#fire threat

[agentrouka-blog]

"Fire burns them. Fire is always hungry."- Bran(ADWD II). "He was always hungry, her Drogon. Hungry and growing fast."- Dany(ASOS I). Fire is many times associated with hunger. Fire consumes. Jon compared R'hllor to 'hungry fire god.' The dragons during DOOM of Valyria were consumed by 'hungry fires.'

Hi anon!

Of course, it is only in its excess that the fire becomes monstrous.

Numerous times in the books, life-giving little fires are described as being "fed" by human hand. Human beings and their animals, children, all living beings must feed, as well. Humans need heat, to stay warm, to cook, to create. Humans need to consume and want to consume. We desire, we want, we make use of the world around us.

As such, fire represents a facet of all life, certainly of all humans.

GRRM doesn't condemn "consuming" or killing for consumption, he doesn't condemn hunger. Only excess and abuse.

Where does he want our sympathy to reside when comparing two cases of hunger in "The Sacrifice"? The starving soldiers practiced cannibalism but is that remotely as horrific as the punishment visited upon them? Both are cases of humans roasting humans, but still very distinct from one another.

Stakes. Nightfall would be on them soon, and the red god must be fed. An offering of blood and fire, the queen's men called it, that the Lord of Light may turn his fiery eye upon us and melt these thrice-cursed snows. (...)

Asha had been as horrified as the rest when the She-Bear told her that four Peasebury men had been found butchering one of the late Lord Fell's, carving chunks of flesh from his thighs and buttocks as one of his forearms turned upon a spit, but she could not pretend to be surprised. (...)

"He was dead," the weeping boy screamed, as the flames licked up his legs. "We found him dead … please … we was hungry …" (ADWD, The Sacrifice)

Human beings must eat to live. But the red god, the greedy fire, demands homage and sacrifice that sustains nothing, only destroys.

GRRM makes a fairly clear and consistent distinction between natural hunger and consumption meant to sustain - and the kind of hunger that is psychological and unchecked, that does not stop consuming until everything is destroyed, because it does not feed life, only power. 

When Dany murders Mirri Maz Duur - a fellow living human being - she consumes her body and soul in order to wake a magical weapon to serve herself. She does not sustain life in any way, she extinguishes a life in order to create constantly hungry creatures to mirror the hunger inside her soul that comprehends no food but power.

He wanted something from her, but Sansa did not know what it was. He looks like a starving child, but I have no food to give him. Why won't he leave me be? (ASOS, Sansa IV)

The hungry soul is a dangerous thing because it can turn everything around it into its food, whether freely given or not.

Dragons make no distinction between animals and humans, they burn and eat it all, and Dany struggles with that knowledge for a while, though she has been pretending it away early on. 

"You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse."

"No," Mirri Maz Duur said. "That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price." (AGOT, Daenerys IX)

Animal or person, it should make a difference but doesn’t. She forgets Hazzea's name, and embraces her dragon side in the grasslands. It alienates her from her own humanity. It turns her into a predator herself, or rather further reveals her for one.

There's a great deal of significance in the blurring of lines that occurs when humans begin to identify more with predators than with each other, a blurring of lines that goes hand in hand with the difference between scavenging meat off the dead and actively killing to consume. Actively killing just to kill. Murder and butchery reduce human beings to consumable goods.

"I killed my first man at twelve. I've lost count of how many I've killed since then. High lords with old names, fat rich men dressed in velvet, knights puffed up like bladders with their honors, yes, and women and children too—they're all meat, and I'm the butcher.  (ACOK, Sansa IV)

One presumed to threaten me, so I killed him and fed him to the other three. They refused to eat of their friend's flesh at first, but when they grew hungry enough they had a change of heart. Men are meat." (AFFC, The Reaver)

He died weeping and alone when I ripped his second life from him. Varamyr had devoured his heart himself. He taught me much and more, and the last thing I learned from him was the taste of human flesh. (ADWD, Prologue)

The dead men's clothes and coins and valuables went into a bin for sorting. Their cold flesh would be taken to the lower sanctum where only the priests could go; what happened in there Arya was not allowed to know. Once, as she was eating her supper, a terrible suspicion seized hold of her, and she put down her knife and stared suspiciously at a slice of pale white meat. The kindly man saw the horror on her face. "It is pork, child," he told her, "only pork." (AFFC, Arya II)

Lamb and dog and mutton and the flesh of man. Some of her little grey cousins were afraid of men, even dead men, but not her. Meat was meat, and men were prey. She was the night wolf. (ADWD, The Blind Girl)

When human beings cease to be persons and become consumable goods, it’s time to worry.

"He would make a monster of me," she whispered, "a butcher queen." But then she thought of Drogon far away, and the dragons in the pit. There is blood on my hands too, and on my heart. We are not so different, Daario and I. We are both monsters. (ADWD, Daenerys IV)

That’s something GRRM illustrates with the excesses of fire, but the fire itself is only a metaphor for a facet of human nature that can degrade down to monstrocity when unchecked. It’s visible in other imagery, the butcher, the cannibal, the sadistic murderer, the greed for power that would observe the beauty of a conflagration over the horror it inflicts on its victims.

[hehearse]

[nyracel]

hot take maybe but the only reason most show runners/producers/writers/etc. age up the (female) characters from book to show adaptation is to overtly sexualize them and not face mass amounts of scrutiny for it.

put 13 year old daenerys next to 30 year old drogo and the audience understands that daenerys is a victim to him and not an equal. put 22 year old emilia clarke as daenerys next to 32 year old jason mamoa as drogo and they’re seen as a budding romance with a tragic ending (by the general audience) due to their on screen chemistry.

flash forward to today, and now we’re dealing with 21 year old milly alcock playing rhaenyra from 14-19 and how her relationship with (28 year old fabien) a mid twenties criston is seen as -morally acceptable- and not a result of a degenerate pedophile taking advantage of and grooming his charge. “ser criston protects the princess from her enemies, but who protects the princess from ser criston?” rhaenyra was 14 when rumors started speculating that she slept with an almost 30 year old criston. a criston who had know her since she was 8 and had been her sworn shield since she was 9. obviously seeing a teenager in the early stages of puberty next to a fully grown man would emphasize rhaenyra being THE victim, as opposed to the show having an 18-19 year old explore her sexuality and seek out ‘consensual’ sex with her peer bodyguard. the discourse has even reached the point where certain stans try to paint the much younger woman as the perpetrator and aggressor of this event, who forced the unassuming man into having sex with her.

i’ll even take this a step farther, and bring up how if they had shown a 19 year old alicent abusing a 10 year old rhaenyra it would be identified and mutually agreed upon as a reprehensible act on alicent’s part. instead they’re of similar age, so people can attempt to paint the picture as two women of equal standing hating each other, and not a much older woman bullying a motherless child. once again however, some stans even go so far as to try and paint alicent as a victim of rhaenyra, and not the other way around. further cementing this is how both versions of alicent are younger than both versions of rhaenyra, AND how criston is still played by an actor who is younger than older!rhaenyra despite his character being the same age as daemon in canon.

they know exactly what they’re doing too, considering they aged alicent down to give her that innate compassion one typically feels when seeing children being abused on tv (something that can no longer be applied to rhaenyra). despite that never being her story; *she* was the abuser, and rhaenyra was her victim. criston’s victim. it’s a nasty cop out, and i wish more people would call out how sickening it is to flip the switch and attempt to make abusive individuals more sympathetic than the *actual* victims of said abusers.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 252

“Sir, we’ve… There’s been an encounter with a Reaper class entity.” 

There were several classifications for ecto-entities. Several ways the Ghost Investigation Ward classified each. Several common ones that they could easily destroy, easily study. Others however… others were dangerous. Incredibly dangerous. 

There’d only been two other Reaper-class entities confirmed before- both contained but barely. RP-1, a large knight-like entity seemingly made from shadows, and RP-2, a child-like creature that could near perfectly mimic a human. 

And now, there was a third. A third entity that could- and judging from the reports coming in had- killed. Had done so several times even. Which meant it needed to be contained yesterday. 

“Send out the teams- I want this thing in Site X Now!” 

[paeonie-s]

my current read on yoshidas ch is that hes the equivalent of a high schooler being made manager of a mcdonald’s bc all of his adult coworkers quit which leads him to believe that the fate of the world now depends on his ability to keep the drive thru times below 90 seconds

[marysblo0d]

How some of you sound

[babylonfelldown]

Everytime I see someone saying Cat was a bad mom, or some farytale like evil stepmom to Jon I wanna pull my eyes out

My girl was a SAINT, no woman would have handled the Jon situation as well as her

Can u look me in the eyes and seriously say that any highborn Lady from one of the great houses would have endured her husband bringing a bastard to their home and raising his as equal to their legitimate children? If anyone thinks that way they don't understend anything about asoiaf

[prolibytherium]

Would kill to read animal POV fiction that has the animal POV’s interaction with humans be like, semi realistic to the level of caution most predators take with large prey and/or competitors (including humans).

Like instead of the usual - “the human is such a weak, pathetic creature... so slow, no claws, blunt teeth… completely helpless without its 'Fire Sticks'. how is it the master of the earth?” type crap it’s like, the bear protagonist or whatever approaches some dude who spreads their arms and yells and the bear is like “FUUUUUUUUCK THAT THING JUST GOT HUGE. IT'S LARGE AND MAKING NOISES. HOLY FUCK.”

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

Transcript:

I'm gonna pump so much of my light into your asshole, it'll feel like I flashbanged your intestines.

Audio Source

[serpentface]

Interview Question for Etsushir:

What was the vibe like as a foot soldier during the suppression of the North Finn Rebellion? Did it feel doomed from the start or did it only fall apart once the Odomache was assaulted and killed?

[agentrouka-blog]

I wonder, if the solution to the fire threat lies in the death of Dany's dragons as the first step towards the magic slowly but surely dying out, where do you think it lies with the ice threat? Do the Starks and the Others make another pact and rebuild the Wall or do the Others need to be annihilated in order to destroy the danger of eternal winter?

My thoughts in this direction are by no means final or especially sophisticated. I'm mostly trying to analyse what all these threats seem to have in common and why - objectively - they are worth condemning, and I always arrive at blood magic and abuse of power over others.

The dragons? Born from murder and blood magic. The Others? Kill and then control corpses through what is likely blood magic. Warging? Mind rape, potentially created through blood magic. Whatever Euron has going on? The Faceless Men? Melisandre? Blood magic. Human sacrifice. Murder. For power.

It's no different from the petty cruelties of the more worldly villains who sacrifice human beings for their own advantage to find an outlet for their emotional scars.

So I think that ice and fire are two sides of the same blood magic coin, in that regard. Grief and wrath translate to the desire for power, just on a more apocalyptic level.

The solution is neither a status quo like the Wall and a world of illogical, unnaturally distorted seasons. Nor a cataclysmic devastation like the Doom of Valyria. The Others are obviously back and were never truly defeated, and the Doom didn't end inhumane slavery nor all dragonlords, it merely led to scattered successors all over.

The solution is going to have to be stepping away from the seductive, corrupting power of magic. Because magic is always presented as a trade and the trade is usually the sacrifice of a third party. The link between the human world and the supernatural world needs to be severed.

So I think that both Bran and Dany especially will be foils in this, presented with the opportunity to refuse that power they have grown accustomed to abusing, and Dany will fail to refuse it and either go down in flames or be stopped in a very worldly, mortal way, while Bran will use his power to work toward ending access to magic entirely, leaving himself once again a helpless, disabled boy who must face the reality of his grief and loss with bare hands.

The dragons are likely to die or at least become inaccessible through magic, the direwolf warg bonds, the greenseeing, all will be sacrificed - not necessarily in the form of a new pact but in the reversal or reparation for an ancient crime that created the Others in the first place. Be that a crime of the original Starks or the Children of the Forest or both. This threat will end through revealing a truth and following through on a logical if uncomfortable consequence.

I think.

[thesulkycroissant]

I love to give Bruce crap as much as the next person, but at least he's trying. Also Dickie's face in that last panel 🥹

[deluxewhump]

the bahkauv: part three

Prev

CW: hurt, more hurt, no comfort yet but a glimpse of it. Brief verbal threat of noncon, pliers as torture device, muzzle, broken bones, ear and hand whump, nonhuman whumpee, burning alive, immortal/quick healing whumpee, slight language barrier, brief thoughts/ideation of death and mortality, multiple whumpers

Hunters camp (before):

At first, the hunters thought the Bahkauv was a vampire. It made sense, in the confusion of the moment. Vampires were far more common than its kind was anymore. That and it had fangs.

At the camp, they soon realized the Bahkauv was not a vampire. This revelation did nothing to protect it. Close enough, they said. It was still a non-human creature, and had a long history of attacking, robbing, and even killing humans.

The first day in captivity, nothing happened. The Bahkauv twisted and pulled at its restraints, trying to no avail to find some give in the ropes that bound it hand and foot. How naive it had been. It had no idea the depth of the hatred these humans had for it, and for the vampires they didn’t kill outright.

One of the hunters caught it trying to manipulate the knots and beat it with fists and boots before putting its first muzzle on its face. At first it had been angry, hissing and spitting at the hunter’s hands that were wet with its own blood. That got it a backhand that made its ears ring and its head ache. The bit was sharp and huge, shoved to the back of its throat so it gagged and secured so tightly it thought it would choke. Humiliated, it had shrunk against the clapboard wall and sulked.

Pride would soon be a forgotten luxury.

The next day, two hunters came for it, dragging it stiff and sore from its first beating out into the yard along with a couple of screaming vampires. The sun was climbing in the sky, which was why the vamps were screaming and carrying on so. It felt an intense gratefulness that it could not burn from the sun as they could. One of the hunters grabbed its muzzle and turned its chin to force it to look.

“You see that? You think you’re better than them, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes.”

Another hunter joined the first. He had a mocking, self satisfied grin. “Let’s teach it a lesson in humility then. What are we waiting for? It was going to tear Byron’s throat out before we netted it.”

“Look at these. Is this fur?” the first hunter stroked one of the Bahkauv’s ears with the pad of his thumb. It shuddered at the unexpected touch. It was not affectionate, or kind, but it happened to be very gentle, and its ears were as highly sensitive as its sharp canines. It recoiled in disgust from the hunter’s hand— and its own reaction to it.

“It appears human when it’s not attacking. Except for a few details. The fangs are one. The ears. And of course it’s utterly vicious, despite being relatively intelligent. Can’t teach it a thing.”

“I bet I can teach it something,” grinned the first. It took the Bahvauv’s fur-lined ear between its forefinger and thumb again, this time pinching so tears sprung to its eyes and it bit back a surprised gasp of pain.

“Don’t be shy. Let’s hear a pretty little whimper at least. You’re going to make a lot of noises here.” The hunter pinched the sensitive skin and cartilage harder, his nails breaking skin beneath the soft layer of orange fur. The Bahkauv grit its teeth as best it could around the bit, and would not make a sound.

“No?” The hunter took something from the belt at his waist. Cold metal replaced fingers. Though the Bahkauv didn’t know it yet, it would come to know the word pliers very well. Such a simple tool, and so effective. Humans love tools— pliers and muzzles and fire. The teeth of the pliers bit down.

The Bahkauv screamed around the bit. It tried to pull away, but the hunter had it firm by the muzzle.

“There we go.” He gave the pliers a few sharp tugs, eliciting high pitched yelps. Its delicate ear was caught between the mean metal teeth like a fishhook.

“That was a healthy scream.”

“It’s an angry scream,” said the second. “That will change. If you take that thing clean off, you can dry it out and send it to your kids for good luck. Like a rabbit’s foot.”

It made an indignant sound, half-scream and haf-growl, saliva tinged with blood dripping from its muzzle.

“Well shit, that’s a good idea. I already ruined this one for now, it’s got a hole in it. I’ll get the other one.”

The hunter had been right that its silence wouldn’t last. It screamed as it was parted from its left ear.

—

It did not take the camp of hunters long to figure out that it regenerated itself quickly. Its ears grew back slowly, as did its fangs when they were later pulled. Everything that had a human appearance healed faster, though all the more painfully for it.

The first time they burned it, they didn’t know if it would survive. Neither did the Bahkauv. When it did, and its skin began to immediately repair itself, they were delighted. The Bahkauv was horrified. If that could not end its suffering, what could?

It was put back in its cell at dusk. It was unnatural for a creature like itself to dwell on death, but after being burned alive all morning and afternoon, over and over, with no more than an hours’ reprieve in between, it began to despair.

“Don’t cry,” crooned one of the hunters from the door of its cell. It scrambled into a sitting position, startled. It had thought it was alone.

“You were a favorite today. We all feel so much better for having played with you. A real morale boost. Look how quickly all that pretty hair has grown back. Your nature works hard to protect your disguise as human, doesn’t it? If I cut myself, the blood would clot and the skin would eventually knit back together. But not like you.”

The Bahkauv pressed its back tight against the wall as the hunter approached. This man was one of its torturers earlier that day— a younger one, not twenty five, tall and broad chested, with colorless blue eyes and close-shaved pale hair. He slipped a pair of pliers from his belt— the teeth were thick and blunt, not sharp like the ones they used to cut its ears. “And who knew you could speak? Do you understand, or did you just learn a few words like a talking parrot?”

The hunter squatted in front of it. Its heart pounded wildly, the staggering, paralyzing fear from the day returning and overriding its exhaustion. He took one of the Bahkauv’s hands in a strong grip. The pliers covered the first knuckle of its pointer finger, still pink and healing from the fire. It crunched down, shattering the first knuckle so it felt like gravel inside its skin.

It wailed, wildly trying to wrench its wrist from the hunter’s grip. It was so weak— like in a dream where it could not run or fight back. Healing and burning and healing again had sapped all its strength. Its anger at the hunters had long been replaced by desperation. Why did they want to hurt it so badly? How could it get the pain to stop? When it couldn’t, it stopped wondering why. It knew why. And this hunter was about to remind it.

“God, you sound like a person. You look human. That makes them hate you more, do you know that? It’s uncanny. Except for those devil eyes, you could be a boy of twenty summers, or less. Some of them even wonder if you’d be worth fucking. I think a lot of them wonder, and who could blame them? But no one wants to be the first to try it.” The pliers traveled to the next knuckle and perched there, waiting, on its freshly formed skin.

“No,” the Bahkauv whispered, tears flowing, saliva dripping from the corner of its mouth, raw and chafed from the bit that was always shoved to the back of its throat. “No. Pl-please.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Do you know those words? They’re the only ones you used all day. All goddam day, even in such unfathomable suffering. I could smell it every time your flesh melted, and still you only said no, and please. But do you understand?”

It was beginning to. Its own mother tongue was not human. But it had the same capabilities for language as the humans. More, even, and could infer with greater accuracy things the humans thought and felt as they spoke, which helped decode the words.

“A thing like you shouldn’t beg, anyway. It won’t work. You don’t deserve our mercy.”

Muscles flexed in the hunters thick, tanned forearm as he squeezed the plier handles together. Another crunch, and a second knuckle was destroyed under their powerful metal bite like glass broken inside a cloth sack. It shrieked so it thought its throat would tear open, pounding its foot uselessly against the wooden floor. The hunter narrowed his blue eyes as its scream tapered off into raw sobs, shaking its head no, over and over.

The pliers retracted and settled over its middle finger, on the first knuckle. The Bahkauv keened in dread, looking into the hunters face and finding not a flicker of regret or a glimpse of mercy. It knew hurting it entertained each hunter in different ways, but it pleased them all none the less. Each crunch of the tool was cataclysmic, and it was hard to imagine how at any point today it would have chosen this immediately to get the fire to stop, because now it did not think it could handle another crushed bone. And it had many more knuckles.

“Either way,” sighed the hunter. “Tomorrow we will burn you again, and see if you know any more words, little parrot.”

__

After they made camp, the three friends slept around the dying fire in their bedrolls. Francis tied a rope to his own waist and looped the other end around the Bahkauv’s collar so it slept six feet away from him. No more escape attempts. If it moved, he would feel it, and they both knew it.

The men slept. The Bahkauv tried to lie awake and alert, but its exhaustion was too great, and soon it slept too. The howling of wolves woke all of them in the wee hours of the morning. Disoriented, it leapt awake, scrambling along the length of its rope. In the hunters encampment, this would have led it to a solid wall it could press itself against, but now it led to Francis. It bumped into him and whimpered, waiting for a backhand or a cuff to the ear.

“Hey. It’s alright,” Francis told it gently in the darkness. Why were their voices so soft and blameless when they spoke to it? It had been waiting all day and now all night for the first blow, the first violence or pain from its captors, and still it had not come. It was like waiting for the pliers to crush another bone.

“They won’t come much closer. You’re alright. You’re safe with us. They sound kind of beautiful, don’t they?”

Stephan and Arthur got up out of their bedrolls to settle the horses, who were stamping their hooves and whickering nervously.

It hadn’t meant to crawl so close to its captor, but once again it was not punished for doing so. Something was different about them than the hunters, but it didn’t know enough about humans to assign much meaning to this observation. It was true the unmistakable sounds of the wolves had frightened it awake, and made the fine hairs on the back of its neck stand up. But it wasn’t afraid in the way it understood fear now. That kind of fear was reserved for humans, with their tools and fire and deliberate malice. But what a strange thing to say. Safe with us. Like they would protect it. It could not imagine humans as protectors.

Still, it slept closer to Francis til first light, with three feet of slack in the six foot rope.

-

Tags

@paperprinxe @whumpsday @i-eat-worlds @handsinmotion @stormchaser819

@annablogsposts @clickerflight @daffyduckcommittedtaxfraud @scoundrelwithboba, @blood-and-regrets

[coastalraccoon]

[ID: Digital drawings of Flame and Viper from Wings of Fire. In the bottom left are two halfbodies of Flame and Viper. Flame is a pinkish-red with a dark purple back. He has lighter beak-like markings on his snout and lighter spots on his chest. A scar snakes just under his squinted eye. Above him is the writing "Best friends :3", referring to him and Viper. Viper is a whitish-gold with a darker sail and stripes along the back of her neck. A large burn scar is visible on her shoulder that starts at the end of her sail. She glares back at Flame. In the top right is a fullbody of Viper. Her front legs are spiky around her elbow just like her neck. On her back, tail, and hind legs are large burn scars. Her right hind leg is completely scarred and is missing multiple toes. Writing just above her foot points to it and reads "2 toes". Her wing is burnt and torn and above it is a spread wing with the writing "Outer edge of wing singed and torn" beside it. At the end of her tail is the writing "Barb gone :(" In the bottom right corner is a small, hastily colored drawing of Viper as the autism creature with confetti surrounding it and the writing "VIPER LIVES" sandwiching it. End ID.]

Silly little au where Viper survives falling into the lava by grabbing Flame's tail at the last second, leading to only half her body getting burned.

[alohamoramylove]

don’t hate me for this but i lowkey think that the people that hate gale read thg as a love story

[tswwwit]

Crying, sobbing, throwing up after reading Bill vs Bill and knowing that in the Book of Bill, Bill had parents, a family who loved him. And Familiar!Bill has that again in the form of his Dipper loving him back

Thank you! Familiar!Bill is really doing much better than the baseline version, what with forming one (1) honest emotional connection and all.

I'm pretty pleased with the emotional arc of Bill vs Bill, but if I went back to it? I'd alter some of Bill's weaponized embarrassment to include Book of Bill details. It'd just hit so much harder.