#the book is filled with a shit ton of complex flawed characters

[jamandjazz]

Guys don’t come after me for this but when Randy said “I’d have let those kids burn” my immediate thought was “yeah same I ain’t risking my life for kids I don’t know” like why are ppl saying he’s a bad person for that???? 😭 I know most of yall wouldn’t run in either???

[d3sertdream3r]

TFA ruined SW imo. As soon as they chose to have Han and Leia be shit parents to Ben the story was broken. Not to mention Luke trying to kill him in his sleep! I don’t blame Rian because he had to provide a valid reason for Luke to be hiding like a coward while the Galaxy goes to hell (which again, was set up in TFA not TLJ) and why Ben went dark. Ben never should’ve been evil and should’ve been the MC. It’s the SKYWALKER SAGA. So a Skywalker should’ve been the MC, not a Palpatine.

This basically turned into a Meta, so stay with me if you can! 😅

I think Rey worked well as being half of the protagonist while Ben served as the other half of the protagonist, as Rian Johnson put it. I do think that his backstory was desperately needed though. The full story of the Last Skywalker should absolutely NOT be told in side-stories like comics and books that most of the audience doesn’t read. His story parallels Rey’s beautifully, and it would’ve been amazing to see them really lean into that on the screen instead of just implying it and then filling all that in later in outside material. 🙄

Honestly I don’t see Han and Leia as being awful parents. I don’t see Luke as being a terrible Uncle either. I see them as people that grew up during an age of oppression and fighting a massive war that damaged them all on a deeply psychological and emotional level.

I see Leia being a fierce woman whose parents showed her they loved her by focusing everything on making the Galaxy a better place for her. I see a girl that inherited her mother’s political prowess and insatiable desire to fight for justice, along with her father’s cunning strategical mind in battle, and using these strengths to her advantage from a very young age. I see her as someone who had to stand by and watch her parents and her entire planet explode and die before her eyes. In the novel Bloodline, we learn that the only way she was able to keep fighting after that devastating loss (that none of us can even attempt to understand) was to focus on destroying Vader and the Empire once and for all and making them pay for what they did to her. I see her as someone who found out that the man who gave her life was the same man she hated with every fiber of her being. I see her as a woman that was terrified of her biological father having an influence on her and even seeing herself in him and his actions. Of knowing she has issues with extreme pride that make her want to force people to listen to her and do what she knows to be the way things should be. Of even feeling a small, dark sense of smugness at seeing them all blow up in the sky above her after they refused to listen to her (read TFA novel; it’s in there!). She had a lot of fear and a healthy dose of anger and darkness after everything she’d been through, and frankly I see a ton of Anakin’s flaws in her, just as she did. She wasn’t just scared of Ben being like his grandfather; she was scared of him inheriting the darkness from her. She kept all these fears and feelings close to her chest. She talked a little bit with Luke but not much. She didn’t talk to Han about it at all, feeling like he wouldn’t understand. She really didn’t think anyone would. She had so many walls put up around her emotions, yet she still wanted Ben to know she loved him. So she showed him the way her parents showed their love for her: by focusing on making the Galaxy a better place for him. Unfortunately that meant not being around much. How could someone hiding so much fear and loneliness be expected to raise a child perfectly?

I see Han Solo as an orphan that loved his father so much, he became a pilot to honor the dream that the man he adored never got to live out, and even got a ship that his father likely worked on. He carried the wound of losing his parents, especially his dad, all his life. But the circumstances of his childhood didn’t allow him to truly grieve. He had to hide it and put on a passive face in order to survive, never fully dealing with it imo. In fact I think he ran from that pain; literally. From planet to planet in fact. His scoundrel swagger masked his true self; the incredibly loyal and extremely compassionate man he actually was. He didn’t see that in himself though. He believed the Scoundrel™️ mask he wore, as much as his son Ben believed he was Kylo Ren. He thought he was a bad person and he had no business raising a kid who might pick up his bad habits. He couldn’t live up to the selfless and kind father that had given up being a pilot for him. He had to keep being a pilot and having adventures because his dad didn’t get to. He kept his dad from getting to do that. How could he reconcile the guilt of his father never getting to live his dream because he was too busy raising him, with the guilt of trying to make it up to his dad by having adventures but in turn not always being there for his own small son?

I see Luke as a kid that always longed for adventure, but learned very quickly that it can sometimes come with a terrible price. I see a boy that suddenly had the weight of the whole galaxy thrust upon his shoulders at just 19 years old. I see a boy that loves his friends so much he ran recklessly to their aid, knowing it was a trap and he would probably die. I see a man that was willing to die for the tiniest chance that his father might actually love him. Someone who then had to try and live up to all the hype and legends and expectations building up all over the galaxy without letting the weight of it all crush him. Someone trying to restore a millennia old order that he knew next to nothing about. Who then had a 10 year old child to look after, train, and basically raise because the boy’s parents had so much pain to work through concerning both their personal lives and each other, along with their individual levels of selfishness they’d learned to harbor in order to survive their cruel circumstances, which kept them from being fully present for their son the way he needed them to be. How could Luke balance the weight of the galaxy on one hand, the restoration of the great Jedi Order on the other, and be the extremely attentive uncle that soft and sensitive Little Ben needed?

They all failed him to be sure. But it wasn’t entirely their fault. They are each complex and layered characters that have experienced more than any of us could ever comprehend, and TFA and TLJ chose to show the toll their inner and outer struggles had on them.

They each loved Ben with their entire hearts and souls, and when Palpatine and Snoke claimed him, their lives were utterly shattered. Han and Leia’s marriage was completely destroyed. Luke wasn’t hiding out of cowardice; he hid out of shame and pain. He crumbled under the weight of the Mighty Skywalker name and expectations of being the one to make the hard and selfless choice and always save the day no matter what. Ironically, in trying to protect what he loved most, it cost him that very same treasure; his family. Not to mention it opened up the galaxy for another Dark Organization to take over. Wouldn’t you want to hide and live miserably until you finally die? That’s how I’d feel.

Luke wasn’t perfect. Neither were Han and Leia. They weren’t gods. They were all very flawed HUMAN BEINGS. That’s what made them so relatable. That’s the beauty of the way the original trio was handled.... up until TRoS. Han was great, but Luke and Leia were handled terribly imo. However, that’s a whole other topic. 😉

Sorry for the length! I hope you made it to the end! 😬😄

[davinamarr]

SP Bedlam mini review/general thoughts - very long very sorry!!!

howdy skeleton fuckers, I’m here to talk about Bedlam. There’s gonna be some spoilers in here so please be wary if you haven’t started reading Bedlam yet or haven’t finished! I’ll tag the post with spoilers so it can be filtered out for y’all who aren’t done with the book yet.

Right

Here we go babeyssssss

So, I think Bedlam was a massive step up from both Resurrection and Midnight. I’ll be kind and put it down to the fact that there were a shit ton of new characters introduced, a new complex plot to keep up with and all that fancy stuff as a reason for why the first two books of phase 2 felt so shaky to me. I enjoyed them, but they definitely had the feeling like Derek was getting to grips with writing these characters again and writing the new characters and really feeling them out and getting them right. 

Bedlam felt so right. It felt like how the books from phase 1 felt; familiar and strangely comfortable, like I was well acquainted with the style and format and characters and plot.  

Into the good stuff now!

Okay, so I loved Abyssinia from the beginning of Phase 2. She’s a fucking loony and I loved that about her but I also loved her deeply caring side, too. Even though her intentions were far from perfect and her love for Caisson sometimes seemed very self-centered and like he was merely a ploy in her plan, there were times in Bedlam were it was evident that she really, genuinely loved him. When she was beating the shit out of Valkyrie and immediately ceased her attack because Caisson was dying it was heart-wrenching and showed us that she genuinely loved her son, even if she did show it in a psychopathic, dysfunctional and massively controlling way. We all have our flaws, right? 

Next, Macaroni Bone Baby - or, as he’s been renamed, ‘macaroni mev muppet’ or ‘bastard mev baby’ 

Am I thoroughly disappointed that Caisson wasn’t Skulduggery’s son? Absolutely. 

Did I also predict that Mevolent was his dad very quickly into the book? Also yes.

I feel like it was somewhat obvious but I still enjoyed the build up and the pure drama of the scene where Caisson’s true magic sperm donor is revealed. Although, I guess he has a literal sperm donor and no magic was actually involved. 

My sweet baby Razzia, why did she have to die? She could have been such a cool character to keep around. Similar to how Fletcher jumps in and helps occasionally. 

Also, Fletcher - that man finally joined the team again and it just made me so happy to see him not being totally sidelined like he usually is! Team Fletcher!

Valitsa, the ship I never knew I needed. Oh my God, I actually love this ship so much. It’s so sweet and genuine, I totally respect your opinion if you disliked it because I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it when it was being speculated after Midnight but goddamn my little heart couldn’t take any scenes where they interacted with each other. 10/10 would recommend. 

Alice - she’s finally got her soul, sweet baby! I hope she gets those 7 years worth of tears out and we get to see more of her because I love Alice so much and I love the relationship her and Valkyrie have because it’s soooooooo sweet I’m gonna fuckin cryyyy

OH, speaking of Alice, I kind of had my prediction slightly wrong! I immediately thought that Alice was going to be the descendant of the Faceless Ones and not Valkyrie, but I entirely see the connection between Valkyrie and the Faceless Ones and why it would be her rather than Alice. 

We finally got our fill of Tanith Low! My sweet blonde haired slim thicc baby! I love Tanith and I’m so glad she had quite a few appearances in this book and I sincerely hope she continues to be a main-ish character again. 

And China, will she ever stop being so annoyingly mysterious? I secretly love cold-hearted-angry-bitch China that arrests her closest friends without hesitation and I would 100% let her step on me if she wanted to. I’m very curious as to who that man in her dream was when she was 19 and the vision of Solace and the referring to her as ‘mother.’ Very ominous, Landy. 

Also, Skulduggery HAS A BROTHER!!!!!!

A LIVING, BREATHING, MAGICAL BROTHER!!!!!!!

WHAT THE FUCK 

Never and Omen are still some of my favourite characters and Omen is still my sweet baby boy son and if any of you touch him we’re gonna FIGHT 

Sebastian on Lily’s scooter was probably the highlight of their little dimension-jumping escapade, because I’ll be frank here, I wasn’t entirely interested in the Darquesse club thing but that last chapter definitely drew me in! 

I’m gonna end this here with a swift apology about my lack of posts here. As you know, I’ve been going through some shit for the past 2 months and my last  A Level exams are in full swing so I’m basically spending all my time either convincing myself that I’m okay or revising. I’m planning a re-read of the whole series this summer as my summer task and I’d like to post chapter by chapter summaries/thoughts posts. Hopefully I’ll be posting more soon since I’ve read Bedlam and the fandom is picking up again. Thanks for stopping by! 

[knightofbalance-13]

AKA Insult The Audience and Characters While Wasting Time

http://delvindeep.tumblr.com/post/164570714739/ive-been-thinking-about-the-world-of-remnant

i’ve been thinking about the world of remnant series and how they could have implemented that worldbuilding into the series proper. here’s a few ideas

Which are all just the same version of “one guy asks another guy for exposition” same as literally every other show in existence which WOR is able to subvert and avoid the pitfalls of the ordinary exposition.

dust: the story literally opens in a dust shop. show ruby buying some, having a chat with the shop owner. “is this for raw use, miss, or ammunition?” “yeah, it’s for my baby.” “your baby?” “the scythe” etc. if you actually need us to know the history of its use and how humanity doesn’t know where it came from, give it to us in one of port’s lectures. we don’t have to hear the whole thing; just a couple of key lines, then it fades into background noise as jaune starts hitting on weiss again or some shit because that’s apparently more important than establishing your lore

Except why would Port or anyone be teaching them such basic elements of dust when they are already in an advanced school for this sort of thing and thus would have already had this drilled into their skulls years ago? That’s insulting to the characters for thinking hey are that stupid and insulting to the audience for believing we wouldn’t catch onto that. Also, i guess you’re fine with a shit ton of flaws in the animation since they had to waste time getting lines for the teachers and the students as well as animating all of that. Unless you want to nix a fight scene or a plot point because RWBY is already stretched for time as it is.

kingdoms: did we even need this one? the show already tells us there are four kingdoms called atlas, mistral, vacuo and vale, that atlas is militaristic, that huntsmen academies train huntsmen (no shit) and that life outside the borders is dangerous. see, they know how to do it already!

Except we don’t know WHY Atlas is built that way, we know nothing about Mistral Vale of Vacuo, we don’t know why their actions of treating Huntsmen like soldiers is so looked down upon and why peopel are so on edge with them. That excludes a lot of the tiny details that really enrich the lore such as Atlas having risen up from the snow to become the new captial of the Kingdom or how Vacuo has a different morality than the other two kingdoms due to the harshness of their area. COngrats, you wasted time and money for a much worse, more boring, more drap version of what we already got.

grimm: instead of starting with the dust shop scene, start with some redshirt nomads. one complains that he doesn’t feel safe travelling at night, another makes fun of him, they start arguing, someone else steps in and tells them to shut up because fear and anger will draw the grimm, which it does. if it’s important to know that they don’t attack animals, show some animals, which the grimm ignore after killing all the humans. the shit about older grimm getting smarter is already in the show, the shit about them evaporating when they die is in the show, and the shit it being impossible to keep them captive is contradicted by the show

Okay then, fork over about a thousand dollars to cover the cost of the voice acting and animation. or better yet, do it yourself so that the CRWBY don’t have to stretch themselves out even further. Oh, and listen as the fans complain on and on about there being no new episodes or anything because there is no WOR to tide them over, thus weakening their suspension of disbelief, thus forcing you to maker more detailed lore, thus more time, more gaps, more annoyance and so on until the show is dead.

aura: this is all in the show already. pyrrha gives jaune a hamfisted exposition dump about aura that he shouldn’t need.

Except what exactly it is, what it does, what Sembelnces are, the types of Sembelnces asd well as build up for Salem.

vytal festival: work the origins of the festival into ozpin’s speech instead of that stupid attempt at explaining the colour names

The listen as people bitch on and on about the color names as well as the info they will inevitably forget about since that means they’ll get it a whole yera before needed. Also, that takes longer so cough up more money or time or have a shitter product.

huntsmen: nothing of substance here that we didn’t already know

Except that Huntsmen aren’t the noible heroes that we see which helps ease people into the tonal shift of Volume 3 as well as humanizing the product.

ccts: look, let’s be honest. the only reason this is here is to explain why cinder’s plan is going to work. like, was there even the slightest question about what was going to happen when they ended the episode with “if one tower goes down then they all do”

the point is, it shouldn’t be so difficult to hint at what the villain is up to that you have to shove it into a side series. just stop having your villain be vague as fuck about everything for the sake of cultivating mystique

Then spend an entire season having the villain detail every single step of their plan with the complexities and all the twists and see if there are still people around. Also, that doesn’t explain why the CCT is so important so you still have to do that so fork over more money or time.

four maidens: this is more of a standalone short than supplemental infodumping, so i dunno if it should count. not that it would matter anyway because the maidens subplot already comes out of fucking nowhere

So9 impliment it into the story which already has fast pace for no reason, kill the pacing and the mood as well as remove the story book element about them. Also, personally work on the series to make up for the week of time they lost because there is nothing there to fill the gap, fork over the money to cover up the removal or personally take responsibility for it.

vale: mostly boring geographical waffle that is unlikely to ever be important. no elegant way to work it into the show, but on the other hand, you don’t need to

Thus the world feels flatter and emptier with no explanation for what happened when teh series gave the tone of doing so, thus losing audience interest and something that made the series unique.

the other kingdoms: we know everyone’s headed to mistral. presumably they’ll be spending some time there. show us the culture when they arrive. are we ever gonna visit the other two? if so, do the same for them. if not, it doesn’t matter much

Wow, you must have some deep pockets or as much free time as possible to be willing to foot the bill for all of this new footage and audio and voice lines and brainstorming and editing that this would all entail. Surely you wouldn’t ask a studio to bankrupt themselves just to do stuff you’d never ask of any other show right?

between kingdoms: it’s in the show! grimm running wild outside the kingdoms is in the show! bandit attacks are in the show! grimm moving in afterwards is in the show! it’s all there already!

Except the specifics of the grimm attacks, why people move outside pof the kingdoms, why there are bandits, how they get supplies and their interactions with the Grimm.

faunus: you know when oobleck is talking about the faunus war? you know when he stops for a minute to ask if any faunus have been discriminated against, and velvet raises her hand, and he’s like “oh, that sucks. anyway, back to what i was talking about”? you know how that part was a total waste of time? cut it. talk some more about the origin of the human-faunus conflict before everyone starts going on about night vision. you could even work some development for blake in there. oobleck asks if anyone knows how and when faunus exploitation began, and blake gives a long, bitter, opinionated answer

Ah yes, because one minute of dialogue to segway into a plotline can  be cut out and around ten minutes of exposition about fanaus history, biology and interactions with the humans can be shoved into that space. Except no, it can’t be so that’s more money and/or time you must be willing to give up to add in what no one asked for. As well as teh all teh angry fans who will yell at you for thinking they were stupid enough to think the characters didn’t know that as well as making all the characters into people with the memory of a fruit fly.

schnee dust company: i feel like this could have been a character moment for weiss. she probably never met nicholas. the only sdc she’s lived with is the one run by jacques. finding out that it was once an honest business run by a good, brave man could be a big turning point for her. “i want to be out there overseeing expeditions like granddad did. i want to change this company back to what it was.” and bam. now being a hunter isn’t just about annoying daddy anymore

Except that why she would even fight against her father in the first place, why she would consider the schhnee name noble at all or how she would miss all this, make the plot hole with her mother even fucking bigger than before, makes Weiss look like an idiot for not looking into her family’s past and, again, kills her motivation so we have a walking contradiction in the show as a main character.

And that’s not even getting into how there are some people who PREFER WOR over ordinary exposition.and thus changing that pisses them off as well as kills the pacing of RWBY. Thus changing something for an, at bets, equal result as before.

Yeah great job on the suggestion.

[jodiwalker]

The Best Things Happening on Game of Thrones Right Now

If the current season of Game of Thrones is fan service, then consider me — a fan — serviced, and sign me up, baby. We've been through the hard stuff, we deserve this. This series has finally broken through the stratosphere of TV criticism and into the land of pure joy where Arya can be both a raging lil' sociopath and a beloved protagonist.

So this is neither a review nor a recap, a critique nor a thoughtful analysis influenced by my superior status as a "book-reader." Instead, it is the most advanced of all literary art forms: a list of I've been tickled by in the first two episodes of season 7. The best things happening on Game of Thrones right now definitively are:

Very Silly Reveals That Are Supposed to Change the Game (of Thrones) But Are Kind of Just Really Obvious Solutions

1. There's a Shit Ton of Dragon Glass at…Dragonstone

Of all the things I expected out of this season—reunions, rifts, Cersei dramatically guzzling wine, Arya masked-murderin', Dany sittin' on thrones, hopefully the glorious return of Gendry's biceps—I never anticipated quite this much focus on igneous rocks. Jon Stark's laser focus on digging up dragon glass is starting to sound like a Goop newsletter, and it's not that I wouldn't subscribe (imagine: the fur recs! the tips for sultry lashes! the straightforward syntax without any annoying exclamation points!), it's just all a little more plainly sated than I expected. Jon calls, like, eight Big Chamber Meetings to tell all the Northern elders, plus Lil' Lyanna Mormont that their number one priority is to find dragon glass because it's the only thing they can create weapons out of in mass to kill white walkers. Those meetings go a little something like this:

Jon: How are we gonna kill white walkers?!

Northerners: DRAGONGLASS!

Jon: And where are we gonna find it?!

Sam, from Oldtown: AT—AND YOU'RE REALLY NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS—DRAGONSTONE!

[Ed. note: I've edited out the regular interruptions from Sansa that give me extreme conflicting emotional anxiety, but we'll get to those later in the "So You're Co-Ruling with Your Half-Sister Who's Actually Your Cousin and She's Recently Developed a Mind of Her Own After Surviving Extreme Trauma" section.]

Sending Sam to Oldtown to train as a maester is like the coconut oil/Franks RedHot of Westeros: that shit works on everything. At the Citadel, Sam begins scooping soup, souping poop (in a scene I would have exchanged for an hour-long loop of gruesome murders), and most importantly, sneaking into the restricted section of the library like some sort of chubby lovechild between Voldemort and Harry Potter. He even gets shut down by Jim Broadbent (aka Archmaester Marwyn, absolutely killing the wise, gives-no-shits maester game) and sneaks in anyway. And what did Samwell find in the restricted section?

Well, Sam steals maybe five books and finds the exact answer he needs, plus one he didn't even know he should be looking for—more on that in a minute.

And you know what? That's kind of dumb and unrealistic, but Sam deserves this. He's had a tough life and his dad is a jerk that wanted to kill him and his brother is (well, used to be) the hot guy from Unreal, and everyone shits on him all the time even though he is legitimately the nicest person alive in their godforsaken, feces infested world — dude has earned finding the solution to saving mankind after exactly 10 minutes of cozy reading with his cute wildling life partner and their ageless baby.

So, Sam finds out (via a super lame picture that Jaime could have drawn with his strong hand) that there's a big ol' dragon glass mine at—you're not going to believe this—Dragonstone. All they've gotta do is dig it up. Well, and, y'know, get past Daenerys Targaryen, heir of Dragonstone who recently arrived on its sandy, glass-filled shores. And that other thing that Sam found?

2. The Cure for Greyscale is Just…Peeling Off the Greyscale

Well, no fucking shit, Sam.  I mean, listen, I know I was just singing the kid's praises, but it's pretty crazy to act like you just found the magical cure for Greyscale in your magical secret books when that cure is…peeling off the Greyscaled skin and then putting a bunch of medieval Neosporin on it. But whatever, it's really sweet that Sam wants to help Jorah Mormont so badly because of his affection for Lord Commander Mormont and is willing to flay him to save his life (and definitely give himself Greyscale with the way he's using those gloves). So go ahead, Sam, peel off that Greyscale in your secret Dr. Pimple sessions—your solution might be obvious, but at least it's not dumb, dumb, dumb…

3. The Dragon Feller That's Just…a Crossbow

So, John is concerned with defeating the white walkers because, y'know, strong moral fiber and a her survivor's guilt complex and all that. But Cersei is mainly concerned with defeating anyone who would try to take the Iron Throne from her that she didn't already blow up with magic fire. And that means she's got to look alive about the tiny blonde Targaryen heading her way who's bringing, along with her legitimate claim to the throne, her three big ass dragons that were, coincidentally, born from a magic fire.

It's going to take something big to defeat those dragons. Something magical. Something much more powerful than even wildfire. Something like…

A BIG ASS CROSSBOW, BABY! Yeah, that will be great for killing dragons — if the dragons are sitting still, 1,000 years old, and already dying peacefully of natural causes. It's okay, Qyburn. They can't all be skull-crushing Frankenzombies held together by Husky R' Us armor level ideas, buddy.

Arya and Her Whole Thing

I remember when How to Get Away With Murder premiered there were a bunch of think pieces that were all, Finally! A Female Anti-Hero for Us to Love Just Like All Those Dude Anti-Heroes We Loved on A&E and HBO! Of course, no one loved Viola Davis' anti-hero like they loved Walter White because people don’t like to love flawed women like they like to love flawed men (and the show's not as good, but Viola is). And so, when Arya gave the best revenge performance of all time at the top of the season 7 premiere, there were a bunch of (to be fair, legitimate) articles that were all Should We Really Be Rooting for Arya? Is Arya a Sociopath Now? Arya Sure Looked like She Wanted to Kill Ed Sheeran, an Innocent Soldier, Who We Will Tell You Later How WE'D Like to Kill, But for Different Totally Valid Reasons.

So let me just say, yes! Arya is a probably a semi-psychopathic now, and yes! We should be rooting for her. She is but a simple mercenary setting out to avenge the death of her loved ones using humble blood magic. Yes, she killed Walder Frey, and yes, she fed him to his sons, and yes she then skinned him and wore his face in order to poison all those sons who she had just fed a pie made out of their dad, but you know what she also did…spared the women who hadn’t done anything wrong except be born into that nasty family. And yes she maybe only spared them to have this bad ass parting line, delivered with just perfect level-headed menace by Maisy Williams: "When people ask you what happened here — tell them the North remembers. Tell them winter came for House Frey."

But she is Arya and I love her, and I support her in anything she does…unless she kills any of the characters I like, in which case I will have to write some think pieces.

Sibling Dramzzz: Stark Edition

And speaking of Starks you have to keep your eye on, Sansa and Jon are having kind of a hard time co-parenting the North, and that's probably because people just loooove putting Jon in charge, even though Sansa should kind of technically be in charge, the only problem is, that Sansa's so annoying. Now, Sansa has made large strides toward being less annoying. But for every two steps forward (occasionally telling Lord Baelish to go fuck himself, knowing about war, not being a moralizing idealist), she interrupts Jon six times in their council meetings and tells him how stupid he is.

And listen, I get it — I have siblings. No one knows you better, and no one knows they know you better. When someone acts like they understand you better than you understand yourself, and worse, they're probably right, it can be trying. When Sansa tells Jon that he's going to get his head chopped off like his virtuous father and brother before him, she's not necessarily, but she is annoying. In a made-up world with dragons and child-sacrifice and, like, constant incest that's often not very relatable, I find this Jon and Sansa stuff frustratingly relevant.

The complexity of familial bonds is a language that spans universes (I mean, I guess that's ignoring the thing I just said about near-constant incest), so when Sansa says just the right bratty thing — "Joffrey never let anyone question his decisions, do you think he was a good king?" — to set Jon off, or when Jon and Sansa get on the same page about something, then he immediately changes his mind and announces it at the dinner table, so she questions his decision in front of all their gossipy cousins…it's normal family stuff, just at much higher, head-chopping stakes.

My great fear is that the tentative but often sweet partnership these two eldest "children" of Ned Stark have formed will somehow be ruined by Littlefinger. So boyyyyyy was it gratifying when Jon choked his old ass out when he was all I wanted to fuck your step-mom and now I want to fuck your half-sister, just thought I'd tell you that right here in front of your dead dad's crypt. And mannnnn was it concerning when Sansa backed down from publicly challenging Jon about his decision to leave the North and sale to Dragonstone the moment she learned he was leaving her in charge of the North in his absence, then immediately looked to Littlefinger for…what? Approval? Guidance? Shared joy? None are great options.

Just get though this Jon and Sansa  — I promise you’ll be best friends when you’re adults!

Sibling Dramzzz: Greyjoy Edition

Yo, this family is Messed! Up! Theon jumped off a ship rather than risk saving his sister Yara from their super-pirate uncle who's now taking Yara, Ellaria, and the last remaining Sand Snake, Tyene as his gift to Cersei which will totally make her want to marry him so he can be king, I guess, and not just of his raggedy salt islands.

It will never not be distracting how much Euron looks like Pacey though. If Pacey had a run-in with an H&M clearance rack and the entire smoky eye section of Sephora.

Sibling Dramzzz: Lannister Edition

And speaking of Cersei's current romantic status: Jaime is giving her a looooot of side-eye because she's, y'know, terrible. But she is doing a really fun thing this season where she's constantly recapping how much she hates everyone while subconsciously remaining us how much everyone hates her in return. While roaming around her Etsy map of Westeros, Cersei tells Jaime: "Enemies to the east. Enemies to the south: Ellaria Sand and her brood of bitches. Enemies to the west: Olenna, the old cunt, another traitor. Enemies to the North: Ned Stark's bastard has been named King of the North, and that murdering whore Sansa stands beside him. Enemies everywhere, we're surrounded by traitors!"

Girl, anymore zingers and maybe a concluding paragraph, and they'll give you a byline at Vulture. It is my one true hope that Jaime will realize his sister is insane and kill her before she kills him or Tyrion.

Everything Lil' Lyanna Mormont Does

I don't care if it's Disney-Channel-level precocious, I don't care if they're just giving us more of what we want…actually, I do care. Give me more of what I want! And what I want is the Lil'est Lady of Bear Island repeatedly telling a bunch of giant grizzled dudes to STFU. "I don't plan on knitting by the fire while men fight for me," she says when it's proposed that girls should be trained to fight in the war to come. "I might be small and I might be a girl, but I am every bit as much a Northerner as you. And I don't need your permission to defend the North." Yes, my tiny queen! I don't know if they heard you in the back, but at this point in time, just about every major house in the realm is run by a woman And speaking of…

Jon and Dany Said Each Other's Names and Hopefully That Will All Be Fine

That's it, that's all I needed. Now they can either become best friends or fall in incestuous Targaryen love, there is no other option.

Images: HBO; BlondieTVJunkie/tumblr

[obsidianarchives]

Jessie Blount

Jessie Blount (she/her) is a queer woman of color, an INTP, a Sagittarius, a sci-fi and fantasy nerd, a witch, and an incredible cook. Jessie works for a rad non-profit in Detroit, where she lives with her girlfriend, Nicole, and a beautiful Slytherin cat princess, Winnie. She spends her time learning survival skills for the impending apocalypse and collecting Harry Potter memes. 

Black Girls Create: What do you create? 

HUMOROUS YET RUTHLESS

I create primarily audio-based media themed around the critical analysis of my fandoms. I do this mainly through my podcast The Gayly Prophet, a queer analytical chapter by chapter reread of the original 7 Harry Potter books that I do with my co-host and good friend Lark. Our bi-line is ‘humorous yet ruthless’ because while I’ve been a fan of the series since before book 4 was out, there are a lot of deeply problematic things in the text. One of the biggest inspirations for the pod was Witch Please, a feminist analysis of Harry Potter by two “lady scholars,” which was great, but sadly went book by book rather than chapter by chapter.  While there are a ton of Harry Potter podcasts, there were not any that specifically looked at Harry Potter through a queer lens. 

On The Gayly Prophet's Patreon I create on-the-spot fanfic round-robin style with Lark and post various multi-fandom fanfiction that I’ve written. I also discuss my other fandoms in some of our other Patreon exclusive content, like our “Editors Cut” where we talk about things like time travel, or my biweekly link roundup, “Muggle Studies.”

BGC: Why do you create?

I don’t really consider it an option, more of a necessity. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, and I struggled a lot with the reality of racism and feeling different than a lot of kids I grew up with. Books and television were my friends, not just as an escape but as a way of dreaming of what could be. This is what drew me to sci-fi and fantasy, but as a child of the ‘90s, I didn’t come across many Black people or women in the stories I consumed. Like a lot of hardcore readers, I dreamed of being a writer, of creating my own story that was as majestic and beautiful as my inner life that had the kind of people I knew, complexity, and strong and weird and queer and POC characters. I cut my creative teeth in fandom, writing a lot of terrible, half created fanfics to go with the poetry that I wrote in my teens. The Gayly Prophet is really an extension of this passion, of my belief in the importance of fun, deep, textual analysis with other people.

BGC: Who is your audience? What do you hope your audience gets out of your podcast?

When I envision our audience, I think of other angry BIPOC queer nerds like me who love a thing so deeply that we want to rip it apart. I think to love a work of art is to examine it from all sides, rediscovering that love but also questioning its limitations and highlighting its flaws. More personally, I hate talking about myself, a holdover of my not-great childhood and deep social anxiety. I’d much rather talk about and listen to people’s thoughts about books and TV and movies. I’ve never gotten tired talking about Harry Potter, as 50 episodes and dozens of hours of The Gayly Prophet can attest to. The gaps in canon are staggering, especially as it relates to marginalized people, and filling those in is something I’m never bored of. I want to have this dialog with our listeners, hear their thoughts and feelings and headcanons. It’s also a bit like group therapy. I talk a lot about childhood trauma and neurodiversity as it related to HP because there is so much built explicitly into the canon and discussing it helps me verbalize and process these things in my own life. At heart, I want our audience to not feel alone. I also want them to laugh because there can never be enough laughter.  

BGC: Who or what inspired you to do what you do? Who or what continues to inspire you?

I’m perpetually inspired by Black nerds, especially folks who are older Millennial/Gen X Black nerds. Being a Black nerd didn’t used to be cool and acceptable. I was a weird kid growing up, consuming sci-fi novels like water and videotaping the X-Files on my grandparents VCR. When I got to college, I was lucky enough to start digging into race and women’s studies, and I was particularly interested in how that relates and informs art and media. One of the biggest influences for me was “The Oppositional Gaze” by Black feminist theorist bell hooks, where she says:

Critical black female spectatorship emerges as a site of resistance only when individual black women actively resist the imposition of dominant ways of knowing and looking. While every black woman I talked to was aware of racism, that awareness did not automatically correspond with politicization, the development of an oppositional gaze. When it did, individual black women consciously named the process. Manthia Diawara's "resisting spectatorship" is a tenant that does not adequately describe the terrain of black female spectatorship. We do more than resist. We create alternative texts that are not solely reactions. As critical spectators, black women participate in a broad range of looking relations, contest, resist, revision, interrogate, and invent on multiple levels. 

I take this to mean that nothing I consume is merely passive escapism, nor do I accept the prevailing white supremacy of much of the media I consume. It’s a complex consumption for me, I love stories and pleasing aesthetics and music and well-written prose. But everything I consume I interrogate, I analyze, I think on the possibilities of what if someone like me was at the center of the narrative. This way of looking has parallels in fandom, in the embracing of Black Hermione, in shipping, in headcanons, in examining canon and discarding and adding at will. 

I also grew up listening to NPR and had this dream of having my own radio show where I just talked about books I loved. Podcasting is honestly a blessing in this regard because I bought a mic and invested in recording software and a website, and now I am living a dream that my sad teen nerd self could have only imagined.

BGC: How do you continue to be inspired especially in these specific times?

Joy and laughter and critical thought are, I think, the best way to survive these trying times. I spend a lot of my time thinking about injustice, racism, and our broken system, and it would be very easy to give in to the feeling of being crushed by a system that actively wants me dead. Thinking of silly Harry Potter puns or playlists for soft bi werewolves gives my endlessly running mind something fun to think on and makes the perpetual tightness in my chest ease a little, because, at the very least, my co-host Lark will laugh and then I will laugh and that’s something that I did, that I created. 

BGC: Why is it important as a Black person to create? 

Honestly, creating is what has gotten Black folks for generations through all the shit that America has wrung us through. There is a reason that anything good in American culture was either created by or made better in Black hands. Music, food, art, clothing, dance, acting, poetry, social change, sci-fi, even the best parts of Al Gore’s internet. And within this, there are countless Black women and Black queer folks who are nearly forgotten. Basically, everyone we know from the Harlem Renaissance was not straight. Disco and house music came from Black and Latino gay club scenes. Even ‘internet speak’ is from Black trans women and folks in the ball scene. It’s part of our culture to thrive in this world by creating something beautiful. 

BGC: Are there other creators that you admire?

My top faves are Black ladies in sci-fi. My number one fave is the late great Octavia Butler, I think everyone should read the Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Janelle Monáe is out here living a peak queer nonbinary Afro-future nerd life, and I am so happy that young queer nerds get to grow up having someone like them (Janelle has not yet said what pronouns to use). Someone needs to give her all the money to make Afro-future sci-fi films. And, to paraphrase Issa Rae, I’m rooting for everyone Black who’s creating podcasts and writing fanfic and making YouTube vids and TikTok, especially the younger folks. 

BGC: How do you balance creating with the rest of your life? 

I work a full-time job that often has me working extra hours, so I don’t do as much for the podcast as I would like. Lark has a bit more relaxed schedule and TBH the podcast would not be half as good without him. My girlfriend is also very supportive, which helps so, so much. I schedule everything I do in Google calendar to make time for recording and the extra bits of running a podcast and having downtime.

BGC: How do you balance creating when you feel drained or exhausted?

I have depression, anxiety, and ADHD, so I am nearly always drained or exhausted. This is where clear communication and a shared calendar comes in. I know that if I work late at work, I need the next evening to recover and make sure to schedule recording sessions or podcast meetings spaced out from my work schedule. We do a lot of longer recording sessions on the weekends or the times where I have time off. We also record a lot of Patron-exclusive content that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of prep work or mental bandwidth, so for weeks where I am particularly low energy, I can still create something. And, lastly, we deeply stagger the time when we record to when the episode goes up, so if I’m in bad mental space and cannot do anything, I can take that time and episodes will still go out.

BGC: Any advice for new creators?

I think it can be hard to start a project because a lot of what we see is the finished product after years of work. You gotta power through it if you want to learn. And often people love it anyway. Someone might draw some fan art and see all the flaws, I see it and am like ‘Yes, more Black Hermione fan art, I love it.’ It’s ok if you have to take things slowly. Some weeks I only have an hour a week to knit or write or read for the podcast, because of real-life things. A lot of people who create all the time have, like, hired help or the unpaid labor of a spouse, so that ‘we all have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé’ thing is shitty creative advice.   

BGC: Any future projects coming up?

We’ve got some exciting things planned for our ‘Make Harry Potter Even Gayer 2020’ campaign, in which we are amplifying queer HP fanworks and merch by queer creators. We are in the embryonic stages of planning some kind of live event for the campaign, too. Folks should follow us on social media to be kept in the loop on that stuff as it develops! We’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @thegaylyprophet.