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Drawing || Timelapse || Environment Concept Art

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Aries: They tend to come off as 'masculine'. Assertive. Short tempered. Thinks they're everyone's boss.

Taurus: They are like still waters. Calm and steady. They don't really want to share their food with you, don't even try it.

Gemini: Quick witted. Natural storytellers. If they smile a lot, they probably hate you.

Cancer: Caring. Always worrying about you despite themselves. Probably should be on drugs.

Leo: Natural hosts. Treats everyone like they're best friends. Only do it because they know a king is nothing without their people.

Virgo: Analytical. Tend to be intellectually conceited. They'll offer to help you and then complain about it. If you do something about it, they'll complain even more.

Libra: Charm overload. Peacekeepers. Always on everyone's side. Gossip masters. Would self destruct rather than make a decision.

Scorpio: Quiet power. Hard to figure out. Fucks up shit for fun. They laugh at your distress and your inability to figure out they did it.

Sagittarius: The life of the party. Blunt honesty. Talks shit then forgets about it 0.5 seconds later. Not suitable for fragile egos. They have a fragile ego.

Capricorn: Stern. Probably your math teacher. Type of humor that you are always left wondering if you were the joke. Works harder than you could ever.

Aquarius: Weird and contradicting. Believes in conspiracy theories. Probably gets turned off if more than one person likes the same thing they do.

Pisces: Imaginative. Altruistic. Martyr complex. Spends 90% of the time daydreaming. Probably on drugs or at least look like it. Hobo chic. Probably crying right now.

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OH MY GOD

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Some book readers now claim that the show's ending means that Nissa Nissa (= Dany) will happen in ADOS. Do you agree with this?

This is one of those things that I wouldn’t put past GRRM but that I’m really struggling to accept because I do not see how it fits the narrative, the themes or the character arc. And I mean fit in the sense of falling in line with the core message of this series and what it says about sacrifice, rather than relying on the parallel to the story of Azor Ahai, or Martin’s unfortunate tendency to sacrifice women for men’s characterization. That is a reason to be worried which is why I can’t dismiss this theory, but I have to fall back on what this story has been trying to say and how it set Dany’s arc.

The internal logic of this theory might hold to an extent in the revitalization of circumstances of how Lightbringer was forged and in following the messianic motifs in Dany’s story which led to the speculation that she is dying to save humanity, but I think it all falls apart on a closer look. Because Dany is clearly being set up as Azor Ahai, not Nissa Nissa. She is the hero forging a weapon with the blood of a loved one which already happened when she hatched the dragons. She is the one “wielding” a mythical fiery weapon that can withstand the upcoming cold. She is prophesied. The fire is hers. Dany is the hero of the story, not the supporting character waiting to be sacrificed so that the main male character can get his big heroic moment. Nissa Nissa’s entire existence in the story was to be a blood sacrifice for Azor Ahai to temper his sword with. That’s not who Daenerys Targaryen is or what her story is about.

Also, the story of Azor Ahai is all about the cost of heroism. Being a hero requires sacrifices and as Stannis tells us, “sacrifice is never easy. Or it is no true sacrifice”. But this story is also very much about the nature of sacrifice and how it relates to the greater good. It’s there that Martin lays the bare bones of this specific dilemma: is it acceptable to sacrifice someone if it’s being done for the greater good? That’s the line of thinking that got Azor Ahai to sacrifice his wife for Lightbringer, and it’s what is going to doom Shireen. But I’ve argued that this line of thinking is inherently dehumanizing in that it reduces people to sacrificial lambs to be laid on the altar of the greater good. It disregards their humanity and takes the choice away from them. And it is our choices that define us. It is our choices that define our humanity. The central conflict of this series is about how supernatural creatures are trying to strip people from their humanity and take away all their choices including death itself. So I struggle to see how a story that tells us that sacrificing other people is not the answer through Stannis, through Mel and Bloodraven, through Rhaegar, can end on Jon killing Dany for the greater good, and in a way that reduces her death to means to an end so he could forge Lightbringer and save the world.

But there is a difference between being sacrificed and sacrificing oneself. I happen to think that Dany is going to sacrifice herself to save humanity, and from what I gather, many of those who adopt the theory that Dany will be Jon’s Nissa Nissa believe that it will be her choice, that she will ask Jon to kill her in the eleventh hour so they could defeat the Others which solves the problem of how being sacrificed doesn’t fit the story’s themes. It will be Dany’s choice and Jon will have her consent. Well, so did Azor Ahai as far as we know. He asked Nissa Nissa to bare her breast but she complied on her own, and the wording of how her cry of ecstasy left a crack across the moon (siiigh, GRRM) and her strength and courage went into the steel suggests a willing participant as well. That, however, does not erase the problematic of having a man kill his female lover for the greater good and so he could have a grand destiny, neither does it add anything to the thread about the nature of sacrifice and the narrative’s distinction between sacrificing others and self-sacrifice. So what is the point? What does this add to the narrative? The angst it gives to Jon’s story?

There is not a single thing this thoery accomplishes that can not be done better through Dany, idk, flying Drogon on a kamikaze mission into whatever lies behind the Curtain of Light. Dany understands self-sacrifice and has shown time and again her willingness to put others before herself. Her willingness to walk into the fire herself is probably the reason why she managed to hatch dragons when many others failed. But her self-sacrifice shouldn’t be for Jon’s own heroic ending. It should stand on its own. I’m allergic to the idea that the end of Dany’s arc as the Breaker of Chains and the Mother of Dragon lies in lending Jon a helping hand on his way to save the world. It’s such a disservice to her entire story to end on a note where her death happens to enable Jon’s big heroic moment.

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HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN AS ANAKIN SKYWALKER ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Part III (2022) dir. Deborah Chow

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The Book of Boba Fett | Chapter 7: In the Name of Honor

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““Because if this is gonna be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition – and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.” - Stephen Colbert”

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Captain Carter and Captain America parallels

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star wars: revenge of the sith soundtrack by john williams

inspired by this post

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Ming-Na Wen (voice of Mulan in the 1998 animated film version) makes a cameo in the live-action Mulan (2020) Bonus:

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He was a man with the soul of an angel, which he managed to save. No matter what.

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HIStory tour icons

credit on @virgomjj on twitter 

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