#a direct fucking parellel

[patheticblorbloscholar]

People with no media literacy should not be able to write media articles. This is especially true for every single "theory" article I have seen for the James Cameron's Avatar saga. It's absolutely embarrassing bullshit and people in the fandom are believing it.

[rise-my-angel]

Basically yes they accused you of being a Sansa stan because Rhaegar and R/L shippers hate Sansa and her stans because, by and large, Sansa stans hate Rhaegar and think Lyanna was a victim. Sansa stans use her parallels with Joffrey in KL as a hostage to make parallels with Lyanna. Sansa stans, by in large, are anti-Dany, anti-Rhaegar, and anti-targ, and hate R/L as a ship for.....obvious fucking reasons lmao. I don't particularly care about either of these two characters to call myself a fan, but it's been hilarious to witness as an outside observer.

Also, further information on inter-fandom relations lol.....Arya stans are aligned with Rhaegar/Lyanna/Dany/Targ stans, fully believe R/L was some uncomplicated love story lmaooo, and will have a positive effect on Jon, once again lmaoooooo. Arya stans tend to lose their god damn minds whenever Sansa fans try to make parallels between Lyanna and Sansa because only Arya is allowed to parallel Lyanna. This is totally because both girls were gender non conforming and not because Arya stans like to use Lyanna as proof Arya will be the Prettiest Girl Ever and be the next Helen of Tory a la Lyanna and get her own targ prince in the form of Jon. No, they totally don't have headcanons or make up fanon in that regard. Not. At. All.

Anyway, the amount of discourse over a ship where the author couldn't be fucked to give the two individuals involved an in text conversation over 30 years across five books is beyond hilarious.

Imagine engaging in any if that unironcally and thinking you are in any way not deranged.

So, okay, let me wrap my head around their arguments. Rhaelya stans hate Sansa because..Sansa being a hostage makes Lyanna...look like she was a hostage...because there are parellels in both their situations. But of course Rhagear and Lyanna HAVE to be a love story, so naturally Sansa is antithetical to that because her story is a direct deconstruction of the false love story narrative.

And they also love Arya, because...Arya..looks like Lyanna...and isn't as hyper feminine as Sansa...so..therefore her fans think she aligns with Rhaegar because they...hate Sansa and pretend its a love story....

Even though the point of Lyanna Stark is that her untold narrative is comparative to both Sansa and Arya in different ways to showcase different aspects of the final years of a life in Lyanna we never knew. Sansa in a highborn girl trapped in a hostage situation where she has absolutely no way of escape, and is now forced to play along to her captors games because it is a matter of survival and watching them try to hold onto their goodness to varying degrees until someone helps them escape or not. And Arya, the more rambunctious girl who holds passions in things the boys do but knows she isn't supposed to engage in that stuff, but is encouraged by her brothers who ends up seperated and alone in the South far from her home and is forced into situations by proxy of having no one there to defend her against the adult soldiers.

But they are wrong in trying to align one sister over the other in who is the better Lyanna parallel. Because Sansa and Arya are not Lyanna. They are two aspects which tell us Lyannas story, but neither of them are actually Lyanna. There is only one character who represents Lyanna as a person, and thats her son.

No one is actually comparable to Lyanna Stark as a person, except for her son, Jon Snow.

Sansa and Arya are the motifs in which her story can be understood, but Jon is the character that tells us who she was as a person. Jon is the Winter Rose.

Also speaking of Jon idk how these people turn every single debate about these 4 characters (Rhaegar, Lyanna, Sansa, Arya, also Dany) into discussions about how THEY have the correct incest ship.

Like...

....

Can we leave Jon out of just one single discussion not about him or try to always pull him back into an incest debate? Please? You incest loving weirdos.

[bluebeetle]

anyways i saw the new csm and mp100 episodes they are so fucking good. the direction in both eps were amazing and the cinematic parellels in mob.. mwah. kobeni is my lil spider monkey.

[tasteslikemolecules]

For the ask game: 41. What was the most memorable part of season 8 to you?

Sam's monologue in “The Great Escapist" – “I remember thinking I could never go on a quest like this. Because I'm not clean“ – is really fascinating and illuminating not just for Sam's psyche during the trials but for his whole life back to his childhood. I tend to think of Sam as pre-hell and post-hell, kind of messed up from his childhood versus PTSD sufferer galore. But this really drives home how much he already saw himself as bad and unclean and 'wrong' as a young child. It's one of the most heartbreaking scenes and episodes of the show. Just like the finale. Oh man. This is one of my favourite dialogues of the show:

SAM: Look at him. Look at him! Look how close we are! Other people will die if I don't finish this!

DEAN: Think about it. Think about what we know, huh? Pulling souls from hell, curing demons, hell, ganking a Hellhound! We have enough knowledge on our side to turn the tide here. But I can't do it without you.

SAM: You can barely do it with me. I mean, you think I screw up everything I try. You think I need a chaperone, remember?

DEAN: Come on, man. That's not what I meant.

SAM: No, it's exactly what you meant. You want to know what I confessed in there? What my greatest sin was? It was how many times I let you down. I can't do that again.

DEAN: Sam...

SAM: [beginning to cry] What happens when you've decided I can't be trusted again? I mean, who are you gonna turn to next time instead of me? Another angel, another – another vampire? Do you have any idea what it feels like to watch your brother just –

DEAN: Hold on, hold on! You seriously think that? Because none of it, none of it is true. Listen, man, I know we've had our disagreements, okay? Hell, I know I've said some junk that set you back on your heels. But, Sammy... come on. I killed Benny to save you. I'm willing to let this bastard and all the sons of bitches that killed mom walk because of you. Don't you dare think that there is anything, past or present, that I would put in front of you! It has never been like that, ever! I need you to see that. I'm begging you.

SAM: How do I stop?

This is the kind of stuff that really made me fall for this show. The drama! The amazing acting. So many feelings. And you can read the scene two ways: 1) Dean keeps Sam from martyring/killing himself by telling him how much he loves him. Happy ending. 2) Dean gaslights Sam and keeps him from doing what he believes to be right (and what's argueably the moral thing to do) because he's unable to let go of Sam. A fucking tragedy. I think the former is what Dean and Sam tell themselves, and the latter is what's really happening. There's no apology in Dean's words, no recognition of ever doing anything wrong. What he says is: Sam you misunderstood me when I ad verbum told you that Benny was a better brother than you, when I said that you can't get shit done on your own, when I blamed you for trying to find happiness without me, when I made it clear I wish I wasn't here with you but somewhere else with someone else.

Season 8 (&9) is where the dysfunctionality between Sam and Dean gets really taken up a notch, and this is my main take away from the season. With every rewatch I'm more surprised just how far they took the Amelia/Benny parellels. It's really not the same! Sam found someone and tried to settle down and did what Dean asked him to (and I'm in the minority opinion that it wasn't OOC for Sam to do it). The show makes it look like Dean and Sam are angry about the same thing: being replaced. But a big part of why Sam is so anti-Benny is centered around Benny being a vampire AND Dean directly comparing him to Sam. We don't get any scenes of Sam saying how much nicer it was to be with Amelia than to be with Dean. It's the opposite. He tries not to talk about her at all. Dean doesn’t explain his relationship to the “monster“, but he does hide it as long as he can. So what is Sam supposed to think about why Dean gets to keep 'his' vampire but Sam's monster friends need to be killed? Why Benny being a vampire is okay but Dean freaks out whenever Sam's otherness is revealed? Citizen Fang is such a great episode for all of this. Sam's jealousy and his anger, it's something we rarely get to see in the later seasons, especially directed at Dean.

And I can't get enough of Sam and Dean breaking up with Benny and Amelia. It's so unhealthy and insane, they way they both make each other miserable because they can't share the other. But it’s also not balanced in terms of power. It’s a full season of Sam being blamed for trying to find a life away from Dean and being shamed into his place. And I love it! 

There's other stuff about season 8 I love (it’s Sam's best hair season for one thing), but Sam and Dean's insane relationship and dynamic and Sam during the trials is definitely at the forefront. 

[adozentothedawn]

I was having an inner monologue about how much Mulan 2020 sucks, that kind of derailed into an idea of how to make the episode ‘Waterbending Master’ from the Last Airbender better.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing the two, because even though something about that episode has never really jived with me it’s still leagues better than fucking Mulan 2020. 

The issue I have with that episode is that it starts off with a rather generic ‘girls can do what biys can do’ plot. But hey, it’s 2005, whatever. Not the strongest point of the show, but it doesn’t have to be. What clashes a little in my opinion is that while the plot itself is a general thing, Katara wants to prove that girls can fight too (in order to be allowed to do it herself, yes, but still), its resolution is personal, Pakku notices she’s the granddaughter of his old love. And I get what they were going for, Kanna left the north pole because she didn’t want to be treated like that. The way the tribe treats its women is directly responsible for Pakku losing her. But it’s not really made clear that he gets that. When Katara is allowed to join the classes is the end, it looks more like nepotism than actual character growth.

Now, how would I change that? Very good question. I think the easiest way would be to just add some other girls in the background of that last scene, to show that he didn’t just take Katara on because she’s Kanna’s granddaughter. But there’s also a way to make it more interesting I think, namely be adding more stakes, and more characters. Let what Kanna did become a new threat. That could be just a few random north pole girls, or you could make it even better and give that role to Yue. Make her an offcial waterbender and give her some more agency of her own. But I also think it’d be important that the parallel to Kanna be only drawn right at the end. Don’t make it a hostage situation, but rather an organic situation of them being unhappy. Yue doesn’t have to outright threaten to leave, but just push her a little more in the direction of Sokka, a little more doubt that she could perhaps leave with him. That in itself could be used to draw a parellel between Yue and Sokka, and Pakku and Kanna, but to be fair that would distract from Katara a bit, so I’m not sure if that’s really a great idea. Otherwise you could draw the same parallel but with Yue and Han, and use Han as a younger version of Pakku. I also think some bonding between Yue and Katara would have been neat, which this also would give opportunites for. This could be accomplished by one scene fo Yue looking unhappy with Han, and Pakku seeing it. Then after the battle with Katara and the whole Kanna revelation, he could look over to them, and that’d be his grand ‘Oh fuck’ realization.

Now, this is hardly a very fleshed out concept, and I’m not sure you could even do it in a 20 minute episode, but I just thought it was interesting and wanted to post it. That’s not to say that the original episode is bad, but I just think I could be better. Maybe if I ever get some more inspiration for this I’ll write a fanfic for it. We’ll see.

[disasterhumans]

One of my mental blocks when encountering a "the gang pretend to be slaves" plot is that it's always a bit unclear what histories and models of "slavery" they're drawing from. It's clearly not the Atlantic Slave Trade (otherwise I might just have to stop watching the show). It's not indentured servitude. It's not Greco-Roman, or caste-based. It often comes closest to trafficking, but the specificities are still missing. It's a detail used as embellishment more than real world building.

In the City of Brass and the Nine Hells, slavery/bondage are parts of the legal/cultural framework. But in both cases it's heavily influenced by fantasy dynamics. Humans (and some humanoids, like the aasimar) are treated more like set pieces. Residents of the City of Brass clearly own slaves for domestic work, but far more than that they seem to own slaves as a status symbol. They are treated almost like (but far worse than) art--things to be collected. In some ways, slavery in the City of Brass echoes Freak Shows or zoos more than it does slavery. The players/VM lean into the "oddities to be collected" angle, which makes the entire thing somewhat farcical. (Also in that episode everyone is pretending to be a "slave," which makes the dynamic quite different from the one in ep 56.)

In the Nine Hells the "type" of creature you are determines your social status. All of the creatures in bondage seen are implied to be corrupted/stolen souls. In that case, it seems unclear is "slavery" is actually what's happening versus explicit eternal torment. This is very firmly rooted in the fantastic nature of the world. Here the players pretending to be slaves doesn't even really make sense, because they're playing into a premise wholly different than what's actually going on.

The Iron Shepherds has so far been the most direct parellel to modern day human trafficking. They capture individual people and work as smugglers--and it's clear within the context of the world that their work is illegal.

With the most recent episode(s) we've been given no clear indication that slavery or trafficking really exist in Assarius. When Liam asked if the humans there looked "mistreated" Matt said they mostly looked rough around the edges. It was clear that humans were generally looked down on and had less social status, but that didn't seem to be connected to any sort of system of ownership. Servants (people who may have lower status but are still paid rather than owned) or even Indentured Servants would have been a cover story that allowed them to have an explanation for why the group were bringing along humans while still affording Beau and Caleb some level of control over the situation. But the cast has no personal understanding of domestic work, or human trafficking, and no generational trauma around slavery. Even outside of the "fuck with your friends angle" it seemed like the only framework the cast even had in mind for this situation was a caricature of "slavery" that gets used in fantasy stories across genres and little basis in real world systems.

This also marks the first time a "the gang pretend to be slaves" plot has involved only part of the team doing the pretending, with the rest of the team collectively acting as "owners." In this episode it was less "everyone goofing off together" and more "Travis and Laura (and Sam) messing with Liam and Marisha." And OOC I don't necessarily have an issue with that--focusing on the caricature has so far meant that I didn't have to Think About This Seriously, which I knew would feel shitty for me. But that change in dynamic means that there are more in character repercussions than there usually are.* And that I think is unsettling for me in a particular way. It's easier (for me) to deal with these plots when they're either wholly caricatures or wholly taken seriously. The dissonance here of "the players are goofing off but the characters feel shitty," is harder to reconcile for me. I would really rather they not ever do "the gang pretend to be slaves" as a plot, ever. But doing it in a situation where it creates a power imbalance between PC's in-narrative means that there's less of an option for viewers to check out from the weight of that plot. (This is not to say that I don't want Marisha/Beau to address the issue in character. But I also was really hoping for this whole thing to exist as a Big Lipped Alligator moment.)

*The Iron Shepherds Arc is another matter, and my thoughts about that would need to be a different post.