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@dreamfyrequeene / dreamfyrequeene.tumblr.com

chel ✧ she/her, xxviii. semi-hiatus | queue only daenerys targaryen (asoiaf) is the fictional love of my life. i also post about other asoiaf things, house of the dragon (mostly rhaenicent), the locked tomb series by tamsyn muir and whatever else i'm interested in.

there is violence against ethnic groups happening all across the world, and while it is so important to focus on the palestinian genocide because awareness and liberation for one group opens avenues for other groups, it is also inexcusable, in an era of endless information accessible at our fingertips, in machines that we hold 8+ hours a day to be silent or uneducated on oppression simply because it is not covered in mainstream media, bottom line. that said, every day is an opportunity to learn and to do better, so i have compiled this information for those wishing to widen their lens outside of what is being widely covered, and for those wishing to help. sudan:

yemen:

dr congo:

tigray:

haiti:

gaza:

general resources:

this is a non exhaustive resource. violence, oppression and genocide towards minority groups is widespread and ongoing, and not limited to these groups or resources. remaining uneducated is a choice, and an inexcusable one to make. the same systems used to oppress and kill ethnic groups across the world can be used on you, too.

if i have misspoken or added something that should not be here or is problematic, please let me know in the notes. please also feel free to make your own additions to this post.

nobody is free until we all are.

A central element of the myth of [Eleanor of Aquitaine] is that of her exceptionalism. Historians and Eleanor biographers have tended to take literally Richard of Devizes’s conventional panegyric of her as ‘an incomparable woman’. She is assumed to be a woman out of her time. […] Amazement at Eleanor’s power and independence is born from a presentism that assumes generally that the Middle Ages were a backward age, and specifically that medieval women were all downtrodden and marginalized. Eleanor’s career can, from such a perspective, only be explained by assuming that she was an exception who rose by sheer force of personality above the restrictions placed upon twelfth-century women.

Michael R. Evans, Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine

The idea of Eleanor’s exceptionalism rests on an assumption that women of her age were powerless. On the contrary, in Western Europe before the twelfth century there were ‘no really effective barriers to the capacity of women to exercise power; they appear as military leaders, judges, castellans, controllers of property’. […] In an important article published in 1992, Jane Martindale sought to locate Eleanor in context, stripping away much of the conjecture that had grown up around her, and returning to primary sources, including her charters. Martindale also demonstrated how Eleanor was not out of the ordinary for a twelfth-century queen either in the extent of her power or in the criticisms levelled against her.
If we look at Eleanor’s predecessors as Anglo-Norman queens of England, we find many examples of women wielding political power. Matilda of Flanders (wife of William the Conqueror) acted as regent in Normandy during his frequent absences in England following the Conquest, and [the first wife of Henry I, Matilda of Scotland, played some role in governing England during her husband's absences], while during the civil war of Stephen’s reign Matilda of Boulogne led the fight for a time on behalf of her royal husband, who had been captured by the forces of the empress. And if we wish to seek a rebel woman, we need look no further than Juliana, illegitimate daughter of Henry I, who attempted to assassinate him with a crossbow, or Adèle of Champagne, the third wife of Louis VII, who ‘[a]t the moment when Henry II held Eleanor of Aquitaine in jail for her revolt … led a revolt with her brothers against her son, Philip II'.
Eleanor is, therefore, less the exception than the rule – albeit an extreme example of that rule. This can be illustrated by comparing her with a twelfth century woman who has attracted less literary and historical attention. Adela of Blois died in 1137, the year of Eleanor’s marriage to Louis VII. […] The chronicle and charter evidence reveals Adela to have ‘legitimately exercised the powers of comital lordship’ in the domains of Blois-Champagne, both in consort with her husband and alone during his absence on crusade and after his death. […] There was, however, nothing atypical about the nature of Adela’s power. In the words of her biographer Kimberley LoPrete, ‘while the extent of Adela’s powers and the political impact of her actions were exceptional for a woman of her day (and indeed for most men), the sources of her powers and the activities she engaged in were not fundamentally different from those of other women of lordly rank’. These words could equally apply to Eleanor; the extent of her power, as heiress to the richest lordship in France, wife of two kings and mother of two or three more, was remarkable, but the nature of her power was not exceptional. Other noble or royal women governed, arranged marriages and alliances, and were patrons of the church. Eleanor represents one end of a continuum, not an isolated outlier.

Not "The Character did nothing wrong" or "The Character is irredeemably awful" but a secret third thing: The Character may display moments of deep love & compassion, may even have a strong sense of ethics, and may also be capable of brutal cruelty that is irreconcilable with those traits. The constant tension between the different sides of The Character's nature is exactly what makes them compelling, and attempting to reduce them down to simply "a terrible person" or "innocent & misunderstood" is missing the point of the questions a media with nuanced characters is asking you to consider

"I don't believe Tarot is real, but it does work"

Expand on that, king (genuinely curious)

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I feel like…

okay, so it’s a lot like conceptual art, or like introspective meditation, at the risk of sounding pretentious

Like. It’s not so much about “the cards are a portal to a higher wisdom that knows more than me” thing- it’s more of a, “given the symbols drawn, could I interpret them posing a question or possibility or suggestion?” Followed by, “is this applicable to my current context? COULD it be?”

Like.

I don’t lay out á tarot hand and say “ah yes, the devil and the tower, I am about to be betrayed”

But I MAY lay out a hand and say, “okay, devil and the tower. Something treacherous and danger. Am I approaching a treacherous or risky situation in my life? What might be a tipping factor? Am I being deliberately reckless? Maybe I should spend some more time working on X project I’ e been thinking of before spending money on it” or “you know what, I HAVE been kind of uncomfortable with X thing, I should say something” or “yeah okay I KNOW Tom from work sucks to work with, I KNOW, yeah maybe I should consider ways of handling that”

Less of a magic oracle, more of a tool for doing literary analysis on real life. Like simplifying everything and laying it out flat so I can gain some distance to untangle my problems without in-your-head crap like projected feelings and social obligation getting in the way and muddying the waters.

So like. I don’t think tarot cards can legit tell the future, but I DO think that self-reflection, mindfulness, and consideration sometimes allow us to predict and calculate our own circumstances.

So, IMO- It’s not real. But it works

If that makes sense

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When reading the Locked Tomb books as an adult, there’s an added tragedy in recognizing how young all of them are. The idea of setting up a bunch of young people to become Lyctors, powerful but stuck permanently at the age one dies and the other eats them is so cruel.

It might not seem that way to readers in their late teens and and early twenties, but when you live long enough you start to realize you have so much more potential to change and grow. The Fourth are the most obvious examples of this as they’re like 14, but the saddest losses in my eyes are Palamedes and Camilla because within the story, they’re the slightly older, slightly more mature ones. Gideon and Harrow treat them as very competent peers. Nona sees the two of them as trustworthy adults. But they’re only like 21.

I remember being 21 and feeling like such an adult. But I got to live long enough to understand that no, the 28 year old girl who proclaimed that at 21 I was just a baby was right. And John is a bastard for encouraging all those young people to unwittingly die and stagnate themselves so early.

Even Abigail and Magnus. When Harrow laments what Abigail could have continued to do if she hadn’t been murdered, to me that’s one of the core themes if lyctorhood

Tags from @katakaluptastrophy that made me see the River bubble a little differently. Of course they stayed to help Harrow. She was just a kid. They had to help her.

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