Untitled

So Theon grows up as the youngest son of Balon Greyjoy in a violent (Vikingish) culture. He is described by his sister as a shy, meek child, which in the iron born culture as weak. His brothers, Rodrik & Maron bully him and beat him up, his father lets it happen, arguably even encourages it (Theon:”I’m a warrior” Balon: “your brothers were warriors”) so Theon has already a bunch of layers of issues building up at this very young age. What he basically learns is that he is A) not manly (hardened) enough and B) there is something wrong with him, he’s supposed to be more like his brothers.

Then Balon decides to rebel against the throne (cause being subservient to someone is one of the biggest humiliations when you’re a Greyjoy! They need independence cause “we do not sow”) both Rodrik and Maron die during the fighting and Theon is Balon’s last living son and is shipped off to winterfell as a hostage. In winterfell he is constantly judged simply for being a greyjoy (the greyjoys were not popular, with good reason!) “The whole castle, from Lady Stark to the lowest kitchen scullion, knew he was hostage to his father’s good behavior, and treated him accordingly”

Not to mention that Theon is very much aware that he could be killed any day. He is not there because he is appreciated (that’s an understatement) he is there for one reason only, so that Ned can cut his head off if his father rebels again. He’s seen by everyone (but Robb) as an object, a means to an end. Theon got no parental love whatsoever (he specifically remembers Ned Stark to be cold to him cause he knew he might have to put him to death one day and how his wife was even colder) and he never really had anyone (but his brothers) to look up to. The only one he had was Robb. And the only thing Theon really wants is to be accepted and appreciated.

So Theon has a really hard time in winterfell (something most people don’t seem to realize) he is scared of a very possible death (and showing fear is a weakness. No one can know!), his self-confidence issues are building up to the point where he practically hates himself (and again… that’s a weakness. No one can know!) and then there’s also the issue with him being a (what we would today call) metrosexual man. Theon loves to dress up nicely (Roose: “Would you prefer to dress in silk and velvet? There was a time when you were fond of such, I do recall.”) and in general Theon has a lot of trades that are generally considered to be female. Which gives Theon some gender issues, it also often gets used against him when he’s insulted with female insults (Balon: “was it Ned Stark’s pleasure to make you his daughter?” Ramsay: “you can be my bitch”)

So what does Theon do to deal with all these issues? he creates a bunch of defense mechanisms :

Theon hides his fear by smiling all the time. It’s a way for him to make the situation out to be less serious than it really is, if it’s “all just a game” he doesn’t have to be so scared. It’s basically Theon telling the world that he is not scared and telling himself there’s no reason to be scared. “He smiled a lot, as if the world were a secret joke that only he was clever enough to understand.”

Theon also romanticizes…well… EVERYTHING. He’s got a huge case of Stockholm syndrome going on when it comes to the starks, he tries to get close to them (notice how he always immediately follows Ned Starks orders like some sort of lap dog?) but when he fails he likes to imagine that they do care about him. cause if they do, there is less of a chance Ned would actually put him to death if it came to that. equally he romanticizes his own family cause if they care about him enough there’s less of a chance his father would risk his son’s life for another rebellion.

Theon acts super arrogant and degrading towards anyone he can be degrading too (which is mostly low born women) in order to hide his self-esteem issues.

Theon has a lot of sex and boasts about it to anyone he can find as a way to establish his manliness. It’s also a way to escape the life he’s leading in which he has no control whatsoever over what happens to him. The only time he ever has any kind of control is in the bedroom.

Theon constantly pretends to be someone else, pretends to be the person he thinks he’s supposed to be in order to please the person he’s trying to please (Ned Stark, Balon Greyjoy) and he doesn’t just pretend, he also tries to convince himself! Half his chapters are spent lying to himself about who he is.

Theon’s relationship with robb is also beyond interesting but that’s not my area of expertise so I’m not even getting into that. it’d require it’s own essay anyways.

Then Ned Stark dies, Robb starts his war against the lannisters and could really use Balon Greyjoy’s ships, so he sends Theon home to convince his father to fight with them. both of them are insanely naïve in that moment. but when it comes to Theon well I mentioned his romanticizing and this is where it comes into play for the first time cause he gets a bit of control here and he’s convinced himself that his dad will totally listen to him! He is absolutely convinced his father will be so happy to have him back, cause hey, last living son AND HEIR! But Theon was dead to Balon the moment he was shipped off to winterfell, he is even less of a greyjoy now and he was never a conventional greyjoy to begin with. So Theon is bitterly disappointed but at that point there is no way back! He’s stuck in the iron islands and it’s either betraying Robb or betraying his own family. When he was with the start one of his ways to deal was to fantasise about his bright future as the lord of the iron islands. He’s never belonged with the starks to begin with so without that he’s (in theon’s eyes) nothing. And that one thing he thought he would always have by default (being the heir to pyke) is very close to being snatched away from him now so Theon becomes desparate and this is one of the many reasons he desides to take winterfell, other reasons include Theon always wanting to belong in winterfell and never being able too so he tries to make it his home, when he’s the lord no one can make him feel like he doesn’t belong.

However, Theon is the worst leader ever! Why? Because he’s used to romanticizing everything, and that worked to deal with his captivity, which he had no control off. But he’s used to that now, he’s not equipped to deal with reality cause he’s spend his entire life teaching himself how to reinvent his own reality over and over. So Theon quickly loses control and he’s basically radiating vulnearablity when Ramsay (in the books) or Dagmer (in the show) take adventage of the situation by manipulating Theon into doing a bunch of horrible stuff, then ramsay burns down winterfell and it’s perfect cause he can just put Theon’s name on the whole thing (Roose to Ramsay: “You never slew Lord Eddard’s sons, those two sweet boys we loved so well. That was Theon Turncloak’s work, remember? How many of our grudging friends do you imagine we’d retain if the truth were known”). Then Ramsay proceeds to capture Theon and take him back to the dreadfort.

And this is when it gets REALLY interesting! Because Ramsay is basically the literal translation of Theon’s entire life!

Ramsay tortures Theon methodically in order to break him and make him into his new Reek (he had another servant called reek that he grew up with and hunted girls with together. They were inseparable and he was possibly the most important person in Ramsay’s life and he died not long before the events in winterfell. But yeah not getting into Ramsay too much! He’s too complex, would require his own huge essay).

Ramsay starts off by cutting off some of his fingers (his method being to skin them and then leave the victim in pain until it becomes too much and they beg him to cut It off to stop it from hurting). Ramsay targets Theon’s fingers specifically because Theon’s an archer! (“Theon had his bow, he needed nothing else”) so Ramsay emmediatly deals with Theon’s only physical defense, so he’s completely at his mercy.

Ramsay then Breaks Theon’s teeth with a hamer, cause Theon probably used the smile technic on him (“Ramsay didn’t like my smiles, so he took a hammer to my teeth, I can hardly eat”)

Ramsay cuts off Theon’s Penis, as a way to play into the whole “not being a man” issue. He also argueably raped Theon (there’s plenty of indication in the text) to further “lower” him to the status of a woman. therefor the quote from “the mountain and the viper” : “are you a woman boy?” is actually really loaded!

Ramsay forces Theon to dress in dirty ugly clothes and refuses to let him bath. And he knows that Theon specifically enjoyed dressing up nicely and in general look nice. (when all in winterfell is lost Theon basically thinks that if he is going to die, he wants to look good)

And last but not least, Ramsay takes his name. Theon’s name is of great importance to him. in winterfell it was the thing he clung to. He was Theon Greyjoy, heir to pyke. His status was the only leverage he had over the people in winterfell. Theon’s also always considered that his name desided who he was supposed to be and strived to be just that.

Theon again pretends to be someone else (this time not by choice but by force), and ironically, pretending to be Reek is the closest he ever gets to changing himself into the person he’s pretending to be and believing his own lies about it. I think it’s very important that Theon has had this practice in pretending to be someone else already so it’s pretty easy for him to fall back into it to save himself. I think it’s very possible that if he hadn’t had that practice Ramsay would have managed to break him completely.

Ramsay has effectively erased everything that Theon thought defined who he was (Theon was wrong about this though and a little part of Theon remains) and replaced it with everything Ramsay wants him to be. Because that’s what Reek is! Reek is everything that Ramsay wants (needs) and so Ramsay quickly becomes attached to him. he becomes very possessive and on some occasions intimate. Because suddenly Ramsay has this person who can provided him with everything he desires and never got (from his dad mostly) and once he’s used to that, he can’t live without it anymore.

listen i get it. i get why everyone is annoyed with Banksy and is sort of disowning him. i understand why people are over him. I GET IT.

but come ON.

it’s not just Banksy that’s involved with Dismaland. i’m thinking it was essentially his idea, but he’s using it to host OTHER ARTISTS. from AROUND THE WORLD. he only has about three or four pieces throughout the show.

there are Palestinian, Saudi Arabian, and TALENTED FEMALE artists showing their pieces in the Dismaland gallery and throughout the park that you’re tearing down because ‘Banksy is SO pretentious’ or whatever trendy thing you think you’re submitting to. Banksy himself said that he’s trying to do something different BECAUSE he realizes that his artwork is the view point of a middle class white dude.

http://www.dismaland.co.uk/artists/

Pretentious: attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.

Hiya, I kitbashed an action figure of you! The head is hand painted in The Spine’s likeness :D There’s a full album on my FB page with more photos, I’ve also drawn a digital portrait that is on my tumblr if you’d like to see that too. 

Do they think that all the sudden people who were thin are going rush out to pack on the pounds, or that across the country school kids will be fixated on fat and compete amongst each other to see who can become the fattest, that it’ll show up on the 6 o’ clock news as the latest alarming trend in our nation’s youth?

I mean, do they think that if people see pictures of fat folks looking nice and smiling and being happy and not hating their bodies that everyone who was about to eat a salad is gonna toss it out in favor a cheeseburger (even the vegans!) and cancel their gym memberships?

Are they scared that a $20 billion dollar weight gain industry is gonna crop up and magazines are going to talk about “packing on those last fifteen pounds before summer”. Do they think suddenly there’s gonna be a flood of ads saying, “Gain belly fat using this one weird old tip” on people’s computer screens?

Do these people think positively presented fat bodies are so powerful and persuasive that it will convince thin people to utterly abandon thinness and dedicate themselves to getting as big as they can?

Or are they upset that people who were already fat will go around continuing to be fat without being punished for existing. Perhaps what they fear is that if we “glorify” obesity, that fat hate will make less and less sense to the world in general and that eventually, weight will become a neutral property. Thinness won’t be so valued that it can sustain industries, nor held as the perfect way to have a body but be seen as one among many valid body types. 

We’re not promising anything, and the word is HEALTH. HEALTH. No “y”.

You can’t fight so well when the concept is about telling people that it’s okay if their health improvement efforts don’t center around weight loss. That’s it okay if they engage in exercise just to engage in exercise and feel good and improve other health metrics. That at any size you can engage in health behaviors with the aim of improving your health rather than just your weight. 

You can’t stomp around and pretend that’s killing anyone or even harming them. You can only gnash your teeth and tell lies and hate fat people with an even more vicious fervor for daring to believe that health and weight are not one in the same and that perfect health is a requirement of NOTHING. 

Prove to me that Health At Every Size or positive images of fat people are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for causing death. Show me where they cause people who were thin to begin with to become fat and people who were fat to abandon self-care and health behaviors they were already doing or would otherwise have done. Give me some fucking evidence. Not evidence that obesity is “linked” with problems. I’m not even debating that. Show me how NOT HATING FAT PEOPLE results in people dying.

PROVE IT. Don’t come here with your bigoted little rage, snarling in outrage at something that doesn’t exist. Actually have some facts. 

PS - Before you go screaming about skyrocking rates of type 2 diabetes - which have, yes, increased. Try not to look like you’re so blatantly misframing the data. The rate of type 1 diabetes (which is autoimmune related) in children has also increased. 

This doesn’t mean that an increase in these things isn’t to be explored or taken or ways to give people chances to improve their health outcomes shouldn’t be found. 

It does mean that you can’t frame this as a “LOOK AT ALL THE BIG FAT FATTIES GET SO MUCH DIABETES!” 

And it does mean that when you stigmatize this disease, you make getting treatment and staying with it THAT much harder for people. You should have a rock thrown at your head for every single minute of shame someone has had to experience for being diabetic with additional ones from people who had the obesity stigma to deal with, too. 

I’m all for fat people like myself having nice cloths and not being outright shamed for our medical condition, but you people cross the line and try to act like it’s perfectly healthy and not a medical condition.  Fuck ‘body positive’ propaganda.

i hope you know those ‘greedy, entitled brats’ are more than often poor, or mentally ill people. i’ve been diagnosed with kleptomania, and i am poor (and not able to have a job due to my other disabilities) and i can not afford a lot of things that i need (menstrual products, make up, toothpaste, clothes) and if  you really think i am an entitled brat, then i guess you’re just an ableistic, classist asshole. 

“it hurts the workers when you shop lift!” rarely. And if it does, it is not the shoplifters fault, it is the companies fault. shoplifting is factored into the budget of big stores and its just the corporations making the employees pay when they literally dont have to, they just want more money like it’s capitalism tbh making minimum-wage employees pay for goods stolen by people who literally cant afford to eat is just pitting poor people against each other so they cant turn on the corporations which are contributing to dismal living conditions by like, not paying taxes and squeezing their employees dry

I seen a woman steal baby formula once, and she told me she had no job, no money and she was desperate to feed her baby and I looked in the other direction. If I saw someone stealing clothes, purses or jewelry I’d report them. Baby formula and absolute health necessities are the only thing I have sympathy towards if someone is desperate for them. You’re not even taking necessities, you’re stealing people’s pets!  

I can understand people who steal necessities if they don’t have their welfare yet or can’t get to the food pantry... but these cases are fucking rare.  What I HAVE seen on the other hand is people using their Welfare Debit Card to buy things they don’t truly need.  Gee, I wonder how they’re paying for their necessities then? 

There’s a reason why mothers and pregnant women are given food stamps that dictate specifically what they are and are not allowed to buy.  All welfare should return to that model.  I’ve seen cashiers have to deal with entitled assholes throwing temper tantrums because they couldn’t get something they wanted with that free money tax payers were kind enough to give them.  These people breed and teach their children to be the same as they are, because we don’t hold them accountable for anything. 

i hope you know those ‘greedy, entitled brats’ are more than often poor, or mentally ill people. i’ve been diagnosed with kleptomania, and i am poor (and not able to have a job due to my other disabilities) and i can not afford a lot of things that i need (menstrual products, make up, toothpaste, clothes) and if  you really think i am an entitled brat, then i guess you’re just an ableistic, classist asshole. 

“it hurts the workers when you shop lift!” rarely. And if it does, it is not the shoplifters fault, it is the companies fault. shoplifting is factored into the budget of big stores and its just the corporations making the employees pay when they literally dont have to, they just want more money like it’s capitalism tbh making minimum-wage employees pay for goods stolen by people who literally cant afford to eat is just pitting poor people against each other so they cant turn on the corporations which are contributing to dismal living conditions by like, not paying taxes and squeezing their employees dry

As for the ‘it doesn’t hurt the workers’ nonsense, how the fuck would this worthless feeder know if it refuses to work for a living?  I work at a grocery store where damaged items can ether be sent back for credit or partially covered by insurance... but there is still loss.  And stolen items, those factor straight into our overhead.  And when our overhead and payroll cancel out our profit margin, the smartest thing for a company to do is SHUT THE STORE DOWN.  

WE’VE MOVED!

Due to recent events and current exposure, a lot of our lifting friends are feeling unsafe. #Liftshopping is NO LONGER a safe tag, and so from now on tag all your lifting-related posts with #Liftplay ONLY.

I repeat, from now on we will be using #LIFTPLAY

DO NOT: + Include tags such as #liftshopping, #shoplifting, #klepto or #fivefingerdiscount

+ Reblog anything in the #Liftplay tag that expresses hate towards the community

+Tag non-lifting related posts with #Liftplay. LEAST EXPOSURE AS POSSIBLE!

These are officially the biggest fucking retards on this site. 

I made a Steam Powered Giraffe/Attack on Titan crossover fanimation, so you might need to know both to be able to make some use of this. You probably at least heard of Attack on Titan and if you don’t know what Steam Powered Giraffe is, look them up now, they’re awesome!

In case you want to know why I did this: First I saw this http://zorasteam.deviantart.com/art/What-am-i-doing-that-the-485286451  I loved it!  And I immediately wondered if someone made a similar thing with the wall from AoT. I looked it up and eventually found one tiny image (but I wasn’t able to do so for the sake of this description, sorry about that) and like 6 other theme related fanarts. I was rather disappointed that there wasn’t more. Why isn’t that a thing? So I decided to make one myself and since my editing skills are almost as poor as my sound editing skills (btw, there’s no sound. I wanted to spare you the experience of some of my special… talents), I just re-did the whole thing.

How the hell can you accuse me and tabbitcha and everyone else of being “misandrist” when you just said that

How the hell can you accuse me and tabbitcha and everyone else of being “misandrist” when you just said that