early 30s | they/them | follows from @spectrumcore
doomed narrative enjoyer. faves include lyanna stark, jon snow, catelyn stark, the lannisters, stannis baratheon, the wall & beyond, dunk & egg, anything summerhall, and a handful of extra tragic miscellanous targs.
i write (slowly). my writing:
The Horn of Winter - Ned Stark & Jon Snow, Ongoing, 65k. AU: Ned Stark is spared execution and sent to the Wall. Haunted by his own ghosts, struggles to face the truth of the Long Night as much as he does his son, Jon Snow.
what a drowning man needs - Mance Rayder/Qhorin Halfhand, 2.5k. Bitter(sweet) reflection on romance, a little morbid, a little gothic, a little wild.
in which Jocasta devours the last light of the sun - Lyanna Stark & Jon Snow, 4k. Horror. Other!Lyanna meets Jon Snow at Harrenhal and struggles to account for why his face is so familiar. WARNING FOR GORE, CANNIBALISM, AND VIOLENCE.
Would the darkness stay longer - Aegon V/Betha Blackwood, 1k. Under the cover of darkness, he mumbles softly into her shoulder, but what if we were Lord and Lady of Raventree Hall?
usually I would ignore fan canon and turn to the text itself if I found other fan interpretations annoying, but the lack of canonical interaction between Jon and Dany means that you're much more reliant on fan interpretations than normal. I try not to reflexively hate something if it's popular (I love Jaime and Brienne and that's very popular), but the fact that this ship, which is built upon fan interpretations I dislike, is so popular and is unavoidable in fan spaces and often saturates tags, doesn't exactly help.
sometimes talking to other people in this fandom about potential adaptations and future releases feels like being a buddhist monk trying to patiently explain the concept of unhealthy attachment
I'm making an asoiaf quiz in the vein of the game show Pointless (like the opposite of Family Feud, where the goal of the game is to name the most popular answer).
Thank you so much for taking the time to fill it out and I hope you have fun! Google quiz form here
Please answer each question to the best of your ability! Multiple answers are allowed too. Thank you! :)
(The game plan is to do this quiz first in order to collect data points and then comes the Full Game Show part where we compete against one another https://discord.com/invite/xwprpuUq7N)
modern au where arya takes home ec in middle school, and during their first week the girls are assigned a sewing project. arya hates it because mrs. mordane keeps comparing her to sansa and embarrassing her in front of the class to the point that sheβs can barely focus on what sheβs doing, so she ends up with an assortment of unevenly cut fabric pieces that she sews together and ties up with a ribbon. she tries to pass it off as a bracelet, but mrs. mordane fails her anyway. arya goes home, throws the bracelet in the trash, and locks herself in her room for the rest of the night.
the next day at breakfast, arya comes downstairs to find jon sitting at the table with her bracelet around his wrist, crooked stitches and all. from that day on, he never goes anywhere without it.
ppl get so upset whenever i say that arya is clearly treated as nonbinary by the narrative even if she isnt voiced as such and its frankly so funny. however could a story abt a child that doesnt feel like a girl yet doesnt feel like a boy either and constantly rejects both gender roles while still adopting parts of both to find ways to express herself read like story of Not Being Cis. truly a crack headcanon w no basis in the text
this is like, f tier bait. civilised. dull. derivative. at least put some fucking bite into it. call me a cunt. actually try to wound me? or even come off anon, show some skin, that would at least be entertaining. can you at least try not to be fucking boring.
personally I think the harrenhal play stark casting was inspired, adds some meaning to the sense of cultural differences and alienation/othering the north has often received at the hands of the southern polity, helps us better see the North/Dorne parallels as regions with a distinct culture who pursue independence, and hopefully discourages white supremacist 'the trve nΓΈrth' type fans, causing them to disengage. additionally, I honestly look forward to any fanart that emerges based on the play's cast.
casting a black woman as lyanna makes the whole βredditors think jon snow is their red pilled alpha male when he was literally murdered for being too wokeβ thing even funnier btw. theyβre definitely going to be normal about this btw.
you should all absolutely read, kudos, and comment on all the short fics posted for the Lady Stoneheart spring fanfic contest:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
they are all short works under 4k words on the theme of 'resurrection'. there is such a variety of entries, which look at various different characters and play in such different genres spaces. entries include:
A time loop where Ned keeps revisiting the Tower of Joy as Lyanna perishes in different ways - A horror fic where we enter Robb's PoV after being revived, part man and part wolf
A fullmetal alchemist style human transmutation ritual for Rhaegar by Jon Conn using human sacrifice, extremely angsty
An exploration of Dunk's PoV as he almost dies while being knocked out during the Trial of the Seven
A Daemyra crack comedy fic
A relationship study of Beric/Thoros in a Renly Wins AU about their fraught yet tender relationship and the romance of reviving someone
A gothic horror/romance where Satin of Oldtown, in a Mary Magdalene parallel, uncovers Jon's body after resurrection and finds out he is more wolf than man
An exploration of Visenya, Rhaenys, & Aegon the Conqueror's fraught and difficult dynamics in a scenario where Aegon dies and becomes a wight raised by Visenya
the collection is currently anonymous, but authors will be revealed shortly. please consider commenting and openly appreciating the works on display! the authors really value your thoughts.
new ask game send me a π» and ill just tell you whatever the fuck i want
new ask game send me a π» and ill just tell you whatever the fuck i want
realised earlier today that i'm largely interested in snowstorm as an interesting barrier to shipping, or complicating factor, given it feels like a narrative inevitability given all the commonalities jon/dany share and the amount of foreshadowing that exists (blue rose growing out of a wall of ice etc.).
i've dabbled in writing jon/satin that unravels with the presence of dany - that when push comes to shove, satin is put aside, the necessary secrecy of their trysts unable to provide the fulfilment that an open romance with a beautiful woman is able to provide. but more than that, i think there's something deeply tragic about being in love with the protagonist who must undertake an epic journey and engage with an epic romance with a beautiful princess, in a 'rosencrantz and guildernstern are dead' sort of meta-tragedy, when you are simply a minor character who can be killed at any convenience, or perhaps will witness the main protagonist fall apart in a tragic way. as a former whore who plays with femininity, satin knows he could convincingly 'pretend' to be the princess as he would in a brothel fantasy, but satin is then stuck in a situation where not only would that trans-femininity be even less permissible, but satin is struck by how his own femininity is considered a shallow artifice in comparison to the cisgender performance. in addition there's the class element, of course: satin is nothing, satin is stuck playing the servant to the lord, and when an equal comes along his interest is put aside. idk! it just breaks my sad trans little heart to think about. and i think it touches on something real about the way relationships with these power dynamics can go sometimes - that we are put aside, sometimes, cruelly. because what we can provide in the shadows is going to be less substantive and feel less complete.
similarly i've been thinking about arya & dany, or even arya/dany, in a situation with a greater time jump (rip GRRM but i'm putting the time skip back in) where arya ends up meeting dany before returning to westeros, and about how the two will both clash over differing worldviews about westeros, targaryens, starks, the rebellion, lyanna, etc. but fundamentally bond over shared experiences, dreams, wishes, wants. i imagine arya playing up the braavo to daenerys and the two having tension, there being something sizzling there that almost takes place - but i think as soon as jon enters the picture you end up with the MOST complicated love triangle. dany sees, 'omg, arya has an older twin? arya has a hot boy twin? a boy version?!?' (lol) in a way that probably undermines some of what arya is trying to do with her gender and the attempted masculinity of it all, but also she sees how MUCH jon loves arya and feels intensely envious - and unsure whether that's just her wishing for something similar from viserys, or whether it's a desire for jon or arya. arya, meanwhile, notices the immediate tension between jon & dany immediately and is torn between wanting her new bestie to get on with her brother and dany to be made a 'true sister', but also torn because that close relationship between her and dany is made secondary immediately by it. i think if there was a pre-existing tension between dany & arya, jon would probably step back and put his sister first - which i think would hurt dany, on some level, who never had a brother who put her first! i think also if you wanted to lean into some of the uncomfortable incestuous subtext, or at least, dany's presumption of that existing, i think that could make it even messier, because from dany's pov she might be put aside for a pre-existing unspoken romantic relationship. this gets worse with the targ reveal because jon does not weight dany equally as family and jon also refuses to do anything romantic with arya (or dany) in ways that i think probably would frustrate dany simply because here is an example of someone respecting those familial boundaries in ways that aren't familiar to her. love triangle and NONE of them are fucking there is NO incest and they're ALL kind of miserable about it on some level LMAO.
the final 'snowstorm is inevitable and it wrecks relationships' i find interesting is a robb/dany political marriage AU where dany cheats on king robb with lord commander jon. lots to unpack in that situation - robb v jon's views on women for one (neither are feminists by our standards, but i think robb would struggle granting dany agency she is used to, particularly given her claim to the IT is undermined somewhat, based on how he handles catelyn, arya, & sansa in ASOS). there's infidelity as rebellion and infidelity as freedom - to what degree is it actually these things in the context of political marriage? there's also repeating the 'mistakes' of lyanna/rhaegar. if R+L=J is unknown there's an extreme irony here. i also think for jon, there's an 'i always wanted it' envy situation occurring where his relationship with robb has eroded to the extent that this could happen, that he would take what was never meant to be his when offered (freely) - but also, i think post-ygritte he'd probably see dany less as a possession and more a free agent who is also participating in this. there's the terrible guilt it would cause (or perhaps lack of guilt, in dany's view). but from robb's pov, the boy who has always had everything, oh god he's had too much of everything (he didn't ask for that), he has to suddenly contend with being jealous of his brother - someone he never thought he'd have envy for. if he's more emotionally intelligent about the whole affair, perhaps he also has to contend with the fact that jon/dany would be better suited as a match, and had jon not been a bastard, and had circumstances been different for dany, theirs was a romance that could have happened organically - and he is a barrier to that, an imperfect substitute for whatever reason. he prevented that inevitability. and on some level, even though he is being cheated on, even though his marriage isn't happy, he feels guilty.
this probably says a lot about what i find interesting in fiction - relationships that don't work, rather than ones that do - but i do think it's interesting to engage with snowstorm this way.
