#i do not like woobification

[synchodai]

just an aegon ii rant

The thing about Aegon that makes people root for him more than Joffrey is that Aegon just seems like everyone's punching bag in a way that Joffrey wasn't?

Aegon did horrible things, don't get me wrong. He raped a woman, he bullied his younger brother, he's implied to have his bastard children join fighting pits (this was never outright confirmed — Arryk only lightly alluded to Aegon doing something shady while they were looking to crown him), and he executed innocent ratcatchers as retribution for his murdered son.

But his rap sheet isn't any worse than Daemon's (murder, grooming, being a cop, etc.) or Criston's (his murder of Joffrey Lonmouth was downright homophobia /jk) or even Rhaenys's (talk about killing innocent people, right?), but for some reason all the characters hate Aegon's guts specifically? Given the people on this show, why?

It's like if Joffrey Baratheon threatened to kill Arya's direwolf and her best friend in episode 1, but he never does anything extraordinarily malicious or sadistic in the next episodes after that. And yet his own family just keeps treating him with outright contempt anyways despite him being their key to power.

Yeah, Aegon should be shamed and punished by the narrative for the horrible things he does...but nothing ever going his way and emphasizing how much of failure he is at every turn is just overkill, man. At some point, this amount of narrative humiliation has nothing to do anymore with dealing with the consequences of his bad actions or his personal failings, and it just makes every character look like they're taking turns unloading their frustrations on an acceptable target.

It's not fun to watch someone get kicked around by their entire family for no reason when he's never done anything especially horrible to hurt them other than be somewhat gormless. Otto most likely doesn't even know or care about Dyana, so does he despise his grandson simply for being a drunkard? For having an addiction? He was plotting to install him as king but all they ever did to prepare him for it was....yell at him and slap him around?

And on Aegon tormenting Aemond with his bullying, it's not like Aemond especially hates humiliating people in public since he regularly does it himself. When Lucaerys smirked at Aemond when they were served a pig in that dinner scene, Aemond bullied Jacaerys and Lucaerys back and Aegon was on his brother's side defending Aemond from getting attacked. Aemond isn't some put-upon victim who's been tolerating his brother's constant abuse — he obviously punches back. He has a hair-trigger temper and has messed up more things for his family's plans than Aegon has. Aemond's the one who was involved in the Driftmark fight that almost implicated Alicent for treason, Aemond's the one who made the Strong toast, Aemond's the one who killed Lucaerys and damaged their cause. And all three times, Aegon defends him!

This is all to ask why? Why are they writing his character like this? Why does the story and other characters keep piling on this dude? Why make Aegon's family hate him? Why make him awful at everything and good at nothing, not even riding his dragon who he has had for over a decade? Why give him these almost sympathetic moments with his brother, son, smallfolk, and dragon, only to have all the characters not show him a lick of sympathy?

Why do they all hate him for being an incompetent king when he straight up gave them the option of him abdicating by running away to Essos? They all act like he's the one imposing his incompetence on them, but they're the ones who forced the position on him. "Every man on that council earned their seat." YEs, Aegon didn't earn his seat — because it was forced on him and I am clawing at my eyes wishing the show would acknowledge that!

Is it supposed to be a deliberate commentary on the tragedy of hereditary monarchy? To show the Hightowers' cycle of abuse (even though no other Hightower is getting consistently hit and berated even after committing the WORST crime)? Is the show making him so pathetic and incompetent to make Rhaenyra more dignified and regal in comparison? Or is it doing this deliberately to woobify Aegon? To have his family and life be horrible so the viewers have built up their sympathies for when he gets his emotionally-resonant plot beats in the end?

Even if that's the case, the means certainly don't justify the ends. There's just no logical consistency to how these chracters treat and view Aegon and it's getting frustrating to watch sometimes.

[scintillyyy]

the thing about transforming jack & janet to be worse than they are in canon is that as a hypothetical i do think it can be interesting if it's done thoughtfully (despite all my normal bitching) (i would also be more interested if there was a lot more dick & tim in this scenario but i digress) (also, why doesn't mandated reporter dana ever get hit with the bad parent stick. i love her, but also. share the love here!! if you're gonna transform parents worse, let's at least remember *all* the parents to transform them.) and listen, sometimes people want their specific blorbos in angsty overwrought situations. i get it, i truly do, actually.

unfortunately. tim drake fic without there having to be a line making sure to mention that he was neglected & his mom didn't want to spend time with him is a needle in a haystack. like. even if the fic in question has no reason to be bringing them up. like they have nothing to do with anything there. but there they are, being bad parents. even if they're dead & tim has to be sad and angsty about them it's always a made up "that one time janet didn't want to spend time with her son", not like. you know. the time she got poisoned to death when tim was only 13. or the time tim tried to pull a boomerang out of his dad's chest with his bare hands. and that ubiquitousness of them sucking in 1 particular way that *always without fail* has to be mentioned even if they're dead and not the focus of the fic is what gets tiring (especially when there is genuinely a ton of canon based angst and happenings that are super interesting to explore or could be used instead for angst with literally no change to the fic that you never ever see in favor of "janet's a misogynistic caricature of a refrigerator mother"), not that people want to imagine and explore scenarios where they suck a little worse.

[steakout-05]

i find it so funny yet simultaneously frustrating how often Scout TF2 gets woobified in the TF2 fandom and even in official media sometimes. like the dude's a lean mean jerkass from Boston, the runt of his mad dog pack of brothers who worked his way up in speed and made it to the top, a guy who thinks he's tough shit and actually has the skills to prove it with his strength and his sprinting, he's a hired and trained killer. here he is as a sad little woobie boy with daddy issues who says quirky stuff

(nothin' wrong with this though, go ahead and do whatever tf you want with scout's character and make him your own thing, hell yeah)

[thedailydescent]

Looking at a lot of Loustat shippers and how they view/talk about Louis, is making me think of the BtVS fandom, the first fandom I joined when I was 16/17.

Anyway, a lot of the Spuffy shippers were out there calling Buffy derogatory names, saying SHE was the actual abusive one in the relationship, writing the most vile essays/fanfiction about her needing to be brought down a peg and admit she was wrong and Spike was right, saying the show was boring without Spike, despite Buffy being the main character, could not talk about Buffy as a character separate from Spike, propping up James's acting skills over Sarah's, made it sound like Spike was a better parent to Dawn than Buffy was (?), saying that the other men she was in romantic relationships with were much more abusive than Spike, excusing Spike for basically all of his actions and woobifying him because of his trauma....

and then you'd have the more critical Spuffy/non-Spuffy shippers (mainly woc) pointing out the blatant misogyny and victim-blaming in this way of thinking, pointing out how Spike represents some of the worst aspects of racism and the patriarchy, both textually and subtextually, even providing scholarly articles and literature to back up their claims, and asking why do you even ship Spuffy if you hate Buffy? Which of course received extreme backlash and harassment from people racing to defend Spike themselves, saying, no of course they didn't hate Buffy, but Spike is more complex than you're making him sound, and no he's not a racist or hates women, he's actually a feminist and a punk/anarchist and doesn't kill based on race, you're just a vile sjw and an anti who loves ruining everyone else's fun.

Anyway. Why do you even ship Loustat if you hate Louis?

[oleworm]

Though unjustly reviewed as a film that one suffers through, or that is too brutal to watch, I enjoyed my experience of The Nightingale (2018) very much, especially the developing friendship between the characters of Billy Mangana, an Aboriginal tracker who has decided that he will no longer work with the British, and Clare, an Irish convict in unwilling service to the colonial forces—both of whom lost their families at the hands of the British and who can never go home, one because the land and his people have been destroyed through genocide and the other because she was transported with no means of return, as a consequence of the class system that drove her to commit theft. The music and the nature stand out, the sounds of Tasmanian birds and marsupials, the vegetation and the geological features—one of the most subtle horror details is the appearance of an English farming village near to the end of the film, the consolidation of British lifeways in a land that was not originally empty but that is being made so, to create scenes of country life that would not be out of place in an Austen film.

It’s interesting that though it came out the same year as The Terror (2018) and they deal with similar topics it appears to have appealed to a completely different audience. Perhaps because one work is more subtle in its criticism of imperialism, while also being an adventure story among other things, to the point where those who choose to ignore it can easily do so, while for the other it is a central theme, and the violence employed to enforce the structures of the empire is directly shown. The Nightingale has good acting and writing, proper costuming, beautiful landscapes and music, all the things that made The Terror great—maybe people never heard of it, or were put off by hypersensitive reviewers, but it does surprise me that not many have seen it. Myself included! I only watched it yesterday. But why I didn’t do so before is a subject to explore in a personal journal, not a blog post, though if I come to a conclusion I would like to share I will certainly do so.

One of the biggest contrasts between both works is how the hierarchies of the Navy and Army are treated. In The Terror, it is up to the viewer to decide how they feel about these structures and those at its head. I can’t think of any character at the top of the hierarchy who is portrayed with more negatives than positives, even Franklin—whose presence in Tasmania is alluded to, but not dug into, an Easter egg for those who have read about it—is portrayed more as a pompous fool than the overseer of a genocidal colonial government, and while Fitzjames’ exploits in China are explicitly described and he dies as a result of injuries received in the First Opium War his character is sympathetically portrayed, to the point that like with Franklin it is often treated as just a bit of historical flavour. Class and rank structures are deeply ingrained in both sets of characters, but where mutineers in The Terror were interpreted as villains for sabotaging and breaking away from the group, and imperfect leader Crozier becomes one of the best loved characters, in The Nightingale we have Lieutenant Hawkins, who while initially charming and played by a conventionally attractive actor—he even looks similar to Edward Little, a popular character in The Terror fandom—consistently brutalises not only the convicts and the Aboriginal people, but also his own men. They are both loyal and afraid, like dogs abandoned, threatened and killed when they have fulfilled their purpose or no longer perform to the level that their superior expects of them. One could say, they are in it for personal gain, but after a certain point in the film there is nothing that he can give them, and yet they persist. Why do they follow him? Why don’t they run away into the bush? When I was thinking about this question, I remembered the character of Thomas Hartnell, who after being lashed does everything he can to please Crozier, the one who gave the order, but except a few people (you know who you are!) many viewers saw this positively in contrast to Hickey who developed a hatred of Crozier and ceased to respect the hierarchical order.

There’s also the fact that we see what happened to the Tasmanians after the British arrive, but we only see the beginning of what will happen to the Inuit. At the time that The Terror ends, only a few of the many search-and-rescue expeditions have made it to the Arctic, whose explorations led to the establishment of a stronger European presence in the North, with all that it involved.

So what was it? 126 white men syndrome, which makes this show attractive to people with an especial interest in men? Are more realistic portrayals of imperialism and colonialism too uncomfortable? Since many fandom participants are women, is it too heavy to think that women can be—and regularly were—assaulted under such circumstances? Are we not too different from the Reddit men who love adventures and the friends we made along the way, to the detriment of other themes important to the story? You decide. For me it’s a little bit of everything.

[doctorcanon]

I usually vibe with the "let people enjoy things" crowd but some of y'all really need to be more cognizant of your surroundings. It's not about you being cringe or annoying. Its about the fact that y'all seem to think your innocent enjoyment of something means it's above criticism, any exploration into how or why it exists or any reproach of your behavior while doing so.

Yes, the internet does have a habit of shaming people, I get it. But in many cases, people don't just bring that shit up to make you feel bad especially in regards to implicit lgbtphobia or racism. They bring it up because they feel bad and are allowed to say so even if it bums you out.

[juicedbeetle]

I know everyone already figured this probably but I hadn't paid attention before to when beej exactly takes his coat off and I was curious, so I'm pleased to report that he left it somewhere in the kitchen

not to mention he is briefly alone with adam in the kitchen while he was there getting the stuff for the sandwich

leaving aside my contemplation about how beej cannot affect the world of the living so those aren't coke, popcorn and 3d glasses he found in their house (probably manifested them himself the same way he takes the coat off. possibly from his mary poppins ass jacket, like with the mic) I like to think that he thought about getting them so he could snack alongside them, other than the obvious "upcoming show aka their death" use, not to mention the fact itself that he takes his coat off makes it feel like the mait's house is his as well, since you usually do it when you arrive home.

hell, I think he doesn't even need a coat whatsoever and just

started doing the "taking it off when I'm home" ritual because he saw adam doing it.

and in general I love this whole beginning part where he just acts like their house is his own, goes into their other rooms to do who knows what (first alone to the left then with adam in the kitchen), sits on their furniture like he owns the place, knows it like the back of his hand

actually I get the feeling that despite the fact he sat down first, he's also imitating adam here, like it's something the guy does all the time so beetlejuice has the whole thing memorized by now. but that's just speculation anyway.

I just get sad because I think he was really excited to meet them and already knew them really well, like he's not lying when he calls them friends, he's known them intimately for 10+ years (and, yes, it's been very creepy). he's lived with them and gotten used to this warm sitcom-y feel and then when they actually meet him they're terrified. Rightfully so but, ouch.

like, nothing goes like he planned right from the start, not just because they're not scary (and I mean, his whole plan was... to have them scare the new house inhabitants into saying his name? and then what? great plan beetleboose great thinking ahead there, a mastermind really), but because they didn't just magically act like his new best friends like he hoped and probably made up in his mind for all those years 😵‍💫

I mean, for all his solitude... the guy totally talks to himself. all the time. that is just a given to me. even besides the clones, the hand thing in say my name, the soliloquy, the guy probably had full fledged conversations. I can hardly imagine how many times he fantasized about talking to the maits for the first time in very elaborate scenarios in his head not to mention participated to all their conversations in the same way he does in this beginning segment and basically took it for granted that they'd enjoy his company same way he enjoys theirs, that is to say, the idealized version of their company he created in his head. siiigh, I love this whole part a lot, you can tell.

[marioyuri]

Its kind of nasty how people babygirlify an incel who became a cop just to carry a gun so he can exercise police brutality and who exploits his position as a pig to assaults women and teenager girls sexually then kills them when they fight back. Because he weaponised male incompetence to get away with everything . Huh

[sea-shelly]

once again: nothing on god's green earth more baffling than anti-max seb fans

[starlooove]

Actually hate girlboss Steph malewife tim shit bc most of the time it’s literally just another facet of “he’s so cool and interesting” while she’s just there

[scorpius-rising]

The current trend of 'anti-capitalist' (for want of a better term) positive affirmations leaves me fundamentally cold. It's not that I don't agree with the sentiments that 'rest is important', 'your worth is not defined by your productivity', etc., but at this point they're just the trend of motivational posters of the 90s and early 2000s looping back around again.

They can so easily feel like a substitute for engagement with awkward realities and the sobering nature of material conditions

[brokentoys]

it sucks being the dc fan with all the right riddler opinions.

[rust-berrie]

ERM ERM HI I JUST WANTED TO SAY I’M REALLY HAPPY YOU LIKE MY SHANE ART SO MUCH CAUSE YOURE A COOL ARTIST TOO OK BYE

WAHJHFGJ I'M GLAD!!!! I SHOULD BE THANKING YOU FOR DOING GODS WORK. BY MAKING HIM WHAT HE TRULY LOOKS LIKE. I LOVE YOUR STYLE AND YOUR SHANE. HE HAS SUCH A SPECIAL PLACE IN MY HEARTTT!!!!!!!! <<333 BANGING MY FISTS ON THE TABLE

[fiachrastudios]

ngl i kinda forget how much i like gale when i'm not playing the game because of the fandom 😩

[dayurno]

Hmm I definitely agree with most of your rant regarding neils ao3 characterization, with the idea that gay relationships can't be written as heteronormative, honestly especially if one of them is gender nonconforming, and I do think some of the dislike around his character can be from a place of transmisogyny. And people who ask for more masc4masc and fem4fem couples are a bit dumb. But I still have a bone to pick with his characterization on ao3 and I can't put my finger on whyyyy

Maybe, it's because (and I'm speaking about the state of the fandom back around 3??or 4?? Years ago when I would actively go through the tags and look for fanfiction and neil was my fave) it was always neil bottoming in every fic ever, no matter what character he was being shipped with in the fic, but like a lot of these fics or even the ones that weren't explicit would have something happen to him where he was the victim or he needed to be coddled and comforted by everyone else, and while I don't think neil is impervious and will never feel and inch of distress in his life, i can't help but think it's a bit ooc (not that there's anything wrong with ooc fic) and it's like neil can also be dangerous and has the capacity to hurt ppl and can be a dickhead but I don't think alot of fic back then showed that? They'd just call him sassy maybe he'd make a few quips and that's it. I think theres a lot of fics out there that wipe out his complexity ig. Maybe I just hate his characterization bc I wanna be a contrarion and I find his characterization boring if it's like that because you can find it in any fandom assigned bottom ever and ive seen it too much so i wanted to see a switch up or its more about his personality being written and less about being feminine and bottoming though i do think the ppl who write him being more feminine also tend to write his character a certain way. But like I also cant help but wonder where it comes from, like it's neil written like this and rarely ever andrew so

Back when I was younger I used to think people in fandoms would make the character who revieves the more feminine one, maybe it's bc it makes it easier to relate and project, or maybe it's bc it makes it easier to contend with a gay relationship if you can fit into like heteronormative boxes bc that's what's familiar to you and that's what you know and see everywhere, or maybe it is just people being fetishistic but now I don't know🤔 also I do think top neil or dom neil is just kinda fun like you said to me kandrew r more the type to have vanilla missionary sex their whole lives but neil would be more adventurous and willing to try new things, he also has cheek and audacity which is cute, like a puppy

Sorry this is so long, I've just thought about it before and has no one to discuss it with

no need to apologize i asked for opinions after all!!!!!!!

i see what you mean re: neil losing his edge, and i do think that it happens a lot with him because he is the protagonist and a prominent character in the vast majority of aftg fics, but i wouldn't say the same de-fanging process doesn't happen to andrew. the fandom has made it a point to soften all of andrew's edges; it's one of the most common bones people pick with nora that she never gives into the idea that andrew becomes a normal, well-adjusted, life-loving member of society post-canon. whether i enjoy andrew in a softer way or not is irrelevant, but i think this is definitely not a neil-only phenomena. i wouldn't even say it's really more pronounced when it's neil! i just think that helplessness, that lack of agency and bite, is a staple of most fandom content because it's self-indulgent and forces characters to act on their relationships by asking for and receiving help from their peers, whatever it might look like for each specific fandom

now i will say that i don't think that the process of making characters wholesome and ultimately consumable has anything to do with whether they are written as feminine or not; whether they are only in a receiving position or not. sexual preferences and gender presentations are inherently neutral: they don't say anything about a person's personality. i think neil bottoming being such a popular trope is just due to a natural consequence of how andrew and neil's relationship is presented in the books — andrew as someone who, at the point of where canon stops, physically cannot allow himself to be on the receiving end of any sexual act, and neil, who loves him and wants to help andrew to find pleasure in whatever way he can. it's the dynamic we're given in the original text, so it's what people tend to think about more.

of course i'm not saying it never overlaps with neil's excessive sanitizing and de-fanging, and it might as well be, for some people, that neil's acquiescence to andrew having control of what they do in bed is an entirely justifiable reason for writing him in a more feminine way. my opinion is, i think, just that that is not inherently immoral — that feminine people with those sexual preferences exist, and at times might even find that their gender presentation plays a big role in why they prefer to interact with sex the way they do. the history of femme pillow princesses in the lesbian community is vast, just as is the history of stone top butches. these minor niches don't imply that all feminine and masculine people must respectively bottom and top, but we do no one a favor by disregarding their experiences when they are a big part of how queer people do sex. i think we fall into old conservative myths when we moralize sexual preferences; i think we try to conform to cisheteronormative ideals when we deny gender presentations that are inherently tied to sex.

and just as a personal comment, i actually agree with you about neil being written as a perpetual, helpless victim and losing his agency. i don't enjoy it. i think it is born from indulgence, born from projection and wish fulfilment, but indulgence isn't immoral. projection and wish fulfilment aren't immoral, either. and, while i don't like the sanitization of aftg characters, i think it is less a character or fandom-specific issue and more of a material consequence of late stage capitalism; it's a symptom of a sickness that goes beyond our little constructed world, and one we should discuss, in my opinion, outside of the boundaries of fandom and individual guilt

i guess my tl;dr is that sometimes things are bad and we have to sit with their right to exist anyway. and my general tl;dr is that we help no one when we go out of our ways to condemn and criticize content where one of the characters is gender non-conforming because of said gender nonconformity. and, ultimately, that what we are missing is more fanfiction about kevin day in tiny tennis skirts

[romulussy]

Sometimes I think my succession bubble gets a bit too cringe and has lost too much perspective.... and then I see the other takes out there and it's like. oh right it's the same in literally every faction, especially on twitter

first of all cringe is dead so jot that down. second of all skdjfbkjsdfhb i know exactly what you mean. i'm on succtwt but only the peripheral of it and i don't check my feed that often so i miss a lot of the drama, but i did spend a few days more involved post-4x09 and it was kind of like. eye opening.

also yeah the losing perspective def isn't specific to only one subset of fans. i feel like most of us are guilty of it in one way or another