#idk I love her and I think about her relationship with personhood a lot

[delaneytalks-tostatues]

This entire bit rattles around in my head 24/7. I love Hera. She contains multitudes.

(Yes we all know the script is wrong she says 4 not 3 in the episode)

[buckybarnesss]

I’m back with more Thots™

(Sad ones this time sorry)

When Kate shows back up in town and comes to the burnt out Hale house and attacks Derek it literally makes my stomach turn. Like. This is his rapist, assaulting him in the place where she murdered his family, the place where he’s punishing himself by staying. Like. To me, it always reads as an act of psychological self harm to stay in the burnt out ruins of his home, the destruction of which he sees as his fault and it just. It ruins me.

It’s always interesting to me to see how quickly Derek accepts harm to himself as acceptable—he tells Stiles to cut his arm off, pushes him out of harms way, and over and over again we see him devaluing his own well being. As a therapist watching the show, it makes me ache for him, to see his trauma so deeply affecting his every decision, to see him being hurt over and over again because he thinks he deserves it. He throws himself on the sword every time to try and protect others, and it’s always at the cost of himself.

And then I think about Stiles and him losing his mom and how he’s got his dad but he doesn’t really—he shares him with all of Beacon County, and what a lonely heartbreaking existence that must be for him. I feel like he sees in Derek so many of the things he feels, and that sparks a deep interest in him, a sense of kinship that only grows as he learns more about Derek, and in turn, Derek senses in him a person that understands pain, loss, and loneliness and with whom he can be himself.

Idk idk, I just, there’s so much depth to these characters that is so rich and I wish we had gotten more time with Derek and Stiles one on one where they talked about these things they’ve experienced.

this is such a good analysis. you are absolutely correct. i've said it before but i'll say it again: derek hale is one of the most traumatized characters to be on television.

the scenes in the tell where kate is just tormenting derek are brutal once you know the whole story. kate is truly an evil, evil person.

in my meta on laura i discussed how in addition to everything kate is doing to derek she's also demeaning laura and refusing her personhood. she never uses laura's name, refers to her as a literal bitch dog and croons at derek how they desecrated her body. it is a deeply, deeply fucked scene when you peel back the layers.

kate and gerard argent are the two biggest villains of the show and so many issues are because of them. especially gerard. like, fuck that guy.

most of stiles and derek's relationship is in the subtext of the show but the threads are there and once you pull on them it unravels revealing a surprisingly deep relationship despite the audience not seeing it all playout on screen.

(a lot of the relationships on the show are like this tbh but it's there).

it amazes me to realize that stiles learns so much about derek and is the only one who actively seeks out to know and understand him. stiles wants derek to trust him and once that trust is earned derek would do just about anything for stiles. it's such a core aspect of their relationship.

their first real scene in the back of the cop car where stiles is all "I'm not afraid of you." is practically his thesis on derek the entire show. derek believes he is something to be feared not because he's a werewolf exactly but because people around him die. he thinks someone caring about him, loving him is a death sentence and he doesn't deserve it. stiles deconstructs all of it by sheer stubbornness.

in the finale of the show stiles -- on his own -- saves derek from an fbi raid where he was falsely accused of murder. it's the inverse of the beginning of their relationship where stiles was the one accusing him of murder.

and the writers never make stiles confront derek over anything, or use it against him. it does nothing but give stiles more pieces to the puzzle that is derek. he holds derek's secrets just like he holds his own.

i think if derek had been around in s5 stiles would've turned to him for support with the whole theo ordeal and derek would've backed him up which would've honestly been a nightmare scenario for scott for a lot of reasons.

(but theo would've had no choice but to go die of shame once derek called him the wish version of peter and shooed him away.)

[atopvisenyashill]

there’s a few characters that imo, it just depends on how the story ends. jorah is the main one - i’ll reserve judgement on him until we see his ending bc the thing is, he’s not portrayed positively. he’s pathetic! pathetic in the eyes of everyone around him! dany thinks to herself if he apologizes - just says SORRY & takes responsibility - she’ll forgive him immediately and that’s the most tragic scene in their relationship for me. he crosses so many boundaries with her, he is NOT the knight she needs, but she loves him anyway for being the ONLY even vaguely kind person to her when she wanted to kill herself, for believing in her when everyone else turned away (even if he believed for the wrong reason!), she TRIES to make herself fall in love with him that’s how much she DOES love him, she is willing to forgive him a HUGE betrayal…and he can’t even say he’s sorry!!!

so like, sometimes i feel like he’s a character whose arc has stretched on too long but at the same time, he is SHOWN to be just as pathetic as he truly is. i have no idea what his ending will be but i more or less trust it will be interesting.

drogo……tied for rhaegar for me in being the worst depiction of “light and dark both” as a character. his ONLY relationship is with dany, who is his child bride. he has no relationship with parents, siblings, friends, not even bloodriders - it’s wild to me that dany’s bloodriders show her more loyalty & love than drogo’s show him! every word out of his mouth is a compliment to himself. he has no aspirations, no goals, no internal personhood. he exists to traumatize dany.

if i’ve bitched about rhaegar once i’ve bitched a hundred times. his actions are nonsensical, stupid, reckless beyond belief. part of this is because we still haven’t gotten the ~big reveal~ in book canon so on the one hand it’s like, yeah sure i do want to wait to see what george has up his sleeve. but best case scenario this man tries to do a blackfyre 2.0 conflict & is surprised it blew up in his face. his positives are more informed than anything - they say he was better than aerys, a True Prince, but what on earth does he do to earn that? on the other other hand, the people saying that shit are like, jaime who has some trauma regarding the targaryens in general bc of the sack, barristan who is the world’s number one targ apologist, and joncon who was in love with him. there’s a lot of room to move here but for me, right now, it’s just like. oh another one of those wife disrespecting silver fire obsessed silver haired motherfuckers. next.

areo hotah is probably the most egregious to me tho because he’s a pov…but WHAT DOES HE WANT. his whole character begins and ends at being devoted to doran - and like, sorry, if you’re going to make this guard’s whole personality he that he’s devoted to the man he serves, he should have been doran’s lover or something, like a joncon thing. he’s got this paternal thing going on with arianne but it’s not deep enough for him to like. idk try to stop her from doing the queenmaker plot, or spare any of her friends, or have any sort of internal conflict at being at odds with her in affc, and then in adwd he’s just completely forgiven her. what does he WANT. he carries doran softly to bed. it’s sweet. it’s empty! does he even miss norvos?????

[vox-solaris]

to me, that quest explained a whole lot and just enough about sorren n jade's relationship. they were low ranking guardians that loved each other, jade got preggy, but sorren gave more of a crap about what the orokin think than his lover and kid. i feel like thats what stalker was guilty about. basically choosing the orokin over his lover, and presumably, she got turned into a frame WHILE being pregnant. jade chose to have a kid and die because it was sort of representative of her forgiveness for stalker and that she still trusted him to keep their kid safe. stalker's hatred of warframes was probably because it was a reminder of what he did to jade, and it was easier to do it for the orokin. but idk just my two cents. i think that if this quest explained more than it did it would just be an exposition-fest :P

i don't really get any of that from what was shown in game. jade had barely any agency or personhood in what little we saw of her, and her significance as an individual was entirely reduced to her role as a mother/wife/backstory prop for stalker. like hell, her only lines were about being pregnant and how he'll protect her. she was 100% a passive feature of her own quest, and that's disappointing to me.

now don't get me wrong, i don't take issue with people coming up with interpretations that fill in the blanks, because there sure are plenty of blanks to fill both regarding the backstory and present implications. you're right that too much exposition isn't in the style of the game, but i still think we needed more than what was given, and i *really* think DE should have been better about writing jade as an individual and should have shown more of who she was outside of this vague mother-wife-savior figure.

[utilitycaster]

26. freebie question, a good while back (before the party split) you mentioned that a possibly interesting ship would be Imogen/FCG. Obviously canon has not gone that direction, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on Imogen and FCG's relationship :D

It is interesting because Imogen hasn't interacted with FCG a ton. I think that friendship sort of fizzled out once FCG started believing in their personhood and particularly after they began building a relationship with the Changebringer. Imogen was not terribly supportive of that (possibly jealous, or possibly just not sure how to engage with it) and so there really hasn't been much.

They are really interesting as parallels, actually, though actually pretty much everyone in the party except for Orym and Chetney fit in this to some degree. Like Imogen (and Fearne), FCG was given particular powers by a megalomaniacal entity, for the purpose of furthering those goals. I think Predathos grants somewhat more agency to loyal Ruidusborn than Aeor entrusted FCG with, though that is to be seen, but there's something very tragic, in my mind, from Imogen's perspective, about how FCG was the tool of a destroyed empire, and so while he still carries those scars and consequences, he actually does have the freedom to be his own person. FCG has to manage a serious chronic condition, essentially, but they don't have missions, and unless some of the wilder theories are right (and they could be, though I have my doubts) the ones who did this to them are long dead. Is this her future? Will she be left with dreams and telepathy even if they defeat Predathos? Will they be the upsides (controllable sorcery powers) or the downsides (nightmares, uncontrollable sorcery powers)? Why did FCG get to just sleep through the hard part and she has to fight her way out?

It really is a fascinating thing about the party: Fearne and FCG were designed to be who they are (though Fearne's upbringing at least was her own). Ashton was partially created in a cult ritual (though it remains unclear if they were the intended recipient or merely the one it happened to stick to). I don't think Imogen was planned a la Fearne, but I do wonder if Predathos or the Weave Mind did specifically target Liliana to ensure her daughter would also be Ruidusborn. While the nature of Laudna's sorcery abilities hasn't come up (and, to be fair, a lot of sorcery abilities in D&D are just like "well that happened to your baby, idk what to tell you") she was used by Delilah for that as well. So much of this party shares this with Imogen and FCG but I think they are the most extreme examples (Fearne is mostly unaffected physically/mentally though obviously learning of her origins is unsettling and upsetting, and Ashton and Laudna's situations mostly hurt them and not as often others, though Laudna's is increasingly a crapshoot) and I think as this became apparent and as they both grew more comfortable with who they were they sort of lost that connection.

They do still share a lot of powers though and I'd love to see them talk again - Laura and Sam always play off each other well, and those earlier interactions where they both tried to read each other's thoughts, or coordinate probing Ashton or Ollie's mind, or the first casting of Shared Dream were all delightful - but they have drifted apart since.

[transfemmbeatrice]

hello! I loved reading your interpretation of much ado's beatrice... I think it makes a lot of sense. on another note, as someone who enjoys shakespeare, do you have any adjacent media like literature classics to recommend? I need to find a classic work of fiction to analyze I think... no pressure though, answer if you want.

i have been giving this ask some thought and i have a number of answers for you! though i don't know if they're exactly what you're looking for, it's what came to mind.

Les Mis. my favorite book of all time!! there is SO much there to chew on, Victor Hugo is an incredible (if incredibly unsubtle) writer. the unabridged version takes some real work to get through, but it's worth it imo. even a good abridged version is still really excellent! i have some opinions on english translations you're free to inquire about if you're interested. whatever you do, don't read Denny. and the brick also still has a great, active fanbase on tumblr!

2. Twelfth Night (2017) dir. Simon Godwin. idk if you're already a twelfth night fan, but this production puts a little twist on it in a way that i am still thinking about years later. it works best if you're already familiar with the play so you can understand how its being subverted; if you're interested, hmu and i can hook you up with any number of productions to watch (which is true of any shakespeare, really. i collect them.)

3. The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie. not classic lit, but the best contemporary scifi i've read. leckie is an incredible writer; there is nothing she's done i haven't loved and i would recommend all of her work, but this trilogy is my favorite. (if you want to try a sample of her writing, she released a short story collection this year called Lake of Souls.) the radch trilogy deals with empire and resistance and colonialism and language and gender and bodies and technology and identity and personhood and so much more!! they're one of my favorite books of all time.

4. other well-written scifi that really gets into it and has given me a lot to think about: the unraveling by ben rosenbaum (which does such a good job, imo, of feeling really alien) and a memory called empire by arkady martine (which has a great sequel as well).

5. crush by richard siken. not to be a cliche, but his poetry is fucking amazing. reading crush was the first time i understood poetry. i went my entire school career never clicking with it--i was a prose girlie and it felt like my brain just shut off every time i tried to engage with poetry, but crush fucking rewired my brain and i've read it so many times. if you haven't checked it out, i can't recommend it highly enough; the language and themes are so intricate and well done and it feels like a coherent whole in a really compelling way.

6. the count of monte cristo by alexandre dumas. it's been over a decade since i read it, but i know i loved it and so do many other people so i trust my own past assessment. i remember drawing a character map about how everyone was connected because it was so complicated (i may still have that somewhere, actually) and it certainly has some strong similarities to les mis but is focused on being a revenge story. i watched V for Vendetta recently and it comes up in that movie a bit and it made me really miss it.

7. Be Good and Rewatch It: Pride and Prejudice. Waypoint (rest in peace<3) did some media rewatch podcasts on this feed, and the star of the show is their series on the 95 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. altogether, their podcasting is more than twice the length of the show itself, but it is so incredibly worth listening to all of it. the adaptation adheres pretty closely to the book so a lot of what they get into relates to the original work as well. there is some fantastic insightful analysis like the difference between english and french relationships with nature and how its reflected in their gardening trends and what it says about lady catherine that her estate is done in the french style--and also there's darcy/peter b. parker fanfiction. extremely well done and also very, very funny, i cannot recommend this more highly!

8. In a similar vein, Shelved By Genre is an excellent podcast if you like sinking your teeth into literary analysis! they focus on genre literature, and have done Book of the New Sun, the Earthsea books, works by Junji Ito, a series by Mercedes Lackey, and I think next are doing Neuromancer? I'm very behind, but they do really excellent work. it's a touch more serious than the last one i mentioned, but it's still a LOT of fun. all three come from academia and i always feel like i'm learning so much when i listen to them.

9. Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot. it's a shortish memoir that i really enjoyed, and there was an interview at the end that i can't stop thinking about because of how she talked about her craft and her story's place in a larger context. i recommend at least reading the interview (which i posted here). i'll also throw Alan Davies' memoir "Just Ignore Him" in here, because i loved it so much and also have a lot of thoughts about how it is written and structured which that interview made me think about again. i'm very biased on this one because i'm a huge fan of his, but i think it's still pretty good if you're not familiar with him. it should be noted that both these books deal with some dark stuff, so feel free to reach out to me for content warnings if you like. alan's audiobook is excellent; heart berries' audiobook is horrendous.

10. this list could not be complete unless i recommended Friends at the Table, an actual play podcast focused on critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends. genuinely the work they do is some of the best stories i have ever encountered, in my entire life, in any medium. there's a shit ton of it and i'm always happy to give recommendations on where to start, whether you're ready to dive in totally or just try a sample. i could never even begin to put into words how good this show is or how much it means to me. it makes me laugh, it makes me cry, it makes me laugh until i cry, it haunts me (positive), it has led me to meeting so many cool people and introduced me to lots of other great and compelling media and philosophy and political ideology. and that's not even getting into my fascination with how game mechanics shape a story, and the sheer joy of things coming together based on chance rather than convenience--it's such an interesting way to tell a story! i'll shut up now but as i will continue to say up to and including when i'm on my deathbed--please listen to friends at the table.

[alienturnip]

Finished FF16 a few days ago and I do have some (long) thoughts about it, so I'm noting them down below. Reactions include the Waloed & Origin arcs.

Tagging @zadien as you requested <3 My thoughts won't be organized but I'll try my best to articulate as I go. Wall of text alert!

I think this is yet another case of "the story didn't satisfy me a lot but the characters bewitched me body and soul" so here I am at the end of the roads... with a lot of grievances toward how the story was structured & written but also impossibly attached to the cast haha, needless to say I have fanart ideas planned and incoming.

Things that I enjoyed a lot:

CliveJill's scene with the snow daisies, where she tells Clive that she wants to spread her wings after all this is over. MY GIRLFRIEND... YOU SHALL HAVE THE WORLD.

Jill being so good with acting dkfjsl <3 <3 she's so cute....

Jill being as much of a ruthless mtfk as Clive, they're soooo in tune when it comes to wrecking havoc

Everything about Joshua he brings SO SO MUCH to the table both with his personalities and the themes he represents. I would ramble if not for fear of this post's length...

Dion's contradictory demeanor hahahahaha - he insisted everyone call him "Dion" but wouldn't shut up about "Ifrit" and "Phoenix", he also refused Harpocrates' gift but then gave another to Clive 2 seconds later, then sauntered off without even checking if Clive likes it or not...

I generally bemoan the lack of discussion on Dion's relationship with his country's imperialism and his hands in that (like, everything about him was perfect to address that topic even in very brief ways?), BUT I highly enjoyed Dion's theme about the loss of personhood and to be reduced to a vessel of power and worship, his multifaceted relationship with the concepts of power & duty & hierarchy. So subtly yet powerfully done with so little screen time... I think Clive's own engagement with the theme (which is supposed to be his central theme) comes short in comparison.

Dion's side quest with Harpocrates also scratched my brain in INCREDIBLY ways, but again I won't ramble too much in this post...

(Hahaha by this point I think everyone knows who my fav is)

Dion & Joshua's dialogues are all so well-written (maybe save for Joshua's last speech...)

Everything about Mid & Gav, they're beautifully done, I love them they have such solid places within the narrative and lovely personalities too. When I watched Mid navigating the Entreprise I was just squealing and cheering for her! Her talking about the dream of flight and the danger it might entail, and her plan of turning such a weighted topic into a lighthearted treasure hunt! My gosh 💗 Gav's drinking scene with Clive is also especially touching, I felt a lot for his burdens.

Lady Isabelle may I have your hand in marriage--

Clive holding Joshua or clutching his body...... breaks me every time I love love LOVE tragic siblings

I can honestly write an essay for each of the characters (especially Jill & Dion my thoughts about them are overflowing) but they will have to be separate posts at this point, let me know @zadien (or anyone else reading this 🫣) if you'd like me to talk some more.

NOW onto the criticisms proper...

Waloed & Origin arcs were pretty underwhelming, mostly because I feel like they haven't offered anything new that wasn't already resolved in the previous arcs...? I enjoyed Barnabas' vibe but his impact on me was a big fat 0, and here comes the conundrum because, well, I'm guessing him being emotionless & devoid of a personality is supposed to be the point with his worship of Ultima, but even that was not done well... All his bedroom scenes kinda ruined all of that, not to mention the out-of-nowhere 'mother' appearances that the story doesn't even bother to explore aside from showing her naked body (Benedikta got the same treatment after her death my god I'm so sorry my beloved)...

Idk what I'm supposed to take away from the character and, in consequence, the Waloed arc? I know nothing of who he was, his dialogues didn't even match Clive's growth at that point - again, why is Clive questioning his humanity NOW of all time, when the story has been going so well? Could they have, idk, shown Clive's fear coming back to him after reuniting with Joshua & discovering Dion's descend to madness, so that they can segue into the Waloed arc more smoothly - that despite Clive's best intention he may lose all his control at the most crucial point and ruin all that he holds dear (like Dion), and that he never let go of his guilt at Phoenix Gate, and having Joshua back unwittingly brought back the nightmares he'd lived with for 13 years? Maybe that would give his identity crisis at the beach some more substance instead of "Barnabas bested me twice and now I'm wet and sat" situation he got going on... I am thankful for Mid & Dion's arc & CliveJill romance & everything about Joshua but the main villain & plot points felt so distant... MY BRAIN WAS NOT SCRATCHED

(I adore Mid & Dion & Joshua hahaha they're so colorful in 3 entirely different directions, my silly children)

I am also not really convinced by Ultima's writing. The plot reveal of him being a God who created humanity but then abandoned us all *could* have been pretty powerful and on point if it wasn't executed in such fragmented ways. If only they dig deeper into one or two specific aspects of that concept to explore...

I am especially fond of the idea of Ultima as symbolic for "the absent parent" and "the narcissistic parent" (both in the intimate familial context and the wider context of head-of-state/leader figures), which could have paralleled SO WELL with Anabella & Sylvestre & EVEN ELWIN had they not cut off Anabella's presence immediately after her death, or had they make Dion reflect deeper upon his relationship with his father beyond "I killed him I am so sad", or had they make Joshua's and Clive's memories of Elwin more complicated - maybe in how they (especially Joshua) worshipped his as their father & leader, but less so as a man, someone human & flawed? And then they can explore how the children gaining autonomy & freedom despite their parents & the circumstances that shaped their childhood as a direct mirror to them breaking away from Ultima? The frustrating thing is, I THINK they did try to do that, what with all the Inner Voice snippets and the initial buildups and all, but the execution keeps coming up short...

Ultima & the Eikons as symbols of "power that binds & enthralls" in contradiction with Clive's fight for a "free world" could've been much more relevant and poignant if maybe they allowed us to get more invested in Ultima's backstory (flashback cutscenes perhaps? more involved murals? a more multifaceted discussion around the concept of will? some attempts at humanizing Ultima's race so that when Clive says "you're just like us" we feel it a bit deeper?) instead of just having the guy monotonously narrating all the plot twists... my god. Not to mention all the on-the-nose dialogues of power of friendship & crude slavery allegories... I don't know! I think Square did NOT do it well in this one.

That's all I can pull from the top of my head at the moment! Ready to hop into replies or asks to talk some more, but yea!

[felixravinstills]

re: ask game

i am still not over allegory of the cave and would love to get your director’s commentary on florus’s relationship with iphigenia and clemmie since they got mentions!

Oooh, Allegory of the Cave!

Here's a link to another ask that Backpacks sent about Florus and Felix for others who may be interested!

Anyway, actually there was a lot more going on with them that got cut from the fic, because it kind of made the pacing and flow weird! Thanks for reminding me with this ask, haha!

In the original draft, Iphigenia and Florus were stated to have been close growing up but grew apart because Florus was a bit too liberal with things she told him in confidence (namely why she's been starving herself). The information that Florus spread her secret came to her by way of Clemensia whom Iphigenia cornered and who deflected to him pretty fast, so Florus has complicated feelings about them.

In the original draft (and there are traces of it in the final), Florus has a lot of guilt over what happened with Iphigenia. There was a section (pre-me remembering that I make the ending a fake Florus autobiography) where a kind of third-person omniscient narrator speculates that history will remember Iphigenia's mother (who I guess was alive in that version. I flip flop about if she's dead or not in my worldbuilding) as having been unkind to Florus after Iphigenia's funeral, but actually this was Florus projecting. <- a more convoluted way of highlighting how someone's personal biases might color a story/history.

There's an implication that Iphigenia forgave him towards the end, but Florus was too afraid to confront his past like that (ironic given he's a historian. kind of a parallel to him being uncomfortable thinking about Clemensia who is dead by the time of the fic). He never fully mended that bridge, and it hangs over him.

Clemensia is like really complicated, because there's a sense of friendly affection with her that he (in my head) would have for a lot of the mentors, but there's also kind of a jealousy? (and the resentment from the Iphigenia thing). I was conceptualizing her as kind of a foil to him. She's active in the rumor mill and actively weaponizing and influencing it for her own benefit, but unlike Florus, she's more well-liked and charismatic. She's also took a more active role in things, and Florus was more passive. The self-identification continues in that I imagine that she died due to medical complications from the snake bite that came later in life while Florus is also dying of similar complications. I think Florus has in his mind, largely forgiven Clemensia for the Iphigenia thing (and the using him to scapegoat other Capitolites), but once in a while, the bitterness resurfaces.

Not really Clemmie and Iphigenia related, but fun fact: the reason I figured that Snow hasn't killed him for what Florus might know from his time information brokering (key word might) is because Snow has the ability to cut off Florus' medical treatments (and Florus is already dying). Florus knows this, and lives under threat of Snow just doing that or poisoning some of his medication at any point (his death would not be suspicious given his state). It keeps him from acting out in his final days. (something something. it is better to live. once dead, you loose all true agency. you will be interpreted by others (as is history) so why not cling to the last of your personhood?) So, Florus' autobiography probably gets published post-Mockingjay. I like to think with Plutarch's help.

Final note that's just generally for this fic and not specifically what you asked:

idk how popular Florus' autobio is initially btw. I think Plutarch's support helps it make the rounds but also i think there is a lot of focus on anti-Snow history books in the wake of the rebellion to help the new government... history is not free of agenda ect. ect. It probably gets more popular later I think... when people can be more objective about Snow and the Capitol.

Anyway, thanks for the ask, Backpacks!

[lemonhemlock]

Hiiii lemon 👋🏻

I was trying to make an oc for Cersei and Jamie and talked about it with a couple friends to bounce ideas with and they all had the same thing to say "you really think Cersei would love someone!? she literally killed Melara for daydreaming about Jamie..." And this kinda made me a bit...

Anywayyyyy personally I think yes Cersei can be delusional, heartless... But that's part of her charm !!! And really people would not be as harsh on her if she was a man.

Like imagine a boy killing his bestie over liking his sister/lover... People would call that a romantic gesture lol.

Which is why I'm here to ask what would you personally do if you were making Cersei/Jamie a female love interest.

Hi, anon! There's quite a lot to unpack in your message. Cersei and Jaime could have the potential to love other people. But certainly their insular upbringing and dysfunctional family made them overly reliant on each other to the point of co-dependency. So I think that if you want to create realistic OCs for them, you should give them traits that tend to their greatest needs or inadequacies.

For Cersei, it's perhaps more easily identifiable the kind of husband who could make her happy - it's basically who she imagines Rhaegar to be. A noble, handsome, gallant young man who would be devoted to her, treat her kindly and involve her in his daily political dealings. Both Cersei and Jaime struggle with gender roles. Cersei wants to be considered a leader and valued for something other than her reproductive abilities, she wants to be respected and not discarded the replaced the minute her body becomes "irrelevant". So power-sharing with a husband who values her personhood and intelligence would help to heal her accumulated trauma. What Cersei yearns for in a partner is not so different than what any woman would wish for herself.

With Jaime, it's more complicated, because you somehow how to prevent him from joining the Kingsguard. Because 1. he would not be able to have a functional relationship when his vows are in direct contradiction and 2. if Cersei is still Queen somehow in this AU, he'd only be miserably sniffing around her skirts, entangling himself in her business, getting inevitably jealous and miserable and keeping her from taking her marriage seriously. Other than that, Jaime has no true interest in politics and he bores easily, so an ideal wife for him would be one with good social and administrative skills, who could handle the tasks Jaime would consider tedious in his position as (eventual) ruler of Casterly Rock. He also has a quick with and is quite funny, so I think he couldn't be truly content if his wife didn't share those qualities. So, IDK, some combination between Sansa and Aunt Genna. :))

Ultimately, I think they could really only reach a true level of contentment if their spouses help them fulfill their societal roles. They're too entrenched in their identities as Lannisters to ever run off to the Free Cities and do whatever and too comfortable to renounce all privileges and live the lives of regular peasants or merchants. Feudalism offers few opportunities that provide safety and comfort; they can't exactly became finance bros or get a job at the business factory to support themselves or engage in some other bullshit activity that's little work and high reward, so staying in the socio-economic sphere of their rich family is their best bet.

Cersei has this fantasy of swords and mail, but she wouldn't have been happy as a knight, with the pushback that comes with true non-conformity. Equally, Jaimie already did what he wanted and eschewed his role as heir, but life as a perpetual knight doesn't seem to bring him satisfaction either. They're not revolutionaries out to dismantle the status-quo and campaign for change, but, in the absence of that, society is not going to just simply accommodate their idiosyncrasies just because it's them. And they don't really like it either when they find out the world doesn't bend around their wishes! (affectionate)

[payphoneangel]

9, 12, 21, 31 for the questions ask :)))

HELLO <333

9. What is your biggest accomplishment?

Hmmmm. That's a toughie. I feel like I could say things like my degree or career or like, my growth as a person and how I view relationships and my own self worth... which are all fine and good and all but ehhh I feel like a lot of that just came with life (well, not the degree. That one was a lot of time and money). TBH I feel like my biggest accomplishment has probably been learning and sticking with guitar. It almost seems silly to consider it my biggest accomplishment, but it's a hobby that I've gotten so much joy and connection out of, it feels important. And I think because it's a hobby is part of why it feels like an accomplishment to me. I have to work to survive. I had to go to school. I had to get better at communicating and setting boundaries. But I play because I want to. Because I love the process of learning new songs and new chords and new techniques. Because I love sharing music and creating music with the people around me.

Idk. That feels big to me.

12. Where is somewhere you'd like to visit?

Oooh, SO MANY places!! Probably Italy, or Kenya, or Indonesia!! They have such cool bugs in Indonesia.

21. Who knows you best?

Another toughie! I feel like it's a split between my close friends and my family. Which, kind of feels like a cop-out answer lol. Like, no duh! Who else would know someone best besides their close friends and family? I guess like, a romantic partner or a therapist.

I say both because I feel like my friends and my family are both deeply familiar with different aspects of myself. It's all still me, but we are all multi-faceted people who act just a little different depending on the environment and who we're talking to, and I'm no different! My family has years of experience, my friends have no preconceived notions of who I'm supposed to be-- family tends to get stuck on ideals of personhood ime.

So they both know a side of me best. My family member who knows me best is probably my sister and my friend who knows me best is probably the one I've known since we were like 6.

31. Describe yourself with 3 singers.

THAT'S HARD. Okay wait, like 3 singers based on songs or appearance??? Individual singers or bands?? Singers whose songs I can sing or whose songs feel like describe me?????? Uhhhh okay I'll go with (in no particular order):

Haley Heynderickx-- since I just rambled about how important playing guitar is for me and people that I'm close to, I'll pick Haley for her song, The Bug Collector. It's a song that I do a cover of on guitar. It is one of the more technical songs I'm able to do and it took a long ass time to learn it. I sing it well, it was introduced to me by one of my closest friends (arguably the one who knows me best) I relate to the lyrics AND I love bugs. BAM. Relevant to every question.

Don McLean-- I stole my name from his song lol. It's also one of my faves to play with my dad.

I'll say Passion Pit because their album Gossamer was my middle school crying album and you know what I was right for that. That's a good ass album.

[rollercoasterwords]

What do you think of bellatrix/pandora??

Or pandoratrix (this one was a fun ship name to smash together)

hmmmm honestly. i'm not a huge fan of....any of the ships for bellatrix i don't think lol. at least not in a canon-compliant or canon-adjacent fic.

like, i don't really care if other people want 2 ship bellatrix with people + have fun doing that, but to me her story is kinda antithetical to any sort of romance, at least in the way i read her. like i very much view bellatrix as a character whose entire life was focused around her family + her sisters, who grew up essentially sacrificing herself in the name of duty to the point that it just. completely traumatized her + drove her insane as i talk about here

and to me her story is so interesting because of the way she was so isolated + devoted to a family who just...didn't really love her back. like i think her sisters did love her, but it was never in a way that really like...acknowledged her personhood, if that makes sense? just bc she was always this sort of mother/big sister figure to them and couldn't ever really be just like. human and vulnerable.

and so for me the idea of bellatrix falling in love with someone just doesn't really work--like, i think it changes her character to the point that she is no longer my bellatrix, in the way i conceive of her. i think if the devotion to her family was stripped away then bellatrix's first priority would be to herself, and to her own freedom. i don't think romantic love is something i could ever see her prioritizing or even really seeking out; in fact, i think that based on the way she's been raised the idea of falling in love would almost be like...nightmarish to her. and while i've seen people talking about "omg what if bellatrix was in love with this character and that's what drove her insane and death eater angst etc etc" i just....idk. sometimes i think putting a character in a romantic relationship can really contribute to their story + add a lot of really interesting angst, but with bellatrix i kinda feel like putting her into a romantic relationship flattens some of (what i view as) the nuance to her character. like for me bellatrix's story is about bellatrix, and nobody else.

i also think i just. don't entirely understand this tendency within the fandom to desperately search for ships for a character the second people start to pay attention to them. like obviously people have been shipping bellatrix around with different characters forever, but i feel like the black sisters in particular are having a little ~moment~ on like. tiktok right now. and so suddenly everyone is going "we need a ship for bellatrix!!" and i'm just like...no we don't? like she's SUCH an interesting character without romance. i don't really understand the need to pair everyone off in order to care about them.

(also....a lot of the shipping i've seen happening for bellatrix is like. happening in the most boring way lmao. sorry 2 be a hater but why is everyone suddenly trying 2 turn her into part of a ~girlboss~ power couple. she was one of the most unequivocally evil characters in the series and personally i think that is crucial to her character. obviously people can write whatever they want + i will just stick to my own corner of the internet, but most of the shipping i've seen happening recently surrounding bellatrix involves watering down her character in some way, and personally i do not enjoy that.)

[butchdykeorpheus]

i'm about to spend WAY too many words talking about barbie movie meta btw just a warning. disclaimer this is just one guy's opinion i may not always hold these opinions forever i'm open to hearing other opinions i'm almost definitely missing something here etc etc

ngl i also loved the barbie movie but i feel like some people are hyping it up / expecting it to be Cutting Edge Radical Leftist Feminist Writing when like. it's definitely not that lol. greta gerwig is a great director and frankly i'm surprised she managed to get away with some of the things she did in a licensed movie based on such a major IP but at the end of the day she's riding a very fine line in making a corporate-approved toy ad that's also a satire with adult and feminist themes that's also a coming-of-age movie for tweens and young teens

like gerwig is spinning a LOT of plates with the barbie movie and whilst that gives it a lot of high energy and humour and wry commentary and the ability to touch on a lot of different topics, she's ultimately limited by runtime and also most likely by trying to toe a line set by mattel/WB about what is and isn't TOO far. and the end result is that whilst it's refreshing to see a high profile movie speak so candidly about how stressful it is to be a woman, some of the themes that it touches on end up feeling underbaked, shallow and performative. like the movie mentioning capitalism and white savourism without actually delving into any of that and whilst it's funny to point out how stupid it is for a company selling Girl Power™ to be run mostly by middle aged men the movie just Does Not Have The Time Or Space To Get Into it so we don't get an exploration of what that means for barbie's existence, for capitalist co-opting of feminism, etc and it easily comes off as a "where are all the woman CEOs???" #girlbossfeminism comment regardless of gerwig's intentions

i get the sense that gerwig & co. knew going in that there were going to be criticisms regardless about the limits of the movie's feminism, and included some of those comments nodding towards the "we don't have time to get into this right now" topics the movie touches on intending them to reassure the audience that she's not deliberately ignoring them. and the results of doing that were Decidedly Mixed. i can't really say if i think it was better for her to do that or not tbh i think that's a more individual judgement call

idk at the end of the day what the movie does best is not to make in-depth critiques about structural oppression but to speak directly to the experiences of modern young girls who grow up being told repeatedly that "girls can do anything" (whether in good faith by well-meaning adults or by capitalist marketing) but then start to realise that the world is still hostile to women in so many ways, who struggle to reconcile that message with the realities of how they're made to feel self-conscious and objectified and the observations they can make about the still patriarchal world around them. who are trying to process all this conflicting information while their sense of self and relationship with the society around them and also their physical body is still developing. and, in relation to that, to speak directly to the personal experiences of adult women in the audience who have internalised and tried to accomodate all those contradictions and become worn down by the stress. the priority of the movie is to tell women and girls that you don't have to be extraordinary or successful or pretty to be worthy of respect or personhood, that you don't need permission to be a full human being

through ken, to a lesser extent, the movie is also trying to speak directly to the experiences of young boys who are internalising patriarchal ideals as they mature and promised "rewards" if they live up to a hypermasculine ideal. except ken admits towards the end that being In Charge™ and hypermasculine did not make him happy, but that he doesn't know who he is if not his status symbols and "possessions" (his girlfriend, his house, his car). i have a few small gripes with how the conclusion of ken's arc was handled in that scene but barbie was speaking directly to the audience when she said that he (men in general) can and should find a sense of self-worth without domineering over others or feeling entitled to a woman simply because he's a man. it's feminism 101 lol it's hardly angela davis or simone de beauvoir but it's not an unimportant message to impart on young boys still wrapping their head around the way the world works

to a less direct extent the movie is also trying to grapple with the complex relationship the barbie brand has historically had with feminism, female empowerment/liberation, beauty standards and traditional gender roles, and the ways barbie has been progressive and regressive in turns. again you could have made a 2hr barbie movie about just this topic alone so your mileage may vary on whether barbie 2023 explored this in enough depth for you (i personally would have liked a bit more self-reflection on barbie's role in imparting beauty standards to young girls but maybe that would have been a bit too dark for mattel/WB lmao) but the movie isn't subtle about setting up the simplistic claim that "barbie saved women from sexism" only to repeatedly knock it down. barbieland is a Matriarchal Utopia™ but it's also explicitly in the text just an idea, a plastic stage onto which the real world projects its concept of an ideal world for women. it takes the slightest nudge from the "real world" - gloria being kind of bummed and stressed out by being a working mother with depression and cellulite - for the entire house of cards to wobble. i wish the movie's answer to this was a bit more complex than "what about an Ordinary Barbie?" but i think gerwig and baumbach knew what they were saying when the CEO called that a stupid idea until another suit whispered that it would make a lot of money lmao

and i think that last point is one of the most interesting things about analysing the movie for me, because you can almost see in these moments these little points of tension between gerwig/baumbach and mattel/WB - hints at the things gerwig/baumbach WANT to say more explicitly but can't without possibly upsetting the people bankrolling the project. i'm not smart enough to draw any intelligent conclusions or moral lessons about that btw i just think it would be interesting to look at these points in the movie where gerwig/baumbach noticeably gesture towards criticisms of Pink Capitalism™ without actually Getting Into It and what that says about the state of trying to make feminist/leftist media under the constraints of capitalism. like it shouldn't be lost on anyone that mattel/WB only bankrolled this project in the first place because we live at a point in time where a certain kind of feminism (and even the outrage generated by conservatives who think "women are people" is radical leftist rhetoric, and the ensuing wave of "let's support the thing that pisses of conservatives") is considered profitable

anyway this has devolved into rambling, my point is, outside of a) telling young boys and girls that patriarchy kinda sucks and they don't have to live up to specific ideals to have worth and b) grappling with the barbie brand's complicated relationship with feminism, the movie's feminist discourse is limited and we're kinda setting some viewers up for disappointment by propping up barbie as a radically feminist movie. that's not to say that barbie 2023 should be above criticism at all but yk. you're gonna have a better time with the movie and better be able to appreciate the prioritised messages if you temper expectations rather than being disappointed that the movie didn't advocate for marxism (or if you're not misled into thinking it's something that you wanna watch in the first place). also that no one should rely solely on big budget, heavily marketed movies based on highly profitable IPs for feminist perspectives or incisive commentary on the relationship between patriarchy and other forms of systemic oppression

also outside of the feminist discourse around it the movie is generally just funny, emotional, upbeat and a little surrealist if you think you'd be into that

[alazyparallelworld]

(i’m terribly late, you don’t need to answer this, but—) maybe amatojo for the ship bingo, and/or shiromatsu?

i'm splitting this up into two posts -!! this is the amatojo one

off the bat there is smth... unusual... the purple'd. the purple is, uh, 'my kneejerk response would've been this,' - as you (rumi) (Some viewers) know i have a very mild tilt of like for tojo... it used to verge on, ah, Dislike, but when you follow a kinnie (dry laugh)

so. when i got this ask, i was immediately thinking. "ah, but, this will be such an empty board. 'i have nothing to say about it, indeed,' i feel bad. it's gonna pale in comparison to the shiro/aka answer,"

and. here i am. SHOCKED THAT I HAVE A LOT TO SAY ABOUT AMATOJO ? the ship leaked through . Rumi's influence.

okay but for real

FIRST i have to clarify, "enable the worst out of each other" - i do not think amami would approve of, seedier implications of being everyone's puppet. What she's had to do for the 'greater good,' -- I think, amami would be at best horrified and at worst having to physically restrain tojo in some way.

"it's not someone else doing this.... it's you! this is your decision! you don't want to actually hurt people!" sort of argument.

when i say, 'enable the worst,' i mean more of their... Mutuals desires to please and their own obsessive fixations. amami is kept awake at night, whiteboards filled back-to-back with stickynotes and pinned down worldmaps, he has plane tickets reserved for 3/4th quarters of the year to continue his search. he loves his sisters so much it destroys him

and love... is a good, thing, right? tojo would not encourage in the way of - yes, stay up until 5 am, lose sleep - but rather tolerate and comfort him in these moments. she doesn't (at least not initially) have the heart to pull him away. It'd be cruelty.

and the vice versa - when her personhood and employment isn't ethically questionable - amami is amazed at tojo's competence. some of the things, she partakes in, even daily flies right over his head... and he too enjoys, 'the facade,' at least initially? She's so beautiful, she's so smart, she can do anything.... how are you supposed to sit someone down and rip their identity away?

so. It would be. AWHILE, or it would take special circumstances for them to have the argument of - "you are destroying your body! you need medical help! you are not responsible for the livelihood of your family!!" & "you aren't all you say you are! you need to stop! you - when you are off, it's like you're all alone despite being surrounded by everyone... i can't stand to see you like that anymore,"

and it would be. Really.

REALLY

REALLY messy. and thematically interesting. and fucked up. and -

idk i think entering a relationship with either of these people is. Uh. a strain on one another, pff... how can you feel like she's your girlfriend when she's - IDK, away at other people's homes more than in your apartment? when she's cooking meals for other people? when you barely see her, at least not 'off the clock'

and how can you dare impede yourself on his grief? how can you 'demand' love, affection, from such endless n continuing sorrow of being Alone? this is enough. this has to be enough...

[himbopunk]

okay some relationship dynamics of hakim's veilguard cuz i'm thinking about it. Gonna talk major spoilers probably. this is super long also

obviously neve x lucanis x rook (hakim) is main ot3. lucanis is dating them both, he would and has killed gods for them.

rook and neve are. they're something nobody can identify. i think it could evolve more into romance the way they both are with lucanis after the endgame but they're not worried about it they don't really need to define anything. i think they wouldve worked more organically if they had gotten to have a longterm adventure sitch with varric like they might have expected, or if minrathrous didnt get fucked up how it did and neve was there the whole time, but i think. idk. theyre very much ride or die for each other and theyre like physically/sexually involved somewhat but usually only when lucanis is also there.

i could write a whole post about hakim and lucanis but like i love a rivaini rogue and an antivan crow. isabela would approve probably. theyre both so down bad for the other for so long, with lucanis hopelessly pining and hakim pulling his hair out because hes been trying to fuck this man from day one but its not working!!! i feel like the moment he finally lets things go and is like idk if hes even interested is when lucanis pulls out the almost kiss scene. Agh. I wanna write more about just them later

Also spite is involved with rook, but not with neve. in general we know spite is gunning for rook from day one but i think with the whole like, mind inprisonment thing and hakim specifically having a whole thing about freedom, when spite (determination) can understand that as their main motivator, it makes him even more like. invested idk. and hakim has no real qualms about spite at any point after like. idk hes rivaini and they have seers like taash says so the possession aspect doesnt weird him out but i think after time spent in the crossroads n with emmrich and manfred n stuff he has a certain respect for spirits' personhood (ig smth that having seers is a good primer for too)

bellara and neve i think are so cute together and definitely have something going on i like them so much. especially with neve being the only non rook person from the veilguard at her brothers funeral? cmon now. idk they both ground each other in a way, bellara needs someone whos a bit more focused and realistic (if sometimes fatalistic) and neve needs someone to pull her out of her own thoughts, and theyre both so good at just. Listening to each other and appreciative of the other hearing out their long rambles and rants. bellara bounces off story ideas or talks to neve while she tinkers cuz it helps her balance her mind and neve talks out cases to bellara cuz it helps to say it to someone sometimes but bellaras brain makes connections in way completely different from her sometimes. idk. theyre a good balance 2 me.

also bellara and rook are pretty close and like. okay in the "someone will die" "of fun" couples they are both the "of fun" for neve and lucanis is this anything. idk.

also rook likes going out in the "elf squad" team of him bellara and davrin a lot and they all have really stupid conversations probably thats the vibe. theyre all very competent and stuff individually but as a trio cannot rub two braincells together to spark a flame. (Mostly rook effect. theyre a himbo i must confess)

speaking of davrin. davrin has Something going on with lucanis but its mostly just vague homoerotic tension and rook Really wants them to work it out so they can be in between it.

rook and davrins relationship is like 90% shenanigans by volume. so much worse is taash is involved too i feel like the three of them get in so much trouble. lots of insane/stupid/dangerous stunts probably . i just think putting a monster hunter with a questionable relationship with death together with two lords of fortune (one of which is also a dragon hunter) is asking for trouble

idk they come off as friends who get into insane shit together and bro out and have random intense introspective emotional moments when everyones tired or burnt out or drunk out their mind

the last 10% is just rook oggling him. if lucanis wasnt making him an honest man or whatever theyd go for davrin in a second but like in a no strings fwb kind of way that he used to do w ppl more often which i dont think would end great..?

hakim has also declared himself assan's godfather but if you asked davrin hed say theyre more like a very chaotic uncle, fine to babysit but leaves them with you all hopped up on sugar (thinking about the scene where rook riles up assan and manfred and then just leaves davrin w them like that)

taash and hakim have both decided this is my little sibling now kinda. like not Literal but ykno, queer found family kinda way. they have a lot in common (lords of fortune, rivaini but multicultural and finding the balance, trans of gender and figured it out alongside some of the other identity stuff, single parent that they lost pretty tragically, etc), and i feel like they just attach to each other very strongly. i also get the sense that theres like some strong community values w rivaini stuff in a way that works there too. also while being in the lighthouse theyre kind of the others strongest connection to back home. idk. i do find it funny they both treat the other like the little sibling cuz like, taash is like 20? & hakim is 33 so he literally is the older one, but also he is small and throwable and kind of the last family they have left by the end of the game so theyre pretty protective of them

Harding my love.... harding and rook were the ogs and theyre best friends, they know more about the other than the rest do abt them regardless of relationship for a good portion of time and i think that adds a whole angle to him helping her w the dwarf stuff cuz its like. i know you, but theres this whole new part to you, and i wanna help you figure it out. idk. they love each other a lot.

rook was really enthusiastic about harding and taash too cuz these are like. Two people who cares the world for finding each other and they're rly good for each other

Also i feel like at least once harding rookand varric had to crash at hardings moms house and she fussed over him So much and its so bizarre to him partly cuz hes never rly had a mother but its conforting in that way of just. idk if youve ever had a close friend with a parent who basically adopts you (esp as a queer person or if youre both diaspora in an area fairly isolated fron yr ppl) but its some of those vibes.

harding is unfortunately the one who dies in my game and i hate it but like. it makes sense unfortunately as upsetting as it is for her to die after finding herself w the titan stuff or happiness w taash or any of it, rook knows she doesnt regret it and hakims whole thing is freedom and choices again so like. that means something. he does feel really terrible for taash though and i think he'd travel to ferelden to deliver the news personally to her ma

finally emmrich. i personally like emmrich a lot n wanna like, engage him more in other playthroughs but i think hakim does kinda see him a bit as this weird uncle figure. elder queer who you love and respect but who theres a definite disconnect between. i do think like, compared to taash and most the other team members that hakim is waaaay less bothered by the necromancy stuff. its not rly. His thing but most magic isnt so its fine. also i think he sees them a bit like. most of thedas find rivaini seers super weird so he kinda figures its a bit similar. & emmrich kind of sees spirits' personhood in a way that even the other party members dont fully and rook respects that a lot. idk he and emmrich both find the other like. Charming and intriguing if a bit strange but not like terribly so, and never enough to hinder their support of the others endeavors. hakims eyes do glaze over a bit despite his best efforts tho whenever hes in a team with both emmrich and bellara. he tries to stay engaged but nostly he asks occasional clarifying questions that furthers the infodumping and unfortunately his brain is very small

also rook loves manfred he is very attached. obv brought manfred back, hes trying to teach him wicked grace and emmrich is wary of hakim being...not the best influence but is indulging manfreds curiosity lmao

Also ofc emmrich here ends up with strife. this is already a million miles long w/o getting into npcs but rook is in full support of old man yaoi. they check in on and tease emmrich frequently

[ungirthed]

i guess i have a lot of thoughts wow. i could bombard friends with this but i'm trying to stay off twitter unless i need information on the world immediately not hrs later so i am talking to myself. journaling or blogging for you is so weird who tf are u supposed to address. i never get it right in my physical diary lmao.

what i loved the most about atla was the characters. i think this is true for a lot of media (i think i hate this word lol)...art? idk. but not always! what makes people stay for something subpar is characters i think but...

for me, besides harry potter the character, the world of HP is much much much more interesting and thought out than the characters. i wasn't as into HP as most people—and thank fucking god now. fuck that cunt—but i still loved the series at the time. however, looking back at the fic i read when i'm bored: it's much more the atmosphere created, my age at the time, and the luck jkr had with the films since young millenials grew up with that. we sensed and felt that world as the books were coming out and seeing kids who were our age or a little older to represent that. the politic of the world suffers some of the same things that atla does tho.

anyway for characterization, i think the female characters in atla, and the shackles that are less oppressing when it comes to gender and sexuality, lend to it. this is the beauty of drawing from something not set in western conceptions and legacies that bog these categories down. these are some of the best female characters i have seen for kids particularly with relationships that aren't defined by men (which is why the live action is insulting lol). at least in the way where these women, when tied to men, are trying to remove those shackles and prove themselves.

but i can't laud any bullshit conception of pre western colonialism. the much less controlling, paternal, religious way of monitoring gender. the "morality or culture police" aka dai li are this function. the idea of laws steeped in "what is right" "what one must do". that is not exclusively western. conceptions of personhood emerge for ordering. man/woman may not existed but there was passive (vagina) and active (penis) then dredges (poor, "sexual deviants" on a skewed gender pattern who are poor).

obviously the oppression via gender was present, because it has to be, because the ordering of the world....imperialism is the contradiction. race-class (non un-tangleable but we can't call this [racial] capitalism bc they didn't live in capitalism but still trash. feudalism, slavery, etc). colonialism doesn't magically just appear and terrorize. it preys off of existing ills and wants. so the systems are there—the books writing about the freedoms one supposedly had and the differences one supposedly had before we were conquered is too easy.

still, i think having its own jumping point for gender and subsequently sexuality (non specific as to what that jumping point is) facilitates knowing women qua women. kiyoshi is so fucking cool and i wish i had more with her. i may read the books because i love everything about what she stood for even though she's deeply misunderstood which is why i think i love mai. excited to think about that more.

and even if you don't necessarily connect with these women—i struggled with azula because i think writing her was too easy because of the problems i'm going to think about more and i definitely struggled with katara but that is written in and because i identify with her and admire her immensely—

tangent: the bravery of these kids is insane. watching it i was like they are so fearless, so brave, so understanding of discipline and sacrifice. so human. i want to harness that. in their world death is hard, it is awful, it is sould-wrenching, but they know the meaning of life. in their world fighting, arrests, imprisonment are prices they pay for fighting. it is normal and the reason is because they know this is struggle and the more normalized struggle becomes, the more they can rely on each other, the less scared they are. they are comfortable with danger (and mischief heh) and that is so fucking important and valuable. also their attempts at self-governing and anarchic-communal living and ways of interacting. but anywho..

the fire nation girlies rship is very true to how women will interact esp from that environment. it's expected of them to have this clash and it's insulting when people believe those clashes are over boys and men. they can be but they aren't. only time that was defined was when meng called katara a floozy which i actually disliked. it was fine in terms of funny haha if i was 11 (which i was at the time lmao) but even back then i'd be like wtf. to be fair i was very very very willful over being a girl growing up because uhhhh patriarchy. that's not to say women or anyone else are off the hook. never lol. and we are allowed to be annoying.

another thing is they don't want these girls to be "just as" like men. their conceptions are shallow bc the world has told us that's what feminism is but it doesn't suffer from as much bullshit bc of their attempts at self-governing and fashioning. of resistance via respect, support, camraderie, disagreement, tension, and love. azula shows what happens when you try that bullshit.

From Ursula K. Leguin's (anarchist queehn) 1983 Mills College commencement speech:

I know there are men graduating, and I don’t mean to exclude them, far from it. There is a Greek tragedy where the Greek says to the foreigner, “If you don’t understand Greek, please signify by nodding.” Anyhow, commencements are usually operated under the unspoken agreement that everybody graduating is either male or ought to be. That’s why we are all wearing these twelfth-century dresses that look so great on men and make women look either like a mushroom or a pregnant stork. Intellectual tradition is male. Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language. The words are all words of power. You’ve come a long way, baby, but no way is long enough. You can’t even get there by selling yourself out: because there is theirs, not yours. [...] The war-games world wasn’t made by us or for us*; we can’t even breathe the air there without masks. And if you put the mask on you’ll have a hard time getting it off. So how about going on doing things our own way, as to some extent you did here at Mills? Not for men and the male power hierarchy — that’s their game. Not against men, either — that’s still playing by their rules. But with any men who are with us: that’s our game. Why should a free woman with a college education either fight Machoman or serve him? Why should she live her life on his terms? I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.

this whole speech is amazing. she's wrong on the "it wasn't made for us" because it was but that's a complex thing and she's white so. also one of my fav lines from zuko is when he tells aang he will fail. it was helpful even if the characters didn't think so. it was helpful, extremely so, and even to me at 32. the idea of failure kills me. my favorite quote on that intensity is "the only penalty for failure is death". zuko knows failure. he's a failson lol and we will always know it. but that is ok. failure is a part of life. it isn't' to be despaired. try it again. and again. and again. this is building a life. fix it. there's a quote from the show about the solution being fixing the problem. how do we fix it?

and i don't think the show could answer that completely without linking it to some otherworldly ideas of life and outsized evil. the problem with bridging real life history in media is that we-the-viewer live in the real world.

the lack of specificity of the world of atla was simply confusing. i don't know what the nations entail nor do i understand the idea of it being the world. they had to speak english obviously but i wish they had found something similar that they do with anime in establishing that there is a lingua franca—not bc of colonialism cos it would be impossible without acknowledging languages themselves and this nebulous asian world wouldn't have had that—but that there are indeed differences and limitations or what it means culturally. i think they mentioned language but not often.

for the world they made: the fire nation could be chinese or japanese (i understand they use chinese in the atla universe and i'm assuming that's bc it is the linguistic root for krn and jpns?) and if japanese it would make sense to enforce that via language. i could be getting my history wrong as i am but a humble negro with some knowledge of this wrt culture, resistance and anti-colonialism but i hope i'm in the ballpark...regardless all the resistances are the same in a good way

[lycanthrology]

@thebourneultimatum OK for some reason, Tumblr won’t let me edit the original ask so I’m doing it like this instead. I got deleted while answering this ask yesterday so maybe it’s connected. Maybe staff really hates Jason Bourne. Or they’re messing with me on Crow’s birthday 😔

Jason Bourne Crow Armitage similarities because we are being so normal on tumblr dot com

Warning for discussion of abuse

Let’s start with @vonkarma2 ‘s revolutionary checklist:

Jason and Crow’s narrative arcs both focus on identity and personhood. They both have their identities destroyed and rebuilt to fit a manipulative organisation’s ideals. Jason feels a big disorientation and struggles to piece together the events of his life and what things make up his ‘real’ identity. Crow ‘willingly’ gave up his old identity and is very aware of his decision at all times.

Crow is actually a rank and not a name. His first name is Lewis, but he’s become so tied to his role as a Knight of the Order of Crows that he almost entirely sheds his old name. Other people began calling him Crow in day to day conversation then over time he accepted it for himself. He’s become so tied up in what he is that he’s forgotten who he is. He’s so detached from the world that Lewis came from that he’s a completely different person in almost every way.

There’s also a lot of conflicting feelings for him wrt his name because while Lewis is his birth name, it reminds him of his mother and that’s very upsetting because he loved her dearly and feels like he betrayed her (<- this is more complicated than that. i won’t talk about it here), and the only people who use it for him in modern day are abusive. But Crow as a name isn’t a ‘real’ name. It was given to him because people couldn’t be bothered to call him anything else. It’s like Soldier or Captain or Officer. Very formal, no personalisation. He isn’t anything outside of the rank.

Also, it’s an animal name. He’s the only character (besides Hollyhock and Baize <- it’s different with her I won’t talk about it here) that doesn’t have a ‘person name’. In the text, he’s consistently likened to different animals. Specifically domestic or prey animals. I know Jason gets related to a dog in the films and I think he has a similar situation where his relationship to different names and identities get complicated and each moniker ends up kind of like their own compartmentalised person.

It’s almost the same situation as this post you made:

+ some animal metaphors i found quickly

So I’ve still only seen the first film. I’m sorry. So tell me if I’m getting this wrong. Jason is dehumanised and treated like a living weapon by Treadstone. They use him for their own gain, while fearing what he’s truly capable of. They have lethal contingency measures in place, in case he turns on them, or deserts. Treadstone created everything that Jason Bourne is, then realised they’d done too good of a job. It’s all very Crow.

Idk how much you know about him so sorry if I’m covering old ground here but Crow was raised in an environment that places humanity on an impossibly high pedestal. There’s a whole political history about this that I won’t go into here. Crow is a werewolf. But the differences between the two species are so slight, it’s almost negligible, aside from the obvious. Crow’s job is to kill other werewolves to ‘protect’ humans. Again there’s political and social history around this that I won’t go into. There’s guidlines and procedure. Think like K from BR2049 being a replicant that kills other replicants, so is ostracised from both humans and replicants. That’s Crow’s situation. He can’t find comfort from either humans or werewolves, because both groups despise and fear him. He’s a very isolated, lonely man which made him vulnerable to manipulation.

An irl of mine said that it’s as if he never fully woke from the Dream and everyone around can tell there’s parts of him that got left behind and that unnerves them like uncanny valley style. They can automatically tell something isn’t quite right. I wanted to hit her with a tire iron

From a young age, Crow was groomed to believe that he was specifically chosen by a werewolf deity because of his heritage. One of his ancestors was leader of a prestigious cavalry rank called the Order of Crows in the fifteenth century, so Crow is excited to follow in his footsteps. He’s led to believe its his prophesied destiny to take up his great-great-whatever-grandfather’s mantle. It isn’t. He’s being actively manipulated by a man called Harry Dashwood. Dashwood uses Crow as a political pawn to get ahead and become sworn in as the Prime Gardener <- the highest political/theocratic rank a werewolf can hold. He has his own agenda that Crow isn’t privy to.

Over time, Crow recognises that he’s being kept in the dark and wants to find a way out somehow, but there’s no real way he can leave without putting himself in serious danger. A lot of people want him dead (and rightfully so most of the time. he is a serial killer) and he’d never be safe without the Sanctum’s protection. Like with Jason and the CIA, the Sanctum itself would become overtly hostile towards him and organise their own ways of recapturing or killing him if he went rogue

When Crow becomes uncomfortable or feels threatened, he talks in metaphor to distance himself from the real situation. He gets stressed and falls back into different scripts or parrots things he’s been told in the past. He says what he thinks people want to hear rather than what he actually wants to. Crow’s go-to exclamation is ‘Equipoise’s mercy’ and the only other character that says that is Dashwood.

This got very muddled at the end. I could say a lot, lot more but I think it would be completely illegible. Whatever. Does any of this make sense? I just wanted to post and get it over with.

To conclude: