#long goddamn post

[hinamie]

long way home

[monakisu]

lawlight toxic yuri i never posted

[knifearo]

ultimately when it comes to shipping and fandom space treatment of aspec characters i just don't accept "aro/ace people can still date/have sex" as an answer from nonaspecs. like yeah. mhm. okay. now i think we both know that you're not saying that out of real interest in the diversity of aspec experiences. so you can turn in your seventeen-page essay on why and how you plan to examine this character's aspec identity within the context of a romantic or sexual relationship complete with evidence from canon and peer reviews from multiple aspec people within the next week or i'm putting you in the pit from the edgar allen poe story

[lelelego]

waiting and waiting

[synchodai]

When I say Tyland Lannister is my favorite character...

I am being 100% dead serious. Here is why I prefer this seemingly average nobleman over the many many many fan favorites in Fire and Blood.

Tyland Lannister is a second son in a story about second sons. Whether his feelings on this are as strong as Aemond's or Daemon's, we never know for sure in the books, but it's obvious that he's subservient to a mirror image of himself who only has more authority because of a few seconds separation between twins. It's a great display of both the arbitrariness and rigidity of succession.

His initial role in the Dance is as the master of coin for the greens. He's depicted as a typical Lannister: charming, comely, and cunning. He did what any savvy accountant would do and divided the crown's treasury amongst different allied regions for safe-keeping, ensuring that if King's Landing were sacked, their enemies wouldn't loot their coffers dry and they'd still have plenty of gold for their war efforts.

And of course, King's Landing gets sacked. Tyland is put in the black cells and ordered to be tortured by Rhaenyra to extract the gold's whereabouts. Winter is coming, people are starving and rioting, her army is dwindling, so she desperately needs that gold. Tyland is gelded, maimed, disfigured, and blinded but the torturers get nothing out of him.

Mind you, this man has been a rich, pampered bureaucrat all his life and he endured all that without breaking. When Aegon II releases Tyland from those cells, he has no fingernails, his eyes have been gouged out and/or sewn shut, this man who was once known for his good looks doesn't look human anymore — but he still manages to maintain his wits so much so that he plays an important role after the Dance.

Even with Rhaenyra dead, there are still armies raising their banners for her eldest surviving son, Aegon Trois. Tyland tells Adult Aegon to kill Child Aegon because obviously, the latter threatens the former's claim and Tyland's understandably angry over what his mom did. Aegon Dos is like, nah, I'll keep the boy hostage instead — that'll keep the armies at bay more than outright killing him.

So Tyland volunteers to go to Myr to hire sellswords for Aegon 2 since their armies are pretty much kaput after six years of this civil war. Tyland is blind at this point I remind you — there is a huge chance this man will never get to go home again. But he does it anyway, because even after years of fighting, he keeps his unwavering loyalty to the monarch he declared for.

Aegon II dies while Tyland is in Myr, and Tyland goes back to Westeros just in time to see Cregan Stark use his powers as the new Hand to marry Aegon III and Princess Jaehaera to unite the green and black sides. Cregan dusts off his hands, says my work here is done, warns the boy king not to trust anyone, then leaves for the North for everyone else to sort this mess out.

Now comes the part where Tyland shines as a character. He becomes the Hand of Aegon III and when you see his policies detailed in the book, it's clear that his goal is focused on repairs and renumerations. After what happened to him, he has every right to be spiteful and bitter against the blacks, but instead he "claimed a curious failure of memory, insisting that he could not recall who had been black and who had been green." He abolished the heavy taxes imposed on the smallfolk, sent out gold to lords whose holdings had been devastated during war, and set out to rebuild the Realm's granaries and fleet. Cleaning up is a tedious, unglamorous job — and because of his monstrous appearance and former allegiances, Tyland was looked upon with distrust.

And yet, while other regents grasped for power and tried taking advantage of the 13-year-old King Aegon III, Tyland seemed to be different. If he wanted power he could have married his twin brother's widow and convinced the boy-king to route more resources towards Casterly Rock and the Westerlands. But he didn't.

Instead, he genuinely seemed to be a father figure to Aegon III.

Tyland Lannister, blind and crippled, had always treated the king with deference, speaking to him gently, seeking to guide rather than command.

And for that, many lords saw him as a weak Hand. But Aegon, who cared for very little and never laughed and was always sullen, seemed to care for Tyland.

When the plague ravaged King's Landing, Tyland dutifully prioritized it over quashing the Ironborn raids at Lannisport. He was the last person to become afflicted with the Winter Fever, and the king sat by his Hand's side during his final hours. When the council starts discussing who should be the new Hand, Aegon (the boy who rarely ever speaks) says:

I would have Lord Rowan as my Hand. Ser Tyland thought well enough of him to offer him my sister’s hand in marriage, so I know he can be trusted.

This boy trusted Tyland, the man who only years ago wanted him dead.

So it's easy to imagine that this man saw Aegon III as the boy he was responsible for, as the son he could never have because of what the war had done to him. Tyland Lannister was a broken man who despite losing everything, his king and his brother and himself, kept a broken Realm and broken boy together when everyone else swarmed like vultures just trying to pick at carcasses.

What motivated this man's loyalty for a boy whose mother mutilated him? Did he regret pushing for the death of an innocent child and this was his penance? Did this man who gave everything for his cause think that this boy was something that could still give all that sacrifice and tragedy meaning? Was the mercy and kindness he afforded an apology for the horrifying trauma that scarred this boy — did he feel responsible for his mother's downfall and the failure to save his uncle? Did his disfigurement and blindness allow him to let go of the man he once was and become someone capable of seeing the folly of pride and power?

Here is his obituary in Fire and Blood:

Ser Tyland Lannister had never been beloved. After the death of Queen Rhaenyra, he had urged Aegon II to put her son Aegon to death as well, and certain blacks hated him for that. Yet after the death of Aegon II, he had remained to serve Aegon III, and certain greens hated him for that. Coming second from his mother’s womb, a few heartbeats after his twin brother, Jason, had denied him the glory of lordship and the gold of Casterly Rock, leaving him to make his own place in the world. Ser Tyland never married nor fathered children, so there were few to mourn him when he was carried off. The veil he wore to conceal his disfigured face gave rise to the tale that the visage underneath was monstrous and evil. Some called him craven for keeping Westeros out of the Daughters’ War and doing so little to curb the Greyjoys in the west. By moving three-quarters of the Crown’s gold from King’s Landing whilst Aegon II’s master of coin, Tyland Lannister had sown the seeds of Queen Rhaenyra’s downfall, a stroke of cunning that would in the end cost him his eyes, ears, and health, and cost the queen her throne and her very life. Yet it must be said that he served Rhaenyra’s son well and faithfully as Hand.

Tyland wasn't extraordinarily badass, noble, or even skilled. He was an excellent politician but no way the best. But I think that's what makes him compelling to me — that he's this down-to-earth depiction of a POW, a war veteran by all accounts, trying to pick up the pieces and slowly glue what remains of the Realm and himself back into something vaguely human.

We tell so many stories about the glory, the tragedy, and the losses of war. But I think it's important and beautiful to tell stories of those bravely and optimistically choosing to keep living in the aftermath as well.

[lunar-wandering]

welcome back to our regularly scheduled monkies for pride everyone

bonuses of MK being tired of their bullshit;

[mushramoo]

Put Roxy in Sport mode

she is rapidly approaching your location

[teal-tealwren]

in the impact we become antimatter

faces :]]]

[mythtakens]

THE BEAR 3.05 → Children

[violet-moonstone]

once more defending my love, book!elphaba thropp

reading reviews of wicked and im seeing people say they hate book elphaba because she's "unlikable"

so many people love the feel good vibes of the musical while not seeing that they sound exactly like people who would have shunned elphaba at shiz for not being pleasant enough and making them feel unsettled instead of putting them at ease

I'm saying this because I find that people are often much more charitable towards fictional characters than real people -- and people IRL who have Elphaba's severe, unwavering personality and unwillingness to conform often face the same social stigma she did, no green skin required. Like yes, Elphaba was an outcast because she had green skin, but I don't think the green skin is the point of the novel. I think her being green is a visual manifestation of being so at odds with what you're "supposed" to be that people demonize you for it. Book Elphaba is queer and hinted to be intersex. I read her as neurodivergent, so this all tracks to me, and considering that other forms of oppression and stigmatization are very important themes in the narrative, I think the green-ness simply emphasizes to the other ways in which she's marginalized.

Trying not to go into the Wicked rant that I tend to do every few months but I feel it coming on

I'm all here for critiques of the novel, because it certainly has flaws, and I understand why people don't enjoy it -- but there is something funny to me about people wanting a narrative about looking beneath the surface to find true value but hating the version of that story that requires the most compassion to appreciate. Like the musical is fun and well-made but it does not require any effort to like musical Elphaba because she's conventionally attractive woman who's feisty and kinda quirky...oh and she's also green. And her being green matters more to the other characters than to us. We don't care that she's green (because we already know it would be wrong to judge her based on that) and the musical gives us no other reasons to judge her, so we don't really have to process any complex emotions.

(Sidenote, I think if book Elphaba were still green but more conventionally attractive, bubbly, and less political, she would not have been as much of an outcast -- at least not in her later adolescence. Her green-ness could have been a novelty or spectacle that she used to her advantage if she made up for it by being more palatable in other ways. Of course, she would never do this, because that's simply not Elphaba. She could never twist herself to be anything other than who she is, even out of social self-preservation.)

Book Elphaba is so much more prickly and unpleasant --and hell, so was I at the height of my social ineptitude and feeling like there was something so so wrong with me (because why for the love of God couldn't I just fit in and act the way the cool kids my age did).

Her unpleasantness and seriousness and insistence on talking about important things that make people uncomfortable are her green-ness imo. Those are the things that affect how we as the reader experience her, and we must experience her strangeness as well.

And while I understand that if the moral of the story is essentially "don't judge a book by its cover" then yes, you can tell a thematically sound story about a girl who is actually pretty cool but just happens to be green and talk about how she's ostracized simply because she looks different. That's a perfectly fine story -- but I think it can go much further -- because it's not only wrong to marginalize people who look different, it's also wrong to marginalize those who are internally different. Difference is persecuted whether its visual or behavioural.

Even if Elphaba weren't green, there are inherent aspects of who she is that prevent her from conforming to the ideal, both in her world and ours. And I think valuing her with all of those things in mind is a lot more rewarding than simply liking her despite the fact that she's green.

Anyway I love Elphaba Thropp and I don't think her being more palatable would have made the story better — it simply would have made it more popular, and I think on that at least, fans of both the book and musical should be able to agree is not an inherently better thing.

...

OK one last point, I saw someone saw they prefer the musical because it has more "girl power" meanwhile the book feels "obviously written by a man" and I just...dear god what a surface level take

Yes Gregory Maguire is a man (oh, the horror!), but he wrote the women in Wicked as people, without hand wringing about if they're likeable or pleasant enough. They are flawed and raw and not just there to make the audience feel warm and fuzzy. He writes about sexuality without making women feel like sexual objects -- I suspect because he also writes about the sexuality of his male characters (the women aren't just in the story to turn us on) and he himself is gay, so there may be less male-gaze going on than with a lot of men who write fantasy. Yes, characters are described in sexual ways, but this happens regardless of gender.

[ourfavoritetorturedwriter]

[shannonsketches]

thinking about gohan and vegeta and how their bond is underrated

the difference in their reactions to each other 😭

Gohan being the first one to step between Vegeta and Certain Death, twice, without an ounce of hesitation, and Vegeta saving him back despite his feelings about battle intervention.

Vegeta knowing Gohan's the best of all of them

Vegeta and Gohan both born prodigies assigned an unfair amount of responsibility to be Great and be a Saiyan Messiah(tm) way too young by a stubborn and proud if not (relatively) well-meaning father who didn't see any other option and I just think Gohan doesn't get enough credit as like. The first serious muscle behind Geets' personal growth.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

so REVENGE, HUH? or justice, if that makes you feel better. it tastes the same when cooked just right. 'I REALLY WANTED A BROTHER.' such a shame to burn a bridge you so desperately wanted to keep, especially when it wasnt even you who started the fire. especially when you hope that not a single fragment of that bridge ever washes ashore.[MAY IT ROT FAR FROM MY SIGHTS] an unfortunate loss! atleast he has his friends.

[puzzlevision]

the episode didnt broke me, i broke the episode

[himbionn]

Alek is either having an internal crisis looking at a beastie or they got caught making out by Volgar - both of which is equally probable. You decide.

[shima-draws]

Me, on Bluesky: Haha this is fun! I wonder since it’s so similar to Twitter why I never liked Twitter?

Me, trying to edit a post bc I noticed a mistake and realizing I can’t edit the post: Ah. That’s why.