No Because The More I Think About The More Upset I Am At The Duffers

Maya, Joe, Joseph, Noah, and Finn really be carrying this show on their backs

ever since maya and natalie have been talking about leaning into ronance & joseph quinn has been saying a lot of things about how he changed eddie’s characters from the original creation done by the duffer brothers (his rings, being more friendly than mean, his queerness), i’ve been thinking a lot more about the way that fandom perceives writers opinions v actors' acting choices.

i think that fans tend to value the opinions of writers more than actors because we have been taught by some fandoms *cough cough* that actors' decisions are unimportant. when in reality, i think characters' personalities heavily come from the way the actor plays them and perceives them. this is very evident in joe and maya discussing the bathroom scene in s3 and joseph creating eddie's image.

no way in hell the duffer brothers intended for eddie to be a queer character. they have shown time and time again they don’t care about queer characters, let alone enough to make them well-written queer characters. however, joseph has stated that he intentionally played up eddie's attraction/flirtation to steve because he thought it fit his character.

i think in fandom we’re very easily dismissive of ourselves and our interpretations of media because we’ve been so harmed in the past by creators and writers of shows. i think a lot more emphasis needs to be placed on the way that actors interpret characters, because generally they are the ones that know the best since they play them.

this was long and rambly but heavily inspired by @wastedonyoursmile 's post about the duffers & queerbaiting.

WAIT NO BECAUSE NOW THAT I’VE THOUGHT ABOUT IT NANCY SCREAMS COMPHET-

Omg help I think I might start projecting onto Nancy Wheeler 💀

Anyways, comphet sucks 😍

i’m a lesbian nancy wheeler truther tbh

if you were going to tell me i would be in tears at the end of an eight-episode mockumentary on fucking freevee because not only did they manage to find one of the most genuine men on the planet earth to be part of their entirely-staged story, but because every single actor who got to know him longer than we did at the end said full-stop they’d fallen in love with him and were so happy to be his friend and had so much fun with him and because everyone acknowledged that he just went above and beyond time and time again every time he was faced with a moral or ethical dilemma and proved people ARE inherently good actually!!!

i wouldn’t believe you and yet. here we are

This and also I exceeded my daily like limit help 💀

What hurts the most about the complete trashing of Byler is how we watched Will fall apart at every turn. We saw the excitement and love on Wills face as he was waiting for Mike at the airport with his painting that he spent days on, just to receive an awkward side hug, just to third wheel on Mike and El's date, just for his painting to end up being nothing more than a device to further Mike and El's dysfunctional relationship. We watched Will suffer all season and it was officially for nothing.

every single time rhaenyra has a plan it is so fucking looney tunes i cannot take her seriously. what if i got into a nun habit to go talk to my ex girlfriend. what if i did the eugenics math and tried to make my kingsguard into a dragonrider. what if i got all of the brokeass dirty blonds in flea bottom to stand like bowling pins before the most pissed off animal in the seven kingdoms. WHAT IF I ACT LIKE MY BRUNETTE SONS ARE THE PRODUCT OF MY BLOND HUSBAND

some of y’all with printed copies of fanfiction are going to die someday and your books will end up at the secondhand book shop and someone is just going to innocently pick up blorbo/shitto enemies to lovers and when i think of it this way let’s keep printing fanfiction

the tragedy of rhaenyra and alicent is that they cannot ever truly see the other without destroying the foundations of their own self-image. rhaenyra cannot see alicent as a child married to a man old enough to be her father because that’s rhaenyra’s father. and the image she has of both viserys as a just and kind man and of herself as the beloved daughter of that man would collapse under the weight of that realisation. the resentment she holds against alicent would have to turn upon viserys. if she recognised that viserys treats alicent little better than a broodmare, she would have to realise that fundamentally that is all her mother was to him too. if she understood why alicent was disgusted by her marrying daemon she would have to see herself not as someone with agency marrying a man she loved who happened to be her uncle but as someone manipulated and groomed since childhood. the agency she clings to, which is so important to how she sees herself, would be revealed as an illusion. by extension she would have to see her family as one in which the familial is warped almost beyond repair. her self-image, so rooted in targaryen exceptionalism, would collapse.

likewise alicent cannot fully grasp why rhaenyra was so upset that she married viserys because she would have to fully see viserys not as the king but her friend’s father. she would have to face the horror of her life head on. moreover she would have to see viserys in her own father. for her to accept that rhaenyra is not selfish or undutiful for having affairs and trying to carve out whatever agency she can, the pedestal on which alicent places duty would have to be destroyed. she would have to realise that duty is only as important as she believes it to be, that it has no meaningful moral weight to it, and that all of her suffering has been for nothing. alicent tells herself that her sadness is a condition of her existence, as a woman, a mother, a daughter, and that by trying to claw whatever happiness she can from the world rhaenyra has turned her back on all of those things; she is the wrong kind of woman. if she could ever accept that rhaenyra had slept around and birthed bastards without judgement the core of alicent’s identity as a good mother/wife/queen would collapse. she would have to face the reality that nothing that happened to her was justified, and crucially that her submissiveness at every turn was not noble or good and was never going to let her win, but only trapped her further. every cognitive barrier she has built up to protect herself and provide some sort of meaning to a life in which she has only ever really suffered would have to shatter.

and they both realise these things to some extent, rhaenyra knows that viserys is flawed and fallible because she’s experienced his mistakes firsthand (and she is definitely aware of daemon’s violence) and in many ways alicent is so viciously judgemental of rhaenyra’s choices because she wants that level of freedom so desperately for herself, and they so clearly love each other still that they both want to believe there’s something good in the other. but they bury those doubts under layers and layers of cognitive dissonance so they don’t have to face deeply painful realities, because neither of them can truly see the other without destroying themselves.

Alicent being a victim to a council of misogynist men being a 'gotcha' moment for some fans really shows their true mentality. This isn't about feminism to these fans, Rhaenyra is just a shield they use to hide their own misogyny with feminism. Otherwise Alicent's circumstances are so clear to even casual watchers (especially in an episode where both her and Rhaenyra have parallel scenes having their council speaking over them). A child bride forced to operate in the patriarchy to protect her kids, that girl getting thrown aside by men, isn't 'payback' or karma.. it's just the patriarchy wheel going on, crushing woman after woman under it. People enjoying Alicent's 'downfall' simply fail to understand the victims of patriarchy or do not care about them (which is why for many of these 'feminists', Rhaenyra's worth is tied to Daemon and not as an individual).

I GOT RICKROLLING 💀

Your gender is now the first randomized wikipedia article you get. No rerolls.

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