You Are Not That Important - Galatians 6

[susellesie]

"My Dark Vanessa" by Kate Elizabeth Russell. Lana del Rey, Norman Fucking Rockwell. Ethel Cain, Hard Times. Azra T., Fruit. HOTD 2X4, "The Red Dragon and the Gold."

[heterogeneousstan]

I wish there could be more exploration of their fascinating, tragic dynamic without someone in your ear telling you its a romance 😒

[theotherpacman]

not all ships are For wanting them to be in a happy healthy relationship together. sometimes shipping two characters means you want them to be erotically obsessed with each other and become entwined in a mutually toxic love affair for a few months and then horrifically break each other's hearts and never speak again. sometimes you want them to be codependent best friends with enough repression to explode a submarine who only make out/have sex when they're at their worst. sometimes you want them to pine after each other for years, never say anything, and then die. sometimes you want them to kill each other. this, too, is shipping

[heterogeneousstan]

Catholic baddies and the pantie sniffer that follows them around ♥️

[heterogeneousstan]

One thing BE was gonna do was serve some tragic familial dynamics

[heterogeneousstan]

I feel like this is where this dynamic was going

[marythequeen]

At the same time, Chapuys viewed Mary as an impressionable young friend for whom he felt a protective responsibility. He regularly included reports to Charles about the devotion the public retained for Mary. It is a telling characteristic of his relationship with the princess that with all the domestic and international political intrigue playing out around him, Chapuys was most moved by the safety and well-being of a young woman still in her teenage years. Chapuys’s place in history is largely due to his antagonistic stance regarding Anne Boleyn, but this is perhaps due to historical interest being more vested in conflict rather than agreement. The evidence that remains from the period, however, suggests quite strongly that Chapuys was more interested and invested in protecting Mary than he was in damaging Anne.

-Writing Mary I: History, Historiography, and Fiction

[heterogeneousstan]

They’re so interesting to me tbh, like actually what was going on there? Is she a daughter or a wife? Or maybe a symbol of Roman Catholic endurance or girlish innocence? All of the above…?

[missdreamfyre]

becoming elizabeth as a show is so funny because it's one of the few shows that's at it's most interesting when it's not on it's title character every scene with mary and edward is electric then elizabeth shows up and it becomes woefully drab which is strange because i'd argue these are some of the most fascinating parts of elizabeths life and ripe for drama but alas.

[shaffyreads]

I feel like there's this thing with pop culture and fandom that whenever audiences get used to a thing being a certain way they don't know how to properly view it when it's not as they are used to.

Like, for most of the 2010s, audiences got really attached to the Scarlet Johannson Power Girl™ trope. It was fairly new in 2012 with The Avengers and people liked it, but then they decided that it was the only way to present "strong women" in media. There's nothing wrong with the Power Girl, but it got tired and old really fast and people started to get weird with love stories involving women (especially Black women--which is its own subject) because now we have this idea that women can't be strong AND in love at the same time.

So, I cannot help but not be surprised that there are some people--not a lot, but some--who do not know how to approach a film like Nosferatu 2024. I don't think that anyone is going to get tired of the multi-layered vampires like what we see in AMC's Interview with the Vampire or the flat ones we see in movies like Twilight anytime soon. However, I think there's a portion of "vampire lovers" who don't know how to handle vampires who are just straight-up evil with no redeeming qualities. It doesn't even matter that Orlock straight out admits that he doesn't love Ellen and just wants to possess her and have her to himself. I feel like people are dancing around that to justify the relationship. But Orlock isn't Edward. He isn't even Lestat. Edward is toxic but is framed by his author to be ideally romantic. Lestat is interesting because there's no hiding the fact that he's toxic, but his toxicity doesn't negate his ability to love Louis even if it's a selfish kind of love. Orlock simply doesn't love. Orlock will break everything to get what he wants. And the tragedy of Nosferatu is that Ellen must be a willing sacrifice to him for the plague to stop.

And I think that's what's difficult for a (seemingly small) portion of the fandom. They're not used to this kind of character just being evil. They're trying to make sense of their attraction to him, but the truth is that it's not really that complicated. They just like villains. They just like monsters. And sometimes villains are just awful. Sometimes they don't have many layers if any at all. And that's okay. There's a place for that in fiction despite the demand for them to be something more.

[torridturncoat]

house of the dragon // flowers in the attic: the origin

[heterogeneousstan]

Gasped when I saw this. If you dug a whole in my brain this is what you’d find istg

[heterogeneousstan]

Idk what the writers had in their tea that morning that made them think “lets give Mary Tudor and Edward Seymour intense sexual tension for no fucking reason” but I’m so grateful for it

[helaenamyqueen]

it physically pains me to see people defending hotd’s writing just because it validates their ship

“cOmE wiTh Me” oh fuck off

[heterogeneousstan]

I’m sorry to say this is so true, some things should stay in fanfictions

[liviasdrusillas]

also the way some people are saying grrm should keep his opinions to himself and focus on finishing twow is so?? sickening?? authors are so much more than their books and they don’t owe anyone anything !!

[blackcat419]

They have no argument against h except “shut up old man”. The truth scares them and they can’t handle any criticism of their terrible tastes

[alicentsgf]

genuinely do think house hightower is cooler and more interesting than the targaryens, like dont get me wrong i like both but the hightowers take it. easily. their shadowy history of alchemy and necromancy, patronage of westeros' cultural and religious institutions, and big fuckass taller-than-the-wall lighthouse has bewitched me body and soul. dragons, blood magic, and a destabilising obsession with incest is all well and good - but institutional corruption and the delicate mastery of soft power? just too tasty. been on the wrong side of several wars and never lost a head or a penny from their main line because they know how to play the game. one of the richest houses in westeros and they know how to do it right ! funding the arts, sciences, faith. controlling the narrative. every message goes through the maesters, them and septas tutoring little lords and ladies, all roads lead to oldtown, and thats just how its done why would you even question it. how could you question it. and all the while the lord of the hightower sits up in the clouds in a tower built atop an unsettling ancient labyrinth of black stone, burning a flame that can be seen for miles, lighting the city every night. like good luck getting away with shit when theres no shadowy corners to hide in. the metaphor isnt subtle. every other house would wish they were the hightowers if they could conceptualise the higher plane this familys operating on.

[heterogeneousstan]

Their relationship in this show kills me. It’s just sooooo sad.

John references knowing Edward for 40 years. They have been to war together. They have been consistent and dependable for each-other in a vitriolic, deceitful, unstable world. They have been partners, a two-man team, a package deal.

Its kind of funny the way they stick to each-other’s sides like two school boys who have handshakes and secret code names and shit. Its starkly contrasted with the other dynamics between the politicians, which are all so stale and fragile (as you would expect from colleagues in a workplace where you kind of always have to be prepared for someone to betray you or for you to have to betray them).

Which emphasises the purity and innocence in their initial relationship, its very naive, especially from Edward’s side.

Edward refers to John as “like a brother” a very intimate and vulnerable admission especially from a man so often cold and aloof. John’s response is to remind him of his relationship with his actual brother and how he doesn’t want his and Edward’s relationship to be compared to Edward and Thomas’s. This is obviously deeply ironic, as their relationship ends up just like Edward and his brother’s. One feels like the other has backed themself into a corner which they cannot get out of and they prioritise their career, their family and ambitions over the other (bit more complex for Edward and Thomas but thats not what this post is about lol).

John’s desperation for him and Edward to still have a relationship after his betrayal is such a childish little hope, so immature and stary-eyed for a rat in the belly of the beast.

I wonder how different it would have been had they not had that argument on the staircase. I think John felt repeatedly ignored and belittled by Edward and this was his last straw.

John is a very emotional and arrogant character. He is hotheaded and I think if his ego hadn’t been affected he wouldn’t have done what he did, regardless of his opinions on Edward’s skill at the job.

Moreover, I think its interesting they share the same flaws in many ways: they both believe that they have the abilities and vision that others lack and that only they should have the top position, they are both very prideful and oblivious to the things around them (Edward to the threat of Thomas and John to the threat that he is encouraging in Mary).

The familiarity with which they speak to each other even when enemies is so poignant. They know each other so well. They are each other’s oldest friends.

I think their relationship is a representative of a theme most clearly demonstrated through Edward Tudor’s character: the death of innocence and truth at the hands of power.

And of course they both go down the same way. Of course they are reduced to squabbling children fighting over the shiniest toy. Of course they become what they have resented in each other because they have always been the same really. Edward stabs John in the back for position. John ignores Edward’s advice and the evidence around him of his own failure and plows relentlessly forward as Edward has always done. Of course this is what kills them both.

John killed Edward. Edward tried to kill John. They both are executed as traitors. All of their scrambling and scheming comes to nothing. The snake eats its own tail. The beast is doomed to consume itself in its entirety ect. ect.

[lqynxv]

behind every art of modern rhaenyra where the artist draws her as masc or butch, theres always daemyras trying to prove that rhaenyra is this ultra feminine damsel because she wears pretty dresses and married a man whilst simultaneously ignoring all of rhaenyras established gender struggle at the same time, making their point so futile that they come across as repulsive people when it comes to the subject of lgbtq+ people specifically when it comes to women who don’t conform

rhaenyras story is based upon gender struggles already well set out in westeros i truly don’t understand unless you watched the show with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears, every time this happens it instills in me that most people who say they like rhaenyra do not actually like rhaenyra because of their unwillingness to accept that rhaenyra is within herself wishes to be different

how do you watch her scene with mysaria in its entirety and including when she says daemon is everything she wishes to be INCLUDING a man and come to any other conclusion

[heterogeneousstan]

Their daddy-daughter vibes are insane

[edwardseymour]

the unclefather vibes of somerset towards edward in becoming elizabeth are so fucked up and delicious… somerset has children but we see more of his fatherhood towards his nephew whose mother is his dead sister who he talks about more than his own living wife…

[edwardseymour]

thinking thoughts

[heterogeneousstan]

Oh I’m obsessed