#blueagia

YES because since king is a fellow comrade he named his son joseph hillstrom after the real name of early 20th century union rep for the IWW joe hill (who was a swedish immigrant and changed the name to americanize it) who was famous for writing and singing parodies of already established songs (please look up the preacher and the slave and casey jones they’re a hoot 😭 and the rebel girl is also great for other reasons but yeah those two are my faves personally) AAAAND since said songs were popular as fuck and his union was too socialist for tptb’s tastes was framed for a murder and put to the death penalty, VERY CONVENIENT RIGHT, and the song was named after him and written immediately after and the day i learned who the guy was and did 2 + 2 my esteem for king grew even more 😂 FOR REFERENCE SINCE WE’RE HERE and sorry a few years ago i think it was 2021 I had a moment where I got REALLY into reading about the whole thing so now I’m word vomiting

this is one of imvho best renditions ever of joe hill sung by paul robeson who REALLY drove it home

^^^^ the above is the prob most famous version of recentish times that joan baez sung at woodstock sorry for this weirdass formatting but i’m on mobile and it won’t let me put text between the videos

AND since we’re talking springsteen I’ll leave you with his imvho chef kiss version that I love to bits, also ofc it doesn’t let me write after the bruce video so I need to do it here BUT i highly recommend looking up joe hill the man because that guy was something else entirely and this was my joe hill horrid summed up ted talk if you want me to let loose and rant about this longer I’m available 😂

🤖 Favorite AI character: Audio Tour Guide from Mistholme Museum my beloved <3 followed closely by Ally from VAST horizon and I.M.O.G.E.N from Stellar Firma

🤡 Favorite horror: The Magnus Archives in general. But the one I'm obsessed with at the moment is I am in Eskew

🕹 What else do you do while listening to podcasts? I'm mostly listening to them at work. My work requires about 30% of my brain's input and I have to keep the rest of it occupied with something, otherwise I tend to get very bored

📞 You have been taken hostage and the only people available to save you are all the different characters voiced by a single podcast voice actor. Which actor’s characters are you calling in to save you? That's easy! Graham Casner, Soren Arkwright and Kenpenin Trun all voiced by Peter Lewis would make a great rescue team, I believe

There’s a reason why people latched on Ben’s journey from evil to good rather than Finn’s, because Finn’s entire moral conflict is resolved in the first 10 minutes of TFA and never addressed again. His only character flaw from there on becomes his *fear* and reluctance to commit to the good guys’ cause, but it’s never treated seriously by the narrative and nobody---with the only exception of Rose in TLJ---ever challenges him on that. No one ever doubts him and he’s never forced to deal with any consequences for his supposed *character flaws*. The narrative constantly shields and protects him from thinking critically about his past as a stormtrooper or how he should feel about those who are still being brainwashed by the FO, and it conveniently establishes that he’s Never Done Anything Wrong or killed anyone on behalf of the FO prior to his defection (which is ironic, considering that after his defection he kills so often and thoughtlessly, but that’s Okay, because he’s on the good guys’ side now!).

i gotta watch it someday i really love the character designs...

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

I would say that it doesn’t get enough shit tbh. The only ones that truly criticize the show are a few book snobs and people who care about good writing rather than spectacle. 

Those people are in the minority. The show is still winning Emmys for writing, even though the writing has been absolute trash since s4. The show is still universally regarded as the best thing since sliced bread. It got a bit of public criticism with s7, but it still won Emmys for writing IIRC.

As for the source material, well … they shouldn’t have decided to adapt it if it was beyond their skill level. The only thing I sort of sympathize with them on is the fact that there are no more books out, so they did kind of “run out of source material,” (despite the fact that they cut/ignored several characters/plotlines, which made them run out of material faster, but whatever).

No offense, but I don’t like that people use time restraints as an excuse, or try to blame the show’s bad writing on GRRM for not publishing the rest of the series. These people are supposed to be professional writers. They signed up to write this show. Other writers with deadlines are able to write well written seasons under deadlines, why not them? And it does suck that they have to come up with their own material, since that technically isn’t what they signed up for, but every show has some sort of setback included behind the scenes. And again, professionals. They’re getting paid millions upon millions of dollars to write this … and this is what they give us. I’ve seen fans come up with better storylines than them. Fans who are not professional writers. Nearly every theory the fans gave us on Arya’s s6 story in Bravvos was better than the nonsense D&D wrote. The fans came up with the “Talisa is a Lannister spy” theory, which, again, was better than the bad fanfic D&D wrote.

And even without TWOW and ADOS, they should still attempt to embody the spirit of the series, but they haven’t. Instead they give us terribly written, lazy, high budget fanfiction where all they care about is spectacle and shock value over good writing and consistent characters. 

Season 7 felt the most like bad fanfiction, but the issues have been there even when the show was still good, i.e. when they did still have source material, because they either cut it in exchange for stupid stuff (like Pod’s magical penis, which has had well over a 3 season arc at this point), changed it and made it bad (like whitewashing Tyrion’s character to the point where he is a boring nonentity, or ruining Robb’s character with that Talisa bullshit and the way it was set up). You can tell they don’t care anymore. If they cared, there’s no way they would have had Arya do that ridiculous Assassin’s Creed escape scene in Bravvos despite her injuries, or make open kinslaying the biggest trend despite the taboo it’s supposed to be (Euron admitting to killing his brother and the Ironborn rewarding him for it by crowning him, the Ironborn helping him try to kill his niece and nephew, Ellaria and the Sand Snakes murdering their entire family … I feel like I’ve forgotten some). Hell, Cersei became queen with no riots from the smallfolk despite the fact that she not only murdered the family they loved, but killed a bunch of them too, and she still has highborn supporters despite the fact that everyone knows she pulled a 9/11 on the world’s equivalent of the Vatican (if Hot Pie knows she did it, then everyone knows). Not to mention the fact that the West is still supporting her even though she’s a kinslayer since she killed Kevan and Lancel, but again open kinslaying is the biggest trend in the show version Westeros). And I’ll be here all day if I rant about what they did to Jaime’s character, or Brienne’s character, or Sansa in s5, or Stannis, or all of the Martells except for Oberyn. They do not care. They stopped caring after they adapted the Red Wedding. They made it clear in interviews that that was what they wanted to get to. After that? Welp. 

Not to mention the grossness of their writing — the sexism despite their obvious pandering, the disgusting way they handled Theon and his PTSD, and really so many other things that would require me to write a thesis. It’s been there since the beginning in hindsight, but it’s gotten worse and more obvious since s4. 

Thank you, dear! I’ll be ranting here because half my tags got eaten in the last post, who knew there was such thing as a limit!

Domeric Bolton

who? | only know their name | loathe | ugh | overrated | indifferent | dead | alive | just okay | cute | badass | my baby | hot | want to marry | favorite

Domeric makes me so sad! Like, just imagine how hard it must have been for house Bolton to produce a, as far as we know, good person. He was a cutie pie! He was liked wherever he went, he liked horses! I bet you anything he was a mama’s boy. All he wanted was a brother and he paid dearly for it :(

Jahaerys Targaryen

who? | only know their name | loathe | ugh | overrated | indifferent | dead | alive | just okay | cute | badass | my baby | hot | want to marry | favorite

I’m guessing we’re talking about the Conciliator, right? I haven’t read Fire and Blood, but i’m spoiled, so I’m a bit disappointed in him? He had a lot of hype, but turns out his wife and best friend outshine him by miles.

Aerea Targaryen

who? | only know their name | loathe | ugh | overrated | indifferent | dead | alive | just okay | cute | badass | my baby | hot | want to marry | favorite

I mean, does this girl ever catch a break? Her fate is terrible even by asoiaf standards. Still, she was so defiant and head-strong! The switch isn’t that improbable, but tbh I don’t find it that unlikely that she’d suddenly become loud and bold as soon as she found herself out of the hands of the dude who must have frightened her the most. Her story reminds me a lot of a rebel teenager taking her parent’s divorce badly by the end.

Tyland Lannister

who? | only know their name | loathe | ugh | overrated | indifferent | dead | alive | just okay | cute | badass | my baby | hot | want to marry | favorite

The only green worth anything! He’s also proof that GRRM does let his tortured and mutilated characters live and be important, so that’s VERY relevant to my interests.

Dolorous Edd

who? | only know their name | loathe | ugh | overrated | indifferent | dead | alive | just okay | cute | badass | my baby | hot | want to marry | favorite

That’s very funny! Yeah… Listen. The thing is it’s not even that it is “not as bad” as Game of Thrones Season 8. It is brilliant. 

I think it’s highly significant that in the vision Dany witnessed in the House of the Undying, Rhaegar looked directly at her and met her eyes when speaking of the Prince that was Promised. And it’s significant that it felt like he was talking to her when he said that “there must be one more” and that the dragon has three heads.

However, it was still only a vision of the past, not actual time travel. Rhaegar should not have been able to see Dany, because she wasn’t actually there with him and Elia and Aegon. It wasn’t Rhaegar having the vision, not him gifted with sight-beyond-sight. As far as we know, even from Maester Aemon who’d know if anyone would, Rhaegar was not one of those Targaryens gifted (or cursed) with dragon dreams and visions of the future.

However however… we know that when under the influence of weirwood paste, Bran was also able to see visions of the past. And we know that even though Bloodraven told him you can only see the past through the weirwoods, not affect it, it did seem like Ned heard him talking… and there are other, stronger possible past-affecting things that the show and GRRM have hinted to. And most importantly, we know that shade of the evening, the substance that gave Dany visions in the HOTU, appears to be a dark mirror of weirwoods and weirwood paste.

So is it possible, that for some rare individuals, shade of the evening gives more than visions of the past (or future), it actually lets them affect those times as well? Perhaps just barely, just enough to appear as a brief flash before a witness’s eyes? It did seem that Robbwind saw her in the vision of the Red Wedding (though note that was almost certainly a metaphorical vision, as I doubt the Freys actually enthroned the body they mutilated in mockery, and of course both Robb and Grey Wind were dead and couldn’t see anything)… but also note that in Dany’s vision of Aerys commanding the destruction of King’s Landing (where he said the exact words Jaime later quoted him saying), nobody seemed to notice her presence at all.