#he DOES HE CALLS HER OUT ON HER ENTITLED VIOLENT ATTITUDE BUT THE SHOW PRETENDS ITS A MEET CUTE

[rise-my-angel]

I am here for your takes on Dani. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought her x Jon smelled of hot garbage. Like at best she was meh, and then when the two of them met I was just like "oh no....you're an entitled bitch". And now that its been years since I last consumed GoT, my thoughts have fermented into "oh no, she really is a conqueror" "oh no, everyone loves her because 'pretty badass lady'" "oh no i'm the fandom minority again". Anyway, where was I. She and Jon had no chemistry. The end.

The *only* way putting them in a romance even makes sense in concept is when you realize Benioff and Weiss gave Jon the Young Griff arc. It's why they gave him a Targ name, beacuse if they call him "aegon" then they can fufill that part of the books without ever having to establish Young Griff as his own character. He is the supposed son of Rhaegar Targaryean and Elia Martell, he goes to Westeros with intentions of using his better claim to take the throne and intends initially on marrying Dany, and it's theorized heavily that Dany will see his claim as a threat and the Burning of Kings Landing will come down to Aegon against Dany.

Jon Snow has nothing to do with that. He is a moral opposite to Dany as a charecter, and we've seen him time and time again be at strong odds against people with her morals. But by giving him the Young Griff arc, it means putting him into the romance spot when it makes no sense for him.

Hey I put a read more beacuse I cannot shut the fuck up about how this relationship is just rape and abuse but beacuse Jon's a man we think he wants it.

All of season 7 Jon is so out of place because he doesn't belong anywhere near Dany's Iron Throne plot, and he's being forced to interact romantically with a charecter that clearly he does not like as a person and is uncomfortable with.

But, Dany is the sacred cow of the GoT/asoiaf fandom. You love her and if you critizize her for villanious actions or morals then you are using bad faith towards her. While I personally don't like her, I don't mind other people liking her but I despise that her stans all refuse to allow any conversation about her being a morally bad person. A person who enjoys cruelty and death, enjoys creating fear and is smug when she can control others. That is not a person Jon would love, let alone even respect.

Their entire relationship wreaks of abuse, of Jon being forced into this and knows he cannot leave it without risking his and his families lives. Remember when Tyrion gave a very small level critisism of her actions and she angrily accused him of treason and siding with his family instead of her? Well what do people think would she have done, if her attraction to Jon was refused? Someone who she took all the defenses away from, all the power from, and could have killed at any moment (dont make an ygritte comparison mimi dont make an yrgitte comparison this is a different anti jon x fandom female fave charecter post).

I don't care how the show frames it, or what the intent was. What we got on screen, was Jon Snow being held prisoner to an immoral, cruel, military conquerer. And when that woman was attracted to him, she essentially forced herself into his life and gave him all but no choice. The Jon bending the knee scene and..the uh...boat...scene...later...uhhh....anyways, those to me feel so out of charecter. You cannot convince me Jon did any of this willingly. He is clearly trapped in this situation and cannot leave and is only with her beacuse she is violent and bloodthrirsty. But beacause Jon is a strong, capable man, it's not talked about as if he's the victim and that is insane to me. (Oh my good god the ygritte comparisons are almost laughable send help).

I don't consider a lot past season 5 to be canon, but if I am forced too, then I refuse to accept Jon was a willing participant in that relationship.

Jon's parentage reveal will always be about the revelations of his mother, and the understanding and acceptance of WHY Ned raised him the way he did. And how it was both his parents, his mother and his adopted father who loved him and kept him safe. The very fact that Young Griff's entire story is based around whether or not he truly is Rhaegar's son as opposed to that being a twist reveal is beacuse HE is the charecter whose Targaryean links is the important one. Jon's story is about him as Stark, and is always shown to be the moral opposite of Dany.

Their relationship in the best senario is not canon, but if it has to be, then there is no world in which Jon is there of his own free will. He is being forced into this relationship against his will. But considering his other love interest was another charecter who essentially forced him into a relationship against his will, and we were supposed to root for that tells me all I need to know.

Dany is a sacred cow charecter, and her stans are unreasonable in defending her. When you can like a charecter and critize them for their actions. Ned Stark was an idiot for ever trusting Petyr Baelish, Catelyn Stark's spiteful attitude and neglect of Jon Snow is was abusive behavior, Theon Greyjoy was a moron who ruined his own life for a father who long since abandonded him. Bam all charecters I love and there are some major flaws that I refuse to defend them for but thats also what makes them good charecters. Their flaws arent writing flaws, they are personal flaws for them as people.

Dany is not allowed to have personal flaws she is always to be justified even with incredibly bad faith defenses, but when she is flawed it's the writings fault not hers. Dany is a cruel, sadistic, controlling, military tyrant who enjoys watching her subjects fear her and her dragons. And she forced Jon Snow into a relationship with her beacuse otherwise then he is against her and we already knew she has no use for people who dont support her to be alive.

Jon Snow deserved better then to have both his love interests be domineering, controlling, abusive women who forced him into a romantic and sexual relationship.

Also, I mean, incest being normal is only a learned trait from Targaryens supporting their own blood purity. Jon was not raised to think incest is normal. Dany thinks its normal beacuse she and Viserys both were raised to think that, and Young Griff thinks marrying Dany is normal beacuse he too was raised with the mentality that Rhaegar would've been raised with. Jon finding out Dany was his aunt would've had Jon looking right at Sam and just

#i liked her in early seasons of the shows run #but quickly i realized I was watching a charecter who would never see herself as in the wrong and her fans did the same thing #wheras Jon wears his flaws on his sleeve and is always fighting to better himself against a world telling him its fine to be a bad person #he is a good man with a strong moral compass and would see through her facade in zero seconds flat #he DOES HE CALLS HER OUT ON HER ENTITLED VIOLENT ATTITUDE BUT THE SHOW PRETENDS ITS A MEET CUTE #HE HATES HER #he and davos would turn their asses around and swim back to winterfell before hed ever even remotely like her as a person #this isnt a judgement for those who enjoy her as a charecter #but instead a critisism of those fans for having absoutelty no objectivity in talking about her flaws and morals as a person #jon fucking hates her and no amount of uwu look how pretty she is will ever fucking convince me otherwise #game of thrones #asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #jon snow #anti jonerys #anti daenerys targaryen #anti targ stans #anti targaryen

[ashariajade]

Umbrella Academy - My Thoughts -  Contains Spoilers

So, now that I managed to get some sleep, here’s my thoughts on Umbrella Academy.

Yes, there will be spoilers here, so avoid if you haven’t seen the show and don’t want to know what happens.

So, overall I loved it.  Too many shows go straight for the grim-dark, full-angst, all drama and I can’t watch them.  It’s why I pretty much have stalled out on   The Walking Dead. Was the show angsty, and dark in spots? Hell yeah. But they also tempered it with humour and laughter and fluff. They didn’t just hammer at you with pain and horror and everything is bad. 

Now for the Characters: (No real order other than how they pop into my head)

Luther - even by the end I still wanted to tell him to grow up. At least he had moved away from the Dad-is-always-right mentality he had at the beginning, but he was still so childishly naive in the face of what was going on. Of them all he’s probably the most emotionally stunted, though he did have some growth in that area by the end he still has quite a way to go before he manages to come into who he can be.

Allison - of all of them is probably the most stable. With what happened with Claire and her realizing the abuse of her powers and pretty much vowing to not use them again (though it’s not explicitly said), she’s the one the seemed to have the most growth pre-pilot.  And she continues, especially in her interactions with Vanya.

Klaus - who is of all of them my favourite. That poor boy. Is he a fuck up? Yes, so much.  But understandably so. Finding out how Reginald Hargreeves trained Klaus to use his powers was horrifying.  I seethed through that whole part with the urge to reach through the screen and strangle a fictional character. Of all of them, he has the most growth.  He learns himself. Does he still do stupid shit? Yes, but he wouldn’t be Klaus if he didn’t. His interactions with Ben are touching, hilarious in parts, and so damn heartbreaking.  I spent the whole time wondering if Klaus held on to Ben and kept him there or did Ben hold on to Klaus so that he wouldn’t leave his family.

Diego - my violent little boy.  He’s another one I felt for so much. If you watch you see that in some ways the others kind of paired off. Allison and Luther with a pre-romantic relationship, Ben and Klaus seemed to be close (hinted at), and Vanya and Fives seemed to be close (hinted at with her leaving the lights on and leaving snacks out for him), but Diego had no one but Grace aka Mom.  She’s the center of his world. Which makes everything with her so much harder to take. His relationship with Det. Patch was cute though (I will talk about her in a bit). The teasing, the goodnatured bickering, the tension - both sexual and professional, everything between them was so cute. 

Fives - arrogant, self-entitled, assholish, what else can be said about Fives?  He loves his family. He actually cares about stopping the Apocolypse.  While he says he doesn’t regret the things he had to do while working for the Commision, you can see that it haunts him. And imagine, being 58 in a 13 yr old body. He’s smart though, but his issue is that he forgets that other people can be smart too. He underestimates people in that regard, including his own family because he believes he’s smarter than all of them.  He’s the most unstable of them all, but then again, he jumped time to the future and spent decades alone with only a mannequin for company before the Commission got their hooks into them.

Ben - I really wish we had more of his story. We don’t know how he died, only that he stuck around. He’s always with Klaus, even with Klaus drugs himself to block out all the other ghosts. Him helping to save Diego when the Academy was coming down and again in the theatre was just awesome. I’m hoping they bring more of him into the second season and we learn more of his story.

Vanya - the ordinary one. I loved the forshadowing done in the first episode. I’m fairly certain the opening scene is her being born. Then after the whole Hargreeves adopting (buying) them, it cuts to her performing Phantom of the Opera (Lindsay Sterling’s version which rocks btw), which as it the intro scenes ago on you find out is to an empty theatre.  So much foreshadowing and very poetic. Even the songs chosen. Her whole arc, being the ordinary one, being left out and left behind all the time, transition into finding out that she’s not ordinary, but extremely powerful.  The whole thing with Peabody/Jenkins creeped me out, but he creeped me out from the first moment. The way Hargreeves treated her pissed me off though. The whole “someone/thing is too powerful we have to lock it up/neutralize it” frame of mind. Her powers are tied to her emotions and because he basically abused and used them, they were raised by a robot, who did her best but doesn’t really have emotions, so she was never taught to control them and use them.  Also, you can’t just lock something in a box and pretend it doesn’t exist. That way lies disaster.  Hence, the Apocolypse.  Potential and powers like that, those tied to emotions don’t just fade when locked away, they grow.  Each moment of anger, pain, humiliation, grief, they all add to that potential.  He had to know she would only get more powerful, that sooner to later Allison’s rumour would wear off or be destroyed and Vanya would remember.

I am glad they didn’t go the whole White Violin from the comics. Interesting look, but no.

Leonard Peabody aka Harold Jenkins - definition of “Cool motive, still murder”. Creep extraordinaire .  Granted, he didn’t want to destroy the world, just the Umbrella Academy, but the way he used Vanya made me so sick. Just about everything he did even before we found out his backstory had me wanting to go scrub down.  Glad to know my instincts are correct.

Pogo and Mom - both are stories I want to know more about. How did Pogo end up there? How did Hargreeves create Mom? We know why, because of Vanya, even if it benefited the others in the end as well. Pogo holding on to so many of the secrets when he should have said something pissed me off though.  He should have let some of them go sooner.

Det. Eudora Patch - I loved her.  As I said, the byplay between her and Diego was so cute.  Just so fun to watch.  There was so much potential there and then, of course, they fridged her.  That had to be the most disappointing part of the show.  Killing a woman to give a man pain.  Really, haven’t we gotten past that yet?  I know they did it to have the whole Diego learns that violence is not the answer arc, but still,  they could have kept her alive and did the same damn thing. 

Hazel and Cha-Cha - such interesting characters.  And Hazel’s arc. Especially finding out that he’s let people go before.  That he’s never been a heartless killed.  Cha-Cha, however, is a heartless killer.  Seriously, she has issues. And her not realizing the Handler was going to leave them there since they had no briefcase? I laughed my ass off.

The Handler - all I can say is what a bitch.

Dave - I wish we could have gotten a bit more of the whole Klaus Dave thing.  I just wanted to bundle them up and hide them somewhere that no one and nothing could hurt them.

Delores - well, yeah, um...

My favourite parts:

The dancing to I Think We’re Alone Now. I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. 

Allison and Luther calling Claire and Luther saying all the things that Allison can’t and her just breaking down and crying.  That was just so painful to watch.

Luther the Furry.

All the times Fives talks to Delores.

Klaus being strangled by Cha-Cha. (that was hilarious)

Heartbreaking Parts:

Klaus saying that no one would notice him missing, and no one did.

Hearing Allison talking about what she did, how she used her powers on Claire.

Vanya drawing the Umbrella Academy tattoo on her arm while everyone else was getting theirs.

Klaus not being able to connect to/find Dave.

When they realize that Vanya is the apocalypse.

Least Favourite Parts: (for various reason)

Klaus being locked in the mausoleum.

Vanya being locked in the vault thing (both times, Luther you idiot!)

Det. Patch being killed.

The whole way Hargreeves treated the kids (seriously, want to strangle him)

Peabody dumping out Vanya’s pills (wow, that had me shaking with anger.  I had figured it out at that point but still, so pissed off).

The whole way they all treat Klaus.

Luther’s attitude.

So, I’m gonna give it a bit and then rewatch the whole season. Hopefully, a second season doesn’t take too long.  I would love to see more.  As I said, I loved it. It was pretty much well done overall.

A cliffhanger ending though.  That was annoying.

#Another Shade of Ash #umbrella academy #my thoughts #spoilers #umbrella academy spoilers

[gutterballgt]

I feel like we all need to watch 2004′s Stepford Wives again and marvel at how much more relevant it becomes with each passing year. I mean, it is a comical, existentially terrifying meta on toxic masculinity and how mediocre a man can be and still be considered the hero of a story, worthy of the heroine’s devotion.

Loooooong post. I got a lot to say on this subject.

It starts out with a few clips from a new season of TV shows, each with a feminist thrust about empowering women while men stew about being left in the dust without them actually doing anything to warrant keeping up. In the last of these promos, a married couple are separated on a tropical island and housed with professional prostitutes to see if they can be tempted away from their marriage vows.

The man, surprisingly, turns down his hot prostitute to stay “in Omaha with my Barbara”. It’s supposed to be this sweet moment of love and loyalty. Of sacrifice, because his wife is so homely while the prostitute was gorgeous and seemed devoted to his pleasure. Awwww.

The woman, who has been bombarded by multiple hot people who want her and who has only ever been with her husband, says she does love him, then jilts him for all the people responsible for what could only be a sexual awakening for her. We’re supposed to see her as a disloyal slut, turning her back on her sensitive, caring husband to have hot, dirty sex with the entire cast of a porno and a ridiculously built Hawaiian dude. How dare she, right? The Jezebel!

Then, we go back to the main studio where the heroine, Joanna, is clearly selling the new season with verve and all the confidence of a woman who knows she’s hit a hot button, and the jilted husband from the promo shows up and, instead of continuing the “sensitive, loyal man with a broken heart” shtick, he pulls out a gun, proposes a show called “let’s kill all the women!”, and tries to shoot Joanna.

We find out later that he’s already shot his wife and several of her new lovers.

I’m sorry, but we see that entirely too much in real life when women say no, when women try to leave, when women try to move on. Men become violent, even murderous, and wreak devastation on FAR more than the so-called source of their “broken heart”. At this late date, it’s too true-to-life to be as funny as it used to be.

There are too many so-called sensitive guys who feel entitled to a woman and think she has no say in the matter.

And that action -- that sudden, shocking violence by a jilted, shamed man -- is at the heart of literally everything else that happens in the movie. It’s the toxic masculinity we’re finally at least battling in public these days. The “if I can’t have you, no one can, and I’ll kill anyone who says otherwise and tries to help you” attitude.

Enter Walter, Joanna’s long-suffering husband. When she’s fired -- BECAUSE SHE WAS SHOT AT BY A VIOLENT JILTED MAN, not because she was bad at her job, her career and sanity sacrificed to some random asshole’s incoherent rage -- he quits his (lesser) job at the same company in a grand gesture of solidarity. Of course, they’re both ludicrously loaded (he states later that she’s always made 6 figures more than he could ever dream of, so it’s more like she’s loaded and he’s married to her), so it’s a largely empty gesture that costs him nothing. But it’s presented as oh, so romantic.

They proceed to move away after a short stint in a mental health facility for Joanna, who was understandably traumatized by her entire career and sense of place being yanked out from under her in addition to being shot, and again, Walter is portrayed as the supportive, caring husband, where Joanna is self-absorbed (ie., RECOVERING FROM TRAUMA) and snide to all their new neighbors (who are kind but empty behind their plastic smiles and kinda weird her out and are politely disdainful of her).

Everything about the set-up puts Joanna in the wrong to the point that she, herself, decides she’s a bad woman, a terrible mother and wife, and that she should literally change her entire self to be more like these false-smiled, plastic bimbos who are so objectified by their “drooling nerd” husbands. She even tries to recruit her friends -- Bobbie and Roger, the only two people she can connect with because they’re just as free-thinking and independent as Joanna has always been and were big names in their industries, just like her -- to buy into the Stepford way of life, though it goes so far against their grain that they can’t help but laugh about their attempts to fit in.

And Walter is thrilled. Here, he finally has the doting, stay-at-home wife and mother he always pictured for himself. He describes Stepford to the other men as “it’s like the way life is meant to be”. And, in a man’s mind, it sure is: he’s living the no-work life on his wife’s money, and he’s finally convinced her to be subservient to him. Why wouldn’t he be happy?

Isn’t that what every man wants?

So, with the dream in his hands, why wouldn’t he be insecure when Joanna starts to point out all the craziness around them, all the inconsistencies? Why wouldn’t he realize that she ISN’T really subservient to him? Not really? That she’s only doing so of her own volition and he has no real way to keep her acting that way if she chooses to take the kids and leave, as she’s threatened to when he refuses to listen to her?

This... is when his own toxic masculinity starts to grow.

Because he could have stopped the whole show when Roger was turned into a Stepford husband. He clearly knew what had happened, but he defended the whole thing 100%, arguing with Joanna about stereotyping Roger as a flaming gay instead of letting him be gay his own way, telling her that people change and she was being hysterical and selfish to find fault with Roger’s newfound “happiness”.

And he didn’t lift a finger to stop Bobbie’s transformation, even knowing she and Joanna had become best friends who were clinging to each other even harder with Roger’s sudden off-putting falseness. Even then, he was already planning Joanna’s transformation, as exemplified by the remote control she found in her house.

He’d already bought in. He was already willing to trade Joanna’s humanity for empty-eyed smiles, for sex with a subservient robot who could only praise him even if she felt nothing, for a tidy house and plenty of baked goods (which, may I remind you, Joanna was already doing while she tried so hard to be what he wanted her to be).

Then, when Joanna finally figures out the whole story -- because OF COURSE she did all the hard work to figure out who these poor women really were and what had been done to them -- and confronts him about it, what does he do? Ignore her entirely and start listing his grievances against her with his man friends cheering him on. And all his grievances are simply that she’s better at everything than him.

And she is. She’s a remarkably intelligent, talented, driven woman who had great success until a man tried to kill her and ruined her career, making her doubt herself.

She IS better than him. And that’s what he can’t stand.

That’s what none of them can stand.

And instead of feeling lucky that he got her, that she chose him even despite his obvious mediocrity, he’s furious and petulant and whines, “No! I got to hold your purse!” All the assholes chime in with “yeah, we’re the girl! and we don’t like it!”, etc., with no sense of irony that they’re demanding their wives “be the girl” because that would be okay somehow. Because women are supposed to wait on them hand and foot, raise the children out of sight and out of mind, keep the house spotless, present their perfect bodies for fucking whenever it’s wanted, and be silent and supportive whenever they’re NOT wanted.

So, it comes down to Walter’s big “hero” moment, where Joanna makes a passionate plea to save her humanity and he, at the last moment (and, more notably, out of sight of the other men), decides he can’t do that to her. Can’t turn her into an automated sex toy.

And we’re supposed to cheer.

For this minimal, absolute-least-he-could-do gesture. He just... didn’t erase his wife’s individuality when he had the chance, because he couldn’t look her in the eye and effectively kill her.

So heroic. Such a fucking sacrifice.

In reality, Joanna did all the fucking work, and all while having to convince the man she loved, who supposedly loved her, that she’s a goddamn human being that shouldn’t be turned into a goddamn robot just because he felt insecure about being a mediocre nobody.

She’s the one who had to pretend to be a perfect, subservient robot for who knows how long to fool the whole town until they could get back into the transformation facility to free all the other women. She’s the one who distracted Mike so Walter could get away and sneak into the facility.

He doesn’t even have, like, mad hacking skills. He’s allowed into the secret lab because he’s a man. And even then, he just pushes buttons randomly on the first screen he sees until the file corrupts itself and the programming breaks down. He doesn’t even know he hasn’t KILLED the first woman before he’s slapping at all the screens without rhyme or reason until all the programs stop.

And Joanna, bless her heart, gives him the credit for it. “No, that’s a man,” she says admiringly.

And then she proceeds to save Walter (again, because she’s already saved him from himself) by knocking Mike’s head off and exposing him for the robot he is, revealing the twist that Claire, Mike’s wife, was the actual neurosurgeon mastermind behind the entire plot.

And, lo and behold, her insanity sprung from her husband, the real Mike, cheating on her. From her catching them in the act and being so stressed out from overwork and trying to live up to expectations that she snapped and killed them both.

Of course, the whole plot is undone now -- thanks to Joanna -- and all the men get their house arrest in Stepford, forced to live the roles they forced on their wives (without the loss of their will, of course, so it’s not anywhere near a comparable sentence)... except Walter.

Because he’s supposed to be the hero.

I just....

Don’t get me wrong. I love the movie. It’s entertaining, and it does a masterful job of slipping in the little micro-aggressions that women deal with daily -- my favorite little stiletto through the ribs is when New Roger calls on Joanna at the assembly, but instead of calling her by her name, Joanna Eberhart, he calls her “Mrs. Walter Kresby”, completely erasing her from the address; it’s funny but also infuriating because it’s, again, too true to life -- and it’s just so well done. Stepford looks like a dream and feels like a nightmare, and it is masterful moviemaking.

But it still pisses me off because, for all its feminist edge, for all its warnings about the dangers of toxic masculinity, it still treats Walter as the hero and makes Joanna grateful to him, his doting wife who’s so proud of him.

Walter.

Who, during that last interview, is very distinctly not carrying her purse.

#toxic masculinity #male entitlement #stepford wives #I've watched the flick a hundred times easily #and I love it #but I love it because it's almost too possible #if we had the technology #every bullshit entitled male in the universe would do it #without a second thought #as long as they thought they could get away with it