#or they never interact

[katrantsasoiaf]

on twitter everyone is losing their mind about the alleged aegon the conqueror prequel and the supposed pitch about aegon being a "drunken lout" or something. but like

even if that was the case, they seemed bothered by the idea of aegon being interesting. like, most of the criticism of a supposed pitch that we have no information about besides one tiny tidbit with zero context. it's merely the idea that aegon i is anything less than "the most disciplined" of the targaryen kings or something. but aegon i is easily the most boring of the aegons in the story because he has no actual personality. i mean this so very genuinely.

aegon ii even with the small amount of characterization that he recieves in fire and blood, at least he had some defining traits and flaws, a character arc, and a downfall. aegon iii as well is a child at the end of fire and blood and got more characterization than the grownass aegon i. aegon iv is a terrible person, but we know so much about him and his actions and his relationships to other characters. aegon v is a main character of the dunk and egg stories.

meanwhile, aegon has no personality.

i saw the description, and being charitable, it could make sense for his character based on his supposed dream in house of the dragon.

mostly because i envision him as prince hal in this pitch. if you don't know, "prince hal" refers to the media critisim of the characterization of young henry v in shakespeare's plays henry iv, in which he is characterized as wayward youth who enjoys the company of petty criminals and wastrels. that is until his ascension in henry v in which he becomes this great warrior king who conquerors the french crown for england during the hundred year war.

basically the plot of netflix's "the king" with timothée chalamet (you know, the movie everyone in this fandom uses to make edits of book!jon snow, and fun fact, dean charles chapman aka tommen and tom glynn-carney aka aegon ii feature in this movie too).

so, i would imagine aegon the conqueror as a youth on dragonstone. his father, aerion, is ruling still and aegon is unmarried. perhaps he is like prince hal, with no real purpose in his life, just living his life up on the island with no responsibilities or burdens.

and then one day, he has his dream. of the white walkers, of the long night, of the prince that was promised. and perhaps it's this horrible dream that causes him to realize that he needs to end his past behavior and begin planning for the future, to prepare for the threat in the north. like how rhaegar found the prophecy and then decided that "it seems i must be a warrior", aegon will decide "it seems i must be a conqueror". and that's when we get him visiting westeros for the first time, ordering the painted table be made, etc.

or perhaps it's because of this dream that for a time he becomes a wastrel. much like his descendant, daeron the drunken who was also burdened with the gift of prophecy, who drank and whored to cope with the trauma of his visions. perhaps, aegon also sought to run from the burden of destiny in wine and ale. until he changed his mind and began his plotting of the conquest. maybe at the behest of his sisters, rhaenys and visenya, to not ignore his dream.

idk, but either of these would have the potential for character development. the idea that his mysterious (aka personality-deprived) characterization in fire and blood was due to a calculated transformation by aegon the conqueror to preserve his own mysticism. that he has not always been this person history views him as, but rather it was someone who he needed to become because he believed that he was required to by destiny.

perhaps i should have prefaced this post with the fact that i hate aegon the conqueror. and a show about the conquest is a terrible idea of a lot of reasons (a blackfyre rebellion show would be much better. honestly who do i have to pay to get a dunk and egg show?)

but this was the weird reason that fans latched onto that derives from the same problem a lot of stans had when hotd came out. which is that most characters in fire and blood are very bare bones, if they have any characterization to begin with. and readers fill in the blanks with their headcanons. but when adapted, the writers had to fill in the gaps themselves, and then fans get made when that doesn't match their headcanons. which to be honest, i do the same.

but until an actual synopsis is dropped, the outrage about aegon the conqueror's character assassination is ridiculous.

you need a character first to assassinate.

[artemisdesari-blog]

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[eydilily]

would you bite the hand that feeds you?

[nemkero]

atla au but nothing changes except sokka is taller and zuko is shorter

[o3o-lapd-o3o]

after six hundred strike

*odysseus and poseidon are both still on the rocks in the middle of the sea*

odysseus: ok, let's just agree to both say we're sorry

odysseus: on the count of three

odysseus: one..two..three

poseidon:

odysseus:

odysseus: see, now i'm just disappointed in the both of us

[magnusbae]

To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:

A post in 2023:

A post in 2014:

A zoom out of the same post:

This is what a community looks like.

See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didn't need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.

It's not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it's the type of interaction people have. They're content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.

Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.

If you want more of something, reblog it.

[haleyusesherwords]

Ify, with light and hope still in his eyes: So Brennan, are you surprised that even in this insane world you somehow managed to stumble upon a pet NPC for the party?

Brennan, with the grizzled expression of a forever DM: It is physically impossible to stop you players from immediately finding the weirdest little guys imaginable and adopting them forever

[kingtheghast]

Safest way for couple of little guys to get down into the big scary caves

[thebrainrotsreal]

Drew this real quick because I fucking love these two so much ???? Especially Bee. I wish they interacted more so badly. PLEASE.

Also learning how to draw these guys.. slowly.

[flurmitcraff]

Comments on Mumbo's hermitcraft videos over the years are so funny to look back on because it's like people have been watching a weird skittish creature slowly progress over time. Like in season 6 when he got involved in the civil war his comments were all like "Mumbo's getting involved in a server event?!? Can this be real?". And s7 with HCBBS and the hobbitventure with XB and Cleo it was " It's nice to see Mumbo hanging out with more hermits he tends to be in his own little world most of the time...", or in more recent seasons where he's gotten better at building and would say that he's bad at this and then go "no no I think I did good :{ " you can guarantee people are going to be cheering for him not being self-deprecating you go you funky mustache creature. I dunno, it's honestly pretty wholesome.

[tchaikovsgay]

this might be a controversial opinion but i think we unnecessarily platform terfs way too much. people cant even make a fun harmless trans post without people jumping on to be like "yeah, fuck terfs!" and its like. severely not about that at all

tumblr terfs love attention. they feed off of it, ESPECIALLY negative attention which is what some of yall are constantly giving them. if you dont want them interacting with your blog or w/e, thats fine, of course you dont! but everyone quietly blocking them while focusing on trans positivity would be way more beneficial than making the focus entirely about giving them the attention that theyre frothing at the mouth for

and frankly the focus on terfs takes away from conversations about casual transphobia that exists outside of just radical feminism. not everyone hides their transphobia under the guise of being a super feminist, and saying "fuck terfs" makes people feel like theyre above ever perpetuating transphobia, which is DEFINITELY not true

[ragingbullmode]

please... understand my vision.....

[bluejey]

comic based off that one baal and aym interaction!

[chell-min]

not an absolute world, but a kinder one

[chez-cinnamon]

Do you think they had a situationship??

Bonus Teacher's Pet doodles-

[forgettable-au]

FORGETTABLE-AU (Page 36-39)

* To note. Her hands are scaly. * And...unexpectedly wet?

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