Well Put - Tumblr Posts
besides daemon as a gothic heroine trutherism the reason i want to see more of harrenhal on house of the dragon is because i always thought it would play a significant role in twow/ados. if king’s landing gets annihilated due to some combination of wildfire, dragon fire, and jon connington bell-related ptsd and winterfell is in the hands of the boltons—and there must always be a stark in winterfell, which aside from being propaganda actually has something simmering there—where on the continent do these storylines converge?
it’s chekov’s monstrously huge castle that no one family can hold, that can hold armies, right in the middle of the continent—a liminal space, a temporal vortex, haunted and cursed, hungry and waiting. it sits on the god’s eye, where the first men and the children of the forest made their pact, where dragons died, where gendry realized who arya was just as rhaegar realized who lyanna was. balerion made a pyre out of the highest tower and there are weirwoods built into the beams and rafters. it’s where jaime was claimed and sent away by an unworthy king and where he returned to save brienne in a moment of certainty and bravery that sucked him into the past and propelled him forward all at once. littlefinger holds it and holds sansa captive, but she has giants to slay and the vale has men. the timing of its completion with aegon’s conquest, how he burned it that first day, and that it’s where jaehaerys held the great council that set into motion the dying of the dragons—but daenerys is a character who symbolizes rebirth, redefinition, reclamation (of her body, of her name, of her legacy: if the throne her family built burns like a pyre, melts like harren’s tower, what better place to restart than a castle that was also burnt and survived? and if arya goes back there, will it seem like an old friend this time?) like we’ve got to go back. the dragons are back. we’ve got to go back. different roads lead to the same castle. am i losing my mind.
"i’m glad that the show is emphasizing that maddie, chimney, nor buck have done things wrong in this situation" Chimney assaulting Buck isn't wrong?
ok, maybe I needed to be a little more clear on this.
I never claimed that chimney punching buck was justified or right. I actually never said maddie, buck, or chimney were ever "right" because that was not the point of my post at all.
I was highlighting how 911 is treating the ppd storyline and the real life implications it has. I didn't paint buck as some perfect person who can do no wrong and is trapped in some impossible situations. I didn't sit and make him the center of this storyline because he isn't. in that same vein of thought, I didn't center chimney's hurt and fear and place it above maddie's own suffering caused by her mental illness. I didn't blame chimney and buck for not "helping" maddie enough.
because that's a redundant point of view and completely misses my original point. being mentally ill is not an isolated experience. it may seem like it when we are caught in the throes of our own suffering when we're in it, but that's the nature of mental illnesses. mental illness impacts entire families, it impacts your loved ones because that's the nature of relationships. when people love and care about you, they accept the pain of seeing you hurt and suffering. maddie's ppd culminating in her leaving chimney and jee-yun and buck and all of their family showcases that idea on an almost nuclear level.
I'm someone who not only has suffered from mental illnesses but has also had many family members suffer the same. I'm grateful for the way 911 has explicitly decided to portray mental illnesses and their impacts on families because it is realistic and powerful without villainizing the mentally ill. you feel for buck and maddie and chimney without pitting them against each other or hating them. it's a storyline that's handled with care and thought, shaped by gentle, knowing hands.
that being said, I have to confess that when I made my post, I was mostly talking about the pre-blow up. before chimney confronted buck and left to search for maddie. but I'll go into a bit now, for the sake of completing my thoughts. I'm gonna "quote" some of the tags that were left on the original post. @elishareads said "#all of them are in the right #but all of them are also in the wrong", and that is exactly what I was pointing out. they aren't wrong because there was no way to be right. there was no right answer for all three of them.
was maddie leaving and isolating herself further while in such a vulnerable state the "right" choice? no, of course not. was buck attempting to help maddie and chimney by holding back information and "playing both sides" in a sense because he loves them both the "right" choice? no, it wasn't and ended up hurting chimney deeply. was chimney lashing out in pain and anger at buck for trying to respect his sister's wishes while also trying to support him by fighting with him and punching him the "right" decision? no, because violence solves nothing. not the pain you're feeling inside nor the source of their problems.
these characters we love aren't right, but that's because that was an impossible situation, to begin with. @evanbuckleyed tagged "#there was literally no way that situation wasn't going to end in disaster one way or another". they were destined to fail in terms of making some altruistic, perfect decisions.
that's why it's so heartbreaking as an audience to watch. we love these characters and want the best for them, but they're full-fledged characters with complicated and nuanced issues.
so yes, chimney shouldn't have hit buck. the blow-up between them was the culmination of the powder-keg situation they're in. even kin. In the middle of his crisis-induced breakdown, chimney was not in the right state of mind to make clear and reasonable decisions. chimney in any other context would never hit buck (or anyone else). but these aren't normal circumstances, this is a full-fledged crisis. moving forward, buck and chimney will have to come together to talk and work through their problems. they will need to forgive each other and rebuild their trust in one another. but their actions aren't irredeemable and that's an essential aspect of this storyline.
my own personal final addition to this monster of a response: if you watch this complicated, nuanced storyline focusing on mental illness and how that can cause strife and pain within families, and instead focus on condemning and villainizing an Asian man to defend a white man (no matter how beloved), then maybe you need to critically think about your own internal biases and motivations.
the best thing about x reader fics is that you and your comfort character can fall in love a million times in millions of different universes and I think that's beautiful
I suppose what annoys me about tabletop RPGs whose primary pitch is “puts the story first!” is that it fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between the rules and the narrative. The defining feature of tabletop RPGs is that interpreting the outcomes of the rules produces a story, and in this sense, all tabletop RPGs “put the story first” – the idea that some tabletop RPGs are About Stories and some tabletop RPGs are Not About Stories is a false dichotomy.
The trouble is that game rules are opinionated about the kinds of story they want to produce, and folks end up conflating “this game’s rules want to produce a different kind of story from the one that I want to tell” with “this game’s rules don’t produce stories at all”, which is not a constructive way to frame things; keep up with that line of thinking and you’re on a short road to becoming one of those dogmatic weirdos who thinks there’s exactly one correct way to pretend to be an elf.