#but i feel like so many ppl will just take the worst faith interpretation of characters actions

[violetshine-appreciation]

wc fans: we want more morally gray female characters

morally gray female wc character: *says/does things that are fucked up/morally gray*

wc fans: This Character Is So Abusive. How Dare The Erins Try To Make Us Sympathize With This Character. She Has No Redeeming Qualities Whatsoever And I'm Sick Of Seeing People Defend Her. I Hate Warrior Cats

[thesilverlady]

https://www.tumblr.com/thesilverlady/714253266548047872/unpopular-opinion-i-dont-think-that-aegon-was-a

Not same anon, but septon Eustace was said to document the sexual rumours/scandalous but unlike Mushroom he didn't like writing about it or exaggerated it. So Eustace said that as a teenager Aegon was sulky, lazy and had wondering hands. Now this is pretty much SA by our modern standards but sadly these things are normalised in Westros. I think many parts of Aegon's upbringing, childhood, and Adult life are left ambiguous for us to interpret (just like many parts of f&b) So the question if this kind of behaviour has developed to rape is left to the reader to determine. And i like to not take Mushroom's account of this whole 12yr girl giving him blowjob *ew* because in the original novel (The princess and the queen) it has mentioned that Aegon was with his mistress and he refused to usurp Rhaenyra at first. My main problem of this whole situation is that people keep assuming the worst of Aegon for some reason

And i am not saying that Aegon was kind of a feminist man lmao but to me he is very tame compares to other characters. because a lot of these people who draw the line at Aegon actually love characters who are waaay problematic than Aegon like Aemond who keeps calling Rhaenyra a whore 24/7 , Helaena a broodmare, killed Alys's whole family and then claimed her as a war prize, commit what we can consider a genocide in the riverlands. Or they love Maegor (i love Maegor btw) who was a tyrant and forced women to marry him then killed some of them because they couldn't give him sons. I think we can all like characters regardless of their morality because at the end of the day they're fictional not real so liking only heroic morally good characters is just soo boring ( i prefer villains more) but i hate how the fandom tends to humiliate people over what fictional character they find more interesting. And thank you for being one of the tiniest minority who is willing to engage in discussions rather than being hostile like most of team green/black spaces.

I wanna say I'm sorry for the long reply 😅 but you brought up lots of interesting facts and I couldn't help myself with replying longer.

So, let's start with the "Eustace was said to document the sexual rumours/scandalous but unlike Mushroom he didn't like writing about it or exaggerated it" Eustace, like so many other maesters we see in f&b is extremely biased. I think due to Mashroom's dramatic self lots of ppl feel safer with relying on septon Eustace and I don't think that's a great idea.

Lots of maesters we see from f&b are very sly with pinning the blame to women, especially when showing favoritism for a man. They're also very anti magic and generally anti Targaryen. It makes reading f&b quite challenging because it's easy to just fall into their biased perspective. But you can see the transition during Jaehaerys I ruling, who of course was probably their favorite due to him complying more and more with the faith.

So what I'm trying to say is, while septon Eustace hardly had any love for the targaryens he still favored Aegon II - a man. Who he wouldn't want to bring out such scandalized actions mostly because what would it say about him? A septon siding with such a lecherous king?

don't get me wrong. I still don't buy mashroom's version of that event but I still think the truth was somewhere in the middle and Eustace tried to make it look better for the sake of his own self image and then the king's.

Obviously Aegon's actions in regards of women are more dismissed inside the world of asoiaf despite being punishable because of his status as a prince/king.

Of course as you said many parts of Aegon's upbringing/childhood/adult life are left ambiguous and left for us to interpret just like with many other characters such as Rhaneyra/Aemond and many more.

However there are lines here and there that do help our interpretation. For instance, one of the reasons why I'm not overly fond of making show!Aemond some poor victim of bullying who grows up to be self-restraint man of wisdom is because that's not him. A targaryen prince like himself wouldn't get bullied like this, there's no reason for his brother to side with his nephews that are alledgedy favored by his father instead of his own blood and when the family dinner later happens we get the line that Aemond "remained a wild and willful child, hot-tempered and unforgiving". The word "remained" implies that he was like that in childhood, so the show version falls apart.

"in the original novel (The princess and the queen) it has mentioned that Aegon was with his mistress and he refused to usurp Rhaenyra at first"

here we fall into a problem that comes from grrm being unable to often keep up with his own story. I don't blame him because the world of asoiaf is massive but we should be used on events contradicting one another.

these characters are quite new compared to the ones we know. The Princess and the Queen was published in 2013, its prequel The Rogue Prince in 2014 before they were both expanded further in fire and blood which was punished in 2018. So, personally I prefer going with the latest version because I think that's more reliable with what George wants the readers to know.

So while the Princess & the queen may have used the word mistress, f&b used the word paramour. And in both versions we never see a mention of this girl ever again. A paramour/mistress to a prince wouldn't be dismissed that easily in my opinion, which is what prompts me to believe Eustace came up at the spot that the girl was that as a cover. Aegon refusing to usurp Rhaneyra exists in f&b too.

"My main problem of this whole situation is that people keep assuming the worst of Aegon for some reason"

I mean.... I don't blame you here 'cause you're right 😅 My humble opinion is that Aemond for example is waaay more unhinged and dangerous than Aegon but for some reason Aegon is treated like he's Satan. I completely agree with everything you said. The fandom is filled with bunch of hypocrites. I too actually love Maegor but I don't pretend like it wasn't mentioned he raped women. At the same time, I have moots on twt who love joking about him and praising but then they'll cause wwiii if they see a semi-positive tweet about Aegon II.

in the end of the day, it doesn't even matter if Aegon ii was an actual rapist or not. Back before hotd even existed and some minority argued against Rhaenyra, the word "rape" wasn't even brought up because there were a bunch of other reasons to explain why a reader didn't support Aegon or the Greens. Team black and team green now throw words like "rape" or "grooming" as a gotcha and to be shitty at fans who enjoy dark characters

"I think we can all like characters regardless of their morality because at the end of the day they're fictional not real so liking only heroic morally good characters is just soo boring (i prefer villains more) but i hate how the fandom tends to humiliate people over what fictional character they find more interesting."

I completely agree with you and I feel for the hurt lots of people go through in this fandom. I also adore villains, and favor imbalanced dynamics between ships, which of course brings the nastiest antis to humiliate and shame you all day everyday.

Both team green & team black have many bad apples. idk about tumblr but Twitter has been hell for me - which is why I'm taking a break from that place.

I'm very happy you feel comfy to send me an ask and don't feel hesitant to reply if you wish. Even if we don't agree with something, I get the sense you're one of the normal people who understand this is just fiction and there's no need to become aggressive animals over characters that are ink on a page.

[blankticket]

3,5,6

What’s the best thing about the show/series/books/comics/etc.?

answered here, but there are so many 'bests' for me that i'm gonna take the opportunity to answer this again: i thoroughly enjoy the pacing of trigun stampede.

it's been @ a breakneck pace, leaving my friends to often remark about how an episode feels more like 10 than 24 minutes. i prefer my stories to be "lean" (unrelated shoutout to the BRS anime, which is only 8 episodes of its neatly-paced story). there's prolly something to do with how we all are what we eat, and that i consider myself as someone who wants to be purposeful with everything that i do (& thus, seek out stories that make every line of dialogue count for example), and so far?

stampede is running (🃏) right along those lines, without compromising on having complexities in its story. having rewatched the current available episodes multiple times & being in constant discussion w/friends with their unique insight has helped me catch onto the more subtle things going on.

...not to go off on More of a tangent. anyhow i think it's pretty damn exciting, especially in tandem with things like how the exact total episode count is being kept under wraps. to me, i've interpreted this rush as evidence the team's itching to get to more of the story that would be surprising and entertaining to new and old fans alike.

i'm not going all-in for orange to stick the landing, buuut that's not to say that i Dont have a lot of faith given what's been put out so far. i'm impressed.

What’s the best thing about the fandom?

haven't sincerely engaged with any 'fandom' shit for anything since like. 2017. (tbh: i use hashtags for categorizing fanart, & not to find friends/ppl to follow depending on the media we're fans of). have been subscribed to the idea that 'fandom' should really just be you and the 5 people you got into the thing by being really enthusiastic about it

with that being said!! saturdays are such a highlight of my week given the watchparties i host with my friends for stampede. just getting to experience it together is something i really treasure; we end up talking for a while after every episode, and the discussion is always invigorating, setting all of our imaginations alight. plus i get to flex a little manga knowledge...! OK i know it's a cornball cop-out answer to say "fwiendship", but honestly. it's great that we have such a fascinating show to watch together & deepen our connections w/each other for it.

What’s the worst thing about the fandom?

[see above answer for context on what i consider 'fandom', personally]. i don't have my finger on the pulse of the trigun fandom at large, but besides the morally reprehensible shit that's prevalent in every fandom? here n'there i've caught glimpses of sentiments that make me wish people could be more patient with stampede...! ��

[antigonewinchester]

based on what I've seen in fandom, I see 3 main levels of "drama":

First level is just regular disagreement. Ppl obviously have different opinions & reading of media and will talk about it! Disagreement by itself isn't a bad thing and honestly I wish there more fandom discussions & conversations on this level... but why I think they're often isn't is because of the next two types.

Second level is, disagreement but people are assholes about it! The conversation doesn't rise to a 'you get death threats / harassment / doxing level' but there are a lot of bad faith assumptions, often on BOTH sides of a discussion, people with often very emotionally invested in their interpretation or seeing their opinion as the Right One. frankly it's just not very fun to talk with someone who isn't actually engaging with what you're saying but what they think you're saying, or with someone who's so convinced they are right that they struggle to engage w/ someone who thinks differently from them.

Third level goes straight to the disagreement is THE WORST THING EVER and this is where we get the death threats, harassment, even stuff like doxing, etc. Our side is the The Right One and the other side are villains, so we can treat them badly (or sometimes even feel compelled to treat them badly!).

as fandom has gotten bigger, I think it's made conversations harder because there are so many more people one could interact with. take the analogy between a small town vs. big city. in a small town, you know that Annoying Jeff always rants about how he hates zippers & buttons are superior, but is otherwise a decent guy, so it's easier to ignore his attitude & put him in context. in a big city, though, maybe you run into 3 Annoying Jeffs and you don't know if these Jeffs are decent dudes or also have other, much worse opinions. it takes time & effort to interact with 3 Annoying Jeffs, and trying to do that all of the time could be a lot. it's more efficient to just dismiss ppl who have 'bad opinions' all together, versus trying to discuss every time.

returning back to the levels idea, if someone has opinions or ideas you don't agree with you, there's the possibility of having an interesting discussion... OR either someone being a jerk to you and/or more direct harassment. in a smaller fandom community, you can establish conversational norms & know more of the people you're talking to, but when more and more people join fandom, a disagreement is more likely to become a crapshoot: am I gonna have a good convo or am I gonna get yelled at thru the internet? if people have the perception that they're mostly just going to get yelled at thru the internet, they're going to avoid doing things that trigger that, like not reblogging certain posts or blocking certain users.

however, I think you're right that fandom has the perception that levels 2 & 3 are more common than they actually are -- and not interacting, not reblogging, or blocking, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in reinforcing the idea that good faith conversations aren't happening in fandom.

re: that post on blocking, idk. i personally think people just not reblogging anything anymore has a bigger impact on fandom. i only really block people i think are going to Be An Issue somehow (there are plenty of people i find annoying or whose views i disagree with that i don't block). i'm not really sure blocking is the source of fandom interaction dropping off; people just don't reblog or reply to anything much any more and that's really why conversations never start or stall out. even nice gif posts only seem to get a hundred notes now when before they'd get thousands. people just like them and don't reblog them so that other people see them.