#might be slow at replying bc i'm still on hiatus

[nervocat]

Hey guys, so I'll be announcing smth rlly important here so pls read this. Just know I get personal on my end but I keep it relatively vague.

I've been feeling very very stressed all month and it's worsened a LOT for this week even tho it is only Tuesday. I'm slacking on my work, sleeping the day away, it's been kinda hard to just get up and do things and I just wanna try and get myself together again before I go down that dark hole again like 7th grade.

It's a very scary thought to me bc I've worked so hard to climb out of that said hole and I don't want to go back down it, if that analogy makes sense (analogies help me understand myself better for some reason).

I've also been feeling very lonely lately and for that reason I've kinda just been shutting myself away?? Online and irl too and while I'll probably be just here to read things, you guys can still send in asks just expect replies to be (possibly very) slow. Just need to get it out of my head that just bc mutuals don't acknowledge me or talk with me as much as they used to doesn't mean they hate me (I hope).

I could ramble on abt how much is going on with my mental health rn and for that very reason I'll be cutting myself off here. I'd honestly love if you guys still talked to me but just be aware, as said before, replies WILL probably be slow (sorry arii for leaving your ask from yesterday sitting in my inbox 😭😭).

I might (very slim chance) post works so I'm not saying this is a hiatus per se, just a needed break if that makes sense. I might be active on my other blog (@benefactordreams) bc that's where I can talk abt ocs and stuff but that's also a big big maybe. I like to write stuff for fun to cope :,))

But yeah, just putting this out there so you guys aren't worried abt my inactivity. Love you guys(/p) and I hope you're all well. I'll see you either in my inbox or when I come back fully

[cxldblxxded]

hi all, quick update post:

officially extending my semi-hiatus until december or so on account of me starting my final year of college ever (yikes) !! in theory i'll have more time this semester since once i get things straightened out i'm only registered for two official classes, but also i'm finishing the post-production part of my thesis so i might not have as much time as i think lol. we'll see !!

i'll still be here hanging out and doing replies n stuff, but i'm probably gonna be even slower than i was before. unless i mention otherwise i haven't dropped any threads or deleted any asks, if u think i've forgotten anything lmk bc i might've but also know that i have other stuff going on !!

also if u liked this starter call or this starter call i haven't forgotten about u i'm just slow lol.

thanks for ur patience xoxo

[glimmeringtwilight]

So i'm not going to do a follower celebration until I finish the halloween pieces for the month (I go on vacation tomorrow, planning to get the bulk of it done on vacation and then I'll post them all a handful of days apart) but gkdkdksk jesus 😭

I didn't even have time to do anything for 600 because 700 snuck up so quick GJDHFKS

I appreciate it sm though 😭 I can't promise anything on a big scale bc I thought I'd have more time for a cyoa type thing before 1k, but I'll try to keep doing polls at least as thanks and so you all get more input on what I work on next

[milkybonya]

Ahhh Milky I hope you're having a good last week! It's unfortunate you can't do more during your last week but I'm sure packing is very time consuming and saying good bye is so important! I hope your flight home goes smoothly too btw!! When I studied abroad I had a layover in turkey which took me in the wrong direction from getting back home so it ended up being like a 12 hour flight home when it could've been 8 😭 it wasn't very fun 😭 I'm sure it'll be really long coming home all the way from Korea. I hope you're able to sleep well or stay entertained~

I have exciting news! Or well it isn't that exciting but I've really started learning Korean now! I was doing it very casually earlier, but now I've installed the Korean keyboard and I'm trying to write little mini letters to Kingdom all in my own Korean! I used to solely use a translator even for short messages bc I couldn't spell or anything 😭 but I'm taking my duolingo more seriously and I'm actually making a lot of progress! I was able to tell Kingdom that I love them and introduce myself but I also did more complex things (at least imo LOL) like say their songs are cool~ I felt so proud of myself hehe one of the members who speaks English cheered my message where I told him I was going to write out a short message to him in Korean and then I did it and I'm just 🥰 Dann is our polyglot king so for him to cheer me on (literally) was so special. This might be a silly question, but what was your favorite word/phrase that you learned while in Korea??? Like it made you feel cool to know it or you were proud of yourself for learning it. I wanna feel cool too hehe 😎 Milky는 멋있습니다 😎

And now, comments on the smau 🤩 why is no one commenting on sunwoo's destroyed can??? 😭😭 It was just in there and everyone was like yep nothing to see here LOL but I mean it is fair that reader not liking rapunzel is a CRIME that's one of my favorites 😭😭😭 and like YES I'm biased bc she has a reptile but STILL I uwu over her and Flynn's romance so like.. I love it. Also reader calling Younghoon a hag LOL I love that they are Savage 🤩 also Eric is so funny like "I'm just covering my arms so you won't fall for me" ITS TRUE THO??? Eric is unofficially my bias wrecker with sunwoo (idk why I say unofficially like.. They always have my attention when watching mvs jfjdsj) and I WOULD fall in love with him don't test me 😭 I'm excited for changmin to come into things~ it'll be so cute, I know it!! And pls slow burn is the best 😭 I'm sooooo excited 🤩 you're going to make my heart yearn for love I just know it jdjsj

Oh and Im glad seeing treasure was so fun!! I'm sure it was heartbreaking to see only 10 of them up there :(( I'm just glad they were still glowing and full of energy for you 🥰 I hope your sunburn is doing better by the way!! I'm sure it is by now since it's been a while since you responded, but I hope it wasn't too painful for the first few days! I haven't gotten a sunburn in ages thankfully but all that does is attest to me never going outside LOL what songs did they perform?? Do you have any pictures?? I'd love to see them 🤩

Sending you lots of love!! Here's a Stalin pic for you hehe he crawled into my banana flavored candle (we call it the banandle) and did a "banana split" LOL he smelled like banana after I took him out lol he's so silly~ love you!

okay tumblr. pls dont delete my reply to my bestie's ask this time. there i'm manifesting that it won't be deleted >:O i was so mad it has taken me days to come back and reply T-T

but even though i was a bit busy packing during my last week, i still had a lot of fun and squeezed a few things in ! also,,,, the universe just aligned and i ended up getting accepted for kard's comeback showcase, which was 3 days before my flight,, and again by luck i was front row! kard are actually my ults and finally meeting them after 6 years and their 2 year hiatus meant to world to me T-T and then each member gave a polaroid away to someone in the crowd and i received Jseph's T--T so insane..

but layovers are confusing and the worst ㅎㅁㅎ that's why i feel so lucky we found a flight without one! so even if it was long and rough, we at least were not so confused <3

waHHH you're learning korean?! i'm so proud T-T learning a language takes a lot, especially when the country you live in doesn't speak it, and i'm especially touched that kingdom have become a motivation for you to learn this new language :")

ah! rather than learning any big cool phrases, i found learning smaller things like how to greet a restaurant owner or store worker goodbye cool. ah but!! i find it interesting that to ask if someone has eaten, you say have you eaten rice? (밥을 먹었어요?) rather than have you eaten food? (음식을 먹었어요?) because rice is such an important part of the korean diet that rice is the equivalent of food and vice versa :D

p.s. Kelsey 씨도 멋있어용~

omg the smau :(( i wanna say thank you for always commenting on it even though it's so messy and slow aH i appreciate you saying you like the slow though!! now that Changmin has finally been introduced officially, i wonder what you'll think :O

seeing treasure as 10 was so good definitely!!!! even though Mashidam were gone, the rest of them did so well <33 and you're so sweet ahh the sunburn healed quickly !

(i figured out why tumblr deleted my reply to your ask--the treasure festival photos didn't save to the ask properly and it ruined everything T-T so imma just direct message them to you hehe)

STALIN IS SO CUTE AND TINY IN THAT CANDLE I COULD CRY!! also omg i love banana scent/flavouring 🥺 so i just know i would live the banandle (i love the name) as much as Stalin hehe,,

i love you and Stalin so much and hope you have a good weekend!! ♡

[him-e]

Hi, I'm the anon who wrote the 5 asks about the Dany plotline and GRRM. I'd like to apologize to u for lashing out, it was uncalled for and u have every right to state those opinions regardless of what I (or anyone else) think. Feeling hurt by the show wrt Dany's story made me react badly to the idea that it was actually acceptable, especially coming from someone whose ideas I appreciate so much and have spent hours invested on. You can answer them, delete them, idk, I just wanted to say sorry.

No need to apologize, anon! I’m currently on semi-to-full hiatus and that’s why I’m being so slow at answering messages—and yeah, I understand the frustration completely, and I don’t blame you for it. ;))

I’m going to answer your ask anyway. Long reply after the cut:

I hope this doesn’t come off as offensive or confrontational bc that’s not the point, I’ve enjoyed reading your ASOIAF/GoT and TB metas for years and would not reply to them if I weren’t invested on them. That said, I’d like to ask why do you insist on 1) arguing that Dany’s dark turn was reasonable if you don’t hate her and 2) defending D&D and blaming GRRM for what happened on the show. When it comes to 1), sure, Dany might *accidentally* burn KL, but to willingly choose to burn thousands of innocents? She may accept that some casualties would have to occur, but not in the way that the show presented (in that she had the choice to not kill anyone but did). You argue that that direction was valid of because of the recurring theme of how power corrupts, but then I’d argue, what if it were Sansa, another character very much involved in the world of politics? Would you be ok if people argued that it’d make sense for her to give up her ideals and become just as power-hungry and cynic and bitter as Littlefinger? Probably not; what’s the point if those characters become their worst possible selves? Dany was made a villain, was implied to be mad and was called “your satanic majesty”. I really can’t see how you could call those writing decisions valid. When it comes to 2), I’m not saying GRRM is perfect, he’s been quite callous in the book series and especially in F&B when it comes to social issues, but D&D are also professional writers with critical thinking skills and moral values of their own who could have tried to alleviate the problems in the books and not made things even worse. That’s why I don’t get why you’re blaming GRRM for what D&D wrote when the former wasn’t even involved in the ending’s writing process aside from possibly giving them an outline of what happens. GRRM should be criticized for what he wrote and will write, and the finale may have feel been a product of his ideas, but he still has no (moral or legal) responsibility in helping to make the TV show better or worse.

The reason why I maintain that the show’s ending is a (badly written) version of GRRM’s ending is that I can 100% see Martin’s blueprint in the climax+anticlimax structure of the season. The way it twists the audience’s expectations and delves into what happens AFTER the final battle is won, the way it subverts the most reliable narrative conventions and, instead of building up in a crescendo towards a final spectacle where the heroes would sacrifice their lives to save the world in a blaze of glory, it shifts gears almost unpleasantly, slows down to show what happens to them once their heroic purpose is fulfilled and zooms in on their identity crisis, their depression and isolation and sudden lack of purpose… it’s all too deliberate, and IN MY PERSONAL OPINION it’s done with a vision in mind—something I don’t believe d&d would spontaneously put any effort in, especially not if GRRM had already served them a perfectly fine, crowd-pleasing endgame involving Dany’s heroic sacrifice against the Others.

I understand my stance might come across as “defending d&d and blaming GRRM”, but I’m really not? I’ve often repeated how I believe d&d messed things up and that GRRM’s version will make infinitely more sense and be infinitely better written, and I’m sure he will avoid the pitfalls of cynical, circular storytelling, because he’s ultimately a better writer and someone who believes in idealism and true heroism even as he deconstructs it. How can the overall narrative remain uplifting & give a message of hope and faith for humanity while still telling a story that ends with Dany’s descent into “true villainy” (but haven’t we repeated ad nauseam that heroes and villains are too reductive categories for asoiaf?), I don’t know, but it’s not my job to figure it out, and I ultimately trust & respect Martin’s vision and ability to tell the story HE wants.

sure, Dany might *accidentally* burn KL, but to willingly choose to burn thousands of innocents? She may accept that some casualties would have to occur, but not in the way that the show presented

1) I’ve always conceded that, while I think the gist of the storyline is Martin’s, there’s absolutely no guarantee that the battle of King’s Landing will go as we’ve seen in the show, or even happen at the same point of the story (for one thing, Young Griff & JonCon will probably be involved, and that seems more likely to happen before, and not after, the war for the dawn);

2) That said, what I’m relatively confident of, at this point, is that Dany will NOT die in the WftD as a self sacrificial hero (this is entirely FANON SPECULATION, and people treating it like a fixed point in the universe, something the narrative is “inevitably” building towards, is one of the reasons the fandom seems unable to critically analyze show!Dany’s evolution without going hysterical about it and resorting to no true scotsman arguments. I’ve often complained about the dangers of elevating fan theories to canon status, and trust me I never wanted to go full cassandra about this, but here we are). The details and plot points leading up to this might be wildly different from the show’s version, but I think Dany will survive the WftD, which will leave her directionless and purposeless and doubting the truth of her heroic destiny for the first time in her life after she hatched the dragons, and that she’ll cross the ultimate moral horizon in a hail mary to restore that sense of self, that sense of purpose, completing her parabola from princess in rags, to breaker of chains, to conqueror, to savior of humanity, to conqueror again, to TRAGIC HERO. How can this be a valid writing decision, you asked—well, why shouldn’t it? Is something only valid as long as it pleases the audience? What screams tragic hero more than the hero turning into the very thing she swore to eradicate, and realizing it only when it’s too late? There’s something genuinely chilly in Dany’s “if I look back, I’m lost” refrain. This is the mantra of someone who thinks the only way to stay alive is to cross one threshold after the other. So far this coping mechanism has brought her higher, and higher, and higher. But what if it will be her downfall? “I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell”, indeed;

3) Dany’s burning KL *accidentally* is like Stannis burning Shireen “but only if the circumstances are dire enough / the stakes are high enough”. No offense, but this is typical stan logic: you admit the possibility that your faves might go through a dark phase but you don’t want to have to unstan them, so you want them to do bad things for good reasons, or because there’s no other choice, or because “they didn’t know”. That’s understandable, but I don’t think Martin is the type of writer to give his character free passes or soften the blow of their moral crucibles like that. This is NOT to say that the show did Dany’s dark turn WELL, because it DIDN’T—her motivations were all over the place, the turning point (the bells) wasn’t believable because it lacked connection to her character arc, the narrative backed away from showing the attack from her pov which betrays the writers’ inability to make sense of this psychological downfall from HER perspective, etc. But to say “Dany will NEVER! BURN! INNOCENTS! ON PURPOSE!” sounds very, very premature to me.

(re: Sansa, hasn’t power corrupted her too, to an extent? Hasn’t she lied, schemed, manipulated, spilled secrets, in order to restore & secure the Stark hold on the North? Isn’t she queen, in part, because the rest of her family was scattered at the four corners of the known world? I’m not particularly happy with the way she was written this season, and I think some of her choices were questionable; but at the same time I reject the idea that a character ending up more flawed, or morally ambiguous, or less likeable than they were at the beginning must necessarily be bad storytelling)

I’m not saying GRRM is perfect, he’s been quite callous in the book series and especially in F&B when it comes to social issues, but D&D are also professional writers with critical thinking skills and moral values of their own who could have tried to alleviate the problems in the books and not made things even worse. That’s why I don’t get why you’re blaming GRRM for what D&D wrote when the former wasn’t even involved in the ending’s writing process aside from possibly giving them an outline of what happens. GRRM should be criticized for what he wrote and will write, and the finale may have feel been a product of his ideas, but he still has no (moral or legal) responsibility in helping to make the TV show better or worse.

Martin is not responsible of the show’s writing, but he is responsible of the outline he gave to the showrunners, and right now I have no reason to believe they didn’t follow it, at least for the most part. For years I’ve been told that “the show is not the books”, and while that’s certainly true, I can’t, and won’t, separate the show from the books when it comes to book speculation, because the show is still for all intents and purposes an ADAPTATION of the book series, and while it’s irresponsible to expect it to be a 1:1 transcription of what will happen in TWOW and ADOS, it’s also equally (imo) irresponsible to act like the two canons have nothing to do with each other and that it’s stupid to use the show as a resource for book speculation. If people want to pretend the show never happened, good for them, but that’s not the way I think, personally. I don’t blame GRRM for the show’s faults, and my reservations are actually 90% about the EXECUTION of the plot which is ENTIRELY on d&d, but there’s a 10% of my concerns that is about the IDEA in itself, regardless of context and execution—the idea of the story ending with a bittersweet anticlimax involving the death/downfall of the MOST PROMINENT FEMALE HERO OF THE SERIES, who is also the carrier of the most subversive anti-establishment political message in the story.

tldr: I’m not criticizing GRRM for what he hasn’t written yet, but I can certainly criticize him for what I think is a (however botched) adaptation of his outline, if the main selling points of said outline are questionable in themselves. No one can convince me that GRRM told d&d that Jon and Dany would die heroically to save the world and they ARBITRARILY decided to fuck it up for shock value or whatever, and just accidentally stumbled onto a more subversive and provocative ending than what Martin HIMSELF was planning. (that would make them two geniuses, even if the execution sucked, lol)

and if i’m wrong about it, well:

but until then…