half mad half worse

easy to forget but book jon snow is great actually. he gets so drunk he cries in his first chapter. he's 16 years old and laser focused on loan negotiation. he keeps getting promoted against his will. he's the chosen fantasy protagonist with the worst genre awareness ever. he implements pro immigration social reforms. he has a giant albino pet wolf. he cuts a guy's head off. he thinks he invented cunnilingus. he's been dead for 15 years.

related to the excerpt i posted yesterday about how enslaved children in antiquity had no experience of sexuality that was not immediately suborned to adult use, this is my problem with "grooming" to describe what happens to rhaenyra and alicent. being from a family where incestuous marriage is institutionalized means there is no "non-sexual" relationship with family members truly possible for rhaenyra. "grooming" fails to get at her actual life - and what matters to me more, this suggests a failure to comprehend lives in the present where ritualized intergenerational incestuous abuse exists and similarly requires a radically different framework to conceptualize violence, one that doesn't rely on "violated innocence." similarly in a society where, from earliest consciousness, you know your sexuality is not your own because you are simply not to have one until your parents arrange your marriage to a (probably much older adult) man, that you will never have sexual agency in the way we think of it, how do we talk about alicent's experience with viserys, when she realizes the fate she was always destined for is at last happening and is still wrecked by it? it's just different. and neither are equivalent to the sexual violence facing enslaved children in the ancient world, but it's a helpful framework.

i just apolitically killed the king like i have no agenda or whatever im just the jester here but i stabbed him anyway LOL all the courtiers and advisors are trying really hard to figure out who did it LOL all of them wanted him dead but they dont know whose scheme it was so nobody can promulgate a coherent political maneuver based on the circumstances LOL just playing my lute #MyLute