#asoiaf image

[castieltrash1]

Can I request Jon Snow x Lady!Reader. Arranged marriage that becomes real love?

this is so sweet ty for the req :')

jon snow x afab!reader; arranged marriage, slow burn, vague mentions of sex, mutual pining-ish i think

when you’re finally brought to the godswood, gaze averted and flecks of snow glinting between strands of hair, jon finds himself relieved. he’d known his duties from a young age so when the time to wed arrived -- a wife already chosen on his behalf -- he didn’t fight it. he tried not to imagine your appearance, but it proved difficult, and many late nights at winterfell were spent concocting an image of you in his head. not nearly as beautiful or rich as robb’s future wife, surely, but you’d be worthy of a stark bastard at least… right?

it’s odd. you’re different, but somehow more beautiful. jon can’t really explain it and he doesn’t try, not wanting to offend you. the first night is painfully awkward regardless, and he’s relieved when you both agree to take it slow for now. everything happens eventually, of course, but your patience pays off. jon considers himself lucky -- he could’ve been stuck with anyone for the rest of his life, but he had you; you, with your kind words and pretty face, practically handed to him on a silver platter. he kept waiting for you to act monstrous, assuming your beauty had to be compounded by something, anything, but it’s not. your marriage isn’t perfect, but jon enjoys figuring things out with you by his side. he likes being a united front with someone. he likes the warmth you leave on the other half of the bed, sheets smelling like the oil from your baths. he enjoys keeping you happy, noticeably fulfilled when he’s seen as a good husband and dutiful partner.

the more you go through together, the deeper jon’s feelings grow. he knows it’s happening, despite his initial attempts to ignore it. you have a lifetime together ahead of you - there’s no need for him to rush things. but the affection gnaws at him, and he can’t deny himself any longer. he loves you. by the old gods and the new, he really, truly, loves you. he hadn’t expected it, thinking any romantic dedication to you would take years to build -- if it ever even came to fruition -- but now it’s here and he almost isn’t sure what to do.

it’s been on the tip of his tongue all day. he’d nearly said it in bed the night before, limbs tangled in sheets as he stared down at you, but the words were caught in his throat. now, every time he speaks to you, the declaration begs for release, desperate for you to know the depth of his feelings. three more opportunities arise before midday, but he lasts until after dinner, when he finds you overlooking the courtyard below and feels his heart skip a beat. you turn to face him and, somehow, his gentle expression tells you everything.

“i love you.”

+ after he says it for the first time, it takes him a while to work up the courage again, even if you happily return the sentiment. it felt like a reward and he doesn’t want to spoil it. the words aren’t careless to him and he wants them to mean something, not be taken for granted. soon enough, you’ll hear it five times a day, gruffly murmured in every free moment alone. and, despite its newfound frequency, it only seems to be more genuine each time.

game of thrones weekend (reqs open!)

[trogthefrog]

Could the fall of the wall be a little more… wet?

The wall in asoiaf is made of ice. When it’s hot it is described as “weeping” with melted parts flowing down the ice. Is it possible that when (if) the wall falls in story instead of being like a brick wall caving in it could be more like a Great Flood?

After all the easiest way to make all that ice go away is to let it run away on its own i.e. turn it into a giant wave! “Waking giants from the earth” could be earthquake but think back to the hammer of the waters or the creation of the neck. Both involved enormous amounts of water flooding after an earthquake. Maybe the fall of the wall could be the same, except being a land based tsunami post earthquake. (Meta narratively drawing upon the Great Flood myth GRRM might’ve learned about as a Catholic child)

Then the Others will surf all the way down to the God’s Eye and marry Jon snow at Harrenhal!

or something

I also could be completely wrong. But it’s a fun idea!

[drakaripykiros130ac]

I saw someone asking why Alicent Hightower and Criston Cole seem to be getting more hate than Joffrey Baratheon or Ramsay Bolton ever did.

The answer to that question is very simple.

Joffrey and Ramsay were just cartoonishly evil, so to speak. They were fun to watch and read about sometimes. They made good villains, and they knew that they were villains (never attempting to hide it).

Alicent and Cole (and Otto as well), on the other hand, are the kind of people you meet in real life as well. The kind of people you absolutely can’t stand for their false piety, their hypocrisy, their gold digging, their double-standards, their constant judgmental attitude, and cruel intentions.

In other words:

Joffrey and Ramsay are TV/book villains.

Alicent, Otto and Cole are real life villains.

[mummer]

[dragonseeds]

do you think dany knew what she was doing when she hatched her dragons or was it just an accident?

oh yes i think she knew exactly what she was doing. the magic in her blood and the eggs and the fire was speaking to her, coming through in her dragon dreams—especially that last fever dream after her miscarriage. i think she knew it was possible before because she could feel the eggs stirring and the magic waking up (and she was already connecting with drogon and drawing strength from him), but it was mirri maz duur who actually taught her how to do it.

i love that what she’s actually doing is never explicitly stated, yet everything she’s doing saying and thinking gives her away. like she swears to jorah she doesn’t intend to die with drogo, she directly compares herself to aegon, she places the eggs on the pyre and tells mirri maz duur that she’s going to take her life because only death can pay for life, etc., but the closest dany ever comes to directly saying it is when it’s done and the last dragon is about to hatch:

like calling herself mother of dragons and then calling them her children is unequivocal, but before that grrm’s building the suspense and creating this heady wild momentum. it feels very similar to reading her wake the dragon fever dream, and provides such a great insight into her character. the space in the narrative where she doesn’t acknowledge what she’s doing or exactly why she’s doing it is where the magic lives, and it also gives her a place to hide any lingering uncertainty or fear, while still making it clear that she understands what’s happening: that she is in fact making it happen.

but like speaking of accidents, i’m obsessed with the difference between dany’s success and egg’s flop tragedy. she uses her husband’s funeral pyre, the husband whose life she traded her son’s for, to wake the dragons (including herself) and creates life from death. aegon v tried to hatch dragon eggs during rhaegar’s birth (the child he and jaehaerys ii traded rhaella’s happiness and agency for) and instead made a pyre of summerhall and most of his family. rhaegar was the last dragon, born in fire, and now it’s her—but it was always her and he always had to die. “the face within was her own.” crazy. insane.

i’m sure people have pointed this out before, but the magic here always makes me think of this line from the last unicorn: “real magic can never be made by offering up someone else’s liver. you must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.” grrm’s use of magic is very similar, just as the unicorn and dany are similar, and i think it’s very possible that other attempts to hatch dragons in the past failed in part because whoever was trying didn’t understand this (and also because they were a. men and b. not daenerys lol). magic has a price, and it’s always high. this is one of the hardest lessons dany has to learn, and she thanks mirri maz duur for it in the end, because she understands that it had to be her own child, her womb, her husband, her sun and his fire that’s really hers burning someone’s life away—and this whole time, the entire book up until this point, she’s been cracking open like the moon, like the eggs on the pyre, and then she joins them in the fire.

[mancegaydar]

Related to people saying they picture asoiaf as looking like 90's fantasy TV-

I want an asoiaf adaptation that looks like a Roger Corman low-budget, absolute piece of crap 80's sword-and-sorcery movie. That's the aesthetic I think we deserved

I want that Mystery Science Theater 3000-ass look

[brucelinas]

Sansa doods

[izfrogzy]

What if…..Aemond never lost his eye 💚💎🥵💎🖤

[shripscapi]

tommen is going to be FINE. don’t even worry.

[saessenach]

on my knees. and only if u want to. jb with 18 or whatever the number is for the laughing kiss please…thank u….

HI HELLO HERE THEY ARE 🥹

Brienne and Jaime for #18 - a kiss while laughing laughing from this list

[scudden]

Sansa in a winter dress

[belle-keys]

The Greens: Queen Alicent Hightower

“What have I done but what was expected of me? Forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law. While you flout all to do as you please. Where is duty? Where is sacrifice? It's trampled under your pretty foot again.”

– House of the Dragon Season 1 Episode 7, "Driftmark"

[trogthefrog]

Lil low quality map of all the armies at the end of AGOT. They are represented by the sigil of their leader (Hi Forley Prester :)

(Also whoops I didn't use Robb Stark's personal arms)

[drakaripykiros130ac]

One thing I enjoy in this whole story is how Otto and Alicent Hightower have somehow convinced themselves that they speak for the entire Realm.

They don’t call a Great Council after King Viserys dies to settle the succession, they don’t let people choose between Rhaenyra and Aegon, they keep King Viserys’ death a secret and plot with the Council behind closed doors.

And then they claim to speak for the Realm when they say things like: “The Realm will not accept her [Rhaenyra]”.

Is that right? And how could your conniving, backstabbing ass know that, Ser Otto? Did you run a survey during the years you were Hand? Did you create polls? Anything like that?

[Don’t even get me started on Alicent. In real life, a woman like her (upstart, conniving, jealous and cruel bitch who steals her stepdaughter’s inheritance immediately after her father’s death), would never receive any kind of support from anyone].

All I can remember is Aegon being crowned by his mommy, granddaddy and his mommy’s lap dog/wannabe lover in the Dragonpit, with hundreds of smallfolk who were forced to attend this farce of a coronation and swear obeisance to a false king under penalty of death (the death of Lord Lyman Beesbury was proof enough that the Greens were going to execute anyone who did not comply with their treasonous actions).

And despite everything, Rhaenyra ends up having the majority Houses on her side (53) and she controls the largest territories of the Realm (the North, the Vale and the Riverlands).

As a whole, Rhaenyra has: the North, the Vale, the Riverlands, the Iron Islands, the Crownlands, and half the Reach.

Meanwhile, Aegon only has the Stormlands, the Westerlands and half the Reach.

Otto and Alicent are either living in absolute denial and prefer to lie to themselves and others or they are truly out of their minds.

Understand this: 3/4 of Westeros preferred to go to war for a woman, rather than accept the man already sitting the throne.

Now, tell me again, what were you saying about the Realm?

[volukyrja]

Hanged man

[visenyaism]

unserious terrible hotd promo poster of my dreams where it’s helaena and six year old jaehaera sharing a cigarette smoking out of the tommen window