#ned leeks

[spoiledmilk2012]

so...... i just got to the red wedding .. :( i thought the red wedding was gonna be joffreys wedding... bitch ass freys... they served the most disgusting meal too like JELLIED CALVES BRAINS?? THIN LEEK SOUP??? whadda heck!!!!! fuck walder and his stupid family fuck the boltons too. they violated the sacred laws of hospitality...... they will all perish >:| at least catelyn is with ned again but still .... so many northerners killed :( :(

[strangelydoctored]

Ned: Peter Peter go

Peter: *grabs Tony’s whiskey chugs it*

Tony: PETER BENJAMIN PARKER IM GUNNA BEAT YOUR ASS

#tony stark #ironman #mine #*mine #op #iron man #peter parker #spiderman #spider-man #shitpost #mcu #text #text post #marvel #ned #ned leeks

[edric-dayne]

a new, even more unhinged Ned Dayne conspiracy theory post to end my tumblr hiatus:

“edric” is pronounced very similarly to the welsh “edrych”, which means “to watch”, or “to see” (as in edrych ar teledu or edrych neu syllu). 

why do i think grrm cares about Welsh, particularly in regards to edric dayne? well, i’m glad you asked:

jrr tolkien, an author that grrm has famously ridiculed for being too unrealistic in his writing, was very interested in Welsh. his Elvish languages, particularly Sindarin, were based off of modern and medieval Welsh

the leek is a symbol of St David, patron saint of Wales, and some stories have Welsh soldiers wearing leeks on their helmets to identify them as Welsh. the leek is also a member of the onion family. Ser Davos, the onion knight, personally saves Edric Storm from being burned by Stannis and Mel. different Edric, same Welsh connection

if i’ve convinced you that grrm intended Edric to sound like “edrych”, where do i intend to go from there? 

not much further, to be honest. a few months ago i wrote out a joke conspiracy theory about Ned Dayne’s parentage, calling him everything from Ned Stark’s actual son to another secret Targaryen. it was fun, but ultimately i think Edric Dayne is a victim of grrm’s scrapped five-year gap: whatever storyline he might have been originally intended to have, i think now it’s just edrych, to watch the main characters on their adventures. this also fits with his statement that he’s never killed anyone - he’s just seen it done. 

#i think this is the most unhinged thing i've ever written tbh #i can still drop the original conspiracy post if anyone wants #just to clarify this is entirely a joke - i don't think his name was intentional #edric dayne #ned dayne trutherism #asoiaf #asoiaf meta

[agentrouka-blog]

I think when Sansa saw red comet in acok ser arys claim it to be sign for joff reign. But she got confused for color as she didn't know about his parentage. I think the whole passage is connected Dany with joff. The bleeding star or red comet has negative language in starks chapters whereas Jon completely ignores it. Also only theon n Dany seems positive about it. I read an​ interesting meta on red comet by @lostlittlesatellites. She has some brilliant theories like you.

1) D’Awwww, thank you. But don’t put me on a shelf with @lostlittlesatellites who has written actual meta, you know, with headlines and analysis and everything. All I do is post far too many quotes and wave my hands about the symbolic importance of leeks. 

2) I think the comet is a very complex red string that connects all the characters in ACOK. They all interact with it, even if only by refusing to place any importance on it. 

Dany and Joffrey’s parallels, while obfuscated by Dany’s woobie underdog disguise, are apparent from the start. Thrust into positions of power at a very young age, executing people who defied them, making unpredictable moves, children of incest… So, yes, the comet that Dany is following being connected to Joffrey utterly works. But I don’t think it is the main point of its mention Sansa’s chapter.

The comet serves as a chapter transition connector between Arya I and Sansa I in ACOK, which are the first known POV chapters in the book.

Arya I ends thus:

That night she lay upon her thin blanket on the hard ground, staring up at the great red comet. The comet was splendid and scary all at once. “The Red Sword,” the Bull named it; he claimed it looked like a sword, the blade still red-hot from the forge. When Arya squinted the right way she could see the sword too, only it wasn’t a new sword, it was Ice, her father’s greatsword, all ripply Valyrian steel, and the red was Lord Eddard’s blood on the blade after Ser Ilyn the King’s Justice had cut off his head. Yoren had made her look away when it happened, yet it seemed to her that the comet looked like Ice must have, after.

When at last she slept, she dreamed of home. The kingsroad wound its way past Winterfell on its way to the Wall, and Yoren had promised he’d leave her there with no one any wiser about who she’d been. She yearned to see her mother again, and Robb and Bran and Rickon . . . but it was Jon Snow she thought of most. She wished somehow they could come to the Wall before Winterfell, so Jon might muss up her hair and call her “little sister.” She’d tell him, “I missed you,” and he’d say it too at the very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything.

So the comet is connected to blades, to justice and injustice, “Lord Eddard’s blood”.

"Never ask me about Jon," he said, cold as ice. "He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. (ACOK, Catelyn II)

And then her thoughts lead straight to Jon, too. Her brother, who gave her Needle.

This is immediately followed by Sansa I opening with the same comet.

The morning of King Joffrey’s name day dawned bright and windy, with the long tail of the great comet visible through the high scuttling clouds. Sansa was watching it from her tower window when Ser Arys Oakheart arrived to escort her down to the tourney grounds. “What do you think it means?” she asked him.

“Glory to your betrothed,” Ser Arys answered at once. “See how it flames across the sky today on His Grace’s name day, as if the gods themselves had raised a banner in his honor. The smallfolk have named it King Joffrey’s Comet.”

Doubtless that was what they told Joffrey; Sansa was not so sure. “I’ve heard servants calling it the Dragon’s Tail.”

“King Joffrey sits where Aegon the Dragon once sat, in the castle built by his son,” Ser Arys said. “He is the dragon’s heir—and crimson is the color of House Lannister, another sign. This comet is sent to herald Joffrey’s ascent to the throne, I have no doubt. It means that he will triumph over his enemies.”

Is it true? she wondered. Would the gods be so cruel? Her mother was one of Joffrey’s enemies now, her brother Robb another. Her father had died by the king’s command. Must Robb and her lady mother die next? The comet was red, but Joffrey was Baratheon as much as Lannister, and their sigil was a black stag on a golden field. Shouldn’t the gods have sent Joff a golden comet?

This echoes a sentiment voiced by Arya and Jon.

"The Lannisters are proud," Jon observed. "You'd think the royal sigil would be sufficient, but no. He makes his mother's House equal in honor to the king's."

"The woman is important too!" Arya protested. (AGOT, Arya I)

There’s another echo, too. When Sansa gets her moonblood, she thinks this:

It was as if her own body had betrayed her to Joffrey, unfurling a banner of Lannister crimson for all the world to see. (ACOK, Sansa IV)

That is another chapter where the transitions matter. Sansa’s flowering is downright embraced front to back by Jon chapters.

So while the comet connects Arya and Sansa, by the fact that they both observe and contemplate it in the context of their misfortunes, it also connects them to Jon by textual parallels. 

For Arya, it hails of justice and conflict and trauma … and of home, of return, of eventual comfort.

For Sansa it’s steeped in her princess-in-the-tower theme, marriage, false knights, quietly questioning the lies around her, drawing the right conclusions without yet knowing it. 

But for both, Jon and his hidden parentage is in there. Jon is more hidden for Sansa, but same as with Arya, the the clues in the text point to questions of Stark allegiance over dragon allegiance. The mother’s colors, the mother’s sigil over the father’s. Ned Stark’s blood. via Lyanna. Which makes Jon, actually, the opposite of the dragon’s heir. Eventually. 

The blood-red banner and the betrothal, the triumph over their enemies, the sword… It’s things pertaining to Jon, hidden under things attributed to Joffrey. It’s Arya and Sansa reunited, their return home, their different connections to Jon, the pack survives. The coming of the wolves. Perhaps even the red wolf. 

Unlike Arya, Sansa’s connection to Jon is likely not going to be brotherly.

The dragon?

"The comet's so bright you can see it by day now," Sam said, shading his eyes with a fistful of books.

"Never mind about comets, it's maps the Old Bear wants." (ACOK, Jon I)

Sam will help uncover pertinent dragon heir information in the books of the Citadel. Jon will end up not caring about being the dragon’s heir. 

So, that there also connects Joffrey and Dany: ultimate Stark rejection.

#asoiaf #red comet #sansa stark #arya stark #jon snow #dragon's heir #wolf's heir #ACOK #chapter transitions #asks #my posts

[foulserpent]

whatre ur ocs favorite vegetables

xikeel: peppers. sweet and spicy peppers. she just eats them whole

ned: root vegetables and leeks and not much else. 

shap: seaweed, if that counts

niviiran: okra, marshmerrow

dusty: leafy greens in general. really likes hackle-lo

solvej: she does NOT like to eat her vegetals .

#anon

[judocritics]

2021 Masters (day-1): Krasniqi 3x opeenvolgend goud /-48kg

(11-Jan-2021)

>> 2021 Masters, QAT Doha (live results)  

/-48kg.

“Indrukwekkend” is toch wel op zijn plaats als je voor de 3de maal op rij de Masters wint (’18 Guangzhou - ‘19 Qingdao - ‘21 Doha). Proficiat dus aan Distria Krasniqi (°95; Kos; 1°WRL). - in 2018 versloeg ze Ami Kondo (°95): de Japanse, wereldkampioene seniors toen ze 19 was; op haar 20 had ze al 3x de GSL Japan gewonnen; won ook de Masters in 2016, maar “faalde” dan in Rio met slechts brons op de Spelen; ondanks winst nog in Paris’19 lukte het niet écht meer zoals vroeger, moest ze in eigen land bovendien Funa Tonaki (°95) laten voorgaan en besliste eind 2020 dan maar te stoppen om zich te storten op een andere passie: kleuterjuf zijn ! much respect!   - in 2019 versloeg Distria, Narantsetseg Ganbaatar (°95; Mgl; 18° WRL);  - nu dus wint ze overtuigend van Funa Tonaki (°95; Jpn; 3° WRL); Tonaki stond altijd in finale van een WTour waaraan ze deel nam sinds eind-2018 toen ze de GSL Osaka won, en vertegenwoordigt allicht ook daarom Japan op de komende Spelen.

Veel kans trouwens dat dit podium /-48kg, ook het podium van de Spelen wordt; al heb je ook nog atijd Frankrijk met Melanie Clement natuurlijk (versloeg Bilodid op de GP Tbilisi’19); en de volgorde van dat podium in Tokyo, dat blijft zo-ie-zo moeilijk te voorspellen.  Daria Bilodid won hier brons met de vingers in haar neus, maar stapte wenend van de mat, allicht haar 1/2-finale indachtig die ze verloor van Tonaki. >> video (bronze) Bilodid - Catarina Costa (°96; Por; 8° WRL)  >> video (bronze) Munkhbat - Clement (°92; Fra; 5° WRL)  >> video (1/2-fin) Bilodid - Tonaki : terecht punt, zie slow motion, andere hoek; en voorts is de tactiek duidelijk: de linker-ondermouw van Bilodid...  >> video (1/4-fin) Bilodid - Munkhbat (°90; Mgl; 7° WRL; 3x WK podium);  >> video (final) Distria Krasniqi - Funa Tonaki   

/-52kg.

Charline Van Snick (°90; /-52kg; 9° WRL): 5° (3 own) Een verdienstelijke Charline Van Snick gezien op dit officieuze WK (zo mogen we de Masters toch wel noemen), en ze wordt dan ook beste Belgische judoka met een 5de plaats. Méér zat er écht niet in, méér zal er ook nooit inzitten als de wereldtop meedoet.  - Opent tegen Sosorbaram Lkhagvasuren (°01; Mgl; 16°WRL); de goede prestaties bij de jeugd van deze 19-jarige Mongoolse werden bekroond met 3 medailles u18 op de Aziatische kampioenschappen en een wereldtitel in 2019 bij de juniors; datzelfde jaar bevestigde ze trouwens ook al bij de seniors: 2° GSL Düsseldorf ! en 2° op de Aziatische kampioenschappen; en vorig jaar bevestigde ze in Düsseldorf met een 5° plaats; kortom Lkhagvasuren staat niet toevallig 16°WRL; >> video (1/16-fin) Van Snick - Lkhagvasuren : een kamp waarin weinig te beleven viel (enkel de laatste 30″sec) en met dan ook terecht 2 shido’s voor beiden toen ze aan de GS begonnen; na een minuut dan een mooie offerworp van Charline (bijna in slow motion) en door met w-a naar ronde-2. - De Zwitserse Fabienne Kocher (°93; Swi; 20° WRL), en rivale van de iets oudere Evelyne Tschopp (°91; Swi; 11°WRL), piekte bij de jeugd als junior in de /-57kg met 15 ECup medailles, een Europese titel in 2013 en 2x brons op het WK (2011;2013). in de WTour staat de balans op 3 medailles (2x zilver Budapest: GP °2019 & GSL°2020), en daarvoor moest ze afslanken naar de /-52kg. >> video (1/8-fin) Van Snick - Kocher  Als je me vraagt wie het meest domineerde dan kies ik voor de Zwitserse, maar Charline was zowat een minuut voor tijd het meest gevaarlijk: eerst met een sumi-gaeshi; zowat 20″sec later met een score; - andere koek in 1/4-fin met een duel tegen Ai Shishime (°94; Jpn; 3° WRL): de Japanse won zowat alles wat er te winnen valt: Düsseldorf, Paris, Aziatische kampioenschappen, Masters (’19), wereldkampioene (1° 2017; 2° 2018; 3° 2019), de laatste 4 jaar in finale van de Japanse kampioenschappen (1W/3L), maar... won nog nooit de GSL in eigen land (5x 3° en 1x 2°); de concurrentie was en is moordend natuurlijk: vroeger vooral Yuka Nishida (°85), Misato Nakamuro (°89; 3-voudig wereldkampioene; 2x brons OG), recentelijk Natsumi Tsunoda (°92), en nu natuurlijk Uta Abe (°00);  Shishime zal hier haar 20ste WTour medaille behalen, maar verliest wel de finale van Amandine Buchard (op een diefje, zoals de Française dat wel vaker doet);  >> video (1/4-fin) Shishime - Van Snick   twee maal is Charline gevaarlijk, telkens met haar favoriete sumi-gaeshi: na 15″sec, en 3″sec voor tijd was het écht heel nipt; pas nadat Shishime haar eerste shido kreeg in GS, leek ze het welletjes te vinden, en de eerstvolgende aanval was wél met voldoende power voor een lichte score (uchi-mata); - Repechage dan tegen Gili Cohen (°91; Isr; 19° WRL); 3-2 in de onderlinge duels in het voordeel van Charline, maar dat zegt dus niet veel; en inderdaad, Van Snick door het oog van de naald: wordt 4′min gedomineerd en dan Cohen gevloerd in GS door haar eigen enthousiasme en een counter van Charline;  >> video (repechage) Van Snick - Cohen   - tenslotte voor brons tegen ... Majlinda Kelmendi (°91: Kos; 6° WRL): regerend Olympisch goud, 2x wereldkampioene, 4x Europees kampioene, 18 WTour zeges...  >> video (bronze) Van Snick - Kelmendi ; ervaring genoeg op de tatami, van beiden, maar teveel valse offerworpen van Charline en ook nog eens doorgestuurd, maakten van Kelmendi de logische winnares.  

>> video (1/2-fin) Amandine Buchard - Majlinda Kelmendi : beslist op shido na 5′16″min GS. >> video (fin) Amandine Buchard - Ai Shishime : gedomineerd worden, maar toch winnen, Buchard heeft er een patent op. 3de shido (voor mij zo-ie-zo meer dan twijfelachtig) voor Shishime na 2′54″min GS.

/-57kg.

Sinds 2019 betekenen de Masters per gewicht de top-36 uit de wereldranking. En hoewel we volgens zowel hoofdcoach Mark Van der Ham als topsportbaas Koen Sleeckx progressie maken, blijken de versoepelde Masters voor de “meeste” categorieën toch nog duidelijk te hoog gegrepen voor Judo Vlaanderen; 8 Britten, 15 Duitsers, 18 Nederlanders, 22 Fransen (om het bij de buurlanden te houden), en....  4 Walen + 1 Vlaming. Wees gerust, geen enkele Vlaamse bobo zal ooit zeggen dat we niet goed bezig zijn :-).  Enfin, dus ook in de /-57kg géén Mina Libeer, die 46° WRL staat. Vaak zijn er wel een reeks judoka’s die voor de Masters bedanken voor de eer, en dan gewoonlijk werden vervangen door lager gerankte judoka’s; maar  a) in corona-tijden wordt er al zo weinig gekampt, dat nu de meesten wel degelijk willen vechten  en b) volgens de versoepelde formule gaat men toch niet véél lager meer dan n°36; ondanks slechts 29 deelnemers, was de laagst gerankte /-57kg die hier op de tatami verscheen Loredana Ohai (°92; Rou; 38°WRL);

Tsukasa Yoshida (°95; Jpn; 3° WRL), die Japan vertegenwoordigt op de Spelen hield een algemene repetitie al had ze haar handen meer dan vol met de getalenteerde Sarah-Leonie Cysique (°98; Fra; 7°WRL), die overigens de n°1 van de WRL klopte in 1/2-fin, nl. Jessica Klimkait (°96; Can); en ook was Christa Deguchi (°95; Can; 2°WRL), die andere Canadees-Japanse wereldtopper, niet van de partij;  >> video (fin) Yoshida - Cysique : fantastische wedstrijd, beslecht in houdgreep na 5′04″min GS.  Overigens, Klimkait vs. Deguchi, of wie gaat er naar de Spelen ? Volgens Nicolas Gill (de baas van Judo Canada) zal dat beslist worden in een “best of three” ergens tussen 20-May <> 03-Jul; een logische approach als je het mij vraagt. Maar wat is logisch natuurlijk: beiden moesten uiteraard toegelaten worden, alleen, een paar assholes van de IJF zijn wellicht de enigen die er anders over denken !  (btw: Jean-Luc Rougé & Jan Snijders, ik kan ze niet zien of rieken die mannen, maar daar kom ik in een apart artikel nog wel op terug) >> IJF Executive Committee   Heeft u hem trouwens ook herkend ? Arkady Rotemberg ? Judo vriendje van Vladimir Putin, en de man die uiteindelijk onder druk zegt dat híj eigenaar is van het fameuze “Putin Palace”, beschreven door Aleksej Navalny.   

/-60kg.

Geen Ryuju Nagayama (°96; Jpn; 1°WRL) en geen Naohisa Takato (°93; Jpn; 3°WRL), absolute wereldtoppers; sinds het ‘debacle’ van Rio (slechts 3°), verloor Takato enkel nog van Nagayama, maar pakte ondertussen wel 2 wereldtitels; alleen in 2019 liet hij het opnieuw afweten op het recentste WK (in eigen land bovendien - slechts 5°), maar toch gaat Takato naar de Spelen voor Japan; 

Jorre Verstraeten (°97; /-60kg; 16° WRL): out (1 own)  - treft het in zijn 1ste kamp (ronde-2) tegen leeftijdsgenoot Joshua Katz (°97; Aus; 50°WRL)  >> video (1/16-fin) Katz - Verstraeten  En toch, het werd een allesbehalve gemakkelijke wedstrijd die Jorre enkel kon beslechten op grond op het einde van de kamp dankzij zijn typische omkeerbeweging.  - in ronde-3 tegen de ervaren Sharafuddin Lutfillaev (°90; Uzb; 4°WRL); het stond 1-1 in de onderlinge duels, met winst voor Jorre ‘vorig’ jaar (2019) in Düsseldorf, waar hij toen de vice-wereldkampioen en 3° van de Masters klopte ! >> video (1/8-fin) Lutfillaev - Verstraeten ; genietbare kamp, waarin de Uzbeek iets voorbij halfweg scoorde met uchi-mata; nog één keer was Jorre dichtbij, na goed voetwerk, maar voorts hield Lutfillaev de deur zo goed als potdicht; Sharafuddin zou zelf nog 2x verliezen en dus niet verder komen dan een 7°-plaats.

In afwezigheid dus van de Japanners, toch een Aziatische finale tussen de Koreaanse winnaar Won Jin Kim (°92; Kor; 12° WRL; 2x 3°WK & 16x WTour medaille) en Taiwanees Yung Wei Yang (°97; Tpe; 11°WRL; 3° laatste GSL Japan & 2° laatste GSL Düsseldorf);  Een kamp voor brons tussen 2 Russen werd gewonnen door Albert Oguzov (°91; Rus; 25° WRL) tegen Yago Abuladze (°97; Rus; 7°WRL); de hoogst gerankte Rus Robert Mshvidobadze (°89; Rus; 2°WRL) en net (in Nov-2020) Europees kampioen geworden (tegen Abuladze), werd er in zijn 1ste kamp uitgeknikkerd door Moritz Plafky (°96; Ger; 27°WRL) ! En Tornike Tsjakadoea (°96; Ned; 14°WRL) verloor dan wel van Abuladze (3-1 shido’s na 7′58″min in 1/4-fin), maar stond wel op het podium na forfeit van Walide Khyar (°95; Fra; 22°WRL); Judo kan écht wel onvoorspelbaar zijn, vooral als kwaliteit zó dicht in mekaars buurt ligt als in de /-60kg.  >> video (fin) Won Jin Kim - Yung Wei Yang   

/-66kg.

Ook hier geen Japanners; trouwens over het duel Joshiro Maruyama - Hifumi Abe later uitgebreid meer. Abe (°97; Jpn; 3°WRL) trok aan het langste eind, maar alweer een schande natuurlijk dat huidig wereldkampioen Maruyama (°93; Jpn; 2°WRL) niet naar de Spelen kan ! Geen enkele West-Europeaan in de top-8; Baul An (°94; Kor; 13°WRL) wint hier de Masters voor een tweede maal, 5 jaar na Guadalajara (Mex, 2016); zeker een verdiende winnaar: zilver in Rio, na.. Fabio Basile en vóór Masashi Ebinuma; oud-wereldkampioen ook (2015); won in 2020 GP Tel Aviv en GSL Paris, en wordt dus een gegarandeerde podium-kandidaat voor Tokyo; verslaat hier Baruch Shmailov (°94; Isr; 8°WRL), overigens voor de 4de maal op rij in een WTour; het brons gaat naar Aram Grigoryan (°92; Rus; 30°WRL), die daarvoor 2 Mongolen moet verslaan, en naar Vazha Margvelashvili (°93; Geo; 5°WRL)  >> video (fin) Baul An - Baruch Shmailov  

#judo #JudoMasters #Doha2021 #judocritics

[andyridgeley]

20 Questions Game RULES: Answer 20 questions, then tag bloggers you want to get to know better.

I was tagged by @smilecapsules thank ya, my dear!!! 

NAME: kk NICKNAMES: kk is the one!!  ZODIAC SIGN: virgo HEIGHT: 5’1” LANGUAGES SPOKEN: english with a side of spanish and italian  NATIONALITY: american (but mainly italian with a side of irish ancestry!!)  FAVORITE SEASON: autumn  FAVORITE FLOWER: sunflower FAVORITE SCENT: my friend got me a cherry blossom candle and i love it!!  FAVORITE COLOR: purple!!  FAVORITE ANIMAL: red panda!! and foxes!!  FAVORITE FICTIONAL CHARACTER(s): steve rogers, ned from pushing daisies, eggsy from kingsman, cj cregg from the west wing  COFFEE, TEA, OR HOT CHOCOLATE: coffee  AVERAGE SLEEP HOURS: 6-8 DOG OR CAT PERSON: dog!! NUMBER OF BLANKETS YOU SLEEP WITH: one DREAM TRIP: italy BLOG ESTABLISHED: i’ve no idea maybe a year or two with this one, i’ve had other ones that i’ve deleted before  FOLLOWERS: almost 1,200...pretty sweet!!  RANDOM FACT: i made poached salmon in dill and leeks with roasted potatoes on the side for dinner tonight and it was DELISH 

not going to tag anyone, but go for it if you want and say i tagged you!!!  

#i feel like i just did this one but oh well!! went for it!! #thank ya!! these are always fun! #personal thingys

[capomerica]

Avengers in Hogwarts Houses

Gryffindor:

Steve Rogers

Thor Odinson

T’Challa

Peter Parker

James Rhodes

Carol Danvers

Sam Wilson

Bucky Barnes

Drax

Pietro Maximoff

Slytherin:

Tony Stark

Natasha Romanoff

Nebula

Rocket

M’Baku

Nick Fury

Valkyrie

Loki

Ravenclaw

Bruce Banner

Pepper Potts

Stephen Strange

Gamora

Wanda Maximoff

Shuri

Maria Hill

Hope van Dyne

MJ Watson

Hufflepuff

Clint Barton

Scott Lang

Happy Hogan

Mantis

Ned Leeks

Wade Wilson

Flash Gordon

Okoye

Peter Quill

#avengers #avengers civil war #captain america #steve rogers #marvel #captain america civil war #ironman #steve #hogwarts #avengers hogwarts #avengers hogwarts houses

[janiedean]

do you think readers should treat edmure/roslin wedding night as rape? i saw a discourse about that saying that she was crying and she wouldn't want to have sex at the red wedding anyway, so it means edmure made her? and i don't know what to think now. i like edmure and just want him and roslin to be happy D:

.......... god what is this fandom turning into *sigh* all right, let’s... unpack... this....

point one: it’s... I think... obvious... that roslin wasn’t crying because of *edmure*, she was crying because she knew that everyone was going to get slaughtered during her wedding night????

point two: like... roslin crying is something that should set the reader off about how Something Is Not Right At This Wedding same as the fact that the food they get offered is very low-par for such a wedding (who the fuck gives THIN LEEK SOUP at a wedding feast??) and so on, like that chapter before the doors close is an escalation of warning signals that Things Are Going To Go Badly Very Soon and roslin being in tears is one of them, it has zero to do with whether she wanted to have sex with edmure or not;

point three: .... okay, she most likely didn’t want to have sex during the red wedding, but... do y’all think... that... in retrospective he would have wanted to have sex with a wife he actually liked against all odds while her relatives and the lannisters slaughtered his sister, his nephew, the army he was part of and basically all of the family he had left bar lysa and brynden?????? like are we serious????

point four: roslin was most likely under direct orders to not make edmure understand what was going on/to make him think that if she was distressed it was out of nerves or smth because like hell walder frey would have wanted him, you know, noticing that he was about to unleash a mass slaughter on his sister, nephew and allies so like.......... unless we go and say that there’s a basic question of consent in all arranged marriages, but I thought that was implicit and if we look at it in context you can’t go and treat them as rape period because to the people involved it wouldn’t be considered as such and wouldn’t be taken as such, saying that he shouldn’t have had sex with her when she most likely would have tried to make sure he would lest having her father murder her the next day too just because... is..... making utterly black and white a situation that is not so;

point five: it’s not that he made her or she made him. they were supposed to consummate the wedding because that’s what it’s supposed to happen in westeros during arranged marriages/noble marriages, he had no idea of what was going on and was actually relieved he ended up with someone he liked (mind: edmure also wasn’t really into this idea of having to make up for robb’s fuck-ups and everyone on his side knew it, like let’s not decide now that edmure volunteered to patch shit up with the freys offering his own hand), roslin didn’t want the rw to happen in the first place and was crying because of that and regardless she did like him, roslin most likely wouldn’t have told him she didn’t want it/that she was crying for anything other than nerves (have you seen her father come on).... and we’re saying that *he* raped her? when he also had no fucking clue of what was going on? because I assure you if he knew people were downstairs slitting his sister’s throat he wouldn’t have gone through with it. like, putting it like that is just... ignoring.... every.... single... bit of context in that setting jfc;

point six: the fact that when they show up in affc they actually want to be with each other, that jaime in order to get edmure’s cooperation promises him that she will join him in casterly with their baby where edmure is supposed to be a hostage and can successfully use the trebuchet baby bluff in order to get edmure to cooperate (let’s not even go there, it was 100% bluffing and we all know that) and that roslin actually prays that it’s a girl because if it’s a boy then her father would kill edmure as they’d have a male tully heir and edmure would be useless should say all about the fact that a) they liked each other regardless of everything, b) he doesn’t blame her for the demise of, uh, HIS FAMILY PRETTY MUCH, c) he doesn’t blame her for being forced to go through that marriage and not warning him because her relatives wanted her to and she had no choice, d) she actually doesn’t want him to die, e) that they want to be together so like..... maybe people should actually start avoiding looking that deep into this specific ship because the point is that they like each other when according to all reason they should hate each other (she should resent being forced to marry him and he should hate her because her family murdered his own wow) and instead they’re basically a reverse tyrion/sansa situation (or a direct ned and cat parallel situation) in which they actually do want to be with each other regardless of the massive fucked-up circumstances they were forced together in, and instead they should discuss... like..... actual rape that happened in the books that is always brushed off as something else and like... actual abusive relationships that people like to dismiss as consensual and so on instead of trying to get discourse of out this one specific instance.

two cents, but honestly, I had to see people completely dismissing, idk, TYRION AND THEON’S RAPE BY PROXY (and tbqh theon’s in adwd isn’t even by proxy most likely) because apparently if it happens to guys it’s not that never mind having to hear that jeynep deserved it because she was mean to arya once upon a time never mind absolutely ignoring what happening to jeynep when she was in LF’s brothel never mind saying that brienne risking to be raped throughout her entire arc since she shows up in acok is ‘nothing’ and she has an easy life, and let’s not even get into what The Cersei Issue Which I Am Not So Insane To Discuss Lest People Tell Me I Need To Chill (and it’s not just We Know What but I’m not touching that discourse with a ten foot pole anymore) but the problem is edmure and roslin? and it’s his fault when it was his sister, nephew, army and friends getting mass slaughtered downstairs?

honestly, miss me with this hypocrisy. and if I were you I’d rest in peace, edmure and roslin don’t look like goners to me and someone has to make sure house tully doesn’t die out by the end of the series and it’s most likely not gonna be brynden. *shrug*

#va bene va bene va bene in verità #rape cw #ch: edmure tully #ch: roslin frey #a song of ice and fire for ts #janie writes meta #are we seriously fucking going THERE #i can't even #per esse na fandom basata sui libri sicuro laggente non sa leggere diomio #red wedding for ts #blaaaarghhh #Anonymous #ask post

[poorquentyn]

Remember Your Name, Part 3: When That Other Man Had Come This Way

Series so far here

“That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore.”

At the end of In the Mood for Love, the film’s protagonist visits the ruins of Angkor Wat. He’d earlier mused to a friend about how back in the day, if you had a secret burning inside that you couldn’t bring yourself to share, you dug a shallow hole into a tree and whispered your secret into it, filling the hole with mud afterwards to keep the truth at bay.

But when our hero decides to try and leave behind the story of forsaken love we saw unfold over the course of the movie, he does not seek out a living thing that can survive and change and grow. He instead unburdens himself to a ruin: a monument to the ravages wrought and distances forged by time. In the sequel 2046, he disappears into the rose-colored fog within, surrounded by his ghosts on parade. Try as he might, he could not seal them away forever.

I have come this way before. It was a dangerous thought, and he regretted it at once.

“No,” he said, “no, that was some other man, that was before you knew your name.” His name was Reek. He had to remember that. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with leek. When that other man had come this way, an army had followed close behind him, the great host of the north riding to war beneath the grey-and-white banners of House Stark. Reek rode alone, clutching a peace banner on a pinewood staff. When that other man had come this way, he had been mounted on a courser, swift and spirited. Reek rode a broken-down stot, all skin and bone and ribs, and he rode her slowly for fear he might fall off. The other man had been a good rider, but Reek was uneasy on horseback. It had been so long. He was no rider. He was not even a man. He was Lord Ramsay’s creature, lower than a dog, a worm in human skin. “You will pretend to be a prince,” Lord Ramsay told him last night, as Reek was soaking in a tub of scalding water, “but we know the truth. You’re Reek. You’ll always be Reek, no matter how sweet you smell. Your nose may lie to you. Remember your name. Remember who you are.”

“Reek,” he said. “Your Reek.”

The Drunkard’s Tower leaned as if it were about to collapse, just as it had for half a thousand years. The Children’s Tower thrust into the sky as straight as a spear, but its shattered top was open to the wind and rain. The Gatehouse Tower, squat and wide, was the largest of the three, slimy with moss, a gnarled tree growing sideways from the stones of its north side, fragments of broken wall still standing to the east and west. The Karstarks took the Drunkard’s Tower and the Umbers the Children’s Tower, he recalled. Robb claimed the Gatehouse Tower for his own. If he closed his eyes, he could see the banners in his mind’s eye, snapping bravely in a brisk north wind. All gone now, all fallen.

Memory and identity are inextricable. Who you were informs who you are, and who you are invariably filters your perspective on who you were. The weight of backstory has always been one of ASOIAF’s central claims to profundity. R+L=J, the story’s central revelation and the beating heart of the fandom, is also the burdensome duty that defined our fakeout protagonist Eddard Stark. What makes Ned’s life so meaningful is that he put it all on the line not to keep the secret that his purported bastard Jon is in fact his sister Lyanna’s son by Rhaegar Targaryen, but in the name of the values that keeping that secret instilled in him.

Time was perilously short. The king would return from his hunt soon, and honor would require Ned to go to him with all he had learned. Vayon Poole had arranged for Sansa and Arya to sail on the Wind Witch out of Braavos, three days hence. They would be back at Winterfell before the harvest. Ned could no longer use his concern for their safety to excuse his delay.

Yet last night he had dreamt of Rhaegar's children. Lord Tywin had laid the bodies beneath the Iron Throne, wrapped in the crimson cloaks of his house guard. That was clever of him; the blood did not show so badly against the red cloth. The little princess had been barefoot, still dressed in her bed gown, and the boy…the boy…                 

Ned could not let that happen again. The realm could not withstand a second mad king, another dance of blood and vengeance. He must find some way to save the children.

Jaime floats in heat and memory in the Harrenhal bathtubs, the truth finally swimming to the surface; Barbrey stares deep into a dead man’s face, the pleasure and pain of it eternally intermingled; Robert himself admits that all he wants most is to leave behind the crown it was all ostensibly for. They all sing the same sad song, the one Reek sings as he rides fearfully into Theon Greyjoy’s past at Moat Cailin: I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell. They followed the red comet, over the edge. Their songs broke, and broke them in their fall.

Following on Theon briefly coming unstuck in time in his first ADWD chapter, Reek II builds on that disorientation by externalizing it onto his environment. The chapter is thick with memory and riddled with decay, all swathes of mist that give way to fountains of blood, because that’s what the inside of Theon Greyjoy’s head looks like. That opening chapter in the Dreadfort gave us a blood-curdling glimpse of the crucible in which Theon became Reek before forcing him out of it; now, the story goes widescreen, taking in how the North has changed along with our POV since last he stepped out into it.

The hall was dark stone, high ceilinged and drafty, full of drifting smoke, its stone walls spotted by huge patches of pale lichen. A peat fire burned low in a hearth blackened by the hotter blazes of years past. A massive table of carved stone filled the chamber, as it had for centuries. There was where I sat, the last time I was here, he remembered. Robb was at the head of the table, with the Greatjon to his right and Roose Bolton on his left. The Glovers sat next to Helman Tallhart. Karstark and his sons were across from them.

The reference to time’s fire in which we burn (“blackened by the hotter blazes of years past”), the epochal weight of the table filling the chamber “as it had for centuries,” the evocation of the ghosts that haunt Theon--all of it grounds the business of the plot in memory and time, and thus in what’s happened to our POV. 

Theon smiled. Reek cannot. Theon had friends. Reek is a pariah. Theon came to Moat Cailin with an army. Now, that army is dead and gone, except for those who turned on the rest...just as he did. Moat Cailin has been made a ruin all over again, defeat and despair folded into it like Lannister crimson into Stark steel, a testament like Tristifer’s tomb to a shattered kingdom. Theon helped shatter it, and now he stumbles back shattered to help melt down what’s left. He is Moat Cailin, more or less, the broken towers a misty mirror for our broken man, the splintered teeth of his smile writ large. The fog that cloaks the fortress reflects how he’s been forced to compartmentalize his past, which is now screaming its way to the surface. There are ghosts in Moat Cailin, and he is one of them.

(image by warsandpoliticsoficeandfire.wordpress.com)

This sense of desolation and loss is mirrored in the chapter’s purpose in the larger plot. The standoff between the Boltons and the Ironborn over the Moat (and by extension, the North as a whole) is little more than a feast for crows. Both sides went for the direwolf’s throat with no higher cause than plunder and the pleasure of it; all they’re fighting over is who did it more successfully. The Ironborn here were left to rot by their Lord Captain when he went chasing his brother’s crown...

“Victarion commanded us to hold, he did. I heard him with my own ears. Hold here till I return, he told Kenning.”

“Aye,” said the one-armed man. “That’s what he said. The kingsmoot called, but he swore that he’d be back, with a driftwood crown upon his head and a thousand men behind him.”

“My uncle is never coming back,” Reek told them. “The kingsmoot crowned his brother Euron, and the Crow’s Eye has other wars to fight. You think my uncle values you? He doesn’t. You are the ones he left behind to die. He scraped you off the same way he scrapes mud off his boots when he wades ashore.”

Those words struck home. He could see it in their eyes, in the way they looked at one another or frowned above their cups. They all feared they’d been abandoned, but it took me to turn fear into certainty. These were not the kin of famous captains nor the blood of the great Houses of the Iron Islands. These were the sons of thralls and salt wives.

...and the Dreadfort men can’t lay any credible claim to be acting as defenders of the North from the reaving invaders, given the Northern blood they’ve both happily spilled throughout. (Those who hunt people for sport shouldn’t throw stones, and all that.) Ramsay in this chapter is merely mopping up after and reaping the benefits of the hard-earned victory won by Howland Reed and his guerilla fighters, and even that he’s not doing himself, but forcing a helpless tortured prisoner to do for him. The Bastard’s unspeakably hideous treatment of the Ironborn after they surrender to him in good faith is the punchline to a very dark joke, poisoned icing on bitter cake. And of course, it’s all in the service of welcoming an army soaked in the blood of the men and women with whom they sat down to dinner, as allies, as friends, as guests at a wedding.

Three days later, the vanguard of Roose Bolton’s host threaded its way through the ruins and past the row of grisly sentinels—four hundred mounted Freys clad in blue and grey, their spearpoints glittering whenever the sun broke through the clouds. Two of old Lord Walder’s sons led the van. One was brawny, with a massive jut of jaw and arms thick with muscle. The other had hungry eyes close-set above a pointed nose, a thin brown beard that did not quite conceal the weak chin beneath it, a bald head. Hosteen and Aenys. He remembered them from before he knew his name. Hosteen was a bull, slow to anger but implacable once roused, and by repute the fiercest fighter of Lord Walder’s get. Aenys was older, crueler, and more clever—a commander, not a swordsman. Both were seasoned soldiers.

The northmen followed hard behind the van, their tattered banners streaming in the wind. Reek watched them pass. Most were afoot, and there were so few of them. He remembered the great host that marched south with Young Wolf, beneath the direwolf of Winterfell. Twenty thousand swords and spears had gone off to war with Robb, or near enough to make no matter, but only two in ten were coming back, and most of those were Dreadfort men.

Even as Reek struggles to keep Theon at bay (thinking of his life before the Dreadfort dungeons as the time “before he knew his name”), making contact with the people with whom Theon rode to war is stirring something inside him, and that’s reflected in the big picture of what it means for this army to arrive in the North. Grey Wind’s forlorn eyes from the House of the Undying are watching, and judging, and waiting. Wolves prowl and howl through the opening chapters of ADWD’s Northern half, singing the song of their fall, and of Jojen’s solemn promise: “the wolves will come again.” The ghosts of the Red Wedding follow this army to Winterfell, and hang heavy on the Ramsay-Jeyne wedding and everything that follows, crying out for redress. The gods have been insulted, and will have their due. Thankfully, there’s a man going ‘round taking names, and he decides who to free and who to blame...

...but discussion of His Grace King Stannis Baratheon, the Wrath of God, will have to wait for later chapters, as will Wyman Manderly’s culinary interpretation of divine judgment.

For the purposes of Theon’s arc, the Ironborn at Moat Cailin serve as the mirror from which he’s trying so desperately to look away. I said last time that what Reek fears most right now, even more than Ramsay, is being Theon. That name carries so much shame and pain with it that he prefers to be “your Reek,” fearing not only the external consequences of defiance (more torture and maiming), but also the internal consequences of identifying as his old self. All Theon wanted to do in ACOK was take control of his life, and now that’s the last thing he wants, because of what he did with that power once he had it. He returns to Moat Cailin flying a white flag of peace, but it may as well be one of surrender.

“I am Ironborn,” Reek answered, lying. The boy he’d been before had been Ironborn, true enough, but Reek had come into this world in the dungeons of the Dreadfort. “Look at my face. I am Lord Balon’s son. Your prince.” He would have said the name, but somehow the words caught in his throat. Reek, I’m Reek, it rhymes with squeak.

“Ralf Kenning is dead,” he said. “Who commands here?”

The drinkers stared at him blankly. One laughed. Another spat. Finally one of the Codds said, “Who asks?”

“Lord Balon’s son.” Reek, my name is Reek, it rhymes with cheek.

One of the Codds pushed to his feet. A big man, but pop-eyed and wide of mouth, with dead white flesh. He looked as if his father had sired him on a fish, but he still wore a longsword. “Dagon Codd yields to no man.”

No, please, you have to listen. The thought of what Ramsay would do to him if he crept back to camp without the garrison’s surrender was almost enough to make him piss his breeches. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with leak.

What gives this chapter its charge is that our POV is being forced by the man who shattered his old identity to resume that identity. It’s Theon playing Reek playing Theon, and he’s being made to remember his name in order to sway the people who represent his old life, because they’d never surrender to Reek. He knows that, because he used to be like them...or he wanted to be, anyway. When Theon first became a POV, his mind was aflame with song, lashing his in-between identity to the values and visions of the Old Way:

Once I would have kept her as a salt wife in truth, he thought to himself as he slid his fingers through her tangled hair. Once. When we still kept the Old Way, lived by the axe instead of the pick, taking what we would, be it wealth, women, or glory. In those days, the Ironborn did not work mines; that was labor for the captives brought back from the hostings, and so too the sorry business of farming and tending goats and sheep. War was an ironman's proper trade. The Drowned God had made them to reave and rape, to carve out kingdoms and write their names in fire and blood and song.

Aegon the Dragon had destroyed the Old Way when he burned Black Harren, gave Harren's kingdom back to the weakling rivermen, and reduced the Iron Islands to an insignificant backwater of a much greater realm. Yet the old red tales were still told around driftwood fires and smoky hearths all across the islands, even behind the high stone halls of Pyke. Theon's father numbered among his titles the style of Lord Reaper, and the Greyjoy words boasted that We Do Not Sow.

It had been to bring back the Old Way more than for the empty vanity of a crown that Lord Balon had staged his great rebellion. Robert Baratheon had written a bloody end to that hope, with the help of his friend Eddard Stark, but both men were dead now. Mere boys ruled in their stead, and the realm that Aegon the Conqueror had forged was smashed and sundered. This is the season, Theon thought as the captain's daughter slid her lips up and down the length of him, the season, the year, the day, and I am the man.

This chapter, Theon I ACOK, slots right in between Davos I (the one with Lightbringer) and Daenerys I (the one in the Red Waste), both of them positively soaked with messianic imagery and focused on weighty questions of power, prophecy, and the price you pay. But in Theon’s chapter, the launching pad for the most stubbornly secular storyline in ACOK, the messianic mindset is stripped of its finery and exposed as pitiful self-delusion. This is who you are, Chosen One, all the more clearly with neither dragons nor shadowbinders at your back: a mirror-drunk fool dreaming of atrocities while your dick gets sucked.

Three books later, that self-image has been racked and flayed and castrated before being spat back out at us as Reek. He thinks of himself as having been born beneath the Dreadfort, molded like clay from Theon’s blood and pain; are you my mother, Ramsay? He keeps retreating to his new name in his thoughts, a mantra to keep the fear away. The identity of which he dreamed is now the nightmare he cannot shake. And what better way for the author to reflect that than by bringing him up against the death of his dream, the most unshakable images of the rot eating away at the Old Way?

Reek passed the rotted carcass of a horse, an arrow jutting from its neck. A long white snake slithered into its empty eye socket at his approach. Behind the horse he spied the rider, or what remained of him. The crows had stripped the flesh from the man’s face, and a feral dog had burrowed beneath his mail to get at his entrails. Farther on, another corpse had sunk so deep into the muck that only his face and fingers showed.

Closer to the towers, corpses littered the ground on every side. Blood-blooms had sprouted from their gaping wounds, pale flowers with petals plump and moist as a woman’s lips.

Ralf Kenning lay shivering beneath a mountain of furs. His arms were stacked beside him—sword and axe, mail hauberk, iron warhelm. His shield bore the storm god’s cloudy hand, lightning crackling from his fingers down to a raging sea, but the paint was discolored and peeling, the wood beneath starting to rot.

Ralf was rotting too. Beneath the furs he was naked and feverish, his pale puffy flesh covered with weeping sores and scabs. His head was misshapen, one cheek grotesquely swollen, his neck so engorged with blood that it threatened to swallow his face. The arm on that same side was big as a log and crawling with white worms. No one had bathed him or shaved him for many days, from the look of him. One eye wept pus, and his beard was crusty with dried vomit.

“What happened to him?” asked Reek.

“He was on the parapets and some bog devil loosed an arrow at him. It was only a graze, but…they poison their shafts, smear the points with shit and worse things. We poured boiling wine into the wound, but it made no difference.”

This is how the Old Way has always died, with broken towers and the stench of corpses, from Aegon melting Harrenhal to Robert smashing Pyke. Every time it falls, the seeds are sown for its next rise; the ideology’s exposed festering folly is folded into a Lost Cause mythos that weaponizes resentment and ennobles suffering. The last time it fell, part of the price paid was Theon’s identity, and his desperate drive to reclaim it by reviving the Old Way is what led him here. He’s unrecognizable to the very world in which he hoped to finally recognize himself.

The garrison will never know me. Some might recall the boy he’d been before he learned his name, but Reek would be a stranger to them. It had been a long while since he last looked into a glass, but he knew how old he must appear. His hair had turned white; much of it had fallen out, and what was left was stiff and dry as straw. The dungeons had left him weak as an old woman and so thin a strong wind could knock him down.

And his hands…Ramsay had given him gloves, fine gloves of black leather, soft and supple, stuffed with wool to conceal his missing fingers, but if anyone looked closely, he would see that three of his fingers did not bend.

That fall from grace, the violent collapse of his projected identity, is reflected back at him by the sorry state of the Ironborn garrison. They came here as an army, together, one people; they knew who they were. And now...?

Someone seized him and dragged him inside, and he heard the door crash shut behind him. He was pulled to his feet and shoved against a wall. Then a knife was at his throat, a bearded face so close to his that he could count the man’s nose hairs. “Who are you? What’s your purpose here? Quick now, or I’ll do you the same as him.” The guard jerked his head toward a body rotting on the floor beside the door, its flesh green and crawling with maggots.

“I am ironborn,” Reek answered, lying. The boy he’d been before had been ironborn, true enough, but Reek had come into this world in the dungeons of the Dreadfort. “Look at my face. I am Lord Balon’s son. Your prince.” He would have said the name, but somehow the words caught in his throat. Reek, I’m Reek, it rhymes with squeak. He had to forget that for a little while, though. No man would ever yield to a creature such as Reek, no matter how desperate his situation. He must pretend to be a prince again.

His captor stared at his face, squinting, his mouth twisted in suspicion. His teeth were brown, and his breath stank of ale and onion. “Lord Balon’s sons were killed.”

“My brothers. Not me. Lord Ramsay took me captive after Winterfell. He’s sent me here to treat with you. Do you command here?”

“Me?” The man lowered his knife and took a step backwards, almost stumbling over the corpse. “Not me, m’lord.” His mail was rusted, his leathers rotting. On the back of one hand an open sore wept blood. “Ralf Kenning has the command. The captain said. I’m on the door, is all.”

“And who is this?” Reek gave the corpse a kick.

The guard stared at the dead man as if seeing him for the first time. “Him…he drank the water. I had to cut his throat for him, to stop his screaming. Bad belly. You can’t drink the water. That’s why we got the ale.” The guard rubbed his face, his eyes red and inflamed. “We used to drag the dead down into the cellars. All the vaults are flooded down there. No one wants to take the trouble now, so we just leave them where they fall.”

“The cellar is a better place for them. Give them to the water. To the Drowned God.”

The man laughed. “No gods down there, m’lord. Only rats and water snakes. White things, thick as your leg. Sometimes they slither up the steps and bite you in your sleep.”

Reek remembered the dungeons underneath the Dreadfort, the rat squirming between his teeth, the taste of warm blood on his lips. If I fail, Ramsay will send me back to that, but first he’ll flay the skin from another finger. “How many of the garrison are left?”

“Some,” said the ironman. “I don’t know. Fewer than we was before. Some in the Drunkard’s Tower too, I think. Not the Children’s Tower. Dagon Codd went over there a few days back. Only two men left alive, he said, and they was eating on the dead ones. He killed them both, if you can believe that.”

Moat Cailin has fallen, Reek realized then, only no one has seen fit to tell them.

And now they are lost, turning on each other, their god forgotten. Cannibalism rears its head again and again in ADWD, as the taboo wilts in the face of winter and war. Theon came here with the knights of summer; Reek returns to find the living dead. Two different armies, two different peoples, as one in his mind now. After all, he’s been trying to bridge this particular gap for most of his life. The abyss awaited both armies to occupy the Moat, as it awaited Theon. Never forget Kubrick’s parting shot in Barry Lyndon:

In ACOK, Theon tried to shed the Northern self exemplified by that shining army at the Moat like dead skin, giving himself over to the image of the Ironborn self in his head. Now Reek returns to Moat Calin to play that image, only to sacrifice it as he was as a child, sacrificed like the men at Moat Cailin to the Old Way...

“Kill him,” Reek told the guard. “His wits are gone. He’s full of blood and worms.”

The man gaped at him. “The captain put him in command.”

“You’d put a dying horse down.”

“What horse? I never had no horse.”

I did. The memory came back in a rush. Smiler’s screams had sounded almost human. His mane afire, he had reared up on his hind legs, blind with pain, lashing out with his hooves. No, no. Not mine, he was not mine, Reek never had a horse. “I will kill him for you.” Reek snatched up Ralf Kenning’s sword where it leaned against his shield. He still had fingers enough to clasp the hilt. When he laid the edge of the blade against the swollen throat of the creature on the straw, the skin split open in a gout of black blood and yellow pus. Kenning jerked violently, then lay still.

...and then again as an adult, this time to the Bastard of Bolton.

Reek swung down from his saddle and took a knee. “My lord, Moat Cailin is yours. Here are its last defenders.”

“So few. I had hoped for more. They were such stubborn foes.” Lord Ramsay’s pale eyes shone. “You must be starved. Damon, Alyn, see to them. Wine and ale, and all the food that they can eat. Skinner, show their wounded to our maesters.”

“Aye, my lord.”

A few of the Ironborn muttered thanks before they shambled off toward the cookfires in the center of the camp. One of the Codds even tried to kiss Lord Ramsay’s ring, but the hounds drove him back before he could get close, and Alison took a chunk of his ear. Even as the blood streamed down his neck, the man bobbed and bowed and praised his lordship’s mercy.

When the last of them were gone, Ramsay Bolton turned his smile on Reek. He clasped him by the back of the head, pulled his face close, kissed him on his cheek, and whispered, “My old friend Reek. Did they really take you for their prince? What bloody fools, these ironmen. The gods are laughing.”

“All they want is to go home, my lord.”

“And what do you want, my sweet Reek?” Ramsay murmured, as softly as a lover. His breath smelled of mulled wine and cloves, so sweet. “Such valiant service deserves a reward. I cannot give you back your fingers or your toes, but surely there is something you would have of me. Shall I free you instead? Release you from my service? Do you want to go with them, return to your bleak isles in the cold grey sea, be a prince again? Or would you sooner stay my leal serving man?”

A cold knife scraped along his spine. Be careful, he told himself, be very, very careful. He did not like his lordship’s smile, the way his eyes were shining, the spittle glistening at the corner of his mouth. He had seen such signs before. You are no prince. You’re Reek, just Reek, it rhymes with freak. Give him the answer that he wants.

“My lord,” he said, “my place is here, with you. I’m your Reek. I only want to serve you. All I ask …a skin of wine, that would be reward enough for me…red wine, the strongest that you have, all the wine a man can drink…”

Lord Ramsay laughed. “You’re not a man, Reek. You’re just my creature. You’ll have your wine, though. Walder, see to it. And fear not, I won’t return you to the dungeons, you have my word as a Bolton. We’ll make a dog of you instead. Meat every day, and I’ll even leave you teeth enough to eat it. You can sleep beside my girls. Ben, do you have a collar for him?”

“I’ll have one made, m’lord,” said old Ben Bones.

The old man did better than that. That night, besides the collar, there was a ragged blanket too, and half a chicken. Reek had to fight the dogs for the meat, but it was the best meal he’d had since Winterfell.

And the wine…the wine was dark and sour, but strong. Squatting amongst the hounds, Reek drank until his head swam, retched, wiped his mouth, and drank some more. Afterward he lay back and closed his eyes. When he woke a dog was licking vomit from his beard, and dark clouds were scuttling across the face of a sickle moon. Somewhere in the night, men were screaming. He shoved the dog aside, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

The next morning Lord Ramsay dispatched three riders down the causeway to take word to his lord father that the way was clear. The flayed man of House Bolton was hoisted above the Gatehouse Tower, where Reek had hauled down the golden kraken of Pyke. Along the rotting-plank road, wooden stakes were driven deep into the boggy ground; there the corpses festered, red and dripping. Sixty-three, he knew, there are sixty-three of them. One was short half an arm. Another had a parchment shoved between its teeth, its wax seal still unbroken.

“So few. I had hoped for more.” The soul shudders. And oh, how casually “somewhere in the night, men were screaming” strolls into the middle of a paragraph, and Reek rolls back over to sleep...

To be clear, I’m not holding Theon responsible for what happens to his sixty-three fellow Ironborn left at the Moat. He’s in no position to refuse Ramsay, as GRRM makes clear in his inner monologue throughout the chapter. But Ramsay is deliberately putting his prisoner through a gauntlet of the self. He has our POV act as Prince Theon son of King Balon, forces him through a cruel mummer’s farce of “choosing” to stay at Ramsay’s side as Reek, and then viciously annihilates the people who represent Theon’s connection to that old identity. It has exactly the effect Ramsay wants: “He pulled down the kraken banner with his own two hands, fumbling some because of his missing fingers but thankful for the fingers that Lord Ramsay had allowed him to keep.” This is what it means to have been Theon and to now be Reek.

This pattern will repeat itself over the course of Theon’s next two chapters, as Roose and Barbrey conspire to have him give Jeyne away to Ramsay publicly, as Theon, and so help cement Bolton control of Winterfell. At every step, Theon's identity is weaponized and turned against him. He flinches from his past, drinks to annihilate his present, and can barely conceive of a future. He is unmoored, drifting through external and internal fog, and he has once again unlocked the North on behalf of heinous authority figures he desperately wants to please. Indeed, Ramsay has wrought a fearsome image of himself in Theon’s mind, a devil equally at home tempting and punishing, and that dynamic is recreated at Moat Cailin:

One of the Codds even tried to kiss Lord Ramsay’s ring, but the hounds drove him back before he could get close, and Alison took a chunk of his ear. Even as the blood streamed down his neck, the man bobbed and bowed and praised his lordship’s mercy.

On that note, one persistent critique of both AFFC and ADWD is that the violence stopped meaning anything--the author started leaning on brutality for brutality’s sake, because he bought into his own rep and/or was out of ideas. I think it’s a valid complaint when it comes to, say, Biter eating Brienne’s face. But on the flipside, the horrific violence in Theon’s storyline is consistently linked to intertwined themes of memory and identity in a manner that I find resonant. Look no further than the man who accepts Ramsay’s offer, and why:

It was the one-armed man who’d flung the axe. As he rose to his feet he had another in his hand. “Who else wants to die?” he asked the other drinkers. “Speak up, I’ll see you do.” Thin red streams were spreading out across the stone from the pool of blood where Dagon Codd’s head had come to rest. “Me, I mean to live, and that don’t mean staying here to rot.”

The one-armed man walked at the head of the procession, limping heavily. His name, he said, was Adrack Humble, and he had a rock wife and three salt wives back on Great Wyk. “Three of the four had big bellies when we sailed,” he boasted, “and Humbles run to twins. First thing I’ll need to do when I get back is count up my new sons. Might be I’ll even name one after you, m’lord.”

Aye, name him Reek, he thought, and when he’s bad you can cut his toes off and give him rats to eat. He turned his head and spat, and wondered if Ralf Kenning hadn’t been the lucky one.

“All they want is to go home, my lord.” And so does Theon, but he has no home to go back to.

Now, of course, Adrack Humble’s dream of counting up his sons is hardly a utopian vision--he kidnapped and enslaved most of their mothers. But the world to which he belongs is the world to which Theon wanted to belong, believing in it so badly he put his life on the line for it...and it failed him, just as it always ultimately fails your average [H]umble man of the Iron Islands. As such, Reek now thinks that the man who rotted without getting his hopes up was the lucky one. This is how he talked when the Young Wolf’s army marched south...

"But such a battle!" said Theon Greyjoy eagerly. "My lady, the realm has not seen such a victory since the Field of Fire. I vow, the Lannisters lost ten men for every one of ours that fell. We've taken close to a hundred knights captive, and a dozen lords bannermen. Lord Westerling, Lord Banefort, Ser Garth Greenfield, Lord Estren, Ser Tytos Brax, Mallor the Dornishman … and three Lannisters besides Jaime, Lord Tywin's own nephews, two of his sister's sons and one of his dead brother's…"    

Theon Greyjoy was seated on a bench in Riverrun's Great Hall, enjoying a horn of ale and regaling her father's garrison with an account of the slaughter in the Whispering Wood. "Some tried to flee, but we'd pinched the valley shut at both ends, and we rode out of the darkness with sword and lance. The Lannisters must have thought the Others themselves were on them when that wolf of Robb's got in among them. I saw him tear one man's arm from his shoulder, and their horses went mad at the scent of him. I couldn't tell you how many men were thrown—"    

...but his story is always interrupted, his comrades died at dinner, and now he dreams only of blood. We rode to war with songs on our lips, but by the time the last notes faded and left us alone with the silence, we were utterly transformed. When Theon eagerly embraces his wine and his half-chicken and his collar, trusting them to silence the screams, all I can think of is this:

“And the man breaks.

“He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them...but he should pity them as well.”

Two chapters prior to Reek II, half a world away, the Shy Maid sailed through another mournful ruin, and when Tyrion stared into the Sorrows, they stared back.

The grey moss grew thickly here, covering the fallen stones in great mounds and bearding all the towers. Black vines crept in and out of windows, through doors and over archways, up the sides of high stone walls. The fog concealed three-quarters of the palace, but what they glimpsed was more than enough for Tyrion to know that this island fastness had been ten times the size of the Red Keep once and a hundred times more beautiful. He knew where he was. “The Palace of Love,” he said softly.

“That was the Rhoynar name,” said Haldon Halfmaester, “but for a thousand years this has been the Palace of Sorrow.”

The ruin was sad enough, but knowing what it had been made it even sadder. There was laughter here once, Tyrion thought. There were gardens bright with flowers and fountains sparkling golden in the sun. These steps once rang to the sound of lovers’ footsteps, and beneath that broken dome marriages beyond count were sealed with a kiss. His thoughts turned to Tysha, who had so briefly been his lady wife. It was Jaime, he thought, despairing. He was my own blood, my big strong brother. When I was small he brought me toys, barrel hoops and blocks and a carved wooden lion. He gave me my first pony and taught me how to ride him. When he said that he had bought you for me, I never doubted him. Why would I? He was Jaime, and you were just some girl who’d played a part. I had feared it from the start, from the moment you first smiled at me and let me touch your hand. My own father could not love me. Why would you if not for gold?

Through the long grey fingers of the fog, he heard again the deep shuddering thrum of a bowstring snapping taut, the grunt Lord Tywin made as the quarrel took him beneath the belly, the slap of cheeks on stone as he sat back down to die.

And therein lies a theme that runs through ASOIAF but for me finds its richest expressions in A Dance with Dragons: you can’t go home again.

Quentyn did not want to die at all. I want to go back to Yronwood and kiss both of your sisters, marry Gwyneth Yronwood, watch her flower into beauty, have a child by her. I want to ride in tourneys, hawk and hunt, visit with my mother in Norvos, read some of those books my father sends me. I want Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry to be alive again.

Home is haunted, by the love you lost and the family you failed.

The door to the roof of the tower was stuck so fast that it was plain no one had opened it in years. He had to put his shoulder to it to force it open. But when Jon Connington stepped out onto the high battlements, the view was just as intoxicating as he remembered: the crag with its wind-carved rocks and jagged spires, the sea below growling and worrying at the foot of the castle like some restless beast, endless leagues of sky and cloud, the wood with its autumnal colors. “Your father’s lands are beautiful,” Prince Rhaegar had said, standing right where Jon was standing now. And the boy he’d been had replied, “One day they will all be mine.” As if that could impress a prince who was heir to the entire realm, from the Arbor to the Wall.

Griffin’s Roost had been his, eventually, if only for a few short years. From here, Jon Connington had ruled broad lands extending many leagues to the west, north, and south, just as his father and his father’s father had before him. But his father and his father’s father had never lost their lands. He had.

Home is a border wall, a chain digging and twisting.

“Do you have brothers?” Asha asked her keeper.

“Sisters,” Alysane Mormont replied, gruff as ever. “Five, we were. All girls. Lyanna is back on Bear Island. Lyra and Jory are with our mother. Dacey was murdered.”

“The Red Wedding.”

“Aye.” Alysane stared at Asha for a moment. “I have a son. He’s only two. My daughter’s nine.”

“You started young.”

“Too young. But better that than wait too late.”

A stab at me, Asha thought, but let it be. “You are wed.”

“No. My children were fathered by a bear.” Alysane smiled. Her teeth were crooked, but there was something ingratiating about that smile. “Mormont women are skinchangers. We turn into bears and find mates in the woods. Everyone knows.”

Asha smiled back. “Mormont women are all fighters too.”

The other woman’s smile faded. “What we are is what you made us. On Bear Island every child learns to fear krakens rising from the sea.”

The Old Way. Asha turned away, chains clinking faintly.

Home is leagues and years away, and yet so close you can almost touch it.

Bran closed his eyes and slipped free of his skin. Into the roots, he thought. Into the weirwood. Become the tree. For an instant he could see the cavern in its black mantle, could hear the river rushing by below.

Then all at once he was back home again.

Lord Eddard Stark sat upon a rock beside the deep black pool in the godswood, the pale roots of the heart tree twisting around him like an old man’s gnarled arms. The greatsword Ice lay across Lord Eddard’s lap, and he was cleaning the blade with an oilcloth.

“Winterfell,” Bran whispered.

“I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved, a brother that I hated, a woman I desired. Through the trees, I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it.”

You have no home. You never will.

Water splashed against the soles of her feet. She was walking in the stream. How long had she been doing that? The soft brown mud felt good between her toes and helped to soothe her blisters. In the stream or out of it, I must keep walking. Water flows downhill. The stream will take me to the river, and the river will take me home.

Except it wouldn’t, not truly.

You’ll give up everything just to get home, please, please...

Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. The Night’s Watch takes no part. He closed his fist and opened it again. What you propose is nothing less than treason. He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell…I want my bride back…I want my bride back…I want my bride back…

...but it’s gone.

“I have no wish to die, I promise you. I have …” His voice trailed off into uncertainty. What do I have? A life to live? Work to do? Children to raise, lands to rule, a woman to love?

Home is a time, not a place, and there were so few times that Theon was at home. One of them was here, not so long ago, though it feels like it was. For a brief shining second as the banners caught the breeze, with roaring Umbers and fierce Karstarks, with a powerful army around him, with his brother in all but blood marching to avenge his (their?) father, he knew who he was.

And now, he can’t even remember his name.

How could who I was mean anything if it can be taken away from me like this? I was a Greyjoy among Starks, and then a Stark among Greyjoys; I was Theon and had to become Reek, I am Reek and have to become Theon. Forgive me, he calls through time to the smiling man he used to know, I was not strong enough. But Theon can’t hear Reek and never will.

...and yet.

A light rain had begun to piss down out of the slate-grey sky by the time Lord Ramsay’s camp appeared in front of them. A sentry watched them pass in silence. The air was full of drifting smoke from the cookfires drowning in the rain. A column of riders came wheeling up behind them, led by a lordling with a horsehead on his shield. One of Lord Ryswell’s sons, Reek knew. Roger, or maybe Rickard. He could not tell the two of them apart. “Is this all of them?” the rider asked from atop a chestnut stallion.

“All who weren’t dead, my lord.”

“I thought there would be more. We came at them three times, and three times they threw us back.”

We are Ironborn, he thought, with a sudden flash of pride, and for half a heartbeat he was a prince again, Lord Balon’s son, the blood of Pyke.

We are Ironborn. We are Ironborn. The point isn’t that being Ironborn is, in itself, some great moral progression for Theon. The point is that he just thought of himself as one of them, as Theon, in spite of Ramsay arranging everything that happens in Reek II to convince him that he is not. He has, just for a second, found himself.

This spark grows in strength when Roose Bolton and his army arrives to escort his bastard’s bride home. As I said last time, the identity shell-games extend beyond Theon himself; his arc in ADWD only works as well as it does because it resonates with what’s happening in the plot. The North went south united, but returns divided. Roose doesn’t exactly have “a peaceful land, a quiet people” on his hands, and bringing the hated Freys north will only further provoke Stark loyalists (as we’ll see in later chapters). Moreover, his army had to pass through the Neck, controlled by one of said Stark loyalists, Howland Reed. As such, it’s not safe these days to be Roose Bolton...so he outsourced the job.

Collared and chained and back in rags again, Reek followed with the other dogs at Lord Ramsay’s heels when his lordship strode forth to greet his father. When the rider in the dark armor removed his helm, however, the face beneath was not one that Reek knew. Ramsay’s smile curdled at the sight, and anger flashed across his face. “What is this, some mockery?”

“Just caution,” whispered Roose Bolton, as he emerged from behind the curtains of the enclosed wagon.

This is a terrific way to reintroduce a villain. We haven’t seen Roose since he shed all pretense and revealed himself, a snake with new skin, at the Red Wedding. What could be more fitting than for him to wrong-foot us along with Ramsay upon re-entry? We lean forward to see him, only to hear his soft voice behind us...

Reek pretending to be Theon paved the way for the man pretending to be Roose and the girl pretending to be Arya. It’s a mockery, a mummer’s farce, a hall of mirrors. By weaving the central question of Theon’s story--who am I?--into the characters and plot points surrounding him, GRRM elevates that story. It’s the classic existentialist quest: the eternal hunt of the elusive Real. The question of whether Theon will remember his name fits like a puzzle piece with the question of whether the North will remember its name. And the North remembers.

But Theon, try as he might, is not a Stark...and neither is Ramsay’s bride-to-be.

(image by Elia Fernandez)

Jeyne Poole is not Arya Stark, and everyone knows it. Her presence is a marker of Bolton success: the key to Winterfell, a gift from their Lannister patrons, a declaration that the old has been humbled before and folded into the new. Yet more than anything else, it is the lack of anyone willing to call the Dreadfort men on their fraud that points to their rising fortunes at this moment. This is precisely why Davos’ defiant stand against the Freys in the Merman’s Court (in the chapter immediately prior to this one, worth noting?) hits home so hard. The man who stuck his neck out for the truth will not suffer these noxious lies about what happened to the Northerners who went south, and it’s all the more admirable because he (seemingly) stands alone.

And after a chapter of his identity being used against him, rewarded with a collar for handing his people over to a butcher, telling himself again and again that he is Reek, not Theon but Reek...our POV finally drops the disguise.

The girl was slim, and taller than he remembered, but that was only to be expected. Girls grow fast at that age. Her dress was grey wool bordered with white satin; over it she wore an ermine cloak clasped with a silver wolf’s head. Dark brown hair fell halfway down her back. And her eyes…

That is not Lord Eddard’s daughter.

Arya had her father’s eyes, the grey eyes of the Starks. A girl her age might let her hair grow long, add inches to her height, see her chest fill out, but she could not change the color of her eyes. That’s Sansa’s little friend, the steward’s girl. Jeyne, that was her name. Jeyne Poole.

“Lord Ramsay.” The girl dipped down before him. That was wrong as well. The real Arya Stark would have spat into his face. “I pray that I will make you a good wife and give you strong sons to follow after you.”

“That you will,” promised Ramsay, “and soon.”

It’s only internal. There’s nothing moral about it yet. He’s yet to relate her fortunes to his own. But by allowing Reek to play Theon, Ramsay has unknowingly reintroduced his captive’s pre-captivity identity into his bloodstream like an antivirus, and Jeyne’s arrival crystallizes what this means for our POV. If she’s not Arya, then he’s not Reek.

The past is present. The mud you pack into that hole in the ruined wall won’t keep your ghosts at bay. But (to borrow from Barristan) mud can nourish the seeds from which you will grow, your past the fertilizer for your rebirth.

At the edge of the wolfswood, Bran turned in his basket for one last glimpse of the castle that had been his life. Wisps of smoke still rose into the grey sky, but no more than might have risen from Winterfell's chimneys on a cold autumn afternoon. Soot stains marked some of the arrow loops, and here and there a crack or a missing merlon could be seen in the curtain wall, but it seemed little enough from this distance. Beyond, the tops of the keeps and towers still stood as they had for hundreds of years, and it was hard to tell that the castle had been sacked and burned at all. The stone is strong, Bran told himself, the roots of the trees go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I'm not dead either.    

#theon greyjoy #ramsay bolton #a dance with dragons #theon in adwd #asoiaf meta #moat cailin #roose bolton #jeyne poole #a game of thrones

[ao3feed-stony]

fragments and shards

by stardating

I am sure that many of us rewrite various scenes from books, movies, and other forms of media in our heads, answering, ‘What if?’ and other such pondering thoughts. These are all of the various scenes from the MCU that I have rewritten in my head or that have just popped up, because sometimes these characters come and live rent free for a while, as they do.

Words: 2957, Chapters: 8/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M, M/M

Characters: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, Thor, Pepper Potts, James Rhodes, Sam Wilson, James “Bucky” Barnes, Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, Betty Ross, Peggy Carter, Peter Parker, Ned Leeks, Michelle ‘MJ’ Johnson

Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Jane Foster/Thor, Bruce Banner/Betty Ross

Additional Tags: Fix-it fic, Scene rewrites, everybody lives no one dies, It’s 2012 And Everyone Lives In The Tower, Canon Typical Violence, Domestic Avengers, Fluff, Friendship, Humor, Teamwork makes the dream work, Author Cherry Picks The Canon, Author Makes Stuff Up, author has no regrets, Self-Indulgent

source https://archiveofourown.org/works/30926072

#stony #steve rogers #tony stark #iron man #captain america #fan fiction #ao3 stony feed #stony fan

[stony-ao3-feed]

fragments and shards

Read it on AO3

by stardating

I am sure that many of us rewrite various scenes from books, movies, and other forms of media in our heads, answering, ‘What if?’ and other such pondering thoughts. These are all of the various scenes from the MCU that I have rewritten in my head or that have just popped up, because sometimes these characters come and live rent free for a while, as they do.

Words: 2438, Chapters: 6/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M, M/M

Characters: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, Thor, Pepper Potts, James Rhodes, Sam Wilson, James “Bucky” Barnes, Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, Betty Ross, Peggy Carter, Peter Parker, Ned Leeks, Michelle ‘MJ’ Johnson

Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Jane Foster/Thor, Bruce Banner/Betty Ross

Additional Tags: Fix-it fic, Scene rewrites, everybody lives no one dies, It’s 2012 And Everyone Lives In The Tower, Canon Typical Violence, Domestic Avengers, Fluff, Friendship, Humor, Teamwork makes the dream work, Author Cherry Picks The Canon, Author Makes Stuff Up, author has no regrets, Self-Indulgent

Read it on AO3

#stony #fanfiction #ao3feed #superhusbands #stevetony