#DEEPLY flawed

[flightlessfinch]

james is more compelling if you let him be a bit of an asshole instead of just a ray of sunshine. he’s self-absorbed. he is naturally mean. he’s a bully. regulus is usually characterized as bitchy but james is literally actually fucking cruel and doesn’t realize it because his self image is built on being a “good person” so he thinks everything he does is justified. he won’t interrogate his own actions because he is scared of seeing himself in a bad light. he’s a prick. i love him more when he is a prick. he’s more human. he’s obviously loving and caring to his friends, but people who are not his friends? no. he’s judgemental. he hurts people when he knows he can get away with it. in my mind he is kinda narcissistic. (James, in his head:“how could you say that i hurt you? you accusing me of hurting you makes me feel bad. you’re being mean.” James, out loud: “Sorry you feel that way.” *doesn’t speak to them for 3 days until he thinks they forgot he pissed them off, then acts like nothing happened. never properly apologizes.*) he’d rather get mad than reflect on his actions. he’d rather other people feel discomfort instead of being uncomfortable with himself. he was raised in a silk nest. he can’t handle criticism. let him be mean and snappy and say hurtful shit he doesn’t mean. he deserves it. as a little treat.

[baeddling]

I think one of the big takeaways from having a post abt intracommunity transmisogyny get some notes outside my little bubble of mutuals who understand feminism is that most people on this site? Fundamentally do not grasp how intersections with misogyny function. When trans women talk about trans men having male privilege, we are very importantly not implying here that they are treated perfectly by all of society. As with all groups of oppressed men, many of their privileges are heavily curtailed by wider societal oppression on the basis of transness, or homosexuality, or color, etc etc. What this does not do is cancel out their ability to wield misogyny against those who exist within the same oppressed groups. Black feminists have long discussed how black men are still capable of and actively benefit from misogynoir, even though they are also oppressed by racist society. In the same vein, trans men suffering transphobic oppression does not mean that they cannot and do not benefit from transmisogyny within queer and trans spaces. These are truths that are not actually at odds unless you have a deeply skewed conception of intersectional feminism (which most of these people do).

[frodo-a-gogo]

Let us be brutally honest with ourselves and with eachother for a moment. If he weren't obese you motherfuckers would be capable of percieving evrart claires sexy sexy moral ambiguity and complex charms

[fukutomichi]

"Forgiveness takes an age. Rain washing clear the long memory of soil. New bark, covering old scars." - Winterbloom S2.E4 ∙ Eldest

[gldnstrngs]

this is definitely not healthy but i feel sadness for arthur. like, so much genuine sadness because it was like he was born to die.

he was never meant to be born. ygraine was not able to have a child, but uther demanded an heir by any means. the boundaries of magic were crossed and arthur was born, but then ygraine’s life was sacrificed.

i can only imagine the burden arthur felt growing up, knowing that his mother passed away giving birth to him. there’s never a word uttered about her; he has no clue if he has her smile or personality. he spends his days with the lingering thought in his head that maybe his father wished he’d never been born, just so ygraine would still be alive. arthur probably began to feel that way eventually.

but there’s nothing he can do to change the past, so we see arthur do everything to make uther proud. yet, somehow, that isn’t enough, despite arthur being the one to go out and fight monsters and magic users while other sits comfortably in his throne and preaching his anti-magic rhetoric.

eventually, arthur is crowned king and learns to rule with his heart rather than with vengeance. then uther’s ghost returns, telling him that he’d failed. arthur was destroying camelot.

“you’ve had your turn… it’s mine now,” is what arthur says before blowing on the horn of cathbhadh, watching his father dissipate into thin air. finally, he doesn’t have to face the burden of his father watching his every move with disapproval.

but then arthur dies. after the constant betrayals from the people he loved and the self-doubt, he dies.

[mikeslawyer]

TIRED of the ted wheeler deeply homophobic agenda. this man simply does not care! yes, it is the 80s so he’s probably casually ignorant, maybe makes a few offhanded comments but he is not the enemy of queer people. he is just casually homophobic, like a lot of people during that time but he genuinely cannot be bothered to like - actively root against queer people. he’s not lonnie.

he just wants to be left alone and for some reason there’s always drama in his house. his daughter is breaking up and getting together with her boyfriend, getting into fights, his son has some sort of a dark secret that ted could not be bothered to care about, his wife is cheating on him with boys that are their daughter’s age. and ted just wants to be left alone.

all he wants is to read his newspaper in peace at the dinner table, but never gets to because there is always something.

[ventique18]

Malleus is literally contender for most pitiful character in twst... Dead parents (mandatory for male leads, I fear), grandmother who couldn't bring herself to love him enough to hatch him herself, foster father who he can't even say I love you to because of their difference in status, foster brother/s who are mortal and will die before he physically turns 30, everybody dislikes him because his own mom accidentally cursed him, his first organically-met friend and potential love interest wants to go home to their own world and leave him behind, and if he chooses not to marry and have kids he's doomed to overwork until he either dies of loneliness or everyone else dies so he wouldn't have anyone to rule over anymore-- whichever comes first.

But even through all the shit the world's putting him through, he's still always so very grateful for any morsel of affection he does receive. Despite having all the reasons to be permanently afflicted with sad boy syndrome, he'd still grin and laugh the widest he could with anyone willing to share some with him. He wouldn't understand jokes and you may have to explain it to him, but he will laugh the moment he realizes you're being silly for him. He will adore that cheap bracelet you made for home economics. He will finish and love that plain omelette you made for him.

He's someone larger than life itself, but he's also someone who thinks little moments and memories and the people who gave them to him are more precious than even his very life. And he is genuinely thankful for every single one of them.

[pythoria]

i don't think you can fully understand astarion until you do an origin run tbh, or at least watch a video of his dream and all the responses you can give. it's hinted at in the final dialogue with cazador with his "you've never forgiven anything", but astarion wasn't some indisciplined brat who "deserved" or "kinda asked for it". He would apologise and beg for forgiveness, he would mind cazador's wishes and schedule and be constantly anxious about it, and the only reason that he got the worst of his wrath wasn't because his personality is just abrasive and it angered cazador, it was purely for entertainment, because he begged the prettiest, he screamed the loudest, etc. You can make the argument that he was the most vulnerable of the spawn, the least powerful, the runt of the pack.

Sure, he wasn't a great person while he was alive what with all his magistrate bs, but he was young and a bit of a dick, not evil. When he was alive and kinda abused some of his privilege as a magistrate that was posturing, underneath it there was always weakness and self-doubt. And when he was stripped of that little power he had, he became his "truest" (or rather basest) self, which was a scared boy who wanted to make it big or impress his superiors. On some level I think he admired Cazador for all the power he had, and we know that at the ritual "he wanted to be just like him". I don't think he would ever purposefully anger someone he looked up to, even with all the shit he was forced to do. For 200 years he was an obedient puppet, and it was his shortcomings, not his defiance that earned him all the torture.

So when you meet him after the nautiloid crash, you aren't seeing a single genuine personality trait of his. Not until the love confession in act 2. All you're seeing for the majority of 2 acts is a mask, a character he created, as well as him in full survival mode. Of course he doesn't want you helping innocents, this might be his only chance to escape, he doesn't want that derailed. Honestly, you don't really see the "real" him until after you've killed cazador. For anyone who finished his quest, y'all know how different he acts in the graveyard scene. He's uncharacteristically soft, even nice, and yes he's angry and he can't undo centuries of suffering, but you've helped him come back to himself. By act 3 he already stops rlly dissaproving of helping people, and when talking to the gurs he's defensive because he doesn't want to get their hopes up and dissapoint them, not because he wouldn't give anything to help. Astarion at his core is sassy, sure, but he is undoubtedly *nice*. He's a good person, he feels so much guilt for what he's done and sympathy for his victims, and he *has* to push it all down lest the psychological pain alone kills him. He likes killing, sure, but more as a sport than a past time. And honestly i could go on and on but let's leave it at that for now.

[chamerionwrites]

One of the more fascinating examples of fandom’s faves-based morality I’ve personally encountered recently was the number of people in the Mon Mothma tag who were absolutely BURNING with righteous fury at her 13-year-old daughter in Andor, when the worst things we have actually seen said character do are (1) be kind of a little shit to her mom (again, she’s thirteen) and (2) fall victim to a space tradwife cult. You know, because she’s thirteen. And has a pretty self-evidently lonely and unpleasant home life. And lives directly in the rotten beating ideological heart of space fascism.

The number of people vocally wishing punishment on a fictional tween was WILD. I unfollowed that tag after ~48 hours lol

[space-specs]

So obviously the first worst thing to ever happen to Barbara Gordon's character was regressing her back to Batgirl again after all her character growth.

But the second worst thing to ever happen to her is the perception Oracle is somehow tech support for the batfam specifically and not that she used to run her own team and regularly work with the actual Justice League.

I think these problems are somewhat connected in that they both relegate Babs as to being strictly in the batfam's orbit and make her appearance in comics contingent on her relation to another (usually male) batfam character (frequently Bruce or Dick). And it sucks to see because it not only regresses her character growth but it restricts her story from growing further than being support in other characters' lives rather than having her own independent life. It was her job to know things! She got shit done! She used to make cameos in seemingly unrelated comics (e.g. Suicide Squad, Blue Beetle, Green Lantern, etc.) because she was such a staple within the wider superhero community! Sure, her most frequent appearance were either with her Birds of Prey team or in Gotham-related stories, but she played an important role in the greater DC canon that I miss now.

[afloweroutofstone]

The 57 countries that are better than the USA according to the current version of my overly-complicated "Nice Things Index" which I spend a lot of time playing around with

[toon-melody]

Day 21 & 22 | Doodle and Idol It was for a school project, they framed it after. It was knocked over when they left…

[wardensantoineandevka]

given this is the Cosmos, all of these people suck at least a little and I'm excited to learn how

[cruelplatonic]

my personal headcanon is the vees were unremarkable nobodies when they were alive. i just love it as a thematic throughline for them. they love to let the public of hell speculate on them being famed and acclaimed since before death, but the the truth is they were a d-list failed influencer that got by on cheap controversey and scamming, a broke junkie who burned every shaky bridge he ever had, and a worn-out broadcast production assistant with more rejected auditions and tossed out script pitches than he could count. nobody missed them when they were gone, nobody cared who they were until they were dead.

[ewwww-what]

It probably won’t (it will)

[anghraine]

sea-salted-wolverine replied to this post:

Wdym Anakin mind tricking padme isn't real? You could chalk it up to bad writing from Lucas who isn't quite sure that women are people, but its pretty clear that by ep III that her grip on reality is toast. Whether or not it is a conscious effect on Anakins part is up for debate, but it is definitely a thing that happened

Not really the main point of my post, but no, that fan theory is not "real" in the sense of being remotely canonical for the films. It's nothing more than a popular headcanon nowhere even slightly stated to be happening in the actual films as written and produced. There's no reason in Lucas's films to suppose that the Anakin/Padmé relationship was coerced through a mind trick, that Padmé specifically would be susceptible to a mind trick, that she does not genuinely love Anakin or have any insight into his character, that her grip on reality is ever "toast," or that the mind trick (previously depicted as temporary and resistible) would work that way at all. Padmé is underwritten in ROTS in the way that cool girl heroines invented by men are often underwritten as grown adult women and especially as mothers, but that is not attributable to any character in the story.

Yes, Padmé is tired in ROTS and misses a lot of what's going on psychologically with her young secret husband who is in a cloistered order of warrior monks fighting a long-term war far away from her, but she sees the threat of Palpatine and recognizes exactly what his accession as emperor means. Her mind is fine. And in Lucas's films, also, Anakin is never shown using the mind trick on anyone. It's not really his style—it's a sneaky short-term solution whereas he's smart and resourceful enough most of the time, but mainly reliant on overwhelming power and skill. His signature "trick" is the Force-choke, not the mind trick, and it's the Force-choke that he ultimately uses against her—not because he's been using his powers against her the whole time (including when he's not even there, I guess?), but as a mark of how far he has fallen by that point. That's lost if it's not a drastic change from their previous relationship. Padmé's own choices also lose all meaning if she was mind-controlled by Anakin the whole time, and her arc becomes deeply boring.

Tl;dr - it is very far from "definitely a thing that happened." It is a headcanon that doesn't reflect anything the movies are trying to do (whether they fail or succeed at doing those things!) and is, IMO, a pretty terrible headcanon as well in terms of the overall coherence of the story and characters and how their world is shown to work.