#rather than thinking about their reasoning or what they meant

[majosullivan]

Nevermore Dashboard Simulator 2

🔄 many-coloured-grass reblogged

🌷 many-coloured-grass Follow

I don’t care what any of you are saying, I just think it is weird that people are joking that Lenore and Annabel are secretly into each other when they have shown constant distant for each other?? Go take a walk through the academy grounds

🔮 sorcery-sorcery-sorcery Follow

the fun police right here is trying to put me in gay detenion but Lenore and Annabel are blocking the way because Lenore has pinned Annabel against the wall

🌷 many-coloured-grass Follow

THE DEVIL HAS A CLAIM ON YOUR SOUL

#WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM? #THEY CLEARLY HATE EACH OTHER #WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE SAYING STUFF LIKE THIS?

8,689 notes

🎇 labyrinth-of-light Follow

[snapping out of remembering the horrific details about how I slowly suffocated under a black mass of slurry, not knowing if my siblings were alive or not, all because I smelt the scent of coal coming from the fire in the common room] oh I should have been at the club

13,477 notes

⚰️ were-all-dead-here Follow

906 notes

🔄 ghostlygal reblogged

🕯️ phantomwraith Follow

i can’t deal with this academy anymore! i mean i can, and i will, obviously. but i can't fucking do this anymore!

🖤 ghostlygal Follow

Area Man Who Has "Had Enough" Wakes Up Next Morning at 7:00 AM to Get Ready to Go to Class Again

7,347 notes

🌤️ serenest-skies Follow

I don’t know if it’s just the stress from the announcement that there’s only one new life, but I SWEAR I just saw Lenore drag Annabel Lee into a closet just now

#or I have started to lose my mind #with how today ended #that seems like a much more reasonable conclusion

29 notes

🔄 spookyxskeletons reblogged angelic-oddity

☀️ angelic-oddity Follow

God I wish I was that bell

☀️ angelic-oddity Follow

THIS WAS MEANT TO BE SAVED TO DRAFTS

☀️ angelic-oddity Follow

GUYS PLEASE STOP REBLOGING THIS, ISN’T MY SHAME ENOUGH?

☀️ angelic-oddity Follow

NO YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME

15,074 notes

🔄 fable-silence reblogged

🍁 fable-silence Follow

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭I HAVETO GO TO CLASS AGAIN😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰😰

🍁 fable-silence Follow

my greek chorus ^

4,832 notes

🎊 impishimpulses Follow

My roommate, who just manifested into an six foot tall ochimusha and consistently calls me dearest: All the creatures in this maze seem to desire nothing more than to suck dry any life we have remaining, i just don’t understand this academy

Me [heard “suck dry” and got so hard i got nauseous]: i think i hauve the devil in me

3,496 notes

🔄 ferocious-fiddle reblogged

🧟‍♂️ gutzngore Follow

The Deans are literally Tweedledum & Tweedledee coded because of their sinister symmetry. but whatever

🎻 ferocious-fiddle Follow

OP I know this is a joke, but just remember that if you go knocking on enough doors asking to see the devil, eventually he’ll answer.

6,660 notes

🩸 bloodstained-petals Follow

I’m never going to listen to anyone ever again that tries to give dating advice along the lines of ‘The worst thing that they can say is no :)’, bitch I just witnessed that Ada girl get insulted so throughly in public after she tried to flirt with Prospero that she literally manifested into some screeching rotten hag

#like be real with me right now

706 notes

🔄 spookyxskeletons reblogged

🪸 drenchedkelpie Follow

The whole experience with the rats in yesterday’s lesson felt like having to escape a ficious pack of bloodthirsty hunting dogs, and I was but a simple and unexpecting deer

🪸 drenchedkelpie Follow

WHAT THE SHIT

☠️ spookyxskeletons Follow

3,969 notes

🔄 floatinghoax reblogged

🌺 etherealdances Follow

Kill them with kindness? WRONG. Spectre attack 👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻

1,002 notes

🔄 deadgirlwalking reblogged namelessghoul

⚙️ the-greater-the-ass Follow

Call me Wall Street the way I. The way I just crashed onto the floor because of that fucking Hungry Ghost

⚙️ the-greater-the-ass Follow

Have y’all just. Ignored everything that has happened the past few years or are some of you just fucking with me?

🌹 blushedandbloomed Follow

Is this some kind of wide spread prank that people are doing? Me and my roommate were talking about what memories of our family we had recovered and I mentioned how badly my brother was affected by his conscription during the World War II, and my roommate just looked at me like I was speaking another language and asked me what war I was even talking about

⚙️ the-greater-the-ass Follow

I’m sorry, world war number

WHAT?

🃏 demonic-betting Follow

I’M SORRY, WORLD WARS???

🌹 blushedandbloomed Follow

🪲 goldbug1843 Follow

@blushedandbloomed you cannot just react like that without any explanation about what on earth you meant by World War II

🌹 blushedandbloomed Follow

I MEANT WORLD WAR II, AS IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1ST SEPTEMBER 1939 - 2ND SEPTEMBER 1945. WHY ARE YOU GUYS REACTING LIKE THIS?

🌻 hyacinth-hair Follow

Unless you are the Oracle of Delphi, why the hell are you stating an end date for a war that’s still going on?

🌹 blushedandbloomed Follow

BECAUSE I’M NOT??? WHAT YEAR DO YOU THINK IT IS?

🌻 hyacinth-hair Follow

1942, WHAT YEAR DO YOU THINK IT IS?

🌹 blushedandbloomed Follow

1950. I WOULD LIKE TO THINK I WOULD KNOW THE YEAR THAT I DIED THANK YOU VERY MUCH

⚙️ the-greater-the-ass Follow

IT’S LITERALLY 1934???

🥀 wilted-rose Follow

🌃 eveningstar Follow

This is getting out of hand

🪵 premature-burial Follow

I DIED IN 1916, HOW ARE YOU GUYS SAYING THAT YOU WERE ALIVE AROUND TWENTY YEARS AFTER THAT WHEN I DON’T EVEN KNOW IF THE WAR THAT TOOK MY LIFE IS EVEN OVER?

💤 sleepyirene Follow

LOVELY ARE YOU TELLING US THAT YOU DIED DURING WORLD WAR I?

🪵 premature-burial Follow

THAT IS WHAT YOU ALL MEAN BY WORLD WAR I???

🐸 hop-frog Follow

🌟 celestialwhispers Follow

I must be having some kind of vivid dream because there is no way this is right. In the most recent memories I currently have, the coronation of Edward VII recently occurred, and now I’m seeing people claiming that they died 1910-1950?

🌬️ loss-of-breath Follow

HOLD ON, QUEEN VICTORIA IS DEAD?!

⚙️ the-greater-the-ass Follow

🌙 voyage-to-the-moon Follow

I am going to lose my marbles

🪓 namelessghoul Follow

WHAT FECKING YEAR IS IT

🪦 deadgirlwalking Follow

56,395 notes

[opal-owl-flight]

Welp cue Neo 3 getting themselves in so much danger that 3 has to save their dumb a*s.

HAPPY BIGGEST RUN!! Guess it kicks off the high action segment of the Neo3 arc :)

(this ask has been sitting in my inbox awhile.)

Neo3 refers to working with Agent 7 and going undercover in Grizzco during the biggest run.

more notes on what transpires in the biggest run below!! Id draw more of this out but Im v tired wdkefk

Before the comic above, there is the matter of pre-biggest run preparations.

"|We'll have to protect right on our home base.|" signs the captain, their eyes steely and cold. "|We have to evacuate everyone.|"

"Aye aye. But I beg to ask -- how are we supposed to protect our identities?"

3 clacks their beak.

"|Dont wear the uniforms. Let us appear like a legendary team taking initiative.|"

"I-if I must suggest, Captain."

They turn to face the newly recruited Agent 7, whos shaking as he spoke. "...I-I can loan us all some Grizzco gear. Itd hide our identities really well."

"Ah, so we play into their game." Says Neo3, anger barely hidden in her half-snarling voice. "Id rather die than wear that."

"Then you can help Three find the root cause of that song theyre hearing." Says 4, "Since you can hear the dirge as much as the hordes can."

3 is so proud of their agents being so capable...

They nod their head. "|Sounds like a plan. Four, join Agent 7 in evacuating the citizens.|"

4 rolls her eyes, grabbing 7s arm. "I wont let you down. And Ill make sure Agent 7 here doesnt, either."

"Hey! Ow! Thats uncalled for! Raaain!!!"

--------

The comic takes place after the source(s) of the so called "Death Dirge"s locations are found (so its 3s next set of commands after the blurb above).

For context, Inkadia and the Splatlands had built infrastructure on migration routes for economical reasons or whatever and thought the salmonids a nuisance. Think of dams being built on irl salmon routes. Or cities being built on dangerous areas (volcanoes, fault lines, etc) and adapting to the danger. The mindset for big runs is "we'll deal with them when it happens." Instead of. Making room for them.

This biggest run is the biggest migration that uses a route thats been hasnt been used for several hundreds of years.

In the middle of the CITY.

Not only that, The Death Dirge is actually Grizzco using devices emmitting magnetic fields to attract BIG numbers and to make them all gather as close to the city as possible (like, attracting even the ones using the other migration routes/the other turf stages).

3 and Neo3 had found these sources and 3 set about dismantling them (alone for the first two, with Neo3 in the last since her task was accomplished). The last one however involved a mechanical defense system that includes a mech (which 3 had to use a well-placed special on to destroy, and as a consequence is very worn out after) and a harpoon trap system thats meant to catch whatever is messing with the devices without the permission to (Grizzco expected that some clever salmonid might get ideas). Thats why 3 gets GOT there...

Theres also 3 mentioning Neo3 getting caught. Grizzco has been interested in Neo3 awhile because of her salmonid-like adaptations.... but thats all I can say for now :)

As for Agent 8, shes in the Memverse by the time the biggest run happens. Having her own anguish abt the platoon being resolved separately before she returns in the middle of the chaos to help out. And also say what she needs to say to 3 and 4...

[factsilike]

I've seen so many takes about this so here's mine;

Stella is an abuser, a horrible wife and an equally horrible mother. That's all she is. She is not complex, she is not meant to be sympathised with, her role in the story is to be an antagonist to the main characters, because that's the way she was written. And it's not bad writing, like people claim it is.

If you don't like that and want that to change, well that's literally what fanfiction is for! Write your own fix it, your own version of her character where she's morally grey or complex or whatever, but don't jump to saying that she is badly written or that Vizie is a bad writer for no reason. Because all that seems to show is that she is not written the way you wanted her to be written, or a story you wanted to see. Write your own, then!

Because you can say that she was forced into this marriage as well or that she was cheated on so she has a right to feel aggrieved about that, and you would be right. Sure, as a child she could be sullen and miserable about this marriage and no one could blame her, but as an adult you become responsible for your actions, and you cannot continue to be bitter and take out your anger out on your partner for no reason. Because that quickly turns into abuse. Her poisonous nature had no base in the early stages of their relationship. Neither are we shown any care from her for her only daughter.

And from what we saw of her childhood picture, she seemed to be deeply unpleasant as a child anyway, so it's probably in her nature. I'd give her a pass as a child, but she didn't shed that behaviour as she grew up, or work on it to become better, so.

And of course Stolas was forced into this marriage as well, yet he, as is shown multiple times in the show, tries to make it work, was never actively malicious to her as she is and endured her abuse silently for so long, at least a decade or two. Honestly I think he does not get enough credit for that, because that takes some strength and resilience. And how utterly depressed he is all the time, because that is the result of those twenty long miserable years. He also clearly adores his daughter, who cannot for some reason see that which really frustrates me, but that is another post.

And as for the cheating-

If you watch carefully you'll notice that Stella wasn't really bothered by Stolas bedding someone else, so much as that someone else was an imp. She was more angered by that fact, that her husband had an affair with an imp, the lowest of the low classes in hell, because clearly she was classist, just like Stolas' father. She felt that it was a huge blow to her ego and reputation that her husband would rather be with an imp than her. So I would say that again, her anger was not really justified on that end.

Sometimes antagonists are meant to be just that. We are not given any reasons to sympathise with them, so we seem to make up reasons, because of course that horrible character must have good reason to be that horrible, right? It makes no sense otherwise!

This post is a result of me being really tired of people going with surface level analysis about villains and antagonists, like "she's Complex!!" or "He's soooo misunderstood and I'm the only one who truly understands him 😤" and "he's sooo tragic 🥺" like please. Look a little deeper and past what you want to see, I beg you.

[lol-jackles]

Hello! I read a great deal of your posts and found all of them interesting. The ones analysing spn, Walker, The Boys, etc. Some about Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki caught my attention, as you talked about being a character actor or a personality actor (did I get it right?)

Could you please expand a little more about these kind of actors and their features?

Thank You so much!

A character actor turns himself into the character. 

A personality actor turns the character into himself. 

Think of the difference between Daniel Day Lewis and Tom Cruise.   Daniel Day Lewis has created a diverse range of distinct characters.  Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise in most of his movie roles.

I've said Jared is a character actor trapped in a leading man role because traditionally "character actor" and "supporting actor" were seen as interchangeable.  A leading man is supported by a cast of colorful characters often performed by character actors who have skills to play almost any role due to their ability to transform into variety of characters.  It's the character in each film or tv show that predominates, not the actor or the actor's own personality. That's why audiences often recognize character actors without being able to name them.

Personality actors are usually (not always but usually) the leading man because they are playing to a type that has been established as the thing that they can do and only they can do in their way.    While it may or may not be like their private personality, that's what it appears to be to the general audience and why they get labeled as “personality actors" or "typecasted".  None of us expect Dwayne the Rock Johnson to do any character acting, we just pay to watch him to do stuff that's exciting or funny.   At the same time Dwayne has a compelling personal style that audiences love to watch on screen. It’s one of the reasons why people tend to enjoy personality actors because they’re not subtle.  Tom Cruise’s characters’ meltdowns arem,always just as enjoyable as the film itself.  Jensen’s acting is not subtle and that’s okay.

In contrast the character actors are creating a personality for the role rather than slotting their own personality into a role.  It's why Jared was usually tasked with playing not!Sam characters on Supernatural because he can excise his own and Sam's personality out of Meg, Lucifer, Soulless, Ezekiel, Gadreel, and Justin and give them different personalities.  For example, in the beginning of season 6, Jared wasn't just acting as a Soulless Sam, he's acting as Soulless Sam faking being the real Sam for Dean and there were several times when Soulless Sam almost, but not quite convincingly pulled it off for Dean and the audience.  As someone who did theater arts during my misspent youth, I don't even know how I would approach that kind role.

Jensen is a personality actor, he's been successfully playing Dean Winchester since Days of Our Lives and it made him a multimillionaire in his 30s, so I never begrudge him for sticking to the archetype.  Nonetheless this style of acting was meant for lead roles and I believe this was the main reason why his fans are such unmitigated assholes for 20 years because he was stuck in supporting roles (even on Supernatural) until The Countdown, which they celebrated as Jensen's “employment era" at age 46.

You can read more about the acting stuff here and here.

[propenseverbosity]

Gale with an Ace!Tav (Part 2)

[Part 1]

Still thinking about Gale with an Ace!Tav.

After their night together, intertwining their spirits in the weave, Tav is elated to fall asleep in Gale's tent rather than their own. Being with him in the weave was strangely satisfying, in a way. They had no idea magic could do such a thing. And if it was something that Gale enjoyed as much as 'the old ways', then as far as Tav was concerned, everything was perfect.

They make their relationship official the next morning. Many grueling days in the shadow-cursed lands often left him with very little magic to spare, but Tav assured him they were delighted to simply enjoy his company. Their nights spend reading together and falling asleep in each others arms were just as important to them as the ones spent in the astral form. He becomes the one silver lining in their otherwise bleak endeavor.

One such night, after reaching the city and finding the Annals of Karsus as Gale requested, they return to the Astral Plane. This time, in a rowboat meant to bring peace and comfort, instead of passion and satisfaction.

Gale lays everything out plainly before him. His desire to claim the crown and become the best version of himself. The version that Tav deserves.

They try their best to convince him he doesn't need to become a God to earn their admiration, but Gale disagrees. If he was already enough for them, then why have they never spent the night together outside of the astral form?

Several emotions come crashing down around Tav at once when they realize their mistake. Keeping the truth from Gale had only made him feel unworthy. He felt that he had no choice but to 'wow' them, rather than woo them.

All this time, Tav thought they needed to find a compromise to hide their true feelings, while Gale had been trying to impress them with his mastery of the weave to hide his own.

If there was ever a time to tell him, this was it.

Taking both of his hands, Tav offers their explanation. Gale isn't exactly familiar with the concept of asexuality, but he's nothing if not open to learning new things.

He listens patiently as they explain the reason why their relationship has been strictly romantic, and why their previous 'encounters' had been exclusively incorporeal. They explain how he is already enough, and apologize for not telling him sooner.

All of Gale's thoughts of godhood are replaced with shock and surprise from their mutual misunderstanding. In turn, he explains his own feelings on the subject, all but outright stating that his relationship with Mystra was also incorporeal, and he feared Tav's eventual rejection in much the same way.

"I'm so sorry I made you feel that way. I promise, you're more to me than magic, Gale. You're already everything I need you to be."

He finally understands. The calm of the astral sea is nothing compared to the relief they each feel in their hearts.

All Tav can do is smile, and kiss him.

Come what may of their adventure, at least they still have Gale.

[goodqueenaly]

I saw that House of the Dragon in their podcast named Alicent's mother as Alerie Florent. Any thoughts on that? The Florents do seem to have bad luck in wars.

I’m still not talking about HotD, but it’s funny you mention this because I meant to make a post about it (and then completely forgot). You can find the interview here and the clip here specifically mentioning the name.

Anyway, the reason I wanted to mention it is not to praise this show but rather to bemoan the fact that a non-canon (to the books) TV show seems more interested in the identity of a female character, no matter how relatively minor, than GRRM himself has with various female characters of ASOIAF. I’m not saying I necessarily expected F&B to identify Alicent Hightower’s mother (although it’s not like I wouldn’t have liked it to), and in the vast annals of awfulness representing F&B’s treatment of female characters, Alicent Hightower’s mother’s lack of presence or even name may seem relatively low on the scale of offensiveness. Yet what bothers me deeply is the startling disregard GRRM has shown more than once in failing to identify female characters, or indeed failing to treat some female characters as more than walking wombs. The reigning yet unnamed Princess of Dorne is an infamous example; “Lady Stark, she died” - that is, Lyarra Stark, the wife of Rickard - is another. (Need I remind anyone that he sarcastically and yet totally inaccurately compared her to Aragorn’s actually named mother?) Quellon Greyjoy gets a detailed biography, but his wives don’t even get first names; Hoster Tully’s wife Minisa and Jon Arryn’s wives Rowena and Jeyne are only identifiable by their dynasties and the manners of their deaths. Nor did F&B go any real way toward solving this problem: Alaric Stark gets plenty of backstory and screentime, but his supposedly beloved Mormont wife doesn’t even have a first name; Rogar Baratheon’s first wife is only mentioned as an anonymous corpse already in the ground; Rodrik Arryn’s nameless first wife dies early enough for creep Rodrik to prey on Daella; Unwin Peake’s nameless adolescent daughter only exists to be raped and die in childbirth. 

I don’t mention all this to say GRRM is a terrible writer, or hates female characters. Far from it! It’s precisely because I think GRRM is an extremely good writer, including with respect to female characters, that I find myself so disappointed when he shows such lack of regard in this area. In the 10+ years since GRRM began focusing in-depth on the Dance of the Dragons, there have been two novellas about this civil war, a world book describing in part this civil war, and an entire “related work” history of (the first roughly century and a half of) House Targaryen, with multiple chapters about this civil war expanding upon those novellas - yet it took the showrunner of a TV show adapting the F&B narrative of the Dance to care enough about Alicent’s mother to name her. I don’t know that this show is going so far as to give any personality or character to the dead figure of “Alerie Florent” (and again, I really don’t care about anything this show does), but even the showrunner mentioning that Alicent wants to remember her mother in prayers is more than we readers can say about, for example, Ned Stark’s relationship with his mother, or Catelyn’s with hers. GRRM’s lack of attention to or indeed interest in the identity of yet another female character, over the course of tens of thousands of words he’s written about the Dance era, stands in sharp and frankly unflattering contrast compared to even the passing mention of this figure allowed by the showrunner of a TV series which, by its nature, might have every incentive to be more streamlined about such details. 

(Once again, I’m not posting about HotD and I’m not inviting anyone to use this post to talk about HotD, because those conversations are getting blocked by me. This is me using a news story related to HotD to comment on GRRM’s writing.)

[mazzystar24]

I've been thinkin bout that bt scene. Obviously I might be totally wrong but idk, I feel like T kinda muttered "god I hope so" into his wine glass & not directly at Buck & he was being maybe kinda insecure, like in his head maybe since we assume he's older & more experienced he might think that's why Buck is sticking around?

Like idk, it's a call back somehow to the first date and the closet comment? Like T wants this to work out because he thinks Buck is adorable but you know they aren't really clicking so ya know whatever works? (But eventually it will fully break down)

And the way Buck said "but you think I do?" about the daddy issues is like Buck goin "....wait what?" in his head because his head does tilt a bit to the side like 🤔🤔🤔 And it's showing that they don't fit.

That it was intentionally weird & off putting.

Tho I do think the bit where T says "but your father is alive" wasn't meant to be snarky. Buck then says "Exactly" which I took as Buck being all "exactly, my dad's just THAT shitty and he's not going to change."

Off course then the speech Buck gave Chris is a bit eh, but like two things can be true at the same time. XD

Also I'm def not a bt shipper, Buddie all the way but yeah that's just how it came off to me. Lol.

I hope this makes sense.

I have been swamped with exams and neglected my inbox so 💐💐💐💐💐

Eh I feel like it was definitely more flirty than insecure like I’m tempted to add the gifsets for reference but I don’t want it to show up in the gif makers’ notifications but yeah like as he’s saying it it’s 100% like suggestive vibes rather than self deprecating making a joke about an actual insecurity vibe

Like I think for me this is definitely a horses not zebras moment

I do keep think that maybe the like off putting moments are intentional because so many weird choices have been made with BT

For the your dad is alive I think I wasn’t super clear on my opinion on it but like I don’t mean he said it to be snarky per say more so that the implications behind that line are things like “you’d feel differently if he wasn’t” or “you can fix things before he does” or as if that’s something to be thankful for or recognise when talking about his pseudo father nearly dying

Like the reason I hate this line isn’t that it necessarily has to be cruel intentions on Tommys part but rather that this sorta narrative gets forced down traumatised peoples throats CONSTANTLY (sometimes with good intentions) and it’s such a bullshit rhetoric and it’s even more bullshit to use that line while talking about this found family/pseudo father he has nearly dying

Also yeah that’s definitely what that “exactly” was meant to be like yup a dead dad would at least be less traumatising, a lot easier to explain, and probably easier on my therapist than this clusterfuck but alas

BUCKS SPEECH TO CHRIS- okay lots of thoughts on this because my mom got confused and picked thought daughter:

Do I love that the writers low-key made it sound like he’s comparing Eddie to the Buckley parents? no I hate it but KR was writing for this ep so what did we expect

Do I think a marginally better way to interpret it is that it was more so continuing that theme of paralleling buck and Chris’ issues? Yes

Are the basic and I mean like the very abstract very simple and nothing further parallels there? Yeah like parent not over their grief causes conflict between parent and child

Other than that no not at all Eddie never involved Chris in this, Kim came over with her Shannon cosplay without telling him, Eddie also never intentionally emotionally harmed Chris while the Buckley parents spent bucks entire life intentionally being the absolute worst™️ and emotionally neglectful and were shit parents to Maddie too by forcing her to pretend her brother didn’t exist while she was a child and mourning said brother

But I also think it’s actually very in character for buck to continue to sympathise with them and cut them an impossible amount of slack by trying to draw parallels to this situation like it’s less trying to paint Eddie more like them and more so using Eddie (someone he cares about and loves and sympathises with deeply) as a frame of reference to mentally try to humanise and sympathise with his own parents - idk if I’m making sense but in my head it makes sense

Like it’s actually a pretty common thing you see with traumatised people they’ll sorta draw parallels that aren’t there between themselves or the people they care about and the people who traumatised them because a lot of traumatised people will just constantly seek to understand that perspective more and sympathise with it like hell I’ve seen it with the people in my life doing it and it’s like woah those situations are very different I need you to recognise that

Loved hearing your view of it and it totally made sense!!!

Gonna see if there are any quick asks I can answer before I get back to my revision cos I definitely yapped more than I expected for this

[fryeswiththat]

Me every time I watch or read a rendition of a character and the OP has flown with the idea that "this character's lapse in judgement is actually a defining characteristic for their future interactions and defines them rather than being a poor decision the character made"

[sysig]

A few more “canon” designs, a few more new ones (Patreon)

[frogathy]

childhood was spent thinking i’d go to hell and men would not love me if i swore so now to heal from that i am swearing as much as i fucking can until i come to my own fucking conclusion about how i feel regarding the usage of such crude vocabulary

[firebirdsdaughter]

I’m really glad…

… That NUMB3RS noticed (I presume—guessing it’s also why they added Colby to the main cast) what a draw David and Colby were and so fleshed them out even more and gave them an arc that spanned seasons and all that.

Like 3x04?? The juxtaposition of David’s steady concern, even defending Colby covering for Dwayne to Don, w/ Dwayne using his rescue of Colby during their army days to pressure him into covering for him and acting sketchy af. It’s fucking perfect. I love these two so much.

[llycaons]

increasingly frustrated by fan attitudes that lsz being a ‘good son’ is a reward for wwx

[vulcanhello]

anyone trying to argue fanfic is inherently better than the films, books, and other stories they originate from i just KNOW doesn’t actually watch movies or read or engage with anything outside their favorite ao3 tags

[goodqueenaly]

@althaeaofficinalis reblogged your post “One aspect of Baelor’s reign that I find...”

A part of me, familiar with this level of religious zeal in both history and irl, wonders if perhaps Baelor's choices (still earnestly meant through his own zealousness and belief in his ecclesiastical kingship) didn't also serve to place the Faith by his own direction. By which I mean: the High Septons Baelor had divine revelations about were a) conveniently not septons at all and b) were in no way educated or mature enough to navigate the poltical or religious function of being High Septon in their own right, and so by necessity would have to rely on Baelor himself to maneuver through those political minefields. This isn't to say that Baelor didn't believe in his own proclamations (really that's up for debate, on a sliding scale of cynicism, but I'm inclined to believe he genuinely believed in his own visions) - more that hmmm isn't it crazy how his divinely inspired visions led him to candidates who would be wholly reliant on himself to lead the Faith?

It’s an interesting consideration, whether Baelor was being deliberately ambitious and/or calculating in his choices for these two successive High Septons. I do absolutely see Baelor as an ambitious person, and I certainly think Baelor was not interested in simply allowing the Faith to run the country while he entered de facto monastic retirement. Still, I tend to think that Baelor saw himself as almost in a way above the Faith - again, a sort of divine right of kings, where he was to some extent on a pedestal above the Faith, receiving the instructions of the gods directly and then transmitting them to both Faith and people. He wasn’t trying to run the Faith himself, necessarily, but rather he was going to transmit to the Faith how the gods had told him they wanted the Faith to be run

I could also see where Baelor’s goal may have been less about attempting to control the Faith himself via a convenient puppet (or two) and more about forcibly humbling the Most Devout, perhaps in line with his own zealous humility.  Rigorously ascetic himself, and certainly willing to chasten the haughty - demonstrated in that anecdote of the “proud Lord Belgrave” made to "wash the beggar's ulcerous feet" by the king - Baelor may have been disappointed in or distrustful of the Most Devout if he saw this body as too comfortable, too removed from what Baelor may have believed were the fundamentals of the Faith of the Seven. If Baelor saw himself as a divinely appointed king charged with shepherding his wayward subjects back to the Seven - and I think he did, given his attempts to (as he saw) correct public morals by banning sex work and burning risqué and “sorcerous” books - then there may have been no reason, in Baelor’s mind, not to extend that purification to the Most Devout.

In turn, perhaps Baelor saw the remedy outside the Most Devout as an institution, a solution apparently validated by the gods themselves. If Baelor sought the will of the Seven beyond the persons of the Most Devout, then there may have seemed no better symbol than the Smith supposedly incarnating himself in a common stonemason, and then the Seven supposedly zoomorphizing themselves to appear before a draper’s son. The Seven, so. Baelor may have seen it, were using the lowest of his subjects, those people whom Baelor himself had emptied his treasury to provide for, to present themselves in the world, perhaps not unlike how they had in the days of Hugor of the Hill. Their appearance, as the king may have seen it, did not simply confirm Baelor’s rightness in caring for the smallfolk, but also seemingly proved that only the meekest and lowliest in his realm would receive the favor of the Seven. Just as the gods had, Baelor may have believed, struck down the Targaryen dragons to punish the Targaryens for their heretical Exceptionalism, so perhaps the gods had removed their favor from the Most Devout and designated the successors of the High Septon among the common people in order to show that even those at the highest levels of the Faith could be chastened if they were not pure and humble enough, the way that these smallfolk were. 

If Baelor was thinking along these lines, then perhaps there is a comparison to be made to the ascension of the High Sparrow in ASOIAF. Like the stonemason Pate and the draper’s son, the High Sparrow was very obviously not a member of the Most Devout, and was like them almost certainly a commoner himself. If the election of the High Sparrow - when “the sparrows came pouring into the Great Sept with their leader on their shoulders and their axes in their hands” - was something of a “vox populi, vox Dei” moment for the Most Devout (at least in terms of the election’s spiritual justification), Baelor I think may have seen the same in his choices for High Septon - the voice of the Seven spoken, supposedly literally, through the mouths of these, to borrow the High Sparrow’s turn of phrase, “humblest and most common of men”. Just as the High Sparrow - who himself seems to hold Baelor in high regard - set the Most Devout septon Raynard to scrubbing floors and confined his Most Devout brother Torbert to a penitent’s cell, so perhaps Baelor also saw his reign’s Most Devout as needing similar correcting from a humble source. If Baelor would not literally hand the members of the Most Devout a scrub brush and a bucket (although I could see him doing that too), he might, nevertheless, have felt it prudent to set above them a master (or two, consecutively) who was (and were) from the lowest levels of Westerosi society, the better to remind them of their abasement before the Seven.

(To continue my pastime of paralleling Baelor and brother Daeron, to see them as more alike than they might appear at first blush - perhaps we can draw a broad parallel between Daeron’s governance of Dorne following the Submission of Sunspear and Baelor’s choice of first Pate and then the draper’s son as High Septons. Daeron had received the ostensible fealty of the Prince of Dorne and his vassals at the Submission of Sunspear, but clearly he was not interested in leaving Dorne in the hands of the Dornish following (what he saw as) the completion of his Conquest; instead, according to Yandel, “Lord Lyonel Tyrell was given charge of Dorne after the Young Dragon returned in triumph to King's Landing”. Just as Daeron had set above his (would-be) new subjects a governor not of their own body, as a sign of the king’s favor toward one of the most fervent supporters of his war, so Baelor set above the Most Devout two High Septons not from their own number, chosen for the divine favor seemingly shown to Pate and the draper’s son. Too, just as Daeron’s choice may have been intended to humble the Dornish and bring them forcibly into the feudal structure of his realm - putting them under the rule of a Reachman, despite or rather because of the historical animosity between Dorne and the Reach - so I think Baelor’s choice was designed, at least in part, to humble the Most Devout to the physical and spiritual meekness Baelor himself emphasized and prized.) 

I’m also reminded a little bit - I know, it me - of the seventh novel in The Accursed Kings, The King Without a Kingdom. The narrator of the story is Cardinal Hélie de Talleyrand, a very high-ranking and aristocratic French prelate. During the novel, the cardinal describes the three papal elections at which he, the cardinal, was eligible to be elected pope but always somehow missed the tiara. The election which clearly bothers him most is that of 1352, following the death of Pope Clement VI. Cardinal Talleyrand moans that during the 1352 conclave, “my impediment was … the fact that I was too princely … [t]oo grand seigneur, too extravagant”, and notes that “[t]here are occasions when the Church is seized with a sudden passion for humility, for modesty”. According to Cardinal Talleyrand, his fellow cardinals “wanted a man of the people … a simple soul, a humble being, a plain one”. While the cardinal, somewhat self-satisfied, remembers that he was “barely able to prevent their electing Jean Birel, a holy man – oh! most certainly, a holy man – but who hasn’t an ounce of a mind suited for government”, he concludes that he “managed to have Étienne Aubert proclaimed Pope, he who was born to poverty”. 

[snekdood]

probably my greatest strength is getting out of suicidal episodes by myself.