#And expanded it twice that

[vexedallay]

Im about 1.5/2 weeks out of finishing and being able to post an art piece ive been working on forever.

Im also abt 2 weeks out of the year anniversary of having started said project.

Im. I'm going insane. Tf??? How has it been that long??

[amphibianaday]

day 1421

[beatcroc]

there's no way the bathroom at peppino's pizza is actually that big but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . hey ummm anyway.... i care them...... anyway there's a lil ramble on my take on fake pep's like psyche or whatever in tags on the og post if ur into that kinda thing :y

hey! it's a series! fake peppino world tour: [noise] [noisette] [peppino]<- u are here [gustavo] [gerome] [noisette again]

[dragons-and-princes]

EJ deserved so much better.

[katyspersonal]

Healing church setting up the sprinkler in the front yard of the grand cathedral so Amelia can run around and bite the water. Enrichment.

Dude fdshhfdh This is so wholesome xD

This is how Amelia's era as a vicar SHOULD have ended *sob*

[needlemeister]

ms paint iterators

[captainofthetidesbreath]

Thoughts on parallels between the scene where Phineas beats Sherman and where Imelda tortures weepe?

Jonas Spahr is there, and he's also not having a good day. 😔

So, I initially meant that as a joke about how I'm a huge fan of Jonas and will obnoxiously take any opportunity to talk about him. I do think there are many parallels and resonances between these scenes, and there is much to say about the four characters named and the central action of nearly killing someone for the sake of the Trust, but those angles are more obvious and more likely to be recognized by most. (And I'm willing to talk about some of those as well, if asked again. Or, if there's a specific aspect you'd like to hear about, let me know.)

In terms of my interests, it IS a pretty interesting point to be made: Jonas Spahr is there, watching. It's integral to both scenes that Spahr is a witness; he's even the ONLY witness in the Arca. His role as such is also explicitly recognized by the active character in each scene:

Since this is about the cabaret and Arca scenes specifically, I won't spin off into an entire commentary and analysis of Spahr's role as an observer and witness. For now, we'll have to content ourselves with the short version just for context, but I can go into it at a later time.

The heart of it is: thus far, his role in the narrative is a generally passive one that largely centers on watching and observing. It's the first thing he does as a player in this story. He steps back and watches how Phineas handles the Ginsberg situation, and the narrators remind us four separate times in 1.03: Mica:

Deeds of Valor—and Caenum, apparently—need to be witnessed, after all! Thing is, Spahr does a lot of watching but, until more recently, doesn't really SEE all that often. He is for a long time a passive, immovable, unreadable observer to events as the eyes of the Trust. He is that witness for much of events he's involved in, for better or (more likely) worse.

After Phineas attacks Sherman, Spahr himself is quick to identify this problem with himself in 2.02: Ascendancy, that he is watching and looking but he is, perhaps intentionally, not seeing and noticing:

The incident in the cabaret and the incident in the Arca are directly connected and bound together by Spahr as witness. Phineas attacking Sherman and Imelda torturing Weepe are moments that Spahr is truly seeing, bearing witness to events and comprehending them, their context, and their implications.

In both, he bears witness specifically to the damage that the Trust causes and the ways that it harms people inside and outside of it. Phineas and Imelda believe that Spahr will witness something else—Phineas hopes that Spahr will not be witnessing a failure where Imelda hopes that Spahr will be witnessing one—but what he is seeing instead is the raw brutality that the Trust and its systems and pressures naturally engender at their logical extremes. He immediately recognizes it to be a horror:

Spahr experiences a dread born of comprehension typically reserved for moments of understanding in eldritch horror. Sucks to be the guy whose role is to see things and you end up actually comprehending some of them! And comprehend them in these two scenes he does.

Spahr doesn't do a ton in terms of active action in either scene—the cabaret scene is notably set off by his mere presence, and he ultimately freezes in the Arca scene—but in each, he does ultimately move to attempt to stop what is happening. And, notably, he does so under his own power and motivation.

That said, he fails to prevent a significant amount of the damage. He moves fast enough to prevent Phineas from killing Sherman, but too late to prevent the harm done to Sherman and all the spiraling consequences of this. He is frozen into a paralysis by Imelda's threat, so he fails to follow through and stop her, stop the harm done to Weepe, and again stop the spiraling consequences from this.

Twice, once in each scene, he fails to meaningfully prevent the harm done here. He attempts to stop them when he is standing here in the room with them, but by then it's too late. ("Too little, too late," as Sherman will eventually say.)

Obviously, Spahr is not the sole bearer of responsibility in either incident. Phineas and Imelda have an immense amount to answer for there, and the system of the Trust itself created the conditions that one way or another pushes them and Spahr to do as they do. However, both are incidents that he in some way has allowed. He reflects on having not seen, or even ignored, the signs of what was brewing inside Phineas and what he was being pushed toward; he helps engineer this intervention and stands by while Imelda locks Weepe in the Arca, never asking enough questions.

He has allowed both to happen. When he begins to feel the emotional aftermath of each, in 2.02: Ascendancy and 2.17: Compensation, the narration of his internal monologue even uses that wording:

They're both critical scenes to Spahr's development as someone whose role is largely passive, both within the Trust systems and within the narrative. Just as much as he is to be seen, he is also very much here to see—and to refuse to see. To stand by as a passive witness to horrors and allow them, silent and impassive and watching. He can try to intervene, but he's already facilitated this.

He is coming to understand his part in this, in brutalities such as these, with horror. In the aftermath of the Arca incident, we see him increasingly discontent with his role in the Trust and desperately in search of ways to stop what he can. He is not yet successful, but his vision is very much clarifying. His arc turns around these scenes as paralleled experiences for him in his narrative, as moments that he witnesses, allows, and fails to stop against even his own belated efforts. These two scenes bookend his growing comprehension and self-reflection throughout season two.

Twice now, it's been asked of him: What are you refusing to see, Jonas? What horrors and brutalities are you allowing to happen? Will you always be intervening much too late?

Third time's a charm, perhaps.

[numiolaes]

also pulling this from my targaryen ocs lore but i firmly believe there are more targaryens than just the royal line. when they flee valyria it's said that aenar took his "wives, siblings, children and kin". kin when you're talking about what are effectively clans can cover a LOT of people since it includes cousins and then you add in the polygamy thing Welp. Literally look at the freys to see how big ONE house can be.

I firmly believe when the doom happened there were a couple hundred targaryens in westeros. which would have expanded in the 100 years between then and aegon and again between aegon and the dance. it's just likely that especially around the dance a LOT of the cadet branches take loses, then later you get the rebellions, add in how that targs are Kinda Fucking Cursed and boom, you're down to the smattering we see in the 5 kings era.

like, that's realistically how things like houses work. i get why grrm doesn't write about all that because that's a lot of fucking people to work into the fucking timeline but then you shouldn't have made the valyrians polygamous and imply that aenar took basically his whole house over to dragonstone.

[bookshelfpassageway]

with all due affection i am taking the word "twink" away from the Captain Laserhawk fandom until it can be used responsibly

[deerspherestudios]

Heads up I'll be closing the askbox again at 200 messages (it's currently at 172)! There's some repeating questions so I'll probably clear em out once I have the FAQ posted.

Also since people might start rushing to ask, please don't spam the inbox with the same question; I'll be deleting those immediately.

[dirtytransmasc]

I think something about HOTD and it's framing is that it had the chance to do something beautiful, or more accurately, it did something beautiful and fascinating either on accident or with intentions that make it practically meaningless, and fucked themselves over with it cause now they can't use it.

the way the shows pacing, framing, and story writing is set, it is insanely easy to get caught up in the pro TB anti team green narrative, cause there is just so much information getting launched at you, you barely have enough time to understand what your seeing surface level, let alone processing it critically on your first watch.

but the more you watch it, the more you process it all, the more logically and critically you think about it, that pro TB narrative starts to lose standing. you see how flawed Rhaenyra is, you see the true situation the greens are in (between a rock [death] and a hard place [usurpation], to put i tot simply), you see the web of politics binding.

if the writers saw what they had done, they totally could have used it to their advantage, they could have used it to really beef up both sides in terms of characterization. or maybe they did realize it, maybe they did it intentionally (I can't tell if I think they're competent enough to do that, whether I like it or not, or incompetent enough to do it by accident and then fumble the bag with it...), maybe that was the intent overall, to destroy TG, not by making them actually awful (outside of what they did to Aegon), but to instead go so overboard you can't see anything else but their TB bullshit.

either way, it had so much potential and they just squashed it.

[deargravity]

not to be making unrealistic demands but this year i want a kanata breakdancing video and also for him to put his hair in a french braid and also to wear a cute skirt and also to have his nails painted and for him to be openly honest about his emotions with the people he cares about and to confront the lingering grief slowly consuming him as he simultaneously mourns someone who is still alive & someone who never was. but to keep it realistic, i’ll settle for a diss track directed at hajun. i guess… whatever tho. not that i care

[bambiraptorx]

Basically how Leo acts in Minor Interference. Which is funny, because a lot of the problems he causes are actually unintentional.

[dreamybasil]

OUUU LPGHEOSGIESAHOFGAW

HLEP

MY HTEHTEH

THEHET

TEHETH

YM THEHT

HLEPHE ME

[quasistarjudgement]

Today got me all "Your heart beats twice. Like a fist."

[needlemeister]

one must imagine iterator ocs [and nsh] happy