#my favorite little daemon poet
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Late night modern hotd music headcanons :D
Rheanyra loves Beyonce so fucking much dude
She feels like she would have one playlist and it's just called boss bitch or something
Reputation is the only Taylor Swift album she constantly listens to and evermore but we won't talk about that
Former theater kid, if you disagree argue with the wall
I am a strong believer that she is a fan of musicals/romcoms and her and her boys have a movie night where they watch their favorites and sing every song word for word
(Daemon does not participate)
ESPECIALLY MAMMA MIA
Rheanyra singing "Slipping Through My Fingers" to Jace and/or Luke has me sobbing my eyes out dude
Jace, Luke, and Joffery singing "Honey Honey" omg
JACE AND (INSERT S/O OF YOUR CHOICE PROBABLY CREGAN) SINGING "LAY YOUR LOVE ON ME" TO EACH OTHER AGHSBSUDBHD
Daemon listens to dad rock and dubstep exclusively, nothing else
Bro is literally the cbat guy
Daemon is really the kind of guy that would be like "there's this band but you probably wouldn't know it because it's so underground" and it's literally Weezer
Alicent loves her yearning music
Phoebe Bridgers, Frankie Cosmos, Laufey, Mitski, Conan Gray
Two words. BOY. GENIUS.
Her and Rheanyra have TOTALLY gone to many boy genius concerts together
folklore folklore folklore
Aegon 😐😑😐
Cbat guy 2.0
Listens to WAY to much house music
No real music taste
Whatever is on the radio, but like the radio in 2016 you know?? Or like late 2000's
1989 (Taylor's Version) he's not a monster lol
Usher (that's the only person I can think of rn lol)
Aemond only listens to classical music or weird experimental jazz because he thinks it makes him different
Activity hates on Taylor Swift for all the wrong reasons
Secretly likes her a little and is way too excited for The Tortured Poets Department
Helaena is so whimsical I love her sm <3
Very much into indie stuff with down to earth vibes
Hozier, The Crane Wives, Noah Kahn, Everybody's Worried About Owen, Bears in Trees, Maya Hawk
"Why Am I Like This" by Orla Gartland...iykyk
Jacaerys Velaryon is an Arianna Grande FAN I don't make the rules
Him, Beala, and Rheana definitely have little dance parties whenever they come over
Loves Ari and Brittany
Also enjoys country music
He gets it from his daddy 🥰
Taylor Swifts Self Title is his everything
LUCERYS VELARYON IS A THEATER KID I REPEAT LUCERYS VELARYON IS A THEATER KID
It's all his mom's fault
His playlists are all just musical soundtracks
Little Shop of Horrors, Heathers, The Falsettos, RIDE THE CYCLONE, BE MORE CHILL, Dear Evan Hansen, Hamilton
Same with the Hazbin Hotel soundtrack y'all don't even know
Luke loves "Hell is Forever"
Also bro has a HORRIBLE singing voice
Anyway I will probably have more tomorrow but that is what I got for tonight :))
#house of the dragon#hotd#rhaenyra targaryen#daemon targaryen#alicent hightower#aegon ii targaryen#aemond targaryen#helaena targaryen#jacaerys velaryon#lucerys velaryon#hotd modern au#modern!hotd#headcanon#hotd headcanon#music
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What form would you think your daemon (from His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, if you haven't heard of them before they are basically the animal representative of your soul usually the opposite gender of yourself) would settle as? Or are they even settled? (daemons settling represents becoming an adult basically, or it happens during a life changing event.) And what do you think your siblings daemon would be?
Jacob: “(sounding very intrigued) An animal representative of your soul, huh? Kind of like a fusion between an Animagus form and your Patronus...that sounds interesting! I’d like to read those books!”
Carewyn: “(thoughtful) ...Well, I’m a robin Animagus...and my Patronus is a Winged Horse...”
Jacob: “And my Patronus is a Hippogriff. If these books are Muggle in origin, though, I doubt those sorts of creatures would be an option. I dunno, maybe I could have a crow? I’ve always liked crows -- they’re smart as hell.”
Carewyn: “...I guess if a Winged Horse is off the table, a robin would be okay.”
Jacob: “(with a wry smile) A robin does suit you, Pip -- I could totally see your daemon being one of those.”
Carewyn: “Mm, maybe...if daemons don’t ‘settle’ until you grow up, mine probably wouldn’t be settled yet, though.”
Jacob: “Give yourself a bit more credit. I’d say you’ve always had a strong sense of who you are.”
Carewyn: “(muttering) It only looks that way because I’m good at pretending.”
[She hates having said this, thanks to the Veritaserum. Jacob, however, rests a hand on the top of Carewyn’s head, mussing up her bangs lightly.]
Jacob: “Don’t be daft. It doesn’t just look that way.”
[His eyes twinkle with a wry, almost proud glint.]
Jacob: “However much you try to tough it out and put on a brave face, you’ve always known what you want, Pip -- what makes you happy. Helping and inspiring others. Right?
[He grins a little more fully.]
Jacob: “You know what robins symbolize, don’t you, Pip? They symbolize hope.”
((OOC: Sadly, due to my own nerdiness, Jacob and Carewyn are pretty solidly locked into the game’s time period (namely,the 80′s), so neither of them would have read or heard of Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy, which was first published in the 90′s. I myself only have a very passing knowledge of them, but from what I do know, I could see Jacob really enjoying them -- he adores Muggle fiction, since there’s so much more variety than in wizard-made fiction. (Two of his favorites are The Once and Future King by T.H. White and I Robot by Isaac Asimov, though you can bet your butt Jacob would absolutely loathe the 2004 so-called “adaptation” of the second if he ever got around to seeing it. I think he’d feel very similarly to Dominic Noble about it. XDD) Carewyn was much more of a Chronicles of Narnia and Secret Garden kind of girl growing up, and now that she’s older, she’s really grown fond of Shakespeare and Jane Austen as well.
Symbolism-wise, the robin is also associated with good luck and renewal -- a good contrast to the crow, which is sometimes considered an omen of bad luck and death. Crows and ravens can also symbolize magic, warfare, wisdom, and prophecy, were considered tricksters in some Native American cultures, and were deemed by the Roman poet Ovid to be the harbingers of rain (in contrast to the last one, robins also evoke the concept of spring). And on a much more superficial note, crows are my favorite kind of bird and “Robin” is actually a family name! Haha!))
Honesty Ask!
#ask carewyn#ask jacob#carewyn cromwell#jacob cromwell#my art#roleplaying#hphm#hogwarts mystery#phillip pullman#his dark materials#jacob#jacob's sibling#honesty ask
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July 2021 Wrap-up
Can’t believe I only have one month of summer left. Anyway, this was a good month, went camping with friends I haven’t seen for more than a year, hung out with my sister a bunch, wrote 11k of fic that I’ll post if I ever finish it.
THINGS I READ:
Books:
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri (didn’t finish before i had to return it to the library :( so i have to wait on the list again)
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
Comics:
Silk (2021) 1
Spider-Woman (2020) 10
Favorite fics read:
Burn the Pain Away by gloriousloki (Loki, Sylvie gen, 2k): Sylvie leaned over the table, looking the judge straight in the eye as she said, "How about we talk about my Nexus event instead, hmm? The one you saw fit enough to prune a young girl over." A character study of Sylvie Laufeydottir that absolutely nobody asked for. Featuring, Ravonna Renslayer, Loki, Hunter B-15, and a teensy-weensy dash of time travel. [I am here for all the Sylvie character studies and this is a really lovely one.
Changing Tides by Ariasune (Gravity Falls, 7k): When their dæmons settle, they'll be grown up. At least, that's the general idea. [Great charaterization and use of daemons, fits really well with themes of growing up.]
like coming home by morningstar921 (Loki, Sylvie + Thor, 2k): The team runs across a variant of Thor in the Void, and Sylvie mourns the things that were stolen from her. Jealousy is a feeling better left to others. [This little fic is a lovely slice of fic and something I desperately want to see in canon. Thor and Sylvie interacting.]
the real banishment is the family we made along the way by scioscribe (MCU, Hela & Loki, 5k): Hela did not ask for company in her sealed-up world, but evidently Odin is economical in containment strategies for his misbegotten children. [Loki and Hela bond in their shared captivity. Excellent characterization, excellent dynamic, I really loved this fic and now I need more fic about Hela and Loki being reluctant siblings and unintentionally growing close.]
See Another Picture by sweatervest (Loki gen, 1k): After the dust of the TVA has settled and the multiverse begins to branch and unfurl like a young sapling, Loki takes Sylvie to Asgard and introduces her to Frigga. [Sweet, touching, all I want.]
THINGS I WATCHED
TV:
Loki season 1
Taskmaster series 1, 2, 7
Movies:
Get Out
Wonder Woman 1984
THINGS I LISTENED TO
Music:
My Dark Disquiet - Poets of the Fall
THINGS I PLAYED
Video games:
Borderlands 2
Control
Outward
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For the groovy ask thing!! Number 1, number 20, number 30 ?
1. If someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to? / This is a hard one, because “understanding me” is not the same thing as getting my fandom/media references. I guess I’d say: read Dorothy Alison and Thomas Wolfe to understand my southern heritage and sense of lesbianism, or watch Star Trek to understand my optimism for the future and love of sci-fi.
2. Would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else? / I want to live in the world of His Dark Materials so I can have a daemon. Probably not in Lyra’s Oxford, though, because women can’t be Scholars there.
3. Pick one of your favorite quotes. / I love The Brothers Karamazov. There is an exchange between two brothers, where Ivan says, “Some driveling consumptive moralists–and poets especially–often call the thirst for life base. It’s a feature of the Karamazov family, it’s true, that thirst for life regardless of everything; you no doubt have it too, but why is it base? The centripetal force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring.”
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The Northrop Frye Theory of A Song of Ice and Fire (or, why you can be certain this series won’t have a downer ending)
The affinity between the mythical and the abstractly literary illuminates many aspects of fiction, especially the more popular fiction which is real enough to be plausible in its incidents and yet romantic enough to be a “good story,” which means a clearly designed one. (p 139)
This quote comes from Northrop Frye’s 1957 essay “Archetypal Criticism” in his book Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. An influential Canadian literary critic, Fye is especially known for his work on William Blake. I’d been familiar with his theory of the four mythoi (generalized story patterns) since high school, and while reading A Song of Ice and Fire I became convinced that Martin has to be aware of it as well. Thus I decided to read the entire essay it comes from to test the idea (not an easy task; it’s 110 pages of very dense text), and that conviction has grown to the point that I want to write the man to ask him directly.
Of course, it doesn’t entirely matter if Martin has read Frye’s work, because his mythoi are archetypes. Frye’s theory of archetypes doesn’t necessitate a collective unconscious like Jung’s; rather, he’s talking about the cultural legacy Western society has inherited primarily from Hellenistic and Biblical traditions, the tropes and symbols we all recognize instinctively. It’s part of our cultural unconscious, the background noise we’ve all received since childhood.
There’s a lot in this essay that could be applicable to aSoIaF, such as how wolves and dragons are classic archetypes of evil or at least dangerous and untamed nature, or how literature versus mythology gives you more freedom to subvert archetypal meaning, but I want to focus on his idea of mythos, and how he argues that there are four major mythoi, comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony, and that they archetypally correspond to the four seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
You should already be able to guess a little of where this is going.
Spring is comedy, which in its broadest outline is not just a story with a lot of humor, but a story where upstarts - often young or from marginalized categories - take on an absurd obstacle (especially a social convention) and win. Villains tend to be more laughable than hated, and ideally it ends with as many people being redeemed/included as possible.
Summer is romance in the Medieval sense of the term, which is a good vs evil story. The hero has to defeat a great evil (a tyrant, a monster, a witch, etc.) usually through great sacrifice (sometimes even their deaths) but either they or their cause ultimately triumphs in the end. Quest narratives from Greek mythology or Arthuriana fit in here, as would Tolkien, Harry Potter and most comic book superheroes.
Autumn is tragedy, where a hero is doomed by their own choices but also by a sense of inevitability, where fate or a kaleidoscope of forces beyond their control or awareness force their downfall. Heroes fail or become villains themselves. Society winds up in a worse state than it started out at, or innocence is jaded by experience.
Winter is irony, where the purpose is to expose an unjust system without necessarily meaning to defeat it. Much irony uses humor to make the criticism go down easier (pure invective works well in essays but not in fiction) and becomes satire or parody, but there is a measure of anger and contempt here not present in traditional comedy. Humor isn’t required, though, and Frye includes Brave New World, and 1984 in this genre, accurately predicting that dystopia would become a trend.
Now, these mythoi are not completely clear-cut and they tend to bleed together at the edges. If a comedy emphasizes the villains and how ridiculously bad they are, it bleeds into ironic satire. If the villains are downplayed and the focus is on the struggle of the heroes, it becomes more romantic. Likewise a romance can turn tragic when a hero’s own weaknesses are the cause of evil or his difficulty in defeating, and so forth and so on.
I would argue that the seasons in A Song of Ice and Fire, once that can go on for years, for complete stories or complete arcs, correspond fairly well to Frye’s model. Allow me to present some examples:
The Dance of the Dragons explicitly takes place during autumn (harvest season in the North) and is a tragedy of epic scale, with huge amounts of death and devastation across the countryside. Jealousy and ambition - not to mention the sexism of inheritance laws and schemes laid down decades ago - lead to the near-destruction of Westeros. The next king Aegon III grows up in winter and becomes a depressed fatalist who dies young, a parody of the usual boy-king tropes associated with summer.
“The Hedge Knight” is set in late spring, and has the set up to be a spring story, wherein a self-appointed hedge knight and his squire defend a puppeteer from an evil prince. The emphasis on Dunk as a character and the underdevelopment of Aerion, however, should hint that this is already a more romantic comedy. By the end, it has indeed become a summer story, with the deaths in the combat to reach its happy ending. It is still a fairly comedic (that is, innocent and uncynical) romance, enhanced by the awareness of the reader that you are seeing the origin story of a good king and his Lord Commander.
“The Sworn Sword” takes place in full summer and presents as a simple summer story of good Ser Eustace vs the evil Red Widow, who Duncan even imagines like a witch. This is subverted as Duncan realizes his master was a traitor and the witch a victim of circumstance, but rather than lead to true parody (an ironic category) this merely means a reevaluation of what the “sides” in play are - conflict vs peace. Through a battle where Duncan even figuratively dies (near-drowning is often a metaphor for death), peace prevails and while the wedding isn’t his, Duncan still wins the lady’s heart (a common chivalry trope).
“The Mystery Knight” is a little later in the summer, and we even get dragons, metaphorically at least. This is the one that most conventionally follows a summer storyline, since the people wanting to foment another rebellion for no good reasons are clearly the wrong side here - not that all the people on each side are purely “good” or “evil,” just that a rebellion for the reasons they give serves no purpose. What’s more, from an archetypal perspective it’s actually Glendon Flowers takes the role of the hero, not Duncan. He goes through early battles, is betrayed and imprisoned, then rescued so as to defeat Daemon, vindicating himself and dissipating the rebellion. Dunk, Egg, and Brynden Rivers are his supporting characters, as fitting their positions as a rustic knight, a hidden noble, and a wizard.
That Aegon V’s reign starts in winter is sign that, for all his good intentions and successes his reign as a “good king” will ultimately be undone later, to serve only as a foil to the bad rulers we meet later. And oh would I love to know what season Summerhall burned in...
Then there’s the False Spring whose infamous tourney is mentioned so often in the books. Howland Reed gets his dignity restored by a scrappy woman, one of them is the mystery knight who wins the cheers of the common folk, and Lyanna gets a token from a prince. Total set up for a comedy, right? But of course this isn’t; it’s a false spring, immediately followed by winter resuming, so we really just saw autumn, as Rhaegar’s choices regarding Lyanna precipitates a series of disasters that ruin him, her, and the nation.
Now, what about the main story itself? Well, we start in late summer in A Game of Thrones, and the first novel does indeed resemble a tragic romance, as Ned dies as the victim of intrigues he had no way of knowing about, but his cause is ultimately taken up by his son and by Stannis. More importantly, we have another hero much more obviously go through a struggle-death-rebirth arc at the end in the form of Daenerys and her passing through the flames to become the Mother of Dragons.
Ned’s death, however, is “the sword that slays the season,” and autumn follows in A Clash of Kings and it continues until the end of A Dance with Dragons. I don’t think I will be controversial in saying that the tragic is the main tone of the series, as even heroes with the best intentions fail, and as many of the villains themselves are revealed to be tragic figures warped by their pasts or their cultures. If I were to go through every point of tragic archetype that winds up in this series, this post would be even longer than it already is. Suffice it to say that Littlefinger is an archetypal tragic antagonist (p 216) and Frye’s six descending stages of tragic hero - from innocent child to antivillain - has some obvious parallels to the ordering of tragic moments - from Bran’s fall to Cersei’s walk of shame. One of my favorite quotes of this essay should resonate with any fan of the series:
Of course we have a natural dislike of seeing pleasant situations turn out disastrously, but if a poet is working on a solid structural basis, our natural likes and dislikes have nothing to do with the matter. (p 215)
Ultimately even disaster and misery can be entertaining if well-written.
As for winter, it should also be noted that for all extents and purposes it is winter in the North for all of books 4 and 5, and the triumph of the Boltons, their farce with “Arya,” and our only potential hero being Theon of all people stinks of irony. Snowfall begins in the Riverlands just after Jaime takes Riverrun, a sign not just of looming famine but that whatever hopes Jaime had for undoing the damage his father did will ultimately be in vain. And of course the chaos that Varys’ assassination of Kevan will bring to King’s Landing is also pure winter material, and comes precisely as winter arrives.
But what will the series be overall? Certainly various character arcs or storylines have different tones, but can I predict what the entirety of A Song of Ice and Fire will be? Yes: it will be a romance.
Why can I be so sure? Frye subdivides the romance into four parts: the agon, a hero’s initial challenges and setup, the pathos, where the hero faces off against their enemy and often loses, the sparagmos, after the hero’s defeat when all hope seems lost, and the anagnorisis, either the literal rebirth or the postmortem recognition of the hero as others finish what they started. Thus Frye concludes:
The four mythoi that we are dealing with, comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony, may now be seen as four aspects of a central unifying myth. Agon or conflict is the basis or archetypal theme of romance, the radical of romance being a sequence of marvellous adventures. Pathos or catastrophe, whether in triumph or in defeat, is the archetypal theme of tragedy. Sparagmos, or the sense that heroism and effective action are absent, disorganized, or doomed to defeat, and that confusion and anarchy reign over the world, is the archetypal theme of irony and satire. Anagnorisis, or recognition of a newborn society rising in triumph around a still somewhat mysterious hero and his bride, is the archetypal theme of comedy. (p 192)
In spite of all its tragedy, in spite of all its subversiveness, this is still ultimately a romance, a hero story, good triumphing not evil. I mean, the evil is literally represented by winter, the classic mythical enemy of a romance (p 187), and the heroes aided by spirits of nature, who “represent partly the moral neutrality of the intermediate world of nature and partly a world of mystery which is glimpsed but never seen, and which retreats when approached.” (p 196)
The difference is that of mode (here you have to go back to the first essay in the book, p 33-34). Traditionally romance has been written in what Frye would call “mythic” or “romantic” mode, where the heroes are either flat-out divine (as in Greek myth or the figure of Jesus) or human but endowed with marvelous powers (as in most fairy tales or Biblical legends). Sometimes it is written in “high mimetic” form, where the hero no longer has superhuman power but is still larger-than-life in their abilities. It is almost never written in "low mimetic” that emphasizes the ordinariness of its protagonists, how they are just like us, or in full ironic mode where the “hero” is someone we’re meant to scorn or pity.
Tolkien wrote somewhere between high mimetic and romantic (though his Silmarillion is mythic) which is what we’re used to in fantasy novels. Martin’s innovation is starting us in low mimetic or even ironic and gradually pushing us up into the realms of the supernatural. That’s why it’s harder to recognize the romantic element of A Song of Ice and Fire than in The Lord of the Rings. It feels like it should be irony, a deconstruction, but it is in fact Martin’s attempt at a more realistic (in the sense of believable human characters) reconstruction of the oldest, most archetypal fantasy tropes.
And so of course it will end in spring - or at least, with a dream of spring, the hope that out of this awful mess a better society can be built in the ashes of the old. THe Republic of Westeros...? Maybe that’s asking too much. I’ll settle on Sansa Stark, First of Her Name.
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