#| anyone : compliments drogos horses

[vorsakhal]

Did I tell yall the hc I have for the first quote unquote friend or somewhat friendly person drogo has over past the sea is a stable hand who he bonds with over horse care?

[wandaluvstacos]

Hi, I just wanted to say that I really love your writing. You always write interesting characters and stories. I was curious about how you came up for the setting/world building in the blood runs pure? Are the Ickhut-uwa and the Darwirz based on any real cultures? Also Im so happy to see Azaja finally beginning to grow more confident in himself

Aww, thanks! ^_^ I think the vast majority of my ideas are born from spite, lol. Usually it’s because I’ll see something in fiction and think “this could have been SO much better”, and then I try it out for myself. This is why I so often try to tweak tropes, even after I tell myself I’ll never touch said tropes (helloooo, heats and werewolves in “Shifters”). I think May the Blood Run Pure was really inspired by Khal Drogo and Daenyrs’s “romance”, because I don’t think it was handled well at all (in the book and the show). However, it was an interesting premise and one I wanted to sink my teeth into. There’s definitely a thing in romance fiction for the “savage brute” who takes what he wants and doesn’t ask for permission, and it often comes with a lot of rapey undertones (helloooo Khal Drago). And while I’ll never fight anyone who tells me Sarnai has rapey undertones too, I do think he’s a little more nuanced than Drogo, and so is Nothing/Azaja, whose consent is... debatable. Azaja, having come from a truly awful situation in which he was literally reduced to Nothing, thinks Sarnai is a decent person only because he’s got no one to compare him to. And unlike Khal Drogo, who literally says he’s going to rape Westeros women (in both the book AND the show, for anyone keeping score), the Ickhut-uwa are not nearly as rapey. Instead they just... you know... eat people. Sarnai himself never requires sexual favors from Azaja, though when the only other option is death, Azaja doesn’t have much of a choice.

I think the problem with Daenyrs is that after she acquires all the power she desires, she never looks back to her marriage with Khal Drogo and thinks “that was wrong. He was not a good person.” Azaja’s view of Sarnai is never so rosy. His feelings toward Sarnai spread across the spectrum, but as he comes into his own, he’s going to start questioning things way more. But so is Sarnai. Neither of them are static, and Sarnai has more layers to him than Khal Drogo ever did.

As for real cultures, I’m hesitant to compare the Ickhut-uwa to any, considering that it wouldn’t be a compliment to that culture. But the landscape is basically the Gobi Desert, and the Ickhut-uwa are nomads, so their diets and living arrangements would be similar to the Mongolians. And because I’m a horse nerd, their horses would look like this:

Not beautiful, but they get the job done.