Reblog To Give The Person You Reblogged From The Strength To Complete The Task™

Listen.

EVERYBODY knows (or should) that you DO. NOT. STOP. in Vidor, Texas. 

It’s best to just run out of gas elsewhere. Whatever you do, black folks, DO NOT STOP IN VIDOR, TEXAS. 

There’s a good chance you’ll get lynched or just come up missing - and I’m not joking.

also do NOT stop in Harrison, Arkansas!!!! (relatively close to OK and MI) a nazi town with a BIG KKK organization.

Reblog To Save Life

Me at the function (House of the Dragon watch party) sharing what I learned from this open access book chapter about authority in Game of Thrones

I might be having a brainfart here, but should Luke have been protected in the first place?

Parlamentarians, bearing some sort of white flag are protected but they tend to come in two flavours

1. to negotiate an immediate end to hostilities (usually involving the surrender of either party)

2. to negotiate for humanitarian measures (e.g. To evacuate the wounded or recover the dead)

But Luke‘s mission wasn‘t that. He left with the clear intention to return with an army for his mother to use. Either as additional bargaining weight or in war. He served the exact same strategic purpose as the ravens the Lannister host sent to Harrenhal durig the Battle by the Lakeshore, all of which were shot down by the Riverlanders without it being treated as anything particularly despicable.

Luke was and should have been protected by Guestright and the status of Storms End as neutral territory. But when he left, Aemond should have been well within his rights to engage him as an enemy combattant, because realistically that‘s what he was.

I am not saying Aemond should‘ve killed the little guy, but he would have been well within his rights to take him prisoner.

I might be completely wrong about this, but this thought just occured to me.

HotD Episode 10 reaction under the cut.

(These aren’t my initial ones since I forgot to do my initial comments, but yeah. I’ve also added the “boundless watches HotD” tag. I will be using that for season 2 block that and “boundless watches” if you don’t want my future opinions or to be spoiled!)

Rhaenyra you did nothing to earn it.

You are not perfect and your dad did diddly squat to prepare you.

Rhaenys… baby… you did start this war. What about all those people you killed?

Daemon did not look like he liked being called Prince

And Jace being a bad brother, knocking Luke down and being forceful. Brother of the year. Even Aegon didn’t push Aemond down. Actually the only time we saw Aegon and Aemond actively fight was when Aegon was trying to leave King’s Landing.

Really do think they are going to play up hot headed Jace the coming season.

I actually wouldn’t be surprised if they had him man handle Baela in season 2 in his anger and frustration, mimicking his grandfather and Daemon. Like I don’t mean he’ll be as physical as Viserys or Daemon, I just mean he would act roughly.

And man… Rhaenyra refusing feminine help while delivering her baby… causing the death of her daughter. Carrying on the cycle her father started. Quite literally ripping the baby from her body and then mourning the child because she would not accept help. Her maids (or whatever they are meant to signify) were begging to help.

Also, people complaining about the Greens making a “show” of Jaehaerys’ death as though the Blacks did not do the same for baby Visenya’s. Gathering all who were there to the funeral and then having Rhaenyra crowned at her own child’s funeral. Like??? Not the time

Also, the Black Kingsguard twin bowing and doing his vow looking up at Daemon rather than at Rhaenyra’s feet.

Rhaenys, you chose a side as soon as you fled. Bend the freaking knee

Is Rhaenyra supposed to be queen of the Rhoynar yet? Isn’t that Dorne?

Lady, why isn’t your heir your cupbearer?? Or at least your husband’s betrothed? The supposed next queen?

Lady, House Baratheon has wanted someone of their blood on the throne for ages and there is no Baratheon blood in your boys, Rhaenyra. Stop pretending they do because that is what actively put Luke in danger later.

RHAENYRA YOU JUST HAD A TRAUMATIC MISCARRIAGE!!!!! WHY ARE YOU ON FREAKING DRAGONBACK?!?!?!? You were in so much pain with Joffrey, and could barely walk?!?!?!?

All of Rhaenyra’s kids are given good options and positions if they had accepted Aegon’s terms.

What would the Green kids have gotten had Rhaenyra been made queen? What positions? What holdings?

Rhaenyra… sweetie… why do you think Otto owes you any loyalty? You made him lose his job when you lied to your father, who knew full well you lied.

And that stupid page was pointless.

Why not have Alicent write a letter??? Or go herself????

Also??? Why didn’t Rhaenyra offer any terms in return for the Greens to contemplate?

Rhaenys, why are you still there? Like you are doing nothing

Why is Rhaenyra shocked that Daemon doesn’t know? Daemon was only informally the heir? Viserys wouldn’t have shared the dream with Daemon because he was actively trying for a son.

And the stupid abuse plot that will no doubt be used to make it so Rhaenyra does not have to be held accountable for her actions. “Oh, she’s being abused so she can’t publically condemn Daemon’s actions”

It actually would have made more sense if Alicent had written a letter saying Viserys had shared his dreams with Alicent and said that Aegon must carry on his dream. That would have made more sense for why Rhaenyra was being hesitant because she might think that Viserys shared Aegon’s dream with Alicent as well as the SoIaF, and with Daemon not knowing, would have given Rhaenyra pause on staking her claim to the throne. Then, her going to war after Luke, would have made it more of her active choice against what she believes her father would have wanted. It would have been a good dilemma or her end.

Corlys… you have been passed out, how did you know Viserys died but not that your brother died?

Corlys, you should now be thinking Daemon is the reason your daughter is dead, your son was murdered, as was your brother. Like???

And Corlys? Even if you wanted to stay neutral, Daemon sure as heck would not allow you to.

Jace, Luke, and Joffrey were given the chance of being heir to both Driftmark and Dragonstone. They wouldn’t be left with nothing, nor would they seemingly be placed in any danger. I would argue Aegon the Younger and Viserys would be the one with some danger as they would have been at the Red Keep. “Aegon” offered that. They would have lived, your grandchildren would have been fine.

Yeah. Where is Daemon?

They swore oaths when it was either you or Daemon. Your father should have had them all rewear to you after his son was born and survived.

Love that the only people not allowed to have revenge is House Velaryon, the racially Black house.

AND AGAIN, RHAENYS ALREADY PARTICIPATED IN AN ACT OF AGGRESSION!

I love how they are only focusing on House Hightower, as though the entire Reach is not really freaking important too.

Why does Baela not go with Luke? She has actual Baratheon blood? Why does Baela not go at all?

Jace is like “we have dragons” but only Jace and Luke are sent? What about Baela?!? She can apparently ride and fight on dragonback next season!

Rhaenyra? Why are you having them swear to the Seven? Those oaths mean nothing since they don’t seem to hold to that Faith! And besides! Jace is going North! Where they hold to the Old Gods anyway!

Also, why the heck does Rhaenys not go????????? She’s more closely related to the Baratheons even if Luke was related to them!

“He’ll be honored to host the Prince of the realm” when have you ever spent any time playing up the Baratheon connection? Borros’ daughters could have served as companions to Baela and Rhaena! Borros’ heir would have been a girl seemingly and you could have offered to foster her as a female heir yourself Rhaenyra.

I feel like it would have made more sense for Daemon to have taken Rhaena to see if she could claim a dragon rather than him stupidly singing for a reason we are just not given in the show.

Luke, why would you not leave as soon as you saw Vhagar?????

Like, you KNOW Aemond has a beef with you and the only reason there was no retaliation is because someone else was there to stick up for you

Also… you just had a letter. You could have had it passed on and then left!

Also… the fact that Rhaenyra and Rhaenys are seemingly unaware that Borros can’t read is astounding.

“I will not fight you.” If I were Aemond, I would have said “why, because you do not have three to help you fight me?”

Luke hasn’t even flown in battle and I assume he hasn’t flown in a storm either. Like? Why not request time to stay and talk things out? Hear more of a possible offer? Hold him hostage for the king you now apparently serve? That would have been the smart thing to do

Also, Luke drew his sword, so does that not mean he’s no longer bound to be protected as a messenger?

While Arrax did so without Luke’s command, once more, it is the Blacks that incite the first physical act of violence. Rhaena or Baela punching Aemond first. Jace punching Aemond first when he didn’t like what Aemond was saying. Rhaenys escaping on dragonback instead of just fleeing and killing multiple people in the process. Arrax breathing fire on Vhagar.

And love (*sarcastic*) how the Greens are made to feel bad when they retaliate to aggression they did not necessarily start (although Aemond is fully at fault for being the one to set out after Luke and Arrax)

Great final shot of Rhaenyra? But I honestly don’t feel like it was a strong end to the season.

Bonus for next season:

I hate the whole “eye for an eye; a son for a son” thing because there was never an eye for an eye.

all RIGHT:

Why You're Writing Medieval (and Medieval-Coded) Women Wrong: A RANT

(Or, For the Love of God, People, Stop Pretending Victorian Style Gender Roles Applied to All of History)

This is a problem I see alllll over the place - I'll be reading a medieval-coded book and the women will be told they aren't allowed to fight or learn or work, that they are only supposed to get married, keep house and have babies, &c &c.

If I point this out ppl will be like "yes but there was misogyny back then! women were treated terribly!" and OK. Stop right there.

By & large, what we as a culture think of as misogyny & patriarchy is the expression prevalent in Victorian times - not medieval. (And NO, this is not me blaming Victorians for their theme park version of "medieval history". This is me blaming 21st century people for being ignorant & refusing to do their homework).

Yes, there was misogyny in medieval times, but 1) in many ways it was actually markedly less severe than Victorian misogyny, tyvm - and 2) it was of a quite different type. (Disclaimer: I am speaking specifically of Frankish, Western European medieval women rather than those in other parts of the world. This applies to a lesser extent in Byzantium and I am still learning about women in the medieval Islamic world.)

So, here are the 2 vital things to remember about women when writing medieval or medieval-coded societies

FIRST. Where in Victorian times the primary axes of prejudice were gender and race - so that a male labourer had more rights than a female of the higher classes, and a middle class white man would be treated with more respect than an African or Indian dignitary - In medieval times, the primary axis of prejudice was, overwhelmingly, class. Thus, Frankish crusader knights arguably felt more solidarity with their Muslim opponents of knightly status, than they did their own peasants. Faith and age were also medieval axes of prejudice - children and young people were exploited ruthlessly, sent into war or marriage at 15 (boys) or 12 (girls). Gender was less important.

What this meant was that a medieval woman could expect - indeed demand - to be treated more or less the same way the men of her class were. Where no ancient legal obstacle existed, such as Salic law, a king's daughter could and did expect to rule, even after marriage.

Women of the knightly class could & did arm & fight - something that required a MASSIVE outlay of money, which was obviously at their discretion & disposal. See: Sichelgaita, Isabel de Conches, the unnamed women fighting in armour as knights during the Third Crusade, as recorded by Muslim chroniclers.

Tolkien's Eowyn is a great example of this medieval attitude to class trumping race: complaining that she's being told not to fight, she stresses her class: "I am of the house of Eorl & not a serving woman". She claims her rights, not as a woman, but as a member of the warrior class and the ruling family. Similarly in Renaissance Venice a doge protested the practice which saw 80% of noble women locked into convents for life: if these had been men they would have been "born to command & govern the world". Their class ought to have exempted them from discrimination on the basis of sex.

So, tip #1 for writing medieval women: remember that their class always outweighed their gender. They might be subordinate to the men within their own class, but not to those below.

SECOND. Whereas Victorians saw women's highest calling as marriage & children - the "angel in the house" ennobling & improving their men on a spiritual but rarely practical level - Medievals by contrast prized virginity/celibacy above marriage, seeing it as a way for women to transcend their sex. Often as nuns, saints, mystics; sometimes as warriors, queens, & ladies; always as businesswomen & merchants, women could & did forge their own paths in life

When Elizabeth I claimed to have "the heart & stomach of a king" & adopted the persona of the virgin queen, this was the norm she appealed to. Women could do things; they just had to prove they were Not Like Other Girls. By Elizabeth's time things were already changing: it was the Reformation that switched the ideal to marriage, & the Enlightenment that divorced femininity from reason, aggression & public life.

For more on this topic, read Katherine Hager's article "Endowed With Manly Courage: Medieval Perceptions of Women in Combat" on women who transcended gender to occupy a liminal space as warrior/virgin/saint.

So, tip #2: remember that for medieval women, wife and mother wasn't the ideal, virgin saint was the ideal. By proving yourself "not like other girls" you could gain significant autonomy & freedom.

Finally a bonus tip: if writing about medieval women, be sure to read writing on women's issues from the time so as to understand the terms in which these women spoke about & defended their ambitions. Start with Christine de Pisan.

I learned all this doing the reading for WATCHERS OF OUTREMER, my series of historical fantasy novels set in the medieval crusader states, which were dominated by strong medieval women! Book 5, THE HOUSE OF MOURNING (forthcoming 2023) will focus, to a greater extent than any other novel I've ever yet read or written, on the experience of women during the crusades - as warriors, captives, and political leaders. I can't wait to share it with you all!

HEY GUYS!!

GUYS!!!

FRANCE HAS REACHED THE REQUIRED NUMBER OF SIGNATURES ON THE CITIZEN'S INITIATIVE AGAINST CONVERSION THERAPY IN THE EU!!

ONE COUNTRY DOWN, SIX TO GO!!

We also need still quite a few signatures in order to reach the one million required.

As to date, the six other countries with the most signatures are:

Spain - 38.72%

Finland - 30.31%

Ireland - 24.86%

Netherlands - 24.15%

Germany - 23.54%

Belgium - 23.09%

So yeah, still a long way to go, but we ARE slowly getting closer. Don't stop now! Don't let this stay within the community, either, if you have any friends or family who are open to queer rights, get them to sign, too!

I know it’s not hard to point out reactionaries hypocrisy when it comes to like safe spaces or hug boxes or whatever but genuinely how much of an echo chamber do you have to exist in for you to think this is a reasonable thing to say

On the subject of Alicent and the accusations of hypocrisy, I'm not really interested in delving into what societal taboos she actually is and isn't breaking. Don't care, have fun, girl.

What does interest me is how the popular framing of Rhaenyra vs Alicent as feminist girlboss vs woman for Trump prevents people from acknowledging what the show explicitly told them in season 1.

Simply put, I never understood why people were interpreting Alicent as someone who honestly, genuinely wants to enforce the values of duty, honor, and sacrifice as a social norm to combat "sexual immorality" (??? I guess???), instead of hiding behind them as the only available coping mechanism for her horrifying personal situation.

Mind you, Alicent isn't just subjected to what the standard for Westerosi noblewomen is, i.e. being sold as a bargaining chip for loveless breeding while expected to have no say in it. She gets a particularly nasty version of this by being sold to an old creep at 15 and put into an extremely exposed position as a queen who is, to reiterate, 15 and thus unable to tweak any personal space, power, and advantages in this marriage until after child number three. And as a plus, she gets mocked both by her husband and his incompetent idiot of a brother (for whom she went to bat, btw), discarded by her only friend, and her children being ignored and neglected by the very man who made sure she'd have them—starting at 15.

So it's the least surprising thing in the world that she would reframe her powerlesness in a way that'd give her some sense of active involvement, i.e. she made a sacrifice and she made that sacrifice in the name of duty.

Alicent's moral framework is such that it encompasses the totality of one person. It's actually astonishing how little of it she applies to others. She empathises with Rhaenyra not stepping up and "doing her duty" by marrying whomever her dad throws at her, and seeks to give her options. She's outraged at Rhaenyra not because she can't stand the idea of a girlboss winning, rather because it's physically painful how little Rhaenyra cares about the precariousness of her political position. She doesn't turn against Rhaenyra because the latter had extramarital sex; it's because she lied to her fucking face. And even when gunning for her bastards who are the textbook definition of usurping and a succession crisis waiting to happen, she allows for one bastard as a freebie.

So no, Alicent's "where is duty, where is sacrifice" isn't her demanding that an immowal girlboss corrects her behaviour right now, young lady. It's a cry of a person breaking because she can no longer ignore that her cope was ever just that, that she was made to give and sacrifice everything while fuck-ups who sacrificed nothing and demanded everything are now going after her children, the fruit of a life she never wanted to live.

Now, why was she made to live that life? Because Viserys.

Why was she made to have those children? Because Viserys.

Who created the situation to which adopting a coping mechanism became a matter of survival? Viserys.

Well, Vizzy? Is fucking dead. Tragically he wasn't given the Drogo treatment of having an urgent meeting with a pillow but he is indeed toast. So the whole reason why Alicent reframed her awful life as an act of dutiful sacrifice? Is gone.

So it doesn't surprise me whatsoever that the moment she became a widow she decided to do something very much undutiful and unsacrificial and jumped on Criston's dick, or that the old programming where she isn't allowed to have anything at all would always immediately bounce back.

(Why is Criston, apparently, pursuing the relationship, I still have no earthly clue)

This site is an AMAZING resource for writing canon ASOIAF. It lets you look up any word to see if it is used in the book - do they have weeks, months, oil lamps, bed bugs, fiddles etc. etc. in Westeros?

This site has the answer!

"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.