ihaveastorminme

[ihaveastorminme]

Reuploading this because my last version sank with my old account. Exactly what it says on the tin, Hozier's "Eat Your Young" with various monologues from The Lion in Winter (1968) spliced in between.

[ihaveastorminme]

I can't believe I'm reading this prologue and already wanting to cry. what the f*** is wrong with stannis oh my god. I had to read this guy go on and on about how he was unappreciated and unloved, ( It did make several points but still) and now he's practically banishing - publicly even - someone who has loved him all his life. are you kidding me.

Also, I've only met Davos for like 5 minutes unalready i would kill for him.Literally rooms full of people. He really won me over when he stood up so that cressen could sit down to eat. Poor cressen though. he's really going about the assassination in a very sloppy fashion.

Oh we really are seeing the first draft of the purple wedding here.

#acok #prologue #valyrianscrolls

[ihaveastorminme]

Lots of mentions of poisons and purple seeds that look shiny like jewels and "no larger than his little finger" and the "tip of his little finger" in A clash of kings prologue. Hmmmmm

#a clash of kings #cressen sounds lovely actually. he and maeseter lewin have the same vibe #valyrianscrolls

[ihaveastorminme]

As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.

#genuinely as i was reading it. this chapter is just. my god. its probably teh best yet? idk. i feel like it now and maybe i wont at some #other time but RIGHT NOW i think this might be one of hte best chapters of the book. and that last line #i want to scream shout break things #a game of thrones #daenerys 10

[ihaveastorminme]

i dont know if it was because it was from Cat's pov, or because i know what happened, but my god, the northeners and riverlords declaring Robb the King in the North was a dreadful moment. She was so hoping for peace and im sure that the moment was very triumphant readign it blind without spoilers, but as i am, reading it felt like a death sentence.

and the imagery is all about war. and robb with the sword in front of him reminded me of that image dany has of him dead in the house of the undying, and of the tombs of the Starks un the crypts of Winterfell.

#ROBB NOOOOOOOOO fuck #im so angry at the greatjon honest to god #catelyn 11 #a game of thrones #valyrianscrolls

[ihaveastorminme]

Her uncle’s craggy face showed his pain plain. He ran his fingers through his thick grey hair. “Will he see me?” She nodded. “He says he is too sick to fight.” Brynden Blackfish chuckled. “I am too old a soldier to believe that. Hoster will be chiding me about the Redwyne girl even as we light his funeral pyre, damn his bones.” Catelyn smiled, knowing it was true.

case in point. tullys, in Looking. you all have more quiet family dynamics, but they must be Observed.

#catelyn 11 #a game of thrones #valyrianscrolls #they are smart af tho #like #i dont have an exmaple at hand they just give me that impression. scrappy smart. also because of cat i must say #she is very intuitive and intelligent. and i guess she shines a good light on all her family. but there is the competense of the blackfish #and the political mind of hoster. and catelyn's sharpness and practical mind.

[ihaveastorminme]

catelyn blaming herself for the outbreak of the war, and how it precipitated - allegedly - her fathers death and all that. its all is killing me, honestly. and it infuriates me that people just 'take her at her word' so to speak.

not it was NOT her fault, what are people even talking about. ned gave her instructions to prepare for war WHEN THEY MET IN KINGS LANDING. there were plans involved. all she did by taking tyrion is speed up the timeline - IF THAT. i doubt even that one honestly, because it would have happened all, just as it happened save for few unimportant details, the moment Robert died, wouldn't it? Cersei had to have been planning that particular kingslaying ever since she arranged for Lancel to be Robert's squire, i bet. And im sure she would have done nothing differently in the wake of Joffrey's ascension, and ned would have still been taken and killed IT WASNT CAT WHO STARTED THE WAR FFS

also - hoster tully sounds unbearable. even in his deathbed, he remembers that he's pissed at his brother. petty bastard. and hes going on about lysa because he wants her at hsi deathbed, to die asking forgiveness probably - AFTER he ahs done the damage and offered no amends. i do not like lysa, she is unhinged af, but im glad hoster will die feeling sorry and without absolution. he earned it

#CATELYN 11 #a game of thrones #valyrianscrolls #catelyn stark #catelyn tully

[ihaveastorminme]

I said the words, just as you did. My place is here … where is yours, boy?” I have no place, Jon wanted to say, I’m a bastard, I have no rights, no name, no mother, and now not even a father. The words would not come. “I don’t know.” “I do,”

#jon 9 #a game of thrones #valyrianscrolls #your lord father sent you to us jon . who who can say. #he sure did old bear #his uncle meant to save his life. his father meant to save the world. i wonder what his mother meant. to save his life probably. #and give him the love of family and the safety of winterfell.

[ihaveastorminme]

Ok. Bran vii made me tear up.

#valyrianscrolls #bran 7 #a game of thrones #the dread building #the kids knowing #summer consoling shaggydog #bran telling rickong they should wait togehter and then consoling his brother #the boys crying even before maester lewin leads the words #the tears on the maesters eyes #all of it #the waves of neds death are going to hit me one chapter after the other now #they all loved him so much and now they will grieve him and its only the begining

[ihaveastorminme]

Bran and Rickon have the same dream about ned dying and now i wonder if all the starks have these kinds of dreams. I mean, this was almost prophetic. And i remeber a scene with arya praying in harrenhall, and almost listening to their response. They saw death before it came. I wonder if they all have the potential to be greenseers, and bran was the one that that was the most powerful, or the most awake to the magic or sth.

Or of this is bran or the other greenseers speaking thru time or sth.

#bran 7 #a game of thrones #bran stark #valyrianscrolls

[ihaveastorminme]

No, Dany wanted to say, no, not that, you mustn’t, but when she opened her mouth, a long wail of pain escaped, and the sweat broke over her skin. What was wrong with them, couldn’t they see? Inside the tent the shapes were dancing, circling the brazier and the bloody bath, dark against the sandsilk, and some did not look human. She glimpsed the shadow of a great wolf, and another like a man wreathed in flames.

what the FUCK is going on in this scene??? i have been reading meta for years and dont remember reading about this anywhere. the shadow of a great wolf? a man in flames? robb? jon? Staniss?

also, what IS wrong with them? because i am starting to think that they really CANNOT see what dany is seeing. that they are seeing something else entirely maybe. i dont know.

#daenerys 8 #daenerys targaryen #a game of thrones #valyrianscrolls

[ihaveastorminme]

Jhogo edged back, his hand on his arakh. He was a youth of sixteen years, whip-thin, fearless, quick to laugh, with the faint shadow of his first mustachio on his upper lip. He fell to his knees before her. “Khaleesi,” he pleaded, “you must not do this thing. Let me kill this maegi.” “Kill her and you kill your khal,” Dany said. “This is bloodmagic,” he said. “It is forbidden.” “I am khaleesi, and I say it is not forbidden. In Vaes Dothrak, Khal Drogo slew a stallion and I ate his heart, to give our son strength and courage. This is the same. The same.”

she knows its not. but she is trying to convince herself that it is, because she needs to believe it, because it scares her what she is doing, what it means.

this type of of delusional thinking reminded me of Sansa for a moment, which was nice, because usually Dany and her enjoyment of markets and bazars and all types of people reminds me delightfully of Arya.

#valyrianscrolls #daenerys 8 #daenerys targaryen #a game of thrones #mirri mas duur creeps me out but at no point did she LIE to dany. and every turn she presented choices #and dany made her choices #she ignored every warning #she and drogo both #even as i am listening to this i am wondering if it was always mirris intention to kill drogo or if she did everythign correctly and it #his own arrogance and negligence that killed him #or if she wrapped his wound KNOWING he owuld not follow her advice

[ihaveastorminme]

I think the Hunger Games series sits in a similar literary position to The Lord of the Rings, as a piece of literature (by a Catholic author) that sparked a whole new subgenre and then gets blamed for flaws that exist in the copycat books and aren’t actually part of the original.

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”.  The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA. 

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

There’s a reason these books became a literary phenomenon. There’s a reason that dozens upon dozens of authors attempted to imitate them. But these imitators can’t capture that same genius, largely because they’re trying to imitate the trappings of another book, and failing to capture the larger and more meaningful message underneath. Make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you’ll wind up with something far removed from the original masterpiece. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming those flaws on the original work.

#hunger games #resources

[ihaveastorminme]

Remembering

by Rainer Maria Rilke

And you wait. You wait for the one thing that will change your life, make it more than it is— something wonderful, exceptional, stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls old books glimmer gold and brown. You think of lands you journeyed through, of paintings and a dress once worn by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough. You rise and there appears before you in all its longings and hesitations the shape of what you lived.

#poem #insp #remembering #rainer maria rilke

[ihaveastorminme]

theon is an idiot

#catelyn 10 #a game of thrones #valyrianscrolls

[ihaveastorminme]

im sure i am being very thick-skulled, but i dont get why its so important that Robin would be fostered at Dragonstone, and not the westerlands, with Tywin. It's been told to Cat twice now [or three times, i dont remember: by the maester in Eyrie, and by that unholy-long-winded speech that Frey gave her before he exacted his toll], and it FEELS important. I mean c'mon, if it hadn't been, it would not have been hidden under all that drudgery that Frey spewed out.

Maybe this is being tainted by the fact that i am reading this book with every-little-detail spoiled for me [which is honestly a shame, i should have read this years ago], but the only thing i can think of is that this is meant to plant the seed in Catelyn [and by extension, us] that the first letter that Lysa sent was a lie. That there, in this little incongruence, lies the heart of the matter, and the heart of the betrayal. that LYSA killed her husband and not anyone else, like she would have Cat believe. and one of the reasons was that Jon was making arrangements for his son, and Lysa was against each and every one of them, and that was Petyr's time to strike.

#a game of thrones #catelyn 10 #valyrianscrolls #teh tullys have a VERY interesting family dynamic #ngl #almost as interesting as the lannsiters. i swear to god tho tyrions povs have gotten harder and harder to read #tywin is so .... #i dont even have the words for the man. its like he spews poison with every single breath. i cannot stand him #its viceral. its uncontrollable. he makes something in me rise up in rage that i cannot control. every tiem his lines come around i want #to smash my phone #i want to rip the book i want to scream #and hoster. im side-eyeing you too old man

[ihaveastorminme]