#things my father told me

[bixels]

I've been watching Teen Titans for the first time with my partner. Saw the "Apprentice" arc and "Haunted."

[dukeofthomas]

why does every reconciliation fic go like this

[s0fter-sin]

i’d love to know how much of early day's spn subtext was deliberate or just a happy accident bc the subplot of 1x08 bugs is sam and dean butting heads about how they were raised and sam hating it while dean tells him he should accept it as they protect a family; predominantly a father and son

the father and son argue bc the son is different and not who the father wants him to be while the son feels ignored and shunned (aka sam). sam spends the episode empathising with him and telling him he can look forward to going to college to get away from him just like he did while dean cuts in to say he should stick with his family

the entire episode, dean defends john and the way he raised them ("maybe he needed to raise his voice but sometimes you were out of line"), it even starts with him and sam arguing over their illegal ways of making money and how they were brought up in the life; dean adapting to and enjoying it and sam wanting to be honest and straight

they talk about sam being sure john is and always has been disappointed in him just for dean to say john used to go to stanford whenever he could to check on him and something about his expression is so bitter; like he knows john would never express that care for him

but at the climax when they're trying to get matt to convince his dad to leave, sam is the one telling him to tell the truth and make his dad listen whereas dean tells him to lie; implying he wouldn't trust his son enough to believe him

he outright scoffs at sam and asks him what he was thinking for trying to get matt to tell the truth

the entire episode, dean is advocating for the kid to work it out (almost to just take it) and stay with his family but when push comes to shove, he tells him to lie

sam who spent years resenting john and his family for how they were raised, fell back on "making him listen"; echoing all the arguments he had with john, trying to force him to understand who he is while john's too blinded by vengeance to even begin to try. the same way sam refuses to see how they were raised and why they were raised that way from john’s point of view, hinting at how similar people they are (which still isn’t an excuse but also not the point rn)

dean winchester, the king of repression and masking (and fawning), dean who at this point is still staunchly defending john, tells a shunned kid with a harsh father to pretend in order for his father to care enough to listen to him and believe him

dean knows reasoning won't work bc he's watched it happen over and over again with sam and john

even the way matt tries to say, “but he’s my… (father)” feels like he’s coming over to dean’s point of view; that matt as a son respects his father to enough to tell the truth and no matter how much they’ve fought, that should trump everything. but dean still insists he lies. and matt tells the truth. and his father doesn’t listen

there's no way they intentionally made dean subconsciously know that a man raising his son in a mimicry of how john raised them wouldn't respect or trust his son enough to believe him about something potentially life threatening after half a season of john ignoring them about something potentially life threatening

right?

[sallymew4]

kids when they hear that their dad is back in town VS. kids when theyre hanging out with a conman that accidentally stole their wallet once

im not even joking btw

bonus heres me being crazy about them in dms ^^^

[luke-shywalker]

I just rewatched the bit from TLJ where Ben and Rey have their first accidental Zoom call and Rey sees him and immediately starts making threats on his life and bro is just looking around like “Can you see my surroundings? I can’t see yours. Do you have a background turned on?”

I haven’t actually watched the sequels since the years they came out so. Sometimes I forget that canon Ben Solo is actually just as much of an idiot as I imagine him to be

[bugisbonkerz]

as someone on the spectrum i really felt for red guy in the photoshoot scene with his family, specifically when he’s moving around a lot and just. not doing what everyone around him is doing, and gets scolded for it.. especially his line “i’m just happy. i’m sorry..” like godddd that’s relatable. so many times i’ve had to apologize for simply being happy and i just want to give red guy a hug please. idk if the writers intentionally made it feel that way but damn it got me

[venomouslilith]

.

[firstroseofspring]

b’elanna vs her mother at similar ages, plus some sketches!

[thebirdandhersong]

Lol

[fromtheseventhhell]

Saying that non-conforming female characters don't face as much misogyny as their "feminine" counterparts is so funny cause literally the misogyny in their treatment is more overt because they aren't staying "in their place" like men think they should. The disdain for women + misogynistic societal ideals are so much more blatant in male characters interacting with these women. Countless times they are, in essence, told they need to sit down, shut up, and know their place but somehow that translates into them having "masculine privilege". I can only assume that people with this take haven't actually read the books and only get their information from second-hand sources.

[soupmanspeaks]

you ever wonder if the Glamrocks's face tracking acts up when they look at Glamrock-Freddy, like they'll look at his face, and the recognition will register as Freddy, but their systems for whatever reason or another think that there is a face overlapped on Freddy's do you think they see two small squares next to him, at his side, roughly child sized, but no one is physically there.... right...?

[candidateofloyalty]

Franziska’s insistence on perfection is an attempt to live up to her father’s legacy despite that legacy being built on lies and ruining countless lives including that of the person Franziska loves most. Accepting that she is not and cannot be perfect is a major step in her development into not only a better person but a happier one. And despite all of this, every time she declares her own perfection my immediate impulse is to agree with her

[makorragal-312]

Okay, so we're all in agreement that that line from Tommy in the date scene was weird as fuck, right?

[moderndayamymarch]

take your son, your only son, whom you love

[kaeyapilled]

i am still not over the fact arlecchino is referred to as "father" by the house of the hearth kids btw. the gender of it all

[atopvisenyashill]

Sorry, but I saw your tags on an Alicent post and I am now using your inbox as a way to rant about the reaction to the Viserys praise in Season 2.

Because no, we probably didn’t need a once-an-episode mention of how great he was. But people acting as though that’s out of character for Alicent or that the show is engaging in abuse apologia really annoys me.

First, in the context of Westeros, none of what Viserys did to Alicent is recognized as abuse. While she was slightly under the Westerosi age of maturity when they married, she had almost certainly had her first period by that point and was therefore seen as appropriate to marry. Marital rape is not a concept for them, and even if he hit her (which I think is unlikely from what we are presented) no-one is going to punish him. He is the king. So while she clearly knows that she doesn’t like “having sex” with Viserys, it’s likely that she (consciously) sees it as less of “he’s forcing me to do this” and more as “I am bearing my marital duty as best as I can, perhaps this is how it is for all women” or at worst, “I’m a bad wife.” As for the emotional abuse: even our modern society is really just discovering that concept. Either way, given the context of Westeros and how she was raised, I think it would be very unlikely for her to recognize his treatment of her as abuse and subsequently rail against it. My guess is that she sees him as a kind of typical husband: she wasn’t in love with him, but she liked him sometimes and he was sometimes nice to her, and he was never overly violent in a way that she would recognize. In her mind, he was a fine husband and a good king.

Second, the idea that abuse survivors feeling anything less than murderous rage towards their abusers is “abuse apologia” really pisses me off. Especially when we’re talking about Alicent in the context of being a victim of grooming, which is done specifically so that the victim sees nothing wrong with their abuse. I see this with Rhaenyra about Daemon sometimes and it just…that’s just not always how it works. Not every single survivor of abuse is just going to hate their abuser with no complicated feelings (which there’s nothing wrong with to be clear) and oftentimes, they are going to have a lot of complicated feelings. So the idea that she should just plainly hate Viserys seems very reductionist to me and just further feeds what I’ve been feeling about the way that a lot of people seem to want Alicent to be a perfect victim.

Yeah first - I wish we had gotten an equivalent of Rhaenyra's "we became one person he could love" speech for the greens. I think that speech went a long way in telling us how Rhaenyra feels about her father (and Daemon, and vice versa) and how he's negatively impacted them and their lives without being an ooc "wow maybe my dad did suck all along" sort of thing. I don't think the greens really get that - I think it makes sense for Otto to compare Aegon disfavorably against Viserys at this point (Aegon is acting kinda wild) and for the smallfolk as well to look disfavorably on Aegon and Aemond (Viserys never dragged them into a dumb fuck war, did he) but at the same time, these comments are not made in a vacuum and I think especially when it comes to Viserys' neglect of his kids and the domestic violence Alicent experiences, which is not only kind of, idk, subtle I suppose (subtle for a general audience, anyway, bc even people real deep in discourse in fandom don't understand dv lol, let alone random joe schmoe just watching his dragon show), but also it's not a thing they have words for or context for in the show, and i think there should have been more spice there when discussing him. but that gets into how the greens writing fell off right around regent/smallfolk.

But secondly - YES. God last season it annoyed the SHIT out of me because I watched a) the throne room scene and b) Alicent crying alone over him, and I FELT that shit. It all rang so true to me - Viserys making a grand gesture at the 11th hour that makes him feel good but ultimately does not really help Rhaenyra's cause in any sort of meaningful way, and Alicent who feels so duty bound to be A Good Wife left crying alone in her room after her shitty husband dies because she HAS to mourn him, that's what a good wife does. And I saw people describe it as "rhaenyra needs viserys to save her" "why does alicent care about that rotting idiot" "why can't rhaenyra/alicent be strong on her own" and it made me want to scream.

Viserys is integral to understanding their characters! Arguably he is the influence on the way both of them develop as people, in both the book and the show. Rhaenyra loves her father - and I will say it again because I don't think people understand that Rhaenyra loves her father. When she's angry with him, when she argues with him, it is because she feels rejected by him, not because she hates him! She does not resent him for putting her in this situation - or, she does, but that resentment does not point towards him and frankly, it never will! It's the same reason Sansa cannot resent Ned, Cersei can't hate Tywin, Arianne is so desperate for approval from Doran. I think often people want Rhaenyra to reject Viserys completely because they think it's what they would do (no, they wouldn't, but alright, u can lie to urself here) but feeling like you've been backed into a corner and reaching for a parent, even a flawed one, to come rescue you, and he does (sort of, kind of, in a way that makes him feel better and is flashy but kind of useless) makes sense when you think about where Rhaenyra will end up which is following this thread and this inheritance she gets from her father to a bitter, violent end!

And then Alicent. Alicent who spells it out literally right on screen that her whole life is about serving ideals she thinks are above her, outside of her, greater than her. And what are these ideals? Family, duty, sacrifice. And who is the living embodiment of family, duty, sacrifice? The patriarch! Her husband! She is duty bound to love him, to mourn him, and so she does, because even in the privacy of her own room, the privacy of her own mind she is incapable of separating her self from her husband, her sons, her duty. She uses Viserys as a cover for her own feelings and desires constantly. And like you said - I mean, nothing that happens between them passes any sort of line in Westerosi society. I think Alicent is the sort of person who would force herself to find things to love about him and she very much seems to love the things in him that she loves in herself - his propensity for quiet, for reflection, his reluctance to act rashly, his perceived lack of violence. Of course she loves him. He practically raised her. Do we not love our fathers, even when they are imperfect?

It very much ties into all these ideas about being a "good victim" but people don't want to really talk about the way our concept of a "good victim" has shifted over the years. Now, when people love their abusers, when they don't rage against the abuse they experience, when they don't realize they're being abused, when they crave the abuse back, it's seen as being weak, unfeminist, bad writing. Real victims rage and seethe. Real victims plot to escape. Real victims may fawn in the moment but deep down they never loved their abusers even a little. That's just not true and it's especially not true when it comes to domestic abuse such as spousal or parental abuse, and because Rhaenyra and Alicent love and crave the abuse heaped on them because it is done by people who they love, by people who love them in return (however selfish that love may be!), it means the writing is bad. No, it's not actually. Sometimes, your dad sucks and you know he sucks and he never gets better and you love him anyway.