#this family's need to protect men even when it comes to fucking incest makes me wanna barf

[deans-baby-momma]

Never Have I Ever-Chapter THREE

Summary: When the Winchester family gets together to commemorate a milestone, the celebration takes a turn no one expected. How will they continue to be a family afterwards? CAN they?!

Or did they cross a line of no return?

Takes place in 2005. Dean is 26, Sam is 22 and Y/N is 19. An AU of sorts as there are no monsters, no talk of the Supernatural.  John and Mary are both alive and had another kid after Sam. Y/N is the baby of the family and their only daughter.

Warnings: language, I think that’s it for now.

A/N: This is an Alternate Universe where Mary didn’t die on the ceiling of Sam’s nursery; John didn’t go out seeking revenge on the monster that killed in wife, thus raising his sons like soldiers. No Mary and John is a married couple who have had their bumps and through their 30 years of marriage.

Also a huge thank you to @firefly-graphics​ for providing me with the awesome divider!!

As soon as her mind wakes to consciousness, Y/N regrets ever taking a drink of anything other than water or soda at her parents’ anniversary party. Her head hurts and her body aches all over. Her inner thighs feel sore and sticky. ‘What the hell happened?’ she thinks to herself before even opening her eyes. 

A groan comes from her left and startles her. ‘Who the fuck is in my room, in my bed?!’ 

Another sound from the other side of her has her opening her eyes. What the hell was going on?

Taking stock that she was not in her room, or even her bed, had Y/N bolting up into a sitting position and looking down her body….her completely nude body. Her legs were entangled with what she guesses is a male’s leg since it was covered in hair.  But there was another set of legs laying against her free leg, meaning there were two men in the bed with her. TWO?!

Hesitantly, Y/N turned to look over her shoulder and gasped at what she saw. Dean was the one her leg was interwoven with! She turned the other way to see that Sam was the one asleep on the opposite side that she had woken up in. 

Both brothers were sleeping peacefully while Y/N was internally screaming, what the fuck was going on?! 

Her eyes unabashedly trail down her brother’s body and when they land on the monster between his legs, her mouth drops open in shock. Were those things always that huge? She wonders. Without  thinking she turns and looks at Dean, his manhood covered by a sheet. Out of curiosity and just the need to know, she lifts the sheet and gets her answer. Yes, apparently men’s dicks are supposed to be that size. Although Dean looks a bit thicker than Sam’s and Sam’s, a bit longer but not enough to make much of a difference. 

Images of seeing Dean with his own hand wrapped around his dick protruding from his body flashes through Y/N’s head; his mouth moving but she can’t hear or remember what he was saying. She closes her eyes to try to get the vision away but it only worsens when Sam appears from between her legs, his lips shiny and glistening.

“....pussy tastes like Heaven,” she remembers Sam saying and then he disappears again. 

Did she have sex with her brothers? How much did they drink last night? Wait! Was that her brothers’ cum on her thighs?

Before she can delve further into her recollection of the night, Dean groans and his dick moves. It literally jumps as he reaches up and grabs her by the shoulder. Sleepily he says, “Lay back down sweetheart. It’s too early.”

Y/N stiffly lays back to the spot between her brothers and Dean cuddles up to her, throwing his arm across her body and his palm cupping her bare breast. 

And as much as she takes pleasure in the feeling of his hand on her body, Y/N pushes Dean’s arm away and clumsily climbs out of bed. She finds her clothes thrown haphazardly on the floor and she quickly picks up her shirt, yanking it over her head and pulling her panties on before darting from the room.

‘Please don’t let me get caught,’ she chants inwardly. ‘Please don’t let me get caught.’

She makes it back to her room and flops onto her bed, staring at the ceiling. All indications point toward the fact that Y/N had definitely had sex with her two older brothers the night before and now as she lay there she can’t help but regret not being able to remember all of it.

Because let’s face it, Sam and Dean were handsome and sexy as hell and almost all the girls in the whole high school -including her best friends, Katie and Bekka- were infatuated with one, if not both, of them at some point. And to know that she got to experience what many only dreamed of doing was overwhelming; if only she could recall.

Suddenly she remembered who exactly she had had sex with and she shivered. “Am I really wishing I could remember a night of incest?”  

Wanting to wash off the guilt and shame, she headed toward the bathroom. How would she ever be able to look at either of them again?!

After her shower, where Y/N scrubbed every inch of her skin, she gets dressed and walks downstairs, anxious about seeing the boys. Do they remember what happened? Would they treat her differently; act differently?

Her concerns are alleviated as soon as she walks into the kitchen. Neither of her brothers are there, only her Mom and Dad sitting around the table, eating breakfast. Y/N quickly takes her place and starts loading up her plate.

After breakfast is finished, Y/N helps Mary clean up, as usual. But when her mother calls her ‘Babygirl”  it sparks a flashback of Dean referring to her as Babygirl as he grunts on top of her, his sweaty body pressed against hers.  Her panties get damp with arousal and she has to excuse herself from her mother’s presence. 

‘Oh my god!’ Y/N thinks as she runs up the stairs to her room. ‘I fucked Dean last night! I let Dean put his dick inside me last night. Shit! Did we use protection? Did he cum inside me? Am I going to end up pregnant with my brother’s kid? Fuck! What the hell did I do?’

TAGS ARE OPEN! Also, a timeline of when each chapter will update will be posted later today (1/18) so keep an eye out for that.

@lostinaseaoffictionalbliss​ @spnbaby-67​ @tftumblin​ @sea040561​ @delightfullykrispypeach​ @larajadeschmidt13​ @atc74​ @vicariouslythruspn​ @squirrelnotsam​ @death-unbecomes-you​ @sandlee44​ @blacktithe7​ @hoboal87​ @mogaruke​ @deanwanddamons​ @onethirstyunicorn​

[caithyra]

I’m suuuure he’s shocked /s

GRRM: “Oh woes! I have created a perfect and supporting family for my main characters and I need conflict to make it interesting! What could possibly ruin a good family?”

GRRM: “Ah! A girly girl, of course!” *Creates Sansa.* “And a traitorous bitch at that who would chose to support and protect her child over her birth family who do not rely on her for protection! Surely all shall realize what a bad person she is! It’s not like her own mother would be condemned for abandoning a child that’s not even her own!” *Creates first outline.* “But wait! She shall be prepubescent at the start of the story...” *Starts creating the actual story.* “I shall introduce her through the resentful tomboy’s perspective! And I shall have grown men slobbering over this prepubescent girly girl because we all know that’s ~*historically accurate*~! Oh, people do not like her? I am shocked! Shocked!”

Like, it says a lot about a narrative that when the author wants to create conflict and shake up a healthy family dynamic in a supremely patriarchal world, that he introduces a prepubescent, feminine sister who is unfavored by her father compared to her tomboy sister (even Sansa’s betrothal is a sham even if it would have made her future queen-in-waiting. If everything went as Ned planned, her virtue would have been ruined on the Trident and after he breaks the betrothal with Joff by accusing him of being a bastard, Sansa’s play-acting at love and having been alone with Joff would have ruined her for good, future prospects and the best she would get is either a disinherited second son who no one else wants to marry or a jumped up house who wants some blue blood like the Freys, Baelishes or Westerlings-Spicers that no one important likes.

Arya, by being younger, and more like Lyanna, would have gotten the queenhood and crown prince by Robert’s second wife after Cersei is disposed of, since Robert really wants to marry his child to Ned’s children, so no one better tell me that Ned ever put Sansa ahead of Arya the same he puts Arya ahead of Sansa. He freaking hides behind his prepubescent daughter’s skirts while investigating what he believes are ruthless murderers who had no qualms killing the most powerful men in the realm in a hyper-patriarchy! And it is the other daughter he warns about dangers and gives lessons in fighting! Like what was Ned thinking would happen with Sansa? Did he even care? Did he think he could just sweep it under rugs and forget it? She will need to marry within recent memory of her scandalous conduct since she’ll be twenty in less than a decade! And marriageable age in Westeros is 16! And yet the fandom goes “Poor Ned to have that traitorous bitch for a daughter~” “She should have listened to Ned who never spoke to her and explained himself or the world wouldn’t be ending~” “I don’t hate Sansa but she was sooo stupid for not blindly obeying her loving father who punishes her for her sister’s sins and never explains himself~” is it any wonder my patience with Ned Stark’s parental fuck ups ran out? Congrats, fandom, you made me hate him by excusing his fuck ups and blaming them on his daughter all the time!).

GRRM tries to make it gray, but he knows full well what kind of audience he writes to when he writes the relationships between Cat and Jon, and Arya and Sansa and should have compensated.

Hell, he should have made Joff a good person, prince and promising future king that most girls would like to marry, only to show that’s not what Ned cares about (after all, unless Ned wants Sansa to be abused like half the fandom, he had no idea that Joff was bad when he betrothed them), he cares about birth and truth and “High As Honor” over practical things like “Winter is Coming and Staying for Ten Freezing Years and Does Not Care Who Sits On the Throne So Lets Not Start a Civil War with One of the Most Powerful Families in the Realm, hm?”.

I mean, no one likes Drizzt Do’Urden’s sisters/mother/the matriarchy as a whole, do they? The Dark Elf Trilogy predates ASoIaF by six years, and should have shown a competent writer exactly what the state of womanhood in the Fantasy genre was like. And if you’re going “well, the matriarchy is evil!” I would like to point out that people hate Cattie-brie who is not part of that matriarchy. Yeah. There’s a reason why Menzoberranzan could be written that way and published and become popular, and it was not that Fantasy readers love and support and makes the effort to identify with and understand female characters (nor does most authors, come to think of it... see female friendships in ASoIaF that are without any sexual, incest, or abusive~ Like Arianne and Tyene being as close as sisters in the Later Books Which Are Not Early Installment Weirdness... Oh wait...).

Heck, in the Belgariad, another series predating both of them, things were more subtle but hardly better for female characters; Polgara is a mother figure who gets to have a moment of being imperfect, but to anyone reading the story, it is clear that Garion is the true victim in the circumstances and conspiracies Polgara’s family has woven around him, and that his anger is the immediate reaction of finding out the truth (he just found out how/why he was orphaned and now has the world on his shoulders! And the characters bag on him for not being understanding of the 1000s of years old woman who lied to him and now is sulking. It is blatantly obvious to the readers that it is not the male character in the wrong). The less said about Ce´Nedra (half hyper-sexual dryad, spoiled princess who wants bigger breasts, et cetera) the better. Heck, the less said about the lovable oaf of the hero group committing marital rape on his estranged wife to cure her of being a bitch and turn her loving the better.

The Narnia books predates even that, and Sansa’s direct parallel is Susan, and, yeah... “A silly and vain young woman” with “Plenty of time to mend” sounds very familiar when you hear how people blame Sansa and wants to force her into abusive marriages with repulsive men to mend her.

Not to mention that in Lord of the Rings and related works women are either paragons of virtue, evil, unnamed or are chastised for being ambitious, with a few, notable exceptions allowed to make “wrong” choices, and, well, just see the Elwing discourse in fandom and how her murderers who kidnapped and kept her children (Elrond and Elros, yes, that Elrond for those not familiar with Tolkien’s Legendarium and only watched the movies) as hostages are their ~*real parents*~ after committing a third almost-genocide against her people.

Yeah, no. GRRM doesn’t get to pretend he’s shocked and/or confused by his readers’ reception to Sansa (and Cat). He does not live, read nor write in a vacuum. This shit has been part of Fantasy fandom since long before ASoIaF was an errant idea in his head.

[livlepretre]

Hey so this is something I meant to ask a while ago, but I totally forgot about it until like five minutes ago. A few chapters ago, Klaus told Elena he hadn’t slept with anyone in years. Is this a head canon you have about Klaus? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought I remembered you saying you thought he would have been sexually reckless in his very early vampire years. If you do think he’s been celibate more recently, is this because he was kind of a paranoid reclusive for a while there? I feel like what I’m asking has different responses based on which universe we are speaking about—whether that be canon, FE canon, or SWBS canon. Cuz like I could see you needing to add that in there so there’s no possibility Klaus has gotten other women pregnant recently in the SWBS narrative. Long story short, I guess I just want to know if there was a reason for this specific line and how you head canon Klaus’s sex life has been over the course of a thousand years.

oh my God YESSSS I love this ask haha

I think that Klaus lost his virginity to Tatia Petrova, and she was the only woman he ever slept with as a human. (She was also sleeping with Elijah, but I do think she was in love with both of them but Elijah was the one who offered that shot at getting married/having a better life, and Tatia was enough of a realist to try-- unsuccessfully-- to break it off with Klaus, but that’s a whole other headcanon.) 

Her death fucked him up pretty much permanently. I think his whole “love is a vampire’s greatest weakness” thing is a result of this tragedy-- this was him turning his heart to stone after having it utterly broken. And of course... also turning his heart to stone in the wake of not even knowing how Tatia felt about him in the end-- was she using him? Stringing him along? Did she really love him back? He’ll never know, because his parents murdered her in the most gruesome and terrifying way possible. 

This doesn’t mean he doesn’t indulge his appetites though. He and his siblings quickly descend into lusts of every sort-- their bloodlust and their sexual appetites intermingle, get confused-- Klaus dabbles with women, playing games with consent and seduction using compulsion, egged on by Kol, and even Elijah, and egging them on in turn. His lovers are often his victims, especially in those early days, when he had less control over his appetites and left a lot more bodies in his wake. It wouldn’t be very long before the list included men as well as women, and those early years would have been almost like a kind of frenzy-- a savagery fueled by the madness of the curse, the fact that their lives had been ripped apart by their parents whom they should have been able to trust, by the dark maw of his grief. 

I think he and Rebekah would have become lovers sometime around 10, 20 years into being vampires-- the subtext of the show supports their incest-- they’re just too weird together!-- and I headcanon that he would have been the one to take her virginity. It would have to be far enough into their curse that by then all of the social mores prohibiting various cruelties and abominations like sibling incest would have been stripped from them-- they were already delighting in murder, torture, rape, etc by then for some time, slaves to their own damnations-- but soon enough after the turn that Rebekah wouldn’t have fallen in love with someone/had the opportunity to have a lover. I could see this being something that would spur Klaus’s possessiveness-- and he’s very possessive of Rebekah. I don’t even see it as romantic in any way-- I think sex for Klaus is largely a mechanism of control and dominance, and he exerts it over Rebekah, his favorite sibling, his pet, the very most. Any hint that she’s going to stray from him, or give her heart, loyalties, and affection elsewhere, and he uses his sexual hold on her to keep her there, and kills the lover for good measure. (Why just Rebekah? Because I don’t actually think the incest extends elsewhere... except maaaybbeee Kol/Rebekah... well, because 1) she’s the only girl and Klaus is definitely misogynistic enough to view this as a weakness or something he can control 2) she’s younger, and her personality is easier to control than Kol, who is a wild child and bucks authority on top of being as suspicious and paranoid as Klaus, or Elijah, who is Klaus’s equal and whose wrath Klaus is always always wary of.) 

So, for a very long time, I think that Klaus sleeps around in a casually vicious way, with Rebekah as his only long-term, on again-off again lover (although, there are probably some mistresses here and there, and probably some witches too, who might last a bit longer, or who might make it out alive), until we get to Katerina. 

Katerina. The woman with Tatia’s face. A duplicate, body and soul. She’s the greatest danger Klaus has faced since his turning, because she’s the one girl his heart might be vulnerable to. So he shores himself up even more. Strengthens that wall of stone around his heart, and keeps himself cold to her. He can’t resist taking her as his lover, of course, or keeping her as his mistress while he gathers the resources necessary to sacrifice her. But all the while, even while he has her in his bed every night, even as he’s plotting her murder, he’s seething with fury and jealousy. He’s envious of Elijah, who falls in love with her, plain and simple; envious of Trevor, even, for the same reason... because she is the one woman he wants, but he’s also too selfish to ever contemplate doing anything other than murdering her for the sake of obtaining his power, so she is also the one woman he cannot have. And he cannot ever allow himself to love her, because he will definitely kill her. And he’s furious when Elijah comes up with a plan to save her, because Klaus is also afraid of Katerina. Afraid of that possibility that if he falls in love, it will be a weakness, just like his love for Tatia was a grave weakness. The thing that was his undoing oh so long ago. 

Of course, Katerina runs, and Klaus feels this proves him absolutely right about her. 

A few more centuries pass. I think with time we see his bloodlust slaked, and more and more of his bedmates survive the encounters. He grows bored, and restless. There’s no more hope for ever breaking the curse, and so his life feels very static. He has nothing to look forward to specifically. He takes lovers here and there, and he falls in and out of Rebekah’s bed, but nothing touches that stone heart of his. 

This changes pretty significantly in the 20s. By then he’s suffered a harrowing blow. The family is broken apart, and it’s just him and Rebekah-- really just him and Rebekah, indefinitely-- for the first time he can ever recall. 

This is when Stefan joins the picture... Stefan, whom Rebekah adores, but who can be something different than every other lover Rebekah has had-- he can be that missing brother for Klaus-- who is looking for someone to fill the void now that Elijah (and Kol, and Marcel, but honestly not Finn because he’s been daggered for eight centuries) is gone. And because Klaus’s ideas about sex and power and sibling love are all screwed up, and because Stefan is charming and handsome and fun, Rebekah and Stefan’s affair quickly becomes Rebekah and Stefan and Klaus’s affair-- the three of them all tangled up together. And it’s precarious but Rebekah will take whatever she can have and Klaus is greedy for emotional fulfillment and Stefan is high all the time and having a great time having great sex so he doesn’t take any of it as seriously as he definitely should. 

Then of course there is the separation. 

I think during this long time period Klaus probably continues his pattern of casual sexual flings, but I doubt he really gets close to anyone. In fact, other than Rebekah or Katerina, I have the feeling that Stefan is the only other person he was sexually involved with that he really cared about. That’s why he wanted him back in 2010 when he ran into him again and the timing seemed right. 

I guess this now gets into the present-- my feeling isn’t so much that Klaus has been celibate as a matter of choice or paranoia or anything (although, he is paranoid, which is why he hasn’t fallen in love again in a thousand years), just that he is simply so old that years might pass between flings and he doesn’t really notice. It doesn’t seem like that long for him necessarily-- years can feel like weeks at this point-- and he’s grown pickier as he’s gotten older-- someone has to interest him for him to pursue, and it takes more and more to interest him now than it did before. 

Like, the show does suggest to me that Klaus may have been sleeping with Greta Martin, and that would fall directly in line with his MO-- we’ve seen him sleep with witches before, and we know that power does interest him. He’s not exactly upset by her death though, even though he seemed to like her-- also in line with how he refuses to become emotionally invested in his lovers. 

I do think though that he was sleeping with Stefan in that summer they spent together-- again, Stefan is an exception to the rule, although he’s not in love with Stefan-- Stefan slides into that weird Klaus category of “brother,” which is a gray area muddled in with lover for him-- essentially the same place that Rebekah occupies, but without the same levels of (faint) protection that actually being Klaus’s blood sibling provides. It’s fascinating to me that Klaus would reinitiate the affair with Stefan without returning Stefan’s memories-- it implies that he wanted Stefan’s devotion pure and simple, like making him fall into his orbit again to see if it will happen again, but it also implies a selfishness and greed for Stefan’s devotion, because he wants it focused on himself and not at all to share with Rebekah. 

I’m sure there was a wild week or two where they all resumed their relationship when Rebekah was reawakened before Klaus discovered Stefan had been lying all summer about Elena. 

My last thought on all of this is to do with Klaus and Elena. I’ve pondered and pondered and pondered why Klaus would choose to kill Jenna when Elena had already promised to go along with him willingly, obviously for the sake of her loved ones, and I had to think he was angry with her and taking it out on her that he had to kill her at all-- because there was a part of Klaus that wanted her for himself, and he couldn’t have her because, once again, he’s way too selfish to ever consider doing anything other than securing his own power. 

I suppose this takes us up to the present.

I put that line in SWBS but left it intentionally easy to misconstrue-- Klaus says he hasn’t had a woman in years, which makes it clear that there’s been no one  he could have gotten pregnant, but there’s been some subtext with Stefan’s responses to Elena sleeping with Klaus that imply that he has that history with Klaus himself-- I think the only fic I have where I wrote it without assuming that Stefan and Klaus were sleeping together that summer was After the Fire, But Before the Flood, but that was only because I wrote most of it before season 3 aired/before that season 3 promo ignited the Klaus x Stefan alarm bells in my brain. So anyway, in SWBS, Klaus and Stefan have that recent sexual history, and Klaus was probably sleeping with Rebekah a bit before Mystic Falls too, but does Klaus even see her as a woman? Doubtful, honestly. There’s something else going on there. 

I’m pretty fluid though in terms of what I think Klaus’s recent sexual history is-- sometimes like in Just A Glimpse, he’s been sleeping with Greta, sometimes the affair with Rebekah and Stefan is full steam ahead like in Fairytale Ending, and sometimes it all fizzles on him like in SWBS. 

I do still think it’s hilarious and amazing that the only time Klaus canonically sleeps with someone in TVD it’s because Hayley negs him into oblivion with her (entirely fair and accurate) assessment of his artwork. 

[honestsycrets]

The Gilded Cage VIII: Sestra, Sestra

❛ pairing | ivar x rus!reader, brother!oleg x sister!reader

❛ type | multi, square Peach for Ivar.

❛ summary | ivar just wants to be free of her to start over again. too bad she’s not done with him.

❛ story tags | impotency, anxiety, PTSD, nsfw, trickery (Oleg), angst, sibling incest (one way), obsessed Oleg, angry Oleg, jealous Oleg, deceit, Rus Princess!reader, general jealousy, time period ableism, manipulation, psychotic Oleg, hallucinations, exhibitionism, mention of death, mention of spousal abuse, voyeurism, arranged marriage within family, platonic!igor x reader, ivar4b-age!igor, spanking, discipline, fingering, assault, aftercare, obsession.

❛ sy’s notes | look at the tags before reading. Sestra: Sister, I used proto-slavic even though that was a bit off.

The first kiss is reminiscent of the plump peaches Oleg has imported from the south for you. Modestly sweet, strange, delicious against his tongue. The first time Ivar trusts you-- but really, really trusts you, it’s as if a hundred peacock butterflies have set off in his stomach, fluttering wings and all, rustling around in his belly.

He shifts, his naked belly between your thighs, leaning up against your dress. Only one layer separates you from him, and in that beauty, Ivar groans. It isn’t as if you are one of those women-- one of the ones at home with thin layers and thinner morals. 

You took pride in your veil, your long dresses, something fitted a little looser, vests and capes of rich silver furs. For a woman with such morals to be stripped down-- a Christian woman-- you knew how he felt about it. He didn’t simply like it. He was hungry for it. 

“Is it too tight--?” you ask modestly, climbing down his body. 

“I’m fine.” 

What now? He lays there, chest heaving, cognizant of the candles flickering light all around him. Any one of the guards could lend a spear to run him through with. To crawl in bed with a Christian, his blood runs cold as he thinks of what Floki would say. He has truly disobeyed his gods as a god. From behind the strip of cloth over his eyes, everything is a cloth black. He wishes he hadn’t done this. He wishes he hadn’t--

“Ivar,” you whisper so gently, and everything is easy. It’s too easy and good, and that gives him a chill. Fingertips ghost over his chest, drawing to one side to the other. It must make you feel like a queen to have the power you did. “Let go.”  

His world goes blank when he feels your clothes fall to the side of him. You sweep down, the tips of your breasts graze his chest-- and the thin fabric of your veil does too. He considers your hair tickling his skin, and for a moment everything felt right. 

He’d touch you if he could but with his hands above his head he as helpless to all the control he so desperately needed. Your thumb flicks, dragging over his nipple, and he jerks like a caged in wolf, rooting in the pillow under his cheek.

“Too much?” you ask him. 

“I’m not a woman,” he insists. You bite small nips between his chest. His teeth gnash. Between them, the smallest of moans rupture past his locked teeth. Those small, teasing bites are like some stupid game with his body. 

“How does it feel?” 

Your hand connects with his half hard erection and he chews on the right words mixed with frustration. You hook your pinky under the ties bouncing them loose. He’s surrounded by your soft words and the sweet care you take in undressing him. 

“I--” he groans, searching for the words to explain why-- he can’t. He dry heaves the air, pouring it out in one long gust. “Not yet.” 

Your hands settle over the top of his pants, and before long you’re molding your hand over his shape, because he’s-- he’s firm. You stop a moment, and he while he can’t see it, he hears it. His taut muscles tighten and roll as he feels you shift over him.

“I’m a little soft,” you whisper, like an absolute divine Christian angel. Your hips take to their own movement, grinding over him as if you were here to deliver him pleasure. Oleg-- his mind wanders, remembering the old fool and how protective your brother was.

If he were here… 

“I like it,” Ivar answers. “It’s-- nice.” 

You settle over him, balancing on your knees, rolling over him, and he’s aware of his body’s reaction. Swelling to firm hardness, that’s not the hard part-- the hard part was the work, and the expectation to keep up. He imagines you above him, your cheeks flaring in rushed embarrassment. You move against him, pretending that you knew what you were doing. Then he’d pretend like he knew what he was doing-- because he was a man. 

And he’s meant to know what to do, beyond his image, beyond being King Ivar the Boneless… Boneless. His tongue slides anxiously over his lip. Suddenly he can’t-- he can’t-- and you stop his train of thought by dragging nails past his toned chest. Images of Freydis soar into his mind. His hands jerk above his head, wheezing a heavy breath, catching air in forced gulps of panic. What’s wrong? you say. 

Your fingers pull at the rope around his hands, loosening it quick. Ivar thrusts himself forward and snatches the blindfold from his bright eyes, small in the expanse of the blue sclera, and you’re not sure what’s happened. Only that as he pushes you off to the side, leaning over the edge to catch his breath, it must be you. 

Everything rushes back to him. He’s not home, in his great wooden bed surrounded by familiar things. He’s here where guards kept out his door at night and the windows were high in the air, too far to jump from, and-- he’s Oleg’s glorified prisoner in this tower high above the ground.

Then there’s you. 

“I did something… wrong?” you suspire softly, but there’s no way that Ivar would answer the way he gulps air. He knows what you must be thinking. Something about you-- something about you was off-- and wrong to him to react in such a way. You sulk to the other side of the bed, drawing a white dress to make yourself decent. 

“Am I wrong?” 

His head turns, past the dry heaving that’s filled his head with an unnecessary amount of air, like he was up in the clouds with Oleg again-- his wretched laughing ringing his ears. You stand upright, not yet forgetting the horror that previously set on his face. Whatever had happened, you had fucked up, you had thrown him into the likes of a panic you had never seen on his handsome face. Ivar tucks a long brown chunk of air behind the shell of his ear. 

“Don’t go,” he reaches out, touching the hem of your dress with a hand that shook akin to crackling wildfire. It’s desperate to stop you. “It isn’t you.”

“Then what is it?” 

He stops then, lip curling, and responds. “...you…” breathless, he makes words, “...reminded me of her.” 

It doesn’t register at first. No, it could have been anyone that he was talking about. He looks at you with such conviction and truth that immediately thereafter, you realize that it is his wife he means. That the whole time you were there, with him, this woman had been sinking through his brain. Suddenly whatever pleasure you had in the intimacy of the moment with him has shriveled there. The moment has drawn cold. You bring your hands around your arms, forcing warmth to fill your body because it’s all you have to cling onto.

“Okay.” 

In his absence of a sufficient reply, you slip out of the room in a rushed half-formed plan to sink away from the room like the wind. Vasilli stands there. You’ve forgotten him in the presence of the man that sits on the heavy wooden stairs. His hands were clasped, gnawing on his knuckle. It registers with him all at once that you’ve slipped away from Ivar’s room not because of the noise, or a call, but because your sluggish steps brought you to collapse on top of him. Oleg’s mind halted, lip quivering apart in something of a shit eating smile, until he realizes that whatever had happened had been sufficient.

“Sestra.” 

The memory of his arms, the security of them when your father was pushing and pushing for marriage, until his “untimely” death solidified something strange in your mind. That whatever it was-- Oleg would take care of it. Because your Oleg was a safe haven, one where rebellious nature would always bring you back to him. The tears bubbled over your cheeks in hideous sniffles. 

“Sestra,” Oleg urged, bringing you to stand on legs limp like wet cloth. His voice wavers with a concealed happiness. Past your bubbling tears, the flicker of the torches that kept the hallway to Ivar’s room illuminated flickered. “Come, let us… go to your room. You can tell me what happened.” 

He carries you back to your rooms-- your mother’s before yours. It fails to come to your attention that Igor is nowhere to be found. Nor that woman who so captured Ivar’s love, attention, and arousal. It is lit in soft scented candles, each one flickering with warm shade. You find yourself face to face with Oleg, laying side to side, body to body. His dark eyes seem friendlier then they have in days, smoothing over your back over and over. 

“--of Katya? He could not--” 

“Please don’t mock him. Men don’t-- you know how prideful they are,” you say, your hand against his chest, pleading with him for the privacy of the moment. Oleg recalls your fondness for Ivar the cripple, and smiles justifiably. “I would not do that.” 

You look skeptically at him. 

“I am surprised, that is all.” He muses almost idly, although he focuses on you with clear purpose. “He has the very jewel of the Rus in his bed and he could not follow through with it.” 

“It is not obligation,” you blurt out. “It is love.” 

His eyes glitter in amusement as he looks into your wet ones, which have scarred over with the tears you kept spilling at the mention of Katya’s name. “Why is it that she has all the love and I none?” it’s a soft whisper, one that you must have thought he didn’t catch, but you needed to speak it. 

“Ah how dramatic. That isn’t true,” Oleg amends. His hands find your small waist, securing himself against you. “Perhaps you have all you need. You have my love.” 

You look at him with a bewildered frown, your eyes suddenly heavier with the pulsing behind your eyes, demanding more tears be shed. “It is not the same.” 

“It could be if you let me.” You blink, wet tears coating your lashes, and as you rub them away, he seizes the chance to come closer, on top of you. “I would move the very earth for you.” 

You don’t doubt that. You’ve seen it. Your father’s failed arrangement-- and his timely death. “I know, Oleg.” 

“Let me.” His palm slips your thighs apart, and your eyebrows press together, chasing the sensation of his broad palms slipping your thighs apart and in that place, he slips between your legs with cautious movement.

You really thought Ivar would be it.

@tephi101 @alicedopey @supernaturalvikingwhore @tootie-fruity @titty-teetee @queen-see-ya-in-valhalla @ethereallysimple @deathbyarabbit @deathbyarabbit @readsalot73 @natalie-rdr @lol-haha-joke @lisinfleur @hissouthernprincess @marvelousse @dangerous-like-a-loaded-pistol @vikingsmania @wish-i-was-a-mermaid @lif3snotouttogetyou @gruffle1 @cris101071 @gold-dragon-slayer @babypink224221 @wonderwoman292 @naaladareia @beyond-the-ashes @generic-fangirl @chinduda @laketaj24, @peaceisadirtyword, @ly–canthrope @cris101071 @daughterofthenight117 @unassumingviking @ladyofsoa, @inforapound @winchesterwife27 @feyrearcheron44 @readsalot73 @squirrelacorngliterfarts @gold-dragon-slayer @medievalfangirl @sallydelys  @bluearchersstuff @affectionrabbitt @whatamood13 @notyouraveragegirl17 @igetcarriedawaywithyou @unacceptabletatertots @ivarandersen @stra-vage @tgrrose @cookies186 @learninglemni-blog @theleeshanotlouise @soiproclaim​ @msmorganforever @beyond-the-ashes @supernaturalvikingwhore @mblaqgi @wuxiesalt @hopplessdreamer @therealcalicali @rekdreams-fandom @moondustmemories @athroatfullofglass @poisonedjoinery @strangunddurm @shookforyoojung @peachesnpisces @tierneygonzalez​ @hexqueensupreme @nohemi2500​ @queenmissfit​ @alicedopey​ @dmv49​ @sallylebecks @terrainhead​ @mybarnesmyhero​ @youurkryptonite​ @lif3snotouttogetyou​ @vikingsmania​ @looneytunes20033​ @bat-fam-blob @oneofthelothbroks @lovelynerdytraveler​ @chinduda​ @whatamood13 @honeyofthegods​ @ilvebeenabad​ @queenbeeta​ @wonderlandofsu​

[lucy-ghoul]

Mikasa Ackermann, Levi Ackermann, Amane Misa, Aeron Greyjoy for the charactet ask :3

SOMEONE HEARD MY PRAYERS AND NOW MY TIME HAS COME, tysm!!!!! <3

okay, let's start with levi (my beloved):

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life (THEE little feral anime man after my heart)

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang (Dark, Tall and Snarky + piercing grey-blue eyes and chronic insomnia? clearly my type ❤)

hogwarts house: gryffindor (maybe....?) | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

ugh, the hp sorting house system is way too reductive. he has qualities of gryffindor, slytherin, and hufflepuff - brave, astute, loyal to a fault, etc. so it's a hard choice. but if i really have to choose, i'd go for gryffindor. i know that his Bad Boy facade shouts slytherin, but while he has larger goals (killing all the titans, then saving the world etc.), he's got no actual ambition for himself. hufflepuff would also be a good option.

daemon (from the his dark materials series): (because i've just decided that's just way more accurate than the hp method) some kind of big feline. maybe a panther - a black panther would be the ideal - aloof, predatory, dangerous, fiercely independent.

best quality: besides his obvious strenghts as a leader and warrior, the way he cares for his comrades-in-arms. it's very hard to gain his trust and respect, but once you have it, it's forever. he's pragmatic and ruthless, yes, but he also has a huge capacity for compassion and friendship. not that he would be effusive about his affections, of course.

worst quality: none, he's absolutely perfect ❤ jklsdfhjk jokes aside, he really struggles to open up (a serious understatement), idt he ever talked about his traumatic past with anyone. i mean, maybe he mentioned it to hange and erwin (erwin knew him when he was still an undergound thug, so...), but... he's not great with feelings. despite his apathetic, intimidating mask, he feels and cares deeply, but he has a long history with losing the people he loves, so he tries to not personally care about his squadmates, which can be both a strenght and a weakness. of course, he spectacularly fails at this.

ship them with: well, it's not a secret that i'm a huge rivamika fan, this ship is almost literally consuming my waking thoughts lmao. imo they're perfectly compatible: very similar personalities (stoic, the strongest warriors, absolutely terrifying on the battlefield but with a soft underbelly), very similar pasts/experiences, so many parallels that it's actually ridiculous, etc. i love how they're both each other's equals and likeness (yes, i took it from jane eyre. no, i don't regret anything lmao). a lot of tropes i love, too: Terrible First Impression (the Pride and Prejudice vibes are so strong with these two, you have no idea), Kindred Spirits/Mirror Images, Veteran/Young Prodigy, The Last of Their Kind, even Height Difference lmao. i could write a whole rivamika manifesto, but this is already too long. (maybe for some other time 👀) i would've loved for their dynamic to be more explored in canon but alas, isayama clearly didn't give a shit about the ackerman legacy, he just used it as a plot shortcut to give them conveniently unique powers, since they never really talked about it 🙄 (and before some troll comes into my askbox shouting "you iNcEsT fReAk!!!!1!!", they're only very distantly related. we know shit about the ackermans but we know for sure that they've got at least several generations between them. biologically their shared DNA is 0%, obviously they don't see each other as family, all the eldians have a dead ass common ancestor from 2000 years ago so they're all basically ⁓related anyway. if you really wanna scream about i.ncest, go watch got/dark/the borgias and shut the fuck up please. or alternatively go outside and touch some grass) sorry for the rant, uh. anyway, i can also see levi/erwin. idk if i'd ever care enough to read a fic about them (i'm usually a huge multishipper, but for some weird reason not when it comes to rivamika? same with braime and kastle tbh), but still, i can see it.

brotp them with: hange and erwin, obv. veteran trio >>> ema trio, sorry not sorry (at least h. and e. died before yams had the chance to ruin their character arcs)

needs to stay away from: ...uh, filth, i guess? lmao

misc. thoughts: besides the stupid teenage fangirl crush i have on him, i'm genuinely fascinated by the man himself. he's a huge mess of a contradictions, and yet somehow it works: he's violent and brash and kind of an asshole, but also has a strong moral code and integrity; he's obv very skilled at all the killing/torturing stuff and yet he has a huge respect for life; he's got a potty mouth to say the least, and yet some very aristocratic manners/tastes (the way he sits, his preference for tea and usually refined clothes); he comes from what's supposed to be an illustrous bloodline, he's methodical and very precise, and yet he was born and raised in the underground, he's been used to filth and blood and poverty since he was a child, kenny of all people was his father figure, and probably has known no other life than a perennial survival mode existence. he's "humanity's strongest soldier", but while well-built he's also small, the david to the titans' goliah, and probably not what people would assume a born warrior looks like. he's also one of the few characters who stayed true to himself and his original characterization until the end, bless you smol king ❤

(okay, this is getting long!)

mikasa:

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them (so much. she deserved better ❤️) | actual love of my life 

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! (stunning lady ❤) | 10/10 would bang

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

this is actually easy: mikasa belongs to hufflepuff and no, i won't take criticism (just joking lol). enough with this "hufflepuffs are fluffy puppies/Cinnamon Rolls <3" thing: mikasa values loyalty and duty more than anything else. she's also hardworking... and fierce, strong, lethal. yes, hufflepuff and lethal are not mutually exclusive concepts.

daemon: (finally the better option) a she-wolf, fiercely protective of her pack.

best quality: loyal, brave, incredibly strong (alongside her more fragile qualities). practical and level-headed on the battlefield, at least when eren is not included in the picture.

worst quality: struggles to let go of the past (understandable, considering her trauma). tunnel-vision when it comes to eren, obv. extreme levels of delusions ("if only i spoke openly about my romantic feelings for him - as if i didn't made them abundantly clear in ⁓6 years - he wouldn't kill 80% of humanity :(((" lmao okay. just. okay), but that's more on the writing. she's sadly more static than any other main character throughtout the whole series.

ship them with: see above :) but recently i've also started to be intrigued by mikasa/annie and mikasa/sasha. also, i'm sympathetic to jeankasa fans, though i don't actually care for the ship.

brotp them with: EMA trio, especially armin+mikasa. their friendship is so beautiful and special. also sasha.

needs to stay away from: ...... eren, at least romantically. again, that's more on the writing than anything else, but e.remika unfortunately encompasses many tropes i loathe with all the strength of my old shriveled heart: childhood friends-to lovers where the (male) childhood friend doesn't acknolewdge/is completely indifferent to the other (female) friend's romantic feelings, she hopelessly pines for him for years without anything more than a cold shoulder... until in the last chapter it's revealed that he loved her all along and doesn't "want other men to have her!!! :((" (then why did you have no reaction whatsoever to jean's years-long crush on her while she was jealous of any vaguely female-shaped human being you were friendly to, including hange? are you that dumb, man?); the female character's development and entire arc 100% revolves around the male protagonist - she has no goals, no dreams of her own except staying with him forever and ever; the romance is based on an idealized childhood dream, therefore reaffirming those childish illusions would make the character regress, not actually grow up (and nope, epilogue!jk doesn’t count; that also lacks build-up - i would’ve said the same about rm as well, so it’s not about shipping, guys, it really isn’t - and mikasa needed an inner change; getting married to another man but still praying to eren’s shrine is not substitute to actual development lol). post-time skip she's never really frustrated/angry with him, they never get a confrontation about him becoming a, y'know, mass-murderer of gigantic (pun intended) proportions; she puts him on a pedestal, and never stops idealizing him/never sees him for what he actually is (the narrative framing him as some kind of tragic martyr/saint eren from paradis with zero agency and basically... no clear motivation for the abovementioned mass murder, and not the actual complex tragic anti-hero/villain motivated by revenge and righteous fury he deserved to be, does not help). it lacks a good or even decent build-up - it's basically all tell and not show. now, if they'd actually been childhood friends to enemies to lovers/mutually co-dependent... it could have been interesting. sadly, it's not my cup of tea. of course this is just my personal preference, no hard feelings to the shippers.

misc. thoughts: enormous potential. she's been my fav female character since s1 - and ah, i miss s1!mikasa, when she had actually other stuff to do besides mothering eren. i love that she's the strongest warrior (second only to levi, obv), that her skills are never called into questions despite her gender, i love how she stands up for herself and the people she loves, that she may seem cold and stoic and yet has a such a huge heart, that she's not perfect but also sometimes awe-inspiring. sadly, she never really gets out of eren's shadow; what she lacks is an arc focused on herself. that's why imo getting deeper into the ackerman lore would've helped (also, you cannot make the main female character and the most popular male character descend from the same Unique Bloodline or whatever, and never really make them acknowledge it out loud; as a writer, you just can't lol). my spite is so strong that i'm currently writing a ridiculously pretentious fic that's 70% development for her character, to give her a voice, and 30% ackerthirsting. (yes, that's the fic i'm always vagueblogging about lmao, rip @ my brain). if any other rivamika fan is interested… mind you, it’s in italian tho, and idt i have the skills to translate into english.

misa:

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

daemon: mmh, maybe some kind of butterfly? beautiful, colorful, and short-lived.

best quality: glorious fashion sense, more inventive and ingenious than fans actually give her credit for.

worst quality: shallow, impulsive, and obv her dependence on/obsession with light (which stems from trauma btw, but still… the very opposite of a relationship between equals).

ship them with: rem, kinda (monster/human ftw!). also weirdly enough mogi, a little bit? she deserves someone who actually respects her… though she’s far from being a perfect angel. she may actually be crazier than light on some aspects. but in this house we stan evil ladies anyway, so i have no problem with that <3

brotp them with: uh, idk, maybe matsuda?

needs to stay away from: obv light. also takada.

misc. thoughts: a tragic victim of sexist writing. she may be… unhinged to say the least, but she didn’t deserve the abuse she got from light (and from the fans). the female characters’ writing in dn is so bad that idk if it’s on purpose, to kinda mirror the reality of women in a patriarchal society (dependent on men, housewives whose life entirely revolves around their husband/boyfriend etc.), or just casual misogyny lol. it’s even more baffling since we don’t know the author’s gender (they may be a man, a woman, nb, anything really). i tend for the latter option tho.

aegon greyjoy (now, i wasn’t expecting him lol):

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

i’m so sorry, i haven’t the slightest idea lmao. maybe gryffindor? mind you, it’s been a long time since i’ve re-read the books, so i don’t have many thoughts about him.

daemon: maybe it’s cliché, but some kind of fish/squid lmao

best quality: ugh, i really can’t remember much from his chapters :(( he’s not a coward, i guess? (lame answer, sorry!)

worst quality: definitely his religious fanaticism.

ship them with: no one.

brotp them with: uh… his family, ig? except euron.

needs to stay away from: obv euron. brr ://

misc. thoughts: i genuinely like the greyjoys chapters, though i vastly prefer the martells (with the exception of theon and asha, bcs i love them). yes, they’re deranged. yes, victarion is… well, victarion lol. but the drowned god religion is actually interesting, grrm knows how to write trauma - every time aeron mentions euron and that freaking door i’m like… :// - and the tragedy of it all… just great writing all around.

okay, that’s the end lmao. thank you so much, love!!! ❤❤

[thecloserkin]

fic rec: runs in the family by liketheroad

fandom: The Borgias

pairing: Cesare Borgia/Lucrezia Borgia

word count: 6k

Is it canon: yes

Is it explicit: no

Is it endgame: maybe

Is it shippable: yes

Bottom line: the revisionist rehabilitation of Juan Borgia that absolutely nobody asked for; read it and thank me later

Hello everyone it’s me, the girl whose entire brand is stanning fictional characters for himbo rights reasons! I am here to tell you why Juan Borgia is not in fact useless, and why you—yes, you—should ship him with our fave murder angels Cesare and Lucrezia! Are you ready?

I love the idea that Cesare and Lucrezia’s love is fated, and that Juan is a mere mortal whose heart grew entangled in God’s plans. This is a series of two short fics: we tend to bruise easily which is more Juan-centric and bad in the blood which is more shippy (if you’re just here for Cesare/Lucrezia) but you should read both.

Here’s what happened: Cesare needed someone to practice on, see, whilst he was waiting for Lucrezia to grow up. And since “only a Borgia can love a Borgia,” and Cesare’s one-night stands obviously weren’t hitting the spot….well. The thing I love about this family is that you literally cannot disconnect the murder from the sex!!!! Because they scratch the same itch. Cesare is the one who teaches Juan how to fuck and how to fight:

And so he taught his brother to be a fighter, and then a lover, but had never anticipated the two lessons becoming one.

Only problem is, Juan catches feelings. And Juan has too much pride to be satisfied with coming second in anyone’s heart:

But Cesare is a soldier, and he can recognize the difference between a parry and feint as well as any true prince of state. It does not seem that Juan wishes for him to stop—but rather, that he has finally decided to make Cesare work for it, every inch of skin, every brush of lips.

“There was a time when you loved me, was there not?” “I love you still.” “But not as much as you love her.” “No. Not as much as I love her.”

NOT AS MUCH AS I LOVE HER adfkdfjdkfjd. So, to be clear, the reason Juan hates Cesare is because Cesare loves Lucrezia more than Cesare loves Juan.

Lucrezia is like the sun, she has an infinite amount of love to give, and she urges charity and reconciliation between her brothers. To Juan she says:

“If I love Cesare, then it is in my benefit to see him happy. And while I can perhaps make him happier than anyone else, I cannot do that alone.”

To Cesare she says:

”I would rather share you with our brother than with a common whore.”

As you guys know, I subscribe to the triangulation theory of incest—that it’s more interesting when there’s a third sibling whose relationship serves as a foil to the main pair (not that there’s anything wrong with orphaned twins, I love my Maximoffs and Fryes). But I see no reason that third sibling needs to stand in an antagonistic relation to the other two. Juan doesn’t have to be a boogeyman, or the butt of Cesare and Lucrezia’s jokes; he could just as easily be their ally. This is Cesare and Lucrezia again:

“He has never been as sweet as you, has never sought out my affections the way you do. Only my ... instruction.” “Then perhaps that is because he believed that was all that was available to him.” “And now?” “I dare say he fears that there will be even less of you that he might call his own, perhaps none at all, once you decide I am of a suitable age.” “Suitable?” “Forgivable, perhaps.” “Oh, my love,” Cesare whispers, suddenly pressed close against her, his lips almost brushing her cheek, “there will be no forgiveness, not for me. But I intend to make my stay in hell worth it, I promise you that.”

This is Cesare to Juan:

“You are correct in thinking that you are not my heart’s only, or truest, love. But you are mistaken if you believe that makes you any less mine."

I love that this fic is staunchly pro-Juan and anti-Rodrigo, which is the reverse of the show. Like, Rodrigo set it up so Cesare and Juan would forever be vying for Rodrigo’s affections, and that’s fucked up. Cesare has just come to accept that Juan’s love will forever be mixed with hate and envy, and that is sad.

This is Juan:

“My god, Cesare. You can’t even abide other men looking at her portrait without drawing your sword, how on earth are you going to share her with a husband?”

See? This, THIS RIGHT HERE is why Juan is better when he’s in cahoots with his siblings rather than undermining them. I snorted.

It is not Djem’s death that she hates him for, but the dowry his death purchased. But even this she can forgive, because there is little any of them do by choosing, not anymore, and she must forgive Juan his part in the destiny their father has carved out for them just as she must forgive Cesare, forgive herself. Besides, Juan excels at accepting hate along with love.

And this was what I meant when I said Cesare & Lucrezia’s love was fated. It’s all part of the divine plan guys. Tbh the most relatable moment was when Lucrezia and Juan bond over what a pain in the ass Cesare can be and then she begs him for the kissing lessons Cesare has refused her:

“You were far gentler than I expected,” she says once he has released her. “It was your first kiss, sister. I thought it best to proceed with care.” “How does Cesare kiss?” “Like he is drowning and he means not to die alone.”

Cut to Cesare and Juan checking up on the newly married Lucrezia. Juan suggests, instead of skulking around the bushes maybe next time we could pay her calls in daylight, and maybe also take turns visiting her to avoid fanning the incest rumors. Cesare is visibly taken aback that Juan even knows the meaning of discretion. But if there is anyone he trusts to look after the light of his life, Lucrezia—well there isn’t anyone, but Juan comes closest. This is Cesare and Lucrezia consummating their relationship:

He kisses her neck, her finger tips, hands feather light against her naked skin. He holds her close, foreheads pressed together, whispering words of love and devotion, and once he is inside her she thinks she would rather die than feel anything else ever again.

This is Lucrezia talking to Cesare about Juan:

”He reminds me of you. You are both killers. Not just because you have to be, but because it is part of who you are—who you both are.” “And you find this quality appealing?” “Because you love me, yes. Because you will use what you both are to keep me safe.”

Friends, in all seriousness, have you ever in your life seen a more Slytherin family?? Honest to god. Slytherin in the sense of being laser-focused on protecting the people within their circle of concern, however that circle is defined.

Ok finally here is Lucrezia to Juan:

Being loved by Cesare comes at great cost, that I’m sure you already know. But how he loves me... it makes him hide from me. He thinks I deserve something better than what he is, and so he hides his darkness from me, hides himself. At least you are not denied the courtesy of knowing him. Or the dangers he faces.”

But Cesare has NEVER hidden his darkness from Juan!!!! Cesare and Lucrezia need Juan, he completes them, it’s not an equilateral triangle but it’s definitely some sort of triangle.

[curtashiism]

Long rant/vent ahead

It’s hard, because I know I genuinely love biology. I love learning about anatomy and physiology, and I have an affinity for bio as a whole. But I don’t know that it’s really what I want to do, and I feel like I was never given the chance to fully explore what I actually wanted to do because of my mom’s manipulative behavior to me growing up.

When I was younger I wanted to do something with music, but my mom told me I wouldn’t be good enough. I didn’t have the talent my sister did at the cello, which was why they sunk so much money into her cello rental and lessons but wouldn’t get me any lessons.

My mom told me future was in academics and I never really questioned it. Her grandma had a premonition (my mom’s words, not mine) that I would go into the sciences. So my mom never let me consider anything else. She tried her best to shut any other ideas I had down. She never came to a single one of my track meets when I ran in 8th grade. I mean, I finished dead last in every race except the one time I finished second to last, but that’s not the point. I shouldn’t have had to be good to earn her involvement. But that’s how it was with her. She only cared when it was something I was good at- academics. She’d come to the awards ceremonies when I made honor roll, but never cared about my other interests.

So I settled on the medical field at some point- I thought a doctor or vet for a while but I’m not good enough at math, physics, or chem, so now I’m thinking public health.

Before I started college, I wanted to take a break from school, get a job, and figure things out. But my mom didn’t want that. She thought if I did that, I’d never go back to school, and we couldn’t have that now could we? So she did what she does- she manipulated the situation to get what she wanted to my detriment. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want loans. She said “we all go into debt, suck it up” and told me if I didn’t start the next term she would kick me out.

So I did. Then once I had the loans finalized, she told me she was never going to kick me out, she just wanted me to “get my life together.” Because clearly it’s not my right to make those decisions, it’s hers, and if I wasn’t ready to start college at 19 my life must have been falling apart.

So now here I am, entering my senior year of college at 26 years old, panicking because I need to start preparing for a Master’s program but I don’t FEEL ready at all and I’m not sure this is actually what I want to do. I like the arts. I want to learn more about them. I want to learn to play the violin, I want to see if I can act (I’m practicing voice acting and am loving it and my friends say I actually am not bad at it and I have a cute voice perfect for child characters), or maybe even try to write a play (I love theater and I love writing.) Hell, I think I’d be happier joining the Peace Corps or going to the Kalahari Desert to volunteer with the meerkat study project for a year. I’m not ready for grad school- but I feel like I HAVE TO do it.

But that’s the thing. I try so hard to get my mom to approve of my decisions for just ONCE in her life. But even when I do exactly what she wants it doesn’t happen. She wanted me to do the science stuff to begin with- but when I tell her there’s a couple of MPH programs down in NYC, I would just need to finally get my driver’s license and a car, she starts making me defend my decision. She asks all these questions that make it sound like I’m some kind of idiot for wanting to get a Master’s degree. And maybe I fucking am, but not for the reason she thinks.

I told her I was going to learn the violin and her reaction was to get mad that I asked if I could practice it in the apartment during my visit home. When it looked like I was going to get to study abroad in London, before COVID, she made it all about her and her letting go issues.

When I graduated with my Associate’s degree- I’m the only one in the immediate family to do so, by the way- my mom cried before my graduation. Because she was devastated it wasn’t my sister.

And I honestly don’t know why I still even try. I know she has four kids but only cares about one. She will NEVER care about me or actually be proud of me. Not if I get a Master’s degree, not if I become a doctor, not if I became a tapdancing polyglot brain surgeon who cures cancer on the moon. She isn’t capable of it. On top of that, she has no grasp on who I actually am as a person.

She has a twisted and distorted view of me where I am a manifestation of all the things she fears are true of herself. All the things she doesn’t want to be, she projects onto me. She calls me hateful and judgmental and mean because I tell her not to call me when she’s been drinking. One single, solitary boundary I request and that’s too much for her. She was jealous of me as an INFANT because my dad doted on me. You have no idea how many times she’s been in the middle of a bender and accused me and my dad of literal incest because we’re close. “You’re his second wife” “there’s some Mormon shit going on between you two!” She doesn’t know the first thing about me. She told all my relatives that I only was in the orchestra as a teen because I wanted to be like my sister, not because I actually liked to play.

I do not admire a single thing about my fucking sister. This is the same sister who conspired with my first boyfriend and got him to sexually abuse me. The same sister who got high on meth and fucking raped our little brother. The same sister who told me about this while she was blackout drunk, then licked my neck. The same sister whose behavior I told to my mom and got a response of “well to be fair I’ve fantasized about your neck too!” Oh but see, if my mom was to be believed, my fucking sister never did anything to hurt my little brother, no sir. He made it up for attention, and I “planted lies in his head because I wanted to prove an agenda about men being able to be raped by women.” Because she thinks I’m so evil I would use my little brother as a pawn for a social experiment just to hurt my sister.

I don’t admire anything about my sister. I barely even fucking feel sorry that she fell into sex trafficking and had the same thing done to her that she did to my little brother. I should be upset about it, but I just feel apathetic, especially since she got to see her abuser put behind bars while my little brother is still dragged out to visit her every time my folks (who he still lives with as an adult) decide to see her. She’s a shitty person. The world will be a better place when she fucking dies. She convinces everyone she meets that she’s a wonderful person because she tells them what a long journey she’s been on and how she’s working so hard to heal through her faith (conveniently leaving out the part where she victimized others as much as she was a victim herself). Bitch, you don’t get a cookie because you fucking went five years without sexually abusing your younger siblings. Jesus isn’t fucking proud of you. I’m certainly not.

But of course, since she’s the one my mom favors, she can do no wrong. My mom is no better than her in my eyes.

So that brings it back to, why the FUCK do I want her approval?

Why the fuck do I care?

She certainly doesn’t care about me. If all the above shit isn’t proof, the fact that she got drunk when I was 15 and said she wished she could kill me is. The fact that she gave me PTSD from all the shit she put me through is proof. The fact that she made me coming out as a lesbian all about her is proof. The fact that she would go on a hateful rant about trans people- even though she doesn’t know I am, she knows I care deeply about the issues which should be enough but some isn’t- is proof. The fact that she honestly can NOT remember what my birthday is and has to be reminded by my dad is proof. The fact that she once called me a bitch on my birthday, which she forgot was my birthday until my little brother reminded her, is proof. The fact that she tried to tear my dad and I apart because she was too insecure to handle my dad “choosing his kids over her” is proof. The fact that she put me in the position of having to let her scream and throw things at me to protect my younger brother, because the alternative was letting her hurt him instead, is proof. The fact that I self-harmed for nearly a decade because of her and only got clean when I moved 3,000 miles away (what a coincidence!) is proof.

She’s fucking sick and is never going to be anything approaching a good mother to me because she doesn’t see me as me, she just makes me the lightning rod for her anger whenever she gets pissed off. When she’s pissed off, I’m an emotional punching bag, and when she’s hurting I’m a substitute therapist who will do all the emotional heavy lifting for her because she fucking knows how to use my compassion and guilt complex against me.

She has reasons, in her head, for why I’m so awful and deserving of her anger, which it took me years to learn weren’t actually excuses because I was a CHILD and she had no right to hold shit against me. And I know the truth is that she’s never proud of me because she doesn’t actually want my success- especially not when my sister doesn’t have it. She treats me the best, the nicest, when I fail, because that’s what she wants for me, even if she pretends otherwise. She’s sick and she’s so determined to play victim for her whole fucking life that she will never NOT be sick this way.

And I’m even sicker than she is because I still try after all these years. The real definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I just keep getting my hopes up that one day, I will say the magic words that will make her actually be supportive. Like if I get a magical piece of paper to show her she’ll think I’m actually worth something, but she never will and I’m an idiot for hoping. If she hasn’t got it by now, she never will. My dad loves me for me, my brothers loves me for me, my grandma loves me for me, my aunts and uncles and cousins love me for me, my friends love me for me- it’s just my mom who can’t figure out that I’m worth more than what I can do for her.

Fuck her. I’m either going to go to grad school or I’m not, but whatever I do will be awesome. I might act or play the violin or write plays or I might study ethnomusicology, or who knows, maybe I will go through with this public health stuff. Either way I’ll be surrounded with people who actually see me for me and are capable of feeling joy at my accomplishments. Maybe I’ll stupidly keep trying to include her, but I’ll have others around me when she inevitably disappoints me yet again. And she can’t say the same because she drives everyone who might care about her away.

[targaryen-stronghold]

As a Jonerys fan, one of the reasons S8 was so shitty is it made Dany/Jon's relationship look very ... uneven or one sided. S7 ended very clearly with Dany and Jon, both as equally powerful allies and rulers. Then S8 basically has Daenerys doing all the work while getting shit on by the North and the Stark sisters and Jon is just ... there? He at least upholds his word to go with her and lead Northern forces to KL but that's basically it?

They had some good moments in Episode 1 but then it went down the hill from there. Even then, Dany letting Jon riding Rhaegal was complete nonsense. It was total fanservice and nothing more. Dany had a hard time training her dragons and even flying them (remember Drogon refusing to fly back to Meereen?), but Jon due to his “cock power” not only flies Rhaegal like a pro, he actually goes into battle on dragonback on his second ride. What a bunch of bullshit. Also, the waterfall scene doesn’t make any sense with Season 8 plot: so Dany is this “power-hungry tyrant” but she wouldn’t mind leave everything behind to live with Jon in the wilderness? What? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is why Season 8 failed and the narrative is utter nonsense. They needed Dany and her resources to save the North but they wanted to turn her into a villain, and these two don’t add up. You can’t have a queen honoring her word and doing her part of the bargain and then calling her a tyrant. You can’t have her tolerating the Starks openly disrespecting her in front of her subjects and calling her a tyrant. Whoever wrote or even agrees with this bullshit never pick up a History book. I’m a History major and I had some good laughs at this fandom stupidity when it comes to Medieval History. In real life, people were executed for less than talking shit to a monarch and these kings aren’t even remembered as tyrants. Remember when Grey Wind basically eat Lord Umber’s hand because he disrespected Robb? Yeah, I don’t recall anyone calling Robb a tyrant because he threatened his subjects with his direwolf to assure his leadership over them. You see: when a man does it, it’s cool and awesome but when a woman does it, it’s “madness” and tyrannical.

When we look at the overall story, Jon and Dany relationship leaves a sour taste in my mouth and doesn’t add up with what was previously established in Season 7. In Season 8, Jon never tells others that he willingly bent the knee to Dany because she proved herself worthy by being willing to sacrifice herself for her people (rescue mission beyond the Wall), nor that Dany pledged herself to the Northern cause of defeating the Night King and his army before he bent the knee. Whenever others attack Dany, his only response is “she’s my queen” or whatever: he never reveals the things she did to prove herself worthy of his allegiance and love. By vilifying Dany, Jon was basically turned into a horny buffoon in Season 8: he only wants her because she’s hot, he’s thinking with his dick - that’s basically what the narrative is saying. But we watched Season 7, we know that’s some bullshit right there. Jon and Dany both care deeply about their people and they were chosen as leaders. They were equals: a King and Queen. They also fell in love in the worst of times but their love was supposed to represent a beacon of hope in the darkness to come. And don’t even bring up the incest part when the ultimate love story of this crap was Cersei and Jaime’s. All the talk about Dany and children in Season 7 apparently didn’t mean anything. Also, Jon basically taking credit for Dany’s accomplishments (riding a dragon, facing the Night King on dragonback, etc.) and never praising her is some disgusting whole level of sexism. Dany is never praised for her role in the Battle of Winterfell: her armies were slaughtered, she rode Drogon and faced the Night King, she picked up a dragonglass sword and fought, and she lost Jorah. But her efforts are never acknowledged. Actually, when she was out there fighting and risking her life, the Lady of the House was hiding inside and talking shit about her. 

Dany has every right to be pissed at the feast when Jon is right there being congratulated for doing the same shit as she did. Varys looks at her suspiciously like she’s wrong in reacting this way (and later he tells Tyrion he worries about her state of mind). This bullshit was so obviously written by men: women everywhere know what is like to have a man taking credit for their deeds. After the feast, Jon is drunk and wants to kiss and have sex with Dany but stops himself. She just lost Jorah but he never bothers to ask how she’s doing. She asks him to keep his parentage a secret because hell would break lose. Dany is absolutely right and all her fears come true: people actually go on their way to conspire to kill her and place Jon in the throne instead. You aren’t paranoid or mentally instable if your instincts are right and people are out there to get you. And don’t even get me started about how awful this story is towards mentally ill people by representing them as “evil” and “monsters”. This so wrong and fucked up, I can’t even find the words to express my disgust. Then, Dany loses both Rhaegal and Missandei and she’s mourning them. In some repulsive fashion, they show us Dany with bags under her eyes and her hair unkempt: this was supposed to be an indicator she was mentally instable (yikes). Jon arrives at Dragonstone but does he care in comforting her? No. He shallowly says he loves her and pushes her away. But where the fuck is this love he’s talking about? When I first saw this scene, I immediately recalled this scene from “Closer” (2004):

This is Jon’s love for Dany in Season 8 in a nutshell. The narrative says Jon does love Dany. But this “love” is shallow and meaningless concerning his actions towards her: he doesn’t support her, he doesn’t stand up for her and he isn’t even there when she needs him the most. She is going through a harsh time and he gives her the side-eye when she rightfully executes Varys for treason (he was trying to kill her): apparently Jon kind of forgot he executed a child who killed him because he befriended the wildings (who, you know, murdered and eaten Olly’s family and forced him to watch). This is emotional abuse in my book. Have you ever watched “Midsommar” (2019)? Season 8 Jon is like the protagonist’s abusive boyfriend, This goes full circle when Jon murders Dany because he wants to protect himself and Arya, Sansa and Bran. But does he try to understand Dany or her motifs? No, she’s a tyrant, period. She wants to kill everyone even tho she never says this. I already talked about how OCC it was for Dany to burn down King’s Landing. She wants to break the wheel and the masters of Westeros are the feudal lords. Of course Dany is threat to every Lord in Westeros because she wants to give power to the people, the smalfolk. The people would then decide who they wanted to rule them. The Northern people might still choose a Stark to lead them… or not. That’s a treat to the Stark dominion over the North.

Either way: all of it was bullshit and offensive and these writers can go fuck themselves for even thinking this was okay.

[geraltcirilla]

"this obsession that is has to be jon or gendry who love sansa doesnt make sense to me" i think this obsession is born from the fact that there are very few decent and handsome men of Sansa's age around lol - at least none that i can remember. people have also paired her with dickon tarly and podrick, which i admit are nice options.

I do think that’s a huge contributing factor to this. Just look at Sansa’s paired canon love interest: 

Tyrion - A much older man she was forced into a marriage with WHILE his family’s political prisoner. A family that executed her father and killed her mother and brother.

Sandor - A much old man who is cruel, rude, and abusive. One of the “romantic” scenes between her and him is literally him holding a knife to her throat and forcing her to sing as she cries and then blacks out, and she was so traumatized her brain changed the encounter to him kissing her.

Petyr - A much older man and pedophile grooming her to be his child bride. Also emotionally manipulative and abusive, he consistently gaslights her. And is responsible for manipulating the events that killed both her parents.

Joffrey - Physically, emotionally, and psychologically abusive. Is always 3 seconds away from killing Sansa at any given moment.

Ramsay - Her rapist. Abuser. Absolute monster.

I don’t have much sympathy for people shipping Sansa and Gendry because that’s just…. kinda spiteful IMO since Gendry is blatantly Arya’s love interest. 

That being said I do have a lot of sympathy for people who ship Jonsa. Imaging watching 6 seasons of men just being the ABSOLUTE worse to Sansa, and then Jon shows up and he treats her with dignity and respect, he protects her, he never sexualizes her or takes advantage of her, and he’s just overall selflessly kind to her. Then adding on the factors that he’s biologically her cousin (which in ASOIAF isn’t even really considered incest) and they weren’t close as children so they don’t extremely view one another as “brother and sister” like Jon might see Arya, Robb or Bran… I understand where the shipping logic lies in that.

Sansa stans have almost no viable options for her that aren’t blatantly pedophilic with abusive undertones. Maybe Margaery but Sansa has now been permanently torn from her, they likely won’t meet again, and it’s unlikely GRRM was ever writing them as love interests to begin with.

I get it. I don’t ship it myself but I’m not about to sit here on a high horse and act like I don’t understand why other people DO. Like you said it’s the same logic of shipping her with Podrick or Dickon. “Wow, two appropriate men in her general vicinity who wouldn’t rape her”. That’s the qualifications we be looking for on resumes now.

Honestly on a random side note Podsa would have been SO ABSOLUTELY CUTE and wouldn’t have even been absurd or unreasonable. Pod is from a noble house, he’s a knight, and he was Brienne’s squire so he spent a lot of time around Sansa. It could have made a lot of sense for them to come together in some capacity. Also at least in show-verse I think Theon was a genuine contender for love interest. I do feel his last few episodes alive they writers were heavy-handed with the romantic undertones with Theonsa, and they weren’t afraid to go there because they knew Theon was gonna die so they didn’t need to worry about “well what if Sansa wanted to marry him”, because they took away her choice.

It just kinda fucking sucks Sansa ended the series completely alone when she coulda have Pod or Theon by her side. I’ve definitely talked myself into a circle here and lost sight of what the point was.

I agree with you.

[arabian-bloodstream]

Decoding D&D’s Playlist

OK, In early Spring, D.B. Weiss and Daniel Benioff helped create a new Spotify playlist: Game of Thrones: The End Is Coming. Upon doing so, they told For the Record in an email, “The answer to the ending is one hundred percent hidden in the playlist choices. No one will believe us, but it’s true.”

I have spent the last couple of weeks going through each song and trying to figure out which character, which scenario, arc, storyline each song was about. I could be completely way-off, but it was fun. So here you. Enjoy! (Note: All songs link to full lyrics.)

Fair warning, this is long. Very long. So long that I’m going to put a cut. I will say... yeah, this playlist screams Gendrya endgame.

Sleep Now in the Fire - Rage Against the Machine 

Dany as Mad Queen.

The world is my expense The cost of my desire Jesus blessed me with its future And I protect it with fire So raise your fists and march around Dont dare take what you need I’ll jail and bury those committed And smother the rest in greed Crawl with me into tomorrow Or i’ll drag you to your grave I’m deep inside your children They’ll betray you in my name

Her Black Wings - Danzig

This one seems to fit Arya in the first three episodes of the season.

She brings the lust Supernatural Ceasing never On and On and On Her stride is such Mortals freeze When she walks past And she comes down to me And she offers me sleep Under her black wings

Think about Arya flying down to kill the Night King, that fits with the “Under her black wings.” And “Mortals freeze when she falls by" and the mention of the "supernatural," all fit the Faceless men training and her overall ability to walk silent and her skills.

Entwined with love Unclean she is

Everything Arya is doing, everything that she has done, every kill has been done for love, to avenge the people she loves, to protect those she loves. And yet, she's so surrounded, covered, engulfed in death that she's unclean.

See she comes Blacker than pitch Have to make this fallen bitch All I want All I crave Demoness calls The bitch is come For those who wait Cross the breach in hell See she is Bedeviled with breasts Enchantment on legs

This stanza here even fits her if you take into account the fact that the Hound calls her a bitch all the time, and the last two lines, well, we do see Arya as a woman for the first time this season.

Immigrant Song (Remaster) - Led Zeppelin

The Army of the Undead want to take over Westeros.

The End (Remaster) - The Doors

This could certainly be about Tyrion with regards to Jaime and Cersei, but something about it just says the Hound (and Arya) a bit more to me because of a line in the final stanza:  “You’ll never follow me.”   Plus, there is a reference to a “Stranger” in the song. The Hound’s horse was named “Stranger” and, of course, as was established (in my opinion) in the final season, the Hound=death and in the faith of the Seven, the Stranger represented death.

This is the end Beautiful friend This is the end My only friend

The end Of our elaborate plans The end Of everything that stands The end No safety or surprise The end I'll never look into your eyes Again

Can you picture what will be So limitless and free Desperately in need of some stranger's hand In a desperate land

Arya is the Hound’s only friend now that Gendry has become something more. And with what happened in "The Bells," it was the end of their journey together.

Now there is this stanza which is why one could think it references Tyrion thinking about his family with the references to father, brother and sister:

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on He took a face from the ancient gallery And he walked on down the hall He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he Paid a visit to his brother, and then he He walked on down the hall, and And he came to a door...and he looked inside "Father?" "Yes, son." "I want to kill you." "Mother, I want to fuck you"

But I took that as more allegorical, the Hound being the killer who is ready to finally kill his family, i.e., his brother. Furthermore, Ray Manzarek said about this song that Morrison "was giving voice in a rock ‘n’ roll setting to the Oedipus complex" and the lines about the father and mother derive from that mythology and essentially boil down to one principle, you can't escape your fate.

Oedipus' father banishes him because he is told that Oedipus will kill him and sleep with his mother. Years later, Oedipus meets a beautiful woman, they fall into bed, Oedipus fathers catches them and lo and behold!, it's his wife... and Oedipus' mother but neither know that, because Oedipus' father banished him to avoid the prophecy. Oedipus and his father fight, and boom! Oedipus kills his father. Ergo, you can't escape your fate. So... does that apply to the Hound killing his brother or Tyrion and his siblings? Could be both. I just think it leans more towards the Hound.

Then we come to the end of the song and it is full of profanity after profanity, the Hound’s calling card before leading to death and then the bolded line that just scream the Hound to Arya.

C'mon, yeah, c'mon, yeah Fuck me, baby, fuck yeah Fuck, fuck, fuck, yeah! Fuck, yeah! C'mon, baby Fuck me, baby, fuck, fuck, yeah Whoa, whoa, yeah, fuck, baby C'mon, yeah, huh, huh, huh, huh, yeah All right [...] It hurts to set you free But you'll never follow me The end of laughter and soft lies The end of nights we tried to die This is the end

On the other hand, if you take out the Stranger references and look at those specific references to brother, sister, father and how Tyrion had to let go of Jaime and Cersei and the Lannister of it all to move forward in many ways, it fits him best. Also, if you look at the line in the final stanza that is italicized that fits Tyrion with his brother *and* sister.

So honestly, I could go either way even if I do lean a bit more towards the Hound.

Girl From the North Country - Bob Dylan

Yes, I know there is a line in this song that references the girl's long hair lying past her breast, but regardless, everything else about this song just screams pre-season Gendry and Arya.  It totally, totally does. It just totally is Gendry pining for Arya. Nothing else makes sense. N-O-T-H-I-N-G!

If you're travelin' in the north country fair Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline Remember me to one who lives there She once was a true love of mine

If you go when the snowflakes storm When the rivers freeze and summer ends Please see if she's wearing a coat so warm To keep her from the howlin' winds

I know that some have tried to fit it with Sansa and Tyrion, and I love them, but it just doesn't fit them. Sansa is in no way Tyrion’s true love, she just isn't. He hasn't been thinking of her throughout his time away from her. We know that. We absolutely know that. It does not fit them, sorry Sanrion fans (I’m one of them).

Now, if there is some time jump that we see in episode 06 before Arya goes to Gendry (because, yes, I'm still convinced that we are getting an Arya/Gendry endgame), then maybe this will apply to *that* timeframe, but as of now, I still see it as pre-season 08 Gendrya, just the feeling, the tenor and tone of it. Think of Gendry's line to her in the second episode: 

The last time you saw me, you asked me to come to Winterfell. I took the long road…

Yeah.

Mama Kin (Live Version) - Guns n Roses

(FYI: These are the lyrics for the live version, so they may differ slightly.)

I believe this one is about Cersei and how her life has been spent living a lie, putting on a show, but it’s all just that, a show.

losin’ touch with all that’s real Whole lotta lover, keepin’ undercover

Cersei so often just can’t face the reality of all the shit going on around her, through most of her relationship with Jaime, she kept that a secret and even kept her other lovers a secret from him.

You’ve been fadin’, always out paradin’

Cersei has always been hiding who she really is, pretending to be the perfect queen, the perfect wife, perfect mother.

Spittin’ fire from your mouth just like a dragon

She does incest like the Targaryens. She's crazy like the Targaryens, but she's not a Targaryen.

You better check it out ‘cause someday soon You’ll have to climb back on the wagon

It’s not going to last, she’s not going to get her happy ending. (Duh.)

It ain’t easy livin’ like you want to

She became the queen, the ruler of the seven kingdoms, but NOTHING has come easy and it’s still hard for and she never had peace or happiness.

And workin’ for daddy’s such a drag You still stuff your mouth With his beans

She as always under Twyin’s control, she hated it, but she was always under his thumb, always playing by his rules.

This was all about Cersei not being good enough, wanting more, but never getting it, giving up everything and never getting it. She should have cherished what mattered, but she didn’t and lost everything consequently.

Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes 

Dany as Mad Queen. Now, this could have been about Cersei, but there’s a line that screams treason, so… Dany.

I'm gonna fight 'em off A seven nation army couldn't hold me back They're gonna rip it off Taking their time right behind my back And I'm talkin' to myself at night Because I can't forget Back and forth through my mind

Howlin For You - The Black Keys

This is so obviously Gendry about Arya that they might as well have revealed it as such after episode 02 in the "Inside the Episode" video.

I must admit I can't explain Any of these thoughts racing Through my brain

It's true Baby I'm howlin' for you

Can't you see Little girl's Got a hold on me

Like glue Baby I'm howlin' for you

War - Grandson 

Pretty clearly not just about the war against the Undead, but that the war for the Iron Throne still raged on despite the fate of humanity and that victory should have been something that brought everyone together, but you know... humanity.

And it's war in the east War in the west War up north War down south

Everywhere is war It's a war Oh, everywhere is war It's a war

Let Me Live/Let Me Die - Des Rocs

Arya again, specifically with Beric sacrificing himself to save her and then her going to kill the Night King. And then leading to her decision to live or to die in "The Bells."

I know pain, I know dread Wicked veins, they turn to lead Tears don’t stop the fire It's killing time

Back from the dead See, their eyes got nothing left Kiss me, I am the cobra It's killing time

Flugufrelsarinn - Sigur Ros

This was in Icelandic and here is the translation:

Hullabaloo, I rushed down to the lake A savior I made a ship and said a short prayer Because I was scared The sun shown and the lake flowed Sunflowers, sunflowers, the flies die But today I must save as many flies as possible In each hand I carry a string, determined I throw them into the abyss and try To draw the flies in before The smolts reach them where they fight The stream and water And so the day passes on Going on board, I had begun fighting the stream Which had already killed so many I can't breathe and I'm getting heavier with every wave I need a miracle Because I'm drowning sins I try to get onboard I pull ashore and save myself onto Onto the beach I lay on a hot rock and let myself dry again I throw myself into the abyss and try To draw in the flies before The smolts reach them where they fight The stream and water A breeze, completely soaked Bold, feels how the boat is out of the strongest current And the land slowly approaches He is both onboard, Sea and on land saving The flies that die here Though especially himself Eternal war and peace nowhere But someone has to sacrifice himself The days are long

With the references to a savior, a sacrifice, the water, the waves, the drowning and the sins, I think it's  clear that this is about Theon and his sacrifice for Bran. Especially when you take into account what the title of the song translate to: "The Fly's Savior," and Bran is, after all, the Three-Eyed Raven. The last stanza absolutely screams Theon (on sea, on land) trying to save the "flies" that die here and always trying to save himself until the end "someone has to sacrifice himself." Makes me a bit teary-eyed. Very beautiful.

You can hear the song (with the Icelandic lyrics/English translation on the screen--well most of them and some vary, but they're mostly there) here.

Can't Stop The Bleeding - Tom Morello feat. Gary Clark Jr. and Gramatik

An interesting note is that this song was added *right before* the finale. I thought after I first heard it that it would be about Tyrion realizing that Dany was not the one to break the wheel and that he would do would do something drastic about it.  Yes, he made that realization, but quitting his job was not that drastic.

On the other hand... Jon's action in finding out that Daenerys was basically going to burn the world down if people didn't follow her vision, including his sisters? Well, that was pretty drastic. So I now believe this was about Jon and Jon realizing that no matter how much he loved her that he couldn't stop the bleeding of his heart, but he had to stop the bleeding of the world.

Frayed like myth, every fool caught it Sound like this, every fool bought itCan't stop the bleeding, calling Can't stop the bleeding, ohFill my soul, it's hard to see Trouble found and trouble lost

Tyrion was duped into believing that Daenerys was the Princess that was Promised, and I think he's going to something drastic about it.

Fire - Barns Courtney

Ceganebowl!

Oh, a thousand faces staring at me Thousand times I've fallen Thousand voices dead at my feet Now I'm gone, now I'm gone, now I'm gone

And my mother told me, "Son, let it be." Sold my soul to the calling Sold my soul to a sweet melody Now I'm gone, now I'm gone, now I'm gone

Oh, gimme that fire Oh, gimme that fire Oh, gimme that fire Burn, burn, burn

The mother in the song is metaphorical or one could take it as the Mother of the New Gods and the Mother stands, among other things, for mercy and peace. And we all know that the Hound is not going to 'Let it be" so it's pretty clear that this is the Hound facing his deepest fear--diving headfirst into fire--at the same time finally getting his soul's desire and taking out his brother.

Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea - MISSIO

The pretty gross relationship between Euron and Cersei, and after episode 05, more specifically, the demise of Euron Greyjoy! (The crowd cheers!)

Wave of Mutilation - Pixies 

This one's about Theon.

cease to resist, giving my goodbye drive my car into the ocean you'll think i'm dead, but i sail away on a wave of mutilation a wave wave

i've kissed mermaids, rode the el nino walked the sand with the crustaceans could find my way to mariana on a wave of mutilation, wave of mutilation wave of mutilation wave

Saying goodbye to Yara, the ocean references, "What is dead may never die" = "you'll think i'm dead, but i sail away," the mutilation" theme.  Yeah, good ole Theon.

Wolf Like Me - TV On the Radio

I think this is about Sansa to Tyrion, using him to get to Dany.

Say Say my playmate Won't you lay your hands on me Mirror my malady Transfer my tragedy

"Playmate" as in someone who is playing the 'game' with her, and the final two lines, the two of them sharing their fears, their miseries, knowing what the other has been through.

We could jet in a stolen car But I bet we wouldn't get too far Before the transformation takes And bloodlust tanks and Crave gets slaked

They could work together, maybe even try marriage again, but both of them know it wouldn't last because there are too many ambitions and lusts and powerplays going on, not necessarily just within them but around them.

My mind has changed My body's frame but god I like it My hearts aflame My body's strained but god I like it

Sansa has become stronger and smarter, she's changed and it's been hard and it's still hard, but she likes it.

Gonna teach you tricks that'll blow your Mongrel mind Baby doll I recognize You're a hideous thing inside If ever there were a lucky kind it's You you you you

She recognizes his flaws, where she can manipulate him now because she learned from Cersei and Littlefinger, and she knows that it wasn't just his brains that got him this far, but he's had luck help him too. Of course, Tyrion is not a "hideous thing inside" and I don't believe that's how Sansa sees him, but this whole section is how she manipulated him, how she used him, because she did. It's about her being able to manipulate him as Cersei and Littlefinger taught her. The only truly hideous characters inside left this season were Euron and Cersei and none of the Starks would have interacted with them to fit this song; that was just one part of the song that was definitely metaphorical.

Writhing under your riding hood

I just think that the reference to "riding hood" was a key to this being about Sansa with the immediate jump to "red" from that phrase and Sansa's red hair.

POWER - Kanye West

The best I can make of this is that it's about Sansa getting through all that she has been through to be in control where she is and she's now determined that one person is not going to be in power of all of them, especially not the North.

Rumble young man, rumble Life is a trip so sometimes we gon' stumble You gotta go through pain in order to become you But once the world numbs you, you'll feel like it's only one you Man, you got the power to do anything you want to Until you ask yourself, "Is that what it's all come to?" Looking at life through sunglasses in the sunroof Do you have the power to get out from up under you Fuck all these labels, fuck what everybody wants from you

I could be totally and absolutely wrong with this one. 

Let’s Have a War - Fear

Cersei's perspective re: the battle of King’s Landing.

There's so many of us There's so many of us There's so many There's so many of us There's so many of us There's so many

Let's have a war So you can go and die Let's have a war We could all use the money

Let's have a war We need the space Let's have a war Clean out this place

Powa - Tune-Yards 

Dany breaking her promise to Tyrion about burning King's Landing if the bells rang.

Rebel, rebel, no Lightening dances in my head Devil, devil, whoa, oh, oh Burning steady as a motor

[...]

'Cause you bomb me with lies, humiliations everyday You bomb me so many times

I never find my way Come on and bomb me Why won't you bomb me? Come on and bomb Go on and whoa

Listen to the Lion - Van Morrison

The first half of this just screams the end of Jaime and Cersei:

And all my love come down All my love come tumblin' down All my love come tumblin' down All my love come tumblin' down Oh, listen listen To the lion Oh, listen listen listen To the lion... Inside of me Oh, oh, oh

And I shall search my soul I shall search my very soul And I shall search my very soul I shall search my very so-o-oul

For the lion For the lion For the lion For the lion... Inside of me Oh, oh, yeah

And all my tears have flown All my tears like water flown

Right? That's their end. Things literally came tumbling down on them, the lion inside Cersei, the Lannister sigil is the Lion, she's pregnant with their last child. All tears have flown because they gonna die, can't cry no more, right? So, obviously this song is about the end of Jaime and Cersei, except... for the next part of the song.

And we sailed, and we sailed... And we sailed, and we sailed... And we sailed, and we sailed... ... sailed to Caledonia

And we sailed, and we sailed, And we sailed, and we sailed, and we sailed... Away from Denmark Way up to Caledonia Away from Denmark Way up to Caledonia

And we sailed, and we sailed, and we sailed... All around the World And we sailed..., and we sailed..., and we sailed... Looking for a brand new start

(They sailed to a few more places, but you get the point.) So, clearly Jaime and Cersei aren't doing that... unless, they did somehow escape those tumbling rocks and we'll see them in the final episode, then, yeah, this song *is* about them. If not and they do be dead and gone, then, well, yeah, I could see this song being about Ser Brienne of Tarth. Because the first part of the song would totally fit her too... if she, like Cersei, had a Jaime Lannister Lion inside her. Uh huh.

We shall see.

Cold Cold Cold - Cage the Elephants

I'm thinking this one's about Jon and his conflict over his identity, because first off we start early on with this line:

I've been breathing air but there's no sign of life

Jon, technically, isn't alive, being a fire wight and all, so, I'm just saying.

Tell me how hard will I fall if I live a double life

Jon Snow / Aegon Targaryen. Uh huh.

And as the darkness falls it fills up both my eyes My life before me like a flash in the night With my arms open wide

Well it's cold, cold, cold, cold inside Cold, cold, cold, cold inside Cold, cold, cold, cold inside Doctor can you help me cause something don't feel right Something don't feel right, something just ain't right

He found out all of this right before the Long Night.

No One Knows - Queens of the Stone Age

This is absolutely about Arya and the whole the Hound=Death and Gendry=Life theory.

And I realize you’re mine Indeed a fool am I And I realize you’re mine Indeed a fool am I Ahh

Gendry proposed, offered himself to her, asked her to be with him... and she totes is gonna realize that she was a fool because he is hers.

Heaven smiles above me What a gift here below But no one knows A gift that you give to me No one knows

The Hound gave Arya a gift, he made her realize that it's time to LIVE her life, instead of dying everyday just waiting for death. Once upon a time, Arya was No One. Yuppers.

Wolves of Winter - Biffy Clyro

This has got to be Sansa giving some straight talk to Dany.

Justify your reasons, now it is my turn We are the wolves! How's it gonna feel when there's no one to support ya? How's it gonna feel when you're standing there alone?

We have achieved so much more than you possibly thought we could (I love that you're seething) You can achieve anything, just remember no I in team (But there's two in brilliant) We are the wolves of winter We live in a kingdom of blood

Go to War - Nothing More

Dany to Jon episode 04 is what this is feels like this is referencing.

Screaming at the ones we love Like we forgot who we can trust Screaming at the top of our lungs On the grounds where we feel safe Do we feel safe? Do we feel safe?

She's lost so many people and feels like those she has she can't completely trust. She doesn't feel safe.

Hush, my baby, make no sound Maybe we can wait each other out It's a cold war Let's go to war

With every settled score I thought that fighting with meant fighting for But you turn it around But you turn it around (War, war, war!)

She doesn't feel she has anyone completely on her side anymore.

Every feeling in my bones Tells me to lash out and tell you to fuck off You've got my heart and I've got your soul But are we better off alone? With every battle we lose a little more Remember everything that we'd die for You are everything that I'd die for

Dany still loves and wants Jon, but Jon no longer can love her like *that.* And Dany keeps losing more and more with every battle, and she hasn't forgotten what she's fighting and what everyone that she loves has died for.

Little Monster - Royal Blood

I think this one is about Jon taking on Tyrion.

Hey little monster, I got my eye on you Where are you going, where you running to? Hey little monster, you know it's all ok I'm gonna love you, no matter what you say

I think this may be about Jon and Tyrion trying to come to terms with what Dany is doing before they part ways on how to deal with her IF my speculation is correct that Tyrion winds up killing her to protect the realm. And then from that point on, things change between Jon and Tyrion. The next part of the song is more about Jon's feelings for Dany and how Tyrion is going to see the Wolf in Jon Snow.

I got love on my fingers Lust on my tongue You say you got nothing, So come out and get some Heartache to Heartache, I'm your wolf- I'm your man I say run little monster, Before you know who I am

Jon had Daenerys' love and Tyrion didn’t. Tyrion took Dany out to protect the realm and Jon understands that it came from a place from honor and that Tyrion loved Dany, but it doesn't matter, Jon is going to show avenge her.

I could be totes wrong, though. We'll find out tomorrow!

Burn the Fleet - Thrice

This is the first attack on King’s Landing.

Sister - Prince

Uhm, yeah, just read the lyrics. It doesn't perfectly describe their situation, but it's the overall tenor and theme. It's clearly about Jaime’s conflict over Cersei.

Dire Wolf - Grateful Dead

The living the night before the Battle of Winterfell, there's just a pervasive sense of a feeling of dread the night before someone's going to die.

the wolves are running round The winter was so hard and cold froze ten feet neath the ground

Don't murder me I beg of you don't murder me Please don't murder me

Devil’s Spoke - Laura Marling

OK, I could be wrong, but I'm thinking this is about Arya deciding to start a new life, making that conscious choice and be with Gendry.

All of this can be broken All of this can be broken Hold your devil by his spoke and spin him to the ground

Basically, this is saying that the choices you've made can be changed and you can take your hang-up (your devil) and cast it away, pin it down.

But the love of your life lives, but lies no more And where she lay your flowers grow

Arya is the love of Gendry's life, and she's no longer lying to herself, and one can take that second line in two ways. 1) as in his hopes grew, or 2) metaphorically, that when they lie together, she got pregnant.

The arms are fed and the babes that wed The backs that bled keeping her in tow But I am your keeper And I hold your face away from light I am yours till they come

The first two lines read to me like Arya's take on society's role for women that she will not be a part of it, and the last three lines are her saying that as long as they are true to who they are and each other, she is his.

Queen - Perfume Genius 

I can't see this as anything other than Dany as Mad Queen.

Don't you know your queen? Ripped, heaving Flower bloom at my feet Don't you know your queen? Cracked, peeling Riddled with disease Don't you know me?

No family is safe When I sashay

It just gives the overall feel of insanity.

Cruel - St. Vincent

From Dany’s perspective because the North didn’t appreciate her, Westeros wasn’t clamoring for her, she didn’t have their love like she did in Essos.

Bodies, can't you see what everybody wants from you? For you could want that, too They could take or leave you So they took you, and they left you How could they be casually cruel? Cruel, cruel, oh

Crown on the Ground - Sleigh Bells

Cersei losing everything.

You need to know how, To say you'll backtrack, Between the clear bag, Somewhere in your habitat, You have a little thing, You think you're bothering, The class is ending, ending, ending, You never did know, You don't wanna know, There's another show playing in your window, The perm'nent thought of you, Has never bothered you, You're gonna have to, have to, have to,

Set, set that crown on the ground

Mother - The Amazons

Tyrion trying to fix everything he’s fucked up because he still wants to believe.

Friends want to kill me But I give them all my loving anyway If god won't forgive me I'm not the only one to make amends

Bronn's trying to kill him. Tyrion is still trying to make amends, as is Jaime.

Mother, it's not in my hands Try to understand, it's only 'cause I can Fools believe they can erase All that they've done before

Tyrion telling the Mother--as in one of the Seven--that he is still trying to believe he can make up for his past sins and mistakes.

Hot Blood - KALEO

Jon’s conflict and shame over his love for Dany, his aunt.

You turn your back, you’re a broken man You come around and just dying to shake your hand I don’t expect you to understand Just keep telling yourself there’s no shame

This was when he was still trying to convince himself it was OK, but then, of course he pulled away from their kiss.

They don’t know 'bout who we are They don’t know 'bout you and I They ain’t know 'bout the stars of your eyes Oh hot blood love is gonna get ya

Before the secret was out...

You wanna prove you’re the better man You wanna reach for the things that nobody can Oh all you need is to break away, yeah Just keep telling yourself there’s no shame

Jon Snow/Aegon Targaryen is a honorable man just like his real father, Ned Stark, and nothing can change that.

War Pigs/Luke’s Wall - Black Sabbath

The end of Cersei who never cared about any of her subjects.

Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war Why should they go out to fight?

Cersei until nearly the very end up there safe in her tower watching all of the bloodshed and destruction.

They leave that role for the poor, yeah Time will tell on their power minds, Making war just for fun Treating people just like pawns in chess, Wait 'till their judgement day comes, yeah

She could have helped, she knew that by playing her games, thousands and thousands of people could and would die, but she didn't care.

Now in darkness world stops turning, Ashes where the bodies burning No more War Pigs have the power, Hand of God has struck the hour Day of judgement, God is calling On their knees the war pigs crawling, Begging mercies for their sins Satan, laughing, spreads his wings

The end of Cersei, ashes falling, bodies burning. Not Satan, but Drogon.

Dead Skin Mask - Slayer 

Dany the Mad Queen, again.

Graze the skin with my finger tips The brush of dead cold flesh pacifies the means Provocative images delicate features so smooth A pleasant fragrance in the light of the moon

Dance with the dead in my dreams Listen to their hallowed screams The dead have taken my soul Temptation’s lost all control Simple smiles elude psychotic eyes Lose all mind control rationale declines

Dany's dreams with Drogo and her baby. So many screams that she has listened to, and we all know that temptation has taken over, no more control, rationale is gone.

Empty eyes enslave the creations Of placid faces and lifeless pageants In the depths of a mind insane Fantasy and reality are the same

The coin has landed on the side of insanity.

Killer Wolf - Danzig

Arya and her awesome power, as a killer, as a woman (see: one smitten Gendry err Rivers Baratheon).

I’m the wolf I’m the one you want I’m the killer wolf I’m 'onna pound you home I’m the wolf Howlin’ all night I curl up next to you When you’re all alone

How her deadly abilities, her killer ways have become so much a part of who she is.

I’m the wolf Howlin’ all night I’m the king wolf I put the chill in your bones I’m the wolf Hunting you down I ain’t no back door wolf I don’t scratch at no doors

She has no fear, she’s in control, and numb to the world in generally for the most part.

Just one kiss, yes From my lips Rake your soul Over burning coals Just one touch, yes From my love Make you howl 'Til the sun comes up I’m the wolf

And how with a few well-placed comments, eyebrow lifts, sultry looks and deadly knife throws gets Gendry all hot and bothered like that. Boy's just gone for her. In the immortal words of Joe Dempsie, he's spruuuung!

The Time Is Now - Atreyu

I just can't see this being about anything other than Arya after episode 05 being ready to start a new life--one that is not about death. And since I firmly believe that the Hound=Death, and Gendry=life, and both are crazy entangled up with Arya this season, that therefore means the new life she starts will be with Gendry.

I've been dreaming 'bout, hope for better days Time for dreaming's done, time to face the sun

(Flying high above the world) It's a new life, it's a new mind And I will never fall

Arya rode away on that white horse, flying high and you know she will not fall. It's just too hopeful and happy to be about Daenerys.

(The time is now) I can't contain myself, I never felt so alive (The time is now) I'm past the breaking point, I set my soul on fire

"I never felt so alive..." For the first time, Arya has given herself permission to live.

(Hey-ay, hey-ay, hey-ay, yeah) The time is now!

Yup, the time is now.

Be My Fire - The Blue Stones

Dany wanting so much for Jon to still love her as his love, wanting him to trust her, to be true to her, to be with her forever.

Baby, be my fire Baby, be my flame Baby, be the softly burning embers

You need a man in whom You can depend Well I'd be the gasoline To keep you alive And I'd be the cold So unbreakable We'd burn together Straight through the night That's alright Baby, be my fire

Yes, it says "man," but eh, the point still gets across. I think this is about them. I think.

Rise Above - Black Flag

I think this is about Sansa and representing the North wanting their independence back.

we are tired of your abuse try to stop us but its no use

societys arm's out of control rise above we're gonna rise above think there smart cant think for themselves rise above we're gonna rise above laugh at us behind our backs rise above we're gonna rise above i find satisfaction in what they lack rise above we're gonna rise above

Alternative Ulster - Stiff Little Fingers

I had no clue what this song was about… I had to go to Song Meanings since I’m not from Ireland and don’t know much about the politics, the Punk Rock scen or the political dynamics going on there. The bottom line is that this song is about seeing beyond the divisions. Therefore, this song… is Jon’s point of view. We all are in this together: The Living against the Undead.

This Sentence Will Ruin/Save Your Life - Young Ruffians

This whole song is about someone trying to figure things out. It’s about someone who frankly knows nothing… so, uhm, yeah, Jon Snow, and his identity crisis and trying to figure out what the fuck to do.

I need to know who I am and what I'm going to do while I'm on earth I need to understand everything and everybody's lives

The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn - The Pogues

This one’s about Tyrion… the song is very Celtic with lots of history about the people. Basically, it's about the urge to self-destruct and about a man's life-long descent into alcoholism. SO, yeah, Tyrion.

Winterlong - Neil Young

Well, this certainly seems to apply to Gendry after Arya turned down his proposal. Very promising though is the fact that nothing in the song is definite. It was all “if…” “you seem to be…”

I waited for you, Winterlong You seem to be where I belong. It's all illusion anyway.

“You seem...” that leaves it to open, the possibility of her coming back is not closed off. The "illusion" could refer to the title and castle.

If things should ever turn out wrong And all the love we have is gone, It won't be easy on that day.

"If" and "it won't be easy on that day" makes it clear he hasn't given up, he's still waiting for his girl to come to him.

Furr - Blitzen Trapper

OK, guys, this is it. I know I keep saying it, but yeah, Arya and Gendry? Are absolutely endgame. This song sounds absolutely like Arya deciding to give up her Stark-ways, being the killer with a list, etc. and joining Gendry. I mean, for reals! I'm just putting all the lyrics here bolding key phrases.

Yeah, when I was only 17, I could hear the angels whispering So I droned into the words and Wondered aimlessly about till I heard my mother shouting through the fog It turned out to be the howling of a dog Or a wolf to be exact. The sound sent shivers down my back But I was drawn into the pack. And before long, they allowed me To join in and sing their song. So from the cliffs and highest hill, yeah We would gladly get our fill, Howling endlessly and shrilly at the dawn. And I lost the taste for judging right from wrong. For my flesh had turned to fur, yeah And my thoughts, they surely were turned to Instinct and obedience to God.

[Chorus] You can wear your fur Like the river on fire. But you better be sure If you’re makin' God a liar. I'm a rattlesnake, babe, I'm like fuel on fire. So if you're gonna' get made, Don't be afraid of what you've learned.

On the day that I turned 23, I was curled up underneath a dogwood tree. When suddenly a girl With skin the color of a pearl, Wandered aimlessly, But she didn't seem to see. She was listenin' for the angels just like me. So I stood and looked about. I brushed the leaves off of my snout. And then I heard my mother shouting through the trees. You should have seen that girl go shaky at the knees. So I took her by the arm We settled down upon a farm. And raised our children up as Gently as you pleased.

And now my fur has turned to skin. And I've been quickly ushered in To a world that I confess I do not know. But I still dream of running careless through the snow. An' through the howlin' winds that blow, Across the ancient distant flow, It fill our bodies up like water till we know.

[Chorus]

OK, now aside from the very, very obviousness of the fact that if you switch the genders--which, when a song THIS PERFECTLY ENCAPSULATES Arya and Gendry's story with references to wolves and packs and settling in a farm (forest lass), etc. one can not worry about the gender not matching perfectly--there's another very key thing one has to bear in mind. 

The song is called "Furr." That title clearly references the narrator (who in this case would be Arya) being a wolf. The group name is Blitzen Trapper. Blitzen is, of course, famously known as one of the reindeer who pulled Santa's sleigh. While science has now proven that all of Santa's reindeer were likely female as male reindeer shed their antlers in December, it is highly unlikely that when the tale was first told that such was known therefore we're going with the original conception that Blitzen is indeed male. And since Blitzen is known as a male reindeer, well, another name for a male deer is a... stag. So, not only does the song itself alone scream an Arya and Gendrya endgame (it really, really, REALLY does).

The group name + the song title + the meaning of the song = The Stag caught the Wolf with his love.  

At this point, let me remind ya'll that Benioff and Weiss said about this playlist, "The answer to the ending is one hundred percent hidden in the playlist choices. No one will believe us, but it’s true." Uh huh. I believe you!

Power - AJ Ghent 

There are no lyrics for this one, so I just listened to it and really, I think it might be the beginning of the season when Dany was feeling confident about taking on the Army of the Dead and Cersei. OR it could be Cersei feeling confident about taking on Dany with her greater numbers. It’s easier to analyze it when you can look at the lyrics. :shrugs:

Toxicity - System of a Down

This song is really about nature being corrupted and capitalism taking over the world, so all I can really take from it is in relation to the endgame that it's Sansa and her opinion of Dany and how she thinks that she is a conqueror set on taking over Westeros by any means necessary.

Born For Greatness - Papa Roach

Oh, my heart. I think this is about Varys, whom I’ve always loved. He's my sixth fave character in the whole series.

I am a man at war And I am fighting for All of the broken people All of the people thrown overboard They always tried to shame us But they don't speak our language No, we're not nameless, we're not faceless We were born for greatness

Yup, and he fought all the way to the end.

Gold Lion - Yeah Yeah Yeahs 

I could be totally wrong, but all I can think here is Cersei’s downfall and her and Jaime’s death although he tried to rescue her.

Gold lion's gonna tell me where the light is, Gold lion's gonna tell me where the light is, Take our hands out of control, Take our hands out of control

Now, tell me what you saw, Tell me what you saw, There was a crowd of seeds, Inside, outside, I must have done a dozen each

It was the height I threw, the weight, The shell was crushing you, I've been around a few

Here’s Your Future - The Thermals

There’s gonna be a lot of death and destruction and people are going to pay for their sins, and someone is going to be sacrificed for sins that they did not commit, maybe not in death, but that person won’t be happy. And I think that person will be Jon.

God reached his hand down from the sky He flooded the land and he set it afire He said fear me again and know I'm your father And remember that no one can breathe underwater

The deaths Dany caused, Theon's death, all the Ironborn deaths, including Euron's mens' deaths.

God told his son it's time to come home I promise you won't have to die all alone I need you to pay for the sins I create Son said I will but dad I'm afraid

Jon's no Jesus, but he's the closest thing to a sacrificial lamb this show has. He's already died once and risen for the sins of others.

Love is Blindness - U2

Dany and Jon. Period.

Love is blindness I don't want to see Won't you wrap the night Around me Oh my heart Love is blindness

They don't want to know what they know about Jon's parentage. It's as simple as that. It changed everything for them.

And that’s all she wrote. Agree, disagree... thoughts? I’d really like to know what other people think.

[jcmorgenstern]

Hey kid wanna cry Remember that kiss between Clary and 'Sebastian' in s2, after Clary says that Jonathan deserves to be saved? How desperate that kiss was. Now knowing the that for years Jonathan was clinging to the idea that somewhere out there theres a person who will save him, who will not hurt and abandon him puts the whole scene in different perspective 😢

you’re very right and you should fucknig say it anon!!

I’m trying to get over my annoyance with how much they’ve fucked Jonathan’s storyline (and my god, the timeline)–the demon clary kills in s1 at the EARLIEST appears at the most 2 months ago, which means Jonathan only learned she existed 2 months ago max. He then, in that time, made a deal with Azazel to get out of hell, walked to Paris, kidnapped Sebastian at a cafe, moved to New York, rented an apartment, knew enough about the goings on at the institute to steal the sword (Genuinely blanking on how he got the Cup to summon Azazel–i knew at one point but rn im anxious and caffeinated), summoned Azazel, infiltrated the Institute….like this is fucking insane on so many levels, and now he can’t even find a sword? ??? ?? ? ? ? like damn need me that kind of motivation on my finals

(also im pre sure aline mentions sebastian dissapeared more than two months ago but lmao what’s consistency)

I actually really liked the prince/princess thing, because it flips the very gendered script by having Jonathan wish for Clary to save him. and Clary IS that figure–she goes to insane lengths to protect and save Jace. I don’t think Clary’s horror at realizing she could have but didn’t save Jonathan is her being like “oh damn im a woman therefore it’s my job,” it’s that being powerless or failing to save a life is one of her worst fears, and she’s upset that yet another family member is “lost” to her. Her entire arc is unified by the theme of finding and wanting to keep her family and loved ones (both family by blood or by familial love) safe. It’s also a callback to the books (a thread that is completely dropped) where she writes a comic about a dark prince that she interprets to be “Sebastian.”

When Jonathan calls “you were supposed to be my princess” after her, he doesn’t mean “I was supposed to carry u away at the altar and we’d make babies in heterosexual union,” he means “you were supposed to be my knight in shining armor and rescue me from the dragon/evil stepmother.” In the context of the story as it’s told–Jonathan as Rapunzel (or Fiona LMAOO) in the tower crying for help, and Clary the knight with the sword only the chosen one can wield riding to his rescue–I feel that meaning is fairly obvious if you understand his character beyond “ew incest lol.”

To put it more academically: in the terms of a feminist reading of the fairytale, Jonathan understands himself not as Clary’s possessor, but the “princess” she as the (traditionally male) knight rescuer is entitled to after the rescue. It may actually deliberately echo the book line where Clary asks Jonathan “who do you belong to.” The script of Jonathan as the hyperagressive, masculine aggressor stalking the (artificially) agency-less woman is complicated by his dual role as the traditionally female victim of abuse waiting to be rescued by the traditional male rescuer. In just a quick few minutes we get a whole different dynamic where we realize Jonathan doesn’t feel he is entitled to her–from his (warped) point of view, he feels she is entitled to him. Jonathan views the act of receiving love in terms of his usefulness or how his identity/abilities/whatever can be exploited by whoever loves him (see: his speech to her about Valentine)–his confusion about why she doesn’t “want” him is because well, she defended him once as anon says, she saved him by giving him hope, she must love him–why won’t she take what’s hers?

This is the dynamic I’m fascinated by–I’ve always read Jonathan as an oddly feminized villain considering his other position as a hyperaggressive rapist–if I were to go full batshit on yall I’d bust out a “queer-coded men presented as often ineffectual rapists” reading but. ill leave that for another time.  or never. I feel the books made that reading very available by sexualizing his abuse by revealing his whip scars in a situation where he takes his shirt off and Clary is uncomfortably thirsty (and the audience is VERY comfortably thirsty). It’s also very surface-level and never really brought up again–something else you’d expect from a presentation of a female character’s abuse.

The show complicates it by presenting the product of Jonathan’s abuse as something to be reviled and horrific, but also kind of pathetically comedic. A male victim of abuse that actually lets the effects show is clearly something to be othered, pathologized, made into something charred and inhuman. The power and agency expected of a male character is restored to him in his rebirth, when the narrative invites you to consider whether he really could change; as that agency is slowly stripped away through imprisonment, a botched matricide attempt, implied (past) sexual assault, it’s paired with his implied descent into irredeemabe villainhood.

I fully realize I’ve jumped so far off the deep end I may as well have started burrowing into the ground of that metaphorical pool, but I think Jonathan’s dual status as feminized victim and masculinized rapist explains why some female fans find Jonathan deeply and fundamentally abhorrent and others find him sympathetic and relatable. Both, I think, are legitimate readings and reactions made available by the text–it’s a question not of whether people think rape is okay or not, but which of his dual gendered positions each person find more salient.

(I’d also argue the same could be said of Jace–do you see him as the typical heterosexual male jock, or the sensitive victim of abuse who struggles with his mental health? Honestly, this model applies to so many other characters–Tony Stark, for example, or Loki). I think it’s important as fans to appreciate, no matter your position or reading of a character, the alternate readings available–I understand why people hate Jonathan and are deeply uncomfortable with him, even if I don’t feel the same way. I don’t take Jonathan hate as a personal attack against my reading specifically, but against the person’s own particular interpretation of him. (I do often get annoyed if people deny the possibility of alternate readings, and probably get pissy in general, but shh).

anyway tldr this was actually just top/bottom discourse in disguise JONATHAN MORGENSTERN IS A BOTTOM thanks for coming to my TED talk haha gotcha

[thecloserkin]

fic rec: Where the Heart Is by Alixtii

fandom: Folgers “Home For the Holidays” Commercial

pairing: Folgercest

word count: 19k

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: Is it ever

Is it endgame: Yes!!

Is it shippable: Yesssss

First off if there’s anyone who has not yet read the epic GQ Folgercest Fandom 10-year-retrospective which i still can’t believe was written by a bona fide journalist, RUN DO NOT WALK over there and do it now. I find it hard to believe there’s anyone with an internet connection who hasn’t seen it?? It’s fucking ubiquitous, there’s a finance & economics blog I follow that linked it lol.

There’s so many Folgercest stories where the tension builds & builds and I respect this one for being like NOPE here’s an explicit sex scene in the first chapter, merry christmas to MEEEEE. I thought the sex was dope but I also think it serves the important function of getting the “longing” & “pining” components out of the way so we can take seriously that the whole “go on the run & get fake married” proposition is a big ask. Luke asks Lexie to come away to Africa with him, and it takes her the seven days of Christmas + New Year’s to say “yes” (with Auld Lang Syne playing in the background)—ngl I may have emitted an actual squeeing noise when she said yes.

The setup for the New Year’s Kiss occurs as soon as Luke arrives home from Africa:

”it’ll be our first New Years after turning 21. We rented a limo and everything. Jane and her boyfriend just broke up a couple of weeks ago, though, so we have an extra ticket if you want to come."

This is pretty nearly “I accidentally-on-purpose brought my brother as a date” territory—it’s not the Most Formal of Formal Events like a wedding but it still puts her brother in a role her romantic partner would normally occupy, and we can expect either (1) lots of “is he single??” female interest or (2) fake relationship!!! Spoiler alert there wasn’t enough fake relationship to satisfy my trope-loving ass but when he let his teleconferencing coworkers assume the hot girl who wandered into camera range was his girlfriend that made me a happything.

It’s a very absorbing story with gobs of Catholic guilt thrown in but the thing that shook me most about this fic is probably that the alternative to “another round of morning sex” is “let’s build a snowman.” Like!!!! Could anything have been better calculated to push all my buttons.

Luke didn't expect to return to find her still a virgin--hell, he's not even sure she was a virgin when he left. Still, he can't help wonder how many times she's done this, with how many boys, and feels an incredible irrational, hypocritical resentment against them for defiling his sister.

This, THIS right here is what I came for. She’s still his baby sister and he can’t turn off a lifetime’s worth of protective instincts even if he’s the one defiling her now. It crops up again with his discomfort at her holding a beer he’s like is she even old enough to drink??? Lmao.

Btw I have zero complaints about the quantity of sneaking-around that occurs in this fic: They make out in their mom’s kitchen when Mom herself could pull into the driveway at any minute!! They park the car in the woods and give each other handjobs!!! Incredible. “What are we, teenagers again?” Luke wonders, and the entire point is they’re not, even if the woods are crawling with teenagers they are adults, and they’re making up for lost time. Luke made a conscious decision five years ago to leave rather than initiate a relationship with Lexie:

”I needed to get away so I could find myself. But, yeah, one of the things I needed to get away was that I couldn’t help spending every moment thinking about how much I wanted to fuck my sixteen-year old sister.”

Lexie studies him, curious. “And did that work?”

Luke shrugs. “Did I stop thinking about it? No. But at least it kept me from doing something I would regret.”

Lexie nods, thoughtful. “I’m not sixteen anymore, you know.”

“You’re still my sister,” he points out.

Oof. It’s a very different dynamic when you try to navigate these shoals as adults, instead of the scenario where you move seamlessly from platonic forehead-kisses to tongue-kisses. I appreciate Luke for attempting to do the whole courtship dance, take her out to the skating rink and the fancy French restaurant and meanwhile Lexie just wants to cuddle.

He said, “You never opened your present yesterday.” She smiles at him, a lascivious grin. “I really think I did.”

Damn but this callback to the iconic “You’re my present this year” line is unalloyed genius.

I did not expect this OC their cousin Gwen to play such a big role. She’s crushing on Luke and she ain’t subtle about it and since Luke can hardly tell his cousin “I’m not interested because I’m already fucking my sister,” the whole situation makes for comedic gold. At one point Lexie makes a quip about her and Gwen having similar taste in men and I was DYING:

“Oh, she was hitting on you hard,” agrees Lexie, “Not that I can blame her. She doesn’t know you’re already taken.” Luke puts his head in his hands. “God, this family is so fucked up.” “It could be worse,” points out Lexie. “It could have been Aunt Mary.”

That Lexie has got quite a mouth on her. The point of Gwen isn’t that Lexie feels threatened by her interest in Luke; it’s that Gwen may be a vexatious person who inserts herself where she is not wanted but she’s still family, and Luke and Lexie choose to take her wasted ass home with them rather than allow Gwen’s mother to witness her inebriated condition. Because you stick by your family. Even if it cuts into your limited one-on-one time with bae because now you have third wheel Gwen.

Side note I love that Luke is a huge nerd who’s lugged a whole roster of interesting books back from Africa, I realize this is a Folgercest fic and not a book blog but I swear my TBR just grows of its own volition. The payoff for all this geeking out on Luke’s part is, he gets a concussion and has a pretty surreal dream featuring some real, some fictional characters, and a good dollop of his own id. Later on, Lexie and Luke are quoting poetry at each other and when he casually dropped a line from’Tis Pity She’s a Whore I was legit s c r e a m i n g. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Tis Pity She’s a Whore is a Jacobean revenge tragedy prominently featuring a pair of incestuous siblings and while the genre is incompatible with happy endings, the incest is not presented at all unsympathetically. It’s worth reading even if you’re not into incest, it’s that wild of a ride.

All right folks this is how we go out with a bang:

The last five years--the last twenty-eight years, really--may have been long and difficult as he was forced to lose and find himself, but he knows they were all worth it, because they culminate in this moment. This is who he is: brother, lover, and companion, until death do them part.

they’re SOULMATES i can now die happy

[scato006-blog]

Searching for a title and feedback.

New to this, would appreciate any feedback. 

All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2019 Stephanie Catozzi

My mother’s hand squeezes around my infantile one, small, petite, and plump even for a 12-year-old. I feel the cold, hard shaft of the metal handle, the gun weighty in my hand. My mother’s breath, laced with Bacardi rum and stale Marlboro lights, coaches me to squeeze harder, my tiny fingertips biting under the pressure and turning light purple at the tips from being held so forcefully.

“You have to hold it like you mean it, steady.” She coaches.

“I don’t want to,” I whine, almost silently.

               The wind kept biting my plump cheeks, and I felt my legs, bare in the November air, tingling and pocking with cold bumps.

               This has become a routine, my mother getting intoxicated or high, and taking a sudden interest in her children and choosing the worst time to suddenly teach us some life skills. My brother, with his autism, is too heady a project to undertake. So, it is me, who at 11 pm is hauled from my kitten covered sheets and dragged outside for an impromptu lesson on protecting myself, undoubtably due to some loosely based on a true story Lifetime network film where a girl, most likely Tori Spelling, is victimized.  

               Thankfully, she loses interest surprisingly fast this time, and when she loosens her grip on my hand, I am able to wrestle past her, knocking her to one knee as she curses and I bolt back into my bed and lock the door. She staggers in and pounds for several moments, calling me names, before I hear her door shut and know she has passed out.

My mother hasn’t been quite right since my father died. I see her leaving often to doctors’ offices, complaining of ailments ranging from pains to depression and anxiety disorders. Her pills litter the tops of our 80’s style maroon kitchen counters; every consistency you can imagine from syringes to tiny multicolored capsules. In the mornings, we see her guzzling down the liquid medications, never using the tiny, clear ridged top that is supposed to serve as a barbie sized measuring cup. Instead, she uses that as a pseudo lid when she gets too inebriated to remember where she put the child proof cap the pharmacist carefully clicks into place. Her arms are littered with pock marks from needles. Some self-inflicted and some from all the blood draws ordered by her physicians. She has become obsessed with this idea of teaching us how to protect ourselves since my father passed. Which later I will realize is terribly contradictory, since the basis of most our inflictions come from her blatant negligence.

               It isn’t until I start having sleepovers with girls outside my neighborhood that I will realize this isn’t a normal occurrence. I spend time with girls whose parents bake them cinnamon buns in the morning slathered with extra crystalline icing, whose mothers collect little figurines cased in glass cabinets without fingertips smeared on them and father figures who go off to work, kissing cheeks instead of backhanding them like the other dads in my neighborhood would do. It’s a foreign world to me, and oddly, it makes me surprisingly uncomfortable to be in such a serene environment. Almost mundane as wild as that may seem to some. Beige. I always notice this common color scheme in these safety net homes, everything was always varying shades of beige from the carpets to the placemats to the sheets. Beige everywhere.

               In the morning, it’s as if nothing has happened, as she bustles around the kitchen getting my brother’s routine down to match the Velcro pictured descriptions that are supposed to help with his over stimulation. I can tell there is something tangible and tense in the air, the blatant ostracizing of me from our tiny family unit. I will learn later that it is due to embarrassment over her own actions, but in the moment from my young perspective, I have somehow failed her.

I gather my things, my teal Jansport backpack smeared with pen marks and patches, and dig in the back cabinet, shoving expired bags of chips and soup out of the way to find a long lost granola bar and walk out the door, pausing before turning the silver knob to look back slightly out of my peripheral at my mother to see if she pauses at the sound of me leaving. She doesn’t.

The bus stop holds a sense of comfort for me, knowing that I will be headed to the one safe institution I have in my young life, school. There are rules, teachers, consistency, and scheduled mealtimes. I know what is coming and when. I know what is expected of me and it isn’t laced with alcohol and substances, or parties in my home with strange men who grab in places they shouldn’t and burn your arms with their cigarettes when you try to yell in protest for someone who is too inebriated to come to your rescue.

Teacher’s take special interest in me, I must exude some sense of chaos at home, my behavior is mildly disruptive with chattering to my fellow neighboring classmates, often causing my desk to be moved adjacent to the teachers to curve my “social butterfly” antics.

Years later, I will run into my favorite English teacher, Ms. Mueller, and she will subtly hint at the signs of abuse she saw from my rumpled clothes to my bruised arms and vacant expression from exhaustion. She will tell me of a time she went to my mother’s store, at the height of our home tsunami during my high school years, and the words heatedly exchanged between them. From that point on, in school, before I have this knowledge, I will choose to spend an hour every day after school with her and be exposed to various forms of literature. She will bring books with her and give me deadlines throughout the year, hoping to keep me driven and expand this world I escape to through books.

Oddly enough, my thirst for books came from the very person I was trying to escape.

In fifth grade I had a teacher I absolutely loathed. It was truly, the first person I had a deep hatred and resentment for. I remember the feelings of rage and a craving for the demolition of our high-ceilinged classroom. Ms. Symzick was a small, petite woman who would prance around her classroom in various shades of loud pinks and magenta, shouting in her irritatingly shrill, chalkboard scraping screeching voice. She had a serious inclination to class favorites, and those favorites tended to be the children of affluent parents she co-vacationed with in the Bahamas and Jamaica, frequently referencing scuba diving explorations and inside jokes she had created with the kids poolside while they showed off their attempts at underwater hand stands. She accused my indifferent attitude towards her and my inability to pay attention to her reading “out loud” to the class on comprehension issues. My mother responded, in typical Tammy fashion, and greeted me that afternoon with a stack of VC Andrews books. Her philosophy was that I needed something to read that could hold my attention in a mildly traumatizing way. Make the book risqué enough for me to care, and it would cure my non attentive approach to active listening. It certainly worked.

While my classmates were reading books about bridges crossing into Terabithia to conquer exciting pretend lands, I was obsessed with mentally trying to connect the incest family trees of wealthy families stuck in attics, toiling away pasting together paper flowers to create gardens. I craved reading about these fucked up families, and was elated to find that not only where the books thick with small font which meant they lasted longer than my classmates small flirtations with literature, but they also were in series so I could follow these families for generations. I would blow through a book a day if it was the weekend, absorbing finally, every comma and black small printed letter flowing into my mind through an osmosis of obsessive reading.

I sit next to Holly and hold her hand under our jackets in solidarity. Holly has the same house as I do, which is baffling and comforting for my young mind. Her brothers shout and throw things in their drunken rages, blaming their parents for their adult failures and losses of custody over children. Her father sits on the couch, sleeps on the couch, drinks on the couch, argues from the couch, he exists on the couch, never intervening. When he would winded from yelling, he would clutch a small, metal vile necklace he always wore. I would learn later it contained a single pill that would melt under his tongue because he was prone to panic attacks from his time in the military.

Holly will sneak into my room, late in the night, when things get bad and she climbs into my bed, cold hands and feet pressed against my calves for warmth. She rustles under my sheets and presses her perfect little bud lips against my cheek and snuggles into my neck and falls asleep fast, just as our thermostat registers the drop in temperature from the window being pried open for her to come in and the furnace clicks on, as always, I fling my leg out from under the blankets, so as to not wake Holly and soak in some cool air as her body heat radiates against my own. I love her and want to protect her, as she is the only one who has ever expressed a kindred likeliness to what I experience behind closed doors. She protects me as well, when my mother opens the door slightly to see if I am awake or when she is under the influence ready for another “life lesson,” she will always close the door and slither away when she sees Holly’s body next to mine.

Holly knew about these moments, in the dead of night when my mother would make her way into the room. She was the one who saw the handprint makes in shades of black and blue, purple then fading to yellows and lime greens. She would take my arm, and lay her hot, brown palm slowly and softly on top of the blue and purple marks so gently, brushing the tops of the soft baby arm hair then would turn over, as if nothing had happened. It was the act of acknowledging, that would transition into acts of protection. She knew if she was there, those marks wouldn’t appear. Holly became an ever-present staple in my life, it was truly as if she was holding me together, fastening my frayed edges to keep them from being burned by my mother and faceless men’s lighters.

This is my day to day, and night to night. The seeking of comfort in concrete things and people outside my home and struggling to find a purpose outside of myself.

Years pass, the same abuses remain constant, even after the school nurse contacts my mother over concerns she has when she sees my bandaged fingers from a screaming hot iron. The difference is the older I get, the more I learn to fight back, slick mouthed and learning to block hands quickly with forearms. I develop the internal switch, for numbing and hardening emotions to dispel any sense of misery or hopelessness, I don’t allow myself to be vulnerable around her and show any form of pain or exaggerated anger. I treat her with complete indifference, which in her drunken, high moments causes absolute meltdowns. Her emotional levels skyrocketing due to inebriation, and my disconnect growing more profound with each outburst. I start to want more, more than these walls and house. I want to sleep peacefully, quietly, and safely. A concept I had never visualized for myself that I thought was coveted for children with two parents and yards without brown spots and littered with dog feces.

I sit, at 15, in my English class, the scared space I have carved out for myself. Ms. Mueller, walks past, having just kicked Gary out of class for shouting at her.

“Dyke gave me a F,” he rages after we are returned our midterm grades.

“Out!” Ms. Mueller declares, stunning me at how she so gracefully and passively dismisses him and his hate slurred words.

As she passes back to her desk, I feel a blue piece of paper get slid under the flesh of my forearm. I slide it under my notebook, I can tell through its delivery, she doesn’t want me to attract any attention through receiving it. She looks pointedly at me, and when the bell rings I rush out to see what it is she has slipped me.

She knows I am not happy with her today. Ms. Mueller detests Holly. There is this just under the surface acknowledgement that they don’t address one another, ever. Holly feels Ms. Mueller is trying to come between us and take time I should be spending time with her and instead am choosing to spend it reading, which is the most boring thing in Holly’s mind. Oddly enough, Holly has detention or make up tests almost every day after school, so her time wouldn’t be spent with me regardless. Holly is known to have her behavioral issues, shouting at teachers and authority figures much in the same fashion as her older brothers do to her and her parents. It is a cycle that has already began its inheritable rotation.

               “She’s not good for you, you have too much inside you for that one.” Ms. Mueller had told me suddenly, interrupting me reading silently beside her while she worked on the summer reading list for the class, and my own which had easily an extra fifteen books added to it. At the time, I didn’t really understand what it was she meant.

“Too much inside me? What the hell?” I thought. I glared defiantly at the top of her head, wishing I had the nerve to reach out and rustle her short, cropped hair out of its artfully tousled with hair paste landscape just out of spite. She didn’t look up, nor acknowledge my anger filled face, and after some time I set my mouth in a taught line and kept reading. Leaving that day without saying a word when our hour was up.

I open it up and see it’s a flyer, for some summer program called Upward Bound and kids interested in colleges. I had never imagined myself being on some pristine collegiate campus. That was also reserved for the cinnamon bun kids whose parents showed up to every sporting event, cheering them on from the sidelines and pumping their fists in the air, visualizing college scouts coming with hefty scholarships and grants. Not for me, who begged for rides to and from practices, relying on my grandparents for transportation sparsely, so they wouldn’t see the state of our house. My mother would always get angry when her parents came to drop us off, always insisting on coming in to survey the

damage in the house from holes in walls to dirty dishes crawling with critters and cats licking dirty pans for burned egg pieces.

I folded the flyer in half and hastily shoved in under my stack of books on the bottom self in the locker I share with Holly. I am always the bottom shelf, to take my lacking height into consideration. She can’t see it; she will lose her mind. I know this, our codependency has blossomed into a full relationship of unhealthy proportions, two emotionally crippled humans attempting at something far too adult.

I wait, as always, for her to come meet me briefly, and she does. Angry brown eyes, jet black hair, browned skin from her native American heritage, and slanted eyebrows. I forgot she was angry with me from this morning when I pulled my hand away from hers when Kim snatched the jacket up that hid our weaved fingertips.

“Mr. Mason is such an asshole,” she huffs slamming her books in the locker, standing on her tip toes to launch them to the back where we hear them ding as they hit the metal back.

“What happened?” I ask, gauging her temperance to see where we are at. Holly drives the emotional state of our relationship; she being the more volatile of the two of us.

“He gave me detention for missing all that homework,” she huffed as she slammed the locker shut. “I just want school to be done already, I hate it.”

I watched her stalk off, wordless, now definitely wasn’t the time to broach the subject of an academic summer camp that focuses on colleges. Holly was not interested in anything remotely studious, let alone something that would separate us for an entire summer.

I watch her turn the corner of the light seafoam green colored hallways, waiting until I can be sure she is completely out of sight before slamming my elbow into the door right above the turn lock, causing it to pop open, a little trick Tommy showed me last year when he had this locker. I hop up on the toes of my sneakers and grab the flyer out from my Roman History classes textbook.

It is in that moment; I realize I don’t want to stay closeted with Holly and hide holding hands. I don’t want to stay in a home I feel constantly threatened in, showing all the scars on my skin and inside of my flesh. I don’t want to be stuck slinging burgers at the diner down the street, or as a cashier at the grocers. I don’t want to struggle against the New England seasonal depression of grey skies to salt crusted and frost heaved roads. I don’t want to be tied to this place where I feel like a hamster on a spinning wheel, never moving forward and back, just in one constant place.

The flyer announces the meeting is today, in Ms. Mueller’s classroom of course, but an hour after we usually meet. I know Holly has detention, so if there was ever a time I could go and take a glance at what this whole thing is about, it is today when she will be occupied for a definite set amount of time.

I watch the clock anxiously for the last two periods, bouncing my leg in anticipation, choosing to focus more on the seconds hand than the other two since it moves at such a faster pace. Holly isn’t in my last two classes; they are AP and she is sequestered into the more remedial ones where they mostly watch movies instead of getting lectures from young teachers who still feel they can make a difference and impact our lives.

Ms. Mueller is at the door, leaning against it with her arms crossed, her cuffs folded up at the elbow, creased slacks and pointed shiny ebony dress shoes, almost as if she was waiting for me. Now that I look back, I think she was.

“Well here she is, take a seat.” She gestures to the open door.

I look in and see every seat is filled mostly with kids from other schools and a couple familiar faces of girls I have barely exchanged two words with. I slide into a seat near the door, resolving that if I need to make a quick getaway, I will at least have an easy shot to the door. Ms. Mueller positions her chair in the doorway; it’s like she can sense what I am thinking and gives me another one of her pointed stares.

A young man with a lot of vigor and energy and radiant brilliantly white smile bounds up to the front of the room. I will learn almost immediately that his name is Craig when he finally stops bounding around and announces who he is, that he went to Bates College, and dives into a lengthy description of what Upward Bound really is. There are other individuals up there as well, all standing in a line with various colleges strewn on their tee shirts and sweatshirts: Colby-Sawyer, Keene State, UNH, Plymouth State, are some of the names I spot.

The program is a six-week summer session that focuses on preparing students for college and even offers opportunities to take college level classes that can be accredited. Six weeks on a college campus, right in my hometown, sleeping in the dorms, going to classes, they even offer sporting events and excursions to local spots for day trips. It sounded too good to be true.

I looked around the room and saw most of the kids had that same look as I did, clinging to every word. “Give me an escape, please. Tell me I won’t fall through the cracks and be left right here where I started.” Their faces all seemed to say.

Craig took the basic Q&A after his dialogue of wonderous academia enchantment and promise, everyone asking the same things I was wondering. I wouldn’t raise my hand and attract attention to myself, no way.

I saw her then, Jodie, sitting with her hand up to ask more about the sporting opportunities offered, field hockey specifically. She sat with her blonde hairspray scrunched hair, long eyelashes and friendly, wide open blue eyes. I was amazed at how drawn I was to her instantly, like she was the bright glinting Christmas tree of hope in contrast to Holly’s darkness and shadowing pessimistic outlook on life and humanity. There was also this underlying feeling emanating from her. She was wearing adidas snap pants and her field hockey jacket, I knew without knowing, I knew she had the same attraction to females as I did. When Craig answered her question to her satisfaction, Jodie thanked him, and I saw her sign the sheet to enroll and receive more information. I watched that sheet for the rest of the presentation and when we were wrapping up, Ms. Mueller caught me at the door, the sign sheet in her fingertips.

“You forgot something,” she stated, a black pen in her other hand, held out to me.

I stepped aside, opening my mouth to let out a string of excuses, all based in fear and simultaneously worried that if I failed at this camp, I would disappoint her.

“Don’t.” She held up her palm that held the pen. “Sign the paper.”

I realized in that moment; this was my chance. I was on the edge of something, a choice. I knew what I would lose, and I quickly sobered to the reality that what I stood to lose, didn’t outweigh what I had to gain.      

So I made the choice, to take a chance, put the pen to that blue paper, and signed my name, choosing to take that chance, choosing something so much bigger for myself than I could have ever imagined and taking the first step to end the cycle that would have ensnared me just as it did many others. It even would claim Holly in the end, leaving her to browning pine trees, closeted and affairs in secrecy, the shame and impending alcoholism, cursing from her couch just as her father did.

[tidustargaryen]

Honestly, do you think Jon was right to kill Thorne, Olly? Jon's fans will answer yes, and that's perfectly normal. They kill your favorite character, for reasons that make no sense to you being given that Jon did the right thing. Yes he was right to save the Freefolk, because we know what's behind the wall, we know what happens when the Night King kills Freefolk'people.

The question is: Do Thorne and Co. know it? Most do not believe in the WW, and it's totally normal, if I come to tell you that I saw the Night King in my garden will you believe me? Others know that there are of course strange things beyond the wall, others know that the WW exist but are not totally convinced of the threat until they see it in front of them, like Dany, like the Starks during the battle of Winterfell.

For them, Jon let pass savages, who will kill, plundering and rape the people of Westeros. The women of their families, the children, like Olly who saw his family being killed and then devouring.

You think Olly was wrong to kill Jon? After what he saw? After he witnessed the horrors made by Freefolk without knowing the threat or believing the existence of the WW?

For these traitors, because yes, they still betrayed their commanders, but they had circumstances to do so, but for them, Jon allowed the main enemy, against whom Night's Watch was created, according to what they believe, to pass the wall, to enter the lands of the kingdom to perpetuate the murders, the rapes and the pillages and they are right to believe it, being given that when Tormund and Ygritte have to pass the wall, they have destroyed at least one village.

It's the same for Jaime, he's killing the Mad King, he betrayed his oath, his king, but for good reason, because the Mad King was going to explode the city. He is still an Oathbreaker, but he did what was right for him, for us too. But not for others, for others, he was a Kingslayer, a man without honor.

Jon did what was right for him, for us, just as Thorne and Co. did what was right in their eyes.

It's the same for Mirri Maz Duur, I hate what she's actually doing because she did it against my favorite character, because of her, Dany is cursed, she lost her husband and child.

But, I know that she has also done what is right for her, her people have always suffered Dothraki violence, murder, looting, rape, slavery. She just wanted to save her people, they are very faithful, and the stallion who mount the world was a great danger to them.

I'm still pro Dany but I still know that Mirri had her reasons, reasons that make no sense for Dany, but Mirri did what was right for her people.

Dany, in burning her, did what is right for her betrayal, her husband and child'deaths.

As GRRM said, not everything is white or black, and what seems right to you may not be in someone else's eyes.

And it's the same for Jon and Dany.

That's why i write this. You say: The fans of Dany / Jonerys show their true colors, they do not like Jon but I return you this sentence ...

Jon / Jonerys fans, do you really like Dany? Or is she just a beautiful woman that Jon needs to empty his balls?

It's the same problem, from your point of view you're right, you think it's just what Jon did, I think it's not.

Jon did to Dany what Thorne and Co. did to him. He hated what his brothers did to him... but he did that to a woman he pretend to love ? (Yeah fuck you D&D or George if he make the same ending for Jonerys)

As I explained: Thorne and co did what they did because from their point of view, Jon had betrayed Night's Watch, they wanted to punish him and then I guess they would have done what was necessary to the Freefolk goes back beyond the wall.

Jon betrayed Dany because he wanted to save his family, yes he does not approve what she did to KL, but that's when Tyrion raised the threat against his sisters (especially Sansa because she revealing Jon's kinship, which led to Varys' assassination attempt on Dany) that Jon reconsidered the murder.

Was it fair? It's up to everyone. I'm sure for Dany, including her followers, it's Jon the traitor, Jon is wrong. For those who are on the side of Jon, he made the right choice.

Should he kill her? I think not. Do you seriously think he was not able to stop her without killing her? He could imprison her, he made the worst choice. It was not only his queen, it was his aunt, it was his lover. You tell me seriously that he had only one choice, and that was to kill her?

Jon made the wrong choice, the worst choice. And that's why people who love Dany, even if Dany is not necessarily their favorite character, can love Dany and favor Jon or another character, defending her. The people that Dany kill, those are the same people who died all along the show. Extras, people without names. I have never seen anyone complain about lost innocent lives. Do you think that the soldiers who died during the Battle of Blackwater with the Wildfire, Tyrion's plan, deserve it? 

They were soldiers, certainly, but some, or a lot, have no choice, they have to fight for their Lords, otherwise they are executed. They were innocent just like the people of KL. But I do not see anyone insulting Tyrion.

And this is one of many examples, it is always Dany who is wrongly accusing for her choices. You honestly think that if Tywin, Stannis, Cersei and even Jon, if they had dragons, you think they would not use them? Jon would certainly use them to take over Winterfell. And no one would be sorry. Everyone would have been happy. Because it was revenge. It was good to kill the Boltons, the Lannisters, the Freys.

But not the slavers? You think that's what slavers do is good ? They crucified 163 children .... children .... and people cry because these same slavers found themselves in turn crucify?

When Arya makes cooking recipes with humans, is that right?

That a father, despite all the horrors he has been able to do, deserves to eat his own children?

Yes ? So slavers also deserve to be crucified as they crucified the children.

But Dany was always blaming for the justice she has done. Why ? Because she is a woman? Because she's not a Stark? And that she is the daughter of the Mad King? Because a woman should not have so much power?

Daenerys did not deserve to die, otherwise, almost all the characters in the show deserve it.

She did not deserve to die from the hands of the man she loves, during a kiss, after promising her help to the North, she made the right choice, but she did not have to help .... If she had refused to help Jon, she would have been criticizing for being selfish, thinking only of the Iron Throne. But she was also criticizing for helping, no matter what she did, during that season she was losing.

I hate this season because the authors did everything to make people hate Daenerys, they wanted to force the viewer's mind by completely forgetting the logic of their story. The only goal, to make believe that Daenerys is crazy and evil.

I am proud to say that, for my part, they have not succeeded. They will not have succeeded in forcing my mind to think that Daenerys deserved this fate, after the crappy life she had, after the flight to the free cities, the famine, the violence of her brother, the rape, the slavery, the scorn of men, and all that she had to endure, she did not deserve to be killed by the man she loves.

Yes I am angry against Jon, and it is a human reaction, to kill this woman for a kiss while he had no choice! He did what Thorne and Co. did to him, he hated being betrayed for passing the Freefolk south of the wall, he hated the betrayal of his brothers, and he did the same thing to Dany?

But Dany deserves it for what she did?

I don’t care, I don’t care about the people of KL, the same people who applauded the death of Ned Stark, who licked the feet of the Lannisters, who spit on Yara, applauded Euron, who have, for all the trouble she did, spit and insult Cersei during the march of shame, she made bad choices to protect her family, but I think no one deserves to be humiliated in public as she was. Nobody.

Yes, of course, from my personal point of view, I will love that Dany does not kill innocent people, but she did not suffer enough? The rejection of people when she comes to help the North, she lost a dragon to help Jon, if she had let him die beyond the wall, you'd be happy? No. If she had let him die during the battle at Winterfell would you be happy? No. Dany save Jon, and what did he do? He rejected her, because she’s his aunt ? The incest in medieval times shocked anyone ... except between parents / children, brothers / sisters (Except in Targaryens family), and among the Targaryens and even among the Starks it is common, the grandparents of Jon were cousins ​​and on the side of the Targs, brothers and sisters .... Moreover, he slept with Dany while he knew that she was descended from a family where they were almost all incestuous, her parents are brother and sister. Sorry but I do not sleep with a guy whose whole family tree is incestuous, it repels me, because incest is wrong and disgusting in modern time, but not in medieval era. Jon did not mind, because in medieval times, for people it was normal. As normal as it is abnormal for us now. But once he knows that Dany is his aunt he is disgusted? It does not make sense.

But hey, let's say it's normal to be disgusted ...

This does not prevent him from going to see Dany, to comfort her, to defend her against the ingratitude of the Starks and the North, to console her, to tell her that he is sorry for the death of Missandei, Rhaegal, the dragon he was riding ... To be simply a support for her, not just a loyal subject who behaves like a robot ... He could have stopped her before she does that when she says "Let it be fear" ... It's still a big clue to what she's going to do: reign in fear. So do bad things, and he does not do anything to stop her? While later he does not hesitate to kill her?

It's not just the murder of Dany, it's all this series of events, all this bashing on her character that is disgusting, and while we were waiting for comfort in the scenes of Jonerys, we have that ? Jon rejected her? Jon killed her? 

We have the right to be angry, angry towards D & D, towards Varys, Tyrion, Sansa, the North the Starks and Jon.

But you do not understand that. Jon live north of the wall, time will heal his wounds, he may find another woman, will have children, since the bastard does not count with Freefolk, he will finally be happy, with friends, Ghost. Yes he is not King, so what? You think that's what he wanted? ShowJon? No, he would have been unhappy.

I loved Jonerys, I love Jon's story, he's a hero, I'm proud of what he did for Freefolk, because fuck xenophobia, but I can not forgive what he did to Dany. She is my favorite character, far ahead of everyone else, and I hate all those who have hurt her during this season, almost everyone except the dead on her side, even Drogon did not avenge her mother, even the Dothraki, while it is their customs to avenge their Khal / Khaleesi, even the Unsullied don’t. They jailed Jon, why Jon did not imprison Dany, why he did not give her a more dignified death than kill her during a kiss, by surprise, seriously, Jon show more respect during the execution of Thorne and Co., allowing them the last words, he gives them more honor than he gives to Dany ...

It is unfair !

But frankly, what if it was Jon? Frankly, if Jon had lost his family, Ghost, if his lover had rejected him, if he had lost everything, if he was totally alone, if this whole season was not a bashing of Dany but Jon and that Dany ended up killing him coldly during a kiss, would not you hate Dany?

[janiedean]

between jaime and theon, who do you think has the more well written redemption arc?

well, counting that imo both of them have arcs that are more identity than redemption in itself... if you want the short answer: theon, because while jaime’s deals with redemption... it’s more a reversed redemption arc, as in, it’s not about him redeeming himself, it’s about him realizing he’s always been a decent person all along. now, I had ranted about the subject already once so if you want the full version focused on jaime there’s the meta, but going into it again and comparing it with theon...

first thing we should probably take into account when comparing them: as someone else who sadly deleted since then, these books have exactly TWO instances of people doing a truly selfless heroic knightly grand gesture and those instances are a) theon saving jeynep, b) jaime going into the bear pit for brienne, which says a lot given that they’re perpetrated by two people that everyone in the narrative (and a lot of people outside) see as oathbreakers/assholes/people with no honor;

now, before we go back there... the thing is that while I think theon has an identity arc first and foremost (I mean he has chapter names corresponding to his identities let’s be real here), but it is more or less straight-up redemptive in the sense that it follows all the basic steps, ie theon does something wrong that he regrets more than just about anyone else at this point (betraying robb), realizes where he went wrong and what he wants from life and decides to be better than that. now mind that with theon it’s strongly interlinked with the identity arc, because he saves jeyne (his narrative redemptive moment) after realizing who he is and who he wants to be and what he wants from life, while his bad actions/betrayal were rooted in the fact that he had an identity crisis and was desperately trying to be what he thought his father wanted/didn’t want to deal with that situation/couldn’t admit to himself that he had with robb what he wanted from his family (acceptance/love/someone caring about him for himself/his personality, not his surname or his worth as a hostage or only surviving male son etc.). now, never mind the whole deal where (still imvho) theon and robb are foils in the sense that robb’s damning (narratively) moment was marrying jeynew while theon’s redemptive (narratively) was saving jeynep, he gains the narrative redemption the moment he does something selfless (ie saving jeyne as in someone no one gave a shit about) regardless of facing death because that’s what theon would have done (remember ‘theon greyjoy would have helped her but not reek?), when we can argue that his betrayal and previous fuck-ups weren’t exactly selfless but more desperate ways to assess who he thought he had to be. except that when he does that he fucks up, when he does what he really wanted to he does the heroic deed, therefore showing that he has the potential to be a more than decent person (which is most likely what robb saw in him), so his arc is both about finding his identity and redemption through accepting it;

so like... we can say that theon’s redemption arc, while tied to his identity arc, is pretty much straightforward;

now, the thing with jaime is: he doesn’t have a straight up redemption arc, because tbqh the only thing he’s done in these books that he should be redeemed from is pushing bran from the window (like guys the incest is nothing you need **redemption** from technically especially since it’s an abusive relationship where he’s not the abused part and I’ll die on that hill, killing aerys was just good sense and he wouldn’t have lied about tysha to tyrion if tywin hadn’t pushed him to do it by the way that’s abusive/manipulative as well and anything else is... about on par of what anyone else in these books has done). what jaime needs is to realize he’s his own person and not his sister and find his own way, and that realization comes through coming to terms with the fact that the person he is at the beginning of the books is not the person he wanted to be when he was young but he still has the potential to be that person and he actively strives for it and tries to do better, which.... isn’t exactly **redemption** clear-cut;

also the rest goes under the cut because this is long af sorry I have feelings on these two.

like, to make it extremely basic: jaime starts as a generally good person. 

now, before anyone harps at me, I’ll take a break from the checklist to say that it’s the text specifying it - he’s the only one in the family who genuinely loves tyrion when no one else would, as genna lannister put it

"Jaime," she said, tugging on his ear, "sweetling, I have known you since you were a babe at Joanna's breast. You smile like Gerion and fight like Tyg, and there's some of Kevan in you, else you would not wear that cloak . . . but Tyrion is Tywin's son, not you. I said so once to your father's face, and he would not speak to me for half a year. Men are such thundering great fools. Even the sort who come along once in a thousand years."

he has the good qualities from all the other lannister uncles/relatives but nothing of his father (I mean she mentions his smile, his strive for honor and being a good fighter, that’s... positive qualities), he’s put at the opposite, or I mean, as tyrion once put it:

My brother, Jaime, thirsts for battle, not for power. He's run from every chance he's had to rule.

and this when it was made clear in book one from tyrion’s povs that his opinion of jaime and cersei was wildly different, which would be hard if they were the same person. also:

That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Knight instead.

like. that’s jaime thinking about what happened to him since he joined the kingsguard. seems to me like he has a clue that something went wrong there.

anyway, back to the point: jaime starts as a good person. and a good person who wants to do good things in life, as in, becoming arthur dayne, ie a knight without stain or honor, and we all know that technically knighthood = positive things;

what happens is that since he goes into the kingsguard his picture gets destroyed - he does it on cersei’s advice and that’s what kickstarts their relationship for good (because the first time they have sex is when she proposes it to him and he accepts both for that and because he wants that kingsguard place in his romanticized vision of it, and we could talk for an hour of the fact that cersei actually had hoped to marry rhaegar just before, so if it actually had happened he’d have ended up without his name/inheritance/position and without cersei but nvm that), then he takes his job and finds out the king is out of his mind, that he can’t protect anyone he should (rhaella), has to watch people get burned alive/strangled/raped in front of him, copes by dissociating (which is like, basic ptsd trauma symptom in war veterans and he was fifteen-seventeen at that point), his picture of honor/valor/knighthood gets destroyed apparently beyond repair, he kills aerys to save everyone else after being put in an impossible position (because he was the only kingsguard in the entire castle which was a fairly stupid decision if you ask me) and then everyone decides he has shit for honor and sees him as the worst without bothering to ask and at that point he says fuck it and embraces it;

as in: he turns into the smiling knight (as he put it) by giving in to cynicism/nihilism and only worries about cersei/his family and says fuck it to his romantic notions even if he desperately wants to believe it and actually if you read his povs, going beyond the part where he’s too world-weary for his own good..... like honestly jaime lannister has the emotional maturity of a seventeen-year old which is pretty much showing that he was so traumatized by what went on with aerys that he basically never moved on from that and coped with it by a) not thinking about it, b) being angry about it when he did, c) embracing what others thought of him like ‘well you think I’m that bad fine have it your way’, which is also... basically teenage angst level but again: he hasn’t moved on from that;

(this while being into a codependent toxic af relationship with cersei that about a) annihilates his sense of identity because he thinks he’s the same as her when he’s all the contrary and acts the contrary, b) is not sexually healthy because being like that with one person only and those premises is not healthy I mean guys fuck’s sake this guy is older than thirty and couldn’t process getting hard when seeing a naked woman, it’s a problem, c) doesn’t help him get out of his issues but actually makes them worse)

now, back to the matter: at his lowest narrative point he pushes bran from the window, except thatThe man looked over at the woman. “The things I do for love,” he said with loathing. He gave Bran a shove.now, everyone ignores that bran himself perceives that jaime said that with loathing, so he knows he’s doing something extremely shitty, but he’s embracing it as necessary in order to save his hide and cersei’s and also because he’s embraced this concept that whatever he does people will think him honorless so what’s the damned point?

then, after two other massive trauma episodes ie being imprisoned for an entire year and losing his sword hand ie his livelihood, he has to face what he wants and who he wants to be because the fact that he doesn’t have the hand a) takes his fighting skills away from him, b) takes what makes him cersei’s exact mirror, c) forces him to rely on other people in the immediate aftermath and the fact that throughout this whole thing he’s stuck with brienne ie someone who reminds him of the person he wanted to be and who actually manages to uphold those ideals and keeps on doing it regardless gives him a wake-up call and makes him realize that he actually... did still want to be the person he used to be;

so like..... the arc jaime is having right now isn’t 1) I’m a bad person, 2) I did something heinous, 3) I realized that and I repented, 4) I’m trying to atone for it, which is the technical redemption arc as it is and which is more true for theon than for him. the arc jaime is having is 1) I was a good person, 2) I turned into someone I didn’t want to be after traumatic events, 3) I did something awful also as the result of years spent not dealing with it and I regret it, 4) I lost a part of me that was to me 99% of what I thought I was good for, 5) I realized that I turned into someone I didn’t want to be, 6) I’m trying to do better and be that person;

btw, before the argument comes like BUT HE NEVER REPENTED:

If truth be told, Jaime had come to rue heaving Brandon Stark out that window. Cersei had given him no end of grief afterward, when the boy refused to die. "He was seven, Jaime," she'd berated him. "Even if he understood what he saw, we should have been able to frighten him into silence.""I didn't think you'd want—"  (mind that here it’s even BEFORE the hand loss and his answer is that he acted based on what he thought she wanted, now I’m not saying she is to blame but that since he was acting thinking that he was doing what she wanted then he didn’t act doing what he would have done if it hadn’t factored into his decision)

"Well, he's beyond suspicion now." Robert's death still left a bitter taste in Jaime's mouth. It should have been me who killed him, not Cersei. "I only wished he'd died at my hands." When I still had two of them. "If I'd let kingslaying become a habit, as he liked to say, I could have taken you as my wife for all the world to see. I'm not ashamed of loving you, only of the things I've done to hide it. That boy at Winterfell . . .""Did I tell you to throw him out the window? If you'd gone hunting as I begged you, nothing would have happened. But no, you had to have me, you could not wait until we returned to the city."

I mean, he says he’s ashamed of it, not me. but like, that’s someone trying to do better than before and wanting to be a better person and going past his trauma (and actually he matures a lot in between asos and adwd so it’s obvious he’s somehow gotten unstuck from his aerys-related issues);

so like..... going back to the point: theon actually wants to actively do something to atone for his betrayal or wishes he could, and while saving jeyne is not what he probably thought as in ‘atoning for having betrayed robb’, it was narratively, because the pay-off is that he’s free of his abuser, knows who he is and who he wants to be and has solved his identity issues and can only go forward. on the other hand, jaime isn’t seeing his previous misdeeds as something he’s actively searching atonement for, and it’s less clear-cut because theon is moooreee or less a straight line, jaime’s having to deal with wanting to act in a certain way but circumstances throwing him back (ie he wants to try and have a relationship with tommen, cersei sends him away; he doesn’t want to break his vow to cat but has to go to riverrun anyway; he doesn’t want to raise arms against them so he bluffs with the trebuchet baby which makes everyone assume the worst of him and works because of that, but on the side he tries to do better see the deal with pia, sending brienne to look for sansa actively going against cersei’s orders, freeing tyrion AGAIN against cersei’s orders and telling him the truth about tysha and so on);

but at the end of it: 1. theon is a generally okay person who has postured a lot as a defense mechanism while being a hostage, starts with an identity crisis that leads to his wrong/bad actions that eventually contribute to causing robb’s death (admittedly I think that the red wedding was a go anyway bc it was tywin scheming it but theon fake killing robb’s brothers > robb sleeping with jeyne > perfect excuse for frey to defect) and to his own torture and abuse at ramsay’s hands, he has to work through his issues, deeply regrets his actions, realizes who he wants to be and eventually does something heroic the moment he comes to terms with it as his big narrative redemptive moment.2. jaime used to be a good person who after going through heavy trauma has stopped giving a fuck about his old dreams and embraced his worst sides also as a coping/defense mechanism [while being stuck in an abusive relationship that annihilates his sense of self], did something heinous at his lowest point, underwent even more trauma that forced him to reshape his entire life, met someone who showed him he could try to be the person he wanted to be/was before aerys, regrets his actions but doesn’t specifically look for redemption through them but actively searches it after (as in: he doesn’t want to be redeemed for trying to kill bran but he still upholds his vow to catelyn and tries to save at least her daughter by sending brienne ie the one true knight in the room after her, frees tyrion and comes clean with him etc) and tries to be a better person all along;

this also is symbolized by when they have their heroic moments as described above, because theon saving jeyne is at the end of his adwd arc, which works as a good bookend for his story and for his identity arc, while jaime jumping in the pit for brienne is in the middle of asos/in the middle of his asos arc, so while jeyne’s rescue is theon’s ending point/crowning achievement, jaime’s rescuing of brienne is his starting point. he doesn’t do it as the crowning achievement of his arc - hell, his arc isn’t even over within asos -, and while it’s not the first thing he does actively post-hand loss (he saves her from being raped and tells her about aerys), but it’s the first grand gesture he makes and he doesn’t even know why he does it but he feels like he has to and goes for it without even blinking twice, while theon does ponder it. like, theon’s redemption (narratively) has been earned and he knows he’s done that:

"Don't you call him that." Then the words came spilling out of Theon in a rush. He tried to tell her all of it, about Reek and the Dreadfort and Kyra and the keys, how Lord Ramsay never took anything but skin unless you begged for it. He told her how he'd saved the girl, leaping from the castle wall into the snow. "Weflew. Let Abel make a song of that, we flew." Then he had to say who Abel was, and talk about the washerwomen who weren't truly washerwomen. By then Theon knew how strange and incoherent all this sounded, yet somehow the words would not stop. He was cold and sick and tired... and weak, so weak, so very weak.

like.... theon says to let abel make a song of that. he knows he’s done something song-worthy. he’s 100% aware of it, post-fact. jaime really is not - he doesn’t think of his bear pit moment as a song-worthy moment (but brienne herself does:“Ser Jaime?” Even in soiled pink satin and torn lace, Brienne looked more like a man in a gown than a proper woman. “I am grateful, but … you were well away. Why come back?” vsthe griffins on his cloak rippled and blurred and changed to lions. Jaime! she wanted to cry, Jaime, come back for me!, but her tongue lay on the floor by the rose, drowned in blood.like, brienne ie the person he saved has definitely interiorized it as A Total Song-Worthy Moment)and the fact that he ended it with the whole I dreamed of you thing which is honestly not the least romantic thing he could have said doesn’t mean that he hasn’t... gone for it knowing what he was doing, differently from theon, and again: theon’s grand gesture is what seals his narrative redemption after he finds out who he really is, jaime’s is what kickstarts his own search for the person he used to be and that he wants to be again and that he actually forgot/thought he couldn’t be, which... is the exact contrary of male!cersei as he has thought until now.

so like... imo theon’s a straight-up redemption arc within an identity arc that deconstructs a bunch of tropes (traitor first and foremost), jaime is a reverse identity arc which includes redemptive themes but where the driving force isn’t his need for redemption, is the fact that he needs to reconcile the person he has the potential of being with a) growing the hell up, b) detaching himself from cersei, c) finding his sense of self, d) overcoming his trauma. and while theon has in common with him the part where he has to find himself and overcome trauma, I think that his arc is really more redemption-driven than jaime. theon wants to atone and finds out he can because of the person he actually is, jaime needs to realize he’s his own person and to do the things he wants to, not what others think of him.

so, to go back to my first point: for this whole heap of reasons, I think that as a redemption arc theon’s is better because it’s... a redemption arc in itself, while jaime’s is basically second coming of age with redemptive themes so I wouldn’t call it like that. I mean, I hate this whole discourse about IS HE ON A REDEMPTION ARC OR NOT bc to me he’s on a self-discovering arc that includes doing things that redeem his past actions, but he’s not actively looking for it in the usual terms. that said I need to specify a few things:

I personally think theon in himself is the best written and conceived character in these books but that jaime is right behind him and they’re technically martin’s greatest literary achievements as characters so it’s not like if I say that theon’s better written I think jaime’s is badly written, ALL THE CONTRARY;

I also think that theon beats jaime for originality and identity arc (not redemption bc jaime’s arc is not redemptive imo as stated), but jaime as a pov is tbqh really a gem when it comes to a) dealing with military-like ptsd symptoms, b) long-lasting emotional abuse, c) using sarcasm as a coping method/defense mechanism, d) lessons in How To Not Deal With Trauma (ie not thinking about it), because while ofc there are parts that are not realistic (ie: someone with jaime’s background should have had a nervous breakdown of horrid proportions a long time before the series started tbh) the fact that people tend to brush it off without realizing it just because he looks fine on the outside tbh says a lot about how people overlook trauma in men when they happen to not show it in the reader’s face/in someone’s face (no one can deny it with theon and sandor, because they show it physically, or tyrion because he talks about it and he’s aware of it, and whoever usually gives it to jaime only says ‘ah it starts after the hand loss). and it’s not george’s fault because imvho he wrote it perfectly given that jaime himself isn’t aware of it, but I just find it very telling;

I think both of them are really great narratives when it comes to exploring reaction to life-lasting trauma and abuse (except that for theon is straight-up physical, jaime is mental/emotional) and both arcs in that sense are written really well;

I also don’t know how fair it is to compare them for the same themes also because jaime’s a fairly reliable pov (sarcastic but reliable, he's not the lying to himself type) while theon’s wholly unreliable/has a journey towards reliable-ness more or less but idk if we’re there so that’s that to take into account too;

I also don’t think anyone in these books has a clear-cut anything arc because it’s all tropes deconstruction and nothing is ever played straight-up, so... again, that’s the opinion but I don’t think it says much as a whole because neither of them is a redemption arc that follows the tropes (I mean theon’s is straight-up but his kinda character - ie traitor who betrays the hero - is not usually given it, but I ranted about it in the above meta).

... this probably went way beyond your question, but here, have a rant.

[youcantunringthebell]

Welcome to my uterus. Here’s my story. Now get out.

I wasn’t an irresponsible teenager or a single twentysomething or a victim of rape or incest or carrying a nonviable fetus when I had my abortion.

Arguably, I’d never been in a better position for motherhood, except I was pretty old for it at 42. I was married to a good, responsible man and working a high-stress but high-paying job.

I say all this knowing it’s none of your business that I had an abortion or why. But I tell you because my right to have one is under attack, and you need to know that people YOU know had abortions, and they had their reasons, and there aren’t certain people whose right to an abortion should be protected and those whose shouldn’t. My uterus, my choice, to be made with my partner, my doctor, my pastor and whoever I wish to gather data from. Normally, I’d tell you to stay out of it, but this damn country right now is prompting me to invite you into it for a little storytime.

My birth control, taken in pill form and missed probably three times in 20 years, had failed me. Turns out St. John’s wort, which I took to deal with that stressful job, interferes with the pill. (You may want to make a note of that, fertile women.) When my period hadn’t arrived a week after its scheduled time and I felt nauseated every morning, I took a pregnancy test just to calm myself down, because I KNEW there was no way I’d be pregnant.

I sat in our tiny downstairs bathroom with my pee stick and my phone, counting the minutes, and there it was: the second stripe. I worked up another pee for the second test. Double stripes. A tiny pinprick-stabbing sensation started at the top of my head and traveled to my fingertips. A child was something I wanted for literally one day when I was turning 35 and afraid of missing out on an experience most of my friends were treasuring. On THAT occasion, I skipped the pill and had sex with my first husband, only to fearfully gulp down two pills the next morning and start watching the calendar. That’s how opposed to motherhood I’ve been. Why? Probably because I’m the oldest of five children and was helping Mommy by the time I started kindergarten. Or maybe I think my screwed-up lineage should end with me. It doesn’t matter. That’s who I am.

I felt panicky. Without ever leaving the toilet, I looked up abortion clinics on my phone, and scrolling through my whole two options, it finally occurred to me I should tell the other person involved in this situation. I pulled up my underwear and opened the bathroom door. JJ was playing a video game, which he paused when he saw my face.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m pregnant,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment. “Well, I told you my family’s sperm could overcome anything.”

I didn’t laugh. “We need to talk about what we’re going to do. I want to get an abortion. We also have gay friends who want a baby. Maybe we should consider that. But that would mean me going through a pregnancy and trying to figure out whether the baby would be healthy, and I don’t know if I could stand it.”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t watch people we know raising my child.”

“I saw online where I could have an abortion on Tuesday. It’s $600,” I said. 

We sat in silence until he turned the video game back on. “Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME? You’re going to PLAY A VIDEO GAME RIGHT NOW?” I yelled.

Later, I figured out that was his way of numbing himself before he had a panic attack.

I took a sick day that Tuesday, and the two of us drove to a clinic in South Nashville. The woman on the phone told us to leave everything in the car except a method of payment. We couldn’t carry anything in — for security reasons. No books. No phones. Just a credit card carried on a short walk from the car, listening to protesters across the street shouting, “We can help you save your baby! Don’t do this! Think about it!”

As though I hadn’t thought about it. As though I hadn’t spent 30 years of fertility trying to avoid it. As though I would cross the street to people who were making a hard day even harder, asking them to save me. 

A stern, beefy man at the door gave us the once-over and let us in. I wore a pencil skirt and a suit jacket, as though dressing up somehow put me more in control over the procedure. The shabby, dated waiting room was absolutely packed, every seat taken by women of all races, old, middle-aged and young, sitting next to their boyfriends and sisters and moms, watching a game show on a small, fuzzy TV or flipping through faded women’s magazines, finding summer looks and risotto recipes and not talking.

At that time, 7 years ago, Tennessee required fetal viability tests but not a 48-hour waiting period, so I had a vaginal ultrasound, but at least I didn’t have to leave and come back after it. The embryo was 5 weeks, the size of an apple seed. It was not life. It was a mass of cells with the potential for life, existing because of my life. It wasn’t a person any more than an apple seed is an apple tree. 

So I was allowed to join the other women having medical abortions -- as opposed to surgical abortions, the other option -- and they took us back in groups of six to watch the required video. I don’t remember much about the video, but I remember well the “what are you in for” conversation we had. One woman was married and pregnant by her husband, who would beat her if he found out she’d gotten pregnant again. She lied to him so she could be at the clinic that day. Another woman got pregnant by her boyfriend while her husband was out of the state on a six-month work assignment. Another said she was there for her third abortion. I couldn’t imagine having to come back to that place once I’d been.

I paid my $600, minus a $20 coupon from the clinic’s website. I had a physical exam and took the first pill of a two-pill process — once you take the first one, you MUST take the second to flush out the uterine wall or risk infection, the doctor warned. They told me to come back in a few weeks to be sure I’d totally passed the embryo.

By Thursday, the day I was supposed to take the follow-up pills, I was in a regular hospital for a deep vein thrombosis and bilateral pulmonary embolism that had actually started weeks before I knew I was pregnant -- manifesting as a persistent calf cramp and the occasional shortness of breath I attributed to being fat and stressed. Likely, the combination of birth control pills and being pregnant caused a clotting disorder. I didn’t know about it until, dressed for work and walking out the door, I couldn’t breathe while I noticed my leg turning purple.

My primary care doctor at the time was the sweetest human on the face of the planet, so when he met me in the emergency room, he didn’t bat an eye at the news I was in the middle of a medical abortion process. “Just take the second dose of pills, and we’ll keep an eye on you here, overnight,” he said. He told me about a dear friend who died on a treadmill from this very clotting disorder, and how relieved he was that I’d come in when I did. Not an ounce of judgment or blame.

I’m not sure how I would have dealt with a pregnancy and treatment for my clotting disorder at the same time. I didn’t have to find out, because Tennessee law allowed me to make that decision about my own medical treatment, and an abortion clinic was available to me. That very clinic is closed now, regulated out of business by men and their self-hating women enablers bent on turning America into a theocracy. Neither JJ nor I regret our decision, and we are grateful for the men and women who risked their safety so we could make it. Some of them have been gunned down in the street for their roles in helping women like me. 

I absolutely respect people who are pro-life, as long as they don’t attempt to regulate my medical care and they do demonstrate a love for life already in the world. (Hello, Tim Kaine.) To those who would take away my rights: Ending abortion access wouldn’t have made me carry that embryo. I’d have spent my last dime traveling for an abortion, and I had dimes to spend. Women who don’t will do like a friend from the Kingdom Hall’s daughter, who punctured her uterine wall with a wire hanger when we were teenagers.

So I’ve told my story. If you can, tell yours. If you can’t, I completely understand. And I mean you too, men. Now get out of my uterus.

P.S. Apropos of nothing: The closest I came to losing it over having my abortion was when my editor at the paper assigned me to go back and cover a special protest IN FRONT OF THE SAME CLINIC only a month or two later. It was a bunch of teenagers led by a priest who taught at a Catholic school. I kept my composure and did the job. A few months after THAT, the priest called me up wanting a story done about the fact he was releasing an album, so I met him at a Music Row studio and wrote up a religion column about him. I asked if we could use a clip of one of his songs to run online with the column. He said no, because “someone might steal my licks.” In my opinion, the licks were not stealable, and to my knowledge, few people ever heard them, never mind stole them.