dkmbookworm reblogged
dkmbookworm reblogged
Interviewer: Do you think it's possible to have a dragon and live a benevolent life? Or would you inherently get pulled into using that power?
George: That's an interesting question… It's often been said that the dragons are the nuclear weapons of my imaginary world. They are the most devastating weapon and they cause great destruction and massive loss of life… This is part of Dany's storyline in the original novels. Dany has three dragons, but that doesn't mean she can necessarily rule cities like Meereen, where she finds herself Queen, easily, without destroying them… I'm a baby boomer, born in 1948, and, growing up in the 50’s, there was always the spectre of nuclear war. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and Khrushchev and saber-rattling and there were all these books about the nuclear Holocaust or about Armageddon... We were worried about that, but these nuclear weapons have only been used twice in all of history on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Afterwards there was a long period where only America had nuclear weapons, nobody else in the world had them, and there were always these concerns about “well, we can win any of these wars”. MacArthur and some other people wanted to use the atomic bomb in the Korean War. When China invaded, the thought process was “why are we letting them do that? We could win the war!”… Barry Goldwater, in the 1964 election, also thought “Why are we fighting this war in Vietnam? Let's just drop a nuke on Hanoi.”… But we never did it, we always refrained. We were the dragon riders that would only use our dragons to intimidate… but now as more and more countries have that, I think the danger becomes greater and greater and someday someone is going to use them. Right now the danger is very high, if Putin starts losing the war in Ukraine is he going to resort to nukes? And then the question becomes “if Putin does resort to nukes, does America unleash it’s dragons or do we not and let him get away with it?”. These are profound questions, we could debate this for an hour with a panel of political scientists, but there’s not an easy answer.
- George R.R. Martin, A Conversation with George R R Martin
#stealing tags#the interview is from october 2022 and is so good for much more than this bit#but this bit is very interesting indeed#basically the point is that when grrm compares dragons to nukes he's not saying it just because of their destructiveness#and status as an ultimate weapon. nor does it make ruling easier when you have dragons/nukes -#it's actually harder *because* your primary weapon is so destructive that you have to hold back and not actually use them#the main power is in the threat they present to your enemies. they were used in battle once before. you do not want to see them used again#complicated when enemies both have this ultimate weapon -- thus the cold war (where the sides refrained) and the dance (where they did not)#it's an interesting metaphor and yeah it would be much on grrm's mind lately#asoiaf#asoiaf meta#daenerys targaryen#dragons
dkmbookworm reblogged
"he was never unfaithful to robert, was he?" - jaime, acok
ha. ha ha ha. the irony of this line is incredible. what's so striking to me is how one dimensional the realm's understanding of eddard stark as an honourable man is - honour itself is an incredibly complicated and unattainable ideal in asoiaf and i think ned as the stereotypical emblem of it encompasses many of the reasons why. because whilst he absolutely does consider acting in a conventionally honourable way important, he always prioritises those he loves. he defended cat's actions as his own without a second thought when she arrested tyrion. his main priority in king's landing is to see his daughters safe, not to secure the succession. lyanna is the prime example: jon's existence is not the result of the lapse of honourable ned stark, it was honourable ned stark choosing his love for his sister over his duty to his king. that and his personal ethical belief that the political murder of a child is never morally acceptable.
no one in the realm has the insight into his personality we get in the first book. none of his children, vitally, understand that he would always prioritise their safety over any honourable scruples. all of the starklings question what their honourable father would think of their actions - killing in self-defence, marrying jeyne westerling, sleeping with ygritte to name a few examples - without recognising that ned's true first priority was always his family's safety.
in fact, he betrayed robert far more than he ever betrayed cat and he would have betrayed honour for his family's safety every time.
dkmbookworm reblogged
Some book one Arya doodles
dkmbookworm reblogged
Chemtrails over the Country Club by Lana Del Ray
dkmbookworm reblogged
there's been a lot of obnoxious pop history trends in the last few years but the bizarre total sanitization of vikings/pirates has to be one of the worst. like sorry to the queer neopagan anarchy symbol in bio twitter user community but like. are you aware both vikings and pirates enthusiastically traded slaves
and to be clear i'm not calling people out for liking the aesthetic or being into historical fiction or whatever i'm specifically talking about the genre of post that's like "it's crazy how most people think vikings were violent raiders when they were actually antiracist feminist sheep herders living in free love communes and operating dog shelters"
I think this comes from an inability people have to, like, be moderate on things.
The initial failure to be moderate comes the traditional received view, e.g. "the Vikings were all horrible barbarians who did nothing but raid and pillage and be evil". Then someone comes along and, rightly, tries to question this view. They say "hey, the Vikings were just people like you and me. Maybe they even did some things that are worth admiring, you know. Maybe we've been treating them unfairly." And this catches on, especially as the original power dynamics that motivated the received view start to fade (slander of Vikings has a lot less motivation when the Catholic church stops being so politically relevant). And people are often inclined to use these other, traditionally maligned societies as foils to critique their own society. And so it becomes widely accepted among the sort of people who consider themselves smart and thoughtful that the Vikings really weren't as bad as they've been made out to be; they've been unfairly maligned. They were just people, like you and me.
Except here comes the second failure to be moderate, when the view slowly morphs into "the Vikings were right about everything, Viking society was so much better than modern society" etc. And that's where you get these twitter leftists, who are somewhere down the second-failure-to-be-moderate telephone line.
Anyway, I'm responding to this post, and respond to many like it, in an attempt to preempt what I have often seen as an inchoate third failure to be moderate, a return to the received narrative that the Vikings just totally sucked, man. No, no! I'm not accusing OP of this specifically (I don't think they're guilty of it), but it is... in the air, around these parts.
Moderation! Moderation! Nuance! Be careful lest you become what you sought to destroy!
(Tags from @tarantula-hawk-wasp :
#tbh this is the hardest part about teaching any type of history bc people want to either valorize or vilify and like no!! #seek truth not goodness in the past #no society is free of sin and no society is free of merit #but that shouldn't be your goal in learning about them - it should be understanding)
yes
#history#the way my friend and I#have discussed this very thing#so many times#people far too often want to create a perfect narrative in history#where there are easy to define villains and hero’s#and everything is wrapped up in a perfect bow#or how it’s used as a ‘gotcha’ towards people#with a half baked truth about the past
dkmbookworm reblogged
Friends & Foes
Another quick drawing for Sansa Week, this time featuring Margaery and Cersei :-) I love the dynamic Sansa has with both of these women, I think they fit perfectly for today's prompt!
dkmbookworm reblogged
from chapter 2 of my Chaggie fic The First Guest
Design notes:
Targaryens - wanted to give them a bit more of an alien appearance so emphasizes this with wider set eyes and for the men longer, more narrow foreheads. + they have extremely light, near nonexistent eyebrows
Dany: she overall has a sweeter softer look. Her hair is in a bob from growing it out after it was burned. Her skin is the darkest from all the time she has spent in the sun and out in the dessert
Viserys: I wanted him to look like a weaker, petulant version of rhaegar, the older brother he never new. His hair is more bedraggled and while he tries to imitate him, he has more of Dany’s softer appearance with some added sharpness with a longer face.
Rhaegar: he is a figure who is both a fighter and an artist so I wanted to get across him having a more introverted look but he still looks strong. He has the classic aquiline nose of the Targaryens and a cleft chin and they are the only parts of his appearance that show up in Jon
Lannisters: I really wanted to get across the appearance of a lion, so this was done by giving them broader, almost squareish features and wide, tilted eyes. And putting their curly hair into the shape of a mane
Jaime and cersei: as the book describes, the two of them are near identical so it was merely a matter of slightly altering the same face. Jaime has a more angled jaw than cersei and a wider neck. Noses are broader and sloped, meant to look like the nose of a lion
Tyrion: obviously the oddball of the group, only simulators are the curls, square face, and the shape of his eyes. Like the books say, he has heterochromia with one black eye and one green eye. He has random pieces of black hair. And he has a large sloped forehead and “the squashed in face of a brute”.
General design notes: sansa and arya largely take after their most common comparisons in lyanna and catelyn but with some minor influences from their other family members
Arya: long face and wild brown hair of the starks, however she has her mothers eye shape, chin, and freckles. She has the most between her mom and sister because she spends so much time outside. Hair is a bit more voluminous than Lyanna’s because she has a bit more of a curly/wavy texture with Cat’s side and her lips are a little fuller as well
Sansa: she has her mom’s face shape and her father’s jawline and aunt/grandmother’s nose. I imagine her with a hooked, almost beak like nose like a birds. She has the lightest amount of freckles because she’s largely indoors most during the series. She has wider, rounder eyes that resemble her aunt Lysa’s. Meant to parallel how she has a more dreamy, romantic disposition and view like her when she was young.
Jon: overall I wanted to show how he took after Ned so he has more of Ned’s face shape but his father’s cleft chin (showing that one next) and his aquiline nose. Hair is also much messier like Lyanna’s and he has her smile and lips. I wanted to parallel the way that Arya takes after her aunt, so likewise Jon resembles his uncle
dkmbookworm reblogged
Day 2: Court life
My contribution for Sansa Stark week this year. This is Sansa in King's Landing. I hope you all get what I tried to convey with this illustration 🙏 Also hope you like the piece in general ✨
dkmbookworm reblogged
generoussaladruins
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dkmbookworm reblogged
Anonymous asked:
wait which version of sansa is fanon sansa is?? i feel like the sansa of sansa stans has a lot of conflicting traits. is she ice queen sansa, who is all politics and cunning? or is she disney princess sansa, who is kind and the perfect lady?
I don’t know I hate all of them.
I hate showborn ice queen Sansa who decries her father and brother as honorable but stupid, I hate perfect impeccable princess Sansa who is held up as some sort of bullshit ideal model of feminine power as opposed to her sister, I hate shipping bait Sansa who is only defined by whatever dude the author is throwing her at.
That is not Sansa. Sansa is sensitive and spiteful and kind and ignorant and artistic and narrow minded and imaginative and brave and insecure and angry and observant and polite and vicious and clever and funny and wild.
She is not your model of ‘actually, going against prescribed gender roles is bad and you should feel ashamed!’ she is not some generic girl boss ice queen destined to live and die alone, she is not the walking talking conscience of any man, she is not the pure heroine to Dany’s villain or the cruel villain to Arya’s hero.
Sansa is someone who grew up chasing her sister around Winterfell and having snowball fights, who taught Jon how to compliment a girl, who played games of pretend with Robb, who comforted Bran when he was afraid of the dark.
She is desperate to please and anxious and hates change and is easily overwhelmed and she’s the introvert to her sister’s extrovert and she can say the meanest things but also is willing to put herself on the line for a perfect stranger like Dontos.
She is every bit Ned’s daughter right down to how she responds to trauma and she is much tougher and fiercer than her stans or her detractors give her credit for. She smuggles knives to secret meetings after dark and runs when someone tries to force her into marriage.
She evades guards and sneaks out of her rooms countless times. She remembers little details and she can think on the fly. She stands up to Sandor and calls out the men who harm her at Joffrey’s command. She learns to love riding and hawking with Margaery and in the Vale she befriends two outcast girls, Mya and Myranda, she’d never have even considered associating with back at Winterfell.
She lets her cousin sleep in her bed at night even though he wets himself and tries to suckle at her. She comforts him when he is sad and sick and keeps him calm during a perilous mountain climb. She talks circles around Harry Hardyng and runs around through the castle with Myranda just to blow off some steam.
Anyways I love Sansa because she’s a flawed human character who I can relate to, not because she furthers some shipping agenda or my specific brand of girl power.
#sansa stark#asoiaf#asoiaf meta#anti got#It’s wild going back and watching the scenes of Sansa in kings landing#and how much of her agency is gone#by trying to smooth over her character and make her easier to swallow#and you can feel how many actions she takes have that nuance stripped#like all the praying she does in the gods wood#in the book it’s a guise to plan her escape with dontos#in the show she only goes there so people don’t talk to her
dkmbookworm reblogged
Honestly noah fence or disrespect or anything but why do people care about Elia so much on this site?? Her main purpose in the book is to be a sad character and that’s literally it. I don’t even get why people are upset about the annulment cause we all know D&D don’t understand or care about the source material and this would never happen in asoiaf. But honestly theres a strange amount of stans for this specific character with almost no real purpose in plot.
wildfirecersei
I’m not sure that’s all she is.
admittedly, the reason I get so defensive about her has a lot to do with the fact that the way she’s treated is undeniably racialized, both within and without the narrative.
as a woman of color, it does get grating.
at king’s landing, she was disrespected and isolated from all sides, by her husband and by the court. in fandom spaces, she’s too often reduced to a stereotype, the accepting dornish scorned wife who was totes okay with her husband cheating!! of course she was!! I mean, he humiliated her, left her all alone in a court in which she wasn’t safe, she ended up defiled, raped and murdered but she was just peachy!! after all, she could have been a better wife!! if only she had been more like lyanna!!
it’s a very common sort of nonsense people sprout about her (even in the text, just look at barristan’s povs) and for those of us who care deeply for the martells, there’s bound to be a huge divide between that false perception and what we know for certain about her, which then cause people to defend her.
still, there’s so much more to her than just being a sad character who deserved better, even though that fact may warrant love on its own imo.
elia may not seem overtly relevant but she’s still a disabled woman of color, whose memory is fiercely guarded by her kins, someone who’s constantly referred to as kind, dignified and compassionate. the love oberyn and doran feel for her, their grief is what is driving their actions in the books, which is definitely moving.
there’s also the way her death is framed, which is something I’m more than willing to critize but the effect can’t be denied. her death was violent and needlessly barbaric. it caused a rift between robert and ned, it’s always talked about with disapproval and regret and it marked the moment when tywin’s gratuitous ruthlessness finally antagonized ned to all lannisters, an antagonism at the root of the events in agot. she’s at the heart of the tragedy that started it all, a tragedy that still drives our story forward years and years after the fact.
moreover, her plight, the fact that she was forgotten, brushed aside in life while her loved ones rage in her name is very much thematically coherent with asoiaf as a whole, as a series that champion the value of life, of legacies and the importance of striving for justice, even if it feels hopeless.
when oberyn is shouting at the mountain to say elia’s name, he’s challenging the lannisters and their willingness to destroy and erase all that oppose them, that will liken them to the others so strikingly. he’s standing for life, for a woman that should have lived but never did and for that waste to be acknowledged and respected.
if the point isn’t to root for that, to stand for that and defend her name too, then I don’t know what it is.
These last couple of paragraphs deserve a standing o, honestly.
There is a tendency to minimize Oberyn’s fight with the Mountain to be solely about Oberyn’s death as if that was the point of the scene, which was not at all aided by the show’s “he got sloppy and that’s why he died”. But death is never the point of any story in ASOIAF. Everyone is going to die eventually, every character is going to end up dead at one point or another. But it’s not their death that defines them. It’s what they died for that is important. It’s what they lived for. “Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths”; the choices they made, how they lived their lives, what they stood for, is what matters and what defines them. That has always been the point from the very first book when Ned’s execution did not define him. Ned Stark’s significance does not boil down to the moment he was flung down on the executioner’s block, but to the legacy he left behind; how he sacrificed himself to spare his daughter’s life and how the memory of this kind and decent man whose first priority was to defend the young and the innocent reverberated so much through the entire North that the Northmen are willing to die in his name. Gosh, this has been the point starting from the AGoT prologue when Waymar Royce bravely stood against a foe out of a legend and chose to fight even when he knew fully well that he had no chance in winning. That choice is what defines Waymar Royce, not that he met his end on the sword of an Other but that he stood against an Other. The abyss stared him in the face and he defiantly told it: “dance with me then”.
So it really rubs me the wrong way when the significance of that scene between Oberyn and the Mountain gets minimized to be about Oberyn’s death. NO. Good god, no. That scene was Oberyn putting the Lannisters and Gregor on trial in the only way that was afforded to him. He was holding them accountable for a crime they have evaded justice for. This was not just vengeance, it was not just about killing Gregor for killing Elia and Aegon. It was about justice, about publicly announcing that he was fighting in Elia Martell’s name, about demonstrating that he was trying to serve justice by making that trial of combat a trial for Gregor, and by extension the Lannisters who named him champion. Oberyn could have killed Gregor right away, but that did not serve his purpose. Oberyn put Gregor on trial and waited for his confession so that his death would be publicly recognized as justice for Elia.
That was the point of that scene, not that Oberyn died in it but that he ultimately extracted a confession from Gregor and a public condemnation of the Lannister\Baratheon regime even as he died. But more importantly, that trial was Oberyn forcing the characters and the readership alike to acknowledge Elia Martell, not as the mother of Rhaenys and Aegon, not as Rhaegar’s wife, not even as Oberyn’s and Doran’s sister but as a person whose suffering and death and very existence was brushed aside as if if didn’t matter, as if she did not matter. Oberyn was challenging the tendency to treat Elia as an afterthought whether in-universe or IRL. He was challenging the narrative itself for treating her as a plot device. Say her name. Acknowledge her personhood and importance as a human being. Don’t be the Lannisters.
dkmbookworm reblogged
This is very urgent so please share however you can. Islam, the mom of this family in Gaza, is eight months pregnant but has a fractured pelvis and therefore cannot give birth safely. She needs a C-section, but the conditions to perform those no longer exist in Gaza. For months women in Gaza have been getting C-sections without anaesthesia. We need to get her out before she goes into labor, which could happen at any time now. We're halfway through the goal and even if everyone just chipped in 5-10 dollars it adds up quick!
dkmbookworm reblogged
In case you lost it - a link to the eSIM donation guide. Even if you feel sick and powerless, you can at least do this. And even if you really, really can't donate, you can always at least share this and remind others.
the lowest tier, which costs 9 dollars, offers a week of connection while the very next, 16 dollars, will provide a full month of contact with the world to someone who desperately needs it. this is not some idle step. an entire month is a huge length of time for people who are displaced, terrified, and isolated.