#this isn’t critical by the way

[afterthefeast]

one thing i am finding so interesting about eight is that his desire not to alienate people by being deceitful and manipulative like seven means that in order to keep them around and not end up so lonely again he lies to them constantly and is in fact deceitful and manipulative

[theswampghost]

i can’t with people saying “that was a happy ending for izzy” do you hear yourselves? him dying in the same way he always believed he would, a hard death, a painful death, when he was just learning to want more? when he was just starting to live for himself and not for ed, a death for the very same person he lived his whole life for? that’s a happy ending, to you? are you hearing yourself?

[worstloki]

AU where Loki doesn’t interfere with Thor’s banishment at all and it takes Thor years to prove himself worthy and when he returns to Asgard everything is just. The same. Nothing seems to have changed at all and everyone greets him like his absence was a minor obstacle that didn’t fundamentally change Thor and the worst part is Loki stepped down from the place as regent without any delay and Thor can’t help but feel there’s something underlaying the way his brother looks at him now and won’t let him touch him and Thor doesn’t know what he could have missed because he doesn’t think he would have found anything wrong with the things around him and how everyone behaves if he hadn’t spent time on Earth reflecting.

[yashley]

Say something true!

[samaspic31]

"Fandom is just for fun/escapism" means there's no quality threshold to meet to be allowed to contribute, and it is generally a space to share a common love for something rather than spend time hating.

It does NOT mean "everyone gets to publicly say, write and draw absolutely anything and be free from criticism, nothing can possibly have ties to real life harmful ideas and reinforce them, nothing should be taken seriously, everyone turns their brain off and analyzing fan content is pointless", especially since that attitude will automatically allow bigoted content to flourish and will push marginalized people out of fan spaces, or at the very least make those spaces hostile and put them in a position where they have to argue with the bigots empowered by that attitude. If it’s escapism, then make it an escapism that’s accessible to most people, which means being mindful of the consequences of the content put out, or else you’re just creating more spaces minorities are excluded from

[theweeklydiscourse]

God forbid you ever criticize the lack of consequences Bakugou experiences in MHA, or suddenly you’ll find dozens of Bakugou stans pouring into your mentions to make a speech about how cruel you are for forcing him to eat cement. They’ll act as though “consequences” inherently involves throwing him into the dungeon or putting him in detention for 100 years and then moan about how him facing consequences would only perpetuate a cycle of abuse/discrimination.

Listen, it’s not really that much of a consequence if the “consequence” in question isn’t directly connected to his current or past bad behaviour. “Oh but his scars!” “When he died that one time!” “His guilt for getting kidnapped” None of those are related to his bullying, and in my opinion, that makes them insufficient as consequences in an arc about changing for the better.

The consequences I would actually like to see could be as simple as: Izuku feels sad/mad because of what he went through, or certain characters reflect on how Bakugou’s past impacts their perception of him. More introspection on the victim’s end is needed, Bakugou doesn’t necessarily need to be pilloried for the arc to be satisfying.

[hello-eeveev]

I think the reason Orym returns to the Ludinus point is that we are discussing the destruction of the gods because Ludinus is making an active plan to kill them now. He is the reason they are having this discussion in the first place, and until he is taken care of, the gods discussion will always exist within the context of Ludinus and the Vanguard, and their plan sucks! it will almost surely cause destruction far far greater than anything the gods can do behind the divine gate. Orym isn’t pro-gods (or even pro-status quo) so much as he is anti-calamity II.

[atopvisenyashill]

Thoughts on the Alysanne is Maegor's daughter AU? I feel like it has some interesting potential, and it vastly recontextualizes different parts of Jaehaehae (I do not like him sjsjsjs) and Alysanne's relationship (such as Jaehaehae's treatment of their daughters) but I wanna hear what you think about it!

I’ve touched on this a bit before but since you actually want to hear my thoughts, allow me to present to you my Jaehaerys Is The Goddamn Worst, And Alysanne Annoys Me Too: An Essay lmao but my answer is basically “yeah all of what you just said.”

I think it makes Alysanne much more palatable (to me) as a character because as she stands, she just fixates on forcing her daughters through these fucked up marriages at too young an age bc it traumatized her to be married and pregnant at 15 too but she’d never admit that being a willing participant in her own kidnapping by her brother-husband was the single worst thing that ever happened to her, and because Alysanne doesn’t want to admit it (and Jaehaerys would never see it as wrong or a mistake) F&B really shies away from delving into the fact that Alysanne is as deranged of a mother as Cersei is. So as she stands, she’s very flat to me because she’s presented very flatly and inconsistently. She’s so in love with Jaehaerys, she’s maritally raped by Jaehaerys, she’s a loving and doting mother, she forces her daughters into marriages when they’re the same too young age she was, she accuses her teenage girls of being scheming whores then gets angry when her husband accuses their teenage girls of being scheming whores, and worst of all we are just told “Maegelle tells them to make up so they do” so we don’t know why Alysanne gets over all of this. What is the point of riding a dragon when you never use that dragon to protect your daughters from unwanted teen marriages? We’re just not given a good enough justification for why her behavior is so weird and frustrating towards her daughters.

Make her Maegor’s daughter though…most of her behavior as an adult makes more sense. Like a worse version of Rhaenyra’s childhood almost - a father desperate for a son, but lowkey obsessed with his daughter, who makes all his hang ups about his parents the problems of every woman around him, except Maegor is out here blood sacrificing and torturing and starting wars and forcing babies on wives he discards quickly and brutally. Then here comes Jaehaerys on a white horse green dragon to save her from the horror her life has become, and he loves her so much he runs away with her even though Alyssa says they shouldn’t marry because people won’t like it. And they have beautiful children, and a beautiful marriage, and build a beautiful kingdom.

Then her pregnancies start getting dangerous. Gaemon, then Valerion, die. Alysanne thinks of the shriveled up mutants she called brothers, if Maegor’s taint has passed to her. Her perfect husband ignores her no, and forces Gael on her. Alysanne remembers that he said nothing to Rogar when Alyssa died, merely wept. Then her daughters start to die. Daella, Alyssa, Viserra, all within a few years. Then Jaehaerys makes Saera watch as he murders her boyfriend, calls her a whore, and says Alysanne cannot follow Saera to Lys. Alysanne thinks of Maegor torturing the Harroways over Alys’ presumed infidelity. Jaehaerys says he’s sorry, and her daughter badgers her into forgiving him, and she remembers how she helped Jaehaerys badger Alyssa into forgiving Rogar. Not two years later, Jaehaerys passes over Rhaenys. Alysanne thinks of how she was never enough for her father, how she felt so superior to Rhaena banished to Dragonstone and resented by Aerea, yet there she is dragging Gael away from court because she can’t stand to be with Jaehaerys. How her father was surrounded by dead women and dead babies and how Jaehaerys is surrounded by his own dead daughters, but surely she did the right thing, surely Maegor was worse, surely the realm is better off? Is he right to pass over Rhaenys? Is she enabling a man just as monstrous as her father? She will never decide, because Maegelle will guilt her about keeping Gael isolated at Dragonstone, and Alysanne will do as she’s told, just like Rhaena, and Alyssa, and Jeyne, Elinor, Ceryse, Alys, and Tyanna, just like every one of her daughters.

I do get why Alysanne is Alyssa & Aenys’ and not Maegor’s. The weird Targ babies, the line not descending from Visenya, Jaehaerys and Alysanne being held up as the perfect Targaryen couple specifically because they are brother and sister and dragon riders. I do even think canon Alysanne is likely traumatized by her time as a hostage on Dragonstone, and the ensuing war, and the trauma bond that caused with Jaehaerys, and it makes her idolize Jaehaerys, and then he isolates her at Dragonstone so he can swiftly and safely marry, groom, and knock her up. It’s not like,,,, a fun time, and it’s enough to make anyone crazy and weird about their daughters, but I think having her father be Maegor makes Alysanne herself much deeper because it gives her, as the most beloved Targaryen queen, a blood tie to the most hated Targaryen king, and a marriage to the most beloved Targaryen king. It fits better with a lot of the themes of the main series (again, imo) - forcing the spotlight on the outsiders to see how the affect the story from behind the scenes. The fall of Aegon’s sons, and The Long Reign, not told from the PoV or to serve the PoV of any of the kings or princes, but of the queen that tied them all together.

[sihtryggr]

I have a lot of grievances with this show, one of them being how they’ve gone above and beyond to constantly drag up the paternity of the Velaryon boys, despite it being a blip in the book because black-haired Rhaenys and *ambiguity* actually existed. BUT that’s just whatever at this point and there’s no use bringing it up again. SO, considering the direction they’ve taken all of this! Man… show!Rhaenyra really pisses me off and honestly? I just feel bad for show!Jace. He’s had rumours of being a ‘bastard’ following him around his whole life. His life has constantly been at risk as a result and Alicent had also been putting their legitimacy to question which Viserys had to shut down on more than one occasion, reminding her, “the consequences of the allegations you toy at would be dire.” Jace himself has known with certainty since he was at least 8 (I’m not sure how old he is in 01x06) that he’s not Laenor’s ‘trueborn’ son. He’s had to stand before a court of people TWICE while his legitimacy was put to question - once subtly in his mother’s home and once very loudly in his father’s home “we know father, everyone knows. Just look at them.” He’s since gone above and beyond to prove that he deserves to be apart of his own family, that he’s the perfect son and Prince and a worthy heir to the Iron Throne. All of this in the face of Rhaenyra STILL holding love for Alicent, the woman who helped along the ‘bastard’ rumours that could’ve put his life at risk, the woman who tried to attack and take his little brother’s eye, the woman who allowed a petition to go ahead that put his own legitimacy into question, the woman whose son was responsible for his little brother’s death because she put it in her son’s head that he was still owed a debt, the woman who helped usurp Rhaenyra AND him, the woman who Rhaenyra snuck out to see without telling anyone to broker ‘peace terms’. Now they’re at war, Jace has successfully won Rhaenyra three of her biggest allies (Stark, Arryn and Frey) but everything has come to a head for him (albeit it was his idea, just twisted) and when he properly confronts Rhaenyra about her past choices, making his insecurities known to her because to him she is stripping him of this one thing that he believes holds him true and maintains his legitimacy because “I’m no fool, mother! The proof is here for all to see.” And all Rhaenyra can say is “I mislike all of this” - I MISLIKE ALL OF THIS?

Yeah. They could never make me hate Jace after all of that.

edited.

[the-meme-monarch]

fathers of the world. you have got to stop calling women service workers over the phone ‘dear’

‼️TERFS STEP AWAY FROM THIS POST YOU WILL BE OBLITERATED ON SIGHT

[zukosdualdao]

the idea that zutara shippers are just ~shallowly*~ obsessed with the enemies to lovers dynamic is so funny to me, personally, because it’s so far from what my preferred ship dynamic tends to be. in general, i am much more predisposed to enjoy romances rooted in friendship and affection right off the bat. i can see the appeal of a lot of enemies-to-lovers ship dynamics on an objective level, but it’s historically pretty rare for that to be the kind of dynamic i am most invested in or pulled in by.

and funnily enough, though i do see and appreciate in retrospect the romantic coding before that point (zuko, buddy, what WAS “you rise with the moon, i rise with the sun” - and keeping katara’s necklace for six episodes after bribing her already didn’t work - about??? i have questions), it’s really not until the crossroads of destiny, where they connect as something other than enemies for the first time, on a much more personal level than anyone in the gaang has connected with zuko, that my interest in their dynamic took root.

*to be clear: this is not me saying that it’s bad for people to like zutara specifically because they generally like the enemies-to-lovers trope or to have started shipping them early on. and i don’t see that as shallow myself, it’s just a criticism i’ve seen slung around a lot. literally ship and let ship. and also, like, of course i enjoy the early aspects of their dynamic because that’s where the growth and story come from. their canon relationship arc wouldn’t be complete without it. so i do enjoy the enemies-(to friends)-to lovers of it all, it’s just that’s not what i generally am looking for in ships lmao. for me, it’s an outlier!

this post is definitely not about bashing other zutara shippers, let it be known, i want to be clear about that. it’s just born of general frustration and bafflement that zutara shippers are seen by antis as a monolith who can only possibly ship it because of their interest in a certain trope—when it’s not even the one i usually go for. lmao.

[aeoris4lovers]

i know travis guiding them was 100% travis and not in character as chet bc he didn’t even have the voice going, but i also would like to imagine that chet did exactly that.

i like it generally bc he has moments like that where he drops the chaos when things get serious (i’ll never forget watching him and orym talk about will and realizing that oh god, under all those layers of whatever the fuck is going on with him, he cares so much).

but i really like it in this specific situation too bc i’m pretty sure imogen was the one to step up after his confession and immediately say they weren’t going to leave him, and i can totally see him avoiding the conversation in the moment but then stepping up to guide her and taking it really seriously out of appreciation.

[batwingsandblackcats]

Absolutely fascinated by Laudna’s “she has a debt to pay. She owes me her life like she took mine.”

This isn’t just a “I’m worth nothing so might as well smoke em if I got em” mindset with Delilah. It’s some of that, but it’s not the whole picture.

This is “might as well smoke em if I got em, and if this is the end of me god damn it I am taking this bitch with me.”

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

When I see stuff like this I kinda want to bash my head into a wall:

To start off, I’m not sure whether this person was commenting on book or show Cersei, but honestly, it doesn’t even matter because she’s so much more than the ‘ambitious villain’ or the ‘murderous girlboss’ tropes in both the book and show.

(Of course, I do have my issues with the way Cersei was written in the show like most people but this is simply a rant post so I’m not going to go through the differences of Show vs Book Cersei)

Cersei is a female character who was shaped by her environment, who’s insecurities were created by her environment, and she’s a woman who’s idiotic mistakes can be traced back to how her environment shaped her. She’s much more than a murderous girlboss, she’s both a victim of the system and also a beneficiary of it, while also acting as an agent of it to keep the status quo while also desiring what the system denied her.

Cersei is NUANCED and complicated and even now people hate that about her and want her to have been a purely evil woman handcrafted in a vacuum, ignoring the context of her life because readers would rather not engage with Cersei’s victimhood and nuances because that ruins their idea of: She Was The Problem and Always The Problem. (People would rather say that she deserved her walk of shame instead of interacting meaningfully with the theme of systematic gender-based violence that is so prevalent in Cersei’s story. The exploration of patriarchal violence in Show Alicent’s story is done so horribly in comparison.)

And what really pissed me off about these tags is that this person has clearly decided that they don’t care to interact with the nuance of Cersei and are fine with flattening her, and yet they shit on others for not liking Alicent.

Because of the way Alicent is written in this show, she almost always has a ‘woe is me I can do no wrong’ attitude, which of course drives people away from the character (woe is me I deserve to take a child’s eye 🥺). However, what actually annoys me is how she’s made out to be stupid, foolish, ignorant, and inconsistent due to the horrible writing of this show, all of which are deviations from her book characterization. Also, I despise it when people want me to support writing decisions and changes made in adaptations that are downright misogynistic and are meant to attract the male gaze.

But what pisses many people, including myself, off is how the changes made negatively impacted many other characters. Alicent’s terrible characterization is like a black hole that distorts and warps the whole story! It’s annoying af!

So when people like this say: ‘She’s nuanced and people just can’t handle it 🙄;’ I say: No. She’s horribly written and a different character from the book and people have a right to be critical about these changes that stripped a female character of 1) her agency and 2) her intelligence!

And the thing is, there was little reason for the writers to have made all these changes to Alicent’s characterization! In the book she is an interesting character with clear motives and understandable reactions. She’s cunning and ambitious and acts the way a noble lady who became queen would. And despite her clear ambitions and dislike of Rhaenyra, she still makes a comment wondering about who would protect the Princess from Ser Criston, and yet she then takes Cole into her service after his falling out with Rhaenyra. That’s a perfect example of nuance! Show Alicent could never compare to book Alicent’s clear moral values and consistent disregard of said moral values in pursuit of power.

And because of this, Book Alicent isn’t easy to stomach. It’s hard for most people to come to terms with a character like her and it’s even harder for people to feel sympathetic for her at the end when she went mad with grief.

On the other hand, Show Alicent was designed in a way to garner pity, and when the writers felt like her current arc wouldn’t be enough to garner the specific reaction they wanted they would then throw in a time skip and suddenly she’s completely different and yet still Thee victim. She’s designed to be as sympathetic as fucking possible! The camera angles, the background music, and the lighting is set up in a way to make sure you the viewer feels pity or sympathy for her! Cause that’s her role in this series! She’s thee Ultimate Victim!

But too bad for the writers as many people are fed up with this kind of inconsistent writing. Even when the writers created a whole new challenge for Alicent where she’s shitted on by the green council and forced to face the beast she helped to raise, I and many others could never feel any satisfaction as it was clear that once again Alicent was being made to be Thee Ultimate Victim who was just led astray by the patriarchy and was a victim of it and was only just realizing it so don’t you pity her don’t you feel sad for her and now she’s trying to do the right thing so pls pls pls pity her 🥺~ So it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are annoyed by these eNLiGhtEnEd changes that have led to a complete deviation from the source material.

To summarize: Cersei is an excellent fucking character who’s by no means easy to stomach, and because she’s not easy to stomach she’s often reduced to annoying ass tropes by dumbasses who are reading above their comprehension level. But when you actually try to understand her, you can easily see why she turned out the way she did and you can feel sympathy for her while understanding that she’s both victim and perpetrator! On the other hand, Show Alicent is a mess and HOTD is trying to make her serve a different narrative role than she did in the books so ofc people are going to be unhappy with the changes as book readers are once again faced with the annoying reality that the writers don’t give a fuck about the source material.

[five-flavor-soup]

Why the endgame couples in A:TLA weren’t necessary: a frustrated ramble

Listen I’m a Zutara shipper through and through (developed after my second rewatch in 2013) but by Tui Agni and La am I glad that it never happened in canon?? Like Kataang and Maiko themselves already felt so rushed and almost out-of-nowhere and their canonisation added like nothing to the plot. Aang’s crush on Katara is a plot device; Zuko’s relationship with Mai at the start of S3 is a plot device. I can barely fathom how Zutara would’ve turned out and I also kinda don’t want to. Imagine Zuko and Katara kissing at the end of the series: it feels completely out of left field, doesn’t it? Knowing that who-ends-up-with-who was an argument in the writer’s room for almost all three seasons means that it could’ve happened.

It shouldn’t have. I don’t think the Kataang kiss or the Maiko romance-reunion should’ve happened either. It’s unnecessary to add—there’s just no need for it, and my nagging here isn’t because I like Zutara and I don’t like how Maiko and Kataang turned out. It’s because the ships and couples and whatever the fuck else are NOT, and should not, be the point of A:TLA—and the ‘couple gets together in the very last scene and all is well :)’ shot suggests that it is.

A:TLA, to me, tried to show the horrifying nature of war and all its victims: the harrowing poverty, the deep-rooted trauma, the bloody violence. I interpreted the most prominent message of A:TLA to be that what was happening during those 100 years is wrong, that war is wrong—it affects the humanity within people, affects what point we offer empathy and kindness, because horrific trauma and needless violence muddies it all up. Why would you hold out a hand for someone who would’ve murdered you if they had the chance? Why would you physically support someone who hurt you and those you care about deeply? Those of the other nations can barely scrounge up empathy for someone from the Fire Nation, because those of the Fire Nation present themselves as inhuman. Those of the Fire Nation can barely scrounge up empathy for someone from any of the other nations, because the Fire Nation presents them as inhuman. And A:TLA shows that all these people are human, good and bad and all of that in between, because that’s just what humanity is. Varied and morally grey.

THAT’S what the GAang learns. That’s what the people around them learn. It’s what Iroh, a war criminal in his own right, tries to teach every child and teen who he interacts with: not in a preachy way, but in a vague way that implies he’d rather have them figure it out themselves lest they interpret his direct teachings wrong. He got indoctrinated into this terrorising, imperialist regime from the day he was born and onwards and it took a personal loss — the death of his son during a siege Iroh himself was leading, a siege in which Iroh and Lu Ten were the aggressors — for him to start thinking that maybe it’s all wrong. Maybe what he was taught is wrong. And he doesn’t want these children to take as long as he did.

The GAang and their (teenage) enemies and small antagonists have all been touched by war, almost to the point of no return. None of the need for violence, the calm in the face of battle and death, the willingness to sacrifice innocents for a sliver of retribution, the extensive knowledge of How To Fight A Battle And Win—none these qualities that these children (!!) may or may not portray are ‘normal’ teenage behaviours. They simply have to have them, or they die or freeze. Their childhoods were stopped in their tracks early because of experiences no child should ever experience. Such is the reality of war. And yet, in spite of the hurt and harm, the GAang is still capable of kindness and empathy. That’s what it’s about.

To end the series with explicit romance — Sokka/Suki doesn’t count, their relationship is not as in-your-face as The Scenes — just feels wrong. Maybe with another season of development it could’ve worked far better (and less unexpected, especially since the previous one-on-one Kataang interaction was Katara getting cross with Aang for kissing her when she was confused; and the previous one-on-one Maiko interaction was Zuko locking Mai in a cell/out of the way and then leaving without looking back). But with the three seasons that we got, it feels odd that the romance is highlighted at the end—especially when Zuko was miserable with Mai (with her being the human representation of ‘close your eyes and pretend everything’s fine’), and there ALSO was a perfectly good ending scene with the GAang bickering right there. Right before the ending kiss.

Why end it like that, when the series isn’t about romance, but about familial and platonic love and love for humanity instead? Why not just hint towards getting (back) together? What’s the point of these confirmations other than ‘the hero gets the girl’ in both instances?

[counting-stars-gayly]

Lord, give me strength. The PJO discourse has begun, and no one starting it has read the books in the last five years.