#i also hate love triangles so much. i adore mags and I like her and bash but their romantic story lines with other people are so annoying

[thewingedwolf]

I still love transplant but this whole story line with Rania is so fucking stupid. It makes sense that Bashir would have a hard time emotionally connecting to and trusting a woman he has moved on from grieving, and that’s a perfectly valid story, but the thing is he really WASNT struggling with it too much? He was nervous and elated to see her the first few eps, they had some issues with awkwardness cohabitating but he was still clearly overjoyed enough she was back that he wanted to GET MARRIED. And she spent five whole years fighting to get back to him! Why would she give up just bc he’s been a little cranky for a couple of weeks????

Anyway, this is the second show I’ve watched where a Muslim character has a secret fiancé show up, only to be written off in a really rushed and dumb way and I don’t fully understand why both of these shows felt it necessary to do this weird ass storyline. Justice for Rania!!

[amorremanet]

For the meme: Hunger Games?

my all-time ultimate fave character: Katniss and Finnick. Like, I have a lot of them who I love, but Katniss and Finnick are tied for my number one spot.

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: Mrs. Everdeen took a while to grow on me, but by the end of Mockingjay, she really had.

a character I used to like but now don’t: tbh, it’s not that I used to like Peeta and now don’t, because I never really liked him and I still wouldn’t say that I dislike him, personally

—but there’s a lot about Peeta, especially with regard to his and Katniss’s relationship, that I find troublesome for various reasons (e.g., the way that Katniss, who is definitely canonically dark-skinned and is written against a backdrop that’s blatantly inspired by the racialized dimensions of classism and poverty, is always contextualized as Not Really Deserving the blonde white boy, who is regularly written in terms that are super not subtle about comparing him to Jesus)

To say nothing of how the text itself seems to agree with this idea, and does shit like go, “Wow, Peeta is oppressed by the Capitol too, like damn Katniss how much of a bitch are you, I mean your family and Gale’s only haven’t very literally starved to death because you and Gale know how to hunt, but wow, damn, Peeta had to help make the goat cheese and apple tarts and he wasn’t allowed to eat them because they were too expensive, that’s totally the same thing as people in the Seam literally starving to death”

Like, I’m not saying that Peeta and his family weren’t oppressed by the Capitol, because they were…… but it’s explicitly established in-text that the Capitol manufactures gradations as part of how they try to keep the Districts all fighting each other instead of fighting them, so yes, Peeta and his family did not experience the same thing as Gale, Katniss, and theirs, and part of that difference was how the Mellarks didn’t need to worry about getting enough to eat, they just couldn’t eat the expensive treats

The thing that bugs me the most, though, is the way that Peeta has supposedly been in love with Katniss since they were kids — except……… how? How can you say that he has truly been in love with Katniss when he, by his own goddamn admission, knew basically nothing about her and never even tried to get to know her for real? I’d buy that he was in love with his ludicrous headcanons about Katniss, but that’s not the same as being in love with Katniss Everdeen: Actual Person

And sorry not sorry, Peeta, but it is NOT true that you, “couldn’t talk to her”; you COULD have talked to Katniss and you chose not to talk to Katniss or deal with her at all in any context where you didn’t have the power of life and death over her (whether it was because she was literally dying of starvation, or because she needed you to make her look sympathetic to viewers in the 74th Games, and you needed her to literally and immediately keep you alive)

……Also, his version of how he fell in love with her has way too much in common with Dante Alighieri’s account of how he first fell in love with Beatrice Portinari for me to be truly okay with it, because Dante is one of the Western Literary Canon’s biggest examples of entitled dudebros who objectify women even while they claim to adore them (because over-idealizing someone is a form of dehumanizing them).

This said, I still don’t dislike Peeta. I just don’t think he’s that great, or that he’s as pure and innocent and cinnamon roll-ish as the books and fandom all make him out to be. Even without my misgivings about Ever*lark, ffs, he is one of the sneakiest, most manipulative characters in the series, and his BS sense of entitlement doesn’t only come out with Katniss

a character I’m indifferent about: Presidents Coin and Snow are both well-executed villains, but I don’t have a lot of feelings about them, personally. They were actually helped by the movies, for me, because Donald Sutherland and Julianne Moore were both really good in their roles, and it made me like them a little more, even if it still didn’t make me have feelings about them or anything

a character who deserved better: Most of them, tbh, but my top six are (in no particular order) Johanna, Madge, Rue, Annie, Finnick, and Gale

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: Katniss/Peeta, see above

But also? Gale/Madge. In my experience, the whole thing only exists so people can have some kind of “uptown girl” fantasy and go, “Look, see, I don’t hate Gale!!! Stop saying that I hate Gale!!! Just let me shove him off to the side and completely mischaracterize the shit out of him and pair him up with Madge for no reason beyond getting him out of the way so I can have Katniss/Peeta!!!!”

Also, Madge Undersee is a lesbian. #sorrynotsorry

Even worse: Effie/Haymitch. For one thing, both of them are gay. I don’t know what books everybody else is reading, but in MY copies of the books, Effie and Haymitch are both gay as fuck, why would you pair up a gay man and a lesbian like that unless it’s like, a situation where Effie and Haymitch get married so no one knows that they’re actually married to Portia and Cinna, respectively

But aside from that (because it’s admittedly a matter of my own headcanons even though I refuse to back down from them), I just??? Effie/Haymitch is just so blatantly a bunch of straight nonsense, pairing the two of them up because he’s a man and she’s a woman and therefore any time they exchange more than two words, it’s ~flirting~ even when Effie has HAPPILY AND ENERGETICALLY been a part of the system that treats all the kids Haymitch as mentored as if their lives mean nothing, and she’s been helping shepherd them to their deaths without getting that this is not good until it affects Katniss and Peeta (which only makes Effie get it because she likes them), and as much as Haymitch’s distaste for Effie is understandable, a lot of his lashing out at her isn’t actually coming from a place of, “I object to you for these fair reasons” so much as it’s coming from a place of Haymitch being a troll for the sake of being a troll, and I just

Why

Why is this ship a THING

Why is it so fucking POPULAR

I only understand this phenomenon in the most cynical way possible (i.e., the way where my explanation for it is, “they are so popular because it’s an M/F ship and, in the movies, both of them are white, even though Haymitch has dark skin and black hair, and the same racialized poverty-coded background as Gale and Katniss, in the books”)

Also, both of them are gay, sooooooo……… #sorrynotsorry

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: Katniss/Johanna, Katniss/Madge, Katniss/Finnick, Annie/Finnick

a cute, low-key ship: Annie/Johanna, and in some AU where Rue and Prim both get to grow up, I think they’d be cute together.

Also, Gale/Peeta. I’m just saying, it’s a perfect solution to the issue of the alleged love triangle because it means neither of them ends up without a ship, but Katniss doesn’t have to be with either of them.

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: dude, my only M/F “ship that deserves to be called an OTP” for Katniss is called a crack ship by most of the fandom, even though she and Finnick have better-written relationship development than Katniss/Peeta and even though Finnick consistently respects Katniss Everdeen: Actual Facts Person and not some shiny pretty pretty princess headcanon about her

Sure, he may not want to be her friend, at first, because he assumes, like she does, that friends are not A Thing that’s going to happen, and if he maybe feels like he has been tasked with babysitting her and Peeta during the Quarter Quell, then… that’s not actually inaccurate, because he was kinda tasked with babysitting them by the other rebels.

Like, helping the two of them to survive and getting them out of the arena was the job that Finnick and Mags were given by the other rebels, and he had to be more hands-on about it than, say, Johanna, since Katniss wanted to have an alliance with Mags, which meant she had to have one with Finnick

So, no. The two of them aren’t exactly cozying up to each other in Catching Fire, because both of them are playing certain parts and performing certain versions of themselves based on a lot of assumptions about How The Fuck This Shit Works and a lot of assumptions about their roles and positions in everything (which admittedly end up being less than accurate… because both of them have been manipulated and lied to by everybody who’s pulling the strings)

Anyway, I shouldn’t go on about this too much more because it will make me get defensive and angry, but Finnick and Katniss are my autistic children and they are not a goddamn crack ship and if I had money, I would pay people to stop saying that so I could look at their tags and only see people tagging everything with them as “BROTP,” as opposed to that plus people calling them a crack ship

Also: Finnick/Gale, Cinna/Haymitch, Annie/Katniss

Also, I didn’t really LIKE Gale/Katniss, but it made me feel more things than Katniss/Peeta (even if I have more thoughts on that one, that’s the thing: they’re thoughts, not Feels; the only thing that I ever really feel about Katniss/Peeta is frustrated), and the whole, “Katniss is all but explicitly suicidal and that’s why she wants to mack on Gale” thing from Mockingjay totally does it for a lot of my angsty catharsis interests

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: Effie/Haymitch. I went, “EEEUGH” out loud when they kissed, when I say MJ2 in the theatre, and I didn’t feel bad about it because: 1. all of the people who loved them collectively when, “AWWWWW”; and 2. eww, can you say, “what the fuck is this hetero pandering bullshit”

my favourite storyline/moment: The entire, “I drag myself out of nightmares and find there’s no relief in waking. Better not to give into it” scene, because I’m a human cliché and Katniss and Finnick are my autistic children. Also, any and every Joniss scene, because I’m garbage and a human cliché and I just want them to be together, is that so bad

a storyline that never should have been written: idk about anyone else, but I personally choose to live in a world where the series-long alleged “love triangle” was between Katniss/Madge and Johanna/Katniss, and the Katniss/Peeta stuff was only ever during the Games and not actually for real, and Gale and Peeta can go do each other or something, because fuck forced hetero love triangles, that’s why

Also? I’m willing to accept that Prim’s death was legitimately necessary for the plot and the narrative, in the same way that I hate Sirius Black’s death but accept that it was necessary for the sake of the story that JKR wanted to tell, so I can just go, “I see your point and I don’t begrudge you this in canon, but I am going to headcanon around it anyway because I don’t like it”

—but there was ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to kill Finnick. See, much like JKR’s senseless murders of Remus and Tonks in DH, Finnick’s death did nothing to make a point that hadn’t already been made multiple times over, and it added nothing to the story. Yea, like JKR before her, SCollins only killed Finnick for the sake of cheap shock value and reaffirming certain ideas about heroism that the rest of the series tried to deconstruct

It was pointless, it was senseless, it wasn’t necessary, and the story, characters, and readers all deserved better than that

Finnick Odair is happy and fine and he’s definitely alive, because all that unadulterated bullshit, “lmao finnick dies” crap never happened

my first thoughts on the series: uh. The first time I tried to read the books, I didn’t even get to the games themselves, because SCollins introduced Madge, introduced the backstory of her and Katniss being like kinda friends but kinda not but they’re not sure, and I was like, “ugh, why. I already know you’re going to make me suffer this bullshit between the two boys, but why would you hand me a totally valid and much more interesting F/F option. Why” and on the other hand, because Katniss reminded me too much of myself at a point when I wasn’t ready to deal with that

my thoughts now: We all deserved better, but I say that all the time about the HP series, too, so me feeling like the series was kind of a let down in various places and criticizing different aspects of it? Isn’t going to stop me from enjoying it

Also, Finnick is fine, Madge is fine, Effie and Haymitch are gay, Gale is bi, and most of my favorite characters are autistic because I said so, that’s why (—I mean, I actually have cases based on canon evidence for Finnick and Katniss, but my real rationale here is, “I want them to be autistic, so they are now, okay peace bye”)

[thebookventureroftroy]

My ramblings on Shadowhunters S02E01: The Guilty Blood

Aaand we’re back. You have no idea how impatient I was to finally watch this episode. Especially with all the gifs appearing on my dash from people who get to watch it before me. Grrr I’m so jealous.

Anyway, I didn’t plan on doing a fullscale rambling this season but turns out I have a lot of em. That’s just how keen I am.

You know the drill. SPOILERS below.

Huh. I don’t even remember that valentine in the library scene. Guess I should’ve gone back and watched that last episode before diving in to S2. Oh well.

Oh, i remember the evil speech though

“JOIN ME BLAH BLAH BLAH *cuts to everyone dead. whoops

wtf is Clary doing there? No way would she just run onto the ship without being seen.

#its a trick

…I don’t think that’s Clary. 

“whoops just killed a random. oh well”

KNEW IT! Jace is so gullible

hate to break it to  you, Shadowhunters. But you really need to find a new opening theme song. 

yaay Lydia

eeeee he said Alexander. 

Alec just blew off Magnus after yelling at everyone. well then.

 I mean, I love him, but I forget he’s also a jerk sometimes.  

Oh. phew. He’s apologising *goes back to forgetting he’s a jerk (he’s only slightly a jerk, I don’t really hold it against him)

As I was writing that he forgot he was supposed to be apologizing and now he’s yelling again. this is why we love him, right?

LUKE! YAAAY

SIMON WHOOOOOOO

ahahaha Simon trying to hide his teeth from Jocelyn. What a dweeb. Lool and now she’s all like “of course you would be so dumb”

Ewwww go back to your book, Aldertree! No one wants you here.

Dammit he actually looks quite charming. 

“Valentine will never break him” -cuts to Jace getting the crap beaten out of him. MY GOD THESE JUMP TRANSITIONS ARE BRILLIANT. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. 

(But seriously, hurry up and save him, guys)

Ohhhhh Aldertree is meeting with Clary. I hate this already

I can’t quite make out what kind of accent he has there. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I need more scenes with him to figure it out. 

……Valentine is making spaghetti. This is too weird.

…pretty sure playing with knives was the first thing you taught him, Valentine.

*painful hesitation “It’s because I *chokes back vomit* love you son” *shudders -  so believable

are they…no they wouldn’t reveal that this soon. 

OMG THEY’RE DOING THE WHOLE DEMON BLOOD THING SO EARLY

Mind you, there was plenty of cut/pasting going on in the last season too, so I shouldn’t be so surprised. At least they’re not dragging it out. 

Guys. Alec and Magnus are fighting again. Alec is such a jerk

He’s like “Mag-ah forget it”

Ugh Aldertree is such a dick.

HE JUST KICKED OUT LUKE. WHAT AN ASSHOLE

It’s like kind of British, right? But like, not british

I hate aldertree so much. Even morre then I ever hated him in the book.

Fiine I looked it up, and he is British. he is also only a few years older than me. huh. 

HANG ON I just remembered that it’s supposed to be Imogen Herondale making everyone’s lives miserable instead of Aldertree. Wonder why they didn’t just bring her back. 

MAYBE THEY’RE GOING TO REVEAL WHO JACE IS WHILE SHE’S STILL ALIVE. I’m so down for that. 

Even Jocelyn’s pissing me off.

I was going to harp on Luke for encouraging Simon to chase after Clary and then I remembered that they still think Jace and Clary are related so he has no reason not to. dammit.

oooooh Simon’s in trouble

(seriously, though, why did Luke just leave him there. 

HE’S TRYING TO JEDI MIND TRICK THEM WHAT A DWEEB LOOOOOL

oh yeah, the demon blood thing.

jesus Valentine is such an asshole. 

oooh training sequence (actually this is one of the few sneak peak things I actually watched)

goodie now Alec gets to fight with Marys. Leave no one out, Alec. 

OMG IT’S CLARY. That one actually got me. Although i suppose I did find it odd that Aldertree would ever just show up to find Luke.

Don’t believe you, Jocelyn. Even book you wouldn’t help Clary run into danger

#knew it. Clary is also gullible

Alec’s trying to apologize again. 

He’s really sorry, guys. I think we should forgive him.

magnus doesn’t want to hear about your other boyfriend, Alec.

“Also, you’re getting better at apologies”

awwww he’s been working on it. 

And I’m squeeing. Dammit

GUYS ITS ONLY BEEN WEEKS WHAT EVEN

phew dodged that bullet simon

Do you think Magnus really needed Alec shirtless for this? Or was it just an added bonus

Ugh. Not all vampires are nice. I forget

Marys is so embarrassed by her children. lol

Dom Sherwood certainly has the moral struggling thing down pact. I’m not even cringing a little.

NOO HE ACTUALLY KILLED HER. I’M SO SAD

I am literally too shocked that Jocelyn tried to kill her apparent son to make too much comment on this.

So do you reckon Malec are going to be fighting a lot this season or what? Coz I’m not sure I can take much more of this sadness.

But anyway, the previously on kind of jumped out at me, and the opening  credit song needs changing.  Other than that it was a pretty good episode. Even though Malec are squabbling all the time, I still love them, and the real apology scene was adorable. I love you guys. And Any time Simon is on screen is a delight. I knoww I went on a lot about him last season but I love him even more in the show than I do in the books. Actually, I pretty much like all of these characters better in the show.

I JUST WANT THEM TO END THE CLACEST THING ALREADY AND WE’RE NOT EVEN UP TO THE DUMB LOVE TRIANGLE. (p.s. I am not at all looking forward to Climon. They were so adorable together in this episode and it’s going to break my heart how much more he loves her than she loves him. He doesn’t deserve that heartbreak).

Oh, and Aldertree is a dick. But you knew that already. I HATE THIS WAITING A WEEK FOR THE NEXT EPISODE NONSENSE WHY CAN’T WE JUST HAVE THEM ALL NOW. jokes we shouldn’t do that, I’d use up all my data bingeing it and not sleep.