#because the narrative is her fault

[stromuprisahat]

Siege and Storm- Chapter 4

I didn't remember Genya disobeyed a direct order. Sure, I knew she didn’t shoot Alina or any of her helpers, but the Darkling ordered her. So I did not-so-quick search for suitable punishment in 1800s:

Figure 1 : Punishments inflicted by British courts-martial 1865-1867 32

... For example, the 1876 version outlined a number of military offences for which the death penalty could be applied. These included mutiny, sedition, desertion, cowardice, sleeping at or leaving a post, striking or using violence towards a superior officer and disobedience 42.

When we’re there, death doesn’t mean a bullet in the head:

In 1800, British Army regulations listed no fewer than 222 offenses that could draw the death penalty, and corporal punishment in the form of flogging was taken to such an extreme that sentences of as many as 500 lashes were regularly ordered. That number of lashes was enough to kill a man, a fact which led several contemporaneous observers to question the ultimate intent of such punishment. ...

There are even mentions of Russia in the first article:

This clinging to flogging and the branding of offenders was not exclusive to the British. Russian courts-martial could order corporal punishments to be administered summarily in the presence of a soldier's company or battalion 38. 

...

Even in Tsarist Russia the death penalty was rarely used in criminal cases – although continued use of the knout resulted in many deaths and little restraint was shown in the army.

It’s also relatively safe to assume Ravka will lean into harsher punishments, since their wars are dragging and defensive, which rarely works for more humanitarian approach. They need to make their soldiers obey, even though their prospects are beyond bleak.

Genya didn’t pay with her life, or deep welts on her back, but magical facial disfigurement. Extensive branding, if you want.

(Btw, huge fan of the choice of words. Mutilated person= WHAT...)

Brutal? Undeniably.

Personal? So was her betrayal and the Darkling is a petty bitch, who rarely does anything for a single reason.

Genya’s disfigurement served as her punishment, vivid reminder he won’t tolerate such behaviour- he needs reliable support, not indecision- and later a weapon against Alina.

Genya’s fate is setting-appropriate, my only objection is possible lack of public trial and perhaps that the Darkling would serve as prosecutor, judge and executor. But then again we don’t know much about the usual inner workings of Second Army, so he might serve as those even in other cases.

[cruelplatonic]

my personal headcanon is the vees were unremarkable nobodies when they were alive. i just love it as a thematic throughline for them. they love to let the public of hell speculate on them being famed and acclaimed since before death, but the the truth is they were a d-list failed influencer that got by on cheap controversey and scamming, a broke junkie who burned every shaky bridge he ever had, and a worn-out broadcast production assistant with more rejected auditions and tossed out script pitches than he could count. nobody missed them when they were gone, nobody cared who they were until they were dead.

[autisticrosewilson]

So do you guys actually think that Jason's entire story, relationship to the others, and philosophy amounts to him being a rebellious teen who wants his dad's attention? Like are you 100% serious? I thought you were joking about that but too many of you are saying it with your whole chest.

And what the fuck is this "Bruce antagonizing Jason is fanon!" Shit I've been seeing? You guys are aware that a parent can love their kid and still be a shit parent right? I know you guys don't want to fathom the thought that maybe your blorbo might also occasionally have to face responsibility for consistently endangering children but let's not start being delusional now.

Bruce does love his kids, that doesn't mean that he hasn't hurt them. And I'd also argue that for the most part he feels in the right for it, and he's said multiple times that he believes it's for their own good, so you can't even argue that he's sorry about it. It's okay for you guys to admit that your PERSONAL INTERPRETATION of the character wouldn't do that but don't sit here and pretend that it's not a facet of the source.

[wildflowercryptid]

some silly goofy cavallari siblings memes for your enjoyment! ( jules is so tired. )

[diadoodledump]

I've been beating this drum for a hot minute but I will never not be bothered by the revision of Catharine and Willis Todd's being reframed to just be abusive addicts, which isn't a great thiiing.

but from a writing standpoint, there is the potential for that reframing to have been done by the actual characters, and having the reframing of Jason's death and becoming the red hood as being inevitable because of his background being a form of internalized classism of well, Bruce. there's something very interesting in the idea that in Bruce's grief of Jason's death, and then the grief of his return, he pushes the responsibility onto the thing he couldn't control, Jason's past.

idk obviously dc would never, but it would be fascinating to have the narrative be self aware and make it a shitty thing the writers just kinda did be examined and challenged in-universe.

[sainteda]

hotd finale spoilers

i think the core issue w the finale scene isn't alicent's willingness to cleave to rhaenyra for mercy as otto once warned her she would or even to recognize that to finally choose a life for herself her sons will likely die (although an 8ep season missing integral scenes like a confrontation w aemond immediately post-s1 or more impact from b&c [given instead to a mishandled alicole plot] is also a big problem), it's the viserys worship ingrained in his every mention or lack thereof. alicent has to recycle an arc of powerlessness she's already endured her entire life, as if to drill into the minds of an audience that was already unwilling to sympathize with her that — actually — she's powerless! who would have thought! because the show refuses to recognize viserys for what he was, or at the VERY LEAST what he did to her, alicent's journey to rhaenyra (and more importantly, away from court) has to be borne of a million new heavy-handed methods the writers have concocted to hit her while she's down, and then hit her again. and again. and again.

alicent can't come to rhaenyra and plead her case while simultaneously reckoning with her anger that this is not new! this is not just her sons or the green council! she was sold off by her only family to the father of the only person she ever chose and it caused her to lose her and she was a child! she never wanted to marry viserys. she never wanted her children. he forced her to have them and then he discarded them and he's lauded even in death for his consideration and judiciousness when he never considered her. why can't she be angry at him!! why bother writing her grief over who she could have been without acknowledging one of the two people who took that version of her away? it's so hollow. the alicent who seeks out rhaenyra on dragonstone is needlessly humbled, lobotomized, and her lines read almost as if she's pleading her case to the audience instead of rhaenyra herself. why can she not be desperate to be heard while the epiphany of not only her lack of autonomy but of personhood itself fights not to bubble over the surface? shouldn't her grief be heaviest now, for not even knowing herself but coming to rhaenyra anyway? rhaenyra who might be the only choice she can remember making? isn't there an inherent anger in that? she could have taken helena and jaehera and gone as far as possible but she's here, before her opposition, grasping at an olive branch she knows is broken, because it's what she would have done the last time she was a person who could choose. it's what she wanted twenty years ago, and what else is there. there's been no alicent since but whoever she had to be to keep herself and her children alive. isn't that fucked up??? hello???

i understand it's a reversal of the scene in the sept so rhaenyra is shutting alicent down but it just makes alicent's path to freedom to look more like a new form of submission. as if her fears weren’t justified. as if her anger in season 1 was petty jealousy rectified once she Saw The Light (rhaenyra). anyways. regardless of hes that she's talking about her and rhaenyra through viserys and aemma, i really don't think i can overstate the wrongness of alicent speaking fondly of him in a scene that's supposed to be about her coming to terms with a lifetime of being used particularly by men — and still continuing to extol a man who quite literally raped her in a scene that is In the show. am i supposed to forget the marital rape of a child bride? the one that they put in the show. on purpose. ??? how am i supposed to view that as anything but disingenuous?

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

question: how can you adore elia when she’s barely a character?

we do not know enough about this character for her to even have stans.

stanning elia is illogical at best, completely delusional and very concerning at worst.

because what even is it that is being stanned and adored? your self insert?

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Sword of Kaigen

standalone fantasy set in a rural mountain village at the edge of an empire that still holds traditional values, with families of powerful water/ice magic warriors

follows a powerful young heir who begins to question his beliefs about the empire when a new boy comes to his village from the city

and his mother, a housewife who has tried to forget her youth as a warrior and vigilante in the city since she moved back home to a loveless marriage

when there’s a violent attack on their village that they’re unprepared for, everything changes, and she has to embrace her old skills to protect her family and people

[shorlinesorrows]

every once and a while I think about how the narrative / characters in stormlight archive canon actively denied and downplayed kaladin’s experiences with oppression the second he became a radiant and a “light eyes” and the way that people in real life treat people that “pass” as white and “pass” as cis and “pass” as abled

sometimes I think about how shallans experiences as a light eyed woman led to her directly press on those wounds, about how she told kaladin he was wrong to be angry or distrustful of her, and how the narrative agreed with her. because even if it wasn’t directly her fault, shallan is a member of an oppressive class that quite literally forced kaladin to fight in pointless wars of pride and enslaved him, who were ultimately responsible for his brothers death, because to them tien was not a child. he was expendable.

shallan did not do bad things to kaladin directly, but the narrative treats his distrust and anger at light eyes as irrational when it is anything but. of course kaladin doesn’t trust her. of course kaladin is angry. she is not trying to be cruel, but sometimes ignorance feels a lot like cruelty.

sometimes I think about how the narrative and the people in it try to separate kaladin from his identity when he becomes a radiant. About how they say he is a lighteyes now, about how those around him try to tell him it doesn’t matter anymore. what happened to him doesn't matter. what happened to his family doesn’t matter. about how, potentially for the rest of his life, kaladin is going to have to sit in conversations with privileged people and listen to words that cut the wrong places, rub old wounds, but it’s okay, don’t be so dramatic, that’s not even you anymore, why are you so angry it was just a joke

I'm thinking about how they act like he isn't darkeyed, when that part of his identity will always be there, and about how it was stolen from him. about how the narrative says "you are now in a position of privilege, so you are not allowed to be angry that the color of your eyes determines what these people think you're worth"

I'm thinking about how he may not have dark eyes anymore, but he is still seen as 'less than' in some respects, about how he's treated like either a weapon or someone to be discarded, about how his life didn't matter to the people above them until he had something to give them. Until he was interesting enough.

I’m thinking about how the narrative tries to sterilize, steal, his identity and his anger and says those things are wrong.

And it makes me want to scream.

[devondespresso]

writing my silly little fic and again im struck with how much opportunities they missed by pretending the s2 stancy breakup wasn't messy, specifically for Nancy's guilt about barb and forcing herself to grow up too fast

like s1 Nancy spends one night being a stupid teenager goofing off at her boyfriend's party and staying over to get spicy while Barb goes home. then she later realizes Barb disappeared and died that one night she was letting go and having fun. this is widely recognized trauma for her and informs a lot if not most of her actions through the rest of the show

in season 2 she's feeling the weight of it more around the first year anniversary. steve trys to help by taking her to a party to forget for a little while and 'be stupid teenagers' for a night. a perfectly set up parallel already

the way the show wants it to go, we get the bullshit argument, they fight, allegedly break up at some point, and nancy sleeps with Jonathan. later steve tells her to go with him and we're supposed to read it as Steve stepping back so jancy can happen. we're supposed to be seeing this as a happy ending.

but with the material we're given this would have been the perfect place for an emotional repeat of season 1 for nancy. she and steve go to the party and pretend to be stupid teenagers for the night. but oh no! nancy lets lose too much, lets herself relax and drink and dance, and the next day her boyfriend's pissed. hes saying she said things she never remembered saying and its hurt him and she doesn't know what to do. and kids around school are talking about them breaking up at the party, and that fits with Steve's anger she saw, so they must've broken up right? it sucks, even if she wasn't in love with him, that'd be the worst way to break up with someone (especially if she's confusing platonic and romantic feelings or convincing herself it has to be romantic when she really just values him as a friend)

and then she doesn't have time to work it out, she needs to go with Jonathan to avenge barbs 'disappearance' to give her family closure. She's got a lot of conspiracy shit to do and its stressful. so when murray starts going off about how she's not really in love with steve, how she actually likes Jonathan and he seems to like her back. they finished a lot of the hard work with the conspiracy stuff, she can let her guard down and have a quick good night.

then the next day is chaos. demodogs and labs and will being possessed. It a rough fucking day. Steve tells her to go with Jonathan while they get the mindflayer out of Will, civil like they're on good terms so she does (and thank god she did because that was rough and they needed all the help they could get)

and then everything's fine again, with the upside down. and it looks like she handled things better this time, was about to relax occasionally and still made it through.

except apparently she and steve didn't break up. he thought it was just a few fights, that they put their shit aside for the apocalypse and now they can work things out.

and it could ruin nancy. a year later and she's still hasn't learned her lesson, that letting her guard down hurts the people she cares about, that relaxing and having fun makes her lose people. its her fault for the messy breakup with Steve and its her fault that barb is gone. she's the reason she's lost friends close to her, 2 for 2, and now she only has Jonathan left (and what do you know, season 3 has her conflict with Jonathan and in season 4 she's not let anyone else get truly close to her and fred still dies)

you see what i mean?? by having conflict magical resolve itself in the background we loose so much powerful, painful character drama for her. our girl who thinks she has to keep the world around her up solely on her shoulders because she can't handle the loss of her best friend in season 1. Nancy who desperately wants to be normal and have people she loves but keeps losing them, through factors both in and out of her control, but feels like everything has to be her fault just because some things were.

and to be fair, that story is still present in the show. its there and definitely compelling, but it could've been even more so. i feel like if maybe there was less 'nancy has to be a strong independent girlboss' in there (abd it's definitely there, they want to make a point of making her a Strong Woman Character so bad) and she was allowed to have mistakes acknowledged by the narrative, this is the direction it would've gone. She could've been an excellent example of well written women who are strong and awesome through their own right instead of the narrative trying to make us like her

[winepresswrath]

Oh so you are one of the jiang' soupbot' yanli who will throw jiang cheng under the bus for little xianxian. Cool

this like the time someone accused me of only caring about Wei Wuxian's feelings. thank you for the laugh anon but also are you lost.

[fate-defiant]

Duck hits different when you're no longer thirteen and in the throes of navigating friendships for the very first time and defining yourself by your social ineptitude.

[my-elder-scrolls-shit]

I've been replaying skyrim and- "Uh oh, Aph! Are you getting philosophical about a mid game that you've played 80 billion times now?" Yes, of course I am. Now, my take of the day is Astrid gets a bad rap in the fandom

If you have personal qualms for whatever reason with her (Cicero fan, upset she got everyone killed, her voice, whatever it may be), that's totally fine! However! I just finished the dbh quest line again, and she's honestly not as terrible as we've been painting her, I feel.

When you first join, she's pretty attentive - clearly keeping an eye on you because you're new, but as you prove yourself and she can worry less, she seems to almost losen up. I do think she asks you to do things that she wouldn't ask anyone else because she's testing you or because you're new and she's not as attached yet, but its clear she has some kind if concern for you and your safety. Especially when the Nightmother incident happens, and she thinks Cicero might have attempted to hurt you. Then shit hits the fan (in her eyes)

Now, here's something that might sound strange - I don't think she decides to sell you out until the last possible minute. Why would she ask you to find her husband otherwise? Why would she keep sending you out to further the plot against the emperor and keep rewarding you? These are shows of trust- and while maybe some could be seen as implicating you further as the sole thorn in the side of the emperor, again, why send you to kill Cicero- to help Abjorn? Someone she loves and cares for deeply? Why not send someone more experienced?

I think maybe her paranoia ramps up after the Cicero incident for sure- she gets more flighty and decides right around when you are going to kill the emperor, when things are seriously about to change, does she panic. I mean, imagine you've led a group for years and some stranger you brought into your family like last week, and a jester who brought a sacred corpse with him is claiming the stranger is supposed to be the faction leader and the only one who can hear the dead lady's voice! That's a shit deal! What the fuck!

If something goes wrong, everything will go wrong. She's probably not had a lot of control in her life previously (note: her story about her uncle making "unwanted advances" makes me think maybe it's something that had been happening and she finally decided to kill him after snapping but she definitely glosses over it very quickly in favor of being murder happy which is understandable) and now that control is once again slipping and everyone else can see she's paranoid (multiple members comment on it if you talk to them before hopping in the Nightmothers coffin the first time) so it's not a big surprise that you, the threat to her status quo and control, seem like the one to take out

And it all goes to shit! And she seems so desperately and genuinely sorry on her death bed - everyone she loved and cared for is dead, mind you. This is a woman who has lost everything and is now begging to die for a greater good and a desperate apology to you and to the people she's hurt. The game clearly doesn't want you to forgive her (based on the dialog options it presents), but i wish we could at least say something kind. But I that might just be me

[elephant-in-the-pride-parade]

ask #2 what head canons do you have about Tom and Mary's relationship

OHHHH A DOWNTON ABBEY QUESTION

Okay okay so i need to acknowledge how feral I am about these two. Also i sorta checked out after the show shoved Mary and skinny chad number 7ish down the aisle (Is his name Henry or something??? the race car driver whatever, fuck him 😆)

(I still dont understand how they expect me to believe that the love of her life dies in a devastating car accident but she would willingly re-marry a race car driver. brain does not compute)

I digress. I think Tom and she develope this insanely deep emotional bond in that first year without their spouses as a result of their shared grief. They each married for love at a time when few others of their social group would have had the chance to do so (Tom is extra isolated on account of he isnt yet accepted into that social group). I think they really heavily depend on eachother in the beginning. someone else who just gets that grief. and also was close to the spouse who died so it's two sides of a coin. they gravitate towards the one other person they feel fully understands them and they help the other A. remember the love who died and B (more in Mary's case) remember what kind of person that love inspired them to be.

And i headcanon that by the time they might be ready for romance again theyve fallen into this inexplicable deep emotional entanglement with the other. it would be incredibly hard to find something more fulfilling. at the same time, transforming that connection into romance would probably be terrifying (would the other want that? would it be a betrayal of Matthew and Sybil to move on together) oodles of grief there.

I think Tom actually goes to Boston at all because he realizes whats happening and it scares him. on the one hand he thinks it isnt fair to mary to hold her back from a romance. on the other hes not quite sure if he could ever move on from Sybil. (And of course be comes back because he cant bear to be away from Mary and figures he can find a way to control the attraction. maybe by committing himself to helping her find new love.)

Which is about where what I headcanon and what the show does diverge. I cant wrap by head around her marrying skinny man number 7. i just cant. Husband material is right there at the breakfast table with her. Why would she go for Henry when she already has Tom?

I also think theyre good for eachother okay! they encourage and empower eachother. She helps him navigate the code switching he needs to do to be a part of the peerage. he helps her find her way out of the constricting box the peerage has always pressured her to conform to. Him being estate agent opens the door for her to take control over it. theirs is a partnership. running the whole thing together. beause he respects her opinion and welcomes her to the table as an equal, it effectively gives her the control over her home shes always felt like she cant have due to her sex.

So in my headcanon she either dumps skinny man or has an unhappy marriage to skinny man that prompts Tom and she to have a conversation about what they really want. And then they would get together And i could frankly read stories about them getting together foreverrr.

[anakinh]

finally watching arcane for obvious reasons (and also mel is so beautiful) and here's my review of season 1 episode 3:

powder, that was the least effective bombing ever. one (1) good guy left standing. one (1) bad guy dead. okay to be fair two (2) good guys left standing and one (1) bad guy dead and then one of the good guys killed one of the bad guys so now it's one (1) good guy left standing and two (2) bad guys dead. anyway. main boss? alive. his case of evil hulk drug? still standing. truly, uh, well, jinxed.

[natjennie]

does anyone out here have a dad that isnt an asshole all the fucking time. like is it even possible.