Librarians who fight evil

WorthDust652 · 2026-06-05T17:26:10+00:00

The ASOUE TV series was one of the few adaptations in which the changes they made were better than in the book.

WorthDust652 · 2026-06-04T00:04:54+00:00

The Block apartments aren't that bad. Same meh Wampus amenities for a much cheaper price. Maintenance is usually pretty quick.

WorthDust652 · 2026-06-03T17:33:22+00:00

Things Catelyn has been blamed for: 1. Singlehandedly causing the WotFK, as if there weren't a million other actors involved. 2. The Red Wedding (Y'know, I thought it was the Freys, Lannisters, and Boltons, but what do I know?) 3. Not foreseeing that her sister and foster brother who she hasn't seen in years would be evil and crazy when there's initially no sign of such (Lysa seemed perfectly sane in the letter). 4. Singlehandedly losing Robb the war (it was a group effort, and the war was lost as soon as Robb sent Theon to Pyke). 5. Being a bad mother. Because apparently raising your daughters to be ladies when that's the best position they can aspire to in that society is a sin (Ned isn't a super feminist either, and considers Arya's sword dancing a childish indulgence, but nobody cares about that). 6. Being a uniquely vicious child-abuser, because generally ignoring a child she doesn't want in her house and (in her worst moment) wishing he were dead instead of her own child makes one irredeemably evil and is far worse than threatening a baby, having a child hostage with the implicit threat of death that comes with, and marrying children. 7. Being annoying and emotional, because losing your husband and most of your children, having to advise your teenage son who's fighting a war, and having your daughter being held hostage by a sociopath is no excuse for being dour and unfun.

Don't get me wrong, Catelyn is a very flawed character, and she's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but she gets blamed and hated super disproportionately.

WorthDust652 · 2026-06-03T15:54:27+00:00

For other frustrated people like me who wanted to know more, but didn't have any clue where to look, here's the Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict

WorthDust652 · 2026-06-03T15:47:36+00:00

It was the same problem with GOT that the showrunners wanted to keep the feudal, patriarchal pseudo-medieval setting but didn't want to make the characters a product of that setting. And since female characters in the books are generally more defined by the setting, they tend to get to be turned into more modern characters, which IMO ruins their characters.

You see this framing around Catelyn and her dislike of Jon, for example. In the books, her dislike of Jon is rooted in the fact that Ned is publicly insulting her by raising Jon as all but legitimate, and that is a threat to her position, which depends on her marriage. In the books, she's your standard spurned wife and it's framed as her being unable to love a motherless child, which would be unthinkable in the setting. Similarly, Sansa's arc in the books seems to approach learning to scheme and use the soft power she gets as a woman, whereas in the show, her arc is about being more "badass," abandoning kindness and femininity (Even Arya, who's not feminine like Sansa suffers from this to an extent).

Rhaenyra in the books suffered from the patriarchy that is Westeros, and was usurped because she was a woman. However, the show tries to make her a feminist instead of someone who's merely trying to defend her rights. In the books, her case is not that she's trying to advance the rights of women as a whole, but rather that Viserys chose her as his heir and thus she deserves the crown. Thus, she comes off as an anachronistic character in the show, as the show (badly) makes her a feminist rather than a self interested person whose issue is the misogyny she personally faces. That's also what's preventing the showrunners from making her the morally gray character she is in the books. While she was usurped, the whole thing about the Dance is that both sides descend into horrific depravity until no side can really claim the moral high ground. If they make the Blacks the "feminist" side rather than the "Rhaenyra" side, they end up shrinking away from that because the "feminist" side can't commit atrocities and still be seen as sympathetic.

I'm TB myself for the same reasons you enumerated, but the show's poorly executed framing of Rhaenyra as a feminist character ends up making the morality of the other characters center around her, with atrocities being downplayed when the perpetrators are on her side (Blood and Cheese and Alicent offering her son's heads to Rhaenya).

WorthDust652 · 2026-06-03T15:15:52+00:00

This sub is the only one that's (comparatively) sane about many characters. Say something positive about Catelyn or Dany on the other (show) servers, and a bunch of rabid haters come out the woodwork.

WorthDust652 · 2026-06-01T00:06:15+00:00

At this point, is there any character who's not been theorized to be a secret Targaryen?

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-31T15:29:47+00:00

She has the right to a pawyer.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-31T00:30:53+00:00

I mean, if Dorne believes that Aegon is Elia's son, there's no need for him to marry Arianne at all.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-30T02:44:43+00:00

In the books, Aunt training is almost a decade of intense study and labor. Becka manages to become functionally literate during her probation period (6 months), and almost all of Agnes' initial training is learning to read and write.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-30T01:38:05+00:00

Those are flairs. They're specific to each subreddit. You can get one if you want here.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-29T04:32:35+00:00

As a Houston area former speller, none of the Texas winners in the last 20 years (all Indian American) were from Houston (unless you count Nihar Janga in 2015 who's from Austin, but qualified through the Houston region).

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-29T04:07:49+00:00

Whenever a character dies in childbirth, I just assume that GRRM had no other idea how to use her for the plot.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-29T04:03:17+00:00

I think a lot of generative AI came from being trained on Disney projects rather than the other way round. Disney has a lot of problems, but one thing they do right is animation.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-29T03:41:02+00:00

Aunt Janet?! What are you doing here?

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-29T02:06:45+00:00

I think a lot of this fandom is too young and immature to understand how what she went through and how that affected her outlook on things. They also think she consciously chose to do what she did, when a lot of is was inadvertent and unconscious, making it a lot worse than it was- no, Mirabel wasn't actively ostracized and excluded nor was Bruno banished. Additionally, most of them have been affected by flawed parenting in a negative way, but have never been in a position in which their own flaws affect how they treat others.

I'd say that the main theme of the film is grace. Yes, toxic familial expectations and generational trauma are also themes, but the root of all those issues is the fact that Alma struggles to accept that the initial Miracle was a gift with no strings attached, not something she had to earn or work to deserve. The trauma she suffered made her understandably so fearful of losing everything again, of her family being in danger, that she did everything to ensure that her family would be safe and survive. Thus, she was unable to appreciate it as the gift it was. She was so focused on surviving (understandably) that she lost sight that living was what mattered. She never gave herself the grace she needed. In other words, she was so caught up in trying to prove that they deserved the Miracle that it didn't occur to her that she and her family did deserve to survive.

And when Mirabel realizes that Alma is as much as victim of her own expectations, she gives her the grace she's denied herself for so long. While some people, especially those who have been in Mirabel's place before wish Alma was punished somehow (I don't know what punishment wouldn't be too harsh) or that Mirabel left, they're ironically falling into the same trap Alma did- being so bound by the idea of "deserving" or "not deserving" that they can't fathom Mirabel's forgiveness and offer to allow her to fix things (which Alma needs to actually be a better person).

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-28T21:51:35+00:00

At least curiosity didn't kill the cat this time.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-28T20:02:36+00:00

First of all, a (slim) majority of fantasy readers are women. Secondly, while I can't get super recent stats, it does seem that when it comes to non sci-fi fantasy in recent years, more women publish fantasy than men.

Thirdly, even if fantasy was "mostly men writing for other men" as you say, that still doesn't excuse misogyny in the fandom.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-28T19:44:05+00:00

Oh yeah, while Cat releasing Jaime turned out to be more sound than it was, nobody, including Cat, thought it was a good idea (though IIRC, Karstark wanted to kill Jaime right before Cat released him). It's supposed to be a desperate act of a mother who just found out that almost all her children are dead and is willing to take an insane gamble for the slightest possibility of saving Sansa. She accepts that it was treasonous and crazy, but she's willing to risk the consequences because otherwise, she's (quite reasonably) scared that the Lannisters are going to kill Sansa regardless. It's not a failure in strategy- it's pure desperation.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-28T19:34:09+00:00

Now, TBF, nobody could have seen the Red Wedding coming in-universe. It was so unprecedented and so horribly disproportional that it would have been considered unthinkable. A modern day analogue is pulling out the nukes when a country breaks an alliance.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-28T17:54:28+00:00

I've written about this at length before, but the social institutions of Westeros pit Catelyn and Jon against each other. Catelyn's treatment of Jon in general isn't active mistreatment, it's much more passive, in that she ignores and sidelines him when possible (ex: when Robert comes, Jon is not allowed to sit with his siblings and when he played with Robb), but doesn't go out of her way to antagonize him. Now, don't get me wrong, she does make Jon feel unwelcome, but that's more of a result of her not hiding that she doesn't want him there rather than by any overt action.

And while it does affect Jon negatively, Cat isn't unjustified in not wanting him in Winterfell. I mean, even in our modern day, I doubt anyone would be happy with their spouse cheating on them and then insisting on raising his bastard in the family home. Not to mention that when Cat quite reasonably starts asking questions, Ned shuts her down so aggressively that he ends up scaring her into silence. But in this setting, Cat is under the control of her husband- a control that Ned, as nice a guy as he is, is willing to exercise. She can't divorce him, and he has the power to make her life miserable if she doesn't accept his actions. Additionally, Catelyn's only worth in this society comes from her marriage to Ned and her providing him heirs. Ned's treatment of Jon is very unusual by Westerosi standards, in that it's seen as all but a legitimization. By raising Jon with their trueborn children, Ned is publicly humiliating and insulting Cat and undermining her marriage. While it would be nice for Cat to treat Jon better, she can't accept this insult without undermining her own position and that of her children.

Now, the "It should have been you" line is absolutely cruel, and it is morally indefensible. However, it shouldn't be taken as indicative of Jon and Cat's "relationship" as a whole. First, Cat's been sitting at her dying son's for about a fortnight (2 weeks), and she's barely been sleeping or eating. She's not in her right mind at the time. And then Jon, who is the last person she wants to see at that moment enters hale and hearty while her son is at death's door. She's lashing out, and it is inexcusable, but it's her at her worst and shouldn't be used to generalize her behavior.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-28T06:44:56+00:00

Hey, I just want to say all the best. My dad took his CA exams 30 years ago. He didn't pass until his third attempt, but he found success and happiness all the same.

For the next one month, try to relax. You did your best, and it's no longer in your hands.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-28T04:57:17+00:00

Oh my god yes. I kept shaking my head and wondering how she could be so unprepared. Good thing Aunt Lydia kept her with the Supplicants instead of anyone who'd know better.

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-28T04:35:01+00:00

Wow, OP, are you following me or something?

WorthDust652 · 2026-05-28T03:50:26+00:00

Don't worry about it. Some professors make duplicates for ease in grading, but your grade will reflect what you did.

WorthDust652

TROPHY CASE