#but like less so than Jon

[ashironie]

Damn I really gaslit myself into thinking Gwen was a main main character bc I love her too much…

I was reading the tmagp wiki so that I can find out how to spell Sam’s name for a chat fic and read that Alice was the other main character aside from him

I completely thought Gwen was and even told other people she was…

I swear to all things holy and not if she fucking dies I will lose it

Please Jonny, Alex…

Please…

[lmaowh-at]

Lanns n Starks lineups/costumes sketches that I will probably add other houses to. Tywin and Joff & the rest aren't here because I was lazy and Cerseis dress took all of my energy. Don't ask me about inspiration or historical basis for these

[chirpsythismorning]

The way fans on the st sub are almost all in agreement Nancy ending up with neither Jon nor Steve wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, and how they can even come up with a sleuth of reasons as to why, honestly pretty valid and fair reasons, but then are absolutely gobsmacked when fans merely speculate something along those lines for El is, quite something.

[oxygen-stealer]

I finally have a Scarecrow design that I think is somewhat decent down!!!!!

This was for art fight btw my acct is here :33

[teamfortresstwo]

“Peter Lukas gets sent back to the regency era” “Jonathan Sims gets sent back to the regency era” valid points valid points but i raise you

Tim Stoker gets sent back to the regency era

[hewantshisbrideback]

Nobody can definitively say the means which lead to the tragic ends of two such beloved public figures. Nobody can name what it was that brought the last Targaryen heir to the throne and the only daughter of House Stark together in the first place. No one knows exactly what happened, not in truth, but people can speculate. And speculate, they do.

A SONG OF INTERVIEWS AND FAKE NEWS: Retrospectives on Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark

[asterdeer]

i know i don’t have the intensity of a diagnosable mental illness that causes breaks with reality on a regular basis but like. i’ve forgotten who i was for no reason. i’ve gotten out of the car after a normal drive home and realized that i don’t know where or who i am or how to get into the house or what a sofa is. more than once i’ve blacked out while driving and “woken up” in a completely unfamiliar part of town with no memory of how i got there. all of that was terrifying. so it’s like. thinking about michael going deeper and deeper into the distortion scared out of his mind and losing himself bit by bit until he was nothing except the evil he thought he was sent in to destroy makes me feel. extremely sad.

but then at the same time he was strong enough - he stayed himself enough - to ensure that the distortion, while it was using his body, was always still a little bit him. it never escaped who he was - a scared, uncertain person who nevertheless cared so deeply about his friend and his mentor that the distortion couldn't help but emphasize it, even when it wants to call him pointless and disposable - so that the distortion was kind to sasha, and helped tim and martin, and even sort of looked out for jon. which makes me kind of stupidly proud of him.

[two-wizards-in-a-trench-coat]

i wonder why everyone usually depicts martin as being super tall. was he ever described that way and i missed it? always pictured him small and easily not spotted for obvious reasons lmao

[velaryoncoffee]

I need to vent about the hotd fandom

Feel free to ignore if you don't wanna hear someone complain.

I created this blog this week because being on Twitter has been absolutely draining and leaving me in some of the most dejected moods I've been in years. It's not all bad; I've found lovely people in the Lucemond community who love sharing ideas and stories and artwork and edits with each other and they've made me feel very much at home.

The issue is that as official content runs dry I believe a lot of people have taken to creating drama as a source of entertainment and community activity... And they do that by constantly instigating tribalistic fights with "the enemy faction" by insulting characters (and sometimes ships). And as someone who loves all characters, this means I've had to watch people shit on everything I like, absolutely fucking everything, for the past few weeks. It felt silly at first, it didn't bother me or touch sides, but over time it has started to become too much, especially as sassy quips turn to insults that you can tell come from deeply rooted contempt.

My fellow Lucemonders will insult Aemond whenever it's hateo'clock, despite him being half of the ship, if not the driving force behind the ship to begin with (and at this point in the series also being one of the few who actually mourned Lucerys the most). My fellow team black folk will insult Aegon II for the crimes he did in S1, talking about us fans of him and other team green characters like we're unintelligent or built wrong for enjoying these parts of them and analysing their characters in a sympathetic, and in my opinion, a holistic and less biased manner. My fellow team green folk either don't bother getting involved at all, or they're even worse, sending out absolutely abhorrent criminal accusations over the relationships and headcanons we prefer to write and draw. I've had people mass qrt me and my mutuals with godawful things, sometimes resorting to death threats and blatant homophobia.

In pettier/less serious situations like with the character hate I've even tried to engage in friendly discussion to see if I could foster a more proactive and calm environment in my circle, only to get absolutely nowhere. It was as if I'd been talking to a brick wall.

Nobody wants to truly get along. Nobody wants to truly hear other people's opinions. Most, to some degree, are incredibly mean spirited and everybody interprets each other in bad faith. They'd rather throw insults and remain in their incapsulated communities where their side is GOOD and the other side is BAD. There's nearly no real analysis that doesn't involve the other side being bad and irredeemable to some extent. And when you try to write analysis, but someone's fave looks somewhat in a bad light, they attack you for it, as if that character's flaws don't make them that much more interesting as a fan.

As someone who is at their essence team green but loves all characters, and whose favourite ship is mostly populated by team black folk, I end up seeing insults from both sides of the isle. And every single fucking time, from every single person involved, they're throwing insults at things I like. I almost never get involved but I often feel caught in the middle catching strays. They insult characters I like. Literary genres and tropes I like. Relationships I like. THINGS I like and give me happiness and comfort. It's like trying to talk with a friend, but every time you want to tell them about your interests they tell you flat-out it's shit and they refuse to be sympathetic or constructive.

It's been very difficult to navigate this, as someone so starkly in the middle. I have a lovely community on discord that are always peaceful and sweet, and I hope this website is somewhat better. I know it will never be perfect, people are way too passionate and tribalistic across the board in this fandom due to the inherent characteristics of the source material, but I've never struggled this much in a fandom in all my many years online.

I have no conclusion to this, only a warning that I am going through HRT and I'm currently in my testosterone peak, so maybe this is all just a momentary mood swing, like PMS for T-boys. If so, it is what it is; if not, and it ain't what it ain't. Thanks for reading.

[ravelqueen]

Hey fic writers where are all these classrooms of precocious 8-15 yr olds that always want to learn and are nice and just need someone nice for them to be perfectly behaved bc i would love to meet them

Relatedly - who is it that decides that characters that are withdrawn, snappy and have no patience are somehow perfect teachers bc like.... how much you know is actually wayyyyy less important than having strong nerves like at least make them bad teachers then!

[atopvisenyashill]

jon/ygritte is very interesting bc even tho their situation was pretty fucked up jon did love her! gendrya is cute but arya is too young and the books are never being finished so yeah

yeah those are both very fair. i think if we got the finished books, gendrya would be in that category of “genuine good love story” bc right now it’s like the beginning and middle build up but, especially from gendry’s end, no real climax. i don’t think arya is aware she has romantic feelings for gendry, i’ve said before i think he’s aware of her feelings and just didn’t know how to handle it, and now feels some extreme guilt over ~rejecting~ her unknown crush. and i think that’s very typical sort of romance novel misunderstanding that could come to a very lovely conclusion. but right now arya is still an eleven year old completely unaware of the romantic undertones of that entire thing while gendry is (i always forget his age is he 15??) just like, trying not to die in the riverlands while he stews in his guilt lol.

jonygritte meanwhile is VERY much one of those toxic romances but i think people are really silly about it. there’s significantly more romanticism in this relationship than other ones, and i think it’s silly to ignore that aspect for the hardline anti ygritte takes the same as like, ignoring those toxic elements really takes away how interesting this relationship is. on the one hand, there’s very much a reason that this romance serves a similar narrative purpose as like, dany/drogo, tyrion/tysha and tyrion/shae, sansa/sandor, etc, and it’s bc there’s some FREAKY consent issues going on here lmao but on the other hand….jon’s feelings for ygritte have impacted not just his own feelings on romance but also his entire leadership arc re: gender & culture it’s so stupid to pretend like she’s ONLY there as a negative influence (this is how i feel about sandor too).

[13eyond13]

.

[fissions-chips]

Thought:

While Jon has had bodyguards before, he doesn’t see Butler as a bodyguard- he sees him as a partner. So if some sort of dangerous situation ever happened that Jon managed to take notice of before Butler…

Maybe he takes the bullet, is what I’m saying.

[ashironie]

worst comes to worst, have a backup plan friend who’s cool with you eating like their arm or something. like obviously absolutely last option just too keep you from keeling over until you can get your next meal, but it’s only like an arm and they consent

Posts that be like “If I were a monster that had to eat people, i would just eat horrible people~” are so absurd to me. How often do you see Known Criminals on the street? Billionaires out for a nightly stroll around town? Effectively fucking never. If I have to drag myself to the grocery store, you think it’s gonna be any easier for me to hunt Bezos and Co. every time my stomach growls? I can’t bother to plan meals more than a day in advance, how am i gonna perform whole ass detective work to confirm someone’s a serial killer before i eat them? Ya’ll got that much time on your hands? Planning 5 course meals every night of the week? Don’t make me laugh. Eat a pedestrian and tragically wrestle with guilt like the rest of us, idiot.

[i-will-change-this-someday]

The Magnus Archives fandom confuses me so much.

I don’t go on discords or have chats with others in the fandom, I just look at post and occasionally post my own, so maybe I’m missing something.

But I’m so confused, I’ll see posts that are like “this fandom only cares about Jon and if you like any of the female characters you get hated on in every interaction, why do the girls get so much hate?” The I’ll turn around and see post that are just “the TMA girls did nothing wrong ever, Jon sucks, he’s a misogynist because he had an argument with a girl.”

Like, I keep seeing post mentioning TMA girl haters, but honestly, I tend to see more post being critical of Jon than the girls, and maybe that’s just because of who I follow (although Jon’s my favorite character in the show)

In my opinion, there’s more post being critical of Jon, because he’s the main character and therefor we see his journey a lot more, than the rest of the characters, so I think it’s easier to say “wow, this character, is so much better than Jon, because at least they didn’t [insert anything Jon did.]”

On the flip side, if another character did something wrong, we don’t always get to see what led them to that point, so we can say “Jon wouldn’t do something like this, this character sucks compared to Jon.”

And I think that’s the issue, comparing them. While comparing them may work if you’re talking about narrative foils or parallels, comparing them for moral discussions (as in, this character’s morally better then that one) doesn’t really work, because all the characters are well written characters that have motivations and morals that we can only speculate.

Sorry, I got distracted, what I’m trying to say is that I’ve seen post that hate on Jon, I’ve seen posts that hate on the girls, and both types of posts tend to turn one or all of the characters into boring one dimensional stereotypes instead of considering the nuances of all the characters.

You can’t say Jon’s never done anything wrong, he most certainly has, his actions hurt several people, but you can’t deny that he’s trying to be a good person.

You can’t say Melanie’s just mean and angry, that ignores everything that has happened and been done to her, but also her anger shouldn’t be excused, she’s hurt people, including herself.

Two things can exist at the same time; “Georgie has every right to distance herself from Jon” and “the lack of support Jon receives in season 4 from Georgie negatively impacted his health” can both be true, and it doesn’t put either of them in the wrong. Georgie isn’t obligated to stay when it would be detrimental to her, but that doesn’t mean that her choice doesn’t affect Jon.

The thing about TMA is that it’s very realistic, the characters don’t just make choices that have no later consequences, other characters aren’t just ok with everything Jon does because he’s the Main Character, and everything Jon does isn’t always right just because he’s the Main Character.

It’s like the real world in that everyone’s choices can positively or negatively affect others, and there’s not much “right” or “wrong” in those choices.

[lurkiestvoid]

yeahhhhh pretty much, except the only thing is it's less individual investors and more Hedge Funds.

Hedge funds use algorithms to maximize profits by any means necessary, up to and including certain tactics that will deliberately tank a stock. If it's not performing well or if they just don't want it to, they can bet against it and whip out a variety of bullshit of varying legality to push the share price down, which causes other HFs to sell to stay ahead of the market, which leads portfolio managers and accountants and regular folks to sell, and then when the selloffs are done the original HFs make fucking bank off strangling the stock. (This also works in reverse: betting a stock will rise, baiting others to buy in, profit, then bet against it again)

So a "strong" company is one with lots of gains and very few/short losses (harder to break/less room to manipulate, generally Big Name stocks like Disney/Apple/etc) whereas a "weak" company with more losses than gains or lots of volatility is a prime target for the piranhas. The people running companies are terrified of stagnation, let alone losses, because it can very, very easily be taken advantage of and even outright kill the company in just a few weeks or months. Perpetual growth is virtually required to survive the market as it is today.

Individual, casual/hobbyist investors with at most a couple dozen shares in a handful of companies don't have the numbers/margins to seriously affect a stock price. Even hobbyist/semipro "traders" who obsess/hoard and attempt to imitate The Big Guys are comparitively few in number and just don't have the weight to affect much more than their own account balance. But hedge funds do have MASSIVE weight in the market, throwing around thousands of shares at a time, several times a day, for dozens of different tickers, in multiple markets and across multiple industries.

And then there are "market makers." These are giant companies whose SOLE purpose is to manipulate the market ensure "market liquidity," or, "a buy for every sell, a sell for every buy." What this means is that if demand is high but there aren't enough shares available to sell, they make more by "borrowing" them, potentially infinitely. If these market makers feel a stock is too "overvalued," they can dump loads of those borrowed shares to saturate the market and drive the price back down. There is extremely little regulation on this, which leads to situations where the same one share can have dozens or hundreds of "owners."

This can happen because regular everyday investors don't actually "own" stock at all. Like, very literally, their "shares" are 1) not real and 2) can be liquidated by their brokers at any time, because, as the go-between third party, their brokers own the shares "on their behalf," and brokers essentially just "deliver" digital IOUs. All Actual Real Shares are held in the DTCC by a company called Cede & Co, and everything else is traded on credit.

If you buy a "share" in a company through a broker, it's not your name on the company shareholder list, it's your broker's. If you're submitting paperwork to your broker for voting for that company's policies at their annual meeting, your broker is pooling aaaaall the votes and "proportionally" voting "on your behalf." And your broker can decide to lend out your shares without telling you (to their own profit) and you may or may not ever get them back -- this is called "failure to delivers" or FTDs and there is a massive backlog of them that just ... never get addressed.

this is hella over-summarized and sloppy but the tl;dr is that supply and demand economics are beyond broken, the entire stock market is more fake than you ever imagined, it's propped up entirely by computer programs trading IOUs-of-IOUs-of-IOUs, and is easily manipulated at the literal whim of bank-and-billionaire proxies.

companies really have got to be okay with stagnant profits. what is wrong with earning the same amount every year? why does it always have to be more? it's not sustainable. there are only so many people on the planet you can profit from 😭