lya-dustin

[lya-dustin]

Sometimes I think the real betrayal wasn’t even D&D. It was the audience's reception. The part of the audience that followed Daenerys Targaryen’s story for years, the girl who was sold, the child who walked through fire, the woman who broke chains, crossed deserts, built cities from nothing, spoke to the forgotten, and still accepted seeing her turned into the mad queen, the threat, the final mistake of the story.

The truth is that Daenerys was always meant to be the central figure. Not one protagonist among many, not the love interest orbiting someone else’s arc, but the actual driving force of the story. That’s clear in the structure of the books, it’s written right there in the title, A Song of Ice and Fire. She is the fire, not as a symbol in the background, but as a living principle. She is the energy that refuses stasis, the fire that consumes dead systems so something new can be born. She wasn’t just a plotline, she was the temperature of the entire myth. Without her, there’s no ASOIAF.

But the way the show and a large part of the fandom responded to her story tells us something deeply, deeply unfortunate. We are still uncomfortable with women who possess power that isn't granted or allowed by someone else. Daenerys is Show!Sansa anthitesis. Daenerys wasn’t powerful because she belonged to someone, or because she was the daughter of a king, or the wife of a warlord. Daenerys’s power sprang from her will to conceive a radically different world and to act upon that vision. She aspired not merely to survive a broken world but to reforge it entirely.

That’s where the discomfort starts. Because the moment a woman says out loud that she wants to break the system instead of inheriting it, people flinch. That kind of ambition gets rebranded as madness. That kind of clarity becomes extremism. And that’s how she was rewritten, her character retconned to serve the comfort of viewers (readers too) who crave familiar patriarchal rhythms.

Men in that story destroyed cities and murdered innocents, and we called them calculated, burdened, tragic. Wherever Daenerys acts from fury and/or grief, it’s framed as a personal collapse. Even her victories are weighed with suspicion, as if her righteousness was always waiting to tip into tyranny.

And when the time came, they didn’t even let her fall through a real confrontation. She wasn’t undone by an equal, or even a villain. She was betrayed by the man who said he loved her, and silenced in the name of peace (by cowardly deceit to boot!) But peace for whom? For what world? For which vision of the future?

A lot of the audience and fandom accepted it. That’s what hurts. They said it made sense. They pointed to the signs. They said it was always going to happen. As if foreshadowing were a moral justification. As if showing the possibility of a fall means that the fall is deserved.

But myth does not compel us to follow predetermined breadcrumbs. We choose which myths to uphold, which voices to center, which futures to fight for. And in the end, the writers chose to extinguish the character who never lost faith in the possibility of renewal.

This is not only about feminism, although it is also that. It is about narrative imagination. Daenerys represented a kind of leadership that did not rest entirely on lineage or diplomacy or soft power, but on vision. She wasn’t flawless, she wasn’t always right, but she was real in a world that rewarded nothing but control. And instead of letting her challenge that world, they killed her to RESTORE it. Targaryen’s restoration suck y’all, except the feudal one approved by the Stark King. Now that we can get behind!!!! Long live the rightful Royal Family!!!!! Yay for progress…?

This isn’t just about representation. It’s about how narratives respond to disruption, to radical agency. Daenerys wasn’t a threat because she lost control. She was a threat because she challenged control itself. She questioned the structures, the cycles, the moral logic of the entire political world around her, and she stopped believing that playing by the old rules would lead to meaningful change.

What happened in the final season wasn’t a tragic arc unfolding. It was a political and symbolic containment of a character who had outgrown the ideological frame she was supposed to stay within.

Her death didn’t serve the story. It RESTORED the familiar order.

And the fact that so many viewers accepted it as “necessary” says more about our collective discomfort with revolutionary agency (especially when embodied by a woman) than it does about Daenerys as a character.

[lya-dustin]

watermarks on gifs are for attention seekers on twitter, not gif artists on Tumblr

......... we watermark our gifs...... so we know when they've been stolen.....

There's a lot of work that goes into gifs. As seen here. Sometimes they take hours to make. My Star Wars Day set took 4 days.

Just for good measure, this

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VILDAN ATASEVER AS HÜMAŞAH SULTAN

i have of sorrow so great wound that joy get i never none

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FREE MY ETHNIC GIRLIES FROM RHINOPLASTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOUR NOSE BUMP IN FINE LEAVE IT ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Nine ships to get to know me,

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Writing characters who don’t know they’re in love

(PS: but literally everyone else does and is so tired)

These characters aren’t clueless, no, they’re not walking around like, “love? never heard of her.” They know something’s going on, they just won’t admit it (not to themselves, not to anyone.) Maybe they’re scared of messing it up, or maybe they think the other person doesn’t feel the same. Maybe they’ve stuffed the feeling so deep even a NASA rover couldn’t dig it out.

Whatever the reason, they’re not avoiding the truth as much as they’re…rebranding it. Calling it “friendship” while giving each other their only jacket and dreaming about each other’s voices like it’s totally normal behavior.

ꕤ They don’t realize it’s love, but they notice everything else. They clock every mood shift, every absence, every little thing. They definitely  know when something’s off.

⇢ “You changed your hair.” ⇢ “You looked upset earlier.” ⇢ “You didn’t text me back and I panicked.” ⇢ “You weren’t at lunch and it felt weird.” ⇢ “Are you cold?” hands over jacket without a second thought

They don’t say “I love you,” but their actions scream it constantly.

ꕤ they get weird when someone else gets close They’re not jealous. No, how dare you think something like that… they’re just keeping an eye out. For safety... Or whatever."

⇢ “Who was that?” ⇢ “Oh, you’re hanging out with them again?” ⇢ “I just think it’s interesting how you never cancel on them.”

They don’t say it, but they hate the idea of being replaced. It stings more than they’re ready to admit.

ꕤ they make excuses to be around each other.

Literally inventing reasons to be in the same space.

⇢ “Wanna study together? I’m struggling with this topic.” (They’re not.) ⇢ “Oh, I was just in the area.” (They weren’t.) ⇢ “You forgot this.” (It’s a single pen.)

They’d rather lie badly than admit, “I just wanted to see you.”

ꕤ  Their friends are so over it Everyone around them is either rooting for them or trying not to scream.

⇢ “You’re in love with them.” ⇢ “That’s not friendship, and you know it.” ⇢ “You made them soup. FUCKING SOUP. Just say you’re married already.” ⇢ “If I have to hear you talk about them one more time, I’m charging rent.”

Friends are the Greek chorus of this situation, like, brutally honest and endlessly tired.

ꕤ  There’s always a moment they almost figure it out That one soft, unspoken beat where the truth almost breaks through.

⇢ Watching them laugh like it’s the first time. ⇢ Seeing them cry and wanting to fix it more than anything. ⇢ Realizing no one else makes them feel like this. ⇢ Thinking, God, they’re beautiful.

Then they blink, panic a little, and go, “Huh. Weird.” And move on. Like absolute fools.

ꕤ  When it finally hits, it’s not cute, it’s catastrophic. Suddenly everything makes sense and feels like too much.

⇢ Flashbacks. ⇢ Internal screaming. ⇢ “Oh no.” ⇢ “OH MY GOD.” ⇢ “Has it always been this obvious??” ⇢ “Wait. Everyone knew?!”

Yes. Everyone. The friends, the neighbor’s cat. You were the only two who didn’t get the memo...

[lya-dustin]

I was reading earlier today about how, in Scandinavian folklore, the nomenclature that's usually rendered as "ring" in modern English can variously refer to bracelets, armlets, or torcs as well as to finger rings. It's usually clear from context which is intended, though there are some legendary "rings" whose form is not specified in surviving accounts.

This ambiguity is, of course, not present in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings; though the work and its titular object are inspired by these sagas, the One Ring is clearly described as a finger ring. However, my brain has seized upon the finger-ring-or-bracelet ambiguity and spontaneously produced an anachronistic 1990s teen movie version of The Lord of the Rings in which the One "Ring" is a cursed slap bracelet.

[lya-dustin]

By the way, not every story needs to have a hidden message. Or a deep meaning. Or be a moral teaching. Or educate its audience.

Sometimes you just want to write something disturbing for the sake of disturbing.

[lya-dustin]

Once again thinking of Palantíri being a foot or wider in diameter. Once again considering the implications

[lya-dustin]

reblog to give writers the power to write 10k words of porn without plot

[lya-dustin]

CHEVALIER (2022)

dir. stephen williams

[lya-dustin]

I never understood people’s irrational hatred towards x reader fics?? If it’s personally not your thing, that’s completely fine and I get it. But to go out of your way to make others feel bad for consuming that type of work or even writing for it is just…like don’t you have anything better to do??? Your time is precious and limited, so really don’t you have anything better to do at all?????

[lya-dustin]

If it doesn’t impact the rest of the story, you didn’t raise the stakes

              I recently went back to a chapter at the midpoint of my novel and changed a huge detail of it because I thought it didn’t raise the stakes enough as it was. Because of this change, I had to go through every single scene and chapter beyond that point and edit it to fit in and make sense. It was annoying, but that’s how I knew I achieved what I wanted to.

              Raised stakes change everything about a story.

              If your characters can continue on as they were, then you didn’t really raise the stakes at all. This heightened pressure or danger has to be heightened enough that their lives as they know them are different now.

              Consider this: at the midpoint, you introduce a mutated form of a monster your characters have been facing that’s more deadly and intelligent than its predecessor. It’s a super scary scene, but after that, your characters go back to their safe house to talk over how best to kill it.

              Suddenly, this new monster doesn’t feel as much of a threat. It’s just another element of the same threat they’ve already been facing.

              To properly use this element as a way to raise the stakes, it should take away something the characters rely on—safety, allies, powers, etc. Something they can’t get back, and don’t get back for the rest of the story. They now have to adapt to new circumstances, and things will never be as easy for them again.

              So maybe instead, they flee to their safe house only to discover that it’s no longer safe—the monster is smart enough to get through their hidden entrance and corner them. Now they’re stuck out in the open, taking turns keeping watch and slowly deteriorating to sleeplessness and stress.

              That’s a delicious steak.

[lya-dustin]

"A society that separates its lore masters from its horny posters will have its headcanons written by prudes and its erotic fanfic by fools."

[lya-dustin]

I never understood the "oh, poor Rhaegar was in an arranged political marriage" like

So was Elia??? And she had to bear the worst of the deal, considering that both pregnancies nearly killed her and then she was killed (with the children she so dearly loved) because her husband couldn't keep it in his pants.

I find Rhaegar to be an interesting character, with the mystery surrounding him and what he wanted to do as king and whatever he read that made him go "I need to be good with a sword too", but he was not a victim of anything but himself.

Elia, Aegon&Rhaenys and Rhaella had it worse than anyone in the Red Keep and no one can convince me otherwise.

When people sigh over how tragic Rhaegar was, it’s usually a call for sympathy and emotional alignment. The howl of the alpha wolf calls the pack. They want others to join in on the melancholy, to feel the doomed romance. Bringing up Elia, though? That breaks the illusion. It reminds everyone that this tragedy had real victims, and that makes it harder to pretend it was just a love story. Elia is the hurdle they’ll never get over — a constant reminder that their so-called rebellion against arranged marriage didn’t challenge the system even a little. All it did was trample over the wife and children within that very system, under the grand banner of “defying tradition.”

It’s nothing more than another ordinary day in Westeros, where a powerful man keeps his wife and children in one hand, and his true love in the other. Strip away the tragic music and blue roses, and what’s left is just the same old story: privilege without accountability, desire without consequence. The ones who flip the table are rarely the ones who stay to clean up the mess. It’s usually the quiet, unremarkable people who end up picking up the pieces.

[lya-dustin]

we need 2 normalize characters who dgaf about romance

[lya-dustin]

The Florist

or the implied smut from the Florist ft: Erinti's pov

cw: sex, horniness, desk sex, some nipple play, grinding/dry humping, orgasm control, p in v sex

for @rivendellwatch TROP Spice Week

At some point in the café, the florist decided she wanted to do more than just sell him flowers.

She has had her share of flings, but rarely with high profile clients, especially blunt assholes like the man who makes no move whatsoever to stop her foot from trailing up and down his.

She wants him, despite how aggravating he had been at her office, she wants to fuck this man. The Florist blames it all on his appointment falling right when she’s started ovulating.

Valar, why did he have to prove he’s not the prick he was earlier?

“Do you always treat your clients this way?” he asks leaning close enough for her to know the attraction is mutual. Gil-galad is close enough for her to smell his coffee in his breath and despite her dislike for black coffee, the florist wants to taste it in his fucking mouth.

“Only the handsome ones.” The redhead answers lifting the pant leg enough to feel where his sock ends and his bare calf begins. She has no idea what’s possessed her to do this, but ,Valar, Erinti  hopes Gil-galad will rearrange her insides sooner rather than later.

“We still have to choose a theme for the gala, don’t we?” the dark haired CEO built like a brick shithouse asks with a lower tone looking at her lips just as she hasn’t stopped looking at his for the entirety of this impromptu date.

“Yeah, unless you’re fine with the one you’ve picked.” Erinti answers feeling giddy at the unspoken proposition to take this back to the privacy of her shop office.

“No, I’d rather take my time perusing your very extensive catalogue, if you don’t mind.” There is a way his Adam’s apple bobs slightly as he tries to contain his own arousal and then there’s the speed with which he pays their bill and return to her shop down the block. “Is your desk as strong as it looks, sweetheart?”

“It should be.” The redhead is walking on air, giggling when he steals a few hungry kisses on the walk back forgetting anyone could be watching and that her shop boasts of more employees besides herself.

Erinti tells the girls to have an early lunch and assumes they’ll close the shop having worked with her long enough to know this is a code for fucking someone in her office. And if they don’t, Erinti’s flushed face, Gil-galad’s proximity and them not bothering to even be discreet about it should be enough to tell them to flip the little sign.

“Give us a call when you’re done!” Nori shouts, ever the bolder one, as the sound of keys and the lock on the front door are heard amidst the giggles of Nessime and Gwilwileth shepherding the two new girls out of the place.

The office door is scarcely locked behind them when she throws her arms around him, stands on her tip toes ---while she is tall, he is much taller--- and kisses him with a desperation she should be embarrassed by.

But he kisses back, even more, Gil-galad pulls her closer to him as they stumble to the desk which is then cleared by blind hands resulting in a decorative vase with left over flowers from this morning’s bouquets smashing to pieces.

Gil-galad’s fine shirt has some of its buttons joining the broken porcelain on the floor, his expensive belt is hastily undone as her skirt is pushed up by large hands while the owner of said hands kisses each inch of skin exposed by the cleavage of her blouse.

Her bra joins the buttons and Erinti thanks her lucky stars she wore one sexy lingerie instead of what she wear when it’s just Elrond coming to pay the deposit. He’s not the first one here, and she doubts he’s kept his own swanky office out of his sex life going by how easily he decided the desk was the best place to fuck in here.

Erinti’s barely shouted a breathless response to Poppy’s inquiry over the broken vase and the noise as she pulls the man’s face back to hers and one-handed reaches between his legs to find him exactly as she wants him.

Hard and ready to completely erase his terrible first impression from her fucking mind.

“What about the décor for the party?” he asks knowing he’s getting what he had hoped to acquire with a condescending tone and a bribe.

“I’ll take care of it.” The florist answers with a moan breaking off the coherence of her words when he takes her tit into his mouth and the other is teased by his free hand. She arches into him, threads her long fingers into his dark hair and lets herself be as vocally appreciative of his talents as she wishes too.

Her tits fit in his hands better than they have for her other lovers, he knows what he’s doing and she is definitely enjoying being on the receiving end of this. She could’ve climaxed just by him playing with her tits and the way he sucked her nipples, but Gil-galad knows he’s desperate to feel him inside her, to fuck her into next week.

The dark-haired man doesn’t remove the final barrier and instead uses the delicious friction of the soaked fabric of his tight designer underwear to make her come undone. He must know she lied when she said Elrond hadn’t picked a theme.

And now the man was punishing her by not letting her ride his magnificent cock.

Gil-galad was supposed to be here just to pay the deposit, but he’d pissed her off and the usual deal with Elrond was ignored to make him choose something from the portfolio made entirely of his company events, his birthday parties and Galadriel’s wedding and vow renewal.

“Tell me, did you set me up?” He asks kissing his way back up and pressing his still clothed dick against her wet slit, grinding against her until she’s so close and so desperate for his cock that she’ll answer with nothing but the whole truth.

She shakes her head to deny it, hoping he won’t stop humping her even if she never gets him to rail her until she sees the face of Iluvatar himself.

“Don’t lie to me!” he makes good on his threat as he slows down and keeps her still to stop her from seeking any relief.

He is much more in control of himself while she’s a desperate mess mewling and begging for him not to stop.

“Yes!” the redhead finally exclaims as the slow torturous pace drives her to insanity. “Oh, Valar, yes!”

Once he makes her repeat her words, makes her apologize and beg some more for his prick inside her, he finally gives her what she has wanted since he pulled her close to him under the umbrella.

The CEO fucks her relentlessly, makes her sees stars and doesn’t even stop him from going too hard on a desk that’s going to uneven from now on. She cries out his name like a lover, both take the Valar’s names in vain and as much as she wants to last as long as he seems to be doing, she just can’t.

“Don’t hold back, sweetheart. You wanted to cum, now cum.” He orders her, and her body obeys him as each thrust brings her closer and closer to a pleasure her toys this morning couldn’t seem to give her.

His demanding nature pairs good with fucking, he’s praising her for how good she feels around him, how naughty she was for tricking him and telling her how she’s going to take his cum like a good girl after he wrings out another orgasm out of her by the time he unravels on top of her.

They are spent and already knowing he’s getting her as a date for the party so long as he fucks her as hard if not harder on his bed than he did on her desk.

“So, would you like to come with me to the party? Got a fully stocked bar at my place where we can celebrate a job well done after.” Gil-galad asks as Erinti fixed up his tie.

“Only if you tell me what color you’ll be wearing.” She pulled him down by his tie and kissed him to seal the deal.

He, unlike her, couldn’t leave his workplace if he didn’t want it to fall apart in his absence, but they’ve exchanged numbers and agreed they will be continuing whatever this is with a real date and the dress she’s buying for the gala crumpled on his bedroom floor.