seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Sweden
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from Yemen
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from T1
seen from France
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from United States
star-shadows replied to your photoset “Houtong Cat Village, Taiwan May 9, 2019”
I WAS THERE LAST YEAR!!!
!!!!!! HIGH-FIVE FOR SAME PRIORITIES but aksj;afj if I’d known, I would have asked for transportation/itinerary advice from you!!!! I was really desperate for it, specifically for Houtong haha
Did you end up also hitting Jiufen/Shifen on the same day?
I'm sorry if it's an obvious question, but do you mind explaining what you mean by Bert's story coming into play from much earlier in the manga? Thank you so much :)
Heh, I just meant that lie Bert told Eren&Armin waaaay back in the day, when they were exchanging origin stories. And it was an interesting detail at the time, but now it informs Bert’s characterization like little else does. There’s not that much we know about Bert, right – mostly he drifts through the narrative on the power of someone else’s choices that he sees no option but to follow. But here’s one intriguing choice he makes:
Back when RBA were just getting to know their fellow trainees, Bert described this haunting, traumatizing scene of a titan attack on his and Reiner’s village. And obviously once we learned that RBA were traitors, the question was, like, what the hell was up with that?? Was this the truth? Was this a lie? I had once supposed it to be the truth, mainly based off Reiner’s strong reaction:
At that time, it looked like maybe Reiner felt Bert had said too much, and had to be reminded not to share his squishy tender feelings with their enemies. Now, of course, it’s clear that Reiner was weirded out for a completely different reason, namely that Bert was appropriating the traumas shared with them by somebody else.
The dude’s story had an angle Bert didn’t really include in his own: that he ran away in fear and left behind his three kids to be devoured by titans. By the time he was telling the story to RBA, he was feeling guilty as hell about this. And then he hanged himself, and this whole incident left a powerful impression on Bert.
After all, RBA knew what it was like to run in fear of titans and leave someone behind. They’d done it to Marcel. And Reiner dealt with it by trying to kill his old self and become Marcel, and Annie dealt with it by accepting that everything was shitty and drawing ever deeper from her reserves of cynicism. And Bert… Bert, apparently, was shook by emotional kinship with that self-loathing guy. And the thing is, like, he understood the guilt, but the reasons for the guy’s behaviour also seemed to have resonated with him.
Because there’s a reason why he told that story to Eren and Armin, and I’m guessing that reason is that he wanted to share with these kids, the kids whose lives he had helped ruin, the ways in which he too was a victim. But he couldn’t tell them the truth, not even the part about Marcel dying, and so he chose to do it by proxy, by taking someone else’s story and incorporating some truth into it: the fear, the running, the leaving people behind, the inability to return to their home. He left out the part about the genocide, but hey, sometimes there are just no metaphors enough.
And Reiner just sat there being like, dude. DUDE. What the fuck.
But even after Bert had told Eren and Armin this lie, this shit kept haunting him.
Annie suggests that the dude wanted forgiveness from them – something they were ill-placed to give. Bert, however, sees it differently. He doesn’t think the man hoped for forgiveness, because that would imply he thought himself worthy of it, and Bert’s not so sure it’s true. No, he thinks all the man wanted to do is lay out his sins for someone to see.
And that sounds very much like Bert himself wanted someone to judge him. Like he wanted someone to know both the terrible things he’d done, and the terrible things he’d lived through, and wanted someone to tell him what the tally was. And was afraid of what the tally might be.
And at the time, Reiner hadn’t been ready to listen to this, because that way lay madness, and because Reiner’s sense of responsibility had always been greater than Bert’s. Reiner had to put sentiment aside, or he’d be unable to function. But now, of course, the chickens are coming home to roost.
… This turned out way longer than I expected??? Soz, it so happened that Bert’s story was something I’d never actually talked about after the recent revelations, so all these words happened in response to your straightforward question ^^
NIF Episode 8 Fandom Talk
@thesilentdarkangel THANK YOU SO MUCH I'm glad you continue to enjoy my work as I enjoy this show, and also I am seriously having Wang Kai withdrawals #teameyebrows (I think this makes Crown Prince #teammoustache and Yu #teamforehead)
@orangememory ohhhhhh, your explanation about Pugilist Dad makes so much sense! I mean, I want to shake him and be like "nnnooooooo that isn't how this works" but it makes sense: he thinks he is doing good by honoring his duties to both family and government, and thereby does evil. And thus our poor Jing Rui sunshine boy is doubly-trapped I HATE EVERYTHING T_T (oh and I BET the fandom went wild for that line. As soon as that joke was made in the show I could just SENSE the fic) (also thank you for giving me Meng's actor's ACTUAL name, the only sources I could find just had his English name and English names for successful Chinese actors always just feel weird to me idk it's like the press calling Zhao Wei Vicky Zhao it's just WEIRD)
@star-shadows ahhhAHHHHH I FORGOT ABOUT THAT SCENE IN THE NOVEL. I stopped reading the novel only a chapter or two after that, since storylines were progressing at different rates and some were veering dangerously close to spoiler territory. But when you mentioned it, YES I remember him and the super-dramatic red bow, and that amazing shot ahhhhhHHHHHHH I reread the whole thing and now I'm having Lin Shu emotions again aaaaaghhh (also that's really cool about the dialogue matching so closely!) and THE SNOW SCENE REENACTMENT IM SOBBING THIS IS THE GREATEST THING
I went through your tower of joy tags (and...a ton of other tags. your blog is a beautiful black hole thank you so much) and didn't see an answer to this, but forgive me if I missed it - do you think there is anything more to Ned defeating Arthur Dayne? I don't mean the frankly stupid theory of Howland Reed warging into him (ughughughugh). but there was that comment from Catelyn's pov about the rumours in winterfell about their young lord defeating the Sword of the Morning, and (1/?)
and Ned’s comment to Bran about how he would have died at Dayne’s hands if Howland Reed hadn’t saved him. and I can’t understand how Ned could have defeated Dayne in one-to-one combat, unless Ned was a much better swordsman than I remember? I guess I mean, I don’t expect conspiracy theories, but is this part of the story significant enough to be clarified in the future, do you think?
I’m sure it will be, GRRM’s answered “keep reading” when asked about the Tower of Joy, many times. It’s probable that Howland Reed did do something – I expect a crannogman trick like a poisoned blow dart or similar, something that disabled Arthur enough for Ned to win. Or maybe Ned was down and Howland held Arthur off with net and frogspear, long enough for him to recover. (The show had Howland just get Arthur in the back, but ugh show and it doesn’t do anything with his or Ned’s or Arthur’s character or traits, because ugh show.)
And Howland is going to appear on stage eventually, so we’ll either get the info from him directly, or via Bran-vision, or something. Hope that helps, and keep on with the black hole. :)
@star-shadows replied to your post: ...
this is brilliant and I’m with you like 200%. Can I just add: Squirrel’s name makes so much sense now. At first, naming your pet by an animal it clearly is not just seems like a weird quirk, until you realize - if Squirrel’s name is a lie, then what’s to stop the rest of Squirrel being a lie as well?
omg you liked my theory!!! thank you!!! I’m over the moon, I’m never the kind of person who comes up with good theories that deal with themes and stuff!!! thank you!!! :)) and yeah, I definitely think Squirrel is GRRM’s first hint to us that something weird is going on :))
what (if any) do you think is the significance of GRRM building up to a 1000th lord commander of the NW, with Mormont being 997th and Jon being 998th? I mean, nothing in this series is random...
To lead up to a significant person being the 1000th Lord Commander. Probably Stannis, if he lives.
I truly mean this as a compliment and I hope you will take it as such, but I have enjoyed your meta (especially endgame meta) so much that I've basically forgotten which parts are from the published books and which are your meta, because let's face it, most of your endgame meta is just the last two books. have you considered writing the sparknotes version of TWOW and ADOS while we're waiting lol (though it basically exists in your tags already!)
Thanks so much! Though on the whole I’ve tended to avoid specific predictions for the next two books (because I dislike being wrong), I think. I prefer estimating probabilities to saying “this will happen”, with a few exceptions. I don’t like cloud-castle-building, piling theories upon theories, and often look somewhat askance at people who do theorize such things with apparent confidence. Also I’m not in the business of writing endgame fanfic, I really want to see GRRM’s story, not mine or anyone else’s. :)
That said, I have tended to be more specific about how I see (parts of) the War for Dawn going rather than most other details of TWOW and ADOS, so I can understand why you might enjoy my endgame thoughts tag. It’s just… there are parts of the story that I can see, clear as day (the Wall crumbling, breaking apart, falling; Brienne and another “no chance, no choice” with her Valyrian steel sword against the Others; Arya riding Nymeria, surrounded by a pack of wolves; Jon and Dany and Tyrion flying through the aurora into whatever horrors lay beyond), but much of what surrounds those bits is extremely blurry, so I certainly couldn’t write a full outline with any confidence. I’m not GRRM, I think I understand the story he’s writing, but I’m not him. And maybe I am a Melisandre, and the visions I think are clear aren’t real, but we’ll see, I suppose…
star-shadows replied to your post “NiF rewatch live blog part 9 Ep 21 - 23, kinda long, but look, a lot...”
these are literally making my life please don't stop
<3 I get pretty self-conscious about dropping all of this stuff in the main tags (let alone my poor followers’ dashboards sorry guys) so the encouragement is very much appreciated, thanks!
I think I am pretty much committed to doing the whole show, having come this far, but I expect the pace will slow down – I did the first marathon stretch as part of post-semester recovery, and lying flat on my back gibbering at the ceiling about narrative structure in NiF can only be sustained for so long before I actually have to pick myself up and do other things too, sadly.
