#women by the violent lack of sense in the world

[blood-orange-juice]

About Childe and his weird gender again, expanding on this post.

I think it has a lot to do with how gender is constructed. Male gender has very clear-cut prescriptions, mostly it's everything that is considered "good" or "human" in current culture. The expectations it places on a person may not be realistic or achievable but they are very clear. Great importance is also placed on separating itself from Everything Female. Things That Are Too Much. Things that break the current culture meaning-making procedures.

Women, while having quite a few prescriptions of their own, also deal with whatever fell through the cracks. Someone needs to ensure the world still functions and reality is never completely covered by whatever official model of the world we currently have.

So women deal with the things men have the luxury not to notice. Mostly bodily and psychological aspects and societal injustice that are not supposed to exist in the ideal picture of society men have imagined. (to be fair, it happens to anyone oppressed and othered. the task of not letting the oppressors meet with reality is delegated to them. I'm just talking about women specifically in this post. but there's a reason oppressed minorities always have ties to supernatural in folklore)

In a way, feminine women are very scary. Walking semiotic horrors.

And I explain all this to say that Childe can be perceived as feminine in two ways.

First, with his disregard for all and any societal norms he just doesn't follow the normal gender prescriptions. He plays a superhero/knight role because it's shiny and it reminds him of the stories he loved as a kid. He doesn't suppress his love for his family because it brings him joy. He looks pretty because looks are a weapon too. He does all these things that would be either stereotypically masculine or painfully unmasculine for anyone else who cares about what society thinks, but he doesn't really see any difference between them. He truly, genuinely doesn't care what others think.

Second, he's also painfully aware of the dark and insane parts of the universe everyone else has the luxury to ignore. He also knows no one cares so he dances around the things a normal guy would never have to deal with (it's such a stereotypical female experience. sometimes I wonder if that's why women rarely like Lovecraft. it's not scary or exciting to them, it's just Tuesday).

But that's just our perception, a trick of light. These are not necessarily gendered.

He also gives an impression of someone extremely vulnerable, yes, but I don't think he handles his vulnerability in a feminine way. He just doesn't hide it and we are used to labeling everything vulnerable as feminine.

He also doesn't really do anything feminine-labeled in a characteristic female way. He isn't really in contact with his emotions (despite having a lot of them), him caring about people takes the form of "protector and provider". his cooking... have you seen his cooking? He doesn't look for support and doesn't try to build things that last. He doesn't accept his vulnerability. If anything, he's trying to pretend he has no vulnerabilities and maybe no psyche at all. He's self-sacrificing in a very male way too. Because he was there and because he could and because it's a cool thing to do.

So he's just that. Himself. Someone outside of gender.

(or rather his gender is knightcore)

If we perceive him as feminine it says more about how our culture perceives gender than about who Childe is.

Also, quoting my previous post, it's a part of him being full of contradictions. For every thing that he does he also does the exact opposite, and this holds for gender too.

Yes he lives the male power fantasy. He also does it in an incredibly feminine way. I think this was Hoyo's original intention and then it blossomed into this human disaster we see.

And to end up on a joke, surely you all have seen that leaked art that is theorised to be Skirk but could have also been an early design of Childe before Hoyo decided to make him a guy.

[queenvhagar]

My perhaps controversial take on the HOTD characters, the GOT characters the writers are trying to mold them into, and the GOT characters they actually most resemble in the books (in my opinion - feel free to disagree).

Disclaimer: these are entirely disconnected series with unique characters, so it's impossible to do what the writers of HOTD seemed to be trying to do in season 1 i.e. mold the characters from Fire and Blood to fit the characters of GOT to try to recreate the success of the early seasons. Given this, I tried to choose one single character analogue from GOT that each HOTD/FB character is most like, but oftentimes the reality is that if any single character from Fire and Blood resembles a Game of Thrones character it is likely that they are a combination of more than one. All of this said, here is who I think the writers are trying to fit certain HOTD characters into vs the character they are actually most like (according to Fire and Blood):

Rhaenyra Targaryen: obviously the show wants her to be the new and improved Daenerys, a protagonist everyone can root for who wants to revolutionize the existing order. In reality, Rhaenyra is most like Cersei: a woman who seeks to use her three bastards to usurp thrones and gain even more power than she already has, all while committing incest with a family member and using her power to punish and silence her enemies. She uses the existing system to raise herself up and keep others below her. She does reach her goal of ultimate power but ultimately she is unable to hold it. In pursuit of holding onto power or gaining more of it, she watches as her children die early deaths. The smallfolk despise her for her methods of ruling. Eventually, she will cause her own downfall and die before her time.

Alicent Hightower: the show wants her to be Cersei, a mean-spirited, jealous woman protecting her problematic children and using her status as queen to put others in their place (they even used Cersei scenes as audition material for the role). In reality, I see Alicent as most like Catelyn - a flawed woman, mother to a king, seeking to further the rights of her son in the hopes of protecting her family from those who would harm them, guided by her own sense of justice, honor, and understanding of the laws of the land (and of course, hyper aware of the bastards in the room). All she wants is her and her children's safety, and she is willing to go to war for it. In the end, however, she watches as every last child is taken from her before she herself dies alone.

Viserys I Targaryen: the show wants us to see him as the ultimate father who loves his child unconditionally and always supports her, and that his view of right and wrong should be what guides the world. In reality, he is most like Robert Baratheon: a weak king unsuitable for rule whose mistakes and complacency lead to civil war after his death. His preoccupation with past events and people, and his role in a former love's demise, leads him to neglect his current wife and their children and make decisions that create long-term issues for his family and the realm.

Criston Cole: as soon as Criston turns away from Rhaenyra, the show wants you to view him as a Meryn Trant type of Kingsguard - a man unconcerned with honor and violently anti-women, more than willing to carry out terrible acts commanded of him. In reality, Criston is like more like Jaime: he seeks to make a name for himself as a knight, guided by his own sense of honor and justice, though he is judged by others as lacking such principles. His devotion to his position on the Kingsguard and his love for the royal family motivates him. Occasionally his self-confidence and delight in goading his enemies can make him appear callous and proud. Although he is not officially the royal children's "father," he has guided and protected them and their mother from early on in the absence of their official father.

Daemon Targaryen: the show wants you to both love and hate Daemon. It seems he should fill many roles that Jaime did - a sword fighter whose swagger and danger mix together, whose dishonorable acts follow him through the world. He acts primarily out of love or his pursuit of it, whether for his brother or his lover and her children. The viewer is supposed to see that deep down he is a good guy, no matter how many characters say that he's not. In reality, I see Daemon as a more capable Viserys III: a man adamant in his family's racial superiority, who believes he and his loved ones should have access to unchecked power because they're better than everyone else. A man who enjoys exercising his power over others and demanding obedience out of fear of his wrath. A man who uses his younger family member to further his own interests without much thought to her own wishes or agency and willing to hurt her if she doesn't act the way he wants her to.

Otto Hightower: the show wants you to view Otto as a new Littlefinger, someone sly about his intentions who uses spies, information, and unsavory methods to take advantage of the ruling family and further his own interests and increase his own power. I see him instead as more similar to Tywin: a Hand of the King seeking to put his family close to the throne in pursuit of legacy and advancing his family's station, a man who arranged for his daughter to marry the king so his blood would sit the Iron Throne and bring his family power for generations, a man acutely aware of the political world and how the game is played and willing to get his hands dirty to play it.

The Strong boys: the show wants you to root for Rhaenyra's perfect, good natured and pure intentioned sons as if they were the Stark boys (mixed with Jon Snow). Raised in a good family, these boys know right from wrong and love each other. Yet some people unfairly think less of them for their birth. In reality, the Strong boys are closest to Joffrey, Tommen, and Myrcella. Bastards set to inherit positions they have no claim to, they are coddled by their mother and protected from any consequences to their actions. When one attacks another child, their mother demands that the other child's family is punished for their actions (and doesn't even reprimand the child for his role in the conflict). The result is the child has no remorse for the harm done, and the other child's family festers resentment against the child. Some people uncover the truth of their birth and object to their place in the line of succession, and these people are killed for speaking the truth. Eventually, a war is fought to keep them and their mother away from the throne, resulting in all of them being killed.

Aegon II Targaryen: the show wants you to see him as Joffrey 2.0. A man interested in viewing sadistic acts for his own pleasure, who abuses women for his own enjoyment, and who is unfit to rule. In reality I see Aegon as closest to Robb: a first born son reluctant to rule as king once his father dies but who rises to the occasion to try to keep his remaining family safe. A king willing to fight his battles alongside his men, no matter the risk it might pose to him. A king who tries his best to rule but makes mistakes along the way that cost him dearly. In the end, he watches as he loses everything, and he dies young.

[butch-reidentified]

I've spoken before about psychopathy, particularly my own, and the importance of recent research and demolishing the stigma and absolutely absurd past conceptions and measures of psychopathy, which were exclusively based on studies of male prisoners convicted of violent crime.

Just to reiterate - psychopathy is not being deranged and uncontrollably violent. Villanelle from Killing Eve is actually an excellent and well-researched example of high-EQ female psychopathy, and the first fictional portrayal I can genuinely see myself in. Psychopaths with high EQ are entirely capable of cognitive empathy, and many (like myself) are actually very gifted in it, and can even make excellent counselors/therapists as a result of this combined with a lack of strong internal biases and the fact that we won't be emotionally impacted/drained by patients. This presentation of psychopathy is becoming more and more recognized and studied, and is distinctly more common in women. We retain the core defining traits, obviously - boldness, deviancy, disinhibition, very high fear threshold, a tendency toward meanness (self-control is a thing, though), reduced capacity for remorse and regret*, and of course lack of affective (emotional) empathy - but are much more able to moderate ourselves and prioritize social functioning, and tend to view the sadistic behavior of low-EQ psychopathic males as wasteful. My wife calls it "prosocial psychopathy."

Anyway, I just kind of wanted to touch on this again since it's been a while and there's a fair few new followers out here. I encourage you to read the above links and check the tag - it's a pretty interesting topic, to me at least.

Edit 4/25/2024: *Regarding the reduced capacity for remorse/regret: I firmly believe this sounds worse than it is. For people like me, at least, it's not that I'm going around doing terrible things and incapable of feeling bad about any of them. The truth is that remorse & regret most frequently occur as a result of intensely emotion-driven behaviors, which as a concept is largely foreign to me - I don't tend toward remorse/regret because the way I interact with the world, analyze situations, and choose to behave in response, is inherently from the very beginning done with the acceptance of potential consequences actively held in my mind. I'm not prone to regret/remorse because I know myself extremely well and make choices as consistent with my understanding of self as possible, having already prepared myself for the possibility that things could go wrong. It's more about being prepared for what might happen and able to cope when things do go wrong, rather than being a piece of shit and not feeling anything about it.

This doesn't make me better or worse than others; it's a neutral fact that male supremacy has made seem otherwise by constantly claiming that "logic" or whatever is superior to emotions. Fuck that. Loads of the best people I've ever known have been very emotion-driven (what non-shit people identify as a form of being passionate) and some of the shittest people I've known would waste their dying breath insisting they're 100% logical creatures, as if that's even a real thing. To me it feels very simple: if I'm making the best (most internally consistent, most reflective of my personality and values, etc) decisions I possibly can with whatever information I have at the time, then I've done my best, acted with integrity, and don't need to regret my choices. This is very challenging to write/talk about bc of the stigma & connotations involved, but again, this is a completely neutral fact to me in the same way I describe being a woman as a completely neutral fact despite the stigma & connotations involved there. Does any of this make sense?

[deathlonging]

do u think you could explain to me why lestat laughed. i does not make sense to me. why would he laugh...?????

[from gifs by sophsun1]

lestat laughs bc he sucks and is crazy <3 in all seriousness i think its for 2 primary reasons 1) the idea of louis not being enough is amusing to him as he says they'll be together for a hundred years a thousand. he chose LOUIS to turn louis to be his life partner why isn't he allowed to indulge himself on the side without an inquisition 2) ironically his understanding of louis' perception of how serious the relationship only hits him now. lestat just views marriage this way: having someone to wait for you to come home, someone you love in your bed (or locking themselves in with you in their coffin. the lack of metaphor is striking) a code you don't have to worry about violating once you've sealed the deal. the way marriage frees men traps women etc bc ofc here lestat realizes from marriage louis expects commitment as opposed to just understanding, like lestat does, that its whole point is being able to do what you want without worrying about the other leaving. the laughter is definitely not untinged by the second of panic he feels. theres a manic edge to it. claudia voice and when he's scared? he ridicules......for a second there lestat allows himself to consider the possibility that louis does not owe him the violative right of infidelity but then of course it comes back to how he's the patriarch. and louis is vegetarian and judgemental and not putting out. and its his right to seek entertainment elsewhere. louis is held to different standards bc hes the student (and the wife). ldl is like well he brought louis into this world of violent freedom and seeking a mortal childhood friend w whom to have a one night stand is ingratitude to him. marriage >:)

[someone-will-remember-us]

Tony is in his 50s and recently did a rough calculation of how much of his life he has spent looking at pornography. “The result was horrifying,” he says. It was eight years. “I can barely think about it. The sense of failure is intense.”

Tony saw his first “hardcore” film on VHS in the 1980s when he was 12. In his 20s, he connected to the internet for the first time, which turned his habit into a “full-blown addiction”. Over the past 30 years, he has just about managed to maintain a double life: he works in a caring profession, is friends with men and women, has had relationships. But there is a part of him he keeps entirely hidden.

“So far, I’ve only told three people in my life about it – two therapists and now you,” he says. “It’s a complete secret from everyone I have ever known. I’m meticulous about covering my tracks, even when in a relationship. My lack of interest in sex with my partner might be the only thing that would cause her to wonder.”

Tony has tried to stop looking at pornography multiple times, but has never managed more than a month without it. He’s tried cutting down, he’s gone cold-turkey – banning himself from masturbating and blocking porn sites. But “the addict brain is exceptionally devious and adept”, he says. He’s also tried therapy, but has found it hard to keep paying for it long-term.

Still, Tony is grateful for one thing: he was young before the internet. “At least I had a normal youth – parties, gigs, adventures with friends. I had girlfriends and a sex life. Boys like me don’t stand a chance now.”

Every statistic related to pornography use in the UK – and globally – is soaring, driven by the ubiquity of mobile phones. About 13.8 million people – a third of all adults using the internet – viewed porn online in May 2023 alone, according to Ofcom. Two-thirds of these were men. While pornography companies don’t report (or acknowledge) statistics on underage viewers, British children, on average, first watch porn at the age of 12. The children’s commissioner for England found in a recent study that much of what young people see is violent and extreme.

Jack is in his 20s and first saw pornography when he was nine. “I was with a group of friends on a school trip. It was a woman giving a blowjob, something I had never been told about in sex education.” Like many children and teenagers today, porn found Jack before he went looking for it. “It came up through things friends shared, then on flash gaming websites. I saw really bizarre things which evoked both arousal and curiosity. That gradually turned into just arousal and then compulsion grew along with it.”

Soon, the intense stimulation of the pornography he was watching meant he “lost interest in day-to-day life”. It wasn’t so much the time he spent watching porn, but the “hyper intensity” of the content. “Sometimes in a particularly addicted phase I would spend hours watching it each day,” he says. ‘‘But usually it would just be an occasional binge then less use the rest of the time … In terms of how it was affecting me, though? That was not a normal life. The porn stimulus is intense and it leads to desensitisation to the small everyday pleasures that keep us sane and content.”

When Jack started having real-life sexual experiences, “it was very difficult to maintain an erection. Real sex was less intense than the masturbation of a desensitised addict – which is what I was”. Unlike online, “there was no option to click through many possible videos for something new and more stimulating.”

Both Jack and Tony describe themselves as porn addicts. Unlike other behavioural addictions such as gambling and gaming, pornography addiction is not included in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which is compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is instead defined as a compulsive sexual behaviour.

Paula Hall is a psychotherapist who specialises in working with people struggling with their pornography use and has set up a private clinic dedicated to it in London. She has been an addiction therapist for 30 years – and started her career working with people with substance abuse issues. She believes it’s clear that pornography is addictive. “Porn use carries a risk of escalation and that is what hallmarks it for me as an addictive behaviour,” she says. “It’s a condition that causes significant suffering and we desperately need to develop resources for prevention and treatment.”

Peter Waddington is a counsellor with Relate, a charity offering relationship support, who is seeing more people with concerns about their pornography use. “Some people might be masturbating 10 times a day, up to three or four hours a go. They are physically in pain and sleep deprived. I see people who look unwell. The similarities to alcohol [misuse] are very strong … It’s also perceived as more shameful than gambling or alcohol,” he says.

“It’s helpful that it is now recognised as a compulsion by the WHO but we would like to see it classified as an addiction. If it was supported by the NHS, people could ask their GP for help.” As it stands, Waddington believes that shame can be a barrier to accessing help.

“There has been concern that by talking about pornography and sex addiction we are pathologising human sexuality,” says Hall. But, she insists, calling it an addiction is not increasing that sense of shame. “We know that alcohol is linked to violent behaviour, to coercive relationships, to heart disease, but people still enjoy alcohol. So we can acknowledge those potential risks without pathologising recreational porn use.”

Hall is finishing work on a leading study into British pornography habits with Leeds Trinity University. The aim is to help develop an online self-help programme. Out of the 193 people interviewed who felt they could not control their porn use, more than 93% reported struggling with depression. “Very worryingly, more than 40% say that, at times, they feel like ending their life,” says Hall. “In the same way that the gambling industry has been instructed to provide warnings and help problem users, the porn industry needs to do the same.”

Tony says: “I indulge in a compulsive behaviour that I feel totally unable to stop, despite severe negative consequences. I feel like an addict, I emotionally isolate like an addict, and I suffer the consequences like an addict. These websites are specifically designed to target addicts and keep them clicking.”

The algorithms that serve up new content for users “are incredibly powerful”, he says. “They tease out interests and kinks you didn’t know you had … You wouldn’t believe the number of mouse clicks you go through in a session sometimes. It’s not enough to watch the same few videos over again. It’s always more, more, more, new, new, new.”

Tony thinks this has made it impossible for him to commit to a relationship. “Porn tricked my brain into thinking I could have an endless supply of sexual partners. How does one partner compete with that? The version of me that isn’t porn addicted might have made a good husband and devoted father, but I became sexually bored and I always hid my addiction – I was never authentic.”

Pornography is often a factor in relationship breakdown, says Waddington. “For a lot of the guys I see, their partners have brought them in because they found out about secret porn viewing. Or they have become so addicted that they started watching it at work. So they need to change urgently – their world is imploding.” None of the pornography websites I approached for this piece wanted to comment.

Gunter De Win is a urologist who specialises in adolescent and paediatric urology and, each month, travels from his base of Belgium to London, where he is a consultant at University College hospital.

“Three years ago I started seeing more and more young guys coming in with erectile dysfunction related to issues with porn,” he says. “They need pornography to climax with a partner or to maintain an erection during masturbation. And they may have to watch many videos before they find one that turns them on. As a scientist, I wanted to unravel this.”

He is now part of a research group attempting to study the impact of pornography on young men’s sex lives. But, as his most recent report states, it is difficult to assess the impact that porn consumption has had on young men with erectile dysfunction as “it is more or less impossible to find a control group that is not using pornography from a young age and at the same time is not morally against its consumption”.

Teenage boys getting “performance anxiety is absolutely normal”, he says. However, De Win has seen young men concerned that they lose an erection during foreplay – which again, “is all normal”. But by watching porn so young, “they don’t understand the basics”.

De Win believes more research is needed into the impact of widely available pornography in the digital age. “Too much of the research on porn is biased either for or against,” he says.

Cold-turkey approaches such as NoFap, a US-based peer support network that encourages abstinence from pornography and masturbation as a recovery method, can have mixed results for young people, he says. “For some, going cold-turkey can be beneficial, but I see boys who end up with no sexual interest at all, which is also bad for their wellbeing.”

His solution is vastly improved sexual literacy – in sex education in schools and in the medical community – that does not condemn all pornography and masturbation as bad. “Introducing shame and guilt has consequences,” he says. For example, “if someone has a religious background and sees porn as taboo, then maybe this creates shame”. Shame, in turn, means that honest conversations around pornography do not happen.

“What I think might have steered me away from compulsive behaviour around porn might have been frank conversations with my parents,” says Tony. “My mother was extremely kind and caring but with an inability to communicate emotion. So maybe some of my tendency towards emotional isolation is just that I am my mother’s son? It’s hard for me to be sure what is really me and what is me corrupted by porn use.”

For now, nature is stepping in to help. “I’m in my 50s and my testosterone levels are dropping significantly, so that’s been a blessing and I am looking less at porn. I’m thinking now about getting help again,” he says. “But it feels like standing at the foot of Everest looking up at the summit.”

[incesthemes]

dean's sexuality is an overwhelming recurring theme throughout the show: his fetishes are prominent, he flaunts his sexuality and sexual behavior freely, he's a relentless flirt, and he has the most sexual encounters in the show. what i want to briefly consider here is how his sexuality and, more importantly, his fetishes may symbolize a freudian eroticization of a fantasized domestic life, particularly in his fetishization of femininity.

so hear me out: dean subconsciously eroticizes his mundane desires because he can't externalize them in a safe or realistic way. the desires are, namely, a longing for a domestic, "apple pie" life, which is a desire that has been explored in the show multiple times. dean routinely covets domesticity, through his desire to raise a child (ben and lisa subplot), the djinn fantasy (2.20), his "nesting" in the bunker (8.14), and his displacement of that desire onto sam (who is the primary subject of his erotic fixation in general and a subconscious extension of himself—if sam acquires a happy domestic life, dean can live vicariously through it).

he also routinely denies himself this domesticity because he's given up on getting out of the hunter life. he was raised in a survival environment and never was given a real opportunity to escape (even sam had to fight tooth and nail to get out, and we all know where that got him). the one time he had a chance to reject john and embrace normality he returned smiling because of sam (9.07). he's the one that vehemently secludes himself (and sam, like in 1.06) from society because connections are a liability. he leaves potential long-term relationships preemptively, always choosing hunting (and sam) over them before anything "real" can happen (1.13, 6.01, 6.21, also consider 8.19, perhaps more abstractly). he's so broken inside that he lacks any real desire at all (5.14). et cetera, et cetera. he denies himself his domestic desires to the point that he lacks desire at all—he's a broken shell of a man.

so the violent repression of the id causes the secret desire to leak out through erotic fantasy, a playground of fiction that is used by, well, most if not all people to explore desire in a safe and controlled medium (see: how many women have rape fantasies, for example—the sexual fantasy is a constructed world for safe exploration of certain desires, often abstracted through erotic symbols).

dean is so repressed as an individual, likely by external pressure to conform and control himself via john, that dean could subconsciously transform his secret desire for domesticity, into an erotic fantasy. he displaces those unacceptable desires from the unattainable mundane onto the safer erotic and they eventually distort into fetishes. the fetishes themselves are then abstractions of the things he covets but can't obtain.

and i want to focus specifically on his desire for domesticity and make an argument for feminization as a fetish (thank you rhonda hurley for your contributions to society) and how that relates back to that base desire.

there are several episodes in the show which suggest that dean fetishizes femininity itself, or rather feminization as it pertains to him (4.07, 5.04, also consider 10.05 in a more abstract sense). in 4.07, dean openly fantasizes about living in a "hot cheerleader's" body (youthfully feminine). in 5.04, dean recounts the time rhonda hurley forced him into her pink, satiny panties, saying that he liked it. 10.05 is a meta episode which additionally posits a plotline where dean becomes a woman through supernatural means, suggesting that fans are invited to draw a connection between dean and feminization. (these are the episodes i can pull off the top of my head; it's probably not comprehensive but i can't remember others atm)

so let's consider this feminization kink: we have dean fantasizing about femininity, womanhood, and especially girlhood, which he notoriously eroticizes (again in 4.07 and also in 4.13 and 10.13, to name specific references, but there are so many examples of this) in relation to himself, specifically. you can layer this in the way his deeper desires are of domesticity, and the home is traditionally (importantly) the domain of the woman. if dean would come to associate domesticity with femininity, then he would subconsciously connect his desire for domesticity with a desire for femininity. therefore, this feminization kink can represent an eroticization of his own (perceived) femininity. dean craves domesticity, but the domestic can only be achieved through womanhood, and therefore his desire for the domestic manifests through femininity, and thus feminization.

this "perceived femininity" of the domestic is important because of how dean conceptualizes the world largely through his consumption of media (see also: his "wild west fetish" via 6.18), which enforces gender roles and the relegating of the woman to the domestic sphere. this additionally aligns with dean's lived experiences: he had a domestic life while mary was alive, and when mary died the domesticity died with her. his only personal experiences with a settled home life are inexorably tied to the presence of femininity (his other excursion is when he lives with lisa, strengthening this association), and the absence of it and subsequent domination of john (the masculine) also took with it that domestic life.

and then you could even go so far as to make the argument that his eroticization of girlhood and his fetish for barely legal girls is a symbol of the domestic life he didn't get to live himself. it can represent a longing for youth in an environment that was inaccessible to him, a stability and domesticity walled off by womanhood. his youth was masculine, and his desire is for the feminine. it would stand to reason that when he yearns for an idealized youth, it would be through the lens of the symbolically feminine. and so this desire manifests through a fetishization of youth (girlhood) and his subsequent creep behavior. it all comes back to the life dean didn't get to live, eroticized and represented through a sexual fantasy born of rigidly enforced gender roles and the loss of femininity in his home life.

[theoihalioistuff]

In the post you made debunking the claim of Ares being the protector of women, you have written that secrecy and disposal of the child born point to rape. Can you please elaborate a bit as I'm having a hard time understanding how exactly? Especially with the latter, is it because the conception of the child happened without the permission of the father of the woman (I've heard even if woman slept willingly, without her father's assent then it would have been considered rape)?

TW for Rape and Infanticide. (My eyes actually started watering and I had to stop several times while researching this ask)

There's a lot to discuss in here, and I'm afraid a Tumblr post from someone who's not a classicist won't cover all that needs to be addressed, so for further reading I recommend Rape in Antiquity (1997) edited by Susan Deacy and Karen F. Pierce, and their follow-up Revisiting Rape in Antiquity (2023), Edited by Susan Deacy, José Malheiro Magalhães and Jean Zacharski Menzies, a series of collected essays regarding Sexual Violence in Greek and Roman Worlds.

Broadly speaking, our modern concept of Rape (criminal act defined by the lack of consent during sexual intercourse) does not have a strict ancient greek equivalent (bearing in mind that "ancient greece" covers large periods of history where attitudes almost certainly differed from time to time and from place to place). Nor is there a greek match found for the english word 'rape' – derived from the latin rapere "seize, carry off by force", which was used for both people (in the sense of abduct or kidnap, only rarely denoting sexual violence) and objects (in the sense of plunder). The latin words most commonly used to denote rape were stuprare "defile, disgrace, rape," which is related to stuprum "illicit sex" (also to stupere "to be stunned, stupefied", origin of the word stupid) and violare "maltreat, profane, infringe, violate".

In ancient greek several words could be used to denote what we today would call rape: Biazomai (βιάζομαι - inflict violence, force, constrain), Harpazo (ἁρπάζω - snatch away, seize, carry off; from where the Harpies get their name, later used to refer to the christian rapture), Hybrizo (ὑβρίζω - outrage, dishonor, affront, treat as an inferior; related to hybris, a complicated word), Moicheia (μοιχεία ‐ adultery, illicit sex) or Phthora (φθορά - ruin, damage, destroy) were all words that, to a greater or lesser extent, were used to refer to violent or illicit sex. These last two concepts, though intimately related to our definition of rape, can be considered distinctly, especially when approximating a definition of "rape" in the classical world: e.g. the forcing of a slave was not morally wrong or illegal, while consorting with a free married woman was. Willingness did not define the crime, rather status and ownership did.

Regarding this last point, women's sexual and reproductive rights belonged to their kyrios (κύριος - guardian, master, head of the household), generally fathers and husbands, but failing that brothers (e.g. Apemosyne and Althaimenes) or sons (e.g. Penelope and Telemachos). Moreover a woman's virtue and reputation were primarily linked to her sexual activity: chastity, modesty, shame and obedience being her main ethical concerns. Therefore, when it came to sexual relationships outside of marriage, it was narratively "preferable that a woman should be raped [be unwilling] rather than seduced" (The Portrayal of Rape in New Comedy, Karen F. Pierce), thus preserving the moral virtue of "respectable" characters like goddesses or heroines. This is not to say every sexual interaction in greek mythology is presented as a rape, that obviously varies from telling to telling and depends on the myth, but it explains the narrative predilection for it. It should also be remembered that plenty of these unions are ambiguous as to whether rape or seduction take place, primarily because it's not usually of interest to the narrator unless the virtue of the women is being discussed (e.g. the centuries long discussions on Helen that survive to this day, and even then the distinction can be dismissed as irrelevant or nonexistent; "We think that it is unjust to carry women off. But to be anxious to avenge rape is foolish: wise men take no notice of such things. For plainly the women would never have been carried away, had they not wanted it themselves." – Hdt. Histories 1.4.2).

When it comes to panhellenic myth, sexual unions between gods and women are primarily framed as extramarital (beffiting a monogamous culture where gods' official consorts where to be found elsewhere), without the κύριος knowledge or consent (for a reversal see Hyg. Fabulae 129), and therefore under the umbrella of illicit sex (i.e. Rape). Recurring motifs are attached to these kinds of stories, which give us narrative context to identify (or at the very least be suspicious of) similar accounts in other myths where no explicit word denoting rape is used (as is most common in surviving works of mythography, that prioritise genealogy and gloss over instances of sexual assault). One of the most common tropes is that of exposure.

Myths of exposure in greek mythology usually come in three flavours. Either the child is exposed because of some prophecy (e.g. Paris or Oidipous), because it is born female (e.g. Atalanta or Iphis) or, in the majority of cases, because it is the product of rape (see below). As you noted the most frequent reason given for the exposure is fear of the κύριος discovery, who, in instances where he does find out about the rape, either does not believe the victim or is indifferent to her plight, and in either case kills her or attempts to do so (some examples below):

[Apemosyne: killed by her brother Althaimenes after she is raped by Hermes] "Not much later he became the murderer of his sister. Hermes loved her, but she ran away, and he could not catch her (for she was faster than him at running). So he spread freshly stripped hides along her path, and when she was coming back from the spring, she slipped on them and was raped. She told her brother what happened, but he thought the god was just an excuse, so he kicked her to death." (Apollod. 3.2.1)

[Auge: sentenced to death by her father Aleos after she is raped by Herakles] "After Auge was raped by Herakles, she concealed her baby in the sanctuary of Athena, whose priestess she was. But the land remained barren, and the oracles revealed that there was some ungodly thing in the sanctuary of Athena, so Auge was found out by her father, and he handed her over to Nauplios to be put to death. Teuthras, the ruler of the Mysians, received her from Nauplios and married her." (Apollod. 3.9.1)

[Psamathe: killed by her father Krotopos after she is raped by Apollo] "Psamathe the daughter of Krotopos got pregnant by Apollo [in Statius' Thebaid 1. 562-669 she is explicitly raped beside a river] and because she feared her father she exposed the child, whom she named Linos. The shepherd who received him raised him as his own, and one day the kings sheepdogs tore him apart. Maddened with grief, she was detected by her father, who [after she had bared her breasts and told him all] sentenced her to death, assuming she had been a harlot and lied about Apollo." (Conon. Narrations 19)

[Alope: killed by her father Kerkyron after she was raped by Poseidon] "Since Alope, daughter of Kerkyon, was very beautiful, Poseidon lay with her, and from this embrace she bore a child which she gave to her nurse to expose, since she did not know its father. When the child was exposed, a mare came and furnished it milk. A certain shepherd, following the mare, saw the child and took it up. When he had taken it home, clothed in its royal garments, a fellow shepherd asked that it be given to him. The first gave it without the garments, and when strife rose between them, the one who had taken the child demanding signs it was free-born, but the other refusing to give them, they came to king Kerkyon and presented their arguments. The one who had taken the child again demanded the garments, and when they were brought, Kerkyon knew that they were taken from the garments of his daughter. Alope's nurse, in fear, revealed to the king that the child was Alope's, and he ordered that his daughter be imprisoned and slain, and the child exposed. Again the mare fed it; shepherds again found the child, and took him up, and reared him, feeling that he was being guarded by the will of the gods." (Hyg. Fabulae. 187)

Not every account of exposure explicitly denotes rape (as mentioned before the nature of the union generally goes uncommented), and sometimes depending on the version seduction is to be better understood. Though both are interchangeable narrative-wise, frequently other details lead may us to suppose the stock character of the unwilling (raped) maiden is being portrayed, I'll use the example of Phylonome again:

"Phylonome, the daughter of Nyktimos and Arkadia, was wont to hunt with Artemis; but Ares, in the guise of a shepherd, got her with child. She gave birth to twin children and, fearing her father, cast them into the [River] Erymanthos. By some divine providence they were borne round and round without peril, and found haven in the trunk of a hollow oaktree. A wolf, whose den was in the tree, cast her own cubs into the stream and suckled the children." (Ps. Plutarch. Greek and Roman Parallel Stories. 36)

1. Phylonome is explicitly mentioned as a huntress companion of Artemis (presumably sworn to chastity). The sexual vulnerablility of Artemis' companions is a common trope; see Kallisto, Daphne, Arethousa, Britomartis, Kyrene, Syrinx, Nikaia, Pholoe, etc.)

2. Ares transforms/disguises himself to approach her (perhaps the most common trope of all), and conceals his identity in the guise of a shepherd (a disguise otherwise used by Zeus to approach Mnemosyne; Ovid. Met. 6.103-128, Clement. Recog. 22)

3. After giving birth she casts her children into the river Erymanthos. The reasoning is the typical stock example, fear of her father, though in this case the form of infanticide is much more direct than exposure: she casts them into the river to drown. As usual with these stories the children are saved by divine intervention, and are nursed by an animal and later raised by shepherds.

Again, no verb denoting rape is ever explicitly used, yet the context of the story is enough to reasonably suppose it was considered as such. Other examples of myths where babies are exposed are listed below, many of them are explicitly rapes, almost all the rest can be inferred as such (I can't for my own sake provide references for all of them, so those interested must do their own research):

Koronis exposes Apollo's son Asklepios on a mountain near Epidauros according to a local legend, Psamathe exposes Apollo's son Linos, Antiope exposes Zeus' sons Zethos and Amphion, Alope exposes Poseidon's son Hippothoon, Akakallis exposes Apollo's son Miletos, Tyro exposes Poseidon's sons Pelias and Neleus, Kreousa exposes Apollo's son Ion, Pelopia exposes Thyestes' son Aigisthos, Auge exposes Herakles' son Telephos, Evadne exposes Apollo's son Iamos, and Phylonome "exposes" Ares' sons Lykastos and Parrhasios (this list is by no means meant to be exhaustive).

My post confronting fake claims that Ares was the protector of women can be found here.

[seluneclerics]

Omg just binge read the five existing chapters of more the fool me and brooooo

Like I just sat my self down and didn’t get up until I finished and I’m so desperate for more!!!

The way you write the characters feels so authentic, even though their relationships develop fairly quick - it doesn’t feel rushed and makes complete sense!

You write Miranda so well, I’ve always in my head saw her as almost adjacent to characters like Narcissa Malfoy, Regina from Ouat etc

They have a cold, detached air around them but they’re fuelled by this addictive passion and commitment to their loved ones that they’re practically clinical about, like they’re not here to play and you get that across so well with Miranda.

I don’t usually read x readers and if I do, I don’t read OC ones but I enjoyed this thoroughly. I might be a little bias because I look a bit like Fraser - brown skin, long, black curls barring the fact that she’s 5’9 and I’m 5’4 at the best of times - but it comes down to how universal you write her.

The name Fraser doesn’t feel like it carries too much connotations like a name like mf Amy or Charlotte which are wayyy to western for a non-white person to easily relate to and her personality is so relatable. And big plus she’s not super annoying so

But your writing is amazing - the way you write intimacy without it being sexual is divine, how the characters look at each other fondly or appreciate the others mind or oh! oh! How you slip in Fraser’s knowledge about them to emphasise how well she knows them! Like how she knew it was Alcina because of her height when she was passed out or how she’s aware that Miranda was coming to yell at her on the balcony! The way she holds Miranda’s face and how Alcina plays piano to her, how Fraser easily makes Mira, Alcina, and soon Donna I’m guessing feel less lonely.

I don’t know, I just live for good sapphic yearning and pining and it’s so nice to see that there’s still a plot - which omg I can’t wait to see where that goes - and it isn’t all easy. Fraser may feel some attachment to Alcina and Miranda but she’s still willing to go behind their backs to search for her father - like trying to sneak into that storage room. She gets close with them but not without her own agenda. The tender, heady back and forth with Fraser and the Lords/Mira is so perfectly countered by the far more gritty landscape and setting, the depictions of the violent, grotesque nature of the corpses and flesh, of the worms and the far less idealistic village and it’s history. You stay true to the grit of RE8 and I’m here for it, I hate when a wlw story or any queer story is all fluffy or all angsty like there needs to be balance and you got it.

Alcina has to hold herself back, she feels uncomfortable knowing about Miranda’s closeness with Fraser or vice versa, Miranda letting Fraser into her vulnerable parts despite how perturbed she is and Fraser not being a dick head that has no common sense but still makes mistakes.

The pacing is great, you have pretty neat prose and I am so interested! Keep up the really awesome work!

- from a dedicate fan now <3

holy shit, i’m???

thank you so much for taking time out of your day to read about the little evil gay women in my phone. thank you even more for making such a detailed comment, really it means the world to me—and also shocks me???

the representation of fraser being a black/mixed black woman was incredibly important to me. the RE community in general has a lack of rep for women of color, likely due to the games themselves not having too many woc in general.

i’m so glad you like my miranda characterization! in this fic, i wanted to lean heavily into what it’s like to be a grieving mother. outside of the vengeful, scornful side of miranda we see inside of RE8. of course, her rage and schemes are still very present in more the fool, but i wanted the aspect of dealing with the grief of losing someone to take center stage.

i think the beauty of miranda/fraser’s dynamic is that fraser exists within miranda’s grief, rather than trying to do away with it or fill the hole that’s left in her heart. she knows she can’t assuage her loneliness and she doesn’t want to. she simply wants to be with her through it all, and i think that’s the beautiful thing about them.

outside of the who-done-it nature of more the fool’s overarching story, i think it’s a story of what it’s like to go to the ends of the earth for a person, solely because you love them and would do anything to see you two reunited.

fun fact: fraser’s name means “of the forest men” and strawberry! the truth is, i got so attached to it when i was trying to come up with a name for her, but then realized it was a boy’s name. i thought it’d be funny for her lore to add in the fact that her father knew it was a boy’s name, but kept it anyway because he liked it so much. besides, i think we can all say it fits her better!

there’s so much more i want to say, but tumblr has deleted this on me like 4 other times already, so i’ll end it there. thank you again, and i look forward to giving you more to read soon!!

[balkanradfem]

List of things m*n expect women to never use against them:

their lack of ability to carry or birth offspring

lack of ability (and desire) to effectively and consistently care for their spouse and children

lack of ability to socially and emotionally take care of themselves

lack of propensity to care about other people around them

lack of emotional maturity and no emotional intelligence

lack of control or willingness to control themselves in the matters of lust, violence, alcohol, power, exploitation, sexual violence, rage

being the perpetrators of 90% of all violent crimes and committing almost all sexually violent crimes

history of oppression, torture, rape and abuse of women

holding the largest percentage of all wealth, land, resources, jobs, economic power, media, entertainment, sports

being centered in education, healthcare, history, science and media despite producing the least helpful and the most harmful results across all boards

doing worse academically, socially, emotionally and sexually, while still using privilege and past of oppression to hold down majority of well-paid jobs and positions in society

taking credit for women’s work whenever possible

creating male-lead religions that do their best to guilt women into accepting the role of servitude and suffering

misogyny and world-wide mistreatment and sabotage of women’s success

blatantly caring for power, violence, wars, sports, other males and their own imaginary positions in society more than they care about women’s well being, health, safety, happiness, quality of life, or even survival

List of things m*n have used against women:

having bodies that prioritize vitality, health, defense from disease, agility, balance, surviving lack of nurturing, cycles of hormones and functions, carrying the role of reproduction instead of brute power and force

i.e female bodies being generally smaller and less physically powerful, while better adapted to survival and reproduction in any condition and environment (used to control women via threats of violence)

women having more responsibility and emotional maturity, this is used to coerce and corner women into being the sole caretakers of offspring, elderly, sick, wounded, and often the m*n too

women having compassion and giving anyone the benefit of the doubt (used to manipulate women back into abuse)

women being able to carry and birth children

women being able to preform tasks with more consideration, continuity, responsibility, accuracy, knowledge and within an expected time frame (used to take delegate all the task-heavy and continuous work to women while taking credit)

women being able to form bonds in the family and community, ability to keep the bonds based on mutual help, cooperation, sense of togetherness and community (this is used to have women sacrifice their time and energy to keep families together, often at their own expense and harm)

being considerate and polite (used to talk over women, take their time and energy, take their voice in the public and shut them down from speaking, also to force their sexual advances)

women being kind (used to coerce women into caring for their abusers and giving them money, resources, and allowances even with the continual hurt)

women’s propensity to care for their offspring (used to trap women in unhappy and abusive marriages, threatening to take away children if women refuse to be controlled, punishing them by punishing or manipulating the children)

young women’s innocence, lack of sexual experience, lack of experience in general (used for purposes of sexual control and sexual abuse)

women’s man-made position in the world where they are less likely to inherit shelter, survival resources, economic power or rights to their parent’s estate, and less likely to gain a high-paying position (used to coerce them into marriages out of survival, prostitution, human trafficking)

women’s propensity to feel shame, discomfort and self hatred at being told they’re unwanted, despised, not good enough, or unlovable (used to isolate women from each other and the society, to be abused in private)

women’s fear of not being socially accepted and liked (used to convince women they are each other’s competition in being liked, and turn them against each other)

women’s homosexuality (used to break sexual and physical boundaries of women who cannot possibly get actual pleasure out of it)

women’s attraction to men (used to sell them idea of love and trap them in marriages, use them for unwanted reproductive and sexual purposes and insist women must have wanted it)

women’s sweetness, joy, desires to please others, wanting to be useful (used to create sexualized and male-fantasy version of women who exist in male’s heads only to please and serve them and make them feel good)

the appearance of women’s bodies (anything that can be sexualized, demoted, humiliated, insulted, hurt, degraded and depicted in a role of service and non-humanity has been done)

[atopvisenyashill]

do you think bittersteel is actually a homophobe or was that just a weird tidbit in awoiaf that grrm never intended to be canon? if so, i think it's so funny because homophobia in westeros seem to be more along the lines of "We Will Quietly Pretend This Isn't Happening As Long As You Make Babies," but bittersteel decided to Evolve the concept into full-on "Fuck You, Sword-Swallowers Don't Get To Become King."

the real answer is i simply don't think we have enough information on bittersteel, his relationship with daemmy jr, or the relationships within the blackfyre faction in general to really give a concrete answer on this. especially ecause like, "being homophobic" is not really portrayed as a "bad thing" when it comes to propoganda (whereas i would argue some level of being a freaky misogynist is - at a certain point, men like gregor, ramsay, roose, etc, cross a line into violent misogyny that even the absolute insane patriarchal guys in westeros are like "gregor is dangerous for women to be around because he cannot stop raping them" ya know. part of robert's bad reputation amongst the lords is in fact because he publiclly humiliates cersei on the regular. not enough that anyone stops it but enough that they feel it's tacky behavior. no one but the reader and one or two characters who are exemplary for this world are looking at the homophobia satin or laenor faced and going "hey that's a fucked up situation" or at least that's how EYE see it). so it's kinda thrown in there without anyone really delving into WHY bittersteel feels this way, if his words have gotten twisted, if daemmy jr is just feeling touchy (understandable if he is though imo and i'll say this about every single character; being queer in this world is difficult and i think it's fine to have a chip on your shoulder about it). as of right now, imo, it's mostly just up to you to decide until we get just slightly more insight into the blackfyres - and i do think we will eventually get that insight, i think our lack of information on this time period is clearly because george wants to write about it more in depth but hasn't been able to yet.

anyways, do i think it makes sense that one of the leaders of the blackfyre faction, a faction rather infamous in story for being made up of religious reacher freaks, anti dornish chuds, and anti intellectuals, might jump to "gays are too weak to be king" ? yeah that tracks. do i think it's just as likely that bittersteel actually didn't care that much and was more annoyed that daemmy jr's "rebellion" was an absolute mess he wanted no part in? i do think that's equally likely at this point. hell, it could very well be some combo of both!

[presidenthades]

So... 😳🤯

What did you think of episode 3?

I’m starting to realize I have a pattern in my general opinion of the episodes. When you look at scenes and dialogue at an individual level, it can be pretty great. The writers are churning out a lot of moments that are destined to become screenshots, quotes, GIFs, and memes that get reposted a lot on social media. But if you step back and look at the big picture, you realize it doesn’t make sense and there’s a lot of inconsistency/lack of logic.

I’m still enjoying the show more than not, but that’s mostly because of the acting, set design, costumes, music, etc. The writing is the weak spot, and it’s disheartening. But that means the show is prime material for fanfic, so silver linings? Maybe? 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m not a fan of the show’s consistent theme of “women are good, men are violent and want war.” That ain’t feminism, and feminism isn’t supposed to be the moral lesson of the Dance anyway.

I like that Rhaenys is generally level-headed, but I don’t like that the show wants us to pretend like her mass-murdering a bunch of smallfolk at the Dragonpit is no big deal, or that somehow it’s supposed to look bad for the Greens instead of the Blacks. If nobody rioted over Rhaenys’s actions, then nobody should be rioting over the hanging of the rat-catchers. And yet it’s only the hanging of rat-catchers which catches flack. 🧐

Alicent and Criston are unofficially having a fight. TBH I think they’re more interesting like this than when they’re just having sex all the time. I do love that Gwayne seems to realize something is up between them almost instantly; definitely Otto’s son.

Speaking of Gwayne: he’s a smarmy rich kid, and I kind of love him. I would loathe him in real life, but he’s just so fun to watch.

I’m glad that Rhaena finally gets dialogue!!! I love that we see her complicated emotions about being sent away because she’s the only non-dragonrider. The leak about her and Sheepstealer seems more and more likely…but I really am hoping Nettles remains in the show. I would prefer if Rhaena’s arc demonstrates that you don’t have to be a dragonrider to have a good story and be of value to the war effort, and her hatching Morning is a great moment in the book.

I also prefer the theory that Daenerys’s eggs came from Dreamfyre, but it’s not a hill I’m gonna die on.

I LOVED Harrenhal. Spooky vibes, Simon Strong just being like “we don’t want trouble,” Daemon’s hallucination sequence, first glimpse of Alys Rivers. It’s giving me ideas for more Joff adventures. Honestly, I would love if HBO produced some kind of Westerosi horror ghost story anthology.

This is a very minor scene in the episode, but it baffles me so I’ll chat about it a bit. When Rhaenyra is worth her council and they suggest “go somewhere safe while we conduct the war effort,” she calls it treason.

Why is it treason?? They’re literally telling her their ideas to her face. They’re not hiding anything. And it’s basically what happened in the book: Rhaenyra sat out of most of the war while other people conducted it. I feel like this particular scene/dialogue was forced to showcase that Rhaenyra is a woman in a man’s world.

Rhaenys and Corlys’s scene was very sweet. It’s also definitely foreshadowing Rook’s Rest.

I’m not sure I like Helaena’s scene. I read comments that she’s hyper-rationalizing as a coping method, but that doesn’t come across the screen well. I think it’s because Helaena isn’t getting the screentime necessary to convey a lot of this stuff, so we have to resort to BTS commentary to get confirmation that yes, Helaena does actually mourn Jaehaerys, she hasn’t just moved on after a few days.

I enjoyed the vulnerability that Aegon shows during his armor fitting, and his discourse with Larys. I don’t necessarily like Larys, nor do I like him manipulating (?) Aegon, but it’s fun to watch.

I can understand Aegon’s thought process to go out with The Boyz as his own coping mechanism, but like many things this season, it’s thanks to the acting. TGC’s face shows a series of emotions as Aegon realizes what a mess he’s in, then ultimately he decides he might as well go out on the town to get a semblance of normalcy. Without that degree of acting, it would be easy to dismiss Aegon as not caring about anything.

It was fun to follow Ulf’s perspective on the streets of KL. His dialogue was a bit clunky because the writers are trying to set up the dragonseed plot. He and Hugh are going to be an interesting pair to watch, with show!Hugh being the serious guy while Ulf is the clown.

No surprise here, but the brothel scene definitely gave me a lot of emotions. 🥲 I like to think sober!Aegon wouldn’t have been as much of an ass to Aemond, after all the times that Aegon has indicated he’s strongly relying on Aemond and Vhagar. Alas, Aegon was very drunk and said a lot of things he shouldn’t have said. Ewan also had phenomenal face-acting in this scene, where you could see him going from horrified and embarrassed to Stone Cold Badass™️.

HOWEVER. If the E4 leak I’ve heard is true, that Aemond tries to kill Aegon because of this brothel scene, I’m gonna be very pissed. We got a scene in E2 where Aemond says he regrets killing Luke…and now he’s gonna kill his own brother in cold blood? 🧐

Septa Rhaenyra… I’m sorry, but this whole sequence was unintentionally hilarious to me. The whole idea is kinda ridiculous. If you forget for a moment that Luke and Jaehaerys are dead, the scene with Alicent and Rhaenyra gives the vibes of two former besties having a spat over something unserious. Honestly I might use it as inspiration for some Alicent and Rhaenyra interactions in my fics, but the big difference is that nobody’s kids have been murdered (yet?) in my fics.

Overall, E3 was a setup episode for future episodes, so it feels like nothing much happened. I’ll still be here next week for E4, but I’ll probably be grumbling about the writing again. 💀

[queenvhagar]

Omg I liked your response about book!Aegon and I’d like to add one point: the book is NEVER afraid to talk about rape and horrifying things that happen to women, but it NEVER explicitly says Aegon rapes anyone. That’s fascinating, don’t you think? Could just be a coincidence, but it’s a very interesting one. Not that groping people is better but there is an argument to be made for book!Aegon actually being a nicer-than-average guy as awful as that is since that makes him just a horny grabby drunk.

Thank you 😌

You think if it actually happened then it would be in the book as someone's account of the history, but even Rhaenyra's court jester Mushroom's unreliable accounts don't say that he outright attacks and overpowers women for his own pleasure. I'm not sure if book!Aegon is necessarily nicer than average, but I suppose that depends on what average we're talking about. Better than Daemon, who most certainly murdered his first wife, groomed his niece for his own political advantage, and had Laenor killed so he could marry her? Probably. Better than an everyday non-royal family man? Maybe not. But book!Aegon is definitely not a violent or sadistic Joffrey or Ramsey type of character that the writers want to suggest he is.

Of course, the writers would justify their decision to add new things to the show and portray Aegon in this specific way as the book purely being a "propaganda" account designed to prop up the Greens and put down Rhaenyra. This whole take doesn't make a lot of sense to me, though. Why does the book include accounts of both sides being terrible if their goal was to slander the Blacks only? You think if it was truly propaganda it would be more heavy-handed and favorable to the Greens than it is.

To me, their whole take of "what if it was all propaganda 🤯" is them thinking they're clever in their interpretation when actually they're undermining the underlying messages and themes of the story by messing with it so much. Additionally, the idea of the official history being written as propaganda and it being some conspiracy of the academics to portray the conflict differently than it actually was shows to me a lack of understanding of how academia and historians usually operate. There's just no way there would be the level of cooperation and coordination among so many different people to just rewrite and lie about history in this context. Not to mention showrunner Ryan Condal was talking about how stuff like the Blood and Cheese of the books was specifically made up by Alicent and relayed to the historians to be the worst possible version of events, basically saying that a lot of this propaganda against Team Black is an Alicent creation. Beyond the whole "not believing women's trauma" thing going on here... you'll see that Alicent never really had the power or access to give anyone any of this information or try to rewrite history. And at the same time, they're writing her as still in love with Rhaenyra and/or desiring reunion with her, so why would she be making up so much stuff against her? It just doesn't really hold up and seems to be more attempts by the writers to make Alicent into a villainous, hypocritical, hated character.

Aegon and Rhaenyra were both flawed in the books, and to be sure, not everything about either person was entirely true in Fire and Blood. But the show is out to make Aegon a degenerate, sadistic, cowardly, pathetic abuser eager for war and bloodshed and Rhaenyra a righteous, brave, just, level-headed savior who exhausted all options for peace before going to war to save the world from the "Song of Ice and Fire" prophecy... They want this story to be an oversimplified morality tale of good vs evil, so they insist that any accounts in the book that conflict with this interpretation are respective "propaganda" to make Aegon look better and Rhaenyra look worse.

Like, I get that Fire and Blood is written as a textbook, but you can't just so freely change the source material without it affecting the quality of the story being told. Imagine any other major adaptation insisting that their source material is false or fake and their version is what really happened. It would just make it obvious that they didn't understand the source material and were trying to justify their own questionable writing choices while at the same time rooting their own horn about how they think they're smarter than the original author.

[scaly-freaks]

Succession AU with CEO’s son Aegon and junior analyst Amara… 😏

Good timing considering the pictures that came out today. Brief interlude to show them off? Yes? Yes.

Him being second to Rhaenyra in Daddy's affections is how I placed them in the modern AU I once wrote and it was a blast. But if we're more specifically aligning him with Roman Roy and Amara is working at the company, the dynamic definitely changes up.

He probably has nicknames for everyone in the office (with varying degrees of success as most people don't feel too positively about him) and Amara's is My Little Pony because she always has her thick hair in this long, very heavy ponytail and Aegon jokes that her head must be killing her but that he'll give her a massage if she asks nicely. She usually grimaces and pretends he hasn't even spoken.

Keep in mind, this motif would return later where him unravelling her hair for her after a long day is a sign for her to finally relax, and his fingers running through it puts her and her exhausted scalp right to sleep.

He's got pretty intense mommy issues in this one (obviously) and his type tends to be older women, with the occasional younger one thrown in that he exerts his power over when he's feeling a lack of it himself. Amara might just be the latest young thing who he's intent on using for his power trip. It's not a love story in the conventional sense.

This is a very powerful man who thinks he's powerless and so acts out regularly - Aegon is dangerous just like he is in canon. He knows the lawsuit he'd get slapped with if his conduct is even slightly out of line with Amara, but the more she fends him off like he's a vampire and she's got a crucifix, the more his frustration grows. Sure, he won't assault her, but has he thought about it? Yes. Has he made jokes about it with his friends? 100%. His frat bros make SA jokes all the time, and though he hasn't actually committed the crime himself, Aegon plays along as men often do when they're in groups.

But Aegon in any position of power is just a fuse waiting to go off tbh, and I prefer to explore the darkness of that rather than create some vanilla world where everything is fine and he magically changes. People usually don't change which is the great misery of life. And yeah, boss/secretary AUs are fun for escapism, but I'm the type of person who watches Godzilla or a Marvel film and winces at the infrastructure being destroyed and how long that'll take to clean up. That's what those escapism AUs are for me. I find way more comfort in realism and the bad things happening because when the character tries to get out of the situation, it might shed light for me and my real life problems.

Tangent aside, no he wouldn't touch her without consent, but the inappropriate jokes, and the general irritation of his presence stretches on until one day something snaps and she reacts badly. She's sexually attracted to him which is the frustrating part for her and adds to her anger, so it most likely would end in some kind of groping/kissing session where they're both making a competition out of who can hurt the other most.

Their sex life is probably very violent, especially once coke is involved. Amara's career is also not really getting on a trajectory to anywhere, because if she agrees to dating him, he'll take her straight to a higher position she didn't earn and will probably be overwhelmed by. Everyone will whisper that she fucked the boss and call her a nepowhore pretty much. The corporate world is cutthroat and if you're not prepared...well.

His aim is to make her his baby mama and keep her in his life in some form or other (he's under no illusion that Amara would ever agree to marry him) and hers is to get away from him somehow. But she keeps crawling back into his bed like she's a junkie and he's a pile of china white stacked in lines on the bathroom counter.

[fancyfade]

OK kingdom come review

it as enjoyable to read. Not terrible. But I have no clue how it got so much hype as like THE best thing ever.

General premise is that in the future, clark is cynical and separated from humanity due to various people including lois dying, magog killing the joker (who committed the aciton) and being acquitted. you have the whole 'idealistic past vs cynical and violent present' conflict between superman and the old league and the new superheroes, in addition to that the old league (especially diana) is tempted by new violent methods and Clark gets tempted to go more towards a fascist controlling people thing with his approach to the other supers who are showing complete disregard for human life, he overcomes it, etc.

the good: while i found some of the world-building eye-rolling, it made sense for the genre and was conveyed effectively. Superman's arc was done well showing his conflict, McCoy has a chance to talk him down (and the man vs superman who is in charge of humanity's destiny is a very key conflict) which was incredibly important for the theme. IMO.

the art was also very pretty.

the bad:

there was only 1 female character who had any significant # of lines and she was involved in an unnecessary love interest plot. Mark Waid stay mid I asked when reading flash "are there any female characters he cares for developing away from men (whether love interest or as a supportive family member or scorned lover)?" and the answer is still no.

it also really did have like. older generation fearful of the younger corrupt generation. the old ways are good the new ways are scary and bad. old man yells at cloud energy. you may be like 'the new ways involve civilians getting injured in superhero battles and the old ways involve them always being protected' but. that's an authorial choice. we could have seen some in the new generation who are not in line with magog before being straightened out by superman, but they were not there. they just needed an old guy to show them the way.

so overall it's very 'good old days of the past, men are important and women are love interests if they show up at all'.

I generally think the romance plot between Diana and Clark was stupid. It definitely felt like Waid did not understand the amazons (bruce lecturing Diana about Amazon way being forcing your way through war) and it can't help but read as 'oh she's in a heterosexual relationship now raising a child thank god'. IDK Waid imagine a female character outside of men challenge forever. The fact that she was presumably not doing anything before talking superman out of retirement does not help -- we saw plenty of male characters acting even after superman retired - flash protecting his city, bruce doing police state lite in gotham, hawkman doing… whatever. But Diana was not allowed the same independence except to motivate a man at first.

i think while ross does beautiful faces, his action scenes are also incredibly lacking

[blindaysblogforturtles]

OKAY OKAY I COULDN'T CONTAIN MYSELF

A man or a monster.

Yoshi and Shen have 3 children together: Yoshi II, the oldest, representing the bond between the clan and the yokai, and little Chisenshiro, an homage to the sacred name and to the little boy Yoshi grew up with.

For a long time things were good and chill, so pacific in fact that some of the clansmen were leaving for the modernity of the city. Not many, but it was clear that since their mission wasn't as proeminent as before, times of peace allowed them to leave without facing guilt or banishment. Yoshi grew to be a good and loving father, and a specially protective husband.

It's because things were good that the tragedy felt all the more painful.

Shen sensed a disturbance in the air first. For days she left the mountains to look for the source of the threat. There was something wrong, she told Yoshi, and she knew he could feel it too. But how the fuck would they explain that? He couldn't exactly summon his warriors because of a hunch. He tried, but the council argued he was being paranoid since the times were of peace.

Well, that blew up on their faces when the fucking Shredder came around with an army of corrupted humans and yokai alike and proceeded to wipe out every single Hamato on sight. He killed elders, women, children. Babies. The warriors, samurai and ninja, tried to put up a fight, but his power was unmatched. Yoshi hadn't known it was an attack. For all he knew his little brother had come to see him after all this time. He'd been excited and hopeful, and that hope blinded him to Saki's true intentions.

Yoshi barely survived, his children had to do most of the fighting to keep their family alive, and Shen carried all of them away from the massacre ocurring with the help of her father in law, Riku. Chiseburo, his wife, had been the first one victim to the Shredder as she saw through his façade.

They hid in the forest, having to move often to avoid capture from the army the Shredder had sent after them, settling in the city with an old member of the clan that had left before the incident. Life in the city was specially hard for Shen and the kids, as they were still part yokai and needed to be connected to their roots. The boys could grow used to the lack of energy they felt for the broken connection, but Shen grew weaker by the day and no one knew if she would survive. Nobody had made a pact like Yoshi and Shen's before.

And that wasn't the only problem. The moment of relative safety was cut short when they received a message from Shredder declaring war against japan unless Hamato Yoshi and his family - all of the people who had left the clan too - came forward to face him. They were hopeless.

Until Yoshi found about an american organization specialized in detaining dangerous supernaturals to keep the lives of humans as normal and mystic free as possible. He connected to them and asked for help, but it wouldn't be simple as that, as they couldn't just trust a random guy from half the world away. With a heavy heart Yoshi said goodbye to his family and promised they'd be whole again. He would be back. Shen allowed him to go, but as soon as he left, her spirit collapsed and she fell into a deep sleep.

In America the organization put Yoshi through all sort of test and trial to prove his story because, unbeknownst to him, Saki had made himself a very respectable public figure in japanese society. They accepted his request for help only after he proved that he himself wasn't just a delusional lunatic and showed his powers.

The look in agent conducting his case as he heard Yoshi's retelling of what happened gave him a bad foretelling, but he forced it down as he promised they'd work on his case.

If he in turn worked for them.

Forbidden from contacting his family by any means, and unable to feel them in his soul, JY0B2's mind withered and deteriorated to the point he was barely human. He spent years being subjected to tests, sent to violent missions, used as a hit man; and experiment after experiment, his memory of the reason he was there faded only more and more, to the point he couldn't remember what life outside had been.

After a mission that almost ended his life he hid in the sewers aiming to go back to base after he lost his enemies but found his injuries were too severe do that. He spent 3 days in the sewers, where he found something. A small rat. In the back of his mind he remembered that yokai had a connection to animals and he was part yokai, and in the back of his mind he remembered a stunning Jorogumo saying she'd devour his flesh like a black widow eats a rat, but it was all blurry and confusing. He called the rat Yoshi. It felt right. And when he went back to base, he still had the animal with him.

"It's fine, Yoshi." He said, laying in his cell and stroking the rodent's furr. It squeaked. "I promise I'll bring you back to your family in my next mission. I just don't want to be alone now."

That promise he wouldn't break.

-----------------------------------------

Bro I fr am enjoying writing this shit. What the actual fuck. I LOVE IT. Also, finally, we see a glimpse of Splinter. Is Yoshi gonna mutate? Or is it JY0B2? I WONT TELL YA HEHEHEHEHEHEH

BUT I am workin on art for the pathetic lil man so there's that. And his rat friend. And also the monster wife, I made her extra hot and extra dangerous.

[heartlandians]

Filling Empty Spaces (Amy/Mitch), part 238

Mitch and Amy find an unexpected connection due to absent lovers. Set around season 11->.

A/N: I didn’t have a beta for this story, so hopefully there won’t be too many grammar errors.

****

The whole world kept on spinning faster - as Amy steadily began to return back to it - but each day a little less. Slowly but surely she was starting to find some balance, both mentally and physically, as she took in the situation she found herself in.

At first Amy was confused, agitated even, but eventually it began to dawn on her why she was in a hospital. While her memories of the accident weren't there, Amy couldn't deny that the stories she was told sounded exactly like something she would do if ever she would find herself in a situation like that.

Not to mention, the condition she was in told her that exact same story, so it wasn't that hard to believe it for that reason either.

Ironically enough, when she was finally awake, Amy's body yearned nothing but rest, but even though all she had to do now was just that - rest - the hospital didn't necessarily offer ideal conditions for it.

There were machines that were peeping suddenly, like when her IV needed changing or the clip on her finger came off accidentally, and every time something sounded the alarm, Amy thought maybe she was in danger. Her poor heart couldn't catch a break.

The smells felt so overwhelming and foreign to her senses and sometimes she just kept on shivering under her cover when the AC was too cold for her liking.

Even though coming out a coma had been one of the most violent experiences she had ever been through, in those lonely hours of the night, when she couldn't sleep, Amy sometimes wished she could go back, because at least being in a coma had been easy.

That's how she knew the lack of rest was starting to drive her nuts.

****

Each day, Amy got different visitors coming in. Grandpa, Lisa, Tim and Lou were the first ones to come.

They were mostly just happy to see her awake, but sometimes some of her family walked in with other feelings attached as well.

"Knock knock", Georgie's voice reached Amy from the doorway as she was trying to eat a jello. "Can we... come in...?" she requested.

Amy's gaze soon found the source of the familiar voice and noticed that Georgie wasn't the only one about to enter the room.

She had brought Jade with her.

The jello melted against Amy's tongue as she took in the sight.

"Yeah", Amy began, then clearing her throat as the answer was barely audible. "Of course."

The two young women walked in, their eyes focused on her like she was part of some type of exhibition; as if they found her strange yet fascinating.

"It's so good to see you doing so well", Jade said, looking like she was holding back a lot of emotions. Amy recognized worry but also some excitement. "How are you?"

Amy put down the little plastic cup and the spoon on a tray in front of her and then tried to adjust herself better on the bed. She felt stiff and her body was still weak. Even though she wasn't as comfortable as she would have liked, this would have to do.

"I'm okay. Just... a little disoriented", she explained, downplaying her condition a little as she didn't want to make others worry even more.

With the nurses and the doctors she was being more truthful about her scale of pain as she wanted the treatment to be comparable to what she was experiencing. But her family and friends could get the more mellow version.

"How's your memory...?" Georgie asked carefully. To her knowledge, when someone sustained a head trauma, they often experienced some problems with their memories.

It seemed like Amy remembered who she and Jade were, at least, as her aunt was not weirded out by their company, but did she remember the accident and what had happened before that, Georgie wondered.

"Oh, uh..." Amy said, wondering what to say at first. "Well, I don't remember what I don't remember, if that makes sense. So Lou's filled me in on what she's heard. I guess part of that came from you", she speculated and looked at Jade.

She remembered the young cowgirl being at the rodeo as well.

Jade nodded. "Y-yeah. I mean, I told everything to the paramedics and... you know, anyone who asked", she shrugged, now looking like she wondered if she had done enough - or maybe even too much. "It all happened so fast."

"And how are you?" Amy worried looking at Jade.

She might have not recall the accident, but Amy could remember them attending the rodeo, and with the rest of the missing puzzle pieces, she tried to use logic to help her navigate the situation.

"Oh, me?" Jade looked sincerely surprised Amy was even asking.

"Well, yeah. It must have shaken you up - and Sloane. And... uh..." she was looking for the name of that guy they had had with them.

"Trace?" Jade offered.

"Yeah, that's right. Trace", Amy remembered now. "How are you all?"

Jade didn't know where to begin.

"Oh, uh... I'm okay. Just glad you're awake", she said, not wanting to say anything about Sloane, because on top of dealing with the guilt of Amy's situation, she was trying to deal with the sadness of her break-up.

Luckily for Jade, Georgie stepped in and - without knowing - helped her friend out by steering the conversation somewhat elsewhere.

"I don't know if the others have already told you, but Trace is actually working at Heartland right now. He's been a huge help. He said you hired him before the accident, and... so we decided to honour your decision when we were short-staffed."

Amy smiled a little. She had not known about that - or maybe it was just slipping from her mind; there were so many things she was trying to keep on top of her head, after all.

"That's good. I guess if I hired him, I must have thought he was right for the job. -- I've been worrying about the horses. Lou said they were fine, but... you know, it's hard to be away from them", she admitted.

"Well, they are fine. Everyone has pitched in", Georgie wanted to let her know. "We all take turns with the chores. And like I said, Trace has been a great addition."

"That's good", Amy said, then wondering something else. "Do you know how Helico is...? And Ash?"

Georgie's eyes went to Jade as her friend probably knew better since the rodeo crews often talked with one another.

Jade quickly found herself being the center of attention again.

"The horse was fine, they got him to stop - thanks to you - but I think the rider injured himself when he couldn't get back up", Jade said. "Or that's what I've heard from other people, at least."

Amy's eyes darted down.

Even though she was relieved to hear that Helico was fine, she felt guilty for possibly making his rider's situation worse. Being dragged like that and fighting to get back up was hard as it was, but she didn't know if Helico had ended up injuring him even more.

The trick-riding show should have been Asher's big return to the scene with Helico, but that had been ruined.

"But he's alive", Jade reminded when she saw the look on Amy's face. "I think that's what matters the most. It looked really bad... The whole crowd was holding their breath."

"I'll call him after I get discharged", Amy decided, even though what was expecting her was probably a really difficult conversation.

"Speaking of..." Georgie began, "when do you think that is? Have they said yet?"

"Oh, I don't know", Amy sighed. "They're still doing all kinds of tests and making sure my body is healing up as it should. I know it's all to help me, but I can't sleep here properly and I'm just so exhausted all the time... I still have a long way to go, but I'm trying not to let it depress me..."

Georgie nodded. "Lyndy's been asking about you a lot."

"I know, Lisa told me", Amy said, looking sad. They had decided not to bring the girl into the hospital as Amy worried it could make Lyndy upset or scared seeing her like this. "It's hard to be away from her, but it helps me to know that at least she's at home, where she belongs..."

"Tim and I have been helping her ride Monty", Georgie shared, thinking maybe that would be something Amy would like to hear. "We've been trying to keep her distracted with all kinds of things. But I'm sure she'll be the happiest when you come home."

"I will be too", Amy already knew, not knowing if she had ever been this homesick.

It then seemed like Georgie wanted to say something more, but she hesitated.

"Uh, Jade... Can I have a moment with Amy?" she then requested from her best friend.

Jade raised her eyebrow, looking a little confused, but at the same time she was fully aware that she wasn't family, so she had no choice put to step back. Georgie was the reason she had been able to come here in the first place, so she needed to respect her wishes.

"Yeah, of course. I'll be outside", Jade said. "It was good to see you, Amy. We'll talk later."

Amy had a weary smile on her face. "You too, Jade. Bye."

When Jade stepped outside, Georgie turned her gaze back to Amy.

"Listen... I just... I just wanted to apologize for how I acted", Georgie said. "And I really hope you remember what I mean, because if you don't, then it's gonna be really embarrassing for me to have to explain it to you..."

Amy then caught on.

"You mean you getting upset about me and Mitch...?" she guessed as she had nothing else on her mind that could make Georgie feel this way.

"Yeah", Georgie confirmed by nodding. "I wish I could be all like... "it's all been forgotten and forgiven because you almost died", but... I just need time to digest it all. I know it's your business, and not mine, but I just want to be honest."

Amy had a lot of mixed feelings about the whole thing too, but right now she couldn't even be sure what was actually true at this current moment, because she didn't know what exactly had she missed while she had been in a coma.

She was trying to keep up as Georgie continued.

"Lou told me that you told her about... the whole thing, and so we had a conversation about it and how I feel about it - or felt", her niece explained, avoiding Amy's eyes as she probably wouldn't be able to get this out if she didn't. "I can't change the way I felt about it, but... Lou assured me that I don't need to keep feeling that way, so... I'm trying not to. But it's easier said than done."

Amy looked at Lou's older daughter. "Well, I appreciate your honesty - always have. It's not always easy to hear, but... at least I know where you're coming from, I never have to guess."

"Well, it's kind of a complicated issue", Georgie shared more. "I just wanted to say it isn't just about you and Mitch. There's a lot of stuff about my past too and how those things make me feel scared."

"Scared...?" Amy echoed, wondering what she meant by that.

Georgie nodded. "Whenever I could sense possible conflicts in my foster families, it made me want to run. But I know this is my family now and I've promised you all that I'm done running away, so... when I sensed a possible conflict... I guess I just felt like fighting instead. And I love Lou, so... I didn't want to see her get hurt."

Amy nodded carefully. "I can understand that. I don't want to hurt her either", she added, whether Georgie could - or wanted to - believe that or not.

"So... why didn't you tell me...? Why couldn't you be honest with me?" Georgie wanted to know.

Amy sighed.

"Because I didn't want to put you in that position. It's kind of like... a dam; if I tell you, but I'm not ready to tell Lou yet, then the barrier keeps isolating you two as well... And so I didn't want to tell anyone before I knew what it even was. What it even is", she corrected, hoping she was still right about that.

"Okay. Fair enough", Georgie said, trying her best to understand Amy's reasoning. "Well, I thought maybe you'd like to know that I'm trying to follow Lou's lead on this. She said I don't need to protect her, so... I'm trying not to. But like I said, I'm still learning. Old habits die hard..."

"I know..." Amy nodded a little. "And I'm glad you had that conversation, because it sounds like an important conversation to have. And, for what it's worth, never be afraid to protect the ones you love."

Georgie slowly let her eyes meet Amy's gaze.

"It was important for us to go through, yeah. I mean, I know I've been with you guys for years now and sometimes it feels like it's been this way forever, but... then something like this happens and I realize I haven't outran my past. Not that I want to entirely, because I never want to forget where I come from, but... it can cause problems sometimes."

"We all have our pasts and things we need to relearn, so don't be too hard on yourself", Amy reminded.

Georgie nodded. "I try not to."

"Can I have a hug...?" Amy's voice was cautious yet hopeful.

Georgie looked a little surprised, but she then smiled and walked closer. "Of course."

The niece bent slightly over the bed where Amy was sat and gently wrapped her arms around her aunt, hoping not to hurt her or rip off any wires she was still attached to.

"It's good to have you back", Georgie whispered.

Amy heard it, and immediately conflicted feelings followed.

She felt good about it too, but some part of her felt... misplaced.

It seemed like while she had been away, the world around her had moved on with such a hurried pace that she was having hard time catching up with everything.

So could she really say she was back?