Elli, she/they, 30s, Russian, Moscow. Non-native English speaker (sorry). Shy, incurable lurker. Random fandoms.
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Ask me Stuff! Anything goes.
# НЕТ ВОЙНЕ (a very good tumblr blog on the war in Ukraine)
something i think would make a lot of historical romance more accurate & interesting is the realization that people are less likely to totally disparage the ethical & social values of their time than they are to use those values to defend whatever it is they want to do
a woman is less likely to go "it's stupid that women are expected to be modest" than she is to go "there is nothing immodest about a woman going out without a chaperone" or even "i can go out without a chaperone because i am so modest"
people also seem less likely to see someone's shitty behavior as reflecting a shitty society than they are to view that behavior as being out of accordance with that society - e.g. a father who's excessively controlling of his daughters' marriage prospects isn't, in her mind, acting that way because he lives in a repressive patriarchal culture, but is actually outdated in his values - his cruelty is unmodern, ungentlemanly, stuck in the past, barbaric. we might think he's upholding the values of his culture perfectly, but the people around him who took issue with his behavior probably wouldn't see it that way
Funny story, I went looking for this cursed fucking video recently and it seems like the cw scrubbed it from YouTube (curious, because videos from the same campaign for other shows are still up). However, they forgot to scrub it from Facebook, so you can enjoy it in it's all dogshit glory (image quality is whatever some weird Facebook video Downloader gave me)
well then please explain to me what got ruben going so that he put alby in a coma. if it wasn't the suspicion that niall was gay and into alby. i rewatched that scene again and it doesn't look like alby's coming onto either of them and not even ruben could believably take it that way. ruben you canNOT be chill about homosexuality. explainnnnn
I know I’ve mentioned it before but every time I think about Valarr as king I keep wanting to crack up.
He’s eighteen, or thereabout. He’s an orphan, he’s king. His grandfather is dead and he's king. At least two of his children are dead, have been dead, and that's a political failure, not something to be constantly quietly, horribly sick about.
The king is dead, long live the king! - Though it is, everyone knows, the wrong king they mean to crow, Baelor's boy supplanting the rightful claimant for the simply reason that he was too much of a coward and not enough a knight to wear his own armor, once.
There's no coronation, of course, what with the plague. Then he gets sick, in earnest, with the plague. The Spring Sickness left him with pox marks and a strengthened immune system and a chronic cough whenever a damp wind rises from the sea, so that’s nice.
The maesters say the number of the dead will keep the wildfire burning in the Dragonpit for about a fortnight still, so every ledge in the Red Keep in stained dark, a slick strange ash that clings to his hair and his crown and his lungs.
His little brother’s lute is still unstringed, waiting where Matarys left it. This is also under the list of things one must swallow and swallow and swallow down.
Everyone thinks he’s either too Dornish or too untried and too weak to rule and two out of three of these is Valarr knows to be true. Maekar is sulking in Summerhall because he didn’t name the guy who bashed his dad’s head in as Supreme Prime Minister. His other options for Hand of the King are Bloodraven, who is terrifying, and prescient, and tortures people, and kind of a bitch about it. Just about no one else. Who even is around. Aunt Elaena and her spreadsheets? One of the frat boy Dondonrrion uncles and cousins who keep manifesting at court and trying to give him bro-hugs when he’s pondering how much to task starving serfs?
He gives the job to Aerys, who shows up to council meetings with a book, and spends the meetings reading his book, and does not much care to look up from the book. This means Valarr has, essentially, absolute power in an absolutist society and no real advice on how to manage that. Except for the knowledge that he was bred and made for this, and it shouldn’t be this hard; that it should not be getting harder every day.
Kiera is going through her own issues, insomuch that she hates him, and is angry, and is bored, and even the woman’s court she is building around herself bores her. She’s also pulling a Tashi Challengers on him and Daeron, which, if it gets a living child out of the deal will be a win, but is also giving Vagarr’s inferiority neurosis new neurosis.
Daeron keeps being kind about it, in his way. Which is to say - without dignity, without pretense, with not even a kernel of the dignity Valarr must demand of himself at all times, constantly, without mercy. Daeron keeps making grim prophecies in bed in a wry, funny, filthy way that makes Kiera snort, an ugly snort-laugh Valarr barely knows and never knew not to find vaguely embarrassing on her behalf before. The sex is amazing. Valarr feels like shit about it. Valarr might as well not be there, might as well be dead and burned; except that he is there, where so many others are not.
Aerion is in exile in Lys doing some bullshit with alchemy, according to the spies, which probably means he won’t go and get married to one of Rohanne of Tyrosh’s approximately a hundred daughters with Daemon Blackfyre, but who even knows. Uncle Rhaegel has taken to dancing around naked to cope with the grief but that’s not even on the list of top ten things Valarr is worried about. At least someone is coping.
Aelor and Aelora keep reinventing Targcest and give him the creepy incest twin stare when he tries to have a serious conversation about marrying other people for the sake of diplomacy. He’s not convinced he won’t get poisoned if he doesn’t leave off with that but nonetheless remains keenly aware his father would be dismally disappointed. He still lets them get away with it.
Daella gets married to Tarth, a man twice her age, and doesn't look back. That's the Stormlands pacified - except not, of course, because the Stormlands are never satisfied. Rhae gets betrothed to Lord Peake to avoid a rebellion and Maekar looks at him as if he wants to pull out a mace and instead bows and obeys.
There’s no wedding tourney because Valarr simply is not doing all of that again, but everyone is unhappy with him about that. Odds are Lord Peake is getting besieged if Rhae gets even a little bit harmed in her longterm stint as a hostage-bride, but that’s a problem for future Valarr.
Meanwhile: Aegon. Aegon is riding around the kingdom with his hedge knight, which ought to be Baelor’s hedge knight, but not so much that Valarr got him in the bequest. Whatever. He’s normal about that, he doesn’t even want the hedge knight.
The problem is that his youngest cousin keeps stopping rebellions and gaining favor with houses small and great alike, speaking on behalf of the small folk, and getting married to Blackwoods and having a truckload of kids. Meanwhile Valarr has no children and his councillors keep hinting that they think Egg is going to pull a Blackfyre on him. Egg is not going to pull a Blackfyre on him and would be incredibly insulted about the accusation, but it doesn’t actually matter, because people are still going around thinking it’s a possibility, and singing sons in taverns about the Targaryen’s one good Egg, and that’s the problem right there.
And this is before Kiera’s one surviving daughter ends up being a natural blond.
Valarr: King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm. Valarr, first of his name. In the dark, he still feels half a boy. The Summer King, they call him - surely Bloodraven has bribed or otherwise coerced someone, a hundred someones, to invent that, make it pass from mouth to mouth. It is no comfort and no flattery. It will not last, no Summer lasts forever - and then, what of his rule, what of the land?
He'll get a reputation for being too pious if the world knows of it, so he does not pray in the Sept. He lights candles at night in his rooms, instead. Prays to the Father, his father; and then he stops using words.
One of these days he will need to commission a new helmet, lay it out in front of the flames and the statue as an offering. He hasn't had the heart or the stomach for it yet. In this, as in all else, he hasn't had it. kneels alone; stares at the flame until his eyes hurt and waits for the new morrow to show what it brings.
you know what. maybe the problem isn't even the targaryens. or rather. it's the targs and the place.
you tell me there's a place called ashford. ash + ford. with a fairly insignificant noble house that gives off enough new money vibes that he's throwing a big tourney for his daughter and clearly losing huge amounts of money about it to curry favor.
and the one guy who dreams about the future sees a hedge knight stand over a great fallen dragon.
and there's fine spring fields, and there's a clear river. and the castle isn't much but it's not old either. it's noticeably not old or grand. and the place is called ashford.
the dragon's wings are black, immense. a century ago a great black dragon crossed these fields, its shadow a dreadful shadow. so perhaps it was balerion, with aegon riding great and terrible in it: aegon the first of his name, who with vhagar and meraxes burned four thousand men of the reach, its king included. they flew over the fields, and fire rained down, shattered the free and the castles to nothing.
so terrible a fire whole houses were ruined to nothing. new names and new keeps had to be brought up: the clever and the collaborators, the ashfords of the world.
the ground of the tourney grounds where targaryen princes kill each other is a dark grayish thing, with ash in it.
all things considered, house targaryen should count itself lucky ashford only took the king's firstborn son and whatever measure of dignity and good will and longevity house targaryen had harnessed for itself.
all things considered, the bad dream was barely a nightmare at all. the great horror is gone and finished, lost to history. this time, a good knight of the hedges brought down a dragon, brought justice against dragons. it is no tragedy at all, really.
Listen I'm a Baelor!lives girly, but give weird, messy, feral Maekar Duncan interactions, like, the only thing they have in common is their love for Aegon and Baelor and there's no walking away from that. Give me a Duncan that can't hear Maekar's voice without feeling the sensation of Baelor's brain matter between his fingers, and a Maekar that can't look Duncan in the eyes without the echo of the crunch of Baelor's skull reverberating up his arm. Give me a Duncan and Maekar that know they share a son, and have raised him apart and together, and who will carry them both inside him forever, but can't stay in a room together for more than 15 minutes before the feel of Baelor's name in their throats starts to choke them. Give me a Maekar and Duncan that orbit around each other, always watching, circling, never quite touching, but tethered to each other by a moment that haunts them, any more than this would be too much. Give me a Maekar that hates Sir Duncan the Tall, for everything that he's presence wrought for all it was not his fault, yet wants him in his service so badly he tastes blood, because he's Baelor's man, and may be all that's left of that side of him. Give me a Duncan that is Baelor's man though and through, even in death, and hates and loves Maekar in equal measure, for Baelor loved him, in his last moments he loved him, and while Duncan can understand what Maekar did, he cannot forget, and he cannot forgive. Give me Maekar, Duncan, and Baelor's ghost that binds them.
Give me a Dunk that, when visiting Summerhall with Egg, offers Maekar every one of his clumsy courtesies but cannot look him in the eye, because if he does he'll choke on the name of a dead man who shares Maekar's right eye
Give me a Maekar who keeps his back to Dunk whenever they're in the same room, because he trusts Baelor's good man not to stab him in it, but he cannot look at him, he can't
Egg forces them to share a meal with the rest of the family, and thank the seven the boy never shuts up, because at least they don't have to force themselves talk to eachother, but they're so busy not looking at eachother that they reach for the same dish at the same time, and their fingertips brush, and they're flinching back as though the touch burned them like wildfire
(it's a very awkward rest of dinner for everyone)
Maekar's solar window overlooks the training yard. He watches Dunk train Egg. He watches Dunk spar with his men at arms. He watches Dunk, from where no one can see him. He tries to see what Baelor saw. Sometimes he sees. Mostly he doesn't.
(he sees it more when Dunk is parenting Egg, when he helps the servants with their duties, when he stops a visiting knight from beating one of the squires, the way he talks to the hunting dogs, and looks after his horses, and protects the maids from drunk visiting lords)
(he watches him a lot more than he'd ever be willing to admit)
(he sees Baelor in him, a little, but that doesn't stop him hating him)
Dunk can't help but watch Maekar in the training yard. Because Maekar is a force of fucking nature. He watches from the rampart, from the shadows where Maekar can't see him, and has to force the breath in and out of his chest as he watches Maekar pulverize his opponents. He's like a snowstorm. It's mesmerising to watch.
(Dunk remembers getting stuck in a snowstorm once with Sir Arlan the only time they went above the neck. He remembers the biting unforgiving cold, and the wind so harsh it burned your skin like the dornish sun, and the unrelenting neverending force of it. Maekar has always seamed like a snowstorm to him.)
(He thinks Baelor would have liked the north, the way the people there kept themselves to duty. He wonders if he ever went.)
(Maekar would know, but Dunk would never ask.)
He wonders if Baelor and Maekar fought the same. He wouldn't know, he didn't see it at Ashford. He was too busy just trying to stay alive.
He watches as Maekar beats down on any knight at arms brave enough to face him, and struggles to see anything of Baelor in it. He imagines Baelor as a more elegant fighter than either he or Maekar could manage. They're much more brute force in style than he could ever think of Baelor as being.
(Maekar remembers wresting in the mud with Baelor as boys, of being bruised from scalp to sole, and them both being scalded for it. He'd laugh if Dunk ever told him his thoughts, but of course he never would.)
(Dunk does see Baelor in Maekar in other ways. When he handles disputes of the local people, when he goes riding and is so gentle with his horse, Baelor's horse, when he parents his children, so harsh and yet so full of love he choked on it. His children adore him, so so much, and it makes Dunk feel ways he cannot understand.)
(It's easier to watch him fight than to deal with everything else.)
And when some visiting lord or knight takes a pot shot at Dunk, says something mocking and hurtful and a little foul, he would chokes on his tongue because the look Maekar gives him is dead eyed and cold, because that his hedge knight, Baelor's hedge knight, the only person allowed to talk shit about Dunk is him.
And the feeling is so so mutual because some other (or maybe the same for dramatic fic purposes) lord or knight makes a comment about Maekar while in the training yard, and Dunk beats the ever living shit out of him. Has to be pulled off of him. Because Maekar is Baelor's brother, and they loved eachother, and that grief is his and Maekar's to share, and everyone else better shut their fucking mouths, especially in Maekar's own home.
And I'm not sure what better: them seeing the other defend them and still not able to really talk to eachother, or them never knowing they were defended at all.
I saw It Was Just an Accident last night knowing nothing about it (the movie I originally went to see was sold out and the usher was like “well this Iranian movie is supposed to be pretty good”). Really, really loved it, and I have to admit that one of my first thoughts after it ended was “I wonder what tumblr user thealogie thinks of this?”
Even before they referenced waiting for Godot I was like…this is like if waiting for Godot was sort of a thriller.
I loved every minute of it but I was also deeply stressed out because the subtitles were very bad. Like the main character speaks Turkish with his family but Farsi with everyone else and they didn’t even put a little parenthesis to say he’s speaking Turkish so that whole aspect that he’s an ethnic minority is lost…..but still thought it was so fun and the debate between the Group is the best explanation/portrayal of what it’s like to be a leftist in Iran today.
#tfw you know your brother's gonna make a scene at the business brunch#because he always makes a scene at the business brunch#so you bring along your arm candy#(who is the head of your security detail by the way)#even though he has no place at the business brunch#and you're going to have to field questions from the nosier of your already nosy family members later#as to the specifics of your relationship with the head of your security detail#such as “why did he keep brushing knees with you”#and “i don't think he looked at a single other person at this table - why might that be”#and also he puts down three slices of victoria sponge because you notice how much he's enjoying it so you keep ordering him more#and he'll insist later - when he's driving you home - that you take it out of his paycheck#that he doesn't need you to pay for things for him and that he can pay his own way#and you'll keep quiet - for now - that you in fact quite like buying things for him#and it would please you to do it more regularly even#but he spooks like a horse when it comes to these things so you have to tread carefully#so you keep quiet - for now - and let him drive you home#tfw amiright
-
But of course he doesn't take it out of his paycheck, because Baelor Targaryen is a lot of things — gentle, clever, kind, funny, surprisingly vanilla in bed, sentimental, unbelievably fussy about his clothes, determined, a terrible driver, loving, impatient, prone to crying at John Lewis adverts, overworked — but one thing he is above all things is a rich arsehole.
"I was under the impression that you rather enjoyed my arsehole," Baelor observed mildly, when Dunk told him as much. He probably meant it to sound snippy, but his eyes were smiling too crinkly for Dunk to take him seriously. They were curled up in Baelor's massive four-poster bed and in the moonlight he was so beautiful it made Dunk's heart twist.
"And so I do," he said, instead of confessing any of that shite, "but that doesn't mean I want to be..."
"My boyfriend?" This time there was no crinkly smile, just the slow drawing of tension that always threaded through their conversations whenever they started on these What Are We Really To Each Other talks. Dunk wasn't sure how he could be clearer about where he was — at Baelor's side, from now until Baelor inevitably got tired of him, even if he never said that last bit — but Baelor still got that pinched look around his mouth and looked off toward the middle distance like he was in some Jane Austen novel and was about to propose to the wrong sister or whatever those books were about.
"I just don't want you thinking I'm...around... because of the things you buy for me. Or because you pay me," he added, and then rewound that sentence and realized how stupid it sounded. "I mean, you do pay me, I suppose, but—"
"I pay you to protect myself and my family," Baelor finished for him. "You've gone to rather extreme lengths to demonstrate that anything aside from that is due to my personal magnetism." The crinkles were back, thank fuck, and Dunk breathed a sigh of relief.
"I don't think I put it quite like that," he said, but he nudged Baelor onto his side so he could tuck himself along the curve of Baelor's spine and legs, still marveling after all this time that he could do this — that Baelor Targaryen let him do this, wanted him to.
"Perhaps not," Baelor allowed, pressing back against him, warm and real in his arms. "Must be my arsehole, then."
"Must be," Dunk agreed, and kissed him fondly on the back of his head, right where the hair was beginning to thin. It was his favorite bit, but he decided to wait a while longer before confessing that.
towards developing an anti-'goody two shoes' baelor chacarterisarion:
its seems sometimes ppl think of baelor as a targaryen in that he gets jealous and possessive, that he has a temper he's keeping a very tight hold on. i don't really see that in bertie carvel, he's playing someone who is never quick to anger, who's naturally steady and reserved in his temperament.
i think baelor's arrogance is much colder. he sees most people as weaker than him and even pities them for it but rarely gets angry AT them. they just don't know better, they're obstacles to overcome. he expects much more from himself because he's just that much better, cleverer, stronger as a person. (he does temper it with a lot of kindness, but i'm not sure when it's genuine and when it's strategic princely benevolence.)
baelor being a strategist and manipulator is in tune with that coldness and arrogance. his charm in bertie carvel's interpretation is more sudbued than what i expected from the novel, but it works because he has fame and reputation as a knight and leader. his natural inclination seems to be playing the good cop, side by side with someone who can shout, threaten and punish disobedience FOR him (he probably developed that dynamic as a duo with maekar, it's their double act which they seem to perform unconsciously just for fun).
as a sidenote, i love baelor's nervous / self-soothing mannerisms. it's not only twisting his rings. the way he holds himself with dunk when discussing his punishment is very funny. baelor learned to hold very still with a placid expression, and that projects power. he turns away every time he fears he might have an expression on his face, but he does it so gracefully it doesn't read as avoidance / loss of composure it is.
my main point: baelor's tragic flaw as a targaryen is that he still puts family first. and also loves maekar beyond what is 'reasonable' (as in, doesn't push him to do better with his sons, especially aerion, because talking to him about it makes maekar so upset….). yes baelor does care for the realm and its people, but only with targaryens as its kings. he can't conceive of separating the two. he cares about honour but it's tough for him to choose it over family. i can imagine situations with lower stakes than ashford where he didn't.
anyway he's still my perfect prince and i love him to bits.
I firmly believe this is when Baelor actually started paying attention to Dunk because WHEN is the last time someone (who wasn't directly related to him) actually contradicted him?
Like, Dunk comes in asking for a favor. This is extremely normal, even if he's a complete weirdo about it; Targaryens probably have people climbing through windows asking for shit from them all the time, and in return offering bribes, flattery, their virtue, whatever they think will get them what they want. Baelor's kind of distantly amused by Dunk's brass balls in asking him directly "hey will you vouch for my old master and by extension FOR ME, some giant rando you've definitely never seen before in your life and don't even know the name of?" but like, same shit different knight really.
So he's like "oh yeah sure I guess I remember him," and then pulls out his sparkling neurodivergent obsessive memory for apparently every fucking tourney in all of Westeros over the last 50 years. He clearly remembers Ser Arlan with some degree of respect — I'm betting most knights facing off against the Heir to the Throne don't actually try to beat him, and the fact that he did spoke well of him. So he's telling this story and—
Dunk interrupts him. Not only interrupts him, but corrects him, with an attitude of "you are insulting my ser" that again, I'm willing to bet nobody's pulled on Baelor for literal decades. Dunk of course immediately trips over his asshole taking it back, even bending the knee to beg forgiveness, but it's too late— Baelor's clocked him, probably for the first time in the whole conversation. And what does he do? He ensures that Dunk's allowed to enter the lists; not only that, but he advises him (indirectly) to strike out on his own, not to hew too closely to his old master's memory but rather to make a name for himself. It's really a remarkable moment and I'm super casual about it.
Sir Duncan was a tall, strappin' lad when Baelor first met him. It is, after all, his defining feature to the casual observer. And that was as a hedge knight, who went hungry more often than not, and had little opportunity to train with those that could truly push him. But after a year of three square meals a day, each one larger than what three men could put away, and solid training with the Targaryen guards, and even Kingsgaurds, Baelor's swore sword was larger than ever.
Where before most men only came up to his chin, the last growth spurt had Duncan towering over even Baelor and Maekar with their Martell inherited height, neither of them coming up to the top of his chest.
And the breadth of him. He hadn't just put on a healthy weight since coming to the Redkeep, but also muscle. He was broader than most doorways in the keep now, having to turn sideways to walk into the Hand's solar when called.
The Hand's Half-Giant, many called him, and Baelor couldn't disagree. It really was extraordinary. Imagine, he thought to himself as he watched Duncan heft his sparing partner over his shoulder like he weighed little more than a feather, how large he would have grown if he could have eaten well from childhood.
Maekar is twitching next to him, and it's been ages since they'd fought together. (It's been well over a year since Ashford, and Maekar had avoided sparing with him since, and that was against eachother, not with, so even longer than that. Far too long). And he's been itching to face off against the mountain of muscle that is his sworn sword for some time himself.
It doesn't take as much effort as he thought it would to get Maekar into the ring. Baelor has just a moment to worry about Maekar's desire to fight Duncan over ruling his desire to avoid fighting with Baelor, before Dunk and Maekar in on eachother with a crash of steel that has him swearing and jumping in to join the spar.
Perhaps the 2-on-1 was a bad idea.
Duncan holds up very well against the two princes, and the spar is pretty evenly matched between Duncan's youth and strength and the princes experience and raw talent. Right until Duncan seems to decide that if they're going to play with unfair odds, then he should get to fight dirty.
Sir Duncan is a fine knight. But Dunk from Flea Bottom is a force of fucking nature.
(Baelor is slightly disappointed, as he watches Dunk punt Maekar half across the training yard with a single kick, that he doesn't remember much of the trial at Ashford. He would have enjoyed seeing Aerion getting the shit kicked out of him like a street rat).
And then all thoughts vanish from his mind, as Dunk fully picks him up, all but one handed from the lack of effort he's showing, and he has just enough time to realise he's looking down at Duncan for a change, who looks beautiful with his head between Baelor's legs with a mischievous smile on his face. Enough time to realise he's suddenly so hard it hurts, 0 to 100 in no time at all, with a simple lift of Duncan's arms.
And before he can feel any way about that, he's suddenly left all his organs behind as his body goes flying away from Dunk (did he just throw me??) and is crashing into Maekar, who had got back to his feel but was now on the floor with Bealor in a pile of limbs and broken dreams.
And Bealor can't help but laugh from pure joy. My man is so strong, he thinks to himself, as he fails to separate himself from his swearing brother and stand.
And if he's thinking about Dunk throwing him around in a more pleasurable setting, well, that's his business.
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