#i believe in gandalf supremacy

[mood-2017]

watching lotr for the first time in my life rn and all I have to say is this: Gandalf punching Denethor in the face and proceeding to knock him unconscious bc he was having a meltdown and was about to give up on Minas Tirith without a fight was the best thing that happened in all three movies.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

Hello! I was hoping to add a bit to your thoughts on Bloodraven. I agree wholeheartedly with you that Bloodraven is a terrible person and made terrible decisions. But I disagree with you that he’s rewarded for it. The novels do quite a but to frame him as an evil person. Yes he’s a magical greenseer and has a lot of magical power, but he’s also a scary tree person with roots growing in him. He lives in a dark cave he can never leave with creepy elves that have probably killed Bran’s friend. There’s also a lot of theories that Bloodraven drove Euron crazy when testing Euron for magical abilities like he tested Bran. GRRM looks to be setting him up as a dark twist to the wise mentor trope while the show treated him like Gandalf.

Hello, Anon! Bl00draven as a villain is actually a very controversial opinion/theory in tumblr fandom, (which is why I misspell his name and use his anti tag) with at least some considering him a straight-up hero trying to save the world, or an anti-hero who commits atrocities to achieve “noble goals” (including, if I remember correctly, the same person who wrote at least part of the theory that Euron is Bl00draven’s ex-student). I believe Bl00draven is “a terrible person [who] made terrible decisions”, but I’m probably in the minority, (you’d probably find a better discussion with people who think he’s a hero in your analysis of how his character is framed), but you haven’t indicated why you don’t think he’s rewarded for his actions. 

I have written about how the narrative protects Bl00draven from the consequences of his actions in the post you’re responding to, in a response to warsofasoiaf, and a response to godihatethisfreakingcat. In summary:

The two times BR suffers any setback (losing an eye; being sent to the Wall for high treason), it ends up working out for him in the end (not being affected by monocular vision at all if he held his own in a second duel against Aegor Rivers, getting a “scary” reputation and possibly greenseeing powers; having 200 of his personal guard and Prince Aemon accompany him, getting to keep the only Targaryen ancestral sword when he’s supposed to be punished, getting elected Lord Commander despite his horrible tenure as Hand, and deserting the Night’s Watch to become an immortal greenseer despite desertion being a death sentence)

When it looks like BR is going to suffer other setbacks, they magically go away (he and Baelor have a dispute over how to treat the defeated Blackfyre rebels, but Baelor dies before he can become king; he mocks Maekar in front of his own son and unsubtly threatens to kidnap Egg, but is said to have become Maekar’s Hand; his spy network fails to capture Aegor Rivers multiple times and couldn’t keep an eye on his ship as it made way for the Wall, but he isn’t punished for failing to do the one job he promised to do)

BR never had to work to gain anyone’s trust or his positions of authority, despite being terrible at his job (his mother was a friend of Da3ron II’s from birth; he was granted an ancestral Valyrian sword as a teenager despite not being the best swordsman; he gets his first Small Council position by age 20; Da3ron II trusts him enough to start a war on his say-so; Aerys makes him his Hand over his more competent brother Maekar; Maekar keeps him as Hand despite resenting him for decades; he’s made Night’s Watch Lord Commander). Maintaining so much power either undermines your claim that the narrative frames him as a villain (if he’s so untrustworthy, why do the supposed protagonists keep giving him jobs?), or it makes the characters who’ve granted him this power into idiots (at least 2 of whom are lauded as intelligent or clever).

Other villainous characters have done less harm than Bl00draven, but are punished for it while he gets to keep his power:

The infamously corrupt High Septon was torn apart by starving King’s Landing smallfolk during the bread riots of 299

The corrupt Rego Draz, who levied high taxes and tolls on the smallfolk (abuse of the smallfolk amidst a humanitarian crisis? sounds familiar), was stoned to death by a starving mob during the harsh winter and plague of 59

Rhaenyra was believed to have murdered Helaena Targaryen, and her husband did arrange for the murder of Helaena’s son (a parent and two young sons murdered in cold blood? sounds familiar). Thousands of smallfolk rioted out of desire for justice for the three, which caused the death of 5 dragons, Rhaenyra’s remaining son Joffrey, and Rhaenyra’s own flight from the capital. She never regained the throne again

Mysaria of Lys, explicitly compared to Bl00draven as Mistress of Whispers, also arranged for the murder of Helaena’s son Jaehaerys, informed on Nettles to Rhaenyra resulting in a warrant for her death (informing on someone to a monarch baseless rumors resulting in a warrant for their arrest? sounds familiar), and may have contributed to Helaena’s suicide that the riots were about. When King’s Landing fell, she was stripped naked and whipped to death as she was forced to walk out of the city.

Tyanna of Pentos, similarly mistress of whispers like Mysaria, tortured the king’s nephew to death (after having him imprisoned? sounds familiar), tortured dozens of men and women including rumored lover Alys Harroway, kidnapped children to ensure their mother’s good behavior while being repeatedly raped, and allegedly poisoned her fellow queens in order to be Maegor’s true wife. She was brutally murdered by the man she sought to influence, her heart thrown to the dogs

Bl00draven deliberately shot 2 unarmed 12-year-olds in front of their father to win a war, ordered the smallfolk back to their lands during the midst of a drought and after the Great Spring Sickness, caused the death of a young man under suspicious circumstances, threatened to keep the son of his rival a hostage, killed a man he promised safe passage to, denied critical aid to the crown’s vassals during ironborn raids, and created a reign of fear and paranoia that resulted in the deaths of innocent smallfolk. Bafflingly, while there are apparently riots and violence and rebellion, he makes routine trips into Flea Bottom to keep the people in line (yes, the smallfolk in King’s Landing are so complacent to authoritarian rulers as I just mentioned) and survives all of them (relatively) unscathed. Not only does he keep his position as Hand, or gained a new position as Lord Commander, but he lives to a ripe old age before running away to the cave to be an immortal greenseer with infinite knowledge. My point in comparing the actions and consequences of characters similar to Bl00draven is that if the smallfolk or the Targaryens were written consistently, he would’ve been horribly murdered for corruption or insubordination long before he ever met Bran. I understand he would have to live into canon era to be Bran’s mentor; but GRRM broke the rules of his own universe by letting Bl00draven get away with too much to be believable while giving him even more power. It is inconsistent writing that makes his survival due to authorial fiat than any skill or allies. That’s why I consider him possibly the worst-written character in the series.

Bl00draven has not committed enough good deeds to be a hero (in my opinion; other people consider keeping Da3ron’s progeny on the throne for a few generations longer to be heroic). But neither has he suffered for the consequences of his actions like a villain. We know that the Freys and Boltons will face comeuppance for their atrocities in the Red Wedding and at Winterfell because it’s already clear they have sown the seeds of their own destruction; the Freys’ violation of guest right contributed to the breakdown of the rule of law that made honorable parley impossible, and their murder of Catelyn Stark led to Lady Stoneheart in the Riverlands killing Freys with the Brotherhood, and their murder of Wendel Manderly led to his father Wyman orchestrating some of their deaths; the Boltons’ role in the Red Wedding led to nearly universal hatred among the northern lords, and caused the mountain clans to ally with Stannis to get them out, and Ramsay’s rape of who they think is Arya Stark just gives them further cause to resent their traitorous overlords. I don’t have to explain how Tywin’s cult of Lannister supremacy doesn’t survive his death as he’s offed in the most humiliating manner by the son he despised, since Jaime, Cersei, and Tyrion are either imprisoned, enslaved, or in a trial for their life by book 5. Contrast Bl00draven, because the family he most wronged (the Blackfyres) are either no longer around or are uninterested in seeing him brought to justice; he certainly sowed the seeds of destruction, but he never reaped them himself (if anything, he got more powerful); instead the Targaryens did. I don’t see how he will be getting any personal comeuppance in the future, unless he is somehow unplugged from the weirwood network and executed as a deserter to the Night’s Watch (the Starks do have a pattern of executing those guys, so maybe it will be Bran’s turn). Until then, I don’t foresee him being a good asoiaf villain either.

[fangirlsgoingrogue]

Leia Organa: Leader of the New Jedi Order

Originally posted at FANgirl Blog

Written by Tricia Barr

A year ago, we lost Carrie Fisher. For some, that meant the end of an era, the end of Princess Leia on the silver screen. For others, hope is not lost that her legacy will continue under the guidance of a new generation of actresses. For everyone who loved Carrie Fisher, The Last Jedi looming on the horizon brought trepidation and bittersweet emotions. Writer-director Rian Johnson had assured fans he didn’t alter the story or Leia’s role in it in response to Carrie’s death. We wanted to see her final performance. We hoped it would do her justice.

The stark moment Leia is blasted out of the Raddus’ bridge is breathtaking, because it draws back those raw memories from last year when Fisher died. Although opinions vary on General Organa’s space operatic Superman-style return to her command ship, most fans are happy Leia’s Force abilities finally have been displayed. While some propose this is an instinctual use of the Force in self-preservation, not a demonstration of skill by a trained Force user, the movie contains clues that point otherwise.

Immediately before Leia is propelled into space, a close-up suggests she realizes who is attacking her ship. The film deliberately cuts between mother and son, settling on Leia who has a knowing look. (What she knows is open to debate.) Kylo Ren hesitates, but one of his wingmen hits the mark. The bridge explodes, decimating the Resistance leadership. Notably Poe, Finn, Kaydel Ko Connix (played by Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourd) and others are staring out into space. Do they expect Leia to save herself? Do they know she can? It is worth noting that in a movie about the fate of the Jedi, the revelation of Leia’s Force ability marks the end of Act One, where the hero of a story crosses a threshold. In terms of our perspective on Leia and the Jedi, the threshold crossed is that Leia has revealed herself as a Force-user in a storytelling universe where that fact was never before overtly acknowledged.

When Leia is placed on the gurney, she drops the homing beacon that connects her to Rey for Finn to pick up. Later, the responsibility this beacon represents is symbolically passed between Finn and Poe, until Leia takes it back again when she returns to command. So the question is: How injured is Leia? If she’s gravely injured, why isn’t she in a bactasuit like Finn? It is possible for a trained Force user to heal herself. Is Leia in a meditative healing trance?

One of the questions I had after my first viewing of The Last Jedi was the timing of the Force link between Kylo and Rey. So I paid attention to it on multiple re-watches. It doesn’t begin until after Leia feels Kylo’s presence during the battle and while she is unconscious (or meditating) in the medward. In The Force Awakens, Leia had implored Han to try to reach Kylo; it’s possible she still hasn’t given up hope but believes someone else will need to reach across the divide to her son. We know from Kylo’s discussion with Rey, and via Snoke’s mind-reading, that the young man known formerly as Ben Solo is troubled. After thrusting his lightsaber into his father, Kylo doesn’t commit to the murder of his mother. The grand finale of the movie shows Kylo is struggling with judgment and even his perception of reality. Possibly his mother, who he thinks dead, sneaks through a door in his wounded soul.

When Kylo and Rey have their first ForceTime, he makes a point of questioning who has connected them. He opines that the effort would kill Rey. (In part this bit of dialogue exists to establish the stakes for Luke later on; a person can’t Force-project without it taking a toll.) Leia has offered a place in the galaxy to Rey – the beacon is to ���light her way home” – and a familial connection to her son. If Leia is in a Force trance, then one sibling at the beginning of the movie mirrors the other’s action at the end of the movie, Leia’s in an effort to help Kylo rather than Luke’s to distract him.

When Luke eventually taps back into the Force on Ahch-To we see Leia, lying in the medward, speak his name. If she has felt her brother’s presence reaching out to her, it’s plausible within the rules of this movie for Leia to connect with others. In addition, it appears that the pool over the emblem of the First Jedi acts as a focal point for the Force, and the new lore suggests the island is a sort of Force antenna that Luke uses to project himself outward. Then why couldn’t Leia be using this Force-amplification another way? Notably, the only ForceTime that we don’t see initiated is when Rey confesses to Kylo about her experience in the Mirror Cave. At this point, she has progressed in her training and it isn’t inconceivable that Rey reached out to Kylo on her own. In fact, Luke breaks the connection when their fingers are touching.

So what about Snoke? He claims responsibility, but he also claimed to be unbeatable and we know how that turned out. Snoke likely did toy with Kylo’s emotions during their connections, given how easily Snoke is shown to read Kylo’s mind. But how did he reach out to Rey and intrude into her mind to join hers with Kylo’s in the first place? Their meeting on the Supremacy appears to be the first time they’ve ever interacted in person, and Snoke has to forcibly read Rey’s mind with the Force to learn the location of Luke Skywalker and the planet Ahch-To, which he then pledges to destroy. From that we can conclude Snoke hadn’t known her geographical location in the galaxy previously. But why not? If Snoke could find her in the Force, why couldn’t he glean a sense of where she was, too? The key might be in Kylo’s dialogue when he remarks that he can’t see Rey’s surroundings. If Leia were manipulating this connection, the light side balancing Snoke’s dark, she would protect Luke and Rey. That’s what made me suspicious of Snoke’s role in initiating the contact, and what turned me on to the possibility that Leia is fostering this connection in a last ditch effort to redeem her son.

Leia returns from her trance, hale enough to shoot Poe, only after Rey is off Ahch-To and Holdo’s escape plan is in a dire position of being compromised. What struck me about that scene is how much it reflects Darth Vader’s appearance in A New Hope. The sealed door blasts open. Did Leia do some Force blasting? It’s unclear, but what is apparent is that Leia presents the opposing image to Vader’s black costume, dressed in all white as she comes through the opening to quell a rebellion within the Resistance. She has gone from Leia the Grey to Leia the White, an homage to Gandalf’s transformation in Tolkien lore. In addition to Gandalf, she moves in a way that gives a visual hat tip to Yoda in Attack of the Clones, where he hobbles about with his cane tricking everyone into believing he’s not as powerful as he truly is. Just a short time later, Leia again wields a blaster in the Crait base, this time backing up Poe’s approach to the crashed shuttle. She completes her affirmation of his newfound leadership wisdom when she implores the others, “follow him.” Thinking about the steady decline of the Jedi Order as they became wrapped up in politics, which eventually led to them being generals and military leaders, Leia’s withdrawal from command might be showing us an inversion for the Jedi Order to return to what they once were.

The Last Jedi’s penultimate scene unfolds with Rey and Leia talking about Luke’s passing and the future of the Jedi Order. What made Luke the perfect person to bring Darth Vader back from the dark side – his remote upbringing, his adoptive family life, his naïve optimism – never set the character up to create a Jedi Order, only save it from extinction. Leia, on the other hand, is well-educated in politics, philosophy, and many of the other intellectual disciplines that would need to be in the toolkit of a person leading the way in rebuilding a new Jedi Order.

Over the course of the movie, Leia is fostering the next generation of military leaders in the Resistance, likely because she intends to strike out on a new path, to finish her quest initiated in the opening scroll of The Force Awakens:

With the support of the REPUBLIC, General Leia Organa leads a brave RESISTANCE. She is desperate to find her brother Luke and gain his help in restoring peace and justice to the galaxy.

Sitting next to Leia is a young woman who wasn’t handed the Jedi life due to bloodline, but rather scrapped and fought for it, first with her reticent mentor Luke and later against Kylo when he asked her to join him. True to her own childhood, she scavenged the books Luke didn’t want. Leia is right: they have everything they need to rebuild the Jedi Order. They have the books, a Master and an apprentice, and hope. This is how I read the story, as a sequel trilogy that is sending two women on a quest to rebuild a Jedi Order, the guardians of peace and justice that we were introduced to forty years ago in A New Hope.

Related links:

Hyperspace Theories The Last Jedi Reaction Show

Fangirls Going Rogue The Last Jedi Reaction Show

The Last Jedi Review

The Last Jedi First Impressions

The Last Jedi Story Structure analysis

Leia Organa – Warrior

Why We Support Recasting of Leia Organa

[unproduciblesmackdown]

I saw your Dumbledore posts and I’m just wondering why you think that Voldemort is his fault. Because I don’t. I mean Dumbledore didn’t do anything to him and it was his choice. Plus you said that he did it twice, it was all Grindelwald’s idea to begin with and he chose to go through with it. I get you don’t like him and all but I don’t believe that Voldemort is his fault. Like Voldemort is entirely his own fault.

the guy is a punk ass dong and he’s like, the least wise person ever coz he may know a lot of shit going on but what’s he ever actually do himself with any of it. he’s the most powerful wizard alive and just chills in the bg arranging things for other people to react to the messes he sees coming a mile away, the guy is a menace……..and like firstly why is his reaction to finally realizing that magic ability supremacy is wrong to wait around to do anything abt the other guy and also decide never to take a position in govt?? the magic govt is useless as is and coming in to cause problems like….say he rises to minister of magic, what even is his jurisdiction and authority. also he doesn’t DO anything abt his revelation and this problem that keeps coming up on his watch….like you couldn’t possibly do anything to help anyone or advocate for any change w your new morals?? what a freakin weendog

also with voldemort, like, every Dumbles and Voldes In The Past flashback shows us how wise dumbledore is coz he’s all suspecting tom riddle of being evil. like, so then do something about it or maybe tell everyone or bring it up in a staff meeting that apparently hogwarts has done nothing ever to address the constant problem of purebloodism. or just do nothing about him ever and let him marinate into this super powerful evil murdery guy, that’s your trademark style, not like you aren’t supposed to be super wise and super powerful or anything. what a nerd

nah instead he dumps a baby at the crappiest possible location for it and then leaves him to deal with voldemort every year when he doesn’t even know like, any magic and is a child the whole time. plus it’s all “oh i didnt tell you about your whole obligation to die / kill voldemort coz i was all tenderhearted and wanted you to enjoy your life, which is the same philosophy i used to leave you isolated with abusive relations for the first decade of your life, and i let you confront dangers as a part of training” like, Or Just Train Him, and also how did he KNOW there would be enough fuckin shenanigans at hogwarts to let hp get used to life and death antics and fighting off voldemort? did he just sit back and let it happen? did he Know nobody would happen to get killed by basilisk or whatever annual nonsense was going on? tf

so way to let some random teen take care of the problem. where is he the whole time, btw? every year at hogwarts he like shows up at feasts and maybe harry finds him at other random occasions. but what is he doing. coz it never seems to be anything for the improvement of the school. and he keeps just not even being around. and being ultimately responsible for every fuckin ludicrous thing that happens in hogwarts. remember how 11 yr olds were sent into the forbidden forest coz they were up late. what in sweet wiz god’s name.

and what in the H e c k was he doing in the sixth year????? how did he manage to fuck himself up on horcruxes. way to absolutely go. and then he’s like “oh dude snape you gotta like kill me man” uhhh How?! how do you plan to arrange that? the whole incident on the tower was something he actually didnt really see coming for once. and like oh wow for once in his life he’s trying to prevent a student from dying, and again is only like giving some five second proposition like “but what if you defected instead and live underground til this thing blows over” like, you could’ve said something before…and how did you know you’d get this chance at all?? and how do you expect someone to go for that in like seven literal seconds. and all the wand switcheroos that occurred there and would prove essential was also total coincidence and no thanks to the d-dore…..lord his own death is also totally his fault

like, the one thing he does is show up to duel off voldemort in book 5, thanks for once. but why doesn’t he make THAT kinda shit his plan? like, imagine a world where instead of getting himself killed, dumbledore goes after the damn horcruxes himself, kills off the whole regular body voldemort had going on, figures out a decent way to destroy horcruxes and takes them all out and lets harry smite the last one so the damn prophecy shit is happy. let hermione help, it’ll all be great

he’s wise and powerful for Fuck All and totally passive abt major issues when there’s no reason to be and crap as a protector and totally irresponsible as a headmaster and ultimately comes off as a manipulative Poser get outta here dude. 0 stars. where’s gandalf

but anyways snape is crappier but he’s not in dumbledore’s positions so not as much of a total letdown