#green feminism

[under-amethystmoons]

Hello, followers!

I'm posting on behalf of a friend.

Over the past year, she has lost nearly everything. A fire took her dream home and the homestead she built for herself and her daughter and she has had a series of unfortunate events continuously since then. After separating from an emotionally abusive person recently, she is now effectively homeless and a single mother. She is unable to get any kind of emergency assistance and she needs help to get back on her feet.

If you can't spare anything - I know times are tough - PLEASE at least reblog and boost!

Thank you!!

Her venmo is @quixotic_pipsqueak

[willowren]

Witchcore is so severely under appreciated

[asidian]

One thing I don't see talked about enough is the amazing cast of women who make up Dead Boy Detectives.

And I don't mean throw-away, there-for-the-sake-of-having-a-girl women. I mean actual, three-dimensional characters, with their own wants, goals, and emotional character arcs that exist independent of the titular ghost boys.

This is a show that runs laps around the Bechdel test in episode one and never looks back.

This is a show that's full of women who are allowed to be messy, complicated, brave, funny, scared, angry, and lash out in their pain. This is a show that's full of women who are allowed to learn from their mistakes, and grow, and change.

This is a show that's full of women who talk to each other, and support each other, and give each other advice about life.

And this is a low bar, but given the state of media today it's a big deal: there is never a single scene in this show that sexualizes a female character. A lot of action movies and supernatural shows frame the women on their cast to show off an ass, or the curve of a breast. Not here. The women are fully covered. They're framed to show their faces and their emotions, because what they're feeling is the important part. It's focused on who these women are as people and not what they can show to entice an audience.

Women in Dead Boy Detectives are heroes and catalysts who are learning to be better people.

They're earnest and clever and processing their own grief and sense of mortality.

They're complicated antagonists who have journeys of their own to walk.

They're cynical, distrustful father figures learning to reluctantly look out for others.

They're cruel and funny and vengeful and have been torn down by a world that did them wrong.

And those are only the main ladies in this cast. There are an absolute pile of supporting women who run the gamut from hilarious to heartbreaking.

I could go on for literal paragraphs about how refreshing it was to see wrongs against women treated as wrongs in the script, or how I have literally never before seen a woman turn down a protagonist romantically and not be villified for it, or how much of a breath of fresh air it was to see a woman's primary emotional arc be an arc about learning to become a better person, but my goodness, there's all that and more.

Nobody is doing it like Dead Boy Detectives, and by god, I love to see it.

[spacerockfloater]

Cersei Lannister & Rhaenyra Targaryen:

Are forced to marry someone they don’t love, so they find solace in the arms of a family member and commit incest

Seduce members of the Royal Guard

Have their husbands murdered because they didn’t like them

Have three bastard kids

Commit atrocities to claim the Iron Throne

Betray their allies when they feel threatened

Rule with fire and blood

Live in constant paranoia so they murder innocent servants whom they believe will betray them, even if said betrayal would be a direct consequence of the way they treat their subjects

Are hated by the people

and lets us not forget the -

But no, please go ahead and tell me all about how Rhaenyra is this feminist icon who has the divine right to rule over hundreds of thousands of people because her daddy said so, therefore if I don’t support her I’m a misogynist.

[zazikels]

HELAENA WAS A BELOVED QUEEN IN F&B SO OF COURSE RYAN CONDOM HAS TO MAKE THE SMALLFOLK PRAISE THE PERSON WHO WAS BLOCKADING THEIR FOOD TO BEGIN WITH BC PROPAGANDA ONLY WORKS WHEN RHA EN YRA DOES IT AND THROW THE FOOD THEY WERE RIOTING OVER AT HELAENA. I CURSE HIM AND HIS UGLY WRITING.

[the-daily-dreamer]

Dignified?

Dignified?!

DIGNIFIED?!?

I’m sorry when did getting killed in a battle or burnt to a crisp become a more dignified way to die? Has this fandom run so far with the notion that women are only valuable if they are masculine or fighters to the point that we find gruesome deaths in battle as a superior way for them to die?

Why must a woman be a warrior or a fighter to have value? Why must she seek power in traditionally masculine ways to be powerful and respected? Why does this fandom wish for all women to be the same cookie cutter, fighting girlboss lest she be titled a misogynistic pathetic trad wife? What is wrong with this fandom and their glorification of masculinity and violence and their continuous desire to have any soft, gentle, kind character be changed into a fighter or else they will ridicule and hate her?!

Helaena deserves far better than her book canon death. But she also deserves better than to die in a battle for a war she didn’t start that has already ruined her life in an unimaginably painful way.

[chichiscloset]

Soft Life 101: 3 Steps to Escape Your 9-5 Job If You Don’t Want to Work

Before we start, I want to clarify what I mean by “Not wanting to work.”

It means, that I don’t want to exhaust myself. I want to roll out of bed at 8 am then go to a workout class at 9 am. I want to spend my time as I please while keeping my workload to a minimum.

Working consistently, burns me out. I have no desire to prove my worth through productivity, nor do I have any desire to engage in hustle culture. I’m sure many of us can relate to feeling like the pressure to perform is exhausting. This is likely why, “soft life” is the latest trend on social media and has taken the girlies on Tiktok by storm.

In this new soft life era apparently, no one has a job and everyone is a "sahm" or "sahgf". While I understand the desire to escape the matrix and have a man you can fully depend on. Creating a more balanced and fulfilling life does not have to solely depend on your partner (though it helps!).

At the end of the day we still all want money! So how can we create an abundant life while still having a work-life balance?

Step 1: Be willing to make sacrifices

There is no such thing as something for nothing. Get that out of your head! I know we sometimes want to be saved, but unfortunately, life isn’t always a fairytale. Everything that we desire in life requires us to give up something else.

Do you want a better body? Give up junk food and exercise more. Do you want a better man? Give up your dust! To bring in the new we have to get rid of the old. If you want a soft life you’re going to have to strategize and be willing to give up what is no longer serving you.

Step 2: Find a passion you can monetize

*major key*

As the saying goes, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life”. Find something you enjoy doing, then figure out how you, can earn money from it. Are you good at doing hair? Become a hairdresser. Are you the best dressed in your circle? Become a virtual stylist. I promise you, for whatever talent you have there are people willing to pay you for it!

For myself, I love teaching and writing! Blogging is a great way to share my expertise, create passive income, and create the life of my dreams that don’t necessarily depend on me going into a job. Also, you can make money blogging with a relatively small audience.

Check out my blog post "Make Money When your Young, Pretty & Ambitious." For more on this topic.

Step 3: Invest, invest, invest

*Another major key*

We all need money to survive. There���s no way around it! Ideally, we would live a life where money isn’t an issue and if that is your goal you have to start investing ASAP! By investing in assets eventually, those assets will make you money.

For example, invest in stocks like the S&P 500 (which is an index fund that is essentially many companies in one stock). Invest in stocks that will grow over time and make you more money than you bought them for. There are tons of ways to start investing: choose one!

A few types of investments

Real estate

Stocks

Businesses

If living a soft life is a priority to you start today with these steps that will eventually allow you to either fully retire or work minimally. If you don’t, you’ll just be stuck doing something you don’t enjoy or waiting for prince charming to come and save you.

©Chichiscloset 2023

[greenqueenhightower]

Favorite Subtle Alicole Moment From S2 E1:

During the small council meeting, Aegon wants to heed a full-on attack on Lord Tully with his dragons. Alicent tries to dissuade him, imploring him to "proceed cautiously." After all her efforts have failed, she looks at Criston meaningfully seeking his aid. Criston acknowledges her gaze, intervenes and deters Aegon by emphasizing the needlessness of putting himself in danger.

I love how Alicent and Criston have developed this embedded telepathy that allows them to communicate and look out for one another. It truly shows that Alicent has very few allies, even amongst her own family, and even fewer people take her advice seriously. She needs Criston to make sure her voice is heard.

Which is sad if you think about it since she needs a man to be validated as a politician and strategist but it is still romantic to recognize that she has found the one man who will not dismiss but rather support her ideas.

[kass-of-the-midlands]

Alicent Hightower’s honestly a scarily good rep of what woc go through in regards to their extensive famillial abuse. Second wife with children that pose a threat to the firstborns. The infighting done between the branches of the family. The child marriage, the father, the grinding down of boundaries between her father and her, her and her children. The religion. The cycle.

[disinherited-dornishman]

Personal thoughts on Team Black, Rhaenyra, and Misogyny.

This is going to be a messy one as regard structure but also topic. Stay with me, people.

I've been seeing a lot of accusations of misogyny against anti-team black, anti-rhaenyras, and anti-hotd posters for criticisms uttered, and I can't help but be a little dumbfounded. Like are we really doing this? Pointing out that Rhaenyra was reckless for having 3 bastards is not misogyny. I'm sorry, as much as you guys might love your make-believe character, I'm just not humoring it. Not if you're going to make the conversation about feminism and sexual liberation.

Okay, let me just say. Rhaenyra having Jace I can understand. An experiment that was stupid but also respectable in a way, because Laenor was definitely traumatized and not fit for keeping up their agreement, so I can support that mistake wholeheartedly for the empathy behind it. But Luke and Joffrey? After finding out that her genes get overriden by Harwin's?

Plain stupid. I'm sorry, that's just playing with fire, especially since she should know how precarious her position would be after the precedent of the Great Council that robbed Rhaenys of her birthright on the basis of her gender.

And like, I'd be fine with it if the show didn't portray it as this girlboss, don't-give-a-fuck win, because all it does is highlight how ignorant the showrunners are about the world in which their show is set! I liked selfish and decadent Rhaenyra in the books, she didn't need to be treated as a hero for it.

And the fact that the rest of the world and everyone in it is portrayed as being at fault for not going along with what's basically that society's equivalent of a political clown show is absurd. Pointing this out doesn't mean I'm condoning it either, I'm criticizing the show's lack of self-awareness. It's so obvious the showrunners are disconnected from the their world.

GRRM writes all his characters as believable people grown up in a medieval society, but critiques it through his own modern moral lense in a way that's seemless, yet in this show they use characters as mouthpieces to spout modern feminist and egalitarian ideals from characters who are ruling class. Who the fuck are they kidding? If you want to make a feminist show, don't use bourgeoisie feminism!!! Idgaf about some Princess' sexual liberation while she's allowed to hold feasts that rips the food from the tables of peasants! There's nothing inspiring about that!

Rhaenyra, one of the single most bourgeois figure in the show, is supposed to be praised for her "sexual liberation" when it literally threatens the stability of the entire realm, and directly caused a war in which countless sexual atrocities were committed and will still be committed? Forgive me if I can't find it in me to be inspired.

If you want the show to be feminist, display the themes through the people at the bottom, the normal workers, the whores, the thieves, the daytalers and smiths and carpenters and undertakers and farmers, etc etc. Don't ask people to cheer for a reckless white woman from a colonizer background with a biological WMD at her disposal for breaking the social contract of a ruling class SHE'S A PART OF and risking destabilizing her entire country, it's fucking insulting! And don't get me started on the gender essentialism of the whole "women good, men bad" horseradish horseshit.

I'd love to discuss and analyze these concepts if we're talking about Rhaenyra's character arc, her as a person, and the themes of patriarchy that one can glean through her. But if we're talking actual, meaningful, proletariat feminism that means something to the medieval society they live in?

You wanna praise this brave monarch for sexually liberating herself, go ahead and praise the female Romans in Spartacus while you're at it. Praise their sexual liberation when they avail themselves of sex slaves taken from Thrace and Gaul and wherever else the Roman Empire had reach and rape them for fun. Understand I'm not comparing Rhaenyra's actions with having her kids with Harwin to rape, I'm pointing out power dynamics. And at least that show had the decency to show that the patrician romans were cruel and vile alongside their humanity, unlike HotD which seems to insist its ruling family of dragonriding depraved incestuous monarchs are actually virtuous while literally having Meleys burst through the floorboards and massacre a crowd.

P.S.: for any Anti-Rhaenyras, please don't start shit about her unless you wanna discuss how the writers fucked up her beloved character. I actually liked her in the books and she should've gotten a bigger part than Daemon, so don't slander her all willy nilly. It's unconstructive and I feel no desire to engage.

[daeneryseastar]

rhaenyra is as much of a girl’s girl as the society she lives in allows her to be.

book wise she has multiple ladies in waiting (not just alicent, which is a grave oversight in the show), one of which is said to have gouged out her own eyes at the sight of rhaenyra’s murder. that doesn’t sound like someone who isn’t capable of inspiring loyalty from the women around them. rhaenys fully and wholeheartedly supported rhaenyra and her cause, even dying in her attempts to make her the first queen regnant of the seven kingdoms. laena betrothed her daughters to rhaenyra’s sons, ensuring that her blood sat both the iron throne and the driftwood throne, all while being a pretty difficult backing to break due to the wealth and naval power of the velaryons (all of this in spite of the bastardy rumors surrounding jace and luke). the agreement also puts forward how politically astute rhaenyra is, and how she didn’t just rely on her father’s word to put her on the throne. she made alliances using her sons hand in marriage; borros baratheon might not have declared for aegon had a proposal taken place the night luke brought rhaenyra’s terms. baela was only held back from partaking in the many battles because of her dragon’s size, otherwise she would have been right beside her betrothed fighting for rhaenyra. there’s even a chance that rhaena would have joined had she had a rideable dragon of her own. she had mysaria, a former sex worker, as her mistress of whisperers, a very esteemed position on her small council. the cases of rosby and stokeworth have no bearing on this, because they were never named as heirs (along with being literal children during a war time) which is what rhaenyra was using as the basis for her rulership. jeyne arryn knew her own position as lady of the eyrie would be challenged (again) if aegon stepped over rhaenyra and subsequently supported her cause. important women like alysanne blackwood and sabitha frey were key players in cregan’s army.

show wise she is shown in the season two trailer to be taking advice from rhaenys and allowing her to be a part of the war efforts. baela and rhaena are explicitly included on her war council, with rhaena as her cupbearer. moondancer is no longer a hardly rideable dragon and baela seems to be taking direct part in the war. rhaenyra is already shown in a set picture to be communicating with mysaria (whether that’s discussing blood and cheese, the aftermath of it, or something entirely different remains to be seen). these are not the acts of someone who hated other women, and using her falling out with alicent and the resulting enmity between them (that is almost completely one-sided due to the difference in power dynamics) as an excuse to otherwise is worse than strange, considering alicent’s canonical goal was to seat her son, a known violent misogynist, on the throne over a woman who was the named heir to the king.

the green’s entire ideological standpoint is that women cannot rule, ever, for it would make the main members of the green’s powerless, and any other lord or heir’s claim would be up for debate if they have an elder sister. if the iron throne had truly been aegon’s by right alicent, otto, and criston would not have left viserys’ body to rot for days AND they would have had the backing of most of the houses. if alicent had cared more for her children’s wellbeing she would have convened a great council before the war began or considered any other effort that would not lead to her children fighting on dragonback. rhaenyra’s (peaceful) ascension would have at least started the necessary changes needed to grant women more authority and (!) autonomy in the seven kingdoms. queen consorts had significantly less influence after her murder, along with the targaryen’s losing their ability to hatch dragons. rhaenyra does not need to be a feminist for her cause to be inherently feminist by proxy.

rhaenyra was not a feminist, but she did have great love for other women. it’s disingenuous at best and downright insulting at worst to try to paint her as anything else. she inspired loyalty even after her murder. if the black’s cause had truly relied on putting rhaenyra on the throne, her armies would have disbanded once she was dead. instead corlys and larys poisoned aegon, with rhaenyra’s son being placed on the throne afterwards. it was ultimately about bloodlines in the end. jaehaera suffered the unfortunate consequences of an ambitious hand because of her status as aegon’s daughter. it plays directly into how alicent outlived her entire family, besides jaehaera, and went mad with grief, learning to hate the color green. how greed and the allure of power can and will corrupt those who choose to make that a priority in their lives, and how the innocent will usually pay the price for those sins.

[sweetlacedreams]

i go to seek the great perhaps

[spacerockfloater]

hi! i noticed you learnt about what ryan condal said regarding blood and cheese. it was…something. i would like to know your thoughts on the matter. though it would be completely understandable if you need sometime to gather them together or if you would rather not at all! thank you and bye!

Hello beloved, thank you so much for asking me! I’d love to share my opinion!

If anyone’s wondering, @rhaenelle is referring to this interview where Ryan Condal essentially says he believes that Blood & Cheese’s brutality and heinousness was exaggerated by the Greens in a propagandistic attempt to convince their subjects that Rhaenyra and Daemon are the worst villains ever born, hence why he toned the event down; to show us what he thinks is the accurate version of Jaehaerys’ murder.

Now, I am aware that Condal had already warned us that HOTD was going to be a feminist retelling of the events of F&B, which practically means that his plan has always been to whitewash the everlasting fuck out of Rhaenyra. So what do I think about this?

Well, for starters, I think that Ryan Condal is an excellent businessman. He knows what kind of tropes are going to make the audience engage with his show. He understands that people need a hero to cheer for and a villain to hate, therefore he removed the moral ambiguity from all of the characters and divided them into two categories: the Blacks, enlightened revolutionaries full of passion, deserving of admiration and correct in everything they do, and the Greens, pious fools with a moral superiority complex who are stack in the ways of the past and commit despicable crimes. The average viewer does not possess the intelligence to comprehend that both parties have their good and bad moments, and that they’re both correct in fighting for what each believes is rightfully theirs. Simultaneously, he benefits from the modern trends that want women in media to take revenge when they are wronged and emerge as triumphant girlbosses, because of course a white upper class woman’s suffering in a western world (or Westeros) society has everything to do with her gender and nothing to do with her personality or decisions (even if this works solely for Rhaenyra, because Alicent seems to be held accountable for every single one of her actions). Finally, it is obvious that Condal is trying to appease disgruntled Daenerys fans, so he has rebuilt Rhaenyra into this tortured martyr that wishes to change the world for the better in an attempt to make her resemble her great granddaughter six times removed.

For all of these reasons, I find it very logical that he is going out of his way to minimise the tragedy the Greens experience. It just doesn’t make Rhaenyra look good and honestly, who wants that? The producers saw how unhappy Danny’s stans were when they made her lose her shit; they’re not going to make the same mistake twice. They don’t want their show to tank like the last season of GOT did, so they’ll do everything in their power to keep the audience happy. And it’s working! What’s the last thing Condal says in this clip? “You kinda start rooting for [Blood and Cheese]!” and boy oh boy, the TB stans sure do! Literally hundreds of memes that rejoiced at Jaehaerys’ death were posted on X this week, with tens of thousands of likes. But when Lucerys died, it was presented as the most foul thing to ever happen in the ASOIAF universe. It is the TB supporters that dictate which child murder is good and which is bad, and that decision usually depends on which child came out Rhaenyra’s womb, not let’s say, the fact that one kid was a toddler that could barely walk, while the other was a teenager that laughed at the disabled person he mutilated himself.

It’s all just marketing

That being said, I want to clarify that I understand why Condal and the HOTD producers do what they do, but being a good entrepreneur does not necessarily make you a literary genius. Now, I’m not gonna explain why stripping Rhaenyra off of every character trait that made her interesting is a bad decision and that in their attempt to remove the blame from her so that they can elevate her as this righteous patron of feminism, they’re accidentally removing all of her agency and turning her simply into a victim, because I have a whole blog dedicated to that. But let’s just say that presenting Rhaenyra as this sexually liberated idol that’s incapable of evil, when in fact she’s an entitled aristocrat who’s completely at the mercy of men around her, from her father to her husbuncle, is the most performative activism move ever pulled in recent TV history, as well as pushing the narrative that Alicent suffers from internalised misogyny because duh, a woman can only be good and a feminist if she supports Rhaenyra, not when she pursues her own interests.

Ultimately, I think we just have to accept that this show is not meant for TG fans. We are not going to find any satisfaction in it. Everything that was unique and admirable about the Greens in the book has vanished. Their family dynamic is fucked up, Alicent’s children hate her, Aegon and Halaena cannot stand one another, Alicent is constantly a victim and never someone that chases her own ambitions, Halaena is very vague, Aemond appears to be more angsty than angry, Aegon is a stupid rapist, Jaehaerys’ death was turned into a mockery, Alicole was weaponised in order to make us shit on Alicent and Criston even more and so on. This show barely caters to us because we’re not making them any money.

The reason that there are more TB than TG stans is because (I’m gonna get so much fucking hate for this) most people who watch TV are fucking morons. I swear, when F&B came out 6 years ago, no one gave a flying fuck about Rhaenyra, because we all understood that everyone involved in the Dance of the Dragons was fucked up in their own way and that the message of this story, just like the general message of ASOIAF, is that nobody deserves to sit on that fucking throne. We were all in agreement about that. But then this fucking show came along and all the oblivious simpletons that swallowed whatever the producers shoved down their throats, grabbed the book and decided that “Woah, this book is obviously a critique on patriarchy and Rhaenyra is obviously the victim of the story”! As if GRRM, the man who said that he doesn’t sit down and think “Oh, I’m going to write a woman now” but instead he believes women to be people just like men, with complex personalities, would ever do that. And they just can’t believe that it is possible for book!Rhaenyra to be an evil racist classist full of entitlement! Surely it must be because the Greens are rewriting history! There’s no way GRRM, the man that created Cersei fucking Lannister, would ever make a female character that’s vicious and crazy just because she feels like it! Y’all need to sit down for a moment. I say this as a radical feminist that supports the 4B movement: you’re projecting your own ideas onto George’s work. Not all the media we consume has to reflect our ideologies, but if you think that it has to, then this book isn’t the anti misogynistic masterpiece you wish it was.

Like, when it comes to F&B, I am firmly anti Targaryen and did not wish for any side to win. I wanted them all wiped out to be honest. But when it comes to HOTD, I’m TG basically out of spite at this point.

All in all, I just think that things are going to go downhill for us from this point on. They’ll just keep glorifying the Blacks until the very end.

[the-daily-dreamer]

Just a reminder to some people in the ASOIAF fandom…

Abuse is not a moral failure on the part of the victim. An inability to defend oneself, powerlessness, fear, etc. are not reasons a victim “deserves” their abuse or worse.

Listen to me: abuse, under no circumstances, is earned by the victim. I don’t care that they didn’t stand up for themselves (could they have? did they personally feel like they could? does it fucking matter?). If someone is a victim of abuse it is not their failure. It doesn’t make them weak for accepting the abuse or feeling like they deserve it. It doesn’t make them frustrating because they don’t have the ability to stand up against their abusers. It doesn’t make them a moral or feminist (when it’s women specifically) failure because they are too afraid to defend themselves.

I see too many arguments that the pain and suffering of a victim is deserved if they don’t radically scream and claw their way out of victim hood. That a victim deserves their abuse if they are in any way accepting of it. This is disgusting rhetoric.

Specifically in the case of Sansa and Alicent. I see too many in this fandom ridicule them and even cheer for their abuse. Simply because they are not in positions to save themselves (and therefore perceived as complacent in abuse). How can you hate the young girls with no rights or freedoms or safety or help for being abused more than their abusers?! How can you blame them for their abuse as if it is their fault and not the sick individuals hurting them? It’s disgusting and people need to take a long and hard look at themselves because while I’m talking about fiction…this rhetoric is clearly indicative of a sickening reality: that society views victims as deserving of abuse if they aren’t fighting.

So I remind you: BEING A VICTIM IS NOT A MORAL FAILURE. VICTIMS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. ABUSERS ARE

[irlangelsdiary]

low energy witchy affirmations🍂

• May I be gentle with myself.

• May I learn to accept myself also on low energy days.

• My body and mind have needs that I listen to.

• May I have peace by doing my best today.

• Every day I do my best and I am proud of myself.

• I am proud of the spells and rituals I craft.