#bc it'd answer how & why while also not being time consuming

[raayllum]

This could be completely off but given what we know:

1) Powerful life and death magic (deep magic? dark magic? both?) demand sacrifice, typically in the form of blood

2) Kpp'Ar called his arm wounds "an ancient and disturbing practice" which fits with Aaravos' sole distinction that the 'blood of child' spell is "one of the old spells"

3) In the time leading to his decision to give up magic, Kpp'Ar captured a giant likely in hopes the giant could read a map that would lead to unicorns in what we now know (7x01) is called the Garden of Innocence.

4) There is also something at the Garden that is required for successfully making a Moon primal stone, which is directly related to Aaravos' desire to invert life and death somehow

So Kpp'Ar doing what he could to try and save Soren would match up and reveal an interesting thread of his character, especially in terms of stopping Viren from (literally) doing the same. Not only would these threads convene to help explain how maybe Callum would do dark magic (Aaravos offering up a corrupted Moon primal stone for his usage to save Rayla, or something, as Aaravos needs the corrupted stone to corrupt/invert the Nexus) or deep magic again, but it would likewise give context for how and why.

[yuukei-yikes]

What are your hcs about Takane’s family if you don’t mind me asking? :0

UM UM UM GHEGEHHEHEHEHEH ok duh of course i dont mind. do YOU mind i'll talk a lot!??!!?

first let me be insane and list everything we know of her family:

1. lives with grandmother, she makes takane's school lunch and apparently wakes up very early. at the crack of dawn as takane puts it. also the one who gifted takane's trademark headphones! has exactly 1 line in the series and it's her telling takane to get the hell up or she'll be late to school (i love takane's intro chapter in the second novel. it's so funny) takane says that if she were to say she's not feeling okay her grandma could go as far as to get her hospitalized so she's also concerned over takane's condition.

2. grandfather passed away, but takane specifies how worried he always was about her illness, more so than her grandma. in second manga route he's still alive and was the one to get takane hospitalized in the first place. in a main route he's the one to push her into enrolling in that highschool. in my opinion, haruka and takane meet each other a little earlier in second manga route than they do in a main route, maybe when they're around 14. they also look a little younger imo but im delusional! i think this because takane's grandpa is still alive then, hence why haruka and takane are slightly younger! THIS IS ALL TO SAY, in a main route takane's grandpa probably dies slightly before or slightly after takane starts hs(in a slightly after situation it'd give place for special needs class bonding times if haruka and kenjirou comfort takane. (holds head))

3. her parents work overseas. that's all we fucking know about them.

im so curious about takane's family NOT ONLY because obviously im crazy and also she's my favorite character but man isn't this something so oddly specific. she lives with her grandparents because her parents work overseas. yeah? for how long? was she raised by them? obviously she's living with them long-term if they're the ones worrying about which highschool she's gonna go to!! ANSWER MY QUESTIONS JIN PLEASE...

MY PERSONAL HEADCANON TEEHEE which. is what u asked but i wrote a whole wall of text before answering im sorry look if youve followed me for a while u know that's kinda the drill.

i headcanon that takane's parents have always worked overseas but also travel a lot. like, not to say "overseas" as in they live in a set place outside of japan but to say they're always moving from country to country doing whatever the hell it is they do. move locations every few months inside that set country and every few years move to a new country altogether.

and when takane was little she did use to travel around with them. i also like the hc they're very career-oriented people and the kinda parents who are always working. not that they were MEAN to her but they were just. not there a lot?? and eventually leave her at her grandparents bc that wasn't a compatible lifestyle for a kid and ALSO she was showing signs of her illness and they were like teehee. i dont wanna deal with this. BTW i imagine takane being soooo little when that's going on like maybe 6 or 7 when she moves with her grandparents. so she does grow up with them after a weird start with her parents.

they kept visiting like during holidays and stuff. but they were never very warm loving parents and takane already had a family routine/dynamic with her grandparents so it was mostly just an awkward gift exhange how's school going kinda thing. eventually when takane gets her diagnosis they just start to disappear completely LOL stop visits completely and as time goes by the awkward phone calls are just texts and then the texts is 1 birthday text a year and then not even that

ratio + her parents are her grandparents💖 from the fan content i've consumed over the years it's the consensus that takane's parents are career-driven people and she doesn't have a good relationship with them and that they're honestly just dickheads. BUT I'VE SEEN some odd ones here and there who think takane loves them and is sad they're not around because of work but that's the minority honestly?? i personally prefer abandonment issues takane 👍 but i do love hearing different ideas hehehehe....

also i think after disappearing ene keeps checking up on her grandma to see if she's ok :( ofc never revealing herself. mostly just snoops. takane and her grandma post str reunion (my brain explodes)

[howlsmovinglibrary]

So i noticed you reblogged a lot of got. I followed you bc of your book reviews. I wonder if you read ASOIAF? It'd be cool for you to review it. And also it'd provide me see your stand towards the writing of the last season, & your perspective towards Arya as retconned Night King slayer, the dull (and abusive) romance bw jnerys, jon's character assassination and the lack of his POV, and the show being Dany's show (at the expense of other chars).

Oh wow anon, it’s very rare that I get asked to go off, but I’m more than happy to take you up on the invitation to rant!

In answer to your first question, I have read the first book of ASOIAF, but unfortunately I personally feel George R.R. Martin’s strength is his plotting, and now that the show has kind of unmasked the plot of those first books I find it difficult to slog through his writing style, just because it’s not suited to me. I got to 100 pages from the end where Ned Stark is wondering whether or not he’s gonna die and was like…I kind of know how this ends.

As for my manifold problems with the writing of this last season, I have them, although they don’t seem to be lined up with yours exactly. I have placed this under the keep reading tag, because Long Post. And Spoilers.

Arya

Ok, so as for the Arya plotline, I actually didn’t mind this. I realise it goes against a lot of the material of the books (which I haven’t read), but I think that however much of a retcon it is it makes a lot of logical consistency within Arya’s storyline itself. I was personally getting to the point, with Arya going around Winterfell and not really doing much, of wondering “why did she go to assassin school again?” I think that her getting to kill the Night King validates a lot of her plot arc, whereas before her training was slowly becoming useless and irrelevant to the current situation the writers had put her in - of course this goes out of the window come the last war.

I would actually argue that this decision, bar its illogical and rushed execution, had elements of why I loved GoT’s more established plot twists. You had a strong fantasy genre trope, the Chosen One, in Jon, and then reality intervenes and breaks it. Jon is trying to fight a fucking huge dragon, and is therefore, logically, preoccupied. So someone else gets the kill. I liked that. I mean, it seems like prophecy has just been UTTERLY DISREGARDED in this entire season rather than twisted or subverted, so I guess if we’re feeling particularly generous (which no one is) it might even be “making a point”.

 And yes, we haven’t seen any of her assassin powers over the course of this season (because the writers are retconning her into a nicer ‘antihero’ and not outright eviscerating psychopath), which makes me wonder why she even has them. But I’m actually ok with her getting the Night King kill.

And I’ll dream of the alternate universe where Arya kills Cersei wearing Jaime’s face, actually utilising her skills, getting her ‘green eyed’ kill, and fulfilling Cersei’s prophecy.

Danaerys

So, I hate Danaerys, but I don’t really agree with your viewpoint of her. I don’t really feel like this became ‘her’ season at all. In fact, I feel like this season was just a lesson in how to gaslight a woman into madness and relegate her entirely from her own fucking story.

I will outright state that, I wanted Danaerys to go Mad Queen. I think her character has had problematic elements from very close to the beginning: regarding her sense of entitlement which is not underpinned by an actual competency in regards to ruling, her idealism, and her tendency as a white character to weaponise the brown people she essentially colonises for her own goals. These are not the reasons D&D give to justify her ‘madness’. In fact, they say she’s always been mad for punishing abusers. It just shows now…because of a bad break up.

Danaerys’ “descent into madness” was so badly written that I get mad just thinking about it. It essentially comprises all the men around her having conversations with each other saying “I think she might go mad”, and then her doing a Bad Thing for no discernable reason. This is 1. BAD WRITING, because SHOW NOT TELL. Also, NARRATIVE CONSISTENCY. If you have to have Tyrion outright narrate what you are retconning as her evil past, which is what he did in the final episode, you have not written a consistent plot. Viewers are not stupid. And 2. It’s just awful in terms of gender. Literally, Dany is a woman who becomes isolated and the men around her pathologise her as mad rather than communicating with her and allowing her the agency to authorise her own existence. It’s like The Yellow Wallpaper. There’s so much gaslighting! Everyone says she’s mad for thinking people will betray her as they betray her in the same breath! Jon says he loves her and then punishes her for desiring him! It’s just absurd. I wanted this to happen and they still fucked it up.

Once her sexual desire is just for her and no longer consumable by the male viewer, because its incestuous, and her ambitions outstrip the men around her, suddenly she’s evil. 

And do not get me started on all the awful racial connotations of her story a) being fuelled by the pointless fridging of the only named black woman and b) being utterly endorsed by all the people of colour within the show unquestioningly while all the ‘good’ white men suddenly have their doubts. The way Dothraki war cries were basically used as background music to signify evil savagery made me sick. They literally weaponised race as a way of connoting fear and evil. The fact that her “evil speech” was basically a straw feminist recycling of her liberation rhetoric in a way to condemn all her thoroughly understandable and initially intentions from the very beginning was just a way to validate every Incel’s fear about SJW discourse. Instead of, I don’t know, CRITICISING HER AS A COLONISER. Maybe unveiling her hypocrisy? Nope! All black people are evil and will never question orders because they have been consistently stripped of their humanity! They are a faceless army of non-whites! And oh yes, all women are evil for wanting to enact violence on those who want to abuse them!

Honestly, I think this season of the show has been as much at the expense of her character as anyone else’s. Because it’s not been written well, or believably, and it feels like a complete reduction of the very real potential she had as a critique of imperialism. She’s just a mad woman. 

Jon

I can’t really talk that much about Jon. I kind of cover it above. I’m not sure if you think Jonaerys is abusive to Dany or to him, I would argue the former because of the gaslighting. 

But I will say, he must’ve taken his refresher course in Stark Honourable Stupidity after actually being competent in Season 7. According to D&D’s logic, if he had simply slept with Dany, a woman he loves, she wouldn’t have gone mad. It’s only in GoT that I can justify incest, but he should’ve taken one for the team. 

And maybe kept secrets better.

Just…the show in general

Really, I’m just so disappointed with the show in general. The plot, like Jaime’s characterisation, is so profoundly circular.

We still have an iron throne. We still have an utterly corrupt council elected through nepotism (although I guess we’re supposed to like them now?) Fuck, we still even have a wall even though ALL THE WHITEWALKERS ARE GONE.

Everything was so rushed and irreverent to the point of incompetency - I mean, everyone has seen the coffee cup. Prophecy and foreshadowing was utterly disregarded (I’ve spared you my Jaime Lannister rant because you didn’t ask), nuance was completely lost. I cannot believe that Cersei’s death was an anticlimax, that she didn’t do anything in that final battle but shed a manly tear, had barely any lines of dialogue despite the fact that she is one of the strongest characters of the entire series. And yet EURON GREYJOY got a triumphant death. It is so disingenuous. I really don’t think the fanbase would’ve been that hard to please but it seems like everything was denied us in the name of ‘subverting expectations’.

And however well shot the battle scenes were, I found it profoundly boring because there was no real motivation to drive the action. It was just screaming, and death, and oh yes some gratuitous rape because that’s what every viewer is here for, right?! I watch Game of Thrones for the character intrigue, not the violence or the blatant misunderstanding of what “authentic medievalism” entails. The fact that I watched the finale of my favourite show and did not cry once - me, who cried four times in a single Critical Role episode - is just a testament to how hollow and heartless the writing became.