Anyway while we're speculating about the end of atn here's a selection of some of tamsyn muir's other endings (spoilers for most of her short stories):
girl & her love interest elope to live under the sea as an eldritch power couple
woman's best friend agrees to move in with her which makes her magical house happy
ghoul and the creature in her dead girlfriend's body walk off into the sunset after destroying their enemies
princess kills a dragon and then she and her love interest go into business together as professional monsters
well one does end with the protag becoming a cannibal and staying with the guy who tricked her into it so you've got me there
monster women overrun a town
a ghost gets revenge
Quite a few of the endings strike an unsettling tone in which you're not quite sure what you got was a happy ending, but the protagonists did walk away better off than they started. That's similar to what I expect from the atn ending too
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I want to make a longer post about this someday but: I think Arya's TWOW arc is going to include her coming to terms with her identity as a Lady. This has been an ongoing conflict with her since her first chapter and I think her flowering in winds is going to mark a turning point. The theory of her having an apprenticeship with the courtesans holds a lot of weight and the idea of Arya going through puberty among a group of unconventional women she's fostered a positive relationship with is just too perfect. It would really have an impact on Arya reconciling her personal idea of what a Lady should be. There's also a lot that she could learn from them in terms of courtesies, communication, appearances, body-language, etc. that would elevate her current skill-set and ways her relationship with them could push the plot.
Not to mention she will undoubtedly reclaim her identity as Arya Stark, and her being a Lady is inseparable from that. Arya Stark is a Lady Stark and being a Lady is a social position, not a measure of how well someone preforms feminine tasks. She shouldn't have to relinquish her position because she doesn't fit patriarchal standards. That's not to say that she's ever going to be the perfect example of a traditional Lady but what I think will happen is that she becomes capable of playing the part. She plays several identities throughout the series but she's always been Arya underneath, so I think it's appropriate that she learns to adopt a "persona" that's part of her. Her remembering Ned putting on his "Lord's face" (+ the various examples of other characters being separate from their ruling persona) makes me think that Arya will be donning her "Lady's face" when she makes a return to Westeros.
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Me watching period dramas from multiple counties and thinking to myself... what really brings humans together across time, culture, and country is our desire to exhibit our wealth by having extraordinarily fancy sleeves.
"Do you doubt my great wealth and power? Have you seen my sleeves? The lace is VERY FINE! LOOK HOW MUCH UNNECESSARY FABRIC THERE IS! Did you notice that they have embroidery? BOW BEFORE MY MAGNIFICENT ARM COVERINGS!!!"
And yet today, where are our fancy sleeves?
WHERE ARE THEY?
This is clearly where modern society has gone wrong...
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something to be said for the fact that people have enough self-control to write a full thesis on why it’s still ok to listen to misogynistic music but cannot themselves go a single day without streaming the misogynistic music. we uphold the culture of misogyny every time we stream it or add it to a playlist etc even if we don’t agree with the lyrics. like. how is this not clicking. it’s direct support. most likely no one is ever gonna tap dance out from behind a bush and ask you for your nuanced opinion on it, and it wouldn’t even matter if they did if you’ve already given that artist and label uncountable reasons to keep making this kind of music cuz we keep telling them with our purchasing and streaming and editing and trending power that as long as it’s catchy enough for you they can say whatever they want about women
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“Yes, Proviso, I am aware you were sleeping and that it’s 3am. Yes I also know you just worked a 12 hour shift and aren’t scheduled again til tomorrow. But if you could just real quick stop in at the trading post and process our 200 drone deliveries orders that would be great. You can go back to your break afterwards, okay? Thanks so much. Alright now, see back at work in the morning”
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Akio is scary because I could meet him on the street. He could be my cool teacher, or my friend's uncle, or that one guy in the Marines, or some man my father met when he was 16. So many people practice cruelty casually, hidden under a veneer of approachability. Akio doesn't have to be a god to be cruel. Akio is scary because I could talk to him and not notice. I've had enough friends/family/classmates abused that I know that abusers can just be kind of stupid and in a position of power. Treating them as gods/flawless masterminds just elevates their perceived power. If they were actually that suave and intelligent, they wouldn't be in the business of sexually assaulting kids.
yeah. you really do not have to be some master manipulator to take advantage of children, the most vulnerable people in the world. and i guess people who claim he is some kind of mastermind just aren't aware that they in all likelihood have met people like him. that he's everywhere. and, y'know, lucky for them i suppose, that they percieve this kind of abuse as something special and rare that basically only happens in fiction. must be a nice sort of ignorance to have about the world.
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I can't see how the writers still think Skystar's a good person. Like, twelve year old me liked him and thought he was interesting, but I was like twelve. And even I knew he was an irredeemable asshole after Moth Flight's Vision.
If a twelve year old can figure this stuff out I have no idea what these grown ass writers were doing.
DOTC has a thesis, stated in The First Battle, that really explains everything.
"Fear and Greed" is just a fake-deep way to reinvent a Good and Evil dichotomy. Because Clear Sky's abuse comes from a place of fear, it means it's not malicious, unlike a "greedy" cat.
He can be "soothed," ergo, he's a fundamentally good person.
Post-First Battle, the books are focusing constantly on his feelings, how sad it makes him to not be trusted, how happy he is when people are on his side. All while he continues to screech at people who tell him what to do, manipulate and mistreat his son, and even still beats and mauls those who offend him.
But because it's "fear," that doesn't matter. That's a justification, an excuse. The writers don't seem to believe in good and bad actions as much as they do good and bad people. True 'evil' comes from a person who hurts others for the wrong reasons, like 'revenge' or malice.
It's abuse apologia. Plain and simple.
The truth is that abusers don't think of themselves as evil people, and everyone, even you and me, is capable of being toxic or abusive. Talk to those who have been abused and we'll tell you; we often stayed because we "saw the good," or even felt responsible for them. Abuse can be passed down through generations because the kids come to believe the way they were treated was normal and okay.
If you go through life thinking that abuse only comes from evil/greedy people, you won't see it when it happens right in front of you. Fundamental good and evil is childish. Abuse comes from fear all the time.
Abuse is about power and control. Fear of rejection, of losing someone, of pain, those are all very common motivators as the abuser tries to stop them from happening before they even begin. It doesn't MATTER that your abuser is in pain too, you NEVER "deserved" what they did in an attempt to break your legs so you wouldn't run.
But... we can all change. Even the worst of us. It's never too late to stop hurting others, move on to a better life, but some people never will. Skystar loves his power, and he keeps that power no matter how many times he misuses it.
He has no reason to change as long as his cruelty rewards him with status and authority.
But the writers are incapable of recognizing that, because for this entire arc, they were stuck in an absurd view of the world in terms of Fear and Greed. Abuse can be excused if he did it for the "right reason," and that makes him "fundamentally different" from the truly evil villains, Slash and One Eye.
Hopefully, it now makes more sense to you.
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There's something that infuriates me so much about people mocking characters that fall into the "not like other girls" trap, because the reasons girls take on that stance is because they exist in a society that tries to put womanhood and femininity in a restrictive box that tells them who and how they should be.
They're generally mocked and derided for not wishing to conform to stereotypical femininity, but when they lash out in entirely predictable but ultimately unhelpful ways (by being dismissive and rude about other women and femininity in general) instead of understanding that it's a product of growing up in a society that's restricting them and punishing them for not conforming (either by choice or inability) so many people who claim to be feminists choose to mock them or make them out to be the cause of the problem rather than a symptom. Whether its being mocked in real life, or watching people deride the fictional characters they relate to, this behaviour just alienates those girls even further into thinking that the issue is other women, and confirms their belief that women who are typically feminine will only ever be derisive toward them and that they're somehow fundamentally different from other women.
If you know someone who thinks along those "I'm not like other girls" lines instead of mocking them try directing them towards resources that can help them understand where that harmful rhetoric comes from, and when you're critiquing characters that fit that mold try to consider why they behave that way, and what girls who see themselves in those characters take from your commentary.
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