DREAMLAND @bwaldorf - Tumblr Blog

Posts

bwaldorf

Visit Original Link

harrisonforded

James Norton as Nick Pearce Ex-Husbands (2023) | dir. Noah Pritzker

#james norton #ex-husbands #movies

y2kbro

#my scene

goldcrescent

Gwayne’s little speech was not a genuine offer btw, he was pretty clearly bullshitting Criston to try to talk him out of what they both know is a suicide mission. He’s freaking the fuck out and taking the information Criston gave him last episode (Criston’s father lost everything when the lord they served lost favor) to try to offer a solution (I am highborn and I will make sure you have a place, see? No need to kill us both). There was a stilted tone and a grimace when Gwayne said “A knight of your…stature would be….most welcome” and Criston caught it immediately because he’s lived in king’s landing for 20 years and besides the fact that he knows goddamn well when someone’s trying to talk him down because this isn’t even the first time a Hightower tried to talk him down from killing himself, what exactly did living get him then? What would it get him now, a few more months of life being a guard dog at the whims of a different jackass? To Ormund, who Gwayne has just told him is a miserable cunt? No, he’s delayed his death for long enough and he will not be choosing a clean death, and it can’t be an easy one — those are too easily avoidable. No one will be coming to take the blade from his throat this time, he will make sure of it.

goldcrescent

bye I paused the episode and wrote this whole thing out only for Criston to just say that himself in the episode a couple of minutes later I coulda just let him finish

goldcrescent

putting these two posts together because I’m having a hard time adding to the other one but in addition to this: I do think Criston fully believed the men he allowed to desert were just walking into another dead end but he chose to let them go and live a few more days, months, weeks, what does it really matter? He can’t make them accept it, they’ll find out soon enough. Surely they have to, there’s never been any other choice for anyone. It’s out of his hands. It was always out of his hands, he’s just a cog in the war machine. He is the hand cranking the war machine. It’s been in his hands for years. He is the king’s hand. His hands are around his neck. It’s out of his hands.

Criston also lost the last remaining shred of his will to live when he thought Aemond, the boy he helped Alicent raise who turned out so much like him (is there any point in being ashamed?), abandoned him like a lowly servant instead of the only father he’d ever had (or is he already dead?). Gwayne meanwhile gets to go home to his own surrogate son, Aemond’s little brother who is so much like Gwayne. Did Criston know that? Did they ever talk about the boys they raised to be so unlike their real father, who could not be bothered to so much as look at them? Did Criston resent him for being a real part of the family unit, not the attack dog, not the servant, not the shameful secret but someone who can publicly kiss Alicent’s hand and be asked after by the boy he helped raise? (She has not given him leave to speak her name). Here is another Hightower offering him a warm place at the foot of their high seat, with that smiling little grimace that he recognizes as them keeping their word for their own honor’s sake and because they think it’s the right thing but not because they want him around as a real person. Maybe he hates them and he forgives them in the same breath.

#PREVVV #such a good post 🥹🩷#criston cole #hotd #asoiaf #text