#i had a longer answer but it involved looking for quotes and i'm too lazy

[atopvisenyashill]

Was Jon/Ygritte nonconsensual?

idk if you’re the right blog to ask but, I see a lot of people hate Jon/Ygritte and specifically Ygritte for “raping” Jon and these ideas are in most circles that involve another ship (Jon/Sana (tho not that I’ve seen you say it, I don’t think) and Jon/Dany mostly) but I don’t get why it’s popular opinion at all?

if there was any lack of consent on anyone’s part it was Ygritte bc Jon lied and slept with her to keep up appearances of being fully with the Free Folk. But a lot of these Ygritte haters claim that bc she’s older and tells everyone they’re fuckin before if actually happens that that’s not consensual. 

like I said idk if you’re the right person to ask maybe if you’ve come across it before you can lead me in the right direction unfortunately people only seem to talk about it negatively to prop their own Jon ship which is not a legit answer imo, comparing ships instead of clarifying the situation

i would say i'm the right person to ask in that i have complex feeling towards this ship & ygritte as a character. but if what you're looking for is a clear "yeah she's a nasty rapist and i spit on her whole character" (which is reductive & hypocritcal of anyone to say especially with main characters like tyrion, victarian, and theon) or "no she's a perfect uwu baby and jon snow is completely at fault for leading her on" (also incredibly reductive and completely ignores the context in which he's making these decisions) than no, i'm not what you're looking for. i do think she takes advantage of jon’s feelings to a degree i feel is sexually exploitative yes, but i would frame her more as like, the dark gray version of gendry (someone lowborn and baseborn, with a romantic story with someone who has immense privilege over him yet is much more naive and younger than him), on par with other characters that Are bad but also not beyond the point of redemption, like theon, dontos, sandor, than a female khal drogo. and a lot of my feelings on that stance is because like you say, you can't ignore that jon is from a people who are at war with ygritte's, that jon is part of a group that is specifically gung ho over oppressing the wildlings, and that jon specifically is engaging as essentially a deep undercover spy. that element is not present in any of the other dubcon romantic dynamics we have in this series and I think that gets glossed over a lot when discussing whether this relationship is toxic or not. like, it is toxic but it's toxic for a lot of reasons that can't be easily summed up because you can't divorce either jon or ygritte from the politics they are currently involving themselves in. you didn't just fall out of a coconut tree, etc.

when it comes to the undercover, lying, honeypotting, whatever, thing, that's where things get complicated. there's two prongs to this - what ygritte is willing to acknowledge out loud and what ygritte actually knows. it seems very clear to me that ygritte is fully aware that jon has not truly broken from the night's watch, that he isn't pulling a mance 2.0, that he's concealing things from her and the other wildlings because he is planning to betray them. she just doesn't want to believe it - she basically calls him out on this when they're flirting during the "is that a castle" scene. and of course, there is a context here that imo people overlook which is to say - jon is a member of the martial force that believes their sole purpose is to keep wildlings from crossing the wall, purely because they are an out group culturally. ygritte is a soldier in an invading army that has banded together because they think it’s invade or die. mance - and several others - are already suspicious of jon. if they didn’t fuck soon, jon was going to be killed and not by ygritte. i think similar to sandor stopping sansa from killing joffrey, ygritte feels this is a stupid thing to die over, and wants him to live to fight another day. is it her place to do this? well, she thinks it is even though jon doesn't think so, because she's vouched for him to mance and taken him on as her own "responsibility" so if he fucks something up, she has to face some level of consequence.

i think in general, ygritte is fascinated and challenged by jon snow, and genuinely falls in love with him while they're together. she's lying to herself about jon's feelings because she's hoping that if she gives him a reason enough to stay, he'll stay. i think this is really clear in the cave scene, where she asks him to stay in the cave and get lost together - she knows his loyalties are pulling him away from her, and she wants to deal with the problem by promising him a future with her, a happy future, where he doesn't have to break his vows any further because they aren't involved in the conflict anymore. so when it comes to “it’s dubcon because jon is lying” the thing is that ygritte is very aware jon is lying to her face; unlike drogo, who just does not see dany as a person with thoughts, unlike arya who is too young to realize the class differences between herself and gendry, and unlike tyrion who swallows sansa’s lies hook line and sinker because he genuinely believes she’s a sweet idiot, ygritte knows jon is playing her, she just thinks she can convince him that his life will be better, easier, more fulfilling if he leaves the night’s watch and stays with her. i guess this depends on your opinion of honey potting - if ygritte knows he’s lying, and jon knows ygritte knows he’s lying, does that make it better or worse? if ygritte knows jon empathizes with the wildlings, but also wants to go home, and jon knows if he doesn’t betray his vows well enough he’s getting shanked, and they have sex, does that make it better or worse? if ygritte knows jon is uncomfortable having sex, but knows if he doesn’t have sex mance will have him killed, knows he is interested in her sexually, knows he is lying to her, and puts him in a position that both protects him and backs him into a corner, and doesn’t understand how cornered jon really feels bc he isn’t telling her, and also she just does not have the framework to understand his hang ups and thinks his hang ups are stupid and don't matter, does that make it better or worse? i think this is really obviously meant to be incredibly dubious consensually, bordering on sex crime territory

this is a woman who has lived her entire life in that grey area - she’s got an even worse idea of what consent looks like than most characters, she has lived a life that is physically and mentally much more strenuous than nearly any other character bc of the extreme climate and lack of freedom of movement than even most smallfolk have. the rest of westeros can be truly ugly when dealing with the wildlings in the vale and wildlings in the north - they don’t have the option of being Westerosi the way everyone else born on that continent is allowed. osha doesn’t even do anything wrong but bc she exists as a wildling south of the wall her entire EXISTENCE is illegal. “but they rape and kidnap-“ yeah so do the ironborn but because they were born on the right side of the wall, they’re allowed freedom of movement. what is the difference between ygritte’s view of life and theon’s, at the end of the day?

if u want my opinion here, i think people just don’t like engaging with ygritte because of this complexity. she is right to be angry and hateful, and she’s even right in who she’s directing it at, but you can’t ignore the fact that her very one sided view of morality has her making a lot of decisions on jon’s behalf that he wouldn’t make if he had a choice. because she is just another cog in the machine, she has no way of making any sort of meaningful change; she’s just another nameless soldier that dies in battle. in a way, she’s exactly like the broken men septon maribald mentions. these broken men are not good people, but they are victims as much as they are perpetrators. and THAT, the idea that her relationship with jon can exist in this complex gray space where two gears in the wheel can meet, find commonalities, and it doesn’t matter because their lives don’t matter, they are just two people in a conflict that’s been going on for a long time, and they can’t fix it, and they can’t escape, so they hurt each other again and again until it finally kills them both - i think the senselessness of it all makes both fans and antis of her uncomfortable. she’s not easily consumable, so she has to be either the snarky fiery great love or the evil pedo rapist (once again madonna whore complex coming for us all) and i just don’t think she, the wildlings, or this entire series are meant to be engaged with on that level.

[mallowstep]

(I came up with this au while in debate class so I'm calling it the Debate AU if you don't mind)

Tigerstar absolutely misread everything about Riverclan and fucked up so bad by keeping Stonefur, Mistyfoot Featherpaw, and Stormpaw alive and well and healthy but basically doing everything to Leopardstar that he does to Mistyfoot and Feathertail and Leopardstar in the Misty and Leopard AUs that Stone pulls a Scourge in front of all the clans and everyone looks at Stonefur in terror but Stonefur only has eyes for Leopardstar, who is leaning heavily on Mistyfoot. (Like Leopard is beat down, she's loosing hair, and she has deeply infected scratches on her shoulders.Stone and Misty fucking Hate Tigerstar for what he's done to this cat they've known all their lives.) Stonefur kicks Shadowclan the fuck out of Riverclan territory, Mistyfoot doesn't let Mudfur near Leopardstar (neither does Featherpaw, for that matter. She wasn't abused and she's healthy, but she was traumatized in-Tigerstar had her watch Mudfur abuse Leopardstar and Tigerstar himself told Featherpaw Greystripe thought the same things about her.) Featherpaw won't let any warriors in Leopardstar's den unless she's in there with Leopardstar ---so Featherpaw can protect Leopardstar. The silver furred apprentice curls around her leader, "I'm right here, Leopardstar. Stonefur and Mistyfoot are talking to the other clans and then they'll be back. Stonefur said he'd bring back your favorite." Featherpaw added, purring as she groomed Leopardstar's head. "Stormpaw said he went and got the best trinket for your new den though, and he thinks it's going to be your choice over uncle Stonefur's."

damn anon. thank you. hold on i'm going to engage.

also fair like. i'm. i'm out of the haze and not good at keeping track of au tags so. the only ones i'm really tagging for are the ones i'm like. still thinking about. stone au atm. just didn't want like. u to be. think it was a thing. i'm just tired 100% of the time. anyway.

cw: sexual assault, physical abuse, a few more detailed cws immediately under the cut

cws: parent being involved in sexual assault of child, child sexual abuse (via exposure)

cool. sometimes it's like. i dunno. anyway. sorry i said i'm tired but also very into this.

anyway /nm but also reminder to everyone that i have adhd and would prefer if you included paragraph breaks. obviously i just copy it into a document and add my own but. i appreciate when you save me the step. like i get it y'all've seen me ramble at Length in one paragraph before i just. appreciate it.

okay back on topic.

i'm going to sidestep riverclan related concerns for the sake of "angst good," lmao. riverclan related concerns being if i wasn't tired i could easily come up with a justification i'm just tired and lazy.

but like yeah like. uh. dammit i'm already opening up tpb books left and right. let me just.

"But common sense says there’ll be a battle, Firestar. I don’t need an omen from StarClan to tell me that."

oh my god can cinderpelt like. go and talk to all of the modern medicine cats so that they stop flipping out because starclan isn't answering their texts or whatever.

Remembering the wounded and devastated cats in the WindClan camp the day before, he had expected only a small group to come to Fourtrees. Instead practically every warrior must have been there.

i mean windclan has like five warriors but-

Firestar waved his tail to signal to the two united Clans—LionClan, he thought with a rush of pride. This was his destiny.

this is mostly for jace (assuming u see this) bc it's the whole "importance of lionclan existing" thing i was referring to. didn't bother to pull quotes on my dotc rant, but here u go.

so. point of canon divergence* is:

“Greetings, Tigerstar,” he meowed coolly. “You came, then. Not still looking for those prisoners you lost from RiverClan territory?” Tigerstar let out a snarl. “You’ll regret that day’s work, Firestar.” “Try and make me,” Firestar retorted.

* from firestar's pov

bc obviously that didn't happen.

no, what happens is firestar sees -- blackfoot and darkstripe and.

leopardstar.

firestar harbours no affection for riverclan's leader. but. even from a distance, he can see her ribs. he'd be surprised she was standing on her own, if he wasn't processing everything else going on.

he doesn't see this part.

Mistyfoot's tail flicks to Stonefur's shoulder, and he nods. They've only exchanged a few words, only had a brief moment, but they're ready.

Stonefur glances back. Featherpaw and Stormpaw are out of the way. He hopes, if this goes wrong, they have the sense to run. If they had the chance, he would have told them to skirt the edge of TigerClan and try to make it as deep into ThunderClan's territory as they could.

He hopes they have the sense to figure that out for themselves.

Firestar is exposing Tigerstar's plans. RiverClan doesn't react. There's not much they'd be surprised by, Stonefur muses. If Firestar told them Tigerstar killed his own kit, he doesn't think he'd be shocked.

Mistyfoot slips towards the front of the crowd. Leopardstar doesn't know, of course. Stonefur has barely had the chance to say two words to her in the past moon. He slinks around to the space between the Clans.

Firestar finishes his speech. No one says anything. Firestar looks takenaback. He glances towards Leopardstar; Stonefur does too. Mistyfoot is watching him, but she's looking at the ground.

A part of Stonefur wants to say, "That's not all." Because, as he starts to run, preparing to leap at Tigerstar, he wants them to know why. He wants them to know what Tigerstar has done. He wants them to revel in Tigerstar's death.

But he doesn't.

Tigerstar sees him, of course. Stonefur isn't trying to be subtle.

"You," Tigerstar growls.

Say it, Stonefur thinks. Tell them what you've done.

But Tigerstar doesn't.

The actual fight is a blur. He doesn't think he is himself again, until Tigerstar's corpse twitches and stills, and he looks towards Leopardstar. Mistyfoot has inserted herself between Leopardstar and Blackfoot, and Stonefur nods minutely.

It's over now.

the clans, of course, are...shocked. riverclan has no complaints, and while...everyone (more or less) is happy tigerstar is dead, but...for thunderclan and windclan, stonefur just murdered him without direct provocation. and the fact that he killed him nine times? direct violation of a warrior doesn't need to kill.

like. if they Knew, they would think stonefur just. but they don't know.

and riverclan doesn't want to explain and shadowclan doesn't want to explain and no i'm not at this moment figuring out what happens wrt bloodclan and so forth. i just wanted to set that scene.

yeah. no idea what happens next in a lot of places here. but.

everyone goes home.

("Your territory," Stonefur growls.

"Obviously," Blackfoot says.)

mistyfoot takes leopardstar to her den. stonefur tells stormpaw to run to thunderclan and ask for their medicine cat. tells him to say it's urgent and he can't explain here. tells him that if they want to send her with a warrior or two, don't argue. just get her here.

featherpaw stations herself outside leopardstar's den.

stonefur feels like he should say something. he's still covered in tigerstar's blood.

"we're taking this down," he says, "now."

they dismantle the bonehill.

once the process has been started, stonefur lets the rest of the warriors finish, and grooms himself and washes in the river until he's satisfied every trace of blood has been taken care of.

he's about to see her when stormpaw arrives with cinderpelt and...hm. sandstorm.

(cinderpelt was there. she saw leopardstar. she can start to put pieces together.)

stonefur greets them, and featherpaw goes to tell mistyfoot and leopardstar, and the adrenaline is fading, his limbs starting to tremble. when's the last time he got any real sleep?

"Stormpaw said you needed a medicine cat," Cinderpelt says.

"We do."

"Did something happen to Mudfur?"

"He can't do this." Stonefur's tail flicks. "We need someone to look at Leopardstar -- you can use our herbs, of course, whatever you need."

Cinderpelt blinks. She's a young cat, Stonefur thinks, too young to be looking at him like she understands. Maybe it's part of being a medicine cat.

"Right then. Does Leopardstar know I'm coming?"

"Featherpaw is telling her."

and stonefur isn't going to follow cinderpelt into leopardstar's den.

for one, it's crowded enough, and he'd probably just get kicked out. for another, he doesn't know what leopardstar and cinderpelt will talk about, but -- he doesn't want to force himself into it.

cinderpelt stays for a while. sandstorm runs proxy, taking some herbs to her, but then she stays with cinderpelt. stonefur has probably been up for over a day when cinderpelt and sandstorm nod.

"take some prey before you leave," he says. "riverclan won't forget this."

"i went over some things with mistyfoot," cinderpelt says. "always good to have some basic herb knowledge."

cats don't have a direct analogue for kissing, but stonefur could kiss cinderpelt for having the grace to say that without letting on why. it's not like riverclan doesn't know. everyone knows.

but.

it's still appreciated.

As the sun rises, Stonefur stands, facing into Leopardstar's den.

"Can I come in?"

Her eyes are watching him. Even they have been changed: no longer the brilliant gold he remembers, but something brassy and dull.

"Of course."

Featherpaw slips past him, taking his place as sentry. She needs to sleep, Stonefur thinks, but it might be best to wait until she's too exhausted to keep her eyes open. He's not above carrying her back to her den like a kit.

Leopardstar starts to stand.

"Don't," Stonefur says. "It's alright."

He hates that seeing her like this is not foreign to him.

Mistyfoot curls up, her eyes closed, a compromise. Stonefur sinks to the ground. "Can I -- do anything?"

Leopardstar looks at the empty space in her nest. "Would you stay with me?"

"Of course." (Anything.)

yeah. uh. i think like. i dunno. it's not like tigerstar ever showed leopardstar a single ounce of kindness. so. uh. am i using that as an excuse to sidestep angst? no. no i am not. well. not entirely. but Damn leopardstar needs a hug.

that she can initiate and control.

but still. she's desperately deprived of positive human contact and as someone who cried once because someone put their hand on my shoulder and i hadn't touched another human being in like six months. i think she needs it.

ohh boy yeah. i think y'all know me well enough to know where i'd go with that angle.

so let me turn my attention to featherpaw. i started answering this ask like an hour ago. anon i love you.

featherpaw has. uh. she's got a Lot of problems. as you can probably understand.

i'd say let's start at the top, but i'm not sure where that is, so let's start with her relationship to stormpaw, because i think that should get fucked up. i think...you know how stormpaw says, "i won't let him kill us"? and. yeah.

but there's never One Moment here and stormpaw realizes way too late and featherpaw feels like...you know like. everyone who is supposed to help her is failing her. she can't really blame leopardstar, and mistyfoot clearly feels bad, and stonefur like. idk what he was doing but she's solidly neutral on him.

could tigerstar try to fuck all of that up? of course he could. do i want to write featherpaw and stonefur arguing about leopardstar? i've already written a lot of something blindingly similar, so not at the moment.

anyway. the relationship i will freely fuck with is stormpaw. i think not because of anything specific, i think tigerstar just gets in her head and she looks like her mother (something tigerstar brings up) and stormpaw takes after their father and he keeps acting like everything is normal and.

at the end of the day, there's this gulf between them that he keeps stepping into.

so yeah. not to mention greystripe. like. fuck.

"Featherpaw!" Greystripe waves his tail at his daughter, and she flinches.

oh hey i hit the grammar cut off again. let me. i learned how to do this okay i'm going to insert some kind of dummy image or something to reset the counter.

there it's a link to my tumblr but i've got grammar checking again xd

moving on.

featherpaw doesn't want to talk to greystripe. it's not Strictly that she thinks what tigerstar said was true (although she's not sure it isn't), but that. just looking at him sets off a loop in her head.

uh. does anyone explain this to greystripe? no. because the cats who could are:

leopardstar (doesn't want to talk about it)

mudfur (doesn't want to talk about it)

mistyfoot (but only by inference, and doesn't consider explaining things to greystripe a priority)

featherpaw (doesn't want to talk about it and doesn't want to talk to greystripe)

so yeah. no. he's in the Dark.

one of the first priorities is building leopardstar a new den. and decorating it. that's part of building a den i just wanted to clarify and.

featherpaw takes it seriously. because. you know. beauty begets beauty.

she doesn't want...stormpaw is ready to jump straight into sharing a den with old apprentice friend dawnpaw. maybe they never stopped.

but featherpaw? doesn't feel safe there. (doesn't feel safe anywhere.)

especially as she's getting older and tigerstar certainly implied and-

she's not sleeping very well.

mistyfoot and stonefur are trying to help her but they're not therapists! they don't know what to do! featherpaw clearly is dealing with shit but how do they help her??? they have no idea!!! how would they?

in a very strange inverse of canon, leopardstar and featherpaw develop a close relationship. leopardstar feels like she failed to protect featherpaw. featherpaw just. doesn't know. she doesn't know what she feels or thinks or knows and like: leopardstar doesn't. she doesn't need to explain herself to leopardstar.

she's in a big sister role to the kits, i think.

uh. yeah. featherpaw. she is not taking any of this well.

sooner or later greystripe corners her (because he doesn't know) and she's having a panic attack and leopardstar is like "you are never allowed to talk to her ever again" and greystripe is like "what the fuck did i do" and someone (mistyfoot?) finally explains.

uh. what else.

stonefur + leopardstar + featherpaw cuddle pile? leopardstar is in the centre. she feels kind of weird about that because she can tell featherpaw is like. going through this whole. uh. whats the. fuck.

like. featherpaw feels like she needs to protect her and leopardstar doesn't really want to encourage that but on the otherhand it's kind of nice that featherpaw is right here because tigerstar 100% used to threaten her to leopardstar and-

yeah.

uh.

i started writing two hours ago so i'm just going to post.