#i. ⌜ meta. ⌟ ― no glory in repeating what others have done.

[honkster]

Why the Dream SMP’s way of storytelling is IMPOSSIBLE to recreate in any other medium.

This has been in the back of my mind for the longest time. I think I finally got it.

People have talked about this before, and they’ve put forward some good points, and good for them – most of them are correct. It’s the way the ccs interact with each other, it’s how plot is mixed in with banter, that’s all good! I wanna put more out there.

So you know how you open a book to read, you start a new show, you sit down to watch a movie – that’s all produced by some sort of company, someone who made it specifically for you to enjoy. You expect a certain dramatic flair to it, certain cinematic choices, certain ways of writing, certain camera angles, certain reactions to things. That’s just ingrained expectations of things now.

The DSMP? Doesn’t have that.

The low expectations work very much in its favor. It’s a Minecraft role-playing server with a bunch of famous youtubers/streamers, who are all good friends and have great dynamics with each other. So when you expect “just another Minecraft video” but in stream form, or you watch the videos because there are certain people in them, you don’t expect to be dropped into extreme lore and sensitive topics, realistic situations proposed in game form, a combination of serious stuff and just fun times with friends goofing around – and you’re pleasantly surprised.

We, the fandom, are used to it a bit more now. How excellently they manage to make a serious story in such a “ridiculous” medium, how much it affects us all and gets our creative juices flowing. But even the ccs can’t predict some of the things that happen. And that’s fun.

The whole election ending the way it has? That was on us. And it made some of the most angsty content there has been in the DSMP. People still theorize about the arc and make connections to now – that’s pog!

Fundy being adopted by Eret – that sparked the whole “Fundy just wants a dad – let’s get him some love” thing that made FundyWasTaken and other Fundy+someone ships happen. I see a different person paired with Fundy every week, and somehow, I agree with all of them. I really got into Fundy because of that stream where Eret “slept through the adoption” and Fundy confronted his real dad and spent time with his granddad. That little stream gave us more insight into Fundy’s whole character (Nevermind Fundy showing off his acting skills – you go you funky little fox), but also justifies some of his actions now. DryWaters? Wanting to kill Technoblade? Fucked up reasons, but we still love him.

Phil being broken out of house arrest ahead of time – still made a great stream and Phil agreeing with Techno’s want for revenge – that made us all very happy. The SBI!!! The AE! And that’s also a thing!

That even if we do know or have predicted what’s going to happen, begged it out of the ccs basically, it is still incredibly fun to watch. Where some books/shows/movies fall short and reveal too much and end up being “too predictable”, they’re not fun anymore. I read this somewhere before, that sometimes holding back EVERYTHING from the reader, and relying on shock value to make a good story is just bad. Whereas if you progress the story naturally and let the reader make some predictions of their own and then they end up being right – that’s a lot of serotonin right there. It’s the re-readability that makes it slightly better the second time.

The DSMP takes this concept and fucking yeets with it. Letting fans engage in the story, letting them theorize and then be right, even acknowledging the fanart that was made, just engaging with the community that their roleplay created – that makes it so much more fun. I bet that even if the whole script was revealed to the fandom we would still watch every plot stream. Even if we knew vaguely what happens in the stream, we would tune in and enjoy every second of it. Because the ccs are just that good, we love them that much, we love this plot that much.

Oh and the unpredictability helps too. Tommy in exile was the vague concept of a lot of the streams – it’s taken that and ran with it in a lot of different directions. All quite enjoyable.

Having said all of that… The fact that this type of telling a story is impossible to recreate in any other medium is… kinda saddening? It is incredibly unique, and I’d say has things that not a lot of the people that produce mainstream media would even consider. “Just friends hanging out” – how would that make the script progress? “Engagement with the fandom, even considering their wishes for the characters” – but we’re telling a story here!

The only thing I can think of that would come close to the vibe, would be just a bunch of writer friends coming together, thinking up a universe and general plot, and then each deciding to write a few of their own characters in that universe. When one author focuses on their main characters, the side ones can feel left in the dust, or not fleshed out. The DSMP is just “every character can write their own story”, which takes a lot of the strain from the “main writers”. But the general thing of “just friends hanging out” would be taken away from it. We’re being serious here, why would we change the tone so quick?

With all of that in mind… I kinda wanna make some predictions? And I don’t know if they’re correct, but it’s fun to theorize. See?

1. L’manburg will die.

And not just because Techno has 54 withers. The country is cursed – it definitely is. There is little sentimental value that can be felt for a few flimsy stilts built on top of a crater. It might go out in a blaze of glory, with the withers (Is history repeating itself an interesting enough plot point to recycle a whole arc?), but it might just be forgotten. Yeah there have been some angsty headcanons about how “no one cares about L’manburg anymore, save for two people” and it just gets abandoned, but how about it just becoming irrelevant?

This all comes back to Dream, it always does! His want, need for the server to be “one happy family again”, it just means one thing. He wants the server to return to the peaceful anarchy that it was before L’manburg. No rulers, no factions, no nothing.

That’s never going to happen.

Try as he might, Dream cannot affect that change that L’manburg did to the server. The introduction of a faction, one that can exist without the interference of a higher power – why do you think so many factions have sprouted up since? And it’s not even serious factions a lot of the time, it’s just a few friends deciding to build their bases on a plot of land that they claim is a nation now. L’manburg has changed the mindset of these people, now an alliance with somebody is a political move. An alliance doesn’t exist if it doesn’t have a faction, and that faction can remain neutral for only so long.

Basically, L’manburg introduced the factions mod into the server.

And the fact that every faction now has enough relevance to hold weight in a war also means that every nation on the server is doomed to follow the downfall of L’manburg. Eventually, they will get into a fight they can’t win, go up against the wrong people, anger someone they shouldn’t have. All factions will either be destroyed, or lose relevance, until their creators, residents and such just… move on.

(And really you can go into meta and talk about real governments and compare them, but it’s far more simple than that. The server isn’t built for peace, it isn’t meant to be a relaxing place where you can just vibe, it may have been made for a few friends to play Minecraft together, but it has turned into An Author’s Curse. The curse that follows any kind of story being told – the fact that peace is boring. People watched the first streams of the DSMP because they liked the ccs, and that’s valid. But how many more people tuned in to watch the war streams because there was PLOT and there was CHAOS and there WASN’T CALM PEACE ANYMORE – that’s the curse of every writer. That you can write about someone just living their life drama-free, you can make interesting peace with characters or circumstances, but it’s always leading to one inevitable conclusion – war, drama, because people read that. And at this point, it’s just a predictable outcome. No matter how much you say that you are retired, that you’re done with violence (Technoblade), something will happen that will prove to you that you believed in people too much. No matter how “neutral” you may be in the matter, no matter how much you claim that you have no allegiance (Philza), you will be forced to pick one, because out of all the bad things, you pick the least worst one, the most appealing to you, the one that can benefit your want of revenge.

And I can go on, but this is far too deep for one simple reason – The Author’s Curse is so prevalent here because THERE ARE ABSOLUTELY NO STAKES. It’s a video game – you die? You respawn. Something gets destroyed? You can just rebuild. Sure, you’ll want to kill the person who did wrong to you, but whatever they did wrong can just be replaced, remade, recreated. So why not have wars? Why not cause massive amounts of destruction “for the plot”?

It’s literally a playground. How all authors have their little playground with their characters that they meticulously plan out, the DSMP is that playground for all of these people.

And it’s fun! Sure! I like it! I’m just really skeptical whenever someone in character says that they “just want peace”, “are retired”, “swear off violence”, “are building just a little city for themselves”. Because you can do that, nothing wrong. But eventually, no matter how much you distance yourself from all of the chaos happening, all of the wars, you will return.

Because it is just much more fun.

It’s the curse. A cursed cycle.

And everyone is in it.)

2. The prison.

I don’t have anything on the prison because I don’t have anything on the book. Yeah I’ve done a whole post where I overanalyze what it could be, but it doesn’t make it any clearer. Whatever it is, it’s made out to be a huge plot point, something that can only be revealed when the prison is finished.

Cursed. The prison’s reason for being constructed is the book, but the book is only relevant when the prison is finished. We can only wait, and theorize, as we do.

(My only theory is that the book is information about another op on the server. Or at least something related to op or creative mode. Dream only fears one thing on this server, and that’s Technoblade, so if his one fear is the most skilled player on the server, what else could give him existential fear?)

3. The SBI.

Again, I don’t have anything! Yeah the reunion seems to be going smoothly, one member at a time, but there is already conflict in their beliefs among each other. And all that’s happened is a vague “maybe one day we’ll strike”.

Is history repeating itself an interesting enough plot point to recycle a whole arc?

Is L’manburg’s destruction AGAIN really necessary to hammer home the idea that no one likes that place anymore?

I don’t know. Whatever happens, no one’s in the right. No one’s in the wrong either. They’re all not good people and that’s that on that.

4. The Clingy Duo.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

That’s all.

(Okay seriously? All of these arcs are connected. You know what happens when everything seems to be connected to one another?

A giant, dramatic final showdown between the two opposing sides.

Cause it’s just Chaos vs L’manburg. Those are the sides. People that want L’manburg to exist and people that want it gone. There are no other sides, there isn’t someone who’s like “Well maybe it can exist if we do this and this” cause no one wants to put in anymore effort into this cursed country. The only people were the clingy duo and now they’re separated and everyone is just leaving and Tommy is on the Chaos side like at this point he doesn’t care about L’manburg he just cares about Tubbo but he has to convince Tubbo to leave L’manburg but will Tubbo be convinced but will Tommy even consider leaving L’manburg and breaking free from its curse AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Goddamit.)

5. The Egg?

Dunno shit about it. Like the prison – it seems important, but we’re just not being given enough information. Is it a coincidence that the moment Dream commissioned the prison the Egg popped up? Or are the two directly related?

I don’t know. But as long as someone is finding ways to fight the Egg, that’s fantastic. Bad juju indeed.

6. Oh the Butcher Army want to kill Dream!

Hah.

Okay I’ve seen people make the case that the Army is just a bunch of people with trauma repeating the cycle of ab*se that they went through and yes.

Just yes.

And the fact that no one is actually looking at it that way and no one is there to like.. help them or even help them understand that what they are doing is just irrational, even though their reason for doing it and the result they hope to achieve is YES and the only thing that a lot of the people of the server who want peace should try to go for as well, they cannot stand up to Dream on their own. They just can’t, they will get punted into exile. They need allies, and they need powerful ones, people that have also been wronged by Dream and want him gone.

But the cycle continues, and no one knows where it ends.

(Okay but from a writing perspective? Getting rid of Dream is the end goal. It is the be all end all of all conflict, well… most of it, at least most that’s related to the supposed “good side”, or “the side that’s been most victimized”. But from the same perspective, that side is just… no longer. It has proven that is just as bad, if not worse than the final boss. I have to agree that Techno has to pay for his crimes, even though I like him a lot, but Techno did in fact cause insane damage. Yeah L’manburg rebuilt, yeah Wilbur probably caused more – still he isn’t completely free.

But that’s a discussion on morality more than laws.

L’manburg is doomed to die. Dream is doomed to be fought, and probably won against (simply because he has won far too many times already, you know how everyone seems to hate OP characters…). But the Butcher Army is doomed to fail against Dream. So how does that work?

Welp.

Is history repeating itself and interesting enough plot point to recycle a whole arc?

The answer is no.

I’ve repeated that question three times now, and the answer to it is no. No it is not. L’manburg can be destroyed again, and it can be rebuilt again, but the sentimentality that people feel for it will not remain. The cycle of history ends somewhere, and it’s not too far a fetch that it ends here.

So what happens when Technoblade, Philza and Tommy roll up to L’manburg with withers and a destruction wish, only to be met with a bunch of traumatized children with axes and a death wish?

Well, I’ll spare the details, but from a purely writing standpoint…

The two sides team up.

Think about it – The Butcher Army doesn’t care about Technoblade anymore. They’ve seen that Dream is the one pulling the strings, they know that even if they do care about trying to eliminate Technoblade again, they have to get rid of his strongest ally – Dream. But through their anger, they’ve lost their fear. You should fear Dream, he’s a fuckin op. Techno is correct in not wanting to go against him.

But after Tommy? After seeing the Butcher Army at their lowest, screeching about Dream being the villain?

Will Techno finally go past his thinking of “government is evil, always government is source of problem” and realize that Dream has the most evil government in mind for his rule?

I’m still kinda sad that Techno isn’t making the conclusions he should about Dream. But he’s starting to – and really, the SBI-Butcher Army team up is the most logical thing that could happen.

Watch me be completely wrong or miss something and I’ve got ALL of it wrong. I would love that.)

(Also it’s very funny to me that Dream is literally simping for Techno while he’s just here like “Listen bud I would stab you on sight if you didn’t have creative mode”. Dream KNOWS that Techno can and will kill him given the opportunity. Techno knows that that opportunity may never arise.

It’s a weird type of stalemate, to be sure. But goddamn is it interesting.)

Anyway... if you read through all of this... I could bake you a cookie? Thank you! I like to ramble.

#dream smp #gooood its just a block game #ITS JUST A BLOCK GAME #...dammit #anyway #debate me #on everything please

[vickyvicarious]

what do you make of Eliot's pre-show reputation for working alone? it makes sense for Parker and Hardison, who've always worked that way, but Eliot has a history of working as part of a team in various contexts

Yeah, it's definitely interesting! Really, Sophie never gets that label of 'always working alone' (and in fact later we see her bringing in Tara, which supports that she has friendly contacts still). It's just Parker, Hardison, and Eliot. And like you said, it makes complete sense for Parker, and even Hardison's hacking is just typically more suited to be done alone even if he is a social guy on a personal level. Eliot is different, given his history.

One thing I noticed a while ago, which is also interesting, is that Eliot's job by its very nature depends on other people. Sophie, Parker, and Hardison all steal what they want - as retrieval specialist, Eliot had to be hired. That's not to say he never just took something he wanted, necessarily, but his role majorly depended on people a) knowing of him in the first place, b) trusting his reputation enough to hire him, and c) being able to get in touch with him to hire him. I highly doubt he was handing out business cards left and right, so he had to have a network of contacts to at the very least pass his name along as an 'I know just the guy for the job' kind of thing. In fact, we see him bring in a friend on a con early in S1, and he is in contact with/does jobs for old military contacts throughout the show. (Once again, in the first episode Parker and Hardison were successfully recruited for someone else’s job, so it's not like that never happened for the others. But the general trend was that they picked their own heists; Eliot was hired on by other people.)

So we have a guy here who has a history of working on teams, a reputation as a loner, and yet still actively works for people who he has to keep on good enough terms to keep hiring him. How did that happen? In my opinion, it all comes back to Damien Moreau.

Eliot's timeline goes through some distinct phases:

Rural teen with a relatively poor family, I think they mention he played football; very all-American.

Joined the army with "a flag on his shoulder and God in his heart" or however that quote went.

Highly trained military operative involved in very classified operations.

Working for Damien Moreau.

Working solo as a retrieval specialist.

Leverage.

It's easy to track him through 1-3. He was recruited into the army with promises of heroism and glory, excelled at what he did, was eventually disillusioned. Getting from there to Moreau is a bit more of a jump, and likely didn't happen immediately. Given how protective Eliot gets over people he's working with, and how vigorously he hates betrayals of trust from his team, I think it's not unreasonable to assume that part of the reason he left the army had to do with whatever unit he was in getting very hurt. Likely in a way that made him feel he failed to protect them; maybe he was the only one who made it out of one specific situation. Maybe just a bunch of people he worked with got whittled down, or maybe it wasn't anything so deadly but he saw how little their lives mattered in the grand scheme of those in charge, saw how amoral the missions he was given were, and it was more of a gradual slide into illegality. There's also the detail that as he got into more and more classified work, he might be less and less likely to have a large group of people he could talk to/be a regular team with. Either way, I think Moreau didn't completely hire him straight out of the army, but there probably wasn't a tremendously long time between him leaving that group and joining up with Moreau.

*I originally thought Eliot didn't meet Toby until after he left Moreau, but a helpful anon corrected me on that! 'In the French Connection Job he says to Nate "I was out of the service and working for my 2nd PMC", doing wetwork.' He 'should've' killed Toby but instead stayed with him for months, 'learning how to cook and how to feel'. It certainly seems like he had gone some degree of numb after his experiences in the army and even since leaving it. His second private military contract/company... still implies he was working for organizations of some sort, though I get the impression he wasn't sticking around for terribly long times. Still, even if he then works solo retrieval type gigs for a while, I don't think he was nearly as insistent on working alone/had such a clear reputation about it, not yet.

Eliot no longer believed that he was doing good. He'd lost his naive patriotism and seems to have lost his religion for the most part as well. He didn't trust the system, but for the most part he still seemed to have faith in individuals. He still kept in touch with some old colleagues, he'd learned from Toby; he still wanted to be a part of something, even if that something couldn't be the US Army. He's a self-motivated criminal now but he still isn't averse to working with others.

Then comes Damien Moreau. Whether you read their relationship as romantic or not, it was undeniably important and personal. They knew one another well. Damien even still liked Eliot years after he'd left. There's good evidence for them having an emotionally abusive relationship where Moreau took advantage of Eliot's tendency to do things for those he cares about (I reblogged a great meta on this a little while ago). But essentially what we see here is that in all his time working for Moreau, no one else made such a strong impression on Eliot. Moreau definitely seems the type to play favorites and emotionally distance Eliot from other goons - Eliot isn't just another goon after all, he's the best. He's worthy of Damien's time and attention and specific assignments that only Eliot can be trusted to get done right. Whatever process of estrangement Eliot's superior skills may have begun, Moreau quickened until there was only one person who was the most important to him. Eliot didn't just work for him as a part of some vast criminal network by the end - no, he worked directly for and with Moreau himself. He was part of a team of two for all intents and purposes, regardless of how often he may have cooperated with others on specific jobs (though I suspect that got less frequent over time as well).

And when Eliot realized how deep he'd gotten, how terrible he'd become? He left, and left Damien Moreau specifically behind. Maybe he took a break for a while, went underground... it certainly doesn't seem like he had a conversation with Moreau and resigned so much as he just ran. And when he returned it was as a solo act. What this tells me is that not only did his time with Moreau break Eliot's trust in himself, it broke his ability to trust others. Not everyone necessarily, but in a working capacity. It probably was not the first time he'd experienced betrayal (in some form or another, his time in the army definitely qualified) but it was the most personal. Eliot trusted and liked Moreau - and he did the worst things in his entire life for him.

He couldn't repeat that. He couldn't leave himself open to getting sucked in like that again. And what's more, at this point he really didn't need to. His skills were such that he could get the job done himself (and had perhaps even honed those more solo skills while working for Moreau), and doing so meant that he never had to leave himself vulnerable to someone else like that again. He didn't have to be responsible for someone else getting hurt, and he didn't have to accept that he'd put someone else in charge of who he hurt. Eliot starts being more careful not to permanently injure or kill people, starts getting more selective with his jobs, and makes it a requirement that he works them alone. He still has to accept jobs from others, yeah, but he has ultimate control over what jobs he does accept, and if he operates purely on a freelance basis without getting too involved with any one client, then he can avoid the emotional entanglement that lead to such horrific loss of judgement in the past. It's hard, because he is naturally drawn to other people... but Eliot thinks that letting no one in is by far the safer option for everyone involved. He still builds relationships with others in order to get his name out, and may do repeat work for certain people, but no one is going to own him anymore. He is good enough that he can afford to set the terms like that; when he keeps getting the job done the word will spread that even alone he is worth the money. Eliot relies only on himself and any relationships he has are necessarily shallow. Professional, brief. This extends even to friendships (that seem to involve infrequent contact for the most part) and romantic relationships (he has plenty of sex but doesn't get emotionally close to anyone, does not fall in love). He is alone - in fact he is emphatically and outspokenly alone, because he doesn't want anyone to get their hooks in him like that ever again.

(*Doing jobs like this also limits the likelihood, especially in the beginning, that he's going to end up working for Moreau again in any real capacity. As time passes and Moreau doesn't attempt to bring him back too hard, that may become less of an issue in his mind, but it could certainly be a perk at least as the start.)

Then of course we eventually come to Leverage. It's been a while since Moreau. Eliot has built a solid reputation for himself - and he is being offered a LOT of money for a job that promises to be fairly quick. At this point, he probably feels like maybe he can trust himself as part of a team again without getting too sucked in - he will just keep it to one job and go his own way afterwards. It'll be fine.

...And then he immediately gets sucked in, bonds right away and wants so badly to stay. But even then, it's because of Nate. Eliot knows Nate, trusts him to be the 'honest man', is certain enough of Nate's moral compass that it's okay to get drawn in if Nate is the one making the plans. If it weren't for him, Eliot would have walked right away. Eliot was never going to allow himself to be ruled by others again... but Nate isn't like any of those people, he is a good man. Eliot can trust him not to lead him into anything too morally wrong, and in fact the work with Leverage is a way to bring some good back into the world. Not redeem himself, that won't ever happen, but under Nate's leadership Eliot can do something good for once. He doesn't want to stop.

By the time he moves past trusting Nate's judgement so much, he already trusts and loves the whole team. Parker and Hardison especially, so now he has to stay to keep them safe... even from Nate's plans sometimes, when he gets drunk and reckless. Eliot is secure in his role as part of a team again - and he probably was very lonely without one for all that time. It's not really in his nature to work alone long-term. And a key difference this time is that everyone else gets just as invested as he, and there's a good balance of power and respect unlike all of the more hierarchical teams he was in before (army, Moreau, they would have clear command structures - hell, even high-school football has a captain and a coach). Nate is nominally in charge but they talk back to him and lead where they have the most expertise. They dedicate themselves to him as much as he to them, they change together. And they change for the better, together.

#leverage #eliot spencer #leverage meta #my meta #anonymous #replies

[warriors-but-cats-die]

Hi! I see that you have different lore and rules in your au, (ie. elders choosing names, seers changing clans which I think is SO interesting omg, clans not speaking the dead's name) would you ever go more in depth with those changes? I'd be very interested to see your take on the clans cultures!! Love this blog so much!! ♡

aww thanks for the curiosity!

wbcd is actually pretty tame in terms of worldbuilding stuff for me, because. bookkeeping. that's -- almost always the answer lmao. i'll do links first and then ramble broadly about clan culture below the cut.

my (warriors) main, @mallowstep, is where most of the relevant content is contained, although i'm ngl for the past few weeks we've just been Experiencing this web of riverclan aus so. this morning i debated the existence of the original sin in warriors. "debated" more like -- talked through? i don't know.

anyway.

i have two worldbuilding related series, the elders' den (folklore) and five clans alike in dignity (worldbuilding essays). it's been a while since i've added anything to either of them because "poetry. hymns. language." has been kicking my ass way more than i expected, but they are living series.

and if you want some proper seers switching clans (i.e., as a thing that's part of the culture, rather than something that happens in an emergency), saccharine tithes of love and glory is currently at 6/8 works and explores that idea starting with yellowstorm (yellowfang), and i just posted squirrelflight.

but for some broad notes:

riverclan

there's...a lot. riverclan is easily one of my most developed clans. i'm trying to keep this stuff to bullet points, because i will literally not stop talking if i don't (see: one of the first things i did this morning was read through the wikipedia page for the doctrine of original sin to talk about how that was compatible in riverclan's belief system.)

core belief: all riverclan cats carry the divine in them (literal descendants of the river)

core values: patience, pride, flexibility, creativity

unique practices: building shrines for the dead and having water burials; bone divination; weaving; raiding the twoleg place; keeping trinkets

main spiritual practices: holidays; veneration of the moon; looking for river spirits

social structure: fairly nuclear

meta-thoughts: they're a proud clan, but because of that, they're the most accepting. it's sort of, "you're one of us, so it doesn't matter -- you have value."

shadowclan

probably the least developed clan. i'm always trying.

core belief: heritage matters, birthright does not (i.e., a focus not on who your parents are, but a respect for the past)

core values: cunning, respect, loyalty, community

unique practices: a large and long list of prayers that seers need to memorize with very specific purposes; prefixes are associated with the last cat to hold them, something which then reflects on the next cat to get the prefix; deep mourning traditions

main spiritual practices: group prayer, led by the leader in the morning and the seer in the evening; serious holy days (vs. riverclan's holidays); limited belief in the ability of a "normal" cat t connect with starclan

social structure: large focus on extended kin

meta-thoughts: i'm always trying to add on to shadowclan, but i've yet to find a story to tell in shadowclan that makes me want to sink my teeth into their culture. there's also -- a problem with them being a diaspora culture, and i'm trying to describe an "ideal" form that hasn't existed since...cedarstar, probably

skyclan

my beloved. i'm not much interested in old skyclan, so:

core belief: loyalty to the clan (really, a focus on being a community, rebuilding, etc.)

core values: adaptability, cunning, loyalty, resilience

unique practices: asking kits if they want to be part of skyclan; having clan meetings on the new moon; naming cats after the very recently deceased

main spiritual practices: nothing has really set hold, yet, other than group prayer/gathering on the new moon

social structure: the whole clan is one family, although they lean towards nuclear

meta-thoughts: they're a new clan, and that's really what this is about. everything about them is about surviving, and so they're very pragmatic. results oriented. etc.

thunderclan

aka, i refuse to accept thunderclan is boring

core belief: a deep focus on commitment to the clan (very communalist)

core values: decisiveness, loyalty, respect, community

unique practices: telling stories with repeated lines; not speaking the name of the dead; deeply valuing skill in battle

main spiritual practices: a deep focus on individual prayer; belief in invoking the names of specific cats; believing the journey to starclan takes several moons; limited spiritual weight in the position of seer

social structure: focused around maara/denmates, often over maach/bloodkin

meta-thoughts: while i haven't done terribly much with thunderclan, it's because i think thunderclan as-presented is pretty good. it's not that they're the default, it's just you're mostly familiar with them. they have a really, really big cultural thing around stories though, more than any of the other clans. while all the clans use stories to explain things, thunderclan takes telling stories very seriously. they're learned nearly word for word.

windclan

aka someone decided windclan should have hymns and i think we all latched on to that

core belief: a focus on commitment through sacrifice

core values: patience; respect; flexibility; mediation

unique practices: calls for casting of stones fairly often (all clans have conflict resolution, windclan is just most likely to use them); requiring the seer to confirm the name of each kit as not being ill-omened; pack hunting which has three roles; a commitment to ecology; sentry duty

main spiritual practices: the hymn, which is split into main sections and sung through, in part or whole, about once a season; holy days (fasts and singing days) have no fixed occurrence but are announced by the seer as little as the morning of; leaving the dead on the open moor so they can run to starclan

social structure: broadly communal, a deep sense of ties between mentors and apprentices, an expectation that mates will be well-integrated with both families

meta-thoughts: much like thunderclan has a lot of sayings derived from stories, windclan has sayings derived from hymns. while i've removed tunnelling from windclan, i've replaced it with a new way to categorize warriors. the three running positions are flusher, chaser, and catcher, and while all cats can run all positions, flusher is the most highly specialized because they're responsible for land management.

alright! i always have more to say about this, but. that's a start.

#ask #spacepriide #mallow speaks #worldbuilding #wbcd is so chill in worldbuilding #like all the names are based on appearance #something that's not a part of my general worldbuilding #but is a necessary concession #etc

[orionsangel86]

what are your thoughts on the deancas endgame.. how will they resolve the Empty.. any thoughts?

Ah that old question! How it pains us all! :P

What are my thoughts on DeanCas endgame now? Honestly it changes everyday!

When Cas first made his deal with the Empty, it seemed so damn obvious to me that it would be a lead up to overt canon Destiel. At the time I was pretty sure that there was nothing else that could bring Cas that level of happiness. Now I’m not so sure. Cas’s devotion to Jack has only grown, and the fracturing of the Winchester family at the end of Season 14 was a huge hit to him. I can now easily envisage something as simple as Cas being invited to carve his name on the bunker table being the trigger point, so long as Jack is alive and well. Being part of the Winchester family has definitely been the principle factor the writers have built on for Cas over the past season. I therefore think that if the Empty does come for Cas, it will be from something familial, something like Jack and the Winchesters all sitting around and them paying specific attention to Cas for doing something great, like actually stopping a monster, saving a ton of people, and doing it all the human way, leading to a very impressed Sam and a loved up Dean beaming at him and telling him to carve his initials, and making sure he adds the W.

As much as I would love it and ascend to fandom heaven if it happened, I don’t think the empty deal is gonna be triggered by Dean grabbing and kissing Cas up against his bedroom door, or even actually saying a very clearly romantic “I love you”. Not that I don’t think that will happen at all, but I feel the Empty deal will need to be addressed very soon, and I just can’t see any overt confirmation of Destiel in text before the very end (if at all) at this point.

Please let me explain my thought process on this before anyone get’s upset or jumps on me.

Season 15, imo, has done a lot for Destiel. Since the very first episode we have had a clear emotional storyline specific to Dean and Cas. Their relationship drama has basically fuelled the emotional heart of the season so far. It has lead to journalists, interviewers, and plenty of check marks on Twitter agreeing that whatever Dean and Cas have, it’s something very special, and important to Supernaturals beating core.

The fact is, Dean and Cas are already being written as a romantic couple. They are being written as two people who deeply love each other, to the point that they get ridiculously overly emotional around each other and when the other hurts them. Their relationship is constantly called out by other characters (Belphegor, Rowena) and mirrored to the more overt (however unfair that is) heterosexual relationship in the show (Sam and Eileen).

If we were still living within the era of the Hays Code, if this was The Celluloid Closet, then we would already be championing Destiel as an epic example of queer romance. It IS a queer romance after all. Destiel is real, it exists within the Supernatural story, and the SPN writing team including actual queer writers are 100% on our side and writing Destiel as best they can. This I am 100% certain of at this stage. As a meta writer, I am already validated that my reading of the show and of Destiel as a queer romance in the show is correct. Destiel isn’t something anyone can justifiably call us delusional for seeing anymore. We have come way far beyond that point here. If you see Destiel as a romantic love story, your reading is a correct reading because that IS the story the writers are writing. Season 15 has confirmed that with the Destiel break up story arc and Dean’s prayer. This I say with absolute certainty. Your reading of Destiel as valid and an actual queer love story is correct. It is the story they are telling. People can’t deny Destiel anymore because it is those deniers who at this stage look pretty damn delusional ya know?

I have bolded several lines above because they are important and I really want to stress that this is my stance on the matter. Do not let anyone try to convince you that I feel differently here. If you are a young queer person who sees yourself and your relationship in the DeanCas love story you are valid in seeing that. Exactly as it is, right now, without any need for further confirmation within the story. I am in no way trying to invalidate you by what I am about to say next.

I mentioned the Hays Code and the Celluloid Closet. If you haven’t seen the Celluloid Closet I urge you to watch it as it is a fascinating look into queer coding within the Hays code era. Also, quickly, if you aren’t aware of what I mean by the Hays Code it’s basically the code that Hollywood had to adhere to, setting out rules of what could and couldn’t be portrayed in cinema at the time. Here’s a link to the Wiki article on the history of queer cinema. The introduction of the Hay’s code also meant the introduction of queer coding and subtext rather than explicit dipictions of queer romance in cinema. When I refer to this in relation to Dean and Cas, basically what Supernatural is doing with Dean and Cas is exactly what was done to dipict queer romance in order to get around the Hays code during the era when it was enforced.

So when I say that Destiel is real and valid and being written as a love story, I mean that the writers are basically doing with Destiel what savvy filmmakers had to do to circumvent the Hay’s code during Hollywoods golden age.

Do you see the issue yet?

It is 2020. The Hay’s Code has been abolished for around 50 years.

I fully respect the SPN writing team for trying to tell the Destiel love story as best they can, but at this point in time, even with everything they have already given us, it is still subtext.

Subtext IS a part of the text. What is Canon? What isn’t Canon? Honestly? I’m done with the arguments about it. Believe what each of you want to believe. What I will say is that I don’t think we are going to get anything more overt from the show at this point. The reason I say this is because the writers have now had plenty of ideal opportunities to actually bring the Destiel love story into text. They could have had a single line in 15x07 that confirmed Dean and Lee had a romantic relationship when they were younger. It would have been so easy to do. But they didn’t. Dean’s prayer to Cas, in all it’s glory, could have given us one line more as well. We could have had a love confession. They could have taken it there. Again, it would have been so easy, and it was the ideal opportune moment for Dean to confess. But they didn’t.

I have gone back and forth on this particular question over and over again. The question being will Destiel be brought into explicit undeniable text by series end?

Again, I stress, this question is completely separate to the question of the validity of Destiel already within the text and I swear to God if I get a single argumentative person in my mentions coming at me because they’ve been brainwashed by *people* trying to twist and blur these lines I am going on an even bigger blocking spree to the one I’ve already been on.

In my opinion, the answer to this question resides not with the decisions of the writers (who I fully believe would make it overtly canon in a heartbeat if they could) but with the CW execs. I have my own theories about what goes on behind the scenes, and what I think Dabb has been fighting with since he first took over as showrunner in season 11, and I just really hope that at some point once this is all over we will get a big expose on the truth about Destiel which confirms my speculation and slams the CW execs for not wanting to go there with Supernatural in particular (something I have previously talked about here). I would love for the execs to have given the green light on Destiel being overt by season end, and I am still hoping they have been more lenient this season even if the okay is only for one small moment. Whatever we get or do not get, it will be at the hands of the CW execs and not the writers. That’s the one thing I ask everyone to please keep in mind whatever happens in the end.

As far as what I think may or may not happen...

I would love for the Empty to take Cas because Dean confesses his love and kisses him. Or even if the Empty takes Cas because of other things, having Dean then rescue Cas from the Empty in a poetic reverse of Cas rescuing Dean from Hell, with the big reunion being their overt textual getting together. I feel like the story could go in so many different directions right now as I don’t actually feel like the plot of season 15 is all that coherant so far. The main key notes were Dean and Cas’s relationship drama, Sam and Eileen’s reunion, Chuck messing with the boys and Jack’s return. I think that things will ramp up pretty quickly in this final run of episodes from mid March to the finale, and I think a lot of storylines will get addressed and resolved in a short space of time, at this point, if anything overt does happen for Dean and Cas, it will happen quickly, and the story will move on, or it will be left in the subtext until the very final episode, or it will remain in subtext completely.

Personally, I think that Dean and Cas’s love story will remain subtextual until the very end, with potentially an “I love you” from Dean that will be interpreted as platonic by all major media sources much to all of our frustrations (a repeat of the Season 12 Cas “I love you”) (As Dean needs to tell Cas he loves him as a plot point at this stage, regardless of whether it is romantic or platonic the story basically demands it be said). I am still quietly confident that Dean and Cas will end the season together in some way, either living or dead, I don’t think that their story or their individual story arcs work if they are separated, and I will be stunned and hurt the same way I was for Game Of Thrones if the show does take a different route.

Therefore, since I see the show ending with Dean and Cas together, I can potentially see them taking each others hands in one final shot that basically subtly confirms that they are an item without ever actually textually stating anything more or giving us a kiss or anything. I personally, would be very satisfied with this. If it doesn’t happen though, if I’m totally honest, I would also be satisfied so long as they are still together by the shows end, as I have continually stressed, Destiel is already a real and valid love story that totally validates me as a meta writer, even if it isn’t technically “canon” by all major definitions of the term. (Again I stg if anyone comes at me for saying this I am blocking without devoting a second of my time to arguing with you I am literally at zero tolerance on this ridiculous argument right now and refuse to be dragged back into the bullshit).

Whatever happens, I am loving what we are getting so far. I’ve really been enjoying this season especially the Dean and Cas storyline because it has been so intense and emotional and I LIVE FOR IT! :D I know I’ll be a puddle of tears whatever happens and I just hope that it keeps up this excellent trajectory because so far I’ve been really pleased with everything else we’ve got even if I was slightly disappointed by the show not pushing 15x07 and 15x09 just that tiny bit further into overt canon confirmation of Bi!Dean and Destiel. We’ll see. As I have already said several times, I am feeling pretty validated by my interpretation of Dean and Cas’s relationship over the past so many years I’ve been writing about them. I am confident that I will continue to feel validated as we reach the final run of episodes, and I will continue to be optimistic that Dean and Cas will get a satisfying ending together, whether that includes overt textual Destiel confirmation or not.

#destiel #deancas #supernatural #spn meta #castiel #dean winchester #spn speculation #season 15 #destiel dreaming #spn endgame speculation #destiel endgame speculation #my meta #the great queerbating debate #queercoding #hays code #asks #anon #Anonymous

[kaaras-adaar]

Kaaras and the Valo-kas

//  Kaaras is NOT a member of the Valo-Kas. For long term RP partners, they most likely know this (or for those who have read over Kaaras’ profile). I did have him in contact with them prior, but it’s easier to have Kaaras as a stand alone character without the ties to the Valo-Kas. So I’d like to shed some light on his mercenary life.

When Kaaras was only five, he came into his magic. At the markets in Ferelden, a group of older kids began picking on him and chasing him–in an attempt to beat him up and most likely steal anything he had on his persons. While he was defending himself, Kaaras was backed into a corner and ended up using a force blast to knock them back.

Kaaras is a qunari, so he never would have been accepted into a Ferelden Circle–they’d rather have him hanged (or made Tranquil). However, Kaaras’ future trainer (Saarebas), saw the incident and made sure that the children didn’t taddle on him–how she did this was probably by scare tactics and threats to them before they could reach their parents, and the incident was never legally reported. Even if it was, most people were afraid to approach a family of qunari.

When this all happened, Kaaras was mortified and ran all the way home in tears. He had no idea what had happened, he’d just thought of pushing them back and it had happened, and he was freaking out. His mother and father had no idea how to deal with their child being a mage (considering they are Tal’Vashoth, only having fled the Qun when pregnant with Kaaras). Neither of them are mages, so they were out of their depth and element.

After a few days had passed, Saarebas knocked on their door and informed them that she had seen the incident, and let them know that Kaaras was safe from the law–for now–but he had to get his magic under control if they didn’t want a repeat of what had happened. Aban and Anaan were desperate for help, and she knew this. They were a poor family that was struggling to make any coin off their farm. Saarebas knew that they could not offer her anything in return for her help, but she was a spiritual woman, and she saw something special when she saw Kaaras, and she believed that if well trained, he could be destined for great things. I should note that Saarebas is an exceptionally spiritual woman, one who actually spoke to spirits–as well as reading tarot cards. What she saw in Kaaras was something, and she believed it. So she offered to help train him so he could gain control of his magic. In return, the Adaar family allowed her to stay in the barn if she was in the area–as she worked as a mercenary and often crossed Southron Hills (the house was small and could barely house them all as was).

Her form was strict and harsh. She wasn’t exactly a mean woman, but she wasn’t nurturing either. Not in a soft way. She was far more the “tough love” kind of woman. But her training is what made Kaaras so disciplined in his magic, and in his will.

After Kaaras’ father died when he was 12, he promised he’d find the remaining man who attacked their home and bring him to justice. He knew Saarebas was a mercenary, and he asked her every day when could he join. It was his soul purpose. Eventually, Saarebas knew that she couldn’t stop him, and said he was ready. If she could not take him under her wing, then he would go it alone, which she couldn’t allow.

Her mercenary group was not the Valo-Kas, it was her own, named the Ash Ataash (to seek glory). Mostly it was with humans and elves no thanks to being in Ferelden. When there wasn’t much coin going for them, they ended up moving to the Marches, in Kirkwall. Competition was fierce within the area, even though there was plenty of jobs going around. Kaaras (and any other qunari) was seen as an asset due to their strength and will to get things done. This meant the Ash Ataash stood out. After being approached by a very qunari orientated band (named the Ralshokra after the supposed death challenges), Saarebas accepted the offer for them to join. It gave them a chance to get work when it was already difficult for such a small band to get good jobs that paid well.

After a few years with them, the Ralshokra had gained a ruthless name for themselves, and Kaaras gained a lot of experience. He didn’t always agree with what was happening and the jobs, but he understood that he was in need of coin to send back to his mother back on the farm.

When he was 24, Kaaras grew fond of one of the other members, Stenn (the former love of his life before Inquisition). Kaaras was in a messy place, and for years after his father died, he’d taken to alcohol as a crutch. Kaaras often drank himself into a stupor to try and take away the pain of his father’s death, as well as sharing a bed with others who approached him and wanted sex. He didn’t have penetrative sex with anyone, in fact, his pride (and shame) stopped him from doing that, at least a part of what little pride he still had in himself. That and he’d always wanted to wait for that someone special. Kaaras has always been a romantic at heart.

Stenn stopped all of this. He was the absolute calm to Kaaras’ storm. He was kind, gentle, loving, and everything Kaaras really needed in a time of need. It was often just talking, staying up late with each other while on the road as everyone else slept. Eventually, it turned into a romance, but they took things very slow. Stenn wanted it to be slow for Kaaras, instead of all the quick paced running into things he was usually doing in trying to soothe his pains. It was also slow because of Kaaras’ lack of alcohol to give him confidence, not to mention the physical pain he could be in at times no thanks to his condition.

Gentle kisses soon became touches, and eventually they went further to being nude with one another, but never penetrative sex. When they were going to, they were interrupted, and the moment was pretty much stolen from them. It had taken all of Kaaras’ courage to get to that point, so it was smashed again, and it just never had time to grow once more as soon after, their band was under attack, and Saarebas ended up dying.

When Saarebas died, it put a huge strain on their romance, no thanks to Kaaras, determined to believe that the bad orders had gotten Saarebas killed. There were disagreements and bad tension, and in the end Kaaras made his decision: he left. Some of the Ralshokra went with him, in agreement that the leadership was too reckless. Stenn remained behind, in disagreement and rather set in his ways (he was a lot older than Kaaras). In a moment of angst, the both of them were far too stubborn and hurt to set aside their differences, and they parted. They never said that they had fallen in love with each other, and the bitterness from their parting kept them from saying it, however, Kaaras showed that he was thankful for everything his lover had ever done for him, and while hurt, they did not part on angry terms.

This was when Kaaras moved up to Starkhaven and that’s where he started recruiting more men. He became the captain of the company and they settled there doing mercenary work for the next few years under the title of the Beres-taar (meaning ‘shield’). Kaaras devoted his life to this, to making better decisions, to letting go of his hate and unhappiness. This was his new goal.

The Beres-taar were quick to make a name for themselves, having some of the advantage of former Ralshokra members. Kaaras was a natural born leader, and with the mistakes of the former band he’d been in, he was determined to give his company a good and loyal name for the work they did. This eventually got the attention of nobles in the area, and they earned a decent living.

Eventually, their name was known enough in Starkhaven that they were suggested to aid with protecting the Divine during the peace talks. This was the first time Kaaras had ever run into the Valo-Kas. The only time Kaaras has ever taken part in knowing the company is via the peace talks. Kaaras was asked specifically by reputation and having previously worked with the Prince of Starkhaven and nobles. Kaaras’ company themselves are not overly large, but they are hard workers who are dedicated to their jobs. Numbers was a must, however, so Kaaras was fine when he got the news that another band would be accompanying them.

Both the Beres-taar and Valo-Kas went to the Conclave alongside one another, however, because the Valo-Kas was more well known thanks to more years of being in service, everyone assumes Kaaras was under their title. He wasn’t, and he corrects EVERYONE who says he is and was, but this is why people assume he’s from the Valo-Kas in Inquisition. 

During his travel back through Kirkwall, Kaaras and Stenn reunited, however, things had changed between them, and Kaaras had changed too much as a person to continue a romance. The events at the Conclave happened, and they were separated, Kaaras became the Herald and Stenn remained in Kirkwall.

Everything else is pretty much known to his timeline. :)

So, Kaaras is NOT a member of the Valo-kas and he never has been. The only time he’s been in contact with them was during the peace talks. Everything you see in Inquisition for the Valo-Kas missions pretty much isn’t canon to Kaaras, however, he does keep in contact with them as there’s no bad blood between them and they were both at the Conclave together.

I will do a meta on Kaaras’ life in Starkhaven another time, but this is why Kaaras is not a member of the Valo-Kas, but why some people assume he is, and that I wanted to at least stay true to parts of the canon, but also pull away from it.

#ooc #Headcanons #Meta #Valo Kas #Beres taar #Stenn #Kaaras and the Valo Kas

[astermacguffin]

So I wrote this prose-poetry/ship meta/fanfic hybrid for kaysanova a few days ago in reaction to the beautiful art by @hachinana87 of Nicky shaving Joe, but then I remembered how [tumblr] fucks over reblogs in terms of searchability in tags. I didn't want to waste my energy writing that so here's a copypaste of that post (minus my gayass ramblings in the tags, so check the original if you wanna see that):

Idk how to explain this, but shaving the facial hair of another man is probably one of the most homoerotically charged domestic thing that typically happens in mlm relationships.

And it's even more poignant if you consider Joe and Nicky's enemies-to-lovers literally-killing-each-other pre-relationship phase. Shaving the face of your lover is a good exercise of trust, intimacy, and vulnerability.

Like, here's another man who's pressing a deadly thing against your face, and yet he handles the thing with such careful precision. The juxtaposition between the cold metal gliding across your skin and the warmth of his fingers holding your face secure.

You've always been told stories about blade-wielding men, their bravery and strength, but somehow no one ever cared enough to warn you of how these men can bring you to your knees—not from the threat of violence, no, but from the gentle grip on your chin, the steady gaze, the careful way he angles your face towards him.

You look at him and see something beneath his gaze: it's the look of a man who have glimpsed the tiniest sliver of the Divine and tells you that he remembers the encounter in the beat of your pulse under his fingers, the way light bounces off your freshly shaven face, the shape of your lips trembling under his examining eyes.

You stop and think: "I believe I now understand why higher beings even bother answering to lowly beings like us. Conquest and Surrender are two sides of the same coin."

Imagine being a god, and someone with so much love, faith, and devotion to you approaches and kneels before you. "Conquer me, I surrender myself to you," they say.

What do you even do? You are now captured by this being. They have conquered you through surrendering.

There is comfort in surrendering, in letting another conquer you. You give away your responsibility towards yourself.

There is also the burden of vulnerability, the pain and shame that comes from exposing yourself that much to another.

On the other hand, there is the obvious glory of conquest. Of power and control. This being has now surrendered themself to you. How empowering is that?

Of course, this glory comes with the burden of responsibility. This being is now yours to care for, yours to protect.

When you conquer, you surrender yourself to the conquered. When you surrender, you conquer the conqueror.

A gentle hand grips your wrist. You exit the realm of contemplation and return to the living, only to witness a curious look from Divine Beauty embodied in the face of this man.

"It's done," he says so gently, as if he knows that his voice has the power to break you. And, maybe, he whispers it for his own sake as well.

"Yes," you reply, grabbing the towel and wiping his face clean. He flashes a warm grin, and despite being detached from reality at the moment, you know in your heart of hearts that the smile is mirrored on your face.

"Yes," you repeat. "It is done."

#kaysanova #joe x nicky #the old guard #the old guard meta #It's about the YEARNING. The devastation of intimacy. The violence of soft kisses pressed against your neck. #if you wanna see more ramblings from a queer catholic who is also majoring in philosophy #i suggest you read the tags in the original #prose poetry? fanfic? a philosophical dialectic into the nature of conquest and surrender in the context of queerness and divinity? #i dont even know what the fuck this is but i hope you enjoy it

[theusurpersdog]

The Beggar Queen

Following up my post on Daenerys in A Game of Thrones, I also have a lot of thoughts on her arc in A Clash of Kings. In many ways it’s a very unexpected continuation of her story; at the end of A Game of Thrones, she has just hatched three dragons and walked out of a burning pyre, seemingly at the top of the world. Instead of a more typical fantasy story, A Clash of Kings sends Daenerys back down to being powerless. There’s a reality to how GRRM writes the story; sure, she has three dragons, but what good are they in the middle of a vast desert? What good are they when they can’t even fly or breathe fire yet? These are all questions Daenerys has to try and find answers to, while also trying to keep her and her people alive. And she’s also trying to build an army and fleet to take her to Westeros while navigating the wonders and horrors of Qarth.

The Bleeding Star

When Daenerys is about to step into Drogo’s funeral pyre in A Game of Thrones, she looks up to the stars and sees a streaking red comet blazing across the sky, and sees it as a sign of her dragons. That same comet guides her through the Red Waste in A Clash of Kings:

The Dothraki named the comet shierak qiya, the Bleeding Star. The old men muttered that it omened ill, but Daenerys Targaryen had seen it first on the night she had burned Khal Drogo, the night her dragons had awakened. It is a herald of my coming, she told herself as she gazed up into the night sky with wonder in her heart. The gods have sent it to show me the way.

The comet is the connecting thread between everyone in the story. From each point of view character, we learn some new truth or interpretation for what it means:

Cressen had never seen a comet half so bright, nor yet that color, that terrible color, the color of blood and flame and sunsets

- Prologue

That night she lay upon her thin blanket on the hard ground, staring up at the great red comet. The comet was splendid and scary all at once. "The Red Sword," the Bull named it; he claimed it looked like a sword, the blade still red-hot from the forge. When Arya squinted the right way she could see the sword too, only it wasn't a new sword, it was Ice, her father's greatsword, all ripply Valyrian steel, and the red was Lord Eddard's blood on the blade after Ser Ilyn the King's Justice had cut off his head.

- Arya I

Doubtless that was what they told Joffrey; Sansa was not so sure. "I've heard servants calling it the Dragon's Tail."

"King Joffrey sits where Aegon the Dragon once sat, in the castle built by his son," Ser Arys said. "He is the dragon's heir—and crimson is the color of House Lannister, another sign. This comet is sent to herald Joffrey's ascent to the throne, I have no doubt. It means that he will triumph over his enemies."

- Sansa I

When Bran repeated that to Osha, she laughed aloud. "Your wolves have more wit than your maester," the wildling woman said. "They know truths the grey man has forgotten." The way she said it made him shiver, and when he asked what the comet meant, she answered, "Blood and fire, boy, and nothing sweet."

- Bran I

All of those descriptions of the comet have one thing in common – Daenerys Targaryen. Whether it be Cressen seeing Fire & Blood in the sky, Arya seeing beauty and horror and Valyrian steel and blood, Sansa calling it the Dragon’s Tail and Arys Oakheart seeing it as the coming of Aegon’s heir, or Osha’s warning to Bran of “blood and fire, and nothing sweet.”, Daenerys is tied to the comet. Because it was meant for her. In the House of the Undying, Daenerys learns that the warlocks sent it to guide her to Qarth so they could feed off her and her dragons.

So, what does it mean, that this comet belongs to Daenerys? I think it’s very similar to how waking the dragon was used in A Game of Thrones. All of our protagonists find horror in the red streak across the sky, where only our antagonists (such as Theon) believe it belongs to them. In one way, all of the ominous foreshadowing for the comet is because the Warlocks were trying to kill Daenerys with it. But, the symbolism of the comet aligns shockingly well with Daenerys’ own path. She thinks it’s a sign of her reign, of her coming glory in the Seven Kingdoms. But instead, it leads her toward ruin; while she narrowly manages to escape the House of the Undying, following the comet almost kills her. The comet is just like the Queenship she’s chasing in Westeros; this thing she can’t let go of, that she’ll follow blindly, until it destroys her.

The comet also allows us to fully understand what Daenerys now represents to the people who saw her step out of Drogo’s Pyre:

"We follow the comet," Dany told her khalasar. Once it was said, no word was raised against it. They had been Drogo's people, but they were hers now. The Unburnt, they called her, and Mother of Dragons. Her word was their law.

Daenerys is very far from a normal political figure or leader; she is a messiah figure to her people, the product of hundreds of years of magic and prophecy. Her khalasar will follow her through the desert chasing a comet, because they watched her do the impossible. This kind of relationship she has with her people is crucial to understanding how Daenerys reacts to them. She puts an immense amount of pressure on herself to live up to the legend that made her the Mother of Dragons:

They are not strong, she told herself, so I must be their strength. I must show no fear, no weakness, no doubt. However frightened my heart, when they look upon my face they must see only Drogo’s queen. She felt older than her fourteen years. If ever she had truly been a girl, that time was done.

Daenerys knows her people are the weakest, the oldest and youngest, the outcasts, the people who cannot provide for themselves. So they turned to her, their only chance after the rest of the Dothraki abandoned them. And Daenerys is aware of this, and trying desperately to save her people and herself, but she doesn’t know how. Her dragons are only hatchlings, and all the enemies she made when Drogo died leave her no choice but to take her people through the Red Waste. As we’ll see later, her magical abilities failing her forces her to become a political and practical leader of her people, whether she is capable of that or no.

In later books, Daenerys begins to gather other followers, but in A Clash of Kings, the Dothraki are all she has. And they follow her because might makes right within a khalasar, and no one is mightier than the young girl who walked out of a fire with no burns and three dragons. Later books are much more invested in examining both the good - but especially the bad - that this kind of relationship can cause between a ruler and her people, but that part of Daenerys’ arc is already set up here in A Clash of Kings.

This dynamic does give us a glimpse into the altruistic part of Daenerys that is still there, and especially on display when Doreah dies in her arms:

Jhogo said they must leave her or bind her to her saddle, but Dany remembered a night on the Dothraki sea, when the Lysene girl had taught her secrets so that Drogo might love her more. She gave Doreah water from her own skin, cooled her brow with a damp cloth, and held her hand until she died, shivering. Only then would she permit the khalasar to press on.

Daenerys gives Doreah some of her own water, knowing that the girl was going to die anyway, just to ease her passing. She holds her hand as she dies, and refused to let Jhogo and the khalasar disrespect Doreah.

Daenerys is aware of the huge sacrifice her few followers made to be with her, and she’s willing to sacrifice tremendously to repay their loyalty.

The Dragons Are All The Difference

In my last meta, I talked a lot about how Daenerys is the truest possible version of what a Targaryen is, Fire & Blood writ large, and how much that has to do with the connection she shares to her dragons; and that theme is built upon even more in this book.

Now she has actually hatched her eggs, but quickly realizes that having dragons doesn’t help you feed your people:

Yet even as her dragons prospered, her khalasar withered and died.

The dragons eat many times their weight a day (and while that doesn’t seem like much since they’re so small, it’s important to remember that Dany’s people are starving to death) and don’t offer anything in return.

This is another case where the dragons function as a stand-in for Daenerys. While she gained tremendously from everything that happened at the end of A Game of Thrones, by becoming a khal and hatching dragons, the people who follow her lost everything. They didn’t even choose to stay with her; the environment she helped create was rejecting of their weakness and left them behind to die with her. And while they have their “freedom” now, it doesn’t mean much when Doreah dies in the Red Waste. Having dragons doesn’t make Daenerys capable of actually saving these people she’s led into the wilderness.

When Daenerys and her khalasar finally find the city they name Vaes Tolorro, at first Daenerys wants to make it their home:

In the coolness of her tent, Dany blackened horse-meat over a brazier and reflected on her choices. There was food and water here to sustain them, and enough grass for the horses to regain their strength. How pleasant it would be to wake every day in the same place, to linger among shady gardens, eat figs, and drink cool water, as much as she might desire.

And later, this happens:

"I've brought you a peach," Ser Jorah said, kneeling. It was so small she could almost hide it in her palm, and overripe too, but when she took the first bite, the flesh was so sweet she almost cried. She ate it slowly, savoring every mouthful, while Ser Jorah told her of the tree it had been plucked from, in a garden near the western wall.

The specific fruit Jorah gives her, a peach, makes this very important. In this same book, Renly tries to get Stannis to enjoy a peach in their last conversation, and Stannis will never stop thinking on what Renly meant by it; to us, it’s quite clear that the peach is the little pleasures in life, joy, happiness, pausing to love the things and people around you. The heartbreak of Stannis as a character is that he will never be able to understand the world in that way; the heartbreak of Daenerys as a character is that a part of her can sit and simply savor a peach, but something pulls her away from it; and, of course, that something is dragons:

She dreamed of Drogo and the first ride they had taken together on the night they were wed. In the dream it was not horses they rode, but dragons.

The next morn, she summoned her bloodriders. “Blood of my blood,” she told the three of them, “I have need of you. Each of you is to choose three horses, the hardiest and healthiest that remain to us. Load as much water and food as your mounts can bear, and ride forth for me.”

And while this choice is fairly reasonable at the time, since she doesn’t know what awaits her in most directions, she thinks later that she could go back to Vaes Tolorro:

Part of her would have liked nothing more than to lead her people back to Vaes Tolorro, and make the dead city bloom. No, that is defeat. I have something Viserys never had. I have the dragons. The dragons are all the difference.

The dragons always stop her from turning back, from being happy where she is. They are her reason to take the Seven Kingdoms, the motivation she has to restore her family to the glory Aegon the Conqueror raised it to.

A part of Daenerys wanting to turn back to Vaes Tolorro and start her kingdom there, is an interesting contrast to her thoughts on conquering Westeros:

Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

But before she could do that she must conquer.

She has all these wonderfully idealistic dreams for her kingdom, yet all of them are made meaningless with the line “But before she could do that she must conquer”; while she wants everyone in her kingdom to be happy, she’s going to have to kill their Kings and Lords and many of the people before she can achieve that goal. The fact that she has to reclaim the Seven Kingdoms by nature means she will force many to sup on tears. But Vaes Tolorro gives her an out; a ready-made city, a rich oasis in the desert, where she could be Queen and grow her people.

But that will always be too small for Daenerys Targaryen, seed of Kings and Conquerors. She will never be content with the small matters of Essos, not when the Red Keep and the throne that by right is hers is sat by the Usurper and his dogs. The connection she has to the Targaryens who took their dragons and conquered Westeros is always going to pull her away from the part of her that just wants simplicity.

Daenerys’ understanding of how dangerous her dragons are is also touched on when she is in Qarth:

And they must be trained as well, or they will lay my kingdom to waste.

She thinks a lot about how she wants to go back to Westeros, and how she wants to avoid laying waste to it. It’s very interesting to note just how aware she is of her dragons’ destructive nature this early in the story, because it suggests she is much more culpable in their actions than some people want to admit. A lot of characters in the story make decisions that end up being disastrous, but are too young or had no reasonable way of knowing how tremendous those decisions would turn out being – the two obvious examples being Sansa telling Cersei that Ned intends to leave King’s Landing, and Bran warging Hodor – and most people file Drogon’s murder of Hazzea as a similar accident for Daenerys. Yet she is already aware that without training they will completely devastate the lands of Westeros, and actively thinks she should try and train them to avoid that. So, once they are much bigger and flying around Meereen killing sheep, it seems like willful ignorance on her part not to do something about them. I think this is so important because the line between Daenerys and her dragons has always been thin, and the further the series progresses the more that line blurs, so Daenerys choosing to look passed or ignore how violent her dragons are is very interesting in the context of how she views herself.

Viserys Always Said. . .

One part of Daenerys’ story that isn’t talked about enough, is how devastating Westeros will be to her. In A Game of Thrones, she thinks to herself that all the doors will be red in the Seven Kingdoms. She knows that the house with the red door and lemon tree in Braavos is the last place where she felt at home, and ever since then she’s been running from one place to the next, a guest in the house of strangers trying to take advantage of her and her brother’s name. She watched her brother slowly lose his mind the more they were turned away, and had to suffer through his abuses. But when she marries Khal Drogo and meets Ser Jorah Mormont, all the things her brother said about Westeros are suddenly within her reach. Instead of thinking that a house in Braavos she can never return to is her home, she can tell herself that the Seven Kingdoms are her real home; they are the place where she’ll finally feel as if she belongs. She builds it up in her mind as this place where all the doors could be red, every house a home to her. And all the things Viserys said about how beautiful it is also stay with Dany:

She wondered whether Aegon’s Red Keep had a pool like this, and fragrant gardens full of lavender and mint. It must, surely. Viserys always said the Seven Kingdoms were more beautiful than any other place in the world.

And when thinking of Westeros, Daenerys specifically thinks that it is home. Previously in A Game of Thrones, Viserys misunderstands her when she says “home” because Daenerys had never viewed Westeros as her home. But now all of that has changed, and Westeros has become a promise to her. She never feels quite at home with the Dothraki, she certainly does not feel at home in Qarth, but waiting for her across the Narrow Sea is the most beautiful place on earth - and she is going to be the Queen.

But us readers have spent much more time in Westeros than Daenerys has, and we know that almost everything Viserys said wasn’t true. The Red Keep is a beautiful castle, but it has no pools or gardens that could compete with Xaro Xhoan Daxos’ manse. Even at Westeros’ height, it lags behind as far as arts and architecture and all the small beauties Daenerys is so enamored by in Essos. And Westeros is far from its best; while Daenerys sits in Xaro’s pool dreaming of gardens of lavender and mint, the War of the Five Kings is tearing Westeros apart. It was never going to live up to the place Viserys told Daenerys it would be, but the War of the Five Kings leaves it broken and fractured in a way Westeros had never seen before. It is not going to be the home Daenerys needs it to be.

The idea of Westeros being Dany’s house with the red door is something that follows her through the next two books, as well. In A Clash of Kings, Daenerys has firmly rejected any other future she could have to chase the Iron Throne, but she has yet to hit the emotional lows that A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons bring her to. She has almost never felt at home her whole life, and the exclusion she feels from both the Dothraki and the Qartheen pushes her further into the promises of Westeros’ red doors, but she is not hopeless in Essos yet and still enjoys so much of its cities and cultures. The next two books will find her in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, though, and her hatred of those cities will make her emotional dependence on Westeros grow.

A Horse Girl With A Curious Pet

A huge part of Daenerys arc is how out of place she is. A combination of being the daughter of a disgraced King from a place she’s never set foot, to being a little girl running from place to place never settling, to being sold as a child bride to the Dothraki, Daenerys has never actually had a people or a place where she feels she belongs. A lot of her more problematic characteristics come from the need she has to find a place where she feels at home.

Being a Khaleesi is the closest Daenerys has come to being somewhere she feels she belongs, but the last few chapters of A Game of Thrones saw that completely implode. While she still has a khalasar and her own blood riders, there’s a distance she has from the Dothraki that is heightened in A Clash of Kings. This book is an introduction to a lot of the issues people point to when saying Daenerys is a colonizer and white savior:

She glanced at her bloodriders, their dark almond-shaped eyes giving no hint of their thoughts. Is it only the plunder they see? she wondered. How savage we must seem to these Qartheen.

The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them.

Daenerys does not understand the Dothraki, and is still an outsider among them. When she enters Qarth and sees all the beauty and splendor of the city, she quickly favors their way over that of her khalasar. Daenerys’ thoughts on the Dothraki are far from simple, since she herself is the victim of their more negative views on people and women specifically, but she also refuses to see them in a different light. She doesn’t even consider the possibility that the Dothraki could settle in Westeros and adjust to a more permanent lifestyle; instead she tries to find a new army to take Westeros with.

It’s really hard to find the line on what is reasonable from Daenerys in this situation, and what is her being irrational. She was sold to Khal Drogo as a child bride and brutalized for weeks or months, and then saw her life fall apart when she demanded the Dothraki be more humane in their warfare, so certain misgivings she has are reasonable.

But Daenerys doesn’t acknowledge her own culpability, and how she herself is not that far removed from the “savagery” of the Dothraki. When she thinks on how the Dothraki sack and ruin cities, it is in the context of her using them to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. Even though she could take her dragons and khalasar and live a perfect and peaceful life in the Free Cities, Daenerys is choosing to take an army – which she views as savage – and conquer a continent.

And there is a certain dismissiveness she has when addressing their beliefs and customs:

Other searchers returned with tales of other fruit trees, hidden behind closed doors in secret gardens. Aggo showed her a courtyard overgrown with twisting vines and tiny green grapes, and Jhogo discovered a well where the water was pure and cold. Yet they found bones too, the skulls of the unburied dead, bleached and broken. "Ghosts," Irri muttered. "Terrible ghosts. We must not stay here, Khaleesi, this is their place."

"I fear no ghosts. Dragons are more powerful than ghosts." And figs are more important. "Go with Jhiqui and find me some clean sand for a bath, and trouble me no more with silly talk."

In the above exchange between Daenerys and Irri, she does have a point. If they decide not to stay in Vaes Tolorro, they could die of dehydration and exhaustion; Daenerys does not really have a choice, they must stay in the ghost city. But she has no patience for the religious beliefs of the Dothraki, and how important they are to the culture, referring to it as “silly talk”. As we see in later books, there is often a logic to Dothraki superstition and Daenerys would be better off if she took Irri and Jhiqui’s advice into consideration.

Speaking of how Daenerys overlooks how important some things are to the Dothraki, I think this passage is especially illuminating:

“We are the blood of your blood,” said Aggo, “sworn to live and die as you do. Let us walk with you in this dark place, to keep you safe from harm.”

This is right before Daenerys going into the House of the Undying, when she is telling her blood riders that she must go alone. One thing that I want to make clear, is that the blood riders are very different from any other type of group sworn to protect their King/Queen; the Knights of the Kingsguard, for example, are sworn to die in defense of their King, but are under no oath to die if their king does, and won’t be punished by death if they save themselves instead of their king. Dothraki blood riders, on the other hand, are sworn to die after they avenge their Khal; so, if Daenerys dies, she has sworn her blood riders to committing suicide. The interesting thing is, Daenerys never really thinks much about that; I think, in her mind, blood riders were something that khals had and so she should have them too, never really thinking further on what she was swearing these men to do. Daenerys builds her brand on being very anti-slavery, and the blood riders live much better lives than chattel slaves, but there is something interesting to the idea that Daenerys has a group of men essentially chained to her – because their lives depend on hers, and as the quote above shows, they actively seek out to be with her when things are most dangerous; not because they want to protect her, but because they are risking their own lives when they let her leave. Of course, she didn’t force them into being her blood riders so they chose this, but Daenerys never thinks on what her choices mean for their lives when she does something risky.

Daenerys’ thoughts on the savagery of the Dothraki leads her to distance herself from the Dothraki when she arrives in Qarth, and she begins acting like the Qartheen to try and win their favor. She dresses in their traditional clothing, lives in Xaro’s palace, does not comment (or think to herself) on the city’s slaves, and tries to use their political systems to buy an army and fleet to sail to Westeros. This leads to some conflict with Jorah, who is instantly distrustful of Pyat Pree and Xaro Xhoan Daxos. Their arguments over the Qartheen are so insightful as far as both of their characters individually, and the relationship they have.

The things Jorah tells Daenerys about Qarth are not inherently wrong, and he actually gives her good advice. From his perspective, Daenerys has told him she thinks Xaro and Pyat Pree will help her win her crown, but he knows by instinct these men are scheming, so he tries to remind her of the reality of conquering Westeros. But the problem is the way he delivers the advice, and how he assumes Daenerys is much more naïve and stupid than she is:

Sometimes he thinks of me as a child he must protect, and sometimes as a woman he would like to bed, but does he ever truly see me as his queen?

Daenerys is aware of how he views and sexualizes her, but she also notices the way he sometimes treats her as if she’s a child. The way Jorah talks to her makes Daenerys both sad and upset; even her closest advisor doesn’t treat her like a Queen.

But Dany isn’t entirely blameless in why her advisors don’t fully trust her to act as Queen. It becomes much clearer in the Plaza of Punishment, when she doesn’t reveal her plan to Barristan or Jorah for really no particular reason, but she has a problem of communicating with her advisors. Since we are in Dany’s head, we understand that she too is nervous and distrustful of Xaro and Pyat Pree, and is trying to use them just as much as they want to use her. But all she tells Jorah is that she thinks they will help her win her crown, when she is actively taking measures to protect herself from Xaro and Pyat Pree. While she is still outsmarted a bit by the rich merchants of Qarth, Daenerys sees through a huge amount of their lies and flattery. Knowing that Pyat Pree would only show her the parts of Qarth that fit his narrative, Daenerys picked groups of her men to search every street of the city, both day and night. She also keeps guards with her dragons all day and all night, in case someone were to try and steal them.

It says a lot about him that Jorah naturally assumes the least of her, but it becomes a growing problem for Daenerys that she is unwilling to explain her actions to anyone. The reason for that, of course, is that she is Daenerys Targaryen, blood of the dragon, and her word should be law. She has an expectation for how people should treat her as a Targaryen Queen, and I’ll get into that more below, but it is a huge factor in how she interacts with those under her when she disagrees with them. She rarely understands why people don’t jump to follow her.

And as Daenerys grows further from Ser Jorah and the Dothraki, she is trying to win over the people of Qarth. As I said above, she is trying to use them to get to Westeros, so she never invests in them the way she did the Dothraki, but in order to win their favor she has to follow their customs and traditions. And to do that, she takes advantage of Xaro’s own ambition, by living in his palace and using his ideas to make enough money to buy the Thirteen and Pureborn into her favor.

I really want to emphasize how well Daenerys is treated in Qarth, even though they refuse to help her get to Westeros. I titled this “The Beggar Queen”, because Daenerys thinking of herself as one is extremely telling as to her expectations of people around her. Here is how Daenerys lives in Qarth:

Trader captains brought lace from Myr, chests of saffron from Yi Ti, amber and dragonglass out of Asshai. Merchants offered bags of coin, silversmiths rings and chains. Pipers piped for her, tumblers tumbled, and jugglers juggled, while dyers draped her in colors she had never known existed. A pair of Johos Nhai presented her with one of their striped zorses, black and white and fierce. A widow brought the dried corpse of her husband, covered with a crust of silvered leaves; such remnants were believed to have great power, especially if the deceased had been a sorcerer, as this one had. And the Tourmaline Brotherhood pressed on her a crown wrought in the shape of a three-headed dragon; the coils were yellow gold, the wings silver, the headed carved from jade, ivory, and onyx.

Yet this is how she thinks on all of her gifts:

I have become the most splendid beggar in the world, but a beggar all the same.

The people of Qarth are willing to give Daenerys everything the entire world has to offer, except the Iron Throne. And even though Daenerys has received plenty from Qarth, she leaves feeling used:

They never saw me for a queen, she thought bitterly. I was only an afternoon’s amusement, a horse girl with a curious pet.

I think this highlights a certain attitude of entitlement Daenerys has. If you look from the perspective of the Qartheen, they have no incentive to help her reclaim Westeros. She wants to sail immediately, before her dragons could help her with the conquest, and she wants to take their ships and their soldiers to do it. She can’t offer them any improved position, because they are wealthy beyond comprehension, and she can’t offer any improvement in their businesses because they already trade freely with Westeros. The only thing she is offering is the name Daenerys Targaryen, which is meaningless to the Essosi who never loved the Valyrians, and never had any investment in who sat the Iron Throne. Yet Daenerys, even though she has almost nothing to offer, refuses to beg:

“Tell me the words of the Pureborn,” prompted Xaro Xhoan Daxos. “Tell me what they said to sadden the queen of my heart.”

“They said no.” The wine tasted of pomegranates and hot summer days. “They said it with great courtesy, to be sure, but under all the lovely words, it was still no.”

“Did you flatter them?”

“Shamelessly.”

“Did you weep?”

“The blood of the dragon does not weep,” she said testily.

The only gift Daenerys keeps of all the riches she received from men looking to see her dragons, is the crown made to look like a three headed dragon:

“Viserys sold my mother’s crown, and men called him a beggar. I shall keep this crown, and men will call me a queen.” And so she did, though the weight of it made her neck ache.

It’s very symbolic that the crown makes her neck hurt, but it’s also very interesting how she draws parallels between herself and Viserys. Being placed in a position where she is trying to buy and negotiate her way to the Iron Throne, she starts to understand the fevered madness that drove her brother:

She hated it, as her brother must have. All those years of running from city to city one step ahead of the Usurper’s knives, pleading for help from archons and princes and magisters, buying our food with flattery. He must have known how they mocked him. Small wonder he turned so angry and bitter. In the end it had driven him mad. It will do the same to me if I let it.

The idea of being passed over, of being laughed at, is enough to make Daenerys have to pause and check herself. She understands how begging to lesser men, when she is the blood of the dragon, could break her brother.

The rejection from the Qartheen is another step in the long walk Daenerys is taking to isolation and paranoia. A Dance with Dragons is the arc that most focuses on how paranoid and alone Daenerys is becoming, but even back in A Clash of Kings, she is starting to mistrust everyone around her; and for good reason. Daenerys is young and incredibly beautiful, and also has the only three dragons in the entire world. Once she hatches them, it becomes incredibly hard for her to distinguish who follows her or wants to have a relationship with her because of her, or if they simply want her dragons. Xaro Xhoan Daxos tries to trick Daenerys into marrying him, because Qartheen custom would allow him to claim one of her dragons. The warlocks also are trying to use Daenerys for her dragons, as they try and lure her to the House of the Undying to feed off the magical energy she has.

Quaithe is introduced in this book, and from the start she tries to warn and guide Daenerys against people who want her only for her dragons:

From her Dany received only a warning. "Beware," the woman in the red lacquer mask said.

"Of whom?"

"Of all. They shall come day and night to see the wonder that has been born again into the world, and when they see they shall lust. For dragons are fire made flesh, and fire is power."

All of the elements in Daenerys life start to add up to her feeling alone and cornered; she doesn’t trust the Dothraki to take Westeros, the Qartheen have refused to help her sail the Narrow Sea, she is fighting with her closest companion Jorah, and the mysterious maegi Quaithe is warning her to trust no one. All of this leads to Daenerys going to the House of the Undying for answers, but I’ll get into that more below.

What is very interesting about Daenerys, though, is that after the House of the Undying goes so poorly, she throws herself back into the Dothraki culture. As a show of defiance to the Qartheen who take all of their gifts and kindnesses back after she burns the Warlocks, she searches the docks while clad in the garb of the Dothraki. The lesson she learns from Qarth is that she hates compromise. She tried fitting in with them, to play their games and follow their rules, and they still refused to take her seriously. They accepted her gifts, listened to her case, and politely but unequivocally said no. So, what was the point? Why did Daenerys give up the Dothraki, why did she bother bribing lesser men?

In the following books, she will try exceptionally hard to make compromises to rule cities, but she hates it. Even though she wants to do these things for her people, each and every time it takes a part of her, and she starts to lose sight of why she even wants to help the people she hates and rule a city that is determined to deny her. Compromise does not sit well with Daenerys.

Daughter of Three

The main points of Daenerys’ chapters in this book are foreshadowing and prophecy. I’ve always found A Clash of Kings to be such a great book on its own, but an absolutely amazing second act to A Game of Thrones, because the first book sets up in the very first chapter the high fantasy conflict with the Others, and ends on the incredibly high fantasy aspect of Daenerys walking out of a burning pyre with three dragons; but in between, the story dives deep into the political and personal stories of our protagonists. And while people still argue which element this story is “really about”, I think Clash does a great job in establishing that the answer is both. The War of the Five Kings pulls the political plotlines into harsh focus, with character like Catelyn, Tyrion, and Davos consistently acting and reacting to the respective Kings, and characters like Sansa and Arya who focus on the personal fallout of war; but A Clash of Kings also sends Daenerys and Bran on their magical journeys, and permanently sets them on very high fantasy paths. In the same book that sees the political foregrounded, two of our main characters leap forward in their magical progression. Daenerys in particular highlights the way the political and magical intertwine, and how the two can work together.

The climax of Daenerys’ arc in this book is extremely magical. The rejection of Xaro and the Pureborn leaves her feeling like the answers offered by the Warlocks is her only choice, so she goes to the House of the Undying. Once she’s inside, she sees a whirlwind of visions that give readers a glimpse into the past and the future, as it relates to Daenerys and the rest of our characters. I’m going to try and break all of them down, and what I think they mean and why the Undying choose to show them to her.

There’s two different sets of visions Daenerys sees when she is in the House of the Undying; the first visions she sees as she is trying to find the Undying, and is tempted to look into doors. This is how Pyat Pree describes them:

“Within, you will see many things that disturb you. Visions of loveliness and visions of horror, wonders and terrors. Sights and sounds of days gone by and days to come and days that never were. Dwellers and servitors may speak to you as you go. Answer or ignore them as you choose, but enter no room until you reach the audience chamber.”

The visions Daenerys sees are of the Five Kings tearing Westeros apart, the Red Wedding, Ser Willem Darry in the house with the red door, the Mad King telling his pyromancers to burn King’s Landing, and Rhaegar talking to Elia about the Prince that was Promised. These visions are separate from the prophecies she receives from the Undying, and I don’t think we’re supposed to connect them to Daenerys or to each other. Some of them go together, but some of them simply don’t; I think GRRM intentionally separated them to show these aren’t necessarily about Daenerys, or even connected in any way. I do think the visions connect to Daenerys in thematic ways, though.

The first two she sees, of small men who represent Kings tearing the woman meant to be Westeros apart, and of a dead King with the head of a wolf at a feast, clearly go together. The first she sees is what the Five Kings do to Westeros, and the second is the climax of the war and its technical end, when Robb Stark is killed at the Red Wedding. These two visions don’t connect to Daenerys as much as they are a broad foreshadowing of GRRM’s world and his books to come; but I think it’s interesting that the glimpses Daenerys sees of Westeros are horrific, terrible things. I’ve always found the use of the phrase “mute appeal” to describe how Robb looks at Daenerys to be very interesting; GRRM only uses it twice more in the series, once to describe Ned’s pleading gaze, and then he describes Jinglebell as looking at Catelyn with mute appeal before she kills him. It’s as if Robb is begging Daenerys not to do something.

As Daenerys runs from the horrors of the Red Wedding, she sees her room from the house with the red door:

“Little princess, there you are,” he said in his gruff kind voice. “Come,” he said, “come to me, my lady, you’re home now, you’re safe now.”

Daenerys remembers that Willem Darry is dead right before she enters the room, which Pyat Pree told her she absolutely must not do. But that vision is the one thing that tempts her, brings her right to the threshold. In this case, turning around was the right choice; but I think this vision has broader imagery. Daenerys, so many times, comes so close to turning around and being the “Little Princess” again, an innocent child who didn’t want to conquer a place she’d never been. But she always turns around. She’s tempted the most in A Dance with Dragons, when she thinks of having a house with Daario free of being a Queen, but she can never commit to that kind of life. It’s not her anymore; she can’t go back.

Then she sees her father in the Throne Room, getting ready to burn King’s Landing. On a meta level, this vision exists mostly to set up Catelyn’s last chapter with Jaime, as well as Jaime’s A Storm of Swords arc; but it is also the vision most connected to Daenerys. For the first time, she’s seeing the real version of her father, the truth of the man she wants to remind people in Westeros; and she’s seeing her future, too. Daenerys was right when she thinks the people of King’s Landing will greet her like they did her father, because she’s going to burn the city.

Her last vision before reaching the Undying is of Rhaegar talking to Elia Martell, and naming his son Aegon. This is the only vision that Daenerys understands; she has no idea what the first two are, and doesn’t connect the vision of the Mad King to her father, but she does know Rhaegar. This is the first time she hears the phrase “the dragon has three heads”, which will chase her through Storm and Dance. Rhaegar also says that his son is The Prince that was Promised, and that “his is the song of ice and fire”. A Clash of Kings is the first book that really starts to introduce the overarching prophecies of the series, and it’s interesting to see The Prince that was Promised introduced in this context; Rhaegar knows something that we don’t, something about his son.

When Daenerys finally finds the Undying, she sees a second set of visions, this set all about her. First, she gets her prophecies of three:

. . . three fires must you light. . . one for life and one for death and one to love. . . Her own heart was beating in unison to the one that floated before her, blue and corrupt. . . three mounts must you ride. . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love. . . The voices were growing louder, she realized, and it seemed her heart was slowing, and even her breath. . .  three treasons will you know. . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love. . .

It’s very interesting that these prophecies end on the note of a treason for love. Someone is going to betray Daenerys for someone they love, and that’s the end; I don’t have a firm grasp on the other treasons, fires, or mounts, but this one, to me, has to be Jon.

Next, Daenerys gets her mother of dragons prophecies; this is the first:

Viserys screamed as the molten gold ran down his cheeks and filled his mouth. A tall lord with copper skin and silver-gold hair stood beneath the banner of a fiery stallion, a burning city behind him. Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman’s name. . . mother of dragons, daughter of death. . .

The three things connecting Rhaegar, Rhaego, and Viserys seems to be that all three were the Heir to the Iron Throne when they died. Their three deaths help to push Daenerys into taking the Iron Throne. Daenerys having the title daughter of death is extremely fitting with her previous imagery; everything about her life has come from death. Rhaegar dying, the Mad King dying, her father’s fleet being destroyed on the night she was born, Viserys being crowned in molten gold, Drogo and Rhaego’s deaths. She is the product of tragedy.

These are the next visions she sees:

Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies. . .

The first two are clearly Stannis and Young Griff/Aegon VI, and seem pretty straightforward; she slays the lie that Stannis is Azor Ahai, and that Young Griff is Aegon VI. The last one is a lot less clear. I really can’t say what this is. I know some people think the Stone Beast is Jon Connington with Greyscale, but to me that seems meaningless in light of the second lie. Why would both Young Griff and Jon Connington need separate lies? Jon Connington isn’t lying about anything. The imagery of a great stone beast is very prominent in all the books; from the prophecy of Azor Ahai waking dragons out of stone, to Sansa being described as a winged beast escaping the Red Keep, to Davos’ description of Dragonstone. I just can’t quite pin down what GRRM is foreshadowing.

The last prophecy she receives is this:

Her sliver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . mother of dragons, bride of fire. . .

All of these are pretty clear; Drogo was her first fire, then Euron, and finally Jon. The description of Jon “filling the air with sweetness” is very ominous, and just makes me even more confident he is the treason for love. I know there are some great metas that discuss sweetness in Daenerys’ arc, I just can’t think of any right now. But the idea of sweetness being bad, and foreshadowing a treason from Jon, is really highlighted by Daenerys hearing this prophecy in Qarth of all places. Time and again, the city’s exterior of sweet smells and beautiful buildings is used to hide the treachery underneath.

After the prophecies, Daenerys sees a whirlwind of past and future events:

Shadows whirled and danced inside a tent, boneless and terrible. A little girl ran barefoot toward a big house with a red door. Mirri Maz Duur shrieked in the flames, a dragon bursting from her brow. Behind a silver horse the bloody corpse of a naked man bounced and dragged. A white lion ran through grass taller than a man. Beneath the Mother of Mountains, a line of naked crones crept from a great lake and knelt shivering before her, their grey heads bowed. Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands as she raced by on her silver, riding like the wind. “Mother!” they cried. “Mother, mother!” They were reaching for her, touching her, tugging at her cloak, the hem of her skirt, her foot, her leg, her breast. They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them. . .

The vision of her “Myhsa” moment leads into the realities of the Undying:

The Undying were all around her, blue and cold, whispering as they reached for her, pulling, stroking, tugging at her clothes, touching her with their dry cold hands, twining their fingers through her hair. All the strength had left her limbs.

The wording is intentionally similar, because we’re supposed to connect the Undying feeding off Daenerys, and the reaction she has to “her people”. In A Dance with Dragons, she turns Quentyn Martell and the swords of Dorne away because she’s not going to leave Meereen, maybe ever. Daenerys loves being a savior to the people of Essos, the feeling she gets when they scream “mother!”, the feeling that what she’s doing is right and good. But apart from those incredible highs, when Daenerys has to live in the choices she made to lead the Essosi, she just hates it. In A Storm of Swords, she does give her people fire and life, opening her arms up to them, but it’s not sustainable. Her fire burns out, and she’s left feeling empty and alone and more than anything angry at the people who made her choose to stay.

The Dragons Are Returned

After Pyat Pree and the Warlocks betray Daenerys, she has finally had enough of Qarth; the warlocks hate her for burning down the House of the Undying, Xaro hates her because she turns down his proposals, and the people hate her for all she’s done in Qarth. And if they all hate her, Daenerys is done playing their games.

The next time she goes out, she does so in the traditional garb and sandals of the Dothraki, with a bell in her hair to signify victory against the Warlocks. When Illyrio Mopatis comes through with Arstan Whitebeard and Strong Belwas, Daenerys commands them to name her ships Vhagar, Meraxes, and Balerion; the world will look upon her ships and know that the dragons are returned. Where she wavered from her the Dothraki, by the end of A Clash of Kings, Daenerys is ready to double down on the “savagery” of them. She’s tired of playing nice, of diplomatically talking and negotiating. This book perfectly sets Daenerys up for the path she decides to take in A Storm of Swords. She’s going to get the army she needs, no matter what.

Even if it means Fire & Blood.

#anti daenerys #asoiaf meta #game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #daenerys targaryen

[whenthemarshmallowmettheslayer]

In the regular pjo series, do you think Luke could have been saved if Thalia had been brought back sooner? Or do you think him poisoning her tree a sign of giving up on her for good?

My answer is no. I still think Luke would have joined Kronos. Even though Thalia’s “death” was a (justified) reason why Luke went against the Olympians there were other reasons he was against them. 

“Thalia gave her life to save you,” I said, gritting my teeth. “And this is how you repay her?” 

“Don’t speak of of Thalia!” he shouted. “The gods let her die. That’s one of the many things they will pay for.” 

Okay, so you’ll probably wondering why I think Thalia coming back early wouldn’t have saved Luke. 

1.) Luke was very bitter about the quest he was sent on. Partially because where was the glory of doing something someone else has already done (I’ve said this before but this is very ironic considering Percy & co in every book are often doing something or defeating some monster a classic Greek monster till it gets to point they’ve done more than any other Greek hero) and because Luke failed the quest; when Luke failed and came back to camp he was treated with pity and this was when Kronos slipped into his dreams. 

“Exactly,” Luke said. “Where’s the glory in repeating what others has done? All the gods know how to do is replay their past. My heart wasn’t in it. The dragon in the garden gave me this-“ he pointed angrily at his scar - “and when I came back, all I got was pity. I wanted to pull Olympus down stone by stone right then, but I bided my time. I began to dream of Kronos. He convinced me to steal something worthwhile, something no hero had ever had the courage to take.”

2.) Luke’s love for Annabeth - who was a member of Luke’s found family and the first healthy family Luke had -  wasn’t enough to keep him compared to his anger at Hermes and the other Olympians. 

3.) Third reason is that I see Kronos slipping into another demi-god’s dreams (Luke wouldn’t be that far gone yet and even when he was bad in the books he still gave Annabeth the offer to join him on the Princess Andromeda) and convincing them to give a monster permission to enter the camp like he had made Luke do to Percy in the books. The monster would mean that the gods - most likely Hades would be blamed if not him the next safe assumption would be Hera - were still trying to kill Thalia and camp (the place Grover said they would be safe at) was not safe for Thalia. 

(The monster would either be a hellhound or a cyclops so Hades would be blamed. Tbh I’m leaning towards cyclops because that is a monster both Luke and Annabeth were not fans of even years later. It, Annabeth traveling with Tyson, is something Luke throws in her face when Percy, Tyson, and her were captured on Princess Andromeda.) 

If the monsters kept being let in and someone got hurt or died instead of Thalia (who was the target of the attacks) I can see Thalia deciding to leave Camp Half-Blood to take Artemis on her offer on becoming a huntress which would only further push Luke further into Kronos’ arms. Why do I think Thalia would take up Artemis’ offer even in this timeline? 

Because Thalia did not want to child of prophecy. Hell, Percy didn’t want to be it either. The only reason Percy did was because he found out Nico was Hades’ son and Percy refused for Nico (who had already ran away into the woods) to go through that. Percy stepped up and claimed the great prophecy as his own because he cared for Nico. (Looking back I really hate the disservice HoO did to Percy. There’s a lot of moments - why would he want to meet Hercules?! He knows what Hercules did to Zoe who he became friend with during TTC! - where Percy is out of character and how Rick wrote Percy’s interactions with Nico is part of that list. There’s a wonderful meta on the subject I can give a link to if anyone wants to see what I’m talking about.) After claiming it, Percy made Annabeth and Grover swear to secrecy so no one could find out and put Nico into further danger. 

Okay, back on track. Thalia did not want to be the child of the prophecy and without Percy (Bianca, and Nico) there she would be only (known) candidate there for quite some time. So taking Artemis on her offer would mean no demi-gods at camp would be at danger because of her and she shouldn’t be the child of prophecy since she couldn’t age. 

This - Thalia being attacked by Hades especially by a hellhound or cyclops and her having leaving - would only push Luke further into Kronos’ arms. 

(I want you to know I’m tempted to write this now that I’ve been thinking about it for a few days. That and I have a surprisingly happy headcanon on this au despite my belief Luke would still turn.) 

#luke castellan #thalia grace #percy jackson series #asks #anti hoo

[him-e]

Hi, I'm the anon who wrote the 5 asks about the Dany plotline and GRRM. I'd like to apologize to u for lashing out, it was uncalled for and u have every right to state those opinions regardless of what I (or anyone else) think. Feeling hurt by the show wrt Dany's story made me react badly to the idea that it was actually acceptable, especially coming from someone whose ideas I appreciate so much and have spent hours invested on. You can answer them, delete them, idk, I just wanted to say sorry.

No need to apologize, anon! I’m currently on semi-to-full hiatus and that’s why I’m being so slow at answering messages—and yeah, I understand the frustration completely, and I don’t blame you for it. ;))

I’m going to answer your ask anyway. Long reply after the cut:

I hope this doesn’t come off as offensive or confrontational bc that’s not the point, I’ve enjoyed reading your ASOIAF/GoT and TB metas for years and would not reply to them if I weren’t invested on them. That said, I’d like to ask why do you insist on 1) arguing that Dany’s dark turn was reasonable if you don’t hate her and 2) defending D&D and blaming GRRM for what happened on the show. When it comes to 1), sure, Dany might *accidentally* burn KL, but to willingly choose to burn thousands of innocents? She may accept that some casualties would have to occur, but not in the way that the show presented (in that she had the choice to not kill anyone but did). You argue that that direction was valid of because of the recurring theme of how power corrupts, but then I’d argue, what if it were Sansa, another character very much involved in the world of politics? Would you be ok if people argued that it’d make sense for her to give up her ideals and become just as power-hungry and cynic and bitter as Littlefinger? Probably not; what’s the point if those characters become their worst possible selves? Dany was made a villain, was implied to be mad and was called “your satanic majesty”. I really can’t see how you could call those writing decisions valid. When it comes to 2), I’m not saying GRRM is perfect, he’s been quite callous in the book series and especially in F&B when it comes to social issues, but D&D are also professional writers with critical thinking skills and moral values of their own who could have tried to alleviate the problems in the books and not made things even worse. That’s why I don’t get why you’re blaming GRRM for what D&D wrote when the former wasn’t even involved in the ending’s writing process aside from possibly giving them an outline of what happens. GRRM should be criticized for what he wrote and will write, and the finale may have feel been a product of his ideas, but he still has no (moral or legal) responsibility in helping to make the TV show better or worse.

The reason why I maintain that the show’s ending is a (badly written) version of GRRM’s ending is that I can 100% see Martin’s blueprint in the climax+anticlimax structure of the season. The way it twists the audience’s expectations and delves into what happens AFTER the final battle is won, the way it subverts the most reliable narrative conventions and, instead of building up in a crescendo towards a final spectacle where the heroes would sacrifice their lives to save the world in a blaze of glory, it shifts gears almost unpleasantly, slows down to show what happens to them once their heroic purpose is fulfilled and zooms in on their identity crisis, their depression and isolation and sudden lack of purpose… it’s all too deliberate, and IN MY PERSONAL OPINION it’s done with a vision in mind—something I don’t believe d&d would spontaneously put any effort in, especially not if GRRM had already served them a perfectly fine, crowd-pleasing endgame involving Dany’s heroic sacrifice against the Others.

I understand my stance might come across as “defending d&d and blaming GRRM”, but I’m really not? I’ve often repeated how I believe d&d messed things up and that GRRM’s version will make infinitely more sense and be infinitely better written, and I’m sure he will avoid the pitfalls of cynical, circular storytelling, because he’s ultimately a better writer and someone who believes in idealism and true heroism even as he deconstructs it. How can the overall narrative remain uplifting & give a message of hope and faith for humanity while still telling a story that ends with Dany’s descent into “true villainy” (but haven’t we repeated ad nauseam that heroes and villains are too reductive categories for asoiaf?), I don’t know, but it’s not my job to figure it out, and I ultimately trust & respect Martin’s vision and ability to tell the story HE wants.

sure, Dany might *accidentally* burn KL, but to willingly choose to burn thousands of innocents? She may accept that some casualties would have to occur, but not in the way that the show presented

1) I’ve always conceded that, while I think the gist of the storyline is Martin’s, there’s absolutely no guarantee that the battle of King’s Landing will go as we’ve seen in the show, or even happen at the same point of the story (for one thing, Young Griff & JonCon will probably be involved, and that seems more likely to happen before, and not after, the war for the dawn);

2) That said, what I’m relatively confident of, at this point, is that Dany will NOT die in the WftD as a self sacrificial hero (this is entirely FANON SPECULATION, and people treating it like a fixed point in the universe, something the narrative is “inevitably” building towards, is one of the reasons the fandom seems unable to critically analyze show!Dany’s evolution without going hysterical about it and resorting to no true scotsman arguments. I’ve often complained about the dangers of elevating fan theories to canon status, and trust me I never wanted to go full cassandra about this, but here we are). The details and plot points leading up to this might be wildly different from the show’s version, but I think Dany will survive the WftD, which will leave her directionless and purposeless and doubting the truth of her heroic destiny for the first time in her life after she hatched the dragons, and that she’ll cross the ultimate moral horizon in a hail mary to restore that sense of self, that sense of purpose, completing her parabola from princess in rags, to breaker of chains, to conqueror, to savior of humanity, to conqueror again, to TRAGIC HERO. How can this be a valid writing decision, you asked—well, why shouldn’t it? Is something only valid as long as it pleases the audience? What screams tragic hero more than the hero turning into the very thing she swore to eradicate, and realizing it only when it’s too late? There’s something genuinely chilly in Dany’s “if I look back, I’m lost” refrain. This is the mantra of someone who thinks the only way to stay alive is to cross one threshold after the other. So far this coping mechanism has brought her higher, and higher, and higher. But what if it will be her downfall? “I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell”, indeed;

3) Dany’s burning KL *accidentally* is like Stannis burning Shireen “but only if the circumstances are dire enough / the stakes are high enough”. No offense, but this is typical stan logic: you admit the possibility that your faves might go through a dark phase but you don’t want to have to unstan them, so you want them to do bad things for good reasons, or because there’s no other choice, or because “they didn’t know”. That’s understandable, but I don’t think Martin is the type of writer to give his character free passes or soften the blow of their moral crucibles like that. This is NOT to say that the show did Dany’s dark turn WELL, because it DIDN’T—her motivations were all over the place, the turning point (the bells) wasn’t believable because it lacked connection to her character arc, the narrative backed away from showing the attack from her pov which betrays the writers’ inability to make sense of this psychological downfall from HER perspective, etc. But to say “Dany will NEVER! BURN! INNOCENTS! ON PURPOSE!” sounds very, very premature to me.

(re: Sansa, hasn’t power corrupted her too, to an extent? Hasn’t she lied, schemed, manipulated, spilled secrets, in order to restore & secure the Stark hold on the North? Isn’t she queen, in part, because the rest of her family was scattered at the four corners of the known world? I’m not particularly happy with the way she was written this season, and I think some of her choices were questionable; but at the same time I reject the idea that a character ending up more flawed, or morally ambiguous, or less likeable than they were at the beginning must necessarily be bad storytelling)

I’m not saying GRRM is perfect, he’s been quite callous in the book series and especially in F&B when it comes to social issues, but D&D are also professional writers with critical thinking skills and moral values of their own who could have tried to alleviate the problems in the books and not made things even worse. That’s why I don’t get why you’re blaming GRRM for what D&D wrote when the former wasn’t even involved in the ending’s writing process aside from possibly giving them an outline of what happens. GRRM should be criticized for what he wrote and will write, and the finale may have feel been a product of his ideas, but he still has no (moral or legal) responsibility in helping to make the TV show better or worse.

Martin is not responsible of the show’s writing, but he is responsible of the outline he gave to the showrunners, and right now I have no reason to believe they didn’t follow it, at least for the most part. For years I’ve been told that “the show is not the books”, and while that’s certainly true, I can’t, and won’t, separate the show from the books when it comes to book speculation, because the show is still for all intents and purposes an ADAPTATION of the book series, and while it’s irresponsible to expect it to be a 1:1 transcription of what will happen in TWOW and ADOS, it’s also equally (imo) irresponsible to act like the two canons have nothing to do with each other and that it’s stupid to use the show as a resource for book speculation. If people want to pretend the show never happened, good for them, but that’s not the way I think, personally. I don’t blame GRRM for the show’s faults, and my reservations are actually 90% about the EXECUTION of the plot which is ENTIRELY on d&d, but there’s a 10% of my concerns that is about the IDEA in itself, regardless of context and execution—the idea of the story ending with a bittersweet anticlimax involving the death/downfall of the MOST PROMINENT FEMALE HERO OF THE SERIES, who is also the carrier of the most subversive anti-establishment political message in the story.

tldr: I’m not criticizing GRRM for what he hasn’t written yet, but I can certainly criticize him for what I think is a (however botched) adaptation of his outline, if the main selling points of said outline are questionable in themselves. No one can convince me that GRRM told d&d that Jon and Dany would die heroically to save the world and they ARBITRARILY decided to fuck it up for shock value or whatever, and just accidentally stumbled onto a more subversive and provocative ending than what Martin HIMSELF was planning. (that would make them two geniuses, even if the execution sucked, lol)

and if i’m wrong about it, well:

but until then…

#anon #asks #got wank #got asks for ts #got discourse #got finale #got negativity #show vs books #dany discourse #dany** #grrm #asoiaf spec #asoiaf endgame

[megashadowdragon]

fantastic-nonsense . tumblr . com/post/169004280990/fantastic-nonsense-fantastic-nonsense-but

fantastic-nonsense:

fantastic-nonsense:

“But I finally understand why I had to go through all that. I needed to understand what true suffering was so I could be more compassionate to others, even to people like Kuvira.”

So do Eska and Desna just not exist anymore or what????

Korra: “I’m sorry about your father. But he was already fused with Vaatu. I couldn’t save him.”

#man the anger has come back with a vengence after re-watching Light in the Dark #like Korra tried to save Unalaq even after he tried to kill her her family and friends AND after the stunt with Jinora #and she was so sympathetic to Eska and Desna #LIKE WHAT PART OF HER CONDUCT IN THE BACK HALF OF BOOK 2 SCREAMED ‘I NEED TO LEARN HOW TO BE MORE COMPASSIONATE TO THE VILLAINS’?????

I would like to add a little bit more about this. Not only was she continually sympathetic to Eska and Desna and not only did she try and save Unalaq and talk him down before he fused with Vaatu, she was continually empathetic, compassionate, and willing to listen throughout the entirety of Book 3. I’ve covered some of this here (with an excellent response by ikkinthekitsune  ikkinthekitsune . tumblr . com/post/94735240726/on-unalaq-family-parallels-and-korras-character), but I wanted to talk even more about it (especially since the linked meta was written while Book 3 was still airing).

Because first we got this:

Where she calmly talks a man down from committing suicide after owning the fact that it’s her fault he’s an airbender (two incredible signs of character development at once: her new, calm and compassionate demeanor and owning up to her actions and mistakes). She’s still got a smart mouth and a hot temper, and she’s not afraid in the least to speak out (see her conflict with Raiko in the same episode), but it’s been slightly tempered with time, experience, and growth.

And then Korra was the one who pushed for Kai to be accepted as an airbender (most likely due to a three-way mix between thinking of how Wan and Mako were also “liars and thieves” before people came along and helped them get to a better place, about her own past and how she was given second chances, and her general compassion for Kai as an individual).

And she visibly and verbally cared a lot about the new airbenders pressed into service by the Earth Queen, and held herself back a lot during her interactions with the Earth Queen (we heard her frustration, anger, and resentment towards the EQ, but she never actually took it out on the EQ until those last few minutes of “In Harm’s Way” when they were all trying to escape).

And then, the interaction which I consider the crowning glory of Book 3 in terms of character development:

“Little Miss Hothead” who likes to beat things with a stick sat down and had an entire calm, levelheaded, rational conversation with the villain of the season. Would Book 1!Korra ever have calmly sat and had a discussion like this with Amon and Tarrlok? Never. Book 2!Korra attempted to have a discussion like this with Unalaq somewhere in the middle of Book 2, but her stubbornness and unwillingness to do anything but accuse put a quick stop on the conversation. Korra’s discussion with Zaheer was calm, rational, and interested. It was also assertive. Korra repeatedly told Zaheer that his approach and views were wrong and stuck to her own ideals while acknowledging that he had some valid points.

This is something that Korra has actually always been good at, oddly enough; she’s good at taking the best of what someone has to offer and leaving a lot of the worse parts behind (like utilizing Unalaq’s teachings while acknowledging that Unalaq was a bad and misguided person who used his teachings and techniques to cause harm). We just never got to see her have an opportunity to just sit down with the villain and have a calm philisophical discussion about ideals that goes beyond “well your views are wrong!” before now. She wanted answers, and Zaheer gave them to her. But the conversation as a whole is indicative of Korra’s immense character development that has happened from Book 1 to mid-Book 3. She’s gone from hotheaded and overly aggressive to assertive but more patient, restrained, and willing to listen. She’s gone from shouting “you’re wrong!” at people to actually having a discussion around why she thinks they’re wrong. She’s articulating her own ideals and views, something that would have never occured to Book 1!Korra.

Early and mid-Book 3 Korra was basically the best of both worlds: all the fire and spunk but with enough character growth to have that fire tempered with compassion, empathy, and mental/emotional maturity. Early/Mid-Book-3 Korra was Korra at her height: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. She had largely stopped defining herself by her status as the Avatar, took responsibility for her actions, and had grown much more mentally and emotionally mature. And she was compassionate. Incredibly so.

So compassionate and selfless that she proceeded to trade herself for the health and safety of the airbenders three episodes after this conversation:

“Worry about the airbenders first. Then you can worry about saving me.”

Like in what world are her actions not compassionate and selfless? Tenzin said it himself: “There would be no Air Nation without Avatar Korra. She opened the portals and somehow the World began anew for us. And she was even willing to lay down her own life in order to protect ours. There’s no way we can ever repay her for all she’s done. But we can follow her example of service and sacrifice.”

Honestly, her actions in “Enter the Void” and “Venom of the Red Lotus” are possibly the reason I’m most angry about the finale conversation and the compassion line in particular, even all these months later, because it completely invalidates and trivializes the entire reason she ended up poisoned, suffering, and traumatized in the first place. And yet somehow Korra needed to learn more compassion, and somehow the only way to do that was through more suffering. The reasoning is so completely contradictory and contrary to everything Korra had already experienced and the development she had already gone through (twice) it’s ridiculous.

I have my own issues with Korra’s Book 4 arc separate from the line, chiefly the fact that it was basically a repeat of her Books 1-3 development compressed into a single season and trauma-induced, but I keep coming back to that compassion line as the short and sweet “why I disliked the finale as a whole”: it erases and trivializes Korra’s actions and character development over the first three seasons, and Books 1 and 2 in particular. From being compassionate to Tarrlok in “Skeletons in the Closet” to sympathizing with Eska and Desna in “Light in the Dark” to calmly having a conversation with Zaheer about how she sympathized with his views but not his actions in “The Stakeout,” Korra proved time and time again that she was capable of incredible compassion, including to the villains and people she morally opposed.

The fact that Book 4 (specifically the finale) tries to erase this and pretend like Book 4 is the first time she has experienced that kind of pain or exhibited that level of compassion makes me incredibly angry and upset. It was cruel, repetitive, and highly unnecessary, and served as little more than a plot device and excuse for Bryke to do a rehash of Korra’s character development in the first three seasons under the guise of a recovery arc (up to and including Korra once again defining her self-worth on her ability to perform her duties as the Avatar instead of the realization of intrinsic self-worth she had as a person that she had realized by the end of “Light in the Dark”). Her PTSD in Book 4 is treated more as a (very condescending) lesson than a legitimately poignant recovery arc outside of select episodes (”Korra Alone” and “Beyond the Wilds”). Apparently, continuing Korra’s character development as they were either wasn’t interesting enough for Bryke or they’d run out of ideas; I can’t decide which possibility I like less.

#lok #legend of korra #lok meta #lok fanwank #legend of korra meta

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

SPN 14x18, Absence -- Review

The controversial episode is at last upon us. This week we had 14x18, Absence and I have some thoughts on this episode. Now, I haven't read any other metas for this episode before writing this so I apologize if I'm repeating thoughts that have already been vocalized. There will be spoilers so I strongly advise against reading this if you haven't seen the episode.

Overall Thoughts

We'll begin with how I felt overall with this episode. Structurally, this was a very good episode. It had two central purposes it needed to fulfill and I think it did a very good job with that; saying good-bye to Mary and the culmination of Jack's descent into the Dark Side. The music was perfect. The cinematography was fantastic in this episode. The framing in these shots were beautiful. It really made you feel like you were in the episode. Cinematography often tells a story in much the same way that writing does and I really appreciated how well the cinematography was telling this story. Like for instance, the moment in the very end of the episode where they're burning Mary's body and it's being done at a crossroads and the camera pulls away at the very end to reveal the crossroads, it just gives you this very eery feeling of how things are not okay. It's symbolic of the crossroads Sam, Dean, and Cas are currently on. Where do they go from here? How do they tackle this conflict they're currently in? Which path do they take? And it's also very telling that Sam and Cas are on a different crossroads path than Dean in that scene. Sam and Cas are on the crossroads that leads to the impala which is symbolic of home and family and Dean is on a completely different crossroads path. And of course, the crossroads can also be seen as representative of the crossroads Jack is currently on, as well. Where does he go from here? Because of his one action, a reflex at that, everything has changed for him and he has no idea which path to take. Should he take the path that leads to the impala? A part of him is afraid to do that because he knows nothing will be the same again even if the Winchesters accept him despite what happened to Mary. Or should he take a different path that he's never known before? He's also scared to do that because it's unfamiliar as well. So that one pull away shot did a fantastic job of depicting all of that in a few short seconds.

Saying Good-Bye to Mary Winchester

I'm of two minds on the death of Mary Winchester Part Two. I don't particularly appreciate what this show does to its female characters in order to provide man-pain. But I do definitely feel like in this moment, Mary fared better than a lot of the other female characters in this show's past. This episode basically served as an entire memorial of Mary and that's something we don't typically get a lot of on this show so I will give the show that. And I also appreciate the symmetry in her death. In her first death, she was trying to protect Sam from Azazel and essentially at the same time, protecting Sam from his own fate, protecting Sam from himself. And in this moment, 14 years later, she's also trying to protect Jack from himself. So always and forever in her last moments, she's trying to protect her children and I admire that. And I also enjoy the opposition of her death in which her first death was something that was no doubt quite painful for her but her second death was something that was painless and she probably didn't even realize it was happening. I'm a little salty that her death was something that happened off-screen and that it wasn't a "blaze of glory" kind of thing and that it was something as stereotypical as a mother trying to protect her child but at the same time, I also can appreciate that as well. If that makes any sense? And I enjoy the idea behind Mary finally being at complete joy and peace with John. Now, is this The John or is it a representation of her memories? Who knows? I like to think it's The John, though. What with everything that happened in the 300th episode. Is it strange that John's name also wasn't included on her door? A little. But that's not to mean that John doesn't have another door that leads to that same heaven. As humans, we like to think in straight lines but heaven wasn't created by humans so I doubt it functions in a straight line capacity. 

I always figured Mary was going to die eventually so it wasn't really all that shocking. She's basically had one foot on Death's porch since she first met Billie in season 12. And I've been thinking on Amara a little bit on this and on whether or not the Universe as its own entity actually approved of the resurrection of Mary. Perhaps, Jack's existence was the Universe's way of rectifying the decision that Amara made. I feel like we've seen both with Mary and Samuel that the longer you're dead and then brought back, you come back just a little bit different. You feel off in a way, like you shouldn't be there. I think Samuel tried to hide it by latching onto Mary and thinking, "If I just have Mary back then maybe this feeling of wrongness will go away." And a lot of season 12 I think played into Mary trying to figure out a place in the world all the while still feeling like she was somehow "wrong". She eventually got to a place where maybe not feeling 100% like she belonged, but she found contentment and she was able to kind of bury it down. But anyway, that's just a head canon I play around with sometimes. 

I loved how so much of this episode was done in flashbacks paying homage to Mary and showing exactly what she meant to each of them and I thought that was very nice. All to culminate in the very end of them in the funeral having to say good-bye to her. 

Let's Talk About Jack

Jack was really interesting in this episode. Particularly, in his dealings with what I refer to as Negative Jack. Yeah, yeah, I know. It was in the form of Nick and/or Lucifer but at least my reading on it was that it's not about Nick or Lucifer directly. What Jack was  seeing was an amalgamation of the negative issues he houses inside his subconscious. All of his insecurities and fears, it popped up to appear as Lucifer because that's how Jack views Lucifer. He views Lucifer as everything he fears to become, everything negative about him essentially. And that's what Mark Pellegrino was actually depicting. Not Lucifer, not Nick, but Negative Jack. Of course, the show could easily come back and say that parts of Lucifer slivered in from that botched resurrection of Nick's but until that happens I'm going with this. And it's a really interesting concept. We've all had those moments where we've allowed out negativity to take over us and cause us to make decisions that maybe aren't in our best interests or what's not particularly good for us. And it's really interesting to see Jack going through this with the aid of a physical manifestation of his own negativity. We're basically seeing Jack's negativity influencing his decision making. He's afraid that he has no soul and that's the reason why Negative Jack tells him what he's feeling is only a muscle reflex, that in actuality he doesn't feel guilt about Mary. Jack, of course, does feel guilt about it but the Negative side of him is afraid that he isn't so it's influencing him in that direction. He fears that the Winchesters will never forgive him so Negative Jack tells him they'll never forgive him. And even if they did, "they'll never trust you again so you shouldn't trust them." It's Jack's Negativity based out of his own fears and insecurities that's telling him to cut his ties and reasoning with him that that's the best course of action, he's losing to that negativity. 

And in regards to Jack and the botched Mary resurrection, I was getting some hardcore flashbacks to Full Metal Alchemist and I loved it. The whole idea of necromancy and Rowena saying that Jack was not in a state to do this kind of spell it just really reminded me of the "give and gain" aspect of Full Metal Alchemist where when practicing Alchemy, in order to gain something you have to give something up. Now in Full Metal Alchemist, the "give" aspect is much more literal and physical but that's FMA not Supernatural, a whole different set of rules. The fact that Rowena was talking about how Jack's current mental state could affect how the spell went, it was interesting to think about that the spell could essentially call upon the caster's mental state to basically serve as the "give" ratio thereby you're giving a piece of yourself to bring someone back which is also quite reminiscent of what happened earlier this season with Lily Sunder.  And what the spell takes from you can affect what would be brought back. If Jack was calm and positive, maybe he could've brought back Mary? But the spell feasting on his negativity could've called upon anything and brought back an evil ghost or maybe even Azazel himself? But I also think due to Jack's desperation and a sense of feeling like he needed to do this as opposed to wanting to do this, there was a sense of emptiness in him which is why an empty shell was brought back. He didn't feel like he needed to bring back Mary because it was the right thing to do, himself being dead earlier that season perhaps wishing he was being given more of a choice in the matter maybe, but he felt like he owed it to his family to bring her back. Throughout the episode, I never felt like Jack WANTED to bring back Mary, it always felt like he HAD to. And when you feel you have to do something out of obligation and not from a general want, it can create this emptiness in you. But that's how I look at it.  

All in all, I enjoyed this episode. I thought it was really interesting and I'm going to give it a B. I thought it was very well executed. It gave us a lot of interesting material to think about and I enjoy that. And I’m excited to see where the remaining two episodes of the season are going to take us.

Tagging @metafest like usual. Sorry, y'all that I didn't really contribute last week. Last week was an episode I didn't have any thoughts on, meta or otherwise. 

And if you're wondering about my take on the "you're dead to me" aspect of the episode (as I was a little vocal about it during the promo), I'm going to tackle that in another post. I don't want to really burden my friends at Metafest with my Bitter Cas Fan opinions on that.

#spn 14x18 #spn 14.18 #14x18 #14.18

[anxietywontmakethewordsgo]

Okay Y’all

So at first I considered NOT posting this second part bc y’all seemed to have it covered on my first post in terms of extra insight for this episode. BUT. I am fucking traumatized, and the only way I’m getting SOME closure is if I point out everything on my mind at the moment (just like part one, which backfired horribly).

SO

Obviously, spoilers for 13.18, and trigger warnings (sexual assault, abuse, torture of our favorite archangel). On that note, Let’s jump into this.

Let’s start chronologically, shall we? The first scene of hell we are treated to is Ketch being told by one of Asmodicksucker’s minions that he needs to wait, because he is busy. After pausing and giving the guard a strange look, Ketch relents fairly quickly, asking if they have something to read.

NOW, I may be thinking too hard on this, but we all know that demons are irreparably corrupt; they have no shame in what they do to others, have no reason to hide what they do. So, why does Asmodeus tell the guard to keep ketch out?

Ketch seems to find this strange too, based on the look he gives the guard before asking about reading materials. When he finally walks in, Asmodeus is in the process of extracting some of Gabriel’s grace (our poor archangel whimpering as he does so). Ketch looks curious, sure, maybe even a bit confused initially. But as he watches, he seems…. disturbed? which is obviously unusual for his usual sociopathic behavior. He asks if this is a bad time, which prompts both of them to look up at him, one is disgruntlement, the other is surprise and hope.

Which brings me to my next point; this entire fucking scene. Rewinding a bit, we have Asmodeus being creepy and saying “just a little more” to Gabriel as he extracts the grace. I didn’t put too much thought into it the first (dozen) time(s) I watched it, but….its strange, isn’t it? If he were any other prisoner, Asmodeus wouldn’t show such…attentiveness to Gabriel’s reactions. He would probably insult them, maybe threaten them for the reaction.

But Gabriel isn’t any other prisoner, not to Asmodeus. I’m sure we all saw the preview where he says “I own you.” To someone off-screen. I’m also sure most of us thought he was talking about Gabriel. He wasn’t, not directly, but it may as well have applied anyway.

Near the end of the episode, Ketch describes Gabriel as Asmodeus’s “prize milk cow.”, and he’s not really that far off in his description. The way Asmodeus reassures Gabriel rather than threatening him is akin to somebody talking to their pet, or any animal in general.

You guys. Asmodeus doesn’t see Gabriel as an archangel, or even a human being. He sees him as his pet, his property.

This little convo right here, where he beats ketch down verbally, saying he has no real identity and that he doesn’t know what he is, is almost certainly what he did to Gabriel in order to break him into what he is now, a petrified shell of his former glory. And it isn’t just in Asmodeus’s mind that Gabe is like his property/an animal – it’s also in Gabriel’s. I can’t stop comparing the way Gabriel flinches away and whimpers when Asmodeus moves to a puppy scared of its abusive owner, how he is almost in a completely different mindset the whole episode, as if protecting whatever is left of his old self by reverting to what Asmodeus thinks him to be.

AAAND now I’ve gone off track from my original point; sexual assault. Obviously the show can’t just outright say they are talking about rape (and even if they could, the writers love subtext too damn much to do that.) I say they are using the ‘pet’ arc to explain just how violated and humiliated Gabriel is. Keep in mind, an angels grace is a part of their very BEING, what they are made of. While we have seen other instances of grace stealing in this show, we have only ever seen it one other time for an ARCHANGEL – and that would be with Michael, in the other world. We all saw how insistent Lucifer was about keeping Michael on the other side, and it makes me wonder if he felt just as violated by Michael as Gabriel does by Asmodeus. (who knows, maybe they’ll address the similarities eventually. After all, Gabriel and Lucifer are going to meet sometime, right?)

Chuck himself said that archangels are made of different stuff, the stuff of primordial creation. Could this mean that an archangel’s grace is even more close to their true form than a regular angel’s? if so, it’s just adding to the theory that not only is Asmodeus using Gabriel to power up, he is also KNOWINGLY VIOLATING HIM, and is ENJOYING IT (that bastard.)

Anyway, I think I’ve spent enough time torturing myself with THAT scene. Let’s move on, shall we?

Hearts were breaking across the world as Gabriel continued to show signs of complete psychological and emotional trauma. He cowered away from Ketch, even when he said it was a rescue. He all but screamed when Sam mentioned his grace, leading to a very disturbed and surprised look from both of them. just – hell, the look on the boy’s faces, PERIOD. When they first saw him, the shock and disgust in dean’s voice as he asked what Ketch had done to him. HELL, even Ketch looked shocked and disturbed that dean would even THINK he would go this far, do something so heinous, especially to an ARCHANGEL.It almost makes me wonder if the writers were also alluding to the boys KNOWING just how bad Gabriel’s current mental state is. i’m COMPLETELY shocked that Gabriel would even let Sam come NEAR him, let alone with a sharp object (ahhh my sabriel shipping heart!).

Some other (smaller, perhaps repeated) points that I don’t have the patience or brain cells to articulate;

-       Asmodeus almost sounding like he’s taunting Gabriel when he says “just a little more” rather than threatening him or insulting him. The humiliation must be immense, knowing he is being treated more like an animal than the archangel he once was.

-       Ketch’s reaction to Asmodeus’s little (ahem) session with Gabriel. He looks almost disturbed, which is very unlike his usual sociopathic self. It almost makes me wonder if Asmodeus KNEW ketch might try to free him, which is why he then later starts trying to mentally fuck with Ketch himself. Ketch also asks if it’s a “bad time”, adding to the uncomfortable sexual atmosphere of the scene already.

-       SPEAKING OF WHICH; Asmodeus fucking MOANING as he injects himself, his expression almost one of euphoria (ew.).

-       Notice how the camera cuts to Gabriel in the middle of the injection, showing a look of pure violation and fear. It is almost as if he can FEEL his very essence being absorbed, corrupted by Asmodeus’s demonic being. I’d say it’s almost an act of…domination, perhaps?

-       When ketch first speaks, both look up, Asmodeus with a look of disgruntlement, Gabriel with a look of surprise, and even HOPE. JUST LOOK AT HOW HIS EYES WIDEN, HOW HIS EYEBROWS RAISE. LOOK AT THE HOPE ON HIS FACE, YOU GUYS.

-       ASMODEUS SEWING OUR POOR CHILD’S MOUTH SHUT ASHDGFGS. It not only is a big part of his identity, who he IS, but it is also a big reminder that there is NO CONSENT ON HIS PART WHATSOEVER, leading to the connection of sexual assault.

Sorry for the COMPLETELY MESSY and out of order post, you guys. I just can’t even BEGIN to fully and properly articulate how fucked up the underlying sexual tones of this episode were. Maybe someone who is better at all this complex meta stuff can explain this better?

honestly you guys, i’m not sure what the writers are planning to do, but with how humiliated, how VULNERABLE Gabriel was....well, its gonna be a hell of a time trying to heal him up back to his former self. what he went through...its not something you just get over. despite this, i’m terrified interested to see where the writers take this.

#supernatural #season 13 #theory #gabriel #ketch #asmodeus #sabriel #meta #imgoingtokillmyself #ahh #why writers why #i hate everything #goodbye #ill just #ugh fml

[recentanimenews]

Crunchyroll Features' Favorite Anime of Fall 2018!

The Fall season, and 2018 anime with it, are finished. We’re looking at a lot of big anime titles wrapping around into 2019, so now is the perfect time for our editors to honor our favorites from this season before the Winter premieres begin. This was a huge season with a ton of big returning titles, so it was particularly hard selecting our Top 3 from the season. You can check out our top anime from summer season, see how our picks compare to our most anticipated titles, or scroll down and check out our favorites!

Peter Fobian

Fall 2018 was absolutely ridiculous. The season looked huge going into it with the shonen fighter RADIANT, returning giants JoJo AND SAO, and 2 mega hyped isekai in Goblin Slayer and Slime. Oh yeah, also a new TRIGGER anime. Then it got EVEN BIGGER with some unknown quantities turning into awesome favorites. We’re still riding the crest of this wave into Winter as so many of the top series are continuing, but the ones that are coming to an end this year really left an impression on me.

ZOMBIE LAND SAGA

This might be the single biggest anime dark horse that has emerged since I started following seasonal anime and that was kind of part of its design. Everything from the show to the promotion was masterfully orchestrated, with the studio giving away little more than the title and Mamoru Miyano’s gorgeous face leading into the season. The way this anime took both tourism and idol anime to the extreme with one of the best concepts and pretty meta. The writing was on point, the comedic timing was perfect, and it even had great emotional beats. I’m really hoping a few of those loose plot threads mean a season 2 because this anime could easily deliver more.

SSSS.GRIDMAN

I watched the first episode of this series back at Anime Expo 2018 and was extremely surprised at how serious it felt. Although it loosened up during the fight scenes, Gridman has to be TRIGGER’s most reserved project to date with some really great storyboards, character drama, and a slowburn mystery that are typically absent from their high-octane visual circuses. It even stuck the landing. This series wasn’t just good in its own right, but really proved TRIGGER is about to deliver in multiple styles of storytelling.

Golden Kamuy

There's never enough space to talk about all the good things in Golden Kamuy. The story is an amazing treasure hunt/survival game in a wonderfully articulated historical set piece of Hokkaido, Japan following the Russo-Japanese War. The characters are as adorable as they are psychotic. The mysteries just keep building up. The violence is magnificent. The food looks delicious. This manga has a the best bit of everything and continually shows new faces as the story develops. Hopefully the wait for more of the manga wont be too long.

Ricky Soberano

Woo! This fall season has been a chock full of great anime that varied from each other in many aspects so I ended up staying consistently caught up with almost everything that came out this season and shows that haven’t stopped going. Trying to pick three took many rounds of questioning from myself to the people that I care about and the conclusion was ‘Ricky loved everything.’ However I came up with my top three by only choosing the ones that made me 110% happy every single time I clicked to watch the latest episode.

Fairy Tail Final Season

  I’ve been a diehard Fairy Tail fan since the beginning (tattoo on my hip for proof) and frankly I’ve cried during every episode this season simply knowing that there will be no more of this amazing shonen that has saved my life more than once after this is done. This season exceeds expectations by not only doing a victory lap and bringing on almost every character that has ever shown up in the show but also by tying up every loose end, answering every burning question, and naturally showing every individual guild member’s badass power has gotten to a level so high up that one could barely fathom. Each episode has me screaming at the screen from the new insane revelation that they just revealed.

As Miss Beelzebub Likes It.

  I don’t usually watch cute anime. However watching Beelzebub be super encapsulated by the presence of fluffy things, show her an affinity for tasty snaccs, and captivation for adorable animals pulled me into a hug as warm as an alpaca sweater and I never want it to stop. The color palette of pastel glory has kept me in a happy mood all season and the stories told are ridiculous but make for a never ending sweet dream.

Run with the Wind

  This was a wild card for me since I may’ve ran track on high competitive levels but I don’t have a preference to sports anime. However the cast of 10’s journeys not only as runners but also as individuals take place with such high stakes on the line made it hard to not want to continue watching especially since the show did well to realistically show competitive running and the realistic sacrifices and training that goes behind it. With such high tension and drama circulating, I was truly on the edge of my seat the entirety of every single episode.

Nate Ming

Y'know, I thought I was gonna watch more JoJo… but I got my mom into JoJo over Christmas break, so that's gotta count for something. From retail hell to the frozen wilderness of Hokkaido to the sacred ring, my Fall 2018 season was full of emotional ups and downs… and I'm still screaming about that season finale for Golden Kamuy.

Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san

All the built-up trauma from working retail and customer service for almost half my life came back in one huge wave with Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san. No anime this season has made me laugh so hard I pulled a muscle (I'm not joking), and no anime this season has made me curl up in the fetal position remembering the insanity of working a Harry Potter book launch at Borders. But aside from all that, Honda-san himself is refreshingly positive and upbeat--work is work, it's tiring and frustrating, but if you love what you do and like sending customers home happy, it's all worth it in the end.

Golden Kamuy

The treacherous journey to find the stolen Ainu gold continued with a second season, bringing back our favorite characters while introducing plenty of new faces. Unexpected team-ups, shuffling of group rosters, and then pitting everybody against each other kept me watching every week, needing to know what was coming next--and that infuriating season finale means I'm absolutely tuning in for whenever season 3 starts airing.

Hinomaru Sumo

I keep joking that "no cowards allowed" is the tagline for this intense adaptation of the Weekly Jump manga, and it's a pretty fair assessment: characters may feel doubt and fear, they may question the decisions that led them to get into the ring, but there's nowhere to run in sumo, so finish the fight and worry about the details later. This show has so much heart, and I'm here to continue cheering for Hinomaru and team into 2019 as we head into its second cour.

Nicole Mejias

I gotta say, this fall season was STACKED with a whole bunch of great shows from start to finish! It was a season where my queue was at its fullest and trying to find time every week was actually a bit challenging to make sure I watched everything. There were so many shows that I ended up liking way more than I thought I would, so it was difficult to pick a top 3, and in some cases I feel my top 3 are mostly continuing from things I really enjoyed before, or last season; but that said, this was a tough season, and if I had more than 3 slots, I’d be in even more trouble picking!

Golden Kamuy

Golden Kamuy is a must-have on my list, and frankly should be on almost everyone's! I really had no idea what to expect from the series when I first heard about it, but whatever I thought it was, Golden Kamuy surprised me with it's amazing characters, fast and severe action, and its balance of comedy and suspense. As the second season draws to a close and some of the serious questions are about to be answered, I'll be waiting to see what's next for Sugimoto and Asirpa in the future. I probably would never get tired of this series, so I'm hoping we hear about a new season soon. Golden Kamuy is a series of feel almost anyone can enjoy, and I hope more people get sucked into it like I did!

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind

JoJo's is one of my favorite series of all, and when Golden Wind got announced I was extremely excited to see what was in store for me, since it was the JoJo part I knew the least about. Part 5 really does have a unique feel to it, from the mafia trappings to the unique and interesting Stand abilities, and now that things are really getting underway, I'm excited to see what's next! Giorno and the rest of the gang are quickly becoming one of my favorite collections of JoJo heroes, with their mix of fun chemistry and personalities, and I can just see Part 5 being in my favorite anime lists throughout 2019 too!

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

I'll be honest: I'm not a big isekai fan. I've never really found the power fantasy aspect of them interesting, and so I've usually found myself giving them a few episodes before getting bored or finding myself watching something else. Slime really grabbed me, though, because from the first parts of episode 1, I thought I was in for a similar experience, but it soon turned things on their heads! While Rimuru is super powerful, the world built in Slime is fascinating, and all of the interactions between characters is great. Also, seeing Rimuru put the smack down on baddies is incredibly satisfying! I'm excited to see where this series goes and how Rimuru's little collection of followers and hangers on grow!

And that's our editor's favorites for the Fall 2018 season! I'm surprised no anime got repeated twice except for Golden Kamuy with 3 votes, which is a fitting send off to an awesome series that reached its conclusion this year after an insane climax. But there's more to come. Prepare yourself for tomorrow when we'll be putting up our most anticipated titles for Winter 2019!

---

Peter Fobian is an Associate Features Editor for Crunchyroll, author of Monthly Mangaka Spotlight, writer for Anime Academy, and contributor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

Already most technology companies wouldn't sink to using patents on startups have said so, the holdouts will be very much faster. This has a nice sound to it, and the heart attack had taken most of a day to kill him. Somehow the idea of inhabiting a world ruled by intelligence. The right tools can help us avoid this danger. There are several reasons it pays to get version 1 done fast. The most naive version of which is: You shouldn't put the blame on one parent, because divorce is never only one person's fault. The latest laws make this a crime. A suburban street was just the right place to look for metaphors is not in the calm, womb-like atmosphere of a big city.

As long as we're talking about the future, we had better talk about parallel computation, just as the hypothetical adversary must be when Michael Rabin solves a problem by redefining it as one that's easier to solve. Both further increase economic inequality. If you went out and hired 15 people before you even knew what you were building, you've created a broken company. They're way more dangerous than Google because, like you, they're cornered animals. And so it is in painting. In a field like physics this probably doesn't do much harm, but the lies implicit in an artificial, protected environment are a recent invention. But you can probably find employers that will waste less of your time.

They continue to improve the speed of actual programs written in the near future will be server-based applications also give us the answer to this question. After a while this filter will start to operate as you write. For example, if you have only one person selling while the rest are just a cost of doing this can be enormous—in fact, discontinuous. The political correctness of Common Lisp probably expected users to have text editors that would type these long names for them. Plus a lot of new inventions, the rich got this first. Mainly, I think it is. This pattern doesn't only apply to companies.

You can see the same program written in two languages, and Apple would be selling programming languages, and one could make a clean break just by taking a pill. You can write programs to solve, but I can infer it from the fact that if their parents had chosen the other way too: the less you can predict how people will use it. Increasingly, the brains and thus the value of products is in software. Bill Woods once told me that his copy of CLTL falls open to the section format. Others seem more innocent; it depends how badly adults lie to maintain their power, and what they use it for. Usually they consist either of omissions or of over-emphasizing certain topics at the expense of another. How can the language designer know what the programmer is going to love, and that's usually easier with fewer people. All startups are mostly schleps. Not merely hardware, but software has users. The first time Peter Thiel spoke at YC he drew a Venn diagram that illustrates the situation perfectly. If you visit on a weekday you may see groups of founders there to meet VCs.

Suppress one, and they'll use it. Programmers are unlike many types of workers in that the best suppliers won't even sell to you, that's something you're well suited for. The reason I want to plant a hypnotic suggestion in your heads: when you hear someone say that in front of users as soon as you feel it. The more versatile the tool, the less you need further investment, the easier it is to get. And yet people write whole books of it. But just imagine calling Picasso the mercurial Spaniard when talking to a friend. I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike.

We did it in Arc, and it was otherwise a straight product sale. This had only recently been declared a crime, and the huge scale of the successes means we can afford to take more risk you should. After all, they're just a subset of hash tables where the keys are vectors of integers. Unless of course they are sufficiently advanced that they already communicate in XML. C, Lisp, and Smalltalk were created for other people to use. This is another one I've been repeating that since 1993, and I don't think that physical books are outmoded yet. After all, they're just a subset of hash tables where the keys are vectors of integers. This seems to me the only limit would be the number of startups is not the only force that determines the relative popularity of programming languages—legacy software Cobol and hype Ada, Java also play a role—but the amount of newly created wealth consumers can absorb, any more than it makes sense to ask early on, any more than it makes sense to ask a 3 year old daughter saw too much. No matter how bad a job they did of analyzing it, this meta-check would at least remind everyone there had to be approved by a committee. It has turned out to be a successful language.

People who do good work you have to tease apart the components. The acceleration of productivity we see in Silicon Valley is that you focus more on the user is a kind of business plan for a new language. This principle is very powerful. As long as we're talking about the designer. You should lean more toward firing people if the source of your trouble is overhiring. We didn't start it mainly to make money; we have no idea what our average returns might be, and won't know for years. So, if hacking works like painting and writing, is it as cool?

And now that we can say with some confidence is that these are the glory days of hacking. Users love a site that's constantly improving. Others see what they've done and are full of wonder, but the source code. I think most makers work this way, then in principle you never have to type. There is an enormous difference in wealth between the household Larry Page grew up in Manhattan, and as a rule of thumb, each layer of interpretation costs a factor of 10 in speed. But you see the same pattern. If there were a little guy running around inside the computer executing our programs, he would probably have as long and plaintive a tale to tell about his job as a federal government employee. When people walk by the portrait of Ginevra de Benci in the National Gallery, he put a juniper bush behind her head.

Thanks to Harj Taggar, Trevor Blackwell, Guy Steele, Robert Morris, students whose questions began it, and Jackie McDonough for their feedback on these thoughts.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #way #matter #parents #adversary #groups #time #National #friend #Harj #technology #parent #fact #software #sound #person #returns #Silicon #power #startups #CLTL #languages #Usually #lies

[lionwithouthonour-blog]

Meta prompt -- what exactly was going through Jaime's mind during the Loot Train Battle?

Okay, I have to admit I almost had to look up which was the Loot Train Battle because I’ve got so used to everyone just calling it the Field of Fire 2.0...

That aside, this is going to get really long (like really long; I can write an essay on this), and there’s almost definitely gonna be some stuff that could potentially be seen as ‘anti-Dany’ so...I’m just warning you so you can’t get mad and say I didn’t.

I think one thing that’s important to remember about this particular battle (and ironically one thing practically everyone tends to forget) is that it’s one that Jaime never saw coming. As far as he was concerned - hell, as far as any of them were concerned - all the fighting was done once they’d taken Highgarden. Just before the battle seems set to begin, he’s told that the gold has safely entered King’s Landing, which if anyone was going to attack them, surely the gold would be the target and not a few wagons of food. All Jaime’s got to worry about now is getting said wagons of food and the last of the Lannister/Tarly forces back into the city and they’re home and dry. And also it’s probably important to note his attitude towards the soldiers as demonstrated early in the scene: Lord Tarly says that flogging them will make them move into the city faster, Jaime tells him not to. Why is this detail important? Because it shows that on some level, Jaime cares about these men. Lord Tarly demonstrates the attitude of caring about them as a commander to an army, Jaime demonstrates the attitude of caring about them as people. People who have probably already spent a long amount of time marching at a forced pace and who probably haven’t had much time for resting or eating or anything else - again, they want to just get everything back to the city. And that’s another important detail to remember.

Now, when the Dothraki appear, they’re forced to fight a battle that nobody was expecting to come, on a terrain that’s the worst possible kind for facing that particular enemy, and against an enemy that probably none of them have ever faced the likes of before. And that’s even before the dragon shows up. Generally speaking, the tail end of a train of soldiers would not be so heavily armed or defensible - all the best soldiers would have been with the gold up ahead and now safely in King’s Landing. Realistically speaking, at least one of the main four (Jaime, Bronn, Lord Tarly and Dickon), probably two at minimum, would have been somewhere up at the front of the train, but dramatic license blahdeblah moving on. Now, they find themselves essentially cornered on an open field (and just FYI, I’m getting tired of people using Robert’s line of “only a fool would face the Dothraki on an open field” to mock Jaime in this moment; like what the fuck else was he supposed to do..?), and about to do battle when they’re clearly outnumbered and probably quite sapped for strength anyway. Still, Jaime refuses to leave them even when Bronn practically orders him to. His “we can hold them off” is, in my opinion at least, a direct response to what Bronn is saying which basically amounts to “everyone here is gonna die in a sec and if you stay then you’ll die too”. They’re both right by the line of Lannister soldiers when Bronn says that and in battle, that kind of attitude is one of the worst that you can have. It’s like in LotR at Helm’s Deep when Legolas starts going off on one about how hopeless the odds are (though granted he does it in Elvish, at least) - it’s just something you shouldn’t say even if you totally believe it and especially not where others can probably hear you. Even if Drogon wasn’t the master of Ironic Dramatic Timing, the argument would probably have ended there. It was less about the words being said than just trying to get Bronn to shut up.

And then the dragon appears...and this is where the potential anti-Dany stuff is gonna start showing so...heads up. First, I would just like to casually remind everyone that no one on the Lannister side has ever seen a dragon before. Oh sure, Jaime’s seen the skulls and maybe even Bronn has too, but this is something totally different. It would be the same as if you suddenly came face-to-face with a living breathing and intent on killing you T-Rex. And while they’re somewhat prepared for it with the Scorpion, again, huge difference between dead skull and living dragon. And that gets shown in all its logic-bomb glory. Second, this isn’t like when Tyrion first saw them, or Jon first saw them. Jaime is facing Drogon knowing full well that he’s going to be used as a weapon against them. This isn’t just a probability like it was for the other two, this is a certainty. And using a dragon in a swords-and-arrows battle like this would pretty much be the equivalent of using modern-day bombing techniques in a swords-and-arrows battle. While they stood little chance of success against the Dothraki, against Drogon alone they stand no chance and against Drogon and the Dothraki, Jaime knows they are going to be obliterated.

Now, from a technical side of things, I would like to point out that the battle is filmed almost utterly entirely from the Lannister army’s point of view, particularly  focusing on Jaime and Bronn. This is the first time we’ve seen a full-scale dragon attack from anyone else’s point of view other than Daenerys’. You know how a lot of people felt more uncomfortable watching this battle in particular than they normally did during dragon attacks? This is the reason why. Instead of the destruction being shown as a wonderful thing and utterly 100% deserved, this showed the destruction as the destruction it really is: men screaming and turning to ash, throwing themselves in the water to drown to try and put out the flames (seriously, the original final shot of the episode was meant to be Jaime seeing his men drowning), sheer and utter terror and chaos everywhere. Also, that scene with the Lannister soldiers and Arya in the woods that everyone just dismissed as a cameo for Ed Sheeren? Well, I’m not gonna argue about that, but I would argue that that scene was a direct prelude to this one. Whether you realised it or not at the time, it humanised the Lannister army, it made it clear that these were not necessarily men who agreed with Cersei or even completely wanted to be there. These were men like any other, who had lives and families and for whom being a soldier was just a job. To everyone who argues that the soldiers were fine to be killed simply by virtue of being a soldier, I repeat: these people had no knowledge on how to fight a fucking dragon! They didn’t sign up to fight a fucking dragon! Most of them probably didn’t even sign up, they were likely conscripted. The logic of that would basically be the same as saying “Oh, you took martial arts courses? You must know how to defuse a bomb!” Also, again I repeat, the best soldiers would have been with the gold up at the front of the train. Jaime, Bronn and (to a lesser extent) Tyrion are the POV characters in this battle and none of them feel good about what’s happening. We as an audience are not meant to be feeling good about what’s happening. Of course, purely choosing a POV won’t control how every single person watching feels because obviously if you like Dany more than you like any of the three POV characters, you’re gonna think this is the best thing since sliced bread no matter how it’s presented. But from a meta side of things, from the set-up, to the acting, to the directing, to just how the thing is filmed, there is a very deliberate attempt to make the audience uncomfortable at the very least with this whole situation.

Going specifically back to Jaime, the next key moment I wanna talk about is the moment he sends Bronn off to the Scorpion rather than going himself. Now, I’ve made jokes about this too, that Jaime is just using his hand as an excuse to get Bronn to do something for him (see pretty much the entire journey to find Myrcella in Dorne). Do I actually think this is his intention in this moment? No. He’s being 100% serious. By this point, chaos has taken over the battle. Drogon is burning stuff left right and centre, the Dothraki have broken through the Lannister lines, their men are being absolutely slaughtered. Jaime’s always demonstrated the desire for ending battles and wars quickly and with minimum damage. Drogon needs to be brought down and fast if they’re going to stand even the slightest chance of getting through this. Jaime is stating an absolute fact that he can’t operate the Scorpion with one hand and certainly not with the degree of skill needed to bring Drogon down. Bronn is literally the only realistic option in that moment.

Finally, because I know this is getting ridiculously long (and I want to congratulate you if you’ve read this far), I’m gonna talk about that last little bit. When Jaime’s looking around at all the men dead and dying and on fire and screaming, I am 100% certain that he’s connecting what he’s seeing in that moment to all the times he had to watch people burning with wildfire in the Mad King’s court. There’s a gifset on here that I’ve reblogged that has this scene with his confession to Brienne (’”Burn them all” he kept saying. “Burn them all”’). I personally have a headcanon (that may or may not be confirmed, honestly I haven’t done enough bts research to know) that Jaime suffers from some sort of repressed trauma from everything he saw and experienced in his time as a Kingsguard to Aerys, and if he does then the sight/sound of people being burned alive would almost certainly be a trigger to it (in the true sense of the term). And it really does look like he’s having some kind of traumatic episode in that moment. Then he sees Dany with the now-downed Drogon, and I honestly think he means what he says to Bronn in the next episode - when he sees her and sees that spear, he thinks he’s found a way to stop the war and more importantly, stop more instances of this. He would have been told the stories of the original Field of Fire, and he has his own experience with the Mad King to draw on. In that moment, Daenerys isn’t the “breaker of chains” or anything good, at least not to Jaime; she’s just exactly what Cersei’s always described her to be - a foreign conqueror who is willing to destroy Westeros if it only means she can rule it (which is one of the reasons pretty much everyone advised her against this action in the first place). And more importantly, she is the Mad King’s daughter, with all the implications of that. He killed Aerys to stop thousands of people burning - and for over 20 years his life has been defined by that act whether for good or not; why would he do anything different here if he has the chance? Jaime literally has nothing else to draw on to decide what kind of person she is besides what he’s seen in this battle, and he sees her at her absolute worst. And it’s a well-established part of his character that he tends to act before he thinks and this is a highly stressful situation where thinking isn’t really much of an option anyway. Of course he’s going to take the chance to try and kill her and, by proxy, stop all the damage that he’s seeing in that moment she’s capable of causing.

So I have a lot of feelings on this scene (and the aftermath in the next episode as well). To everyone/anyone that actually read this whole thing, feel free to agree or disagree as you wish and well done for actually reading the whole thing in the first place (told you I could write an essay on this).

#ooc; out of hands #[ meta talk ] #long post #((So I've been putting off answering this but here you go)) #Anonymous #[ headcanon alert ]

[orionsangel86]

I dont think they'll kill Sam and Dean off for financial reasons. The show had a lot of talk about planning a supernatural movie after the show is done and also tried to launch a spin-off once already they are going to want them for these plans, or at least the possiblity for it. If they kill them and everyone else SPN is dead truely, closure included you cant sell stuff on that like with the feeling of being able to rejoin Sam and Dean anytime any plans etc over i dont think that

Hmmm... okay so valid point, if they will actually go there... I dunno if they will, If SPN ends with Sam and Dean just driving off in the impala I will honestly feel a bit cheated, because it will mean no development in all 13+seasons. Bibros will love that of course, but I think it would be a massive anticlimax. 

The way I see it, SPN had two possible endings:

1. They all die in a blaze of glory, just like Dean always says and the ending that we KNOW Jared and Jensen and Misha all want. None of them see a happy ending for the show, they all think that the characters will die for the world. This ending makes sense considering the song of the show is “carry on wayward son” and really, that song is all about death isn’t it? We could STILL have destiel in this ending, and have them all reunited with those they love in heaven, it could be tragic but still hopeful and happy in a way. Like they all end up sitting around the bar in the roadhouse and all the old characters come back and yeah, maybe Dean will smile at Sam as he is reunited with Eileen (or even Jess?!) and gives her a kiss, and then Cas walks up to Dean and stands by his side, they smile at each other and all the happy faces all around them and then Dean takes Cas’s hand and thats that. End scene.

It is an option that will actually be incredibly bittersweet. Something like the Wayward Daughters spin off could still go on but the original cast wouldn’t be able to do one off episodes with them. But then would they really need to? Wayward Daughters doesn’t need Sam and Dean and Cas paying a visit every now and again to be successful. It will have Jody and Donna and Claire and maybe even Rowena could be like a Crowley character... I don’t think a movie is a good idea personally... I get flashbacks to the X Files movie and well, I wouldn’t want it to tank. 

2. We are still going for Dabb’s happy endgame idea. Who knows, maybe they will bring Eileen back? I was wondering if maybe that mystery character from the promo is the Nephilim baby from the future? Maybe he’s all grown up and tries to convince them all to let him live and gives them each a gift and the gift he gives Sam is Eileens life back? Who fucking knows eh? 

if the endgame is still happy, then it will have to be something to do with the boys not quite leaving hunting, but settling into a Bobby type role and also training up the next generation of hunters. Sam would rebuild the global men of letters from scratch (since the Brits will probably be in ruins by the finale) and recruit people from all over the world to watch over the Supernatural and start a global organisation of worldwide protection. Perhaps the final season will actually be about the world becoming aware of the SPN?! Sam would control that (a true man of letters) WITH A FUCKING DOG! and Dean and Cas would still travel, go hunting together (Cas would be human) and yeah, I can see that happening I suppose but it doesn’t make sense to not give Sam SOMEONE outside of his brother and Cas.

The reason that this option doesn’t seem so likely to me now is that they were BUILDING on Sam’s endgame in the subtext for two seasons!! His dreams of ‘someone’, his saving of the retirement leaflet in his keepsake box, his questioning of who he is and what he wants now. (he never managed to convince me that the hunter life is what he WANTS even if he has accepted it). Eileen was a big part of that... so I just don’t get it? It really confuses me that they killed her when she seemed like someone who could be so important for the future and for the endgame?! Could so many of us meta writers have been wrong about Eileen’s role? To me, it feels like a massive wasted potential and now I’m just completely lost for this endgame idea.

Perhaps the true endgame is a mixture of both of these? Could one brother live and the other die? Could that be the true endgame? Sam accepting his fate and sacrificing himself for the world in a repeat of Swan Song but this time he goes to heaven and reunites with those he loves, but the codependency is broken and Dean accepts his brothers death for real, and in his place gets a human Cas? (that would certainly be controversial to certain darker sides of fandom...)

Honestly I just don’t know. I’m upset that Sam’s friend had to die. Because she was SAM’S friend. One of the only friends he has outside of Dean, or who Dean hasn’t connected with more than him. Even if it was completely platonic between them, its still really annoying that Sam had that taken from him. He never gets to bond with anyone outside of Dean. 

*sigh* I’m so tired nonny. I don’t think I could deal with a movie or it dragging on for another so many seasons. I WANT it to end at the moment, I am sick of seeing these characters suffer. If you keep adding more hurt to the mix without any comfort the audience eventually gets bored. SPN is becoming too painful to watch right now. 

Who knows how it will end really? Or when. So long as it does end and so long as the characters get the ending they deserve, an ending that is satisfying and beautiful and makes sense according to the story so far. Anything less would just feel cheap and broken.

#spn speculation #endgame speculation #destiel #saileen #12x21 #spn spoilers #season 12 #asks #anon #Anonymous