#i think shes going down that route

[ride-thedragon]

While I do love this, I think this is just a missed opportunity for Nettles.

She's the one starting the weird ass risk your life for acclaim cult in the Vale. Past the romance, she's a question for morality and loyalty in the story and a wrench in the whole we are Gods not Men, natural right idea.

Even here, she could be the most natural foil to Rhaneyra.

But we shall see.

okay i was asked to post this on tumblr since i posted a mini essay about it on twitter so here it is, i added some more examples and elaborated on my points that i couldn't over twitter.

so, when i first watched episode 207 i thought it was weird how religious rhaenyra was, until ryan condal mentioned the cult imagery. now i think instead of the show making her paranoid and neurotic in the final arc, they're going to make her more of a cult leader figure.

i think rather than leaning into her paranoia and the idea of a "hysterical paranoid mother" after she loses her sons, they're going to have her drink her own kool-aid more and more. it's interesting that this is what emma and ryan discuss in this scene with the dragonseeds in the inside the episode.

i think it's interesting that instead of the show positioning her like "a leader amongst the smallfolk," this episode positions her in a darker light, like someone who is manipulating the people there for her own goals. and when vermithor turns on the bastards, she doesn't let them run, the guards keep them barricaded in.

she is literally enraptured by the fire in these scenes. now that she knows it's possible for others to claim the dragons, she has been vindicated and wants more. this is not a merciful queen who is reaching out a hand to the smallfolk, she's throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. after all, these are just smallfolk. bastards with no honor. ryan literally describes the scene as a ritual sacrifice.

and who do you conduct sacrifice for? the gods. but in this case, the gods the seven or the old gods, they aren't even just dragons, but the fact that rhaenyra sees herself in the dragons. she says as much in the literal pilot of the episode when viserys asks her what she sees when she looks at the dragons. she understands the power they wield.

she knows that their power lies in the dragons. but she doesn't reflect viserys' belief that they are a power that man never shouldn't have trifled with. she leans into the chaos and fire and blood of the dragons, we see that in the sowing, clearly.

rhaenyra inherited the worst of both viserys and daemon and that will lead to her madness. she's got viserys' strong belief in prophecy (one now exacerbated by her desperation).

we see that faith in the prophecy falter but never truly fade. rhaenyra has always taken is seriously, to the point that everything she's done this season is in response to the prophecy. her pacifism isn't just due to avoiding bloodshed. she makes it clear to jace that before plunging the realm into war she had to know there was no other option because of the burden of the prophecy.

even though daemon has never believed in prophecy or superstition. she's also got daemon's desire and lust for power and strength (something she confessed wanting specifically because daemon is a man when she was speaking to mysaria).

it's a great deconstruction of the chosen one archetype to have her drink this koolaid and believe herself the chosen one only to have that belief corrupt her. emma d'arcy speaks on this in their interview with gq when discussing rhaenyra's growing fanaticism.

I think something that has been happening for Rhaenyra throughout the series is a growing religious fanaticism. After her father’s death, there is this desire to be connected to him in some way. And losing him happens at the same moment as having her throne usurped. And so that thing that would have been such a direct connection to him is also stolen. So in lieu of that, there’s that searching [through] the histories. I think imagining that at some point her name will feature next to her father’s is in some way comforting, and I find it very moving to see a person who in grief has committed themselves to the history books. As the series goes on, I think we see her more and more invested in her faith. She returns to the old gods. I think all of these actions are in search of her right; the thing that she thought she had received from her father, she is looking for evidence again and again. And part of it, I’m sure, is a choice. I think sometimes in times of loss, we can choose the anchors that we are going to cling to, and her faith becomes one. But I think there’s a narcissism in it. I think her connection with her religion is about wanting to reinforce a divine right. And I think, looking at [episode] seven when this miracle takes place, and this man claims Seasmoke, I think she feels that it’s a gift from the gods. I think it’s what allows her to ride roughshod over Jace’s very legitimate concerns about his own status. I think it’s what allows her to stage a massacre, essentially. She feels that she is riding on the wings of her faith. But her faith, and her belief that she is the ruler that is supposed to sit on that throne, are completely enmeshed.

They continue:

What is going through Rhaenyra’s mind as she watches the Targaryen bastards be devoured and torched alive? I think she feels like a god. I think she feels super proud. I mean, I think it’s uncomfortable. I think there’s something, actually, also that ties into the religiosity — even being back in proximity to dragons, to that fire, is to somehow be living her birthright. To be soaking up the divine, somehow. And do you think that she feels as though the decision to essentially stage a massacre, as you say, is vindicated when the two new bastard dragonriders are found? Totally. Without a shadow of a doubt. I mean, it’s horrendous, but I think she is now this sort of emboldened fanatic, [and] I think she’s experiencing events within a far bigger timeline. She’s imagining the history books. And you know, what’s happening right in front of her is awful. But in 300-400 years, what will be documented is possibly a very short war; a huge civil war that was averted, that this was the first ruling queen, that this ruling Targaryen queen expanded the Targaryen’s ability to have dragons within their armoury.

emma's read on this supports what we see on screen when it comes to rhaenyra's newly found zealousness. the religious aspect could lead her to do things that might have been seen as atrocities by her. it could lead to mysaria abandoning her, her riders turning on her, and we would see more of that targ madness.

gods are mentioned several times in 207. first by addam, who says that the gods are calling him to greater things. rhaenyra has never been the extremely religious sort but, in this scene, she looks like she's had a moment of clarity.

importantly, rhaenyra doesn't know who addam's father is, or hugh's or ulf's. this is simply the first time in history that a non-targaryen (at least in her eyes) has claimed dragons. it's something that she believed impossible. it can feel like destiny to the desperate and she's been extremely desperate after losing daemon, rhaenys, and continuous loss after loss with no hope of recourse.

mysaria says that rhaenyra is lucky addam chose to bend the knee to her rather than himself. and her reply is that it is ordained. this religious vocabulary being used is intentional!

her complaint against the lowborn is that there is an ancient fealty from highborn houses. she essentially implies that bastards do not have honor. mysaria corrects her by pointing out that her legitimate half-brothers aegon and aemond aren't exactly delights, but that doesn't make rhaenyra see the light. instead she recognizes that there's fealty to be had from lowborn people too. the order of things have changed, as mysaria says, so she realizes that she can lift up people who have been historically stepped on and give power to the powerless, calling them her army of bastards.

but when jace calls this out, predicting that someone (perhaps hugh?) could lay claim to her throne if she legitimizes these bastards if not by name then by offering them the power of gods. obviously, jace's concern is real, his entire legitimacy lies on both viserys' past support and also the fact that he has a dragon of his own. if any bastard can claim one, what does that make him? but rhaenyra's response isn't logical. she believes that the throne is part of her and her son's destiny. their right.

for years, on some level, rhaenyra has believed that even though people have insulted her sons, they are full-blooded targaryens. she says herself that if she was a man she could father a dozen bastards, and as heir, she gives birth to three without hesitation. these aren't strongs or velaryons to her, her sons are targaryens.

but even when jace essentially begs his mother not to give commoners dragons, bringing up her past sins and pointing out his own struggle knowing that he's harwin strong's son, her response is somewhat cold. she says now that the gods have laid this in front of her and she has no choice.

the dragonkeepers call what she's doing blasphemy and note that it isn't the gods who brought the dragonseeds to her, but she herself has done that.

Dragonkeeper Elder: This is an abomination. You sent an Andal before a dragon. The judgment was delivered. Now you would send more. Rhaenyra: Ser Steffon Darklyn was the blood of the dragon. Dragonkeeper Elder: It was a blasphemy. He was no dragonlord. Neither are these. Rhaenyra: And yet the gods have set them before us. Dragonkeeper Elder: You have set them before yourself! The dragons are sacred; they are the last magic of Old Valyria in this sad world. They are not pieces on a board for the games of men. Our order will take no part in this.

to the dragonkeepers, she's using these bastards and dragons like chess pieces in her war. but to rhaenyra, who has seen addam claim seasmoke, it seems like this is a divine right — a sign from the gods. and that's proven again when hugh claims vermithor.

addam claiming seasmoke changed everything for her. she talks about claiming a dragon as a transformation, and, in many ways, this claiming has transformed her as well. she tells the dragonseeds that their purpose now is the end the hardships of war.

she paints a lovely image promising them peace at the end, but it is a wholly false image. with vermithor and silverwing now in her arsenal, there will be more suffering, more bloodshed. there are no promises of peace now that the war has been given to the dragons, not until everyone is dead. and if that happens, well, the gods willed it, not her.

in this moment, when she says "may the gods bless you" i have to wonder, is she talking about the seven? or the valyrian gods? or the dragons? i don't think she's fully in deep, but i can see the set up for a much darker storyline for rhaenyra rather than the book plot. every time her beliefs are proven or something impossible happens, that could reinforce her zealousness.

i have always said that rhaenyra is a combination of viserys and daemon, and i think that still. i think that she has both of their madnesses within her. as she loses more, the only thing she'll have to hold onto is that prophecy and the divine right she believes in now.

even this scene from the finale promo has over-the-top messiah, chosen apostles, last supper vibes. her saying "i have entrusted you with a power only few have known" as if she wasn't desperate for them and had no say in who the dragons chose. i love it!

honestly i'm totally here for it, i think it's an exciting direction to take. i don't think rhaenyra was always like this, she might have had the proclivity for it growing up under viserys' wing, but it's the war that's pushed her to this point. desperate people will turn to things like faith in order to guide them when the real world disappoints. i think it's a far more nuanced look at a sort of "madness".

and i'm here for the conflict that will happen with daemon as a result. i think daemon will be in direct opposition to this. he's NOT the type to follow cult leaders. this will be their conflict on top of the existing power struggles. this, to me, is far more interesting of a struggle as opposed to nettles causing romantic tension. this show has a tendency to lean away from harmful stereotypes about women. pitting woman against woman is one of them, as is the hysterical woman.

daemon dying for her could be a form of devotion, or perhaps even a command from a delusional rhaenyra who believes he will survive it. daemon could end up drinking the kool-aid too after the devastations of the war or simply realize that this is the last thing he can offer to someone who is too far gone to be saved.

THIS IS THE FIRE I WANT FOR RHAENYRA. this is the mad queen setup that we could have had! targ exceptionalism and completely going off the deep end as a way of coping with an unwinnable conflict. without viserys, without rhaenys, no one is there to temper the fire within her.

[theaceace]

imagining a world in which Simon agreed to go with Edwin and try to escape hell, imagining Simon developing an immediate and very inadvisable crush on the cute guy that just threw a grenade at a demon and Edwin's reaction to that, imagining the reaction of Charles Overprotective Rowland when he finds out that the guy Edwin insists on dragging along with them is one of the guys that sacrificed him to a demon in the first place, imagining the Night Nurse's face when three dead boys pop back through the door instead of two

[literaila]

On a scale of one to ten how emotional was readers reaction seeing megumi alive again

8.7 but she never really believed that he was gone. call her crazy but her son isn’t going to blindly submit to some manic gym bro from the heian era

megumi takes back his body and she’s basically jumping up and down with yuji and applauding. a standing ovation for her son, obviously.

and then later she goes home and cries herself to sleep because a. she’s really proud of him and b. the world is a terrible terrible place

[harmonicabisexuals]

i love cuddy but i find the huddy relationship thematically boring compared to hilson and hameron...it's not her fault tho!! bc she's just not enough of a foil to house like wilson and cameron are. cameron is house's conscious, wilson is his reflection and cuddy is his enabler :/ so the curse of her character is no matter how many times she tries to stand up to house, he will ALWAYS manipulate her, trick her, and eventually circumnavigate her and she will LET him! she'll even help him do it!! cameron and wilson are really the only ones who actually are able to stop him, and half the time wilson isn't even stopping him, he's just pointing out the truth of the matter after the fact...but it's still a point of conflict and something for house to push up against—with cuddy there just isn't that same tension

[stuffnonsenseandotherthings]

So this week we got the mentors relaxing around their interns and blurring the lines as well as some nice juxtaposition between Jane/Ryan and Judy/Ba-Mhee(/Tae).

Next week it looks like shit's going to hit the fan quite spectacularly and re-draw the lines we saw dissolving today.

[rist-ix]

https://www.tumblr.com/rist-ix/749015401700229120 not you reblogging this when you ship bloom with the man who murdered her family 😭

Bloom's into ppl who slay! Hope this helps :3

[truethes]

literally could not get to sleep last night until about 3am so have now managed to plot some sort of mini hsr au's for some of my gen.shin muses:

kav.eh - surprisingly the least developed, but he's definitely imaginary remembrance, using me.hrak as a summon. kinda waiting for the next patches to drop on more lore of the remembrance as a whole before i commit to anything big on this, though!

neuv.illette - one of the judges of the ten lords comm.ission, a vidyadha.ra involved in the imbibitor lunae's arrest and subsequent imprisonment to the shackling prison. now forced to bare witness more towards the schemes that surrounded this, it's certain he feels a certain amount of guilt for making such a choice. def on the hunt path - element i am uncertain of.

tartag.lia - once a child with big dreams and goals to join the silvermane guard, he disappeared one day during his youth down a hole never to be seen by his family or friends again. truthfully, he disappeared into the path of the nihility, only to be rescued by one of it's emanators, ski.rk. unfortunately, it wasn't specified which area of belo.bog ski.rk was to return to the child to and he's been living in the underground ever since. is a pretty infamous champ at the fightclub. i believe him and luca are good friends and you cannot convince me otherwise. he is lightning nihility though, im very sorry acher.on and kaf.ka ...

thom.a's and aya.kas are pretty intertwined but separate - they alongside aya.to were all childhood friends on a planet that was eventually attacked by dr prim.ative. tho.ma essentially ends up taking a risk to sacrifice himself so that aya.ka and aya.to get away, much to their dismay but inability to stop, but he is eventually found by the galaxy rangers and taken in, he is fire the hunt. ayaka, in comparison, ends up travelling around a few places with her brother. they're still inseperable, but are now considered stowaways with no real home. they have the same goal as tho.ma, to find each other and then, maybe then they'll be able to find some semblence of home again.

[kaidanalenkosprmanager]

Sophie Shepard & Kaidan Alenko (ME1) 1/?

MIRA'S MORE CANON ME1 "After everything that happened with Zaeed, Caleston, and the Villa? I think need to tell you a few things about BAaT." "Well, after everything that happened with Zaeed, Caleston, and the Villa? I think I might owe you an explanation about how I really know Anderson." AKA: Zaeed Massani and the case of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad message ping. :) Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (2021)

[thepandalion]

help I'm going insane over deltarune and Undertale stuff again

[itwoodbeprefect]

"but how do you watch something accidentally with french subtitles?" you may ask, and i may tell you that it's simple, because i love english, english is fun and versatile and incredibly useful in this world, but listening to some dutch music recently reminded me how much consuming dutch art for a change feels like doing stretches for my brain (i don't really notice what i'm missing out on if i don't do it, but it feels SO good when i do), and that had me pondering once again how to incorporate some german into my diet in a natural way, because if dutch is my language, then german belongs to people i love, german is the one used to tell family stories, german is a language that feels like home but that i use so little it always takes a few days of just listening before i remember how to speak without feeling like an idiot, and so i thought to myself, well, i know bad buddy has a whole list of subtitle options, and perhaps i can pull off a really neat trick here and get my fill of german while also spending some time with thai (with which i am having a torrid love affair this year) through a show i know almost by heart at this point, because i can process the german fast enough to still be able to listen to what i'm hearing (the spoken thai), and then as a bonus, i'd get to sidestep english entirely for a few brief but glorious moments, which is a thing so rare it's almost unheard of, and that would just be a win-win-win. however! it turns out german is not one of the many, many languages offered on youtube as a subtitle option for bad buddy (which is of course fine because in a grand way, truly, why would it). and they do happen to have french, which i then of course had to click just for fun almost as a joke just to see it play for a minute or so and definitely not any longer than that, and as it turns out, on a practical is-this-doable-for-me level french in this context worked out way better than i thought it might, which is why i got sucked in immediately, easily fascinated as i am. but this is also a language that has me reading just slowly enough that it takes all my attention to have any hope at staying caught up with the speed of the dialogue, which amounts to a situation that is, you know, not making me feel much closer to my german grandmother (or making me feel very much at all for that matter, because on the whole i have a deeply impersonal relationship with french), but that IS very unexpectedly making me think fondly of my high school french teacher who once wrote under an assignment that he really hoped i'd choose to do something with languages. and this is probably not what he meant, but i suppose i am doing that, yes. both by choice and because i stumbled and tripped and now i've watched several episodes of a french subtitled thai show in an attempt to find german input because i was listening to dutch music.

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

my 1 (one) stardew opinion is shane should not have won the bachelor poll

[lesvianism]

i feel like people wouldn’t have been so shitty in regards to violet if the game was more transparent about the issues within violet and minerva’s relationship before she was taken.

like i’m pretty sure the game developers did mention how vi wasn’t really getting the treatment she should’ve been (??) in the relationship, and you do see it in certain scenes, but those scenes are mostly in the romance violet route, so people who already decided to hate her and only play the louis route didn’t get to see them.

[laggs-cringe-corner]

i am not immune to family reunion

[swordmaid]

pivotal moment of shri’iia’s arc in act 1 was her willingness to save the gnome slaves - since that really goes against her oath (as an oath of the crown paladin for lolth) as well as everything she was raised to believe in as a lolth drow now I’m thinking thalia doesn’t even try to save them omg..

[meadowmusing]

I genuinely suspect a reason for them making them miss the deadline in the pjo tv series is that they didn't want to reveal too many of the gods so early on. That would be a lot of casting and they probably want to save the reveal for some of them later on. That and they've shown all the male Olympians, so they've given us a decent amount already

[glamfellens]

girls after finishing lonesome road for the third time