#idk just darry who struggles with saying i love you so he shows it in every other way he’s capable instead

[qprpbj]

thinking severely hard about a five ways darrel curtis says i love you to people without saying it and the one time he finally does fic

[atopvisenyashill]

@amethyinst wait let’s TALK ABOUT IT bc everything you’re saying is CORRECT and OBVIOUS, and i wasn’t expecting it to be SO OBVIOUS and YET i feel like it gets really glossed over!

the “harsh journey across barren wasteland” thing is practically jumping off the page here, down to bran losing rickon & osha early in the journey and dany losing doreah early in hers, & the kicking off point being a fight between several factions of what’s left of drogo’s khalasar & dany’s, and the final sack of Winterfell being this kind of three way issue between what’s left of the iron islanders, the stark loyalists theon left alive, & ramsay. dany & bran really escape death here through like, oodles of luck and quick thinking from the people around them.

but ALSO you have dany currently on the dothraki sea and bran in the far north, and both of them are just kind of looking away when meat of a questionable source is given to them. and i think there’s something more here, in that dany shows up to qarth & it’s an oasis in the sea, only every door is shut in her face and the warlocks are there ~lurking. meanwhile you have bran showing up to the far north hoping for a miracle cure to his legs and to get all the magical answers he seeks only to get some very shitty answers from the cotf while bloodraven is ~lurking. this is why i think there’s a chance bran is leaving the cave p quickly in twow - like dany in the dothraki sea, he’s going to have an extended journey where it’s just him (and maybe Summer) using his warging abilities and trying to get his body to the wall. probably doing a lot of reflecting, and possibly learning the wrong lesson as he reflects!

and there’s a lot between hotu & the cave too - learning the old gods are just greenseers, seeing with his own eyes that the first men sacrificed people to fuel their magic, seeing his father talking about jon, seeing lyanna & benjen spar. meanwhile dany is having visions that include her brother talking about tptwp, her father yelling to burn everyone,and the “false wizards” who try to trick her. both of them being shown but not quite processing that all their visions are linked to their own history. there’s the elusive, suspicious way the warlocks & quaithe speak with dany, always in riddles, and bloodraven is equally suspicious and cagey. but they’re both learning, they’re both progressing in their magic, and they’re both really struggling with placing where ~the line is morally when it comes to how they use their magic - but look at their mentors lmao, they have the world’s shadiest teachers.

and YEAH everyone loves to talk about the targaryen connection & jon and dany both being born towards the end of the rebellion, but i think it’s glossed over that both dany & bran are kinda In The Shit when their parents get murdered during a succession war and have to go underground or get killed. dany’s fondest memories are the ones from when she’s bran’s age and younger, with willem darry there to care for her (like the ONLY capable adult she ever interacts with 😭). and you have osha, who like willem darry isn’t really a sworn sword type, they’re just very loyal people who were close at hand and did what they could for the children in their care. there’s something that links them when it comes to, idk exactly how to phrase it, but physical trauma & their magic coming in, basically. both of their childhoods whittling their support systems down until they’re alone - only when they’ve experienced physical traumas & lost everything can they access magic on a stronger scale. and the fact that they both reach for it sooo readily! jon doesn’t want anything to do with it, he’s spent nearly every book actively running from it, but dany and bran turn right into the arms of their magic as a refuge.

they’re also just both clearly the prophecy children lol no offense to jon (or tyrion for that matter) but i think even IF jon or tyrion or aegon (or euron 💀) manage to get a dragon, the capital p Prophecy Children are dany & bran as the last dragon and the last greenseer. and they’re so much THERE too - bran looks like an andal & dreamt more ~andal-ish dreams but inherits the legacy of the first men’s magic after being disabled and socially de masculinized bc of that disability, while dany looks a consummate valyrian but she’s a girl and inherits the mantle of last dragon after every man in her line fails. everyone wants to be THEM but they are the only ones capable of that power - and that’s a good thing but also a very bad thing.

[specific-dreamer]

do u have any hc about darry and ace? I love in the musical tht she is the only one to call him "superman" and jumps on his back like twice i think? also just read a rly good fic of ace x marcia where ace does know about darry and pauls relationship and he confides in her abt it

this is more a headcanon on their backstory (i fear i got carried away) i hope that’s ok 😭

i mentioned in the tags of a previous post, but i think darry prayed one night (lilo and stitch style) for god to give him a sister because pony and soda were annoying him and like a month later two-bit steve and bales (who is he in the show btw?? like he’s in the lore but idk him in the show. i digress) introduce everyone to ace and he’s utterly convinced that god answered his prayer

due to that he tries to be on his best behavior around her because he doesn’t want god to take her back

so he tries to be polite and gentle with her

but for a what 13/14? yr old boy (if ace was twelve when they met and im assuming she’s the same age as steve) it’s really hard

one quiet lazy afternoon when it’s just them two in the curtis living room playing cards, she asks what’s his problem? and she goes on this rant about how if he don’t like her than he should just come out and say it.

darry’s flabbergasted. and highly embarrassed because he thought he was being discreet, in treating her more gentle, but he confesses how he thought her a gift from god and ace? she falls in love (/p) right then and there. because she’s never heard that before, especially not towards her.

so she’s all giggly and happy at the thought of anyone thinking her a gift and wanting to be gentle enough to preserve her. she’s giddy at the thought of being perceived as feminine/soft even when she’s wearing her boy-est clothes, she’s excited that someone has those thoughts about her without any expectation of getting anything more from her.

she doesn’t say any of this, but it’s evident how pleased she is by the huge grin on her face. but she does tell darry that she can hold her own weight and he doesn’t have to be gentle all the time.

but when she does want to be treated more delicate it’s always darry she goes to. she trust the others ofc but it’s something about how darry’s first instinct is to treat her like a flower, that makes her more attuned to him.

i think that’s why he’s always lifting her and carrying her somewhat akin to a princess in the show.

that got away from me lord um here are real headcanons that may be more what you were hoping for anon 🤧

every year for halloween the guys always want to do scary gory shit for their costumes or they’d want to go pull pranks and shit on the socs. this however is the one night ace let’s herself go out dressed to the nines, so she usually dresses up as like a princess or a fairy or something that’s traditionally girly and overtop. darry usually wants to go out with the guys but she looks at him once (1) with a fake pout and he’s putty. he’s immediately figuring a matching costume and he’s calling paul to look for a party for him and ace to go to. (one year they were wonder woman and superman, hence his nickname)

idk what darry is in my headcanons but he asks ace how to ask out a girl and she laughs her ass off for a solid thirty minutes before she’s any help. it’s okay because he does the exact same when she asks him later.

when ace is struggling to figure out how to do her own makeup (tricky eyeliner or something idk) she forces darry to sit down and let her do his makeup

darry takes ace to his senior prom. that’s it send tweet

(in a parry universe, darry and ace go on double dates with paul and marcia)

that’s all i got off the top of my head ! i hope these were alright ! (but also per the last part of ur ask, im begging for the link)

[peggycarterisacat]

Thanks for the ask, I love the pre-rebellion era 😊 I tried to pull as much from the books as I could, but since there's so little info I had to fill in the blanks a little, and a big part of the characterization in faith was because I really wanted Jaime to have more positive, quasi-familial figures in his life. (Some of the little details were based on people in my own life, but I'm not gonna focus on that here.)

I've written about this before, but I'm certain that there was some secret plotting going on within the kingsguard, namely that Rhaegar had a plan in place to overthrow Aerys. The reason it looks like they weren't doing anything is because none of our POV characters knew about it. The Kingsguard couldn't let themselves appear disloyal to Aerys or risk revealing the entire plan.

Barristan and Jaime had no idea this was happening — Barristan was loyal to his vows, and there are all kinds of reasons Jaime would be left out. He was like seventeen, he joined the kingsguard when the plans were already in motion, and they couldn't be certain where his true loyalties were. And, not that Jaime was incapable, but his appointment to the kingsguard was more of a fuck you to Tywin than anything else.

In light of all that, I think that the other kingsguard (at least partly) intended to protect Jaime by telling him to obey Aerys's orders. They knew there were plans in place to remove Aerys, they didn't expect the Rebellion to escalate the way it did, they definitely didn't expect Aerys to attempt to blow up all of King's Landing, and they didn't want Jaime to get himself killed in the meantime.

Here's (most of) what we know about them:

Gerold Hightower: Lord Commander of the Kingsguard — he would have been on Aerys's Small Council. He initiated Jaime into the Kingsguard, and then when Aerys ordered Jaime to leave the Harrenhal tourney, Hightower offered to go instead. This is admittedly a small example, but I think this shows both that he was fond of Jaime and that he wasn't unthinkingly following orders.

Hightower was also at the Tower of Joy at the end of the rebellion, which would indicate his loyalty to Rhaegar rather than Aerys. Yet, after Rickard and Brandon were killed, Hightower told Jaime "you swore a vow to guard the King, not to judge him." I have a couple of conclusions from that — 1) Hightower might have been more comfortable disagreeing with Aerys privately (e.g. in the small council) but not so much publicly (because of his collaboration with Rhaegar or otherwise) and 2) he was trying to protect Jaime because Jaime wasn't being at all subtle about how he really felt.

Barristan Selmy: Both Barristan and Jaime have a particular interest in the White Book, so that's where I started. He also romanticizes the hell out of knighthood and his vows (very like young Jaime).

Barristan's view of Ashara aligns with the idea of courtly/chivalric love — he never expected anything from her romantically or sexually, but he's definitely putting her on a pedestal. His view of her is romanticized in line with his own values, rather than who she was (he maintains that she was "dishonored" at Harrenhal, ignoring her own agency, when no one else thinks that Brandon/Ned/whoever took advantage of her). And he's still focused on being worthy of her — he never approached her and would not have done so unless he could crown her queen of love and beauty. Her memory haunts him even years later, and he dwells on what might have happened if only he'd been a better knight.

Lewyn Martell: I don't think he was actually in on Rhaegar's plans, but at a minimum Lewyn was loyal to Elia and the Martells above Aerys.

Jaime's POV and A World of Ice and Fire both note that Elia and the kids were Aerys's hostages during the Rebellion, to ensure Dorne's cooperation after the loss on the Trident. However, Jaime ALSO notes that Aerys had to threaten Elia before Ser Lewyn left to lead the Dornish army to the Trident in the first place.

Then there's also his paramour — I don't think their gender is specified in the books? (I wrote them as a woman because I was trying to draw a parallel to Oberyn and Ellaria, but axed it because it didn't flow)

(I have a very self-indulgent AU in my head where Ser Lewyn breaks Elia and the kids out of KL and then marches the army right back to Dorne to wait out the rebellion.)

Jonothor Darry: The only description we have of him is "earnest." He was the one who told Jaime that yes they are sworn to protect Rhaella too, but not from Aerys. He also reacted strongly when Jaime asked to be sent to the Trident instead of him. "Then guard the king," Ser Jon Darry snapped at him. "When you donned that cloak, you promised to obey."

Idk. To me that seems a little too angry to be in line with "earnest." Maybe it was the stress? But there really wasn't much point in reprimanding Jaime like that, because there was absolutely no way he'd be allowed to leave King's Landing at that point in the war. So I chose to interpret that as protective but unable to express in a healthy way.

(also I wanted someone in the fic to be ace, and I envisioned Ser Jon very seriously explaining this to Jaime and Jaime just wanting to DIE of embarrassment)

Oswell Whent: Whent was a part of Rhaegar's inner circle from the beginning — not only was he at the Tower of Joy, he also played a crucial part in Rhaegar's original plans (aka setting up the Harrenhal tourney as a cover for a Great Council to discuss removing Aerys). Also had a dark sense of humor.

(I struggled with Whent the most — ended up spinning this as a willingness to bend the rules a little.)

Arthur Dayne: where to start? Characterization-wise, I lean on the way Arthur dealt with the Kingswood Brotherhood — patient and empathetic to the needs of people whose lives were completely different his own experiences. Also able to convince Aerys to grant rights to a group of smallfolk who were actively rebelling against him. (Also great at dramatic one-liners, but I'm not good at writing that kind of dialogue.)

Then there's Jaime's knighting which was like. Alone at dawn in a secluded countryside sept, Arthur says "blood is the seal of our devotion" and then cuts Jaime. Any implications from that seem to have gone completely over Jaime's head, because of course. This is one of the reasons I don't think Arthur was very straightforward or direct when dealing with his personal life.