#a rapist is bad

[txttletale]

everyone loves to talk big game about how they hate carceralism and punitive justice until it comes to the topic of sexual violence in which case half of the prison abolitionists will revert immediately to being constitutional literalists for the code of hammurabi without missing a beat--good thing that the accusation of sexual violence hasn't been historically leveraged against people of colour or gay people or trans women or anything or this capitulation to kneejerk reaction would be uhhh pretty bad!

[broken-heart-raven-queen]

I just remembered that we have DAYS of Aaron Minyard's life stolen from us for when the police took him after he took away the trash (smashed beautifully a rapist head into pieces) and mind ypu that in those days he just experienced one of (if not the) most traumatic experiences of his short life.

[boag]

The girl who got sexually assaulted by Melanie Martinez came back to the internet and made a long tiktok explaining what happened and how Melanie’s fans literally ruined her career and her life and all these Melanie fans are once again on Twitter saying random irrelevant shit about her . Like oh you heard her old friends don’t like her anymore? You heard she was racist? Well this is a really crazy conversation to bring that up in unless you are trying to make this random woman sound like someone who Deserved to be raped by your fave which is exactly what you seem to be doing . Interesting

[lagosbratzdoll]

Ryan did a bunch of interviews recently that I've been reading and I have some thoughts. You can find the interviews here and here.

There's a lot of terrible stuff in it but I don't have the time or inclination to bother with all that. I'm going to be focusing on two things he said in the interviews.

Starting with this from the House of the Dragon podcast which I've linked above.

In it, Ryan talks about why he decided to contrast the lives of Hugh Hammer and Ulf the White with the lives of the privileged Targaryens. It was fascinating to get a peek into his head.

Ryan reads a rapist and thinks "this is a person worth deepening. We need an in-depth exploration of what goes on in this rapists head. We need the audience to sympathise with them."

Which wouldn't be so bad on its face, there's always room to analyse a fictional rapist. The problem is that he then reads about a little Black girl who raised herself on a tiny island rising up to become a dragon rider on her own merit. A little girl whose Valyrian heritage is constantly debated and discounted. He reads that and decides that there's nothing worth exploring there. Her story isn't unique. She isn't unique. In fact, she's so common that while we adapt and humanise not one but two rapists, we're going to erase one Black girl and turn the other into everyone's punching bag.

Then I read his puff piece from Big Think.

This is a fascinating glimpse into his thought process. I read this and Ryan Condal's baffling decisions began to make a little more sense.

By his own admission, Ryan's ideal show is one where Black women are erased, flattened and ignored. He claims to write powerful women but we've not seen hide or hair of these women. In Ryan's show, nothing is ever deliberate and the women are largely passive participants in their own lives.

In Ryan's ideal show there's no room for a little black girl to claim a dragon with nothing but faith and her wits. In Ryan's ideal show we need all of the rapist men but the Black women are interchangeable AND replaceable.

In Ryan's ideal world, it is too much to ask that a Black girl be adored, have songs written about her and knights joust for her favour. In Ryan's ideal show, Black people aren't fully developed characters, they're props that he forgets about for episodes on end.

And that is why the show will continue to drop in ratings. When I saw the Nielsen numbers for the premiere, I laughed until I cried. The biggest streaming day ever for Max and they couldn't beat The Boys or Your Honour. The most recent numbers are even funnier.

But don't worry gang, House of the Dragon is doing great. It's now number three. It finally beat a four year old show! Everything is fine.

[wisebeth]

why does the pjo series have to unnecessarily villainize goddesses (hera & athena) or show them as silly ladies (aphrodite & demeter) BUT posiedon and apollo are somehow shown as the coolest/most likeable gods, even though arguably, they're right after zeus on terms of corruption?

ares shown as the worst god after zeus and hera amuses me. last time i checked, he was the patron god of amazons and literally killed a man for attempting to rape his daughter but guess who cursed women for rejection? apollo. guess who raped women when they said no (aside from zeus)? posiedon.

[hella1975]

it's been pointed out on here before that a lot of terf arguments are actually rooted in sexist idealology that feminists fought and died to unnormalise decades ago and that's its own kettle of fish but one thing i also find very frustrating about this so called 'radical' feminism is that it's so... defeatist? like the moment you categorically label an entire section of society as Bad and Inherently Evil then there's also the implication that nothing can be done about it, and it completely takes all accountability away. saying all men are evil is just another way of saying boys will be boys. he raped her because he's a man. he hit her because he's a man. he didn't listen because he's a man - it's almost offensively oversimplified. there's no point trying to fix this issue in society because men are just Like That, okay! so now what? it's not like they're going anywhere, so you just accept that 50% of the population are evil and will forever treat you terribly and there's nothing to be done about it bc they're biologically predisposed to it? like is that fr the argument here? you're soooo radical for that

[painfullyprickedandticked]

i dont think striker and alastor are characters who are "precious senpais who did nothing wrong" i just don't think they're as reprehensible as valentino or stella. their actions aren't excusable, no, but they aren't near that level of abhorrent.

[thaliajoy-blog]

Rereading the Dany part of AGOT exclusively has led me to yet unforeseen places of discomfort like the whole Dany & Mirri Maz Duur story even surface level is very tragic & I'm obsessed by what is there what is underneath the surface and what could be in that dynamic (maybe I'll get into it another day) but the tenth Dany pov chapter in the novel is harrowing before the pyre starts because you see the contrast between how Mirri and Drogo are treated and it's distressing. Mirri is tied to a the pyre and whiped so she stops talking. Drogo is washed and clothed lovingly by Daenerys, she even speaks to him, apologizes to him, feels fondly about him, tries to give him a real king's funeral. But it makes sense, tragic sense. Mirri put Dany in an incredibly miserable & and vulnerable place. She murders Drogo & Rhaego. She is more than Dany's ennemy but Dany is not in a position that would make her want to forgive those actions, even based Mirri's trauma that Dany knows all too well about. So it's this fucked up thing where the birth of the dragon is preceded by an hommage by Dany to a man who is very obviously monstrous in GRRM's writing - Mirri murdered a child out of vengeance, but Drogo lead the killing, traumatizing & enslavement of many more children simply because it was in his power. And Dany loves him (and even names a dragon after her - I'm sorry Drogon there's that aside from the fact that your name is pretty stupid my sweet baby), a frightened love born out of the need to not just die from her awful situation as the teenage bride of a warlord. I'm thinking about how like Irri & Jhiqui still see themselves as slaves despite everything Dany does to delegitimize slavery ; in her continued fondness towards Drogo Dany kind of refuses to see her chains and her past victimization.

And it all comes back to Mirri, this monstrous victim, this wise demon, the maegi, the magic teacher, the one who cannot be forgiven. Tied to the pyre. Unwilling witness to Dany's marriage with the fire. This benefits us all to wonder & mourn and ponder about how complex & mindfucked GRRM made this situation (and I kind of love it as it is) rather than to designate one victim & one abuser and rant about how the fandom at large doesn't realize how really innocent one is and how really evil the other is.

Surge of thought on mirri lately brought to you by my obsession with Epic the Musical and how the Horse & the Infant, Just a Man and Ruthlessness kinda fit her I think.

[spacelazarwolf]

how do people deal with the cognitive dissonance of seeing trans women be outed as rapists and abusers regularly but then claim that ASAB has nothing to do with violence. It's easy to list off trans women rapists but it's hard to come up with even 3 names for trans men

how do u deal with the cognitive dissonance of being a fucking moron. also i fucked ur dad.

[wizardpink]

Genuinely don't understand how people can point to specific incidents of blood drinking in The Vampire Chronicles and say "this is a metaphor for sexual assault, but not all those other instances of nonconsentual blood drinking, like the kind every vampire does to at least one human every. single. night."

[tikurrdurr]

i feel like the cc fandom sometimes forget that a majority of the cast r in fact children and a lot of behaviors r learned from somewhere..........

like yes obviously they should be held accountable (anyone with a working brain knows this) but saying that "[this character] should DIE because of this bad behavior" is silly. thats a whole troubled kid

[oh-wow-im-still-here]

Everytime I come across an anonymous ask from one of those danmei confessions blogs that is so utterly, bafflingly wrong I take psychic damage.

[lucyshypemaster]

"how is ravi the best book bf?" he helped her to dispose of a body, man.

[winepresswrath]

what louis did to lestat and what louis did to armand are connected and that's important to the story but also. it is simply not the same. nothing louis did excuses armand's behaviour, that's not how anything works, but he did not "cross a line" or "poke at armand," he weaponized armand's history of abuse to belittle and demean him. nothing armand said to louis came close- the equivalent would have been "oooh, i'm such a stupid bitch that my husband can beat me half to death and i'll keep crawling back for more even when it endangers my daughter!" it's retraumatizing and deeply destabilizing to hear that shit from your partner. and in response armand should have been like "well this man sucks when he's high and he's high all the time, so i'm bouncing" but if he'd done that we wouldn't have a story, would we?

edit: i've come back to give armand credit for "claudia didn't love you like we did/do. ps. u used her to distract from your own hurt feelings" that shit does hit in a similar way. however "the ways someone hurt you have left you contemptible and weak. they scrawled 'dirty and annoying' all over your soul in red ink and it's never coming off" is just outstanding work. timeless

[moistrodent]

How the fuck do people find this thing hot

I hate everything about him. He’s so fucking ugly.

[silver-dragonborn]

I don't know what I'm going to call my fanfic where the Greens lose and Criston runs away to Essos with Alicent and Aegon in exile where they're forced to sell mangos for a living.

Mango Craze

Mango Dreams

Mangogate

It's supposed to be pure crack but also has a lot of serious moments where the "victims" of Rhaenyra's "tyranny" come to the startling realization while selling fruit for a copper that if they had just stayed in their lanes, they wouldn't be in this situation.