#and my current project is song of the pyre

[autopotion]

3, 5, 7, 11, 13

3. 1-3 games you’ve played in the past 12 months that you really enjoyed

Oh I was gonna include this in my "video games I played in 2022" wrap-up post I'm theoretically gonna make. But as a sneak peek, my top three games of 2022 (that maybe aren't the best but that I enjoyed the most) are AI: The Somnium Files -- nirvanA Initiative, Pyre, and Odin Sphere Leifthrasir.

5. Game(s) coming out that you’re looking forward to

Ah jeez. I try really hard not to follow current releases since I don't have current gen consoles, but it would be a lie if I said I'm not interested in playing Dragon Age 4 (no I'm not calling it "Dreadwolf"). I probably won't play it when it comes out, since I don't have a PS5, but I definitely have to play it eventually. Also FFVII Remake stuff, because, despite all my complaints with the first one, I still enjoyed the experience. u_u

7. A series you’ve lost interest in

I feel like you know the answer to this lmao... Kingdom Hearts for sure. That was my favorite series as a kid, but once I started hitting the end of high school / early undergrad years, I stopped following the series (since it kept releasing "spin-offs" [see: actually entirely necessary games to understand the story] for consoles I didn't have). I still have a lot of nostalgia for the first one--weirdly I would say that one is the game that ignited my interest in the open world format, despite being a very linear experience--and I still really like the Chain of Memories manga (FORMATIVE!!) but I'm just not into it these days. Not really being into Disney properties anymore also definitely contributes.

11. Do you prefer ‘blank slate’ main characters you make yourself or otherwise project onto, or characters with a set personality and backstory?

Very tough call... it depends on the game & the protagonist, honestly. I don't really like playing as men, which is unavoidable if you're into video games, so on a very shallow level I wish more games allowed me to make my own character. I also enjoy crafting one that I think fits into the setting and making choices with them, I like feeling like I have a hand in shaping the story (which is an experience only video games can provide). Also I think a lot of protagonists are forgettable, and outshone by a far more memorable supporting cast, so why not let me just make my own? (Barring, you know, budget/resource reasons.) But some video game protagonists are really good, and have important roles in the story they're in, and I wouldn't swap them out for a blank slate. SO... depends on the game tbh! Also I just want to play as more women. If your game lets me play as a woman I'm already invested (even if I don't end up liking that woman very much).

13. Quick, name the first song from a game that comes to mind

AAAA!! Um, Cosmo Canyon? From FFVII?

[pyrefection]

ok i LOVE THESE THINGS

i am honored you tagged me oh my g o d

here we GOOO

nickname: Based off my username, Pyre!

sign: My sun is a Virgo and i can never remember any of the others no matter how hard I try

height: I am 5'10.5", but with my shoes im like 6" hehe

last thing i googled: i literally think it was "ghost band AO3" and i think that says a lot about me

last song stuck in your head: I have been teaching myself Merry-go-round of Life on guitar, so that!

number of followers: 41!

amount of sleep: Not enough. Never enough. Anywhere from 3 to 6 hours

lucky number: 64, one full stack

dream job: Currently working it! I do research and development for the purification of proteins used in pharmaceuticals! Ive worked on a project that is hopefully gonna help people with HIV, one for chronic Hives, a lot of cancers, and one of them just got FDA approved so thats super cool

favorite song: I have too many, but probably either Tired and Awake by Oliver Riot, Banks by Lincoln or Wolf by AlicebanD

favorite instrument: I play violin and im learning guitar! But ive always been a fucker for any kind of bass

aesthetic: I literally only wear all black and maybe some earth tones if im feeling spicy. I go for a look where people think "wow they def have a body full of tatoos under there" but sadly i am Bare

favorite author: I honestly dont have one? I like many for different reasons, and i find myself running to different authors for different moods.

random fun fact: for how much i love to draw, i am ungodly uncreative. Nothing I do is actually because of my own imagination so I am BEGGING for requests

I am,,, not going to tag anyone specific but if you are seeing this post pretend its YOU i am tagging!

17 questions, 17 people (except i think we lost some questions along the way and i don’t know 17 people on here)

nickname: not really a nickname since it’s longer than stella, but my mum will say ‘stella for star’ cos it’s a streetcar named desire reference

sign: scorpio, i know nothing about star signs but i always thought scorpio sounded the coolest

height: 5’7

last thing i googled: intensive language courses near me (i rlly want to practice my french)

last song stuck in your head: about you by the 1975, matty healy is haunting me

number of followers: 1196, shoutout to anyone who’s still here from when i was a death note blog

amount of sleep: my average over the last 7 days is 4 hours a night 👍🏼

lucky number: 29

dream job: clinical psychologist, just need to get into a clinical doctorate programme (v unlikely as they’re so so competitive)

favourite song: pink lemonade by the wombats (could never pick one but this is my default answer for this question cos it was my favourite when i was 15)

favourite instrument: piano

aesthetic: 90s grunge always

favourite author: i don’t rlly read many books by the same author just random ones, but i really like michel bussi’s books

random fun fact: i know every single word to we didn’t start the fire by billie joel, that’s fun

thanks u sm for @scilessweetheart for tagging me n sorry this took so long!

tagging @junkyardromeo @lemonfloatz (no pressure) n anyone else who wants to join!!

[roxilalonde]

wait are u the one that makes homestuck fanfics?? bc i kinda wanna read more hs fanfics ,,

i like this “the one” business because it makes me feel like i’m reigning in the prestigious position as author of any and all homestuck fanfic published during my term. like every time someone gets an idea for a dirkjake coffeeshop AU they gotta file an application with me

[threedaysofdarkness]

Tag 9 people you wanna know better

Tagged by @babesarewolves

1. Fav colour(s)- purple and lilac

2. Currently reading - I haven’t read anything in a while  🙃 but I’ve been meaning to start “Alamut” by Vladmir Bartol

3. Last song - 1914 - Pillars of Fire (The Battle of Messines)

4. Last series - The White Lotus

-5. Last movie - the last new movie was Dune, but I saw Kodachrome (2017) this morning.

.6. Sweet, savoury or spicy - Spicy actually, too sweet is kind of a deal breaker for me and savoury depends on the food;

7. Craving - a pizza actually, haven’t eaten one in a long while

.8. Currently working on - my musical Project (It’s called Ghostlight if anyone wants to check 😅😇 ) and some pickup models I’m trying to develop

I'll tag @the-raven-that-refused-to-sing, @grandis-spiritus @tangled-grace @a-pyre-of-doom, @curse-of-the-pharaohs, @schwarz-kirsche, @lilarctos @kapelicax and @child-of-leviathan

[arsonistblue]

BLUE YOU HAVE OCS???? Please tell me everything about them

AAAAAA YES I DO!!!!! I’m writing a book (technically a series) and they’re all my children

It’ll all be under the cut bc this might get long (It did) since I’ve don a fuckton of world and character building, plotting, and meticulously planning the books, and I have a feeling people will want me to shut up but it’s my blog and I get to rant about my book if I want to kjlsdfkjlsdf

(I kinda have to explain some of the worldbuilding to explain the characters)

Most of them are from a different dimension similar to the “human” dimension, called the Middle. They’re also like humans themselves, but they each have a “difference,” which is what they call their power, for lack of a better word. It’s called a difference because, even if two people have the same ability, say, they could both control water, it would still be different for each of them. They’d’ all have a calling, for lack of a better word. And their styles have to be self taught.

There are 6 people, 2 sets of triplets, who are called the Crest. The Crest were an experiment to try and create a solution to help fix a corrupted world that seemed utopian. Sector 13, a rebel organization trying to fix said corrupted world, decided to tweak the genetics of six embryos to make them more powerful. Their idea of this was for these six to have two “differences” rather than the standard one (the thing is, though, they didn’t know just how powerful the six would be). 

Two sets of parents (The Quills and the Clearlys) volunteered to carry the children and raise them. However, word of the Crest got out, and in turn sparked a massive war. 

Okay, onto the characters!!! (picrew link)

This is Alex Clearly. She’s the main character, and a member of the Crest.

She was raised in an orphanage in the human dimension. She was born in the Middle, but due to being born in the midst of a giant war about her existence, her parents wanted to keep her (as well as the rest of the Crest) hidden away. So they (The Quills and the Clearlys) hopped from safe house to safe house while still in the Middle. However, they were found by a different organization who wanted the Crest dead (or worse), and a bomb was set to their safe house. The Clearly parents thought they were the only ones to survive, but then they found Alex (keep in mind, she’s a baby at this point) and decide “fuck this, she’s going somewhere objectively safer.”

So, they took her to the human dimension to be raised in an orphanage with one of Mrs. Clearly’s old friends (read: bitter ex-friends who don’t necessarily hate each other to death but don’t vibe any more) who was hiding out there. They would’ve set her up at a foster home but they were like, about to die from sepsis so they decided “this’ll work ig.” They did their best ok 

This orphanage, unfortunately, is run by a horrible old woman who (for reasons explained in the book) absolutely despises Alex. So Alex is kind of an outcast in this orphanage because of that. The only adult who actually likes her is Gwendolyn, aka Mrs. Clearly’s old friend. She also has a best friend, Eli. 

Now, given that Alex is part of the Crest, she has 2 powers. One appeared at birth, which was telepathy, which meant she could read others’ minds and emotions. But, because the universe hated her, she couldn’t block them, so she constantly has waves of other people’s thoughts and emotions hurtling at her (this is also me projecting as an empath jklsdflkjds hyperempathy is a bitch)

I’m currently debating whether to spoil what her other power is because you find out a few chapters into the first book 

Yknow what fuck it, she’s a hydrolic. She can control water and it’s awesome

I don’t want to spoil any more of her backstory, so now I’ll give some attributes!

Me, talking about Alex: So there’s this she/they

She’s been Through Some Shit (tm) but she’s a survivor, and taught herself self-defense, how to steal without getting caught (for when she really needed food/supplies), etc

She’s also a badass and tough as nails

However do not let her badassery fool you, she is in fact a Fucking Nerd

Trust issues are rampant

Definitely Not Straight (see the undercut [important note, the undercut does not exist until book 2])

V sarcastic

If you give her dumplings she will love you forever

Definitely said ACAB after the cops took away her Big Burly Guy Friends for Robin Hood antics (read: stealing from the rich and giving to the poor)

said Big Burly Guy Friends were Big Burly Guys, taught self defense classes in their garage. She (at the time, a skinny 7 year old) showed up and asked them to teach her to fight, and at first they laughed, but she learned self defense and every saturday she showed up and they gave her a juice box and some crackers

10000% has adhd

During book 1, she’s 13-14

In just a normal high school AU, she would be a closeted memelord

But would unironically say poggers

She hates rules

A lot

She goes out of her way to break the especially stupid ones

Stubborn as all hell

She’s also super protective and if you hurt someone she loves, you fear for your life

Long story short, she’s a badass nerd with adhd who could kill a man with ease

I love her so much it’s not even funny ok?? she’s my child

Next!

This is Eli Marcus. He was Alex’s best (only) friend at the orphanage. He’s also from the human dimension. 

Eli was at the orphanage since he was five. He was always friends with Alex, and tried to help her with her headaches, though Alex never told him she was a telepath. 

He’s a loyal friend, and always tries to cheer people up

He has a bad habit of forgetting to take off his binder at night, much to Alex’s annoyance

He loves to play the drums. There’s constantly a song stuck in his head, and he taps his fingers on tables or chairs or whatever to try to get them out

It works, then it’s replaced by another song

He probably has adhd too

He has tried to dye his own hair. It did Not work

Alex kept reminding him that he had dark hair but he was just “I am looking Away, I do not see it” so it only dyed his scalp red

So far we haven’t seen very much of him, he’s in the first few chapters of book 1. I’m planning on putting him in book 2 or 3 though!

This is Jazzi LeCiel, one of Alex’s best friends. 

Jazzi lives in The Middle, and she’s the same age as Alex. She’s a stratic, meaning she can control the air (like an airbender), but like most people, she didn’t discover it until she was around middle school age. Her backstory isn’t as developed since she’s not the main character, and the story is told from Alex’s perspective. 

She’s a disaster bisexual

She would unironically cuff her jeans

Loves causing chaos 

She’s pretty trusting up front but if you break her trust it takes awhile to get it back

Farily petite

Also a badass like Alex, but she’s also a dork jlsfljdfk

I love her so much it’s not even funny 

She’s one of the classic short-but-deadly people. By this I mean she could easily kill a man with her eyes closed and one hand behind her back, and probably would if he pissed her off enough

Very strong sense of community

She’s independent but knows when to rely on her friends and family, something she’s trying to teach Alex (since she always had to be independent)

She’s extremely creative and thinks outside the box, hell, she probably doesn’t even know where the box is

Next!

This is Torrent Rush. He’s another of Alex’s friends in the Middle.

Torrent is about the same age as Alex and Jazzi, maybe a few months older. He’s also a visidem, meaning he can turn himself (and, if he focuses, other people) invisible. (Also that’s not really what his hair looks like, but it was the closest I could find)

Daddy issuuuuuuues

His dad’s a piece of shit

He’s got an older brother, and thus is very competitive

He’s generally very caring and outspoken, also very kind even if you’re a total stranger

Though he has trouble keeping his emotions under control, and when he gets angry or upset enough, he tends to lash out

Someone get this boy some therapy

His favorite color is purple

Idk why I added that, it’s not relevant at all lkjfdskljdfs

He tries to be smooth and he kind of is ngl, but like not as smooth as he could be

He kinda has White Boy energy but he tries to not be like that, you know? Like he was raised with toxic masculinity but he’s trying to outgrow it

tl;dr he needs therapy and a nap

This is Ezra Quill, another of Alex’s friends and a member of the Crest. 

He’s lived in the Middle all his life as well, and is both a pyre (controlling fire) and a hypnolic (basically he can control other people’s minds and therefore bodies as well). He’s lived at a Sector 13 base for awhile, too. 

Imagine sunshine given human form. You have Ezra

Seriously he’s a cinnamon roll

I love him so much

He has on multiple occasions had fucking butterflies land on his nose. This is not an exaggeration. It happens multiple times

He’s a fucking NERD and will hyperfixate on anything 

He specifically loves baking 

Cracks a lot of jokes but he’s generally very sincere

Also he’s a tol bean???? child what are you doing up there

He’s quite fond of mango lassi and payasam

He plays with his fire a lot, purely to have fun. He loves lighting his hand on fire to scare people (Loretta, mostly) 

He fidgets

a lot

He always has to be moving, whether it’s tapping his fingers or doing that fuckin wave squiggle motion with his arms (he’s also really good at it)

He also hums to himself, but it always ends up with him making random sounds and making Alex think there’s a cryptid toddler in the other room

He loves big sweaters, not just because of how cozy they are, but also because he can slap people (read: Alex) with the long, flappy sleeves 

Next is Loretta, Alex’s adoptive mother and all-around wonderful woman.

Loretta is a master hydrolic, and teaches at the academy. She’s probably a repressed lesbian too lkjsdflkjdfs

She was a part of Sector 13 from the beginning of their work on creating the Crest, and when she met Alex, she almost cried because of the strong young woman Alex was becoming. 

Loretta will see a child (read: anyone younger than her), say “is anyone gonna adopt that thing” and then not wait for an answer

She had to physically stop herself from making Alex sign the adoption papers she keeps in her pocket at all times the first time they met

If you hurt somebody she loves, run

Faster

She has some dark spots in her past, in her present, too, but she’s working to illuminate them 

Also she’s in love with her best-friend-turned-enemy but she doesn’t know it

She is a fierce fighter when she wants to be. Nobody expects it, either. They see her and think she’s more laid-back, some daresay delicate, but she’s anything but. She’s taken down a full grown man while wearing heels

She’s basically adopted Torrent, Ezra and Jazzi too

She adopted Alex, but she also saw Torrent and Ezra and Jazzi and decided they were hers too

“How many children do you have?” “Biologically, legally, or emotionally?” 

I love her sm 

[the-wardens-torch]

The WoL + Primal Project - Falerin Arcita

((VERY late to this one. but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.))

The Warden’s Pyre

Quest title: Burning Questions

Part 1: Camp Drybone is abuzz with talk of a murderous insect-creature preying on the local N tribe of Seeker Miqo’te… Three of them - including the nunh and his best hunter - are currently missing and feared dead.

Part 2: Further investigation reveals that the creature you seek resides in the bowels of the Burning Wall…

Part 3: Arriving at the Burning Wall, you discover a single survivor - a Seeker woman out of her senses with pain and fear.

Part 4: You try to speak to the woman, but to no avail.  The only intelligible words you can understand amidst her wails and choking sobs are “they killed him…” and “my son…” For the safety of the rest of the tribe - find this monster and put it to the sword.

Part 5: After sending the woman to Camp Drybone to recuperate, you descend into the twisting passages of the Wall. Upon reaching its deepest point, something emerges from among the forest of corrupted crystals…

You see what appears to be a distraught Hyuran boy, no more than 17 summers in age, borne aloft by the translucent red form of a Hyur-sized wasp. It approaches you on two pairs of red-veined, iridescent wings, filling the air with something between an insectile hum and a Spoken-like moan.  

These wings prove to be the only aesthetically pleasing form of this bug-creature, for as it closes in, you notice that the wasp’s thorax erupts out of the boy’s back, still connected to him via intertwining blood-filled veins and life-sustaining aether trails.  While one pair of wings is rightly attached to the wasp’s back, the other set boils from the boy’s shoulders like a pair of grotesque epaulets.

The wasp’s six legs brush luridly against the boy’s face and shoulders, sometimes appearing to stroke his cheeks in an almost loving fashion, though its mandibles snap menacingly just ilms above his head. Perhaps the most disturbing detail of all is the hunter’s arrow that runs the boy through from back to front. Its obsidian head blooms headfirst from the center of the poor lad’s chest, creating a rosette of gore on the remaining shreds of his leather armor. You hear a rattling gasp from the boy’s throat as the monster approaches, hands wreathed in glowing red aether…

*begin fight*

Intro Screen Text: Eastern Thalanan - The Warden’s Pyre

(A Few) Mechanics: -Fairly small arena - in the bottom of a canyon formed from corrupted crystals. A waterfall is clearly visible. -Attacks include; bastardized arcanist and summoner spells as well as fire and light-based spells drawn from the corrupted crystals surrounding the arena. These are all performed via erratic, twitchy hand gestures and phrases performed by the boy - the wasp is primarily a form of conveyance.   -No adds or add phase. -Lots of very potent secondary status effects (poison, paralysis, heavy, etc.) and DoTs from attacks, some of which can’t be cleansed.

Combat Phrases: (voice is very anguished/strained and sometimes chokes/gasps wetly) Start: “I could never be one of you, hm?” Tank buster/big attack: “If spilled blood is the only part of me you want, then take it!” 50%: “I only asked for tolerance, and  you couldn’t even give me that!” 25%: “Warden… why aren’t you watching?”  10%: “Azeyma, why aren’t you listening?” Death: “Please... don’t blame... her.”

Music:   -Complex, chaotic and very noisy, but with a coherent melody beneath. Maybe something a bit like this - I tagged this particular song as a potential Fal combat theme years ago... nevermind the video part.

Aftermath: You return to Camp Drybone, where the Seeker woman now sits in the infirmary, now coherent enough to relate a sad tale in between sobs.  She had only returned to her tribe recently after over a decade of estrangement, bringing with her an adopted Hyuran so named Falerin. She had hoped that the tribe would embrace him as one of their own, and they appeared to do just that for the first few days. However, the nunh later insisted that the boy go on a “hunting trip” with him and some of his best hunters.  It ended with the nunh ordering his hunt master to shoot the boy in the back over burgundy falls.

N’elyrha mentions that Falerin, though not a trained mage, was possessed of an aetherial “familiar” of sorts… In retrospect, the tribe’s mystics believe that this familiar was an unheeded sign of the boy’s immense untapped arcane power. Perhaps his anguished plea as he fell wounded and bleeding to his death provoked this familiar into channeling nearby aether in an attempt to save its master. But because the aether of the Wall is so heavily corrupted, it filled the boy with malevolence and altered his form, forever chaining him to his spirit companion.

…which had been a small, red honeybee.

Resolution: N'elyrha asks you to accompany her to the Final Prayer, where you join her in offering a solemn /prayer to the Warden poor Falerin’s behalf. Quest complete.

Press F to pay respects

((Okay…its not really Fal as a primal per se, more of a variation on the old bad ending Halloween prompt of @sedatayuun‘s that I loved so much... Even though I can’t find my original response to it because tumbleeerrggh’s search function sux. Also I advise against looking at pictures of parasitoid wasps on Google, and David Cronenberg’s The Fly is one of my favorite horror movies.))

[slingerscng-archive]

— answer these questions then tag 20 blogs you’d like to know better!

tagged by: @inconspiiicuous

tagging: be gay and do crimes steal

nicknames: ember, em, bree, bean

zodiac: virgo

height: 5′6″

time: 9 AM

favourite band / artist:   Emery / The Dear Hunter / IDKHTFM

song stuck in my head:    Do It All The Time - IDKHTFM

last movie i saw: Avengers : Infinity War ( thanks I hate it )

last thing i googled: Kraken Dice ( lo and behold @warscourged and I were having a conversation about it )

other blogs:​ uh;; this is the only active one but I’ve got like...4-5 others floating

do i get asks: I do surprisingly

why did i choose this username:  I used to be really bad at coming up with names, but I think it was just off the phrase for my inbox “You fell in love with the slinger’s song, haven’t you?” Which I THINK was a pull from Bastion a while back. I used to have a lot of Bastion references in my blog. 

following: 139

average amount of sleep: 5-6 hours

what i’m wearing: screen print computer cursor hoodie, pyre t-shirt, plaid flannel sleep pants, head scarf

dream job:  professional illustrator 

dream trip: japan

favourite food:  shrimp makhani curry

play any instruments: piano, sing, ukulele ( poorly )

eye colour: brown

hair colour: natural hair: brown, currently: faded red

languages you speak: english, conversational french

most iconic song:  enough - RKCB

random fact:  when I was 13 I was walking to school and was actually hit by a truck, spider man’d backwards into the street and landed on my feet. I spent a solid 20 minutes with the dude that hit me and the cop explaining to them I needed to get to school because I had a project due before I was taken to the hospital. Blocked up three streets of traffic.

describe yourself as aesthetic things:   multiple screens flickering different static images / clusters of pens, markers, paints, and utensils / a shimmering void ; is it sea or space / a break through the trees that all look like silhouettes but something moves in between / neatly pinned insects and skulls for decoration or reference / room full of trinkets; some useful but many useless   

[joannalannister]

Daenerys Targaryen & JFK

“...let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. 

“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”       --President Kennedy's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

“Shall we begin?”      --Daenerys Targaryen, Game of Thrones 7x01

This post was inspired by a Dany quote from the show, but imma do what I usually do with the show, which is project my book!feelings all over it. This post is not intended to be a commentary about the show**, it’s about the books.

**There is one other Dany quote from the show that I intend to comment on below, but only because I feel it ties into the above JFK quote, in terms of ASOIAF themes and Dany’s book!characterization.

I’ve been thinking about this since the summer, when I first saw show!Dany trailing her hand lovingly over the Painted Table, over the hills and valleys, the rivers and mountains, places she’d heard about her whole life. A quote from A Game of Thrones was playing over that scene in my mind:

Somewhere beyond the sunset, across the narrow sea, lay a land of green hills and flowered plains and great rushing rivers, where towers of dark stone rose amidst magnificent blue-grey mountains, and armored knights rode to battle beneath the banners of their lords. 

And when Dany went to stand at the head of that table, it was one of the only times in season 7 where I felt I caught a glimpse of things to come in the books. A pale shadow of GRRM’s Westeros, to be sure, but I could see it. 

Tiny, slender 16-year-old Daenerys, her hair shining like molten silver in the gloom of the Stone Drum. Daenerys, standing where Aegon the Conqueror had once stood, at the head of a great painted table stretching away from her into darkness, as a great Night falls over the continent. And this table! A table -- a map of Westeros -- so large that, if stood upright, it would be over five stories high. GRRM’s Westeros has such grandeur, “like in the great stories [...]. The ones that really mattered.”

(Like, I don’t think Dany would be in that special seat where Dragonstone is located on the map, I think GRRM would deliberately put her at the head of the table, beyond the Wall, foreshadowing her true destination.)

I have no idea what wondrous and highly quotable things GRRM would have Dany say and think while standing there. But that question show!Dany asked -- “Shall we begin?” -- that question captured the essence of it for me. 

And you’re all gonna think I’m lame, but my mind jumped to President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, to that similar line, “let us begin.” And no, I don’t claim the showrunners intended this parallel between Dany and JFK, and tbh I don’t care what they intended, but I feel like it’s an apt comparison when talking about GRRM’s Dany. 

(GRRM has spoken very highly of the Kennedys, saying on his livejournal: “They were men like any other, not plaster saints, and had their share of failures and mistakes. But they fought the good fight, and left the world a better place than they found it, and no more can be asked of any man.)

I see Dany as a dark horse in the race for the Iron Throne, similar to JFK’s unexpected win in 1960. More importantly, though, I see Daenerys as a reformer, as someone young and vibrant who wants to shake up the Old Guard and change the world. 

And like, I’ve said this before, but Westeros is currently without justice, without peace, without the rule of law. It’s a place where the Lannisters can enact a dwarf genocide with no one to stop them. Where no one speaks for the smallfolk, where families’ ancestral homes can be seized and sacked, where murder goes unpunished, where a Mengele-esque mad scientist runs free. 

And those are the kinds of things that Dany stands against:

“Justice . . . that's what kings are for." --Daenerys, ASOS

She values “peace, prosperity, and justice” while a lot of the people in charge of Westeros right now value vengeance. And sure, Dany obviously doesn’t always get these things right every time, and she makes mistakes, but she’s fighting to make the world a better place.

Daenerys cares about people. When most nobles in Westeros feel little or nothing for people of low birth, Dany raises the lowborn up and gives them a place at her side and on her councils. Think of Missandei, Grey Worm, her handmaids. 

Dany’s outlook is more radical imo than Arya befriending prostitutes, or Stannis raising Davos to a lordship -- which are both good and admirable acts -- because Dany goes further. Dany wants to get rid of this whole system that grinds the lowborn to dust under the indifferent heel of the mighty. Just consider how GRRM wrote Dany’s attitude toward the tokar: “It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master’s garment, a sign of wealth and power. Dany had wanted to ban [it.]” 

She wants to bring change. She wants to stop the abuse of power, and help people. 

It’s as if Westeros and Essos both have already been under a Long Night of dehumanization, one created not by the Others, but simply by other people. And when Daenerys takes that torch from her bloodrider’s hand and lights the pyre that night in AGOT, she’s lighting the world on fire. 

And it’s a good fire, my friends. It’s this kind of fire, the kind that gets passed around, and that makes your heart swell to see it:

It’s the kind of fire that rallies people to Daenerys like iron to a lodestone, and it’s what makes cynical people disparage Dany as a “Mary Sue” (whatever that is) when she gains followers. It’s the kind of fire that makes the Widow of the Waterfront dare to dream. It’s the kind of fire that gives Tyrion purpose and direction in the darkest depths of his depression. It’s a fire of hope: “...and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.”

Daenerys was the first spark in the forging of a brighter world. 

Light it up, girl.

(And while we’re talking about lighting fires, just FYI, I really fuckin’ hope Dany burns Randyll Tarly in TWOW, because he is a horrible person who represents everything that is wrong with the current Westerosi system. In GRRM’s early novel, Armageddon Rag, there is literally the prototype of Randyll Tarly, who GRRM describes on the page as a “fascist pig”. Burn him, Dany. And somebody necromance Tywin so she can burn him too, because only one death wasn’t enough for that bastard.) 

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So when I heard “Shall we begin?,” Kennedy’s words echoed in my mind. “Let us begin.” Let us have “a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.” 

“Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?" --Daenerys, ASOS

“Peace is my desire.“ --Daenerys, ADWD

Kennedy considered “tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself” to be the “common enemies of man” and it’s these things that Dany is fighting against. It’s this type of stuff that ASOIAF is all about imo. (It fascinates me to consider things like the pale mare in the context of this speech that GRRM grew up with.) 

But unlike Kennedy’s, Dany’s words were a question. An invitation, the way ASOIAF is an invitation: 

A Song of Ice and Fire [rubs] our faces in the reactionary brutality of its world, in the hope that we’ll see it more clearly, and fight it more fiercely, in the world we see when we look up again. [x]

I think I’ve said this before, but ASOIAF is the kind of work that requests audience participation. It doesn’t want you to remain passive. “Rage,” it commands, “rage against the dying of the light.” 

So I loved those three little words. Dany looks straight at the camera, straight at us, and she asks us, “Shall we begin?” 

“...let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.”

A new endeavor. A new world of law. Not a new balance of power. 

I said up above that Dany wants to get rid of this whole system that grinds the lowborn to dust under the indifferent heel of the mighty. 

She doesn’t want simply a new balance of power. She wants a world of laws, of justice, of peace.

Did you agree with me when I said that stuff above, about book!Daenerys? 

Because Dany says something similar in the show:

“Lannister, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell, they’re all just spokes on a wheel. This one’s on top, then that one’s on top, and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground. I’m not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.”

And, like, ok, this is not my favorite show quote, and I don’t like talking about the show, but people use this quote to condemn Dany (even book!Dany) for not wanting to create a democracy or a constitutional monarchy in Westeros (and no one demands a democracy of the other (male) contenders for the Iron Throne). (I have #receipts on this fandom, just send me an ask.) 

Quoting from the book, “Mastering the Game of Thrones” by Battis and Johnston, it gives historical background and analysis to this wheel quote:

If Martin is the god of the text, he is not a benevolent deity seeking to punish evil, reward the good, or console his faithful readers. His characters’ lives are unpredictable, violent, and often brief, and beloved figures quickly fall from happiness and security to suffer betrayal, maiming, illness, and death. In the middle ages and Renaissance, such downfalls were often subscribed to Fortuna, whose wheel pulled men up to success and tossed them down again in failure. Fortune, like Providence, is a guiding force whose motion is inevitable. Her effects, however, were unpredictable; how quickly her wheel might turn or how high or low it threw those caught on it could not be foreseen. Unlike providence, Fortune does not seek to punish ill or reward good; her only motivation is movement, her only constant change itself.

In both the books and the show, Daenerys wants to punish wrongdoers and reward good. She wants justice. Justice is not compatible with this concept of Fortune’s Wheel, hence the “breaking the wheel” line on the show. The “wheel” speech is where she literally says on the show that she doesn’t want the little people crushed by the nobility’s political machinations. (It’s reminiscent of Varys’s line, “Why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?”)

Dany doesn’t want people to live merely at the whim of a tyrannical ruler. That’s no way for people to live, always uncertain whether or not they have the royal favor of the person currently at the top of the “wheel”, like when Cersei throws Falyse to Qyburn, who experiments on Falyse and murders her. 

Or like when Cersei approves of people bringing her the heads of people with dwarfism. 

Or when the Tyrells, while clawing their way to the top, throw Sansa and Tyrion under the bus. 

These are the types of things that Dany wants to stop (“break”), because life is not a zero-sum game, no matter how much Cersei would like us all to believe that “you win or you die” is the way the world works. Absolutist views like Cersei’s, where you’re either on top of the world or crushed underneath it, leave no room for the kindness and compassion and love that GRRM advocates in every chapter. That’s why people like Cersei are wrong, and why Dany will cast her down in the books. 

The entire time, books and show, the Dany I’ve seen and read wants to change how the world works, and create something bold and revolutionary. 

“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

This was the other reason that Dany’s “Shall we begin?” jumped out at me, because I knew what came before JFK’s “let us begin” in his speech, and I knew what came after in 1963.

In all the GRRM books and stories I’ve read, he has this tendency to leave a lot of things unfinished. Not in the sense that TWOW is currently unfinished as of January 2018, but in the sense that ... the worlds he creates go on without us, and often without the characters we love. There are things left undone at the end GRRM’s stories. 

Because, like, obviously I don’t know how ASOIAF is going to end, but I strongly believe that Dany sacrifices herself to save the world. (Like a president dying while serving his country?)

“All this will not be finished [...] But let us begin.”

For example, I get the sense that we’ll never see things all neatly wrapped up in Meereen, or see slavery completely gone from Essos. But Dany set it all in motion. Let us begin. She was the spark, and it’s now up to the people of Volantis, Lys, Myr, everywhere to fan the flames and keep them alive, even after Dany is gone. 

I was saying this in another post, that there’s a Romanticism to Dany, and in a way that’s similar to the Romantic-capital-R fairy tale attached to Kennedy and the “Camelot Era”. I’m just gonna quote myself (and Steven again) cuz I liked what I said the first time:

[...] “Coming out of the tradition of chivalric romance - where the point was about the purity and intensity of longing *from afar* not its consummation, which threatened the social order and had to be punished with a tragic end - a lot of the classic romances are cases of “star-crossed” love”. Steven cites classic examples of Guinevere and Lancelot, Tritan and Isolde, and Romeo and Juliet. Dare I add Dany and Westeros? The intense longing from afar, the threats to the social order, what I suspect will be a tragic end?

[...] I believe Dany would give everything for the people of Westeros, for the people of the world, that she would forsake her heart’s desire, her lifelong goal … that she would tear out her own heart for Westeros, and not expect to get it back, if only to keep her people safe … 

[post]

“...and it has been saved, but not for me.”

And after Dany dies -- if Dany dies -- it’ll be up to other people to pick up the pieces of Westeros and rebuild. But I don’t think Reconstruction is something we’ll ever see in Westeros. Like I said, GRRM tends to let his stories go on without us. 

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Dany reminds me of the heroes in the big fantasy stories: Frodo from LOTR, or King Arthur from The Once and Future King (who Jackie Kennedy was arguably trying to build JFK’s legacy around with the “Camelot” comparison -- and I believe GRRM was a T.H. White fan? But I don’t remember where I read that), etc. Anyways. The Fantasy Hero often leaves us in the end, and it becomes time to stand or fall on our own as we turn the last page. 

But that’s what I think some of the best Fantasy stories are about: teaching us to stand. To hold. 

“I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.“      --The Lord of the Rings movies

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wow ok that was a long post, sorry. idk man. those three words just gave me a lot of feelings. I’m sorta afraid now what TWOW’s gonna do to me because I think it’s gonna be a lot longer than just three words

im not gonna go back up to the top and read over this mind dump so i hope that made sense.

[elusianknight]

currently listening to pyre’s mourning song, mourning my GPA as i ignore my computer science project