#it is funny how they keep giving me everyone but gregor | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yesthefandomfreakblr · 3 years

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G U Y S ~m~ f e e l i n g s

big long post WOOOOOOOOOOOO

so uhh i did a lot of daydreaming today during school as one does when they don't care and are running on -12 hours of sleep and one cup of chocolate milk in lucky charms. I did a lot of thining about this whole 'Ripred pretends to be a service animal AU I came up with andddd ngl i'm liking this a lot.

- Cormaci and Ripred are dedicated pen-pals via Gregor and Ripred confides that he's always wanted to see the museums in New York. they talk about how fun it would be and Cormaci rather enjoys hearing from the snarky, witty, and kind of sweet stranger.

-One day gregor hands him Cormaci's note and Ripred sends gregor with his reply after their echolocation lesson. "Dearly detestable, (a customary greeting for the two) I have a large service animal vest and shades if you want to use them. meet me at midnight and we'll make a plan. XOXO- Cormaci"

-Ripred is over the frikken moon you have no idea. they make a plan, he tries on the vest, they meet in the morning to go to the museum.... And Ripred can't. It's just too bright and too loud and too many people so close to him. everyone stares and many try to pet him. Ripred knows he can't attack people or talk, so he just pulls Cormaci back to central park and has a full blown panic attack five blocks before they make it. they make it to an alleyway and he just shakes and gasps for air. sensory overlaods, especially when you've never had one, are no frikken joke.

-He just sulks back in the quiet, normal smelling, tourist free underland that doesn't burn his eyes. a few days go by and Cormaci proposes a picnic in central park. way less crowded, and with his vest people are warned not to pet him anyway. Ripred gives it another go.

-it doesn't suck. it actually goes very very well. he has the time of his life seeing the ducks and the horse carriages and sunbathing. they do this three times a week and gradually he goes to stores with her and they run small errands. after about two months She can take him anywhere and he won't get overwhelmed. of course, Cormaci hardly takes him into places or restaurants because he's not a real service animal. while waiting to cross the street, Gregor warns him to watch his tail. "what you think I'm just gonna fling it out and hit someone??" he flings his tail out for emphasis and hits someone. -rager speed activate- he catches them and apologises profusely. the 5 foot 2 ich overlander cracks up and compliments him on his reflexes. She hangs out with them the rest of the day and pays for their ice cream. He actually gets her number and they part ways. I mean she's weirdly chill but some people are. at least she didn't sue or panic.

-he uses the library computers to watch training videos and look up the criteria for service animals. He, Cormaci, And gregor's family all help expose him to all of the scenarios and help get him ready. He spends a lot of time with Lizzie. with her smelling salts, puzzles, and emergency phone in his pockets, Lizzie goes places with just him. they go to the museums and nerd out together.

They meet with the registration managers, and after the worst day of Ripred's life, (vet checks and behavioral/training testing. letting people grab, pinch, pull, poke, and prod him places he'd rather them not.) He get's officially registered as Lizzie's service animal.

-Ripred is ecstatic to roam the overland as he pleases and be able to help Lizzie. but he soon realizes she's not the only one who needs his help. Ripred builds a trustworthy council for the gnawers with two head leaders to rule in his stead. and helps Luxa build a better council so that she can visit a few days a week. this takes like a month.

Gregor's dad needs to go back to work, but is still very weak. Ripred, the two days a week he lectures, goes with him and carries his papers, medicine, and anything else on his vest and lets Mr. Campbelle lean on him during lectures. it's very interesting to him and excruciating not to chime in. So during breaks they geek out on theories about anything. Ripred helps him overcome his PTSD from his time in the rat lands. Texting his new distant friend Ripred finds out that Ally, the girl he one-hit K.O'd, has horses and actually does equine therapy. she helps Gregor's family for free. Ripred gets kicked by a horse.

Gregor needs help catching up with school, so he does that when they get home. and after the war of time, Gregor just needs him a lot. Ripred spends two or three nights a week with the boy, and they go on a lot of walks. They either walk for hours in silence or Gregor just breaks and gushes like a waterfall. He doesn't want to trouble anyone with everything on his mind but Ripred is safe. he understands. Gregor talks to him and Ripred listens. occasionally offering bits of valuable advice.

three days a week he goes to school with Lizzie, and finds that her teacher is very good at chess. they get along just fine and he talks to her and even helps with her lesson plans, given this is her first year. at first she tries to call Lizzie's emergency contact. but it's him. He lounges around and is the gordon Ramsey of education. He coaches Lizzie through panic attacks and she is never once bullied when he's around. she learns things from him and makes a couple more friends on the chess team. He'll sweep the floor with any one of them. He mostly reads during class but occasionally, during tests, (when Lizzie is most comfortable,) he'll react to the high stress of another student and put his head in their lap. (test anxiety is something else) and because they're elementary school kids, they make a cult for the rat. they call him Mr. Rat and leave offerings like shiny trinkets or snacks. he privately tutors the class for an hour after school because of this (they can leave if they want but he's smart and funny) and they all learn morse code/ ace their tests. going with Lizzie to P.E is his favorite. everyone else hates it. they fear him. He's no longer allowed to play dodgeball.

Grace is home but can barely walk. on good days her lungs will suddenly give out and it's extremely dangerous. with no one else able to run errands, and desperate to get out of the apartment, she begrudgingly and sorrowfully asks for his assistance. she wishes she could cut ties with the underland for good, but her family desperately needs him. the 'service animal' thing was just so he could go to the museum, but now he's a part of their lives. She leans on him in the grocery store and he sniffs out the best products as well as pushes the cart. if she goes down he has her inhaler and knows what to do. and aside from that, he makes great company. he's funny and smart. and she can tell him things she can't tell her family. about her chronic anxiety, her nightmares, her depression, her constant fear for her children and fear they don't love her anymore for trying to protect them and fear she didn't do enough and fear it will all happen again but this time someone won't come back... He understands what it's like to lose everyone. He understands not telling people things. He lets her talk. and only offers what she needs.

He still hangs out with Cormaci and they go on little trips together, but He's very busy taking care of his family. He never anticipated it to go this far or be this much work, sleeping in the underland once or twice a week, eating most meals there. But Ripred had decided to help Lizzie, a little girl that was very much like his own deceased pup. and in that, got closer and closer to Gregor, who was like a son to him long before he knew of Cormaci. In caring for and, in a way, adopting these pups, he'd adopted their parents and become a cornerstone in their daily life.

about Ripred and Ally, yeah they still hang out as often as possible she lives a couple hours out in florida but stays at her friends a couple days a week in NYC. it's kind of strange to him, but he finds it helpful that she would do anything for him. he can call her anytime for anything and she'll drive out or stay up late and talk, or uber eats him a snack. he ends up telling her absolutely everything. she's a good listener. her horse hates him. she gives Gregor free riding lessons and makes the BEST ribs.she's cool about the underland thing and just lets him talk. which he's not used to. within a few months, she knows more about him than Lizzie or Luxa. she sees him ugly and sees him nice and doesn't hate him for either. yeah she has a big crazy personality but if he accepts her, she'll return the favor tenfold. it takes a while but he gets used to having someone love him like a dog. she's kind of a dog. She knows what he's done, good and bad. and she's cool with it. but if he ever ever lies to her. she will never trust him again. he knows she's not lying.

Ripred supervises Gregor and Luxa's first date getting pizza and starbucks and going to a movie. He nips at someone's ankles for attempting to interfere.

Lizzie's panic attacks become more rare. to the point she doesn't need Ripred at school. Gregor's father no longer needs to lean on him, and can carry his own things. Grace returns to work and only needs her inhaler maybe once a week. Gregor is healing to the point he doesn't sneak out of his room and curl up with Ripred at night.

But none of them, not even Grace, want hm to leave. He experiences all of the Holidays with them during their first year together and he loves them all. food. Luxa joins to along with Cormaci of course. on Halloween he and Lizzie go as little red riding hood and the big bad wolf. gregor and luxa dress as bats. Gregor all black and Luxa a stunning gold. Ripred fights airport security. he tells his overlander friend, Ally, all about it. she thinks he's a bad-A.

As he is needed less and less Ripred goes back to the underland and helps Keep the peace. he was doing ok sending messages from the overland, but his presence is certainly needed more than twice a week. especially Luxa. she needs time alone to speak with a father figure, especially with Vikus's health fading. He helps relieve the pressure and helps her relax. She becomes like a daughter to him, Aurora as well. RIpred comes at a moments notice if any human male shows interest in his baby girl. He even brings Ally down and she honestly would kill to ride a bat. she gets to ride a bat. with everyone constantly dumping their problems on him and them having so many, Ally becomes vital to his mental health. to just have someone to relax with, to talk to to get Denny's at 2:00 AM with.

the years are long and full of hardships, love, and light. Gregor's family becomes more financially sound, they can comfortably afford to feed Ripred now, and go on annual trips. Luxa and Howard go to Hawaii. Vikus passes away two years after the COC, and Gregor's grandmother shortly after. Gregor's family decides to stay in new york. Ripred, Luxa, and Howard go to Virginia for a month with gregor's family in the summer and have the time of their lives. He brings Ally everywhere he can she makes him food, they joke together, sometimes stay at each others places, have a pick up lines war, and she's actually a valuable ally in meetings for writing things down and even contributing. they know everything about eachother. He often thinks to himself that she's every bit as sassy and kind as his mate, and if she were a gnawer, he wouldn't hesitate. but she's human.

and after four more years, at the age of nineteen, Gregor and Luxa are married. though they are no longer bonds, (the council decided you can only have one bond as not to split loyalties) Ripred walks Luxa down the aisle and takes his place beside gregor. where Ares would have stood. Gregor's mother is proud to call Luxa her daughter. Ally brings Luxa a pet cat, as is viking tradition for newlyweds to have one in their home. Ally's weird. but they like her.

Gregor's family half lives down there now and the gnawers and human tensions are almost nonexistent after so many years.

Ripred is godfather to all eight of Gregor and Luxa's children. and though he's starting to ache in the leg he broke in COC, his age starting to climb, it's not too much for him to play with his godpups or wrestle with Gregor. he'd be like mid 50's as human. (another reason he could never be with Ally, She's 25.) He attends Lizzie's wedding in the underland to hazard when she turns twenty. after all that time, he's nearly thirty, and plays a little less rough. he has another decade or two in him and is happy to live it. life has been hell to him... but now he's found heaven. he keeps his tears to himself watching his massive family, not of blood, but of choice, grow in a place that is not torn by war. a place where the walls are made of stone and a place where the sun shines. He doesn't mind people touching or hugging him anymore and you see his real smile a lot more often. but he's still too mean to die. snarky and sassy as ever. but a lot happier. in a bittersweet kind of way. he will never forget his wife or his pups, but he knows she'd be happy for him. and it doesn't hurt to think of them.

He may have been the registered service animal, but they were all helping him right back.

#the underland chronicles #ripred #gregor the overlander #ripred the rat #ripred the gnawer #ares the flier

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365days365movies · 3 years

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February 27, 2021: Love Actually (2003) (Part 1)

We gotta start this Recap.

Just trust me here, this one’s gonna be a lot. Why? Because this is Love Actually.

And I really want to talk about it, I REALLY do, but...this is not only a long movie, but an anthology, so it’s gonna be...complicated. But, I will say one thing. If you’ve been reading this since January, then you’ll know that this blog was inspired by the book Shit, Actually by Lindy West, a collection of hilarious movie essays that I love. And, yeah, this film is its namesake. So, although I want to go more into it, we gotta get started. Sorry for the rush, but...TRUST ME.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

An airport! We see families and other loved ones reunited at Heathrow, as narration begins, telling us that love is everywhere. After name-dropping 9/11...TWO YEARS after it had happened (too soon, David), he states that “love actually is all around.”

Got it. So, as the 2003 film All Around begins, singer Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) is trying to sing a Christmas-themed version of “Love Is All Around,” which is pretty goddamn bad. His recording manager Joe (Gregor Fisher) agrees. Jamie (Colin Firth) tells his sick girlfriend (Sienna Guillory) that he loves her, and he takes off for something that he can’t attend.

Daniel (Liam Neeson), a fresh widower, calls his friend Karen (Emma Thompson) a mom bidding her daughter a good day as she heads to school. Jack (Martin Freeman) and Judy (Joanna Page) are...air humping on a set? I need to know more. Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Juliet (Kiera Knightley) are getting married in a church, with their friend Mark (Andrew Lincoln) as the best man. And FINALLY, David (Hugh Grant) has just been elected as the new Prime Minister, where he meets Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), a member of the household staff.

...Well, that is a lot. Goddamn. So, this is an anthology movie, huh? I’ll try to cover this as smoothly as I can.

Peter and Juliet say their vows, and as they walk out, they are surprised by a rendition of the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love”, organized by Mark. At the wedding is Jamie, whose brother is at his apartment when he returns home early. He’s there to fuck his girlfriend. Oh. Shit. Well, sorry, Jamie.

Also at the wedding is Colin (Kris Marshall), a waiter and messenger who’s been trying to woo British women, but is constantly failing. When talking to his friend Tony (Abdul Sallis), he insists that he’s going to the USA, where the women will appreciate his accent. Tony tells him to simply accept that he’s a “lonely, ugly asshole”. Colin, in response, calls himself a God of sex on the wrong continent. A pair, these two.

Tony is a production assistant, working on the film that Jack and Judy are in. They’re apparently professional stand-ins, actors who substitute actors in film set-up, in order to figure out lighting and cinematography. Neat! Well, normally. Here, they’re standing in for a sex scene, and they ask Judy to go topless, to see how best to frame the shot. And it gets...increasingly awkward. And it’s pretty goddamn funny.

Meanwhile, a funeral. Oof, tone whiplash right there. It’s a funeral for Daniel’s wife Joanna, and she leaves behind him and her son, Sam (Thomas Sangster AKA fuckin’ Joffrey, but I won’t hold that against him). Back at the wedding, Mark stares on longingly at the dancing Peter and Juliet. A woman asks if he’s in love with Mark, and he replies no.

At an office building, another guest at the wedding, Sarah (Laura Linney), is a worker at a graphic design company run by Harry (...awww, Alan Rickman). His secretary Mia (Heike Makatsch) brings her in to Harry’s office, where he tells her that he and everyone else in the office knows that she’s in love with fellow worker Karl (Rodrigo Santoro), and that he should get it over with an ask him out. He walks by her, and she doesn’t say anything, while also recieving a call...from someone she refers to as “babe”. Well, I feel a little infidelity coming on.

On Mia’s radio, Billy Mack’s shitty Christmas song is playing, and a radio host agrees as Bill’s brought on for an interview. Bill shares the sentiment in what must be the most depressing radio interview I’ve ever heard. In that interview with Mikey (Marcus Brigstocke), he basically completely sabotages his own record, and probably his entire career. This interview is followed with news about the Prime Minister.

David, new PM, has been bonding more with Natalie, and the two definitely appear to like each other. He also comes up in conversation between Judy and Jack, as their stand-in sex scene has progressed to basically just straight-up sex, which feels...I feel like this doesn’t fucking happen with stand-ins in movies...right? Like, come on, that’s a LOT of breached privacy, and I feel like it’s not that realistic. Anyway, the two use the opportunity to make small talk, and Jack tells Judy that he appreciates having someone to talk to. She agrees, and it’s cute in an extremely awkward way!

Production assistant Tony is heading home, and is getting a ride from Colin, who announces that he’s bought a ticket for a trip to the beautiful land of Wisconsin, where he will certainly meet some hot, hot babes. Tony does not agree.

Back at Harry’s office, he and Mia plan the company Christmas party. Mia unsubtly notes that she kinda has the hots for him, and he’s not saying no. Meanwhile, Daniel and Karen are talking about the fact that his stepson Sam seems to be having a lot of trouble, understandably, and Daniel’s not doing much better.

Karen does her best to help him through it, and Daniel does his best to help the troubled Samuel. But he can’t coax much out of Samuel to figure out what’s wrong. Samuel finally opens up, but tells Daniel that he’s in love. Daniel’s surprised, but he insists that he’s in love, with a young woman named Sansa Stark, but he must find a way to ensure her loyalty, if ONLY HER NOBLE FATHER WASN’T IN THE...right, sorry, Game of Thrones.

OK, anyway, Sam’s in love, and in complete agony about it. Daniel tries to coach Sam through his feelings, and is genuinely being a supportive-as-hell stepdad. Also in love and in agony is Sarah, staring at Karl from afar one night as the office closes down. And then, also in agony is Jamie, fresh off of his breakup with his cheating girlfriend. He’s in a GORGEOUS AS FUCK house in the French countryside, and sits down to write.

Back in London, David tries to get to know Natalie a bit better, and they...I mean, they’re 100% gonna get together by the end. We’re just working through the romantic folderol right now. Natalie leaves, and David asks a portrait of Margaret Thatcher is she had that problem, calling her a, uh...a “saucy minx.” Well, OK.

Billy Mack is on a television show, continuing his press tour and reminding us once again that he used to be addicted to heroin. Joe is not happy. Mark, an artist, calls Peter, and is put on the line with Juliet. Peter asks him to “be nice,” but when he they talk to each other, he’s rather short when she asks for some of his footage from the wedding.

Back at Harry’s, Mia is laying it on fuckin’ THIIIIIICK, Jesus, while Sarah ends up pining once more for Karl. At his college in the French countryside, a new housekeeper, Aurélia ( Lúcia Moniz), has been hired to take care of his place. However, there’s a serious language barrier between the two, as she’s Portuguese, and he’s too talkative, goddamn. It’s awkward. It’s a little awkward.

David’s got a meeting with the President of the United States (Billy Bob Thornton), who IMMEDIATELY notes Natalie’s attractiveness. Political tensions are also rough between the two and their administrations. The two have a private meeting later, and David leaves the room for a moment. However, when he goes back in, he sees Natalie kissing the President! Whaaaaaaaat? That’s a...fucking terrible idea, Mr. President, what the FUCK? HAVE YOU HEARD OF BILL CLINTON

The next day, at a press conference, David gives into his rage about the affair, and he acts more assertive towards the President, noting that he won’t bow to the President’s bullying. Wow. International crisis time because of a fuckin’ girl! Who’s the saucy minx, now, Thatcher? WHO’S THE SAUCY MINX NOW

Right afterwards, he gets a call from his sister: Karen. Huh. She notes her frustrations with his actions, but he’s too busy and hangs up. She states her frustrations to her husband: Harry. DOUBLE HUH. After everything, though, David retires for the night. The radio station plays a song for him, and David responds by dancing around 10 Downing Street. And it’s hilarious. And I love it?

At Jamie’s cottage, he and Aurélia start to bond regardless of their language barrier, and their conversations seem to gel with each other, despite them not understanding that themselves. It’s actually...kind of cute. I dunno, I kind of like it. I think it’s sweet. Overly saccharine, yeah, but sweet as the two fall in love. Yeah, I’m a fuckin’ sap, what can I say?

Juliet visits Mark, who’s once again acting fairly cold towards her. She confronts him about it, and notes that she wants to genuinely become friends with him. Mark seems to agree with this, but still notes that he has no video of the wedding. And yet, she finds it, only to discover that Mark doesn’t hate her. Actually, he likes her. Actually...he loves her. And, uh...fuck, yeah, he LOOOOOOOOVES her. And she figures that out once she realizes that the video of the wedding doesn’t feature Peter in it AT ALL.

Y’know, I’m really worried that this is becoming an infidelity situation, but I have to admit...Mark’s a good man, and a great friend to Peter. He knows that he loves Juliet, but he keeps his distance for the sake of his friend. And that is...actually amazingly honorable. Damn. You’re a good man, Mark.

At 10 Downing Street, David asks his assistant Annie (Nina Sosanya) to put Natalie in another position, as her presence is distracting him. And that is...responsible. That’s pretty damn responsible. OK, I can dig it. She’s soon replaced, and you can see that David is saddened by that.

His sister’s best friend's stepson, Sam, has just gotten bad news. His crush, Joanna (oh, yeah, his crush has the same name as his deceased mother, forgot to mention THAT little tidbit), is going back to the USA. After discovering that she’s American, Daniel decides to cheer him up by watching Titanic together. AND AGAIN. This relationship is adorable, and I love Daniel’s hardcore good dad energy.

Jamie and Aurélia need to bid each other goodbye, as Jamie is headed back to England. However, as they part, Aurélia kisses him goodbye, which seems to break him a little. Meanwhile, Billy Mack has shot a video for his terrible song, which inspires Sam to perform in a school concert to get Joanna to fall in lover with him and get her to stay. But he doesn’t play an instrument, and chooses to learn the drums, to Daniel’s dismay.

At Harry’s company Christmas party, Mia is hitting HARDCORE on Harry, which Karen notices. She’s speaking to Sarah, and encourages her to dance with Karl, while to two stand in front of Mark’s photographs, and...

TOO MUCH. IT’S TOO GODDAMN MUCH

I...I gotta take a break, and we’re at the halfway point anyway. See you in Part 2.

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oneunexpected · 4 years

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I love Free Day because it means I can do Whatever I Want and I get to rb it to tucweek along with the incredible art pieces and insightful analysis other people have made and mine’s just, like, TUC as vines.

Anyway. Here’s the definitive power ranking of all minor characters* in the Underland Chronicles. It's quite long, because I tried to use every character.

Icarus -this DUUUUDE. This GUYYYYY. SUCKS! -“uh-oh looks like I’m infected with the plague better fly directly into a social gathering” -would be an anti-masker probably 0/10

Reekwell and Gushgore -Fangor and Shed part two, but unfunny this time. 1/10 y’all suck give me Fangor and Shed back

Purvox -Purvox is apparently a beautiful red spider who teaches Hazard how to “speak” Spinner. That’s cool. -that’s it. Why did Suzanne even feel the need to name her? I’m grateful for the extra details but 2/10

Ajax -mean. -nobody likes him -this is probably why he gets on so well with Solovet -some sort of flier general, it seems, which is pretty cool 2/10

Hero & Kent -twins, I guess that’s fun -they’re only like eight but they still Smirk Evilly. Good for them 2/10 just because there’s 2 of them

Anchel & Daphne -some randos Keeda mentions as dead. They probably had some sort of significance to be mentioned by name but We’ll Never Know. 2/10 RIP though. I’m sure you’re worth higher than this but I don’t even know who you are

Horatio -crony #1 -has a crush on Dulcet. Didn’t we all 3.5/10. Boosted solely by association with Dulcet

Marcus -crony #2 3/10

Wevox -thought her name was Weavox until I began writing this post -sort of “Was Margaret Thatcher a Girlboss?” vibes -“As it is, Vikus, we will not drink. Web them” is a RAW line and it bounces around my head sometimes -the spiders are clearly very crafty about their political relations but she was not going to hesitate for a MOMENT to consider the ramifications of killing the monarch of Regalia and we gotta respect that -docking points for the girlboss thing, though. 4/10

Stellovet -queen of insults you gotta be honest -had an INCREDIBLE amount of impact for only having like three lines. I remember being like 11 and reading so many fics on Fan Fiction Dot Net where she was a scheming villain -funny how Luxa thinks her endgame is just becoming a princess. She doesn’t care beyond that she just wants to be royalty 4/10

Chim -baby -ok she’s 5 -doesn’t do anything but look confused and help provide a gateway for Howard to look like a good person 5/10, for years of life. What’s even your name? Chimney?

Andromeda -she’s good. She is an Absolute Beast when she crosses the Waterway with Howard and Mareth, definitely saved Mareth’s life -loves Mareth very much :) -shuns Ares at first but comes around, we still gotta knock her for this though 5/10

Clawsin & Bloodlet & Ratriff -Some folks who go to Ripred’s side, Clawsin gets blinded from the Bane, Ratriff gets his arm ripped off by the Bane, it is what it is 5/10 collectively

Reflex -man’s got jokes -very helpful with the code -shoots streamers of silk around the room when they break it -came to Regalia secretly... secretly to whom? The spinners? The gnawers? Whatever, he’s a rebel either way -I had to look up his name though, so apparently not a lot of impact. Sorry Reflex 5/10

Treflex -announced he was joining the quest, then IMMEDIATELY died. Yes king give us nothing -made a good snack? Gross. 5/10

Cevian -the scene where they find her body is beautifully written and so heartbreaking. She’s the catalyst for the entire fourth book -gives Aurora the opportunity to make her first ever big impassioned speech. It’s what Aurora deserved -still, she doesn’t get any dialogue so I can’t vote her super high 5/10

Euripides -seems nice -always described as “Vikus’ big grey bat,” never just big bat, never just grey bat -tells Luxa to teach Gregor how to ride a bat because his neck is getting bruised lol -nice of him not to embarrass Gregor though 6/10 speak up for yourself, king

Pend -takes Boots back to Regalia after the moth brings her to the crawlers’ land -Vikus recognizes him by name which is really impressive since crawlers look pretty homogenous, although we are told Vikus is better than most at picking them out. Still, Pend is probably a high rolling crawler. 6/10

The scorpions -I know I’m supposed to be doing named characters but they’re pretty cool. The passage they’re in is a really fun read. Mad respect 6/10 I’ll see y’all in Scorpio szn, baby

Razor -showed SHAME and GUILT in the first book when he got called out by Ripred -raised Pearlpelt as if he was his own. In payment, Pearlpelt knocked him off a cliff and then tried to eat him to hide the evidence 6/10

Fangor and Shed -funny dudes. -apparently constantly drunk 6/10

Gox -Gox got shit DONE, okay? Gox got shit DONE. -would eat your carcass without a moment of hesitation. It’s fine. 6/10

Hermes -this guy is great! -brings Luxa her crown -gets seriously injured while protecting Lizzie on their way to Regalia -might be dead tbh no one ever says 7/10

Keeda -okay listen. Keeda’s great. Keeda is that warrior at the Battle of Marathon who ran all the way back to Athens to report their victory and immediately die, except Keeda was reporting that the gnawers were about to invade -listen I know she was dealing with some other stuff, but Vikus asks, “how many rats?” And she says “many. Many rats” ??? No estimate? “An army?” Whatever. We give her a pass. 7/10 RIP

Pandora -FUCK -her death was possibly the MOST disturbing passage I’ve ever read. I could see it so, so vividly in my head. Man I remember the horror -she just wanted to explore 7/10 but also 2/10 for emotional trauma

Queen Athena -ICONIC one-liner in Curse of the Warmbloods, absolutely demolishes the gnawers over their treatment of the nibblers -I’m really biased towards her because Athena is my favorite goddess -probably could’ve done more for Ares, especially as seeing she’s supposed to be perceptive and a really good judge of character and whatnot 7/10

Daedalus -flinches in fear when Boots says she’s gonna sing a for him, specifically -basically pledges his life to Lizzie in the event the Code Room is attacked so that’s very nice 7/10

Heronian -she’s in a full body cast, but that will not stop her. 8/10

Susannah -can we talk about how she lost both of her siblings and she just keeps trucking along? -REALLY wish we knew more about her -clearly Very Kind. Can you please ask your daughter to be nicer -takes really good care of everyone she comes across :) 8/10

Min -creaky old cockroach dance 9/10

Frill -was cool -taught everyone the marks of secret -taught Hamnet about pacifism and stuff too -I get the feeling she was wayyyyy more important to Hazard and Hamnet and their survival than Gregor’s narrative really dives into 9/10

Mr. Cormaci -nice man. Gave Gregor quarters. 10/10

Gregor’s grandma -cool lady, you can’t deny! -tells Gregor he can’t outrun his issues -has a super cool quilt -who IS Simon??? 10/10

Scalene, Euclidian, Root, Cube, and Newton -felt obligated to include all these kiddos because they are, in fact, named, even though none of them get any dialogue or anything else for that matter, really -Scalene was a little nibbler pup that found her mom in the Arena, Euclidian and Root are two more that the mom was looking for, Newton was one that no one claimed but some other guy was like “any of us will take him” which is :’) but also, so, so sad. -Cube was the pup Luxa named that ended up in the pit in the Firelands -Scalene and Newton survived a genocide and Euclidian which is baller any way you swing it 10/10

Tick -:( :( :( -the selflessness. -I shipped her with Temp when I was 8? I can’t answer for that 10/10

York -LMAOOOO this guy’s a LEGEND -7 ft tall. -fights with a zweihander. -says fuck, canonically. -hosts hundreds of nibbler refugees -very loving uncle to Luxa, helps her learn how to rule - his exasperated affection towards Howard when he finds out Howard stayed in the Firelands even after he got sick was very cute 10/10

Honorable mentions: Perdita and Dulcet Their roles are too big in the last book to be included in this list, but these ladies both get a 10/10.

#ucfw

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piratekingimogen · 4 years

Text

you don’t belong here

word count: 2158

part 2

The room went silent when Imogen’s eyes locked on mine– or maybe I just stopped processing sounds. Shock had emptied my lungs like a knee to the chest. There wasn’t enough air in the whole room for me to draw breath as her gaze scraped across my body.

(The once-over was familiar: she was searching me for injuries. She had done so many times before, with frustration and fondness mixed on her face. This time, the fondness was gone.)

The corners of her lips twisted downward. “King Jaron.”

“That’s him?” asked a gray-haired woman beside her.

“Oh, it’s him. I would recognize that face anywhere.”

I finally found my voice. “Imogen, what are you doing here?”

“If His Highness addresses me by any name other than ‘king’, you may run him through, Malina,” she told the woman beside her. Roden snickered. Imogen’s icy gaze jumped to him and the sound died. “The same applies to our other prisoner.” Gregor cleared his throat softly and her fingers closed around the hilt of the sword at her hip. “All of our prisoners, in fact,” she said impatiently, rounding on Gregor. “Captain, do you have something valuable to say for once or are you just testing my patience? I warn you, it’s short.”

Wait. Gregor was a prisoner too. Which meant, not necessarily a traitor. Which meant, I thought, my heart lifting, a potential ally. But he had made himself cozy with the pirates, to the point of roaming freely– unless his hands weren’t just folded respectfully behind his back, but tied. Why was he even here? His lips tightened at Imogen’s sharp tone. The sight was absurd, and almost, almost funny. Gregor, captain of the guard of Carthya, ducking his head in reluctant deference to Imogen. King of the pirates. This couldn’t be real.

“My king,” he said. “The conditions may have changed, I admit. But I beg you to remain open for negotiation.” What had he offered her? What did Imogen even want? My head ached. Oh, the devils were having their fun with me now.

“I could just kill him now,” the gray-haired pirate offered, with a sharp-toothed smile. Gregor blanched. “Make a nice little example.”

“Kill them both,” Roden suggested.

“The pirates swore to kill the king of Carthya,” said a second pirate. “It’s a matter of honor.”

“A matter of Devlin’s honor,” Malina said. “Do you want to go take it up with him?”

“Devlin’s honor is all of our honor,” Roden shot back, rising onto his knees. His chains pulled him back.

“Remember your position, mutineer,” Malina said.

“My king,” Gregor said desperately, raising his voice over the quarrel. “If you let me send word to Drylliad–”

“Everyone shut up!” Imogen’s eyes blazed. The noise died immediately. She squared her shoulders. “Take the captain to the root cellar and lock up the mutineer with Erick and his boy. In thirty seconds, King Jaron should be the only one in this cell beside me.”

I wasn’t at all sure I wanted that. Roden’s chains were rapidly unlocked. “Maybe Gregor should stay,” I suggested, my voice high-pitched. I would take any chance of an alliance now.

“Coward!” Roden spat on the ground as he was dragged out, earning him a kick in the calves.

I grimaced. “As it sounds like you’ve already started negotiations– guh–” The tip of Malina’s sword pressed against my throat and I choked on my words.

“Address her as king.”

“Malina. Out,” Imogen ordered. As a pirate caught Gregor’s elbow and spun him toward the door, my suspicions were confirmed: his hands were tied behind his back with knotted rope. Malina sheathed her sword, bowed, and exited. The door clanged shut behind her. The sound echoed through the suddenly quiet cell.

I didn’t trust myself to speak. I pulled myself upright, now that there was no threat of attack from Roden. The rusting chains pulled at my wrists as I folded my hands in my lap. Imogen stood motionless, with light from the barred window catching in the uneven strands of hair that drifted around her chin. A dozen emotions churned in my gut– fear, confusion, fading shock, rising anger. This wasn’t the same Imogen I thought I knew, I reminded myself. I had to tread carefully.

But my sense of self-preservation buckled under the growing weight of my anger, and I had never been as good as Imogen at holding my tongue. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” I said, striving to keep my tone even. “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t answer.

“How long have you been working for the pirates? While you lived in the palace? While we were in Farthenwood?”

She tipped her chin up, expression inscrutable. “Why do you care?”

“Are you kidding?” I rattled my manacles. “Because I want to know if you decided to join the pirates despite finding out they wanted to kill me, or because of it.”

“There you go,” she said. “This isn’t about you. I was trying to get away from you. I thought, surely, this is the one place he wouldn’t be stupid enough to come.” She couldn’t hide the venom in her last words. True or not, the words were meant to hurt, and they did. But the spark of anger in her voice brought a vicious sort of relief. Anger, at least, I could understand.

“And the whole assassination thing didn’t give you pause?” I demanded.

“Why would it?” she said. Her knuckles were white on the hilt of her sword. (Her earlier threats still rang in my ears. I had a vivid image of myself, pinned to the wall like a skewered moth, with blood spreading through my tunic. I needed to tread carefully.) “Because we’re friends? Because you care about me, and want me around? Oh. Wait. No, I think you had something to say about that last time we saw each other.”

I felt a stab of guilt as I remembered what I had said to convince her to leave the castle. It had been for her protection. I resented her bringing it up now, trying to distract me from the matter at hand, reminding me of something I would much rather forget. I had said some cruel things, I knew. But that was a far cry from siding with assassins. “You know I didn’t mean that.”

“On the contrary,” she said coldly, “you were very convincing.”

“So this is about me,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“You’re not listening to me!” Her bracelets glittered and clinked as she jabbed an accusatory finger towards me. (I had never seen her wear jewelry before. I had tried to give her a necklace, once, soon after she came to court. She refused it.) “You can’t think about other people for one second. It’s all what does this mean for you, how will this help you win, how are you going to show off how clever and brave you are while everyone else is just– just swept into the corner to collect cobwebs.”

“I did it to protect you,” I said. “I thought Roden would target you next.”

“Why would he do that? He knew I could gut him like a fish!”

“Well, I didn’t know that!” We were both too loud now. Imogen’s sword was out, the tip weaving to punctuate her words, while I strained against my chains. My guilt was becoming harder and harder to ignore. (She knew me too well. If she saw a flicker of regret, she would pounce.) “Since you never saw it fit to tell me you were a master swordsman.”

“Do you really want to make this about things we didn’t tell each other?” she snapped. “Face it. You refuse to trust people that you claim to care for, you would rather be cruel than vulnerable, and it’s finally come back to bite you.”

My cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear?” I snapped. “I was stupid, and I shouldn’t have said those things, and I’m sorry.”

“Except you’re only sorry because it got you into trouble,” she said.

“What do you want me to say? And don’t you try to take the moral high ground while you have me chained up with a sword at my throat!”

“I’m not going to attack an unarmed child.”

I couldn’t let the insult slide. “You realize that you’re a child, too.”

“I am a king,” she hissed. “And unlike you, I earned my crown.”

“I have done everything–”

“Look at you,” she said. “You ran away from Carthya. You deceived your regents. What if you had found Devlin, and he recognized you? He would have tortured you until you gave up every secret you knew, and then killed you. You are a danger to your country and to yourself.” Her words hit like physical blows, leaving me gasping. My eyes burned.

“Enough.”

“I’m not done,” she snarled. “You risk your life on idiotic schemes and you make enemies of your only friends. Because we were friends. Whatever you say, we were friends, and I cared for you, and when you sent me away it hurt like you had carved my chest open, and I hated you. And the only way I thought I would find any peace was to get away from you, and then here you came.”

“Imogen, enough!”

“I told you not to call me that!”

“Or what?” My chest heaved. “You’ll kill me? Do it. If my life is really so worthless.” In instant, her sword swung up, poised over my pounding pulse. I lifted my chin, bracing myself for a biting pain. Her brow was knotted, her shirt soaked with sweat. Her sword hand shook.

Then she lowered her blade, stepping back. “You just don’t understand.” Step, step– she retreated, shaking her head. “You can’t understand the position you’ve put me in.” Step, step– her back hit the opposite wall and she slid down until she was sitting, her cutlass clattering to the ground beside her. Her expression was suddenly, unbearably weary.

The fire had died in both of us. “Tell me,” I said softly.

“I can’t.”

Neither one of us spoke for some time. I had the strangest feeling of seeing her for the first time. Her cheek bore the shadow of a bruise. Damp strands of hair clung to her neck, twisting like roots. I imagined brushing it back, tucking it behind her ear.

“I don’t suppose you could let me go,” I said. “I won’t come back.”

She shook her head. “Too many of my pirates see your life as a blight on their honor– the one mark that Devlin couldn’t kill. I wouldn’t survive another mutiny– and for Carthya’s sake and mine, I need to remain king.”

“I understand.”

She stood. “Well, I think I know what has to be done.” I took some consolation in her pained expression: she didn’t seem to take pleasure in the thought of my impending death.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to talk to my first mate, and Gregor. See if they can change my mind.”

My heart caught in my throat. “And if not?”

She had the grace to meet my eye. “I’m sorry it ended up like this.”

***

She returned late that night, or maybe early the next morning. I would never be sure which. Her expression was tight, pained. I didn’t need to ask if there was good news. She knelt in front of me, holding a mug of some dark liquid.

“Would you die for Carthya?” she asked.

“If I have to.”

She held out the mug. “I thought… this would be gentler than a sword.”

I caught a bitter whiff as I took it. Poisoned. Ironic that, in the end, I would die the same way as the rest of my family. What would Darius have thought of this? Would he have done the same? No, I knew– he wouldn’t have come here.

“Are you ready to hear my last words? I spent a long time thinking of them,” I said conversationally, swirling the mug.

“Oh?”

“‘Better to die a king than to live a coward’,” I said, and took a gulp of the poisoned drink.

“Hmm. I was hoping there would be an apology in there somewhere,” she said. I opened my mouth to respond, but she pressed a finger to my lips. “No, those were good. Don’t ruin your last words.” My fingertips were turning cold. I took another sip. “Listen, we both did what we thought we had to. Don’t look back. I won’t.”

My hands were numb, and my head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. “I really am sorry for what I said,” I mumbled. I took one more sip, then tried to set the mug down gently. It slipped from my grasp, spilling across the packed earth floor. A moment later, I slid to the ground beside it.

taglist: @ascendancejaron

#you don't belong here #pirate king imogen #the ascendance series #imogen #jaron eckbert artolius iii

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madebyleftovermuses · 5 years

Text

Mad Targaryen

* The recap just had to open the wound from Jamie’s betrayal of Brienne

* Varys telling everyone that Jon is true heir

* Who are we trying to feed?

* Jon is like “how you know, motherfucker?”

* Dany has become unhinged

* Varys is gonna die and he knows it

* I really liked Varys and his little secrets

* Technically you’re also his aunt

* Tyrion trying his hardest to save the children

* Davos; my man! ❤️

* “I’m Arya Stark. I’m going to kill Queen Cersei” okay!

* Tyrion tried so hard to speak in another language

* Why the fuck are you trying to save your sister who absolutely hates your guts, Tyrion

* I’m hella worried that Tyrion is gonna die

* How funny would it be that they are looking in the sky and the dragon is just swimming underneath the boats?

* Everyone gets a hood in this episode

* Jamie did not get into the Red Keep

* Maybe just stop shooting at the dragon

* Tyrion probably isn’t happy that they are attacking

* The army is no match

* I doubt your elephant could go against a dragon

* Cersei, bitch, you aren’t gonna win this one

* They know they would be slaughtered

* The last fucking minute of fucking course

* Only the soldiers died

* Dany what you doing?

* You sure you want Dany to be your queen, Jon?

* Why do I feel like Grey Worm is gonna try and kill Jon in this mess?

* New title for Daenerys to add; killer of innocence

* Fuck! This asshole is still alive

* Can they both die? Jamie can only die after this fuckface is dead

* It’s been 8 seasons let Arya killer her!

* Brother vs brother

* Just let Gregor die!!

* Thank you!! The Queen’s hand was annoying

* Sandor isn’t even phased by how his brother looks

* Both die now?

* This is why you don’t fight on the stairs

* Bet Arya regrets coming to the Capital

* Come on Sandor!! You can’t lose to your brother!

* Not the eye thing!!!

* Both the Hound and The Mountain are dead and I’m hella upset that Sandor is dead

* Arya can’t be dead!! Oh thank god she isn’t!

* Bet she regrets saying no to Gendry

* Arya is about to adopt a child or not

* Cersei dead? Give me a body!

* Arya is truly lucky she’s not dead

* Where is Jon?

* Also, where is Tyrion?

#game of thrones #arya stark #tyrion lannister #jamie x cersei #jon snow #daenerys targaryen #davos seaworth #grey worm

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phantomphangphucker · 5 years

Text

My Little Box Of Secrets - Phanniemay day 2 - Secrets

“What you doing tonight sweetie?”

“Oh just playing Doom with Tuck and Sam”

“I’m glad you kids manage to have such normal lives, in such a ghost infested town”

I only smile at mom as I head up to my room, I’d really rather lie to her as little as possible.

Kneeling on the floor, I can’t help but chuckle as I phase out my, not so small anymore, collection box, “let’s take a list of inventory”.

* Basically mummified steak - Tuck would probably be pissed that I didn’t eat this but I’m definitely not now.

* A corsage petal - I doubt I’m ever going to be giving one of these to a dragon ever again.

* Purple back gorilla fur - probably illegal to have, but my very existence is illegal so...

* The hat from that stupid expensive cool guy outfit - this thing is sill hideous.

* Shard of a mirror - the last thing I need is someone putting that damn thing back together.

* A wishing well coin - I mean, it’s not technically stealing.

* Vlads’ prized football - just to be a dick to him really, though he probably knows I’m the one who took it.

* A gift ribbon - that stupid thing basically got me thrown in jail, so clearly it’s not as innocent as it looks.

* A burnt domino - my sister was almost fried by dominos, that would honestly be a dumb way to die. I’d rather go by something epic, and I thing getting electrocuted by an entire dimension to half-death counts as epic.

* Cujo’s collar - I really have no clue how this hasn’t disintegrated. My gloves do if they come off, so?

* A broken, burnt guitar pick - pretty sure lots of people have one but none of them remember the singer, suck on that Ember.

* Picture of Mr. Lancer in a dress - did I notice? Yes. Is it weird? Yes. But I’m the definition of weird so I wasn’t gonna call him on it.

* Petrified pumkin cube - definitely gross but effectively useful to scare folks with. Sure, they’re mostly disgusted but still.

* Tuck’s goth phase collar - I like to wear it sometimes just to bug him.

* The mayors tie - hey, if the town’s going to accuse me of assaulting the mayor, I doubt they’d be focused on his missing tie.

* A broken bit of a mini portal maker - can’t have Johnny trying to rebuild the thing.

* The entirety of Vlads’ gift basket - nope, never opening that.

* A burnt, cut and stained empty flour sack - is it cheesy that playing pretend parent is what got me to start liking her?

* Tiger fur - maybe illegal? Don’t really know. I’d think it’s more illegal to have one as a pet and use it to hunt ghosts though.

* Gold crown - everyone thinks I stole it, so might as well keep it. I’ll get in more shit for returning it anyway.

* Replica of DP symbol patch - not sure why she even made multiples. Maybe I should copyright it? Stick it on merch or something.

* Scratch and sniff of Foley by Tucker Foley - still smells awful, no clue how he even got the resources to make this shit. Highly doubt Sam helped.

* Pirate hat feather - it’s fluffy. Too bad the sword disintegrated.

* Ring of rage - no way in hell I was letting Vlad keep that. Still trying to find the damn crown though.

* A tattered bed sheet - that was beyond embarrassing and I can’t help but cringe at any childhood photos where I wear a bedsheet as a cape now.

* Some teddy bear stuffing - had to make room for the fart box after all.

* A chunk of a time medallion - from the one Dan fused inside my chest. It’s a good reminder of what I must never be.

* A burnt, stained and torn up copy of The Fright Before Christmas 2 - because I like to hit it.

* The power cell to the Fenton super suit - funny enough, just the cell alone super charges me. Who knows when that’ll come in useful.

* Space helmet - guess who did get to become an astronaut? This halfa ass did. Probably completely illegal though.

* Replica black T-shirt with DP symbol - I mean, it did look good, even if I didn’t want to being stuck in that with Dash.

* Sams’ tiara - I wasn’t about to let her throw it out. Wore it once just to mock Aragon, so worth it.

* Gladiator shoulder pad - still looks pretty cool honestly.

* Picture of Halfa Jack - I couldn’t resist when ClockWork turned a blind eye. He probably just wanted to piss off the Observants, which I’m down for.

* Orange Danny jello - was it safe to take a bit of jello me? Probably not. But it was the weirdest state my bodies ever been in so...

* Gregor’s jacket - black and white is my colour dude, stick to the shitty red letterman. And yes, I, as Phantom, did cosplay the guy for Halloween once. Just to piss off the GIW.

* Vial of clone goo - disturbing? Definitely. But if Dani ever has some issues, it could be useful.

* The other “mayors” tie - because fuck you Vlad, might as well make this tradition. I pretty much have to steal the next mayors tie now, so long as Vlad doesn’t keep buying the votes.

* Sealed bloodblossom leaf - am I stupid for keeping this? Absolutely. But I’m the kind of dumb ass that will forget what those stupid plants look like.

* Ghost sea monster scale - weirdly sharp and again with the not dissolving thing.

* Vlad head eyeball - damaging the thing was the only way to get dad to stop wearing the thing.

* Fenton wig - stupidly useful, almost concerningly so.

* My first ice crystal - this is probably why there’s never any bugs in here. Keeps everything nice and cold.

* Milkshake glass with Hobsin’s signature - I put that man through Hell, but asking for this was probably weirder to him than my tastebuds.

* Box Ghosts’ Not Wanted poster - it really is just too funny not to have.

* Chunk of Nocturn’s sleep helmet - one thing I wanted to blow up but yet blew up on accident. Even my sleep is destructive.

* A vial of oatmeal - it may be horrendously expired but it was just too funny to not keep.

* A freaking apology letter from Red to Phantom - I’m still completely weirded out by this honestly. I really do need the reminder that it’s actually real.

Sealing the box back up, before I head out for a patrol. It sure says something that every episode of my life is just another secret. And amongst all the pennies for my ponderings, are souvenirs for my secrets.

End.

#phanniemay #phanniemay19 #danny phantom #phandom #fanfic #secrets #danny fenton #maddie fenton #phantomphangphucker #have a fic suck my dick #fuck PP its not canon #phanphic #short

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turtle-paced · 6 years

Text

GoT Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

Ah, the end. I’m free until 2019.

Yeah, no, tune in Sunday for the most recent numbers and my proposal for what I do next.

7.07 - The Dragon and the Wolf

(2:02) The Unsullied have reappeared in the plot.

(2:24) And with a shot of Jaime looking out over their ranks, we establish that the Unsullied are now at King’s Landing. What Riverlands? What Reach? Who’s running them now? And did anyone notice hostile forces marching through?

(3:21) This is, I think, one of the worst conversations in the entire series, due to its combination of indulging a favoured actor and trying way too hard to be cynical, irreverent and witty (but overshooting two of those marks and undershooting the third, landing firmly in “juvenile” territory). “Maybe it really is all cocks in the end,” says more about the show than it does about the characters.

(4:45) Here we have a long establishing shot showing us some real nice work modelling the Red Keep, plus Euron’s navy, and the few ships Dany sent. Perfectly legitimate use of establishing shots - especially given the political situation these characters are heading into, and the purposes for which they’ve each assembled these forces. This time, the length of the shots is well justified, and we’re looking at something more attractive and interesting than a damned stone corridor.

(5:15) Yeah…the book!North has more than a million people living in it.

(6:24) Woman called bitch: 1. Note Jaime’s shocked expression as Cersei says “if something goes wrong, kill [everyone in a certain order].” I do not know why this is supposed to be surprising to him - the only thing that leaps to mind is that he’s horrified she’d order such a thing under a flag of truce with so little specification as to what “if something goes wrong” means.

(6:42) People start walking to the Dragonpit here.

(8:05) We start in earnest with the reunions here. Tyrion and Pod, this time. It’s nice that they get to see each other again and catch up.

(8:18) Look, writers. Bronn saying the word “cock” is not inherently funny. Please stop.

(8:29) Similarly, Sandor doesn’t have to swear at everyone for no reason at all to maintain his hard man cred.

(8:37) Now Sandor and Brienne get to see each other again and catch up. That’s also nice.

It’s well worth mentioning, from an adaptational perspective, how telling it is that Brienne and Sandor speak fondly and admiringly of Arya, without mentioning Sansa. This is pretty much a product of the show’s lack of interest in and understanding of Sansa’s book material - her refusal to become jaded and cynical affects Sandor deeply, but was barely adapted in the show. It did, however, preserve Sandor’s repeated speeches to Sansa in praise of cynicism. As far as the adaptation can tell, there’s no reason for someone as “badass” as show!Sandor to care about Sansa. As opposed to Arya, of course he’d like Arya, she’s a scrappy tomboy. What’s not to like?

The knock-on effect is that it was that much harder to show Sandor’s own character development. The scene where Sandor buries the farmer and his daughter did a bit of that catching-up, but not much, and it doesn’t erase the fundamental problem of Sandor returning to violence - and hence the story - after the massacre of the peaceful farming community he was living in.

(9:46) Varys chimes into Tyrion’s reunion with Bronn (another nice thing!) to remind us that Bronn works for people when he gets paid. And he hasn’t been paid.

(10:54) And they finally arrive at the Dragonpit. Weren’t those reunions nice? Wasn’t it fun? Couldn’t we have used those four minutes of screentime telling the story instead?

The plot going on here is the peace talks. If there’s tension here, it needs to be directed towards “will these talks be successful?” and “will Cersei believe us?” If we have to see four minutes of characters walking to these peace talks, the conversation on the way needs to be Tyrion sounding Bronn out over Cersei and Jaime’s current attitudes, or Jon going over what he has to say and how. Also acceptable is Jon asking Brienne how Sansa was doing (to give him a chance to react to the news Bran and Arya are at Winterfell; this is new information pertaining to several major characters), or the minor named characters talking about the wight-in-a-box. Even then, we don’t have to have conversations about conversations we’re going to have.

Tyrion, Bronn and Pod reuniting? Fanservice. Cut it. Brienne and Sandor encountering each other again? Fanservice. Cut it. You’ve got a story to tell, gentlemen, move it along.

(11:42) Especially cut it, because we’ve now spent a minute watching the first set of arrivals at the Dragonpit file into place. On top of the four minutes of useless walking to places, this kills the pace of the episode. It’s supposed to be tense waiting; by now it’s more like “get back to me when the plot starts up, ‘kay?”

(12:30) Man called cunt: 1. Sandor’s swearing again. He’s maybe a little Flanderized.

(12:34) Man called cunt: 2.

(12:37) Ahahahaha, wow. We get a good look at Cersei’s outfit here and I get to return to laughing at how terrible her costuming’s been this season. In a better show an outfit this bad would be a tip-off that Cersei’s not taking this at all seriously. In this show, well. The outfit’s too plain to make a point of Cersei’s wealth and power, and too fancy to make a point of its plainness. I’ll get back to costuming again once Dany shows up.

In the meantime, say hi to Euron! He’s back!

(13:23) After another minute and a half, we’ve got the second party to arrive seated. Chop chop. We don’t have all day if we’re going to get through some plot here.

(13:32) Sandor’s really being highlighted here. We have several characters with established tension, and it’s Sandor who marches across the stage to confront Gregor. I worry that we’re going to get Cleganebowl, I really do.

(14:48) Dany loses political competence here to enable future plot point, coming with two of her dragons.

(16:06) And our third and final party finally seats herself. It’s been almost ten minutes since these characters set out on the path to the Dragonpit. Nothing of interest has been said. Nothing has been done. There’s building tension, and then there’s pacing the episode badly.

Now that Dany’s here, I’m also going to point out the costuming thing that’s now super obvious. Every named character here, with the exceptions of Jaime and Varys, is wearing black. (Jaime and Varys are both wearing very dark, dull colours.) This lack of range in colour actually subtracts from the worldbuilding. Why are Tyrion and Cersei dressed as Tywin-clones? They’re just about the only people there who’ve so much as seen Tywin; there’s no point in dressing to copy him (except to make a point to the audience, what’s a fourth wall?), and these black costumes are still too blinged out to effectively do the job anyway. Why is Jon not in grey and white (not that we’ve ever seen Starks in grey and white)? Why hasn’t anyone got Davos something a bit less shabby to wear? Did all of these people join the Night’s Watch when I wasn’t looking?

Little things - bits of jewellery, chasing on armour, and so forth - have all the house symbols that should be loud and proud on clothing and conveyed through colour. Jaime’s is possibly the best costume here. Check the details on it. They’re nice ones.

(16:29) As if to spite us, when Tyrion starts talking, Euron interrupts. Dammit. We were so close to getting the episode started.

(17:10) Thank you, Jaime! Forty seconds of bad joke and explaining why the bad joke is bad. Aaaaaaargh. We know. Get a move on.

(18:26) At least this time Jon seems to have practiced his “the zombies are coming” speech.

(18:50) Dany’s first line since she apologised for rocking up late. She’s barely had a reaction shot. It’s pretty much what happened in her meeting with Theon and Yara at the end of s6; Dany’s been shoved into the background so that Tyrion can take centre stage (because his own plot vanished into the ether and all he’s got to do is speak for Dany in political situations). Seriously, she doesn’t have to speak all the time - you just have to keep checking in with her visually so we know she’s got opinions and those opinions are important!

(19:18) Cersei calls someone else a usurper. Um.

Note again that Dany hasn’t made an argument. She’s confirming things and restating them. The work of the appeal, for her faction, is left to Tyrion. Jon Snow gets to speak for himself.

(19:28) On perfect dramatic cue, Sandor emerges from the basement here with the wight-in-a-box.

(19:50) We watch Sandor carry it to centre stage and start unboxing it. It’s a slow roll within a slow roll. It’s a slow roulade. A turducken of unnecessarily dragged out dramatic moments. I have died, and I am in pacing hell.

(20:33) Oh it’s a wight in the box! Wow, that only took a FULL MINUTE.

(20:43) Great reaction times here. That wight covered some distance.

(21:21) Qyburn’s reactions here are excellent. This is well done.

(21:39) Davos Seaworth, brought along to light a torch for Jon. Jon, meanwhile, handles this like an airline safety demonstration. While I love ADWD-timeframe Jon’s boring-but-practical attitude, this is pretty comical.

(22:12) Deaths: 1. Jon kills a wight. Still trying to catch up to Dany.

(22:38) At last! Dany contributes! Took her long enough!

(22:44) Again, something genuinely good - we can tell that Jaime is convinced, no tricks. He’s had the reaction shots to show this, and he’s asking follow-up questions. (Dany being able to estimate numbers is a good way of showing her competence and interest in the matter.)

(23:03) “Can they swim?” Interesting question there, Euron…

(23:24) “This is the only thing I’ve ever seen that terrifies me.” At first I thought this was both bad acting and bad writing (show, don’t tell!). Now we know that Cersei had plans within plans going and this is aaaaaaallll just a ruse to get Euron clear to ferry the Golden Company across the Narrow Sea.

(23:49) And that was Euron, everyone! He sure did add a lot to the season. Most of it comedic. Unintentionally comedic.

(24:04) Here’s something that again, in a better show, I would like a lot - Cersei starts monologuing in pretty much the same words as Jon and Tyrion. In a better show, I’d have the trust that this was Cersei deliberately reflecting back what she knows the others want to hear, deliberately mimicking their rhetorical devices. In this one, I’ve got nothing more than that the general intention of the scene was “Cersei convinces the others she believes the threat is real.” There have been too many clunky speeches for what looks like it could have been an effective idea to work.

(24:51) “I ask it only of Ned Stark’s son.” This is closer to the sort of irony that the books give us with Jon and Ned. The emphasis is on Ned, and what Jon is not.

(25:22) I have the strong suspicion that Jon swearing allegiance to Dany last episode was done first and foremost to break negotiations down right now. I’ll be interested to see how it plays out next season, combined with the inevitable internal R+L=J reveal.

(26:16) Wait what? Brienne said what? Brienne of Tarth? “Fuck loyalty”? Are we looking at the same character here? Full line’s worth examining, too. “This goes beyond houses and honour and oaths.” Only realpolitik can confront the army of the dead, in Game of Thrones, and honour is an obstacle.

(27:28) Surprisingly, Jon Snow actually advances a good argument for honesty! Which, much like his position on amnesty back in 7.01, is rather undercut by the action this argument was paired with. Not much good having these arguments if everyone around him is going “yes, Jon, but that was daft.”

(27:49) Here’s one of the best examples of what I’ve been talking about. We’ve only got one chance, Tyrion says. He goes to talk to Cersei alone. And yet, in order to maintain the plot the showrunners want to write, Tyrion can’t succeed. Just like with the Masters in Meereen, just like with Jaime ditching Casterly Rock earlier, Tyrion’s plan fails. I’ve got no faith that the showrunners are going to start pointing this out and have people’s opinions of Tyrion change for the worse because of this track record of failure. Yet if Tyrion doesn’t do this, he doesn’t have anything to do.

(28:11) “Or we all go home and we’re right back where we started.” Which is a huge failing of this plot. After six and a half episodes of war, very little has been accomplished vis-a-vis Dany and Cersei.

(28:22) Tyrion starts walking here.

(28:40) Cut to Tyrion in the Red Keep here. But it wasn’t just Tyrion walking. We had reaction shots to Tyrion walking. Totally worth eighteen seconds.

(28:48) And eight seconds of just Tyrion’s face before we see that he’s walking next to Gregor Clegane. I could just cry. Please, please, get to the story.

(28:59) Cut to Tyrion turning the corner of this corridor. Thrilling action! Stunning development!

(29:52) After a brief stop for Tyrion to do some nonsense like ‘converse with his brother, whom he loves yet knows he must oppose,’ we get yet more shots of Tyrion walking!

(30:16) Tyrion finally makes it into the same room as Cersei here. In terms of scene-setting, we saw that Tyrion was nervous because Gregor Clegane escorted him part of the way. In terms of new information, we learned that Cersei and Jaime argued until she kicked him out of the office.

Here’s a thought. Maybe we could have had about eight seconds of Tyrion being escorted by Gregor Clegane and nervous on account of this and its implications, and actually see Jaime get kicked out of the office by a furious Cersei? Rather than burn almost two minutes watching Tyrion walk a hundred metres?

(30:43) Woman called whore: 1.

(30:48) Woman called whore: 2.

(31:42) Again we see that it’s the loss of Tywin that caused the fall of the Lannisters in show-verse, as opposed to Lannister actions creating their own enemies and removing all incentive to make peace. True, this is out of Cersei’s mouth, and Cersei’s not reliable, but we have corroboration in the structure of the story elsewhere. To me it looks like this is supposed to be a moment where the stopped clock is right.

(33:04) Tyrion drinks: 1.

(34:02) Tyrion drinks: 2.

(34:38) We’ve changed topics a bit here, into “why is Tyrion working for Dany.” He believes she’s going to make the world a better place.

(34:47) And the example of Dany’s good governance he gives Cersei is that Dany chose him as an advisor. That’s…that’s some ego. Worse, the dynamic Tyrion asserts the existence of, that he checks her worst impulses, has not been in shown. We have instead seen Dany acting against Tyrion’s advice (at least once because she quite reasonably believed that he advised her badly), but often in a way that makes him very concerned that she’ll turn out to be a tyrant after all.

(34:56) Cersei subtly puts her hand on her stomach there. Plans within plans.

(35:38) End scene! So. What did that scene actually accomplish? Tyrion was sent there to convince Cersei to give them the truce. We did not see these characters discuss the truce. They barely discussed the meeting. Instead, they hashed out events of past seasons. They talked about events the audience was there for and emotions the audience knows haven’t changed. At most, the scene got Tyrion and Cersei to a place where they could talk about the truce. But what we did not see was any talking about the truce.

More in just a second. Or a few minutes. That will no doubt feel like hours.

(37:22) After a bit more stuff about the Dragonpit, Dany tells Jon that she can’t have children, and he questions it. Again I get this weird foreshadowing feeling, knowing that later this episode this character will be having consensual PiV sex. Though at least this information flowed from the conversation preceding it; it wasn’t quite “by the way, have I mentioned I’m infertile?” “Have you thought that maybe you might not be infertile?” It seems more like the conversation as a whole was engineered to get to a point where Dany could mention this fact a bit more naturally.

We’ll see.

(37:59) “I can’t forget what I saw north of the Wall, and I can’t pretend that Cersei won’t take back half the country the moment I march north.” Yes, that is the basic dilemma we knew existed right from the start of the episode, isn’t it? Stop repeating yourselves and move on to new plans!

(39:12) Cersei declares that she will march north with the others and fight the White Walkers. This after an offscreen discussion with Tyrion. If this solved their problems, it was a bad idea to have their problems solved offscreen. If this is a trick, it was a bad idea to put this offscreen, because it involves a character we’re supposed to believe is intelligent and perceptive being totally fooled by someone he knows very well, yet doesn’t trust. This plot point determines whether there’s a united front or whether the good guys are set up for a nice backstab - you have to show us things this important.

(40:08) “He never asked for my opinion, why would he start now?” We meant to do it! We definitely didn’t screw up the latter half of season six with characters artificially not telling each other important things! That aside, a lot of those communication difficulties were on Sansa. She failed to share important information that people in her situation would be expected to share, and when Jon did ask for her advice and assistance, she lied to him. Not for good or well-written reasons mind you, but she did. Repeatedly stating that s6 communications problems were Jon’s fault does not actually make them Jon’s fault.

(40:33) Finally, someone mentions that a political marriage between Jon and Dany might not be a bad idea.

(41:30) Relax, Sansa! We never saw Arya on an assassination mission she didn’t screw up big time.

The scripting for Littlefinger has been adequate, so far this scene, which cannot be said for earlier conversations between the two. It’s possible to tell where he’s going for manipulation in order to promote Sansa at Jon’s expense, but he hasn’t overplayed his hand much in this particular conversation. Sansa doesn’t look like a total fool for not picking up on this. Right up until…

(41:46) …this moment. “Sometimes, when I try to understand a person’s motives, I play a little game.” This, this is past obvious and past on-the-nose. The only way Littlefinger could get more blatant is if he said, “you should really consider killing your sister and claiming the Northern throne, Sansa.” This is not a situation like in ACoK where Tyrion knew Littlefinger was bad news, and just thought he was slightly less bad news than everything else he had to deal with. This is a situation where Sansa has free rein to do what she likes to Littlefinger, as we’ll see.

The fact that she does not immediately pick up on something so obvious, after several seasons of dealing with more subtle people and armed with the knowledge Littlefinger is untrustworthy, is one of those things that makes it hard to believe this character is supposed to be intelligent, in spite of what other characters say elsewhere. We’re told she’s smart and frequently shown she’s not. We see stand-alone scenes depicting her intelligence, but otherwise her smarts aren’t worked into the plot. This is because the showrunners don’t seem to believe she’s smart in the first place. They’re trying to write against their beliefs and the cracks show.

(42:51) Goddammit! That letter Sansa wrote was proof of life. It’s not proof of anything else. Definitely not of her treachery. Which doesn’t exist.

(43:33) The writers spit in our collective faces by writing a logistics scene.

(44:15) And spit again by having Jon actually consider the political messages he’s sending.

(45:03) Huh, my bad. Davos was wearing dark green. Over black, of course, so he’s not totally off the hook for the mass Night’s Watch-joining.

(45:18) Yes. We know Jon could have lied to Cersei. It wasn’t that long ago. We saw it. We don’t need Theon to tell anyone, much less Jon himself.

(45:29) And we know why Jon didn’t lie. You’re not even paraphrasing previous episodes now, you’re repeating conversations from earlier this episode!

(46:05) Congratulations you have character arcs please continue the actual story

(46:41) “It always seemed like there was this impossible choice I had to make. Stark or Greyjoy.” Like an author was scripting events out to examine the meaning of family and displacement through my experiences. Like I was a character in a popular TV adaptation of a novel series, and then the writers got lazy and decided to make me recite my central dramatic tension for the class, just in case someone hadn’t understood the point of most of the scenes I was in.

Even Alfie Allen can’t save this.

(47:00) Recapping season two is not progress!

(47:15) Then Jon tells Theon that Ned’s a part of them both, because we hadn’t had enough obvious rammed down our throats.

(47:52) Now that the closest thing Westeros has to Jesus has forgiven Theon of what sins he can and told him the endpoint of his character development, can we please get back to the story?

(48:05) “When I was Ramsay’s prisoner, Yara tried to save me.” Now we’re going over season three. We are all in pacing hell.

(49:26) “She’s your sister, and you left her to die.” This fundamental position is one the narrative never challenges - the equation of a PTSD episode in the middle of a fight with a conscious, deliberate choice to abandon Yara out of cowardice. If it was the latter instead of the former, the shot selection and acting at the time did not convey this. It’s a profound difference. “Would have tried to help Yara but couldn’t,” versus “could have tried to help Yara but wouldn’t.” And yes, this is the narrative speaking, not the Ironborn who can’t be expected to know about PTSD. Theon’s “abandonment” of Yara is the event he has to overcome in this season. If it was the characters speaking, the narrative would be Theon grappling with the fact that despite what his society tells him, there was nothing he could have done.

That’s setting aside the fact that really, what was Theon supposed to do there? Euron already had a knife right at Yara’s throat. If Theon had moved towards them, Euron would have killed her. Even if Theon had been thinking clearly, jumping over the side may well have been the best call.

I’m also quite uneasy with the fact that Yara’s been captured to give Theon something to do going forwards. I’m hoping Yara’s more than a MacGuffin in this storyline.

(51:31) Theon is kneed in the crotch. Surprise! It doesn’t work. Just like Jaime stopped a sword with his golden hand back in season five. I’m not sure I can unpack everything going on here - but let’s just say that a knee to the crotch hurts no matter what you’ve got down there (and we saw that in the Brienne vs Sandor fight, where Brienne realistically screamed in pain when Sandor kicked her between the legs). In Theon’s case, scar tissue can be very sensitive. The writers still aren’t actually thinking about what Theon’s mutilation means beyond “hur hur, no penis.”

(51:48) It’s also quite upsetting that the narrative says that Theon proves his courage through physical violence. Another part of a greater pattern - this season alone has already told us that Sansa was a coward for being held hostage. We can see this through the fact that Theon getting up after being told to stay down doesn’t get the lingering shots - it’s Theon withstanding a knee to the crotch and then beating the guy up that’s the climax of the scene. In other words, the scene conveys that Theon hasn’t done anything worthwhile until he’s actually won the fight.

(52:00) I’m not sure if this guy is dead. I don’t think so.

(54:03) Urrrgh, I can’t mention enough that I hate Maisie Williams’ direction this season. It’s just so goddamned smug. She’s capable of more and better, and we get this instead, because she’s “badass” now.

(54:19) It’s clever because every line here applies to Littlefinger better than Arya. Bait aaaaand…

(54:46) …switch.

(55:00) Littlefinger every bit as confused as the audience, I see. I wouldn’t have thought the writers wanted the audience asking the same questions as Littlefinger in relation to what’s going on. Maybe they should have considered writing a scene or two where the Starks worked out what was going on, and made the focus of the storyline managing to corner Littlefinger into a confession?

(55:25) Ah, the murder of Lysa Arryn. The first time that Littlefinger was arbitrarily gagged and rendered neither able to plan for contingencies nor improvise despite demonstrated skill in both areas. Also should be raising questions amongst the Valemen why Sansa testified so emotionally to the contrary back in season four.

It’s worse than Littlefinger just being gagged - he outright confesses to this one. Further note that Sansa provides no evidence, not even mentioning that she saw him do it, nor giving him the opportunity to respond to her assertion that he murdered Lysa to gain power in the Vale. I know showing a real trial wouldn’t be much fun here, but we’re already skimping on basic fairness.

(55:34) Sansa pulls out the fact that Littlefinger conspired with Lysa to murder Jon Arryn.

(55:58) Then Sansa elaborates on the consequences. This is bad, bad storytelling. Jon Arryn’s murder kicked off the political plot. Sansa (and Arya, and Bran) lost their parents and two brothers as a result of the war this started. We didn’t see them learn this. We didn’t see them react to this. The Starks are the heart of this story, and we didn’t see the survivors learn who bears so much responsibility for their misfortunes. We didn’t see how they learned it. We just see that they did.

The priority in this scene is not the long game - the fall and rise of House Stark. That can only be done through developing Sansa, Arya, and Bran, showing their individual journeys before bringing them back together, each contributing their talents to rebuild their home and family. This is very nearly a seven-season internal mystery, touching most of the main characters! It deserved reactions! Especially when the people affected discovered what happened! Instead it’s just brought out to get rid of Littlefinger, with no foreshadowing or development so it remains “shocking.”

Continue to note that Littlefinger denies things and Sansa just rolls on.

(56:04) The lack of reaction-to-information becomes worse as Sansa reveals that they know Littlefinger conspired to betray Ned. They found out who’s responsible for their dad’s death and didn’t get a reaction shot. Didn’t get a scene.

(56:23) When Littlefinger brings up this whole lack of evidence thing, Bran brings up his visions. The audience knows they’re credible, certain people believe them to be credible (including Sansa), but why should anyone else put any stock in them?

It’s fine if the pressure of the situation makes Littlefinger crack and betray himself even in the absence of hard evidence, that could be a tense and exciting scene. But one of the things that makes him such a dangerous opponent, a worthy endgame villain, is that this is a damned hard thing to do. In ACoK, Tyrion told him he was looking into Jon Arryn’s true murderer - and all Littlefinger said was “Jon Arryn’s true killer? I confess, you make me curious.” Show!Littlefinger’s crumpling like soggy newspaper. There’s got to be some fight to this.

(56:42) So…if that really is Littlefinger’s knife, does that mean Littlefinger tried to kill Bran? That makes no sense whatsoever (as he would have had to have learned not just that Bran fell, but also the circumstances in which he did), and is pretty hard on logistics besides.

(56:59) This scene does give Aiden Gillen the chance to prove that yes, he can act. Another person whose direction has been pretty atrocious really.

(57:19) Littlefinger’s master plan revealed! He was trying to sow strife in the Stark family. Man, did his plans ever get smaller scale throughout the series.

(57:32) “I’m a slow learner, it’s true.” Oh, fuck off. Not content with just plain old character bashing, they now have a character bash herself. This is what I mean by the writers truly believing that Sansa isn’t clever. Incidentally, you know what was cut from this storyline? Scenes where Sansa actually worked things out.

(57:38) Littlefinger asks for a chance to defend himself. He outright points out that this is a kangaroo court. Held by the nominal heroes. If the heroes don’t have enough evidence to get him nor the wits to trick him into providing that evidence himself and instead have to rely on corruption to do away with an enemy...I don’t end up thinking highly of the story.

(57:51) I do like Royce refusing Littlefinger’s authority as Lord Protector of the Vale.

(58:28) Also that Sansa’s crying.

(58:30) So now that we’re done reading out the charges and detailing the allegations against Littlefinger, when’s the trial going to be? There are clearly some questions of fact in dispute here -

(58:35) Or not.

This setting is not big on justice. Bullshit trials have featured throughout the series. I would not be complaining about this one being bullshit were it not for three things. First, the people we’ve seen running bullshit trials thus far are the bad guys. That’s literally one of the things that makes the bad guys bad guys, they run unfair trials, and people can’t get fair hearings in them! It is on our heroes to be better than Lysa Arryn and Tywin Lannister even when dealing with the guilty. Second, Sansa literally just tried to pass this off as justice - after denying Littlefinger all rights to defend himself. No evidence, no right of reply, no opportunity to ask for trial by combat. Nothing. Some justice that was. Finally, the series proper opens with an execution and a goddamned discussion on how they should be fair and contain a semblance of due process, even when the facts are as manifestly apparent as the case of a Night’s Watch deserter! This is not a good fantasy series to be fucking up your discussions of justice in!

That said, I do still think it’s clear that Sansa did the bit where she looked into Littlefinger’s eyes, heard his final words, and still knew that he deserved to die. She was not hiding from her responsibility in sentencing Littlefinger.

One more thing I do honestly like: even with his throat cut, Littlefinger keeps trying to talk. Deaths: 2. At Sansa’s behest, Arya kills Littlefinger.

What an anti-climax.

(59:39) “What are you doing?” “Preparing the expedition north.” And for that, Cersei calls him stupid. What a fool, thinking that because Cersei pledged in public to march north and never informed the commander of her armies otherwise, that she was planning to march north!

(1:01:17) This is a novel variation on the “you do know we’re in a dire situation, right, Cersei?” “yes, but we have the writers on our side, Jaime” conversation these two have been having over the course of the season.

(1:01:41) Just pointing out again that Dany made a rookie mistake in bringing two of her dragons and succeeded only in tipping Cersei off that one got killed.

(1:02:06) These armies just keep coming out of nowhere for Cersei, purely to keep her as a conventional threat. This plot has not progressed. We started this season with Cersei under threat from all sides, but with an army at her disposal; we end this season with Cersei under threat from all sides, and an army at her disposal. All the battles have been wasting time until Jaime breaks up with her. The development here has been in Jaime and Cersei’s relationship alone.

(1:03:03) I think the idea here is that Jaime breaks up with Cersei for two reasons - one, she doesn’t trust him as he trusts her, and two, she’s telling him to break an oath. The former’s fine, but seriously, most of Jaime’s relationship with Cersei was breaking oaths. The writers passed up the logical reasons for Jaime and Cersei to break up and stuck themselves with less logical ones.

(1:04:07) Favourite scene of the episode by a mile. Jaime in plain clothes, riding away from King’s Landing as it starts to snow.

(1:05:41) Sam and Gilly make it to Winterfell. Seems the Kingsroad is fine to travel. Never mind the armies.

(1:06:14) Huh, that’s funny, robo-Bran doesn’t seem to have trouble saying nice things to Sam like he had trouble being kind to Sansa and Meera.

(1:07:02) Sam came to Winterfell to help Jon fight against the dead. So, does that mean he’s deserting the Night’s Watch? Or have the writers just forgotten that the Night’s Watch is a thing?

Actually, considering all the black people are wearing, maybe everyone really did join the Night’s Watch, and when everyone is in the Night’s Watch, nobody is.

(1:07:20) Apropos of nothing, Bran says “Jon needs to know the truth” and gives us all the exposition. It’s…a bit graceless. Pretty much what the word “infodump” describes actually. Combined with the fact that Bran isn’t emoting over the fact that his dad lied to everyone for years, it makes it hard to see why this is an emotional bombshell as well as a plot one.

(1:07:44) Bran asserts that since Jon was born in Dorne, his surname is Sand.

(1:07:58) Sam hits us with the other part of the exposition! Jon is (*gasp*) actually legitimate!

(1:08:34) “Robert’s Rebellion was built on a lie.” No it wasn’t. Rhaegar’s apparent abduction of Lyanna was only one cause.

(1:08:53) “He loved her. And she loved him.” First, Lyanna going with Rhaegar willingly doesn’t mean she stayed willingly once Aerys murdered her father and eldest brother, and Rhaegar left to fight against her family. (Also, I sincerely hope that show!Lyanna is a bit older than fifteen. That is an improvement the show could easily make.) Second, ohhhhhh boy does this ever erase Elia from the narrative. Rhaegar was married. He had kids. Even if he didn’t love them, he had responsibilities to them. In his situation, abandoning those responsibilities was damaging and dangerous to those human beings. How romantic is this, when an innocent woman and two innocent children suffered for Rhaegar’s decisions? Just because they’re in love doesn’t mean everyone else in the world ceases to exist -

- Oh, wait. Sam and Gilly. I forgot. Don’t mind me then.

Third, I know the show’s done plenty of incest normalisation with “you can’t choose who you love,” but seriously why cut to Jon Snow going to Dany’s bedroom just as it’s exposited that they’re aunt and nephew? Is that really what you want the audience to have on their minds?

(1:09:16) Epic love story you two, but perhaps consider smiling at each other? So we can see you make each other happy?

(1:09:24) Cut to Tyrion lurking around outside, very creepy, no possible way to tell what he’s thinking from what’s shown here.

(1:09:35) Bran asserts that Jon’s real name is Aegon Targaryen.

This is ridiculous. If Rhaegar wanted to name Jon “Aegon,” he made this plan when his first son Aegon was still alive (on account of the fact he predeceased his children). If Lyanna wanted to name Jon “Aegon,” that means she was still on board with her relationship with Rhaegar, not giving a fuck about her father and brothers.

The other reason it’s ridiculous is because Jon Snow’s real name is Jon Snow. Jon is the name Ned, Jon’s father, gave to him. Ned picked it to honour someone he loved very much, which in turn shows his love for Jon. The “Snow” part Ned didn’t pick so directly, but he went with that rather than Sand because Jon is Northern. Like his family. Jon grew up with that name. He answers to it. Everyone knows him by that name. It’s his real name.

Also, there’s nothing inherently special about being named Aegon Targaryen. Jon Snow can save the day just as well with a bastard surname.

(1:09:50) Consensual sex: 1.

(1:09:59) Male butts: 1. Most definitely for the fanservice. This season has been a real refreshing change as far as the sex and nudity numbers go.

(1:10:12) “He’s never been a bastard.” Yes he has. That’s the point. Whether or not his parents were married (book or show), he’s never lived as anything but the bastard of Winterfell. (This is in pretty direct contrast to Aegon so-called Targaryen in the books, who might have been raised on a poleboat but always knew he was a prince.) He’s been a bastard the whole time, and no discovery of legitimacy can change how Jon was raised.

(1:10:18) “He’s the heir to the Iron Throne.” That’s as may be. This looks to me like it might be a point of conflict with Dany later. However! The qualities that will help Jon assist in saving the world rest first and foremost with his upbringing as Ned Stark’s (bastard) son. Which, again, is rather the point.

(1:10:28) If Tyrion hanging round Dany’s door earlier wasn’t creepy enough, what’s even creepier is that he’s still there now. Still watching. Please leave…

(1:11:11) Sansa and Arya up on the battlement having a supportive chat about what happened in the last Winterfell scene. Ah, good times, good times. Remember that time Arya threatened to murder Sansa and take her face? It was last episode! When did they make up?

The action in the last scene hinged on Sansa and Arya working together. We did not at any point see them working together. We did see death threats. Yet another important bit of character work that took place offscreen.

(1:11:31) “I never would have survived what you survived.” “You would have.” Uh. No. Again, the point. No surviving Stark would make it through what any other surviving Stark did, and it’s most apparent in the case of the sisters. Moreover, it’s not a freaking competition! You do not get points for surviving worse things!

We also see here that Sansa compliments Arya, but no compliment is given to Sansa in return. In isolation? Innocuous. In an episode where two people who know both sisters praised Arya without mentioning Sansa once? Less innocuous. Combined with off-air statements about Arya always being tough and shrewd while Sansa had to work for it? Downright suspicious.

(1:12:21) Quoting Ned about the need to work together would be so much more heartwarming if these two hadn’t only been working together offscreen, and the writers hadn’t well and truly established a pattern of all these siblings being utter dicks to one another for no good reason! I think Arya and Bran are the only two who’ve spent any time together recently who haven’t had dire communication issues.

(1:13:19) Good use of Bran’s crows to go to some nice establishing shots at Eastwatch. I wonder what’s going to happen here.

(1:14:21) And some nice shots of the army of the dead at last starting their advance on the Wall. Longer shots definitely justified here, since we’ve been working up to this from episode one.

(1:15:04) Three horn blasts is for wights - nice job with the homework, writers!

(1:15:42) The other half of why we just had to go North of the Wall. Needed to kill a dragon…and raise it as a wight. Well, if you edit out the horn that will bring down the Wall…

(1:16:35-37) Deaths: 3, 4, 5, 6. A few people fall from the Wall.

(1:16:41) Deaths: 7, 8, 9. A few more.

(1:16:57) Deaths: 10, 11. Two more.

(1:17:08) Nice shots of the Wall coming down thanks to wight-Viserion’s fire.

(1:17:42) And likewise, nice shots of the army of the dead moving through the breach. Not a bad way to end the season - competent visual storytelling.

Game of Numbers S07E07

Deaths: 11. Mostly people falling from the Wall, but Jon kills a wight, and Sansa and Arya team up to kill Littlefinger.

Male butts: 1. Meant to be sexy.

Female butts: 0.

Consensual sex: 1.

Rape: 0.

Woman called ‘bitch’: 1.

Man called ‘bitch’: 0.

Woman called ‘whore’: 2.

Man called ‘whore’: 0.

Woman called ‘cunt’: 0.

Man called ‘cunt’: 2.

Tyrion drinks: 2.

Cersei drinks: 0.

#anti got #fine toothed comb edition #cw: violence #in pacing hell you never get past the third circle

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azvolrien · 6 years

Text

First Steps

I originally intended for this to be just a short one, but somehow it ended up almost four thousand words long. What can you do. Bit of a prequel story; mostly worldbuilding, but also some character backstory and the first ‘on-screen’ mention of High Master Carwel’s given name.

~~~

The door was slightly ajar, but Nicholas tapped his knuckles against it regardless. “Can I come in?”

There was a noncommittal grunt from inside the room.

“I brought you up some cake.”

A pause. “…What kind of cake?”

“Sponge with buttercream icing and strawberry jam.”

Another pause. “All right.”

Nicholas shouldered the door open. The room on the south corner of the house was well-placed to get the sun all day; even in the early evening, light streamed in through the tall, wide windows, casting shifting shadows through the linen curtains and the mobiles hanging from the ceiling. Nicholas didn’t duck quite in time to avoid hitting his head against a carved dragon, sending the mobile spinning on its string as its wooden wings flapped in place. A model of the solar system spun gently in the breeze from an open window, five little planets rotating around a painted yellow sun. In the far corner of the room, eleven-year-old Wygar huddled cross-legged on his bed, a white bandage wrapped around his head, a woollen blanket draped over his shoulders, and a large ginger cat curled up loaf-fashion on his lap. A few spots of blood had leaked through the bandage where it covered his right ear.

Nicholas set the plate down on the bedside cabinet. “I… I see Gregor’s keeping you company.”

Wygar didn’t look up or even smile, though his eyes darted sideways for a moment. Gregor purred happily as Wygar stroked his fur.

Nicholas sat down on the bed. “How does your ear feel?”

Wygar sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Still hurts,” he mumbled.

“I’m not surprised!” Wygar’s breathing quivered and he bowed his head. Gregor repositioned himself slightly and continued to purr. Nicholas sighed. “I’m sorry I shouted earlier,” he said more gently. “I was just so scared when I came in and saw you with the knife to your ear like that. Were you really going to cut the point off?”

Wygar nodded.

“Oh, son. Nothing should be so bad that it’s worth hurting yourself over.” Wygar looked up at that. “Would you like us to take you out of that school?” asked Nicholas. “We thought it would be good for you to be with other children your own age, but if you’re really that unhappy there, we can find a tutor for you. You wouldn’t have been there for more than another few months before moving up to secondary, anyway.”

Wygar shook his head.

“No?”

“Why should I leave?” asked Wygar, scowling. “They’re the problem.”

“That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,” said Nicholas with a small smile. “So. I know you’ve had trouble before, but… None of the past times have resulted in half the windows at your school broken and you trying to cut your ear off. Talk me through what made it so much worse than usual, eh?”

Wygar took a deep breath. “I was outside at lunch break, reading my book. Usually I stay in the library at breaks, but they’re replacing all the bookcases so it’s closed, and they don’t let you hang around in the corridors or the assembly hall so I had to go outside instead. People sneaking whispers during class, it’s not great, but I can handle it and if the teacher’s there then they don’t push their luck too much. But, you know, outside… it’s a big playground and the teachers and helpers don’t pay as much attention as they do in classes, you know?” Nicholas nodded. “So I just… sat down on one of the benches under the rain roof and had my lunch, and I almost, almost made it to the bell without anyone noticing me. But then there were about five minutes until we had to go back to class when Darren Williams and his gang of, of cronies came over.”

“Which one is Darren Williams again?” asked Nicholas, frowning.

“The tall one. Well, everyone’s tall compared to me…”

“About so high, blonde hair and brown eyes?”

“Yeah, that’s him. It’s not the first time he’s picked on me, but he’s good at sweet-talking the teachers and getting his gang to back him up so he always gets away with it… Well, they just started off with the usual stuff, just saying… saying stuff, so I just sort of hunkered down behind my book and tried to block them out, you know? Because there’s just the one of me and they had me cornered in the shed, and I’m too small to fight past them so ignoring them’s all I can do.” Wygar sighed, and fell silent for a few seconds before continuing.

“But then Darren grabbed my book off me and started going through it really roughly, tearing the pages and reading bits out loud in this really sarcastic voice, like it was so stupid that anyone might actually enjoy reading it, and then he got to my favourite part – the scene where Lord Rathus defeats the Red Hills Revenant – and just got this look on his face, and then he said-” Wygar’s breathing shuddered and both of his hands closed into fists. Gregor looked up at him. Wygar adopted a fair imitation of Darren’s voice. “‘It’s no wonder you’re always reading this rubbish – books are the only place some long-eared freak could ever be a hero.’ And then he just chucked the book over his shoulder, pages coming loose, and I… I just lost it and went for him. But he’s still bigger than me and he has all his friends, you know? And they were all around me, all poking and grabbing at me and chanting their stupid chants and pinching their ears into points, and then… I’m not really sure? Things went sort of… weird and shimmery, sort of like above the road on a really hot day, only it wasn’t hot? It was like the air was shaking around me, and then there was this, this weird rumble, then this sort of, of wave went through the air with a funny snapping sound. All of Darren’s gang were thrown back, but the wave kept going until it hit the school and broke the windows. Then everyone got sent home, but the headmaster – he doesn’t like elves either, he’s just better at hiding it – kept giving me this look like it was all my fault and sweet little Darren couldn’t have started anything, no, even though he’s like twice my size and with a whole gang to back him up… And I got home and thought to myself, maybe if I didn’t look so different to everyone else…” A few tears leaked from his eyes, but he rubbed them away before they could really fall.

Nicholas laid one arm around his shoulders. “If you’re sure you want to stay at that school, that’s fine,” he said. “But before you go back, I’m going to go and speak to your headmaster, and I’m going to rip him a new one for letting things get this bad.”

Wygar let out a half-hearted giggle at the idea of his even-tempered merchant father ripping anyone a new anything.

“But that’s not the only thing to take from your story,” Nicholas mused. “This wave you described – it sounds a lot like a technique I’ve seen the wizards use now and then. I think before you go back to school – before anything else – we need to talk to the College.”

The following afternoon, the doorbell rang. Wygar did not look up from his book until his mother called for him to come downstairs. With a sigh, he trudged down to the hall with the book under his arm and Gregor trotting at his heels.

“You’ve got a visitor from the College,” Mari said brightly, waving towards the living room door. “We’ll be in the next room the whole time,” she added in an undertone. “Just shout if you need a hand.”

Wygar just nodded and let himself into the living room. A cup of tea rested on the coffee table; a tall, broad-shouldered man with long black dreadlocks and skin a dark, warm shade of brown stood by the window, his hands folded behind his back as he looked out at the street. At Wygar’s footsteps, he glanced over his shoulder and smiled.

“I heard there was an incident at your school yesterday,” he said.

Wygar perched on the nearest sofa. The man took a seat on an armchair, still on the opposite side of the room, and tied his dreadlocks back with a strip of green cloth. Gregor hopped up beside Wygar and made himself comfortable.

“Are you… Stormlord Llewellyn?” asked Wygar. “Am I in trouble?”

The man laughed. “Am I-! No. My name is Master Idris Carwel. And no, you’re not in trouble for what happened. I’m afraid a few broken windows is far from unusual for a first manifestation.”

Wygar blinked.

“It happens a lot when people first come into their powers,” Carwel explained. “It can be a stressful, confusing experience, especially if they haven’t grown up in a magical family. I expect you have questions; I’m here to answer as many as I can.”

Wygar looked down at the book he still held. “Have you ever fought a revenant?”

It was Carwel’s turn to blink. “…Nnnot what I thought your first question would be,” he said. “No, I’ve never fought a revenant. I have seen a few, though; the best examples have been found down in Kemet and up in the far north of the Sea Loch Country, created to guard the tombs of important figures – kings, priests and so on.”

“Oh.” Wygar tucked the book behind Gregor.

“The Barrow of the Red King is a pretty accurate depiction of ancient Kaldrfjord burial practices in most respects,” said Carwel, “so you can tell the author did do the research. She just upped how dangerous the Revenant would be for dramatic effect. The magic involved in creating a revenant is actually not very different to animating a built construct, but even laden with spells a mummified corpse is just too fragile to do more than walk back and forth looking scary.”

Wygar’s eyes widened. “You’ve read Fireclaw?”

“Of course.”

“Lord Rathus is my favourite character,” said Wygar in a confidential manner.

“The rest of the group wouldn’t have got far without him,” said Carwel, nodding. “But we might be getting a bit side-tracked. Do you have any questions about your magic?”

Wygar screwed up his face in thought and ran his fingers through Gregor’s fur. “Can you tell how powerful I’ll be?”

“Well, it’s not something that’s easily quantified,” said Carwel, “though the number of windows you broke suggests ‘very’.”

“Ooh.”

“There is a safer way to get some idea. Do you know how to conjure a witchlight?”

“No, I’ve never done any magic on purpose.”

“Right.” Carwel cracked his knuckles and held out one hand, palm up. “It’s one of the simplest magics there is; it requires nothing but a little concentration and willpower. Focus on the energy inside you. I like to visualise it as a sort of vortex just under my heart, but you might find something else more helpful; everyone has their own way of managing it.”

Wygar closed his eyes. “All right.”

“Then draw on a little of it, and will that energy to convert into light.”

Wygar took a deep breath and thought about what had happened the previous day. There had been a sound like thunder, a shockwave through the air, and a lot of broken glass. A big fire could do the same thing; he had once seen a half-razed house, the remains of its windows blasted outwards by the heat. He pictured a crackling orb of flame in his chest, and imagined pulling a strand out like drawing a string from a ball of yarn, guiding it down from his heart to the palm of his right hand. It itched, as if roiling under his skin. He took another deep breath and tried to tell the energy what to do, changing it from the rage of a forest fire to the warm glow of a candle.

“That’s it,” said Carwel.

Wygar opened his eyes to see a ball of yellowish-white light, perhaps three inches across, hovering steadily above his hand. An involuntary smile appeared on his face.

“Now,” Carwel went on, “feed that little light as much energy as you possibly can, and we’ll have a better idea of how much power you have at your fingertips.”

Wygar furrowed his brow in concentration, and channelled the rest of the fire into the ball. Immediately, it grew five times the size and flared a brilliant, blinding white, so bright that it leached all sense of colour or texture from the entire room. Wygar gasped, clapped his other hand over his eyes, and cut the magic off. Gingerly, he lifted his hand back off his face and, blinking, waited for his vision to return.

When it did, he saw that Carwel still sat across the room, his mouth hanging open.

“And you’re only eleven,” he said faintly. “Once you’re a grown adult, with full access to your power… Harbinger’s fire.”

“What?”

“Wygar.” Carwel sat forwards, clasping his hands in front of him. “I’ve been around magic for my entire life,” he said. “I grew up in a house full of wizards even before I attended the College, and as a Master I’ve worked with mages – wizards and witches alike – from all over the continent. So I want you to really understand what it means when I say that I believe you have the potential to become one of the most powerful wizards I have ever seen.”

“…Wow.”

“Indeed. Which makes it all the more important that you attend the College.”

“So… if I have magic, I have to go to the College, right?”

Carwel nodded. “It’s been part of Stormhaven law almost since the founding of the College itself. An apprenticeship lasts a minimum of four years; after that, you have the option to either continue your studies as a senior apprentice, or you can leave the College if you decide you’d prefer to follow a different path. After another four years, you can decide if you’d like to stay at the College and move up to journeyman rank.”

Gregor, oblivious to this conversation, climbed up onto Wygar’s lap and sprawled across it. Wygar stroked his fur, thinking. “Mr Griffiths at school said that they made it the law to go to the College just so they can control the wizards.”

“I take it Mr Griffiths is not a wizard himself.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Carwel shook his head. “Mages are required to attend the College so that they can learn to control themselves. Because the consequences of a mage losing control can be terrible, and for many more people than just the mage alone.” He paused, drumming his fingers on his knee, and went on more slowly. “Have you ever heard of the Andari Event?”

Wygar shook his head.

“No, I don’t suppose it comes up much in a primary school curriculum.” Carwel cast an eye over the bookcase. “I see there’s a copy of Maps of the Known World up there; do you mind if I take it down?”

Wygar shook his head again. Carwel got up to lift the hefty hardback book from its shelf, laid it on the coffee table, and flicked through to a page showing part of the land between the Eastern Lakes and the Inland Sea.

“Here.” Carwel tapped a finger against an irregular blob about two hundred miles long and more than a hundred wide, completely encircled by a thick black-and-grey line. Tiny letters painstakingly written along the line labelled it ‘The Andari Wall’.

“Andari was the biggest Imperial city east of the Lakes,” Carwel went on. “It was an important trading hub between the Imperial heartland and the Kingdom of Huaxia on the other side of the Inland Sea. At its peak it had more than ten times the population of Stormhaven, though still smaller than the Imperial City. And eighty-seven years ago, it was utterly obliterated by the most devastating explosion in recorded history. The people who survived the blast – mostly by being far enough away – started falling ill. After a couple of years, when people made the connection between the Event and what became known as Andari Sickness, the Empire evacuated the remaining survivors and built the Wall to keep people a safe distance from the blast site. We don’t know all the ins and outs of exactly what caused the Event – even today, people who spend too long inside the Wall get sick, so nobody can get close enough to the origin point to study it – but we have determined with certainty that a local mage lost control of an experiment that quickly went horribly wrong.”

Wygar stared at him in silent horror, hugging an indignant Gregor.

“See, this is why I don’t usually teach the children’s classes,” said Carwel. “I have trouble calibrating just the right amount of fear to instil.”

“What’s the right amount of fear?” stammered Wygar.

“Oh, simple. Enough to make you careful without making you timid.”

“That… makes sense, I suppose.”

“Yes, I’ve always thought so.” Carwel clasped his hands in front of him. “What about the College itself? Do you have any questions there?”

“What’s it like?” asked Wygar as Gregor squirmed out of his arms and back onto the sofa.

“Big question, but I’ll cover the basics.” Carwel held up a hand and one finger from the other. “The College is divided into six Schools. Journeymen and Masters all choose one school to specialise in; junior apprentices such as yourself take basic classes from all of them, while senior ones usually narrow their field of study once they have a better idea of where their powers lie and what interests them most. I’m with the School of Combat, where we teach you how to fight both with magical techniques – what you accidentally did yesterday is called a ‘concussive wave’, by the way – and mundane ones, as well as classes on tactics and strategy. There are also the Schools of Healing, Constructs, Portals, Sight, and History.” He folded each finger down one by one. “Magical history, that is, studying both its use over time and trying to suss out how it actually works. Each School is led by a High Master, who in turn answers to the Stormlord, the head of the whole College. Then there are all the non-faculty staff such as the cooks, the cleaners, the librarians, the administrators… and the maths teachers.”

“Maths?”

“Afraid that’s a skill even wizards need to have,” said Carwel with a smile.

“All right,” said Wygar slowly. “So… would I have to stay there?”

“No, in fact. Students from other parts of the country do have to board except during holidays, but since you live in the city you can either just attend during the day like a normal school, or board during the week and come home at weekends. It’s completely up to you, and you’re welcome to change your mind if you think the other option would suit you better.”

Wygar was silent for a long time, stroking Gregor. Carwel got up to put Maps of the Known World back on its shelf.

“Are there bullies at the College?” Wygar finally asked in a very small voice.

“There are bullies at every school,” said Carwel gently. “But we take a very dim view of it, and Matron Inkfoot in particular – she looks after the apprentices – will help you sort out any trouble you’re given. She’s very protective of her charges.”

Wygar gave this some careful thought before he nodded and went on, still quietly. “I won’t be starting at the College until after the summer.”

“That’s correct. Term starts mid-River Moon.”

“So… Can you teach me a shield spell, for the rest of the term? Just in case.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Carwel. “Those spells are a little more complicated than conjuring a witchlight, but I’ll show you a fairly straightforward one to try. Tap into your magic again, and start off by imagining a shield between you and your attacker…”

The shield was barely visible other than as a faint shimmer in the air forming a rough disc in front of Wygar. They spent a few minutes practising keeping it up as Carwel threw cushions at him from across the room. Gregor watched in quiet bemusement.

“We mostly use beanbags for shield practice at the College,” said Carwel as he collected all the cushions and put them back on the chairs. “You can throw them harder, but they’re still not going to hurt anyone if they drop their shield. This one isn’t strong enough to stand up in serious combat – it wouldn’t stop an arrow or a sword – but the amount of battering your average group of school bullies can dish out won’t leave a dent.” He rubbed his chin, considering Wygar in silence. “I think you’ve been using magic without knowing it for a long time,” he said. “Do you ever feel that you’re tired all the time, or too warm?”

Wygar nodded.

“Thought so. We call that ‘bleeding’, up at the College; when a mage is almost constantly using magic on an unconscious basis. It’s not uncommon, especially in powerful, but unaware young mages, and usually shows up as excess heat. It should mostly stop now that you’ve learnt to channel your magic consciously, but it would explain why you’re so thin.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Mages need to eat a little more than other people. I’ll give your parents a few pointers about your diet.”

“Will I get taller?”

“People rarely stop growing at eleven,” said Carwel, smiling. “Yes, you’ll get taller. Though how much is between you and the gods.”

“…Huh.”

“I should start getting back to the College,” said Carwel. “Have you got any more questions before I leave?”

Wygar thought for a few seconds, then shook his head.

“All right. I’ll see you after the summer, then.”

He walked out into the hall, where both of Wygar’s parents were not trying very hard to look like they hadn’t been eavesdropping.

“What was that about his diet?” asked Nicholas.

“He needs more of it,” said Carwel, and smiled to take the sting out of it. “For starters, more meat, milk and eggs. I’ll confer with the Healers for more detailed advice; we’ll send a messenger within the next few days.” He nodded to Wygar, collected a two-handed sword from the umbrella stand, and let himself out into the street, where a sturdy construct with the horns of an aurochs waited for him. He tied the scabbard across his back and climbed into the construct’s saddle.

“Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need more help,” he said as he took the reins. “Helping young mages is the foremost purpose of the College.”

“Wait,” said Wygar. Carwel raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Why do you keep saying ‘mage’ instead of ‘wizard’?”

Carwel grinned. “Because you’re only a wizard once you’ve been trained.” He flicked the reins and turned the big construct northwards. “Good luck for the rest of term. Cadair, go!”

The construct broke into a lumbering canter, its flat, three-toed hooves drumming on the cobblestones. Both it and Carwel were soon out of sight around the next corner.

“So, how did it go?” asked Nicholas, laying a hand on Wygar’s shoulder.

“You probably heard most of it,” said Wygar.

“Well… Yes,” admitted Mari. “But we want to know what you think.”

Wygar held out one hand, conjured a small golden witchlight above his palm, and smiled. “I think… I think that things will be better now.”

~~~

See? Wygar is a cat person.

The Andari Event has never come up in a story before, but it’s been part of the canon for some time nevertheless; the Wall is marked on this map of Stranatir that I drew last year. Carwel doesn’t go into detail about the symptoms of Andari Sickness, but suffice to say... it’s something we’d recognise.

#az writes stories

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darsacarrington · 6 years

Text

Having to Say Goodbye P1

“We aren’t letting you go alone.” Robar said as he followed me around my office. Sure he’s worried about me, everyone is. Most of them know how badly I function after a lose. Only this isn’t like last time. I have a family to protect, and I have people I need to put into the ground.

Getting out my travel pack I look up at Ro. He’s been following me around like I’m his mother hen. “I don’t need anyone to go with me. It’s just a trip to Uldular and going to see Teren. Technically no one can go with me when I see Teren. No one goes in or out of his place” I flash my eyes up frowning. “remember?”

He’s giving it all he’s got. Last time I was alone and in this state I vanished for six months and came back out a sorry bastard. Mal’s Ma is the one who got me through, now I have more than just her. I have my baby sis, I have my Da, I have Stonebrill. I’m not going to thank the Light, it abandoned me a year ago when it took my light away. Instead I’m just going to be happy some kind of fate is helping me.

See, if I didn’t have a target to go after, this would be worse. So much worse. Kat has a thorn in her side. And a few of the men are now my personal playthings. This includes breaking them mentally and physically before I make sure they never join the afterlife. I can’t trust the light to do justice to them. It’s better to do this with your own hands.

“How about you... I don’t know take your father with you?” He asked trying to think of people I wouldn’t mind being around me.

“Da’s taking care of Malthe, I’m not taking him away form her, Ma would actually kill me for that.” I said with a scoff. “And Gregor is busy watching Kat’s place. And I’m not letting Ben get abused by Nishan if I get a call. They are more uptight than us mate.”

Robar was now on his last leg. laying his hands on the table he looked up at me. “You cannot go into a titan ruin by yourself!”

Placing some potions in my kit I looked up at him frowning. “I need to do this. You don’t get it...”

“I obviously do not! Why would you do this? People do die when they go in.” He said starting to get on his high horse.

Now, I know Robar is scared and worried. So I close up my pack and look at him dead on. “Mate. I need to say good by to Loch. Really say goodbye. She’s going to be killed when I get to work on this gang.”

“She left y-”

No, he does not get to fucking say that. “She didn’t leave. Greymane fucking took her! There’s a fucking difference mate and get that through that void touched brain of yours.”

I can feel the venom on my tongue as I said it. Do I regret snapping, no, not right now I don’t. The effect is easy to read as he backed up from me. Hands raising up in surrender.

“Alright my lord.” He said quietly.

No one here understands what I’m feeling. The closest is Da, but he keeps missing Ma. I can’t, I can’t do that again. When I thought there was hope, I was good. But there isn’t hope. There’s just, anger. Greymane will be paying for what he’s done to the family he destroyed. I’m fortunate that Loch and I never made out relationship public, but I’m also sad. No one will offer me the condolences I feel like I need. Instead people just ask why I am so broken over an ally.

My anger reaches my eyes and a tear was starting to grow. I’m starting to think the love of my life died years ago, when Morgana died in my arms. That was the life I deserved. Loch... she was too good for me. No cunt of a rogue deserved a good light honoring woman like her.

But I need to say goodbye. To know I was enough of a fool to have had happiness with someone too good for me.That’s why I need to go to Uldular. I need to go to the place where I thought my world was open for me. I need to say goodbye to the impossible dream I had and know I’m in a painful reality.

Looking into my bad I double check my gear. If I’m going to go, I’d better do it. Before I ship my ass up to the cold I have to hit Stormwind to speak to my ‘friend’ the warden, and I need to use some of the favor Loch got for The Ape... Funny even with out her she’s the reason I can do stuff.

I hate, and love that. After this is over, I hope to just hate it. Hate the touch that was abandoned on me. But that’s not right now. Right now, I got to get my ass down to speak to a Warden about changing the only public records that connect Darsa Carrington to Darsa Noman.

((Mentions: @kat-lockhart, @lochlyn-kiden, @teren-k))

#To Northrend SL #He won't believe she left him

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masha-russia · 7 years

Note

Please know that fans of elia or Brandon have no problem with rhaegar and lyanna being in love and getting a happy ending. Problem only arose when those 2 chose to pursue their happily ever after at the expanse of elia, his children by her, Brandon, Rickard and basically the whole realm. Lyanna is supposedly so moral a person that she can't see howland being bullied yet she doesn't bother coming back an telling everyone that she wasn't kidnapped but consented? This makes no sense.

Hi, thanks for asking,

Before talking about Rhaegar and Lyanna, I’d like to start with Brandon. Brandon Stark has fans? … In this case, I feel like these people don’t know that Brandon Stark was one of the creepiest men in the story. I realize that many may have forgotten, or not truly comprehended, the part of Dance with Dragons that showed us Brandon’s personality, since it was a small part in a Theon chapter. Brandon Stark was a sexual predator. Apart from killing people, which is already bad enough, his other favorite pass time was to sleep with virgins, specifically virgins, because he loved the sight of blood on “his sword” -> "a bloody sword is a beautiful thing”. I know the text is subtle here, but that’s the meaning. And no, Barbery Dustin wasn’t lying. Also, GRRM words: “It’d be an exaggeration to say that Brandon died before he could have children” which translates to “he had plenty of bastards”.

“Brandon loved his sword. He loved to hone it. ‘I want it sharp enough to shave the hair from a woman’s cunt,’ he used to say. And how he loved to use it. 'A bloody sword is a beautiful thing,’ he told me once.”

“Brandon was never shy about taking what he wanted. I am old now, a dried-up thing, too long a widow, but I still remember the look of my maiden’s blood on his cock the night he claimed me. I think Brandon liked the sight as well. A bloody sword is a beautiful thing, yes.”

Brandon Stark was gross. His caring for his sister and father makes him a three dimensional character, but not any less of a creep (edit: and not because of his relation with Barbery which was consensual) I am glad he died, and I have to say, House Stark was lucky he did, because if Brandon became Lord of Winterfell, the reputation of the House wouldn’t be at all as good as it was under Eddard’s rule.

Alright now, you say you have no problem with Rhaegar and Lyanna being in love, only that it happened “at the expanse of Elia and the children”. If you refer to the moral aspect and to the idea that Rhaegar “cheated” on her, I don’t understand what alternatives would satisfy you? Rhaegar was made to marry Elia, it was an arranged marriage, and Lyanna was being forced to marry a man she absolutely did not want. Divorce isn’t an option in Westeros (though judging by the outraged reactions among Elia fans following the news of show Rhaegar divorcing Elia, divorce doesn’t seem to be an option for you either), polygamy isn’t allowed, the only way for Rhaegar and Lyanna to be together is as a non-married couple, sadly. Again, I think Elia was in friendly terms with her husband and supported him. And Rhaegar’s children don’t have a say in his love life. As long as the children are cared and provided for, he did his duty as a parent. As you know, Rhaegar was greatly concerned about the War for the Dawn, and he believed Rhaenys and Aegon would have a role in it, so obviously he would have returned with Lyanna and their child to raise all of his three children together.

If you refer to their deaths, I already explained several times that you cannot blame Rhaegar and Lyanna for the murders of Elia, Rhaenys and Aegon. They didn’t commit the murder. The responsibility lies with Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch (the actual murderers), with Tywin Lannister (for giving the order), with Robert Baratheon (for wanting to kill all the “dragon’s pawn”) and to an extent with Aerys Targaryen (for refusing to send Elia and the children with Rhaella and Viserys to Dragonstone). Same for Brandon and Rickard. Rhaegar and Lyanna couldn’t have known what would happen, and they certainly didn’t wish for such horrors like the murder of Elia and the children.

Please do not believe that Kingdoms rise in rebellion over highborn girls who elope with noble Princes. “Such stories make for charming songs, but poor history”. Jon Arryn didn’t call his banners because of Lyanna, and not even because of Brandon’ and Rickard’ executions (Aerys was in the right by law to execute them, for threatening a Royal with murder, even though he did it cruelly). He rose in Rebellion when Aerys asked him to kill the innocent (by law) young men he was fostering. Thousands of people won’t go to fight and die in a war for the sake of a girl. Betrothals can be set aside.

“This makes no sense,” you say, not understanding why Lyanna and Rhaegar didn’t inform anyone of their eloping, and accusing them of idiocy and selfishness, or the story of being inconsistent. It is not the story or the characters being inconsistent though, it’s the text screaming at you that there is something wrong with the informations it gave you thus far, and that there are missing pieces of the puzzle. I think it’s evident from the novels themselves, but even GRRM is always elusive when answering any questions about Rhaegar and Lyanna and their actions. Just from one interview:

“Will we learn more about Rhaegar in the next book? Why did he take almost a year to join the fight against the rebels, or why did he kidnap Lyanna?”“You will learn more, but I can’t promise it’ll be in the next book. Keep reading.”

Rhaegar took a year to join the fight because he did not know there was War, and I believe someone was doing his best to keep him ignorant. This someone could very well be Varys - he is a Blackfyre supporter, his wisperings in Aerys’ ear was what made him even more paranoiac and cruel, he was the one responsible for Aerys’s coming to the Tourney at Harrenhal, where it is rumored Rhaegar planned to dispose him as King. If Varys really cared “for the Realm” (he does not), he would have helped Rhaegar, but instead he helped Aerys to keep the Throne while making sure his paranoia and madness grew.

Old Lord Whent had announced the tourney shortly after a visit from his brother, Ser Oswell Whent of the Kingsguard. With Varys whispering in his ear, King Aerys became convinced that his son was conspiring to depose him, that Whent’s tourney was but a ploy to give Rhaegar a pretext for meeting with as many great lords as could be brought together. Aerys had not set foot outside the Red Keep since Duskendale, yet suddenly he announced that he would accompany Prince Rhaegar to Harrenhal, and everything had gone awry from there.

As for not telling anyone of their eloping, again I believe they did tell someone. I strongly suspect Lyanna told Eddard that she fell in love with Rhaegar and that she would run away with him, but Eddard didn’t have the courage to let his father and Robert know. Other people must have been told as well, but again something went awry.

Once Rhaegar joined the war, it was too late to sue for peace. The leader of the Rebellion, Robert Baratheon, declared Rhaegar his number one enemy, so I can hardly see Rhaegar making peace with him. The Kingdoms were fighting, divided between Targaryen loyalists and Robert Baratheon supporters. It’s just not realistic at all to believe Rhaegar could have raised a white flag. Killing Robert would have put an end to the Rebellion, just as killing Rhaegar brought an end to the fighting at the Trident. Rhaegar and Robert were the faces of the War.

I very much doubt Rhaegar wanted to kill Eddard. It is possible that he gave orders to spare Eddard, for Lyanna.

This is funny. Ok as I said already Rhaegar didn’t know of the war, but … Basically the whole Realm from Dorne to Casterly Rock passing by the North fangirls about Rhaegar, how noble and gifted he was, that he was a true dragon, that he would have been a great King. How exactly did you reach the conclusion that “Canon paints him more as a coward”?

Even Yandel (Yandel!!), who wrote a very biased book (The World of ice and Fire) as he was trying to please King Robert Baratheon, said:

For despite his crimes, Prince Rhaegar was no coward.

Even he, not a lickspittle exactly but a man who wanted to be in Robert’s good graces, couldn’t bring himself to talk badly of Rhaegar.

I’d gladly come back to this conversation once we get the other two books.

#rhaegar targaryen #lyanna stark #asoiaf meta #brandon stark #elia martell #minemeta #asoiaf #text post #Anonymous

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odogaronfang · 6 years

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Zombie apocalypse aus are neat. Tell me more.

oh thank you so much for asking!!!!!!!!

okay this might get long so prepare, uhhh where do i start

so basically. henry is my main character. in this au, the risen are the zombies, makes sense yknow. difference is, while most zombie media tags zombies as slow to move, slow to act, and without capability for higher thinking, the risen are still, on some level, fundamentally human. (this kind of stems from the risen’s capability to fight in awakening, and from of a support between ricken and henry; see “they’re just like us, but dead” (((: ) given, the risen are slow and not all too strong, they’re dead and decaying and atrophying- but the fresher risen, the recently turned, can in some cases rival a healthy, living human. i’m still thinking on what caused the pandemic, i’ll be honest, no haha-no-one-knows cop-out, i’ll get back to you on that. but no one knows of any cure yet, of course, or this au wouldn’t exist.

so. in a world of the living dead(?), where being a mage translates to being a gunslinger, cut to henry. was this an excuse to make henry dual wield handguns? maybe. will i apologize for it? absolutely not.

i digress. henry is the chaotic neutral/neutral evil gunslinger with incredible aim and a questionable at best moral compass. i’ve actually got a sketch of him somewhere, of him pointing a gun at someone saying “give me your stuff. or die! i win both ways!” ‘course i didn’t draw the other person, but it gets the message across. he’s generally just kind of desensitized to things. he comes from a neglectful but wealthy family (as he does in canon), so he never had much of a mentor or anyone to guide him in what’s right versus wrong. mostly he’s just interested in self-preservation, and the preservation of his birds; he’s been rescuing wounded birds (read: crows) since he was old enough to know how, and he names them bird puns and keeps them as pets, and now he’s got what’s basically a murder of loyal crows at his beck and call. they feed on the risen (and humans) he kills, and warn him when something is approaching. he trains them well. he’s the pavlov of corvids.

gaius is a slightly more morally responsible survivor, who probably raided a bass pro outdoor shop/renaissance festival as soon as the pandemic broke out. he’s got a sword, and throwing knives, and some daggers, and a bow (before it breaks and he doesn’t know how to fix it). the good thing about it is that he doesn’t spend time looking for ammo- the bad thing is he has to do a lot of maintenance on them. he is a thief, steals from encampments and sleeping lone wanderers, but he isn’t killing anyone for supplies, usually. except candy. he’d probably kill for candy if he liked the brand enough.

the shepherds are a survivors’ group dedicated to assimilating, training, and protecting fellow survivors- think alexandria, hilltop, or the kingdom from the walking dead, if you know it. their HQ is an abandoned castle, a historical landmark, that they filled with traps and alarm systems, and is practically impassable if you don’t know it. chrom founded the group, along with his (boy?)friend robin (that’s actually his nickname, because of his fighting style, not his real name).

-lissa is chrom’s little sister, an aspiring general surgeon and the current medic of the shepherds alongside maribelle, her close friend since VPK.

-frederick is a good family friend to chrom and lissa, and by extension the rest of the shepherds- he’s a war veteran and former hand-to-hand combat instructor, and does his part by training new recruits, and often acting as chrom’s and lissa’s bodyguard.

-sully is my wife also a veteran, was actually trained by frederick while still in active service. she leads a lot of patrols around their HQ, and interrogates new recruits. just to make sure.

-stahl is the resident herbalist/apothecary, it was his father’s trade and he grew up learning it. he’s often an assistant to lissa when she needs it, as he can make the salves and ointments and medicines that she needs to treat injuries. he also sometimes helps in the kitchen, because of his extensive knowledge of plants.

-miriel is their sniper, and hobbyist historian. the historian part doesn’t matter so much, but she likes to talk people’s ears off about things if they’ll let her. she’s pretty okay with math and science too, so she’ll help stahl with measurements, ratios, etc, but mostly she likes history and shooting things from 200+ yards.

-ricken is the baby boy of the shepherds. “it takes a village to raise a child” they say, and he’s the village’s child. everyone looks out for him. everyone is his parent. he is well loved and being trained by miriel in the art of sharpshooting. (he’d rather be with stahl learning how to make things.)

-donnel is their agricultural expert, and directs all their non-specialized workforce in the maintenance of their fields. he’s very strict about their schedule, about how things are planted and pruned and fertilized and harvested, about how croplands are rotated for optimal yields, but damn if the results aren’t better than anything they could’ve gotten at a market pre-apocalypse.

-virion is their bowhunter. they could use guns, but it wastes precious ammo and is loud and attracts attention, so he trains archers and leads them out on hunts when their tame livestock are running low or they feel they can risk the venture. it’s more sensible to take from the wild than their personal resources, robin says, and robin’s advice seldom fails them…

-panne and nowi are in charge of livestock (and nowi is a herpetologist on the side. she loves reptiles. she has a pet python.) panne hates to see any animals killed, but especially her babies, as she calls the one she raises, and fully supports virion and co’s ventures as long as it spares the lives of her animals. she recognizes necessity when she sees it, however, and if an animal needs to be killed for whatever reason, she does it herself, to make sure it’s quick and painless. she’s not the most social, but she and donnel get along well, and when henry joins their number she takes quickly to him and his avian following.

-generally, their guards/patrols consist of vaike, gregor, cherche, kellam, basilio, flavia my other wife, lon’qu, and say’ri. they’re alternating shifts on castle patrol, two to each group, one pair on each side of the castle, east and west. they’re always up late but they’re allowed to sleep in as compensation.

-cordelia, sumia, and libra jump around a lot, help a lot with donnel’s farming but also with out-of-camp ranging, as they’re skilled riders. cordelia helps tend to the horses, and ricken sometimes joins her.

-olivia was an aspiring actress before the pandemic, and before she became a single mother- now she’s practically a secretary, keeping their records of harvests and hunts and slaughters and rangings and patrols. she’s mentored by miriel, who adores that kind of boring work. olivia is also an excellent liar and if they ever need to negotiate with other people, she’s their go-to.

-tharja is also a sniper and everyone’s favorite hot topic membership cardholder. she and miriel like to have cynical conversations about the state of the world and complain about men with sully. the three of them definitely have a girls’ club going.

-inigo (the only child character i bothered to include) is olivia’s son to an unnamed father. his interests have always been in the performing arts field, but as that isn’t realistic anymore, he spends a lot of time with everyone. sometimes he’ll go and sit with ricken, and they’ll browse the castle library for fairy tales and folklore and read it together, and sometimes they’ll try and write their own and then perform it for everyone else, on stormy nights when the mood is dismal. they’re always stupid but they’re funny- they both have a gift for dramatic comedy- and everyone looks forward to their shows.

i feel as though i should warn people that it’s henry/gaius, though that isn’t the focus of it. it started as a bad shitpost and now it’s a ship so… [wattpad voice] don’t like don’t read, you feel

#fire emblem: awakening #henry #chrom #robin #frederick #just tagged the most popular ones to get attention (:#wow i think this is my first original post about fe #anyway #hmu if you have more questions i love this au that i created 2 days ago #zombie au #my au #i am thinking #i may call this the 'have some death!' au #so just in case #have some death! au

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