#I just think it’s ironic

[sunnibits]

rip to izzy hands, so wife coded he even got killed off for a man’s development <3

[eydilily]

gem n joel the strongest duo (family) that you are

and of course. her

[yaoisquidbob]

serious gaming

[lmaowh-at]

Lanns n Starks lineups/costumes sketches that I will probably add other houses to. Tywin and Joff & the rest aren't here because I was lazy and Cerseis dress took all of my energy. Don't ask me about inspiration or historical basis for these

[classichorrorblog]

10 Body Horror Films To Consider For October/Halloween

[gunstellations]

its sonics turn! 👅

[oobbbear]

Best dynamic

[too-many-lavellans]

Kadan 🥺? Please 🥺✨?

(please don’t tag/comment with your inquisitor, thanks)

[ofswordsandpens]

actually I do want to talk about Sally Jackson a tad more because one criticism I've been hearing about her book counterpart more recently is "book Sally is one-dimensional: the perfect mother with no flaws" and that just has me biting my cheek because one part of her book counterpart that I always thought was ripe with discussion and didn't make it to the show is that Sally states that it was selfish of her to keep Percy close. It's one of the last things she says to him before she's "killed" by the minotaur.

And there's so much that we don't know about Sally because we view her from Percy's eyes. From his perspective we know that she's exceedingly kind, she never raises her voice to him or even Gabe, and she endured a horrible and abusive relationship to protect her son from monsters (of a different kind).

But there are things we can piece together from the text: Sally has known about CHB for a long time, apparently since before Percy was even born because Poseidon told her he wanted to send Percy there; she was told that it was a mistake for her to keep Percy close - who told her that, we're not sure, she only uses the phrase they; she's been in contact with Grover through out the school year; she knows that she can't cross the camp boundary line, which means either Grover or someone else (Chiron? Poseidon?) told her that, and that she understood that there was place that Percy would be safe from monsters.

And all of these little details are so interesting because it does make you wonder just how much she did or didn't know. Was her self assessment right? Was it selfish of her to keep Percy close?

On one hand, she kept him close because she loved him, alongside the fear that if she sent him to camp, she would be saying goodbye for good -- so is it even fair to call the act of keeping him close selfish? Or perhaps, much like Chiron, she assumed keeping Percy in the dark would be safer?

But on the other hand, Percy had been attracting monsters all his childhood, she understood camp was a safe place from monsters, and she had apparently been told explicitly that it was a mistake for her to keep him close.

And then adding in the factors of: Percy is her only family in the entire world, she's been suffering with Gabe for years, sacrificing so much in order to keep Percy safe when he's at home... but even that has a touch of sad irony because when we meet Percy in tlt, its at point when he's not really home at all -- he's been regularly sent off to boarding schools, so much so that he's internalized it as his own short-coming.

And all of this isn't to say "Omg Sally is actually horrible" or to assert definitely that she is selfish... but more to speak to the fact that in the books, she's not an all-perfect 2-dimensional mother. And her self-assessment of selfishness is something that is really interesting to explore and debate given the implications of what she apparently did (or did not) know about the godly world. I feel there's even an argument to be made that Sally being "selfish" could be a reflection of Percy's fatal flaw.

[i-a-q]

Peter: So… if you were a sandwich, what kind of sandwich would you be?

Tony: *without hesitation* A clubhouse, obviously. And you?

Peter: I’d probably be a peanut butter and jelly.

Tony: Of course, you would.

[fantasykiri5]

Fabian Seacaster, Maximum Legend that you are

[grimalkinmessor]

At the risk of revealing that I'm a Crazy Conspiracy Theorist I really do think that the biggest reason Hollywood seems to hate youtubers and wants nothing to do with them is because they are infinitely harder to control. People usually have to pay their dues to become famous, usually have to sign their damn soul away or do crazy awful shit in order to get a hand up—but you can't threaten obscurity to someone who already has a large fan base. Who is, in a lot of ways, already famous. A while back Mark talked about his time at a red carpet gathering and how no one would look at him or pay attention to him; almost like he was getting deliberately snubbed for being a youtuber. And yeah a lot of it is probably also the fact that "real" actors and directors don't see youtuber creations as valuable or Real Art, but I also think that a big part of that hostility is that he's not tied to it like they are. They can't make him do anything. Which, again I'm theorizing, is why I think Iron Lung is getting clotheslined. Because you know damn well that if Mark has enough money to produce it himself, then he has enough to advertise and release it himself. But he can't. For Some Reason. He's got to jump through hoops first because, well.

It really is all about control.

[eldritchdilf]

I better not get fucking flagged for this

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[synchodai]

HBO's Continued Insistence on Dumbing Down Westerosi Politics

So there have been countless thinkpieces already on how GOT simplified the feudalist politics of Westeros (by giving a lowborn sellsword lordship over The Reach, by having no consequences for destroying the Sept of Baelor, etc.), but I haven't seen a lot of people talking about that for House of the Dragon.

The worst being that the show presupposes that Rhaenyra is the lawful heir when the books showed there are plenty of lawful arguments why she wouldn't be.

Mind you that I've been enjoying the show a lot so far. This is just to vent out my frustration with the writers' failure to fully engage with the values and protocols of the Middle Age-inspired setting. The show seems uninterested in laws of the Realm in a story ostensibly about politics, save for when they're using it as an excuse to amplify depictions of sex and violence.

Blacks vs Greens wasn't a matter of misunderstanding of who each side thought Viserys wanted on the throne. It was the Targaryens' belief of their absolute authority clashing with the Realm's established traditions. Everyone always knew who Viserys chose as heir. In Fire and Blood, Grand Maester Orwyle said as much when he was parleying with Rhaenyra on behalf of the Greens.

Rhaenyra heard his terms in stony silence, then asked Orwyle if he remembered her father, King Viserys. "Of course, Your Grace," the maester answered. "Perhaps you can tell us who he named as his heir and successor," the queen said, her crown upon her head. "You, Your Grace," Orwyle replied. And Rhaenyra nodded and said, "With your own tongue you admit I am your lawful queen. Why do you serve my half-brother, the pretender?" Munkun tells us that Orwyle gave a long and erudite reply, citing the Andal law and the Great Council of 101. Mushroom claims he stammered and voided his bladder. Whichever is true, his answer did not satisfy Princess Rhaenyra.

(For non-F&B readers: Munkun is the Grand Maester who served Aegon III, the king who came after this civil war. Munkun's book, The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling, is one of Fire and Blood's source texts. Mushroom is the King Landing court jester from Viserys I to Aegon III's reign. One is a source written with academic rigor but is secondhand at best. The other is a firsthand eyewitness account but is from a literal fool who will take every chance to make things more scandalous and sexual to please the crowd.)

In House of the Dragon, they replaced Orwyle with Otto and Orwyle's discussion of legal precedent with Otto handing Rhaenyra a book page from Alicent. It's quite evident here that the writers, much like Mushroom, thought a discussion on the actual laws of the Realm were negligible in this story about a succession war.

Even Alicent made no pretense that Viserys chose Rhaenyra over her children and I have no idea why the HBO writers decided to make her mistakenly think otherwise. Maybe they thought a queen regent pushing her son to take the throne over another woman made her appear unsympathetic as a character, but if anything, this only makes show!Alicent less politically savvy and more delusional than her book counterpart, fully believing an addled king's vague muttering on his deathbed was sufficient grounds to change heirs last minute.

Book!Alicent following Andal laws instead of her husband's wishes makes sense given her Andal upbringing, her devotion to the Faith of the Seven which enforces said laws, and her desire to protect her children from Rhaenyra given that Rhaenyra has shown she's not above murdering family (see: Laenor).

In the books, there was a long discussion between the former king's council on who should succeed Viserys.

Here are the arguments for Rhaenyra:

Rhaenyra was older than her brothers and had more Targaryen blood

the late king had chosen her as his successor, that he had repeatedly refused to alter the succession despite the pleadings of Queen Alicent and her greens

hundreds of lords and landed knights had done obeisance to the princess in 105 AC, and sworn solemn oaths to defend her rights.

Here are the arguments for Aegon II:

many of the lords who had sworn to defend the succession of Princess Rhaenyra were long dead [...]

Ironrod, the master of laws, cited the Great Council of 101 and the Old King’s choice of Baelon rather than Rhaenys in 92

the hallowed Andal tradition wherein the rights of a trueborn son always came before the rights of a mere daughter

Ser Otto reminded them that Rhaenyra’s husband was none other than Prince Daemon, and “we all know that one’s nature. Make no mistake, should Rhaenyra ever sit the Iron Throne, it will be Lord Flea Bottom who rules us, a king consort as cruel and unforgiving as Maegor ever was [...]”

Should the princess reign [...] Jacaerys Velaryon would rule after her. “Seven save this realm if we seat a bastard on the Iron Throne.”

Once again, the show chose to cut out this long political discussion. Instead, the council had already made up their mind and decided to stage a coup (when in their perspectives from the books, it would definitely not be a coup).

For all their marketing how two sides are equally grey, HotD is actively delegitimizing Aegon II. The strongest argument for him is how his claim follows the laws of the Realm, but the show doesn't seem to care about the laws of the Realm or the political need to maintain a more predictable/tested transfer of power.

Instead, the show focuses on Viserys's relationship with his daughter and the mysticism of the Targaryen bloodline. In doing so, they emphasize Rhaenyra's strongest arguments for succession — that she's more of a Targaryen than her half-brother and that her father prefered her.

And what for? Because in our modern-day, we don't have male-prefered inheritance and people can only imagine misogyny as the only injustice here? What about the injustice of a monarch exercising absolute control, thinking that his "superior" heritage makes him above the established laws of the native people?

This is not to say Aegon II is unquestionably the heir. But this is to say that the show removed the political nuance of why people are questioning in the first place. Precedence isn't the end-all-be-all of succession, but neither is "because daddy said so".

[inkskinned]

sometimes we just need someone to pay enough attention.

for the longest time i had been trying to read The Lord of The Rings. everyone had sung the praises for it, over and over. i'd seen clips of the movie and it seemed like it could be fun, but actually reading it was fucking horrible.

my parents had the omnibus - all the books squished into one big tome - and in the 4th grade i started sort of an annual tradition: i would start trying to read TLR and get frustrated after about a month and put it back down. at first i figured i was just too young for it, and that it would eventually make sense.

but every time i came back to it, i would find myself having the exact same experience: it was confusing, weird, and dry as a fucking bone. i couldn't figure it out. how had everyone else on earth read this book and enjoyed it? how had they made movies out of this thing? it was, like, barely coherent. i would see it on "classics" list and on every fantasy/sci-fi list and everyone said i should read it; but i figured that it was like my opinion of great expectations - just because it's a classic doesn't mean i'm going to like experiencing it.

at 20, i began the process of forcing myself through it. if i had to treat the experience like a self-inflicted textbook, i would - but i was going to read it.

my mom came across me taking notes at our kitchen table. i was on the last few pages of the first book in the omnibus, and i was dreading moving on to the next. she smiled down at me. only you would take notes on creative writing. then she sat down and her brow wrinkled. wait. why are you taking notes on this?

i said the thing i always said - it's boring, and i forget what's happening in it because it's so weird, and dense. and strange.

she nodded a little, and started to stand up. and then sat back down and said - wait, will you show me the book?

i was happy to hand it over, annoyed with the fact i'd barely made a dent in the monster of a thing. she pulled it to herself, pushing her glasses up so she could read the tiny writing. for a moment, she was silent, and then she let out a cackle. she wouldn't stop laughing. oh my god. i cannot wait to tell your father.

i was immediately defensive. okay, maybe i'm stupid but i've been trying to read this since the 4th grade and -

she shook her head. raquel, this is the Silmarillion. you've been reading the Silmarillion, not the lord of the rings.

anyway, it turns out that the hobbit and lord of the rings series are all super good and i understand why they're recommended reading. but good lord (of the rings), i wish somebody had just asked - wait. this kind of thing is right up your alley. you love fantasy. it sounds like something might be wrong. why do you think it's so boring?