#i am defending him with my LIFE

[magdalenepie]

mitya IS and WILL be the best character dostoyevsky has ever created

[mkpersephone]

Magneto I love you man but you have a lot of them. My bald king here is left alone😭😭😭

Animation: X-men' 97, Ep 3 & 10

[veryintricaterituals]

This blog is about to become an Edward Teach apology blog. This is your warning and you've been warned. I am about to partake in justifying, condoning, defending, excusing and rationalizing in ways you've never even imagined before. He's going to kill people, act deranged and commit atrocities and I'm just going to sit in my living room like:

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[nesperus]

maybe something sparrow related? maybe him and little lark being mischievous, or him with rebecca if ur thinking older!! i just really love how u draw all the oaks

little different than what i normally do but can we cut him some slack

[tsuunara]

,, BSD FANDOM STOP FUCKING MISCHARACTERIZING CHUUYA FOR ONE SECOND CHALLENGE

i need to get this out of my head because i can't do this anymore with ppl who mischaracterize chuuya so much

tw ; opinion and lots of stormbringer and 15 spoilers! i think it's safe to put that here (also sorry for my poor wording of this i'm trying my best here sob sob justice for chuuya!!!)

"chuuya would be a red flag in relationships because he has incredible anger issues and gets violent!"

,, what a bullshit statement LOL i'm (not) sorry for saying this but i really don't think chuuya has any anger issues whatsoever?? NOW JUST HEAR ME OUT FOR A SECOND being short-tempered ≠ having anger issues!!! ,, having anger issues is something you CAN'T control and causes you to say or do things that can cause harm to others. chuuya does NOT have anger issues!!! we relatively don't see chuuya taking his anger out towards ANYONE with NO CONTROL over his actions whatsoever (arahabaki excluded, it's literally a god of destruction)

,, "but he takes it out on dazai!! he fought with him!!"

,, chuuya mentions that it was to SPITE him. when dazai and chuuya are together, i'd say chuuya is more pissed and annoyed because dazai is usually pushing is buttons. he's just a bit short-tempered and loses it a little more easier than others! of course he also does loses his temper a bit whenever he's stressed as well (that one cannibalism arc episode!!! where he said "son of a bitch") but he didn't particularly go KABOOM KABOOM, ifykwim. ,, we can also see him relatively calm and serious with his work in some episodes too!! he's not yapping and exploding all the time, because obviously he's a 22 year old man. throughout these 7 years, chuuya WOULD'VE learned to mature himself and control his emotions ESPECIALLY after going through his trauma.

,, "but chuuya is violent all the time!"

,, "all the time" ? bffr LMAO. okay sure, chuuya is MAFIA EXECUTIVE and that's part of his job. but that doesn't mean he's always killing this and that!! literally in the official wiki it mentions how chuuya isn't "impossible to reason with" when dealing with his enemies!!

,, ALSO FURTHER PROOF THAT CHUUYA ISN'T SOME COLD-BLOODED KILLER WHO KILLS EVERYONE HE SEES!! in stormbringer, we're up to the scene where N literally tells chuuya that he wasn't human and literally TORTURES HIM, verlaine - the man who KILLED off all his friends - gets him to kill N. but guess fucking what? CHUUYA DIDN'T!!! he tried to go for verlaine instead!! and he also sympathized with him because he KNEW where he was coming from as well!!

,, also!! when he was betrayed by the sheep in the 15 arc, dazai gave chuuya the choice of what to do with them when he was ordered to kill both the sheep and the GSS. and chuuya told him not to kill any of the sheep - most likely due to the fact that he actually still sees them as his family (give this man a break wtf) ,, even if we see chuuya angry at times, at most we can justify his anger - i mean who wouldn't go feral if you had to face the man who killed all your friends or the man who literally killed off your original self, tortured you and told you you weren't human? if anything, it's a very human thing if im being honest. (further proof that chuuya is human) ,, now, bringing back to our bullshit statement - why would chuuya need to get angry or violent if he loves his s/o? chuuya may be a red flag and has his flaws but i REALLY don't see the need for him to take any of his anger out on his s/o. he's really not angry 24/7 all the time, nor does he always NEED to use violence even as being part of the mafia - and just so you know, it's confirmed that chuuya would treat women the best out of everyone!!!! so let's just call it a day and go home guys 🤗🤗🤗

tldr; there would be no need for chuuya to get angry or violent if he loves his s/o, being a mafia executive does NOT necessarily mean he is violent all the time as he sympathizes with others, chuuya does NOT have anger issues and just loses his temper a little more easier than others (especially when it comes to dazai), and asagiri literally confirms he respects women.

thank you for coming to my ted talk. have a good day, evening or night ^_^

[seaghosst]

we need to stop characterizing misako as a terrible mom and instead hate dr julien for deadbeat and leaving echo in that damn lighthouse

[superbellsubways]

poor little meow meow

[yourlowkeyidiot3]

Why are people blaming the fact that Stan got kicked out on Ford and not on Filbrick

[quadrantadvisor]

I started shipping Dick Grayson and Percy Jackson as a joke and then got accidentally invested. Help.

The thing about them is that I think they would Know. They would each know that the other had been though more than any one person could be expected to bear. They would feel secrets like a weight between them. And they would just. Not ask. They would decide to be eachother's simple thing. A bright spot of good in a world that's too hard.

Dick comes across as a ray of sunshine but he keeps up with Percy's snark. Percy's bleeding heart for the downtrodden and disdain for any authority endears him to Dick. They just have complimentary energies.

What makes this funny is how everyone else reacts to them.

Dick's family is panicking, since Percy is The Most Suspicious Man on the Planet. He works six months out of the year at summer camps that don't exist. He was accused of terrorism as a twelve year old. They keep trying to bring this up with Dick, who is exaggerating oblivoiusness. "What, Percy, suspicious? Never. He's great with kids, I'm sure the campers love him, isn't that sweet?" Tim is pulling out his hair.

Meanwhile, Percy's telling Annabeth (who he is still dating, polyamory ftw) all about his new guy, and Annabeth is like, "Let me get this staight. You're dating a rich trust fund kid, who's also a police officer, named Dick? That's not a real guy. That's a parody of a person. Who are you and since when do you tolerate cops."

[6flyingosprey6]

QSMP Eggs and what Percy Jackson cabins I think they belong in

Chayanne- Poseidon

Dapper- Hecate

Leo- Iris

Ramon- Hephaestus

Juanaflippa- Nemesis

Bobby- Ares

Tilin- Aphrodite

Trump- Hypnos

Tallulah- Apollo

Richarlyson- Demeter

Pomme- Hades

Empanada- Athena

Sunny- Nike

Pepito- Hebe

Chunsik- Tyche

Nacho- Dionysus

[sunrizef1]

Quick rant that I'll probably delete

—

Lmao Lewis stans attacking Virgil van dijk is pure comedy

Why are you that rattled by that man??? For a comment he made 3 years ago???

He cheers on max in Abu dhabi and they start tweeting images of him losing THREE years later 😭😭😭

I hope England shits the bed in the final, I can not stand these people

“Every tongue that falls against Lewis Hamilton shall fall”

What 😭

And he's also had much worse losses since 2021??? Girl I watched that man get sent by old man Perisic at 8 am on a Saturday morning, he is not rattled by losing a rigged semi-final after two goals that weren't his fault

And trying to call out a world-class defender and the captain of the Dutch national team for losing one game AS A TEAM when Lewis hadn't won in fuck-knows how long is insane

That fandom gets one win and forgets that Lewis isn't the reigning wdc and hasn't been in a while. The only fandom that deserves this kind of ego that other fandoms are currently displaying, not just lh44 hive, is Max’s fans.

Taking their anger out on virg for what max did is crazy work. Pretty sure Virgil has more trophies in the past three years than Lewis does.

Lewis is 1/76 in first-place trophies since 2021

Virgil is 4/22 in first-place trophies since 2021

And virg was fighting for TEAM trophies with a squad that was slowly falling apart.

Pls do not start 😭

[can-i-get-a-yippee]

Every time I see people telling Eddie to stop terrorizing the women of LA, I grow stronger

Like,,, HELL YEAH!! GET HIS ASS!! BULLY HIM MORE!!

[five-of-cr]

the crows texting

jesper: texts back within 3 minutes no matter the time of day, keysmashes, so many emojis, way too meme literate for his own good, VOICE NOTES

wylan: auto-caps but no punctuation because text-to-speech and he can't be bothered, snarky as FUCK

nina: types SO fast, best usage of emojis, caps lock fiend, always roasting people (especially kaz and jesper)

matthias: emojis used incorrectly, gif reactions to everything, individually checks in on people if he thinks nina roasted them too hard

inej: frequent heart emojis and :) emoticons, official chat lurker, almost never sends memes but when she does they're incredible, always responds "lol" to nina's roasts

kaz: auto-caps and proper punctuation because jesper told him it causes him physical pain to read. typing bubble appears for 30 seconds followed by just the word "K." originally refused to use emojis but started when he heard wylan offhandedly say how much he liked them since he can't read

kuwei: sooooo bad at responding, but when he does it's like 19 times in a row, uses the most random-ass emojis, the definition of chaotic neutral, is the only one who gets jesper's meme references 100% of the time

[himitsy-chan]

people who don't understand Mike Wheeler shut the fuck up challenge

[rt3nenbaum]

fernando saying he has tried to pee on the car but that he can't do it💀