#then it's super likely the organisms that initially dreamed it would've influenced it enough to have a sun at least.

[boombox-fuckboy]

As a hobby worldbuilder who works primarily in what I assume is the weird fiction zone (with fair sized fantasy or scifi elements, depending on the project), I sometimes get stuck about what to do with the sky. If reality doesn't work the same, how do I account for the sun? Should I even have a moon and stars? If I do, are they true moon and stars, or an equivalent?

While you can gently sweep the conundrum under a rug, it can of course become part of the game. Here's some examples of solutions I've enjoyed:

Midst: The natural state of the universe is, in fact, light. Darkness acts like a reality-warping, breathable liquid. Midst is an islet, which here means it's one of many floating planetoids. Midst specifically floats and rotates slowly at the border of light and dark, causing day and night. The moon is an even smaller floating body, but it's mostly just there to explode. Space is dangerous not for breathing or temperature reasons but because you'll get ripped to shreds by floating mica.

Campaign: Skyjacks: The sun is the creation of the Sovereign (now dead patriarch god), and the stars were his angels. The Morningstar is the only one that doesn't move, guarding the empty throne, but the few remaining stars (angels) do, and also aren't always up there, which makes navigation difficult. There are so few stars now as most angels were cast out of the heavens a couple centuries back (when The Sovereign was slain). The moon was created by The Forest Queen, allowing her to see by the light of it, which she could not by the Sovereign's sun. If you fly an airship above the moon, she cannot see you.

The Mistholme Museum: Specifically, in the world of The Beast and The Queen, the stars are beetles, which roam about on the dome that is the sky. The sun? Different beetle.

[bitchfromtheseventhhell]

AU where Nymeria didn't come soon enough and Joffrey maimed (murdered?) Arya. What would've happened? How do you think the story would proceed?

well this ask is sure a punch to the gut so thanks for that.

but after that initial punch, i had fun with this.  my goal was to keep major strokes of the plot largely the same but to justify them with different characterizations that precipitate from this different scenario.  

this is also long bc i had fun so i’m putting it under a cut

trident:

arya: 

first thing’s first--i’m not killing arya.  sorry will not will never.

so let’s assume some maiming of some sort.  joffrey’s got live steel and is swinging it, so my guess is he’d hit either her arm or her abdomen.  

if abdoment, i’m going to assume a not deep strike/miraculously misses internal organs swipe--but one that bleeds a lot and one also that takes a while to recover from.  

if arm or leg, there’s going to be muscle damage depending on where he strikes. in any case--how that would affect her permanently i’m not sure.

ned: 

look ned was super fucked up by arya’s disappeareance to begin with after she fled the scene, my guess is he’s going to be even more fucked up by the fact of her being physically attacked.  can you imagine arya being brought back somehow covered in blood and the lyanna flashbacks he would have been having?  (especially if, given that arya disappeared for several days in canon, he may have already have been having lyanna flashbacks).  he’s really not going to be ok with any of this.  

while he can’t call for anything bad to happen to joffrey, i wouldn’t be surprised, actually, if he told robert he wouldn’t be hand, and then had robert cajole him back into it; i think he would likely break sansa’s betrothal to joffrey as well, or at least say that he was considering breaking it pending joffrey’s further behavior.  i think he’d want to believe that “children fight” but i don’t think he’d be willing to accept that “children fighting” = joffrey turning live steel on his daughter.

if they continue to king’s landing, my guess is that guilt would wrack him a whole heck of a lot.  if they turn back north, it’d probably be the same.  ned carries guilt really intensely.  for the sake of this au, i think they continue on south.

sansa:

sansa’s whole drunken experience on the banks of the trident is already 12 times of overwhelm for her.  agot sansa--and agot-sansa-i-sansa which oh hey here she is!--especially is someone who does everything she can to believe that things are good, right, fair, just, perfect, etc.  so there are two options for her witnessing joffrey swing and hit her sister with a sword:

blame arya for it--if she hadn’t gotten in the way and had just come to the wheelhouse with sansa the way sansa had wanted everything would have been fine.  

be immediately disillusioned by joffrey--seeing him for the cruel boy he is.

i lied there’s a third option which is some combination of the two but

i, personally, am leaning option 2 laced with option 3 but really more option 2 than anything else: why? because lady’s still alive coming out of all this since it was nymeria who attacked joffrey and if nymeria didn’t attack joffrey both wolves get to stick around.  since so much of the lady’s death symbolism is connected with the way that sansa engages with the truth and reality (among other things) but if lady’s alive that is a literal game changer for like all of sansa’s characterization. i def think it’s gonna be a “dragged kicking and screaming” kind of thing for sansa (see: secret option 3 maybe transitioning towards option 2), but i think it’s a major shock to the system: her perfect prince almost killed her sister because she tried to get him not to beat someone up.  like imagine nymeria snuggling and being all protective of sickbed arya the way that summer is of bran, and lady keeping them company because pack!!!!!! and suddenly you’re going to have a very different world experience for sansa within a game of thrones because her wolf is choosing her pack for her and is not being severed from her symbolically or literally. that’s a big deal.

let’s say that sansa’s betrothal is on hold.  let’s also remember that both lady and nymeria are alive and still with the party at hand.

lannisters/baratheons of a lannister vibe: 

my guess is that cersei’s furious with ned to begin with and believes whatever it is that joffrey tells her.  

i think joffrey, knowing he’s in deep shit, lies, and does a lot of blaming of arya, saying his same story that she and mycah set upon him with clubs.  i think he sticks to this story.  

because of this it’s likely that mycah is killed still.  which means that arya’s likely going to still blame herself for the whole situation; the difference is that i think that she’s more likely to get support from sansa out of this because lady’s alive and a lot of sansa’s lash-out was about lady’s death.

i bet nymeria’s not thrilled with joffrey, but stays close to arya (playing more defense) and i bet lady growls every time he lies and, as septa mordane points out, sansa’s “as willfull...as arya” when it comes to lady.  and while i do think she may well play that “i don’t remember everything happened so fast” card when people ask her what happened, i think that 1) ned being livid and potentially freezing her betrothal to joffrey and 2) lady growling all the time will keep the situation real for her.

but i think that there’s still a lotttt of love lost between lannisters & starks heading into king’s landing.  it’s got a different flavor to it.

king’s landing (and beyond):

ned:

i think, for the most part, ned’s political actions and moves are going to be similar.  he’s going to have a lot more open hostility for lannisters earlier on, but is also going to need to play it cool.  he’s also going to be tetchier with robert sooner (which may mean no hand’s tourney? since robert doesn’t want to alienate him and ned can really push down on that “your son attacked my daughter” thing.)  i think he is likely going to follow littlefinger down the road to hell as he does in agot, and is likely going to rat himself out to cersei, and is going to get iced.  i don’t think this will change in its grander arc though details of it will change.  the nature of his need to comfort arya will be different because nymeria will be there and she’ll be recovering from injury.  syrio might be more of an active “self defense for the daughter” and less a “welp my dad was a dick to lyanna so i guess i won’t be a dick to you and get you a teacher” move.

sansa: 

i think things will be rocky with joffrey for always.  i mean they’re rocky in sansa ii (when the hound walks her back and freaks her out; this might not happen in this au bc chances are lady’s enough of a guard for sansa, if the tourney happens which as i said maybe it doesn’t), but i think sansa’s wary of him because she has seen his violence and has had to live with the ramifications of it rather than being able to compartmentalize them away and blame arya for lady’s death.  i think it takes a long time (as mentioned above) for her to wrap her head around this, but it’s a very intense “life is not a song” thing for her earlier than it happens in canon.  my guess is that, rather than getting meaner to arya as time progresses as she does in agot, she’ll get easier with arya.  if life’s not a song, then she’s not “a lady in a song” at least not the way she thought she was at the start of the series and--lbr here--i think the fact that lady and nymeria are both present is going to drastically change the way that they engage because even if arya and sansa argue--which they will.  as i said this characterization is different but that doesn’t mean that what we started with goes out the window--the wolves are pack and i think that’s an odd point of clarity for both of them amidst the “wtf is going on” that is 1) king’s landing and 2) pre-pubescence on sansa’s part coupled with the privilege she has of being the elder sister and the conventionally beautiful one.

i think that “shit hits the fan” moment is going to be different for sansa’s character more than for what happens.  i don’t think she nec goes and tells on ned when he says he’s sending the girls north; this doesn’t change anything.  she and jeyne are held hostage; jeyne is sold to littlefinger; sansa has lady with her.

i hate saying this: i think lady isn’t going to survive king’s landing.  there’s no fucking way she doesn’t attack anyone who tries to hurt sansa, even if she’s the most docile wolf, and i think the first time she tries it ends her life.  this, like ned’s death, is going to be deeply traumatic for sansa, esp if wolf-dreams began happening for sansa.  

to me, the timing and the  nature of that death for lady is everything.  lady being killed in defense of sansa, rather than as collateral damage for something she didn’t do changes both sansa’s relationship with her death (ie she’s gonna hate lannisters even more intensely than she already did, and it’s going to be unequivocal, rather than her periodically blaming arya for it) and the symbolic nature of it.  it’s not ned giving lady a northern death, and changing drasitcally the nature of sansa’s connection with the north and with her stark identity--it’s reinforcing i think, given everything that’s going on.  they killed her daddy, they killed her wolf (and lbr here preliminary wolf-dreams are likely here which means ugh with lady dying), joffrey attacked arya, this is bad news bears.  i think she’s terrified of all this, but i think lady has a deeper influence (and she already has a deep one tbh) on sansa and rolling forward i think that just changes the nature of her growth.

this puts sansa’s situation--if not her characterization--back in line with canon.

arya:

first of all hi please imagine arya carrying needle with her always instead of keeping it hidden in her room because she’s scared but doesn’t want to be scared so she keeps needle with her because it reminds her of jon and if she has needle and nymeria she won’t be afraid.

because getting maimed with live steel will make her frightened but she’s determined not to be frightened but, being 9, she is frightened.

she throws herself into her syrio lessons.  i think that--given nymeria’s proximity--it’s possible that those’ll help kick off her wolf-dreams even sooner than canon because a lot of his teachings involve focus and mindfulness which is a lot of what jojen’s trying to get bran to do when he’s controlling summer; also given the sheer power of arya’s warg/skinchanging capacity hell yeah nymeria’s presence is gonna kick that off sooner.  

the challenge we hit with arya is going to be the same challenge we hit with lady: nymeria’s presence is gonna be tricky to navigate when shit hits the fan.  part of how arya is able to escape king’s landing is that she is able to hide and be a streetrat for a few days; that’s gonna be tricky when she’s got a direwolf.  the main solutions to that i’m coming up with are:

she does the rock throwing thing now rather than at the trident.  i think this is unlikely but it’s possible.

she has better control over her wolf than she expects and is able to get nymeria out of the city somehow.  this also feels unlikely, more for the “while i think arya may have some control over nymeria, i don’t think it’s this much control” sort of way.

the most likely is: that you have the goldcloaks finding the wolf, nymeria beasting the shit out of them because i have a sense that they’re freaked out by her and also she’s the literal head bitch in charge of this series, and escaping the city on her own.  i don’t think she goes far--the kingswood maybe at least initially?--but that leaves arya on her own so she can conveniently get picked up by yoren after ned’s beheading and then get boosted from the city.

what i think this means is that nymeria’s never toooooo far from arya.  i think that she’s wary of those around arya, but arya’s dreams have her “safe” and so maybe as arya’s making her way north, nymeria is doing the same.  i don’t think that nymeria is able to go and be at arya’s side again, but i think that--like in canon where she’s kinda helping arya out--she’s never toooo far, and does start her whole pack-building project.

tbh i think in asos they’d reunite??? which would change up arya’s going to braavos bc i don’t think she would if she had nymeria i bet she’d brave the wild and try to walk north to jon.

ok i’m tired and vaguely pleased with this upon a reread so i hope this all makes sense!