#but also those people aren’t inherently evil either

[stormywinter42]

I think anti-proship culture is so odd

Like it’s the same vibes as vegans who refuse to talk to people who aren’t vegan

Cause like, I’m not interested in stuff like that but if you are then like, good for you I literally don’t care it doesn’t hurt anyone

[jozor-johai]

This is just a short note I will expand on elsewhere, but GRRM has this somewhat infamous quote about LOTR, about what to do with the orcs after the story ends. This is about rulership—what happens after the conquest?

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

Part of what I love to death about ASOIAF is that it seems fundamentally more interested in these questions than the excitement of the conquest itself.

I see this quote brought up about the Others every once in a while, but I also think that we might be seeing one iteration of this idea with Dany in Meereen and the children of the slavers:

“The Sons of the Harpy are laughing in their pyramids,” Skahaz said, just this morning. “What good are hostages if you will not take their heads?” In his eyes, she was only a weak woman. Hazzea was enough. What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children? “These murders are not their doing,” Dany told the Green Grace, feebly. “I am no butcher queen.” (ADWD Dany IV)

There are obvious differences—for a start, humans have the potential to grow up to be anything, rather than the known entity of the inherent evil when it comes to orcs.

In an ASOIAF-relevant context, though, the question is similar: you won, do you eradicate your enemies? Their remaining families? What if it looks like a direct path to peace for those you were fighting for? “What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children?”

Considering that slavery is some of the clearest evil we’ve seen in the books thus far, I think this is one way GRRM is be bringing his thoughts on fantasy rulership to a more human context in ASOIAF.

The issue of letting the children live (or not) also makes for another very interesting parallel between Dany and Robert Baratheon, who is another key figure in ASOIAF’s exploration for how one rules after the battle has been won. Barristan makes the connection nearly explicitly for the reader, standing up for Ned’s name:

“Your Grace,” said Selmy, “Eddard Stark played a part in your father’s fall, but he bore you no ill will. When the eunuch Varys told us that you were with child, Robert wanted you killed, but Lord Stark spoke against it. Rather than countenance the murder of children, he told Robert to find himself another Hand.” (ADWD Dany II)

Robert was faced with the same choice and, over the course of his reign, has been given two different takes, one to start his reign and one at the end of it. Robert’s peace was bought with the blood of Rhaegar’s children, the young Aegon and Rhaenys, delivered—albeit unsolicited—by the Lannisters, to cement Robert’s legitimacy and their own stake in his rule. At the end of his reign, Robert is faced with the premise of a new Targaryen baby being born and Ned offers an contrary opinion much like Dany’s own (in spirit if not in allegiance):

“Robert, I ask you, what did we rise against Aerys Targaryen for, if not to put an end to the murder of children?”

There’s plenty more to be said, but I just want to point out this angle for interpreting the GRRM LOTR quote. For one, sometimes people take issue with how literally GRRM himself is enacting his criticisms (saying things like, 'we never see Robert's tax policy either')—but this is a great example of how GRRM can raise a criticism that fits for a different series and make it work within his own world by adjusting the circumstances.

Also, I think that for discussions that attempt to predict where the story will go from here based on comments like this from GRRM, it’s important to see where GRRM is already exploring these ideas. In ASOIAF, this sort of application doesn’t require this idea to be explored with some kind of similarly-undying evil like the orcs or like Sauron, GRRM is applying these ideas to much more human evils, like slavery, and much more human applications, like any kind of military victory.

[cry-ptidd]

I don’t really see Laura as evil, if someone was evil they wouldn’t ya know feel some remorse or feel terrible at the shit they done. They would move forward without a care. Laura to me was deeply hurt and took out it on the world with cruel force. She would have continued if she wasn’t stopped, but still. It really calmed her down just a tad bit and kills by orders now. Doesn’t feel bad about it but it does get to her at times. That I do love, i would probably tell her,”so after what happened to you-you just took it out on the world on innocence knowing you were innocent too?hypocritical aren’t we?”yeah i would be lunch.

Yeah she'd probably dislike being called out like that. I mean she's THINKING it but hearing it be said out loud always hurts and monsters are often immature in their ways of solving things.

I REALLY like this character analysis of her. I was a bit skeptical at the first couple words but I agree completely. She's not inherently evil, her mind was irreversibly fucked up by another's doing which broke her view of the world and herself and led her to either hurt herself or others. She chose both but moreso the latter.

When you think about it it's actually a bit hard to categorize her, like Alucard. Yes her crimes are countless and yes she fucking eats people and kids and innocents but she's also like... an animal. Her human instincts have been almost completely overtaken by her new werewolf ones and it's kind of a fucked up situation for her because she'd HAVE to eat human meat to keep her strength (in my werewolf lore hc). It's like vampires, their existence is inherently tied to hurting people, and especially to people (them) getting hurt and changing into something terrible. Seras is the only creature shown in the series that kept her morality because her mental backbone is made out of titanium and Integra rejected that altogether so we love them.

I just REALLY like "wounded predatory animal" type of characters. How much of your instinct is inherent and how can you fight it. Were you pushed to hurt or did you always have it in you and it has an excuse to let out. The aggression that comes with being a terrified creature with only your teeth to defend yourself. Delicious Give me 14 of them right now.

(.) Another note about Laura calming down after getting nearly killed is the realization that people can retaliate even when her attacks are justified in her mind. Yes she knew the concept of paper but never really understood it (like many people that don't even realize it). In her rage she had a "i got hurt, now I hurt them back and the cycle will stop" mentality that was kind of what happened in the abbey, with her killing her abusers and the physical harm stopping because their mangled remains literally inside her guts right now. It was a very childish attitude she had that made the silver bullet more a wake up call than an execution. It didn't really teach her that what she was doing was wrong (she knew it was wrong, all of it, and she still did it, which is very reprehensible and should be condemned), it taught her that hurting innocent humans (or rather, those with loved ones) will result in them retaliating against her.

[mobliterated]

Okay me angy here I go getting riled up again! If I see any more pisscourse about ace/aro not being part of the queer community, queer is a slur, men are inherently evil monsters, I’m just gonna assume you’re a TERF. Ace discourse back in the 10’s is exactly how TERFs started their rise to power.

Start out by drawing a line in the sand that (awful) people agree with. Now there’s proof that you can start boxing in certain identities. That means (general) you can start making specific definitions for things.

Queer is now a slur again. Queer actually hasn’t been reclaimed. People agree with that. You’ve just torn down an umbrella identity that everyone was able to gather under and unite behind.

LGBTQIA+ is actually the Correct Way to talk about the queer community. Actually we need to drop QIA+ because queer is a slur, intersex isn’t a sexuality/gender and is just a weird medical condition, and A stands for allies (instead of aro/ace bc we already decided that they aren’t part of the community) and we don’t want those sick CisHets infiltrating our community.

LGBT is now the proper accepted term. That means you must be Gay Lesbian Bisexual and/or Transgender to be part of the community. If you aren’t doing LGBT correctly then you are trying to infiltrate the community and steal resources (and those resources are never defined). Only LGBT people are safe.

Oh, except bisexuals. They’re dirty cheaters bc they get to pass as straight and thus aren’t Oppressed Enough like us Pure Gays. How dare they be into men. Only Good Gays get to be into men. If a lesbian ever thought about a man in any vague romantic/sexual way then they are Impure. Men are the true evil of the world bc patriarchy. The only type of man you’ll be safe with is a gay man bc they don’t want to SA you when they see your shoulders/ankles.

All men are the root of all evil, except our good example gay men, who coincidentally are usually white and follow the good gay stereotypes, which are feminine in nature. Femininity is Good and Safe. You can trust anyone who is Feminine, and you can distrust anyone who is Masculine. Men only exist to take advantage of women. Women must be protected at all costs.

Wait. We allow transgender people in the community. That means either a Dirty Evil Man is cosplaying as a woman, or a Pure Innocent Girl got taken in by the evils of masculinity and patriarchy. Trans people are bad since they are being taken over by Evil Men, and/or trying to infiltrate the community, which we already decided is bad. Trans people aren’t Pure. The T in LGBT gets dropped.

Also if you’re nonbinary someone pulled the wool over your eyes. It’s just a phase and you’ll fall into Woman Lite soon enough. There’s no such thing as an amab nonbinary person. Men are evil, and nonbinary is Woman Lite. If you dress in any way that’s not feminine or androgynous then you are doing it wrong.

Congrats, you are now a TERF.

And before you say “that’s not what happened!” I saw every single one of these talking points come out in real time. It was slow. It wasn’t sudden. It was pushing the boundary little by little until you boiled the frog. And now with acecourse coming up again I can all but guarantee that this cycle will happen again. So! Some things to look out for and deprogram.

All men are not inherently evil. All women are not inherently good. Masculinity isn’t inherently evil. Femininity isn’t inherently good. Queer is not a slur and is an extremely useful umbrella term for those who don’t know which label they fit under, or who don’t want a specific label. Yes, queer can still be used as a slur (I have been called queer in a derogatory way) but it is one the community has reclaimed. Trans people aren’t trying to trick you. Amab nonbinary people aren’t “lesser” than afab nonbinary people. Nonbinary is not Woman Lite. There is no such thing as a morally pure sexuality. The queer community is welcome for all who identify as queer; yes, even that person. Policing and oppression olympics is not a litmus test for “pure enough” for joining the queer community. The queer community is for Everyone. That’s it. That’s all.

[youronlybean]

ChilledChaos Appreciation Post Essay :)

There’s a whole lot of negative things I can say about streamers and content creators in general, especially about YouTubers I myself used to watch and enjoy (I have since grown as a person and recognise that they are, whilst not inherently terrible people, unfunny and uncool). However, I prefer to spread positivity wherever I can, so here’s my ChilledChaos appreciation essay.

From watching Chilled’s YouTube content from back in the day to watching his streams for over three years now, he’s one of the best around in my sincere opinion. Whilst things have changed since the early YT days, it’s clear that Chilled remains timeless and just a genuinely good guy. He’s mature and fair, compassionate and understanding, funny and charismatic (despite the ‘sociallyawkward’ tag on his stream lol) and above all else, he has an incredible innate social awareness.

Chilled, outside of being cunning, deceptive and Evil with a capital E for the laughs (CTC: Can’t Trust Chilled!), is at heart a genuinely very empathetic person. For good reason Chilled hosts many of the lobbies in PR1. He makes sure that his players are having fun, constantly checks in on them to make sure his settings are fair and fun for everyone, and will always change a rule if most people agree that it isn’t fun for them. He takes criticism very well and recognises that his players aren’t being critical of him as a person at all when they ask him to change one of his rules. They respect his decisions as much as he respects their opinions, which is incredibly important when playing long-term with a group of people, especially since they all have valued friendship.

He can recognise when things are too loud or chaotic (the occasional stream mute is very refreshing for neurodivergent ears) or when people just aren’t having fun. He recognises when a game is more fun when it’s played frequently and when it’s more of a twice a year kind of game, for both the players’ sake and the audience. He also does his best to make sure everyone gets to play the game as much as possible and protects those who have died early a lot in a session or tries to make a game go quickly if there’s a lot of people dead and waiting.

(I remember when the green shield mechanic was first introduced for Town of Us, Chilled didn’t want to use it because then people wouldn’t learn. He began to use it I think when he realised that the game itself is very unpredictable, and people can’t always pay attention to everything, especially when they’re trying to stream at the same time.)

Chilled also remains true to his morals. He doesn’t do “edgy” jokes (I think everyone knows what I mean by “edgy”), and has consistently put his foot down when topics that definitely should be taken very seriously were joked about. He does this whilst also recognising that there wasn’t harmful intent behind the jokes but that they still shouldn’t be made. The good thing about it is once he tells them to stop joking about something, it is never joked about again (this doesn’t happen often at all but when it does I know I can count on Chilled to be a voice of reason). He doesn’t bring the vibe down when doing so either, simply tells them to stop, they stop and apologise, and everyone moves on. I know this has got to be hard to do on a livestream, especially in front of an audience of thousands and for your job. It’s got to be a lot of pressure. He’s professional about it and takes into account that people make mistakes sometimes and that doesn’t make them bad people. He’s also not afraid to stand up to his friends if they are the ones to blame, but also recognises if he’s in the wrong.

(One particular occasion comes to mind a lot from about a year ago: I won’t go into detail but Chilled was absolutely right, the joke was not funny despite no ill intentions towards anyone, and no joke on that topic has been made since on any PR1 stream I’ve seen. People aren’t perfect, but they can recognise they made a mistake and they did because Chilled took a stance and helped them recognise that it was a bad joke, and was able to criticise his friends without damaging any relationships or respect for each other.)

Chilled also very clearly values his online friendships. He definitely knows how to pick his friends by the people he consistently surrounds himself with and has even maintained some of those friendships for over a decade (Junk, Ze, Tom, Tay, etc.). He’s not afraid to introduce new people into his circle and has great chemistry with just about anyone he talks to. He’s great for matching a chaotic energy or a relaxed one, and is able to keep up a cheerful mood or a good vibe when things are looking rough. He doesn’t take bumps in the road to heart and knows when a bit or joke or even a game has run its course. He has moments outside of his persona when he shows genuine concern and compassion for his friends and even if he talks shit he’ll always admit that he is fond of someone, even if it’s not to their face.

(Here I think of Vikram, and how it’s clear that they are good friends even if Chilled gives him a lot of shit - Vikram does ask for it too though, lol. If Vik is missing from a TOS lobby it’s just not the same without him, a sentiment Chilled has often expressed. He always very sincerely mentions that he hopes his friend is okay if he is suddenly MIA - and this also applies to all other PR1 members)

Chilled is also just insanely funny. It’s obvious to just about anyone that he deserves the large audience he has, as he is a skilled entertainer and knows how to make someone laugh. I mean, what’s funnier than growing a moustache out of pure spite? He worries about balancing so much because he wants everyone to have a fair chance at winning because he knows that losing over, and over, and over again just isn’t fun. He’s very genuinely smart and can admit when he’s wrong, he’s often the first to deduce that someone else is lying (takes one to know one!) and very logically driven (spontaneity is his Achilles heel, best examples being Ze, Vik, Chibi and Side, all of which are either comedically impulsive or refuse to adhere to logic). The fact that he is very in-touch with others emotionally and intellectually (whether he realises it or not) makes him very good at a myriad of things - mystery-solving, game-balancing, entertaining, and literally any of the other things I’ve already said about him and in my excited live-blogging.

(Something I notice just as a general observation about PR1 vs. some content creators I used to watch is that there’s a lack of rage in PR1. Personally I think this is a huge improvement and it’s way more entertaining to watch people having genuine fun and for grown adults to not take losses as failures and not get pissy and rage quit when things aren’t going their way. And the lack of rage-induced slurs thrown around is… well, refreshing, to say the least. - more on this in another post, probably)

Anyway, in conclusion, Chilled is awesome and I have copious amounts of respect for him (even if he is addicted to Yu-Gi-Oh! and doesn’t have gutters lmao)

[sadkachow]

sometimes i wish i wasn’t transmasc.

i love being me, but it just gets so exhausting. 

i’m not in an environment where i’m able to be entirely open about it, and it makes every moment when i’m with anyone i’m not out to exhausting. i feel like i’m putting on a show, pretending to be someone i’m not.

and then (and this is the main point of this post) sometimes it feels like the queer community hates people like me. not always, but certainly enough. enough to make me feel isolated, even in online spaces where i can be myself, because no one wants me to be me. the amount of shit i see by other queer people (even other trans men!) about how my manness somehow means i don’t experience oppression (which assumes every trans masc or man can or wants to pass—and even then, they must also be quiet about their transness), that trans mascs and men aren’t allowed to have the language to speak about their oppression, that we’re oppressing other trans people (by merit of being men, i guess???), that we’re evil disgusting monsters. 

the fear-mongering around t, the idea that it makes you bad and dangerous, the idea that certain effects of t are inherently disgusting and bad.

the way that we’re either seen as “evil vicious wicked men” or “poor dumb stupid girls- i mean boys- i mean girls”.

we’re hated because we’re failed women. 

we’re hated because we’re men.

no trans man or masc has ever experienced oppression based on their identity—and don’t you dare go look up the reported rates of violence, harassment, and s/a that we receive, don’t you dare look at how high they are! 

trans men aren’t allowed to see our transness and our manhood as connected in any way, they must be separated (“we have to protect queerness from disgusting masculinity”—which is also harmful to anyone who is comfortable or even enjoys experiencing and embracing their masculinity). 

gay trans men like me are introducing on the gay community.

straight trans men are either preying on innocent women, or they’re “better” than cis men, because they(“‘re not really men”) know what women want and are like and can thus serve women better!

trans men who still identify with lesbianism for whatever reason are either treated as women or treated (once again) as evil invaders out to harm women.

not to mention the trans mascs and men who identify with any other label than those three—no matter what, our identities and labels get twisted around to be used against us, to the point where sometimes it feels like maybe it’d be better if we didn’t identify as anything at all (except maybe that’d get turned against us too).

we get attacked for trying to have more neutral language (i.e. “pregant people” instead of “pregnant women”, “menstrual hygiene” instead of “feminine hygiene”, etc). we get attacked for having our own language (the way every single term used to describe transmasc oppression has been dissected and degraded until it’s become clear that maybe it’s not the word itself but simply the fact that we are using it).

we get told how much men are awful and horrible either as if we arent “really” men (“kill all men. but not you, you’re one of the ‘good ones’ (aka: i don’t see you as a man)”), or because we’re just as bad and need to be separated and killed and harassed and hated (“kill all men, including trans men. you can’t be mad, you’re asking for it by (existing as yourself) being a man!” “trans men really are the men of the lgbtqia+ community” (this is also a form of malgendering—gendering someone correctly for the sake of harming or attacking them (aka with malicious intent))).

i see so much help and resources for other queer people, but hardly any for trans mascs/men. i’ve seen support that parades itself as “for trans people”, and then it turns out it’s for all trans people except trans men. (this isn’t an exaggeration, by the way. i’ve seen multiple respurces that say that they’re for the support of all trans people, and then if you actually read into it, they’re for the support of trans women and nonbinary people only—which is completely fine that those support groups exist! but then don’t label it as “for all trans people” if it’s not for all trans people. that’s exclusionary, and can also present nonbinary identities as “women-lite”—and also often leaves no space for trans women and nonbinary people who present in a more masculine way or who also identify with manhood/as men to some degree, or for nonbinary people who dont identify with womanhood/as women at all.)

violence against trans men is so often erased because we’re misgendered even in death. we’re forcefully detransitioned. we’re s/a-ed and abused at extremely high rates.

we’re pitiful misled girls or failed women or wicked evil men or pick me’s or vile abusers. 

we’re evil and we cannot be hurt or oppressed because we’re men, as if that is not a point of view that is based on bioessentialism/gender essentialism, racism, intersexism, and extremely harmful (especially to marginalised men in general—trans or not). 

no identity is uniquely capable or incapable of harm—anyone can harm anyone, regardless of who they are.

and yet, and yet, and yet, it’s alright because we asked for it by simply being us.

sometimes it just feels so isolating to be a trans boy, because everywhere i look, there’s people hating me for existing.

im just so tired of it.

(clarification: i know not all of the queer community holds this stance. i’ve seen and/or met wonderful queer people of all identities who have been understanding and accepting. i’m also not trying to say that the things mentioned in this are only driven forward by the community—plenty of people who aren’t in it do this stuff as well. what i mean is just that it feels as if this sort of talk—particularly radfem rhetoric—has been incredibly pervasive lately, at least from what i’ve experienced. i feel like a lot of people forget it’s not just the “trans exclusionary” part of TERFs that is bad, but the radical feminism as well. radical feminism isn’t good. it’s incredibly bioessentialist, racist, intersexist, and harmful in so many other ways by its nature. but it still stands so clearly in so many places. this is also by no means a comphrensive list on the treatment of trans mascs/men. i’m not infallible. there’s certainly other things that have happened that i’ve either forgotten or am not aware of—and if anyone wants to add on, feel free!)

[organ-market]

What Makes Monster Prom Special? | Love Letter and Review

By Ghost Emoji 👻

Monster Prom, 2018

In 2018, the first installment in the Monster Prom series exploded onto the internet and made some major waves in its wake. Monster Prom, developed by Barcelona-based studio Beautiful Glitch, is a multiplayer visual novel where you (and up to three other friends) run around school, courting different monster characters in hopes of asking your crush out to the big prom. Since its release, the game has spawned two sequels, with the third one coming soon. Its sequels take various different spins on this core structure, but it always remains a humorous, multiplayer romp that friends gather on a couch, or a Discord call, to laugh and have a good time. 

Monster Prom’s creator, Julián Quijano, was inspired by a different game with a very similar gameplay structure called The Yawhg, where rather than kiss hot monsters with your friends, you try to save a town from an impending evil. Monster Prom takes the multiplayer narrative adventure of The Yawhg and runs with it to blend internet humor and pop culture references with the hilarity of a multiplayer dating sim, all the while backed by the beautiful art of Arthur Tien.

To me, the game itself feels less like an actual game I want to play and more like a fun activity or experience to share amongst a group of friends. The game’s stated objective is to successfully ask out one of the game’s several romanceable monsters to the prom, but in truth I’ve never felt too bad about being rejected in the game. Winning doesn’t really matter as much as having fun with some close friends, and honestly, I don’t find myself playing the game alone anyway. For my group, it’s practically mandatory that we voice each of the in game characters. Getting into the characters, the weird scenarios, and making funny voices are what make playing Monster Prom so special to me.

Beyond the excellent writing, characters, and art, I think that is what makes Monster Prom resonate with so many people. It is beloved because it can be shared and experienced communally, which is what differentiates it from other visual novels that usually are much more solitary undertakings. The multiplayer aspect to Monster Prom is essential to its success. So even if your fictional monster crush tossed you into the gutter, you and your friends are still laughing along and are ready to play another round.

Spooky Academy, the setting of Monster Prom

That being said, the game is not without its faults. I really do wish the game had a save feature, at least as a contingency. It’s a real shame when the power cuts out, your computer crashes, or somebody has to leave early and you aren’t able to just pick up where you left off, especially if you’re already halfway through the game. This issue is exacerbated by the length of the games, which in of itself isn’t a real flaw. The games always offer a short and long mode, but even so, the game can easily take up 40-50 minutes even on the short mode, especially if you and your friends want to voice the characters (which I really recommend). The Monster Prom franchise as a whole isn’t really for everyone either. Humor is inherently subjective, so if you aren’t laughing at the jokes, you won’t be having a good time since comedy takes the front and center of this game.

Those general flaws are prominent throughout each of the games, so if you like one, you’re sure to like the other ones. The third game in the franchise, Monster Road Trip, is the only one that strays from the dating format. While romance takes a back seat, you instead try to balance your different stats, ensuring none of them reach 0. It’s also the only game where you can lose before its conclusion, and the only one where you lose collectively as a team. I’ve played about two or three rounds of Road Trip and that’s not enough for me to make a solid opinion on it, so for now I really recommend the first two games, Monster Prom and Monster Camp. There’s a tremendous amount of content throughout all the games and enough scenarios to ensure you won’t get bored anytime soon.

My advice for those interested in the game is to just grab the game with the cast you prefer, or even try out the free demos available on Steam. The games themselves are relatively cheap, all priced around $12 USD, but the first game goes on sale frequently for dirt cheap. It’s an interesting and exciting game, and I really hope more games like it follow. Multiplayer narrative video games feel like an untapped gold mine of possibility. You frequently see the genre explored naturally in the world of tabletop gaming, so I’m eager to see what the virtual world has in store for bold new storytelling.

-Ghost Emoji 👻

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

it’s genuinely so interesting to see azula in completely different circumstances bc like. i mean for one she's very autistic and that’s always fun i too am like that except without the burning things and threats and stuff. but also like, we kinda see a little of how her world is like, just a bit. she's often mean spirited towards her friends like everyone else but she's not intentionally cruel, even apologising to ty lee when she realised she upset her. her perfectionism applies in all areas, even things that would seem petty. she's surprisingly empathetic towards zuko when he's mourning in the beach house. she is just generally awful to the people outside of that specific group though. she sees herself as inherently evil, since she's got such a warped view of love she thinks her mother hated her instead of being genuinely concerned about the way she was being influenced.

she’s awful, but she’s very human, and she's absolutely not heartless no matter how much she pretends to be. her relationships with others she’s close to aren’t at all healthy, obviously- she plays mind games even at the best of times and discards people when they refuse to be useful to her- but that’s not out of malice to them at least (the whole rest of the world is another story). considering how much she adores and idolises her father, it’s probably not a stretch to say where that idea of love comes from.

and like. none of this makes azula a better person. but it makes her a person. she's a deeply messed up kid, but she’s still a kid, and not 100% of her actions at all times are done out of cruelty and spite. she’s got a deeply negative self image, and she feels a need for control and domination to feel like she’s worth something to herself- either her self esteem is dangerously high on an ego boost or she's immediately into angry self hatred she externalises at the world. she’s not just “ooh evil crazy!” she’s genuinely mentally ill and has a distorted perception of herself and the world around her, and she does genuinely deserve help for that, as every person struggling with mental illness does. she also needs to be stopped from hurting others- both those she’s close to and those she’s not, because neither is a good position to be in- and removed from her current environment, and instead be somewhere that doesn’t enable her behaviours and keeps both herself and others safe from her anger. and as long as she believes she can’t be a better person- just a more useful monster- she can’t heal and become a better person, and that might not be something that ever happens. she’s awful, she’s cruel, and she also needs genuine mental help.

[inmh01]

So I’m always happy to dunk on feminists who scream “SEXUALIZED!” at any woman who displays more traditionally feminine traits, because some of them think any women with a cup size larger than A is “sexualization” and frankly they are indiscernible to me from religious fundamentalists that think any sign of cleavage on a woman is inappropriate.

At the same time, what exactly is happening in your head when you think “a pair of faceless female robots with large breasts are inherently superior in design to other female video game characters because they get my dick wet” is a good tweet that doesn’t make you look like a weirdo?

I haven’t played Atomic Heart. IDK if the robots being sexualized is relevant to the plot or their character or not- nor do I care, because the devs can design their female characters however they like. Sexualize them all you want, I don’t care- sexy can be fun.

But conversely, devs do not have to make their female characters “sensual” or “feminine” to your tastes, because the defining factor of a good female character or their design is not if they get your dick wet.

IDK who the character on the bottom left is, so I can’t fact-check anything else about her character-design. But she doesn’t look masculine to me- she just looks like a woman with short-hair. And I shouldn’t have to tell anyone familiar with video games that a lot of devs are fond of finding ways to give women short (or very contained, like in braids or ponytails) hair so they don’t have to animate longer hair.

The top-right lady (Selene Vassos from Returnal) is modeled on this woman.

It’s a pretty close match. Are we now going to argue that her model isn’t feminine enough? Selene isn’t designed to be “sensual”, she’s designed in the same vein as Ellen Ripley: A female scifi action character who wears clothing that makes sense for her role. And yeah, those clothes aren’t always going to be particularly “feminine”, because that doesn’t make narrative sense.

Aloy is not meant to be “sensual” either, she is meant to be a post-apocalyptic warrior. Additionally, picking a deliberately awkward shot of her face from the State of Play trailer to downplay her femininity is a red flag that you’re not being intellectually honest. I’ve played this game: Aloy’s face is normal. Dude deliberately found a shot where her face looks weird because of the angle.

Also, you can get different outfits for her in-game. Some of them are less conservative than others and show off her body and curves more, but most all of them make sense in context for her to wear because they involve armor and animal hides.

And then of course we have the massive L of deliberately cherry-picking these four characters for bullshit reasons when I can just as easily post shots of Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters, Mia Winters, Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield (all from Resident Evil), Kara, Chloe, and North from Detroit: Become Human, Julianna Blake from Deathloop, Elizabeth Comstock from BioShock: Infinite, Dani Nakamura from Callisto Protocol, Bayonetta, any of the female characters from Until Dawn or The Quarry, most of the female characters from Assassin’s Creed and Final Fantasy...

I don’t see him congratulating the Resident Evil team on making Lady D sexy (or maybe that was because thousands of other people beat him to it? I recall Lady Dimitrescu’s sexiness being relatively uncontroversial) or the Final Fantasy XV devs for giving Cindy big boobs and a revealing outfit.

You get my point, right? He specifically cherry-picked four characters (and within that, cherry-picked specific pictures of those characters) that are not overtly feminine in appearance when he literally had dozens of other options to pick from- but those options would disprove his point.

tl;dr bad twitter post, Feminist Frequency would be grudgingly proud of your cherry-picking skills my dude, and female character design does not and should not always revolve around whether or not it tickles your pickle.

[whatudottu]

About your one headcanon post regarding Ectonurites: I remember having this kind of silly idea once that the High Ecto-Lord of Anur-Transyl is also in charge of religious affairs in addition to general ruling (basically being their version of the pope in a sense) which is why Zs’Skayr dons his skin like a cloak in Omniverse, with traditional Ectonurite religious doctrine teaching that the sun deity is basically their equivalent of the Devil who will immediately “kill” them on sight and thus they need to either hide or disguise themselves from them (whether through staying indoors, their sun-skin, parasols, or possession of bodies either real or artificial) and Zs’Skayr attempting to use this as a way to get his subjects on board with his plans, claiming he was finally “vanquishing” the sun’s evil and “exterminating”/“purifying” its “demons” (aka species that need the sun to live)

Ooo a Theocracy, or at the minimum a theocratic absolute elective monarchy if it’s less ‘God has appointed thee to govern its land’ and more ‘High Ecto-Lord = Priest-King’ between Anur Phaetos and the wider Anur System (maybe a former and latter respectively?), maybe even something a little less… like an oligarchy equivalent where the priesthood has significant influence in Phaetan politics even if they themselves aren’t ruling under one religion. Either way it’s really really interesting for worldbuilding implications, especially since if the sun (or ultraviolet radiation) which could be considered demonic can actually ‘smite’ or I suppose ‘collect’ innocent souls. Very easy for early ectonurite civilisations and eons of evolutionary history to view that as ‘evidence’ of the existence of divinity even if infernal in nature, at least until science gets developed and atheist and agnostic circles have concrete reasons to disagree-

Heh, I can imagine the cultural differences between [insert name for religion a ‘High Ecto-Lord’ is a part of] and atheist ectonurites, where of course everyone would do their part to protect themselves from the sun (because it is literally an active threat, even in funerals because it puts unnecessary risk on the cyst stage), but the differences come in the home or on planets with little to no UV rays. Like religious folk would retain their cloak or hell, there’s the equivalent to *looks at religions i vaguely know enough to compare* nuns where ectonurites would be in constant possession of sunsuits, whereas atheists would shed their skin and close their parasols and kinda let the body breathe so to speak (functionally the sun skin doesn’t restrict anything since it’s a natural biological process - even if not everyone has the same potentially mindless experience with it - but some folk like the permanence of styling their underbody rather than the rather fragile temporary skin they can damage with wear and tear).

Heh, if Zs’Skayr has a religious motivation to block the sun on Earth, he and the rest of his potentially extremist kin would really inherently hate Pyros and pyronites. If Earth is ‘hell-touched’ with its sun corrupted life, Pyros would be the text-book definition of a hellscape and consequently their people would be the closest things to real life hellspawn, which isn’t exactly um… all that great now is it? Hell, depending on how you headcanon the Anur System as well as if you extrapolate what has in some way been said about it’s planets, you might even say the most extreme may have problems with Anur Khufos and thep khufan, who though culturally also remain in the dark, they come from a planet with so much sun it’s surface is largely one of dry desert heat!

Of course as High Ecto-Lord - one officially recognised in the Anur Transyl polity - Zs’Skayr is hardly in the position to agree with those kinds of folk, especially since he may not be the sole political power on this united Anurian community. But, when does that stop political figures anyway, particularly the religious types :P

[pansythoughts]

So I got this ask on curious cat

And I had too much to say again, because Luca is my best boy and I unfortunately love character analysis. Below the cut is half a rambling essay on Luca Balsa’s flaws, unreliable narration in IDVs storytelling, and ultimately, how I liked his third birthday letter a lot.

So to start with, I’m not actually sure that much changed with regards to Luca’s character, or at least how I think of him, based on the information presented in his third birthday letter. I think we’ve always been presented with Luca’s flaws—we meet him when he is in jail for having murdered a man and causing an explosion that harmed others. We learned last year that he has a habit of mansplaining to women he just met, and cursing out people he thinks have wronged him in ways that imply they’re less than him. We knows he’s got anger issues, and we know he’s not particularly thoughtful even to new people.

But also, the letter is written by a character voice that we’ve seen time and time again takes the cruelest, most bad faith reading of any characters actions to seemingly prove that all humanity is inherently evil. Which the narrative also disproves! Idv gives us the context to see that there’s other information that strongly contrasts the way the experiment file writer thinks of each character, and in Luca’s case this is especially true. We’ve been given so much about how Luca is angry and reactive, yes, but that also he is an abuse victim dealing poorly with a new disability, not to mention arguably ptsd. Anger, lashing out, thoughtlessness—all of those are really human responses! The letter writer is wrong to take the bad faith reading of a very traumatized man reacting to being put through more trauma. By the same token I think it’s not quite right to frame Luca as a character who is either positive or negative. He’s very believable, very human, and very well written.

As for my general opinion on the letter, I really liked it! I think it’s really interesting that it looks like lucatracy started to clash because of differences of opinion on the stakes, and interestingly I think it’s because Luca’s experience was mostly in the realm of design and theory while Tracy had practical experience. I also like that the letter specifically discusses the brain damage and issues with cognitive function Luca has now, because the lore hasn’t always leaned into that. I like that it establishes that as a baseline at the top for our context as an audience; it makes it clear we’re supposed to read the rest of the letter through that lens, that this is a traumatized disabled man having a reaction to exposure to his trauma, and acting accordingly. The character voice of the writer doesn’t view it like that, but i really think we the audience is meant to. That’s good dramatic irony and tension imo. I also think it adds a lot that they hammered in how sensitive he is to betrayal, and how that caused issues in his game when he was faced with something that seemed like betrayal, apparently. That’s a really good detail that’s fascinating to incorporate into my view of Luca. None of that I think in the end makes him better or worse than I thought he was, and I sincerely hope people aren’t judging him too harshly for reacting in believable ways to the bad things that have happened and keep happening to him. I still love Luca the most of any character in this game, and am still excited to learn more as time passes.

[this-isajokerjoke]

hogwarts houses

i feel like in the fandom, there’s a lot of discord about the houses. slytherin is either the worst or better than everyone, and same goes with gryffindor. hufflepuff is a bunch of morons with hardly any magic, who don’t deserve the time of day, who deserve to be ridiculed. ravenclaws are too smart, too nerdy, and are hardly talked about at all.

that’s dumb. that’s immature. not everything is black and white, and it takes a lot away from the story when it’s viewed in that way. 

slytherin is the house of the cunning, the ambitious, where “you’ll make your real friends” (the sorting hats song). none of those things are bad. obviously, they can lead to being immoral or manipulative. i see a lot of fan fictions that play into that, maybe a bit too much, where the bullying is written off as “getting revenge” and spinning a narrative where slytherins are the oppressed, so much more so than muggleborns. a lot of these have the dangerous idea that blood purists are right about muggles and muggleborns, but that’s a separate argument. BUT, slytherins aren’t inherently evil; no one is. being in slytherin doesn’t make them evil. they’re not some sort of overpowered group, they’re all children. maybe they’re harder to read, but i highly doubt most of them can just push away emotions. i don’t think all of them are so cynical. i think they’re careful, they use what’s given to them, maybe they want to learn because knowledge is power. maybe they form connections, but i don’t think it’s them not having any real friends. i think the ambition they have isn’t always just used for their gain, but for the greater good too. they realize that losing a battle doesn’t mean losing the war, that sometimes, you have to surrender for survival.

gryffindor is the house of the “brave at heart” (the sorting hats song), chivalrous, the daring and people with a lot of nerve. that can lead to being brash, bullheaded, not knowing when to stop. but it’s also important to be able to face your fears. i don’t think they’re all dumb, or brash, or rude. i think they’re willing to stand up for people, even if they don’t like them. they might put others first. they aren’t fearless, but they can understand that overcoming fear is very powerful. sometimes, they can’t get over their fears. sometimes, their fears are hard to face, and maybe they don’t always face them. that is not shameful. i think that it’s a work in progress, and that’s brave too. maybe they’re rude sometimes, maybe they’re more of a small picture person. they aren’t exactly always loyal, but they stand up for what they personally believe in, whether it’s actually right or not. they want to protect not only the people they care about, but innocent people as well. 

hufflepuff is the house of the “just and loyal” (the sorting hats song), the patient and the “unafraid of toil” (the sorting hats song). they’re described as hard-working. they believe in fairness, even if it hurts them. they aren’t exactly rule followers, but they have strong moral codes. i don’t think that makes them weak. i don’t think they’re leftovers, or stupid. loyalty can be dangerous, and it might cause them to not question the person they’re loyal to, or to speak up against something that rubs them the wrong way. but i also think they’re fierce protectors of the people they’re loyal to. they have good work ethics, they understand why rules might be put in place. they’re kids, so they’re not going to be without their own biases and prejudices, but they’re going to try to be fair. they might not stand in front of someone they’re loyal to, or pull strings from the sidelines, but they sure as hell will be a shoulder to cry on. 

ravenclaw is the house of the wise, of the people who love to learn, the witty, “those with a ready mind” (the sorting hats song). this could lead to being snobbish, or believing they’re always right. however, i don’t think they always have their nose in a book. learning can be hands on, and i think they probably run a lot of experiments, whether social or scientific, or some sort of magical experiment. i think they’re less likely to buy into something that erases knowledge, not because knowledge is power, but because knowledge is valuable. i don’t think they’re always on top of their studies, i think they get sidetracked with their own interests. i think they stay up too late infodumping about one of their passions. i think some might be good at checking sources, and others not believing that something doesn’t have a bit of truth. they have friends, people who they care about and will stand by, but i think they also need to be able to talk about the things that keep them going, whether it be algebra or art, muggle or magical, addition or rocket science. they can be sarcastic, they have a weird amount of knowledge about obscure subjects. some of it is completely useless, like maybe they’re learning a dead language for no reason other than why not? maybe they’re mature for their age. maybe they’re hopeless at school, but have high emotional intelligence, or street smarts. learning and knowledge isn’t just limited to school or things you can learn through a book. sometimes knowledge is gained through experience, and i don’t think ravenclaws discredit that.

i think with well rounded characters, the world of harry potter is more interesting. i think motivations of each character is important. i think it would be dumb to ignore it, from a story telling perspective. i’m not sure how much this ramble made sense, but i would love to see a fic where these houses lived up to what they could be, where the people in those houses were diverse, who had flaws and tried their best to be the best person they could be, whether they go about it in the right way or not. it makes characters interesting and engaging, relatable, it makes them feel real. i’m so sick of hearing the same takes. give me people who contradict a part of what their house stands for, give me people who take their values too seriously and accidentally make it one of their faults. give me people who have traits of other houses too, because we are all spectrums. 

[boreal-sea]

I feel like there’s this disconnect for a lot of people because they either underestimate the reach of radfem rhetoric or simply don’t realize it exists. Feminists who aren’t intending to be radfems but sound like them when they get get upset when marginalized men try to speak on their experiences because they conflate them with MRAs. And the problem is that the most privileged white cishet able bodied traditionally masculine men are also spouting crap about how women having rights is “harmful to mens’ mental health”, so I can understand where this immediate attack on any posts discussing mens’ mental health and positivity for men by marginalized men comes from, but it’s still so harmful. That’s what scares me.

I definitely think MRAs exist, the most privileged men freaking out over losing even an ounce of that power, but I don’t think acting like any person trying to speak on mens’ rights is an MRA helps us at all. As a cis woman, I get that it’s a knee jerk response because the MRA movement was so relatively recent and awful, but I think there needs to be a willingness for people to stop and consider whether that is actually the case or whether it’s a man of color or queer man or disabled man trying to speak on his experiences and being silenced. I’ve seen so many posts trying to have this conversation get derailed by people who seem to have good intentions but are unfortunately still parroting radfem talking points and it’s just frustrating. I don’t know what the solution is but we seem to be at a point where we’re just spinning our wheels and making no progress and that’s harming everyone.

Yeah - MRAs and "incels" and all of those kinds of misogynistic, sexist guys who celebrate the patriarchy and think they're owed women, who think feminism is evil, and use phrases like "feminazis", absolutely do exist! And their rhetoric is absolutely harmful! Like you will not find me denying the existence of these assholes.

But as you said: guys speaking up about how the patriarchy harms them are not inherently misogynistic dickheads. A lot of them are in fact marginalized men who in a lot of cases are probably less privileged than the women screaming at them.

(but don't try to show a radfem research showing she could be more privileged than a man, she'll have an aneurysm and I can't be responsible for that lol)

The solution is for people to stop jerking their fucking knees and grow beyond the influence of radical feminism. I did it, they can too. I'm not gonna sit here and say I wasn't influenced by radical feminism in my early days online. I absolutely was. But then I started to think for myself and not like a member of a hate group trying to capitalize on my outrage.

[sanguinifex]

Y’know the “classic children’s literature” canon is largely pretty fucked up.

C.S. Lewis was racist and homophobic and sexist, not to mention Extremely Christian and trying to convert you (seriously, there are exactly 2 books where the bad guys aren’t women or Muslims by another name, and one of those 2 doesn’t even have an antagonist once Eustace gets un-dragoned)

Roald Dahl was notoriously antisemitic and just kind of misogynistic in general. Keeps trying to sell the idea that ugly people are inherently evil and pretty people are inherently good. Also like the Oompa Loompas are a) canonically black in the books and b) slave labor, and this is promoted as positive? Charlie’s dad would’ve had a job if Wonka hadn’t been literally stealing people to avoid paying workers. Also, like, the nerve of leaving a chocolate factory to a random kid who knows nothing about chocolate except it tastes good, when probably at least a dozen of the Oompa Loompas are qualified to run the place. Like, Dahl is great at giving people nightmares, but the inherent assumptions begin the worlds he builds are not something I want to give to a 10-year-old and tell them it’s Great Literature and something to emulate, the way I was. (Also, I was actually 8, come to think of it.)

JKR. Well. Besides the TERFery and racism/antisemitism. There’s just a complete disregard for bodily autonomy that’s so present in her work that it becomes obvious it’s part of how she views the world? Like, it’s supposed to be a funny joke to slip someone a potion that turns them into a canary. Admittedly the delivery of that line was 109% but like. What if he’d got stuck like that? You can’t just transmogrify people like that without asking them. You also shouldn’t do the “muggle” equivalent like putting Nair in someone’s shampoo. That’s assault, Joanie. I think this also feeds into her transphobia, because she just doesn’t seem to have anything that would hold her back from swapping someone’s gender for giggles if she were able to. It’s not just the HP series, either, it’s her works aimed at adults as well. Like, she’d be the type to barge into the bathroom while you’re peeing and then get offended when you’re upset by this because “We’re all girls here.” But oh it’s a modern classic and you have to read it to understand nerd culture…well, you could make that argument 10 years ago but it’s a bit less solid in 2023. I wouldn’t ban a kid from reading it, but I wouldn’t give them a box set. If they brought it home from the library I’d give a quick talk that I’m not mad at them for reading it but they should be aware that the author is a jerk.

Stephanie Meyer: Completely inescapable if you were a tween girl anywhere between 2005 and 2010. You had to plough through 4 doorstoppers of toxic Mormon heterosexuality just to understand what anyone was talking about. Like, I think it should be shelved with a pamphlet about healthy vs unhealthy relationships in it. Also, like, Meyer profited off the names of Native people and didn’t give them a cent. Also Bella you need a vampire like a fish needs a bicycle, just take some vitamin D supplements and you’ll get over him

Again, I’m not saying “don’t read these books.” Many of them are well-written and have historic and sociological and literary value. This post is about how we tell children that these demonstrably bigoted authors, whose bigotry shines through in their writing because they’re too unaware of it to file it down, that these are Great Writers and suitable to emulate. It’s not just that bigotry could be absored by young readers, it’s also that ir build a false foundation that will crumble under literary analysis, creating a life of doubting one’s own word choices, among other problems!

[halogenwarrior]

I sometimes notice an odd tendency for people to think the grief and tragedy surrounding a character is somehow more profound and meaningful if that character is a villain. Now a lot of the times this can be explained with good reasons, such as how often the evil character stands out as having a complex and human reaction to the tragedy while the more heroic character seems boring in how unaffected they are or the tragedy is just thrown in for flavor (like the “obligatory orphan protagonist”) without an exploration of what it means for that character and how it affects who they are. In those cases, it can feel shallow and boring when haters of the villain try to say “(one-dimensional minor character x) had an equally tragic life, why don’t you obsess over them”, ignoring that bad things happening to a character doesn’t make them compelling on its own. That being said, I feel the example of how Thistleclaw was treated by the fandom pre-SH shows that sometimes there is no good explanation and a character being a bad person just makes the bad things that happened to them more resonant to some people independent of other variables. There is a corner of the fandom that really focuses hard on his grief over losing Snowfur, in spite of the fact that the narrative doesn’t focus at all on his psychology with regards to this compared to Bluestar, and even extrapolates things like his grief turning him into a worse, more violent cat because Snowfur calmed him in spite of the fact the actual narrative shows Snowfur was enthusiastic about fighting as well and died as a result of it. Meanwhile other characters who lost someone close to them without narrative focus on how it affected them, like say, Birchfall and the trauma he went through as a kit, get comparatively very little focus and headcanoning of their psychology, seemingly just because they aren’t as morally bad. 

Though interestingly enough you also see the opposite phenomenon in the warriors fandom with cats like Mapleshade, where some people are so uncomfortable with the moral complexity of a character who was wronged in a way that wasn’t justified and then was motivated to do bad things because of it that they try to contort the narrative to make Mapleshade always the sole cat to blame - in this case, the tragedy (despite it being genuinely greater than most other characters in the series, while lots of cats lost their mate like Thistleclaw, Mapleshade is the only one to lose all of her children on top of being exiled) is rendered inherently less sympathetic by the character being a villain. While Mapleshade probably has more “sympathizers” in the fandom than Thistleclaw overall, there is still this clear difference in how the tragedy is either heightened or diminished by their cruel actions. 

[horizon-verizon]

The Greens may have stolen the gold from King’s Landing, but it was Rhaenyra’s job as queen to come up with an adequate solution. She failed miserably. She overtaxed the smallfolk instead of the nobles. That caused the city to turn against her which led to her being overthrown. She let her paranoia consume her and ordered the execution of Nettles and Addam, both of whom were loyal to her. She did nothing when the smallfolk stormed the dragon pit. Therefore, it’s clear that the message of the story is that both Aegon and Rhaenyra are bad people and rulers, and that we aren’t supposed to choose sides.

*EDIT (5/31/24): Rhaenyra suffers from really bad sexist writing on GRRM's, not just the maesters', part and it undermines his own point.* And no, she doesn't need to be necessarily "moral" like Dany to be a deserving ruler.

The point of her story was to highlight how no matter how good or evil or morally ambiguous a person you are, if you are female, you are subject to losing a power men are just granted. Or usurped. And this is inherently wrong. Rhaenyra chose to go to war rather than give up. This is valuable. Visenya was not thinking "for the realm" or for the benefit of smallfolk or outside of her family, yet she as so many fans bc she was not passive or restricted by "madness". She has less sexist writing.

Consider what @azureflight says down in comments as well.

If Rhaenyra weren't a woman and if I were to go about this as if we take F&B how GRRM--not Gyldayn--wrote it, I'd agree. It's actually how GRRM chose to write Rhaenyra that gives rise to all the issues with her people (and I) have had and will continue to have.

But since she is and this Dance is about misogyny and how it ended with the realm losing its dragons and making women lose more power, I disagree.

Also, read this POST.

A)

You: "She did nothing when the smallfolk stormed the dragon pit."

This is the passage of Rhaenyra's response to the Storming:

As soon as word had reached her that the Shepherd’s savage flock was on the march, Rhaenyra sent riders to Ser Balon at the Old Gate and Ser Garth at the Dragon Gate, commanding them to disperse the lambs, seize the Shepherd, and defend the royal dragons…but with the city in such turmoil, it was far from certain that the riders had won through. Even if they had, what loyal gold cloaks remained were too few to have any hope of success. “Her Grace had as well commanded them to halt the Blackwater in its flow,” says Mushroom. When Prince Joffrey pleaded with his mother to let him ride forth with their own knights and those from White Harbor, the queen refused. “If they take that hill, this one will be next,” she said. “We will need every sword here to defend the castle.” ("Rhaenyra Overthrown")

I hardly call that "nothing".

And this is something most people would have done, which is already a lot once you consider that when she first tried to "arrest" the Shepherd, she ended up losing many 10 guardsmen & loyal soldiers. Other soldiers and gold cloaks were at the different points/city gates to protect them from any invaders (which includes the greens). By the time the Shepherd came back to rile the KLers for them to finally be inspired to storm the Dragonpit--not long after this mob-killing--she was already shorter than soldiers than ideal. We also have to remember that the Blackwoods, riverland supporters, etc. PLUS Cregan and his Northern men were not in KL at this time. they were either fighting the greens outside in other territories or they were still traveling to KL/the crownlands!

B)

The American Civil War had both sides display racism in that both white Northerners and Southerners believed that Africans and black people were inherently lesser peoples--some abolitionists still believed so and their problem was that slavery is a step too far because they believed that their God and country is based on more "graceful" ideas of freedom for all humanoids. For years, systematic methods to convince and reaffirm this belief of white supremacy through a mixture of education, entertainment, advertising, Jim Crow Laws, and structural, legal segregation.

Yes, the cognitive dissonance was/is real, but what slavery needed to end and its ending was a step towards gaining more political rights for black people. Would we rather go forward or backward? With Aegon--the only other choice other than Rhaenyra--it was way backward.

Also, while Rhaenyra was not herself a compassionate or strategic person even before her paranoia (partially because she was), she herself wasn't as terrible as she became. While her own blood purity was definitely there--this is still a feudalist world and realm--it was not the thing that started the Dance and pushed her and her family into the position to defend themselves and her to develop the paranoia she had.

Her children would have been great rulers. And if she wins, they win, because they draw their claim through her, not Aegon the Elder. Also, she seems had a huge hand in how they developed their personalities, strategic-ness, and sense of responsibility they all developed. This makes me feel even more that the fault of the Dance came from the circumstance of a woman being further denied power more than her making some decisions.

C)

1.

Bigger picture-wise, I think it's fascinating and useful to see how the imperfect victim (azureflight's comments-considering and learning more about the glass cliff) not totally digging her own grave after facing a lifetime of psychologically undermining and acting like her imperfect human self in order to survive psychologically, by the simplest means necessary, yet losing all the same because of a combo of her not being able to respond as quickly to the challenges of what's left to her to "fix". Yet given no space and time to do so. And she not choosing we Watsonianly, Rhaenyra is one particular way a victim of misogyny tries to aggrandize and gain control.

I agree that her, as the Queen and an adult, still was accountable for her own loss of focus and responsibility for the way she accumulated the taxes after the treasury was depleted. Celtigar was not the person to depend on (even here, she happened to have the wrong people at the wrong time bc the better ones already decided to go green not out of loyalty to the greens but either fear or greed), nor should she have turned against the dragonseeds.

But again, the greens depleted the treasury intentionally to make the very problem she had in KL AND Aemond burned down one of the major suppliers of food in Westeros' "south" regions: the riverlands and esp their farmer's villages and fields.

And with all that was dealt with and has to be done, I think it is very easy to see how she and most people in her position would falter. What was on her to do list:

an influx of refugees

a manic Shepherd preaching against her and calling her and Targ dragons unnatural to incite riots

rumors flying about that she killed her own sister with no valid evidence, the crowd and others blaming her for Larys' action of taking Maelor

her need to maintain relations with the lords immediately surrounding the Keep and in KL so she may be assure they continue to support her without her having to resort to Syrax and dragon fire

Me, I probably would have tried taxing both the rich and poor, but make it so that the rates are dependent on resources available to those houses. What else could she do to raise money for herself?

But with a completely empty coffer and the rumor-mongering Larys performed, I'd still likely be called "Maegor with Teats" in my having to heavily tax rich people/merchants, which goes to show how misogyny really opens one up to unanalytical criticism.

Other than that, Rhaenyra and I and the readers are very different people with different experiences and similar-but-different backgrounds--one fictional and created for a particular narrative purpose and I have the luxury of being removed from her specific situation by not being a dragon-riding princess of a super-misogynist land (after azureflight's notes below) in a situation in KL already horrid for any ruler to deal with treasury gone, missing green master of whispers who took Maleor despite the boy being safe with Rhaeyra and the rioters pulling the kid apart, refugees from Tumbleton, etc.

I also have the remove that helps me to see the bigger picture without being directly affected so I can better see how she should/could have responded to things--but because I am not a dragon-riding princess, do I really know what it's like to have lived in court and live in the middle of when chauvinism and female chastity reigned as completely normal?

2. Comparison to Daenerys "Stormborn"

In comparison to Rhaenyra, Dany proved herself both capable and more resilient against circumstances that one wouldn't pick over Rhaenyra's. Dany was abused and isolated from all that Rhaenyra had all her life, as her mother birthed her at Dragonstone and died not long after and she and her abusive brother lived traveled to several different places and with Illyrio Mopatis. These men sell her into sexual slavery. She almost died several times, once by her master-husband's own riders, in the desert while leading her own khalasar, she's targeted by those who shelter her, went through 2 miscarriages with the first being much more traumatic than the next, lost the husband she bonded with (even with him being her abuser as well), she faces Jorah Mormont's attempts to further emotionally isolate her, she's in danger every day from slavers and disgruntled men who wish to use her or destroy her, and her own husband-for-peace is plotting against her...and yet she still manages to manage an entire city and get her good-good simultaneously without totally failing as Rhaenyra did. Dany was under 15 when she went through all she went through, while Rhaenyra died at 33, so she ruled in her 30s.

Dany is so special because she comes into some sort of awareness and is thus the real change-agent. Partially because she was exiled from Westeros after Robert and the others usurped the Targs, Dany experienced having a remove from her own dynasty and family for her to see them from a more objective lens while Rhaenyra lived within that Targ-Andal paradigm from birth. If she hadn't been removed as she was, with how she tried to placate her brother for some time until she chose herself, she could have been similarly trampled under the machinations and dealing of abusive men like some Targ women. (And this was before she had her dragons, thank you very much).

Both women are constantly criticized for how they run their respective territories during heightened periods of violence or threats against them seeking to kill and usurp them. I think Dany is obviously doing a lot better than Rhaenyra, is much more concerned with how to live better for the "smallest" of smallfolk, and is Rhaenyra's superior in terms of leadership morally or strategically--while the past sentence is also correct. Dany was herself a compassionate intelligent and driven person. Rhaenyra wasn't compassionate or had true foresight or was willing to have one, but also came to be self-driven. (And why isn't Aegon or any other man expected of the same?) It happens that, with Rhaenyra's context (kids, lack of remove for perspective [not the abuse!]), she devolved into paranoia easier.

At first, Dany defended her brother and her father's claims as being automatic, and then through her removed experience, admitted that while they were usurped they also weren't fit for the rule, WHILE finding the justification of her own claim to the Iron throne through them both and her ancestry, WHILE also claiming from her own need to protect others. Rhaenyra also claims through her father and Valyrian heritage, without looking out for the disadvantaged and focusing more on herself, only succeeded in blinding herself to how looking out for other women/girls (or at least being strategic about it would have also strengthened her own legitimacy.

If for nothing else, they are coming from a similar place of needing to develop a new meaning of self and autonomy, and Rhaenyra fell into the more selfish identity. Very Jaehaerys I of her in that she chose herself over those she could have called a kind of "kin"--girls and female leaders.

I and Rhaenyra and Dany all have the shared experience of being born and raised in a misogynist society where most girls grow up having to confront and choose whether/how they will accrue power in a space that would deny them the same power, dignity, or self-respect as men are granted automatically, which does create a dearth that needs philosophical filling, so to speak. How the subject fills it is their responsibility, and different people respond to that differently and according to circumstances that both were out of their control and resulted in their own decisions. But it's always good to trace how each event both OUT of and IN their control has shaped how they view their own capabilities and the actions they took, this is analytical reading. It does not have to come with actually liking a character.

3.

However, apart from comparing her to Dany, who she falls short of obviously, I think it's worth more to investigate why Rhaenyra in her own story falls as she does instead of expecting her to be equal to Dany or Rhaegar or any other person. Who is Rhaenyra, and what makes her the way she is? That way, we find out truths about the way she was, where she faltered and failed. What exactly defined her fall and how do we, as readers and people look for aspirational behavior and principles, identify?

The idea of Rhaenyra's seeming lack of the most ideal creative pragmatism (which again, most people actually don't have) and sense of entitlement comes from these things:

the Andal-adapted-Targ attitude to its own claims of power-from-its-historical-means-of-maintaining-power in conflict with its adopted Andal misogyny to maintain itself at the expense of its Targ's women's autonomy and right to the same authority

a lack of real training that stems from that misogyny "for the sake of the dynasty"--denoting a lack of true confidence in her and thus leaving a such an effect on young Rhaenyra that she must rely on herself above all else -> I usually try my best to not get "psychological" here, but in building self-confidence, to me, she seemed to have relied and fallen back on her right to power through heritage and lineage, as most other males would feel entitled if they had been named heir and grew up as royal in a time of prosperity to legitimize herself as self-persuasion/defense mechanism

Alicent/the greens' harassment of her since she was a child and the subsequent reclaiming of autonomy by sheer, necessary tenacity

As all these things provided shape to Rhaenyra's mindset towards her claim, I don't think we should ignore how her being set against didn't feed her sense of entitlement other than Viserys naming her. Her heritage as well as her means to assure herself and claim power.

I already explained what I think about her being unstrategic or pragmatic HERE, going a more Doylist route and mostly "blaming" GRRM.

If we are going just Watsonianly, I'd say that Rhaenyra, again, was a quasi-Othello figure even by being a spoiled princess and Queen at the same time. Both Rhaenyra and Othello are figures that are given the circumstances of people doubting their placements in higher positions of military and nonmilitary power. Both develop paranoia based on the existing fear of losing that power and dignity. While Othello gains his power, self-perception of dignity, and male credit/reputation through his own means in battle victories, he also is in the position of having to constantly prove how "useful" he is to this Christian/European society that is always going to be set against him and will only allow him to have his privileges and rights if he doesn't rock the boat. It is that element of self-proving to the domineering power that Rhaenyra shares with him in that she would always be held in some contempt or condescension for being a woman who goes after male-coded power, even with her growing up to be a princess-then-ruling-Queen. Inevitably she cannot share his started-from-the-bottom/culturally foreign and racialized Otherness, but she is also Other for being a woman, a Targ dragonrider (magic) in a Faith/Andal world. Both felt the need to "prove" themselves through patriarchal ideals to keep a sense of dignity provided by the same oppressive and embedded forces/sociopolitical contexts.

In the end, both succumbed to monarchical patriarchal forces but both also have always been vulnerable and compromised in some way by those forces and given the problem of where and how to compromise to gain power/peace and space to live. I want an ideally good and smart character from anyone who finds themselves in such positions, especially when they are in the highest seat of power with the ability to revolutionize the injustices of the world. But humans are diverse in temperament and develop differently by circumstances and their own decisions simultaneously.

In this way, I think that Rhaenyra was the victim turned perpetrator who continued to be a victim at the same time. Her entitlement was both her strength & her fatal flaw, which was engendered by her decisions to respond to circumstances. But her entitlement was also hardly a fault of her so much as par for the course for someone of her rank and position.

GRRM wanted Rhaenyra to be a little different and yet similar enough from Daenerys in terms of circumstance and backgrounds--someone to surpass--and provide context/stakes for why Dany comes to being physically, historically, and narratively so that we see what can form a leader. Rhaenyra is why a Daenerys "Stormborn" is necessary while being her cause. And part of that is that remove I speak of, and sometimes that remove is forced or self-willed or something of both. GRRM goes with "both" being necessary and caused by each other in a constant cycle.

D)

That being said, while both Rhaenyra I and Aegon II had blood purist expectations and drew claims from a misogynist Targ-Andal paradigm, one is a woman who was usurped because of misogyny while the other is a man who would have plunged the realm into a worse form of it than Rhaenyra if he had more time to actually rule. Rhaenyra's death and loss were disastrous for women: (bride of fires' post).

While he eventually lost, he/Alicent still usurped her and caused the war to happen in the first place based on misogynist principles instead of accepting her rule. that Rhaenyra lost all and lost out the opportunity to rule strengthened the notion that a female leader was undesirable AND that a woman would cause chaos for men if left to have influence and more power over them if there are no active higher powers on them even in the form of a specific will and testament, like with Rohanne Webber having to marry by a specific date or lose her right to power. Female=evil. Female ruler=herald of disorder. With such stakes, I'm not going to accept Aegon--the only other option aside from Rhaenyra in this feudal context.

The other option is a power vacuum. This society is not like Russia of the 20th century where there were people who studied political ideas of political liberties for the common man in other nations/states/territories. The riots are not revolutionary riots, they are incitements from a specific group that wishes to form their own vision of a monarchial feudal vision without dragons--which I must say, again, were necessary to get rid of the Others AND unify the previous warring states of the Westerosi kingdoms in the first place. Such does not exist in ASoIaF/real medieval societies.

Shit's complicated. Dragons are destructive, any yet this is a feudal, society where only the strongest (supernatural and ordinary) gain all and win. Dragons are useful for both ends, yet the Targs/both sides of this Dance are examples of humans who human their way into fucking shit up for themselves, but one was put out more and would have given (even unintentionally) some benefit to the realm by flouting patriarchal norms against female autonomy. Again, if we're forced to choose--and we certainly are because this state is not going to turn democratic overnight--Rhaenyra is still the one for me.

Again, I think that her dumber decisions made things worse, not that they 100% made her situation alone what it was.

Again, consider what @azureflight says in comments, which had me rethinking calling her actions "dumb" and more just inevitable.

(8/21/23):

THIS is a great post by mononijikayu about medieval queens, female rulers, the history of how women in leadership positions were made and seen as threats to the very structure of social "order", and contextualizing Rhaenyra thru Empress Matilda. I didn't even know about Matilda's husband being comparable to Rhaneyra's Daemon! PLZ READ!!!!

Excerpt:

just as much, along with these fictitious portrayals, more lies are depicted. these women are considered vixens that cause havoc to men by shifting them into desires and danger. through the written word, we see how women are cast in roles of villains in men’s lives. it is because by their conclusive thoughts, women are the only creatures that are able to turn ‘good honorable men’ into despicable creatures who do shameful, deplorable acts for the sake of women’s pleasures.    [...] itis within this narrative that ancient chroniclers declare that women were in fact the doom of men. if they were not able to control the dangers posed by the wiles of women, then the foundations of the mighty society they had built would be up in flames.  [...] as i mentioned, these factors of community are written down and preserved. and with that, the example of the ancients were the foundations by which medieval society built itself. the same concepts continued to cause the same issue within society and that was the exclusion of women from participating in the bigger picture of community and state, much so with governing states in their own right—without judgment or disapproval.