#but it's specifically “There's nothing to erase.”

[a-secret-bolton-vampire]

CW: Rape, incest, CSA

This is actually not a strictly A Song of Ice and Fire post here, but it overlaps in some ways so I figured I'd write this.

Anyone who has not read the web serials Worm or Ward and wishes to avoid spoilers, don't read this post:

Disclaimer out of the way, I've found striking parallels between fandom reaction for both A Song of Ice and Fire and Parahumans regarding how characters who survived sexual abuse view their abusers, in a dangerously disturbing way.

For this I'm going to specifically be using the examples of Aeron and Theon Greyjoy from A Song of Ice and Fire to compare and contrast to Victoria Dallon in Ward. All three were psychologically and sexually tormented by their abusers during the course of the series. Theon is a young adult by the time Ramsay gets his hands on him, but Aeron and Victoria were both children when they were molested by family members so they will be the main two characters to compare.

In the case of Euron and Aeron, there are a (sadly very vocal) minority who are ready to dismiss Euron's danger to others by specifically using Aeron's abuse against him. Sure, Euron is evil and horrifically abused him and Urrigon when they were children, and it is understandable that Aeron would be mortified of Euron. After all, he tries to warn people about Euron repeatedly, only for his attempts to stop him to all fail.

The response by this section of the fandom to claims of Euron being built up as a major threat are essentially that Aeron's trauma is in the way of his ability to perceive Euron objectively. Is Euron actually as dangerous as Aeron claims? You can say the same for Theon and Ramsay. After all, Theon is half-mad warning Stannis about Ramsay, and Stannis is bringing some Rational Realness to the forefront by saying "what do I have to fear him for?"

Since GRRM is never releasing another A Song of Ice and Fire book it's hard to say what he intends but he could definitely intend for this to be the case. That said, there is a story featuring a similar character that is completed. Ward!

Victoria Dallon's sister, Amy, is a cape with healing abilities, though as the series progresses we know that healing is just the tip of the iceberg; she can change the biological makeup of living things. Amy is adopted, and has never felt any love from anyone other than Victoria. Amy develops deep romantic love for her sister, however, and then begins a series of bad decisions that just serve to deepen her already deep mental breakdown.

Amy proceeds to; alter Victoria's brain chemistry to give her compulsive romantic thoughts about her, then following healing Victoria after a battle, she spends several days alone with her, during which she repeatedly rapes her, erases her memories of said rapes, until her mental health deteriorates even further and she is unable to use her power properly and turns Victoria into the Wretch: a mass of flesh and limbs and heads, rather than anything actually human.

Then Victoria spends 2 years in a mental institution, stuck in a body she hates, all the while fighting the compulsions Amy left in place. When she finally returns Victoria to normal at the end of Worm, it is actually against her will and not because she had a change of heart or got more confident.

Then we get to Ward, where Victoria is the main POV. As is very obvious, Victoria is struggling with extremely intense PTSD, mentioning Amy is enough to trigger a dissociative flashback, and she wants absolutely nothing to do with her anymore: and fucking rightfully so.

Victoria also warns people about Amy. She warns her therapist to try to reach out to Amy before she hurts someone else, she warns literally anyone who will listen about Amy and what she might end up doing. We may not know what it is that Ramsay and Euron end up doing, but we do know what Amy does.

She refuses all help and doubles down on bad decisions, enslaves people with her powers, later imprisons and torments and touches Victoria again against her will, and becomes the dictatorial monster in charge of an entire planet. Victoria's warnings prove to be extremely prophetic and extremely real.

Now lets get into some discourse shall we?

Despite Amy being a rapist who rapes her sister, enslaves others via mind control, and literally never once improving as a person or acknowledging that her actions even caused harm, there are still those who think Amy isn't at fault. Some might find this post, but I don't really care. Amy is at fault for things Amy did. Victoria is not at fault for hugging her sister like a normal human being when Amy is upset, Amy didn't do her a favour healing her because then she just raped her and then really couldn't fix her back to a human body, and Amy isn't absolved of these sins because she healed a lot of people.

Essentially, Victoria is sometimes blamed for being raped by her sister, the rapist, despite Amy canonically being a manipulative lying liar rapist.

Okay so that doesn't seem to related to what the fandom says with Euron and Ramsay, right? After all, we don't really blame Aeron for being molested and Theon for also being sexually tortured and abused by Ramsay, do we? There are factors as to why that is (mostly that Aeron and Theon are men and Victoria is a woman; if you don't buy this argument look at people who say Cersei deserved to be sexually assaulted by Robert or try to use "the times" as an excuse to overlook Daenerys also being raped by Drogo) but there is an overlap here.

Amy being able to get away with that she did only to go on and hurt so many other people is a meta-commentary on the way survivors of sexual abuse are disbelieved or blamed for what happened to them. Naturally, those real like abusers end up going to abuse other people too. Fuck, even in the fandom, Victoria is still fucking blamed for things that she had absolutely no choice in the matter.

Which leads back to Theon and Aeron. Yes, trauma impacts the way you remember traumatic events, and that means objectivity can get lost at times. It can for Victoria and Theon and Aeron. But that trauma, the dissociation, memory problems, all of these together, are there for a reason. And that's because someone came along, ruined another persons life for their own pleasure and satisfaction, and then got away with it.

Victoria warned the world about what Amy would do, and she was unfortunately correct. Theon and Aeron warned others about Ramsay and Euron. Survivors should be believed, and not be dismissed. After all, it isn't our fault that we got abused. People may hear things about Euron or Amy or Ramsay, but the people who truly know who they are---what they are capable of, what they are actually like---are the people they abused.

So yeah, it's kinda fucking lame when I hear someone go "Stannis gonna prove Theon wrong with facts and logic" as if he doesn't, I don't know, have insight into Ramsay's psychology in ways Stannis doesn't. Same with Euron. Same with Amy.

Also fucking read Ward it hurts as intensely as it kicks ass.

[juneboat]

the fact that save files in deltarune are quite possibly even more diagetic than they were in undertale fills me with fear and dread like no other

[claraoswalds]

It's racist, my dear, to be blunt. People come from outside, they think we're all witches and druids. For God's sake, child, you walked into a piece of string!

[strawglicks]

"aww itty bitty flint bby innocent pure bby we need to protecc him" i will break your legs

[snekdood]

idk who needs to hear this but not a single being on earth owns land

[whywoulditho]

has anyone ever written a no capes DC AU where Jason's pit rages are switched into OCD/intrusive thoughts?? because that's a concept i literally can't get out of my mind. i tried to write a pit rage once and i noticed the way i'm describing it is a literal projection of my intrusive thoughts back when my ocd was that awful. so i thought i might try to write something like an OCD!Jason fic but if anyone's read something like that before please let me know!!

[banditblvd]

The website was called brush.ninja… I had to ….

[abandonedsdjfhcvndfbv]

Both 27 year olds in wh go crazy age regressing Charlie in a more physical manner (literal 10yr old body and for example her penchant for plushie-collecting) Ashe it just happens to him tragically mostly when talking to Noel it's not his fault he happens to trigger the most vulnerable emotions in Ashe on accident every single time (sorry i mentioned them once but then i went off about them in tags.) Charlie and Ashe parallels are so intriguing for real. Something is wrong with you guys

[solvicrafts]

Just saw some people saying that the Loki s2 finale was crap because it wasn't approached with a Christian perspective.

Loki is based off of the Norse deity, you absolute chucklefucks.

[vitalvitriol]

people have got to start drawing mona weirder. or at least less "conventionally attractive white woman"-like. please

[sharkneto]

Why don’t you want five in school?

Oh, I've ranted about it before in the tags of THIS POST but in general it makes me wildly uncomfortable. As an adult, the thought of hypothetically being forced back to high school is the fucking pits, you could not pay me enough to do it - and I even had a good time in high school! Five is almost 60 years old and they're going to force him to go to classes and hang out with teens? That feels bad from every angle! It forces Five to act in a way he'd only do under great duress and fucks his agency and autonomy as an adult so badly. There are better, more interesting ways to play with the consequences of his physical vs actual age than sending him to goddamn high school. There's other, less dominating options for the "he looks like a kid and never actually graduated" problem.

You do you if that's your jam, don't let a random dude on the internet yuck your yum, but Five in high school is a squick for me.

[nezuchuuko]

seeing chappell roan’s good luck babe get used for a het ship is crazy

[widevibratobitch]

why aren't there enough people in yt comments only there to complain about modernized/nontraditional/nonhistorical stagings and costumings of operas. “rossini wouldn’t have wanted il barbiere di siviglia to look that plain and ugly” “der freischutz doesnt work if it’s not set specifically in early 19th century germany” “ohh don giovanni shouldn’t be wearing a modern 3 piece suit” SO TRUE! <333 there’s a hundred productions a year, ninety seven of them are modern and in ninety six of them the director is Not Doing Anything Interesting with the opera. i actually do care if it’s “period accurate” or not. if you can’t engage in the story without some modern costumes to focus on and are ok with the director who treats his audience like 21st century obsessed idiots who won't understand shit unless it's spelt out and translated to modern times for them that’s a you problem

[constantvariations]

Probably one of the most unfortunate things about RWBY is, for all it's inclusion of characters of color, there's no real cultural identity behind any of it

Outside of names, what is there to identify Yang or Ren or Sun as Asian? Other than skin tone, what marks Emerald as a Black woman? What marks Maria as hispanic besides her surname and clothes loosely inspired by Dio de los Muertos?

The few times crwby genuinely tried to tie these things together have ended in total failure. Flynt Coal is so unambiguously Black that his weapon and design are just Jazz... and that's his entire character. The Black One to counter our White Hero for 4.2 minutes, then claim he digs her style, thus negating every relevant real-world implication of a large, wealthy white family driving small time entrepreneurs of color out of business

Every single attempt at inclusion is through such a glaringly White lens that it's no wonder that people often mistake Sun or Ironwood as white despite being named after a Chinese deity or being modeled after their Asian VA. And that's so disappointing in ways I don't think I could ever truly put into words

[netflixnormalthings]

when people say steve did nothing wrong i go a little more crazy each time because i dunno man between the slutshaming and then calling johnathan a slur/implying he killed his own brother and uhhhh interesting ways of handling his relationship with nancy...

[weregreatatcrime]

Wait that’s you??? I never once realized the pitch blog was you, even though I’ve been following you here and there for years???

DGGADSDHFJGKHL FRIENDO I AM HOWLING LAUGHING

yes pitchblackblog is my "main" blog skdfkhgd I made it years ago when rejoining tumblr, not realizing i would be stuck with it as my main blog and I just don't wanna deal with the hot mess of fixing it just so my likes match up

I REALLY wish tumblr had a way to change main blogs, but alas

Since then I've had several other blogs, most were fandom specific, but I've given up on doing That because again, too much effort lol, along with a couple ask blogs that have been left by the wayside over the years due to uhhhhhh medical bs