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butwhatifidothis · 4 years ago

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I have thought it would have been a hella better game if Sothis had been the protagonist too! Here’s how I imagine it would be like:

Byleth is the actual reincarnation of Sothis and the child-Sothis we see at the start of the game is actually her subconsciousness. Sothis/Byleth is still the emotionless mercenary with no social skills when the game starts, but she does become more and more emotional and expressive as she begins interacting with specifically Rhea, Flayn and Seteth, her old family. They do form a bond with the lords and the students though (I think the dynamic in AM as a close friend is nice) and most of Byleth’s thoughts are shown through child-Sothis’ commentary.

They can still have the “protagonist being ignorant about Fodlan” thing going on, but with a little twist that it is actually because Sothis keeps confusing the old Fodlan of her era with modern Fodlan and gets blinding headache all the time but actually that is her getting flashbacks. Because of this Jeralt took them away to Morfis (which didn’t exist in her time yet) and they only returned recently after being hired by Rodrigue who had them take care of some bandits in the Kingdom (that is why she has heard of the Tragedy but doesn’t know the details of it).

For example, when she leads the class to the Red Canyon, she mistakenly thinks it is a big, prosperous city that is supposed to be the capital of Fodlan and the lords and Rhea have to explain to her the legend of Zanado. Then she faints and gets a flashback of a beautiful city called Zanado with many humans and dragons living together in peace and unimaginably sophisticated technology located in the exact same valley. She confuses a lot of places with old Fodlan too. To her, Arianrhod is still a small fishing village, Fhirdiad is a food paradise and tourist’s attraction, Goneril is the capital of Agartha, a neighbouring belligerent nation, Enbarr is an ordinary small town where she landed when she first crashed into Fodlan, the Valley of Torment is a fertile valley with a large population focused on agriculture, the Church of Seiros is supposed to be called the Church of Sothis instead and she doesn’t know what the knights are because such concepts did not exist in her time nor Morfis, etc.

Of course, because she often gets so confused by the current Fodlan, the lords and Rhea still have a lot of explaining to do every time they have to travel somewhere like they do in the game. Claude becomes very suspicious of her too.

When she gets attacked by Solon, child-Sothis merges with Sothis, now reincarnated as Byleth, and regains her memories and power as the goddess and from now on her emotions and stuff are back. Then a cutscene showing Sothis’ memory of how and why she came to Fodlan as an alien, how she created the Nabateans and passed her knowledge to the humans in Fodlan, how Fodlan thrived as a nation of Nabateans and humans living together, how Agartha rose as a highly technologically advanced belligerent neighbouring country in the east and how Fodlan and Agartha fought in a war that devastated the entire world so much that she spent centuries healing it until it finally began prospering again and she went to sleep. In her memory we are also shown that the Nabateans all had symbols like the current crests of the 12 Elites and we are misled into thinking those with the crests are the descendants of the Nabateans. The cutscene then ends abruptly when Sothis is jolted from her sleep and the last thing she sees is a wicked man (Nemesis) raising an axe on her and a young girl’s screams that she knows it’s her daughter Seiros.

She is very confused right now because apparently the world she knew is just completely forgotten by the people, and apparently five of her children founded an empire called Adrestia with a human an entire thousand years ago. She knows they can live longer than 1000years and realises they must still be alive now and wants to find them. She also doesn’t know how she died too and is rather panicked that she will be killed again if word gets out she is Sothis. Ah, and she is very curious of the true identities of the 12 Elites as their first names were not recorded and shared the same crests with some of her children. Sothis worries if they were her children who adopted a different surname because that would mean her children fought amongst each other and may be they destroyed each other to the point that Fodlan was in such a ruin that no one remembers the old Fodlan now.

After this cutscene showing the old Fodlan under Sothis’ guidance ends, Byleth who has now remembered her life as Sothis and regained her full power, wakes to Rhea singing a lullaby very popular in old Fodlan so Sothis thinks Rhea may know something about the old Fodlan, but she is paranoid because she thinks there are parts of her memory missing and does not know for sure if Rhea is trustworthy. As a result, she doesn’t immediately tell Rhea she is Sothis and Rhea is not aware that her mother has already come back.

Rhea suggests having Sothis sit on the Holy Throne to jolt her memory and she accepts, hoping to remember what happened to her after the man with the axe showed up. However, before she can sit on the actual throne, Edelgard comes in with her soldiers and battle begins. Then the Imperial army attacks the Monastery before Sothis gets a chance to investigate and talk to Rhea/Seteth/Flayn. Sothis is completely stunned when Rhea turns into a dragon to protect the people because she finally realises Rhea is Seiros all along. She goes back immediately to protect Seiros when she is in danger but gets hit by Thales’ magic energy balls and falls down the cliff. She manages to tell Seiros she is Sothis before falling down the cliff though.

From this point, the route differs into the three non-CF routes.

SS will be a more personal story about Sothis trying to recover her memory and finding out what happened to her family. Sothis will also slowly realise Seteth and Flayn are her family and Macuil and Indech will also join them on this route to help rescue their little sister. Unfortunately, none of them can tell Sothis what exactly happened on the day of the Red Canyon Tragedy because Seiros was the only survivor and the four of them weren’t present in Zanado at the time. They can only tell Sothis that the five of them banded together with Wilhelm, a human and later Seiros’ husband and fought with Nemesis and his 12 Elites who tried to conquer the southern half of the continent and subjugate them to his tyranny. They can confirm the 12 elites were not their siblings and just magically got the crests of their family via unknown means. In the end Sothis rescues her daughter and storms Shambhala. The family are happily reunited and strive to rebuild Fodlan together after Rhea explains what she did to Sothis in her infant state.

VW will be a story about Sothis and Claude learning about what happened to old Fodlan and Agartha. Claude notices that Sothis has been reading up on the founding of the empire/church and the legends about the 12 Elites/saints too. He suggests they team up because he is also doing the same thing. Sothis tells him about the truth of her identity, her missing memory and the old Fodlan she remembers. This clarifies things up for Claude so Claude actually opens up to Sothis and begins trusting her as a friend and the rest follows canon. Rhea will explain what happened in the Tragedy and the fates of their family. Sothis and Claude take down Nemesis to avenge herself and her family. They also learn that Agartha is why Almyra and Fodlan fight all the time.

AM will still focus on Dimitri and the Kingdom but this is how I would frame the story: Sothis thinks the Kingdom nobles descended from the 12 Elites are the descendants of the Nabateans and may know something about her children and what happened to them. Sothis asks Dimitri if he has heard of the Nabateans. Dimitri doesn’t know anything but promises he will help Sothis investigate into this. Everything follows canon until Cornelia’s death, who not only taunts Dimitri about his stepmother but also mocks Byleth that she is assisting the descendants of the 12 elites who slaughtered her entire family 1000 years ago in a war against the descendants of her own children. Sothis in the end comes to term with the possibility that Dimitri’s ancestors might have killed her and her family and continues to support Dimitri as she believes he will make a good king while Edelgard is currently a terrible ruler who has caused the suffering of thousands of people.

CF, on the other hand, will be a much darker story. After Sothis wakes up to Rhea singing to her, she gets to choose between “ask Rhea” and “ask Edelgard” about the saints and the elites. If “ask Edelgard” is chosen, Edelgard will ask why and you can choose “tell Edelgard the truth”. She will lie and convince Sothis into helping her by telling her that Seiros and the four faints did a major cover-up and they were the ones who killed sothis and turned their blades against the rest of their siblings for power. The man Sothis saw in her memory was a bandit hired by the five saints to kill sothis and the other children, known as the 12 elites now, banded together to resist Seiros around a heroic mortal that is Nemesis. When they lost, Seiros hunted down the 12 elites, crafted weapons from their bones and gave their blood to her own allies. The church then lied to the people again that the 12 elites were helping her because one of the five saints didn’t want people to remember their siblings as villains forever. Her own ancestor wilhelm helped Seiros in her unjust war for power and she intends to make things right now and asks if Sothis wants to be a part of that. If Sothis refuses her offer and expresses her scepticism of Edelgard’s claims, the game will immediately end because Edelgard will kill her.

If chooses “yes” then you enter the CF route. Edelgard tells Sothis she intends to declare war on the church to take down Rhea and take back the lands occupied by the evil descendants of the people who slaughtered Sothis’ children, aka Faerghus and Leicester. Edelgard, however, tells Sothis she intends to capture Rhea so Sothis will be able to ask Rhea the same questions to prove her claim. They do not return to the Monastery for the Holy Throne ritual and the coronation scene and war declaration scene play instead. When Sothis returns to the Monastery, she is with the Imperial army intended to conquer the Monastery. Sothis confronts an infuriated Rhea, who is extremely mad about her betrayal, and asks why Rhea/Seiros sent the assassin on her and killed her siblings. Seiros quickly realises Byleth/Sothis is in fact the reincarnation of her mother, but Edelgard notices that and has Thales attack Sothis from behind to prevent Seiros from telling Sothis the truth and swaying her to their side. Sothis falls off the cliff and Seiros tries to kill Edelgard for turning her mother against her and killing her again before she retreats to the Kingdom.

Five years later, Sothis wakes up and rejoins Edelgard’s army only to find out the Empire is on the brink of collapse against the combined might of the Kingdom-Church-Alliance with only Garreg Mach, Gronder, Fort Merceus and Enbarr left in their control. Not all of the Black Eagle students are fighting on their side either - Ferdinand, Dorothea, Petra and Caspar have abandoned the Empire and are fighting for the Kingdom-Church-Alliance army while Linhardt and Bernadetta simply refused to join the war. Instead, Ladislava, Fleche, Randolph, Count Bergliez, Arundel and Jeritza have become your new units.

Sothis continues to help Edelgard in the war and they quickly reclaim the territories lost to the allied powers. As they continue to push forward, Sothis encounters Seteth and the other three saints too (Indech and Macuil joined Rhea after learning of what Edelgard did to Sothis) on the battlefield. They will try to tell Sothis the truth and you have an option between “question Edelgard’s claims and spare them” and “believe in Edelgard’s words and kill them”. If the former is chosen, the game will end immediately as Edelgard will backstab Sothis instantly if she knows Sothis has turned against her. The rest follows canon, but Seiros will try to tell Sothis the truth again on Tailtean. Sothis will be killed if she believes Seiros instead of Edelgard here too. Heartbroken and traumatised by the fact that her mother has killed all of her only remaining family members and has already tried to kill her twice and is about to come and kill her again, Seiros transforms into a dragon in Fhirdiad and sets the city to fire once the citizens have been evacuated, hoping to bring down all of her enemies including her mother with the fire in order to avenge her friends and family.

In the end, Sothis kills Seiros as canon but loses her power and immortality as a goddess because it was Seiros’ magic that kept the creststone alive, and without the protection magic on the stone it would just be an ordinary stone and couldn’t function as a heart. Sothis almost dies without a working heart but the Agarthans save her by a heart replacement surgery on her using Seiros’ heart on the condition that she will give them the Crest of Flames creststone and the sword and share her blood with them regularly. Everything else continues as canon and the route can end with a realistic dark ending (everything crashes and burns) or a fake happy ending (the one in the game).

YOOOO dude this is great! Byleth as a character is so uninteresting, at least to me, because the only actually interesting thing about them is something that was done to them, not something they did. Byleth was born without a heart and was given the heart of a long-dead Goddess to let them live - neat! Intriguing! But nothing else catches your eye like that about them. They live on as a mercenary who apparently only wanted to ever ask questions about anything ever at all once they get to the monastery. The biggest thing they’ve done is make a name for themselves for how well they fight in battle.

Now, we pivot the idea of Sothis being the protagonist, that’s where things start getting interesting. She fell from the stars and created new life? She helped humans prosper in knowledge only to have that knowledge be used for evil? She healed all of Fodlan from the devastation caused by the war humans enacted and fell into a sleep because of it? Those are all things she does that are worth getting to know more about. Her being murdered during her rest by another greedy human and was reduced to nothing but a dormant consciousness for a thousand years being coupled with the “being given the heart of a long-dead Goddess” being what was done to her isn’t the only interesting thing about them anymore. That’s all stuff that offers so much to the player to want to delve into, especially with a character who is gradually more and more vocal about their want to learn about themselves, with thoughts and feelings about what happened to them, what happened to their family, what they did in the past they can’t remember.

I especially like all the ways you can just get a game over in CF - in a way that reminds me of that one mission in Sacred Stones where if you beat the boss you get an insta-game over since he was your only way to progress the story lmao, except this is turnt up to 11, and instead of punishing you for being a dingus and fucking up the plot, in a way it’s trying to save you from becoming a kin-killing pawn to a tyrant.

About the only thing I might have a bit of a ehhh with is Agartha being why Almyra and Fodlan feud, just because I find them feuding due to themselves and not a third party to be more interesting to me (personally! That’s just for me lol, it’s not an inherently bad notion!), but thanks you so much for sending this!!

#ask #anon #anti edelgard #Anti-edelgard #just to be safe #like omega safe lmao #this is so cool!!

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chasing-classics · 4 years ago

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I See You, I Love You- Lexi x Reader

Pairing(s): Lexi Howard x Reader

Warning(s): language

Summary: Lexi has been in Cassie’s shadow for as long as she can remember so she’s given up on the idea that you, her best friend, could ever be interested in her. At the winter formal, you show her exactly how you feel.

A/N: Lexi Howard is a fucking saint and she deserves the absolute best! She needs more love lol

‘’What did you think of the dance?’’ you beamed, sitting down next to your best friend.

Lexi offered her signature smile, that little twinkle in her eyes shining bright and taking your breath away.

‘’You were great, as always,’’ she nodded, holding her geometry book to her chest as she smiled down at the floor.

That was typical Lexi. She and you came from two completely different worlds and personalities. You were outgoing, the class clown and the life of every party. Lexi was the bookworm, the quiet girl with the heart of gold. And you loved her more than anything in this world. You had become fast friends with the Howard sisters, Cassie and you had similar interests and personalities so you two clicked immediately in elementary school. Nearly everyday after school was spent at your house or at the mall growing up. You easily considered Cassie one of your best friends, but it had been Lexi you had fallen in love with.

Unbeknownst to you, Lexi had fallen just as hard. She remembered feeling something different towards you growing up, but watching all of the attention Cass would get from guys and the pressure from her mother to ‘’bag a man’’ made it difficult to come forward with her feelings towards you. It wasn’t like her mom was homophobic or anything, and she absolutely adored you and was charmed by your witty humor, but she had always been in her sister’s shadow for as long as she could remember. How could she suddenly, after ten years of friendship, come clean about her feelings towards one of her closest friends? How could she possibly jeopardize that, when she was so used to being second-best to Cass? How could you ever see her more than what she was; plain-Jane Lexi.

‘’Are you going to the formal tonight?’’ you playfully bumped her shoulder with yours as you two took your time walking to your car.

‘’Yeah, want to pick me up?’’ she smiled, tucking a tendril of wavy brown hair behind her ear.

‘’Abso-fucking-lutely,’’ you grinned, opening the car door for her.

This was it, this was going to be the night you were going to confess your feelings to Lexi. After you had chickened out about asking her to the formal, Maddy, BB, Kat, and Cass all gave you the stern pep-talk you so desperately needed. ‘So are you just going to wait around until some loser makes a move on her?’ Maddy scoffed. Your eyes furrowed in both jealousy and protectiveness. ‘It’s true, I saw Chris Rivas talking to her in P.E today,’ BB added, taking a hit of her vape. You clenched your jaw at the thought of that meat head anywhere near Lexi. Cassie grabbed your hand encouragingly, a small smile on her glossy lips. ‘She likes you back, y/n. Just. . .just tell her how you feel.’ And so you were. As you walked up to the porch of the Howards’ house, makeup done to your liking and your dress looked absolutely stunning.

‘’Y/N! Oh honey you look stunning,’’ Miss Howards exclaimed, the typical half-empty wine glass in her hands. You smiled, giving her a hug as she welcomed you inside. Cassie came down the stairs first, dressed in a simple but elegant blue gown. You squealed and hugged your best friend, the two of you trading compliments and joy.

‘’Oh my gosh, Lex,’’ Miss Howards’ voice broke the two of you apart, you turning around to look up the stairs. Your jaw dropped and you swore your heart actually stopped beating for a few seconds.

She was beautiful. She looked like a princess, only better. She had an embarrassed smile on her face, her cheeks quickly turning into a rosy pink color. You smiled when you noticed her nose crinkle up, the same way she always did whenever she was embarrassed.

‘’You look beautiful,’’ was all you could manage to get out, still in a daze. She laughed a bit, looking down at the ground. Neither of you noticed the knowing smile on Cassie and Miss Howards’ face.

‘’Take good care of my daughter, y/n,’’ she called out as the three of you flooded into your car. You gave her a cheeky grin, nodding as you made sure Lex and Cass were buckled up.

‘’Always!’’ you called out, watching the older woman put her wine glass away to wave to you three.

The gym was packed, sweaty bodies were dancing and grinding in every which way you could imagine. You were currently sitting at the table with the girls, smiling as Lexi played and toyed with your charm bracelet out of boredom.

‘’I’m going to go get a drink, Rue, you should come,’’ Jules announced, causing you to quirk a brow.

‘’Huh? Ohhh, Oh! Yeah! Coming,’’ Rue grinned, winking at you.

‘’I should go apologize to Ethan,’’ Kat sighed, offering you an encouraging smile.

‘’I’m going to go kick Nate’s ass, enjoy you guys,’’ Maddy sent a quick smile as she glared daggers at the Neanderthal currently fingering some random blonde on the dance floor.

‘’I’m going to suck dick,’’ BB coughed, smirking as she blew out a cloud and swayed away with some random baseball player.

‘’I’m going to watch,’’ Cassie was the last to leave, the two of you now alone in your big empty table.

‘’Well that’s weird,’’ Lexi laughed, raising an eyebrow in confusion at the dispersed group. You shrugged, smiling back at her. ‘’You still got me,’’ you offered. Lexi nodded, smiling and leaning closer to you. You felt your face flush as you realized how close you two were, and the two of you cleared your throat; praying that the other couldn’t sense how fucking nervous you both were. ‘It’s now or never,’ you relented in your head. You turned in your seat so that you completely faced Lexi, her sitting up straight as she noticed your change in attitude.

‘’Y/n? You ok?’’

‘’N-no. I mean, yes! Well, sort of. Fuck this isn’t how it was supposed to start,’’ you huffed, pinching your brows together in frustration. You froze when you felt Lexi’s soft hands hold yours down from your face, her eyes searching yours as if she could read your thoughts.

‘’How what was supposed to start?’’ she asked softly.

You thumbed at her hand, sighing. You looked her right in the eye, taking a gulp and trying to remember the girls’ words of encouragement.

‘’Lexi. . .I’m in love with you.’’

Her eyes widened in shock, her grip on your hands became slightly looser as your heart clamored in your chest.

‘’I’ve been in love with you since fourth grade, when you helped me the day Nate Jacobs gave me a bloody nose from that football. I loved you then, I loved you when you could barely say one fucking sentence the day you got your braces, I loved you when you told me Rue couldn’t kiss for shit, I loved you when you came over at my house in the middle of the night crying about your dad, I loved you when you made me chicken noodle soup when I was sick with the flu last summer, and I love you now. I probably always will. I love everything you do and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tell you without making it weird between us, because I’d hate myself if I ever lost you. . .and now I’m rambling, but. . .it’s true. . . I love you.’’

You felt your body shake as Lexi processed your words. On one hand the weight had been lifted off of your shoulders. The burden of carrying such a heavy secret had finally ceased to exist, dissipating into thin air. On the other hand, though, you were terrified of what Lexi’s reaction would be.

‘’Y/n. . .you don’t mean that.’’

You were crushed, physically deflating. ‘’W-what?’’ you whispered, trying not to allow your voice to crack. Lexi shakily sighed, eyes glossy with unshed tears as she looked at the dance floor to avert your devastated gaze.

‘’My whole life, I’ve been runner up. I’ve never been enough. Nobody has ever really seen me. And you, you’re so wonderful. You shine in a crowd, everyone loves you. Everyone sees you. And as much as I love you too. . .which I do. I fucking love you so much, I’m not enough for you. I’ll never be enough,’’ tears streamed down her pale cheeks and when you went to brush them away, Lexi sniffled and pulled away.

‘’Lex. . .I want this, I want you. Why can’t you see that?’’ you whimpered, heart breaking at the sight of her crying.

‘’Y/n, I’ve never been enough for anyone. Not my parents. Not our friends. I don’t want this to be the same,’’ she was close to sobbing as she stood up, pushing her way through the crowd toward the exit.

‘’Lexi!’’ you called out, panicking. You had come this far, confessed this much. You couldn’t let her leave feeling like this, like you didn’t see her. Without thinking, you made a bee-line for the stage, abruptly cutting off the DJ and grabbing the microphone.

‘’Hello? Sorry, sorry guys I just. . . I really need to say something,’’ you exhaled, closing your eyes momentarily to gather your courage. You opened them and right away found Lexi, stunned and tears running down her cheeks as she looked at you like you had lost your mind. At this point, you weren’t sure she was wrong.

‘’That girl over there, the one in the black dress. With the most beautiful fucking eyes and smile you’ve ever seen,’’ you started, someone moving the spotlight so that it rested on Lexi’s general direction.

‘’Yeah, that’s her. Lexi. Listen. . .I don’t know if she’ll hate me for doing this. And if you do, Lex, I understand. But the last thing I’m going to do is let you leave without showing you how much you mean to me. I’m not afraid if the whole fucking school knows it, I’ll say it to anyone who will listen. Lexi Howard is the most beautiful, the most down-to-Earth, kindest, funniest, most loyal person you’d ever hope to meet. Those are just some of the reasons I fell in love with her when we were in fourth grade. And as much as I thought I loved her back then, that’s absolutely nothing to how much I love her now,’’ tears cascaded down your cheeks, you felt the entire school looking at you but all you focused on was Lexi.

Her mouth hung open, tears still glossy in her eyes as she stood there, listening to every word you said. The shadow of a smile on her red lips.

‘’You’re worried that you’re not enough for me? Lexi. . .you are everything. I see you, I love you. And I’m not going to stop just because you’re scared. I don’t care how long it takes, I’m going to prove it to you that I’m not going anywhere,’’ you smiled through your tears. You could vaguely see her smile, hands covering her mouth soon after as she began taking small steps towards you.

You gently handed the mic back to the DJ, who you could’ve sworn was choking back a few tears of his own (whether it was from being faded or actually moved by your speech, you didn’t know) and began walking towards Lexi. Nothing around you mattered other than the girl you were walking towards. Not the whole school who was clapping and cheering, not the girls crying out of joy and merriment, not even the fact that your makeup was absolutely fucked due to your emotional outburst.

‘’Lex please don’t hate-‘’ your eyes flew open when she tackled you into a mind-blowing kiss, her hands caressing the back of your head as she crashed her lips onto yours.

You quickly kissed back, holding the side of her face as the world completely faded from your view. You didn’t know how long you stood there in the middle of the dancefloor, kissing your dream girl like it was a bad high school musical deleted scene. But you didn’t give two shits.

‘’I love you too,’’ she whispered, staring into your eyes as you held each other. You nodded, smiling as a new wave of tears threatened to escape. She smiled back, the two of you kissing and smiling, wrapped around in each other’s gentle embrace. Wrapped around in the start of your new forever.

#euphoria #lexi howard #euphoria fic #fluff #rue bennett #cassie howard #maddy perez #euphoria hbo #lexi euphoria #maude apatow

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ailec-12 · 4 years ago

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@thatawfulsnapeboy asked for a war-free HP universe: James takes Harry and Severus to the park and a woman makes a passing remark about how calm and well behaved his first son is (Harry is running around madly looking adorable) and it makes James thinks on how transparent Sev is trying to be all the time.

(She actually sent me two prompts and, since I want to write both, I’m keeping the ask until I fulfil the other one.)

Thanks so much! And sorry because I wrote it in November and, then, never seemed to find the right moment to proofread it. I really hope you’ll like it. It’s teeth-rotting fluff!

It can also be read on AO3.

At the Park

It was such a nice sunny day. James was enjoying the warmth on his face from his spot on the green bench. The children were playing nearby in the sandpit, where one could usually find the younger ones. Severus always chose to remain with Harry rather than make friends with the older boys. He was quite protective, to his son’s delight, and having him keep an eye on the toddler made these outings far calmer than they would have been otherwise. Harry was a bit of a handful, unable to stay still for longer than five minutes. On the other hand, Severus was patient and adapted easily to Harry’s rhythm, building castles he did not mind destroying again and again or playing tag among trees and bushes.

Shortly after they had arrived, a woman with twins just a little older than Severus sat down next to James. Her children had already run off towards the slide and she let out a weary sigh. She must have followed his gaze, because she remarked,

“Those two are your boys?”

He was startled by the question and, blinking, looked from the children to the woman and, then, back to the children. Severus had frozen. It was barely noticeable, but James knew he was listening in. He had never stopped to think about it —Lily and he had been improvising ever since Severus was brought to their home. And yet, there was only one possible answer.

“Yeah, they are.”

Harry, fed up with the older boy’s distracted demeanour, tackled him with a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Severus was startled enough that Harry overpowered him for a moment, staying on top of him. At least, he seemed to have forgotten the adults’ conversation.

“Ah, he’s a darling. Your older boy, that is. My son and daughter are the same age and, still, they don’t get along half the time.”

“Um, the age difference might actually help. Severus knows he’s got to be careful with Harry and indulges him a lot. Fights between siblings are to be expected, though,” replied James, thinking about the petty arguments Padfoot and he had got into when they were much younger.

“Indeed, but your son has the patience of a saint! Staying with his baby brother instead of running off to play. It’s lovely.”

James nodded, but something in that compliment did not sit right with him. It was true that Severus never protested going to the park and getting dragged into Harry’s games, even though he enjoyed himself more when he was brewing with Lily or playing chess. Thus, it would not have been strange if he had wandered around the park on his own or stayed in the swings after Harry had got bored of them —even if he had decided to pick up a fight with James. Yet, at the park, Severus was meeker than usual and always stayed close by. How these little details kept escaping his notice, James would have loved to know.

He stifled a sigh of his own and focused his attention back on the chatty woman and her small talk.

...............................

James had taken them to an ice-cream parlour after the park, which was brilliant in Severus’s opinion. The man had insisted they both got two scoops each, so he had chosen chocolate and vanilla. Harry was making a mess of his single chocolate scoop and James’s attention was divided between eating and cleaning the toddler’s face. Severus ate his ice cream slowly, careful to take small bites.

“Harry, lad, you’ve got ice cream on your hair. How in Merlin’s name did you manage that?”

Harry giggled in response.

“Sorry, Daddy,” he said, grinning impishly.

The young father rolled his eyes at the obvious lack of remorse, but softened it with a fond smile. His smile stayed even when his gaze turned to Severus, startling him. Then, James winked complicitly and the boy could not help the way the corners of his mouth lifted a little bit. However, his tiny smile did not last long, withering as James cleared his throat a moment later. Before he could even think about it, his mind was trying to come up with ulterior motives for the unexpected treat.

“So, um… You hear what that woman said earlier? On the bench?

”Severus offered a cautious nod. He thought James had failed to notice his eavesdropping, but there was no reason he should get upset about it anyway. The adults had been talking about him and the woman had actually remarked on his good behaviour. His neighbours at Spinner’s End did not usually have such kind words to say about him, so he must have done something right and James should be happy. Desperately, he latched onto that thought.

“Great, so– No, Harry, you can’t use your hands to eat ice cream. With the spoon, like this.” James turned to look at him again, although always keeping an eye on his son. “Well, I was thinking… Perhaps you’d like to play with lads your age? You know you don’t need to stay with Harry all the time.”

“You… don’t want me to play with him?”

He bit his lip right away, cursing how pathetic he sounded. It was not as if he could not understand James’s feelings, but he had been living with them for a while and thought he had learnt what they approved of and what they did not. He had tried really hard to be good so that they would not regret taking him in and he had made sure to go the extra mile at the park so James could not find an excuse to leave him at home.He had to bit his lip harder to stop it from trembling.

“What? No, no. I really like that you two get along. I imagine it can get boring, though, and you never complain, so… Uh…”

James seemed unable to find the words, so Severus cut in very quickly.

“I like playing with Harry.”

His ears were burning and he took a spoon full of ice cream to his mouth in order to avoid James’s gaze.

“And that’s… That’s brilliant,” the man assured him. “However, if you want to play with the other lads or stay in the swings or the slide while Harry’s in the sandpit, you can, you know that, right? I trust you’ll be careful even if you’re not stuck by my side.”

Severus’s eyes snapped up upon hearing the last sentence. His chest felt hot as well —it was very similar, and also vastly different, from what Lily called ‘a panic attack.’ James was looking back at him in a very strange way.

“Sev not play with me?” came Harry’s sudden interruption, accompanied by a pout and a devastated expression.

Although Severus was very grateful for the distraction, his dry mouth would never have let him answer. Luckily, James reacted fast.

“Of course he’ll play with you, right?” The older boy managed to nod when James looked at him in confirmation. “He may want to make more friends, though, because he’s a big boy and big boys like to play other games sometimes.”

Harry’s pout remained, but he was starting to look more reluctant than rejected.

“Okay, but Sev is my friend and we make castles and play tag! And play with the ‘nitch and the koffle,” he said, as deadly serious as a child his age could.

“All right,” James agreed with a chuckle, tousling his son’s hair and making his smile wider. “We’d better get moving or we’ll never be in time for dinner.”

As they walked home, with Harry swinging hands between them, Severus could not help bringing the topic back up.

“James?” The man let out a sound that let him know he was listening. Severus gathered up his courage and soldiered on. “Can’t I stay with Harry like always? I don’t… I ain’t good at making friends,” he confessed in a mumble.

In fact, he had no clue why Harry even liked him —not that he could bring himself to ask that.

James did not answer right away, but shot him a long look.

“Of course you can, it was just a suggestion. I don’t want you to stop playing with him and neither does our little terror. I just think… It could be good for you, y’know? And, anyway, you can’t get any good at making friends if you don’t make a few tries first. Besides, you’ve heard Harry, you’ve already made a friend.”

The hot feeling travelled from his chest to his throat, forming a lump that only allowed him to jerk his head up and down a couple of times. He squeezed Harry’s hand and the toddler let go of his father’s hold abruptly to ask Severus to give him a piggyback ride.

“I don’t mind,” he said to James, because the man had sounded worried for him. And, as he crouched down to calm Harry’s excited shouting, he found he really didn’t.

#Severus Snape #James Potter #Harry Potter #Harry Potter fanfiction #House Potter for Children in Need #A Hotchpotch of Feelings #HP #My fics #Prompt #100 Followers Celebration #*

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checkerflats · 4 years ago

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Haven't been on tumblr in a long time. Felt like this was a decent place to write since nobody I know really uses tumblr anymore. I wanted to talk about my journey over the last few years and tumblr feels private enough a place to do so.

I moved to Florida 3 years ago (well as of this upcoming March) and at first life was decent. I tried to acclimate myself, stay healthy, positive, supportive, etc. At some point during that first year, I became incredibly depressed, nervous, anxious, overwhelmed trying to support myself (I did have a good friend group to help me) but down the line I had convinced myself I had a plan and that it was 'my plan, I thought of it' so instead of talking to the people I cared about and loved, I continued to try to do things in my own way.

A belief is a thought you have that you like. My belief was that I was the only one who could tell me what to do. And I never told myself to shut up and listen to people; realize they're saying what they're saying because they care. I became toxically selfish. I started judging my friends and peers opinions, being an asshole, being inconsiderate to everyone around me, unwilling to talk about my issues (and if I did I sounded like a narcissistic twat), etc.

To make a long story short, I resulted to drinking to cope with my overwhelmed thoughts and feelings. This isnt an excuse. It's just what happened. It in no way makes my behavior acceptable. In fact, anyone who knows me and how I act when drinking changes my thinking patterns would attest that it's only ever made anything worse. Even days or weeks without doing so, it affects me on such a negative level that negativity is the only lense through which I view the world and its inhabitants. I become the definition of nihilistic.

This led me to losing my friends, my loved ones, my job, housing, and ultimately respect from others and respect for myself. It was devastating and I did it to myself. After July of 2019 I started to refrain from drinking and honestly believed I had become the best version of myself. I got a new apartment, job, new friends who have still supported me to this day, albeit, upon making these leisurely friends who wanted to be wild, I felt I should--I wanted to participate. It was fun for a minute, and I was sober for about a month or two..

I'd begun to drink with them every now and then, never alone or at home, never two days in a row. I thought I could be a casual drinker. However, these friends and I stopped drinking for the most part, and begun to do a lot of acid (one thing I wouldn't say is neccesarily bad or addictive, in moderation) and a LOT of xanax. I started to learn a whole new meaning of 'fucked up' and went downhill faster than Jack and Jill could even imagine, baby!

By December, a friend and I decided we'd start doing cocaine. Fuck it, right? That got bad quick. It only lasted about 2 months on and off until we realized how crazy it was and that we needed to actually save our money (and sanity) so we stopped. By this point (March/April of 2020) I'd stopped doing everything other than weed. That inevitably led me straight back to drinking. This time it was everyday again, alone, at home, you get the point. When coronavirus hit I lost my job, couldn't find another anywhere therefore couldnt afford rent, was constantly in scary situations for 2 months (drunk), and decided it was best to GTFO and high tail it back to Ohio by May of 2020.

This took me months to realize, but I had so subtly slipped back into mass depression. Being back in Ohio, around triggers and friends who'd grown apart from me, I felt helpless and alone. I began drinking all the time. When I'd wake up, all throughout my shifts at work, at 2 am once the beers I'd had after work were buzzing off.. I was having the worst thoughts and feelings possible that I won't elaborate on because, again, I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses or even manipulating the perception of whoever might read this. I did this to myself. My behavior was absolutley unacceptable. I'd been put on probation for drinking, I'd been arrested for it even once in my own bed sound asleep (lets not go into how corrupt the law enforcement is in Mansfield, OH). The point is I'd broken the law and, regardless of the circumstances, the law is the law and it comes with consequences.

By October of 2020 I'd agreed that the best case of action was to go to a treatment center for addiction. The center was more or less a joke at first until a counselor committed to actually helping us started working there in mid-November. All in all being sober long enough to get back to a focused, rational, kind state of mind has put me in a euphoric state of content more so than any materialistic or temporary feeling that a substance or whatever else could bring me. Real peace is better than fake, self-driven delusion. I got released from the center today (1/13/21).

What I'm trying to get across is that if it wasnt for those who care for me after all the shit I've put them through, if I hadn't accepted I had a problem and my plan wasnt working, I'd still be that other guy. If you give up your ideals and listen to a 'Higher Power', (a 'God', a group of people as in power in numbers, a spiritual intuition that things happen for a reason and you agree you alone can't solve issues the same way you've tried 1000 times over and failed) whatever your view on that is, if you are willing to change and accept support you will be able to find genuine serenity.

That other guy is still in there. I have to continue working my program daily and catch myself if I slip up, be prepared to tell others, make amends (unless that would make things worse) and by all means listen to their advice in order to turn 4 months of sobriety (even from weed, but this is mostly about drinking) into 4 years, and so on. If you read all this (well first off, thank you, like.. golly!) and you are someone who knows me, then I'm sure that's hard to believe because everyone who knows me has heard me say before that 'I am quitting alcohol!' when in all honestly all those same people probably knew damn well I was just trying to convince them rather than myself and even if I did want to stop, I still had a desire to do it. That's where I can finally cut ties and announce that I, personally to myself, no longer have the desire for alcohol. Today. Right now. One day at a time. I despise it. It took my ambitions and spat them in my face along with my kindness, positivity, all my goals and loved ones like they all meant nothing and I am sick and tired of enabling that feeling. The world we live in is full addiction. Eating, technology, fame, money, power, caffeine, nicotone, sugar, sex, drugs, rock and roll--you get it okay? None of those will bring anything of substantial value or genuine joy. Being selfish will bring nothing but suffering. Be kind and loving. Love is salvation.

Once more, if you read all this, you're a saint and I thank you and hope your life, if not already, becomes (and continues to be) positive, peaceful and great. Love yourself, the best and worst. Face fear head on and never give up. Always lend a hand to those who clearly need it and if they turn it away like I did so many times, all you can do is hope and pray they'll get to the point of acceptance someday. I am so grateful for the oppurtunity I had to turn my life around. I am thankful for every single person who's come and gone and the help they offered before and after I actually admitted it was neccessary. I'll try and be of service to others when and where I can. Stay safe, world.

-cone

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antihero-writings · 4 years ago

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Before It Kills You Too

(Cover art by _xstlyricax_ on Instagram!! I’ll put a link to her profile in a reblog!!)

Fandom: Lore Olympus (Webcomic)

Fic Summary:

Hera goes for a drive after a fight with Zeus, and has some time to think. Her internal monologue and memories, using Blackpink's "Kill This Love" as a prompt. ||

Anger was a fire, it burned white hot and devastated the world around it. But then it faded...This was more than anger.

Character Focus: Hera

Notes: If you haven't listened to, and/or watched the music video for Blackpink's "Kill This Love" (I’ll put a link in a reblog!), I highly recommend you do so either before or after reading, as the fic is based on the lines, and a few of the visuals of it!

The cover art is based off of the visuals of 0:59-1:12 of the music video too!

I'd really appreciate it if you could leave a comment and/or reblog!!! I'm not kidding when I say that makes my week!!

(I’ll put some more notes in a reblog!)

Chapter 1: I Owe It All to You

Hera kept glancing from the road to the speedometer, the dial sneaking steadily upwards: sixty miles an hour to seventy in seconds.

She leaned over and took a cigarette from the pack, putting it between the fingers of the hand on the steering wheel. She took out the lighter and clicked it open, lighting the end, then closed it again and set it back down in the cupholder while she breathed in.

Smoke never tasted so sweet as when she was angry with him.

Eighty, ninety.

“Good to see you again, Bunny!”

“It’s only been a few days!” She laughed, “And who’s Bunny?”

“You are!” Zeus took her hands and gave her eskimo nose kisses. “Who else?”

The golden girl smiled, big and bright—

—the kind of smile one can only give when the world itself is big and bright. When one lives in a realm of hope, where beings keep their secrets, and their promises, and no one lies, or steals, or cheats.

She breathed out, smoke billowing like her mouth was the gates to the Christian’s hell—(they say hell hath no fury right?).

Sometimes she wished she had Zeus’s power; that she could set the world on fire with a glance.

A hundred.

The world was nothing but streaks of light across her vision. Not trees, people, and buildings; not distinguishable as life or meaning, just lines of color as she flew by. Maybe things were better that way. She could dance in the in-between, reach up and grab the ribbons, twirl around with them in beautiful absurdity. Only absurdity was beautiful; truth and sanity were far too ugly.

“Bunny I—”

“Don’t ‘Bunny’ me!”

She took another long draft, letting the smoke’s medicine filling her lungs.

And out.

Breathe out, feel the negative emotions leaving your body, all the meditation gurus say.

What a load of bullshit that was.

For every soothing inhale there was always an exhale that felt like it was clawing its way out of her throat. For every sweet hello there was a bitter goodbye, full of curses at his back, in return. For every incredible high there was a unfathomable price. That was the rule to life; what goes up, must come down.

And she had risen too high, once upon a time.

The test of life had no answer, let alone a right one. Even the gods were slaves to fate, and emotion.

The tires screeched hellishly as she rounded corner.

Hera walked around the corner.

“It just—I feel like the world’s on fire when I’m with him! You know?”

The queen stopped. It was that nymph’s voice. The one who came by earlier.

“Ahh I’m so jealous! Tell me more! Tell me!”

“Well he just…I don’t know! When he kisses me the whole world just kind of…stops. You know? And when he listens…I feel like he’s actually listening.”

“Ugh, too sappy! Tell me the dirty stuff!”

“Oh stop! I’m not gonna tell you about our sex life!”

Hera rolled her eyes, beginning to walk away when—

“Well he is the king of the gods. You’re right; It’s better if I imagine.”

The queen froze.

“Eugh I don’t want you imagining me in bed with him!”

“No, I’m imagining me in bed with him!”

Hera couldn’t hear them anymore. Couldn’t see the world in front of her. She was staring at a space before her eyes only she could see; a space, a memory, where the world was wide and she and Zeus were the only beings in it.

That space was shattering piece by piece.

Her breath was shallow in her chest, her blood pumping her ears.

“Mama?” Ares’ little voice brought her back to the world. “Mama, you’re hurting me.”

She immediately let go of her son’s tiny hand. “I’m so sorry sweetheart!” She crouched down and took his hand in both of hers, this time with the most gentleness she could muster, and kissed his fingers. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah…‘m okay.” He took his hand back and rubbed it.

He looked at her apprehensively.

“…Are you okay, mama? …Are you angry?”

She whizzed passed broken stop sign, catching her reflection in the rear view mirror; her hair in tattered locks like rags about her face, eyebrows permanently furrowed, lip permanently pursued, blue eyes dim and hollow, with nothing of the brightness they once contained; only a few lingering sparks of electricity in an abandoned power plant.

‘Okay’. ‘Angry’.

Such ugly words.

“I just…” the golden girl pushed her hair behind her ear sheepishly, her eyes bright, “I feel like the world’s on fire when I’m with him…you know?”

“Can’t say I do,” Aidoneus muttered softly.

She put her gently hand on his. “Don’t worry, I know you will one day.” She grinned.

And what made it better was that she really meant that.

He tried to smile back.

“So what’s that…like?” he asked softly.

“Well…when he kisses me the world kind of …stops. It feels like there’s nothing and no one in the universe but him and me. We can talk about anything. And when I talk it feels like he actually listens. He always makes me laugh. When I’m with him…it feels like nothing else matters…”

She hated that word: okay. It was too simple, too easy; one could always throw it out as an answer. It didn’t mean, I’m doing very well, or I’m doing poorly—(though it could mean either depending on the context). Okay was just, ‘fine’, ‘alright’. Okay could mean you were doing wonderfully, having a great day, and okay could mean you would rather be dead, and either way people would smile and say good! I’m okay too!. Okay was never truly satisfied, never fully living. Just existing. ‘Okay’ was a word for ghosts; for those who are neither dead nor really alive, neither sinners nor saints. Just floating through the world, caught in between.

She was always okay…and she was never okay.

She rolled down the window, cool air rushing in to the car and scooping up all the smoke, taking it out into the night, giving it to some other lonely Goddess who needed it.

“Ugh, this again? I thought we were done with this…Just leave it for now. You’ll feel better after lunch.”

And, anger, anger was a fire that blossomed like a rose high, and bright, and scorching for a while, eating everything it saw. Then it dwindled. Sometimes it could be lit again by a passing breeze, if the embers were still fresh enough. And sometimes that relight could touch a passerby leaf or bush, and from there desecrate forests and cities. But often, even then, once it had finished blazing it would wither and die. Anger burned white hot and violent at first, but eventually it would fade, and the world would be left to deal with everything it blackened in its wake.

She sometimes had a vague image of smashing Zeus’s head in, of him clutching his big ugly skull, golden trails of blood intermixing with his violet hair, draining down his cheeks. And there she was, holding the stem of glass, half of the vase, in her hand, the rest of it in pieces all over the floor before them. Sometimes. Sometimes it felt good to take out all that anger out on innocent paintings. Sometimes she had to destroy something, before it destroyed her.

“You’re acting crazy.” He had said.

Crazy, was she?

Crazy for believing visions in her head, which were always right in the past? Crazy for being angry? For kicking him out? No.

Crazy for staying with a being like him?

Yes. If she was crazy, that was why.

If I’m crazy, well, then…

She smirked, taking a long draft, and letting it out, grey wisps filling the air around her.

Thanks, baby, I owe it all to you.

She had a faint recollection of being sane once. Before him. He always made her crazy, be it when she was first fell in love with him, or when she rose in hate for him. But there was a time, when, before all this, she was a sweet, naïve little golden girl in the forest, with her sanity in tact, who loved animals, and taking care of broken things, her innocence still put together.

He thought he knew crazy. He hadn’t even scratched the surface.

But then that impulse would fade as quickly as it came, and she was left with guilt for even thinking that way. She’d never do that. She might burn his picture, but she wouldn’t actually hurt him…would she? She hoped it would never get that far.

No. That was anger. The boiling thing rising inside her that made her want to smash, and spit in, his face, and burn paintings, that was anger. Anger rose, vehemently, but in the end it dissolved.

This was more than just anger.

This, this feeling; this dull resounding ache at the back of her consciousness like an unending death knell; this thing that bored a hole in her stomach, making her feel constantly sick; this thing that hung as a weight in her chest; this thing wrapping around her, chaining her wings; this thing that stained her eyes with sleeplessness; this thing that broke into her mind and ransacked her thoughts, tainting all those happy memories, making them seem diluted with lies, and sickening to think of, and never, ever left her house—

This was heartbreak. Eternal, infernal, heartbreak.

She was on a long stretch of road now, out where nature still bloomed and she didn’t have to look at anyone’s faces or talk to anyone. The ribbons of light still outlining the air—(was it two hundred now? She’d lost track.).

Lucky me.

Everyone always told her she was lucky. Not everyone got to be the wife of the king of the gods. Just her. She was lucky she had a husband who was powerful. Who was rich. She was lucky she had a husband who adored her. Who doted on her. Who listened to her. Who she could talk to. Who made her laugh.

Not everyone had that. Some had husbands who were poor. Who were weak. Who didn’t love them, and whom they didn’t love. Husbands who didn’t dote on them, or give them so much as a wanton kiss. Who fixed a permanent scowl on their faces. Who they couldn’t talk to. Husbands who lied to them, and cheated on them.

She was lucky she didn’t have that.

Not everyone got to be queen.

Lucky her. So lucky he chose her. So lucky she got the crown. No one else.

No one but her.

So lucky she had that handsome face to wake up to every day.

(Every damn day)

So lucky could talk to him every day. So lucky could kiss him, and hug him, and make love to him.

(Sometimes she couldn’t even look at him.)

So lucky she had Zeus. That goofy, dumb, brave, arrogant king as her better half. So lucky she had a husband who was so sweet, and kind, and gentle, and funny, and patient, and forgiving. So lucky she didn’t have had a cheating, lying, conniving, backstabbing little weasel for a husband, who put that crown on his head, and walked into his office like he owned the world—!

And he was the one person who could say he did. Including her. Sometimes she couldn’t say a word against him.

He owned the world. Along with every fucking girl in it.

And he did fuck them.

After it all, what would he say?

We all lie, so what? Something like that.

So what.

Him; the illustrious king with his throne, and his lightning. Her; a jealous queen with a stolen crown.

The only one to blame was herself.

“I just feel like everyone’s lying, everyone’s—!” the golden girl cried, her hands over her eyes.

Someone took her arm, someone whose grasp was gentle.

He put his finger on her chin, tipping her gaze up to him.

“I’d never lie to you.” Zeus said, giving a gentle smile.

And what made it better was he meant it.

She returned the smile, placing her hand over his. “Nor I to you.”

That naïve little ray of sunlight darkened by his moon.

We’ve both lied, so what? That would surely be his excuse.

“You know what?! Why don’t we talk about you for a change?”

He’d said he was sorry before. He’d promised to be better.

And she believed him, then.

He’d spent enough time telling the truth that she believed he meant it when he apologized. When he made promises. When he spoke to her, she thought he meant the things he said.

I cheated on you, I’m sorry.

I lied to you, I’m sorry.

Now she questioned everything he had ever said. His apologies, his promises, his compliments, his kisses. Were those words so long ago just another lie? His promise to never lie to her, was that just the first lie of a thousand? As numerous as the hours they spent together. Did he ever intend to keep his words back then?

That was the unfortunate thing about lies; they could reside in even the most sincere of promises.

I’m sorry.

(I’m not sorry.)

Long ago she’d wanted him to apologize. She’d been more than desperate to hear those words falling from his lips.

Now she knew they meant nothing. They could, and usually would, be just another lie. And, even if he meant them, they wouldn’t fix this aching hole he’d left in her chest.

She remembered herself at her wedding; them, the picture of a perfect, royal couple, his violet a compliment to her gold. Both of them practically shimmering, wearing traditional wedding attire—(though impossibly embellished and adorned)—and those goofy, light-filled smiles. The whole pantheon applauding, smiling, wiping away tears at their back.

In other countries, at weddings, they said they’d be together in sickness and health, till death did them part.

Did this count as sickness? As death?

Didn’t he break that promise? Did her promises matter after he broke his? Was her faith and faithfulness worth nothing anymore?

She now imagined herself in a black dress, standing at the back of that ceremony with a bow, and an arrow made of adamant, laced with the venom from a certain many headed monster, its gleam reflected in darkened gaze. She breathed out as they spoke, and loosed that arrow, shooting that girl in the back. Olympus shouted in vain, as she watched all that gold flow out of her past self, those blue eyes fade to a cool grey, keeping her from making the biggest mistake of her life. And she’d look at Zeus’ horrified face and think

I’m sorry.

(I’m not sorry.)

That was surely better than this. Better than dying slowly, the blue in her eyes dimming day by day into lifeless grey still animated somehow, better than that gold leaking out of her with each forsaken sunrise she woke up next to him.

Would he be happy then? Without her? He could fuck around with whoever he wanted.

Would she be happier, dead, without all this?

There was no way she could have known, back then what their lives would become after a few millennia. How that god who held her hands and said he’d never lie to her, who hugged her and kissed her, and seemed so in love, could become dissatisfied. That lust would overtake him; he’d keep wanting more and more, gorging himself on it. She had no way of knowing that she wouldn’t be enough one day.

She was young, and innocent then, and didn’t know better.

She couldn’t forgive herself for that.

Something flashed gold in the headlights before her, and for a second her mind manifested before her; she saw that golden girl still, her own hair draining down the street like liquid, that white wedding attire—old, ragged, covered in burns—her own naïve eyes, still full of light and life, staring up at her, terror overtaking their innocent frames. And her own eyes boiled.

The sound of breaking glass was like a cooling rain upon a fire that had been left raging too long.

******

Zeus was doing important business work. Focus was imperative.

Someone knocked on the door. “Your majesty.”

He fumbled with the spinner he was playing with, dropping it on the floor, sitting upright. He folded his hands on the desk, clearing his throat, trying to look professional.

“Yes? If it’s Hermes wanting to install racing tracks in the sky again—”

“Uh, n-no,” the messenger poked her head in the door, looking nervous, “It’s… about your wife.”

He blinked, then sighed, leaning back in his chair. “…What’s does she want this time?”

“Um…” she swallowed, avoiding his gaze, “S-She’s been in a car accident.”

*****

Notes cont.: Do you guys have any ideas for what song I could use for Zeus for the next chapter? (I want the next chapter to be framed like this one--based around a song, but for him, and from his perspective.) Let's see...In the simplest terms, I'm looking for a song about someone who knows they've made mistakes and/or hurt someone, and wants to do better. It doesn't have to be kpop, it can be anything XD (Though to be honest I'd prefer if it wasn't American pop...)

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aboveallarescuer · 5 years ago

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GRRM interviews about (or mentioning) Dany - Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 1998

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

December 1998

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

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

July 1999

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

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

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

November 1999

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

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

September 2000

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

November 2000

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

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

December 2000

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

GRRM: Guilty as charged.

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

I wanted to stand much of that on its head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You do tend to be very brutal to your characters.

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

June 2001

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

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

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

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

February 2002

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

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

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

Not yet.

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

Dany is not sure what to believe.

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

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

March 2002

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

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

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

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

April 2002

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

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

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

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

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

December 2003

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

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

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

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

Shaw: Are all the Targaryans immune to fire?

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

February 2004

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

May 2005

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

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

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

The following will show up in ADwD:

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

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

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

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

This is no hoax.

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

George said it is done.

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

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

AFFC will be the size of AGoT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 2005

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

November 2005

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

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

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

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

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

Q: 5-year gap?

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

(Petyr is just Peter, for example.)

Some he did say during the course of the evening:

Cersei = Sir-say

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

Sansa = Sahn-sa

Tyrion = Tear-ion

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

Daenerys = Dane-err-is

TARGARYEN KINGS

SUBMITTED BY: AMOKA

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

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

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

Here's the lineup:

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

January 2006

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

February 2006

NAERYS TARGARYEN

SUBMITTED BY: AMOKA

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

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

July 2006

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

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

SPOILER: Possible for ADWD

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

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

February 2007

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

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

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

May 2007

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

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

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

August 2007

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

April 2008

BERBERS AND DANY

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

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

July 2008

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

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

April 2010

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

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

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

February 2011

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

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

July 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 2012

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

June 2012

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

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

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

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

October 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 2013

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

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

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

November 2013

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

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

March 2014

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

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

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

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

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

June 2014

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

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

Q: What is your favorite line in ASOIAF?

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

November 2014

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

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

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

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

May 2015

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

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

June 2015

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

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

May 2016

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

Reactions after the episode

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

d. Others loved Dany on Drogon.

December 2016

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

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

July 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 2017

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

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

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

August 2018

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

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

November 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 2019

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

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

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

#daenerys targaryen #resources #grrm #valyrianscrolls

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Lupin Part 2: What to Expect

https://ift.tt/2MkPGVl

This piece contains spoilers for Netflix’s Lupin.

Netflix’s compelling French crime comedy-drama Lupin ended Part 1 on a hell of a cliffhanger. Yes, there’s Assane Diop’s (Omar Sy) son Raoul (Etan Simon) getting snatched by Pellegrini’s cleaner Leonard (Adama Niane) in the Maurice Leblanc-obsessed town of Étretat, though honestly that had been telegraphed throughout “Chapter 5.” The real stunner is when Officer Guedira (Soufiane Guerrab), perhaps the only person whose Lupin fandom rivals Assane’s, tracks down the gentleman thief and addresses him as, “Arsène Lupin?”

And that’s where Part 1 ends, with two adversaries—who might well become allies—finally meeting on the beach while fellow fans in top hats, capes, and monocles venture out to the Hollow Needle, not knowing the potential tragedy that could unfold in Étretat. Where can Lupin go from here?

Thankfully, Netflix has already confirmed that Part 2 will premiere later in 2021. While we wait for an exact release date, we’re going back over the dangling plot threads and pondering Leblanc-related clues to make our predictions for where the second season could go.

The Hollow Needle

The most obvious lead would appear to be The Hollow Needle, Leblanc’s 1909 novel set at Étretat; Assane and Claire (because of course he made her read the book) challenge each other with quotes from it in “Chapter 5”:

Downstream from Étretat, the maidens’ room Under the Fréfossé fortress, the hollow needle

The Normandy rock formation is said to hide the secret treasures of the kings of France, from precious stones to queens’ dowries. In The Hollow Needle, Lupin’s main rival is Isidore Beautrelet, boy detective, who catches on to the mystery of the hollow rocks—though he is aided by a Great Detective known (for copyright reasons) as Holmlock Shears. In Lupin, Guediera would seem to embody a mashup of the two: He’s got Sherlock Holmes’ instincts for deduction, yet he’s treated by the other French police as juvenile for basing all of his investigative theories on the Lupin books. Having gotten no support from his fellow officers, and now confronted with the man who embodies his favorite literary character, Guedira will likely be tempted to help Assane rather than arrest him.

Their most pressing priority will be safely rescuing Raoul from Leonard, or possibly Hubert Pellegrini (Hervé Pierre), if he gets him back to Paris before Assane and the others catch up to him. In the book, the Hollow Needle eventually houses Lupin’s most valuable possessions, as revealed by Assane and Claire teasing each other by reciting the treasure map:

Two feet on the letters in stone Measure 19 fathoms Turn the cross Climb onto the 44th step Then, on the 357th… You will find Arsène Lupin’s treasure

Yet this takes on an ominous glow when you consider that Raoul would be considered Assane’s treasure, and that Leonard has proven himself to be a vicious assassin. After all, Assane humiliated him twice in “Chapter 5,” between locking him on the train and framing him as Paul Sernine to the French police. Furthermore, when “Chapter 1” flashed back to the day that Babakar (Fargass Assandé) allegedly killed himself, a young Assane saw Leonard—who clearly made eye contact and smiled—before he got the news that his father had hanged himself in his cell. Which is to say, Leonard has been part of the Pellegrinis’ cover-up from the beginning, and will stop at nothing to tie up loose ends. I would not be surprised if he were tempted to deviate from the Pellegrinis’ plan to personally hurt Assane through Raoul.

Assane and Clair

On a personal level, there’s unfinished business—in the present and the past—between Claire (Ludivine Sagnier) and Assane. While Claire has spent all of Part 1 suspicious of Assane’s business, preferring not to know how he’s getting his alimony, that lack of knowledge led to Raoul’s abduction. She didn’t have enough time in “Chapter 5” to process the confirmation, via Leonard’s presence, that Assane has gotten mixed back up with the Pellegrinis. In fact, when he does reveal that it’s related to Babakar’s death, Claire challenges him that he has never spoken about his father in 25 years, so she actually knows the least. Hopefully Assane will finally let her in on what happened to Babakar and the justice he’s been trying to enact.

From Lupin III to Inspector Gadget: Examining the Heirs of Arsène Lupin

By Natalie Zutter

Netflix’s Lupin: Is Arsène Lupin Real?

By Natalie Zutter

Of course, I can’t help but imagine that even if Claire is sympathetic to his vendetta, she will be less so when she inevitably finds out that he and Juliet were carrying on an affair 14 years ago. Even though Assane ended things before Claire told him she was pregnant with Raoul, the fact that his revenge scheme has him interacting with Juliet will probably tank any trust he regains with Claire.

With Lupin having teased that Juliet and Assane mean more to each other than just adolescent flirtation, but not revealing to what extent, it seems likely that they’ll move toward a romance as adults. Whether that’s Juliet turning on her abusive father and imprisoned mother, or Assane seducing her as a way to infiltrate the family home once more, we’re bound to see a lot more of Juliet in Part 2.

As for the elder Pellegrinis? At this point, I don’t expect Anne Pellegrini (Nicole Garcia) to redeem herself; the reveal that she paid for Assane’s schooling seems to be the extent of her apology for what her family did to Babakar and to him. But a showdown between Assane and Hubert Pellegrini seems all but guaranteed. Part 1 had Assane interrogating members of Pellegrini’s inner circle and trying to gather incriminating information, only to be foiled by the rich man’s standing and connections each time. But Assane has become a gentleman in his own right—moreso than Pellegrini, frankly—and will likely find a devastating way to confront him face-to-face.

Louis Valmerás

The Hollow Needle sees Lupin take on yet another alter ego, Louis Valmerás, and actually “go straight” and retire from a life of crime with his new wife, Raymonde de Saint-Veran, who knows nothing of his past. The final showdown with Beautrelet and Holmes has a shocked Raymonde learning the truth about her husband’s past and ultimately taking a bullet for him; a grieving Lupin manages to escape, alone.

Depending how closely Lupin Part 2 decides to draw from this tragic Lupin installment, things could go very poorly for Assane Diop. Pellegrini has proven that he has no scruples about disposing of people in his way, like poor disgraced journalist Fabienne Beriot (Anne Benoit) after her brief return to glory. I’d like to think that Lupin is not the kind of series that would kill off a child, but we have to consider the source material.

That said, despite all of the tense stakes that Part 1 established, let us not forget that Netflix’s Lupin is a comedy-drama. I don’t doubt that there will be personal fallout from Lupin’s actions, but I trust that we will get more intricate heists and clever disguises in order for the gentleman thief to evade his enemies once more.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

How do you think Lupin Part 2 will end?

Lupin is streaming now on Netflix.

The post Lupin Part 2: What to Expect appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2MiMQ30

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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squidproquoclarice · 5 years ago

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So I saw your answer discussing Dutch thinking Abigail was trying to steal John, and some of what he says (I can't remember specifics sorry) added to that make me think that Dutch might actually be part of the reason John is refused to admit paternity? In a way, he's always seeking Dutchs approval and Dutch is always noticably silent compared to Arthur and Hosea when it comes to stepping up as Jack's father, in a way that could push John to continue refusing because silence could be seen (1/2)

(2/2) agreement/approval and John seems to seek Dutchs approval in a way for a lot of the game up until Shady Belle/Saint Denis when Dutch leaves him in the bank. Dutchs silence and even what seems like encouragement at times could be part of the reason that John refuses to take responsibility until after Dutch leaves him and he begins to see Dutch for who he is during chapter 6 which in a way might be what really led up to Dutch leaving him. That or I'm reading way to far into this. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I agree mostly, and disagree on one point? John’s less anxiously seeking and craving Dutch’s approval like Arthur is. He’ll challenge Dutch long before Arthur will, and the fact that he was willing to leave for a year (even if he drifted back in the end) means that his sense of self and worth is far less rooted in Dutch’s approval and attention. For Arthur and his devastated sense of intrinsic self-worth, Dutch’s affirmation is essential. For John, who knows himself and has a confidence Arthur lacks, it’s nice, but not a necessity. At the end of the day, John is a grown man. He makes a choice to not only not support Abigail being left in a very hard situation, but to slut-shame her and insist she’s lying to him to try to trap him. He bears the ultimate responsibility for that. I do think Dutch contributed to it, though. His silence on the matter of Jack is very eloquent, compared to Hosea and Arthur. Given he’s the leader of things, he very much could have put his foot down and insisted that if John wanted to stay (either when Abigail was pregnant, or when John returned after his absence), he was going to do right by Abigail and this child he had fathered. It probably would have done some good, even, given that John and Abigail’s arguments were causing stress in the group, and had clearly thrown both Hosea and Arthur, two men Dutch very much depends upon, for a loop. John stepping up would have repaired that rather than letting it become a years-long lasting damage. The fact he didn’t means that it served Dutch’s purposes to have John and Arthur coldly at odds rather than united. It served his purposes to not risk John and Abigail finding something together that became more important to them than the gang. And knowing Dutch, I can imagine subtle encouragement has been there. John probably was immature and scared and selfish and contrary enough to not need any encouragement to not step up, but I do think it happened. I know it’s a difficult situation you’re in. But Abigail is...well, you and I both know who she is. What she was. Are you absolutely sure that baby’s yours? I know, I know, she says it. But a desperate woman’s got to find a safe harbor. I just don’t want you to be made a fool, son. It’s happened to smarter men than you and me both.

#john marston #dutch van der linde #rdr2 #thank you for coming to my red talk #Anonymous

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ratac1d · 4 years ago

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AFK Arena Tips, Tricks, and Heroes for the Abyssal Expedition

The Abyssal campaign was pretty fun. It was an entirely different occasion, with various procedures, groups, and managers. There was a great deal to take in, and every little thing about it was new to the point that not many had a smart thought of how to beat it until two or three days.

Luckily, that was the first. Like they evidently state about nurturing, it's just terrifying the first run through on the grounds that you don't have the foggiest idea what you're doing. Thus, we have the experience, and luckily, we'll have a genuine responsibility from all players (on the off chance that you do the precious stone enlistment thing), so this time it will be incredible.

Anyway, for what reason am I making this post? All things considered, there's a great deal of ground to cover in this occasion. It's a misuse of endurance to utilize your full LB meta group in a powerless spot, and luckily, you don't need to! Here are a few hints, stunts, and saints I'd recommend executing into your techniques:

1. Use as hardly any saints as conceivable in a battle.

In deep, there's an endurance meter for each saint. They start off with 60 energy and gain 4 consistently. Most fights require 12 energy from each legend required to begin, and you get some back by beating the stage with certain conditions. One star on the off chance that you beat it, a star if no one kicks the bucket in the fight, and a star on the off chance that you win inside 30 seconds of the beginning. Each star you acquire gives both of you energy back, which means you can net a deficiency of just six energy.

Be that as it may, here's an interesting point: you could utilize four legends in a fight to get three stars on a fight, or utilize one saint to two-star it (in the event that you win a performance, the base is two stars since you'd lose on the off chance that somebody kicked the bucket). Without a doubt, the four saints lose less energy independently, however you'll generally lose 24 energy, rather than losing 8 by soloing it. Particularly if it's a saint you wouldn't regularly use in a group comp in any case, it's very justified, despite any trouble to solo it at whatever point you can. (Except if it requires 3 legends to one star when you realize you can three-star with five, at that point it's a deficiency of 30 energy in any case.)

2. (modified) Have a solid list from the beginning.

A significant piece of this occasion is the honored embodiment. It tends to be utilized to purchase relics, which buff legends in various branches. (More on branches in another tip.) Blessed quintessence is obtained from taking out towns, towns, and urban communities. Notwithstanding, the underlying buffs from the tree (regarding HP, atk, def) presumably won't sufficiently be to quickly begin running your Elite+ and Legendary saints.

Accordingly, my recommendation is utilize your acceptable saints at a high rising except if A, they as of now work at lower climbs (Mehira for instance) or B, they're a manager executioner (like Cecilia or Saurus). At that point, when the branches begin arriving at lv 2 or 3 when the detail buffs make climbs practically inconsequential, you can begin turning out with the E+ young men.

Fundamentally, attempt to plan what saints you put in your list so you can limit energy use and augment results (grimy deeds done bargain basement, I needed to). You just get 10-25 saints relying upon your position, so pick shrewdly!

3. Construct your branches, particularly the ones you use.

Much the same as in the ordinary game, the Abyssal campaign has a tree, with branches that buff the saints in them. In contrast to the customary game, be that as it may, each branch is great (if you don't mind buff mage branch). You won't turn out badly in building any of them, so attempt to organize the branch you have numerous legends in, and on the off chance that you have any saints in it, buff the officer branch too (likely the best one of the five). In any case, you'll most likely need to overhaul each branch for journeys, and it's simply a smart thought to do that in any case. That is to say, it isn't so costly, so what do you need to lose?

4. Facilitate with the civilian army and construct common trust.

This occasion is certainly not an independent occasion. You'll presumably be separated from everyone else for the main day or two, however attempt to associate with different players as fast as could be expected under the circumstances. Since players that are associated can assault anyplace associated with a common like, your gathering will advance route quicker than if there were 70 lines made a beeline for the last chief.

On a comparative note, you'll likely need to collaborate with another person to take out your first towns and urban communities since they're so troublesome. Simply know that the individual who murders the last adversary involves the region that was all in all battled for, so make certain to inquire as to whether they need it before you kill it after another gathering was at that point attempting to take it. That is simply mean. Have the activity to help other people before they help you, it will pay off over the long haul since you'll have the option to rapidly trust everyone around you. I realize that seems like some sort of kindergarten educator stuff to state (no offense to any kindergarten instructors out there), however it's actual, it caused me out so much the last time and made the occasion more fun.

So those were the principle tips and deceives I needed to discuss, presently for some saints I utilized that were great:

Orthros Icon

1. Orthros–obviously they're revamping the tank branch (presumably in light of the number of individuals griped about Orthros), however I figured that on the off chance that you can't beat em, join em! He was truly tanky last time; even at L+, he was killing it! Likely in light of the fact that risings don't make a difference that much yet whatever.

Fundamentally, Orthros has an aloof capacity where he gets more max HP until he's at 150% of his base, at that point mends 3% of his HP consistently. That doesn't seem as though a great deal, yet since he has 1.5 occasions his maximum HP, it's more similar to 4.5% of his HP every second. The tank branch at that point expanded HP regen by half, which means he was mending practically 7% of his HP every second. That, alongside his ult, which let him recuperate even in halted time, made him practically unkillable except if you had silly blasted harm or Ferael/Oden. Talking about…

Oden Icon

2. Oden–another instance of "in the event that you can't beat em, join em." When he was on the foe side, he truly screwed with your group. He moves legends into one another, takes their energy, and does gigantic AoE harm, particularly when he gets his eyes opened.

Clearly, that implies you can gain by it by utilizing him in your group! Consolidate him with another AoE unit (like perhaps Skriath or… no not going to make reference to him), and you have a wombo combo, dynamic couple, um… torment train, energy pick up, Bruce Wayne. (what am I sayn'?)

Warek Ascended

3. Warek–so you think about mission Warek? Better believe it, he kinda sucks to battle against, and you know why. However, imagine a scenario where I revealed to you that he could do that for you.

Warek on your side with overhauled may is a beast. Envision him in the mission, yet about twice as great and can solo an adversary group with no issue (so fundamentally envision him twice as great, he could as of now devastate me). This Madlad can be utilized at any climb in view of the base detail buff, yet clearly, he will improve a SI and stuff. That is to say, you're presumably previously utilizing him for supervisor battles, you should mess around with him somewhere else.

Estrilda Ascended

4. Estrilda–she's likely the legend that is polished the third-most by the powerful tree. Where Warek was a unit, Estrilda is a super unit, with all the AoE she bargains and the existence siphon she gains from the tree. Once more, you're presumably utilizing her as of now, yet she can without much of a stretch performance battles on the off chance that you need to rapidly move to certain urban communities or a chief.

Rigby Icon

5. Rigby–(Quick aside here, I will let you folks realize that Rigby is my #1 legend in the game. I use him a great deal, so I know a ton about what he can do.) If saints like Warek and Estrilda picked up great buffs from the might branch, Rigby turns into a beast with it. Envision a saint with 90% harm decrease, more than 150 scurry, and huge loads of life siphon when he's at low HP. As far as I might be concerned, that is the meaning of OP, and you'll certainly observe it on the off chance that you use him. He can likewise harm supervisors, not exactly Saurus level yet at the same time strong generally speaking.

That is pretty much all I need to state on this. I will likely refresh this post as I experience the occasion for the subsequent time, regardless of whether to add more tips and deceives or to share some offbeat legends that my gathering has had accomplishment with. I trust this is a decent first guide, I plan on adding more here!

Read more about Abyssal Expedition here.

#abyssal #expedition #afk #arena

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settledthingsstrange · 4 years ago

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Three of my children and myself were first exposed to a known COVID-19 case on the five-year anniversary of my husband’s death but did not hear about the exposure for over a week. I looked to my six children and wondered if any or all of them would be the next to lie with their Daddy and brother, or if I would be the one to leave them totally orphaned. Now that the oldest was seventeen and the youngest seven we had finally settled into some kind of regularity, though I still struggled daily with a deep darkness. As I watched the pandemic and lockdown play out, observing it from a place of intimacy with death and mourning. Very often I wondered if that was the case for our leaders and decision makers. It appeared to me death was being approached officially as an anomaly instead of a certainty, and disease we being treated like a strange exception instead of the rule. We ticked off each COVID-19 death one by one through mass media in a way never done with any other cause of death before. Of course, this seemed justified at the time because, in a pandemic, each death is another piece of the puzzle, which is helping us to understand the disease, and, to be fair, in the early days we had no idea what it might do. But I began to worry about our nation’s response to the disease about the time our own self-imposed family quarantine was over. The lockdowns were in full swing and no exit strategies were even allowed to be spoken of without the accusation that anyone considering reopening to a more normal sort of life simply did not care about humanity. It seemed that so many were willing to make a bargain with whoever might be offering that they would do anything to save others from sickness and death. While this was certainly generous and completely understandable (and I am sure I too would have been tempted by it before I had lost my husband and child), it caused me alarm now that I was already in mourning. I could see that these well-meaning, deeply loving people simply could not imagine life without their dear ones and so they were ready to make any sacrifices that were asked of them to keep death at bay. ... The pandemic has demanded that we siphon all our lives through the internet. The corporal works of mercy seem to have been made incorporeal, better to be filtered through big tech. Someone is making a lot of money when we funnel all our relationships, commerce, education, recreation and even worship through a third party. This new disembodied way of living is an effort to be "safe," but it seems Christ’s example suggests we must become more embodied, not less. We already know that however safe living on the internet might make us from some kinds of physical threats, the new cancel culture and persistent internet aggression has opened up whole new ways to devastate and be devastated. In avoiding the pain of my own life, I find the lure of being dis-incarnated very seductive. The internet—that glittering indulgence of the eyes—is an infinite stream of the finite, wherein you can pretend to lose your loss, and your body with its limitations. There, I can temporarily avoid some of the pain of my present life. But, God Himself, pure spirit, became a real man with a real body. It is a continuing argument I have with Him that He took the bodies of my dear love and child from me at the same time that He insists on the Incarnation of Himself. My argument with God goes something like this: You say it is so important to be incarnated, to become a human with a body and yet you expect me to be satisfied with this husband and son of mine whose living bodies are gone from me? You expect me to commune with them as far away spirits while you lived as a man. Which is it, God? Is it good to be incarnated or not? To which I wonder if God’s response to my objections might be something like: your dissatisfaction, my dear, is exactly My point. This is not the end. We await the Resurrection of the body. St. Paul says that Christ died and rose again to set us free from our fear of death which is a kind of slavery that has held us in bondage from the beginning (Hebrews 2:15). How do we understand the lives of the martyrs in a pandemic? "They endured mocking and flogging, chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawn in two, put to death by sword. They went around…destitute, oppressed and mistreated," says St Paul. But he concludes, "The world was not worthy of them" (Hebrews 11:37). Pandemic was actually very common throughout history and, through those times, the saints went right on fulfilling Christ’s commands to feed and clothe, care for, and love others. It’s very possible some disease was actually spread through the charitable acts of the saints, if it was God’s will. It’s not that those saints were too uneducated to know that this could happen, it’s that they made a conscious choice to care for others in a physical way in spite of the risks to themselves and even the risks to those they cared for. Why did they do this? Because the people around them who asked for their embodied love needed that embodied love more than they needed long lives free of suffering. Even though humans make choices that are real, no sickness or death happens without God’s permission or involvement. Or at least Christians used to believe this. Forcible, physical segregation and perpetual isolation is usually used as punishment. Are we so sure that the negative outcomes of these safety measures won’t outweigh the positive?

Katherine Baker, “A Pandemic Observed: What mourning my husband and son taught me about the fear of death.”

Read the rest here.

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cruelangelstheses · 5 years ago

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safe and sound

fandom: avatar: the last airbender rating: T characters: sokka/zuko, jet words: 5.8k additional tags: alternate universe (no bending), first meeting, swordfighting, sharing a bed, light angst with a happy ending, jetko that turns into zukka description: zuko has been searching for a home for a long time. a/n: sup i posted this a While back as an ao3 link for @zukka-week 2018, day 1: swords, but i’m reposting my fics as tumblr posts. this setting is technically an au but basically it’s just like the avatar universe without the four nations/elements, bending, or spirits, and thus the characters’ backstories are somewhat different, and i imagine the city as being pretty much ba sing se

read it on ao3

—

Zuko is not above stealing. He’ll steal an apple or two from a distracted merchant. He’ll steal money from people that he knows have more than enough. He once stole some bandages and medicine after being injured in a fight—the shopkeeper had seen how little money he had and turned him away, and he thought it ridiculous to have to pay to stay alive. No, Zuko does not necessarily object to stealing on principle, not if it’s for survival, not if it won’t hurt the person being stolen from. But something about Jet’s suggestion—to go out on a “spree of liberation,” as he so eloquently (and suspiciously) called it—makes Zuko’s skin crawl.

Jet has “liberated” a lot of things in his life, but Zuko has never actually seen him do it. He’s never really allowed himself to think about it too deeply, nor has he ever asked; it’s one of those things that he’s been content to leave as a mystery. Now, though, he’s about to find out what exactly happens on one of Jet’s “expeditions,” how he gets those expensive-looking weapons and perfectly cured meats.

The night has just begun, the sun having set less than an hour ago, the sky fading from purple to dark blue to black as Zuko quietly closes the door to Jet’s apartment and steps out onto the dimly-lit street. Jet is standing a few paces to the left with his arms folded pensively, and though they both have their faces covered up to the eyes, Zuko can still see the wheels turning as Jet seems to run through an invisible list of potential victims. Finally, he turns to Zuko and beckons with one hand to follow him.

Zuko and Jet have been dating for almost a month now, but the only people who know about it are Jet’s friends. They met at a shitty tavern near the edge of the city, Zuko alone and Jet with those same friends. As it turned out, they were all in similar situations: they were all kids without families, just trying to get by. They understood each other, and that was something precious, something Zuko couldn’t pass up, even against his better judgment.

Zuko has been alone for a few years now, ever since his family died in a devastating explosion. Zuko was the only one to survive, but not without a permanent reminder on his face. He’s been living on the streets ever since then, working odd jobs and sleeping outside or in cheap little inns. Now, of course, he sleeps in Jet’s apartment, which isn’t fancy by any means but serves as the nicest place Zuko has lived in since his family’s demise.

Jet leads him down various side streets into one of the poorer, darker, more run-down areas of the city, the sort of area where one of the biggest concerns is being caught in the wrong place after dark. It’s an area Zuko has spent quite a bit of time in these past few years. In fact, it was while he was living in one of these areas that he decided to buy his dual swords (any weapons that his family had had were lost in the explosion). As Jet slows down and starts to more closely observe the area, slinking against buildings and hiding in dark spots, Zuko’s stomach drops.

“What do you expect to find here?” he whispers, trying to mask his dread. “There won’t be very many valuables.”

“You’d be surprised,” Jet replies smoothly. “And this place isn’t very heavily guarded. You can get a lot more with a lot less risk. I usually start here and work my way up.”

Zuko opens his mouth to say something else, maybe even to try talking him out of it, but before he can actually form words, Jet’s eyes lock on a target: a young woman carrying two bags of food. Zuko thinks he sees bread in one and fruit in the other—basic necessities. Her clothes are plain, and she looks tired from a long day. She is exactly the type of person Zuko would make sure not to steal from.

Reluctantly, Zuko follows Jet’s lead as the woman turns down a lonely alley with few lights and no other people around. Jet darts around the corner after her and uses the end of one of his hook swords to catch her foot and trip her, a trick Zuko has seen him use a few times. The woman falls to the ground, the bags’ contents spilling everywhere. Accompanying the food are a few articles of clothing; it looks as though she just finished buying these things from a nearby market.

The woman gasps and glances up at them, terrified. She seems like she wants to say something, anything, but she’s frozen in fear. Jet swipes one of the pieces of clothing and briefly examines it, as if to determine whether or not it would fit him or any of his friends. Then he turns to Zuko, his eyes narrowed with expectation, silently saying, You gonna help me or what?

At that, Zuko breaks out of his horrified trance—he’s been watching Jet in shock, trying to process everything; he hasn’t even unsheathed his swords. Pulling down his mouth covering, he blurts, “Jet, what the hell?”

Jet stops what he’s doing and tosses the clothing to the ground. Without looking at the woman, he points one of his hook swords at her threateningly, a wordless demand for her to stay put. “Thought you said you didn’t have a problem with stealing,” he hisses to Zuko.

“I do if it’s from people who are just as poor as we are,” Zuko snaps, “if not poorer!”

“Zuko, you of all people should know that it’s every man for himself,” Jet snaps back. He doesn’t waste any time; he’s going straight for the jugular. “You and I, we’re outcasts, remember? We don’t have any allies. We don’t have any family. We had to do everything we could to stay alive. And we still do. You know that.”

Zuko scowls at him and clenches his fists, making his anger clear. Jet’s right, and he’s persuasive, and they both know that Zuko is far from a saint, but none of that stops the feeling in his gut that this is wrong, that he’ll beat himself up for it years down the road if he doesn’t say something now.

“No,” he says firmly, narrowing his eyes at Jet, feeling something akin to disgust rise in his chest, in his throat. “Look at this woman. She can’t be much better off than we are. This isn’t harmless petty theft. You’re practically mugging her. You’re not just doing what you need to do to stay alive; you’re hurting people. People who don’t deserve it—people who didn’t do anything wrong.”

Jet stares back at Zuko, long and hard, his expression unreadable. Then he sighs and lowers his hook sword. To the woman, who is still trembling on the ground, he says, “Grab your things and get out of here. Before I change my mind.”

The woman scrambles to her feet, hastily grabbing the bags and stuffing her goods back into them haphazardly. Within ten seconds, she’s already rounded the corner, running home as fast as her legs can carry her. Zuko silently hopes that nobody else decides to prey on her tonight.

Once the woman is out of sight, Zuko turns to Jet and says, his voice a bit softer now, “Jet, you know I don’t care if you steal from merchants, from the wealthy, from people who have more than enough food and all the money in the world. But I want you to promise me you won’t do something like that again.” Deep down, he knows he won’t be able to stop Jet from continuing to do it behind his back, but he wants something.

After a long pause, Jet says, “Okay. I promise.” It’s quiet but firm.

Zuko, half-expecting Jet to refuse, doesn’t really know what to say, nor does he know what their new plan for “liberation” is.

As if sensing Zuko’s confusion, Jet answers the unspoken question. “You know what?” he says, actually sounding somewhat nonchalant. “Let’s call it a night, okay? We can go all-out some other time. The full moon’s out anyway—too much light.” He raises an eyebrow. “That cool with you?”

Pleasantly surprised, Zuko just nods and says, “Uh, yeah, okay. Lead the way.”

The quick walk back to Jet’s apartment is carefree and comfortable, almost as if nothing happened between them. On the one hand, Zuko enjoys it, feeling like everything has returned to normal. But he can’t shake the tiny, nagging voice in his head that tells him to be on his guard.

They fall right back into their regular evening routine as soon as they return to the apartment: share the same bed (both shirtless), kiss a little (or a lot), fall asleep—Jet with one arm draped around Zuko’s body. In the comfort and safety of the bedroom, the world of crime and violence and immorality feels so far away, like a distant nightmare, like a memory from long ago.

The voice in the back of his mind tells him not to believe it. So when he wakes up in the middle of the night and finds himself alone in the bed, Zuko knows exactly where Jet has gone.

He doesn’t know how late it is or how long Jet’s been out. All he knows is that it’s still dark out (despite the moonlight) and that Jet and his hook swords have mysteriously disappeared. A part of him hopes that it’s not what it looks like, that he’s wrong, that Jet’s not doing anything behind his back. It’s just that, though: a feeble hope, based only on what he wishes were the case, not on what he knows is the truth.

Zuko wastes no time—who knows how many people Jet’s already harassed and mugged? He pulls a shirt over his head and slings his swords’ sheath across his shoulder. Then he heads out into the night, running down the same side streets Jet showed him earlier, searching for any sign of life. He investigates every shadow cast, every movement glimpsed out of the corner of his eye. Just when he starts to think that maybe he was wrong, that maybe Jet isn’t out stealing from the poor, he hears a voice in the distance, yelping, “H-hey!” It’s followed by the clatter of metal hitting the ground.

Zuko bolts toward the direction of the sound. Turning a corner at the end of the street into a dark alley, the first thing he notices is the oddly dark sword lying on the ground near him, a few feet away from the struggle. The next thing he notices is that, just as he suspected, the instigator is none other than Jet, his face inches from the boy he’s antagonizing. “Gimme your money,” he says, his voice low and hostile.

The boy—darker skinned, hair pulled up into a short ponytail, pretty damn attractive—holds his hands up. “Hey, hold on a minute, I don’t have any money,” he protests.

Jet shoves his knee into the guy’s stomach, and the guy gasps in pain. “You’ve got enough for that fancy sword, don’t ya?” Jet says with a slow grin. “Gotta be more somewhere.”

The boy gulps. “And what if there isn’t?”

“Well then,” Jet replies smoothly, “I’m sure that sword’ll fetch a fine price on the market by itself anyway.”

Zuko, who has yet to be noticed by either of them, unsheathes his swords, the sound making his presence known. Jet glances over at him and promptly freezes, like an animal seconds before it’s killed, only much less innocent. “Zuko—”

“Let him go,” Zuko interrupts gravely, taking a few deliberate steps forward. “I’ll fight you if I have to.”

Jet’s eyes narrow, wild with something between disappointment and anger swimming in their dark depths. “I thought you’d understand,” he says slowly, turning away from the boy and tightening his grip on his hook swords. “But I see now that I was wrong about you.”

“I could say the same to you,” Zuko retorts. “Fucking liar.”

Without much warning, Jet lunges at him, hook swords raised, and Zuko blocks them with his own dual swords, steel against steel, the clang echoing through the alley. Zuko shoves Jet back, and as he’s reaching forward to strike with one hand, Jet uses both his hook swords to grab onto the end of Zuko’s, deflecting it to the side. Zuko manages not to lose the sword and swings at him again. Jet leaps backward, but he doesn’t completely avoid the blades; Zuko can distinctly hear and feel the cutting of fabric and flesh, though not very deep.

Jet glances down at the cut on his arm and falters slightly, taking a step backward. Zuko takes advantage of the opportunity and springs on him, making a quick slash at the wrist of his right hand. Jet hisses in pain, instinctively loosening the grip on his sword, and Zuko swings at it with all his might, successfully knocking it out of Jet’s hand. The sword lands on the ground only a foot or two away from the boy Jet was harassing, who snatches it with a clever grin and points it threateningly at Jet.

Jet seems to realize now that he’s outnumbered and lowers his lone hook sword, staring daggers at Zuko. “Traitor,” he spits.

Zuko shakes his head. “I should’ve known. I should’ve known the moment I met you. In a way, I kind of feel sorry for you—the world has been so cruel to you that you think the only way you can survive is by hurting others.” He shrugs. “You’re confused like I used to be. And maybe one day you’ll learn like I had to. But until then…” He puts his swords back into their sheath—he’ll clean the bits of blood off later. “Until then, I don’t want to see you around.” He pauses to let that sink in, and then he adds, “I’ll come back to your place tomorrow to pick up my things.”

Jet scowls wordlessly; he knows he’s been beaten. He holds his hand out toward the boy, who still has Jet’s other hook sword. “Gimme that,” Jet says.

The boy turns to Zuko, as if for permission. Zuko nods at him, and he holds the sword outward. Jet swipes it out of the boy’s hands. He gives Zuko a look of betrayal, of anger, but Zuko can see the hurt that lies beneath it.

“Goodbye, Jet,” Zuko says softly, and something in his heart hurts, too. There’s a significant part of him that wishes it didn’t have to be this way. But it does. If Zuko is going to fully move on from the mistakes of his past, it does.

“Goodbye, Zuko,” Jet replies grimly. Then he turns around and runs swiftly out of the alley, seemingly unfazed as the blood from his cuts starts to run down his arm. He doesn’t look back.

The boy breathes a sigh of relief. “Wow,” he says as he processes everything that just happened. “Thanks, dude. Zuko’s your name, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Zuko says, suddenly feeling his boldness leave him as he looks this guy over more carefully. He’s probably around the same age as Zuko, but a little shorter and lankier, with deep blue eyes and a pretty face.

The boy seems to notice the way Zuko is looking at him (Zuko’s never been good at hiding his feelings), and he smirks knowingly, but not maliciously. “I’m Sokka,” he says smoothly, his eyes twinkling playfully.

“Sokka,” Zuko repeats as Sokka heads over to where his own sword has been lying on the ground. He picks it up and casually wipes the dirt off of it. As Zuko watches him, an opportunity for conversation strikes him. “Why’s your blade so dark?” he asks.

Sokka smiles proudly. “It’s made out of the rock from a meteorite that landed out in the woods recently.”

“I...wow,” Zuko says in genuine fascination, staring at the dark gray sword as Sokka returns it to its sheath.

Sokka stares at Zuko for a second or two, looking like he’s considering something. “Do you, um,” he says slowly, clearing his throat, “have a place to stay for the rest of the night?”

Zuko shrugs without saying anything. He could probably find a cheap hotel or a nice spot on the street to sleep on like he used to, but the truth is that, once again, he doesn’t have any reliable place to stay.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Sokka says firmly. “You could stay with us for the night, if you want.”

Zuko raises his eyebrow. “Who’s ‘us?’”

“My sister and our two friends and I,” Sokka replies casually. “We all share an apartment not too far from here.”

“Oh, uh,” Zuko stutters, somewhat flustered at the offer. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to impose…”

Sokka waves his hand nonchalantly. “Nah, you’ll be fine,” he says, already starting to walk away. He glances back over his shoulder, as if expecting Zuko to follow him. “Well? I’m sure you’d rather sleep in a warm bed than on the damn ground, and I doubt your boyfriend’ll let you back into his place.”

That catches Zuko completely off guard, and he rushes to catch up with Sokka. “H-hey, how did you—?”

Sokka shrugs, that teasing, knowing grin back on his face with no sign of disappearing anytime soon. “Call it a hunch,” he says. “That fight definitely felt like a lovers’ spat to me.” He doesn’t mention Zuko checking him out, but it hangs in the air between them, unspoken. Sokka knows that Zuko thinks he’s attractive, and Zuko knows that Sokka knows.

After a few moments of near-silence, with the only sound being the sound of their footprints as Sokka leads Zuko to his apartment, Zuko asks, “So, what made you decide to take a walk in the middle of the night, anyway?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Sokka replies. “I had a weird dream where food started eating people.”

Zuko snorts; he can’t help it. “Talk about revenge.”

“I know!” Sokka says, his voice going up an octave, throwing his hands up in the air. “But anyway, usually eating helps me when I wake up in the middle of the night, but obviously I wasn’t gonna do that this time. So I thought I’d take a little night walk instead.”

“If you were just taking a walk, then why’d you bring your sword with you?”

Sokka just laughs at that, short and sharp. “In case I got attacked.”

Zuko laughs a little, too, something he doesn’t do very often—he didn’t even laugh all that much when he was with Jet, and yet Sokka’s gotten him to laugh within half an hour of knowing him. That’s impressive, to say the least. “Well,” he says, “it looks like it didn’t help you out that much anyway.”

“He caught me off guard, okay?” Sokka insists, but he’s still smiling. “The guy’s stealthy. I admit it. But if I’d had my boomerang, too, he would’ve been in for it, I’m tellin’ ya.”

When they reach the apartment, Sokka lowers his voice and warns Zuko to be quiet, since everyone else is likely still asleep. Zuko can’t make out much in the darkness, but the apartment has a similar layout to Jet’s, though it doesn’t have as many rare or expensive items obtained under suspicious circumstances. Most of the things that Zuko sees are things he’d expect to see in most people’s homes—rags to clean with, some pots and pans, a few articles of clothing strewn across the floor. So far, the most remarkable possession he’s seen of theirs has been Sokka’s “space sword,” as he calls it.

“So, uh, we’ve got two beds,” Sokka whispers, “for four people, but Toph always sleeps on the floor.” He gestures to a dark shape on the floor of the main room that must be Toph. “Aang and Katara usually share the one bed because both refuse to share one with me.” He points toward the open door that leads into a small bedroom area. The other bed, decently-sized, rests near the corner of the main room, which also consists of a small living area and a kitchen.

Zuko raises his eyebrow. “Why don’t they want to share with you?”

Sokka smiles sheepishly, looking embarrassed but trying to hide it. “I just toss and turn a lot. And sometimes I accidentally steal the blankets.” He clears his throat and rubs the back of his neck. “So, um...I can, uh, sleep on the floor,” he says slowly, “if...you’d be uncomfortable...you know.” Even in the darkness, Zuko can see a blush on Sokka’s cheeks.

Zuko shrugs. He genuinely doesn’t care if he sleeps in the same bed as Sokka; at least it’s a bed, and he’s slept in much stranger places with much stranger people. (And there’s also the fact that Sokka is very attractive, and Zuko would be completely fine with sharing his warmth. But that doesn’t influence his decision at all, of course not; that would be ridiculous.) “I don’t mind,” he says out loud. “Really. It’ll be fine.”

Sokka sort of smiles at that, seeming almost relieved. “Okay,” he says, making his way over to the bed. He takes his shoes off and leans them up against the wall, then pulls the sheath of his sword off his shoulder and rests it on the floor next to the bed. He lets his hair out of its ponytail and rests the tie on the nightstand, then climbs into the bed. The covers are already somewhat messy, but only on Sokka’s side.

Zuko takes his own shoes off and rests the sheath of his swords on the floor next to the bed like Sokka did. Then he awkwardly crawls under the blanket, trying to be calm and fucking normal instead of thinking about how pretty Sokka is and how close they are. He can’t blow this.

“What’ll your friends think when they wake up and see a stranger sleeping in your bed?” he asks as the thought hits him.

“My sister might freak out a little, but other than that, it should be fine once I explain what happened. Don’t worry,” Sokka replies calmly.

Zuko rolls onto his side so that his back is facing Sokka. As he’s lying there, it finally hits him, just how much everything has changed in so little time. He broke up with Jet, and he’ll be on his own again, and he’s sleeping in the bed of some guy he just met, and everything is weird, and yet it doesn’t feel bad. He thinks he might even be okay with it.

After only a few minutes, Sokka whispers, his voice barely audible, “Zuko.”

Zuko rolls over to see Sokka sitting up, looking contemplative. “Yeah?”

“I have a question,” Sokka says quietly, “and you don’t have to answer it, but I was just wondering.”

Zuko takes a deep breath. Here it comes, the inevitable question, the question everyone asks soon enough after meeting him: the scar question.

But what comes out of Sokka’s mouth isn’t what Zuko expects. Instead, Sokka asks, “What did you mean when you said to Jet—that was his name, right?—when you said he was confused like you used to be? When you said maybe he’d learn like you had to?”

Zuko sighs in relief. Strangely enough, it feels easier to him to answer this question than it does to answer the scar question. Maybe it’s because he’s made peace with his past, with his mistakes. But he still hasn’t made peace with his family’s brutal deaths, especially his mother’s; he was closest to her. He doesn’t think he’ll ever make peace with it.

Zuko sits up on his elbows. “After I...became homeless, I did a lot of things that I regret. Things like what Jet was doing. I was angry at the world, and sometimes I think I still am. I don’t rely on it anymore, but I did then. I stole food from people who were starving because I didn’t care. I thought that I was better than them, that I deserved food more than they did. I got into fights with anyone who so much as looked at me the wrong way. A lot of them were kids or teenagers. One was probably around ten or eleven, and I think I was fourteen.” He sighs, remembering all the bloody noses, bruises, deep cuts, and broken bones he’s given people over the last few years.

“It got worse before it got better, especially after I got my swords. I mugged poor, innocent people. You would’ve wondered why I never got an apartment or anything, what with all the money I stole, not to mention the odd jobs I worked sometimes. I think it was because I didn’t want to stay in the same place. I liked running around with nowhere to be and everywhere to go, and besides, it would’ve been easier for other people to trace me if I stayed in one place, instead of committing a crime and then disappearing. I think I must’ve slept in every hotel in the city, except the really high-end ones.”

Sokka watches and listens, not judging, at least not openly. His gaze is intent and sincere. “What changed?” he says softly. “What made you stop?”

Zuko sits up more, leaning the pillow up against the wall and then resting his back against it. “It happened not too long after I turned fifteen. One evening there was this awful fire in another section of the city that destroyed several houses, and that night, across the street from where the fire had been, I saw this little kid sitting on the curb, all curled up into a ball and crying. He was maybe eight or nine. I remember not wanting to care. I remember just wanting to walk away and forget about it, because it wasn’t my problem. But I had a bad feeling about why he was crying, so I went over to him.” He closes his eyes briefly, imagining it, remembering every detail.

“He didn’t notice me at first, and I didn’t know what to say, so I just kind of sat down next to him, and that’s when he looked up at me. He asked me what I was doing, and I honestly didn’t really know, so I told him that I saw him crying and felt like I couldn’t just leave him there, which was the truth. When I looked at him closer, I realized he was partially covered in soot with a couple of small burns. He told me that his parents hadn’t made it out of the fire, that his home and his family were all gone and he didn’t know what to do. That was the first time in a long time that I’d felt sympathy for anyone. I saw myself in this kid, and I realized then that I didn’t want him to grow up hating the world and everyone in it. So I turned to him, looked him right in the eye, and told him to promise me he would never hurt someone for no reason. I remember how confused he was, because to him, it didn’t seem to have anything to do with the fire. I explained to him that when you go through something hard, sometimes it makes you bitter and angry, and I told him that I didn’t want that to happen to him. So he nodded and said that he promised, and then I gave him a bunch of money that I’d stolen the night before, and I told him to find someone that would help him, like a neighbor or an uncle or a family friend or something. He said he’d try and ran away, and then I sat down on the curb where he’d been sitting and thought about everything I’d done.

“It was hard to go through all those victims and put myself in their situations, but I did it. It was like seeing that kid had opened the floodgates and made me able to care about people again. Up until then, I think I’d locked my heart up. I never allowed myself to feel anything other than hatred and anger, because anything else made me weak.”

There’s a stretch of silence after Zuko finishes as Sokka seems to process everything. Then he says, gently, his eyes soft, “Is that what happened to you? With the fire?”

Zuko bites his lip as he remembers hearing something burning, as he remembers looking through the little window in one of the doors with his left eye just seconds before the explosion. He doesn’t look at Sokka when he says it. “Something very similar. Yeah.”

“I...I’m sorry,” Sokka says, sounding genuine. “Katara and I lost our mother six years ago.” He reaches his hand out tentatively, his gaze filled not with pity but with understanding. Normally, Zuko would shy away. Normally, the scar is off-limits. But this is far from normal.

Sokka pauses right before his hand reaches Zuko’s face, as if silently asking permission. Zuko nods. “You can touch it.”

Sokka moves closer to Zuko and rests his hand on Zuko’s cheek, his fingers feeling the burned flesh. They’re so close now, only inches away, and all Zuko has to do is lean forward and bridge the gap.

“Zuko,” Sokka says, his hand never moving, “I don’t know what exactly it is about you, but I feel...close to you for some reason. Even when I first saw you fight with Jet, I was drawn to you.”

Zuko’s heart starts to beat faster. “I, uh, I could say the same to you.”

And then they’re kissing.

It’s soft and slow, gentle and tender, Sokka’s fingers lightly brushing against Zuko’s skin. Zuko drapes his arms over Sokka’s shoulders, sighing when Sokka runs his tongue across Zuko’s bottom lip. It’s bliss, but not an energized, ecstatic bliss, like the way kissing Jet felt like. It’s more of a glowing sort of bliss, a tranquil and safe sort of bliss, warm but not scorching. Whereas kissing Jet felt like fireworks, hot and wild but short-lived, kissing Sokka feels like a hearth—like coming home.

When they break away, both of them mildly out of breath, Sokka kind of laughs and says, “Well, now I know I wasn’t misreading the signals or anything.”

He’s referring to Zuko checking him out, and Zuko’s face heats up a little. “Well, yeah, I guess I’ve never really been the best at subtlety.”

Sokka just smiles and says, “Would it be okay if I...saw you again sometime?”

Now Zuko’s definitely blushing. “I, uh, yeah,” he stutters. “Of course.”

Across the room, an annoyed voice groans, “Great performance, lovebirds; now will you please go to sleep?”

Sokka and Zuko both jump. Zuko doesn’t think he’s ever been more embarrassed in his life. One of Sokka’s friends—the one who sleeps on the floor, Toph, if he remembers correctly—is awake. He doesn’t know how much she’s heard, but apparently, she’s heard enough.

“Toph!” Sokka hisses. “Way to ruin the moment!”

“Way to ruin my sleep,” Toph retorts. “Your gross kissing noises interrupted my dream. This guy better be cute.”

“I—he is!” Sokka says, his voice cracking, also clearly embarrassed. Zuko tries not to smile (and fails miserably).

“I don’t trust your opinion,” Toph replies bluntly. “I’ll ask Katara in the morning.”

Zuko looks over at Sokka quizzically. “Can’t she just decide for herself?” he whispers.

“She’s blind,” Sokka explains. “She has no idea if you’re cute or not.”

“Guys, what’s going on?” another unfamiliar voice asks. Someone steps out from the other bedroom into the main room and turns a nearby lamp on: a girl who looks a lot like Sokka, but a little bit younger—his sister, most likely. “Sokka, who’s—?”

“Sokka’s new boyfriend,” Toph interrupts from her place on the floor.

“He’s not my—we just met!” Sokka sputters, blushing.

“Yeah, but that didn’t stop either of you from pouring your hearts out to each other. And then making out.”

“We were not making out!” Sokka insists, his voice going up an octave again; Zuko thinks it’s cute. “My tongue and Zuko’s tongue didn’t meet once!”

Another person steps out of the bedroom and into the main room, a younger boy with black hair. He rubs his eyes. “Okay, guys, you know I’d prefer it if we didn’t argue at all, but if we have to, can’t we do it after sunrise?” Then he glances over at the bed and, noticing Zuko, raises an eyebrow. “Um, Sokka, I’m not judging or anything, but why is there a random guy with a scar in your bed?”

“Can we please just discuss this in the morning?” Sokka groans. “This guy saved me from his ex-boyfriend who was trying to mug me and he needed a place to stay so I told him he could sleep here for the night. And I’m probably gonna keep hanging out with him, so be nice.”

“Katara, I want your honest opinion,” Toph says to the other girl. “Is this guy cute?”

Katara seems to think for a moment, and Zuko tries to hide his self-consciousness. Finally, she says, “Um, yeah, actually, he’s not bad-looking.”

“Great. That’s all I needed to know,” Toph says. “Now can we all please go back to sleep?”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” the boy—Aang—says, turning around and heading back into the bedroom. After giving Sokka a skeptical look, Katara turns the light back off and follows Aang.

“I’m sorry for them,” Sokka says immediately. “They’re nice, I swear, but they don’t know you and it’s the middle of the night and they’re cranky.”

“I can still hear you, you know,” Toph grumbles.

Sokka ignores her. “Anyway, um, we should...probably get some rest,” he says slowly. “It’s been a long night. I can give you a proper introduction in the morning.”

Zuko just smiles a little and lies back down; this time, though, he’s turned toward Sokka, not away from him. “You know,” he says, “you and your friends...almost feel like a family of sorts.”

Sokka shrugs, but he’s smiling, too. “We are.”

Zuko hasn’t had a family in so long.

“Maybe one day,” Sokka says, his voice soft, “you can be a part of it, too.”

That night, Zuko sleeps better than he has in a long time, probably since before his family died. He revels in the feeling of Sokka’s warm body next to his. When he was with Jet, it felt good. But when he’s with Sokka, it feels right, like finding something that he thought he’d lost forever.

Like coming home.

#avatar: the last airbender #atla #zuko #sokka #zukka #my fics #i wanna write more zukka aaaaa i miss them

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