#thinking about being raped again

[glitchingeyes]

make me drink too much and take advantage of my limp body when i’m so drunk i can’t function

[fromtheseventhhell]

It's crazy that people still uphold show!Sansa as a well-written character and pretend that liking her is the pinnacle of feminism when it would be infinitely more impactful to acknowledge her terrible and misogynistic writing. This is the same character who, while written by two men, was thankful for the abuse she suffered because it allowed her to grow. The same character who we had to be told was smart because the writers were too lazy to develop or show her intelligence. The same character who had to rely heavily on the men surrounding her and ended up accomplishing nothing on her own merit ( and no, thinking that she deserved to be Queen doesn't mean that she earned it). She is not well-written, she is not complex, and she is not a feminist character. Which is fine! If you enjoy her then good on you, but please stop pretending that she's something she isn't just because you feel the need to justify liking her character

[batwynn]

Almost every day I think about that first post I saw a few years ago where someone decided that people enjoying the cuteness of otters needed to be destroyed for the sake of ‘reality’ and ‘facts’. The post was open from start to finish that they were telling you that otters did ‘horrible things’ because they wanted to ‘break the illusion’ or whatever. It was full of language and tone that implied or outright said that people were ‘stupid’ or ‘foolish’ for liking otters, and that they should be punished with this information. This fact. This fact that was a twisted form of humans applying their moral concepts on to wild animals, to begin with, but was also simply being put out in to the world to hurt people for liking that animal. And then I think about how everyone started sharing this ‘fact’, post after post sharing the same tone and language of punishment, of implied ‘stupidity’ for ‘not knowing’. People gleefully commented this ‘fact’ on thousands of otter picture posts, they posted it a million times on the otter fan facebooks, they made tiktoks, they hammered it in over and over again. Don’t like otters. Don’t think they’re cute. They’re Bad™️. You’re a Bad™️ person if you like them. And people genuinely believed that. I saw so many people genuinely hurt by this, who thought they were a bad person and needed to stop liking or sharing otter pictures. Or they’d add a little note at the bottom, ‘I know otters are Bad™️ but I still think they’re cute.’ And I can’t not think about how pointlessly fucked up and cruel that entire thing was from the start, and how manipulative and shitty it was. And how it spun out into the universe until even now, on an otter video posted earlier this year, there’s dozens of comments about how otters are Bad™️ because one person decided that this wild animal doing something that is repugnant to humans, the animal with no knowledge that this is Bad™️ or with malicious intent (because it’s a wild fucking animal), meant they needed to hurt and punish anyone who liked that animal. And, finally, that people were so afraid of being seen as morally wrong/Bad™️ that they destroyed their love for this animal on the word of some fucking rando online without stopping to look internally at their own moral compass and understanding of animal behavior.

[fleshdyke]

[atopvisenyashill]

dany and rhaenyra really couldn't be more different considering dany grew up in abject poverty and rhaenyra was constantly shielded by her status and name. for dany, her name was a death sentence, so they exist in totally different frameworks of what being a “targaryen” even means. it’s this vast difference in upbringing that informs how they rule as well with daenerys giving a lot of attention to how her actions/rule affect the oppressed while rhaenyra doesn’t particularly care about the common people at all!

I'm gonna do what we do at work which is start this out with a lil ground rules corporate talk thing: We assume positive intent as a starting place. I'm taking this in good faith and I hope if anon sees this, they take it the same.

So the first point - that because dany grows up in poverty due to being a targaryen and rhaenyra grows up in privilege due to being a targaryen, that means they are too different and thus can't be compared. Firstly, I think it's just a bit silly when people say stuff like this. Sansa's sexual abuse and isolation at KL isn't somehow less traumatizing simply because she had access to food (food she frequently doesn't eat, because she's traumatized over all the sexual abuse!) nor is Arya's physical abuse in the Riverlands somehow less purely because she had a handful of friends. Catelyn having a husband that loves and respects her doesn't mean that there are not similarities in her raging against the system that has turned on her with Cersei's own rage against the system. There need not be a one to one similarity in order for us to find commonalities in themes and I think this constant "you can't compare those two" just stinks of ~oppression olympics~ but oppression just doesn't work like a checklist and if you experience the required threshold of terror, you "get" to call yourself oppressed in some way.

Moving on, the thing is, both of them experience the emotional and sexual incestuous grooming from an older relative that goes with being a Targaryen:

He pushed back her shoulders with his hands. “Let them see that you have a woman’s shape now.” His fingers brushed lightly over her budding breasts and tightened on a nipple. “You will not fail me tonight. If you do, it will go hard for you. You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” His fingers twisted her, the pinch cruelly hard through the rough fabric of her tunic. “Do you?” he repeated.

Daemon spent long hours in her company, enthralling her with tales of his journeys and battles. He gave her pearls and silks and books and a jade tiara said once to have belonged to the Empress of Leng, read poems to her, dined with her, hawked with her, sailed with her, entertained her by making mock of the greens at court, the “lickspittles” fawning over Queen Alicent and her children. He praised her beauty, declaring her to be the fairest maid in all the Seven Kingdoms. Uncle and niece began to fly together almost daily, racing Syrax against Caraxes to Dragonstone and back...Eustace, the less salacious of the two, writes that Prince Daemon seduced his niece the princess and claimed her maidenhood...The whole tale soon came out, in no small part thanks to Mushroom himself. King Viserys at first refused to believe a word of it, until Prince Daemon confirmed the tale was true. “Give the girl to me to wife,” he purportedly told his brother. “Who else would take her now?”

both of them also experience a much older sworn sword preying on their youth and fondness for him-

"What did she look like, your Lady Lynesse?" Ser Jorah smiled sadly. "Why, she looked a bit like you, Daenerys." He bowed low. "Sleep well, my queen." Dany shivered, and pulled the lionskin tight about her. She looked like me. It explained much that she had not truly understood. He wants me, she realized. He loves me as he loved her, not as a knight loves his queen but as a man loves a woman. She tried to imagine herself in Ser Jorah's arms, kissing him, pleasuring him, letting him enter her. It was no good. When she closed her eyes, his face kept changing into Drogo's.

Though many lords and knights sought her favor, the princess had eyes only for Ser Criston Cole, the young champion of the Kingsguard and her constant companion. “Ser Criston protects the princess from her enemies, but who protects the princess from Ser Criston?” Queen Alicent asked one day at court... However it happened, whether the princess scorned the knight or he her, from that day forward the love that Ser Criston Cole had formerly borne for Rhaenyra Targaryen turned to loathing and disdain, and the man who had hitherto been the princess’s constant companion and champion became the most bitter of her foes.

they are both forced into marriages they don’t want to be in-

Dany looked at Khal Drogo. His face was hard and cruel, his eyes as cold and dark as onyx. Her brother hurt her sometimes, when she woke the dragon, but he did not frighten her the way this man frightened her. “I don’t want to be his queen,” she heard herself say in a small, thin voice. “Please, please, Viserys, I don’t want to, I want to go home.”

"No." On her terrace, in her bathing pool, the little fish would nibble at her legs as she soaked. Even they kissed with more fervor than Hizdahr zo Loraq. "I do not love you."

And though His Grace reasoned with her, pleaded with her, shouted at her, and called her an ungrateful daughter, no words of his could budge her…until the king brought up the question of succession. What a king had done, a king could undo, Viserys pointed out. She would wed as he commanded, or he would make her half-brother Aegon his heir in place of her. At this the princess’s will gave way. Septon Eustace says she fell at her father’s knees and begged for his forgiveness, Mushroom that she spat in her father’s face, but both agree that in the end she consented to be married.

and start conflating violence, power, and safety in their minds-

The princess was not slow in answering this charge. She dispatched Prince Daemon to seize Ser Vaemond, had his head removed, and fed his carcass to her dragon, Syrax.

“He would make a monster of me,” she whispered, “a butcher queen.” But then she thought of Drogon far away, and the dragons in the pit. There is blood on my hands too, and on my heart. We are not so different, Daario and I. We are both monsters.

you say for dany her name is a death sentence, but for rhaenyra, being a targaryen is also a death sentence! not to "they very much killed jesus" you here, but they very much kill rhaenyra! if rhaenyra remains a “good targaryen” she is acutely aware she will lose everything, and this is something dany is aware of as well, it's why she reacts so badly to daario's "queens have no purpose but to warm some king’s bed and pop out sons for him" comment about her marriage to Hizdahr. rhaenyra's mother and both grandmothers die before they’re 25 of childbirth. rhaenyra grew up in the same court gael did, that saera did, that viserra did, likely knew the truth of what happened to each girl, and as a woman who is concealing her bastards, all of that has to terrify her. so she stays the “bad woman” the tyrant, the whore, the visenya, in an attempt to protect her children and that gets her killed. being a targaryen has devastating effects on both of them.

as for the differences in how they rule - i’m gonna be honest and say does it matter how they feel if the result is the same?

when they first come into true power, both women are more concerned with getting revenge than they are for settling the unrest-

“How many?” one old woman had asked, sobbing. “How many must you have to spare us?” “One hundred and sixty-three,” she answered. She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon.

...whilst at the Red Keep Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen set about rewarding her friends and inflicting savage punishments on those who had served her half-brother...Henceforth, Celtigar decreed, traitors, rebels, and murderers would be beheaded within the Dragonpit, and their corpses fed to the queen’s dragons. All were welcome to bear witness to the fate that awaited evil men, but each must pay three pennies at the gates to be admitted.

both of them compromise on a stance that is integral to their whole platform-

Dany was shocked. “They want to be slaves?” “The ones who come are well spoken and gently born, sweet queen. Such slaves are prized. In the Free Cities they will be tutors, scribes, bed slaves, even healers and priests. They will sleep in soft beds, eat rich foods, and dwell in manses. Here they have lost all, and live in fear and squalor.” “I see.” Perhaps it was not so shocking, if these tales of Astapor were true. Dany thought a moment. “Any man who wishes to sell himself into slavery may do so. Or woman.” She raised a hand. “But they may not sell their children, nor a man his wife.” “In Astapor the city took a tenth part of the price, each time a slave changed hands,” Missandei told her. “We’ll do the same,” Dany decided. Wars were won with gold as much as swords. “A tenth part. In gold or silver coin, or ivory. Meereen has no need of saffron, cloves, or zorse hides.”

But the Queen’s Hand argued against this, for both girls had younger brothers. Rhaenyra’s own claim to the Iron Throne was a special case, the Sea Snake insisted; her father had named her as his heir. Lords Rosby and Stokeworth had done no such thing. Disinheriting their sons in favor of their daughters would overturn centuries of law and precedent, and call into question the rights of scores of other lords throughout Westeros whose own claims might be seen as inferior to those of elder sisters. It was fear of losing the support of such lords, Munkun asserts in True Telling, that led the queen to decide in favor of Lord Corlys rather than Prince Daemon.

both of them act vindictively and violently towards a low born woman in conjunction with stupid behavior from the violent men they’ve been groomed into loving-

Forgive me, sun of my life, she thought. Forgive me for all I have done and all I must do. I paid the price, my star, but it was too high, too high… “I thank you, Mirri Maz Duur,” she said, “for the lessons you have taught me.” “You will not hear me scream,” Mirri responded as the oil dripped from her hair and soaked her clothing. “I will,” Dany said, “but it is not your screams I want, only your life. I remember what you told me. Only death can pay for life.”

In a voice as cold as ice, she commanded Ser Luthor Largent to take twenty gold cloaks to the Dragonpit and arrest Ser Addam Velaryon. “Question him sharply, and we will learn if he is true or false, beyond a doubt.” As to the girl Nettles, “She is a common thing, with the stink of sorcery upon her,” the queen declared. “My prince would ne’er lay with such a low creature. You need only look at her to know she has no drop of dragon’s blood in her. It was with spells that she bound a dragon to her, and she has done the same with my lord husband.”

and I do think there is some similarity in the way that Dany sacks Astapor and it turns into a nightmareish ruin, and Rhaenyra lets KL fall into ruin as well.

you say rhaenyra doesn’t care about the common people but we don’t get her thoughts nor do we get the thoughts of a single person who is willing to tell the truth about her. both of our reliable sources hate her and mushroom is actively concealing things. we know dany cares about the smallfolk because we get her horror over drogon killing a child - only for her to forget that child’s name and decide the cost of her war doesn’t matter so much as taking her throne. this is the exact same moral justification rhaenyra is making - the safety of the people of KL are an acceptable compromise for her own throne.

what both of them want is less about the crown and more about what it represents to them. for dany, it’s home, belonging, love, safety, the simplicity of her life when it was just her, a viserys who had yet to lose his mind, and an aging ser willem darry. for rhaenyra, it’s the exact same - the simplicity of her life before aegon was born & her mother died, the love in her father choosing her over the men around him, the safety of her children. Both of them reach for violence to achieve those ends because they’ve been taught through a life of violence - albeit different sorts of violence - that force is the only way to protect yourself. And since Rhaenyra ultimately fails in her goal, I believe Daenerys will fail as well. Whether she’s smart enough to pull a Nettles and disappear (disappear not spread more violence ~liberating~ places that are not asking for her help or cultural arrogance) or if she, like Rhaenyra, will find that when she’s reached her limit, when she’s finally and truly lost, the door she thought she left open to escape through has been slammed shut behind her-

But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King's Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind's eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind's eye, all the doors were red.

[thedreadvampy]

The thing is I am definitely not happy or chill in the Immediate Sense lately but I am, big picture, so fucking happy with the person I am.

It's like. My brain was made by and for consistent trauma and since that trauma stopped about 5-7 years ago, it is incredible what the amount of resilience and cleverness and flexibility and thoughtfulness I developed to survive can do when it's not being all spent on surviving. like I had a hundred ton weight on me so I had to get REALLY STRONG to stay in the same place and not get 100% crushed, and when that weight came off I found I can use the strength it used to take to stand up and I can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

I was talking to my mum the other day and she said, "you've got the 'fuck it' energy at 30 that most women don't find until their fifties at least" and I'm like yeah man. Imagine how unstoppable I'll be in 20 years.

[bijoumikhawal]

only going "rape and torture are bad" when people defend Palestinians is pretty fucking scummy, speaking as someone who knows more than the average person on this site does about torture, and hates it real bad and knows a lot of people repeat torture apologia because it's deeply pervasive in modern culture

[6-2-aestheticsofhate]

i have a lot of thoughts on minos in relation to pasiphae and the minotaur (both greek mythological and in ultrakill) but i dont really want to make a lot of posts abt it considering. the topic is generally hard to talk about.

[theghostiedyke]

Hmm... thoughts about a piece of media that is so flawed but had so much potential.

cw for references to rape

Sighs dramatically looking out the window.

19 year old Derek Hale still reeling from a barely addressed trauma on trauma on trauma. His uncle manipulating him to use a werewolf's fangs [body] as a tool. For acceptance. Paige dying as a result. His own body being used by Kate Argent. He is a means to an end and tool to get information. He is meat. A body to be used and discarded.

Returning to beacon hills and being treated as meat again and again. By teens. By adults. By himself. By the audience. He is a scapegoat. A beast. Untethered. Eyecandy.

He is forced to kill his only remaining family member [that he knows of]. This is. Ironically his choice but the other options are what. A teen committing murder? The same Hunter family taking more of his family? Its his choice and not his choice all at once.

He inherents a power he was never meant to. Never trained to. He still doesn't address any of the barely repressed trauma. He seeks out traumatized teens. Does he see himself in them? Are they a means to an end like he was? Is? They're given a choice, the bite is a gift. But what is informed consent? When power is seductive to the powerless. To the ones who have had power taken from them again and again. Is it wrong to want back some power? To hurt back when they hurt you first?

His impulsive decisions coming back to bite (claw. drown. paralyze.) him in the ass. Powerlessness magnifying. Lashing out at everything that can be perceived as a threat. Survival mode. What's another death worth really. There is no time to be safe. Feel safe. Safety is a fairy tale. Not something afforded to those like him.

His body is used as a weapon. His first beta's body is literally a weapon to be wielded. If the bite shows whats on the inside is it a two way mirror back to the Bite's source? Having the control of who gets bitten torn from him by circumstance of necessity and circumstance of betrayal. How can someone who was forcibly bit understand that repeating the cycle in reverse isn't better. But it is means to an end. A weapon to propped up and used when necessary.

He is a body. A weapon. A means to an end. A novel concept to added to a collection of rarities. Even those he surrounded himself with chose to abandon him. He pushes away the last ones who had the potential to care. Whats the point? He is a body. A weapon. A danger to himself and others. Not worthy of being saved. He is used again and again for his power. His status. His body. His potential as a weapon. His power can finally be used to save. He takes it. He is not worth saving but. His younger sister is. She isn't the reason their whole family is dead. (He is.) He is so tired. The power he was never meant to inherent weighing heavily. It's a relief to give it up. Its the first bit of relief in years. The first step to healing maybe. A lifting of responsibilities he barely handled.

[pocketsizedquasar]

i genuinely, sincerely, deeply hope, from the bottom of my heart, that every single person who spread and propagated that bullshit lie that israel didn’t bomb the hospital, destroying the whole building and killing hundreds of people, but it was a “misfired hamas / palestinian rocket” — i hope every single one of you rots in hell.

[comradecowplant]

I don't follow blogs ran by people being racist about rap so I'm only witnessing the secondhand responses to the recent "discourse" and sadly 'tumblrinas being racist about their bad taste in music & low lyrical literacy' is exactly what I'd put on my 2024 bingo card for this steadily declining shithole....

[deicide-doll]

trigger warning. do not read if you dont want to read something triggering.

[fleshdyke]

hchkvgjvfj

[puppyboydaydreams]

.

[aradia-queen-of-the-sheep]

my completely unprompted anime hot take of the day was that I hated ultimate bladeworks