#i never thought of organising my stuff and sorta plan my posts

[imclou]

@head-in-the-icloud's Dawn and Dusk doodles from last week's magma. Drawing them is so satisfying istg, my hand cramped really bad but i held on til the end for that sweet sweet dopamine

|| Ref Sheet ||

Also this little ref sheet i made back in December.

[shine-no-hitokiri]

WARNING, spoilers Ep10 ahead

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I thought something horrendous happened, and then watched the episode and? It? Was? Sad, yes. Uncomfortable to watch? Yup. Realistic and messy and unpleasant depiction of varying degrees of animalistic rage from people suddenly put through the grinder? Absolutely.

Rhaenys: they are coming for you and your children. You should maybe abandon Dragonstone at once.

Rhaenyra: goes into labor right there.

Daemon: checks garrison, organises outlook posts, mentions that they are undermanned and how they should at least attempt to appear strong, sends a dragon skywards in fear enemy dragons might come, thinks to check the loyalty of the Kingsguard. Listens to her cries, all the while doing his stuff. When all is done, comes to Rhaenyra (it's too late). Grieves. Is with her at the funeral. Crowns her.

People panicking left and right: He didn't SuPporT hEr.

No. He didn't. He secured their castle on the very real assumption that they could be attacked any moment. That's a realistic depiction of what would normally happen in such a situation and a realistic depiction of Daemon in particular. He would see securing the castle as way more useful than being emotionally supportive of his wife. Come on.

The council: gathers

Rhaenyra: talks.

Daemon: is literally vibrating in his skin... yet still waiting for her to ask every pertinent question before giving her the answer.

Panicked viewers: He Was UnDerMinIng Her.

No? He was doing his damned best? His best isn't very good, but that is a known fact? I truly loved the first meeting? He was acting like a teacher's pet dying to be questioned and to show how ready he is? Like a hound tearing at the leash? Like she asked about the state of their garrison and he started answering before the question ended, talking at a speed we've never seen from him before? But he waited for her command each time? Like, what did you realistically expect, Daemon being calm and reasonable?

Otto: exists.

Daemon: is mouthy and Dark Sister happy.

Rhaenyra: tell him to stand down.

Daemon: stands down.

People: He WaS UndErmInIng Her.

My sisters in Seven, this man has no self control at the best of times. Here, he's convinced these people killed Viserys. He has hated Otto his entire life. He has just cremated his daughter. His brother's throne has been usurped and he's fully expecting to be attacked at any moment. And Rhaenyra looks at a fucking book page and starts to forget what she'd spent 20 years pursuing and preparing for. It's a fucking miracle Otto is still alive.

Second council: gathers.

Rhaenyra: wants to maybe accept terms.

Daemon: unravels.

OK, I'm with y'all here, this is absolutely bad and the entire scene just was bad per se. Now, the entire episode was leading to him screwing up under pressure, it was a given because it was always going to be too much of an offence from people he hated too much, and not being allowed to act the way he wanted because he's suddenly answerable to the Queen was never going to be without consequence. Rhaenyra said right in the beginning that he'd go mad, and she knew him best. She actually sent Jace after him because she expected Daemon to start the war without her (didn't happen). It's hardly a commentary on their relationship, more of a "multiple brave attempts at bottling the rage were made, but ultimately, in the face of escalating stakes and piling up tragedies, were unsuccessful". That said, the entire scene was kind of badly thought out. I'd sooner believe Daemon would openly defy Rhaenyra's orders than him kinda sorta threaten her but not really and then leave?

Anyway...

Show: makes a point to have Rhaenys scold Corlys for abandoning her, remind him that they're both hurting. Hmmm... Something something parallels something.

Rhaenyra: actually goes on to plan a war? Thank you 14 flames of Valyria, because just accepting the terms and sending her sons to be "wards" (read: prisoners) of her enemies would be a wildly stupid decision. Is shown to be too naive, sadly. Reminding the Baratheons of their oath wasn't the power move she expected it to be.

Daemon: makes himself useful? In the only way he knows how? In the middle of the mess? With everything collapsing and war unfolding? 2/10 you screwed up and aren't out of the doghouse by a long shot but a small attempt was made to shield Rhaenyra from the rest of the council and to just be at her side? OK maybe 2/10 is generous, 1.5/10 is more like it.

TLDR: my expectations of this man were realistic (read: low where violence and high emotional pressure are concerned) and there was always going to be a fuckup from him somewhere. It's the thing about burning - Sometimes It Actually Burns. Daemon and Rhaenyra aren't a lovey dovey couple, they are two fucking dragons that are being caged and threatened with spikes. There will be blood.

[hundredbillionbottles]

Mother

“Bad luck has trapped me”; this is a sentence I came across while reading a story written by one of my Grade 2 students at work. The story was about a really bad day she had had where she missed the bus and forgot her homework and was pushed in the mud, but in the end it was made alright by coming home to her Mum who held her and told her everything would be alright.

I found this particular sentence to be a very pretty way of describing the turmoil of a day where nothing will just go right, and thought that it applied absolutely to my feeling on Saturday morning when I approached a barred, bolted, blatantly shut cycle-hire shop. Fancying a bike ride round Bogotá, I researched bike hires in my area and found this fateful establishment, which advertised itself to be open at 9am. It was now 12pm. But it was, in typical Colombian fashion, shut. Now, I don’t know how the mice are getting on, but it seems that recently the best laid schemes of men don’t just aft gang agley, they always bloody gang agley! The Puente weekend Tatacoa trip fell through, the Guatavita day trip fell through, twice; it seems every activity we have organised for ourselves in the past weeks has been met by some unpredictable, impassable obstacle. I vented this frustration to Stephen over a resigned coffee on the curb outside Tostao, our favoured local coffee shop, but calmed down after tentatively wolfing down an apple tart of holy quality.

In the caffeinated optimism of the short walk home, I considered that maybe part of the reason I’ve been struggling lately with my mind being in two places is down to trying to do too much here, trying too hard to hop about as much of the country as possible and go on all these adventures and consequently resenting the gap house every time I’m there for over two hours. And so in turn part of me has forgotten that I actually live here, and so neither my bed in Bogotá or Nailsea have felt like mine, and so a traveller’s ambition has rooted me neither here nor there. I suddenly felt brighter about everything having finally isolated a problem which I could solve; when we got home I made a blueberry pie at a leisurely pace while skyping Mum and Dad for almost two hours and getting through numerous country albums from Sun Kil Moon, Flogging Molly and Father John Misty. It felt good to be doing something which I knew I would like, something aimless and quaint to remind me that this house I my home and not just where I sleep.

Not wishing to blow out this rekindling homeliness, I called off a semi-planned-not-really trip to Villavicencio, capital city of the Meta region of Colombia, sorta-scheduled for the next day and decided to dedicate my energy to what matters most: the sesh. That night George, Dom and I went on a ‘girl’s night out’; we played a few games of Worms modified for drinking, drank too many chocolate cocktails at a brilliantly quirky, brilliantly expensive, and then made our triumphant return to Theatron, the town-sized club not visited since way back in January when we first arrived. It was throwing a mad one for its 15th anniversary, and we threw outrageous shapes in the special way that only gringos do in almost all of the rooms in the complex, including one American-dive-bar style room which blasted System Of A Down’s Toxicity. At the drop of a hat (literally: one dude head banged so hard his hat fell off), I had to severely alter my dancing style from hip-wriggling Reggaeton to fending for my life in the pit. It was the best night out I’ve ever had.

The bus to Usaquen flea market the next morning was a bit more of a struggle though. I had only had a couple hours sleep, and the vehicle’s leaps over the potholes and speedbumps thumped my aching head like the way an alcoholic divorced man pounds on a static TV set. However, it proved to be an excursion worth going on; after getting milkshakes in a 50s style diner which curiously played Thin Lizzy’s 1976 hit ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, we hit the market and for an hour I lost myself in the vender’s heckles, in the street performers, in the crafts of both art and tat. A woman on one stool tried to, and succeeded in, selling me a bottle of Stowford Press cider which she had marketed as some sort of English delicacy. I couldn’t help but giggle when she poured me a sample shot glass of the stuff out of a can. I also bought myself three pairs of earrings, increasing my tally to an amount which is completely unjustified for a person who is still yet to get their ears pierced.

That night the entire gap house population went out for dinner at a stark, nigh-on abandoned Mister Liu’s Chinese Restaurant (a photograph of which I’ve posted on this blog, but until now we had never been). The staff looked genuinely surprised to see people come in. The walls were lavished in Chinese ornamentation but the TV was playing a Mexican soap opera. Our drinks were brought out in plastic cups. Despite, being the only people in the place, the service was still pretty slow and we joked about how its only Mister Liu in the kitchen and maybe he’s a dwarf with a moustache that reaches all the way down to the floor and he keeps tripping over it. It was one of those dining experiences that reached that perfect, bliss level of shitness that made it amazing.

The Grade 2 girl that wrote that story and came up with that neat little phrase, her Mother died the second week I was here. I read the story with her again today, as she was submitting it into her portfolio for her ‘Student Led Conference’, and when I finished it she smiled and said “My mum was a really nice person” and I said “I can tell she was”. It’s inspiring how positive she has been in school the past four months having undergone the most crushing of tragedies, how hard she works, how well she writes, how friendly she is to everyone, how hard she tries to get me to say ‘water’ in my apparently hilarious British accent every day. It shows how one can lift themselves from even the lowest of lows if they make the effort to get that first push off the ground. I’m sure that inside she is hurting deeply, but if she can lose a loved one so precious to her and can keep herself together every school day for over a hundred days, then I can make sure a little confusion doesn’t get to me for the next forty-odd.

I hope she stays strong. She has done so well.