I Was Going To File My Taxes Today. Oops

lots of people seem to forget strikes are SUPPOSED TO negatively impact the economy and inconvenience people. that's how you force the company to give into your demands. it's hitting them where it hurts hardest--their profit.

It’s something that has been annoying me for a very long time. Why the writers of Game of thrones/house of the dragon feel the need to make so many antagonists sexual predators.

I’m gonna take 3 very obvious examples:

Joffrey Baratheon: Did we need the se*ual assault and murder of the two prostitutes to understand what kind of boy he was. We saw him torture Sansa again and again, killing kids, being a coward…Did we really need to see him torture those women? Some will argue that it was to show us what man he would become but I think we got a pretty good idea of what kind of man he was.

Ramsay Bolton: he was the worst monster you could imagine, he r*ped women (off screen), chase them with his dogs, tortured Theon, skinned people alive for fun. We knew who he was, what he was. The r*pe of Sansa was just to shock the audience, it was no character development, certainly not for Sansa, that girl went through so much already, way too much. That scene was just made to make people talk about the show on social media.

Aegon II Targaryen: we could have for once in the got universe an antagonist major who was not born a monster but become one but the writers may have realized that we would feel too much sympathy for the boy after seeing as a teenager victims of abuse so they decided to kill that sympathy and use the most despicable way to do so. They made him a r’*apist. I remember a producer of the show saying that it would be different in hotd, if someone was r*pe the trauma would be focused on the victims, they would not make a r*pe scene for nothing. It may have been true for Alicent but not for Diana, her trauma will never be addressed and let’s be real if we ever see her again it would be for her death scene. The only thing her agression brings is the scene between Aegon and Alicent and since Alicent is really religious, if Aegon had a consensual sexu*l relationship with another maid or a prostitute the scene would have be the exact same. They wanted us to hate Aegon and the green before the start of the dance. It can also either be seen as excuse of the abuse « see, he was rotten from the start, they were right » or he was beaten up and treated like shit by his family so now he hates women and r*pe them. I’m really angry about Aegon.

Bonus (yeah it’s the kind of post with bonus): we all choose to forgot about it because it was so stupid and unnecessary but Jaime did r*pe Cersei in front of the dead body of their youngest son. But apparently both Cersei and Jaime forgot about it.

I would not make a post about Dany because I really wanted to talk about the way the antagonists of the shows were written and how it was always women who were victims but their trauma was never addressed. most of the time it was useless, or just use as a tool to make us hate a character faster so their work as writers would be easier (don’t have to write a nuanced character) but of course I think about her too, it’s a little different because her trauma was indeed addressed in the show, even if they waited s7 to use the word r*pe. But the way D&D filmed the scenes was to be remembered and once again shock the audience, it was also traumatic for Emilia.

You can write a good antagonist without making him a r*pist, in the fact those 3 characters would still have been great villains without that.

mike’s still smart in s3 & s4 though. he came up with the sauna test in like two seconds. he’s the entire reason the cali crew found the location of the nina project. i made a whole list of all the smart things he’s done in the show (for Reasons) and i promise you he hasn’t stopped being scary intelligent, he’s just mostly forced to deal with emotional conflicts now, which he’s abysmal at because he’s a teenage boy from a family that doesn’t talk about emotions and doesn’t even know what he’s feeling half the time, much less how to say it (or if he should say it) in ways that aren’t clumsy and impulsive and unintentionally hurtful

Concerning Alicent's reaction to Rhaenyra's idea to marry Haelena to Jace, canon shows that Ned Stark and Stannis Baratheon (both male faves) would react no differently if someone suggested betrothing one of their kids to someone they know/believe is a bastard

It's why even if Joff was decent Ned rejected Littlefingers advice to keep the betrothal and to also betroth Arya to Tommen. It's why Stannis freaked out when whatshisname suggested marrying Tommen to Shireen. Because fair or not Westeros has certain views on inheritance.

Alicents reaction is very natural given their society

The double standards are something else

The issue of bastards is extremely hard to make modern audiences understand because most cultures, at least in the west, no longer have this stigma against them. (Although they suddenly don't have a problem with outdated historical values when it comes to excusing child brides or sexism hahahaha !)

Nyra may have actually had some good intentions there but it was still a slap in her face and she had to have known that to some degree. And Alicent was pretty chill about it next to the reactions of Stannis and Sybelle Spicer and the rest when offered a marriage alliance with a baseborn kid.

But even had she readily accepted, you know they would have found some way to spin it so she's a villain 🤦‍♀️"zomg look at Alicent trying to steal the throne by selling her OWN CHILDREN through marriage!!!1!1!?1"

Women in Shakespeare

Me: *Removes my cat from my lap to do something else.*

My cat: Father is...evil? Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love? I am running away. I am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. I can no longer thrive in this household.