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jackoshadows · 3 years

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The ASoIaF fandom can be so frustrating sometimes.

It’s okay to admit that one doesn’t like this or that character. There’s nothing wrong in disliking a character.

I am pretty open on my blog about my indifference towards or dislike for Sansa because of her stans. I don’t make disclaimers about how much I love the character before proceeding to criticize Sansa. I am not a Sansa stan and that’s okay. My blog is a place for me to jot down my thoughts and celebrate characters, books and shows I do like. If you love Sansa as a character, block me, don’t follow me etc.

What’s obnoxiously annoying are the folks who claim to love all the characters the same and then give their ‘unbiased’ opinions which are held up as canon facts because they came from neutral book reader experts. To hell with that nonsense.

These posts reek of hypocrisy and double standards. It often tears down some characters while subtly propping up others - and it’s gobbled up by the wider fandom as unbiased interpretation of the text.

One example is pushing forth the notion that calling Arya pretty (Something that both her father and brother tell her she is in the books) is wrong, it’s sexualizing her, it’s okay for Arya to be ugly, she’s canonically not pretty because Cat/Sansa said so and no other interpretation is allowed etc. And then the same person who says all this celebrates Sansa’s beauty and ships her with a 27 year old man who falls in lust with Sansa.

Or when they say that the Arya-Lyanna (and Sansa/Lyanna parallels, because it’s always important to mention Sansa with respect to Lyanna even if said person claims to not care about Lyanna as a character) parallels are overrated and not important and they don’t care about Robert’s Rebellion characters but on their blogs there’s all these posts, fanarts and meta about Elia Martell - a Robert’s Rebellion character.

A so called book expert would note that GRRM has several characters outright compare Arya to Lyanna or mistake Lyanna for Arya in the books while Sansa has no such comparison. But no, the unbiased book expert thinks that the Arya-Lyanna and Sansa-Lyanna parallels are equivalent and are both overrated.That post just annoyed me excessively into writing this long ass rant post.

Why are these neutral, unbiased folks so interested in stripping away from Arya’s story?

In the books Jeyne Poole is masquerading as Arya Stark - but that story is only Jeyne’s, has nothing to do with Arya or Arya’s importance to the North.

Arya is a strong warg, Nymeria and her wolf pack are a ‘Chekov’s wolf pack’ that GRRM has hung on the wall - Our expert opinion is that Direwolves are not all that important in the grand scheme of things.

Arya is pretty - why needlessly call Arya pretty, it adds nothing to Arya’s story and is all about sexualizing a child.

Arya-Lyanna parallels - why do we need these parallels, Arya is distinct and interesting without them.

These aspects are all important parts of the character’s story. There are so many very well written essays exploring these concepts with respect to Arya’s journey of self discovery in the books, the narrative significance of her parallels to Lyanna, her bond with Nymeria and her warging talents. For those who are interested, here are two bloggers who actually like Arya and have written about her character and character arc.

https://donewithwoodenteeth.tumblr.com/meta-masterlist

https://ashotofjac.tumblr.com/tagged/arya-stark

Some of these same people will rush to condemn any reading of the books that does not have Sansa wielding power at the end as being ‘Sansa hate’. But they will have no issues to undermine and devalue Arya’s actual book story, the relationships she has, the parallels she has, the skillsets she has, her appearance, her importance to the current story happening in the North.

There is a whole ass plot currently in the books of Northerners rallying for Arya Stark and preparing for battle against the Boltons for Arya Stark. But that’s not important because it’s actually Jeyne Poole and Arya’s story is about sailing off west of westeros. But hey, Sansa will definitely go North and hold power and that’s like 100% happening because we are the unbiased book experts and we say it is so.

Or when all else fails - Arya is a Mary Sue, she’s a fantasy character, she’s a ‘strong female character’ because she fights with a sword, people like her because she’s a tomboy who fights. Sansa is realistic, Sansa is complex - but here are all the essays that basically transfer Arya’s complexity and story to Sansa - because it fits more with their fave, because these aspects would fit better with the traditionally feminine character even though they never tire of talking about how GRRM is deconstructing tropes. Because the trope deconstruction is only applied to Arya, Jon and Dany. Never Sansa.

And honestly, why are these people reading a high fantasy series if they hate fantasy and fantasy characters so much? We love Sansa because she’s so non-magical! Then go read non-fiction books. They also twist Jon, Arya and Dany into ‘fantasy’ characters - despite these characters going through some very real and human experiences. What’s fantasy about Arya’s experiences in war torn Westeros, Jon dealing with bigotry at the wall, Dany trying to rebuild Meereen, while dealing with famine, disease and insurgency?

Or how Jon and Dany getting any kind of happy ending or becoming rulers would be so boring, sweet, predictable, conforming to tropes, a happy ending etc. But Sansa getting love, romance, going home, becoming the Stark in Winterfell, getting her fairy tale ending - that’s totally what GRRM is going to do! No trope deconstruction there! In may ways, Benioff and Weiss’ ending is not all that surprising - Mad Queen Dany, Jon remaining a bastard with the freefolk, Sansa having power as a leader - are all popular theories among bnfs in the fandom. D&D wanting to wind up the show quickly with easily found fan theories is not that much of a stretch.

ASoIaF reddit is equally frustrating. Instead of Sansa stan bnfs on tumblr who pretend to like Arya and Dany while subtly undermining their story and importance, on Asoiaf reddit it’s Stannis stans who dislike Jon and Dany because these characters present a challenge to Stannis. The mere suggestion that Jon may play a role in the battle against Ramsay sends them into frothing at the mouth rage. They hate Jon, Jon is a Gary Sue because he dared advice Stannis - the greatest general ever - on Northern military strategy. Never mind that Jon grew up in the North and learned from Ned, how dare Jon Snow know more than Stannis! Unacceptable!

And I love Stannis Baratheon. I want Stannis to crush and defeat the Boltons. But unlike reddit dudebros, I can see that he is a secondary character, a tragic character who is most probably going to perish and Jon takes over because Jon Snow is a central protagonist in the story.

I feel it’s the same with Sansa. IMO, GRRM clearly doesn’t see Sansa in the same way as he does Arya, Jon, Dany, Tyrion and Bran. Whenever he is asked questions about the books, book plots, long term arcs, endings, age gaps etc it’s these characters he often brings up and references. It’s these characters who are important to him.

And that’s why there’s a lot of undermining and undervaluing of these character’s and their stories, them being described as fantasy characters, tropes, Mary Sues and Gary Sues, ableist rhetoric about Tyrion and Bran to undermine them.

I am damned certain that if it was Sansa who had all the parallels to Lyanna, or if she was the warg, or Jeyne Poole was impersonating her, this would all be ‘VERY IMPORTANT’ and on all the gifsets and essays. But she isn’t. So fandom bnfs are reduced to talking about how these aspects are not all that important anyway.

It’s like how this quote - ‘You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts’ turns up on gifsets every other day on the Arya tag but this quote - ‘Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only two years apart, could be so different. It would have been easier of Arya had been a bastard, like her half brother Jon. And Jon’s mother had been common, or so people whispered’ very rarely does and will not get reblogged when it does.

Or when Sansa sees Joffrey trying to kill Arya and sides with Joffrey or when Sansa throws Arya under the bus and tells the Lannisters that it’s Arya who is the traitor - just sisters being sisters y’all!

It’s all about maintaining a certain narrative about Sansa - and when others point out her actual relationship with Arya in the books, we are accused of hating and wanting Sansa dead and how we should be criticizing Tywin and the Mountain instead. This is nonsensical whataboutism and ignores that people talk about these aspects of the books because sometimes bullying, getting mocked for one’s appearance, abuse and neglect from parental figures etc. can resonate with certain readers unlike getting one’s head smashed in by Frankenstein.

At the end of the day, I wish these people would be honest about the characters they like and relate to. We are all biased. That’s why our opinions and interpretations are subjective. There’s nothing wrong in saying, hey, I like Sansa more than Arya or Dany, I relate to her character more.

I relate to Jon Snow a lot, I see things from his POV, I would disagree with the characters who disagree with Jon, I enjoy his story at the Wall and the North. My interpretations of the text are therefore colored by my bias towards Jon.

For others, it’s Dany or Sansa or Arya or Tyrion or Jaime. And that’s okay because these are fictional characters and liking one more than the other is not going to earn anyone woke points and lead to women’s rights.

And finally, there’s nothing edgy or cool about disparaging the central protagonists of a high fantasy series as being fantasy characters - go read other books if one is not into fantasy.

#rant post

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yellowhammerga · 3 years

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Unpopular Opinion:

I didn’t enjoy the two episodes from last night. I didn’t like how they went back on everything they spent the last three seasons building for the girls.

Annie is falling into the same habit she always does where she needs a man. I’m over this homeless man plot I find it very creepy on how he kept trying to blackmail her into letting him stay and after she has shown that she wants to keep this situation platonic he tries to “romance” her with food from the garbage and then attempts to make her jealous.

Beth’s storyline I just have no words. I’m not going to lie I was happy that Dean FINALLY came to the realization that Beth could care less about being a wife and a mother when it comes to her being involved in crime. How Dean called Rio an excuse for Beth to dive deeper in crime I feel the same could be said as her always throwing out she’s a “mother” as an excuse to not get her hands dirty whenever she’s in a criminal situation she put herself in. I’m rooting for Dean to leave her by the end of the next episode. I’ve also kinda gave up on anything BRIO to happen again this season. Rio deserves better.

Nick is trash. I miss Mary Pat & Turner as the villains.

I LOVE THE HILLS! The only excitement I had for these episodes was seeing how Stan will not allow his wife to be a “Yes woman” to Beth’s terrible plans. I just need the writers to allow Ruby to think for herself more and choose herself and her family over their friendship. It’s a double standard how Ruby was crucified for choosing Stan in 2x07 for a second over Beth but Beth is willing to put all of their lives at risk to save Dean and no one has a retort. Where was the same outrage? Ruby sweetie you should know that you should always defend your faithful and loving husband from being slandered by your “best friend”.

I don’t know if I’ll continue to watch the rest of the season. It was a disappointment to me that after the hiatus we received these two episodes. I’m just going to continue to read my GG fics because at least those make sense and the plots appear more aligned with the trajectory the ladies have started since the Pilot episode.

#gg concrit #gg negativity #gg spoilers #nbc good girls #goodgirlsnbc #gg 4x10 #gg 4x11 #the writers need to make it make sense #Dean Boland and his team of women hating men #Boland divorce coming soon #The Hills are my favorites #Annie learned nothing in therapy #Beth I just can’t with her #rio needs to be alone for a while #Nick has got to go

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 4 years

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Lily Evans and Severus Snape: Headcanons

So, I was asked in the ask about Sirius and Regulus what I thought about Snape and Lily. At this point people are probably going, “Oh that Carnivorous Muffin is just clearly a Snape stan who thinks he could never do anything wrong and anyone who was slightly mean to him is evil.” Shockingly, I’m actually not, I just happen to think sexual harassment and attempted murder are bad and probably worse than JKR intended (I do think she was trying to go the “boys will be boys” route versus “oh my god, they just dumped pigs blood on Carrie at the prom and then threw her at a starving vampire”)

So let’s start on Snape.

First, Snape did live an incredibly shitty life, with circumstances beyond his control, that did lead to many of his poorer choices. In no way am I saying that it was alright for Snape to have grown up in an impoverished, abusive, household and endured years of humiliation and torment at school.

That said, I believe that we all, in some respects, are responsible for our actions and our decisions. Yes, even when we come from non-privileged backgrounds. Life is hard, some people will have it much easier than you, that doesn’t excuse you becoming a domestic terrorist or tormenting and terrifying your students, young children, so much so that an entire generation comes out with a loathing and incompetence in your subject.

I guess let’s start back on his friendship with Lily Evans. We get... a really weird perspective from Snape on that friendship. Time and her tragic death have warped it into this strange worship where I’m not sure the Lily Evans that exists in his mind and memory is the one that really was there. She’s this shining Madonna idol who he failed, actively betrayed, is very very hung up about it years later.

I suspect they weren’t as good of friends as either of them thought they were and it comes down to Snape’s resentment of his own upbringing and muggles. I believe Snape was very racist towards muggles, specifically, due to his father. It was his way of grappling with his home life and only fueled by being in Slytherin. Lily was probably, in his mind, always a golden exception to the rule (Lily is the token, gold standard, muggleborn where she’s pretty, brilliant, charming, etc.) That Severus himself was a halfblood clearly caused him some angst. What I’m getting at is that I believe throughout their entire friendship, especially when they got to Hogwarts, there was an unacknowledged undercurrent of intense racism that eventually boiled up with that one incident in Snape’s fifth year.

Calling her that, while he views it as a slip of the tongue that damned him for all time, I see it more as a Freudian Slip. That sort of thing doesn’t just slip out from nowhere, not at that age when they both knew exactly what that word meant, it simmers beneath the surface, and was ultimately what he thought of her. Later, she became the Madonna figure that he views her as today (ironically perhaps even less of a person than he viewed her as at the time).

That said I think a number of factors played into the young Snape becoming a Death Eater. One, becoming friends with Lucius/that crowd who were all being sucked into Tom’s influence. Two, having his terrible home life and all the implications of Snape resenting his own blood status as well as muggles and muggle borns at large. Three, the loss of friendship with Lily (now there’s nothing to hold him back anymore, he has no reason to preserve muggleborn life). Fourth, Dumbledore’s letting Sirius, James, and Remus entirely off the hook in the werewolf incident.

That last one, especially, I imagine cemented Snape’s utter hatred of ‘the light’ (don’t get me started on the stupidity of light/dark in Harry Potter but I guess I’ll use the term) and those that cater to muggleborns. They’re hypocrites of the highest order, Dumbledore claiming to defend the poor and non-nobility, when he goes and does the exact opposite (James is the next lord Potter, Sirius is still pureblooded even if disowned, Severus Snape is a dirt poor halfblood).

So what I’m saying is I understand why Snape did become a Death Eater, I do not condone this action. Especially as, unlike Regulus, Snape never gets cold feet. He loves being a Death Eater at first, he’s living the dream, getting all the revenge he ever wanted and burning the stupid wizarding world to the ground as he scrambles for ways to climb in Tom Riddle’s graces. We don’t see any hint that he was wavering, thinking of the fact that beloved Lily might die in battle, perhaps at his hand, until the prophecy.

Now, I’m a little kinder than some about the prophecy. We know Snape overhears the first portion of the prophecy in early 1980. He eagerly rushes to the dark lord, regales him with the prophecy in both a) aid to the cause and b) in the hopes of climbing in the ranks and gaining the dark lord’s notice. At this point, Lily Evans is pregnant, perhaps knows the gender, but has not given birth. Months later, when both Neville Longbottom and Harry Potter are born at the end of July, Snape realizes he has signed Lily Evans’ death warrant (because despite Dumbledore talking, I imagine Tom always planned to kill off both children, Pettigrew just happened to make things convenient for Tom to go to the Potters first).

With Lily’s death now so inevitable, and her blood on his own hands, Snape has his existential crisis, goes to Dumbledore who puts the Potters in hiding and becomes a double agent. Snape also pleads for Lily’s life with Tom and he puts in a minimal amount of effort to spare the woman.

Then Lily dies anyway and now Snape lives in the bitter cynicism most commonly seen in characters from Game of Thrones. He’s Dumbledore’s agent and sort of a Dirty Harry character, getting to see all the nasty things that many of the other order members never have to deal with. He’s one of the more intelligent characters in the series, able to see the truth of the world he lives in, but he also doesn’t care enough to actually do anything about it. He’s a bitter, resentful, and angry protector of Harry Potter, choosing to hate a naive child for all the reminders of his own terrible life (both in Lily, for failing and betraying her, and in James his most hated rival and tormentor). He gleefully enables the favoritism of Slytherin (my god how he panders to Draco Malfoy) while tormenting poor Neville into terror (that Neville’s greatest 13 year old fear is Snape is very telling).

Basically by the time we get to him in canon Snape not only isn’t happy but I think he doesn’t want to be happy. He’s accustomed to his bitterness, his cynicism, his quiet rage and moves forward out of both resignation, guilt, and a sense of obligation to a woman’s ghost. The actions he takes in canon aren’t so much for Harry as they are for the memory of Lily Evans.

Even if Snape could be happy at that point, change his life or his purpose, I do not think he would. He’s a man who has given up on life.

Now, onto Lily Evans.

You probably think I’m going to rail on her to for the sheer hypocrisy and nerve of marrying James Potter. I’m actually not. Lily Evans is one of my favorite characters in the Harry Potter series and probably the one I’d label as the most moral (though that’s a very low bar in Harry Potter, the characters are almost all assholes, but even so Lily would still be very high on the list).

You know what, I’m just going to damn myself and sound like a crazy person. Lily Evans always reads to me as a more moral young female Tom Riddle.

What the hell? You undoubtedly ask but I’ll explain.

Lily, while having a far more stable homelife than Tom Riddle, also comes from a muggleborn background. She’s exceptionally brilliant, very good looking, and very charming with a lot of people who would call her friends but no one close. Lily, aside from Snape (and that’s debatable), has no friends.

If Lily had not been a Gryffindor, and were Dumbledore not a raging misogynist, his Tom Riddle bells likely would have been ringing with her.

“But wait, that can’t be right!”

Oh, yes it can. First, as I went into above with Snape and Lily, there was something deeply wrong with that friendship. I believe they both considered themselves best friends, didn’t see many of the warning flags, but ultimately we see the giant fissure when Snape lets loose the m-word. Given all of that, I would not label them having been true friends in the first place. Just the appearance of friends.

Otherwise, while it’s very easily to canonically point out James’ friends it’s incredibly difficult to do so with Lily. First, people hardly remember Lily. We get Dumbledore talking about her like she’s the Virgin Mary, saving her son with the power of her love. We get Snape’s weird Virgin Mary impressions of her. Otherwise, it’s pretty much just Slughorn. Everyone else remembers that she married James and that was great because JAMES WAS SO COOL and that she had very striking eyes and was “nice”. Lily is less than a ghost in Harry Potter canon (sadly Harry never really realizing it).

Also, unlike James who has Sirius, Remus, and Peter to point towards (that are very important characters in canon). Lily has no one. The godmother was Alice Longbottom, a woman many years older than Lily and James who probably liked Lily well enough but I can’t imagine was a close friend. In canon there’s an offhand mention of two girls named Mary and Marlene but we don’t see much of them/Severus was always cited as Lily’s closest friend. As for Lily’s sister, well we know they’re estranged. I think it’s very telling that Lily writes a letter to Sirius, James’ best friend and certainly not hers, telling him that James is pouting over his invisibilty cloak. It’s because there was no one else to write.

So Lily Evans is a brilliant girl, who everyone likes and is very charming, but has no friends and led a very lonely and short life.

Here’s where my slack towards Lily comes in.

When she dumps Snape I completely understand why she did so. Snape dropping that word wasn’t simply a mistake, a moment of infinite regret, but something that revealed what he truly thought of her and where she came from. Lily was absolutely right in walking away.

However, without Snape, her closest friend is suddenly gone and the world is cold. As graduation approaches I imagine Lily’s career options become clearer and clearer. While very talented and smart, Lily is a muggleborn, what job she does manage to get (thanks to the sheer nepotism of the wizarding world/lack of jobs) will likely be through Slughorn if she manages to get a job at all. The world is cold and it is cruel and no one seems to even notice.

Cue James Potter. I do believe, probably until seventh year, Lily loathed James, not simply because of the horrifying things he did to Severus (and I’m sure she knew very little of it, Snape hiding most of it from her out of pride and shame), but because he’s just a giant dick. He’d make flirting with her a kind of game and joke to be shared with Sirius, something to hold over Snape’s head, like she’s a prize to be one.

However, by seventh year the werewolf incident has happened, Snape’s retreated further and further into Death Eater recruit land and she’s cut him off, and for all my “James is a dick” I do imagine he calmed down a little. Now that Snape is no longer friends with Lily/after the whole almost murder incident I imagine they didn’t bully him nearly as much as they used to. Though yes, they probably still bullied him, but Lily probably doesn’t know that now that she’s lost contact with Snape.

James is charming and very good looking. He seems a bit more mature than he used to be. Lily is desperately lonely, living in a world that rejects everything she is, and James seems like one of the few who does support her (that James is more of a ‘pretty fly for a white guy’ kind of support for muggleborns doesn’t hit until later). So Lily is charmed and makes the largest mistake of her life, she and James start dating.

Now, given their extreme youth as well as Lily’s pedigree (say what you like, I don’t think Mr. and Mrs. Potter were thrilled that their son was dating a muggleborn) I imagine the wedding was a shot gun wedding and Lily got unintentionally pregnant. Yes, go ahead and throw fruit at me or call foul, I just can’t imagine they’d want a child that young while in the middle of a war while they’re part of an active resistance movement and only just out of Hogwarts.

Then things start snowballing downhill. Lily and James have just joined the resistance movement, Lily’s son is prophesied to defeat Voldemort, they strongly suspect one of James’ close friends is a spy, and they’re forced into hiding.

In hiding is where I imagine stress runs high and their marriage begins to fall apart. We know from Lily’s letter that James was routinely leaving hiding, using the cloak, so he could meet up with Sirius and Peter (I imagine Lupin’s on the out as they suspected he was the spy). While James might not realize what a big deal that was, I imagine Lily always did, and she begins to realize just what she’s gotten herself into but there’s no way out while in hiding.

Now we go really off the rails into headcanon territory in: what the hell is up with Harry Potter?

In my stories, I often choose the unwitting god route. Harry can’t die because he is a god, he becomes the master of death and always was the master of death. This is an answer, but it’s one that makes canon Harry a god and... I would not want canon Harry as a god. JKR and Dumbledore push the “Lily loved her child so much that it deflected death... multiple times” but this always felt... unsatisfying. Many parents love their children (fathers too, JKR, let’s not make this weird Virgin Mary thing) and yet Harry Potter alone in the history of mankind survives multiple times.

Most likely, Lily pulled off some insane bullshit with absolutely no resources and minimal education AND EVERYONE IGNORES IT. We do know that Lily crafted the blood wards, wards stronger than anything Dumbledore himself can come up with/than Voldemort can break. Ones that protect Harry not only at home but away from it as it melts Voldemort for simply touching his skin. Lily pulled off the impossible in only a few months and did it right under everyone’s nose.

This makes her easily one of the most intelligent characters in Harry Potter. Probably beating out Dumbledore and maybe tying with Tom Riddle. And Dumbledore tells us, “Your Virgin Mary mother loved you so much, Harry, that it courses through your veins and lights those that would want to harm you on fire.”

So, that’s Lily for you.

Now, that said, I’m probably a bit biased and clearly very lenient with her marrying James. To be honest it took me years to figure out why the hell Lily would ever marry James after what happened with Severus and was always one of those weird canon things I never quite understood. He’s that good looking and charming, I guess, was my response.

The answer I now land on with some confidence was that the world is that cruel and bleak and Lily was utterly alone for two years.

By the way, a side note/plug, of all my stories while head canons do pop up here and there I think “October” is one where they tend to crop up more. It’s a vast AU of canon, but it gives an idea of what I think x character would do in y situation.

#headcanons #harry potter #lily evans #severus snape #october

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firelxdykatara · 3 years

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not gonna lie I would love to hear more about the drama and infighting that went on in The Vampire Diaries fandom if you have the time (and also want to use that time to give your experience with the fandom, which from the snippets you've told sounds Not Fun so I get it if you don't want to lol)

oh god, there was like, SO MUCH, i just

i really feel like tvd is one of those fandoms that is so hard to describe without a lot of ‘you’d have to have been there’, but it really felt like this huge and all-consuming beast for about five years until the show finally imploded and the fandom basically turned on it en masse. (you ever see that post going around that’s like ‘if you ever want to know what true regret feels like, ask someone who once called tvd their favorite show’? still a mood, all these years later. basically the entire fandom thought the show should have just bowed out with whatever shreds of dignity it had left at the end of season 6, and became more of a hatedom than a fandom for the last two seasons. when you have an entire fandom cheering news of your show’s cancellation, i think that’s a sign you done fucked up, julie.)

first and most infamous, of course, are the ship wars. which are pretty much inevitable in any teen-centered drama, and i really think the CW fucking thrives on them, but it was particularly egregious in TVD’s case because not only was the base premise of the show a love triangle, but the two main romantic leads were brothers that the show constantly pit against one another--in pursuit of elena’s affections, but also because it kept up this insistence on the ‘good brother/bad brother’ dichotomy which stopped making sense after about season 2 (by which time we have found out that the good brother was never as good as he appeared, and the bad brother has been growing and isn’t nearly as bad as he pretends to be)--and the question of which brother ‘deserved’ elena (and no, what elena wanted very rarely factored into these discussions, especially in the team stefan camp because they turned on her when what she wanted was no longer The Good Brother, but i’ll get to that in a bit) was hotly contested.

i’m not kidding when i say the shipping wars were vicious. i started watching tvd shortly after it began to air, which was late 2009, and kept up with it fairly sporadically over the years. i didn’t come onto tumblr until 2011/2012, and by then, the fandom was already pretty much a garbagefire. there were anti ship and anti character blogs, any time something bad happened for one ship the rival ship would invade the tags to gloat about it (seasons 3 and 4 were especially rough, and i’m not gonna pretend delena fans weren’t just as bad about tag invasion and shit, but as that was my side of the road i saw a lot more of the stelena shippers being assholes, which soured my opinion on the ship a long time before i started rewatching and realized the red flags were there from the start), confessions blogs were popular also toxic as fuck (so much fighting happened in the notes of those posts, good gods), and this was right around when twitter’s popularity was on the rise and the line between Celebrity and Fan was thinning, so the fandom was absolutely atrocious to much of the tvd cast and crew.

(some of them deserved a lot of the later backlash, but in the early years a lot of it was ‘how dare you write the story in a way i dont like, you terrible fucking person’, and gods don’t get me started on the dobsley vs nian Thing)

i think what really encapsulates my feelings on the tvd fandom as a whole, though, is the way they (to this DAY) treated elena gilbert, which can be summed up in one meme that gained a lot of traction around season 3 if i remember right: that gif of pam from true blood, with the text altered to read “i’m so OVER elena and her precious doppelganger vagina!”

i swear at one time i had over half the active tvd fan accounts on tumblr blocked, because i got to a point where i would no longer tolerate elena hate, and she was (and still is, in what remains of the fandom; you’ll see a lot of ‘elena was one of the worst things about the show’ takes from ex-fans, too) one of the most widely despised characters in the entire fandom. because she -checks smudged writing on hand- was a traumatized teenage girl who -reads off a crumpled notecard- couldn’t always perfectly sort out her own feelings and -squints at the ceiling- sometimes made mistakes or bad decisions. (except a lot of the fandom also insisted that she was a mary sue who had no character traits or flaws or faults and it was like....make up your fucking minds???? is she a calculating conniving bitch whose somehow manipulating these centuries old vampires to tie them around her little finger or is she a boring flat character with no depth and no flaws??? jfc)

there was this massive double standard, too--like, stefan and damon could fuck whoever they wanted and that was fine, but elena was constantly raked over the coals for the crime of developing romantic feelings for the two men who had become constants in her life and whom she cared for deeply, and oh my GOD the slut shaming that happened when elena slept with damon was fucking wild. (and also happened in canon lmfao. like the show had one of elena’s best friends basically call her diseased on screen for falling in love with someone other than stefan. it was gross and ridiculous and the friend in question was also being a giant hypocrite at the time since she was happily flirting with someone who was directly responsible for the deaths of like four of elena’s loved ones and her own boyfriend’s mother but that’s beside the point) but like elena was called a slut and a bitch and a whore for ‘cheating’ on stefan (she hadn’t, and she had in fact broken up with him on screen the episode earlier) and ‘immediately’ jumping into bed with damon, even though none of them said fucking boo when stefan had one night stands or damon had fuckbuddies or whatever.

shit, caroline didn’t get any of this treatment when she started falling for tyler while dating matt! which isn’t to say i think she should have, just that i think it’s fucking ridiculous that elena was absolutely demonized by the fandom for daring to have feelings for two guys at once and eventually acting on them--despite the fact that the entire premise of the show was a love triangle. it’s not a love triangle if both sides don’t eventually get explored, and the crew had been pretty explicit about the fact that delena was going to happen at some point--but when it did, a huge chunk of the fandom absolutely threw a fit.

and a lot of these elena haters were alleged stelena stans, and i say alleged because they hated her so much for not wanting stefan’s dick anymore that it was clear they were really stefan stans and only wanted stelena to be endgame because they wanted stefan to ‘win’ at the end of the day, because ‘he’s the good brother’ so he deserved elena more.

it was all very gross and very misogynistic and very sex shaming (apparently delena was a ‘shallow’ and ‘superficial’ relationship because they had sex after two years of unrequited feelings slowly becoming requited and then pining for ages on both sides, and because they had a lot of on screen chemistry that the show capitalized on for years so of course they did a lot of making out and shit but it’s not like stelena didn’t have its fair share of making out and sex scenes, stefan was just too much of a coward to let elena top i’d apologize for that joke but i’m really not sorry because it’s true), and when i say it was egged on by the crew, that’s because they refused to let the love triangle die back in season 4 when it should have.

they insisted on stringing stelena fans along, dropping little bread crumbs to keep them invested, like dreams of a future where they were married and revealing that stefan was also a doppelganger and he and elena were descended from a pair of star-crossed lovers (a plot that ultimately went nowhere, to no one’s great surprise), and then fucking like. julie plec turned around and threw nina under the bus after she chose not to extend her contract and pretended that stelena might have happened again if she hadn’t left the show, which....i mean frankly i wouldn’t put it past her, but it would have been shitty writing. then again, she thought having a vampire pregnancy where a uterus was magically transplanted from a witch into a vampire that could somehow......carry the babies to term.... made sense and was a good way to accomodate candice’s RL pregnancy rather than like literally ANYTHING else, soooooo. but anyway julie saying that around like, end of s6 sparked off a new wave of nina hate and elena hate and ship wars bc they SEers took it as ‘confirmation’ that stelena was REALLY meant to be endgame and it was all just a hot fucking mess

another thing is that, while tvd was in its prime before the anti/purity culture shit started picking up any real steam, there was still this pervasive attitude throughout the fandom that if you liked Damon, you were A Bad Person. liking damon was apparently grounds for insults and harassment, and apparently he was The Worst Person on the Show even though literally nothing he does on screen is any worse than shit we know stefan has done (and frankly every other vampire too, but i mention stefan specifically because he was always held up--in the show but especially in the fandom--as the Good Brother while damon was the Bad One, and if you liked damon more then that had to mean your morals were dodgy and you clearly couldn’t appreciate what a heroic and saintly figure dear stefan was and....oops, i’m sorry, my salt keeps leaking -cough-).

meanwhile klaus quickly became a fandom darling despite not even really having much of a redemption arc (on tvd anyway, he just became more ‘affably evil’ as the show went on and more inclined to work with the main characters rather than try to kill them; i have no idea what went on over on his show, though), and like i can 100% appreciate liking villains and not caring that they do dodgy villainous shit, even just liking them bc they’re hot and wanting them to kiss a main character bc they have insanely good chemistry (yes i ship klaroline, no i won’t apologize for it, they could have been Really Great), it’s just really the double standard that gets me.

and all of this, incidentally, required ignoring some truly gross shit stefan was responsible for wrt his relationship with elena, that frankly it has always bothered me never really got addressed in the show. i get why elena herself would never be able to actually call him on it, but the fact is that he stalked her for months after he first saw her and thought she was katherine (meanwhile it only took damon .5 seconds to realize she was someone else entirely, but that’s another topic entirely), and then he deliberately inserted himself into her life because, in his words, ‘i have to know her’. he never gave a thought to how his presence in her life might affect her (or rather, he did, and tormented himself about it in his internal monologue, but never let this actually dissuade him from disrupting her life), and elena would wind up blaming herself for every tragedy that befell her friends and loved ones as a result of getting mixed up in vampire bullshit even though none of it was her fault--she literally blamed herself for existing but most of the fandom didn’t give a fuck about that lmfao--and stefan did shit like find out that she was adopted and then withhold this information from her until she got pissed about another secret he was keeping (her resemblence to katherine) and drop it on her to try and distract her from her very reasonable anger, and like... i should stop before this becomes a whole rant about how much i hate stefan fucking salvatore, but the point is, he did a lot of really sketchy shit he never answered for and elena never really took him to task for, and the fandom just kept eating up his insistence that he was the Good Brother and therefore he deserved to have elena, and if she didn’t want him anymore it was because she was a heinous bitch who didn’t deserve him.

uh.....i think i got off track there. and there’s probably a lot of shit i missed, like i think i was incandescent with rage for most of seasons 5 and 6 so i missed a lot of the interfandom shit cause i was too busy being increasingly pissed off at the show itself, but if nothing else this should give you an idea of how much of a goddamn cesspit the fandom was while the show as in its prime. there’s a reason both the show and the fandom have such a lousy reputation lmfao.

#the vampire diaries #tvd #tvd fandom salt #anti stefan #anti stelena #salt for ts #asked #Anonymous

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ladymelisande · 3 years

Note

The Grisha Trilogy/Six of Crows Zoya>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>King of Scars/Rule of Wolves Zoya. I really don't think Zoya needed a tragic backstory (she already has plenty of conflict without the sad past),nor all that character shilling. Also,as a biracial woman who knows plenty of "passing" biracial people,Suli Zoya was a wack retcon. Ironically,TGT/SoC Zoya came across to me as more nuanced,if in a simple way. She was an unapologetic bitch,driven, ambitious,had a caring side, presumably had gone through character development (changing sides in the war),kind of a brat yet loyal and reliable. The most logical step for Zoya's arc would've been her handling the responsibility of dealing with being one of the most powerful people in a country in shambles.

I also saw a meme saying something like:

Zoya in TGT and SoC: I don't have a tragic past, superpowers (she did,but nothing really unique or over the top,just honed natural abilities in universe) to justify my behaviour. Don't like it? Fuck you.

Zoya in KoS: Hello,my name is Mary Sue.

It's kind of weird that her being Suli because as far as I remember nothing in her description of the trilogy says she was. So yeah, it's a whack retcon ala Rowling, but apparently we hate brown women because we point out a double standard!

I read one page of KOS that a friend showed me (meanwhile crazy stans where quote tweeting us while in private... Because nothing is more charming than stalkers that are also cowards) and she sounded like just Bardugo's mouth piece. Like the whole listening the Darkling's bad deeds and the whole cult that Bardugo did to piss of Darklina fans... Who she is still baiting, nah, it's not even worth reading.

In a way is kind of hilarious because any other hack writer would use Alina as self insert and sometimes yeah, Alina is kind of a boring sack of flour... But God, Bardugo trashes that girl to the ground for having even the tiniest desire of leaving that pathetic life she had with Malaria that I can't help having pity for her.

The whole double standards of how Alina was warned and punished for using the merzost by ending up basically in her childhood again. But Zoya can have every power under the sun and I don't see Leigh fucking with her as she did with Alina.

Like you describe her and how people have showed me spoilers, she gives me show Strong Female Character™ vibes.

#may answers #anti zoya

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sparklyaxolotlstudent · 5 years

Text

More than 900 notes on the “Lila gets Exposed” ficlet? I love you guys.

And writting Lila liying stupidly and being caught stupidly is fun. so yeah, I might make this a series on different characters catching Lila lying. At least I have some idea on how Alya, Chloe, Nino, Rose and maybe Juleka might catch her.

These are meant to be unrelated and one shots, but I will try to kept characters other than Marinette and Lila out of the fic that aren’t their so they can still form a coherent narrative if the reader want to feel like Lila was caught by everyone.

———————-

Lila gets Exposed As The Lying Liar Who Only Lies

Marc and Nathaniel.

“Did you want to see me?”

Marinette got inside the classroom of the art club, where Marc and Nathaniel were waiting for her.

“Hiya Mari!” greeted overenthusiastically Marc, guiding her to a seat near a table where Nathaniel and he had been working. They had something covered in cloth, which Marinette found a bit suspicious, but was used to how theatrically dramatically extra those two could get.

“What’s this?”

“Well, remember our comic?”

“Which one? Where Super Nathaniel saves me from Stormy Weather and Lady Wifi and then we ki…”

“NOT THAT ONE!” reacted Nathaniel not so quickly, blushing so much his skin got the same color of his hair. “Ahem. The one where Might Illustrator and Reverser teamed up with Ladybug and Chat Noir for…”

“The double date one or the one where they fight Queen Wasp?”

“… Queen Wasp.” Marc turned to Nathaniel. “You told her about the double date one?” Nathaniel shook his head, both looked at Marinette confused, but she just smiled innocently and sweetly.

“Ha! You guys are so transparent. I was just guessing”

Marc made a face “meanie” he added a raspberry for emphasis. Nathaniel just kept his red hue.

“ANYWAY. The comic with us as heroes being heroes alongside the heroes of Paris” said Nathaniel very quickly. Marinette giggled at how easy was to push Nathaniel’s buttons.

“And you’re our Everyday Ladybug, so we decided it was only fair that you would join the team!”

“We actually wanted to say you’re the real Ladybug, but realized that would be a bit problematic… and Alya would freak out big time”

Marinette had never panicked and been relieved so quickly in her life.

“Yeah, right, clumsy old Marinette as Ladybug, who would believe a loser like me was a superhero?”

Nathaniel and Marc looked at each other.

“Marinette, sweetie…” Marc said, holding Marinette’s hand “We love you with all our hearts, brains and other internal organs, but if you dare to call yourself bad names ever again, I will be legally and morally obligated to slap you silly until you learn to appreciate the wonderful human being that you are.”

“Duly noted”

“SO! Since you have never been akumatized –kudos for that, by the way, you rock – we didn’t had anything to base your herosona with… so we started thinking, and your main forte is designing, but bringing stuff that you draw to life is sort of Mighty Illustrator gimmick…”

“It’s not a gimmick!”

“Right right… so, Nathaniel thought about the hat you designed and we basically took a peek at your sketchbook, and we decided that fashion was going to be your thing!”

They grabbed the cloth and pulled it at the same time, uncovering a series of illustrations of Marinette in several hero suits. Some very elaborate some more simple. The main one seemed to be a play on her normal clothes, with a dark pink bodysuit with white details, including a belt, a dark grey jacket, and a brooch that resembled the ladybug earrings, just in the same shade of dark pink as the body suit.

“We based her a bit on Ladybug. With the brooch she can switch between suits, and the brooch changes colors to match which suit she is using. Her standard outfit is the pink one, which we based on your clothes, and it gives her agility and strength. The other suits are more specialized, like the blue one allowing her to breathe underwater and swim more efficiently. We’re thinking a rainbow theme, with 7 suits plus the pink one. We might squeeze a black and white one too, although that is Reverser gimmick.” Nathaniel looked at Marc with a sly smile. Marc rolled his eyes.

“Touche. Anyway, we call her Fashionette, unless you want to be called something else”

Marinette couldn’t help but notice that they somehow had made the power of the suits match the power of the potions that Master Fu had given her. Still, it was different enough from Ladybug to throw suspicions… even though Nathaniel had made an illustration of Ladybug, ‘Fashionette’, Chat, Reverser and Mighty Illustrator. To Nathaniel’s credit, he had made Ladybug with longer hair, taller and more muscular than herself. She then wondered if that’s how other people saw Ladybug or if it was just Nathaniel’s artistic view.

“Marinette as a hero? Wow, you guys are so talented!”

They had been so focused on their explanation of Fashionette that they hadn’t noticed that Lila the lying liar who lies had entered the art room. Marinette closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Oh, and you did a drawing of her with Ladybug, my best friend.”

“Well yeah. We’re making a comic and including Marinette as a hero with us. I’m sorry, who are you?” asked Marc sincerely, as he had no idea who this girl with sausage hair was, but felt weird for how she was talking.

“Oh, you don’t know me? I’m Ladybug’s best friend, Lila Rossi”

“Isn’t Ladybug’s best friend Chat Noir?”

Lila’s eye twitched, but decided that Marc probably would question her if she kept that lie. Marinette smiled wide at that, hoping that Lila would go, but alas, she just approached the table and grabbed one of Marc and Nathaniel’s comics.

“Oh, a comic book. Cool. I know Stan Lee, he basically based Spider-Gwen on me. I might be able to get you to meet him someday.”

The three art kids looked at each other, a bit confused.

“Are you going to use a Ouija?”

“What?”

“Stan Lee died last year”

“And Spider-Gwen was created by Jason Latour and Robbi Rodriguez, not Stan Lee”

“I… I was just testing you. I meant he based Spider-man on me, way before he died, of course.”

“Didn’t know you had a time machine. Must be awesome”

“What?”

“Lila, Spider-man was created in 1962, so either you have aged really well, or you have a time machine.”

“Ugh you guys, always misunderstanding me! I mean the spider-man from the movie! He’s my best friend!”

“Didn’t know you and Tom Hiddleston were friends”

“Of course, we are very close!”

“Hiddleston is the guy who plays Loki. Holland is Spider-man.” Lila was speechless.

Marinette was using all her power to not fall from her chair laughing. Lila trying to outgeek Marc and Nathaniel, comic book fans extraordinaries, was the funniest thing she had ever seen. Even more fun than when Chloe fell in a puddle of mud.

“Ugh, you suck!”

Lila threw the illustrations to the floor, without noticing that Mister Perrault, the art teacher had gotten in the art room just that moment.

“What is going on?”

“This girl who I am still not sure who is” said Marc quickly, as he could see Lila was going to respond something “started trying to impress us with her lies, but since we didn’t believe her, she just threw our work”

“They were being mean to me!” Lila tried to sob, while the other three teens were gathering the stuff she had thrown.

“Regardless of what they might have said, I caught you on the act of trying to destroy the work of art they had done for Marinette, and if there is something I will not tolerate in my club, is precisely that. Follow me to the Principal’s office… whoever you are.”

The trio smiled. Marinette couldn’t help but worry at Lila being akumatized yet again, but she also wanted to put some input on her “super hero” persona that Marc and Nathaniel had created with so much love for her.

——-

Art Teacher has no canon name, so I landed in “Perrault” after searching for french last names. If you don’t know who Charles Perrault is, I weep for your childhood.

And I do accept suggestions for “Fashionette” canon name, which would be also my Akumanette, should I ever write one.

#miraculous ladybug #ml fic #ml fiction #ml au #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #lila rossi #marc anciel #nathaniel kurtzberg #ml oneshot #ml Lila Gets Exposed #ml salt #ml salt fic

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portpebble · 4 years

Text

New Episode Liveblog

Disclaimer: The owner of this blog loves all the sides and will not post hate on any of them. I may not love every opinion or decision that said character makes but that is because no character is perfect. I Stan Everyone. Thank you.

Thinking about responding honestly, but quickly deleting it, thats relatable repression baby!

The music??? IS DIFFERENT???

WHY IS THIS MUSIC SUCH A BOP

Oh my god, Thomas is absolutely pissed.

Patton trying to let Thomas be angry while also trying to give him advice youre doing amazing sweetie

Take a shot everytime they say ‘f’

NEW SONG????

NEW SONG!!!!!

THIS IS SO FREAKING COOOOOL

This song is a bop, but my ADHD is going crazy its so fasssst but so goooood

Wait this is Ace Attonery

Roman, youre allowed to make mistakes bby

...ways to preDICT THE FUTURE “No!” “Hhn- ghfk- hngh- very good”

Roman are you okay? Did you get your house filled with feral cats? Roman? You alright there? ROMAN?

“Those baby making catholics” fgghkhk Roman I love youuuuu

Patton really do be bringing out the logic in this one huh, is this ep about empathy? Sounds very empathy-ish

Foresight seems to be the focus so far, but I don’t think that’ll carry through the whole ep

“Hes a jolly good fellow!” jdkhkgfhkhg

Oop, we’re back to the good person dialema (he made the “good” decision tho??)

Roman’s insults gfkhgkhk stOP youre supposed to be this mANS CONFIDENCE OH NOOOOO

“A bagel??? :DDD” ROMAN I FELT THAT (Also didn’t this happen before with switched rolls I feel like it did???)

Pokemon!

A gamesssssssssssssssstORE

“They should cost a little outdoor time” I sure hope not.

The little Thomas sprite pointing at the sign is so cute!

AT LEAST SIXTEEN GRAPHICS PATTON I LOVE YOU SM

Is it just me or does Roman’s voice just sound a bit different this ep?

Oh yeah, its all coming together

Roman is like “please do not assault the actor for the hotdog, thank you.”

OOP- ThEres the double standard!!!

LOGAN!!!

Roman clicking the Ignorant button and Logan looking just so done ugggh I missed our boys bickering in the last episode

.... jesus christ super star :((((

Roman reading Logan’s little fact for him is super cute

I think its okay to do a good thing because it makes you happy because if youre happy that good things are being done than that makes you good (sorry, thats pretty much incomprehensible)

Patton’s trying so hard to not push his opinions, but he needs to realize said opinions arent set in stone

yeeaaebeahab- go- Patton, I hope you know you are the cutest

Yall know Im a Patton kinnie, but I agree with Roman (maybe thats the therapy talking)

Hey this is really wholesome actually! We love Patton and Thomas trying to give Roman an open and supportive enviroment to express his opinions on the matter

Oh hey! The music is 8-bit Deceit’s theme!

You can get the reward while still caring, gosh this one’s so good because I agree with each character’s points ahhhh!

I agree with Thomas, they’re different scenarios.

Thomas: Am I not allowed to feel good for doing something good? Logan’s little box: 0.0 Oop-

Yeah, I thought this ep was going to about empathy

OH I HATE THIS SCENARIO I HATE THE TROLLEY THING AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I cant read Logan’s little facts while also listening hElp-

The T word gfhjlkjlghg

Oh no! Logan’s box goes crazy I cant read all that!

RIP Logan’s box, you will be missed but only a little bit.

Also, I love how calm this argument is, I was really worried for this ep because I didnt want Roman and Patton to be mad at one another but they’re both handling it so well, hense Roman helping Patton with the little box

klghkljlkg he has become the mustache

Oh no! Logan! Patton, NO!

Yeah, the pity thing was kind of confusing

ROMAN BBY NOOO

Roman: I have been doing a bad job Thomas & Patton: STFU TOP TEN REASONS WHY YOU ARE WRONG NUMBER ONE I LOVE YOU

Thomas is not okay, Thomas is too relatable.

SELF CARE TIME SELF CARE TIME

OOOOOOO PATTON I FEEL YOU THERE BUD ACK

WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA PATTON IS A FROG AND I CANT UNDERSTAND WHAT HES SAYING AHHHHHHHHH

LILYPADTON FDHKJHFKJHKJHLHLK

PATTON PUT LESLIE DOWN

HEY STARDEW VALLEY MY TWO HYPERFIXATIONS MERGED INTO ONE

TTHAnk you Logan!

WAIT HAS HE BEEN DECEIT THE WHOLE TIME OH MY GOD (YESSSSSSSS LOVING THIS)

OOOOO Deceit has a little cane, I KNEW there was a reason I always felt the need to draw him with one

AHHHHHHH WHEN HE SHOT AT DECEIT HE JUST HIT THOMAS NONONONO

Oh? Patton agreeing with Deceit? This is very good.

Oh hey, these are the characters from one of the vines he made

“oh, Logan I-” “PETER SINGER IS AN AUSTRAILIAN-”

Wow, today’s episode really keeps saying Loceit and Royality rights, huh?

(valley girl voice) Whatever, sure, if thats your thing

Deceit really do be out here being my therapist now I suppose?

Roman, love, its okay to make mistakes

Deceit redemption arc is in full swing ba-

:OOOOOOOOOOO

I HAD A HUNCH THAT WE MIGHT GET HIS NAME

HIS NAME IS JANUS GUYS HIS NAME IS JANUS AHHHHHHHHh

ROMAN STOP BULLYING JANUS CHALLENGE

JANUS STOP BULLYING ROMAN CHALLENGE

Oh my god, Roman looks so hurt, oh my god

Remus watching Deceit refer to him as the evil twin: Remus watching Roman be offended at being compared to him:

ROMANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

PATTON THANK YOU

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

ROCEIT IS DEAD AND I AM CRYING BY ITS BODY

Janus be like: Im sorry, the sass jumped out

“Im so sorry LESLIE” fjgkllljlkjhklgjlkvbjklgjklvjklvjklhglkvblkgjlkv

Janus: Be Gay, Do Crime Patton: Right Now, Not the Time

JANUS ACCEPTANCE ARC YAYYYYYYYY

PATTON I LOVE YOU

Janus: Patton is asleep, post murder plots

LOVE YOU JANUS BBBBBBYYYYYYEEEEEEE

This episode hit home very hard, thank you for the free therapy session Mr. Sanders.

Lee and Mary Lee, I love you already you huge dorks

WOW MOCIET GOT RIGHTS THIS EPISODE HOLY COW

#patton sanders #roman sanders #deceit sanders #janus sanders #Which I will be using as well as Deceit Sanders for now btw #thomas sanders #ts spoilers #Putting Others First #remus sanders #he's mentioned but breifly #liveblog #tw bold #tw caps #logan sanders #almost forgot him IM SORRY

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chid-sen-gan-blog · 5 years

Text

So, Just Got Into It with Some Dany Stans...

And they wanted to know what I had against their fav. So, while I usually try not to get into long-winded opinion posts (because, honestly, who wants to hear me rant?), I figured I do owe at least an explanation for my Anti-Dany stance, and decided to set the record straight.

(Warning: These are my personal feelings and opinions. Obviously I don't speak for everyone, so please don't assume this is a general consensus. Also, I apologize if I offend anyone; this isn't meant as a personal attack.)

💠💠💠

For anyone that follows me, this should come as no surprise. I don’t like Daenerys, and I never have - not since I first started watching the show during Season 2, not when I backpedaled and watched Season 1, not during her conquering spree in Essos, not ever. I find her storyline cliche, her triumphs contrived, and her character grating. Season 7 did precious little to endear me to her, either; matter of fact, it only made things worse.

Daenerys to me is a modern-day Disney princess, if that princess was written as a mostly blank-slate Mary Sue with no real stakes left in her tale; propped up by questionable deeds and unearned accomplishments marketed as “feminism”, and shielded from critics and the like because of “girl power”.

I’m not invested in her story because there’s no reason for me to be. Her struggles, on the rare occasions she has them, are always quickly resolved - resolved very rarely by her own actions - and she tends to emerge from them with far more than she entered with. For a series like Game of Thrones, which prides itself on pushing boundaries and subverting expectations, Daenerys’ supposed “feel good” journey comes off as old hat, and stands out like a sore thumb.

My biggest problem with the character, however, is that I can’t, for the life of me, tell what her arc is supposed to be. She often switches from benevolent freedom fighter to totalitarian monarch so quickly it gives me whiplash, and always does so with fairly little regard for the consequences these switches bring. Which, for someone we’ve been told over and over again is a hero - someone we’ve practically been conditioned to like - is a bit jarring, to say the least.

While it’s certainly no secret that Game of Thrones has a plethora of morally gray characters, the difference between them and Daenerys lies with how they’re presented. The Starks have had their dark moments, but has there ever been a doubt in our minds that they were the good guys? Cersei, on more than one occasion, has earned our sympathy, but have we ever actually pondered if she’s really a villain? Characters like Jaime and The Hound have grown from antagonists to fan favorites over the series, but both had a specific turning point; a moment that showed them in a different light, and made it clear that we were now meant to root for them, rather than against them.

Daenerys, though, has none of this. We’re told she’s a hero, when her moments of glory are undercut with white savior imagery and, more often than not, ashes and screams. She earns our sympathy, but she herself seems to have very little to spare when it’s of no benefit to her. She has multiple points throughout the show when we’re told we’re supposed to root for her, but just as many that set us on edge, as well. And if all of these unsettling details aren’t leading to something grander in Daenerys’ story - if they're simply there for shock value without any pay-off - then, I’m sorry, it’s just bad writing. There are blurred lines and then there are double standards, and Daenerys has long since become a beacon for the latter, rather than a complex example of the former.

Do I believe that her story will eventually take a darker route? Yes, I do. But do I want it to? Honestly, no. I sincerely want to cheer for her. I want to love her character. And I've been wanting to do so for seven fricking seasons. But since it’s been impossible for me with how her journey’s played out so far - with how glorified she is by the fanbase no matter her actions - I think the only thing that might be able to salvage her character (in my eyes) is is a true, conrete heel!turn.

Simply put, if something doesn’t change and change soon, Daenerys Targaryen will continue to be my least favorite character on Game of Thrones. And that’s a real shame.

tl;dr: I don’t like Daenerys for multiple reasons, I wish that I could, but I think the only way that would happen is if she alters her current course.

#anti daenerys #anti targ restoration #anti dany stans #dark dany #april is thrones month #sorry about potential typos and incoherencies #i hope this makes sense but it probably doesn't #i don't usually write my opinions in length because i'm horrible at it #also because no one really wants to hear what i say or at least i assume

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tinkdw · 6 years

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I'm really torn about Mary. I love that she's a strong, independent woman and I'm rooting for her romance with Bobby. But tbh, I don't feel like she really wants to be Sam and Dean's mother. To me, their relationship feels more like hunting allies or distant relatives than immediate family. So I'm trying to understand Mary more. You mentioned family responsibilities. How would Mary interpret that? Do you think she sees being emotionally or physically nurturing to her sons as a weakness?

Hi!

I love Mary thanks for asking :)

I’d recommend you scroll my Mary Fucking Winchester tag, I’m quite vocal about my POV of her, how she’s absolutely and clearly “not just a mom” and a wholly independent person in her own right.

Whilst it’s understandable that some people struggle with her apparent “not caring” about the boys I just… I can’t with this POV. It’s so friggin misogynistic (often it also comes from those who love John which just NO NO NOPEDY NO TAKE A SEAT).

Mary died a horrible death. She then lived in Heaven with an ideal perfect life with her two babies who she clearly LOVED. She was then unceremoniously resurrected into a world which from the first moments was horrific enough that she might believe it to be Hell (I’m reminded of Buffy so much with her storyline). One of her kids is kidnapped and tortured and the other is a hunter, something that was literally the last thing she wanted for them. Of course she struggles with the WORLD, with her whole life basically, Sam and Dean are just a part of that…

She then put herself second to them and tried to protect them by working with the MoL. Of course it didn’t work out but doing the wrong thing for the right reasons is literally a right of passage for Winchesters. We cannot have double standards here, Sam Dean and Cas have all done this kind of thing at some point - because they love each other. That was her motivation. To protect them.

Because she loves them.

Is she a cardboard cutout cookie baking apron wearing cutesy pie tucks them in to bed at night mom? No. But she WAS. We know that from Heaven and flashbacks and the pilot. That was Mary. But Mary now is tortured, she’s come into this harsh world and is just trying to do her best.

I don’t think she views being physically or emotionally nurturing to her boys as a weakness at all, I think she just is/was struggling with who they are, what her life is in general. It’s not a choice to be removed and frozen with them (she literally broke out of that in 12x22 right? She was giving all the hugs after that then got stuck in an alternate universe, not really her fault!), she was just struggling with life in general and Hell I know plenty of depressed, anxiety driven people who would say that’s exactly how we act - remove yourself physically and emotionally. I mean this is also a Winchester classic in itself too lets not forget.

So yeah I have huge respect for her storyline since she came back. I do think part of the problem in fandom with people disliking her is Sam Smith’s (by choice maybe as she’s tortured idk?) quite frozen acting but as I say perhaps this is a choice, it makes it hard to really gel with her emotions though, you have to really delve as I do understand on a top level she seems to not care sometimes but the thing is her words and actions show she cares IMMENSELY. If she was more emotive I think it would be clearer but the words, the actions, they all prove one thing, that she loves them and has struggled with herself and her life so much, she’s got so much going on and no, the boys are not the freaking centre of the universe no matter what J2 stans think. Whilst at the same time I re-emphasise that Mary’s actions have continually been to protect her boys. She worked with the MoL despite her best instincts and literally punched Lucifer in the face and got sucked into a different universe to protect them!

Lets give her a little slack!

I really look forward to her storyline as it’s so brilliant for her own right but it’s also so key as I keep saying for Sam, Dean and Cas’ arcs but especially Dean’s - to see her accepting who she really is, what her life is, what she wants and to go get it unapologetically. Hell, I’m even half expecting some kind of mentioning at some point that her whole life was a lie since the moment she met John and was forced to love him by a Cupid, she bloody well deserves her own life back and to be and do what she wants, finally! After so many years of duty, responsibility and being horrifically manipulated by others for their end.

It stuck out to me so much when she said to Ketch that all she’s ever had is her WILL and that just floored me because she doesn’t even know she didn’t have that, that she was manipulated into loving John, that her whole adult life was based on a lie, it’s just so horrifically TRAGIC.

So her getting a happy ending and finally who she wants to be?! YES!

Which is all just such a huge exposition and mirror for our boys.

Which leads me to my satisfied face as her story is just continuing further and further down the route I expected and wanted to clearly lead to and give us this happy ending for THEM.

Excellent :)

#Mary fucking winchester #Mary winchester #supernatural #tinks meta #season 14 speculation

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fideidefenswhore · 5 months

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The double standards for Anne and Mary compared to Jane and Mary always baffles me. So when Anne prioritizes her own child and safety she's a bitch, but when Jane does the exact same thing (when her child doesn't even exist yet) it's not only ok, it's ignored. Because thinking about it breaks the saccharine love show people are weirdly invested in. Anne fighting for Elizabeth's rights is treated like it doesn't matter, or played down completely to pretend she only wanted Mary recognizing her marriage because she's......evil? Idk. And she got a kick out of it? But Mary needing to do it for Jane is....ok? Right? Fair? It makes no sense when Mary fights against recognizing Anne she's so brave and her stans are outraged she ever be expected to "lower herself" but when she gives in later it's no big deal Henry and Jane demanding it? And whatever Mary went through during Anne's time was the sickest cruelty and all what Anne planned, but with Jane, it never happened, or it's suddenly all Henry and Jane.....was too nice to stand up to him? It's like Mary accepting she's illegitimate is horrific when it's for Anne but some boring i-am-not-a-robot check box task she's we've gotta get out the way when it's for Jane. Like if Mary had gone on resisting do they think Jane would've been cool with it?

Well, we don't really know if "Jane demanded it", actually given the contemporary evidence that seems unlikely (although tbf it's murky...in May 1536 Chapuys claims she's actually argued for Mary's total restoration, but in June 1536 there's another report from another source that she 'begged [the King] on her knees five times' to not arrest Mary--not 'restore her'-- which is often conflated with the former to do the same, by July 1536 Chapuys claims all she’s done is beg Henry not to arrest Mary, not restore her). Tl; dr if her opinion on this was drastically different from HVIII's at the outset, she seems to have conformed to his rather quickly, was more the point I was trying to make there.

but some boring i-am-not-a-robot check box task

*Forgot to address this one:

Like if Mary had gone on resisting do they think Jane would've been cool with it?

Yeah, that’s also sort of the thing, although apparently she did want Mary to resist anything but perhaps apology and HVIII to concede and reinstate her as heir. Whether she’d come to regret that, had it succeeded, when Jane had a son or daughter remains another question…

But yeah, anyways, I don’t think Jane would’ve been warm towards her had Mary refused to acknowledge her as Queen (which, if we take Mary’s Title Act seriously, was what she actually believed … although if you subscribe to Loades’ theories, it wasn’t what she believed then, but what she came to believe, and her conformity of the summer of 1536 was genuine ‘conversion’), called her ‘Lady Jane’ and the ‘King’s mistress’ as she had AB. Nothing is impossible but I don’t find that… probable.

Edit:

Just kidding, Chapuys’ report and the Bishop of Faenza’s were muddled in my memory, here we go:

This last wife is said to be much loved by the subjects, both because she is very gentle and good, and because she has five times thrown herself publicly at the King's feet, requesting him to send for his daughter and declare her Princess, a thing which has greatly moved the people.

Although, instructive that praise of Jane from this group (the above Bishop, Reginald Pole, even Chapuys to some extent) ebbs away once news travels that she hasn’t effected Princess Mary’s restoration, after all. The praise thus seems like it was rather conditional.

#anon #if jane actually demanded it behind the scenes then she definitely had everybody fooled #bcus there was no record of that #so like not impossible but i think unlikely....#mind there were really no parties as personally invested in her denouement and curbing her influence as there was #for the boleyn party #i doubt she was like this complete serene angel that never had any outbursts of temper...ever #it's just that if she did no one really.... cared #and in the context of an absolute travesty of justice whose indictment included LAUGHING AT HVIII'S CLOTHES AND POETRY AND MUSIC.......#flattering hviii became more vital than ever before and as such you had to flatter his choice of wife #as for the second report if it's true he ignored her -- it says 'rudely rebuffed' --#which speaks to such a minimal influence in intercession #that it's hard to understand why she thought the same for the monasteries would be effectual in october 1536...but i digress

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maevelin · 7 years

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I don't mean to be rude, but' i'm genuinely confused. I understand liking Nesta, but I don't know how you would love her so much knowing that she was this abusive : "...Feyre, you’ll have no one left to remember you, or to care that you ever existed.” "No one in this family cares about you and we would all be happier if you were dead”. "You stink like a pig covered in its own filth. Can’t you at least try to pretend that you’re not an ignorant peasant?” and many moreeeee

“I think Nesta feels everything— sees too much; sees and feels it all. And she burns with it. Keeping that wall up helps from being overwhelmed, from caring too greatly.”

“You know nothing about who I am, and what I’ve done and what I want.“

“What happened to Tomas Mandray?” I asked, the words strangled.“I realized he wouldn’t have gone with me to save you from Prythian.”

“He stole you away into the night…It wasn’t right.”

“But beneath the wall, I witnessed children - entire families - starve to death. Were it not for my sister…I would be among them.”

And many moreeeeee.

And all that while we have only one side of the story and not a clear picture since we only got Feyre’s PoV. For every example you put here for Nesta’s abusive behavior I can present an action of hers that showed remorse and love and sacrifice for Feyre. And yet somehow those do matter in this equation at all.

What surprises me here however is that somehow people are ready to be confused and jump to conclusions and ask explanations as to why someone likes a fictional character. As if there has to even be a reason for liking a character as if it is wrong to love it and therefore you need to explain your thoughts and motives for daring to like a fictional character.

This truly baffles my to be honest. Also a helpful reminder. When you send an ask to someone starting with the phrase ‘I don’t mean to - insert whatever word’ then the receiver of that ask will immediately get into defensive mode because chances are that what the sender did not mean to be actually…is.

Generally speaking however I can like whatever I like without having to explain myself. Fiction is not reality. And what attracts one person to liking certain things in fiction is a matter of personal taste and …you know…different strokes for different folks.

Nesta Archeron is a fully developed character. The side you showed in your ask (which I am not excusing because I do not have to pretend as if it is not there in order to like Nesta) is only a part of Nesta’s characterization. In order for me at least to like a character I need to eventually go through their journey and progression and then decide. Personally I liked Nesta from the very beginning. Why? Because she was not a character that we have seen a thousand times on repeat in the YA genre over and over and over again. That alone made her a breath of fresh air in a collection of anachronistic cliches to which Feyre succumbs to in every aspect and form for most parts in the trilogy to the point where in the last book became practically a bland character with no characterization. But liking is not the same as genuinely loving and as I saw more sides and layers in Nesta I came to love her. I came to love her cold exterior and the fear that lurks underneath. I came to understand how closed off she is. I came to see her struggle with her inability to express emotion. I came to see her mental disorders. I saw the battle that raged inside her. I came to love the little things and those that were left untold when it came to her. I came to like the realistic parts of her portrayal.

When Acotar began it was obvious that the author wanted to give a Cinderella presentation (so to immediately make Feyre more likable) and did not care for Nesta or Elain aside from showing them as the bad fairytale sisters. They were there simply to play that role (which really made me roll my eyes) and then Sjmaas decided to change her tune and showed more layers. And -for me at least- …it worked.

Yes Nesta is problematic. Yes she is an asshole.You won’t find any arguments there from me.

Nesta is a flawed character. She is not the typical ya heroine. She is not a certain typecast of the Mary Sue protagonist. She also presents characteristics that are both female (propriety, lady mannerisms, dress code etc) and male (rage, unapologetic selfishness etc). She is intelligent and not a warrior. She does not need to yield a sword in order to be a badass. She is not a tomboy in the way tomboy girls are unrealistically presented in these kind of books. She shows characteristics that when are shown in male characters then they appear sexy and hot and their behavior is always excused while when women show the very same characteristics they must always apologize and be condemned for them. I am sorry but I would rather see and like a rude, loud, damaged, unapologetic, flawed and angry asshole lady rather than a picture perfect snowflake at any day. I can LOVE a character without expecting them to be moral or good or even nice. This is fiction after all.

I want to relate to characters. I want to see their flaws, I want to feel them. I want their layers. I want their aggression and their emotional blockage and their depression and their anger and I do not want them to be sorry for it or change their character so to become…likable or loved by others. I want them to speak with actions instead of words. I want them to be consistent. I want them to not be perfect. I do not want the author to spoon feed me any redemption for me to like them or hit me with constant dialogue and exposition so to tolerate a character and come to like it. I do not want one character to be condemned because another is in the highlight and can do nothing wrong which is hypocritical most of the times...and a lie. I want a character that has meat and bones and down to the marrow I can sink my teeth in them and still find more things to explore instead of the same old same old we meet in certain types of literature constantly.

Grey characters are interesting. Morally flawed characters are interesting. Characters that are conflicting and bring conflict are interesting. Female characters of that sort are hella interesting for me.

And because Nesta is an amalgamation of all those traits I came to not only like her but love her. I stan her. I want to read more about her. I am here for her as a character.

On the other hand let me tell you that I also adore Rhysand. Like I live and breathe. And no one is confused when people like Rhysand. No one was even confused when people expressed their love for Rhysand during the first book when we did not have his explanations and excuses for his actions and behaviors. Most people adored Rhysand in acomaf before the chapter in the cabin came. Most people did not even bat an eye when it came to how ‘normal’ it was for Rhysand to have such a fanbase in the acotar fandom even before acomaf was published.

I do not judge people for loving Rhysand (hell I am one of them and I do not want to relate only with moral characters in fiction) but I cannot stand the double standards here.

No one asked me why I like Rhysand. Rhysand that can be manipulative and abusing and secretive and an asshole. Like the way he treated Morrigan in acowar for example. People keep on seeing nothing wrong in him but that does not apply to other characters.

We are still talking about Rhysand that despite his reasoning abused Feyre too. The fact that an abusive action can be understood or explained or ‘excused’ does not negate the abuse no matter the reasons one may have. People seem to somehow forget or excuse that and give a pass to Rhysand as a character AND to people that like Rhysand despite it. The fact that Feyre forgave him or decided it to avert her eyes from his behavior and the author decided to pretend that Rhysand is a feminist and a character that can do no wrong and must be put in a pedestal does not negate his abuse or how interesting as a character he is (at least in the first two books). The fact that he drugged Feyre and treated her the way he did still remains a fact. Or that in acomaf he purposely sent her to the weaver in a situation that could have led to her death which was during a time that she had severe PTSD and could be triggered and further damaged. Or the way he treated Morrigan when it came to her abusers and the way he acted towards her taking away from her all of her agency. And do not even let me start on the suicide pact he made with Feyre while he should know better since he is over 500 years old while Feyre is not even 20. The fact that the author decides to sugarcoat that behavior and even glamorize it as healthy does not change it from being problematic and yet it is constantly praised.

It is praised when it comes to Rhysand but not when it comes to Nesta. Imagine that really.

No one argues about how Rhysand is likable despite being a grey amoral character and an asshole. The fact that he uses honey in his words and not vinegar like Nesta does not change his amorality.

Is it a matter of nobility and motives? Like those Nesta showed when she wanted to save kids and stood up in the High Lords meeting and wanted to sacrifice her life in the war? Is it because Rhysand was abused UtM when Nesta was abused when she was thrown into the cauldron (which we do not even know how much time passed for her in there). Is it because he was a rape victim because Nesta can have Tomas Mandray for that. Is it because despite his PTSD he stood up defending his ideals just like Nesta did? Is it because he is an extrovert while Nesta an introvert? Is it because he loved Feyre despite the abusive moments? Because Nesta’s actions also show love towards Feyre. Is it because of the romance? Because sibling love and rivalry can be just as interesting. Is it because Rhysand’s honest actions in contract with Nesta’s that are also there.Is it because Feyre loves and forgave Rhysand so the fandom has too and be alright with it and not expect more from him? Because the last time I checked Feyre loves her sisters to death and forgives them and is ready to go down for them but the readers choose to ignore that. When Feyre called the names of those she loved in her list inside her head to give her strength both under the mountain and when she was a spy in the spring court Nesta was always there but people act as if that should not be the case despite the fact that Nesta is Feyre’s family and in families you forgive.

Or is it because Rhysand is a man and does not have to excuse himself especially since the writing favors him even beyond reason and logic while Nesta is a woman so she will have to be judged -by far- more harshly and the people that like her must always explain why they like her as if they should not?

I can’t help but wonder.

In the end I don’t necessarily have to filter everything I read in fiction through a politically correct perspective and apply to the fictional things I like a real life way of thinking. At least not all the way through.

In the end I can just like characters either they are heroes or villains or in the between or nothing of that sort.

And Nesta is one of the character that has won me over. With her bad traits and her good traits. With her dark moments and her moments of light. With her wrongdoings and her ideals. She is not perfect. And I would never expect her to be. And I actually love her exactly because she is not that. I would take an imperfect character any time of the day. Just I have done with Scarlett O’Hara and now Nesta Archeron. They are my jam I can’t help it.

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