#that treat jade like a person instead of a caricature

[matchahater]

jade did everything she could to keep her daughter away from a world that took so much from her. the flattening of her character into a selfish evil war criminal who’d sacrifice her own daughter to save herself is racist character assassination and I’m SO OVER IT

[autumnblogs]

Aside Glance: The Palpable Absence of the Dubiously Canonical

So you might have noticed throughout my writings that I have at the same time avoided directly talking about any of the expanded universe material while also occasionally alluding to it just enough to make it noticeable. At least, probably.

So to nobody’s surprise, let me say;

I don’t like the Homestuck Epilogues.

Before I dig into why, I wanna dig out what I think I actually do like about the Homestuck Epilogues. CW: for mentions of suicide, sexual violence, fascism, genocide, etc. Spoiler Warning for the Homestuck Epilogues, although if you haven’t read them by now, good; don’t. Keep reading for my thoughts on the Epilogues.

I do like that the Homestuck Epilogues say quite loudly and clearly that Fascism Is Terrible, and that Neo-Liberals are often Discount Fascists at best in terms of the material effects they have on the world that we have to share with them. They can often end up being interchangeable, and events can cause someone with a temperament predisposed toward Neo-liberalism down the path of bloody reactionary sentiment the way it did with Jane.

Homestuck has always been a pretty soundly anti-authoritarian work, and pretty aggressively contemporary work, so it makes sense that Homestuck^2 would reflect an internet culture rabidly obsessing about the politics of the Trump-Era United States, cast its villains as parallels to the Trump Administration, the grody religious movements it catered to, and the hyper-rich dingalings who benefited from it.

I do like that the Homestuck Epilogues develop the theme of criticizing the author and continues to call attention to its narrators, this time by explicitly casting them as villainous, and morally ambiguous/incomprehensible respectively. A central idea in Homestuck is the relationship between Author, Audience, and Characters, and the blending of the lines between them.

I like that it calls attention not just to the idea that a story’s narrator is an agent themselves, but also to the reality that the narrator may not have the best interests of either their readers, or their characters in mind. I like that the authorial powers of these characters are represented as overtly dangerous and evil when they are addressed at all.

I also like that the Homestuck Epilogues are rather brutally honest about the fact that sometimes, the people that you grew up with - your close friends - grow apart from you, and turn into kind of bad people. I’ve watched that happen in real time, and have had to stop hanging out with people because they just kind of... turned evil. That’s something that needs to be discussed more in fiction, and more honestly than the usual way. When the most visible example of like, someone you knew and loved turning into a bad person is like, Anakin Skywalker, maybe the world needs more stories about that.

So good, that’s what we’ve got for things I think were good to say. Well done.

What don’t I like about the Homestuck Epilogues?

In a word, I think, they are cruel. Relentlessly cruel. Even actively malicious.

Homestuck has, of course, always been rather mean-spirited and adversarial, pretty much since page one. And really, so has Andrew’s writing in general, since the days when he ran the site Team Special Olympics. His humor walks a fine line between and outrageous and genuinely offensive, as he dares you to say, “That’s fucked up!” so he can respond “it was just a joke, where’s your sense of humor?”

But the Epilogues transcend the usual sardonic envelope-pushing we can usually count on Andrew for, and instead opt to sink their teeth into the readers in an assault on the senses, and on the sensibilities. Reading the Epilogues is a brutal experience to endure emotionally, and in a lot of places, morally offensive.

And they are this way practically from the first page; our very first impression of the Homestuck Epilogues is a content warning that presents itself in such a way as to be almost unmistakably parodic. The stylization as an AO3 work, particularly in the context of Homestuck, where these sorts of overzealous content warning pages are associated with preachy jerks like Kankri, it comes across as a direct challenge to the viewer, and by a challenge, I really mean an attack. It is a mean-spirited joke at the expense of people who have a desire to curate their media experience - and then the authors have the gall to say that the one of the goals of the Epilogues is to challenge people to curate their media more.

Every time a character could conceivably make a bad decision, or become a more ill-conceived version of themselves, they somehow manage it, which becomes all the more unbearable because of the identification of character and audience that has been the case throughout all of Homestuck. If Homestuck introduces us to this entire cast and says, this is you, the Epilogues seem to follow up with and there is nothing good about you. Jade Harley somehow transforms into a grotesque caricature of a trans-woman, a girl who is sexually incontinent and predatory in a way that is directly tied to her having a dog penis - a state of being which the text variously slut-shames her for in Meat, or alternatively uses to blame her for ruining Dave and Karkat’s relationship in Candy.

John Egbert is severely depressed and dysfunctional, and this leads him either to go off and kill Lord English to chase the thrill of adventure and his own sense of purpose (in direct opposition to the all-but-explicitly-stated takeaway from Homestuck which Dave gives us, that the better option is to just leave the story alone altogether - explicitly the worst decision he could make according to the rules of Homestuck) or descend into decades of nihilistic solipsism while the world disintegrates around him.

Dirk’s worst natures take over him and transform him into a person who can only conceivably be satisfied either by becoming an arch-villain, or by murdering himself.

The Epilogues are aggressively cruel to Jake English, choosing to double down on the lack of emotional resolution he suffered from at the end of Homestuck, and squarely placing the blame for his own misery on his own shoulders, in a way which is pretty hard to read around, which is part and parcel of the general malice which Homestuck has historically treated mentally ill characters with. Nearly all the kids in Homestuck have suffered incomprehensible levels of mental and physical abuse, and the text expects them to simply overcome it sheerly by force of will. Sure, Jake is miserable but it’s his own fault, the text seems to say; if he’d just get his act together, like Dave, maybe he could get on with his life without being mind-broken by Dirk, or raped and whipped by Jane.

This isn’t even to delve into the flagship reveal of Homestuck 2, that Rose and Jade in the Candy Timeline have not only had a daughter of their own (without telling Kanaya), but that furthermore they have replicated their own trauma in her. Rose and Jade’s daughter has grown up completely emotionally alone, in the care of her Moms’ archenemy.

The point in all of this is not that the Epilogues have made everyone behave out of character or anything like that - I think it’s clear after a re-read especially that all of this is a conceivable direction that these characters could have taken. Rather, the Epilogues reliably choose to believe the worst of the characters of Homestuck in terms of their writing decisions. Everyone always makes the worst decision that they could make, or at the very least, nearly the worst. And because of the identification of reader and character, we can’t help but take away from that a sense that this is what the authors think of us as well.

And in case it wasn’t stated explicitly enough, a running theme throughout the Epilogues is that all this conflict and badness taking place is, to some extent or another, because we the audience are looking at it. As Andrew stated in relation to the Epilogues, there’s a kind of Happily Ever After possibility bubble around the characters that intrinsically collapses into conflict the moment we observe the events again - in other words, by participating in a story, we the audience members are somehow complicit in the characters’ suffering. Yet not all stories must be driven by conflict - and who triumphs and who fails in that conflict says a lot about what a story has to say about real life.

The Epilogues engage in a kind of voyeuristic cruelty, a kind of pessimism and cynicism, a kind of relentless ugliness that I have seldom seen, and to what end? The whole thing seems to me an attack on the audience.

Aside from general, abstracted claims toward authorial intent (which I think is there), I also want to say that, I can’t emotionally engage with the Epilogues, for a personal reason; as somebody who has struggled with almost daily suicidal ideation for most of my adult life, the way that the Epilogues deal with that subject goes from troubling to malicious and hostile in its treatment of Dirk’s suicide.

And staying personal, while I haven’t had to deal with some of the other sensitive topics that the Epilogues handle recklessly, handle them recklessly they do - Jake is serially raped by Jane, and in a way that he serves as a vehicle to move the plot forward, rather than with any kind of compassion for Jake’s condition. The possibility that Tavros Crocker might be being molested by Gamzee is brought up flippantly in one scene and played off as a joke.

The Homestuck Epilogues play at maturity through handling dark themes and sensitive topics, and reveal a profound immaturity in their authors because of the ways in which they are cruelly, insensitively handled over and over again.

I guess I’ll close with the least egregious thing. The Homestuck Epilogues just aren’t funny. Even at its bleakest, Homestuck has always been funny. In their relentless pursuit of cruelty, and the shared misery of their audience and characters, the Homestuck Epilogues forgo even this most basic element of Homestuck, which Andrew has always described as being basically a comedy.

Anyway; I will not be doing a thorough analysis of the Epilogues. I hate them too much and they suck.

[geejaysmith]

On mobile, there are no readmores.

Ok, so maybe the key thing that pisses me off is that either way you dice it, the whole "evil Dirk" bullshit is either the distortion of a writer with a noted history of fanfics distorting characters into their most cynical form if not outright mischaracterizing them for an abuser/victim dynamic, or its commentary about an author who lets their own soapboxing overtake the willing suspension of disbelief in the characters' voices and the fabric of the world, rather than anything the character showed signs of being in the actual text. And if you're going to go "but timeskip! People change!" that's a hack move that Homestuck became far too dependent on in its later run, especially after the retcon, that cons the reader into doing the writer's job in order to try and resolve the cognitive dissonance of, say, a character who *actively did not want* to be what he's just suddenly become, and who's showing a level and flavor of asshole he never was.

Also, having a gay character, who a ton of young readers have identified with for years, suddenly turn bigoted alt-right-in-all-but-name just to make SURE you know he's the bad guy? Idk, that just strikes me as an asshole move. One of several asshole moves, like never addressing how the actions of one or several other characters contributed to his feeling guilty, especially about his sexuality when he's the one gay character whose orientation is directly discussed in the story proper, or how the character who can be reasonably assumed to have the a large hand in contributing to that guilt is never held to account, but instead victimized by Dirk with out-of-the-wild-blue-nowhere transphobic horseshit in the epilogue. In fact, would it be going out on a limb here to say that entire plot point seem to exist *only* for the sake of said out-of-character transphobic horseshit?

Sorry, I was about to say "but this is a whole different rant" but like, no, actually, this pisses me off. It *really* pisses me off how *badly* Dirk gets treated as the one prominent homosexual male character, and it has always pissed me off.

But no, really, the biggest thing pissing me off in the "oh this isn't rational to feel this way, actually, fuck it, I don't care if this is rational, these feelings aren't going away and this shit is PERSONAL now" way, is how most of what makes its way to my dash about Dirk since the epilogues dropped just comes off as uncritical about this. That even in trying to "fix" the damage done, it still tacitly admits there may be some validity to it, instead of staring it down and asking "and what the hell is your justification for that, outside of 'Hussie said so'?"

And let me take a moment to indulge in my neurotic impulse to hedge my own words and say, fine, ok, you want to explore evil!Dirk? Cool, your prerogative, we clearly find this character close to our hearts for very different reasons, whatever. But I don't and never want to see it and now it's everywhere, and people aren't taking to say, fascist Jane with the same gusto as they do to drag my favorite character, whose problems and insecurities are so close to my own he's the first work of fiction I've cried for for since childhood, through the mud.

Oh, and is it worse because this is basically just the same "Dirk is a monster" bullshit I've been fighting since the Great DirkJake Tag Discourse of 2014? Yes. Yes it is. I really do believe that Evil!Dirk - not "he has flaws as a person that result in toxic behavior", not "his actions have resulted in tangible harm and that needs to be addressed", but outright malicious intent or at least such utter disregard for the people he loves that intent is an automatic moot point - in other words, the ugly caricature being paraded around in the epilogues under the fig leaf of authorial approval, alongside the ugly caricatures of Jade and Jane, who only further expose the whole farce - in all its incarnations is and always has been an outright mischaracterization that only holds water if you push for deliberating interpreting the text in the most negative way. And I've spent *years* arguing with myself in my own head because fandom bullshit has convinced me that the only way I can hold an opinion and have a right to speak it is if I can have an airtight argument for my stance, like it's some fucking debate club, or something. And I am done. Dirk is not a monster, never was, and I am *done* screaming at myself in my own head instead of speaking out loud because "oh no, what if I'm wrong on the internet? What if randos online think I'm some dumb yaoi fangirl who's doing an abuse apologism?" Who cares? I know what I fucking read. I know the character that I saw.

You know what happens when you grow up isolated and don't have that first great "I wasn't fully cognizant of the fact that other people have thoughts and feelings like I do and acted like an ass and am now facing consequences - oh god I fucked up, I need to make this better somehow" young, when the stakes are low and you forget about it by puberty? You know how that childhood loneliness gives you a paralyzing fear of rejection that leaves you with a guarded persona, makes you agonize there's something wrong with you? How it makes you feel like you're irreparably broken, irreconcilably different?

I do.

So I'm confident that I know what I'm talking about when I say "it looks a lot like Dirk Strider." Coincidentally, it can also look a lot like Jake English. I know because I've been both. And you'll notice, pile of neuroses though I am, I am neither a victim nor am I a monster.

So. Yeah. Evil!Dirk upsets me greatly and always has and I don't want to see it. Except now it's everywhere and I once again have to tread lightly if I want to find any content of him that isn't made directly by me. A thing I loved has become something that makes me feel feelings that suck. *Again!* And I don't have the time or energy to throw into counteracting it at the moment, unlike with TLCstuck and the retcon a few years back. And yeah, this is personal and no one is responsible for my feelings and emotional wellbeing but me, yes, yes. But also this is my blog and I get to pick what goes on it and this is me telling myself "to hell with what people think when they see it, it's Tumblr, this is the house that personal emotional-fueled discourse built", and also if I didn't get this out I'd kind of end up screaming about it in my head again until all I can articulate is a high-pitched screech? I just need to fucking vent this out so I can get on with my goddamn day and it's out of my head? So maybe it'll quit coming back? It's way too fucking early for this? And oops, this post got way too long and a lot more emotional than I was expecting. Hey, crying helps relieve stress, y'know (Note: I'm not actually crying, it's the principle of the thing).

tl;dr, I have always thought Evil!Dirk was bullshit but it still hurts to see, and while I know I have no reason to bear a grudge against the people writing it as people, on principle, there's a part of me that wants to fucking punch those responsible for putting it back in the fandom consciousness in such a big way? Especially when I'm not seeing anyone pick over the horseshit done to other characters in quite the same way.

That is all. Carry on, I've vented my spleen. I'm gonna toss this post to the wind and go back to Wolf 359 shitposting.

[pussymagicuniverse]

Ribs

Let us laugh, ugly laughter, from the pits of our bellies, from the bottom of our soles, pushing into the veins of our eyelids. The same bodies that we rued since the day we met them––let us meet them once more. Greet them with kindness and refuse the estrangement that creeps into the periphery. Let us be still again, lucid. We shall no longer think of ourselves as floating heads, seeping vulvas, hard breasts, black gums, crooked, and harsh teeth. We will no longer have the desire to compare our round and dark selves to the moon or to the sun or to the stars. We shall drink from the final and sweet waters.

Let us mend ourselves, weft by weft, refusing the distance between Ourselves and the Other. Tenderness and softness, subjugation and servitude, beauty and frailty; these things are not needed where we are going.

9

A gaggle of self-important nine year olds stuck in the confines of Gifted English went through their weekly list of vocabulary. In the sticky Georgia heat, they listed off words and their definitions, one by one, the syllables bumping against each other across uneven teeth. The lazy recitation waned into the white clock face, waiting until the sweet, sweet hour of freedom. 3:30. Thirty more minutes until the words were soon, and rightfully, forgotten. The air was alight with the giddy, yellow excitement of these final school weeks. The memory of the school year was already faint, fleeting.

As testament to my selective memory and emotional hoarding, I do not remember a single word from that list except for one. Zaftig. It’s a word of Yiddish origin, meaning “a woman who is full-figured.” Or more specifically, as my jaded fourth-grade English teacher phrased it, “pleasantly plump.” Zaftig. Pleasantly plump. It makes sense that I would hold onto such a word, even after the steady passage of time and maturity. As I sat in that classroom, buried in my threadbare, oversized, maroon sweatshirt shaped to hide the nascent form of a fat kid’s prepubescent and uncertain body, I imagined the kind of woman who would call herself zaftig. She would be a happy woman, probably a good and prolific cook (a skill which would serve to make sense of her large existence.) She would have many round and plump babies who would eventually run their way into an athleticism, distance themselves from maternal fatness, but never let their own memories erase the tenderness of her embrace. Zaftig. I imagined her as viscerally entwined with her own culture, chosen as a cornerstone of communal abundance, the only symbolic element of fat womanhood that dripped with nobility, purpose.

I was, of course, not this woman. I sported maroon, high fantasy-chic, thin-rail glasses to match the lumpy sweater. The weekly cycle of jeans began and ended with a scratchy pair of bootcut, black pants that I rolled into an unassuming, and deeply unflattering capri. I wore converse that I intentionally scuffed and dirtied on the pavement because they never looked cool when they were pristine and new. I made myself feel sufficient in my clothing. Was it pretty? No. But it did not have to be. I was a smart kid. I couldn’t do math, but I could read, I could feel. Novels made me cry and my friends made me laugh and my teachers always seemed to like me enough. I was sufficient.

I did not realize the apologies that I stuffed into the folds of my sweater. The tender and shameful sorries that I hid under layers of cotton and polyester. The embarrassment when anyone would look too long at my frame. How dare I force them to see the ways I shove myself in the tube of my own skin, a fat sausage girl with buck teeth and round fingers. With each tug at the bottom of my shirt to make sure no one saw the dip of my belly, with each long sleeve that covered the tapestry of new stretch marks, I whispered sorry. Sorry you have to experience me Sorry you have to see me Sorry.

I carried these apologies in my hands, in my face, in my voice for years. I channeled the unfortunate circumstance of my heaviness into my attitude. Pleasantly plump. Pleasant. Smile comfortingly when they look at you so they know where to cut first. Speak clearly, confidently, smartly. I learned quickly to laugh with other women and girls when talked about their community-organized starving sessions, speaking of their own bodies as inconveniences. I learned to talk about the fat on my bones like a glue-like phlegm that “just wouldn’t budge.” I did not know how else to speak of myself. The woman in my memory, zaftig, was a caricature. She was not real, nor would she understand the ways I dreamt of pulling my stomach and cutting into it deeply, cutting it away from myself.

18

I remember the first time I laid against a partner; the room dark to hide the rolling plain of our bodies. He dipped his fingertips in the curve of the space where my thigh met my hip. “I like this,” he whispered. This meaning how it all melted into each other, this meaning the places on my body where hands and lips could find purchase. My heart hitched in my throat. As we drifted to sleep, the phantom pressure of his hand pressed deep into my skin, I planned how I would leave his house as soon as dawn struck.

I would, of course, call him again. Open myself again. Being desired is an addictive and ugly thing. But to be treated tenderly, with hands that know the weight of your thighs, eyes that do not look away when you wear your love for them so openly across the roundness of your face. To know that, to feel that, is to feel the realness of your heart, the warmth of your very living body. I hate that men can give this to me, even when they are unworthy, even when they are cruel. I hate that I cannot give this to myself.

19

I’ve caught myself as a woman obsessed. Obsessed with the running of my fingers across the jagged lines spread flat against my belly. My ribs can only be felt when you gently, persistently, press into the soft, malleable skin, the brownness of several generations pooling at the bottom of my spine. Seeping with the rich history of this body. I feel the metal of the button on my old jeans bite deeply into the fat above my belly button. Stare at the denim stitching stretch against the expanse of my legs. This body is unrepentant, straining, aware.

We eat these reflective parts of ourselves. The cold seeping and puncturing our lungs; we delve deep into the pain of being wanted. Loved as they told us to be loved. But if we release, refuse the bite and the cut of the knife, who are we? What are we then but the gnawing husk of our mother’s, our grandmother’s failures?

We know that, inevitably, we will fail. We will bargain our happiness and our lives on the whims of men who will never, not ever, love us. We will eat at the tables we set despite our tears blinding us, thickened with maize flour and salt. We will raise children, girl children, who we will integrate into the cult of self-immolation. And as she burns, falls into the rot and dysfunction and isolation of womanhood, we ask ourselves again and again.

When did we begin to want the things we do? Who gave us this knowledge, seal broken and soft insides scooped out, consumed? We bleed, hot and red, across the pavement.

How cruel it is to sell this to us as freedom, as liberation. How cruel it is to see our bent forms, emaciated chest cavities gaping open, and dig into us with that horrific avarice. How cruel it is to refuse threading of the needle, the suturing of the wound.

When did we begin want this? When did we begin want this at all?

20

I struggle to believe that this belongs to me. I drink most nights and wish I were free. Lipstick on the back of my hand running bloody like an open sore. I am beautiful when I say no.

22

We are stunted and painfully awkward. I try to hide the relief when you reach for the light switch, flooding the room with a comfortable blackness. And perhaps it is the headiness of mint liquor from the punk show, or the beat of Kreuzberg, but in the soft recess of your small corner room, in the furrows of a gray and blue apartment complex, I swear that you're the most beautiful person I have ever seen. 

My eyes adjust to the darkness, and the glow of the streets below illuminate the curvature of skin. You've put yellow marigolds in a tin can and placed them by the window. We are dense with wanting.

Chromatic and warm lights behind the eyes. It matters very little what I do when I am pressed against you like this. And when you rest the rough-hewn hands of a person who works too often against my frame, when you breathe heavy and vulnerable, I am alight. Is it because you are, if only for a moment, weak? This is why women have lived like this for generations––waiting for the brief and tender second when she loves with her throat exposed, mouth agape and ready for gutting.

It's over as quickly as we come down, the fresh magic dissolved into the heat of the night. It should feel shameful, but the sheen of sweat reminds me to stretch into my skin a bit more. There should be that eternal burden of the girl, the bleeding of a lived-in body. But it is not there; instead, we share the most gentle laughter that we have had in months. I am embracing the unknown hollow of this feeling, and remind myself that we both hold this. 

A consciousness lazily but persistently rounding the edged glass of a death, a release––recuperating in the spaces where we are no longer categorical, no longer fragmented. Where the necessary condition for our justification is not the deftness of our performance. Body neutralized into the heat of a natural and bearable light.

•

The streetlight streaks white-yellow into the room. I can smell the hot oil of the french fries in the ​Döner shop across the way. I count the number of times your leg grazes mine as you fall into welcomed sleep. I relearn the art of holding. The various ways of grasping something that is not my own. Lightly so as to not possess, but steadily so as to heal, to understand.

I know it is not freedom that I see when you look at me, but for once, I am laid flat against a semblance of humanity. I am not sucked in, pressed back, holding pose, holding gut, stretching out neck, and wondering if it is enough. I am not outside of my body, pinching and pressing and figuring out the ways I can make you want to look at me. You want to look at me. And I want to look at you. In this way we witness each other. I am lucid, waiting, awake. I understand the weight of each breath I take.

In a few hours, we drink coffee and try not to smile at each other in that coy way that asks for more information, more knowledge of the other. You ask if I need directions to the train, and I say I do not, but thank you. Your eyes no longer contain that once-familiar alacrity, and the silence is still with the thoughts of the night previous. We are no longer disjointed by the alcohol, almost too aware of one another to find comfort. And yet, I find myself hesitating to leave. The thought of it runs over and over in my mind, crackled 35mm film of heat and tongue and laughter, as I board the train to Alexanderplatz. As I step from the train and onto the platform, up the gum-and-paper splattered steps into the solid and sure pulse of the morning, I am aware of how I trust myself.

A body is a strange and wrought place to feel like an imposter, but I slowly unfurl, and allow myself to sink into the sureness of my existence.

Milka Kiriaku is a queer black writer, educator, and emulsion extraordinaire. Ever the personal welfare-idealogue, they rely religiously on strong community, great books, terrible movies, and hylauronic acid.

[thelawyerthatwaspromised]

House Stark and the Northern Fool Fallacy

“Maybe you are just a Northern Fool.”

~Tyrion Lannister, right before Jon Snow upstages all of his influence over Daenerys Targaryen

If you believe the Starks are less intelligent than any other group of characters, you’re wrong and you’re buying into  the show’s propaganda.

The popular conception of House Stark (and the North at large) is that of a simple, hard people that are stubborn, honorable, and stupid.

Are the Starks actually less intelligent? Do they have trouble connecting dots? Can they not trace chains of events? Do they struggle with building winning strategies?

“No” to all of this. The Starks simply play the game differently than the others...but the constant underestimation of their wits has not only been shown to be untrue by the actions and reasoning methods of the Starks, it’s been shown by the contents of the series itself to be an inaccurate caricature.

The most unfortunate part (or fortunate if you’re looking to be surprised and enjoy when characters exceed your expectations as a viewer) of this misreading of House Stark is that it’s lead a lot of the general audience to believe that Jon Snow is stupid and hasn’t thought through the political ramifications of his interactions with Daenerys Targaryen.

This is one of the ironies of the show. The general audience - which largely sees the Starks as stupid or foolish - are themselves being guided wrongly into a false position even though we’re shown more than enough to KNOW that the Starks aren’t stupid. They simply value life and justice differently than the other houses.

There are specific examples of characters underestimating the Starks supplemented by specific examples of historical events portraying the Starks as unthinking barbarians which are so blatantly false that viewers should also understand that the Starks are not stupid - and yet that myth persists. 

We can essentially knock down these lies character by character:

Ned Stark the Fool / The Play in Essos

One of the most gut-wrenching and significant moments of the entire series has been warped into largely a comedy act in Essos.

The saddest part might be that Ned Stark is now quite often considered a stupid character. He may have made mistakes but what he “stupid”? Let’s look at the fiction followed by the fact.

The Portrayal

Portrayed as an unwashed Northerner who doesn’t understand the line of succession. Viewers get that he wasn’t power hungry and didn’t speak like an idiot. Yet somehow the view of Ned being stupid persists. 

The Truth

Ned figured out the Gendry / Robert connection. He also figured out that Cersei’s children were not Robert’s. Ned’s reality in trying to uphold the proper line of succession and rightfully deny Joffrey the throne is the exact opposite portrayed in the play in Essos (which is the popular narrative in Westeros, one can then gather).

What was Ned’s great mistake?

His refusal to drag children from their beds in the night. His refusal to be like Tywin Lannister. Was this stupid? Did he not understand this was playing with fire? No. He told Varys that his madness in telling Cersei was that of mercy. He was betrayed by Littlefinger (who preferred Joffrey to stay on the Throne to Stannis). A series of events led to Ned’s beheading. None originated from Ned’s stupidity.

In fact, the Starks are exceptionally skilled at snuffing out bullshit. Take Benjen, for instance. Tyrion is offering empty platitudes. Benjen knows what he really thinks, even if Tyrion initially won’t say it.

Benjen knows what NED taught him, that everything before the word “but” is horseshit. Benjen can see right through Tyrion. It’s a small example but one that reinforces the idea that the Starks as a bunch are extremely perceptive people who, while choosing not to play the games the other houses play all the time, understand when someone is feeding them bullshit.

Ned’s Execution

The way in which Ned was executed, including what his daughters perceived at the time, became important (rather stupidly so) in Season 7 with Arya temporarily believing that Sansa had taken part in Ned’s betrayal.

Ned, perhaps the most dignified person in the show’s history, did not blubber or plead. He even lied to the world in backing Joffrey’s claim with the hope that it would save Sansa’s life.

Portrayal

This is the Sansa that Arya seems to remember. And it’s a mistaken memory. Arya seeing events this way (the play sort of echoes how she described Sansa in Season 7) completely colors how she treats Sansa and leads her to question Sansa’s loyalties to Jon. 

Looks pretty stuipd in retrospect, right? Yet one of the biggest popular theories before Season 7 was Starkbowl. The idea that Sansa had been around Littlefinger and Cersei too much. That she was too dark now. Too jaded by her life events.

Truth

You, the viewer, saw Sansa’s anguish. You saw how much it crushed her in the coming episodes. You saw her look at the doll Ned had made for her with regret and sadness at Blackwater. You saw her fight to take back Winterfell, mentioning her father nearly every step of the way.

It’s a bad look for Arya to have acted like this towards Sansa. The interesting part was, she echoed so many of the foolish things that viewers seem to have believed (or maybe even hoped for) all the way through Season 7 / Episode 7.

Sansa Stark

Little bird. Stupid little girl with stupid dreams that never learns.

Littlefinger, through Season 6 when Sansa reunited with Jon, had been the closest thing to a lasting friend that Sansa had after leaving Winterfell. She was used as a pawn, manipulated, sold, basically treated the same way Daenerys had been without receiving the same measure of sympathy. 

She’s constantly ridiculed and left without agency up until her escape with the Boltons. Her greatest crime was naively believing the the world wasn’t terrible and that people meant it what they told her. Then her father died. She lived as a prisoner at the hands of Cersei and Joffrey. Her ONLY respite was a temporary friendship with Margaery.

Her other “friend”, Baelish, still treated her like a stupid little girl. His plans to win the North and the Iron Throne centered on using her as a pawn. He never truly respected her.

One of his lessons was that she’s a poor liar. She proved this wrong when she lied for him regarding his murder of her Aunt Lysa. 

He began treating her more as a mature adult after that but he never stopped manipulating and underestimating her.

He believed he had her in his clutches. He didn’t at first understand that he couldn’t wedge the bond formed between Sansa and Jon. When Jon choked him and LF observed Sansa longing for Jon as he departed Winterfell, he abruptly switched to trying to wedge Sansa and Arya.

LF thought Sansa could be turned. Littlefinger thought surely she couldn’t break free of his machinations. MAYBE betrayal and treachery are actually NOT tactics that are as effective as a casual political philosopher might believe?

Then this happened:

Sansa knew all along during Season 7 what he wanted. She couldn’t just have his head hacked off while he carried influence. His scheme to drive apart Sansa and Arya allowed her the timing to have him executed. She may have questioned Arya at points. Arya sure acted aggressively towards Sansa after their reunion. But she never took her eyes off the bigger picture: that LF was as threat to their home and family and at some point he had to go.

Robb Stark

Perhaps my least favorite characterization of a Stark is Robb.

Portrayal

Another unwashed Northerner. He’s shown running around proclaiming himself as the Rightful King (itself a lie). It doesn’t show Robb possessing anything that can be described as honor or cunning.

This is to be expected. It’s war propaganda. The Lannisters would never publicize the fact that they COULDN’T OUTMATCH ROBB ON THE BATTLEFIELD.

This portrayal of events is the EXACT opposite of how things happened.

Truth

The fact of the matter is that Robb captured Jaime Lannister at Whispering Wood not because he had a direwolf or slew 1,000 Lannisters single-handedly. He won because he outwitted them. He laid a trap and both Tywin and Jaime fell for it. 

Tywin was forced to acknowledge Robb’s intellect and the devotion he inspired from his men after he continually got his ass kicked by the Young Wolf.

Tywin, the same guy who had routinely talked down the threat of the Young Wolf in the build-up to the war, found himself begrudgingly accepting the fact that he would have to rely on political maneuvering and deceit in order to end this war because, when it came to traditional means, he was no match for Robb.

That’s pretty damn significant. And yet the portrayal of events is a complete fiction...

What did Robb in?

Even more than the Freys and Boltons, Robb was defeated because he chose justice for slain Lannisters rather than forgive the actions of Rickard Karstark.

This event, and the beheading of the head of House Karstark, more than even breaking the betrothal to one of Walder Frey’s daughters, put Robb in a position where he was forced to choose between justice and military benefit.

The easy call would be to keep Karstark alive. To somehow keep his forces in the fold. Instead, Robb did what he thought was right and he died for that. I don’t blame Sansa for saying that Ned and Robb made stupid mistakes and lose their heads for it because in the end, Robb and Ned DID make stupid mistakes.

The difference seems to lie in how much House Stark was forced to suffer for their mistakes compared to other houses.

Jaime and Cersei tried (and failed) to kill Bran which is the event that really sparked the War of the Five Kings.

Robert became fat, lazy, and continued his philandering and behaved like a teenager all the way up until his death. His neglect of Cersei (driving her back into the arms of Jaime) essentially caused a powder keg politically which exploded into the War of the Five Kings.

Tywin stupidly bedded the person Tyrion loved (or at least believed he loved) and unnecessarily included her testimony when a conviction was a foregone conclusion which motivated Tyrion to murder him with a crossbow. His house suffered immeasurably and the best chance for its survival now lies with Tyrion, the child he hated.

Olenna underestimated Cersei entirely. She completely misread what Cersei was capable of and her house was destroyed for it.

Ramsay Bolton stupidly castrated Theon and continually tortured him physically and psychologically which eventually led to Theon helping Sansa to safety and his ultimate destruction at the hands of Jon and Sansa at the BoTB.

Roose Bolton first stupidly thought that his hold on the North could survive the ultimate betrayal of House Stark when he murdered Robb at the Red Wedding. He stupidly believed Ramsay could be trusted with political power and with responsibility and believed that Sansa Stark’s presence would help his cause rather than ultimately lead to the destruction of his house.

Littlefinger stupidly believed that Sansa was incapable of turning against him. He believed she was nothing more than a pawn to be used in his games. He believed that she would love him and give him the affection that Catelyn never did. We all know what happened to him.

The point is that not all the characters are stupid. The point is that the Starks are not. They make mistakes and are punished severely. They suffer consequences for their actions - but they are completely operating at the same intellectual level that any of the other supposed “experts” are operating.

So why do I care and why do I think it matters?

I care because I love the Starks, first off. Their house represents the one with the healthiest worldview, in my opinion. Only the Tyrells are really shown to have had much a healthy intra-family dynamic compared to the other houses. Yet the Tyrells were all to willing to form alliances, play games of deception, betrayal, and murder, and ultimately the Tyrells fell.

Where am I going with this?

Jon Snow, as a player of the game and a member of House Stark (if not in name yet) is most assuredly not a Northern Fool.

Jon Snow is the character that I believe holds the most significance for the survival of Westeros and the improvement of the Realm after the Great War’s conclusion.

Season 7 may have featured more mentions of “Northern Fool” than any other season and viewers bought this lie hook, line, and sinker. D&D love their setups and if you believe Jon isn’t always thinking how to do what’s, isn’t always thinking about how his actions might affect his family and the people he loves, and is simply acting on his gut all the time, I have news for you: You don’t know Jon Snow.

Portrayal

“Maybe you are just a Northern fool.”

~Tyrion, S7 / E3

What better moment encapsulates how others view the North as a whole than this one?

If my suspicions are proven correct, that Jon Snow’s arc in Season 7 is centered entirely on his MISSION to bring Daenerys North at any cost, then he will have played the game absolutely masterfully while maintaining the image of the Northern Fool.

His enemies’ (and potential allies) misreading of his capacity for real politik puts him at a ridiculous advantage. Yet we’ve seen Jon play the political game. We’ve seen him observe and learn lessons.

He very quickly thought of how to earn Mance’s trust and gave the Night’s Watch invaluable intelligence regarding their plans. He couldn’t have done this as a dimwit incapable of quick-thinking and deceit.

People try to twist Jon’s murder as the result of his foolish bravery...yet my take (obviously) is very different on the matter. He knew it would be an unpopular position. He knew it put him at risk. He sought Aemon’s advice specifically because of this. Aemon gives the famous “kill the boy” speech which was Aemon’s way of saying “stop trying to please everybody and do the right thing”. In essence, isn’t that what the Starks just do?

It’s why they inspire their subjects, rather than continually finding themselves putting down their subjects. Say what you will about Robb’s assassination as contrary evidence to this, but Robb was killed because he brought justice to the Karstarks. Roose Bolton was a schemer that was simple trying to accumulate power, and House Umber felt betrayed by Jon’s granting the Wildlings lands in the The Gift. Which one of those events were caused by House Stark trying to do something other than the right thing in an intelligent, if not difficult way?

Which brings me back to Jon Snow.

Am I to believe that he hasn’t thought about how his alliance with Daenerys Targaryen will be perceived by the Northern Lords? 

Am I to believe he didn’t consider the repercussions of announcing at the Dragonpit at the behest of Cersei Lannister’s demand?

Am I to believe he initiated a physical relationship with her, which by Tyrion’s look alone are foreshadowed as terribly complicated from a political standpoint, because he was just head over heels in love and it had no strategic purpose?

Am I to believe that Jon Snow isn’t hiding something when his mission to Dragonstone in the first place was to specifically get Daenerys to come North to fight the Night King?

Am I to believe that he isn’t skeptical of Cersei Lannister while knowing what she’s done to House Stark and also not even originally considering her as part of his mission when he departed for Dragonstone?

All of those questions I posed to myself are answered with a resounding “NO” on my part. Each one could basically be a meta individually but the bigger point is that if I answered “YES” to all of those, it would require that Jon Snow not have a thinking, planning, strategic bone in his body. That he’s like Forrest Gump drifting in the wind like a feather and simply lucky to be taking part in so many historic events.

My viewpoint is that Jon operates similarly to the other people in his life. He acts deliberately and with an eye towards a larger purpose. He may not always make the most advantageous choice but he’s not the type of person to throw his kingdom to a foreign queen because he wants to sleep with her. 

When people call Political Jon a character assassination on Jon Snow, I have to answer that the idea that he would give the North to Daenerys without any other consideration or counsel from his own people or family the TRUE character assassination. It’s a viewpoint that paints Jon as stupid and it’s a characterization of multiple House Stark members that just falls flatly on its face when held up to scrutiny. 

Think less of Jon if it turns out that he used Daenerys’ affections for him to get her to come North if you will but I will not fault the guy when he thinks it’s the difference between the extinction of men and it’s possible salvation.

Just don’t tell me Jon Snow is stupid and don’t tell me that House Stark consists of anything less than intelligent, capable leaders.

You might have believed that Jon and the Starks are dumb. You’ll be surprised at the end of the series. You believed the false narrative the show put out there. You fell for it. You will wonder how the Starks survive since the show said they were stupid. I will say....

[sonicfandomsecretsanta]

This submission is from @bouncepaaad! I wish I had gotten a chance to draw something from it but I ran out of time. 

For @spadeyque

- Sugar Cookies -

Sonic relaxed in the hammock hung in a corner of Tails’ workshop.

The big winter celebration was just around the corner, and even closer was the Christmas party Amy held every year at her house. The party didn’t start for hours yet, so Sonic had decided to while away the time lounging comfortably indoors, listening to the sounds of his best friend tinkering.

Sonic flipped the phone open and brought it to his ear, then promptly winced and moved it away when Amy’s distressed voice came through loudly.

“Sonic! It’s a disaster!”

The blue hero sat up, instantly alert. “What is it, Amy? Eggman attacking somewhere?”

“Noooo!” wailed Amy. “I was just about to make some cookies for the party, but I realized I don’t have any sugar!”

Sonic blinked, then looked nonplussed.

“Amy,” he groused, “You really called just for that? Can’t you just make them another time?”

“But I already mixed the dry ingredients together, I can’t just let them go to waste!”

Sonic switched the phone to his other ear, digging a finger into the one that had taken the brunt of Amy’s high-pitched protest.

“Alright, alright,” he chuckled. “Hang tight, I’ll be there in a sec.”

Flipping the phone closed, Sonic hopped out of the hammock and stretched.

“Gotta go, Tails,” he announced to his little brother. “Sugar emergency.”

Tails emerged from where he’d been working behind a spare engine, and pushed his goggles up past his forehead. Though he’d only heard half of the phone conversation, he’d already worked out the situation.

“There’s an extra bag in the pantry,” said Tails. “You can take her that.”

“Nice!” Sonic grinned, glad to have been saved the trip to a grocery store. He didn’t dislike running in the cold weather, or even the snow, but he certainly didn’t prefer it.

Once he had the sugar in hand, he poked his head in the workshop to let Tails know he was heading out.

The young fox had already dived back into his work and didn’t look up, only waving a hand from behind the engine. “Be careful, Sonic. Oh!” He popped his head out again. “And bring me back a cookie!”

“Will do, bud!”

With a wink and a wave, Sonic was speeding off through the cold, in the direction of Amy’s house. __________________________________________________________

Amy Rose puffed her cheeks in frustration at herself. Forgetting to check if she had enough sugar to make sugar cookies of all things! At least Sonic was coming to her rescue.

Sure enough, just a few minutes later she heard Sonic skidding to a halt outside her door. The sound made her heart beat a little faster, and she smoothed out the front of her frilled apron and hurried to let him in.

“Yo, Amy!” Sonic said, lifting a hand in greeting. He hefted the small bag of sugar for her approval. “This enough?”

“Oh, Sonic, thank you!” Amy gushed, latching onto him with a hug.

Sonic grunted and flailed a bit under the sudden armful of Amy, but didn’t push her away. 

He glanced around at the evergreen boughs that adorned the doorframe, the lights strung up all over the place, and of course the plump tree in the corner covered with colorful ornaments.

“Wow, looking pretty festive in here!”

Amy pulled back, smiling. “Vanilla, Cream, and Cheese are coming by soon to help me with the rest. This place will be party ready in no time!”

“Well, I’ll let you get back to it,” said Sonic, preparing to leave.

“Wait!” cried Amy, gripping one of his hands. “You can stay and help?”

Sonic shrugged. “I don’t know, Ames. Baking isn’t really my thing.”

“You can just watch if you want to! I’d really enjoy the company.”

“Eh, well…”

“You can have the first taste,” Amy sing-songed.

When Sonic sighed and hung his head, she knew she had him. She squealed in delight as Sonic let her pull him into the kitchen.

At the table, Amy set to work immediately, filling a measuring cup with the delivered sugar and then mixing it together with some butter in a bowl. Just a few steps later, she had a mound of light-colored dough pressed flat with a rolling pin. She took up a cookie cutter and began pressing and wiggling it into the flattened dough.

As Sonic watched, he suddenly realized that the cut-out shapes looked a little…familiar.

“Uh, Amy…are those…me cookies? Wearing a Santa hat?”

The pink hedgehog giggled. She’d been wondering when he’d notice.

“Yep! The cookie cutter’s from a special winter release of Sonic kitchen goods! See?” She gestured to the item’s packaging, which featured a caricature of Sonic himself, wearing a red and white Santa-themed outfit.

Sonic raised an eyeridge. “Limited Edition, huh?”

Amy laughed again, but didn’t tell him that the cookie cutter had been a prize for a mail-in Sonic trivia contest.

She continued the rolling and cutting process, humming as she did so. It wasn’t long before the first batch went into the oven. When the timer beeped about ten minutes later, Amy donned some oven mitts and pulled out the freshly-baked sugar cookies.

Before she had a chance to set the tray down, Sonic reached over and grabbed one of the cookies with only his gloved hand.

“Sonic, they’re too hot, be careful!” protested Amy.

But Sonic shoved the whole cookie in his mouth without any regard for it’s temperature. He chewed bravely through the heat, only stopping once to suck in a gulp of air.

“Boys,” Amy sighed as she found a safe spot for the tray.

When he finished, Sonic’s eyes were bright with happy surprise.

“Whoa, I taste delicious!”

By the time Amy’s brain had registered his wording and indirect praise, a furious blush had already overtaken her cheeks.

Flustered, she tried to cover it by fussing with the oven mitts and reaching for a cookie herself.

“R-really? Let me try!”

She blew on it, then tried a bite from the cooled area. Her jade eyes lit up at the subtle sweetness and soft texture.

“You really are delicious!” Amy echoed Sonic’s words without thinking, and turned to the blue hedgehog with a smile, excited with her success.

Her breath caught when she noticed that Sonic was already looking at her, with not only a surprised expression but a soft redness spread across his muzzle.

A few moments stretched by as they stared at each other.

Sonic was the first to avert his eyes, reaching a hand back into his quills.

“Ah, heh, they taste just fine without any frosting. Are you gonna leave them like that?”

Amy snapped back to herself, and gave a little laugh.

“No way, silly!”

Amy quickly gathered all that she needed to begin mixing up small batches of different-colored icing. Then she filled some piping bags with each color and started decorating the little hedgehog heads – white for the eye area, a peach muzzle and inner ears, and the rest filled in with the well-known shade of blue. She did one color at a time on all of the cookies so that the colors wouldn’t mix, expertly squeezing out just enough icing for each tiny area. A carefully-placed chocolate sprinkle for each nose, and two green ones for the eyes completed the little treats.

Sonic had settled back into a chair to wait as she worked. At first he seemed bored, sitting loosely with his chin resting on his palm. By the time Amy had neared the last of the colors on the last of the cookies, he was watching closely, looking mesmerized.

“Y'know, I never realized before,” Sonic began. “I mean, for something I’m just gonna chew up in a few seconds, that’s a lot of work.”

Amy smiled softly, not looking up as she added the finishing touches on another cookie. “It doesn’t feel like work to me. I love baking, and I love trying to get all the details just right.”

The pink hedgehog was so absorbed in her decorating that she didn’t quite hear the “hmm,” from Sonic, nor notice the thoughtful look on his face.

She had nearly worked her way through all three dozen cookies, with only two left waiting for some blue icing, when the clatter of a dish suddenly caught her attention. She looked up to find Sonic had gotten up and was now rummaging around in a cabinet.

“Sonic?”

He turned, and had in his hand what he seemed to have been looking for – a small bowl similar to the ones that held the different icings.

“Uh, any of that plain white frosting left?” he asked.

Amy looked over to the large bowl where she had mixed together the original batch of icing. There was just about a cup left.

“Well, yes, but why –?”

Instead of answering, Sonic gently took the piping bag from her and put his hands on her shoulders, giving her a gentle nudge towards the kitchen doorway.

“You probably have some things to do to get ready for the party, right?” he said cheerfully. “Go ahead, I’ll handle things here!”

Amy resisted his nudge, glancing around at all the dirty bowls and spoons and general mess that accompanied a batch of baked goods. “But I have to –”

Sonic leaned around her and gave her a smile, one of the heart-meltingly charming ones. "C'mon Ames. I’m giving you a free pass here.“ 

It was true that Sonic didn’t offer himself up for cleaning services often. And she did have to freshen up and change dresses before Cream arrived…

"Well…okay,” Amy agreed. “But I won’t be long!”

A quick primp and a few outfit changes later (the red dress with the white fur trim? The green velvet pinafore? Or the candy cane print skirt? She couldn’t decide!), Amy returned to the kitchen. She was disappointed when Sonic was nowhere to be seen, but only slightly, as she’d been expecting it.

The sight of an amazingly clean kitchen almost made up for it. Even the dirty dishes had been washed.

As she drew near the table, she noticed an unusual cookie – a very pink one – sitting near all the others, with a slip of paper underneath it.

In a familiar scrawl, the note read:

“Amy - Just thought you deserved one of your own. Definitely harder than you made it look, but I hope you like it anyway! P. S. I took an extra for Tails! He loves your cookies!”

By the time she had reached the end of the note, where Sonic had signed his name alongside a little doodle of his head, Amy’s face felt warm with another blush.

She couldn’t help but smile at the cookie Sonic had decorated. The spiky, Sonic-style quills had been broken off and rearranged more closely around the face, resembling her own quillstyle. The icing on them was a rosy pink beneath the jaunty red holiday hat.

Some of the colors were smudged together and the eye sprinkles were a little uneven (not to mention the edible glitter that Sonic had somehow found and sprinkled generously), giving the cookie the appearance of something Cream might have decorated by herself, but Amy’s heart couldn’t have been happier.

Sonic had made something just for her.

On a whim, she took one of the Sonic cookies and set it close to the Amy one, so that their little sprinkle noses were touching.

There, she thought. Perfect.

The doorbell chimed, and, practically aglow with love and cheer, Amy went to answer it.