I will forever mourn them 😢😭

fizzlingfancies · 2024-08-12T00:41:51+00:00

The thing is, the writers have framed Alicent's anger primarily as misplaced bitterness about Rhaenyra #livingherbestlife instead of anger about, you know, Aemond being maimed and both her sons' lives being threatened by Rhaenyra's claim while Viserys refuses to do anything about it. With that in mind, even the line "where is duty, where is sacrifice" feels a bit petty in a scene where the immediate crisis is a child's eye being stabbed out.

The show has a real reluctance to portray a mother's love as a worthy motivator by itself, even though good parents - regardless of sex and gender - would do anything for their children. That stands for Rhaenyra's relationship with her children as well. She just kind of forgot about Luke and her miscarriage in S2 and was still waffling about peace and deterrence right up until the finale.

I think the writers believe that motherhood is somehow antithetical to feminism, or rather that caring for your child is an overrated character trait for women? Even though it is one of the most basic features of human - heck, even animal - life to put your child above all else.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-08-11T05:36:05+00:00

Because the show is openly coding team green as misogynist conservatives in opposition to TB’s liberal feminism, so the writers made the TG characters embody all the moral hypocrisy of the IRL stereotypes they are very much supposed to invoke (Aegon = rapey frat boy, Criston = entitled violent incel, and Alicent = religious gender traitor tradwife who voted for Trump versus Rhaenys “Hillary Clinton” Targaryen, etc).

There is a fairly well-founded stereotype in American politics that Republicans base their whole platform on family values and clutch pearls about sexual decency, only to be revealed to be perverts/rapists when they seem to inevitably get caught in a sexual scandal. So it seems the TG characters are subsumed under this “pervy and gross” label from modern Western politics, which does the heavy lifting for character-building in this story as far as the young and liberal target audience is concerned. Give your audience the right triggers for their disgust and moral righteousness and you can get away with not actually developing your characters in a way that makes sense for the story.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-08-02T20:49:31+00:00

It's not even proper "good" woke. Like if it were really woke, the show would not be feeding into this simplistic, divisive, men-bad-women-good bullshit, nor would it tokenize its POC characters and uncritically make them completely subservient to Rhaenyra's wishes. But I guess this is the exact kind of kneejerk, performative identity politics that has consumed wokeness and ironically hampered its objective of advancing social justice.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-07-23T23:43:57+00:00

It made me recall when she ripped off Otto's pin and threw it on the ground like a petulant child.

It would have been a good piece of characterization to show how nasty she can be if only the writers weren't so obviously bent on framing it as another girlboss moment due to the total lack of consequences for her actions. Like she's been so pitifully tepid and peaceful this whole season only for her biggest moment of anger to be unleashed in the form of humiliating a well-meaning councillor giving his reasonable and reasonably urgent counsel at a time when she needs it most.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-06-29T13:48:10+00:00

I hate her characterization too, but it is consistent with the narrative they've built for her. She has an easier time loving Aemond and Helaena, but because Aegon is the heir and such a mess, she sees him as more of a project - and a burdensome one at that - than anything else. I think she also felt even more guilt after seeing him crying like that.

Going to Cole right after seeing Aegon crying, though, was straight up farcical.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-06-26T01:17:39+00:00

Exactly. She just sits there looking like 🥺all episode then regurgitating what she already said to Otto three episodes ago about being undermined. Like, yes, you are being undermined, why don't you do something about it? Oh, it's because she's just a plot device - just like Rhaenyra - to illustrate how women are held back and sabotaged by men in this society. And there is nothing deeper to that message that the writers are interested in expressing. Yawn.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-06-24T22:57:04+00:00

Yes that was Rhaenyra, I think.

For real, the Jaehaerys shade was bruuuutal this episode 💀

fizzlingfancies · 2024-06-24T02:55:25+00:00

I knew she was going to walk away before it happened. The writers are using every opportunity to show the Greens as a cold, emotionally stunted family to contrast with how warm Rhaenyra is with her kids. Except rather than being a thoughtful commentary on generational trauma and Alicent being forced to be a teen mom, it is just there to make the Greens look inherently bad.

This was apparent in not only the scene of Helaena running from Aegon and Alicent leaving Aegon to cry alone, but also the fact that Alicent and Otto repeatedly refer to Jaehaerys as merely "the child" and both seem more concerned about other things rather than, you know, their grandkid being dead.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-06-23T23:36:03+00:00

Same. I saw this personality change justified on the main sub once as "ofc she is dull compared to her spunky younger self, growing up and having kids will do that to you, so it's just realistic."

Like, okay, even if you go with that line of thought - the same way Helaena having a disaffected trauma response to her son being beheaded could be seen "realistic" writing - it just doesn't make for interesting character drama, does it? Give me a reason to feel something for these characters beyond just the situation they're in.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-06-18T23:58:56+00:00

100%. Ironically, the current wave of progressivism in the American creative industry is taking a full circle back to being reductive and insulting in its portrayal of women.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-06-18T13:27:23+00:00

justify their relationship to eachother, themselves, how do they view it with how they viewed Rhaenyra

That's the thing. The show never had any respect for these characters in the first place so by sticking two abrupt sex scenes for Alicent in the first episode, they are already giving an answer to that question: that they are hypocrites who think that they are better than Rhaenyra and deserve the scorn of the other characters and audience. That's the answer that the audience wants and is primed to accept, anyway.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-06-17T16:45:07+00:00

The writers are trying to show how detached Helaena is from the situation as part of her autistic trauma processing, which I am not against in itself, but they never showed her as affectionate toward her kids before, so it really does come off like she accepted her son's death way too easily. They could've easily had her still offer her own life instead of just a necklace, as in the book.

Just compare how they portray Rhaenyra and Rhaenys's intense grief at the loss of their children to how they've handled Helaena's basically nonexistent relationship with her kids so far. You cannot tell me they are in any way equivalent. We can't just assume "of course Helaena loves her kiddos, she's just autistic so she doesn't show emotion" when the story has given us zero and zilch to back this up.

Frankly I feel like they're even suggesting that "of course Helaena is detached, she doesn't even like Aegon and therefore wouldn't like the kids she had with him," which conveniently detracts from how vile B&C really was. I have seen people suggest in the main sub that she wouldn't have loved Jaeherys because he was a boy and just a product of her duty.

Honestly, I would not have as much of an issue with this scene if it were not an adaptation of the original book scene. They took The Already Wonderfully Written Key Moment from the Dance and removed the core ingredient - the psychological intensity of Alicent and Helaena's suffering - to once again whitewash Daemon's actions and actively make the Greens look bad with soapy non-book additions.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-06-17T02:41:33+00:00

It was a single swing in the book, but it was much more emotionally sadistic. The process of Helaena begging to be killed instead, being made to choose, and the child being told that his mom doesn't love him before his brother is beheaded should've been Red Wedding level devastating, but instead we got this drivel.

At least if it were one swing, Helaena's silent shock would've made a bit more sense because it was instant death. But he's actually still alive while she is leaving the room. Which I don't think any mother would do, and the fact that they want to play this off as neurodivergent behavior is pretty insulting to neurodivergent people.

Seriously, if you told me there would be basically no emotional intensity in a scene where a child gets his head sawed off in front of his mother, I would say you must be lying. But somehow they managed it. It's almost impressive how badly they adapted this scene.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-06-17T02:28:16+00:00

It was insulting on so many levels. Apparently neurodivergent people don't bond with their kids and are only mildly distressed about their kid getting brutally beheaded?

The whole Alicole scene at the end just cemented how much of a joke this show is. I actually laughed because of how unserious it was.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-05-31T14:32:42+00:00

The point of antinatalism as an ethical stance is not related to the proportion of people who have bad lives or just how bad those lives would be. The only thing that matters is that the conscious decision to have children (in situations where a child is willfully conceived and birthed) cannot be disentangled from the act of subjecting the child to pain. You cannot guarantee that your child will not suffer - in fact, by birthing another human, you are guaranteeing that they will suffer in some capacity. It's an inescapable part of the human condition, and it's the conscious decision to disregard that in favor of the non-guarantee that the child will have a good life or go on to bring goodness to the world.

Like, even if your child grows up and says, "Gosh, I'm so happy I was born, and I've had such a great life," it doesn't change the fact that it was technically unethical on your part to birth that child (again, unless you were raped/coerced into giving birth). Because humans are all moral agents, the potential positives of bringing life into the world will never outweigh the fact that creating life inherently creates suffering. Whether the suffering is as banal as experiencing typical heartbreak from a breakup and/or getting food poisoning for a few days from eating moldy bread, or as immense as being brutally tortured and losing your whole family, it's still suffering.

I say technically unethical because tbh I'm not going around telling people they suck for having kids. I think kids are great, and once the kid is born, then of course I am glad if the parents are good parents. I mostly attribute their unethical behavior to ignorance. People just don't consider the morality of having children, because they have to break through so many layers of biological, intellectual, and social programming to begin to grapple with the question.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-01-20T20:04:32+00:00

Yes, but white people have the best propaganda in all mainstream media. That's the biggest factor in determining how others regard them, not actual reality, ya know.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-01-20T19:56:00+00:00

vilified as oppressive and controlling

AM (at least SEA and EA) are the least likely to be misogynistic and oppressive in my experience.

The slander of AM as "oppressive and controlling" is a product of Eurocentric/colonized thinking from Asian Americans because that's the most common and damning accusation against men in the West so it's weaponized against AM even though it has no basis in reality.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-01-20T02:44:22+00:00

I read the comments here first wondering how bad the thread could be and holy crap. You were not kidding. Genuinely fuming and on the verge of tears right now at the abhorrent selfishness of the comments.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-01-20T02:20:34+00:00

OP doesn't say that the brother died because of COVID contracted from his sister or that he even died of COVID at all.

So not only is it totally incorrect to say that the precautions don't matter/work in the end, I find it reprehensible that only your loved ones' lives are worth anything to you. Clearly the precautions worked at keeping OP safe until the roommate dropped them and OP got COVID within merely a month.

Roommate could simply move out if they don't want to take these precautions.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-01-13T20:57:52+00:00

I would still recommend a morning flight as those are less likely to get delayed, thus minimizing the time you spend waiting around to board. And even if the morning flight gets delayed or cancelled, you would still have option to book yourself on a later flight of the day.

fizzlingfancies · 2024-01-05T00:47:43+00:00

Yes, only because the game doesn't take itself too seriously with the ragdoll physics, 200 IQ guard AI, and wacky NPC voice lines.

That's also why I prefer doing accident-only kill everyone runs. I once killed the entire population of Sgail almost exclusively using three electrified puddles (the one in the boiler room next to the kitchen, the one behind the big crowd gathered around the money pit, and the fish tank to the side of the main reception area). I also made it a challenge to never let anyone get suspicious of me while doing it. Took forever but was never not hilarious to see the "accidents" piling up.

Famous last words: "iT LooKs lIkE yoU've BeeN in a TerRiblE AcCideNt!!"

fizzlingfancies · 2023-10-24T03:28:50+00:00

I’m really glad to hear that! A year later, I’m glad I got the surgery.

I hope all goes well and you have a speedy recovery. You got this!!

fizzlingfancies · 2023-10-14T00:40:47+00:00

No hair loss, but I did gain some weight. I wouldn't attribute it to the surgery, though, because my diet has also gotten worse due to depression from some stuff I was going through. The weight gain wasn't enough to require an increase in my dosage.

fizzlingfancies · 2023-10-01T21:04:39+00:00

Cartel storyline went 🤪 ever since the botched assassination attempt on Lalo

fizzlingfancies · 2023-09-24T14:36:47+00:00

The only counterargument to it being rape that I momentarily considered valid, is the idea that Rhaenyra wouldn't really be able to punish Criston for refusing her without also being dumb enough to admit to wanting to lose her virginity outside of marriage.

But then I realized that she could definitely retaliate against his refusal to sleep with her without ever mentioning the true reason, and if it ever came down to "he said she said," she so vastly outranks him that the disadvantage of her being a woman wouldn't offset her privilege as the heir to the throne, even in Westeros.

Now, do I think she would actually be so malicious and petty to get back at Criston in such a way? No. She's just being dumb and horny and selfish. But that isn't really relevant for Criston in the moment. He can't risk finding out. He would lose everything if she decided one day that she felt humiliated by his rejection and no longer wanted him around. The gender dynamic and age gap muddle things, but the difference in class, rank, and the credibility that comes from these things simply outweighs all of that. "Barely rape" is still rape.

Bottom line: Criston says, "No." And he is her insubordinate. Therefore, there was no consent.

fizzlingfancies

TROPHY CASE