#danys third child will survive guys

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

i’m honestly so surprised that ppl think that the seven kingdoms staying separate is a good idea or even close to george’s endgame.

just no. you are wrong :)

and tbh id be kind of disappointed in george if asoiaf ends and the free cities continue to remain separate.

but then i remember george is an incredible writer and his endgame will satisfy all the themes he’s been developing <3

yes i’m delusional i have faith that george will finish the series 💀

[elfindreams]

SOME THOUGHTS NOW THAT I’VE FINISHED ADWD:

• good god I can’t imagine having been a fan of this series all along and having to wait ten-plus years for TWoW, which STILL hasn’t been released... WHAT HAPPENS TO BRIENNE IS SHE OKAY I NEED TO KNOW

•I have a weird and terrible premonition that the prologue chapter of TWoW, if/when it ever comes out, will be from the POV of Rickon or perhaps Shaggydog.

•I haven’t kept proper count or anything but there have to be at least five different characters (all male, incidentally) who are described within the narration as grotesquely fat and repulsive and smelly. Like, constantly. In excruciating detail. After the second or third instance of this, I began to have this uncomfortable sense that there are some kind of sublimated body image issues and self-hatred at play here, because GRRM himself doesn’t exactly have a slender body shape... is this guy okay, emotionally speaking? I’m not even saying that in a jokey way, like, seriously, is he? ._.

• On a separate but not-irrelevant note. This man just LOVES himself some titties, huh. Absolutely adores them. (Relatable)

• I have a reasonably high tolerance for disturbing shit within fiction provided that it’s handled well, and I’m the last person to insist that authors need to show their characters brushing their teeth before crossing the street lest their grown-ass target audience absorb negative moral values, but the Victarion chapters in ADWD crossed the line for me. Yes he’s an intentionally awful person yes you’re not supposed to feel comfortable yes it will surely all make sense once TWoW comes out blah blah blah blah blah but, like... what’s the point of Victarion? I mean, really? His chapters are unpleasant to read, they contribute very little to the plot so far, and on a thematic level, the only thing that really comes across is “LOOK HOW AWFUL AND MISOGYNISTIC THIS GUY AND HIS CULTURE IS!!! WOW, ~TOXIC MASCULINITY~ SURE IS BAD!”, which is just as simplistic and didactic as only writing nice characters who perfectly fit our world’s moral sensibilities. And that’s especially strange because Jaime and Sam’s respective subplots are both about men who are super emotionally fucked-up (in completely opposite ways) because they were raised to think that the best and only way to be a man is to be a Cool Tough Badass Whomst Fights Real Good™, and both are done really well. So on that level, the Victarion chapters are treading on well-worn ground, and also faceplanting.

• It belatedly occurs to me that Ygritte was described as “pug-nosed”, which implies that pugs exist in Westeros...

• I was more sad about the presumed deaths of Pretty Pig and Crunch than about Jon Snow, tbh.

• *kicks rock* I wish Ser Barristan was my grandpa...

• I remember seeing Discourse on my dash circa 2014-2015 regarding Dany’s subplot in Astapor/Yunkai/Meereen as a white savior fantasy, and it’s certainly not for me to say whether that part of the show is Good, Actually, because I am super white and also haven’t watched the show. But if anything, the book version seems like a critique of that type of story: Dany shows up in these places that are completely foreign to her, swiftly and forcibly fixes their major societal ills using her superior firepower without knowing anything about the underlying factors which contribute to their existence... and then she is shocked when everything goes horribly wrong like 20 minutes later. (i.e. she ends slavery but the rich and powerful former slaveowners are still rich and powerful and still ✨control the means of production✨ so most of the formerly enslaved people end up right back where they started, it’s just that they’re now “free” but being paid starvation wages and barely surviving instead of being literally enslaved. Which she maybe could’ve avoided had she spent time learning about how the city’s economy worked and would need to be changed, and/or sat down with people and directly asked them what they wanted and needed, what would be useful to them in starting new lives for themselves, etc.)

• (I feel like I’ve already mentioned the above bullet point in a previous post but I am dumb of ass and pure of heart and also don’t feel like going back through to check)

• Satin lives!!! YES!!!

• oh right uhhhh yeah R.I.P. Quentyn, you died as you lived: doing your best but unfortunately also being kind of below-average

• Regardless of whether Young Griff/Aegon is actually Aegon, Varys’ master plan seems... bizarrely short-sighted and risky? Like, he spends 20 years intentionally destabilizing the realm plotting to put this perfectly-molded prince on the throne, but what happens if his perfect prince gets randomly thrown from his horse or gets an infected cut and dies? Even if he ends up on the throne, how can it be guaranteed that his own children are equally perfect future rulers? Is that why he and Ilyrio helped Viserys and Dany survive, so they could serve as backup in case anything happened to Aegon? But if so, then why didn’t they keep those two closer at hand, and try to educate them in a similar fashion, and keep them safe? And if his whole motive is peace and prosperity for the realm, then what was wrong with the existing state of affairs by the end of ADWD, with Cersei stripped of political power, a good-natured and pliable child king on the throne, and Kevan serving as the regent and doing a legitimately good job? Instead of the whole convoluted Aegon plot, he could’ve just... I dunno, found a way to maintain a position with court and pulled some strings to make sure Tommen was properly taught how to be a good king.

• oh yeah right R.I.P. Kevan, too

[ladyfantasy98]

Flyers and Favors, Part 2!

Hello! First, thank-you for the wonderful response to my Danny Phantom fanfic, Flyers and Favors! I’m really honored that so many people have liked and reblogged -- some of them twice!

So while I had intended it to be a one-shot, inspiration struck, and I’ve added a second part! With a possible third part to come at a later date.

Chapter 2 deals with Dani battling Skulker when he comes to bother Danny during study time. It ended up longer and a bit more serious than I intended, but I think it’s still humorous and a good read (if I do say so myself ;) ).

Let me know what you think! I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!

You can read this second part either below the cut, or on my Fanfiction.net account. Happy Reading!

Danielle knew the instant a ghost showed up. A shiver ran through her body and she gasped, releasing a small blue puff of air.

With a grin, she jumped up from her brown wooden desk and transformed, letting two white lights wash over her body and change her into her ghost form, Dani Phantom. Her shoulder-length black hair (layered with triangle cuts in the back) became white, and a black-and-white jumpsuit replaced her purple pajama shorts and button-up top.

She turned intangible and flew up through the ceiling of her bedroom - created by siphoning off sections of the Fenton family's lab - until she reached her older cousin/brother/creator Danny's room. She poked her head through his floor just in time to see him finish his own transformation into Danny Phantom.

"Hey!" Dani called, startling him and making him jump up into the air. Hovering there, Danny looked over at her.

"What's up, Elle?" he asked. Ever since she had moved in with the Fentons a year ago as their adopted daughter, the family had taken to calling her Elle, Ellie, or Annie to differentiate between her and Danny. Dani didn't mind, but she still introduced herself to new people as Dani-with-an-I, and she would always be Dani Phantom.

"I got this one," she answered Danny. "Go back to studying."

"But - "

"I can handle whoever it is, I promise," Dani insisted. "That's the whole reason you went into the Ghost Zone the other day, right? To make sure they'd leave you alone so you could study?"

"Well, yeah, but -"

"Then study. These exams are really important to you, I know."

Danny lowered himself until he was back on the floor. He glanced over at his desk, which was covered with pencils, textbooks, and loose-leaf paper filled with scientific equations. "I mean...this can wait. You have homework, too, I know. I'll just stay up and -"

She narrowed her glowing green eyes - the same as Danny's - at him. "Danny. Please. My Pre-Calc homework is not going to determine whether I graduate or get into my dream college program this week. Just let me. Handle. The ghost."

Danny stared at her for a moment, looking torn, before he finally sighed. Twin flashes of light raced up his body, and his eyes turned blue, his white hair - cut shorter and closer to his head than when he was 14 - became black, and his own black and white jumpsuit disappeared to reveal a NASA T-shirt and a pair of blue boxers.

"Alright, you win," he conceded. "Just...be careful. And you'll get me if you need help?"

Dani rolled her eyes. "Yes, Dad, I promise. Now go do you homework!"

Danny laughed. "Alright, Mom." But he waited and watched as Dani pulled out her phone and quickly shot off a text to Valerie, saying the exact same thing she'd told Danny, before turning intangible again and flying through the roof.

Bursting into the night air, Dani took a second to enjoy the rush of flight, before putting herself into a fighting mindset. Looking around at the houses, clearly illuminated by the giant green Fenton Works sign attached to the Fentons' home, Dani couldn't see any signs of a recent ghost attack. No broken windows, no smoking buildings, no screaming people.

But she'd definitely sensed a ghost earlier. Maybe it was something small? Or it was still in the lab? Now that she thought about it, she should have just checked out the lab first, especially since it was right next to her bedroom. But she'd wanted to make sure Danny didn't go after the ghost himself. He'd been super stressed over his final AP Chem and AP Physics tests this week and she had wanted to do him a favor by taking care of any ghostly threats that came through.

Not to mention it would show him and the rest of Team Phantom that she was mature and skilled enough to protect Amity without any of them breathing down her neck. Honestly, she loved her cousin, and Sam and Tucker and Valerie, but sometimes they were way too overprotective. They acted like she hadn't spent over a year living on her own, fighting ghosts and for her own survival. And they had been worse lately; their impending collegehood must have been making them overly nostalgic and worried and adult-like.

Dani was about to head back inside, when she gasped, her Ghost Sense alerting her once again. Then, sensing something coming towards her from behind, she dodged to the left - just in time to avoid the grappling hook/claw that zipped by her. It landed in the sidewalk down below, cracking the concrete.

Dani spun around, following the mechanical line up from the hook to the ghost who had fired it. When she saw who it was, she groaned.

"Oh, come on, Skulker? Really? Do you know what time it is?" she demanded.

"Ah, the Ghost Girl. Nice to see you. I'd been planning on hunting your sire, but a fight with you should warm me up nicely!" Skulker exclaimed. He pressed a button on his suit, and the grappling hook shot up from the sidewalk and returned to Skulker with a hissing sound. "And, yes, I know it's late. My apologies. Believe it or not, it's morning right now in the Ghost Zone."

Dani rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever." Floating higher until she was eye level with Skulker, she prepared her own ecto-blast, green light coiling around her hand. "Also, how many times do I have to tell you, Danny is my cousin, or maybe my brother. He's not my sire. That makes him sound like a medieval king or something. It's weird."

Skulker chuckled. "You're more right than you know, child." Then, raising his arm to ready an ecto-energy cannon blast, he added, "Now, enough talk. Let the hunt begin!"

Danielle smirked. "You're on."

She took aim at the center of the robotic suit and launched her ecto-blast. Skulker simply dodged it, and fired his own attack. Danielle turned intangible and let the cannon fire pass right through her. Undeterred, Skulker launched a type of flaming arrow, burning with his signature green-blue fire.

I should probably move the fight away from the neighborhood so nothing gets too damaged, thought Dani. Dodging the small projectile and flying over near the park, she asked,

"Didn't you get the flyer?"

"Of course I got the flyer. The Ghost Child littered them all over my front lawn!" Skulker exclaimed, shooting out three more rockets from the launcher on his right shoulder.

"And, what, you just decided to ignore it? That's so not cool." Dani reached out her hand and encased the rockets in her ecto-energy, containing their explosions; smoke billowed within the green spheres as she lowered them to the ground.

Dani then flew towards the park, where there would be less people to hurt and less buildings to damage. Skulker chased after her, donning a pair of night-vision goggles, even though there were still street lamps in the park.

"I thought you guys were allies sometimes," Dani added, stopping in mid-air above one of the public fountains. She could hear the water gurgling slightly in its concrete bowl.

"Yes, when the fate of the Ghost Zone is at stake," Skulker answered. He hovered on the opposite side of the fountain, arm outstretched towards her. "The whelp failed to explain in his flyer how him failing a test would be the end of the world."

Dani narrowed her eyes at the hunter. "It'd be the end of his world," she told him. She held up both hands and formed two more ecto-blasts. "What's important to Danny is important to me, so I'm not gonna let you ruin this for him."

"How admirable." Skulker fired another blue laser at her, which she dodged. She released her ecto-blasts, hitting Skulker in the chest. He crashed into a nearby tree, breaking the poor plant in half. When Skulker remained on the ground, Dani hovered closer to him. Placing both hands on her hips, she said,

"You don't plan on following him to college, too, do you? 'Cause that would be even more uncool."

Skulker merely grinned at her from among the wood splinters. "But of course! Where the prey goes, the hunter goes. The whelp doesn't think he can shake me just by going to a different learning institution, does he? How foolish!"

Dani fired another ecto-blast at him. He yelled in pain as it hit, pounding him into the ground. Dani smirked as the dust settled. That oughta teach him.

Only to widen her eyes in surprise when she saw that Skulker was no longer on the ground. "Wha - ?"

A presence behind her. She looked over her shoulder just in time to see Skulker's grin before he backhanded her, sending her crashing into another tree. Dani groaned as the tree fell, sending a shock wave of pain up her body. Spitting out leaves, she gathered herself, then rose up into the sky.

"Alright, Skulker, not ba - aaahhh!" Dani screamed as a ghost-proof net wrapped around her, knocking her back onto the ground and sending bolts of electricity through her body. She was left panting and jittery once it passed.

"Haha, you underestimated me, didn't you, Ghost Girl?" Skulker crowed as he walked towards her, his metal boots crushing the grass underfoot.

Danielle scrunched her eyes in pain, before opening them and glaring at the ghost hunter. She wriggled in the net, frustration building as she failed to free herself.

Skulker picked up the net and Danielle, holding her as if she weighed nothing. She'd gotten a bit of a growth spurt once she'd turned fourteen, reaching Danny's old height, but Skulker was still much larger than she was. Well, his suit was, at least.

"You know," Skulker began, regarding her thoughtfully, "I've never understood why you cling to human traditions so much. You, Phantom, even Plasmius - you all plan and prepare for human lives, human futures, but why? You're ghosts. And sure, lots of my neighbors concoct plans for world domination - even I like the occasional vacation out in the human world. But ultimately, we all belong in the Zone. Even you three."

Dani blinked up at him, surprised by his sudden philosophical demeanor. Even as she huffed and struggled in the net, she couldn't help but agree with him. There were times - when she was flying, high above the earth, or slipping between buildings without a care for the laws of physics, or using her powers to fight ghosts intent on doing evil - she wondered why she wanted to be human. Why did she want to pretend to be an ordinary girl, when there were people like the Guys in White that would capture and dissect her and her cousin the first chance they got? Why should she hide herself in this world, when in the Ghost Zone no one cared that she was part human?

But then...

Then she remembered the look on Danny's face as he taught her how to use her powers to help people. How excited he was to receive the acceptance letter from Amity University, contingent on his grades though it was. The joy and pride Danielle felt when Jack and Maddie welcomed her into their family, ghost powers and all. Going shopping with Jazz, and having her explain things like bras and periods. Hanging out with Tucker, Sam, Danny, and Valerie, listening to them joke around and plan for the future, even as they made Amity Park a safer place.

Dani sucked in a deep breath. "Skulker, you're right," she said. "We are half ghost."

Then, hoping she was right, she transformed. The white rings washed over her, her ghost side tucked away for now, leaving her in all her human glory. And - to her delight - as soon as she was human, Dani fell out of the net.

She landed on her feet, and smiled up at Skulker, who looked confounded. He must have forgotten to use the anti-halfa net instead, or perhaps, like usual, he had underestimated her.

"But we're also half human. And so we decide where we belong."

Mid-transformation, Dani jumped up and decked Skulker in the face. The ghost sailed to the left, gouging a trench into the earth as he landed. Before he could get up, Dani unhooked the mini-Fenton Thermos she always kept with her from around her waist and aimed it at the ghost. The thermos' opening shone brightly, its light sucking Skulker up into its metal confines.

"No! No! I'll get you for this, Ghost Girl! You and the whelp!" Skulker thundered, his words becoming quieter and more distorted as he disappeared into the thermos. Dani capped it and twisted firmly, sealing him inside.

The night became quiet once again. Dani surveyed the former battleground, pleased to see that the park had sustained little damage, outside of a few broken trees. Hooking the thermos back onto her belt, she rose into the air and headed home.

Danielle didn't know where she quite fit in yet - in town, in school, in life - but there was plenty of time for her to discover that. Right now, all she wanted was to stay by her family and friends' sides. And if the the price for that was battling a few ghosts and sticking them in Fenton thermoses - for at least six months, she thought gleefully, imagining Skulker's misery -

Well, then it was a price she would gladly pay.

[ladyfl4me]

I know you like that good sweet worldbuilding, sooooo if you could add just one thing to amnesty canon, what would it be?

JUST ONE THING? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU CAN’T DO THAT TO ME. THAT’S NOT FAIR. I’ll give you options and then, in a hypothetical universe, I’ll pick one and Make It So for amnesty canon. it’s almost 1:30 in the morning where i am rn, so bear with me.

If i may, for the first one, i would do a switch: i would remove the reconciliation in its entirety, and make the villain some sort of political intrigue/antagonistic force within Sylvain, making the light figures from there instead. I’m basically just spitballing all the things that I am going to do in TCOS here, but like. 

Okay, by keeping things centered on Sylvain, that would be a powerful thing to add. It could have been a possible domino for Griffin to push to do more Sylvain worldbuilding, and make them more fascinating as a society for the protagonists to interact with. Griffin called Earth and Sylvain sister planets, and then didn’t follow through on that connection at all, making it an artificial bond by fantasy space America trying to start a puppet war. Christ. You can’t reduce an entire planet down to one culture and set of political ideals. By making the villains have a more direct relationship to Sylvain, you might get a hell of a lot of nuance. 

That’s not to say i didn’t like the Reconciliation plotline; i think it was really thematically interesting and had a lot of symbolic weight. I just feel like it superseded a lot more interesting potential ones in Sylvain, which got abandoned. Like! The exiles thing! Dani canonically has parents and a brother-- what’s up with them? The drama surrounding that!  How do the councilmembers relate to each other? What are their individual politics? Alexandra’s dead fucking father - what kind of society puts a child  in charge, unless it’s a dire fucking emergency? What happened to her dad? What’s their technology like? Their culture? Their music? What has Sylvain done to try and stymie the quell in the past, before they got to where they are today? Why has that failed? A gateway to all of this could have been opened if Griffin had decided to make Sylvain as a whole more significant, and while the “these two forces are actually being threatened by a third greater power” thing is cool, i wasn’t entirely convinced.

And if i couldn’t remove the reconciliation, i would add this: there are other sylvan communities all over earth like the lodge. The lodge is a microcosm for a much bigger sociocultural migratory phenomenon that crosses galaxies. The two planets have been connected for centuries, if not millennia; you cannot look me in the eyes and tell me that there aren’t sylvan communities embedded near major geothermal hotspots the world over. 

“wait tin don’t they need energy to survive -” Barclay and Indrid had those crystals, and those kept them alive well enough. I specifically cite Indrid because that guy never once showed up at the hot springs for a dip, and seemed to be just fine living off his crystal - whereas the exiles who didn’t have a crystal had to make do with the springs. Like. Just imagine a whole society of crystal-wearing sylphs operating a society in the woods near a ski resort in Colorado, or a few miles from Yellowstone. Or a bunch of sylphs who’ve wired crystals to [throws dart] Manhattan’s power grid, and have created a gentle web of pseudo-sylvan energy over the whole city to give the sylphs and their descendants there sustenance. The idea of there being sylphs who were exiled to earth and formed their own communities - or sylphs who left lawfully and formed their own communities near gate locations, having children and settling on earth - is fascinating to me, and is completely in line with the lore griffin already has set out given how the gate travels.

I know you said just one thing, but i am still sitting here and thinking... If i wasn’t going to make it a worldbuilding thing, i would make it a character thing. I would dig the knife with stern to make him more of a developed character in arcs three through to the end - or at least make him more of a bad guy. I’ve talked about the “stern looks out the window during the post-arc-3 interlude, catches Boyd Mosche taking pictures of the lodge before his meetup with Ned, intercepts him, makes the mistake of hearing him out, and teams up with him in a quid pro quo effort to take down Ned in exchange for shade tree” AU at LENGTH. It is one of my favorite Amnesty AU concepts to think about. I still think that those two would be an absolute villainous powerhouse if they’d met in canon. (i have my own thoughts about them, related to the versions that show up in TCOS and TMWCIFTC, that i’ve been sitting on for longer than I’d care to admit, but, well. That’s for another time. Yes that’s an invitation to ask me to yell abt it if you’d like, their development in TCOS has taken a fucking U-turn that i’ve been excited about for a while and i like talking about my fic lskdjlskdjf) 

But if not that, I would probably just make Stern quit the fucking FBI, man. Idk what to tell you, the only good cops are the ones that quit and the fact that he stayed an FBI agent, with a team there observing the gate, and was implied to be rewarded with a romantic relationship with his former prey, never sat right with me. I could accept it if he left the FBI and was shown to try and make up for his mistakes. Four good deeds for every bad, and all that jazz. But alas.

I know i listed three things but hey, these would not all be implemented simultaneously. It’d just be one. So it still kind of counts! A lot of this bitching boils down to the fact that Amnesty-the-story and Amnesty-the-DND-roleplay-podcast are not necessarily the same level of quality in my head; as an overarching story, I think Amnesty might have worked better as a TV show or book series, in terms of its narrative, even though the TTRPG aspects of its execution were awesome. A lot of things I would want to add would suit this podcast as a Balance-length epic or a piece of textual narrative literature, not necessarily a podcast. Sorry for the long answer, it is 1:30 am and i just think a lot about the holes in amnesty meta and What Could Have Been because my specific AU bread and butter is trying to patch them lsjdflksjdf

ask me anything! all asks will be answered

[yeniayofnymeria]

GRRM's Original Outline "What has changed?"

Hello,

Now you all know Martin's letter he wrote in '93. When this letter was written and sent to the editor, the first 13 chapters (200 pages) were already written. In addition, the book consisted of three volumes of the first stage, but as you know, but its 7 volumes now.When we read the letter and the first 5 books, the first comment made was very different and different from the first outline; one or two things remain the same. But is it really? Here I would like to discuss this with you. I think I will go through the events step by step and you will make your own contributions when you read. Let's start!

1. Stark-Lannister war. It's remain, nothing changed.

2. (Dany) Targaryen's 7K invasion with Dothraks. It's still did not happend but we know Dany has Unsullied and some sellswords and next book, she will have Dothraks too. She will linger a little more in essos and then come to the West for the conquer. It's remain too.

3. The Others. GRRM said " Their story will be [sic] heart of my third volume, The Winds of Winter. " It's remain too.

4. Five Main Key Characters (Jon, Arya, Bran, Dany and Tyrion). " In a sense, my trilogy is almost a generational saga, telling the life stories of these five characters, three men and two women. The five key players are Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and three of the children of Winterfell, Arya, Bran, and the bastard Jon Snow." It's remain too.

5. Fall of the Starks. " Things will get a lot worse for the poor Starks before they get better, I'm afraid. " Yes, indeed it happened.

6. Dead of Robert and long may live new king! "Ned will discover what happened to his friend Jon Arryn... will have an unfortunate accident, and the throne will to brutal Joffrey, still a minor." Yes, it happened too. This substance remained the same too.

7.Sansa and Joffrey. "Sansa Stark wed to Joffrey Baratheon, will bear him a son, the heir to the throne, and when the crunch comes she will choose her husband and child over her parents and siblings, a choice she will later bitterly rue. " Sansa betrays his family anyway but she did not wed Joffrey or bear his son. This substance has changed a bit.

8. Bran's coma and dream and greenseer and dead of Robb. " Young Bran will come out of his coma, after a strange prophetic dream... He will turn to magic, at first in the hope of restoring his legs, but later for its own sake... Robb Stark will die in battle." 

Bran's the same, but Robb's got some change. Robb doesn't die in a war against Joffrey, Jaime and Tyrion. But he really wins a few battles at first (against Tywin. So there's no Tywin in the first place) and then he dies at the Red Wedding.

Bran's in a coma. So Jaime and Cersei are standing exactly. This shows that Jon Arryn's death is due to his learning of the relationship(Jaime-Cersei). So Joff was a bastard in the first outline too. Ned died for the same reason.

Tyrion did not burn Winterfell but fought against Stark army and became Hand of King. Jaime fought against Robb too and lost, was captured. This part is different in some ways, but the same in some ways.

9. Jon Snow, The Wall and Lord Commander. " Jon Snow, the bastard, will remain in the far north. He will mature into a ranger of great daring, and ultimately will succeed his uncle as the commander of the Night's Watch "

Jon goes the wall and will became lord commander but Benjen was lord commander in the first place but it seems he dies anyway or disappear. It's remain.

10. Helping family and Jonarya Love. " When Winterfell burns, Catelyn Stark will be forced to flee north with her son Bran and her daughter Arya. Wounded by Lannister riders, they will seek refuge at the Wall, but the men of the Night's Watch give up their families when they take the black, and Jon and Benjen will not be able to help, to Jon's anguish. It will lead to a bitter estrangement between Jon and Bran. Arya will be more forgiving ... until she realizes, with terror, that she has fallen in love with Jon, who is not only her half-brother but a man of the Night's Watch, sworn to celibacy. Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy, until the secret of Jon's true parentage is finally revealed in the last book. "

Winterfell is being burned by Greyjoys. Cat is not with Stark children, he is with Robb. Bran and others run away and went to the Wall. But Bran and others did not take refuge in the black brothers. Jon has something to do with Arya again. He wants to protect and save her(FArya). He can't do it because of his vows and he's in a lot of pain... And we know who is Jon's real parents.

Jon and Arya love... It's still too early to say anything about it. When Arya goes to the wall, the love between the two emerges. Arya escaped from KL as in the first outline. But instead of going home, she drifted into her own adventure. Arya has been trying to get home and Jon all along. She'll probably go straight to the wall when she gets back from Braavos. There are so many hints about Jonarya love in books. ( https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/125364-jon-arya-hints-and-overall-significance-of-their-relationship-including-part-3/ )

11. Beyond The Wall and Bran-Cat-Arya. "Abandoned by the Night's Watch, Catelyn and her children will find their only hope of safety lies even further north, beyond the Wall, where they fall into the hands of Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall, and get a dreadful glimpse of the inhuman others as they attack the wilding encampment. Bran's magic, Arya's sword Needle, and the savagery of their direwolves will help them survive, but their mother Catelyn will die at the hands of the others." This part has undergone significant changes. Despite this, some small parts remained.

Arya is not with them, Cat neither but she dies anyway (and came back but as fire wight not ice wight). Bran never meet Mance(yes, Mance exists) and see others but he sees deads and met Cold Hand(ice wight) and BR and Singers. I guess Rickon is not exists.

Arya has Needle, that's mean Jon gave her it anyway. And direwolves...

12. Dany, Viserys and Drogo. “Over across the narrow sea, Daenerys Targaryen will discover that her new husband, the Dothraki Khal Drogo, has little interest in invading the Seven Kingdoms, much to her brother's frustration. When Viserys presses his claims past the point of tact or wisdom, Khal Drogo will finally grow annoyed and kill him out of hand, eliminating the Targaryen pretender and leaving Daenerys as the last of her line. Danerys [sic] will bide her time, but she will not forget. When the moment is right, she will kill her husband to avenge her brother, and then flee with a trusted friend into the wilderness beyond Vaes Dothrak. " Only 5% of this part has changed.

13. Dragon Eggs and Invasion Plans."There, hunted by [unclear] of her life, she stumbles on a [something about dragon eggs] a young dragon will give Daenerys [unclear] bend [unclear] to her will. Then she begins to plan for her invasion of the Seven Kingdoms." This part has changed 95%.

14. Tyrion's Fate. "Tyrion Lannister will continue to travel, to plot, and to play the game of thrones, finally removing his nephew Joffrey in disgust at the boy king's brutality. Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and blaming his brother Tyrion for the murders. Exiled, Tyrion will change sides, making common cause with the surviving Starks to bring his brother down, and falling helplessly in love with Arya Stark while he's at it. His passion is, alas, unreciprocated, but no less intense for that, and it will lead to a deadly rivalry between Tyrion and Jon Snow."

Yes, it seems this part almost completely changed. But Tyrion has been betrayed by his family in every way(Tysha thing and attempt to kill), just it changed "how it will be" This betrayal caused him to change sides. Only on Targaryen side instead of Stark. But Tyrion will probably be on the Stark side too.

Tyrion is exiled to Essos, not north. Jaime's not the bad guy in the story, Cersei is. Joffrey's dying. In the first Outline, Jaime kills everyone, so Sansa is dead. In the present story, Sansa is still alive and her story continues. They're not named, but probably Joff's siblings are in the first outline and they're dead.

There's no competition between Tyrion and Jon(Arya). It's hard to expect it at this point. We need to wait for the next encounter, but I don't think it will. Unlike the first otline, Jon and Tyrion are good friends. If GRRM designs a love triangle like the first one, maybe they can be enemies. Or maybe he changed the third candidate for that love triangle. (However, if you read Mercy POV, GRRM is waving its hand to this love triangle there.)

In general, the outline / skeleton remains exactly the same, even the characters' motives are more or less the same; there are big changes in a few places, but not so big changes in the remaining parts. Same affliction, betrayal and so on that will ensure the development of the character. Situations occurred in one way or another. It's just that things have gone differently ... but betrayal comes from the family again and (Jon) he's suffering because he can't help the family.

He keeps his end.

GEORGE: […]As I write these last two books, I’ll be moving towards the ending I’ve known since 1991/

“Some major characters — yes, I always had plans, what Tyrion’s arc was gonna be through this, what Arya’s arc was gonna be through this, what JonSnow’s arc is gonna be. ”

...

I don’t want to reveal what I’ve planned for some of these characters, but I’m pretty well on track with most of the major characters. It’s minor characters like Bronn that assume greater importance.”

At Balticon 2016 he said he knows who sits on the Iron Throne at the end.

A year later, in a video interview he continued by saying he has always known the fates of his main characters, who lives or dies, marries who...etc since 1991 when he began writing.

That's all. Thank you for read and sorry again for my bad English. Bye.

[gondorosi]

How do you see Jon's personality being if he had been raised by his biological parents?

I have to thank you for this ask since it ties perfectly into something I’ve been thinking of - just how much of Jon, Dany and Arya’s personalities are tied to innate characteristics vs those molded by environment? Since you’ve asked me about Jon specifically, let’s focus on him.

Background:

Before anything, we have to establish Rhaegar and Lyanna’s situation. Since you mention both parents, I assume this means you consider a world where Lyanna is Rhaegar’s queen in King’s Landing. Lyanna’s political position will greatly influence Jon’s own experience, upbringing, and as a result, his personality. Does Rhaegar somehow get away with having two Queens? Is Elia alive and estranged from Rhaegar (the only likely minimally happy scenario imo)? Is Jon considered to be a trueborn Targaryen or a legitimized bastard? Does Lyanna have a say in the matters of the Kingdom or is she relegated to Dragonstone/a renovated Summerhall? If Elia is alive, does she allow a relationship between Rhaenys, Aegon and Jon? Is Rhaegar disappointed that Jon didn’t turn out to be his Visenya? Does Rhaella survive Daenerys’ birth?

For this post, let’s assume that Lyanna is (a) Queen, has a definitive say in matters, and has a proper loving relationship with Rhaegar. Jon is allowed to have a normal sibling relationship with Aegon and Rhaenys and Elia is a better human being than Catelyn. Rhaella survives, so does Dany and both are active presences in the Red Keep.

A Mother’s Love

Let’s get to the most obvious difference a life as a Targaryen would have entailed - Jon would have his mother. Even in her absence, so much of Jon is Lyanna - his quick temper, his sarcasm, his championing of the underdogs, his ability to judge character. A world in which Lyanna is alive to bring up her boy is likely to result in a firm, principled, headstrong young man completely devoted to his mother. Not too different from what we have, right?

In this world, however, Jon would have no reasons to hide in the shadows. If he stays in the background, it would be solely because he doesn’t wish to be in the limelight, not because he feels it’s not his place.

Prospects

Our first introduction to a Jon action is when he discounts himself from the list of Ned’s children so that the pup count adds up, and Bran doesn’t have to see the pups being killed. That’s:

Quick thinking

Big brother of the year

These aren’t character traits which can be molded. Thus I’m led to believe that a Jon raised by Lyanna and Rhaegar would be no different in these aspects. However, a different social dynamic to being the Bastard of Winterfell would mean:

He does not need to hide his intelligence or ability for fear of attracting anyone’s wrath

He doesn’t have to be constantly and forcibly reminded of his place on the fringes of the family and thus forms a more natural relationship with his siblings

He actually has prospects and options of futures in front of him

That last factor would mean that he has the freedom and ability to indulge his natural curiosity and wonder about the world. This is the guy who was mesmerized by the beauty of the snow stretching all the way to the horizon beyond the wall. This is the guy who took the initiative of learning all he could about Free Folk culture because he wanted to know them, when as a spy all he needed to find out was their attack strategy. This is the boy who lamented never being able to see all the places in the world since he had effectively barricaded himself.

Jon is a naturally restless soul with a thirst for adventure and knowledge - in this he’s the perfect combination of both his parents. Jon Snow, the Bastard of Winterfell would never have had the ability and freedom to indulge his wanderlust and thirst for adventure, but as a Prince of the realm and with his parents actively encouraging it, I think he will barely stay put in King’s Landing once he’s allowed to travel on his own.

Relationships

It’s quite entertaining to speculate the differences between big brother Jon and little brother Jon. I would like to imagine Rhaenys and Aegon not being tainted by Court gossip about Jon (and believe me there’s no happy universe I can think of where Jon’s birth would NOT be a scandal for the ages) and considering him to be their little brother.

I do see a little brother Jon being a bit of a brat - his escapades as a child in Winterfell with Robb certainly give enough fodder to imagine that. In case Rhaegar allows contact between his son and his cousins in the North (and he better, else Lyanna is going to have WORDS), Jon would likely get along with Robb just as well as he does in canon, albeit now they will be on a level playing field socially.

I don’t know about Dany really - they are both similar enough fundamentally that I see them getting along fabulously in any and every iteration but I’m not sure about anything more than being each other’s closest confidantes. To me the Jonerys jumps out due to the parallels of their experiences and their decisions and ultimate journeys. In the absence of that - I can’t say.

His relationship with Arya will likely be different as well - even if he’s fostered at Winterfell for a time he would not have been present in Arya’s life since birth and the closeness they share at being the ‘outsiders’ of the family would likely not exist. I still think she would be his favourite cousin - but a royal cousin is different from a beloved brother.

Another aspect a Jon who is raised in King’s Landing will not be able to avoid - he will be the subject of rigorous matchmaking exercises. As a bastard of the North he had nothing to offer anyone thus wouldn’t have been considered even for a third daughter of a minor house. As the second son of the King, however, he will be the one all Houses focus on once Aegon is betrothed.

You know, at the end of it, there’s so many ways Jon could have turned out differently. Lyanna could have still died birthing him and he would have been thrown to the wolves of the Court as a child. He could have gone through life as a royal bastard and faced continuous comparisons to the Blackfyres. He could have grown up the Crown Prince if Tywin picked the wrong side before waiting for the result of the Trident. In every iteration though I have to ask myself, would I like a Jon Snow who did not face all that he has and turn out as he has?

A person is the product and the sum of their circumstances, their experiences and their innate makeup. One is no less important than the other - thus a Jon who grew up with his parents but without Robb and Arya, without Ned and without the Night’s Watch would be a very different person than the one I know and love. He might still have turned out to be one of my favourites, but I think I’m ok with the one we have.

[snowstcrm]

I’m not saying that Daenerys could never go mad in the books, and George might have even implied that she chose madness when she left Mereen. I just personally don’t think her story will end in utter tragedy and darkness.

There are four important things to remember:

The Others are way bigger threats in the book than the show made them seem

Prophecies being taken much more into account in the books than the show + daenerys’ rules of threes

grrm once wrote that his main 5 characters will survive the books which includes daenerys. The guy has known the ending from the start and hasn’t changed it. His biggest story beats have also stayed consistent, with the first third being about Lannister vs. Stark, Daenerys’ Westeros conquest, and then finally the giant threat to humanity which is the Others which will unite the characters to fight.

The show completely prioritized her goal for the throne when Daenerys in the books has a more earnest, secret desire for a simple home.

Dany has always paralleled Jon in their paths of growth and they will eventually meet in the middle to fight the Others. At the end of ADWD, Dany let’s go of her guilt of the little girl that was scorched by Drogon and accepts her identity as a dragon. This shows a loss of her humanity in part, and the same will be reflected in Jon when he’s resurrected. They will both be darker, a bit less-human versions than who they were before, and this means that they’re both spiraling down into a tragic end, or they will be able to climb out of the darkness together and survive like George had originally planned.

I do believe that Dany will be involved in the destruction of Kings Landing, but I don’t think it will be anything close to how it happened in the show. I also believe that the wildfire will play a much bigger role than it did with the show, and fAegon or Euron with his horn will play a part.

Being her father is something Dany always feared. For her character to end up like her worst nightmare would be very bitter. I see Dany getting lost in her darkness during her conquest, and somehow in the process of this Kings Landing gets lit up with wildfire. Becoming her father isn’t “foreshadowing” or her destiny, it’s a conflict her character has to overcome through trial and growth.

She may choose cruelty for a period of time, but I think the destruction of Kings Landing is what will pull her out of that darkness and haunt her enough to seek redemption. Then somewhere along the way she meets Jon, and I believe they will get married (her third marriage for love). I also think she will become pregnant (third child).

To go north, you must go south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.

To fight the Others in the north, she must go through the trials of her conquest in the South. To reach Westeros, she had to be in Essos. To progress as a person she has to fall down and regress. To touch the light and be a hero, she has to have a period of darkness that she must overcome.

I strongly believe that this will not be the end for Daenerys in the books. Not only had grrm planned for her to survive as a core character, but she still must get married, possibly become pregnant, and also lead the war to fight the final villains which are the Others.

This isn’t her end.

[nomnomzombies]

8x06: Identity and Sigils, The Three Eyed Raven and King Bran

**this disappeared somehow in editing. idk what’s happening guys. i don’t really know how to use Tumblr. so if you saved this and it’s different for the third time I’m so sorry**

This is in response to @dr-doomsduck ‘s post 

I noticed the Raven sigil and I’m honestly not sure exactly how I feel about it. On one hand, there’s all of the pride for Bran, and this feeling of coming into his own. However, when you look at the surviving Starklings, their journey has been a process of identity conflict and reclamation, but Bran adopting the Raven sigil breaks the trend of the other Stark children. Jon and Bran are the most similar in their mentor-apprentice relationships as both of them embraced their mentors’ teachings as opposed to Arya and Sansa, who modified the “curriculum” to adhere to Stark morals and teachings.

When you look at the whole brood, when they’re ultimately faced with the decision of cloaking or adopting another sigil (as a form of concealment or denial), every single one of them has picked Stark. The only exception would be Theon (who is an honorary Starkling), but even though he donned his Kraken and fought alongside his sister, he still died for the Wolves.

Jon, who was trained by a Bear (and adopted those teachings and integrated them into his Stark-ness), was put into the position of refuting the Wolf sigil only once (although his time with the Wildlings put him in crisis in terms of his Night’s Watch oath, it never required him to strip himself of his Stark identity). I’ve discussed before how the death of Rhaegal indicated his inability to adopt a Targaryen identity, but the other part of it is his process of being susceptible to Targ indoctrination via Dany. There was a brief opportunity for Jon to be vulnerable enough to be sucked into the “fire and blood” teachings, but ultimately it just wasn’t there. He refuted Dany as a potential “mentor” for fostering the Targaryen identity, and thus there was no hope of the Dragon developing within Jon.

When Sansa was in King’s Landing, her colour changed to mauve (the melding of Lannister crimson and the blue tones of the North) and the lion began to appear in her costume decisions. Although the lion overtook the wolf in terms of visible sigils, her Northern roots never disappeared, but rather integrated into her Southern influence for strategic cloaking. When she left King’s Landing, Sansa’s clothes began to mimic Littlefinger’s in terms of colouring and cut--her infamous “Dark Sansa” dress integrated feathers into the decor, as Littlefinger’s sigil is the mockingbird. When she escapes Ramsay’s captivity, her dress is grey, and her cloak is unassuming. It’s not until she rides south with Jon to rally the northern houses that she completely reclaims the Stark fashion, and we finally see her don the Direwolf for the first time in the series. (Season 6)

As Arya is in the Riverlands, after escaping King’s Landing in season 1, she’s completely stripped of her Stark and highborn identity. In Braavos, she’s forced to abandon all things Arya Stark, but she can’t part with Needle. She dons the clothing of the House of Black and white and begins her training. In the end, though, she refutes the teachings of her mentor. When given the opportunity to become “no one,” Arya tells Jaqen to fuck right off--”A girl is Arya Stark.” Bran, on the other hand, completely adopts all teachings from the Three Eyed Raven. 

This whole thing may seem moot, because I’m ultimately arriving to the point which the character himself has been pushing onto us for the last two seasons and Meera confirmed in season 7–“You died in that cave.” Bran has been saying, “I’m not Bran Stark anymore.”

Some theorists say that Bran has become a vessel for Bloodraven—but book readers know that the “three eyed raven” (at face value) is much closer to a collective conscience. The parallel that I’ve drawn for people in the past is much like an AI, where the singular conscience becomes a node in the collective once it’s integrated into the “system” aka Weirwood net (or, weirwood.net). Bran Stark the individual disappeared once he uploaded to the collective.

This is why I’m having a very hard time being happy for “Bran”—and a very critical issue that I have with his kingship. Because... this isn’t Bran. This is the Three Eyed Raven. We don’t have any information to suggest that the Three Eyed Raven has been particularly ambitious in the past, but it’s now integrated into two high-profile and highly magical bloodlines (Stark and Targaryen. 

The narrative also proposes that the Three Eyed Raven has been  attuned to the possible timelines, and has been slowly adjusting course to eventually end up in a seat of power. **I’m asserting this based on our understanding from the show, not the books.

The Three Eyed Raven has been saying things to make itself as unassuming and non-threatening as possible, even going so far as to adopt the consciousness of Brandon Stark—who was already paralyzed when the Three Eyed Raven first started appearing to him. We know that the Three Eyed Raven has been appearing in childrens’ dreams for a long time, as it’s stated in the books that the Raven appeared to Euron Greyjoy as a child, but didn’t appear to Bran until after his fall. Was Bran’s disability a deciding factor to him being chosen as the successor?

In Bran’s first raven dream, he sees the corpses of all of the children that “couldn’t fly.” It’s hard to say if these corpses represent physically murdered children, or if they’re more likely to represent a death in the subconscious—the “death” that would leave those people susceptible to madness. Was Euron as a child one of the broken bodies in Bran’s Raven dreams? Moreover, the Raven dreams are very triggering for Bran--the Three Eyed Raven (Three Eyed Crow in the books) is a very sinister entity, and continues to make Bran relive his trauma every time. Bran refers to the Raven dreams as his “falling dreams.” 

@sayruq wrote a post, citing book quotes, as to why Tyrion providing the moniker of “Bran the Broken” completely goes against Bran’s character and monumentalizes one of Bran’s greatest sources of internal pain in the books. He laments being “broken.” 

My initial thought on the matter was that it was just shitty writing, and the point of it was supposed to illustrate that Bran has reclaimed his identity as a paraplegic—much like Sansa’s dialogue was likely meant to illustrate her reclaiming her identity as a trauma survivor. The more I thought about it,though, the more I pieced together that “Bran the Broken” was a moniker that doesn’t go against Bran’s character because it’s not Bran anymore. It’s the Three Eyed Raven, who doesn’t have the same relationship to the word that was very triggering to Bran Stark. 

The Three Eyed Raven has gone to great lengths to make themself seem as innocuous as possible with statements like, “I don’t really want anymore” and “I can never be the Lord of anything,” and integrating with a paraplegic boy. Moreover, before the Battle for Winterfell, the Three Eyed Raven even said that he “didn’t know” if their plan would work, even though we have other reasons to believe that they can see the future. They tipped their hand with the line, “Why do you think I came all this way?” So, yes, in some way, the Three Eyed Raven understood that becoming King was a possible outcome of the Great War, and maneuvered in such a way that they were in the ultimate seat of power.

Allowing the North to secede was likely of little consequence to them because there’s bigger things at play--as demonstrated by the Three Eyed Raven’s preoccupation with finding Drogon. 

Putting corrupted people in the seats of power only further drives home the point that the Three Eyed Raven in power bodes ill for the people. 

Sam is poorly trained despite being one of the most morally “good” characters on the counsel, and even though he’s shown to have the drive to stand up for what’s right, Sam clearly respects the Three Eyed Raven. 

Brienne is also a “morally good” character and she’s the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard—because she broke her oath to Sansa—so she has little say over actual matters of state. But the fact that the Three Eyed Raven was able to convince either Brienne or Sansa to break that oath makes me uncomfortable. Not only do we not know how it happened, but the end result is that Sansa is alone in the North—she doesn’t have a single loyal and true adviser at the beginning of her reign.  

Tyrion is not a good person, and will likely be easy to control as Tyrion has also showed great respect for them���even so far as to personally nominate them for King.

Lastly, I’ll refer to the part that bothered me most about the Small Council scene. As Bran is leaving, every member stands at attention and after Tyrion proclaims, “We serve at the pleasure of Bran the Broken...” everyone attempts to synchronize “Long may he reign!” and Tyrion says, “That will improve.” Implying that this proclamation will happen every time the Three Eyed Raven leaves the room. Formality is expected for a monarch, but we didn’t even see that level of regime-quality salute in the presence of Dany as she emerged to be a dictator.

So, yeah, tl;dr I think that Bran adopting the Raven sigil for his kingsguard is way, way more deeply encoded than at first glance. 

[adreamofspring-archive]

Hi! I read a post by someone explaining why Dany won't go mad in the books. I think it might have been you, or might've been reblogged by you? I just watched the Game Revealed and they said "When George told us he was going the mad queen route with Dany..." that's not good. What do you make of it? I mean, they couldn't outright lie, could they? I mean it's... super convenient that that's the first dialogue in the entire thing, but... now I'm scared. I had hope the books would go differently. :(

Hi!

So I’m pretty on the fence about two things.

If she will go 'mad’ in the books

If that’s necessarily a bad thing

I haven’t watched the Inside the Episodes because I really don’t give a fuck, but if they really said that then I’m not sure how I feel. If this wasn’t how GRRM intended for it to go, why did he allow for it to happen? I also know that D&D have changed things from ASOIAF DRASTICALLY to the point where it’s literally not even the same series / characters in some cases. D&D can say literally whatever they want and to me it’s complete and utter bullshit because in the BTS of every episode they’ve said she’s not her father, she’s not a sadist, ect. Take a look at how they’ve supported her over the years and are now saying it’s wrong of us to support her the whole time? So I take everything they say with a grain of salt.

I personally don’t think that this is where GRRM is taking her character.

Here are some good metas about why she won’t go mad in the books.

x. x. x. x.

Here is a small paragraph from this post, written by @goodqueenarya​ and @snowstcrm​

Dany won’t go insane. Why? Because nothing she has done is any worse than what her male counterparts have done. Like Arya, her journey is about finding her home. Daenerys’ pursuit of the throne is something she sees as a duty to the people she is told are waiting for her. She supports other claimants whether it’s her brother or her son over her own claim. For herself, she wants a simple life. But she puts the needs of her people above personal goals. Also, the vision of the destroyed Red Keep is a show only invention. She has more complicated visions in the book, none of which suggest she is insane or will be.

The Others are way bigger threats in the book than the show made them seem. Prophecies being taken much more into account in the books than the show + daenerys’ rules of threes. Grrm once wrote that his main 5 characters will survive the books which includes daenerys. The guy has known the ending from the start and hasn’t changed it. His biggest story beats have also stayed consistent, with the first third being about Lannister vs. Stark, Daenerys’ Westeros conquest, and then finally the giant threat to humanity which is the Others which will unite the characters to fight.The show completely prioritized her goal for the throne when Daenerys in the books has a more earnest, secret desire for a simple home.

Beyond that, I don’t think that the Throne is going to be the end goal for Daenerys. She literally dreams about being a common woman, not being Queen and having a lemon tree outside her window. She craves a simple life.

Here is something I think it’s important to remember what is actually book!Daenerys

“Yet Your Radiance has found the courage to answer butchery with mercy. You have not harmed any of the noble children you hold as hostage.” “Not as yet, no.” Dany had grown fond of her charges. Some were shy and some were bold, some sweet and some sullen, but all were innocent. “The Shavepate would feed them to your dragons, it is said. A life for a life. For every Brazen Beast cut down, he would have a child die.” Dany pushed her food about her plate. She dare not glance over to where Grazhar and Qezza stood, for fear that she might cry. The Shavepate has a harder heart than mine. They had fought about the hostages half a dozen times. “The Sons of the Harpy are laughing in their pyramids,” Skahaz said, just this morning. “What good are hostages if you will not take their heads?” In his eyes, she was only a weak woman….What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children? “These murders are not their doing.” Dany told the Green Grace, feebly. “I am no butcher queen.” - ADWD

Why do the Gods make Kings and Queens if not to protect those who cannot protect themselves? - ASOS

“I told you, I know our little queen. Let her hear that her brother Rhaegar’s murdered son is still alive, that this brave boy has raised the dragon standard of her forebears in Westeros once more, that he is fighting a desperate war to avenge his father and reclaim the Iron Throne for House Targaryen, hard-pressed on every side … and she will fly to your side as fast as wind and water can carry her. You are the last of her line, and this Mother of Dragons, this Breaker of Chains, is above all a rescuer. The girl who drowned the slaver cities in blood rather than leave strangers to their chains can scarcely abandon her own brother’s son in his hour of peril. And when she reaches Westeros, and meets you for the first time, you will meet as equals, man and woman, not queen and supplicant. How can she help but love you then, I ask you?” - Tyrion, ADWD 

"It is such a long way," she complained. "I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl." - ADWD 

In terms of asoiaf, if Daenerys doesn’t make it to the end of the series, I personally think that she will die fighting the army of the dead. She is the mother of dragons. She is the breaker of chains. Her entire arch has been revolved around her using her power to free slaves and punish those who would harm them. It is her destiny to destroy the Others and break the chains that death has on them.

With all that being said, if this is where he’s taking her character... I’m over it. I think the hero falling into the villain trope and dying tragically is pretty... boring to be honest? It would be such a better message and a much more interesting story if after everything she’s suffered and endured and survived if she stayed true to herself rather than falling to the dark side. As Kristen said, I’ve had enough of the mad woman trope. I’ve had enough of it. It isn’t original or interesting. I don’t care what path he takes to get there. It’s not a destination we should be going to in 2019 or later and calling it subversive or good writing. And up through ADWD Dany is, to me, one of the less grey characters. Not someone I could see conceivably doing what Dany did in 8.05. If that happens, even if it takes her years and a slower and more carefully constructed descent into madness, I’m out. Women don’t have to be mad or villainous to be interesting. Their trauma doesn’t have to strip them of their humanity or turn them into hardened badasses. Dany staying true to herself to the end would be a lot braver storytelling and a lot more interesting to read. I personally think it sends a terrible message to every woman out there who’s ever moved past their abuse and became their own hero. I can’t stand it, honestly.

[jupiterjunebug]

heyyyyyy you said to ask you bout them hcs about the councils war crimes.... and this is me..... asking away.... blease give me the hcs.... blease...

i was going to write like 200 words but here I am. here i am with a 1.5k word fuckin. Essay with multiple citations. Under cut because I Apologize For Being Like This.

Alright buckle in motherfuckers it’s time for my long andprobably fuckin’ stupid waxing poetic abt the political ramifications ofsylvains current…everything.

“But the worse that things got in Sylvain, because of thehumans, the stricter their laws got. And today they got some pretty draconianlaws in effect governing who can and can’t live there. And the outcasts, wellthey don’t really got anywhere to go.” That’s Mama, in the third episode ofAmnesty, talking about how sylphs ended up at Amnesty in the first place.

We never get an answer as to what EXACTLY “draconian” means. @transagentstern theorizes it’s in the form of a one child policy (hence whydani’s on earth, she has a brother), someone else said it might be a form ofsubspecies racism, my person hc both joking and serious is everyone got ousted forshit like jaywalking and littering. Either way, we’re first introduced to thelaws of sylvain as “they’ll take any opportunity to throw someone off the boatif it means it sinks slower.”

Then we meet Janelle and Vincent, who are NICE, and we meetwoodbridge who’s an ass, and we meet Alexandra who thinks Aubrey should go die.Woodbridge and Alexandra both Don’t Like Humans, but Woodbridge is so goddamnforgettable I deadass forgot he was a character until I started reading ficwhere he got brought up, and Alexandra’s the “im eleven so shut the fuck up”meme and also never onscreen.

The ones onscreen are Janelle and Vincent! Who are nice!Janelle mentor-figures Aubrey despite not having time, and Vincent asks forDVDs of human shut cuz he likes them, and it’s all good. It’s all jokes.

They’ve got some pretty draconian laws in effect.

It would be easy to blame all those laws on Woodbridge, whohates humans, and whose title as “Minister of Preservation” could be taken as“guy in charge of this awful triage situation.” You could blame it on Alexandraor the past Interpreters, and say that whatever they’re interpreting boileddown to “tell all the people that snowboard without a license that they have toleave.” You could say that “today” doesn’t mean they passed the WORST of thelaws recently, but that 200 years ago the laws were shit and they just got MOREshit recently (I do say this, actually, more on that later). That would meanit’s not even the current ministers faults! I mean, except maybeeee Woodbridge cuzhe’s a ghost and his “business” to finish before passing on might deadass besitting at sylvains sickbed until it dies or a miracle cure comes in.

Even if they didn’t make all the laws, even if they didn’tmake ANY of the laws, they still enforce them. Vincent might have a good funconvo with Aubrey about Shrek, but he and Woodbridge and the Interpreter andHell probably Indrid when he was around to some degree, and Janelle who isn’tblameless even if she was too busy reading her books to really pay attention atthe trials. They all still enforce them.

Like I said, this is an awful triage situation. It’s hard,living on a planet that’s in its death throes. They have to do something to keep people alive as longas possible, even if they AND all of the people on sylvain KNOW that it’sfutile you can’t just give up. But, you know, establishing a dictatorship whereyou can get exiled for reasons Mama considers “draconian,” well that’s. That’skinda. It’s not QUITE a war crime, and I’m not sure how else they would’vesolved the issue, but that’s the backdrop of this situation. Sure, Janelle andVincent are nice, but they or one of vincent’s subordinates were probablypersonally responsible for jake coolice getting ousted from sylvain, or atleast they didn’t stop woodbridge from doing it.

OK so step one is “we’re kicking half of our population out,we need to do this, this is the lesser of two evils.” Step two is “where do wesend them?”

The only option other than Earth or execution that I canthink of would be The Corrupted Lands. Now, kneejerk reaction is Earth soundscomparatively awesome for the exiles, yeah? Death is death, and The CorruptedLands would be WORSE than death cuz you end up infected with the Quell and allthat junk. At least on Earth you don’t end up, like, losing your entirepersonality and goi-

Barclay: Anotherday or so and we’re gonna start losing the stuff that we know and love aboutour friends Dani and Jake and Moira and the whole team here. So, as quick aspossible would be better.

Ned: What do youmean “losing stuff”? Are they gonna start dyin’!?

Barclay:Eventually, but before that happens they’re gonna start going a little bit…well, I guess, feral is the word.

Wow thanks for that reminder, this convo from Amnesty ep. 10that just started playing in the room all by itself. That’s right! Sylphs thatdon’t have crystals (like Indrid does, and Barclay is shown holding in thefirst ep, and we know do SOMETHING bc Indrid’s fine and Barclay doesn’t includehimself when talking about ppl going feral. So either that or somethingsomething Indrid and Barclay aren’t sylphs that’d be a whole ‘nother hc post imstopping that here) spend days slowly losing their will to live, then becomeuncontrollably violent, and then die!

But that won’t happen and the council knows that becauseAmnesty Lodge exi-

“-And the outcasts, well they don’t really got anywhere togo.” Thanks Mama. The Lodge wasn’t built on Sylvain’s orders. Every gateprobably DOESN’T have a convenient hotspring that prevents people from losingtheir goddamn minds, because look at that phrasing. They don’t have anywhere togo. The Council had no PLAN for where the exiles would end up, and in Kepler itjust so happens somebody else decided to MAKE a plan.

Techniiiically, before Kepler all the sylphs that weren’tgiven crystals could’ve been executed or sent to the CL. But I don’t think so.And the reasons why the councilmight’ve chosen to send people to earth instead of the other two optionsdepends on your interpretation.

It could be that they didn’t like the idea of having toactually square up and kill people like big kids, so they decided to exilethem. It could be that, while the thought of someone going feral on earth mightSUCK, there’s a CHANCE exiles might stumble on someplace like Amnesty, whereasthe CL WILL make you bonkers, and not the Dr. Harris kind, 100% of the time.More pragmatically, they might’ve been worried about executed people turning upas ghosts, and people in the CL coming to attack the wall.

Or it could be, yanno. War crimes.

Woodbridge hates humans. Granted, it seems like he hateseveryone. But his introduction to the show is literally him looking at the PGand saying “Hi, yes. I ensure the survival of our kind in the wake of yourworld’s countless ruthless assaults.” Alexandra’s not fond either, as herthoughts say: “I wish [Aubrey] would stop coming here. It’s her world’s faultthat Sylvain is dying in the first place.”

How recently did they start exiling people? Was it less thanthirty years? More than thirty years? I like to think it was more. In episode6, Dani says that her type of sylph gets a bad rap because some of her kind hasdrunk peoples’ blood to get more energy. The perception that vampires drinkblood has been around……….a long time.

Sure, that idea could’ve been around during/before theassault on sylvain when some dipshit sylphs just left of their own accord andthen decided to drink people for yolos. Or it could mean that people have beenexiled for a WHILE, and the fact that the laws got more “draconian” just meansMORE people have been exiled now.

A lot of non-violent cryptid sightings happening a long timeago could be chalked down to sylph that WEREN’T exiled goin’ and doin’ stuff,but killing someone to feed smacks of desperation OR being the sort of personthat hated humans so much that the first solution to “im hungry” was “im goingto eat a person.”

Either way. Picture this. Thirty-five years ago, the gate toKepler isn’t open. The gate to NYC is open.A sylph gets pushed out of it. There’s no springs, or if there is there’s noMama to guide them there. No Mama to help them fit in. They go feral in the middle of New York, or in the middleof where the gate before New York was, or the gate before that, or the gatebefore-

You get stories about monsters like the Jersey Devil,monsters that kill midwives and children. La Llorona, who drowns little kids,might look like Dani up close.

Sylvain is dying, and they’re at the rationing stage. TheCouncil has to know what happens tosylphs that don’t eat. The Councilhas to know they’re pushing people that might try to murder and eat humans intoa populated space. The Council has to know that they’re pushing people thatmight try to murder and eat humans into a space populated by a race thatdestroyed their planet.

Killing two birds with one stone.

[agoddamn]

nanigma replied to your post: at this point i’m going to assume that nobody...

Eh, first dragon’s death didn’T have much of an impact either. At least Dany never really seemed broken up over the death and resurrection of what we are meant to believe was like a child for her. I don’t think the showmakers expect us to care for any dragon besides Drogon.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Viserion’s death was especially good. I really never thought I would be unfavorably comparing anything to Viserion’s death since the wight arc was so bad. But here I am, re-evaluating my quality floor!

Viserion’s death at the very least had tension. It featured a long built-up villain taking the field, that insane wight mission, magical weapons, heretofore unseen powers, a daring rescue, an emotional connection, things that had been foreshadowed being fulfilled (”what else can the Night King res?” and Viserys betraying Dany once more). The arc was dumb as hell and plot armor as fuck, but it did accomplish some basic tension and excitement.

With Rhaegal...a guy whose most iconic line is still FINGER INNA BUM teleports in front of her (for like the third time, by the way) and unleashes a fucking railgun??? And then Tyrion gets knocked out so they don’t have to show a battle scene or explain how anyone survived that? It’s like they were fucking embarrassed the scene was there and hurried to gloss over it.

[dellaliz19]

Stupidly long Star Trek post, my apologies

So, as a long time Trek fan whose been watching Star Trek Discovery since its debut, and a recent binge watcher of Seth McFarlene’s Trek homage The Orville, I’ve come to a conclusion.

Star Trek shouldn’t be serialized.

Let me explain. First, let’s define some stuff. A serialized television show is one where each individual episode is a part of a larger story, and a viewer cannot grasp that story without watching the entire season, in order. Now, this type of show can have short arc side plots, but they all tend to be related to the main story as well. Star Trek Discovery uses such a format: each episode builds into the story of the war with the Klingons, and side plots like the Ash/Voq arc, or the Mirror Universe still serve this ultimate storyline.

In contrast, an episodic show is one where each episode tells its own self-contained story, where a viewer could tune into one episode and grasp that entire plot by the end. These shows can also have season long or series long themes, but they do not tend to ‘drive’ the series. The Orville (as well as TOS, TNG and the other Star Trek shows) follows this format; each episode tells a complete story, and the season has themes/storylines that continue throughout, like the antagonism with the Krill (the shows Klingon analogues) and Mercer and Grayson’s relationship.

Now, why do I think that serialization is a bad fit for a Star Trek show? Well, let’s try to pin down what Star Trek is about. The shows have obviously had different themes over the years, but the two most famous, successful shows (The Original Series and The Next Generation, and the others as well, but especially these two) were at their core a space adventure series following a small cast of characters we liked and related to, that used aliens and sci-fi as a metaphor for real life ethical and moral scenarios to tell engaging, fun and sometimes challenging stories.

So, with that premise in mind, why do I think episodic story telling is the best way to tell that particular type of story?

Because it gives us time to tell that story.

Comparing The Orville and Star Trek Discovery (which I think is fair, as they are both modern takes on the classic Star Trek formula), I’d argue that The Orville manages to tell a better Star Trek story, because it’s allowed to take the time to do so. The Orville has time to, for example, dedicate a whole episode to their third officer Bortus (the Worf analogue), and his same sex mate, and their struggle over whether or not they should perform a sex change on their female child (they are members of an all-male race where females are only born once every 75 years). That episode explores the themes of gender equality, and understanding cultures not your own, but is also a very personal episode where we get to look at Bortus’s culture, relationship, gender ideals and how the crew relates to this issue, and Bortus in turn. Or, as another example, The Orville has time to dedicate a whole episode to security chief Alara (the shows Vulcan analogue, at least physically) and her self-doubt and fear after she was unable to save a redshirt from a fire. We get to meet her parents in that episode, get an impression on how they view her career, and learn the fears of the crew in that episode, while also enjoying a horror comedy episode where Alara eventually triumphs, and learns to believe in herself.

Those episodes, and many more – like the one where Data analogue robot Isaac has to survive a post apocalyptic planet of cannibals while defending and bonding with the ships doctor and her children – serve to make the main cast feel real, and very well developed. I could genuinely tell you where Bortus and his mate went on their first date, or that Mercer views Kermit the Frog as an ideal leader, that LaMarr is afraid of clowns, or that Malloy loves pulling practical jokes. And that’s because the show doesn’t have to serve this overarching narrative, so it has the time to give each character fears and flaws and hopes.

Star Trek Discovery, on the other hand, doesn’t have that time. Each episode needs to build into the main narrative on the war with the Klingon’s and Burnham’s role in it that it doesn’t have the ability to dedicate as much time to the supporting characters. A prime recent example of this is the death of the show’s medic, Hugh Culber. His partner, Paul Stammets learns of his death, wakes up from his coma and then…immediately has a plan to get them out of the Mirror Universe. The next episode then is dealing with the war, their time jump and Mirror!Georgiou and Burnham, and while Stammets gets a scene about his feelings, the show can’t take the time to give them some room to breathe. To dedicate a whole episode just to that emotion and let us feel it with Stammets, because the main plot is too important to the story to just put it on the backburner. This leaves the personal aspect of the show - the crew, their relationships with each other – weak…unless they are relating to Burnham.

See, serialized shows do work in many cases. Marvel’s tv line up, especially Jessica Jones, are great examples of this. Personalized dramas, telling one main protagonists story are an amazing fit for serialization, as each episode builds into that character’s personal journey. Large ensembles stories are another: Game of Thones is serialized, but it has so many plot lines that it often feels episodic, where you can sideline one plot for several episodes and then pick it up again (this is, I think, a part of why fans aren’t enjoying the last season as much, as the rapid cutting down of plotlines has turned the show into direct serialization following only Cersei, Jon and Dany).

Star Trek Discovery, as a necessity of the format, has turned the show into a more personalized story about Burnham. And so, while Burnham and her story are developed, the side characters often fall by the wayside, or are only allowed rare moments to develop as characters not related to Burnham and her arc. I couldn’t even tell you the names of any of the bridge crew off the top of my head on Discovery other than Saru, much less any of their fears or ambitions. Now, this doesn’t make Star Trek Discovery a bad story…but I’d argue it doesn’t make it a great Star Trek story.

The universe of Star Trek Discovery feels small: less about exploring brave new worlds and meeting exciting new cultures, but about the personal, dark internal trauma of war. And you can say that well, the old Star Trek formula was tired and worn out and we needed to try something new…but The Orville proves that honestly, it wasn’t.

I think episodic shows get a bad rap as ‘lesser, pulpy’ media. The serialized personal drama of a show like Hannibal is always going to be critically more acclaimed than the episodic NCIS, CSI and a hundred other crime procedurals in their 10th and 15th seasons…but I’d be hard pressed to say that made Hannibal a ‘better’ show than those others. I’m just as likely to get as much enjoyment out of throwing on an episode of early seasons Criminal Minds as I am one of Hannibal (which I did enjoy). And to me, Star Trek Discovery (originally conceived and produced by Bryan Fuller, the guy behind Hannibal) feels like a show that’s a little bit ashamed of the campy, episodic past of Star Trek, and is pushing back hard on serialization and dark, violent war because it feels like it has something to prove.

Now, again, I’m not saying that The Orville is a better overall show than Star Trek Discovery (though I enjoyed it more, to be frank), or that Discovery is a bad show. All I’m saying is…I feel like we shouldn’t treat episodic shows as lesser to serialization, and that we should be able to accept that some genres and stories just lend themselves better to one format. Fun, utopian space adventures are a better fit for episodic storytelling, and darker, personal stories to serialization, and it just seems strange to me that the branded Star Trek show is the one falling in the latter category rather than the former. I think Discovery would benefit if it wasn’t a Star Trek story (with all of the unnecessary Star Trek cameos and tie-ins, like Sarek or Harry Mudd), but rather it was just a personalized space drama about a mutineer and a war, and it was allowed to stand up and be its own thing, rather than having to try and fit itself into a canon and universe it never quite seems comfortable in.

[lgbt-teenager-support]

books about bisexuality?

(books and captions from barnesandnoble.com) 

Not Otherwise Specified - Hannah Moskowitz

Etta is black, bisexual, and in recovery from an eating disorder, and that combination of things doesn’t mesh with being a ballerina living in Nebraska. It certainly doesn’t help her stay friends with her old lesbian besties who consider her tainted. But Etta refuses to be put in anyone’s neat little boxes, and as she finds the right people to surround herself with to help her love who she is, she also discovers they may be her key to getting out of town and finding her best life in the future. Putting this book at the top of the list is a Bi Visibility Day no-brainer; if you’ve ever wanted to feel the literal urge to fist pump from the bi pride in a YA novel, put a copy of this in your cart, plus one for everyone you know.

Far From You - Tess Sharpe

Mina and Sophie were best friends, even through a car accident that changed their lives. But now Mina’s dead, and Sophie’s determined to find out who killed her. Along for the ride is Mina’s brother, Trevor, who not only wants justice for his sister, but wants Sophie as well. But as the two get closer, Trevor learns Mina and Sophie were more than just BFFs; they were in love. For many YA readers, Sharpe’s debut is the first time they saw the word “bisexual” in a novel. For still others—present company included—it’s the first time we saw an on-page sex scene between two girls in a YA. Whether it was a first for you—or will be—there’s no question this is one of the most important bi YAs the category has to offer.

Coda - Emma Trevayne

Anthem has a passion for music, but as a conduit for he Corp, most of what he listens to is work, powering the grid through him while shortening his life span. All he has to live for are the twin siblings he takes care of, the girl he’s smitten over, and his friends, including his ex-boyfriend. Sexuality is a non-issue in Trevayne’s dystopian society, but passion for music and rebellion? Is everything.

The Art of Wishing - Lindsay Ribar

You know the drill—girl finds genie, girl gets three wishes…girl falls for genie, who happens to be in the form of a high school boy, and learns the villain gunning for them both is her new guy’s ex-boyfriend… totally run of the mill, naturally. While I loved the first book in this duology a lot, I managed to like the sequel even better—it’s in The Fourth Wish that Margo and Oliver discuss not only what it means for him and for them that he’s bisexual, but the gender fluidity inherent in his continuously taking the bodies that would be most pleasing to his new masters.

Otherbound - Corinne Duyvis

If the fact that this debut has a bisexual protagonist doesn’t sell it to you on its own, consider this: 1) it’s a super-rare standalone fantasy, 2) that also has disability and racially diverse representation, and 3) is the closest thing to Sense8 in YA form. Amara is a mute slave girl, charged with protecting a princess. Nolan lives in an entirely different world, but when he blinks, he is transported into seeing through Amara’s eyes. As dangers grow for Amara, and the control dynamic between her and Nolan changes, the two of them will need to work together to keep themselves, and the princess for whom Amara has begun to develop feelings, safe.

Under the Lights - Dahlia Adler

Actress Vanessa Park may be new to realizing she likes girls, but Brianna Harris, the publicist’s intern sparking that discovery, has been an out-and-proud bi girl for years. While Vanessa works to process what it would mean for her friendships, family, and career to come out, especially with her being Korean American already putting her in a precarious place on the Hollywood food chain, Bri’s experience with bi erasure tie in to her own hesitations about moving forward with someone who’s not ready. As its author, I’m probably a little too biased to tell you if this book’s any good, but there sure is a lot of making out (and then some).

Trust Me, I’m Trouble - Mary Elizabeth Summer

When you read this book’s predecessor, Trust Me, I’m Lying, you don’t know the main character, teen con artist Julep Dupree, is bisexual; frankly, neither does she. She falls for a guy, things happen, and…well, that’s all I’ll spoil about that. But she also meets Dani, a 19-year-old Russian mob boss who’s back with a vengeance in the sequel, resulting in my personal favorite girl-girl couple in YA this year.

About a Girl - Sarah McCarry

There’s no missing from that cover that there’s a relationship between girls in this book, the third and final of the Metamorphosis trilogy. But as the book opens, main character Tally actually has feelings for her best friend, Shane, which he seems to reciprocate, resulting in a fan-yourself-level sex scene. The emotional aftermath isn’t quite as fun or romantic, though, and when she sets out on a quest to find her maybe-father, she’s free and clear to fall for the mysterious and alluring Maddy.

Over You - Amy Reed

Max is the calm, responsible girl to her best friend Sadie’s wild child, but when they go away together for a summer to a farm commune and Sadie gets mono, Max finally gets to emerge from her shadow and be her own person. Newly independent, she finds herself drawn to Dylan, the very same guy who piqued Sadie’s interest before she got sick, and an unusual choice for Max, since she usually prefers girls. I loved this book for being a great novel about toxic friendship, and it’s a great pick if you’re looking for a novel with a bisexual main character that doesn’t revolve around a romantic relationship.

Empress of the World - Sara Ryan

This was my personal first read with a bisexual main character, and I suspect I’m not alone there. When Nic goes to spend the summer at a program for gifted youth, she certainly doesn’t expect to fall for a girl; after all, she likes guys. But when she falls for the beautiful and talented Battle, she falls hard, and the girls’ mutual and confusing feelings give way to a sweet romance that transcends labels or expectations.

Grasshopper Jungle - Andrew Smith

It’s hard to put Smith’s neon-covered apocalyptic opus into a genre, but it’s here for its rare bi male character in YA, caught in the confusion of having feelings for both his best friend, Robby, and his girlfriend, Shann, while also fighting to survive an infestation of human-size praying mantises that have descended upon their Iowa town.

Pantomime - Laura Lam

Gene is the daughter of a noble family, but she doesn’t feel at all at home in female trappings. Micah’s a runaway, who joins the magical circus of Ellada as an aerialist’s apprentice. As he becomes a bigger star in the show, he also finds himself drawn to two other performers—female aerialist Aenea and male clown Drystan. But Pantomime isn’t about a character who falls in love; it’s about a character’s evolution and understanding of identity. Winner of the 2014 Bisexual Book Award for Speculative Fiction, the story continues with Shadowplay.

Cut Both Ways - Carrie Mesrobian

Will’s finally had his first kiss, but he didn’t expect it to be with his gay best friend, Angus. Determined to put it behind him, he starts to date Brandy, but it doesn’t stop him from gravitating back to Angus over and over again. The thing is, Brandy’s no beard; he genuinely likes her, too, and he has no idea how to balance them both and make a choice. Though Will doesn’t consider bisexuality or use the word (which is addressed in the author’s note), to the best of my knowledge, this is the first realistic contemporary YA from a major house to be narrated entirely by a male character engaging in sexual activity with both a male and female character, and that’s no small thing.

Adaptation - Malinda Lo

When birds start flying into planes all over the country, it’s impossible to call that many collisions a coincidence. Then Reese and her crush, David, get in a crash of their own, and when she wakes up a month later, she has no recollection of what she missed. Her life only gets more confusing when she meets the beautiful Amber, and realizes she’s confused about more than just what’s going on outside; apparently her sexuality isn’t quite what she thought it was, either. As she works to solve the mystery of what happened to her during the month she was unconscious, she also must confront her feelings for both David and Amber, an issue which continues in sequel Inheritance.

Love in the Time of Global Warming - Francesca Lia Block

It’s the end of the world as Pen knows it, and with her family disappeared after natural disasters rock Los Angeles, there’s nothing for her to do but search for what comes next. As she embarks on her Odyssey-mirroring quest, while thinking about her parents, her little brother, and her best girlfriends—one of whom had been on her mind in a new, kissing-related way for a while now—she finds a new band of friends to join her, which includes the alluring and mysterious Hex, taking her sexuality in yet another turn as they fall in love against the backdrop of a world falling apart.

you can find more bisexual books here, here, here, here, here, and here

hope this helped!

-Mod Charlie

[lilbreck]

AGoT Prologue - Chapter 3: Daenerys I

Notes:

Since I’m going to be more than likely addressing GRRM in a… less than praising manner a lot of the time, I’m going to call him Mr. Martin here. It’s my way of trying to soften my attack.

To the people who refer to the chapters only as the POV [insert number], what did chapter numbers ever do to you? Did they poison your dog, dry up your well, and run off with your girl? What the fuck did they ever do to you? To whoever didn’t put the chapter number in the actual chapters of this book: I fucking hate you.

Mr. Martin, have you ever actually interacted with children? Because, going by your writing, it doesn’t seem like you have. While Dany’s advanced mental age could be due to a life the run due to her brother’s paranoia and his probable mental, emotional, and physical abuse, I side eye why Bran is written so old.

Having said all that. I have the maps open, the appendix with children’s ages a click away, and I am ready to read.

Prologue

Royce is pretty much a young Hot Topic manager that everyone who works with him secretly (and not-so secretly) thinks is fucking useless and full of himself. He also apparently has the survival instincts if a particularly stupid rock.

But, hey, he’s a sharply dressed pretentious idiot!

They do a really good job of describing how it feels to freeze to death. Damn. I also like the that Others don’t appear to be mindless. It makes them far more threatening, IMO. I also like that it’s not just the dead coming back, there’s that supernatural cold that comes with them that just adds an edge of terror to it all.

Question: To those who use this prologue to speculate on Jon’s future (because of how it kind of mirrors his death), does the fact that Royce was blinded before he died change the idea for you that Jon might lose an eye? Just curious.

Chapter 1: Bran I

Age 7

And we’re going to have a seven-year-old see a man beheaded. Life’s hard, y’all. It’s the third guy from the prologue so I guess he ran fast enough for the Others not to get him? It’s interesting that, apparently, Ned didn’t tell them any of what was going on, just that they were off to behead someone. I say this because Robb was under the impression they were going to kill a wilding sworn to Mance Rayder. Speaking of wildings, can I just say, there is some major anti-wilding propaganda coming from Old Nan. I wonder how much of it is close to what they’re like. Obviously not the laying with Others bit.

You have to wonder, if it’s not even winter yet, and their breath is already showing… how fucking cold does it get in the North? Also, how many thirty-five-year-olds is Bran seeing to recognize that his father may look older than thirty-five? Most kids I know either think their parents are forever the same age, or always old. Or, you know, both.

Theon (who is about five years older than both Jon and Robb) is an ass. He just straight up laughed when a man got his head cut off and then kicked the head away. I’m with Jon.

I see we have the first sign that Jon sees a lot that others don’t (the man was afraid). Also, I wonder how long he’s been calling Robb “Stark”. I wonder if this is only under certain circumstances, or if it’s all the time. It’s been a long ass time since I’ve read this.

I’d like to take a moment to say that I’ve been thinking a bit more harshly of Cat than I possibly should have. I forgot that Jon and Robb are the same age. What this means is that, as far as Cat knows, as soon as Ned got her pregnant, he fucked off South and got another woman pregnant. Now, we know that’s not what happened, but still.

I also completely forgot that the direwolf they found had been killed by, presumably, a stag. Damn, but Theon was fucking eager to kill the pups. I mean, it��s easy to say “of course” since when know what happens now, but still…

And Bran noticing that Jon had deliberately excluded himself as Ned’s son, even called him “Lord Stark”, in order to save the pups. I’m all emotional over here.

This chapter we see that Theon’s an ass, Jon is willing to draw attention to what probably hurts him the most to save even puppies lives, and Jon either has some freaky sensitive ears, or there’s already a call between the direwolves and the Starks. I’m guessing the latter.

Chapter 2: Catelyn I

Age (32 or 33, IIRC)

Married to Ned – 15 years.

I really like how the differences in religion really say a lot about the mindsets of Southern houses and Northern houses. Now, when she (and everyone, I assume) refer to “the children of the forest”, I’m assuming they mean a people, not just actual children roaming around the forest. I’m putting that out there, because you can never really tell in fantasy.

I think it says a lot that, even after years, and a political marriage turned to love and trust, she still doesn’t seem comfortable with their religion. She even talks about how the eyes of the heart tree followed her. She still very much views herself as a Southerner. I wonder if, when she married Ned, she brought any lady’s maids or anything of that nature with her. Other Southerners to help her feel less isolated. I’m thinking not, and I feel so much for her.

Chapter 3: Daenerys I

Age 13

Okay, give that she’s a year younger than Jon, I want to know the timeline for Rhaegar’s death, Aerys’ death, and the birth of these two. I’m sure there’s a timeline somewhere, I’ll look it up later.

I like that Dany is smart enough to question what Illyrio wants from them if he’s giving them so much, though I have to wonder what she went through to make her ask that. Also, I don’t like Viserys right off that bat. He fucking twisted her damn nipple, painfully.

Okay, so I’ve got a bit of the answer to the timeline question I had. During Robert’s Rebellion, Viserys was eight, but Dany was still an early stage pregnancy, if I’m interpreting “only a quickening in their mother’s womb” correctly. So, while not exactly a year younger than Robb and Jon, it’s close enough. And she’s going to be riding to “reclaim” a home she’s never had, seeing as she doesn’t even remember Dragonstone, and she was still with a wet-nurse when they fled there. Already I just want this poor girl freed from her brother and taken some place safe and warm where she can be a child like she obviously wants to. Maybe find a w ay to return to Braavos.

It’s also interesting to see the different views that we have on the Rhaegar and Lyanna story. The first we hear of it, he was battling and dying for the woman he loved. Of course, Dany’s only getting her information from her brother, so everything has to be taken with a grain of salt. Also, how much of their wondering was actually because of people after them, and how much was her brother’s paranoia. After all, Dany does say she never saw anyone.

Just going by Dany’s descriptions, Viserys has been full on mad for a while now. IIRC, in the show, the bath scene with Dany was mean to show that she was resistant to heat. However, in the book the servants/slaves never comment on the heat. Dany does, but she only says she likes the heat because it makes her feel clean and her brother is telling her that it was never too hot for a Targaryen. So, yeah, I’m thinking that “heat resistance” in the show has nothing to do with the book.

Poor Dany doesn’t even have a moment to pretend this is anything other than her being sold. She quickly makes the connection between the young slave’s comment about Drogo’s slaves wearing gold collars and the gold collar that’s put on her. Fuck Viserys.

Oh, I didn’t realize we got a reference to the red priests and the Lord of Light this early on. Heh. Wow, they are spread far and wide, aren’t they?

I’d like to point out that Dany has a far better bullshit detector than her brother. She’s probably had to develop a habit of being able to read people because her brother seems quick to lash out. Also notice that Viserys claims to be the last dragon… while his sister is standing right next to him. He is damn far gone.

Okay, there is obviously so much wrong with the Dany and Drogo pairing. Let’s skip over the fact that her brother is selling her to him, because that’s a common thing through this series / time. Dany is thirteen here, Drogo is about thirty. Aren’t we all glad they aged a lot of the characters up for the show? Another thing that should set off red flags is how much Drogo frightens Dany just from how fucking mean he looks.

“I’d let his whole khalasar fuck you if need be, sweet sister, all forty thousand men, and their horses too if that was what it took to get my army. Be grateful it is only Drogo. In time you may even learn to like him. Now dry your eyes. Illyrio is bringing him over, and he will not see you crying.”

Yeah, everyone involved in this (save Dany, of course) needs to die painfully. Like, you know how Vlad would impale people and the pole would go through them from ass to brain, but sometimes it wouldn’t get the brain and they’d be left up there to slowly die? I want that to happen to these people.

 We’ll leave off here and read three or four more chapters tomorrow. Hell, maybe more. We’ll see. However, feel free to comment away. Let me know if there’s something I missed, or if you want to talk about any specific thing.

Just remember, it’s been a long time since I’ve read this, so I’m only familiar with the first three chapters so far.

[netunleashed-blog]

Where are the Love Island winners now? All the couples from 2015, 2016 and 2017 - from engagements to LOTS of splits

http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=25091 Where are the Love Island winners now? All the couples from 2015, 2016 and 2017 - from engagements to LOTS of splits - http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=25091 Love Island fans have been glued to their screens since the ITV2 show launched in 2015. And, now, a fresh batch of super-hot singletons are in the infamous reality show villa. With the help of Caroline Flack and narrator Iain Stirling, they're competing to find Mr or Mrs Right under the glare of the spotlight. This year, Danny Dyer's daughter, Dani, is in the cast, along with a doctor, a solicitor, a government advisor and a lot of muscles. But what happened to the previous contestants? And does the dating show really work? Here, Mirror Celebs examines how many of the Love Island couples actually stayed together after the show - and where our favourite pairs are now... SERIES 3 - 2017 Winners: Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies (Image: ITV) These two were so adorable they sailed to victory, last summer. Unfortunately, despite scooping the £50,000 cash prize, they went their separate ways in Decemeber. “With sadness, we’ve decided to separate. Our schedules made it difficult. We’ll remain good friends,” a statement said. Fortunately, Kem has his 'bromance' with Chris Hughes to fill any void. They've already enjoyed a one spin-off show and will now front another, also for ITV. Runners-Up: Camilla Thurlow & Jamie Jewitt (Image: Rex Features) They notoriously got intimate in the villa - despite the presence of 69 high-definition cameras filming their every move. Yet, defying the odds, Camilla and Jamie survived the show intact. These days, the couple are still together and spend much of their time using their fame to promote charitable causes, such as World Cancer Day. Who'd have thought it? Third place: Chris Hughes & Olivia Attwood (Image: Comedy Central) This pair need little introduction. Despite having obvious chemistry, they constantly argued during their time in the Love Island villa - and then some in the real world. Although they gave their romance a go on their on TV series, Chris and Olivia: Crackin’ On, it wasn't meant to be. In fact, their messy break-up was broadcast to millions. Since then, Chris reportedly briefly moved on with ex-Corrie actress Georgia May-Foote, while Olivia is said to have reunited with ex-boyfriend, Bradley Dack. Fourth place: Marcel Somerville and Gabby Allen (Image: REX/Shutterstock) Once part of boy-band Blazin' Squad, Marcel was - rather ironically - considered the nice guy of the competition. His connection with Gabby delighted viewers who wanted them to win, but they finished in fourth place. A nine-month relationship followed, but this came crashing down when he cheated on her during a lads' holiday in Spain. He then accused her of cheating on him with Dan Osbourne - husband of former EastEnders star Jac Jossa. Recently, he confessed that she won't answer his calls - which is probably for the best... Jessica Shears & Dom Lever (Image: ITV) They were the first couple to be booted from the villa, but that hasn't stopped Jess and Dom from embarking on a relationship together. To prove it, the pair stripped down to their swimwear to get ‘married’ by Richard Arnold on Good Morning Britain. Thankfully, it wasn't legally binding, but the pair are planning their own nuptials. Watch this space... Series 2 - 2016 Winners: Cara de la Hoyde and Nathan Massey (Image: ITV) Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now Cara and Nathan were love's young dream when they hooked-up on series two of Love Island. They were arguably the strongest couple in the villa (had a few wobbles - nothing major) and were destined to walk away with the £50,000 cash prize, which they did. Cara even emerged from the show telling fans: "We will not let you down. We're going to get married and we're going to have babies." Well, the latter was correct but sadly the marriage prediction was not. Cara moved into a flat with Nathan in his native Essex, which saw them pop-up in TOWIE. They also spoke frequently in interviews about their inevitable engagement. (Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock) Then, in April, they announced a shock split. And a bigger shock followed just three weeks later: Cara was pregnant. She told OK magazine they hadn't been trying for a baby and had broken up around two weeks after finding out she was expecting. Fast forward to 6.30am on December 13 2017 and their son, Freddie-George, was born. They've both said they won't get back together for the sake of the child , but this also proved a dud prediction. The couple have since reunited and hinted on Instagram that more children may be on the horizon. Then in July 2018, while the latest series of Love Island was on telly again, they announced their engagement. Read More Nathan whisked Cara off to the villa where they'd met in Mallorca, blindfolded her and popped the question. Runners-up: Olivia Buckland and Alex Bowen (Image: ITV2) Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now These two had an interesting start on the show: they only got together after Alex had already slept with another contestant, Zara Holland. But they certainly made up for lost time, being crowned the show’s biggest rompers after having sex more than 30 times. They officially became boyfriend and girlfriend in the series finale, which Alex took to the next level by popping the question over New Year’s Eve, which they spent in New York. They now live together in Essex (with a French bulldog). (Image: ITV) The wedding will take place this summer and fellow Love Island star Cara de la Hoyde has already been snapped-up as a bridesmaid. Olivia recently told MailOnline: "We’ve got a lot sorted but the guest list is the hardest. "The ceremony is really small and we want to keep it family orientated. In the evening it’ll be party time!" Third place: Scott Thomas and Kady McDermot (Image: WENN) Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now They starred in one of the most romantic Love Island scenes of all time - when Scott asked Kady to go official while kneeling poolside surrounded by candles and towels arranged to spell out the words, ‘Be my GF?’. Following the show, their romance went from strength to strength. They lived together in Manchester and spent time in Australia supporting Scott’s brother, ex-Emmerdale actor Adam Thomas, while he was appearing on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! Unfortunately, they split just 18 months after leaving the villa. Fourth place: Katie Salmon and Adam Maxted (Image: ITV2) Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now Katie coupled-up with Northern Irish wrestler Adam, but it failed to launch. Once the show finished, they both confirmed via Twitter that they were 100 per cent single - and threw in a couple of cryptic metaphors. Adam said: “It's like when you're eating a kebab after a night out & the first few bites taste good but then u realise that it really isn't nice at all!” Katie retaliated: “It's like getting socks at Christmas. Practical but no fun.” Katie later confirmed a romance with model Dani Whittaker, while Adam is in a relationship with dance instructor Carly Taylor. Fifth place: Emma-Jane Woodham and Terry Walsh Er, and Malin Andersson (Image: WENN) Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now This was one of the more fascinating Love Island storylines: Malin and Terry hooked up at the start of the show and seemed utterly inseparable. When she was booted off in a shock elimination, he vowed to go with her but she insisted he stayed behind to finish the experience. So imagine her shock when newbie Emma-Jane turned up at the villa and Terry was immediately smitten, leaving a stunned Malin alone at home watching their romance develop - which included a VERY racy sex scene Malin then rocked up at the villa to confront Terry in a rather awkward scenes, and Tel later admitted he was sorry for hurting Malin, but he didn't regret his actions. "I’m not going to stay with someone for the wrong reasons," he said. "I want to be with Emma and life goes on." (Image: FameFlynet) Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now But, alas, it was not meant to be, and Terry and Emma later split. Terry announced the break up on Twitter, saying: "For people asking me or who it concerns me n Em have broken up. We’re still friends. One chapter closes another must open." Malin, meanwhile, who later spent £7,000 on surgery to look good on social media, was later linked to fellow Love Island star Tom Powell, who admitted to Daily Star in March: "It's somewhere in between being friends and a relationship." Tom Powell and Sophie Gradon (He was eliminated week five, she walked) (Image: ITV) Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now Their romance was tested when Tom's ex, Emma-Jane Woodham, turned-up out of the blue, but Tom and Sophie genuinely adored each other. That was clear when he was eliminated in week five, which saw devastated Sophie alone in the villa - until Katie Salmon arrived, that was, and they became the first-ever same sex Love Island couple. Days after coupling up with Katie, however, Sophie cooled things off as she just wanted to be with Tom. She then quit the villa, saying she didn't want to lose him - unaware a furious Tom had been tweeting about how angry he was. Sophie and Katie became the show's first same sex couple (Image: ITV2) (Image: WENN) Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now Afterwards, Sophie and Tom met up - on camera - and managed to patch things up, but had a rollercoaster romance until splitting months later. And it wasn't the most amicable of splits, with mud slinging on Twitter and allegations of cheating. Most recently, Tom has been linked to fellow Love Island star Malin Andersson, while Sophie found love with new man Ashley Ienco. They later broke up and she began dating Aaron Armstrong. Sadly Sophie died at the age of 32 on June 20, police confirmed. It's not thought to be suspicious. Rykard Jenkins and Rachel Fenton (She was eliminated week three, he walked) (Image: ©ITV) Their romance was one of the sweetest and most enduring in Love Island history; after meeting at the villa and forging a connection, the couple were torn apart by a twist that saw Rachel eliminated and Rykard told to remain on the island. But the thought of saying goodbye to Rachel when he'd just found her was just too much to take, so he dramatically quit there and then, leaving the villa alongside his beloved. One year on they’re still super happy together and, unlike other Love Island couples, have shunned the limelight to live a relatively normal life. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now Series 1 - 2015 Winners: Jess Hayes and Max Morley Jessica and Max were crowned the first-ever winners of Love Island, sharing the £50k prize. However, the writing was on the wall when Jessica told Mirror Celebs less than 24 hours later: “We have a laugh together but we are not madly in love or anything like that.” So it was no surprise that two months later, the couple - who lived in different parts of the country - had split up, with Jess admitting: “Some things are just not meant to be.” Max added: “We gave it our best shot.” (Image: WENN) However, Jess seemed a little less amicable towards Max in a Facebook Live with Daily Star the following year, when she said: "You think you fancy someone but with Max, looking back at it now, it makes me cringe." "I would never, ever go near him again," she added. After the show, Jess found herself making headlines when she exposed her boobs at the Cheltenham Festival while attending with pal Katie Salmon - who would also go on to appear in Love Island . Max, meanwhile, went on to date Geordie Shore star Charlotte Crosby and fellow Love Island star Zara Holland. He also appeared in Ex on the Beach. Read More Love Island 2018 Runners-up: Hannah Elizabeth and Jon Clark (Image: ITV) Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now These two gave us our first - and only - on-screen engagement in series one, when Jon dropped to one knee and popped the question. Sadly for them, his grand gesture didn’t lead to them to victory (and that cash prize would have helped with wedding planning, given Hannah said she wanted the “biggest wedding ever” with a huge gown covered in Swarovski crystals.) In the end, there wasn’t to be a wedding: the couple called things off. (Image: Splash) Jon told OK magazine there was no animosity, they’d just been rowing and things hadn’t worked out. Hannah agreed, saying the engagement hadn’t been for show - they’d genuinely both loved each other and wanted to marry. Since Love Island , Jon's joined the cast of TOWIE alongside Chris Clark. Meanwhile, Hannah has found love with a new man, George Andretti, whom she's described as her "soulmate." Third place: Lauren Richardson and Joshua Ritchie (Image: WENN) These two paired-up as friends during their time on Love Island, two years ago. Sadly, romance didn't blossom for them, either. Lauren’s retreated from the spotlight over the last year, but Josh has been making his fair share of headlines. Joshua - who claims to have slept with more than 400 women - appeared in Ex On The Beach and had a brief fling with Stephanie Davis, following her split from Jeremy McConnell. Fourth place: Cally Jane Beech and Luis Morrison Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now These two actually dated before Love Island - but being at the villa gave them a chance to reconnect and remember just why they’d fallen for each other in the first place. The fact Cally was based in Hull and Luis lived in London had been a factor in why their relationship hadn’t worked previously, but after being thrust together on the show, the timing was just right. And they produced the first-ever Love Island baby! Cally gave birth to daughter Vienna Morrison-Beech after a 32-hour labour, saying: “The most amazing day and feeling ever. When 2 became 3.” WHAT ABOUT THE PRESENTERS? Caroline Flack and Andrew Brady Caroline Flack and Andrew Brady She hasn't always been an authority on romance - with a trail of broken relationships behind her (including Harry Styles, no less). But it appears that she's finally found Mr Right in the form of another reality TV star: The Apprentice's Andrew Brady. The couple got engaged earlier this year and he recently moved into her London apartment. There were rumours of infidelity (on his part), but these have been dismissed and the couple have recently returned from a loved-up holiday in Greece. Iain Stirling and Laura Whitmore Laura Whitmore and Love Island star Iain Stirling Off-screen, Iain Stirling is far more successful than many of Love Island's contestants. He's been dating TV presenter Laura Whitmore for more than a year - and happily admits he's "punching above his weight" with the blonde beauty. Iain, who became well known for his sarcastic Scottish drawl as the voiceover of reality show Love Island, said he takes no offence at suggestions his girlfriend is better looking than he is. In an interview for the Chris Ramsey show, he said: “I don’t mind it, because it just means I’ve done better haven’t I? “I’ve got someone who’s like me, but much, much better. And Laura’s got someone who’s like her, but much worse. “I think I’ve done quite well out of it, but I’m dead happy because she’s lovely and stuff.” Source link