#represent her children

[fatherforgivethem]

What a sad reality for those who merely wish to worship.

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[cry-ptidd]

” Am I not right to weep? O my children, cursed children of a hateful mother - ”

[alicentalicent]

in episode 1x06 we see how alicent interacts with each of her children, considering that she shows her affection with touch.

she touches helaena's arm, which openly displeases helaena.

in the same scene she hugs aemond, and he sinks into it. (i like that both moments happen in the same scene, with the two children she's affectionate with)

then we have aegon, the child she does not give affection to, but rather grabs his face harshly.

she then realizes she lost control a bit and was too harsh, even if it was to protect him and make him understand what's at stake, and she brushes his hair, trying to soothe the hurt she already inflicted.

it does not work.

[acourtofquestions]

Aelin.

He had no voice here, but he spoke her name. Threw it across the gulf between them.

Slowly, she turned to him.

It was her face—or it would be in a few years. When she Settled.

But it wasn't the slightly older features that knocked the breath from him.

It was the hand on her rounded belly.

She stared toward him, hair still flowing.

Behind her, four small figures emerged.

Rowan fell to his knees.

The tallest: a girl with golden hair and pine-green eyes, solemn-faced and as proud as her mother. The boy beside her, nearly her height, smiled at him, warm and bright, his Ashryver eyes near-glowing beneath his cap of silver hair.

The boy next to him, silver-haired and green-eyed, might as well have been Rowan's twin.

And the smallest girl, clinging to her mother's legs ... A fine-boned, silver-haired child, little more than a babe, her blue eyes harking back to a lineage he did not know.

Children. His children. Their children.

With another mere weeks from being born.

His family.

The family he might have, the future he might have. The most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Aelin.

[spelllingandthemysteryschool]

we must rid this world of the specter of The Girl

[shadowglens]

she knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. how she had wrung out her girlhood like death. (x)

taglist (ask to be added/removed):

@risingsh0t, @faerune, @zahra-hydris, @jennystahl, @carrionsflower, @fenharel, @loriane-elmuerto, @auricfog, @tommyarashikage, @thedeadthree, @arborstone, @imogenkol,

[the-owl-tree]

more thoughts from yesterday's discussion. what a waste of moth flight for the trial, she's a perfect antagonist for leafpool. they're both daughters of a clan leader, they both have a higher connection to starclan, they both discovered an important spiritual place, and they both, in some regard, had to give up their children.

however unlike moth flight, leafpool knew when to ask for help and she wasn't afraid to lean on her family, her children rejected her but she ultimately gave them a better life compared to moth flight, and while moth flight has defined her existence to protecting a cruel law, leafpool could've (and quite frankly should've) been the one to defy and ultimately destroy it.

[ntaras]

it always shocks me that there are people who dislike ambessa and the same people who dislike ambessa love silco like you love a bad father why can’t you love a bad mother…

they’re both horrible people who soooo deeply love their children. one sent her beloved daughter away because she was her weakness while the other kept his beloved daughter possessively close with him because she was his weakness i don’t see how you could love one but hate the other

silco has enough defenders and ambessa has many people who love her but she truly deserves the same amount of immense defense of her parenting that silco gets

[dippers-doodles]

“A fierce champion, I am sure.”

- - -

“You look sharp. Well done soldier.”

[lala-blahblah]

I will never make this because it would be for an audience of one (me) but ever since reading "If we Were Villains" (story about serious drama kids in college who perform shakespeare and deal with a murder) I have been entertaining the thought of a crack fic crossover with High School Musical The Musical The Series where the staff decides they will no longer put on shakespeare after the tragic accident that happened at Thanksgiving, because Shakespeare plays would only increase the tension and drama. So they hire Ms. Jen who decides their spring play will actually be High School Musical (which exists in the 90s in this universe) and it ruins the vibe so much that everyone gives up on being dark and mysterious because they're universally pissed at Ms Jen for making them learn choreoraphed basketball dancing.

[wellzofyouth]

Writing and I just have... thoughts on the Bruce and Helena parallels. Don the mask. Become someone else. Become what you fear. Become the bat. Become the hunter. This way you're no longer the scared little boy in the alleyway. This way you're no longer the scared little rabbit. Become the savior thay you wished save you. Push people away to protect them. Push people away to protect yourself. Dehumanize yourself. Humanize others. Your body is a double edged blade. You begin with the girl and end with the crossbow. You are a holy warrior in the bowels of hell. You cannot escape your mother's blood. Do you even want to? You don't need anyone. Does anyone need you? Nobody's son. Nobody's daughter.

Also you're two assholes.

[mightydyke]

The Xenogenesis series is so fucking good. With each book, the ending gets more hopeful, the protagonist is less human and I found myself sympathising more with the Oankali and less with the humans (although I can't bring myself to "pick a side", Butler's portrayal of both is so nuanced and makes me feel so conflicted in the best way possible.) At first the Oankali are presented as colonisers, forcing the humans to mate with them and sterilising those who don't in a pretty clear parallel to eugenics, but in the second book this role is reversed when Akin is kidnapped by human resistors and they want to force him to be more human, trying to cut him off from his Oankali way of life. The scene that really drove this point in for me was when some humans were plotting to cut off the tentacles of those two Construct children, even though it could kill them. There's a reading group question about this in the back of my copy, about possible parallels between this and our own world, and yeah. FGM and the treatment of Native American children in residential schools spring to mind. It's crazy how astute Butler is and how this scene, which is about half-alien children, is still so true to life. But even then, there are sympathetic humans, like Tate and Gabe and Yori. They still make mistakes, but mostly out of a lack of understanding, like Tate not returning Akin to his family and Gabe interrupting him when he's healing Tate.

And the endings! Dawn: Lilith has been impregnated against her will, being led away by Nikanj, her plan to get to Earth and run away has failed. Adulthood Rites: Akin has secured the Mars colony for humans. Despite not being allowed to reproduce and live on Earth, the future of the human race is secured. The town Phoenix is burning, but there's still a sense of hope (also the symbolism of Phoenix adds to this hope. And it's so clever!! I love Butler's symbolism so much). Imago: Jodhas and Aaor have been accepted by a human village, Jodhas plants a seed that will grown into a town. Planting a seed is such a symbol of hope, but this seed will grow into a ship that will devour the Earth of resources, leaving it a husk. Also the different narrators! Lilith and Akin don't narrate their own stories directly, only Jodhas' story is written in the first-person. Lilith is human, Akin and Jodhas are half human, but Jodhas is an ooloi, which seem less human than male and female Oankali. Lilith wants humans to escape from the Oankali, and Akin fights for the humans to be allowed to continue to exist without breeding with the Oankali. But Jodhas is the opposite. It seduces humans into wanting to mate with it. It represents the gene-trade mission. Yet it's story is told in the first-person. I'll be honest, I felt sympathetic towards Jodhas whilst knowing that I probably shouldn't. I found it's relationship with Jesusa and Tomas to be very sweet, I was happy for it! When it didn't tell them that them staying with it throughout it's metamorphosis would hormonally bond them for life, I obviously saw it as terrible. To chemically bond someone to you for life without their consent is awful. And the way that the Ooloi are so good at convincing humans, like when Aaor and Jodhas go to Jesusa and Tomas' community and Aaor instantly gets mates! That humans would immediately want to mate with something they have been brought up to fear their whole lives shows the power of the Ooloi's manipulation. And yet I still feel compassion for them. Butler's writing creates empathy for every single character. The way she writes is as seductive and convincing as an Ooloi's scent.

[lessnowon]

anyways, i'm just dropping by to say fuck jk rowling and that snape being romantically in love with lily is really stupid when it would be more narratively and thematically consistent (and, frankly, more compelling) if his love for her was familial

[death-rebirth-senshi]

I once saw a post that was like "Radahn and Malenia are half siblings what beef could they have" and like you cannot possibly comprehend the beef that half-siblings children of divorce can have with one another.

[fideidefenswhore]

the take that we shouldn’t consider AB a feminist (and yes, that’s an anachronism, fwiw) because she was unpopular amongst women in her time is… very strange. like, that is not the thermometer by which to judge whether a woman or, really anything, was feminist (whether or not the person or whatever is well-beloved or popular amongst women… if it were, the real housewives franchise could be considered a feminist entity)

[ilynpilled]

Jaime thought back on the head he'd given to Pia. He could almost hear his little brother chuckle. Whatever became of giving women flowers? Tyrion might have asked. — Jaime IV

"He will bring a rose for you," her father promised her, but a rose was no good, a rose could not keep her safe. It was a sword she wanted. Oathkeeper. — Brienne VIII