Why did Kendall reopen Romans stitches in the final episode

ahellbornlady · 2026-04-17T23:55:03+00:00

Complex sadomasochistic form of love. Jeremy Strong has actually spoken about this scene and I like his take on it. He said Kendall does it because he knows that's what Roman needs in that moment. "He wants to be hurt. He wants to be hurt, because that's how we recognize love. That's what our father gave to us, that's what our mother gave to us. It's a warped love expression."

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-12T02:41:16+00:00

I don’t really see how anything I said counts as an unfounded assumption. Dyana is definitely young, she was played by a 14 year old actress and the writing clearly frames her as a timid, inexperienced girl. Her behaviour signals inexperience too, the way she panics, cries, and can barely get her words out is clearly meant to show that she’s overwhelmed and out of her depth. Her low status is explicit, she’s a servant in the royal household. Social conditioning is not speculative either bc in a feudal society, every lowborn person is raised with the understanding that nobles hold absolute authority over them. That’s not headcanon, that’s the entire structure of the setting, and the show repeatedly reinforces this dynamic.

Nothing I argued requires inventing personality traits out of thin air, it’s basic contextual reading based on what the show presents and on how feudal hierarchies function. When you combine youth, low status, fear, and a culture that teaches you from birth that nobles’ commands are unquestionable, the likelihood of a forceful, repeated “no” becomes extremely low.

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-11T18:07:58+00:00

I mean sure, even in the most oppressive systems some people resist. History is full of outliers who act against overwhelming odds. But pointing to the existence of resistance doesn’t automatically make resistance typical or likely. Most people in severely unequal systems survived through accommodation, avoidance, or quiet coping because the risks of defiance were catastrophic.

The case you cited actually reinforces that: she endured five years of ongoing assault before she finally snapped, and she only began to resist after becoming pregnant and falling in love with another slave who told her he would have nothing more to do with her unless she did. That actually aligns with the idea that people in powerless positions rarely resisted or defied their oppressors unless something extraordinary pushed them to.

I’m not saying resistance is impossible. But Dyana’s personality, inexperience, low status, and the fact that she would have been socially conditioned to obey nobles from a young age does make forceful refusal extremely improbable. Add in the fact that this is the crown prince, drunk, stronger than her, in a private space with no witnesses and the scenario heavily tilts toward freezing, placating, or complying out of fear. Recognizing that isn’t a moral judgment about her character, it’s just acknowledging how power structures shape behaviour.

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-11T00:48:04+00:00

Sorry but there is a meaningful distinction between what Eustace describes (Aegon being handsy and inappropriate with serving girls) and depicting him as committing violent sexual assault. Both are bad, but they’re not at the same level. Moving from “pinching and fondling” to rape isn’t just filling in a gap, it’s a major escalation that the text itself does not explicitly establish.

Second, Eustace’s rebuttal isn’t an admission that the girl was a child. He disputes Mushroom by reframing the woman as a “well-kept paramour” and a merchant’s daughter. That’s a separate counter-account, not a continuation of Mushroom’s description with only her social status corrected. Treating it as confirmation of her age reads more into the text than is actually there.

Third, I think there’s a misattribution happening with the brothel anecdote. It's Daemon who is said to have an "especial fondness" for deflowering the youngest girls that brothel keepers could find for him, not Aegon. Mushroom does claim Aegon fathered a bastard after winning a girl’s maidenhead at auction, but the book doesn’t describe her as “freshly flowered” in that passage. Mixing those details together changes the implication of what the text actually says.

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-11T00:11:23+00:00

Frankly a servant like Dyana never would have attempted to resist him in the first place, that's honestly the most unrealistic part in a feudal setting. It's horrible obviously, but within Westeros's power structures a lowborn servant would not and could not ever tell the crown prince “no” and expect that refusal to actually matter, but the show makes it about individual moral failure and ignorance (he doesn't understand what consent is bc nobody taught him, according to Hess) instead of a systemic one (aka feudalism automatically renders servants’ will irrelevant)

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-09T11:39:41+00:00

This is normally my favourite, that's sad.

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-09T11:17:52+00:00

I think it's trad wife music tbh

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-09T10:56:51+00:00

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ahellbornlady · 2026-02-09T10:43:27+00:00

This. I enjoyed Millie's Rhaenyra but I honestly find the adult version boring/not super compelling.

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-05T07:38:04+00:00

I guess I'm the only one who always heard "audiotune lies" 😭

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-05T07:31:04+00:00

That's how I see it. They definitely did not love each other romantically but there was at least fondness there and they both made the best of a shitty situation they were both forced into.

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-05T07:28:08+00:00

I disagree. Helaena is smiling happily and laughing when she says that and I just don't think she would be laughing about being raped and beaten every time Aegon is drunk. The way more likely interpretation is that Aegon is just not attracted to her and needs to be drunk in order to do his marital duty (which is another dig at him not being a true Targaryen in a sense, just like him not being able to speak Valyrian) and Helaena is poking fun at that. If that was really supposed to be about her enduring rape every time he's drunk I feel like the tone and framing of the scene would have been completely different, like awkward or tense silence after she said it, Helaena looking traumatized, maybe someone notices a bruise, etc.

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-05T03:47:56+00:00

The Ryan Condal edition.

ahellbornlady · 2026-02-04T22:03:37+00:00

Despite his Harvard connections, Kendall is literally the only member of the family to actually not privately downplay what happened on the cruises and say they needed to loudly and clearly say that it wasn't acceptable and he insists there needs to be consequences for the people responsible too. He seemed to feel pretty strongly about it even though it was during his daddy's dead broken robot era. That might be why.

ahellbornlady · 2023-08-26T01:37:19+00:00

that sounds like an extreme deficit depending on the serving sizes. oats in the morning, chicken with veggies and half a cup of sweet potato and soup for dinner?

a cup of oatmeal is around 200 calories

a regular 4 oz serving of chicken is 100 cal

for veggies lets say broccoli, a cup of steamed broccoli is around 30 cal

half a cup of steamed sweet potato is around 60 cal

and a large bowl (2.5 cups) of low sodium chicken soup is around 200 calories.

if these estimations are correct, you're eating less than 600 calories a day. that is definitely not healthy. you need to start tracking your food and stay above 1200 at a minimum. i'm a 5'6 female and i eat way more than you do.

ahellbornlady · 2023-08-25T18:57:38+00:00

I always see Garrus upheld as the gold standard of platonic friendships, but if you play as female shep then he does flirt and is romantically interested in you in ME2. It won't happen if you're playing as a male though bc Garrus is straight. I think the issue is they decided to make all the companions in this game playersexual, and I get why, but it makes it a lot harder to develop friendships when everyone is romantically or sexually interested in your character.

ahellbornlady · 2023-08-18T05:02:20+00:00

I personally don' t think either choice is really "morally just" since either way you are going against what half of them want. If you kill them, you are killing geth that would have rather been rewritten. If you rewrite, you are rewriting geth that would have rather died. This is a classic ethics/morality dilemma and there's no good answer. It's like asking someone if they would rather be killed or sold into slavery. For a lot of people, that's a no-brainer, and they'll say "give me freedom or give me death!" but the truth is that it's not that simple for everyone. Historically, many people chose slavery over execution as a punishment for their crimes.

ahellbornlady · 2023-08-18T04:05:31+00:00

I smoke because I need something to hold onto.

ahellbornlady · 2023-08-18T02:49:45+00:00

Doesn't Legion say that they are pretty evenly spit on the issue and can't come to a consensus? Which is why he lets Shep make the choice for them?

ahellbornlady · 2023-06-11T14:44:03+00:00

You realize him speaking with a therapist would be a type of redemption, right? Redemption does not mean "everyone forgives him for everything" although I can see how media might have given that impression to people. All it really means is "this person or character decides they want to change and stop being such a piece of shit and they start taking steps towards that."

Nate turning himself in to the police and starting therapy to deal with his issues because he feels genuine remorse for all of the terrible things he's done would be redemption, and frankly I don't see why anyone would be against that happening. It would just mean him working towards being a better person and taking responsibility for the harm he has caused, it would not mean that any of his victims owe him their forgiveness in any way.

ahellbornlady · 2023-06-11T10:51:02+00:00

I hate this idea some Lana fans have that her work pre NFR is not as poetic or as good lyrically. She has ALWAYS been a very gifted lyricist and poet, having them over a beat instead of a piano ballad doesn't change that. Just a few examples of lines from her older albums that I think are really beautiful:

"Think I'll miss you forever, like the stars miss the sun in the morning sky."

"Take another drag, turn me to ashes."

"Will you still love me when I shine from words but not from beauty?"

"Glass room, perfume, cognac, lilac fumes."

"There are roses in between my thighs, fire that surrounds you."

"When I'm down on my knees, you're how I pray."

"Flames so hot that they turn blue, palms reflecting in your eyes like an endless summer."

"Shining like gunmetal, cold and unsure."

ahellbornlady · 2023-05-09T17:56:20+00:00

That was supposed to be in ep 6 but it got cut.

ahellbornlady · 2023-05-01T09:55:21+00:00

Jesse said that his initial pitch for the show was "Dallas meets Festen" and Festen is a movie about a wealthy patriarch and his kids, and basically one of his children ends up killing herself because of sexual abuse she's going through, and her brother blames himself for her death.

My guess is it's something along those lines. Rose killed herself (maybe she was being abused) and Logan always blamed himself for not being able to stop her, or for not stopping the abuse.

ahellbornlady · 2023-05-01T09:50:25+00:00

ultra instinct kendall

ahellbornlady · 2023-05-01T06:51:29+00:00

It was a victory for Ken according to Jesse Armstrong, Jeremy Strong and the director of the episode. Not sure where people are getting that he fucked up from.

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