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bokettochild · 1 year ago

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Febuwhump Day 18

@nancyheart11 you asked me for a Twilight Whump for this one, so I did my best! He wasn't talking, but it's a little tastier with the spice of another perspective >:)

I hope you enjoy!

Rating: Gen

Wordcount:

Summary: They talked about wandering off alone, but that doesn't exactly stop certain people (AKA Twilight) from not doing it again. Maybe Warriors is taking it too personally, but Mask's pup is giving him a headache. He just wants all his little brothers safe in one place, is that too much to ask?

(Note: I have not proof written this. My apologies, but half my keys aren't working, so typos are probably there.)

They do not run off alone, they just don’t! It’s not so much a rule as something that everyone understands, so why in Hylia’s name is it still so hard for the others to actually do? Warriors resists the urge to hiss at himself; he is not Mask or Wild, he is not a feral little creature that can’t use his words, but by Hylia’s Wings does he wish he could get away with it sometimes!

They’d talked about this! Not at length, and yes, his opinions had been very quickly dismissed in favor of discussing the ability of their enemy to shapeshift, but he’d expressed his disapproval with running off alone in the middle of a battle!

But who really listens to him anyway?

No, the captain stops in his tracks for a moment to shake off that thought, that’s not fair. Most of the other heroes listen. For Wind it’s second nature, and Time too, most days, listens without thinking about it. Even as an adult, the other respects his experience in leadership and knowledge of fighting and working with others. Four, even for his faults when it comes to actually working with and not simply around other people, still hears him out when he speaks. Sky and Hyrule both respect him for his title of knight and the work he’d put in to earn it, and even Legend, who despises soldiers, will respect his decisions and follow the plans he’s set. Yes, there's some disconnect, which is to be expected when working with a new team of people that aren’t accustomed to each other just yet, but they’re trying. Most of them are trying.

Twilight and Wild are their own story.

The captain’s teeth saw against each other as he ducks through the underbrush, following the faint trail left by big paws and the even bigger tracks of a moblin. How can a person be so determined to keep others in line and behaving, to keep others in the group safe and obeying the rules, and yet they themselves trod all over them?

Granted, he is also currently separate from the group, wandering off alone, but he’s not the only one and everyone else knows what he’s doing. He’s tracking Twilight while the rest collect themselves and make camp. Wild had offered to do it, but after the last time, he just can’t trust the kid to actually come back; Wild’s proved where his loyalties lie, and it’s with the rancher, not their group. When asked to make the choice, they all know what it would be.

He told the champion to stay.

He doesn't know if he’ll be listened to, since that’s also the other point of struggle here, but he’s done all he can. He’s a good tracker, used to picking up the slightest sign of enemy activity, and his reasoning of being their current medic and thus the best choice in the case Twilight had gotten injured in some way, seems to be reason enough for most of the rest. There’s offers of course, to have someone go with him as backup, but looking over the tired men and boys in camp, he turns them all down. They need the rest, and time to recover from their own injuries and exhaustion. As a soldier, he’s been trained to push his limits, his exhaustion, his pain, his physical abilities, and ignore all barriers until his assignment is completed. The others may be heroes, ones who’ve faced odds that soldiers could never imagine, but they’re not likely to have experienced that sort of pressure and he wouldn’t want them to.

They need their rest. He can get his once his duty is done.

Now if only Twilight wouldn’t make it so hard by having wandered off to Nayru knows where!

A hand drags through his hair, disrupting it, but it doesn’t matter. Yes, there’s a small voice that hisses to fix it, one that sounds a bit like Proxi, but these heroes care even less for how he looks on any given day than for what he says.

Still being unfair, Link. They aren’t all bad. They’re good kids.

Sure, they’d probably all take offence at being called kids but that’s what they are! The youngest are very young and even Time, their eldest, still looks to him through force of habit for guidance and aid. At most, he’d say the oldest most of them could be is twenty, early twenties for the rancher and skyloftian, but that’s still young enough to still be tripping over themselves in an effort to understand adulthood. They are, in his mind, still kids, and they’re mostly good ones, so he really can’t go lumping them all together as not giving a darn when they very much do. Not about his looks, thank Hylia, but about what he has to say? Most definitely.

Again, it’s just Time’s pups who don’t.

Goddesses, they take after their old man to an extreme level! It feels like just yesterday he was chasing down the little scamp, explaining the importance of comradery, of trust, of teamwork. Just yesterday, he was tilting brilliant blue eyes up to meet tired ones and asking, nearly begging, for the kid to please just give his way a chance.

He sort of doubts such methods will work on his kid’s much older pup though.

Twilight and Wild are similar in that they are stubborn, but they’re also much older than Mask had been, and neither is desperate for the stability the young boy had sought. They have Tie and each otehr, their own little bubble, separate from the rest of the heroes, and while both have an obvious respect for his skill, that’s about where their respect for him ends. They don’t look up to him, don’t admire him, don’t see him as anything more than another hero in their group, which is nice as far as not needing to babysit them goes. He’s glad that they don’t need him to keep an eye on them, that they’re stable enough mentally and in their perception of themselves that they don’t need someone else to support them, and if they do, they’ve already found that in each other. Still, having even the smallest of ways to get through to either of them would be nice.

He’d thought that experience with the army would help connect him with the champion, that maybe a bond with Time could be something he could connect with the rancher about, but so far, no dice.

His feet skid slightly on some leaves, bringing his attention back to the task at hand. Right, he needs to find Twilight. He can worry about driving home the idea of not running off alone when he’s sure the other is still alive. Granted, they didn’t see the black lizalfoes, or anything they think might have been another form of the beast, in this last battle, but it doesn’t take the most powerful of monsters to lay a hero low, especially if they don’t have anyone to watch their backs.

The paw prints change to boot prints with the same seamlessness as they’d become paws at the beginning of the trail, and blood, crimson not black, spatters on the ground in an arc that indicates a swinging blade right where the moblin’s feet shift into a spin to face its pursuer. The trail of blood falls to the left of the trail, which means it could be delt by the left-handed hero or by the opposing monster, but considering the sudden turn, his money is on the rancher being the injured party here.

By habit, his hand falls to his bag, assuring himself he’s got his med kit close at hand.

By the three, these boys could save themselves so much pain if they just covered each others’ asses! Next time they get to the ranch or any place where they can stop for a little, he’s asking Time to help him arrange a training session for these kids. Maybe with their unofficial leader’s support, he can even get the two pups in on the session. As is, he’s sure Wind and four will be willing, and Sky will most definitely be his most valuable asset in teaching them. Good grief, whatever the Knights Academy on Skyloft is teaching, they're doing a great job, because that boy melds seamlessly in with whomever is closest to him!

That may or may not be why he keeps close to the skyloftian, but who can blame him for wanting the assurance of having someone to watch his back when he’s so busy trying to keep an eye on all the others all the time?

Twilight could have used the same, and blood specks along the trail as he goes. The steps become distorted, shuffling over each other in what’s clearly a break from the chase to fight. Here though, seven or eight paces from the initial blood spatter, more footprints join the mix. A bokoblin- no, two of them. The rancher’s steps disappear for a short moment, but with some looking around he finds them again. A flip or a throw landed him behind his foe, but he’s pushed back, heels dragging as they shuffle backwards into the woods as the enemy presses forwards against him.

More tracks join the mix; an ambush.

He grits his teeth, pushing forwards, ignoring, for the most part, the trail of the monsters in favor of following boot prints that press heavily to the dirt at the heel and toe, running, now pursued rather than the pursuer. The rancher will have known to try and limit the area of approach from his foes by darting into the trees. At best, he’d have circled around to pick them off from behind, but the prints don’t indicate as much. The speed of the different monster types will change have changed the tides of the fight though, with the bokoblins moving faster, prints fading out entirely as they likely fell and faded to miasma, leaving behind a moblin trail that continues, joined by more of its kind. He’d estimate at least three, maybe five of the creatures.

Not great odds for one already injured rancher.

He picks up his own pace. There’s no sounds of battle ahead or anywhere close by, not that he can hear. Granted, cannon fire in the war has definitely damaged his hearing enough that he could just be missing it, but he chooses to believe that there’s nothing, if only in the hope that Twilight will somehow be headed back along the trail towards him already, instead of being even further out, still in the middle of a fight.

He doesn’t stumble across the rancher walking along the path though. No, he follows the fight, the footprints, trailing through the trees until there’s nowhere else to go. A wall of earth, steep enough to be a struggle to climb for anyone currently being chased, rises up and the footprints spin about to face those following after. He doesn’t keep track after that though, because the moment he sees fur and brass armor that catches the fading light, he knows his search is done.

“There you are, rancher.”

The urge to steal Time’s thunder and call the other man a pup- not with the affection of the now older man but with all the ire of its original connotation among his own people, is strong, but he resists. That would be considered out of line without context, and he doubts Twilight even knows the source of the nickname he so values from his mentor.

Knowing it means a young person who’s annoying but not yet unbearable, yet, would probably kill some of that magic.

So, he bites his tongue, keeps his impulses to himself, and moves to the side of the younger man, who’s currently slumped against a tree, breath strained but still there as dark eyes, a shade or so darker than Time’s own, flutter slightly with an effort to stay open.

“Cap’n?”

Darker or not, there’s definitely a lot of Time- of Mask, in the rancher’s face, and it makes staying mad with him a bit of a challenge when he’s looking so pathetic. “Got yourself in quite the situation, haven’t you,” he hums, kneeling at the younger’s side and taking his time with a once over. The rancher’s tunic has taken damage, but his concern is where crimson leaks from the tears, not where blades have slashed through only to be halted by chain mail. Yes, the bruising won’t be fun, but his concern is something he can fix, anything that Twilight will actually need help with.

There’s a wince from the other. “Not my intent.”

“Never is,” he unclips the bag from his belt, eyes falling on a nasty looking gash just below the cut off of the chainmail’s sleeves. There are some light scratches over browned features and an injury to the leg that leaks slowly into the earth below, but the rancher’s armor looks to have done its job well.

“The others?”

“Fine.” He keeps his attention on slipping the bracer from his brother’s arm, on unbuckling and sliding away the leather, the underlying glove, and then rolling up the sleeve to get at the injury he needs to treat. Wound care fills his mind, not answers, not talking. That can come once he’s assured that the other is alright. Much as the man drives him mad, he’s still Time’s kid, and still a fellow hero, still a brother, still someone who doesn’t deserve to suffer just because he’s particularly good at being stupid and reckless.

“Wild?”

“Fine.” He repeats, sucking in his cheeks as he sees the damage done without fabric blocking the way. Claws do so much more damage than blades, and the chances of infection are higher too. Not as much as with bites, but it’s still not preferrable.

“The kids?”

He huffs, turning to grab for his kit, looking for anything he might have to quickly clean the wound. “You’d know if you didn’t run away mid battle.”

Hurt crosses sloping features briefly, not for the prodding at the wound site, but from his sharp tongue. Regret stirs briefly at his heart, but like his ire, he pushes it down to keep his head clear and his mind focused on his work as their team’s current medic.

“Yer upset.”

The urge to tell the kid ‘no shit’ is very strong, but he bottles up that too. Instead, he keeps his eyes on the wound, on wiping it down and looking for anything that might have gotten into the cut.

Twilight’s ears flick back, not appreciating having his words ignored. If there’s one thing the rancher is accustomed to, it’s answers when he speaks. Wild always answers, Time too even if it’s not verbal, and the younger ones always respond to. Being met with silence, both verbally and in body language, must be new to him. “Did somethin’ happen?” And when he still doesn't answer, “Wars, what’s goin’ on?”

“They’re fine, now hush.” It’s a deep cut. Not as bad as the axe wound, but not light by any means either, and it will need stitches. He keeps his needles in a bottle, clean and ready for use, for this reason. Mask used to fuss that it was a waste of a good bottle, and the thought lightens his heart just slightly as he pulls it out and grabs the needed supplies to close the wound in the rancher’s arm.

“No, Wars-” there’s a straining from the body beneath his hands, but Twilight doesn’t successfully pull himself up, and his face flashes white for a moment before he slumps again. It seems the mighty rancher has spent all his strength in fighting alone, nothing left to use to so much as sit up by himself.

“Stay still,” he sighs, pushing down, entirely unnecessarily, against a shoulder. It’s for the sake of the man’s pride, he tells himself, to pretend to play along that twilight can get up on his own right now. “Let me work.”

Work and bottle up his frustrations enough that he can talk afterwards.

Twilight, however, has no such intentions of likewise staying silent. “Captain, what’s goin’ on?”

“I said stay still.”

“Are they hurt?” Blue eyes bleed worry, the same desperation his mentor used to let slip, sometimes still does when it’s his pup in trouble or hurt. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Why are you actin’ like this then?”

The urge to growl again rises, and again he shoves it down with pursed lips and clenched teeth, focusing his energy on starting the stitches and hoping the pain of them will be enough to distract the younger man from his line of questioning. It doesn’t work though.

“Wars?”

“Twilight,” his voice snaps without his allowing it, eyes flicking up to meet midnight blue, “I’m trying to focus. Stitches aren’t easy, believe it or not.”

They’re familiar and he’s done more stitches in his life through human flesh and zora scales than his baby sisters have in their needlework projects that Maither gives them. He won’t admit that though, not if it gives him an out from having to talk. Honestly, some days, he really misses having Proxi around to speak for him when he’s stressed. She was always much better at that sort of thing than he was.

Twilight falls quiet at his words though, but he still feels those eyes fixed on him, searching his face even as their gaze is broken with a flinch or a huff of pain as the needle pressed through flesh and pulls the two edges of the cut together. He has to stop a few times to dab away blood and clear the area for the next stitch, but he’s quick about his work. In and out, twisting the thread together to close the wound, moving on to the next stitch and watching as the flesh pulls together again over where blood leaks out.

He's done before he’s ready to talk again, but bandaging is something they’ve all done, and he can’t say that actually takes so much focus as to stop him talking, and Twilight knows it, already pressing again with the questions. “Wars-”

A scoff escapes, puffing hair out of his eyes to clear them, even though having it to hide behind would be much more preferable. “You really are Time’s pup, aren’tcha?”

A tick. “What does that mean?”

He ties off the ends of the linen wrap, tight enough to hold but not so much as to cut off circulation. “You’re a worrier and a fuss pot.”

Heavy brows crease in answer, but Twilight doesn’t actually have a foot to stand on when it comes to opposing his words. Instead, the rancher just stares at him, waiting until Warriors turns his attention to the injured leg, arm finished.

It’s only once he’s gotten a start on treating the cut there (this time from a blade) that the rancher’s voice rises again, guarded and wary. “You’re mad at me,”

He doesn’t answer.

Rather than guess why, Twilight pushes ahead. “I couldn’t let that moblin escape. We don’t know what’s out here, and letting it terrorize a village jist wouldn’t do. You know that, Wars.” When there’s no answer though, the country accent keeps rolling, pitching slightly, straining. “There was a whole ‘nother camp out here, one that might have attacked us in the night!” And then, when still no answer sounds from his lips, “You would have done the same.”

“I would not.” He clips, snipping his thread and briefly glancing over at wide eyes. “I would have attended to my men and then pursued the enemy when we, as a team, were capable of doing so Wandering off on my own is what nearly lost us the war. So, as a rule, I won’t be doing that again unless I absolutely must.”

That shuts the rancher up, recognition dawning in midnight eyes that falter and fall as he turns his attention back to tending wounds.

There’s no more pushing done by either party, and it’s quiet as he works save the hisses and hitches of the younger man’s breath in pain as stitches are laid and bandages wrapped. That done though, the quite is almost overwhelming, even to him, and he finds himself sighing at it, crouching before his pup’s pup and resisting, with a lot of effort, the urge to hook a finger under the other's chin and lift that gaze to meet his own, like he’d done with his own kid what feels like only yesterday. Instead, he keeps his hands to himself, but gentles his gaze all the same. It’s not that hard, not when faced with familiar features drawn up in a soft scowl that, were it Mask, he’d teasingly call a pout. “I’m not mad,” a disbelieving look meets his own at the words, but he pushes his tone a bit firmer with the next ones. “I’m frustrated, but we can work over that later, preferably after we’ve all had dinner and some rest. For now, we should head back to the others, before your cub starts thinking we’ve dropped off the face of the world or something.”

A furrow forms between dark brows, too sharp teeth, wolf teeth he muses to himself, gnawing at the other's cheek lining. It’s a bad habit, and he’s sure the man knows it, but he doesn’t correct it. That’s not his place.

He can guess what’s troubling Twilight though. “Can you stand?”

A huff, a little smile that’s flustered enough he can guess the answer. “Not really.”

He knew it. He doesn’t hold it against the other though, instead, shifting to kneeling at the man’s side, shuffling about as he must before giving a waring of his intent. “I’ll carry you then.”

Alarm flashes clear as day over the rancher’s face. “Cap, I don’t-”

“I’m stronger than I look,” he assures, although it doesn’t seem to do any good. No doubt, twilight’s staring at his slighter frame and remembering his own bulk, but honestly, he’d served for years in the army. If he couldn’t haul an injured soldier any distance, he wouldn’t be worth the rupees he earns.

Getting Twilight up on his back with no help from the weakened rancher or anyone else is a bit of a mess, and there’s some slipping and struggle which the rancher no doubt sees as proof that this is no good, but despite protests, he keeps at it until the other is slung over his back. Twilight is heavy, much more so than the other boys would be, but it’s not his first time hauling an Ordonian to safety, and the bulk of his brother just means he moves a bit slower than he would otherwise.

Twilight’s grip around his neck is weaker than is ideal, but in the long run, it’s probably better that way, because it means his breath doesn't get cut off as he heads back to camp.

Like he said, once they’re there, when they’ve had something to eat, and probably after the rancher downs a potion from his cub’s bag, they’ll need to talk. This time, he will not accept having them change the subject or redirect. This time they will discuss going off alone.

After though. After they’ve had time to catch their breath. And he supposes, shaking his head, after Twilight wakes up again from the doze he’s apparently fallen into.

Good grief, the man even snores as loud as his mentor!

#asks and answers #linked universe #linkeduniverse #lu warriors #lu twilight #febuwhump2024 #febuwhump #ketto writes #dad warriors #he is not ready to be a grandpa guys #but is very weak to the puppy children in this group #he will not admit it #but he is #yes i am referencing the update like a madwoman #it's free warriors and twi angst though!#can you blame me?

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morningstar-warriors · 23 days ago

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Playbooks and Games

Good morning Warriors, I suppose its time I started telling ya'll what I've been working on!

Re-Working Playbooks:

Every single playbook within UWAG is getting a bit of a re-fresh. I'm beginning each Playbook with an updated descriptor that puts the reader in a cat's shoes... paws? Basically to try an immerse that person immediately into a more story driven fantasy feeling.

Excerpt from the Hearts of Fire Playbook:

Your strong paws thud against the earth, heart beating with the ferocity of a lion. The cries of battle echo across crimson soaked fields. Your claws find fur and flesh, the scent of fear stings the air but it is not your own. You screech in the face of a snarling enemy, whiskers splaying out in a horrifying show of power and size. This is war, but you feel alive! By StarClan, by all The Pantheon in the sky, you fight as if it is your last fight. “For the Clan, for my family, for survival!”

Following this my goal was to add three new knacks for each book, and edit/fix up old knacks. In some cases, certain playbooks have gotten a sincere re-vamp. Ritualists have had multiple knacks replaced, and re-written to better suit my original vision for these cats.

One of the new Ritual Knacks:

Luck Ritual (2 Spirit Chips.) This Ritual can be casted once a day. A Luck ritual must be cast at Dawn. Your cat will weave together catmint and marigolds, making a crown to place on each Clowder Member’s head. This Knack allows each member of your Clowder to re-roll any check of their choosing with advantage once.

This goes for many Playbooks as, some of the wording and over all feel of these characters have been changed to better suit the day dreams I had while originally envisioning them. Not to mention there were of course, mechanical tweaks being made!

I think I want to stress the idea that Players aren't acting as the average cat, you are playing a "Chosen One" there is something unique and special to you. Like an eclectic cast of anime protagonists. Or side protags because the main character is always some lame guy. Most of it comes from my childhood, watching things like SSS Warriors and seeing cats use the wind to dance around their foes, loud screeching cries, and intense line delivery.

Every Playbook will also be suggested a pouch to start with, there are new kinds of pouches being made, and I intend to maybe add some mechanics when it comes to foraging or hunting. So this is ALSO why this update is taking a hot second... While I cannot promise that will be fully actualized, its very much on my mind.

Another additional thing being added to Playbooks are Player Questions! Here is a sample from the Guardian Playbook:

Ask a Player to your right one of the following: - Does the beast within me allure you, or frighten you? - What about me makes you laugh? - What about me feels ancient? What about me feels young? - How do you help me avoid responsibility?

The New Playbooks:

Kittypets and Rogues. I have already released a teaser in my discord server for the latest Kittypet book: The Savant. So if you know, you know. I aim on releasing two of each book for now, while wanting to do three, I found I was just sorta pushing myself a bit too much given my outside-warrior-cats-work-load. So two Playbooks each for now.

Teaser of Playbook Titles:

- The Savant - Mittens - City Slicker - Survivalist

Things Being Cooked:

Editing Apprentice Playbooks, nothing major, just adjusting it to match up with the latest edits as well as fix any confusing wording or typos. Everyone say thank you to Secretary Em.

Settings. I have a team of two helping me write settings, which will contain Animals with stats, and herbs for medicinal reasons... Or poison reasons... This will tie in with foraging, hence its minor delay, or potential lack of development when the new pouches come out.

Seasons. May be paired with Settings. Holidays and Traditions may merge into this section.

Religion and Lore!

NPCs.

Maps for clan camps, and landmarks. Seasonal Change versions as well.

Typos, errors, minor fixes... The usual suspects.

An art contest to replace some old art in the books.

#warrior cats adventure game #warrior cats #morningstarblogs

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wrenhyperfixates · 4 years ago

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Don’t Mess With Cats

Prologue

Pairing: Loki x reader Series Summary: When you find the most beautiful cat on the streets of New York City, you decide to take him in and give him a home. Little did you know, that cat is Loki Laufeyson, the very person your boss Tony Stark is looking for. Deciding to lay low for a while, Loki lives with you for nearly three months. And then you go missing. Still in cat form, Loki teams up with Tony and the Avengers to find you. While simultaneously having to keep his true identity a secret and grapple with his blooming feelings for you, can Loki find you before it’s too late? Chapter Summary: Transformed into a cat after the Battle of New York, Loki gets taken in by you. Chapter Warnings: typos, I’m sure A/N: Ok, so I forgot to advertise this, but uh, here *throws new series into the void* Updates every Monday. TAGLIST FOR THE SERIES IS OPEN! Hope you enjoy! :)

Permanent Tag List: @lucywrites02 @frostedficrecs @lunarmoon8 @twhiddlestonsstuff @lokistan @lowkeyorlokificrecs @gaitwae @whatafuckingdumbass @castiels-majestic-wings @kozkaboi @cozy-the-overlord @birdgirl90 @myraiswack @mythicalgarlicknot @what-a-flammable-heart @marvelouslovely @laurenandloki @fallinallinmendes @sophlubbwriting @mooncat163 @lokislittlesigyn @wolfish-trickster @electroma89 @jgun2001

(strikethrough means I can’t tag you; message/ask me to be added to a tag list) MASTERLIST

The light shining in his eyes was blinding, and Loki blinked against it. It was rather unnecessary, thought the God. After all, he was complying. Relatively, anyway; he couldn’t stop his witty remarks, even if he tried. But he held out as long as he could, and now it was time for the tell-all.

“So?” questioned the voice from the other side of the table. “Are you finally ready to explain yourself? How exactly did all this happen?”

Loki looked right into the camera and it’s small, blinking red light with a crooked sort of grin. “Now that, is a long story...”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Loki wondered if Thor could have handled a crushing defeat as gracefully as he did. Then again, Thor probably wouldn’t have wanted to lose, unlike his brother. At least Loki’s mind was his own again, even if his body was still aching for more reasons than he wanted to remember. But he was free.

The Avengers hadn’t kept a close enough eye on him. Really, it was their fault that he slipped away. Besides, he’d done something he was sure they would never in a million years guess.

He shapeshifted into a cat.

Perhaps it should have been odd to take on an animal’s shape, but it was second nature for Loki at this point. His paws moved swiftly over the sidewalks and into an alleyway. Though being a cat was a great cover, he couldn’t use his magic to teleport himself away in that form. Checking around him, he prepared to change back to his usual form, but before he could shed the sleek black disguise, you were crouching before him.

“Hey there, little guy,” you smiled, offering him a small part of your cheese stick. “What’s a pretty boy like you doing out here all alone, huh?”

He harshly meowed and hissed, but didn't do anything to actually hurt you. He realized he was probably a bit too well groomed for you to think he was a stray. Despite his best effort, he couldn’t help himself from sniffing at the offered food.

“That’s right,” you smiled with a soft voice. “You can have it.”

Slowly, and without breaking eye contact, he put the snack in his mouth, chewing carefully. After all, he wasn’t used to Midgardian food. Unfortunately, it was rather delicious. Even worse, he preened under your attention when you went to pet his head. He even went as far as to walk against your palm, letting you pet all along his back. He just hoped it was only his feline form that was lowering his inhibitions.

“Want to come with me, huh boy?” You carefully picked him up. He was too tired of fighting to resist. “There you go,” you whispered, petting him once more.

After examining him, you began to walk with the small, now purring bundle of warmth in your arms. Upon closer inspection, you found he had a number of scratches and cuts on him. You kept whispering calming reassurances to Loki. Even if you didn’t know it, he really needed it.

Next thing he knew, you’d brought him to the vet. He resisted a bit as they took him back into a checkup room. Once he saw you were going to be allowed to go with him, he calmed considerably. He held still as they searched his body with a scanner, but there was no microchip for them to find. Without a collar, he was deemed a stray, and you left with him in your arms again.

“Don’t worry, boy, I’ll take care of you,” you said, scratching behind his ears.

That evening you took some photos of him, and the next day you put up missing cat posters. Despite the fact you were hoping to keep him, you wanted to make sure you weren’t keeping him from his family.

A week later with no reply, you made a trip to the pet store, stocking up on everything you’d need. Except for the collar. You hadn’t exactly figured out a name for your new friend yet, and vowed to keep a careful eye on him until then.

On the matter of names, you were currently trying to figure one out for him. Loki sat on the windowsill, tail lazily swishing back and forth as gentle rain tapped the window, blotting out the view with large drops on the glass. You tapped your chin with the capped marker as you tried to figure out some more ideas on your white board.

As you wrote down another possibility, Loki leapt from his perch to a low bookshelf before reaching the ledge of the white board. You’d printed Muffin, Mittens, Dusk, Shadow, Ebony in a bulleted list.

“So, what do you think? I’m leaning towards Ebony.”

He meowed in protest and began rubbing up against the board, erasing the options. He looked at you as if to say “Really? This is the best you can do?”

“Alright", you laughed. “I don’t suppose you have any bright ideas then."

He quickly looked around, trying to find a way to communicate with you. He had a plan: Stay here and recuperate. Then, when the search for him had died down a bit, he’d leave. Maybe he’d even be able to briefly thank you for kindness, in some way or another.

Suddenly, he realized the TV was on, and he was just in luck; they were reporting on him. He hopped on the television stand and began trying to signal his name to you on the banner with the headline. You looked at him for a minute, perplexed that he seemed to have such a deep understanding of what you were saying. Then something lit up behind your eyes.

“I’ve got it! How about Mischief?”

Loki glanced at the screen, seeing the word there. He supposed it made sense you went for that instead of his actual name. After all, he’d just attacked the city. Well, he thought, close enough. He meowed in approval and rubbed himself against your legs. You picked him up, scratching behind his ears and earning a purr.

“Well, Mischief, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.”

And somehow, Loki found he couldn’t agree more.

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pixies-and-poets · 2 years ago

Note

That streaming thing could actually work with DK, Rabbid Cranky and RK staying aware of where Rabbid Peach was and what she was doing during Sparks Of Hope(better than my idea anyway-)

Ok both you and @emilocalisto basically said the same thing at the same time, it's very important that those three stay in touch with RP and Beep-0, I think we all agree! :3

I like to think the cell/internet service could cross dimensions even if DKA is in a different dimension (after all, the SoH battles are supposed to take place in the "darkmess dimension" anyway), if Rabbids can travel dimensions physically I'm sure they would have figured out a way to send data.

I bet RP texts RK all the time, and it can take him forever to respond while trying to use his massive gorilla bunny paws to text and try not to make typos, so he just uses emojis most of the time

RP: OMG soooo bored in the ship rn... What r u doing

RK: 🍌

RP: Not surprised lmaooo hey wanna come to the next battle? I'll go w/ gargantu-fan

RK: 😍

#mario rpgs #mario plus rabbids #mario + rabbids #alter answers

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afoolandathief · 3 years ago

Text

So, instead of working on Something Wicked or Those Horrid, Horrid Things, I basically wrote 2,500 words of what's essentially fanfiction of my own work.

Some spoilers for Those Horrid, Horrid Things, since it's set about seven years in the future from the story.

Will I do anything more with this? Who knows?

Also there's probably a shitload of typos and other issues since I just wrote this in like a feverish state and it's after 1 a.m.

TWs for blood and gore, some language, sort of some slight acephobia, some awkward moments of people being half-dressed, and brief mentions of vomit and dead animals:

For a long, long time, Fenrisúlfr Lokison had thought about what he would say to Tyr Odinson the next time he saw him.

Of course, he had thought that would be when the sun and moon disappeared, and all the world had met its end.

Instead, the son of the All-Father appeared out of a copse of trees in almost the same way he had first appeared to Fenrir as a boy — except now he was older and much, much angrier.

Tyr had always been brave. He had also always been fair and just. Which was probably why he gave Fenrir a moment to defend himself, issuing a battle cry from the trees and running straight towards a wolf the size of a large ship.

It was incredibly stupid. Fenrir reflexively swiped a massive paw and batted Tyr several yards across the forest floor. He felt his outstretched claws catch and rip something underneath Tyr’s armor before he landed.

And then Tyr Odinson was on his back, intestines and blood and all sorts of things that made Fenrir nauseous pouring out of him. And yet he still held his sword high, ready to fight to the end.

It would be a quick end. Fenrir could snap him up in one bite. And he was very, very hungry.

But instead Fenrir shifted into the form of a young man — only a year younger than Tyr — and stepped closer to inspect his childhood friend’s wound.

“Put your weapon down, Tyr,” he said, his voice still a deep growl even in this form.

Tyr’s face had grown pale and slick with sweat, but he shook his head.

“Fine,” Fenrir said. “It won’t matter, soon. You’ll pass out from the blood loss.”

He really hoped he wouldn’t, though. If Tyr went to sleep in this state, Fenrir wasn’t sure he’d wake up.

He knelt down in front of him, easily pushing back his left arm until he dropped the sword. Tyr swung his right arm, which was, of course, empty of a weapon. Fenrir’s stomach lurched as he caught him by the forearm, unable to look away from where it ended.

It had been six, maybe seven years since Fenrir had taken Tyr’s hand, and now he had gone and wounded him again.

His eyes swept to the gash in his stomach, and he nearly vomited.

Tyr noticed.

“Still can’t stand the sight of blood, eh, Fenrir?” he asked, with what would have been a smirk if he had the energy to form one.

“I can -” Fenrir shut his eyes and took a breath. “I can — with animals, now. Have to eat, after all.”

He’d been traveling in the woods of Jotunheimr for some time. It hadn’t made much sense to go to college or get a job after high school, back in that little pocket of time and space in Midgard his family had found a home in. Not when he knew what was coming in a matter of years.

Ignoring every instinct and shred of common sense telling him to leave, he dug out some rags from the pack he kept on his human form. Removing what was left of Tyr’s armor and shirt, he pressed them against the gash the way his parents had taught him before he’d left home.

“What are you doing?” Tyr asked, his voice becoming worryingly slurred.

“Saving your life, you ass,” Fenrir said, as he wrapped the last of the bandages tight around his waist.

Tyr was taller, and had built up a bit of muscle as he’d grown up, but he was still slimmer than Fenrir. Not to mention Fenrir had the power of a giant warg stuffed into the body of a man.

He picked him up easily, scooping his arms under his shoulders and the crook of his knees.

“So,” Tyr managed to get out, his eyes half-closed. “Where we going?”

Fenrir twitched his shoulders under the cloak his dad had stolen from Freyja all those years ago, and two enormous wings unfurled along his back.

“Somewhere safe,” he said.

The peak of the roof cut sharply into the moonlit sky, but Fenrir managed to land with his cargo still somewhat intact.

“I can stand,” Tyr said to him, a bit more coherently than when he had been bleeding out on the forest floor.

Fenrir nodded and helped him to his feet. Tyr was an Aesir god, and they were of hardier stuff than humans.

But they were still mortal, and the steadily growing stain on Tyr’s bandages was making Fenrir queasy.

His knees crunched against the gutter as he knelt at the edge of the roof and bent over, reaching down to test the window, then the next one. Each of them was locked.

“Do you have the strength to hang off the roof and climb through a window?” Fenrir asked.

Tyr nodded as though Fenrir had asked him the most inane question imaginable.

Fenrir pulled at the last window and felt it slide upwards. It was the worst one to enter the house through, but it sounded as though they wouldn’t have any nasty surprises upon entering.

“Slip in there as quiet as possible,” he said to Tyr. “I’ll be right behind you.”

He winced the entire time, but Tyr swung through the window one-handed and landed with only the softest pad of his feet. When Fenrir got inside, he saw him staring wide-eyed across the darkened room.

The massive form of his mother was splayed across one side of the bed. She was snoring, with the bulk of her forearm thrown over her head. On the other side was his father, who was also snoring, but in loud fits and starts instead of a steady pattern like their first wife.

The two were both reaching towards Sigyn, who was somehow sleeping peacefully in the center of the bed, her willowy form angled for equal contact with both of them.

“That,” Tyr began in a whisper. “That’s Angrboda, the wolfmother, the Jarl of Ironwood.”

“My mom, yeah,” Fenrir said.

“And Loki, the Trickster God.”

“My dad.”

“And the Goddess of Loyalty -”

“Their wife, Sigyn, yes, Tyr,” Fenrir said. “I brought you to my parents’ house.”

Tyr glanced over at him.

“You’re telling me the Father of Monsters, wanted for the murder of my brother, has been hiding out here?”

His dad’s scrawny arm shot up and they both jumped. But Loki only let out another loud snort before turning over in bed.

Fenrir wasn’t sure if they needed to be so quiet. Both his parents and Sigyn should have gone deaf after sharing a bed for all these years.

He led Tyr out of the room down the hallway, passing the open door of his siblings’ room.

Jormungandr’s heat lamp was still on, illuminating the sleeping eighteen-year-old stretched out and hanging off the top bunk of the bed. He was snoring at a volume that could rival his father’s.

“Is that -” Tyr started. “Is that the Midgard Serpent? In human form?”

Fenrir rolled his eyes.

“That’s a pain in the ass, in pain-in-the-ass form.”

The room hadn’t changed much since Fenrir left, although Jormungandr had acquired several more swim trophies and posters of his beloved video games and cartoons. The bottom bunk where Fenrir had slept had been replaced with the desk, which had been moved to make room for Narfi and Váli’s shared racecar bed.

“You really should be more scared of those two,” Fenrir said, gesturing to his two sleeping half-brothers. The twins looked deceivingly peaceful tucked in together, but Fenrir knew better.

A horrible sound — like dead tree branches rubbing together, or corpse nails scratching on a coffin — brought both Fenrir and Tyr out of their thoughts.

“Psst.”

Fenrir tracked the source to where his fifteen-year-old sister was standing at the other side of the hall.

“Psst,” Hel repeated. “Fenrir, get over here.”

Tyr stared back at her.

“So,” he said. “This must be the Queen of the Dead.”

“Yes,” Hel said. “And unless you want to join my domain, you both better get over here.”

Hissing more complaints under her breath, Hel dragged the two of them into her room, shutting the door quietly behind them.

Fenrir glanced around the room. It had only grown more horrifying over time, with various dead things laid over the top of Hel’s vanity dresser, and Nidhogg snoozing on her bed in his chihuahua form. He had at least mellowed with age, if only a tiny bit.

He glanced back at his sister. Her half-black, half-white hair was scraggly, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

“You’re up late,” he said.

She shrugged.

“I like the nighttime,” she said. “Besides, school’s out, so there’s no reason to be up early.”

Fenrir had forgotten about summer vacation. It was easy to lose track of time in the woods of Jotunheimr, with only the changing temperatures and leaves to take note of.

“Sleipnir’s back from college. She’s staying in the guest room.” Hel added, as though she wasn’t making conversation with her long-gone brother who’d appeared in the night with an Aesir god. “Anyway, you’re going to want to shut up and keep still in the next thirty seconds.”

He was about to ask why, when he heard the grunting and padding of his father down the hallway. Hel brought a finger to her lips until there was the familiar shut of the bathroom door.

“They always get up to pee at this time,” Hel said, making Fenrir question if she really had only been staying up this late once school was out.

She sat herself on a chair in front of the vanity, her eyes running up and down Fenrir and the bloodied, bandaged man he’d dragged home.

“You’re in trouble,” she said.

“Hel -” Fenrir began.

She held a hand up, and Fenrir swore all the shadows in the room moved with it.

“I know this is Tyr with you, Fenrir,” she said. “And — given he’s a son of Odin and the one responsible for tying you up at fourteen — we both know mom and dad will kill him on sight.”

“Hel, he’s currently bleeding out from where I clawed him open,” Fenrir said, his voice fighting around a lump growing in his throat.

They each jumped as a knock echoed from the door.

“Hela,” Loki’s voice said from the other side. “Is someone in there with you?”

Fenrir shook his head at Hel, biting his knuckle as his sister seemed to weigh her horrible choices in her head.

“Uh, no, daddy,” she finally said, her voice swinging into a high-pitched, sweeter tone.

“No boys in there?” Loki went on, their voice lilting playfully. “Or girls? Or any sort of paramour I should be worried about?”

“I said, no, dad,” Hel said, her voice suddenly stilted and lower.

Loki chuckled from behind the door.

“Don’t know what I’m going to do with you, princess,” they said. “I’ll have to fight them off, soon.”

Hel stared at her lap, her brow furrowed into a deep rut on her forehead.

“You alright?” Fenrir asked, once their father’s footsteps had padded back down the hallway.

Hel chewed on her lip.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s just — they’ve been making these jokes for like the past year, and I know they don’t mean any harm by them, but it’s just weird because -”

She paused, and several comments his sister had made growing up rose in Fenrir’s mind.

“Because you’re ace,” he said.

He brought his hand to his mouth as soon as he said it.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Hel,” he said. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“No, I mean, you’re right,” she said. “Didn’t know it was that obvious.”

Then she giggled like a nervous teenager, which was the most disconcerting thing Fenrir had ever heard from the half-dead girl.

“Does dad know?” he asked.

Hel shook her head.

“No one knows,” she said. “And dad’s the last person I want to find out.”

She stood up and paced the room, rubbing her chin, before gesturing to Fenrir.

“I’ll patch up your boyfriend and keep him a secret,” she said. “As long as you don’t tell anyone about this.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my sworn enemy,” Fenrir said. “And, fine.”

He hadn’t intended to tell anyone, anyway, but if it kept Hel quiet, he wasn’t going to object.

Hel took Tyr by the hand and sat him in her chair.

“So,” Tyr said, sounding disturbingly more disoriented again. “You know -”

He paused and waved his hand in the air.

“Magic?” Hel asked, as she undid his bandages. “Yes. I’m going to get these organs of yours back in place. It’s not your time yet, Tyr Odinson.”

She turned back to Fenrir.

“Remember the spell Sigyn used to disguise herself?” she asked. “Made her look familiar to herself, but you kind of forgot that? I’ll do the same with him.”

Fenrir nodded, for some reason relieved Tyr’s features wouldn’t be completely erased.

“We’ll call him Thorin Sigurdson,” she went on. “An einheri who grew bored with Valhalla and left, and that’s when you found him. That’ll explain why he’s familiar with Asgard and Odin but not much else. And plenty of soldiers lost arms before dying in battle.”

“That’s brilliant, Hel,” Fenrir said.

She rolled her eyes.

“Well, yeah,” she said.

Her magic worked surprisingly fast, and soon Fenrir had a healed Tyr with slightly different features, like a slightly-wrong copy of the Aesir god.

Which was good, because he could hear footsteps coming down the hallway.

“Alright, I definitely heard someone this time,” Loki was muttering.

Fenrir looked back at Tyr and realized there was one problem.

“Tyr, you don’t have a shirt,” he said.

Tyr glanced down at himself, apparently still struck stupid by blood loss.

“Well, guess not,” he murmured.

Fenrir was already pulling off the overshirt he had grown accustomed to wearing in Jotunheimr.

“Here. At least have something on.”

Tyr shoved the shirt back.

“No, your clothes all smell like wet dog.”

Hel was slouched on her bed, petting Nidhogg and observing the chaos unfolding before her.

“He’s not wrong, Fenrir,” she said.

Fenrir let out a growl he wasn’t proud of and proceeded to shove the shirt over Tyr’s head.

The door burst open.

“Hel, I don’t mind if you have someone over, but you still need my permission to -”

Loki stood in the open doorway, staring at their oldest son gripping the shirt of a strange young man standing opposite from him.

Fenrir sensed Tyr bristling next to him. Which could have been because he was facing public-enemy-number-one of the Aesir and the bringer of Ragnarok, or — much to Fenrir’s stomach-churning chagrin — because his dad was wearing an open robe with nothing underneath but their underwear and an oversized Metallica t-shirt Fenrir was fairly certain had been stolen from his mother.

Loki continued staring at Fenrir and Tyr, taking in the son who’d been gone for months, maybe years. Then a smile cracked wide across their face.

“Bodie, Sigyn, get out here,” they shouted down the hall. “Fenrir’s home! And he’s brought his boyfriend.”

#those horrid horrid things #fenrir #tyr #myth loki #hel

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kellyvela · 4 years ago

Note

GRRM has said in interviews that he’s purposely played with the romantic tension between the hound and Sansa. What do you think the endgame purpose of the unkiss and that playing is meant to be for?

This is all what he said about the matter in question so far:

The Hound and Sansa, romantic or platonic? It could be very different things to each of those involved, mind you!

JUNE 24, 1999 THE HOUND AND SANSA

Moreta12: I understand, I’ve heard your opinion on that. In ACOK, it seems that the relationship between the Hound and Sansa had romantic undertones. Is that true?

GeoRR: Well, read the book and decide for yourself.

Moreta12: I’ve read the book and I’ve debated those particular scenes with a few others. Half say that it’s romantic and half say it’s platonic. I’ve taken the romantic stance.

GeoRR: It could be very different things to each of those involved, mind you

Moreta12:Yes, but it seem like evidence points towards romantic undertones. Will the Hound appear later?

GeoRR: Yes, the Hound will be in STORM OF SWORDS. In fact, I just finished writing a big scene with him.

[Source]

When will Sansa be “legal”? **ºª@”¡¿x<%$!&?

OCTOBER 05, 1999 AGE OF SEXUAL RELATIONS IN WESTEROS

The nature of the relationship between Sandor and Sansa has been a hot topic on Revanshe’s board. Sansa’s youth has been one focus of the discussion. What is the general Westerosi view as to romantic or sexual relationships involving a girl of Sansa’s age and level of physical maturity?

A boy is Westeros is considered to be a “man grown” at sixteen years. The same is true for girls. Sixteen is the age of legal majority, as twenty-one is for us.

However, for girls, the first flowering is also very significant… and in older traditions, a girl who has flowered is a woman, fit for both wedding and bedding.

A girl who has flowered, but not yet attained her sixteenth name day, is in a somewhat ambigious position: part child, part woman. A “maid,” in other words. Fertile but innocent, beloved of the singers.

In the “general Westerosi view,” well, girls may well be wed before their first flowerings, for political reasons, but it would considered perverse to bed them. And such early weddings, even without sex, remain rare. Generally weddings are postponed until the bride has passed from girlhood to maidenhood.

Maidens may be wedded and bedded… however, even there, many husbands will wait until the bride is fifteen or sixteen before sleeping with them. Very young mothers tend to have significantly higher rates of death in childbirth, which the maesters will have noted.

As in the real Middle Ages, highborn girls tend to flower significantly earlier than those of lower birth. Probably a matter of nutrition. As a result, they also tend to marry earlier, and to bear children earlier. There are plenty of exceptions.

[Source]

Unreliable Narrator

JUNE 26, 2001 SF, TARGARYENS, VALYRIA, SANSA, MARTELLS, AND MORE

[GRRM is asked about Sansa misremembering the name of Joffrey’s sword.]

The Lion’s Paw / Lion’s Tooth business (*), on the other hand, is intentional. A small touch of the unreliable narrator. I was trying to establish that the memories of my viewpoint characters are not infallible. Sansa is simply remembering it wrong. A very minor thing (you are the only one to catch it to date), but it was meant to set the stage for a much more important lapse in memory. You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom… but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it’s a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.

[Source]

(*) It was Arya who misremembered the name of Joffrey’s sword tho…

Unreliable Narrator 2.0

OCTOBER 05, 2002 SANSA’S MEMORY

[Note: This mail has been edited for brevity.]

… this is an inconsistency with ASoS more than an outright error. In ASoS, Sansa thinks that the Hound kissed her before leaving her room and King’s Landing. In ACoK, no kiss is mentioned in the scene, though Sansa did think that he was about to do so.

Well, not every inconsistency is a mistake, actually. Some are quite intentional. File this one under “unreliable narrator” and feel free to ponder its meaning

[Source]

Unreliable Narrator 3.0

NOVEMBER 27, 2007 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

Here’s a really particular question (which I realize means it probably won’t get asked in a general interview): In A Storm of Swords, there is a chapter early on where Sansa is thinking back to the scene at the end of A Clash of Kings when The Hound came into her room during the battle. She thinks in the chapter about how he kissed her, but in the scene in A Clash of Kings, this actually didn’t happen. Was that a typo or something? —Valdora

GRRM: It’s not a typo. It is something! [Laughs] ”Unreliable narrator” is the key phrase there. The second scene is from Sansa’s thoughts. And what does that reveal about her psychologically? I try to be subtle about these things.

[Source]

Sansa may be dead but Alayne is alive

APRIL 15, 2008 FUTURE MEETINGS, POVS, ARYA’S ROLE, EASTERN LANDS, AND ASSASSINS

[Will Sandor and Sansa meet?]

Why, the Hound is dead, and Sansa may be dead as well. There’s only Alayne Stone.

[Source]

A lot more dangerous than romantic

AUGUST 2, 2009 AS SER JORAH MORMONT…

weltraummuell: The Hound Oh please don’t cast an old guy for the Hound, his scenes with Sansa are so romantic and erotic, I couldn’t bear if it’d feel creepy all of a sudden. Well, that’s me making demands. LOL

GRRM: Re: The Hound Old guy? No, but… the Hound is still a whole lot older than Sansa, and was never written as attractive… you know, those hideous burns and all that… he’s a lot more dangerous than he is romantic.

kestrana: The Hound Yeah its a “girl always wants the bad boy” kind of thing although Sansa seems to pull something else out of him. It feels so wrong sometimes but I want to see them together again tee hee.

weltraummuell: The Hound Hehe, George, maybe you didn’t intend it, but he turned out to be a very erotic character to female readers. Especially since he’s mutilated and dangerous. Makes him unpredictable and vulnerable which is the most explosive aphrodisiac for a girl’s fantasy. ;)

weltraummuell: The Hound And I know from discussions on other board other women feel just the same about Sandor. He’s an absolute favourite with the ladies!

halfbloodmalfoy: The Hound LOL, you’re such a man. To many of us women, dangerous *is* attractive.

GRRM: The Hound But no one has any love for poor old Sam Tarly, kind and smart and decent and devoted…

[Source]

I played with it but I didn’t get the answer I was waiting for

JUNE 22, 2012 SWORD & LASER VIDEO PODCAST

GRRM: I am sometimes surprised by the reactions, of women in particular, to some of the villains. The number of women over the years who have written to me that their favorite characters are Jaime Lannister or Sandor Clegane [the Hound] or Theon Greyjoy… All of these are deeply troubled individuals with some very dark sides, who have done some very dark things. Nonetheless, they do draw this response, and quite heavily, I think, in the case of some of them, from my female readers in particular.

Veronica Belmont: I’m a big fan of the Hound, myself, actually.

Tom Merritt: Of Sandor? Really?

Veronica Belmont: Yeah, the Hound… Maybe it’s not because I feel any compassion towards them, I’m not really sure what the attraction is. Ah, I’m not going to call it attraction, actually. Let’s just say it’s a fascination, perhaps.

GRRM: [Chuckles] Well, I mean, fascination is one thing, but some of these letters indicate that there really is like a romantic attraction going on there. And I do know there’s all these people out there who are, as they call themselves, the “San/San” fans, who want to see Sandor and Sansa get together at the end. So that’s interesting, too.

Tom Merritt: The TV show has sort of played with that a little, and probably stoked those fires.

GRRM: Oh, sure. And I’ve played with it in the books. There’s something there, but it’s still interesting to see how many people have responded to it.

[Source]

I played with it but I didn’t get the answer I was waiting for 2.0

JUNE 23, 2015 GRRM Q&A AT THE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKSTORE IN STOCKHOLM

Question: “Is there any fan reactions that you have been surprised by, like is there a character that’s more popular than you thought or have people been shocked by something you didn’t think we would be shocked at?”

GRRM: “I’m reasonably certain what people will be shocked by. I knew that the Red Wedding would provoke a big reaction and it did. I was pretty confident that, you know, throwing Bran out the window and then killing Ned in the first book would get reactions, and indeed they did. All of those worked exactly the way it did to the extent that things that have surprised me, they tend to be smaller things. I guess I… Maybe I should not have, I don’t know. How do I phrase this without getting myself in terrible trouble… I guess I don’t understand women, but I was definitely, you know, way back when, surprised by the number of women who reacted positively to characters like Theon and the Hound as dashing, romantic figures. The san/san kind of thing took me by surprise, I must admit, and even more so the women who, and there are some, who really like Theon. So that surprised me.”

[Source]

Unreliable Narrator 4.0

DECEMBER 2016 ASKING GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ABOUT S@N/S@N

My question is regarding Sansa Stark. Her sexuality has evolved through every book and yet the memory that seems to stick the more with her in this regard is the night of the Blackwater. So I was wondering if you can expand on your view on what this is, since as before that night her interactions with Sandor Clegane weren’t really physical.

The night of the Blackwater, yes. Ahhh… Well, I’m not going to give you a straight answer on that hahaha… Uhmmm, but I would say that ahhh… you know a television show and a book each has its own strengths and weaknesses; there a re tools that are available to me as a novelist, that are not available to people doing a television show. And of course there are tools available to them, that are not available to a novelist, I mean they can lay in a soundtrack, they can do special effects, they can do amazing things that I can’t do, I just have words on paper. What can I do, well I can use things like the internal narrative, I can take you inside of territories… thoughts, which you can’t do in a TV show… Ahhh… You just have the words they speak, you see them from outside because the camera is external, while prose is internal, and I have the device known as “unreliable narrator”… Ahhh… Which again, they don’t have. So, think about those two aspects when you consider that night of the Blackwater.

[Source]

Do with it what you will.

#anon asks #sansa stark #the so called unkiss #grrm #asoiaf

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butterflies-dragons · 4 years ago

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Hey love your metas! I want to ask about Sansa dealing with her sexual assaults and trauma. The way she mismemorised the traumatic events, do you think she gonna misremember any other similar traumatic events in future? Do you think her family will help her remember these events n dealing with it?

Hello Anon,

Thank you ♡

I recently wrote about Sansa dealing with trauma, particularly sexual assault trauma.

Here is the post for anyone interested.

And here is another one.

Almost every meta, essay, analysis, etc, about the so-called “un-kiss”, has been written from a sexual perspective. For the majority of this fandom, either shippers or not, Sansa remembering a kiss instead of the sexual assault she suffered and later having nightmares with her assaulter being in bed with her, CLEARLY means that she is having sexual fantasies with her assaulter, that she is expressing her dark, repressed, hidden, deepest desires about her assaulter, that all this is part of her sexual awakening.

But every time GRRM has been asked about the subject, either from a sexual perspective or not, he consistently tagged Sansa misremembering things and events as “unreliable narrator.” Lets see.

In chronological order:

JUNE 26, 2001

SF, TARGARYENS, VALYRIA, SANSA, MARTELLS, AND MORE

[GRRM is asked about Sansa misremembering the name of Joffrey’s sword.]

The Lion’s Paw / Lion’s Tooth business, on the other hand, is intentional. A small touch of the unreliable narrator. I was trying to establish that the memories of my viewpoint characters are not infallible. Sansa is simply remembering it wrong. A very minor thing (you are the only one to catch it to date), but it was meant to set the stage for a much more important lapse in memory. You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom… but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it’s a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.

[Source]

It is very curious that the person who misremembered Joffrey’s sword name wasn’t Sansa, it was Arya:

The big man shrugged. "I was Joffrey's sworn shield. The butcher's boy attacked a prince of the blood."

"That's a lie!" Arya squirmed in Harwin's grip. "It was me. I hit Joffrey and threw Lion's Paw in the river. Mycah just ran away, like I told him."

—A Storm of Swords - Arya VI

But despite the unreliable narrator’s identity confusion, what I understand from George’s answer is that misremembering a minor detail like Joff’s sword name “it was meant to set the stage for a much more important lapse in memory,” like the “un-kiss” for example, that George mentioned next.

At the same time, the “un-kiss” will eventually mean something, but just now it’s a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.

Take note that George’s answer is from 2001, after ASOS was published, so by that time he already knew about the existence of the shippers that want Sansa with the Hound being together in a romantic/sexual relationship. You can check this fact by reading the questions and answers from 1999 compiled in this post. But he still mentioned that the meaning of the “un-kiss” was “a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.”

So much for the so-called “evident”, “canon”, “endgame“ ship and ASOS being “their ship’s book” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* * *

OCTOBER 05, 2002

SANSA’S MEMORY

[Note: This mail has been edited for brevity.]

Well, not every inconsistency is a mistake, actually. Some are quite intentional. File this one under “unreliable narrator” and feel free to ponder its meaning...

[Source]

Here George’s answer is more succinct: the “un-kiss” is not a mistake, it was intentional, file this one under “unreliable narrator.”

* * *

NOVEMBER 27, 2007

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

[Source]

Here George gave us little clues:

[The un-kiss] is from Sansa’s thoughts [an internal thought for herself, she is not telling anyone that the Hound kissed her]

What does that reveal about her psychologically?

I try to be subtle about these things

Also take note how GRRM repeatedly highlights the word “subtle” regarding the “un-kiss”:

but just now it’s a subtle touch (After ASOS but before AFFC)

I try to be subtle about these things (Shortly after AFFC)

This is a stark contrast with the majority of this fandom, either shippers or not, that interpret and believe that Sansa remembering a kiss instead of the sexual assault she suffered and later having nightmares with her assaulter being in bed with her, CLEARLY has to do with her sexual awakening, that the “un-kiss” means that she is having sexual fantasies with her assaulter, that she is expressing her dark, repressed, hidden, deepest desires about her assaulter.

And I wonder, since Sansa has similar dreams with Ilyn Payne and often feels naked around him:

As the headsman looked at her, his pale colorless eyes seemed to strip the clothes away from her, and then the skin, leaving her soul naked before him. Still silent, he turned and walked away.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

She dreamt of footsteps on the tower stair, an ominous scraping of leather on stone as a man climbed slowly toward her bedchamber, step by step. All she could do was huddle behind her door and listen, trembling, as he came closer and closer. It was Ser Ilyn Payne, she knew, coming for her with Ice in his hand, coming to take her head. There was no place to run, no place to hide, no way to bar the door. Finally the footsteps stopped and she knew he was just outside, standing there silent with his dead eyes and his long pocked face. That was when she realized she was naked. She crouched down, trying to cover herself with her hands, as her door began to swing open, creaking, the point of the greatsword poking through …

She woke murmuring, “Please, please, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, please don’t,” but there was no one to hear.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa VI

Once she dreamed it was still her marrying Joff, not Margaery, and on their wedding night he turned into the headsman Ilyn Payne.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa II

Does this mean that Sansa is having sexual fantasies with her father’s executioner as well? Does this mean that Sansa has dark, repressed, hidden, deepest desires about Ilyn Payne too?

I think that the “un-kiss” has to do with Sansa’s internal thoughts, how her mind works, how her mind deals with unpleasant/disturbing events. So in order to decipher its meaning we must ask ourselves about Sansa’s psychology, she is a deeply traumatized child by many events: Her direwolf’s death, her father’s death, the disillusionment of her Prince and the Queen as high moral figures, the disillusionment of the knights as fair heroes, the psychological, physical and sexual abuse she has suffered so far. The “un-kiss” is a subtlety from the author, this can’t be as easy as “Sansa has the hots for the Hound”.

Sansa: All she wanted was for things to be nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs. —A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

Sansa: Almost raped by the Hound during the night of the Blackwater Battle, he invaded her bedroom, pushed her to bed, put a dagger at her throat, requested a song from her under threat of death.

There is a song called “Off to Gulltown” that says:

Off to Gulltown to see the fair maid, heigh-ho, heigh-ho. I’ll steal a sweet kiss with the point of my blade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho. I’ll make her my love and we’ll rest in the shade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho.

Sansa: The Hound kissed me during the night of the Blackwater Battle.

Fandom/Shippers: Sansa fancies the Hound uhhhhhhhhh

Sansa: Has unpleasant memories of the “un-kiss” feeling soiled by it.

Sansa: Has a nightmare about Tyrion and the Hound in bed with her the night after Marillion attempted to rape her.

Fandom/Shippers: Sansa fancies the Hound and have fun dreams with him uhhhhhhhhhh

It's really all that easy?

George hates to be predictable:

I spoke earlier about how predictable stories bore me. And we’ve all, you know, seen the stories where the hero, you know, he seems to get in trouble—he’s all alone, he’s surrounded by twenty foes, but he’s the hero! You know he’s going to get out of it; you’re not really engaged. I want you to be engaged. I want you to feel what the viewpoint character is feeling. If the viewpoint character is in trouble, I want you to be afraid, I want you not to know whether he’s going to get out of it. And I think the only way to do that is establish very early in the books that you’re playing for real, that anyone can die, and if the character’s in a life or death situation that he might not survive it. That these are not superheroes, these are not Indiana Jones. These are fallible human beings who are vulnerable to death and betrayal and all that. To my mind, that makes the stories much more suspenseful and gripping and emotionally involving.

(...)

I also liked the idea of the story not being predictable. Too much of fantasy is too predictable, you know? They say we write the stories that we want to read. And I was a reader long before I was a writer, and as a reader I love stories that take me to places that I don’t expect, and I hate stories where you read the first five pages and you know exactly what’s going to happen for the rest of the book. Those stories bore me very quickly, and I don’t want to bore my readers or indeed bore myself in writing, so I try to, you know, create a fairly complicated thing that’s full of twists and surprises and unexpected turns, but all of them rooted hopefully in human nature and arising out of the characters and the desires and wishes and dreams of those characters.

—A Dance With Dragons: George R. R. Martin

And he is always distracting us:

There are some mysteries in these books. There are some things that I’m gonna reveal later on that I’m planting clues for. There are some later plot twists that I’m foreshadowing. There are things that are gonna happen in Book 5 and Book 6 and Book 7 where I’ve planted a seed for it in Book 1. But I don’t necessarily want to give away my hand. So, what do I do when I plant the seed? Well, I plant the seed, but I try to do a little literary sleight of hand, and while I’m planting the seed, my other hand is up there waving and is distracting you with some flashy bit of wordplay or something that’s going on in the foreground, while the seed is being planted in the background. So hopefully the seed is there, the foreshadowing is there, but maybe you won’t notice it, because it’s surrounded by so many other things.

—The George R. R. Martin Podcast, Episode 7 (9:17)

Transcription provided by this post.

Think about it!

* * *

DECEMBER 2016 ASKING GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ABOUT SAN/SAN

[Source]

Here George was asked directly, by a shipper, about the “un-kiss” and Sansa’s sexuality, and he stuck with his classic “unreliable narrator” answer.

George also repeated these things:

I can use things like the internal narrative

I can take you inside of territories… thoughts

Prose is internal

I have the device known as “unreliable narrator

His comparison between a TV Show and a Book is very telling:

You just have the words they speak, you see them from outside because the camera is external, while prose is internal.

Also, it seems that he is done with questions about Sansa’s sexuality, as you can see from the chronology of questions and answers in this post.

So, the “un-kiss” and any other misremembering from Sansa has to do with her psychological state, not with her sexuality in particular.

Sansa did something similar with the Trident incident, where her direwolf Lady, part of her soul, was killed by her own father using his sword Ice.

She remembered the facts exactly as they happened when she told her father about it. But later she started to blame Arya and Cersei, but exculpates Joffrey, her future husband:

Sansa and Septa Mordane were given places of high honor, to the left of the raised dais where the king himself sat beside his queen. When Prince Joffrey seated himself to her right, she felt her throat tighten. He had not spoken a word to her since the awful thing had happened, and she had not dared to speak to him. At first she thought she hated him for what they'd done to Lady, but after Sansa had wept her eyes dry, she told herself that it had not been Joffrey's doing, not truly. The queen had done it; she was the one to hate, her and Arya. Nothing bad would have happened except for Arya.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa II

She accommodates and compartmentalize a lot as a way to cope and survive every unpleasant, disturbing and traumatic event that already happened to her in her short 13 years.

So to answer your specific questions:

Do you think she gonna misremember any other similar traumatic events in future?

I think so. This is sad because it means that Sansa will experience even more traumatic events that she will have to deal with...

We need to wait to know the “un-kiss” true meaning. She romanticizes the Hound’s rape attempt against her and made it into a kiss, just like a song called “Off to Gulltown” that describes a non-con/sexual abuse situation against a maid, like her.

Inside her mind Sansa decided to remember the good things that men like Tyrion and the Hound did for her. In her first AFFC chapter (Sansa I), she thinks:

When Joff had her beaten, the Imp defended her.

When the mob sought to rape her, the Hound carried her to safety.

When the Lannisters wed her to Tyrion against her will, Ser Garlan the Gallant gave her comfort.

Only in her nightmares the true slipped out:

And she dreamed of her wedding night too, of Tyrion's eyes devouring her as she undressed. Only then he was bigger than Tyrion had any right to be, and when he climbed into the bed his face was scarred only on one side. "I'll have a song from you," he rasped, and Sansa woke and found the old blind dog beside her once again. "I wish that you were Lady," she said.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa VI

But after Marillion’s attack, Littlefinger forced kiss and Lysas’s death she is starting to join the dots. For an instance, when she hears Littlerfinger using the same sexual innuendo than Marillion, “Let me warm you”, she realizes that Petyr Baelish is bad news:

Let me warm you, Sansa. Take off those gloves, give me your hands."

"I won't." He sounded almost like Marillion, the night he'd gotten so drunk at the wedding. Only this time Lothor Brune would not appear to save her; Ser Lothor was Petyr's man. "You shouldn't kiss me. I might have been your own daughter . . ."

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa VII

The whole passage from her first AFFC chapter (Sansa I) is very revealing:

The things her aunt had said just before she fell still troubled Sansa greatly. "Ravings," Petyr called them. "My wife was mad, you saw that for yourself." And so she had. All I did was build a snow castle, and she meant to push me out the Moon Door. Petyr saved me. He loved my mother well, and . . .

And her? How could she doubt it? He had saved her.

He saved Alayne, his daughter, a voice within her whispered. But she was Sansa too . . . and sometimes it seemed to her that the Lord Protector was two people as well. He was Petyr, her protector, warm and funny and gentle . . . but he was also Littlefinger, the lord she'd known at King's Landing, smiling slyly and stroking his beard as he whispered in Queen Cersei's ear. And Littlefinger was no friend of hers. When Joff had her beaten, the Imp defended her, not Littlefinger. When the mob sought to rape her, the Hound carried her to safety, not Littlefinger. When the Lannisters wed her to Tyrion against her will, Ser Garlan the Gallant gave her comfort, not Littlefinger. Littlefinger never lifted so much as his little finger for her.

Except to get me out. He did that for me. I thought it was Ser Dontos, my poor old drunken Florian, but it was Petyr all the while. Littlefinger was only a mask he had to wear. Only sometimes Sansa found it hard to tell where the man ended and the mask began. Littlefinger and Lord Petyr looked so very much alike. She would have fled them both, perhaps, but there was nowhere for her to go. Winterfell was burned and desolate, Bran and Rickon dead and cold. Robb had been betrayed and murdered at the Twins, along with their lady mother. Tyrion had been put to death for killing Joffrey, and if she ever returned to King's Landing the queen would have her head as well. The aunt she'd hoped would keep her safe had tried to murder her instead. Her uncle Edmure was a captive of the Freys, while her great-uncle the Blackfish was under siege at Riverrun. I have no place but here, Sansa thought miserably, and no true friend but Petyr.

—A Feast for Crows - Sansa I

As you can see Sansa is starting to realize that the persons that help her, can also hurt her and have ulterior motives to help her, that the help is not unconditional and always has a price.

So I think she will reach a point where she would be able to do the same with all her abusers, she will realize that men like Tyrion, the Hound, Dontos, etc, have helped her but at the same time have hurt her, Tyrion accepted to marry her and almost commit marital rape, the Hound attempted to rape her and repeatedly abuse her psychologically and physically, even Dontos, always requesting kisses.

Do you think her family will help her remember these events and dealing with it?

Most probably. Meeting Jeyne Poole again, for example. Knowing what Littlefinger really did to her, and all his crimes against House Stark.

I really hope for that moment of realization, when she can stop lying to herself, when she can clearly see all those men as her abusers and that she owns them nothing.

George, please! She had enough already... Give her some peace and quite! Give her true friends and her family back!

Thanks for your message.

#anon ask #sansa stark #anti sandor clegane #anti tyrion lannister #anti petyr baelish #anti littlefinger #anti sansa's abusers

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agentrouka-blog · 4 years ago

Note

Sansa is my favorite character. Hands down, she is one of the most the most interesting POV's for me. Her lapses in memory are particularly interesting & how GRRM says it's setting up for a bigger lapse. I have a creeping inkling lately after reading her chapters. Sansa doesn't seem to think back with guilt on telling Cersei Ned's plans. WE know it didn't change Cersei's plans but I think Sansa buries it. Do you think this may come up & be her "lapse" in memory? I worry about her... Am I nuts?

Hi anon!

I don’t know. Her telling Cersei about Ned’s plans is likely to play into the conflict between her and Arya when they reunite but she does acknowledge that she was being willful and she does acknowledge being deceived in her trust in Cersei.

Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father's head. Sansa would never make that mistake again.

(ACOK, Sansa I)

It is not Sansa’s fault that the adults around her were playing a game of lethal politics and Ned never warned her, and I’m pretty sure that Sansa not dwelling on it is actually a simple case of not taking the blame for something that wasn’t her fault.

I’m not sure why this would be subject to a massive memory lapse. What would it accomplish, story-wise, for her to have forgotten this and then remember it? This un-information doesnt’t carry much narrative weight.

I actually doubt the popular fanon that the emphasis on unreliable narrators is meant to “set up” a big future memory lapse for Sansa in particular.

It’s hard to find quotes on this, but these seem prominent:

It’s not a typo. It is something! [Laughs] ”Unreliable narrator” is the key phrase there. The second scene is from Sansa’s thoughts. And what does that reveal about her psychologically? I try to be subtle about these things. (Entertainment Weekly November 27, 2007)

Or here:

[GRRM is asked about Sansa misremembering the name of Joffrey's sword.]

The Lion's Paw / Lion's Tooth business, on the other hand, is intentional. A small touch of the unreliable narrator. I was trying to establish that the memories of my viewpoint characters are not infallible. Sansa is simply remembering it wrong. A very minor thing (you are the only one to catch it to date), but it was meant to set the stage for a much more important lapse in memory. You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom... but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it's a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on. (Taken from here, June 26, 2001)

The main take-away here is that GRRM wants us to know ALL the POVs are unreliable narrators.

The other thing is that he talks about Sansa’s psychological approach to trauma: rewrite, re-interpret, romanticise. Which is really something that points at the situation she rewrites being traumatic (as opposed to romantic), not Sansa’s supposed psychological instability, as some people like to surmise.

She is not alone in this. It is how Westeros employs metaphor. A “kiss” becomes a metaphor for a knife at your throat, which is an image that comes up in the novels again and again and again. A war of succession becomes a “Dance of Dragons”, a swordfight is compared to sexual intercourse. This play of images is as important as the mismemory.

It’s also important to note that it is NOT Sansa who misremembers the name of the sword (it is Arya who recalls it as Lion’s Paw instead of Lion’s Tooth in ASOS, Arya VI), nor is that the only example of edited memories. Jon does it with Ygritte’s “maidenhood”, Arya misremembers her age when she first killed (eight v. nine or ten), Cersei misremembers how much Sansa revealed to her in the first place. Surely there are plenty other examples.

So actually, the memory lapse he claims to be setting up may not even be about Sansa specifically. It may involve her, but it may also be as distant as, say, historical memory involving the Long Night, or another character, or a memory involving the past that has already been brought up, etc.

I’m not saying it cannot be about Sansa or a future memory loss, but I think we can easily broaden our horizon on this.

What I am certain about is that Sansa’s “Horrible Act of Betrayal(tm)” is nowhere near big enough to warrant the “much more important lapse in memory” treatment GRRM is teasing.

#asoiaf #sansa stark #mismemory #unkiss #betrayal #asoiaf speculation #unreliable narrator #grrm interview #asks

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smokin-gun · 4 years ago

Text

(With Endwalker looming ahead, I’ve been trying to write out some story for Nyx while I battle some pretty awful depression. Don’t expect greatness, but here’s some reading. I apologize for any typos since this was written on my phone.)

“Front Gate Breach… Did you fucking HEAR ME? Aleksander… answer your fucking pearl!”

“Aleksander…ALEKSANDER!”

“I ain’t feckin’ Aleksander… Bu’ ye ‘ave more problems than yer front gate bein’ breached…”

—————————————

**Fourteen suns earlier**

A large, three-toed foot caused dust to rise each time it plodded along a cracked and thirsty ground. Patterns rippled across its surface as if it tried its best to replicate the surface of the sun, the water scattering and snuffing out into the thick air before it could fully hide below.

The warking of a Chocobo, and a consequential cough as the dust choked it’s lungs, caused its rider to pull back the reins harshly before he joined it on the dried sands. A strong hand plucked the leather bits off the saddle and close to his waist as his boots added to the crunching around them.

A thick lilt was almost inaudible as a gust of wind enveloped them, “Jus’ think. Las’ time ye were here, ye wanted i’ t’be hotter”. The blonde Miqo’te elbowed the massive red bird next to him and it squawked in protest, head arching as it snapped close to his arm. “Believe me, dunnae plan t’be ‘ere longer’n we ‘ave t’be”.

The Seeker’s body was mostly covered by a scarf that clung around his neck, pulled up around his face so that the only things visible were the points of his ears and a determined amber visage. Bare shoulders rippled with ink work and tanned skin looked the slightest bit darker than usual. Thick work boots, laced tightly, treaded upon the dried lake beneath them without a hitch. A pair of hip-hugging leather pants were held aloft by a belt lined with more ammunition and tools than were likely necessary, but they were arranged enough that they weren’t burdensome.

The most noticeable detail about the man was the weapon that held closely to his back. It had a very obvious plethora of uses, but the form it held was that of a scythe, high above his head and glistening in the sun. Its wicked curved held an almost antique charm to it, but parts of it paid homage to the gunblades and firearms known by only Garlemald itself.

The thought of a homecoming for Grace made Nyx smile, the crooked grin creeping into the dimples close to his fangs. He often wondered whose weapon he’d recovered all those seasons ago and the thought of someone wanting revenge for improving its design made his tail twitch in excitement.

He’d already been traveling for some time, searching for the most remote entry to the empire that brought dread the world over. It wasn’t his first rodeo, but he wasn’t expecting the extreme change in climate. The last time he’d been in the hellscape, it was covered in a ridiculous layer of ice and snow, frigid to the point that he thought he’d die in his sleep if he had to take shelter somewhere. Thankfully, the destrier of a bird that he often figured would abandon him at his worst came through in a surprising series of events.

The current mission was something new. Knowledge that his father was, indeed, alive was jarring enough on its own. Unfortunately, the old man was found to be working under the Garleans either against his will or perfectly free. He’d said something that kept Nyx on his toes and his head swimming. A history in Garlemald… Had he really been holed up there this whole time or was it some sort of misunderstanding?

The Destrier jerked to a halt suddenly and Nyx’s eyes snapped forward and out of his own mind. A massive shadow crept towards them over the invisible horizon. Where the heat rose and swam with its false hope of clear oceans, a massive structure flew through the air like a giant crypt… Blood red hues clung to a black material that looked too organic to be leaving the land, like a great vulture, sickly and lurching.

Both sets of eyes followed it for a moment before they realized the thing was headed their direction. Nyx felt his heartbeat in his ears as he flashed glances around them. No cover. Not even the smallest hint of foliage. His bird companion seemed to understand the predicament, and like clockwork, began to run in the opposite direction from the Seeker. A few expletives escaped his lips before he sprinted after it.

As the structure loomed directly overhead, both of them fell to the ground, Nyx’s hands covering his head and the destrier’s beak pressed into the dirt as if two ilms of sand hid his entire body. It was in that moment that they both realized the massive Flying Fortress had continued on as if it hadn’t seen them at all. It was on a mission, perhaps seeing them or not.

The Miqo’te rose to his feet, dusting himself off as he looked over to his companion. The bird shook its head and fluffed up twice its size before it shook violently, dust shooting in all directions. If he hadn’t just experienced the massive craft, Nyx might have chuckled at the animal. Instead, he reached out and took the reins of the oddly compliant companion, tugging him forward and onward towards their original destination.

-——————

Suns passed by them like the slow, steady creep of death was behind them every step of the way. No signs of civilization showed itself and a few times Nyx questioned his ability to track his way. Even the usual stubbornness of his Chocobo had ceased and it simply went along with whatever the Seeker had him do, hoping that he’d find mercy on them both and head back towards Ishgard.

The horizon started to disappear for what was likely seven suns into their journey. Oranges and reds were swallowed up by deep purples and the smallest hint of real hid at the base of what looked like distant mountain ranges. The first signs of terrain change.

As before, the pair simply stopped where there were after Nyx made a few marks in the dried earth with a boot so they wouldn’t be disoriented come morning. A few rods and a tarp made for an easy shelter, but an odd wind had started to blow in once the sun had disappeared behind the range in the distance. The last gasps of orange cast an eerie glow on everything that could be seen, which wasn’t much.

Nyx had just laid out beneath the lean-to when he shot straight up. Chittering? Or howling… The wind that pushed dust along with it muffled a noise several malms away, but he knew he wasn’t hearing things as the great bird near to him raised its head and turned to face the same direction he’d looked.

/Skkkkkkeeeeee…. Aaaa…./

“Seven Hells… Damask… on yer feet… looks like we’re gonnae ‘ave company…”, the Chocobo clacked its beak as it stood, a foot pawing the ground as if readying itself. Nyx slid forward and out of his temporary bedding, a hand sliding out to grasp at the great scythe that hid beneath a blanket. As his fingers gripped the length of steel that made up the vast majority of the weapon, the tattoos along his arms glowed with a bright blue, the ornate details rippling down his flesh until each one had joined the first.

The Seeker took on a wide stance and his ears flattened at a new sound. His hearing was much more valuable than sight since the sun had disappeared entirely. All he could see were the crimson feathers of the beast beside him…. Which didn’t make the click, click, clicking sound surrounding them any less formidable.

He heard it every now and the. With the rushing of the wind, but it mostly drowned it out. One sounded behind him… then a few fulms away. A flash of silver and gold shone briefly in the light from his body, and then disappeared in the dust. He turned just in time for a flash of teeth and barely managed to side step it, although he found himself grazed by an unsightly appendage.

Again. A flash of teeth and another round of flailing claws breezed past him. This time Damask caught it with a kick of strong legs and the blood curdling scream they’d heard in the distance became disturbingly close for comfort.

“Aye, we’ve gotta get oot o’here… they’re underground. Damask, let’s go!”, he reached out just as another massive jaw lurched from the sands in front of him, sending the Chocobo hurtling to the side with a sickening thud. Thankfully he’d only been knock led away as far the Seeker could tell, but he was down for the count. It was time to draw them away or the bird would be a meal for what was likely four or five very hungry sand worms.

Nyx turned on a heel and ran in whatever direction fate would have him. A blur of blue was all he could see with inhuman screams sounding behind him. They reacted to sounds, to vibrations. Each step elicited a noise from them and it was obvious he’d become the hunt. The weapon in his hand dragged the ground as the Miqo’te continued forward. Added noise ensured they would follow but one misstep would be his last. Every now and then he knew he heard them breach the surface and then dive back underground.

Stopping would be suicide, and though his legs felt like they were on fire, he continued. The chase seemed endless and he knew he wouldn’t have much longer unless Lady Luck was on his side. He wasn’t afraid of death, but he’d definitely be disappointed if his story ended before he’d gotten answers.

Just as his mind had convinced him he’d need to come to terms with being eaten by massive worms in the deserts of Garlemald, he found himself tripping and connecting rather harshly with something metal. It echoed with the collision which also made his ears ring. “Fuck’s sake!”.

When he managed to open his eyes, realization struck hard and heavy. It was the supply crate that he’d hid in many many moons ago when he’d had to breach a laboratory. The writing on its side had a bunch of gibberish about medical things he’d rather not spend time on. With no hesitation, he rushed to the front of it and flipped up a metal door that rose with a little force. When he managed to get inside, he slammed it shut just in time to hear something outside colliding with it in a similar fashion to his discovery.

They had intentionally crashed themselves against, one after the other. The crate shook violently each time but somehow managed to hold its own. He was safe, for now.

#nyx ashkala #ffxiv #mateus #crystalrp #crystal data center #final fantasy xiv #character progression #oc development

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skeptycats · 5 years ago

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Vicky Archives #4

CODE OF THE CLANS - A little light humour

Vicky Holmes, the former editor of the Warriors series, has been doing short extract readings on Facebook since the start of the UK lockdown back in March. There’s some really cool anecdotes hidden within some of these videos, so I decided to begin penning them down for posterity and easy reference.

I won’t be transcribing filler, hedging and false starts but I’m including some amount of preamble just to be comprehensive.

A little short one this week! My health is a little poor at the moment so it’s a couple days late anyway, but I hope you enjoy!

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Hello! It is Tuesday, March the 31st, last day of March, and I’m in a bit of a down mood today, I’m sure a lot of us are. The realities of lockdown are setting in, I’m bored, I want to go shopping - and I never want to go shopping! I’d just like a change of scene.

I decided today to go for some light relief. I’m going to do a reading from Code of the Clans, which was I think the first book I wrote completely on my own, so I storylined it, brainstormed it, and actually did all the writing on my own. It’s a lot harder without Kate or Cherith to help because obviously I was responsible for all of the words, but I was also able to play with the Erin Hunter voice myself. It was lovely, and I really enjoyed it.

Code of the Clans is something which we call non-fiction. Obviously it’s still fiction, but it was delving into the world behind Warriors. The structure, the heritage, the religion. It was just a pure exercise in fantasy, it was a delight.

I’m going to read a short section from Code #11, which is ‘boundaries must be checked and marked daily. Challenge all trespassing cats.’ I’m going to read a short scene in which Whitestorm teaches border tactics to some familiar faces when they were apprentices. I can remember when I wrote it I was smiling, and giggling to myself. I’m probably going to do the same now, so forgive me for effectively laughing at my own jokes. We all need a bit of humour today.

Is every cat here? Firepaw, Graypaw, Ravenpaw, Sandpaw, and Dustpaw? Dustpaw, stop trying to push Firepaw into the brambles. I’m not blind; I can see what you’re doing. Firepaw, go to the other end of the line. Sandpaw, he does not have fleas! Stand still, all of you.

As Lionheart told you, we’re going to practice border defense today. You can be the patrol, and I’ll be a deputy from another Clan who’s crossed the boundary. Who’d like to lead the patrol? Don’t look so terrified, Ravenpaw. I won’t make you be the leader if you don’t want to be. Graypaw, why don’t you have first turn? If you could just pick up that stick in your mouth and use it to draw a line across the sand, we’ll call that the border. Sandpaw, it doesn’t matter that the line is wobbly. Boundaries aren’t whisker-straight, code are they? So, you’re on that side, walking along on a dawn patrol. Off you go, patrol!

Did you really need to yawn like that, Graypaw? Oh, I see, it’s because it’s the dawn patrol, and you’re tired. Well, let’s pretend you all had a really good night’s sleep and are full of energy. Now, what should you be doing? Yes, sniffing, tasting the air—what for? That’s right, Sandpaw. ThunderClan border marks. And what else? Yes, Firepaw. The border marks of the other Clan. But only where the two borders meet. Beside the river and the Thunderpath, it would be bad news to find any scents of RiverClan or ShadowClan, because it would mean they’d crossed over from their side. So keep sniffing.

Maybe not that much, Sandpaw. Have a good sneeze and you should get the sand out of your nose. So, border marks, border marks. Can you smell both sets? Good. But what’s this? A cat from another Clan has ignored the marks and stepped over your border?

No, Ravenpaw, I didn’t mean we were actually being invaded. The cat from the other Clan is me. See how I just stepped over the line in the sand? What are you going to do about it? Wha . . .whoa! Stop treading on my ears!

Well, yes, Dustpaw, launching an attack and knocking me back across the border is one option. But is it wise to take on a cat twice your size? Or a trained warrior with more experience than you? The purpose of a patrol is to assess the situation and report back to your Clan leader. You won’t be able to do that if your pelt is clawed to shreds at the farthest part of the territory from the camp. Any other ideas?

How about asking what I’m doing? I might have a valid reason for crossing the border, especially if I’m alone. That’s right, Graystripe: [TN: Vicky points out the name error here] What do you want? is a good way to start. Don’t be too hostile: Remember, you are in the stronger position, because this is your territory and you have the right to defend it. Unless I have a very good explanation for crossing your border, I don’t have any rights at all. What do you think my reply might be?

Yes, Ravenpaw, I might need your help. My Clan might have been invaded, we might have serious trouble with prey, or we might have sickness that needs your herbs. All these reasons would mean that I am weak, so you can allow me into your territory but never out of sight.

If I am hostile, then meet me with hostility—which isn’t the same as aggression, Dustpaw. You’ve started with a strong challenge—What do you want?—and now you need to give me some sort of warning. Ravenpaw, what would you say?

Hmmm. If you’re going to threaten to claw a cat’s ears, you should try not to look so terrified at the prospect. Firepaw, would you like to try? Ah, yes, I like that you indicated the rest of your patrol. It’s always good to let the enemy know they’re outnumbered. Sandpaw, put that fire ant down. No, I don’t care that Firepaw might not know what it is. Now is not the right time to show him—and he certainly doesn’t need to get bitten by one.

So, you’ve challenged the trespasser, warned me that there’s a whole patrol here that can take me to your Clan leader if that’s what I wish; what next? That’s right, Graypaw, let me—the intruder—speak. If I can’t give you a convincing explanation for what I’m doing on your territory, if I don’t ask to be taken to Bluestar at once, then chase me off with no more questions. Don’t provoke a full-scale war—chasing means chasing, not catching and clawing. Just make it clear that you will defend your boundaries from any kind of invasion, even one paw across the border. A good warrior is always ready to fight, but only if it’s absolutely necessary: A good warrior will seek a peaceful, claws-sheathed solution first.

You will all make good warriors one day. Don’t look so doubtful, Ravenpaw. You need to find only a little more courage to be as good as your denmates. Your hunting skills are excellent— Dustpaw, you’d do well to watch him. Who knows? You might even lead this Clan one day!

Now, back to camp, all of you, and leave this old warrior to enjoy the sun in peace.

BEHIND THE SCENES

That was fun. Always cheers me up to revisit some of the humour, and there was a lot of humour in Warriors. Both Kate and Cherith excelled at introducing some comedy, especially around kits interacting with the older cats.

That’s something I was very aware of when I was writing the ‘non-fiction’ books like Code of the Clans and Battles of the Clans. It’s very easy to think of Warriors as super intense and super involved and traumatic and emotional, but you can’t sustain that. It’s exhausting to write and it’s exhausting to read, just as it’s exhausting to live. I think at the moment there’s a danger that we’re all sort of living on a bit of a knife’s edge, living on our nerves, and I’m certainly starting to feel that. It’s okay to take a break, with your writing and with your general day-to-day life. Laughter is the best medicine, literally. Writing about kits just gives me the giggles every time. And yes, it feels self-indulgent to laugh at my own jokes, but hey, I’m on my own, I have to make my own jokes.

It was very interesting there because of course I spotted a typo - one of my famous errors! - that Graypaw had been referred to as Graystripe. Obviously I wrote Code of the Clans when we were probably on series two at least, if not three, so I was thinking of these cats as their warriors names, and obviously forgot I was supposed to be calling Graypaw ‘Graypaw’ there. I have obviously made lots of mistakes over the years. I think my favourites are the fact that Heavystep died and comes back to life several times, and Rowanclaw started off as a she-cat and then pops up as a tom. So we could perhaps claim the first transitioned fictional cat? But it was an honest mistake.

One of my fondest memories from going on tour is when I would turn up in a bookshop and some very earnest little child would turn up with a book full of post-it notes, and they’d solemnly say that they’d pointed out all the typos and errors in the book and marked them with post-its, and would I like to take the book away so I could do the corrections. No, is the short answer. I’m sorry for the mistakes, but it’s not up to me to correct them. That’s the publishing, that’s further down the line. We have corrected errors in some books, but it has to be big mistakes, you have to go in and change the printing plate. All I can humbly say is ‘I’m sorry’. I’ve written a lot of words, they’re not always going to be the right ones.

#vicky archives #warrior cats #warriors #whitestorm #code of the clans #not designs

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bramblemask973 · 6 years ago

Text

Power of the Clans - Prologue

Fire... Fire..! Fire! FIRE! Kin and kin will drown the forest in blood. Lives will be lost to the claws of battle. Fire alone will save the Clan when kin is no more. Fire alone will save the Clan when kin is no more! A Warrior Cats AU where the Clans have powers and the Fire Alone prophecy means a little more than it lets on.

AO3 link FF.Net link

Proofreading? What's that?

Welcome to Power of the Clans! A WIP self indulgent Warriors AU where each Clan has its own power and the Fire Alone prophecy has a different meaning. SkyClan has wings, ShadowClan uses shadows as portals, ThunderClan controls lightning, WindClan controls air and RiverClan controls water.

If you notice any typos or hard to read sentences, please let me know! ~Jeli

The sun was nearing the end of its reign in the sky when they finally reached the outskirts of the forest. A light breeze shuffled the leaves in the canopy above, and the distant sound of birdsong made the air seem that much lighter. The first steps onto the sun-warmed grass brought a new energy to her aching muscles. Home, again. Finally. It had felt like such a long journey, and though they’d only been gone overnight, it felt like days.

The newly appointed Spottedstar padded onto the rocks at the top of the gorge, bounding down from them onto the path below. Shaking out her tortoiseshell fur and taking a quick moment to note the cats at the riverside, she looked back up over her shoulder to make sure her companion followed. Duskfeather had travelled with her overnight, and hadn’t left her side for a single moment. He was the best cat she could have taken with her on the journey to the Moonstone. The tom leaped down onto the rock beside her just as a greeting came from above, drawing Spottedstar’s attention.

“Spottedmask! Duskfeather! You’re back!”

Daypaw rushed to the edge of the gorge, nearly taking herself off of it as she flared her wings to stop. Crouching on the lip of the rock, her tail puffed up, flicking with excitement. The cream tabby grinned as she looked down at them, amber eyes wide.

“Or are you Spottedstar now?”

“That’s right.” Spottedstar purred, tucking her wings close to her sides to give Duskfeather room to stand beside her. Duskfeather’s green eyes gleamed warmly as he raised his tail in greeting to his apprentice. Daypaw’s grin only widened and a mischievous look crossed over her face for a moment as she opened her wings and straightened up.

“Awesome.”

Almost immediately, Daypaw leaped past them onto the Rockpile and then down to the riverside, nearly flattening Dustface in the process. Spottedstar shared an amused look with Duskfeather before she turned and headed down the path deeper into the camp. Many moons of paws had travelled this path, wearing it down into the rock to make a safe passage for cats of all ages from the pit of the gorge to the top. She’d walked it many times from her kithood to last night, but now it felt different. New.

She didn’t have much time to think about it. Daypaw’s yowling had gained the attention of the rest of the Clan, and faces were peeking out of dens and appearing from behind the gorge rocks. A ginger tabby queen, Redleaf, peered out from the nursery, the sounds of barely born kits crying behind her. Her brother Cardinalfur sat beside the fresh kill pile at the bottom of the gorge, his tabby markings mirroring hers despite his darker fur, wings folded neatly over his back. His feathers weren’t quite as neat – the hint of green spattered here and there from the herbs he stashed in between them made his feathers appear ruffled and unkempt, despite being the cleanest in the Clan.

Feeling pride burn in her chest, Spottedstar glanced around, taking in the rest of the Clan. Shadefur had just landed, a fresh mouse clamped in her jaws. Behind her was Fangwisp, the newest warrior, licking his lips to clear the drops of river water from his mouth. Speckleheart appeared around the corner, three mice hanging by their tails from her teeth, her silver pelt dusty and ruffled. As Spottedstar reached the Rockpile and leaped up onto it, Dustface had Daypaw pinned, the apprentice squirming her protest.

SkyClan. Her Clan.

Heart beating in her chest like a woodpecker on bark, Spottedstar flared her wings as she stood tall, pulling breath in for a yowl.

“Let all cats old enough to catch their own prey join here beneath the Rockpile for a Clan meeting!”

A shiver went through her spine to the tip of her tail, and for once she was glad for her long fur to hide the fact that it was beginning to prick up along her back. She had dreamt for moons about being able speak those words, and it sent chills through her body to finally do so. She really was leader, and there was no turning back.

Her call had drawn out the remaining cats from their dens. Dustface finally moved off of Daypaw and nudged her to get up and sit properly. Cardinalfur jumped up onto one of the lower rocks of the Rockpile. Shadefur sat down between Duskfeather and Fangwisp. Redleaf took a glance back inside the nursery before she sat in its entrance, not willing to leave the kits. That was fine. Spottedstar didn’t expect her to, not after only giving birth last night. She was glad to see the queen was strong and safe, and the kits sounded the same.

Forcing her nervousness down, Spottedstar let her tail flick as she took in the faces of the Clan. Her Clan. They all trusted her, looked up to her to guide them, to keep them safe. Was she ready for this? Probably not. But she wasn’t alone. She had all of them.

“Cats of SkyClan,” Spottedstar began, pausing for a moment to swallow the rising dread in her throat. “As the Sun begins her descent and the Moon rises, we mourn Hawkstar as he travels with them on his way to StarClan. He was a fierce and devoted leader, and we will honor him in the stories we tell to our kits, and generations on. Hawkstar!”

The cats immediately raised their muzzles to the sky, calling out the old leader’s name to the sunset. A bittersweet pain started in her belly as she watched them. Hawkstar had passed the day before from an old infection that never healed properly, fighting for every breath. He had lived a good long life, though, and was an old cat when he died. Spottedstar lifted her eyes to the sky, letting the Clan chant his name until they faded back into silence of their own accord.

“StarClan has granted me their blessing and my nine lives so that I may continue in Hawkstar’s place as leader of SkyClan.” Wings tucked close to her sides, Spottedstar turned her gaze back onto the cats below. “I offer you all nine of them as I ask for your loyalty and your trust. I pray that StarClan can guide my paws to bring us to greater heights, so that SkyClan may thrive long after I have given all of my lives to its service.”

It was then that the Clan erupted into their own cheering, this time of her new name. Spottedstar’s worries suddenly vanished like the wind, warmth spreading over her fur again. They accepted her. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if they hadn’t. A few moments and then she stretched a wing for silence, finally able to do what she’d wanted since arriving back at home.

“But I cannot do it alone,” Spottedstar purred, pulling herself to her full height and looking up at the sky. “I, Spottedstar, leader of SkyClan, say these words below StarClan and Hawkstar, so that they may hear and approve of my choice. Duskfeather will be the new deputy of SkyClan.”

The Clan burst into cheers and purrs, Daypaw nearly leaping out of her skin as she howled her mentor’s name. Duskfeather just looked stunned, his eyes wide and fur rising along his spine. He stumbled as Shadefur gave him a shove with her head that nearly pushed him off of his feet, but quickly recovered, padding towards the Rockpile and climbing up beside Cardinalfur. The medicine cat grinned and touched his tail to his friend’s.

Finally the meeting was over. Spottedstar leaped down from the Rockpile, blinking as the Clan swarmed around her, offering kind words and purrs. It took a bit for them to disperse, but she made her way over to her new deputy and the medicine cat beside him. Cardinalfur stood up and grinned, giving her a friendly lick between the ears before stepping back.

“Congratulations! I knew you’d do great. I hope it wasn’t too disrespectful that I couldn’t go.”

“Dawnstep didn’t mind. She knew you had to worry about Redleaf,” Spottedstar smiled. “I’m glad the kitting went well. Redleaf seems alright.”

“After the first scare, it didn’t go too badly. She’s still nervous, though. It’s her first litter, so I told the Clan to leave her be for a few days. That goes for you as well, leader or not.”

“I’ll leave her be. I can speak with her later.” Spottedstar sat down beside them, suddenly exhausted. Now that the exhilaration of the day was over, the length of the journey caught up with her. Duskfeather shifted a bit closer, nudging her shoulder.

“If you’re going to the Gathering, you should get some rest. You haven’t slept since the Moonstone.”

“I’ll rest, its fine. I’m going to lose a life from being tired.” Spottedstar stood up and turned towards her den, but then glanced back up to Cardinalfur as Duskfeather nodded and walked away. He seemed lost in thought, eyes staring into the nursery. Following his gaze, Spottedstar froze. A soft glow was coming from inside the nursery, flickering like firelight. She blinked, and the glow was gone. Just the stone wall from before. Fur prickling along her spine, Spottedstar stood up again and shook her head. Maybe she was more tired than she thought.

“Get some sleep, Spottedstar. I feel like we have a long night ahead of us.” Cardinalfur whispered, giving her a strange glance before he turned away and headed for his den. Spottedstar watched him go, her tail flicking. Her first day as leader wasn’t even over yet, and he was already giving her strange cryptic messages.

Perhaps they both just needed to sleep.

***

The Gathering was going well. Brackenstar of ThunderClan and Sharpstar of ShadowClan had both welcomed her graciously, while Creekstar, RiverClan’s leader, offered some kind words in Hawkstar’s passing. Dewstar hadn’t come up to the Great Rock yet, but she was on her way. The view from here was brilliant. Spottedstar couldn’t help but flutter her wings to get some of the tension out of them. She could see every cat from here, which means every cat could see her.

Duskfeather seemed to be settling well with the other deputies. Sootcloud, ShadowClan’s deputy, was sitting beside him. By the looks of it, they were swapping stories, and looking quite comfortable. Cardinalfur was picking herbs from his feathers to give to the WindClan medicine cat, a ginger tabby named Ivyclaw, who had brought some of his own to trade. Everything seemed peaceful. Quiet.

This is how it should be. Peace among us for moons. How long could it last?

Spottedstar shifted over to let Dewstar leap up beside them, and a quick nod to Sharpstar let him know the Gathering could start. The ShadowClan leader let out a yowl for silence, waited a moment for the Clans to settle down, before he began to share his news.

Everything was going quietly for a while and it was Spottedstar’s turn to speak all too quickly. She gulped as Brackenstar shifted out of the way for her to step up, and as she did, a sudden harsh wind cut through the calm air of Four Trees. Stumbling, Spottedstar steadied herself and glanced down to the cats below, before her spine prickled and every muscle in her body stiffened. Every cat in the clearing went silent as the other leaders and medicine cats did the same. Nobody dared speak to break the silence, the wind picking up and clouds beginning to billow overhead.

Suddenly it wasn’t wind anymore. Voices, a dozen ghostly voices blew around the Clans, in every cat’s ears. From the smallest apprentice to the oldest elder to all of the leaders, every single cat’s fur prickled as the word of StarClan burst into their ears.

Fire…

Was StarClan taking back their blessing? Surely they wouldn’t do so now, in front of all of the Clans. Spottedstar looked frantically down to the cats, eyes widening as she caught sight of the glow again. The same glow from the nursery, the same firelight, except this time it was coming from the belly of a RiverClan queen.

Fire…!

The orange markings of a ShadowClan tortoiseshell warrior flickered.

Fire!

A WindClan apprentice’s eyes burst into flame.

FIRE!

A ThunderClan warrior’s tail swished anxiously, a blaze following in its trail.

And StarClan screamed.

Kin and kin and kin will drown the forest in blood. Lives will be lost to the claws of battle. Fire alone will save the Clan when kin is no more.

Fire alone will save the Clan when kin is no more!

#Warriors #Warrior Cats #Warrior cats AU #warrior cats power au #power of the clans

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polandspringz · 6 years ago

Note

“I- I can’t see! I can’t see anything!” With rat hunters?

Fun fact: I had a dream that inspired the plot of this, and the prompt just happened to work for it. Also, I didn’t beta this at all so I pray that it doesn’t have any really bad typos.

“We are sure to get discovered like this-!”

I was shoved forward abruptly, and my eyes snapped open, shocked by the sudden golden light that filled them. A polished white marble floor, heavy roman columns stretching up to the high dome shaped ceiling, I could see figures dancing between them, their bodies oversaturated in light but their movement just flashing by. One large chandelier extended down from the heaven that was the plaster ceiling above us, painted with angels and men alike. Music wafted throughout the room, harmonizing with the chit-chat and the clink of glasses and dishes.

As I squinted further up at the ceiling, everything slowly unfurled as I spotted the red paint that had been swirled over the faces of the humanoid figures. The chit-chat sounded more like squeaks and cheeps than voices of different tones intermingling, and the dancers entered the shadows of the columns enough that I could see their fur and their feral appearance. Although some of them were adorned with jewelry, the fact was still undeniable. I looked towards the orchestra.

I shivered as I spotted Rat King Cora on the steps beside the musicians. Humans that were likely forced into this very job, as their music was good, but lacked obvious heart and the craft you would normally hear. But, as I looked further up the cream colored staircase, my eyes widened.

“Ratmilian?”

“Poland, what are you doing?” I heard Vince mutter, and saw him standing beside a large buffet table to the left and back of me.

“It’s alright, I’ll talk to her-” The voice of Lab was cut off by a grumble, a suppressed growl, and then I saw Sals running up to me, fully dressed in their top hat and monocle.

“Sals?! Where am I? What’s going on?” I pressed my hands into her fur, holding on as a lifeline as I saw the big rat figures waltz around me. They seemed to be getting closer, and with every circle they made around the ballroom, I swore they were pushing me further back into the grand doors.

“We are going to attack Ratmilian tonight, don’t you remember?” I heard my sister say through our psychic link, and by the severity of her words, I knew why she was choosing it over her normal speak. If she said this outloud, it may be nothing more than growls to us, but the rats would hear her loud and clear.

“No, when was this agreed upon?!”

“Shh!” Vince shouted from the table. He gestured angrily towards the stairs again, “Rattul is in position.”

I was too distracted by the behind me opening up suddenly, and I almost fell backwards and through them with a shriek if it wasn’t for two arms covered in suede catching my fall. I was thrown back towards Sals, and saw Ratdito Chase sauntering in, Ratpacito seated on his shoulder. He had got out his formal cowboy wear for the occasion, or so it would seem.

“Saddle up boys, it’s time us ratslingers to wrangle up some rodents.”

With a tip of his hat and a flick of his wrist, his gun left its holster and spun into place in his hand. His gaze flickered to the stairs, and everyone seemed to follow as they took up a formation behind me. Rattul, normally always seen beside Rat King Cora, was just barely visible, a small squid swirling near the top stairs edge, approaching Emperor Ratmilian.

“You ready for this?” Someone asked me, but before I could turn my head and see who, I was overwhelmed by a flash of images.

Rattul would transform and move to strike the Emperor. The rest of us would charge forward and start firing indiscriminately. We wouldn’t be prepared for the rats rushing at Rattul, nor the number now swarming to the mass of Cora, swelling as they stomped towards us, a malicious glint in his eye.

Blood. A fallen cowboy hat, a broken dinner platter. A gored bear. Two figures with charred coats caked in blood. A robotic head sparking and laying separate from the body that was now being torn apart before my very eyes.

“What?” I gasped airily as the images ended, and no one seemed to hear me, because they all stepped forward once more. I took a step back, and walked into the darkness on the other side of the threshold. What did all of that mean-

“Here we go.”

My eyes widened in horror as I saw Rattul’s inkling form sprout from her small squid covered body, and she cocked her weapon directly at the Emperor’s head. Sals let out a roar, Ratdito a holler, and the rest of them a shout as they charged forward into battle.

Rattul fired, and the story from my mind was set in motion. The only battle cry I could muster was a tearful shriek of-

“Wait!”

I shot forward, sitting up and scrambling out of the blankets on my bed. My feet were entangled up and I fell on my elbow, my one hand extended as the adrenaline kept the image of my friends running forward just out of my reach. As the darkness of my bedroom came to pass and was processed by my eyes and brain, I crumpled, curling into a heap on the bed. I heard some shuffles, and then felt something wet nudge my arm.

Sals’ nose was tapping me. I hadn’t even noticed I was crying, but my body was racketed by soft sobs and as I sat up to look at my sister, every breath left my back aching as my stomach was sucked in and my rib cage rising rapidly. I could seem to stop or articulate, so she climbed up onto the bed and wrapped herself around me.

“Bad dream?”

“Yes, yes… very bad…” was all I could manage. As I pressed myself into her fur, I leaned my cheek against her back and tried to mimic her gentle breathing pattern. My cheek resting on her back, my arms looped around her as best as I could, and I followed each expansion and contraction as I tried to suppress the all too real imagery that I was still reeling from, “It was so bad… It was as if…”

Just as I was starting to calm down, a sharp pain went through the bone above my eye, and I felt a migraine coming on. I was going down.

“Ow, ow, ow… Ugh… Sals, what’s happening to me?”

“Do you have a fever?” She went to reach up and touch my forehead with her massive paw, but thought better of it, and settled them into her lap, “Alas, my body always runs a little bit hotter now, so I cannot check. Maybe Vince or Chase would know what to do?”

“No, I don’t want to wake them up right now,” I applied pressure to my left eye, and waved away Sals and what I hoped were her worries with my right hand, “Besides, I still don’t trust Ratdito, or Rattul for that manner. They’re too… new.”

Despite whatever my dream had shown me, I knew from Ratdito’s behavior that he was too wild, and it was less that I was worried about him exploiting whatever ill-state I was in and telling Cora and more that I was fearful of him feeding me something poisonous all for the sake of causing a mess amongst our ranks. Rattul, while she was reliable, to get to her I would have to go near Cora, and at this time of night I didn’t want to disturb either of them.

And, our mission as of late had been to take out Cora, not Ratmilian, so why did my dream show me-

“Do you want me to take you to Lab then? Or we can have Ratchard and Pigeonbach pass on the message and he can-”

“Sals,” I said, exasperation taking over as I slid off the bed, “I want to go on a hunt.”

“Now? With who? I thought you didn’t want to wake anyone up?”

“We won’t be waking anyone up. Just us, Sals.” I walked over to the one dresser in the room and changed, shoving my feet into my boots and slinging my cape around my shoulders, my glasses went on my face last. I glanced at the tip of the fountain pen on my desk, glistening in the moonlight from one of the high windows, “We should stop in the armory first. I’ll need something small, even a knife will do.”

I barely waited for her after that. I marched out of the room and began to trek down the hall. As a prisoner, I probably should have been more cautious of guards spotting me, but I couldn’t care less with the state of mind I was in.

I needed to take my confusion out on something, and running it Rat King Cora’s suite and charging him without any backup didn’t seem too smart.

“Sals, watch out!” I shouted orders as my sister mauled several large street rats in our usual alley. Even though I had picked up a small gun, I was still sticking towards the entrance of the small passageway, only moving in when I needed to scoop up the bodies that Sals defeated. Lab wanted more rats, and I am sure he would be happy we got some, even if we did a hunt without his permission.

Pigeonbach flitted about above in the air, keeping an eye on Ratchard as he scampered through the chaos, trying to find his way back to me. I hated having to send out our friends as lures, but after several successful hunts, it was harder and harder to find some bad rats hanging out late at night, as many wanted to keep their lives and let police handle it. Ratchard and the others new all the hideouts, and were able to trick groups and gangs into following him out so we could get our fill of bloodspill.

Sals heard me and jumped aside, just in time to avoid a strike from a rather large rat with crooked yellow teeth. It wasn’t often we got big ones, but Lab was always happy when we did. This must be the leader then, I thought as I decided that this would be a good time for me to strike.

“Sals, I’ll get him-!” I dashed forward, pulling my gun from out of my belt, skidding to a stop just in front of my sister and with two determined hands, I raised it and aimed straight at its chin.

Cora- no, Ratmilian stormed towards me, stepping onto Lab’s broken body and charged me. I turned and ran down the corridor, but was met by a dead end, a locked door. His enormous figure was illuminated by the yellow light of the ballroom, a black shadow in the doorway as he loomed closer.

“You did this.” None of the rats had ever spoken before, but Ratmilian’s voice was deep and raspy, a hiss full of malice and was made of a million squeaks spoken at once.

“I didn’t- what are you- What’s happening- ARGH!”

I dropped the gun and raised both hands to my eyes, stumbling backwards. There was a slash of movement in front of me, and then I felt the force of a mighty clawed paw slamming into my side, and I was thrown roughly into the concrete wall of the building’s side. My head smacked backwards, and I felt some of the stone break under my impact. A few ribs groaned as my abdomen began to throb and my knees gave out. My arms fell limply to my sides as I tried to look on, but red was quickly bleeding into my sight.

Sals had thrown me out of the way, knocking me aside just before the rat leader could get his mouth around my head, and she was currently grappling with his attack meant for me. I could hear Pigeonbach squawking above, and saw their little red form circling frantically. All around us, smaller rats lay still like scattered confetti. One gray figure dashed like a paint smear on space up towards me, and settled on my chest. I saw the glow of a little golden crown and the dirt covering his cape.

“Ratchard, what’s- what’s going on?” I tried to reach up and offer him some comfort. He looked pretty beat up, it must have taken him a lot to escape the clutches of the other ranks once they realized it was a trap. I folded my hands over his form and scooped him up, planting a quick kiss to his face before I set him down on the ground next to me. My eyes were still throbbing, “Sorry, I can’t really think right now.”

Sals managed to throw the rat backwards, flipping him so he sailed into the ground. They climbed on top and began to mercilessly attack, but not before sending another message to me.

“Are you okay? What happened?”

As if on cue, my vision went completely black, but a wave of red hot pain shot across my temple. I let out a scream and fell over, and I could hear Ratchard squeaking in panic as they jumped away from my form.

“I- I can’t see! I can’t see anything! Sals, I don’t- hnngh- Sals, I’m blind… I’m blind!”

A growl that was both verbal and passed through our link, then, “What did you do to her??!!!”

I pressed my hands harder into my sockets, now kicking and thrashing as the pain was dialed up, and I could feel it spreading all over me. I could feel Ratmilian, his claws sinking into my flesh, tearing apart each muscle, the little rats that made up his arm and hands chewing at my bone, my throat clamped down on before the pain turned to white and I could feel everything separating, my mind slowly fading-

A new rush of adrenaline kicked my body into action, and suddenly I was pushing up onto my hands, my head turned towards the noise of the battle. My mouth moved involuntarily, and with a single second passing, I screamed.

I heard the breaking of glasses and felt something clatter and crinkle in front of me. There was a high pitched ringing sound that continued to clang for thirty seconds before it faded, and as it faded the dark, dinghy colors of the alley seemed to swallow the white and chase it back to the center of my vision. Everything closed up and then I was left staring at the debris that remained.

Ratchard had dodged in time, so no glass had hit him, but I slowly took off my broken glasses, shaking hands trying not to drop them as I stared at the hollow frames. I could see a white trail of smoke rising into the sky, and Sals was standing a few ways back, likely having jumped away the moment the heat had touched her. Tucking the glasses into my pocket, I scooped up Ratchard and forced myself to my feet, stumbling towards the gun which I had dropped. As I stooped down to pick it up, I heard the shifting of Sals and felt the waves of discomfort flowing into me.

“Poland… You just vaporized-”

“I know.” I tried to keep my voice steady as I tucked the gun into my belt again, making sure the safety was on, and my other hand steadying Ratchard on my shoulder.

“You know? What do you mean you know? How long have you-”

“Sals… Please, I…” I took one last glance at the darkened spot where the large rat had been. We needed to collect the smaller, fallen rats, but I didn’t have the energy for that anymore. Lab would be sorry, but, a small voice in the back of my head told me that maybe, no matter what his goals were, he would understand that the health of his fellow hunters were more important. He called a few retreats himself, didn’t he? Surely he would understand, especially after…

“I need to tell Lab something… No, I need to tell the team something.”

As I hobbled out of the alley, Sals came up and nuzzled me onto her back. I decided to take her up on the offer, and latched my hands into her soft fur, and shut my eyes.

#ask poland #writing #rat hunters #ask prompt #my writing

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shipperbelle · 7 years ago

Text

Second rewatch of the Timeless done... can finally form complete sentences...

Before I begin, this is my blog which means it’s filled with my perspectives and opinions. So there’s that... Second note- my cat is being super lovey right now so if there are typos it'll be in large part because her paws or butt hit the keyboard... anyway on to my venting session:

Firstly, THAT FINALE WAS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF HOW A SHOW SHOULD FINALE! Every. Single. Thing. was ON POINT!

Harriet Tubman was an absolute gem. I literally have never heard half of the story they told on her, and I feel so happy that I learned more about this amazing woman. The second half, although not focusing on a historical figure, really highlighted the mistreatment of the Chinese and was extremely interesting. These writers know how to tell a story!

On to the good parts...the characters!

-Lyatt:

These babies have been slaughtering my feels since the pilot episode. There is so much chemistry between Matt and Abigail it’s almost painful. Like seriously. They just stand in the same room and its fire. Now. Wyatt has been battling a hard impossible situation since Hollywoodland. Honestly y'all. We learned Jessica was not only his wife, that he grieved for for six years, but also his high school sweetheart. That is a long history for any couple, even a couple whose relationship is as toxic as theirs, which makes the whole “he should've just broken up with her” argument so invalid. His decisions do not mean he doesn't love Lucy, nor does it mean that he's “too little too late”. Lucy got hurt. That much was unavoidable, but does that mean theres no going forward. HELL NO. If anything that pain will create a stronger bond, because almost losing Lucy for good is a hell of a motivator for Wyatt to do some hardcore groveling. But is she open to it?

That hug! That beautiful, glorious, and emotional supportive hug speaks soooooo much more than words. Her face when Wyatt FINALLY drops those three big words we've been begging him to say... and umm hello! Future Lyatt! Yea... I'm pretty positive she's more than open to some groveling from Wyatt and some amazing times with Wyatt.

People seem to be so hung up on Wyatt being jealous and possessive, which apparently is a bigger sin than actively trying to harm/kill, but lets think about this for a second. Wyatt is a man. And sorry, but men are not known for handling intense emotions particularly well. He's so torn between what he should do and what he wants, finding out his wife isn’t what he remembers is his wife, and is confronted with the reality that his relationship with Lucy is basically changed dramatically. Thats a hell of a lot for anyone to handle. So yea, does he lash out in ways that seem abhorrent? Obviously. Is it right? Hell no. Is it something that should cause us to pick up our torches and pitchforks? Well thats up to you, but honestly in the grand scheme of the show? No.

I’m hoping like all hell that we get a season 3 because after all this angst I am so ready to see some smooth sailing.

-Flynn:

Let’s not get it twisted. I do really love Flynn. I like the dynamic he brings to the show. I love how his character plays with the others. He’s a great addition to this season. However, no I don’t play into the idea of romantic g*rcy. Platonically speaking, it’s great. They both understand each other because of shared loss and can be someone the other can turn to. But I both don’t see it romantic, and hope like hell it never becomes romantic because:

-He literally put his hands around her throat and choked her! Threw her around like a rag doll. Held her at gunpoint. Shot at her. Kidnapped her. Etc,

Many people excuse this away because “he had his reasons” or “but he didn't actually kill her”. Ya no... sorry not ok. Ever. Reasons being he was grieving over his wife, or trying like hell to get her back... umm but he had the journal saying they would eventually work together which means he still went out of his way to harm Lucy.

Also... I’m over love triangles (and it would be a triangle because Lyatt has been building since the pilot and is so unresolved) and I really think at some point Lorena and his daughter will come back into play. (which would repeat this seasons dramatic storyline).

Riya:

SAVE RUFUS!!! These two absolutely killed it. Jiya became an absolute badass and it was great. Her scene with Mason at the end broke my soul a little bit... and I'm still not ok about Rufus (ill have to expel those feels a little later)

Random Thoughts:

For awhile I was so frustrated with how long the Jessica storyline was being dragged out. It seemed like something that should've taken maybe 3 episodes max to resolve. However, it now makes a little more sense. They had to keep her around to the finale because I truly think that next season Emma and Jessica will become the “big bads” of the season. She obviously has a deep history with Rittenhouse (as does Emma) and now there is no clear leader, which means either they work together or we’ll see Emma v. Jessica. Ok... I see you writers.

-She was drinking at least twice. Theres no way she could've known she was pregnant because it'd be super early (math is our friend), and I doubt there are sensitive early pregnancy tests laying around the bunker... She so not pregnant. She’s a LIAR!

-Emma- HOLY SHIT! I felt for her a lil in the Suffragette episode and thought (as most of us did) that perhaps she was coming around.. but NOPE. She went full on murderous megalomaniac crazy!

#timeless #nbc timeless #lyatt #Wyatt logan #I had so many feelings #still have so many feelings #seriously tho we need at least 5 more seasons #save rufus

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jonsa-creatives · 8 years ago

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Prompt! Jon & Sansa have married for political reasons. After the war, Sansa starts to become frustrated with Jon bc he won't do the do with her even tho he'll hold her in his arms & cuddle, etc. So one night she confronts him & tells him she'll take a lover if he won't make their marriage true. Jon gets protective of her & growly & telling her she's his & only his and starts touching her & they make love in the dirtiest best way possible. Basically Dom!Jon restraining himself until he can't

Hi Anon!

I am liking all the dom!Jon prompts coming our way and I can’t say I’m not tempted! But well, here I am filling another dom!Jon prompt we all love so much LOL so I hope you like this one Anon!

Unbeta’d so pardon the mistakes and typos if any!

Rated E for explicit.

Mood music inspired by Bad Things by Machine Gun Kelly ft Camila Cabello

~ Mod Elle

My Undoing

The wedding was all a blur as Sansa was in a daze for the most part. There wasn’t even a kiss between the both of them as Jon cloaked her with his white as snow fur cloak, one that he had commissioned for their nuptials. Next thing she knew, they were both seated side by side, watching their guests eat and drink merrily as the food and wine kept coming.

Sansa could only manage a few bites and took a few sips of the wine that was so generously gifted by King Tyrion from Kings Landing. She liked how it tasted and she understood why kings and queens drank so much. Perhaps a little more would numb her to what was coming next.

As if they read her mind, loud chants of ‘bedding!’ rose within the halls and had reached a level so deafening that Sansa wanted to run away and hide. Her tears flowed freely and Sansa wiped them away hastily, hoping no one noticed.

“No. There will be no bedding ceremony, my lords. Thank you for joining us and we hoped that you enjoyed the food and wine. Now, if you don’t mind, I think Lady Stark would like to retire for the night. I am sure she is tired,” Jon spoke and addressed for the loud chanting to stop. Sansa was relieved and smiled at her new husband as he held out his hand to her. He had become a stranger to her now, after his return from the war. Battle weary, scarred and no longer a bastard, this Jon was very much a stranger to her. He even spoke differently now. Sansa wasn’t quite sure she was entirely comfortable with it.

“Thank you. I was getting quite tired. I suppose I will see you.. soon?” Sansa thanked him as she stood up to leave. Jon nodded and turned his attention to the lords who were getting increasingly rowdy. Perhaps it was time for all to retire for the night. Jon had barely any energy nor the patience to spare in dealing with drunken lords eager to paw at his new bride.

Sansa settled in underneath the furs and clutched tightly at the waist of her smallclothes. She was a bundle of nerves as memories of her previous wedding night with Ramsay flashed in her mind.

No, Jon would never do that. He isn’t Ramsay.

The doors creaked opened and Sansa sat up, ready to greet Jon when he entered, smoothing her hair to make sure every strand was in place. she may look every bit a wife but she could not deny she still wasn’t ready for it. To be bedded by her cousin, now turned husband. The new Lord of Winterfell.

It was a marriage alliance suggested by Tyrion when news of Rhaegar and Lyanna’s secret marriage was made public throughout the seven kingdoms and how the baby boy that was born out of that marriage came down to Jon. He wasn’t a bastard after all.

Despite his new status, Jon had refused to rule as a Targaryen, constantly reminding Tyrion that he would always be a Northener, inside and out. Though the Northern lords weren’t too happy to receive him as such. The only way to appease them was a promise. A promise that they will no longer be subjected to Southern subjugation.

“There is a way.”

“And what would that be? The North would never have me near their kingdom,” Jon sighed as he sat with Tyrion and his small council. How he yearned to return home. Life in the South was not suited for him.

“The North won’t revolt if you were tied to house Stark. If Sansa was that link,” Tyrion suggested as he took a big gulp of wine from his half filled goblet. Jon stared at him and turned to Varys, who nodded in approval.

“Sansa? She will never have me! We were siblings-”

“Ah yes, but now you’re not are you? You weren’t even close, last I heard when Sansa once talked about her family while she was here at Kings Landing,” Tyrion continued as he pointed to Jon as if making a point.

“Well, cousin marriages are accepted and very common, my Lord. It would take some getting used to-”

“I can’t do that with Sansa! I can’t do it to her! After all she has been through, I just can’t,” Jon shook his head in adamant refusal.

“Well then, in that case, prepare for another civil war. After what D@enarys had accomplished since the Battle of the Dark Winter, they seek reparations for all that damage, all that hurt. My Lord. It is your choice, still. Marry Sansa or fight another useless senseless war. And this time, whose side will you be on?” Varys spoke and Jon winced as the truth of his words stung him. He was right.

“Send a raven. I’ll return to Winterfell in a fortnight.”

Tyrion smiled as he held up his goblet to Jon. “Send me an invitation, Jon Snow. Or is it Jon Targaryen?”

Jon smiled as he entered and saw an attentive Sansa sitting on their marital bed. She looked exquisite and every bit a princess, with her long copper locks falling softly down her shoulders and her silky robe that covered the smallclothes he was expected to tear off her. Jon turned away as he removed his cloak and doublet, undressing for bed. Tonight was going give him little rest and sleep, even though he was exhausted enough from earlier that day.

“Jon.. I could.. If you wanted to..” Sansa softly spoke, fingers in her hair twisting her locks nervously. It made her look even more beautiful than she already was. There was something about a shy and sweet Sansa that made his loins stir. Jon couldn’t deny that it wasn’t the first time he felt that way about Sansa. He had always felt that way about her, ever since they reunited at Castle Black years ago. Jon had those feelings deeply suppressed, in light of how inappropriate and forbidden it was, feeling that way about his half sister. Now, there was no reason for him to feel any inhibition - she was his to take. Perhaps, those feelings weren’t suppressed after all.

“No, Sansa. I won’t do that to you. Not tonight, not ever. Not unless you want me to. Whenever you’re ready.”

A deep sigh that came from her indicated her relief and Jon’s heart sank a little. But perhaps it could work, nobody needed to know and the North would remain peaceful and faithful to Lady Sansa. No civil war looming on the horizon. That was perhaps, enough for this marriage between them.

The days had come and gone and it was almost the last few months of winter, as Sansa and him maintained a calm yet playful friendship. He had grown to love her, as a wife, much to his dismay and the nights became more and more agonizing to him as he yearned so much to touch her, as a husband would. There was nothing to stop him, with Sansa only inches away, her shapely form laying next to him on the bed they shared for almost a year now. Tonight was just going to be another night he would take himself in his own hand, dreaming of Sansa bouncing on his hard cock, moaning his name.

“Jon?”

“Yes, Sansa?”

“It’s been a year that we’re married. Do you think the other lords are wondering why we don’t have heirs yet?” Sansa asked innocently as she sat at her vanity and brushed her hair. It was hypnotic to watch her, how he wished he could run his fingers through her soft red hair.

“Is that what you worry about often? That the lords think about how often we bed?” Jon smiled as he wiped a warm wet washcloth over his face and chest.

“No but if I were them, I would wonder, I suppose. Someone once told me that bedding was all that men ever think about,” Sansa giggled as she turned to Jon. They were no longer shy around each other, whether half naked or in their smallclothes. It was good progress, as Jon took notice.

“Is that what you assume I think about?”

“Well, don’t you? Especially now that you’re not getting… anything from me.”

Jon placed his washcloth down and walked towards Sansa. He knelt down and looked into her pale blue eyes that he often lost himself in.

“Sansa, listen to me. What we have, is enough. I don’t think of taking you like any common man would. I know… what he did to you and I do not want you to be reminded of that in anyway. No matter how long it takes, how you feel about me, I will never force you to do anything you don’t wish to.”

Sansa stopped brushing her hair and looked down. She wasn’t about to shed any tears, not anymore, for what Ramsay did to her. She was damaged and did not feel in any way a proper high born wife should be.

“Perhaps, you could find someone to do it on my behalf.. since you can’t even bear to touch me..”

Jon stood up and stared at Sansa, his ears burning at what he had just heard. Sansa watched him and as their eyes met, Jon suddenly felt overcome with a burning desire to sweep her in his arms and kiss her till dawn broke.

“Sansa, why would you say that? Do you want me to bed another?”

“Perhaps, since we don’t even touch each other. I know it’s hard for you to-”

“Is that what you want? Do you also wish to bed another man other than me?”

Sansa’s hand flew to her mouth when she realised how the conversation had angered him.”No, Jon! I would never-”

“Then stop saying such things. It won’t happen, it will never. You are my wife. You are mine as I am yours.”

Sansa looked up at him with her eyes shiny with tears. “Am I? Are you mine, truly?”

“Aye, I am.” Jon nodded as both their eyes locked onto each other’s once more. The familiar stirring deep within his loins greeted him again, this time more forceful and he felt himself growing hard. There was no denying how much he wanted to take her, to mark her as his. And his only. Jon’s gaze drifted to her soft pink lips and it took him every ounce of restraint, not to grab her by the hair and kiss her, as he watched her tongue flick across her lower lip. Sansa broke their eye contact and looked down, albeit briefly as she shyly returned his gaze.

“Show me, Jon. I want to know.”

It only took him a second before he pressed his lips against hers and parted them in a desperate search for her tongue. She tasted of berries and lemon and it only made her more delicious. His tongue brushed against her teeth as it tangled in a frantic dance with hers. Gods, how he loved kissing Sansa. It was better than he had imagined.

Jon opened his eyes as Sansa pulled away from him. She giggled at what had transpired between them and Jon could only smile back. He was desperate to have her on his mouth again.

“Will you have me then, my Lady?”

Sansa’s nod was all he needed to sweep her into his arms and throwing her on the bed. Sansa gasped but continued her girlish giggles at how peculiar he was behaving as a husband. Surely, no husband would act like this, like a ravenous animal in heat. Sansa was only half right, if she knew how hungry Jon was for her.

“Take this off,” Jon ordered as he tugged at the chemise she had on. It was thin and almost sheer but the way it clung to her curves was teasing him a little too much. Sansa nodded shyly as she meekly wriggled out of it. But it took too long for Jon and he wasn’t sure what came over him, as he pulled and ripped the fabric into two. Bare breasts with light pink teats greeted him and Jon devoured them, biting into her flesh as Sansa threw her head back at the new found pleasurable sensation.

“Uhh.. Jon..” her moaning his name was all he had ever dreamt about the past year they had been married. As Jon’s teeth scraped against her soft bare skin, Sansa writhed as he made her way down between her thighs. His hands roamed all over until they settled firmly on the curve of her buttocks, kneading the firm yet soft flesh as his pinky teasingly brushed against her puckered hole. A deep gasp from Sansa told him, this was all new to her and it made his heart swell knowing he was still her first in a way.

“Jon.. no.. what are you doing..”

“Shh.. I promise you will feel good, Sansa. I only want to make you feel good. Will you let me? I will never hurt you, I promise.”

Jon smiled as he watched Sansa who was watching him, kissing her belly and the inside of her thighs and as he reached her sex, Jon stared straight into her eyes as he clamped his hungry mouth over her folds. Sansa jumped and shut her eyes, overcome with the fire of lust that had taken over her body, giving Jon full control to do whatever he wanted. It made him even harder than he thought possible, at how sweet and delicious she tasted.

Jon hummed against her warm wet flesh as he sucked and nibbled on her luscious folds. Sansa cried out in ecstasy as his tongue snaked in, darting in and out of her inner walls, teasing her into yielding to him completely.

The pressure that grew from deep within her only grew the more Jon licked and sucked at her flesh. Her peak reached higher and higher as she clawed at his curls and it wasn’t until he pressed the flat of his tongue against her small nub that something exploded within her. It was mind-blowing and never in her life she dreamt of feeling that in her, ever.

“Ahhh! Jon.. oh gods! Jon!”

Sansa panted as she came down from her climax, her first one. Jon peppered her body with kisses as he crept up on top of her. For the first time, Sansa was in love - as she looked into the grey eyes that hungered for her, the lips that uttered her name so lovingly. She was his, completely - mind, body and soul.

“I will make you mine, Sansa. I will mark you so everyone can see how much you belong to me.”

Sansa nodded as Jon kissed her neck and winced as he nibbled hard on her skin. “Spread your legs open for me, sweet girl. I need you.”

She couldn’t see it but she certainly felt the stiffness that poked at her entrance. It felt large enough for Sansa to be nervous at its intrusion but she was well prepared, judging from how wet and slick she had become. Her body was ready and willing. Jon paused and turned his attention to Sansa, watching her reaction as he readied himself to enter.

“Sansa, you’re mine. Always remember that,” Jon whispered as his painfully hard cock pierced through her wet folds and found himself wrapped tightly within her inner walls. Sansa and Jon groaned in unison as both of them savoured the spine tingling sensation. Sansa felt full yet hungry for him and she never knew how bedding could feel this way. Sansa moaned wantonly as Jon started to move, rocking his cock in and out of her. It took all he had in him not to spill in her too soon but the way she moaned his name and how intoxicating her scent was, Jon found himself thrusting deep and hard into her, in chasing after his own peak.

“Ohhh! Jon… uhhh..I’m yours… always..”

Jon’s hand grasped her neck and pressed down gently, as he whispered into her ears. “I won’t let any man touch you, let alone look at you… You’re mine, Sansa. Mine.. mine.”

Sansa held onto his hand on her neck and shut her eyes as her peak washed over her once more, this time deeper and lasting longer than just a few seconds. Sansa’s body went limp as she felt as if she had died and went to heaven. It was almost like a little death as Jon’s cock pistoned in and out of her, pushing faster and deeper at every jab. “I love you, Jon..”

The three words that Sansa softly whispered into his ears were all that caused him to come undone. Jon howled as he finally let go and spilled into her hungry quim, as rope after rope of his seed shot deep in her, mingling with her juices. Sansa moaned along with him as she felt the warm fluid pool deep inside her inner walls. Jon heaved and panted for air as he stayed on top of Sansa, too weak to move. He had given her his all, if only she knew how weak she would make him.

She was his soft spot, his one weakness. He had no real fear and he had seen the worst and faced the worst in his life. He had scars and healed broken bones to prove it. That was, until now. If he had only one thing to be afraid of, Sansa would be it. She would be his undoing, that much he knew.

“I love you, Sansa. Always.”

Okay, okay I know this wasn’t very dom!Jon but I got carried away! Sorry Anon, Jon can’t quite help himself in turning into a soft romantic when it comes to his precious Sansa! I hope you still like it lol..

Thanks for the prompt!

#jonsa #jon x sansa #smut fic #anon prompts #dom jon x sub sansa #a little bit #jonsa fic

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butterflies-dragons · 5 years ago

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oh j0nryas know about balticon report, they just think he was being coy (asdjkahs same delusion with s/ns/ns), that he was rambling bc he was trying not to give spoilers. at this point he could go on live and say "no dumbasses there is no j0nrya, there won't be, there never was" (same w pedoships) and they will all be like "omg it is definitely happening in twow, look at how he's trying to divert our attentions, we are onto you george hehehe"

OK let’s review, again, chronologically, all the times that GRRM was being coy and trying to divert his readers’ attention regarding the ships you mentioned:

The “It could be very different things to each of those involved” Alternative: “Mind you!”

JUNE 24, 1999 THE HOUND AND SANSA

Moreta12: I understand, I’ve heard your opinion on that. In ACOK, it seems that the relationship between the Hound and Sansa had romantic undertones. Is that true?

GeoRR: Well, read the book and decide for yourself.

Moreta12: I’ve read the book and I’ve debated those particular scenes with a few others. Half say that it’s romantic and half say it’s platonic. I’ve taken the romantic stance.

GeoRR: It could be very different things to each of those involved, mind you

Moreta12:Yes, but it seem like evidence points towards romantic undertones. Will the Hound appear later?

GeoRR: Yes, the Hound will be in STORM OF SWORDS. In fact, I just finished writing a big scene with him.

[Source]

The “Why are you asking me about Sansa’s sexuality?” Alternative 1: “Are you really asking me when your fave male adult character can fuck a girl, 15 years younger than him, without guilt?” Alternative 2: “Why are you so gross?”

OCTOBER 05, 1999 AGE OF SEXUAL RELATIONS IN WESTEROS

The nature of the relationship between Sandor and Sansa has been a hot topic on Revanshe's board. Sansa's youth has been one focus of the discussion. What is the general Westerosi view as to romantic or sexual relationships involving a girl of Sansa's age and level of physical maturity?

A boy is Westeros is considered to be a "man grown" at sixteen years. The same is true for girls. Sixteen is the age of legal majority, as twenty-one is for us. However, for girls, the first flowering is also very significant... and in older traditions, a girl who has flowered is a woman, fit for both wedding and bedding. A girl who has flowered, but not yet attained her sixteenth name day, is in a somewhat ambigious position: part child, part woman. A "maid," in other words. Fertile but innocent, beloved of the singers. In the "general Westerosi view," well, girls may well be wed before their first flowerings, for political reasons, but it would considered perverse to bed them. And such early weddings, even without sex, remain rare. Generally weddings are postponed until the bride has passed from girlhood to maidenhood. Maidens may be wedded and bedded... however, even there, many husbands will wait until the bride is fifteen or sixteen before sleeping with them. Very young mothers tend to have significantly higher rates of death in childbirth, which the maesters will have noted. As in the real Middle Ages, highborn girls tend to flower significantly earlier than those of lower birth. Probably a matter of nutrition. As a result, they also tend to marry earlier, and to bear children earlier. There are plenty of exceptions.

[Source]

The “Unreliable narrator - Part 1” Alternative: “The much more important lapse in memory that was promised”

JUNE 26, 2001 SF, TARGARYENS, VALYRIA, SANSA, MARTELLS, AND MORE

[GRRM is asked about Sansa misremembering the name of Joffrey’s sword.]

[Source]

The “Unreliable narrator - Part 2” Alternative: “It doesn’t mean what you think it means”

OCTOBER 05, 2002 SANSA’S MEMORY

[Note: This mail has been edited for brevity.]

Well, not every inconsistency is a mistake, actually. Some are quite intentional. File this one under “unreliable narrator” and feel free to ponder its meaning

[Source]

The “Unreliable narrator - Part 3” Alternative: “Better ask yourself about Sansa’s psychological state”

NOVEMBER 27, 2007 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

[Source]

The “The answer is No” Alternative: NO!

APRIL 15, 2008 FUTURE MEETINGS, POVS, ARYA’S ROLE, EASTERN LANDS, AND ASSASSINS

[Will Sandor and Sansa meet?]

Why, the Hound is dead, and Sansa may be dead as well. There’s only Alayne Stone.

[Source]

The “He’s a lot more dangerous than he is romantic” Alternative: “BUT THERE IS SAM!”

AUG. 21ST, 2009 AS SER JORAH MORMONT… - NOT A BLOG

weltraummuell: The Hound And I know from discussions on other board other women feel just the same about Sandor. He’s an absolute favourite with the ladies!

halfbloodmalfoy: The Hound LOL, you’re such a man. To many of us women, dangerous *is* attractive.

GRRM: The Hound But no one has any love for poor old Sam Tarly, kind and smart and decent and devoted…

[Source]

The “That’s interesting...” Alternative: “They are deeply troubled individuals, Harriet”

22 JUNE 2012 SWORD & LASER VIDEO PODCAST

Veronica Belmont: I’m a big fan of the Hound, myself, actually.

Tom Merritt: Of Sandor? Really?

Tom Merritt: The TV show has sort of played with that a little, and probably stoked those fires.

GRRM: Oh, sure. And I’ve played with it in the books. There’s something there, but it’s still interesting to see how many people have responded to it.

[Source]

The “I guess I don’t understand women” Alternative: “I'm shook”

JUNE 23, 2015 GRRM Q&A AT THE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKSTORE IN STOCKHOLM

[Source]

The “Comfort level of femininity” Alternative: “That's not a reference for romance”

MAY 29, 2016 BALTICON REPORT

My con friend asked about the Jon/Arya relationship again and brought her (impressive) Game book that had all of her references marked out with little flags. She brought up the Ygritte connections to Arya that Jon saw in her. George did not directly answer yes or no if there would be anything romantic between the two.

George did say, despite what readers see as clues to a romantic relationship between Jon/Arya in the books themselves, he did not confirm this so easily but inferred that what Jon saw in Ygritte was a comfort level of femininity. <<< She and I obviously discussed these comments after the meeting and this was the general feeling.

My con friend was referring to George explaining Jon’s perception: GRRM replied, “You know, I don’t think it’s a reference for that [for romance]. It’s a reference to a certain physical type, and a certain indication of what Jon finds admirable. It’s like someone who reminds you of, you know… Other people might be put off by this, you know, hair that looks like small rodents have been living in there. It doesn’t put him off because he is used to that.”

The “I was making up shit.” Alternative: "I wish I can delete that"

MAY 29, 2016 BALTICON REPORT

After the Coffee Talk just outside the room:

My Con Friend asked about Arya and Jon again. This time GRRM gave some very pointed replies:

GRRM finished (in the hallway now) by saying that he “wished some past things weren’t such strong foreshadowing,” and that he, “wished some new things had stronger foreshadowing then.”

Friend: Ok, if you foreshadowed something in the first book, like, really cleverly hidden, would you then follow through on that hint? For sure?..

GRRM: “Well, this goes with what I said before, the story changes and expands as I write. I wish I was able to go back and make revised drafts, but that’s not going to happen.”

Here is a transcript of the outline discussion and Jon/Arya portion of the coffee talk:

[question about Jon/Arya]

GRRM: “Alright, you’ve thought about this more than I have. I mean it’s simple, Jon is very fond of Arya. They were the two odd birds in the Stark family nest, here. They didn’t quite fit in with the others, they look like each other, they both had the brown hair, you know, as opposed to the auburn hair of Sansa and Bran and Rickon and Robb. So there was always that closeness between them. And, you know, Arya didn’t mind that Jon was a bastard, and Jon didn’t mind that Arya was a tomboy, so there is that closeness there.”

[question about Jon comparing his lover to his sister]

GRRM: “If he did it, uhm… I began writing these books in 1991, and, uhm, I worked on it in 91 and then I got a tv play, so I put it aside to really work on ‘Doorways’ tv pilot and did a tv show in 92-93. In 94 I returned to it [the books] and worked on it. You know, up till then, in my career as a writer, I’d always written the entire book before I opted for sale. That’s unusual. Most writers do chapters and an outline. They write a few chapters, they outline the rest of the book, give that to the publisher and the publisher says ‘oh okay, I’ll take that’.

“As some of you may have noticed, those who have been paying very, very carefully attention, I’m not good with deadlines. And, uh, and I’m not good with outlines, either. I always hated outlines. So with Fevre Dream and with Armageddon Rag and with Dying of the Light and all my novels, I wrote the entire book. I didn’t do chapters and outline. I sat down, I wrote a whole book, and I sent it to my agent and said ‘Look, here’s a whole book, and it’s finished’. That way I ran into no deadline, it was finished before it even went on the market. And it worked well for me. And my initial thought was to do this the same way, but what happened, you know, was in 1994, uhm, when I returned to it and I’m working on it and I’m very enthused about it and I say ‘I really wanna write these Game of Thrones books as the next part’. But I was still in Hollywood and I’d just lost all this groundwork on ‘Doorways’, I was still in… The studios and networks still wanna work with me, so I’m getting other offers, like ‘We want you to write this movie’, ‘we want you to do another tv pilot’. And, you know, I took a couple of them and was ‘Oh god, I gotta have to put the book away again’. Cause I have no deadline [for the book]. You know, when you think Hollywood, they will give you a deadline, you know, they say ‘here, son, write this movie, we want it in three months’.

“So, I said ‘look, if I wanna get back to being a novelist, I’m gonna have to sell this even though it’s not finished’. So I had my 200 pages of Game of Thrones at that point, but they wanted outline. I said ‘I don’t do outlines. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, I figure it out as I go. And that’s how I always did it.’ No, we had to have an outline. So I wrote two pages, a two-page thing about what I thought would happen. It’ll be a trilogy, it’ll be three books, Game of Thrones, the Dance with Dragons, and Winds of Winter. Those were the three window titles. And, uh, it’ll be three books and this’ll happen, and this’ll happen, and this’ll happen. And I was making up shit.

“And I had thought that those two pages were long forgotten, because, of course, the books did sell. They sold in the United States and in Great Britain, both. They sold for enough money that I didn’t have to take any more Hollywood games. So I was able to say ‘no’ around. I had a few less [?] to wind up in in 94 and 95. Once I had, I said ‘no, I don’t want any more movies or tv shows, I’m going to write these books now’. And I started writing the books. And in the process, I pretty much disregarded the outline. The characters took me off in entirely different directions. So, for 20 years I had forgotten that that two-page thing even existed. And then someone in my British publisher, HarperCollins, they got a new office building, uh, brand new offices, and new conference rooms, big conference rooms that they decorated with books and stuff like that. And they named the conference rooms after the writers, so one of the conference rooms [?], and they put up these plastic display cases, including the outline. The two-page outline, yes. [?], they didn’t ask my permission, they just put it up. And in that two-page outline, Jon and Arya become a romantic item.”

“You know, I don’t think it’s a reference for that [for romance]. It’s a reference to a certain physical type, and a certain indication of what Jon finds admirable. It’s like someone who reminds you of, you know… Other people might be put off by this, you know, hair that looks like small rodents have been living in there. It doesn’t put him off because he is used to that.””

[someone says they have 5 minutes left]

“You know, I was pretty pissed that that outline got out there. It should not have happened. Outlines and letters like that are meant only for the eyes of the editor. They shouldn’t go on public display. And, uh, they also [?] my papers on [?], all my papers and correspondence. You know, I’ve been sending that stuff there for years, and it’d be, you know, available for future scholars or whatever, just like the papers of many other writers. Somehow, in the back of my head I was like ‘yeah, 20 years after I’m dead some scholar will go in and find them’. They’re going in right now!” ”

[question if he is still going with the 1991 ending]

“Yes, I mean, I did partly joke when I said I don’t know where I was going. I know the broad strokes, and I’ve known the broad strokes since 1991. I know who’s going to be on the Iron Throne. I know who’s gonna win some of the battles, I know the major characters, who’s gonna die and how they’re gonna die, and who’s gonna get married and all that. The major characters. Of course along the way I made up a lot of minor characters, you know, I, uhm…Did I know in 1991 how Bronn, what was gonna happen to Bronn? No, I didn’t even know there’d be a guy named Bronn. I was inventing him along the way when I was writing, ‘Okay, he gets kidnapped. Let’s see, there are a couple sellswords there, their names are Fred and Bronn’.

“It was actually Bronn and Chiggen, and then one of them dies, I flipped a coin ‘okay, who dies? Chiggen dies, cause his name is stupid. Bronn is a better name, so I’ll keep Bronn’. And then Bronn became quite an interesting character and plenty of these characters take on minds of their own. They push to the front till you [?] speech and you think of a cool line and you give it to Bronn because he’s trying to talk, and now Bronn is somebody who says something cool. [?]. That’s how characters grow on you. “So a lot of the minor characters I’m still discovering along the way. But the mains-”

[question if he knows Arya’s and Jon’s fates]

“Tyrion, Arya, Jon, Sansa, you know, all of the Stark kids, and the major Lannisters, yeah.”

This report appears in the following sources:

fattest leech of ice and fire blog [Source 1]

asoiaf.westeros.org [Source 2]

westeros.org [Source 3]

The “Unreliable narrator - Part 4” Alternative: “I think I had enough...”

DECEMBER 2016 ASKING GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ABOUT SAN/SAN

The night of the Blackwater, yes. Ahhh... Well, I'm not going to give you a straight answer on that hahaha... Uhmmm, but I would say that ahhh... you know a television show and a book each has its own strengths and weaknesses; there a re tools that are available to me as a novelist, that are not available to people doing a television show. And of course there are tools available to them, that are not available to a novelist, I mean they can lay in a soundtrack, they can do special effects, they can do amazing things that I can't do, I just have words on paper. What can I do, well I can use things like the internal narrative, I can take you inside of territories... thoughts, which you can't do in a TV show... Ahhh... You just have the words they speak, you see them from outside because the camera is external, while prose is internal, and I have the device known as "unreliable narrator"... Ahhh... Which again, they don't have. So, think about those two aspects when you consider that night of the Blackwater.

[Source]

Most of these questions make me think of Nabokov having to clarified, regarding Lolita, that he didn’t write a romance..........

So there’s that, everyone can draw their own conclusions. God knows that in this fandom: “We look up at the same stars, and see such different things.”

Thanks for your message.

#anon ask #grrm #jon and arya #sansa deserves better #the things i have to read...#poor george #poor nabokov

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