#(except in the case of racism or homophobia etc etc but that should go w/o saying)

[horizon-verizon]

There is an enduring sense in the fandom that if you cannot structurally change the entire or major parts of an oppressive status quo, it's somehow better that one does absolutely nothing. Bc you're "messing up the stability of an already stable social order, which proved itself to be the best or most reliable bc it's endured for so long".

And I despise it. Because it essentially means that any effort except a huge, topsy-turvy one where the whole system gets upended or severely so doesn't matter. (At the very least those that don't seem like it.)

It's a perfect partner to racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. & people use it not just against Rhaenyra but Dany, Rhaenys, & Alysanne!!! Any Targ woman, really. Aegon V, if one mentions his laws. Ironic, bc Jaehaerys had progressive laws for peasants ONLY bc of Alysanne, but it's obvious why they prefer the female-heir denying Jaehaerys over Aegon V!!!

Coupled with this sense, some say that these women are totally complicit in those systems bc use they happen to be born into royalty or aristocracy, actively use their privileges at times for their own ends instead of ALWAYS to create or influence others for groundbreaking policies & laws, or manage to just escape certain abuses other women face bc they were reserved for the specific task of having children for their male spouses.

Daenerys was a bridal slave, for example. She doesn't face SA from random men every other night, but that doesn't stop the risk of her facing that fate if she were to ever fall out of her husband-owner, Drogo, favor. That doesn't stop her haters from arguing that she should have done more for Mirri & those Lhazareen women, that she even profits from slave labor when she clearly is allocating and directing funds from taxes to the city of Meereen! From ignoring how all those she freed are not still slaves, that the slave masters time and time again have said, point blank, that she is a danger to their enterprise CONTINENT-WIDE!!! She makes mistakes and the biggest one compromising too much with the slave owners of Meereen, yeah, bc she is in the beginning of her leadership journey, and still she manages to inspire loyalty, faith, and hope in many of her followers and she also still manages to keep most people alive w/o actually giving all the way in and that terrifies the slaveowners! For good reason. Read the last few pages of the last book and tell me that she won't come for their necks, either literally or figuratively idc. She's obviously not fucking up so bad or has totally failed in her role as a protector, and she will make mistakes as other leaders before her and after her will! Why this level of negative & bad faith scrutiny?!

And let's go to Rhaenys the Conqueror. She created the rule of thumb & the rule of six, where no man could legally beat their wives to death when she decreed that the rod could not be thicker than the husband's thumb and he could not whack her more than 7 times. Some argue why didn't she outlaw wife-beating entirely if she and her siblings conquered Westeros. First of all, these are the very same people who bleat abt how the Targaryens destroyed and colonized Andal culture without bothering to offer material evidence of such. If Rhaenys & her siblings actually have "colonized" the Andal-FM lords, & it was Andal custom for men to beat their wives indiscriminately…then the Targs couldn't have actually destroyed any part of Andal "culture" and replaced it entirely with Valyrian ones where seemingly men could not beat their wives at all! If you can even consider this "destroying culture", as I'm sure a few would argue. If anything, this was a cultural compromise, and it obviously functioned and was intended as a form of protection for women when before there was absolutely none! Aside from male relatives, but that's not system-wide, makes such cases seem not serious enough or that people across communities shouldn't care too much about others when you personalize it, AND that just reinforces the idea that only men have a property claim over women, be they biologically family or by marriage. Secondly, if you argue that Viserys should have obeyed the "laws" of male primogeniture bc he is a feudal king--the "Protector" of their customs and interests--that is only supported by the swords & loyalty of lords, that the GC of 101 proves that (as if Jaehaerys also didn't use that to enact his own will passively for a male heir), then why is it that Rhaenys seems to do something along those lines and WORK with the current Andal customs, her efforts--which actually are protective to those who needed protecting!!! Rhaenys & her siblings were new monarchs of a newly unified-ish realm, & as unifying conquerors tend to do, they opted for the strategy that would keep them seated bc it made "the lords" comfortable that they would not force them to change the bulk of their religious and cultural practices. Not only did Visenya & Rhaenys arrange strategic marriages that both benefited them and those married (their families), but Aegon made it a point to go on progresses and hear various lords and peasants' issues to arbitrate. Which made it so that these lords felt they would not be led by a leader who'd enforce his laws willy-nilly without considering his subject's conditions or desires. It is in this context that Rhaenys, we could see and assume, was taking a bit of a risk with not one but 2 new laws against men's "rights" over their wives' bodies!

There's Alysanne, who took it a step further in her women's courts, and the right of first nigh abolishment, her attempts at the Citadel, & the Widow's Law. Again, if not for her, Westeros and KL would be 3 steps behind in infrastructure and women's protection. Alysanne was a Queen Consort who had even less power on her own than Rhaenys & Visenya and we see that she had to convince Jaehaerys to implement his laws; it took Septon Barth's interference/support for Jaehaerys to even go along with the abolishment of the right of first night! Later with Viserra, I believe that she arranged the much older Theomore to Viserra bc it coincided with Jaehaerys' plans for that marriage alliance between the Manderlys and the royal house. And to please or to go along with some of her husband's plans was to also add onto her own power…bc a royal Consort only has power by their monarch spouse gives them license to influence and status! Was it clumsy writing? Of course, it was pretty bizarre and partly due to how F&B is written as a historical document despite how this portion of history is better documented than others. Did Alysanne indirectly cause Viserra's death in her refusal to relent from her suspicion that Viserra was trying to become queen, as she interpreted it? Arguably. and I think that GRRM was telling us that over time and over the disappointments w/Jaehaerys, she slowly got more determined to retain any sense control…and where does her control end up coming from? Yeah, GRRM is showing that tightrope, I think.

Rhaenyra was not actively progressive in policy nor direct action as all the prior 3, but to argue that she should be feminist so that the usurpation and the femicide done against her becomes unjustified is absurd! Oh, she wasn't a feminist at all or progressive, she didn't implement any sort of law at all for women or smallfolk [did Aegon?! or Alicent?! or Aemond? Daeron, Otto?! so why are they better?!!!], so that's why she shouldn't be queen even though by the very "law of the land", she is by right the heir to this throne that never actually was about who would make a good, consummate ruler in the first place. 🙄.

So there is a vague & un-discernable, forever shifting, & impossible goal-post-level of feminist activity or "being" that these nihilistic or conservative naysayers use against women being leaders or even passively having positions of power that may still benefit the women of Westeros through setting a precedent &/or actions of necessary intervals that build on the past ones under conditions that are already limiting how much they can do or say in order to be able to put forth those feminist (really proto feminist), anti-slavery, etc., progressive steps--on a damn psychological and psychosocial level that:

diminishes how much brain power and time a woman can put to policy or things outside of the "house" because their power depends on the husband's regard towards them

makes it much harder for women to really commit themselves or fully expect to implement their goals & dreams for any sort of change (or even dream of any) when there's such subtle and unsubtle obstacles in their way: Rhaenyra, her stepmother an siblings plotting against her and then the usurpation, that we see in the microcosm of how the treasury stolen from her and the crown led to the smallfolk turning against her at KL AND the ongoing war, thus preventing her from really establishing herself as Queen/ruling at all; Alysanne, I described with Jaehaerys; Rhaenys, Andal patriarchy; much less, in Rhaena the Black Bride's case, find just actual happiness and plain old security against male aggression!

provides a setting where women become more compelled to compromise with some patriarchal ideas/practices to maintain a certain level of power or defense (there's a thing line to measure and transgress the "right way" and without other's judgement and impatience or lack of faith adds an additional pressure of, outside of fiction but applicable)

leads up to Daenerys having to have the strength to pursue her goals on with her own instincts and compassion and wit, work harder than most men would face in her position...not that any could since men cannot and have not largely had the bridal slave’s experience!

Anyway, all of it ignores or tries to hide the fact that it is exactly that undisrupted male authority over female (of any class or wealth) & under-classed people that is the true destabilizer and destroyer of lives. That there is still so much meaning and real impact in what people like Alysanne and Rhaenys did/do and huge upheavals or entire sweeps of structural change like Dany does takes measured steps!

That through multiple Targ women dying form childbirth, raped, murdered, or sidelined and critically limited in political authority or agency, this becomes so obvious! you cannot oppress half of your population, reduce them to sex-giving broodmares who you can kill if you think they have a male heir on the way or have cheated on you and call yourself progressive! You're actually 10 steps behind where you're supposed to be because half of you is not involved enough in the development of your society!

We wanna be all "feudalism is bad", "blood purity is bad", "the Targs didn't end feudalism so they are the most evil and responsible for all evil in Westeros" but when they see someone either passively or actively seem to make any progress to mitigate the pressures and power of patriarchal boundaries or concepts or whatever....they go screaming "not feminist enough" or "they're actually just like everyone else"! And some of us will also try to say that Daenerys is either entirely too much like her colonist ancestors or she will end up that way as D&D published because she is Targaryen (a bio-essentialist argument) to argue about why SLAVEOWNERS should stay in power!

And it all is very anti-intellectualism, anti-critical thought or introspection and examination...because on closer look and investigation, you will see how F&B is a text that was always anti-misogyny on GRRM's part (attemptively) even as it is misogynist as an-in world text! And it's on purpose--both the writing and how people wax "it's a dragon show, nothing at all to do with misogyny or wokeness!"

Because then you are not challenging the status quo...because you can't reason through it or against it and when it happens in seemingly harmless manifestations people will think it innocuous.

[sage-nebula]

I see what you’re saying, but counterpoint: Why? Why do folks need to admit that things they like are badly made?

Setting aside, for a moment, that “badly made” is subjective and that some people might genuinely disagree on what is or isn’t badly made — who are these people hurting, when they make posts expressing their love for how this series was written or that scene was filmed? Who are they hurting when they gush over this character’s development or this ship’s writing? Are they hurting those who disagree? Because if so, those people can easily use the block or blacklist options. Are they hurting themselves? They seem happy enough, and I haven’t heard of Bad Fandom Opinions putting anyone in the hospital, so I don’t think that’s the case, either. If someone makes posts on their own blog about This Thing They Like, talking about why they like it and how awesome they think it is . . . they’re not hurting anyone. And if they’re not hurting anyone, then I see no reason why they need change their behavior.

There is this attitude that has, I believe, sprung up in recent years where you’re expected to list out all the flaws of everything you like. To call something you love, whether it’s a series or a ship or a character, “garbage” is seen as cool or enlightened. If you’re not constantly talking about this bit of bad writing in a show you like, or this bit of bad gameplay in a game you enjoy, or how X developer is trash because Y reasons, then you’re a stan or a shill and you clearly don’t have critical thinking skills. But I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s exhausting to have to list out all the flaws in something you love before you’re allowed to talk about liking it. It makes me sad to look at something I love and degrade it with insults. It makes me feel like I’m joining the bullies who would mock me for something I enjoyed, which was admittedly a form of defense I used in middle school to keep my peers from knowing that I (gasp) still liked Pokémon and YGO. If I mock these things, then I’m one of them, they’ll think I’m not a loser and I’ll be safe. But bullies will be bullies regardless and we shouldn’t be afraid to show unabashed love for something, without needing to simultaneously tear it down. Yes, you can point out the flaws in something and still love it wholeheartedly — but you shouldn’t need to tear it apart every time you make a post about how much you love it. You should be able to say, “This thing rocks!” and have that be the end of it. Not every place is a place for critical discourse, and just because someone doesn’t make a long list detailing all the flaws in their favorite thing whenever they talk about it doesn’t mean they aren’t aware those flaws exist.

And on that note, as I said above, “Thing Is Badly Made” is subjective. Even if a large group of people agrees that Thing Is Bad, that’s still a subjective opinion. It’s just a popular subjective opinion. For instance, you and I have very different opinions on your favorite video game. You think it’s wonderful, and I think it's the opposite of wonderful. But my opinion is NOT any more correct or valid than yours is. I may think that all of the choices that went into the development of that game were poor ones, but you might conversely think they were wonderful ones, and that opinion is just as correct as mine . . . because it’s an opinion, and a video game is a piece of art, and different people are going to view art differently. And heck, over time, our opinions can change as well. When I was nineteen I thought Supernatural was well-written in the first five seasons at least, but now at thirty-one I look back at even season one’s writing and cringe. But does that mean that Supernatural is, objectively, poorly written garbage? No, because it’s art. And art is subjective. And people who think that the early seasons of Supernatural are still good aren’t wrong, nor do they need to qualify their gushy love posts with “I know it’s garbage” first before getting into the praise.

So, ultimately, I do understand what you’re saying. And I agree with the point of “it’s okay to love something you consider to be garbage,” because it is. But unless someone who Likes A Thing picks a fight with someone who Doesn’t Like A Thing and screams at them about why they should actually Like This Thing, I don’t think they need to qualify their posts with, “I know this Thing Is Bad,” even if Thing Is Bad is the popular subjective opinion. Maybe they genuinely, wholeheartedly believe Thing Is Good. Maybe their opinion of what good camerawork, or writing, or game design is genuinely differs from popular opinion. And maybe they already privately struggle enough with everyone saying Thing They Like is garbage, but they’re pretending they don’t by making positive posts instead, and being told, “your thing is garbage but you can still love it” doesn’t actually make them feel any better, because they don’t want to call this thing they love, that they don’t think is garbage, garbage.

Bottom line, if someone is attacking others for having a differing opinion on A Thing, then they need to stop and check their behavior. But if they’re just making gushy posts about how they think A Thing is amazing, then they should be allowed to do so without qualifiers. They’re not hurting anyone, and it’s easy enough to block them and move on if their opinions are bothersome.

There's some folks who really need to just admit The Thing They Like Is Badly Made.

Like. Some posts read like a fucking hostage being forced to try and convince people The Thing Is Well Made lmao

It's okay, you can stop trying to deny raging flaws in a thing and pretend they're masterfully crafted. Really.

You can love a thing with all your heart AND it can be badly made. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I have deeply enjoyed things that I would not recommend to anybody, things that are just undeniably bad. But I found them fun anyway, because something doesn't need to be super well made to be enjoyable.

It's okay to admit the thing you like sucks in terms of how its crafted, and you like it anyway because there's nothing wrong with that nor is it something to be ashamed of.

I know a lot of stuff says otherwise but that's BS. You can just embrace loving something that's just. Not Good

It's okay. Embrace it.

It's honestly a lot less stressful than trying to pretend away glaring flaws.

[bigskydreaming]

Two Qs, 1. How do I stop people from assuming I'm ableist n hate me for it if a character I Hate for TONS of petty+ serious reasons just happens to be a disabled character? Like if they were a brain in a jar with a mouthpiece I'd still not be in their vicinity without setting my head on fire it has nothing to do with their body or gender or skills etc. And 2. How do you post a fic w/o fear of some lurker stealing ideas n publishing it as a novel n becoming popular I mean... like CC exists......

Here’s the thing….there’s never ever going to be a person who manages to make it through life without being misconstrued on SOME subject. We have no control over what other people think about us, only on what we put out there for them to perceive and form opinions on. And sometimes those opinions are entirely contrary to what we feel we’re putting out there, and that sucks and can be aggravating as hell, and you might need to vent about that or groan to yourself or a friend or maybe it’ll make you bitter and petty on a subject, but at the end of the day - it doesn’t matter. You can’t ENSURE someone has the opinion about you and what you’re putting out there that you want them to have, and you just gotta find a way to be okay with that.

And there’s really no way around it, you just kinda gotta….figure out a way to make that happen. And its easier said than done, for sure, and its far from a sure thing, I bitch and moan constantly about people getting me wrong on various subjects because hoo boy do I seem to get a lot of people steamed about opinions I don’t actually have lolololol. So like I said, I get it, its frustrating as hell, when you’re absolutely sure the opinion they’re expressing of you is not based on something you’ve actually said or believe.

BUT.

But but but but but.

Before you go raring off to the races getting frustrated and fed up with a person because they seem just determined not to hear what you’re truly trying to say on a subject…..double check, triple check, make crystal fucking clear that you’ve reviewed what you’ve ACTUALLY said - not just what you think you said, not what you meant to say in your head, but rereading back to yourself what you ACTUALLY have said on the subject - and make 100% sure that they’re not picking up on something that YOU YOURSELF DIDN’T PICK UP ON WHEN EXPRESSING AN OPINION.

Because that happens. All the time. To all of us.

And just because we didn’t MEAN to put any ableism or racism or homophobia or sexism in there, that doesn’t mean that some didn’t slip in any way without our realizing not. We all grow up steeped in environments that are chock full of all those things and more, they inform and influence so many more of our opinions and choices and decisions than even we realize. And just because we don’t THINK of ourselves as being any of the above, doesn’t mean that we haven’t at any point expressed certain viewpoints or said certain things or performed certain actions…..that in and of themselves are ableist or racist or homophobic or sexist or transphobic or any of the above or more. 

And just because we didn’t notice it was there didn’t mean it wasn’t there, and THAT could be what they’re picking up on…..and while that one instance of harmful thinking/speech/action isn’t necessarily representative of who you are as a whole…..to someone who only knows you via certain limited interactions, that one instance is a far greater slice of the pie, so there’s no real reason for them NOT to assume that’s representative of you overall, rather than an exception that only slipped through the cracks because you didn’t realize it was there.

So if you genuinely, truly don’t believe you’re ableist in your thinking or opinions and thus don’t want anyone to assume that of you, the only way to really do that is NOT to assume that nothing you say or do is ableist because you know yourself and know that you’re not an ableist person.

Rather, the thing to do is each and every time someone accuses you of that, like….take the time to review what you ACTUALLY said or did that they’re responding to, and double check that its not actually ableist. Reaffirm if only to yourself that you stand by what you said or did and that you said or did it for the right reasons and not what they’re presuming. It really doesn’t cost you that much time or energy to do that check-up on yourself….and the end result is that it doesn’t mean that you’re going to be able to change that person’s mind about you - if you said what you meant to say originally, and after reviewing it still stand by it, chances are, they’re probably interpreting you the way they are for their own reasons, and there’s not much any of us can do about that. 

But at least you can be sure then that no matter what someone else thinks, YOU are comfortable with your reasons for feeling a certain way about certain characters or whomever…….and that ultimately is all that really matters. All that we have control over, and what we have to fall back on even when people are pissing us the hell off because they seem bound and determined to interpret us wrong - and truuuuuuust me, I mean it when I say I get that, lol.

But you gotta do the work. There’s no shorthand, not if you’re genuinely sincere about NOT wanting to be the thing that they think you’re being. None of us can unilaterally just….decide not to be ableist or something like similar, and TRUST that deciding not to be that thing ACTUALLY means that no ableist or similar thinking is ever going to sneak into our opinions or actions regardless. 

So ultimately, my best advice is just to remember to listen just as much as you pay attention to what you say and put out there….because no matter how certain you are of your own nature overall, that doesn’t mean that individual actions and speech can’t get away from you…..and it doesn’t hurt you to be open to being told you did or said something ableist even if unintentionally. Rather, if you genuinely don’t want to be ableist, its to your BENEFIT, to be told when you unintentionally put something ableist into something you said or did or wrote…..so that you can be aware, and thus make sure not to do the same thing again….since if you were already aware of its ableism, you would never have put it in or said it in the first place.

So I mean, I guess its just about…..trust in yourself when you truly believe you’re right, after re-checking your math or the equivalent….but just as important, don’t be afraid to be wrong, if your real priority isn’t being ‘right’ about not being what they think you are, but instead just being or BECOMING ‘better’ than they think you are.

2) As to your second question, just do it, Nike slogan or not. LOL. Sorry, but there is no real means of protecting your ideas because ideas can’t be copyrighted - that’s how someone like CC gets away with what she did. Similar advice to what I just said above…..just trust in your own ingenuity. Don’t focus so much on the importance of having singular ideas or stories that nobody else has anything like, because there’s nothing truly new under the sun….other than execution. Only the way YOU execute an idea and unfold it over the course of an entire story is ever going to be truly unique, because any single idea can be taken in any of a million different directions. And the more you allow your own creativity to be about more than just a single idea or premise you had, the more its going to become distinct as YOUR creativity, YOUR execution of your various ideas, no matter how many other people do stories of similar premises.

‘Real’ writers get ripped off all the time, and it sucks, but its never stopped any that I’ve ever met, because the thing about real writers is they don’t NEED to rip off anyone else’s ideas….because they’ve got more than just one. And anyone who can come up with an idea for a story in the first place, rather than just stealing someone else’s, can come up with a second one, and a third. I truly believe that. There’s no imagination that only has a one-story limit…..just people who lack so much imagination or faith in their own imagination they default to stealing others’ in the first place.

Trust in your own uniqueness as a person and have faith that will imbue your execution of any story idea with enough unique elements or flavor that it’ll still be distinctly yours even if someone else rips off the basic premise. Once you give yourself permission to just….not be afraid of someone ripping you off, because you know that EVEN IF that should happen, you’d be okay because you’d still have other ideas, more stories to write……I PROMISE you, the fear of someone lurking around and waiting to rip you off will vanish completely. It doesn’t mean that such a person won’t still be out there. It doesn’t mean that someone won’t still try and steal one of your ideas somewhere down the line. But it does mean that even if they do, it won’t matter….because unlike them, you’re more than just one single idea.

And if someone actually rips off your execution of an idea, ie plagiarizes your actual story? That’s a different matter, but there are recourses for that. I mean, the mere fact of being able to point to your story existing in some form before they ever brought out their ripped off version of yours means that at the very least, you can torpedo their credibility. The only way to truly LEGALLY be protected in case of actual plagiarism is to copyright something, and you can’t copyright a fanfic for instance, since you don’t own the intellectual property, and you can’t copyright your premise since as I said above, nobody can copyright an idea, so honestly, I really do say and believe you’re better off just….not worrying about it. If it happens, there are ways to address it then, but building it up as an inevitable or even a likely hypothetical usually just acts as a form of self-sabotage convincing us there’s one more reason not to put ourselves and our work out there.

And that is SO much more devastating to your career as a writer or even just a fanwriter, than someone potentially ripping off one story of yours…….because it means you never put ANY stories out there, just for the sake of protecting even just that hypothetical singular one.