maintain a more predictable/tested transfer of power.

Instead, the show focuses on Viserys's relationship with his daughter and the mysticism of the Targaryen bloodline. In doing so, they emphasize Rhaenyra's strongest arguments for succession — that she's more of a Targaryen than her half-brother and that her father prefered her.

And what for? Because in our modern-day, we don't have male-prefered inheritance and people can only imagine misogyny as the only injustice here? What about the injustice of a monarch exercising absolute control, thinking that his "superior" heritage makes him above the established laws of the native people?

This is not to say Aegon II is unquestionably the heir. But this is to say that the show removed the political nuance of why people are questioning in the first place. Precedence isn't the end-all-be-all of succession, but neither is "because daddy said so".

[valtsv]

speaking of aromanticism wins. she would not fucking define herself using modern queer identity labels and symbols but girl have you heard of this thing called being aro because i think you'd like it.

[arcticclimes]

[utilitycaster]

I'm vagueing a very specific post here but there's one post from a few days ago that manages to be both unbelievably patronizing, to the point of dehumanizing, towards people from colonized countries and cultures, and also claims that maybe the reason people who don't like Campaign 3 Don't Get It is because maybe a game based on Pathfinder would have more complex villains than one based on that childish black-and-white game, D&D. And while the first point is, well, white and western-centric and I find it genuinely horrifying that 40-odd people in the fandom liked and reblogged this one. I do want to point out that fully and eloquently debunking the that point would probably require I spend a while reading Spivak and hooks, and to be clear, I am attempting to do so, but that takes time.

What I can point out, however, is 1. in a post claiming to speak for colonized people maybe don't end it with a petty dig at the more popular of the two biggest guns in TTRPGs, that's just basic rhetoric and 2. As Critical Role began pre-stream in Pathfinder 1e and your argument is apparently that works that inherit from D&D are inherently overly simplistic I have some real bad news for you about where pathfinder derives from.

[balladofbells]

Can we talk about the fact that in Thule, Maryse’s last words to Jace were basically I love you.

[crypt1c-gho3t]

In every multiverse, every universe, every reiteration of their souls and every new turn of their lives Link and Zelda will find eachother

and Zelda will always be taller than Link

[starrycloak]

the fact that they had dustin's (likely) first crush on someone older -

who was both a major inspo for his dream girl concept (witty, smart, badass, cool nerd)-

and the one who reassured him he will love and will be loved in the future, even when he thought that might be a hopeless pursuit for him, the way the world works-

(couldn't find a gif with the line "Girls this age are... dumb. But when they get a little older and wise up, you're gonna drive them nuts.")

be the older sister of one of his best friends, nancy wheeler, will never not be funny.

i mean

just

cause

reasons

[irenespring]

Maybe House has made me more in-tune to the secret unhinged side of my favorite characters but I'm watching SVU and Alex Cabot is a menace. (/pos)

"I have to enforce the law, and the law is not always about justice" except random times when she disagrees and will fully become the lawyer for an opposing party in full defiance of her bosses.

"Your honor I simply do not vibe with the law" and will say so in court to the point where she once got held in contempt.

Started her legendary string of "Go After The Large Company Instead of the Obvious Target" cases just because Liv asked.

She will actually do literally anything that Olivia asks...sometimes when she does something especially unhinged I go to check the scene before and 90% of the time she's doing whatever it is to appease some vague whim of Liv's.

Ride or die for the SVU squad as a whole after working with them for less than a year and knowing that they have cost her like all her political capital (something that was very important to her...she says so in her introductory scene).

Exactly predicted fetal personhood legal issues 25 years before the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

Wanted to execute a woman for the first time in NY history for feminism reasons.

Spends like 80% of all work meetings, with other people in the room who are often actively talking to her, just staring at Olivia.

Always down for a Crazy Scheme (especially when she gets to deceive others).

She has a lot of moments of understanding the law as a weapon (ie how to I use it to my own ends as opposed to viewing it as a holy ideal) that is only now actually becoming a common philosophy in law school circles.

WAY more loose-cannon moments in general than I remembered.

Also I feel the need to reiterate just how many bridges she will burn and loops she will jump through for the slightest hint of approval from Olivia. Just...so gay.

Seriously just like how in House a casual viewer may get distracted by Wilson's "Definitely a Normal Person" disguise and miss how he is just as crazy as House, Alex is just as batshit as known exhibitionist-asphyxiation-in-the-middle-of-the-courtroom fan Rafael. And I love her dearly.

[separatist-apologist]

.

[plantanarchy]

me coming back to work this time of year after five days off sick is UNPARALLELED levels of chaos

[jedi-enthusiasm-blog]

Kind of a vaguely tangential to Jedi meta comparison for you - I've been reading a lot of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels recently. It's canon in Discworld that wizards don't have sex or marry. The sex thing is partly bc an active sex life makes it hard to care about and practice magic. It's also implied that performing magic can be as good as sex anyway. In The Light Fantastic, Rincewind performs magic successfully for the first time: "Magic! So that's what it felt like! No wonder wizards didn't have much truck with sex!" In Mort, Wizard Cutwell hooks up with Queen Keli and implicitly never really does magic again. The no marriage thing is bc magic can be hereditary, and if a wizard who is the youngest of eight sons then himself fathers eight sons, the eighth runs a risk of being a sourcerer, a being of godlike magical power (Sourcery)

I basically thought it was an interesting point of comparison to the Jedi bc it's kind of just a fact in Discworld canon that wizards are celibate by choice and live exclusively in single sex communities (though that gets challenged as early as the third book in the series, Equal Rites), and no fans really freak out over it, or talk about how the Unseen University was wrong for having such restrictions. It's not a 1:1 obv, bc Pratchett was writing comedy, but clearly some fandoms can handle the idea of people living monastically and asexually for supernatural power reasons. Maybe celibate academic spiritual communities are only good for making fun of. Idk.

I haven't read any of the Discworld novels, but there is something similar going on with the Avatar (the last airbender not the one with blue people) fandom.

Air Nomads are inspired by Buddhist monks just like the Jedi (although the Jedi have a heavier philosophical inspiration). Air Nomads give their children to the Temples, children are raised communally and they are given to a mentor when they reach a certain age so they can learn airbending. Likewise, the Air Nomads focus not on obtaining earthly pleasures but spiritual enlightenment. Their similarities with the Jedi are stunning, but the hypocresy that gets me is:

If I posted an anti-Jedi argument with the names swapped about the Air Nomads, I would be skinned alive.

And the Air Nomads have more "shady" things than the Jedi going on! We have seen in all three other nations that not everyone is a bender and meanwhile all Air Nomads are airbenders? How is that possible? Do they commit eugenics or something? This is probably poor worldbuilding on the creators part, but still, easier to have bad faith interpretations.

And yeah, if sex does impact your magic negatively, it makes perfect sense that you'd either have no magic or be celibate. And if magic is as good as sex? Count me in, goodbye sex you won't be missed.

[communist-hatsunemiku]

im talking to this gorgeous person from tinder and they like Miku and actually send me interesting lengthy replies and ik i make this post like once a month lol. They asked me "so do you really like Miku or are you just kinda sorta familiar with one or two songs?"

1. lol, and 2. thats actually an extremely based and valid question and the fact that theyre asking it is an extremely green flag