#“““Bones””” discourse

[theweeklydiscourse]

I’m sick of people passing off patronizing and condescending commentary about how naive and impressionable women are as useful and educational. These people will base their analysis of fiction on sexist notions about how easily women are “tempted “ by malevolent villains and then act as if that’s some revolutionary take. They’ll unironically construe the narrative in a way that takes away all agency from the female heroine and frame her decisions as entirely the result of the villain’s manipulation.

They wring their hands about how dangerous it is for women to be exposed to these stories and moan about how terrible it is that hot villains appeal to the “baser instincts” and tempt female viewers further (Yes, I actually saw someone make this argument) It’s truly bizarre to see people agreeing with such patronizingly sexist rhetoric and saying things like “I miss the days when villain romances were cautionary tales and not encouraged.” As if women thirsting after attractive fictional villains is some epidemic that threatens society.

It’s especially irritating when women are the ones saying these things. They want to believe that they are a rare exception that, unlike those other brainless girls, can understand that liking hot villains will threaten their morals and lead them astray…OH THE HORROR!! Please save your dramatic preaching for the next purity conference and stop pretending that your sanctimonious commentary has any substance whatsoever.

[kenneth-black]

Tommy: “I won’t be your last”

Buck: *immediately hauls his ass to Eddie’s house*

[bonefall]

Sorry to barge in but the Crowfeather talk has actually inspired me to keep writing my long-winded Nightcloud defense doc lmao-I started it a few months ago and got maybe halfway done before I got burned out (curse you adhd)

It goes over every time she's mentioned and has a section clearing up misconceptions because you would not believe just HOW weird people can get about Nightcloud

For example: Did you know that there are genuinely people who think she took advantage of Crowfeather and groomed him? Well I didn't until I saw it with my own two eyes. People try and say she's like Mudclaw levels of older than him when she literally just appears out of nowhere in Starlight. Insane behavior

Do not cite the deep magic to me; I was there when it was written

[greensaplinggrace]

“Character A didn’t love Character B because they hurt them” discourse is truly terrible because it assigns a moral value to love that simply does not exist. love doesn’t actually mean anything about someone’s character. it doesn’t make someone’s actions toward another any better or any worse, it doesn’t prevent atrocities, and it doesn’t prevent abuse.

love is a worthless emotion when it comes to morals because it simply holds no bearing on them. true love doesn’t exist. there is no better or more pure version of love. in the end love doesn’t mean anything. it’s a non-emotion. it’s the child of passion and affection and dedication. doing something bad doesn’t preclude a feeling of love, because a lack of love isn’t a requirement for immoral actions, and morality isn’t a requirement for feeling love.

[kyouka-supremacy]

This is the only take I want to hear regarding the Bones discourse from now on

[rxttenfish]

theres a post going around thats driving me insane so i have to comment on it

no, lighter bones are NOT associated with secondarily aquatic animals!!! its the opposite!!! secondarily aquatic animals often acquire DENSER bones than their relatives!!!! not only does this help them be more stable in the water column, but it also acts as ballast to help them SINK!! they do NOT want to float!! they want to achieve a density that is roughly equivalent to that of the water around them and achieve neutral buoyancy so that it is equally as energy efficient to dive as it is to surface! secondarily aquatic animals already have lungs and fat stores and other things which are less dense than water and thus would float, so they need something to offset that, which often results in things like denser bones!!

penguins have denser bones than other birds! whales acquired denser bones in their evolution to a marine lifestyle! the extremely high density of spinosaurid bones is one of the primary arguments for them having an aquatic lifestyle!!!

[relaxxattack]

rereading the hivebent commentary makes me so annoyed that people are never really willing to analyze the actual effects that alternian culture clearly had on every troll, especially the highbloods. pretty much the only troll who ever actually gets taken in the context of her upbringing is vriska.

no one ever seems willing to think about the character arcs of trolls like equius and terezi, who are also bluebloods with extremely hypocritical and toxic understandings of the people around them-- equius is boiled down to a gross creep who is just like that naturally and definitely didn't get it from his society in any way, whilst terezi is scrubbed of virtually all her flaws and turned into a strange sort of based love interest character who is all about being gay and too cool to be tricked by any of the alternian propaganda. quadrants? classism? how silly! terezi would never believe in stupid shit like that. she's quirky! and GAY!

despite the fact that equius and terezi both obviously have much, much more to their personalities than that-- and the alternian empire is informing way more dangerous things about these kid's beliefs than "kiss annoying people".

[brainrotfromhorny]

The entirety of Siege and Strorm the Darkling is manipulating Alina, tempting her with power and sex and all that ✨ fun ✨ stuff. Meanwhile Mal is manipulating her like that guy you meet in college who is willing to hook up but he can't be together with you because this semester he's taking like, fifteen credits ;c

[trek-tracks]

I had the weirdest dream last night that they made an AOS animated series which had an episode that made it canon that Bones was secretly a superhuman cursed to remain immortal until he had cured all of humanity's suffering, but also that he gained his powers from the pierogi his mother made in a mall food court. I guess his mother was also immortal, but that was never explained.

This, of course, set off a lot of furious online discourse about whether TAAS (the alternate animated series) was actually canon or not. The cool thing to do when anyone insisted it wasn't was to just reply "ok gene" (as in Roddenberry, who reportedly didn't view the original TAS as canon), and it started trending as a tag. Because nobody capitalized the name, people outside of the fandom had no idea what was going on. Tumblr started speculating that scientists had discovered the "okay gene," as in the gene that made you feel okay, and everyone was saying "brb, gotta get my genome adjusted to add in the okay gene."

It was ironic, I thought, because if TAAS Bones could only actually discover the okay gene, he could cure all of humanity's suffering and finally get some rest.

...I have got to shut off social media.

[theweeklydiscourse]

Scars of Co-Dependency: The Link Between Alina’s Repression and Mal

The first chapter of Shadow and Bone ends with a musing about the strength of Mal and Alina’s love.

Their determination to stay together is so strong that even the Duke takes notice. From the way this scene is framed, coupled with the context of how their relationship concludes, the reader is led to believe that this is the essence of their bond (and they would be correct in that assumption). Not because this scene is an example of ideal romantic devotion, but because it illustrates the codependency and stagnation that defines their relationship. Notice the phrasing of “The boy and the girl” which becomes a recurring motif throughout the trilogy. Even when Alina and Mal are older, they are still referred to with these terms even though they have long outgrown them. It’s a romantic framing device that characterizes their relationship as a quaint and simple dynamic straight out of a folktale, but it also represents the way that their relationship keeps them trapped in childhood. Their over reliance on one another keeps them stagnant and stunts their growth, this is particularly clear in Alina’s case where her physical growth is literally stunted by the repression of her powers.

Alina’s repression is undeniably linked to her relationship with Mal. This connection becomes impossible to ignore in Alina’s flashback to the day the Grisha examiners came to see her.

Alina almost instantly recognizes the truth within herself and panics. In this panic, she makes the choice to deny her powers to remain with Mal at the orphanage, knowing that if she embraced her power, it would mean leaving Mal. She actively suppresses her true self to stay with Mal and for years after that day, she is forced to cope with the consequences. Alina’s great sacrifice to stay with Mal is not rewarded by love, instead, she is met with more hardship. For example, Alina doesn’t seem to have many close friends aside from the ones that are already friends with Mal:

Alina’s appearance is sickly and thin, hence the insulting nickname. But her thinness also suggests a kind of starvation of the self. By denying her Grisha identity, she denies her body the nourishment it needs to be healthy and strong. Because her sickness is connected to her repression, it also extends to her relationship with Mal from which the urge to suppress first originated. In an exchange with Genya earlier in Shadow and Bone, Alina displays her insecurity about her condition.

Her insecurity, her fatigue, her sickness; it all circles back to the choice she made to stay with Mal. It is only after her revelatory flashback and the acknowledgment of her loneliness that Alina is able to make progress in her training and awaken her true strength. This progress is accompanied by her letting go of her attachment to Mal and freeing herself from that emotional burden. Alina says, “I'm sorry I left you so long in the dark.I'm sorry, but I'm ready now.” and reaches a breakthrough. One of the ways this manifests is in her physical appearance and maturing body.

Even though the remnants of her insecurity remain, the joy Alina feels cannot be dismissed. It is astounding that this is only able to happen once she lets go of her past with Mal and begins loving her true self. Her maturing body symbolizes her departure from that childhood connection that was holding her back, bringing her forward into adulthood. Once she begins loving herself and the qualities that make her unique, she can bloom. Mal’s connection to Alina’s repression and insecurity is RIGHT THERE and once you begin to really examine it, the link is difficult not to see.

In the Netflix adaptation, this connection is visualized through the cut on Alina’s palm.

In this case, Alina’s choice to stay with Mal is visualized through an act of self-harm. She intentionally cuts her hand to sabotage the Grisha exam, scarring herself in the process. The pain of cutting herself is a sacrifice to stay by Mal’s side and though some might consider that as a romantic act of devotion, I see it as further evidence of their flawed relationship. In both the book and the show, Alina harms herself and is doomed to a life of repression in service of staying with Mal.

This connection makes the ending even more baffling. It feels intentional that Alina is able to mature, find independence, empowerment, and new friends once she lets go of Mal, yet the ending suggests otherwise. The codependent nature of Malina is RIGHT THERE and yet the narrative never does anything to critique it and instead, chooses to romanticize it. It really makes it feel as though Bardugo favours Mal and his personal fulfillment over the empowerment of her heroine. So much so that she’s willing to wreck the progression of Alina’s character arc.

[kenneth-black]

me during that break up scene:

[bonefall]

This Mapleshade Discourse once again reveals how people, even those who will cheer ACAB, cannot envision a world in which unjust laws of society do not have to be followed, and that rules do not have to be enforced with punishment. "She broke the law, so she has to face the consequences!" How about you take my hand, and I point out the flaws in the rules that govern our society to you and what we can do to combat them, and I show you the research on punitive vs restorative justice, and together we look upon this silly little battle cat story through this political lens to analyze the messages it intentionally and inadvertently sends with its treatment of Mapleshade's character and the characters of other codebreakers, and we kiss softly under the moonlight.

And then we cut open Oakstar and Appledusk and leave them to die from infection. Together. ❤️

LIKE... "She broke the law so she must face the consequences" is such a cold take it's still defrosting. Maybe the law is bad. Perhaps unjust rules ought to be disobeyed. Consider, the consequences are unacceptable; I simply do not think you should be thrown out of your house for having the wrong lover.

Like deadass what do they want her to do. Go back in time and not give birth to them. Do they want her to unfuck that sleazy twink. Insane.

[greensaplinggrace]

yeah you know what? I'm going to get into this. "don't humanize villains"/"this abuser is a monster" is some of the worst character discourse in fandom. abusers are not other. abusers are not always easy to recognize. othering someone who's done terrible things from humanity is an arrogant, poisonous idea.

that is a person who is doing those things, and you want so badly to be unable to fall into such patterns of harm and abuse that you will force that person into another category of species altogether, and in so doing you spare yourself from introspection and you give yourself a pretty little pedestal to stand on and you shame everybody who fell for a red flag that is surely so easy to recognize. and you give into prejudice you assign moral values to attributes outside of yourself and you think you are so above doing harm that you could never act in such a way, even as it is a capability within all of us to do so.

get off your self righteous high horse for a moment and use your fucking brain. I'm sick of people in fandom claiming to be the most moral members that are the "only people willing to discuss this" and then every statement out of their mouth is harmful and pervasive word vomit.

[dragondraems]

oh my god, Senshi mentoring Chilchuck is so endearing and also so so so funny if you know that Chilchuck is middle aged.

Senshi: What a brave and precocious child, that I must mentor and protect

Chilchuck: None of these fucking people know how half-foots age

[theyarebothgunshot]

I want to remind everyone that my very straight and chronically offline mom (someone who would actually be GA if she watched the show) saw only the hospital scene in 8x5 where eddie sits by buck's bed and Tommy is a visitor, and said that she thought buck and eddie were romantically entangled. And y'all are really out there saying that buddie doesn't make sense and this season has the least buddie scenes ever. Okay.

[feathertailedcentipede]

would it be fair to say that "asexuals can still have sex though" is pretty much the same as saying "lesbians can still fuck men though"?