#god knows where this came from but yeah

[gojoest]

“satoru”

“say, pretty”, he gives a soft, little squeeze around your foot as you sit on the other side of the couch with your legs stretched on the length of it, your feet rested atop his lap for him to gently massage and admire you while you are reading.

“would you ever stop loving me?”, you close the book in your hands and set it aside.

what a silly question, he thinks and lets out a short laugh in disbelief that you are actually asking him this, after all these years. by the look in your eyes he can tell that you already know the answer to it, but perhaps you’re trying to act out a scene from the book that you just read. he needs to tread carefully, god knows what kind of crazy romantic line the character pulled out there. he needs to do better.

“let me thi—“

before he could even finish, his face is met with the fuzzy pillow you throw at him. “you’re not supposed to say that out loud, you idiot”, you pout, turning your face to the side, visibly irritated that he’s not taking your question seriously.

he chuckles and throws the pillow back at you so you can put it behind your back again.

“i don’t know how to do that”, he says.

“what? not saying everything that comes to your mind out loud?”

“no — that too, actually”, he snorts, “but i don’t know how to ever stop loving you”, his voice falls down a tone lower than its usual and the playfulness in his eyes shifts into a soft gaze. undeniably, the words come from his heart.

a smile is trying to force its way on your lips, but you cough it off, pretending to clear your throat before you continue.

“even if i did something terrible one day?”

he nods. “even then, i’d still love you like crazy”

“even if i killed a man? you’d still love me? even then?”

“i’d even take the blame for you”

“but if you did that, they’d separate us because you’d go to prison”

“then we’d run away together”

“but they’d be out for us constantly, until they find us”

“i’d kill them all”

“but that’d make you a terrible person too”

“would you stop loving me?”

“no”

“then it doesn’t matter”

[ricky-mortis]

Curtwen Week Day 6: Happy Ending

[astergore]

something something stress desperation and murder

[raynavan]

i think Ingo deserves to be angry. (seeing red, if you will) (for day 28 of Sept-Ingo: red)

[starry-eyer]

magic in asoiaf is genetic. and that is intresting. and the fact that grrm doesn’t shy away from the implications of this makes me love asoiaf even more.

because it’s very understandable that these people who could ride dragons would see themselves as more gods than men. it’s understandable that the practice of sibling-sibling incest would become common in order to keep this ability in the family/to not lose said ability. it’s also understandable that these people would see their race as superior because they are able to do these things that others could not.

it also makes complete sense that this human civilization collapsed in a horrific magical event due to their own hubris because they saw themselves as gods when they were always only men.

and that is peak world building.

some more peak world building is that the noble houses of westeros also clearly gained power and held onto their power through the use of their magical abilities inherited from their ancestors.

a godlike existence like Garth the Green being the ancestor of all the oldest and most noble of the reach houses makes perfect sense for this world!and it also makes sense that the lords without this ancestry are discriminated against in this region that still holds onto the values their society cultivated in the past in order to maintain their magical superiority, even though most of these noble and old houses no longer exhibit these abilities.

and it also makes sense that these people no longer have access to these abilities as they no longer practice the religion that was centered around these powers; plus their blood is simply diluted at this point as these houses have married into a different ethnic group so often that the magical gene just doesn’t surface anymore.

but the fact that it still matters if you can trace your ancestry back to Garth the Green? peak! peak! peak!

george does such an excellent job showcasing the stagnation of westerosi society here because why should it matter if you’re connected to this magic guy if magic is no longer commonplace? however, it also makes total sense that the ruling class of the reach still harps on and on about this as it’s how they maintain the status quo and differentiate themselves from those they consider lesser now that they no longer have access to magic themselves.

and this is also why it’s very important that the Starks still retain the blood of the first men. because the first men interbred with the children of the forest and other elder races, which is what gave these humans these powers. it’s also worth noting that before the direwolves connected with the Stark children, none of our current Starks were able to awaken their abilities by themselves, which shows that even now they are very far removed from their ancestor who’s genetic makeup gave this bloodline these abilities. and it makes sense that the Starks experienced this slow magical decline because magic itself was declining in the world after the doom of valyria.

another reason for this decline is because Andal culture started heavily influencing the North and slowly changed the way magic was perceived. so now in the present, a warg/skinchanger/greenseer has become something to fear being because that’d make you different and therefore puts your life at risk, which means that there’s now practically no safe environment to cultivate these abilities and no secure way to pass down any knowledge you do have about said abilities.

i can’t help but be reminded about how Jon Snow has rejected his nature and how that has led to the stagnation of his abilities, and then i think about Arya and Bran and how their new environments have led to an astonishing growth in their abilities, which shows that it’s not just genetics that matter, environment is also just as, if not more, important.

i bring all of this up because magic being genetic in asoiaf is not as problematic as people try to make it out as. in real life, sometimes people just have genetic gifts. some people can become olympians, and some people are disabled. some people are born 10 times smarter than the average human, and some people believe that covering their faces in lemon juice would turn them invisible. that is reality. and in this universe, some people have access to magic and some don’t, and it’s all based on genetics. it’s unfair! and that makes it realistic.

not everyone gets to ride dragons and not everyone gets to travel back in time, and that grounds asoiaf, which is what grrm was going for.

and how these societies have organized themselves in response to these genetic abilities and the dangers they pose makes absolute sense. on one hand we have the valyrian freehold, which was a magic hotspot and the people who lived there used magic to propel their society to new heights, and on the other hand we have the seven kingdoms that demonize anyone too different, and all magic practitioners are different from normal humans.

and the fact that george decided to go this route with asoiaf is so juicy to me cause:

we have characters like Varamyr and Euron who use their abilities to commit great evils and we know that their powers have influenced the way they see and interact with others. on the other hand we have characters like Dany who use their abilities to fight against evil violent institutions. and through characters like her we learn how vulnerable fledgling magic practitioners/characters with these abilities are to these older and more dangerous institutions and individuals who are perfectly aware about the knowledge gap between them and these younger characters and know exactly how to exploit them.

so, while it’s understandable that the fandom is uncomfy with the practices and values that grrm has written about, this isn’t bad world building by any means. it’s logical and well thought out. and i truly enjoy that grrm doesn’t shy away from writing about the more worrying aspects and implications of magic being a matter of genetics. i also like how the seven kingdoms and the valyrian freehold are kinda extremes on the matter of magic and how this is/was detrimental to both of these societies and at the individual level. a horrific magical firey doom is not any better nor any worse than a slow drawn out icey decline.

imo, what is important to remember is that in the world of asoiaf, people with magic are the ones who are discriminated against (bc most POV characters are in Westeros and magic is a no no there). so they are the ones who are in danger if they out themselves as magic users. now, it is true that some societies are more tolerant (Qarth is a great example of this and Valyria before the doom was likely the most tolerant to have ever existed in this world), but as of now most societies simply aren’t. remember jojens warning? he didn’t pull that out of his ass. bran would’ve been in a lot of danger if he came out and told the wrong people about his dreams/abilities. also, jon’s assassination may have been partly motivated by the mutineers fear of wargs. this is the life-threatening danger magic practitioners are in for simply existing in an intolerant society.

tbh the reason i typed all this up is because it’s very annoying when people try to ignore the reality, which is that the dragonbond depends on genetics. now, i’m sure there are other ways to ride a dragon, as dragons are magical animals so of course there may be a one in a million chance of a dragon allowing some rando to ride it, but this doesn’t change the fact that there is such a thing as a genetic ability that gives these certain humans the ability to form a connection with a dragon.

(another example that i can’t help but remember is that melisandre was able to get ghosts approval by using some of her tricks. of course there could be other reasons for ghost to have done this, but the most likely reason is that ghost simply fell for melisandre’s trick and this influenced how jon saw mel. but this doesn’t change the fact that melisandre will never have the kind of bond jon and ghost have because melisandre is not a warg. this is also another example of how vulnerable fledgling magic practitioners are to older ones.)

so, sorry not sorry that george decided to create a realistic representation of what a society would look like if only certain bloodlines were able to ride dragons <\3.

[vynnyal]

Actually you know what, I'm gonna post this. Check it out, I'm fiddling with this PMV. Spoils the whole game ofc. And the name of the song is pure imagination by Fiona Apple!

Also I'm apparently a big fan of drawing moon laying down 😂 total count including scrapped drawings is 5 (technically 6)

[jackass-jones]

Come back home when you have some sense

You can throw your life away just not at my expense

You’re not the son I raised

[unproduciblesmackdown]

winston my quant of billions

[cator99]

I always get detained at da border because PROFUNC never ended but basically I'm like if a targeted individual didn't even care

[tiddiesoutwhenthetisout]

not me curling my laptop charger wire the way you curl band equipment cords HAHAHA god i miss it

[loftwinglullaby]

wow thank you so much

[exopelagic]

everyone was so harsh to alola it deserved so much better. like this region is so well designed and so pretty and the story is actually really fun? will never forgive everyone for what we did to her

[i3utterflyeffect]

also sometimes with the media i consume i don't think about how starved i was for good trans rep as a kid and i just remembered this morning the first time i saw a trans person in a movie and it's just like. man............

[moophinz]

[todayisafridaynight]

Sohei 🤝 Kazama: Bad dads

who even IS a good dad in this series like who even is a dad that we can all look at and go 'now THATS a good dad right there'

[the-acid-pear]

Honestly to expand on my last RB a little . . .

Like, remember all those stories about UFOs and, well, not really UFOs since they were on the ground but, those stories about things some suspect to be of alien origin and while unknown what's known is that you're going to die in 5 minutes. (Radiation poisoning)

If you truly went on to believe those were made by aliens it'd be like... So sad. Like imagine you crashed a fucking shit crash you're in a new place confused lost maybe you've been looking at it for a while but now you're stranded and now everyone who so little dares to come across you will literally die an horrible death. Like man. It'd fucking suck.