of saints & heretics

let his sword break and his shield shatter

[phantom-threaded]

“Listen to me. And listen very carefully, my infant death. It was never you.”

[besotted-with-austen]

No, Random Protagonist, you were NEVER in love with B-you could never be in love with B, for A is your One True Love.

You see, being in love with someone else before A would compromise the idea that you are only truly in love with the person you are spending the rest of your life with, and we can’t have that, can we? That is the role of the One True Love.

You have known B for years? You cared for B with all your heart? You adore B beyond what a normal crush would mean, you were friends and confidants? But now you have A, and A can be all that and more! Why would you need B, or your friends and family? Why would you need anyone else other than the One True Love?

You might have had B, or C, or D, or someone else up to Z, but none of those matter- what matters is the One True Love.

This is especially true if B did not return the feelings you had for them-this is the ultimate proof that B was not right, you know that affection actually means something only when it is returned, and that is the role of the One True Love.

And if B ends up being a horrible person, well! That was the Universe trying to scream at you the inevitable truth! How could you have been destined for the malevolent B when angelic A is around, the honest and good One True Love?

Don’t worry, Random Protagonist-you will not know love until your eyes lock with A’s. We are preserving your sentimental purity.

[biorg]

[mideias]

“10,000 years” is mentioned in the novels. But you also have places where maesters say, “No, no, it wasn’t 10,000, it was 5,000.” Again, I’m trying to reflect real-life things that a lot of high fantasy doesn’t reflect. In the Bible, it has people living for hundreds of years and then people added up how long each lived and used that to figure out when events took place. Really? I don’t think so. Now we’re getting more realistic dating now from carbon dating and archeology. But Westeros doesn’t have that. They’re still in the stage of “my grandfather told me and his grandfather told him.” So I think it’s closer to 5,000 years. [...]" X

This was GRRM's response to a question about the timeline of that cancelled GoT prequel which was to take place 10,000 years before the events of the main series, during the Age of Heroes when the Long Night occurs. So he's trying to write a history that makes sense for the characters and their world, not for readers that exist in a world of advanced science. My understanding here is that any absurd dating of an event from a distant past in Westeros should be taken with a grain of salt, as the characters don't have the means to date the history of anything properly and rely mostly on memory passed down through many generations. One thing I know about oral tradition/history is that people's memories tend to be imprecise about the exact date of something, even with events that they were personally involved in. This puts to question all the absurd longevity of certain Houses, like House Stark existing for 8.000 years does not sound very plausible.

[loo-nuh-tik]

Interview with the Vampire | 2.04

[videolottery]

My male heir pisses me off

[sanhunpo]

Wanted to draw smth out of my comfort zone and to experiment with techniques more, (struggled a lot due to it) but really I just really liked looking and drawing Isabelle adjani :)

[rudjedet]

people who don't know anything about academics: man y'all are stuffy and boring what's up with that? actual academics: *too busy fist-fighting each other over the beryllium problem or the existence of a dentistry profession in ancient egypt to reply*

[cunn1ngboy]

hannibal growling is my religion, and oh im such a monk

[mideias]

Going through my old likes and realizing just how much of my whimsy I've lost in the last couple of years.

[micmit-deactivated20171203]

[dammitsandor]

legend has it that if you say “i hate sansa stark” three times in front of a mirror sandor clegane will jump out of the mirror and kick your sorry ass into oblivion

[periodcostumefantasylover]

Sybilla’s riding dress in Kingdom of Heaven

[visenyaism]

i just think asoiaf is one of the few fantasy series i’ve read that really Gets It re: misogyny not being individual but part of wider systems of oppression (along with class, ability, status, etc.) that individuals can simultaneously be victims of and complicit in. so it’s frustrating to see so much of the Discourse be about girlboss v. girlboss and gendered oppression somehow ending when the feudal monarch is a woman

[visenyaism]

literally!!!! it has Something to say about gender that a lot of the genre doesn’t!!!! it’s being violently enforced because it is an extension of the systemic feudal violence everyone in that world struggles against. and at the end of the day that is way more compelling to me than having an individual “empowered female character” because we confront it and out of that comes nuance and really interesting deconstructions of power and state violence. it’s not perfect and the bar is in hell but I think it’s really interesting

[laurellerual]

This painting gives me Sansa, Joffrey, septa Mordane, the Hound vibes so I photoshoped it a little bit.

The orange is symbolically about beheading.

(Isabella, John Everett Millais)

[elizabethan-memes]

There are many many Serious Reasons why I am glad to be living in the 21st century but one of the more personal less serious reasons is the quality of historical research and how much more we know now, and how much has been revealed to be bullshit.

Life is short, I don’t want to spend it reading Victorian moralisers or credulous analysis of primary sources, believing that Anne Boleyn had six fingers and that spices were used to disguise rotten meat.  

[zorrocafe]

One time when I was researching ancient Rome, I was specifically looking for information on the plebeian classes, and encountered a Victorian-era book that said something to the tune of

“But we don’t care about the unwashed, ill-bred lower classes like the plebs, so let’s focus on the patricians instead, because they’re more relatable”

[deadpanwalking]