#i think her character is complex and nuanced and i love that

[mythalism]

im so sorry to be a mythal lover like my icon and url suggest but i genuinely think her relationship with solas in this game was one of its best writing moments and specifically their confrontation is the highlight of this game for me and i have to talk about it.

it is so fucked up and tragic and raw. it shows us a side of him we have never seen before. she is so brutal but also somehow kind. she is probably the most complex and nuanced character in the entire dragon age universe. what she did to him was inexcusable and she takes full accountability for it but she also does not apologize. its SO INTERESTING!!! ITS SO INTERESTING!!!!

WHEN HAVE WE EVER SEEN HIM LOOK LIKE THIS>??? HIS FACE??? HIS BODY LANGUAGE????? HE LOOKS TERRIFIED AND WRETCHED. WE HAVE NEVER SEEN HIM LOOK LIKE THIS EVER.

HE WHISPERS HER NAME, AVERTS HIS GAZE. HE CANT EVEN LOOK HER IN THE EYE. HIS NAME IS PRIDE??? HE IS THE DREAD WOLF AND HE IS THE MANIFESTATION OF PRIDE AND LOOK AT HOW HE LITERALLY CRUMBLES IN HER PRESENCE???? HOLY SHIT. THIS IS SO UNLIKE HIM

i love that she does not apologize. it would have been out of character. she isnt sorry and she never was, but she at least takes accountability for what she did to him and the effect it had. she does not offer meaningless platitudes of sorrow. why would she??? she just plainly states the truth.

I RELEASE YOU FROM MY SERVICE. I RELEASE YOU FROM MY SERVICE. HE STILL CANT LOOK HER IN THE EYE. HE IS SOOOO SUBMISSIVE HERE WHAT THE FUCK. honestly i need to make a comparison between their body language here and his body language with lavellan in trespasser but that'll have to be for another time. but i am so obsessed with this line being what she says of all the things she could have said. again no apologies. just catharsis. and she talks to him like a loyal dog, someone under her command, a subordinate, not a lover. did she always see him that way? where did those lines blur? this would have been a good moment for an "ar sala mala revas" but this line is so brilliant on its own i cant complain.

AND THEN YOU HAVE THIS NEXT. THE WAY THEY ARE THE INVERSE. mythal stands over him and looks down upon him, while lavellan literally GETS ON HER KNEES TO SEE HIS FACE. TO LOOK HIM IN THE EYE. BRO THIS IS SO SICKENING. once again it mimics the way they kneel in trespasser, the way they kneel when he removes her vallaslin. and even though he's not kneeling he is bent over in agony and she is quite literally meeting him where he is at ohhhh myg od

and then when it is finally his time to address her directly he looks her right in the eye, his face is calm and not wretched like before when he looked upon mythal, im literally so sick over this look like how long has it been since they stood face to face like this, 8 years????? i havent even gotten into the way his face is bloodied and bruised like this is so vulnerable im literally dying i dont even remember what my point was with writing this i just needed to scream about it. i think mythal's presence here gives so much context to solavellan's dynamic. seeing how he is with mythal versus with lavellan back to back, how mythal speaks down to him while lavellan literally looks up to him. also something something about how lavellan offers him forgiveness while mythal offers him freedom. maybe i can make these thoughts more coherent in like a week from now but right now im running on 3 hours of sleep and pure dopamine. this scene is so fucking crazy i love it.

[professionalbooklover]

i've been having thoughts about nesta, the IC and how different characters actions are viewed by the fandom and i need let them out so here we go lol.

nesta was iconic in hofas and i love her, but idk why this entire fandom seems to think she is beyond reproach? i feel like the point of nesta is that people are complicated and make mistakes but are still worth loving and fighting for. but that doesn't mean that her choices and behaviour can't hurt other characters, and that they don't also have the right to react to that/have feelings about that. i just think sometimes people overlook that if she has the right to be hurt, to lash out, to react and act in ways informed by her trauma, then other characters do too. and putting her on a pedestal and acting like she never makes mistakes or does anything wrong cheapens her character imo.

i just don't get why the IC is viewed as this clique of bullies that hate, mistreat and exclude nesta for no reason and nesta is perfect and can do no wrong when that is 1) not the case and 2) the situation is nuanced from both sides!!! its not like either party is perfect or hasn't made any mistakes - both have. imo you can’t just acknowledge one characters complexity and humanity while not doing so for the others. if nesta can lash out at others, so can the rest of the acotar crew and vice versa. idk if any of this makes sense but i had to get it off my chest.

[makotonaegiunderstander]

something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.

“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”

[cherry-treelane]

I find it so ironically funny when hardcore Debbie defenders use the defense that she was just a victimised teenage girl (agreed) and then proceed to slander Fiona and express their hatred for her character and lack of sympathy

as if being an adult magically absolves an individual of the horrifying trauma that precedes them and screws up their mentality and actions

funnily enough these people get mad at others for "expecting Debbie to be an innocent angel and hating on her for acting out as a result of trauma" (also agreed, debbie does deserve more sympathy, she can't be expected to grow up to be a perfect saint when she's been through so much) yet seem to hold Fiona to the same unattainable standards and put her on a pedestal as if she wasnt a child that was forced to intensely grow up while never actually being raised

like lets put this into perspective and remember that fiona grew up surrounded by corrupt morals and insanely screwed up behaviour yet still emerged as messed up, yes, but surprisingly good considering the situation she was in??? she had to navigate basic things such as morals and being a good, responsible person on her own. imagine how difficult it must be to lead a bunch of kids, including yourself, with no previous role model or good example of your own to follow. most of the time, she always tried to do what she thought was best and would have the most desirable outcome

[thatgirlwithasquid]

yknow. sometimes when i see anti posts i just sit here and think ‘damn. you would not have gotten Jennifer’s Body’

[toytulini]

thinking about my oc Bytte. and. her gender is Aro. her Aromanticism is inextricable from her gender experience.

[academiaipromise]

finally finishing ballad of songbirds and snakes makes so many things in the original series borderline funny with how much sense they make now like OF COURSE snow didn’t believe katniss loved peeta enough to die with him and that it had to be an act of rebellion like sorry that’s outside of the realm of your life experience sir. 

[synthville]

the ‘raffi is so wild and impulsive and emotional and can’t handle her shit’ schtick has gotten real old tho can’t lie. like it was already stale when plcard told her she was being ‘too emotional’ literal seconds after elnor died (um hello sir have you ever heard of grief? you might not participate but let a bitch breathe! thank you!) but having worf (who im actually liking so far) pull the same ‘she’s irrational, violent etc’ thing is just like. eye roll. obviously the writing isn’t doing my girl any favours by cheaply and gleefully playing into it with cliches left and right but my goodness can they come up with something else!

[kiss2012]

ummmmm ok.

[pizzabookbuying]

gosh I’m a LITTLE heartbroken

[skecherss]

Maybe it's the eternally distrustful loveless child in me but idk something about the way DC has been writing familial relationships in recent years rings so false to me. There's no room for the complex, nuanced, unnamed relationships Batman and Nightwing used to have, nothing like the warped mother-daughter-sister thing Barbara Gordon and Cass Cain had, nothing like Superboy's weird obsessive hero worship/bone-deep dread of his clone fathers or Max Mercury's weary undefined protectiveness of Bart or Wonder Woman's dogged loyalty to her little "sisters". Cause — for me, at least, I know I actively seek little moments of connection in stories; when I write or when I read it is to seek comfort. I think that's why DC has made this shift. Readers like me gravitated to those little warm moments, and DC noticed that we did without stopping to think about why.

But there's a point at which I notice diminishing returns of comfort from fluffy writing — it ceases to register as real. It's too good, too saccharine, too empty of any of the pain and frustration it takes to express genuine love for the other person. It's all hand-holding and no sweaty palms. It's so easy for someone to say they love you. It's so easy to see when it's all just words. And part of this is, yeah, bad writing; all that stuff about show not tell. They're trying to tell us these characters care about each other without giving us any real proof. but. idk. I need my love to be real. I need to feel the bones behind each embrace. I can't accept affection without struggling my way into it. Honestly I'd rather get a grim gritty Batman who forgets he HAS kids until they throw themselves into the line of fire than a milquetoast helicopter Batdad who tells his kids exactly what they mean to him without actively being in a state of bleeding out.

[dearausten]

nah cause the fact that jane austen wrote a character like emma woodhouse is still insane to me. she threw all the standards out the window and was like hey, here’s this incredibly complex and nuanced character, she’s selfish, privileged, manipulative and arrogant, but she’s also really fucking kind, she would do anything for those she loves (including sacrificing a lot of her liberties), she is able to admit that she’s made a mistake and grow from it, because those things are not mutually exclusive. and i think the reason why everyone is trying to girlbossify their heroines to make them like lizzie bennet (which is an insult to her character but that’s another story) is because they’re scared to write characters like emma. which is understandable, because she’s unlikeable-ish, and they don’t want to take that risk.

honestly the way jane wrote emma is IMPECCABLE and not everyone can pull it off, but i wish female characters with actual flaws were more popular.

[blueiight]

theres this quote running around from jacob anderson where he talks about how historically black people have been removed from period dramas and how, as suggested by the interviewer (w/ blueiight embellishment ofc), the very few times black charas would show up in these period pieces theyd be side characters delegated to a raceblind narratively incoherent plot to placate an audience ashamed with / of the nuances of blackness. i rly like how he said louis’s character represents both a ‘black and very human story about a vampire… [Black people] do not usually have the opportunity to play such complex and fluent characters’. i think that brings to heart a lot of why this show has my heart, as an armchair historian and r.n. (dont ask what that stands for). u racebent characters in a way that coheres, situate ur black characters in a specific context, and the story never deludes us into thinking the mere existence of an interracial relationship is enough to end racism. in e2 louis literally says “fledgling sounds like slave, dont call me that” and e3 starts with louis telling lestat the history of dismembering runaway enslaved ppl & placing their bodies on the gates of of jackson square.. in his initiation to vampirism, louis is moved from the historically Black creole treme area he grew up in & is placed into lestat’s townhome in the very white, french, old quarter. vampirism as hes initiated into is a loving, powerful, cruel, and isolating existence for louis. bc of vampirism he is able to kill a racist person and not be lynched for it, hes able to echo the historical dismemberment on the alderman by placing his body on the st louis cathedral, but he is unable to kill racist groups & systems that initiate race riots. his connection to claudia in s1 is not so much by the oedipal, but by both their connection as lestat’s fledglings and as Black [creole] people placed in a part of the city largely alien to them both. this connection can be broken down even further. louis saw claudia as his joychild of sorts, ‘[his] redemption’ for his 5 years of pimping but a big part of her tragedy is that a child being made into a vampire cannot redeem anyone, much less redeem an individual from what was a historical inevitability. claudia is adopted into such a stature that she wouldve otherwise never reached by virtue of being made a vampire, but even then that is conditional. claudia is rendered inert from being anyone’s ‘wife’ forever trapped in the confines of immaturity as a ‘daughter’, only hoping at best to be louis’s ‘sister’ and isnt that resonant to bw.. she’s selectively infantilized both a child ‘meddling in the affairs of her parents’ , ungrateful, arrogant, and adultified - presumed powerful enough to ‘poison louis against [lestat]’ , taking on the role of louis’s ‘knight in vengeful white black’ .. the response lestat has to claudia is characterized by him continuing the cycle of abuse he once faced toward her and with a black claudia who was once a poor girl now adopted into this immortal luxury it takes on a racialized element. “bach is beyond you” and claudia bites back with “yes this french music is hmm. not made for these mongrel ears”. the absence of metaphor is striking!! literally the fact that this show does not shy away from the era its set in is why its so good.

[discountsoysauce]

Okay, I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm not trying to be hostile, nor am I defending Cardan's actions by saying this. I agree that what he did was cruel and despicable, and there's no justifying that. I also agree that Taryn is a complex and nuanced character who clearly loves and cares about her sister and was just trying to survive the same way Jude was. That being said, I don't agree that the things Cardan did hurt Jude more than what Taryn did. I'm not saying I think what Taryn did is worse than what Cardan did, but I do think that Taryn's actions hurt Jude the most. At that point, Jude and Cardan were strangers. He hated her, and she hated him, and she knew exactly what to expect from that. His actions hurt her tremendously, but they were never betrayals. Everything he did was exactly in character with what she thought of him.

Taryn, on the other hand, was her sister. Her best friend. The person in this world that she trusted more than anyone else. They did everything together and trusted each other with everything they had. Taryn's betrayals hurt the most not because what she did was actually worse than Cardan but because she was someone who Jude truly trusted and loved with all her heart. (Once again, this is not arguing over how bad Taryn's actions really were it's arguing over the emotional impact they had on Jude. I can go on a whole other rant about how Jude ignored Taryn's concerns in favor of her own stubbornness, which led to Taryn feeling frustrated and ignored, but that's a different conversation). Jude puts Taryn's safety and comfort above her own on multiple occasions (letting her make an oath to never help Jude at the lake so she can get out, advising she stays behind from the lessons when she knows its going to be dangerous, agreeing to risk her life going back into Elfhame to prove her sister innocent for a crime she committed even after being betrayed) and yet Taryn doesn't really do the same until qon when she takes Jude's side over Madoc's after he nearly killed her (if you do have examples of her doing this feel free to rebutt me it's been a couple of days since I read the book).

Jude understands that Taryn made an oath to never help her, but she also knows that humans don't have to keep their oaths. Even more so than her secret relationship with Locke or tricking Cardan into relinquishing Madoc from his oath (which i will get back to), I think the most egregious betrayal Taryn ever did was leave Jude alone with Valerian. She could have accidentally kicked her chair or bumped into her on the way out or even just broken the oath even one time and apologized on her hands and knees for it after or played it off as if she didn't know Valerian was planning something. She could have stuck her neck out for Jude exactly once. And she didn't. She left Jude alone with the most violent and bloodthirsty man at the top of a tower completely defenseless. I fully believe that no matter what oath she was under, that was something Jude would have never done. And Jude felt betrayed by it.

The Locke thing to me is a betrayal but an understandable one. Taryn obviously had her reasons for doing what she did. She wanted to fit in the same exact way that Jude did, and she found her opportunity to do so. It's obvious she was torn up about lying to her, at least to some extent, although some of her actions call that into question. She told Jude that she wanted to find her place in Faerie by finding love, and Jude wanted to find it by becoming a knight. Since love didn't seem as important to Jude as knighthood, Taryn took the opportunity that was presented to her. That being said, this betrayal still hurts Jude tremendously, although it's less because of Taryn's actual actions and more how Jude perceives them.

I think this last betrayal is what especially hurt Jude. Throughout the story, the one thing Jude wanted was power. Like Taryn, who wanted to fit into Faerie by finding love, Jude wanted to fit in (or surpass) Faerie by obtaining power. While Jude didn't approve of Taryn's relationship with Locke, she does accept it. She never does anything to sabatogue Taryn's attempts at reaching her goal. She gets her a wedding gift that will make her more beautiful than her, she attends her wedding to Locke despite the betrayal she feels, she threatens Locke to never betray her sister, and she keeps quiet about Locke attacking her and stealing her wedding gift because she wants her sister to be happy. Jude never does anything to get in the way of Taryn's goal of finding love (after her relationship to Locke is revealed). The same cannot be said for Taryn. Jude had finally gotten the power she'd been vying for since the beginning. She was struggling to maintain it, sure, but she had it. Then Taryn came in pretending to be her and tricked Cardan into freeing Madoc of his oath to the crown and relinquishing control of half of their military force. And just like that, everything Jude had been working to build came crumbling. Whether or not things would have turned out differently had Taryn not done that (which I think they would have), Taryn knowingly sided with Madoc in trying to tear away Jude's power, the one thing she had been fighting for this entire time. While Jude never dared get in the way of Taryn's goal, Taryn willingly got in the way of hers. And that, to Jude, is probably the worst betrayal of all.

So yes, I *do* think that Cardan's actions were worse than Taryn's, but I do not think that they caused Jude more pain.

"we need more complex siblings dynamics"

you bitches can't even handle taryn duarte

[odetojupiter]

so, we know that abuse and victim responses to abuse are very central to aftg, but what i find interesting is how other characters respond to the victim’s reactions, especially when it comes to mourning their abuser. there’s something about kevin mourning riko, aaron mourning tilda, neil mourning mary, andrew mourning cass, thats so important to me because it really truly highlights how even when people are united through similar traumas, the differences in their situations makes it impossible to fully understand the relationship a person has to their abuser. neil, aaron, and andrew are united through the abuse, neglect, or - what the fuck is the word i’m thinking of? permit? condone? i mean, knowingly allowing it to happen and not intervening - stemming from a maternal figure. but neil can’t understand why andrew would hold on to cass for so long - he refused to let her go until aaron came into the picture. and andrew can’t understand why aaron would mourn for tilda, potentially viewing aaron’s grief as a betrayal of their promise. and they all ridicule kevin for his reactions to riko. of course, neil and andrew are also abused by riko, but they still can’t understand the complicated relationship between kevin and riko because, at the end of the day, they just weren’t there.

i mean this is primarily an observation but i really love how trauma and trauma response is depicted as nuanced, complex and overall just difficult to understand from an outsider perspective in the books. it reads as really real, and though it can be frustrating when a character doesn’t understand a different character’s response, you have to understand that their perception of said character’s response is warped by their own experience of abuse.

andrew bounced from home to home, never had stability, so obviously he held tight on to the first mother-figure that didn’t outright hurt him. his self-worth was probably low enough that he thought living with drake was a fine price to pay to keep cass.

neil only ever had his mother, and he’d willingly accept her harsh hands because he believed she was just keeping him safe from the very real dangers that were closing in on them.

aaron was dealing with an addiction, and so was his mother; he was equally dependent on her to avoid withdrawal as he was scared of her anger.

i don’t really have a point anymore but you get what i’m saying

[neyafromfrance95]

everyone always says they want complex female characters but then they altogether dismiss any complexity and nuance of female characters.

yes, tashi loved tennis the most but why? why was she unable to show vulnerability and the human underneath the tennis player/coach?

did you all forget tashi saying that her family didn't have money when she was young? she single handedly got her family out of poverty through tennis. her whole family depended on her as a tennis prodigy. it was her only skill, only passion, only source of security and pride, it was her entire identity.

remember how art basically lied to tashi that patrick was hooking up with other girls and didn't love her after tashi told him that she thought she could take her relationship with patrick to the next level?

this lie triggered tashi's insecurity/fears that she was only enough as a tennis player/coach. this is why she wanted patrick to depend on her as on a tennis coach. she thought that was the only reason he (or anybody) would need and value her.

art understood that tashi needed tennis and was reducing her own value to her job and basically used this by asking tashi to coach him. he became smn who'd depend on tashi the tennis coach. he wanted her and would do anything to get her, including lying to her and exploiting her fears. he even used her trauma as a reason why she should have chosen him instead of patrick. also, it's interesting choice that art gave tashi his grandma's ring. it's like he used his dead grandma tactic on her almost the same way he did on patrick. except for patrick *knew* art was low-key a snake. then when art became dead set on winning after learning that tashi slept with patrick and was probably gonna keep her word about leaving him if he lost? tbh, it felt like art was trying to encage tashi throughout the entire movie.

tennis was tashi's everything, the love of her life, but she loved art and patrick too. however, i feel like she needed art bc he made her feel like she was alright, she was still needed as a tennis expert. patrick, on the other hand, i think she genuinely loved him in a romantic way and was afraid of losing him. the fact that she got injured after their fight only shows how distressed she was about him leaving her and how far from indifferent she was about him.