#at least be familiar with the source material you're discoursing about

[ro-botany]

Hi, anon! I also am someone who has written a fair amount of meta about Grima and you can also pick a bone with me if you want. By the phrasing of your ask you seem unwilling to have your mind changed, but let's touch on a few points here anyway because I'm bored.

For one thing, you seem to have missed crucial themes about agency that have been present in Grima's character since his debut! In both Awakening, and the further backstory granted him by Shadows of Valentia, one constant in Grima's life is that other people have decided he is evil, and treated him as such before he even acts. In fact, being literally forced into acting how one of his followers believes he should act is a major plot point of Awakening! The lvl40 dialogue of Grima: Fell Reincarnation in Heroes just pushes that theme further; of feeling used and forced into a particular role by humanity.

And for another, you seem to have fallen for the Grimleal's propaganda about Plegia, and assumed everyone in the country is an evil mook! You're also implying that the horrific crusade that Chrom's father led against Plegia was justified! There is too much to unpack there! You've lost the plot so much that you've condemned an entire country over one guy you got mad at!

If you want to discourse Grima or Plegia then I'm assigning you required reading, because you clearly have not read the textbook. Please review:

Grima's dialogue in the Future Past DLC, especially the bad ending.

The premonition cutscene that opens Awakening, with the knowledge that this is one of Grima's memories from the bad timeline ("Those vivid dreams you have—those are my memories. We share those memories because we share the same heart…Grima's heart." - Chapter 23 "Invisible Ties" from Awakening) and not an event from the timeline that the game follows.

Forneus' journals from SoV, while holding the fact that he is talking about a literal baby firmly in your head.

Awakening Chapter 5 "The Exalt and the King" opening, particularly as pertains to the previous exalt's crusade.

Awakening Chapter 6 "Foreseer" opening, particularly as pertains to Chrom's thoughts on the previous exalt's crusade.

Awakening Chapter 8 "The Grimleal" village conversations.

Awakening Chapter 10 "Renewal" pre-battle and battle dialogue between Mustafa and his soldiers.

Awakening Paralogue 20 "A Hard Miracle" opening dialogue, particular with the unnamed village elder.

I expect a short summary of all assigned readings, a paragraph analyzing what the first 3 readings imply about Grima's motivations, and a paragraph analyzing the average Plegian citizen's view of the Grimleal and the monarchy in general based on the other 5 readings. Due date is Friday and all assignments may be submitted in my or Feli's inbox. Dismissed.

Speaking of Grima in Heroes, I am the only one that one of their alts claim in their level 40 quotes that he's evil because his worshippers don't love him enough?

I mean an entire country worships Grima to the point of routinely sacrificing themselves and victims, they've continued to do this for a thousand years despite repeatedly being persecuted for the rest of the world explicitly for worshipping Grima?

It doesn't add up, I feel?

The Future Past DLC also depicts Grima mainly as a sadist.

If you are going to argue Grima lore I will once again direct you to professor of Grima studies @felikatze

Otherwise the best I can do is shrug and point out heroes fucks up characterization all the time, best not to spend too much energy on it

[fideidefenswhore]

I've been wondering this for awhile, because different secondary sources give various takes on the Downfall of Anne Boleyn, but how big of a role did the Seymours (Jane and her brothers) in particular play in the downfall and judicial murder of Anne Boleyn?

I hated how Becoming Elizabeth white-washed Edward Seymour's character by portraying him as being super nice to Elizabeth when I'm 100% sure that wasn't the case in real life. He didn't defend her when the Thomas Seymour scandal broke out, didn't tell her she looked like her dad, and certainly did not apologize to her for his brother's behavior. Somerset kept her away from King Edward and refused to let her come to court when she was accused to let her speak her piece. Wasn't he also the one who refused to give Elizabeth the lands/money Henry VIII left for her in his will? Thomas abused the Princess no question about it.

The Seymours helped cause Anne's death and then abused her daughter it seems. If they were behind her downfall it makes sense that they wouldn't care about her daughter either.

Well, given you've already mentioned secondary sources, I'm assuming you're not looking for reccomendations for material on this subject, and are just asking for my opinion? I might post some excerpts later regardless in some reblog or edit of this ask, if you're interested.

I'm not too familiar with the sources on Edward VI's reign but that does sound about right? Although I'm not positive there was much improvement when Edward Seymour was disempowered and eventually executed and John Dudley took up the helm, from what I remember that's true. For more on this, I would rec From Heads of Household to Heads of State by Jeri L. Mcintosh and Word of a Prince by Maria Perry.

Yeah, I don't...even want to get into BE discourse too much (I assume the invention of their relationship shifting from begrudging antipathy to admiration and eventual apology was due to AR's sympathy for him, but fans of the show were mad he apologized to Elizabeth and not Mary, for...what? What did they want, exactly? Had he not apologized to her in the canon of the show he would have died a CSA apologist). Most of it just seemed absurd to me. For whatever reason that man seems to have had some appeal to AR during her research process, and I simply cannot fathom why. To me, he is just flop (as ruthless as Cromwell but without his genius or political acumen, of moderate intelligence but poor character, I don't think you can even make the argument that well, even if ineffectual and 'of small power' by 1538, as per one contemporary, at least he withstood every shift and endured, that would be more applicable to a figure such as William Paulet).

But, circling back to the first question:

How big of a role did the Seymours (Jane and her brothers) in particular play in the downfall and judicial murder of Anne Boleyn?

An interesting one, because they're part of this rather large faction at the time, as Chapuys reports. I don't necessarily get the impression they were actually leading said faction, however...those with the most weight to pull number as Lord Montague, Nicholas Carew, at times Francis Bryan, the Marquis and Marchioness of Exeter. What's particularly interesting to note is that Chapuys specifically alleges that these players are constantly giving Jane advice on how and in what manner to speak with Henry VIII. Often this report is stretched to farce (some authors almost writing about this in ways that veer on anachronism, suggestions of Jane almost being fed line for line by earpiece), but assuming even moderate exaggeration of Chapuys' part, what I find compelling is what this means, which is that Jane doesn't really know Henry. As in, she has some sense of him, but she's reliant on the advice of those who have known him much longer.

Why I find that compelling is that it implies the Seymours have always sort of been on the outskirts, never within Henry's inner circle up to this point, which makes sense once the evidence is considered (Jane has probably been serving the new Queen since 1534 at latest, her appearance on gift rolls notwithstanding, but doesn't show up as her intimate in the way of Margaret Douglas, Mary Howard, etc). Her 'brothers' alone is interesting, isn't it? Contemporary report at this time doesn't even place Thomas there in the ramp-up to the coup, it might even be that he's often placed there in fiction because as we recreate these scenes on screen and stage, we read things backwards. We do know that Edward is there, and presumably he might have even been at court for some time, we know he's present at Anne Boleyn's coronation feast as server to Cranmer, we know he's the Duke of Richmond's Master of the Horse. But there's no mention of Thomas Seymour in all this until he's given title once his sister becomes Queen.

So, Edward's involvement, by contemporary report, is that he's basically in attendance at these meetings of Boleyn opponents, he's promoted to the Privy Chamber in March 1536 (not, however, the Privy Council until halfway through the next year, which is interesting...basically, he's not significantly promoted to that place of trust and influence until Jane's been Queen for an entire year, which is instructive insofar as it could mean one of two things: one, Jane's lack of influence and power as Queen, or two, that she doesn't care about the promotion of her brothers enough to push on the matter), he's chaperoning meetings between Jane and Henry alongside his wife in the quarters Cromwell has granted him which connect to Henry's own, and he's present at the failed Imperial detente between Cromwell, Chapuys, and Henry VIII in April 1536.

Circling back to how Jane requiring such intensive counsel to speak with Henry, on what to say and how to say it, on how to approach him...every point this faction wants her to press with Henry is rebuffed by him. There is no honeymoon period for Jane, truly. If she can't convince him to reinstate his eldest daughter in the succession, would she have been able to convince him to repudiate his wife? It's doubtful, although I'm sure she encouraged this, it's unlikely her encouragement was what pushed him over the brink, as it were.

Moreover, if we go beyond Chapuys, according to contemporary reports Jane was countermanded, sometimes quite publically, on pretty much every political move she attempted (once, five times in a row on the same matter, and another reports Henry as saying he had already 'often' told her not to meddle in his affairs, and this as early as five months into their marriage, and Jane as Queen). This is instructive insofar how much they were leading this faction, versus other members of the faction leading them. Assuming she wasn't masochistic, Jane must have repeatedly been promised and told by those that 'knew Henry best' (almost all of whom, absent Bryan, are going to end up on the scaffold in two years' time) that her influence was going to equal or even surpass her predecessors' upon Henry, and that she just had to bide her time.

So, was there a Seymour 'family firm' comparable to some others, as far as the Boleyn coup? Beyond Jane & Edward, there's not much evidence for one (certainly they were united in grabbing the spoils afterwards, Henry Seymour grabbed a vacant position by one of the accused and condemned men, Edward a viscounship to equal George Boleyn's, not to mention the riches and properties of the Dissolution both Jane and Edward enjoyed, etc). Thomas is absent, as are their parents, and Elizabeth Seymour seems to have even possibly been a Boleyn supporter by dint of her husband. Jane's maternal cousin is on the jury which condemns her predecessor, but beyond that....

Circling towards your last:

The Seymours helped cause Anne's death and then abused her daughter it seems. If they were behind her downfall it makes sense that they wouldn't care about her daughter either.

Eh, I don't think it's fair to term any of them, save Thomas Seymour later on, as 'abusive' towards Elizabeth. What's more certain is that they wouldn't have wanted her to develop any sort of base of power and support. It is interesting, though, as far as memory serves, that it's after Edward Seymour's power was stripped that Elizabeth was making such public appearances of honour at her brother's court. An interesting aspect of any counterfactual of Jane's survival, Jane being the last Tudor queen (consort) of Henry VIII, would be how the relationship between Edward VI&Elizabeth might then manifest, the Seymours would not have faded into obscurity as they did for much of Henry's reign, and it's difficult to imagine that they wouldn't have been wary of the two of them developing any sort of rapport. But, they did, and it was Henry that directed the education and environment that made this possible.

[golbatgender]

Yeah, I read it (though I think it's updated since) because I thought it was asstastically ridiculous to argue about a book without reading it first. Like maybe you can fake your way through English 9 like that, but there's no SparkNotes for something that came out like last year—and even if there were, that's someone else's commentary and they can say whatever they want. Same goes for any post about it on tumblr. If you haven't read the source material, you're not in any position to evaluate claims about it. And wouldn't the antis like that, so they can make us believe whatever they want about something they personally don't like?

I bet 95% of antis complaining about Killing Stalking haven't read it. I bet a lot of Voltron discoursers haven't seen more than a very few episodes of the show. (I don't have any interest in Voltron currently, and haven't watched it, but I try to avoid making claims about it beyond "So-and-so, being a fictional character, is not a real person.") I bet most of the ones complaining about manga have never actually tried to find manga (hint: most people look for kinks first, and how the fuck are you supposed to tell ages half the time when it's in a language you don't understand and can't read and everyone's an elf, and you're only there because it's the only thing you can find for a kink you wish you didn't have, you probably just skip to the like two pages with it; and they're not real people ffs). I bet at least half of the antis complaining about "pedophilic" or incest fic don't read fic and almost none of them write it, and they just don't have the creativity to consider that in fiction, you can find consensual, adult incest that is completely different from a child being sexually assaulted by a family member—seriously, it's worlds apart. (And it's not something I look for, but I will read it from authors whose work I'm familiar with, or again, in search of rare kinks. Bite me. Again, fiction. As in not real and never will be. I can tell the damn difference. If you can't, stay the fuck away from other humans, and probably also animals.) I bet most antis have no idea why forming your own opinions of things and doing the reasoning yourself is important, or even that it is, or what goes into creating a work, or why an author would choose to have a character or be "problematic" beyond personal bigotry (to cause conflict, to give room for growth or show tragic decline, to set up a plot twist, simply to establish that the character is flawed or a bad person), or why they might not explicitly state that it is problematic (because they think you can tell or they want people to discuss it, generally without calling other fans pedophiles and abusers for stuff they didn't do!).

So, basically, they can sound out words but they don't know how to actively read. And they think it's good not to form one's own opinions or seek out new information. The fascists are going to have the last laugh, I tell you.

Do antis realize they are literally doing the Streisand Effect? Most most people are gonna wanna see something more if you try to censor it. I actually learned about my incest kink and ageplay kink because of antis. I also read a little of killing stalking cause of them. Also they are shooting themselves in the foot cause they are making less people try Voltron, less views/ merch sales = less money = slowly cancellation. rip your precious little show antis, time to ruin something else...

👆👆👆👆 lmao yep, the main reason I started reading Killing Stalking is because I heard antis talking about it and I got curious.