#and jon not being WHITE is whats unrealistic

[ihaveanaversiontodecisions]

seeing the "Jon isn't a poc character because white people make up most of academia and also the voice actor is white and his name sounds white!" tma discourse on twt makes me want to claw my fucking eyes out.

"b-but i j-just imagine him as white🥺"

*extremely loud incorrect buzzer*

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #jonathan sims is not white #jonathan sims character design #i will die on this hill #“white people make up academia him being a poc doesn't make any sense!!” #he literally started the apocalypse #he is canonically a voyeuristic antichrist #there are SENTIENT WORM HIVES in this podcast #a giant eye literally opens in the sky #and jon not being WHITE is whats unrealistic #be so fr #twitter discourse #i hate twitter

[esther-dot]

If the FF and the northerners start cooperating what’s the need for a King Beyong the Wall?

Well, the FF have a distinct, and in some ways, incompatible culture with the Northerners, I mean, Jon's thoughts are pretty harsh initially

Jon had no answer for that. Small wonder that the Seven Kingdoms thought the free folk scarcely human. They have no laws, no honor, not even simple decency. They steal endlessly from each other, breed like beasts, prefer rape to marriage, and fill the world with baseborn children. Yet he was growing fond of Tormund Giantsbane, great bag of wind and lies though he was. Longspear as well. And Ygritte . . . no, I will not think about Ygritte. (ASOS, Jon II)

so imo, it's a little unrealistic that merely being on this side of the Wall, means all is well. There's a lot of prejudice towards them too, so they'd need, I'll say, an advocate? In ADWD, Jon is already trying to explain their POV, but even post wars, I'd still think it necessary. What if a Northman's daughter runs off with a free man? And vice versa? There's potential to assume the worst about the people they've considered enemies, they may think abduction/rape, that could easily spiral. You need someone who has the respect of the FF and standing in the North to maintain the peace.

This is part of the Jon and Mance convo, and I don't think it's out of nowhere to think huh, this might be the role Jon is specifically prepared for, and I'm sure it's passages like this that contribute to @justleaves theorizing:

Open the gate and let them pass. Easy to say, but what must follow? Giants camping in the ruins of Winterfell? Cannibals in the wolfswood, chariots sweeping across the barrowlands, free folk stealing the daughters of shipwrights and silversmiths from White Harbor and fishwives off the Stony Shore? "Are you a true king?" Jon asked suddenly. "I've never had a crown on my head or sat my arse on a bloody throne, if that's what you're asking," Mance replied. "My birth is as low as a man's can get, no septon's ever smeared my head with oils, I don't own any castles, and my queen wears furs and amber, not silk and sapphires. I am my own champion, my own fool, and my own harpist. You don't become King-beyond-the-Wall because your father was. The free folk won't follow a name, and they don't care which brother was born first. They follow fighters. When I left the Shadow Tower there were five men making noises about how they might be the stuff of kings. Tormund was one, the Magnar another. The other three I slew, when they made it plain they'd sooner fight than follow." "You can kill your enemies," Jon said bluntly, "but can you rule your friends? If we let your people pass, are you strong enough to make them keep the king's peace and obey the laws?" "Whose laws? The laws of Winterfell and King's Landing?" Mance laughed. "When we want laws we'll make our own. You can keep your king's justice too, and your king's taxes. I'm offering you the horn, not our freedom. We will not kneel to you." (ASOS, Jon X)

Not only does Jon go ahead and bring them past the Wall (the thing their king wanted), they swear to him, don't kneel, but they do swear, so the spec in this post and this post about Jon being their leader, a pseudo king / Lord of the Gift, it feels like it could be the followup. So no, not King Beyond the Wall, but a leader/peacekeeper in the North.

Basically, it’s kinda a crossover of the endings people talk about for Jon, incorporates all the king foreshadowing (which truly does puzzle me now), resolves the issue of Sansa marrying/needing to carry on the Stark line...I think it's a fun angle!

#dot chat #jon’s ending #book jon

[antoine-roquentin]

“The federal budget assumes the government will recover 96 cents of every dollar borrowers default on,” Mitchell wrote. This banker, Jeff Courtney, put that figure closer to just 51 to 63 cents.

Now, for a private lender, like a bank, this projected shortfall would indeed be a ticking time bomb. The bank might be in danger of insolvency (unless, of course, it was rescued by a federal government that could give the bank an emergency cash infusion and take those bad loans off its hands). But there’s no real danger of a federal Cabinet-level department becoming insolvent. The Treasury Department is already in the habit of making up the Education Department’s budgetary shortfalls.

So what is the problem again? Typically for a news outlet like the Journal, the story describes this potential shortfall as what “taxpayers” would be “on the hook for,” but obviously, we all know that that is not how federal budgeting works. Taxes could rise for certain people for certain reasons, but no one will receive an itemized bill for this uncollected debt. And as for that large, catastrophic number ($500 billion!) that might never be paid back, it amounts to less than one year of a national defense budget that “taxpayers” are similarly “on the hook for.” (The Journal’s editorial board recently complained that the Biden administration’s proposed 2022 $715 billion Pentagon budget, while an increase in real terms, nonetheless represents an unconscionable decline in the defense budget as share of gross domestic product. “Taxpayers” are not mentioned in the editorial.)

Democrats helped sacrifice a generation of students to the deficit god, in exchange for meaningless numbers in a report.

The story, then, is that the government might not collect some debt, even if it currently pretends, for budgetary reasons, that it definitely will, and, as a result, the deficit may rise to levels higher than the current estimates predict. For a committed conservative, such as DeVos, that situation is inherently scandalous. For everyone else, that could only ever become a problem in the future, and only if that future deficit has some negative effect on the overall economy, which is not very likely considering the entire recent history of federal deficits and economic growth.

That state of affairs may explain why articles like the one in the Journal so often invoke “taxpayers,” as if everyone would have to write personal checks to cover the Department of Education’s shortfall: because without imagining taxpayers as victims of government deficits, it’s hard to point to anyone actually harmed by a government department giving unrealistic estimates of future revenues.

Except in this story, there are actual victims: the people who hold debt that the government doesn’t realistically expect to collect in full but who are bled for payment regardless. As Courtney’s report found, because of the importance of these loans to the department’s balance sheet, the government keeps borrowers on the hook for the loans even if they will never be able to repay all of the money they owe, often by placing borrowers on a repayment plan tied to their income. (As the economist Marshall Steinbaum has explained, the “income driven repayment,” or IDR, program is framed as a means of helping borrowers, but in reality, it “exerts a significant drag on their financial health, to no apparent purpose” by forcing them to “make less-than-adequate payments for many years before their debt is finally cancelled.”) The victim of such a scheme isn’t taxpayers, it’s debtors.

There’s one particular portion of The Wall Street Journal’s story that the public should treat as a moral and political scandal (the emphasis here is mine):

One instance of how accounting drove policy came in 2005 with Grad Plus, a program that removed limits on how much graduate students could borrow. It was included in a sweeping law designed to reduce the federal budget deficit, which had become a concern in both parties as the nation spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as baby-boomer retirement was set to raise Social Security and healthcare outlays.

A key motive for letting graduate students borrow unlimited amounts was to use the projected profits from such lending to reduce federal deficits, said two congressional aides who helped draft the legislation.

Each change was publicly justified as a way to help families pay for college or to save the taxpayer money, said Robert Shireman, who helped draft some of the laws in the 1990s as an aide to Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) and later was deputy under secretary of education in the Obama administration.

But how agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office “score” such changes—determine their deficit impact—“is a key factor in deciding whether a policy is adopted or not,” Mr. Shireman said. “The fact that it saved money helps enact it.”

To explain this more plainly, Democrats helped sacrifice a generation of students to the deficit god, in exchange for meaningless numbers in a report, because CBO scores are more real to senators than flesh-and-blood people.

This is the sort of depravity that deficit obsessions produce. The Iraq War needed to be “paid for” with the future earnings of students who, lawmakers imagined, would eventually be rich, even as many of the same lawmakers voted to cut taxes on already-rich people. Now the debt of the still-not-rich students can’t be forgiven because of its importance to the federal government’s predicted future earnings. And politicians and commentators in thrall to deficit politics still paint the situation as a morality tale, in which the borrowers are irresponsible for having the debt and the government would be irresponsible to forgive it. After all, think of the poor taxpayers.

The early days of the Biden administration led some to believe we were finally free of this incoherent political mode, where dubious predictions in CBO reports dictate the limits of the politically possible and determine who will be arbitrarily punished for the sake of limiting the size of a program in a speculative 10-year budget projection. The proof that Democrats had learned their lesson was one major piece of legislation, the American Rescue Plan, designed to respond to a unique emergency.

More recently, the administration, and some of its allies in Congress, have signaled strongly that they’re returning to the old ways. The American Prospect’s David Dayen has reported that the White House is determined to “pay for” its infrastructure plans, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is apparently leading the charge to ensure the infrastructure spending is “offset.” This will have the likely effect of limiting the scope of the plan, once again sacrificing material benefits for the sake of estimates and predictions from the CBO.

The Biden administration seems to be determined to go about this without violating its pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $400,000 (a threshold meant to define the upper limit of “middle class” despite being comically higher than the Obama administration’s similar $250,000 limit for tax hikes). It has floated increasing IRS enforcement and raising the capital gains tax for the wealthiest Americans. Both are fine ideas. But the best thing about taxing the rich is not that you can use their money for infrastructure, it’s that doing so reduces their political and economic power. That’s also the reason why it’s so difficult for Washington to do it.

The complete incoherence of the current Democratic position on spending and deficits is summed up well in another Wall Street Journal story, where Montana Senator Jon Tester was quoted saying, “I don’t want to raise any taxes, but I don’t want to put stuff on the debt, either.… If we’re going to build infrastructure, we have to pay for it somehow. I’m open to all ideas.”

“Open” to “all ideas” but unwilling to tax the rich, and unwilling to allow a CBO report to show a larger deficit as a result of needed spending: This is more or less precisely the dynamic that led student loan debt to explode in the United States, and it’s the zombie worldview that threatens any chance of this government averting a multitude of political, economic, and ecological disasters.

[lordtheodorexiii]

Life Tastes Like Cardboard

I’ve found myself unable to cry for years now, finally brought to an end by Life Tastes Like Cardboard.

LTLC is a free surreal psychological horror walking sim by Demensa, and is described as "A game about boredom and self-pity". The author states that it's about themself, and with that description, it almost feels like looking into someone's diary in the format of a game, with Demensa being the writer, artist, composer, and developer.

Spoilers below the cut. Please play Life Tastes Like Cardboard.

From the moment the game started, I was already immersed. The monotony of life, reliving memories, sight of death, being unable to meet your own unrealistic expectations, and hatred of oneself hit really close to home. I initially felt as if I were playing Yume Nikki with the surreal imagery presented to me, but when I began to piece together the meanings of the symbolism scattered across the dream worlds, and find secret items, things begin to hit harder than they did the first time, such as chapter 7 with its hospital scene, and chapter 11′s hangout with Ollie.

Speaking of Ollie... Ollie is a recurring character in LTLC. This friendly canine seems to appear almost exclusively in the dream world, with the ability to appear wherever he is needed, and the power to create portals to his own dreams. Ollie is one of the few entities in Jon’s dream world that is willing to strike up a conversation or help Jon, and is happy to do so. A memorable moment is when he finds Jon after he comes out of the hospital dream area, and warps himself and Jon to one of his dreams, where a parade and party are taking place. He and Jon talk about an assortment of silly things together, and it was this moment that made me shed tears. Not the horror of the hospital, the repetition of chapter 1, or the absurdity and panic-inducing imagery of the chapter 3 museum. Two friends, chatting about nonsense to pass the time. I don’t know what it was about this that got to me, but I had to pause and get a glass of water during it. The fact that this is the only time we see Jon smile might’ve done it. I cried again again when Jon meets up with Ollie to go to the library and takes him to his house after reading the Quiet Kitten. The sudden warmth of the area (seen above, Ollie and Jon are standing on a cliff with a view of the sunset. the sun is black.), Ollie offering Jon some hot chocolate, another small talk, Ollie listening to Jon vent, and the tenderness of Ollie’s theme in the previous area hit my heart hard. I initially missed Sad Fantasy, a picture book by Ollie. Just looking at the beginning of it, depicting Ollie and Jon cooking and living together in a clean space brought the waterworks again. The last images, Ollie trying to comfort a likely suicidal Jon then despairing afterward, hurt a lot. I love Ollie.

All of this comes together for a massive climax at the end of chapter 12, where the player is made to walk through a collage of the events of the game, while Crushed Cadence, a chiptune-shoegaze track accompanied by jagged black, white, and red art assaults the senses. Some figures there speak to you, one being a crying Ollie who only says “I miss you.” Eventually, it abruptly ends, and our protagonist is left to wander a void until they’re no longer under our control and sit down. After waiting for some time, Ollie sits down next to him. If you managed to collect every collectible on one save file, Ollie will reach out to Jon’s hand. I don’t know what to make of it exactly, but choose to believe that there is still positivity even with a monumental amount of strife in the past.

It’s a great game, and I highly recommend playing it, even if you read this spoiler-filled rant.

#thirteen.txt #I feel like this would be easier to consume as a 2 minute youtube video #Maybe I'll clean this up to make a spoiler free script #Probably not. I'd just procrastinate #No one reads these.

[thebluelemontree]

Hiya blue lemon it's me again. Do you have any criticism in the way GRRM wrote Sansa in book1/2? EX:.Sansa and Jeyne are BFF but we amolst never see the girls talking to eachother, and when JP is sex traffikced sansa just forget about her(we could have a scene where sansa try to find what happened to JP or at least grieve for her). Every time sansa appears as a non-POV in AGOT she's been mean and whe we have her POV she's mean for no good reason(SANSA III AGOT). >PART 1<

And the worst is why GRRM wrote sansa goin to Cercei to tell her the "Ned Plans", it's just bad writing, Cercei kill lady so Sansa going to her was OOC GRRM just wrote that to we hate Sansa And in the book it's not explained what "the Ned plans" was(And it was nothing imortant at all, and would make no difference at Ned's fate) so ordinary readers blame Sansa for Ned's death and GRRM does that too in book 2 Cercei put all the blame for Ned death in sansa nd "the Ned Plans" Your thoughts?PART 2

There’s a lot to unpack here. 

I get a sense that in the early books, George was not as comfortable writing female relationships as he was writing male relationships or even male-female ones. I mean, Catelyn has no female friends, no companions like Margaery Tyrell’s cousins, no fostering wards of her own, no correspondences with other ladies except that one letter from Lysa for plot reasons. This is just weird for the lady of two major houses. It is neglectful on George’s part to give most of the important social connections to men. This doesn’t mean he was totally inept at writing female relationships, though, and it does seem like he’s tried to improve upon highlighting the positive in later books.

By comparison, the positive side of the brotherly relationships are presented so strongly that it tends to smooth over the conflicts with many readers. Jon can feel envious and resentful of Robb, but the love and loyalty is always in the foreground. The conflict between Arya, Jeyne, and Sansa does have legitimate character arc and plot purposes, so this isn’t bad writing. It’s unfortunate that GRRM presses down so hard on the constant bickering and occasional nastiness, but he did write some positives (albeit they tended to be revealed in later books) and there are understandable reasons for the dynamics. It was not done in a totally unrealistic way. What’s depicted is a typical and relatable rocky period for that age group, and there was negative adult influence at play. It’s not a permanent feature of the sisterhood. It’s all there if you pay attention and you’re inclined to be charitable toward the mistakes of young girls.       

If a reader is already predisposed to see the bonds between male characters as more pure and more able to overcome the negative aspects, then they probably also view the bonds between female characters as inherently weaker and more fraught with conflict. Fandom misogyny is not GRRM’s fault. That sector of the fandom will always have contempt for girls for being girls, especially preteen girls. They will always hone in on their faults and belittle their virtues. 

I don’t think that is true that we hardly ever see Jeyne and Sansa talking. They are nearly always in each other’s company. There was real friendship between Sansa and Jeyne, because what George does do well with them, is realistically write the way girls cement their bonds. Young girls strengthen their relationship by communicating and confiding in each other. Sharing secrets, crushes, hopes, fears, and pieces of gossip builds trust and intimacy. Jeyne and Sansa do this all the time, even though they can have different opinions and disagree about a lot.  Yes, there is some one-sidedness in that Sansa socially outranks Jeyne and believes that makes her more mature and wiser than her friend. Jeyne is dependent on her closeness to Sansa as a highborn lady and future queen to rise successfully, so she’s not going to push back on Sansa’s dominance. This is also a reason Jeyne sometimes bullies Arya to supplant her as Sansa’s “sister.” When Sansa has something to share, she goes to Jeyne to talk about it. I think it’s hilarious that the girls have a debate over which castle Gregor Clegane’s head will get spiked. Sansa wants Jeyne at her side for these new and exciting events like the tourney. When things get serious and dangerous, they comfort each other. Again, this is not all George’s fault if some readers don’t recognize or value the way girls do friendships.  

It’s stated quite clearly why Sansa tries to not think about Jeyne or her deceased family members very often. It’s fucking traumatic and her survival while among her captors depends on mentally holding herself together. 

If only she had someone to tell her what to do. She missed Septa Mordane, and even more Jeyne Poole, her truest friend. The septa had lost her head with the rest, for the crime of serving House Stark. Sansa did not know what had happened to Jeyne, who had disappeared from her rooms afterward, never to be mentioned again. She tried not to think of them too often, yet sometimes the memories came unbidden, and then it was hard to hold back the tears. Once in a while, Sansa even missed her sister. By now Arya was safe back in Winterfell, dancing and sewing, playing with Bran and baby Rickon, even riding through the winter town if she liked. Sansa was allowed to go riding too, but only in the bailey, and it got boring going round in a circle all day. -- Sansa II, ACOK.

Following her father’s beheading, Sansa was in a suicidal depression for days. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t bathe, welcomed drug-induced sleep, and contemplated killing herself. If she thinks too much on those she lost, she falls to pieces. She can’t openly weep and mourn for “traitors” if her life depends on appearing to be loyal to Joffrey. Most of her grief is suppressed inside. This also includes asking too many questions she doesn’t feel psychologically prepared to hear the answer to. She was there when the decision was made to shuttle Jeyne off to Littlefinger; however, she has no idea this is going to result in Jeyne being sent to a brothel and worse. I would also keep in mind that even if she did ask, it’s not like Cersei or Littlefinger would ever tell her the truth. Why would they? Does she really want to hear lies and have to think about what the horrible truth might be when she can’t do anything about it?  When it comes to Arya, Sansa believes her sister escaped on the ship bound for home. She comforts herself with imagining that Arya is safe and free, and that’s enough to keep her going.  

And she prays and sings for Jeyne, wherever she is.

She sang for mercy, for the living and the dead alike, for Bran and Rickon and Robb, for her sister Arya and her bastard brother Jon Snow, away off on the Wall. She sang for her mother and her father, for her grandfather Lord Hoster and her uncle Edmure Tully, for her friend Jeyne Poole, for old drunken King Robert, for Septa Mordane and Ser Dontos and Jory Cassel and Maester Luwin... -- Sansa V, ACOK.

It’s only until later in the books that Sansa feels emotionally at peace enough to start remembering the good times with Arya and Jeyne without breaking down into tears. We can also see the conflicts weren’t always a thing, and the love was strong with all three.

Sansa began to make snowballs, shaping and smoothing them until they were round and white and perfect. She remembered a summer's snow in Winterfell when Arya and Bran had ambushed her as she emerged from the keep one morning. They'd each had a dozen snowballs to hand, and she'd had none. Bran had been perched on the roof of the covered bridge, out of reach, but Sansa had chased Arya through the stables and around the kitchen until both of them were breathless. She might even have caught her, but she'd slipped on some ice. Her sister came back to see if she was hurt. When she said she wasn't, Arya hit her in the face with another snowball, but Sansa grabbed her leg and pulled her down and was rubbing snow in her hair when Jory came along and pulled them apart, laughing. -- Sansa VII, ASOS.

It was most unladylike, but Alayne sound found herself laughing. For just a little while, as she ran, she forget who she was, and where, and found herself remembering bright cold days at Winterfell, when she would race through Winterfell with her friend Jeyne Poole, with Arya running after them trying to keep up. -- Alayne I, TWOW.

So it’s not even that the girls only bond through confiding. They run, play, and roughhouse with each other. It’s interesting that AGOT!Sansa tried to be so mature and proper, but now that she���s older, she’s remembering how good and freeing it was just to be a kid. But let’s not act like this part of the story is over. Jeyne is still very much alive and seems likely to run into Arya in Braavos. We can almost be 100% certain that Sansa will find out the truth about what happened to Jeyne and what Littlefinger did to her (and her parents), then watch out. Sansa will turn all that buried pain into a righteous fury at Littlefinger.  

Now as for Sansa being mean for “no reason.” Um... yeah, LOL. Sometimes she’s just a total unwarranted bitch to her sister, and it’s not meant to be a good look. Sometimes she’s superficial, insufferably immature and annoying, judgmental and prejudiced AND THAT’S OKAY. I mean, she sounds no better or worse than your average middle-schooler if they were of the privileged nobility. Guess what? Sometimes preteens are really like that. Sometimes siblings have ugly, knockdown drag out fights where they say horrible things to each other. Most will grow past those phases and still wind up just as loving and close. It’s realistic and believable. Sansa has flaws, but they aren’t deep moral flaws. She does an amazing job at growing, learning, and overcoming those flaws over the course of the books. In TWOW, she’s warm and affectionate with people, easy-going, nonjudgmental, and genuinely more mature than ever. She took the stick out of her ass and became a happier person for it. What’s the problem? What did you want her to be? Perfect? Unfailingly kind and loved by everyone all the time? She’d be a saint, not a multifaceted human being. Even with her occasional ugly side, Sansa is still a strong, smart, compassionate badass. I don’t care if some people don’t like her as she is written or if they vilify her with their misinterpretations or ignore her strengths. What bearing does that have on GRRM’s vision for her character? He never set out to write any character that the whole fandom would either unanimously love or hate.    

This is not bad writing. This NOT bad writing. This is GOOD writing.

*Sigh* Listen... this whole nonsense about Sansa being to blame for Ned’s demise has been going on since ASOIAF was written on clay tablets. You don’t have to listen to every stupid thing the fandom says about anything. It’s just factually wrong. End of story. This misinterpretation and reader inattentiveness is not GRRM’s fault, because he lays out all the details of everything that went down between Arya, Ned, and Sansa’s POV as it was happening. It’s totally understandable why an upset and frustrated Sansa would go to Cersei, the mother figure she implicitly trusts and admires. She didn’t go to Cersei to betray her father’s plans. She went to the queen to intercede in what she thought had to be some big misunderstanding, having no idea what was really going on or at stake. 

This is not OOC for her to go to Cersei after Lady’s death. The hand that killed Lady was her own father’s, a undeniable breach of trust that wounded their relationship. Ned just doesn’t really do a lot to deal with the emotional aftermath either. Ned and Sansa are very similar in turning a blind eye when confronted with unpleasantness from someone they love. Ned is also at that moment disillusioned with Robert’s failure to do the right thing after the Trident incident. He begs Robert in the name of their brotherly love and the love he bore Lyanna, and Robert turns his back on Ned anyway. Yet Ned immediately goes right back to believing in the best of Robert’s nature, despite all evidence to the contrary. Every sign points to this being a one-sided friendship with Robert being lazy, irresponsible, and completely selfish. Like father, like daughter. Sansa has a very hard time accepting that Joffrey and Cersei are not the people she thought they were, even when she’s seen some cracks. And since she can’t understand her father’s actions and the communication has been shot to hell between them, of course she runs to Cersei with her problems. Cersei can flip a switch and pretend to be kind, loving, and understanding. 

This is so typical of a teenage thought process:  “Dad just doesn’t understand and he’s making a big mistake. I don’t understand why he’s doing this. He doesn’t get how important this is to me. This will all work out if a sympathetic adult steps in and fixes it. Everything will turn out great and we’ll all be happy.” While Sansa is pouring her heart out about how it isn’t fair she can’t say goodbye to Joffrey, Cersei pretends to be that sympathetic mother figure that really understands her. How hard would it be then to pump Sansa for information? Like “Oh my sweet little dove. I know how much you love my son. Don’t worry. I’ll help you straighten this out. You said your father wants to send you away? How? When? What’s the name of that ship again?”  

And that line from Cersei’s POV is horseshit. Cersei is a liar and regularly lies in her POV to absolve herself of responsibility and force the blame entirely on others. In this case, Cersei is acting like she didn’t totally manipulate a trusting child to betray her.  We also know this is a lie because Ned was the one that told her himself of his plans to reveal the invest and remove her as queen. Sansa had nothing to do with that. All Sansa did was give Cersei information that allowed Cersei the opportunity to take her hostage before the girls could leave by ship. Cersei’s plans against Ned were already well underway. Sansa never came to her with the intent of knowingly betraying anyone, but she did have selfish reasons for going to the queen to complain in the first place. GRRM said himself that Sansa wasn’t to blame for Ned’s capture or death, but she did play a role in the events that transpired. That’s fair. All that makes her is a kid who made a not entirely innocent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless, which she immediately learned from. Does she trust Cersei or Joffrey again? Hell no.  

Relax, anon. It’s fine for her to not be nice all the time. It’s fine for her to have some realistic, garden variety flaws. It’s one of the most universal human mistakes to fall too hard and fast for the wrong person, act the fool over them despite all the red flags, only to realize you only saw what you wanted to see in them. And Sansa learned this lesson at eleven when some adults haven’t learned it at all. Relax. She’s a great, well-written, relatable character who has overcome most of these issues successfully.  

#Sansa stark meta #sansa stark #sansa stark characterization #asoiaf characterization #arya stark #jeyne poole #ned stark #asoiaf commentary #fandom nonsense #Anonymous #my meta

[onelonelystory]

i think the phenomenon youre talking about ive seen called "brown paper doll", ive seen it plenty in my other fandoms too unfortunately -_-

Bro okay I have been thinking about this for literally a month and a half I am so sorry I haven’t gotten a chance to respond yet but like

Yeah

Fanon Jon is such a blatant case of tokenism and like I never want to dissuade people from creating characters of color that isn’t what this is it’s just.

Background for those of you who may be unfamiliar, the brown paper doll phenomenon is basically when white creators co-opt identities of people of color through an original character. I have primarily seen it used to describe black experiences, which is of course something I cannot speak to, so I will use this more as a jumping off point than a perfect parallel.

The thing about creating a character, even in this case a character that already exists in some form, is you become very close to the idea of them in your mind. They become a person, to you, and the traits you apply to them have to bend to the way they grow and develop. White people don’t grow and develop as people of color, and so there is no way for them to properly embody a character of color. Period. 

Often times, to combat this they’ll make the character sort of an empty vessel. That’s how you end up with your generic brown Jons, where there seems to be no point to them being brown at all, except to perpetuate racist ideas of monsterdom. And I do not think that brown people in fiction need any more of a reason to exist than brown people in reality, but in reality brown people are not empty vessels. So that is then a failing.

Other times, less often in this fandom but certainly there, creators will combat this by researching what the “average” brown person would be like. That’s how you get, say, the idea that maybe he feels tragically separated from his culture, or - and this is one I do see pretty often - villainization of his grandmother as homophobic/uncaring/strict/conservative. Ah gee was the canon reasoning behind his neglectful guardian not enough for you? Huh? It’s so unrealistic that an old woman who lost her child might be a shitty caregiver that you were forced to conclude that in a brown household a child is condemned for being imperfect? Another one I’ve seen in my worst nightmares and only a couple times in reality is Jon getting hatecrimed. Hey, if you’re white, please don’t make a 2k word headcanon not!fic about a brown man getting called slurs in the streets. If you couldn’t tell, this, too, is a failing.

So then how should white creators write characters of color? How should white fans write their brown Jons? Here is a piece of advice: people of color... exist in the real world. Never ask for unsolicited advice, that should be a given, but there are plenty of ways to reach out to people of color without negating boundaries. I for one am happy to answer questions from time to time. Get eyes on your work and hold yourself accountable to the real people you’re representing more than to the fictional character you’re trying to embody.

#For the record I do understand the perspective that white people shouldn't write characters of color #I personally don't think that having an ensemble cast of all white characters is the better of the two evils? I guess? #anyway to everyone who's been asking me if they're racist for writing brown Jons here's my answer #ask #fandom racism #brown paper doll #magpod #jonathan sims #angryrivaini

[tweedstoat]

Hi! Just wanted to pop in and say how much I adore your fics. The Elia, Rhaenys, and Aegon tags are nearly impossible to get through. 95% of the fics don’t even feature them prominently and of the remaining 5%, either they’re horrible people bullying faultless Lyanna and Jon 😒 or wonderful angels (unlike that awful witch Catelyn Stark 🙄) who exist to be Jon and Lyanna’s cheerleaders and absolve them of any guilt.

Also I wanted to commend you on your Rhaenys and Elia characterization. Especially Rhaenys! I think a trend I sometimes see is that female characters are only allowed to be happy after they’ve rejected any femininity and taken up weapons and become brash and daring and loudly opinionated. And those girls deserve happiness for sure! But it’s so nice to see a Rhaenys who does lean towards soft power. Who isn’t only a horse and weapons and wild sex enthusiast because she happens to be Dornish. Because that kind of characterization doesn’t really ring true to me for someone like Rhaenys who is in the spotlight a lot. Who’s actions and personality are going to reflect on her abandoned mother who lost out on the throne. I’m so glad characters like her and Elia and Rhaella get to be the heroes of a story while still performing femininity (and frankly using that as their weapons).

And I think you handle the Lyanna situation very well. Personally I’m ambivalent towards Jon and am not fond of Lyanna. But I also don’t like overblown animosity that feels cartoonish. There might be negative feelings directed at them by certain characters, but they aren’t acted upon in any uncharacteristic way. Those two feel more like afterthoughts to Elia and Rhaenys. And while I very much lean into the drama of it all (because it’s so rare for Elia to win this much) I can very much appreciate the reality that Elia and Rhaenys aren’t spending every waking moment thinking about Jon and Lyanna. They have lives to lead and it’s pointless keeping a scoreboard of who got what win over the other. There’s no need to compete, but there’s also no need to be friendly and accommodating is the vibe I’m getting from your story and I really love that. (But I also like that negative feelings exist because let them be human and relatable!!!!!)

Sorry for the word vomit 😅 but I really love your writing and it’s one of the only things I look forward to in this fandom anymore tbh. Thank you so much!

this is so sweet oh my goodness and I’m in a crappy mood today because of uni stress so this really made my day thank you for sending me this

I’m glad you find Rhaenys and Rhaella exercising soft power interesting. I think you’ve got the right take on Rhaenys! She is someone who would love to be able to be loud and brash and is quite opinionated (see: her outright telling her father she would marry anyone to get away from him) but in the red keep where her every move is scrutinized she doesn’t have the option to do that. She has a complicated relationship with the way she presents herself which is also heavily tied up in the fact that she is the only visibly non-white member of her family and she faces scorn for obviously being half-Dornish.

I think the whole “I’m not like other girls” vibe of only letting girl characters be cool and better when they dislike girls who behave in “traditionally feminine” ways is just as shitty as painting girls who don’t behave in traditionally feminine ways as “masculine” (and trying to say they have male privilege – like what?). The truth is that even though some traits are ascribed by society to one gender or the other – there aren’t any traits that are more inherent to one gender than the other. And quite frankly in a society like Westeros women are going to have a complicated relationship with their performance of gender regardless of how they perform it.   

I also really enjoy women in old stories using the small tools available to them as women to undermine a system that disregards them because it’s fun!

Thank you for saying that my handling of the Jon/Lyanna situation is realistic! I once got accused of bashing - which I don’t want to do so that was a bit of a blow. But I don’t think I’m bashing them to have my characters think negatively of them or disliking them. I did some investigation (mainly by reading r/relationships lmao) into how people feel when their parents break up due to affairs and the common thread I saw was a LOT of pain and resentment and yeah some jealousy and dislike of half siblings who resulted from those new relationships. And that’s in our society where we have stuff like divorce and no one’s starting wars over kidnapped fiancées. Imagine how much more resentment there would be in a situation where not only did your father leave you but that also 1. Put your life in jeopardy 2. Put your inheritance rights in jeopardy 3. You can’t just leave and tell him to fuck himself because in this society the family you have grants you saftey and power. Honestly Rhaegar’s lucky someone hasn’t snapped and stabbed him yet.

You're right to say they aren't accommodating or friendly, saying that Lyanna and Jon are an afterthought is probably right. Rhaenys Rhaella and Elia have approached something like tolerance with Lyanna – they’ll leave her alone if she leaves them alone and that’s the way everyone likes it. In an everyone lived situation I simply don’t think it would be realistic to approach it in any other way. And because Elia and Rhaenys are more on the “winning” side of this I dont think they would spend every waking moment dwelling and brooding on Lyanna.

I think this tendency to have Elia and Rhaenys approve whole-heartedly of Lyanna and Jon is caused by 4 factors

1.     The misguided need to have them be good or to “give them agency”. Making a character a flat nobody who doesn’t have any emotions towards a situation that would be dangerous and deeply personally humiliating to them isn’t making them good or giving them agency its making them boring and unrealistic.

2. Not wanting to “pit girls against one another”. Look i hate this trope of 2 girls catfighting over a guy as much as anyone else but I have noticed that sometimes people say “don’t pit women against each other” when....2 girl characters don’t like each other for totally legitimate reasons. Elia doesn’t dislike Lyanna because she loves Rhaegar and Lyanna was a homewrecker who stole him. Elia is understandably angry because the whole realm is destabilized, her children’s lives and futures are in danger, and she’s been nationally humiliated. Let female characters be as complex as the male ones. No one bats an eye that Ned and Jaime despise one another because they’re men and we don’t expect male characters to be beautiful angels who never have a bad thought about anyone.

3.     To have them be good to contrast “bitchy” Catelyn. Cat isn’t a bitch and I will die on this hill. If you want to look at who was primarily responsible for the whole Jon situation Rhaegar and Ned are right there.

4.     Being unable to conceptualize non-white characters as having motivations (and negative emotions) that are either directed towards or separate from a (usually white) fandom fav character like Lyanna or Jon.

#ladies rebellion verse #Anonymous #asks #also i find it funny that the fandom has seized on horse riding as being proof that a girl is special and cool and nota dumb girly girtl #when horse riding was one of the common forms of exercise noblewomen took part in

[fedonciadale]

I've seen metas drawing the comparison between Daenerys and Hitler. Are there any that compare Jon's reactions to her madness with Henreich Himmler, his second in command who oversaw ground assaults?

It would be interesting to read, because even though as viewers we know Jon isn't evil, from the perspective of the citizens of KL he's the one who led the foot soldiers along with Grey Worm. I can't help but feel he, Grey Worm and Tyrion are complicit in Daenerys's attack morally, not unlike those "following orders" for Hitler. All three men supported her and I'm not really comfortable as a woc overlooking that.

Hi there!

Shortly after episode 5 aired I answered a long ask about the question if Jon Snow was a war criminal, which you can find here.

One important thing is, that the layers of guilt are different, I think.

Greyworm was a brainwashed Unsullied who had learned to obey his master/mistress. And when Dany ‘bought’ (or rather just took) the Unsullied, he accepted her as his mistress. I think it’s extremely difficult to judge him, because it is not clear, if he could have snapped out of it. We don’t really know, if he bought Dany’s propaganda of liberating the world. We don’t know if he had any idea about Westerosi law of war (which includes not killing people who have surrendered). The show writers gave him a romantic storyline with Missandei, but they never really elaborated on his motivations, apart from his loyalty. So if you give him the benefit of the doubt, he did indeed just follow orders without ever thinking about the morality of it all (although you could argue that Jon Snow and Davos questioned his killing of people who had surrendered). As you said: Just following orders does not excuse him from his guilt. I had hoped that Greyworm’s and Missandei’s wish to live their own happy life would lead somewhere, to questioning their loyalty to Dany, but they were never meant to be more than side characters that support Dany going over the edge.

As for Tyrion: I think he is the most guilty, actually. He knows Dany from Essos, he knows she had no qualms using her weapons of mass destruction. He knows she has a temper. He was witness to the burning of the Tarlys - which went against Westerosi law of war. So, he could have known. I think you could compare him not a Nazi General but the German Generals who thought they could use Hitler to achieve some of their goals and turned a blind eye to the atrocities he committed because of that. Tyrion thinks something along the line of “I can influence her. It won’t be that bad. We’ll manage and in the end I’ll get the Rock, just as I always wanted.” That is what I think will happen in the books. Tyrion wants to get the Rock - if only to spit on Tywin’s grave - and Dany is his only chance. For that he will tolerate her war crimes. I guess he might bitterly regret that in the end, but we will see. So, Tyrion is an enabler, and that he ends up as Hand is sickening. It’s not unrealistic though. In the 1950s and 1960s there were still plenty of people alive and active in Germany who had been Nazis. (It just doesn’t fit with Bran being king, but I have said that mutliple times already). Tyrion is a bit like Albert Speer: advising Dany, being a close confidant and afterwards claiming that he never had had any control and that he didn’t believe the propaganda anyway....

As for Jon: Heinrich Himmler is not a good comparison. Himmler believed. Jon did not. He allied with Dany because he thought he needed her and like Tyrion he thought that it wouldn’t be that bad, that he could advise her, that her dragons and the defeat of the White Walkers were worth it. When he learned about the burning of the Tarlys the enemy was literally at their doorstep and there was no time.

And Arya had killed the Night King, Dany was still in Winterfell (with her magically reborn Dothraki army and the Unsullied) and Jon had little choice but to follow her to King’s Landing to fulfill his promise. I think he knew she was bad, but he didn’t know how bad. He was caught up in the war, nilly willy, so to say. And then he witnessed the destruction of King’s Landing. War crimes happened, and Jon was in the middle of it, trying to prevent things, but not succeeding. He could have known, that it might come to that, but let’s not forget that unlike Tyrion he had not seen the Tarlys burn, and he might have deluded himself into believing that it would be ‘normal’ warfare.

As episode 5 and the beginning of episode 6 was filmed, that was his turning point, the moment he decided to become the ‘resistance’ and to kill Dany. I still think it was originally meant to be that way and that they added the Jon/Tyrion convo later (because it makes absolutely no sense). I mean, there were thousand of murdered dead on the streets of KL and Jon had to be persuaded to kill Dany. If he had talked about his oath in his convo with Tyrion it would have at least make a little sense (and then the parallel to the German generals who tried to kill Hitler would work), but Tyrion had to tell Jon that his siblings were in danger.

From a certain point of view I absolutely hate it, that they boiled it down to this personal conflict. Preventing another King’s Landing should have been enough justification to kill Dany. That was what several of the attempts on Hitler’s life were about: To prevent more deaths. If you would press me, I would compare Jon to Georg Elser, not the Generals who plotted against Hitler. Because Elser’s reasoning was: “Someone has to do it”.  But Elser was an innocent man himself, he had not participated.

If you want to compare Jon with someone who participated you might compare him to Stauffenberg and the famous assassination attempt of July, 20. That is not an exact parallel either, but Stauffenberg had participated in the war for a long time before he decided to do something. Or maybe Henning von Tresckow or Ludwig Beck who had been plotting against Hitler since the 1938 crisis and Tresckow had had his doubts since 1934.

Don’t misunderstand me. These people were far from being fighters for democracy, but they saw Hitler for what he was and acted against him from the moment their eyes were opened. And yet they were not innocent, because they had participated in the war and subsequently had at least tolerated war crimes. You could not live in these times and stay innocent on the other hand. It’s not possible to live in a tyranny and keep clean hands.

So, in a way all the modern parallels can only help us to say where exactly the guilt is. None of the comparisons work 100%.

Thanks for the ask!

#anon ask #Jon #Is Jon a war criminal? #DarkDany #The burning of King's Landing

[schmokschmok]

everything changes, nothing perishes

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Relationship: Jon Sims x Martin K. Blackwood

Characters: Jonathan Sims, Martin K. Blackwood, Gerry Delano, Georgie Barker, Melanie King, Tim Stoker, Sasha James

Wordcount: 10.000

Freeform:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Alternate Universe - College/University

Romantic & Platonic Soulmates

Brief Georgie/Jon

Amicable Breakups

Trans Melanie King & Martin Blackwood

He/Him & They/Them Pronouns For Asexual, Nonbinary Royalty Jon Sims

HOH Tim Stoker

The Mechanisms Are The Archivist’s College Band

Summary

It’s just like Martin to get a soulmate who’s already bound to someone else.

A "the first words your soulmate says to you are written on your skin"-au but the twist is only a twist if you haven't read the first installment of the series (which is not necessary but appreciated).

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28395876

Complimentary Georgie/Melanie Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25056415 

CN: Alcohol (mentioned), Canon-/Fanon-typical Martin Loneliness, Food (mentioned), Toxic Parent-Child Relationship (Martin’s mother)

 #1

Just got drunk and walked in.

It’s kind of a funny story, Martin supposes, what with the admission of alcohol being the catalysator and the cocky confidence of the script. When he was young, he thought about this sentence a lot, even though his idea of ‘getting drunk’ didn’t correspond to reality. (He still thinks a lot about it, but it’s not as rose-tinted anymore. Or at least he likes to think it isn’t.)

He never pictured a face or an actual voice to accommodate the words. But he thought about the tone, and the inflection, the way someone might say it with anger or arrogance or the intensity of a really great punchline.

The stories he made up were full of bravery and heroism, of drunk shenanigans and questionable decisions, of happy accidents and laughter. Fantastical in places, but realistic most of the time.

On better days he imagines a whole group of people close to him – friends – waiting for him in their favourite pub or on a patch of grass in front of the college he’s going to attend soon or in the flat of one of them. He imagines them chatting and retelling stories animatedly, laughing and talking over each other in enthusiasm and comradery. And one day there would be someone new, someone Martin would not have seen before. And in the moment, Martin would get into earshot, they would say it: Just got drunk and walked in. And it would be the start of a story about the lack of courage and the finding of it on the bottom of a bottle. Or the beginning of a tale about someone trying to do good, being all on their own, however. Or it would be the end of an adventure of nerves and worry.

Martin can see himself with someone equally as anxious as him. But he can also see himself with someone cockily declaring that they drunkenly walked into a place they shouldn’t have been in as well.

On worse days he imagines hearing the words in a crowd, only in bypassing, the source of countless daydreams and nightmares swallowed by the masses of people going on about their day without ever realising he was there in the first place.

One thing stays the same though in all of his imaginations and phantasies. In every single version Martin can think of, he falls in love with the voice before seeing their face first. It doesn’t matter if the words are yelled in arrogance and vanity or muttered self-consciously and kind of self-deprecatingly or hesitantly contemplated. He falls in love so fast and hard he stops breathing for a second then and there.

He had years upon years to build up enough expectations to know it only needs a little shove to snowball all of his fluttering endearment into the devastating, all-consuming love he was always destined to feel.

Martin is a romantic at heart and it doesn’t matter that all of his what ifs are futile and unrealistic, he’s in love with the idea of having a fairy-tale romance and that’s enough as it is. With all its daydreams and the gentle warmth in his stomach.

 #2

He doesn’t want to be lonely, really, he tries his best not to be. But it’s hard and he doesn’t know how to change it. When he still lived with his mother, she complained a lot about him being home all the time when he wasn’t working. (He shouldn’t think too much about it, she also complained a lot about him being away too much – no matter if he was out working or meeting up with somebody who could turn into a friend.)

The first two years in college didn’t change that fact at all. He was friendly with most of the people he met in his department and at the events he attended. But he wasn’t friends with them by any means. And that had always been the problem, hadn’t it? They thought he was a good lad, a nice chap, a dapper mate, a “we should hang out sometime!” and an “it’s lovely seeing you here!” but he’s not interesting to talk to. People don’t remember him because: While he can hold small talk relatively well, conversations with him tend to be one-sided. He asks the right questions, listens and reacts appropriately to the things people tell him, but he doesn’t reciprocate, can’t counter a story with a story because they’re either too personal or too embarrassing or don’t exist at all.

The first person talking often enough to Martin to make him share a few selected stories here and there is Gerry Delano. They share a single class and find themselves sitting next to each other, sharing and comparing the notes they made during the lecture. They haven’t met up outside of their shared class before, so Martin’s pleasantly surprised when Gerry asks him to come see his band the up-coming weekend.

 #3

He’s late. Because of course he is. One time. One single time he gets invited to something, so naturally he has to put in overtime. He’s at least an hour late, maybe even a little bit more. The text he shot Gerry to let him know that he’s late sits unread and unanswered in their chat and Martin feels awful.

Eventually, he reaches The Anglerfish, the small student bar just off the campus that hosts open mic nights and concerts for student bands. Gerry’s band is supposed to play tonight as the closing act; the after-act for a bigger student band Martin’s never heard of – The Mechanics? The Mech– something something. Apparently, they have a longer set than the other bands so Martin could be lucky to only have miss one or two songs of Gerry’s band.

Martin hasn’t listened to a single song of any of the bands that play tonight, so he’s not sure what to expect from the evening. Muffled music spills out of the slightly ajar windows, but he can’t make out a genre or any specific instruments, so he reaches for the handle of the door and takes a deep breath, for the last time relatively alone, then he opens the door and goes into the dimly lit entry way.

The first thing he hears are the chattering voices of people standing off to the bar and sitting at tables lining the walls, but when he dives into the crowd, simultaneously scanning it for Gerry’s lanky figure, he hears it.

“Just got drunk and walked in,” declares a voice loudly and with a manic kind of arrogance. Martin freezes in place. This is all wrong.

But he doesn’t get the chance to dwell on the fact that he heard the phrase etched into his upper thigh verbatim from someone he can’t even see, because the crowd doesn’t stop moving. Despite Martin’s need for the whole world to take a fucking breather, the people behind him shove him into the room and he tries to get air into his lungs again, but he only manages a few shallow breaths before the voice carries on and Martin realises that it has to be the singer on stage who said the most fateful words of Martin’s life.

The voice is gruff now, deeper and drunkenly confident.

Careful not to bump into too many people, Martin navigates through the crowd, trying to catch a look at the stage. In spite of his height it proves difficult and he goes further into the bar, diving into the crowd, while absolutely forgetting why he came in the first time: To meet Gerry who wanted to see the band Martin’s currently enraptured by, before playing with his band.

Finally, he manages to find a place at the far-right side of the publicum – close enough to see the stage but far enough to not stand in the way of the fans that came specifically for the band.

The song’s still going, and Martin scans the stage briefly. The band’s bigger than he expected and if it weren’t for the sheer presence of the person standing front centre stage, clutching the retro silver microphone with only one hand, Martin’s sure he’d have to look at every member of the band to determine who he’s looking for.

Adjusting his glasses, he attempts to take in every detail he can but he’s pretty far off and he can’t see everything he wants to. The things he can see are their long brown hair, dishevelled and laced with braids to keep it from falling into their face, goggles perched on their head like a headband; the dark brown skin of their face and hands and the lower half of their left arm; the black paint around their eyes, rampant like ivy roots; the black nail polish on the hand holding the microphone; the white linen shirt underneath the muddy brown waist coat, a dip hem skirt in the same soily brown over fishnet stockings and heavy brown boots with at least four or five centimetres of heel.

Their voice sounds like it’s made to narrate and yell and sing and– well, talk, actually. It sounds like a voice Martin would love to talk to and listen to and wake up to and– shit. This is bad and, did he mention, this is all wrong.

A narration begins and Martin realises all of a sudden that it took one measly song for him to lose all dignity and sense of appropriateness and instead win all of the love at first sight he dreamt of but didn’t anticipate to, well, suck so much.

He can’t have a crush on someone like, like that! Someone beautiful who carries themselves with ease and swagger and confidence. Until now he thought he could do this, you know, meeting his soulmate and instantly falling in love and maybe even talk to them like a civilised human being. But he was wrong, god was he wrong! He can’t talk to that ethereal being in fishnets. This is, wow, this is so far out of his comfort zone, he involuntarily takes a step back.

The only reasonable explanation is that he must have misheard the narration, must have missed a quintessential detail of what happened. Or it’s a very strange coincidence, his soulmark isn’t the most non-sensical sentence, there’s probably plenty people out there being able to say the exact same sentence. He just hasn’t met them yet.

Still, he can’t avert his eyes, he’s transfixed on the stage, listening to the, to be embarrassingly frank, horribly hot voice laying down the events leading to Oedipus’ Trial of Wits. Everything except the stage steps back and Martin’s brain singles out the band. The elbows touching him and the feet stepping on his don’t feel as real anymore, or maybe he’s less real in this weird interspace of knowing your soulmate or crushing on a complete stranger with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.

But there is no way to know, is it? He can’t go back and enter the bar again, consciously heeding the sentence that caused his distress. The only things he can think of doing are either getting to know the singer, who introduces himself as Jonny d’Ville just a few songs later, which is pretty creepy and Martin doesn’t want to do that – or he has to attend the next concert (or next concerts?) to determine if he merely misheard which doesn’t seem like a better alternative, if Martin’s honest.

So, still unsure what he should do next, he focuses on Jonny d’Ville and the way he gestures while narrating and singing like he’s winding his thoughts forth; the way he sits down during the songs he’s not involved in; the way he can’t hold back when Marius von Raum sings the part of Herakles and he mouths the words excitedly before jumping back to the microphone to sing the part of Zeus; the way he uses a single drumstick to beat the drum and holds the harmonica; the way he draws a steam punky gun and flourishes it like a natural extension of his arm.

“I’ve been looking for you!”

Gerry’s voice is so close to his ear, that the sudden proximity startles him more than the actual talking to him, or at least that’s what he tells himself. He’s not far gone enough to admit, even if it’s just to himself, that he was captivated by the band so much that he didn’t even realise that they neared the end of their act.

“D-Didn’t you get my text?” Martin yells back, leaning back, out of Gerry’s personal space. “Had to put in overtime and when I got here, I couldn’t find you.”

Gerry waves dismissively and shouts back: “Well, I found you at last, we’re up next!” He grins self-consciously and nods towards the stage. “Don’t really wanna get up after them but the crowd’s hyped up so maybe they’ll accept us as one of them.”

Even though his gaze flickers to the stage multiple times, Martin succeeds in looking at Gerry and smiling encouragingly. Then he says: “You’ll do amazing, Gerry. Don’t worry.”

While Gerry opens his mouth, the last notes of Elysian Fields carry through the bar and applause rings out. Jonny d’Ville takes a step forward, basking in the applause of the crowd and chugging water from a half litre bottle. As the applause dies down a bit, he lifts the microphone up again and exclaims: “Thank you! Thank you! Now, we are aiming to put that on CD, ehh, sometime around July. It won’t be exactly the show that you saw, this is, well, this is the debut. This’ll be refined and processed, et cetera, et cetera.” He bows outlandishly. “But if you want to help with that occurring – and you know you do – there is a crowdfunding, an indiegogo page, uhm, for this, uh, CD, there’s lots of,” he fumbles for words, “lovely perks from dice to patches and all sorts of brilliant things. So, go there, give us all your money.” The crowd laughs. “And then we will make a CD and we will send you the CD and you can listen to this to your heart’s content, uhh,” the crowd cheers again, “but thank you so much for coming!” He gives a few more thanks, then he says. “We’re going to, well, we’re going to leave you, uhm, with one quick final song and I think you probably know which one. So, sing along if you know the words.”

And the crowd knows the words.

Involuntarily, Martin steps back, overwhelmed by the sheer energy that erupts because of the people around him jumping up and down, yelling the lyrics to Drunk Space Pirate.

After that, it doesn’t take too long for The Mechanisms to clear the stage off their instruments and The Black Eyed Keays to set up their own act. Gerry comes out, hand gripping the neck of his electric guitar harder than necessary, knuckles lighter than the rest of his tan hand. His band is composed of five members including him, Martin’s yet to meet them.

Before he can start really looking at the other four musicians, he can see Ashes o’Reilly coming through the makeshift curtain separating the backstage area from the public. They goe straight to a woman standing off to the side, while politely dismissing people congratulating them and trying to involve them into conversation. As Martin averts his eyes because it seems like a private moment, he sees Jonny d’Ville leaving the backstage area, pulled through the curtain by Raphaella, their hands intertwined.

Something in Martin halts, something that had been on edge for the last hour or so, something that seemed to only be satisfied by the crushing reality of his potential soulmate holding the hand of someone other than him. (They could be friends, Martin knows that, he’s not that dense to think that everyone holding hands has to be romantically involved with each other. But it doesn’t stop him in the slightest of thinking that he wants to be in the place of holding Jonny d’Ville’s hand. He doesn’t even know the real name of the guy and already wants to hold his hand. Pathetic. And definitively creepy.)

Shaking his head to remind himself that he’s here for Gerry and The Black Eyed Keays, he turns away from Jonny d’Ville and Raphaella stopping at the bar, but out of the corner of his eyes he catches sight of Raphaella wrapping her arms around Jonny d’Ville’s waist.  

 #4

As far as Martin can tell, it’s going well for him, wonderful even, just perfectly fine. He realised today that he hadn’t spent too much time wondering about The Mechanisms or Jonny d’Ville in the past few months and he’s rather proud of himself for not obsessing. His shift ended a tad early today, he didn’t have any costumers that grinded his nerves, the night provided him with a good eight-hour long sleep, and he didn’t even have nightmares.

This is the literal incorporation of a good day. Martin doesn’t have too many of them, so he tries to really bask in the feeling, who knows how long it’s going to last.

On the way out of the Ceaseless Watcher, he picks up two cups – one filled with black coffee and one with a herbal-fruit tea blend – and starts walking to the patch of grass in front of the Jonah Magnus’ University where he’s supposed to meet Gerry. Careful not to spill coffee or tea or burn himself, he clenches one of the cups between his forearm and his chest, while he fumbles for the phone in his pocket.

For a second, he contemplates coming to a halt to text Gerry that he’s on his way, but he doesn’t want to stop, being in the momentum already. While concentrating on proper (or at least somewhat comprehensible) grammar and typing the right letters, he’s paying a little less attention to the way as he should. Of course, he notices the change of underground from the hard-stomped way underneath the trees to the openness and softness of the grassy patch. But, actually, that’s about it. It’s not too crowded because it starts to be too cold outside to properly hang out, so he doesn’t even have to navigate through groups of students.

The thing is: Martin doesn’t really think something (or someone) could cross his way, so he doesn’t even try to pay attention to the area around him. And that’s why he doesn’t reckon with the incredibly inauspicious sounding crinkling when he steps on something that is decidedly not lawn.

Martin stops dead in his track, draws a shaky breath and wants to say anything (like an apology probably), but the only words leaving his mouth are a softly whispered: “Oh no.”

The words of apology are stuck in his throat and he doesn’t dare look up from the sketchpad he stepped on unintentionally. Right on top of a study of the two statues in front of the academic museum of arts is a rather perfect imprint of the sole of his boot. Martin swallows.

“You cannot be serious,” drawls a voice that makes heat rise in Martin’s cheeks – out of shame and recognition all the same.

As if the voice had snapped Martin out of a stupor, he rushes to say: “Oh, god, I am so sorry.” Shoving his phone into his coat pocket and setting down the two cups, he crouches and starts to wipe at the now slightly damp paper, more apologies tumbling from his lips.

“Alright!” The voice cuts him short, impatiently. “Stop it. It’s alright. Don’t bother.”

Two hands reach for the sketchpad, taking it out of Martin’s hands without further ado.

“I’m really sorry,” Martin says again, still not daring to look into the face of the person he just ruined the day for. Instead, he’s looking at their hands – one of them pulling the sleeve of a jumper or hoodie out of the sleeve of their coat and over their other hand to gently dab at the paper that already starts to get wavy where Martin’s boot hit it.

The person who is definitely not Jonny d’Ville (because Jonny d’Ville is a stage name and Martin doesn’t know who the human being in front of him is) retorts curtly: “I gathered as much.”

“Is it …”, Martin interrupts himself, shifting his weight so that he’s sitting on his heels instead of the balls of his feet. “Was it important?” He scrunches his nose. “I mean, I didn’t– didn’t destroy, like, a project for a course you’ve been working on for months, did I?”

“No,” they reply but their tone suggests otherwise. “It’s not … It’s nothing.”

They stop dabbing at the paper and Martin realises that they’re looking at him now and that it would be the polite thing to look back. It costs him approximately a metric shit ton of effort to lift his eyes and meet theirs. But he manages. (Just about.)

Martin regrets his decision to meet their eyes at approximately the same time that he can start making out the details of their face that he hadn’t been able to see in the dim light of The Anglerfish and the distance between him and the stage. It’s the exact same moment that Martin realises that they are as beautiful as Martin thought they would be. In a more reigned in and moderated kind of way – their hair confined in a bun, their face not painted with ivy roots but dotted with circular scars, and their outfit more suitable for daily use – but nonetheless beautiful.

“It doesn’t look like it’s nothing,” Martin says softly, and he doesn’t know where he’s getting the courage from. (Probably nowhere, he’s not exactly thinking as it is. And ‘not thinking’ is not the same thing as conjuring up courage.)

A scoff slips past their lips and they reply: “It is, though. And even if it wasn’t: I don’t see how this could be of any concern to you.”

Martin averts his eyes and looks down at the two cups he placed next to the place where the sketchpad had previously lain. The shock of already having his foot in his mouth is probably the reason why Martin just goes on: “If I want to make it up to you, I need to know just how bad my clanger was.”

His gaze flickers back to their face and takes in the steep corrugation between their drawn together brows.

Slowly, they say: “You don’t have to make it up to me.” They look almost appalled at the thought, and Martin’s not sure if he should be offended on his behalf or theirs. (Does he look like someone who ruins peoples work and then walks away? Or did nobody ever thought about righting their wrong when interacting with them?)

“I know I don’t have to,” Martin retorts, then he backpaddles and tries to correct himself: “I mean, you don’t seem like someone who’d enforce rectification but … I want to.” He swallows around the lump in his throat. “Make it up to you, that is.”

“Oh,” they say softly, and Martin thinks that they seem like they didn’t even notice they said anything at all. Absentmindedly, their left hand fiddles with the hem of the maybe-sweater-maybe-hoodie sleeve still pulled over their right hand.

“This was absolutely and entirely my fault,” Martin says when they don’t speak up again. “So, if it would be alright with you, I would like to, I don’t know, buy you a coffee?” The blush on his cheeks intensifies because he knows what this could look like. But someone like them would never even consider that someone like Martin could hit on them, so he tries not to dwell on that thought for too long. “I work at the Ceaseless Watcher, so, you could drop by and get a coffee on the house?”

Martin attempts a smile but it’s a rather weak one. The palms of his hands are clammy and a little numb, but he doesn’t dare wiping them on his trousers to get rid of the feeling.

“Are you working on Thursday?”

In all honesty, Martin didn’t reckon they would actually agree. Much less on the first go. (Such things don’t happen to Martin. He is never lucky enough that things just work out.)

“I– uh, yes,” Martin rushes to say before they can think about changing their mind. “Five to eleven.” An owlish blink in Martin’s direction. “P.M.”

“Good,” they say, both hands now lying flat on their sketchpad. “Then I will see you on Thursday.”

Martin takes this as his cue to stand up and leave, and it takes him almost ten whole minutes until he realises that he doesn’t even know the name of the person he had just met. And it takes him almost five more minutes of self-loathing and -pity until he remembers that they will see each other again. Next Thursday.

Maybe one time everything can work out for Martin. Just one time.

#5

It doesn’t work out for Martin.

It doesn’t work out for Martin, so obviously and severely, that Martin genuinely thinks about hiding in the employee’s bathroom so that Jane can take over the register and deal with the slowly trickling in students of the Jonah Magnus Institute.

Jon (that’s his name, Jon without an H, it’s short for Jonathan, narrowed eyes at Martin’s name tag, Martin) has a girlfriend that is beautiful like a flower meadow in full bloom underneath the blue open sky. But they don’t just look great together (and they do, Martin’s perfectly and painfully aware of that fact), they seem to get along greatly, too. (Which is good! It’s not like Martin’s begrudging someone’s happy relationship or anything. It’s more like … he envies it? Envies the apparent ease and comfortability that come with knowing someone intimately for a long time. Envies the way they lean into each other and share private smiles. Envies the look of contentedness and trust when they look at each other. – Or maybe he’s overanalysing things he has never been part of. Eternally condemned to an etic approach to romantic relationships.)

Today, however, Martin wants to flee the scene because Jon looks livid and Georgie’s attempts to calm him down seem rather futile. They’re barely in earshot when Jon hisses: “I still don’t understand why you invited her along.”

“It’s not every day that you meet your soulmate,” Georgie replies soft spoken and with an exasperation that implies that it’s not the first time she has said this sentence to him. “And I won’t let you antagonise her just for the sake of it. At least get to know her. If she’s as bad as you think she is, you get to tell me that you told me so and I’ll back off.” She smiles at him. “Deal?”

But she doesn’t wait for him to answer, instead she turns to the counter where Martin’s been standing the whole time, trying to look like he hasn’t been eavesdropping, and greets him: “Hey, Martin.”

“Hi.” Martin tries to smile through the awkward glances Jon shoots him. “What can I do for you?”

“Two latte macchiatos, one decaf, one regular, and one white coffee,” she replies. While he’s ringing up her order, she continues: “And maybe if you could answer me this: Do you think Jon’s approachable?”

Martin stops dead in his tracks and Jon splutters: “Georgie!”

“What?” Her gaze flickers between an indignant Jon and the redder and redder growing face of Martin. She tilts her head in confusion and furrows her brows.

Jon hisses: “You can’t rope Martin into your schemes, you wretched thing!”

“Why not?”, Georgie questions before Martin gets to have a word in this. (Not that Martin would actively try to intervene when they’re obviously fighting about something important. Something Martin doesn’t want to think about while they’re still standing right in front of him.)

“Because,” Jon starts to say, but Georgie’s bulldozing on: “Martin is the newest addition to our squad and you brought him in, so, if anyone knows if you’re approachable or not, it’s him.”

“Martin is not a part of our friend group,” Jon says bewildered, then the realisation that Martin’s right in front of them sinks in. But the words are out in the open and the damage is already done.

“Jon!” Georgie exclaims, her voice filled with outrage (or at least something that comes close to outrage).

Martin smiles weakly and says: “It’s okay, Jon’s right. We’re not friends, or anything.”

It’s true, even though Martin had hoped that they could become friends. Or at least acquainted. Sometime in the future. (But Martin has to admit that Georgie thinking that Martin belongs to them in any kind of way – it felt nice. Nicer and bigger than it should probably have.)

“Oh,” Georgie says, brows even more furrowed than before, and a look of contemplation on her face that Martin can’t decipher. Then she shakes her head and Jane calls out for Jon and Georgie to collect their drinks.

They continue their argument while walking away, and Georgie sends him a soft smile and a wave over her shoulder before they grab their coffees and head for a table near the front of the café.

Martin tries not to look at them too much, or at all even, but he must have failed embarrassingly, because he notices Jon’s displeased face before he realises that someone has entered the café and beelines for the table Georgie and Jon sit at.

And that’s the moment Georgie’s and Jon’s conversation hits him full force. Jon’s soulmate has come into their life. Jon‘s soulmate has come into their life and the soulmate in question has just entered The Ceaseless Watcher. Which means one thing: Martin is not Jon’s soulmate.

Martin laughs lowly and self-deprecatingly and thinks: It’s just like him to get a soulmate who’s already bound to someone else. If he’d tell his mother, she’d probably tell him he had it coming without ever specifying why.

 #6

“Sounds exhausting,” Gerry says, both arms on the counter and more slumped against it than standing upright.

Martin shrugs his shoulders and says: “That’s just uni life.”

“It’s not,” Gerry retorts, pulling a face. “I’ve been lying on my bed the whole weekend, working on a few new songs. What you’re doing is the Martin way of life and, no offence, but it sounds exhausting. Three out of ten, wouldn’t recommend.”

“I kinda … take offence?” Martin’s voice goes up way too much at the end of the sentence, and Gerry waves his hand dismissively. “Did you just come by to insult me?”

Gerry grins and extends his arm to ruffle Martin’s hair (which is not something Martin expects other people to do and that’s why he doesn’t really know how to react to it), before he says: “Nah. Don’t. If it’s working for you, go ahead. – I’m here because my roommate and their girlfriend broke up, so I’m waiting for them to, I don’t know, cheer them up, I guess.”

“Oh,” Martin says eloquently. “I’m sorry?”

Gerry shrugs. “It’s alright, I think. They didn’t sound too upset on the phone.” Then his gaze falls on the giant clock on the wall behind the counter. “Should be here soon. Could you please ring up one regular latte macchiato and one decaf?”

Nodding, Martin punches the order into the register and Gerry reaches for his wallet. Then Martin steps over to the coffee machine to prepare the two different shots of espresso and heat and foam the soy-oat milk blend.

They exchange a few more quips while Gerry carries the hot beverages to a table next to the wall and gets back to the counter because they don’t want to disturb the other patrons by talking too loudly.

Gerry’s about to go on a tangent about the breaking of his G and B strings, when the bell above the door chimes and someone enters The Ceaseless Watcher.

Without intent or his own volition, a bright smile plasters itself onto Martin’s face, before he even turns towards the door – pavloved into customer friendliness – and sees Jon walk into the café. His smile falters a bit, but he manages to uphold it and greets: “Hey, Jon.”

Jon nods in reciprocation and says: “Martin, Gerry.”

“Oh, you know each other?” Martin asks, already one finger on the register to punch in Jon’s order, but Gerry’s hand makes an abortive gesture.

“Jon’s my roommate,” Gerry explains with another gesture towards the table where the two latte macchiatos wait for them. “Didn’t know you were acquainted.”

A blush creeps up Martin’s neck and he forces an embarrassed groan back down his throat. He’s torn between processing the information that Jon and Georgie broke up (apparently) and the realisation that Gerry used they/them pronouns for Jon.

“Well, we are,” Jon replies curtly and frees Martin from saying anything at all. Jon already turns to leave the counter when Martin squeezes out: “Jon, could I– would you– just a moment?”

Jon nods and Gerry walks to their table to give them a moment of privacy. But Martin doesn’t continue, because the questions that pile up in his mouth and block the way for the thing he actually planned to ask try to fight their way over his lips. Did Georgie and you really break up? Is it because of your soulmate? Are you alright? Is Georgie alright?

“Yes, Martin?” Jon looks vaguely annoyed. (Or maybe Jon looks obviously annoyed, but Martin doesn’t want to accept it because he’s a hopeless romantic and thinks that even if he is not Jon’s soulmate, Jon is still his and that must mean something, right? The universe wouldn’t be as cruel as to present Martin his soulmate only to make them hate him, right? – Yes, of course, Martin knows that soulmates don’t have to be romantic or even platonic, that a shared soulmark only means this person will have an impact on your life and that it is on them to find out what kind of impact that is. But Martin wants it to be positive. He desperately craves for it to be positive force in his life. And he doesn’t know what he’s going to do if this thing ends up being a giant fluke.)

Martin clears his throat and tries to ignore the burning behind his eyes.

“Just,” Martin swallows down everything that doesn’t have any place being in his mouth, “Gerry used they/them pronouns for you and … I don’t want to misgender you?”

Jon’s face doesn’t tell Martin anything. If Jon is pleased knowing that Gerry uses the right pronouns; if Jon is annoyed that Gerry made a capital t Thing out of Jon by using gender-neutral language; if Jon doesn’t really care either way. Jon just looks at him. It’s a bit unsettling.

“If you don’t want to talk to me about this, I get it,” Martin continues softly when Jon doesn’t say a thing and only studies Martin’s face. “You don’t have to. But I would like to, you know, respect it if you preferred a specific set of pronouns.”

Martin shrugs to shove the weight off his shoulders, but Jon’s stare turns disconcerting. Uncertainty making its way into Martin’s chest, until Jon says slowly: “I use he/him and they/them pronouns. At the moment it’s the latter.”

A nod in acknowledgment earns Martin something akin to a smile, the smallest of uplifts of the corners of Jon’s lips, and warmth spreads through Martin’s cheeks and chest.

They lift their hand in a wave goodbye until they seem to realise that they’re not actually leaving but rather sitting down at the table Gerry’s still waiting at, and duck their head in something Martin wants to call embarrassment.

For a few minutes while nobody walks up to the counter and everyone seems to be busy except Martin, Martin takes a plate out of one of the cupboards and places two pastries on it. Then, after a few pacing steps forward and back again and too much hesitation, he walks over to Gerry and Jon and places the plate on the table.

Jon opens their mouth to say something and Martin can see the questioning look on Gerry’s face. But he cuts the discussion short by blurting out: “On the house.”

In an attempt to mask the anxiety already spreading through him, Martin smiles his brightest smile, turns around and walks away. (Which: Who does something like that? Jon must suspect that Gerry has told Martin something Martin shouldn’t know about. Or they must think that Martin is an absolute court jester. And given Gerry’s face, at least Gerry suspects that Martin is not acting out of sheer courtesy.)

(Martin desperately wishes for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.)

 #7

Georgie and Jon are broken up for good, or that’s at least what Jon says to Martin. This is remarkable because of two things: First of all because it means that Jon is actually talking to Martin except for, you know, ordering coffee or awkward small talk while Martin prepares the beverage. And secondly because Martin didn’t think their split would actually last. Georgie and Jon are, even if it sounds impossible, the perfect pair and Martin isn’t sure how they managed to not be soulmates.

Since Martin tried to clarify Jon’s use of pronouns, Jon has significantly warmed up to Martin and Martin isn’t sure if it’s because of this or because Jon can’t spend as much time with Georgie anymore. (It’s not like they actually take a break from seeing each other. Gerry told Martin that Jon and Georgie went to an outing together on the same night they broke up.) Either way, Martin’s suddenly confronted with a Jon who asks him low-voiced how he’s doing and who hesitantly wants him to have a good day.

“He/him day,” Jon says instead of a greeting. He wipes sweat from his forehead and tries to tug every stray strand and wisp of hair behind his ears or underneath his hair tie – rather unsuccessfully.

Martin throws a glance behind Jon to assess the situation in the café and if he can risk leaving the counter for a moment. When he deems it safe, Martin says: “This reminds me … Wait a moment, I …”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but instead walks into the little storage room in the back of the shop to fish a little box out of his bag and come back to the front of the café. A small blush blooming on his cheeks, Martin smiles at Jon and says: “Hey, Jon.”

Jon furrows his brow as if he hadn’t realised that he skipped an essential part of the conversation, then replies dutifully: “Hello, Martin.”

“So,” Martin begins, “I’ve been thinking. We’ve been talking about your pronouns and …” Martin trails off and presents the little box he retrieved from his bag. He opens it and showcases two braided bracelets, one in salmon pink and one in teal. “I heard about pronoun pins and bracelets? Had some yarn laying around and thought … if you want to, you could use them to indicate your preferred pronouns?”

At the end, Martin’s voice trails off and he sounds a lot less sure about his idea. His uncertainty is a mix out of ‘did I overstep’ and ‘am I too much’, but the way Jon’s furrowed brows melt into something entirely else lets Martin think that he’s not as much a burden as he feared.

Cautiously, Jon reaches for the bracelets, stopping mid-air to throw another glance at Martin who can’t stop himself from making a weird combination of nodding and shrugging.

Jon takes the two bracelets out of their box and Martin throws the empty box into a drawer underneath the counter. He runs them through his fingers, feeling the texture of the yarn and the structure of the fish braid pattern. Pocketing the salmon pink bracelet, he extends his right arm with the teal-coloured one towards Martin, asking: “Could you tie it?”

The uncoiling of the knot right underneath Martin’s midriff makes Martin smile and he takes the bracelet out of Jon’s hand to tie it around Jon’s wrist. He miscalculated quite a bit with his own wrist as reference, but he is able to comfortably wrap the bracelet around Jon’s wrist two times, before he ties it into a loose knot. The colour looks nice against the warm undertone of Jon’s skin and up-close Martin can see the smaller and bigger moles scattered across his lower arm.

Martin’s not sure if it is he who lets go of Jon’s arm first or Jon who takes his arm back, but he knows that he looks up from where he held Jon’s wrist just a few seconds ago and catches sight of Jon looking at him. It’s not a look Martin can decipher. As so often, Jon looks like he’s trying to make sense out of something Martin has said or done. (Or maybe he’s trying to make sense out of Martin as a whole. The same way Martin is still trying to grasp the essence of Jon.)

“This is really nice,” Jon says, and it sounds more like he’s turning every word three or four times before releasing it into the air between them; like he’s somehow forcing the words out after analysing and approving them, because they don’t want to be heard. But the way he cradles his wrist and the bracelet with such great care and a little disbelief shows clearly that he’s serious. Jon’s eyes snap upwards to look at Martin again, and Jon adds: “Thank you, Martin. That’s really,” he draws in a breath, “considerate.”

Not sure if he should dismiss Jon’s words or not, Martin ducks his head and turns towards the register: “Decaf or Regular?”

“Surprise me,” Jon replies with a shrug of his shoulders. Martin tilts his head in confusion and Jon clarifies: “Gerry and Georgie think I drink too much coffee, but I don’t necessarily like them interfering with my life choices, so we made the deal that every time we drink coffee together, we order one decaf and one regular and it’s a surprise who gets to drink the decaf.”

Chuckling lowly, Martin retorts: “That’s a nice tradition.”

Jon pays for his coffee and Martin turns around, reaching for the decaf beans, safely out of Jon’s sight. For the taste, he adds much more ground coffee than Elias normally allows him to use and sprinkles a bit of cocoa powder on top of the milk foam. Then he hands Jon the final product and smiles.

Their fingers almost touch when Jon takes the mug out of Martin’s hands and he starts to walk away for two and a half steps, before he turns back again and asks: “When does your shift end?”

“Oh,” Martin throws a glance at the clock behind him, “in about an hour? Why?”

Jon shifts his weight and replies: “I thought I could use a walk, and that, maybe, you could use a walk, too?”

This seems to cost even more surmounting than thanking Martin, but it fills Martin with warmth and the hope that Jon doesn’t hate him. (He should know by now that Jon doesn’t hate him, they’ve been friendly for quite a time now, but the fear that Jon [or anyone, really] could suddenly decide that Martin is too much and too overbearing is prevalent.)

He swallows all that down and says: “Yes, I’d like that.”

 #8

When Melanie and Georgie get together, Martin’s not entirely surprised. Actually, he’s not surprised at all because Jon himself has told Martin that Melanie had asked him about his feelings for Georgie. (I don’t get it, Martin, do I look like I would begrudge them their relationship? Do I look like a fragile thing that needs to be coddled? No, Gerry, shut it.) But part of Martin wonders if Jon’s really as alright with the situation as he makes it out to be. As far as Martin knows, Jon and Georgie had been dating for quite a while, and Melanie is Jon’s soulmate. It must be a horribly awkward situation to be in.

Somehow this hasn’t kept them from hanging out as a group, though. Melanie and Georgie are lying in the shadow of a tree, while Sasha and Tim rampage through the water, and Jon and Martin, they sit on the small landing stage, their feet dangling in the water.

Jon’s hand is resting right next to Martin’s and it would be so easy to reach out and grab it, to intertwine their fingers and just enjoy the weight of Jon’s hand in his. But they have never done something like this, Jon is an untouchable entity in the night sky, beautiful like the milky way but foreign and unjudgeable with his disconcerting stares and assessing questions and brutally honest words. And a mere mortal like Martin can’t just reach for the hand of a natural phenomenon like Jon Sims.

So, he takes his hands into his lap instead to keep himself from doing something ill-considered like taking Jon’s hand anyways.

For a moment, they watch Sasha and Tim, but when they head back to the picknick blanket Georgie and Jon had brought and where Georgie and Melanie are leisurely sitting, Jon indicates that they could go back to the others, too. So, they get up and walk back to the others. (Martin’s hand twitching to reach for Jon’s.)

“No way! You’re lying!” Tim’s voice is barely more than a whisper, while he’s scrubbing his hair as dry as possible with a towel.

Sasha’s hand reaches out for Tim’s ankle to direct his attention to her, and she says while signing simultaneously: “Nobody can hear shit of what you’re saying.”

“Louder?” Tim asks and it’s obvious that he tries to adjust his volume. But Sasha shakes her head. “Louder?” Sasha shakes her head again and Tim waves dismissively, before he continues to towel dry his hair.

“What’s going on?” Martin says, sitting down next to Sasha, quietly marvelling at the fact that Jon sits down next to him even though the space doesn’t necessarily allow it.

Melanie’s cheeks redden (a foreign and unsettling sight, if Martin is honest), and she seems to think about her answer for a moment, before she finally extends her legs, showcasing multiple sets of names written on her skin. Sasha’s, Tim’s, Georgie’s and Martin’s. But most prominently right in the middle Jonathan Sims in the same curvy scripture as the rest, but instead of a felt tip marker, it seems to come from under Melanie’s skin.

“Oh,” Jon says right next to Martin and Martin thinks: Oh, indeed.

That is, however, where the similarities between Jon and Martin end, because while Martin starts to panic at the obvious evidence of Melanie’s and Jon’s soulbond, Jon says: “Georgie, this is your handwriting.”

“Yes, it is,” Georgie replies cheerily, before pointing at the crook of her arm. “And you know what? That’s Melanie’s handwriting.”

“Congratulations,” Jon deadpans, but Martin can feel the rigid line of Jon’s shoulders relax.

Just for a moment, though, because Georgie says: “And you know what that means, Jon! There’s still someone out there waiting to be found by you!” And Jon is as tense as before.

“I hope not,” Jon replies, and Martin can’t help himself hoping that Jon is right. Because Melanie turning out not to be Jon’s soulmate doesn’t automatically turn Martin into Jon’s soulmate. Martin doesn’t even know what’s written on Jon’s body, and even if he knew he’s not sure he could remember the first thing he ever said to Jon.

Georgie only smiles, used to Jon’s antiques and clearly mentally occupied.

“You’re making such a big deal out of it,” Tim says while turning his C.I. back on. The volume of his voice adjusting to an appropriate level when he’s finally able to hear himself again. “Out of anything, really. Why don’t you just enjoy the knowledge that somewhere out there is someone who enjoys talking to you, like, without any obligation.”

Out of Jon’s sight, Georgie starts a countdown (three – two – one!) with her fingers, and as if she had given Jon a sign, he goes on a tangent about determinism. Martin has never been as in love with Jon.

Oh.

Oh.  

 #9

MartiniKolada: sos

MyKeaymicalRomance: what did you do?

MartiniKolada: i had an oh. oh. moment MartiniKolada: you know where you think oh. and then it hits you like oh. but it’s italic and the italicity of the moment hits you right in the face??

MyKeaymicalRomance: i don’t think italicity is a real word

MartiniKolada: italicness then??

MyKeaymicalRomance: maybe italicisation?

MartiniKolada: does it really matter???

MyKeaymicalRomance: probably not lol

MartiniKolada: as i was saying MartiniKolada: i just had the mortifying realisation that i think i love jon?? like, not likelike but lovelove?? and idk what to do, like, what WILL i do next? burst into a song or into tears??

MyKeaymicalRomance: oh, well, i think it’s probably too early to tell him

MartiniKolada: “probably” he says

MyKeaymicalRomance: well, what do you want me to say?

MartiniKolada: idk???

MyKeaymicalRomance: do you want me to come over after my class?

MartiniKolada: yes pls ))):

MyKeaymicalromance: k

 #10

It’s October, and their semester break is over in two weeks. Martin’s already dreading having to go back to courses and classes because he’s not sure if the last few weeks of seeing Jon almost every day are over if they both have to pick up work again. (The good thing is that the others will come back from their visits home. Martin doesn’t know how it happened, but he’s grown close to Gerry and Jon’s squad and actually misses them.)

Now, however, he concentrates on the fact that Jon asked if he would like to stay overnight because Gerry’s away and he doesn’t want to be alone tonight. He said It’s eerily quiet and Martin didn’t need more to say Yes, I mean, yeah, no problem, I’d love to. Because: It’s not like Martin regrets agreeing to Jon’s request, it’s more that Martin’s utterly overwhelmed with the thought that he is going to spend time sleeping in the same room as Jon. (Embarrassing, right?)

“You seem distracted,” Jon states and reaches for the mousepad to pause the film they’re watching. Or in Martin’s case: attempt to watch.

It’s not a new development that Jon and Martin sit on Jon’s bed, huddled close together, to watch a movie or play a two-player game Jon has found on his hard drive. But it being old news doesn’t prevent Martin from marvelling at the way Jon’s thin frame fits in neatly with the curve of Martin’s fat stomach and thigh. And the way Jon seems to melt into Martin over the course of one evening, almost liquified at the end, nestled into Martin in a manner that Martin couldn’t recreate if he tried to; absolutely unretractable when Martin tries to reconstruct how he could find himself in a situation like this.

“A bit,” Martin agrees, studying the cursor now resting on the nose of the protagonist. “It’s nothing.”

“If you don’t want to watch a film, we don’t have to,” Jon says and it’s only because they’ve been spending so much time together that Martin recognises the defensive tone of Jon’s voice as concern. (A few months back he would have definitively thought that he had done something wrong and that Jon is annoyed with him. And the knowledge that the anxiety coiling underneath his midriff is with great certainty unfounded and only fabricated by his own brain makes warmth spread through his whole chest.)

“No, it’s alright, really, it’s nothing,” Martin repeats placatingly, already reaching for the mousepad to unpause the film.

But Jon catches his wrist mid-air and says lowly: “I hate when you do that.”

“What?” Martin’s hand sinks until it hits his stomach, but Jon’s hand remains wrapped around Martin’s wrist as if he needed to keep Martin by his side; as if Martin could somehow muster up the volition to get up and go.

Jon’s gaze is entirely on the junction of their skin, probably focusing on the way Martin’s skin tone clashes with the salmon pink of one of the two bracelets Jon’s wearing tonight. (Or probably not because Jon doesn’t really care for things like that.)

“Well,” Jon says to Martin’s wrist, “when you say it’s nothing even though it’s clearly something.”

Self-consciously, Martin contemplates for a hot second telling Jon the truth. That he just likes being with him even though Jon doesn’t feel the same way as Martin. That he likes how they fit together like matching salt and pepper shakers. That he likes the firmness of Jon’s hand around his when Jon excitedly grabs Martin’s hand and forgets to let go again. That he likes Jon’s distracted (and to be honest distracting) soliloquies and overexcited monologues.

Being honest, however, isn’t worth the awkwardness that will most likely be the result of confessing his feelings, so Martin deflects: “That implies that you’re always telling me right away when something’s bothering you. But that’s not what you do, is it?”

Jon pulls a face. “No.” He sighs. “No, it’s not.”

Without thinking, Jon shifts the weight of Martin’s wrist in his as if he’s trying to feel for Martin’s pulse. For a moment, they’re both silent, dwelling on thoughts they’re not ready to share, yet. Or maybe only Martin’s not ready to share, yet, because Jon concedes softly: “You’re right. So, if I were to share a matter that has been on my mind lately, would it be more encouraging or pressuring for you to hear about it?”

Martin weighs both options, partially occupied with the way Jon’s still holding onto his pulse. Then he concludes: “Both, probably? I mean, it could be both.”

“Do you want me to tell you anyway?” Jon asks, lifting his gaze and focusing on Martin’s face. (Jon has this incredibly unsettling habit of looking at people at precisely those moments it’s the most disconcerting, gaze unwavering and the only thing betraying his own nervousness is the way he fiddles with the hem of his sleeves or the jittery tapping of his fingers against the fabric of his trousers.)

And since Martin can’t refuse Jon anything, he nods.

“You know, this is probably ridiculous and you’re going to make fun of me, endlessly,” Jon says, a barely visible crinkle appearing between his brows, “but Georgie said that she doesn’t understand why we haven’t kissed, yet. And it’s been on my mind ever since. Should we be kissing, Martin?”

Martin almost chokes on air. “What?” He must have misheard. Or misunderstood. Because it’s absolutely impossible that Jon said this particular string of words without any hesitation.

“Well,” Jon says, obviously growing uncomfortable, “I told her that she should stop being presumptuous, because if you would want to kiss me you would say as much. But Georgie said she wouldn’t be surprised if you were to think that I’m kiss averse as some asexual people are and that you were ‘too bashful’ to ask for clarification.” Jon breathes in and out, once, then twice. Martin’s trying hard not to mcfucking lose it. “We’ve been dating for quite some time now and I hope you’d feel comfortable enough to ask me things like that instead of assuming my stance. However, I do see now that I should put my own house in order first rather than waiting for you to say something.” The crinkle between his brows smooths out. “So, the quintessence is that I would like to kiss you, Martin, and that I would like to know if you were amenable to this idea.”

Owlishly blinking, Martin tries to make sense of all the admittedly beautiful but absolutely impossible words that Jon has said just now. He’s not sure which part he should be concentrating on and his thoughts crash into each other, tumbling onto his tongue, only to get buried underneath a new load of thoughts just a nanosecond later.

The thing that actually makes it past Martin’s stupor is: “We’ve been what?”

Jon furrows his brows again and replies slowly: “Dating.”

“And you didn’t think I needed to know that??” Martin’s voice cracks, eyes wide and cheeks reddened. The pressure of Jon’s fingers around his wrist loosens and Martin wants nothing more than to hold on dearly, but at the moment he can’t do anything but stare at Jon’s face that shifts slowly into a look of embarrassment.

“Well, I thought– I didn’t,” he groans lowly. “I thought you knew.”

“How should I have known?” Martin doesn’t really want to argue about this, but the words tumble out of his mouth, absolutely unstoppable. “Did you send me a formal enquiry? Ask me to be your boyfriend while we were doing incredibly romantic things like shopping groceries? I would have said yes, don’t get me wrong, this is not a ‘I don’t want to be dating you’ because I do very much want to date you.”

Martin’s breath goes hard, and he attempts to focus on the blush that bloomed on Jon’s cheeks sometime around the mention of Martin calling himself Jon’s boyfriend and that deepened further when Martin stressed that he wanted to be Jon’s boyfriend as well. But then Jon’s smiling. Not a barely visible lift of the corners of his lips but a genuine smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes.

“I think,” Jon says, shifting the weight of Martin’s wrist again, so he can intertwine their fingers completely, “that everything we do together is inherently very romantic. Even grocery shopping.”

“Oh, my god,” Martin tries to hold back a giggle and fails, “you’re a sap! This is unbelievable. This should be illegal.” He wriggles his other hand out of the almost non-existing space between them and cups Jon’s hand in both of his. “You can’t just spring the fact on me that we’re dating, only to change your behaviour a hundred and eighty degrees and say things like, things like that!”

“I’m only adapting,” Jon replies, lifting Martin’s hands and pulling them in close. “I thought we were taking it slow because you never made a first move, and I didn’t want to be too much.”

“Then we’re in the same boat, huh,” Martin says while he’s watching Jon pressing small kisses on Martin’s knuckles. “So, what do we learn from this, Jon? Don’t talk to Georgie about those things, come talk to me.”

Jon snorts. “You’re one to talk. I can’t count the times Gerry told me to ‘go get my man he’s pining again.’ It was embarrassing.”

“Imagine how embarrassing that is for me?! I was literally gay on main while he thought we were already dating?!” Martin makes a suffering noise at the back of his throat, but Jon doesn’t stop pressing small kisses into his knuckles, so it’s not as bad as it could be. “We need to cut ties with Gerry but that shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“No, that’s feasible,” Jon replies. “Very sensible.” He puts down their intertwined hands. “A thing that would be very sensible, too, is telling me about the reason you were distracted earlier.”

“It seems ridiculous now,” Martin says, but Jon nudges him with his shoulder to prompt him to go on. “I just thought about how hard it is to sit next to you and not kiss you.”

Jon lifts himself up on his elbow and murmurs: “That is a lie, Martin K. Blackwood.”

“Only half of it,” Martin replies softly, before he closes the gap between them and kisses Jon with as much care as he can conjure.

(The light shove Martin gets when he asks “so, we’re boyfriends now, huh?” is definitely deserved.)

#the magnus archives #fanfiction #jonmartin #jon sims x martin blackwood #wtgfs on the side #dating without knowing #softness #pure and unadultered softness #college au #schmok writes #i forgot to post this back in the day but since tma ends today #FLUFF for all of you!!

[caithyra]

Full Circle: Almost An Arthur

One of the reasons why I believe Mad Queen Dany divided fandom so badly is because, well, ASOIAF has often been touted as the Fantasy that is either realistic or unlike other Fantasies.

Unfortunately, it looped back on its head until it wasn’t what was advertised.

I mean, lets talk about this Destined Heir who is growing up from humble beginnings after being displaced from the Throne. Little Arthur Pendragon is little more than a squire for a knight’s son, but then it is revealed that Estel is in reality Aragorn, descendant of the great kings of old! There is a even a prophecy that decrees that when the End comes to the world, Belgarion will be there and stop it! So it was a great day of hope when Dany rose from the ashes with dragons on her shoulders!

Except... There this lady, a woman, high-ranked, a queen who got a bit too much power, and we know these hysterical wimmens and Mad/Evil Queens are just sooo original that this story has at least two heavily featured ones and possibly more by the time this series ends!

Move over Menzoberranzan and make way for Meereen!

And then Alistair (bastard and only known surviving son of the previous king’s father) grew pissy because I wouldn’t kill Loghain in front of his daughter, the queen, and took the throne from Queen Anora (that ambitious btch according to fandom, who happen to have been the widow of the deceased king, oh and that king was about to set her aside to marry the Empress of Orlais, more on her empire later, that the grandking freed the kingdom from after a... shall we say, bad occupation in which Loghain’s mother AND dog were literally rped to death because taxes by Orlesian knights?) and ten years later sends messages in which he’s so incompetent his scribes make fun of him yet the kingdom is still running fine. Also, to receive your knighthood in the Orlesian Empire you have to go to the ghettos where the elven jewish equivalents live and kill random elves! And that’s just the surface of this empire ruled by a queen/empress (oh, and the great-grandqueen who started the rebellion to free the kingdom died before it was free, just to make sure there’s no counterpoint Good Queen in Thedas).

Well, I think you all might notice a pattern in popular Fantasy, now, right? Like, Male Destined Heir/Patriarchy=Good; Queens/Empresses/Matriarchies=Bad/Mad and/or incompetent?

And here we have a main female character, “rightful” heir to the Throne of Westeros who Brings Magic Back and all that, and taking into account the whole “Not Like Other Fantasy Series” (”Not Like Other Strong Female Characters”... “Not Like Other Girls”?), and I can totally see why Dany fans cannot believe that she’s meant to go Mad/Evil Queen. Especially with Queen Cersei Lannister having been born a monster worse than Scylla and Carybdis at birth.

The thing is, GRRM/D&D weren’t just content doing Destined Heir with a Twist just by making her female.

They wanted to deconstruct the Destined Heir trope.

Slavery, Colonialism, and you name it. They threw it at this trope to deconstruct it, completely blind to how, simply by making the Heir a woman they were looping back onto another, overly worn, overly annoying, overly prevalent Fantasy trope. Is it really any wonder that a lot of viewers/readers rebelled against this idea?

“Off with their heads!Dracarys!” - The Queen of HeartsDaenerys Targaryen

And then there are those who believe that yes, Dany will turn mad, just not as in the show, and, well, I agree with them. And it is also kinda obvious that with Aegon Targaryen (whether he is the real deal or not) will change a lot of things by virtue of not being Jon Snow.

I could go into my fan theory that Aegon is the Real Deal. That he will bond with Rhaegal. That he will marry Arianne Martell. That Dany will try to force him to marry her instead. That Aegon wont abandon his wife (or take a second one like Aegon the Conqueror) like Rhaegar abandoned Elia Martell. That Dany will believe that history will repeat itself (she believes that if Rhaegar married her instead, she would have been able to keep him in her bed unlike Elia) and kills them in a fury.

Killing her nephew unhinges her, but killing Rhaegal’s rider causes him to abandon her and be vulnerable and ensnared by the Greyjoys’ Dragon Horn unhinges her even more, and so on... But basically, no one will be under any illusions about her sanity or suitability long before she gets near the Iron Throne.

And I could go on, but that’s just a fan theory. My point is that things would go waaay different than in the show, and yeah, with how the books are right now, it can’t really go in the direction of the show even if characters end up “more or less” the same (according GRRM).

There are those who thinks it will go the same, but it really can’t with Aegon not being Jon (unless that’s how Jon will be rezzed, by warging his half-brother, but then again, my theory is that rezzed Jon is a fire-wight with his memories, much like Beric and Stoneheart, and the real Jon will forever be inside Ghost, thus turning Jon’s Ghost into Jon’s ghost, lol, gotta stop fan theorizing), and with the Greyjoys’ story being so different.

The point is that whatever your view point, it is pretty gosh darn annoying that when we for once get a female Arthur Pendragon in a mainstream series, they turn her into a colonialist, slave-owning, pyromaniac Mad Queen.

Like, we have a whole bunch of Mad Queens (or potential Mad Queens)! We even have Cersei Lannister for the Unrealistically-Proportioned-Castles-and-Wall’s sake!

“[...]of course you get into Sansa being jealous of Dany[...]” - David Nutter, Director of Game of Thrones

“[...]Then the Queen was shocked, and turned yellow and green with envy.[...]She called a [ranger], and said, "Take the [Dragon Queen] away into the [Godswood...erm, Red Keep]; I will no longer have her in my sight. Kill her, and bring me back her heart as a token."[...]” - Little Snow-White, a fairy-tale

Yeah... So... Yeah... Here we are?

Anyway, this wasn’t a defense or an attack of Dany (or any other character). It’s just one of the many times I notice how, in an effort to deconstruct a trope, the authors ended up rewriting a much more tired and offensive one instead. Essentially looping in a full circle back to being trite.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #daenerys targaryen #the belgariad #lord of the rings #arthuriana #dragon age #dark elf trilogy #Looped Deconstructions #random ramble #is probably not coherent because tired #oh well have it anyway #I have read too much fantasy #too many fairy tales legends and myths

[bonesgadh]

Dear favorite meta writer. How do you think GOT should have ended for Gendrya? Pretending that awful and forsaken last episode doesn´t exist. After Arya rode the white horse away, what would you think SHOULD have happened for Gendrya and Arya after that? Something that actually MADE SENSE.

Well, after 8x05′s beautiful ending of Arya with the white horse the only thing that made sense to me was her having her sweet epilogue with Gendry. I remember pretty much everyone in the Gendrya fandom agreed Arya finding happiness with Gendry was obviously the ending they were setting up for her. All the evidence was there, all the hints, the nods to ‘My Featherbed’, the parallels—it seemed like such an obvious path. There are some wonderful metas that explain this better than me. 

After the episode and based on the evidence we gathered and the white horse-black horse symbolisms and all that jazz, I created the following scenario in my head (that crumbled three days later when I stumbled upon those infamous leaks):

The white horse is meant to represent Arya choosing life, right? Both literally and metaphorically. So she uses it to ride away from the destruction and onto safety, saying ‘not today’ one more time to death.

Arya uses the horse to get to Jon (who alongside Sansa and Bran, her home and Gendry are meant to represent her better half).

Very much like their scene from 8x06 Jon is surprised to see Arya in King’s Landing and he is quite scared to see her all bloody and completely shell shocked (I was dying to see Arya suffering from PTSD after being so close to death and witnessing so much destruction, her being completely okay afterwards seemed very unrealistic if you ask me). She has a complete breakdown, she bawls her eyes out and you see her as vulnerable as you have never seen her before.

Dany goes full-on mad Queen mode. She summons all the lords and ladies of the Seven Kingdoms to bend the knee to her and that’s how Sansa and Gendry make it to King’s Landing instead of that stupid council. 

Jon asks Arya to stay in the camp because she is still traumatized by what happened. However she doesn’t listen to him and she sneaks into the square because she knows neither Jon or Sansa are safe and there’s no way she’ll leave them alone.

I wanted to see Arya saving Gendry’s life, to state how she was done with killing and would move on to saving lives. At the ‘bend the knee’ ceremony we see Daenerys demanding Gendry to swear loyalty to her but he refuses. Dany reminds him she legitimized him and he owes her loyalty (which would have been a nice callback to her being certain Gendry would always be loyal to her). Gendry defies her and tells her he will never bend the knee to the woman who destroyed his hometown and he’d rather die than to be in debt with a murderer. Dany declares him a traitor and sentences him to death, and she does the same with Sansa, Bran and Jon.

Arya is looking at this from a hidden spot which would mirror the scene from 1x08 when she sees Ned’s trial. She remembers what happened with her father, how desperately she tried to save him and how she was forced to look hopelessly as they accused him of treason. She doesn’t want Gendry and her siblings to suffer Ned’s fate so she steps forward and saves them, because the four of them are the only things that matter to her in the world.

The lords and ladies of the Seven Kingdoms and their armies, disgusted by Daenerys’ radical approach to rulling and inspired by Gendry’s defiance and Arya’s bravery, choose to rebel against Daenerys. There’s a huge battle and Bran wargs into Drogon to stop him from burning everyone to death and Daenerys dies.

In the aftermath of the battle Arya reunites with Gendry and he thanks her for saving his life, she tells him she didn’t want to loose him the way she lost her father because he is way too important to her. She tells him she rejected his proposal not because she doesn’t love him, but because she got scared and she didn’t think she would survive her mission of killing Cersei. She tells him she is a different person than the one he used to know and that she has done things he can’t even imagine. Gendry tells her he doesn’t care and he loves her anyway, and that he wants to know everything about her pain. Arya tells him the past few weeks have made her realize she wants to be happy and just give herself into feeling after spending years suppressing her emotions. She chooses life and humanity, and she tells him he is one of the reasons she wants to live. 

Because I didn’t give two fucks about the throne or who ended up rulling the seven kingdoms let’s assume we got the same resolution: Bran is king (or someone else for all I care).

The next part is a bit tricky because I wanted Gendry to give up his lordship to go live the quiet and peaceful life with Arya but at the same time I wanted him to stay a lord. What I didn’t want was Gendry as king because, if Arya rejected his proposal because she didn’t want to be a lady, logic dictates she would hate the idea of being queen even more so she would never accept to be with him. I’m more drawn to the idea of Gendry keeping the Baratheon surname but giving up his title.

In the epilogue I wanted them to show us Arya and Gendry living in the Riverlands. Their relationship was born there so it would make a nice parallel to have them retiring to live in those same lands. They are not married (at least for now) but there are some subtle hints that are meant to tell us they are getting to know each other better. Maybe a scene of them just talking, you know? Or doing something sweet together. Walking in the forest (because of the whole forest love-forest lass thing) or riding a horse or staring at the birds or some corny shit. Bonus points if there’s a hint of Arya being pregnant.

This is the ending I envisioned for them. I don’t think I was asking for too much, just a few changes to the ending we actually got. I hope I didn’t bore you with my bad fanfiction :)

And thank you again for saying I’m your favorite meta writer, eres muy linda.

#gendrya #meta

[jaimetheexplorer]

I brought down by niks latest interview.Saying "J never needed redemp.He was a guy who certain circumstances in his life e.g. Kingslayer so then he needed to redeem himself bc he did this horrible thing when killing the Mad King. Then N said the redemp arc where he had to be good guy, stay with Bri etc that's not GOT.You cant erase ur prev life.Jaime bel that redeem urself meant redeeming his past and he couldnt. He can't cut off who he was.The idea of leaving C alone is impossible to him" Wtf?

2/2 Downhearted anon. Just that interview makes no sense. In prev season interviews, wasnt Nik wanting Jaime to escape Cersei for good and be with Braime forever, like he was the biggest Braime shipper??? I dont understand. Does he think ppl don’t remember stuff? Its a shame theres no way to ask him about this.

Dear Downhearted anon,

I have to admit I read only a short excerpt from that interview, so I might have missed some of the other content, but, from what I read, this is what I can say.

There are different layers to his comments, IMO. One is the take on the story, and the other is the justification of the writing choices. And, as much as I might vehemently disagree with the former, what I take issue with is the latter.

When it comes to the take on the story, we have to remember that he has to talk about the actual content of the show. The show, unfortunately, did go with the idea that Jaime is essentially doomed to never escape his past. I do not believe that is his arc in the books for many reasons, and I think it was extremely underwhelming, nihlistic and unsatisfying even just taking the context of the show into account. But, unfortunately, nihilistic and unsatisfying is what we got. The show was aiming for romanticizing incest and abuse romantic tragedy with JC, in the end (I actually think there was a far more disastrous chain of events at play, which required multiple OOC developments for multiple major characters just to arrive to Jon killing Dany - but that’s a longer story), and it is what it is. He has to talk about the reality of the episodes, not the alternatives.

If you take most of Nik’s comments, and go back to read D&D’s and Cogman’s interviews from the past, you’ll notice that it’s mostly stuff that’s lifted straight from their quotes, even down to the language: “good guy/bad guy”, “he doesn’t have a redemption arc”, “it’s just life, and he has made some mistakes”. I don’t know whether this is because he had a “final season” briefing with them and came around to see things their way and agree, or because he was told this is what he was supposed to say about the story, or because even though he doesn’t agree with it, this is what was written in the end and so this is what he talks about. His reasoning for saying these things is anybody’s guess and kind of beyond the point. But, where before he used to have his own take on the character and his arc, he’s now basically regurgitating the party line.

For my part, I never completely disagreed with the idea that Jaime does not need redemption per se. Jaime doesn’t need atonement for slaying the Mad King, for sure. He needs recognition for that. He needs atonement for a other horrible things he’s done, but even those (e.g., pushing Bran, the incest) are more about moral gray areas areas than villainous behaviour per se, since he’s never committed atrocious acts just for his own selfish gain, or for power, or because he enjoyed hurting and killing. More importantly, I have always seen Jaime’s story as more of an identity arc, where redemption is just one component. In that sense, I can agree with the take that that he is a “complex character who, at times, has made some terrible mistakes”. Jaime is not, and never was, a straightforward villain who needs to atone for his sins. He’s a much more complex and layered mix of sins and honour, and goodness and idealism turned bitterness and cynicism, and a messy product of living most of his life in toxic and abusive environments who, in some situations, has committed some horrible mistakes that he needs to own up to and face the consequences of, and who is trying to redefine and reinvent himself in the aftermath of some life-changing events such as losing his hand, meeting Brienne and growing disillusioned with Cersei. 

The problem is that, while D&D preach about Jaime being a complex character who does not need a ‘cheesy’ linear redemption arc, they also, in the same breath, justify an ending that shoves him precisely into a clear, black-and-white, simplistic category (”he just accepts he is a hateful man”) or display the psychological depth of a 5th grader (go check out their take on the sept scene in their Oxford Union Q&A and their inability to think in any more complex terms than “good guy/bad guy” or to understand that not all “bad” actions are equal). They’re not deep writers, and that shows painfully in their execution. But I can understand the “no need for redemption” arc, from a theoretical/philosophical perspective.

What I take far more issue with is justifying writing choices by attempting to play the realism card, or the adult writing card, or the “this is GoT” card, basically implying that everyone who dislikes or criticize it is being unrealistic, immature or unsophisticated for not accepting the only inevitable outcome to a story (I wrote a twitter thread about it this week). Just because your story has decided to depict things in a certain way, it does not mean that that is the only realistic option for the story, and that people who expected/wanted/hoped for something different were fooling themselves, let alone that it had to be written that way because that is how life works.

Sure, there are people who fail to break away from their (abusive, traumatic, toxic, what have you) past and move on, but there are also plenty of people who do, and who end up thriving. One outcome isn’t any more realistic or true to life than the others. And, while some might think this is a hyperbole, it is highly irresponsible, IMO, to say that being unable to escape toxicity and your past is “the way things are”, when there might be people out there who do struggle with trauma, toxic and abusive relationship (or know people who do).

On top of that, it is rather silly to imply that we were expecting some unrealistic, too-easy scenario, where Jaime flipped a switch and totally erased his past overnight. That implication is misguided, at best, and dishonest, at worst. We put up with four entire seasons of show-only “non-linear” storytelling when it comes to Jaime, and were incredibly patient with it. Wasn’t the point of those four seasons precisely to show that life is complicated and he couldn’t just let go of his past so easily? We watched that. It happened. Nothing about this was easy or unearned.

Had we been shown a Jaime who was 100%, stupidly and completely devoted to Cersei at every turn, cruel, evil, selfish and not caring about the innocents, of course expecting an outcome where he just leaves it all behind for a honourable wench or what have you would have been a ridiculous expectation to have. Indeed, back when Jaime did come across as that kind of character, nobody was expecting anything from him. He could have died with Cersei under those bricks and most wouldn’t have cared.

Instead, for years, we were shown a Jaime that did struggle between his toxic past/Cersei and his honour and, far more often than not, we saw his honour win out. While I can see an argument for saying that didn’t guarantee an outcome where he did break free of his past for good, it’s not like like there was no buildup or seeding for the more positive, less nihilistic alternative. So I don’t find it so far fetched to have expected the events of S7 to be the last straw that finally tipped the scales completely to the other side (especially considering how 8x02 was written very heavily to imply just that or, at the very least, did not seed any doubt).

By Nikolaj’s own admission in TONS of interviews, he had been fighting with D&D for years because he expected things to move in a certain direction and kept getting frustrated when they didn’t, or when they confused him. He wanted the exact same things we wanted for Jaime and in his relationships with Cersei and Brienne since SEASON 2. He might have resigned himself in the end to having lost the battle, but he behaved exactly like us for years. So, assuming he believes what he is saying, if I could talk to him, I’d ask him how is it that he got the same feeling of “expectation” for something that in the end never came? Maybe because the seeding for both options were there all along? Maybe because, if the seeding for both options were there all along, the alternative isn’t so far fetched and inconceivable after all? Maybe because if the alternative isn’t so far fetched and inconceivable after all, then what we got isn’t the only inevitable way this could go down? Food for thought.

Of course, I want to believe that he isn’t that tone-deaf and unsophisticated as an actor (and a writer) not to realize that the only problem with the way Jaime and JB were written in S8 was not the fact that they didn’t get a HEA. Ignoring the writing quality, for a moment, and just focusing on the writing choices, there were literally dozens of ways of writing a story that ended even in a similar tragedy (EVEN with Jaime dying with Cersei), that would have been far better and more satisfying than what we got. The problem isn’t that Jaime didn’t declare his everlasting love for Brienne or that he didn’t stay together with her. The problem is that we patiently waited through all the buildup and seeding mentioned above, for years, for a relationship that ended up being butchered within 30 minutes, destroying literally everything it ever stood for (first and foremost trust and respect - I am not going to list everything, but Jaime trying to sneak out without so much of a goodbye and being completely indifferent to her pain after she vouched for him and saved his life multiple times was not only OOC, but completely unnecessary to the plot, unless it aimed to destroy the foundations of their bond, way beyond the romance).

To conclude, I’ll leave you with GRRM’s own words, when asked about Jaime’s redemption arc that he, unlike the show, has explicitly stated he wishes to explore:

“I want there to be a possibility of redemption for us, because we all do terrible things. We should be able to be forgiven. Because if there’s no possibility of redemption, what’s the answer then?”

The show decided that the answer is that we don’t escape our past. We are doomed from the beginning and any attempt to change and move on is eventually futile (and that ended up being true of nearly every character in the show, not just Jaime). But that doesn’t seem to be at all the stance GRRM has on this whole thing, and I would dare anyone to tell me that GRRM’s vision and his writing are inferior, too easy, or less realistic than what we got from the show.

There’s no guarantee that Jaime will survive in the books, or that he and Brienne will get a HEA (although I do not rule it out at all).  But the fact that the man who invented these characters and this world has a different stance on Jaime and redemption automatically invalidates any nonsense show people can say about how this was the perfect and only way it could end, and that expecting anything different from this series was wishful thinking.

#anon #koops answers

[cctinsleybaxter]

2019 in books

The year’s contenders for the good, the bad, and the rest. I used to make a list of the ten best books I read all year, a tradition encouraged by my mom as far back as high school, but out 2019′s twenty-six mediocre offerings it didn’t really come together. Instead I’ve decided to break my ‘honorable mentions’ category into three subsections that I hope you’ll enjoy. In order of when read, not in order of affection:

Honorable mentions [books I liked; 3+ star material]

The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin was given to me as a Christmas present last year, and I wasn’t sure how much I would like it since I don’t really do high fantasy. Rules need not apply; I loved the world building and narrative structure, and the characters were so much better than I’m used to even when their arcs seemed familiar at first glance. I guessed what was going on with the formatting maybe a little too quickly, but even then it was emotionally engaging and I was eager to keep reading and see what happened next. Haven’t devoured a book that way in years.

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi has been on my list for a while; as a memoir told through short stories it’s hit-or-miss, but so worth it. I especially loved getting to read his early attempts at fiction, and the chapter Phosphorus regarding his first real job as a chemist in 1942 (his description of his absolute disgust at having to work with rabbits, the feel of their fur and the “natural handle” of the ears is a personal favorite.) This excerpt is one I just think about a lot because it’s full of small sweet details and so kindly written:

“[my father] known to all the pork butchers because he checked with his logarithmic ruler the multiplication for the prosciutto purchase. Not that he purchased this last item with a carefree heart; superstitious rather than religious, he felt ill at ease breaking the kasherut rules, but he liked prosciutto so much that, faced by the temptation of a shop window, he yielded every time, sighing, cursing under his breath, and watching me out of the corner of his eye, as if he feared my judgement or hoped for my complicity.”

Slowing Down from Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin is a one-page short story, but I’m including it because it’s the best in the book and one of the better stories I’ve read in general. I won’t spoil it for you since it’s more poem than anything else (and you can read the whole thing here.)

A Short Film About Disappointment by Joshua Mattson deserves to be lower in the order because it’s like. Bad. But I couldn’t help but have a self-indulgent kind of love for it, since it’s a book about white boy ennui told through movie reviews. It definitely gets old by the end (one of those things where you can tell the author lost steam just as much as his leading man), but parts of it are so well-written and the concept clever. 80+ imaginary movie reviews and psychosomatic possession by your traitorous best friend. 

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway has one of the greatest twists I’ve ever read in a novel, and no that’s not a spoiler, and yes I will recommend it entirely on that basis. It does its job as a multi-year sci-fi epic; reminds me a lot of Walter Moer’s early stuff in that it’s a bit Much(tm) but still a good mixture of politics and absurdity and absolute characters. Tobemory Trent was my favorite of the ensemble cast (but also boy do I wish men would learn how to write women.)

My Only Wife by Jac Jemk is a novella with only two characters, both unnamed, a man describing fragmented memories of his wife. It has me interested in Jemck’s other writing because even though I didn’t love it she writes beautifully; reading her work is like watching someone paint. The whole thing has a very indie movie feel to it (no scene of someone peeing but there SHOULD be), which I don’t think I’ve experienced in a story like this before and would like to try again. 

Mentions [books I really wanted to like but my GOD did something go wrong]

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou is the most comprehensive history we have of Elizabeth Holmes and her con-company Theranos. It’s incredibly well-researched and absolutely fascinating, but veers into unnecessary pro-military stuff in one chapter (’can you believe she tricked the government?’ yes i can, good for her, leave me alone) and carries an air of racism directed at Holmes’ partner and the Pakistani people he brings onto the company. Carreyrou works for WSJ so I don’t know what I expected.

Circe by Madeline Miller was��fun to read and goes down like a glass of iced tea on a hot day, but leaves a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste. It says a lot of things that seem very resonant and beautiful but ultimately ring hollow, and the ending is too safe. Predictable and inevitable. 

I was also bothered about Circe’s relationships with Odysseus and Telemachus as a focal point, not because they’re father and son (Greek mythology ethics : non-committal hand gesture) but because it’s the traditional “I used to like bold men but now I like... sensitive men.” Which as a character arc feels not unrealistic but very boring. You close the book and realize you’re not nine and reading your beat-up copy of Greek Myths, you’re an adult reading a New York Times Bestseller by a middle aged straight white woman.

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor could have been the best thing I read all year and I’m miserable at how bad it ended up being. The concept is excellent; a thirteen-year-old girl goes missing in a rural English village, and every chapter chronicles a passing year. I knew it would be slow, I like slow, but nothing happens in this book and it ends up it feeling like Broadchurch without the detectives. Plus, McGregor, you know sometimes you can take a moral stance in your story and not just make everything a grey area? Especially with subplots that deal with things like pedophilia and institutional racism?

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor is about a twenty-something who moves from Iowa to San Francisco in the 90s and explores gender and sexuality through shapeshifting. It was something I really thought I would like and maybe even find helpful in my own life, but I couldn’t stand a single one of the characters or the narration so that’s on me! It does contain one of my favorite lines I’ve read in a long time though:

“And anyway, weren’t French boys supposed to be like Giovanni, waiting gaily for you in their rented room and actually Italian?”

Dishonorable mentions [there’s no saving these fellows]

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson was supposed to be a fun easy-to-read thriller and what can I say except what the jklfkhlkj;fkfuck. It very quickly goes from ‘oh hey I read books like this when I was 15’ to ‘oh the girl who intentionally gets kidnapped by a wealthy serial killer is accidentally falling in love with his son and can’t stop talking about his eye color now huh.’ I felt like I was losing my mind; why did grown adults give this 5 stars on Goodreads.

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips is supposedly surrealist horror fiction about working an office job in a new town, and reminded me of that rocky third or fourth year when I really started hating Welcome to Night Vale. All spark no substance, and even less fun because you know it’s going nowhere. I’ve also realized this past year that I cannot stand stories about women where their only personality trait is the desire to have children. People will throw the word ‘Kafkaesque’ at anything but here it was just insulting. 

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai alternates point of view between Yale, a gay man living in Chicago in the late 80s and watching his friends die, and Fiona, the straight younger sister of one of those friends now looking for her erstwhile daughter in 2018. It was nominated for the 2018 Pulitzer, and part of my interest was in wondering how we were going to connect the plot lines of ‘the personal cost of the AIDS crisis’ with ‘daughter lost to a cult.’

The answer is that we don’t. The book is well-researched and acclaimed beyond belief, but it is SUCH a straight story. Yale’s arc is fueled by the drama of his boyfriend cheating on him and infecting them both, Fiona is painted as a witness to tragedy and encouraged to share their stories with her own daughter. “You’re like the Mother Theresa of Boys Town” one of the men complains bitterly of her, and the claim goes undisputed. It’s a story that makes a lot of statements about love and families and art that I feel we’ve all heard before to much greater effect.

#long post #stardate 2k19 #apologies for any typoes or bad wording i've been trying to write and edit this for like the past week and a half

[undeadmanbun]

Hi @nanyallen13 ! Thanks so much for the asks and blog compliments and sorry for the delay in replying. To make it easier to reply in one post I’ve screenshot the asks and anyone reading will need to go from bottom to top (they’re numbered).

I’m so glad you got in touch, it’s really great to get other opinions and takes because the nature of our ship and theories (and people’s knee-jerk reactions to them) means we’re often in our own corner of fandom, so non-jonsa opinions and input is great to hear. I hope all the jonsa meta people see this, they’ll be please to hear you enjoy their posts. And your English is amazing btw!

We never, ever ask that anyone ships it, all we really are out here doing is saying to folks “look, look at this foreshadowing, look at this evidence! we’re not crazy like you say we are!” and mostly we get crickets or yelled at, so it’s really nice to hear from a "neutral” that you think it could happen. Ok, this might be a bit messy because I’m out of practice, but to answer your questions...

What did I think of Dany before season 7?

I agree with what you said, but I began to take issue with her a little ahead of season 7, maybe season 5. I was still thrilled when she left for Westeros in season 6 because this is what we’d been waiting for all this time, but season 7 really sealed the deal for her arc taking a darker trajectory. I didn’t have especially strong opinions on Dany after season 1, I actually found her non-Westerosi arc kind of uninteresting for a long while and cheered on her “badass” moments, but, in hindsight, I think that’s because on first/second/third viewing I hadn’t realised where this was going.

I think I started to question some of her actions in season 5, when she burns the guy using the dragons, when her dragons are out of control and burn the child, when the teacher tells her it’s not a black and white situation (I’m writing this quickly, haven’t gone back to check names etc) but didn’t think too much about it until she was on the doorstep of characters I care for. That’s when it really hit home. Suddenly she was a threat to the characters I love. I wasn’t convinced of her being a full blown antagonist for a long while, but I’m more and more convinced she is as time goes on. A recent rewatch solidified this for me because when you go back in looking for it it’s kind of obvious (season one is FULL of foreshadowing, it’s amazing).

And you’re right. Perfect hero Dany is absolutely not an interesting character, she’s bland, unrealistic. But beautiful, dangerous, complex, flawed villain origin story Dany? Well, she’s a different matter. Dangerous and unpredictable “dark!dany” is a far more interesting character, and one that will go down in the history of female characters. We’re getting to see how a Cersei comes to be, and that’s fascinating stuff.

The stans have sadly created some power fantasy projection of the character wherein they want her to not only get everything in the story, but to be everything all at once to them, and she simply cannot do/be that, she’ll be human, she’ll be flawed, she’ll fail, she’ll die (and I agree, definitely not in childbirth, which is a dreadful ending for her, she deserves much better).

What did I think of J*nerys before Jonsa/Season 7? 

Hmmm, let’s just say nothing good lol. I started to take issue with Dany around season 5 and I also had finished reading the books around the same time so I expected the ship to sail in some form. It was the obvious ship, too obvious in my opinion. It seemed like the dreadful, predictable male hero + female hero ship that I expected from a lesser series. So I expected it, but my hope was that the likely Chekhov’s gun of all these sycophantic men surrounding her that want to serve and love her (which is terrible, tedious storytelling unless there’s a twist) would go off, and that it would be a Jon-shaped pistol hanging on the wall.

When season 6 happened I was blindsided. I never, ever expected to be here now loudly shipping Jon with his “sister” Sansa (bear in mind I shipped nothing in this show really, but was aware of Brienne and Jaime being a slow burn, it’s hard to miss). I obviously had a clue they could reunite because season 5 had Sansa escaping Ramsay and she knows where Jon is. But when they reunited I assumed it would be platonic and it just didn’t have the sister brother platonic vibe it should have had. Suddenly Jonsa was doing all these tropes and by episode 10 of season 6 I’d jumped on board as a fully fledged jonsa shipper, and then down the theory/book/show evidence rabbit hole I went for another 2.5 years (jesus fjfdjfhkdjf). So by the time season 7 came around I was convinced of another endgame that wasn’t J*nerys.

On the topic of season 7, I totally agree with you regarding Political Jon, and my hope is obviously that it’s true, but if it isn’t, well, I will be very frustrated with Jon (because I love that dumbass). Fortunately there’s a lot pointing towards it so I’m hopeful. If he’s legitimately in love then it’s just a truly awful love story and an insult to “the north remembers” narrative (and to Jon’s character). 

As you said, it seems like it is very intentional on the part of the show runners that all of these things are happening at once. They’re not mutually exclusive theories, but they are incredibly complimentary. You have to believe that a lot of people are crazy to be able to rule this “theory dissent” out, and I just don’t believe we are as “delusional” as we’re accused of being.

So, in summary, I never expected a) dark!dany or b) jonsa, but much analysis later I’m convinced of both, there’s just too much evidence for these theories for me not to expect them in some form. Maybe me and everyone else here will look like clowns in a few weeks, but I’m quietly optimistic. And absolutely nothing in the promo season has convinced me otherwise, only 22 days to go!

#dark!dany #jonsa #anti-daenerys #just in case #it's not really anti

[thegorydamnreaper]

Long Post! the rest of the ask & my answer below the cut!

Hi! I have a few more words to say than the alloted 500 characters of an ask, hope you don’t mind.

I wanted to disscuss with you if you have time, the fact that Pierce Brown managed to get full control of writing for the RR tv show. I know it’s too early to say something, but in the light of recent events (awful finales and so), I became more aware of how amazing it is. I really think our high hopes will be paid off handsomely.

I don’t know about you, but…when I look back at what my favorite RR characters have done in the series, I think that I am so bloodydamn grateful that Pierce Brown is the writer for the tv show.

Simply because, if we look at what the writers have done to Daenerys Targaryen, we can conclude that purity police would have wank material for decades to come.

I mean, all of the Gold characters (and Darrow) killed an innocent in the Passage. In Iron Gold Darrow burnt a slaver (who was also a genocidal maniac and according to Apollonius, not that repetant about it either). In Morning Star Virginia comdemned and killed her own twin brother (another genocidal maniac). Sevro keeps in mind the number of people he killed with his razor alone inventarized by Color. Victra forsakes everything when it comes to saving her kids, even morals or the benefit of the doubt. The Telemanuses are not on friendly terms with demokracy and they let vengence cloud their judgement. Cassius facilitated the death of a comrade and of his liege (although, they deserved it) and killed Fitchner and put his head in a box.

By that logic, we should have all these people go mad at the sound of bells and start attacking people at random. All that in order to justify their deaths (preferably by a ‘pure-hearted’ loved one). Awful right!

Thing is, Pierce Brown has established over and over again that 1. Revolution is necessary by any means (and Golds aren’t the type to just accept that, it’s not in their culture or DNA) and 2. You have to destroy (old ways) so you can rebuild (a new world).

What he also made very clear was that everyone has their sins, every character can be the villain is someone else’s story and…basically nobody is perfect. Nothing is black and white. Human souls are made out of shades of grey.

This stupid idea that revolutions always need to be peaceful, otherwise they are evil, is just that. Stupid! If the status quo is inherently wrong from its roots (even for the class it benefices), it should be radically changed. And if force is necessary (and it is, the author established that and reinforced it over and over again every change he got and in a way that it felt natural), then it should be used. Even Cassius, who protected the status quo despite the fact that it took his away his twin (indirectly), realised that it should be changed.

Demokracy is radical change for the status quo. But you cannot make it without the proper tools - power to destroy the symbols of the old world. Virginia installed demokracy because she (with the Rising and all the allies) conquered Luna first. And they all did it using force and manipulation. Otherwise it couldn’t have been done.

And she tried! Tried to change the status quo without demokracy. Tried to make conpromises. First, she tried to back up rights for lowColors and interColor couples. She joined the Reformist current. We all know how frowned upon they are in Gold Society. And how that never really worked in the midst of Civil War (although she is presented with a chance - Nero called the Reformists to ally with him, but he planned to kill them after he was done using them).

Then she compromised when she thought Darrow dead for months, Sevro wasn’t answering her, she lost the battle at Deimos against Roque and the only thing standing between Adrius and her son was some asteroids and the secrecy of his birth. She negociated with Octavia and asked to be ArchGovernor of Mars so her son could get the chance to live. I mean…the Rim forces were in theters and it was only so long until Octavia gained the Rim back. And she led the rebels. Of course, she would have gotten a death sentence or prison and her son would have been taken hostage or worse. Thing is, she was desperate. Otherwise she wouldn’t have done it.

Point is, in terms of revolutionary themes, morally grey characters, grey morality in general, the RR series cannot be adapted as anything else, but what it actually is if it has any hopes of being well-done. And the fact that the author who created this series in the first place will write full-time for the tv series is a blessing. Simply because, we know that we won’t wake up with ‘burning slavers was bad all along and is a sign of madness’.

I know it is a low bar to set, but given that a show of such magnitude did that, I kinda have to.

Of course, the books aren’t perfect, but the show can capitalise on that and improve things.

Thing is, I don’t want some purist approach to this series in any way, shape or form. It causes bias and messes up the entire story. And even the smallest chance that we’ll get the adaptation we deserve really makes me happy.

What so you think, though? About PB’s approach to revolution and grey morality? Would he be able to pull it off in the show as well? (I do think he can if he isn’t inpedimented).

Also, do you also have high hopes for the RR show?

Sorry for the long rant, I just need to get it off my chest ( I don’t take well to my faves being disposed off for the sake of some centrist garbage).

–

Hi darling!!! I love all of this! I’ll do my best to answer and expand on your thoughts, but it might get a bit ramble-y at times. Also idk why but the format is all screwed up BUT! here we go:

Firstly, and this is something I’ve said before and will keep on saying: THE CREATOR OF A STORY WILL ALWAYS KNOW MORE ABOUT IT THAN MOVIE/TV STUDIOS. They are the ones that created a world that became successful in the first place. Why anyone would want to deviate from something that has already been proven itself to an audience is beyond me. So good for PB, because at the very least we can trust that the end product will be truer to the books than any other failed shows/movie we’ve seen in the past.

Now some thoughts on books involving revolutions and revolutionaries:

1. They are inherently bloody, brutal, and violent. It’s the victors (the revolutionaries OR the old regime, depending on the story) that get to write the story of what happened, and they often gloss over their own crimes to portray themselves as heroes. Truth is hard to find, because it’s all perspective. THAT BEING SAID, revolutions are not inherently bad. In RR, even the Golds are harmed by the Society, though they’re supposedly at the top. Remember Julian? Or any of the other Golds that died at the Institute? Or how the Institute was rigged in favor of the Jackal, even if he didn’t deserve to win? The ONLY reason that happened is because the Society was inherently toxic. Sacrifices will have to be made in order to bring about a new, better, world - otherwise it’s just not a realistic story. 

2. How does Red Rising differ from GOT on this? (Brace yourselves for a lot of salt here!) With GOT, Daenerys Targaryen, arguably the greatest revolutionary thinker for the duration of ASOIAF, experienced a fatal case of bad writing at the very end. But, looking back to what the real character wanted, it’s clear that she never punished those who were undeserving, even if it was brutal at times. Those that betrayed her were afraid of the change she would bring, because it meant they would those their power. In my opinion, Dany never would have set KL on fire on purpose - that’s a lot more Cersei. When faced with enemies, Cersei is brutal and utterly callous when planning their destruction. I think it’s far more in character for her to have set KL on fire by blowing the wildfire caches, than it is for Dany to hear bells and go “mad.” I can talk more about this, but let’s look to RR characters now.

All of your points on Darrow/Mustang/Sevro/Victra/Cassius are all spot-on. None of them are blameless. But I want to point out what might possibly be one of Darrow’s greatest “crimes” and a great analogue to the burning of KL- the burning of the Docks of Ganymede.

The death count was mind-boggling, the people innocent - and still, Darrow made the choice to burn them. Yes, Victra gave the order, but it wasn’t her call to make. He annihilated them, because he wanted to prevent further destruction. It was a calculated move, but that doesn’t make him “mad,” nor does it mean he view the people who died as lesser creatures (as Cersei or a different Gold might have). It was a measured choice that put his character in conflict and THAT is what made that scene good writing. He had to make a decision that went against his core beliefs, because it allowed the Rising to rid themselves of a future threat.

3. Okay, now about fandoms. People who read books like GOT and Red Rising are looking into a world that is similar to our own, but far enough away from us to feel safer (by that I mean the choices of Sevro or Jon Snow have zero impact on our real world politics). But because of that similarity, they can critique the world we actually live in. And I think that’s why so many people are upset with Thrones - the ending showed that no matter how much we dream of a different, better world, ultimately things never change. Whereas with RR, Darrow wins! They have a Republic, they have the start of a new world! Iron Gold and the ensuing books show the reality of fighting to maintain that dream - because again, it wouldn’t be realistic to just magically have a perfect world - but I think that it’s a good balance between hope and realism to make it worth reading.

So those are my thoughts! Moral purity is unrealistic and can stay the hell away from my beloved books and cheers to PB for (hopefully) maintaining creative control. I think if the show is on the right network, with the right creative team it could be done really well, and stay true to the heart of the series. 

My hopes are high, though only time will tell if I regret that statement 😅

#red rising #iron gold #pierce brown #darrow au andromedus #sevro au barca #darrow of lykos #howlers #sons of ares #mypost #submission #ask #astrea #darrowsrising ‘s ask

[turtle-paced]

Revisiting Chapters: Brienne VII, AFFC

This is also on my wordpress.

You have to admit, that one line does kind of overshadow the entire rest of the chapter. There’s reason for it, but still.

The story so far…

With Pod, Septon Meribald, and Hyle Hunt, Brienne continues in search of Sansa, a little more weary every day.

The Hanging Forest

This grim chapter begins in a grim place.

On a lightning-struck tree hangs a rotting corpse savaged by crows from above and wolves from below. There’s a chunk of salt stuffed in his mouth. A bit further onwards there’s another corpse, this one torn from its tree by the wolves, but still wearing a halfhelm that once had a lion on it. The lion’s lost its head.

So the readers, at least, can see that Lady Stoneheart’s got an appreciation for symbolism. It seems Nymeria does too.

Hanging is how Westerosi deal with common criminals. With a poor hangman, it can go very wrong and result in an extended, painful death. The lightning-struck tree is a bit of a red herring for Beric. The salt speaks for itself, shoving the idea of guest right back down Frey and Lannister throats. Then wolves have got to the corpses and mangled what they could get, so there’s Nymeria carrying out her part of this vengeance. Finally, there’s the beheaded Lannister sigil – and indeed, the lions have lost their head.

As Brienne and her party continue through the woods, they pass a lot of hanging corpses. Hardly a hundred yards go by without one, Brienne tells us. All hung, all with salt in their mouths. Where the corpses have cloaks, those cloaks are either grey, blue, or red – knights of House Frey or House Lannister. The common men don’t have cloaks, they have badges on their shirts, and they’re far more varied.

Brienne spied axes, arrows, several salmon, a pine tree, an oak leaf, beetles, bantams, a boar’s head, half a dozen tridents. Broken men, she realised, dregs from a dozen armies, the leavings of the lords.

She further reflects that:

Some of the dead men had been bald and some bearded, some young and some old, some short, some tall, some fat, some thin. Swollen in death, with faces gnawed and rotten, they all looked the same.

This is an outsider’s perspective of Lady Stoneheart’s works. We see the vengeance she exacts from the perspective of someone who hasn’t lived through the specific injustice, and who therefore sees the indiscriminate nature of this revenge before any reason. Whatever these men may have done as individuals, we’re treated to mass anonymous death first. We never learn the individual crimes of the dead men, no means to separate individual guilt out in a collective crime, we’re given the only ‘solution’ Westeros has in this time of social breakdown – the indiscriminate application of viligante capital justice. Brienne explicitly links these deaths to the broader problem: these men are “the leavings of the lords.” She’s more concerned about who might have hanged them than she is about what they did in life, and it’s her PoV GRRM adopts to show us what’s going on.

But we do have a range of perspectives here. The dead men are, for the most part, the men who raided Saltpans. Hyle thinks they’re improved by death. Meribald, who ministered to the area and was friends with Saltpans’ septon, hopes the Father judges them harshly. That reaction, too, is an important part of GRRM’s depiction of religious figures. Meribald is not universally forgiving, not some unrealistic saintly figure. He gets angry too.

The one thing they can all agree on is that staying in the forest overnight would be unbearably creepy. Unfortunately for them, as they move out of the natural woods, they move into muddy fields where the bodies of Stoneheart’s victims are hanged from gibbets instead. Try as Brienne might, she finds the sight of the dead men sad rather than triumphant.

Orphan Inn

Then we get an in-universe change of topic, to the place where the party is hoping to stay for the night. It’s a substantial infodump from Meribald, tracing the inn’s history from the reign of Jaehaerys I (who used to stay there with Alysanne when they travelled past). The interesting symbolic/foreshadowing bit is the tale of of Long Jon Heddle, who forged a three-headed black iron dragon to hang from a post for the inn’s sign.

“When the smith’s son was an old man, a bastard son of the fourth Aegon rose up in rebellion against his trueborn brother and took for his sigil a black dragon. These lands belonged to Lord Darry, then, and his lordship was fiercely loyal to the king. The sight of the black iron dragon made him wroth, so he cut down the post, hacked the sign into pieces, and cast them into the river. One of the dragon’s heads washed up at the Quiet Isle many years later, though by that time it was red with rust.”

A black dragon turned red, washing up on Westeros’ shores. Cough, reference to Aegon, cough.

Meribald continues, reminding us of a different piece of Westeros’ past – book one. He knew Masha Heddle, the proprietor of the inn at the start of the series, and thought highly of her. He describes her as a kind woman who did her best to accommodate him and never sent him away without some food. Meribald reminds us that the Lannisters hanged her. Readers know that Masha Heddle was killed for the terrible crime of owning an establishment where a Lannister was embarrassed. Meribald adds that when Masha’s nephew took over, he was killed too.

“It is being common-born that is dangerous, when great lords play their game of thrones,” said Septon Meribald.

As we’ve already seen this chapter. The entire concept of the broken men asks the readers to think about the “but for,” and think about it with compassion. But for their lords playing the game of thrones, would the common soldiers ever have found themselves coming to this end?

The inn itself is described in some detail, because it’s beem a while since it was important. I for one hadn’t realised how much my memory of Game of Thrones had coloured my impression of the place – the small, dark room in the TV show is quite different in the books. (Don’t blame them, it was an S1 setting and therefore subject to actual budget limitations.)

By any name the inn was large, rising three stories above the muddy road, its walls and turrets made of fine white stone that glimmered pale and ghostly against the grey sky. Its south wing had been built on heavy wooden pilings above a cracked and sunken expanse of weeds and dead broen grass. [As Meribald explained, the river used to run under the south wing before changing course approximately seventy or eighty years pre-series.] A thatch-roofed stable and a bell tower were attached to the north side. The whole sprawl was surrounded by a low wall of broken white stones overgrown by moss.

It’s a big, reasonably fancy place capable of housing a lot of people, in other words. More hopefully, there’s the sound of someone doing some smithing. As Brienne and company ride through the muddy yard (remember that for later), they’re greeted (kind of) by a group of small children, the oldest of whom is about ten. When Hyle Hunt asks them to get their mother, they tell him that they have no mothers – except for the one girl who says that she used to have a mother but ‘they’ killed her. This inn is now run by war orphans.

The eldest of the girls on the porch, Willow, takes charge of the inn’s business for the moment (in the absence of her sister Jeyne, who she says is the innkeep). She charges Brienne and company silver for their stay, though they’ve got no food to serve but horsemeat. Willow can charge this much because she knows the other alternative for accommodation is staying in the forest with all the corpses.

“Do you question all your guests this way?” asked Ser Hyle.

“We don’t have so many guests. Not like before the war. It’s mostly sparrows on the roads these days, or worse.”

“Worse?” Brienne asked.

“Thieves,” said a boy’s voice from the stables. “Robbers.”

Again we see the breakdown of Westerosi society, which in this chapter will come together in one setpiece, the orphans under attack by raiders and one woman’s choice and courage determining whether these already-victimised innocents live or die. The service economy isn’t working. Ten-year-old Willow is acting as the proprietor of the inn and helping to care for other children. The people who pass by are more likely to be thieves than people about their own business.

Then, however, we get a surprising development. The boy who just spoke turns out to look a lotlike Renly Baratheon, to Brienne’s shock. She runs through the differences very quickly – this boy’s jaw is squarer, his build is stockier, his hair is wilder, and he looks a lot angrier and more suspicious than Renly ever did. That last point is a rather important one. Meribald spots Gendry’s suspicion too.

Gendry’s presence itself raises some questions. He was last seen in Arya VIII, ASoS, with the Brotherhood. What’s he doing here at the Inn at the Crossroads? Aside from keeping an eye on the kids here. Brienne asks how the children got here, whether they’re any family of Willow’s.

“No.” Willow was staring at her, in a way that she knew well. “They’re just…I don’t know…the sparrows bring them here, sometimes. Others find their own way.”

More leavings of the lords.

Gendry and Willow have a brief dispute about whether to allow Brienne and company to stay. Willow, arguing for them to stay, wins because Brienne’s party has food and the children are hungry. At Willow’s signal, a whole lot more kids come out of the woodwork, some of them holding crossbows ready to fire. It’s apparent that this is not the first time something like this has happened. The kids knew where to hide, they knew to have ranged weapons ready, and they knew the all clear signal. You wonder if they’ve had to fight before.

When Brienne goes down for dinner, she sees that the common room is absolutely packed with children. The older boys are in the realms of ten or twelve. Willow’s indisputably in charge, to the point where Brienne wonders if she’s highborn Arya.

Hyle, meanwhile, spots blood soaked into the floor. Brienne knows of three deaths in this inn, but as Hyle points out there’s no telling just how many people have died here. He’s also concerned at the sheer number of children here, because in those numbers they could be dangerous.

The kids, however, are most concerned with food.

The children fell upon the supper like wolves upon a wounded deer…

You wonder how long they’ve been living on horsemeat, too. This does, however, raise the question – who’s looking out for these kids? There are so many of them they can’t stay hidden. The inn is not an inconspicuous little building. They need food and they need defending. The answer is partially in Gendry’s presence – he was with the Brotherhood. Some of them, at least, are still looking out for the orphans of the War of Five Kings. As Gendry tells Brienne, he’s expecting friends. The association between the inn and the Brotherhood will become clearer next chapter.

No Chance and No Choice

By this point of the book, it’s abundantly clear that Brienne is very tired. The death and destruction she’s seen is wearing on her, and she’s had no success. But she’s not giving up. At this point, Septon Meribald’s path is heading in a different direction, and she intends to ditch Hyle Hunt.

Brienne had not forgiven him for Highgarden…and as he himself had said, Hunt had sworn no vows regarding Sansa.

She does not trust him to do right by her, and she does not trust him to do right by Sansa (should Brienne find her). Brienne also has a choice to make, about where to look next. This is the crossroads – she could go east to the Vale of Arryn, west to Riverrun, or north to Winterfell.

But there’s another option, which Brienne thinks of briefly.

Or I could take the kingsroad south, Brienne thought. I could slink back to King’s Landing, confess my failure to Ser Jaime, give him back his sword, and find a ship to carry me back home to Tarth, as the Elder Brother urged. The thought was a bitter one, yet there was a part of her that yearned for Evenfall and her father, and another part that wondered if Jaime would comfort her should she weep upon his shoulder. That was what men wanted, wasn’t it? Soft helpless women that they needed to protect?

It’s a choice. It’s tempting on the one level, but we can see Brienne’s pride and determination here in how bitter this option is on the other level. Love of her home, love of her father, and the prospect of Jaime can’t make the failure any sweeter.

At dinner, Brienne is presented with another option again.

“Can it be? Somewhere inside our swordswench is a mother just squirming to give birth. What you really want is a sweet pink babe to suckle at your teat.” Ser Hyle grinned. “You need a man for that, I hear. A husband, preferably. Why not me?”

Oh, well, when he puts it like that.

“I’ve known men to wed lackwits and suckling babes for prizes a tenth the size of Tarth. I am not Renly Baratheon, I confess it, but I have the virtue of still being amongst the living. Some would say that was my only virtue. Marriage would serve the both of us. Lands for me, a castle full of these for you.” He waved his hand at the children.

Man, he really knows how to sell it! Hyle, my dude, Brienne has been subject to sexist rants by far more attractive men, so you need to change it up if you want to compete. Unlike the thought of Tarth, her father, and Jaime, this offer not tempting in the least to Brienne. She reminds him implicitly of what happened at Highgarden when she found out about the wager, and tells him that if he tries anything sexual with her she’ll rip off his dick.

Later, Brienne goes outside to give Gendry some food and ask him a few questions.

“How old are you?” Brienne asked. “Is your mother still alive? And your father, who was he?”

[…]

“You have black hair and blue eyes, and you were born in the shadow of the Red Keep. Has no one ever remarked upon your face?”

Unbeknownst to Brienne, several people have remarked on Gendry’s face. Two Hands of the King, both of whom died within months of asking that question. Looking at Gendry, Brienne comes to a realisation:

They are not his sons. Stannis told it true, that day he met with Renly. Joffrey and Tommen were never Robert’s sons.

I’m thinking that this may turn out to be a quietly significant moment. Brienne has sworn revenge on Stannis for his murder of Renly, but she’s not so blinded by this that she can’t see where he was right and honest.

Before Brienne can actually tell Gendry that he’s a king’s bastard, she’s interrupted by new arrivals in the yard. Brienne looks out through the falling rain and tries to count them, listening to the sounds of swords and mail as they dismount. Then she recognises one of the riders as Biter of the Bloody Mummers. She calls Gendry over, realising that there’s going to be trouble, and they both see a man wearing the Hound’s helm (Rorge). Willow comes out with a crossbow, but the helmed man makes a graphic sexual threat to her.

What follows is one of the best and bravest moments in all of ASoIaF.

Seven, Brienne thought, despairing. She had no chance against seven, she knew. No chance, and no choice.

She stepped out into the rain, Oathkeeper in hand.

Let’s be clear. Brienne does have a choice, just like she has the choice to abandon her quest, to marry Hyle, to do something other than keep following her knightly quest. Nobody had seen Brienne. She could have tried to hide. She didn’t have to defend Willow and the other children of the inn. But Brienne believes in knighthood and in doing the right thing, to the point where she does not regard this as a choice at all. She has a sword and she must use it in defence of those less able to defend themselves. The only reason she must do this is because of her own beliefs and character, nothing external.

The rest of the chapter is fight scene, in which we see Brienne doing her best and using strategies that work well for her. She starts with trash talk – even more enraging from a woman – and then fights defensively on the muddy ground. As she recalls later in the fight, this is a tactic deliberately taught to her:

Old Ser Goodwin was long in his grave, yet she could hear him whispering in her ear. Men will always underestimate you, he said, and their pride will make them want to vanquish you quickly, lest it be said that a woman tried them sorely. Let them spend their strength in furious attacks, while you conserve your own. Wait and watch, girl, wait and watch.

Caught by surprise, Brienne has no shield to help her block and tire out her opponent that way. The quality of her sword is a significant advantage, since she can cut through Rorge’s mail. She waits for him to get tired, waits for him to lose his footing, and only then does she strike, with one last bit of trash talk.

“Sapphires,” she whispered at him, as she gave her blade a hard twist that made him shudder.

Unfortunately, that’s when Biter intervenes, and unfortunately there’s not much Brienne can do. In the mud, taken by surprise, Biter’s weight and bulk is a decisive advantage. Brienne goes down and she can’t get back up. He bashes her head into the ground, keeping her disoriented, breaks something in her face (not clear whether it’s nose or cheekbone) and her arm as well. Then he starts biting her and eating her. It’s gross and I don’t care to go into any more detail. Suffice it to say that the other people capable of fighting at the inn step in, and not a moment too soon. The chapter ends with Biter’s death at Gendry’s hands.

Chapter Function

All the themes in Brienne’s chapters really start to draw together here. The sheer number of hanged men provide crucial context for Brienne’s confrontation with Stoneheart’s Brotherhood Without Banners next chapter, showing us how the war has dragged a noble cause into viciousness and mass slaughter. There’s a breakdown here, which will become far more apparent next chapter and form the actual climax of Brienne’s AFFC story.

On the flip side of the coin, Brienne confronts another breakdown in the raiders of Saltpans, still free after some serious atrocities. The people who are supposed to be doing something about them aren’t doing anything about them. Here she puts her body on the line for the convictions she’s expressed elsewhere in her chapters: even when the knight’s noble cause is doomed, it’s their duty to make the attempt. Unlike the sworn knights she’s been passing by, Brienne takes the raiders on, and she wins. At a cost, but she wins, and she saves the children at the inn. It’s a key thematic moment. If not for Brienne’s intervention, things would have ended very differently.

The action is a key step in bringing Brienne, Pod, and Hyle to the Brotherhood in a position of physical weakness but, in Brienne’s case, undeniable moral strength.

We’re also reintroduced to Gendry after a lengthy absence. Who knows if he’ll ever learn who his biological father was.

Miscellany

Setting features heavily in this chapter, with descriptions of the woods and the inn, but the description of Saltpans stands out to me – it’s summed up as “the corpse of the town.” The town itself was murdered. Everything’s grey, the seagulls are crying, and the only living part of the town (the keep) is shut up tight.

Gendry’s converted to R’hllor. Nice example of a sympathetic character changing religions because of their personal spiritual needs; compare Sam Tarly deciding to swear his Watch vows by the old gods rather than the Seven.

Clothing Porn

Nothing of note – Gendry wears a blacksmith’s apron (surprise), Rorge has got the Hound’s helm on, and most of the raiders wear dark cloaks.

Food Porn

Fried cod, barley bread, porridge, cheese, carrots, and apples. Nothing fancy, but the children treat it like a veritable feast.

Next Three Chapters

Catelyn VII, ACoK – Catelyn III, AGoT – Jon VIII, ACoK

#ASoIaF #revisiting chapters #cw: violence #brienne of tarth #gendry waters #podrick payne #a feast for crows