provehito in altum

Susy | '99 | she/her "We are so lucky we are still alive to see this beautiful world."

[medeapalatyna]

Elia Martell trying to get the people around her to be rational political actors but everyone's too busy being grief stricken or obsessed with prophecy or crazy and racist or transporting a minor across state lines

[melrosing]

spoilers: some TMK character thoughts

wanted to do a round up of my exact feelings on the characters as I can remember them bc I've mostly just shared info rather than opinions so far!

Jaime: MY BOY!!!! obv i'm starting w Jaime. I would've lovedddd if we'd had more of him but I'm taking quality over quantity. his main story is in act 2 just desperately trying to get other people to react the way he is to the things happening around him, and he's literally threatened w violence by other members of the KG. so for anyone still insisting he is just there pretending to give a fuck: nope Jaime's whole thing in this story is giving a fuck! which chimes into his broader story exactly as I understand it thank u VERY much!!!!

Ned: I loved him and his characterisation was exactly as I would've expected it to be. i think any ned fan would be happy w how he's played here, it's just all v true to the books and it's good to see his relationship w Robert and Lyanna explored more and how they kind of conflict w each other.

Robert: by and large i liked this portrayal. I'm not a hugeeee fan of overplaying Steffon and Cassana for woobification points I guess it felt a little forced. sure this is no doubt something that devastated robert but does he necessarily need a traumatic reason to be a drunk and a flirt? so I felt like it was to try and give more justification to his enmity w Rhaegar than was needed - Lyanna feels like enough. otherwise, I think his actor did a great job showing both the charisma and the vulnerability of the character and he had great chemistry w Ned. and he's pretty funny also

Aerys: again, liked Aerys. I think showing both his vulnerability as well as his tyranny makes him more compelling to follow. guy has a surprising number of comic lines also and the physicality of the role is pretty strong. again, I don't really like grief being used as the reason characters go mad, and it was again in this case for Aerys and Summerhall. I think it makes sense as part of the reason he's unready, but I don't buy it as a foundational reason he is the way he is. but it's interesting nonetheless to see the event loom large in his life.

Rhaella: I kind of need someone else to remember the exact sequence of the scene with Elia, Ashara, Jaime and the KG, but I think this characterisation was definitely.... interesting?? I like that they tried to think outside just 'tormented' and give her sharp edges. it was interesting to see her kind of bloodthirsty in her way. but I think she might have benefitted from a bit more show don't tell, and there was just too much happening in this play to afford her enough scenes for that.

Rhaegar: idk. this is messy. like I think the problem is actually fundamentally GRRM's. in rhaegar we have three things: 1) a guy who genuinely seems to love Lyanna, 2) a guy obsessed w prophecy, and 3) a guy who would carelessly abandon his wife and children for either. given that Rhaegar actually gives less of a shit about prophecy in act 2, this becomes.... worse??? and he does genuinely get vexed at the idea that Elia can't conceive again. so while we see that he's capable of generosity of spirit (trying to offer Robert friendship, trying to save the realm from his father)...... he's just not likeable!!! what can I say! i don't like this man! he's a bit useless and pretty selfish and his love for Lyanna doesn't move me enough that I don't care about those things! sorry!

Elia: oh my lord. look I really can't 100% blame this on the playwright because I want to be fair - this was gonna be a hard ask. in 2026, a lot of people are gonna struggle w how to write Rhaegar's discarded wife, who does nothing in canon but give birth, sit imprisoned and die. this is a very passive role, and I can understand why MacMillan's instinct was to beef it up with politics. I can understand also why he wanted to alleviate the pain of what Rhaegar's done to her - what if she didn't actually give much of a shit lol she's got other fish to fry. what if she's fine w being imprisoned because she's got PLANS. ugh. idk. it's left me cold. if you try and spare Elia all the vulnerability of her plight, she just becomes kind of. dry? and unconvincing? I think people would've found it more compelling to hear the story of a woman working through the pain of what has been done to her and her children, and BEING angry, rather than just conducting a political plot that goes nowhere. like I think that's the point - because Elia's plot has been replaced with this, she has no meaningful plot. her correspondence with Lyanna feels pointless and hollow, because her only motive is political, and knowing how this ends for her, I'm not waiting to find out what happens. I think MacMillan should've really sat there with Elia for a long while and thought about what happens in her story and how that would make a person feel, and how can you make those feelings sing on stage... rather than coming up w some weird b-plot.

Ashara: I think Ashara suffers from a case of being beefed up beyond how she can serve the story, and truly works best as a more ambiguous character. in TMK, everything about her is laid on the table and so she ends up just serving as a supporting act to Elia and Brandon in a way that adds little to the story. again, this was always gonna be a difficult one because she very much HAS a place in this story, but I think if we'd focused more on the POVs of fewer principles (stick with Ned, we don't need scenes of Brandon and Ashara alone together), then having her dance in and out might have worked better. she and Elia having once had an affair is a nice touch but I don't know that it adds much??

Lyanna: I like Lyanna a lot in act 1 - she's very endearing but very headstrong, and you can really see a lot of Arya in her. she's fun to follow. but MacMillan again was always going to wrestle with what to do in act 2 when Rhaegar and Lyanna have this prophecy hanging over their heads. do they lean into it?? I think it was important for Rhaegar to let the prophecy go a bit for his love for Lyanna to be at all convincing, but when Lyanna picks up the slack for him she loses some of herself. I don't really know what the compromise ought to have been, because clearly this is a massive factor in their story together, but sometimes it's hard to see the love for the prophecy what can I say. they start talking a great deal in riddles it feels like, and kind of like a couple you wouldn't want to be stuck with at a party. Lyanna really shines brightest when she's w her brothers. but again, the Rhaegar/Lyanna/Elia triangle is a reallyyyy hard one to square, and I've literally tried myself w an as yet unfinished Robert's Rebellion project that is still around on my blog lol

Arthur: I'm really wedded to my mental version of arthur dayne so when I didn't get him I was unfairly like what!!!!! but I enjoyed the performance, and just wish he'd had more characters to bounce off of - he's mostly limited to Rhaegar and Oswell

Cersei: she's not really big enough to add to this list but cersei's little 'i want it all' line pleases me. I like that they managed to cram a good character moment for her in so little time.

[lepusfangs]

elia being politically smart and wanting the best for house martell but also being okay with rhaegar taking lyanna as a second wife even though any sons that they have would without a doubt endanger Aegon and Rhaenys' positions not to mention that the last time there was a half-dornish crown prince about to ascend the throne a series of rebellions broke out

[missgallavjch]

BI ASHARA OMGGGG

[armandlastnamemarius]

The Vampire Lestat 3.07 The Failures

[xxsunnyphoenixx]

Idk man I'm not saying you have to hate tvl or that you can't enjoy it (I was enjoying it a lot up until ep 6 myself), but if you're refusing to engage in the criticism of the repeated pattern of unaddressed anti-blackness within this season and are instead pretending like the criticism of this season is because people "don't like when vampires are evil" than I am not going to trust your judgment on this season sorry

[nxctern]

Just met the 7th Hokage

He seems nice but I still overcharged him out of principle

[angelsweety]

[jozor-johai]

Full disclosure this is a crazy idea but hear me out.

I was thinking about the way Winterfell is described—it's the "heart" of the North and the Starks, in the same way that the weirwood "heart tree" is the center of the grove it's in, but Winterfell is also an actual metaphoric beating heart that pumps hot spring water throughout. So I wondered if the same way that Winterfell extends the symbolic 'heart' idea to it's actual structure, perhaps the weirwoods would as well. So:

Assuming that we know the Weirwoods, in some way, literally drink blood. Thinking about all the history of blood sacrifices to weirwood trees, and this line from Dance:

And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.

Then also considering that their leaves are constantly red—meaning they are not receiving nutrients from the sun, (which would need chlorophyll, green leaves, etc), and additionally that both their sap and leaves are so blood-colored that Catelyn thinks of them as:

dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands

Understanding that (normal) trees are pumping sap throughout themselves to carry water and nutrients, etc, without chlorophyll in the leaves I think it's safe to understand that the leaves are red from the same substance that is the weirwood's red sap.

But IF the weirwoods actually drink blood, then what if their sap isn't just blood red for symbolic purposes, but because their sap is somehow literally blood? And they sustain themselves on actual blood, which is why the concept of blood sacrifices to the weirwoods began?

And the whole reason I'm even trying to make this point is: what if that's why they're called "heart trees"? Not because they're the heart of the grove that they are in, but instead because they are actually pumping blood like an actual heart?

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Re the chlorophyll thing, I see you already got corrected on that in the notes, and I think that @ewnor's theory that weirwoods may have adapted to very different light conditions intriguingly feasible. But I also wanted to add that we've seen a weirwood sapling, a new tree in the current era, growing red leaves without any sacrifice:

Where the keep had been was a pile of collapsed stones, overgrown with green and purple moss. The yard was all weeds and pine needles. Soldier pines were everywhere, drawn up in solemn ranks. In their midst was a pale stranger; a slender young weirwood with a trunk as white as a cloistered maid. Dark red leaves sprouted from its reaching branches. —AFFC, Brienne IV

But even though literal blood is probably not pumping through the veins of weirwoods, they probably have fed on people, both as formal sacrifices and otherwise. Note that blood and bone meal are incredibly good fertilizer for all plants, and trees are known to eat dead people (and meat in general) for their nutrients. For all we know, wild weirwood saplings specifically grow where bodies (hearts) were once buried, and the Whispers happen to be a place where the legendary Clarence Crabb had a collection of heads.

Though note that some theorize a sacrifice is needed to "open the eyes" of a weirwood... and Brienne did bury Nimble Dick Crabb at the roots of this particular sapling...

[normielesbian]

I will never be able to fully express how being a lesbian is not considered cool and sexy to average people, who aren't terminally online. It considered especially disgusting to people when you're a woman who doesn't look like a super model or actress. People are shocked and appalled at the thought you want to eat the pussy of an ordinary girl whose like a waitress or something. People are grossed out that two women who might be fat, masc with stretch marks/scars or without makeup etc find each other completely attractive and have completely fulfilling sex for themselves. Lesbianism that is devoid of the male gaze repulses people. It's why lesbians are rarely fully represented in media. It's not sexy anymore if it's not two straight thin decorated actresses directed by a man. They so mad when we want each other and don't care to meet their beauty standards or need their approval.

[platoapproved]

But then he sees him in the show, and there’s Lélio. There’s the person, there’s the performer that he saw when he first met, when he first saw Lestat and fell in love with [him], and there’s that glint again. He can’t help but desire that... [x]

[alisonzai]

[missgallavjch]

i hate how whenever i have a gay thought my mind either tries to disprove it telling me that it's not gay that actual sapphics have different thoughts/reactions that I'm deluding myself and appropriating an identity that doesn't belong to me because it's so improbable that i would happen to be bi OR that it means that I'm a lesbian and i dont really like men

and whenever my mind tries to convince me that my thoughts are not gay i feel even worse because i start thinking that a woman who's actually attracted to women would definitely be sure straight away and would not question her attraction to women she would just know feel it in her bones

[missgallavjch]

i've been questioning my sexuality a lot lately (meaning for the past few years) and it's genuinely been making me feel so bad :( not being 100% sure of who i am is driving me insane

[missgallavjch]

the way body hair on both men and women is genuinely so attractive to me like... armpit hair leg hair chest hair the happy trail genital hair... they turn me into a feral wolf

[sinkdraws]

fighting inner demons

[closetgakure]

Naruto the #1 yearner of all time doesn't even stop after being married to his love for 20 years