#discussions of fire

[jonnywaistcoat]

Is King Cole gay?

You know how queer historians are always saying we should be careful using modern language like 'gay', 'bisexual' and 'trans' about historical societies because although these things have always existed its reductive and counterproductive to impose our own language and conceptions of them onto other cultures and other sex-gender systems? Well, surely the same thing should apply to the societies and cultures from the far future as well?

There is so much distance between us and OUaTis in both time and space, the probability that they share our conceptions of sex, gender and gayness is vanishingly small. And that's assuming the characters in OUaTiS are even human, which is never explicitly stated.

This is all to say that, to me, the question is not "Is King Cole gay?" The question is "Are you a bad enough dude to conceive a new type of gayness that's weird enough for space?"

[mohntilyet]

about illario working with the venatori, we can't forget that elgar'nan gifted him blood magic, so I do think that he somewhat influenced him and that's why he's so much more vindictive and jealous in comparison to tevinter nights. I don't mean that he's being mind controlled, but it's a bit like cyrian, a god just amplifying those negative emotions in you and promising power and glory can push a person to that edge and to make stupid af decisions.

im also not forgetting that zara line in inner demons where she talks about an envy demon. like. why an envy demon in specific...there's THINGS between zara and illario that were not shown

no literally if you get me talking about illario + envy + the possibility of getting him possessed, you will have me here for fucking ever. a non mage doing blood magic (any magic at all) is really weird and interesting to me and i don’t remember an example of this happening before (feel free to correct me tho lol. i’m discounting possessions and dwarves)

i had started wildly theorising after bloodbath that he had been possessed and he was tapping into the fade using an envy demon. especially like you said, zara mentions it, AND because i swear there’s a codex in the ossuary where it mentions an envy demon whereas spite is obviously determination, right? so i thought it was a breadcrumb trail to a big “illario is being influenced and doesn’t even know” reveal— same as you anon like great minds am i right— but i’m not sure there is actually any evidence of that lol. like maybe if you squint but i do believe it was explained away by “oh yeah, and elgarnan let him do special blood magic”

it does also make sense to me that illario can only control lucanis, due to being part of the same family. a bloodline thing, and it is very poetic to me that their shared family connection in caterina is what allows him to control lucanis, even for a moment lol. spite being the extra magical boost that lucanis needs to block that out ALSO makes sense to me so i’m not too fussed abt these details lol🤔

the envyllario in my heart also gets spectral weapons for himself. lucanis gets wings, illario gets talons, PLUS green-purple are complementary colors so it would have been really fun to see them clash with their spirit/demon-powers. the talon thing is also a kind of reflection of his end-goal desire, how envy demons already have those freaky hands, and it manifests as claws and is a much more aggressive, strength-augmenting manifestation (as opposed to manoeuvrability and speed-augmenting that spite’s wings give lucanis.) anyways that's what the diagram above is supposed to be (this is extremely hot to me)

[thotkumi]

[askoverkill]

"Returning contestant...?"

transcript below:

Returning contestant...?

Oh, silly Contestant #2! You don't want me to explain your secrets to your party, you know they're listening!

(WUH OH, THAT'S RIGHT!) (THEY CAN HEAR YOU!)

I've... been here? Before? I think... I'd remember... burning alive...

Aw, Contestant #1... you've never burned alive before. So silly. What is this, silly hour? Okay, let me make you sillier.

...

...Why.

[dragon-robus]

COVER LEAK?

OH MY GOD is it a new book leak? I saw it on reddit, but i can't found it again, I only have this screenshot..

I'm guessing this is a work in progress cover, as it doesn't have the details worked out, but it already looks impressive. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I think it might be a Peacemaker. They looks like a nightwing, but has slightly curved horns and if I'm seeing the silhouette correctly, the scales go around the eyes like the rainwing ones.

AND THE BLOODY MOONS this means that the nightwings could have new abilitie??? or maybe other dragons can?

[oppitfs]

Happy itafushi Friday, the best day in the week 🐯🐺

[fictonrantsworld]

Bro my queen helaena has no respect for viserys legit look at these cut scenes from bts of hotd ep 8 of viserys coming in to the dining room...😭

My girl has no respect for her neglectful father like..🤣😂😅 she immediately sat after one sec.

Say whatever about aegon and helaenas relationship but, girl fr prioritized examining and toying with aegons insect gift that he got for her, than her dying father, like girlie...

Bro even aegon stood for a while like...

Aegons look of anger at his father, when he said he loves them all, and helaenas look at viseryss face like...oh yeah...I'm supposed to feel bad for your lost eye but when aemond looses an eye it's nothing huh.

[crowleysgirl56]

Ok, so I wanted to do a deeper dive into this particular passage of Good Omens:

For context, this is at the climax of the book, they’re at Tadfield airbase, the horsemen have been dispensed with, Aziraphale has his body back, and Satan is about to claw his way out of the pit.

In most of the proceeding chapters involving Crowley it talks a lot about how scared Crowley is. He is very scared of Hell.

One could perhaps say maybe he is scared of them due to The Arrangement, but that is never explicitly stated. I think it has more to do with Hell is bad, and Crowley has spent the majority of the book being yelled at by some entity through the radio or TV telling him how he’s going to be in super amounts of trouble when they get their hands on him. He is just scared of what will happen. When he comes across the book shop burning he doesn’t cry for his lost friend. He curses Aziraphale, and I think it’s because the one person who may have been able to keep him safe and protected from Hell is now gone.

So when he thinks to himself (as shown in the above screen shot) that there is now nothing left for him to lose, this is why I never thought (upon reading the book the first time that is) there were any romantic feelings between him and Aziraphale. I know that technically he had already lost Aziraphale. But by this point he was back again, and back in his body. If there truly were romantic thoughts between them surely the idea of losing him again would come up.

I have read so much fanfiction, some old, some new, and what they all have in common is the detailed inner monologue of Crowley’s turmoil over his feelings for Aziraphale and how he doesn’t feel like he can act on them. In the book we get nothing of the sort, from either character. Even when they’re separated there is hardly ever any description of them thinking of the other except occasionally to frame a short reference to something. Reading the book I never got the impression that there was anything more than two ethereal beings spending time and proximity to each other and doing work for each other for no other reason than they’re essentially a bit lazy.

I think they’re only queer coded for the fact that there’s the line about Aziraphale appearing “gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitric oxide”, and Crowley is, well, very Freddie Mercury coded. Them being seen as gay together and all the gay slurs in the awful racist scenes of Aziraphale body hopping about in culturally indigenous people after the bookshop fire has more to do with the very typical 80’s/90’s trope of “being gay = comedy gold”, than them actually being together romantically.

I think the reason why they were shipped so much after the publication however is for the same reason we ship so many male couples (or female couple) in modern media, why we’ve always shipped them: because of the complete and horrid lack there of, of proper queer representation.

If you’ve ever seen the magnificent Russel T Davies TV series It’s a Sin, there is a wonderful scene where the character Ash starts a job in a school library and the headmaster asks him to go through all the books and find any book that has queer love scenes so they can be removed. Ash then gives a most beautiful and impassioned speech (albeit it turns out the speech is just in his head) of how there is nothing. Absolutely nothing. There is nothing to the point where they are nonexistent. They are invisible. They are not seen. (Or like, something to that effect. I tell you though, it’s bloody brilliant).

So I think that’s rather the point really. You have two iconic characters, albeit supporting bit characters practically, and I think a lot of our minds automatically get drawn to wanting to put them together because of the sheer lack of queer couples. People have been doing it for years from Frodo and Sam, to Harry Potter and Draco (or Ron I guess), to Sherlock and Watson (even before the Benedict Cumberbatch show. Also as an aside let’s not get into how obsessed people got about Sherlock Holmes back in the day when those books were first published. The obsession was the reason Doyle killed the character off the in first place, then after getting letters from people telling him they were literally going to kill themselves, the reasons why he resurrected him again. Don’t tell us that modern day nerds are weird and obsessive. We’ve ALWAYS been like this).

It’s for this reason why queer representation is so god damn important. Why I still support the idea of Good Omens season 3. Because regardless of how the characters were originally intending to be represented in the book, it’s very clear now that they are so much more than “Just friends”. And we NEED that! Whether you subscribe to the idea that they will be physically intimate with each other, the fact remains is they love each other. They love each other immensely. And that comes from years of Terry Pratchett (and the other guy) accepting that canon and telling fans that it’s true. Because Michael Sheen made a choice and held a belief about how he saw his character and then David Tennant followed suit. That literally tens of thousands of fanfiction writers have decided the same.

So that’s my take. I don’t think loving each other was ever intended that way in the book, but in the last 35 years their story has morphed into the ineffable husbands that we now know.

What are your thoughts? Have I rambled on long enough to make any sense? Do you agree? Have I missed something completely obvious and gotten it all wrong? Keen to hear thoughts.

[briius]

people tend to forget jon when they discuss tower of joy and why certain characters acted in the way they did. in the end, it's about jon and his backstory. and even though you can argue about other characters, it still revolves around jon and people's feelings about him (this post is obviously if you believe in r+l=j) because I see sometimes people villainize rhaegar (although he has a lot of rightful criticism) about him having lyanna guarded by the kingsguard without really thinking of why. in the end lyanna couldn't do much because she was pregnant, even if she regretted going with rhaegar or if she still was in love with him. if she returned to the rebels she could be safe because they would think she was kidnapped (no matter what actually happened) and obviously feel bad for her, but her child would not be safe and would most likely be harmed or killed. and she obviously did care for jon no matter what you think her thoughts about rhaegar were in the end.

He could still hear her at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes.

AGOT Eddard I she was obviously worried about jon’s well being and was genuinely scared for his future until ned promised her. i think people tend to forget lyanna’s love for him when they discuss tower of joy. in the end it’s not her feelings for rhaegar or hatred for robert making her stay there, it’s her love for her son, because her staying is the only way to ensure his safety. these thoughts are reinforced when the sack of kingslanding happens. 

He remembered Rhaegar's infant son, the red ruin of his skull, and the way the king had turned away, as he had turned away in Darry's audience hall not so long ago. He could still hear Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded once.

AGOT Eddard IV first of all, sansa is pleading for lady’s life in this scene because she loves lady, and ned is comparing it to lyanna and how she pleaded the same for something before. it’s obviously a parallel for lyanna pleading for jon’s life and her care for him. second of all, the kingsguard had no idea if ned and co. would harm baby jon because of what happened with rhaegar's other children. all they knew was that ned and robert were close friends, and they had no knowledge of what Ned was like as a person or what his intentions were. because the kingsguard didn't try to stop ned from seeing lyanna, they tried to stop him from seeing jon and if he wasn't born we don't know how the kingsguard would have acted the same with ned and co. ned even explains why the kingsguard is there in his fever dream and why it revolves around jon.

"Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys. I thought you might have sailed with him." "Ser Willem is a good man and true," said Ser Oswell. "But not of the Kingsguard," Ser Gerold pointed out. "The Kingsguard does not flee." "Then or now," said Ser Arthur. He donned his helm.

AGOT Eddard X in the end, the kingsguard sees this as their duty. they wouldn't be there if it wasn't for jon because they saw protecting him as their duty. and this conversation also reinforces why lyanna has to protect him and why he isn't safe, because people will see him as a danger to the throne and the new dynasty. what i'm trying to say is that jon is very central to the tower and joy and the characters' actions around it, and if you ignore that you'll misunderstand why they act the way they do. however, i do think it's incredibly sad that lyanna, who longed to be free, was trapped at the end of her life. especially because she was trapped by the same thing she tried to escape from. lyanna and her life reminds me of the scene in gilmore girls when lane says “it was such a small window, a peephole really. it was the briefest of windows. i barely got to do it, i barely got the chance to be a person”. when talking about her freedom and life.

[blackcat419]

It’s really frustrating to see how HotD strips story from female characters not in the royal family to give their story to those main characters.

There is the theme of women being anti war in fire and blood, but those women are not Rhaenyra and Alicent. Those women are Lady Tyrell, sustaining from war to protect her son. Lady Baratheon, pushing for peace to protect her house after her husbands death. Samantha Tarly, guiding her lover towards peace instead of more war. Johanna Westerling, calling for peace in the main land and mercy for Tyland. Alysanne Blackwood, willing to marry Cregan to prevent him from dragging the realm into more violence.

Those are the women pushing for peace. Some from the beginning of the war and some closer to the end.

[zer0atdawn]

The fact that there was actually a master of fire who became a centipede will never cease to amaze me.

[xmimikyuusx]

It'll never not be annoying when a cishet person says "well it's just unreasonable to have a cast of characters in a dating sim to all be bisexual" and that cast will all be 99% white and thin and able bodied. I really don't want to hear how "unreasonable" a bisexual cast in a dating game is when there isn't a single character who weighs more than 200 pounds on your roster

[witha-boxofscraps]

I’m a sucker for the reluctant father figure adopts feisty teenager more than anything in the entire world and I was so desperate for this to be Haymitch and Katniss when I first read the trilogy

And now SOTR is out, it feels like everything I’ve ever wanted has been put in the palm of my hand and you best believe I bawled my eyes and heart out at that epilogue.

But I maintain the stance that Haymitch was not able to be a father to Katniss. He was far too broken by the time her games came around and there are so many instances in the books where he’s downright cruel to her despite caring about her (and Peeta) more than anyone in the world. Katniss describes Boggs as reminding her of her father but Haymitch is never really able to take on that paternal figure. Maybe they wish that’s what they could be together but Katniss had been an adult since 11 and Haymitch was barely able to care for himself. I think people are forgetting that he literally left her to care for herself in return to 12 for weeks until Peeta returned at the end of mockingjay.

So when I read SOTR, you best bet I gasped when I found out Louella was his sweetheart. Louella who he described as his LITTLE SISTER. because suddenly everything fit together so perfectly. No, in this world Haymitch couldn’t be Uncle Hay to Katniss. And no, he could not be the father figure she missed so desperately. But he was always an older, protective figure looking out for her. Haymitch Abernathy, the man who adopted so many as his younger siblings. Maybe that’s what Katniss was in a sense to him. Not strictly a younger sister because he certainly took on a more parental role with her (the people guarding Snows greenhouse discussing going to inform Haymitch that Katniss is there) but maybe she was just enough to heal the hole left by Sid.

Maybe, like Katniss was almost a mother to Prim but not quite, Haymitch fulfills the same role.

[rookflower]

One trait of Mapleshade that I find fascinating is the fact she *wants* to reveal the kittens are half-clan. She states that they will be loyal to both RiverClan and ThunderClan, as well as revealing the truth to the Clans (Not specifically the kittens?) I think Mapleshade is just interesting if you think about her as being this perpetual believer that everything will be okay, because StarClan loves her (She even states StarClan would love her children). She isn't afraid of them being rejected - doesn't even really consider that being a problem, because her children are special. Though I do feel this is a symptom of how the half-clan rule is just an ultimately cruel part of Clan-life, and Mapleshade unfortunately got caught in the midst of it. Especially seeing as her faith is kind of sad, knowing what will happen in the end - even as someone who dislikes Mapleshade.

yeah i think mapleshade's total faith in her own security mostly works to add to the tragedy. it's one of those books where no one really wins and i think serves as worldbuilding towards how fucked the warrior code is as a system but that either isn't intentional to the extent it goes or the writing team don't really want the readers to dwell on it. no matter how hard you try to appeal to the forces of oppression around you they will cut you down as soon as you are vulnerable and othered. they are not there to help you and cannot be won or reasoned with in a way that makes you truly immune unless you just are exactly what they want you to be.

mapleshade certainly has flaws pre-exile- she's self centred, rash, judgmental- but none of these make her an ontologically bad person or remotely justify what happens to her, it just makes it more of a gut punch for her when that sense of security and certainty is pulled out from under her feet. while a character like leafpool or bluestar is fully aware and fearful of the consequences for their transgression and will suffer in guilt and hiding until they are inevitably or resultingly punished for it, mapleshade does not have that understanding or sense of self preservation and is also, more immediately and directly, punished for it. no winning the starclan game!!

[sforzesco]

I got. thoughts. about valens and voices in imperial roman history. but I also got a lot of thoughts about uhhhhhh choosing your brother for co ruling the Fratricide Foundation Story Empire. many thoughts about themistius' oration too

Brotherly Love, Themistius (trans. Peter Heather & David Moncur)

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / insta