On that last visit, though, [Asha] had found Lady Alannys in a window seat huddled beneath a pile of furs, staring out across the sea. Is this my mother, or her ghost? she remembered thinking as she’d kissed her cheek. (A Feast for Crows)

The Heddle Sisters

Hagen’s daughter “Hagen’s daughter stumbled to her knees, snatched up his sword, stabbed the second man, and then rose again, smeared with blood and mud, her long red hair unbound, and plunged into the fight.”

“King Viserys is dead, long live King Aegon.” Hearing the cries, some wept whilst others cheered, but most of the smallfolk stared in silence, confused and wary, and now and again a voice cried out, “Long live our queen.”

Prince Aegon was with a paramour when he was found. At first, the prince refused to be a part of his mother’s plans. “My sister is the heir, not me,” he said. “What sort of brother steals his sister’s birthright?” Only when Ser Criston convinced him that the princess must surely execute him and his brothers should she don the crown did Aegon waver.

Rhaenyra heard these terms in stony silence, then asked Orwyle if he remembered her father, King Viserys. “Of course, Your Grace,” the maester answered. “Perhaps you can tell us who he named as his heir and successor,” the queen said, her crown upon her head. “You, Your Grace,” Orwyle replied. And Rhaenyra nodded and said, “With your own tongue you admit I am your lawful queen. Why then do you serve my half brother, the pretender? Tell my half brother that I will have my throne, or I will have his head,” she said, sending the envoys on their way.

On the ninth day of the twelfth month, Sunfyre the Golden died on Dragonstone. After this, Aegon started planning his return to King’s Landing. Though Rhaenyra had died, her cause lived on. Aegon II would sit the throne again, but it would only last another half of a year.

The Tourney of the Hand arrives, and brings with it many challenges.

“Lord Quellon’s third wife had been a Piper of Pinkmaiden Castle, a girl with big soft breasts and brown doe’s eyes.” “A flying axe took off half of Urri’s hand when he was ten-and-four, playing at the finger dance whilst his father and his elder brothers were away at war. Instead of healing Urri’s hand the Old Way, with fire and seawater, she [Lady Piper] gave him to her green land maester, who swore that he could sew back the missing fingers. He did that, and later he used potions and poltices and herbs, but the hand mortified and Urri took a fever. By the time the maester sawed his arm off, it was too late.” “When Balon heard what had befallen Urri, he removed three of the maester’s fingers with a cook’s cleaver and sent his father’s Piper wife to sew them back on. Poltices and potions worked as well for the maester as they had for Urrigon. He died raving, and Lord Quellon’s third wife followed soon thereafter, as the midwife drew a stillborn daughter from her womb.”                            —A Feast for Crows

What Newsrooms Still Don’t Understand About the Internet

You can’t report on a culture war and also be an invisible bystander

warzel.substack.com|Charlie Warzel

Zitron’s post reminded me of a fascinating paper I read last week by UNC associate professor, Alice E. Marwick on “Morally Motivated Networked Harassment.” The paper offers exactly the kind of detailed explanation of how and why online harassment takes place at scale that newsrooms are lacking. Marwick focuses on a specific variety of online harassment called “morally-motivated networked harassment,” which is the type that’s most prevalent in arguments about politics, cancel culture, and media bias.

…

“A member of a social network or online community accuses a target of violating their network’s norms, triggering moral outrage,” she writes. “Network members send harassing messages to the target, reinforcing their adherence to the norm and signaling network membership.” As anyone who has spent time online knows, morally charged content performs better online. It resonates widely and provokes strong responses among all humans. “As a result, people are far more likely to encounter a moral norm violation online than offline,“ Marwick notes. This is partly why spaces like Twitter, where different audiences interact easily, feel especially toxic.

What I appreciate most about Marwick’s paper is that it wrestles with the complexity of this type of networked harassment. In her studies, Marwick finds that “networked harassment is a tactic used across political and ideological groups and, as we have seen, by groups that do not map easily to political positions, such as conflicts within fandom or arguments over business.” Everyone across social media is constantly signaling affiliations with their desired groups. And each of those groups are trying to enforce a social order of their own based on their preferred moral codes. Dogpiling abounds.

…

It is important to recognize the universality of this phenomenon, in part so that we don’t fall into amplifier modes ourselves. But we also cannot confuse the fact that anyone can be the subject of networked harassment with the fact that morally-motivated networked harassment isn’t always evenly distributed.

Harassment, Marwick argues, “must also be linked to structural systems of misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia, which determine the primary standards and norms by which people speaking in public are judged.” She writes that women who violate traditional norms “of feminine quietude” experience disproportionate amounts of harassment which is linked to their gender. She deems these characteristics “attack vectors,” another word for vulnerabilities that increase the likelihood of online harassment.

Theon leaned on her shoulder and let her guide him across the rain-slick boards. “I liked you better when you were Esgred,” he told her accusingly.

She laughed.

“That’s fair. I liked you better when you were nine.”

- Theon II, a Clash of Kings