#the kind of gifset that almost makes it seem like the show treated these two with the respect they deserve

[seokjinsonlyone]

this what i think bts love language is

a/n: this just my thoughts besties i ain’t do no formal type of research or nun just let my lil imagination sprint 🥸🤪

namjoon:

physical affection/words of affirmation

okay so i said physical affection for one bc like he seem to like initiate contact with people around him a lot

like in interviews he be having his hand on whoever next to him thigh or like when he be performing if it’s someone next to him he throws his arms around them a lot

not to mention like whenever jimin or jk or whoever start feeling up on him he never rejects it or makes a face or anything like yoongi does he just accepts it

like there’s so many stage clips where jimin will come and rest his chin on joon’s shoulder and he just lets him

or jk will just start touching on him some way grabbing his arms or sumn and it doesn’t phase him at all

another example is like on day 2 of sowoozoo when tae randomly came and linked arms with him and hobi during mikrokosmos hobi was like 🥴🥴 but joon was just 😌

and then there was that magic shop muster moment when jk was talking about how much he loved joon and how he was his beginning you know as president of the joon fan club does and namjoon couldn’t help but to go over and give his number one admirer a hug you know the moment

same thing with compliments he lowkey be eating them up

like you know how whenever hobi gets complimented he be like “😶 don’t say those things” joon don’t do that

like when they was asked to take their jackets off during the butter shoot and namjoon was like yeah okay and everyone started hyping him up and he was just 💁🏼‍♂️😜

and again on day 2 sowoozoo when he pushed his hair back from his forehead and everyone went OHHHHHSWJJSJS SEXY NAMJOON and then he decided to murder us all by tilting his head back on top of that adding insult to injury i would insert the picture but for my mental health i will not

and again whenever they talk about him being such a great leader he never shies away from it doesn’t cringe always accepts it so you know it must mean a lot for him to hear those things

aside from that tho he’s such a poetic person

like he is definitely involved in an intimate affair with language so there’s no way he wouldn’t appreciate you verbally telling him how he makes you feel

like just think about how many times he’s said he wants to sit down with each army and listen to their story

that being said if this was your man i think you’d definitely have to both show and tell him how you feel

like if he was about to head out for work you definitely got to kiss him before he leaves

and if you on the phone with him the last words you’re saying are i love you

and he’s definitely gonna cherish it each time always gonna have that cute little smile dimples caved in his cheeks bc you love him and he feels it

seokjin:

acts of service/words of affirmation

alright so ngl the reason i said acts of service for seokjin is like almost 100% based on his reaction to tae setting up that birthday event for him where he had his friends send him messages

he talked about it for WEEKS like he was genuinely so moved that i just like he has to love it

and then there’s like how much he bothers jk to like do simple stuff like i’m specifically thinking about that one moment in bon voyage 4 when he was sitting down at the table and called jk to help him up

and then there’s also little things he does for others like when he peeled tae’s tangerines for him or when he offered to feed yoongi bc he was driving or how he always offers bites of his food before even gets a chance to taste it

now i say words of affirmation bc he always searching for a compliment

my minds going to when jk hurt his foot and jin was pushing him in the wheelchair and kept feeding him lines to say about how he was such a good hyung and how he loves him

or in the behind the scenes for the boy with luv video and he kept tryna get tae to compliment him for being witty

and my boy never misses a chance to introduce himself as worldwide handsome

even though he does a lot of those things jokingly there are moments when he’s serious too about giving compliments and shy when he receives them like in those be interviews when he called jk a singing genius and jungkook was talking about how he had the most range and he got all ☺️☺️

or that moment from in the soop when he was comforting yoongi about like not having regrets and when yoongi told him he wanted to be like him just those kinds of moments let me know words are important to him

which just made me remember how hard he tries with his lyrics and how important they are to him like when he was writing awake and he talked about how he kept getting rejected but he was super insistent bc it was important for him to sing the words he wrote and don’t even get me started on moon i just-

anyway jin done said many times he is a man of the present so if you’re with him you gotta actively show/tell him

if you’re at the store pick him up some gummies

if you know he’s got a long day ahead of him maybe pack him some snacks to take with him in the morning

if his hair looks nice tell him

send him messages throughout the day even if he can’t respond immediately

he claims he’s a man of the present but whenever he takes a moment to reminisce the past he’ll look back and know just how much you care about him

yoongi:

quality time/acts of service

listen as much as this man loves spending time alone the time he spends with others means a lot to him

like how he always go fishing with jin even tho he ain’t particularly fond of it

or how like in in the soop he had made plans to play games with jimin and did so extensively

also from in the soop when he had spent most of his day outside reading but then he had heard everyone starting to make the theme song and immediately ran to get his equipment to record and what not

not to mention his poem from the end of that one run episode where they went on like a mini trip or whatever and he was like “what a relief that we have seven members. what a relief that we have each other.”

like being all together is important to him

like i just think about that one scene from one of they movies ion remember which one but they were all gathered around the table and it was when he had told them how he actually hurt his shoulder and they was talking about how they was worried about jk and how he need to come out his room and it’s not even the content of the scene but just like the fact that he ain’t have to be there but he was

and also can’t neglect to mention how he whined for y e a r s about how ain’t nobody come to visit him on set when he was filming the videos for his first mixtape like mans wouldn’t let that go and then how touched he was when they made appearances on his daechwita set even if he couldn’t express it properly

and how he begged for them to make cameos in the video and how happy he was when jin and jk did

and he doesn’t ever forget to mention whenever him and hobi hang out he’s like yeah we went for a drink and dinner and talked and blah blah

he loves it when people make an effort to be around him

now acts of service i got this all on a whim okay like… listen… we all been there we have all watched an ideal type video on youtube don’t lie okay

and up there it be like he want someone to bring him food in the studio and take care of him and stuff like that and in this case the math maths

you really can see that in how he treats others

like just the other day i saw a gifset somewhere and the boys were like yeah yoongi always takes care of us he don’t make eye contact tho

not to mention how he always cooks for them when they go on trips

and even though he ain’t give seokjin his song yet we know it’s coming! eventually!

and whenever they be ganging up on jungkook yoongi always the first one to be like “stooooppp you gon make him cry”

my baby just always be doing little things for others to show he cares okay 🥺

so if you got with my baby you gotta take care of him 🥺🥺🥺

he really needs someone that understands him bc he not gonna say anything

if you’re all hanging out together make sure you’re by his side so he knows you want to be there with him

if he’s busy stuck in his studio drop by even if you just end up laying on the couch he’s gonna appreciate you just being with him

and bring food my baby getting buff he need all the veggies and protein he can get

hoseok:

receiving gifts

i really had to think about this one but once i connected the dots yeah it makes total sense

like he looooves shopping loves getting stuff so when other people give him stuff i know he just 🥰🥰🥰

hobi lights up when he gets gifts they don’t always have to be big but i know he very much appreciates them

like how in the army corner store festa video when asked to bring something meaningful to them he brought those figurines which was the first gift a fan gifted him

which makes me think about how those limited edition figurines dropped and hobi was like i need to get one for namjoon and then namjoon was like i need to get one for hobi and so they ended up with like two of them or something like that

also from festa in the little photo booth mission every time he won a prize he was like yaaasss omg and was thinking of ways to put it to use like when he got that picture frame he immediately stuck them film strips in it he probably got it hanging in his room or in his studio by now tbh

and i think it was on the canada run bts episode where jk bought him those slippers and he was super happy

even when they were in hawaii and him and jin were hungry on the bus and he asked jin for gummies like ofc jin had to get on his nerves first but when he finally gave him his snacks he went from 😐 to 😚

or how he still has that change purse that namjoon bought him in malta (probably still got the money in there too tbh)

speaking of malta got me thinking about how tae went out of his way to win hobi that flamingo bc he said he’d never seen one and when tae gave it to him he went parading it around telling everyone that tae won it for him and then said he was gonna put it in his studio

and he got that chicken leg pillow they gave him from you quiz on the couch in his studio

and i think it was from the 2020 winter package he was so happy when jin bought him those ugly little troll elf things with the hat you know what i’m talking about

and he commented like three times when jungkook drew that picture of him for his birthday

and we know mans be giving gifts too

like how he got yoongi that coffee truck on the set of daechwita

and when they were on the speak yourself tour and he went out shopping on a day off and bought jin a sweater or something

and how he slaved through like 2 or 3 lives making bracelets for the members and then gave it to them on the bang bang con live

and the most devastating one of all when they had to give each other gifts i think it was on the run episode with all the water games but i could be wrong anyway and like most of them gave each other gag gifts like their merch or whatever but hobi gave jimin (and the rest of the members) a cd for his song promise it had a little photo book in it and everything 😭😭😭

so like whoever gets with this fine specimen gon have to throw a few dollars together to make sure this man is kept

not really i’m sure he doesn’t expect you to sell your car for a gucci peacoat or your soul for a rolex

but if you did decide to save up for some time to get him a little extravagant gift i know he’d more than appreciate it

more often than not though it’d be the little things that got to him like if you bought a simple t shirt from the store but then kinda like upcycled it drew little doodles on it wrote “i’m your hope” somewhere on it there would definitely be a picture uploaded of him on weverse or twitter wearing it

or if you decided to compile the pictures of you two together into a scrapbook or something he’d keep it somewhere accessible like in a drawer in his desk in his studio and flip through it with a little smile on his face when he’s missing you

and even if it was something even smaller than that like say he mentioned in passing that like idk he was out of eggs or something and you bought him some he just might marry you

jimin:

physical affection/quality time

the first thing that comes to mind with this for jimin is how he comforts his boys

like there’s so many behind the scenes clips from tour where like jk or tae will be upset with their performance and crying and jimin would be the one to come up behind them and hug them and wipe their tears

same concept for that one moment in bon voyage 3 when they told him that tae was crying and he just kinda hugged him and wiped his tears and hovered around him to make sure he was okay

or when they left hobi at the gas station in bon voyage 4 and then went back to pick him up he still hugged hobi even as he was laughing evilly

also in bon voyage 4 when they went on that helicopter tour and they was on the mountain and him and tae tackled each other and was rolling in the snow

and he is just like always in jk arms like he just jumps on him for no reason like in that video where lee hyun is acting as one of bts’ management

also in the behind from i think when they were practicing for the 2019 bbmas i believe at some point jungkook was holding that man spinning him in circles or sumn like that

and there’s also that one comeback show when him and tae were in the comic book cafe and they were just cuddled up together looking at tae’s phone practicing english i think

and on that one joon live when him and tae crashed and just caused a whole lot of commotion i’m pretty sure at one point they were cuddled on the couch and then jimin told tae his breath stinks and tae proceeded to open his mouth over the air purifier

anyway clearly he is a man with hands

but he also is someone who loves to spend time together it’s important to him

like i just think about how when they had their “break” back in 2019 he talked about how he just traveled the entire time and he went with various friends and family

and i’m pretty sure it was bon voyage 3 when they were doing their friendship trips and trying to make fresh pairings or whatever he was like i don’t think there’s any surprising pairing with me and it’s like… that’s true

like you got minimoni, minimini, jikook etc… all tried tested and true man gets around his band

and he’s the main one who’s always like “yeah bro we should live in the dorms until we’re 50”

and he always talks about how he can’t be alone and how he’s always gotta be doing something with someone

and his lives!!! his lives!!!! when he spends time with us it’s always so intimate and personable

like you can’t tell me that i ain’t have dinner with him and jin after a show in the hotel room and we drank off camera even after the staff told us we couldn’t 😤🤚

there’s also that time he went live and someone said they had some kind of condition and then he took it upon himself to look it up and try to find treatments

just liiiike whenever he goes live every minute counts bro and yes this is me trying to summon him bc we ain’t had a solo jimin live since october and i know they super busy but i miss 😓😓😓

so for this mans i just feel like you just gotta really be with him

just like he makes every second count you have to as well

like he’s gonna want to have your full attention and you’ll definitely have his he’ll be obsessed with you tbh

however he doesn’t always have the time and his schedule definitely isn’t the most accommodating so he’s gonna want someone to put in the effort

but as long as you make sure he knows you’re all in he’ll always meet you halfway

taehyung:

words of affirmation

now this one has been stated explicitly multiple times and he’s admitted it himself

specifically during let’s bts in their segment within the segment and namjoon was like taehyung the kind of person who grows from compliments

and i ain’t even got the right words to express how i feel about the smile he couldn’t help when hobi had them all tell tae that they like him

not to mention the story he told during the festa video last year about how he always tried his very best to get hobi to praise him and how disappointed he was when hobi didn’t get it

and i may be tripping but didn’t like earlier this year he didn’t post on weverse or twitter for like a month or so because he wanted to keep seeing us say how much we miss him???

and in bon voyage season 2 when they had to write letters to each other and he wrote his to jimin and then cried when he read it

there’s also a moment in bon voyage 4 when he and rm were about to sleep in the same space and he asked joon if he could cuddle him and joon was like 🥴🤚 how bout no and tae was like you do like me right? and rm was like yeah of course but let’s not cuddle bro

also in that weverse magazine interview they did he talked about how depressed he got when they weren’t able to perform and he only felt happy for a while when he was able to communicate with us

and in turn he’s very verbally supportive as well

like at that one fan sign they was talking about bon voyage and they asked army which season they liked better 1 or 2 and someone said 1 and taehyung was like “😐 now why would you say that bc namjoon won’t even in that” even though really it was only like 1 or 2 episodes he missed out on

and like he’s always hyping seokjin up like when they were doing the map of the soul 7 comeback live and jin was talking about how he wasn’t a good dancer and taehyung was like 😡 don’t say that bc it’s not true you’re good and you always been good

and in the let’s bts thing again it was important for him to let jimin know that he likes him best like they really are best friends y’all 😭

and when he talks about how much he loves suga’s raps

and that moment in the soop when he set up a date for him and jungkook to talk out whatever tension they had or whatever

and how during those individual be interviews he had hobi flustered when he complimented his passion for music

and he always be saying like the most comforting stuff on weverse letting army know he’s there as a source of comfort at all times even when he can’t be

like this man is literally the creator of borahae meaning that we’ll love and support each other for a long time

so if you get with tae communication is key!!!

you gotta tell him how you feel about him

if you’re out and about and see something that reminds you of him? tell him. if you like his hair that day? tell him. if he does something that pisses you off? tell him. if you miss him? tell him. if you love him? tell him.

like y’all gon talk about everything and nothing at all some days you’ll be discussing aliens and parallel universes other days you’ll be like discussing the future of your relationship

and ya know he a busy man so you not always gon be having long and drawn out heart to hearts so i think he’d love it if you just sent messages throughout the day something that let him know you were thinking of him even if it’s just a picture of a possum you chased down or if you spammed him with tiktoks you thought he’d like

he’d be looking at his phone like 🥰🤳 thinking about how much he loves you

jungkook:

physical affection

now this lil menace right here is touchy

always down for a cuddle

like on the canada episode of run when they were about to pick out rooms and he was like firmly latched onto hobi on the couch while they waited

and when they were practicing home for the magic shop muster and yoongi sat in the arm chair and immediately jk sat in his lap and tae sat in his lap

or how in in the soop after they were done eating he just went and latched onto jin’s back

and how tae had went to go wake jk up that one time and they ended up falling asleep

or how jk had went to wake up jimin that one time and they ended up falling asleep

there was just a lot of jk cuddles going on in in the soop so i’ll move on

let’s talk about the pool water debate run episode where in the end jk decided to latch onto jin’s back yet again

i’ll take this moment to mention the jinkook moment that lives in my head rent free for no valid reason it’s from the life goes on countdown video where they were reading the post cards and he was wearing that big pink sweatshirt and jin was wearing that pink and black bomber jacket and jk just grabbed jin’s arm and held onto it and played with it and when he was done he just threw it away i… i think about that moment a lot there’s an entire section in both my head and heart dedicated to that moment anyway continuing on

i’ll talk about that time they were backstage for a show and they had them blow up mattresses and suga was minding his business resting and jk just rolled up and moved his legs and laid beside him and then hobi decided to pile on top

and whenever they’re on stage he’s always the most delighted when joon would suggest a hug he’d be the first one over there nose scrunched up giggling he loves it

there’s also many instances in interviews and lives where he just can’t keep him hands to himself

just like that last butter live when tae ended up with a crown of forks thanks to mr kook

and he never misses an opportunity to feel up joon

which makes me remember that time he kissed namjoon on the forehead

and he is just always carrying jimin for some reason

so in conclusion… physical affection

and if he was your mans you’d be on the frontlines of receiving all he has to give

not necessarily in public or around a lot of people but in a space where you both were comfortable yes

you’d just have to accept that when you’re standing around he’s going to give you a shoulder/neck/back massage for no particular reason

and he will latch onto you in different positions for extended periods of time

and you gotta do the same! like that’s your man! go give him a hug! a kiss! let him know you love him

cuddle up to him while y’all chilling watching tv

hold his hand while y’all talking

just like grab onto him and never let him go

he’ll be hoping you don’t

[omnomtonystark]

Charmed 2x10

This episode was a lot of fun. So many moments where I laughed out loud, whether the show intended it or not. The A-plot with Jordan wasn't as good as last episode's with Ray but it advanced his storyline and was a great showing for Maggie. Two episodes in a row! Mel and Ray's Reno adventure was enlightening in many ways. And I know this might be weird to say considering what happened (or didn't happen), but Hacy finally had some much needed progression.

Happy 26th Birthday: Okay, it’s official. I like Jordan. He is now an actual character instead of an inexplicably long-lived victim of the week. His terrified reaction to Swan being possessed was both appropriate and hilarious (“I don’t know whether we should call a cop or a priest 'coz I’m feeling all sorts of weird and not the good kind”). He took the magic reveal well and didn't have a problem admitting he was out of his league. And he was so sweet -- not pushing Maggie about being "dead", cleaning up his own birthday party, asking if witches and humans can be friends, driving Swan home. I'm looking forward to what "balancing the scales" mean.

MVP of the episode: Maggie. Maybe being a bodyguard is her true calling. Protecting someone 1-on-1 seems to bring out the best in her. She was amazing this episode and the way she talked down the spirit in the end was a fantastic display of her empathy.

Torito: That's slang for little bull, right? Cute nickname. I'm so glad I was wrong about the writers dropping Mel's storyline with Ray. It deserved to have its own focus. Ray talking about Marisol and how that whole relationship played out was a good moment. That he never treated Maggie differently speaks a lot to his character. Mel accepting him for who he is and inviting him to stay was really nice and showed growth. I think my favorite shot of the episode was of her and Ray sitting in that diner in Reno, taking their coffee the exact same way. Nice visual cue. I hope Ray comes back. The actor has a voice for exposition and his reactions to magic are consistently funny.

Let’s drop the pretense: Yes, thank you. I have a lot to say about Harry and Macy in this episode (another post), but the bottomline is I'm really happy they're not just stagnating in some indefinite holding pattern anymore. Something had to give. Harry finally telling Macy out loud that he has feelings for her was like lancing a wound everybody could see but nobody wanted to do anything about. And while Macy still seemed stuck, unable to speak or tell the truth even when given several chances to do so, Harry laying it out there and making a decision was a needed step forward. They're about as endgame as anything is and I think going on diverging paths, for the moment, will be good for them in the long run. What's the saying? Time away makes the heart grow fonder? Something like that. (Although not literally since they live together. Lmao there's gonna be awkward times ahead in that house.)

Favorite moment: "Well now we protect each other." Harry looked like he was about to melt.

High comedy: Abigael. No, wait! Come back! I'm serious. From her wretchedly convenient inconvenient timing, to asking Harry to make tea, to making pointed comments to Macy like she had a death wish, almost everything she did in this episode had me rolling. She's not a particularly funny character but the situations borne from her being, well, her and me imagining fandom's reaction kept me amused all throughout the episode. She's like a character from a soap opera who's wandered onto the set, determined to chew the scenery and make the audience chant for her demise.

Not Stark, but Luthor: Magic tech, scientists playing with magical substances, money to engage in the black market... I'm calling it now. This is Julian. Whether he's a demon or just a human with a dangerous fascination for magic, who knows, but there are too many narrative red flags for him to be innocent. And I suspect he may be working with Abigael. His invitation to Macy was too well-timed with Abigael showing up. Trust no one.

Nitpicks: Jordan must have been in his own world adjusting that thermostat because he didn't hear all the racket Maggie and the spirit were making. Why did Maggie text Macy to come back to SafeSpace when she literally could have just called Harry and they would have orbed back immediately? Why didn't Mel use her invisibility potion for the buyer meet up?

Details: I really love this show's titlecards. They're fun. Is there a gifset somewhere? I've been wanting one since season one. Mel's stolen post-its makes a comeback and that tickles me for some reason. The "Your future begins today sign" falling on Jordan was kind of funny. Who knew curses liked irony?

Funniest part of the episode: A toss-up between Ray giving Jordan a drink in the command center and Macy asking Abigael who'd want to kill her while visibly thinking, "Aside from me."

[margridarnauds]

ronan & olympe for the ship opinions? (also please let your previous anon know that they're the funniest person in the world and i love them)

So…interesting thing, there. And something I’ve been increasingly thinking about as I think back on my last few years of fandom, my evolving feelings towards M/F shipping, and how fandom, as a whole, treats M/F ships. I’m going to apologize in advance for the length since I KNOW you didn’t sign on for 1.5k words of reminiscence. 

Also: BEAGLE ANON, YOU’RE THE FUNNIEST PERSON IN THE WORLD. 

When I first started out with 1789, in about 2015 or so, I was actually pro-Ronan/Olympe. Like, I wanted NOTHING more than fix-it fics where they retired to the country and had babies. I listened to La Guerre Pour se Plaire for HOURS, getting caught in the gothic atmosphere and the passionate, conflicted lyrics. But, at the time, the overall fandom environment was…well. Not conducive to it. And I was young, and I wasn’t strong in my opinions yet, so I stood back and kept it to myself. I think that might be part of why I ended up backing away from 1789 when I did. Yeah, I liked it, but I didn’t have a strong sense of community, and most of the attention, at that time, was in the Mozart, L’Opera fandom, and I wasn’t a major picture there. I attended streams, yeah, but I wasn’t a CONTENT creator, and it was easy for me to fade into the background, I think. Maybe because I was too afraid to be a content creator, back then, because that would involve possibly expressing my own opinions. I accepted that Ronan/Olympe was No bad, terrible, awful based on that desire to fit in, because it was so much EASIER. Just like I accepted that French 1789 was a disaster, that MOR was much better, and that, really, it wasn’t worth the effort. Just an inferior musical. (The problem, of course, was that I NEVER liked MOR as well as I liked 1789. Maybe it’s better put together, but I don’t ENJOY it as much, and imo it drags quite a bit at a few places, a problem shared by its German counterpart.) 

I came back to 1789 around…2017, with the European Musicals Streaming event, with the Takarazuka one totally stealing my heart, specifically Lazare/Ronan. Suddenly, I was IN, and I was creating content. Yeah, most of the French musicals fandom didn’t give a flying fuck that I was creating content, with most of my support coming from my friends and Takarazuka fans, but I was CREATING CONTENT, for the first time since I joined fandom. I was finally starting to figure out my way in fandom, finally starting to get noticed. In 2018……..for reasons I won’t give out, at least publicly, there was a massive rift in the old French musicals fandom, a lot of bridges got burned, and, naturally, I was far enough from the fire. But this DID give me a shot at carving out my own 1789 experience, for once, without them hanging over my shoulder. I do think that the reason why the 1789 fandom’s as strong as it is now is because of that rift, because it left a sort of power vacuum. Suddenly, there was a space for other French musicals, and we didn’t have to worry about the constant comparison to MOR. BUT. Keep in mind. 2-3 years ago, the overwhelming consensus on Ronan was pure, unadulterated hatred. There were a few Ronan content creators in an already small pool, but the general consensus was that Lazare was better in every way and Ronan was a terrible protagonist.  (I know fully well that some old members of the French musicals fandom, to this day, won’t engage with Ronan content. At all. And I can say this as openly as I do because I KNOW they don’t follow me.) As a Peyronan shipper, I was in an awkward place, especially as time went on and I realized that I actually did like the little shit. One half of my OTP was absolutely beloved, one half was hated, and, while there was definitely some content on the Tumblr side of things (I definitely did NOT single-handedly invent the ship out of thin air, I don’t take credit for it, and I’m grateful to everyone who kind of. Took me in), the fan fiction side of things still tended to lean Ronan/Olympe. If, today, it seems like the fandom consensus is Ronan/Lazare, that’s because I fought tooth and nail to get my own place in the fandom. 

I…suppose you could say that I justified my place in the fandom by tossing Ronan/Olympe under the bus. It was easier, that way. It meant that I could forge alliances with anyone who wanted Solène/Olympe instead, though I was still on dangerous ground since I still wanted precious Lazare with Ronan, and, of course, the show would be better without Ronan. (You’ll note that the VERY FIRST fic I ever published on AO3 was Solène/Olympe. Why? Because I knew it would be a safe option to test the waters. That. And I really did just write it the night before my GRE.) But, at least I wasn’t a Ronan/Olympe shipper, right? I was safely gay. (Biphobia, thy name is fandom.) When I talked about Ronan, I talked about him as gay, I talked shit about Ronan/Olympe whenever I had the chance. All properly tagged, of course, in the proper channels. I’ve never been the sort to actively hurt someone who DID ship it, I just took pains to not associate myself with the Icky Het Ship. When I talked about Ronan, I talked about him as GAY, VERY GAY, not a hint of bisexuality to him. Because if he was bi, that might mean that Ronan/Olympe had a leg to stand on, you see? You’ll note that, to this day, I almost never acknowledge Ronan/Olympe as a thing that HAPPENED in any given fic continuities, because it was so much easier if he simply fell into Lazare’s arms instead. Wiping that little spot clean. And. Well. Here I am. About 5 years after I first got into 1789. And, looking back, I wonder if it was REALLY that bad, or if I just nodded my head because it was easy at the time, since it’s only been in the last year that I really, really began to develop my own spine. (Honestly, props to Marie Antoinette the Musical and, specifically, Morléans as a ship for that one.) For the most part, I’m proud of how far the fandom’s come in the last five years, and I’m proud of the work that I, individually, have done to help get it there, whether it was streams, gifs, or fanfics. But sometimes, I do worry that anyone coming in who ships Ronan/Olympe, like I used to…might feel out of place, and I never want to treat them like I was treated back in the day. 

Do I ship it? Not really. That ship’s sailed for me (I didn’t mean to make that a pun but here we are). I’m fairly firmly Lazare/Ronan and Solène/Olympe (though I’m not as firmly pro-the latter as the former, simply because I REALLY don’t have as much material to go off of there.) Not just because of the old pressure, but just because…looking at it in, say, the French cast…there’s really no chemistry there. At all. The Takarazuka Olympe looks mildly terrified to be in Ronan’s presence at any given moment. I DO actually kind of like it in the Toho production, especially with Teppei Koike and Sayaka Kanda, since the two of them fit together SO naturally and their voices are like two pieces of the same puzzle, but I’m not sure it’s something I’d particularly want to create content for. In fact, when I tried to write Ronan/Lazare/Olympe as an OT3, my HARDEST dynamic to write and justify was Ronan/Olympe. I do think that “La Guerre Pour se Plaire” is a stunning song, musically, it’s probably one of my favorite French musical songs. I do kind of tend to see Ronan as gay, simply because Takarazuka Ronan in particular is………..forceful, to the point that I can see him forcing himself to believe he’s in love with Olympe in order to distract himself from Lazare. I feel like the French cast, while arguably realistic in it showing Ronan/Olympe’s relationship having problems, also shows a couple that, really, beyond the physical attraction, couldn’t have made it work had both of them survived. And I feel like fandom, back in the day, was far too willing to take Olympe’s side over Ronan’s in that dispute, ignoring how Olympe’s own relationship to her side of the conflict is…kind of toxic to her. And while Ronan went about it in an ass-backward way (“I will kill your friends and family! To remind you of my love!”)……..he did make some Points. And Toho Ronan/Olympe, particularly Teppei/Sayaka, are more two kids in love who just want to give it a shot. (Kato Kazuki/Nene Yumesaki were more….forceful, manly hero/prim and proper governess with a spine of steel. Which is OKAY, but not really personally as interesting to me.) I do give the Toho credit for really, really making me see that, okay, it might not be for me, but it CAN work on stage. Mostly. (I still hate that forced kiss.) 

 I will say that there are times where I find myself writing Lazare rather similarly to Olympe in terms of him going through the same feelings of guilt, shame, and duty, and I’m just like “....hm. What have I really changed? Did I just substitute Lazare’s face for Olympe because it was easier? Or copied the existing dynamic and pasted a dude’s face over Olympe’s?” (I do think that there are definitely DIFFERENCES to Olympe VS Lazare, it’s just...eerie in those individual moments.) I do think, at the end of the day, the story of forbidden love during the French Revolution....we’ve HAD it before, in the La Revolution Française musical, and in my opinion it does work best as a queer narrative. And, unfortunately, Ronan/Olympe just...isn’t developed particularly well enough on stage to justify it as an EPIC ROMANCE. 

Overall, I think that I’m fairly settled in my ways at this point, but I also don’t hate it to the extent that I once did. It’ll never be my favorite, I can’t really see them getting married and having kids, and, frankly, the relationship just isn’t as interesting to me as the alternatives since we’ve SEEN it played out on screen, and I can’t really see myself making content for it or really engaging with it in any meaningful way outside of reblogging gifsets/reading fics, but like. I don’t HATE it anymore. I’m neutral to its existence. And, when it comes down to it, I have read fic/engaged in content for it, because, at this point, it’s STILL part of my favorite musical. If I could have done things differently….maybe I would have stayed with it more, for longer. Maybe I’d have written that happy country babyfic (you know. In 18th century France. Where raising babies in the country was so painless). Maybe I’d have gone over to Peyronan earlier and not looked back. Maybe I would have written Ronan more consciously as a bisexual man instead of a gay man. Who knows? Maybe I’m just a tired bitch these days and so am hyper-dissecting everything. But I definitely never want anyone coming into the fandom to think there isn’t a place for them just because they ship Ronan/Olympe. 

[emospritelet]

Homecoming - chapter 13

Yes, I know, it’s been months. Apparently I needed to see gifsets before I could work on this again, but here we are! I get them out of London and on their way north, which is good, because Things are going to Happen when they get there...

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [Part 12] AO3 link

x

Belle had enjoyed the Christmas festivities a great deal more than she had expected. She had spent a pleasant couple of days reading in the library, chatting with Ogilvy and the Professor over tea in the afternoon, or over a glass of wine at dinner. She had also spent time with Alice, who had kept her promise to ask her dressmaker to make up a gown for Belle from the bolt of blue silk she had been given as a Christmas gift. Madame Etoile was pleasant and polite, gushing over Belle’s face and form, and the colour of the silk. It would perfectly set off her pale skin and chestnut hair, Madame Etoile remarked, smiling broadly as she ran small, neat hands over the gleaming cloth.

There was some discussion over styles, once her measurements were taken, Madame Etoile’s pattern book filled with the latest fashions from Paris, and Belle was excited by the prospect of having a new gown in such a fetching colour. It would certainly make a change from the more staid dresses that she had been wearing during her time as a governess, and she hoped that she would get more than one chance to wear the gown. It would be ready for its first fitting when they returned from their journey to Lady Tremaine’s house in the north of England.

The day after Boxing Day, a letter was received from Lady Tremaine, who pronounced herself “delighted that you will be visiting my humble home and confident that you will be able to rid me of the evil entities that dwell there and steal my rest”. Ogilvy read this line aloud over breakfast, in a very dry tone and with one eyebrow raised. It made Belle want to giggle, and Alice snorted in amusement.

“When shall we go, Papa?” she asked eagerly, and Ogilvy passed the letter back to the Professor before picking up his piece of toast and marmalade.

“Her Ladyship informs me that she’s travelled back to the North, and has invited us for the New Year, so I should think we can set off the day after tomorrow,” he said. “That should give Hatter plenty of time to pack the cases. You know how he likes to plan these things.”

“What did Lady Tremaine say about us staying at that cottage?” asked Alice, and he shook his head, chewing a bite of toast. He took a sip of coffee to clear his throat.

“Unfortunately, it’s been undergoing quite extensive repairs,” he said. “She’s asked us to stay at the house instead. I did mention that we were planning on bringing quite an entourage, but she doesn’t seem to object. I hear Willowbrook Grange is extensive, so I daresay she’s got the room.”

“It’s only the four of us, and the twins,” protested Alice. “And Hatter and Ivy, of course, although I don’t imagine that would be an issue. Ivy can come, can’t she?”

Ogilvy looked at her over the top of his glasses.

“Well, someone’s going to have to dress you and Miss Marchland,” he said dryly. “I'd like to to remember that Lady Tremaine has invited other guests to a shooting party, and that she plans “a series of entertainments”. If you think I’m suffering that with only Doc for company while you two lounge around in the library, you’re mistaken.”

Belle glanced between them, surprised and a little alarmed by the prospect of Lady Tremaine’s reaction to the governess attending a house party.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t want me there,” she said quickly, and Ogilvy switched his gaze from Alice to her.

“We expect Lady Tremaine to consider you a guest, Miss Marchland,” he said quietly. “I shall insist upon you being treated as an equal, I assure you. Not only because you’re part of this family now, but also because I think your good sense and logic would be of use to Doc and myself in this investigation.”

“We’ll need all the good sense and logic we can get, judging from that letter,” remarked the Professor, spearing a piece of bacon with his fork. “Her Ladyship appears to be convinced that she’s been marked by the Devil himself.”

“Well, perhaps we can put her mind at ease,” said Ogilvy, picking up his coffee. “At the very least it will give us a change of scene, and some good clean air. From what I can recall, the lake country is very beautiful, and Lady Tremaine is said to have stunning gardens. Perhaps they would add a little something to our morning walk, if - if you would accompany me, of course.”

He was looking at Belle expectantly, and she couldn’t help smiling.

“I should be delighted.”

He returned her smile, his eyes crinkling, and turned back to his breakfast. She resumed eating her own, trying to ignore the pleasing little flutter in her belly that appeared whenever he smiled at her. Over the past few days she had grown to know him a little more, spending her evenings in the library, or discussing books and music after dinner. He was very knowledgeable, and well-travelled, as was the Professor, and she had listened eagerly to their reminiscing, although she was sceptical about the far-fetched nature of some of their stories, and thought them embellished for her sake, and for Alice’s. They could not really have discovered a nest of demons in the tunnels beneath Exeter, for example, but she had enjoyed the tale, nonetheless.

She had spent more time with the children, as well, getting to know their quirks and assessing how far along they were with their schooling. Neither could read or write much beyond their own names. With one or two notable exceptions.

“Please write your names at the tops of your slates, as neatly as you can,” said Belle, setting a clean slate in front of each of them.

The schoolroom was light and fresh, a cold draught finding its way in under the sash window, and Belle kept an eye on the twins in case they started to shiver. She watched as they scratched out their names in wobbly letters, Nicholas scowling at his slate.

“Very good,” she said, when they had finished, making a mental note to work on their writing. The letters were recognisable, but they would need to learn to write with a better hand. “Now show me what else you can spell.”

The twins looked at each other, then back at their slates. They made no move to write, and Belle decided to prompt them with some simpler words. Her eyes flicked to where Charlie was curled up in a patch of sunlight by the window.

“Can you spell ‘cat’?” she asked, and the twins shook their heads.

“I can spell ‘shit’,” announced Nicholas. “Old Bartholomew down at The Turk’s Head showed me.”

“Oh, I can spell ‘shit’ too!” said Ava eagerly, and Belle closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before opening them again.

“Well, I would hope you won’t find the need to put that word into any formal correspondence,” she said dryly, making them giggle. “Perhaps we should run through the alphabet before putting any words together.”

She also spent time with Alice, who seemed to enjoy having another woman in the house, and one that she could talk to almost as an equal. Belle thought that Ogilvy and the Professor had done an excellent job of raising her, considering the start she had had in life and the lack of a wife in the house to act as a mother figure. Alice was curious and intelligent, eager to learn new things and incredibly excited at the thought of going on a journey. She chattered away as Belle packed her valise, sitting on the bed in her usual familiar way.

“I heard that Willowbrook Grange is haunted,” she said. “So Mrs Wolfe says, anyway. Maybe that’s what Lady Tremaine has asked Papa and Doc to help with. They don’t always deal with hauntings, you know. Doc says sometimes the spirits just like the place where they used to live, and that we shouldn’t throw them out of their own house just because it makes us uncomfortable. Of course, sometimes they’re trapped there, and then he and Papa help them to cross over. They wouldn’t be able to come back if they didn’t, you see.”

“Come back?” said Belle curiously, and Alice nodded.

“Come back as someone else,” she explained. “Another life.”

Another life. Perhaps she believes as Mr Ogilvy does. Past lives.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” asked Belle, folding a blouse, and Alice beamed.

“Oh yes!” she said. “I used to see them all the time in the alleys before I came here. Poor, lost souls, they were. I wish Doc could have helped them find a way out. I don’t think any of them wanted to be there.”

She chewed at her lip, looking sad, and Belle tried to change the subject.

“I hear the house is very grand,” she said. “I’m sure I shall feel quite out of place.”

“Of course you won’t,” Alice assured her. “You lived at Furton Grange, didn’t you? I’m sure Lady Tremaine’s house can’t be any grander than that.”

“Perhaps not,” allowed Belle. “I wish my new dress had been ready for the journey, though.”

“You shall wear it when we get back,” said Alice. “For my birthday, perhaps. That’s in February. The dress will be ready by then. We can have some music and dancing, like at Christmas.”

“That would be very pleasant.”

“You can dance with Papa,” she said. “He’s very fond of you, you know. He smiles a lot more, since you came.”

Belle could feel a slight blush in her cheeks, and she turned her attention to the stockings she was packing to hide it.

“I’m - I’m glad,” she managed. “He’s been very kind. You all have. I’m very happy that I came here.”

“We’re glad too!” said Alice. “It felt as though something was missing from the house, and then you came!”

She reached for Belle’s hand, squeezing it, a wide smile on her face, and Belle couldn’t help smiling back. Yes. She was very glad to have found this little family, and to be considered a part of it.

x

They departed early, Hatter hailing a cab to take them to the station at Euston, and another for he and Ivy and their cases. They would be breaking their journey in Derbyshire, Lady Ella having sent an effusive letter inviting them to stay at Furton Grange, and Belle clasped the children’s hands as they walked swiftly along the platform through clouds of billowing steam. Ogilvy helped each of them into the carriage, and Alice glanced back over her shoulder as she mounted the train, face alight with excitement.

The twins were wide-eyed with curiosity as the train made its way out of London, faces pressed to the windows of the compartment as soot-blackened buildings gave way to scattered villages and then rolling countryside, swathed in white blankets of snow. Belle and Alice started a game with them, asking them to point out churches along the route, but after awhile they grew bored, and sat back against the cushioned seats. The Professor produced a bag of toffees, which kept them quiet for long enough that Belle and Alice could share a brief conversation about Furton Grange, and the gardens there.

“I suspect there’ll be far less to see at this time of year, of course,” said Belle. “Although Lady Ella always did enjoy the Christmas celebrations. She always had a very large Christmas tree in the hall, and kept it up until Twelfth Night.”

“I bet her Christmas tree isn’t as pretty as ours,” said Ava stoutly.

“Well don’t tell her that,” remarked Ogilvy, from behind his newspaper.

“Miss Belle says we should always speak the truth,” said Ava, and he let the top half of the newspaper fold over, glancing at her over the rim of his glasses.

“And Miss Belle is quite correct,” he said. “Although if it comes to a choice between telling the truth and protecting someone’s feelings, sometimes it’s best to remain silent.”

“I can’t deny that,” said Belle, when the twins turned their gaze to her. “One should always aim to be kind where one can, of course.”

“What if someone’s nasty?” asked Nicholas. “Do you tell ‘em they’re nasty because it’s honest, or do you say nothing because that’s the nice thing to do? How will they know they’re nasty if you don’t tell ‘em?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to that,” said Belle. “Perhaps if it’s something they can change, it’s appropriate to say something.”

“Oh!” said Ava, with a look of understanding. “So it would be mean to tell old Bartholomew he’s got a big nose, because he can’t change that. But it’s alright to tell him he smells, because he can go and have a wash, can’t he?”

There was a snort of amusement from the Professor, which he turned into a cough. Belle closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them Ogilvy was watching her with a twinkle in his eyes.

“I think perhaps there are more tactful ways to speak to people,” she said. “We can move onto that sort of thing after you’ve worked on your letters.”

“We can spell ‘shit’, Mr Ogilvy,” announced Ava helpfully, and Belle wanted to put her head in her hands.

“That sounds a bit like your vocabulary at their age,” remarked the Professor, and Ogilvy grinned.

“Well, I improved vastly with time and patience,” he said. “I have every faith in Miss Marchland’s abilities, as well as Ava and Nicholas’s.”

He turned back to his paper, and Belle shared a brief, pained look with Alice.

x

They had to change trains at Derby, taking the branch line to Matlock. Lady Ella was to send a carriage to meet them, and looking out of the train window, Belle hoped they would not have to wait too long. The snow was falling again, thick white flakes drifting down as the sky darkened. By the time they had alighted from the train, the twins tired and fractious, it was fully dark, but Belle was relieved to see Hatter already conversing with a tall man in a black greatcoat, beside a large black carriage. The man bowed solemnly to them, and opened the door to the carriage.

Belle well remembered the journey from the station to Furton Grange, a jolting, winding ride of thirty minutes or so. She and Alice held the twins on their laps, bracing against one another to avoid being thrown around, and Ogilvy and the Professor held tight to the leather straps at the side of the carriage, their walking canes wedged against the opposite seats to keep their balance. Belle whispered in Nicholas’s ear as they turned the final corner, the dark mass of Furton Grange lit up from within, sending sharp wedges of warm light out across the smooth carpet of snow.

It was a fine house, two hundred years old, the sweeping driveway providing a welcome break from the rutted road leading to it, and Belle could see servants hurrying from the house to greet them. Lady Ella appeared as they were being led up the wide steps, dressed in ivory silk and with a fur stole draped around her thin shoulders to keep out the winter cold.

“My darlings!” she drawled, swooping in to press a kiss to Ogilvy’s cheek. “How wonderful to see you! Do come in and warm yourselves. There’s barely time to change before dinner!”

[five-wow]

10.01 thoughts (or basically a rambly recap, very spoilery, with a lot of caps lock abuse) under the cut!!! :D

JERRY’S BEEN SHOT. that’s not actually a surprise at this point in any way, but oh gosh, poor guy. “it hurts more than i thought it would.” oh no. :c

i’m confused though - grover’s there calling an ambulance, jerry is bleeding, steve is keeping pressure on the wound, but where’s danny? clutching his heart out of frame? OH WAIT he could be arresting ezra hassan, i suppose?

on screen: 2 weeks later. jfdkfjdk they resolved that cliffhanger in like, under thirty seconds.

love jerry’s longer curly hair! REALLY LOVE that jerry and junior are playing battleship, omg.

jerry thought about HIS DND BUDDIES WHEN HE GOT SHOT. i love him. (i’m also both worried about his mental health and glad they’re showing him actually feeling some repercussions from getting shot, aside from the flesh wound.)

tani and junior!!! are going to the opera!!! wonderful, i’m into it.

AH. here we have steve on his date, omfg. it all looks so pretty - the background, the restaurant, the date, steve. REALLY AWKWARD conversation though, fjdkfd. steve’s been hanging with danny too much - as soon as someone asks “what are you thinking” he just opens up his heart.

“it’s just crazy, you know. things that happen at work.” FDJKFDJF i’m glad he’s seeing that AFTER NINE YEARS.

DANNY CALLS. i’ve seen the clips that were drifting around tumblr, so i knew it was going to happen, but still. DANNY CALLS. IN THE MIDDLE OF STEVE’S DATE.

“i think it’s best,” steve says, about taking a phone call from danny while he’s in the middle of a first date with a really pretty woman who seems very kind about his total awkwardness, oh BOY

the WAY danny says “hi” just already has me in stitches. i die. and then steve’s “dude! i don’t know.” he sounds so frustrated! poor guy.

“words are kinda just, they’re falling out of my mouth, i don’t know why.” OH STEVE. also: that’s 80% of all fic in which steve finally confesses his feelings to danny ever. thank you, canon, for giving us a steve who is canonically prone to this.

“do you have any game at all?” danny asks, of steve, WHO HE IS CALLING IN THE MIDDLE OF A DATE. the co-dependency here is HIGH and it’s probably unhealthy but i’m enjoying it a lot, truly.

okay so, steve says “you’ve called twice, we haven’t even ordered!” and then DANNY SAYS “if you answered my texts, i wouldn’t have to call” and that’s just ALL SO BAD. they are TERRIBLE together and that woman should probably run far away.

danny! way to build up steve’s confidence on this date by telling him his thing is awkward and messing things up, holy shit.

I’M SCREAMING. “that was danny. who i love. very much.” I AM YELLING. YES. GOOD. PREMIUM CONTENT.

just. i love “i love you”s, okay. i love them. we got one (1) in s9 at the end of 9.01, but we’re off to a good start now in 10.01, with steve telling his frigging date that he loves danny, oh my.

IT GOT WORSE. i paused like, in the middle of steve’s sentence, and then as soon as i hit play the date said “sounds like my ex” and steve says “you know, it’s funny that you say that, because it’s kind of like a marriage” and uh, hello steve, i made a gifset about that the day before yesterday, thank you for giving me an update, but also just. wtf. wtf holy shit

i. i just. this is supposedly steve on a date with a woman being all heterosexual, but it’s really an extremely mcdanno scene, like ten times more than i was prepared for, wow.

real talk though, i’m almost certain this relationship isn’t going anywhere, but this woman seems really cool!!! i love her so far.

tani is actually enjoying the opera and junior seems to be paying more attention to her than the stage and i have no idea if this is actually an officially official date between them or if they’re still “just friends”, but it’s all so cute. and then, of course, some anonymous guy shows up with a sketchy briefcase that’s inevitably going to contain weapons, but oh well, it was nice for how long it lasted.

a slightly updated intro!!! katrina law is already in it (which i like) and the new group shot is kind of crowded but really nice, but fjdkfdjkdf they chose a really awkward moment where adam is supposedly typing something on the tech table but he’s REALLY OBVIOUSLY just randomly tapping his fingers on it. that’s going to haunt me. oh dear show runners, why.

danny... says steve was blowing his date, as they arrive on the crime scene that junior and tani found, and steve says he has a second date and danny goes “you got a second date?” incredulously and almost dismayed and that just really sounds like he WANTED steve to blow it. what is this, danny, setting steve up with a pretty woman from steve’s school to test him? see if he’ll say no and fall in your arms instead, and when he doesn’t, you’re disappointed?

even the lighting in this random stairwell gun fight chase scene is kind of pretty! the blue and red? i like it.

oh NO, steve, you’re not even ten minutes into a new season and you’re chasing some suicidally parcouring bad guy across roof tops and into a jump that’s REALLY going to give danny a heart attack, jesus.

fdjkfd danny telling steve that ten years ago he would’ve made that jump? telling him he’s forty? i’m not sure if that’s kind of mean or really good, but it might be both.

plot stuff happens, but i keep getting distracted by all the grey in steve’s beard and his new, longer hair. it’s good.

i like quinn’s introduction!!! i really do, more than i’d expected. and honestly, that déjà vu thing lenkov was talking about is very faint to me, to the point where it’s mostly just there because danny says it out loud in the text and then forcibly makes it so. they’re not in steve’s garage, it’s the wrong car they’re standing next to, there are three people instead of two and there’s no “one, two, three” and showing badges, but steve yeets his badge over the windshield of the car in quinn’s direction. the similarity isn’t that strong.

danny going “i gotta follow him” about steve and “i don’t know [shrugs]” about where they’re going is beautiful.

i’m about halfway through the episode now and steve and danny have spent SO MUCH time together and it’s really good but also has me slightly worried that they’re pushing all the steve&danny content for the entire season in one episode, omg. it’s good, though. i’m happy for now.

adam is still doing yakuza stuff. i get it, because it’s the one big thing they’ve given his character, but i do get kind of tired of it. he’s supposedly out, but every time they need it for plot reasons, he still has connections somewhere that are willing to help him for whatever reason.

and then quinn shows up and pulls a gun on adam, fjdkfd. listen, i know i said i was getting tired of him doing the yakuza thing over and over, but shooting him would be a little drastic.

danny: “this is good, we’re chasing a monster truck. that’s totally normal, right?” how is it that NOW they’re both suddenly realizing their lives are kind of crazy? they weren’t crazy before, guys? guys??

HAH, the guy in the truck drives over a dozen cars. that’s ridiculous, but a lot of fun, omg.

danny, when he finds tani and quinn in the same room at hq: “oh good, you two have met.” YES. MY SENTIMENTS. except i’m perhaps a little more exuberant about it. TWO MAIN FEMALE CHARACTERS IN ONE SCENE YES GOOD I LIKE THIS. we haven’t had this since... season 4, maybe? when catherine was briefly part of the team?

oh SHIT. danny: “are you sure you’re not related to steve in any way?” okay SO. we’re all assuming quinn is steve’s new love interest, but quinn being steve’s secret half sister somehow? also nonsense, but nonsense i’d like. and i mean, they need to keep the mcgarrett family drama alive somehow, so this could be fun.

quinn: “can’t this thing go any faster? [steve looks at her weird] what?” steve: “nothing. just never had that complaint before.” that is a LIE. i know for a fact that that’s a lie, because i have a stupid amount of knowledge of h50 of the top of my head and one of the things i know is that in 8.01 tani pops up between steve and danny while she’s in the backseat of the camaro and ALSO asks if it doesn’t go any faster. i know what they’re going for here, setting quinn and steve up as equals, and i like what they’re trying to tell us about quinn as a character in theory but come on, if you’re trying to convince us steve is all impressed by this woman that you might be setting him up with romantically, at least do some continuity fact checking on your own show, guys.

anyway! i do like that it’s canon that all women in five-0 think the camaro isn’t fast enough. get wrecked, steve and danny, HA.

when steve said to the bad guy “my friend lou here is going to put some handcuffs on you” i thought at first that he said “liu”, as in quinn’s last name, and oh man, first they had tani and junior’s last names as rey and reigns, which was close enough, but now they have lou and liu, gosh.

!!! this talk between steve and quinn in front of kamekona’s?? i LIKE IT. A LOT. we get to know a little more about quinn and steve genuinely does treat her as an equal and a capable colleague and there’s nothing especially romantic about this, which is good this early on even if they’re doing that later because i do feel like it could possibly work but right now it would just be really weird and very forced and i’m just really relieved that’s the dynamic they’re going for. this, this is good.

OH BOY. “we’re breaking up with you, danny” steve says. i... wow.

FAIR THOUGH. it’s probably a REALLY GOOD idea of steve to maybe involve danny a little less in his dating life if he wants to, well, actually have one that’s viable for life, but oh GOSH. danny going “you can’t cut me out” when steve tells him this? danny is just. so interested in steve’s romantic life, damn.

tani: “mom and dad are fighting again.” fdjkfdjk YES. this time it’s not even junior saying this to eddie behind steve and danny’s back, it’s just tani saying it out loud to the entire group and nobody says anything about it so uhhh that’s accepted fact then, within the team. GOOD.

ohhhh jerry is leaving. also not a real surprise and it’s probably kind of good that the team doesn’t endlessly keep growing if quinn joins this season, but ahh, i’m sad, anyway.

GROUP HUG. i love EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT THIS.

oh gooood, somebody put a bomb in the champ box in steve’s garage. that’s harsh.

final thoughts: i LIKED THIS. very much!!! i’m relieved about that, tbh, because at least i’m happy about the start of the season, which seems like a good sign, haha. i love quinn so far, there was REALLY GREAT mcdanno stuff in this, i love that steve is dating again, tani and junior seem to be dating, jerry is fairly healthy and happy - all around lots of good stuff.

i do kind of think that cliffhanger from last season got extremely little attention (we didn’t even see ezra hassan get arrested, and what happened to her kid? where was danny? idk it was weirdly short and quick), but it’s still possible they’re coming back to that in a later episode, idk.

[janiedean]

Ok I need to know your thoughts about this Green Book mess

... pray for me anon XD

anyway, never mind that my general thought is that I’m really sad the mule didn’t compete this round because then it’d have deserved all the awards hands down........

tldr: the fact that people are outraged is the proof that tumblr at large can’t recognize classism when it hits you in the face.

in longer words: 95% of the hot takes I’m reading are Patently False And It Shoes People Haven’t Seen That Movie.

in much longer words: counting that I haven’t seen all the nominees but I did see both blakkk/lansman (which from now will be BKKK) and blackpanther and green book (and borap but that one wasn’t gonna win best movie anyway so) and I guess that is where the crux is, so, in order.

bkkk was obviously the best movie of the lot quality speaking. in an ideal world, it would have one. except that bkkk is a movie that’s heavily political and if y’all think that the oscars would give a prize to the heavily political movie that directly criticizes the administration in power then y’all missed the part where that’s not what happens at the oscars. last time it happened it was 1978 and the deer hunter won and I still don’t know wtf was the jury’s state of grace at that point, but in 1980 they had apocalypse now in the list and kramer vs kramer won. like. guys. if you have APOCALYPSE NOW on the list and anything else wins in the major categories then you’re a joke. and tbh it surprises me that spike l/ee is still hoping he might snag a major win that’s not for screenplay with these parameters - they’re not gonna go there. hasn’t happened since ‘78. come on;

bp was not a best movie flick. like, guys: it’s not even the best mcu film around as far as I’m concerned and while it most likely deserved the technical awards..... seriously? like. if neither GB nor bkkk won then any other movie on the list had better shots than bp. I can’t even think people seriously assume it was best movie material or ON PAR WITH BKKK as in, ‘if bkkk doesn’t win then THAT ONE should have won’. like, no;

now: green book was a *safe* pick in the sense that it wasn’t as heavy-handed as bkkk when it came to be political so it was the perfect choice if they wanted to go like ‘oh hey see we gave the award to the movie about racism without giving it to the one raising the middle finger to donald trump’, but differently from moon/light (which according to me was the most political political win of the last ten years like guys sorry that movie was nowhere near as good as people said back then and I found it incredibly overrated, and before you tell me that it’s because I didn’t understand it: exactly the point. the wire is one of my fave shows ever and it tacked all the things moon/light tried to except that it did it vastly better and I actually got it for how well it was written, moon/light completely failed in that sense and I’m glad if it was a good movie for the people it was directed to but it didn’t engage beyond that target imvho but never mind that) it actually tackled very well a series of issues I never see discussed in US cinema when it comes to *racism-themed* movies and I thought it was a really well-made movie that nailed a lot of things especially when it came to how classism and racism interject themselves in the discourse and how you don’t get out of discarding one of them so easily.

specifically, with SPOILERS FROM THE MOVIE under the cut SO GO AHEAD AT WILL OR NOT:

now: all the posts ‘this is the usual movie about the white guy who gets the black friend’ already are obviously from people who haven’t seen it because they missed the basic point, as in: that the white guy is poor and uneducated and isn’t *racist* because he’s a terrible person, he is out of ignorance and not knowing any better BUT at the same time he’s not so narrow-minded that he doesn’t have fairly forward opinions on other -isms (see THAT REVEAL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOVIE after which he goes like ‘I’ve been a bouncer in most of new york’s night clubs do you think I mind that thing’ which is a thing the audience wouldn’t have thought since italian-american men from the 50s/60s notoriously came from a fairly -PHOBIC culture in that specific sense), and that the guy being italian-american ie a *white* category that back then did not have *white privilege* put him in a lower class position than the black guy;

on the other side, it was spelled that the black guy’s issue was the contrary in the sense that he’s rich, he’s cultured, he speaks five languages, he’s not a stereotype and since people want stereotypes or expect them, he can’t seem to please either side and feels alienated from both, which I think is a discourse that should be way more relevant in a website where people talk all the time about people of color not being stereotypes and so on;

like the entire fucking point of that movie is that white guy overcomes his racism unlearning his ignorance and black guy has a few realizations about how classism works and reconnects with his heritage throughout the entire thing;

and the fact that it was the black guy explaining the white guy how to write the poetic love letters without grammar mistakes and got him to appreciate finer things in life while the white guy helped him get down to earth (which he plot-wise definitely needed - he was unhappy af before XD) *and* at the same time the movie never fucking forgot that skin color > money when it comes to systematical racism in the south (ie the scene where they get stopped by the southern policeman and white guy punches him bc he basically told him that being italian-american was being half-the-n-word and black guy tells him ‘yeah well I handled that my entire life you could deal with it once’ was FAIRLY DAMNED OBVIOUS even if it also showed that it’s Not How Things Should Go) was imvo a very good narrative choice/balancing;

also, I was really appreciating that scene where don asks tony (a guy who has no idea who orpheus is and thinks orpheus and eurydice is about orphans) to shorten his name because vallelunga is too difficult to pronounce and tony’s like ‘if the people you play for are so cultured they can learn to pronounce my name properly’ because like guys that’s a thing that happens with all non-anglophone names and seeing it come from someone who hasn’t had an education but doesn’t want to be *made better* because that doesn’t make them unworthy and then only accepts help when he wants it and doesn’t come from a position of ‘you need to look more presentable’ but from ‘I want to make your life better’ was really fucking nice excuse me, because it *did* make a point about how not being formally educated means that people are considered lesser when they shouldn’t have to fight for it, and I thought that the class-switch in there was a really great idea;

anyway nvm my specific opinions about specific scenes, the point is: green book is not heavy-handed and admittedly is a lot more sugary than BKKK and has the feel-good ending that makes it palatable for easy wins, but the content is fucking everything but sugary or devoid of discussing Serious Issues that I almost never see tackled in this kind of US movie and if people actually wanted to watch a movie that sees the subject counting that class relations exist, that some -isms are culturally learned and can be overcome, that money counts when we’re discussing how people are treated in the US, the *earned whiteness* concept (because tony is *white* but hasn’t *earned whiteness* and it’s plenty damned obvious) and that class relations are not automatically clear-cut *especially in the US* then green book is an absolutely valid choice. and like...... it wasn’t white saviorism in the sense that WHITE GUY GETS REDEEMED AND BECOMES UN-RACIST, it’s about two people growing and learning from each other and the fact that tony’s racism is tied to a) upbringing while being poor b) not literally knowing any better but that it doesn’t really take that much for him to see that his opinions are wrong when usually it’s poor black person vs rich white person, and actually that’s why I thought calling it reverse driving miss daisy was reaaaally not getting the point, so if people actually saw the damned movie before deciding it’s terrible that’d be nice;

I also think sp/ike lee was beyond rude in his, er, reactions to GB’s win, but then again... listen guys I love the man’s movies but since that time he went like ‘clint eastwood can’t make movies about charlie parker’ (??) and dismissed the italian partisans’s associations complains about what he did in miracle in st. anna (a movie I did actually really like but they were right about him villainizing the resistence when he could have not) with basically I DON’T CARE THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE ISSUES WITH HOW I, AN AMERICAN, DEPICTED A FAIRLY IMPORTANT PIECE OF ITALIAN HISTORY... like he needs to chill and to realize that there’s a thing called losing with grace and he’s not doing it.

tldr: bkkk imvo deserved to win way more and tbqh if I was spike I’d complain about bp having gotten more awards than his movie when bp really is the safest choice ever if we wanna talk about politics win, and I can agree that GB was a political choice, but it was not a bad political choice nor a racist one and actually it raised a lot of issues that I’d like to see explored more in movies because they usually aren’t. on top of that I thought mahershala ali’s performance in gb was fucking stellar and definitely was miles better than his part in moonlight (but like... bc he was in moonlight for TWENTY MINUTES, he was co-lead here) and I’m honestly baffled that when he won for moonlight there were gifsets everywhere and here there aren’t when this role was WAY better and more nuanced and with more to chew, never mind that again, he deserved it just for the speech under the rain I was discussing before. but like..... of course we’re all ignoring it??

also: I’m really laughing that tumblr as a whole is crying about GB winning when until two days ago bkkk was the worst thing ever because adam dr/iver starred in it and OMG OF COURSE HE WAS CHOSEN TO PLAY THE KKK MEMBER BECAUSE HE REALLY IS RACIST [lmao as if spike l/ee would work with a really racist person] and no one on this website gave a single fuck about it when it came out except for adam dr/iver fan blogs but now everyone is like OMG WHY DIDN’T BKKK WIN???!!!!! like guys you didn’t care about BKKK until a day ago and now I’m supposed to think you were rooting for it all along? when you all hated it because omg how dare they cast ky/lo ren in something where he’s not a bad guy? like we serious? come the fuck on, no one on here cared. and the fact that if blackpanther had won no one would say BKKK not winning = UTTERMOST CRIME just says all about how a film’s quality is judged around here. bye, I said my piece.

[officialthiamlibrary]

Welcome to another profile on Behind the Screens, giving you personal insight on who your favorite creators are and what they do when they aren’t wowing you with their creative ability.

Happy Tuesday friends! Today, we have the delightful pleasure in getting to know one of your most requested authors, @formerprincess. Rena, our aforementioned guest, is the writer of numerous works, most notably A Tale of Claws and Fangs, Overslept, and Finding My Way To You. As you’ll come to find out, she’s also so much more, so let’s not wait a second more to dive in.

Rena! To get us started, share something about yourself! And for the twist: the word could should be around the number of letters of the characters in you’re favorite TW rarepair ship.

Erica Reyes + Stiles Stilinski = 25

Shy but it you know me I can be pretty weird. Huge book lover. Disney Fangirl. Big heart. Need writing like air. Wrestling fan.

Woah, really?! A wrestling fan? What got you into it?

I get this question so often haha. Because I appear so shy and innocent, people are always like: What? Wrestling? You? It’s fun.

My dad watched it for a while and sometimes I watched it with him, nothing too invested. But then I learned about Nikki and Brie Bella over tumblr rp and I got really curious about them so I researched online. I love them both, especially Brie, love that they stand for strong women and through them I started to actively watch Wrestling and over time gathered some other wrestlers, male and female, I love to see in the ring. It’s fun to watch them and what they do in the ring is impressive.

From wrestling to Teen Wolf, I dig it! And, how you find your way to the Thiam fandom? What about the two grabbed a hold on you?

That’s kind of a long story. I started watching Teen Wolf because I saw gifs and pictures of it on tumblr. I got curious and wanted to see this show but it wasn’t broadcasted on TV in my country, so I kind of searched online for a way and I watched until the point where Liam was introduced in the series  but then stopped because I lost interest and with work I was too busy to even think of Teen Wolf. And then I was on tumblr and I saw a gifset of the scene where Liam and Theo almost fistbumped and I was like ‘Oh hey, these two are cute together.’ I don’t even know why, I just liked the chemistry they had in the scene, Theo’s soft smile, and all. I grew curious who they were because I recognized Liam but I had no idea who Theo was. Quick online search. Aha, those two are Theo and Liam, Thiam for short. Interesting. The Thiam fandom was so very small at this point, there like five fanfics or whatever, so I didn’t really get much from my little expedition into the Thiam fandom.

I kind of forgot about them again because life and other stuff and all and then I saw something about Theo being evil months after my little encounter with the Thiam fandom and I was all ‘Wait a minute! What? But he and Liam…What the hell is going on?’. I was totally confused and stayed confused until was finally able to watch Teen Wolf again (I watched because I heard about the series ending and felt nostalgic so I gave it another shot). I watched season 4, 5, and season 6A and I was hooked!! And so ready for more screen time of Theo and Liam together, so ready to see what would happen to my boys.Tumblr came in handy again and damn had the fandom grown. I saw what everybody had to offer and the ship itself gave me so much inspiration that I wanted to contribute and put in my own two cents on them. The fandom was so welcoming and friendly, it felt like a family from the start and thus I decided to stay. I met many great people because of Thiam already, it’s really awesome.

What drew me in about them? The unspoken chemistry between them, not only romantically but also platonically. Even when I saw gifsets from them without any context, the looks they shared showed such a connection for me, I was astonished and delighted. And when I saw the whole scenes with them, every episode, I liked how different they acted around each other. I always felt like they got each other to a point no other was possible. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the relationship they have with other characters but I always felt they had this special level of a connection. As if they found their ideal counterpart with each other because they both have this fire inside them and don’t shy away from unleashing it.

Oooh, that last bit is so poetic!

Thank you. It came to my mind while I laid in bed and couldn’t fall asleep. When I thought of this, I sat up and almost yelled “That it! That’s Thiam!” Thank god I didn’t or I would have scared the neighbours probably haha.

Haha, most definitely. What’s another thing you’re passionate about beside Thiam and wrestling?

Being creative in general, not only writing.  I mean, yes, writing is the biggest thing I am passionate about. I view writing as a way to deal with the stress of daily life and I would go crazy if I couldn’t write. I also write poetry sometimes.

But not only writing, sometimes I like to create some picture collage or maybe an outfit on Polyvore. Or I simply create things in my head, characters, storylines, worlds, whatever I can think of at those moments. Sometimes I take my thoughts and try to realize them in my Sims game, it’s fun.

LOL, fellow Sims lover! This is one of my fav things to do! What’s been your favorite characters/scenario to conceptualize in the game? How did the game turn out? Any entertaining stories?

Hey, that’s great haha! I love to do this and I’m currently building some houses I could use as inspiration for my stories. I usually play with original Sims, see them starting a family and see how many generations I can have until it starts to get old or until I’m running out of ideas but I once created Stiles, Lydia, Erica and Derek in the game and the Stiles Sims immediately took a shining to the Derek Sims. It was hilarious to watch because even when I was not telling him to, he was interacting with Derek, followed him around. It was adorable. He tried to make Derek laugh^^. It ended with them falling in love and Lydia and Erica being the bridesmaids.

Aww, natural shipping, sigh. That’s the best. Let’s say you could put Thiam in a similar situation, but with characters of another show. Which would you choose? How’d you think the interaction would go?

I’d chose Shadowhunters tv series and to me, this would be hilarious and awesome at the same time. Theo and Jace would so have this little competition who’s better at basically everything; Izzy would be like an older sister to Liam but without actually treating him like a baby. She would admire his determination and will to protect those he loves, they have this in common. I imagine Liam and Jace siding when it comes to fighting because they are all like: Act first and think later but really just want to protect their family and friends. Alec would roll his eyes and ask himself what he has done to deserve this but come around in the end because is actually someone able to not like Theo and Liam? 

Magnus would be totally amused by the whole thing, especially if Liam and Theo are not a thing yet but he has eyes and he can basically taste the sexual tension okay? And Luke, Liam would not stop asking Luke questions about how he leads his pack and everything because another Alpha, how cool is that??? Also Maia and Liam? Dreamteam! Both struggle with control sometimes and they so would get each other. Imagine Luke and Scott running after their Betas to save them from trouble XD. Theo and Clary, because I love the headcanon about Theo being an artist, would bond over that and probably have a tentative friendship going on.

Before we chat about your works, one more silly question. If you could build the ultimate paintball/laser tag team from any five characters AND one villain on Teen Wolf, who would they be and why?

Liam, Kira, Allison, Theo, Erica, and Kate Argent

Liam because he is very athletic and competitive.

Kira because it surely would fun to have her around and she is just an awesome badass cutie. Also, she has fast reflexes.

Allison because she has an amazing aim and also girl power!

Theo because he is like a mastermind and can come up with the best strategy.

Erica because she is my queen and she would lure the other team out so we can shoot them. She and Theo would be great at making a cunning plan.

And Kate because she is ruthless and would destroy the other team.

Perfect. I still say Theo and Allison would’ve been a sight to behold together–for better or worse. Alright, so we have wrestling, sims, shadowhunters, outfit planning. And on top of all those, writing! If your creative process was a person, what type would they be? What would they do? Wear? Listen to? How do they handle conflict?  

They would be a very chaotic type, all over the place. Somebody you see and wonder how they get any work done because they seem to not be organized at all. They would be that type of person that oversleeps and then bolds into work with their bag hanging off one shoulder, their jacket almost slipping down the other shoulder, travel mug filled with coffee clutched in their grip, and clutching a notepad with lots of notes hanging out from it to their chest. They would not be the one that steps into the spotlight at all but rather satisfies with the result of their work.

Their clothing would be a mix from different styles, Boho but also athletic, sometimes chic. Everything they want to wear, they wear it.

Their taste in music is mixed. They mostly listen to Pop but they also have some rocks songs they are addicted to, some Hip Hop. Whenever they hear something with a good beat, good lyrics, that’s what they like and listen to. Their favorite band would probably be Little Mix.

Handle conflict? That’s a tough one. Hm. They would try to see it from the other’s perspective while at the same time telling themselves they should not explode and yell. They are mostly quiet but if they are peeved, they can lash out. If somebody yells at them they would shy away and close themselves off.

Does your creative process also extend to other fandoms? Pairings? Novels or stories with original characters?

I started to lay down the basics for my own original novel and I can’t wait to start. I wanted to write it for years and now I finally got the right motivation and the right mindset.

Aside from Thiam, I have written some fanfictions for Charmed since that’s one of my favorite tv shows. And I have some Stucky fanfictions started as well as the base for a Malec fanfiction that lingers in the back of my mind.  But Thiam is definitively the ship that inspires me the most and I wrote the most about.

An original novel, that’s awesome! What genre are you setting it in? Also supernatural?

It is a novel playing in this day and age but it’s all about the supernatural world mixed with the normal world of the humans. Think Charmed or Shadowhunters. You have the innocent humans living without actually knowing that demon witches, vampires and such live among them. The supernatural society is still in the focus of the novel.

That sounds awesome. Would you say there’s one trope or situation that somehow always wrangles itself in your stories?

I try my best to use different tropes and situations to challenge myself as a writer but one thing that happens for sure is character A watching character B and marveling around how gorgeous they look and how stunning they are. Just some good old-fashioned swooning. I just like to imagine one person being so completely enamored by another person that they have to stop and stare for a while because they sight is breathtaking. And the other person is either completely oblivious and continues with what they do, or knows exactly what they are doing, smirk at person A and preen at the attention.

And yes, friends to lovers, I’m a sucker for this.

Who isn’t really?! What’s the best friends to lovers story you’ve ever read, either fanfiction or novel? (Or one of the best, since they’re probably so many to choose from)

I guess it’s one of the greatest tropes out there haha. Puh, I read so many great stories and novels about that trope, it’s hard to tell. I remember a novel I once read (I can’t remember the title  or the character names though) where this was one of the main story lines but it really took the whole novel for them to finally become a couple and yet while reading you saw their relationship growing and evolving. That’s what I always try to achieve with my stories. 

I also read a Malec fanfic once where both were human but Magnus was a tattoo artist and Alec a florist. They got to know each other and it was simply perfect, Magnus helped Alec with some things and it was just adorable and awesome and amazing. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the title of this one either. I will search for it and maybe give it a shout out later when I found it again because it was really good

Oh, I’ve read that Malec fic, so good! There’s a fantastic MM novel called Switched—I think—by N.R. Walker that’s friends to lovers and I read it in one night. It’s just something about two people, who know one another in and out, coming together, more sighs.

I’d love to jump into your Thiam works. First, the Raeken Twins and your story, Finding My Way To You. Do you have any twins headcanons/imagines which helped you bring Mike Raeken to life?

I got this awesome ask one day about Theo and Mike from PPL being twins and my mind began to rattle. I thought about Theo, his personality, and began to develop someone who would be Theo’s complete opposite. Pretty Little Liars helped a lot because Mike was a sweetheart there, at least until the point where I stopped watching the show. I absolutely loved the idea of Theo having someone to take care of and protect, being a big brother.

I had a vague scene in my mind where Theo berates Mike for being too trusting and Mike just rolls his eyes and tells his big brother to relax. That was the base on where I developed the Raeken Twins. I wanted somebody who was the opposite of Theo but I didn’t want to go completely black and white and so I carved out Mike’s character more, gave him some rough edges as well.

It is fun to play around with the aspect of Theo having his counterpart who at the same time gets him to a T and has someone he always aimed to protect. He may act like he doesn’t care but it had always been my headcanon that he would do anything for Mike and Mike is that one person who knows everything about Theo and who also knows Theo does in fact care

So, if Mike Raeken was part of the Pack and the TW universe, how would he handle these few scenarios:

a: Who would be his pack allies, the pack members he’d bond with? Who would be his pack friend-enemies?

Mike, just like his brother, would become a member of the puppy pack because Mike’s a puppy too. He’d probably bond the most with Nolan and Corey because they share the most character traits with them being kind of cute and sometimes awkward. Brett would be his crush for sure. But he would also be good friends with Liam and totally root for Thiam.

Friendenemies? Good question.  He’s not as harsh as Theo so he probably would not really have problems with the people around. Unless you come for his brother, then he will end you.

b: In a Supernatural crisis, how would he respond?

That clearly depends on the situation. When it comes to facing an enemy and taking them down, Mike’s a fighter and goes into the full experience. He is fast, he is agile, he is ruthless. But if it comes to protecting the people he cares about, he gets very defensive and worries more about them and bringing them to safety than taking part in the fight itself. He’s not even afraid to charge in and drag the person out of the fight (especially his brother). Mike is pretty level-headed and can stay calm even if times get rough. He checks a situation, makes his own theories about it, but he mostly stays in the background, lets the others talk and discuss, and only interferes when he feels like it’s not going anywhere. But most of the times he is fine with just watching and striking when it’s the right time.

c: One hilarious scenario you think would occur between him, Theo, and other member of the pack?

They would pull a Switch-A-Raeken so often to confuse the pack and get their laughs out of this. Liam is probably the only one who can tell them apart because he pays so close attention to them (mostly Theo though) but the others always get totally confused and the twins love to switch even during a conversation to completely confuse everyone.

One situation I find absolutely hilarious and I will write one day would involve the Sheriff, probably to introduce them as twins. One twin gets arrested, the other shows up to bail him out. Stilinski is in his office when suddenly one of the deputies knocks at the door. He calls them in and they open the door, slightly nervous. “We…uhm…have a situation here with the boy we arrested. You might want to check? He said you surely would love that.” The sheriff narrows his eyes and gets up from his chair. He walks out of his office and there they are. Two identical smirks on their faces and casually leaned against the backrest of the bench in front of his office. “Hey, Sheriff!” One of them says. Stilinski is baffled, moments pass by. He finally finds his voice again. “There are two of them? Because one Raeken wasn’t enough???” He yells, voice cracking at the end. He scratches his neck and grimaces. The twins’ smirks intensify. The deputy ducks away and hides behind the computer screen.

Rofl, I hope you do write it! Are you planning to continue Finding My Way To You too? Any spoilers you can slip us?

I am definitely planning to but I have more prominent ideas for A tale written with fangs and claws and other stories at the moment. I do have written some part of the next chapter still. I love this story and the feedback I received was wonderful. Raeken Twins are a fun thing to write about, so expect more to come.

For a spoiler, I will tell you we will have some drama, much love and yes also smut. There will be a slightly different take on the Dread Doctors spin because I am dissecting the storyline a bit to make it more fitting for Finding My Way To You. There will be a shift in the relationship between the twins as well. For everything else, you need to stay tuned ;D

Well, I suppose we must now haha. Until then, we have all of a Tale of Fangs and Claws to keep ourselves busy. Speaking of….a Tale of Fangs and Claws Time!! (I held out for this long; I’m proud of myself.) For anyone unfamiliar, could you give us a quick synopsis? What inspired the idea? 

Whooo!!  The story is about Liam becoming an Alpha when he least expects it. He and Theo are living in Seattle, are roommates in college, and totally in love with each other but they both feel the other might not return their feelings in the beginning. Theo still joins Liam’s pack and together they return to Seattle. The story follows Liam’s journey in his new role, especially when other werewolves appear and Liam and Theo soon have a pack of their own to take care of. They become a family, face many battles and they all learn more about each other and their strengths and weaknesses, help to find their place in the world.

My inspiration for this came from the sole wish to see Liam as Alpha. I think he would be a great Alpha and would have loved to see it happen at the end of the show as some kind of next-generation thing with the older pack members leaving Beacon Hills and him taking over from Scott. The more I thought about this, the bigger the need for Alpha!Liam became and I started to imagine his pack, created their characters a little bit and searched for faceclaims. It took me a while until I finally started to write the story; until I had a decent enough base to actually imagine turning this into a multi-chapter fic and upload it.  Add me playing around with my basic photoshop program and create some Liam as Alpha manips and the inspiration was there. It came to the point where I could no longer hold back and thus I uploaded the prologue. I never imagined the success it would have and I am still amazed by this.

Wow, and it’s almost 300,000 words long! First, huge congrats on being the longest Thiam fic thus far! Is this the longest story you’ve ever written? Did you originally plan all the chapters or has it reshaped itself? Would you say you have a secret to writing longer fics while also keeping your personal interest high?

It’s crazy! Thank you so much!! I have to say I never expected this to turn out so huge, I still can’t believe it. Every time I check the chapter numbers, it still feels so unreal. When I started, I had no idea how long this would be. I had basic elements and certain points I wanted to have happen but everything else was non-existent in the beginning. It still is nowadays because that’s how I write. I don’t have everything planned out and so my own story keeps surprising me but I love this.  I’m writing a chapter and some things are coming to my mind while I’m writing and I take a break to consider, bring this in a vague timeline, and then continue writing.

 I admire people whohave every little detail plannedout but I’m so not like this and I had it happen to me that I wrote a chapter completely different than I intended to. Because my thoughts didn’t work as good as the thing I had been actually writing, if that makes sense. Sure, I have some scenes I have in mind for a long time and while I have not every word planned out, I have a pretty solid image of the scenes. Theo’s development for example. I knew how I want to have the big moments to happen and I am even more excited than usual when it is time to write it.

The story is indeed the longest I have ever written until now.  Who knows what the future has in store? :D

I wouldn’t exactly call it a secret. Thiam itself inspires me so much and receiving so much feedback from so many people is also a very good source of motivation, not gonna lie. This story, the reactions I got from people, has made me feel better about my talent as a writer and that fueled my passion. I associate so many great things with this story and I got attached to every single character that writing a new chapter feels like coming home. I see them as part of my family, my babies if you want, and I am curious to see how they develop further. That’s what keeps me inspired to make this story longer and longer. I’d say the secret, in general, is creating something you truly love, no matter how cliche this sounds. Create this word that is truly you that brings yourself joy and I’m sure you won’t lose interest.

Yes, I so agree! When I was writing my main Stacksonstory, I fell so in love with the characters and the progress of the story! And then to be able to talk about them with so many people, it definitely kept the thoughts coming, even long after I finished it!

Exactly what happened to me with A tale written with fangs and claws! It is wonderful to have such great response and it’s a great source of motivation. I get so many ideas for this story just by reading comments or talking with people. That’s the beauty of fanfiction I think.

Most definitely! Would you then say any of your original characters are based on people you know personally?

Actually no.  I was more inspired by fictional characters, took some things from them, and created my own individual character. If there are any resemblances I haven’t noticed them yet but hey, maybe I will someday^^

Maybe, who knows what might happen. Not us, certainly. Thinking forward, is there one thing you’re dying to add in the story but you have to write a few more chapter before it comes up?

Liam’s and Theo’s wedding! I am dying to write this since a few chapters and everyone who read the last chapter knows I’m toying around with this thing a bit but I really, really can’t wait to write their wedding. It will happen one day and I am excited about it but it will take some more (a lot more) chapters until we can get there.

Yessssss, we’ll be patiently waiting until then! Before we wind down, I’d love to give you a time to impart some wisdom onto us. Any life hacks or creative wisdom on your mind lately?

It is important to figure out what works best for you and never let anybody butt in, writing-wise and in life too. I had to learn this myself but there will be people telling you how you should do a certain thing and then you need to figure out if this is really the best for you. I’m not saying you should not take advice, you definitely should, but it is okay to change this advice, maybe combine it with the advice you got from someone else and create your own special way to get things done. There might be people who are very critical of how you work, how you handle things, and sometimes it can really get to you and be a bummer but it is important to remember that as long as it good for you, as long as it helps you get something done the way you want it to, it’s the right way for you. Your own opinion and your own wellbeing are more important than what some might think are the right thing for you. Your way is the right thing and great things will come from this, just stay true to yourself even when it’s hard sometimes

Also: Allow yourself to change. What was on your mind a year ago, what you wrote a year ago, doesn’t become less valid just because you changed your perspective. You are ever-changing and there will be moments where you realize that your old mindset doesn’t apply to the situation anymore, not to the person you became anymore. That’s okay. It doesn’t take anything away from the progress you made before, doesn’t take anything away from what you created back then. It simply shows your development as a writer, as a person, and that’s a fascinating progress.

Thank you so much for your honesty and depth. Aww, well, we reached the end of our time, Rena! Luckily, we’ve learned so much about you in our short time together. To end us out, what’s next for you? Any big plans?

I have several projects planned. In terms of fanfiction, I’m planning a sequel to A tale written with fangs and claws if I finish the story, I’m planning on continuing my Mated series, Finding My Way To You will be continued as well, and there are several other fanfictions on the line. I’m also planning on finally writing my first original novel, something I’m very excited about.  Those are the things I have planned, who knows what else is gonna happen? Life is full of surprises.

Good luck with your novel! And all the other bundles of surprises and happiness that are whirling your way. Is there anything else you’d like to share? The mic’s in your hands.

It’s okay to struggle. I sometimes feel like the standards expect everyone to be perfect at anything they do and it can be really frustrating when you feel like you’re not reaching these standards. You feel like a failure and it’s a horrible thing to feel. I had so many moments where I felt like I would never reach the standard for that thing to be considered good or even great and it took me a long time to learn not to always compare myself to others and be proud of who I am, my talents, what I create. I still feel like I’m not good enough sometimes but every time I struggle, I learn new things about myself and that’s what made me realize it is okay to struggle. You learn next to nothing when you don’t struggle and ease everything perfectly on the first try.

Sure, it’s great to have a lift first time you do something, it’s even important to be a natural in some things, but I also know that struggling causes doubts and insecurities because you feel like anybody else doesn’t seem to struggle at all. What I’m trying to say is embrace your struggles as part of your development process on becoming the best version of yourself that you can be. And remember: Nobody has the same story to tell as you. The world needs to hear yours, don’t let the doubts take this away from you. It’s a long and difficult way to go but it’s worth it in the end.

Thanks so much Rena! It was a freaking blast getting to know you and your life, inspirations, and quirky interests haha! 

Thankfully, the conversation doesn’t have to end here. To chat with her about her works, Thiam, Teen Wolf, even Wrestling, you can find Rena at these three places:  

AO3: Former_Princess

Tumblr: formerprincess

Ask Box: formerprincessask

In her words, “It’s more than okay! I love getting asks, messages. I’d even love to get a carrier pigeon. I am a shy noodle myself but I absolutely love to interact with people and have them interact with me. Ask as many questions as you want, send in as many things as you want, you will never bother me and in fact make me very happy. Also - on a non fandom related note - myaskbox is always open for anybody who needs somebody to listen to them.”

She’s also currently accepting prompts, though it might take her a while to get to them–you know busy lives and what not. So, feel free to “send in things, share your thoughts, headcanons, and everything else,” with her. (Also, her words!)

Thanks so much for reading. We will see you next week as we get to know about fandomtrashwhore, aka Marie, our resident Thiam Social Media expert. Until then!

Have a Thiam Creator you fan over? Send us their names. Likewise, if you as the creator, would like to be a part of the Behind the Screens series, give us a shout too! We’d love to get to know you, as well.

[kickassfu]

Welcome, Dear Customer

Happy bday @westhallen this was probably not quite what u had in mind, but i hope you like it!!! I wish I could make u a gifset, as you’d like but i don’t know hoooow so you get this xD Love you <3

On FF.

Welcome, Dear Customer

It truly was a magical coffee shop; it was welcoming and warm, open to anyone who needed it. It smelled of baked chocolate cookies and fresh brewed coffee, it felt like home away from home - like, for that moment, you belonged there. Humans always managed to find it someway or another, walking in dazed, and leaving with a lighter heart and a smile. Caroline built Mystic Falls, as a safe haven for whoever needed one, whether they were a werewolf, a witch or a vampire, enemy or friend, all were welcome. Although if anyone started trouble, she would deal with them swiftly and promptly.

She was open and friendly to anyone, but there had been a new patron that managed to get on her nerves; Caroline still wasn’t sure what he was yet, he managed to hide it quite well, but she was sure he was special. Something different, maybe a hybrid of sorts? He was infinitely intriguing and could get under her skin fairly easily.

The bell on the door rung, and she sighed, his smell always made her hunger rise and her composure to fall. Smiling brightly, - although faked, no one but him had ever noticed - Caroline said warmly, “Good morning.”

He smiled back at her, knowing full well she couldn’t treat him like she did the other customers, no matter how much she tried and sat down at the counter right in front of where she stood. “Good morning love. Did you miss me?”

“You were here yesterday.” she muttered, rolling her eyes.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, dear customer. Thank you for always coming by, have you decided what you’d like yet?”

“One of your special coffees please. And I’ve said it again and again, call me Klaus.”

There were many special coffees, for any and all species, things that called to their inner beings, but the one Klaus asked for was made especially for him. She didn’t like doing it, not sure what made her buckle to do it the first time or what made her keep doing until now. She felt exposed, and vulnerable, feelings Caroline didn’t appreciate feeling - but she did anyway.

Carefully she brewed the coffee; it was mesmerizing, he could never look away from her dainty, lithe fingers, as she used her own special brand of magic to make coffee or cookies, or killing someone.

It was by chance that he came across this place, he liked the feeling of it but felt it was off, as if something was trying to invade his very being, and then he had seen her. Glorious in all her being; all smiles and kindness at the surface, but deep inside there was something powerful and sometimes dark that drew him closer. He had tried to stay away, but it didn’t last long until he broke and came to see her again, and the next day, and the next one, until he craved every part of her.

As he saw the drop of blood fall from the tip of her finger into his coffee, his eyes turned yellow in anticipation of her taste. Licking his lips, Klaus lost himself in her smell and restrained himself from taking a bite of her tender flesh.

“Here it is, hope you enjoy.” Caroline said, her skin feverish from the way his eyes always devoured her, but doing her best to not show how he truly affected her. One way or another, he always got on her nerves, but not because he was annoying, - no - it was the way he looked at her. The way he acted around her, the way he talked, the way he looked, it was his very self that rattled her.

Klaus took his time, sipping the hot coffee slowly; the magic and her blood intertwining, and sinking into his body, that feeling lasted a while and he could still feel her inside him - it was ecstatic, but never quite enough. He wondered how long it would take for her to finally let her guard down around him; it didn’t really matter, he had time - plenty of it - and he’d wait however long it took.

“Perfect as ever, Caroline. My tongue is still tingling from your taste.”

“Please refrain from saying misleading things on my place of business.” Caroline almost called him a pervert, but he was still her customer - maybe after hours she would.

The bell rung once again, and she looked up to see two humans walk in, hand in hand, and in love - it was nice. Although most humans that came, did so when sad or upset, it wasn’t rare for a loving couple to find her coffee shop. Maybe it was the shop’s atmosphere, but the man’s eyes suddenly lit up, as if he couldn’t wait any longer and he kneeled on the ground.

“Elena, will you marry me?”

The beautiful, long haired girl in turn seemed surprised, and started crying, falling to the ground in front of her boyfriend - fiancé? - and hugging him tight. “Of course I will Stefan. It took you long enough, I almost asked you to marry me instead.”

They sat down in a far away table, kissing and hugging, as if it was their last day on earth - it was adorable, and maybe slightly annoying. Caroline took their orders, and said they needn’t pay, it was her little gift to their future happiness.

Klaus looked bored through it all, and she couldn’t help but ask, “Not a fan of displays of affection?”

“With you, I would be.” he said, and she wasn’t sure if it was another one of his jokes.

“I’m too smart to be seduced by you, Klaus.” she flirted subconsciously. When she realized what she said, Caroline wanted to hit her past self for slipping out of her work personality. Although Klaus seemed delighted by her slip up, which made her even more embarrassed.

“That’s why I like you.”

Oh no.

Now he was flirting back.

This was not good.

She was enjoying it.

“Sorry, I need to go clean some tables. It’s almost time for closing up, my apologies dear customer.”

One step forward, two steps back, in the same place as before but not quite. She already had him in the palm of her hands, and it was only a matter of time until he had her in his.

[winelover1989]

Jon & Dany - Mirroring journeys leading to each other 

We’ve seen a lot of visual parallels of these two through all the brilliant gifsets the gifmakers of this fandom create. @officerparker asked me to take the show apart with a scalpel in terms of these two as characters & honestly as a writer trying to learn the craft, this was a very educational exercise. This Mother of Metas, a Jonerys thesis if you must, is entirely based on show canon.

Scratching the surface - Stark/Targaryen contrast

Looking at these two at surface level, they might seem like polar opposites. Jon lives by the Stark stoicism, a house whose motto is ‘Winter is Coming’ instead of something personal. It symbolises their disinterest in political games and laser sharp focus towards the danger that lurks north of the wall. For winter hits them first, their strength lies in protecting the realm from what lurks beyond the wall. They have never fared well politically in games of southerners, so they distance themselves from it to focus on what really matters. Joining the Night’s Watch only amplified and cemented this in Jon’s character, as focus on the threats beyond the wall & aversion from politics is the foundation of the brotherhood.

Dany is a Targaryen. ‘Fire and Blood’ both nurturing life sources when contained but devastating when unleashed. She too is kind, nurturing and protective but she doesn’t shy away from violence against wrong doers. Targaryens don’t fare well diplomatically either but with godlike power of dragons and fire magic, the Dragons unapologetically make their way to the top of the food chain. The first Targaryen conquest led to the creation of the Iron Throne, which all the other houses are fighting over with politics ever since the Targaryen dynasty ended. The second conquest could again change the game and setup a new system, which Dany very much intends to do, to break the wheel that tramples the common people. They don’t play the game, they create and dominate it with great power which drives some in the dynasty to greatness and some to madness. 

Despite house values that are reactive vs proactive and avoiding the game vs dominating the game, both are more tied with mysticism and a greater purpose, rather than games of mere mortals. Underneath this outer shell of contrast, these two characters are so similar, they are almost mirrors of each other, something their arcs strongly signifies. 

Character Backstory

Birth : Jon and Dany are both orphans born in a chaotic environment. The death of their fathers put an end to Targaryen dynasty’s reign and their mothers died at childbirth. 

Dany was born at Dragonstone during a storm, the night of a naval battle which destroyed the Targaryen fleet.

Jon was born as a Ned fought the guards outside the Tower of Joy in Dorne.

Dany was shipped off to Essos for her safety soon after her birth.

Ned Stark took him back to Winterfell as his bastard to protect his life and uphold his promise to his dying sister. 

Upbringing : Their childhood issues parallel in terms of not belonging, toxic relationship with a parental figure and a crisis of identity. 

1. A sense of belonging to a home/family :  Dany grew up on the run like a fugitive, escaping cities in the nick of time from assassins. She grew up without a home or a stable family other than Viserys. She had no long term friends or formal education as a child.     

Jon grew up a bastard, an unwanted outcast with front row seats to the perfect family he would never be a part of. Him getting drunk outside, as the family feasted during Robert’s visit in the pilot is a good indicator of how much worse would the exclusion must have felt when he was a child. 

2. Toxic parental figure : Dany had only Viserys to call family and he was quite obviously physically, emotionally and psychologically abusive, with undertones of sexual abuse as well. He treated her like his property rather than a person. Yet she had the same kind of toxic combination of fear and love for him that children of abusive parents have at a younger age before they grow up and realise that there is more to human relationships than being abused. 

Jon craved motherly love his entire life. Despite being an outcast, he had strong sibling bonds & a decent relationship with his father but he was completely ignored and despised by Catelyn and he ws unaware of who his biological mother was or why she didn’t want him either.

3. Identity crisis

Viserys raised Dany with a very distorted view of what it means to be a Targaryen based on his distorted childhood memories and who he was as a person. Good example of this would be Dany only knew Rhaegal of a one dimensional warrior and was surprised to find out that he hated fighting and loved music. Her warmth was discouraged and looked down upon as weakness and Viserys repeatedly used the word Dragon when he is hurting/dominating her.  Her identity crisis comes from being exposed to only the madness side of the Targaryen coin through Viserys and stories of her father. She had to discover the greatness on her own. 

Jon’s greatest mystery is not knowing a key piece of himself, his mother, who was the reason for denial of maternal love and his exclusion from the Stark family. Ironically as we now know his mother was Lyanna Stark & he would have found a place in the Stark family if his fraternal Targaryen roots didn’t threaten his life. Jon once said he wanted nothing more but to be a Stark his entire childhood. Tyrion’s advise on embracing his identity and wearing it like a badge of honour instead of being ashamed of it played a huge role in Jon coming into his own. He no longer wishes to be a Stark, he is Jon Snow. There is a key piece of his identity and heritage he needs to discover and allow the Targaryen in him to grow. But he has accepted himself as Jon Snow enough to not start calling himself a Targaryen either. 

Inciting incident for the story 

The plot begins with death of Jon Arryn, Hand of the King & Lord of Vale. He was Ned and Robert’s father figure. His wife Lysa poisoned him on her childhood crush, little finger’s request. Lysa sent Catlyn Stark a letter stating that she fled to Vale and the Lannisters poison her husband, to create the rift between Starks and Lannisters. This was something Little finger had been plotting his entire life and as he finally sets his plan to destabilise the kingdom in motion, the plot begins with Robert travelling north to ask Ned to be his Hand. 

Jon and Dany are introduced as meek and reactive minor characters in a world where House Targaryen, Dragons and magic has disappeared. Both of them are being pushed further away from the central plot with Jon joining the Night’s watch and Dany betrothed to Khal drogo. 

Introduction of Character Goals: Magic is so nonexistent that the sighting of white walkers was brushed off by Ned, which would end up being the central motivation for Jon Snow’s character. 

It starts with Jon being shunned by Catelyn Stark from a ceremony - Robert’s feast - He gets the advice to embrace the fact that he is a bastard from Tyrion and also meets his uncle Benjin, a brother of the Night’s watch. 

Jon was in some control of his destiny, as he proactively chose to embark on his hero’s journey by pleading his uncle Benjin’s to make him a member of the Night’s watch.  

He had no better options as a bastard, but he embraced his character goal, to guard the realm from what lies beyond the wall because winter was coming. 

This small and innocent desire was the seed to his mission against white walkers once he witnessed magic. 

In an attempt to put a Targaryen on the throne once again, Varys’ friend and spy network partner Illyrio Mopatis, the merchant housing the Targaryen siblings’s arranges Dany’s marriage to Khal Drogo to help the Viserys acquire an army.

Dany is launched off into her storyline by being forced into a ceremony she didn’t want to be part of - her marriage to Khal Drogo for the fulfilment of her brother’s goals of getting an army. 

She had such little control over her life, she is introduced as a character being stripped naked by her brother in her very first scene and it takes all of season 1 for her to find free will.

Her little plea to her brother “I want to go home” is dismissed with their need for an army & ships to return to Westeros and take the Iron Throne by force.

Her naive desire to go back home ends up being the seed for her character goals to provocatively embark upon her journey to become a Queen who fights for free will. 

Meeting their animal symbolism

 Varys’ friend Illyrio Mopatis, gifts Dany three dragon eggs at her wedding.

Jon talks Ned into sparing the loves of the Direwolf pups they found next to a dead direwolf mother. As he walks away, he finds an albino pup who Theon calls ‘Runt of the litter’. Jon adopts Ghost.

Key difference here as well is how reactive vs proactive these adoptions were and the fact that Dany’s Dragons weren’t born but given to her as eggs to be hatched when she comes into her own as a Dragon as well. 

Personally I loved the fact that Dany first picks up the green egg, the one Rhaegal hatched from, her dragon named after Jon’s father and the one I assume Jon would ride one day. Also Jon got the silver haired pup, just like Dany’s hair in the books. 

Key differences in Characterisation: These two have parallels but by no means am I stating that they are same on every level. Both of them are beautifully unique, with similarities and differences. They have character contrasts in their story parallels and character parallels in their contrasting storylines. One of the reasons why Dany’s monologue, when these two meet is so powerful, because their stories began at very different places and it had a huge impact on how they grew.

Dany had an unstable and abusive childhood, Jon was an outcast in the perfect family as a bastard. 

She was more privileged and was a Queen in some capacity since the beginning but was treated like a trophy. He had a lower stature in his family and the Night’s Watch at first but he had free will, except S03. 

Dany starts out in a powerless, battered, controlled and reactive damsel in distress mould. Jon starts out as every hopeful and naive proactive fantasy genre hero, though the story does a great job at keeping it subtle and presenting him as a minor character. 

It would take a season for Dany to find free will and to take charge of her story. Jon had that freedom and was driving his story from the start. 

Dany had absolutely no support system. Jon had Ned, Robb, Arya and Bran who loved him dearly.

The episode ends with Jon finding an honourable purpose in life and Dany getting raped and pushed to the very extreme of her life as a victim.

All these differences are a big factor in why these two grew so differently at a surface level. Jon is a hesitant leader because he started hopeful, naive and a little arrogant, which changed after all the horrible things he went through. Dany is an ambitious and dominating leader because she knows what being powerless is and she would never revisit that place or let anyone else live in shackles if she can make a difference. Comparing them at surface level is futile and destroys the entire point of the story, so lets dive in deep! 

Season 1  :  Struggling to find a place in their new world - Watcher on the walls & Khalessi 

This season starts with a Jon making his way to the Wall - the physical metaphor for the threshold between the known world from the unknown, a transition common for the archetype of a hero in the fantasy genre & Dany travelling with her Khalsar, struggling to adapt to her new life. 

Foreshadowing scene transition:  Dany is staring at her dragon eggs surrounded by candles & crying as Drogo rapes her and it cuts straight to Jon staring at the campfire on his way to the Wall, with Ghost sitting beside him. Tyrion was also travelling with them & informs Jon that the new recruits who joined them are rapers. This serves as the first example for his glorified image of the Night’s watch to shatter. 

Goals this season

Jon wants to become a ranger like his Uncle Benjin 

Dany wants to hatch the dragon eggs to escape her powerless existence and she also wants to return to Westeros

Beginning

Jon, a naive and skilled fighter joins the Night’s watch, only to realise that it’s not an honourable ancient military order but a group of misfits and criminals. 

Dany, a battered girl, becomes Khalessi against her will, only to realise that they aren’t as barbaric as she first assumed them to be.

Jon starts out as a very angsty & arrogant character. He says “I’m better than all of you,” frequently to other brothers of the night’s watch, shows off his fighting skills to make others feel worse and protests not getting assigned to the rangers because he deserves it most. 

Dany starts out not believing that she is the Dragon instead of her brother and she has little to no faith in herself at this point. 

Following Uncle Benjin’s advice “A man gets what he earns when he earns it”  Jon starts training his brothers and tries to make the best of his situation instead of arrogantly making demands.

Dany starts learning how to cope in her marriage, trying to make the best of her situation and starts getting more comfortable in her role as Khalessi, by learning their language, dressing like Dothraki and understanding their culture.  

Journey : Characters guiding them through their arcs

Guides - Mormonts:  They both have Momonts guiding them on their journey. Jorah helping Dany learn about the Dothraki and Westeros. Jeor, his father, the lord commander of the Night’s watch takes Jon under his wing to groom him as his successor. 

In the episode “You win or you die” a wine seller tries to poison Dany due to Jorah’s betrayal but Jorah decides to save her instead and stop spying on her, switching from a spy to a true supporter.

In the same episode the very next scene is Jon being selected as commander Mormont’s steward, something he first views as a betrayal because he always dreamt of becoming a ranger. He believes he deserves it more than any other recruit. By the end of the episode he understood Jeor’s reasons and came into his service. 

Catalyst- Viserys/Benjin : 

Jon joined the night’s watch for his admiration of Benjin and Dany was forced into her Khalsar because of Viserys’ ambition and in a way Viserys was the one who planted the seed of taking back the Iron Throne in Dany’s mind.

The episode Benjin leaves for the mission beyond the wall he never returns from was the same episode Viserys died at Khal Drogo’s hands. 

It’s interesting to note that the dragon named after Viserys, Viserion and wight Benjin die in the same episode as well at the battle at Eastwatch by the sea. Viserion is raised as a wight dragon in the end, as Jon and Dany’s goals align. 

Friend - Doreah/Sam

They both make friends quickly in their new environment, Jon with his brothers and Dany with her handmaidens.

Jon takes a stance against bullying when he meets Sam and soon becomes a protective friend and starts gaining better understanding and empathy for his brothers who aren’t skilled fighters as him.

Dany subtly starts expressing distaste for slavery as she befriends the slaves in her Khalsar, specifically Doreah, Dany’s hand maiden and her brother’s sex slave who was sold to a pleasure house as a child. She helps Dany gain the skills to cope in her marriage, gain a better hold over Drogo and assimilate in the Dothraki community. 

Jon & Sam’s friendship had level of intimacy where they could discuss their lack of sex lives freely, have locker room talks and were constantly teased with jokes about being in love by others in the Night’s watch. 

Dany & Doreah had a much more intimate relationship since Doreah teaches Dany the ways of pleasing a man. It was heartbreaking that  Doreah backstabs Dany unlike Sam who is still Jon’s best friend. 

Leaders to be replaced - Alliser Thorne/Drogo : 

Ser Alliser is the best swordsman and leader at the Night’s watch until Jon arrives. We now know that Jon soon rises above him in rank as the Lord Commander and becomes their best swordsman as soon as he arrives. 

Drogo was one of the best Khals the Dothraki had seen, but as we know now, no one has led a Khalsar as big as Deanerys and led them into a battle on another continent. 

Jon despises Alliser, who is in charge of training the new recruits, for discriminating against him and  Alliser hates him for his arrogance.

Dany is just terrified of Drogo in the very beginning and is barely surviving in her marriage. 

Despite their differences Jon does learn a lot about leadership from Alliser but as we all know, Alliser plots to kill Jon after a long standing rocky relationship

Dany on the other hand, falls in love with Drogo as the season progresses, gets pregnant with his child and learns the way of the Dothraki because of him. With that new found partnership, she grows strong and comes into her own as a leader like she never had in her life. 

Both leaders die at the hands of Jon and Dany respectively and contribute to their character rebirth in some way.

Climax 

In the episode Jon wants to be ranger to find his Uncle Benjin who went missing and is denied the opportunity, Dany too tries to talk Drogo into fighting for the Iron Throne, which he denies because a Khal doesn’t need an iron chair, only a horse to sit. By the end of this episode Jon takes his oath as a pledged brother of the Night's watch with Sam at the wierwood tree beyond the wall & Khal Drogo promised Dany to conquer Westeros and give their son the Iron throne after the attempt on her life. 

Introduction to the world of magic: 

His first trip beyond the wall, the metaphorical barrier between the ordinary world and ice related magic, to take his vows, Ghost finds a severed hand in the woods and Jon returns to the wall with a dead body which will turn out to be wight. That night Ghost leads Jon to Commander Mormont’s chambers where the wight rises from the dead and attacks them. Jon fights him off with fire, in turn burning his hand. Commander Mormont gives him his family’s Valarian Steel sword Longclaw, replacing the bear at the hilt to a white wolf. 

As soon as her goal to return to Westeros starts becoming a reality, Dany is disheartened by the village raid that the Dothraki initiated in order to sell captives into slavery for the money a war on Westeros would require. She saves and brings back a witch who offers to heal Drogo’s wound.

Death of a loved one:

Jon receives the news about Ned from Commander Mormont and he flees the Night’s watch that very night to join Rob in the rebellion but he is talked out of it by his friends who bring him back that night before someone learns of his desertion. Maester Aemon later reveals that he is Aemon Targaryen and he too had to make a similar choice for duty when his family was destroyed. Not only is Jon humbled by this as a character but he learns a lesson about choosing his battles, that sometimes forsaking your heart’s desires is the right thing to do.

Dany on the other hand, against all counsel to not trust the witch who got Drogo sick, bargains for Drogo’s life and \the witch uses that desperation to propose a blood magic ritual to save Drogo’s life. Dany assumes the life of his horse would buy Drogo’s life but by the end of the ritual she loses Drogo, her unborn child, her ability to ever bear children and most of the Khalsar. The Ice vs Fire, stoicism vs passion was strong in these reactions.

Transformation:

The season ends with Commander Mormont leading a mission beyond the wall to find Benjin Stark, figure out why the wildlings are forming an army and understand the mystery of undead wights. He takes Jon along with him as a ranger on their mission beyond the wall accomplishing his character goal. This scene cuts straight to Dany. 

Dany tries to convince the remaining members of the Khalsar to stay and follow her. Since the Dothroki follow only strength, she straps the witch to Drogo’s funeral pyre, places the dragon eggs next to Drogo and steps in as well, wearing her wedding dress. It wasn’t a suicide attempt like many believe it to be, when Jorah tries to stop her with that assumption, she says “You don’t understand.” In the show canon, she’s immune to fire and she knows Targaryens who are Dragons can’t be killed by fire (“Fire cannot kill a dragon,” when Viserys dies). When her handmaiden burns her hand by snatching the hot egg Dany was unaffected by, she realised that she might be a dragon. Next season she tells the Spice King "I dreamt that if I carried those eggs into a great fire, they would hatch." So walking into that fire was Dany taking a leap of faith, in no one but herself, finally embracing the fact fact that she is the last dragon.  She rises from ashes like a phoenix next morning, her character reborn  along with the birth of her three baby dragons, earning her titles of Mother of Dragons and The Unburnt .

That is why it is powerful that when Dany introduces herself to Jon, she tells him that the only thing that kept her going was nothing but faith in herself because that’s how she finally reclaimed her life.

Season 2 - Venturing into the unknown & letting go of naivety - Shield that guards the realms of men  &  Mother of Dragons

This season these two venture out into a harsh and cruel world, Jon beyond the wall and Dany into a desert - the red waste. They both got what they wanted, Dany gets control over her destiny, three dragons and people to lead and Jon gets to be a ranger. But things don’t work out so well for these naive souls. They are faced with moral conundrums, exposed to grey areas, face deception, are taken advantage of and even get captured but in the end they both learn the same lesson for leadership - scepticism, shrewdness and the art of deception. 

Foreshadowing scene transition : Dany’s Khalsar is staving, as she leads them through the red waste because the Khalsars in the great grass sea they left behind would kill her and take her dragons. She loses faith in her capabilities as a leader when Jorah Mormont reminds her of the lesson she learnt last season with the Dothraki, that a leader must be strong. Dany finds her strength and sends her riders to explore the unknown ends of the desert for a destination. 

She looks up at the red comet in the sky and the scene switches to Jon Snow reaching Craster’s keep where he acts defiant and judgemental of Craster and challenges his authority. Commander Joer Mormont later backs Jon into a corner, reminds him of his position, asks him if he wants to lead someday and when Jon nods, he says “Then first, you must learn to follow.” The scene switches to red star in the sky and finally to Dragonstone where Melisandre has Stannis convinced that he is the one chosen by the lord of light. 

The foreshadowing was so strong and ironic, now that we know that Jon and Dany would meet at dragonstone as fully formed leaders thanks to Melisandre who realises that it is the two of them who were her lord’s chosen. 

Goals: 

Jon wants to unravel the mysteries beyond the wall and embraces the fact that one day he wishes to lead as the Lord Commander.

Dany wants to get her people to safety and later, she finally vocalises that the Iron Throne is her right and she will take it with fire and blood. 

Beginning

Dany starts out hopeless as her people are starving and one of their horses returned with the Dothraki rider’s severed head in a sack but she holds onto her curiosity about another way out for them.

Jon struggles with the curiosity about what Craster does to his sons after they are born, even refusing Gilly help when she doesn’t tell him why she is afraid for her unborn child if it is a son. 

Qarth extends an invitation to the Mother of Dragons but Dany refuses to show them her dragons at the gates as they are newborns and aren’t intimidating at all. Also she’s an overprotective new mother against an entire world that wants to take away her children from her. 

Jon follows Craster into the woods at night as he gives away his baby boy to the White Walkers, a revelation that shocks him to the core and gets him assaulted by Craster when he catches Jon lurking. Next morning, Jon has a hard time dealing with the moral conundrum of Commander Jeor knowing the cruel fates of these babies and doing nothing. 

Dany fails to tactfully negotiate with ‘The 13′ to grant them entry to Qarth. She tries reasoning, bargaining, appealing to etiquette for guests and goes as far as to intimidate but since she put all her cards on the table and showed her unimpressive hand, they deny her entry until Xaro, the richest man in the city vouches for her. 

Jon and company are kicked out from Craster’s keep and they leave for the Fist of the first men. Jon leaves this place with dilemma as his black and white principles of allies & foes, right & wrong and which battles to fight & which to avoid, are blurred. 

Journey : Beyond the wall & in Qarth

Their character growth begins this season when Jon reaches Fist of the first men wondering why the first men would retreat to such a high mountain peak, what were they escaping from. Dany settles in the quarters Xaro assigns them, distrustful of her host because the last time a rich man provided her roof and gave her an expensive dress, she was sold off to Khal Drogo.

Antagonistic Teacher: Dany is received into this storyline by the Spice King who refuses to welcome her into the city, refuses to give her ships when she demands it offering three times in return when she takes the Iron throne back and in the end refuses to help her find her dragons in the meeting of the 13 when they go missing, even though he didn’t know where they were. It teaches Dany one half of the lesson this season that if she puts all her cards on the table, honestly discloses her dreams to sceptics and asks them for help without shrewd tactics, then she would be called “A little princess” and dismissed like he does.

Jon has that with Qhorin Halfhand, Night watch's best ranger who receives them at fist of first men and leads Jon into wildling territory so that they can find wildlings and gather intel on why Mance Rayder is forming an army. Halfhand quickly breaks it to Jon that there is no honour in gladly giving his life here, no lords would know a bastard who died protecting them beyond the wall so he should claw for his life and put his survival above else. Jon disagrees when Halfhand says that “Wild things cannot be tamed” about his direwolf Ghost and as we now know, Jon does end up commanding the army of wildlings. End of season Halfhand is the one who pushes him into infiltrating the wildling army, the thing that teaches him the art of deception and shrewdness. 

Declarations:

Jon to Ygritte: “My father was Ned Stark, I have the blood of the first men. My ancestors lived here same as yours.”

Dany to Spice King : “I am Deanerys Stormborn of the blood of old Valaria and I will take what is mine with fire and blood.”

Unwanted advances from condescending & more experienced people: 

Xaro shows Dany his unbreakable vault, offers her half of the undisclosed treasures inside and proposes her for marriage. He informs her about the war of five kings between Lannisters, Starks and Baratheons and advises her to quickly get ships with his money and sieze the opportunity when Westeros is destabilised. It is also brought to Dany’s notice by Xaro, that Jorah is in love with her. Jorah advises her not to trust Xaro and tells her to be patient. He promises to find her a ship which is all she needs because her potential allies are in Westeros, not here. Both men are courting Dany by fulfilling her desire for ships. 

Jon meets Ygritte when Halfhand’s team of rangers attacks a group of wildlings. Jon tries to save her for questioning but after refusal, he volunteers to behead her. They consider the warning for burning the dead a ploy to send a smoke signal and refuse but Jon’s curiosity is sparked. Ygritte runs off when Jon fails to execute her, leading him away from his men at sunset. After recapturing her, Jon has to stay the night with her and so the unwanted advances begin to seduce him with sex. 

Jorah and Xaro’s contradictory advises puts Dany in a moral dilemma about the pursuit of her goals and plants seeds of doubt in her mind about both of their intentions. She asks “Who are my people?” She only knew one Targaryen, her brother who sold her off. She’s unsure if she’s one of the Dothraki and she says that she’s not stupid enough like her brother to belive that the people of Westeros pray for her return either. She tells Jorah she trusts no one anymore.

Jon has his beliefs about wildlings questioned when he gets into an argument with Ygritte who tells him that he’s not free but shackled by the vows of Night’s watch and that it is unfair that they built a wall, claimed the North and started hunting wildlings. 

Both Jorah and Xaro often talk down to Dany this season when they tell her what she should and shouldn’t do by weighing their life experience and wisdom against hers. Dany tells Jorah “Do not speak to me like I’m a child” and Xaro “I don’t care where you’ve been,” when he tries to calm her down after her dragons are stolen by sharing his life experience. 

Jon is negged by Ygritte who figures out he’s a virgin and mocks him for it, saying her famous “You know nothing Jon Snow” line for the first time when he discloses that he’s not that unaware about sex. 

Dany gently lets Jorah down and repeatedly rejects all of Xaro’s advances. 

At one point, Ygritte comes on so strong sexually at Jon that he clutches his sword, this & the dry humping the previous night would be considered terrifying if the genders were reversed. This in a way parallels with how Dany and Drogo’s relationship started, though it was way worse for Dany. 

Dany walks into her house to find her people slaughtered and her dragons missing which Xaro denies having any part in but he orchestrated the whole thing with the warlock from House of Undying who stole her dragons in exchange for helping Xaro become the King of Qarth by killing The 13 during Dany’s meeting with them which Xaro sets up. Dany thought she had Doreah, her handmaiden, spying on Xaro for her but Xaro was the one playing Dany all along. 

Ygritte knows that he doesn’t know his way around wildling territory and can’t get back to his camp. During their banter she lures him to into a trap even though Jon assumes that he is the one in control & she’s his prisoner. When Jon is distracted after Ygritte‘s advances, she manages to escape and Jon finds himself surrounded by wildlings. 

Climax 

Jon’s  capture : 

After being captured by the wildlings, Jon meets Halfhand again who blames him for their capture due to his inability to kill  Ygritte and chasing her because all the men who went after Jon were killed by Wildlings. 

Ygritte repays her debt by convincing the wildlings not to kill Jon either since he’s Ned Stark’s bastard and Mance Rayder would want him alive. 

Halfhand whispers to Jon that according to his intel Mance is planning on marching to the wall and one man on the inside is worth thousands on the wall, he urges Jon to become that spy since Mance would surely kill Halfhand for revenge for his previous missions. 

Dany’s capture :

Jorah tries to convince Dany to leave for Astapor on the ship he was able to procure instead of walking into the trap at the house of undying since she didn’t grow her dragons in her womb and they weren’t her children. 

This was the first time Dany says that they are the only children she will ever have and she is indeed their mother. Once again she put her faith in her own magic above the magic of the warlock and leaves for the rescue.

She goes to the house of undying and ends up getting captured as well because the warlock’s magic grew stronger in the presence of her dragons and the dragons grow strong in hers so he planned to keep her chained there for eternity.

The house of undying : Dany has a vision of the throne room which was in in ruins and engulfed in snow and just as she walks upto the Iron Throne, she hears her dragons scream and leaves to find herself beyond the wall where she sees her dead husband and child in a tent. 

This foreshadows for their tied fates and how Dany goes beyond the wall when Jon, the only other living Targaryen calls for help, putting aside her invasion plans for the throne to save Jon and commits to fight along with him after the death of her child, Viserion and witnessing what she thought was his death as well, so that the entire kingdom including the capital doesn’t end up destroyed by the forces of winter. 

Escape:

Dany finds her dragons and what the warlock didn’t anticipate was, in Dany’s presence her dragons grow strong enough to burn him and their chains. 

This scene cuts straight to Jon being taken to Mance Rayder’s camp. Halfhand instigates a fight with him, the wildlings give Jon his sword to enjoy the show and he keeps provoking Jon until Jon kills him. Halfhand whispers, “We are the watchers on the wall” with his dying breath so Jon understands why he did it. Jon gains the respect of the wildlings for killing the legendary Qhorin Halfhand and they believe that he committed mutiny, which is punishable by death, destroying all chance of him going back to the watch. They cut his ropes to free him and say “Time to meet king beyond the wall.”

Transformation 

Once again Jon and Dany’s story lines finish a season. From Ygritte‘s deception, Halfhand’s mentoring, his own struggles with the moral grey areas beyond the wall and the knowledge that Mance too was once a crow, Jon gears up to play the part of a double agent to gain intel on the wildlings for the watch.

The scene cuts to Dany who finds Doreah & Xaro in bed. Dothraki take his pendent, find the vault empty and lock them in the vault. “Thanks for teaching me this lesson,” Dany says because she finally learnt that even though Xaro’s wealth was all a lie, by concealing that information well, he managed to rise to power. Dany uses this information to negotiate in Astapor where she doesn’t naively show all her cards the way she did at Qarth but shows up as a customer, there to buy the unsullied. 

Both walk away, prepared for deception they would need next season. Just as Dany happily walks away with the fire breathing dragons, the scene cuts to three horns being blown at fist of the first men, the Night’s Watch’s first fight with Walkers.

Season 3 - Deceptive beginnings to finding a noble purpose - Spy among Free Folk & Breaker of chains

In a way this season completely flips Jon and Dany’s character situations in season 1, Jon finds himself without free will or a support system in what he considers a barbaric society. Ironically, he is the only one not free among people who call themselves free folk. He must cope and blend in, he even falls in love with one of them, which begins as a means for survival and proving that he really has forsaken his vows, much like Dany in season 1. Dany on the other hand is commences her hero’s journey in the Slaver’s Bay to free the oppressed, much like Jon’s need to become the shield that guards the realm of men in season 1. 

Goals:

Jon Immediate - He must infiltrate the Wildling army as a spy in order to gain as much intel he can about their attack on the wall.  Jon Long term - Living with the Wildlings his moral conundrums between his black and white vision of the world blurs to grey because of which seasons later, he realises that the fight between Wildlings and Night’s watch is futile.

Dany Immediate - To get an army for invading Westeros, Jorah talks Dany into travelling to Astapor to buy unsullied as unlike normal soldiers, their obedience guarantees that they wouldn’t kill, rape or loot the innocent in war. Dany is against sell swords and has a distaste for slavery, which is evident from the way she cringes when she sees the golden statue of Harpy when their ship gets close to harbour.  Dany Long term - After witnessing the atrocities the slaves face in slaver’s bay, Dany puts her goal for Iron Throne on hold and her goals start shifting in the direction of abolishing slavery in Essos, which became evident when Jorah tells her she has no reason to take Yunkai as it doesn’t serve a purpose in her plans to take Westeros and Dany says “We have 200,000 reasons to take the city” after he tells her the population of slaves in the city. 

3A - Mance Rayer’s army camp & Astapor: They both begin the season with a plan to deceive someone by concealing their true selves for the greater good.

Jon hides the fact that he is still a crow. He straight away bends the knee to Tormund, assuming he’s Mance and pledges his loyalty to them. Mance tells him that they don’t bend knees north of the wall and rejects reasons like love for Ygritte or desire for freedom, Jon settles for a half truth that will become his character goal as a leader. He tells him that he saw a White Walker when Craster offered his baby boy to them and Commander Mormont cared for it less than the Wildling army. “I want to fight for the side that fights for living,” he declares and is accepted as one of them. 

Dany hides her beliefs on slavery, her ability to speak Valarian & her lack of wealth when she comes to negotiate for the Unsullied. She shrewdly bargains with the slavers for all Unsullied, the untrained boys and Missandei in exchange for one of her dragons. When Ser Barristan and Jorah challenge her, she steps up as a leader and warns them that she values their advise but they should never challenge her decisions in front of strangers. 

New Mentors : As a former member of the Night’s watch who became the King beyond the wall to fight against the White Walkers, a goal the Watch had strayed far from over the centuries, Mance Rayder becomes a huge influence on Jon’s leadership style. Soon after they meet and bond over their common goals for desertion from the watch, he tells Jon that uniting ninety clans for the largest army in the North seemed like an impossible task, but “I told them we are all going to die if we dont go down south.” A unification strategy Jon uses later as a leader whenever he needs to switch focus from internal squabbles to the threat beyond the wall. 

In Astapor, Dany meets Ser Barristan Selmy who pledges his loyalty to her. He ends up becoming one of Dany’s most trusted advisers and as someone who knew both her father and Rhaegar well, he was able to give Dany a much more realistic connection to her roots than her brother did. 

Conclusion :  When the Wildlings find out about the White Walker attack on the Rangers of Night’s watch at Fist of First Men, Mance orders them to climb the Wall and wait to attack Castle Black from Southern gate until he lights the greatest fire that the North has ever seen and sends an army to the Wall. He tells them to take Jon with them as he knows the castle’s defences and weaknesses. Jon reluctantly gives them intel about only 3 of the 19 forts being manned and the details about patrolling on the wall but he sneaks in a lie that there are a thousand men instead of a hundred on the wall to delay their attack. Morally and strategically torn due to his double life, he leaves for the Wall desperate and hopeless but his cover is blown to Ygritte who figures out he’s still a crow. Thankfully she keeps it a secret. 

During the exchange of the Unsullied and Drogon, as soon as Dany gets the golden Harpy whip, she brings the deception to an end and reveals that she can understand and fluently speak in Valarian. She commands the Unsullied to kill every master in the city, free every slave and not harm any child or innocent. Drogon burns the slave trader. She frees the Unsullied and asks them to follow her if they believe in her. She leaves with an army, all her dragons and a newfound purpose in life. 

Transition -  Climbing the wall & Road to Yunkai : Joer Mormont is killed in a mutiny at Caester’s Keep and Jon sets to return to his side of the wall like a Wildling, by climbing the wall. On the road Ser Barristan challenges Jorah’s position in the Queen’s counsel due to his disgraced past. 

Military allies - During this journey, Jon’s antagonistic alliance with Tormund grows more tense and Dany meets Grey Worm who is selected by the Unsullied as their leader. 

3B - Wildling raid south of wall & Yunkai siege

Upon reaching south of the wall, Jon for a moment gets lost in the daze of blooming romance in their banter and talks of taking Ygritte to the Grey Keep in Winterfell and wanting to see her in a silk dress like the ladies of Westros so that he can tear it off her. Like the last time he got lost in fantasies and she reminded him they will take Castle Black, he once again instantly snaps out of it when she reminds him that they will take Winterfell as well. Jon tells her that from all his history lessons, he knows for a fact that they will lose just like the last six times Wildlings attacked the North in the last thousand years and makes it clear that his allegiance lies with his people, which Ygritte tries to erase by kissing him. 

Outside the gates of Yunkai, Dany welcomes the leader of Masters of Yunkai, wearing a Queenly white silk dress and a the casual threat of her dragons. He tries to manipulate her the same way Xaro did last season, with gold, ships and her dream of the Iron throne. Dany doesn’t fall for it this time and puts her goals against slavery above her desire for the Iron Throne. She keeps the gold, tells them that they will lose this fight and gives them an ultimatum to free all slaves if they wish to live. He tells Dany that Yunkai is not like other cities, they have powerful friends who will destroy her and return slavery to her free cities. As we now know it was the Iron Bank who was backing the Yunkai, the City of Embezzlers for financial gain to destabilise Dany’s efforts to abolish slavery. 

Warriors from opposing sides in love with them 

Ygritte:

Ygritte and Jon fight for opposing sides and their relationship was born reluctantly on Jon’s behalf as a part of fitting into his undercover persona of a Wildling when she tells him she wants him to break his vows to prove he’s not a crow anymore but he soon begins to like her after they get intimate. He takes a few steps back every time Ygritte mentions their plans for his homeland though. 

Ygritte falls hard and fast soon after their time in the cave, which was evident from her reluctance to leave and prolong their time together. When they leave to climb the wall, she tells Jon that she’s his woman now and he needs to be loyal to his woman, casually dropping the threat of castration. Until this point Jon seems unaffected and wanting to escape. 

When Ygritte almost dies during the wall climbing accident, Jon displays strong feelings for her and initiates a romantic kiss for the first time when they reach the top of the wall. What I found interesting with the Dany/Drogo comparisons is that Dany really falls for Drogo when she’s pregnant, when they created life together and Jon falls for Ygritte when he almost loses her to death. 

He struggles with his duty and his love for Ygritte until they attack the old man who breeds horses for the watch. Jon tries to talk them out of it, clinks his sword on a rock to warn the old man, distracts Ygritte when  she shoots an arrow at the man escaping on his horse but when they manage to capture the guy later, force Jon to kill him and accuse him of still being a crow when he can’t, that’s when he fights them and leaves.

The interesting thing is, even though Ygritte tells Jon that they need to be more loyal to each other than the leaders while he was betraying his cause to join hers, the moment he leaves the wildlings, he gets literally back-stabbed by three arrows right after telling her that she knew who he was, that he had no choice. He tells her he loves her and knows she loves her enough to not hurt him and he gets shot as soon as he turns around. 

Daario Naharis 

Daario meets Dany when Yunkai commissions the Second sons to fight Dany’s forces. He too instantly falls for Dany. When his partners plan to sneak into her tent dressed as unsullied to murder her, Daario is chosen to do it.  He kills them instead and drops their heads at her feet to pledge his sword to her. “Second Sons are yours and so is Daario Naharis. My sword is yours, my life is yours, my heart is yours.” The next day he takes Yunkai for her with Jorah and Grey Worm through a backdoor he had access to and the slave soldiers soon switched sides as well and opened the gates to Dany. So there is a significant contrast with Jon’s storyline here in terms of falling for the someone you are expected to fight, loyalty and switching sides since Daario ends up worshipping the ground Dany walks on.

Climax & Transformation

Jon’s horse drops him half dead at the gates of Castle Black, broken both physically and emotionally. He returns to where he belongs with a mission, preparing the Wall for Mance Rayder’s attack. He is carried inside by his friends to get immediate medical help. Just like Dany his goals have changed as well, he no longer wants to be a heroic Ranger, he just wants to protect every person south of the wall against the threats beyond the wall. Venturing out in the world, his moral compass has become greyer and his mind has expanded enough for him to see the big picture and things that really matter. 

Davos stands at the end of the table at Dragonstone with the scroll from the Night’s watch needing reinforcements, trying to convince Stannis to march North, something Melisandre agrees with telling Stannis that this is his destiny and as we know now, Davos once again finds himself in a similar situation when he goes to Dragonstone with Jon to convince Dany to join the fight in the North. 

The season ends with Dany, not a Jon & Dany transition scene. She is waiting for the slaves in Yunkai to open the gates for her. “People learn to love their chains,” she says from her experience as a dehumanised girl with no free will for most of her life. She addresses the former slaves of Yunkai to tell them that their freedom is not hers to give but theirs to take. When the people starts cheering for her and calls her Mhyssa(mother), she walks into the crowd and is carried by them . Just like Jon, Dany too has a new mission now, to put an end to slavery in Essos instead of conquering Westeros. 

Season 4 - Finding home & voice as leaders yet a loss of self-Sword in the Darkness & Conqueror of Slaver’s Bay

This is by far my favourite season, as a whole, not just because I absolutely loved the dark and layered story arcs both Jon & Dany were set on. This was the season that I really got invested in Jon, unlike Dany who had my heart end of Season 1. Both these characters start out as people without a home, defending their adoptive home, only to lose themselves and their personal goals completely in the process. The descent into abyss only getting more satisfying next season until they both reemerge from darkness, stronger. 

Goals

Jon - Protect the Night’s watch against the army of Wildlings  

Dany - Put an end to slavery in slaver’s bay before she leaves Essos

Beginning - Jon

Internal - Psychological state :

Jon begins this season healing from his heartbreak and the literal wounds of being shot in the back right after confessing his love to a girl for the first time in his life. 

Psychologically he is struggling with the double life he led as an undercover crow among the freefolk, as he adjusts in his structured and lawful environment.

His fist scene is him talking to Sam about how he was always jealous of Robb growing up because he was better at everything and recalling their last conversation because he learns about the Red Wedding which happened while he was trying to escape the wildling raid.

He knows that Bran is alive, thanks to Sam’s interaction with Bran when he helps Bran go north of the wall. Jon feels powerless to not stop Bran from venturing beyond the wall & later this season he tries to plot Bran’s possible routes and locations on a map of the wildling territory in the library. 

Jon made his peace with the fact that he has left the politics of the seven kingdoms behind when he didn’t desert the watch after Ned’s death but the knowledge that his family is gone and Winterfell is taken by Boltons does take a toll on him as he begins to suppress his grief. He gets more jaded and starts behaving more like the brooding Jon Snow with no regard for his life that we now know. 

Jon even casually mentions that Alliser can finally hang him for what he’s done. When Sam tells him he did nothing wrong, Jon walks away saying “I’ve done plenty wrong,” with his unique brand of icy cold stoicism.

External - Situation :

He stands in judgement in front of Maester Aemon, Alliser Thorne, acting Lord Commander in Mormont’s absence, the one man on the wall who hates him since day one and Slynt, the disgraced former Lord Commander of King’s Landing city watch, who is arrogant and dismissive of everything Jon saw beyond the wall especially wargs and giants. 

Jon is defiant and unimpressed by his experience in the capital. He asks him if he’s ever even been north of the wall. Ironically this is the very reason Alliser hated Jon as soon as he joined because he too was arrogant about his fighting skills for someone who had never been north of the wall. Its the reason why Alliser calls him ‘Lord Snow’ to mock him. Shows how much Jon has grown as a character.

He honestly confesses to everything he had to do to infiltrate Mance’s army,  how he escaped and magnitude of the threat the wildling army poses. Using Mance’s advice of uniting people with the fear of being killed by the unknown, he tells them that they would all die and the wall will be breached if they don’t take the threat seriously. Maester Aemon excuses Jon for breaking his vows for his reasons and the threat that lurks beyond the wall. 

Beginning - Dany :

Dany’s story starts out at a brighter, warmer and hopeful place, unlike Jon who is consumed by darkness and grief over his family. In fact, she starts out spending quality time with her family, her dragons, who are beginning to grow defiant like most teenagers do. She leaves for Meereen with the handful of Dothraki who followed her, the Unsullied, the Second Sons and the freed slaves of Yunkai who decided to follow her. She is prepared to liberate the stronghold of Slaver’s bay, Meereen.  Daario tries to warm up her heart a bit more by giving her flowers to court her.

On the road to Meereen, she stumbles upon an infuriating sight, a crucified slave child’s dead body at every mile marker to the city. She orders them to bury all of them without collars after she marches ahead and looks at every single one of them. This welcome sets up her temperament of dealing with the Meerenese slave masters. 

Foreshadowing scene transition : This season again has a scene in the beginning of their story to setup their arcs for the season, of stepping up as a leaders with goals that shake up the status quo, with blatant disregard for the current established system, in order to protect their adoptive home. 

Jon

Oliie arrives at Castle Black to inform them about the wildling raid at his village. Maester Aemon & Allier don’t want to send men as they are low on numbers and the raids are clearly a tactic to draw them out. 

As a champion of the common people, Alliser asks for Jon’s opinion & he agrees in his doomsday tone. “Mance Rayder is coming. If the Wildlings breach the wall they’ll roll over everything and everyone for a thousand miles before they reach an army that can stop them.”  

A horn blows for incoming riders and two of Jon’s close friends return after escaping from Craster’s Keep. They inform everyone of the mutiny at Craster’s, Commander Jeor Mormont’s death &mutineers’ intentions to stay at Craster’s. 

Jon requests to go beyond the wall to kill the mutineers which Alliser denies because they just agreed on holding the fort but Jon tells him that this isn’t about justice or revenge. 

He lied to the wildlings about thousand men at Castle Black and if Mance reaches Craster’s Keep before them, they’ll get the truth out of the mutineers and know that the wildlings already raiding beyond the wall are enough to attack them right now, before they are prepared to fight. “Mance has all he needs to crush us, he just doesn’t know it yet.” A gentle reminder to the death that their doorstep and they all agree.

Despite his reasonable exterior, Jon is shaken up when he’s not facing them. The news of Jeor, his father figure, hits him hard when he’s already sinking in grief. This scene cuts straight to Dany. 

Dany

Dany reaches the gates of Meereen where they send a single rider, the champion of Meereen, who mocks her for being a woman with an army of eunuchs. 

Daario volunteers to fight him and wins it before it even began with his smooth cocky theatrics. 

Dany then addresses the common people directly to clarify that despite the lies of masters, she went to Astapor & Yunkai and all the slaves from those cities now stand behind her, free. She assures them she brings choice, not commands, and fires barrels full of collars from freed slaves to make a statement that resonates among the slaves. 

Dany has always been someone who motivates the oppressed to take their freedom on their own, much like she did for herself. She has never been a savior but a great influencing force that the masses get behind, a revolutionary. 

The contrast here is that Jon’s enemy is death itself that looms beyond the wall and he is fighting for survival, of the Night’s watch and the North. Dany on the other hand is fighting for life with free will against the powerful within society who oppress rather than lead. 

Planning attacks in the pursuit of justice

Jon gets permission by Alliser to ride to Craster’s Keep but he is only allowed to take volunteers. He gives a speech about the mission being risky but necessary for their survival. If it wasn’t enough, he reminds them that they are brother and Lord Commander Mormont their father who lived for the Watch and died at the hands of backstabbing cowards he considered his men. “All we can give him now, is Justice” and to his and Alliser’s surprise, he gets enough volunteers for the mission. 

Grey worm and Unsullied enter Meereen through the gutters dressed as the local slaves to join the gathering of slaves contemplating their freedom. Grey Worm shares his experience and gives them weapons. “Kill the masters” is smeared on the walls with blood and a Targaryen flag hanging over the statue of Harpy on top of the pyramids as a Master is slaughtered by the mob. As soon as Dany takes the city, she crucifies the masters just as they displayed slave children on the road to Meereen.  Ser Barriston asks her to consider answering injustice with mercy as the support of the rich and powerful is necessary to rule. Dany declares, “I will answer injustice with justice.”

Adopting a new Home

Jon: After heartbreak, grief over his family and losing a father figure and the loss of his home, Jon begins to cling onto the Night’s watch as his home much like Tyrion told him in season one that “You leave your old family behind and find a new one”. He starts using the word home for Castle Black and Brothers to address the Night’s watch frequently and calls Commander Mormont their father. He doesn’t spend a moment grieving, he channels his focus entirely on protecting his new home against Mance Rayder’s army at all costs, after his real home and family was destroyed while he was living among Wildlings. 

Dany intended on leaving Essos after liberating Slaver’s Bay and Daario informs her that the Second Sons took the Meerenese Navy which is just enough for her to get her army to Westeros. She even learns of Joeffery’s death. She is in a situation similar to Qarth when she learns of Robert’s death and considers marrying Xaro for his resources to get her to Westeros, only now she has all resources at her disposal. Ser Barristan believes that after all the wars, they could easily take King’s Landing but Jorah doesn’t think they can take all of Westeros with current resources & no allies.  

Jorah informs her that her council in Astapor was overthrown and in the absence of all masters, a common criminal declared himself King. Yunkai re-enslaved the free people who stayed back and swore to take revenge against her. We now know that with the help of the Iron Bank, they form the Sons of Harpy to destabilise her regime and bring back slavery to Slaver’s bay. 

She begins to doubt herself and wonders why anyone should follow her. She quickly realises, it would require more than just the liberation to put an end to slavery and she needs to stabilise Slaver’s bay before she leaves. After fighting tooth and nail for her own freedom, she refuses to let the people she freed fall back into chains. She stays in Meereen and adopts it as her home until slavery is gone for good. “I will do what Queens do, I will rule,” she says refusing to leave for Westeros just yet.

Reaction to loss/betrayal of a Mormont

Jon attacks Craster’s Keep when the mutineers are drunk at night and during the showdown with the cut throat responsible for the mutiny, he gets crap about not knowing what it feels like to be free or fighting with honour being his weakness. It ends with Jon burying Longclaw through the back of his skull when he’s too distracted attacking the girl who stabbed him to protect Jon. Jon reunites with Ghost, who also killed one of the mutineers who managed to escape. Jon last saw Ghost when he left to find Wildlings early season two and now they have both grown in the wild into bloodthirsty wolves. They burn down Craster’s Keep along with the bodies and avenge Lord Commander Mormont. 

Later this season Tywin got one of Varys’s birds to send Jorah’s royal pardon signed by Robert to Ser Barristan in order to create a rift between Dany and one of her most trusted advisers. The betrayal hits her hard when she finds out that Jorah spied on her since the beginning and was responsible for the attempt to poison her while she was pregnant. She banished him from Meereen and gave him until sundown to leave or die. 

The loss & betrayal of their Mormont parental figures and guiding force leaves these two hardened and facilitates their descent into darkness, but it also helps them grow independently as leaders. 

Being weighed down by politics

Jon at the Night’s Watch:

In the beginning when Jon starts training the Night’s watch about the fighting styles of the wildlings that he observed in his time with them. Alliser quickly reminds him that he’s a steward and a traitor’s bastard, without Mormont to protect him. As acting Lord Commander, he commands Jon to go back to the kitchen.

Jon’s request for the mission on Craster’s Keep gets sanctioned only because Slynt warns Alliser that Jon is more liked and Maester Aemon would soon call for a vote now that Mormont’s death is confirmed. If Jon dies at Craster’s, there’s no risk of him rising in rank above them.

He warns Alliser that Mance’s camps were close to Craster’s and he’ll reach the wall by the next full moon. Slynt makes fun of his friendship with Mance and dismisses his warnings as they still don’t believe the Wildlings are united.

Jon urges Alliser to block the tunnel with rocks & ice forever, as he has seen what giants can do unlike them. He’s reminded he’s not of the order of builders but stewards. They want to keep the tunnels open because sending Ranger beyond the wall to carry out missions against wildlings has been the only real duty of the Watch in the last few centuries. The interesting thing to note that Jon started out with the goal to become a Ranger like his uncle and now he’s evolved enough to shut the door on it for the safety of the realm forever. 

Jon & Sam are assigned guard duty on the wall until the full moon when Jon expects Mance to march on the wall instead of being allowed to have any say in the strategy. 

Alliser believes in Jon’s intel only after Mance Rayder lights the biggest fire the North has ever seen but he does impart him with wisdom that comes in handy later “You know what leadership means Lord Snow? It means that the person incharge gets second guessed by every clever little twat with at mouth.  But if he starts second-guessing himself, that's the end.” Alliser agrees that they should have sealed the tunnels when they had the time.

Despite Jon’s warnings since day one that they will be attacked by the Wildlings he climbed the wall with from southern gate as Mance attacks the wall, there are hardly any men posted at the back gate. Alliser to leave the wall to  Slynt and to go down to fight for the attack on Castle Black from the southern gate they didn’t prepare for.

Slynt freezes up and can’t fathom that giants are real even when they are charging at the wall right in front of his eyes. He keeps bragging about the force of trained men he commanded as Lord Commander of the City watch and keeps calling them a group of misfits instead of handling the crisis until Grenn lies that Alliser needs him downstairs and Slynt leaves to hide in the pantry.

Dany in Meereen: 

Dany finds grey areas in her decision to crucify the Slave Masters when Hizdahr zo Loraq, her future fiance begs her for his father’s body so he can perform last rights. He tries to appeal to her humanity by telling her that his father worked on the preservation of the pyramid she resides in & other landmarks in Meereen and strongly opposed the crucifixion of slave children. Dany is reluctant because he did own slaves, despite opposing the cruel displays but she lets him bury his father when dignity. This only opens up the floodgates for him making his way to her inner circle, which only causes more problems.

After Daario asks Dany to send him somewhere to kill her enemies instead of asking him to patrol the city, she sends the Second Sons to Yunkai to kill all the masters & take back the city. Jorah talks her out of it since he too sold slaves once and Ned Stark’s mercy gave him a second chance. Dany commands him to send Hizdahr zo Loraq as her Ambassador with Daario to tell them what happened in Meereen & warn them to “Live in her new world, or die in their old one.” Though this diplomatic alternative seemed better at the time, we now know that it was the Masters of Yunkai who were in cahoots with the Iron Bank for the setup of Sons of Harpy in Meereen which caused all the havoc in Slaver’s bay to overthrow Dany and bring back slavery. 

Dany meets a slave who wants to go back to his master as he enjoyed his life as a teacher and hates being the old man being picked on by the young at her new camps for former slaves. Dany allows him to go back with a one year contract. Barriston feels this contract rule could be taken advantage of for return of slavery in every way but name. It really does have that effect because next season the slaves were still being auctioned for the fighting pits.

Locking up their animal symbolism 

As soon as Jon returns from Craster’s with Ghost, Alliser tells his that the Watch is no place for wild beasts and commands him to lock him up if he doesn’t want him to end up in the stew. Jon complies but it doesn’t last long for his storyline as during the attack on Castle Black in the finale he sends Sam to let the Direwolf out, during the attack on Castle Black.

Dany on the other hand is forced to lock up Viserion and Rhaegal in the crypts after Drogon burns a shepherd's three year old girl. A heartbreaking decision that leaves Dany in tears as she closes the crypt on her children for the safety of the people of Meereen. Symbolically, Drogon, flees the city just as Dany begins to try fitting into the mould of Queen of Meereen and forsaking the Dragon and the Khalessi within her. 

In the finale when Dany walks away in tears after chaining up her children, it cuts straight to Jon’s scene which too ends with him walking away heartbroken from Ygritte’s funeral pyre. Another layer of parallels here, is that Dany too once burnt a funeral pyre for Drogo, a relationship which already has so many parallels with Jon & Ygritte.

Climax 

The end of this season leans heavily on Jon, as some of the previous season endings favoured Dany. Amidst the chaos of the politics in the Night’s Watch, Jon ends up in a position to lead the Wall’s defences, truly embodying the leader they needed during their darkest night. When the defence has been setup, he learns that Alliser has fallen, leaving the Castle vulnerable. He sends Grenn with a small team on a suicide mission to hold the inner gate against the giant as he too descends down the elevator to hold the fort and just as he steps out to engage in one of his most satisfyingly gory combat scenes, he asks Sam to let the Direwolf out. Oh the symbolism! 

When he comes face to face with Ygritte he has a smile  on his face even though she’s pointing an arrow at him. Ollie shoots her with an arrow when she’s struggling with the idea of killing Jon, its tragic but understandable since Ygritte was part of the raid on Ollie’s village & he thought Jon was in danger. Earlier that night, Sam asks him “How is it like to be with someone? To love someone and have them love you back?” It irks Jon, ”I’m not a bleeding poet. What did I get for it? An arrow six inches from my heart.” 

Jon begins this season heartbroken over Ygritte and dealing with the grief of his family’s slaughter at the Red Wedding, the destruction of Winterfell and Commander Mormont’s death. It ends with him surrounded by the death and destruction of his adoptive home and brothers of the Night’s Watch as he holds the corpse of the woman he loves. 

Aftermath

Jon :

Jon ends up losing all hope in their survival end of this episode. When Tormund says he should have killed him, Jon only responds with, “Aye, you should have.” 

The next morning he goes beyond the wall, alone and unarmed to kill Mance Rayder under the guise of a negotiation. It’s a suicide mission, “You’re right, its a bad plan. What’s your plan?” he asks Sam. He understands the futility of the situation but he also knows they are doomed anyway, the Night’s Watch wouldn’t survive another night against Mance. 

Despite the ulterior motives, Mance’s offer of peace, that the wildlings wouldn’t have to kill them if they were peacefully allowed safe passage to hide behind the Wall now that the White Walkers are rising, ends up planting the seed for his motivations next season. 

Just when Jon was caught in an attempt to kill Mance in the middle of their peace talks, Stannis’s last minute save gives them a fighting chance.

Jon convinces Stannis to take Mance prisoner instead of killing him and burn the dead and Stannis finds respect for him when he learns Jon is Ned’s son.  

Transformation : Stannis’s save and Mance’s peace offering pulls Jon from the pit of total hopelessness and despite the great loss and death which surrounds them and the dangers that lurk beyond the wall, he finds some purpose to lead next season. 

Dany : She ends this season with Jorah banished, Daario in Yunkai on a mission to reestablish control diplomatically, her dragons locked up in the crypt and Drogon fled from Meereen. Though her story started on a hopeful note, in order to learn how to fit into the mould of the Queen of Meereen and repeatedly being advised to go against her instincts to  govern like a diplomatic leader, Dany ends up losing a good part of herself. She is neither the Mother of dragons, nor a Khalessi of the great grass sea and her goals of returning to Westeros are dwindling as she finds herself in a dark place lost and unsure of herself as a leader. 

Transformation : Dany leaves a good part of herself, the revolutionary conqueror, behind as she locks the Dragons as they are too wild for a ruler trying to establish order in her kingdom in favour of becoming the Queen of Meereen. 

Season 5 -Honourable leaders vs Resistance to Change, leading to Assassination  - Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch & Queen of Meereen

This season both Jon & Dany embody their roles as strong leaders and champions of the people. Both have forsaken the destiny their houses demand in favour of their moral & honourable goals, Dany refuses to leave Meereen to Westeros until slavery is eradicated from Slaver’s Bay and Jon can’t join Stannis to take back Winterfell as he swore a sacred vow. Both struggle in their fights against the long winter & slavery due to diplomatic approaches towards resistance from within Mereen/Watch, which leads to assassination attempts at both of their lives. End of the season, they are both plucked from these leadership roles they are bound to by honour and duty.

Goals : 

Jon has started to see through the futility of the fight against Wildlings as he begins to understand the larger threat they face and that’s the war he really wants to prepare for, even though due to the wars in Westeros, no one is sending men to Night’s Watch and the Watch itself is still plagued by the tunnel vision of Wildling hatred to see the true goals of the brotherhood. 

Dany has completely stepped into the shoes of the Queen of Meereen. As the forces of antagonism rise in the form of the Sons of Harpy, Dany refuses to sail for Westeros until ensure slavery never returns to Slaver’s Bay.

Foreshadowing Scene Transition : There are two important scene transitions start of this season, which establish the new story arcs.

Establishment of goals:  In Mereen the Unsullied knock down the Golden Harpy statue from the Pyramid and the killings of Sons of Harpy begin.  Mossador, the representative of former slaves on Dany’s counsil who was the first to get behind her and call the meeting of slaves when Dany first came to Meereen, is convinced they intend to put them back in chains. Dany assures him them the heads of these snakes will be cut off once they are rattled out of their holes. 

It cuts straight to Jon who is summoned by Stannis by Melisandre. Jon bends the knee to Stannis as he greets him. There are three long term goals established in this conversation.

Stannis reminds Jon that the Boltons rule the North & of Robb’s death and asks “Don’t you want to avenge him?”

They discuss his stance on wildlings and how it could impact him badly considering the general antagonism against wildling in the Night’s Watch. “They were born on the wrong side of the wall, doesn’t make them monsters.” Jon vocalises his pro-wildling stance for the first time, beginning to embrace his unification goals this season.

 Stannis also offers Jon until nightfall to convince Mance to bend the knee and offer his army to Stannis as he would give them lands and citizenship once his war is won, implanting the idea for Jon to do the same one day. 

Establishing their struggles:  Hizdahr zo Loraq ‘s insistence on reopening the fighting pits, inability to control Dragon and Mance’s stubbornness to not bend the knee.

Dany

Daario and  Hizdahr zo Loraq, the representative of former slave masters on Dany’s council, return from Yunkai stating that it was a success and they setup a council of both former master and former slaves which will be answerable to her.

He proposes  reopening the fighting pits to her first, which the masters of Yunkai asked for in return. “Politics is the art of compromise,” he urges but Dany rejects his proposal and tells him she’s not a politician. 

As we now know the masters of Yunkai, who swore to overthrow her, have banded with former slavers masters leaders in Slavers Bay and the Iron Bank to establish the Sons of Harpy to destabilise her regime and the pits open a backdoor for the return of slavery. Yet the entire season  Hizdahr zo Loraq keeps pushing for the pits, presenting it as a wise move and in the end he dies at the great game at the hands of Sons of Harpy.

Later in bed, Daario says that he agrees with the opening of fighting pits because as a former slave, becoming a gladiator is what taught him how to fight, brought him glory, earned him his freedom, introduced him to the Second Sons and put him in her path. 

He starts by of talking about his mother who sold him into chains and later the conversation moves to his views on the changes that happened in Meereen after he left. “You are not the mother of Unsullied, you are the mother of Dragons.”

Dany confesses that she doesn’t want them to hurt anyone & she’s afraid she can’t control them. Daario reminds her that she is the Dragon Queen and Dany visits the crypt, only to be chased away by her two angry & betrayed dragons. 

This scene cuts straight to Jon:  

Mance guesses that Stannis sent Jon to convince him to bend the knee and ask for his army. Jon puts forth the proposal of the Wildlings getting lands here once Stannis’s war is won.

Mance says his people won’t respect him if he bent the knee to a Southern King, they would never fight for Stannis and it goes against all his principles.

Jon reminds him that winter is coming and his stubbornness would get his people killed after they put their faith in him to get them south of the wall. “Isn’t their survival more important than your pride”

Jon thinks Mance is foolish and making a big mistake but he just says  “The freedom to make my own mistakes is all I ever wanted,” and accepts his fate to die with pride.

When Melisandre sets Mance of fire and Mance is engulfed in fear, Jon puts an arrow through his heart for mercy, so that he can die with dignity.

The beauty of this setup is that not only does it launch the arc of Jon’s struggle to unite the Kingdom against White Walkers but it’s interesting to note that even though he believed Mance was foolish, Mance leaves his mark on him after all the time Jon spends uniting the entire North using Mance’s strategy of telling people they would die at the hands of the unknown if they don’t unite. He has the exact same conversation with Dany. Her mirroring words, “Isn’t their survival more important than your pride,” leaves him with that self realisation. 

Internal Struggle - Law vs Tyranny | Lord Stark vs Lord Commander Snow

Dany - Rigid enforcement of Law: 

Daario catches a member of Sons of Harpy and questioning him reveals that he is not a master but a poor man paid to fulfil orders.  Mossador and Hizdahr tussle over whether or not its a plot by former masters to put former slaves in chains. Dany sides with Mossador, the leader of former slaves about executing the prisoner to send a message. 

Ser Barristan suggests a trail as per the law and tells her that the stories of Mad King aren’t her enemies lies, he had witnessed the tyranny and and watched it destroy the kingdom and her family’s legacy. 

Dany agrees to a trial as per the law.

Assuming that Dany’s hands were tied Mossador kills the prisoner that night and stages his body on the streets with “Kill the masters” smeared with blood on the wall much like they did when they took the city for her.

Mossador does it out of unshakeable devotion in Dany since day one. She later states the law in the matter is, killing a prisoner awaiting trial is punishable by death. (Robb had to execute Lord Karstark for the same reason)

She stages a public execution to make a statement that freedom cannot exist without law and dismisses pleas of the former slaves in the audience. This beheading further polarises the already volatile city.

After the mob violence between the former slaves and masters caused by the the controversial beheading, Drogon showed up to meet Dany that night and just as she tried to touch him, he flew away. Metaphorically, being caught up in politics and diplomacy of mortals, she’s not prepared to embrace the Dragon within her. 

Later when Tyrion meets Dany and she asks him for advise on the fate of Jorah’s life after he returned to Meereen despite banishment as an example of his skills as an advisory. "A ruler who kills those devoted to her is not a ruler who inspires devotion." He tells her she would need to inspire devotion if she ever wants to rule Westeros. The aftermath of this execution made Dany ruthless towards those who fight against her and more forgiving of those devoted to her.

Jon - The offer for Lord Stark

Stannis once again summons Jon to express his disappointment at the mercy Jon showed Mance. “Show too much kindness people wont fear you. If people don’t fear you they wont follow you” an advise Jon uses right after the election when he executes Slynt.

Jon respectfully tells Stannis that the freefolk will never follow him and Stannis asks condescendingly “Who then? You?” which too happens soon after.

Stannis shows him a letter by Lyanna Mormont saying they cant support his claim because he’s not a Stark. Jon apologises for finding it amusing and tells him the Northerners and Freefolk are similar in that regard, they only follow their own. 

Stannis bargains that if Alliser wins the election & becomes Lord Commander, Jon will be punished for his bravery but Stannis would reward him with legitimisation, a Stark name & title of Lord of Winterfell if Jon pledges his sword to him and joins him in his battle for Winterfell. 

Jon would be useful because with a Stark, Stannis can get Northern forces & support. Also Melisandre saw him fighting at Winterfell in the flames, as she mentions next season.  

Jon tells Sam its all he wanted his entire life but he’s honour bound to the Night’s Watch. 

Election for Lord Commander:

Since Alliser poses a threat to both Jon & Gilly, Sam nominates Jon for the position of Lord Commander because despite his age and lack of experience, he was the Commander they turned to when the night was darkest. 

Alliser asks them whether they would choose someone who has fought Wildlings his enter life or someone who makes love to them.

The voting reveals a tie, which means Alliser still has half the watch backing him and his Anti-Wildling sentiments but Maester Aemon breaks the tie with his vote for Jon. 

Stannis’s advice for Lord Commander

Stannis isn’t pleased when Jon rejects his offer because he doesn’t want to forsake his sacred vows and compares it to Ned’s honour which got him killed.

Stannis leaves him with another useful advise, to send Alliser to Eastwatch as the Watch is polarised at the moment. When Jon says its safer to keep your enemies close, Stannis disagrees, that whoever said that didn’t have many enemies. 

He leaves him with one last parting gift, his Wildling prisoners and advise to see if Tormund if more willing than Mance to negotiate with Jon . 

Davos’s Appeal for Lord Stark 

When Stannis leaves, Davos reminds Jon of his vows he is so honour bound to include guarding the realm of all men, which requires getting your boots dirty. 

He says sitting in a frozen castle with a non existent army as the North suffers under Boltons will accomplish nothing. It’s a good point, because even as King in the North, he still has the same goal and governs like the he did as Lord Commander, addressing all his brothers in the common room from his High Table of advisers but now he has an army at his disposal and has the North focused on the threat of winter instead of political squabbles. 

Execution : On his first day as Lord Commander, he assigns Alliser as First Ranger as a sign of good faith as he’s their most experienced ranger and Slynt the restoration of ruined fort Greyguard. Slynt as usual begins to show off that he was inchanrge of King’s Landing’s defence when Jon was still a child. He is defiant and disrespectful even when Jon tells him to its not a request but an order. Jon asks his men to take Slynt outside and for Ollie to fetch his sword as insubordination is punishable by law at the watch. 

Jon stops stops with his sword hanging above Slynt’s head when he confesses he didn’t want to go because he’s a coward, agrees to leaving and begs for mercy. Jon beheads him anyway as a demonstration of strength and to inspire fear and respect in a polarised environment where he’s not respected by half the people. 

Jon/Dany Parallel & Contrast for Execution : 

This execution happens in the very next episode after Dany’s public execution of  Mossador to uphold their law. 

The contrast would be that Slynt was defiant and Mossador was devoted. 

After Mossador ‘s execution Dany lost the faith of the common people backing her in a polarised and unstable political environment and  Slynt’s execution ensured subordination from those who didn’t respect his decisions. 

Though in Dany’s case the Sons of Harpy grow stronger publicly and in Jon’s case his foes grow stronger in shadows despite surface level obedience and in the end it leads to assassination attempts on both of them,  in broad daylight vs being lured into a corner at night.

Jon - Shutting the door on Lord Stark

When Sam gives him letters to be signed and sent to all the lords to ask them for more men, Jon refuses to ask Boltons for help in a rare display of expressing his feelings over Robb’s death. Sam reminds him that he’s the Lord Commander now, its his priority and Boltons could have men to send to the watch. 

Mellisandre makes a move on Jon in order to convince him to join Stannis’s cause and march with them, he rejects her advances and tells her he loves another. 

Dany : Hesitant Ruthlessness

Hizdahr zo Loraq shows up once again to request the fighting pits be reopened as its the first day of the season. He presses that despite the cruelty, it is ingrained in Meereen’s culture & traditions and without traditions, former masters & former slaves have nothing in common but distrust and hatred, which will lead to violence. 

The Unsullied are attacked by the Sons of Harpy in an alley, Grey Worm is injured and Ser Barristan dies saving his life. 

Dany is angry that Ser Barristan, who preached mercy until that morning died in a back alley at the hands of cowards.

She orders all the leaders of the great houses of masters be rounded up and she takes them to the crypt where her dragons are chained.

Dany vocalises that she won’t give up on her dragons but  train them. 

One of the masters is pushed in to be burnt and eaten and the rest are taken as prisoners. The process to be repeated daily until they talk, who is responsible for Sons of Harpy. 

Dany’s struggle between mercy & ruthlessness is here to stay but this does momentarily help her step out of her self imposed constraints as Queen of Meereen & helps her embrace the dragon within.

Foreshadowing - First indirect interaction: Sam reads a scroll to Maester Aemon informing him that Dany is under siege at Meereen with forces working against her from within and without and she refuses to leave until freedom of slaves is ensured. Maester Aemon is heartbroken that she is alone under such circumstances with her last relation at the other end of the world, unable to help. “A targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing,” Maester Aemon says as Jon walks into the room. 

Seeking reassuring counsel

Jon asks Mester Aemon on advise on something he wants to do which will divide the Night’s watch and half of them would hate him. Maester Aemon tells him to do it without even knowing what it is since half already hate him and as Lord Commander he should do what needs to be done for the greater good. “Kill the boy Jon snow and let the man be born.” As we now know Jon gets reborn next season. 

Dany asks Missandei her thoughts on how she should handle this siege and  Missandei tells her that she has seen Dany listen to the counsel of her advisers and sometimes she has seen her ignore their counsel because only she could see a better way. That’s how they met, Dany tricking the Missandei’s slave master by going against Jorah & Ser Barristan’s counsel. 

Compromise with their prisoner

Jon &Tormund : 

Jon pitches that for 8000 years the Watch has strayed from its vision &  fallen short of protecting the realms of men since Wildling belong in that realm as well. Winter is Coming and things will change since he is the Lord Commander now.

Tormund refuses to kneel & Jon says he doesn’t need it. He’ll allow them through the gates like Mance wanted & give them lands but when the Walkers come, he wants them to join the Night’s watch in the fight. 

Jon has a handful of men & no lord in Westeros is sending people to the watch. Mance’s army of 150,000 gives them a chance. Its a smart bargain. 

He tells him they need the wall, that he shouldn’t let his pride condemn their children to death. 

Tormund tells him they are camping at Hardhome but he wouldn’t go alone as they would need assurances from the Lord Commander that Stannis’s borrowed ships wouldn’t be torched in middle of sea like Mance was burnt.

Dany &  Hizdahr : Hizdahr is on his knees begging for his life when Dany accepts that he was right about the fighting pits, that she would embrace their culture to ensure peace & marry him to forge a better relationship with the Meerenese people as they view her as a foreigner right now.

Attempt at talking them out of their unshakeable resolve

Jon & the watch : 

They remind him that the abandoned villages Jon plans to give them were abandoned after Wildling raids, just like the slaughter at Ollie’s. 

Ed, his closest friend reminds him of the 50 brothers they just lost. 

Ollie holds onto the hope that Jon is tricking them but when Jon tries to make him understand need each other to survive winter, Ollie leaves angry & distant.

Alliser reminds him that they have been defending the wall against Wildlings for centuries & he even bids Jon farewell saying that the  mission is stupid & an insult to Night’s Watch. Jon thanks him & leaves even though a good part of the Watch is riled up and to make things worse, he leaves Alliser incharge. 

Dany & Daario :

In bed that night Daario asks if the King of Meereen would reclaim his pillow after marriage and Dany assures him that Hizdahr is smart enough to know its purely political. 

He isn’t convinced that killings will stop if their leader is King. 

He asks why she can’t marry him instead as she’s a Queen & can does she pleases. Dany says she couldn’t do such an inadvisable thing even if she wanted to and Daario innocently remarks "Then you’re the only person in Meereen not free.” She realises for the first time that the title of Queen of Meereen put shackles on her instead of a crown. 

He suggests her to gather all the great,wise & worthy masters in Slavers Bay at day of the great games & slaughter them. She says she’s not a butcher. “All rulers are either butchers or meat.” And as we know she is the one attacked at the great game and the Sons of Harpy crisis isn’t resolved until the main leaders plotting to overthrow her are killed.    

Character guiding to Westeros 

Since the beginning of the season it was Stannis who came to Jon with reminders of Winterfell, advising Jon politically and planting seeds in his mind to return to the world of Westeros. Just as Stannis walks away from Jon’s Story, Tyrion enters Dany’s when Hizdahr takes her to a lower fighting pit to boost morale & through the underground slavery that returned to Slaver’s Bay due to the reopening of pits, Jorah & Tyrion’s slaver too brought them to the same pit.

Cementing of Character goals pulling them together

Hardhome: Jon & Tormund face resistance the moment they reach but they finally manage to call a meeting of all the clan leaders. Everyone is dismissive of Jon but he states that it’s not about friendship, it’s about survival.

Jon offers them lands to farm, safe passage through the wall & the few dragonglass daggers they had, the only known weapon that can kill a white walker at that point, as a token of good faith to those who join them. 

Reminds them that this is what Mance wanted, a new life for them but when they ask about Mance, his fate creates unrest which Tormund diffuses and urges them to make peace.

The clans are still reluctant as their people who died at the hands of the crows. Jon reminds them that he too would not forget the 50 brothers he lost the night Mance attacked. They don’t have to forget their dead but think of their children. 

He once again uses Mance’s unification technique of reminding people of their inevitable doom to get them past conflict & look at the big picture. “The long night is coming, and the dead come with it. No clan can stop them, the free folk can’t stop them, the Night’s Watch can’t stop them and all the southern kings can’t stop them. Only together, all of us, and even then it might not be enough but at least we’ll give the fuckers a fight.”

Tormund vouches for him but they wonder what their ancestors would think when one of them says “Fuck em’ they’re dead,” and joins Tormund despite not trusting a man in black. Others soon follow suit.

The Thenns convince most of them to walk away, declaring they will always be enemies & its a trap to kill Wildlings at sea. Jon ends up with only 5000 on his ships out of the the large and adamant army. 

Tormund tells him it took twenty years for Mance to unite them and assures him they would come around when they run out of food but soon enough a storm approaches and with it comes the army of wights.

People rush to the boats & Jon is told to leave to make sure they get to pass but he charges at the army instead with his men. 

The moment he spots the White Walkers over the mountain, he rushes to retrieve the dragonglass daggers in the hut but he fails to find them & a walker attacks him. By the end of that fight, in a moment of desperation Jon crawls to his sword & swings it on instinct. It doesn't break to their surprise & the Walker crumbles to ice as Jon slashes his sword through him. 

They ditch the dragonglass and run for their lives as a much larger army of wights charges at them.

As Jon leaves on the boat he looks into the Night’s King’s eyes as he raises all the dead, forever etching it in his mind who the real enemy is, a mission he can never stray from.

Dany & Tyrion’s meeting: Much like Dany & Jon’s archetypes of the revolutionary leader & saviour, house values of Targaryen & Stark and elements of Ice & Fire, their moment of truth are contrasting as well. Jon’s purpose cements during battle at Hardhome, Dany’s goals of conquering Westeros is reignited over a peaceful talk between Deanerys Targaryen & Tyrion Lannister which begins with them getting a read on each other, discussing the horrible past of their families and Varys’s faith in her. 

Tyrion commences her for reopening the fighting pits & on arranging a sham marriage for the good of her people, though he drops the mention of his sister marrying someone she despised for politics and it not working out well.

Dany takes him in as her adviser and once again vocalises her goal to take the Iron Throne in a really long time. 

When Tyrion suggests she stay in Meereen since she’s done so much good in Slaver’s bay, she also finally vocalises that her fight here was only put an to end slavery. She will keep fighting for freedom but this is not her home.

For support of her claim, they discuss her strategy of being the champion of the common people alone not working out so well for her here, just like it wouldn’t in Westeros, if she somehow gains their devotion.

When Tyrion presses that one cant rule without support of the rich & begins to browse through his knowledge of the Nobel houses of Westeros and who might back her, she shrugs it off.

“Lannister, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell, they’re all just spokes on a wheel.  This one’s on top and that one’s on top and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground. We’re not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.” She declares like a true Targaryen prepared to change the game once again after her conquest.

Climax

Jon- Night’s Watch’s Mutiny

Jon feels like a failure for being the first Commander in history to sacrifice the lives of sworn brothers of the watch, only to return with a small portion of the Wildling army.  

After Hardhome his only concern is White Walkers but Alliser & his men are still convinced Jon will get them killed by opening the gates to Wildlings. 

Jon & Sam discuss his Valarian Steel discovery & loss of dragonglass. “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway unless we had a mountain of it,” Jon says. Sam asks for permission to go to the Citadel to learn more about the thereat. And as we know it, Sam does find a mountain of dragonglass & that’s what leads Jon to Dany. 

That night as Jon sits in his chambers defeating, reading all the scrolls from the Lords of Westeros rejecting his request for more men at the Watch, Ollie lures him out with hope that a Wildling he brought back saw his Uncle Benjin. 

Jon finds himself surrounded by Alliser & his loyalists in front of a cross labelled “Traitor”. They repeatedly stab him chanting “For the Watch.” The last stab in the heart by Ollie comes as the most hurtful betrayal. Jon is left to die alone in the snow after being assassinated discreetly in the darkness. 

Dany - Sons of Harpy’s Coup

Both Dany & Tyrion find murder for entertainment distasteful after their life experience and at one point challenge Hizdahr if he has ever killed instead of just enjoying it comfortably as sport?

Hizdahr and Dany debate over which legacy would survive after they are all gone - Dany’s vision for the world or the cruel traditions of Meereen, that has lasted for ages. 

Jorah shows up in the arena and wins, but at the end of that fight Jorah swings a spear in Dany’s general direction to kill the assassin in a golden mask behind her and so begins the attempt to assassinate Dany publicly in broad daylight. Hizdahr is the first to die in the chaos, unable to fight.

Despite their attempts to escape, Dany finds herself surrounded by Sons of Harpy in the middle of the arena with only a few people struggling to guard her.

Drogon comes to her rescue and when he’s been attacked by spears, Dany for the first time mounts Drogon and commands him to fly.

On her dragon, Dany escapes Meereen and the restrictive mould of the Queen of Meereen

Transformation

Just as Dany becomes a dragon rider after being saved from the attempted assassination by her Dragon, Jon is swallowed by his greatest enemy, death. Not for long though, he will be resurrected by fire magic but he returns darker & colder from the abyss, free of his vows & set on a path to leave the sidelines of the plot and return to the world of Westeros, with a clear purpose for the realm. 

Drogon lands far off in the great grass sea, refusing to take Dany back and there, she ends up surrounded by a Dothraki hoard, going back to her roots & closer to her destiny of a Dragon riding Khalessi ready to leave for Westeros. Their lives as Lord Commander & Queen of Meereen are behind them now.

Season 6 - Back to their roots - Bastard of Winterfell & Dothraki Widow

Jon Snow’s descent into darkness for the last two seasons lead him to the abyss of death.  His arc this season is about truly embracing life once again and reestablishing the goals of fighting against death itself, which lurks beyond the Wall as King in the North, which unlike his position as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, provides him with an army. But just like in season 3, when his loss of free will paralleled with Dany’s situation in season 1, the reactive nature of his character after being so broken that his arc & goals are mostly driven by a sibling’s desire to take back their home, once again puts him in a position similar to Dany’s beginnings. 

After two seasons of trying to fit into the mould of Queen of Meereen by diplomatically making peace with the slavers & making compromises in a culture that has been profiting from slavery, cruelty & oppression, it’s symbolic how Dany’s character felt shackled in Meereeen by the end & she starts her story quite literally shackled & treated like a slave. In season 3, Dany embarked proactively on her hero’s journey to end slavery just as Jon left for the Watch in season 1. This season, just like Jon’s beginning, Dany is a proactive character, self driven towards her goals, brave & even a little arrogant like Jon was when he started out. 

Engulfed by death & chained like a slave, they both start out overpowered by the very thing they fight against.

Parting with their previous title

Jon - Rebirth: Davos, Ghost & men loyal to Jon guard his body in his chambers as Alliser & his men take over the Night’s Watch. Davos asks Ed to get the Wildlings, who storm through the gates when Alliser is trying to break down Jon’s door and the traitors are arrested. Melisandre says that she saw Jon fight at Winterfell in the flames, but she’s struggling with her faith when Davos tries to convince her to do something. During a prolonged & hesitant ritual, Jon’s body is stripped, cleaned & Melisandre desperately chants the spell over & over again until nothing happens and they all leave. Ghost feels Jon’s presence & to both Davos and Jon’s shock, he comes back to life. 

This strongly parallels with Dany’s rebirth end of season 1 but her rebirth helped her reclaim her life & find hope. Jon’s rebirth pushes him farther into hopelessness & despair, a regression into Dany’s beginning, only darker and kissed by death. When everyone greets him with awe, Tormund tells him that they think he’s some kind of God.  It strongly resonates with the Dothraki struck by the presence of divinity when Dany walks out of the burning temple of Dosh Khaleen, unburnt later this season.

Struggle 

The first thing Jon says when he realises he came form the dead was “I shouldn’t be here.” He spends a good part of this season rejecting his second chance & dead on the inside. He even asks Melisandre to not bring him back if he died at Battle of Bastards, which he fought with a death wish.

“I did what I thought was right & I got murdered for it. Now I’m back. Why?” Its a question he keeps asking, partly unable to understand his greater purpose & partly feeling unworthy. 

When Davos pushes him to keep fighting, he feels hopelessly defeated, that he thought he knew how to save the world but he failed.  

Even before the execution of his mutineers, he’s sitting alone by the fire staring at the bloody vest he died in. 

Transition : As soon as he hears their last words and hangs them, he hands his cloak to Ed and walks away. “My watch has ended.” He pledged his life to Night’s watch & he gave it when he died at the hands of his sworn brothers. 

Dany - Queen of Merren to Dosh Khaleen : Dany’s transition is not as life & death as Jon’s but she’s shackled, flogged, dragged on foot through a desert & has to listen to the rape fantasies of her captors and there’s only more where that came from when she meets their Khal.

She speaks Dothraki to introduce herself with all of her titles, which he dismisses and once again threatens her with rape until she tells them she’s Khal Drogo’s widow. It finally earns her some respect but they decline to take her back to Meereen despite the offer of horses as reward and inform her of the widows of Khals. 

In the city of Vaes Dothrak, she too is stripped naked in the temple for her transition to a Dosh Khaleen, by the other widows of Khals, but since she didn’t come to them as soon as Drogo died, she isn’t accepted as one of them just yet. Her fate will be decided during the meeting of Khals, Khalar Vehzven, where the Khals sit down to decide which cities to sack & which tribes to enslave. When Dany introduces herself as Queen of Meereen, along with all her titles,  their leader says she was present during Dany’s pregnancy ceremony & Khal Drogo’s promise to conquer Westeros in that very temple. Dany gets an unsolicited lesson in patriarchy, “You thought he would conquer the world by you on his side.” She’s advised to accept her fate as a woman without her Khal to make that dream come true.

Introduction of new goals

Jon - When Ed asks Jon how he could abandon the watch after what they saw in Hardhome, Sansa arrives at the wall and as soon as he tells her everything about his situation, promises to protect her & not leave without her, Sansa plants the goal of taking back Winterfell with his army of Wildlings in his mind. Jon’s reluctance to fight, “I’m tired of fighting” ends with Sansa’s ultimatum to seal his goal this season, “But I’ll do it myself if I have to.”  

Dany - As the widows discuss their abusive pasts as Khalessis & appreciate this new life as Dosh Khaleens, as in this temple Khals come to them for wisdom, Dany excuses herself to get some air & leaves with the youngest widow there. “I can never leave Dosh Khaleen until I rise as smoke from the pyre the day I die,” the girl says when they talk about leaving & unknowingly plants Dany’s new goal in her mind. Daario & Jorah show up to rescue her but Dany refuses & asks them to lock the temple from outside when she’s called for the meeting of Khals & kill the guards posted outside, . 

Foreshadowing Scene Transition :

Jon’s Motivation - Ramsey sends Jon a letter to inform him he has Rickon in his dungeon & his wolf’s fur on his floor. He threatens to skin every Wildling under Jon’s protection & if Sansa isn’t returned now, his men will take turns raping her. 

Reaction : Tormund asks how many men Ramsey has, Sansa tells him 5000 during Stannis’s attack. Tormund confirms that the Wildlings have only 2000 who can fight. Sansa gives Jon the strategy to ask the Northern houses for help, they are still loyal to Starks & Jon is as much Ned Stark’s son as Ramsey is Roose Bolton’s. She urges him to save their brother & Winterfell from a monster & he finally nods to get onboard his arc this season. 

This scene cuts straight to Dany being summoned to the temple.

Dany’s Motivation : Unlike Jon who needs external motivation this season, Dany is self motivated and has a plan already set in motion to acquire an army. She stands there silently when they discuss whether she belongs to Dosh Khaleen, or they should take the bounty of 10,000 horses the Masters of Yunkai have placed over her head or if they should just take turns raping her. 

Reaction : Dany gets up on the centre stage and tells them that this is where she was told that her son will be the stallion that mounts the world & Drogo promised her to conquer Westeros. When they mock her for being stupid enough to believe it & decide that they would repeatedly rape her, “You are small men. None of you are fit to lead the Dothraki. But I am. So I will” she declares. When they refuse to ever serve her she holds one of the giant lamps on the stage & spills it, “You’re not going to serve. You’re going to die.”

All Dothraki rush to the flaming temple of Doah Khaleen. Dany emerges unburnt from of the burning symbol of a Khal’s widow’s sealed fate, surrounded by death of their Khals. All Dothraki clans in Essos, gathered there, kneel to the display of divinity like her remaining Khalsar did end of season 1 & Dany once again fully embraces the Dragon within her. This strongly parallels with Jon emerging from the death around him during the Battle of Bastards, finally embracing his will to live. 

Motivating people to join their fight

Jon:

Upon discovering that the Umbers(Northernmost house that despises Wildlings) & Karstarks (Robb executed their father for killing Lannister prisoners) declared for Boltons, Jon says “There are more than three houses in the North: Glover, Mormont, Cerwyn, Mazin, Hornwood. Two dozen more. Together they equal all others. We can start small & build.”

Jon tells the Wildlings that despite this not being the deal they made, he can’t fight Walkers from North & Boltons from south & if he loses the battle, the Boltons would kill them as well. “After they are finished with me, they’ll come for you.” The Wildlings agree to fight to protect their children. 

Jon, Sansa & Davos meet Lyanna Mormont, who isn’t impressed by them or their fight. Davos tells her that Jon was Jeor Mormont’s chosen successor because they both understood that the real threat isn’t amongst squabbling houses but the death beyond the wall which both men have fought against at Fist of first men & Hardhome. Divided, the North is doomed, so she joins. 

House Glover rejects them because they just got their house back from the Iron born with the help of Boltons. They don’t want to be flailed or fight with Wildlings. When Sansa reminds them of their oath, he expresses his distaste for Robb favouring his love life over his people when his house was taken, his family put in cells & his people slaughtered. “House Stark is dead.” 

Mormont Figures :  It’s interesting that both Jon & Dany once again get guiding Mormont figures back into their lives as just two episodes ago, Dany forgives Jorah, commands him to find the cure & extends an invitation to join her service once she leaves for Westeros and Lyanna partners with Jon.

Dany: In season 2 Jorah tells Dany that the Dothraki only respect strength and she will have a real Khalsar when she displays her strength & not before. 

Now that the Dothraki follow her only for superstition, on her road from Vaes Dothrak she asks everyone to wait. She returns riding Drogon, who has completely accepted her as a dragon rider, now that she too has fully embraced her inner dragon. It overwhelms them as a dragon is more powerful than any stallion any Khal has ever mounted. 

She tells them that she would not choose only three blood riders like most Khals, as she isn’t a Khal but she chooses them all as her blood riders, a validation every Dothraki rider craves. 

She gives them the exact same speech that Drogo gave his Khalsar when he promised Dany to conquer Westeros.  “Are you with me? Now and always? “ she concludes to an army that has completely embraced her cause & her as a leader.

Key Difference: Even though Jon & Dany have been in similar situations emotionally as characters & have had mirroring arcs one of the key differences in them is, Jon still fails to inspire people. All his negotiations so far have ended with the Mance strategy of using the fear of unknown & inevitable doom. People might get onboard out of fear for their lives but they are always in small numbers, leading to him to be the underdog with a small army. This exact situation mirrors Hardhome, when he had to gather a force of the exact same size as the Dothraki. Even now that he’s touched by mysticism, he doesn’t use his divinity as the man who came back from the dead or has any strategies in place to really inspire people. But he has strengths in some areas in which Dany is weak, like his icy resolve & laser sharp focus on the real problems beyond the wall, which is why their convergence is necessary for Westeros’s survival. 

Struggle with their right hand about battle plans

Jon - Plans for Battle of Bastards vs Sansa’s Advice

Timing : They camp where Stannis did, for the site’s natural fortification & running stream. Jon doesn’t want to make Stannis’s mistake & wait, he wants to fight before the weather turns or Ramsey can gather more men. Sansa wants to go to the Cerwyns & more northern houses, but after the rejection at Glover & getting only 62 Mormonts, 143 Mazins & 200 Hornwoods, he says they don’t have the time for a lost cause, forcing Sansa to use her Vale trump card & she sends a raven to Littlefinger. 

Negotiation : During the parley, Ramsey offers him to surrender terms which wouldn’t benefit Jon at all. Jon suggests a one on one combat which Ramsey refuses & Jon tries to infuriate him by saying that now his men know that he isn’t willing to risk his life for him. Sansa leaves telling Ramsey to sleep well before he dies the next day.

Judgement : During the war council, Jon says he challenged Ramsey to rile him up as Ramsey is overconfident & would charge first at the battle. Sansa, who has endured Ramsey’s patient & cold psychological abuse & torture, asks him how he made that judgement of character after a small meeting.

Strategy : They had a smaller army, the Wildlings were afraid of knights on horses who easily defeated them when Stannis attacked Mance but Davos says that patience is the only thing that could help them win. Their entire strategy banked on patiently waiting for Ramsey to charge first so that they can surround his army from three sides when it’s in centre of the field, something Ramsey ends up doing when Jon charges first. Sansa tells Jon that she doesn’t know battle plans but she knows Ramsey, he doesn’t fall into traps, he lays them & he is much better than Jon at it.

Sacrifice: Sansa tells him to give up on Rickon, as he is a Stark & a bigger threat to Ramsey than a bastard or a girl, which ensures his early demise. Jon doesn’t accept it as the letter about Rickon was the very reason he agreed to fight. 

Advise: Dismissal of Sansa’s advice as obvious, leads to Jon’s doom, “Just don’t do what he wants you to do.”  Ramsey creates the stage with burning flailed bodies of Stark sympathisers & gives Jon false hope of saving Rickon to lure him into the battlefield first & break him psychologically from his brother’s death, enough for Jon to throw out his plan & charge first. The battle was lost the moment he did.

Embracing life: We experienced the doomed battle from Jon’s POV as he navigates the death & destruction around him & not only does Ramsey order the Umbers to surround Jon’s army from three sides exactly like Jon planned for Ramsery but his archers had piled a mountain of bodies of Jon’s unprepared army behind them to act as a fourth wall. Jon ends up trampled in a stampede and for the first time since beginning of season 4, Jon embraces his will to live & claws his way out of the death that surrounds him. Sansa arrives with the Littlefinger by her side, as the Knights of Vale save the day. 

Deathwish: Jon had no will to live until the battle of bastards which was evident from his request to Melisandre the previous night to not bring him back and his endearingly heroic, yet poor choice to charge alone at Ramsey’s army after Rickon’s death. But it changes when Jon embraces life & the knights of Vale save the day, that’s the first time this season Jon is no longer a walking corpse. He doesn’t feels defeated by death or lacks purpose in life.  He stares at Ramsey & chases after him with a raging desire to kill. 

Dany on the other end, returns to find Meereen under siege and a naval force at their shores, with a desire to kill all the masters. 

Dany - Response to Seige on Meereen vs Tyrion’s Advise

Dany calmly listens to Tyrion as he explains that the city did flourish for a while, after his meeting with the leaders of the masters from the slave cities, which essentially exposed Meereen as weak and leaderless. 

Furious she discloses her plan, “I will crucify the Masters. I will set their fleets afire, kill every last one of their soldiers, and return their cities to the dirt.” In response, Tyrion tells her the story of siege on King’s Landing when the Mad King ordered Jamie to “Burn them all,” before Jamie killed him. 

Unlike Jon, Dany changes her mind and takes Tyrion’s advise of laying a trap for the masters, tricking them into a negotiation for surrender to kill the leaders of slave masters responsible for Sons of Harpy & the siege.

The Slave Master from Yunkai, who Dany met earlier during negotiations of the siege on Yunkai, who promised to destroy her & her movement with the help of his powerful friends (Iron Bank), offers her terms of surrender which wouldn’t benefit Dany at all, a lot like Ramsey did to Jon at the parley. They asked her to return unsullied to masters of Astapor, kill the dragons & leave on foot.

They inform the masters that meeting is for their surrender. When they remind her that her reign is over, Drogo shows up & Dany declares “My reign has just begun,” before she mounts him & leaves to burn just the frontlines of the armada attacking the city. Rheagal & Viserion break out from the pyramid wall, so symbolically as she lets out the dragon within. A lot like Jon’s direwolf being let out from captivity when he led the charge at Castle black. 

Grey Worm asks the soldiers to abandon the lost cause of defending masters who would never fight for them. They do & Tyrion thanks the masters for giving them the ships they seize after the forces stand down. 

They ask them to choose which one would die & when they expose the least powerful/influential one, Grey Work kills the other two and tells the third one to leave and inform his friends of what happens. 

“This cannot be forgiven despite her forgiveness in the past,” Tyrion says before the execution as in the end, the death of the most influential leaders of the slave masters was necessary to cement the abolishing of slavery from Salver’s Bay. Fire & Blood when diplomacy was mistaken for weakness.

Sansa/Tyrion - An interesting thing to note is they were husband & wife, both abused at the hands of Lannisters & had a difficult journey to Jon & Dany.  They both served as motivating factors to pull Jon & Dany from sidelines to the big game just when the Seven Kingdoms had destroyed themselves through internal political squabble, Winter is coming & Westeros is in dire need of mystical intervention. 

Climax 

Taking Winterfell/Leaving Meereen

Jon storms into Winterfell after Ramsey starts preparing for siege, the giant breaks the gate despite the numerous arrows he takes. Ramsey delivers a killing shot in the giant’s eye before challenging Jon to the duel he suggested earlier. Jon picks up a shield, avoids all his arrows and repeatedly punches his laughing face until he notices Sansa disturbed by his blood thirst. He orders Rickon’s body buried in the crypts.

He later offers the Lord’s chambers to Sansa, as she’s a Stark & Lady of Winterfell. He thanks her for the Knights of Vale & when Sansa apologises for not telling him about it earlier, he tells her they need to trust each other now that they have so many enemies. They both laugh about the white raven from the citadel informing “Winter is here” as he looks up at snowfall. With newfound conviction to live & fight death and having secured Winterfell, Jon summons all the lords of the North, even the ones who didn’t join them earlier.

Dany makes her first decision as Queen of Westeros by accepting their 100 ships into the armada that the masters brought to Meereen for siege & promises them Iron Islands & Euron’s death, if they accept her as Queen of Seven Kingdoms & accept its integrity by leaving their way of life, raiding & raping.  

She makes Daario in charge of Bay of Dragons, renamed from Slaver’s Bay as she successfully abolished slavery & leaves him with specific instructions to keep peace in the Meereen until the people choose their own leaders, essentially establishing some form of democracy. She officially makes Tyrion her Hand to the Queen by giving him the pin.

Building a bridge to lead them to each other

Jon Banishes Melisandre to the south after Davos tells him about Shereen. Unlike Melisandre, who felt Jon is the Promised Prince, the Red Priestesses in Essos started endorsing Dany as their Lord’s chosen this season and Melisandre has become broadminded about interpreting prophesies. As we know now, she travels south to find Dany & asks her to summon Jon Snow in order to bring Fire & Ice together.

Bran has a vision about Jon’s birth, revealing he is Lyanna Stark’s son, fathered by Rhaegar Targaryen. Ned only adopted him as a bastard for his own protection  as all Targaryens were slaughtered after Roberts’s rebellion.

Dany breaks up with Daario she says she can’t take a lover with her, because  “If I’m going to rule in Westeros, I’ll need to make alliances. The best way to make alliances is with marriage.” Interesting foreshadowing considering, there’s only one suitor for a Queen left in Westeros. 

Transition to King in the North & Dragon Queen in the south

The season ends with Jon addressing all the Lords of the North in the common room previously used for feasts, from his High Table, exactly how he used to govern at the Night’s Watch as the Lord Commander. When the Lords talk of returning home & waiting out the storm, after the victorious battle, Jon reestablishes his goals, which he gave up on earlier this season now that he’s in a position to gather a real army to fight the White Walkers. He uses Mance’s unification strategy one last time and tells them that the real enemy wouldn’t wait out the storm, he brings the storm and come winter, they will all die if the North doesn’t unite. As this was the reason Lyanna Mormont joined Jon’s fight, she declares him King in the North & everyone soon join in, swearing fealty to fight for him in wars to come. 

Varys secures an alliance with the south, Dorne & Highgarden, to back Dany’s claim to the throne & provide her with remaining ships for her army to come to Westeros. Earlier while creating her alliance with Iron Islands, she too defines her goals as a Queen, “We will leave the world better than we found it.” The season ends as Dany sets sail for Westeros as the Dragon Queen in the South.

Season 7 - The worlds collide - King in the North & Dragon Queen in the South 

War Room Counsel - Forming Strategy

Jon addresses the representatives of the North from his High Table, with Davos & Sansa by his side, exactly like he used to govern as Lord Commander of the Night’s watch. He lays out his goals for the season:

That every Maester in North works on finding Dragonglass which is more valuable than gold at the moment.

They begin training every man, woman & child in North as the entire North would still not be enough to fight the White Walkers.

As the Night’s Watch is dwindling in numbers, he requests the Wildlings to man Eastwatch by the sea, which is the closest castle on the wall to Hardhome, to act as first line of defence.

The castles of Umbers & Karstarks are closest to the wall & will be hit first in the North, so he makes peace with the houses as they know the lands best & the North can’t have political squabbles this winter. "I will not punish a son for his father’s sins, and I will not take a family home away from a family it has belonged to for centuries " when asked to take their homes for Lord Umber & Lord Karstark’s treason, after they died in battle, which is essentially the punishment for treason.

Jon once again starts embodying the role of a leader more confidently when he concludes the meeting with, “That is my decision, and my decision is final.” To establish that he represents the North’s interests but he is their King.

Dany reaches Dragonstone, the seat of House Targaryen & her birthplace, which sits on a mountain of Dragonglass along with one of largest & fiercest armies in the world & three dragons, as a harbinger of summer & hope Westeros needs. Upon reaching, she goes straight to the war room, where she runs her fingers over Dorne, HighGargen, Castely Rock, the North & finally stands behind the North beyond the wall on the War Room table carved in the shape of Westeros’s map and says “Shall we begin?”, foreshadowing her shift of goals.

First night at Dragonstone during the storm mirroring the storm on the day of her birth, she mentions that she expected a homecoming but it doesn’t feel like home, her subconscious lifelong desire after living without a home or family her entire life.

She soon takes a step back on her plans for the conquest as she doesn’t want to be the Queen of Ashes & cause more damage to an already war torn country for her ambition. 

Tyrion lays down his plans for the conquest, all of which would be outsmarted by Cersei, costing Dany all her allies & destabilisation of the South.

Lady Olenna leaves the War council with what would be her last words to Dany, “You’re a Dragon, be a Dragon,” in response to her reluctant conquest.

Drift with Sansa/Tyrion - The two characters who pulled Jon & Dany to the Game of Thrones, slowly start drifting away from these two as they challenge every decision they make in favour of the internal war within Westeros & their vision of how it should be won, unlike Jon who only cares only about the war with the White Walkers & Dany who too abandons her conquest for the Iron Throne when she goes North to save Jon, a lot like she did when she first saw what slavery did to the world. Both feel like Jon & Dany are abandoning their cause when they leave the seat of their house to visit the other’s territory. 

Tussle with the architects of this story - Varys/Littlefinger

The night of the storm, Dany has her first conversation with Varys & confronts him about his service to her father, Robert, his support for Viserys & the assassination attempt on her life. He tells her that his loyalty lies with the common people & the well being of the country, which is why he believes in her cause, to protect the oppressed from the rich & powerful. Dany tells him to come to her if he feels she’s failing the people, instead of backstabbing her like his former employers or she would burn him alive.

Littlefinger too approaches Jon for their first conversation before he leaves for Dragonstone, in front of Ned’s statue where he commends Jon for outliving all the Stark men despite being despised by Catelyn. He assures Jon that he’s an ally and he can be trusted, exactly like he did to Ned and Jon backs him up against the wall & strangles him exactly like Ned did when Littlefinger says he loves Jon’s sister just like he loved his mother. Jon walks away threatening to kill him if he touched his sister. 

Call to the meeting

Melisandre visits Dragonstone to inform Dany that she might have a part to play in Lord of Light’s Promised Prince prophesy, as does another. She asks her to invite Jon Snow, the first Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch to let Wildlings through their gates to protect them from the dangers beyond the Wall & the King in the North who united all the Northern Houses & the Wildling for the Great War. She asks Dany to hear from him what he’s seen beyond the Wall. 

Tyrion advises that he knows Jon well and even though he doesn’t believe in prophesies, Jon would be a great ally as he has just as much reason to hate the Lannisters as Dany, for trying to destroy their houses. "Send a raven north. Tell Jon Snow that his queen invites him to come to Dragonstone... and bend the knee,” Dany decides.

Jon receives a raven to come bend the knee much like Cersei’s, which he dismisses at first but then Jon & Davos realise that Dany has a large army & fire breathing dragons, which is exactly what they need but Sansa advises her against it.

Sam’s raven informing him the Dragon Stone sits on a mountain of Dragonglass is the tipping point for Jon’s decision to leave. He knows convincing Dany is their only chance to survive winter & so he calls all the Northern Lords to inform them of his decision. “Daenerys is a queen. Only a king can convince her to help us.” He declares when advised against it.

Worlds Collide

It’s symbolic that the last two surviving Targaryens meet at Dragonstone, the ancestral seat of House Targaryen as one refuses to be the Queen of Ashes & the other wishes to ensure he’s not the King whose Kingdom was destroyed by the death winter brings. “I’ve brought Fire & Ice together,” Melisandre observes as his icy resolve and her dominating fire clash when she asks him to bend the knee & he doesn’t (My meta on their reasons: Bend the knee). Its like watching an unstoppable force meet an immovable object. 

When Jon talks of the bad blood between their houses, he doesn’t expect her to accept that her father was an evil man & apologise for it. “I ask you not to judge a daughter by the sins of her father,” she gives him a glimpse at their mirroring souls by using his exact words.

“Together we will save this country from those who would destroy it,” she promises peace & prosperity for the Kingdom once their houses unite, foreshadowing their unified goals to fight the Night King when she witnesses the army of the dead, much like she abandoned her goals for the Iron Throne when she witnessed slavery in Essos. 

Dany is the first person who doesn’t fall for Jon’s use of Mance’s strategy of warning her of the death & doom which awaits everyone and he’s the first to not get intimidated by her power & her dragons, while being respectful of her as a leader. 

It’s iconic that Dany, who has been a Queen in some capacity since the beginning, greets him in a regal attire sitting on a throne, trying to convince him to support her claim to the throne & Jon, who has been a warrior since the beginning, acting as the protector of the realm, the unearned phrase every King’s title ends with, meets Dany clad in full armour as he tries to convince her to help him protect the realm from death beyond the Wall. It’s also iconic that he had to give up his weapons & she had to walk down from her throne to show him who she really is underneath the shell of a Targaryen. The worlds collide & the two appear in the same frame after six seasons of mirroring journeys.  Thus commences the journey of these two finding their reflections in each other and come together in every way.

These two are pieces of a greater whole, two souls who’ve never belonged, Dany never finds a home no matter where she goes & Jon never had a sense of belonging to a family. Jon wants to protect the world from death & Dany wants to build a better world for the living. He lives by icy stoicism & she lives by fiery passion. He doesn’t want to rule, yet has unshakable resolve in his decisions, even when he’s called foolish like his father and she wants to rule, yet she takes a step back every time she’s reminded of her father’s madness, even when the diplomatic path ends up hurting her cause in the long run. She has perfected the art of embodying the role of a ruler, he despises it. He unites people, she inspires them. Yet their souls and journeys mirror each other at such a profound level that once these mirroring worlds of ice & fire collide, they are taken aback by what they see in the other. Only together can they save Westeros and heal the bleeding war torn country. 

Note: I really enjoyed writing this so if any of you have any more ideas for me to analyse these two or the show, let me know. Since this was about their detailed journeys, it’s a monstrosity which took three weeks to research & write, so sorry about the length. 

[starsandnines]

So recently I promised that I would share my new brocdes “headcanon” with you all, so here it goes. I will try to express myself as best as I can but I won’t promise anything because I kinda have lots of feelings about this.

So this new headcanon/theory thing came after I closely analyzed Nico’s and Lewis’ behaviour this year. But before I start, I think it is for the best that I share what had been my originial theory about these two up until now.

First of all, looking back at the rivalry of these two, I always assumed Lewis was the one who was kind of an asshole towards Nico and that’s why they drifted apart. I thought this not because I think Lewis is an asshole or anyting but because let’s be honest he is the one who can be the more dramatic, and the one who is more likely to make a hurtful comment or the one dissing the other. It is just the way Lewis is. Nico is always, ALWAYS diplomatic or at least he tries to be, he tries to keep this composed, calm and collected facade up. That has always been his coping mechanism. So all this led me to believe that Lewis was at fault mostly. And let’s be honest I always had a soft spot for Nico so who knows I might have even been a little bit biased and automatically didn’t blame him. Anyway, on to the next point. After analyzing their personalities even more deeply, I think Lewis’ behaviour is immensly misunderstood in this fandom most of the time. And it makes me sad because Lewis is often treated like this arrogant asshole who always makes rude comments about other drivers. However, Lewis is more complex than that. I’m not saying his statements and comments about Nico are not hurtful because they are. But life and people are not black and white I’m afraid. 

Let’s go back to the time after Nico’s retirement. Nico said that he and Lewis didn’t get on after a while because they obviously wanted to be treated equally in the team. He said that as long as one of them didn’t accept to be the number two then they couldn’t maintan a friendship. Now obviously the one who was always forced into being the second best in the team was Nico. Nico obviously didn’t want to accept second place and honestly why would have he? Now, I’ve always assumed that Lewis, already having championship titles, didn’t take this behaviour from Nico smoothly and I can’t blame him either. He rightly thought that he is the better driver (proven by his titles) and of course there was his competitiveness which naturally every driver has. So when I looked at these facts I believed that Lewis was the one who pushed Nico away and treated him like shit because of his own massive ego. Now, from Nico’s point of view. He must have been furious many times regarding Lewis’s behaviour with the team orders and of course Mercedes (even tho they always said otherwise) kind of wanted Nico to be the second driver. And Nico due to being diplomatic and composed about his feelings in tense situations could easily give people the impression that even tho he wasn’t happy about the drama and the tense rivalry with Lewis and his comments he still seemed to accept it somehow and learnt to roll with it. What I didn’t take into consideration is how hurt Nico must have been all the time. He must have felt like shit being treated like that and honestly just beacause he didn’t show his feelings to the cameras he might have been absouletly cold towards Lewis. Just look at how Nico reacts here (x) to a question about being friends and rivals with Lewis at the same time  and how Lewis  was just trying to make Nico laugh about it almost as if he already knew that Nico didn’t like the situation. So what I’m trying to say is that Nico mght have been the one who started to drift apart from Lewis because he was hurt and couldn’t bare being treated in such way in the team. 

(I hope you can still follow me because I haven’t even started the main theory yet :D)

So now comes a little psychology lesson even tho I’m no expert. Nico has always been very consistent with what he said about his and Lewis’ relationship during his time in the team. If you look at press conferences, post race/quali interviews he used to say the same thing all over again, sharing very little with the media, rambling about the ‘base respect towards each other” etc… Right after his retirement however, he immediately started to open up. He emphasized many times how he wanted to make things right with Lewis because he was not in the team anymore so it should be easy right? At first I was like, sure that’s the right thing to do. As this year’s season went on, Nico somehow always talked about Lewis on twitter or in interviews. Bordering on being a little too pushy in my opinion. Now I get it that he is still connected to Mercedes as he is the ambassador of the team and I guess he still has to suppport them and that means not talking shit about Lewis. But I always thought that he could have tone it down a lil bit if he wanted to but he seemed honest and genuinely happy for Lewis’ succes and race wins this year. So we saw Nico’s behaviour and after this gifset (x) where Lewis didn’t even look at Nico’s direction even tho he touched his arm, and this post (x) where they have shown a picture of Lewis and Nico to Lewis and he simply didn’t want to do anything with it, he didn’t even want to say a word about it, almost like wanting to forget that he and Nico have ever been friends. Now these passive vibes coming from Lewis almost immediately, being hugely in contrast to Nico’s kind and open approach towards Lewis, had been criticized by many in this fandom, saying how petty Lewis behaves and how he “can’t let go of his rivalry with Nico”. But in my view, that is not how people work. Lewis had many rivals in the past before Nico, I don’t think I have to specify these drivers. Nonetheless he still moved on and still can be civil with those drivers. Which leads us to the conclusion that NO Lewis is not childish and not petty and not miserable. He is hurt. Which leads us to another conclusion which is that Nico might have been the one who was at fault in their relationship turning for the worse. Furthermore to support this idea, Nico can be easily open (like I’ve mentioned a few lines above) and forgiving towards Lewis because of this exact reason that he was the one who started it all. Rightly so he is the one who should initiate the making up. Speaking from experience, my mum when she argues with somebody, tends to forget it really quickly and she always thinks that after like 5 minutes everything is forgotten without her ever apologizing. If you read what Lewis has said recently here (x) you might start to see my point. Lewis basically said that he loved Nico and so he tolerated everything but he realized that it was unhealthy for him and so he distanced himslef from Nico. I find this really tragic. I know how hard it can be to do this, when you love someone but you know that your relationship with that person is not good for your mental well-being so you move on.

I think if Lewis was such a pathetic and petty driver who cannot move on from old arguments then he would be like this with everyone. However, Nico is the only person who Lewis “treats” this way and that’s why I’m basically writing this post because it made me think about how hurt Lewis must be from the fight with Nico. And that is because Lewis is not hurt by the championship title taken away from him last year or the previous years’ dramas. He is hurt because it was NICO who (might have) hurt him. And let’s just consider the fact that they have known each other since they were kids. SINCE THEY WERE KIDS. Like, can you imagine what that feels like? 

I am not saying that Nico is the one who is the asshole here. I love both of them with all my heart. I’m just saying that recently their behaviour has put things into different perspective for me. And I also think that Lewis might be waiting for Nico to truly discuss things and he doesn’t make do with twitter mentions and what not. Or he might be so hurt that he doesn’t want to do anyting with Nico for now. Who knows.  So this is it. I feel like I just poured everything that I think into this post and I’m not sure if this is comprehensible so let me know what you think or if you need me to explain some parts then write me and I’ll try my best :)

[thatsjustsupergirl]

ur post about fic & racism in the supergirl fandom really got me thinking (especially about my own biases so thank you) but also like, how there’s this incredibly pervasive but subtle new form of racism I haven’t seen b4 in other fandoms? Like on one hand u have this loud condemnation of how racist monel is & how he was a slave owner blabh blah but no corresponding attention given to the existing Black characters. 1/4

I get wlw not wanting to write m/f fic but a lot of the fandom doesn’t reblog (or make) any of the gifsets, they don’t meta for him they don’t call for more screen time for Mehcad. Same for M’gann. SO many posts talking about how awful monel is compare him to Lena and strangely don’t mention the Black female character who also came from an oppressive society to become a hero? And there are like, idk, 4 people? Who write or post wlw fic with M’gann in it? 2/4

Same with Maggie. A huge segment of fandom decided Floriana is white (even tho hollywood clearly won’t cast her in roles for white women) so they use that as an excuse to exclusively stan the very light skinned white wlw. And the way it carries over to the characters, like, okay Flo is white? but Maggie is absolutely treated like a woc in how parts of fandom aggressively ignore her & find ways to demonize her character while overtly supporting lighter skinned characters ¾

And that same part of the fandom doesn’t ever seem to create content for Lucy or Vasquez either. IDK this isn’t something u can probably explore with stats but ur post really got me thinking and it just feels really gross now bc I see all these posts condemning racism but there’s still this extreme perpetuation of privileging white characters at the same time? & I haven’t seen this particular trend in fandom b4 4/4

Oh, anon, this made my day. I have a bunch of notes waiting in a doc to address the whole Mon-El thing with regard to the racist undertones and the rhetoric used by the show to frame his storyline, and I will do my best to write it before the season comes back again, because I genuinely think they tried to aim high and just … missed completely. (But I make no promises because my thesis defense is on Tuesday.)

To your first point re: fandom attitudes – I was surprised in the early half of S2 when so many people came out of the woodwork making posts in the main tag like “wait, why did they get rid of Kara/James??” because, oh right, nobody acted like they cared for almost twelve straight months. If y’all were so okay with this ship, where were you to acknowledge its social significance when it was canon? Where are you now? Why hasn’t there been an outpouring of tweets week after week at the execs and the writers for sidelining an interracial couple in favor of what we’re getting, especially since the storyline literally handwaved away human trafficking and slavery as minor plot points?

Not only that, when there’s unrealized potential for a non-canon ship there is typically an outpouring of fic in response, and while there’s been a statistically significant amount of new Karolsen fic in S2 because it’s pretty easy to top zero percent, the writing there is not keeping pace with any of the other dude-involved pairings. 

And you’re right, anon: it is not possible to prove anything with stats. HOWEVER, thanks to the addition of these new characters for S2, I *am* at the point now where it’s possible to see correlation between character race and fan engagement with different pairing choices. And the bias is there, whether it’s in the het pairings, the femslash, or even the m/m pairings. The whole reason I started tracking fic outputs in the first place was that any attempt to have this conversation last year devolved into yelling and finger-pointing because “you have no proof!” that racial bias is a thing. Except, yanno, all the POC who live with it daily saying that it’s a thing. Well, congratulations y’all: your choices leave digital footprints behind that are pretty easy to follow and chart for everyone to see.

This isn’t actually a new problem, by the way – racism and preferencing of white pairing happens a lot, in almost every fandom. The only difference maybe is that I’ve experimented with quantifying it, which is not something that people usually do when they study fandoms or fan behavior.

It pains me to no end that M’gann has been so overlooked, because her story has just as many dark character beats to it as Lena’s, if not more, plus the added bonus of her sharing a sense of “otherness” with Kara in a way that few other people can. And there is no way the disinterest in that pairing isn’t about race, because there are a whole bunch of ships from S1 between white women who’d never even met each other in canon that have more romantic fics than M’gann/anyone.

And the nonsense about Floriana, which I’ll remind everyone again was started by a white girl, had a demonstrable chilling effect on interest in Sanvers as a pairing. Like. I can actually show that on paper. And you’re absolutely right with what you said above, which bears repeating: Maggie is absolutely treated like a woc in how parts of fandom aggressively ignore her & find ways to demonize her character.

There’s also a treatment of Floriana herself that reminds me uncomfortably of how people went out of their way to demonize Naya Rivera’s personal life whenever she reminded the world she was black instead of just “very tan.” And a lot of the rhetoric people are using to talk about Floriana’s racial heritage is almost verbatim the same as what you’ll find on white supremacist discussion boards about Italian people. I’d love to think this is an accident, but I’ve made some people pretty angry for pointing this out in the past, so I suspect it’s at least partially deliberate.

Lucy was another case that drove me insane, for two reasons:

The vast majority of femslash fans flat-out ignored her as a romantic choice even though there were a whole lot of good reasons to ship her with either Kara or Alex, and a whole lot less negative reasons not to. (And it’s not like Supercat was already dominating the scene before Lucy’s character was introduced. That ship only became popular after the movie Carol came out during the winter hiatus of S1.)

People had the same fight last year about whether or not Lucy counted as a WOC and ultimately insisted that the answer was no. But then people kept on ignoring her anyway like somehow dubiously legal boss/employee relationships, potential treason, and incest were more logical bases for attraction.

Also, to the people who have been like “oh yay we could’ve had Dichen as Maggie, a real WOC” like somehow this would have made the fandom love her more – you’re full of shit. If you mean that, why has there been so little fic about Dichen as Roulette? Like, last year there were a whole bunch of shipfics featuring Livewire. There was Kara/Siobhan. And yet … no dark scenarios of Supergirl/Roulette? No Alex ones? There were even a bucketload of those for each Danvers sister + Max Lord, and this fandom isn’t even that into dudes. You’re telling me no one is interested in this kind of hero/villain dynamic with the Asian chick and somehow that’s not also about race?

tl;dr I suspect that a decent chunk of this problem is the result of subconscious bias, but some of it’s not. And what’s really sad about it is that, for all the talk on Tumblr about representation being important, we’re really doing no better as media producers than Hollywood when it comes to race. If anything, we might actually be doing worse.

[yennefers-geralt]

Arya and Dany: Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors

After posting this gifset, there was some debate about the Hogwarts sortings for Arya and Daenerys with some insisting that they were both Slytherin. So I thought I would explain why I see them as fitting into Hufflepuff and Gryffindor rather than the other two houses. This got long, so I’m putting it under the cut.

TL; DR: Even though both characters have Slytherin and Ravenclaw traits, it is, IMO, their Hufflepuff and Gryffindor characteristics that most significantly form their characters, influence their choices, and represent their values.

Why Neither is Predominantly a Slytherin

Both Arya and Dany do have a number of qualities that fit with that house, such as ambition, cunning, resourcefulness, determination, self-preservation, cleverness, etc. But the novels don’t show either of them as being driven by these qualities. They don’t value the traits above others nor are their actions dictated by those traits. Instead those are qualities in both of them that are motivated by other, more dominant characteristics.

So while it’s true that Dany has been amassing power, showing great cunning in her fight against the slavers, and plans to claim the Iron Throne, that ambition is born out of duty to her family and a newfound duty to those she can protect with her position.  

“Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?“  – ASOS

In other words, she’s not seeking power for ambition’s sake, but so she can have the power to protect others and herself. She is also seeking the Iron Throne because she sees it as her duty as the last of the Targaryens. Initially, she supports Viserys’ claim and then Rhaego’s claim. It isn’t until they both die that she wants to pursue the throne herself. Several times she wishes she could have a normal life and wasn’t a queen with the responsibilities of the blood of the dragon. If Dany really was a Slytherin, she would have been more likely to embrace her own claim and not see it as a burden. And when she reached Astapor to buy the Unsullied, her priority would have been to head straight to Westeros with them. It wasn’t as though she knew the people being enslaved at the time or owed them anything. Yet, to the determent of her own cause Dany halts her own plans to help them. 

As far as Arya goes, the novels show her to be ambitious since she wants a position of power such as a king’s councilor or high septon. She’s also shown as extremely clever  and cunning. But while these are traits she has, Arya’s character and choices aren’t shaped by them. Like Dany, Arya often puts helping others above her own goals. For instance, as much as she yearns to reunite with her family, Arya puts a high priority on Gendry and Hot Pie’s safety as well.

She would make much better time on her own, Arya knew, but she could not leave them. – ASOS

If  Arya fit in Slytherin, she would be more likely to put her own needs and her own self-preservation first. 

Why Gryffindor?

It seems like Dany and Arya’s Gryffindor potential isn’t up for debate, but I’ll touch on it anyway.

A solid case for Gryffindor!Arya can be found here. The long and short of it is that Arya not only possesses traits like bravery, nerve, courage, and daring, but those are also traits that she values. What a person values has a significant influence, if not an all out determination, of who they are. She uses Syrio’s “fear cuts deeper than swords” mantra to inspire bravery in herself and pushes herself onward, even when she’s completely terrified. 

“I am a wolf, and will not be afraid. She patted Needle’s hilt for luck and plunged into the shadows, taking the steps two at a time so no one could ever say she’d been afraid.”  

In this and in countless other examples, Arya shows she will continue on even in the face of fear, which is the ultimate show of bravery. In other moments, she feels shame at not being able to show bravery and criticizes cowardliness in others. In all of this, her character and choices are guided by Gryffindor ideals.

With Dany, her Gryffindor traits grow as the series progresses. Like Arya, she has a mantra that she uses to draw strength and courage in the face of fear.   

"I am the blood of the dragon,” she whispered aloud as she followed, trying to keep her courage up. “I am the blood of the dragon. I am the blood of the dragon." 

As stated before, going forward even when afraid is the definition of bravery, particularly in this series. Even though Dany initially doesn’t have the opportunity to push herself to be brave since she is under her abusive brother’s thumb. But even then, she recalls moments where she stood up to him in the past and gains the confidence to do so more often. by the time we get to ASOS, she’s wanting to lead battles and in ADWD, she’s facing down a plague to help her people and witness their suffering for herself.

Why Hufflepuff?

The more I went over the Hufflepuff traits that guide Arya and Dany’s actions, the more I realized that this is probably the house their characters naturally fit the best. Like Slytherin (and all the Hogwarts house, tbh), Hufflepuff is often misunderstood. I’ve seen it casually regarded as a house for weak characters or for the left overs. The latter is due in part to this line from one of the sorting hat songs:

"I’ll teach the lot And treat them just the same.”

While the other founders are quoted as preferring specific traits in students, Helga Hufflepuff will welcome all of them. This kind of tolerance and acceptance of all different sorts of people is exactly what Dany and Arya are about. Just looking at the variety of characters from all sorts of backgrounds that Daenerys is surrounded by proves this. She accepts all sorts of people and actively tries to be a queen to everyone. For Arya, her tolerance for a wide variety of people can be best described with this quote:

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody. – AGOT

This is proven throughout the novels as Arya makes friends with a butcher’s boy, a blacksmith apprentice, the lord of Starfall, an archer from the marches, prostitutes, the lady of Acorn Hall, mummers, and on and on. 

Along with the tolerance and acceptance of others detailed above, other significant Hufflepuff traits are justice, loyalty, and hard work.

Hard Working

Even as a queen, Dany is hard working to the point that Barristan suggests she start delegating instead of taking everything onto herself. Arya also doesn’t shy away from hard work whether it’s foraging with the Night’s Watch recruits, performing back breaking labor in Harrenhal, or working in the House of Black and White.

Loyalty

Arya’s loyalty to Mycah is consistent through the novels. She not only befriends him despite his station, she fights the crown prince to protect him, and tries to get justice for him once he’s been murdered.

In some ways, it could be said that she is loyal almost to a fault. Not only is Arya unable to abandon Gendry and Hot Pie, who are slowing her down, she also takes on additional work to cover their tracks and puts herself at risk for them. Her loyalty to Gendry and insistence on rescuing him are part of the reason she and Hot Pie are captured in ACOK. She also puts herself forward and tries to hide her friends’ whereabouts from the Brotherhood, when they’re found in ASOS. 

Similarly, Daenerys hurts her own cause several times by staying loyal to the freedmen and women she’s trying to help.

The raggle-taggle host of freedmen dwarfed her own, but they were more burden than benefit. Perhaps one in a hundred had a donkey, a camel, or an ox; most carried weapons looted from some slaver’s armory, but only one in ten was strong enough to fight, and none was trained. They ate the land bare as they passed, like locusts in sandals. Yet Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged. I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me. – ASOS

“I would sooner perish fighting than return my children to bondage.“ – ADWD

"I will not abandon Meereen to the fate of Astapor. It grieves me to say so, but Westeros must wait.” – ADWD

Justice

Many refer to what Arya and Daenerys do as revenge, but primarily, for both characters it’s about justice.

Arya has a strong sense of justice that was instilled in her by Ned. The reality that most of the world, including her own country men and Ned himself, don’t uphold those standards is a harsh blow for her. But it only gets worse as she witnesses atrocity after atrocity. That leads her to take action in enforcing justice.

I should kill them myself. Whenever her father had condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with Ice, his greatsword. “If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look him in the face and hear his last words,” she’d heard him tell Robb and Jon once.

Looking at the list of names Arya recites, one can see that each character earned their place by committing a crime, usually murder. This isn’t about petty revenge for her.

Daenerys’ dedication to justice speaks for itself: 

Dany set great store by Ser Jorah’s counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms pointing up the coast road. – ASOS

Harsh justice is still justice. – ASOS

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice … that’s what kings are for.”

In the end, if Dany and Arya were somehow dropped in a Hogwarts universe, in my opinion, they would both be more likely to choose Gryffindor than Hufflepuff. They both have aptitudes for each house, with a possibly high aptitude for Hufflepuff. But their value and reliance on courage seems to outweigh most everything else. 

@themagicaljess, @shegryffindor, @fleiur

[itsallaskam]

sorry for so many but 7, 12, 17, 21, 27, 30, 34, 37, 40, 46, (girl squad) 51, 53, 55, 57, 67, 73, 76, 77, 78, 80

Sorry this took so long to answer but there were a lot of questions!

7. Who of the actors is your favorite and why?

Ooh, this is really tough because I really think they are all so talented. They all do such an incredible job portraying emotions without having to say anything.

However, I do think that Josefine and Thomas did a really incredible job in season 2. I think Josefine especially does a lot of good job of portraying emotions without speaking. There are so many scenes I can pick out where I could feel what she did, just from a look. I also think they together were great, they seemed to have a lot of natural chemistry that didn’t seem forced. I will also probably never get over the anxiety scene. They played off each other so well. Hence why I’m still mad that Thomas bailed, so much potential.

12. Do you think skam handles what it’s like to have a mental illness right?This is difficult since the only main character that we see firsthand experience anything (which we don’t see diagnosed) is Noora and her anxiety. I do think it was very important that they did show it and a way to help someone with anxiety. Of course there is Even with his bipolar, but you only see Isak’s experience with Even. Having a mental illness and being around/helping with someone mental illness are two very different things. There is also Vilde who is it is implied has an ED, possibly Noora has experience with that as well. I do think that Skam does much better than most television shows with addressing mental illness, but they haven’t yet really delved into having their main character having a mental illness which would be interesting to see for sure. Especially to further undo stigma attached to mental illness. To wrap up this long answer, I don’t think skam has properly handled what it’s like to have mental illness right, since they haven’t had a main character directly experience and deal with it every day.

17. Do you know any series similar to skam?I really can’t think of any American shows that are really similar, I would maybe say Friday Night Lights, only because I think it has that element of realism and emotion that Skam does. But really American shows about high school don’t come close to Skam at all.

My Mad Fat Diary is a good one I think that’s fairly similar. I think that handles mental illness in a real raw and good way where the characters are also in high school. I highly recommend that.

21. Would you want to go to Nissen? Why?I would want to go to Nissen solely so I could experience russfiering because it looks really fun and I’m sad I didn’t have one. I am a little bitter I didn’t get to be a Russ, because who doesn’t want a month long country endorsed party while you don’t really have responsibilities? Also I really want to know what their schedule looks like? What time do they start and end? My high school was much different. But, I have no desire to go back to high school.

so this doesn’t clutter up dashes I’ll put the rest under a read more!

27. What scene made you the happiest and why?This is also tough. Honestly I love all of the slomo scenes, but the top would be between the girls walking to the penetrator party and William and the boys getting out of his car or the hills but that kind of doesn’t count.

Overall I’d have to say the scene where Noora tells William off for being an asshole. The girls really hadn’t been friends for that long and Noora really went to bat for Vilde. And I think girls supporting girls is very important. Especially to the guy who really seems untouchable and is never put in his place. It’s also impressive that she essentially does this to the most popular, coolest guy in the entire school as someone who is brand new to the school. I love the idea of her taking back the balance of power from the boys. Plus I mean there is no better song for the end of it than Bossy by Kelis, it’s perfect. I love that scene a lot.

Also in the running are when William tell Noora she’s beautiful and when Noora sings Justin Beiber to Eva and when Noora gets caught lying about Eskild not being home.

30. Is Skam your favourite series?I have a hard time ranking shows, but I would say that Skam is definitely up there as one of my favorite series. It’s just so well done and really doesn’t sugar coat things and treats teenagers like people. It’s handles a lot of difficult topics well and has very relatable characters.

34. If you could be best friends with any character who would it be?I would have to go with Chris because I love how she just doesn’t give a fuck about what anyone thinks of her, which I could always do more of and she’s hilarious. I think she’s a very underrated character.

37. What is your opinion on (character name)?I didn’t see a specific character for this, so I’ll skip it for now, but if you want to ask again and pick a character I’ll do it!

40. Which character is most like your best friend and why?I think my best friend is a combination of Noora/Sana/Chris. Noora’s style/makeup. Sana’s protectiveness and fuck you attitude when necessary. Chris’ goofiness and humor. If I had to pick one though, probably Noora just less serious.

46. Do you think skam handles sexuality right?This is a very complicated question. Sexuality is a spectrum and basically in all media it is lacking. I do think that skam did a good job with Isak’s season to address his struggle with coming to terms with his sexuality. I think it was especially important his conversations with Sana about religion and sexuality and also when Eskild got really real with Isak and his bias/prejudices. Isak is a very flawed character and so was his story.I also think that they did a good job handling Noora and how she felt about her sexuality after her experiences with her prior boyfriend and also the entire Nico situation.Sexuality is deeply personal and complicated by our own experiences.I do think with what skam has addressed, it’s done a good job, but as with all media they have a lot more they could do in terms of representation, but they’re doing better than most shows. Especially in regards to teenagers.

51. Who is your favorite squad member and why?I would have to say Sana, because she gets really real with all the girls and comes off as a bit rough and prickly, but she protects and takes care of her girls and wouldn’t let anything happen to them. I love her humor and how she handles when people question her and her choices. The talks she has with Noora and Isak are so important. I think she has a very mature viewpoint.

53. What do you think is most important about the friendship of the squad?What I think is most important about the friendship of the squad is them just supporting each other. They start out really not having close friends at a new school and very quickly are supporting each other. From Noora defending Vilde, to Sana throwing a drink at Pepsi Max for calling Vilde a slut, to them all leaving when Sana runs out of the party, to them going to the doctor with Vilde twice, them taking care of Vilde when she drank too much, to the fight with Iben, to them at the cabin, to them all being there for Noora when she thought she’d been raped to when William left. I just think that it’s important that they’re there for each other. 

Especially in high school which is a complete emotional mess, I love that they have each other. They fight, but at the end of the day they’re there for each other and protect each other.

55. What do you hate about the squad?I wouldn’t say that I hate anything about them. I think I just dislike how judgy they can be of each other at times, but teenage girls are judgy. I guess I also don’t like how at parties sometimes they just split up and not see each other again? Like at the help the penetrators party or william’s party in 2x3. But there’s nothing I really hate.

57. Do you have your own squad?I do! It would be the girls I lived with in college (lol this is where everyone figures out I’m old). We have a named group text and everything and I pretty much text them everyday.

Kollektivet

67. Who would you want to share rooms with?already answered!

73. What is your favorite fanfic or headcanon & why? I honestly don’t read/look for much of either but let me swoon over you by @kiranstein is super cute and I love it. Go bug her to write more!!

76. Did you learn Norwegian for skam?I have started doing duolingo for Norwegian almost every day since I started watching haha. It’s actually been really good for me getting back into language learning.

77. What is the most crazy fan theory you’ve heard so far?That s1 or s2 was just build up to s3. Because both Eva & Noora had incredibly important journeys. The illogical William hate. Or that Noora isn’t a feminist or vastly changed from s1 to s2 because of her relationship with William.

78. What is your most favorite gifset?There are a lot of good ones so this is terribly hard but two of my favorite colorings are this one and this one even if the scenes are sad. Also one where they managed to make the super purple more than words scene look normal but I can’t find it.

80. What is a fandom related url you wish you had?I actually quite like my url, but I think initially I wanted damnskam, instead it’s the title of my blog.