what I was talking abt earlier. we have fully looped back around and away from feminism, societally, whereas before it was very Feminism 101 to acknowledge that many parts of existing as a woman in a misogynistic society are painful and upsetting.
not that being a woman is Inherently Negative in a bubble. but that living on this earth, in the conditions we're living in, is hostile to women.
and that gender is a performance. that many of the Staples Of Femininity as accepted by society are things that you have to create and perform and mold artificially and aren't inherent, that COMPLAINING about day to day difficulties of existing as a woman is something that you're allowed to do.
acknowledging these basic, again, feminism 101 things, that something tied to womanhood is more time consuming or more expensive or more dangerous Because Of The Problems. does not CREATE the problems. that when women complain about having to perform femininity, they are not, in fact, oppressing themselves. the call does not come from inside the fucking house.
saying that you HAVE suffered does not fucking equate that you believe you SHOULD have suffered.
like I could talk about this for hours. how braindead and one-dimensional the Takes are getting. "being a woman is looking in the mirror and going fuck yeah i'm a woman" damn. I guess any negative experiences you have by living in a misogynistic world... are your fault if you are anything but positive?
"you don't actually want liberation" we've fully gone back to telling feminists "you WANT to be oppressed" when anything negative about our society is pointed out. it's not real until I say it out loud, I guess, and then I'm actually the one who caused it.
if anybody expresses any unhappiness with how they're treated or the status quo or the language and culture surrounding womanhood and femininity. they've created it, right that second. they invented it just now. it wasn't a problem before somebody complained, right?
also trans women aren't braindead zombies who just follow the flow of whatever cis women around them say. I am pretty fucking sure they are very much aware of pain, and are MORE than aware of the swirling torrent of misogyny and standards of femininity than anybody else. actually. and I am pretty sure someone complaining on tumblr that being a woman means always putting on a performance is going to make someone change their mind about transitioning. also "performing femininity" as a necessity to being treated well as a woman is not fucking NEWS to your Local Trans Woman. I AM PRETTY SURE SHE GETS THE CONCEPT. using trans women as a scapegoat for this braindead perspective on gender politics is spineless, meritless, and pathetic.
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Worst things GOT did casting wise:
- making Dany too beautiful (+ styling her in a way that she never has a hair out of place, always wears BLUE - which makes her look peaceful and soft and angelic, not making her burn her hair off etc). I just think of that one official art piece that's in the illustrated AGOT book where dany is bald, with the dragons and sparks and frames around her and its so striking instead of the "beautiful angelic blonde women stand empowered with her tits out" scene we got
- casting Iain Glen as Jorah and not like. a random Lannister (like. Come on. He is a burly and ugly man... why are you casting one of the most beautiful men to play him.... this is how we ended up with dany/jorah shippers)
-making Joffrey too unattractive (this is not meant to disparage JG who is a great actor and seems like a really cool dude and i'm not saying he's ugly but I think from his very first scene Joffrey looks very punchable and it would have been so much smarter to make the audience .. relate to Sansa's infatuation with his golden looks. In my head (and in all the official art) Joffrey looks like a male version of cersei/a younger version of Jaime.)
- making Dany, Jon, Robb, Marg, Brienne etc 10+ years older than Sansa and the younger starklings .... It's not "the main characters and arya (who is so cool and can kill people) + the little children" it's ONE AGE group of equally important characters
Like I know people are upset at Ned/Jon etc being too attractive, WHICH I GET, but I feel like those were very vibe based casting decisions and i'm ultimately fine with that (I also think it's easier for the audience to root for someone if they're attractive so like. I guess they had to do it) but these other things resulated in people's perception of the characters being so wildly different from what they're supposed to be. The real reason people get so angry whenever someone says they wish tamzin had stayed is because they don't like the idea of daenerys not being this ethereal beauty (TM is beautiful but not in a conventional way) that they can fully root for without issue.
1. NO YOU ARE SOOOOOO RIGHT ABOUT THEM REFUSING TO LET DANY LOOK UGLY. it’s not to say tamzin isn’t clearly beautiful, but i think she’s beautiful in the same way gwendoline christie is, which is that she’s very striking and she has a strong presence but she’s not exactly what people picture when they say “typical hot lady” (which is Crazy these are all able bodied white women, like the definition of “beauty” is soooooo fuckijg narrow that tamzin merchant is ~atypically beautiful) vs emilia definitely is, and YES like everything from not burning her hair off to emilia being,,,,,fuller in figure than dany as a fourteen year old would be is just very clear that they saw dany different than the way she is On The Page. i mean i know people whack george for saying that she’s like a sexy funny lady or whatever but george never lets go of the fact that she’s incredibly young whereas d&d completely miss that part of her character.
i will say i Get the criticism of tamzin perhaps not picking up on the conlangs easily because one thing you can say for emilia is that she had a decent head for the conlangs, she’s even still partially fluent in dothraki lmaooo. but all the other stuff they said about why they recast dany it’s like. hmmmmmmmmmm.
2. absolutely right about iain especially because he’s similar to idk paddy in that he’s got CHARISMA but unlike viserys, they didn’t intent to portray him as a deeply flawed, antagonistic character they went in portraying him as like an objectively Good Guy dedicated to dany. he’s just so much less creepy and pushy in the show and has several scenes where he shows some moral backbone - that “yet here you stand” “yet here i stand” scene is sooooooo good for example, the fact that he actually apologizes for spying on dany, giving him the greyscale story & not having him fuck a valyrian looking woman in a brothel 💀, etc etc - and you also just lose some of the creepiness here because emilia is clearly a grown if young woman and ian is handsome, so it’s like. welll of Course you want to root for them to be together! and never mind that this is a Massive departure from their book characterizations!! again, they have this idea of jorah in their head that doesn’t match up with what’s on the page even a little.
3. i do get your point re: joffrey and i think this is my problem with aidan as littlefucker too - they’re too obviously villains and it makes ned and sansa look stupid. like, in the books we have that moment where robb almost decks joffrey which does seem to signal something bad but the crown prince being full of himself doesn’t mean he’s going to threaten his betrothed’s sister with a sword then get his ass handed to him by a toddler. in the show we get QUITE a number of scenes where joffrey is shown to be a brat AND as you say, just like aidan, jack has a Certain Look, he looks like a shitty jock who has allegations against him ajsjdj like irl when jack smiles he��s so adorable!! but in the show they REALLY play up his ability to channel a greasy aura ya know aksjd. when the point of asoiaf is often that villains don’t LOOK like villains, but some of our Main Villains clearly resemble typical villains in the show.
4. “it’s ONE age group of characters” NO YOU ARE SO RIGHT. like, there’s several years difference from robert to ned to cat to the twins to tyrion but they’re all the same generation of characters. there’s that exact same age difference from brienne to robb, dany, jon to sansa, arya, bran, with theon kind of similar to characters like jorah, who are old enough to remember The Before Times but aren’t quite in either generation. but because they wanted dany, brienne, jon, robb, and margaery to be more of a Typical archetype rather than an exploration of that archetype, they aged everyone up and essentially invented another generation between the “adult” characters and the “kid” characters. not to be super nerdy here but one of my favorite worked shoots in wrestling is one cody rhodes did where he was ranting about the way young wrestlers get put through the grinder and he has this amazing line where he sums it up as “old men talking, young men dying” and it’s not to say there aren’t a lot of old dudes Also dying lmao but you really see this where young leaders are often unprepared for their responsibilities and used as puppets by older men and you just MISS THAT when that whole generation is so grown!
it’s like they looked at those themes of war being terrible and all consuming and brutal no matter how justified you feel you are and went “wow war is brutal 😍” LIKE PLEASE????
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readings of tom and greg that are like "tom just needs someone to control"/"greg just wants the power that tom can give him" are so deeply biased and pessimistic that you're just flat out ignoring the show so i try not to bother with dignifying it But imo it's also indicative of really shallow understanding of how their relationship is informed by the whole corporate masculinity thing. in a way that i just have to say something about. like even aside from all the clear points of selflessness on either end and trust between them etc.. did you even consider that maybe it's himself that tom doesn't like when greg isn't beneath him? that falling on distinct points on a hierarchy is simply what makes it easiest for him to feel safe being close with another man, especially in the waystar setting? he undeniably actively WANTS to bring greg up with him. he just doesn't know what to do once greg is there because when someone is beneath you, you can grab them, you can touch them, you can pull them as close as you want and it's all excused by you "exerting your power." when someone is above you then it's simply you knowing your place when you get as close as they demand. when another man is your equal, though, you no longer have that excuse. now you have to admit that there's no power to exert nor accept when you touch. you just want it.
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i feel GENUINELY insane because nobody in canon or fanon has brought up ruidusborns in these conversations.
@caeslxys made a very good post about it, shout out to Peyton, but in general you're totally correct! imo, a lot of people are discursively motivated to disregard the plight of ruidisborn or justify the suspicion and ostracization they face, because to do otherwise is to admit that Liliana Temult is a sympathetic character.
(When she brought up the fear of the gods and their followers retaliating against ruidisborn, regardless of involvement, if Predathos was subdued, most of the responses i saw either called her delusional, said it would be her fault, or even a few "good"s.)
(Also Orym saying this, which I'm assuming was a line he had on the tank for a while regardless of what Liliana said-which, lmao-given that the other option is that he's saying ruidisborn being hunted down would only start to make up for Will and Derrig's deaths, and I don't think that's what Liam meant to imply.)
But no, it's the same viewpoint applied to undead like Laudna and every mortal whose had negative experiences with the gods-they're making a big deal out of nothing, and if it really is happening its their fault. The oldest rhetoric in the book for dismissing the concerns of the marginalized. The fact that Ruidisborn are a more X-Men style of oppression doesn't change the way these systems work on them, and in fact just further heightens the cycle of suspcion and isolation leading to anti-social behavior, leading to punitive measures and further suspcion and isolation. See: people saying that if ruidisborn are all hunted down, its the fault of Liliana and other ruidisborn who joined the Ruby Vanguard to get the first chance they've ever had at understanding and belonging.
In the last week or two there's been a growing appeal to the idea of a silent majority in Exandria who have a great relationship with the gods, actually, and who don't deserve to have their loves disrupted for the sake of those who don't. The truth of this claim doesn't particularly matter, because it serves the same purpose as people saying that it made sense for people to chase Laudna out of towns because undead are scary, or isolate Imogen because having to talk to someone who can read minds is uncomfortable; it's a grotesquely utitilarian way of saying that the people on the outskirts are acceptable sacrifices. It's "fuck you, I got mine" disguised as "looking out for the little guy." It's "those that matter, and those that don't" with a friendlier, broader vision of who matters.
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genuinely asking but why do you think riko’s death messed them up so bad? they only knew her for about 3 days but it was depicted like they knew her their entire lives. my reasoning is bc she was a kid who got murdered to be a vessel, which i understand 100%, but it still gets me scratching my head when everybody including gege makes it this huge thing in their history that literally turned geto evil. just wondering your thoughts.
it’s a lot more complex than just riko dying. it’s the trauma of watching her die when he’d just promised he’d ensure her future bc he and satoru are the strongest, and find out his best friend is “dead” and almost die himself and realize he’s not part of the strongest like he thought he was, that he can’t even ensure one kids future. and then he goes off to find a group of non sorcerers clap and celebrate over said kids death. so then ofc he starts to wonder why he risks his life, and swallows and exorcises curses, and watches the people he cares for (like haibara) die as they protect people like that. and the conversation with yuki didn’t help bc it pushed him to decide that killing non sorcerers would get rid of cursed energy that creates curses in the first place. then he watches the twins, two little kids, get abused by non sorcerers when all they were trying to do was save their town. so yeah in the end he didn’t understand the purpose of protecting the weak when they could be so ugly—and that doesn’t justify the extremes he took, ofc, but the reason he turned out the way he did was a snowball of multiple things, not just riko dying—that was more the catalyst
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rereading fablehaven is actually so sad rn bc like fuck im not eleven anymore wtf? i keep reading expecting to relate to kendra and seth like i used to but i just dont? like i can still feel the beating heart of love i have for this story underneath but its like different now. like this fun story is deeply sad to me now like what???
these kids joined the magical world and in doing so had to sever every connection they have to the outside world from before. they only have friends their age for like a ch of book 2, and after that they basically have no peer group. how awful is that for a couple of kids?
and they dont get to be kids anymore. seth’s mischief gathers consequences until he seems to lose it in the latter half of dragonwatch. kendra gains self confidence in some ways but then also becomes more and more burdened with responsibilities she didnt ask for and shouldnt have at the ripe age of 13-16.
like i dont even know
i might be projecting here and its def not this deep but i desperately need these bitches to re-enter the public school system and make some fucking friends their own age. please. magical or non-magical.
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