#I was too kind to the tully monster

[mirtadraws]

various Creatures drawn from memory

[calisources]

GAME OF THRONES: HISTORIES AND LORE - ROBERT'S REBELLION. all sentences are taken from a mini-web series of hbo's game of thrones with different characters narrating different aspects of the world. this specific sentence memes is made from various videos of perspectives of robert's rebellion. change pronouns, names and locations as seen fit. this is a long post.

By Robert Baratheon.

The crimes of House Targaryen were too heinous to go unanswered.

The noble houses of Baratheon, Stark and Arryn united to oppose and overthrow the line of the cursed Dragon Kings.

We tried to take Ashford Castle in the Reach but the Tyrell’s beat us back.

The Targaryen searched from house to house for Robert Baratheon.

The combined forces of Ned Stark and the Tully's swept into the city guards. What a day that was. It's now known as the Battle of the Bells.

 It was his heir, Rhaegar who started the whole damn thing

Finally emerged from hiding in the south and assembled his own army to face us.

The battle that would decide the fate of the Seven Kingdoms occurred at the crossing of the Green Fork of the Trident River.

Rhaegar commanded the royal host which was some 40,000 strong.

Their  forces were outnumbered by nearly  5000 men but that didn't matter, they were fresh that we were battle-hardened and had justice on our side.

The Stag and The Dragon right there in the fort of the river.

Ned Stark goes to the capital to face the Mad King and make him pay for his crimes.

By Viserys Targaryen.

The Targaryens, Blood of the Dragon and the last of old Valyria were loved by their subjects and admired far and wide as the greatest dynasty in the history of the Western world.

Three centuries of Targaryen rule was shattered by the usurper Robert Baratheon and his band of traitors.

House Baratheon owed its very existence to the Targaryen.

Was it not Aegon the dragon himself who elevated the bastard Orys Baratheon in the war of conquest?

There are some who dare to claim Robert and his allies had reason to rebel.

They say the crown prince stole the usurper's lady love. They say my father King Aerys murdered Rickard Stark and his son without just cause.

Whether these charges are true or not? It doesn’t matter if the dragon answers to no one.

Aerys' good name has been besmirched in the years since the Rebellion. He’s been called a dangerous madman, a monster, a tyrant that brought  his tragic end upon himself.

My father was a victim of weaklings in his Council, lackwits who failed him in his hour of need and let the rebellion spin out of control.

At the Battle of the Trident, it was there the valiant Rhaegar met Robert in single combat but the gods betrayed him, and he perished by the usurper’s hand.

The Battle of the Trident seemed to herald the end of the Dragon kings.

I was the surviving heir to the throne. 

He sent me to the island fortress of Dragonstone along with my mother Queen Rhaella who was great with child.

King Aerys Targaryen prepared to defend his throne to the bitter end.

By Oberyn Martell.

 House Martell could have waged war until the end of days.

His royal parents had not produced a sister for him to wait, so he had to look elsewhere for a princess and there was only one in Westeros. Elia of house Martell.

She was not the most beautiful woman in the world or even in Dorne but rare for a woman from our land.

Her flower came with no thorns. She was kind and clever with a gentle heart.

I loved her, I feared for her for years I fended off lesser men from her but when Rhaegar came even I failed.

He was beautiful and the crown prince of the Seven Kingdoms and our mother had worked so hard to secure the match.

They were wed and he took her from her home from those who loved her and would die for her and locked her in his red keep.

She bore him a daughter and a son though, each almost cost her her life.

Elia loved Rhaegar, she obeyed him and he chose to steal away Lyanna Stark.

A pale northern girl whose veins ran with ice like all her people.

 instead of disciplining his faithless son, King Aerys executed the Starks when they came seeking justice.

Even in his madness he knew that no true Dornishmen would ever take up arms against our beloved princess and that we would fight to the death.

Prince Rhaegar, who was too slow or too arrogant for Robert's Warhammer.

Lord Tywin's Army sacked his friend's city while Lord Tywin's son�� murdered the king he'd sworn to protect.

War is terrible and men must become terrible to wage it.

Lord Tywin's dog Ser Gregor Clegane the mountain, made Elia watch as he murdered her daughter and dashed her infant son's head against a wall.

With her baby's blood still on his hands he raped my sister and murdered her.

By Catelyn Tully/Stark.

Brandon Stark of Winterfell sought and won my hand.

Brandon was heir to the north and a suitable match for a daughter of house Tully.

Brandon was wild and terrifying, never far from laughter or trouble.

I loved him with all the fire of her first passion.

Prince Rhaegar Targaryen abducted Brandon's sister Lyanna. Hot-blooded as always, Brandon immediately rode for King's Landing to demand justice.

Brandon's younger brother, a man whom I had never met though of whom none spoke ill or spoke anything at all.

I spent the war by the windows waiting for a raven to hear if my son would grow up fatherless or at all. We knew the price of defeat.

When he came home to me he could not meet my eyes. I saw the reason by his side.

Many  men have bastards, I know, and under the strain of war any man no matter how honorable may forsake his vows for a night of warmth that he may never know again.

Ned Stark was not built like other men. His northern honor would not let him sequester his shame in some distant holdfast.

These bitter memories are sweet now they are all I have left of my Ned.

The Starks are of the North and like the snows of winter when they come south they melt away.

By Ser Jaime Lannister.

Kingslayer. A word every man and woman in Westeros spits at me, though many can't even name the king I slayed.

 I understand to them,  I'm a symbol of everything they'll never have and a warning that'll

never apply.

When a  dog goes mad we put it down. Why not a King?

I was never supposed to be on the Kingsguard. 

Oh as a boy I dreamed of the white cloak like all boys.

If Tywin Lannister forbade the tides, the waves would cease.

She could arrange for the king to raise me to the Kingsguard so I could stay in the city with her.

Is it a rock you want or me? Come morning she had my consent.

 I would join the Kingsguard for her. I would force my lands and title for her. I would forsake our family for her.

Everything started to fall apart at Harrenhal.

King Aerys made a great show of my investiture.

I admit despite my father's anger I was happy and foolish.

He commanded me to return to the Red Keep to guard the Queen and little Prince Viserys. 

The Mad King had chosen me to spite my father and steal his heir. I wanted to rip off the white cloak but it was too late.

I kept the King's secrets when his Pyromancer said caches of wildfire beneath King's Landing.

It fell to me to hold the red keep.

Royal Command,  bring me your father's head if you were no traitor.

Burn them, burn them all he kept muttering.

As I approached the throne, sanity flashed behind the King's eyes for a moment just long enough to read the look in mine.

He turned and ran, a single thrust was all it took to end the greatest dynasty the world had ever seen.

The last dragon king squealed like a pig and shat himself so easily. I thought a king should die harder than this.

I knew at once when I saw the way they looked at me I would be blamed.

I commanded them to announce that the Mad King was dead and to spare all those who yielded 

They asked me if they should proclaim a new king as well. I knew what they meant. Would it be my father or Robert Baratheon? or maybe the charred verse

Proclaim who you bloody well like

I climbed the steps of the Iron Throne and sat on it with my sword.

[fantasticalleigh]

October scary movie review roundup:

I decided to really put forth an effort to celebrate this being Halloween month by watching as many horror films as I can. requirements aren't too strict but i'm only counting movies that are new to me, not old favorites. youtube has a ton of movies for free so i've been sifting through those and found some decent ones. if anyone has any good recommendations please lmk!

(i'm not like a huge slasher/gore fan but i don't mind it if it isn't in excess in a film, which crosses out a ton lol. i'm unfortunately squeamish about that stuff but i've always prefered thrillers/psychological horror and stuff of that ilk anyway. )

list of films watched so far:

-The Terror (Netflix)

(actually started this last month, nearly done with it so i won't rate it yet. acting is great, but the CGI of the monster is kind of bad imo)

-Grave Encounters (Free on YT)

i love a good found footage film. this one was a pleasant surprise but too predictable. acting was good, ending was unsatisfying. 5/10

-The Haunting (Free on YT)

didn't know this was an adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House until it started, hated the changes they made. but it did solve a long childhood mystery of mine: once as a kid my fam and i went furniture shopping and this movie was playing on a huge tv. i paid attention to it only for a minute and saw the scene where Nell sees her reflection's pregnancy belly growing (for context Nell herself wasn't pregnant) and screams in terror and runs away and then i walked away. never knew it was from this movie but always wondered. mystery solved!) CGI wasn't terrible most of the time but when it was bad, it was bad. i hate what they did to the characters, hate the changes from the source material (wtf was that bedroom SA scene??? ...was the ceiling going to impregnate her???) all the iconic moments from the book that were added to the movie felt like flimsy afterthoughts. marcia gay harden, i can believe as Nell. Catherine Zeta Jones, I can believe as Theodora. Liam Neeson as the doctor, sure. Why the fuck is Owen Wilson in this. (3/10. watched on youtube.)

-Hell House LLC (Youtube)

another pleasant found footage surprise. i really enjoyed this one and will most likely watch again. good/decent acting and the suspense did get to me, particularly in the scenes with the basement/rising tension in the cast/clown statue. The found footage thing is most genuine here, where in the following sequels it feels hamfisted and not as genuine bc everyone and their mom is doing a fucking documentary or news bit on the hotel. also a bit predictable but they nailed the suspense and the buildup to the climax was pretty well done. CGI not good but briefly used at the end, didn't bother me like it did in the sequels. 8.5/10

-Hell House LLC-The Abbadon Hotel /Hell House LLC-Lake of Fire (Also free on YT)

notably worse than the original. acting was especially bad in The Abbadon Hotel. Both films suffer from "we-don't-trust-our-viewers" syndrome where they insert so many freaking flashbacks to the original that it feels insulting they don't expect the audience to remember what happened before. flashbacks could make up a good third of both movies. hated most of the cast for The Abbadon Hotel but Lake of Fire was much better. The actor for Tully was awful in all three movies. CGI was terrible but sparsely used, at least. Both movies relied on the creepy clown gimmick way too much which felt like a huge waste considering the setting is a demonic/haunted hotel full of other potential props/settings that could've been used more for a good scare. the ending to the trilogy as a whole was fine. Abbadon gets a 2.5/10 and Lake of Fire gets 5.5. I would def watch Lake of Fire again but Abbadon was a slog.

-In the Tall Grass (Netflix)

this has been on my netflix queue for YEARS and i literally only just watched it last night. based off a Stephen King work and I love SK so I had high hopes and wasn't let down. I haven't read the novella but this was a good movie on its own. normally i don't like time-loops as a plot device but it worked really well here and the acting was good. patrick wilson is a sleeper fave of mine, he was great in this and i've never seen him in such a charismatic to super super creepy role before so he nailed it although when that scene hit i was literally cringing away from my laptop. the child actor in this is also really good, i felt for him at the end. would definitely watch this again and i'm interested in the book now. really good suspense/acting/soundtrack. i like that they never fully explained the phenomenon behind the giant black rock/ time fuckery in the tall grass or the mysterious alien grass people. IMO horror works best sometimes when it is left to the audience's imagination or when there's gaps left empty in the lore. 8/10.

-Barbarian (Hulu)

i've been really interested in this for years but never got around to watching it bc i don't like sitting in movie theaters and i'm slow to gettting to new media. but i knew zach cregger from his days in the WKUK and loved that and had heard good things about this. (also apparently he's developing a new Resident Evil movie or something now?? I'm excited.) these days i don't/rarely watch full movie trailers because they give so much away so i tend to want to go in fresh. i've avoided full spoilers for this movie up till now aside from some vague mentions of stuff so i knew there was a certain theme in the movie. overall it was solid, really tense first half with that red herring and really good acting from the female lead, i don't recall her name. when act two came on i was genuinely shocked and thought the website had glitched out or something, wasn't expecting that.

Last Podcast on the Left just did a series on Josef Fritzl (huge trigger warning if you decide to look him up) and that case must have heavily inspired the movie because there were a lot of parallels I couldn't help but notice. Overall fairly disturbing but I do wish the ending was a little different. I like the significance of what happens but idk, felt like it needed a little something more. Even one line of dialogue could have bolstered that, because I know Tess was thinking it but I needed to hear her say it to REDACTED.

(and what happened to REDACTED'S body? he's never shown again. did the REDACTED eat it? was he buried? did i miss something?)

-The Fourth Kind (free on YT)

awful. awful. awful. maybe one truly scary moment. the ending was bullshit. acting was whatever. too much screeching audio and my ears can't handle that. this movie is always being hyped online as so intense and scary yet i couldn't stop rolling my eyes. huge disappointment. 2/10 and that's me being generous.

--The Omen (1976) (Hulu)

admittedly i watched this when i was a kid but i barely remember it so it counts. sound mixing was fucking awful, for starters. dialogue is a whisper yet the soundtrack (heavy on ominous chanting in latin and screaming and spooky music) is SO damn loud i kept having to raise and lower the volume. a good flick for its time, i guess, but I couldn't get into it. If there's a more modern version I might check it out. Gregory Peck is always a treat but man, I got so mad when he's safe in Rome and he calls his wife, who's in mortal peril with a half body cast and alone in a hospital, to meet with his contact and fly to him in Rome. You couldn't go get her yourself?? You just condemned her, idiot, and you knew she was gonna die. For fuck's sake. Then he has the nerve to get all droopy and sad when he gets the call like five minutes later that she's fucking dead. Not scary. Suspense is killed by goofy spooky music. Gregory Peck's silver-fox hotness is offset by his character's stupid reticence to believe the facts before him until it’s too late. 3/10.

-The Inkeepers (Peacock)

i didn't hate it but i also didn't love it. i love anything about a haunted house or a haunted hotel, and this one being a haunted hotel sounded intriguing but ultimately it felt like it fumbled itself over and over. kind of boring, tbh? really unsatisfying ended even if it was a bit gutsy to kill the main character. sorry for spoilers here but i don't think anyone's gonna race to watch this one lol. i'd never heard of this movie until it got recommended to me. didn't realize lena dunham was an exec producer on this until the credits rolled. 3/10

[ariel-seagull-wings]

FICTIONAL CHARACTER ASK: JANINE MELNITZ

Asked by anonimus

@thereisnoblogonly-zuul​

@professorlehnsherr-almashy @thealmightyemprex @goodanswerfoxmonster @the-blue-fairie @princesssarisa @gravedangerahead @parxsisburning @softlytowardthesun @themousefromfantasyland @filmcityworld1 @lord-antihero @lioness--hart

@budcortfancam @bixiebeet @spengnitzed @angelixgutz @stantzed @janeb984 @amalthea9

Favorite Thing About Them: Let's face it, besides Lois Maxwell's portrayal of Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond film series, there weren't really other examples of desk secretaries so well developed as Janine Melnitz. It is a hard job, and vital to keep government institutions and companies organized, but like the also hard work of being a howsewife, it is often overlooked because is a job associated with women that writers tend to think it won't be interesting to audiences as " the stories of man of action going into a battlefield or other dangerous kind of adventure" that they often choose to focus on. So to have this simple working class lady being portrayed with charisma, as we empathize with the boredom, excitement, confidence, anger, stress and fear that she shows as she navigates trough her job, acting as the human element that helps to keep us grounded in this fantastic story about scientists hunting ghosts in New York City, is marvelous to watch. And she is also shown to be able to adapt and become a competent Ghostbuster in her own right, even leading a back up team while being someone who, like Winston Zeddemore, didn't got access to an Ivy League University Doctorate, showing that there are other forms of being inteligent besides having a golden framed diploma, like conecting with the general public and providing emotional support for friends who need it.

Least Favorite Thing About Them: The fact that when Ghostbusters 2 went to take inspiration from the cartoon The Real Ghostbusters, it made the mistake of only getting inspiration from the character design in the messy later seasons, ignoring the idea of her acting as the fifth Ghostbuster presented by the first two seasons and instead making her have a sexual escapade with Louis Tully out of nowhere to boost his confidence so Louis could be the new fifth Ghostbuster. The writers of the second movie, wich was the same team as the first one, had the template to make progress in making a urban fantasy adventure comedy story where man and woman worked together as a team to save the day without seeing anything weird about it, and didn't tooked any advantage of it.

Three Things I Have In Common With Them:

*I have short hair and wear glasses;

*I often use sarcasm as a mechanism to cope with problems;

*I also work behind a desk with a computer, telephone, pencil and paper;

Three Things I Don’t Have In Common With Them:

*I'm not an american from New York City;

*I'm not a red head;

*I wouldn't have the courage to fight against ghosts and monsters that she has;

Favorite line:

From the July 1983 Script Draft:

"The phones? I wouldn't say the calls are pouring in, Dr. Venkman."

"Good night, Egon."

"Is it alright if I watch?"

"Thank you."

From the October 1983 Script Draft:

"Who do you think you're talking to, Mister? Do I look like a child? You can't come in here without some kind of warrant or writ or something."

"It's a sign, all right... "Going out Of Business."

"I want you to have this."

"It's a souvenir from the 1964 World's Fair at Flushing Meadow. It's my lucky coin."

"Keep it anyway. I have another one at home."

From the 1984 movie:

"You're very handy. I can tell. I bet you like to read a lot, too."

"Oh, that's very fascinating to me. I read a lot myself. Some people think I'm too intellectual, but I think it's a fabulous way to spend your spare time. I also play racquetball. Do you have any hobbies?"

"Hello, Ghostbusters. Yes, of course they're serious. [she paused and sat back down] You do? You have? No kidding. Uh-huh. Well, just, uh, just give me the address. Yes, of course. Oh, they'll be totally discreet. Thank you."

"We got one!"

"Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trans-mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?"

"I've quit better jobs than this."

"Ghostbusters! What do you want!?"

"You are so kind to take care of that man. You know, you're a real humanitarian."

From the novelization of the 1984 movie:

"Would I kid you?... Well, the soonest we could possibly get back to you would be a week from Friday... I'm sorry, but we're completely booked until then... Uh huh... All I can suggest is that you stay out of your house until we can get to you.... Well, in that case. I'd be not to provoke it. You're welcome."

"Egon, there's something very strange about that man. I'm very psychic usually, and right now I have this teerible feeling that something awful is going to happen to you. I'm afrayed you're going to die."

"That's so romantic. "

"You're sweet, Egon."

brOTP: Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Winston Zeddemore, Dana Barrett, Tiyah Clarke, Louis Tully, Kylie Griffin, Melanie Ortiz, Louise, Irena Cortez, Bryan Welsh, Ilyssa Selwin, Walter Peck.

OTP: Egon Spengler.

nOTP: Ron Alexander.

Random Headcanon: Her maternal family is of german-irish, lutheran and catholic background, while her paternal family is of ucranian, polish and georgian jewish background. She always took part in traditions of both sides of her family, but has more strong identification with the jewish side.

Unpopular Opinion: I understand the idea of the Real Ghostbusters cartoon series episode Janine, You Changed being an attempt to criticize the executives that wanted to force Janine into what they deemed conventional patterns of femininity by inserting the plot of an evil fae that prays on insecurities manipulating Janine after she feels insecure about her appearance, but I think that is still out of character because when it camed to her physical appearance, Janine never seemed likely to feel insecure about it, but take pride in it. If a writer really wanted to explore some insecurity in her in a way that felt organic, it would make more sense to explore her insecurity due to the fact that she camed from a working class background and didn't have access to a college and university doctorate like Peter, Ray and Egon because of lack of money or family connections and because the universities criteria to accept new students is arbitrary and elitist, but Winston, who also shares a working class background, and the other Ghostbusters would assure her that just because she isn't a former Ivy League graduate, doesn't mean she is less inteligent or capable to understand the work of tracking and studying the supernatural.

Songs I Associate With Them:

Elusive Butterfly

If

Andante, Andante

Somebody to love

You Are the Sunshine of My Life

Stay

Favorite Picture of Them:

Annie Potts in the 1984 movie

In the original two seasons of the Real Ghostbusters animated series

In the IDW licensed comics

[yourlocal-lichen]

ok here I am almost a month later tee hee

note: "belief" in a deity in this world is more in the d&d sense-- it would be stupid to deny the gods' existence (though some, I'm sure, do) due to the tangible effects they have on the world, so belief means more how much you support or think about one god or another.

edit: page break

Bard's initial lack of belief in Lady Light is simply due to his upbringing. no one around him when he was especially young supported Lady Light. he may have known one or two people who did, but they didn't impact him in a way to start believing. (Nox, on the other hand, makes a point of not believing in gods. they've seen too much of the world to think the gods actually care about anything.) he's basically telling people that he is the "chosen one" of a god he hasn't even thought about much for his whole life, at the behest of the city government. he blesses children and homes and talks to people in the name of Lady Light, but that's all for show. over time, as he realizes how deeply unequipped he is for this, he starts praying to her for real this time in private, kind of just to see what happens. eventually it becomes something like real piety and she responds, helping him bolster the community. she doesn't do it out of the goodness of her heart, but because the entire existence of her as an entity is reliant on others' belief in her, and Bard has brought a lot of genuine worship to her door (as oppose to the city using her as a symbol of might).

Nox feels a deep connection to the monster because they've spent so little of their life trying to fit in with the community (still being helpful in a similar way that Bard is but with far less of the emotional warmth and they just kind of stick out), and thus being a bit ostracized. meanwhile, the city's fight with the monster is based heavily on perceived evil, light vs. dark, etc., and holds no basis. to keep the community engaged in the war (Bard's entire involvement in the war being a trick à la city), the government propaganda leans heavily on "universal human experiences" that the monster lacks. and where Bard falls a little in love with everyone he meets and struggles to control his deep empathy, Nox is aroace and experiences little-to-no affective empathy. many ways that the city tries to dehumanize the monster (romance, "passionate sex" (a phrase actually used in one of my literature classes on this topic), and empathy, namely) also dehumanize Nox. Nox also processes emotions through anger, something which makes in case you were wondering, the story is largely from Nox's POV.

at the start of the story, it's Bard and Nox against the world. when Bard is contacted and filled in by the city government, that's sort of the beginning of a wedge between them (Nox feels a little abandoned and panicked and bullies Bard into refusing the offer but by then it's too late to pull out and Nox said some kind of terrible things). then Bard is pulled into Being An Icon and they see each other less and less, even when Nox goes with him to the front lines. fast forward through a few things and Nox is like "hey I hardly see you anymore and you're clearly not doing well" and they get closer again as Nox introduces Bard to some new friends they've made (Ambrose, Tulli, and Sylvia) and Bard starts to develop a reason to live again.

that's all I have time for and I hope you find time to read this aha thank you so much for the questions!!

it's not blursday anymore but i implore you to feel free to talk abt your ocs regardless :]

whats an oc you're thinking about a lot lately? how abt an old favourite? one that's been giving you some trouble?

omg :3

I've been thinking a lot about Nox recently because I've figured Bard's arc out so well and right now they just seem like an extra (btw these guys are all old favorites I thought of them maybe even 3 years ago now and they're still stuck to me like baby opossums). but I've been thinkin about them lately! mostly about how their city is fighting a big monster and how Nox relates A Little Too Much to the monster and how their best friend is supposed to be the figurehead of light against the monster

I also just thought of two more scenes so you get to have them shoved down your throat with some context

(context: Bard is supposed to be a religious hero for the city but he doesn't believe in the god he's supposed to represent. he has light powers but that's just a thing he's been able to do his whole life but now everyone is calling him the Lightbringer and thinking he's the icon of Lady Light and when he doesn't know what to do he starts actually praying to her and becomes more devout. also he's like. 16)

but anyway. Bard goes to battle against the monster (he doesn't really do anything his job is purely symbolic) and at some point gets face-to-face with the thing who had seeked him out and totally overwhelms him (but doesn't do anything to him something something understanding being made into something you're not) and the people hell bent on protecting their icon beat the monster back (who lets them) and Bard was terrified out of his mind but Nox saw what the monster did and after that starts doing research and maybe tries to find the monster and talks to it

and then later in the story we have a parallel scene where Bard goes to find the monster and be face-to-face with it in battle and uses light against it (aided by Lady Light, his light on its own is not that powerful) which works but at this point the reader has followed Nox and understands the monster more and maybe doesn't want it to die? and that scene either ends with Nox pulling him back (thus committing heresy) or the monster killing Bard I haven't decided yet I just thought about it. I don't think Bard's arc is advanced enough for him to die yet (he hasn't started loving himself again) [plaintext: "he hasn't started loving himself again"].

so that's who's been causing me trouble they've been causing me emotional grief

[waitingforwinterwinds]

Game of Thrones - 59 CATELYN IX (pages 614-627)

Cat and Robb arrive at the Twins, and Cat tries some politics to open the way forward, lest their campaign end for lack of a bridge.

-

She feared for Ned and her girls, and for the sweet sons she left behind at Winterfell. And yet there was nothing she could do for any of them, and so she made herself put all thought of them aside. You must save your strength for Robb, she told herself. He is the only one you can help. You must be as fierce and hard as the north, Catelyn Tully. You must be a Stark for true now.

This must be so hard on her. Deliberately compartmentalizing and saving mental strength. That has to be so tough for a mother who loves her children so much. I like how she's dipping into the Stark part of her identity, because there were hints if not outright declarations in her earlier inner monologues that even now, a decade and a half (ish) on that there was still some small part of her that felt like an outsider to the north. Now she's deliberately stepping into that identity, and shoving that doubt aside because the chips are down and this is what she needs to do, who she needs to be to protect her family.

Catelyn put her heels to her horse and rode off, it would not do to make him feel as if his mother were usurping his position. Did you teach him wisdom as well as valor, Ned! she wondered. Did you teach him how to kneel! The graveyards of the Seven Kingdoms were full of brave men who had never learned that lesson.

Again with the good play, leading Robb to where he should be paying attention but letting him get the final steps on his own. Guidance, not hand holding, not smothering, not stepping on his toes. Good balance. Also: "The graveyards of the Seven Kingdoms were full of brave men who had never learned that lesson." ooph, now there's a line.

"I will go," she said loudly. "You, my lady?" The Greatjon furrowed his brow. "Mother, are you certain?" Clearly, Robb was not. "Never more," Catelyn lied glibly. "Lord Walder is my father's bannerman. I have known him since I was a girl. He would never offer me any harm." Unless he saw some profit in it, she added silently, but some truths were did not bear saying, and some lies were necessary.

Ooohh, Cat being ready to walk into danger, while knowing she could be walking into danger, but also knowing it's the safest course of action for them.

It does raise more questions than it answers about your children, but knowing they were raised by technically at least four people to varying degrees, I think we can all accept that no one person is singularly responsible for their... mind sets. ... kind of a metaphor for the whole ASOIAF isn't it? It would be easy to look at specific people and go "literally everything is your fault and your fault alone." but the reality is it was a series of shitty life choices and poorly informed decisions snowballing beyond anyone's control. (Littlefinger certainly had a large part to do with it all though.)

Lord Walder was ninety, a wizened pink weasel with a bald spotted head, too gouty to stand unassisted. His newest wife, a pale frail girl of sixteen years, walked beside his litter when they carried him in. She was the eighth Lady Frey.

I think we should expand the "Petyr's being creepy (around children) so let's kill him" game. I'll start: And then suddenly the walls collapsed as a giant metal monster crashed though it, its mouth opened and Catelyn saw her husband standing in its metallic maw. "Cat, get in the robot!" Cat looked around her to see the rubble from the fallen wall had crushed Walder Frey, as made obviously by the leaking smear of red where he'd been seconds before, though it had missed the eighth Lady Frey. This was probably a bit not good, Cat decided, and let her husband help her into the giant mouth of the metal beast. At the back of its throat there was a staircase that lead up into what should have been the beast's skull. Her daughters and Jeyne Poole were bickering over a strange table with glowing circles and coloured levers. "What is going on?" Cat asked, afraid to hug her daughters, lest they vanish like smoke. "What is this monster?" "Its called a Zord!"

The reader recently finished marathoning a season of Power Rangers and regrets nothing.

Catelyn frowned, disquieted. "I had understood that Lysa's boy was to be fostered with Lord Tywin at Casterly Rock." "No, it was Lord Stannis," Walder Frey said irritably.

Come on, Cat, you can figure this out, people have been lying to you!

"And you are to wed one of his daughters, once the fighting is done," she finished. "His lordship has graciously consented to allow you to choose whichever girl you prefer. He has a number he thinks might be suitable." To his credit, Robb did not flinch. "I see." "Do you consent?" "Can I refuse?" "Not if you wish to cross." "Then I consent," Robb said, solemnly. He had never seemed more manly to her than he did in that moment. Boys might play with swords, but it took a lord to make a marriage pact, knowing what it meant.

This world sucks (: I want better things for this family. She's right though; alliances, not war, make stable kingdoms.

Related reminder: if you cannot say 'no' without negative consequences, or if you fear that you cannot say 'no' without negative consequences, then your ability to consent is impaired.

This is Consent Under Duress. It is not true consent, but that doesn't mean he isn't bound by this decision, because it is still a political contract, and doesn't mean that his later actions aren't cheating.

[hellsbellschime]

I always love your takes on Dany because I think you explain her really well and was wondering what you think of this take by a Dany stan. It's got some uh... interesting ideas. Sorry too because it's quite long

The main difference in between Daenerys' political arc, and that of other "heroes" and their Houses is that Dany's is not currently a political arc relegated to fighting for Targaryen grievances and wins. Meanwhile, all other main House representatives in the narrative (Starks, Martells, Lannisters, Greyjoys, Tullys, Tyrells, Baratheons) are generally fighting precisely for nothing else but their own (and their Houses') grievances and wins.

That's where the double standards come in-

+ Daenerys is harshly and minutely judged for the quality of her every act, upon every single person in her narrative, bc her arc involves her aim to hold responsibility over the wellness of all these people.

+ Everyone else who are part of the Great Houses however are merely judged as per how they perform towards the wellness of their own Houses, because that's all they aim to perform for.

One girl dies in an act Dany is not directly involved in, particularly in intention, and the discussions are endless as per the repercussions and outrage of the occurrence. Because Daenerys took it upon herself to defend all these people, and this seems like a failure, particularlyin her POV: one girl with no other importance in the story and a few lines, among maybe millions. One girl. Hazea.

Robb Stark and his men, on the other hand, will kill, maim and rape thousands, or even tens of unnamed thousands, and there is no outrage; rarely discussed repercussions. Because Robb's political arc is not about protecting nameless people. Not about caring for the fate of one-liner non-noble characters. His arc is about the grievances of House Stark. About Ned. Readers judge him upon how close he gets to getting revenge on Tywin and Jofrrey, about how well/or bad he leads wars, not about what kind of leader he is to people, what kind of 'monster' he is to enemy commonfolk. The relevance of his eventual loss is not about the fate of his people, or enemy people, either. It's about his personal tragedy. It's about the tragedy of the remaining Starks.

There is outrage for Daenerys even killing her (leader) enemies. For everyone else, it's an undisputed aim.

Daenerys is even already judged for the possibility of a future where she will anything that concerns her actually being Daenerys of House Targaryen in Westeros. The possibility that any Westerosi people might die, while hundreds of thousands may have been dying so far at the hands of other Great Houses (directly and indirectly), and it's mostly irrelevant for them. But for Daenerys that judgement is everything. She is looked through the lense of "if she's a Queen she's meant to protect them, not kill them" tho she has not yet been granted that status, while those who have had the status of Kings, Queens and Lords of Westeros in the meantime have been responsible for the deaths of their own people all of this time.

No noble Northener really cares for a Jeyne Poole, least of all for a Hazea.

Daenerys alone is (harshly) judged as a leader of people, because that's her current actual arc. She is not Daenerys of House Targaryen currently, in a real sense, not really. Her family and House don't really matter where she is now, and to what she is doing.

Almost every other noble character (and I only say almost to partly exclude those not taking particular part in politics) is given the leniency of the tragic MC in a tragic family drama biopic. ALL THEY ARE IS X PERSON OF HOUSE Y. And in most cases nothing else matter. - end post

Well, obviously no hate to this person whoever they are and I don't necessarily think it's a bad take just because I disagree with it. I particularly DO agree on things like Jeyne Poole, and I think that is GRRM very intentionally trying to point out some huge hypocrisies with everyone in the story, even the "good guys", because it is incredibly unfair that no one will come to save Jeyne Poole while a fuckton of people will come to save "Arya Stark" just because they cared about Ned.

But where I don't agree is on that aspect in particular. Because it's not about winning or airing grievances for these great houses, a lot of their actions are largely driven by the fact that they simply care deeply about the other people who are involved in the war now or who have been hurt or killed in the past wars, and that is largely what is motivating many of them to do what they do. And in even more intense cases, they're going to war because they are in extremely immediate danger.

This is true for both villains and heroes, I mean Robb and Cat go to war against the Lannisters because there is an immediately mortal threat to their entire family, and even though Cersei and the rest of the Lannisters are clearly villains, their actions are also driven by an immediate mortal danger that their family is facing. And it's safe to say, a huge portion of what happened in the WOT5K would never have even occurred if a lot of these people weren't put in a position of "HOLY SHIT me or someone I love is about to die RIGHT NOW if I don't do something so I better fucking do something".

I feel like the story makes it clear that the wars that they are fighting are very pointless and brutal anyway. I mean FFS, GRRM does not accidentally traumatize the shit out of Arya by putting her in a commoner's position in a war that is supposedly being fought in her name. So I actually agree with the writer in the sense that there is a double standard when it comes to Dany vs. everyone else, but I feel like the double standard is valid because all of these characters for better or worse have a dog in this fight. Whatever they've done is incredibly personal and therefore pretty irrational for them.

And the fact that the men are rallying to save Arya Stark when they wouldn't rally to save a thousand Jeyne Pooles is very telling and demonstrates that they are extremely hypocritical, but it's also telling because they're not fighting for the "heir to House Stark". They repeatedly talk about how they're fighting for Ned's girl. It has very little to do with her nobility and power and a great deal to do with how these people feel about Ned not as a Stark, but just as a person that they knew and cared for who was horribly wronged.

So while I agree and recognize that a ton of the main characters have done the wrong things, often for the wrong reasons, it's personal, it's emotional, and it's irrational. And in a lot of cases it is driven by something as simple and pure as "I am about to die if I don't do something so I'm doing the first thing I fucking think of to get out of it". Even for the houses who initially got involved as a power play, it has become very much about the people that they care about and their own feelings rather than strategy and house advancement.

That doesn't magically make it moral, but it does make it hugely distinct from what Daenerys is doing. Because Daenerys doesn't have a dog in this fight at all. She has absolutely no personal ties to Westeros or anyone in it, and she is not in any danger from anyone in Westeros. Literally the only Westerosi person who has ever even really tried to kill her is a man she doesn't know and is already dead, and the only Targaryen she ever knew who even had a connection to Westeros was someone she hated who abused her horrifically and who is also already dead.

Ergo, Dany is a villain because she literally has no personal or political justification for the massive war that she's going to bring to Westeros. She is going to leave the place she's in that is a complete mess and desperately needs help even more than it did after her intervention, and she's going to invade a place that she doesn't care about beyond some imaginary concept she has about it in her head, has no connection to, has no need for her, and poses no threat to her.

She's not fighting for anything besides herself and her own sense of entitlement over Westeros. She's more harshly judged for her actions because they are completely driven by her own whims and desires and nothing more. She has the opportunity to think things through and plan and get advice and actually figure out the best way to do things, whereas every character in Westeros is reacting to something very immediate that they don't have a lot of time to consider and that is deeply emotional for them. But still, she doesn't even do that.

She's judged for all of the mistakes she makes because they're unnecessary and foreseeable mistakes. And, if she actually just waited and tried to figure out what to do instead of basically throwing herself into situations where she's suddenly overthrowing governments and ruling hundreds of thousands of people without a plan or any governing experience, then a lot of the bad things that have happened as a result of her campaign wouldn't have happened.

And obviously, I think this is a very intentional move on GRRM's part. I think he establishes that war is pointless and often outrageously hypocritical with the WOT5K, but there's a reason he gave Dany no one she loves and no one who needs her help and no one who poses a threat to her in Westeros. She's going to bring war to an already war-ravaged continent simply because she feels like it should belong to her.

That is drastically different than Robb going to war because his father has been falsely charged with treason or Cersei murdering Robert because he will try to murder her children if he finds out they're not his. And while all of the wars in ASOIAF are terrible and purposeless in the end, GRRM is going very far out of his way to demonstrate that Dany has literally zero justification or even explanation for why she acts the way she does beyond her belief in her own super-special entitlement.

[kiingocreative]

The Structure of Story is now available! Check it out on Amazon, via the link in our bio, or at https://kiingo.co/book

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I often feel that it took me thirty years to write my first book, No Pain, No Game. Not because I was physically writing it for that long, but because finally publishing my first novel felt like the culmination of three decades of bad writing, half-finished novels, random short-stories and a million mundane diary entries. It took that long to experiment with my craft, hone my skills, and master the fear of putting my work out there for all to see.

Exaggerations aside, it actually took me three years to write No Pain, No Game, from typing the first word on an otherwise blank page to having a fully-fledged, ready-to-publish novel. Those three years consisted of mostly undisciplined writing, sitting down to work on the story as and when the urge arose, sometimes not looking at it for weeks on end, and only getting back to it when inspiration hit. Only when I got serious about publishing did I put in the hours consistently, whether or not I was in the mood for it. The whole experience felt like not so much like long distance running, but more like a slow, often sluggish stop-start stroll, with a heart-pumping sprint at the very end.

I came out of having published the book revved up from adrenaline, soaking in the momentum, fretting for more and ready to do it all again. Out came the laptop again, the rush to get the first draft over and done with and the mad rush into editing-land.

It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint (and not interval running, and not a slow leisurely walk)

The thing with sprinting, however, is that if you do it for too long, you quickly run out of breath and I soon learnt that maintaining that level of effort over time was unsustainable. Somewhere in the middle of editing my first draft, I hit a wall.

A big, fat, hundred feet high brick and mortar monster of a wall. I never saw it coming, and I face-planted right into it. For weeks after that I couldn’t look at my manuscript or social media, and I had to take a proper break from it all to restore.

The break gave me a chance to introspect and take stock of what had happened. It felt to me that, if I wanted to keep on writing more books (which I did) I had to pivot from my disorganised style of writing to a more committed endeavour. There’s nothing wrong with a leisurely walk, or random bouts of interval running, but I realised it wouldn’t give me the kind of results I was truly after. I had to look at writing as a marathon, and build the sort of stamina and endurance I needed to do this many times over without burning out.

From Dilettante to Disciplined Writer

When I think back to writing my first book, I wonder if there’s some truth in the saying that ignorance is bliss. Because I was less focused on the outcome at the time, I was better able to enjoy the ups and downs of the process, especially because I only sat to work at it when I felt like it. I was also mostly unaware of the mountain of logistics that come with writing and publishing a book, so I’d be able to see the distance I’d covered, without worrying about the miles that still stretched ahead of me. Yes, ignorance was, most definitely, a little bit like bliss.

Reminiscing on her own experience, author Shamika Lindsay says that, with her first book, ‘the process felt so different and [she] almost felt the pen gliding across the paper but with [the sequel], it was like pulling teeth’. In fact, she adds, starting to write her second book from scratch felt like ‘such a chore and [she] was just so eager to complete it because [she] felt like it took so much from [her] to write than the first book’.

For R. G. Tully, author of the Ardamin series, who put greater emphasis on the editing stage when working on his second book, the process also took longer and wasn’t always enjoyable. ‘The editing grind was exactly that, a grind’, he confesses.

But you have to do it whether you like it or not, because the only way out is through. There are, fortunately or unfortunately, no shortcuts. Fortunately, because it’s the very act of going through that arduous journey that makes you a better writer in the end. And unfortunately, because there can be times it’s just not all that pleasant.

You’ll be surprised the amount of distractions that manifest themselves when you desperately need a reason not to work on your manuscript — it’s actually quite spooky. Treating writing with discipline, organisation and professionalism is exactly what will prevent you falling off tracks, and what ultimately gets the work done. And that’s the difference between a published book and one that’ll sit indeterminately unfinished somewhere in your archives.

A Tough Act to Follow

Unfortunately, there’s still a little bit more to writing your second book than just great discipline. Even when you’re able to get yourself to follow through and show up for your craft, giving your first book a literary sibling can come with its own challenges, especially because you have something to compare it to.

And it’s not only you, but your readers too, who will be expecting certain standards from your writing, especially if it’s a series. Though it shouldn’t come in the way of writing the book you want to write, the relationship of trust you’ve built with your readership through your first book still needs to be honoured, and this can cause certain amounts of pressure.

‘I felt a little pressure to keep the same feel about the story’, R. G. Tully says, ‘and to include more from my secondary characters, give them a little more depth’.

Stormi Lewis, author of the Sophie Lee trilogy, puts it simply: ‘It was a little hard to decide how to exactly start [with the second book]. At first I was worried and became overwhelmed because so many loved the first one. I didn’t want to let anyone down. I had to step back and come to terms that they loved it for being unique. And the only way I could stay true to the story and give them what they really wanted was to focus on the story and not so much about what I thought they wanted for the second.’

For others, the comparison can be more inward-facing, like author Tara Lake, who admits that writing the second book in her series has been a challenge, because she’s ‘struggled with comparison of the self: past Tara had a lot more time to devote to writing, present Tara has much less time with [her] kids being home full time from school during much of the pandemic’.

For others still, some of that pressure can be self-imposed. When writing her second book, Freya McMillan shares that ‘[she] put a huge amount of pressure on [herself] as [she] wanted it to be meaningful in a particular way to honour [her] dad, who died a few years ago. Once [she] stopped doing that, it was much less challenging to write’.

It Ain’t All Bad.

I do want to pause here and add that not everyone faces such challenges. There are authors out there who launched into writing their second book with more ease than the first.

Sabrina Voerman tells me that ‘[her] second book came a lot easier to [her] than [her] first book. The idea hit [her] so hard and fast that it took [her] aback, and [she] could do nothing but write it’, and the entire novel was written in a matter of weeks, whilst her first book took years to finish.

Same for Trevor Wiltzen, who says that writing the sequel to his first book went smoothly, greatly helped by the fact that ‘[he] wrote the second book immediately after the first, [so he] knew the characters really well’. He admits he ‘found it very freeing and really enjoyed the process’.

Even Stormi Lewis, who struggled at first, adds that ‘once [she] got started, [she] was fine’ and that ‘[she] felt the writing was solid and [her] best book yet, simply because [she] really got to develop more of the characters and the story’.

As with everything, we must then conclude, there will be as many types of experiences as there are writers out there. So how can we best prepare for what’s to come?

A Chance to Grow

Performance coach Tony Robbins says that the quality of our lives is intricately linked to the quality of the questions we ask ourselves on a daily basis. So if we need to face something that’s outside our comfort zone — starting again from scratch on your second book for instance — is it a punishment or is it a gift? Is it a curse or an opportunity?

I’m tempted to think that the level of discomfort that can come with writing your second book is a gift, because it gives us a chance to grow.

It’s a chance to take everything we’ve learnt from doing it the first time around and take our learnings for a spin to see if it makes the process easier. It’s an opportunity to improve, to work at our craft in new and wonderful ways.

It’s both daunting and incredibly exciting to face a brand new story — or a different side to the same story for those writing series — and to dare to plunge into the unknown of where it’s fated to take you. It’ll see you grow and evolve as a writer and, in turn, you’ll get to watch your writing morph into something more mature than it was before.

I say look at your writing like you do the passing of seasons: different times will have different qualities, different characteristics, different feels to them. You live and learn through each of them, and gather a wealth of experiences that eventually inform who you become. Maintaining the discipline to write through every single one of them is what will ultimately give your work all its depth and substance.

All it takes is that first word on the page.

And the second.

And the third.

And all the words beyond that.

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week #85

Global Warming Film Slump: (It got too hot here to watch too many movies this week! I had to buy me a fan.) Anyway, the best of this week were ‘Blame’, ‘Clemency’, ‘Young Adult’, ‘I am love’, ‘Little Women’. 

🍿

“The Future Of Film Is Female” X 8:

🍿 Quinn Shephard (Photo Above) is my new, wonderful, discovery. Blame (2017) was her astonishing directorial debut. It’s about the staging of Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucibles’ at a suburbian ‘Mean Girls’ high school. But it’s not a teenage drama. On its face, it’s sensitive, provocative and intelligent. However, you can’t overlook the fact that Shepard started writing the script for the movie when she was 15-year-old, that it was directed, produced, edited and sound-mixed by her, and it was even self-financed by her (and her mom). She also starred in it (brilliantly, and together with her real-life girlfriend), and played it well - ALL BEFORE SHE TURNED 20. Truly, a talent of Orson Welles-levels. Obviously, if she was a man, she’s be hailed as the new Tarantino, and given all kinds of money to do what she pleases. 9/10.

🍿 Her newest film Not Okay is about a ecosystem I don’t care about, the empty lives of narcissistic social media influencers who would fake anything to achieve internet fame. The film even opens with an onscreen disclaimer that it contain “an unlikable female protagonist” and indeed ‘Buzzfeed Danni’ is young, vain and vacuous. But Shepard is such a skilled author that she delivers a solid well-directed tale (especially with the powerful slam-poetry ending).

Shephard herself appears in a short cameo at the support group meeting, wearing a t-shirt that reads ‘The future of film is female‘.

Now that will be nice to see!

🍿 Clemency by Chinonye Chukwu won the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2019, making her the first black woman to win the award. It tells of prison warden Alfre Woodard who oversees the execution of an inmate who claims his innocence. A sober and precise look at the people who carry out this inhuman administrative murder. 8/10. Much of the crew on this film was female!

🍿 Greta Gerwig’s 2019 version of Little Women, with the magnificent Saoirse Ronan as Jo March, AKA Louisa May Alcott. Joyous and simply marvelous. Having the sisters speak in contemporary English got some used to, but eventually worked.

🍿 Jodie Foster’s directorial debut Little man Tate (1991), with herself as an ordinary single mother trying to give ‘normal’ life to her 7-year-old prodigy son. Jodie Foster herself was a former child prodigy, but this feel-good film was unfocused and unresolved.

🍿 Young Adult (2011) - Incredible script by Diablo Cody, and incredible acting by Charlize Theron. Sour-sweet, painful and real. 9/10.

🍿 Tully, another Diablo Cody script starring fat Charlize Theron (and the 3rd collaboration between Cody and director Jason Reitman, after ‘Juno’ and ‘Young Adult’). Like de Nero in ‘Raging Bull’, Charlize Theron gained 50 lbs. so she can play the bloated mom realistically, a bit too realistically. The constantly crying baby was grating indeed. 7/10.

🍿 First watch: Patty Jenkins’ painful first film, Monster (2003) about real-life street prostitute and later serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Charlize Theron deservedly won her only Oscar for this harrowing, tortured performance. She completely transformed herself into this unattractive, tragic role. Really tough to sit through.

🍿

So I also had to get me a palate cleanser with Charlize ("I have alopecia in both eyes") Theron at her most glamorous in Long Shot - again. One of my new favorite romantic comedies, and one I can watch any time, again and again. (This is the 3rd with Bob Odenkirk that I saw this week!).

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Stolen Kisses, Truffaut’s third chapter of the Antoine Doinel saga. The very first scene by the closed Cinémathèque Française with Charles Trenet singing ‘Que reste-t-il de nos amours?’ promises prime Truffaut: Sentimental, delicate, romantic. Jean-Pierre Léaud plays a confused guy without a center who doesn’t fit in and has no clue what he wants to do. 6/10.

Here is Jean-Pierre Léaud’s first audition for ‘The 400 Blows’!

🍿

2 more by Luca Guadagnino:

🍿 I Am Love, my 3rd of Luca Guadagnino’s dazzling ‘Desire’ trilogy (after ‘A Bigger Splash' and ‘Call Me by Your Name’). It was co-produced, and co-developed by Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton over a 7-year period. She gloriously plays a rich industrialist’s wife from Milan. It’s a luxurious masterpiece, mature, sophisticated and cultured, which leaves much of the story unsaid. The plot twist at the exact mid-point was unexpectedly shocking and very moving. Highly recommended.

🍿 The Staggering Girl, an artsy 2019 Guadagnino’s short with Julianne Moore, Marthe Keller and Kyle MacLachlan, and with score by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Created together with fashion house Valentino it’s more like a highfalutin 35 min. commercial for them. Beautiful and boring. 2/10. 🍿

Oh, how sexual mores change. Michael Caine’s 1966 Alfie does not come across today as a boyishly charming free-spirited ‘player’ with a Cockney accent, who thinks of himself as ‘God’s gift to women’. Rather a callous scumbag, a self-centered male-chauvinist asshole. It’s hard to find this film witty any more. 🍿 

Michelangelo Antonioi X 2: 

🍿 Antonioni’s 2nd short, the early neo-realistic short, N.U., a documentary about the workers of the Netezza Urbana, the department of sanitation: the anonymous street-sweepers of Rome.

🍿 And his very last work at 90, ‘The Dangerous Thread of Things’, part of the 2004 trilogy Eros, three unrelated stories about love (and sex). The other two parts are ‘The Hand’ by Wong Kar-wai and ‘Equilibrium’ by Steven Soderbergh. Kar-wai’s short, about a tailor who falls in love with gorgeous concubine Gong Li, was perfect. 

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Ed and Pauline (2014) is a short about influential film critic Pauline Kael’s early writing life and partnership with Edward Landberg, with whom she ran the Berkeley Cinema Guild and Studio in Berkeley, CA, thus creating the first art cinema in the USA.

🍿 

Boudu Saved from Drowning by Jean Renoir, with Michel Simon from 1932. A strange comedy of manners about a middle-class bookseller who saves a free-spirited, suicidal clochard and brings him into his household. Unreformable and unlikable, the anarchistic house guest does not conform, and the good deed is not rewarded.

🍿  

..."We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented"...

Re-watch: Peter Weir's prophetic The Truman Show (1998) retains it’s power. An “exploration of simulated reality, existentialism, surveillance, religion, metaphilosophy, privacy, and reality television, with elements of dystopian fiction, metafiction, psychological drama, romantic comedy, satire, and social science fiction”. Shot at the Florida home of infamous pedophile Matt Gaetz.

🍿 

“.. Wearing a turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy.,, all day..” and “This jacket is dry clean only. Which means it’s dirty.” Etc.

I never heard Mitch Hedberg before. This is his 45 min. Comedy Central Special from 1999. Deadpan.

🍿  

I Don't Just Want You To Love Me, (1992). A mediocre German documentary about the prolific Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 3/10.

🍿  

After bingeing the first 4 seasons last week, I thought I’ll continue with Better Call Saul, but unfortunately after the first 3 episodes of Season 5 I had enough. The more I decided that I’m not buying into the emotional lives of the characters, the more I started to dislike it.

(I don’t have to be a completist in everything I do!)

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Throw-back to the art project:

Adora With Jean-Pierre Léaud.

Adora in The Truman Show.       

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(My complete movie list is here)

[a-libra-writes]

I am sitting here going through my comfort character imagines list and I am somewhat wondering how you managed to make me fall for a bunch of characters I do not even know ( seriously. I only ever casually watched episodes every now and again if I couldn’t escape it), so why the hell am I getting heart eyes reading about the way Brynden Tully is proposing after being sure he’d die as a warrior because the thought of waking up without his girl being there makes him panic and why do I want to give Tyrion a good tight hug when “Obviously, he handles this maturely and drinks a lot” ( to quote one of my favourite lines in the history of written words from the jealous headcanon/imagine thing). Not to mention my swooning over the old lion that has only intensified due to your brilliant writing and that story idea I have about Robb Stark asking Roose Bolton’s wife how it comes that a kind woman from a good family like her got married to a man like this with her reply being: “My father knew that in a world full of monsters the safest place for me would be by a monster’s side. And I got lucky, my lord. Mine even loves me”.

Also I have to thank you for the deeply rooted appreciation turned love for Stannis and the world in which that poor man at least got a chance to be happy after being tortured by the fates for far too long ( that’s what ff is for after all. Fixing what the writers butchered in a way🧐).

So in summary, just know that your writing absolutely makes my day and that I come back to it more often than I should care to admit.

So I hope you have a nice day and may the muses smile upon you and the moira spin your fate in your favour.

🦛

oh thank you!! this is so wonderful to read 😭 Im glad you appreciate it, and extra glad I've been able to push some of my favorites at you 👀 There's so much nuance and layers to a lot of the characters (esp relating to the books), and I like being able to share that.

[ficsilike-reblogged]

Blood in the Rivers: IX

A/N: Apparently I cannot write short chapters. Thank you for your patience and for all the likes and reblogs and kind comments on the last chapter. I love you all so much. Special shout-out to @starlight-starwrites​ for listening to me whine about this chapter.

Pairing: Oberyn Martell x Ellaria Sand x F!Reader (Tully)

Rating: NC-17, for acts of warfare (blood, guts, and gore--our Tully is a little mean), Face-sitting, fingering, using sex to go to sleep, a few kisses

Word Count: 14.2k ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Read Chapters I-VIII here! Or on Ao3!

Chapter Nine: The Monster, The Maiden

King’s Landing still smelled of piss and soured bread.

Robb’s missive had come just after they had set the Lannister fleet alight at Lannisport. Yara and her fleet would be left to sack Casterly Rock with a majority of Y/N’s small band of men while Obara and Arya and a handful of Riverlanders set off toward the capital with Y/N.

Cersei had grown desperate and crazed. Growing only more bold and paranoid after she was crowned Queen.

King Tommen was dead. Margaery had been thrown into the Black Cells under suspicion of his murder and the new queen had pulled nearly all of her loyal bannermen to protect the city. Obara surmised that it was a Faceless Man, sent after the king after the Iron Throne refused to pay their debts to the Iron Bank of Braavos.

So much had changed since she had left the safety of Sunspear’s shadows. And yet not enough. The Lannisters still called themselves the rulers of the Seven Kingdoms and the Realm still suffered.

Obella’s tactics had kept all but a handful of the men under Y/N’s command alive. The Westerlands had been put to the torch and their gold and silver mines plundered in the dark of the night. The small band of Riverlanders hid in the dense forests and picked off the Lions’ bannermen when the roads forced them to march two-by-two. She, Arya, and Obara had been welcomed as guests at Pinkmaiden and settled there as their first command stronghold. When asked why she did not think to travel to Riverrun, Y/N’s answer was simple. “I have asked men to leave their homes to fight. I do not go home until they do.” They had never stayed in a location for longer than two days, moving from target to target with brutal efficiency.

But now she was back in the gods-forsaken capital that she had narrowly escaped.

“Has it always smelled like this?” Obara asked, nose crinkling as the wind carried the putrid stench up to the high hill above the city.

“Yes,” both Arya and Y/N answered.

The men at their backs looked grim and anxious in their cloaks, trying to hide their armor. While the Northmen and Dornish were still marching toward the capital, the Reach knights and cavalry had been the first to arrive at the gates of the city, demanding the release of Margaery—the rightful queen. It provided a well-enough distraction.

Y/N slipped off Qēlos’ back and patted the mare’s side in thanks. The beautiful horse had earned her weight in apples a thousand times over in this terrible war. She handed the reins to Lord Blackwood who promised to keep her safe until she returned.

“But are you certain-”

“Lord Blackwood, my answer has not changed since the last time you asked. I thank you for your concern but it is unwarranted.”

The older lord’s face colored with an embarrassed blush and he dipped his head. “Of course, my lady.”

Arya barely concealed a laugh as she, too, dismounted but Obara was stone-faced as her feet hit the damp grass. Patrek Mallister was quick to offer his hand to take her horse’s reins. (In truth, he’d been quick to do anything Obara needed. When they were still setting the Westerlands ablaze and picking off their infantrymen from the cover of forest, Y/N noticed that the majority of men under Obara’s command were either half in love or half terrified of the eldest Sand Snake. Patrek was decidedly the former. His time as a captive of the Freys after the Red Wedding had stripped him of the wandering eye he was known for.)

Obara and Arya stepped to Y/N’s side and they each took a deep breath.

“May the Warrior protect you,” one of the men whispered at their backs.

But Y/N could scarcely hear it over the thudding of her heart. No matter how many times she had readied for battle and shadowed warfare, her heart always leapt into her throat. And maybe that kept her alive, the slight-panic keeping her senses heightened.

“This way,” Arya said, leading them down, down, down. While Tyrion’s crude drawing of the placement of the wildfire around the Red Keep and King’s Landing was safely tucked into Y/N’s small pack, Arya was the one leading them into the mouth of the passages beneath the city. She had warned them about the smell.

It did not help.

Once pleasant and cool water gave way to stink and muck that had Y/N retching. Arya shushed her above the lapping brown water as one of Euron Greyjoy’s longboats neared where they had been treading against the waves. And then, much to her horror, it became clear that they would have to submerge themselves in the muck to avoid detection as the boat sailed by. Through the brown water and with burning lungs, Y/N watched the boat sail across the surface and she nearly vomited when they quietly crested, feeling the disgusting water line her mouth as she clutched her pack to her chest.

“Nearly there,” Arya whispered, starting a slow swim toward a dark corner of the wall.

They were quiet as they hoisted themselves up into the stone hole, gurgling with more sludge. But Y/N could not hold back her retch any longer as they finally curled around a jagged corner. It echoed in the dark and she winced when she heard it.

“Come, Little Fish, do not let your stomach fail us now.” Obara’s words of encouragement were stilted as she tried to keep her own rolling stomach contained.

“The worst is behind us,” Arya whispered with a small smile, murky water on her lips.

Both Obara and Y/N sighed at the girl’s unflinching (if not dark) optimism they quickly set off after the young Stark, following her steps in the dark, twisting tunnels and up the tight steps of uneven stone stairs which led to more tunnels and more stairs. They walked in silence for a long stretch of time, the squish of their soaked boots the only sound they heard. But dim light soon trickled down from some unseen room above to light the path Arya led them on. With the light came the realization that they were surrounded by dragon skulls, damp and dusty with the passing of time.

“I once thought they were monsters,” Arya whispered, a far-off look on her face.

“Is this what you found when you disappeared for half a day?” Y/N asked, skirting around a skull with teeth as long as her arm. It all seemed like a lifetime ago that she had been worried about where Arya had hidden away and Ned had sent Y/N and half his guard out into the city to look for her. When Arya arrived back at the Tower of the Hand, reeking and dirty, near dark, Ned had been both relieved and furious with his youngest daughter.

“It was,” was all Arya said, voice sad. It had been a lifetime for her, too.

And now they were here, in the bowels of the castle that had tried to rip their lives asunder and had very nearly succeeded. But now it was their turn.

The dim light only grew a fraction brighter as Arya finally slowed to a stop—but the noise grew, too.

The first voice was unmistakably Cersei; “the Red Keep has never fallen.”

“Our own father helped it fall. Have you forgotten everything?” Jaime near-snarled in return.

Y/N crept closer to light on quiet feet and followed it so she could more properly hear the conversation. Any bit of information was valuable, even if she was soaked in muck down to her skin. She pivoted so she could look up into the room above, a tiny sliver of stone crooked in its place. She recognized the carved pillars and marble lions of one of the interior courtyards even through the small field of vision the stone allowed.

“Father is here—he will never allow-”

“Our father is not a god despite your best efforts to make him one in your heart of hearts. And neither are you.”

“He will keep us safe. I am Queen of the Seven Kingdoms! Let them try to take my crown.”

“They will try!” Jaime pressed. “The Tyrells are at the gates and the wolves and Martells are coming. What will you do when they arrive and Father’s plans fail you? Yara Greyjoy’s fleet have taken Casterly Rock. There are whispers of Riverlanders picking our bannermen off from the trees after torching most of our bannermen’s lands. What will you do?”

There was a pregnant pause and Y/N felt Obara tug on the back of her jerkin, trying to get her to move.

“Let them have ashes.”

Obara tugged again and Y/N let herself be pulled away this time as she fumbled to grab the wax-coated map of Tyrion’s wildfire storehouses from its hiding place in her pack, unhearing of Jaime’s reply. “We must be quick.”

Arya huffed. “You were dawdling.”

But the three of them set off in search of the glowing jars of fire and found them almost exactly where Tyrion had said they would be and quickly—and carefully—started to move them, hoping that Tyrion’s map proved accurate again. It took hours of cautiously shuffling in the dark to move the cracked glass jars and half-filled barrels they found to where they needed them for this plan to work. They did not have the time to completely empty the city of its wildfire caches and knew there were still piles of them in secret coves and shadowed corners of the city’s underbelly.

Through more thin walls and cutaway stones, they heard whispers. Whispers of the forces outside the walls. Whispers of movement of the gold cloaks and Kingsguard around the city. Whispers of doom with the arrival of the Northmen at the gates.

Whispers whispers whispers.

When her arms ached and her clothes had dried, they moved the last little jar into their pile. But the tiny jar refused to settle and tried to topple from its perch. Y/N thrust her hands out and caught it before it shattered on the floor. A single drop leapt from the jar’s depths and missed her hand before it spattered on the ground, hissing and smoking against the stone.

“We have to go,” Obara said. Even through the thick walls, they could hear the din of movement along the balustrades, readying for battle. Obara had a small barrel in her arms, too. The second-to-last piece in their plan.

Y/N froze for only a moment before she tore off the sleeve of her tunic and shoved it into the top of the jar in as a makeshift stopper. She could use it later, she reasoned to herself, as she stuffed it into the small bag at her back.

Arya was pressing her ear up to the slab of stone at the end of a squat, dead end tunnel. She only needed to stand on her tiptoes to reach it, face tight with concentration. “We’re good,” she whispered before reaching up to move the stone. A whoosh of cooled night air came with it.

Obara started to slowly pour out the contents of her barrel, leaving a sickly green trail from the pile of jars up to Arya’s side. “You first, Pup,” she said, crouching to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling.

Arya then leapt and scrambled up into the dark. Her little hands reached down for the barrel Obara was holding and Obara followed her path up once the barrel was out of her grasp.

“Little Fish,” Obara whispered, “come. We’re nearly finished.”

Y/N glanced back at the pile of wildfire. It looked so much smaller from a distance. She hoped it was enough. Obara held out a hand for her and Y/N took it, needing the help to get out of the tunnel. They were just outside the city now, right at the edge of one of the Old Gate. The grass was damp beneath their feet with early-morning dew as Obara took the barrel from Arya and quickly emptied its contents down into the hole and then trailed it away to leave a smoking green puddle. She discarded the barrel as they crept toward the sparse forest, hoping the growing sun would provide enough cover so the guards on the walls would not see them. The murmur of a city ill-at-ease crept over the high walls and gave a beat to their retreating steps.

Tytos and Patrek were hidden behind the first handful of trees, looking more worried than Y/N expected.

“The Tyrells have retreated for the moment. The archers on the walls have kept them from battering down the Lion Gate,” Tytos said as he handed over the reins to her horse. “And the Northmen have arrived.”

“Have they seen you or our men?” Y/N asked as she rifled through one of the saddlebags for a canteen and a scrap of cloth and quickly wet it, wiping it across her face.

“I do not believe so, my lady.”

Y/N nodded and then tossed a fresh and damp cloth to Arya and Obara, letting them clean their faces, too. She then grabbed a small canteen of ale and swished it around her mouth before spitting it out. “Raise your banners. It is time we made our presence known.”

Tytos nodded once again and signaled toward the men lining the dark of the trees.

Y/N hurried to pull on her armor and huffed out a thanks when she felt Obara’s rough fingers tightening laces or adjusting the pauldron over her shoulder that she had skewed in her haste. Arya’s armor was impeccably placed even without help and Obara slapped at Patrek’s hand when he tried to assist her.

The banners of the Riverlands started to rise as they stepped out of the tree line. Shouts came from the wall when they were spotted.

Y/N patted Qēlos’ flank as she pulled her bow and quiver from the horse’s tack, sending the mare further into the woods to wait.

“Archers!” Some gold cloak yelled from his perch. “Archers!”

Y/N nocked her arrow and Arya lit the end. Dirty fingers pulled the string tight for just a moment as she angled it up into the sky and then let it loose. It sailed through the air and hit the small puddle of green at the base of the wall.

A terrible crack and boom filled the sticky dawn air and Y/N nearly lost her footing as some invisible force shoved her back. Green flames filled the air and the city wall erupted into a storm of broken brick and black dust.

“The wall!” someone cried, muffled against the ringing in her ears. “They’ve breached the wall!”

Y/N righted herself and watched as her small band of Riverlanders and Obara and Arya surged forward in a wave, quickly followed by men in copper armor, pressing into the city’s wound as the green flames of the wildfire continued to eat at the wall and screaming soldiers.

The Dornish had come.

She nocked another arrow and let it fly, tearing into the neck of a distracted solider at the top of the crumbling wall. Another pushed an archer taking aim from his perch. Again and again she picked off the remaining soldiers on the balustrade above the hole in the wall until her quiver was empty. But then, even over the din of the battle, she heard a distinctive crack. Metal breaking and smacking against stone and brick.

“The gate! Defend the gate!”

And now there were two.

Y/N slung her bow across her shoulders and drew the pair of small blades from her belt and pushed forward, trailing behind the press of Dornish and Riverlands.

The city was in chaos. Gold Cloaks and Kingsguard and Westerland bannermen were scrambling over the rubble and wreckage, swords clashing against the invaders. But the Reach and North had pushed their way through the Lion Gate.

There would be no escape.

A man in red and gold armor screamed as he ran at her, spear thrust out in front. Y/N was able to dodge it but his feet could not be stopped and she sank the end of one of her blades through the eye slot of his helmet. She knew she needed to keep moving. Her armor was not meant for full-scale combat like this. But she would not leave her men, Riverlander or Dornish, to fight alone.

But the battle raged. Her small blades were coated in crimson and her arms ached as they pushed forward toward the Red Keep. Toward Cersei.

She caught sight of Arya in the skirmish ahead. The little wolf was holding her own for the most part against some City Watch brute but a well-timed kick to her stomach had Arya falling to the ground, her little sword slipping from her grasp.

“Arya!” Y/N screamed as her heart leapt into her throat to strangle the air from her lungs. “ARYA!” She pushed through the pulsing group, watching the Gold Cloak sneer and stalk toward Arya who struggled to get to her feet. Y/N fought against the crowd, dodging an ax at her throat and a sword at her stomach with a desperation and savage grace a person could only conjure for someone they loved. But she knew… She wouldn’t get to her in time. She wouldn’t make it. The man raised his sword, sweaty face pulled tight with glee and ready to strike the life from Arya Stark and then-

A golden hand caught the sword just as its reached its crest and Jaime Lannister shoved the man back before driving his sword through his belly.

Y/N slid to a stop on her knees as she reached Arya’s side, pressing Needle into Arya’s grasp again and urging her to her feet and back into the near-safety of the advancing crowd. Jaime gave them both a look as they stumbled back, unreadable and…sad. But then he was gone between the swarm of swords and shields.

The Bells did not ring. There would be no surrender. She expected nothing less from the queen.

But perhaps she should have remembered Cersei’s cruelty, her need for control, and Cersei’s own words. All Y/N could think about was finishing this—finishing this war, this stupid war that had taken too much from everyone she cared about.

As the sun started to settle high in the sky, she heard a rumble. Even over the roar of the growing battle, she heard it. Felt it shake the stones beneath her feet. And then the city burst. Green flames and thick smoke filled the air as brick and wood rained down like a terrible storm, ripping through Westerland armies and invaders alike. Dirt clouded her mouth and she tasted fire as her ears started to ring with an intensity she had never experienced, pushing her back and on unsteady feet. With dazed eyes, she watched a man in a gold cloak stumble forward, mouth open in a silent scream as the emerald flames blazed across his armor.

Someone’s hands grasped at her arm and tugged her to the side, finding a bit of refuge behind the fallen remains of an inn. Arya was looking up at her, covered in soot and blood and Y/N watched her mouth move for a few moments, unable to hear anything but then it came back in a wave.

“-taking the Red Keep.”

“What?” Y/N asked, tongue heavy in her mouth.

Arya frowned. “Did you hit your head? Robb is about to take the Red Keep. Cersei must have sent someone to light the rest of the wildfire.” Arya turned to look at something over her shoulder and stiffened. “Come on. We haven’t finished this yet.” The younger girl pressed Y/N’s blades back into her hands. She hadn’t even realized she had lost them. And then Arya was striding away through the rubble, disappearing into a haze of smoke as green flames continued to lick at the wreckage.

Y/N shook herself, trying to free her mind of the buzzing and sluggishness and opened her pack, making sure that her own stash of wildfire had not started to crack or bubble. It was intact, thankfully, and it gave her enough momentum to push forward. Another gold cloak ran into her path a few steps later. His armor was blackened and charred, and buckled when she kicked at his chest to knock him toward the ground before driving one of her blades into the small gap between his cuirass and helmet.

It was easy when they staggered and stumbled or looked too long at the green flames. It was easy. When had it become so easy?

But it didn’t matter when she kept Obara from falling to some red cloak’s sword through her back or when Tytos was knocked from his horse by a City Watch soldier. It didn’t matter that it had become easy when she was keeping her people alive. The ground continued to rumble as more small pockets of wildfire roared to life and burned everything it could. But she kept moving forward, her steps trailing behind Obara’s as they pushed up the steps toward the Barbican of the Keep. It had been reduced to chunks of splintered wood and twisted metal, trampled over by the advancing armies. Y/N turned as she reached the top—just for a moment—to see the destruction the war and wildfire had brought upon the city. Almost a quarter of King’s Landing was gone, swallowed into the maw of black smoke and broken stone. The Red Keep was still burning. More green flames had reduced most of its outer walls to piles of smoking rock and ash. Only the Holdfast still stood tall. If Cersei’s plan had been to burn the advancing armies in the streets—she failed. But a sizeable group of Kingsguard and Gold Cloaks still stood between them and the crown that sat on Cersei’s head.

And they pushed and swung their swords and battered their shields, driving the loyalists back or into the ground.

But then something caught Y/N’s eye. Drew her attention like the Stranger had placed their hand upon her head and turned it.

Tywin Lannister was standing outside the smoking Tower of the Hand. His sword was bent and his helmet fell from his fingers with a clatter. His guards had abandoned him; his grand army reduced to only a handful of men. But his face still hardened when his cold eyes raked over her. Even as the battle had clearly been lost, he held his head high and pointed his sword toward Y/N with a sneer. “Come along, girl. Let us finish this.”

Equal parts dread and joy stoked her soul then. And her heart thundered in her chest even as she knew that the time was short. As Tywin took a step toward her, she threw one of her blades, aiming for his throat—and he deflected it easily, as she knew he would. But her hand dove into her pack and her fingers found the warm glass. Y/N threw the jar at him, uncaring of how her shoulder popped and ached with the sudden movement. All she could do was smile when she watched it smash across his chest plate, dripping green. His eyes grew wide as recognition flickered across his face. She bent to pick up a piece of burning wood and threw it at him, watching the green flames erupt.

Fire makes people dance. And Tywin was no exception. He screamed through the green.

The scrape of a sword against a sheath gained her attention.

It was Oberyn. Dark eyes alight with want and fury and, with a single stroke, took Tywin’s head from his shoulders. It still burned as it rolled across the stone, spitting green embers in its wake. The body slumped to the ash-covered ground, plate armor smacking against broken stone. And then Oberyn was marching toward her, sliding his bloodied sword back into its sheath. With his usual brutal grace, he wrapped his arm around her waist and slanted his mouth against hers, uncaring of the grime or dirt. Y/N quickly reciprocated, pressing her lips firmly against his. Months of separation, months of wondering if she would see him again despite her promise, months of yearning poured out of her as she grasped at the back of his neck to pull him closer, uncaring for the moment of the surrounding destruction. All there was, was Oberyn Oberyn Oberyn and his beautiful mouth that she had missed too much.

He only pulled back to breathe before he took another kiss, smiling against her mouth. “Blood suits you, my moonlight.”

And it suited him, too.

**

Tywin’s head looked large as it sat next to Cersei’s. Most of it had escaped the wildfire because of Oberyn’s quick removal but half of it was still charred.

The man and woman who had destroyed her family had been reduced to silent heads on a soot-covered floor.

Robb was sitting on the Iron Throne, Widow’s Wail across his lap and a hammered bronze and iron crown settled over his dark auburn curls. The grime and blood of battle still streaked his armor but he looked every bit the portrait of a king with Grey Wind sitting near his feet, gnawing on something that looked suspiciously like someone’s arm. The remains of the Throne Room were filled with dirt-smudged commanders and lords who had sacked the City. Oberyn found all of it tedious and had slipped away with a kiss to her temple to help his men settle into camp for the night.

The sun was setting, casting the entire room in the warm glows of pink and orange over its broken walls and melted windows, like the gods were presenting them all with a bit of beautiful quietness for their victory. Their dead would be tended to later, before the city would be looked over to see what could be salvaged. The story that Cersei had set the stashes of wildfire alight as a final effort to kill the advancing armies was already being whispered throughout the smoking city. No one needed to know that the only reason why more destruction had not been reaped was because of Y/N, Obara, and Arya’s actions in the winding tunnels. It was their secret to keep and hold.

As Robb started to hold court, presiding over the captured Lannister forces and learning Euron’s fleet had turned and run when the wildfire had started, fleeing East toward Essos, Y/N excused herself, trying to fill her lungs with something more than soot. She walked through the winding halls, some half broken and others still filled with groups of injured needing a healing touch. And perhaps it was muscle memory, but Y/N found herself standing outside the door of her old room before she could remember turning that corner or walking down this hall. Her fingers brushed against the wood. The wound from Gregor’s sword had not been patched and it splintered under her touch when she pressed against it. For a moment, she thought of opening the door and walking in and seeing what else had changed or stayed the same. But her hand retreated. Her life was not here anymore. There was no need to step into a place of terrible memory just for memory’s sake.

Movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and Y/N’s heart leapt into her mouth at the sight. “Jon?”

His face morphed from anger to surprise to joy and then he was running toward her with outstretched arms.

She met him halfway and threw her arms around him, uncaring of the blood or dirt and grime. He still smelt of fresh snow and pine even over the stench of battle. His gloved hand found the back of her head and he held her close—like he was afraid she would disappear from his grasp if he let go too soon. “Your hair is so long now,” she murmured into his shoulder.

And his answering laugh sounded choked in his throat. “I have so much to tell you.”

“We have all the time in the world.”

But then Mace Tyrell cam huffing and puffing into the hall, still clad in his gaudy golden armor and red in the face. “My lady, Lord Snow, His Grace is requesting your presence.” He then turned and half-ran back toward the throne room without an ounce of grace and his tarnished golden armor untightened and slapping against his extremities with each step. Y/N hid her laugh behind her hand until Jon nudged at her shoulder.

“You have not changed at all, Y/N,” Jon quietly mused.

“Oh, I have changed quite drastically, dear cousin. But not the parts that matter.”

Jon shook his head with a small smile. “I will hear your stories one day.”

“As I shall hear yours,” she promised just as they walked through the broken threshold. But the respite was torn away the moment she noticed who had been lead in chains in front of Robb’s new throne. A handful of Freys were on their knees and snarled at her as she walked past when Robb waved her forward to stand at his side. They were surrounded by the small band of men she had brought to King’s Landing—every one of them looked hungry for blood. And if there had not been an audience, Y/N would have let them slake that need.

“House Frey has refused to bend the knee,” Robb said, his light eyes cold and hard as his gaze moved to the men at his feet.

“Usurper-!”

Whatever insult the Frey had wanted to spout was silenced when Tytos cracked him across the face with a closed fist, his dented gauntlet still covering his hand. “Silence!”

He turned and spat blood. A tooth clinked against the floor. “Bitch.”

Tytos raised his hand again to claim the rest of his brown teeth but Robb stood from the throne and strode down to the man and grabbed the Frey’s greasy hair and yanked his head back to expose his throat. The edge of Widow’s Wail pulled a thin line of crimson from his throat as he gulped. “Tell her what you confessed. Tell her, braggart,” Robb seethed, making sure to angle his face to look at Y/N. But every other person was staring at her, too.

And Y/N wished she had Oberyn to stand with—to feel his steadying warmth at her side when the man’s hard stare ripped across her face. But Arya was a comfort too, moving to stand at her side with a snarl of her own. “We found your father outside Pinkmaiden. He tried to bargain, said the Red Wedding did not have to stain all of our hands.”

Y/N could feel her heart stutter in her chest but fought to keep her face neutral. “But you did not care to treat with my father.”

“We dragged him to Harrenhal,” another man said with a laugh. “Took his head and gave the rest to the bear.”

Y/N felt her stomach roll. Bile was rising in the back of her throat in a terrible wave as she curled her into fists behind her back. Grey Wind rose from and licked his bloody chops, baring his sharp teeth and the man cowered and shriveled. “You boast of your own damnation. Have they never taught you of what becomes of men who do not heed the gods’ warnings? Or have the gods never touched The Twins?”

The Freys bellowed, screaming and hollering this and that but all she could hear was a dull roar in her ears, watching their dirty faces contort with their own simple rage.

She dragged her gaze to Robb. “I have heard what they had to say, Your Grace. What else would you have of me?”

Robb stood straight, ignoring how the prisoners still fumed. “I would have nothing of you, my lady. You and your house have paid a high price for your loyalty.”

Robb’s words pushed something both cold and soft against her fragile heart. She nodded once, knowing his words meant more than their simple meaning. “House Frey has wronged more than just me and mine, Your Grace. You know that better than anyone. Do with them what you will. I do not care for their mortal coils and the gods will not care for their souls.” And she watched, a little entranced as they were dragged away, one by one, and slowly the Freys’ screaming was snuffed out. Y/N noticed a bit of tension leech from Robb’s posture as the quiet settled over the crowded room and he retook his seat.

But it was quickly washed away as the next prisoner was brought in, chains singing with each step. A quick kick to the back of his legs brought Jaime Lannister to his knees in front of Robb. And the last living lion in the city actually smiled. “Stark, we must stop meeting like this.”

Maege Mormont started to draw her sword when Robb held up a hand. “You once made my mother a promise. An oath. To return her daughters to her care.”

“I did.” His green eyes flickered to Arya at Y/N’s side.

“You failed.”

Jaime clenched his jaw. “I did.”

“And then we find you fighting alongside your sister.”

“To be fair, it seemed your sisters were already in the care of your cousin so my oath-”

“My sister is the only reason your head is not on a spike,” Robb seethed. “She told me of how you saved her life.”

“Is this true, Lady Arya?” Some lord from the Reach asked. He was quickly met with looks of derision from the surrounding Northmen for questioning her or Robb. (“Of course it is true! She’s no reason to lie!”)

“It is true,” Y/N said, stepping in front of Arya who looked ready for the ground to swallow her whole. Her pride was a fearsome thing. “I saw it with my own eyes. Against his own bannerman, he raised his sword to keep Arya safe.” Murmurs started to slide through the assembled crowd and Robb’s jaw ticked to the side but all Y/N could see was Jaime’s soft, sad smile when he looked at her, like he was remembering how she cried and asked him not to tell anyone. A quiet kindness repaid.

“Your brother has been granted exile.”

And Y/N watched Jaime’s eyes widen, almost hopeful, as Robb continued to speak.

“You will have until sunrise to find a way out of my kingdom. If I see you again, your head will be thrown into Blackwater Bay.” Robb waved his hand and the chains encircling Jaime’s wrists and ankles were released. “A life for a life, Lannister. I suggest you make the most of it.”

**

“Perhaps they’ll have a song about my father when this war is truly over and the city is rebuilt. They can call it the Fish and the Bear.”

“I would hope the bards would grant him a more fitting song. He had more tales to tell than the way he left this plane, my moonlight.” Oberyn wrapped his arms around her as they stood on the balcony of her room, watching the city settle in for the night and she pressed her ear over his heart, listening to its beautiful beat and letting it steady her own.

It had been nearly a week since they had taken the Red Keep and Robb had been proclaimed king. Everything was slowly being rebuilt. Northmen and cavalry from the Reach were staying to help the city’s smallfolk resettle and survive, creating a sense that all would be well. The gold taken from the Westerland mines settled the Iron Throne’s debt with Braavos. Margaery had been surrounded by the maesters and healers the Tyrells had ferried with them in the war, making sure her time in the Black Cells had not permanently injured her, but had been presented to Robb just this morning and he had gladly accepted her as his queen. It was all a show, of course. The alliance between Robb and the Reach had been forged in the shadows long before he ever set foot in the city. The plan that Oberyn and Ellaria carefully crafted had unfolded beautifully. There were a handful of pieces left to move but Oberyn and Dorne were thankful for a bit of respite and Y/N was grateful for his arms to fall into when she felt that insidious ache once again grow in her chest. Oberyn made it easier to bear. He had kept her close when the other lords and ladies started to learn of her campaign in the Westerlands and what she had done—looks of horror and morbidly curious whispers disappeared when Y/N was in his arms. She only wished that Ellaria was there, too. It had been far too long since she had them in her arms. She needed them both.

“You are being called back to Sunspear, are you not, my prince?” A raven had arrived from Dorne just after they had broken their fast.

“We are being called back to Sunspear,” he mused before pressing a kiss to her forehead. “But you are not coming with me.”

Y/N had not said anything to give him that inclination. But Oberyn always knew. She felt him breathe in the scent of her skin as she sighed, burrowing a little closer to his warm chest. “I have to finish it.”

“I know, my moonlight, I know. And I will never keep you from your wrath.” He leaned back to gently cradle her face in his warm hands. “But I will have you promise me, again. Promise me that you will not forget us. Come home. When you are finished, come home.”

**

“Tell me something, Arya. Something good.”

“I met a boy. Named Gendry.”

A dense fog had settled over the damp grass, curling its ghostly fingers around the trunks of the trees that sheltered Y/N and the armed men from any eyes that might be scanning the land from the safety of their chambers.

Arya spoke, unhurried but succinctly, about her time disguised as ‘Arry’ with Yoren and then the Brotherhood without Banners, as Y/N waited for her men to finish a perimeter check. Most she knew, having gleaned it from conversations with Arya back in Dorne when they took breaks at the training grounds with Obara. But it seemed she placed the secret of Gendry a little closer to her heart. “I thought I saw him in King’s Landing before we left. Working as a blacksmith again.” Arya almost sounded wistful. “I didn’t ask or get too close. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t know what to do if it was him.”

“I think we have both learned that fear gets us nowhere, Arya,” Y/N said softly. “If he makes you happy, makes you laugh, try. Seven know you deserve some joy.”

Arya’s mouth tilted up in a small smile and she looked out toward the formidable fortress of The Twins, seat of House Frey. A strange location for such sentimental talk but it seemed the pair both needed a bit of respite. The handful of Riverlands men who had gone with her to King’s Landing were accompanying her for one last mission. And a small band of Northmen who were heading home were given leave by their king to help Y/N if they chose—and they did.

Ghost, Jon’s white direwolf, trotted to her side on silent feet and Qelōs whinnied in greeting. Y/N had met Ghost after taking King’s Landing when she found Jon wandering the ruins of the holdfast, trying to find a kitchen so he could feed Ghost. The direwolf was decidedly quieter than Grey Wind but no less protective of his chosen Stark or anyone Jon seemed fond of.

And where Ghost was, Jon always appeared. She watched Jon slide through the trees to stand at her side.

“Twelve guards on the perimeter. Five archers in the Water Tower.”

“Inside?”

“No more than forty.”

Y/N nodded and tightened her grip on the reins. She knew most of the Freys and their allies had been in King’s Landing and had been disposed of in battle or by the ax.

But she wanted all of them.

“They seem to be gathering who they can. Must’ve heard whispers of us marching North.”

But the Freys had few allies left. They were the only house in the Riverlands who had not sent forth supplications and oaths of fealty to the new king and queen of the Seven Kingdoms. And the simple bit of parchment in Y/N’s saddlebag was all the protection and fodder she needed to fan the flames already consuming the dark part of her heart that had led her here. It read simply; House Tully was once again Lord Protector of the Trident and the liege lord of the Riverlands. Any and all actions House Tully made on behalf of the Crown to secure allegiance and peace were sanctioned and accepted.

Perhaps Robb did not know what Y/N meant to do. But maybe he did, letting her loose on the House that had caused both her and her sweet cousins so much pain. She had kept her wrath contained while at war. It burned and raged under her skin but she had pulled it back like a tiger on a chain, knowing that if she had let herself be blinded by her need for vengeance, she would have only caused herself and others more heartache as her men would fall to the sword and ax because her plans would have left them vulnerable instead of safe. But now they were safe. This was the final piece. And she could let it finally burn.

A window pushed open and caught Y/N’s eye. A glint of metal, a cage, was revealed in low candlelight. The rookery, it would seem. Y/N watched a raven fly and pulled an arrow from her quiver. She nocked it and pulled her bow taut, listening to the string sing under her fingers. The arrow flew and took the bird from its flight. They would have no support.

Y/N drew another arrow and turned to Jon. “Give the signal.”

**

“Your father would be proud, my lady. You are a force, just as he.” Tytos was still filled with compliments even as he let a maester stitch up a gash on his arm.

Y/N managed to smile and dipped her rag into a bowl of fresh water and dragged it across her blood and dirt caked face and neck as she glanced out the window. For a moment, she doubted Brynden Tully would be proud of her. Letting loose a band of men still raging from victory and anger from the betrayal of the Red Wedding onto enemy territory and giving them permission to do whatever they wanted and needed to take the fortress was not honorable or something he would have ordered. But he was gone and she still breathed. She was a survivor—and she knew he would be proud of that.

Portcullises crumpled and arrows flew. Swords ran red and the fortress burned. The siege had lasted all of a handful of hours—just long enough for her to spend her quiver of arrows as she picked off fleeing Freys as they ran across the bridges. But it was finished. Almost.

Y/N grasped Tytos’ uninjured shoulder and squeezed, telling him to rest as Patrek ran into the room and told her they had finished gathering the Freys as she requested. He led her out of the damp, dark castle and onto the grass just on the edge of the Green Fork. A band of about twenty men were on their knees as the Northmen and Riverlanders created a circle around them with dirtied swords kept them from wavering.

The last of the Freys. All of them were guilty. Every single one of them knew of the plot and drew their blades when the time came. Each one had benefitted in some way from the slaughter of the Red Wedding and murder of her father.

Patrek continued on as Jon separated himself from the group and touched her arm just before they reached the group. “This will not bring them back,” he whispered, dark eyes pleading. He had seen enough bloodshed.

Y/N pushed his hand from her arm and stepped forward. “No, it will not. But blood begets blood. And I shall bathe in it. There shall be no root or stem left.”

Patrek had dragged a large stump from the tree line and set it at her feet. She watched a few of the men nervously glance between the stump and Y/N, knowing what was coming.

“Your men have refused to swear fealty to King Robb, the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms. Your House has refused to bend the knee. Guest Right was violated for greed.” Y/N held her hand out for the ax Lord Cerwyn had across his back and he gave it readily. “I have learned that if you pass the sentence, you should swing the sword. I gave the order.” The weapon was heavy in her grip as she remembered Ned’s words. She’d just been a girl when he had said them and his eyes were sad. But she knew the words to be true and just. “Bring me Lord Walder Frey.”

Two Northmen darted into the group of Freys and pulled a snarling man, still in his sleeping clothes, up and then dropped him to his knees at Y/N’s feet.

“Little Lady Tully,” Walder sneered with rotted teeth. “If your cousin had been half the bitch you are, she might still be breathin’.”

“The gods gave you a chance to be true when they sent Lady Catelyn to your door. They gave you another when your men found my father. You and your wretched family betrayed mine. Now you must reckon with me.”

Walder’s face contorted and splotches of red dotted his grey cheeks. “You-”

Y/N swung the ax and buried it into his neck but it caught on this spine. His eyes grew wide as blood spurted and oozed from the wound. Walder’s mouth opened and closed with silent curses and stained his brown teeth red. She yanked the ax back and watched the Frey crumple down onto the stump before finally cleaving the man’s head from his shoulders. “Bring me the next,” she called out over her shoulder. “I should like to finish this before nightfall.”

She needed a new ax after the third Frey. And a damp cloth to wipe the blood from her face and hands.

“Bring me the next!”

A tall man was then shoved to his knees in front of her, brown hair thin and greasy as it stuck to his sweaty face. He snarled up at her, as a handful of others did before.

“Name?”

“Raymund Frey.”

And that gave Y/N pause. “Arya!” Arya came running, a stranger’s blood streaked across her cheek but still bright-eyed. Y/N handed over the ax. She took it with a frown and glanced at the Frey. “This is Raymund Frey.”

Realization dawned on the young Stark’s face and her grip tightened. If the Freys had not been so fond of bragging, perhaps they would not have known he had been the one to slit Catelyn’s throat at the Red Wedding. But they knew. And so, Y/N watched Arya bury the ax into the man’s neck.

And when all of them were gone, bodies left out to be pecked by hungry carrions, Y/N walked out into the river and washed the blood from her hands. It was finished. The blood in the rivers had washed her clean.

**

Riverrun had managed to survive a handful of sieges and a brief Frey occupation without losing its integrity. Jon and Arya accompanied her to her family’s seat and she invited the Northmen to rest in its halls for a fortnight before continuing North.

Houses from the Riverlands descended upon Riverrun when they heard of her return and Edmure’s release from the bowels of Casterly Rock. And Y/N was not sure if they had heard of her campaign at the Twins or in the Westerlands but a handful of them stuttered and avoided eye contact when they once again swore fealty to House Tully and bumbled through lathing compliments for King Robb as if he were standing beside her. It amused Arya endlessly who poorly concealed her giggles behind her hand until Jon nudged at her shoulder.

But Edmure had been much changed since his time in Casterly Rock’s dungeons. He walked with a limp and was in need of a cane. The fingers on his left hand were crooked, healed broken and at strange angles. And his vigor had left, his pride, too. Whenever anyone asked for an edict or command, his blue eyes flickered to Y/N and she found herself answering.

Settling feuds, giving instruction on how to rebuild, granting clemency, and doling out justice when needed. Through all of it he seemed to look to Y/N for guidance, to answer for him. She had only planned to stay long enough to make sure the Riverlands were at peace but Edmure gave her pause.

It was exhausting and confusing and Y/N, more often than not, found herself in the familiar kitchens late at night in search of wine. While she had anticipated that being within Riverrun’s familiar halls would finally grant her some peace, all she found was longing for the warmth of the Dornish sun and the gentle touch of Ellaria and Oberyn. The sound of the little ones laughing in the Water Gardens while Obara hollered out formations at the training field. Riverrun was so…quiet. Had it always been so quiet and cold? A small comfort was taking her father’s childhood rooms as her home. It was a way to feel close to him but the ache that had settled in her heart grew a little easier to bear with each passing day. And receiving a raven from Winterfell made her smile, too. It was from Sansa, stating that she had sailed North from Sunspear and had settled back into Winterfell without issue, a small band of loyal Northmen at her call. She had been named Warden of the North by her brother Robb and Y/N remembered how the broken throne room had been filled with cheers at the news, even if Sansa had not been present to hear it. But her own troubles persisted.

Jon found her the night before he, Arya, and the Northmen were to depart for their homes. She poured him a large glass of wine and ushered him into a seat in the dark room and finally pried his story from him. He spoke of betrayal and death and love and loyalty until the sun rose with the next morning.

“Out of all the Starks, you were the most prone to finding trouble.” She reached out to grasp his hand and squeezed, matching tired smiles on their faces. “But you survived. That is all that matters to me.”

He laughed and rubbed at his eyes as she smiled. “If you ever tire of the snow, come to Dorne. I will always have a place for you.”

And then she led him out into the sun to join the rest of the Northmen and bid him goodbye with a tight hug and a kiss against his head and she turned to Arya who begrudgingly gave back the Sand Steed she had stolen before hugging Y/N with a ferocity only she was capable of.

“Find your joy, little wolf,” Y/N whispered into her hair as she held Arya tight. “You deserve it. Now, stay safe.”

Arya nodded and sniffled once before clearing her throat as she pulled back. They both whispered soft goodbyes to each other as the morning light continued to grow. And then Y/N watched them disappear on the horizon with a heavy heart, knowing she was strangely alone now in the place she had called home. As she stepped inside, she nearly bowled over Roslin. Apologies tumbled from Roslin’s mouth as she cradled her son to her chest, almost shaking.

Y/N bit back a sigh and plastered a smile on her face. In truth, Roslin was a genial and gentle woman. Pretty. Loyal. So unlike the rest of her family. Y/N saw how she constantly looked to Edmure with love in her eyes and was met with a broken smile in return. And when the news had come of what had been become of her family, Roslin almost seemed relieved. It made Y/N wonder what she had endured while under her father’s thumb. “It is nothing, my lady. My fault. You are Lady Tully now. Apologize for only what is necessary.”

Roslin froze for a moment, as she always seemed to do whenever Y/N spoke with her, but then nodded with a small smile of her own. “Of course, my lady. Thank you.”

The pair spoke for a little longer, Y/N asking after the health of her babe, a boy nearing his first nameday and named after Edmure’s childhood idol and pride of their house, Kermit Tully, who had led House Tully to the height of their power during the Dance of Dragons. Yes, Y/N supposed, Roslin would grow to be a fine Lady Tully.

If only she could ensure Edmure would become the man she needed him to be.

Y/N eventually found herself slipping away after bidding Roslin a good day and walking up toward the rookery, she wanted to send a raven to Sansa to ask how she was faring. The ravens cawed in greeting as she stepped inside. They always recognized her, the intelligent little beasts. But it was the open window that drew her attention. A white raven cawed as it turned to watch her approach. The noise came again as she brushed a finger against the bird’s back and it fluttered its wings, showing the slip of parchment tied to its leg.

Y/N already knew what the missive would say – white ravens only appeared with the changing of the seasons.

The raven cawed against and nuzzled against her finger as she untied the parchment before flying away. And she was right – “winter has come” was all the Citadel had written, probably in haste to finish the hundreds more needing to be sent.

When she asked Edmure what should be done, finding him sequestered away in Hoster’s old rooms, he gave her another tired smile and asked her to make sure the other Riverlands houses were informed and cared for. Yet another obstacle. Dorne had never seemed so far away.

Y/N ordered the overfilled storehouses of the Twins be emptied to make sure the houses beleaguered by the long war would not starve and wrote to Willas and Olenna in Highgarden to secure a few hundred bushels of grain and barley as well. Even with the war, the Reach had enough to spare. And so, more weeks slipped through her hands. Lords and ladies from across the Riverlands came to Riverrun to receive what House Tully could give them and continue to ask for guidance from their liege lords.

An envoy from House Vance was the latest to arrive and it was then that Edmure seemed to finally show some of his former self. He smiled and greeted them, welcomed them, and helped them settle for the handful of nights they would be housed at Riverrun. And a breath Y/N did not realize she was holding finally pushed its way out of her tired lungs. He would be fine, she told herself. He just needed time.

Even Roslin seemed to settle more into her role at Edmure’s side. It was comforting to know that House Tully was secure once again. She sent a raven to Dorne, telling Oberyn and Ellaria she hoped to leave within a fortnight and arrive before the first snow of the new season. It put a certain spring in her step to think that soon she would be back in Dorne. She would be married and-

“Y/N!” Edmure called her name and snapped her from her pleasant reverie before the evening meal. She walked to his side in the hall and offered a small smile. “I have a gift for you, cousin.”

Before she could ask what the gift was, they were ushered into the hall for the meal. Edmure then pointed out Lord Vance’s third son and prattled on for a majority of the meal. Kirth Vance was handsome, she supposed, and he spoke kindly to servants and squires alike and tended to his horses and hunting dogs with care and doted on his nieces and nephews—if Edmure could be trusted. But every word nearly turned her stomach and she resorted to pushing her food around her place in a poor attempt to look like she was eating.

Ser Kirth was almost bashful as he met her gaze and quickly ducked his head with pink cheeks. “He thinks you are the most beautiful woman he has ever seen,” Edmure continued to whisper. “Kirth is not one to overstep—he would listen to your commands and see them through as a faithful consort to you here at Riverrun.”

And then she saw what this was.

“I would have the room,” Y/N said, rising from her seat. While most everyone quickly scurried away, including Roslin and her babe, Edmure signaled for Kirth to come closer. “No, no, Ser Kirth. My dear cousin has misread my intentions. I would speak to him alone.” Another ruddy blush took over his cheeks and he tipped his head before all but running from the hall. When the door firmly shut, she rounded on Edmure. “How dare you.”

Edmure stood, cane clacking against the floor. “Y/N-”

“If you think for a moment that you have the ability to coerce me into staying by offering me a man like that, you do not know me at all.”

“You led the Riverlands to victory. Not me. Not little Robb. You, dear cousin. You raised the banners and called on their loyalty and oaths. You bled alongside them.” Edmure pulled in a shaking breath and pressed harder onto his cane. “Riverrun should be yours.”

“I do not want it.” Y/N turned away from him, trying to hide her disgust. “Is this why you have shunned your duties? You believe you cannot serve your people.”

“I know I cannot.” And he sounded so defeated that she almost turned to comfort him. But rage kept her still.

“Then the Lannisters have won. They sought to strip you of your will and pride and make you a soulless creature of their making.” And Edmure was quiet and that was what had her turning. Her once near-boastful and handsome cousin had all but curled in on himself, face warped and scrunched like he was near tears. “Don’t let them win, Edmure. They are gone. You are still here. You are the man who led men into battle without flinching. You are the man who sheltered smallfolk here, in your home, because you knew they were scared.” Her voice cracked, broken in her throat. “You are the man who read me stories when I was a child. You are a good man. True, brave, and honest.”

Edmure shook his head and a single tear escaped his eye. “I cannot be that man again. I am tied to the family that imprisoned me, killed my sister-”

Y/N reached out to place her hand over Edmure’s on the head of his cane. “The Freys are dead and at my hand. I would gladly do it again. But that woman loves you—loves your son—despite your best attempts to spurn them. The gods have given you a fine wife, Edmure. Do not squander it.”

“She-”

“Is your wife. The mother to your heir. You were once a man of honor. Be so again. No one shall claim the Twins. Let it rot if you wish. Roslin loves you, chose you over her family. There is no ill will in that woman’s soul toward anyone. Just love.” Y/N sighed. “We know love in any form is rare, Edmure. You have found it in Roslin. I have found it-”

“In Dorne,” Edmure grumbled. “Yes, I have heard of your betrothal to Prince Oberyn and your dalliances with his paramour.”

Y/N pulled back her hand and crossed her arms over her chest, a sad shield against the wound he had cut. “I am happy. They love me. I love them. Why can you not see-”

“He has daughters older than you, Y/N. All of them bastards. Do you not believe you could find someone more suitable to call husband?”

“And you think Kirth Vance would be suitable?” She bit out, anger replacing the hurt. “I would give Oberyn eight more bastards if the gods allowed!” She bellowed as something protective struck at her stomach, even if the targets of her cousin’s ire were thousands of leagues away. “He loves me and I love him and Ellaria. He fought beside me, for me—for the gods-forsaken pile of brick and mortar because he knew I once called it home.”

“It is your home!” Edmure yelled in return. “You are a Tully-”

“I am Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell’s wife in all but name and I am going home!” Her chest heaved and she wiped a hand across her face, trying to calm herself before said anything else. “You are the Lord of Riverrun. Lord Paramount of the Trident. You are not a child. Your life has led to this moment. Do not forsake Hoster’s teachings for your learned meekness. He named you as his heir—be the man he knew you to be. Because I cannot and will not be.” And then she left, leaving Edmure alone.

**

Y/N pulled her fur-lined cloak a little tighter about her shoulders as she strode out to the stables. Qelōs was being tended to by the stable hand and her tack was waiting to be placed on her gleaming back. Full saddlebags were ready for one last journey South. Y/N had spent the last night in Riverrun’s Sept, praying for guidance and for her father’s soul one more time—another quiet goodbye. She thought it would be fitting to do it here, in his former home. And as the sun rose the following morning, it was the most at ease she had felt in almost a year.

“I am never coming this far North again,” Obara said, moving closer to her to try to get a bit of body heat. The large fur cloak and gloves were not enough, it seemed. Obara and Oberyn had led an envoy to the Riverlands to collect Y/N and ensure she was safely delivered back to Sunspear. Frost had started to stick to the grass around Riverrun, thin sheets of ice collected over patches of the rivers and Obara had been distraught about the temperature since she arrived with her father two days ago. Ellaria and the rest of the Sand Snakes had stayed in Dorne. Loreza and Dorea had apparently caught a bit of a fever with their first Winter and Oberyn and Ellaria both wanted to keep the rest of their daughters healthy. The little ones would be fine, but Ellaria and Oberyn always wanted to be sure.

Y/N chuckled at Obara’s plight and pulled a thick wool stole from one of her bags and wrapped it around Obara’s shoulders, making sure to tuck it high around her neck. “What of your plans to see Seagard? Hm? Lord Patrek will be devastated.”

Obara sniffed and looked away. “He must wait for Winter to end if he wishes to have me at his home. I am of Dorne. He-”

“Is in love with you, Obara. And Lord Mallister is amiable to the match if you wish it.” Y/N assumed tales of Obara saving his heir’s life and fighting beside the Riverlanders may have something to with Lord Mallister easing his views on who could be a possible match for his son. That, and Oberyn Martell being her father, a Prince of Dorne and the man who took Tywin Lannister’s head from his shoulders was a definite bargaining point. Y/N finished tucking the stole around her frigid companion. “But I am happy to simply see your face again.”

“Sap,” Obara said with a small smirk. “If I have to hear Father wax poetic about your eyes the entire ride to Dorne, I will be forced to murder you both.”

“Oh, I expect nothing less.”

They spoke a little longer, watching their horses be readied for the ride before one of the stable hands said, “Oh, Lord Tully! Good morrow!”

Y/N turned to see Edmure at the mouth of the stables. Roslin was at his side, a small smile on her delicate lips. Something was bundled in his left arm, his right still holding his cane. It had been a tumultuous two weeks within Riverrun’s halls. Edmure had stumbled when regaining his duties but fulfilled them with more confidence with each day. He had kept his conversations with Y/N at a minimum and had steadfastly refused to speak to Oberyn more than necessary when he first arrived. But Edmure softened. At almost an alarming rate. But perhaps that was simply Oberyn’s charm. His pervasive magnetism that could draw nearly everyone to his side if he wanted them. Edmure was no exception. And that gave Y/N a little comfort, to know that Edmure did not hate her betrothed as he had tried. Knowing her two families, no matter how different, were coming together was a solace. Riverrun would survive under Edmure’s lordship.

The pair stepped closer and Roslin helped Edmure press the bundle into Y/N’s arms. “It is a gift for you. A reminder of… of Riverrun.” Not of home. Not anymore.

Y/N looked down at the bundle and watched it move, the tip of the fabric peeling away to reveal a fluffy snout. Y/N quickly unwrapped the dog with a huff of a laugh as it wiggled in her hold. The pup fit comfortably in her arms and had the most beautiful black fur with a tuft of white on his chest.

“He is of the Riverlands, hearty and loyal. Even if Riverrun is no longer your home, I’d like… I’d like if you still had a piece of us with you.”

The pup squirmed in her grasp and raised up on unsteady legs to lick at her chin with a happy yip. A fortuitous distraction for both Edmure and Y/N as they tried to clear the tears from their eyes. Y/N nodded and pressed a kiss to the dog’s head before leaning up to kiss Edmure’s cheek. “He’s wonderful. Thank you, Edmure. A treasure to be sure.”

It was not an apology, not an outright one anyway. But Y/N accepted it just the same. It was a soft ending to a hard chapter.

But she was ready to start a new one.

And as Oberyn walked into the stables, a soft smile on his face, she knew it would be a good one.

**

The distance between Riverrun and Sunspear seemed so long and so short at the same time. Each night was spent in Oberyn’s arms, trying to reclaim the time she had lost. They would whisper about their plans for the future, of how they both wished Ellaria in their arms when the nights grew colder and colder.

But it was good. It was soft and gentle and eased the ache she had held against her heart like a shield since she had left his arms. It was good.

The pup had grown astonishingly fast. He often squirmed out of her grasp in the saddle to trot alongside their horses. If there were ever a body of water near the road, he quickly jumped into it to wet his fur and then happily scampered back into line, proud of himself.

“He is a little bear,” Oberyn once griped as the pup’s sharp teeth nipped at his leg when Oberyn had moved to help Y/N down from her horse. The pup seemed a little insistent on having Y/N’s attention at all hours and he only grew bolder as the distance from Sunspear grew shorter. Obara found her father’s frustration with the pup endlessly entertaining and would also lathe attention on the pup at any moment. She followed her father’s lead in calling him a little bear, much more affectionate in tone. And Y/N supposed the name just stuck. She called him her little river bear in High Valyrian, but settled on just calling him Gryves for short.

As they crossed under the stone arches of Sunspear and the crowds cheered, little Gryves happily pranced next to Qelōs and snapped his jaws, catching the flower petals the people of Sunspear had thrown into the air in celebration of their return. Ellaria and the Sand Snakes were waiting on the steps of the fortress and Y/N dismounted before Qelōs even stopped and raced up the stairs. Tears were in Ellaria’s eyes as Y/N wrapped her in her arms and she could taste them as she pressed her lips to hers again in again in a fevered frenzy as an incandescent warmth bloomed in her chest at just the simple touch of Ellaria’s skin. And it took Ellaria holding her still, gentle hands on the side of her face, to realize she was crying, too. “No more tears, my Tully,” Ellaria whispered. “You are home.”

A happy shriek had them pulling apart to see Dorea and Loreza bowled over on the steps being licked by Gryves whose entire fluffy body was shaking with how quickly he was wagging his tail.

Oberyn stepped to their side and kissed Ellaria soft and slow before pressing a kiss to Y/N’s smiling mouth.

Yes. She was home.

**

Gryves huffed for the third time, disturbing her attempt at sleep. Or maybe the dog knew she couldn’t sleep and was sharing in her plight. Y/N gave up after she heard him huff again and slipped out from under her blankets and padded over to her balcony, letting the cool breeze wash over her as she pulled the doors open. Gryves’ nails tapped against the stone beside her and they both walked to the railing, looking out over the still-bustling fortress.

Her wedding was tomorrow. Her dress was carefully hung and her maiden’s cloak alongside it. Daisy had been bouncing in each step in the last week, happy to have her friend back safely and to “finally see you married to your prince, my lady!” Daisy and Daemon’s own ceremony would be held the following day. People were buzzing about down below, readying for the festivities. While the ceremony would be small, Doran insisted on letting them have every finery they wanted. Y/N did not care if she had to marry in a threadbare sack and in bare feet and they only had blood oranges for their wedding dinner—she simply wanted to be married.

Gryves placed his front paws on the railing and looked out over the small crowd, too. He let out a soft ‘boof’ as he watched. He was still growing, his head now coming to her waist but he was still as playful as ever—and patient. Loreza had fashioned him a hat that looked peculiarly like an otter and he let the girl set it on his head and sat still long enough for the girls to coo over him before getting distracted by a gull he promptly chased into the sea. He was doted on by almost everyone who resided in or worked around Sunspear. (Oberyn was still trying to find a way to get the dog to like him and stop nipping at his leg whenever he tried to kiss Y/N.) Sarella was home (“For only a moment!” she insisted.) from the Citadel and the Sand Snakes were all together again and Y/N found them all to be wondrous company. Daisy and Daemon were still steadfastly in love, perhaps even more so that Daemon had returned unharmed. All of it was so idyllic. So perfect. And for a moment, Y/N once again wondered if the world was about to crash around her—but she quickly dismissed the thought and she thought of Ellaria telling her that happiness does not have limits and that she had the ability to choose every joy and happiness that was placed at her feet. And Y/N wanted to seize every last opportunity.

A knock at her door had her turning and Gryves kept to her side as she walked back into her rooms to open the door. Ellaria was on the other side with a soft smile and Gryves darted around her and into the darkened halls, probably in search of Loreza or Dorea. Y/N stepped back to let Ellaria in and softly shut the door behind her. Before Y/N could ask what she was doing, Ellaria had grasped at her face and pushed her lips to hers, easily delving into Y/N’s surprised mouth to lick and explore. Y/N faltered for a moment before letting her hands slide around Ellaria’s waist, bunching the silky fabric of her dressing robe between her fingers. Ellaria pulled away for a moment to press soft, wet kisses against Y/N’s cheek and down her neck, humming as she felt the thrumming pulse beneath the skin.

“I knew you would not be sleeping, my Tully.” Another kiss to Y/N’s panting mouth. “And I will have to call you something else after tomorrow, won’t I?” Ellaria’s laugh was light and her fingers started to trail up and down Y/N’s arms, raising goosebumps in their wake.

“You can call me whatever you desire,” Y/N said, tone breathy.

“And if I simply wanted to call you mine?”

“I am already yours.” Y/N leaned forward to press her forehead against Ellaria’s as her hands gently grasped Ellaria’s hands in hers, wrapping her fingers around her wrist. “I am yours and you are mine,” she whispered the vow against Ellaria’s lips. It was no Sept. There was not a Septon in sight nor any other trappings of the ceremony. But Y/N meant the vow as seriously as she would tomorrow with Oberyn.

And then Ellaria was kissing her again, tightening her grip on her wrists like she wanted to brand her touch to Y/N’s skin. “I am yours and you are mine.” Ellaria then dragged Y/N forward and spun her around before pressing a hand to her chest and pushing. Y/N didn’t even realize they had come so close to the bed until she fell onto it with a laugh, greedily grabbing at Ellaria’s legs as she climbed over her and stole another kiss against her smiling mouth. “You need to sleep, yes? I have two options for you.”

“Oh?”

Ellaria nodded and trailed her lips across Y/N’s chin, nipping at her jaw, before sliding down her neck again and letting her tongue dip into the notch between Y/N’s collarbones. “I can have you brought tea. Or…”

“Or…” Y/N played along, letting her hands slide up from Ellaria’s legs to her hips but her grip stuttered when Ellaria’s mouth suddenly pressed over her chest, tongue finding her nipple even through the cloth and teasing it to a hardened peak. When she was satisfied with one, she quickly did the same to the other.

“Or I can tire you out myself,” Ellaria said, situating herself with ease so she could lay her cheek against Y/N’s chest, undoubtedly listening to her fluttering heart. “Which would you prefer, my Tully?”

“You. Always you.”

Ellaria’s smile was bright even in the dark of the room as she sat straight and shuffled down the bed while signaling for Y/N to center herself in the blankets. She gracefully stretched out beside her slowly pushed the edge of Y/N’s chemise up, up, up until it exposed her lace-edged small clothes. “You’re always so pretty for me,” Ellaria mused before her fingers trailed over the front of them, already coaxing a moan from Y/N’s lips. “It has been too long since I’ve been able to touch you like this. You are never to leave us like that again.” She leaned down to kiss Y/N’s lips again, licking into her mouth. “Swear to me.”

“I swear it,” Y/N said, last word a breathless gasp as Ellaria’s talented fingers slipped beneath her small clothes and found her heat, ready and wet for her. Y/N had not even realized she had become so wet, only able to focus on Ellaria.

“Good.” Ellaria dragged the damp small clothes and dropped them to the floor. “So pretty,” Ellaria whispered as her fingers started to push through Y/N’s folds, gathering her slick before trailing up to her clit and circling it with just the right amount of pressure to have Y/N’s hips lifting from the featherbed. Again and again, Ellaria would push through Y/N’s folds, barely dipping into where she needed her most, as she pressed lazy, open-mouthed kisses against Y/N’s panting lips.

“Please,” Y/N near-pleaded. “Please.”

“And always so polite.” And then finally—finally—Ellaria curled her fingers into Y/N’s pussy in one single motion and delighted in Y/N’s high pitched whine and how the younger woman fisted her hands in the silk sheets at her sides. Ellaria leaned up just enough to seal her mouth over Y/N’s, all teeth and tongue and heavy, warm breaths as her fingers started to move, dragging in and out even as Y/N’s fluttering walls tried to pull them tight.

The familiar coil was starting to grow and unravel at an embarrassing rate and Y/N heard herself nearly wailing as it snapped and that delicious wave of pleasure washed over her. But Ellaria did not stop. Her fingers continued to curl inside her, Ellaria’s other hand pressed down against Y/N’s belly and pinned her to the bed. Y/N cried out at the burst of pressure she felt bloom and the coil started to wind itself again, now with an unfamiliar bite and sting that sang with each movement of Ellaria’s fingers.

“Oh please,” she said, words choked in her throat. She reached out to grasp at Ellaria’s wrist, pushing her further, letting her fingers brush against the spot only she and Oberyn could reach.

“That’s my good girl. Take what you need.”

Even through her hazed mind, Y/N keened at the praise. She wanted to be a good girl.

Ellaria licked across her panting mouth and bit at Y/N’s spit-slicked lips, smirking the entire time. Y/N’s walls fluttered around her fingers and she pressed her thumb against her clit with enough pressure to have Y/N cry against her mouth. Slick soaked her hand but she did not cease her movements, pushing her fingers into her until her hips pressed up against her grip and Y/N’s fingers clawed at her shoulders.

“El-Ellaria I-”

But she pressed her down to the dampened blankets and smiled. “So beautiful,” she said. “Give me another. My good girl.”

Her thighs shook, nearly clamping down over Ellaria’s arm as wave after wave of terrible pleasure wracked her body. The room blurred as her arms slid down Ellaria’s back to pull her close as if she were not the one inflicting this delicious torture. The sounds that came from Y/N as her fingers continued to move could only be described as lewd. Wet and frenzied.

“Give it to me,” Ellaria said, steady and low against her heated skin.

Y/N cried out as another jolt of blinding pleasure shot through her, hips finally lifting from the featherbed as her vision went white. Her heart continued to roar in her ears. Ellaria’s fingers slowed their assault before pulling out, leaving Y/N feeling empty and spent even as her body shivered with residual tremors. Ellaria’s glistening fingers dipped between her kiss-bitten lips and her tongue twisted and slid to gather everything she could. When she was finished, she shuffled down Y/N’s body to press a kiss against her wet cunt and Y/N let out a broken moan. Her dark eyes sparkled when she looked up at her. “One more.” She licked a broad stripe up from her hole to her clit and Y/N keened, nerves alight and near painful. But the long strokes of Ellaria’s tongue continued, broken up by little kitten licks against her clit or dipping inside. Every flick of Ellaria’s glorious tongue brought Y/N closer to the precipice but it came sooner than either of them anticipated, dribbling out of her with a broken sort of cry and a new puddle between her thighs. With a final kiss, Ellaria rose and walked to the vanity near the open balcony and pulled a golden cloth from its pile before dipping it into the small basin of water Daisy had left for Y/N to wash her face earlier. She slid onto the bed again and wiped between Y/N’s still shaking thighs with a gentle touch, delighting when she shivered. “Are you all right?” Ellaria asked as her tongue peeked from between her lips out to clean the shining mess from around mouth.

Y/N sighed with a tired smile. “I am perfect.” She reached out toward Ellaria’s soft skirts and felt the silk slide between her fingers. “But I would like to please you, too.”

Ellaria smiled and dropped the damp fabric to the floor. “Are you sure?”

“I am. But I hope you do not mind guiding me.”

Ellaria slipped back onto the bed and her knees bracketed Y/N’s thighs as the younger woman gently pulled the skirt up to reveal Ellaria’s uncovered mound, shining in the candlelight. Y/N’s hands slid from her waist to the backs of her thighs, urging Ellaria up toward her face. Ellaria had taught her many things, one of them being how to give her pleasure with just her fingers and Y/N had delighted in the taste of her love. But, in truth, Y/N had been fascinated by watching Oberyn make Ellaria cum with his wicked tongue. She wanted a taste from the source, too.

“By the gods, you are perfect,” Ellaria murmured holding her skirts higher so she could look to see Y/N’s face between her legs. She reached down to curl her hand around the back of Y/N’s head, pulling her up to meet the crux of her thighs.

Y/N quickly licked a short but firm stripe from Ellaria’s hole to her clit, earning a soft sigh in return. The bitterly sweet taste of Ellaria was heavenly and Y/N quickly, selfishly, licked again and then wiggled her tongue against Ellaria’s hole, trying to collect as much as she could.

“That’s it.” Ellaria’s grip tightened on her head and Y/N licked again and again before taking a chance and pulling her clit into her mouth and sucking. They both sunk into the pillows.

Y/N reached up and around to grasp at Ellaria’s hips as her licks grew bolder, encouraged by Ellaria’s moans. They grew louder as her tongue started to delve and lick and press. Ellaria would sometimes murmur instructions, “to the left” “right there” “a little harder, my darling” and Y/N followed each with wild abandon and squealed when Ellaria pressed down onto her mouth and moved her hips, grinding against her tongue.

“So good,” She panted. “So good.”

Y/N ate her out in earnest, sloppy and spit sliding out of the corner of her lips between covetous licks. Ellaria could suffocate her like this easily—and Y/N would die happy.

Exploring fingers slid down and Y/N simply pressed against the bundle of nerves and smiled when Ellaria wailed in response, head tilted back to press the sound into the sticky night air. Her hips moved faster. Y/N did all she could to keep up, to give Ellaria as much as she had given her. The hold on her head tightened and Ellaria suddenly stilled above her with a groan. The thighs on either side of Y/N’s head shook and the taste of Ellaria flooded her mouth. Y/N pulled her fingers away from her clit but gave a few final licks before Ellaria pushed off and then sat beside her on the pillows.

Ellaria caught her breath with a laugh and then leaned down to press a kiss to Y/N’s lips. “I cannot wait to teach you everything I know.”

Ellaria kissed her again before Y/N rose and wet her own bit of cloth to wipe between Ellaria’s thighs. She lathed a kiss against each of Ellaria’s legs before pulling her skirts down again as she lounged on the featherbed. “I will be a dutiful student.”

The laugh Ellaria let out was tired but joyful. And they spoke for a few more stolen moments, Ellaria constantly checking to make sure Y/N was not overworked or feeling strange as they shared slow kisses in the moonlight. “Will you be able to rest now?” Ellaria asked as Y/N yawned.

“You have thoroughly exhausted me.”

Ellaria’s smile grew and she kissed Y/N one more time before she slipped off the bed again. “Then I shall see you in the morning, Princess.”

Y/N smiled at the sound of the title. “In the morning, my love.”

A/N: Please let me know what you guys think! I really appreciate it. :)

Beautiful people who asked to be tagged: @roxypeanut​ @lostinwonderland314​ @fandomreblogsnoshame @arianawills​ @nyrnerosmartell​ @5hundreddaysofsummer​ @honestlystop @huliabitch​ @youhavemyfantasticbeasts​ @karmezii​ @thesadvampire​ @sarcasmisakindofmagic @alexa4040​ @paintballkid711 @huliabitch​ @stitchers-in-stitches​ @iellaren-uodo-rian​

[schnoogles]

Temporary Escapes written for the @jonsa-halloween event! Day 1: Wargs/In The Dark Read on Ao3

Sansa and Jon are ruling the North together after the defeat of the others. Sansa, already prone to making up stories and bury her trauma, finds an escape in warging into birds, soaring high into the skies to escape her fears and nightmares. Jon worries though. Varamyr once said birds often cause wargs to be disassociated with reality.

__

The knock on the door shook Jon out of his stupor. Going through ledgers was his least favourite part of ruling, he found it boring. And going through them late at night was just abysmal. He shook his head and called out to the door. “Enter.”

“Your Grace?” a timid looking woman peeked through, “Pardon the interruption. It’s just- well you told me- uhm- always come fetch you-”

“Gwin? Remember what we talked about? Speak freely, please.” The poor woman had been around during Ramsay’s reign of terror. And sometimes, she still felt like she had to tiptoe around Jon. He’s been working with her to try to get her to feel safer in the walls of Winterfell. It’s a work in progress. 

Gwin, very much still distressed, started over, “Your Grace, she’s doing it again. And I can’t get her to stop.”

Jon shot up to his feet, “How long has she been at it?” Already marking his place and closing the books, Jon was ready to leave immediately. They both walked out and headed towards the sleeping chambers as Gwin answered.

“I’m not sure. She was like that when I found her, and I tried making her stop, but she wouldn’t! I’m sorry.” Gwin was wringing her hands as she tried to keep up with Jon. He noticed.

“You did all you could Gwin,” he reassured her, “If you don’t mind fetching some warm washcloths and hot water?” Gwin nodded and turned to leave. Before she could get any further though, Jon called out. “And Gwin? Thank you.”

__

Jon carefully opened the door to their chambers and saw her sitting there, in the dark. She was by the window, a cup of ale sat next to her untouched. With her back to him, she looked as if she was just gazing out at the night sky, admiring the stars. Jon knew better. It’s been a while since she’s done this, but every time it happened, it lasted longer and longer.

He walked over to the window and knelt in front of his wife. Even though he knew what to expect, every time he saw her eyes a pure white instead of her usual Tully blue, his heart broke, just a little. “Sansa? Darling, please wake up.” No answer. He knew waking a warg up from skinchanging was near impossible, but damn it he’ll try. Cradling her face, he leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers. All he could do now was wait. 

It was probably less than five minutes later when her eyes flashed blue again. “Jon?” she whispered, still in a daze. “What are you doing?”

“Sansa? I lost you again, love. You went away.” He kissed her sweetly, gently. “You promised you wouldn’t do this anymore.”

Tears filled Sansa’s eyes. Afraid that even speaking too loud would somehow cause her memories to resurface, she whispered, “I didn't want to, I swear. But when it got dark, it was like the monsters came back. The echoes of knives scraping, of fabric ripping, their voices. I couldn't take it. All I felt was alone and I felt trapped. I didn’t like it. I just wanted to go away for a little; escape reality for just a bit. I forgot myself.” She was softly crying now.

“Shh shh, it’s alright love. It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have left you alone like this.” Before he could say anything else, Gwin returned.

“I’ve got the washcloths and hot water Your Grace,” setting down the items, Gwin curtsied and retreated, but she hesitated by the door before turning around and spoke to Sansa. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you, Your Grace. I’m glad to see you’re back.”

Sansa smiled at the kind woman. “It’s not your fault, Gwin. You’re my lady’s maid, not my slave. You aren’t expected to be at my beck and call at all hours of the day and night. I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you, turn in for the night and rest. Have tomorrow off even, I don’t mind.” 

Touched by her queen’s kind words, Gwin returned the smile and left.

Jon picked up the washcloth and dabbed Sansa’s face, clearing off any sweat he’s sure has dried off since. Sometimes he wishes Bran had never taught Sansa to hone her warg skills. Skinchanging into one of Winterfell’s hunting dogs -into Ghost even- was one thing. But skinchanging into birds? And so frequently? He worried for her. Varamyr once said that birds cause skinchangers to be disassociated with reality. He knew that’s why Sansa did it though. The horrors she’s seen and the trauma she’s been through would cause any man to wish it all away and escape. 

“My love you can’t do this anymore, please,” Jon quietly begged. “One day you might not come back to me.”

“I’ll always come back to you Jon.”

He sighed. After the light cloth bath he gave her, they quietly dressed for the night. Though their marriage started off with many awkward silences, they now lived with moments of comforting quietness. When he had finished brushing her hair, they went to bed. He wanted to know what today’s trigger was, but he would never ask her. Sansa would tell him when she was ready. He was on the precipice of sleep when she was.

“Jon?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you think I’ll be a terrible mother?” Her voice was soft, filled with an anxiousness he couldn’t quite name. But it was what she said that had him wide awake, turning to face her.

“Absolutely not. Where is this coming from love?”

He could feel the hesitation radiating from her body. “I saw Maester Wolkan today.” She whispered to him, as though afraid of his reaction. But Jon didn’t notice, his heart was beating wildly. He was told not to hold much hope, Sansa had been through too much.

“Sansa?”

“Jon, I’m with child.”

The euphoric feeling in Jon was indescribable. He pulled his wife over to his arms and peppered her in kisses. “That’s wonderful news Sansa.”

“Is it?” 

Jon immediately stopped his affections. Had he read the room wrong? Did she no longer want children? Did she not want his children? His mind was spiraling and Sansa would have none of that.

“Jon, I’m happy. Incredibly so. But after everything that’s happened to me, what if I can’t be the mother that our child deserves?”

“Impossible. Darling, I think we both have fears when it comes to raising a child. But we can’t hide from our fears. Or warg ourselves away.”

“I know.”

“We can’t rely on magic to escape. Gods know how I wish I could just warg into Ghost whenever Glover talks.” Sansa laughed at that. Jon has done that once before, and the Lord of Deepwood Motte didn’t take his King’s absence too kindly. 

“Jon, what if our child becomes a warg?” There was worry in her voice. If she could so easily get addicted to skinchanging, who’s to say their children wouldn’t?

“Then we’ll teach them.” He said simply. “We’ll teach them right and proper. Stark blood runs through their veins. Blood of the First Men runs through their veins. If they'll have magical abilities like I think they will, then we show them how to handle it."

Sansa still wasn’t reassured. “And we’ll make sure it’s not a clutch?”

Jon smiled at his wife in his arms and nodded. “We’ll make sure it’s not a clutch.”

10 years later

A dog was trailing behind Sansa, trying to get her attention. When it did, she turned around and looked at it. It tilted its head back. Sansa sighed and put her hands on her hips, ready to lecture.

“You get your skinny little arse out of there and back to your lessons Sarra!” 

The dog whined and then suddenly looked at Sansa curiously, as if wondering How did I get here? Sansa huffed and continued on her way.

When she arrived at her destination, she went in and closed the door behind her. She didn’t say a word until she had his undivided attention. 

Jon took his time to carefully sign the last bit he needed, put down his quill, and looked up at his wife. “Yes, dear?”

“Your daughter-”

“Now hold on.” Jon was affronted with her implications. “Why is she only my daughter when she’s in trouble? When she does something wonderful, suddenly she’s yours too?” Sansa pouted. “C’mere love. What did she do now?”

Sansa planted herself on her husband’s lap and placed her hands on his shoulders. “She skipped her lessons again by warging into one of the hunting hounds.”

Jon’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

“Don’t be impressed!”

He laughed. “I’m sorry darling, but for a nine year old, even you have to admit that’s pretty impressive.”

Sansa sighed. “I just don’t want her warging so much and so soon.”

Jon suddenly understood. It’s been a few years since Sansa last skinchanged into anything, but her fears were not unfounded. “We’ll talk to her tonight. We’ll explain why it’s dangerous to warg so much, alright? I promise.”

“You promise?”

“Have I ever broken one?”

Sansa blinked.

“Right.” Jon cleared his throat and picked Sansa up, bridal style. “Up we go, Your Grace.”

Sansa yelped and clung onto Jon for fear of falling. “Jon! Where are you going?”

“Where are we going, my love.” Jon kissed his wife and she laughed.

“Alright, where are we going then?”

“To the bedroom of course.” He had a few broken promises to make up for. Sansa giggled all the way to their bed, sure she wouldn’t want to warg anytime soon.

[honeylikewords]

Eddie loves costumes that require or are helped by being done by a group. Couples costumes, friend group costumes... And when he has his own little ones, family costumes! David, meanwhile, doesn’t care much for making a spectacle of himself more than he already is at his massive height. So he goes for a bear kigurumi every time. But that won’t stop him from gushing over the cute little costumes he has his wee ones in. :3 I’m just statin’ facts

I like to think that Eddie’s costumes don’t necessarily chase the pop culture zeitgeist but are more about his personal fixations; mythological characters, obscure film characters, pun projects (for example, he has his wife don a flower crown and peasant dress and carry a bottle of wine and drape a towel over her arm to be a “Midsommelier”), and the like! 

Plus, it’s way more fun to have his partner or friends in on the joke! One year, Eddie went as Mr. Rogers and all his friends as assorted citizens of the titular Neighborhood, another he took it upon himself to make costumes so that four of them could go as The Talking Heads (he wanted to be David Byrne so badly); another year, once in a relationship, he procured costumes for himself and his girlfriend to go as Vinz Clortho (Lewis Tully) and Zuul (Dana Barrett) from the original Ghostbusters, elated to have an opportunity to run around unhinged and recite his favorite lines, like “During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!”

His girlfriend mostly just enjoyed the swishy orange dress.

Once he and the missus get together and get married and have their children, Eddie goes above and beyond for Halloween, insistent that even if he and his wife don’t dress up (which would never happen, obviously), they have to dress up the babies. It’s just too cute to pass up the chance at!

In a surprisingly dark move, Eddie sews a hoodied onesie for the baby so that they appear to be wearing the same little suit and burlap sack as Sam from Trick ‘r Treat (Eddie tries to justify it with Sam not being inherently evil and mostly just a pretty cute little kid out for trick or treat when his wife complains that dressing their baby up as a demonic Halloween spirit might be distasteful), and it’s surprisingly well-made and warm, keeping baby nice and cozy as Momma and Dada go about their autumnal activities. (Eddie decided that to match baby, they all had to go as various horror movie ‘monsters’/fright-makers; the missus was the Bride of Frankenstein, and Eddie wanted to go as the Babadook before his wife talked him down to the more normal-passing Norman Bates, concerned that the amount of makeup necessary to pull off a Babadook look would upset the baby too much.)

For  Eddie, Halloween is such a fun time-- rife with history and mysticism, spiritual oddness and social kookiness, and aesthetic wonderment alike run rampant during those weeks leading up to the All Hallow’s Eve-- and he just can’t let go of the chance to indulge in some once-a-year merriment, especially when it can involve his friends and loved ones (and his peculiar interests).

For David, however, Halloween is more down to earth. David is deeply discomforted by scary stories, gory decorations, slasher movies, jump scares, etc; the spookery of the season and its axis around death makes him more than a little uneasy, at times, so he prefers a more “Great Pumpkin” kind of Halloween than a, say, “Friday The 13th” Halloween.

He likes to decorate the house with sweetly carved jack o’lanterns (recently having discovered that there are plastic and foam pumpkins he can carve and keep throughout the years and that carve like his more familiar medium of wood, David tends to prefer the synthetic gourds for house decor and organic ones for the outdoors), putting up string lights and smiling sheet ghosts. 

He’s the Local Dad that will sit on his porch all night in a warm, comfy costume-- David, ever the pragmatist, decided many years ago that he either goes as Paul Bunyan (for warmer Halloweens) or a teddy bear (using the bear kigurumi for colder evenings), and never falters to employ those costumes-- and hand out candy, smiling at every trick-or-treater without fail. 

His favorite trick-or-treaters are always the babies; he knows they can’t eat candy, but watching parents walk up to the house with a wee little bundle in their arms, peeking out of a princess dress or pumpkin suit, well, it just melts his heart every single time, and he will often stick out a finger and try to boop the baby on the toes to say a wordless “hello”!

But the very, beary best costumed kiddos are always his own.

David’s little ones get to go as anything they like, so long as the costume isn’t excessively horrifying or unsafe (i.e. nothing sharp, nothing that would let them catch a chill, nothing gory), and David’s children often pick more unusual costumes, so that never seems to be an issue for them. 

One year, one of his sons desperately wanted to be a chicken (reasons unclear); another, his daughter wanted to be Santa (”For Halloween, sweetie?” “Yes, please.”); many times, David has dressed the wee-est baby up as Babe, the blue ox that accompanies Paul Bunyan in many of his tales. 

David also likes to see what his wife chooses to dress up as; she likes to pick comfortable costumes, as well, since she is usually the parent that walks with the little ones to take them trick-or-treating (as she is the parent most comfortable talking to strangers). Her costumes are usually built around a sensible pair of walking shoes and a warm jacket, and David always finds them adorable. He was especially fond of the year when she was a few months pregnant and went as Winnie the Pooh, citing the baby bump as her “rumbly tumbly”. 

Each boy has their own Halloween traditions and comfort zones, but I like to think both of them have an equally wonderful time on the holiday, in their own special ways!

[smokeybrandreviews]

Smokey brand Movie Reviews: I Like Toast 'Ems

I love Jennifer’s Body. I’m on record singing this thing’s praises from the top of my lungs. I honestly believe this is one of Megan Fox’s best performances. She loved this part and it really shows. I was one of the few who saw this thing in theaters way back when, it came out on my birthday so the narcissism demanded i partake, but i was wholly surprised by what was presented. When the reviews came out, i was stunned because they did not reflect the film i had watched. Over time, the appreciation for this movie has grown considerably and with Fox experiencing a ind of career resurgence, i wanted to revisit her best role thus far. Plus, there’s an unrated edition of this thing that i didn’t even know existed so i wanna check that out anyway. IS the Unrated version worth a watch? Let’s find out.

The Good

I have to commend the direction in this flick, it’s absolutely superb. The choices made in constructing this story were right right on the money. There is a definite female energy which permeates every scene, which is makes sense considering the source material. Karyn Kusama did an excellent job putting this film together.

This thing’s soundtrack is kind of amazing. It’s weird hearing  Florence + The Machine, Hot Chip, Black Kids, and Hole in such a mainstream movie but i dig it hard. I’m such a f*cking hipster, man...

The dialogue in this sh*t is not anything a proper teenager would say, but i still love every bit of it. It’s ridiculous and campy and ridiculously charming. Diablo Cody has a knack for that. It’s not realistic in any sense, old suits in stuffy boardrooms would say otherwise, it’s still quaint in it’s own right.

Look, i give the dialogue in this thing the most sh*t, but the writing is actually pretty tight. Diablo Cody is brilliant at her craft. Juno was amazing and so is Jennifer’s Body. It’s weird that her career kind of petered out there at the turn of the decade. I mean, it didn’t, but it definitely felt that way. Cody has written some dope sh*t since Jennifer Body. Both Young Adult and Tully were great, but even so, it’s like she just disappeared. I guess that is the fleeting nature of being the “It” in Hollywood.

I was talking about this the other day, but Megan Fox is outstanding as Jennifer Check. She has this smarmy, arrogant, sultry energy about her and it just permeates the entire character. Fox humanizes the monster in Check, in spite of this try-hard dialogue. This is easily the best role i have ever seen Fox in and she deserves more visibility. Ma has the talent to be great in this industry, all she needs in the opportunity.

Amanda Seyfried is, arguably, the linchpin of this entire narrative. I love how she brought a deceptive frailty to Anita “Needy” Lesnicky. I’ve been a huge fan of Seyfried since i saw her in Mean Girls and have followed her career ever since. She’s made interesting choices, Lovelace and Chloe immediately come to mind, but Needy is easily my favorite in her filmography. That said, it’s super weird watching Seyfried pretend to be the frumpy friend.

I really like this cast. There’s a few standouts, outside of the two leads, but it’s chock full of great performances from a pretty legitimate ensemble. I was surprised by a few but, overall, this thing feels like everyone fits their roles perfectly.

It’s hilarious that Adam Brody is considered a sex symbol in this flick. He plays the murderous Nikolai Wolf, the whole reason Jennifer got possessed in the first place. This sh*t is definitely a product of it’s time.

Kyle Galner is his greasy, creepy, self as always. This time, he’s a scuzzy wannabe rocker named Colin Grey. I don’t know what that dude looks like after a bath. Every character I've ever seen him play, always seems so sticky.

Speaking of out-of-place cameos, f*cking Chris Pratt is in this thing! Andy “Star-Lord” Dwyer, himself! He’s the douchebag almost-cop. I can’t believe i didn’t make that connection until now.

I would be remiss if i didn’t the great J.K. Simmons. Dude is Jennifer and Needy’s teacher, Mr. Wrobleski. Dude isn’t in this too much but what we do see of him, is dope. As always. That guy is the king of cameos.

So Johnny Simmons is in this. He plays Needy’s boyfriend, Chip Dove. Dude is kind of forgettable but i think that’s the point. The thing is, i know this dude from something else but i couldn’t place it for the longest time. Then it hit me like a truck; Young Neil. He played Young Neil in Scott Pilgrim! Which is hilarious because Chip Dove is literally the same character.

I really like this story. I don’t go for the teen drama too much but this one does a great job of supplanting that with actual, interpersonal, conflict. Jennifer’s Body isn’t a horror story. It isn’t a gore fest. It’s not some vapid, superficial, teenage wasteland of a flick. This is a character study. It’s an expose of growing up and growing apart. This is coming to terms with a broken heart and a lost love. This is a proper, character driven, tragedy and i love it.

The Verdict

Look, i love Jennifer’s Body. That is no secret. it’s not a surprise. High recommend. This review is more for the “unrated version” of the movie. That little bit is actually wildly misleading. There isn’t any extra violence, you don’t get to see Fox’s boobs, it’s not really “unrated.” It’s actually closer to a directors cut than anything. As far as a recut, this thing is awesome. I think i prefer this version over the theatrical but both versions are still great. Megan Fox gives an amazing performance as the demon possessed lead, while Seyfried is exceptional was the evolving heroine. The story is a little cliche but the characters are more than enough to keep you hooked. Jennifer’s Body is a gem and it’s a proper shame it didn’t get the shine it deserved upon it’s original release. If you have time to kill, and considering we’re about to go round two in quarantine so you just might, give it another shot. I think you’ll be charmed.

[she-wolf-of-highgarden]

Arya and Justice (vs revenge)

One thing that throws me off in this fandom is the majority of people go “Arya’s motivation is revenge”. Like i see how you get there, but it is more complicated than than. Arya never actually mentions the word “revenge” or “vengeance” or “avenge”. It does not even show up in her chapters. You know what does show up in her chapters? Justice. 

There is a difference (though slight) between revenge and justice. Revenge is amoral. Anyone can claim to be taking revenge. There is the implication that there has been some sort of slight, but it could be literally anything. Someone wanting justice means that some injustice has occurred. X hurt Y by doing something either unfair or outside of the social norm. Fair is a big thing for Arya. Fair is how we are introduced to Arya. 

“It wasn't fair. Sansa had everything. Sansa was two years older; maybe by the time Arya had been born, there had been nothing left. Often it felt that way. Sansa could sew and dance and sing. She wrote poetry. She knew how to dress. She played the high harp and the bells. Worse, she was beautiful. Sansa had gotten their mother's fine high cheekbones and the thick auburn hair of the Tullys. Arya took after their lord father. Her hair was a lusterless brown, and her face was long and solemn. Jeyne used to call her Arya Horseface, and neigh whenever she came near. It hurt that the one thing Arya could do better than her sister was ride a horse. Well, that and manage a household. Sansa had never had much of a head for figures. If she did marry Prince Joff, Arya hoped for his sake that he had a good steward.” - Arya I, AGoT

“Oh." Arya felt abashed. She should have realized. For the second time today, Arya reflected that life was not fair.” - Arya I, GoT

“Nothing is fair," Jon said. He messed up her hair again and walked away from her, Ghost moving silently beside him. Nymeria started to follow too, then stopped and came back when she saw that Arya was not coming.” - Arya I, GoT

Jon’s right. Very few things we see go down in Westeros through the series is any kind of “fair”. As Sansa points out, the monsters very often get their way. The thing is, Arya has not really given up on the idea of fair. She still brings it up. 

“He was angry because he'd liked Lucan, she knew, but it still wasn't fair. "It's Steelshanks Walton's work," she said defensively. "And the Mummers, and Lord Bolton.” - Arya X, ACoK

“Broad level fields stretched before her, all weeds and wild wheat, sodden and trampled. Arya kicked her horse back to a gallop. Run, she thought, run for Riverrun, run for home. Had she lost them? She took one quick look, and there was Harwin six yards back and gaining. No, she thought, no, he can't, not him, it isn't fair.” - Arya III, ASoS

Her list is a bit different in the fact that she has it not in the name of societal/personal equality, but in the name of someone breaking a societal norm or hurting someone else. Cersei is half on Arya list because she killed Lady, which was not fair. It wasnt Lady who did anything, it was Nymeria. Which Arya herself points out. 

“Lady wasn't there," Arya shouted angrily. "You leave her alone!" - Eddard III, AGoT 

The knights on her list like (formally) the Hound break societal norms. Granted they are a child’s idea of what a societal norm is for a knight, but she was still taught them somewhere. The knights on her list either torture people (Gregor Clegane) or rape women and girls (Chyswick) or abuse the people under them (Weese). There isn’t one person on this list who is just some innocent bystander. None of them can even claim they were just following orders (Sandor Clegane is a whole different issue and Arya takes him off the list anyway). They never had to go to the extremes they went to. These knights, like the deserters of the Nights Watch, are not keeping their oaths. They aren’t following the rules and they are getting away with it at the expense of the smallfolk, at they expense of people they swore to protect. 

Ned Stark’s death is similar. To Arya it can’t be fair because it isn’t true. It isn’t fair to kill someone when they have done nothing wrong and Cersei has done it twice. She had the Hound run down Mycah and (in Arya’s mind) she ordered the killing of Ned Stark. 

I dont personally think an 11 year old should go around killing people. I think the kills are disturbing and i look forward to when they end (and i do think they will). I, also, think its a mistake to take Arya’s own reasoning out of why she is doing what she does and that revenge is a bit oversimplified in this case. 

[alayne-stonecoldfox]

Sansa and Songs

Sansa’s love of songs is shown early on in the books, and is a an important part of her character as well as her narrative.

Once, when she was just a little girl, a wandering singer had stayed with them at Winterfell for half a year. An old man he was, with white hair and windburnt cheeks, but he sang of knights and quests and ladies fair, and Sansa had cried bitter tears when he left them, and begged her father not to let him go. "The man has played us every song he knows thrice over," Lord Eddard told her gently. "I cannot keep him here against his will. You need not weep, though. I promise you, other singers will come."They hadn't, though, not for a year or more. Sansa had prayed to the Seven in their sept and old gods of the heart tree, asking them to bring the old man back, or better still to send another singer, young and handsome. But the gods never answered, and the halls of Winterfell stayed silent.

Many different characters comment on it

Lady Catelyn had said that Sansa was a gentle soul who loved lemon cakes, silken gowns, and songs of chivalry - Brienne

So the singer played for her, so soft and sad that Arya only heard snatches of the words, though the tune was half-familiar. Sansa would know it, I bet. Her sister had known all the songs, and she could even play a little, and sing so sweetly.- Arya

Sansa Stark, he mused. Soft-spoken sweet-smelling Sansa, who loved silks, songs, chivalry and tall gallant knights with handsome faces.- Tyrion

Her love of songs is at first tied to the way she wishes to see the world, her innocence, her dreams and her naivety. She has lived a happy and sheltered life, she is the beautiful daughter of a noble house, and has no reason to think her life would not be like the heroines of the songs she loves. This is her romanticised view of the world.

All she wanted was for things to be nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs.

Be brave, she told herself. Be brave, like a lady in a song.

"It is better than the songs," she whispered when they found the places that her father had promised her, among the high lords and ladies. Sansa was dressed beautifully that day, in a green gown that brought out the auburn of her hair, and she knew they were looking at her and smiling.

Sansa insisted. "I don't want someone brave and gentle, I want him. We'll be ever so happy, just like in the songs, you'll see. I'll give him a son with golden hair, and one day he'll be the king of all the realm, the greatest king that ever was, as brave as the wolf and as proud as the lion."

This quote below is one of the first times Sansa instead associates songs with a negative connotation, but in an interesting way.

The young knight in the blue cloak was nothing to her, some stranger from the Vale of Arryn whose name she had forgotten as soon as she heard it. And now the world would forget his name too, Sansa realized; there would be no songs sung for him. That was sad.

She has just witnessed a young Vale knight die in the joust. It is described as :

“the most terrifying moment of the day came during Ser Gregor's second joust, when his lance rode up and struck a young knight from the Vale under the gorget with such force that it drove through his throat, killing him instantly. The youth fell not ten feet from where Sansa was seated.”

Sansa’s reaction is recorded alongside her friend Jeyne’s

Jeyne Poole wept so hysterically that Septa Mordane finally took her off to regain her composure, but Sansa sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching with a strange fascination. She had never seen a man die before. She ought to be crying too, she thought, but the tears would not come.

I love this part of the book. It’s Sansa’s first, very blunt, encounter with death, though it takes place in such a wonderful colourful atmosphere, a court joust, where she’s been having the time of her life and has always dreamed of being part of. It is even quoted by her as being ‘a song come to life’. The way it’s written seems like she can’t quite process what she’s just seen. The reality of the death. The only thing that registers with her truly in that moment is that he won’t be the one the songs are sung for, and that’s what she finds most tragic. It is a shallow take on it. She is still a young girl caught up in songs and not reality.

This passage happens in Sansa’s third chapter, when Ned has decided Ser Gregor is to be brought before the Kings Justice, and Loras volunteers to bring him in but Ned refuses to send him. Sansa doesn’t understand why, and says this to her Septa, and Petyr Baelish overhears

Her father's decision still bewildered her. When the Knight of Flowers had spoken up, she'd been sure she was about to see one of Old Nan's stories come to life. Ser Gregor was the monster and Ser Loras the true hero who would slay him. He even looked a true hero, so slim and beautiful, with golden roses around his slender waist and his rich brown hair tumbling down into his eyes. 

Lord Baelish stroked his little pointed beard and said, "Nothing? Tell me, child, why would you have sent Ser Loras?"Sansa had no choice but to explain about heroes and monsters. The king's councillor smiled. "Well, those are not the reasons I'd have given, but …" He had touched her cheek, his thumb lightly tracing the line of a cheekbone. "Life is not a song, sweetling. You may learn that one day to your sorrow."

Again, a moment highlighted Sansa’s naivety and how she truly believes life would be like the songs, Ser Loras defeating Gregor because he is the handsome young knight and Gregor the monster. It is also the first introduction of the line “life is not a song sweetling” which will be echoed throughout Sansa’s chapters from this point on, as her innocent world view is shattered and her naivety chipped away. The line is impactful coming from Petyr Baelish of all people, as he was once also a young boy who’s world vision was crafted from songs. 

"There's a song," he remembered. "'Jenny of Oldstones, with the flowers in her hair.'""We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky." She had played at being Jenny that day, had even wound flowers in her hair. And Petyr had pretended to be her Prince of Dragonflies. Catelyn could not have been more than twelve, Petyr just a boy.

Did you come with Lord Bracken and Lord Blackwood, the time they visited to lay their feud before my father? Lord Bracken’s singer played for us, and Catelyn danced six dances with Petyr that night, six, I counted.

He believed Catelyn Stark was being married against her will in an arranged marriage to Brandon Stark, falsely believing Cat loved him and he had taken her maiden head (he hadn’t, he was drunk and it was Lysa) and they were going to be together despite his lower birth, and he could fight for her hand, because that was how it happened in the songs where the gallant young hero’s always won. But that’s not what happened, and Petyr lost everything in that duel, his home at Riverrun, his ties with House Tully and what he thought was his true love, and from that point onwards he descended into bitterness, becoming a man of ruthless practicality. He recognises the same innocence in Sansa with a knowingness that it will not last.

Another key figure in Sansa’s narrative relating to songs is The Hound. From the beginning of her chapters he derisively refers to Sansa as a little bird who sings songs.

Some septa trained you well. You're like one of those birds from the Summer Isles, aren't you? A pretty little talking bird, repeating all the pretty little words they taught you to recite."

Tell me, little bird, what kind of god makes a monster like the Imp, or a halfwit like Lady Tanda's daughter? If there are gods, they made sheep so wolves could eat mutton, and they made the weak for the strong to play with."

A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face." He cupped her under the jaw, raising her chin, his fingers pinching her painfully. "And that's more than little birds can do, isn't it? I never got my song.""I . . . I know a song about Florian and Jonquil.”"Florian and Jonquil? A fool and his cunt. Spare me. But one day I'll have a song from you, whether you will it or no."

The Hound seems to resent Sansa’s innocence. He is a character that certainly knows how harsh the world is, and he see’s Sansa’s world views as foolish, and every chance he gets he seems to want to wake her up to the real world, whilst also acting as a protector. She brings out a lot of conflicting feelings within him, as he does in Sansa, as he does not fit her idea at all of what a knight was meant to be. His harsh demeanour is very confronting to her throughout her early chapters, culminating in a scene in her room where he seemingly planned on raping her, but could bring himself to do it, because as much as he hated her innocence, it touches him as well. He settles on wanting a song.

"Think I'm so drunk that I'd believe that?" He let go his grip on her arm, swaying slightly as he stood, stripes of light and darkness falling across his terrible burnt face. "You look almost a woman . . . face, teats, and you're taller too, almost . . . ah, you're still a stupid little bird, aren't you? Singing all the songs they taught you . . . sing me a song, why don't you? Go on. Sing to me. Some song about knights and fair maids. You like knights, don't you?"He was scaring her. "T-true knights, my lord."

I could keep you safe," he rasped. "They're all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I'd kill them." He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. "Still can't bear to look, can you?" she heard him say. He gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. "I'll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said." His dagger was out, poised at her throat. "Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life."Her throat was dry and tight with fear, and every song she had ever known had fled from her mind. Please don't kill me, she wanted to scream, please don't. She could feel him twisting the point, pushing it into her throat, and she almost closed her eyes again, but then she remembered. It was not the song of Florian and Jonquil, but it was a song. Her voice sounded small and thin and tremulous in her ears.

This scene, as well as the entirety of the chapters that come after Ned’s death and covering the battle of the blackwater, references songs in a new dark way in Sansa’s chapters.

Perhaps I will die too, she told herself, and the thought did not seem so terrible to her. If she flung herself from the window, she could put an end to her suffering, and in the years to come the singers would write songs of her grief.

She called for the heroes from the songs, for Florian and Ser Ryam Redwyne and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, but no one heard. Women swarmed over her like weasels, pinching her legs and kicking her in the belly, and someone hit her in the face and she felt her teeth shatter. Then she saw the bright glimmer of steel. The knife plunged into her belly and tore and tore and tore, until there was nothing left of her down there but shiny wet ribbons.

She heard it as she had never heard it before, and there were other sounds as well, grunts of pain, angry curses, shouts for help, and the moans of wounded and dying men. In the songs, the knights never screamed nor begged for mercy.

The deep moan of warhorns, the creak and thud of catapults flinging stones, the splashes and splinterings, the crackle of burning pitch and thrum of scorpions loosing their yard-long iron-headed shafts . . . and beneath it all, the cries of dying men.It was another sort of song, a terrible song.

They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls, even Elinor. They've never seen a battle, they've never seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her father's head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.

Do you have any notion what happens when a city is sacked, Sansa? No, you wouldn't, would you? All you know of life you learned from singers, and there's such a dearth of good sacking songs.""True knights would never harm women and children." The words rang hollow in her ears even as she said them.

For those who remained, a singer was brought forth to fill the hall with the sweet music of the high harp. He sang of Jonquil and Florian, of Prince Aemon the Dragonknight and his love for his brother's queen, of Nymeria's ten thousand ships. They were beautiful songs, but terribly sad. Several of the women began to weep, and Sansa felt her own eyes growing moist."Very good, dear." The queen leaned close. "You want to practice those tears. You'll need them for King Stannis."

But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. "Life is not a song, sweetling," he'd told her. "You may learn that one day to your sorrow." 

Sansa’s world view has begun to change as she is no longer naive and has suffered tragedy, and nothing is happening as she thought it would. She still seems to love songs, but now there’s a lot of melancholy attached to them.

The third key figure in Sansa’s narrative associated with songs, after Petyr Baelish and the hound, is Marillion. Her Aunt Lysa’s favourite singer who she encounters first at the Fingers during Petyr and Lysa’s marriage, where he attempts to sing to her and rape her.

"Marillion?" she said, uncertain. "You are . . . kind to think of me, but . . . pray forgive me. I am very tired.""And very beautiful. All night I have been making songs for you in my head. A lay for your eyes, a ballad for your lips, a duet to your breasts. I will not sing them, though. They were poor things, unworthy of such beauty." He sat on her bed and put his hand on her leg. "Let me sing to you with my body instead." She caught a whiff of his breath. "You're drunk.""I never get drunk. Mead only makes me merry. I am on fire." His hand slipped up to her thigh. "And you as well."

Luckily, he is scared off by Lothor Brune, who is asked by Petyr Baelish to watch over her that night. But Marillion and his singing factor again into one of the biggest moments of Sansa and Baelish’s story so far, as he plays his harp and sings to cover the sounds of Lysa’s attempt at killing Sansa by throwing her through the moon door.

“No." Sansa planted her feet and tried to squirm backward, but her aunt did not budge. "Not this way. Please . . ." She put a hand up, her fingers scrabbling at the doorframe, but she could not get a grip, and her feet were sliding on the wet marble floor. Lady Lysa pressed her forward inexorably. Her aunt outweighed her by three stone. "The lady lay a-kissing, upon a mound of hay," Marillion was singing. Sansa twisted sideways, hysterical with fear, and one foot slipped out over the void. She screamed. "Hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey." The wind flapped her skirts up and bit at her bare legs with cold teeth. She could feel snowflakes melting on her cheeks. Sansa flailed, found Lysa's thick auburn braid, and clutched it tight. "My hair!" her aunt shrieked. "Let go of my hair!" She was shaking, sobbing. They teetered on the edge. Far off, she heard the guards pounding on the door with their spears, demanding to be let in. Marillion broke off his song."Lysa! What's the meaning of this?" The shout cut through the sobs and heavy breathing. Footsteps echoed down the High Hall. "Get back from there! Lysa, what are you doing?" The guards were still beating at the door; Littlefinger had come in the back way, through the lords' entrance behind the dais.

Petyr comes in time to stop it. Of course, we know this is when he kills Lysa himself. Marillion is witness to all of this. Petyr decides to keep him alive for his own ends, sending him to the dungeons to be tortured into now defending their innocence.

"We have come to an agreement, Marillion and I. Mord can be most persuasive. And if our singer disappoints us and sings a song we do not care to hear, why, you and I need only say he lies. Whom do you imagine Lord Nestor will believe?""Us?" Sansa wished she could be certain.

"Lord Petyr has been kind enough to let me keep my harp," the blind singer said. "My harp and . . . my tongue . . . so I may sing my songs. Lady Lysa dearly loved my singing . . ."

Sansa most traumatic moment, the moment she almost died, was serenaded with a song. Now she and Petyr use that singer to cover the crime of Lysa’s death with Sansa being able to hear him from down in the dungeons where he sings at night.

The singer's voice was strong and sweet. Sansa thought he sounded better than he ever had before, his voice richer somehow, full of pain and fear and longing. She did not understand why the gods would have given such a voice to such a wicked man.

He would have taken me by force on the Fingers if Petyr had not set Ser Lothor to watch over me, she had to remind herself. And he played to drown out my cries when Aunt Lysa tried to kill me.That did not make the songs any easier to hear.

 "Please," she begged Lord Petyr, "can't you make him stop?""I gave the man my word, sweetling." Petyr Baelish, Lord of Harrenhal, Lord Paramount of the Trident, and Lord Protector of the Eyrie and the Vale of Arryn, looked up from the letter he was writing. He had written a hundred letters since Lady Lysa's fall. Sansa had seen the ravens coming and going from the rookery. "I'd sooner suffer his singing than listen to his sobbing."

That night the dead man sang "The Day They Hanged Black Robin," "The Mother's Tears," and "The Rains of Castamere." Then he stopped for a while, but just as Sansa began to drift off he started to play again. He sang "Six Sorrows," "Fallen Leaves," and "Alysanne." Such sad songs, she thought. When she closed her eyes she could see him in his sky cell, huddled in a corner away from the cold black sky, crouched beneath a fur with his woodharp cradled against his chest. I must not pity him, she told herself. He was vain and cruel, and soon he will be dead. She could not save him. And why should she want to? Marillion tried to rape her, and Petyr had saved her life not once but twice. Some lies you have to tell. Lies had been all that kept her alive in King's Landing.

Marillion in his entirety really opens up a more troubling world view for Sansa to start to digest. He was beautiful and young and a singer, but he tried to rape her. He tried to aid in her murder. He was tortured into defending her and Baelish. She knows he will be killed. Sansa is conflicted by all of this, feeling haunted by his sad songs as she tried to sleep but can’t. He has given her a lot to think about regarding her survival but also her morality.

"My lady was too trusting for this world." Petyr spoke so tenderly that Sansa would have believed he'd loved his wife. "Lysa could not see the evil in men, only the good. Marillion sang sweet songs, and she mistook that for his nature."

Songs have been weaved throughout Sansa’s narrative consistently, alongside three men who enforce these links even more. The Hound who wanted a song, Lord Baelish who was once a lover of songs himself, and Marillion, the singer. I believe that songs will continue to play a thematic role in Sansa’s chapters, but i would say the dreams and innocence once associated with them in her mind is long gone.

The moment came back to her vividly. "You told me that life was not a song. That I would learn that one day, to my sorrow." She felt tears in her eyes, but whether she wept for Ser Dontos Hollard, for Joff, for Tyrion, or for herself, Sansa could not say. 

As the boy's lips touched her own she found herself thinking of another kiss. She could still remember how it felt, when his cruel mouth pressed down on her own. He had come to Sansa in the darkness as green fire filled the sky. He took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak.It made no matter. That day was done, and so was Sansa.

That day was done, and so was Sansa.

That day was done, and so was Sansa.

That day was done, and so was Sansa.