DC x DP Prompt: Bruce is bad at emoting but at least ghosts are empathic (too bad bat kids are not)
Was reading Twincognito on AO3 when I stumbled across this gem again:
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" “Danny, Tim. I was just…checking in. Is everything alright?” Curse his inability to make meaningful conversation when it wasn’t a life or death situation.
They glanced at each other and shrugged.
Then Danny hauled himself out of the bed and walked over to Bruce.
Bruce tried not to let too much excitement show on his face. "
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Now I really want to read a story where Bruce adopts Danny post Meta trafficking and is being his usual emotionally constipated self. His kids keep getting mad at him because he's treating their new meta brother who was trafficked poorly (generally being stilted in conversation with him, walking away hurriedly mid-conversation, avoiding Danny when he's feeling really awkward, etc). They think Bruce is discriminating against Danny for being a civilian, meta, dealer's pick, but really it's just Bruce being horribly socially awkward. Danny knows this because of ghost empathy and find the whole thing hilarious. The whole thing comes to a head with the Bat Kids staging an intervention in the Bat Cave.
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look this site really is awful for ppl with OCD so i just wanna reassure anyone that you are not Tainted Forever for consuming a piece of media with questionable content. the fact that youre able to recognize it speaks to your critical thinking skills, which is good, certain depictions should be critiqued. but you dont need to ruminate on it to the point where you begin to feel guilty for simply witnessing gross or creepy writing choices. you dont have to vindicate yourself to the fictional tumblr discourser inside your head, saying that youre now a bad person bc you watched the wrong anime. your actual response to it still matters of course, but thats that and this is this. just seeing it is neutral, you didnt commit a thought crime. its literally fine.
IF YOU ARE USING THIS POST TO ONLY FURTHER YOUR STUPID PEDANTIC BLACK-AND-WHITE DISCOURSE TO GET A "GOCHA" OVER THE OTHER SIDE YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. DON'T USE OUR DISORDER TO VINDICATE YOUR BEHAVIOR. THOUGHT CRIMES ARENT REAL BUT ACTIONS STILL MATTER. PEOPLE WITH OCD ARE CAPABLE OF THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT OUR ACTIONS AND RESPONSES, EVEN WITH INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS AND RUMINATIONS. TREATING US AS IF WE CANNOT, ONLY TO FORCE US TO USE YOUR STRINGENT UNNUANCED DISCOURSE OPINIONS ABOUT "PURITY CULTURE" (TRIGGERING TO THOSE WITH OCD) AS THE ONLY REASONABLE GUIDE DOES MORE TO EXACERBATE OUR OBSESSIONS THAN HELP US. YOU ARE THE ISSUE AS WELL. YOU ARE ALSO THE TUMBLR DISCOURSER INSIDE OUR HEADS. DO NOT USE US FOR YOUR DISCOURSE. WE ARE PEOPLE, NOT HYPOTHETICALS TO USE TO EXPLAIN IF YOUR FROZEN INCEST FANFICTION IS OKAY OR NOT. TREATING US AS IF WE CANNOT AUTONOMOUSLY HAVE OUR OWN OPINIONS ON WHEN MEDIA IS TANGIBLY HARMFUL IS ABLEIST. FORCING US TO ABIDE BY YOUR IN-GROUP'S SET OF UNEQUIVOCAL MORALS IS ABLEIST. ACTING AS THOUGH THE ONLY SOLUTION FOR US IS MINDLESS MEDIA CONSUMPTION IN WHICH "EVERY DEPICTION OF XYZ, NO MATTER HOW POORLY DONE OR EXPLOITATIVE, IS ALWAYS OKAY AND IF YOU DISAGREE YOURE ACTUALLY AN EVIL 'ANTI'" IS ABLEIST. THOSE ARE THE SAME BLACK-AND-WHITE MORALS THAT SEND US INTO OBSESSIVE SPIKES, BUT FLIPPED. A SET OF MORALS IN WHICH QUESTIONING THE IMPACT OF A PIECE OF WORK MAKES YOU AN "EVIL CONSERVATIVE PURITAN "ANTI"" DOES NOT HELP MORAL OCD.
YOU ARE THE DAMN TUMBLR DISCOUERSERS MAKING THIS SHIT WORSE FOR US! YOURE THE EXACT SAME BUT WITH FLIPPED BUZZWORDS! YOU'RE MISSING THE WHOLE DAMN POINT!
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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".
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