#or deny her autonomy

[sentientsky]

Kristin Chang, "Churching"

on apotheosis. on rage that has nowhere to go

[casscainmainly]

Jason and Cass' opposing views on murder is so interesting. Their conflict is not purely moralistic - that is to say, it's not purely that Jason thinks murder is okay, and Cass doesn't. It's their identities, their original and most fundamental worldview. Jason is a murder victim and Cass is a murderer. Yes, Jason kills people as Red Hood, and yes, Cass dies multiple times, but this never truly erases how they see themselves. Jason will always have been murdered, and Cass will always be a murderer. They are unable to fully extricate themselves from those roles, and thus will never approach life or death the same way.

[coolcarabiner]

lesbians who are terfs will never make any sense to me crying about the supposed exclusivity of the “female experience” like my brother in christ she experienced an othered, lonely, confusing childhood where she was made to feel inadequate in her gender, sexuality, or both just the same as you and instead of letting this unify you against patriarchy you just enforce it on other people to maintain the sliver of “power” you think you have. how do u not see how dumb this is oh my god

[lagosbratzdoll]

This is a very very unfinished thought but I've been thinking a lot as I reread the books about how the women of House of the Dragon don't really get catharsis and how that'll likely be worse in S2. Say what you want about asoiaf but a number of named women there experience catharsis.

They kill their abusers (Lysa, Cersei, Dany). They regain some agency after a violation (Lysa, Cersei, Lady Stoneheart, Dany), and they refuse to forgive the people complicit in their subjugation (Lysa, Cersei, Dany, Lady Stoneheart, Jeyne Westerling).

Obviously, three or four isn't enough in such an expansive cast of characters but the point remains that they claw back their autonomy however they have to. They're allowed to be angry, bitter, unforgiving and cruel to their abusers in a way women in House of the Dragon just aren't allowed. They're allowed grief, grief that is violent and destructive.

The women of House of the Dragon don't get angry. They stand around and stare plaintively at the camera, they cry prettily, and they plead for peace and non-violence. They suffer and suffer and suffer and there's no relief.

[kittlesandbugs]

Mustacheless Ortega is about Ortega reclaiming his past appearance because the sad bitter person that looked back at him in the mirror like his father has faded before the euphoria of having his best friend (and/or old flame) back from the dead. It's about realizing that joy outweighs sorrow when you let it. It's about embracing past comforts instead of wallowing in old pains. It is prompted by Sidestep's stupid jokes. It is realized through Ortega's own reflections on himself, his past, and his own hope in the future.

[sholmeser]

my transfem raiden vision…walk with me

[shimmerluna]

Sara was literally so scared to go to school at Marieberg that she was at risk of failing her grade and her mom suggested they both go back because of Simon?

[azuremist]

I am so tired of people being like if you think Milsiril is a toxic mom you're an IDIOT!! Like you people really have no idea how damaging it can be to grow up with parents who infantalize you huh.

[mariocki]

Return of the Living Dead III (1993)

"What's going on, Curt, tell me what happened?"

"We had an accident."

"What kind of an accident?"

"On the bike."

"What happened?"

"You died."

"I what?"

[kentuckycaverats]

edinburgh chronicle update!! in which del bleeds sunlight and the coterie takes on petaniqua

tw: self-harm

it's the coterie (del, mitra, sami, bene) + tara (del's fiance) + justicar lucinde and a couple other allies vs. petaniqua and four (4) black spiral dancers. we're in petaniqua's domain, deep belowground in some old mining tunnels. lucinde's on petaniqua, everyone else on the BSDs, and del's covering tara while she finishes a ritual to destroy petaniqua's last remaining font of power

petaniqua evades lucinde by setting her aflame, drops a knife at del's feet, and does some baali shit to command del to carve her fae True Name into her own flesh. she outrolls del, who watches in horror as her hands move against her will to begin carving aelsidhe (her estranged fae soul)'s name into her forearm. she can't take any other actions until this is finished

mitra uses horrid reality (chimerstry) to craft an illusion that everyone can see but is only materially real to petaniqua: where del's vitae flows from her wounds it spills not as blood, but sunlight. and petaniqua burns

del finishes her carving and, free to act of her own volition again, amputates that arm at the elbow and kicks the discarded limb into the flames so petaniqua can't have it

the rest of the coterie and allies take out the BSDs and sami creates an opening for lucinde to grapple petaniqua. del gets a scorpionated blood (blood sorcery) + sunlight illusion double whammy in on petaniqua. we need to stake her but she's ritually protected against staking. hm. good thing mitra's got horrid reality <3 his illusion isnt a real stake, but it's real to petaniqua, and that's all it takes. he stakes her, she's paralyzed, and del gets to give petaniqua her final message:

before we send you off to whatever tar pit a slug like you spends the rest of eternity rotting in, just wanna make sure you know that the moment this became inevitable was the night you let your stupid fucking dog murder my sister. all your thousands of years haunting this miserable earth, and for what? to be brought down by a handful of neonates for one mortal teenager. fuck you.

lucinde hands her an arcane dagger enchanted for just this purpose, and del plunges it through petaniqua's eye and into her brain. she screams and shrieks and thrashes as del make scrambled eggs of her brain, then dissolves into a mountain of ash

it's over. after 27 years, it's over.

except it isn't.

petaniqua didn't need to see del's true name. it was the knife she made del use to carve it. petaniqua's master, the demon foebok, wyrm of fear, has it. and with it he now knows where to find aelsidhe

countdown to the final battle begins.

[yetunsent]

judith thanking god that she had a cavalier who taught her “the limits of what they will be to each other for the rest of their lives” so early is soooooooo. ohhaug. she says she’s lucky she so lucky. sure yes sure she wants and wants and wants and joined her hand to marta’s with the “purest intentions.” she’s wanted coronabeth for 12 years. but she’s so lucky marta told she couldn’t be with her entirely. so she isn’t tempted! it isn’t an option. she’s so lucky and thank the emperor for it. i feel lightheaded

[a-really-bad-decision]

Look. I get that folks who are approaching the finale from this angle are usually doing so from a place of genuine good faith and love for Joel. But like. If your immediate reaction after finishing season 1 is to insist that the cure never could have been developed/distributed/tested/viable and that the Fireflies were stupid/naive/slapdicks/never could have accomplished it anyways, so Joel Definitely Did Nothing Wrong, I can’t help but feel like you’re wildly missing the point of it all.

Because like. Joel did not ever care if the cure could have worked. He did not care if it’s what Ellie might have wanted in that moment (neither did the fireflies of course, but they’re not the ones who traveled by her side, protected her, made her feel safe and cared about). Neither of these were ever a point of consideration in the finale. Ellie’s death and the resultant hypothetical cure could have had a guaranteed 100% success rate. It could have spread instantly, around the world the moment they removed her brain from her skull, turning every single runner, clicker, and bloater back to a healthy human being, with no deleterious side effect.

And Joel still would have shot that doctor point blank in the face.

Because that moment right there, is the point. To me at least. It’s the climax that the whole story has been building towards: a father’s beautiful, selfish decision to save his daughter at the literal cost of the entire world. And not just the world in an abstract sense, but in ways that carry weight to him on a deeply personal level. Tess’ dying wish. A real future for his niece or nephew. Ellie’s own agency in all of this. And he did it without hesitating for a moment.

Going from treating Ellie like cargo, like a clicker waiting to happen, to deciding that her life is more important to him than than any other human being who was or ever will be born? Regardless of whether it’s “““healthy”””, that’s an incredible fucking relationship arc. And it only has this level of gravity and meaning if there are genuine consequences to making that decision.

(And let me be clear here: none of this is a moral indictment of Joel. Joel’s motivations, actions, decisions etc. are all incredibly blatant, human, and relatable, and if he’d done anything but go on that rampage, it would have contradicted everything we know and understand about him so far. Also, he’s fucking fictional. Who gives a shit if he did a Kinda Amoral Thing. None of it is real, and it doesn’t matter)

The argument here isn’t that Fireflies Good And Smart And Can Totally Save The World For Sure Guys, or Joel Did Objectively Bad Thing And Is Unforgivable Bad Forever Now. The argument is that the show is much more interesting and internally consistent if you buy into the idea that there’s a chance, even a slim one, that the fireflies could have extracted a viable vaccine at the terrible cost of a fourteen year old girl’s life. That maybe Joel did prevent a cure from being made – that he potentially did doom the world for Ellie (or at least doomed it to another few decades of limping painfully by until something else came along). And that despite the cost, he pulled that trigger, brutally and without hesitation. He did it knowing that he’ll have to go on living with the knowledge of what he took from everyone, and how effortless it was to make that choice in spite of it all. That he’ll willingly betray Ellie’s trust as many times as he has to if it means keeping her from taking the burden of that guilt on herself, but also because he can’t bear the thought of her hating him if she learned the truth. And most of all (and in his own words), that if he was given the chance to go back and do it again, he would have made the exact same choice all over.

You take that out, and what kinda finale do you get now? A run and gun scene of a man rescuing a girl that he’s come to love, sure, but now it’s from a bunch of one dimensional, child murdering villains, set in a place they never had to go to, preceded by a journey that was rendered useless before they even left, all because there was never any chance of it working in the first place. Pointless roundabout cynicism, and an endpoint that now textually only existed to stick the protagonists in their get along sweater.

You don’t have to agree with this specific interpretation of the ending. I get that this can come across as a harsh reading of Joel, especially since he’s a character that myself and others genuinely like a lot. But that nitpicky fixation on proving that the cure never could have worked always felt more for the benefit of the uncomfortable player/viewer than as any sort of actual narrative improvement. A way to divest yourself of ever having to sit with the weight of either choice. Of having to think about the way that a secret so massive, sitting unspoken between you and a loved one, can rot that relationship. Of the way that someone you thought you trusted can act in your best interests, but against your own wishes.

And if that’s not what you want from the show, genuinely and without judgment: that’s fine. You keep doing you. I’m just not sure why you’re watching something like tlou otherwise.

[professorlegaspi]

I’ve been trying to articulate why this Josh-is-the-dream-guy revelation is so important to Celia, and I think I’ve finally got it.

Celia, fundamentally, wants and yet fears a relationship built on trust. The whole love triangle situation has been prolonged by her trying to make romantic decisions based on her body, on her literal physical sensations. She refuses to really analyze her emotions. She doesn’t want to let feelings into the decision making process because admitting them to herself is one step away from admitting them to others, which is too vulnerable for her to really consider. She puts off communicating openly with others and doing any sort of self reflection frequently throughout the books, usually citing how busy and overwhelmed she is. But really, she adamantly, wholeheartedly, does not want to be vulnerable. She has avoided making love confessions, even to herself, because they are exposing.

But, in this moment, she finds out that she has been vulnerable with Josh already. He has been in her subconscious, her dreams, the most intimate and protected part of who she is, and he was a safe presence in there. He didn’t take advantage and he didn’t judge. This moment is not a realization that she has feelings for him. She’s known that, albeit subconsciously for forever. This is a realization that it is safe for her to feel those feelings. That they aren’t something that is going to hurt her, that she has to repress. Instead, they are the most natural and undangerous thing on earth. Josh has been in her dreams, has literally been a part of her. Of course she loves him. Of course it’s okay to love him

Or, to quote her directly, it’s him, it’s always been him.

[rebdot]

thinking very hard abt the lore i came up w for lyra (my tav) and how it relates to her being in a relationship w astarion bc they both kind of come across as similar "flirty morally skewed but putting on a facade" types and it's what brings them together initially but their reasons for being like that are so different.

she sees being a social chameleon and manipulating people as a way to empower herself in a world that doesn't necessarily trust or respect her and she uses it as a way to assert her will and autonomy meanwhile his experience is almost the exact opposite. and i think that's part of why she goes along with the honestly obvious manipulation attempt (she has 17 charisma and he has 10. come on.) bc she percieves it as just like, something harmless to play along with and have fun until eventually they both actually develop feelings and he confesses and they are both like "oh fuck." anyway the moment she finds out anything about cazador i think she starts plotting his death before he even mentions it solely bc she doesn't think that anyone who wants that much power over people should live.

[mysria]

𝐌𝐲𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚'𝐬  𝐕𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬  𝐨𝐧  𝐒𝐞𝐱  &  𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞

Sexual  relationships  have  always  been  a  detached  thing  for  her  as  a  sex  worker.  She  has  a  mentality  of  separation  between  her  work  and  her  own  personal  desires.  Even  then,  it's  become  such  a  casual  thing  for  her  with  no  real  emotional  attachment;  to  her,  it's  just  a  physical  act  mostly.  No  different  from  sparring  or  a  massage,  a  source  of  physical  relief,  an  outlet.  She  does  enjoy  sex,  she  just  doesn't  get  emotional  gratification  from  it  with  people  she  has  no  such  attachments  too.  When  it  comes  to  her  work,  her  feelings  are,  of  course,  much  more  complicated,  but  for  her personal life,  it's  all  fairly  straightforward. She will use sex to get what she wants as well, though she tends to hold a low opinion of those who can be too easily manipulated in such ways.

On  the  other  side  of  things,  romantic  desires  are  a  rare  thing  for  her.  She  is  on  the  aro  spectrum;  greyromantic  feels  like  the  most  accurate  term  for  how  she  experiences  romantic  attraction.  It's  very,  very  hard  for  her  to  have  any  interest  in  anyone  in  that  regard,  mostly  because  for  her  to  feel  that  interest,  she  has  to  trust  someone  enough  and  feel  safe  with  them,  and  trusting  anyone  at  all  is  hard  for  her in the first place.  There is  only  one person  in  canon  she  has  ever  felt  any  true  romantic  feelings  for  or  loved  in  that  regard,  and  that's  Daemon,  because  Daemon  had  earned  her  trust  first  and  foremost.

It's  not  impossible  for  her  to  want  someone  romantically,  but  most  of  these  relationships  she  engages  in  casually  are  more  oriented  around  sex  and  mutual  gratification  in  other  ways,  closer  to  "friends  with  benefits"  situations  than  anything.  And  she  can  be  fond  of  her  partners,  definitely;  she  can  be  very  caring,  affectionate,  and  protective  of  them.  She's  not  unwilling  to  get  close  to  others,  it  just  takes  a  lot  before  she  begins  to  feel  anything  resembling  romantic  love  for  them.  (And  she  is  polyamorous,  just  to  be  clear.  Monogamy  is  not  something  she  is  open  to  unless  she  does  develop  deep,  romantic  feelings  for someone to  the  point  she  would  be  willing  to  consider  it  for  their  comfort.)