Pointless LOTR headcanon of the day: Frodo & Merry both take after their mothers, meaning Frodo looks more like a Brandybuck than a Baggins and Merry looks more like a Took. This is a constant source of petty contention.
(Pippin meanwhile absolutely takes after his father & is the most Tookish looking)
Merry: call me a Took one more time
Gandalf: if it looks like a Took and acts like a Took it’s a Took
Merry: I will END you
Gandalf is the only nonhobbit in the fellowship who understands the minutiae of Took Vs Brandybuck Vs Baggins rivalry & he delights in it, everyone else baffled
Frodo: look it’s perfectly simple. The Brandybucks don’t like the Tooks because they play golf and think they’re better than everyone because they occasionally go on adventures. The Tooks don’t like the Brandybucks because they live on the wrong side of the river and like boats. And nobody likes the Bagginses because they’re annoying.
Aragorn: are you… Including yourself in that
Frodo: I said what I said.
Frodo: now the Bagginses don’t like the Brandybucks OR the Tooks because they’re highly disrepectable but also richer than they are. And as far as a lot of the Bagginses are concerned I’m a Brandybuck because I grew up in Buckland and I have the Brandybuck Profile
Merry: which just means he’s not pug-ugly
Frodo: quite.
Aragorn: this is all ridiculous. Keep going.
Gandalf: Hm now I wouldn’t say UGLY but… every Baggins I’ve ever met has been perfectly Round or perfectly Square… There is no middle ground.
Gimli, baffled: Frodo isn’t round OR square
Merry: that’s because he has the Brandybuck profile
Gimli: so… Is he a Brandybuck…
Merry: ABSOLUTE not
Frodo: slander!! I’m a Baggins how dare you
Pippin: was your father a Round Baggins or a Square Baggins
Frodo: my father… Was the ROUNDEST Baggins who ever lived… A perfect Sphere of hobbit…
Gimli: What about your uncle. Is he round or square.
Frodo: Please tell me you’re kidding my uncle is the most Tookish Baggins to ever live and that includes physically
Bilbo ‘looked… exactly like a second edition of his solid and comfortable father’. He’s a round Baggins imo
Frodo: But then SOMEBODY *glare* nudged him out the door.So now he’s a Took.
Oh? It’s so widespread with Dany that it has become difficult to understand some posts because of how given they treat the bastardization of her name and how expected it is that the rest of us would understand who they are talking about. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I have yet to see those who do the same with Sansa and Cersei. And of course it has to be the female characters getting that treatment. Of course.
I don’t know who came up with the lovely shtick of calling Daenerys any random name that starts with a D, or who popularized it and made it that it doesn’t have to be a name when you can just use any random adjective, but I would gladly fight them.
People keep asking “How can anyone have a problem with AO3 doing fundraising!”
And I’m just like…. Have people not noticed all the virulent anti-AO3 hate on tumblr propagated by the anti shipping community? Antis have a problem with AO3 raising money because they hate the fact that AO3 won’t allow them to censor content they don’t like and doesn’t tolerate bullying. That’s who is putting out these posts like, “how can this nasty site raise so much money?” Read between the lines.
And for all the people who are just like, “If they don’t want AO3 to to raise money why don’t they just not donate?”
Because antis are incapable of saying “this isn’t for me so I won’t support it but I don’t care if other people support it. They have to actively discourage other people from supporting the thing. At the same time, they also won’t stop using AO3 because 1) they’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites who want readership and that’s where the readers are and 2) they’re too lazy to put together their own archive using AO3′s open source code because that would require doing coding and buying servers and doing all the moderating they want, which is hard, and they just want to engage in empty virtue signalling, which is easy
Anyway, my point is, people need to be aware that these people are out there and they hate AO3 and they want it to go away even though they’re actively using the platform. They’ve even said they want AO3 to fail so something “better” (re, something they control) can take its place. Some of them are blatant about it, calling AO3 a cesspit of pedophilia, and some of them are subtle about it, saying more innocuous things like ‘Does AO3 really need 130K a year?” “Shouldn’t you give your money to individual needy people doing gofundmes for stuff that’s more more important?”
But all of these people have the same end goal, which is the destruction of the archive, and the way they’re going about it right now is to try to discourage people from donating.
So instead of asking, “Why do people object to AO3 raising money?” start telling people “Hey there are people out there who hate AO3 and want to destroy it and we have to protect the archive from them.” And donate, if you can, and signal boost, if you can’t.
Well, Ned did have plans to get Sansa and Arya out of King’s Landing but Sansa unwittingly let on those to Cersei which ultimately contributed to the effectiveness of purge of the Stark household. According to Cersei, the Lannister success was a close thing even with Littlefinger’s aid and the information that Sansa provided was what gave the Lannisters the edge. What that tells me, besides the fact that whatever alternate plans Ned could have had would have still been soundly thwarted as long as Sansa and Littlefinger had the chance to relay the information to Cersei, is that Ned’s canon plans were not as bad or as inadequate as fandom believes they were.
That said, I’d still like to talk about how the emphasis on honor and justice in Ned’s narrative have driven many people to automatically assume it is the sole motivation for every one of his decisions, which is not only far from true but I feel like it comes too close to buying into Littlefinger’s rhetoric of Ned being naively ignorant or stupidly honorable. I think what many people fail to consider is that Ned was barely walking the line of an outright civil war at this point. Sure, he could have tried to flee King’s Landing. Except…. how does that work within the larger political picture? If Ned abandons his post and what power he could claim in the capital, he leaves Cersei to crown Joffrey and claim the regency unchallenged before he could even make it to Stannis – if he even makes it to Stannis because Cersei knows that Ned knows about the incest and if Ned up and runs, he leaves Cersei in power giving her the means to prevent him from leaving in the first place. So he either leaves himself open to a preemptive attack from Cersei, or he does manage to leave King’s Landing by the skin of his teeth but at the cost of having the Lannisters claim legitimacy for Joffrey which ensures the outbreak of a civil war because displacing a sitting king with the power of the Westerlands behind him isn’t going to be easy. Keep in mind that I haven’t even touched the matter of Sansa being Cersei’s captive at this point which effectively undercuts any plans Ned could have had for leaving because he was not going to leave his daughter to the Lannisters. Also, do not forget that Ned was heavily injured at the time that a walk from the small council chambers to the throne room pained him. That’s bound to make any escape attempt way more complicated.
Alternatively, Ned could do what he tried to do in canon – move swiftly to claim the regency as designated by Robert’s will to undercut Cersei’s attempt to seize power using a superior military force to the red cloaks, which would have left Ned as the main political actor in King’s Landing and put him in charge of the royal children. In addition to the gold cloaks, he relied on the formal recognition of the small council of him as regent and Protector of the Realm. He also counted on Renly’s support and was only told that Renly left minutes before Cersei’s summon came so there was nothing that could be done there. That’s not a bad plan at all. Ned could have prevented the War of the Five Kings in one fell swoop but way too many factors combined to prevent his success, Littlefinger’s betrayal, Renly’s departure, Sansa’s
divulgence
of information, Barristan Selmy’s inability to take a stand, etc.
Sam speaks 