the-shadow-asassin

[the-shadow-asassin]

[the-shadow-asassin]

Evening, when this is posted I probably wont be here because let’s face it, I’m British, it’s almost the new year; I’m out binge drinking and shoving the Union Jack so far up my arse I’ll be farting “Rule Britannia” for a millennia. I’ve been using this account for five years and somehow along the line, I’ve been following the majority of you toss-pot international knobheads for longer than most (Wehey, lads! Cheeky Nandos at mine, yeah?). For a personal account full of incoherent/poetic anger marathons, I’d say 1K followers ain’t that bad. Regardless, this is just a bloody shout out for all of you.

@sscagnetti @co0t @twopiningidiots @cutepiglet @euryalus @midnight-and-daydreams @ayumiko @the-shadow-asassin @tobiohchan @sunshinekillua @xmamu @bluefreakingskies @noiseycrow @elricity @petitecretine @edenerys @sxa-pride @kenmacchis @yamazekis @adziedoodle @roymaes @georgeace @moosemum @escarletes @v-a-t-s @komaedas @tsukis @tachibana–chan @mazusu @aetulias @yushiyuki

Anyway, yeah. Some of you know me personally and some of you don’t. Either way, anyone reading this should follow them for awesome content, art, personalities and the annoyance a certain few have caused me. 

[the-shadow-asassin]

When you get hacked...

[the-shadow-asassin]

whenever you talk to a family member (parents or grandparents) about how badly you have have fucked up, why do they always have a go? it isn’t like I don’t know that I've fucked up, I don’t need you telling me I have fucked up, I’m telling you because I already know that i have.

So yeah, please just nod along with me and acknowledge it, I don’t need the lecture

[the-shadow-asassin]

*missed phone call from work*

me: ugh if they’re asking me to come in I’m not gonna do it 

*phone call from work*

manager: hey can you come in today

me: yeah, sure I’ll be there in a bit

[the-shadow-asassin]

Hi! What do you think is the point of the whole R+L=J revelation (aside Jon's feelings)? Given that being a Targaryen is not necessary in order to ride a dragon I don't think it will change anything. Thank you!

Thanks for the question, Anon.

Well, if the only point of Jon’s arc was to ride a dragon, no, it wouldn’t change anything. But surely that’s not all there is to Jon, right?

Number one I think, a careful distinction needs to be drawn. Jon isn’t a Targaryen. Jon is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna. There’s a key difference there. Jon won’t do what he does heroically because he’s a Targaryen and only Targaryens can be heroes, that’s silly. Hell, I doubt if, by the end of the story, more than a handful of characters are even aware Jon was the son of Rhaegar. His story is not a House Targaryen story (in contrast to that of Daenerys, which is very very much a Targaryen story): he’s not going to claim the Iron Throne, he’s not going to rule the Seven Kingdoms, he’s not going to fly with a dragon banner fluttering beside him and his breastplate decorated with a ruby three-headed dragon.

He is, however, a child of prophecy, and that’s my second point. Jon is an in-your-face classic hero, right - the one who starts as a down-on-his-luck boy, roses in this ancient institution, and becomes an obvious leader against a major supernatural threat. He’s pointedly and immediately sympathetic from the first. So obviously, a good classic hero needs this miraculous birth story, right (something something gods and wonders always appear), and he has one! Rhaegar, the lost silver prince, last Prince of Dragonstone, handsome and chivalric, this guy who was apparently great at everything; Lyanna Stark, beautiful and brave, willing to stand up for the defenseless, a scion of that most cherished family, House Stark. 

But then you realize - Jon doesn’t get a power-up from that parentage. Instead, everything is totally fucked up about that. Rhaegar broke every chivalric and dynastic code by absconding with Lyanna - daughter of the Lord Paramount of the North, sister of his future Lord of Winterfell, the betrothed of his Lord Paramount of the Stormlands. Given his melancholic personality, I don’t think he ever really loved her; rather, he needed a mother for his third head, and saw that she fit his prophetic designs. I tend to doubt whether Lyanna was actually happy in the tower of joy; she might have been pleased to run away with the handsome crown prince as though her life was a daring song, but would she really have been happy living for several weeks and months after with a gloomy man, in a faraway lonely little keep in Dorne, never again seeing her beloved brothers? That’s really sad.

So instead of being the ideal prince, the son of the great Rhaegar and the lovely Lyanna, Jon is the prophecy-conceived child of a prophecy-obsessed prince who was willing to throw his realm into war to fulfill what he thought was necessary and his captive teenage vessel. Jon only exists because Rhaegar thought his conception would fulfill a prophetic vision (much in the same way Rhaegar himself was conceived). It’s glorious and horrible all at once: sure, Stark and Targaryen blood make a potent combo, but fuck man, you got it in the worst possible way. Poor Jon has lived his life in a crisis of identity, and now he finally gets the answer to his biggest personal question: his father is the man whose actions led to the death of Rickard and Brandon and was the villain of the popular telling of Robert’s Rebellion, his mother was the woman that prince ran away with, about whom his adoptive father rarely talked because the memory of her made him so sad, and his adoptive father spent his entire marriage hiding the truth of Jon’s parentage from his beloved wife because he couldn’t risk his best friend murdering baby Jon for the accident of his birth. 

Poor Jon. He’s going to be devastated by that news. And that revelation is going to become a question for the remainder of his arc - am I a hero because I choose to be a hero, or because I was destined to be a hero from before I was born? And that’s the question of ASOIAF, isn’t it? So much of the story is hammering in that being a hero isn’t this glorious destiny for a chosen few. Being a hero sucks. And it’s hard. And you do it even though you might never get recognized for doing it. 

So I don’t see R+L=J as a plot device, per se; rather, it’s, as @poorquentyn says, is the ultimate expression of that theme. It’s a way to demonstrate that heart in conflict, the key axis of GRRM’s story. Are you defined by what came before you, or are you what you choose to be? Are you the hero because it’s been foretold you would be the hero and you’re just another gear in the machine of prophecy, or are you someone who chooses to act in the hope of spring against the cold and darkness of winter? Or, alternately, are you able to escape what came before you, or are you bound to repeat the madness and blunders of those who came before you? Are all people, as Tyrion thinks, “puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us”, or are we our own characters with destinies we make for ourselves - good or ill?

The Queen Regent (NFriel)

[the-shadow-asassin]

[the-shadow-asassin]

The last 5/6 chapters of Tokyo ghoul have been bombshell after bombshell, it's mildly worrying....

[the-shadow-asassin]

There are so many different things that make Tokyo ghoul brilliant and worth watching. One of the reasons why it is so good is because ishida, is not scared to travel the grey zone, take the last couple of chapters for example. Torso, a guy that is a complete creep, but has a sympathetic backstory, then we learn that tooru, a guy who who you already feel sorry for because of his own story. Then you found out that he slaughtered his whole family. Him doing it because they abused him, does not justify him killing them. Just Like Torso killing his father is not justifiable because he was abused as well. Lawfully anyway. My own personal opinion is something different. I am not defending either of them.

[the-shadow-asassin]

At this point we can safely claim Yomo and Touka as the only sane people in the whole manga

[the-shadow-asassin]

Fucking hell, compare these two radio systems, how the fucking hell am I meant to compare these two radio systems if I can't find fuck all. Compare BOWMAN and fucking Tetra... Yeah fucking great.

[the-shadow-asassin]

[the-shadow-asassin]

interviewer: would you say you are motivated to succeed

me: no

me: but i AM terrified of failure

[the-shadow-asassin]

Me when Bae says she’s alone in her dorm

[the-shadow-asassin]

Tokyo ghoul re 72

Shit is going down man. Kaneki is fighting Arima, Touka knows what Kaneki’s end game is and she completely stops it with a sentence. She knows he wants to die, he knows that he wants to die, but he wants to die in style. so when she says, “see you later” it’s either completely stopping him, because even through he wants to die, he wants to die knowing that everyone he loves is happy, Touka can’t be happy if he doesn’t meet up later. Or… It could be setting him up in style, because let’s be honest here, what better way for a mc to die when he is meant to be meeting someone, after all, it’s tragic (Tokyo ghoul to a T) and it’s a showdown. What more could he ask for. Another thing that is obvious, it’s a death flag, but for who? Is Touka, or is it Kaneki. This is ishida we are talking about after all…

[the-shadow-asassin]

You can literally see the support they lean on rotting away through the chapters covers  —

chapter 1

chapter 63

chapter 120

re: chapter 72 

I originally thought the first manga cover was too fair back to be unrelated, but you can see in the the first cover the Black Goat’s Egg in his hand, and in the two later cover it lying by Touka and Ken, SHE’S EVEN LOOKING AT IT, I never realised this stuff. 

This symbolism right from the very first chapter is amazing, damn Ishida.

[the-shadow-asassin]

this is honestly the best thing i’ve made