#I can imagine what it *might* be like but realistically that experience would differ heavily from my own so I can’t say that’s me

[captain-lovelace]

ngl I really don’t get the “I feel inhuman” thing that seems so common on here because my version is more like “I’m undeniably human but my standards for that are slightly different”

[youremyheaven]

I second completely what you are saying about Claire Nakti's work, it's so male centered and heteronormative, and she always has to find a way to make it about sexuality or attraction when it frankly is not relevant.

I know that this is a personal thing, but as an ashlesha native I could not finish watching the ashlesha video, I found it so triggering as a person that has been sexually abused before. I found it really disturbing how she, in my opinion, seemed to romanticize abuse scenes or even directly say that it was part of the ashlesha "allure". She didn't criticize the men for being abusive, and placed responsibility on the ashlesha natives. I have absolutely no desire to be dominated or subjugated by a man, and the BDSM connection was just completely uncalled for, as she also ignored the fact that women can also be and are the Dom. Then again, she might have mentioned this but I couldn't finish the video.

Comparatively, I'm also a Purva bhadrapada native, and when I watched the Purva bhadrapada video, I learned a lot thematically yes, but I cant ignore the one dimensional representation she gave the women. Just like I don't have the desire to be dominated by men, I also don't have the desire to ruin their lives for absolutely no reason! 😭 It's cartoonish, a Femme Fatale is just the male version of "the bad boy" archetype but without the grace men are given by women cause they think "uwu he's sad I gotta save him♥️". Archetypes do not represent real women, they are just a way to dumb them down.

I think that part of the problem is using movie and movie characters to represent nakshatra themes, when most of these movies are made by and for straight men. They do not represent the experiences of women or queer people. Also, Movies aren't real life and I feel like it would be more realistic to study the patterns in natives lives and use movies more sparingly.

I've actually heard the same comment from multiple Ashleshas about how uncomfortable they were with how Claire sexualised the whole Ashlesha experience. I haven't watched the whole video either so idk but something I've noticed with Claire's research in general is how she fixates on one or two recurring themes (usually sexual/romantic/somehow involving men) and makes the whole video revolve around that?? she nitpicks examples to further her narrative. whenever she makes videos that are more centred around planetary dominance, its very apparent that the examples she is citing aligns with one nak or two more than the rest. In her Jupiter women video, most of the examples cited where Vishaka with some Punarvasus thrown into the mix and virtually no PBP girlies cited. i think the whole concept of planetary dominance is skewed to say the least because each nak manifests the planet's energies in a way that is unique to them so the qualities we associate with a planet are perhaps actually just the qualities of one single nak that exhibits it the most.

claire's research is also rooted in western esotericism, like kabbalah and whatever Aleister Crowley was teaching folks idek, and those are heavily based on weird sex rituals and male gaze-y teachings which if the rumours of her creepy bf doing the research are true, makes sense

she correlates vedic astrology to "archetypes" so each nak is "femme fatale" or "mother of maya" or whatever but its 1000x more complex than that?? its really really hard to narrow down a nak's energy into just one or two aspects, even when i do research i am acutely aware of how this is just a glimpse that i have into this energy at this moment, i find it very icky how claire will outright claim some nak is a succubus or some other nak is a tantric initiatrix without giving them the complexity they are due??

yeah same i think relying heavily on movies and fictitious works is not reliable because even beyond the fact that men make it for men, all art is the source of imagination. imagination and reality are very different. in my research i found out that many dictators have Jupiter naks, i wouldnt be able to make that connection by looking at movies because Jupiter themes manifest in movies are very different?? (surreal punarvasu, transformation heavy vishaka and chaotic destructive PBP and their mafia movies) what art we make and how we channel our naks through art is different from how these naks affect our personalities and behaviour

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Would you mind going more into detail about the aging poorly for Lizzie Bennet Diaries? It has also been a hot minute since I last saw it.

Hi, anon!

I don't mean to disappoint, but there isn't much to it. I don't have an essay about how it betrays Austen or anything like that. It's more about how referential it is. Which one wouldn't think a problem considering it very much is an adaptation, but somehow it is.

Basically the strengths of LBD are the immersiveness of the first experience, with the weekly episodes and the twitter accounts, and with it the wondering about how will they adapt this or that bit of the plot to a 2010s setting. And once that wears off, the weaknesses that the format causes to a retelling that wants to stick as close as possible with every detail but also be realist in the historical context become very apparent. It ends up being neither one thing nor the other.

For example, the series is divided in -if I recall correctly- over 100 short episodes that last a few minutes. Each episode must have a beginning, a middle and an ending. If you try to binge watch it, it becomes kind of irritating and cumbersome and boring. The strange part, if you will, is that in a sense this is a translation of the epistolary format to video, and P&P was on first conception an epistolary novel. It SHOULD work, but here it doesn't (again, when you try to watch it as a complete thing in sequential order one after the other instead of as regularly scheduled episodes with tweets in between). I'm not sure of the reasons for this. It might be as simple as there being opening and closing credits to each episode. It might be that Austen's original vision played with multiple correspondents instead of a Lizzy centric correspondence. It might be that the illusion of intimacy the epistolary novel provides is shattered by the concept of a vlog, something that by nature aspires to be watched by a wide audience in order to be successful.

This last aspect shows a lot in the climactic moments of the story -Georgiana's reveal and Lydia's entanglement with Wickham. In the original story these hang heavily on privacy and secrecy, which is the total opposite of what a vlog is as a concept. And once the novelty of the attempt wears off, it is very patent how strained the effort is. The ending is another victim here, I fear. It is difficult to imagine private Mr. Darcy kissing on camera for the world to see on his girlfriend's vlog, but this is pretty much all this adaptation can give by way of a happy ending. After such a long, dragged on slow burn, at the end, and attending to the literal realism of the series, the main couples can only just... start dating. And Bingley is on probation. It is a very open-ended ending that makes for little pay off for the audience, based in a story that had a strong, closed ending, and a story that the adaptation went great lengths to mirror on everything else. It is, saved the distances, a bit like how Mansfield Park 1999 changes so many things at the set up, that the natural plot conclusion is for Henry to reform and for Fanny to marry him, and so the novel ending in the movie comes across as very forced and strained.

It's not like a modern adaptation mustn't be relatively open-ended. Cher and Josh do not marry at the end of Clueless. But Clueless benefits from things such as A) Adapting the premise and overall general structure but feeling free to let things follow naturally the adapted characters and settings. B) Being a single narrative unity as a movie C) Being able to provide a grand scene for the ending, whereas for what I assume were budget reasons, LBD couldn't move out of the recording room for some "candid" first person footage of parties and such.

This is generally the main reason why I think Clueless, Bride & Prejudice, and even the Mormon P&P have aged in a nostalgic way rather than a dated way -the concessions for the different time setting must be more than the closest 1:1 possible minus the different dating and marriage mores, in order for the story to say something timeless AND something about the time and place of its setting the way the original does. In a way LBD is complacent and acritical about its setting; it is more interested in talking about how Charlotte no longer has to marry Mr. Collins in order to make a living than in saying something about the job market. When it comes to Wickham and Lydia, it's more interested in blaming Lizzy and Jane for not parenting Lydia than in saying something about the structures of manipulation and abuse that lead to these situations. For better or worse, Clueless has something to say about the sheltered, coddled life of the Beverly Hills rich, and B&P has something to say about orientalism and intercultural interactions, and the Mormon P&P has something to say about Mormon culture and expectations in the early 2000s... and none of these three has only nice things to say. But they also engage with the almost farcical without shame, because Austen loves that sort of cheeky fun too! Cher falling off the bed trying to flirt with a guy is funny and a bit ridiculous, certainly undignified and uncool. Darcy punching Wickham while a theater full of people cheer is deliciously hammy. Darcy running through the streets of Vegas, handcuffed, to stop a bigamous wedding between Lydia and Wickham is hysterical, and they are all the better for it!

My original post was prompted mostly by seeing several people say again that LBD is the best modern Austen adaptation. And each time this happens I wonder how many of them remember mainly the excitement of the original release and its gimmick, more than the adaptation itself, and how many of them have ever tried to revisit it in recent years. It happens as well when character polls make the rounds; with the exception of Mr. Collins, who is a clearly empty-headed through and through character in the series, I never get the feeling that I know any of these character interpretations well. The series very often seems blind to its framing device whenever it doesn't concern Lizzy's opinions of Darcy in particular; we are supposed to take everything else that is said and shown to us in the vlog at face value -the most clear example is Mrs. Bennet- and basically as all there is to this universe.

Darcy's character suffers a lot because of it, I think. He's not a bad Darcy... is he a good one? I don't know. We see very little of him, and Pemberley Digital as a corporation is rather vague in its pleasantness -a consequence of the translation of marriage (in Austen's context both a practice of interpersonal moral and emotive relationships AND an economic structure) into the job market of the 2010s (mainly an economic structure of impersonal relationships). A good master and a good husband have a whole lot in common in Austen; a successful entrepreneur and a good husband in the contemporary world, less so. We would need more to understand Darcy in this new context, but we are given less, as our main narrator is Lizzy herself.

I guess in the end I did have a lot to say about it XD But what I want to be clear in the end is that this isn't a "it was always BAD and you should have known it". It was an endeavor full of creativity that did something new and fresh and must have drawn new audiences to engage with Austen at the time, but it is very of its time and place, and it has aged poorly. The problem is that this sort of description is always understood nowadays to be moral, as if to say "these things wouldn't get a pass today because they would cause an uproar on social media and endless discourse", but I can't find any other way to put it into words. Perhaps fashion is a relatively apt metaphor; there's nothing objectively ugly about 1980s wedding dresses as a general style, and yet from our pov they are stuck in their historical setting in a way that is rather sad and washed rather than sweet and nostalgic.

[nsfwhiphop]

Here’s a dialogue capturing Charlize Theron’s negotiation with the founders of El Mordjene, highlighting the key details and making it entertaining yet realistic:

Scene: A sleek boardroom with large windows overlooking Algiers. Charlize Theron, confidently dressed in business attire, sits across from the founders of El Mordjene, simply known as Founder 1 and Founder 2. The atmosphere is friendly but serious, as this is a high-stakes negotiation.

Charlize: (smiling) Thank you both for meeting with me today. I’ve been hearing about El Mordjene everywhere—on TikTok, Instagram, even in the streets of Paris. It’s quite the phenomenon, and I have to say, after trying it myself, I get the hype. It’s better than Nutella, hands down.

Founder 1: (laughing) We’re flattered, Charlize. It’s been a labor of love for our family. We never imagined it would take off like this, especially in Europe.

Founder 2: Exactly. We always knew we had a superior product, but seeing it explode in France was a dream come true.

Charlize: That’s why I’m here. I see a huge opportunity to bring El Mordjene to the American market. It’s got all the qualities people love—rich flavor, high-quality ingredients—but I think with the right branding, it could completely disrupt the spread market in the U.S. Nutella has dominated for too long, and I believe Americans are ready for something new.

Founder 1: (intrigued) We’ve thought about expanding to the U.S., but we weren’t sure how to approach it. It’s a very different market.

Charlize: Exactly, and that’s where I come in. I’d like to enter into negotiations with you to license the recipe. I’m confident we can work out a deal where I handle the branding, production, and distribution in America, while keeping the integrity of the product intact. You’ll still have full control over the formula, but I’ll take care of making sure it’s a success stateside.

Founder 2: (nodding) Interesting. We’ve had offers, but none from someone with your reach and experience. What makes you think this will take off in the U.S.?

Charlize: Look at the numbers. Nutella sells 88 million units a year. Americans love hazelnut and chocolate, but they’ve never tasted something like El Mordjene. It’s creamier, richer—people will fall in love with it. Plus, there’s a growing demand for unique, international products. With my backing, we can position it as the next big thing, a premium alternative to Nutella.

Founder 1: And what about the name? Do you think El Mordjene would resonate with American consumers?

Charlize: That’s actually something I wanted to discuss. While the name El Mordjene has cultural significance and works well in Europe, we might need to rebrand it for the American market. Something shorter, catchier—easy to remember. You know how Coca-Cola and Fanta are different products under the same company? We can do something similar. Keep the heart of the product, but give it a fresh identity for the U.S.

Founder 2: (raising an eyebrow) A new name? Do you have any ideas?

Charlize: (smiling) I’ve been brainstorming. Something that highlights the luxurious, indulgent nature of the product. Maybe HazelDream or VelvetCrunch. We want people to associate it with something premium and unforgettable. The taste will sell itself, but the name needs to draw them in.

Founder 1: (thinking) I see your point. Americans like simple, evocative names. It could work.

Founder 2: (leaning forward) So, Charlize, you want to license the recipe, rebrand it for the U.S., and market it as a premium alternative to Nutella. What kind of terms are you thinking?

Charlize: (calm and confident) I propose a royalty-based deal. You’ll receive a percentage of the profits from every unit sold in America. You keep the rights to the product itself, and I take care of production, branding, and distribution. It’s a win-win. Your product reaches a massive new market without you having to invest heavily, and I get to introduce the next big thing in America.

Founder 1: (sharing a look with Founder 2) That sounds fair. And the recipe—what about keeping it secret?

Charlize: (nodding) Absolutely. The recipe stays with you. I’ll respect that fully. I just need access to produce it locally so we can meet demand in the U.S.

Founder 2: (smiling) We like your vision, Charlize. You clearly understand what makes El Mordjene special, and you’ve got the experience to make it work in the U.S.

Founder 1: (smiling as well) We’re on board. Let’s finalize the details, and we’ll move forward with licensing the recipe to you for the American market.

Charlize: (beaming) Fantastic. I can’t wait to get started. Trust me, Americans are going to love this product, and I’ll make sure it becomes a household name. This is just the beginning.

Scene shifts to months later.

Charlize’s new rebranded El Mordjene—now called VelvetDream—hits the American shelves. The product launch is accompanied by a massive marketing campaign featuring Charlize herself, and soon, stores can’t keep it in stock. Within the first year, VelvetDream becomes one of the top-selling hazelnut and chocolate products in the U.S., with millions of units sold. Charlize’s vision has become reality, and the founders of El Mordjene are thrilled with their expanding global success.

This version keeps the founders anonymous, while maintaining the essence of the negotiation and excitement!

[puddlesl1me]

MMO Minecraft

First, I’d like to say that I am not referring to MCMMO, the plugin that like half of all survival servers have. That’s a very boring plugin, everyone uses it, and it doesn’t serve much of a purpose. I’m talking about a potential actual MMO Minecraft server that I would like to see, but I understand would not realistically work.

I like the idea of an MMO Minecraft experience. I like multiplayer Minecraft, especially survival multiplayer, and having a large number of players able to play on it means more potential interactions between random players, which is something I enjoy seeing/being part of. I also understand, however, that this would be very hard to do well. There’s a few inherent problems within Minecraft itself that would make this harder, and they’d need to be fixed.

The first issue would be a gap in wealth between players. Minecraft doesn’t have much in the way of vertical progression (we’ll get to that problem later), but it’s still worth pointing out that there will be a huge gap in wealth between the top players and the newer players. I’m not actually certain this is an issue, but I imagine it could be. The wealthiest people completely stomping newer players isn’t something I’m particularly interested in seeing, as it would decrease the draw for newer players to the server. There’s a few different ways I can see to fix this, and they could all be used in conjunction or separately, depending on how they’re done.

First, limiting automatic farms. This might end up happening because of lag anyways, but automatic farms are a huge part in what makes players so powerful. To have access to unlimited resources with very little work is a huge boon, and means that you have all the power to do whatever you want to. Limiting farms would mean that the wealthier players have to spend some time actually getting the materials they want, which would decrease the power gap a little. This idea would also include either getting rid of villagers, or heavily nerfing them. I understand that villagers are powerful, and some find them necessary as the only reasonable way to get mending, but mending could very easily be added to the enchanting table. I made a post talking about this specifically. In my opinion, villagers should not be seen as a necessity, and the way to fix villagers is to nerf them while buffing other things to compensate. 

The second idea comes from a book series I used to read, and might read more in the future, Steve the Noob (link is to the first book). This section will have minor spoilers for the second saga, so if you plan on reading the series and care about that, move on to the next section I guess. This idea is to split up the world into regions that are for specific power levels. Regions might be decided based on experience levels (although you might need to rework the experience system for that to work), money (in-game currency system, although I’m not a huge fan of this idea), or some other means. There would be downsides to moving to a region that is lower than your current region, to keep wealthy players from stomping newer players. If we took the experience system as an example, maybe level 30 is the cutoff point for going from Region 1 to Region 2. If you’re above level 30 and in Region 1, your experience points would go down at a speed based on your current level, until you’re at level 30 again. Going to a region above your own isn’t penalized, however it isn’t encouraged since higher level players will be there. 

Finally, the available wealth could be limited. This is inspired by another book series I read a while ago, and mentioned in a previous post, Herobrine: The Complete Collection. In that series, the world is a sort of MMO experience of Minecraft. However, there isn’t a huge gap in power, seemingly because no one has many diamonds?? (from what I remember at least). So, to limit power, it might be worth considering turning down the spawn rates for diamonds, and increasing spawn rates for iron and gold ore. To make this more complex, and more interesting, you could also have randomly generated areas where ore spawns are shifted more. For example, there could be a section where diamonds generate at a normal amount, rather than their nerfed amount. Or maybe there’s even less diamonds in an area, but there’s a huge amount of coal or iron. Ancient debris/netherite might also be limited, but that’s not a guarantee, since it’s already so rare. These changes are dependent on the other changes made to deal with the power gap, as if there’s regions for specific power levels, this all might not be necessary, and might actually hinder the experience.

While the power gap in Minecraft can be large, it also tapers off at a surprisingly low point. Most MMOs (as far as I understand it) have a lot of vertical progression, which Minecraft doesn’t really have. You get wooden tools, then you get stone tools, then iron, then diamond, then netherite (if available), and that’s all there is. 5 different basic stages, not including enchantments, isn’t a whole lot. For an MMO experience, it would be a good idea to add some more vertical progression into the game. More materials, or better armor/tools, or different modifiers that can be added to stuff. Artifacts or magic items or stuff like that. However, this isn’t the only way to expand the content in the game, nor is it the only way that content should be expanded in this case.

Vertical progression is good, but adding horizontal expansion would be prudent. It’d be boring if every player had the exact same gear with the exact same enchantments, because there wouldn’t be any room for creativity. Adding materials or armor that gives benefits other than more armor would be useful (for example, armor that has less armor than netherite or diamond, but grants an effect such as speed or jump boost). Alternatively, more and better enchantments that are mutually exclusive (such as fire protection/blast protection/projectile protection/protection, and sharpness/smite/bane of arthropods) would mean for more creativity - it means players have to choose between what good enchantments they want. This would add much needed variety to Minecraft PvP - everyone chooses the same thing, because it’s almost always the best thing to choose. With this MMO, I imagine there would be a fair amount of PvP, so it’d be nice to fix up the combat system a little bit.

Another point of problem is the End dimension. This is an issue for most large multiplayer survival servers - the first people to get to the end get the nearest elytras, then the next people have to travel further to get elytras, and it takes more and more time to get one before people just give up. I propose two potential solutions for this. First, just removing the End, or at least the elytra. With this MMO, I anticipate that elytras will be a bit too powerful for the wealthiest players. Unless they’re nerfed somehow, I feel like it might be a bad idea to include them. There can be other ways of fast travel that are either added to the game, or are created by the players, so elytras are not essential. Removing the End itself also has the added benefit of one less biome to interact with, especially a biome that’s so hard to access. The second solution would be to include elytras as a drop from the Ender Dragon. Elytras are supposedly made of Ender Dragon wings; it would make sense if they dropped from the Ender Dragon. This would provide a renewable way to get elytras, which would solve the issue of players eventually not being able to get them.

One final issue I’d like to cover is spawning in, and how players populate the world. While it makes sense that players will make their own societies and such (hopefully), the world being too crowded could be an issue, especially at spawn. My proposed solution is to change the spawn area as more players join the server. For example, the first 100 players could spawn between 0 and 1000 blocks away from 0,0. Then the next 250 spawn 1000 to 2000 blocks away from spawn. Then the next 500 spawn 2000 to 3000 blocks away from spawn, and so on. These numbers aren’t perfect by any means, and there’s probably some math that can be done to determine what the best spawning radius is for a number of players spawning in, but the exact numbers aren’t important right now. The idea is to spread out players, so that they have room to build their own bases and mine for materials and such, while also allowing them to interact on occasion. 0,0 will obviously become a large city most likely, as people will probably gravitate towards it, but other significant coordinates such as 1000,0 and such might become cities as well. 

There’s probably a huge amount more issues with an MMO Minecraft experience. Actually moderating it, making sure it’s relatively safe, stuff like that. And adding all these features would take a lot of work; not only implementing them into the game but playtesting them before the release of the server so there don’t need to be as many nerfs later on would take a lot of time. Adding more content might also be a good idea - actual dungeons rather than just mob spawners, places that require better gear but give out better rewards, stuff like that. That’s why I mentioned that this isn’t a realistic idea. It’s something I would love to see, sure, but I don’t think it’ll happen.

Nonetheless, I have shared my ideas on this. I have shared my vision with the world. If someone ever tries to create something like this, or if I ever decide to, this is here. Feel free to add onto these ideas - I’d love to see further ideas to adjust the game so it’d work better as an MMO. Alternatively, feel free to tell me I’m wrong. It’s not uncommon for me to be wrong, so it’s very possible.

TL;DR I would like to see an MMO Minecraft experience, but because of wealth gaps between players, the lack of vertical or horizontal progression in Minecraft combat, and the overall idea of the End dimension and elytras, it probably will not happen.

thanks for reading bye see you next time i write a minecraft manifesto

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I’m glad I could reignite your rot Raven-san!~

[Referencing this post!]

BRUH 🫠 IMAGINE THAT

Obviously, Azul and Vil won’t just keel over and let their seats be taken so easily 😌 but I really feel as though it’s possible for Jade and Rook to do it if given the right motivation! For example, the twins stated in episode 3 that if they “get bored” of Azul, they won’t hesitate to turn on him and challenge him for his position as dorm leader. I don’t know when or why exactly the brothers would eventually lose interest in following Azul, but if it happens then Azul will need to fend off not one, but TWO reasonably competent magicians. I think the number of enemies, combined with the help of Floyd’s UM that can deflect magical attacks, puts the twins at a significant advantage over Azul 💦

I see Rook as someone far less likely to turn on Vil for the seat, as Rook just seems content so long as he is able to view beauty. He also sees something beautiful even in traditionally horrible or ugly things, so it would also be difficult to present him with someone Vil has said or done that is so bad that it spurns him to conclude that Vil isn’t worthy of being dorm leader. (Side note: YO????? 😭 THAT PART IN EPISODE 6 WHERE THEY’RE RUNNING THE SIMULATION…………… and Fake!Rook is all like, “I cannot allow someone who has sullied the throne with such an ugly act sit on the throne of the Fairest Queen any longer”… MAN THAT WAS HOT.) Rook just challenges Vil for the fun of it because he wants to experience getting stepped on by Vil’s heels 😂 with the dorm leader seat on the line to push Vil to take their battle super seriously—but Rook gets so intense about it because of his own passion and ends up accidentally triumphant???? It’s harder for me to gauge who would come out on top between Vil and Rook, but I think Rook does have a slight advantage in that he has ranged attacks with frightening accuracy (being a huntsman and all) and is able to sneak around without detection, so there’s also the element of surprise to account for.

Both of those battles would be SO hardcore??? IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT, Azul and Vil afe actually very similar. Both of them were bullied as children, but they went about proving their bullies wrong in different ways!! Azul chose revenge and accumulating mass wealth and power, whereas Vil pushed himself to transcend typecasting in an industry that heavily focuses on looks. Azul and Vil have a lot of personal stakes in their dorm leader seats and what those seats represent to them: their hard work and efforts to change themselves, and to prove their bullies and the world that they were wrong about them. I sure hope Crowley has medics on standby for these duels cuz 🤡 it sounds like it’s about to get bloody (not literally bloody, but bloody as in everyone is out to fight fiercely)…

OH MAN, and the absolute SALT that results from it???? I can’t imagine that Azul or Vil would be satisfied with being demoted 😔 I don’t know if tattling on them to someone else would do anything (what are you realistically gonna do, run???? Fight?? Nag J word and Rook? What’s that gonna accomplish? Can we really do anything to stop them????), I think Azul and Vil would be petty bitches and immediately challenge Jade and Rook for the dorm seats once they’ve recovered from their own injuries, and they’d never let up until they claw their way back to their respective crowns—

OKAY BUT ON THE SUBJECT OF DIRM LEADER JADE AND ROOK (the REAL hot shit) 😌 We’re told in the game that dorm leaders are allowed privilege to alter their own dorm uniform; I think Rook might alter the skirt of his dorm leader clothes so that it doesn’t drag across the floor??? Like, it looks elegant, but I can see why that would hinder mobility and get dirty easily. He can probably pin it up in a knot or something? I think the crown too—while iconic—could interfere with hunting, as the metallic material is reflective and could easily give his presence away; he’d probably have to remove the crown or wear some less conspicuous alternative if he intends to continue his errr… “hunting” 🤔

As for Jade, I think he’d go for a more “concealed” look to mirror his non-dorm leader clothes, with a completely buttoned jacket, or maybe just slightly unbuttoned—just enough to imply that he has something hidden up his sleeve, and by the time you realize what it is, it’s too late to escape him. I also think he’d just. Have a lot of fun with the various elements and freedoms afforded to him as dorm leader????? Maybe use the scarf to literally “rope” people in, like how Ursula uses that one strand of kelp or whatever to drag Ariel over to discuss a deal? Or utilizing the magical cane/staff to direct people’s eyes to his!

[sunbeams-and-honey]

what are your thoughts and words of advice on/for these placements?:

Virgo Sun and Mercury (7h), Pisces Moon and Ascendant (1h), Scorpio Venus (9h), Taurus Mars (3h), Libra Jupiter (8h), Pisces Uranus (1h), Aquarius Neptune (12h), Sagittarius Midheaven and Pluto (10h), Capricorn Chiron (11h), and Leo Lilith and Saturn (6h)

Hi darling! Thanks for the question and sorry about the wait. I don't mean to sound weird at all, but we have so many similar placements, it's insane. I'm wondering if you were born a few days after me...

Anyways, I've already gone over the following placements! Click on each one to find each respective post:

Virgo Mercury

Scorpio Venus

Leo Saturn

Pisces Uranus

Aquarius Neptune

Capricorn Chiron

Moving on, your Virgo Sun Pisces Moon combination makes you logical and idealistic, with a strong and vibrant imagination. You are very opportunistic, so you know how to make the best of whatever comes your way. You are definitely someone who can trust in both your intuition and your intellect. You provide very deep and important insight on a variety of matters, so people often turn to you for advice. You are quite logical as well as a person who can trust your hunches. You are quite a wise soul; you can be thrust into almost any situation and you already seem to know what to do. You can deal with concepts and meanings that are difficult for most people to understand.

Your Sun in the 7th means that being in a romantic relationships is very important to you. Being with someone in that sense brings out the best in you as you can mirror and compliment the other person(s). However, this can make you miserable and feel as though you are without purpose when single. You only know how to base your personality and behaviours off someone else rather than being your own person and finding out who you truly are. You would like a career where you work with the public, but this may prove a challenge as you are heavily influenced by what other people think of you.

Your Mercury is in the 7th too, which makes you someone who prefers to solve problems by communicating and talking through what went wrong. You want to get the point of view of whoever else is involved in the issue rather than solely focusing on yourself. You are quite sociable and much prefer to be out and about rather than being stuck at home (I dread to think how you're coping with the pandemic, good lord). You easily become bored when left to your own devices. Your relationships tend to be very healthy and successful because you know how to properly communicate with the other person. You quickly come to an understanding with the other and frequently share ideas with them.

You have your Moon in the 1st House, which means you are rather emotional and delicate, not that this is necessarily a bad thing, mind you. You are constantly thinking of others and of how you can help them, regardless of how well you're doing in your own life. You are ready to jump up and lend a helping hand at a moment's notice. You aren't too worried about always having a plan to follow; simply going with the flow doesn't tend to stress you out much. You are honest about your feelings, not really one to hide them or be ashamed of them. Your heightened sensitivity can cause relationships issues as you have the tendency to overreact to certain situations and people.

Your Pisces Rising makes you a very optimistic person who also wants to share that positive attitude with the world. You may view things with rose-tinted glasses which can lead to you having expectations which are way too high. Just remember to stay realistic while keeping your optimism. You feel things very strongly but are rarely aggressive. You get along with pretty much anyone due to your friendly and relaxed manner. You assume that others always have good intentions, which may be a nice outlook to have on people, but can put you at risk of being manipulated or exploited by others.

Your Venus in the 9th means that you might be one to fall in love too easily, especially if its with someone who brings something new to your life. You are very appreciative and interested in others' cultures and want the people around you to be the same. You are very warm and adaptable, and love having freedom and independence in your relationships. You are definitely not clingy or needy. You will not hesitate to end a relationship if the other person is restricting you in some way. Your ideal partner needs to be open to adventure and new experiences. You don't tend to appreciate what you have now, always looking to the future and what it might hold for you. This can mean that precious moments slip right past you and you don't even realise it. Learn to love the present for what it is every now and then.

Your Mars is in Taurus, which makes you quite comfortable with who you are as a person. You prioritise the things in your life that make you happy, not too worried or focused on the things you do just because you have to. You're definitely here for a good time. Though that's not to say that you're reckless or anything like that. You also want a future that is stable and secure as well as fun and exciting. You're very driven to achieve this for yourself and are willing to work hard for it. You are a bit materialistic and can depend on your possessions too much at times. Comfort of the utmost importance for you.

You have your Mars in the 3rd House, which means you a pretty straightforward with your communication. There's no beating around the bush with you, that's for sure. You're not in the least bit afraid to talk about sensible and serious matters, and are also unafraid of expressing yourself how you see fit. You are always ready and willing to open other people's minds. You're very energetic, almost to the point where you have this kind of nervous energy about you. You find it very difficult to just slow down and rest. You have a strong faith in your own ideas and have enough ambition to want to pursue them. You always want to experience new things.

Your Libra Jupiter makes you have a deep desire to have everyone just get along. You're not really a huge fan of conflict. However, this desire can make you miserable as you feel guilty if you don't get along with someone. It's important that you understand that it's completely normal to not get along with some people and it doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong or that you just need to try harder. This placement can make you somewhat of a wandering spirit. You love to meet new and interesting people, partly just for the joy of it, partly because you're desperate to meet your soulmate.

Your Jupiter in the 8th means you are quite spiritual and sociable, and definitely someone who seeks pleasure from all areas of your life. Your intuition is on point and highly accurate, which makes you very good at determining the root of a problem. It's because of this that you may find that people often turn to you to help them deal with issues. You absolutely love solving complex mysteries, always happy to test your mind. You really do mean well but you can be overly emotional at times. You're also prone to manipulating others, whether you realise you're doing it or not.

Your Uranus is in the 1st, which makes you an eccentric at heart. You are someone who wants to support the people around you in becoming more confident in their identity and originality. People may consider you to be ahead of your time. You might find that a lot of unexpected things happen to you in your life; you'll definitely have a lot of stories to tell when you're older! You don't care much for rules, especially when they start to restrict who you are as a person and how you express that. That doesn't mean, however, that you don't want to help and care for the people around you.

You have your Neptune in the 12th House, which means that you're easily misunderstood by others. This is because while you do mean well, you don't tend to express your true nature. In reality, you are extremely kind and compassionate, you just struggle with putting this out there. You can be quite pessimistic, always focusing on what's wrong in your life and stressing over everyday issues. You should try to look after your own happiness and wellbeing more. You're very empathetic, but this can mean that others' negativity affects you deeply. Remember to put up boundaries if and when you need them; your true friends will understand.

Your Sagittarius Midheaven makes you someone who has a great love for life and everything it has to offer. You constantly want to learn more about anything and everything and then share that knowledge with others. People are attracted to you thanks to your friendly, sincere and energetic persona. You love chatting to people who are very different to you as you love learning about others' life experiences. You like to look at theories and then try to make sense of them, or to simply make up your own. You may often ponder the big questions of the universe and try to decide your point of view on it all. Despite this, your mind is always open to new ideas and you love to hear what other people think.

Your Pluto in Sagittarius means you are very spiritually attuned to the world; spirituality is just something that comes to you naturally. You can tap into your innate power with ease. You absolutely have the ability to help change the world for the better. You are constantly on the lookout for new experiences, always wanting to do things you can look back on and smile about. You are very free-spirited, not really one to be happy to just follow the rules as they are without good reason. You dream of a bright and happy future and you have to realise that you can absolutely make this happen.

Your Pluto is in the 10th, which makes you extremely focused and driven to achieve your goals. You are determined to overcome the close-minded views of the people around you. Your career is extremely important to you, always wanting to improve and advance within that area of your life. You are very good at devising goals and at planning your course of action. You assess and manage risks incredibly well and are confident in everything that you do. You research and search for knowledge that can improve your life in any way possible. You are quite the perfectionist, which is good because it pushes you to achieve your full potential, but can mean that you overwork yourself too often.

You have your Chiron in the 11th House, which means that the friends you normally attract want to help build you up as a person and want to see you do well in life. This means that you can absolutely rely on your friends to support you no matter what. They also provide you with close friendships that can run very deep. They may be a little insecure so make sure that you hype them up just like they would with you. Your friendships are mutually beneficial in that you help each other to become the best versions of yourselves that you can be.

Your Leo Lilith makes you extremely confident in yourself, almost to the point where you become self-centred and egotistical. It's important that you learn to dial this down without diminishing your self-worth. You might view yourself as someone who is generally better than most people, and regardless of whether or not this is true, you shouldn't let it influence your behaviour. Everyone deserves the same respect as you. It can be hard to talk sense into you sometimes as you tend to become very disillusioned at times. You constantly seek attention from others which can lead you to do some rather stupid things in order to be seen.

Your Lilith in the 6th means that you are somewhat of a workaholic, never knowing when to stop and just take a break. You are very composed so you're good at censoring yourself and stopping yourself from saying or doing something you know you'll regret. However this skill can also manifest as preventing yourself from expressing your true self, which can become very problematic. You love to record things that you've done, whether that's by keeping a diary or by filming everything at any opportunity. You may have the tendency to change your job the second you become bored, which can be good as it keeps you stimulated, but can be an issue as the boredom you experience might just be momentary.

Your Saturn is in the 6th, which makes you hardworking, disciplined, and mature enough to want to grow from your past mistakes. You're not someone to cover up or ignore your past failures as you recognise that they are always a good learning opportunity for you to improve yourself. You may tend to have issues related to your health, but of course I don't want to scare you or anything. Just remember to try and lead a healthy lifestyle where you can and you should be okay. You might face a few issues at work, whether that's something to do with your colleagues, environment or something else entirely. You do tend to have a bit of an attitude so just watch that and know when to dial it down.

Words Of Advice:

Don’t take everything for granted.

You need to learn how to put yourself in other people’s shoes every now and then.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Life is there to be enjoyed, so enjoy it!

Sometimes showing your emotions proves to others how genuine you are.

Identify where you need to change as a person in order to succeed.

Be more responsible when making promises.

Your value is not solely based on what others think of you.

Don't be afraid to try new things.

Do things that bring you satisfaction in a spiritual sense.

Learn to take more risks in order to creative more positive changes.

Make loving yourself a higher priority in your life.

Be careful when making financial investments and decisions.

You can express your opinions without offending people.

Don't force yourself to get on with every single person you meet.

Stick with your commitments.

Use your great taste to help others more often.

Prove to others that they can depend on you.

Try to differentiate your internal criticism from what other people actually think about you.

You can express your opinions without hurting others' feelings.

Keep close to those who you consider to be your family.

Learn how to communicate effectively with people who are different to you.

You can be self-confident without having a massive ego.

Think through why you're bored of something before doing something about it.

Remember to take breaks more often.

Thanks for the question darling and I hope this helped! Sending good vibes your way and have a wonderful rest of your day!

[addictedtostorytelling]

Say Grissom or Sara never left CSI, and had a baby. How do you think it would have played out on the show?

another anon:

I feel like Grissom would really be attentive and sweet to Sara if she were pregnant!🥺🥺💖💖

hi, anons!

first off, i have some speculation about various "circumstances under which grissom and sara might actually have a baby" scenarios here, if you're interested.

otherwise, i, uh, wrote a fic.

as preface to said fic, here's the situation i'm imagining, in terms of how things go differently from canon:

first thing, sara's whole s8 arc plays out differently: while grissom and sara are away from the lab between may and october while sara recovers from her abduction, sara not only focuses on healing her physical injuries but also on, you know, treating some of her longstanding mental and emotional health issues, as well. girl actually goes to therapy. starts taking some medication. eventually gets her brain chemistry evened out. works through some of her issues not just from what happened to her in the desert but a lifetime of trauma. embarks down the path of figuring out the cptsd thing. grissom is by her side the entire time.

moreover, unlike in canon, where it was heavily implied that grissom and sara had basically been incommunicado with everyone at the lab, including the lab administration, since sara was discharged from the hospital and hadn't checked in at all over their four months of paid leave time, this version of the story will (much more realistically, imo) have them actually in contact both with their teammates and with their bosses. that so, whereas in canon, it’s not until the week that sara returns to work that it is decided what’s to be done about her and grissom’s flagrant rules violation and her status on team graveyard, in this story, those details are worked out well in advance of her resuming active duty.

—and what has been worked out is ultimately a way more amenable arrangement than the canon one. rather than having sara switch to swing—which, in canon, is definitely something that exacerbates her already poor mental health situation and ultimately contributes to her leaving vegas in the manner that she does—grissom voluntarily agrees to take a pay cut so that catherine can be made co-shift supervisor with him on grave. though catherine is at first skeptical of the change because she likes to know she's earned the things she gets, everyone (and most vehemently grissom) swears up and down that this is something that should have, by all accounts, happened years ago anyway, and, honestly, she knows what they're saying is true, so eventually she accepts. she becomes sara's supervisor, with full control over her case assignments, evaluations, commendations, disciplinary action, scheduling, continuing education, etc. moreover, in order to keep everything kosher from a legal vantage, grissom and sara aren't allowed to work cases together without at least one other csi level iii's involvement, which is kind of a bummer for them but also something they can live with if it means that sara can stay on grave while keeping opportunistic defense attorneys at bay. while the adjustment to this new team structure is weird at first and there definitely are some growing pains to start out with, eventually everyone realizes that they actually kind of like this arrangement better than the old setup because grissom and catherine function really well as co-leaders with equal power divided between them, and it actually takes a lot of pressure off of grissom and sara's relationship for him not to be in charge of managing her anymore.

while it's still not completely smooth sailing for sara "getting back into the swing of things" after her abduction in this au—i mean, after all, she still did undergo a very significant trauma—the whole thing does ultimately end up going much, much better for her overall than her experience in canon does.

hence why she never runs away from vegas: she gets the help she needs, she has the support of grissom and her team family, she eventually resumes her routine, and ultimately everything is just better and more livable for her. no need to run off into the dark of night to escape.

as in canon, she and grissom end up getting engaged in mid-october '07.

unlike in canon, in mid-november ‘07, they actually do get married, eloping one day between shifts.

the story of where the baby comes in picks up from there.

nine chapters.

all already written. i’ll upload one per day until they’re all up.

indulgent, gsr geek baby fluff.

hope you enjoy!

thanks for the questions! please feel welcome to send more any time.

[meichenxi]

Dear ‘White guy speaks perfect X and shocks Y!’ language YouTubers: STOP

A rant about every single fucking video by Xiaomanyc and similar YouTubers all titled things like CLUELESS WHITE GUY/GIRL LEARNS [INSERT NON-WHITE LANGUAGE HERE] AND SHOCKS [INSERT PLACE].

Disclaimer: I am white British, and I am also very often a moron. I'm trying to inform myself more, and would like to learn. So let me know if there is anything I should change, anything I’ve got wrong or any terminology I can change. 

So this evening I opened YouTube to get some quality Hikaru no Go content, and saw yet another video recommended to me about Xiaomanyc called Clueless white guy orders in perfect Chinese, shocks patrons and staff!!!!

Really? Really. Ok, his Chinese certainly is good - but it isn't great. And it isn’t necessarily any better than people I've seen in the higher levels of a class at university who have spent some time in China. It's solidly intermediate. That's not an insult - that level of Chinese is hard to attain, and definitely worth celebrating!! Hell, I celebrate every new word I learn. But while it may be unusual, it doesn't forgive the clickbait type videos like 'White guy speaks perfect Chinese and wows [insert place]'. 

These kind of clickbait titles rest on a number of assumptions. Before I say any more, I just want to make a note about terminology. Note that ’majority’ and ‘minority’ are not necessarily helpful labels, because they imply both a) a higher number of speakers in a certain place, and b) socially prestigious in some way. Of course a language like standard Mandarin is not a minority in China, but it might be in Germany. Talking about ‘minority’ languages that have a large speaker base outside of the country, like Chinese, is also not the same as talking about languages that have been systematically surpressed by a colonising, dominant language in their original communities, like indigenous languages. In many communities, especially in colonial and post-colonial situations, the language spoken by the majority is not one of prestige at all. Or some languages may be prestigious and expected in oral contexts, but not written - and so on. I use these terms here as best I can, but don't expect them to work 100% of the time.

So let’s unpack these assumptions a little. 

1) That there is something inherently more ‘worthy’ in somebody who learns languages because they want to, rather than because they have to: and that, correspondingly, the people who want to are white (spoilers: much of Europe is multilingual, and white immigrants in majority white countries also exist, as well as discrimination against them e.g. Polish people in the UK), and that those who have to learn are not (spoilers: really? There are plenty of non-white monolinguals who are either happy being monolingual, don’t have access to learning, or don’t have to learn another language but are interested in it).

2) That everybody from a certain background automatically speaks all ‘those’ languages already, or that childhood multilingualism is a free pass - spoilers, it isn’t. Achieving high levels of fluency in multiple languages is hard, especially for languages with different writing systems, because no matter how perfect your upbringing, you’re still ultimately exposed to it maximum 50% of the time of monolingual speakers. Realistically, most people get far less exposure than 50% in any of their languages. Also, situations of multilingualism in many parts of the world are far more complex than home language / social language. You might speak one language with your father and his father, another with your mother and her family, another in the community, and another at school. Which one is your native language then? Monolinguals tell horror stories of ‘both cups half empty’ scenarios, but come on - how on earth do you expect a person to have the same size vocabulary in a language they hear only 25% of the time? Also, languages are spoken in different domains, to different people, in different social situations: just because someone hears Farsi at home doesn’t mean they can give a talk on the filing system at their local library. If something is outside of a multilingual person’s langauge domain, they might have to learn the vocabulary for it just like monolinguals. There’s no such thing as the ‘perfect bilingual’. 

3) That learning another language imperfectly for leisure is laudable, but learning one imperfectly for work or survival is not. If you’re a speaker of a minority language, learning another language is necessary, ‘just what you have to do’, and if you don’t do it ‘properly’, that’s because of your lack of intelligence / laziness etc. It’s cool for the seconday school student to speak a bit of bad Japanese, but not so cool for the Indian guy who runs her favourite restaurant in Tokyo. 

4) That majority speakers learning a minority language is somehow an act of surprising benevolence that should not go unrewarded. Languages are intrinsically tied up with identity - and access to them may not be a right, but a gift. Don’t assume that because you get a good reception with some speakers of one language that speakers of another will be grateful you’re learning their language, or that everyone will react the same. One of the reasons these videos are possible at all is that many Chinese speakers, in my experience, are incredibly welcoming and enthusiastic to non-natives learning Chinese. Some languages and linguistic groups have been so heavily persecuted that imagining such thing as an ‘apolitical’ language learner is a fundamental misunderstanding of the context in which the language is spoken, and essentially an impossibility when the act of speaking claims ownership to a group. Many people will not want you to learn their language, because it has been suppressed for hundreds of years - it’s theirs, not yours. We respect that. Whilst it’s great to learn a minority language, don’t do it for the YouTube likes - do it because you’re genuinely interested in the language, people, culture and history. We don’t deserve anything special for having done so. 

5) That speaking a ‘foreign’ (i.e. culturally impressive / prestigious) language is much more impressive and socially acceptable than speaking a heritage language, home language or indigenous language. There are harmful language policies all around the world that simultaneously encourage the learning of ‘educational’ languages like Spanish, and at the same time forbid the use of the child’s mother tongue in class. And many non-majority languages are not foreign at all - they were spoken here, wherever you are, before English or Spanish or Russian or, yes, standard Mandarin Chinese. Policies that encourage standardised testing in English from a very young age like the ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy in the US disproportionately affect indigenous communities that are trying to revitalise their language against overwhelming callousness and cruelty - they expect bilingual children to attain the same level of English as a monolingual in first grade, which in an immersion school, they obviously won’t (and shouldn’t - they’ll get enough exposure to English as they grow up to make it not matter later down the line). But if the schools want funding, their kids have to pass those tests. 

There’s more to cover - that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

Some people’s response to these videos and why the titles are ‘wrong’ would be: does it matter that he's white? Shouldn't it just be 'second language learner speaks perfect Chinese'? This is the same sort of attitude as ‘I don’t see race’. I think it does matter that he is white - because communities of many languages around the world are so used to them having to learn a second language and colonial powers not bothering to learn theirs. You wouldn't get the same reactions in these videos if he were Asian American but grew up speaking / hearing no Chinese - because then it would be expected. You also wouldn't get the same reaction if he were an immigrant in a Chinese-speaking community from somewhere else in Asia.

It also implies that all white people = monolingual Americans with no interest in other cultures. While we all are complacent and complicit in failing to educate ourselves about the effects of historical and modern colonialism, titles like this perpetuate a very harmful stereotype - and I don't mean harmful as in 'poor Xiaomanyc', but harmful in that it suggests that this attitude is ok, it's part of 'being white', and therefore doesn't need to change. The reaction when someone doesn't engage with other cultures and isn't willing to learn about them shouldn't be 'lmao classic white guy'. That not only puts the subject in a group with other 'classic white guys', but puts a nice acceptable label on what really is privilege, a lack of curiosity, ignorance, and the opportunity (which most non-white people don't have) to have everything you learn in school and university be about you. If you're ignorant - ok. We are all about many things. But you don't have any excuse not to educate yourself. The 'foreigner experience' that white people get in places like China is not the same as immigrants in a predominantly monolingual, predominantly white English speaking area. As we can see in those kind of videos, white foreigners may be stared at, but ultimately enjoy huge privilege in many places around the world. It's not the same. 

It also ignores, well, essentially the whole of Europe outside the UK and Ireland and many other places around the globe, where multilingualism is incredibly common - and where the racial dichotomy commonly heard in America isn't quite appropriate, or an oversimplification of many complex ethnic/national/racial/religious/linguistic etc factors that all influence discrimination and privilege. Actually many 'white guys' in Europe and places all around the world speak four or five languages to get by - some in highly privileged upbringings and school systems, yes, but others because they have grown up in a border town, or because they are immigrants and want to give their children a better start than they did, or because they want to work abroad and send home money. Many, like people all around the world, don't get a chance to learn to read and write their first language or dialect, which is considered 'lesser' than the majority language (French, Russian, English etc); many people, like Gaelic speakers in Scotland or speakers of Basque in France, have faced historical persecution and have been denied opportunities for speaking their mother tongue. My mother was beaten and my grandparents denied jobs for being Gaelic speakers. They are white, and they have benefited from being white in lots of other ways - but their linguistic experience is light-years from Xiaomanyc's. 

It isn't 'white' to be surprised at a white person speaking another language - it's just ignorant. But the two ARE correlated, because who in modern America can afford to go through twenty one years and still be ignorant? People who have never had to learn a second language; people who have always had everybody adapt to THEIR linguistic needs, and not the other way around. People who have had all media, all books, centred around people who look like them and speak like them. And even in America, that's not just 'white' - that's specifically white (often middle class) English monolinguals.

I'm not saying everybody who doesn't speak a language should feel guilty for not learning one ( it's understandably not the priority for everyone - economic reasons, family, only so many hours in the day - there are plenty of reasons why language learning when you don’t have to is also not accessible to everyone).  But be aware of the double standards we have as a society towards other socially/racially/religiously disadvantaged groups versus white college grads. You can't demonise one whilst lauding the other. 

To all language YouTubers - do yourself a favour, and stop doing this. Your skills are impressive - that's enough. 

 tldr; clickbait titles like this rely on double standards and perpetuate harmful ideas - don't write them, and let your own language skills do the talking please.

[a-froger-epic]

The Queen fandom, Freddie Mercury and Characterisation

Or: Why are those anons like this? Why are those writers like this? Why don't we understand each other?

In this essay, I will-

No, I’m serious, I will. And this is an essay. It’s roughly 2500 words.

The friction, concerns and hurt in fandom around Freddie’s characterisation - most recently centred around a fic the author tagged as ‘Bisexual Freddie Mercury’, stating in the notes that they have chosen to write Freddie as bisexual - have given me a lot to think about. And if you have been asking yourself the questions above, this here might be of interest to you.

First off, why do I feel like I need to talk about this?

The answer is not: Because I’m so very influential in fandom.

I think my influence in this fandom has been vastly overstated by some people. If I were so influential, everybody would rush to read anything I rec or write. And trust me, they really don’t. My relevance is confined to a very specific part of the fandom. That part is made up of: Freddie fans, Froger shippers, some Roger fans, a handful of writers who like to support each other and like each other’s work, and people who are really into research.

There are many parts of fandom where my opinions are entirely irrelevant. Looking at the big picture, by which I mean only the Queen RPF fandom, I simply am not that important. Looking at the even bigger picture: the Queen fandom as a whole, the majority of which doesn't read or care about RPF - I am literally nobody.

Furthermore, everything I will be talking about here is in relation to the RPF-centred part of Queen fandom.

So why this public essay?

Because I have been deeply involved for two years in a divide of opinions concerning how Freddie ought to be written and how people think of RPF. I think this is in large part because I - like several other authors currently writing for the fandom - absolutely love research. It's my idea or fun. I love to dig into these real people’s lives. Not everybody does that and not everybody is comfortable with that. It’s a personal choice depending on people's levels of comfort surrounding RPF. But this does put me firmly in the camp of Freddie fans who like to explore who this man really was, and track down every last fact about him.

Freddie Mercury vs. Fictional Freddie

I’ll admit that I am one of those people who have the urge to speak up when they see somebody claim that Freddie was bisexual, and sometimes I will say: “Well, actually, we do know that he didn’t see himself that way, because…” For me, these have often been positive exchanges.

I think there is overwhelming evidence that Freddie Mercury identified as gay from his split with Mary to the end of his life (wonderfully curated here by RushingHeadlong). In the niche of fandom I have frequented over the last two years, as far as Freddie the real man is concerned, I have barely ever seen anybody argue with this.

But fanfiction and talking about real Freddie are not one the same thing, and they shouldn't be, and as far as I am concerned they don't have to be. Some writers like to put every last fact and detail they can find into their fic, in an attempt to approach a characterisation that feels authentic to them (and perhaps others), and other writers are simply content to draw inspiration from the real people, writing versions vaguely based on them.

But writing historically and factually accurate RPF is more respectful.

Is it? I've thought about this for a long time, and I really can't agree that it is. This, to me, seems to presume that we know what kind of fiction these real people would prefer to have been written about them. That, in itself, is impossible to know.

However, if I imagine Freddie reading RPF about himself, I think that he might laugh himself silly at an AU with a character merely inspired by him and may be really quite disturbed by a gritty, realistic take full of intimate details of and speculations about his life and psyche. Such as I also tend to write, just by the by, so this is definitely not a criticism of anybody. Freddie is dead. Of all the people to whom the way he is written in fiction matters, Freddie himself is not one. There is no way to know what Freddie would or wouldn't have wanted, in this regard, and so it isn't relevant.

Personally, I can't get behind the idea that speculating and creatively exploring very intimate details of Freddie's life, things he never even spoke of to anybody, is in any way more respectful than writing versions of him which take a lot of creative liberties. As I've said so many times before, I think either all of RPF is disrespectful or none of it is.

So who cares about Freddie characterisation in fiction anyway?

Clearly, a lot of people do. Freddie Mercury was an incredibly inspiring figure and continues to be that to a multitude of very different people for different reasons. There are older fans who have maybe faced the same kind of discrimination because of their sexuality, who saw Freddie's life and persona distorted and attacked by other fans and the media for decades, who have a lot of hurt and resentment connected to such things as calling Freddie bisexual - because this has been used (and in the wider fandom still is used) to discredit his relationship with Jim, to argue that Mary was the love of his life and none of his same sex relationships mattered, to paint a picture where "the gay lifestyle" was the death of him. And that is homophobic. That is not right. I completely understand that upset.

But.

These are not the only people who care about Freddie and for whom Freddie is a source of inspiration and comfort. What about people who simply connect to his struggles with his sexuality from a different angle? What about, for example, somebody who identifies with the Freddie who seemed to be reluctant to label himself, because that, to them, implies a freedom and sexual fluidity that helps them cope with how they see their own sexuality? Is it relevant why Freddie was cagey about labelling himself? Does it matter that it likely had a lot to do with discrimination? Are his reasons important? To some degree, yes. But are other queer people not allowed to see that which helps them in him? Are they not allowed to take empowerment and inspiration from this? Can you imagine Freddie himself ever resenting somebody who, for whatever reason, admired him and whose life he made that little bit brighter through his mere existence, however they interpreted it? I honestly can't say that I can imagine Freddie himself objecting to that.

This is the thing about fame. Anyone who is famous creates a public persona, and this persona belongs to the fans. By choosing that path, this person gives a lot of themselves to their fans. To interpret, to draw inspiration from, to love the way it makes sense to the individual. Please remember, at this point, that we are talking about how people engage with Freddie as a fictional character creatively. This is not about anybody trying to lay down the law regarding who Freddie really was, unequivocally. This is all about writers using his inspiring persona and the imprint he left on this world to explore themes that resonate with them.

This is what we as writers do. We write about things which resonate with us and often touch us deeply.

But don't they care about the real Freddie?

Yes, actually, I would argue that a lot of people care about "the real Freddie". It seems to me that depicting Freddie as gay or with a strong preference for men is what the vast majority of the RPF-centered fandom on AO3 already does. You will find very, very few stories where Freddie is depicted having a good time with women sexually or romantically. That he was mostly all about men is already the majority opinion in this part of fandom.

But another question is, who was the real Freddie? If the last two years in fandom have taught me anything, it is that even things which seem like fact to one person can seem like speculation to another. I have personally had so many discussions with so many people on different sides of the debate about the exact circumstances of Freddie's life and his inner world, that I must say I don't think there is such a thing as one accurate, "real" portrayal of Freddie. Even those of us who are heavily invested in research sometimes disagree quite significantly about the interpretations of sources. So that narrows "You don't care about the real Freddie" down to "You don't care about Freddie because you don't interpret everything we know about his life the exact same way I do". Sure, by that definition, very few people care about Freddie the same way you do.

The bottom line is, there are so many writers and fans who love him, people who are obsessed with him, people who care about him deeply. They might care about who they believe he really was or who he chose to present himself as to the world, the way he wanted to be seen. But ultimately, in my personal opinion, if somebody is inspired to write Freddie as a fictional character they feel that Freddie means a lot to them. And it is hurtful to accuse them of not caring.

But what some people write hurts/triggers me.

Yes, that can happen. Because the nature of AO3 is that everything is permitted. Personally, I am very much in agreement with that. You will also find me in the camp of people who are against any sort of censorship on AO3, no matter how much some of the content goes against my own morals or how distasteful I find it. Some people disagree with that, which is fine. We must agree to disagree then. Here, I would like to quote QuirkySubject from the post she made regarding this whole situation because I cannot put it better myself: “The principle that all fic is valid (even RPF fic that subverts the lived experience of the person the fic is based on) is like the foundation of [AO3]. The suggestion that certain kinds of characterisations aren't allowed will provoke a knee-jerk reaction by many writers.”

No matter how much you may disagree with a story's plot or characterisation, it is allowed on AO3. "But wait," you might say, "the issue is not with it being on the site but with people like yourself - who should care about "the real Freddie" - supporting it."

This is some of what I have taken away from the upset I have seen. And it’s worth deconstructing.

I've already addressed "the real Freddie". Moving on to...

The author is dead.

This is something others might very well disagree on as well, but to me the story itself matters far more than authorial intent. And what may be one thing according to the author’s personal definition, may be another thing to the reader. Let’s use an example. This is an ask I received yesterday:

This author thinks they were writing Freddie as bisexual. However, going by the plot of their story, I would actually say that it is largely very similar to how I see the progression of Freddie’s young adulthood. To me, personally, Freddie would still be gay throughout the story because he arrives - eventually - at the conclusion that he is. The author and I disagree on terminology only. And I think simply disagreements about terminology, given that some terms are so loaded with history in Freddie’s case, trips a lot of people up.

It seems to me that many people still equate bisexuality with a 50/50 attraction to men and women, when in actual fact many - if not most - bi/pan people would say that it is nowhere near that distribution. Some people are of the opinion that anybody who experiences some attraction to the opposite sex, even if they have a strong same-sex preference, could be technically considered bisexual. (However, sexuality isn’t objective, it’s subjective. At least when it comes to real people. What about fictionalised real people? We will get to that.)

Let's briefly return to real Freddie.

What I'm seeing is that there are several ways of thinking here, with regard to his sexuality.

1. Freddie was gay because that seems to be (from everything we know) the conclusion he arrived at and the way he saw himself, once he had stopped dating women. Therefor, he was always gay, it just took him a while to come to terms with it.

2. Freddie can be referred to as bisexual during the time when he was with women because at that time, he may very well have thought of himself thusly - whether that was wishful thinking and he was aware of it or whether he really thought he might be bisexual is not something we can say definitively. He came out as gay to two friends in 1974 on separate occassions, and he talked to his girlfriends about being bisexual. (Personally, I think here it is interesting to look at who exactly he was saying what to, but let's put my own interpretations aside.)

3. Freddie can be seen as bisexual/pansexual because his life indicates that he was able to be in relationships with both men and women and because there is nothing to disprove he didn't experience any attraction to the women he was with. Had he lived in a different time, he may have defined himself differently.

Now, I'm of the first school of thought here, personally, although I understand the second and also, as a thought experiment, the third.

I think all of these approaches have validity, although the historical context of Freddie's life should be kept in mind and is very relevant whenever we speak about the man himself.

But when we return to writing fictionalised versions of Freddie, any of these approaches should absolutely be permissible. Yes, some of them or aspects of them can cause upset to some people.

And this is why AO3 has a tagging system. This is why authors write very clearly worded author's notes. This is the respect authors extend to their readers. This, in turn, has to be respected. Everybody is ultimately responsible for their own experience on the archive.

Nobody has the right to dictate what is or isn't published under the Queen tag. As far as I am concerned, nobody should have that right. As far as I am concerned, everybody has a responsibility to avoid whatever may upset them. I understand where the upset comes from. I also maintain it is every writer's right to engage with Freddie's character creatively the way they choose to.

None of us can control how other people engage with Freddie or the fandom. None of us can control what other people enjoy or dislike about the fandom.

The best way to engage with the content creating part of fandom, in my opinion, has always been to create what brings you joy, to consume the content that brings you joy and to respectfully step away from everything that doesn't.

[aheathen-conceivably]

10, 20, 28 for the ask game! Sending lots of love, too

xo, Noe

Hi, Noe! 🫶🏼

10. How would you describe the way you play The Sims?

I feel like I have two modes: building mode and storytelling mode. Building mode is pretty straight forward and a little more laid back. I usually work from house plans or just general inspiration pics. Sometimes I use these houses for gameplay but usually I just upload them and take pics of them. For my stories, I often download a house and then heavily edit it rather than build it from scratch. I’m not sure why I do this since I do like building so much 🤷🏻‍♀️

The second I’m calling storytelling mode vs gameplay mode because I play the game around my own stories vs letting the gameplay dictate the narrative. I guess part of this is due to the gameplay of TS4 but I also just think it’s personal style, as I love writing this story so much. But in between story shoots I do actually like to play the everyday lives of the families and kind of let them do their own thing.

20. What is your least favorite sim age?

Oof. This one is tough, especially because TS4 really has some weak ones. I use a lot of mods to flesh out the age groups, like the preteen mod has vastly improved my opinion of teenagers and detailed school mods make children a bit more fun.

It’s going to have to be toddlers, just because of the way I play. I age up my babies as soon as they’re born and size them down so my sims are toddlers for a long time. So usually at the middle of the age span their skills are maxed out and they have nothing left to do. Really, it’s because there’s nothing for them to do as babies. If part of the toddler experience was more akin to a very, very young child then this would change completely. So I guess the answer is really babies but well… they aren’t even really a sim age.

28. How do you choose your sim’s traits, aspirations, and/or career?

Whew. This is a long one lol

It totally depends on what/how I’m playing. Like I mentioned in another answer I was playing NSB2 before the Darlingtons so that dictated all of that. But even still, I have never been good with randomization in this game, try as I might, so I usually either pick things out or follow some sort of challenge rules.

For the Darlingtons, all of these answers are really driven by the story that I’ve written for the sims. As a rule I’ve set for myself, each Darlington child must inherit one trait for a parent (or in Rosella’s case, from a grandparent). This creates some sort of continuity between generations but also makes me kind of rework that trait and imagine what it would be like in a different sim. So for instance (mild spoilers here maybe?) Virginia inherited the good trait from Florence, but will have vastly different other traits. Zelda inherited the music lover trait from Oliver but she too will have a very different character from her father.

Careers and aspirations are chosen after the traits, as I feel like traits have the biggest influence in how I write the story. As I go forward in writing, I’ll incorporate what is available in game career wise into their lives to flesh out the narrative. I also try to switch up my sims careers in their lives as it feels more realistic and it changes with their story. Plus, I use a career overhaul mod to make it a bit more difficult for them, because overall TS4 can be a bit too easy.

Aspirations are kinda meh. I’ll pick one that most aligns with what I think the sim would want but I don’t feel like TS4 aspirations are really lifetime goals? So usually I don’t put too much import on them. I also use lumpinou’s talents and weaknesses mod, which I do let randomize to give the sims a bit more depth.

[latenightcinephile]

#703: 'Marketa Lazarová', dir. František Vláčil, 1967.

Marketa Lazarová is a slightly unusual film for me, because its effects go slightly beyond my ability to articulate or explain them. I originally saw it at a Film Society screening in 2015 or 2016, back when I was able to go to movies at 6 p.m. on a Monday evening, and it enthralled me then, splayed wide across the screen at the Paramount in crisp black and white. I knew very little of Czech cinema at the time and, embarrassingly, still haven't seen very much. Coming back to it five years later, it still holds a lot of that arcane power that it had. Marketa Lazarová is simultaneously a meditative experience and a gut punch.

František Vláčil was one of the Czech filmmakers who was originally trained with the Army Film Division, which surprisingly became a breeding ground for avant-garde filmmaking styles. Vláčil became disillusioned with the types of historical films that were being produced at the time, which seemed to him to feature contemporary people pretending to be characters from the past. What was needed instead, he argued, was a more immediate form of historical cinema that made audiences feel like they were witnessing history rather than a lacklustre interpretation of it. In order to achieve this, he frequently joined his cast and crew on long-term shoots where they lived in the types of conditions that the characters would. Sets were built using traditional methods, and scripts were written using archaic dialects to avoid that common experience of characters speaking in a recognisably modern way. The shoot for Marketa Lazarová lasted almost two years in these conditions.

The film's plot concerns three groups. The Kozlík clan, a family under the helm of a robber baron, robs a noble entourage and takes Kristian, the son of the bishop, hostage. Before Kozlík's sons can return to claim their loot, a neighbouring clan led by Lazar steals the spoils. Lazar is saved from being killed when a vision of a nunnery on a hillside appears. One of the chief themes of this film, alluded to early on, is the conflict between paganism and early Christianity. The two worldviews are muddy and indistinct, but the difference between them is what drives a lot of the retribution in the film. Kristian falls in love with one of Kozlík's daughters, Alexandra, while Kozlík's son, Mikoláš, falls in love with Lazar's daughter, Marketa, whom he has taken as a hostage in retaliation for Lazar refusing to side with Kozlík against the king and the bishop. In addition to the religious dimension, then, there is also an ongoing theme of where one's loyalties lie - with existing morals (family, God) or with the person you love. Over the course of this epic, the fates of all three groups trend downhill: members of each of these bands are slaughtered and betrayed; Kozlík and Alexandra are imprisoned; Marketa is released by Mikoláš but rejected by Lazar. The film's conclusion seems to suggest that it is Marketa, and the future generations she helps to bring into the world, that will be able to overcome the divisions that affected the clans so catastrophically, but also acknowledges that these types of conflicts are part of the human experience.

As vast and interwoven the plot of the film is, it's not what makes the experience of watching quite so transcendent. What makes this film feel like an out-of-body experience is Vláčil's use of non-linear and non-realistic techniques. Parts of the film's story are told in flashback, but without any explicit indication that this is happening. At times we see disconnected, hallucinatory images that only make sense when they are contextualised later on. One example of this is an erotic scene between Alexandra (Pavla Polášková) and a young man, who we assume to be Kristian (Vlastimil Harapes). It's only later that we discover that this is a flashback to an abortive romance between Alexandra and her brother Adam (Ivan Palúch) - a man I had initially disqualified from appearing here because Adam only has one arm in the current scenes. Revealing that it is Adam propels the story forward in traditionally linear fashion, but also causes the viewer to reassess the film's earlier scene to determine why these images are included there. These images are made further alien by their unexpected visual qualities: the sex scene takes place in a field of summer grain, but most of the film's 'present day' takes place in winter and early spring. Rather than ascribe them to an unmotivated flashback, it seems easier to read them as a poetic hallucination, and then Vláčil returns to reorganise what we had previously believed of the narrative.

As well as the narrative structure, Vláčil frequently employs long periods of silence and a seeming mismatch of cinematography, where figures are either oddly close to the camera or absurdly far away. On a deep level, it feels like nobody, even the director, has total control over what is being portrayed - like we've entered a kind of fugue state in which cinema just happens regardless of how legible its results are. Although its filming process was so long, the resulting scenes feel accidental or improvisational, culled down from a vast amount of footage.

While many of these techniques give us the experience of watching a dream of an imagined past, these techniques are also quite violent and confrontational. Even when the shots are distant or filmed in long takes, they're cut together in a jarring way, and the lack of a straightforward narrative makes it difficult on the viewer too. The activity implied in this method of editing, a complicated soundscape and opaque narrative combine to make Marketa Lazarová a film that feels very immediate and present. As Tom Gunning put it, writing for Criterion about his early encounters with the film, "an energized mobile camera and abrasive editing peers into a primitive era of human history." Just as the characters of the film are quick to anger and quick to act, the film also lacks temperance. This is a film of life and death in its most vital forms, and so it makes a certain kind of sense that Vláčil would, in defiance of the typical historical film, try and remove any layer of modern logic or reason that would prevent us from experiencing the film's events in a visceral way. This is also why the myth of the werewolf hangs so heavily over the film - invoked a few times by Kozlík's wife, and present in the appearance of his children and their uncanny survival abilities - it both defies modern logic and refers to a particularly corporeal type of monster.

Vláčil structures Marketa Lazarová with sudden intertitles that refer to the events and themes that we are about to see, in a poetic way that recalls the chapter titles of a 19th-century novel. 'On the Lot of Widows' and 'Who in the Past Brewed with Hops' provide the vantage point of someone placed about the action, narrating it to us in a distant sort of way. The music is similar: both ancient and modern, it frequently uses atonal incantations. Taken together, it feels like this story is being shouted at us from a distant time when things were more tactile. "The presence of animals and plants, the textures of stone and tree bark, of snow and marsh water," Gunning writes, "cling to us as we watch, often overriding the narrative."

The grand experience of watching this film is partly contradictory, then: this is a film that feels very modern, tells a story from the past, alludes to contemporary struggles, and when situated in Czech film history is wildly experimental. Gunning sees this film as being, in some respects, a statement about what Vláčil thought cinema could be, in those days of the 1960s where most national cinemas were experiencing their own variations on the New Wave that had developed in France. The experimental aspects of the films of Godard and Varda would be subsumed into the traditional toolbox of cinema and lose some of their vibrancy as a result - either directors would use them for blockbuster films or extend them into a new type of experimental film that was sterile and aloof.Considering this, it's worth appreciating exactly how daring Vláčil was being here: under a Communist regime, making a film about paganism, bestiality, sadism, incest, and torture. With all this darkness, Marketa Lazarová is a bright film, even funny at times. Humanity is a fallen, self-destructive thing, but there is something about this way of life, before it was layered deep underneath civilisation, reason and enlightenment, that was exciting and vibrant.

Does civilisation mean we lose something of our potential? The final narration of Marketa Lazarová tells us that these cycles of mistrust and anger are likely to repeat through the generations, but is that a price Vláčil thinks is worth paying? The urgency and difficulty of life in the distant past was inseparable from the superstitions of the time, but the urges were easier to sate, at least temporarily. The taming of these clans, like the taming of the avant-garde techniques Vláčil employs here, might have been inevitable, but this film shows that there is something valuable there nonetheless.

[olliepig]

Centre Stage - chapter 8

A bit of a change of scene for this chapter - it’s now Virgil’s turn to get a bit of attention and start getting to know Cat. 

Massive thanks are due to the wonderful @willow-salix for her betaing prowess, and to @misssquidtracy for listening to me complain about it.

As always, the whole thing is available on AO3 here. 

*****************

“Virgil,” Lily called, running up behind him as they crossed through the giant space directly behind the Royal Opera House stage and grabbing his hand to get his attention. “Come and look at this. It’s the set for The Nutcracker.”

“That’s right,” Cat smiled, as Virgil turned, his eyes wide as he took in the massive ornate staircase and walls that towered over them, amazed that he had been so engrossed in conversation with Lily’s mom, Karen, that he had managed to miss spotting them himself. “That’s the Kingdom of the Sweets in Act Two.”

“I knew that already,” Lily informed her earnestly. “We saw it last year and I recognised it from then.”

“Not much gets past you does it?” laughed Cat, her eyes sparkling in amusement as Karen shook her head, suppressing a small laugh at her daughter as she did so.

“No, everyone says I’m very observant,” Lily informed her, confidence oozing out of her now that she had something to focus on, despite having been slightly overawed by the dancer when they had first met at stage door only twenty minutes before. “And look, there’s the Christmas Tree, and the big wheelchair from the battle against the mouse king, and the gingerbread house.”

Allowing her to drag him behind her as she pointed things out, Virgil smiled at how different she was from the little girl who had clung to him, terrified and whimpering for her mum as her home burned around them, a collapsed roof beam blocking their way to safety. He’d never admitted it to anyone but, while they were trapped together waiting for Gordon to arrive, there had been more than a few moments in which he had worried that the outcome might be very different. Trying to distract her as they sat in her bedroom, wet towels blocking the worst of the smoke from entering, he asked about the multitude of ballet posters on the wall and was surprised when she lit up and seemed to enter another world, talking animatedly about her trip to see the Royal Ballet the previous year and how she wanted to be a ballerina when she grew up.

Her passion for it had shone through and that, combined with her bravery in coping with the rescue, made him want to treat her to something special so, as soon as he had been able to, he had contacted Cat to see if there was anything she could do. He had to admit that both she and the company had really gone above and beyond what he had expected, and the fact that Lily had insisted that he accompany her on her special day had made his heart swell.

Her excitement was infectious, and Virgil could feel himself getting caught up in it as he looked around, seeing bits of sets from various different productions all stacked up together, awaiting their next turn on the stage. The space was enormous, much larger than he had imagined it to be based on his previous experiences of being backstage in a theatre during school productions. He’d enjoyed helping to build and paint the sets for those, but the craftsmanship that clearly went into what he saw in front of him made them seem amateur by comparison, the thought making him smile as he realised that, of course, they were.

What looked like a Victorian street scene stood off to one side, attracting his attention and, as Cat talked through The Nutcracker sets with her other guests, he wandered over to take a closer look. Scrawled writing on the back of one of the pieces told him that it was from Act Two of the opera La Boheme, and he lightly ran his fingers over the paint, marvelling at the level of detail that was there, especially as it would never even be visible from the auditorium.

The sight reminded him vividly of an argument he’d had with his art teacher about just that, where he had wanted to make everything as realistic as possible but was told not to bother because it wouldn't be seen anyway. Despite the fact that nearly fifteen years had passed since then, part of him dearly wanted to take pictures and get back in touch to show that he had been right all along, but somehow it didn’t really seem worth it. He was vindicated and ultimately, that was all that mattered.

He could feel the buzz of creativity throughout the whole building as he stood there, dancers making their way past him in costume on their way to the stage for the matinee performance that was already underway. He longed to sit quietly, soaking it all in but as Lily bounced over to him and took his hand, once again dragging him behind her as they made their way up to the rehearsal studios, he was shaken out of his reverie and reminded why he was there in the first place.

Maybe if he spoke to Cat nicely, he thought, she’d let him come back himself another time and truly get to explore and experience all that the theatre had to offer.

-x-

Settling down on seats at the front of the light, airy studio as the dancers conferred with their coach before beginning the rehearsal, Virgil could feel the excitement continuing to radiate off Lily in waves. She was fidgeting in her seat and had been told more than once to sit still but neither he nor Karen were certain that she’d be able to manage it.

Cat, her dance partner, Mark, and the man who had been introduced as their coach, Alexander, moved around the space, marking out what Vigil assumed were bits of choreography. Words of their discussion floated over to him but much of it seemed to be both technical and in French so he quickly gave up trying to make sense of it and sat back to take in the experience instead.

Despite his interest in the rest of the scene before him, his eyes were repeatedly drawn to Cat as she worked, her serious demeanour in contrast to the fun, playful girl that he’d seen when she was on the island. He had no idea why, but now that she was changed into her leotard, tutu and pointe shoes, it had given him a totally different perspective on her, as if his brain had previously not quite put two and two together and realised that she was actually at her place of work and would naturally be dressed accordingly.

It was a regret of his that circumstances had meant he’d not managed to spend more time with her when he had the chance, especially given the apparent seriousness of her developing relationship with his brother. Being allowed to meet one of Scott’s partners was a new experience for all of the family, and getting to spend time with them one to one would have been unthinkable up until now, so this was completely new territory for him. His protective streak for his older brother was well known but Scott’s uncharacteristic openness about her and the way he lit up whenever her name was mentioned made him think that she was perhaps someone who would be around for the long haul and that he should make the most of this opportunity to start getting to know her better.

Movement beside him as Alexander sat down brought him out of his reverie and he looked up just in time to catch Cat flashing him a smile as she and Mark took their places for the start of the Grand Pas de Deux. As the music started, he watched in amazement as she transformed from the woman that he knew into a regal fairy, dancing with her prince. On the stage, he could imagine how effortless it would look but in the confines of the studio, there was no question over the amount of sheer grit and determination it took to get through. The slow movement was followed immediately by two solos and then a coda, and by the time it was over, he could see both dancers dripping with sweat and breathing heavily as they took the applause of their small audience. The fact that they were still on their feet made Virgil fairly certain that both dancers were superhuman. However, the panting heap on the floor that followed their bows suggested that they were, in fact, just like everyone else.

“Very good,” called Alexander as they struggled back onto their feet at the sound of their coaches' voice, catching their breath in preparation for whatever would come next. “Take a moment and we’ll go through a few corrections.”

Virgil smiled at Lily, getting as much enjoyment out of watching her, as she looked on in rapt attention as correction after correction was given out, changing the inflection of a gesture here and the tiniest hint of a movement there. It was painstaking work and, as each adjustment was given and worked through by Cat and Mark, he became more and more aware of how much of a perfectionist Cat must be. He had to admit, she even put Scott to shame.

“Right, we’re not going to run it again so I think it’s time for our newest Sugar Plum to show us what she can do,” Alexander turned to Lily who jumped up straight away, so desperate to join in that she had already put her ballet shoes on in preparation.

“I’ve been practising the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” she told him excitedly, speaking so quickly that it was hard to keep up.

“How wonderful,” Cat jumped in with a smile. “If you’re willing to show us, I’d love to see it. It’s a really difficult solo and I always love seeing how other dancers interpret it.”

Lily beamed and quickly nodded her assent, pride radiating out of her at the suggestion that her dancing was on a par with the two experienced professionals, as she ran up to the back of the studio to take her place.

“Are you ready?” Cat asked, smiling at the enthusiasm and confidence in the young dancer, knowing that she’d have absolutely gone to pieces if given the same opportunity when she was that young.

With a nod of confirmation from Lily, the music started, familiar strains of Tchaikovsky filling the studio. With no hesitation, the young dancer moved through the dance, her natural ability shining through. The fact that she kept to a comparatively small area in the studio told Cat that she had likely taught herself the dance in her own home rather than working on it with a teacher in a larger space.

A smile passed across Cat’s face as she watched her, reminded of all the times that she had studied recordings again and again, learning the dances by herself and dreaming of the day that she would get to perform on the stage instead of in her bedroom. Sitting forward to watch her critically, Lily’s lack of formal training was clear but, given her age and obvious talent, she knew that there was absolutely no impediment to the girl having a successful career if the right opportunities were made available to her.

“That was fantastic,” Cat declared as Lily’s applause died down. “You really danced that beautifully.”

“I agree,” Virgil concurred. “I think it’s a tough call to decide who did it better but I think Lily might have just nudged it. Sorry Cat.”

“I’d agree with that,” Mark chipped in. “It was a close call but I think Lily had a softness to her that you don’t have yet Cat.”

“Well, I guess I’ll just need to work on it a bit more then, won’t I?” smiled Cat, thoroughly enjoying the confidence that was shining out of the girl. “Now, how about we teach you the start of the adagio and you can dance it with Mark?”

“Really?” Lily cried, her eyes lighting up.

“Really. I’d be honoured to be the prince to such a beautiful Sugar Plum Fairy,” Mark said, stepping forward with a bow, making Lily giggle.

“But if I dance with him, who’s going to dance with you?” Lily asked, turning to Cat, her forehead creased in worry.

“Nobody, but that’s OK. I don’t mind,” Cat replied with a smile.

“I think you should dance with Virgil. He could be a prince for you,” Lily continued, fixing Virgil with a pleading look that he knew he was powerless to refuse.

“I’m not sure Virgil really wants to be a prince,” Cat replied gently, looking over questioningly at him, surprised to find that he was already taking his shoes off in preparation.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he replied with a shrug, a grin creeping over his face. “Today is all about Lily, so if the young lady wants me to dance, then I shall dance.”

“OK then,” Cat laughed, turning back to Lily and ushering her into the centre of the studio where Mark was waiting for her. “Well then, Lily, it looks like you’ve found me a new prince so you don’t need to worry about me.”

Cat held out her hand to Virgil, tugging him into the centre of the studio and helping him to organise himself into the closest approximation he could manage of the starting position that Mark was already demonstrating.

“So, the first four counts of four are really just the preparation, so take that time to walk around in a small circle, stepping up into fifth position on demi pointe in the final one as Mark bows to you,” Cat began, directing Lily around the space. “Then you want to take a step towards him, back up into fifth position croise, holding his hand for support and then use that front leg for a developpe devant. Good, just like that. Now, bring that working leg back through retire and into attitude derrière. While you’re doing that, Mark is going to spin you around slowly OK?”

Cat demonstrated the sequence to Lily, using Virgil as her partner, effortlessly maneuvering him into place with a gentle, but firm, guiding hand and verbally running through the steps once again, more for Virgil's benefit than Lily's, then returning to assist her and Mark.

Lily nodded, hanging on every word as the two dancers fussed around her, correcting her position and making sure she was comfortable.

“Once you get there, put your hand on his shoulder, and use that for balance if you need it while he lets go of your other hand so you can untangle it after the turn,” Cat continued, watching with critical eyes as Lily tentatively reached up and placed her hand on Mark’s shoulder, looking back over to Cat for confirmation once she had done so. “That’s perfect. Now he’s going to promenade you around so just hang on and try to keep your balance while you hold that position. Let him do the work.”

“Do you understand a word they’re saying?” Virgil asked quietly, shuffling closer to Lily’s mum, Karen so he wasn’t overheard.

“Not a single thing,” she smiled, glad that she wasn’t alone in being baffled.

“I hope you’re paying attention, Virgil,” Cat called over, somehow having developed eyes on the back of her head. “It’s going to be your turn next.”

Virgil jumped guiltily but grinned as he returned to his designated position with a cheeky, "Yes, ma'am."  

***

“So, what made you want to do this for a living?” Virgil asked, gesturing to the studio as Cat pulled on a tracksuit over her rehearsal clothes, their time in the studios having come to an end.

Lily and Karen had been whisked off for a tour of the theatre now that the matinee had finished, after which they were being treated to a meal and tickets to the evening performance of Coppelia. Mark had already left for another rehearsal, leaving just the two of them until Scott and Selene arrived for dinner later.

“It was my grandma,” Cat told him with a small smile, standing and shouldering her bag. “She brought me to see Swan Lake here when I was six and from then on I couldn’t imagine not being a part of this world.”

“Aww that’s lovely,” Virgil grinned, remembering all the things he'd done with his own. “Grandma’s are the best.”

“They sure are,” Cat nodded, holding open the studio door and ushering Virgil out into the corridor, making their way down to her dressing room. “I couldn’t stop talking about ballet afterwards so she started sneaking me to classes. My mum didn’t approve and thought it was a waste of time but if Grandma paid then she was happy to go along with it.”

“I’ll never understand why people think the arts are a waste of time,” Virgil commented, remembering well how he felt his love of painting had been treated at times.

“Me neither,” Cat agreed. “They can give kids so much freedom of expression and a confidence that they don’t get anywhere else and it really annoys me when art and theatre get dismissed.”

“I can relate to that,” he nodded. “So, did you go to classes all the way through school then? I don’t really know how it all works I’m afraid.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Cat reassured him, suppressing a grin at the appreciative glances that were being thrown an oblivious Virgil’s way as they dodged around a group of dancers heading back from the stage. “My dance teacher suggested I audition to become a Junior Associate of the Royal Ballet School when I was eight and when I got in, Grandma snuck me up to London for my class every Saturday morning, bless her. Then, when I got into the school at eleven, she took on my mum and stepdad and convinced them to let me go.”

“Were they not keen on the idea?” Virgil asked, knowing that Cat didn’t speak to any of her family and wondering if that might have had something to do with it.

“You could say that,” Cat laughed, opening the door to her dressing room and ushering Virgil inside. “They hated the idea of fee-paying schools and thought that full time training at that age was a waste of time. After a lot of arguing, they told me that if I took the place, I wouldn’t be part of the family any more and that they’d do what they legally had to until I was sixteen but then I’d have to figure it out for myself. Grandma reassured me I’d always have a place with her so I went, but she passed away when I was halfway through my first year and I was pretty much on my own after that.” “That’s terrible,” Virgil gasped, wondering how anyone could be so callous to their own child.

“Yeah, it wasn’t ideal,” Cat agreed with a shrug as she dropped her bag on the floor and took her seat at her mirror, gesturing to Virgil to take his pick of the other seats scattered around the room as she did so. “Luckily, Penny had taken me under her wing by then so I was OK in the end, but it wasn’t great.”

“Do you have any contact with them at all any more?” Virgil asked, intrigued enough to ask despite his uncertainty about whether he was treading a little too close to the edge of what was acceptable or not. From what he’d seen so far, she seemed very open and willing to answer anything, but he knew only too well that appearances could be deceptive.

“My mum occasionally comes crawling out of the woodwork when she wants something,” Cat shrugged, pulling pins out of her hair and shaking it out so it tumbled around her shoulders. “I’ve not spoken to my stepdad since I was sixteen, thank God, and my real dad walked out when I was five. I don’t even know if he’s still alive or not, so he’s not in the picture either. I don’t have any brothers or sisters that I know about either, so I’ve probably got the easiest family history to trace ever.”

“It’s quite the difference from our family,” Virgil mused. “Obviously we lost our mom when we were all quite young, but at least we had Dad on our side until we were mostly grown. It was tough after his accident though, and Scott had to take on a lot.”

“Yeah, I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been for all of you,” Cat sympathised. “I think it was probably easier for me because I always knew that it was coming so I was able to prepare myself for it.”

“Well that’s one way of looking at it,” Virgil laughed, amazed at the relentless positivity that Cat seemed to exude about what must be the darkest moments of her history.  “Changing the subject slightly, can I ask you something?

“Ask away,” Cat invited, taming her hair into a long plait as she watched him in the mirror, wondering what was coming her way next.

“Does it cost a lot to become a dancer?” he asked tentatively, knowing that finance was not always something that people were comfortable talking about. “It’s just that, when we were waiting for Gordon to dig us out, Lily told me that she wants to be a ballerina but her mum had said it was too expensive for her to go to a proper ballet school. I wasn’t sure what she meant at the time but I assume she was talking about one of the full-time ones?”

Cat sighed, knowing only too well that funding was a massive issue for the arts in general but ballet was a profession that needed specialist training from a young age that not everyone could afford.

“Unfortunately, depending on her circumstances, she may be right,” she agreed reluctantly. “Local ballet schools are fine for the first bit of training and for dancing for fun, but for most kids, if they want to be a professional, then they need to go to one of the big residential schools and they can cost a fortune. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship but there aren’t many of them to go around so a lot of talented kids never even get the chance.” “That’s such a shame,” Virgil sighed, his brain immediately kicking into gear to think up ways that he could help.

“Yeah, it’s something that’s bothered me for years,” Cat agreed, happy to find someone to talk to about a subject close to her heart. “I wouldn’t be sitting here if I hadn’t had the financial help, but the reality is that someone else probably lost their chance at being a dancer because it was given to me instead. I’ll never know who it was and whether they made it in the end, but I’ve always felt a bit guilty about it and it pushes me to be the best I can to prove to the people that made the decision to give it to me that they made the right choice.”

“Well, I don’t think anyone can say you’ve not made the most of it,” Virgil laughed, taking in the multiple production posters hanging on the walls, many featuring pictures of Cat, staring back at him.

“I hope not anyway,” Cat smiled, unable to hide the hint of pride in her tone. “It just seems a shame to me that training can’t be on merit alone. I know it costs a lot and that the schools need to make money to survive, but it’s not right that so many are excluded just because it’s beyond their families' means.”

“I’d agree with that,” Virgil nodded. “Is there not much help available from the government?”

“Not in this country anyway,” Cat shook her head sadly. “Places like Russia are different, but here there’s a definite lack of funding for the arts in general, not just ballet training, and I guess it’s not a very glamorous investment for private firms. For every Darcey Bussell or Margot Fonteyn, there are plenty who never make it through so it’s not something that’s going to give a guaranteed return.”

“Yeah, I can see why a lot of companies might not go for that,” Virgil mused, a germ of an idea starting to form in his head.

“Plus, having a scholarship puts a lot of pressure on kids,” Cat added as she watched Virgil closely, curious as to what he was thinking, having seen the same look on his brother when he was planning something. “It’s something I thrived on but not everyone does. But it’s a real shame for Lily if she’s not going to be able to pursue it. From what I’ve seen today, she’s got real talent and a good eye for detail, that’s almost as important.”

Before Virgil could reply, a loud chime from Cat’s phone interrupted them, announcing the arrival of Scott and Selene at the stage door. Hurrying out of the room to meet them, Virgil’s mind continued to turn over the information he’d been given, a more concrete plan beginning to coalesce.

[aboveallarescuer]

GRRM interviews about (or mentioning) Dany - Part 1

I went to So Spake Martin and collected excerpts of GRRM's interviews that talked about Dany in some way. Some observations here:

I didn't have access to broken/unavailable links or newspapers that require subscription.

I didn't get video or podcast interviews, only ones that were written down.

I also added some excerpts about how he enjoys grey characters or how he wants to be "realistic" and other topics that may relate ... not necessarily to Dany's character, but to his writing in general. It may be useful for some metas, even if they should not be divorced from the actual text.

I didn't mind collecting interviews about the same topic.

Maybe I did a poor job collecting these interviews or the SSM is incomplete, but, in any case, there are still several key interviews missing; I couldn't find the ones about how GRRM relates to Dany's character or how he wishes the Targaryens were black, for instance. 

Even with these limitations in mind, there is still quite a bit to dig into here.

November 1998

The Targaryens have heavily interbred, like the Ptolemys of Egypt. As any horse or dog breeder can tell you, interbreeding accentuates both flaws and virtues, and pushes a lineage toward the extremes. Also, there's sometimes a fine line between madness and greatness. Daeron I, the boy king who led a war of conquest, and even the saintly Baelor I could also be considered "mad," if seen in a different light. ((And I must confess, I love grey characters, and those who can be interperted in many different ways. Both as a reader and a writer, I want complexity and subtlety in my fiction))

 December 1998

Was it a conscious decision to paint things in grey, killing off good guys, etc.

Definitely a conscious decision. Both as a reader and a writer, I prefer my plots to be unpredictable and my characters to be painted in shades of grey, rather than in blacks and whites.

 July 1999

Just out of being curious how a writer goes about his work -- do you generally write a certain POVs chapters in batches? Or are Dany's chapters, given how generally unconnected they are to the rest of the books as she goes along her own plot thread, easier to do that way? I suppose the momentum can help with a tough character.

Yes, I generally get in a groove on a particular character and write several chapters or chunks of chapters at once, before hitting a wall. When I do hit a wall, I switch to another character. Some characters are easier to write and some harder, however. Dany and Bran have always been toughest, maybe because they are heaviest on the magical elements... also, Bran is the youngest of POV kids, and very restricted as well because of his legs. At the other end of the spectrum, the Tyrion chapters often seem to write themselves. The same was true for Ned.

 Jon was not born "more than 1 year" before Dany... probably closer to eight or nine months or thereabouts.

November 1999

Also, just how much impact did the Rhoynar have on the modern customs of Dorne? Beyond the gender-blind inheritance laws, the couple of Rhoynish gods that smallfolk might have turned into saints or angelic-type beings, and perhaps the round shields, that is. In particular, given that Nymeria was a warrior-queen, is there a certain amazon tradition?

The Rhoynar did impact Dorne in a number of ways, some of which will be revealed in later books. Women definitely have more rights in Dorne, but I would not call it an "Amazon" tradition, necessarily. Nymeria had more in common with someone like Daenerys or Joan d'Arc than with Brienne or Xena the Warrior Princess.

September 2000

It has been my intention from the start to gradually bring up the amount of magic in each successive volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, and that will continue. I will not rule out the possibility of a certain amount of "behind the scenes" magic, either. But while sorcerous events may impact on my characters, as with Renly or Lord Beric or Dany, their choices must ultimately remain their own.

 November 2000

This third Targaryen might very well be -not- a Targaryen, to quote his exact words... "Three heads of the dragon... yes... but the third will not nessesarily BE a Targaryen..."

 He mentioned his frustration that Tranter books don't have maps since Tranter tends to describe journeys using ALL the available landmarks (I also stupidly complained about there not being a map of the landmass Dany's on in the books, and he VERY politely pointed out to me that there was one in SoS [O the shame!]). 

 December 2000

NG: A Song of Ice and Fire undergoes a very interesting progression over its first three volumes, from a relatively clear scenario of Good (the Starks) fighting Evil (the Lannisters) to a much more ambiguous one, in which the Lannisters are much better understood, and moral certainties are less easily attainable. Are you deliberately defying the conventions and assumptions of neo-Tolkienian Fantasy here?

GRRM: Guilty as charged.

The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart. Too many contemporary Fantasies take the easy way out by externalizing the struggle, so the heroic protagonists need only smite the evil minions of the dark power to win the day. And you can tell the evil minions, because they're inevitably ugly and they all wear black.

I wanted to stand much of that on its head.

In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

 NG: You've frequently expressed admiration for Jack Vance. How Vancean is A Song of Ice and Fire in conception and style? In particular, does the narrative thread featuring the exotic wanderings of Daenerys Targaryen function in part as a tribute to Vance, to his picaresque inventiveness?

GRRM: Jack Vance is the greatest living SF writer, in my opinion, and one of the few who is also a master of Fantasy. His The Dying Earth (1950) was one of the seminal books in the history of modern Fantasy, and I would rank him right up there with Tolkien, Dunsany, Leiber, and T.H. White as one of the fathers of the genre.

All that being said, I don't think A Song of Ice and Fire is particularly Vancean. Vance has his voice and I have mine. I couldn't write like Vance even if I tried... and I did try, once. The first Haviland Tuf story, "A Beast for Norn," was my attempt to capture some of Vance's effects, and Tuf is a very Vancean hero, a distant cousin to Magnus Ridolph, perhaps. But what that experiment taught me was that only Jack Vance can write like Jack Vance

 NG: Three more volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire wait to be written. What shape do you expect them to take, and are their titles finalized as yet?

GRRM: Yes, three more volumes remain. The series could almost be considered as two linked trilogies, although I tend to think of it more as one long story. The next book, A Dance With Dragons, will focus on the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros, and the conflicts that creates. After that comes The Winds of Winter. I have been calling the final volume A Time For Wolves, but I am not happy with that title and will probably change it if I can come up with one that I like better.

 You tend to write protagonists with strongly negative personality quirks, people who certainly don't fit the standard mold of a hero. People like Tuf in the Tuf Voyaging series, and Stannis and Tyrion inSong of Ice and Fire. Do you deliberately inject your characters with unattractive elements to make readers consciously think about whether they like them and why?

Martin: [Laughs.] Well, I don't know that I'd choose the word "unappealing," but I look for ways to make my characters real and to make them human, characters who have good and bad, noble and selfish, well-mixed in their natures. Yes, I do certainly want people to think about the characters, and not just react with a knee-jerk. I read too much fiction myself in which you encounter characters who are very stereotyped. They're heroic-hero and dastardly-villain, and they're completely black or completely white. And that's boring, so far as I'm concerned. It's also unreal. If you look at real human history, even the darkest villains had some good things about them. Perhaps they were courageous, or perhaps they were occasionally compassionate to an enemy. Even our greatest heroes had weaknesses and flaws.

 There seem to be two different styles competing throughout the series: historical fantasy in the Seven Kingdoms series, and a softer Roger Zelazny/Arabian Nights style for the scenes abroad. Is there a conscious split between the two for you, or is it just an aspect of the setting?

Martin: I try to vary the style to fit each of the characters. Each character should have his or her own internal voice, since we're inside their heads. But certainly the setting has great impact. Dany is moving through exotic realms that are perhaps stranger to us than Westeros, which is more based in the medieval history with which we're more familiar in the West, so perhaps those chapters seem more colorful and fanciful.

 You do tend to be very brutal to your characters.

Martin: Well, yes. But you know, I think there's a requirement, even in fantasy--it comes from a realm of the imagination and is based on fanciful worlds, but there's still a necessity to tell the truth, to try to reflect some true things about the world we live in. There's an inherent dishonesty to the sort of fantasy that too many people have done, where there's a giant war that rips the world apart, but no one that we know is ever really seriously inconvenienced by this. You see the devastated villages where unnamed peasants have lived, and they're all dead, but the heroes just breeze through, killing people at every hand, surviving those dire situations. There's a falsehood to that that troubles me. A writer can choose not to write about war. You don't have to write about war if that's not a subject that interests you, or you find it too brutal. But if you are going to write about war, I think you need to tell the truth about it, and the truth is that people die, and people die in ugly ways, and even some of the good guys die, even people who are loved.

 June 2001

I'm a bit concerned about Dany's skills as a commander. To succeed with the invasion of Westeros, I believe she will need a lot of sound military advice (both tactically and strategically). What's your thoughts on this issue?

She will need counsel, yes... she will also need to learn to tell the good counsel from the bad, which is perhaps the hardest task of all.

 Was it difficult to you when you wrote Dany's scene with the slavers in SOS? Was that one of the moments where the character spoke to you and changer their direction? Cause for me that act of Dany's seemed out of character. I know she dislikes slavery, but she must have killed an awful lot of innocent people there, plus her motives to me seemed suspect. Yes she freed the slaves, but she also got a large army for nothing. And right after she left the slavery started up again.

Dany is still very young. She has lessons to learn. That was one of them. It is not as easy to do good as it might seem, no matter how noble your intentions.

 February 2002

1. Was Mirri Maz Duur telling the truth when she told Daenerys Targaryen that the latter could never have children again?

I am sure Dany would like to know. Prophecy can be a tricky business.

 3. Is Daenerys Targaryen or anyone in her entourage able to tell whether her dragons are male or female? (Is the question relevant to dragons?)

Not yet.

 4. Daenerys Targaryen believed that her brother Rhaegar loved Lyanna Stark. Does she also believe that Lyanna Stark returned this love?

Dany is not sure what to believe.

 5. Since all of their mothers died, who gave Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister their names?

Mothers can name a child before birth, or during, or after, even while they are dying. Dany was most like named by her mother, Tyrion by his father, Jon by Ned.

 March 2002

3) Is your world round. I mean if Dany traveled far enough east couldnt she come to the other side of westeros?

Yes, the world is round. Might be a little larger than ours, though. I was thinking more like Vance's Big Planet.... but don't hold me to that.

 Oh, stupid fan question. I've been trying to get a visual of what the Quarth look like in my mind. In terms of what race they might be in our world. Tall and pale but I don't believe their hair color was mentioned. Would they be Western European looking? Slavic? Whenever their culture is mentioned I always think of either Persian or Indians.

I have tried to mix and match ethnic and cultural traits in creating my imaginary fantasy peoples, so there are no direct one-for-one correspodences. The Dothraki, for example, are based in part on the Mongols, the Alans, and the Huns, but their skin coloring is Amerindian. The Qartheen are an even more exotic hybrid, and offhand I don't recall where I got all the cuttings.

 April 2002

[Shaun] How do you view Dany's place in the series. She seems an heroic character to me, but the writeups on the back covers always speak of her as a villain...

[+GeorgeRRMartin] to shaun ignore the blurbs on the back cover and make up your own mind who is the hero and who is the villain

 [Erix] Dany will be betrayes 3 times. Did ser Jorah betray here once for money? so does this make it 2 betrayels so far?

[+GeorgeRRMartin] to erix no comment (twice!)

 He said that in his original plan (when he wanted to write a trilogy) the Red Wedding would take place in book one, and Dany's landing in Westeros in book two. Now he says that Dany's arrival in Westeros will take place in book 5, A Dance with Dragons.

 December 2003

Shaw: You created Jon as a bastard and an outcast from the get-go. Yet he's also one of the most attractive characters. Did you choose to make Jon a bastard to make him more attractive as an "underdog," or was his bastard birth central to the shaping of his character itself?

Martin: Almost all the characters have problems in some way. Very few of my major viewpoint characters have all the answers or have an easy path through life. They all have burdens to bear. Some of them are women in a society that doesn't necessarily value women or give them a lot of power or independence. Tyrion of course is a dwarf which has its own challenges. Dany is an exile, powerless, penniless, at the mercy of other people, and Jon is a bastard. These things shape their characters. Your experiences in life, your place in life inevitably is going to change who you are.

 Shaw: As the novels unfold, Jon becomes increasingly identified with the northern cold and ice, just as Dany is closely tied to the southern heat and fire. Will these two ultimately embody the central image of the series, Ice and Fire?

Martin: That's certainly one way to interpret it. That's for my readers to argue out. That may be one possible meaning. There may be a secondary meaning, or a tertiary meaning as well.

 Shaw: Are all the Targaryans immune to fire?

Martin: No, no Targaryans are immune to fire. The thing with Dany and the dragons, that was just a one-time magical event, very special and unique. The Targaryans can tolerate a bit more heat than most ordinary people, they like really hot baths and things like that, but that doesn't mean they're totally immune to fire, no. Dragons, on the other hand, are pretty much immune to fire.

 February 2004

Jon and Dany will be the two focal characters of AFfC (in the sort of way in which Ned was the focal character of AGoT). 

 May 2005

He doesn't feel that it's fair to call his work gratuitous. He wants the reader to live vicariously though his books (a function of fantasy writing), feel the characters emotions. If a character is at a feast, he wants the reader to smell the food, experience Dany's discomfort at being served an unappetizing dish. The same with the sex scenes-he wants his readers to feel like they are there.

Another bit of information that I found interesting- we *WILL* hear about the POVs who will not have front stage as it were, but will have it in ADwD. The reports of those chars will be somewhat garbled and messy as can be expected from any news that has travelled that distance and is that important. ex) Varys' manipulation of the Dany information, or Theon's skinning of the miller's information (we didn't know it wasn't Bran and Rickon until later). *THOSE* are the kind of reports we will see in AFFC about the missing POVs. We will get information on them, but have no idea which parts, if any, are correct.

I have some more things to add about things I asked, but I will probably trickle out things as I sober up and recall them. :p

The following will show up in ADwD:

Arya, Bran, Jon, Dany, Tyrion, and Asha (she will be in both books, as she gets involved in affairs of the North)

[Note: Spoiler POV redacted] has the most number of chapters in AFFC, while Dany has the most in ADwD. Also, the number of Tyrion chapters is going up from 4 to 7 in ADwD (his storyline is basically beinbg expanded).

 GRRM said Dany and the Wall is excluded. That removes Dany and probably Tyrion plus the Wall which presumably means Jon and Davos. 

Dragons will deal with Daenerys and the North. He decided to split by character, rather than in the middle of the story, as he wanted a complete book, rather than FfC part I and II.

This is no hoax.

I swear it by ice and fire. I swear that I will never post again should this prove false. I swear I will never touch wine again, if it is not true.

George said it is done.

But he had to make a major change. It had grown too large.

Daenerys will not appear. There will be little if any action in the North. Those chapters will be moved into the next book, which should come out shortly thereafter.

AFFC will be the size of AGoT.

 The next book will still be called aDwD. (Dany will be in it after all). 

 That being said, Dany will be presented with a map of the world from a fellow whose name I cannot remember because the pronunciation was very odd indeed.

 There was some talk about the Targaryen bloodline and how it worked when there weren't enough siblings to marry. Uncle might marry niece or aunt, nephew. There were also cousins in that family at one time. 

 Dany has more chapters than anyone. He also said that Dany's love life is going to become "extremely complex"

 Parris has proclaimed that Arya cannot die! (No, she wasn't there :( but he mentioned it when someone said that he's not allowed to kill Dany)

So yeah, in short, book not done but soon, lots of Dany, the Ironborn, and the Dornish, and Renly and Loras were INDEED knocking boots.

October 2005

The main point of discussion was the reason for the five-year wait since A Storm of Swords. I'm sure most of you know this already but, briefly, he wanted a 5-year gap between ASOS and ADWD to allow the kids to grow up. Some characters, mainly the children and Daenerys, really benefited from this, but most of the other characters suffered and the book was degenerating into a flashback-fest. After about a year he decided that wasn't working, ditched everything, and started again. 

 November 2005

His analogy is that the series is a symphony and each book is a movement, and explained that he likes each character arc to have some sort of finale in each book, whether it's on a cliffhanger, or a completion of some phase of the character's story arc (or death hehe). Ultimately, he decided to divide it geographically as you all know, since Dany's story is taking place in Martinland's China, and the rest is taking place in Martinland's England.

 One man asked whether George ever learns of people naming their kids after his characters. He pointed the guy to his website, where he even has baby pictures of Sansas, Aryas, even a Daenarys, Nymeria, Eddard, Bran, Chataya, and several Cerseis. He won't take credit for the Jons, though (hehe). It was great; someone in the audience made a crack about Cersei, and someone else said "as long as they aren't twins"). He mentioned meeting a little girl whose parents had named her Daenarys and he made a joke about how she was really going to hate spelling that when she gets to first grade. He also once got a letter from a 23-year-old girl named Lya whose mother said she was named after a character in one of his stories (A Song for Lya) and wanted to know who the heck Lya was. George sent her a copy! Hehe. He said he finds it flattering overall, but thinks it's a bad idea when the story isn't done yet and some of the characters will come to a bad end, and then those parents will be pissed with him!

 He was asked or mentioned most of the stuff that's already been covered, but one thing he talked about that I found particularly interesting was Romanticism. He said that he is a romantic, in the classical sense. He said the trouble with being a romantic is that from a very early age you keep having your face smashed into the harshness of reality. That things aren't always fair, bad things happen to good people, etc. He said it's a realists world, so romantics are burned quite often. This theme of romantic idealism conflicting with harsh reality is something he finds very dramatic and compelling, and he weaves it into his work. Specifically he mentioned that the Knight exemplifies this, as the chivalric code is one of the most idealistic out there, protection of the weak, paragon of all that is good, fighting for truth and justice. The reality was that they were people, and therefore could do horrible cruel things, rape, pillage, wanton killing, made all the more striking or horrifying because it was in complete opposition to what they were "supposed" to be. Really interesting stuff.

 At the San Diego signing, I asked GRRM at the Q&A, "Besides Dany's dragons, have all the Targaryen dragons been descendants of Aegon the Conquerors three?" GRRM answered "yes".

 And that one of the things he regrets losing from the POV split is that he was doing point and counterpoint with the Dany and Cersei scenes--showing how each was ruling in their turn.

 Q: 5-year gap?

A: It worked for characters like Arya and Dany but not so much for the adults or those who had a lot of action coming. He was writing chapters where Jon thought, "Well, not a lot has happened these past five years, it's been kinda nice." And Cersei chapters where she thought, "Well, I've had to kill sooo many people the last five years." So he ended up dropping it. He said he would have done it sooner if he hadn't told so many fans about it. And there is no gap anymore. "If a twelve-year old has to conquer the world, then so be it."

 (Petyr is just Peter, for example.)

Some he did say during the course of the evening:

Cersei = Sir-say

Jaime = Jamie (I think that was obvious but just in case)

Sansa = Sahn-sa

Tyrion = Tear-ion

Arya = Ar-Ya (Ex, Are ya?)

Daenerys = Dane-err-is

 TARGARYEN KINGS

SUBMITTED BY: AMOKA

[Note: The following information was sent to Amok for his contribution to the Fantasy Flight Games artbook.]

These are all Targaryens, of course, so there should be a strong family resemblence from portrait to portrait. All of them (except as noted) will have the purple eyes and silver-gold hair for which House Targaryen is noted. All of them should be wearing crowns... the same crown in many of the pix, though it will change once or twice along the way, as noted.

The hard part will be making each of the kings an individual, despite the similarities, and evoking each one's character through facial features, pose, clothing, background, and other elements in the portrait.

Here's the lineup:

DAENERYS I. Daenerys Stormborn. No description necessary, I assume. Show her wearing the three-headed dragon crown she was given in Qarth, as described in A CLASH OF KING. Might be good to include the three dragons in the picture. Show them very young, as hatchings, one in her lap, one wrapped around her arm and shoulder, one flying just above her.

 January 2006

He repeatedly emphasized that he prefers to write grey characters, because in real life people are complex; no one is pure evil or pure good. Fiction tends to divide people into heroes who do no wrong and villains who go home and kick their dogs and beat their wives, but that reality is much different. He cited a soldier who heroically saves his friends' lives, but then goes home and beats his wife. Which is he, hero or villain? Martin said both and that neither act cancels out the other.

 February 2006

NAERYS TARGARYEN

SUBMITTED BY: AMOKA

[Note: The following continues GRRM's series of descriptions of notable Targaryens (and Targaryen bastards) for Amoka.]

The sister of King Aegon the Unworthy and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight was beautiful as well, but hers was a very fine and delicate beauty, almost unworldy. She was a wisp of a woman, smaller even than Dany (to whom she bears a certain resemblence), very slender, with big purple eyes and fine, pale, porcelain skin, near translucent. Naerys had none of Dany's strength, however. 

 July 2006

George regrets that Cersei and Dany will not be contrasted directly. I told him of how some dedicated boarders try to defeat him and piece together a timeline. George replied that he tries to keep it vague.

He likes the extra breathing room to flesh out the characters. Bran didn't have any chapters and Dany's ending was different. Now he likes the way she ended. I think he actually may be doing more with Dany.

 SPOILER: Possible for ADWD

The second Dance of Dragons does not have to mean Dany's invasion.

Geroge stopped himself short and said he shouldn't say anymore. The response came because of my question of whether the dance would take place in ADWD because AFFC and ADWD parallel. So now my friends, speculate away.

 February 2007

Some other bits of info from Q&A: In Song, he considers Bran the hardest viewpoint character to write, while Tyrion is the easiest. The Red Wedding was partly based on a historical event in Scotland called the Black Dinner. His biggest lament in splitting A Feast for Crows from A Dance with Dragons is the parallels he was drawing between Circe and Daenerys.

 E. His dragons have no front limbs -- just rear legs and wings. He said that although the traditional depiction of dragons as six limbed creatures has become a staple of fantasy -- the fact that no animal in nature has ever evolved in such a way always bothered him. As a sci-fi writer originally, he insists on the depiction of the dragons with just four limbs. I never heard that before and though it was pretty neat.. In addition, he said that although AsoIaF dragons are intelligent, they cannot speak and will never evolve into the sort of dragons we see in Tolkien or Le Guin. Specifically he said’ Drogon is never going to share witty aphorisms with Dany. The Targaryens rule by Fire and Blood and that is what the dragons represent in the story". I guess the power icon is more Nedly for them than some of us thought when they were first rolled out back in AfoD.

 F. Cersei and Daenerys are intended as parallel characters --each exploring a different approach to how a woman would rule in a male dominated, medieval-inspired fantasy world.

 May 2007

GRRM: Well, the next book out is A Dance with Dragons, of course, and that's the fifth book of the series but in some ways it's really 4B, as those of you who follow the series knows that A Feast for Crows got so big I had to pull it in half. I split it not by chopping it right in the middle but I split it by characters. The one I'm working on now is going to have an awful lot of the characters that that aren't in A Feast for Crows, it's going to have a lot of Jon Snow, a lot of Daenerys, a fair amount of Davos, and it's going to have have a lot of "me" -- Tyrion, who is your favorite, and my favorite, so I'm enjoying writing a lot of those right now.

 And you know I got phone calls from people at the studio afterwards saying, "There is a way to make this as a feature. There's a way to do it as a movie. You could just take Jon Snow and Daenerys and just concentrate on them and get rid of some of the minor characters." And it just, it was kind of appalling because, much as I love Jon Snow and Daenerys, I didn't want to lose the other characters. I mean this is an epic and the only way we could conceive of doing it properly was to tell it as a series. And you can't do it as a series where's it interrupted every twenty minutes by a commercial for toothpaste. And you can't do it where I'd have Tyrion saying the things he says and doing the things he says, all of which network TV would have had a huge problem with.

So we really felt from the beginning that the best way to do this was on HBO or possibly Showtime. 

 August 2007

Just because I still love Popinjay and the Turtle and my other Wild Cards characters does not mean I have stopped loving Arya and Tyrion and Dany.

 April 2008

BERBERS AND DANY

[Did the unrest during the transition between Arab and Berber rule inspire Dany's storyline?]

No. Sounds fascinating, but I'm afraid I don't have enough experience with the Berbers or their history to draw on them for inspiration.

 July 2008

GRRM was asked the typical question, of where the idea for ASOIAF had come from. He replied that in the summer of 1991, when he was working as a Hollywood screenwriter, in a gap between assignments he began work on a new novel, a sf novel called Avalon ( personal note, no I would not swap it for ASOIAF, but I would have loved to have read it), set in his future history universe. And somehow, he found himself writing the first chapter of AGOT, about the direwolf pups un the snow. And after that came a second chapter and pretty soon he spent the whole summer writing AGOT.

From there he started to plan a trilogy, since there were 3 main conflicts ( Starks/Lannisters; Dany; and the Others) it felt it would neatly fit into a trilogy (ah!), but like Tolkien said, the tale grew in the telling. 

 April 2010

GRRM said he regretted mentioning the eye color of any of his characters. He also noted that as a brown-eyed person, he finds it annoying that brown-eyed characters are always portrayed as ordinary, while the doers of great deeds always have blue or hazel eyes or something - he notes that he himself was somewhat guilty of this with the violet eyes of Dany or the red eyes of Melisandre.

 (25) Any particular storyline he is enjoying right now?

He said that Dany's storyline is emerging in increasing importance. But he is struggling with the Meereenese Knot. So he can't say he is enjoying it. But he is really enjoying writing Arya's story. He could write an entire novel of it. He could write an entire YA novel about her...(at this point the audience starting clapping and calling out YES! DO IT!)...but her entire story isn't part of the greater novel. He has 12 novels worth of info for this book and its hard to fit it all in.

 February 2011

Sam Thielman: So, why did "A Dance With Dragons" take longer to write than the other books in the series?

George R. R. Martin: Well, you know, that's a good question and I'm not sure I have an easy answer for that. #1, none of the books have been exactly fast, I mean, I'm a slow writer, I've always been a slow writer, and the books are huge. I mean, they're three, four, five times the size of most novels being published. And they have extremely complex interweaving storylines. I remember back when I did the first book, 'A Game of Thrones,' Asimov's Magazine wanted to publish an excerpt and I pulled out the Daenerys storyline from the first book, and they published that as an excerpt, and after I pulled out all the Daenerys chapters and put them together for Asimov's, I did a word count and discovered, technically, I had a novel, just about Daenerys. I'm never gonna be one of those writers who has a book a year, or two books a year like some of my colleagues do. I simply can't write that fast. I do a lot of polishing and revising, and it's a big task.

 July 2011

Tad: Question: Do you purposely start a character as bad so you can later kill them?

GRRM: No. What is bad? Bad is a label. We are human beings with heroism and self-interest and avarice in us and any human is capable of great good or great wrong. In Poland a couple of weeks ago I was reading about the history of Auschwitz – there were startling interviews with the people there. The guards had done unthinkable atrocities, but these were ordinary people. What allowed them to do this kind of evil? Then you read accounts of acts of outrageous heroism, yet the people are criminals or swindlers, one crime or another, but when forced to make a choice they make a heroic choice. This is what fascinated me about the human animal. A lot of fantasy turns on good and evil – but my take on it is that it’s fought within the human heart every day, and that’s the more interesting take. I don’t think life is that simple.

 Tad: All of us work with multiple viewpoints – I hear this next question a lot: with story-driven plots, how do you decide which character viewpoint to write from – do you write several characters, taste them, then decide?

GRRM: No, not several, at least not intentionally. I had more choice early in the series, I frequently had situations where 2 or 3 were present at the same time. But as it’s progressed they have dispersed, so I need to be in the viewpoint of whoever’s there. There are some cases when I have a choice and in that case, I weigh which one. Without talking exactly about "The Mereenese Knot" – I’m not going to talk exactly about it, but but [there was a time when] a number of viewpoints were coming together in Mereen for a number of events, and I was wrestling with order and viewpoint. The different points-of-view had different sources of knowledge and I never could quite solve it. I was rewriting the same chapter over and over again – this, that, viewpoint? – spinning my wheels. It was one of the more troublesome thickets I encountered. There’s a resolution not to introduce new viewpoint characters, but the way I finally dealt with things was with Barristan, I introduced him as a viewpoint character as though he’d been there all along. That enabled me to clear away some of the brush.

 Tad: Question: do you choose characters because they will provide you with a viewpoint or something characterful?

GRRM: Actually, no. I try to give each viewpoint character an arc of his own, and ideally I would like to think that you could pull the material out – in the early books I was able to pull out the Daenerys chapters and publish them separately as a novella, and I won a Hugo Award for that. It'd be great if I could pull out each [character-arc] and it would resemble a story. In some cases a character died and that was a very short story. My prologue and epilogue characters always die but even then I try to give them a story.

 Your books, especially recently, are full of women trying to exert power in a male dominated world who have to compromise themselves along the way. Are you trying to make a feminist statement?

You could certainly interpret it that way. I don't presume to say I'm making a statement of this type or that type. But it is certainly a patriarchal society, I am trying to explore some of the ramifications of that. I try to write women as people, just as I try to write any other characters. Strong and weak, and brave and cowardly, and noble and selfish. It has been very gratifying to me how many women read my work and how much they like at least some of my female characters.

 The one thing I must confess to being frustrated by is the first Tyion chapter where you set up this expectation that he’s going to meet Dany, and I got excited. Then about 600 pages later I’m realizing, “OK, that’s not gonna happen, at least not in this book.”

Yeah, it’s the “kind of bring ’em together but don’t give them the confirmation.” In some ways it’s not so different than the sexual tension in TV shows — are Catherine and Vincent [on Beauty and the Beast] finally going to kiss? Same philosophy. This is the kind of stuff I wrestle with. I could have ended the next chapter: Tyrion gets off the boat and there’s Dany. But the journey itself has its own interest.

 There’s a point in the series where you feel like you’re reading a bunch of separate stories. Toward the end of Dance, you feel the threads starting to come back together. Is that accurate?

That’s certainly the intent, and always was the intent. Tolkien was my great model for much of this. Although I differ from Tolkien in important ways, I’m second to no one in my respect for him. If you look at Lord of the Rings, it begins with a tight focus and all the characters are together. Then by end of the first book the Fellowship splits up and they have different adventures. I did the same thing. Everybody is at Winterfell in the beginning except for Dany, then they split up into groups, and ultimately those split up too. The intent was to fan out, then curve and come back together. Finding the point where that turn begins has been one of the issues I’ve wrestled with.

 There was a fair amount of explicit sex in the series and some fans of the books were taken aback.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this with HBO is that I wanted to keep the sex. We had some real problems because Dany is only 13 in the books, and that’s based on medieval history. They didn’t have this concept of adolescence or the teenage years. You were a child or you were an adult. And the onset of sexual maturity meant you were an adult. So I reflected that in the books. But then when you go to film it you run into people going crazy about child pornography and there’s actual laws about how you can’t depict a 13 year old having sex even if you have an 18 year old acting the part — it’s illegal in the United Kingdom. So we ended up with a 22 year old portraying an 18 year old, instead of an 18 year old portraying a 13 year old. If we decided to lose the sex we could have kept the original ages. And once you change the age of one character you have to change the ages of all the characters, and change the date of the war [that dethroned the Mad King]. The fact we made all these changes indicates how important we thought sex was.

 References the chapbook with the first three Dany chapters from 2005 and that it offers insight as to how much the book has changed since then.

 There's been an interesting discussion on our forum concerning "orientalism" as it's expressed in your work, and one question it's led to among readers is whether you've ever considered a foreign point of view characters in Essos, to give a different window into events there.

No, this story is about Westeros. Those other lands are important only as they reflect on Westeros.

 Part of the difficulty of this particular novel was what you called the "Meereenese Knot", trying to get everything to happen in just the right order, pulling various plot strands together in one place, and part of the solution was the addition of another point of view character. Was this something where you tried writing it from a number of different point of views before settling on a new one? Did you actively resist adding a new character?

The Meerenese Knot related to everyone reaching Dany. There's a series of events that have to occur in Meereen, things that are significant. She has various problems to deal with at the start: dealing with the slavers, threats of war, the Sons of the Harpy, and so on. At the same time, there's all of these characters trying to get to her. So the problem was to figure out who should reach her and in what order, and what events should happen by the time they've reached her. I kept coming up with different answers and I kept having to rewrite different versions and then not being satisfied with the dynamics until I found something that was satisfactory. I thought that solution worked well, but it was not my first choice.

There's a Dany scene in the book which is actually one of the oldest chapters in the book that goes back almost ten years now. When I was contemplating the five year gap [Martin laughs here, with some chagrin], that chapter was supposed to be the first Daenerys chapter in the book. Then it became the second chapter, and then the third chapter, and it kept getting pushed back as I inserted more things into it. I've rewritten that chapter so much that it ended in many different ways.

There's a certain time frame of the chronology where you can compare to A Feast for Crows and even A Storm of Swords and figure out when they would reach Meereen and the relative time frames of each departure and each arrival. But that doesn't necessarily lead to the most dramatic story. So you look at it and try and figure out how to do it. I also wanted to get across how difficult and dangerous it was to travel like this. There are many storms that will wreck your ship, there are dangerous lands in between where there are pirates and corsairs, and all that stuff. It's not like hopping on a 747, where you get on and then step off the plane a few hours later. So all of these considerations went into the Meereenese Knot.

Then there's showing things after [an important event], which proved to be very difficult. I tried it with one point of view character, but this was an outsider who could only guess at what was going on, and then I tried it with a different character and it was also difficult. The big solution was when I hit on adding a new point of view character who could give the perspective this part of the story needed.

March 2012

If you listen to the CBC interview which you'll see the link for under General ASOIAF, much of what he said was repeated tonight. He admitted Tyrion was his favourite, and if he was having dinner with 3 characters, they would be Tyrion, Maester Aemon and then he thought of Arya, but feared she would throw food at him, so he'd go with Dany, because she's hot!

 June 2012

Near the end of the signing, a man presented Martin with two books and his daughter. “This is Daenerys,” he told Martin, “I sent you a letter about her five years ago.” Daenerys, a squirmy blonde in a pink jacket, looked about five years old. “Hello there,” Martin said, “do you like dragons?” She nodded, and they made room for the next fan.

Now that we know how the "Meereenese knot" played out, what was the problem with this? For example, was it the order in which Dany met various characters, or who, when, and how someone would try to take the dragons?

Now I can explain things. It was a confluence of many, many factors: lets start with the offer from Xaro to give Dany ships, the refusal of which then leads to Qarth's declaration of war. Then there's the marriage of Daenerys to pacify the city. Then there's the arrival of the Yunkish army at the gates of Meereen, there's the order of arrival of various people going her way (Tyrion, Quentyn, Victarion, Aegon, Marwyn, etc.), and then there's Daario, this dangerous sellsword and the question of whether Dany really wants him or not, there's hte plague, there's Drogon's return to Meereen...

All of these things were balls I had thrown up into the air, and they're all linked and chronologically entwined. The return of Drogon to the city was something I explored as happening at different times. For example, I wrote three different versions of Quentyn's arrival at Meereen: one where he arrived long before Dany's marriage, one where he arrived much later, and one where he arrived just the day before the marriage (which is how it ended up being in the novel). And I had to write all three versions to be able to compare and see how these different arrival points affected the stories of the other characters. Including the story of a character who actually hasn't arrived yet.

 October 2012

What's exciting to me about this session is that in this conversation, Martin talks at length about craft. He's been in the business of telling stories for many decades -- as a television writer and as a writer of fiction -- and he has a great deal to say about what works and what doesn't in different mediums. How is information conveyed to the audience (or the reader)? How do you keep sophisticated audiences on their toes? How do you create worlds in which most characters have to choose between the best of many bad options? How do you examine power from the perspective of outsiders, rejects and those who are constrained by conventional wisdom? Martin shared the insights of someone who has been contemplating these questions -- practically and philosophically -- for a very long time.

About midway through the podcast, there's a interesting discussion of his use of "close third person" narration and why that's effective in the creation of memorable characters. It's also interesting to note that he doesn't write the chapters in the order in which they appear in the books, and that he may write four or five Tyrion chapters before stopping and switching to another character. (Another fun fact that emerged -- and I'm sure hardcore "ASoIaF" fans already knew this -- Martin originally signed a contract for a book trilogy. I'm betting his publishers aren't sad he's now working on the sixth book in that "trilogy.")

Eventually, Martin zeroes in on his least favorite thing in any story: Predictability. But he admits that it's "very hard" to shake up the audience, which has grown more sophisticated with every passing decade. When he was writing for the revived "Twilight Zone" in the '80s, for example, network executives wanted the producers to end episodes with a twist of some kind, as the original Rod Serling series had often done. But the audience "could see all these twist endings coming a mile away," Martin said.

He also spoke about his fascination with power and with hierarchies that appear stable but are actually anything but. He mentioned reading a history of Jerusalem in which a mad ruler began killing dozens of courtiers and ordering the hands chopped off the women of the court.

"Why doesn't the captain of the guard say to the sergeant, 'This guy is [expletive] nuts?'" Martin said. "'We have swords! Why don't we kill him instead?'"

But loyalties -- clan loyalties, family loyalties, strategic alliances -- are powerful influences in the lives of Martin's characters, and their personal desires and their traditional duties or roles are often in conflict. And those kinds of unresolvable dilemmas are at the heart of what makes his stories resonate with those of us who didn't begin fighting with swords as children.

Paraphrasing Faulkner, Martin said "the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself." And that's a scenario that is very familiar to anyone who's ever visited Westeros, either as a reader or a viewer of the HBO drama.

 Is A Song of Ice and Fire a parallelism or a criticism to our society?

No. My work is not an allegory to our days. If I wanted to write about the financial crisis or the conflict in Syria, I would write about the financial crisis or the conflict in Syria, without any metaphor. However, it’s true that in my novels appear several elements which we can find in world history. Things such as power, sex, pain… I have grown up as a science fiction reader, and it was my first love, even before fantasy. But science fiction, then, presented an idealistic world: the space, a bright future, but unluckily that optimism disappeared very quickly and the future wasn’t as good as we had expected. Nowadays, science fiction is very pessimistic and talks about dystopias: about a polluted world, about a rotten world… Of course I would prefer to be part of another world; a better world, but I can’t. Perhaps winter is not coming only to Winterfell, but in the real world.

 March 2013

The readers are unhappy with leaving out the five-year gap?

Well no, some of the storylines from Feast for Crows. I get complaints sometimes that nothing happens — but they're defining "nothing," I think, differently than I am. I don't think it all has to battles and sword fights and assassinations. Character development and [people] changing is good, and there are some tough things in there that I think a lot of writers skip over. I'm glad I didn't skip over these things.

[For example], things that Arya is learning. The things Bran is learning. Learning is not inherently an interesting thing to write about. It's not an easy thing to write about. In the movies, they always handle it with a montage. Rocky can't run very fast. He can't catch the chicken. But then you do a montage, and you cut a lot of images together, and now only a minute later in the film, Rocky is really strong and he is catching the chicken.

It’s a lot harder [in real life]. Sometimes in my own life, I wish I could play a montage of my life. I want to get in shape now. So let’s do a montage, and boom — I'll be fifty pounds lighter and in good shape, and it will only take me a minute with some montage of me lifting weights and running, shoving away the steak and having a salad. But of course in real life, you don't get to montage. You have to go through it day by day.

And that has been interesting, you know. Jon Snow as Lord Commander. Dany as Queen, struggling with rule. So many books don't do that. There is a sense when you're writing something in high fantasy, you're in a dialogue with all the other high fantasy writers that have written. And there is always this presumption that if you are a good man, you will be a good king. [Like] Tolkien — in Return of the King, Aragorn comes back and becomes king, and then [we read that] "he ruled wisely for three hundred years." Okay, fine. It is easy to write that sentence, “He ruled wisely”.

What does that mean, he ruled wisely? What were his tax policies? What did he do when two lords were making war on each other? Or barbarians were coming in from the North? What was his immigration policy? What about equal rights for Orcs? I mean did he just pursue a genocidal policy, "Let’s kill all these fucking Orcs who are still left over"? Or did he try to redeem them? You never actually see the nitty-gritty of ruling.

I guess there is an element of fantasy readers that don't want to see that. I find that fascinating. Seeing someone like Dany actually trying to deal with the vestments of being a queen and getting factions and guilds and [managing the] economy. They burnt all the fields [in Meereen]. They've got nothing to import any more. They're not getting any money. I find this stuff interesting. And fortunately, enough of my readers who love the books do as well.

 And meanwhile, you've got Daenerys visiting more Eurasian and Middle Eastern cultures.

And that has generated its controversy too. I answer that one to in my blog. I know some of the people who are coming at this from a political or racial angle just seem to completely disregard the logistics of the thing here. I talk about what's in the books. The books are what I write. What I’m responsible for.

Slavery in the ancient world, and slavery in the medieval world, was not race-based. You could lose a war if you were a Spartan, and if you lost a war you could end up a slave in Athens, or vice versa. You could get in debt, and wind up a slave. And that’s what I tried to depict, in my books, that kind of slavery.

So the people that Dany frees in the slaver cities are of many different ethnicities, and that’s been fairly explicit in the books. But of course when David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] and his crew are filming that scene [of Daenerys being carried by freed slaves], they are filming it in Morocco, and they put out a call for 800 extras. That’s a lot of extras. They hired the people who turned up. Extras don't get paid very much. I did an extra gig once, and got like $40 a day.

It's probably actually less in Morocco since you don't have to pay quite the same rate. If you're giving 800 Moroccans 40 bucks each, you're not going to fly in 100 Irishman just to balance the racial background here. We had enough trouble meeting our budget anyway.

I know for some readers, they don’t care about this shit. But these things are about budget and realism, and things you can actually do. You are shooting the scene in a day. You don't have a lot of time to [worry] about that, and as someone who has worked in television this kind of stuff is very important to me. I don't know if that is answer or not. I made that answer, and some people weren't pleased with that answer, I know. They are very upset about that.

 August 2013

Amid reports of a dramatic uptrend in babies named “Khaleesi” and tourism to Dubrovnik, Croatia (aka King's Landing), we're guessing George R. R. Martin doesn’t need much of an introduction.

 AC: How do you decide what you're going to work on, whose voice you're going to work in today?

GM: Well, I don't write the chapters in the order in which you read them. I get into a character’s voice. It's always difficult to switch gears, actually. When I do make that transition from one character to another, I usually struggle for a few days trying to get back the voice of the character I'm just returning to after some hiatus. But once I get into it, I tend to write not just one chapter by that character, but three or four. So I'll be writing Jon Snow chapters, and I'll carry that Jon Snow sequence as far as I can. And then at some point, maybe I'll get stuck or not be sure what I should do next, or maybe I've just gotten way ahead of all of the other characters in the books, so I need to sort of rein myself in and make myself switch from Jon Snow to Sansa or Daenerys or somebody like that.

 November 2013

We can't leave Martin without pressing him for his thoughts on which of his characters keeps the best table. Would it be the wealthy, sun-loving Martell family with their Mediterranean-leaning flatbreads, olives and spiced snake? The sensualist Tyrion Lannister? Or the moveable feast of the court of Daenerys Targaryen with its duck eggs and dog sausage?

"Oh, Illyrio Mopatis, the magister, no question. Just watch out for the mushrooms."

 March 2014

Was it a big shift for you, when you were writing the scenes that take place at Winterfell and suddenly you have the Daenerys scene, with an entirely different location?

Pretty early on, in the summer of ‘91, I had the Daenerys stuff. I knew she was on another continent. I think I had already drawn a map by then – and she wasn’t on it. I’d just drawn the map of the one continent that would come to be called Westeros. But she was in exile, and I knew that, and that was sort of the one departure from the structure. It’s something I borrowed from Tolkien, in terms of the initial structure of the book. If you look at Lord of the Rings, everything begins in the Shire with Bilbo’s birthday party. You have a very small focus. You have a map of the Shire right in the beginning of the book – you think it’s the entire world. And then they get outside it. They cross the Shire, which seems epic in itself. And then the world keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then they add more and more characters, and then those characters split up. I essentially looked at the master there and adopted the same structure. Everything in AGame of Thrones begins in Winterfell. Everybody is together there and then you meet more people and, ultimately, they’re split apart and they go in different directions. But the one departure from that, right from the first, was Daenerys, who was always separate. It’s almost as if Tolkien, in addition to having Bilbo, had thrown in an occasional Faramir chapter, right from the beginning of the book.

 Although Daenerys is hooked into Winterfell, because we hear talk of her family, the Targaryen family, early on.

You see overlaps. Daenerys is getting married, and Robert gets the report that Daenerys has just gotten married and reacts to that and the threat that it poses.

 Fortunately, the books were best sellers, I didn’t need the money, you know, so I could just say no. Other people wanted to take the approach of, there are so many characters, so many stories, we have to settle on one. Let’s make it all about Jon Snow. Or Dany. Or Tyrion. Or Bran. But that didn’t work, either, because the stories are all inter-related. They separate but they come together again. But it did get me thinking about it, and it got me thinking about how this could be done, and the answer I came up with is – it can be done for television. It can’t be done as a feature film or a series of feature films. So television. But not network television. I’d worked in television. The Twilight Zone. Beauty and the Beast. I knew what was in these books, the sex scenes, the violence, the beheadings, the massacres. They’re not going to put that on Friday night at eight o’clock, where they always stick fantasies. Both of the shows that I was on, Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast, Friday night at eight o’clock. They think, "Fantasy? Kids!" So I wasn’t going to do a network show. But I’d been watching HBO. The Sopranos. Rome. Deadwood. It seemed to me an HBO show, a series where each book was an entire season, was the way to do it. So when I sat down with David and Dan at that meeting at the Palm, which started out as a lunch meeting and turned into a dinner meeting, and they said the same thing, then I suddenly knew we’re on the same wavelength here.

 June 2014

Q: What can you tell us about a warg dragon rider?

A: There is no history/precedent for someone warging a dragon. There is a rich history of the mythical bond between dragon and rider.  There have been instances of dragons responding to their riders even from very far away (hmm) which shows it is a true and very strong bond. We will learn more about this. Keep reading (we hear “keep writing” from the back of the room).

 Q:  What is your favorite line in ASOIAF?

A: I can’t single out one line but my favorite passage is Septon Meribald’s speech about war in… what was it?  (crowd yells out Feast for Crows).

 November 2014

For people who are not familiar with your work, the series takes place in an imaginary world. There is a struggle for control of the kingdom. This dynastic war is essentially one of three main plot lines. There are the other plot lines involving these sort of superhuman characters, and then there’s the exiled Targaryen daughter who seeks the return of her ancient throne. Why those three main plot lines?

Well, of course, the two outlying ones — the things going on north of the Wall, and then there is Targaryen on the other continent with her dragons — are of course the ice and fire of the title, “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The central stuff — the stuff that’s happening in the middle, in King’s Landing, the capital of the seven kingdoms — is much more based on historical events, historical fiction. 

 Pop culture has grabbed “Game of Thrones.” It’s been featured in “The Simpsons” and “South Park.” What goes through your mind when you see these references?

Well, I think it’s tremendously cool, of course. It’s nice to be doing something that everybody is so aware of and that has entered the cultural zeitgeist in that manner. The only aspect of it that really astonishes me is not that the characters and the story is being parodied or referenced in these various places but the extent at which I personally am. I mean, when I see myself as a character on “South Park” or I see Bobby Moynihan imitating me with the suspenders and the hat on “Saturday Night Live,” when I see companies selling Halloween costumes, not Halloween costumes to be Jon Snow or Daenerys but Halloween costumes to be me, that’s pretty freaky. That’s something I could never have anticipated, and I just don’t know what to think of it. 

 May 2015

Still, it’s only natural that there’s a few characters Martin would have liked to have seen on the show that did not make it in.

“Strong Belwas, who was part of Dany’s entourage,” Martin said. “I understand why he was cut, but I kind of miss him.” In the books, the massive eunuch warrior is a former pit fighter who joins Dany in Qarth. Belwas’ story elements have essentially been combined with the character of Daario, who is arguably more essential to Dany’s journey.

  June 2015

I explained that in my own head, Yandel is in King's Landing, clutching his book, showing up each day for an audience with the king... and each day being told perhaps the next day. Except on those occasions where, you know, they tell him the king's getting married today, and then whoops, Joffrey is dead, etc.

I also noted that of course, given how he wrote about the reign of Aerys and and the rebellion, that if Aegon or Daenerys take King's Landing he may indeed end up having his head chopped off... George seemed interested in the idea, I think. :P

 May 2016

4. GRRM and Picacio both made the joke about "you need to pay the artist" and such regarding general fan fiction. And then GRRM said he has issued some sub-licenses to things like art and games, etc. GRRM also mentioned that HBO owns the rights to the exact likenesses of the tv version of the story, meaning, no art can be made where Dany looks like Emilia. He was very careful in avoiding a real link in feeling between him and HBO even though he was asked about it twice. Then GRRM mentioned, and Picacio joined in, how GRRM knew the show would overtake the books. Not too much new.

Reactions after the episode

c. Dany on Drogon seemed random and a repeat of previous seasons.

d. Others loved Dany on Drogon.

 December 2016

And the most revealing: he said that for Winds, Winter is the darkest time 'where things die' and many characters will go dark places.

 At last I was able to ask him the question I had sent for the tombola. I have always been fascinated by how ASOIAF embodies the theories put forward by Acemoglu and Robinson about countries with extractive institutions (which hamper development). So my question was: Why do you think the political institutions in the Seven Kingdoms are so weak? His answer: the Kingdom was unified with dragons, so the Targaryen's flaw was to create an absolute monarchy highly dependent on them, with the small council not designed to be a real check and balance. So, without dragons it took a sneeze, a wildly incompetent and megalomaniac king, a love struck prince, a brutal civil war, a dissolute king that didn't really know what to do with the throne and then chaos. Interesting answer.

 July 2017

To a certain degree, also, it’s so intertwined, tragically and unfortunately, with the character histories. Daenerys doesn’t get to where she is unless she’s sold as a child bride, effectively a slave.

And I should point out, and you probably know this if you’ve read the books and watched the show, Daenerys’ wedding night is quite different than it was portrayed in the books. Again, indeed, we had an original pilot where the part of Daenerys was recast, and what we filmed the first time, when Tamzin Merchant was playing the role, it was much more true to the books. It was the scene as written in the books. So that got changed between the original pilot and the later pilot. You’d have to talk to David and Dan about that.

 I had all these meetings saying, “There’s too many characters, it’s too big — Jon Snow is the central character. We’ll eliminate all the other characters and we’ll make it about Jon Snow.” Or “Daenerys is the central character. We’ll eliminate everyone else and make the movie about Daenerys.” And I turned down all those deals.

 When you’re walking down the street in Santa Fe, do new character or historical details just pop into your head?

Sometimes it happens to me on long-distance drives. When I was younger I loved to take road trips, and get in the car and drive for two days to get to L.A. or Kansas City or St. Louis or Texas. And on the road, I would think a lot about that. In 1993, I think it was, I visited France for the first time. I had begunGame of Thrones two years before in ‘91 and I had to put it aside because television was happening. And for some reason, I had rented a car, I was driving all around Brittany and the roads of France to these little medieval villages and I was seeing castles, and somehow that just got me going again. I was thinking about Tyrion and Jon Snow and Daenerys and my head was full of Game of Thrones stuff.

 You’re in unusual territory, with your characters very much still in your hands but also out in the world being interpreted for TV. Are you able to have walls in your mind such that your Daenerys, say, is your Daenerys, and Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys is hers and the show’s?

I’ve arrived at that point. The walls are up in my mind. I don’t know that I was necessarily there from the beginning. At some points, when David and Dan and I had discussions about what way we should go in, I would always favor sticking with the books, while they would favor making changes. I think one of the biggest ones would probably be when they made the decision not to bring Catelyn Stark back as Lady Stoneheart. That was probably the first major diversion of the show from the books and, you know, I argued against that, and David and Dan made that decision.

In my version of the story, Catelyn Stark is re-imbued with a kind of life and becomes this vengeful wight who galvanizes a group of people around her and is trying to exact her revenge on the riverlands. David and Dan made a decision not to go in that direction in their story, pursuing other threads. But both of them are equally valid, I think, because Catelyn Stark is a fictional character and she doesn’t exist. You can tell either story about her.

 Is there anything we didn’t get to talk about?

I suppose there are issues we could have explored more with the whole question of sexual violence and women — it’s a complicated and fraught issue. To re-address that point a little, I do a lot of book signings, and I think I have probably more women readers than male readers right now. Only slightly, but it’s probably 55 percent, 45 percent, but I see women readers at things and they love my women characters. I’m very proud of the creation of Arya and Catelyn and Sansa and Brienne and Daenerys and Cersei and all of them. It’s one of the things that gives me the most satisfaction, that they’ve been so well-received as characters, especially by women readers who are often not served.

 August 2017

- My question about Daenerys was chosen as the third question (I was lucky!) but he refused to answer it lol … I asked “How old was Daenerys when she left the house with the red door, and was it located close to the palace of the Sealord of Braavos?” (thanks Butterfly for suggesting it to me) I don’t know why he refused to answer about her age, but about the house with the red door he said there will be more revelations about it in future books.

- He was asked to comment about the differences between the book and show characters, particularly Daenerys. GRRM ignored all the other characters and talked only about Daenerys - he said that the show one is older because there are laws in USA that prevent minors from having sex scenes so the decision was made to age Daenerys. Otherwise, book Daenerys and show Daenerys “are very similar” and “Emilia Clarke did a fantastic job”. (I guess he can’t really say negative things about the show, can he?)

- “Will Jorah ever get out of the friendzone?” (side-eyeing the person who asked this). GRRM: “I would not bet on it.”

 August 2018

Q: if you did have a child what would you name him or her?

A: “I don’t know... probably Not Daenerys”

 November 2018

“I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany (Daenerys Targaryen) has found that out as she tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there.

“She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities, and we certainly see that in Fire and Blood, we see the dragons wiping out entire armies, wiping out towns and cities, destroying them, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to rule — it just enables you to destroy.”

[...] “If you read Fire and Blood, you’ll know there’s definitely a bond between the dragons and their riders and the dragons will not accept just any rider,” says Martin. “Some people try to take a dragon wind up being eaten or burned to death instead, so the dragons are terribly fussy about who rides them.”

[...] The prince defeated the threat in the North by driving his sword through his wife’s heart. Will Jon have to do the same to Daenerys? Or is she the prince, Azor Ahai, reborn? Martin suggests all may not be as it seems.

“The Targaryens have certain gifts and yes, taking the dragons and dragon riding and dragon breeding was one of them,” he says. “But the other gift was an occasional Targaryen had prophetic powers and could see glimpses of the future, which they didn’t always necessarily properly interpret because, you know, they were fragmentary and sometimes symbolic.

“But to what extent did they share those gifts, what did he see, what prompted him to do all this? These are things I find really interesting to ponder.

 What was interesting from The Guardian interview you did, is this book — as daunting as it would seem for most authors to attempt, and as tough as Winds has been for you — this was curiously easy for you to write. Yes. Partly because it’s linear. Although it covers 150 years or so, it’s very straightforward — here’s what happened in the year 30, here’s what happened in 25. In Winds, I have like 10 different novels and I’m juggling the timeline — here’s what’s happening to Tyrion, here’s what’s happening to Dany, and how they intersect. That’s far more complicated. 

 August 2019

On the fame thing, does it ever feel surreal to stop and think about the reach that your work has had? I mean, couples meet through Game of Thrones, there are Thrones-themed wedding ceremonies, and babies are named after your characters. Is that something you ever dwell on and think to yourself  'God, my work has had this massive effect on people?'

It's very gratifying when you get letters, emails, and hear stories like that. They definitely do name children after my characters and send me pictures of their babies.

People also name their dogs, cats, iguanas, after my characters. Sometimes, it’s a little surreal. I often wonder about all the young Daenerys’ out there because kindergarten teachers will hate me because they have to spell it!

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Hello! I'm pretty sure I saw you mention a while ago that you were disappointed by confessions of the fox, would you mind explaining why? I've seen mostly good things about it myself. If I misremembered then I'm sorry and I hope you have a good day :))

I think this is one of my less popular opinions. And I understand - we so rarely get historical fiction with trans folk as the titular character (indeed, we rarely get any fiction what that). So I get people’s desire to laud it. 

For me though? It fundamentally didn’t work as a book. As a story.  

Let me count the ways. (Apologies in advance for the length of this.)

First: If you’re trans-ing someone who was historically cis instead of seeking to find a real, historical trans or gender-nonconforming person, I have questions. 

Most of the questions can be summed up as: Why? 

I struggle with historical fiction that takes a cis person and re-imagines them as trans as if there aren’t already literal historical, real trans people out there whose stories can be told. It smacks as (unintended, well meaning) erasure of lived experiences. 

Jack Sheppard, to the best of our knowledge, was a cis dude. There were trans folk in London in the 1710s and ‘20s. You might have to dig a bit for them, but they’re there. Because trans folk have always been there. 

Second: Characterisation 

This is more personal taste, but I found Jack and his girlfriend Bess to be inexcusably boring. How a trans, thief and gaolbreaker in 1720s gin-soaked London can be written as boring is anyone’s guess. But he was. 

Jack had no real personality and I found his story to be uninteresting. Oh, he’s the world’s best thief and gaolbreaker, that’s nice. But on its own it isn’t enough.

He had few to no faults. Childhood trauma isn’t a personality. Nor is being trans. And the author relies heavily on gender + occupation (thief-ness) to equal personality. So it falls very flat.  

Bess, his girlfriend, is a mixed-race sex worker from the Fens (even though actual real-Bess was from Edgeware). She seems to only exist to demonstrate that Jack is good at sex. She also veers a little into the Mystical Woman of Colour Healer Who Aids The White Person on their Journey of Self Discovery trope. 

Neither Bess nor Jack undergo any real change in the book. They exist in a weird stasis and experience no development, despite living through some harrowing things. They’re wooden dolls who move through the story without really engaging with, or being influenced by, the things around them. 

The other “main” character is a modern Academic who “found” this supposed “manuscript” of Jack’s life and is annotating it. His story unfolds in the foot notes and it’s just so messy if not a bit contrived. It didn’t make sense. I think the author was trying to convey that the Academic was in a sort of dystopian future, but if that’s the case it didn’t work. And if that’s not the case, the entire inclusion of the Academic’s story served only to annoy and take me out of the reading experience. 

E.g. There’s a scene where the Academic is being taken to task by the Dean for playing stupid games on his phone during office hours and like honey, lapsed-historian/academic here, trust me the Dean doesn’t give a fuck what you do during your office hours so long as you’re in your office and students can come bother you about their poor marks. 

The manuscript is supposedly being sought after by this pharmaceutical company for nefarious reasons that never struck me as being entirely realistic/believable. Also, the university was spying on this non-tenured, slightly useless Academic as if he somehow mattered? Which made zero sense. Anyway, it was stupid and should have been ripped out of the final version. OR changed substantially. 

Jonathan Wild, the thief taker (main antagonist to Jack), is probably the only interesting person. 

Third: Lack of Follow Through, or, the Fabulism Was Not Used Well 

The book tries to blend in some fabulism to the world by giving Jack the ability to “hear” the thoughts of inanimate objects. This could have been fun and gone to some interesting places, but it failed to deliver. 

I personally found the shoe-horning in of “capitalism commodifies everything” to be sloppy and heavy handed. It was done with little grace and didn’t sit right given that we are dealing with the early modern period. Yes, you can use the past to critique our modern woes, but do it intelligently. Don’t slap modern points of view and understandings of things onto the past and expect them to make sense. 

Anyway, Jack spends the book hearing inanimate objects talk to him, asking him to “free” them, or something. And uh .. .it doesn’t go anywhere interesting after that. 

Also the correlation one can draw from these objects to, you know, slaves, is uncomfortable. Especially as it’s the cargo of the EIC ships that Jack hears. I don’t think it’s intended in any sort of malicious way, but the allusion is there and I always found it to be distinctly uncomfortable. 

Fourth: Misuse of Marxist Theory, or, More Heavy Handed Moralizing that Annoyed the Dear Reader because it wasn’t subtle and, more importantly, it wasn’t done intelligently. 

So, the author is an academic - studies 18th century lit. Which is readily apparent as his Academic (self-insert) character is, I believe, supposed to be a historian and uh ... you can tell that the author doesn’t know enough to wing that. E.g. How he interprets some of the laws and customs of the time. Instead of understanding the social, economic and, most importantly, environmental issues that gave birth to laws like “the corporation of the city of London owns the streets so you can’t muckrake” he chooses to understand them through a very 21st century lens (and a Marxist one at that. I know I’m perhaps a bit uncool for this, but I find the application of Marxist theory to the early modern period to be ... not useful). 

Do you know why, mid/late 17th century London passed these municipal laws? Because of the god damn fucking plague you numb nut. You absolute buffoon. It had nothing to do with “oh the City/government is evil and wants to own you” it had to do with the fact that no one cleaned the goddamn street. So the city took over doing it. 

Prior to this, in London, you were supposed to keep the street in front of your building clear of waste, debris, refuse etc. No one did this, of course. I live where it’s cold and snows a lot and people can barely shovel the 2 sq ft of sidewalk in front of their driveway in the winter. I dread the idea of an average homeowner being expected to keep the street clear and clean. 

Anyway, guess what dirty streets attract? Vermin. Guess what comes with vermin? Plague. Guess what happened in 1665/66? The great plague of London! 

17th century England might not have understood germ theory, but they did understand correlation. (Also, the population of London was doubling at the back half of the 17th century and streets needed to be reliably cleared for through-traffic reasons etc. etc.) 

ugh, sorry, that one in particular drove me up the wall. Not everything is a capitalist conspiracy. Especially when we’re talking about municipal by-laws from the 17th century. 

And I understand the temptation to read a lot of modern interpretation of words like “corporation” and “company” onto bodies that used these same words in 17th and 18th centuries. But the weight, meaning and connotation of “the worshipful company of merchant adventurers” is different from, I don’t know, “the tech company google” or whatever. The early 18th century is when we start seeing the birth of the stock market, of “venture companies” (i.e. merchant adventure companies), of a lot of the language and proto-iterations of what will grow to be economic institutions of our time. But it doesn’t mean they’re the same and that difference is important. Because Jack Sheppard is a man living in 1720 he’s not going to be having our modern 21st century critiques of capitalism because his engagement with the economic systems of his time would have been radically different to our own experiences. 

Fifth:  Unbelievable Top Surgery & Recovery 

So, Jack gets top surgery. In 1720s fever-ridden London. While quarantining in a brothel. 

And he lived! No infection! No tearing! He was up and about in a matter of days. I don’t remember if his nipples survived the operation or not but somehow Jack did. Without anesthetics! Or you know, any concept of hygiene. 

His Mystical Girlfriend Who Exists to Show How Good Jack is at Sex is also somehow Magically Very Literate and also Magically a Surgeon? and performs this surgery on Jack in the middle of a plague. 

The entire ordeal was so poorly handled in terms of believability that I literally set the book down and said “what the fucking fuck” to the empty room then drank wine before finishing the chapter. 

An aside, it is funny thinking about the quarantine chapters at this point. I read COTF when it first came out a few years ago. Sweet summer children, we none of us had any idea how to write quarantine scenes. 

That reminds me: the entire quarantine thing was presented as the government trying to control movement and take away people’s rights etc. instead of a very normal, typical response that cities had been enacting since 1350. Samuel Pepys, who lived through the 1665/66 epidemic, barely even notes the restrictions. He’s like just “hmmm I’d love to go to the pub but I also don’t want to die. so. *shrug*” 

At the time of the author’s writing, most of us in the western world had no idea how normal and day-to-day disease was for our ancestors and yes, sometimes there would be crackdowns to try and curb it if an epidemic hit. That was part and parcel of life. So again, Jack and Bess wouldn’t be like “ooooh we’re 21st century slightly libertarian lefitsts who think the government is doing this to control us and for nefarious purposes”. Much more likely, they would have been like Pepys and viewed it as nuisance, albeit a necessary one. 

Sixth: Overall Lack of Realism 

I think I’ve noted the big moments where I was like “no one in the early 18th century would think that I’m pretty certain”. This isn’t to say people didn’t grouse, complain about London government (and the king etc.), critique or question the world they lived in. They absolutely did! Regularly. With great verve and gusto, if the broadsheets are anything to go by. But their critiques, their complaints, suggestions for bettering life, are not the same as ours. Because how could they be? They lived in a different world, were responding to specific things, grew up hearing and believing certain things etc. 

Jack, aside from having minimal to no character, really did read like a modern slightly-libertarian leftist who was plunked into a novel that takes place three hundred years ago. 

In addition to unrealistic political views, his understanding of body, gender, sexuality and identity also read as incredibly modern. Now this is harder, because we have so few extant sources from that time on those who lived non-gender conforming lives, and from their point of view, so yes creative imagining and interpretation is the rule of the day for writing that. 

But, we do know how in general the average person engaged and understood gender and sexuality and that would, naturally, inform anyone whose experience was different. And that base line of “probably what a typical cis Englishman or woman felt about their body and identity” wasn’t present. At all. 

Indeed, gender engagement at that time was interesting. The concept of the body, the role of the physical body, how it was interpreted is absolutely fascinating and the author could have done some really cool things with that. But he didn’t. He went for slapping a modern interpretation onto the past. 

At this point, write a dystopian novel and make Jack a fictional character. That probably would have gone over better, for me at least. The conceit can remain the same: It’s the year 4056 and an Academic found a manuscript from the year 3045 when the Dystopia Was a Thing - and go from there. 

--- 

I think part of what made this very popular and why people seem so taken with it is that it reads smart. It reads like someone who has immersed themselves in that world etc. because of the slang and language used. 

Yet, for me, as someone who has studied this period extensively, especially queerness in London in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, it read flat and unrealistic. 

I was initially very enthused when I started it. There are some posts to that effect on my blog. But it very quickly went south. It tries very hard to be Radical and Smart and Subversive and Critiquing Everything and so I think it fails at the fundamental thing it should be doing: telling a good story. 

(Note: The book does try and address racism in London at this time. It also felt a bit forced. And Jack seemed to have no prejudices or preconceived notions about Indian and Black folk which isn’t realistic. Like, it might make him #Problematic but my dude, you’re writing a man born in 1702. He’s going to have some iffy views. That can be challenged! Absolutely. But they still would have existed.) 

---

Thank you for the ask! I again apologize for the length of the reply. 

[snkirschtein]

Hi I love your tumblr account , I have a headcanon request please for characters Erwin Levi Eren Connie Hanjie.. it is what would they do if they knew their dating partner was doing drugs behind closed doors. Would this be frond apon or accepted in the military that they are in. I am so sorry for my broken english I am from Brazil. If this doesn't make sense I can re write it also I understand if you're uncomfortable to do this request. Thank you a lot

thank you! your english was great, thanks for sending in! i hope this is what you were looking for, i have experience with  warning for drug abuse mentions

Erwin:

If Erwin were to find out, he’d be shocked to say the least. How did he not know his s/o was under the influence? He wouldn’t show it, but he’d honestly be distraught, especially if it was a serious issue that had been going on for a long time.

Information like this is confidential. Erwin is not going to tell anyone, at least no one that doesn’t need to know. 

He’s going to want to get them help. First things first. He cares deeply about them, and unfortunately, since he’s the commander, it would be incredibly unprofessional and irresponsible of him to not get them help. And that would mean having them suspended from duty.

In the end, Erwin would make sure they get the help they need. Realistically, Erwin might even break things off, at least until they can get clean. It wouldn’t need to be discussed, as it’s probably not the most important thing to worry about in this situation, but Erwin would only do so so that they could focus on getting themselves picked up. There’s a lot of complex emotions and consequences that affect the two of them from a situation like this.

Levi:

Levi’s seen plenty of drug abuse in the Underground, unfortunately. He’s closer with it than he’d like to admit, not personally, but with how much he’s experienced with seeing. 

I feel like because of this, Levi’s probably able to detect it sooner than the others. Depending on what his s/o is using, there are different ways he can detect what’s going on.

Levi’s first reaction is ultimately disappointment. Sad disappointment. 

He’s not going to tell anyone that they know. It is no one’s business, and he won’t even give the implication that something’s going on. He will get the connections himself to get them help if it’s that far, otherwise he’ll help them get clean however he can. 

When it comes to expeditions, Levi will keep an eye on them. If they weren’t in his squad, they are now. This change is purely for the purpose of making sure they don’t go through any sort of withdrawal symptoms on a mission or falling out from using or not using. He will cover it with the fact that they are a skilled soldier, and Erwin will probably be alright with it because Levi is a good judge of character, along with not being bias towards his s/o.

Eren:

As soon as he finds out, he’s just mad at himself for not knowing. He can’t help but feel like he never really knew his s/o at all, and it’ll be a feeling that deep roots down in his heart for a while after this, recovery or not.

Eren, being a hothead, would probably cause an argument over it, which isn’t the right approach, but his emotions always take control of his logic. He definitely cries, in his own space, away from his s/o. 

He’s way too unexperienced to know what to do in a situation like this, so Eren would probably want to talk to a trusted superior. Captain Levi or even Hanji. He’s not sure how they’d react, nor does he want to think about the possible outcomes, but he’s too nervous and scared for his s/o, so he’d want to get someone who could help. For his s/o’s sake. Whatever happens at that point is in the hands of his superiors.

Whether or not they can continue to be a couple after this really depends on if they can get clean or not. Eren would want to be there for him but that’s a lot of stress on a person. He’d feel awful about it, but he’s only human, so he’s got his doubts.

Since Eren’s typically in the spotlight, I feel it might be a little tough to hide something like this, especially if his s/o is well known amongst his corps. He’s not a gossip, and he certainly doesn’t approve of them, so one can imagine Eren got into many fist fights about his s/o’s habits. 

Connie:

Connie is the most upset. He doesn’t know what to do or say because he can’t imagine why his s/o would want to start getting into habits like this, or how he couldn’t see it. He feels so stupid, and it definitely beats on his self-esteem, since everyone thinks he’s clueless already. 

Like Eren, Connie doesn’t know what to do. He wants to tell someone but he doesn’t know if he should, or who. At first, he plans not to, but Connie struggles with keeping secrets that weigh that heavily on him, so he’d probably let it slip during a quiet moment with the closer members of the 104th. It’s a feeling of hopelessness that drove him to want help, for the both of them.

Connie would want to stay with them, so he’d really try. And it could totally work out. If they end up being taken out of the scouts, he’d visit wherever they are as frequently as he can, as well as write letters. He’d definitely apologize a lot. 

He’s not going to fight anyone that has anything to say. Like mentioned previously, this takes a big beating on Connie, so he just doesn’t have the emotional capacity to fight. That said, the 104th would definitely step in to his and his s/o’s aid.

Hanji:

Aside from Levi, I also feel Hanji could detect at least a little bit about her s/o’s situation. In fact, different from the others, I believe Hanji is more likely to confront her s/o rather than somehow find out.

She can handle this situation. Hanji is smart and logical. She takes care to make sure no one outside of her and possibly the other veterans know, and she’s very smart in how she communicates it. 

Hanji’s s/o would have to leave the scouts to recover. Before Erwin would even make the call, Hanji discussed it with her s/o. It was definitely a problem, and Hanji doesn’t have what is needed to help her s/o. They need someone professionally trained.

The best choice to Hanji is leaving the relationship to simply be supportive friends of each other. This is a situation that needs to be looked at from outside the romantic relationship bubble, and whether or not they get back together afterwards is to be determined. But for now, Hanji’s decided it’s best to support her former s/o in that way.