#but that was not the intention 😭

[trentxaa]

... this chapter is coming out so melodramatic i'm kinda rethinking it

[shepscapades]

[dbhc flavored] Hermit a Day May: Day 14 — Doc!

Featuring both a current-day s10 doc and a verrry early s8 post-deviant doc! :]

[lazycranberrydoodles]

english translation book 5 baby we are in the ‘people assuming kid form hua cheng is xie lian’s son’ era 🔥🔥🔥 / follow for more hualian silliness

[moghedien]

Minthara says “in Her name” when you first meet her and she’s following the Absolute but when you recruit her and she expresses that she no longer follows any god, but she still has an intact paladin oath, and she says “in your name” occasionally because she’s no longer Lolth’s paladin or the Absolute’s paladin, she’s your paladin

[ochibrochi]

metropolis nights 🌙 (kal-el ver. under the cut) original "template" by @/K0TTERl

[beeduoo]

i really like this meme

[tatakaeeren]

Same smile....yet so different part 2 💔 | part 1 | Part 3

[shakingparadigm]

they are sooooo cute

[papicup]

Imagine loving somebody so much that you're willing to stop the time and erase your ENTIRE existence just for them to be happy ( even though we know he is his happiness but he doesn't get it)

And you still get called a heartless villain

Imagine offering ppl happy dreams that THEY controll not you

And you still get called a heartless villain

Imagine seing your loved in pain , you who have so much power yet can't do anything about it

Imagine being SO lonely, isolated, feared and having so much affinity for evil

But you end up growing into a sweetest ,kind hearted person

Imagine being Malleus Draconia

[avalencias]

I don’t know what to do—I have to trust someone—I don’t know who to trust

massive, massive props to aabria for this episode (here at this point and after!!)…to all of them really, but it was about here that I was driving yesterday morning and had to frantically try to hold the image in my head for the rest of my commute. I only kind of succeeded but it is what is. wow. what an episode

[swampybogg]

[hyenaa-euphoria]

stuffss for the red giant auuu!! :P

[nobleriver]

Michonne talks to Rick about their son

[botlabyrinth]

currently thinking about the shift in annabeth’s tone towards percy from episode 3 on the bus:

p: “there’s no way this is what sacred smells like”

a: “we’re soilders on a mission. it’s not a vacation”

to the end of episode 5 in the zoo truck:

p: “well, this smells”

a: “if it gets us where we need to go, that’s all that matters”

like she says it SO softly in the zoo truck?? it’s the same sentiment as episode 3 but she delivers it in a much kinder way like she’s not annoyed at his little comments anymore she’s just kind of stating the obvious, whereas in episode 3 she’s clearly annoyed and so over him being oblivious about everything… the subtle shift because they’re actually friends now

[koolaidashley]

Ok @bettertwin9000 I lied earlier which u never would have guessed I have a gift ☝🏻☝🏻

Plus one without pride colors below 🤗 since I know u a bitch for axolotl

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

I’d honestly rather not talk about this topic because of the fandom toxicity that always surrounds it, but I think one of the more…should I say….interesting things to witness post HOTD has been the way fandom treats Jon Snow’s relationship with House Targaryen, and the effect that has on how they perceive his role in the larger (unfinished) narrative. Jon’s association with the Targs is more implied in the books because his parentage has not been revealed yet. But when you read the many companion stories released over the years like the Dunk and Egg novellas, The Rogue Prince, and Fire and Blood, you realize how much of House Targaryen is built around having Jon Snow as a foundation. I’m talking entire characters being Jon Snow clones or being created as a tiny hint-hint, nudge-nudge for ‘Jon the hidden Targaryen prince’. Sometimes, multiple characters within a certain period have elements of Jon; e.g., Jace, Addam, and Alyn Velaryon all being Jon Snow clones to varying degrees.

Jon was one of the very first characters ever created in this story many, many years ago. The first scene GRRM envisioned, of a family finding direwolf pups in the snow, gave birth to two characters who would be central to the entire series’ resolution: Jon and Bran. Then you read GRRM’s leaked outline and though he has since denounced it, it still says something important: Jon was always meant to be a secret royal prince. We can comfortably assume that he was created before most of the world’s history was set in stone. So when GRRM is building upon House Targaryen, which has thus far occupied the vast majority of the supplementary material, he injects elements of Jon into those characters. For example, Egg from D&E is very similar to Jon Snow personality wise. Bloodraven, who is from the same era and even has a role as Bran’s mentor in the main narrative, is created as foreshadowing for Jon Snow. Baelor Breakspear, also in these novellas, is how GRRM shows that Targaryen princes don’t always have the typical Valyrian look. Baelor favored his mother, as does Jon. Beyond just those novellas, he exists to inform on Jon, not just in look but in character too. Sometimes, Targaryen history is written to inform more tangentially on Jon’s own origins. Case in point, Prince Duncan and Jenny of Oldstones as parallels for Rhaegar and Lyanna.

Then we get to Fire and Blood which focuses so wholly on House Targaryen. And what I find interesting, and then frustrating at times, is how HOTD has morphed how we discuss this book. Because outside of HOTD, it’s easy to see how GRRM builds on Targaryen history with Jon in mind. And then we have the Dance of the Dragons. And this is where HOTD fucks up beyond measure. A lot of characters who existed during the Dance inform on Jon and his potential future. I’ve already mentioned the two Velaryon brothers, but I want to zero in on Jace because as one of the key players during this conflict, he is one of the most important ways in which GRRM links these historical characters to the (currently ongoing) main narrative. Jace is pretty much “Jon Snow if his Targaryen parent was actually the woman and he was raised as a prince”. He is so very similar to Jon in character, almost to the point of being an outright clone. And this important because one of his greatest accomplishments during the Dance was his alliance with Winterfell’s lord, Cregan Stark. This birthed the Pact of Ice and Fire, a union between the two most powerful and important families in the meta-narrative. This union went unfulfilled in Jace’s and Cregan’s lifetimes…..but Rhaegar and Lyanna flipped it over its head. Originally meant to be a union between a Stark lord and Targaryen princess whose children would have direct claim to Winterfell, the actual fulfillment of this Pact was that a Targaryen prince sired a son by a Stark lady. The result of this union, Jon, now has claim to both families’ legacies: Winterfell and the Iron Throne. Through the Pact of Ice and Fire, Jon Snow becomes one of the most important and most direct cases of narrative continuity between the current era and Targaryen history. The Dance of the Dragons unknowingly gives birth to Jon Snow.

What HOTD does is to entirely erase one of the most direct consequences of the Dance from its narrative. The show makes no meaningful reference to Jon, or the Pact, even though the author of the source material was careful in laying out just how important Jon is to the central narrative. What’s frustrating is how then they spend a lot of time talking about the prince that was promised whose song is the song of ice and fire. But then they erase Jon, the result of the pact of ice and fire, from the narrative. The worst thing about this is that HOTD has taken such a large space in fandom discussion, such that people use events from the show to inform how they engage with the written text. For all intents and purposes these have been two different narratives, but now I have to read the worst blood-supremacist takes about Jon; which is incredibly ironic given the subject matter.

I often see people celebrate that HOTD doesn’t talk about Jon, which has been a pretty big clue on either one of two things:

Many people who engage in fandom discussion post HOTD don’t actually engage with the text in its entirety. They’ve either never read the books and have only consumed them based on their online fandom bubbles, or what they have read is severely limited in scope.

Some of those who have read these books don’t like ASOIAF for what it is. They like it for what it should be for their headcannons and character-limited perceptions. Thats why they like it when certain sections of the text are outright ignored, because it’s better for their headcannons that way.

Beyond wanting new material, one of the worst consequences of these books going unfinished for me is that large sections of this fandom will be primed to ignoring one of the central characters, because all the material that’s been released outside of the published material has greatly mischaracterized the text itself. We’re now relegated to unhelpful (sometimes idiotic) arguments such as “HOTD says so, so it must be true in the books”. HOTD is taking creative liberties, and we should respect that. And we should also acknowledge that some part of HOTD is continued from Game of Thrones, which didn’t do a very good job of adapting ASOIAF or its characters in the first place. Cutting out the Pact of Ice and Fire (as far as we know) is one of the worst narrative changes made by the HOTD show runners in terms of establishing common context with the story many viewers are already aware of. And it sucks that with that show’s massive popularity, future ASOIAF adaptations will follow suit in completely disregarding important elements of the overall narrative. But hey, at least dragons look good.