#ramsay tag

[kingsmoot]

hi! im not sure if you’ve spoken about this before but would be so interested to hear your thoughts on the dynamic between ramsay and the original reek? like the combined matters of reek already being a serial rapist and murderer before he even meets ramsay, the abject weirdness of an adult man being best friends with a child/preteen, and the fact that ramsay names his torture victim after reek despite no indication that he ever tortured the original reek? i always felt george was hinting at some kind of cycle of abuse thing with the whole “who corrupted who” line. anyway sorry this ask is so long but i love your analysis and would really like to hear what you think!

hello 🩷❤️🖤 firstly thank you for your kind words!! i have spoken about this before, but i'm happy to speak about it again, ty for your interest! i'm honestly a little surprised this is such an underdiscussed topic in general!! but not too surprised.

in short: yes. i completely agree with you. from my reading of the text it is obvious that reek was sexually abusing ramsay. i've made a few posts about it:

1. most plainly here

2. and i also touched on it here where i talked about ramsay's mama willingly and purposefully putting him in danger

I went through asearchoficeandfire and pulled every mention of reek i, the manservant that roose gifted to ramsay, so let's go through them all together

the rest is under the cut for discussion of child abuse, endangerment, neglect, and csa, as well as rape and necrophilia

there are three "reeks" in the text. reek, the manservant that roose bolton gave to ramsay and his mother. reek, who is ramsay in disguise in winterfell. and reek, who is the tortured remains of theon greyjoy. to keep things simpler and easier to follow i am only going to call these three people reek, ramsay, and theon, ignoring who might have been called "reek" at what time.

"Lord Bolton has never acknowledged the boy, so far as I know," Ser Rodrik said. "I confess, I do not know him." "Few do," [Lady Hornwood] replied. "He lived with his mother until two years past, when young Domeric died and left Bolton without an heir. That was when he brought his bastard to the Dreadfort. The boy is a sly creature by all accounts, and he has a servant who is almost as cruel as he is. Reek, they call the man. It's said he never bathes. They hunt together, the Bastard and this Reek, and not for deer. I've heard tales, things I can scarce believe, even of a Bolton. And now that my lord husband and my sweet son have gone to the gods, the Bastard looks at my lands hungrily." Bran wanted to give the lady a hundred men to defend her rights, but Ser Rodrik only said, "He may look, but should he do more I promise you there will be dire retribution. You will be safe enough, my lady . . . though perhaps in time, when your grief is passed, you may find it prudent to wed again."

acok, bran ii

this is the first we hear of reek and ramsay, and it's notable that they've only been over at the dreadfort + its surrounding lands for two years now. we learn later in adwd that reek and ramsay have been together since ramsay was a child, but they were living in weeping water with ramsay's mother

It was a few days after Alebelly's bath that Ser Rodrik returned to Winterfell with his prisoner, a fleshy young man with fat moist lips and long hair who smelled like a privy, even worse than Alebelly had. "Reek, he's called," Hayhead said when Bran asked who it was. "I never heard his true name. He served the Bastard of Bolton and helped him murder Lady Hornwood, they say." The Bastard himself was dead, Bran learned that evening over supper. Ser Rodrik's men had caught him on Hornwood land doing something horrible (Bran wasn't quite sure what, but it seemed to be something you did without your clothes) and shot him down with arrows as he tried to ride away. They came too late for poor Lady Hornwood, though. After their wedding, the Bastard had locked her in a tower and neglected to feed her. Bran had heard men saying that when Ser Rodrik had smashed down the door he found her with her mouth all bloody and her fingers chewed off.

acok, bran v

the above is referencing ramsay, of course, disguised as reek. here we have the account of how ramsay and reek were caught on lady hornwood's lands after they had kidnapped and raped her from the stark perspective (and filtered through bran's 7-year-old perspective as well) but a little later on we hear it straight from the bastard's mouth:

"Aye, but [Ser Rodrick] thought us friends. A common mistake. When the old fool gave me his hand, I took half his arm instead. Then I let him see my face." The man put both hands to his helm and lifted it off his head, holding it in the crook of his arm. "Reek," Theon said, disquieted. How did a serving man get such fine armor? The man laughed. "The wretch is dead." He stepped closer. "The girl's fault. If she had not run so far, his horse would not have lamed, and we might have been able to flee. I gave him mine when I saw the riders from the ridge. I was done with her by then, and he liked to take his turn while they were still warm. I had to pull him off her and shove my clothes into his hands—calfskin boots and velvet doublet, silver-chased swordbelt, even my sable cloak. Ride for the Dreadfort, I told him, bring all the help you can. Take my horse, he's swifter, and here, wear the ring my father gave me, so they'll know you came from me. He'd learned better than to question me. By the time they put that arrow through his back, I'd smeared myself with the girl's filth and dressed in his rags. They might have hanged me anyway, but it was the only chance I saw." He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. "And now, my sweet prince, there was a woman promised me, if I brought two hundred men. Well, I brought three times as many, and no green boys nor fieldhands neither, but my father's own garrison."

acok, theon vi

ok just a quick pause i LOVE ramsay's little monologue here it's SO CRAZY GOOD it's so good it's so

like telling theon to his face "aye, but he thought us friends. a common mistake." is CRAZY. it's so good!!!! after so many chapters of build up too the whole thing feels like being nailed down to a chair and put in thumb screw and every time there's a new bran or theon chapter they're tightened just a half-turn before this reveal where your thumbs are sliced clean off by a scimitar IT'S SO GOOD RRAUUUGHHH

sorry i got distracted. this li'l bit is interesting because it sets ramsay up as In Charge. he calls the shots. "[Reek]'d learned better than to question me," he says, and he sacrifices reek to the stark riders to save his own skin. the way ramsay tells this story sets reek up as disposable and submissive. a servant who is below ramsay's station, defers to him, gives obeisance, and gives his life for his master. (notable as well that this is not Lady Hornwood who they are raping the corpse of, but an anonymous northern girl, likely one of the smallfolk who live by and/or in the Hornwood keep)

ramsay's language here also makes it clear that this is habitual for him and reek. he likes to hunt girls, rape them, and kill them, and reek likes to fuck their corpses before they've cooled. romance. this was established somewhat back in bran ii when lady hornwood first introduced the pair, but we now have it straight from ramsay's mouth that this is their habitual game.

"I knew the first Reek. He stank, though not for want of washing. I have never known a cleaner creature, truth be told. He bathed thrice a day and wore flowers in his hair as if he were a maiden. Once, when my second wife was still alive, he was caught stealing scent from her bedchamber. I had him whipped for that, a dozen lashes. Even his blood smelled wrong. The next year he tried it again. This time he drank the perfume and almost died of it. It made no matter. The smell was something he was born with. A curse, the smallfolk said. The gods had made him stink so that men would know his soul was rotting. My old maester insisted it was a sign of sickness, yet the boy was otherwise as strong as a young bull. No one could stand to be near him, so he slept with the pigs … until the day that Ramsay's mother appeared at my gates to demand that I provide a servant for my bastard, who was growing up wild and unruly. I gave her Reek. It was meant to be amusing, but he and Ramsay became inseparable. I do wonder, though … was it Ramsay who corrupted Reek, or Reek Ramsay?" His lordship glanced at the new Reek with eyes as pale and strange as two white moons. "What was he whispering whilst he unchained you?"

adwd, reek iii

the above comes two books later, and now that we've gotten lady hornwood's perspective (and this is a perspective that comes from the general northern grapevine of people who live between winterfell and the dreadfort) and ramsay's perspective (which we will soon learn to doubt) we get roose's.

it's interesting too, i had always pictured reek as a grown adult man, but my friend @wormlips pointed out to me recently that roose does call him a "boy" in the above passage. i think i always pictured him as an older man partially since theon is transformed through his year of torture in an abandoned shipping container into an old man. i had just always made the logical leap that in addition to making theon smell terrible so that he is more similar to reek, purposefully torturing and starving him and turning him into a bent old man was also to emulate reek. to recreate him in a way. so i have always pictured him as being WAY older than ramsay, like rams is between seven and ten and reek is like... forty five. but wormie also pointed out that drinking perfume seems like a childish thing to do. i can see the sense in their reading of it! i have personally never pictured the two of them as being close in age, but rather ramsay as a child and reek as an old(er) man. i think the two incidents of reek stealing perfume might have happened when he was young but that he was an adult by the time ramsay's mother came to the dreadfort to ask for a serving man.

it's interesting also that roose implies with his question of who corrupted who that reek was not a serial rapist + murderer before he was given to ramsay. but idfk about that. the thing is that all of these people are unreliable narrators, so it's kind of a murky picture of a purposefully obscured past.

it doesn't make sense to me that the smallfolk would claim the gods cursed reek to "stink so that men would know his soul was rotting" if he wasn't already murdering and/or raping girls or defiling corpses. why would that be how they explained his smell if he was just a normal guy with a medical condition?

it's possible that roose only gave reek to ramsay and his mother because of his smell. because ramsay's mother wanted him to give them a servant to help her raise the boy so roose gave her one who smelled like an open grave being used as a latrine. but that doesn't seem like the kind of joke roose bolton would play. not to me! roose giving the troublesome mother of his rapebaby a man with a proven history of horrible violence? that seems like the kind of joke roose bolton would play. to me.

also reek and ramsay becoming "inseparable" reads as far less sinister if you picture them being the same age. i do not.

another point to reek being significantly older is that it wouldn't make sense for roose to send a child over to a woman who was asking for childcare support. even if he did, she'd send him back. he couldn't do any more work around the mill than ramsay could if they were both children, he would just be an extra mouth to feed. so even if he isn't quadrouple ramsay's age like i'm picturing him, he would definitely be older. like 16-7 at minimum i think.

to your point about cycles of violence, i would say that ramsay's entire existence as a character is about cycles of violence. the cycles are certainly cycling!!! but that's not exactly what i get from this particular snippet. i take roose's question about whether reek corrupted ramsay or ramsay reek in the same way i take his telling ramsay that his way has always been in favor of "a peaceful rule and a quiet people". he's full of shit!!!

my reading of it is that rams was obviously already a violent child. maybe he was killing animals, hurting his mother, hurting his fellow children. but he was a child. and reek was an adult man with a history of violence towards others. that violence isn't explicitly stated in the text but i think if the smallfolk were saying that his soul was rotting then it had to be pretty bad. i interpret this as reek already being a rapist and serial killer before he ever met ramsay (which is your reading too!).

"Has my bastard ever told you how I got him?" That [Theon] did know, to his relief. "Yes, my … m'lord. You met his mother whilst out riding and were smitten by her beauty." "Smitten?" Bolton laughed. "Did he use that word? Why, the boy has a singer's soul … though if you believe that song, you may well be dimmer than the first Reek. Even the riding part is wrong. I was hunting a fox along the Weeping Water when I chanced upon a mill and saw a young woman washing clothes in the stream. The old miller had gotten himself a new young wife, a girl not half his age. She was a tall, willowy creature, very healthy-looking. Long legs and small firm breasts, like two ripe plums. Pretty, in a common sort of way. The moment that I set eyes on her I wanted her. Such was my due. The maesters will tell you that King Jaehaerys abolished the lord's right to the first night to appease his shrewish queen, but where the old gods rule, old customs linger. The Umbers keep the first night too, deny it as they may. Certain of the mountain clans as well, and on Skagos … well, only heart trees ever see half of what they do on Skagos. "This miller's marriage had been performed without my leave or knowledge. The man had cheated me. So I had him hanged, and claimed my rights beneath the tree where he was swaying. If truth be told, the wench was hardly worth the rope. The fox escaped as well, and on our way back to the Dreadfort my favorite courser came up lame, so all in all it was a dismal day.

adwd, reek iii

the above always sends a chill down my spine... "a peaceful rule. a quiet people. that has always been my way. make it yours." you delusional lying bastard 🩷🩷🩷

this passage is notable as well because it shows us that rams is an unreliable narrator. it's not the first time either!!

Ramsay was clad in black and pink—black boots, black belt and scabbard, black leather jerkin over a pink velvet doublet slashed with dark red satin. In his right ear gleamed a garnet cut in the shape of a drop of blood. Yet for all the splendor of his garb, he remained an ugly man, big-boned and slope-shouldered, with a fleshiness to him that suggested that in later life he would run to fat. His skin was pink and blotchy, his nose broad, his mouth small, his hair long and dark and dry. His lips were wide and meaty, but the thing men noticed first about him were his eyes. He had his lord father's eyes—small, close-set, queerly pale. Ghost grey, some men called the shade, but in truth his eyes were all but colorless, like two chips of dirty ice. At the sight of Reek, he smiled a wet-lipped smile. "There he is. My sour old friend." To the men beside him he said, "Reek has been with me since I was a boy. My lord father gave him to me as a token of his love."

adwd, reek i

ah, but that's not true, is it, rams? your father gave him to you as a jest, to spite you and your mother. he was given to you both to harm you and it is a quirky little miracle that he ended up harming others with you instead.

rams tells himself and other stories about how he was welcomed into his father's house and beloved by him. how his mother was a great beauty who his father was in love with. and it's all lies. all dust upon the air.

i'll also note that roose describes reek as being "dim". i don't think there's much truth to that tbh. i think roose is proven time and again to view all the smallfolks as dumber than him. beneath him and mostly inhuman. this is really well defined in arya's acok chapters when she serves as his cup bearer and she is totally invisible to him.

"A fine rule, m'lord." "The woman disobeyed me, though. You see what Ramsay is. She made him, her and Reek, always whispering in his ear about his rights. He should have been content to grind corn. Does he truly think that he can ever rule the north?"

adwd, reek iii

[ALICENT HIGHTOWER VOICE] AND AEMOND... YOU KNOW WHAT AEMOND IS.

this btw is where my characterization of ramsay's mama really takes root. i think it's obvious enough what she was doing without this explicit confirmation from roose, especially with how ramsay acts and how he speaks about himself. but this is the crux of it. she had everything taken from her. her husband murdered and her raped under his still-warm corpse. and then she carried her pregnancy to term in the hopes that the gods would grant her a boy who could be given a place in the world that she never could be.

to me this is where the cycles start cycling. not with reek and ramsay, but with a desperate, violated, brutalized woman giving her son back to her rapist and insisting that he claim him. like, if she were... i'm not certain that i would call her a "Good Victim" for doing this but she could have aborted her pregnancy. tried to rebuild her life now that her husband was dead and she was physically brutalized. aboritcides are plentiful in westeros. or if she wanted to keep her pregnancy to term she could have lived the rest of her quiet life with her child in weeping waters in the shadow of the dreadfort. and she could have kept her son far from the leech lord who brutalized her.

but she didn't!!!!!!!! she shoved that baby right into the wide open razor toothed mouth of the monster who brutalized her!!! she knew exactly what kind of man lord roose bolton was and she was determined to get her child recognized by him and taken into his fold.

i love that rams is like... a personification of her all consuming rage as well as a personification of his father's brutality. it's great.

"He fights for you," Reek blurted out. "He's strong." "Bulls are strong. Bears. I have seen my bastard fight. He is not entirely to blame. Reek was his tutor, the first Reek, and Reek was never trained at arms. Ramsay is ferocious, I will grant you, but he swings that sword like a butcher hacking meat."

adwd, reek iii

further evidence of reek being significantly older than ramsay! a child would not tutor another child. further evidence also that reek was already a brutally violent man before he and rams started playing the most dangerous game in the woods. he taught ramsay how to hack people apart with a broadsword.

also calling reek ramsay's "tutor" here reinforces to me that their relationship was inappropriate. odd for a young child and his teacher to be "inseparable".

"He's not afraid of anyone, m'lord." "He should be. Fear is what keeps a man alive in this world of treachery and deceit. Even here in Barrowton the crows are circling, waiting to feast upon our flesh. The Cerwyns and the Tallharts are not to be relied on, my fat friend Lord Wyman plots betrayal, and Whoresbane … the Umbers may seem simple, but they are not without a certain low cunning. Ramsay should fear them all, as I do. The next time you see him, tell him that." "Tell him … tell him to be afraid?" Reek felt ill at the very thought of it. "M'lord, I … if I did that, he'd …" "I know." Lord Bolton sighed. "His blood is bad. He needs to be leeched. The leeches suck away the bad blood, all the rage and pain. No man can think so full of anger. Ramsay, though … his tainted blood would poison even leeches, I fear."

adwd reek iii

aaaaaaaaand back to ramsay's bad blood. "I had him whipped for that, a dozen lashes. Even his blood smelled wrong." :> where did all the bad blood come from, i wonder? his sire perhaps?

i love roose describing rams as full of anger. that's his mama's anger 🩷 calcified by roose's rejection of him and his refusal to accept this. spurred on by reek's proclivities and by reek's own rejection by his liege lord. just a horrible layer cake of brutality and violence and abuse.

that's all the quotes i have for you!!!

to me it is obvious from the above text that reek sexually abused ramsay as a child. possibly when he got older and bigger and stronger and reek was a much much older man, smaller and frailer, he really was meek and obedient to ramsay. but it didn't start out that way. his tutor would not behave with deference towards him. the man who taught him how to hack meat apart with a broadsword and how to hunt women through the woods before skinning them was not... subservient to him.

the closeness between them is suspect just because of their age difference and further suspect because of who reek is and what he does.

i also think that ramsay would never see this as sexual abuse. i think ramsay and theon have exactly the same frame of mind here where it isn't possible for them to be sexually abused or taken advantage of because they're men and that doesn't happen to men.

it's obvious that ramsay thinks of his relationship with reek fondly. fondly enough that he tells people reek was a token of his father's love. fondly enough that he creates a new reek for himself after the first one dies.

to your point about ramsay torturing theon into his reek when he never tortured reek, i do read part of that as revenge. like a sort of inversion of what was done unto him. i don't think that reek tortured ramsay the way ramsay tortures theon! but i do think he assaulted him. a major theme with ramsay is the playing of parts (a theme intensified and continued when jeyne is brought to winterfell as arya) so i see his sexual abuse and torture of theon as an inversion of what reek did to him.

i mean, i think ramsay tortures theon for other personal reasons. like resenting his beauty, his status as a lord's legitimate son, and the way he treated him in winterfell when he took it over. and just because he's a sadist who likes torturing people to get off. but also i like to think that it was an inversion of what reek did to him.

i'm unsurprised also that this isn't really talked about because the asoiaf fandom in general loves to say that the cycles are cycling but hates to admit that the evil monstrous characters who hurt people were also hurt themselves. so it's like bad fandom politics to say that ramsay bolton, who is a serial killing serial rapist, was also raped as a child. and put into situations with people he never should have been in because he was a child.

this is way too long it's way too many words it took me like the whole day to write it!!! i hope you read it to the end and don't get bored!!! thank you for your question mwah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bottleswithbottles]

Drawing the @rogerrrroger 's Gordon Wall-E with some creativity liberties because im stupid LMFAO (i liked a lot ur design ily no straight)

[apparently-artless]

✧❁✿ DUNGEON MESHI E01 ❀ MARCILLE DONATO ✿❁✧

dedicated to Ramsay (@himawaari)

[kururrugi]

"i want to do more than just kissing."

[camelliagwerm]

But you need to understand the limitations.

[jeyneofpoole]

modern theon goes to ramsay’s halloween rager in roose’s basement, gets violently high, agrees to take ramsay to get mcdonalds in balon’s truck (that he stole), they’re driving on a back country road and hit something, theon thinks it’s a deer but he and ramsay get out to check and it’s two small children (trick-or-treating in. the woods?) theon is in a delusional crossfaded haze vomiting into a bush while ramsay is trying to convince him that they have to bury the bodies before the police come (he jacks off to true crime documentaries) and theon (hallucinating that the kids are bran and rickon because ramsay laced his weed with rat poison probably) is like oh yeah that’s rational we should do that so they do it and then get back in the truck and go get big macs and never talk about it again except for when they’re having freak nasty out-of-bdsm-regulations sex and ramsay forces him to confess to the crime over and over while theon ideates suicidally. aaaaaand post!

[captaincanonly]

[vextik]

an excuse to draw a bunch of guys i like that ive been pecking at slowly for a couple weeks

[itrhymeswith-freak]

thramsay memes? thramsay memes

[wodania]

The Miller’s Wife of Acorn Waters

@asoiaf-smackdown

[snekberry]

jon doing the idiot sandwich thing with martin...

my hand keeps slipping

[kingsmoot]

i don't see people talking very much about ramsay's daddy issues but it is like. the whole of his self is built around trying to edge his way out of and around the cold dead granite block of roose's total neglect and rejection

[notanorigami]

aww, Lynn's such a cute gordon ramsay fan (ch 802)

First off, Nick being such a kind and caring (boy)friend!

Title: Invite

Hell's Head Chef (Gordon): This week, I opened an exhibition in Beijing; please come visit it!

Nick: "Hell's head chef's solo exhibition. Lynn probably wants to go, right?"

Nick: "Hey, Lynn..."

Lynn: "Hell's head chef is going to open an exhibition in Beijing!!!"

Nick: "Looks like you really wanted to go, huh."

Next up, Nick being patient with his die-hard Gordon Ramsay fan of a boyfriend!

Title: Exhibition

On the day of the exhibition.

Lynn: "These are his favorite knives. "

Lynn: "This one he specifically uses to cut onions, this one he uses to cut lamb, this one..."

Lynn: "I recognize this pot, it's the one he threw onto the ground in Season 2 Episode 17."

Lynn: "Look at the dent."

Chef: "Help!"

Nick: "What?!"

Lynn: "Oh, this is his apprentice from last year. Now I have a good impression!"

Chef: "I don't want to be a chef anymore, quickly let me out!"

Lynn: "This exhibition is too good!"

Nick: "Ummm...... Lynn."

[briennsa]

Lucifer and Sam 5x03 // Ramsay and Theon

described in alt text

[evil-maryland]

This is the perfect representation of out Hellsite

[yoohyeon]

“𝚆𝚎𝚕𝚕, 𝙸 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚜𝚑 𝚠𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍

𝚐𝚘 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚋𝚎𝚐𝚒𝚗 𝚒𝚝

𝙱𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚋𝚎𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝙸 𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚖𝚢𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏

𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎, 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝚒𝚝”

Marianas Trench - Haven’t had enough (2011)

Do not repost!