#and ned was not an abuser

[kacievvbbbb]

God I think a lot about how for 2 generations most of the Starks were killed riding South to free the people that they love.

That they are the family most killed by betrayal because they’re the only ones that believe in honor so much to trust anyone anyway and be shocked when it’s turned against them.

And for two generations Stark brothers have struggled, fought and moved mountains to try and bring their sisters back home only to be met with a death so gruesome it could start or end wars.

[seaworthee]

ned and cat dealing with the lannisters

[death-of-cats]

there are some characters that i find very much benefit from re-reads of ASOIAF and Theon is at the top of the list for me. it's for a lot of reasons, but for example there's a moment in A Clash of Kings when Theon is at Winterfell and Bran and Rickon have gone missing. he calls out the castle's people to question them, and he sees Old Nan and he mentally shit-talks her, calling her a stupid nattering old woman. and at the time it's clearly meant to be yet another Theon heel moment, we like Old Nan, Bran likes her, all the Stark family do. but then you get to ADWD and you find out once when Theon was playing as a kid he accidentally knocked Old Nan down and was beaten pretty badly for it. obvs that's not Old Nan's fault, she probably wasn't calling for him to be hit, but tbh personally if i got my ass beat as a child for unintentionally hurting an old lady then i would not have positive feelings toward that person going forward. it's moments like that that don't excuse but do re-contextualize Theon's feelings that make re-reads of his POVs valuable to me.

[a-chaotic-dumbass]

how i sleep knowing Ned's greatsword Ice is still being used to protect the Stark girls even after being remelted reshaped and reforged

[sapphia]

getting out ahead of this because if i see another mentally ill girl be torn apart for nickelodeon’s bottom line, i’ll scream

the neds declassified cast might be entitled and problematic but they’re also child stars who were chewed up and spat out by the nickelodeon pipeline. even if abuse didn’t happen on their set and they weren’t producing dan schneider’s fetish content, every season of that show is a year of their life they spent WORKING as CHILDREN, work for which they will never receive residuals for because children on Nickelodeon don’t get those (because union negotiators are adults, and worse, adults in hollywood). that is three children who were put on television, made to work all sorts of hours, told they were special and stars and they’d made it already when all the rest of the children hadn’t because they had talent, and then those children were not trained or prepared for anything beyond child acting by the network that cast them aside when as soon as they grew out of their role.

adult actors with a couple of lines in a single episode still get residuals from the work nickelodeon children were literally forced to do at an age where they had no choice in the matter. now a bunch of 30 year olds who are tired of hollywood’s nostalgiabait are gonna take that out on the actors who’ve been put here by kids TV’s lack of ethics.

if you have an issue with people not letting go of their entire teenage years as fast as you’d like, pick a child abused under nickelodeon, write their name on a bullet, and mail it to a Nickelodeon CEO. THEN you can laugh at the people who had their childhoods stolen for profit.

[lana-del-rhaena]

worst timeline au where ned reveals to robert that cersei’s kids are incest bastards and he gets rid of them, however you want to imagine that. instead of marrying margaery or any other eligible lady, robert spends the next half decade grooming his new lyanna, arya. ned allows this because as we’ve seen he is generally nothing more than an enabler for robert. he has misgivings but he can rationalize it to himself, it’s nothing too far out of the norm for westerosi betrothal standards.

however, you cannot tame a wolf, not fully; despite years of effort the marriage ends with arya slitting his throat and escaping to braavos with the help of syrio forel. as she flees, she sees the apparition of a woman in the godswood, and a face that’s almost her own smiles at her

[ladystoneboobs]

A memory prodded at Theon. In one of his rare curt letters, Lord Balon had written of his youngest brother going down in a storm, and turning holy when he washed up safe on shore. -Theon I, aCoK

this little glimpse of balon/theon's strained long-distance relationship kinda fascinates me now. can't believe i'm going to defend balon as a father to theon in any way, however small, but i feel like hindsight has kinda blinded fandom into thinking balon gave up theon for dead and gone the moment he gave him away as hostage. this also carries the underlying assumption that balon was always going to rebel again making theon's life already forfeit to him.

thing is, while balon undoubtedly called his banners before theon came home, that also coincided with robert and ned both being recently dead, making that 2nd war seem really opportunistic. as if the only thing balon learned from his first rebellion was that king robert was strong enough to defeat him, the only man capable of defeating the great balon. so when that enemy dies, balon's crown is all but won in his mind, and with the death of ned too he could use his next war to take revenge on the (dead) man who took his son from him. maybe with robert's lifestyle he could have hoped to outlive him despite being older than robert, but robert and ned together? that must have seemed like a miraculous chance straight from the drowned god himself, a chance to rise up and take revenge that it was his duty to take for his people, even if it meant risking the life of his youngest child who'd been gone for 10 years anyway.

but before all that, even if robert being still alive was the real deterrant keeping him from warring again, he was, in effect, not only keeping theon safe by paying the hostage-ransom of keeping the peace, he was also keeping up a bare minimum connection with theon through rare and curt correspondence updating him on family events like aeron getting born again (and i'm assuming that's also how theon knew what asha's ship was named). idt we should so easily ignore that this is a society which views kinslaying as a grave offense regardless of circumstances or personal feelings, and one which greatly values male heirs over female heirs. i doubt balon was so much a feminist girldad that he just switched 12yo asha into the son slot right away as soon as all her brothers were lost. imo it was more likely a gradual process done not so consciously as asha proved herself worthy growing up and theon's time in the north stretched on and on. all until such point as asha had achieved son status and only son status at that, (maybe also coinciding with alannys leaving him so he had even less reason to keep up with her baby boy?), and then theon could be written off as belonging to the enemy, no longer ironborn or a son of balon, so sanctity of greyjoy life no longer applied to him. (real ironborn greyjoy son already killed by darth greenlander theon, from a certain point of view.) only then could balon be a not-father to theon, not welcoming him back home or even giving him a chance to prove his loyalty by providing intelligence on the northerners and the lands they were about to invade. (which could have made balon's war plans a touch less stupid. see, it all comes back to criticizing him in the end.)

in fact, come to think of it, i wonder if one thing ned and balon had in common is just not thinking of the danger of theon being executed as a hostage, not taking ownership of that possibility bc it hadn't happened yet. and hey, if it ever did come to that they could each tell themselves it would be the other guy's fault really, i was just doing my duty to my king/as a king to all my proud people. and that meant their actions didn't have to be obviously at odds with ned's view of himself as a good man opposed to killing children or balon's view of himself as great greyjoy patriarch and victim of the greenlanders (who could ofc prevail against them all if given the right chance).

[lagosbratzdoll]

I feel like I've said this before but I am not a fan of Rhaegar but the way antis talk about him in this fandom is so frustrating. It makes it so difficult to have a nuanced discussion about the man and his failings.

[bbygirl-aemond]

"pedophilia is not normal or moral in westeros and grown men having sex with children should not be excused by the fandom," i say.

the asoiaf fandom boos.

i begin to walk off the stage in shame, when a voice speaks and commands silence from the room.

"she's right," they say. i look for the owner of the voice.

there in the first row stands: ned stark.

[manicpixiedreamjop]

oooohhhh 28 - "I know your friends" with either solittle or armitozer please! <333

(Putting this one under a cut bc it got a bit long!)

“What the fuck happened to you?”

It’s not as if Edward has any say in where Sol goes or what he does, as Sol had been kind enough to remind him on his way out the door earlier when Edward had asked where he was going (“None of your fuckin’ business Neddie, you’re not my boyfriend and you’re not my mum, so fuck off, yeah?”). He feels justified in asking now though, as Sol stumbles through the door just past one in the morning, lip split, brilliant black eye blooming on the right side of his face.

“Got in a fight, didn’t I?” says Sol, tugging open the fridge and leaning into it, pulling out a beer and immediately holding it up to the bruise on his eye. His eyes look slightly out of focus, and Edward doesn’t know if it’s from the injury or if he’s been drinking already too.

“With who?”

“Does it matter?”

“Your face is bleeding, Sol,” says Edward, shoving himself to his feet and walking across the kitchen towards him. “So yeah, I’d say it fucking matters.”

“A friend,” snaps Sol.

“What friend?”

“You don’t know him.”

“I know your friends.”

“Can we not with the third degree, right now?” asks Sol, and this time Edward is sure he’s drunk. Better that than concussed, he supposes. “My fuckin’ head is killing me.”

“Do you think it’s because you got punched in the face?” asks Edward, but he softens his voice, taking the beer out of Sol’s hand with one hand and turning his chin towards the light with the other. The bruise is nasty, but the cut on his lip isn’t as bad as it had looked when he’d walked in, only crusted with old blood, already mostly closed. “Come on, Sol,” he continues, even softer this time. “What’s going on with you?”

Sol lets out a long, slow breath through his nose, and finally looks at Edward properly, eyes big and far softer than Edward ever gets to see them when Sol’s sober. “Was seeing someone,” Sol says finally. “Didn’t work out.”

“They did—” Edward says, forcing himself to stay calm, to push down the anger rising in him, sure it’s the last thing Sol needs right now.

“I thought—” Sol starts, but he cuts himself off too, shrugging awkwardly. Edward realises all at once that his hand is still on Sol’s chin, but can’t bring himself to move it, especially not when Sol leans into the touch. “I don’t know what I thought,” he continues after a moment, and then, before Edward can say anything else, Sol leans forward and kisses him.

He tastes like blood and whiskey, his several days of stubble scratching against Edward’s chin, and Edward is already opening his mouth and leaning back into the kiss before he quite processes what he’s doing. Because they don’t do this, him and Sol. They’re flatmates, they’re old friends, and maybe they’ve gotten off together a few times when they were drunk, and maybe Edward fantasises about getting down on his knees and sucking Sol off every time Sol comes home from the gym all flushed and sweaty and grinning, but they don’t do this. Edward has never even dared allow himself to want this.

“Sol,” he says, pulling away, forcing himself not to react to the small, disappointed noise that Sol makes. “You’re drunk.”

“And?” asks Sol. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want you. That I haven’t wanted you for… for fuckin’ ever.”

“You’re drunk,” Edward says again, as much to himself as to Sol. “And bleeding, and… Let’s just get you cleaned up, alright? We can talk about this in the morning.”

Sol stares at him a moment longer, eyes still wide, before his face hardens again and he steps back, holding the beer can back up to his eye.

“I can deal with it,” he says tersely. “I’ve had worse.” Edward doesn’t know if he’s still talking about the black eye or not.

“Sure,” says Edward, taking a step back as well. “Yeah. I’ll just… leave you to it then.”

“Cheers,” says Sol, and then he’s stepping away, out of Edward’s orbit, and down the hall towards the bathroom.

[atopvisenyashill]

sorry i’m still annoyed but like we really think if ned would have seen robert hit lyanna with his own two eyes he wouldn’t have done anything. that’s what we’re saying. that’s really what we’re all saying that’s really-

[brithombar]

lyanna and her bed of blood is still the most hauntingly beautiful and sorrowful description of the ambiguity of violence done to a womans body through childbirth or through abuse and i return to it as part of neds mournful narrative all the time. asoiafs use of abuse where it is present through the words of the characters and how you can tell if the characters sorrow is genuine, if it is delightful, or if it is an act through this approach is something i think of a lot. GRRM, ursula k le guin and octavia butler are writers i think of a lot when it comes to the depiction of violence as a world destroying act that does not seem diminished through the act of trying to describe the unspeakable in words

[ducktr0ducin]

Thinking about this again-

If you headcanon Ratchet/Fulton as abusive towards Gyro then get the fuck off my blog I don’t want you here lmao

[grennseyelashes]

I'm just sayin i don't think Martin woulda put that (since removed) line in about Jon being older if he wasn't, in fact, older. And that does probably mean Rhaegar might not be his dad. Which means that thematically it's probably known rapist Robert Baratheon, as the entire series is an examination of complicity even in the face of good intentions.

[angelfoodscake]

thinks about how jam and biscuit were both alone and found eachother.... oug......

[visenyaism]

cersei lannister had about 3-5 business days of peace at the end of a game of thrones where it’s like. plan she singlehandedly concocted to murder her abusive terrible husband THE KING goes off without a hitch literally flawless execution most successful kingslaying in westerosi history. rhaegar outfit at his funeral. anyone who suspects foul play is in the dungeon or on her side. coup d’état equally successful. her bastard son installed as ruling king. ned stark in prison about to swear fealty to the lannisters and get ransomed cutting hostilities off at the pass. one stark kid in custody and littlefinger promised to take care of the second one. annoying brothers-in-law scattered to opposite ends of the kingdom away from her away from each other not a problem. lysa arryn doing fuck all. tyrion in enemy custody and not the walls. father and brother going to war for her. also jon arryn who she never liked is dead as a freebie. and then she never came down from this high but can you blame her