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really i think the red wedding is perhaps one of the best moments in modern literary history because its soooo much more than just that one scene ive said it once and ill say it again nothing in asoiaf is a complete and utter shock twist everything is foreshadowed like being woven into a great tapestry of everything that happens. the red wedding is foreshadowed so much you feel it looming over every narrative involved and i really do believe the cultural consciousness of the spoiler that it will happen improves the reading for the red wedding. you know that sickening feeling that everyone here involved is doomed and there's nothing youu can do to stop it. daenerys's vision of a king with a wolf head surrounded at a feast of the dead a whole book before it even takes place. the emphasizing of how you should never ever ever ever violate the laws of hospitality its a crime against the gods and catelyn continuing to push that they should eat first no more matter what. the legend of the rat cook and the gods anger over it. and then you realize not only is the red wedding a tragedy but it is just the beginning and a narrative device that will span every house involved and their downfalls. it is by design that tywin lannister plans it and he's dead by the end of the same book along with his grandson. oh red wedding you will always be famous i love you so dearly and i cannot wait to read the fabulous horror of the demise that lord walder frey will meet

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mother and daughter

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i should've mentioned it in that dragons can plant trees post, but magic in asoiaf is partly being recontextualised through both bran and dany, in bran's case, he's (at least temporarily) inheriting bloodraven's weirwood network which he historically used to run some version of a surveillance state when he was hand. but already bran's involvement with is thematically panning out differently, bran answering theon's anguished prayers to the heart tree in winterfell is saying: this is the new face of the old gods and if they had been cold and unforgiving before, that could change. "gods do not weep, do they?" thinks theon, but we know bran does, "if i cry, will the tree begin to weep?"—now i don't entirely understand where bran's arc is going but also don't think he's meant to fully reject whatever bloodraven and the children are offering to teach him, the way sansa needs to reject littlefinger's overall cynical philosophy but there is benefit to being exposed to the realities of the world, not that it had to happen in such a violent manner. the way arya has picked up valueable skills and knowledge at the house of black and white and eventually rejecting the faceless men does not mean forgetting all that.

similarly, dragons have been historical weapons of war and tools of conquest in the freehold, yes, but already they're, i.e. the last remnant of old valyria is helping dismantle the freehold's imperial and slaveholding legacy. it's a dragon eating its own tail! and what is dany's story if not a cycle of destruction and then after that, rebirth.

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In this light she could almost be a beauty, he thought. In this light she could almost be a knight.

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lady catelyn

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Night gathers, and now my watch begins.

Gift for @the-perfunctorily , NIGHT’S WATCH!

[brehacrgana]

hey netizens! i'm not sure how many people are aware, but youtube's been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can't be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate

BUT, if you're a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard to get rid of it!

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false) youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0) youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, []) youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)

reblog to help keep the internet less annoying and to tell corporations that try shit like this to go fuck themselves <3

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Good morning/day nerds, today’s Random Stray Star Wars Thought from me to you is: you know the whole “let’s save Palpatine from his self-kidnapping” mission in Revenge of the Sith? I’ve made the joke before that there were at least a few real moments where Sidious COULD have theoretically gotten himself killed if one or two things had gone slightly differently. And sure, the dude’s got good Force Vision or whateverthehell, but I don’t think we’re meant to think he KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that every single thing about his plan would work from the get-go or anything. Like, the Dark Side is strong, etc, but it obviously isn’t supposed to bestow perfectly accurate clairvoyance on its users. 

SO: given this, WHAT IF he’d died of something totally benign on that mission? Like, the ship tilts the wrong way while it’s breaking up, and he goes flying and breaks his neck? Or he somehow loses his grip while they’re dangling there in the elevator shaft while Obi-Wan’s busy gazing at Anakin’s ass? A stray chunk of the furniture from inside the ship crushes him while they’re escaping? Or even, hell: Dooku figures it out at the last second, murders him, and then gets mowed down himself by Team Handsome 5 minutes later? 

Just…something about this is CRACKING ME UP. Anakin is BEREFT when they get home, because sure, Dooku’s dead, BUT HIS FAVORITE OLD MAN DIED (and also he’s feeling Some Confused Ways because secretly Anakin suddenly feels a LOT less worried and full of dread and angst and fear???! Even though his beloved Uncle Palpatine is dead and it’s ALL HIS FAULT for not saving him???? WHY IS HE FEELING KIND OF…BETTER DESPITE THIS TRAGEDY; WHAT’S WRONG WITH HIM???) (Obi-Wan never especially liked the guy and is forced to be like “there there, Anakin, I know, it’s…a terrible loss, that we’re, uh, all very saddened by, of course” while quietly being like THANK THE FUCKING FORCE, that dude always creeped me out.)

Of course, if Dooku and Sidious both eat it on this mission, then…the Sith are defeated (unless you count Maul being out there with his off-brand Sithery, but let’s set that aside for the moment.) So the boys get home from this mission, and all of the Jedi Council, in an emergency debrief meeting, are like “…uh, does anyone else notice that the Force is completely clear now…? But Dooku’s the only bad guy who died??? I thought he wasn’t the main Sith, and there were two of them????? Anyways guess we’d better all get ready for the Poor Chancellor’s State Funeral, what a shame that he was kill– WAIT A MINUTE…” 

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Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

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POV characters: aSoS

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Tenderness

(via)

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me remembering that luke and rey didn’t even have a good relationship and we didn’t get to see them as a parental relationship or even as friends

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Apples can make red panda happy to be weighed.

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Daisy Ridley on The Great Stand Up To Cancer Bake Off