#plus I hate monarchy ofc

[graveyarrdshift]

*slowly backing away bc i've read marxist literature once or twice* 😔

NOOOO DON'T GO PLS I LOVE YOU BESTIE PLS DON'T HATE ME 😭😭😭😭

[kiivg]

Do you have any additional Wardens, Hawkes, and Inquisitor OCs? Or are the ones seen on your blog the sole iterations

.Kind of? 🤔. Imean my characters are linked with specific events that happen so changing them out would affect what I consider to be my world state; like Goddard Trevelyan is present in the Battle of Denerim and saves Andrastopher Cousland’s life, which makes sense because Goddard is serving penance in the Fereldan army, hence why he’s there. Whereas I feel like an Adaar wouldn’t have a place there, (re: Sten being the only Qunari in Ferelden apparently??) I mean Lavellan could be there as an original member of the Dalish clan in DAO assuming you kept them alive (I didn’t haha) or Cadash could be a Legion of the Dead member who helped with the battle and then left the order to remain topside.

.But then with Goddard, Andrastopher asks Anora to give him a secret boon (in return for saving his life) which in turn allows Goddard to ask for his freedom to return home to rule his bannorn, and then eventually become Inquisitor. Ofc I could just say some random person saved Andrastopher and maybe Goddard simply went home after serving penance and lived happily with his wife and children, and then had to endure crippling sadness knowing his youngest son died at the hands of the Inquisition, and never knowing his bastard son either, and then descending into madness knowing he had failed his child and swore to avenge him by turning against the Inquisition and possibly the Chantry and in turn losing his faith and driving House Trevelyan into the ground 👹💣💥. Or he could not go home, suffer the same knowledge, and avow to destroy the Fereldan monarchy for keeping him indebted and not being there to save his son.

.With Hawke he’s kind of interchangeable because his storyline is kind of pre-written as you’re always going to be Hawke the Eldest Sibling and certain events will always happen. But I do like Doherty more than Marcus (my previous Hawke) because I get to make his life sadder as he sides with the Templars to eradicate blood magic in the Kirkwall Circle and then offers to sacrifice himself in place of Anders (who he has already forced to flee) whereas Marcus always sided with the Templars to protect Templar!Carver. Personally I love siding with the mages and that would be a nicer ending for Doherty, but I need to side with the Templars for a specific ending 🥲.

.Still! My Hawke allows the HoF group to stay at their house (Leandra having recognised the giant son of the Couslands and knowing that they need to offer him safety and succour) whilst they’re in Lothering, and in turn Andrastopher warns them to flee whilst they can, as the dark spawn horde are advancing rapidly. This creates a kind of friendship that means Andrastopher is paramount in saving Hawke from the Seekers later as they attempt to recruit either of them for the job of Inquisitor.

.However!! I do want to make a new Warden Commander for the sake of padding out my hero count and also allowing Andrastopher to abandon the cause he detests (Grey Wardens) and also to focus solely on vengeance (Killing all Howes and stealing from the nobility who shunned him), which gives him a more stable relationship with Zevran in the end.

.But to get back to the original point of “other heroes” I do have not super developed other characters that could have been the hero. Like I have an Aeducan prince who helps the HoF team in the Deep Roads, after surviving on spider meat and mushrooms for months, and my Dalish HoF who is a transient elder who offers aide to all those in need (who leaves the clan pre-DAO). And I recently started playing a Cadash who hates the Chantry but is paramount on figuring out what happened at the conclave as some of his best friends were killed there (plus big boom?? He needs that kind of power in his arsenal) and maybe he gets a smooch along the way 😘. There are some I can’t have because they technically would die with the choices I make, like the Human/Elf mage in DAO will always be killed by Andrastopher in the circle quest, and the Dalish will also die as Andrastopher sides with the werewolves. And technically all the heroes you don’t choose do end up dying because either Duncan doesn’t show up to save them or they get killed in the Conclave explosion. Ofc that’s easily changeable like they didn’t contract the blight etc in DAO or they weren’t in the Temple when it exploded in DAI.

.TLDR: Yes but they’re all in the same world state and not technically HoFs/Hawkes/Inquis’ because I have a one track mind for this game!!!.

[kateandthediamonds]

I like that H&M are joining trooing of the colour. It would show that 1) those two are hypocrites(plus their squad) and 2) the differences of Camebridge and Sussexs. So, personally, I wouldn't mind:)

Oh they are? I didn’t even know lol I don’t read anything about them but ofc them coming to celebrate the reign of the queen shows they’re a bunch of hypocrites who don’t hate the monarchy as their stans believe

[janiedean]

Do you think Jonsa is going to happen? I did read some meta about foreshadowing and it's a "squint if you miss it" but there is stuff. For example. Jonnel/Sansa stark in the family tree. People say the fact that Jon didn't care about Sansa being wed to Tyrion, compared to Arya being wed to Ramsay means he his repressing his painful memories and how he has a secret crush on her.

... tldr and sorry for the harshness: no, but if you want to go into the details, with no offense to anyone shipping it of course:

as I already recently ranted, jon and sansa are in two totally different brackets - jon is a main five, sansa is in the following bracket, jon has the entire chosen one storyline plus being the center of the entire story going on, sansa has the I want the love story and I'll get it plotline which does not mesh with jon's so there's that;

sansa's story arc is admittedly painfully clear in the beginning as in: if she thinks she's going to marry a beautiful gallant pretty prince and she thinks it's joffrey who is like attractive and LOOKS gallant but we all know how it went, then she's going to end up with someone who is the total opposite, also if she wanted to be queen in the beginning then it means she's absolutely not going to be in the end bc her entire arc is about realizing that everything she wanted in the beginning is not what she truly wants, and since jon is absolutely poised to get kingship, divide the kingdoms and fuck off to the wildlings after there is no way that her storyline meshes with his like that;

sansa's only viable love interests at this point on page are sandor and tyrion, the end, which by the way are, guess what, not standard attractive and are two people who need to overcome their trauma but never treated her unfairly, and like... denying that in the text sansa is attracted to sandor (she MAKES UP that he kissed her, she dreams he comes to her on her wedding night, she's all like AH BUT JUST *I* KISSED THE HOUND etc like sorry but that's a thing never mind all the knightly investment subtext) and that sandor is her love interest on text is imvho absolutely senseless - you can ship whatever you want and realize that canon isn't going there and write fanfic, no one is gonna stop you, and I can accept the endgame theory from sansa/tyrion shippers even if I think sansa/sandor is it, but sansa/anyone else is absolutely out of the question;

also sandor is the only one sansa thinks about using all the criteria ned used to describe the knight he would find her which was better than joffrey bless whoever went and did the search (brave gentle and strong) and she doesn't use neither of those terms to think about jon, like there's more evidence for littlefinger based on that and idt lf is gonna be her intended;

they think they're siblings and like I know that saying 'BUT THE INCEST' in these books is not like an automatic NO because there's canon incest and the rival ship ie j*nerys also would be incest but like one thing is jc which is not endgame and plainly described as abusive/unhealthy, one thing is targ incests which like the narrative generally is like HEY THIS WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA ABOUT and one thing is falling in love with someone you thought was your sibling and you grew up with like that the moment you find out you're cousins - that... doesn't work like that. and like while I don't have a horse in this race and j*nerys is hardly my ideal endgame sorry but it's a lot more likely that jon would end up getting with someone who he never met before, was the sister of a father he never knew and doesn't even consider his father and he had no relation with before than with... someone he actually thought was his sister, even if he finds out she's his cousin that doesn't change it;

'repressing painful memories' jon has zero issue thinking about catelyn or sansa not treating him great so idk what he should be repressing;

arya vs sansa question: .... well that's like getting close to the entire point but not getting it, in the sense that while jon didn't take wf because it belonged to sansa - but he said he would have if ygritte had been alive and stannis said he could marry her and not val which I mean... says all honestly - technically he made vows saying he renounced his family which is the entire fucking point re arya - the point is that he didn't give those vows up for robb but he would for arya which was the one he was closest to which is what makes everyone else kill him and no he wouldn't have done that for sansa because she was the only one who kept him at a distance, but...

the entire damned point is that they have to reconnect as siblings. sansa going back north (which is gonna happen) and jon being there and most likely getting legitimized/getting robb's will etc means that they have, as adults (or at least... well not kids) realize that how she treated him was wrong and that they can build a relationship which means that each single text reference to each other which is really nothing romantic™ is posed to tell you THESE TWO WILL BE THE STARK SIBLINGS MEETING FIRST and since they didn't have a close rship before they will forge one now, but that doesn't mean that they're going to be romantic endgame, because jon's point isn't having the uber romantic storyline and sweeping a maiden off her feet and sansa already has at least one love interest posed to do exactly that and while their sl are absolutely meant to intersecate on a sibling finding each other again level they are off when it comes to romance;

also a j*nsa endgame would... imply that she becomes queen of the seven kingdoms and they stay reigning there when sansa is absolutely posed to stay in the north and do her own thing and jon is posed to destroy the united-westeros-because-a-targ-did-it legacy (which like... great bookend bc first legit targ king unites it, bastard stark-targaryen king who most likely is keeping the bastard name undoes it) and he is going to hate each second of it, so it doesn't add up with sansa getting her happy love song fairytale romance... which again she can get from other people that the text strongly pointed at already.

so: no because it makes no sense thematically for either of them and for that matter I don't even think jon*erys is eventual endgame tho I guess it has to happen at this point given the show mess idk but if either of them had to be j*nerys would make a load more sense and I still think that a targ restoration with two monarchs keeping on being monarchs is not what a dude who is obviously anti-monarchy has in mind for the endgame. like no offense to anyone into it ofc but again it has zero textual basis for being romantic endgame and it wouldn't even make either of them happy bc jon is not sansa's gentle brave strong knight and sansa isn't the kind of woman jon is actually into (ygritte reminded him of arya I mean) and idt he'd get romantic feelings for his sister who he's going to think of in that terms anyway so there's my two cents. and I understand that it's not smth that a lot of people would agree with but take it up with grrm because he's the one putting that in the text and not me X°D

[leafy-wings]

glory for the ask meme?

good morning!

for this ask meme

Sexuality Headcanon: lesbiab Gender Headcanon: nonbinery.. demigirl maybe. “girl maybe but fruity” A ship I have with said character: i postulated this before tentatively but; glory x snowfall? ehh? i really want to write a fic of them hanging out, where glory introduces snowfall to the idea of suntime, mirroring the scene in hidden kingdom where its like “the first lesson is to sleep. you need it” yknow! glory understands snowfalls queen trauma so well, glorys young too and while her legacy is success she only became queen to save her tribe in the face of a horrific prophecy. i would love to see a more slowburn for snowfall realizing nightwings are pretty ok and glory could help, sympathizing with the things that they did while under pressure while still forgiving/not forgiving them. like i think glorys the best character for making the point of; what happened to you was wrong, bad, and unnecessary, it was done with malicious intent, but those that did it thought it necessary, were not doing it for fun, and no longer have the need to do it. the intersection between.. justice, revenge, and healing vs sympathizing and understanding the grief those against you might be going through and understanding that since theyre not going away you need to come to terms with them. ofc their situations are different but i think a nice parallel and different enough to make a point. id love to see them argue about how the monarchy is bad or maybe have snowfall consider lax rainwing protocol for icewing society as well as the games to become queen so she doesnt have to kill or be killed. i also kinda maybe ship snowfall x hazel so maybe all 3 of them are there. i like it A BROTP I have with said character: i want glory and peril to be friends.. i wanna write a short character study fic about them and how they viewed their time under scarlet. i think of all people glory would understand needing to be weaponized to keep oneself safe, and i like the idea of peril more apprehensive to approach glory because of her emotions. she feels more feelings than peril does who only ever really feels angry or excited. OH YEAH i really wanted to write a fic where they have a lil therapy session because sunny insists upon it, but its only the two of them to see if they can socialize, where glorys supposed to drop her mask scales because hiding her emotions isnt healthy while peril has to try and pin down her feelings while they talk because she needs to learn social cues and other dragons feelings and what better way than with a dragon who shows their feelings so clearly? i just want them to talk about the fallout of the prophecy in a very frank and understanding way. plus i like tsunami and glory, i feel like perhaps tsunami was not nice enough to glory while under the mountain while still wanting to defend them, tsunamis shtick is trying to protect her friends while glorys shtick is trying to protect herself and a few save dragons around her. id love to see the both of them try and get the other to have more wide reaching empathy for others as well as. argue the ethics of being queens gfhjgfd A NOTP I have with said character: glory and deathbringer i fucking hate deathbringer. aside from the age (and yes actually id be uncomfortable with an 18 year old dating a 30+ year old too yeah thank you) deathbringer is just too immature and giddy and non serious. i know the conceit is supposed to be, just like thorn/smolder, that its a character who is serious and haughty as a defense mechanism getting their walls broken down by someone who pushes them into having fun where theyre actually also fun and mischievious and joking on the inside, but like. this is NOT the time. hes annoying and aggravating and i dont see the charming aspect when i know that glory is young and traumatized and in the midst of basically the worst event of her life and deathbringer is basically the first dragon whos nice to her SPECIFICALLY to flirt with her. and i cant believe that deathbringer knew WELL That the rainwings were being kidnapped and tortured TO DEATH and didnt do basically anything to warn her. he is a NIGHTWING adult during the time in which they are enslaving her tribe so i can safely side with snowfall on this one and say Fuck Nightwings Until They Repent. A random headcanon: glory definitely makes wide reforms to rain/night society in regards to being more progressive and welcoming. making more accessible houses for houseless rainwings, getting rainwings to actually raise children, getting schools and places for therapy, just overseeing all the business of the rain/night kingdom to have it be more “normal”. not that she wants them to act like other tribes because thats “normal”, no, of course not, she loves her tribe(s) including with all their strangeness and proclivity for nature, but.. sometimes legislature is there for a reason so you dont get unfair treatment, and glory only seeks to see her tribe treated fairly General Opinion over said character: i like glory! shes one of my favorites; i sympathize with her a lot in being traumatized and unsure of how to deal with it. the part at the start of the book where she ruminates about kind of missing being with scarlet hit me so hard... i understand how it is when youre traumatized so thoroughly and basically alone though you have friends AROUND you, that you become a bit “selfish” because you just want to see yourself safe, and then the ensuing protectiveness you feel over people like you. i like that she cares about justice, which is not always kind and given through nice words. i do wish her trauma about being almost MURDERED by her guardians as well as abused ALL HER FUCKING LIFE was grappled with more (and yes im one of the anti sunnys who think she was a real bitch for demanding that glory forgive the dragons who TAUGHT HER SHE WAS WORTHLESS. if sunny feels bad for the guardians who didnt abuse her to the extent that they did glory than thats HER issue, and she has no place pushing the decision to forgive them onto glory, when iirc webs never even fucking feels bad). she also gets a hard case of “turns into nothing when its not her POV” and so fucking aggravatingly is that her given personality trait is “i love my boyfriend who is 2x my age”. her aggression, sense of justice, wittiness and haughtiness are scrubbed clean and replaced with little romantic quips with some guy i hate. she has so much left to her character and so much insight to offer in a lot of what happens in the book but, no, shes just set aside.. id also love to see what shes actually doing as queen

[esther-dot]

'Sansa laughed in the face of democracy' is one of most popular antisansa lines d stans like to parrot. but what they missed about the situation is that idea of democracy in a feudal society is indeed funny because the concept is impossible to achieve unless they changed the entire system (which was beyond Sansa's authority). 

plus neither Sansa nor Jon were absolute monarches they were chosen by their people(unlike D).

in the end of the show the writers attempted to set up an elective monarchy‎, it was lazy but still this was the direction they were heading maybe under a better writing and a few decades/centuries, westros could achieve a constitutional monarchy and later a representative democracy similar to Scandinavian countries.

(ofc I'm being very optimistic here they would  probably start another war once Bran is dead.)

now getting back to D, she is a khaleesi whose word was law in her khalasar and thanks to d&d making her the unburnt she became a godlike figure for them as well.

all of these formed a cult of personality around her aka the furthest concept from democracy (ironic how d stans consider it empowering).

Also D has 3 dragons (nukes) and she uses them to force her will on cities. she consider people who disagree with her to be her enemies and she burns her enemies. her break the wheel quote was never about democracy she wanted a self centered monarchy. futlrther more she has 2 famous lines that shows just how much she really cares about democracy:

"I'm not a politician, I'm a queen"

"they don't get to choose"

first shows she is a queen above politics who has absolute power over her subjects.

seconds shows she doesn't care about other people, her choice and word is the only thing that matters and I don't know if it's not autocratic then what is it.

I really shouldn’t be surprised they’re blaming Sansa for Westeros not becoming a democracy, but I am? I mean, the antis might not make much sense, but I have to give credit where it’s due and admit, they are really creative when it comes to finding reasons to hate Sansa! 

I think D&D inserted Sam’s suggestion, not as a genuine possibility, but as another way to mock the audience. They created the idea that Dany was going to empower the people of Westeros (all her talk of breaking the wheel and taking down the great houses) to hide the fact that she was coming to subjugate a continent. How people really thought that someone bringing armies and dragons to Westeros to wage war and take the throne would somehow benefit the common man, I’m still not sure, but they did, and I felt like Sam’s line was targeting us, not the other characters. 

Having the lords select a leader feels as good as it’s going to get, and if D&D had cared, they could have made a truly moving story about the boy whose dream of becoming a knight was taken away, only for him to save the realm anyway, and be chosen their king for it. It’s very tropey that a brave deed wins you a crown, and a play on it could have led to a beautiful moment. I feel really bad for Bran stans because knowing his endgame, they may have more reason to be upset with D&D than any of us!

Anyway, I agree that the dragons are a problem because they put Dany in a position of absolute power. The Starks have to work to keep the trust of their people, their power is derived from that, whereas Dany, she doesn’t have to honor her obligations to her people because...well, what are they going to do about it? Dany didn’t care about the will of the Westerosi as evidenced in s7 when she took the king the North chose prisoner and demanded he kneel to her--a queen he told her they would never kneel to. Whereas Sansa, from s6-8 maintained that the North should be free. I’m not sure how people looked at that contrast between the two --being forced to kneel vs being freed-- and decided that Sansa was the baddie, but again, good for the antis for thinking outside the box! 

Here’s a post discussing the idea of democracy in Westeros by someone far more knowledgeable than me about historical forms of government, and if you have any speculation about what Bran will do during his reign to secure the future of Westeros, I would really love to hear it. The idea that Westeros will continue to select rulers is nice, but it does seem like it will end in war.

[janiedean]

your villain origin story had a hate for ned and most of the stark brothers and thought sansa was the least loved stark and atuff. i remember because i used to stan sansa and her meta would keep cropping up but everytime there was so much shit about how ned preferred arya not sansa etc, even fics about that. when ???? and idek where the brothers preferring arya came over lol, if anything the reason arya and jon were so close was that they both felt like outcasts. sansa was the ideal daughter, if ned worried about arya more it was because she reminded him of lyanna and we all know what happened with her. asoiaf's world is not the best for women and but even in the upper classes if women weren't traditionally pretty + feminine they would likely NOT have a good life (some northern houses excluded), ofc he worried about her?? but i don't see how you can get "neglectful father" from that lol, not to mention all of sansa's positive memories with bran and robb. (i think they also got mad that ned didn't want sansa to witness beheadings and punishments when he let bran witness it lmfao like maybe consider the world of the books?????)

i mean write what you want and all, but her crowd had it in their heads that sansa was the misunderstood, less-loved, underdog protagonist of the books which... was not the case lol. it was projecting 21st century fandom politics onto sansa when in the world of the books sansa definitely had an upper hand before everything went to shit because she was a beautiful aristocrat who was good at her courtesies and singing and sewing and knowing what to say and all the who's who, the ideal daughter/lady. it's after she becomes a political prisoner and her worldview is shaken at the end of book 1 that she becomes an "underdog" with 0 privilege.

I mean.... yes that was pretty much her schtick but again she was like AH I READ THE BOOKS EXTREMELY ATTENTIVELY and she hadn't for shit bc again I only read the 'raised as a sexual object' meta other than that complete amount of crap that was the robb is a dick one which makes me suspect was the first time someone told her her analysis was bullshit bc she was pretty virulent when telling me I didn't understand my favorite character lmfao but like... that's what stayed in 80% of showsansa fandom atm and I wish like hell it wasn't because it looks like they all like sansa for being cerseilite when the entire point is that she's all the contrary lmao

but like the arya villification + ned/cat villainizing when like you can argue they weren't perfect but not that they didn't... love... their children plus absolutely not understanding the basic point that what will make the starks thrive at the end is that they actually do love each other and have the kind of bond that will get them to survive the shit they got even when their parents + robb are dead and died in that shit way and not that they backstab each other which dnd didn't get but the moment you open the books it's p damned obvious so honestly I think she basically went and decided sansa was the trope she's deconstructing and banked on the 'people hate feminine women' angle when like... yeah she got hate from fandom but in-verse she has the upper hand in comparison to arya as you say and feminine women in-verse automatically have an upper hand in society anyway bc if they don't perform we all see how it goes but anyway she completely interpreted stuff avoiding the context, the worldbuild and the circumstances the characters grew up in and minimizing things and not using the same standards of judgment which was wild but at the end of it I'm still sad that I couldn't manage to actually ask her for a cut of her favorite white boy t-shirt sales since she had to put them down a week after that shop opened *rolls eyes* and with this I mean that you can't criticize sansa because she was eleven-twelve when she did most wrong things she did WHICH I AGREE WITH but at the same time robb at fifteen is the worst for having thought with his dick when he had sex with jeyne which like.... okay he's not trained to be a king, his bff betrayed him, he thinks he caused the deaths of his brothers, has had canonically obvious instances of 'I HAVE TO PERFORM TO MY UTTERMOST BEST OR PEOPLE WILL THINK I'M WEAK' and repressed anger issues and he's fifteen or sixteen but he's thinking with his dick when he has sex with a girl who was being nice to him? like if sansa being a kid means it's explainable/understandable then robb is also fifteen which is not an adult where I come from but nah he was a dick X°DDD okay X°DDDDDDD and she did that with each single char never mind the indecent jon bashing when in the s6 finale he didn't say ACTUALLY MY SISTER SHOULD BE QUEEN which,,,,,, they elected him to fight the zombies and he's been doing that since S1 in which way sansa had more qualifications in an elective monarchy??? X°DDD just.... I'm really glad she seemingly isn't around much anymore because my friend those were takes we're all better off without