#questionable legitimacy

[peupeugunn]

i've read so many fics and seen so many posts where people talk about what jon snow's birth name should be. "no it's NOT aegon that's stupid" "what if it's aemon after the maester" "what about daemon lol?" "what about jaehaerys cause they're both j names" "but what if it IS aegon??"

well have you considered the funniest possible thing lyanna could have named her child:

jacaerys.

[scuffledig]

pour one out for vimm's lair today

[banefort]

Not to sound like a broken record talking about nomadic v settled lifestyles in HOTD, but an interesting dynamic that has come of the Daemon-Harrenhal sideplot is between him, the castle, and Alys and Ser Simon Strong, is what they represent as manifestations of the Neolithic agrarian revolution.

Daemon’s time at Harrenhal is spent oscillating between the two factions. Simon represents the foundations of a settled society. He dictates Daemon’s waking hours and daily schedule (against his will), keeps him tied to his political duties, and goes so far as to impel Daemon to guarantee the longevity of Harrenhal by commencing its reconstruction - affirming a settled and regulated lifestyle.

On the flip side Alys represents nomadic life, occupying the halls of the castle much like a ‘ghost’, only affecting circumstance through cerebral happenstances, whilst also showing a marked affection for the natural world and ancient natural structures (Wierwoods), and repeatedly identifies with the natural world via totemism (calling herself a barn owl). She is the history of Westeros and the First Men made manifest, and personifies a nomadic lifestyle which has been lost to to the regions south of the Wall.

By having Daemon constantly tossed between Ser Simon and Alys - settled and nomadic, polytheism versus paganism, agriculture versus shepherding, he occupies a liminal space and is caught between the refractions of history, and through his tumultuous residence, is implicitly drawn to question the true strength of monarchy, settled lifestyles, and all forms of contemporary power structures; for Alys, and her associated phantasmagorical neolithic ways, are clearly established to have had a far more substantial and cerebral impact on Daemon’s psyche than Ser Simon, who, while Daemon does entertain, he visibly holds no regard for, as opposed to Alys, who he is both wary and keen for. This is substantiated by his being shown to feel conflict and guilt over his perpetuation of Targaryen ethnocentric incest, his failure to fulfill his duties to his faction (be it the Blacks or his children/wife), amongst others, following his arrival at Harrenhal, suggesting that through her presence as an all-encompassing totem of nomadic conducts, his deep-rooted pride in Targaryen legacy, “the establishment” and all things modern, rapidly unwind. The paths of his - and all other citizens’, ancestors calls to him from an intangible, psychosomatic place. His contemporary comforts are all but stripped bare in some primal, unbidden rush to follow in their footsteps.

[zvaigzdelasas]

No skin off my back, but isn’t the assumption of liberals that either the Republican Party would alter course and become more moderate or collapse into several smaller parties upon consecutive Democratic Party wins?

Or I guess “one party dominant” is still a distinctive political system from either orthodox multiparty liberal democracy or Marxist-Leninist single party democracy. Are American liberals typically supportive of Lee Kuan Yew? That would make sense

The most coherent plan I've seen is "unshakeable Democrat majority in all chambers until they completely trash the FPTP system, institute multi party democracy, and get rid of the electoral college, and every single SC justice becomes a democrat. Now obviously they wouldnt do this for quite a while, but -". Also has the assumption that the new parties would all be Good Parties.

As to LKY - literally have been trying to ask this exact question for months and have yet to get a meaningful response. Mainly bc vanishingly few US libs have even a rudimentary familiarity with any political system outside of North America and Europe, but for the few who do they'd have to actually consider the point "PAP actually does things that most Singaporean people want them to do, which is how they get elected again and again" which is the inverse of the carriage-driven-horse version of democracy they understand.

[timomoe]

I just wanna say:

Fuck all the assholes who called her a man and tore her down and fell for all the bs misinformation regarding her sex and boxing career. Fuck y'all fuck y'all fuck y'all bc GUESS WHO FUCKING WON

[dannyriccloverrr]

interesting……

[rhaenin-time]

I just find it wild how there are so many people out there insisting Rhaegar and Lyanna MUST have wed because they REALLY want them to be wed so they can say:

"Jon's not actually a bastard! You know, that totally objective label for a totally non-flexible concept of illegitimate birth. There's a piece of paper out there that says that everyone who mistreated Jon for being a bastard is WRONG. Not because it's wrong to mistreat someone for being a bastard though! They were just wrong for treating him like a bastard when really he WASN'T. He was a REAL BOY all along."

[daenystheedreamer]

targaryen madness doesn’t come from blood magic or prophecy or old valyria or even the incest it’s just a side effect of being blonde

[y-rhywbeth2]

I haven't actually gotten anywhere near Act 3 still, but I suddenly remembered the quests where you kill people and take their hands, and the first kill that doppelganger comes up to you and critiques your work as clumsy or something.

I just... You're new, aren't you? Durge gets half a dozen "wait 'til my Father hears of this" type dialogue options, but none to tell this newbie trying to lecture the vessel of murder to shove it? Bah.

The temple of Bhaal should be thankful I tend to reject Bhaal, because if I did become his Chosen I have a list of people on staff who are getting fired. Into the sun. Welcome to house cleaning day. Or maybe they'd be happy to get murdered by Bhaal's Chosen/Prophet/Child/Avatar/Self-Insert/whatever. Perhaps forsaking Bhaal is punishing them...

[ask-ryo-aoki]

New Years… is it that time of year already? How old would that make me? I cant quite… remember…

Well regardless, thank you very much for the birthday wishes.

[denouemente]

there is something so tragic to me about rhaenyra losing everything and everyone important to her and people act surprised when she has the audacity to react to it!!

[impercre]

.

[edwardseymour]

Sorry for being annoying over Anne x Jane but if you ever would have the chance to adapt this ship how would you do it?

by ‘adapt’, do you mean for a dramatisation? because i strictly believe that we need to put a moratorium on tudor related media (excluding henry vii and maaaaybe mary i since they’re underrepresented as is, and it would annoy the right people). so i don’t want an adaptation, frankly.

as for an ideal adaptation… well, i liked the idea of anne and jane’s dynamic in wolf hall — but not anne’s characterisation. it was so belligerent in stripping her of warmth and humanity, and this collective amnesia about criticisms of mantel’s handling of women (and gender) now that she’s dead is really something. personally, i’m fine with violently and bodily shoving her from her pedestal. on a similar strain, channel 5’s anne boleyn tried to give us a similar dynamic — of anne being unsettled by jane, whilst simultaneously looking down at her, and (again) i like the idea of anne being curious about jane, and the dynamic of gender/femininity being played with, with the two being seemingly polar opposites in ideological opposition, but nothing was delivered on that front. for as much as lola talked about jane being ‘machiavellian’... literally nothing was shown really exploring that. the kiss felt like everything else in that show: hollow, trying to be reactionary. you can’t try to explore that dynamic and simultaneously refuse jane any characterisation beyond the periphery of anne’s perspective; it’s imbalanced. also, i don’t like how these adaptations take every opportunity to make anne abusive to others — she is always depicted as putting her hands on jane (as well as striking others) and anne boleyn (channel 5) has her sexually harassing jane. i am not opposed to depicting anne as violent or abusive (there’s arguably evidence for it) but it seems notably one-sided: jane dormer’s account implies jane gave as good as she got (“scratching and bye blows between the queen and her maid”), and jane was clearly willing to undermine and displace her mistress which contradicts the idea of jane as passive/complacently honourable.

arguably the tudors s2 threads the needle the best? anne is irascible and clearly agitated and unsettled by jane, who is shown to be actively involved in her faction, and evidently lacks respect for anne. it just doesn’t take it far enough on characterising jane/giving her a clear motivation, and walks all of it back by s3, anyway.

[berrymascarpone]

Apparently Isshin is just some dude with a beard

[halfyearsqueen]

viserys and rhaenyra are genuinely such an interesting dynamic to me because like. to everyone else she's clearly the favorite, but the first time she ever attempts to gainsay him because he didn't tell her about the arranged marriage, that ends with her on her knees begging for his forgiveness.

[subconwoods]

loosely relevant to the bracket but not enough to put it in the tag, iiii'm not really a huge fan of the popular aro snatcher headcanon

romance repulsion from trauma as a result of relationship abuse does happen but traumatized ppl who experience it vary in whether they choose to id as aromantic vs considering it something they'd like to recover from. de-facto designating these characters as aro with no interest in recovery and not touching it again is kind of a broader pattern, not something exclusive to this fanbase, but i wish more people were willing to get into the weeds with it and depict characters with different outlooks on it

like, i'm absolutely not knocking you if it's something you do for personal reasons, but ime traumatized ppl tend to have very complicated relationships w romance as opposed to losing interest in it entirely. it doesn't come down to the hc itself but the motive for it, y'know? it often comes across as similar to when people hc a woman as a lesbian specifically so she doesn't intersect with an m/m pairing they're more interested in. why is your first answer when concerning a traumatized character that you think they'll never have another relationship?