I don’t understand how antis who hate 80% of Rey’s character development still say they stan her wholeheartedly. So she should’ve listened to Luke instead of standing up for herself, her entire dynamic with Ben Solo was manipulation and she was supposed to Learn Her Lesson...okay, then her entire arc is about being who she was in TFA? What do you want to happen here, and are you sure you actually like a character if all of her choices and development and agency are detestable to you?
They don’t actually like her, they like their idea of what she should be as a flawless vessel for their Strong Female Character fantasies. They started ignoring canon the first time they watched, why stop now.
The way the narrative constantly makes Rebecca/Amanda suffer REALLY pisses me off. Genuinely this is SUCH overkill.
Let's start from the beginning because most of the fandom does not seem to realize/acknowledge this. Rebecca already had trauma BEFORE being adopted by Sam. He mentioned "despite all she'd been through" as in reference to her life prior to adoption. I'm going to be clear with you all, the fact Rebecca was in a situation which required her to need to be adopted implies that most likely, she'd already been in a traumatic situation. I've witnessed myself how even for very young children, the very act of taking a child from one home and placing them into another one can be traumatic and very disruptive to their development and affect them for the rest of their lives. Regardless of what exactly Rebecca went through, it is clear she was already healing from something that would've affected her for her entire life. Luckily, Sam (being fictional father of the year) was very kind and patient and a healing safe figure in her life that she very much needed.
Amanda 3 spoilers below:
Now what happens if you take a child who has already been through the pain of 'losing' a parent and make them go through it again? That in itself already felt cruel. Then you factor in the ways Hameln treated children in general that probably also applied to Rebecca, they isolated her from the world and experimented and operated on her. They transformed her into a cartoon character without her consent and made her play the role of Amanda for TWENTY YEARS, all whilst being trapped and isolated from all positive relationships and being stuck with someone who was emotionally manipulative and abusive towards her. Her friends grew up without her. Her father was killed. That friendly librarian she was friends with? Killed. Her first real fellow-child friend? Killed. IN FRONT OF HER. SHE FELT HERSELF ROTTING. She was being watched and haunted by the meatman who was/reminded her of the horrible people who operated on her body and rejected her autonomy. Not to mention all of the very very toxic ideas she parrots especially in Amanda 3 that Sam definitely did not teach her (blaming Wooly and/or Hameln). Her trauma with doctors and nurses too we have to consider here. And then we have the ending of the series where Rebecca is set free. She has literally lost everything. No therapist will ever believe her, I was discussing this with a friend who said: "if she even tried to explain it they would probably send her to a psych ward" and like... I hate to admit it but I think my friend has a point, unless they were able to fully prove Hameln's crimes (unlikely) they wouldn't believe her. The majority of the world probably doesn't even believe cursed tapes and demons are real. She cannot go to the hospital without them calling the police. Hameln is still DEFINITELY after her. They burnt down Kate's house for all this literally yesterday. She lost 20 years of development, she can't get a job because she is missing most of her k-12 education and can't even go to college. She will probably be in some way disabled for life as a result of being stationary for 20 years, probably having extreme fatigue, muscle weakness, and chronic pain if I were to guess. She's probably going to be running from Hameln for the rest of her life until they are destroyed. I'm barely mentioning even half of the issues that will arise. She escaped the tapes but she is essentially trading one hell for another.
But something seems especially cruel to me how every good thing she's ever had got ripped away from her. Her life, Sam, Kate, Chickenscratch. All to a little girl who was already probably struggling with the trauma of having her original home and family taken from her regardless of the reason. Like... why??? This is just plain CRUEL. No other character in this narrative is made to totally and completely suffer the way Rebecca has. Her entire story is mostly just... pure suffering. Why???? She doesn't deserve any of this!!! Why doesn't the narrative torture Hameln or Wooly?? Especially Wooly! Beyond me just being really sad for her and really just not wanting to see a little kid go through nothing but trauma over and over and over again (which was NOT what I was expecting in the first two games I do not know what I expected but it wasn't this)... it's just not great writing. If you make an entire character's arc just suffering over and over and every positive thing you give is just there so as to perpetuate further suffering there comes a point where you desensitize your audience. Also, in one of my writing textbooks for college I literally read this the other day but there's a whole section talking about this and how if you're writing a good story everything your character goes through you put your readers through too like emotionally. If you put the character through too much without the proper sensitivity it does turn your readers away from the story or at least limit how much they allow themselves to care. I love her character but she NEEDS something good and happy in her life that she is allowed to KEEP. Her narrative shouldn't be only suffering and pain. She should be allowed to have happy memories unclouded by guilt and trauma. OH NO TO MENTION I THINK @cctypical or @curliiwurlii mentioned that she's going to have SERIOUS survivors guilt from this too so tack that on to the list. BUT SEE?! What was the point in all of this? The more I analyze the story the more it starts to fall apart because what was the point? The message? What the heck is this story even trying to say??? Ugh... T^T my girl needs some justice guys. She really needs some justice. This just hurts... this game just hurts... Don't mind me I'm just going to keep imagining Amanda/Rebecca being HAPPY and having FUN and having GOOD THINGS while also making Wooly pay for his actions in my mind and burning down Hameln and punching the CEO and blowing up the meat market with the meatman inside. Fuck this game guys fuck it so much.
May I ask what you thought of the last episode of The Sun from another Star? I adore this story, they got me obssessed with them but some scenes in the last episode got me feeling, i don't know, a bit uncomfortable? Arthrit was quite pushy and I wonder if that's the kind of behaviour he used to have (which would explain why people are saying he is a bad person)
I am still enjoying this series tremendously and I cannot believe it's almost over but those scenes got me thinking. I will miss them so much, I might need to read the novel!
This post by @chibipandaao3 and @befuddledcinnamonroll gets at a good number of my thoughts about the series directly.
@doublel27 also pointed out in our dm's about the show "Daotok’s trauma with relationships is that his ex didnt actually want him and went after him for a dare/money, so part of what he needs to know is that Arthit is actually interested in HIM Daotok and isn’t just seeing him as a challenge. Or won’t get tired of Daotok being difficult."
On a broader level, I think the whole of the BL fandom could gain something by exploring the nuance of consent in BL and beyond. The whole sequence of Arthit's pursuit reminded me of one of my favorite contemporary sexuality theorists, Avgi Saketopoulou, and her distinction between 'affirmative consent' and 'limit consent' in her book Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk Race, Traumatophilia. Affirmative consent is the kind most tumblrinas of the mid-2010s will be overwhelmingly familiar with: no means no and the enthusiastic yes! As she explains "violations of consent are real and deserve our attention.” Affirmative consent developed from the informed consent model in the medical field, which was such an important step forward in disability rights and general patient care, especially for marginalized communities. This kind of verbal clear-sighted consent can absolutely be sexy!
However, "affirmative consent imagines a subject that can be fully transparent to herself." Being able to articulate what you want clearly and verbally can be a break-through, a joy, a sign of trust and self-awareness, but it depends on individuals, real or fictional, who can and want to do so. "Where affirmative consent imagines a subject that can be fully transparent to herself," Saketopoulou argues, "the self cannot be fully known...we are always somewhat opaque to ourselves." Do we really know everything we want or don't want? What pleasures might the unexpected hold for us? What displeasure might our desire return to us?
The alternative to the affirmative consent model should not swing the pendulum so oppositely that it dangles into the belief that an individual knows exactly what another person wants and ought to be able to act accordingly. Instead of an outside authority determining another person's wants, limit consent is thusly named how this kind of consent comes from an individual's choice to let another person transgress the limits of one's own boundaries and therefore one's own concept of exactly who they are (limit experience). "While the usual paradigm around consent is about maintaining control of a situation, limit consent is more about giving up control." Under limit consent, we agree to let someone explore with us without a pre-mapped plan or script for how things will go.
Limit consent can obviously be about sexual experiences, but it's also a kind of consent we admit throughout our lives as we accept people and experiences in that could likely change us. Saketopoulou has a particularly edifying example in her book.
"A colleague, whom I will call Imani, is playing with her four-year-old daughter, Lumi. "Be the monster!" Lumi instructs her. Instantly transforming herself into an imposing ogre, Imani leaps forward. She snatches Lumi. "I will eat you!" she growls mancingly. Lumi squirms from within Imani's firm grip, squealing with delight. She fights back, giggling in abandon. Then suddenly, she yells, "Stop!" Imani stops immediately. They look at each other; a moment passes. Clearly, they have done this before. 'Again!' Lumi commands. Imani instantly leaps forth. Again she grabs, again the scary monster, again ominous and frightening. Lumi is laughing. 'Stop!' she commands anew. Imani stops. They rehearse this scenario a few times. Several repetitions later, Lumi looks vaguely unsatisfied. Then, a solution! "We'll play a different game," she announces. "I tell you to be the monster; you grab and scare me; I say stop; but this time"--she punctuates each word--"You! Don't! Stop!" "I don't?" Imani now hesitates. "No," Lumi replies confidently, "you go on and on, more and more." "What if it gets too much?" Imani asks anxiously. The little girl, however, seems utterly disinterested in this adult question of safety and careful calibration. The question of safe limits does not appear to worry her: "You have to not stop, or else it won't work!" she says impatiently. "Don't worry, let's just go on and on, more and more."
Lumi wants to relinquish control, perhaps in trust of Imani, perhaps just to explore general risk, with its potential for both the good and bad. Either way, she wants change to her experience. This is what Arthit and Dao have been circling in their relationship to one another, for me, albeit with less enthusiasm than Lumi, and for Dao, much less verbalization of that desire. But in his allowances and the subtle expressions Oat has been masterfully playing across his character's flat affect, its clear there's desire, which hits a limit on his swan-long neck.
In affirmative consent, transgressing past another's limit is the site of betrayal. ArthitDaotok would be done for. In a limit consent model, though, "the relative safety of the relationship is what puts in place the 'facilitative circumstances' that [psychiatrist Emmanuel] Ghent suggests can enable passibility and the risking of an encounter with opacity. The safety in question, however, is not that things will not go wrong but that if they do, which they could, both parties will stick around to process and hold the injury together." Isn't this exactly what we see Arthit do here, as he apologizes, discusses his urges, and remains to let Daotok know that this artsy beauty's boundaries won't dissuade the beast's heart? Through accepting the affection of his friends and Arthit, Daotok is confronting the opacity of the walls he's built up after his experience with his ex and childhood of exclusion. They're gradually bringing him into a place to recognize his own desires for connection and belief in his own desirability.
BL in particular is interested in characters who are quite unclear about themselves and their desires, characters who don't want what they want. Like The Sun from Another Star, the pursuers are rarely arguing "I know you want it." The pursuers just know what they themselves want and, taking a leap of faith past the mixed signal they're receiving, go about it...sometimes aggressively, to say the least. This is a capital-D Dramatic tool after all! I'd generally condemn this exact method in real life, but as a piece of queer fiction, it gets at a queer feeling to me, and maybe just a feeling experience by anyone who's asked to repress their sexuality by society.
Some queer folks can confirm their sexuality openly and independently, but many of us went through a period of simultaneous wanting and not-wanting for same-sex relationships, compartmentalizing our desires from our ideas about ourself. Within the conflicted emotions, there's a dream for someone to bust open the locked door and make it possible. For all the closeted years the feeling was experienced, its no surprise that the erotic fantasy can persist, too. In my reading, the dubious consent and so-called rape scenes can sometimes symbolically get at this feeling in a way one-to-one representation can't always manage to dramatize. (And that's why I'm really interested in Thai writer Chim who seems to be trying to explore the realism of PTSD from sexual trauma alognside BLs use of dubious consent to eroticize the above queer fantasy.)
Going into a general experience as a viewer of art, such as BL, we can draw on limit consent as a model for accepting complicated aesthetic experiences. We consent to view most art--we go to museums to see paintings and sculptures, we go to theaters or turn on our screens to watch tv and film--and we don't know what we're getting ourselves into. Now, in an affirmative consent model, the viewer might presume some idea based on the genre, the type of museum, the network, and more broadly on their expectations for societal standards and art, generally. They've signed up for a specific experience and have a right to feel betrayed or trespassed if the art does not subscribe to the expectations to which they consented.
Under a limit consent model, however, the viewer consents to the art's full extent of possibilities, including the possibility that the aesthetic experience of viewing it goes beyond their comfort, understanding, and stable sense of selfhood. They've consented to be transformed by a work, which can come with surprise, risk and quite ugly, disturbing thoughts and feelings. In fact, artworks could leave you with completely unresolved and even traumatizing emotions. I mean, it could leave you feeling ecstatic or enlightened, too, but there's the rub of releasing yourself to art. Maybe you'll want to avoid viewing it ever again or giving it another thought. The thing is, the art isn't forcing you to stay or abandoning you and leaving you to process it alone. People forget that. It will remain for you to revisit when you're ready to face the parts of yourself and your understanding that proved to be so challenging to face when you viewed it.
Some people have constrained ideas about what BL must be, what queer representation must be, and series offend their sensibilities when they don't ascribe to that notion. I feel that, too. But I've increasingly learned not to react so quickly (nor to write my hate down hastily for others to read on main). Instead, I'm trying to become more curious about what limits of myself I can't yet access to appreciate it. And the secret parts of yourself aren't all dark, either. The erotic torture romance of VegasPete could be as eye-opening as the fluffy chaste joy of 2moons. There might easily be wells of joy you didn't know were possible! You are vast. Limit consent is a way to explore those multitudes.
Hiiii... So I'm back, sorry for leaving all the time, but this time I'll try to stay here and interact more with the Wish AU fandom (if they want, of course :] ) Especially because now I really want to write my own Wish AU, which I already have a few posts about, but I never did anything consistent, so let's get started.
STARBOY (HAEDUS)
First, I would like to start chronologically with the story, so I thought it would be most appropriate to begin with Haedus, who is my starboy in the rewrite and is the younger version of himself, but I want to clarify how the magic system works here:
The stars are divided into classes of power. Those of the highest rank are the ones who can come down to earth to help people. Those of the middle rank can interfere with their magic directly, but they do not materialise or go down there. Finally, there are those of the lowest rank, who can only give what are known as “strokes of luck”. But above all, there are some stars that are respected and powerful throughout the galaxy. I am talking about the two classic Disney stars who have never shown themselves in person to the other stars and are basically treated like gods or masters.
On the other hand, the higher-ranking stars are responsible for teaching the stars their place and how to control their powers. They also assign each one which wish they will grant or whether they can go down there to help with the wishes. However, this sometimes creates problems in the community because there are stars who bother others or discriminate due to class differences.
Now, returning to Haedus, he was born a star with IMMENSE power, without exaggeration, which you might say is a good thing, right? Not really. You see, the power of a star also depends on how well it controls itself, including its emotions. If it doesn't control itself, it can cause disasters for everyone in the galaxy, so Haedus's case is very risky. If he loses his temper, he can be a threat.
This led to everyone being afraid of him and not wanting to approach him, which was sad for him, as he is very energetic and always sought the approval of others, but never got it. The only thing that remains in his memories are the fearful looks they gave him without him knowing why. The only stars he spoke to were some high-ranking ones who were in charge of watching over him and teaching him to control his powers, and above all, a friend who did what no one else dared to do: he saw Haedus for what he was, a star who just wanted to make friends and fulfil wishes like everyone else. They became inseparable in a short time (I would even say that Haedus may have developed feelings for his friend). However, everything was ruined one day.
As I have already explained, the higher stars decide who fulfils wishes and who does not. Well, they decided to agree that, due to the risks, Haedus would never go down to Earth or be given the opportunity to perform wish magic. They always distracted him or made him unaware that they were manipulating him into obeying them, until one night Haedus' friend got a pass to go down and grant his first wish to someone. At this point, our starboy is desperate to prove that he is not a threat, that he can do it right, so he begs his friend to let him go undercover with him to help him grant wishes, as a team at least, to prove his worth.
In the end, his friend simply refuses, saying he cannot risk his opportunity. That he cannot create a THREAT to the rest of the stars. What would happen if something went wrong?
An argument breaks out, one in which Haedus can no longer contain his frustration and anger. He can no longer bear being rejected, and even his best friend sees him as a danger to everyone. He loses control, his magic destroys everything around him, and oh, I almost forgot to tell you!
The only things capable of harming or killing a star are other stars.
Haedus doesn't remember well what happened next, he could only watch as his friend almost died in his arms, and worst of all, it was his fault.
His already poor reputation is now non-existent. Everyone fears and hates him, considering him a monster who should never have existed in the first place and who could harm them all. Now, all he can do is flee and escape from those who want to destroy him in order to rid themselves of the danger he represents.
His personality changed a lot after that. Now he is more blunt, more sarcastic, and has lost all hope of being accepted. He tries to hide it with jokes and acid humour. He may seem capricious and confident, but in reality he only does so to hide how miserable he feels. He actually has a good heart and still wants to fulfil the wishes of others, but he refuses to trust them.
This is Haedus' current design, and you may be wondering who the other two are? Well, let me tell you that I wasn't so mean as to leave our Starboy alone in space.
NAOS AND NEMBUS
He is Naos, and together with his twin brother Nembus, they form the duo that Haedus found one day and decided to take under his wing. They basically see Haedus as their older brother and only source of support, as the twins stood out from the beginning for their lack of power and were always bullied until the older one arrived and defended them. Now they are his only companions and the only thing that keeps Haedus sane.
Naos is the most energetic of the three. He never stops talking and asking questions about basically everything. He is very curious, like Nembus, and before meeting his older brother, he was the one who defended Nembus and him from the other stars. However, he is also the most mischievous and, to a certain extent, childishly selfish, so Haedus is the one in charge of educating him and keeping him in line so that he does not destroy or bother the other stars that bother the three of them (although in the latter case, Haedus makes exceptions and decides to help him and Nembus cause disasters in space as revenge against the other stars).
I would also like to mention that the three of them can see most fairy tales from the sky, which, due to their lack of connection to other stars, leaves them with plenty of free time to observe. Naos loves doing this because he always finds the stories interesting (Haedus only watches because he has to accompany his brothers and also because he likes seeing the clothes everyone wears, especially how they are made, while Nembus is mainly interested in the music created by humans and animals), so I would say that when he arrives on Earth with Asha, he will write fairy tales invented by himself, and Haedus and Nembus fully support him.
Anyway, Nembus is the shyest of the brothers, but that doesn't mean he isn't curious about the world. Although he doesn't talk much, he likes to communicate by creating fairy dust figures.
Apart from that, on the rare occasions when he uses his voice, he does so to sing and create music, as he finds it easier to express himself that way
Haedus is a great big brother. He may be a bit of an idiot, but he would give anything for his little brothers. He doesn't want them to go through what he did at their age, so he does everything he can to distract them from the other stars who want to hurt them and tries to make them laugh as much as possible, even if it sometimes ends up exhausting him.
Before I go, I would like to tell you that Haedus and his brothers arrive on Earth through a deal... one that is not very safe and that our star boy completely regrets.
Because good magic comes from the stars, but when it comes to dark magic, where do you think it comes from?
This was the only option Haedus had to obtain permission to go down and fulfil someone's wish in order to prove that he is not a monster and be accepted again, but not because he wants to be accepted, he just wants to stop having to hide with his brothers and be in constant danger. He couldn't bear to lose them.
But in the end, things don't turn out well. The three stars were supposed to go to a fairy-tale-like world to complete their task, but let's just say that thanks to the power of the Disney star, that doesn't happen, and Haedus is teleported to a modern world, a city called Rosas, with a girl named Asha who is just as confused as he is. Now all he can do is help her get home and try again to complete his mission
Haedus' relationship with the two stars of the North is... peculiar. He knows they are like gods, but in reality he doesn't care much about them. In fact, he can communicate with them sometimes. Think of it as Jack Frost's relationship with the man in the moon!
They have spoken with Haedus very few times throughout his life, but that was enough for our star boy to constantly ask them why they let him live with this power and why they don't help him fix things (basically, he behaves like a moody teenager with them, but don't blame him, it's the only time he can be like that because afterwards he has to take care of Nembus and Naos).
Daeron the Daring: some personal thoughts after episode 3x04
Long post ahead, with possible spoilers for Fire & Blood.
I keep seeing increasingly elaborate analyses of Daeron after episode 3x04. He resembles young Alicent, his conversations echo things Otto once told her, his relationship with Ormund reflects Alicent's relationship with Otto. Tessarion inside the sept represents his divided Hightower and Targaryen identity, his clothes, the candles, the religious imagery, the repeated dialogue... everything is being connected to everything else.
And to be clear: I am not claiming that none of these things were intentional.
Some of them almost certainly were. The conflict between Daeron's Hightower upbringing and his Targaryen blood is explicitly part of the show's conception of the character. Benjamin Evan Ainsworth has described Daeron as caught between those two identities, shaped by Ormund as a father figure while also possessing the power represented by Tessarion. He has also explained that Daeron has learned to anticipate Ormund's violent outbursts and still wants to please him despite fearing him.
My problem is not that all these interpretations are necessarily false.
My problem is that fandom analysis often seems to take a few structural details and build the arches, vaults and frescoes of an entire cathedral around them, while I am still looking at the actual foundations and wondering how much of that cathedral was truly built by the show.
A parallel is not automatically characterization, an echo is not automatically development. Symbolism can enrich a character, but it cannot replace the character himself. And when I compare what Fire & Blood gives us about Daeron with what the show has chosen to emphasize so far, I cannot avoid the impression that the adaptation has separated qualities that originally coexisted within one person and redistributed them between Daeron and Ormund.
Book Daeron is described as handsome, courteous, clever, popular and the gentlest of Alicent's three sons. He is also said to have grown up in the shadow of Aegon and Aemond, which made him more accustomed to following orders than giving them. That last part matters: Daeron was never written as an impossibly dominant teenage commander who naturally controlled every room he entered.
But "accustomed to following orders" is not the same thing as helpless, passive or incapable. At the Battle of the Honeywine, Ormund's army is facing defeat until Daeron arrives on Tessarion and saves it. Ormund knights him with Vigilance and names him Daeron the Daring because of that action. Daeron, characteristically modest, gives the credit to Tessarion rather than claiming the victory for himself.
That single event already tells us several things at once:
- He is modest, but he is not passive.
- He is gentle, but he is willing to enter battle.
- He follows Ormund, but he can also save Ormund when Ormund fails.
- He does not need to posture like Aemond in order to be courageous.
Later, after the fall of KL, Daeron and the great Hightower host are considered the greatest threat to Rhaenyra's rule. Daeron scouts ahead on Tessarion, and several houses and territories submit to the Greens rather than face him and his dragon.
I would not call him a fully developed military genius, because Fire & Blood is far too sparse to establish that. It barely gives most of its characters an interior life at all. But it clearly presents Daeron as militarily capable, operationally useful and dangerous enough to influence the decisions of entire houses.
And then there are the contradictions.
Daeron is courteous and gentle, but after Maelor's death he refuses mercy to Lady Caswell and has Tessarion burn Bitterbridge. Later, during the horrific sack of Tumbleton, he orders Hobert Hightower to stop the violence, although Hobert is unable to control the army. When Hugh Hammer starts presenting himself as a prospective king, Daeron throws wine in his face. He also quickly gives his approval to the plot against Hugh and Ulf.
That is not a morally uncomplicated person.
That is someone who can be kind and vengeful, modest and proud, obedient and decisive, merciful in one context and merciless in another. He is not "the good Green" because he is harmless. His gentleness exists alongside his capacity for violence.
Even within the limitations of a fictional history book, Daeron contains more than one quality at a time.
Before we ever met Daeron onscreen, the show had already established a fairly specific image of him. In season 2, Gwayne described him to Alicent as stalwart, clever, skilled with both sword and lute and, most importantly, kind.
Episode 3x04 follows through on the kindness.
Daeron notices when Ormund is about to explode and discreetly tells the young cupbearer to leave. He is gentle and affectionate with Tessarion. He is horrified when Ormund orders him to kill Leo. He tries to appeal to mercy and reason, but Ormund forces him to carry out the execution as a grotesque rite of passage while preparing to use him as a possible claimant to the throne.
All of that works on an immediate emotional level.
Daeron is sympathetic. He is clearly not another Aegon or Aemond. He has a conscience, tenderness. His bond with Tessarion is lovely. He is trapped beneath the authority of a man who raised him, frightens him and still represents the closest thing he has had to a consistent father.
I understand why people are already attached to him.
I am already attached to him.
When I call him an absolute sweetheart, I mean it.
But I mean it with two different kinds of awareness at the same time.
The positive one is obvious: finally, the show has introduced a Green prince who is not immediately presented as sadistic, grotesque, sexually deviant, monstrously ambitious or fundamentally repellent. Daeron is sweet. He is gentle. He genuinely cares for his dragon. After years of the show treating nearly every member of this family as a collection of pathologies, that feels almost revolutionary.
The negative side is that the show once again appears to associate goodness among the Greens with powerlessness.
Daeron can be kind because he is frightened. He can be sympathetic because he is controlled. He can be gentle because someone else possesses the authority, initiative and capacity for violence.
As of episode 3x04, the show seems to have taken several qualities that coexisted within book Daeron and split them between two people.
Daeron receives the gentleness, modesty, vulnerability, conscience and emotional suffering. Ormund receives the command, strategy, initiative, menace, political ambition and violence.
Book Daeron could follow Ormund's orders and still become the person who saved Ormund’s army.
Show Daeron is currently being fashioned by Ormund, hidden by Ormund, politically positioned by Ormund and forced into violence by Ormund.
That distinction matters.
This redistribution of qualities becomes even clearer when we look at Ormund. In Fire & Blood, he is barely characterized beyond his political and military function: he is Lord of Oldtown, commands the Hightower host, carries Vigilance and dies during the First Battle of Tumbleton. The show, however, has expanded him into a flamboyant, manipulative and volatile antagonist who intends to place Daeron on the Iron Throne as a Hightower puppet.
And I understand the practical function of that choice.
The show needed new energy. It needed a new antagonist who could actively move the plot. Aegon is incapacitated and displaced. Aemond, after being constructed as the principal Green threat throughout season 2, is now injured, hidden at Harrenhal and temporarily removed from the action. So the narrative energy associated with planning, danger and villainy has shifted toward Ormund. Even contemporary coverage of the episode has openly described him as the season's new central villain.
He deceives Daemon and Rhaenyra with the false Daeron. He takes Tumbleton. He publicly performs justice while privately arranging Leo's murder. He intends to put Daeron on the throne while retaining control over him. He is theatrical, violent, intelligent and unpredictable.
In other words, Ormund receives nearly all the agency.
Daeron receives nearly all the victimhood.
And perhaps that is only the beginning of an arc. Perhaps the entire point will be for Daeron eventually to resist Ormund and become the Daring. We are only halfway through the season, and episode 3x04 is his first substantial appearance. I am not declaring his complete characterization finished after one episode.
But I am discussing what the show has chosen to make its first and strongest statement about him.
The writers had waited more than 2 seasons to introduce a character the audience had repeatedly asked about. They then built his entrance around a surprise: first the false Daeron, then the revelation that the real prince was the quiet red-haired squire standing beside Ormund all along. The fake-prince plot and the forced execution at Tumbleton are inventions of the adaptation rather than events taken from Daeron's book storyline.
And yes, it worked.
Daeron and Tessarion are currently the only part of the show I feel genuinely curious about. But they interest me partly because they are new.
Not merely new to the screen: narratively new. I do not know where this storyline is going because this version of Daeron and his relationship with this version of Ormund do not really exist in F&B.
These characters have not yet accumulated three seasons of contradictions, abandoned consequences and retroactive explanations. There is still possibility around them.
That curiosity is real, but it is not the same thing as trust.
I can see why viewers are drawing so many parallels around Daeron, and some of them may well be intentional. Maybe Daeron does deliberately resemble young Alicent. Maybe Ormund is consciously echoing Otto. Maybe the religious imagery is meant to externalize Daeron's divided identity. Maybe Tessarion chained inside the sept represents the Targaryen part of him that Ormund and his Hightower upbringing have suppressed.
Those are all valid readings.
But Daeron resembling Alicent does not automatically make him complex. Ormund echoing Otto does not give Daeron agency. Tessarion functioning as a symbol does not replace Daeron functioning as a participant in his own story.
A beautifully constructed parallel can still surround a simplified character.
And sometimes I feel as though fandom takes every visual detail and fragment of repeated dialogue and performs hours of unpaid narrative labour on behalf of writers who have repeatedly demonstrated that immediate emotional impact matters more to them than long-term consistency.
The analysis may be intelligent, the connections may be beautiful.
But a brilliant audience interpretation does not retroactively prove that the underlying writing contains the same degree of architecture.
Sometimes the audience really has built the cathedral. The writers merely left a few stones.
And this is where my concern really lies.
I do not need Daeron to be a carbon copy of his book counterpart. I do not need him to arrive already invulnerable, fully formed and commanding armies like a forty-year-old general.
I do not object to his vulnerability, to his religious upbringing, to the idea that Ormund has psychologically controlled him or that he must grow into his courage.
In fact, that could become an excellent arc.
What worries me is the possibility that the show will once again mistake suffering for complexity and helplessness for goodness.
Book Daeron was not interesting because he was simply "the nice brother".
He was interesting because he was the gentlest brother and still became Daeron the Daring. He was courteous and capable of atrocity. He was modest and politically significant. He was used to following orders and capable of decisive action. He could credit Tessarion for his victory and make armies surrender at the prospect of facing them.
His qualities did not cancel one another out. They created tension inside the same person.
That is what I want from the show: not merely a sweet boy for the audience to protect while Ormund carries all the power and darkness around him, but a Daeron whose sweetness survives alongside courage, competence, rage, violence and agency.
So yes: I already find Daeron completely adorable. And I am still perfectly capable of recognizing that, as of episode 3x04, the show appears to have taken Daeron the Daring, handed most of the "Daring" to Ormund, and left Daeron with the qualities designed to make the audience want to wrap him in a blanket.
Those two reactions are not contradictory.
These are the reasons I cannot fully invest myself in all these analyses and readings of the subtext, and why I now approach the show with little more than a lukewarm, guarded curiosity.
How do I explain to the CRK fandom that I think Pure Vanilla Cookie and White Lily Cookie are most definitely exes? For vibes, story, and character development reasons? I keep seeing people trying to explain why Purelily is better than Shadowvanilla and I’m sitting here thinking “it’s not that I think they haven’t dated or wouldn’t date, it’s that I think it’s already over”. I don’t ship it but it did happen.
Don’t get me wrong here: Vanilla and Lily are ride or dies. They are BFFs. I would say until death do us part but one of them literally did die and it didn’t matter. They’re closer now than they ever were before. I just don’t think it’s romantic per se.
Allow me to illustrate my understanding for you:
Vanilla and Lily meet in college (the academy), become fast friends
They both literally skip classes to hang out and sneak into restricted sections of the library. This is canon.
Their platonic feelings for each other are growing and growing
Over time, these take a romantic undertone as well
They try dating and do date for a long time, both during and after college
I’m talking 5-10 years. They at LEAST dated for 3 years. I could be convinced they dated for decades and maybe were even married and divorced at some point. This wasn’t a fling. They were in love.
Most of their firsts were with each other. While I imagine Pure Vanilla maybe dating a person or two for a few months before (he has a big heart and is at least a lil bit in love with everyone he’s ever met), maybe making out or getting handsy but not further than that, Pure Vanilla was Lily’s first EVERYTHING. Maybe even first friend (I do not remember if this is canon or not)
However, overtime the passionate love of romance faded, but the intimacy and love of best friendship always remained.
Pure Vanilla Cookie is a creature of habit and responsibility, but White Lily Cookie is the light of freedom. She needs to explore and find answers. I cannot imagine that White Lily Cookie could stay in one place long enough to satisfy Vanilla, and I cannot imagine that Vanilla was willing enough to adventure to satisfy Lily.
They go on dates, buy each other little things, etc. but this slowly turns from passion to obligation. The feeling of “Oh! We haven’t done ______ in a while. We should, we’re a couple, after all” was more present than “We should do this because it would be fun”.
They both become frustrated- Pure Vanilla at himself for not being able to drop his duties as king and go with White Lily, and White Lily being frustrated at both of them and then feeling guilty for being upset because it’s not his fault that she can’t “function right” and “give him a good wife” <- they are both wrong and self hating btw.
Eventually, they realize this has severely strained their relationship: they talk (though Pure Vanilla had to get her to open up slowly over months, maybe years) and realize that they miss how they used to be. “Break things off” seems like the incorrect phrase to use because romance was holding them back. They become even closer when they do not feel obligated to romantically commit themselves to each other. It’s a breath of fresh air and they can both love each other freely again. They become closer than ever- the same companionship they had at the height of their academy years but with the added wisdom, years, and intimacy of knowing each other for a long time.
Continues like this until All That Shit (Dark Flour War) happened, they missed each other greatly etc. etc.
In walks (floats?) Shadow Milk Cookie
Oh wow here’s a guy who hides his feelings and is convinced he’s a monster! Thankfully, Pure Vanilla Cookie has experience (and a type apparently).
To Vanilla, being with Shadow Milk is exhilarating the same way stealing from the forbidden section with Lily was- a feeling Pure Vanilla had missed
This isn’t to say being with Lily was boring or monotonous in anyway, it’s just that Shadow Milk has a confidence and presence that Pure Vanilla finds alluring and captivating.
He also isn’t afraid to insult Vanilla to his face. While this can be annoying at times, it’s certainly refreshing. Shadow Milk Cookie may be the Beast of Deceit, but he’s honest in a way that many cookies who surround him lack- he actually voices his displeasure instead of just pushing it down and acting like everything is fine. This is something that White Lily is especially guilty of. There’s not much that annoys Pure Vanilla, but people acting like everything is fine when he’s trying to help because they don’t wanna bother him and then exploding when it has become a crisis is a very familiar frustration to him.
That’s not to say that Shadow Milk doesn’t hide what’s wrong- holy SHIT does he hide what’s wrong- but he hides what’s wrong with HIMSELF, also something White Lily does, and something Pure Vanilla is more than willing to coax out of him. It’s when others act like Pure Vanilla can do no wrong and don’t tell him when he makes them uncomfortable that makes him sad and anxious. If he can’t tell when he’s upset someone, then Vanilla always has to be on his guard. Shadow Milk Cookie has no such qualms about making demands to Pure Vanilla and it takes a burden off of him.
There’s more interesting things about their relationship as well but I don’t wanna turn this into a Shadowvanilla analysis post.
In conclusion, Purelily are besties who dated and Shadowvanilla works best when Pure Vanilla Cookie has the experience he gained by dating White Lily Cookie. “I don’t ship it but it did happen” is my best explanation and ultimately how I feel about PureLily. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
post your meta about how danny becoming dan makes sense please!!!!! 🙏🏾
aight bet.
this is going to be a bit ramble-y and I will be going into more depth on the sociological aspects than I would otherwise because, though I do not write for the white gaze, I am painfully aware that I am in the presence of White Gays™ who will misinterpret or attempt to deflect criticism of their favorite white boy if i hold up an unflattering mirror to a character they project on to. So its just easier to head off some of the pseudo-intellectual arguments before they start. I am not going to debate yall about this. If any of yall take issue with me speaking frankly about white people. Cope. <3
now on to the meta:
Why Danny becoming Dan makes sense, actually.
To better explain i think it requires a peek into how I see Dan as a character. And how why he's like that is a completely unsurprising result of Danny + Grief.
So Dan is all Big and Bad and wants the Whole World to Know. He wants to either destroy or enslave humanity.
And like. 🤨🙄😒
But the main thing is, that like all who seek power especially men, power seeking/hierarchy assertion is a fear behavior.
Like yeah yeah "rage at a world that abandoned him" or whatever but like. Anger is a secondary emotion. Bro is covering for grief and fear. 🤷🏾♀️
Hell the comics even confirm this with (spoilers) Vlad calling him out for the same things that he does.
But even beyond that i dont excuse his power seeking behavior to Plasmius's influence.
Danny has that in him too.
Because Dan's whole shit is an act of Ego Protection.
Bro is Desperate to keep that grief buried.
He needs everyone to be scared of him. He needs everyone to feel as bad as he does.
But on God and the Ancestors, that man is One (1) Hard Read away from breaking into tears. The only thing stopping that from happening is that, unfortunately, he has enough power to never be forced to sit with himself in that way.
So he is constantly coping.
He cannot deal with his own reality so he does everything in his power to avoid it, much like how Teen Danny has a dedicated part of his brain for Not Thinking About What He Is.
The one time he was forced to really think about himself/his nature Spectra damn near had his ass because it fucked him up so bad
So he has the same coping mechanisms as he always had. For one.
He has the same fragile ass ego, tho aggressively protected, for two.
And now on to the third part of my power point presentation.
Like, hey, sidebar: Danny's moral compass is typically other people most often Sam or Jazz. And btw offloading his moral/emotional intelligence onto the women his life dovetails really nicely with my final point.
Which is that, for all of his good qualities, Danny is still socialized as a Statistically Average White Boy.
And while this doesn't guarantee that you turn out evil there's a couple of things that you just gotta accept about that.
Male socialization in western cultures does not allow for emotional development. You are not taught to express yourself. The only acceptable emotion is anger.
There is the Male Socialization of Dominance as a Means of asserting status/manhood.
And despite what the melanin deficient leftist population would like to believe *****this doesn't exist in a vacuum from race*****
But i will focus on the parts most relevant re: racial socialization for Danny.
Because while in all likelihood that he's walking around with a thousand and two unconscious biases (keep in mind i am talking about canon Danny not the perfectly woke version that lives in the fandom's mind) brass tacks there's certain things white people and white men especially (tho white women and femmes are NOT EXEMPT) are conditioned to believe about the world.
One of which is the deeply individualistic belief that you are Entitled To Revenge.
My toxic trait is that im lowkey Pro Revenge. But this stance is for minorities specifically. And no being a white woman/femme/afab does not count. Talk to me when your voting block can compete with Black women re: progressive political alignment. ✌🏾
Because, as we all know, the thing about white supremacist capitalist patriarchy is that it hurts everybody. Even those who receive dividends from it.
But white people are Severely Individualism Pilled and so when they feel the Steel Toed Boot of The System crushing their windpipe they feel Uniquely Slighted.
As if No One Has It As Bad As Me or, alternatively Anger at An Uncaring World.
The narcissistic "woe is me" bullshit that acts as if the world continuing to turn when your life goes bad and the general apathy of the masses is the result of an inherent depravity in the world as opposed to everyone being caught up in their own bullshit. Largely do to trying to survive under the same oppressive system that caused the pain in the first place.
People would have a lot more time to care about the plight of strangers if they were not being made to fight for scraps.
And yes "anyone can feel the pain of an uncaring world" but white entitlement allows for so much insulation from Systemic Violence that the idea that Other People Are Going Through It Too but Would care if given the chance eludes them.
Because white people pain is real pain. (unlike the pain of minorities caused by systemic violence) but white people's voluntary isolation (because holding on to cultural identity and community makes you Other) makes it so that pain, tho real, is an individual problem.
Whiteness has no tools for mending grief because that does nothing to reinforce hierarchy. It has no use for a broken worker.
And so white people though they will acknowledge the pain of other whites with thoughts and prayers have no means of actual communal grief and healing.
So when Danny lost his support system he was up a creek.
Not to mention him ending up in the custody of Vlad of all people meant that there was no fucking chance of him learning any kind of healthy coping mechanism.
So you have a young white man who is going through grief, feeling very isolated, who is by the nature of his socialization inclined to respond to respond to extreme emotional distress with repression or anger, and who's standing in society would (at least subconsciously) condition him to believe that it is his right to lash out against an uncaring world.
Who suddenly had the power to do so with the twitch of his finger.
So basically a young white man, who already wasn't popular at school but "was such a nice boy" and experienced real grief from the sudden violent loss of his support system and anger at living in a world that is cruel and unfair and doesn't care that he's hurting, chooses to externalize it in the form of mass murder. (Bonus points: he's literally the embodiment of his own suicidal ideation.)
(No literally the first act Dan ever did was kill himself. But the Phantom half isn't able to die. So he's just endlessly externalizing that pain. Kind of on the nose tbh)
So no i am Not Surprised At All that Danny would turn into Dan given the circumstances.
Tldr; sorry to tell you but Danny fits 3/4 of the profile for a school shooter and the loss of his community and support network would likely be enough to tick the last few boxes 🤷🏾♀️
Okay so I bit the bullet at watched deadwingdork's reaction to Patricia's "boinking animal people" video. Irritating to hear him constantly misgender Patricia as "they" and "him" but I wanna talk about Patricia's actual video.
It's bad, it's a bad video essay. Everytime you think she's gonna buildup to a point but no, she just goes from describing one piece of furry media to another. She jumps between media made for kids and media made for adults (including a sex game). In a good video essay using such a wide range in media could serve to illustrate how people grow into the furry fandom over time. You watch something as a kid, it speaks to you in some way, you grow up, develop adult desires and feel a whole new range of emotions about it.
But no, she just goes on and on about how horny [media] made her personally feel? She doesn't even try to use the experiences of other people to strengthen her point, only her own. And with a title like "The Ethics of boinking animal people" well, she doesn't really talk about the ethics. She doesn't go into the complexities of consent, the line between fantasy and reality, or how erotica can be used to cope with trauma or strengthen communities, she doesn't explain about why we have lines about what you cannot and can boink.
She did raise some good point about how for those that experience dehumanization due to queerness/autism can relate to furries. But again, she's so tunnel visioned by her own trauma that she can't understand that not every furry literly thinks they're an animal. Frankly I have a hard time fully understanding the points she's trying to make?
She said that Maus is more furry then Zootpia (which comparing an autobiographical story about a man's generational holocaust trauma to a fucking kids movie is vile in its own right) because Maus has a thought out animal = race metaphor, the only animal thing about Maus is their faces, they don't have any other animal traits. whilst zootopia is all the animalness of its characters but has a weaker racism metaphor. But then she goes on and on about how Furryness is about the tactile sensation of the animal traits? Which contradicts her statement about Maus being more furry than Zootopia.
Also she brings up Turning Red to further her emphasis on "the tactile nature of furry" which uh...the main character of that film is a child? Why are you using a child character in your video about fucking animal people ? 🤨 Also for Maus, Turning Red and Pom Poko, she completely ignores how the animal characters in these stories are used to be a metaphor for minority struggles? Maus is about the treatment of Jews during the holocaust, Turning Red is about puberty and immigration, Pom Poko is about post war japan being westernized. THEIR NOT ABOUT SEX.
Surprisingly she didn't talk much about Furries as metaphors for transness, unless I missed something. What else? Oh ya bringing up a shitty MS paint furry movie and lampshading the "drama" around it so you don't have to bring up the fact that you enjoy a film that was made by literal groomers.
Okay rant over
honestly deadwing dork's virulent transphobic chudism being the reason more people are talking about that vid is the worst possible way it could have broken containment, because like?
teobap is a perfect distillation of exactly how patricia talks about fucking everything. she never actually makes a point, she never takes anyone else's experiences into consideration, she retroactively assigns sexual intent where there was none, she brings children's media into explicitly sexual discussions, she ignores the actual struggles of other marginalized people to use them as rhetorical devices, she uses her own marginalization as justification and validation for her rhetoric and as a sort of cudgel to dissuade disagreement, and openly platforms other predators in a wink-nudge plausibly deniable way that she can make sound like a refutation of their actions to people who would normally be turned away if they understood the full context.
deadwing dork never actually brings any of that up. because that's not what he's interested in. he's interested in lolcowing a disabled trans woman who made a weird video, picks up on the undercurrent of and overt references to zoophilic desire, and is too fundamentally intellectually uncurious and incapable of sympathetic thinking to glean any of the specifics in order to actually comprehend why what she is saying is bad. instead, he and his audience spend FIVE. HOURS. making cheap, cruel, and exploitative jokes at patricia's expense that utterly destroy any possibility of actual measured critique to follow behind their slopjob and be taken seriously.
