#I feel like I deserve absolutely nothing

[deoidesign]

Time and Time Again comes back tonight!

Thank you all for being so patient with me, I know it was a long hiatus.

My health was struggling, my arm was (is) hurting, and I decided it wasn't worth it. I'd rather be slow!

So thank you for giving me that grace, and I hope you'll be there with me for the rest of the series.

[trappedinafantasy37]

"Weeeh! I wanna recruit Minthara on a good playthrough! Weeeh! I don't like the ultimatum and want to keep both Minthara and Halsin! Weeeh! I wanna make Minthara good! Weeeh! I don't want Minthara to break up with me!" Minthara deserves more content but none of these things are at all what she needs or deserves. No, these are all things that you want for yourself, but do absolutely nothing for her. This is one of the biggest L's in the game and it will forever enrage me because I just know it will never happen.

Minthara deserves to confront Orin like all the other companions do with their abusers. She deserves to scream and yell at Orin. She deserves to cut at her the same way Orin did, make her bleed and scream in pain. Minthara deserves to torture Orin, just as she did her in the mind flayer colony. Minthara deserves the right to roll up to the Temple of Bhaal and beat the shit out of Orin with her bare hands. Leave Orin begging for mercy in which Minthara will not even give her a drop. To slam Orin down on that altar and slice her throat, offer her up as a sacrifice to the father she is so blindly devoted to.

And yes, Minthara would be afraid. She would be TERRIFIED. Despite how strong and powerful Minthara is, she is also the only one afraid of Orin. Unlike Ketheric, or Gortash, or Sarevok, she is the only one who fully acknowledges just how dangerous Orin actually is and does not underestimate her. She will walk down into that temple, intending to duel Orin with a massive disadvantage because she is terrified.

Minthara choked when seeing Orin again in the mind flayer colony. She choked when seeing Orin as an imposter, throwing her deep into the ocean of paranoia and fear. And she is so entrenched in paranoia that it actually becomes palpable to everyone around her, even you. She describes herself as paranoid, but this is the first that you actually see how paranoid she is. And she choked again when Orin kidnapped someone in camp, making her feel inadequate, making a mockery of her for being unable to protect one of her own. And every day that passes, the more and more likely that the victim is going to die and she has doubts on their survival.

At every possible avenue in which Minthara could have done something or said something about Orin, she froze in place with fear. But she's had enough. She cannot be afraid of Orin forever and she doesn't want to be. One way or another, Orin has to die and she wants to get over that fear. She needs to know that Orin is dead, for herself.

This would also make the alurlssrin confession all the more impactful. She wants to tell you that she loves you in the best way that she can because of the very high likelihood that she will never have another chance to do so. She would beg you to come with her as you give her the courage. She has the courage to face her fears and confront her tormentor, because she knows she has you in her corner. If you have the courage to stand up to the very gods themselves, then she can stand up to Orin. Romanced or not, your presence alone is enough to give her the strength to do something she would otherwise be too terrified to do.

Minthara deserves the honor to solo duel Orin in a fight to the death. Minthara deserves the right to achieve vengeance for herself. No, I do not care that this confrontation would conflict with a Durge playthrough. In fact, it would provide a phenomenal source of some interesting, and toxic, drama between Durge and Minthara. Especially if they're in a relationship. This also does not mean that Minthara killing Orin instead of Durge would not have its consequences (because it most certainly will). Even if Minthara does not fight Orin, it would be so much better if Minthara was just given the fucking chance to yell at Orin like all the other companions in their personal quests.

[daemon-in-my-head]

I think my main issue with existing in fandom and engaging with it comes down to the narrative dissonance I've somehow established with fanon.

Cuz while fanon and the canon overall (durge a lot less tbh) is pretty positiveish and badass my approach simply... Isn't.

I'm not going with the banehold rescue missions or the 'maybe love did end up being enough' vibes.

My fucks aren't happy. They have their moments but at the end of the day durge never got over losing their purpose and eventually returned to Bhaal semi voluntarily and Gortash just, never changed. Grew even more bitter perhaps but he's always been a manipulative idiot with the emotional intelligence of a breadcrumb and continues to exist and act that way, eventually fucking up yet again because his ambition and need for control outweigh the desire for human connection.

I simply put them in a different, more comfortable situation than their past, but never allowed them to have that fundamental change they would've needed to attain legitimate happiness. They could've been happy if they had realised that they weren't in the same place anymore but they didn't. Couldn't. I mean heck my durge quite literally removed one of his eyes himself that's how hard they're fucking shit up for themselves.

And that isn't for everyone, which is valid, but it also makes it hard to interact with the fandom cuz if I do there is a chance of my overwhelming desire for tragedy and fucked upness leaking to people who don't enjoy it. Or we'll gothic horror ig cuz the gods still exist and fuck around (and dear lord am I making them fuck around) but at the end of the day the haunting isn't the supernatural or divine, it's the mortal idiots who can't seem to realise that yes, indeed, everything's changed.

So I just try not to.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

.

[fitpacs]

<3

[cheekblush]

really starting to believe that psychic who claimed i’m cursed

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

why is job hunting.

that's it that's the post

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

you know if we do accept the last epilogue-esque sequence as a sort of dream/wish of ted's and therefore not necessarily canon, very funny if we then simply go "yeah, trent's book is called 'the lasso way' actually. he didn't change that. nope."

[thatswhatsushesaid]

fandom salt that has nothing to do with mdzs for once, i bet you're all relieved

(full disclosure up front that i'm a show-only person and haven't read fire and blood)

i say this as a dedicated and devoted antagonist enjoyer and stan: i am bewildered by the preponderance of hotd posts crossing my dash atm that are, with their whole chests, asserting that:

the narrative of the show is positioning the greens as having a more justified claim to the iron throne than the blacks

rhaenyra is the real villain of the story for, as far as i can tell, the audacious crime of /checks my notes, having sex and then lying about it because not lying about it would probably result in her disinheritance and death (and she would have been killed, as a potential threat to aegon's claim, we're literally watching that happen right now)

aegon is ??? the real hero??? aegon "spends years having his illegitimate children fight each other to the death in illegal pit fighting matches" targaryen, is the real victim because ??? his actor has big sad eyes i guess

don't get me wrong, i am not immune to an antagonist with big sad eyes--stanning a little guy with big sad eyes who does some atrocities is my raison d'être on this blog--but also i think the protagonist and antagonist characters of mdzs (jgy and wwx specifically) are on FAR more equal footing in terms of the blood on their respective hands, the logical reasons and justifications behind why they do what they do, to say nothing of the other parallels that make viewing the story from the antagonist's perspective a super satisfying undertaking for people who enjoy that kind of thing (it's me, i'm people). but if the text and the subtext weren't there to make these examinations a rewarding experience, and if i didn't also find the way the broader fandom itself talks about jgy to be as fascinating as it is frustrating, i... probably wouldn't be running this blog.

even taking into consideration the horrific thing that happens at the end of s2 e1--which, to be clear, was not what rhaenyra wanted, at all--that does not actually change the material conditions that led to rhaenyra having her birthright stripped away from her. it does not make her and aegon the same. they are not the same, not remotely.

is he fascinating? ...not to me, personally, since of the two brothers i'm WAY more interested and invested in aemond's journey and his parallels with daemon (who i ALSO like but who clearly, deliberately manipulated rhaenyra into needing him, from a young age), but i can see why fans might look at this young guy with big eyes who thinks his daddy never loved him, and latch onto him as their meow meow of the hour. whomst among us hasn't been besieged by the brainworms before, no judgment, i get u. none of that makes him a hero.

[anxiously-sidequesting]

To me personally malistaire is the funniest and most pathetic villain wizard101 has ever had AND I MEAN THAT SINCERELY!!! Between doomed children who have been manipulated, groomed, and isolated into becoming products of their environments, someone scorned who has been punished unfairly by having your biological heart torn out your chest and turning your children and all of reality against you to satiate their own ego, a nonhuman entity so powerful and so clueless they unintentionally threaten the lives of everyone around them, Malistaire FELL DOWN BRO. Like yeah you're bitchless now. You and me both. Get in line. Everyone in this room is bitchless. We are ALL living that ✨💅🏾💃🕺 Single Life™. You are a middle-aged man. Cope

[edge-oftheworld]

one thing I love about following celebrities/artists who are honest and proactive about their mental health struggles etc is I can’t count the number of times someone I know is going through something and I’m like ��I’ve got a song for u’ and how much of my life involves telling myself ‘if [redacted] can do something/get better/etc then so can i’ (and having actual real evidence of it in front of me) and I can’t understate how much I appreciate these things.

but at the same time it involves a whole lot of watching people I care about suffer and you learn to read the signs and infer between the lines in songs and interviews, and yes we can never fully know what they don’t share with us, but when they do share things it’s not a big stretch to be like ‘this seems like it’s what life is like for you and I have taken encouragement from it but you deserve so much better’. and it’s easy to find ways to get angry at a predatory industry and realise things that could be hurtful if you’re already fragile.

and we can advocate for some things and help ourselves and the people around us feel better but it’s hard to meaningfully reach your faves as an individual. and there are things we can’t say on the internet in too much detail, speculation becomes the harmful kind of gossip, and so sometimes it’s a whole lot of internally saying ‘you’re doing incredibly well to have gotten to where you are but I wish for your sake things would get better faster’

[notetaeker]

Wow I was so unappreciative of my own accomplishments when I was in college. I'm trying to put together a portfolio and it turns out I wrote 5 whole news articles for the school paper ???

[nexus-nebulae]

another childhood bucket list item obtained: i finally have a snuggie

[aeide-thea]

do you ever think abt like. how it takes you twice as much work to arrive at half as much personhood and by the time you've managed to scrape yrself together that far the ppl you were trying to join in with have moved on

[raazberry]

kind of funny what literally one good day of not making insane assumptions about what my friends think of me and instead just talking to them does to me

[poems-of-a-lover]

i will never understand the "stop casting straight actors as gay characters" argument. people just wanna out gay actors so they can have a better grasp on who to hate.