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dowagersqueen · 9 months

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I genuinely think they tried to add complexity to Aegon but it looks like some clash in the writers' room because he is written and acted one way on screen and then he is described as someone who is doing these horrible things off screen. Also the rape storyline was done to create a conflict for Alicent to solve and kind of bond with Dianna over traumatic experiences but it wasn't conveyed very well on screen and they threw Aegon under the bus in the process. They might think he will "pay" for his crimes when he will be badly injured and the audience will sympathize with him like they did with Viserys whose suffering was shown in detail. Especially compared to Aemond who was shown as a tough guy who didn't cry (they even showed him smiling) when he lost an eye and his recovery process was skipped completely, so the audience doesn't really sympathize with him because they don't see an effect it had on him, it's left off screen. I think it's too early to say where they're heading with both Aegon and Aemond.

i don't think they genuinely tried. i mean if i try to take the writers' comments seriously it honestly doesn't sound good? like they're like "we made him a monster but he's not a monster" because they describe the horrible things he did but then only verbally do they say he's not that bad and worth of sympathy. none of that translates in the show. either they lack the ability to write him the way they thought they would write him or they just never wanted to. they literally wrote him comically bad. his only temporarily good quality is being somewhat self aware but he's also not doing anything worthy with that information and it goes away as quickly as he's handed some power. yes, he's had a complicated relationship with his mother and a horrible one with his father and i've discussed this in the past at length, i would have to dig up the asks, but at the end of the day, there's plenty of characters who have had... a worse experience? of course it offers you insight as to why he turned out the way he did and makes you sympathize with him as a child but he never actually stands up and does something good for anyone to sympathize with him. he doesn't take his responsibilities seriously at all, he is presented as being mean to his siblings, not caring about his wife or children or dragon, constantly disappointing his mother by doing terrible things, making gross comments to women in his vicinity, being cruel to children etc.

i'm sorry but genuinely.... if that was an attempt from them it was a poor one. my final opinion is that they did a very bad job with aegon and whatever comes in s2, no matter what it is, is shaped by the bad job they did in s1.

we can agree to disagree though.

#asks #i've seen people support the writers takes about him and the sympathy for the fictional abuser and i won't get into it but that's just now #like there are limits to where you can take your character and where any sympathy stops #idk

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williamaltman · 4 years

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Luke/Alex Rant

Negativity Alert.

So, ugh, the whole Luke/Alex being exes thing actually brings me so much pain, and it’s like no one understands me :(

I’m actually gonna start with the part that’s gonna make people hate me, which is probably not the best idea when looking for sympathy/empathy/understanding, but oh well, it just makes the most sense to me to write it like that... Thanks for those who bear with me.

First of all... It’s not really canon. I mean, maybe it could be. Maybe they could make it in s2. But I’m tired of people saying it’s straight up confirmed, putting it on wikis and everything. Owen and Charlie were just chatting, joking around and having fun with the fans on live, they weren’t being completely serious.

They clearly like to support fan theories, headcanons, ships. Yet on actual serious interviews they have never mentioned that. They have even talked about how Flynn/Reggie was supposed to be a thing, but not that. Not once did it come up when talking about LGBT representation on the show either(why would they not say Luke isn’t straight?).

I understand having a headcanon and feeling validated when the actors support it but it seems like most people legit can’t tell the difference between that and actual officially canon things? It seems like people either think this is actually written in the show(which we don’t have any evidence of) or that the actors have the authority to decide what’s canon just like the writers/showrunners/directors, which... It’s just not true?

Now, why it actually upsets me.

Well, just for starters... IT’S SO SAD??? I really don’t get what joy people get into characters being broken up??? And I mean, the fact that they stayed friends and are still fine with each other is nice I guess, and I see why that could be appreciated... But at the same time the one thing that made people get this idea was when they held hands in episode 2 when they got scared... With the idea being that Luke instinctively went to Alex to cope, and then Alex said “Let’s not” as in “Let’s not make it weird, we’re not together anymore”.

Which is so freaking sad??? The idea that they used to be each other’s emotional support and now even though they’re friends they can never really be that close anymore? Which, means that things are NOT just completely fine like ~UwU happy exes~??? Same for the also popular "evidence" that Luke supposedly looked sad when he realized Alex liked Willie.

And so, we go to the fact that... They’re clearly not happening “again". Willex and Juke/Palina are the ships. I see most people who are into this saying they’re into the current ships anyway and want for them to thrive and for Luke/Alex to stay only in the past. Which, I mean... I KINDA get, liking ships in the past but wanting them to move on. But that makes more sense to me when it’s something that it’s actually in the thing, not something that’s not shown and you’re pushing to happen only to add heartbreak that didn’t need to be there.

EVEN THEN, pushing that aside and understanding liking this idea of them in the past... Why need for that to be canon then??? If it’s all about the fanfics and fanarts and aesthetics and somewhat suggestive moments to relate to that but nothing actually substantial on the show... Then why push for more than that and open the door for people to get invested and want for them to get back together, when for you nothing’s gonna change either way? It’s so counter-productive.

And if you actually want for them to get back together... Well the idea that the creators of a show targeted at teenage girls would take away the main het ship for a gay one even though there’s already a canon gay ship that doesn’t interfere with anything is ridiculous. So again, keeping it as a headcanon and maybe reading fics where they get a happy ending instead of pushing it as canon it’s the best idea possible too.

Ok, I didn’t mean for this post to be so argumentative and combatitive. I meant for it to be more about my feelings really. But now that I feel like I’ve actually brought good arguments to my stance, there’s that feeling that actually exposing my real emotional reason to think like that is gonna “ruin it” and just invalidate everything... But well, I guess that’s too bad, and if anyone’s taking this seriously at all, which most likely isn’t the case, I again ask you to cut me some slack and not just think everything I said is dumb as hell because of what comes later? Like let’s be real here, we’re all coming from some kind of emotional place here, right? Even getting so attached to fictional characters at all.

So, the thing is, I WOULD LOVE LUKEALEX SO MUCH. The possible dynamic and/or tropes/archetypes that they could have would be literally my weakness. It’s already my weakness. In fact what I might consider my very first serious ship already has it. And god, did I suffer for that, and in the end I don’t even know if the results were worthy and if I’m even sure of what they were.

And that ship was actually a wlw one. A mlm one(I’m a gay guy) makes it 10x worse(the fact that Luke is like totally the kind of character I’m attracted to and Charlie is also like, perfect, doesn’t help either). It would make me invested in a way that would probably already be too much if they were together, but them being exes just absoutely DESTROYS ME. Like on a visceral level.

And the fact that the idea is most of the time that Luke was the one who was there for Alex when he came out. And that maybe Luke was his first love. And now that's gone. It absolutely kills me. It’s so so so tragic.

Like, I actually read a fic like this. Before this whole thing became so popular and Owen/Charlie said anything about it. And it destroyed me. I bawled my eyes out for like an hour. As well-written and touching as it was, it wasn’t worthy, it was definetely not worth suffering so much like a month after reading it.

So it’s just so painful that for most people this is just a cute little thing that doesn’t affect them at all while it truly hurts me so much :/

So yeah, this is my rant. It should probably have been two separate posts, one talking about how I don’t think it’s really canon and one why i don’t want to... Cause as I said, I feel like no one is gonna take me seriously while if I ended it on the arguing part it would lend more credence to it. And I do think people desparately need to take a step back in regards to how they’re considering this 100% confirmed canon(or even anything besides a little teasing).

But I had to vent I guess. Please be kind enough not to come here fight me. Edit: I didn’t mention this at first cause it’s kind of not the main reason and not relevant to LukeAlex specifically, but: I value canon MLM ships A LOT, and watching the show I loved Willex so much and saw nothing between Luke and Alex, so I do 100% want to focus on the canon ship instead of going down this route of hyping up a crackship(that wouldn’t be a crackship if the exes thing was made canon, and might not even classify a crackship even now, but still). I’m not trying to make a point about how people who ship LukeAlex are evil (because, in a way, I do too!), and I definetly don’t want to throw the racism card, but yeah. Just a little extra point to make.

#Anti LaLex #Anti Luke x Alex #Anti LukeAlex #Anti Lulex #LukeAlex #Luke x Alex #Alex x Luke #Anti Alex x Luke #I mean not really #but I guess I have to tag it like that #Luke Patterson #Alex #Julie and the Phantoms #JATP #Rant #Vent #Long Post

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tervacious · 4 years

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Being a rape victim doesn’t automatically make you a good person other people should take seriously and no I’m not talking about Tara Reade

Kurt Eichenwald is a terrible person who has a twitter account and isn’t afraid to use it to make a damn fool of himself and anyone who takes him seriously about any subject whatsoever. He came to my attention back in 2016 as a shill for Hillary Clinton, and when he resurfaced a year or two later as a subject of mockery for wondering loudly, with the air of a man in desperate need of attention, about whether or not tentacle porn really exists.

I would have forgotten all about him, except the other day he decided to go on a long twitter rant about Tara Reade being a liar, and even then I would have never known he did this if I didn’t follow some brave souls who apparently monitor his account for the next time he discovers something almost everyone else in the entire world knows about already and decides to share his discovery with the group.

Tara Reade is a liar, according to Kurt, because, you see, HE was raped.

Kurt Eichenwald has epilepsy, and apparently years ago after a massive seizure he passed out, during which time a man violently raped him. He ended up in the hospital. He was severely injured, and afterwards was deeply traumatized. He was only ever able to open up and talk/write/tweet about this because of a lot of help and his wife.

Weirdly, even though he’s a terrible person, and a damn fool, and has awful war-crime-apologia politics, I totally believe his story. I don’t know if he filed a police report, or if the guy was caught, or if he has medical records to back it up. I don’t know if he told anyone at the time except for, I assume, the doctors and nurses. I have no idea how long it took him to process the horror of what happened to him. And I don’t know if he gradually came into an understanding of the events of that time, or knew all along, or forgot details, or kept things back when he finally decided to start talking about it, or what. None of that should be particularly important when it comes to defaulting to believing a victim. In fact, when I read his first few tweets, even though I knew what was coming, I realized he probably was legit when he went off on his tentacle-porn discovery. I no longer feel that is a subject worthy of mocking him for. It makes total sense to me now.

You’d think a guy who had something so hideous happen to him would have developed empathy along the way, particularly for other rape victims. You’d be wrong if you thought that.

Tara Reade, you see, did not react in any way the way Kurt Eichenwald reacted to what happened to him, so she must be lying.

If it was acceptable to think this way, I wouldn’t have to believe anyone about rape. Because when I was assaulted, as a teenager in a dark parking lot on a community college campus after (or was it before?) a night class, I fought the guy off. I successfully attacked my would-be attacker, who shoved me partly against (or onto?) the hood of a car, where a broken antenna cut into my upper arm, but I kicked him off me, slammed my fists into the back of his head (or between his shoulders?), and stabbed him with the biology probe I had in my bag because I was taking a ceramics course at the time and that was the tool I used for detail work. I didn’t scream or yell because that’s not my style and also it wastes your breath when no one is around. The man was three or five inches shorter than me, but muscular, stockier and bigger than me, I couldn’t tell you his age or race, he smelled like alcohol, and he wore boots. But see, I fought him off, got him on the ground, kicked him three or four times (I was wearing boots too), and then ran like hell for the buildings. There was blood on me. He didn’t rape me. In fact he couldn’t even get his hands below my waistband. It felt like it happened in slow motion but it had to have happened quickly. I remember it was spring semester. And it happened thirty-two and a half years ago. And I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t report it. I wasn’t ashamed but, I mean, it’s not like anything actually happened, right? I didn’t want my parents to take me out of college or start monitoring my life. I wore long sleeves throughout the summer to cover the mark on my arm. I started carrying a knife. I still don’t talk about it. This might be the first time I’ve written about it. I have never told my mother about it, and I’m fifty years old. I have no plans to tell her either.

But he didn’t rape me. Because I kicked his ass. Why do other women claim they freeze? That makes no sense, they must be lying then. Why don’t other women fight? They must be lying. People tell other people this happened to them? They must be looking for attention. In fact, if a man can’t fight off his attacker? He woke up, after all. It’s not like he HAD to lie there, and

See how ugly that is? See how horrible and wrong? See what a bad person you have to be to think that way? I was just employing rhetoric and it made me feel awful typing it without meaning it. Jesus fuck. What a husk of a human being Kurt Eichenwald must be.

So Tara Reade didn’t do anything Kurt Eichenwald did. According to him, this means she is a liar, and not just any liar, but the worst kind of liar, and should rot in hell.

Kurt Eichenwald is a perfect example of why men, even men who are rape victims, should shut up forever when it comes to rape culture and women who have been raped. His rape gave him no insight whatsoever into what women deal with. He has no understanding of the power dynamics between women and men. He never had to deal with that, even in the moment a man raped him. He has nothing to offer on this subject, except to take a woman’s rape and somehow make it all about himself.

I could write a lot about men and their relationship to rape as victims. Kurt Eichenwald wrote his screed, and the replies were full of mainly women falling all over themselves to validate him and offer sympathy. When a man tells his story, he’s brave. If a man or boy is violated, it’s the worst crime of all. When we read about priests in the Catholic church sexually abusing children and adults, all we read about and hear about are the boys, even though the records show THREE TIMES as many girls were abused and raped, and women were assaulted, abused, and raped as well. Many of the female victims ended up pregnant, and that had to be covered up somehow as well. But we all associate “pedophile priests” with boys. And ironically men use the horror of what happened to all these children to complain about how unimportant their stories are, how “it’s okay when it happens to boys” or “no one cares when it happens to boys”, when in reality that’s the only time rape is taken at all seriously. The male body is precious and it isn’t “normal” to violate it. Whereas the actual disposable, easily erased victims are always women and girls.

This isn’t to lessen what happened to those boys, but why does what happened to those boys lessen what happened to girls and women?

Tara Reade knew and liked her attacker, a man with incredible power who still has incredible power. She is receiving death threats, has been doxxed, has had fake internet accounts established in her name to discredit her. Her politics have come under scrutiny because apparently if you liked Putin one time you are magically unrapeable-- who knew? Women are rushing to discuss why she wasn’t wearing pantyhose back in 1993, because ALL women wore them back then, so WHY NOT, TARA? WHY DIDN’T YOU HAVE THEM ON???

(Probably for the same reason I didn’t wear pantyhose, despite dress codes, in 1993, and that is because they are uncomfortable and also both of us are from California where the pantyhose thing was pretty much over by the early nineties. Just an fyi.)

And Kurt Eichenwald had a horrible thing happen to him too. I’m sorry to read that, that anyone had to go through that. But it doesn’t make him a good person, and it doesn’t make him an expert on rape, and it doesn’t make him right, and it obviously gave him nothing in the way of empathy or compassion for the suffering of women, especially one who he finds inconvenient. And in a way, it makes him worse than the men who have never been raped or never thought it was possible that they even could be raped. He should know better, and he doesn’t.

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