Latest Posts by fallingstarinspace - Page 3

Okay so my sister just ended her 2 (?) Year long situationship and I thought why not post about it bc the details are kinda intriguing and also the situation doesn't make sense I think??? Tw: horrible descriptions of the situation bc there only sm information my brain can retain.

Basically this is about a younger (!) Guy in her class bc they started out as friends I think but tn she went out for drinks with her friends and he was there bc it was a class thing, except they didn't talk for over a month previously bc she left him on delivered deliberately bc they had a fight (I completely forgot what it was about).

So this night was the first time in weeks they talk and he's mad at her for ghosting him and they start to get vulnerable (bc drinks.) Mind you throughout their friendship they had this weird thing where it seemed like he flirted with her but then went on to go on dates with other girls? I think that was the thing? (Actually Im terrible at recounting events bc they had multiple arguments if I'm not mistaken, she's had multiple tantrums over him, ranting to me while drunk whenever she would go out with her friends).

Anyways they talk about their feelings and he basically recounts when they met for the first time at a party in the first semester of their first year and how he chugged a bottle and he noticed she looked at him and he thought smth like: yeah we could have a thing.

And from her pov it was actually a: never have I ever done x thing. So she was like judging him. But then at one point throughout the first year she develops feelings and she even tells him this night that she liked him at one point.

At one point during this night he even tried to kiss her on the mouth and she retracts. She also tells him she's seeing some1 atm (she's talking to another guy so she tries to commit to one guy at a time).

And then their argument leads to this exchange that was smth like:

Her: just tell me you don't like me.

Him: fine, I don't like you.

And now she's pissed at him for agreeing, she's not sure why, but we both suspect it's bc either A. She wanted him to disagree and say he likes her so she could reject him and retain her ego ig?? Or B. She wanted him to disagree bc part of her still likes him?

And after letting it out she kept repeating "I hate him, I hate him, I hate him." And then it lead: "I don't feel anything for him." And then: "I'm gonna fuck the other guy." And now she's trying to finish writing her paper for school bc who got time for hoes when you have homework to do.

I think the first step towards the life you want is often to just say yes to more things. Accept that coffee invitation from your coworker even if it seems awkward. Sign up for that free class at the library that you're not sure you'll like. Join that club. Book that tour. Say yes to as many things as you can and kill the part of your brain that gut-reacts with a no.

I need you, and I never need anyone.

“Eventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding place.”

— Unknown

touch-starvation needs to be written with emphasis on the starving part. you are hungry to be touched. so hungry that even the very taste of it makes you nauseous. it has been long since anything has ever touched you, ever fed you - that your body has grown more used to that gnawing emptiness more than anything else. it's better for you to be held, to eat but it makes you sick to try. you know

What does Kentaro Miura have to say about Casca?

I think, due to fandom's general preferences towards Guts and Griffith, there's been much more discussion of the relevant Kentaro Miura quotes about their characters and relationship. There also appears to be more translation effort made towards the parts of the interviews centered on Guts. This also means that a lot of discussion of Casca and her place in the narrative is filtered through the idea that he has had very little to say about her over the years.

While I do wish that Miura had more to say about her, and about her path in the narrative, he certainly hasn't been completely silent. I wanted to compile as many quotes directly from Kentaro Miura about Casca as possible in one place for anyone to refer to. I also wanted to provide my 2 cents on some of them, though with the disclaimer that neither I nor anyone reading a quote or soundbite can know they're fully correct about his meaning. After all, no one reading these quotes in an article or magazine knew Miura personally, myself included.

Most of these you can find translated on the Berserk fanwiki. I've linked to them all.

Cheating a bit by not including that quote from the 1996 fanmagazine that caused such an uproar a while back, where Miura said he thought Casca might feel pleasure during rape if the perpetrator was Griffith. TBT to that hot mess. I'm not including it bc it's a third party source from someone not particularly close to Miura and also because I've already discussed it in depth here.

So, moving on...

The source for this first quote is a bit... Tricky. It's not that I don't believe it exists, but because most of this is being done through fan translations, it's hard to provide a direct link. This one I've found which is apparently from an interview in 1996, but the only sourcing I've found is kojion on twitter and this reddit post. I think this might be from the Berserk Illustrations File interview from 1996, but if it is, then it's clear that interview has only been partially translated. I guess the translator wasn't interested in the parts involving Casca. Lol. Below is the translation from the reddit post:

Miura: I have never been in love. In the past I have only dated a woman I didn't like twice. I have never had a first love. I have never been in love. My image of women is made up of my sister and stories from my best friend who loves women very much. In the case of Casca, rather than portraying a woman, she’s a character made up of a collection of my own complexes and weaknesses. So I am not good at real women. I have a longing for love itself. But I have no time; there are only 24 hours in a day.

Interview with Yukari Fujimoto in 2000. Yukari Fujimoto is a feminist cultural critic/women's studies professor at Meiji University in Tokyo, which I always found very interesting.

Interviewer: Getting back to the topic of planning Berserk, though, there's a long flashback arc that starts in volume three, showing things like Guts' youth and leading up to the Eclipse. Did you at least have parts of that long story in mind when you started drawing, or did you just make it up as you went?

Miura: Back then it was more like I was making it up as I went, I'd say. I actually hadn't planned for Guts and Casca to get together, you know – it just occurred to me partway through that it'd be more dramatic that way. As I remember it now, all I'd really decided at the time was that there'd be about five characters, and I'd make them similar to five of my friends.

Interviewer: I see – so those five friends are the base models for the characters.

Miura: Pretty much. The only difference is, there aren't any Griffiths or Guts in our group. There really was a guy similar to Judeau. We had a Corkus too, and a Rickert. There's no Casca, though, since it was a group of guys. And then Pippin is me, in terms of physical appearance.

[...]

Miura: Yeah. It's sort of been vacillating back and forth up until now, but now Griffith is going to come to terms with having become a demon. I basically see it as the beginning of the relationship between the two of them having become adults. And also, the demon child that Casca gave birth to is going to become something of a key point – despite the fact that I didn't even plan for it to be Casca's baby when I first drew it.

Interviewer: Really?

Miura: I didn't even have Casca in mind at the time.

Interviewer: Ah, right. That means it wasn't supposed to be a fetus at the start, then. And I guess there was no plan to have Guts lose his eye and arm the way he did, either...

Miura: None at all. That part was left open. Basically, I had planned that he'd have it done to him somehow by Griffith, and then a love story came into the picture, and taking that to its extreme just happened to fit together nicely with the climax. It's not as though I had it planned from the start. And now it turns out that the demon child is similarly going to snap very usefully into place.

My own commentary: This interview is the source of a claim that I've seen around a lot, which is that Casca was an ad-hoc addition and that therefore undermine any importance she might have to the narrative. However, my personal interpretation is simply that these quotes exist to show how the general plot structure of Berserk came to be in Miura's mind, and how he sort of... made shit up as he went along. I think there are two ways to take "I actually hadn't planned for Guts and Casca to get together, you know – it just occurred to me partway through that it'd be more dramatic that way." Firstly, the way I've usually seen it, that Casca was added in thoughtlessly with no regard for her character just to be a tool for Guts and Griffith's stories. That's partly true, but I think additionally this indicates that Miura elevated Casca's narrative importance in order to create a better and more dramatic story. It's also easy to extrapolate Miura's love of shoujo manga to this point here, considering how shoujo's focus is so often the drama and tragedy of romantic love.

This next quote is another kojion/reddit combo, with kojion claiming its from 2013.

Miura: I had the idea that the medieval European period was a very male-dominated world. And I wanted to depict a girl who was working very hard in such a world. The female characters in Berserk are drawn with the hope that women of the same gender will like them. Female characters drawn by men tend to be somewhat convenient for men. I wanted to avoid that, so I drew them in a way that was not disrespectful to women, because this is a story about a male-dominated world.

[I initially had a picture of one of those gold star "you tried" memes here but then I felt bad about it lol. Honestly I can't help but feel some affection for Miura here for saying this, though there's a conflicting element here too, that he genuinely didn't consider that drawing so much explicit sexual violence might also be considered disrespectful to women (even though he's pretty obviously talking about outfits here). I also think that over-exaggerating Miura's views on women, making them seem worse than what they are is often done only in service of sidelining the women he has written, and written well in my opinion.]

Berserk Official Guidebook Interview, 2017

Interviewer: You put so much emotion into those characters, and when the Eclipse happens, they're all gone. That must have left some scars on you as the artist.

Miura: I was emotionally invested in each character, so I felt more depressed than scarred. And the story went way down in popularity with the readers around the time of the Eclipse [laugh]. Many readers were furious that I'd do such a thing to the characters they liked. My editor at the time was concerned but also of the opinion that we'd just have to follow it through to the end. The point I had to pay attention to was making sure the flow of the story wasn't completely severed with the Eclipse. That's why I spared Casca. If she had died and the serialization had continued for a long time, I feared the reason for revenge would become something of the past; and if Guts were to establish new relationships, then his incentive would waver. It may seem calculating and unpleasant, but it's because Casca's by his side that he can never forget the Eclipse.

My own commentary: this again shows the interplay between Casca as a plot device and Casca as inherently narratively necessary. Interestingly, this particular translation has it be slightly vague whether Casca's survival is to keep the memory of the eclipse alive for Guts or for the readers themselves. It seems to me that there's a little bit of both in this decision. Also of note - this interview was done in 2017. By this point, Miura must have had a decently clear picture of what he intended to do with Casca's revival. I think this interview would have implied something very different if it had been done during conviction arc or just post golden age.

[...]

Interviewer: After that, Griffith was resurrected and Guts picked up some travelling companions. One of them is Farnese. How did you go about creating her?

Miura: I imagined Farnese as the second heroine after Casca, but I had a little trouble. I simply crammed my own tastes into Casca to create her character. She's loaded with what I considered ideal: a warrior woman, dark brown, strong but with a womanly side [laugh]. When it came time to make a new heroine, I couldn't use the same method as with Casca. So I thought I might as well make a heroine with whom female readers could sympathize. Mori is popular with girls, so I asked for his opinion as I pondered. The concept was "a female office worker who's been in society for a year or two, may or may not be accustomed to her job yet, and is ill at ease in a masculine society" [laugh]. She's doing her best with a band of knights in a masculine society, but she's unsociable since she can't seem to fit in with those around her; and her frustration is moving in a sexual direction, although half of it includes my own delusions [laugh]. In the face of Mozgus' intense impact, such an ungrounded woman is sure to get hung up on religion. In other words, "an office lady who's caught up in a dangerous new religion." That's Farnese [laugh].

Interviewer: How about Serpico?

Miura: Serpico is those female readers' "dream". My intuition was that he's the kind of man they would want to have around. To be frank, he's André from The Rose of Versailles. For a woman exhausted by society, he sees to her needs and considers her before all else. I thought this might be a woman's everlasting dream. To take it further, I think there are three dream men that a woman has. Someone like Serpico who sticks close by, a prince on a lofty peak for whom she longs, and someone wealthy and down-to-earth who will come and woo her. And I recently saw the stage production of Onna Kaizoku Bianca – based on Glass Mask by Suzue Miuchi. In it, those three types of men show up around the heroine. I realized, oh, the same thing's happened by coincidence in Berserk [laugh]! Farnese has Serpico close by, Guts to long for, and Roderick the rich guy. That's all three present and accounted for!

Interviewer: Conversely, Guts has three heroines in Casca, Farnese, and Schierke.

Miura: Maybe it's just a good balance to have three members of the opposite sex around. Although it's a coincidence here, too [laugh].

I don't have anything really to say here lol I just think Miura's gender commentary is so funny. It reminds me a little of the way Terry Pratchett comments on dynamics between men and women in his books. I guess both of them are men who got their start in the 80s and continued writing into the 2010s where the treatment of women in fantasy became far more a part of the public consciousness, and it seems both of them tried to alter their writing accordingly. Up to the reader to what extent they succeeded though.

Kojion/reddit from 2017, apparently - is this possibly from the Berserk Official Guidebook interview as well?? Or did he do a second interview in 2017 that isn't listed anywhere?

Miura: In regards to Berserk’s Guts, Griffith is a character who draws out impatience, fighting spirit and loneliness, Puck is “relaxation, laughter and a “seriousness crusher”“, the current Casca is “a character who draws out feelings of guilt, uneasiness and pity”. By arranging the characters with the intention to pull a certain something about Guts to the surface, he becomes a multifaceted protagonist.

My commentary: Guts has complicated feelings on both Griffith and Casca due to the trauma of the eclipse. Just as Casca still associates Guts with her trauma, Guts too associates Casca with his. If his feelings towards Griffith were solely anger and his feelings towards Casca were solely caring that would be a much less interesting story. This quote is very frank about how Guts and Casca's relationship stands currently; it says nothing about its eventual outcome in the manga. It also says nothing about Miura's feelings towards Casca, or makes any comment on her importance to the narrative.

Interview with Comics Natalie in 2019

--So does that mean love is an important theme in "Duruanki"?

That's true. When I chose this androgynous character as the main character, I knew I had to depict a love story properly. I haven't been able to do that properly in "Berserk" yet, so I'm a little nervous and unsure of my chances.

-- Eh, what about the relationship between Guts and Casca...?

Even though they look like that, it's like the stage before they get to love is still going on forever (laughs).

My commentary: I already said a bit about this in previous posts. In my view, this is saying that Guts and Casca were beginning a relationship and in the beginning stages of falling in love prior to the eclipse. Then, of course, the eclipse happened, and it destroyed their budding relationship completely. Their relationship currently is defined by the tragedy of what could have been. I again think it's Miura taking a very realistic view of Guts and Casca's relationship as it stands currently, but it says nothing about how it will eventually end up, good or bad.

-- In the latest volume 40 of "Berserk," Casca finally regains consciousness. I'm sure there are many fans who have been waiting for this.

I'm also deeply moved. However, things get tougher for Casca from here on out. For Casca to truly recover, she must analyze and understand her experiences and resolve them herself. She must face what Griffith did and the monsters.

--So this is a necessary process for Casca to truly recover. I think there was also a route where Casca would fully recover once she regains consciousness, but Berserk doesn't let its characters take the easy way out. I think Miura-san also needs to be prepared.

It's a story about humans, so it's bound to be like that. If you don't do it properly, like what a human would do if this situation occurred, it won't be a compelling story.

My commentary: You've all seen this quote before lol. Well, this is the source. It's part of a larger interview about the future of Berserk and Duranki, and just a quick note that this version is from me using google translate on the Japanese website. There was a blog that translated part of it, in particular the above quote that "Casca must face what Griffith did", that now redirects to a 404 link because of course it does. It's up on the wayback machine here.

Now I have various undated quotes, most of which come from kojion and were compiled on reddit.

"I didn't want to make a sexy female warrior, which is often the case in fantasy films, although the idea of a female warrior is nothing new. But now I am not so particular. I am not restricted by the form of a female warrior, but am trying to depict her as a human being." (kojion alt source)

"Miura took on the apostle; I'm going to kill all the humans, I'm gonna mess them up. Mr. Miura has been working for months. Mr. Miura kept on drawing and Finally, he messed up Casca And then Mr. Miura, who had painted it all over After this, he actually suffer from depression." (kojion alt source)

"I want today's readers to experience what once shocked me when I read the manga. Last month, Mr. Mori revealed the scene in the Eclipse chapter where Casca is raped by Griffith. He was inspired by a manga published by Go Nagai in 1979. In this manga, the woman he loves is raped by a demon in front of the main character. Mr. Miura arranged and expressed this scene." (kojion alt source)

This is apparently a panel from that particular manga, btw. No explicit sexual assault, though there is clear implication.

One last third party quote, this time not directly about Casca, but about writing women on the whole. It's from this cute interview made into a comic by the interviewer:

It echoes a sentiment he's expressed in other interviews, that Miura himself doesn't feel like he understands the female mindset so he asks people he assumes know better - in this case Kouji Mori, his friend who is heading Berserk's continuation, and Chica Umino, another mangaka who was close friends with Miura.

Miura's such a mess of contradictions when it comes to women and his female characters. One of his most well known interviews is with a feminist cultural critic. He has said multiple times he's terrible at writing women. He thought deeply about writing Casca not just as a male fantasy. He literally designed her with all the traits he thought were sexy. He wrote a 20 page rape scene with Casca and then fell into a deep depression after.

What can you even say lmao.

I WISH IT HAD ALL BEEN DIFFERENT!!!!!

I find your lack of whimsy disturbing

I wanna drink your words like wine

y’all really recommend books like: title, there are gay characters, enemies to lovers, young adult, written by poc

not once do i ever see a summary

im not a misandrist i have a male cat

Also as a side note, shonen fans make me laugh because they will have serious power scaling discussions as if shonen writers don't just give their favourite characters ridiculous asspull power ups and rig fights in their favour all of the time.

Female characters are often used as jobbers/ are made to intentionally lose fights for the development of male characters, or to make other characters look stronger.

I need a female character in a shonen to be given an unbelievable asspull and only then will I believe that gender equality has been achieved in the genre.

This may be a broken take, but take the fuckign Shibuya arc.

Itadori- is getting his ass beat by Choso when choso has some spaghetti flashback.

Megumi- Is getting his ass kicked by Toji but then Toji takes possession of his body and offs himself. Megumi summons Mahoraga and then Sukuna shows up to kill Mahoraga so Megumi doesn't die. Also Megumi has hand to hand combat training but fundamentally he is a summoner, so his CT is actually not that useful in direct one on one hand to hand combat and he gets his ass kicked a lot by the likes of Toudou and a lot of other characters.

Meanwhile:

Nobara- Yeah she has the shit fight against Haruto but Nobara Is doing well against Mahito's clone, Mahito calls her his natural born predator and she has some good strategic moments before dying in the most low down dirty disrespectful way possible when actually it would have been interesting if her CT was his demise and Gege should have let the whole "natural born enemy" thing play out so Nobara had a serious W.

As a side note, many people say she wouldn't have survived the culling games.

JUST GIVE HER AN ASSPULL-- like every other shonen character gets. The whole genre is built off of asspulls. Black flashes in JJK effectively exist as a plot convenience-- I am tired of us having serious conversations about a genre that basically just is hype moments and aura farming.

everything in this life fucking matters and love is devastatingly real

hey. don't cry. how the gentle wind beckons through the leaves as autumn colors fall. okay?

“this character should kill their abuser” i agree. unfortunately they wouldn’t do that.

I was scrolling through the Gutsca tag on Twitter and found this gem from two years ago.

Thread by @treeism on Twitter

Nothing will ever beat the time someone on Reddit said to me, “Don’t tell me that if Griffith was standing right in front of him Guts would choose Casca over revenge” and I just replied with this

I have to be honest: if Katara had gotten the same treatment Toph did in ATLA, people would like her much more.

What do I mean about “getting the same treatment”? In many moments of the show, I realized that Katara was written differently than Toph (in the sense of how female characters are written). Toph is given much more substance and power showing scenes than Katara. She’s a genuine person that it’s not being written for a particular cause and has her story ending already written; she gets to do more and be more. While, for me, Katara has moments where she gets to be the amazing, waterbending master, that’s fair and loving (that to me are the scenes that show the true Katara), and then there are others where it seems she’s not allowed to be anything more than a plot device.

The episode that got me into that conclusion was “The Day of the Black Sun”. Katara does nothing in that invasion. Absolutely nothing. There’s a small scene of her attacking people, then her father gets hurt and she’s immediately removed from the story. While, Aang, Sokka and Toph go kick people’s butts and do something, Katara is (off-screen) healing her father. I wouldn’t have a problem with the trio fighting together, if it was shown Katara doing something important as well. While, Toph gets to be a person and get in fights, showing her skills and “hanging out with the boys”, Katara is only there to fulfill a purpose of that episode’s plot: which is getting kissed by Aang. After that, she’s removed from the narrative.

That’s something you never see happening with Toph. She fights creatively, grows on her power, gets to show her skills and is known to be a badass through the whole fandom, she doesn’t have scenes where she’s downplayed or underused and then just disappears. The reason for that is that she was written as a person with nothing binding her , with no sort of romantic connection to another character; therefore she gets to be a person. Now, this isn’t a post shitting on ‘kataang’ (this is not a post about ships), but Katara was written in many moments as just the romantic interest of Aang, having scenes where her entire actions are revolved around him, like in “The Day of the Black Sun”. Her purpose was to be kissed and now that’s she fulfilled it, she can be removed from the story.

Which makes me come back to my original point: if Katara was given the same treatment as Toph, people would adore her, ‘cause we know what she’s like when written normally: a fair, talented, fighter who guides the group through moments of helplessness and wants to save the world.

my dad, trying to explain the concept of money to me: say you have a sandwich, and i need your sandwich. but i don't have anything to give you. you're not just gonna give it to me.

me: i would just give it to you.

my dad:

My personal favourite

I know satoru had flashbacks all the time

Anne Sexton, from a letter featured in Anne Sexton; A Self-Portrait In Letters

What does the dead dove tag mean?

Wonderful question!

“Dead Dove” comes from this scene in Arrested Development wherein the character Michel Bluth opens a brown paper bag that reads: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT. He looks inside and sees what is in fact, a dead dove. The then says: “Well, I don’t know what I expected.”

In fandom, the tag has come to mean: “pay extra attention to the tags!” And/or “this fic is what it says on the tin!”.

So if, for example, a fic includes the tags: Body Horror, Gore, and Violence along with the Dead Dove: Do Not Eat tag, the author is saying “Hey I’m not joking about these tags! Read at your own discretion!”

The tag acts as an honest intensifier to whatever tags are already in the work, as the author using it wants to give a double warning for their content, that it may be triggering and that the reader should proceed with caution.

One fic tagged with Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, also includes the tags: Seriously, this fic deals with some serious and disturbing content matter, mind the tags

Thanks for asking and happy reading!

Gojohime is funny bc Gojo's personal feelings regarding Utahime have a surprising amount of depth when you look into his actions, while Utahime's totally annoyed and unimpressed attitude towards Gojo is hilariously simple minded

Gojo: *100% trusts her to not betray him, relies on her to find the mole, relies on her ability to strengthen his cursed technique (literally everyone else would get in his way if they tried helping him), calls her weak but counts on her anyways, always goes out of his way to tease her on sight bc he loves their banter, turns off his infinity around her showing how she is one of the few ppl left he can relax around*

Utahime: he an annoying ass bitch

current fan creation landscape is kinda like if you went to a party with a homemade cake and everyone takes a slice and silently thumbs up at you with no attempt to start a conversation except for occasionally some guy sits in the corner with a tape recorder critiquing the cake as though he was a restaurant critic and another guy is handing the cake to an uber driver like "yeah i need you to find a restaurant that makes cake like this so i can have more of it" and the only person that's talked to you in 30 minutes is a very sweet little guy who was like "hey i liked your cake" and then ran away apologizing for bothering you the moment you said thank you.

ekko's va, reed shannon rightfully calling out caitlyn for literally gassing the undercity, exercising police brutality, and not even taking accountability or apologizing for any of the oppression and violence she did against zaunites

and in turn, the arcane fandom calls him and ekko "monkeys" and other racially motivated names and slurs

Also I REALLY hate that the writers decided to use the most lazy trope possible, the trope I hate with my whole heart

When we have a big war between two sides that was becoming worse and worse for so many years

And instead of actually resolving it, the writers just add another, BIG ONE enemy to unite those two sides

And now they don't need to think about how to resolve SUCH COMPLICATED conflict that was lasting for decades. No, now they suddenly have a peace bc "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". THAT'S SO FUCKING LAZY

I wanted to see how Zaun and Piltover resolve their conflict so bad and all I've seen was a fight against Ambessa and Viktor?? Seriously?? That's a such disappointment

Also the same thing happened in spop and I really hoped Arcane isn't gonna do it...and they did...

Like imagine if in ATLA instead of Aang stopping the fire nation, all 4 nations just united against spirits

That's actually insane

the funeral (a grotesque display of two queens’ grief, forced on them against their will) being interjected by images of aegon beating blood into a bloody ruin says something about how women’s grief is exploited and paraded around as a virtue while male grief is only allowed to exist in conjunction with violence.

female sorrow is expected to be public, dignified, and even noble, it serves as a symbol of quiet strength and resilience. otto uses it as a tool to gain sympathy for their cause. notice how he forced alicent and helaena into it, while he allowed aegon not to participate. wouldn‘t the king being at the funeral send a powerful message? yes, it would. but otto looks at aegon with contempt, the other councilmen and alicent do not know what to do with his tears. the realm cannot be allowed to see the king grieve. not like this.

male grief is denied its own space and validity unless it manifests in aggressive or destructive acts. aegon realizes this to some degree too— he lashes out publicly by killing the rat catchers. he shows his grief by being violent, by spilling blood.

the toxicity of it all is very effectively shown at the end when aegon is crying by himself. did he retreat there to be alone and finally let it all out? his mother is either letting him have that moment alone or she’s deeply uncomfortable with it and chooses to leave. no matter what motivated alicent in acting the way she did— the moment still reveals how male vulnerability is something people fear. it shows that even the most human expressions of pain are not acceptable for some.

if it wasnt clear before,

THIS BLOG IS TEAM BLACK AND WE RIDE FOR QUEEN RHAENYRA TARGARYEN, THE REALMS DELIGHT, FIRST OF HER NAME, QUEEN OF THE ANDALS, THE RHOYNAR AND THE FIRST MEN, LADY OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS, PROTECTOR OF THE REALM