#and also is sung with the unasked follow up 'could it?' which is even more telling

[administer-distractions]

that said the decision to remove elphabas line "it couldn't happen here in Oz" was unforgivable terrible movie 0/10

[spn-ficfanatic]

Imagine Being Stung By A Bee Whilst On Set (v2. Angst)

Words: 1700

Warnings: Swearing, Anaphylactic reaction, Near-Death

No pairings, just some angsty goodness. Version 1 is fluffy and can be found here.

If you’ve read the fluffy version, you’ll notice that the story starts the same, but things start to change after Bob yells “CUT!” 

I like filming outside, wish we did this more.

“Dammit Dean, put the knife down,” Sam begged. His older brother had thrown you on the ground roughly and was kneeling over you, knife in his right hand and daggers in his eyes. Sam was being held to the nearby tree by Crowley who looked on with a grin, like the cat that got the milk.

What is that tickle on my bum?

“Do it Dean, end this,” he practically sung. Dean seemed hesitant, which gave you hope, but all hope was immediately gone when he thrust the knife into your gut.

Shit, did something sting me?!

You cried out in pain, tears springing to your eyes instantly.

Fuck, something stung me!!

Your breathing shallowed as you stared into Dean’s eyes, with a look of hurt and betrayal that didn’t penetrate his soulness hide.

… ON MY ASS!!!

“Let’s go Crowley,” Dean said, holstering his knife and fading into nothingness while holding his gaze on your face. You rolled to your side to face Sam, holding your hands to your stomach to try and stop the blood flow even though you knew it was an impossible feat. You heard Crowley disappear also with a whisp of air, and Sam dropped to the ground with an oomf. He was instantly by your side, holding your head up and begging you not to leave him. You continued to cry and gasp in pain, and as the bloodloss became too much your head lolled to the side.

“Hayley? Don’t do this, open your eyes dammit. Hay!” Sam shook you gently, but you gave no response. Your chest ceased its rise and fall, and with it you ceased to exist.

“CUT!” cried Bob. Jared took a hand away to wipe the tears from his eyes before giving you a tight hug. You tried to catch your breath as you wrapped your arm around his back, patting his shoulder.

“Impressive take guys! Don’t think we need to do that again, we got everything we need,” said Bob cheerily. “Take 15!”

Jared let you go and stood up, and before he could offer a hand Jensen came over to pat his on the back and compliment the take. Neither notice you stay on the ground for that moment, your eyes squeezed shut as you tried to concentrate on slowing down your speeding heart.

“Um, guys?” you heard Mark comment, and his gaze moved from them to you pointedly. Jared and Jensen both jumped at the sudden realization you were still on the ground and moved back toward you.

“Oh, sorry Y/N. Great take, I thought the knife got stuck for a second there,” Jensen said lightheartedly, holding out his hand as Jared did to help you up. You stayed on the ground on your back, holding yourself up on your elbows while fighting the dizziness that was creeping in.

“I’m fine,” you gasped, answering the unasked question, and Jared and Jensen looked at each other concerned. Both bent down on bended knee to get a closer look at you, and you felt Jared brush away a few strands of hair from your face which was now covered in a sheen of sweat.

“Shit Y/N, are you sure? You don’t look so good,” he asked worriedly, placing his hand to your forehead.

“I um, I might need some help,” you admitted sluggishly, before your elbows gave out and you fell to the ground, your vision going black.

-----------------------------------

The guys were alarmed when you lost consciousness, both shouting your name as you fell. Jared caught your head and gently laid it on the ground, while Jensen’s fingers pressed against your neck to feel for a pulse.

“Hey, we need a medic over here!” Mark shouted, running over to the first aid trailer to get a team down there.

“Pulse?” Bob asked as he came and knelt down next to you.

“Fast, really fast,” Jensen replied breathless.

“Cummon Y/N, wake up,” Jared begging, tapping your cheek lightly. Your breathing was thready and you were obviously struggling to fill your lungs. The guys gasped when they saw your lips were starting to turn blue.

“Holy fuck! HEY, WE NEED SOMEONE HERE NOW!” Jensen shouted panicked, turning briefly to look for the medic team.

Mark was running back with the first aid crew sprinting ahead of him. They pushed Jensen, Jared and Bob aside as they leant over you to try and find the problem.

“She looks like she’s in anaphylactic shock. Is she allergic to anything?” one of them asked Bob, who shook his head.

“Not that I’m aware of. Guys?”

“She’s never mentioned anything,” Jensen replied, rubbing the back of his neck and holding his other arm on his hip. He was feeling sick just watching you lay there so still and pale. Jared wasn’t fairing much better, he looked like he was about to throw up and was holding his arms across his stomach.

Just as you took your last breath the first aid officer took a plastic tube from his bag and in one swift motion slammed it into your thigh, holding it there while counting under his breath. The entire crew watched on in complete silence while they waited for something to happen.

----------

You woke suddenly, taking a sudden gasp of air when you realized how desperate you were for oxygen. Your head became clearer and it took a moment to realize you were on the ground with Greg from first aid hovering over you. Susan next to him had her fingers on your wrist and appeared to be monitoring your pulse, while simultaneously speaking into her phone asking for an ambulance.

“Thank fuck,” you heard Jensen and Jared say in unison, and you looked up to see their horrified faces looking back at you.

“Y/N? Do you know where you are?” Greg asked you, and you looked at him in confusion.

“I’m on the set. What’s going on?” you asked, surprised by your raspy voice.

“You appear to have had an anaphylactic reaction to something. Do you have any allergies?”

You thought back to the moments leading up to your collapse and realization dawned.

“I didn’t think so. But, um, something stung me I think. Right before I…” you trailed off.

“Where abouts? I’ll need to see,” Greg asked, not noticing your face flush with embarrassment.

“Err.. well, on my, um… rear,” you replied quietly.

Greg smiled softly, understanding your unease, and continued. “No worries, I’ll help you up and we’ll get you back to the first aid trailer to have a look ok? If it was a bee we’ll have to get the stinger out right away.”

You nodded softly, your head pounding, and allowed him to help you stand. When your legs gave out Jared reached out and caught you with lightning speed, and without waiting to ask he scooped you up into his arms.

“What the hell Jared!” you squeaked quietly, surprised by the sudden altitude.

“Just… let me do this,” he said quietly, following Greg back to the trailer with Jensen alongside. You fell silent, realization dawning just how close a call it must have been for this type of reaction, and rested your throbbing head against his chest with a sigh closing your eyes. You could hear the siren in the distance and relaxed with the knowledge it was coming for you.

-----------------------------------

You couldn’t help but fiddle with your wristband. You’d been laying in this bloody hospital bed, in this horrible hospital gown, for hours now and were feeling antsy to get out of there. Greg had accompanied you in the ambulance, however Jared and Jensen had to stay behind to get the final scenes for the day done. Both were pretty angry with that but you understood where Bob was coming from… the show must go on as they say.

As soon as he was satisfied you were going to be ok Greg went back to set, leaving you alone for the last hour and a half waiting for the all-clear from the doctor. You didn’t even have your phone on you, figuring they’d accidently left it in the first aid trailer when you were bustled into the ambulance.

It was about 20 minutes later that there was a soft knock on the door, and you couldn’t help but smile when you saw Jensen and Jared in the doorway looking at you with concern.

“Thank Christ, I was getting bored,” you told them, gingerly sitting yourself up so your back was rested on the pillows. “Wanna sneak me outta here?” you asked with a smile and an eyebrow wiggle. They laughed and each gave you a tight hug before Jensen smacked you on the shoulder.

“Ow, hey! Don’t hurt the invalid!” you dramatically cried out, sticking out you bottom lip for effect.

“Yer well, don’t scare us like that again,” he told you gruffly, but with a hint of a smirk.

“Did you know you were allergic to bees?” Jared asked. You shook your head.

“Not a clue. Never had an allergy in my life. But then, I’ve never been stung before so... yer.”

“I like the get-up,” Jensen said, pointing to your hospital gown as he sat down in a nearby chair.

“It’s nice, right? Think they’ll let me keep it?”

You continued to chat with the boys, feeling much more animated since they’d arrived, and were pleased when the doctor made an appearance to discharge you. Now the proud owner of a pair of crutches, you hobbled out to the waiting cab while Jared and Jensen kept stride with you the whole time. Not an easy feat for two guys with legs as long as palm trees, so you were grateful to them for that.

“Oh, so I get the next few days off by the way,” you told them casually once you were all seated in the cab and headed back to your place.

“What? So, you’re telling me all we need to do for a bit of time off is have a near-death experience?” Jared asked in mock surprise.

“The secret it out. Don’t tell Bob I told you” you respond with a smile and a wink.

[jonryatrash]

Bael, Rose(s) of Winterfell, and Prophecies

So this meta is written in response to @bloomray and laney’s conversation that you all should read here before reading what follows. It’ll make more sense that way since this adds on a few things to B’s post. 

Preface of Sorts

So first, a quick confession. I’m real hard pressed to find any evidence in ASOIAF of Jonerys. I’m sure it exists; I’m sure shippers can point me to something somewhere, but everything mostly feels like a stretch. And hey, that’s okay because god knows you don’t have to ship stuff that’s even remotely canonical. To each their own and all that. What does annoy me, however, is leveraging certain lines and selectively reading without a lot of context in order to prove canonical foundation. For me, the line that gets stretched the most is this one from the House of the Undying prophecies: 

A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness.

Somehow, blue flower = Jon and sweetness = romance, and hence Jonerys is endgame. As bloomray pointed out in her post (and as other meta writers have as well), sweetness has a lot of negative connotations to it in ASOIAF, particularly in Dany’s narrative. Bloomray already outlined that in her piece, so I’m not going to rehash that here other than to say that perhaps the sweet smell could be the sweet smell of decaying flesh from the Others and Wights Beyond-the-Wall that Jon’s narrative is tied to? Just a thought. 

Anyway, what I’m most interested in is the blue flower part in this post. Laney came up with the initial idea of the blue flower alluding to the tale of Bael the Bard, and bloomray expanded upon it in her post. 

For this post, I want to talk about framing and the context surrounding the places where we hear about the tale of Bael the Bard to understand how it might fit into Jon’s narrative and, by extension, what GRRM is trying to get at in the HotU prophecy. 

Bael the Bard’s Song

First, let’s talk about where Bael appears most significantly in the text. The only places that Bael isn’t just name-dropped in passing are Jon VI in ACOK and Jon I in ASOS. The former is where the story is laid out, and the latter is when it is revealed that Mance infiltrated Bobby B’s visit to Winterfell. It may be worth noting, in passing, that Bael is never mentioned in ASOIAF outside of Jon’s POV. Thus, I think it’s fair to say that the story of Bael is meant to tell us something about Jon. 

So the story itself: 

“North or south, singers always find a ready welcome, so Bael ate at Lord Stark’s own table, and played for the lord in his high seat until half the night was gone. The old songs he played, the new ones he’d made himself, and he played and sang so well that when he was done, the lord offered to let him name his own reward. ‘All I ask is a flower,’ Bael answered, ‘the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o’ Winterfell.’”

“Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious. So the Stark sent to his glass gardens and commanded that the most beautiful o’ the winter roses be plucked for the singer’s payment. And so it was done. But when morning come, the singer had vanished...and so had Lord Brandon’s maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain.” 

[...]

“Lord Brandon had no other children. At his behest, the black crows flew forth from their castles in the hundreds, but nowhere could they find any sign o’ Bael or this maid. For most a year they searched, till the lord lost heart and took to his bed, and it seemed as though the line o’ Starks was at its end. But one night as he lay waiting to die, Lord Brandon heard a child’s cry. He followed the sound and found his daughter back in her bedchamber, asleep with a babe at her breast.”

“Bael had brought her back?” 

“No, They had been in Winterfell all the time, hiding with the dead beneath the castle. The maid loved Bael so dearly she bore him a son, the song says...though if truth be told, all the maids love Bael in them songs he wrote. Be that as it may, what’s certain is that Bael left the child in payment for the rose be’d plucked unasked, and that the boy grew to be the next Lord Stark. So there it is--you have Bael’s blood in you, same as me.” 

-Jon VI, ACOK

Alright, so there’s that--the tale itself. And the similarities to Rhaegar and Lyanna are definitely there within the story itself. Singer, Winterfell’s daughter, a son born to a dying line (Targs), etc. 

Perhaps Jonerys shippers read the similarities between the tale and Rhaegar/Lyanna and make the blue rose a connection to Targaryen bedding Stark. I say bedding here because (1) I don’t believe Rhaegar/Lyanna were ever married, (2) the power dynamics make consent very challenging in this relationship, and (3) as Ygritte says, maybe the Rose of Winterfell did love Bael like the song claims, but in Bael’s songs everyone is in love with him so it’s hard to say what the nature of the relationship was. 

Winter’s Rose v2.0 - Lyanna Stark; Or, Why This isn’t About Jonerys, but Jon’s Parentage

Now that we have access to the tale itself, I want to talk about what surrounds the tale. As I said in my preface, I think what frames the tale tells us a lot about how we’re supposed to read it both in the context of the chapter and ASOIAF as a whole. 

Let’s look at what comes almost directly before the tale first. Ygritte and Jon share the following exchange:

“You said you were the Bastard o’ Winterfell.”

“I am.”

“Who was your mother?”

“Some woman. Most of them are.” Someone had said that to him once. He did not remember who.

She smiled again, a flash of white teeth. “And she never sung you the song o’ the winter rose?”

“I never knew my mother. Or any such song.”

“Bael the Bard made it,” said Ygritte. - Jon VI, ACOK

And then what follows shortly after when Jon is tasked with beheading Ygritte: 

He raised Longclaw over his head, both hands tight around the grip. One cut, with all my weight behind it. He could give her a quick clean death, at least. He was his father’s son. Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he? - Jon VI, ACOK

The tale of Bael the Bard is bookended with mentions of Jon’s (1) maternity, and (2) paternity. Naturally, when Jon references being his father’s son, he’s talking about the man who passes the sentence swinging the sword. But it takes on such a beautiful, double meaning for the reader in the midst of mentioning his mother, telling the tale of Winterfell’s daughter (the Winter Rose) being abducted by a singer, and then Jon questioning his paternity. 

The blue rose is meant to represent Lyanna. Of course it’s tied up in the great Rhaegar/Lyanna debacle, but it’s first and foremost about the Rose of Winterfell. Jon is associated with the blue rose through his mother. Yes, through the crown of roses Rhaegar bestowed upon her, but even more significantly through this legend---Winterfell’s daughter and her bastard son who return to Winterfell while he’s still a babe at her breast.

We know Jon will be important in the War for the Dawn, just as Dany will be. It’s only natural they meet. They are, after all, the last surviving big-name Targaryens. But to see that her seeing him in a vision means that they’re going to have a romance or bang? Well, need bloomray and I remind you that Dany also saw a man with a wolf’s head being paraded around (Robb Stark). No one is pairing Dany with a resurrected Robb Stark. We can’t assume anyone she sees in the vision is meant to be her lover. 

Into Every Generation? Winter’s Rose v3.0 - Or, I’m Shipper Trash Always and Forever

GRRM loves his sets of three, almost as much as I love Jonrya. The parallels between Lyanna and Arya have been written about a thousand times over. We’re meant to see those two as freakishly similar, from looks to personality. It’s in canon. I don’t think I need to rehash any of that here. 

Likewise, bloomray already addressed a bit of the Jonrya parallels to the Bael story in her post. To briefly reiterate, on Jon’s behalf, Mance as Abel (read: Bael) goes to Winterfell in an attempt to save fArya and bring her home to Jon. Jon is the legend’s Bael by proxy, and Arya Winterfell’s daughter who Jon intends to spirit away from Winterfell. (Note: the 3.0 legend plays out by proxy on both ends, because Mance is Jon and Jeyne is Arya, but whatever). 

Now, surely you’re thinking that I’m reaching here. Look, at little, yes, but let’s look at the framing of Bael in Jon I in ASOS. Jon goes to meet Mance, and it’s revealed that Mance was present during the King’s visit way back in AGOT. Then:

“Bael the Bard,” said Jon, remembering the tale that Ygritte had told him in the Frostfangs, the night he’d almost killed her. 

“Would that I were. I will not deny that Bael’s exploit inspired mine own...but I did not steal either of your sisters that I recall. - Jon I, ASOS

So here Mance likens both Sansa and Arya to the Rose of Winterfell from the initial tale. We’re invited to read all Stark daughters as the Rose of Winterfell. GRRM through Mance is putting Sansa and Arya in the same position as he put Lyanna. If anyone is the Rose of Winterfell/Lyanna Stark in the blue rose image and backstory, it’s Sansa and Arya. 

But there’s more. We see the tale appear in two important moments where Jon begins his decent into “breaking” his vows. Except he breaks his vows to play the long con on Mance & co. Sure, he bangs and falls for Ygritte (who reminds him of his little sister, which, weird), but he never truly things to break with the Night’s Watch. 

Except he does in ADWD for Arya, Winter’s Rose and Daughter of Winterfell. He tries to steal her from Winterfell, to take part in a war with the Boltons, and thus really and truly breaks the vow that he’s been able to (TWICE befre) resist breaking about taking no part in the affairs of the realm. 

But, you say, either Sansa or Arya could be the Winter Rose. Yeah, maybe, except let’s look back at the original story: 

“Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious.”

Sansa flowered in AGOT. Who is expected to bloom and become a woman in TWOW? Arya Stark. Just check out “Mercy” if you need any proof that she’s using her body sexually as a weapon. And who is the most precious to Jon? His heart, the girl he broke his vows for, the girl he gave his dick to in AGOT. ARYA F-ING STARK. 

Conclusion

The beautiful parallels are there, my dears. Maybe v3 is too much to ask of you, and that’s totally okay. It makes a lot of sense to me, especially since ASOIAF up to this point has been basically an ode to Jonrya. Their love is about canonical as it gets. Platonic? Meh, if you must, but you have a lot of weird sexual thoughts to explain away if you think that’s just brother-sister stuff. 

I would invite you, however, based on the context surrounding the tale of Bael and in light of everything @bloomray said her post, view that prophecy in the HotU not as Jonerys as canon, but as a not-so-subtle nod to Jon’s parentage for the reader to put the pieces together.