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pessimisticpigeonsworld · 6 months

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HOTD has made many interesting choices in their adaptation of the story of the Dance. One of their favorite excuses for many of their questionable choices is "feminism". Why did they remove Alicent's ambitions and autonomy? Feminism. Why is Rhaenyra less proactive and hesitant? Feminism. Why are Daemon and Otto the primary active agents in the lead up to the Dance? Well women can't be in the wrong or violent, so feminism.

These choices are the farthest thing from feminist; they're sexist, end of story. Every decision surrounding the women of the Dance reeks of benevolent sexism. One of the most obviously sexist decisions made is the purposeful removal of female cooperation and friendship.

Rhaenyra in F&B has many female allies and friends. Her ladies in waiting loved her so much, one of them, Lady Elinda Massey gouged out her eyes at the sight of Rhaenyra's death. Lady Jeyne Arryn, Lady Alysanne Blackwood, and Lady Sabitha Frey/Vypren are just a few examples of ladies who fought for Rhaenyra (Alysanne and Sabitha literally fought in battles). Lady Fell chose death over betraying her oath to Rhaenyra.

Now, we haven't had any opportunity to meet most of these women I listed in the show. Lady Fell was portrayed as she was written in the book, a very minor character who simply foreshadowed how most of the realm would choose Rhaenyra over Aegon. Elinda Massey, however was reduced to an unnamed servant, not even a lady in waiting. Her treatment is an echo of one of my biggest issues with HOTD, the treatment of Laena and Rhaenys.

Laena was Rhaenyra's dearest friend in the book, in fact it's implied that they had a romantic relationship. Whether you believe that telling or not, it's undeniable that she and Laena were extremely close. They chose to betroth their children while they were infants, Rhaenyra flew to Laena's bedside during her final labor, and she stood vigil with Daemon over Laena's body.

All of that closeness and intimacy was removed in the show to make room for Alicent. So let's break that down: they removed a long and healthy relationship between two women and replaced it with a short-lived (in terms of screen time) friendship that quickly fell apart and turned into an intense rivalry. Reinforcing an old stereotype of female friendship: that it is entrenched in rivalry and toxicity and can quickly be turned to enmity. Alicent was so quickly and easily turned against Rhaenyra and it's even implied that she was jealous of Rhaenyra long before they became enemies.

Rhaenys in the book was an ardent supporter of Rhaenyra. She happily claimed Jace, Luke, and Joff as her grandsons, advised Rhaenyra to go to war, and gladly flew against Aegon and Aemond.

Meanwhile, in the show, Rhaenys was turned into one of Rhaenyra's rivals. She constantly challenged Rhaenyra's ideas, dismissed her as a naive child, disliked her children, and even considered backing the Greens. On top of that, they turned her into yet another "peaceful" woman. She advises against the war, and seems to continue to do so in season two. Rhaenys is virtually unrecognizable in the show. They chose to take a woman who tried to prevent a younger woman being wronged by the patriarchy the same way she was and turned her into a bitter woman who resents Rhaenyra (for most of the show).

HOTD claimed to have wanted to tell a story about how the patriarchy pits women against each other. That's all very well and good, but that's not what they actually did. They took a story where a woman is wrongfully usurped because of her gender and is supported by many other women and turned it into another tired female rivalry story.

Rhaenyra has no female friends aside from Alicent. Laena was turned from her dearest friend/lover into simply a rival for Daemon's affection. Rhaenys was turned from a supportive mentor and defender to someone who took out her resentment for the system on a fourteen year old who only starts to support her when she's proven "peaceful".

HOTD chose to perpetuate a harmful stereotype about women: that we constantly view each other as threats/rivals and can't have truly healthy relationships with other women. Rhaenyra had women who supported and cared for her in the book, in the show all she has is Alicent. A woman who abused and undermined her for ten years, raised her children to hate her, and usurped her. Every change HOTD made in the name of "feminism" solidified just how sexist it really is.

#rhaenyra targaryen #canon rhaenyra targaryen #laena velaryon #rhaenys targaryen #rhaenys the queen who never was #anti hotd #anti ryan condal #anti sarah hess #asoiaf #house of the dragon #team black #anti team green #anti alicent hightower

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sunny44 · 8 months

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The exes club

Pairing: Max Verstappen x ex!reader, ex wags x fem!reader

Warnings: ex wags.

Summary: Where all the ex wags are best friends.

Yourusername instagram post

Liked by @maxverstappen, @isahernáez, @charlottesiine, @luisinhaoliveira, @elenaberri, @katerinaberezhna and other 174829

Yourusername the exes club is reunited again

Ps: for sure the best part of ours relationship

Tagged: @isahernáez, @charlottesiine, @luisinhaoliveira, @elenaberri, @katerinaberezhna

Isahernáez I miss this so much

Yourusername and I missed you

Luisinhaoliveira love you babes

Yourusername love you more girlfriend

Maxverstappen I can see you’re having fun

Liked by Yourusername

Love4wags I love that the best wags are bestfriends

Mv33fan I miss y/n and Max together

User81 I hate the fact that y/n explicitly say that she doesn’t like the current wag

F1lovelywags

Model Y/n Y/L/N talking about the comments of her not liking the new wags.

Y/n was Max Verstappen's girlfriend until a few months ago when they decided to end their relationship.

She and the other ex-WAGs were often seen together in the paddock during race weekends, emphasizing that they were and still are best friends.

Fans are now commenting on her latest post, suggesting that she dislikes the new WAGs just because she shared that she and the other exes were out having fun.

Yourusername instagram stories

“It’s race weekend”

I was invited to attend the weekend in Monza.

It had been a while since I attended any races; it lost its appeal after Max and I broke up. We decided it was for the best, as my modeling career consumed all my time, just like his racing career did to him.

We no longer had time for each other, and it was driving us apart. So, the best decision for both of us was to take a break, which ultimately led to the end.

But here I was again, at a race, hoping everything would go well without any stress.

"Excuse me, Miss Y/L/N." I turned around to see someone from SKY Sports. "Could you give a brief interview?"

"Of course," I agreed, controlling to not roll my eyes as giving interviews was the last thing I wanted to do today.

"We saw your statement in your latest YouTube video regarding the comments on your posts. Do you have anything to declare?"

"As I said in the video, I'm not obligated to like anyone, even if that's what fans think. I don't personally know any of the girls, so the comments are unfounded, defamatory, and malicious," I said, looking into the camera. "I've always been friends with the other girls, and our friendship might have started here due to our ex-boyfriends working in the same field. But our friendship goes beyond that, so the fact that these so-called fans are bothered by something so trivial truly amazes me. Once again, I have nothing against anyone, so I ask you to stop trying to portray me as the villain just because you don't like me."

"Very well, thank you Y/n, for your words," I agreed and left.

I continued walking, stopped for a coffee, and on my way back, Daniel waved at me.

"Y/n, long time no see."

"Hi, Dani," I hugged him. "How are you?"

"Good, and you?"

"Good too, just the usual dramas."

"I saw; people don't have much sense.”

"Don't even talk about it. I don't know where people get this rivalry. It's not like I said anything about them in the post."

"Don't worry about it. Fans are just jealous because all of you dated who they wanted. The girls are getting hate now for dating them."

"Yeah, tell me about it," I sighed. "It's terrible for all of us. Max and I aren't even dating anymore, and people still hassle me."

"I can imagine. Heidi sometimes shows me some comments, and they're pretty nasty."

"Well, I need to go, but good luck in the race," I waved. Passing in front of the Red Bull garage, I was pulled inside, and when I saw, I was in Max's driver's room. "What the hell is this?"

"I wanted to see you," he said simply.

"And did you need to pull me in like you were kidnapping me?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you and I wanted as few people as possible to see."

"Why? Are you ashamed?"

"Of course not." He stared at me. "How are you?"

"Look, you didn't pull me in here to ask how I am, and I know it was your idea to invite me, even though you tried really hard to make it seem like it wasn't," I said, and he looked at the floor. "So tell me, why so much effort to bring me here?"

"Because I wanted to talk to you."

"You could have called me or sent a message."

"I know, but I needed to say this in person," I agreed and sat on his bed.

"All right, I'm listening."

"I wanted to apologize for my fans. I heard about what happened with your last post, and I didn’t wanted you to go through all this because of me."

"It's not your fault."

"Are you sure? The fans are mine."

"It doesn't matter; they're not your real fans if they're such nasty people," he agreed. "It's okay."

Max sighed, briefly averting his gaze before fixing it back on mine.

"Y/n, I need to be honest about the other reason I brought you here," I nodded, encouraging him to continue. "I still love you, more than I can admit. Seeing you dealing with all this pressure and drama made me realize that, even with everything that happened between us, I can't just let you go. Not again."

My heart raced, and a smile formed on my face.

"Max, I feel the same way. I think, deep down, we never stopped loving each other. Maybe it's time to give what we had a second chance."

He smiled back, sincerity reflected in his eyes.

"Y/n, I just want to do this the right way, without rushing, and make sure we're both ready." I nodded, feeling a profound sense of relief.

"I'm willing to give it a try, Max. After all, what do we have to lose?"

And in the end, I guess I put an end to the exes club.

Bonus scene!

Yourusername instagram stories

“Ops, I guess the exes club is over for me”

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mistchievous · 1 month

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This fandom is such a toxic cesspool. It's no wonder trolls like today's are being born from it. Like, sure. It's rage bait, but people are allowed to be upset about it. This fandom has fostered and continues to foster an environment where people like this feel emboldened. Where they feel like they can say things like this and do things like this and get not only negative attention but positive support as well. Because they expect certain segments of the fandom to find it funny. Or to even legitimately enjoy it.

Every fucking side of this has bad actors. If I never see the term BoB again, it'll be too soon. And the negative posts about Tommy are not simple statements of disinterest or dislike or critique. They're violent and vitriolic posts aimed specifically at a queer man. Like, no fucking shit they're going to make people feel unsafe. This isn't your normal ship war toxicity. This is disgusting. It's not the first time a love interest has been portrayed this way either. Some of the fics about Ana make my skin crawl to this day. She was portrayed as a rapist, a child abuser, a kidnapper, a murderer, etc. And while there were certainly legitimate discussions to be had about her character, so much of this went far beyond any of that.

And she wasn't alone. This fandom has a dark history in how it handles love interests. It's never been cute. It's never been funny. And sure, it's fiction. But fiction can be upsetting. Particularly when demonization of certain characters seems rooted in something vile.

It's fair for people to be frustrated and hurt and upset that the worst of this fiction is being spawned because people encourage it with their so-called "jokes" and with callous behavior. That trolls are being born who are willing to risk triggering CSA survivors and more by disregarding fandom norms like basic fucking tagging.

The amount of hate being thrown around casually by some and dismissed easily by others is mindboggling at best and horrifying at worst.

We can do better than this.

#mist speaks

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incomingalbatross · 7 months

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I have a Theory that good writers drawing from their own childhoods have a tendency to accidentally create fans who dislike their fictionalized siblings. I have a further theory that this comes from A) portraying their own childhood feelings too immersively and B) forgetting their audience doesn't automatically love their sibling just from meeting them.

My biggest example is Gravity Falls, because I really feel like this is what happened there. Alex Hirsch is good at making us buy into Dipper's angst and weird twelve-year-old problems like they're actually serious. At the same time, crucially, he assumed his audience didn't need to be convinced that Mabel was a treasure and a delight in the same way that they needed to be convinced Dipper was a good kid. Is it not obvious from meeting Mabel that you should love her??

I also have a suspicion that this is going on in the early Little House books (I had to get old enough to read the later books before I stopped disliking Mary) and in Little Women (I remember how viscerally relatable Jo's feelings are in the book-burning scene and with the Europe trip, even though she's not in the right in either case). In both cases, we get various sibling hurts portrayed - and portrayed well - through the lens of the person who feels unjustly afflicted. Childhood and teen injustice hurts, and it's easy for the reader to enter into those perceived grievances with a lasting bias. But I don't think Laura or Louisa intended that! They loved their sisters! They knew their own younger selves were brats sometimes! They just forgot their readers (especially as kids) might not automatically share these ideas.

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antianakin · 3 months

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Hey, I have a question to ask, and I'm gonna ask this to a few others cause I'm not a huge Star Wars expert on this.

Ever since The Acolyte aired, the jedi have been portrayed more as space cops. But, since when were they space cops? I thought they weren't like that. Am I wrong?

They AREN'T space cops, you're entirely correct, it's Leslye Headland who is wrong.

Here's the thing you have to understand about Leslye Headland and fans like her: they will claim to their dying day that they love the Jedi while sitting there talking about how the PREQUELS Jedi specifically were awful failures who doomed themselves by being heartless assholes who failed and/or abused Anakin and helped bring about the destruction of the Republic because they were simultaneously too political and not political enough.

When the Prequels first came out, they were received... poorly... by a large chunk of the adult audience. And it became a THING to hate the Prequel trilogy for a long time. After a while, people started deciding they didn't want to hate the Prequel trilogy, but they didn't actually LIKE some of the things in the films that were different from the legends canon that had already existed for years (primarily the way the Jedi had been interpreted), and so they chose to come up with interpretations that allowed them to "like" the Prequels better. The primary one that's become so popular as to basically end up considered the actual real intended message of the films is that the Jedi had become corrupt by the time of the Prequels, they were too old-fashioned and strict and stuck in their ways (specifically in that they forbid their members to love and were beholden to the Senate) and that this allowed Palpatine to win and Anakin to be seduced to the dark side, so they're the REAL villains of the entire story and the audience is SUPPOSED to dislike them.

In fairness to these fans, there IS a theme in the Prequels of an institute that's supposed to stand for peace and goodness being corrupted into an organization that is run by fear and greed. It's just that the institution in question is the SENATE, not the Jedi. And we spend a LOT more time with main characters who are Jedi, going out and doing cool fun Jedi adventures, than we do in the Senate with any of the known Senate characters doing political things. The only Senate character who could be considered a main character in the Prequels is Padme and a LOT of her more political scenes got cut from the films in order to focus on Anakin's story instead. Even in TCW, most of Padme's "political" episodes and storylines just devolve into action adventure plots instead. So it isn't hard to understand why people focused in on the Jedi and assumed that the story was ABOUT the Jedi rather than the politicians and picked up on a theme about corruption that was very much THERE and just misapplied it. But it's still wrong.

Leslye Headland appears to be one of those fans. A LOT of Star Wars fans of a certain age tend to follow this particular headcanon. Dave Filoni is another one of them, despite his reputation as George Lucas's "padawan" and the person who understands Star Wars the best after Lucas (spoiler alert: he's not).

So what we're getting in the Acolyte is a VERY intentional critique of the Jedi becoming more political I guess, more beholden to the Senate, and therefore becoming more like "space cops" instead of... I don't know... space Knights of the Round Table maybe? I think there's this concept that the Jedi should be more free spirited like... fairy god parents wandering the galaxy just handing out random miracles to worthy people and smiting the unworthy or some shit instead of being intergalactic ambassadors for the Republic, helping to resolve conflicts with legal backing and power.

This is something that's been around for DECADES now. It's in plenty of other books and comics that have come out during and since the Prequels, it's in TLJ, it's in TOTJ and TOTE, it's in the Ahsoka show, and now it's in The Acolyte. And it's obviously floated its way around fanfiction plenty, too. It's almost impossible to avoid if you talk to any other Star Wars fans from that age group (and even honestly fans YOUNGER than that age group because a lot of the older fans basically taught their children and younger siblings to hate the Prequels or that the Prequels were about the corruption of the Jedi, or younger fans just picked it up via osmosis if they spent almost any time within fandom the way I did). But it's becoming a thing that newer shows are really hammering in as if it's real canon. Headland genuinely believes that it is and we know that to be true because she's flat out SAID THIS in an interview she gave before the show aired. She 100% believes that the point of the Prequels, George Lucas's intended message in those films, was that the Jedi were corrupt and had fallen from grace. Her show is written with this misinterpretation of the films as a foundation for how she portrays the Jedi.

And that's how you get the Jedi suddenly feeling like "space cops" when that's so very clearly not what they are in anything Lucas ever created.

#star wars #jedi #pro jedi #anti leslye headland #anti headland #leslye headland critical #headland critical #anti the acolyte #anti acolyte #the acolyte critical #acolyte critical #the acolyte negativity #acolyte negativity #acolyte salt #the acolyte salt

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aliteralsemicolon · 1 month

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what do u think about Maeve as a character and as a love interest for Spencer?

Well she definitely exists. She was definitely a canon love interest 😐 I choose to forget a lot of details from that whole incident on purpose. Talking about this is just beating a dead horse bc I think my opinion is just a general consensus.

but here's what I think anyway:

The storyline

I won't talk about it for long because I feel like it's obvious, but the whole situation was handled so poorly. It kinda just showed up out of no where on one random peaceful day. What do you mean Maeve didn't want Spencer to get the BAU involved because 'it could endanger him'? Babe, he's already in danger just by being in a relationship with you, but I guess that just doesn't fucking matter. Also, what the fuck do you mean that Spencer just went along with it? I'm sorry? Spencer Reid, who becomes very impulsive when it comes to the wellbeing of his loved ones? He just agreed to sit back? Not even investigate in his free time?! By the time ZUGZWANG happens, we as viewers know how the BAU operates. The BAU was more than equipped to successfully deal with Diane. We know what they're supposed to do in a stalker situation, but for some reason they ignore nearly every goddamn protocol and then they're surprised when Maeve dies??

Maeve as a character

Listen, I don't dislike her because she was Spencers love interest. I'm actually somebody who's very keen on love interests for Spencer. I want that poor man to be happy. I dislike Maeve because she's one of the worst recurring characters on the show. She's very morally annoying. Not grey, annoying. Maeve is a geneticist. Geneticists, for the most part, study gene interactions and evolution. She has no fucking business diagnosing and prescribing shit from one look at an MRI scan. I don't even wanna talk about how medically inaccurate the migraine bit of the storyline is. Somehow it gets dumber. I don't know what she said for sure, but I know for a fact that she said something like she had to get to know Spencer because of how interesting he seemed. FROM HIS MRI SCANS?! Are we ignoring how unethical this is? Please, I cannot fucking do this. But there's more. Apparently she loves Spencer. She says as much at the end of a phone call AND literally writes that one love quote in the Narrative of John Smith for him. She loves Spencer, but fails to mention how she was engaged literally not long before she met him. And she doesn't feel an ounce of guilt or sadness when he ex-fiancé (whom she also supposedly loved) gets shot in the head in front of her? Also there's certain times where she just comes off as very emotionally manipulative, but in the dumbest way possible. The thing is that I don't even hate her because she's like this. Some of these things actually give the character potential to become a really interesting and complex character. It's because she tries to come across as the opposite. The writers try very hard to portray her as an intelligent, good and innocent character, but everything she does is very selfish and stupid. Personally, if I was a geneticist and some fucker reached out to me to ask about his MRI scans I would redirect him to a fucking neurologist or something.

Maeve as Spencer's love interest

She's introduced to us a mysterious woman over the payphone. We get glimpses of her body in a dark room and we watch her fiddle with things while walking around, but we don't actually get to see her face until later. Her voice is meek and sultry. If this sounds like some wattpad introduction then that's because that's literally what it is. Maeve is introduced to us in a very Y/N esc way. The whole relationship is very much wattpad story written by a 14YO back in the day. Wait I take that back, even fucking 14YO's writer better shit. At least their stories were worth ruining your sleep schedule for. I can't even be upset, Maeve is literally not the first female character portrayed this way on the show *cough* Jane Seaver *cough*. MGG didn't want Spencer to have a love interest so Maeve was written to die. I just wish they at least tried to do the characters and the story justice. Viewers couldn't even connect to Maeve because she was just thrown at us one day and then literally killed a second later. Even if she wasn't unlikable I find it very hard to imagine that I would've cared about her death, because I literally had no time to bond with the character. It's also just very awkward when she shows up after her death because I feel disconnected with Spencer's emotions. Mentally, I know that she's his first great love or whatever, but emotionally, I do not give a fuck. She does not match Spencer's freak. What she is, essentially, is a female version of Spencer (but through the male gaze because she's a woman so ofc she's slightly dumber and Y/Nified). Spencer is one of the most complex established characters on the show and Maeve as a partner for him is just very boring. And even if she's was interesting, I PERSONALLY FEEL LIKE the actors have no chemistry together. He's had more chemistry with love interests that lasted for a way shorter period than he does Maeve. Ironically, the most chemistry he has is with the one person he despises the most (Cat Adams) and I think that speaks volumes. God, I wish so badly that they utilised the bar tender he did a magic trick for or the forensic scientist in that bombing episode.

Again, I'm pretty sure most of the fandom feels this way. I'm fairly confident that I might have more to say, but I cannot be bothered anymore.

#; discusses #; answers #✉️ from anon #spencer reid #criminal minds

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ae-neon · 28 days

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I have a theory about the discourse. Not any specific discourse but about the canon-obsessed side and how they react to things.

When you're happy with canon and you come to participate in online fandom, there's not much to talk about. There's only so many times you can come online and look at fanart or post a quote you like before you get bored. If you're happy with the way it is, you have nothing to add. Look at Star Wars or Harry Potter, they're passionate about the world and want to get into the details and theorize, expand... they're not being negative (well sometimes they are) but they're also not in canon's clutches. That creativity, when you have something to add to the canon as a fan, determines your participation in fandom. That's what separates fandom from a casual fan, who is happy to put down the book at the end and move onto the next one.

And since ACOTAR is a book fandom, it's not like there are gif makers or other neutral, canon compliant activities to occupy your time, especially if you refuse to learn art or start writing fic.

So what do they do? Get online and start drama. Go after people who have any criticism about media they like, or even go after the people who are making their own, positive content (and aren't posting criticism) simply because it isn't canon compliant or they don't like it. That's how you get people calling all Tamlin stans "antis" even if they don't post anti content. And on that topic, it's not even enough for something to be canon-compliant, it also needs to be canon-compliant in the right way. You have to like x characters and dislike y characters and if you do draw/write fic about something based in canon it needs to be portrayed with the same narrative that exists in canon. So no positive Tamlin content allowed, even if there were positive moments of him in canon. Everything Nesta did is wrong because SJM said it's wrong. And if you disagree you misread the books. It's even in the ship war! The only explanation for that much animosity over three ships that are that boring is that they're all obsessed with canon/what will be canon. Every side of the ship war refuses to entertain the idea of simply shipping something because they like it, that's why they're on here three years after ACOSF still arguing over whether or not Elain looks good in black.

TL;DR canon obsessed people have zero creativity and the only thing they have to contribute to fandom is being a self appointed cop

I think you're absolutely correct, the three sides ship war being rooted in who is right rather than what they like really hits

The funny thing is that canon is so threadbare it adds to the sense of it being almost impossible to write non-canon without doing so much more work

Like the Archeron parents and the KoH don't even have names and across her courts there are no language groups to signify a general trend for naming conventions, geographically we know as much about the continent as Prythian etc etc. but we know Velaris, the CoN and Illyria, and the IC all have juuuuust enough background and fridged associations to play with so that's the safezone

Canon even has a perfect built in oc placement for IC fans in the completely empty space that is Rhysand's sister

And the threat of harassment as well as the weird puritan standards breeds this hyper sanitized facade where "non-canon in the right way" fans and antis alike are, funnily enough, all forced to tread lightly and stick to similarly approved non-canon content

The Nyxlin backlash is proof enough of that. A sudden wave of disingenuous moral grandstanding when the creators went out of their way to make it clear the acceptable parameters for content submission fell well within general and platform specific guidelines. And no one was being forced to participate or view content anyways

Like I mentioned in the post about people threatening to "redeem" Tomas Mandray, I have no interest in policing fandom (but I guess they see criticism of canon as exactly that) and if I didn't want to see that content I would simply scroll away or rant about it on my own blog if it really got to me. It would never cross my mind to harass a real person over a fictional character, especially anything as half-baked as an sjm character

But again, just like you said, a lot the fandom genuinely has nothing to do besides reblogging art and purity checking

My biggest gripe is the sense of authority it gives to SJM, we are almost forced to play along according to her rules when they don't just depict but validate racism, misogyny, homophobia, ableism, segregation and a general neo-liberal colonial mindset - a Zionist salad of fuckery

#anti sjm #anon asks #anti nessian #anti acosf #anti acotar #anti acomaf #anti acowar #pro tamlin #idk what to tag

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diaphin93 · 2 months

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The worst is that those Edelgard haters are bigoted ( misogyny is a very important part of it, but there's also so much casual racism, ableism and queerphobia, but I'm sure you've seen this better than I did :/ ) but they often believe themselves to not be, and so many of them try to make them like they're actually the one fighting bigotry.

For example, Edelgard has the biggest queer fanbase out of all the house leader and appear outside of the fire emblem fandom in sapphic online space ( hell she even had an irl drag performance ). But they can't really acknowledge that, because that would make them look bad.

So they pretend that actually the huge majority of Edelgard fan are straight men... But to pretend that, they have to play with reality. Edeleth is getting reposted really often in yuri reddit community ? That's because those community are actually all straight men fetishizing wlw. Edelgard is the only canonical bi lord? That's because they wanted to attract those straight men fetishizing wlw, so it's actually terrible male-gazey represention. Edelgard fanfiction are by the HUGE majority written by sapphic women? They'll conveniently only attack the one man that got his F!Edeleth fanfic popular. That guy actually has mostly sapphic and often trans reader? They don't mention it. He often talk about his own queer headcanon or analysis himself? They'll make shitty post on how those hcs or analysis are actually queerphobic.

And that's the same for sexism, racism and ableism. Edelgard is a character made for white straight men, so she's bad for minorities despite her own traits diverging from the norm: she's an acceptable target when you pretend to be against bigotry. Her fans are all white straight men, so they're acceptable target when you pretend to be against bigotry. ( And funnily enough, they never acknowledge when a non-negligible part of the fandom they're in, like Dimitri and Rhea, are full of straight white men )

But that's the problem, the huge logical issues they try so hard to bury, is that we're not actually white straight men. It's so alienating to have them talk about the bad white straight fans of Edelgard, while at the interacting with people like us. Like, did any of your detractors even ever genuinely acknowledged when you, a woman, accused them of incel like behavior without immediately scoffing at the accusation? Did they ever acknowledge that uncomfortable place of minorities in the Edelgard discourse, like they do so often with Rhea or Dimitri to portray themselves as fighter against bigotry?

They erase minorities in the fandom, but they pretend to fight for them.

And the worst is that they don't even really fight against bigotry in the fandom at all. There's so many racist, queerphobe, ableist, misogynist in part of the fandom like the Blue Lions. Hell some of them are very openly conservative or far-right! But they'll never attack those.

Even in the Edelgard community, where we do have small group of vocal straight white bigoted men like in Reddit... They don't actually do anything to them! Those guys are often just as busy fighting F!Edeleth and sapphic women in the community as they are engaged in the discourse. And the Edelgard haters, well, they don't like F!Edeleth and honestly they don't like sapphic women who like Edelgard either, so they have no interest in fighting them. Because they don't actually care about bigotry, they just want to shit on the character they dislike, not so rarely for bigoted reason on their own.

Hey, thanks for the message and sorry that I'm replying so late, started to write this up and then got distracted alot. And I feel you. I think many aspects of this whole Edelgard discourse and fandom Drama surrounding it are very symptomatic with issues in fandom in general, that can often be very hostile towards lesbians and sapphics in particular, due to the strong androcentrism that is visible across Fandoms. I think FE3H in this way represents somewhat of a microcosm of Fandom in on itself, due to the fact that Edelgard early on established herself as a fav of Sapphic and Yuri-centric communities inside Fandom, her most favored ships being w/w with m/w ships always being somewhat of a niche.

Like, Edelgards strong presence in the fandom as well as the preference of sapphic relationships surrounding her is quite an anomaly inside fandom which isn't very often seen and in my opinion the result of a perfect storm. I think what partially plays into it is probably t he way 3 Houses is structured, with the eponymous 3 Houses front and center and a chose your own Lord approach, which creats very much a faction system with this game and with it, encourages the development of communities centered around supporting their chosen Lord and House inside the broader fandom of 3 Houses. And the Black Eagles are just perfectly set up to draw out a strong sapphic and yuri fanbase for itself. There is naturally Edelgard as the central female Lord of the game herself, but I think what cemented it is having Dorothea next to her. Both of them are not only part of the, sadly rather small, cast of confirmed and unambigiously canonical queer characters with the ability to marry either Byleth, they also are themselves written in a way that would naturally draw sapphic audiences. Edelgard alone already fits right into typical tastes of both sapphic audiences and the more decicated fandom, being a canonically queer woman who serves as the central protagonist of her playable route and not only subverts traditional writing with her dominant, brunt and guarded personality, but also acts as a morally nuanced character with motivations strongly centered around the revolution against an oppressive religious institution and a heavy hitting backstory centered around themes of loss of abuse, loss of bodily autonomy and societal vilification. It doesn't hurt that her initial students uniform also strongly invokes an association to Utena if you look at her, even if it may happen unconsciously, who stands as one of the definitive icons of queer women and sapphic centric story telling inside japanese media. Her role is also close to the villainess genre, which is highly centered around a critical lense on the way female character usually are vilified and reclaiming them as empowered feminist symbols, often through the heroine subverting the predetermined narrative that sets them up against each other and chosing female solidarity and companionship with the villainess, which is basically the plot of the Black Eagles Route. The Narrative tries you to force siding against Edelgard and only through claiming authority and deepening their bond to Edelgard, can they defy it and side with her. With Dorothea, we probably have the most feminist character in the history of Fire Emblem, whose themes center highly around objectification and misogyny she faced in what hs implicitely a clearly patriachal society.

Both of them also have strong supports with the other two female members of the Black Eagles, whose personal themes go deep into patriachal abuse, misogyny and anxiety as well as xenophobia, imperialism and the loss of autonomy, both on a personal and national level. Them having these strong bonds with other women, but also female characters outside the Black Eagles, like Edelgard with Lysithea and Dorothea through their shared Paralogie with Ingrid, even if the laters support line is sadly cut short, creats an in short ideal set up a strong w/w centric community around the Black Eagles. With the Black Lions, with its extreme androcentrism, focus on male bonds and traditional Bishonen Design, drawing the traditional Yaoi but also het crowd, we have also a male supporting class who have strong queer subtext with each other, while also drawing in more non-conventional m/m shippers. Especially Ferdibert, due to Huberts more striking non-Bishonen features.

Sorry for the deranged long tangent and going so much offtopic, but I think it was interesting to go a bit into the factors that in my opinion lead to Edelgard and the Black Eagles having an by far above average w/w representation and appeal against the typical trend we see in more general non-female or sapphic centered media. And honestly, I think this is part of where the hatred comes from, because Edelgard and the Black Eagles just tick every box, but in a game that also features your typical straight white heterosexual with yaoi-bait possible Protagonist that draws Fandom attention, to which she stands in opposition. So it invokes hostility and ire, because it ultimately reveals the very centrist to conservative milktoast comforts of Fandoms that try to present themselves as bastions of progressive values and queer representation, when alot of m/m is less than an authentic representation of queerness and most often written around the comfort and gratification of a mostly cishet and in the case of western fandom also very white audience (look at how for example the m/m fandom on the Blue Lions side shuns Dimidue in favor of Dimilix, despite a much more tender relationship that can be read as romantic by the former). So they need to recontextualize Edelgard and her Fandom as actually not queer, as rightwing and reactionary but also engaging in the tactic of it being at one hand oppressively powerful and hostile but on the other hand also a niche delusional group that misreads the entire story. It is all to justify their own more conservative or centrist comfort zones and androcentrism, against a queer feminist Icon.

Though I think especially on Tumblr, what also goes into it is this need to recontextualize fandom into activism. We see this alot with m/m fandoms for example, where, what is male on male stories written not for a queer audience but for cishetero female consumption first and foremost, is treated as the forefront of gay activism. I mean, we saw it with the whole SuleMio vs Destiel Drama here, didn't we? Where bitter Destiel fans expressed the view that their Supernatural ship was actually a major influence in the push for queer representation and acceptance, up to claiming yuri gundam from japan owes everything to some male-centered buffy rip-off that featured less explicit queer representation than its predecessor did at the turn of the millenium. In 3 Houses, we also see this as treating opposition to Edelgard as some form of activism, framing her goals as imperialist or outright colonialist in nature and making the divine whiter than white dragon people who are the immortal progeny of a dragon goddess into a representation of every real marginalized ethnic group on earth...in a game that eschews racial allegories in favor of actually depicting xenophobia, colonialism and genocide against human PoC characters. Many of these arguments actually reveal how Edelgards detractors are basically just performative progressive activists focussing their advocacy on wars against fictional european-inspired powers inside a game, while also clearly just repeating leftist words that they picked up without an understanding of their contemporary political context. Again offtopic, but using terms such as imperialism in its contemporary political context or even worse, colonialism, for wars of conquest and ideals between fictional nations inspired by medieval european kingdoms and empires is asinine.

As you also hinted at Captain Flash, I think there is also a hugh double standart towards male yuri fans which bothers me. First off is blanked hostility and accusations of fetishization towards these groups always linked by transphobic collateral, due to how many closeted sapphic transfems first explore their identity and sexuality through the safe confines of w/w fiction and especially Yuri and this kind of rhetoric will inevitably damage eggs. Secondly is it hypocritical as it often comes from white cisheterosexual women who center their media consumption around the blatant objectification and fetishization of male queerness, with the Yaoi Genre having a shit ton of homophobic, heteronormative, misogynist and transphobic baggage. It also shows a clear lack of knowledge and insight into the culture surrounding Yuri in general, with these kinds of detractors usually projecting issues inside the yaoi community onto yuri. Yuri, as a genre, just never had a split between male and female creators that queer male japanese fiction had, which was traditionally seperated into the female dominated yaoi and the male lead bara or gay comics genre. Sapphic women were always a driving presence both as creators and consumers of the Yuri genre and are very well capable of policing fandoms against fetishizing misogynistic influences. It doesn't even fit into consumption trends, gooners, to name them very bluntly, don't engage with fanfiction, yuri asa broader yuri or shipping discourse, they are much more pragmatic in getting off and just straight up jump into porn.

I think its especially nefarious if we look at the queer community surrounding Edelgard. I mean, Monica at this point could be a transbian icon, because I have seen so many trans women strongly identify with her and build their fandom identity around her, because they can immerse themselves so deeply into her love and appreciation for Edelgard due to her being such an important comfort character for them. Edelgards most passionate fans are often also among the most vulnerable people inside this fandom, who feel inspired and comforted by her. Hell, even Captain Flash, who is often heavily slandered by Edelcritical crowds for the crime of writing a f!Edeleth fanfic often expressed in his authors notes how important and comforting Edelgard is to him, due to his own history of trauma and health issues.

Though I will also say, I'm against the idea of pushing the entire Blue Lions Fandom under the Bus and villify all of them. And even if I did just write some accusatory shit against Yaoi Fans, there is no understatement that in this case I talk about problematic trends I noticed inside the broader fandom discourse as well as the subsection of Yaoi Fans who engage over and over again in hostility against lesbians. At this point, I don't really think the people you complain about, which bother me alot myself, are really a majority of Blue Lions and Dimitri Fans, they are just very loud, pushy and aggressive and are good in talking as if they have any authority (look for example at this asshole who goes into his large somewhat orientalist and overall just stretching interpretations of the games supposedly deep buddhist themes and characterizes Edelgard as some evil seductress due to his own misogyny and media illiteracy). We shouldn't forget that Dimitri for many is just as much of a comfort character and inspiration as Edelgard is for her fans, due to his themes of trauma, mental illness, redemption and forgiveness which resonate strongly with them and their lived situation. I also think the very loud edelcrit community really worked towards poisening the waters and radicalize discourse, but overall I would personally assume that the majority of Dimitri Fans can understand and appreciate Edelgard as what she is in the confines of his route, a well-intentioned antagonist who in their point of view goies to far in her ambitions and whose ideals are irreconcilable with Dimitris. Which is true from the point of view AM operates on, just as Dimitri for an Edelgard Fan represents a good man who has fallen victim to the System and its manipulators Edelgard fights against. Theirs is a conflict of opposing ideals and perspective and I would say its where the game manages to execute its themes of connections and outreach as well as differing perspectives the best. Like, normal Blue Lions Fans ultimately agree with what Edelgard wants to archieve, because their reading is that Dimitri wants to archieve the same, they personally prefer his approach and road towards that goal. I think this is a point where people should be able to have fun with heated discussions but ultimately agree to disagree, its a very subjective matter ultimately.

Actually, I would say the worst detractors and most toxic individuals of the community are probably the church of seiros fans and the "Rhea did nothing wrong" crowd. Like, they can be among Dimitri, Claude or Rhea Fans, but those are usually those who try to force their own rather reactionary interpretations onto the community and engage often in rather racist, religious apologetics and pro-eugenics as well as pro-feudalism talking points and have this weird disdain for humans and human autonomy & liberation, as if they really immerse themselves mostly into the fantasy of being from some superior race, lol. Most of them have rather twisted and messed up interpretations of the world and the story which they are adamant about and usually they build their interpretation of the game around what they want it to be, namely being very pro-theocracy, anti-liberation and espousing the idea that humans need divine immortal beings to lead them, as well as often also being super Pro-Crest. I mean, one of the most infamous Edelcrit Fanfics is basically just full on pro-theocracy, pro-feudalism and pro-eugenics. Usually they have a strong hate boner against Hopes because it really ruins their personal headcanons of what the game is, lol. And I think many of them seem to have strongly jumped to the Engage bandwagon, which is closer to what they want out of 3 Houses, playing the idea of a divine dragon ruler straight and justified feudal bloodlines straight.

But yeah, I think I went into quite a few tangents here, I hope it doesn't bother you. If you have any more asks you can hit me up. Ultimately, I call them out when they engage in Incel and Misogynist behavior and otherwise just clown on these trolls. Its also just sad in a way, because its clear, that they constructed this idea of what they think the game is in their heads and everything that came out after te initial release of the game contradicts it.

#fe3h #edelgard positive #edelgard discourse

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saintsenara · 7 months

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if you are still doing ship game, thoughts on jily?

thank you very much, anon - i am always taking questions both on romantic ships and on characters' platonic vibes, the more unhinged the better.

although jily can't really be described in those terms, not least because their narrative purpose in canon is to be little more than blank canvases onto which harry can project as he goes through his series-long character arc, shedding his initial hero worship of james when confronted with the reality of his father's behaviour in order of the phoenix and starting both to fully appreciate lily's centrality to the course his life is taking and to see his dad with nuance as a real and fully-rounded person, flaws and all.

this narrative role means that the glimpses we get of them in canon feel kind of superficial - their bantering during snape's worst memory is basically high-school-teen-movie level, the snapshots of their life under lockdown in deathly hallows lovely and bittersweet but also just colour to a storyline which is already all of those things.

and this is not to say that i find jily uninteresting as a ship - i completely reject the common anti-jily position that they didn't really like each other, that they had nothing in common, or that their backgrounds made them incompatible [i'll expand on this below, but while i do think that their respective blood statuses and the impact of these on their relationship are worth thinking about, i loathe fics which portray james as chafing against his marriage because, as a pureblood, he'd be more comfortable with someone 'of his own kind'. this is bullshit, and there's far, far too much of it in this fandom]. my views on one of james' most frequent non-lily partnerships are well known, and i share the outrage many jily fans have for the way lily in particular is treated in a subfandom increasingly dominated by rigid fanon which prioritises giving depth to male characters [even if those characters are, in essence, oc's] and slash relationships over exploring the canon female characters, partnered or not.

but i do also find that a lot of jily falls into the same trap as much of the hinny i dislike - that is, a tendency to present as a sunshine-and-roses fairytale a relationship which is much more interesting if the things which canon implies [and which can be reasonably inferred outside of canon scenes from a canon coherent engagement with the text] might have introduced an element of dysfunction into james and lily's partnership are taken into account.

the shadow of the war is obviously one of these things. what role lily actually plays in the resistance is something which preoccupies me [she is never mentioned in canon to have taken a combat role - and i find it considerably more plausible that any attempt voldemort made to recruit her was at snape's request and connected to her potions prowess] particularly because, as we see in the way her death is memorialised in deathly hallows, the series regards the defence of the integrity of the nuclear family as a key aim for the good guys. how does she interact with james and his wartime role when she's pregnant, nursing, or in hiding for the vast majority of her time in the order? how does she feel about her husband being a soldier if she's behind the scenes?

indeed, what role james [and sirius] plays in the order is also something i'm obsessed with thinking about - not least because so much of the inherent tragedy of the marauders' storyline is caused by the fact that james and sirius think they're fucking invincible and that their plans to keep the potters safe are foolproof. it's entirely reasonable to read james and sirius as being pretty gung-ho about being paramilitaries - and my headcanon is absolutely that more battled-hardened order members didn't like them very much [moody does not, after all, seem massively fond of sirius] - and lily seems affected by this too [she's not holding her wand either!], and what they thought they were doing as 1981 rolls around is compelling to me.

james and lily's divergent backgrounds is also something i'd like to see explored more in fandom - not, as i've said, in the dull 'james should have married a pureblood' way, but in a way which deals with the fact that their relationship follows wizarding norms. molly weasley can blame the war all she likes, but [although i doubt this was jkr's intention] the evidence of canon is that witches and wizards marry and have children extremely young as a social standard, that couples generally don't live together before marriage, that divorce doesn't seem to be common, and that married women tend not to work. lily - a mother at twenty and, therefore, presumably married at nineteen - is coming of age, then, in a magical world which thinks about gender very differently from the muggle world of the 1970s, and i think that tension is worth exploring.

[similarly, the way in which her marriage is self-protective - lily gains a pureblood name and the social cachet which comes with it at a time when she's in rising danger on account of her birth - is something i think it's worth looking at when considering the pairing.]

there are other flashes of dysfuntion which i adore thinking about in relation to jily - lily's relationship with the other marauders [you can pry the reading that sirius resents her for stealing the love of his life - and i certainly don't mean lupin - away from him from my cold, dead hands]; how much of his misbehaviour at school james conceals from her; the fact that lily becoming more overtly interested in james from her sixth year onward must have a little bit of attempting to make snape jealous mixed into it - and whenever i stumble upon them in fics i say oh ho like horace slughorn and kick my little feet in the air.

i care rather less about 'we're so hot and flawless and not doomed' as a trope.

but i do stan james for beefing with vernon dursley even though lily told him to behave. the man really is just that annoying.

#asks answered #asenora's opinions on ships #jily #james potter #lily evans #is this an 'i'm in danger' one?#only time will tell

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mixelation · 1 month

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I recently read Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer! I was a bit skeptical of it because I really disliked the movie, and the reasons people said the book was far superior had very little to do with why I disliked the movie. However, I found the book pretty engaging. The prose seems a little rigid at first, but you get used to it as a stylistic choice to reflect the voice of the POV character pretty quickly. I thought the pacing was pretty good and sense of suspense well done, and as a result I read it in about two sittings (which is fast for me lol).

Annihilation is about a team of four women entering the mysterious Area X, a deserted zone of "ecological disaster." Their team's goal seems to be to explore the area, but as the story progresses, we learn a lot of information has been withheld and the expedition's true purpose is unclear. Area X is a sort of supernatural-meets-scifi area of strange occurrences: there's a strange wailing of unknown origin at night, the narrator character (a biologist) is constantly noting strange fungus-like growths, there's ~unknowable~ creatures wandering around. Oh, and it's also the sort of story where all the characters are slowly losing their minds for various reasons. I've seen the genre described as horror, although I'd describe the mood as vaguely unsettling rather than frightening.

My main complaint about the movie was that, IIRC, a lot of it leaned heavily on unknown-biology-as-horror and very poor biological explanations. The book isn't like this: the POV character specializes in "transitional environments," by which I think it's meant she's a community ecologist interested in ecological succession or else how environmental perturbances alter ecology. So there's a lot of prose of her describing ecological communities, both real ones and the almost-supernatural ones of Area X, but it's done without the infuriating attempts at an "explanation" which makes no sense, nor is discovering a new community arising villainized as being horrifying in how unknown it is. In some ways, getting to watch such a new community talk hold is portrayed as soothing to the main character. So in that regard, I enjoyed the novel.

Most of the negative reviews I saw of this book focused on the unreliability of the narrator or the lack of resolution for mysteries encountered. It is very true that the narrator is unreliable and she occasionally admits to withholding information form the reader, or in some places it's not clear if what she describes even really happened or was a hallucination. If you don't like that trope, you will hate this book. If you love unreliable narrators.... I wouldn't call this a stand-out or particularly interesting example, but it sure is unreliable.

Now, given this book is basically all suspense for a building mystery, I did feel throughout the whole read that the end would make or break it. And my conclusion upon finishing it is.... it's fine? I wasn't blown away by the ending, but I wasn't dissatisfied. However, I think you will be very frustrated as a reader if you expect clear-cut explanations, or for every detail to be resolved. The mysteries put forth by this book come in three categories:

the narrator - we get a full character arc with her, and in this regard I found the ending satisfying. again, it's not mind-blowing, but it does feel adequately resolved. you do have to be alright with some ambiguities and making your own conclusions, but i personally like this in a story.

the southern reach - this is the name of the agency organizing the expedition (and the name of the trilogy). Their purpose/goals are unclear, and we become aware rather quickly that they are sending people to gruesome deaths and outright lying to them about it. Personally, I didn't find them that compelling as a mystery, and didn't care to learn more than "they're a generic cryptic agency, you know the type." Some, but not all, of these mysteries will be resolved, and some of those resolutions will just open up more questions, which could be frustrating if you are interested in this element of the plot and are also the type of reader who expects all questions to be answered by the end of a story. Worry not, though-- there's two more books!

Area X itself -- like I said, there's very little attempt to actually explain WTF is going on here and why, although you sort of start to intuit the logic of this strange world. honestly, i feel that "solving" the mystery of Area X is beyond the point of the story (which is about the narrator being obsessed with ecological change but terrified and unwillingly to cope with change in her own life) and trying to shove an explanation into the movie was doomed to fail. it's unclear to me if the subsequent books will get into this or not.

Overall, a pretty good read, would recommend. I might read the other two books one day, but probably not for my next read.

#annihilation #mixed bag #book review

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sylenth-l · 5 months

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hello! hunter age anon back once moe with another question!!! (sorry ig yhis gets annoying!!!)

i want to ask about Cayde's dynamic with andal!!! like, how to portray their relationship and maybe cayde's general psyche when it comes to people and forming bonds.

Not at all, I love getting questions about my guys!! (I'm just bad at answering them aksdjhflks OTL)

It's… complicated, I'm never sure how to describe characters' relationships with words. I know it sounds incredibly cheesy, but to me Andal and Cayde are two halves of a whole, one feels incomplete without the other. Even if we're talking about them being just friends, they're the type who always show up everywhere together and if for some reason they aren't, they'll be texting each other non-stop still. "We're two halves of a whole idiot" - that's literally them.

You could say that they knew and understood each other perfectly, but I feel like while it's true in general everyday scenarios, on a grander scale Andal always had an upper hand in that. He knew Cayde like the back of his hand, he trusted him and believed in him far more than Cayde ever thought of himself. Cayde however wasn't exactly that sharp when it came to serious things about which Andal avoided speaking head-on - like, Cayde couldn't understand why Andal takes his Vanguard duty so seriously. It was only after he spent years as the Hunter Vanguard himself that he started to get what Andal must've felt. I don't think it's Cayde's fault or something though - Andal most likely barely ever talked about that, and he himself didn't exactly need people talking about their feelings to understand them.

I think it's safe to say, judging by how everyone speak of him and the leadership positions he seemingly effortlessly always ended up in, that Andal just gets people, he understands them extremely well and can find a common language with just about anyone. He was the one who made "significant progress in faction accords". What kind of person you must be to make faction leaders come to an agreement, at that time especially??? Convincing, sharp and charming sounds like an understatement alksdhfkjaks

So, I think it was that quality that helped Andal almost immediately see right through all of Cayde's clowney facades. And his own kindness and honesty pretty much left Cayde totally disarmed. Andal got to know him - the real him - and loved him, thought of him as his best friend. And made damn sure Cayde was aware of that as well. That's actually so, so incredibly important - because with the way Cayde is, he constantly thinks that deep down people surrounding him either dislike him or are disappointed in him. No matter how much time they spend together, it's not something he himself will just get one day because "well it's OBVIOUS" or something. His relationship with Ikora and Zavala are probably the most striking example of that. Ikora says he was one of her closest friends - Cayde says he's not sure if Ikora even likes him. The City is flooded with Cabal, lightless Guardians scattered all over the system, humanity is in shambles - and Cayde is genuinely surprised Zavala is looking for him and needs him. He leaves messages for both of them in case they kill him, making it sound like he wouldn't be surprised at all if they did. That… really shows the abysmal gap of misunderstanding between them, to put it lightly.

But Andal! Cayde never once doubted Andal and Andal's feelings for him. The good old days he speaks so fondly of is the time when he ran around the Solar system with Andal and their pack. Even if he sometimes laments that Andal is too serious and bad with jokes, that seriousness and honesty is actually just another proof that if Andal says so, then he really does like him and is impressed by whatever Cayde wanted to impress him with this time.

I think it's probably one of, if not the most important part of what made Andal so incredibly special to Cayde - that freedom of being able to be equally honest with him, be real. Goofing off because he simply wants to goof off - not because he prefers to give people lower standards so that they won't be disappointed in him when he fails. Sharing his muddy concerns and fears that he barely even can put into words, knowing it won't be laughed at or brushed off as unimportant. Absolutely everything got better instantly if they were in it together. The mere presence of one of them in close proximity immediately cheered the other up.

I don't know, I can talk about them for hours and still not say what I wanted to say. I always miss the most important stuff somehow, no matter how many words I pour in. Honestly, I think that to better understand what was happening between them, all you have to do is to (re)read "The Man They Call Cayde" - literally half of it is basically Cayde's love letter to Andal.

#ask #destiny #candal #there i made myself cry about them again thanks a lot <3 #no heterosexual explanation to their whole situation sorry

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