#but also it's not in character if Lambs isn't thinking about the child he literally watched die of Plague

[nomsfaultau]

Philza Malewife Competition Round 5

Previous rounds: Cleaning. Cooking. Decorating. Karens. Current points: The Lambs Wolves Wear (2), Lighting Lanterns Philza (1), Weight in Gold (1), everyone else (0).

For a quick synopsis for the fics I’m referencing- those are here

Next round: Helping out their poor sick kid :(

and....uh...this one lost our family friendly rating. Oops?

Lord what fools these mortals be!: Is that a stomach bug? He'll fix them right up! Usually Lady Death is in charge of fixing their children, of course, but if given permission he's more than happy to help!Ripping the offending organ out of his child's belly is so easy with his big sharp claws (courtesy of his wonderful Lady!!). Next to craft a new stomach out of ice and shadow, shove it back in, lace mortal flesh together, and voila! Now their stomach will be perfect. It'll have to be, if they are to survive the Fae Wilds :)

Where do Babies Come From?: Has the classic plastic bag covering a kids trash can for all your vomit needs! It's a spider-man trash can too. Plus some cough drops (the tasty citrus kind) and sprite and medicine from going to the Emergency Room. He's offered to pick up anything from the local gas station that the kid wants, set them up with lots of pillows and netflix...but Philza does still have to go to work. Especially after he got the ER bill. Doesn't let the kid see it, of course, but...oof. He's going to have to put in a lot of overtime to catch up from this.

Lighting lanterns to bring you home: A swift cut, and the sacrificial lamb is lain on the alter. Philza knows all the prayers and rituals across the horizon in both directions. Afterward he cleans the knife off slowly. The gods will cure the kid's illness, if they know what's good for them. And if not...well. Technoblade can just bring the kid back with him when he returns from Hell in the Spring. And give him the tea on how Lady Death is entertaining her new surge of godly company.

The Lambs Wolves Wear: There's no medicine. Not really. He knows a few soothing herbs, but not much more than that. The journey into town is too long and hard, might just make it worse. And even then, he can't afford real medicine. So Philza coats the room in trinkets, in rings of salt and straw dolls and crimson ribbons. Holy words smudged on the kid's palms with leftover dye from the wool. And Philza waits, and hold the kid's hand through the long, long night. He falls asleep at the bedside still praying. He shivers slightly, in his sleep, haunted with the memory of holding Technoblade's hand as illness stole his last breath.

Worth far more than your weight in gold: Birb doesn't understand germ theory. He doesn't know what medicine is. All he can do is tuck the sick child under wings to make sure they are soft and warm and dry. Luckily unlike the humanoid Philza's, this Phil is less likely to catch the illness due to the species barrier, and is very safe to snuggle with. But there isn't much more he can do, and since he lives in a nest there isn't much protection from the elements. He's worried, and feels useless. Would eating a dead squirrel fix it?

Fault: As an immortal that's made it to modern day, this Philza knows every remedy under the sun, and offers a combination of home remedies he foraged by hand and ground up into medicine with a mortar and pestle, AS WELL AS medicine Wil stole from the store. Plus some honey from Tubbo for that cough, and it goes well with the herbal tea he made. During chills, he also makes for the best blanket ever, the fire in his chest warm and hot as he cradles the kid close. This Philza by far knows the most about healthcare. But also if the kid needs cheering up (and their humor falls in this area), Philza will also teasingly threaten to use leeches to balance their humors.

Mandatory Family Reunion: Philza has a policy of cancelling all plans the moment one of his children is sick so that he can be at their side the entire time. Reading familiar bedtime stories, spoon feeding food, attending to their every whim and then some. Unlike all other Philza's this one offers luxury S-tier pillows, every single streaming service and video game ever made, and has world-class doctors attending to every cough this kid makes. Honestly the Queen of England didn't have this good a deathbed. Now...for transparency's sake, I must establish has MFR Techno been bedridden 3 times because Philza induced illness in him (Roofies (accident; mixed bad with meds/concussion); Bedridden with every vaccine ever (intentional, but for crying out loud this kid doesn't have protection against chicken pox!); Tranquilizer/chemical pacifier (so Techno would stop trying to attack him)). But that wasn't necessarily so he could have a placid Techno too weak to resist dotting, just an appreciated side effect. The kid in question probably wasn't mildly poisoned...

Golden Apples (Gilded Atrophy): Philza tosses over some regen potions and a golden carrot for saturation. That's about the best he can do. Unless the kid wants to be killed so they can respawn at a non-sick save point? Philza has a sleeping potion and a sword if that's the case. They wouldn't feel a thing and would be good as new in two minutes tops. Eh? No? Suit yourself. Tubbo, personally, can attest to both the terror and the effectiveness of his respawn surgeries, but hopefully it won't come to that...

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

Okay I want to write an essay here about Gullveig and Book 7 and themes of agency and how Gullveig's mega-waifu design is actually integral to this.

The way Gullveig is designed, she rarely if ever smiles. Even when you Summon her. She's a dutiful servant. She has no agency. This is the future Njordr envisioned for her: an agentless, demure woman who does as she's told. She's gorgeous--breasting boobily and everything.

Kvasir already thinks she has little agency--that her fate is decided. She is lonely, and cares for the protag like, you know, a nurse almost. She falls for them. But ultimately, she knows her life is a cycle and it cannot be broken. She will be hunted down and killed and become Seidr. It doesn't matter what she wants--which is to live--she has no agency in this. It's Fate.

And Seidr... Dutifully does what Njordr tells her to, not knowing that even the ritual she does to "create a child" is a step in an elaborate plan to fully break down any sense of agency she has. The Golden Seer's Curse will ultimately rob her of it entirely and he'll have his weapon to take out his bitterness on the mortals because he's pissy he's not in his prime anymore. Seidr doesn't realize he dreams of being a mother will be dashed because the ritual is one to mark the player character for literal disassembly and soul fodder for a fake goddess to bear the curse in the interim. Because we could dismantle Njordr's plans by encouraging Seidr's agency.

It is only through empowering Seidr do we finally end the time loops for good. It is only by boosting her does SHE get to decide. Gullveig isn't gone--because she doesn't think it's fair that Gullveig should die. Instead, Seidr becomes a character who exists outside of time as all three at once through her own will. It is actually REALLY important to stress that she doesn't kill Gullveig, she absorbs her and they become one singular entity out of time. All three now exist at once--the ending is actually pretty explicit about this! Seidr refuses to let any part of her life be robbed from her by Njordr, and we gave her the power to make that decision but it was still ultimately HER DECISION TO MAKE.

Gullveig wouldn't be as powerful as a story of feminine agency if she DIDN'T end up a mega-waifu by the end. Because the entire point is she's a woman robbed of agency and turned into a thing. A living weapon, sure, but given the metaphors going on in regards to agency here, if she wasn't hot it'd fall a little flat because she's been molded into what a man thinks she should be. Her one act of agency AS Gullveig is killing Njordr because she can make it fall within the lines of the curse.

And I will stand here and say a lot of people were so busy being mad at Gullveig's design and the "make a baby with me" bits they missed the underlying in-your-face metaphor for the topic of women's agency. Of course Seidr wants to make a baby--that's What Women Do. It's also one of the biggest NEGATIVE acts in the entire book because it deconstructs the player character to use their soul as fodder to become a sacrificial lamb for the Golden Seer's Curse.

Anyway that's my essay. Enjoy.

.

[moonlitgleek]

Isn't Rhaegar absolved from his actions due to the fact that the prophecy is true and his son with Lyanna is the savior of the human race? Isn't Jaehaerys II absolved from his since the prophecy was true and TPTWP, in fact, is born of Aerys and Rhaella's line? I know we can mull over how Rhaegar could have done things differently to get his third child, but it seems that it was destiny. With Jaehaerys II, there wasn't even another option but to force the marriage to fulfill the prophecy.

Neither is absolved, no. Because the ends do not justify the means, and destiny is only what we make of it.

So many characters in this series act on the rationale that the greater good merits any number of sacrifices made in its name, which is also often used to justify and minimize blatant atrocities. Varys plays with people’s lives and maims children on the thought that King Aegon will right all the wrongs in Westeros. Mel argues that burning children alive is a necessary price for the survival of everyone else. Rhaegar treats the thousands of lives lost over the course of the rebellion as an acceptable collateral damage for a prophetic enterprise. Stannis is on the path to fall to that same viewpoint of a necessary sacrifice (”we do not choose our destinies” You do, Stannis. You do. You’re the only one who can choose). Robert’s council tries to frame Dany’s assassination attempt in the context of how ending two lives would spare thousands. Tywin tries to spin the Red Wedding as something that spares countless lives that would have fallen if the war continued. Mirri Maz Duur kills an unborn child on a crime he has not committed. Bloodraven may have honed Euron’s magical abilities on the notion that it would be worth it in the end, and he has a history of working on the basis of “the ends justify the means” during his tenure as Hand (e.g, killing Aenys Blackfyre in a breach of safe conduct, letting the Greyjoys pillage and reave as they please because he was too focused on the Blackfyres, etc). Though there is an obvious variance in the overall morality and sincerity between these character, all of them give the same rationale of a necessary evil done in the name of a greater good. If you have to sacrifice a few to save everyone else, if you have to sacrifice one person to save everyone else, it’s a no brainer, right? What is one life opposite everyone else?

The answer is “everything”

Human lives are worth so much more than being means to an end. Putting people on the chopping block for “the greater good” dehumanizes them by reducing them to sacrificial lambs in the name of a higher purpose. But ASOIAF has always advocated for the recognition of the value of life and respect for the sanctity of human life. Though the methods may vary, the text remains loud and clear in its refusal of dehumanizing ideologies, whether the source is human characters like Tywin Lannister, Robert Baratheon or Randyll Tarly, or supernatural creatures like the Others who are the literal embodiment of dehumanization. ASOIAF is about the fight for our common humanity, for recognizing that humanity regardless of things like class or race or which side of a magical wall you were born on. But you can not fight for our common humanity by devaluing people’s lives. You can not use the argument of “doing it for humanity” to disregard the humanity of those being sacrificed. That cold ruthless pragmatism is not the point of this series; the fight against it is. That’s been the point from the first prologue when Wymar Royce stared the abyss in the face and charged at it.

That’s why the support of the narrative lies with characters like Ned Stark and Davos Seaworth who refuse to give into the idea that the cruelty and dehumanization is necessary for the greater good. Through them, GRRM delivers the point that every single human life matters. That saving one person can mean everything. That it’s not naive to think that one life is worth everything. Protecting the one is not inherently inferior to protecting the many. The greater good can just as well lie in saving one person. Which it did in the case of Ned and Jon.

I think it’s pretty significant that Ned had no idea about the prophecy or what role Jon would play when he protected Jon, while Rhaegar who did know made everything exponentially harder. There’s a rather underappreciated irony in the fact that Rhaegar (and Jaehaerys) had little to do with fulfilling the prophecy; in fact, they jeopardized it. They may have orchestrated the circumstances under which Jon and Dany could be conceived, but a closer look shows that Jon and Dany were born mostly in spite of them and their actions. I mean, Jaehaerys married Rhaella off so young it impacted her health and her ability to bear living children. She almost died at Summerhall along with Rhaegar in an ill-fated attempt to hatch dragons, and while that’s mostly on Aegon V, I expect that Jaehaerys was fully on board as well considering the measures he took for the prophecy. Rhaegar impregnated a teenager and left her to give birth in less than ideal circumstances, and spurred a civil war thing that weakened the realm and put his entire family at risk and got a few of them killed. I can only describe their efforts as counterproductive.

But I find it extremely fitting that they ended up doing little and less for the War for the Dawn, because Rhaegar and Jaehaerys embraced the metaphorical cold in their quest to fight it. Jaehaerys reduced Rhaella to an incubator for a savior as if her humanity and her worth are narrowed down to her womb. Rhaegar was willing to see thousands of people die for his vision of what the prophecy required. They allowed themselves to decide people’s worth. Rhaella, Elia and Lyanna mattered only as much as the children they could bear, and those children mattered only as much as their prophetic roles. Rickard, Brandon, their entourage and the rest of the casualties of the rebellion mattered not at all. But that’s not how it works. Rhaegar and Jaehaerys don’t get to decide people’s worth. They don’t get to decide which lives matter more. They do not get to devalue other people’s lives because these lives are not theirs to decide what to do with. Individual lives matter, not because of a prophetic destiny but because of their humanity.

That’s why I don’t see the prophecy as Rhaegar and Jaehaerys’ absolution, but rather their hubris.I get the sense that they acted on the assumption that the prophecy would make everything alright in the end, especially Rhaegar, and so ended up missing the entire point. They got so entangled in their interpretations of the prophecy that they did everything wrong. Got a lot wrong too since Rhaegar wasn’t even trying to get the Prince that Was Promised from Lyanna; I doubt her was even aiming for a boy. Hatching dragons in Summerhall ended on a tragedy. And of course, no one ever accounted for Tyrion. But the prophecy, true as it may be, doesn’t make things go a certain way; people do.

Which brings me to what you say about how it was destiny that Rhaegar acted like he did instead of other alternatives available to him. This argument fundamentally misunderstands a rather significant theme of this series - that it’s our choices that define who we are. Through the political and magical plots alike, individual choice is held up as immensely important to the point where many characters’ existential victory lies in that choice, the clearest case of all is how the three heads of the dragon have to contend with some version of this dilemma.

It all goes back and back, Tyrion thought, to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads.

Does Dany have “the taint” of madness? Is Jon’s decision to fight his or is it an inevitability orchestrated by prophecy and Rhaegar Targrayen? Can Tyrion break free of the toxic legacy left behind by Tywin? Do they get to define who they are on their own terms or are they beholden to their lineage and their ancestor’s legacy? That’s for them to decide.

“Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.”

Maester Aemon lays down the bare bones of this recurring theme in Jon’s arc. Across multiple books, Jon faces the choice of keeping to his watch or leaving several times which only frames the significance of how his destiny as one of the saviors of Westeros lies in him making that choice. Jon’s “chosen one” status has always been linked to him taking control of his future and deciding for himself. It’s him choosing to stay in Castle Black despite his appalled discovery of the reality of the Watch and to take his vows despite his frustration with the appointment to the stewards. It’s him going with Qhorin Halfhand of his own accord. It’s him picking the Wall over deserting for Robb or Ygritte. It’s him making a conscious decision to be the leader of the fight at the Wall over Stannis’ offer of Winterfell. It’s him taking responsibility of the free folk and recognizing that the commonality of being human is what matters. Jon is on the forefront of the text’s central conflict by virtue of his choices.

Dany is also fighting for our common humanity over in Slaver’s Bay. Her arc is basically a hard fought battle for autonomy, whether hers or the slaves’. Dany fights for freedom, for people’s right to choose, for them to be recognized as people not things to be gifted and sold. “Have you asked them?”, she challenges when Xaro Xohan Daxos argues that slaves have no use for freedom because they were made to be used. But Xaro Xohan Daxos doesn’t get to decide others’ fates, neither do the slavers of Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen. They don’t get to deprive them of their right to choose. People’s lives do not belong to them to decide what to do with. They don’t get to strip them of their free will or dehumanize them by treating them as things to be used to their satisfaction.

Because that’s what the Others are doing. They are supernatural slavers coming with their ice cold chains and stealing every single choice from humanity, right to the choice of dying. You can’t even die. They will resurrect you and force you to be their undead puppet.Mankind can’t even choose death because they will rip death from your grasp and drag your corpse up to join their army. The real threat in this text is a supernatural embodiment of dehumanization and taking away people’s choice. The War for the Dawn is nothing if not a fight for freedom, for the right to choose and to be human.

So the idea of “destiny” controlling how things go? It goes against the very heart of the series. Destiny is nothing but a series of choices deliberately made by individuals to shape the future. There is no fixed inescapable narrative that they can’t deviate from, or some all powerful cosmic power dictating how they should act. Even in the presence of magical visions, it remains the characters’ choices that decide their future. They get the prophecies but what they do with it is on them because the prophecies do not decide who they are. For all the magical elements and prophetic visions in this narrative, it remains that one of the things that the story emphasizes again and again is that our choices matter. They have meaning and they have consequences. Nothing is inevitable unless we make it so.

And that needs to hold true for the story to have any kind of meaning. Acting as if there is some kind of predetermined destiny that compels people to act in a particular way means that literally no one is responsible for their actions. People were just always meant to do what they did. Everyone is bound with chains of magic, lineage and a mystical force that has free reign to manipulate them. Free will is only an illusion fed to pawns that have no control. And if that’s the case, you can no longer hold anyone accountable. How can you call a person good or evil if no one has the capacity to choose their path? How can you hold anyone responsible either for their heroics or their atrocities? And if there is no good and evil, if honor and corruption get tarred by the same brush, if you have no basis to distinguish between the true knights and the false ones, then the only choice is truly “you win or you die”. Which is bullshit. These are false binaries and are far, far from being the measure of triumph.

ASOIAF has never been a story about the futility of ideals but rather about the fight to hold onto those ideals. About how“the battle between good and evil is fought largely within the individual human heart, by the decisions that we make”.  It all comes down to a choice and to the accountability for that choice. This series is rife with people trying to sidestep responsibility for their decisions, from Tywin maintaining plausible deniability to Robert willfully closing his eyes to corruption and transferring blame onto the next convenient target to Roose cultivating “a peaceful land, a quiet people” to Littlefinger keeping “clean hands” to Barristan Selmy and Arys Oakheart hiding behind their vows to justify their inaction in the face of tyranny. But they don’t get to outrun their responsibility for their own decisions. No one gets off scot-free, not because of vows of obedience, not because of corrupt systems, and not because of some notion of an inescapable destiny. The narrative won’t let them.

You must make that choice yourself, and live with it all the rest of your days.