#because i have zero motivation to make more edits as clearly nobody really needs that

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Repost: Ask on Navigating Fandom (1)

Anonymous: Excuse me for saying this but ure so unusual. U've clearly been in the fandom for a long time but u have views that would get u tarred & feathered on twitter like the fansites and shipping. U scold the fans but also know a lot about the history to defend them. U like jikook but u say u have rapline bias becoz how many rapline bias care about maknae line? Not Many! It's like u follow some rules and not other rules. How do u figure all of this out?

***

Hi Anon, I’m not sure if you’re the same anon that sent a related ask, but since this is less explicit, I’m posting this to respond to.

No offense, but I feel a lot of people who ask questions like this, i.e. there’s so many rules and worry about how to be a fan, are people who to some degree perhaps care a bit too much about what other people think about them.

Before I get into all the rest, I’ll sum it up this way: the best way to be a fan is to spend time on what you enjoy related to that thing/person/group. Some people like to casually engage and that’s okay. Some people are natural hobbyists and like to commit more time and their personal skill towards it including making fan-made merch to sell on Etsy, curating playlists, making edits, running music blogs etc. Some people have natural leadership qualities and start/join fanbases, write up guides, and organize catalogs and/or local meets with other fans. Some people feel comfortable being responsible for translation or voting accounts. Some people invest their time in voting, buying, streaming, etc, because this is how they’d like to support a group they love. All of this is okay and you’ll find every single type of this fan in the fandom. Note this also applies to people who are ‘fans’ but of a different kind: antis. Antis are actually very invested in the groups they dislike, and they also come in all the forms I described above, it’s only they expend their time and efforts towards doing the opposite: unrelenting criticisms, comparisons, dehumanizing, making hate blogs/youtube channels, etc.

My point is, the actions or the way you express your interest in something are varied and ultimately doesn’t really matter (of course if you’re being abusive, racist, transphobic, or dehumanizing that’s obviously problematic), what matters is the motive or heart behind it. If you’re the type to not memorize lyrics because it’s just not your thing but you try to find out what they’re singing about because you care about what they have to say, that’s okay. If you don’t memorize lyrics because you think Korean sounds gross and just want to listen for the instrumentals and overall vibes, you’re getting a side-eye from me. But again, nobody is stopping you from doing it either. You’re in your house, I’m in mine. You can log off or block me, and I can do the same.

For example, I have all kinds of asks sitting in my inbox, not deleted for any other reason besides that I find them amusing. To be clear, I’m not referring to people who ask me weird or unusual things out of curiosity (I see you guys and I’ll get to you soon but honestly half the stuff y'all are sending me are better dealt with in DMs :)). I’m referring to ARMYs and antis who need an outlet for really toxic shit, and have somehow decided I, ARMY, BTS, or all three should be targets of that. So I ignore it. The antis who make repeat visits to my inbox are for all intents and purposes, a bunch of binary code: a series of ones and zeros, like any other dimwit on the internet. It’s an occupational hazard of spending a lot of time in big online communities. To be very honest, this is how I see it.

A lot of people would prefer to have their views unchallenged, and the way they deal with that is something that’s easy to predict, because in general, people are people. We’re not that different.

Of course, many people have a problem with someone being racist, so if you are, well a lot of people will have a problem with that lol. In my post here I talk about some common ideas ARMYs have about BTS just as a natural consequence of listening to things they’ve said and done repeatedly over years and years. I personally think that if you take the time to really listen to BTS and have a good awareness of the ecosystem in which they operate, there are only few conclusions to reach.

My approach to most things is if something makes sense to me, then cool! If it doesn’t, well then it’s not my problem, and this is something I generally apply to BTS and ARMY (there are exceptions). And this is how I navigate discussions or arguments on ARMY Twitter as well.

I had one yesterday with an ARMY about merch prices where my position was: 'listen, BTS merch prices are on par with their Western counterparts. Billie Eilish’s pajamas set goes for about $150, and so as a group that’s on par with most big Western acts, those prices are expected. However, a good chunk of the fandom is still firmly in the k-pop sphere, and compared to merch prices in k-pop, BTS’s seems ridiculous plain and simple. And this is something the company should be aware of and it’s a good idea to include this in their considerations next time.“ The ARMY I was replying to had a problem with everything I said after “However”, but I’d stated my views because it was a conversation I was interested in contributing to, and left it at that. If that army became abusive or really weird, it would’ve been a block and report sitch and we’d all be happy lol.

Personally, there are a few lines I do not cross at all when discussing Asian artists. For example, I have opinions on many k-pop idols but feel no need to express negative views about any of them unprompted, based solely on my perceptions, for any substantial period of time online. <- This is an action that doesn’t make sense to me. If I enjoyed doing this, I would, but I don’t, so I don’t. I also do not entertain any further commodification of any of these artists because I see how this is disproportionately applied to Asian people in general i.e. the token Asian in the friend group, in Western movies, or the Western music landscape. Some people are comfortable doing this, and they will continue because ultimately no one can stop them (or you) from doing what you want. You can always block them, make a new account, find people who think like you, etc. All the sub-sets in the fandom exist because we don’t all agree about everything all the time. Find the one you click with and roll with it.

Good luck 💜.

Originally posted: January 21st, 2022 11:45am

#repost #bts fandom #bts army #fandom behavior

[bluefirecas]

.

#hmmm gonna rant about how i wish i can delete my blog and just vanish from here #because i have zero motivation to make more edits as clearly nobody really needs that #look at the fandom trends!! #especially with my last edit that I spent like 2 days on just trying to figure out the best way #but it doesn't matter because it's not a meme right?? #im seriously deliberating taking a break from this blog. #its been so weird here and I'm struggling to find any joy lately #and anyway if i don't make and post edits here what the fuck am I even doing here #sometimes i wish I could delete my blog but I don't want to lose my side blog. #and there's no other way around it (: #I've enjoyed my time here but I'm not anymore and I honestly don't know if I even belong here #rant over #i hope none of yall read that #but if you did and you think I'm whining you're free to unfollow me #original content is dead anyway and so am i

[simon-newman]

Newman’s Anime Reviews - Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

Hello and welcome again to the 2nd of my 2021 anime challenge review.

For February I’ve watched something that my friends were trying to make me watch for years.

It might actually be more than a decade that I’ve been putting this title off and they were quick to add this to my challenge list once the opportunity arised.

Were they right to recommend this title to me? Should I have watched this anime earlier? Those 10 years ago?

Perhaps. Still - I’m coming here with mixed feelings on this show. But… I’ll talk more about it in the review proper.

Today’s title is the 2006’s anime by Sunrise.

  Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

  Now where do I even begin with this show? What even is this? What the hell is happening?

Well…

The Empire of Britannia is one of the 3 major political powers in the world of Code Geass - ruled by the Emperor Charles zi Britannia they invaded the country of Japan 10 years before the start of the plot.

Their absolute military dominance thanks to the use of cool mecha has led to unconditional surrender of Japan which is now known as Area 11.

It is there that our protagonist - Lelouch - the young Britannian student plans to take his revenge on the Emperor himself for what he’s done to him and his wheelchair-bound sister. 

I feel that it is important to put emphasis on this last part here because this is the ultimate motivation for our MC. Something that’ll drive him forward no matter what.

He wants to create a safe world for his sister. That’s it.

Need to protecc.

  The question that remains is: How?

How do a teenage boy banished to one of the colonies is supposed to change the world and cause a major power shift?

We get first glimpse at his supposed skill almost immediately - with Lelouch easily defeating an adult player in the game of chess. Nothing much so far but it’s an indication of his real power “shown” later on.

Lelouch is a genius… Or at least this is what the anime tries to convey to us. He is clearly smart and a gifted strategist with lots of charisma and a penchant for theatrics.

However - this is still not enough. That’s why something happens to push our protagonist forward at this stage. In a weird turn of events, a run in with anti-britannian terrorists and a top secret research subject Lelouch obtains the titular Geass.

What is a Geass? It is a power gifted to an individual which in case of Lelouch allows him to give anyone he establishes an eye contact with a single command that this person must follow.

This is actually one of the tame ones.

  From there on Lelouch joins and reforms the “terrorists” into “Black Knights” - a Rebellion led by his alter-ego the masked man called Zero - and starts executing his plan to take revenge… I mean to make the world a safe place for Nunnally.

From there we follow Lelouch as his Rebellion grows while he himself learns the limits and drawbacks of his power and tries his best to hide his identity as Zero.

Initially the show is quite entertaining - especially when it comes to battle scenes where we get to see Lelouch improbable planning and tactical skills at work. As for the other parts…

Yeah… I should have watched this show those 10 years ago because right now the parts with MC’s school life just don’t do this for me… They really slow down the plot and while they do serve the purpose of establishing various plot-important details it’s just... 

Well the pacing sucks.

Without any breaks and just the action sequences the anime would be very much rushed but the break parts at school just go on forever, developing into trivial stories used to deliver some little bit of exposition or character development. The balance is off and the show doesn’t get better until the mid point…

Speaking of which…

Nice mountain you’ve got there...

  There’s a major shift that happens somewhere in the mid-point of the anime that is bothering me to this day.

Who is the bad guy?

It might seem like a trivial question to many.

Obviously it’s Britannia! With their world conquest, asshole Emperor, warmongering royals, discrimination of conquered nations they call Numbers (in case of Japanese it’s “Elevens”) and engaging in wanton destruction and genocide for no good reason. They’re basically the Nazis.

With the above in mind there’s nothing wrong with Lelouch being willing to use all means at his disposal to achieve his goals… Right?

Monsters need to be stopped.

That was kinda the thing until the Battle of Narita where the Black Knights’ tactics caused the destruction of a town.

Now - this by itself could have been used to drive the point home with the Rebellion losing a lot of PR. After all the town was in the JLF controlled territory, inhabited by the Elevens and stuff…

Well. You see - the creators of the show didn’t think that was enough and/or missed the opportunity.

First of all - there’s no PR backlash for the Black Knights whatsoever. Nobody cares. The Britannian are now leading the rescue and recovery operations in the area and… It’s just weird. Why would they suddenly bother?

Secondly - it suddenly turns out that the people in the enemy-controlled territory were… Britannians? SOMEHOW. This is made to inflict personal level suffering to MC and some other characters as one of the character’s relatives dies in the event.

Third of all - after this very point there’s a major change. We no longer get to see Britannians committing atrocities but do get Lelouch crossing line after a line in the pursuit of his goals.

I think the creators realized that to make it appear more grey vs grey they can’t show Britannians as complete monsters but… It really doesn’t feel to occur naturally here. Were the person in charge of Britannians change again? Yes - I could accept that they are a better person than the previous leader. It isn’t so. And even if it was it wouldn’t undo their previous actions and made the characters that stayed seem really inconsistent.

It’s a major turn off for me when consistency in storytelling takes a back seat for a point to be made.

Because Zero’s not edgy enough without it I guess...

  There’s also another kind of inconsistency here when it comes to battles.

The cool mecha used by the Britannians are… Well. In the early parts they seem indestructible until the plot demands they’re not.

At first it seems that only other mecha have the weapons that can affect them. Then we see that some weapons do work BUT it is only when MC is commanding the battle.

It’s a magic wand that removes the plot armor from Britannians whenever Lelouch is there and often gives them to the allies.

Often - being the key word here.

One good thing is that it doesn’t stick. Plot-important characters don’t die but they are not immune to damage either. The mechas often get wrecked and require fixing. Lelouch himself is subject to this quite often as he’s not an outstanding pilot like others on his side.

It is thanks to that aspect of the action parts that the anime is not becoming one-sided and remains entertaining. You’re drawn to it to see what’s happening because it’s not just another battle.

Yes... Really entertaining battles...

  I think it is becoming apparent what’s the issue here.

There are a lot of things done wrong with this anime. Things that don’t necessarily break it but I can’t just overlook them. Things that are putting me off. Inconsistency, bad pacing, weird editing where some scenes are cut extremely abruptly - as if to reduce time. 

There’s also the usual issue of geniuses written by people who are not geniuses. Lelouch brilliancy is only guaranteed by the fact that people on the other side will do something stupid. Some of his actions are not the brightest and some are just downright stupid and easily could lead to his downfall were his enemies to have half a brain. Or worse - one action is such a poor choice it simply falls apart on it’s own - and you could expect it to the moment “it” happens (is there a point in keeping spoilers on this show? I’m talking about Geasing Shirley).

There’s also the braindead Suzaku - a subject so controversial on the Internet that I’ve hesitated to touch it here and decided to only reduce it to a small paragraph.

Yes. Suzaku is an idealistic foil to Lelouch. He serves his purpose. BUT. His idealism is stupid - not by the virtues he’s holding but by remaining blind to what is happening around him. He wants to end the discrimination without using violence but the Britannians are killing Elevens for no reason whatsoever. Time and time again the side he’s on goes against his principles and he still sticks to them. It is becoming less and less possible to emphasise with him with each incidence.

Still - there was a certain charm to this anime. It was fun to watch and only getting better the farther in I’ve gotten.

Not including the school drama.

All in all the score I was about to give was still going to be pretty low at this point. The anime was decent but far too flawed for my tastes… That was when the last story arc started.

The pizza...

  I must say. The rug was pulled from under my feet.

Those events were really unexpected. Emotionally draining and yet entertaining as nothing before in this show.

So many lines have been crossed in an instant - there was no return. Not anymore. Shit was happening and it was a spectacle to watch. Some men just want to see the world burn. Duh. I watched events unfold and I enjoyed it very much until the very end.

The end of a 1st season that assured I WILL watch the 2nd one when I find the time (I didn’t so that it wouldn’t affect this review).

All in all - the show’s grand finale is the high point that offsets all the problems I’ve talked about earlier. It is simply done perfectly.

And speaking of endings. It is time to finally end this review as well...

 Final Score: 7/10  

Status: Completed Season 1

Sentence: Lelouch vi Britannia commands you: Watch Season 2!

Previous: Kimetsu no Yaiba

#Anime #Review #Code Geass #Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion #Lelouch Lamperouge #Lelouch vi Britannia #C.C. #Kallen Stadtfeld #Geass

[kegisaroused]

The Last Jedi

I have a lot of thoughts. A lot of them are not good. Thoughts are under the cut in no particular order. Probably a little rambling/incomplete maybe I’ll write something more put together later IDK

MAJOR HUGE SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY

Okay so first, stuff I actually liked:

-Luke seeing the two suns in his last moments. One of the few moments with Luke’s character that didn’t feel totally off. 

-Luke handing Leia the bauble from the falcon and the old love theme stabbing me right through the goddamn heart.

-Finn and Poe having very few actual interactions and still managing to be gay as hell.

-I love the Porgs and the Crait foxes fuck all y’all. 

-I also liked Rose a lot and would love to see her actually get better character development. Her tasering Finn was fantastic.

-Rose and Finn’s little side jaunt has me so torn because despite it being totally out of place and gimmicky it also had some of the better character interactions/development in the whole movie? Not that that’s saying much

-Luke basically trying to get Rey to leave by purposefully being as much of a creepy old weirdo as possible. 

-R2 playing Leia’s original message. MY HEART.

-Laura Dern ramming the cruiser into the First Order at hyperspeed was really fucking cool. 

-Yoda being Yoda (when he WAS Yoda, but that’s for the next section)

-Leia using the force FOR ONCE (though the how was real stupid, but again... next section)

-Rey being happy to see Finn having a bond with Rose and smiling at it rather than being jealous or something stupid like that.

-Rey NOT giving Kylo another chance at the end. Like... mmkay buddy I tried but you made the wrong choice I’m shutting the door in your face now BYE.

-That said, I was really afraid of the stuff between Rey and Kylo because the shippers with spoilers had been making it seem like the romance angle was REALLY played up but... it wasn’t? At all? Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t shut down that angle but the nature of their connection felt ambiguous. The music cues did not indicate a romance, and Snoke straight up SAYS that Kylo’s conflict and draw to Rey was something he was putting into his head so that he’d bring Rey to him. I also feel like Daisy and Adams acting choices were emphatically NOT hinting at a romantic dynamic. I was afraid the shirtless scene was gonna be some sort of awkward flustered Rey and instead it was her just being genuinely annoyed like STFU and put a fucking shirt on.

Now... on to THE BAD:

-The pacing. HOOOOLY HELL THE PACING. This movie was paced so badly. It felt simultaneously like it went on forever, but also moved so fast there was never breathing room. It felt manic and confused. Also the whole movie seems to take place over the course of like... a day. 

-EVERYONE was out of character at least half the time. Everyone either pulled shit that didn’t make sense for them to drive the plot or they completely rolled back their character development to rehash shit. TFA already dealt with Finn needing to stop running from his problems, why is he immediately trying to run away again? His attempted heroic sacrifice at the end would have been a good character moment... if we hadn’t already HAD that moment in the last movie. Poe was reduced to the “reckless hothead” archetype and not only had to learn a lesson that not only didn’t make sense for him, but he had to learn it twice. In the same movie. 

-The CGI gimmicks. It was treading pretty damn far into prequel territory with the unnecessary CGI animals where practical effects would have not only sufficed but felt much more organic. 

-I’m so happy they finally let Leia use the force but her floating herself back into the ship was SO STUPID LOOKING. I wanted to laugh and I am 100% sure that was not the intent. Carrie Fisher did not die for this. 

-Fake Luke at the end was stupid because it was immediately obvious. He was digitally edited to look younger, he was using a lightsaber that WE JUST SAW GET DESTROYED instead of the lightsaber he actually HAS, it was just... dumb. 

-Speaking of dumb: Luke’s entire motivation was stupid and made absolutely zero sense if you know anything about Luke Skywalker. You’re talking about the only person in the galaxy who believed Darth Vader could be redeemed. Like... that’s literally the WHOLE POINT OF HIS STORY IN THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY. You’re gonna have me believe that Luke Fucking Skywalker was so easily scared by the dark side that he (even for a SECOND) contemplated killing a teenager? No, no, no fuck right off with that shit. If anything it should have been REY who thought Kylo was an irredeemable monster and Luke convincing her to give him a chance. Even if in the end he throws away that chance. You can still make the point of “maybe not everyone can be saved” without committing character assassination on Luke. Like what the hell even was that.

-The dialogue was so clunky a lot of the time. Yoda for example: there were moments where he was perfect (him smacking Luke in the face and being like YEP FUCK IT BURN THE TREE WHO NEEDS IT were very in character actions) but a lot of his dialogue felt like someone doing a bad Yoda impression (important note: I’m referring here to his actual written lines, not the voice acting). Also his puppet was really weird looking I don’t know why but it did not look right at all. 

-Some of the jokes also felt very forced and unnecessary. Star Wars needs levity, but the tonal balance was just off and there were a lot of jokes that felt very shoved into scenes that did not need jokes.

-I didn’t buy the Finn/Rose romance. I don’t actually have a problem with that ship at all. Finn/Poe is obviously my preference but lets be real I’m not holding my breath and I’d be 100% fine if Finn/Rose is where they went. But it wasn’t developed at all? They had a couple bonding moments yeah and were definitely becoming good friends, but not nearly enough to make me believe THEY’RE IN LURVE. It was like they somehow thought her sacrifice couldn’t be meaningful if it was just about saving a friend instead of saving GUY I WANNA MACK ON which is kinda bullshit. 

-There was a continuous trend of showing HEY LOOK WE HAVE FEMALE CHARACTERS. LOOK AT ALL THESE LADY PILOTS AND GUNNERS only to kill them off immediately. Paige’s death I didn’t overly have a problem with as there was at least a reason and a point to it with her being Rose’s sister, and she was given a moment to shine and a heroic sacrifice at least, but with all the background characters it felt like they were so determined to be all LOOK WE HAVE GIRLS that we saw more girls die than guys.

-Also are Poe’s whole squad from the last movie just supposed to be dead now? Like... they got their own comic and everything and are fairly popular side characters. Are you really going to just say they’re all dead? 

-The fight choreography was really lacking. Luke fighting Kylo at the end could have been so cool but it was 90% stupid CGI and just felt silly. Especially comparing it to the Rey and Kylo (I refuse to type their names with a slash because seriously MISS ME WITH THAT SHIT) fight from the end of TFA which was so well done and just... ugh. Also Finn’s fight with Phasma was very anticlimactic and she was so underused.

-Finn and Rose’s side trip was completely pointless. Which is annoying because like I mentioned before it had some of the better character moments in a character-less movie, but it was literally pointless. I get that they wanted to set up some sort moral ambiguity or juxtaposition (OOOH THE ARMS DEALERS SELL TO BOTH SIDES SO IT’S A GREY AREA. OOOH THE POOR PEOPLE AND THE ANIMALS SUFFER FOR RICH PEOPLE’S ENTERTAINMENT. AM I DOING THIS RIGHT? IS THIS HEAVY HANDED ENOUGH?), but even if they had their hearts set on doing that (despite not needing to at all) there are a million other ways they could have done it without completely derailing the plot. Especially since in the end the plan didn’t even WORK an actually made things worse because if they never brought the stupid slicer on board the original plan would have worked and most of the resistance would have gotten away just fine. The slicer character himself was pointless and one dimensional.

-What is the First Order doing? They made sense in TFA because they were a fringe group who had been laying low and underselling their strength while they prepared to attack and overthrow the New Republic. But what are they doing now? Did they seize control and establish a new capital planet? Did they install a new governing body since they literally KILLED ALL OF THEM? What is their end goal? What is their motivation? There’s nothing there and there needs to be. 

-Why on god’s green earth didn’t Laura Dern just TELL POE THE PLAN? Why was she being needlessly cryptic and withholding? She wasn’t protecting anyone by withholding information and was actually making herself look really bad and incompetant for no reason? She didn’t even say she HAD a plan. It was so stupid and made no sense.

-Which leads me to a larger overall problem: the characters were not driving the story, the story was driving the characters. The characters did things because they had to to make the plot happen, rather than the plot happening because the characters did what they would naturally do. As a result almost all the characters felt incredibly stiff and there was pretty much no meaningful character development. 

-The movie wrote its self into a corner. I get that they wanted to push it into a more unsure ending ESB type situation but they went too far. The rebellion was in an unsteady place at the end of ESB but they still had, you know... a fleet? More than 10 people? They were also extremely inconsistent scene to scene with the number of resistance fighters left alive. They act like they’ve got almost nobody left, but then they have enough people to man the trenches on Crait? And a lot of those people clearly escaped back into the base but then when they’re escaping to the Falcon there’s like 5 of them? Am I supposed to believe that the 8 year old Rose gave a ring too is the savior of the resistance? None of it seemed to be done with any forethought to the future of the story.

-Where the hell is the rest of the Galaxy? I’ve never watched a Star Wars film that felt so isolated. Even with Rose and Finn’s B plot the galaxy felt empty and unpopulated. 

Overall the whole thing felt like a bunch of unfinished thoughts slapped together into a story without a proper narrating structure. The whole movie seemed confused about where it was going and what it was doing.

I’m hoping JJ Abrams can reel it back in with Episode 9 because it’s really gonna upset me if TFA was a fluke and the rest of this is just gonna be Prequel Trilogy 2.0

#the last jedi #spoilers #tlj spoilers #star wars spoilers #rey #finn #poe #I'm really disappointed TBH #gonna go reread all the post-TFA fanfiction that was better than this movie

[turtle-paced]

GoT Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

Sorry for the delay - Easter, exams, that sort of thing. But here we are at the start of season six, isn’t that exciting?

6.01 - The Red Woman

(2:11) It’s a lovely opening shot of the Wall and Castle Black, at least.

(2:57) Anyone know why Sam’s dog cares so much about Jon? The showrunners just haven’t done the work to show the direwolves are magically significant.

(4:41) Yes, Jon is dead. This scene is moving at a glacial pace. I mean, you should dedicate time to allow the viewer to process a major character’s death, but we’re getting almost as much time to show Davos and Dolorous Edd reacting to Jon Snow’s death as we saw Sansa react to the deaths of Robb and Catelyn.

Get used to comments about the scene moving slowly. I spent most of season six hollering “GET ON WITH IT” at my laptop. The pacing in this season is absolutely shot to hell, and it’s not because they didn’t have enough plot or potential plot. They absolutely did. But once again that plot was compressed to maintain “shocks” and big end-of-season events, leaving the characters to make small talk for multiple episodes.

(5:02) Edd trusts the men in this room, who we’ve never seen before. It’s like they’re placeholding for other characters, characters who may have been shortsightedly killed off earlier…

(6:20) It took us about four minutes to inform three characters of Jon Snow’s death. Nothing else. Just establishing he’s dead. Glacial.

(7:20) “But I never once disobeyed an order.” This line is, I think, supposed to tell the audience that Thorne is loyal to the Watch and killed Jon out of what he saw as necessity; the telling-not-showing thing leaves me with the impression that Thorne is going for the most facile loophole imaginable, “well he never told me not to kill him.”

(7:40) Then we end up with tense problems. No, not that sort of tense. “Jon Snow was going to destroy the Night’s Watch.” How? By letting the Free Folk through the Wall - oh. Shit. A bit late, huh? The lack of the Pink Letter has led to this problem: if letting the Free Folk through the Wall alone was enough to kill Jon over, it was enough to shut him up on the wrong side of the Wall for. Instead, the mutineers let Jon and all the Free Folk through, then killed Jon, which fixes nothing and causes even more problems.

(8:08) More tense problems. “What he thought was right would have been the end of us.” Okay, smartypants, but the Free Folk are still through the Wall. Your problems still exist in the present. Just because the writers know this plot is effectively over for the season doesn’t mean the character should.

(8:56) Davos is clearly at a bit of a plot loose end, with Stannis dead. His motivations aren’t completely clear - while he liked Jon, and I can understand that he’d prefer to work with Jon over the mutineers, I’m not sure what he thinks he’s accomplishing.

(9:40) Oh wonderful. This scene. Timer on!

(9:48) “The kennelmaster’s daughter. She smelled of dog.” Profound.

(10:05) Okay, stop, because this is bullshit. Myranda was absolutely afraid of Ramsay, as we saw back in season five, and it’s really damaging for the show to say she wasn’t after the fact and leave it as the last word.

(10:40) I still don’t know whether this is Ramsay hamming it up or being genuinely sad. One’s a waste of time and the other’s offensively privileging the abuser’s perspective of his victim without chance for rebuttal.

(10:50) And timer off! That was a minute and ten seconds of Ramsay mourning for Myranda, for the same plot and character effect as we could have got if Ramsay just shrugged off her death entirely in two lines.

(11:20) Poor Roose. He got stuck with the recap. Ramsay defeated Stannis, Ramsay married Sansa yes yes we watched season five, more fool us. Not to mention his only plot function is to nag Ramsay ineffectually.

(11:45) “[The North] won’t back us without Sansa Stark.” And yet we will see just as many Northern lords back the Boltons as the Starks, and twice as many sit the fight out entirely.

(13:01) I wrote it back when I first saw this episode: this river is here so the writers could include an exchange with Sansa wanting to give up and Theon spurring her into greater courage. Even now Theon’s telling her just how bad Ramsay is and she really needs to believe him - I think she knows already. This wouldn’t be so bad in isolation, but it doesn’t stand in isolation. It’s not even an isolated event in this episode. There is a consistent pattern of the writers writing Sansa as weak so that others (usually male characters) can show their strength.

(14:08) But the hug is very nice, especially as the panning out to show both of them together conveys that the comfort received is mutual.

(15:03) I swear, nothing a Stark or Stark-adjacent character does is allowed to succeed. Theon says Sansa’s dead, not an unreasonable proposition given the fall plus the run through the frozen landscape plus the river, and immediately this guy says “liar.”

Incidentally, imagine if this guy had been all like “dead? We better go look for her body!” “But sir, the footprints -“ “I said, we had better go look for her body! We will be searching in that direction over there. It will take us hours. A shame nobody’s looking at the road north right now.” Same plot outcome, but conveys that disloyalty is something the Boltons are having problems with.

(15:50) Deaths: 1. Brienne’s kill.

(16:21) After a brief exchange of blows that shows how the choreography has gone downhill (a hit to the sword made Brienne spin away dramatically at one point), deaths: 2. Brienne’s kill again.

(16:42) Deaths: 3. Pod’s kill.

(17:01) Deaths: 4. Brienne’s kill. Another injured man, who says “no, please” before Brienne cuts his throat with what can only be described as an expression of savage glee.

(17:13) Deaths: 5. Theon’s kill.

Hey, you know who hasn’t done anything in this scene? Sansa. I am so reminded of the hill clan attack back in season one, where Catelyn just tucked herself up next to a boulder and didn’t get in the way of any of the fighting…in spite of picking up a knife and killing a man herself in the book. Sansa has not done so much as shout “behind you!” or something like that.

(17:32) And now’s the time to talk about Brienne’s appearance. Last season she had to choose - kill Stannis or save Sansa. Here at the beginning of the season we see that that choice has zero consequences. Brienne gets to do both. There isn’t even a cost to her relationship with Sansa. It completely undermines that moment of choice. What is even the point of writing that choice if it doesn’t make a difference?

(18:03) Not to mention the choice Brienne made undermines her sincerity in this offer. Brienne will do anything for Sansa, anything, I say, there is no knight more dedicated to a lady - oh wait hang on a tic personal vendetta over there just gotta pop out in this crisis situation for a bit of revenge murder.

(18:10) Theon nods his approval of Sansa accepting Brienne’s vows. Which one of them has met Brienne before, again?

(18:28) Goddamn it. This starts off so promisingly, with Sansa gathering herself to accept Brienne’s vows formally, but then she freezes up and needs Pod to prompt her. This instance is especially bad, as Sansa remembering her manners in trying situations is her jam. Nobody expects Sansa to be perfectly put together through all this - but we’ve already had two instances in this episode alone (the river, the fight) of Sansa needing the help of others. At this third point, it’s time for Sansa to demonstrate her own strengths.

(19:27) It’s good that our first sight of Cersei involves her fiddling with with her much shorter hair. It shows us that the haircut meant something to her.

(19:46) What’s odd is that Cersei is completely alone. She’s still being accused of things like murder and treason, but she is completely unattended by anyone. Which could be an oversight, but as we’ll see later, Margaery (accused of perjury), is constantly shadowed by a septa.

(20:02) We have multiple shots of Cersei traversing the castle to go greet her daughter. Padding! How would we understand that Cersei walked through the castle to greet the boat if we did not see her walking through several other rooms first?

(20:16) Myrcella’s shroud is indeed gold.

(21:29) This discussion of bloated Lannister corpses has got to be some sort of reference to the putrefaction of Tywin’s corpse on his bier…but it’s not the fact that Tywin’s body succumbed to biology and decayed, it’s that it did so while lying in state. It’s the same thing as Tywin’s magnificent white charger taking a dump in front of the Iron Throne after the Blackwater.

(22:01) Show!Cersei continues to be a far better parent than book!Cersei, able to recognise that her daughter was a separate person whose desires did not necessarily align with her own, and able to value those differences.

(22:16) While I’m comparing writing to Catelyn’s scripting, this bit from Cersei, “she was nothing like me, no meanness, no jealousy, just good” reminds me of Catelyn’s monologue in 3.02 reminding everyone that she’s a horrible, horrible person.

(22:42) Reminding the audience that Cersei is motivated by a prophecy. A prophecy that she will have three children, all of whom will predecease Cersei. The fact that show!Cersei has had four children aside, she also says to Jaime, “you couldn’t have stopped it,” which kind of undoes the whole point of making Cersei driven by that prophecy. Everything she does, she does precisely so she can stop it coming true.

(23:10) “Fuck everyone who isn’t us.” Jaime Lannister’s lack of character development in five words.

(24:00) The way Margaery’s voice breaks over her demand to see her brother - Natalie Dormer is way too good for this nonsense storyline.

(24:36) So’s Jonathan Pryce, walking in with a perfectly executed good cop act. At least, Jonathan Pryce’s acting is perfectly consistent with a good cop routine, in a context where a good cop routine makes an awful lot of sense. The High Sparrow may be sincere in everything he says…

(25:01) …but he’s saying the exact same thing as the “overzealous” Septa Unella, just in a gentler tone. Like with Melisandre, this doesn’t look like religious sincerity, this looks like a trick.

(25:34) In addition to this, the scene accomplished nothing. Nobody has changed their minds about anything. Nothing new has occurred. A minute and a half of episode wasted.

(25:53) Doran’s reminiscing about a dead relative he loved very much. He’s toast.

(26:48) Deaths: 6. Tyene instakills Areo Hotah. Must’ve been a critical hit.

(26:56) Deaths: 7. Tyene kills the maester.

(27:10) Ellaria here gives us a motive rant. She references Elia and Oberyn. She says Doran’s people are disgusted with him, as the guards watch impassively.

(27:43) “Weak men will never rule Dorne again.” Deaths: 8. Doran, killed by Ellaria.

What the fuck happened there? Last season, Doran was a clear good guy in this storyline, behaving reasonably and rationally against the super-obviously-evil Sand Snakes who wanted nothing more than to murder an innocent girl, and he had sufficient support of his guards to arrest the malefactors when they acted. This season, Doran’s a weak man who doesn’t deserve to rule, Ellaria and the Sand Snakes are representatives of girl power even though they haven’t changed their position on revenge murders, and the Dornish guards apparently don’t care about anything beyond murdering weak men.

In itself, this really plays like the villains triumphing. Ellaria gets away with murder and commits another, goes on a fucking motive rant, and disparages someone trying to stop a destructive and futile war against massive internal opposition as “weak.” Obviously bad, right? Right. And yet we get to the end of the season and apparently this is a positive step for the Dornish?

(28:03) Trystane is still on the ship. Obara and Nymeria apparate on board undetected, having caught up with this ship somehow. Okay then.

(28:13) Ah, cousin murder, so empowering. Nobody really cares about kinslaying in Westeros.

(28:42) Deaths: 9. Trystane, killed by Obara.

(28:51) Woman called “bitch”: 1. A wonderful and positive example of women interacting, completely necessary to wind up the scene.

(29:05) “We’re never going to fix what’s wrong with this city from the top of an 800-foot pyramid.” Gosh, if only Dany was more a woman of the people. That’s her problem, her rule doesn’t take the lower classes into account enough. (Back in “Hardhome”, Dany’s problem is that she’s ruling without the rich.)

(29:30) Varys is a eunuch: 1. It took just over thirty seconds to get to that “joke”.

(30:07) This bit where Tyrion gives a coin to a starving woman so she can feed her baby…I’m going to quote from the excellent How Not To Write A Novel, because it pretty well encapsulates my feelings about this bit. 

“Perfect people are boring. Perfect people are obnoxious because they are better than us. Perfect people are, above all, too good to be true. […] An unprincipled gold digger who gives twenty dollars to a beggar is enchanting. A crusading human rights lawyer who volunteers at an animal shelter and also pauses on his way to court to give twenty dollars to a beggar makes us gag.”

The narrative’s lost sight of Tyrion’s interiority. The problems he faces are external, not requiring him to change or compromise, not based around his flaws. He already knows the best thing to do - the problem is doing it. But that means that show!Tyrion is now a flat, static character.

(30:35) Abs & pecs: 1.

(30:53) We see here that the Red Priests are preaching in favour of Dany, as is consistent with the anti-slavery stance they had back in season five. Note also the over-explaining of the effect Dany’s removal of slavery has on politics here. I’ll get back to this next episode, where certain things are under-explained.

(31:10) Abs & pecs: 5.

(31:13) So this sermon here is framed as being the Red Priests preaching that Dany has abandoned the former slaves of Meereen. Yet this speech contains lines such as “the people who love the darkness chased [Dany] away” and “will you fight for your own salvation, now that Queen Daenerys is not here to fight for you?” They’re not preaching of Dany’s abandonment, they’re depicting her as a champion of the former slaves driven out by the true enemy and in need of their activism while she’s gone. This Red Priest asks “will you take up her flames yourselves?” This is an unambiguously pro-Dany message, emphasising continuity between Dany’s cause and the current needs of the former slaves, rather than rejecting Dany as too timid and beholden to the Masters. I prefer to think that Tyrion’s established-to-be-crappy Valyrian is getting in the way, because otherwise he’s really bad at interpreting the messaging here.

(31:37) Oh, that’s Dany’s other problem. “You can’t fight an enemy you don’t know.” Man, if only Dany had thought of finding out who the Sons of the Harpy were. Truly, Tyrion is bringing exceptional insight into this situation.

This show is very clearly only as smart as the writers.

(32:12) Abs & pecs: 6.

(32:33) The burning of the ships (in a nice shot, incidentally) was the only new thing to happen in this scene, and it doesn’t have time to breathe. It’s all well and good to re-establish the situation at the beginning of the season, but we had three minutes checking in with the state of Meereen’s economy, and thirty seconds of a major attack on Dany’s future interests. These proportions seem to me backwards.

(32:48) Meanwhile, in the extremely Irish Dothraki Sea…

(33:33) “You keep coming back. Why?” “You know why.” Ooh, ooh, so do I! It’s because Jorah’s a stalker who cares not a whit about Dany’s repeatedly stated desire not to have him anywhere near her! It’s not a romantic tale of unrequited love but a depressingly common romanticisation of behaviour that’s genuinely dangerous!

(33:45) Daario here explicitly mentions that Dany doesn’t want Jorah the way he wants her (a formulation Jorah accepts), and then calls Jorah’s actions romantic. There’s no subversion. No questioning. The show thinks that Jorah’s disregard for “go away, I don’t want to see you again” is romantic.

(35:10) So these master trackers found a ram that was very clearly killed by a dragon and obvious tracks from a Dothraki horde, and yet it takes that fucking breadcrumbed ring for them to conclude “Daenerys was here, the Dothraki must have taken her.” This is not the LotR movie’s “not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall” (not familiar enough with the books and don’t have the time to reread them right now sorry) - in that story, the pursuers were already on the trail, already aware of who the kidnappers were, and the discovered pin was more proof of life than anything else (“not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall” = “that didn’t drop off a Hobbit corpse, that had to be torn off by someone”).

(35:50) Abs & pecs: 7.

(36:24) Plot-critical speculation about whether the carpet matches the drapes, brought to you by Game of Thrones. Just kidding. It’s not plot-critical at all.

(36:55) So that was thirty seconds of dialogue devoted to two unnamed minor characters dicussing how they’d like to rape Dany. Good use of time, writers!

(37:16) Once again we return to shots of butchered meat in the open air as an indication that these people are primitive and uncivilised. Guess what? Food preservation tech back in King’s Landing isn’t great either - but we sure don’t get the shots saying “look how backwards these people are!”

(37:23) Abs & pecs: 8.

(37:48) Abs & pecs: 9.

(37:55) The women, naturally, are immediately jealous of and threatened by Dany. Of course. That’s what women are like, in Game of Thrones.

(38:41) Then we get this wonderful comedy routine about how stripping Dany against her will would be among the five finest things in life.

(39:23) Look, I know that Dany’s seemingly constant appeal to her own titles back in season two was comical, but she was set down for it back in season two. What’s she supposed to do here, not give her name and as many titles as she can heap on, when the alternative is (as has been so clearly articulated) rape?

(40:19) Here’s the better way of showing how grossly misogynistic Dothraki society is, without solid minutes of rape threats - Khal Moro only backs down when Dany says she’s Khal Drogo’s widow. That gets the message across. We could have saved minutes of rape threats.

(41:14) But there’s the plot progression, after six minutes of Dany listening to sexual threats. She’s being taken to Isengard Vaes Dothrak. Six minutes. Alternatively, we could have cut to the chase and shown Dany arriving at Vaes Dothrak. The pacing this season…

(41:22-41:43) We need twenty seconds of following this guy’s shopping trip to understand that this is a street full of beggars, and, gasp! Arya is one of them. You can tell the imagination is running dry, you really can. Earlier seasons would have done this in literally half the time.

(42:16) I do like the out-of-focus background and the very focused street noise, including how we hear the Waif before we see her on screen. That gets across Arya’s internal experiece of blindness nicely for a visual medium.

(42:42) However, I do not understand why this stick-hitting is taking place on the streets, in public. Seems a bit overt for a bunch of covert assassins. Not to mention that once again the Faceless Men can’t teach for crap. Pummeling students is bad teaching, and by all logic will most likely result in a student with broken bones, a deep resentment of their teacher, and an only marginally increased ability to fight with sticks once the broken bones heal.

(43:01) That was two hits to the face, with a staff. God but I hate hate hate what the showrunners are saying about education with this storyline. This is not toughening Arya up. This is beating her up. But it’s all worth it in the end since she becomes a badass assassin!

Did the writers understand what was going on with Alliser Thorne, Jon Snow, and the conflict over training in book one? Randyll Tarly’s attempts to make Sam a knight? I rather think they didn’t.

(43:13) Two more hits to the head with a staff, and a couple of nasty body blows as well. Maybe we can count Arya’s lack of severe injury here as foreshadowing for how she survives that gut wound later.

(43:23) Meanwhile, the other beggars on the street are completely unaffected by the sight of a woman beating the crap out of a girl. Not even “geez, take it off the streets!”

(44:01) Meanwhile, back at the Wall, an armed standoff has developed. I understand that Jon’s supporters are in danger from the mutineers, but this is all just killing time. It’s unnecessary, much like the stuff with Dany, since it neither advances the plot nor develops characters. Skip straight to the fight between the Free Folk and the mutineers. Get to the point.

(45:55) Cut to Melisandre starts here. Just so you all can appreciate how long this scene goes on for.

(46:31) Melisandre looks in a fuzzy mirror.

(46:53) Boobs: 1. What, you think it would be a season opener without tits?

(47:03) Female butts: 1.

(47:39) Gasp! Shock! Horror! Melisandre is old!

(47:44) Boobs: 2.

(47:53) Have a niiiiiiiiice long shot of this naked old woman. Be repulsed and horrified at the fact that women age. The show feels reasonably free to put unattractive naked men on the screen from time to time, but when there’s an unattractive woman on screen, it’s the focus of an episode’s reveal and everything is framed so we can appreciate just how unattractive she is.

(48:01) Female full frontal: 1.

(48:19) Female butts: 2.

So that was the reveal, everyone! What a shocking twist. In hindsight, we can see how knowledge of Melisandre’s true age and appearance makes a huge difference to the plot. Except no, it doesn’t come up again, the only difference is that after this point the showrunners won’t write in topless scenes for Melisandre, because now the audience knows how saggy she really is - it just wouldn’t be sexy anymore. Who needs a whole walk of shame when the same thing can be accomplished in one ponderously slow scene of a woman getting into bed?

The episode is named for Melisandre, and the “important” thing we discover about her here is that she’s old. She doesn’t do anything of plot relevance, and she’s going to be bringing someone back from the dead very shortly. The Red Woman! She’s actually old!

Game of Numbers S06E01

Deaths: 9. Brienne kills three people, Tyene two, and Pod, Theon, Ellaria, and Obara one each. Doran, Trystane, and Areo Hotah were amongst the casualties.

Boobs: 2.

Abs & pecs: 9.

Female butts: 2.

Male butts: 0.

Female full frontal: 1.

Male full frontal: 0.

Woman called “bitch”: 1.

Man called “bitch”: 0.

Varys is a eunuch: 1. Oh, it’s been too long since the last gratuitous mention of Varys’ mutilation!

#anti got #fine toothed comb edition #cw: violence #cw: rape #cw: abuse #only love pads the show #season six

[therewas-a-girl]

Hey i love the insight you give to Oliver and im not so lucky to be an analytical (😬😊) and was wondering what does Oliver trusting himself have to do with him not telling Felicity? And what does Felicity mean when she says she understands now because of Billy? Those scenes have me very confused.

okay, anon here i am, finally. im so sorry for the  late reply, but i’ve had a couple of bad days preceded by some worse weeks T_T, and i’m in the middle of exams * T_T harder* , so free time is essentially not here for me.

BUT i’m on my break now - 

SO!

first of all, thank you! i find it  a little bit surprising tbh, cause i never saw myself as very analytical - i just sort of obsess over details and some things seem to make sense only to me?  or i just don’t know how to express them clearly enough. but im going to try my best, i promise. but don’t take me at my word, cause honestly, even as i write this, im still trying to understand this myself, so i’ll just… take with with a grain of salt

im going to take up the easy one first: felicity. mostly because, where felicity’s ‘i understand now because of Billy’, of all things, is concerned, my reaction is basically this :

im just not here for it, and i dont care to bullshit my way into circular meta/rationalization over it, because the subtext of it as an idea alienates and, frankly, enrages me.

Oliver… 

So, the first thing i thought when i heard Oliver say, ‘i dont trust myself’ is the fact that, this whole conviction he has right now (that he enjoyed killing, and that everything that is and went wrong in his life, stems form this truth he hid from himself)is based on his supposed clarity about himself and his nature that he gained when he was holed up and tortured by Adrian for 7 days. Aka, not to be trusted.

my messy reasoning goes kind of like this: 

in the flashbacks, we saw Felicity tell him that she still felt like he didn’t trust her, or anyone.  That she didn’t understand why, and ‘maybe you don’t understand why either’. Leaving us with the hint  that, until he does, and deals with it, he will keep making the same choices. 

Oliver did not contradict her - which makes me think he, in part, agreed with her. 

(the writers use characters for this kind of ‘truth exposition’ thing, so i’m guessing they wanted to tell is that yes, Oliver does think this, and doesn’t understand this about himself*) 

so he has this insecurity, this… missing understanding about himself. A secret, so to speak. A truth about himself that he is so afraid of, that he has buried it so deep inside that is not even buried; It’s suppressed at this point. Which is why he didn’t understand himself. 

Adrian kidnaps him. 

Now, i thought it important to remember that he is the villain. (and here is where the text and my interpretation of it mix a little) Adrian is super smart and intuitive about people, and also - important! - a lawyer. He knows how to ask questions, how to lead people on. All the while Oliver was there, Adrian was in his suit, walking back and forth like in front of  a jury, totally calm, asking one leading question after another; plus a lovely side dish of torture, because why not trigger all the lovely trauma. 

And he got what he wanted. He got Oliver to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear!

Basically Adrian made Oliver look at his deepest fear, and admit it as truth. (and it’s not that i think the whole ‘i liked it’ about killing is a lie. but i think its more complicated than ‘you’re a dangerous crazy person who enjoys killing. who knows what you might do’) . A truth that Oliver has, apparently, always known on a subconscious level. Something he has  never faced but always feared. 

(which is, ironically, what makes it so easy to believe. It’s always a lot easier to believe the bad things about ourselves - but even more so when you take into account how self-deprecating Oliver is. hello depression how are you?)

This truth he admitted has been behind his every hesitation, his every insecurity. The fear that goes kind of like this: ‘You are a bad person because you did horrible things, monstrous things, and it’s not that you’re not sorry. You  liked it’.  

To someone like Oliver, whose sense of morality, right and wrong, is mostly internal, personal, (but also informed by conventional understanding of good and evil ) and who relies on ideals, motivations, reasons, to help him navigate his daily life, this is basically shattering the ground he walks on.

Oliver has always seemed to me like he needed to believe that his actions were right. Extreme, but justifiable, doing the right thing. (i remember his whole speech in s1 when he made an offer to John about joining him. about how the rich people of Starling were stepping on the city’s throat and not caring who they hurt and if nobody was going to stop them, then ‘its going to be me’. it was to fulfill a promise, a duty - something he sometimes even seemed to resent. but to do that, he had to believe he was doing the right thing, though in flawed ways) 

…that he didn’t even think were that flawed since, in season 1, he was having some SERIOUS adjustments issues when it came to adapting to civilian life. Every time he went out there, he was ‘kill or be killed’ mentality of a war-zone, which had been his reality for 5 years. Took some time to shake that off and even be able to see that he didn’t have to kill to survive. (and holy shit am i digressing)

Now, it seems to me that Oliver took this admission when he was in that cell, and did not stop to examine the ‘why-s’ and ‘how-s’, or even doubt the conclusion Adrian led him to, based on who was ‘holding his hand’ trying to get him there. Because Oliver says it himself - ‘Adrian did not make me a killer’. He frees this truth from circumstance completely. (either the circumstances of his admission, or even, before that, his behavior/violence) 

I don’t even think circumstances matter to him; they’d probably sound like justifications and he’d feel even worse for trying to justify himself, when he thinks so lowly of himself. 

Obviously Felicity puts it in far better context than he is capable - or rather, willing -  to do, reminding him, in 5.20, of things that he maybe knows to be true, but that he thinks have no bearing on his actions, or his judgement of himself. (’Five years in hell did that. Five years dealing with this city’s worst criminals did that’). She immediately gives him context, that Oliver probably feels either guilty for considering, or like it has no bearing, because he still chose murder, and who does that? Bad people who are not to be trusted. The kind of people he used to kill, in fact. (a belief reinforced by the accidental murder of Billy Malone, actually, while we’re at it. Like, in Oliver’s head it probably sounds like this: ‘if you weren’t so fucking monstrous and a murderer, Malone would still be alive’.)

The crux of the question seems to be the clash (a push and pull) between the love and compassion he is capable of, all the good parts of him, moral parts (and judgments); and the violence he knows he is capable of. (and righteousness, the satisfaction he felt while enacting that violence.**). 

He probably thinks that this ‘truth’ Adrian ‘showed’ him/led him to, is something he’s “known” all along, but just been too much of a coward to admit to himself. 

Like, suddenly that ‘unknown reason why he doesn't trust anyone’ has a logic, and a clear definition. He was afraid to face it, but now he does, and it makes perfect sense! He is the problem! He doesn’t trust himself because – the goodness (to simplify it) inside him, the part of him that feels guilt now, never let him get close to people he loved, even though he wanted to, even though he needed them. It always made him hesitate, because essentially, he was protecting everyone around him, instinctively, from what he knows to be violent and dark inside him. 

He also lied to himself and others he got involved with (John and Felicity, for starters)  about why he was doing what he was doing. That he is no better than the people he used to murder, and he even got his best friends involved 

and he forgets that his ability to feel all this guilt over this kind of thought is, essentially, what makes him so different, and sets him apart from this person he is so afraid he is. 

EDIT: i almost forgot that you asked me about how this relates to Oliver not telling Felicity about William - and I’m guessing, it’s not specifically about William. That omission was generalized as a lack of trust, and this ^^ whole thing, seems to be aimed to explain why. I think Oliver thought she would for sure explode in his hands, a conviction fueled by Barry’s ‘you broke up’ idea. And that he thought she would for sure leave him, not love him enough to forgive him? Not love him enough, essentially, because why would she? 

The feeling of being a failure for missing out on his son’s life (were it anyone else, i wouldn’t say he takes this blame too on his shoulders, because its so clearly Moira’s and Samantha’s doing for keeping him away, but this is Oliver! Of course he would) probably added to the guilt and the certainty that he wasn’t good enough for her to hang around. 

A self fulfilling prophecy, in truth, and a also a deep misunderstanding of Felicity’s character. More than the lie/omission, i find this, the reason behind it, to be Oliver’s real mistake. 

A mistake of course that is, sadly, in character, because Oliver has historically had trouble believing that the people he loves actually love him back. Which leads us back to ‘why would they’, and the reason why he thinks that, which is basically that he thinks he’s a shit person not worthy of anyone’s love. Not always, but most of the time.

It’s such a BRILLIANT manipulation really, because on someone who is like Adrian, this kind of lie wouldn't work! (Adrian killed his wife. In cold blood. he has exactly zero problems being the way he is.) 

It takes someone like Oliver for this  to work. Someone who is essentially ALL HEART. Who is kind and good and who, on a deep human level, abhors the violence that was done to him and that he has done to others, despite knowing that ‘it is a violent world and - as the world has taught him - it only responds to violence.’ It takes someone moral enough that, even while enacting murder, even while feeling that killing evil men was good, would still know it is wrong. And hate himself for it. For being capable of it, for looking at the world in the  face and thinking it is necessary. 

You can be led to think something is necessary, and still hate it. I think Oliver is an idealist, so it fits that he would hate having to lower himself to the level of nastiness the world around him responds to. (it’s so good for him that he is a mayor, actually. he can affect change, without employing ‘talents’ that came to him though pain and loss and tragedy. skills - violence - that he probably hate using by now, at this point in his journey) 

I really hope I’m making at least some kind of sense. Im sure this is like, only a portion of what is really going on with Oliver; or an angle into it? idk… 

Personally, when I imagine Oliver’s mind, I usually think of him floating on the surface of a really deep lake. And this lake is his personality/psyche, the exploration of which has been affected by his history. Said history has been such that he has explored corners of this lake that to most people, remain obscure all their lives. This is not a good or bad thing. it chance. Some people are pushed to the extremes and learn new things about themselves. Some never have to. Oliver was pushed, and he knows the depths of this lake, the hidden caves, the scary wildlife in the dark. It’s not like he went to those depths because he wanted to - but that doesn’t matter. What he saw there, he cannot unsee, unlearn***. 

Now he is on the surface again - but he knows the geography of himself. Most people whose feet dont touch the soil think the depth goes a couple of feet more. Oliver knows it doesn’t. And he knows that, if necessary, he could go to those depths again, if he has to. 

I mean, people rarely know what they’re capable of in extreme situations. Most people think choices made in these kinds of cases reveal you. And Oliver thinks those choices revealed a killer. And despite how balmy the surface waters are, he knows that down there it’s ugly so, he puts up these limits. You get to swim up to here where its safe, but not further out. Even if you want to. Felicity totally wanted to know all about him, but Oliver thought, wow no. Down there its ugly and gross and if she sees that, she will not just leave. She will also hate me. And to Oliver, being someone who feeds so much on the opinions of the people he loves - that  is basically his worst nightmare. I swear some of his most radical actions have been because he was so resistant to someone he cares about thinking badly of him. 

Anyways, this got ridiculously long. 

* the next time anyone tells me Arrow is good representation for someone with PTSD and mental illness, I’m gonna fucking FIGHT that person, because this is prime example of these asshole writers mystifying this illness. Why, you might ask. Because Oliver’s trust issues can directly and unequivocally be traced to his trauma. Its not that hard. it is not a mystery and treating it as such, and making everyone around him ignorant of this simple fact, demonizes (so to speak) his condition, instead of ‘representing’ it in any positive way. 

At this point Oliver’s isolation is beyond logic - or suspense of logic. As of right now there are two soldiers, two geniuses and a cop on his team! it makes them all into either idiots, or nasty, cause they have either trained to expect this (Dinah, as a cop, i imagine knows what PTSD is) or been through it (John, Rene) or are fucking geniuses who can fucking google (Felicity, Curtis). By now even nonexistent baby Sara would be able to understand the reasons behind Oliver’s patterns of behavior. It is not rocket science AND EVEN IF IT WAS - FUCKING GENIUSES IN THE HOUSE???!!!

I’m just so tired of Oliver’s trauma and violent re-traumatization being used (exploited) and some ‘so hard to understand’ baffling plot point, instead of being dealt with.

** I dont think Oliver ever stopped to consider that his life during those five years was hell, and that that means a lot of things. It means that it was out of control for a long time. that he was prey for a long time. and that it is absolutely normal to feel a sort of satisfaction when you are not the prey anymore. and that its normal to feel good when you ‘replace evil with death’ like he did in season 1. and that plenty of veterans would be able to tell him that soldiers hate war and t lohe ve war too, and that this is what happens when you live in this… almost liminal violent reality for so long. we are human and we adapt to whatever we have to, to survive. 

***I actually think this is what’s happening with Felicity too, only instead of a lake, with Felicity I imagine a road. Like those that stretch through the desert. She only sees this one road and she is so sure that she has to walk it, because it feels righteous to her. Necessary. 

Oliver and John though, they know where that road leads. They know that the choices she will make along the  way that will feel necessary - that they may even BE necessary - but she may eventually regret making them. Because this extreme, ruthless clarity she’s living, and which they have lived, pushes away all reasons why some things are wrong, but those reasons, John and Oliver know, eventually (if you’re lucky) will come back. And the  choices made during that time might give Felicity insight into things she is capable of that she is probably going to hate. And hate herself for making them. 

And they’re just trying to warn her that this road she is walking on is literally the middle of nowhere. That there are no stop signs to tell her when she’s gone too far and that she will know only when she is too deep in it, and she will hate herself for it, just like they hate themselves for some of the things they  have done, that they wish they  never had to do. 

I’m going with this interpretation, instead of the weirdly sexist-vibe of ‘you’re too pure to be fucking human’ angle.

#arrow meta #oliver queen #felicity smoak #arrow thoughts #oliver queen thoughts #felicity smoak thoughts #s5 #this is probably full of typos im so sorry #Anonymous