Mytly

A blog focused primarily on 'A Song of Ice and Fire' and anti-Game of Thrones. Additional fandoms: Vorkosigan Saga Discworld Avatar: the Last Airbender

[chainofclovers]

Put in the tags the completely finished (whether cancelled or wrapped up on its own terms) TV series that has YOUR perfect ending, however you define that

Please don’t include huge spoilers for the specifics of the endings, and it would also make me happy if people don’t use this to talk about the shows whose endings they hated

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

i NEED people to realise foreshadowing is. in fact. a literary device. and not a Bad Thing. the audience picking up on your hints is a Good Thing. because. it makes the story and it’s conclusion make sense. and some people will not see those but enjoy seeing them on a second read through. red herrings are one thing but if your novel consists of nothing but red herrings it’s not a coherent story it’s just a collection of paragraphs that don’t actually plausibly link to one another. you're not fighting with the audience you don’t look clever you look like you don’t know how basic fiction works. be vulnerable for once in your goddamn life and don't treat writing like a game to be won where the audience losing is a good thing.

[ineffectualdemon]

Getting to the end of a story and going "THE CLUES WERE THERE THE WHOLE TIME!" is always joyous for me whether or not I picked up on the clues leading up

If I saw the clues and caught the hints then yes! I am clever and me and the author/creator/artist etc were in on it together the whole time!

If I didn't notice the clues or got fooled but can clearly see them in hindsight then "Ha! You won this time storyteller! I am delighted by this game we play!' and then I enjoy putting the pieces together afterwards and enjoying how clever it was. I feel like the creator respects me as an audience

If there is a "twist" that comes with 0 clues or foreshadowing at all I'm annoyed. I'm pissed off. I feel like I'm being condescended to and patronised. It's not clever or interesting and makes me annoyed I ended up caring about characters and plot points that ended up meaningless.

Because it's not that these stories don't have foreshadowing or plot clues. They just abandon it for a "surprising twist"

A story that pays off the clues is letting me into the fun and makes a participant in the story

A story that just gives me a "shock" but no pay off is telling me not to engage or get attached or care. So why would I watch?

[s-n-arly]

OMG! THIS!

Random plot twists that don't connect to anything in the story are not clever. If we don't see it coming because the writer didn't provide any clues, they aren't clever and it's totally unsatisfying (and I will NEVER read this writer again). These clues need not be lit up in neon with a parade of elephants and showgirls. But they need to be present

I'm a writer and am rarely surprised. Often, if I am surprised it's because the writer was a dumbass and included a "twist" that makes no sense (and therefore isn't really a twist, it's just random bullshit). If a writer genuinely surprises me, without being an absolute dumbass, I am FUCKING DELIGHTED! I will tell everyone I know to read the book/see the movie/watch the show.

[ardentmystacina]

Foreshadowing is the reward for paying attention. It's the story letting you in on the secret like a co-conspirator because you're the clever little audience member who has been picking up on the clues the writer has been setting up.

It even makes watching/reading again more worthwhile because if you didn't notice the foreshadowing the first time you have the joy of being able to notice the things you missed!

[queenbruv]

one thing from project hail mary the book that i really wish theyd made clear in the movie is that when grace makes the decision to save rocky instead of go back to earth, he is prepared to die. like i understand why the movie had to cut a lot from the book for pacing and it wasnt exactly necessary to include the whole sub-subplot where rocky and grace figure out that there is nothing on erid that is safe for humans to consume, but it would have been worth a passing mention at some point, because grace goes back for rocky knowing that even if rocky takes him to erid, he will still die there, because there is nothing he can eat. the only reason he survives is by eating taumoeba, which is a solution rocky comes up with only after grace saves him and admits to him that he came to his rescue fully prepared to die.

the movie really breezes past rocky's rescue and the time skip, and it never explains why choosing to save rocky is so monumental in the first place: it answers the central question grace is grappling with for the whole movie. "who would i die for?" he doesn't just go back for rocky because it's the right thing to do. he sacrifices himself to save rocky. he is ready to die if it means rocky will live.

[humbababa]

His bestest, closest and only friend.

[joomju]

This is lovely, but,

In the book he sacrifices himself to save Rocky and Erid. He saves humanity, saves his home planet, then chooses to turn around and save another one.

Grace has grown from the man who wouldn't "get in the robot, Shinji," to the guy who saves two planets and billions of lives. Did they really cut his entire character arc from the movie?

[mytly4]

Yes, exactly. That gifset in the second reblog is really annoying, because Grace does sacrifice himself for a planet - and it's not even his own planet! In the book it's made clear that he has enough human food to get to either Earth or Erid, but not both. But while he doesn't need to personally go back to Earth in order to get the taumoeba there (he can just send them on the beetles, which was the original plan anyway), Rocky has no such way of getting the taumoeba to Erid. And without the taumoeba, Erid will die. So it's not just Rocky that Grace is saving by turning his ship around, he's saving the whole of Erid too.

[mayasaura]

Amena, a second-year student at PSUMNT trying to get into the highly competitive Perihelion workstudy program: Sooooooo, any chance family of crewmembers get preferential placement? Yeah, the Perihelion's security consultant is my. Uh.

Amena, realising she doesn't want to try to explain Secunit to the Dean of Students: The security consultant is my Third Mom.

[secunitscompromisedbrain]

peer reviewing ops tags cause they made me laugh loud enough to scare my dog

[aarrowom]

[frightfullytreeish]

no nuance you have to decide

would jeeves have succumbed to the one ring?

no, he would diminish and go into the west and remain a valet

yes, he can't resist such power (burn bertie's ugliest trousers)

the ring has no effect on him, tom bombadil style

Voting ended onApr 5

[frightfullytreeish]

4 days left in the most important 'thoughts had just before going to sleep' poll I've ever made

[foxofninetales]

"Well, Jeeves," I said, "That seems to be that."

"A consummation greatly desired," Jeeves agreed.

"The forces of darkness vanquished, the rightful king upon his throne, and all that. And, even more importantly, Tuppy Glossop disengaged from that horsy female and returned to the bosom of my cousin Angela."

"Indeed, sir."

"Rather a shock running into the Reverend Aubry Upjohn riding that fell beast, what?"

"I though you displayed great alacrity in relocating to that ditch in the nick of time, sir."

Far below us, the molten lava did a rather spirited impersonation of boiling soup. I mopped the p. off the b. with a handkerchief I'd improvised from an orc loincloth. I had been to some deuced uncomfortable country estates in my time, don't you know, but at least there one had been able to toddle downstairs and pour oneself a quick W. and S. as needed to stiffen the sinews. Galadriel's Buck-U-Uppo was excellent at vitalizing the limbs to forge on the last dreadful mile and all that, but it lacked the comfort that speaks to the soul.

I contemplated the glowing river. "Redirecting the army of Aunts to that Isengard place was a stroke of brilliance, I thought."

"You are too kind, sir."

"Still, all things must end, as they say. Travel is broadening to the mind and all, but it is past time to attend the call of heart and home. Among other considerations, I think something took residence inside this mithril shirt somewhere around the Morgul Vale and has been wandering about biting hither and thither ever since, and I am filled with the desire to strip it off and do battle with the blighted thing."

"Understandable, sir."

"I heard rather a good one the other day: Sing hey! for the bath at close of day that washes the weary mud away! -and by Jove if I don't think they were on to something, Jeeves."

"It is undeniably felicitous to be surrounded by the comforts of home," he assented, and yet I couldn't escape a certain sense of firmness about his gaze.

I sighed, for I knew what he wanted. Well, I mean, I'm all for taking a firm stance and not being trodden on in one's own home and all, but as far as rallying around to save the young master goes, none could have rallied more greatly than Jeeves. If a little firmness was the price I had to pay, well, so be it.

Slowly I undid the old school tie from around my neck. It was harder work than one would have thought; as if it could hear what was rattling around in the old brain, the ring that was threaded on it put in a last surge of effort in the gleaming and enticement department, filling my mind with heady visions: Freddie Widgeon gnashing his teeth as I sank yet another dart into the bullseye, Aunt Agatha wreathed in tears and begging my forgiveness for ever having misjudged me, Jeeves gazing admiringly as I displayed my newest waistcoat for his edification…

It was the last that broke the spell. Cursed objects of all-consuming power were all well and good in their sphere, but there were limits, don't you know? And yet I hesitated. "You don't think I could slip it on and just have a quick total domination of the world before I toddle around to the Drones for a stiff one?"

Jeeves gave a gentle cough of reproof. "I think you will find it for the best, sir."

It was a wrench, but one could not deny the man had earned it. With a heavy hand, I held the ring out to him. "Take it, then. You will know what do with it, I'm sure."

He took it from me with the sort of shimmer that showed he was exceptionally gratified. "Thank you, sir."

I watched as the ring fell from his hand into the depths below. It hit the lava and rested there for a moment before slowly sinking beneath the glowing surface, and as they caught fire I almost felt that the Old Etonian colors glowed brighter in approval. That Wooster, they seemed to say: not much in the brains department, but he gets the job done.

Outside, there came a hideous wailing as of something ages old abruptly losing the power which bound it to this mortal plain and all that, which I took as our signal to leg it down the nearest drainpipe before things got sticky. The road goes ever on and on, what? Yet I paused there, at the end of all things, because some things have to be said.

"No, thank you, Jeeves."

[elodieunderglass]

You know how I LOVE a narrative protagonist that blanks entire swathes of the narrative because they don’t CARE.

I do love Miles Vorkosigan, carrying most of The Vorkosigan Saga, entirely full of himself, reaching the end of fifteen-or-so books, fancying himself the cleverest and slipperiest little being in the galaxy, boxing with his father and loving him and losing him and finally a father in his own right, faced with his mom at the end of the series.

In which Cordelia pleasantly says, “now that I can stop giving a fuck, your bisexual father and I were banging this background guy this whole time. Yeah, that guy. Yeah, you’ve known him your whole life, we were doing it a lot, and yes, we were robbing the cradle - it was a slightly-badly-balanced but frankly hilarious polyamorous triad. In the light of your father’s death, Mr Third Wheel and I are now going to create various combinations of children, and possibly explore a two-person romance or maybe just be platonic coparents of your new crop of siblings ✌️”

And Jole’s just like 🧍🏼‍♂️

And it’s completely believable as an insane end-of-series 40-years-or-whatever-in-the-making ending because, BECAUSE, miles would have been paying zero attention to a single 🤏 piece of information about BISEXUAL POLYAMOROUS FATHER

Like Miles was our POV narrator for 30-whatever years and he’s bright and funny and rampaging adhd and he. Would never have noticed that. It was never gonna be on his radar

[theredkite]

#vorkosigan saga#Gideon the ninth obviously is the most popular recent one but I do fucking love Miles FULLY blanking the polycule#it’s like. it’s not retroactive it’s not lampshading it’s not bad writing or a twist or anything it’s just Miles NEVER NOTICED.#bisexual dad who? his little gay lover who? that is NOT relevant to my narrative#my narrative is about banging hot ladies in space. the occasional horse. angsting about - no I am NOT angsting about disability and#mental health and neurodivergence and being slightly off-centre from everyone else and not considered attractive and framed as a mutant for#being A BIT SHORT etc LISTEN:::::: the angsting is about the internal condition of being Miles which is permanent and incurable? thanks???#the only mitigation is getting Attention for Insane Feats? Okaay????? if you’re mad about this it’s probably bigoted of you actually.#stealing other people’s armies is how some people cope???#and with the constant brew in Miles’s brain of the experience of being Miles Vorkosigan I can FULLY imagine him deleting all hints about#bisexual polyamorous fathers. including a time where he walked in on Aral and Jole#✋ NOT relevant I’m too busy being Miles#we will process that LATER.

I loved rereading Vor Game after Gentleman Jole, and sniggering at Miles being mildly irritated by stupidly hot Lieutenant Jole with his stupid perfect career and his stupid being there. Yes, Miles, that's your stepfather. He's looking at your dad like that because he loves him. Everyone else in the room knows, it's just you live on a really backward, patriarchal planet, so nobody mentions it.

I really want one tiny little extra scene in Gentleman Jole. I wish Mark had shown up. Imagine it:

Miles, known genius, the Emperor's very own eccentric detective, who grew up in his parents' house, listening to his mother explain his parents' polycule very patiently in small words: "wait... so all those homophobic remarks about dad that I've been hearing my whole life... and all those scandalous rumours about his ex-boyfriend... and that hot younger man dad worked with who was around a lot... who ended up coincidentally stationed the same place you were... that was all because dad was BISEXUAL???"

Mark, a traumagenic system literally created in a lab to hate his parents as part of a deeply-convoluted political plot, dropping in to visit the family he only met as an adult: "hi Mom! hi Dad's Boyfriend!"

[elodieunderglass]

LITERALLY THIS IS WHAT I MEAN

mark: I know, it’s so nice that they have each other. Aral’s had so much to deal with and -

miles: ✋ can we rewind to 5 minutes ago and then pause there for 12-16 business days.

ivan: hey guys how’s it going. Bought a new throw pillow the other day. Oh hi Jole

[elodieunderglass]

“IVAN KNEW? THAT IDIOT IVAN?”

[maykendehoutman]

#I have a theory the GJ&tRQ is so low rated on the book sites#Because of the fans who identify with miles too much#They were also somehow blindsided and resent it

100%

[everlovingt]

Wait, GJ&tRQ is rated low? Noooooo - I need to go write some reviews.

[maykendehoutman]

Relative to other VK Saga books, yes. (It has come up in more recent years.) There was a lot of division over it when it came out. I love it though.

Also, if anyone hasn't listened to the My Word As Vorkosigan podcast, the one on GJ&tRQ is the funniest of the bunch.

"This book is so horny!"

[fabiansociety]

LMB did something kind of similar with Paladin of Souls, and it's a great thing to have as a pattern. You're a middle aged lady who has been through The Horrors and is ready for retirement? Your bribe from the literal gods is hot sex with a sweetiepie

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I am constantly seeing people trying to puzzle out what's "ruining books" and it makes me more and more tired. Read a different book. You have more choice in reading material than at any other point in all of history. No one thing can be ruining ALL of them.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

"Are trope-obsessed tiktok book pitches ruining books?" Go read something that wasn't marketed on tiktok. There's so much of it. Is this a problem for would-be authors trying to get traditionally published? Possibly, I don't know, I'm not familiar with the market. Is it a problem for readers? Of course not. Stop being stupid.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

"Okay Derin, how can I find books without scrolling tiktok or booktube for them, or only looking at the goodreads front page?":

Try a genre that isn't currently On Trend. If you don't like the current romantasy bestsellers because they all follow the same tropes in order to game the tiktok algorithm, try something that isn't romantasy.

Read something written before 2010. There are plenty of amazing books being written right now also, but if your problem is with current trends specifically, go read the books that people were complaining were "ruining literature" twenty years ago. They're great.

Walk into any second-hand bookshop and just start looking around. There will be a lot of the thing you don't like there and there will also be a lot of other stuff, some of which you do like.

Make friends who like the same sorts of books as you.

This might only apply to me, but I get a lot of recommendations by simply being into vaguely philosophical video essays. If you follow a lot of the Jacob Geller Types on youtube or nebula then you will get more truly awesome science fiction recommendations than you know what to do with.

Write a web serial and every few days somebody will pop into your inbox saying "this thing you wrote kind of reminds me of [x], have you read it?" and it's almost certainly something you've never heard of in your life but now you have another story to check out that you know touches on themes you've demonstrated interest in.

If you find yourself in truly desperate straits, go to tvtropes.org and type in a trope you like. Scroll down to 'examples'. There's a whole long list there of stories about a killer on a leash, or battle couples, or whatever else you're in the mood to read about today.

Read Time to Orbit: Unknown, which is a story that I'm super unbiased about, you can definitely trust me when I say that you specifically will like this no matter who you are, I totally wouldn't lie to you.

[nellydreadful]

I would like to add: follow authors! If an author you like is active on a social media platform you are also on, follow them. Writers are nearly always readers themselves, and they like to write, obviously, so it is very common for a lot of them to write about things they read. Books that were a big influence on them, books they like right now, books their writer friends are putting out, whatever.

If you follow a lot of authors, not only will you keep track of what books those particular authors are releasing, but you’ll also probably learn a lot about a bunch of other books and media. (thank you for the CJ Cherryh recs Mr Derin sir)

[mytly4]

I agree with the OP that the constant hand-wringing about stuff that's "ruining" current books gets old real fast (whether that "stuff" is particular social media platforms or "wokeness" or whatever). I really want to get hold of some of these people and ask them why - if they feel current books are ruined - they have to read current books at all? Just read something older! It's not like older books pop out of existence once newer ones come out! Sure, some old stuff may be out of print or hard to find, but unless you're looking for a specific older book, that shouldn't be an issue.

I realize that the problem in most of these cases is that people don't really have places where they can get book recommendations, and wind up picking up whatever's trending on social media. However, even the tiniest bit of effort (such as Googling) can turn up huge lists of recommendations, including in the genre that you want. A tiny bit more effort will turn up more recommendations than you can possibly read.

Anyway, here's a video that includes a list of 300 book recommendations, specifically curated so that you don't have to rely on the algorithm for recommendations. Here's the actual list: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading_challenges/b9e364fb-9b97-49a7-b3b5-bc24064e6cbd. The video description also includes several sub-lists on The StoryGraph.

[the-boring-distopia]

tlt is one of those books where I can't technically prove it but I'm convinced these bitches are actually biologically distinct enought due to death magic, space travel and living in the future that they are basically a different species. Not even in a transhumanist way, but in a "how the fuck is Harrow not burning in all that unfiltered radiation on pluto?" way. Like if I ran a lab report on them it would come back with shit that is not normal and definitely concerning or fascinating.

I don't just say it based on vibes, like we know Camilla/Palamedes lived on a space station for a long while and their bone density is not lower than usual (based on plot/behavior at least), which would be basically impossible for a "normal" human and they don't have any related circulatory issues either. None of the female characters (not just house citizens, none) are mentioning periods even once, which makes me question if they even still have something resembling periods. We have characters (probably) coming from planets with way higher gravity than ours and they can take those stresses.

At this point it's not a stretch that the people of Dominicus either had to adapt over generations or their respective lyctors did some adjusting because those are some weird things.

I just know that putting a single drop of Ianthe's blood under a microscope would show us shit science is not prepared to explain, or just doesn't want to.

[mytly4]

They have artificial gravity. You do realize that IRL, problems such as bone density issues and so on are caused by living in zero/very low gravity. Living on a space station that has artificial gravity the same strength as Earth's would not necessarily cause any problems. Ditto with living on planets with very high gravity - they can just lower the gravity artificially. That said, I don't think anyone actually lives on the gas giants, since they're, y'know, made of gas. The people there probably live on one of the rocky moons and/or in a space station in orbit around those planets.

As for the Ninth House, it's located in a very deep shaft dug into Pluto. I doubt much radiation penetrates that far. And what little that does isn't necessarily unfiltered. I mean, yes, Pluto doesn't have an atmosphere, but there's nothing preventing the Ninth House from putting some artificial barrier across the opening of the shaft to filter out the radiation.

[cyber-punk-rock]

Can you play an instrument? (Any skill level)

Yes (which one? 👀)

No

Nuance (up to interpretation)

Voting ended onApr 2

I’m just curious how many people at some point in their lives have played/learned to play an instrument of any kind.

I included a nuance button bc I know there might be some folks who might be like “well I played the recorder in grade school but idk if that counts” — count it if you want or hit nuance if you’re unsure! 😊

To be clear, if you studied an instrument to any level of proficiency, even if you’re out of practice now, please select yes!

Reblog with your instrument, if you wish 🙏🏼 Or just for more accurate results

[cyber-punk-rock]

Boosting again! I’ve been enjoying reading everyone’s responses so far, it brings me joy to see music has reached so many lives!! 😊🫶🏼

[eilinelsghost]

Comparative Sizes of Beleriand and the Lands to the East

I put this together as a resource for my own writing awhile back and at first just stared at it in utter bewilderment. Is Beleriand really this small?! It seems like the answer is yes, and I'll give a quick explanation as to why below.

I've seen various stitched together maps of the First and Second/Third Ages, but the primary ones I've encountered still end up with the distance measurements not quite reflecting what we have in the text or map legends.

Without going into too many of the tedious bits, the basic overview is that I put this together by superimposing the maps in Photoshop, aligning Himring and Tol Himling, then drawing this out till the two iterations of the Ered Luin crossed. The primary thing here was ensuring the distance between Himring/Himling and the Ered Luin remained the same in both places.

There were various other details as well, but the key factor for determining whether this was feasible was to check whether it held up when comparing the numerical distances we are given as well.

This is simplest on the map of Middle-earth in the Third Age, since the official map was kind enough to provide a mileage legend. However, the Beleriand map was not nearly so forthcoming. So off we go to everyone's favorite chapter of the Silmarillion (Of Beleriand and its Realms) where we find that East Beleriand is described as being

at its widest a hundred leagues from Sirion to Gelion and the borders of Ossiriand

If this is 100 leagues, then we can convert that to roughly 345 miles and move that rasterized line down within the same file and line it up with our mileage legend from the map of Third Age Middle-earth (scaled as shown in the first image). Which gives us this:

Almost spot on!

Which, I'm not going to lie, really shocked me. I expected to find that this was wildly off since I've always assumed these maps to be fairly equal in my head. But no, it seems that all the epics of the First Age really did happen in an area no larger than Eriador.

One last image that I find interesting is isolating just Beleriand from this stitched map while retaining the water's tint so you can see the approximate whereabouts of the new shorelines would have ended up.

[laufire]

i find myself far more charmed by aral vorkosigan than i know i would by any of the modern romantasy love interests with a ~dark past i've heard about. this is funny because he's an utterly charmless man, but when he awkwardly proposed to cordelia a few days after meeting her and said he'd been thinking about it since the moment he first saw her (when she was barfing on the mud), i had to laugh, shake my head thinking "what a strange little man," and admit i'd been won over.

[liesmyth]

I first read Shards of Honor in the italian translation, and in it Aral is still using the formal form to address Cordelia when he asks her to marry him. His lack of charm bewitched me utterly

[laufire]

i'm reading a spanish translation i bought i few years ago and it's the same there. he can barely maintain eye contact. he's 44 years old and this is the first time he asks anyone out in his life. cordelia is not ANY less awkward during this and the first thing that did her in was seeing him smile when she paid him a compliment. losers <3. i can't wait to meet their son.

[liesmyth]

omg I love how multiple translators took one look at Aral Vorkosigan (Captain Admiral Conqueror etc.) and thought "AWKWARD GUY. AWKWARD"

[mytly4]

Sadly, English doesn't have a formal/informal distinction for "you". But the author does convey similar distinctions via how the characters address each other, that is whether they use first names or titles (and/or surnames). As this dialogue in a much later book puts it (though not about Aral and Cordelia):

"I mean, is she in love at all? I've never even heard her call him by his first name. How can you be in love with someone you're not on a first-name basis with?"

"Oh, that's a Vor thing."

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Favorite Young Book Heroines

Final

Cassie (Animorphs) VS Daenerys Targaryen (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Cassie

Daenerys

Show results

Voting ended onMar 8

NO ANTIPROPAGANDA PLEASE

Propaganda under the cut

Cassie:

Hugs trees, heals animals, pacifist forced into a war. She's beauty, she's grace, turns into a wolf to eat your face.

[goodgrammaritan]

@thejakeformerlyknownasprince Can we make Cassie win the whole thing????

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

We certainly must try!

@hugintheraven's propaganda:

Cassie is a fat black girl who is the moral center of the group and is often deeply unpopular both in and out of universe for it. She argues for peace with a mouth red with the lifeblood of her enemies, because she may hate violence, but she understands that keeping her own hands clean is not the same as doing the right thing. Vote Cassie.

My Propaganda:

Attempted to talk up her best friend to a Hollywood heartthrob by saying “that’s not all she can do! She also had a house fall on her.”

Ended the alien invasion of Earth by coming up with a way that the invaders didn’t have to steal Earth’s resources and could live in peace.

Forgets to gender half the time.

Not scared of: venomous snakes, giant spiders, polar bears, eels, maggots, alien centipedes the size of school buses, 7-headed monsters the size of buildings. Is scared of: skunks.

Once gave her phone number as 123-45678.

Likes Nine Inch Nails, dislikes Megadeth.

Responded to Marco asking if “girls get all weird about bugs and snakes” by dropping a live garter snake into his hair.

Even her parents canonically think she’s cool.

“One-woman army” who single-handedly fought 20 human-controllers and won to save her friends from a trap she warned them not to walk into.

Favorite channel is Animal Planet.

Has a side gig in ecoterrorism. Is implied to keep this up even after the war ends and she becomes a government rep.

Deserves kudos for the brain surgery on her friend, but ALSO did leg surgery on a random Australian man while in hork-bajir morph.

Short queen.

[reconstructwriter]

How the fuck is Daenerys pulling ahead?

While these two are both idealistic characters focused on building a better world, powerhouses in their respective realms as the One Woman Army and the Mother of Dragons, both with the brains to apply that power, both caught in wars for their respective homes and both have undertaken personal moral crusades…

But for all Daenerys pretty words, she most often ‘frees’ those enslaved by taking control of them herself. Sure, GRRM writes them as willing to join her – and serve in their former capacities – but if Grey Worm or any of his command decided they didn’t want to fight? I definitely can’t see Daenerys dealing well with a good chunk of her army deciding to settle down and become woodworkers or something.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Daenerys also views her conquest and rule of Meereen and all the people within as a sort of testing grounds for her ability to rule Westeros. That’s...an interesting mindset that lends itself well to her white savior complex but GRRM doesn’t strike me as an author who’s fully aware of all those implications.

Cassie keeps true to herself through a war. Yes, a big part of that is because she has her friends and the hard decisions they make to thank for this at times – how well would Cassie’s plan have gone without Jake murdering 17,000 helpless non-combatants? Or Rachel’s willingness to get her paws even dirtier for the sake of keeping her friends a little cleaner? But the author acknowledges this. She’s the one to plan and trap David in rat morph. She’s also earlier the one who willingly traps herself in caterpillar morph for the freedom of a single child.

Daenerys would NEVER

Ultimately, Daenerys says she would like to be a good queen, but would rather idealize that role than change anything about ‘The Wheel’ that ultimately sparked that war. She wants to win but isn’t as committed to changing the rules by which people get put in power. She’s part of the wheel, unwilling to give up being the axle in order to break the rest of it – as that means breaking everything her own family has done for three hundred years.

Cassie is willing to betray her own comrades to break the rules of engagement the Yeerks and the Andalites have laid down. She breaks that wheel. Not alone. Not even the One Woman Army can do it alone. She can’t do it without sacrifice, without blood on her hands and teeth and especially on the hands of her friends. But she took the axle of that Wheel of War and authoritarianism Andalite Imperialism and Yeerk Conquest built and curb-stomped it! The only Animorph who has the endurance to keep on going in war and in peace.

Daenerys? She’s got too much white supremacy baggage. In the hands of an author more aware and capable she could still be interesting as a villain or an anti-hero or even both. But for my money I’ll take Cassie in all her morals and contradictions and steadfastness that saw her survive a war and the peace afterwards.

[mytly4]

I'm sorry, but this is blatant anti propaganda (even if the OP claims it isn't). But more irritatingly, it is based completely on the TV version of Daenerys, whereas this is poll is about the books only. @reconstructwriter's post clearly gives away the fact that they are not familiar with the book version of Daenerys (or at the very least, mixing up the two versions), based on their reference to "breaking the wheel", which is a show-only line, with no basis in the books whatsoever. 🙄

Moreover, their anti-Daenerys arguments have no basis in the books either. Daenerys literally tells the former slaves she frees that they are free to leave and do whatever they want and that no one will try to stop them. She does at one point think of her experiences in Slaver's Bay as preparing her for her future role in Westeros. But she also comes to realize that such a view is mistaken, and that Slaver's Bay is not a testing ground but a place with people she's responsible for. This realization forms the climax of her arc in the third book, and she spends the entirety of the fifth book (she doesn't appear in the fourth book) making compromises for the benefit of her freed people. Several people (former or current slave owners, that is) urge her to leave Slaver's Bay and go to Westeros (including offering her ships to get there) so as to get rid of her, but she is firm that she cannot leave until her people are safe and taken care of. How does that count as "idealizing the role of queen" or anything of that sort?

The bottomline is, Book!Daenerys is one of the unambiguous heroes of A Song of Ice and Fire, and not a villain, or anything remotely like it. Claiming that she is is either a case of terrible reading comprehension or blatant misrepresentation.

[eightyonekilograms]

How far back in time can you understand English?

An experiment in language change

Nifty little language game here.

I can read back to 1500 with basically no difficulty

at 1400 I have to read slowly and carefully, but I can understand all of it save a couple words

at 1300 I can still comprehend most of it if I read slowly, but a much larger percentage of the words are unfamiliar to me, even with context

1200 and earlier are almost totally unintelligible

[naamahdarling]

Okay, so 1300 was where it took some real thinking. If I were trying to understand it spoken and not written I probably wouldn't do well at all. But there's enough Latin that I would adjust pretty quickly I think. I could achieve full fluency.

I can't do 1200 or anything past it. It is, as the author says, a wall. It feels like a closely related foreign language. I had Spanish lessons at a very early age so I actually do okay at romance languages and skated through 1300 on thstt, but am totally lost here because I know zero German, and as German roots become more prevalent I lose all footing.

Really cool stuff. I really want to know what we will sound like in 100 years and wonder if anyone has made an educated guess at that.

[yarnings]

Right now I'm loving the idea of Learned Penric, i.e. Penric-as-a-Divine. Because we all know that he's not a proper divine. He only got ordained because he needed to do so to keep Desdemona. He had no idea what he was going to do with his life (although he would have loved to be a scholar). Him being a senior sorcerer is just a convenient trick to let him do what he wants (play with his translations). He's lucky that scholar-divine is a role that exists, so he can get away with just playing around with translations and trying to figure out the nature of demons and all that jazz, and every time we see him forced into the role of an actual divine (like when he's asked to bless a meal) it's jarring.

Except...

The reason he took his irregular oath was compassion. He saw personhood where no one else did and didn't even bother to ask "is anyone going to take care of her?", he just went straight to the top and said "ok, I'm going to throw anything and everything away because this person needs my help". He stops in the middle of a sea battle and takes the time (time that he could have used to put a hole in the pirates' ship to get them off his for all I know) to make sure that a young Roknari isn't sundered. This man isn't a wanna-be scholar who got stuck having to do pastoral care as a divine. He's a shoulda-been pastor who Someone made sure was put in a place where he could do that job.

[fabiansociety]

it can be a little hard to tell, because penric’s affect is so self-effacing, but he is possibly the most competent of all of bujold’s hypercompetent protagonists. desdemona brings so much skill and expertise along, but penric is someone who loves cultivating those skills and coming up with new applications. AND he takes everything he learns seriously. he might not be a full-time divine, and he may not have planned or wanted to get the training, but he took the training and the duty completely seriously. (see also: his suicide attempt, where he couldn’t say no to a duty he absolutely did not want)

[yarnings]

I like that Penric being the most competent is so clearly not a case of "well this guy is just better", because the extra support (both from Des and from his training) makes such a clear difference. "Knowing what you can do" and "having a support network" are obviously the cause.

He definitely takes things seriously! He started out (as everyone seems to) worshipping the god ordained by his sex and age, but then we see him, later on, paying attention to the other gods not just of necessity (being cautious about giving animals that would belong to the Son to Des, even if there's nothing of the Bastard's around) but because it's respectful - when he gets taken to the camp in the Physicians of Vilnoc (and poor Bujold - that has to be the worst timing ever to write a plague story) he signs with more respect for the Son, because that's who the camp is dedicated to. Or for the Mother when he's working with physicians. (For someone who simply could NOT handle working as a physician, it's remarkably difficult to convince him that he doesn't need to at any given point in time.)

[fortunes-haven]

Tangentially, I like that he's so competent that the gods are like, no, no, we're not going to help you. You're going to help the people who prayed to us. Now go figure out how to rescue a couple of scared children from slaver-pirate island.

[fabiansociety]

that much at least has been a consistent element of the relationships between gods and saints, sorcerers, and shamans in the broader series. or, i suppose, between the author and the characters; no hands but ours, indeed

[yarnings]

I agree that that's a consistent element, but (and this is in part because Penric's story is a bunch of short episodes, so Bujold can do it) the way that Penric gets loaned out between the gods is pretty unique to him. (Definitely falls under "going to get all the use out of this tool that I can").

Now I wonder - does being a saint change you to the point where you can no longer be sufficiently empty? Because we know that the saint of the Bastard in Lodi (Masquerade in Lodi) didn't really know what was going on. Caz definitely had no idea, and didn't even know anything weird was happening until halfway through his role. Ista may have known a bit more than Caz, but she was in many ways such a child (she's such an odd character, because she's an empty-nester, but also effectively a teenager, even though she's my age.) She had also been cast loose when the Bastard scooped her up.

Would Caz be capable of becoming a saint again, or has he been so filled up with knowledge of the gods that he can't empty himself enough? Pen can be sent over and over again because he doesn't need to be a saint - he just hit "accept" on the terms & conditions while still retaining his autonomy. The saints of the Bastard (who are obviously way more common than we realised) persist as saints, but really have just one job. Petty saints have a much smaller role (and, like the saints of the Bastard, they do the same thing every time. They dispense justice by knowing who's lying. They help women survive labour.)

I feel like Pen, who obviously didn't have any goals of his own, might have made a good saint had he not picked up Desdemona. He was so willing to fulfill the "correct" role that he let himself be put on a fast track to burnout as a physician. (Because that's what got him! Not being a physician per se.) He puts himself in danger to deliver sermons because that's his job. (Although maybe he's like what Caz observed about the old Provincara - he does his job and he takes that very seriously, but he takes doing what he is told seriously enough that he wouldn't be able to handle the gods telling him to do otherwise. That isn't actually leaving space).

[fabiansociety]

i’ve been wondering for the last several books if the bastard doesn’t actually have two categories of saints, and that penric isn’t the half of the partnership that is up for sainthood. sorcerers can’t be saints, we are told, because the space in their soul that would get occupied by the god during a numinous seizure is already occupied. and we are also told that the layering of animal souls across generations is what creates the great beasts that function similarly for the shamans of the weald. penric himself has noted the similarities between shamanic soul construction and demonic imprinting.

we know the bastard doesn’t like reclaiming his demons, that mishandling or abusing demons is a grave sin worthy of throwing penric and the saint at it. the bastard *wants* demons to linger in the world, to accumulate knowledge and experience and density. there’s a parallel there between the way a saint’s soul has to be stretched before the god can visit. des has brushed up against—is it every god in the pantheon at this point? the bastard most commonly, but the mother was there when they rescued pen’s in-law, the son was there when they redeemed the lost shaman’s soul, the father was there in masquerade at lodi (i think?) has she met the daughter? for as much as penric is god-touched for a human, des is even more notable as a demon. so it’s possible that it’s not just (or even!) pen that’s being loaned out, but des.

i do think you’re right about being a saint making you less open to other gods, or even to your own god. the pattern seems to be that minor saints last a long time and major saints have one big task and are then released. the god hunger remains, but the hunger itself takes up space in the soul

[yarnings]

I'd forgotten about them encountering the Son. (I can't remember if the Father shows up in Masquerade in Lodi or not, but he does in Penric and the Shaman, talking to the Greyjay, and Penric's able to tell him that yes, that was a god-touched dream based on Des' reaction). This brings them up to almost the full tally, and since it was the Daughter, not the Mother, that they met at the shrine (I just re-read through the omnibus stories), the odds that Desdemona has encountered all five are really high, because that's the petty saints she'd have been working with as a sorceror-physician.

One thing that's clear about our understanding of demons (and this would include demonic personhood) is that the temple just doesn't know. Despite his protestations, Pen is almost certainly the leading expert in sorcery, and I'll take his view on the subject over that of his instructors at seminary. (For things like demonic personhood definitely).

[fabiansociety]

it's also very in line with the mother throwing dozens of potential saints at the curse in chalion and only cazaril making it through. the bastard throws hundreds of demons into the world and most get cycled back after three or four generations. des surviving is a testament to the skills and care of herself and her riders and a huge helping of bastard-pleasing luck.

[fleshadept]

the thing i enjoy the most about the locked tomb and discussions around it is there is absolutely zero thirsting for men. there are so few men in that series and so many lesbians that none of them have been blorboified to the point that they dominate the fandom. within the text the point of view characters are in fact so disinterested in men that there is almost nothing in the descriptions of the few men that there are to grasp onto to force them to be the everpresent sexyman figure in fandom, much less to yaoi them. it’s yuri or starve.

[mytly4]

Interesting fact: The Locked Tomb as a whole doesn't pass the reverse Bechdel test – that is, there are no conversations between only men, with no women present. Now granted, this issue is mostly because the main narrators of the books are all women (with the minor exception of the John chapters in NtN, but in those, he's talking to Harrow throughout). But even if we count conversations between only men where the female narrators are present but not involved in the conversation - that is, they simply overhear the conversations (Gideon especially spends a lot of time overhearing other people's conversations in GtN) - there's still nothing. At the most, there might be some blink-and-you-miss-it scene in GtN where Gideon overhears Silas and Colum talking to each other, and where Silas refrains from making bitchy comments about the Ninth House directed at Gideon, but off the top of my head, I can't think of one. Apart from the Eighth House, all other pairs (or trio) in Canaan House are mixed gender or female only, so the overhelming majority of conversations in GtN involve at least one woman. In HtN, the gender ratio is more even, with more male characters, especially at the Mithraeum, but even there, there are no conversations between only John and Augustine and/or G1deon, without any female character participating in the conversation as well (usually Mercy).

[morille-the-swamp-dragon]

Do you also hesitate with starting reading another Discworld book because the world might end when you don't have any left to look forward to or are you normal?

[larathia]

Once you have Read Them All, there is the stage of 'rereading to get more of the jokes you missed the first time, after another reader goes OH DID YOU SEE THE BIT WHERE - and you have to go 'er, no?' and reread furiously'.

And then there's the stage of 'rereading because it is x time of year'. The Night Watch reread is in may, Hogfather around winter solstice. Reaper Man in autumn. Carpe Jugulum and Witches Abroad are both great October reads.

And past that is the stage where the books have all started to blend a bit in your mind but there's this one quote that absolutely fits what's going on right now, hang on, let me reread these three books to see which one the quote was in.

And of course, concurrent with all these is the stage where you're trying to get someone else into the series and you're rereading the ones you're thinking of recommending so you can tell them relevant things and not just the ones you like best which may well be in entirely different parts of the series.

*pats* Worry not, grasshopper. Discworld is not a series that grows stale on rereading. Rather, I suspect you will find, as many before you have found, that there are gems you completely missed on previous reads, and each reread will bring more of them to light, making the book feel new over and over.

[mytly4]

I get that people worry about not having any "new" Discworld book to read, but in my experience, rereading them is just as rewarding, with the bonus that you already know that you're going to like the book. 😁

Okay, I'll admit there are a handful of Discworld books that I didn't like quite as much on reread (mostly ones starring a guy whose name begins with "R" and ends with "incewind" 😝). But there are several more that I loved a lot more on reread, including my favourites, Night Watch and Small Gods, which – hard as it is for me to believe now – I wasn't particularly impressed with the first time around. 😱 There's also I Shall Wear Midnight, which I've read thrice, and which went up a star rating in my mind every time (from 3 stars to 5 stars). Even with ones where my rating stayed the same, I learned to appreciate them on a deeper level upon reread, such as Monstrous Regiment (which I had enjoyed the first time around, but hadn't really thought much about the queer themes).

The bottom line is that most of the joy of Discworld doesn't lie in finding out what happens. The books are mostly not plot-centric (though of course, plenty have amazing plots). Their appeal lies in their characters, themes, and, of course, Pterry's masterful use of language. None of these things are diminished upon rereading - if anything, rereading helps me (and probably others) appreciate these aspects more. So instead of thinking that there won't be a new Discworld for you to read any more, try thinking that now there are 41 books you love that you get to reread and rediscover. 😄

[uncultureddoubloon]

Something I really appreciate about LMB's "truth serum" of fast-penta is that it's not perfect. Even before the fact that you can have an allergy for it, both naturally & artificially induced, it affects people differently & doesn't absolutely require people to spill The Actual Truth (as they understand it). You're just more likely to get truthful answers from the person under the effects of the drug.

Then there's the aforementioned allergies, so you can't use it on everyone for risk of bad allergic reactions. And even if you're not allergic, you can still sometimes fight it (Miles babbling poetry springs to mind lmao), or it otherwise affects you in a way that doesn't lend itself to relaxed honesty (Miles' hyperness again)

It's a really cool way to have a truth serum in the world that can be used but can't be used or relied on 100% of the time for believable reasons. And when you do use it, there's risks of things going awry & any questioning done with it still needs a skilled hand to guide the answering to what they want/need

[mytly4]

I love how fast-penta works in the Vorkosiverse. It doesn't make people tell The Truth, which is after all, a philosophical concept, and not likely something that could be chemically induced. Rather, it simply lowers people's inhibitions and makes them lose self-control to some extent (that is, when it works as intended). So under fast-penta, people are both willing to say exactly what's on their mind, and they can't really stop themselves from saying it. In other words, they can't lie, either deliberately or by ommision.

This is also why it takes a skilled questioner to conduct a fast-penta interview - because if you don't or can't guide the person being questioned to the relevant issues, they are just going to babble about everything that's on their mind, whether or not it has anything to do with the questions being asked. This is where people with ADHD - like Miles - have an advantage: if the questioner isn't skilled enough, then a person with ADHD can simply babble about any of the multiple streams of thought going through their head, rather than the relevant one. (They may not have any control over which one they talk about, but at least the odds are in their favour.)