#bad day CANCELLED

[sparkmender]

my pharmacist, upon spotting my Decepticon pendant, literally RAN back over to his desk behind the counter and came back with a whole ass TFP ratchet figurine

[hermit-frog]

[pain-in-the-butler]

yesterday was the 15th anniversary of me officially being in the fandom!

here's to fifteen years of forcing people to read my kuroshit 😌

[taikawaititisbellypudge]

I really feel like OFMD being cancelled in January set the tone for the whole year

[chasiufan]

Consume my underthello content with yuri Lenses please…….

[xxplastic-cubexx]

i had this old man teacher in middle school who basically was Charles Xavier. i mean, he looked the part, he sounded the part, he acted the part- really the only difference was the lack of telepathy and he could walk. and the name i guess.

well i ran into him the other day and his recently wedded husband. they met when he was in the military forever ago and reconvened and inevitably tied the knot.

his husband’s name?

Erik.

i am being dead serious. a part of me evaporated.

What in the reddit story…….. youre yanking my chain SURELY…. But if youre not has his husband ever expressed revolutionary ideation or—

[causenessus]

I feel like a dragon slowly being woke from my sleep

[rhaenin-time]

No, House Targaryen is not inherently "doomed" by the very same flaws (and themes) that doomed the civilization that they left.

No, they're not fated to succumb to the Doom that they survived specifically because of the foresight that set them apart from everyone else who perished. Not only would it be terrible, simplistic writing, it would also endorse a terrible, simplistic worldview.

People choosing to make House Targaryen a representation of and thematic successor to not just the civilization that they differentiated themselves from, but the power structure that they chose to leave, literally divested from, and actively worked to prevent from rising again in another form... really rubs me the wrong way.

Why isn't this projection and generalization done for any of the families that come from the cultures that are not coded as other? Why is it only the family that's been separated from their cultural context? Why do the other families each get to be unique, complex manifestations not just of different aspects of their cultures, but of their own specific histories?

Why is the foreign degenerate family both a representation of everything wrong with the culture they come from, and a scapegoat for everything wrong with the system they assimilated into? How is it they represent everything bad about what they left behind, and also everything bad about the land they came to? Even though all those flaws are not only shared by the system as a whole, but are flaws that predate their arrival, that they were punished for resisting, and that they are demonstrated to be incompatible with. Why is it always both?

It just rings so familiar to the way so many people view the other in real life. Because the Targaryens are overtly, and intentionally written as the other. It's the reason so many people identify with them, and it's the very same reason that other people vilify them. They're not just the in-universe other to the 'default' culture established in the text, but they're also given characteristics that we, the reader and audience, can recognize as other and even sometimes anathema to Western Christian culture.

Perhaps the old tales were true, and Dragonstone was built with the stones of hell

A Storm of Swords, Chapter 25, Davos III

I want you to ask yourself: Why is the idea of "fire and brimstone" evil?

To paraphrase the annoying people that love to cite Ramsay when they feel like it: If you look at a morally complex family surrounded by other morally complex families in a morally complex world in a story that's famed for seeking to challenge your underlying assumptions, and think that their association with fire and brimstone is meant to signify their singular satanic evilness, rather than say... challenge that very Eurocentric assumption, you haven't been paying attention.

This vilification mindset where the Targaryens are the singular evil of Westeros is so common to people who seem to want to consume ASoIaF without engaging with the criticisms of the Eurocentric worldview of history at the heart of it. And they end up using the convenient “others” to project all the wrongs of that world onto so they don't need to examine it any deeper.

This is the part where I so often get crucified!

This is the take that so often gets me crucified for "trivializing real world bigotry" in an attempt to "moralize interpretations of fiction" by an onslaught of people with troubling ideologies who then ironically steer the onslaught to moralizing their interpretations of fiction in a way that seeks to either mask or justify their troubling ideologies.

The worldbuilding of ASoIaF is an almost unparalleled projection of the Eurocentric worldview. That's what makes the world feel so rich. That's why GRRM and even the readers and audience are able to craft so many details that feel intuitive. But that also means that how you choose to interpret that world is often driven by underlying biases and ideologies that relate to that worldview — especially if you're not willing to challenge them the way George RR Martin does and encourages you to do.

It means that certain potential biases and ideologies people might balk at outwardly expressing in the real world are recontextualized in a way that feels more comfortable to indulge in.

There are countless examples from countless parts of the narrative. Honestly, you could fill books on the matter. But the one I'll point to right now is how the vilification I pointed out earlier is so emblematic of how the Eurocentric worldview often seeks to project their own flaws onto the other or choose scapegoats for systemic issues.

It comes from the same place with how someone pointed out that the baffling bastardphobia that would have medieval peasants giving the side eye is so often people jumping at the chance to “cosplay” as bigots who base their arguments in misogyny and bio-essentialism. Because it's an acceptable channel to indulge in that mindset in a way that they'd often otherwise question, or at least hold back from expressing out of caution.

And there I go again. "Moralizing fandom" for pointing out that fandom is so often used as a 'safe space' to build communities that share and spread troubling ideologies that you're not allowed to criticize because those ideologies have been 'appropriately' decontextualized from their real-world parallels, even though those parallels are still very much there.

But the problem is that it's impossible to simply 'channel' bigotry and leave it in an 'acceptable' space, because bigotry doesn't work like that. It's not a static object you can carry around in your pocket to play with when you think it's safe to do so. It's a blight. A living poison that feeds and grows and spreads. And if you give it a 'safe space' and continue to feed it with 'acceptable' fuel, it will always find its way out.

[dnphobe]

should have met dan and phil today but im sick. coping by complaining in their confession booth even though im not at the show.

[theythemmer]

princess daniel you will always be so special to me

[abovecalamity]

Another one, thank you 😀

Every game that Bayern loses, there is a spark of joy in my heart 💓

[tyrramint]

Y’know

I try not to think about the cancellation too much and just enjoy being in the fandom and enjoying the show me the books that we have

But we were ROBBED of a second season

I’m still so genuinely upset

I cannot believe that they cancelled it, everyone who worked on it and everyone in the fandom deserved a second season

[death-limes]

falling headfirst back into my middle/highschool hyperfixation of shipping blossom ppg and dexter laboratory (aged up ofc), except now im a lot better with characterization and relationship dynamics so their whole story in my head has gotten a huge glow-up of sorts & i love them even more now

too bad they dont rlly have a fandom that gets Like That about them, ao3’s got slim pickins & most of it is just kinda basic

[infinifi]

But did mans look happy? Was mans being silly? Did mans smile a lot?

[cut-catches]

i love when i was literally supposed to start getting iv infusions TODAY and just got a call from the agency that actually their supplier won’t give them my fluids because there’s a shortage and they decided i’m not sick enough to need them

[itsindiana]

gang im not mentally or emotionally prepared to lose bad batch . i lived through the war of '14 ( clone wars season 6 ending ) and the battle of '20 ( clone wars season 7 ending ) . i don't know if i'm brave enough to face another loss .