#rant about fanon

[eyayah-oya]

Hi! About your answer for D. May I ask, what upset you the most in how fandom and canon portrait the Bad Batch?

This is a good question!

Canon is easier to answer so I’ll do that one first. I’ll put it under a read more so it’s not a super long post.

THESE ARE MY OWN PERSONAL OPINIONS AND ARE IN NO WAY AN ATTACK ON PEOPLE THAT ENJOY TBB AND THE CHARACTERS!! PLEASE ENJOY YOUR IDEAS, HEADCANONS, AND STORIES ABOUT THEM. I RESPECT THAT. PLEASE RESPECT THAT I AM ALLOWED TO HAVE MY OWN OPINIONS TOO.

I’ve always enjoyed shows and movies and books for the characters. To me, plots are secondary to the characters; you can have the most interesting plot in the world but without interesting characters, it would be boring to me. I started watching TBB with high hopes. I generally liked the characters and I was interested to see where the show would take them. (Though I do admit that part of the reason I started the show was because of Echo—he was my hyper fixation at the time.)

Every member of the original Bad Batch is a stereotype of a typical American action movie which I find incredibly boring. The mysterious and badass Hunter/tracker/leader. The snarky and rude sniper who distances himself from others. The muscle who is purely there to show off or be dumb (I hate this one the most). And the annoying nerd who forgets that others aren’t as smart as him.

Now, I recognize that there are a lot of people out there who really like the Bad Batch and the representation they’re given. Hell, a lot of the time I am a lot like Tech: I info dump and show off my knowledge all the time. I used to get called a know-it-all in a derogatory way until I decided to embrace it. It still hurts to get called that though. Anyway, I’m getting off topic. The point is, I’ve seen a lot of posts about how people identify with the Bad Batch, especially Tech. And that’s not my issue with the show and the characters.

My main issue is the development of the characters. Specifically that there was none. None of them changed at all throughout the entirety of the season. We should have seen some development and growth, especially from Echo, but he was barely in the show at all. I wanted to see the Batch worry about Crosshair or try to go and get him back, but he’s almost never mentioned unless he’s actively hunting them in that episode. And then it’s to get away from him. The Batch was hyped up to be this super close knit batch who care about each other above everyone else, including other clones, and yet it seemed like they barely tolerated each other in the show.

Another thing that I struggle with is how the introduction of the Bad Batch takes away one of my favorite themes and lessons in the Clone Wars show. I love that the clones show that you don’t have to be different to be important. You don’t have to have special powers or look different in order to be special. We love the clones. Look at Echo and Fives! They’re fan favorites for good reason. They’re fun characters and yet, besides Fives’s tattoo and goatee, they’re exactly like all the other clones. For someone who has never stood out once in their life, it was incredibly validating for me to see a show where you don’t have to be different to be of worth. The Bad Batch took that away from me. They’re different and because they’re different they’re special, unlike the “regs”. They degrade the other clones and then in the Bad Batch show, the other clones bully them. It never felt right to me, more like the writers were trying to make the Batch out to be pathetic and alone, make others sympathize with them, despite seeing them act the exact same way during TCW. Not to mention, I personally struggle with portrayals of bullying of any kind.

Not to mention all of the blatant whitewashing, ableism, and just idiocy of the way the show was written.

Now on to fanon.

One of the biggest things that I have issues with is the same reason why Anakin apologists annoy me. I’ve found that the Bad Batch fan base tends to write the characters as always in the right. They never acknowledge the mistakes the Batch makes nor do they acknowledge how their actions might hurt someone else. Especially with Crosshair and Hunter. Both of those extremely popular characters made several mistakes in the show, but I rarely saw anyone hold them accountable before I stopped engaging with TBB content.

I also have a big issue with the way people treat Wrecker as though he were a child who doesn’t know anything. He’s incredibly smart. He has to be in order to create the exact kind of bombs he needs or to fire a projectile at something. That all involves complex math and chemistry. He is honestly my favorite of the original batch, but I hate how he’s always portrayed as dumb and childish. I know that maiseey recently got Wookiepedia to change their page on Wrecker and I’m glad about that, but it doesn’t change the way the show and the fan base treats Wrecker. He’s only there as the comedic relief in almost a side show kind of way. And I hate it so much.

I don’t know much about how fanon treats the rest of the batch beyond what I’ve already said. I only really engage with the cloneshipping part of the TCW fandom and I rage-quit TBB before the finale episodes. I don’t think I ever read fanfiction beyond a select few authors who I am friends with. I might not have all of the facts and the fandom might have changed a lot since I last poked at it. If the show was halfway decent (I’m my opinion) I might delve into the fandom, but the show bores, annoys, and frustrates me, so it’s not worth it to me to join a fandom I’m not interested in.

In order to be fair, there are clones from TCW that I don’t like, no matter how much I want to, because of how they’re always portrayed in fandom and fanon. That’s why I took Wooley and made him my own.

Thank you again for the question and I hope I answered it satisfactorily. I’m starting to fall asleep though, so I’m going to end here.

#ask and lizzie answers #tbb critical #rant about canon #rant about fanon #lizzie rants #I tried to be as non-judgemental as possible #it’s great if you like the characters #ship and let ship #love and let love #I chose to hyper fixate on Wooley #and there’s no room left in my brain for anyone else #I like seeing interesting takes though #I still won’t write tbb #and I won’t watch the next season #not worth my time

[kaladinkholins]

Very interesting to me that a certain subset of the BES fandom's favourite iterations of Mizu and Akemi are seemingly rooted in the facades they have projected towards the world, and are not accurate representations of their true selves.

And I see this is especially the case with Mizu, where fanon likes to paint her as this dominant, hyper-masculine, smirking Cool GuyTM who's going to give you her strap. And this idea of Mizu is often based on the image of her wearing her glasses, and optionally, with her cloak and big, wide-brimmed kasa.

And what's interesting about this, to me, is that fanon is seemingly falling for her deliberate disguise. Because the glasses (with the optional combination of cloak and hat) represent Mizu's suppression of her true self. She is playing a role.

Take this scene of Mizu in the brothel in Episode 4 for example. Here, not only is Mizu wearing her glasses to symbolise the mask she is wearing, but she is purposely acting like some suave and cocky gentleman, intimidating, calm, in control. Her voice is even deeper than usual, like what we hear in her first scene while facing off with Hachiman the Flesh-Trader in Episode 1.

This act that Mizu puts on is an embodiment of masculine showboating, which is highly effective against weak and insecure men like Hachi, but also against women like those who tried to seduce her at the Shindo House.

And that brings me to how Mizu's mask is actually a direct parallel to Akemi's mask in this very same scene.

Here, Akemi is also putting up an act, playing up her naivety and demure girlishness, using her high-pitched lilted voice, complimenting Mizu and trying to make small talk, all so she can seduce and lure Mizu in to drink the drugged cup of sake.

So what I find so interesting and funny about this scene, characters within it, and the subsequent fandom interpretations of both, is that everyone seems to literally be falling for the mask that Mizu and Akemi are putting up to conceal their identities, guard themselves from the world, and get what they want.

It's also a little frustrating because the fanon seems to twist what actually makes Mizu and Akemi's dynamic so interesting by flattening it completely. Because both here and throughout the story, Mizu and Akemi's entire relationship and treatment of each other is solely built off of masks, assumptions, and misconceptions.

Akemi believes Mizu is a selfish, cocky male samurai who destroyed her ex-fiance's career and life, and who abandoned her to let her get dragged away by her father's guards and forcibly married off to a man she didn't know. on the other hand, Mizu believes Akemi is bratty, naive princess who constantly needs saving and who can't make her own decisions.

These misconceptions are even evident in the framing of their first impressions of each other, both of which unfold in these slow-motion POV shots.

Mizu's first impression of Akemi is that of a beautiful, untouchable princess in a cage. Swirling string music in the background.

Akemi's first impression of Mizu is of a mysterious, stoic "demon" samurai who stole her fiance's scarf. Tense music and the sound of ocean waves in the background.

And then, going back to that scene of them together in Episode 4, both Mizu and Akemi continue to fool each other and hold these assumptions of each other, and they both feed into it, as both are purposely acting within the suppressive roles society binds them to in order to achieve their goals within the means they are allowed (Akemi playing the part of a subservient woman; Mizu playing the part of a dominant man).

But then, for once in both their lives, neither of their usual tactics work.

Akemi is trying to use flattery and seduction on Mizu, but Mizu sees right through it, knowing that Akemi is just trying to manipulate and harm her. Rather than give in to Akemi's tactics, Mizu plays with Akemi's emotions by alluding to Taigen's death, before pinning her down, and then when she starts crying, Mizu just rolls her eyes and tells her to shut up.

On the opposite end, when Mizu tries to use brute force and intimidation, Akemi also sees right through it, not falling for it, and instead says this:

"Under your mask, you're not the killer you pretend to be."

Nonetheless, despite the fact that they see a little bit through each other's masks, they both still hold their presumptions of each other until the very end of the season, with Akemi seeing Mizu as an obnoxious samurai swooping in to save the day, and Mizu seeing Akemi as a damsel in distress.

And what I find a bit irksome is that the fandom also resorts to flattening them to these tropes as well.

Because Mizu is not some cool, smooth-talking samurai with a big dick sword as Akemi (and the fandom) might believe. All of that is the facade she puts up and nothing more. In reality, Mizu is an angry, confused and lonely child, and a masterful artist, who is struggling against her own self-hatred. Master Eiji, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.

And Akemi, on the other hand, is not some girly, sweet, vain and spoiled princess as Mizu might believe. Instead she has never cared for frivolous things like fashion, love or looks, instead favouring poetry and strategy games instead, and has always only cared about her own independence. Seki, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.

But neither is she some authoritative dominatrix, though this is part of her new persona that she is trying to project to get what she wants. Because while Akemi is willful, outspoken, intelligent and authoritative, she can still be naive! She is still often unsure and needs to have her hand held through things, as she is still learning and growing into her full potential. Her new parental/guardian figure, Madame Kaji, knows this as well.

So with all that being said, now that we know that Mizu and Akemi are essentially wearing masks and putting up fronts throughout the show, what would a representation of Mizu's and Akemi's true selves actually look like? Easy. It's in their hair.

This shot on the left is the only time we see Mizu with her hair completely down. In this scene, she's being berated by Mama, and her guard is completely down, she has no weapon, and is no longer wearing any mask, as this is after she showed Mikio "all of herself" and tried to take off the mask of a subservient housewife. Thus, here, she is sad, vulnerable, and feeling small (emphasised further by the framing of the scene). This is a perfect encapsulation of what Mizu is on the inside, underneath all the layers of revenge-obsession and the walls she's put around herself.

In contrast, the only time we Akemi with her hair fully down, she is completely alone in the bath, and this scene takes place after being scorned by her father and left weeping at his feet. But despite all that, Akemi is headstrong, determined, taking the reigns of her life as she makes the choice to run away, but even that choice is reflective of her youthful naivety. She even gets scolded by Seki shortly after this in the next scene, because though she wants to be independent, she still hasn't completely learned to be. Not yet. Regardless, her decisiveness and moment of self-empowerment is emphasised by the framing of the scene, where her face takes up the majority of the shot, and she stares seriously into the middle distance.

To conclude, I wish popular fanon would stop mischaracterising these two, and flattening them into tropes and stereotypes (ie. masculine badass swordsman Mizu and feminine alluring queen but also girly swooning damsel Akemi), all of which just seems... reductive. It also irks me when Akemi is merely upheld as a love interest and romantic device for Mizu and nothing more, when she is literally Mizu's narrative foil (takes far more narrative precedence over romantic interest) and the deuteragonist of this show. She is her own person. That is literally the theme of her entire character and arc.

#blue eye samurai #mizu blue eye samurai #akemi blue eye samurai #blue eye samurai meta #just in case... im gonna tag this as #mizukemicritical #akemizucritical #though this post isnt actually criticising the ship itself but rather fanon's portrayal of the ship and the characters #for that reason lemme also tag this as #wank.mp3 #feel free to disagree of course but please be civil #and if you need to rant about how wrong i am without any convincing evidence kindly feel free to make your own post. peace and love <3 #fandom.rtf #meta dissertations.pdf #shut up haydar #edit: for full disclosure. i do rather dislike this ship. but obviously it's fine for anyone to enjoy it. please do! have your fun! #it's just that as usual! popular fanon and fandom around a ship is what has completely deterred me from any sense of enjoyment of it #it's a shame too because i was very open and even eager for some mizu/akemi romance in the future #but out-of-character fanon + the rudeness of certain fans has definitely soured it for me #but that doesn't mean people can't enjoy it obviously! ship and let ship!!! #plus it has its appeal which i DO STILL see and enjoy!!!! #i would even go as far as to call them soulmates because their narratives and characters are LITERALLY intertwined!!! #but. yeah. my gradual distaste for this ship is indeed very unfortunate.

[utilitycaster]

Wait sorry I will discourse over basically anything but I literally do not see the point in having any thoughts over Orym telling Keyleth Imogen is Liliana's daughter other than "yeah Captain Obvious"; this is not like, trampling over someone else's viewpoint, this is "Imogen said something very unclear and the entire interaction made Orym's statement virtually moot anyway":

Probably most importantly, Keyleth isn't stupid and has, per the TCSR, +12 to insight. You think she sees a human woman with hair the exact same not-typically-found-in-humans shade of Liliana's and goes "golly gee who could that be?"

This happens immediately after an exchange in which FCG hedges on whether Liliana should be destroyed, and Imogen (again: looks a lot like Liliana) hesitantly says "well, she didn't help" and then proceeds to talk about how she too has powers that involve a bright white light and strange things happening after, and that it's wishful thinking to believe Liliana did something last minute to help. Again. Keyleth has +12 to insight and a positive intelligence score.

Marisha as Laudna suspects that Keyleth suspects but rolls low on insight, ie, the cast is openly thinking that Keyleth might be aware of the connection.

The exact words Imogen says to Orym are "Do you think you should tell her what y'all saw." This is extremely vague. I did not myself in the moment think this meant "the Raven Queen's vision"; I thought it meant more details of what had happened at the Tishtan site, especially in context of the prior discussion, which was about Liliana and not about Vax. I would not be surprised if Orym (and for that matter Liam) had a similar interpretation.

#critical role #critical role spoilers #insert barbie rant except about the execrable fanon of imogen

[laniemae]

Just gonna say it again- I really hate when people flanderise John to just some “always angry guy” who’s always bitchy but actually an uwu tsundere. Like seriously John in canon is a lot more stoic and composed yet EVERY fan content I see of him has him be constantly angry and hot headed like he’s Fuuta! And it makes me upset because I really love John and he’s probably the most flanderised character I’ve seen so far ever and just. Ugh I want people to properly understand him instead having him be a ship tool.

#milgram #mikoto kayano #John kayano #john milgram #like please let him be an actual person instead of just a tsundere! #I elaborated on this in a tag rant not too long ago but I really feel like it’s mido’s fault #Like before double people always thought that John was the angry one and mido existed and he was the stoic one #But now we’ve got more characterisation for John people still haven’t dropped the thing of him being hotheaded and just #Basically having him be a flat archetype and mido be the stoic one and like #I still really don’t like mido and how his involvement always flanderises John (and mikoto to an extent) #And his fans are so pushy about him being canon it’s just aughh #it’s sad as lots of mikoto (and especially john) fans I see don’t actually like them who who they actually are in canon #But for this distorted perception of them by fanon #I just needed to let this off my chest this thing has been annoying me forever #I guess I’ve always felt iffy as having mikoto and John as some of my favorites and I guess since I focus more on their actual canon selves #This is why I’ve always felt weird about my love for them as I just feel like what people’s ideas of them are just completely different #I just want people to understand this

[blonde-and-cat-suc]

Catra being anxious and having panic attacks over the bad things she did is actually counter productive to any hypothetical scenario where she is self reflecting and/or receiving constructive criticism.

Her potentially having crippling anxiety over being an asshole in the past PREVENTS and/or DELAYS any changes she might potentially make.

Making this character spiral over moral dilemmas does not inherently mean she’s actively working to change her ways. Her being afraid of facing her badness does not make her good; it simply means she has anxieties toward constructive criticism/dialogue.

#in response to the dumb fuck fan comics I see about Catra having panic attacks over and over #yeah like. I get th sentiment. but really that’s not how that works #well. it DOES. but if the audience of the popular fanon POV of Catra’s character is supposed to be sympathetic #why make her a wet soggy cat (metaphorically) #why make her the sad pitiful one #if she’s making changes in her life and her behavior… wouldn’t that be… impowering ? #wouldn’t she feel happier? #she wouldn’t even need to be coddled by Adora (and company). #she’d accept the bad things she’s done and would apologize with no tears none of this wet cat bullshit attitude #actually… fuck it I’ll just write something where she does exactly that #mariposa rants #what I told you guys… that making a huge self pity party for yourself… after doing some shitty thing #is actually incredibly selfish … and silly…. #(ex. bojack horseman. like. literally the entire show.) #eww mariposa ranting about bojack horseman #<<< (new tag cause I’m not down with this point) #basically. feel bad for a minute. then spend the next hour working on yourself. journaling. self therapy. actual therapy. meditate. pray. #whatever the fuck dude

[dragonseeds]

what are your thoughts on rhaegar and lyanna?

oh i love them! there’s all this talk of them haunting the narrative and they do, but i’d take it further and say they are the black hole at the center of the story. the choices that they made, starting with lyanna’s decision to defend howland reed and what that meant to both him and rhaegar, who was very likely at his lowest point at harrenhal after the ruination of his careful plans, touched or changed the lives of every character and plot line in the series. the story itself is such a fun mashup of tristan and iseult, lancelot and guinevere, helen and paris, the fall of camelot and all of arthuriana really, the classic trope of the princess in the tower and the dragon and the knight: all of that in one couple and we don’t get to experience any of it with them. we can guess and speculate, but we can never truly know them. we experience their story only through the memories the people who survived the war they ostensibly kicked off, and those memories are all heavily colored by trauma, guilt, nostalgia—alternately faded and sharpened by time. it’s this incredibly fun and brilliant reconstruction of some of the most enduring tragedies in folklore and mythology and i adore it.

hate beyond articulation the way asoiaf.tumblr.edu approaches their relationship and the individual characterizations of both of them, though. just absolutely some of the most insufferably sanctimonious disingenuous decontextualized analysis i’ve ever experienced—much of that coming from people viewing this through a historical lense instead of a thematic one. like, imagine approaching the battle of the trident as “rhaegar is a bad person for fighting for his father who was evil! he lost the moral high ground with that one” as opposed to “rhaegar as a character exists to fail and die; he was the last dragon, carrying the unbearable weight of his family’s legacy and the burden of the prophecy for which they conquered westeros: the end of his life is the end of the targaryen dynasty. he must fail and he must die, so that dany and jon can grow up free of that weight and that power. daenerys gets to redefine what it means to be targaryen on her own terms. she and jon separately and unknowingly do the things that he thought he had to do—the things he was conceived and born to do—but never knew how: they do it because of their circumstances, because of the people that they have grown into, because they believe it is their duty, because they have the power to do it.” also, like, re: interpretations of battle of the trident, is there maybe another battle that occurs later in the series that is exactly the same thematically and contextually? where perhaps a character who was missing for a while shows up on the eve of battle, knowing that the opposition is right and their cause is just but that his family will die if he doesn’t fight with them? anything that adds an extra layer of meaning to what happens, aside from dany’s own connection—which is not as thematically similar but is still incredibly meaningful. like i certainly don’t think there’s any one interpretation of a character or story, but the worst ones are consistently applied to rhaegar.

and then with lyanna in particular, it’s like people cannot stomach her or find her sympathetic as a character unless they’re wallowing in her eternal victimhood. the constant dismissal of the importance of lyanna’s actions and what they meant to rhaegar is pure misogyny, by the way. her choices and her agency, the inherent meaningfulness of the struggle for both of those things in a system that seeks to reduce her to her body and the use men can make of it—all of that is important. the person she was and what that meant to people was important, but from the way i most often see her discussed, it’s like her gendered death is the only thing that matters. it’s okay to lament her because she got crushed by the wheel. if she hadn’t, if she wasn’t a victim to write flagellatory meta about, she would be a hypocrite, someone who needed to learn a lesson—as difficult for some of these people to relate to as dany or rhaenyra apparently are.

like, it’s just wild to me because her kindness to howland reed and her choice to defend him, to disguise herself as the knight of the laughing tree and risk her life and reputation to fight for him—is the answer to and the embodiment of one of the most thematically significant questions in the series. we see it most prominently in dany’s chapters because she asks it directly: why do the gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves? that’s what lyanna did, when no one else was doing it: she had more honor than any knight at that tourney or any man sitting on the small council, and it meant something to rhaegar. like what about this is hard to understand? i think he must have idealized her immediately: she must have seemed like something out of a song or a story to him, and rhaegar was a singer, a songwriter, a bard: he knows how stories are supposed to go—how to finish a song, or at least he thought he did.

bran, who also loves stories, says it himself: “and the mystery knight should win the tourney, defeating every challenger, and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty.” like obviously bran has some critiques i cut out, but he has the ending right—only the wolf maid was the knight, and she couldn’t have won. in the feudal gender prison, women are rewarded for being beautiful and their worth is derived from that and from what their bodies provide. she should’ve won the whole thing, but the system doesn’t allow that, so rhaegar—in a fit of single-minded capital r romantic hero idiocy—dedicates himself to winning the tourney to honor her in the only way he can: the only way the system allows him to recognize her. it was the worst possible move he could make at that time because of the romantic connotations, but i love him for doing it, as stupid as it was and even though there is no way it didn’t hurt and humiliate elia, or make him look terrible when he desperately needed to make a good impression on the lords of the realm—it’s just such a Moment. being reminded that there’s good in the world—feeling hope in the face of endless abject overwhelming despair—how do you express gratitude for that? the idea that he could only doing it by hurting someone who didn’t deserve it and making himself look like an ass is fucking awesome. i’m genuinely so sorry for people are incapable of enjoying that. could not be me!

but that’s just my interpretation of what happened at harrenhal. like i said, part of why i like them so much is that we truly don’t know. while i love darker relationships in general, the idea that he crowned her at harrenhal because he wanted to impregnate her then does not work for me. it’s a popular theory, but it renders some of the very few contextual clues we are given about what happened meaningless. for one, he didn’t know that elia wouldn’t be able to have more children at that time. this was discovered after she gave birth to aegon, and that is the point at which the question of the third child appears to have become a motivating factor for him. i personally think he left for the riverlands to consult with the ghost of high heart—the one whose prophecy is the reason he was born, the reason is parents were forced to marry, the reason his family burned alive the night he came into the world—and ran into lyanna somewhere near harrenhal. it’s possible he had been in contact with her prior to this (how? without her family knowing? what are the logistics of that?) but i think it’s just as likely it was pure chance. i really like the idea that his crowning her queen of love and beauty caused lyanna’s father to set a date for her wedding to robert or talk of moving it up, maybe even suggest a double wedding at riverrun, which would have almost certainly caused her to balk. either way, high heart is located between harrenhal and riverrun. arya also stops there while she’s kidnapped by the brotherhood without banners on the way to ransom her to her family at riverrun, and they trade songs to the ghost for her dreams and prophecies. i think it’s worth noting because arya’s journey in the riverlands mirrors lyanna’s right down to her “death” as arya stark when she leaves for braavos, paying the ferryman’s fee with the coin jaqen h’ghar gave her—just as jon’s journey at the wall mirrors rhaegar’s in many ways right up until his own death.

i also don’t think rhaegar and lyanna eloped because they were in love—this is implied by lyanna’s famous quote—but that they did come to love each other deeply, which is suggested by the way they died: her roses and him saying her name. notably, rhaegar did not leave the tower of his own volition—someone had to come and get him with news of war, which is hilarious because i think the tower of joy is right in the middle of like three major battles of the rebellion? like quite frankly, if he didn’t love her or care for anything beyond the prophecy and if she didn’t love him despite how badly things went wrong, then where in their story is the heart in conflict with itself?

i do want to clarify that i love the tower entrapment and the power imbalance aspects of their relationship as much as i love (what i interpret as) the genuine respect for each other that grew into love: it’s really the tension of those disparate elements that interests me. a dragon can love the maiden, but he’s only ever a dragon—still liable to hoard her like treasure or burn her up and rip her open trying to be gentle, to protect. that FUCKS, sorry! love is sweet and hopeful, but it’s also at exactly the same time horror, consumption, destruction.

idk it’s myopic to act like the beginning or the ending of their relationship—of their lives—is the summation of it. i think people want their story to be easy when it’s not: a clear case of a villain and his victims where everyone knows who to root for and no one has to think too much about things that are difficult or uncomfortable, questions where there probably isn’t an answer that doesn’t hurt someone. what a sad, tedious way to approach any text, but specifically this one. i’ve sometimes seen it suggested that if their story is romantic then it’s an endorsement or justification of all the “bad” things that happened because of it, and that’s also stupid. grrm as an author is never going to be someone who tells us how to feel about anything: he presents these characters and situations, often as a means of exploring certain facets of the human condition, and each of us has to come up with our own answers and find our own meaning. i don’t think he always knows what he means, or what those answers are, you know? but for me rhaegar and lyanna are one of the most fascinating parts of story, and whatever the truth is—if we ever find out—i can’t imagine a scenario where i don’t love them or find them really interesting and wonderfully sad.

#lyanna stark #rhaegar targaryen #rhaelya #i’d apologize for this being so long but u have got to all be used to me by now #like i couldn’t be succinct at gunpoint #or coherent apparently #and especially not about this like i’m not normal about either of them #also just to clarify because this kind of turned into a rant: none of this applies to people i follow #but like. i sincerely think that 90% of the meta about them (individually + their relationship) is bad lol #and part of that is bc so much of it is based on fanon instead of what is actually in the books #and that frustration really comes through in this post and i regret that but it’s out there now lol #asoiaf

[mudstoneabyss]

actually. the specific phrasing that boy Kevin wants to kill older Kevin with "I must disassemble him, piece by piece, so that everything inside of the Old Kevin comes out. Only then can the New Kevin truly begin." is so incredibly the idea that to heal from trauma and "improve" you have to destroy every "wrong" part of yourself, that everything "tainted" by it has to somehow be replaced by something untouched (which isn't possible)

#reading back that phrasing I do think that'll be the way brinknor takes it #this arcs seeming like it'll be so. breaking the cycle of abuse and violence and coming to terms with yourself #and maybe understanding that you can never remove the parts of you impacted by trauma and start again completely ''pure'' #but you can treat yourself with the kindness you should've been given #which i hope it is that because. and understand i am biased. but i'd love that direction for Kevin #it feels much more satisfying than any more. angsty way this arc could go imo #like he's been through enough! #because of the way Kevin is portrayed in fanon. not as frequently anymore but still pretty common. I worry about coming off as woobifying #by saying I want him to heal I want him to have nice things I think he deserves them #when he's also simultaneously Not A Good Person #yknow the poor little innocent cinnamon roll baby etc etc fanon #but. well for one im Not Like That about him. but my main point of bringing that up is. him not being a good person is why I want to see hi #get better and generally have a good life. why does someone have to be good to deserve to heal from trauma #especially when trauma is a big reason for the way they are #like its fiction yeah yeah i'm still tired of mentally ill people having to be ''good'' to ''deserve'' to get better yknow #i mean especially in fiction you tend to either see mental illness as the poor traumatized one who's allowed recovery because they're nice #or the insane psychopath who cant be ''fixed'' so ''deserves'' bad things-up to deserving to die!- for it #i didnt mean for this to be a rant erm. oops #wtnv #wtnv spoilers #joyousposting

[achaotichuman]

Random Ramble

I think it is hilarious how some people are so aggressive about sticking so thoroughly to canon, and not allowing for any room for imagination, because like, my brother in christ, canon does not exist.

None of these are real, the characters are not real, the story is not real. There is no such thing as canon.

There is only such thing as the op. The one who originally made the story and the characters, which is why we have copyright. So that no one can *make money off of these characters and the story*

But so long as you aren't plagiarizing the story in order to make your own money off of it. Once these characters are published and, in the world, everyone has free reign with them.

Once they are in your head, they are your characters. Which is why people interrupt their actions differently. Because the characters will appear different in your head compared to anyone else, including the author.

Idk the origins of the term canon, nor have I done any research on the topic (I'm just rambling) but tbh in my eyes it appears like we as a society have allowed money to ingrain itself so deeply into us as people, that we allow to dictate what we think. And this goes for the idea of canon.

Because the actual author is one making money off the books (rightfully so) it has become a sort of, is their way or the highway (this is just a half-thought through theory btw don't take it too seriously)

Which is why I personally love to take said characters and do whatever the fuck I want with them. Because whatever I make them do is in character for me, and even if it isn't, it might be for someone else. Because while they are in my hands, they are my characters.

Consider this a freedom post. You are free to think whatever the fuck you want, none of these people are real. Make Elain a villain, give Kosechi a love interest, make Feyre and Tamlin get back together after she divorces Rhysand. It doesn't matter what the og author thinks, so long as you aren't making money off these characters, you can do whatever the hell you want with them.

And I don't mean make theories crack, I mean you are allowed to genuinely believe this is the best course of action, even if you know the og author won't take it that way.

Cause personally, I do think Tamcien is a plausible ship, and I hope it happens in canon. Do I think it will? No, but Tamlin and Lucien are my characters when they are in my head, so I am allowed to think whatever the fuck I want about them. And same goes for people who disagree with me.

Like some people want Lucien to take over the world, I do not. Some people want Tamlin to die, I do not. Some people want a myriad of things that I do not, and both of those ideas are in character, so long as they are in your head.

Make elriel your canon, make elucien your canon. Fuck it, make Rhysand/Beron your canon.

The only person judging you in the voice in your head, and people on the internet and who gives two fucks what they think. Get as weird as you want, it's all canon, cause none of this is real.

#this came from the depths of my soul #as an avid fan of crack ships and crack theories they are my canon #oh but that just means FANON #no #canon #cause none of this is real #the og author gets their hard earned money #and i get to sit here and make stupid stories about imaginary people #its all canon #its just that one person gets the money from it #acotar #acotar headcanons #acotar au #no one take this too seriously i suddenly started ranting

[greenapplebling]

I am once again asking people to stop assigning family roles to found family. It beats the point of having a found family in the first place

Also: "this character is a mom friend" ≠ "this character is the mom of the group"

One implies the friend is naturally caring, nurturing and thoughtful. While the other implies there's an assigned person in the group who gets emotionally burdened by people of their same age range to act like their mom

#'zuko and katara are the parents of the gaang' #no. katara is a 14yo that tries really hard to embody what she thinks a mom is like #to overcompensate for the lost of her own mother #what she likes about aang since ep1 is that he reminds her to have fun and to be a kid again #which she gets more open to as the story progresses #and zuko is a child soldier who was forced to grow quickly and doesn't remember what it's like to be kid anymore #zuko isn't being fatherly to the gaang. he acts like a commander bc he thinks they need discipline #i kinda feel bad for zuko he's not around long enough to learn to be a kid again #and then he just becomes the fire lord #found family #trope #writing #fandom #fanon #atla #atla rant in the tags

[4lph4kidz]

alright tumblr just crashed and ate the post i was making as a follow up to the 'how should people depict hal in an AU' poll so tl;dr i really appreciate all the responses and varying opinions from people although i should have maybe made it clearer that 'if not an AI' was, like, the main point of the question. anyway i personally think hal/the autoresponder is very much a product of canon's circumstances, such that a very different setting/AU isn't really going to be able to cover every angle to his character in the same way, so you should do whatever is most fun/interesting 👍

#x #i also had a whole seperate rant about his function in the comic versus the ways people explore him outside of that / in fanon #but let's save that for another day

[vessel-full-of-stories]

Kid.

#911 fox #911 on fox #evan buck buckley #bobby nash #911fox #every time bobby calls buck kid #this doesnt mean i dont have beef with the portrayal of their father-son relationship #not the fanon one #the canon one #i want to rant about it but its depressing to think about sometimes #6x10 is giving me hope the writers are finally gonna do something about it but i wont trust it until i see it

[doubledyke]

Once I head someone say Sarah is the only really necessary or meaningful female character, and that Nazz and the Kankers are pretty much disposable; ''Nazz has no personality, and the Kankers are absent from 50% of episodes and are just a Diabolous ex-machina ending when they appear. The could work very well without any of them.''

What do you think of this?

are they implying that she's only "meaningful" because she's related to ed? because...yikes dog. sarah serves a pretty similar role to the kankers in that she foils the scams and pranks and acts as an obstacle and/or deterrent. an antagonist. but the way they fulfill the role and the reaction they get from the eds are different in ways that i'm too lazy to get into at the moment.

now i could genuinely be missing something because i've never taken a class on media analysis or whatever the fuck, but i truly don't get what people mean when they say nazz is uniquely lacking in personality. i'm not saying eene has excellent, fleshed out female characters, but some people act as if 1) any of the non-eds have highly complex personalities that are explored canonically 2) being kind, outgoing, flirtatious, sporty, etc. aren't personality traits. just because someone doesn't like her personality doesn't mean it doesn't exist. and we know just as much, if not more about nazz's interests than we do the kankers. or jonny: he likes wood, is laid back and seems to enjoy superheroes. or kevin: he likes bmx. he's a bully. he has a crush on nazz. he's buds with rolf, whose backstory we probably know the most about after the eds (maybe even more?). then there's jimmy who lowkey has a great, complex personality.

seems like since nazz is pretty, is into stereotypically "girly" things and is nice, people consider her a "bad" (female) character. which to me is hilarious and ironic. these are the same people who call the kankers "evil". like okay... 😂

this idea that all female characters are supposed to be virtuous geniuses... it's a show about 3 dumbass preteen boys. there are tons of female-led shows available out there, and female main characters galore. these people should go watch em. seriously. im tired of hearing about it frankly.

oh and if edd was canonically a girl, people would hate her and call her a mary sue 👍

#idk i might delete this later bc i'm in a piss poor mood atm and i don't mean to sound harsh #as usual not ranting at you anon #but people can make up tomes of fanon lore for these male cartoon characters #but suddenly the hc well runneth dry when it's time to get creative with a female character whose backstory isn't spelled out for them #i'm not saying you have to divide your attention equally between male and female characters because i don't #but i also don't need my cartoons to be feminist manifestos lmfao #i have to live as an afab every day i have my own thanks #just saying if someone wants female stories with great female characters they're out there #stop looking for them on netflix and amazon prime maybe #okay let me stop because i'm getting riled up and going off the deep end #i don't even care like THAT but once i get going i can't stop #can you tell i've had a terrible week #oh and to the anon who sent the ask about a certain ship #sorry mate i'm not posting that one #text

[haileylovesskz]

trigerring marauders fans: i despise fanon marauders. this is more like my opinion on the fans rather than the fandom itself but anyways.

i. characters were ruined.

firstly, our main characters: the 4 marauders themselves. why does every single body in this fandom believe they are all gay. remus and james are canonly straight. i despise the fact that people believe regulus & james are true loves and wolfstar is basically canon when in reality the canon thing is jily and remadora. i may not like jily but at least i can accept the fact that it's canon. people go as far as saying you're homophobic when the only thing you said is "i dislike wolfstar" (based on true events). hated how the fanon marauders had zero personality and were treated like gods who only had a small flaw and that is bullying a person that had gone through enough hardship at home and the only reason it started was that snape wished to be in slytherin.

secondly, the not-much-screentime-but-still-important: lily evans. all i have to say is: she is canonly straight and died before taylor swift was even born so she would never get the chance to become a swiftie like yall's "headcanons".

thirdly, the this-was-entirely-made-up: the bunch of barty crouch jr., regulus black, evan rosier (i forgot his name but its that evan guy), pandora lovegood (she was mentioned for half a second in the books), dorcas meadowes, frank & alice longbottom, mary mcdonald. these are the people that were mentioned in the books for half a second and yall made them a whole alternative universe where evan rosier and barty crouch are dating and then theres mary/lily or dorcas/lily or mary/dorcas and all that. sometimes i appreciate yall's creativity.

ii. the fans

here is a list that will automatically get you hatred from 99.9% of the fandom:

being against wolfstar

being against jegulus

being against mary/lily or dorcas/lily or mary/dorcas (idk their ship names)

shipping remadora because rEmUs LoVeS sIrIuS!!!

saying characters such as lily, james, remus were canonly straight.

disliking the swiftie lily headcanon

shipping snily

being a snape fan

i can go on for three years but this is getting long so lets just go to my next point.

iii. the bullying of snape

stfu and stop excusing every single action james & sirius did to snape because "tHeY wErE kIdS!!" did you know snape was also their age? sure they grew up to be more mature but that surely does not mean their past actions should go down the drain and disappear like it was never there. james and sirius literally hung him upside down, was partially the reason why snape lost his only friend, hung snape upside down for their own entertainment, making snape face even more hardships at hogwarts when he was looking forward to escape his abusive household (just because he wanted to be in slytherin).

that is all for today, now thank you for coming to my ted talk.

#hailey awaked from the dead after 3 months?? no way!! #back to me ranting about random stuff #marauders #i hate fanon marauders sm omfg #anti wolfstar #anti jegulus #lily is not a swiftie. #harry potter

[elven-kisses]

absolutely insane bonkers about Grian rn. can someone please come hold hands with me and talk about him please

#kit rants #i know i complain about fanon but i like grian a lot #i have sp many design ideas for him but i cant tjink about them properly inless im talkinh to someone else about it

[blonde-and-cat-suc]

If Adora and Catra both did crap to hurt each other then why do I never see comics abt Adora feeling like crap and feeling bad for hurting Catra

#salt salt salt #old draft post that i had stewing in here #even fandom knows. they KNOW. that c//a is not an equal relatioship. #equal c//a would have these two ALWAYS arguing back and forth with each other about things from the past. possibly working them out togethe #equal c//a FANON would naturally reflect this following that same logic #so why is it when we see the premises of “Adora has to apologize to Catra now” its the same tired old... #“Im sorry i left you in the Horde” #and nothing else. #“im sorry that your feelings were hurt and im sorry that you had no influence over me at that time... Im sorry that you're STILL mad at me” #she's not apologizing over something that she is genuinely sorry about #she's apologizing in these fanon works as a means to placate catra (and fans' warped reality of what this relationship actually is) #it's a shitty vaguely disguised way to “equalize” c//a and make it so that they BOTH look like awful people #when obviously this is not the case because the narrative itself doesn't think Adora is wrong for leaving the Horde! #even if these two were “equally bad” to each other. why ship them then. really. seriously. i get the rhetoric of “ooh toxic spicy ship” but #if they're really SO “toxic and spicy” where is the part where they're BOTH toxic? BOTH bad for each other? #it's not a toxic relationship if ONE side is toxic. thats called an abusive relationship. anyway. im done now. good night. #whoops! tag rant

[telffiin]

oh my goddddddd tim stans are so fucking OBNOXIOUS!!! why do they keep writing him as this eternal victim who can do no wrong and is bullied/abused by the evil 10-year-old and everyone is mean to him???? mary sue self-insert ass.

#damian should try to kill him again #this was inspired by a particular commenter on ao3..... you know who you are #if i knew fanon tim irl i would try to kill him too jesus christ #i could also write a whole other post about how damian is treated by them but it wouldn't be coherent at all #and i value my sanity #anti tim drake #anti tim drake stans #rant?? #they also just. blow things out of proportion idk #dc #batman