#shifting shadows

[13thdoodle]

Shifting Shadows doodles to try get out of art rut

and bc I missed them so much 🥺🥺 + Vampire AU (Vampire 31 and Werewolf Fen) bc they are cute

31 is taller than Fen (and Danny too lol)

Fen belongs to @ajitated

[aomiinwonderland]

Woohoo, two day gap again so two mixed prompts from @wispy-wallfish ~ I tried my best to create a poem with the theme of delirium and degenerative incorporated. I might re-edit it haha

Shifting Shadows

Grappling with Echos

Slipping reality

Reminiscent habits

Hallucinations awaken

Deteriorating kindred

Karama unleashed

Unknown waters

Wanting release

Death surrounds mw

Move, it commands

Crumble, it demands

Remember, it beckons

[lu-hyrule-memes]

[ceilingfan5]

!!!

i had a dream this morning and now i have a boy about it?

this is Jasper Ash, formerly the Shadow Prince, and he is in a lot of trouble. he's under house arrest until the kingdom can figure out how to loophole themselves out of a prophecy, but until then, he's going to be ogling resenting his guard about it

[id: a pale man with pointy ears, red eyes, and wavy black hair, wearing a purple coat with gold details, black pants, and matching boots]

[kellyvela]

Shifting Shadows

I was re-reading the AGOT Prologue today and I couldn't believe that after all this time, I've missed the fact that the Others are described as "shifting shadows."

I mean, we already know that shifting shadows are bad news, as @rose-of-red-lake already told us in this post with a little addition from myself.

But the Others, one of the great threats against humanity in the universe of Ice and Fire, being described as shifting shadows as well, is huge!

The Others made no sound.

Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone.

(...)

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.

(...)

“Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to interfere.

—A Game of Thrones - Prologue

BONUS:

This is how GRRM started his short story Only kids are afraid of the dark:

So, beware your lover, if his face remains a shifting shadow...

[blog-sliverofjade]

Zack shook his head. "I am glad you aren't mine. You're going to be dead before you're forty." "No," rumbled my husband's soft deep voice from the hallway. "I'm going to be dead before she's forty.”

Shifting Shadows by Patricia Briggs

[fedonciadale]

I was reading one of your metas and I got surprised because people read this as jonerys foreshadowing: Sometimes she would close her eyes and dream of him, but it was never Jorah Mormont she dreamed of; her lover was always younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting shadow.

I’ve always read this thinking that dany was dreaming about having a cute man and someone who isn’t old like Jorah and Drogo, especially because later when she uses Irri for sex (again) she pictures Daario’s face so I’ve never put much thoughts on it. I guess I just let it pass because jon is really associated with shadows, but anyway is not good as some people think it is. Great meta btw.

Hi there!

Thanks for the compliment.

Yes, the “shifting shadow” is possible Jonerys foreshadowing, but not in a good way, or rather it is foreshadowing that Jon will be the death of Dany.

The shifting shadows made the stone figures seem to stir as the living passed by. (AGOT, Eddard I).

This is about the Stark statues in the crypts. The dead Starks, just like Jon is dead right now.

And this is corroborated by this scene:

Lady Dustin's serjeant raised the lantern. Shadows slid and shifted. A small light in a great darkness. Theon had never felt comfortable in the crypts. (ADWD, The Turncloak)

Then we have a telling scene in Catelyn’s PoV:

She thought she glimpsed movement, but when she turned her head, it was only the king's shadow shifting against the silken walls. She heard Renly begin a jest, his shadow moving, lifting its sword, black on green, candles guttering, shivering, something was queer, wrong, and then she saw Renly's sword still in its scabbard, sheathed still, but the shadowsword . . .     (ACOK, Catelyn IV)

That is about Stannis’ shadowbaby killing Renly, an act of kinslaying.

King Stannis pointed a finger. "There you err, Onion Knight. Some lights cast more than one shadow. Stand before the nightfire and you'll see for yourself. The flames shift and dance, never still. The shadows grow tall and short, and every man casts a dozen. Some are fainter than others, that's all. Well, men cast their shadows across the future as well. One shadow or many. Melisandre sees them all."     (ACOK, Davos II)

This is also rather ominous in general, if you ask me.

As well as this:

The nightfire burned against the gathering dark, a great bright beast whose shifting orange light threw shadows twenty feet tall across the yard. All along the walls of Dragonstone the army of gargoyles and grotesques seemed to stir and shift.     (ASOS, Davos VI)

The shifting shadows are connected to Rh’llor and Melisandre, a power/powers that probably will partly be responsible for resurrecting Jon Snow.

She told the Myrish woman all that had occurred beneath the shifting shadow of the Iron Throne. (AFFC, Cersei VII)

This might point towards the fact that the Iron Throne is Dany’s true love.

This also doesn’t seem to bode well:

The way the shadows shifted made it seem as if the walls were moving too. Bran saw great white snakes slithering in and out of the earth around him, and his heart thumped in fear. He wondered if they had blundered into a nest of milk snakes or giant grave worms, soft and pale and squishy. Grave worms have teeth.     (ADWD, Bran II)

There again is a connection to the dead.

As is this quote:

Griff was on the second man the instant he shambled down off the cabin roof. With a sword in his right hand and a torch in his left, he drove the creature backwards. As the current swept the Shy Maid beneath the bridge, their shifting shadows danced upon the mossy walls. (ADWD, Tyrion V)

So all in all, shifting shadows should not be read as a promise for Dany, but a deadly threat.

No, why is this scene even seen as Jonerys foreshadowing? Because of this quote in Melisandre’s PoV where Jon is the shadow:

The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half-seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again. But the skulls were here as well, the skulls were all around him. Melisandre had seen his danger before, had tried to warn the boy of it. Enemies all around him, daggers in the dark. He would not listen.     (ADWD, Melisandre I)

As you can see, Melisandre’s vision connects the theme of the shifting shadow quite well to Jon and to the other quotes. So, yes Jon is the shifting shadow, the dead man brought back by Rh’llor and his orange flames, the man who is also a beast, a wolf, surrounded by skulls, harbringer of death for Dany.

Usually Jonerys shippers connect this to this quote:

Beneath her coverlets she tossed and turned, dreaming that Hizdahr was kissing her … but his lips were blue and bruised, and when he thrust himself inside her, his manhood was cold as ice. She sat up with her hair disheveled and the bedclothes atangle. Her captain slept beside her, yet she was alone. (ADWD, Daenerys VII)

They say the shifting shadow and the manhood cold as ice is Jon. And that Dany feels like she sleeps alone, just like Jon felt when he lay beside Ygritte.

I must admit, that I see the foreshadowing, but I don’t see how this can be positive.

Thanks for the ask!

[pandora15]

🌹

From Chapter 9 of Shifting Shadows (I know it’s been a while ahhh it’s so hard to write this):

“No,” he whispered, and his own voice echoed back to him, a cruel reminder of his failure.

Everyone is just having a great time in that fic :)