#so it's not even conquering

[problemswithbooks]

Not going to lie it's a little weird to see people who are huge fans of the Targaryens try and down play the bad stuff they did.

Like when they say they didn't colonize Westeros they just conquered it. As if that's any better.

By definition, no the Targaryens didn't colonize Westeros, but that's less because they were so much better than the First Men or Andals and more because they simply couldn't. The Valyrians did colonize the places they conquered in Essos, but by the time Aegon crowned himself King of Westeros all but his family remained of the pure blooded Valyrians.

They couldn't colonize in the traditional sense of the word because there were only a handful of them left--not a large scale population that could come and take over all the lands and Houses of Westeros.

But that doesn't mean conquest is better. It's still subjugating and controlling people with military force.

It's also weird when they argue that Westeros did better under the Targaryens so actually the conquest was good. Did Westeros have some really despicable policies or constant fighting, sure, but a country--or a batch of countries, having bad morals or infighting doesn't give someone else the right to take them over and instill themselves as King. That is the kind of excuse the US uses all the time and every thinks that's pretty shit.

But the prophecy? What about that?

Well, it's honestly kind of stupid, or in the very least makes Aegon and any of his family that heard it look stupid. If he legitimately had a dream of the world ending unless one of his family had their ass on a united Westeros throne it was brain-dead not to flaunt that like no tomorrow. In world where there's magic and dragons, where the Targaryens already saved themselves from the Doom of Valyria a hundred years prior there would be no reason for Westeros to believe it.

I'm sure some of the Lords would have still resisted regardless, but it still would have made it much easier for the Targaryens over all to rule if the entire country was under the impression they needed to be in charge to save the world. Heck, it also might have put a damper on some of the later infighting like the Dance if everyone had known. Could it have caused some problems, sure, but concealing from everyone but the heir is dimwitted simply because they could easily be killed off before passing it on.

But even if Aegon thought he needed to be King of Westeros to save the world that doesn't mean his conquest was good. If that was the case the Andals taking over Westeros from the First Men was justified to because they believed it was their promised land. Or were desperate to escape slavery under the Valyrians. But of course neither of those is a good excuse to subjugate an entire continent.

Another talking point is to point out that the real colonizers are the First Men and Andals not the Targaryens. As I said before that doesn't quite hold up because it's very likely given how they took over Essos that had more than a handful of Valyrians survived the doom they would have colonized Westeros or at least continued to colonize Essos.

On top of that the First Men colonized Westeros somewhere between 8,000 to 12,000 years ago, and eventually made peace with the Children of the Forest, worshiping their Gods, learning from them and all of them coming together to build the Wall. The Andals came to Westeros, at the earliest 2,000 years ago and colonized both the First Men and the Children of the Forest.

Meanwhile, by the time of Aegon's conquest of Westeros the Valyrians had only been gone a hundred years. Aegon was far more closely related to colonizers then the ancestors of the First Men and Andals that lived in Westeros when he conquered it. So to act as if it's only the Westerosi that have the blood of colonizers in their veins just isn't true. The Targaryens do to and it's much more recent.

And this isn't me saying the Targaryens are evil. The First Men and the Andals have some really awful stuff in their history, and even during the main books do some horrendous stuff. No one in this book series or the TV shows it's based on are entirely clean of fault or even unforgivable stuff like genocide, slavery or colonization.

My point isn't that the Targs are so much worse then the rest of the Houses in Westeros. Just like every other House they have good and bad members. And even the good ones have done terrible things while the worst of the worst sometimes do very very heroic things.

I don't like the argument that simply by being a Targaryen a character is bad or doomed or should fail. But that doesn't mean pretending the House is actually perfect and if they did something bad, like conquering a country and subjugating it's people under a Ruler they didn't want it's fine, plus those people actually deserved it because 2,000 years ago they did evil stuff themselves.

[obscureenthusiast]

-Brutus and as many as 60 co-conspirators, circa March 14th, 44 BC

[yashley]

Say something true!

[barrel-crow-n]

Thinking about how Kaz was so possessive and obsessive over Fifth Harbour because that's the place where he crawled out of the sea no longer as Kaz Rietveld, but as Kaz Brekker, and how that place was his start of darkness and the beginning of his hunt for revenge. But then he gifted Inej a ship there. He told her that her berth would also be free for when, if, she decided to come back, because she is under no obligation to. That's where he gave Inej her parents back. He made his place of start of darkness, to the place of his start back to light, and healing.

Thinking about how Kaz always fixates on the smallest details, and no matter how symbolic it is in an analysis, it's more symbolic to him as a person in the story.

[petit-papillion]

Charles for United Nations Special Envoy for Road Safety

📸 Streets for Life

Love this color blue they used for his poster 💙

Seriously though:

[biscuitscheesebiscuits]

Reading physical copies of The Queen's Thief series for the first time and realizing that the maps in them are inconsistent???

[quietwingsinthesky]

it’s that no one ever believed him that gets to me the most. this is a society of telepaths. and yet when the doctor finds out that the drums are real, he’s surprised. the master is surprised, elated, by the confirmation that he’s hearing something that’s really there, that this thing that’s been following him and hurting him for so long is real.

after a certain point, given that the master is Really Fucking Good at mind control and such, you have to imagine that no one could just pick up on the noise in his head with a little general telepathy. he had to choose to let the doctor in to share it. and. and okay. we need to put aside him striving to be The Best At Controlling People’s Minds in the context of him having his mind violated as a child because if i think about these two things in relation to each other i’ll throw up.

but there has to have been a point before he was so accomplished that he couldn’t have defended his own mind as easily. that he couldn’t keep someone, anyone, from delving into his head and hearing the drums. which means i must conclude, because we find out who put them in his head at all and it’s the most powerful guy on gallifrey, that when he was younger, the people around him did know. they could hear the drums. they could figure out what was done to him. but they did nothing, they said nothing, they told him he was hearing things. because if the lord president wanted to use a child for his own ends, who was going to stand up and stop him? easier to sweep it under the rug. and the master lived with that for so long that finally having just one other person hear the drums was a shock to him.

[allypacino]

goncharov (1973) / taylor swift / not easily conquered / lorde / richard siken

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

I don't know if I'll ever actually write this, but I have a vague idea for a fic that's like, Sam, Jan, and Jamie vs the AFC Richmond Charity Gala that's set in early season 2 and basically explains what happened to the charity gala in 1x04 that's implied to be an annual tradition but that we never see again. The premise is as follows:

After the Dubai Air protest, Sam feels bad that he didn't look into the company he agreed to promote beforehand and decides to be more proactive in his activism. Which is why, when Ted announces the gala is coming up and Jan Maas (who obviously wasn't there for the last one) is like, "isn't it exploitative and dehumanizing to auction off players?" Sam decides he's going to Do Something About It and tries to rally the team to petition Rebecca to change the event, with mixed results.

Jamie, meanwhile, is having a... weird time. He's still nervous about his place on the team, especially now that Roy is back and at the height of his refusing-to-coach-Jamie era, and while there's not as much outright animosity from the other players, they're also not really friends. He's trying to be on his best behaviour, but the upcoming gala is making him nervous and Sam and Jan going around talking about like. consent and bodily autonomy and all that is dredging up some feelings that he's been repressing — mostly about Amsterdam but also about Lust Conquers All (I don't know a ton about reality TV production but it sounds pretty brutal on the contestants, and Jamie would not have been in a great frame of mind going in).

So when Sam and Jan go to talk to him, he doesn't want to turn them down because he's trying to make up for how he treated Sam last year, but he also doesn't want to get on the bad side of the rest of the team if they like the gala, and also also if auctioning off players is wrong then what happened to him in Amsterdam was definitely wrong, and he's not ready to confront that. But of course Sam is a sweetheart and realizes pretty quickly that Something Bad happened here and is like. okay now we really can't have the gala.

Anyway they make a 50-slide Powerpoint that they rehearse a bunch of times and go to present it to Rebecca in full Isaac-approved suits and everything, and then only get like. one slide in before Rebecca's like, "you're right, that is creepy. We'll come up with something new for this year." Also Roy apologizes for joking about Jamie having to sleep with that woman. The end 😊

[uncanny-tranny]

r u chill w non transitioning ppl?

Why wouldn't I be? At one point, every trans person who is transitioning was once someone who wasn't (whether or not that was a choice or their need is a separate discussion).

Hatred of any kind of trans person is not a Righteous or Good Thing - every single trans person has their place, their entitlement to safety, community, and respect of who they are

[jjkyaoi]

it’s real interesting watching people fall for alastor’s “i see you as my daughter” shtick. and by interesting i mean it’s the funniest thing i’ve ever seen because alastor had never felt threatened until lucifer, somebody who cld easily overpower him, just Casually showed up. like this is not a thing about caring for charlie his ego is just incredibly fragile and he is a little freak <3

[spineless-lobster]

Alexander the great and hephaestion are so patrochilles coded it genuinely makes me sick to my stomach like how the fuck did they make the iliad in real life what the actual hell this is so fucked up

[mirusx]

does anyone grasp the depth of grief, persistence, and hope all at the same time from these supposedly just system notifications? please bear with me and my incoherence bcs i might actually be losing my mind????? i apologize in advance

[Story, --, has begun its storytelling once more.]

[Story, --, is continuing on with its storytelling.]

and then kindly replace those '--' with a story like "Life and Death Companions" or other stories affiliated with kdj and kimcom.

Orv has repeatedly emphasized how people are stories and how we are all just stories trying to understand each other. Seeing these 'stories' that were made from kdj and other's connection trying to continue on and starting once more evoke emotions deep inside me. Because Kdj and every member of kimcom live on through these 'stories', they embody the stories that they obtain. They're the ones who want to continue on and to begin once more. Because 'once more' implies that it has already come to an end at one time, and 'continuing on' means persevering despite of.

like resisting permanent death.

It's like no matter what catastrophe befall the world or the universe and how long these stories and connections may stay dormant, they will always awaken once someone remembers them. Once someone speaks of them. It's like how people have this irrational fear of being forgotten, and so being remembered, being told, and being shared just like a story somehow realize our existences. And we all know that these system notifications appear when the people involved in the story are wielding their shared story/experience to get through something(scenarios) or to someone(between themselves) and hope that the stories they've created are good enough to be acknowledged. Whenever the system narrates a story— one, both, or all of the parties included in the story want to be seen, recognized, and understood as we all crave to be good enough to continue being somebody in at least someone's story— in someone's life. It's like our souls despairing and rejoicing at the same time, "i'm here! i'm still here. i'm still continuing on. our story's still existing.", pleading to be read.

and so once someone recognizes our story, connected with us, and understood us— our story continues on despite of, and it begins once more even when it might have ceased at one point. It tells this new story of not being forgotten

and how our existences— our already written stories, always endure. just like theirs.

....the grief, the persistence, and the hope of it all.

[Story, Life and Death Companions, has begun its storytelling once more.]

[Story, Life and Death Companions, is continuing on with its storytelling.]

fuck did this even make sense im so sorry. i just really needed to get this off my head, it's rotting my brain

[fairandfatalasfair]

"Most young patrollers who exchanged north of the Dead Lake took primed knives from home along. About half the patrollers returned, ready to take up expanded duties. None of the knives did. A steady stream of sacrifice, flowing northward."

[acadieum]

omg y’all… I just figured out how to crochet… and I feel so powerful rn..

albeit I’m doing a very simple beginners project that’s accompanied with a pattern and guide but I haven’t felt this excited abt a new hobby in a while and I’m like :3333

[revasserium]

tragic heroes

he sees it in the way you look at him, at the way you see passed all his bravado, all his helpless insecurities, hidden behind a firm exterior, or an easy smile, or a wink and a kiss to the cameras.

the first time you ask if he’s tired, he almost breaks down.

“exhausted,” he says, finally admitting it to himself, letting the height of his body curl in on itself till he’s sure he could fit comfortably in your arms and stay there.

“shh…” you tell him, “it’s okay…”

“everyone gets tired sometimes, even superheros like you,” you say, reaching for him, pulling him into you, into your chest, holding him like a breath, carrying him in your arms as though that’s where he’s always belonged.

“i’m not a superhero,” he says, his voice small and tight and terribly different from the way it usually is.

“of course you are,” you say, pulling back to look at him, to cup his cheeks between your hands like water in a stand storm, like something beautiful, something precious and perfect — something made so by it’s mere existence.

and when he tries to shake his head, to open his mouth and tell you how wrong you are, you shut him up with a kiss. you kiss him so hard and so deep that for a moment, he can’t remember a time when he wasn’t kissing you. you kiss him hard enough to bruise, hard enough to forget.

when you finally pull away, he looks down to find you smiling and he leans down to kiss you back like acceptance, like pain and knowing and remembering.

“you’ll always be my hero.”

ATSUMU, bokuto, hoshiumi, HINATA, midoriya, oikawa, MIRIO