#i'm not even a henry apologist i just think he's a way more interesting and complex character than evil killer manipulator

[betryl]

Honestly Henry did commit horrible and inexcusable and unforgivable acts but it doesn't mean that every single thing he ever did for the entire book had to be out of ill intent.

He didn't save Richard during Winter to get him to trust him, he saved him because Richard was his friend he found freezing to death in an attic. He wasn't manipulating Camilla, he loved her and was trying to protect her and prevent her abusive brother from hurting her any more. He killed himself for a lot of different reasons but one of them was that it really was the only remaining way he could find to get everyone out of trouble and make things somewhat right again.

He surely was detached, and while he generally didn't feel as strongly as other people and even suppressed his own emotions to try and always be as rational as possible, it's not like he was completely incapable of feeling anything at all. In his own aloof way, he did care for them. I think that it's really the fact that despite everything there was some good in all of them that makes them so compelling, Henry included.

[fideidefenswhore]

I've been wondering this for awhile, because different secondary sources give various takes on the Downfall of Anne Boleyn, but how big of a role did the Seymours (Jane and her brothers) in particular play in the downfall and judicial murder of Anne Boleyn?

I hated how Becoming Elizabeth white-washed Edward Seymour's character by portraying him as being super nice to Elizabeth when I'm 100% sure that wasn't the case in real life. He didn't defend her when the Thomas Seymour scandal broke out, didn't tell her she looked like her dad, and certainly did not apologize to her for his brother's behavior. Somerset kept her away from King Edward and refused to let her come to court when she was accused to let her speak her piece. Wasn't he also the one who refused to give Elizabeth the lands/money Henry VIII left for her in his will? Thomas abused the Princess no question about it.

The Seymours helped cause Anne's death and then abused her daughter it seems. If they were behind her downfall it makes sense that they wouldn't care about her daughter either.

Well, given you've already mentioned secondary sources, I'm assuming you're not looking for reccomendations for material on this subject, and are just asking for my opinion? I might post some excerpts later regardless in some reblog or edit of this ask, if you're interested.

I'm not too familiar with the sources on Edward VI's reign but that does sound about right? Although I'm not positive there was much improvement when Edward Seymour was disempowered and eventually executed and John Dudley took up the helm, from what I remember that's true. For more on this, I would rec From Heads of Household to Heads of State by Jeri L. Mcintosh and Word of a Prince by Maria Perry.

Yeah, I don't...even want to get into BE discourse too much (I assume the invention of their relationship shifting from begrudging antipathy to admiration and eventual apology was due to AR's sympathy for him, but fans of the show were mad he apologized to Elizabeth and not Mary, for...what? What did they want, exactly? Had he not apologized to her in the canon of the show he would have died a CSA apologist). Most of it just seemed absurd to me. For whatever reason that man seems to have had some appeal to AR during her research process, and I simply cannot fathom why. To me, he is just flop (as ruthless as Cromwell but without his genius or political acumen, of moderate intelligence but poor character, I don't think you can even make the argument that well, even if ineffectual and 'of small power' by 1538, as per one contemporary, at least he withstood every shift and endured, that would be more applicable to a figure such as William Paulet).

But, circling back to the first question:

How big of a role did the Seymours (Jane and her brothers) in particular play in the downfall and judicial murder of Anne Boleyn?

An interesting one, because they're part of this rather large faction at the time, as Chapuys reports. I don't necessarily get the impression they were actually leading said faction, however...those with the most weight to pull number as Lord Montague, Nicholas Carew, at times Francis Bryan, the Marquis and Marchioness of Exeter. What's particularly interesting to note is that Chapuys specifically alleges that these players are constantly giving Jane advice on how and in what manner to speak with Henry VIII. Often this report is stretched to farce (some authors almost writing about this in ways that veer on anachronism, suggestions of Jane almost being fed line for line by earpiece), but assuming even moderate exaggeration of Chapuys' part, what I find compelling is what this means, which is that Jane doesn't really know Henry. As in, she has some sense of him, but she's reliant on the advice of those who have known him much longer.

Why I find that compelling is that it implies the Seymours have always sort of been on the outskirts, never within Henry's inner circle up to this point, which makes sense once the evidence is considered (Jane has probably been serving the new Queen since 1534 at latest, her appearance on gift rolls notwithstanding, but doesn't show up as her intimate in the way of Margaret Douglas, Mary Howard, etc). Her 'brothers' alone is interesting, isn't it? Contemporary report at this time doesn't even place Thomas there in the ramp-up to the coup, it might even be that he's often placed there in fiction because as we recreate these scenes on screen and stage, we read things backwards. We do know that Edward is there, and presumably he might have even been at court for some time, we know he's present at Anne Boleyn's coronation feast as server to Cranmer, we know he's the Duke of Richmond's Master of the Horse. But there's no mention of Thomas Seymour in all this until he's given title once his sister becomes Queen.

So, Edward's involvement, by contemporary report, is that he's basically in attendance at these meetings of Boleyn opponents, he's promoted to the Privy Chamber in March 1536 (not, however, the Privy Council until halfway through the next year, which is interesting...basically, he's not significantly promoted to that place of trust and influence until Jane's been Queen for an entire year, which is instructive insofar as it could mean one of two things: one, Jane's lack of influence and power as Queen, or two, that she doesn't care about the promotion of her brothers enough to push on the matter), he's chaperoning meetings between Jane and Henry alongside his wife in the quarters Cromwell has granted him which connect to Henry's own, and he's present at the failed Imperial detente between Cromwell, Chapuys, and Henry VIII in April 1536.

Circling back to how Jane requiring such intensive counsel to speak with Henry, on what to say and how to say it, on how to approach him...every point this faction wants her to press with Henry is rebuffed by him. There is no honeymoon period for Jane, truly. If she can't convince him to reinstate his eldest daughter in the succession, would she have been able to convince him to repudiate his wife? It's doubtful, although I'm sure she encouraged this, it's unlikely her encouragement was what pushed him over the brink, as it were.

Moreover, if we go beyond Chapuys, according to contemporary reports Jane was countermanded, sometimes quite publically, on pretty much every political move she attempted (once, five times in a row on the same matter, and another reports Henry as saying he had already 'often' told her not to meddle in his affairs, and this as early as five months into their marriage, and Jane as Queen). This is instructive insofar how much they were leading this faction, versus other members of the faction leading them. Assuming she wasn't masochistic, Jane must have repeatedly been promised and told by those that 'knew Henry best' (almost all of whom, absent Bryan, are going to end up on the scaffold in two years' time) that her influence was going to equal or even surpass her predecessors' upon Henry, and that she just had to bide her time.

So, was there a Seymour 'family firm' comparable to some others, as far as the Boleyn coup? Beyond Jane & Edward, there's not much evidence for one (certainly they were united in grabbing the spoils afterwards, Henry Seymour grabbed a vacant position by one of the accused and condemned men, Edward a viscounship to equal George Boleyn's, not to mention the riches and properties of the Dissolution both Jane and Edward enjoyed, etc). Thomas is absent, as are their parents, and Elizabeth Seymour seems to have even possibly been a Boleyn supporter by dint of her husband. Jane's maternal cousin is on the jury which condemns her predecessor, but beyond that....

Circling towards your last:

The Seymours helped cause Anne's death and then abused her daughter it seems. If they were behind her downfall it makes sense that they wouldn't care about her daughter either.

Eh, I don't think it's fair to term any of them, save Thomas Seymour later on, as 'abusive' towards Elizabeth. What's more certain is that they wouldn't have wanted her to develop any sort of base of power and support. It is interesting, though, as far as memory serves, that it's after Edward Seymour's power was stripped that Elizabeth was making such public appearances of honour at her brother's court. An interesting aspect of any counterfactual of Jane's survival, Jane being the last Tudor queen (consort) of Henry VIII, would be how the relationship between Edward VI&Elizabeth might then manifest, the Seymours would not have faded into obscurity as they did for much of Henry's reign, and it's difficult to imagine that they wouldn't have been wary of the two of them developing any sort of rapport. But, they did, and it was Henry that directed the education and environment that made this possible.

[wheelercore]

What's your opinion on Henry and Vecna now?

Well my opinion really has always been the same, since before tfs (i was 1 of 5 henry apologists in the fandom before henry theories really blew up on the by/ler-sphere sksbsisussi helloooo besties if u see this u know who u are :33333).

Henrys pov in the show never added up to me and there was always talk about how a 12 year old could even concieve of such horrible things, esp when a huge part of the show is about how children are not born evil. Now that its confirmed that henry was actually 15 and much more sympathetic, it puts into question the validity of henry's retelling (and how he villainizes himself, interestingly enough) plus what exactly is the reason behind the inconsistencies. Which i have already thought about in a rosegate lense but i will not talk about that rn :3 but i am Looking.

Tbh ive always been someone who never understood the "well this character CHOSE to be this way" takes when talking about children/teenagers who were abused or treated badly from a young age. Because really to me, its a portrayal of a tragedy rather than choice. Im not trying to excuse their behavior of course, but the portraying it simply as a choice to be a bad person puts the blame solely on the abused person in question and imo takes away from the real meaningful theme that (joker voice) society, and the people who were meant to support them, to some level has failed them. Operative word being solely, as I'm not saying that people cant be held responsible for their own actions. I'm talking more so in an analysis lense of the themes of the show.

We see this repeatedly shown in the show: concerning behaviors popping up when caretakers (namely parents) fail to unconditionally love their children, so their children develop negative coping behaviors and attitudes to deal with their situations and how those behaviors perpetuate over generations. But really thats not even the case with Henry, as even with Virginia's behavior (tfs) Henry still seemed like a decent kid. Maybe attached to Patty because of his mommy issues but its not a Billy type situation.

Henry is the very definition of never having a chance. From what ive heard of tfs i think he really tried to be good and was good. He was just a normal kid, really. But your own mother betrays you and your stuck in some psychopaths lab basement for 30 years, never actually ever getting to escape and rejoin society before getting blasted into the UD, so there was never really much hope there in his situation. Its also super vague how much control henry really has over his own actions regardless, considering now we know that Henry is not nearly as autonomous as we were lead to believe in the show.

I never really believed honestly that Henry was the big bad of st. You could either be a Mindflayer theory believer or a henward enthusiast (i do like me a mix of both), either way both imply that vecna and henry are not necessarily 1:1.

I'm quite interested in how they take henry in s5, because eventually the party will have to learn that Henry is not what he seemed, then we can get down to the actual truth of the matter.

[shallowseeker]

Anon because this is a touchy subject but I'm the one who hates Mary. Thanks for fielding my ask with such patience. I'm honestly very hopeful I can come around to liking her more.

I was wondering if you could write more about Lucifer? I really liked the Lucifer-war meta you wrote. He's a pariah in the fandom, but you seem to like him and Nick?

You're welcome, I think.

About Lucifer, uh, well. I'll be honest with you. I'm not super keyed into Lucifer, so I can't promise that I have any thoughts to share? But I'll keep it in mind as I watch through again. Here's what I like about Lucifer and what I'm less interested in. If any of this syncs up with your interests, feel free to stick around!

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First, I meant when I said it's okay not to connect with a character. For example, it's taken me a long time to come around to Charlie Bradbury, and she's a fan favorite! Sometimes, there's no real reason you don't jive with a character. (There's nothing wrong with Charlie. I just happen to find her kind of annoying! And that's okay. That I like Arthur Ketch more than OG Charlie doesn't mean I'm a horrible person, right?)

I find that many of the characters featured in season 8 are kinda boring to me. Many of them I think were meant to be templated and figment-like in terms of their complexity relative to an integrated life. But some of them, like Metatron, I really love! He turns out to be so much more than the "ho-hum wiseman" that he appears to be, and then he basically repeats Cas's mistakes with regard to "punishing" his home and "trying to be God."

Yet, the fandom as a whole absolutely loathes Metatron. But I'm not going to go into their inboxes and harass them to see things my way.

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So, Lucifer...

Many Lucifer fans seem to be fans of the early-seasons Lucifer, but I'll be upfront with you and say I prefer the whiny, petulant guy that was peeled back in later seasons--the one who revealed to Anael that all he really wanted was to fit in. Yeah, he's "less edgy, less cool," but I find him way more interesting!

I think there's an echo of Sam and John here re:fitting in. Because while Sam is "rebellious" towards John, he is, according to Henry Winchester, quite like John in terms of his base personality. After Jess died and Sam focused on revenge, Sam seemed strangely glad to have something in common with John, to understand him.

Lucifer too seemed excited and more sympathetic to his dad after Jack arrived. I way prefer that to the idea of a "villainous" guy in a white suit spitting spooky lines about destiny. That Lucifer...feels like Chuck.

I guess my thesis is that Chuck's portrayal of Lucifer is pretty close to Chuck's true self: a kind of cool-headed, all-knowing sadism. But perhaps the real Lucifer is eaten up by pain and volatile emotion.

"He's stealing my best lines," Lucifer laments when he reads the Bible in season 13. There's probably some truth to that. Perhaps, Chuck takes all his worst parts and stamps them onto Lucifer, and he takes Lucifer's best parts and stamps them onto himself?

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And John...

I'll also be honest and say I find the fandom's tendency to paint Lucifer and John with all the bad in the entire universe to be sort of...frustrating? It verges on cartoonish. Engaging with their complexity automatically gets a fan painted with the dreaded "abuse apologist" label. I feel like disengaging from Lucifer and John almost...pressures you into trying to explain away TFW's own wrongdoing to hastily differentiate them from Lucifer and John.

Furthermore, I feel like John is raked over the coals for his inability to let go of his hatred of Azazel, but the fandom won't even entertain anything less than the abject destruction of John and Lucifer. In a sense, we can lurch into being quite John-coded when it comes to John and Lucifer!

It's almost like it's a badge of honor to blame them for all the evils in the universe, even the evil that Sam and Dean do on their own. Gabriel had a gorgeous speech on this very issue in season 13's Exodus! (Gabriel at once excused Chuck too much and blamed Lucifer too much, but he had a great observation!) At what point do you stop blaming your father and take responsibility for yourself? Where do we draw the line? How do we heal?

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I'm also pretty fascinated by Chuck's tendency to victim-blame Lucifer's descent as "inevitable," while taking no responsibility for his own actions. That Chuck pointed to Lucifer's "jaundiced eye towards humans" as proof of his corruption is...hmm. It's bad.

It's like viewing Demon Dean, MoC Dean, or Amara-thralled Dean as "the real Dean." Just because you have urges or thoughts does not mean that you'd act on them in your right mind! That's the whole point of being an animal with free will!

Chuck's pretty fucked up for that viewpoint. It's his own rationalization for sure.

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The other thing I'm fascinated by is that tantalizing nugget that Amara "trusted Lucifer once." Did Lucifer try to get close to her in order to catch her off-guard? "Dear nephew, my how you've changed." I'll always be rotating that line my head.

And I'll continue to ponder why Amara was so willing to make up with Chuck but was not willing to even try with Lucifer. How sad! You'd think if she felt bound to Dean, she'd also feel closer to Lucifer for being connected to her in a similar way. Maybe? And then there's the pesky fact that Amara becomes Lucifer's torturer and is willing to make up with Chuck but throws Lucifer away like garbage... It's hmmm.

If we assume that the MoC corrupted Lucifer, I say there's a good argument for his disinhibition and actions making him feel like he was beyond the point of no return, and so he continued to descend. There's something here that shackled Lucifer's free will just as it shackled Dean's.

And yet his own family is not even willing to extend the slightest bit of kindness, and that is why Lucifer is like that when we see him in Vince. He spends most of his time pleading to Cas, because that turns out to be his most stable family member. Same with Gabriel. (Though they try to kill each other over and over.)

Honestly, I find it difficult to ignore Amara and AU Michael's torture of Lucifer, and how frightened Lucifer was of AU Michael. It's also hard to look away from just how much "having a mission" fills Lucifer with purpose and surface-level loyalty for those around him.

It's hmmmm. Lucifer is simultaneously the worst version of himself AND he's also scapegoated for things that he didn't do and that aren't his fault.

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And lastly, I'm always going to be interested in Jack. That Lucifer wanted Jack to give his life meaning is not nothing. It speaks of a life that means nothing. Forgiving Chuck and then getting tossed by Chuck, not to mention having gray-rock stability with Cas as his roommate and then getting ripped away from Cas, was honestly...probably the worst thing that ever happened to Lucifer. It's the thing that made him give himself over wholly to nihilism.

After that, Lucifer became single-mindedly focused on having a kid to plug the whole of his existence. He obsessed over Jack to a point that he was rushing to cross worlds to get to him. And yet, that care never really grew into anything truly parental. He was so willing to slit Jack's throat! He was so jealous of Sam being important to Jack that he tried to make Jack kill Sam.

It's hmmmm.

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And Nick.

Nick is a festering sore...and how Lucifer manipulated his personal life in order to Stockholm him was gut-wrenching. Nick lost his entire identity!

I'm sure that "Like" is a strong word, but I think his plight in season 14 is certainly something we're supposed to pay attention to in the context of the Dean-AU Michael possession.

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Things I don't care about?

Well, I'm not so much about Lucifer, Rowena, and Sam directly, because I feel like his interactions with them are cartoonishly straightforward: with them, Lucifer is his worst self. There's not much to add.

Lucifer does show some glimmers of being Gabriel-like with respect to Sam, in that he "respects Sam," engages in "torture of the brothers," and tries to "train him to recognize illusions" and "come to certain conclusions via illusions."

It's also sort of interesting to me when the reflection of Lucifer ricochets onto TFW, reminding them of when they were their shadow selves. (Jimmy Novak possession, cannibalism, killing innocents, sacrifice, lying, etc.)

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[time-variance-archive]

Sorry, I haven't made posts of my own for a while, mainly because I am a bit tired when I come back from work and I don't find the creative energy or the self discipline to do basic ressearches. My next posts include references to Henri Bergson's Time and Free Will, and watching a few more online classes about the Eddas and historical knowledge of the Norse myths.

But recently I got caugh in a very interesting conversation (tw for heavy topics) and while I don't want to include myself in the thread, I want to make my own post it.

I'm not sure where to begin, because violence in fiction is a very complex topic that have been discussed since humans make up stories. I don't have any moral ground to hold there and I think everyone's feelings and opinions on the matter have a value. I am not one of those poeple who scream against "antis" all day, because "anti" is a word that can mean anything and nothing at once (okay, I use it occasionally, always for specific situations like anti-Sylki, anti-Lokius, anti-series... it's just an easy way to name the sides of an argument). I think it's a mere courtesy to respect other poeple's triggers and emotional response, as well as their argumentation.

I think a good text to read on the matter is Aristotle's Poetics, but I am too lazy to look at anything else than the Wikipedia page and my few memories from college.

I think a good part of the "fandom wank" comes from an opposition of a Platonician and an Aristotelian approach of fiction. Some poeple take fiction as a symetrical imitation of the real world while other people read fiction in a more metaphorical way. I don't think any of those sides are better, especially because not all fiction is meant to be consumed the same way. I would say it is not appropriate to watch historical fiction the same way we watch fantasy.

Anyway, sorry if I'm rambling, I'll come to the point discussed here : does Mobius' interrogation methods qualify as torture, and is it appropriate within the narrative of the show ?

As @iamanartichoke said, fiction is subjective to a certain point and I agree. I've been talking about the time loop scene with several poeple in DMs and we confronted our perception of the scene, and how it clashes with the answers of @lucianalight and @tori-artemis.

I think a lot of poeple, me including, percieved the time loop scene as a memory loop, aka, not Loki being repeatedly beated by Sif, but Loki experiencing a memory of being repetedly beaten by Sif. It's not a big nuance, but it changes the whole meaning of the scene.

By putting the emphase on the memory aspect, the scene becomes an introspective moment. What matters here is how Loki reacts to the memory and how it shapes his character journey. After the first loop, Loki mocks the choice of memory, saying "I never thought about it again, because it was just a little fun". It takes him a few loops to come to the realisation he has hurt Sif, and to apologize. Interesting part, his apologies worked, even in a memory, and fake-Sif tells him "you have always been alone and you will always be."

What I understood of this scene is that sometimes, we have to think over and over about a past event to take a lesson from it. I think we've all been Loki there, remembering a morally dubbious deed with fondness or indifference. Wasn't it funny when we pranked the poor math teacher and they lost their temper ? Here, Loki comes to an important realisation : one of the reasons why he's been alone is because he was seeking attention the wrong way. It's only by admitting his wrong that he can take something out of the memory.

Note that my interpretation is purely doylist : the time loop scene serves as a visual metaphor for introspection. This is not an admission that Mobius was right or Loki deserved it, because I am in no way a TVA apologist. My feelings for Mobius are complex and I keep that for another post.

I hope I'm not offending anyone with this post, I am not interested in discourse at all and I have no claim that my interpretation of fiction is more valid than anyone.

@iamanartichoke @lucianalight @tori-artemis @rollychan @acertifiedmoron