#pointy end

[agentrouka-blog]

What do u make of the line ‘i want my bride back’ being repeated? jonr*yas seem to think its foreshadowing them

Well, they do like to think that being Jon's favorite sister is foreshadowing for a romance, so... obviously I don't see it that way.

To me, it both shows how scared he is for Arya and how GRRM is showcasing his decision-making process.

“He has Lightbringer. He talks of heads upon the walls of Winterfell. He knows about the spearwives and their number.” He knows about Mance Rayder. “No. There is truth in there.”

“I won’t say you’re wrong. What do you mean to do, crow?” Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. The Night’s Watch takes no part. He closed his fist and opened it again. What you propose is nothing less than treason. He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … “I think we had best change the plan,” Jon Snow said.

The quotes following Arya are the only ones that are taken from the letter, tying his line of thought back to the present. The fact that Ramsay knows about Mance's identity and the secret rescue plan is highly significant to Jon because it seems to prove the veracity of his claims, at least in part. And what Ramsay claims to have done is to lock up Mance in a cage and skinned and beheaded the six spear wives. He repeats twice that he wants his bride back, before making a list of all his other desired captives and threatening to eat Jon's heart.

Arya is - as far as Jon knows at this point - his only surviving sibling, his little baby sister, and his rescue plan failed and but she is reportedly on the run.

The sequence of "I skinned these women - and I really really really want my bride back" is ratcheting up the threat level, the repetition is giving the impression that it's ringing in Jon's ears while he comes to the decision he was battling in the beginning of that paragraph: whether to openly - treasonously - break the neutrality of the Watch or not.

And not surprisingly, Jon does the most Stark thing possible: try to rescue his little sister, the Watch, the wildlings and the North - by destroying Ramsay.

At the end of the chapter, the Watch bites back. And we get the personalized, grieving, Arya-related quote we didn't get in his memory slide show earlier.

“Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …

The pointy end quote shows up three times: when he learns of Arya's impending wedding before he chooses to try and save her. It shows up again while he is anxiously waiting for news from Mance.

And it shows up here.

In this moment he can't rescue Arya anymore, can't rescue anyone, because he's dying, by pointy end.

[hinamie]

harus

[the-bat-bros]

Damian, Jason just wanted a hug. He thought that his baby brother was hugging him. The poor man is so touched starved but this was SO funny

From: Robin #5 (2021)

[morganadismay]

moody little sir gwaine what will he do

[soonielo]

Yaoi so twink it turns to yuri

[drawishme]

flying frierens

[kelsochronicles]

There’s two extremes to my art 🤣

[srapsodia]

went to a figure drawing class with a live model for the first time in years! it was a great experience and im really excited to go again next week :>

[vitrificvitriol]

Late night sketch

Bonus Astrotrain, who is waiting very patiently outside for them to stop fucking around:

[lenle-g]

I wrote the sentence "All Scott can think of is that skinny kid with the scraped knees arriving home from summer spacecamp, his noodle arms full of freebies and one baby tooth missing from his megawatt grin." in a fic this morning anD

Jeff has this in his wallet

[vabam-fr]

more riot concept stuff!! this is just a concept sketch, but hopefully more to come :-)))

@ringleaderising obligatory piglet ping

[randomnameless]

Why do the FEH devs insist on ignoring Nabatean lore so much?

I recently had a surprisingly cordial discussion on redshit with someone about the "nabateans = colonisers" take, and one of the main points raised was that the game was purposedly foggy around Nabateans/Sothis/their story because it would obviously favor a certain narrative (and thus make another narrative look, uh, not that marketable anymore).

To be honest, we still ended up with a product that had a lead go "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and yet that lead is still marketable enough to have raunchy cipher cards and 5 FEH alts, so I actually wonder if, while pissing on that lore had that purpose, it was ultimately pointless since Supreme Leader can still sell goodies despite her incarnation in FE16.

And not only Supreme Leader - but the entirety of WC where we basically have 70% of the cast crying/complaining about their "mixed blood" or lack of and basically adding their 10 cents to the "this race and its blood is the reason why the world sucks".

I mean, can you imagine Sylvain selling any goodies and alts if Flayn replied to his "wah wah people only are kind to me and want to fuck me because I have Nabatean blood :(" by some uncharacteristic "good for you, I have to hide my ears, had to dye my hair, have to lie about my family because if the truth is found out about my identity, I will be hunted and vivisected like an animal and harvested for parts by people who call my kin abominations - just like what happens in the game where the same people who call my kin "abominations" ally with a classmate who calls me a creature and pretends I am incapable of human feelings based on my race".

FE Fodlan's main selling point is its cast of students, for various reasons, but even if I tried to kid myself, Nopes and FEH made it clears : students are the main selling point.

If you spare more time and attention to the Nabatean plot/lore, the students either grow from "likeable" to "despicable" or worse, you won't gaf about them because yeah sure, Hilda might be upset because people expect things from her due to her crust, but it would feel like a "peanut" compared to Seteth's irrational (granted, it's not so irrational since GW exists) fear that Flayn's newest friends would dissect her if they learnt she was a Nabatean, and being conflicted by finally letting her have human friends and form bonds she crave, or protect her due to the trauma from the genocide of their species.

Don't get me wrong, I love peanuts, I mean, not everyone can have a tragik of loaded backstory!

And yet, given how this verse's DNA is "can you fight against the red emperor who uwus about you", they had to add copious amounts of Earl Grey to their games so there's no clear-cut factions :

The "Your alien blood and its influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command" vs "I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

is turned to :

"Your alien blood Crests and its your church's influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command"

"I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

Sprinkle with the cast's hammering here and there that the "reforms" might be needed - but never develop on what they are - and add a few baseless and groundless takes as a toping (basically everything Claude says about tolerance and the general "isolationism/foreign policy" stuff) and you get FE Fodlan where the Red Emperor's war isn't seen as the catastrophe it is in the other entries from the series!

Now, for FEH...

FWIW, the F!F!Billy's trailer had them try to explain that Sothis was a bit pissed about her slaughtered/massacred children when Nopes never gave any reason about why she was pissed - maybe on Billy's behalf bcs Jerry's dead, but come on, she would indeed deserve the medal of the worst parent in the franchise if that was the case, since Billy can murder her daughter without Sothis taking over ! - but given that they cannot write/go against the source game those characters are from.

They tried a bit, with B!Supreme Leader and Hegemongard's FB, but then it stopped (because she had no "new unit" released since then lol) and I can understand why : Hegemongard came out before the Supreme Emblem, and Hegemongard hates dragons who are seen/perceived as gods by some of their human followers. Come FE17, and now Supreme Emblem accepts Alear because they are "one of the good ones". We can come up with HCs and details and talk about what are emblems or if Hegemongard's views were only hers at the end of AM all day long... But imo, Doylist wise, it still feels it's a retcon because the devs from the main games tried to scrap and remove the most "controversial" traits she had.

For the other characters... Well, you see what Marianne is in FEH (but even in her base games), she's one of the few characters who reacts - in a way - to the partial history about relics and demonic beasts and all... only to give sad uwus to Maurice.

FE16 (and Nopes) refused to have any "student" character react to the Nabatean lore/reveal, about what are relics and all. There are no lines, Claude shared some knowledge in the explore section of VW's last chapter, but we don't have anyone muse or think or even talk about what are relics, what are crests, and what kind of fuckery their ancestors or the ancient humans of Fodlan did.

With that in mind, FEH can't do much : either they write Marianne in a retcon-y way like what happened for Hegemongard (and they're not afraid to piss on characterisation, look at Lyon!), or they flanderise her "character" and develop her around 3 lines she had in the game in her paralogue, and continue to give sad uwus about Momo when he was at best a guy who slaughtered and murdered so much that he abused the Nabatean turned into a relic to the point where he turned in a demonic beast even if he had a matching crest, or at worst, had been part of Nemesis's piñata party in Zanado and was something of a genocider.

Tldr :

Why FE Fodlan never gaf about Nabateans : earl grey + the marketable cast has to stay marketable and you can't sell peanuts at the same price you'd sell swordfish

Why FEH dgaf about Nabatean lore : they can't afford to retcon characters + they have to sell peanut alts with the same seasoning they had in their base game.

For what it's worth though, I think FEH is more daring than the base game(s) given how they gave more lines and screentime to Rhea - through her different alts - than GW. And they even designed her Halloween!alt's lines to piss on some of Claude's assertions, while the various FB involving members of the church also - indirectly - reply to some accusations thrown their way in FE16 when, FE16, never gave them an opportunity or lines to explain that those takes were full of dung.

*"but random, maybe she doesn't know that the crests she often decries is "dragon blood"!"

It's highly debatable, especially given what she and Hubert throw to Billy in CF - but even if she doesn't, Doylist wise we still have a character who, knowingly or not, says "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and who is never called out on her prejudice. That's more of an issue regarding the general writing though, she has to be a red emperor and took pages from Ashnard's book, and yet, the player must still feel bad and want to romance her, so her mindest/goal cannot be looked at too closely, because, I guess, even the devs thought it would be difficult to romance her (thus sell goodies!) if more light was shed on the "blood from this race corrupts our people" schtick -> which in turn would also make characters whose backstory and gimmick rely on "crying about crests" be way less likeable, thus marketable and able to sell goodies.

[ennn]

3D Printing Rio's Death Crown - Attempt #1 FDM Print

[selkiewife]

I mean... if an undead zombie is coming to attack me and a sword happens to be at my feet, I am picking it up. If I am planning a war and there are a bunch of swords on the table... I'm picking one up. If I'm in an active war and I already ride a fucking dragon, I might also think, "Hey, why not have this crossbow as well because you know... there is literally a WAR happening." If someone cuts out my kid's eye and my husband has a dagger hanging from his belt, I'm grabbing that dagger and demanding revenge. If I'm in a crypt full of wights and my sister gave me a dragonglass dagger, even if I haven't been trained to use it, I am going to TRY. Like you don't have to be trained in the "masculine arts of warfare" to defend yourself or seek revenge or just like want to pick up a sword if they are literally right there. Granted many long swords are heavy as fuck, I get it. And yeah you need training to learn to wield weapons safely and responsibly. But like ANYONE would pick up a weapon and try to defend themselves if threatened. They wouldn't think, "Wait. Will this make me look too much like a girlboss? Or worse- A Mary SUE????"

[yutaan]

Touga and Saionji, two Very Good Friends

[r4pira]

The power

it suits you (I can taste it on you)

inspired by THIS amazing fic by @hazeism