branwendaughterofllyr

[branwendaughterofllyr]

seeing that Criston quote bit… lowkey one of the best parts of the season coming from someone who doesn’t give af about him (lost his appeal when he and Alicent went from intriguing chemistry but refusing to act to straight kinda boring FWB’s I got more from Gwayne with both of them than I ever got from Alicole)

real and correct

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"The child of a wolf, my lord, is still a wolf."

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Everyone say thank you to @tired-reader-writer

It’s Helaena time.

“It is by no means an absurdity to append to the silk-worm an account of the spider, a creature which is worthy of our especial admiration,” she read. “How steadily does it work with its claws, how beautifully rounded and how equal are the threads as it forms its web! With what wondrous art does it conceal the snares that lie in wait for its prey in its checkered nettings!” Helaena looked up from the scroll. “There is no link at the Citadel for the study of insects, but Maester Alekyne devoted fifty-eight years of his life to the study of bees. He wrote on other creatures too. Like the spider. I meant to make tribute to him, in tapestry. But then these came.”

With one hand, Helaena beckoned her uncle closer.

“These ones do not weave webs. They are jumping spiders from Sothryos.” In small boxes with thin delicate glass atop them lay half a dozen brilliantly colored creatures, no bigger than his thumb, each with tiny hairs in shades of bright turquoise, purple, orange and any other colour a Tyroshi would be pleased with. It put Aegon in mind of the displays put on by the peacocks of Highgarden.

“My grandsire had them sent to me. He meant well.” The girl picked one of the boxes up and held it cupped in her hands. “What right do I have to command such a creature’s death,” Heleana said, her eyebrows knitted together as she frowned. “Yet I would never see it otherwise. I will never go to Sothryos.”

I can be sweet talked into posting snippets of the next chapter bc I am simply dying to post

[branwendaughterofllyr]

I can be sweet talked into posting snippets of the next chapter bc I am simply dying to post

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I present to your attention Jeyne Royce, the first wife of Jon Arryn

(Although I don't particularly like the drawing, I plan to redraw it.)

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January Just One Word Book Photo Challenge

Day 28: Sub-Genre

Fairy tale retellings: my favorite fantasy sub-genre!

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I just posted about not putting important family lore in tumblr posts not the fic, but I pinky promise that this shit will be in the fic.

I’m having Baelon and Oldgon thoughts as I work on the next chapter. I do want to be clear that Baelon very did much love Oldgon. This is not a Tywin-Tyrion situation. But Oldgon does still largely view their relationship through the lens of a hurt child, and Baelon WAS a fairly emotionally distant father. And something I’ve been hinting at but haven’t really acknowledged yet is that Oldgon actually did admire his father a bit! Baelon was a very admired figure who performed his public role very well! He was Baelon the Brave! Loyal brother and loyal Hand! He was well liked and fairly popular. And while we know the adult Oldgon who is very comfortable in his own skin and who he is, that was not always the case! He got (very unfavorably) compared to Vaegon a lot as a kid, and never got into any form of swordsmanship or hunting or even into riding that much (that would be a later hobby). And Oldgon very much did feel like a disappointment to his father (was he actually? Eh. Kinda sorta not really.)

[branwendaughterofllyr]

I’m having Baelon and Oldgon thoughts as I work on the next chapter. I do want to be clear that Baelon very did much love Oldgon. This is not a Tywin-Tyrion situation. But Oldgon does still largely view their relationship through the lens of a hurt child, and Baelon WAS a fairly emotionally distant father. And something I’ve been hinting at but haven’t really acknowledged yet is that Oldgon actually did admire his father a bit! Baelon was a very admired figure who performed his public role very well! He was Baelon the Brave! Loyal brother and loyal Hand! He was well liked and fairly popular. And while we know the adult Oldgon who is very comfortable in his own skin and who he is, that was not always the case! He got (very unfavorably) compared to Vaegon a lot as a kid, and never got into any form of swordsmanship or hunting or even into riding that much (that would be a later hobby). And Oldgon very much did feel like a disappointment to his father (was he actually? Eh. Kinda sorta not really.)

[branwendaughterofllyr]

Joanna Lannister and Roanna Reyne commission

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How do you create or analyze characters? What do you think about when you first create an OC?

Hmmmm. I guess the first thing I think about is the primary relationships that would shape this person? Like, who raised them, parents, siblings, their closest friends, etc. And especially in Fanfic, I want to be sure that the character meshes well with the pre-existing story and setting.

I guess a lot of my OCs start out with “what if c person had a kid” or “what if so and so lived.” For my fics, there are a lot of canon OCs for me to jump off of, and I try to construct a realistic person out of the circumstances?

And there’s one big question I always keep in mind when writing OCs. What Is Wrong With Them (derogatory).

In all seriousness, I think keeping in mind what the flaws of a character are is really helpful. And I mean REAL flaws, flaws that inconvenience them or even frustrate the readers. I usually start with What Wrong With Them bc I find it helpful when considering the choices they make and also how other characters will react to them.

And the way I write, I almost always start off with a conversation, no dialogue tags, nothing, just pure conversation between two characters, bc for me the dynamics really shape who an OC is.

For Oldgon, he first existed as Alyssa’s father, and one of the first things I decided about him was that he was kind of stupid lol. In the sense that he can be willfully ignorant and not really that good at sensing malicious intent. For Alyssa I knew that I wanted her to have an unhealthy attachment to her father lol.

I’ve read a fair bit of OC-centric fic and I think one of the major pitfalls for OC writing is the lack of relationships for said OC, especially familial ones? Or the OC’s personality doesn’t fit with the family they belong to at all, or maybe all the family lore is only vagued in the fic itself but explained in posts on Tumblr where the average reader might never see it lol. (And on the other hand, you absolutely don’t want a massive lore dump either, which is another common issue).

And this isn’t to say that other approaches are wrong or anything! This is just where I usually start with! I loved fucked up family dynamics and how they shape characters, so I’m always asking myself “why,” when it comes to my OCs, when they make choices or when I want to assign traits to them.

What is wrong with them!

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This is the anon about your parent-child OCs, thanks for the reply!

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Baelon and Alyssa (especially Baelon, he’s a character I find just as thought-provoking as Rhaegar), and the way you described them makes me think the typical Targaryen-style family dynamics could definitely apply to them too.

But would that kind of absolute bond and affection really be good for them? Personally, I don’t think so. Especially not for Alyssa, a woman raised from birth to exist in Baelon’s shadow. Among all the women briefly mentioned in the histories, I think she’s portrayed in one of the most insulting ways.

She’s the “cool and spunky girl,” the guy’s first love and sidekick type. She even gets inducted into the Dead Ladies Club! Honestly, I think Daenerys, Alysanne’s first daughter whom she loved dearly, got a more vivid depiction than Alyssa did.

Would Baelon find this assessment too harsh? lol Based on your other replies, you don’t seem to be a huge fan of Baelon, and neither am I. I’m actually a massive fan of Viserra.

If I were better at English, I would’ve written an incredibly long fic about her, an AU where she lives and has a daughter (not with a Manderly, poor Theomore was already too old when Viserra died). In that AU, Baelon… well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be a fic written for his fans! I don’t think he would’ve treated an older Viserra or her daughter particularly well.

But maybe it would’ve been a good AU for Viserys. His court would definitely have needed older royals, at least Alicent would have. Maybe Viserra could’ve given Alicent the sense of stability that Oldgon once did… or maybe she would’ve just become another one of her Targaryen nightmares lol

The conclusion is: yes, Oldgon really did have quite the dramatic family. My condolences to his stomach.

I’ve had this ask sitting in my drafts for ages now, and it actually inspired me to go back and rewrite some Baelon stuff in the upcoming chapter of Poison lol.

It’s hard to get a read on some of the F&B characters bc they spend such little time on screen so to speak. There are a lot of valid interpretations that people can have, so my take is by no means gospel. I do think that Alyssa T and Baelon were groomed to be together.

Just as Baelon had once followed Aemon everywhere, Alyssa trailed after Baelon. “Like a puppy,” the Spring Prince complained.

Alyssa is looking up to her older sibling in a way that is explicitly compared to the way that Baelon looked up to Aemon, following him around and wanting to do the same things has him. Baelon is annoyed as older siblings often are, and this is all perfectly normal sibling behavior! And Alyssa’s early relationship with Baelon is also later compared to how Maegelle follows Alyssa around!

But it’s Alysanne who is the first to make it romantic.

There had been some thought, after the tragic death of Princess Daenerys, that Aemon should wed Princess Alyssa, the eldest of his remaining sisters, but Queen Alysanne firmly put the thought aside. “Alyssa is for Baelon,” she declared. “She has been following him around since she could walk. They are as close as you and I were at their age.”

Alysanne projects her own trauma bond with Jaehaerys onto her children, actively romanticizing her children’s normal sibling relationships. The dimensions of what they are meant to be is inherently changed by this. If they hadn’t been betrothed, would they still be in love? Or would their close bond be construed as romantic even without it bc it’s expected of Targaryens, and is clearly being actively held up as a good example in the reign of Alysanne and Jaehaerys. Idk. But the older set of the siblings from this generation are depicted as being particularly close and tight knit, and they also seem to be the most functional (really makes you wonder about the younger set).

And Alyssa is…. There’s not much to her, she’s a pretty generic cool girl as you said. At least with Baelon you get a sense of the tragedy of his life after he looses the two people he loved the most in short succession (Aemon and Alyssa) but Alyssa… idk.

I agree that there’s a bit more character wise to Viserra, since she seems to have slipped through the cracks of her family. She’s abusing alcohol at a young age and she doesn’t seem close to any of her siblings, and then her mother wants to marry her off to a literal GRANDFATHER in a very odd pairing that in my opinion is Alysanne once more projecting her own wishes on her daughters (Theomore was a friend of Alysanne, and there’s literally no reason why Viserra couldn’t have married one of his adult sons.) I can’t imagine Baelon and Viserra having a happy marriage either lol. And I also can’t imagine that Viserra would be especially nice to Alicent, since she seemed to have a strong sense of Targaryen superiority.

I’m now imagining Oldgon with step mother Viserra and I don’t think they’d be very happy with each other 😭😭😭

[branwendaughterofllyr]

Iford Manor Gardens, Iford, England by Steve Lannin

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I did this to help illustrate a point I'm making in a different post, but I feel it's relevant above and beyond that specific context.

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My average writing experience:

"Alright I think I'm almost done actually-"

*Google doc grows second health bar and a choir starts singing in latin*

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People love making Cassandra and Maris Mean Girls TM but I stand by my problematic queens. There’s something fishy going on here!!

maris fic????? im soo curious about it👀

Evidently the people want to know about Maris. So to be clear, I currently have no plans to post any Maris fic, it was just one of the ideas I was playing with before I ended up writing a poison tree. I don't think I even have the draft anymore, and all I can remember about it is the line "Maris was not the prettiest of her sisters. Which was fine, for she certainly was the cleverest." I believe it was an Aemond/Maris fic, with a focus on the Four Storms.

I actually think the Four Storms get a bad rap in the fandom, considering three out of four of them ended miserably, and we don't know what happened to the other one.

And there's a very telling detail, I think, that most people miss when it comes to Elenda Caron and her daughters.

Lady Elenda Baratheon, the widow of Storm’s End, also took a new husband that year. With Lord Borros dead and Royce an infant, Dornish incursions into the stormlands had grown more numerous, and the outlaws of the kingswood were proving troublesome. The widow felt the need of a man’s strong hand to keep the peace. She chose Ser Steffon Connington, second son of the Lord of Griffin’s Roost. Though twenty years younger than Lady Elenda, Connington had proved his valor during Lord Borros’s campaign against the Vulture King, and was said to be as fierce as he was handsome.

And I honestly think this hints at something darker about the way that Lady Elenda unloaded all of her daughters off, either as septas or wives, since her new husband would have been closer in age to her unmarried daughters. Maris joins the Silent Sisters for unknown reasons, and while it probably is just a rumor her tongue was cut out, considering that her sisters also ended pretty miserably and she was partially blamed for Aemond losing his temper and killing Luke, I am side-eyeing it.

And I also think that Cassandra gets a bad rap, as well, despite her being in pretty uncomfortable straits after the Dance. Casssandra is likely around twenty (based off of Floris' age) and unmarried, no longer the heir to Storm's End because of her new brother, has lost her chances to be princess and then queen, and now a large chunk of the eligible men have died during the recent Civil War. And I don't think she was the one who killed Jaehaera, and I think that all of the above issues made her a great target for possibly being framed in the matter of the poisoning. Or if she was actually involved, she was likely an easy mark for manipulation (and considering that Tessario was an Unwin Peake appointment.....). And her punishment being to get married off to an old man with a bunch of children, while her mother declares it will stop her plotting..... Idk, maybe you should have been more on top of things, Elenda!

And then we finally have Floris getting married off to a man old enough to be her grandfather at age 14/15, who had SEVEN sons from two prior marriages but still gets her pregnant almost immediately, leading to her dying in childbirth at only 16. I don't care how sad Thaddeus Rowan was anout his teen bride dying with his twentieth kid, you can't make me like him!!!!!!

The Four Storms are really canon OCs to me, so I'm more than a little disappointed how slept on they are, and I think Maris and Cassandra are the real standouts here.

[branwendaughterofllyr]

I REALLY love your Jeyne Strong! The way she’s scared of what’s coming feels really layered and real. Of course her family would be worried, how could they not be?

Thank you! Jeyne is probably my most controversial character, which is not surprising in hindsight but wow does she get a lot of hate lmao. One of the things I disliked about the show was the lack of……. How connected the lives of these people are. It’s insane to me that Aegon and Rhaenyra never talk on screen!!! These people all lived in the same castle for a decade and most of them barely know each other?

Jeyne is actually inspired a lot by Jane Boleyn, the Viscountess of Rochford, better known as Anne Boleyn’s sister-in-law and was also later Katherine Howard’s lady in waiting. She’s also inspired a lot of hate over the years, as it’s alleged that she conspired against her husband, George Boleyn, and Anne, and she did give evidence against them when she was interrogated. She survived that incident, but would be executed alongside Katherine Howard for helping that queen actually hide her affairs from Henry VIII. I found Julia Fox’s biography about Lady Rochford really interesting, and it inspired me to write a character that was caught up in the currents of intrigue and has to worry about her and her family all getting in VERY serious trouble. There’s always going to members of the court who get caught up in the fallout of big royal scandals even if they were Just There, and I wanted a character to deal with that.

And since we’re both here already, I’m going to keep talking about Jeyne lmao.

Jeyne has also been constructed to be very similar to Elinor in so many ways. Similar personalities (though I think Elinor has a much bigger sense of humor) and similar backstories. Both are eldest daughters who lost their mothers at roughly the same ages, and both have to deal with Family Scandal (though the Tyrells are much better at covering theirs up which is why The Tyrell Family Scandal hasn’t really appeared so far bc it’s pretty hush hush. Someone ask me about the Tyrells!) And I planned very early on for Oldgon to get a second chance at love, since I personally love second chance stories, and I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with loving another person after one relationship has ended, particularly in era where someone could drop dead of a papercut at a moment’s notice. A lot of people could have two or three marriages since mortality rates could be fairly high and step parents were a pretty normal phenomenon.

And in the next chapter, Jeyne kind of snaps a little when it comes to Harwin’s mess. She’s been an accomplice bc if Rhaenyra and Harwin get caught it could have major consequences, particularly for Harwin, since I think Viserys would do his best to shield Rhaenyra from any fallout, but she’s not happy! She’s very much not happy! The Strongs in my fic all have a very complicated relationship dynamic that Oldgon is not really privy to, particularly since he only really knows Lyonel in a professional capacity (where he’s very competent and respected) and doesn’t really see them all together. I didn’t particularly like the way the show handled the fire at Harrenhal, since I think Larys was the least likely suspect tbh, and the reasons just seemed to be for The Lulz. My Larys is obviously not a good guy (loves terrorizing children and torture!) but he’s a product of his family and Harrenhal, and I’m trying to give him some actual motivations going forward.

And Jeyne herself has been through several variations, her original relationship with Alyssa was MUCH more antagonistic (the story about Jeyne wanting to push her stepmother down the stairs is a holdover from when Alyssa tried to do that an earlier draft, which was in turn by Princess Diana ACTUALLY pushing her stepmother down the stairs. Lots of stairs here).

[branwendaughterofllyr]

there's something to be said about the fact that the most sympathetic view we get of Cersei throughout the books comes from Catelyn (and Ned to an extent). They're on opposing sides of a continental war, Cersei is partly responsible for Ned's death and is now holding Sansa (and Arya as far as Catelyn knows) hostage, and still, right before the battle between Renly and Stannis, when Catelyn goes to pray, she wonders if Cersei prays to the same gods she does. She just realized that Bran learning of Cersei's and Jaime's affair is the reason he fell, and still finds it in herself to think that Cersei is a mother too, that no matter if her children came from Robert of Jaime, she still carried them and birthed them and fed them. Her hate for Cersei cannot be understated, and yet, in that sept, the moment when Catelyn thinks to herself that even Cersei, with her proud and cold and lovely features, would weep for her children too does more to humanize Cersei than any single appearance she had in Tyrion's, Jaime's or Sansa's chapters.