#alice the absent

[fairies-rule]

Morpheus from Alice the Absent, when he was sitting naked in the rain, lost to the strangeness of his new state.

[mothpawbs]

yaknow I can't say alice the absent was a fantastic read but two years later my favorite takeaway is still that morpheus is canonically a complete whore

[baby-girl-aaron-dessner]

Despairing at the number of likes on this dumb af tweet. It’s so clear that a lot of the hatred directed towards Alicent is driven by the bandwagon effect.

It’s either that or media literacy is dead.

[bohemian-nights]

Show!Alicent and Show!Rhaenrya were never going to experience motherhood (or marriage for that matter) the same way, when you take into consideration that Alicent was forced to marry Viserys (Rhaneyra was technically forced to marry Laenor, but even then they had an arrangement and Rhaenyra still had power, whereas Alicent didn't have that power or that arrangment).

Alicent was forced to have her children (Rhaenyra willing had children with Harwin a man of her choosing and did not have to endure marital r@pe. Even though she and Laenor didn't want to have s!x they agreed they would until they had a child. Alicent on the otherhand is quite literally summoned by her husband for s!x. S!x that upon hearing she was being summoned for began crying and during said s!x mentally had to dissociate).

While of course people can still compare them it always annoys me when people specifically compare their relationships with their children because the context in how these children came to be is completely different (and the fact that this is only ever used to demean Alicent). Therefore how these mothers view their children is going to be completely different. This doesn’t mean that Alicent and Rhaenyra don’t love their respective children it just means that the dynamics they have with those children are going to be vastly different.

Not only that but the way Alicent and Rhaenyra themselves were raised and the relationships they have/had with their own mothers (and fathers) is also going to impact how they raise their children.

Nothing to add cause this is an excellent analysis. Wish more people would acknowledge their different positions(in life and situation) and keep that in mind when talking about their mothering, but this fandom is allergic to actual analysis🙃

[lemonhemlock]

The truth about Alicent Hightower: why is she so disliked?

https://youtu.be/t9HjamrAMfU?si=QpoUMPQQSuTWmovz

I found this video on YouTube. I didn't watch the video, but I did read the comments, and many of them were negative toward Alicent. I want to know your thoughts on this video.

The comments are negative towards Alicent because the creator's request for engagement consisted of asking her audience to share why they disliked Alicent. Though I do feel inclined to enquire myself: why are you asking me to react to this video if you haven't even watched it?

Many of these talking points I have already addressed in my lengthy meta posts over time:

There is a conflation of Alicent from the books and Alicent from the show. Show!Alicent was not sent to comfort Jaehaerys and is more innocent and trusting that book!Alicent because she is younger.

Alicent is hated by many viewers for "seducing" Viserys. The creator says she doesn't and denies that people blame her for that, but they do. It's an easily-verified, observable reality and, thus, a strange thing to even say.

Jace/Helaena is not an advantageous marriage for the greens.

"Why was Otto spying on Rhaenyra?" It's literally his job. "He deserved to be fired". It's literally his job to be spying on everyone and report the information back to the King.

The Hightowers are faced with the fait accompli that Aegon will not be named heir. They went into the marriage fully believing that Alicent's sons would overtake Rhaenyra in the line of succession, as was the social norm.

It ultimately comes back to what I was talking about these last few days. This is the result of a conflation of several factors:

ignorance about what medieval social and economic arrangements actually were (what is feudalism? what is manorialism?);

stubbornly clinging to the notion that Westeros is an absolutist monarchy and that "the King's word is law";

downplaying the bastard issue, i.e. refusing to acknowledge how concerning the division of the marital estate was to inheritors and blaming it entirely on misogyny-fueled sex-negativism;

having no concept of what common law is or how it functions.

People can't let go of this image that Westeros is a capitalist modern state with an authoritarian leader (the King). And dragons. (It's Russia, basically. The dragons are bears).

Most of TB's discourse contains some combination of the above, which is why, honestly, at this point, if people are so invested in still talking about this, I would truly suggest a primer in medieval history, because this is getting ridiculous. These reasonings are just not rooted in a tangible basis of reality and trying to engage with them is like fighting windmills.

In the same vein, I wish people would stop bringing up the point of Alicent misunderstanding that Viserys changed his mind on his death bed. I get it, you think it's a dumb argument, but, lo' and behold, it's actually lifted straight from real history and, to the shock of thousands of Twitter users, it worked. What now? Stephen of Blois truly is crying in the afterlife because you think this little trick of his lacks realism. 🤦‍♀️

[thepinkcalamity]

This drawing took almost 8 hours of my life and I can’t even say if I like it or not 💀 Anyway, I still can’t get over the fact that Audrey is a Drew-

[lovesickeros]

im back for my monthly delusion and its alice this time BECAUSE WHY DOES NO ONE ELSE TALK ABOUT HER. OR RHINEDOTTIR. extremely powerful witches who are probably on equal power level to an archon just vibing and committing war crimes.

[velvetjune]

the chapter songs in Alan Wake 2,, flawless

[pettyprocrastination]

alicent hightower is for the ‘i know my mother would have lived the happiest life if she never met my father even if it meant I would never have been born’ gang. 

[viinnyliicious]

Still thinking about Splintered, here's Gossamer :3

[yen-sids-tournament]

The complete list of all our Original or Remake polls.

We have posted all of the ones we are aware of, if there is a pair you do not see, kindly let us know!

The Little Mermaid 1989/2023

Dumbo 1941/2019

101 Dalmatians 1961/1996

101 Dalmatians Sequels 2000/2003

Aladdin 1992/2019

Alice In Wonderland 1951/2010

The Parent Trap 1961/1998

Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent 1959/2014

Cinderella 1950/2015

The Lion King 1994/2019

The Jungle Book 1967/1994 and 1998/2016 *

Peter Pan 1953/2023

Mulan 1998/2020

Freaky Friday 1976/1995 and 1998/2018 *

Lady and the Tramp 1955/2019

Pinocchio 1940/2000/2022 **

A Christmas Carol 1983/1992/2009 **

The Absent-Minded Professor/Flubber 1961/1997

Beauty and the Beast 1991/2017

*the plan had been to put the most popular two against each other in a third poll to determine the most popular of the four, but it was made pretty clear without the need

**There were three versions of the story and the poll answers were adapted to better fit the three-way comparison

[sansacherie]

While I accept there was probably a number of valid reasons as to why the show didn't include a birth scene for Alicent (ie time constraints) I don't agree at all with this idea that being thrown around that it was unnecessary because Aegon's birth "came quickly and without fuss".

Like first off I find people using Alicent's words here as proof that she had it easy so funny because if you actually educate yourself just a little you would understand that often times a "quick" labour is still extremely painful - you're basically running the length of a marathon at a sprint. Obviously I wouldn't compare Alicent's experience to Aemma and Laena's (whose experiences were horror stories and the worst possible scenario). But Rhaenyra's? We don't know how her first two births went, but there's not much to convince me that her giving birth to Joffrey would have been any more significantly painful compared to Alicent with Aegon. Especially when you consider how it was Rhaenyra's third versus Aegon being Alicent's first.

Furthermore I feel like people are forgetting that Alicent says this on Aegon's second name day. It's been 2 years. Because of this, I don't think it's wrong to assume that Alicent might be misremembering or downplaying it.

Secondly Aegon's birth supposedly being easy is moot to me because that's Aegon's. Not every birth is the same. Alicent could still have had a very difficult birth with Helaena who she was barely 2 months away from delivering in episode 3. To give you a real life example my mother gave birth to my elder brother easy enough but when she had her second child me she ended up needing a caesarean because according to the doctors I was in distress.

Furthermore saying a birth scene wasn't necessary on the basis that it was apparently a walk in the park for Alicent is so completely lacking in like empathy.

Like never mind the fact that Aegon's birth is a turning point in both Rhaenyra and Alicent's story because the minute they both found out Alicent had a son, Rhaenyra's claim was now in danger. It's the fact that you would have this 15 year old giving birth because this 40 something year old impregnated her. It's a level of horror that the others (Laena, Aemma, Rhaenyra) don't have because all of the three mentioned were adults in their scenes. Although to be fair Laena would have been around a similar age when she had Baela and we don't know how old Aemma was when she had her first with Viserys but those aren't the births being used. It's the fact that Alicent would have gone into labour knowing Viserys last wife died in childbirth and horrifically at that! It's the fact that the people she would want to confide in about her fears (her mother and Rhaenyra) are either dead or angry at her so you have this isolated terrified 15 year old uncertain of the future.

Ultimately I'm fine with it not being included because funny enough I don't need a super painful birth scene for me to sympathise with a character especially in regards to their motherhood. But I do this idea that excluding a birth scene for Alicent necessary because it was "painless" just completely untrue, sorry.

[sillyzombiedelusion]

Ok so I've seen people talking about how they couldn't adapt b&c accurately because of the child actors but like,,, they still managed to very easily "tell" us that jaehaerys was getting his head off without actually involving the child actor? And when b&c arrive and threaten helaena the kids aren't actually onscreen? They very obviously could've found a work around that didn't butcher the entire scene.

[darkestspring]

How does Rhaenyra feel about Baelon II? I can imagine that when Baelon arrived at the palace he was a little boy who had just lost his mother, perhaps Rhaenyra normalized at that time as Alicent and Viserys protected him. But a couple of years later he notices Viserys' preference over Baelon and that he treats it as his own, saying that Aemma had loved him and maybe he's there when Rhaenyra decides to intervene and says that Baelon II better go with Daemon because he is his father.

baelon ii came to alicent and viserys as a boy of six namedays, still grieving for his mother and despite it just being a rumor, he knew his father murdered his mother. Rhaenyra felt bad for him, knowing what it meant to lose a mother.

baelon ii and rhaneyra were sort of close when baelon was a child but viserys preference towards baelon was evident to everyone who had eyes. their relationship estranged due to that preference and to the treatment of aemond, like i mentioned before, baelon ii has an extreme sense of loyalty, aemond is his cousin who was raised with. learning that aemond was being bullied would irritate him, it would make his view of jace, luke, and rhaenyra become less nice. children don't learn these things on their own, so what is rhaenyra teaching them?

by the time that daemon marries rhaenyra, baelon's fondness of rhaenyra is completely gone. rhaenyra tries several times to mend that relationship several times throughout the years, trying to bring him to her side, but he's too stubborn and too loyal towards those who raised him to change his stance.

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Since I based my TMAGP!Gerry and Needles off their voice actors, I figured I’d do the same for the main cast. Subject to change of course, but I’ve really come around to loving these freaks.

[oathofkaslana]

ever think abt how their whole life changed right here because they're faced with the suggestion that the person they consider their mother isn't a good person? how they realized that they built their lab overlooking their dead brother's heart and realizing that there's a reason for that and that reason isn't necessarily good in spite of the value of family that they were taught when they were taken in by alice and klee..