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This part. This is the part I’m talking about

This is not a woman falling to pieces because her father won’t let her marry a man she just met.

This is a woman born to a life she has very little say in. She has never had a genuine friend (besides a tiger). She is facing a marriage to a man she doesn’t know and doesn’t like but duty (and the law) demands it. So she took a risk, ran away, ran to a world she doesn’t know or understand and when she landed in trouble (serious, serious trouble) a stranger came to her aid. She finally (finally!) made a real connection with someone but they didn’t get much time together before the guards showed up and she had to reveal who she was.

This moment when she’s crying her heart out? It comes after she’s been told that the first person she ever connected with, the first person to be genuinely interested in her for who she is and not what she is, the first real friend she has ever made, was executed… because of her.

Crying is normal. Even if it's over something trivial. We all face a lot of struggles in their lives, whether we acknowledge it or not. Something minor might end up breaking the camel's back.

Anyway, here's one of my favorite scenes in Beauty and the Beast:

Really, none of the classic princesses deserve the misinterpretation.

Cinderella?

Again, this is not after someone told her “yOu CaN’t MaRrY a MaN yOu JuSt MeT”—this is after she went to great lengths to get ready for the ball, adhering to the intentionally difficult (meant to be impossible) stipulations set by her abusive step-mother for her to be allowed to attend (when really she was invited and had as much right as the others to attend). She made that dress (I can’t recall off the top of my head if the classic animated version was also her mother’s old dress she restyled or not but still, she put in a ton of work on top of all the extra house work) and what did her step-family do? They tore to shreds while she was wearing it. Of course she’s lost hope: it’s the final straw after years and years of doggedly remaining optimistic despite constant harsh treatment.

Let’s go to another favourite: Mulan.

Mulan’s just had the worst day.

She tried her hardest to live up to her family’s and her society’s expectations and vision of a perfect bride but she failed. Not only did it go wrong, but she was publicly humiliated by the Matchmaker—by extension, humiliating her family.

Granted, her family has been kind and sympathetic about the whole thing. Her father even goes to encourage her, assuring her of his unconditional love for her and his confidence that she’ll get it right next time.

She’s just beginning to smile when the drums pound and news of war reaches their village. Her father—her beloved father who’s already a veteran and lives with a disability—is expected as the only male in their family to suit up and head out in the morning.

Mulan can’t help. Nothing she says will be listened to and she can’t take his place (until, of course, she thinks of a way to do so which this moment of crying it out in the rain leads to—score one for having a good cry and clearing your head).

There’s of course more. Take any princess’ dramatic crying momentTM and review the context and I’ll bet you’ll see it’s never as trivial as some have framed it. And, yes, like prev pointed out, it’s this awful thing of people believing boys can’t cry and girls can but then they can never be taken seriously.

But I wish more people would grasp that this isn't a function of being RIGHT-wing, it's a function of being any-fucking-WING. The idea that you don't have to understand how something works in order to judge whether it's Good or Bad, and in fact trying to understand something Bad is going to contaminate you spiritually, is very much in evidence on the left as well.

He meets Adar and the Uruks who have just left Sauron's fortress, finally free.

Adar takes one look at the creature and says

A true knight is charged to protect the innocent, to defend the weak, to uphold justice, and to act with honour. These are sacred vows sworn before the gods. They are not meant to be hierarchical, and they are certainly meant to be sacred. However, initiation into the Kingsguard brings another set of vows. The knight must protect the king and royal family with his life, obey every command, and keep every secret. His duty to conscience, the helpless, and the innocent now falls beneath his oath to serve an institution. This is what I mean by a hierarchy of oaths. It is not merely that Kingsguard vows can contradict knightly ones; it is that those vows are ranked. Knights are no longer guided by morality but by the command structure of power, where obedience eclipses justice.

Ser Duncan the Tall is perhaps the purest example of what knighthood once meant. As a hedge knight, he lives by conscience and honour. He defends the innocent at great personal cost, striking a prince to protect Tanselle Too-Tall. That moment defines true knighthood: acting for what is right, not for who commands. Yet when Duncan joins the Kingsguard, that same moral strength becomes restrained. He does not lose his goodness, but his ability to act upon it. The institution transforms a knight of conscience into one bound by silence. During his service as Kingsguard and Lord Commander, Duncan witnesses the suffering of Rhaella Targaryen, a child trapped in a miserable marriage and forced into pregnancy at a young age. At what point did Duncan’s courage fade? Surely he and Aegon were close enough for him to speak against it. His death at Summerhall may show that his moral core remained, yet it is tragic that his greatest act of protection comes only through a duty permitted by the same vows that once silenced him.

Jaime Lannister provides the perfect inversion of Duncan’s tragedy. He lives within the same hierarchy but refuses to remain silent. Jaime recognises that his vows betray one another and exposes how the Kingsguard transforms knights into instruments of royal will rather than protectors of justice. When he kills Aerys, he loses his honour in the eyes of the world but reclaims the essence of true knighthood. His rebellion restores the morality that the Kingsguard stripped away. Jaime embodies the decay of chivalry under monarchy, yet unlike his fellow Kingsguard ‘knights’, he breaks free from it. In doing so, he reminds us that the greatest act of loyalty a knight can perform is not obedience to power but fidelity to conscience.

Uh-oh! Skeletons have taken over the photo reference repository!

The taxonomists are taking a well-deserved fall sabbatical... but when the scientists are away, the skeletons will play!

They’ve been a little over-enthusiastic about allocating the bone stash without supervision this Halloween. Everything is a vertebrate now! You get a spine, and you get a spine, and you get — well, we’re not really sure what that last guy built. Better to just smile and nod. Step right up! For one night only, view a world in which cladistics aren’t enforced and taxonomy is non-euclidean!