If You Are Ever Out Here W The Take "society LOVES Feminine Men And Masculine Women What About The Poor

i don't understand the recent "how often do men think of the roman empire" trend. one of the most well-known recent academic and popular historians of the roman empire is a woman, mary beard. why do this? it isn't cute or funny if you think about the implications for more than five seconds

i hate how people read asoiaf and go But what if they were more strategic. oh renly was so dumb to usurp his brother. cersei was so dumb when she [everything she ever did]. daemon was dumb when he did blood and cheese. and its like but they did those things because theyre renly cersei daemon. renly is an attention whore cos he has no parents and two brothers one of whom is a pussy-slaying frat bro and the other is a closeted middle manager. cersei did dumb things because she was raised by tywin 'caesar was right' lannister in the seven 'patriarchy' kingdoms. and daemon is daemon. you guys just want a book where everyone is a flat personality 500iq MENSA logician. and that sounds like dogshit!

highlights of the only affc chapter jon appears in, which i just read:

-everyone complaining about jon being a dick and sams like you guys are just mad he got a real job and then jon’s kind of a dick and sam’s like 😦

-jon sucks he never hangs out with us anymore he just bosses me around and hits shit with his stupid sword we miss him :(

-aftermath of the jon gilly baby swap “discussion” and jon’s clearly like ok that’s me done being a heinous cunt for today this part will be easy sams going to love going to college but then sam also starts freaking out and jons like what is your PROBLEM!!!!!!!!

-it’s your stupid fault i’m in stupid charge so now you have to deal with it go do autopsies NO MORE negative self talk I WILL KNOW

-“your evil bird drew blood” “ok what do you want me to do about that.”

-just straight up being like i want to fuckin kill the lannisters. anyway the nights watch takes no part or whatever. hope they eat shit and die

-he truly has the bearing of a man who was screaming into a pillow mere seconds before someone entered the room and is going to resume screaming as soon as they leave

-gilly kind of chewing him out on the way out the door and jon’s like :\ ok and sams like well that’s none of my business

-pull your hood up you have snowflakes melting in your hair 😭😭😭😭

finding out there's a frankenstein ballet and that it was in october of last year…DEVASTATING

look at this. look at these. im foaming at the mouth

﹒ (◞‸◟)　　🩰　　✿ @ coquette

“Have you forgotten Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon?”

“Never. That was Lannister work, Your Grace.”

“Lannister or Stark, what difference? Viserys used to call them the Usurper’s dogs. If a child is set upon by a pack of hounds, does it matter which one tears out his throat? All the dogs are just as guilty.” (Daenerys II, ADWD) 

It kind of amazes me that people expect Dany to just automatically worship Ned Stark. Yes, Ned Stark was a great man, an honorable man, but he still actively participated in the Rebellion and was the righthand man to the person who led the slaughter of Dany’s House. He was best friends with the man who called Rhaenys and Aegon “dragonspawn”, and even after his own anger at Robert, he still agreed to be Robert’s hand, 14 years later. He joined Robert to quell Balon’s rebellion. Ned’s guilt at aiding and abetting Robert in fact plagues him throughout AGOT. 

For me, it’s a little upsetting that the fandom doesn’t acknowledge that one of Ned’s actual flaws was his constant willingness to aid and abet Robert and overlook his excessiveness for so long. When Ned refused to cosign the plan to assassinate Dany, that was the first time in 14 years and probably the only time that Ned defied Robert and went against him. When Ned was angry at Robert sanctioning and being pleased at the deaths of Rhaenys and Aegon, he still went back to him after Lyanna’s death. He still saw Robert happily crowned. He still joined him to quell Balon’s rebellion. He still agreed to be Robert’s hand. When Joffrey got Mycah the Butcher’s Boy killed and Cersei ordered Lady to be executed, he didn’t stand up to Robert. It took Ned years to go against the dictates of his best friend.

So, while Ned isn’t “cold-eyed” or of “frozen heart” like Viserys taught her, and while he isn’t exactly a “dog” like Robert or Tywin, he was still culpable, and the AGOT narrative holds him accountable through his constant and repetitive feelings of guilt at Elia and her children’s deaths, as well as his fears of what will happen to his own daughters at the hands of the Lannisters. In fact, Varys’ very speech to Ned about Princess Rhaenys showcases that Ned stews in the hypocrisy of warring against one tyrant who kills children but then supporting a King who cheered and smiled at the deaths of other children. 

In that sense, yes, “all the dogs are just as guilty”. Ned is guilty of being complicit in Robert’s anti-Targaryen blood purity by aiding and abetting his conquest and his reign. GRRM has strived to show us that Robert’s Rebellion was ultimately not a moral or revolutionary conquest, as it replicated the same oppressive infrastructures Aerys II simply took to a 1000th degree. Robert still wanted innocent children and women murdered, he still massacred an entire house, in Balon’s Rebellion he enabled the Ironborn smallfolk to be murdered and their women raped, he himself was a rapist and abuser, he left bastards all over Westeros and was a horrible and absent father, he left the realm in disrepair, and the hole created by his absence led to the outbreak of a civil war that no one can blame the Targaryens for this time around. 

Ned even saw Robert slapping Cersei. He came to realize that Robert is abusive, which is why he warned Cersei that he knows the truth about her children, because he did not want Robert hunting them. That he was even going to tell him the truth and endanger their lives is something else that has always bothered me. Is a warning really good enough to keep them out of danger, especially knowing how Robert reacted to Rhaenys and Aegon’s murders? Regardless, if the narrative holds Ned accountable for his complicity in Robert’s actions, and if the narrative shows us, time and time again, that Robert’s Rebellion was ultimately a bastion of hypocrisy and did nothing meaningful to change the structures that led tyrants like Aerys to brutalize people, then it does not make sense to think that Dany here is being “unreasonable”. If your entire family was murdered and someone told you that the guy who was best friends and comrades-in-arms with the man responsible for the event was a good person, would you be so quick to believe them, so quick to forgive?

I’m sure Dany will learn that Ned was truly a good person and that despite his complicity in Robert’s crimes, he felt guilt and actively strove to be a better person and to right the wrongs of his past (namely, the complicity, the overlooking/the willful blinding), and that he was one of the few people who cared about what happened to Elia and her children, many years later. But Dany has the right to mourn her family and the right to be angry at everyone involved in what happened to them, as well as to currently hate the people who were best friends with and aided the man who smiled at their corpses. 

You guys often like to say that the Starks will be justified in mistrusting Dany because she’s Aerys’ daughter (and Aerys killed Rickard and Brandon Stark). I’m saying here that Dany will be justified in mistrusting the Starks for being Ned’s children because Ned Stark was Robert’s best friend and Robert ruined Dany’s life, led to the slaughter of her house, murdered her eldest brother, hunted her even when she was in the womb, sent an assassin after her, and smiled at the corpses of her niece and nephew. She is justified in that anger and she will be justified in that mistrustfulness. It absolutely does and will go both ways. 

Girls on Halloween be like

love is the most twisted curse of all