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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year

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I Prefer My Heart To Be Broken, Chapter Three: Matriculation

A plan goes wrong. A wound reopens. Flight.

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CHAPTER THREE: MATRICULATION

Jon wakes up with a plan.

That’s probably a bad sign. His plans are rarely good ones.

He kisses Martin awake, hoping to sway the jury.

Martin responds by rolling over on top of him, pinning him neatly. “No,” he says.

“Now, wait a minute, I haven’t said anything,” Jon protests (mildly).

“I know that look, Jonathan Sims. That’s your I’ve got an idea look. Whatever it is, we haven’t discussed it yet, so, no.”

Jon smiles. “I have an idea look?”

“Everything’s on your face. At least, to me.” And Martin thinks it is a marvelous face. There Jon lies beneath him, hair spread out on the pillow, wearing nothing but a soft smile that eats away at the extra years people usually assign him.

Why can’t we have this? Martin thinks.

“It’s not crazy, I promise. Mason is going to London,” says Jon.

“Mason. The what’s-it—the Grove head?”

“The Paragon, yes.”

“The one who makes you think of Jonah Magnus.”

Jon sighs. “That’s not his fault. That’s my baggage—but did you hear me? He’s going to London, and plans to be back in time for the new season. That probably means he has a ride of some kind. And London! They must have information there. Libraries. Somewhere I can research.”

Oh, the enthusiasm was painful because it had become so rare. “Research what?”

“What we’re up against. What we’re facing. Weaknesses. Whether national borders matter. Something.”

“You think they’ll have answers there? Anything that could actually help us?”

“I have to try,” says Jon.

Martin feels a little like he’s bullying a kitten. “And you think nobody’s going to follow you.”

“Well…” Jon looks so confused (adorable). “I’m sure we’re being followed here just as much as we would be anywhere else.”

“We? So I’m invited on this expedition?”

“Mason wants to meet you. He tried inviting me to a party, or something, with you alongside. He might go for it.”

“There’s meeting, and then there’s traveling with for a week,” says Martin. “Besides, it’s harvest time. If I bug out now, I’m going to lose a lot of the social credit I’ve built up.”

Now that Jon has this idea between his teeth, he won’t let go. “So blame me. I’ll show up, make a fuss. Make it seem like you have to come with me for the sake of domestic bliss.”

“No. No, because—no, Jon—one, because I won’t have anyone I work with thinking you’re anything but perfect for me, and two, because you can’t act.”

“I can so act,” says Jon, the picture of Edwardian offense.

“No, you really can’t.”

“Well, then what’s your idea?” huffs Jon.

“Put a guy on the spot,” Martin mutters. “I don’t know. But I don’t like this one.”

“What happened to, ‘we can’t just sit here?’”

“Haring off with a man who reminds you of Jonah Magnus isn’t the other option, Jon.”

“Then let’s go ourselves. We could manage it.”

“We don’t know the country, the roads, the routes. The local laws. It’s risky.”

“That’s my point,” says Jon. “We can’t make a plan out of ignorance. We have to figure out what’s really going on here. If we can escape. What if the King in Yellow has an enemy who isn’t… you know, chaos? What if there’s someone we could go to for help?”

It sounds reasonable.

Martin wonders, deep down, how much of it is reasonable, and how much is Jon’s need for knowledge, his curiosity propelling him like wind in his sails. “You’re sure the local Grove has nothing?”

“I’ve looked. It’s all vague. It’s useless. They don’t even know why this is year 376, for heaven’s sake.”

Martin sighs. “There may be a way to do this.”

Jon brightens.

“You remember Julia, Peter, and Mark.”

Jon’s slow smile is like honey. “How could I not?”

Martin’s own is, too, but then it falls away. “Well. They were talking about needing to make a trip to London soon to barter some supplies before winter. I could suggest that I do that for them.”

“Brilliant.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“You’re only saying that because I got the idea from a man who can’t help having gray eyes.”

Martin kisses him. It tastes desperate, to him. He wonders if it does to Jon. “I’m saying that because I hate that we have to come up with plans and learn things, and we can’t just be.”

Jon goes very still.

“That wasn’t about you, Jon. That’s not what I’m saying.”

“I know. I know.” But Jon doesn’t.

“Damn them,” murmurs Martin, and settles in to cover Jon like a blanket until the tension leaves him.

Jon stands over exams.

He mimics what he knows the other teachers are doing, silent, watching, walking between the rows of chairs and desks as if checking for cheating.

No one in his class is cheating. It gives him a little bump of pride to realize that in other classes, many are.

He’s prepared them well. He wonders if this is how Martin feels when harvesting crops after all that planting and watering and weeding.

Maybe being a teacher isn’t so bad.

When it’s finally done (hours into the day), he congratulates everyone and gathers their tests. For form’s sake, he glances through, as he knows other teachers do, until he can tell them with confidence that they have all passed.

The cheering is lovely. Then there’s a lot of hand-shaking, and he fixes up his classroom for the last time this season.

Jon locks the precious books away. Sighs, sits, and looks out the window at Dandridge.

He could do this, he thinks. This could work for the rest of his life, maybe.

(Though he’s going to need to find some damned answers soon or he’ll go completely crazy.)

(Though he feels like a plant kept from sunlight, beginning to yellow.)

One thing at a time, Sims, he tells himself. Eldritch gods come first.

He’s tired.

That’s good, he thinks. He’d rather be tired than thrumming with that illicit Eye energy he did not earn and does not want.

It’s only as he’s leaving, as he’s walking down the path that leads out of the Grove and into Dandridge proper, that he realizes he feels watched.

He stops. Looks around.

The Grove is quiet behind him—a round, wide building with a dark green roof, giving the impression of a tree with windows.

Around him, Dandridge is settling in for the night. It’s somewhere between Medieval and Edwardian—no building taller than two stories, natural materials all around.

And wireless power, of course.

A weird, uneasy chill shivers up his back.

Maybe it’s because Dandridge closes up early, and is practically dead before an event like matriculation. None of the shops remain open; a few people still wend their way home, walking at the far ends of streets. It is eerily silent.

He sees no one else.

The feeling of being watched remains.

Reach for me, tempts the Eye, promising all the information and effective spying he could want.

Jon walks instead.

Jon isn’t sure when he stopped trusting his intuition (probably about the time he was tricked into ending the world), but the bad feeling worsens as he leaves the town until he can’t ignore it anymore. Someone is following him, or he’s lost his mind.

Jon has one of his ideas.

He crests the next hill, descends far enough to be out of sight of anyone behind him, and then hurries off the road. There is an abandoned orchard here, thick-trunked, still quite leafy in spite of the lateness of the year. Casually, he leans against a tree, arms crossed, and waits to see what comes.

What comes is Mason.

Mason, who crests the hill, looks startled to find Jon gone, and glances around to find him.

Jon has already moved behind the tree.

His heart pounds as Mason seems to consider Jon’s poor hiding place, then—for some reason—disregards it and continues to look around.

I’m behind hunted, Jon thinks, and realizes he’s wrong about this man. Mason doesn’t remind him of Jonah at all right now.

Mason reminds him of Daisy.

It’s a fraught few moments. Mason takes his time scanning the countryside.

Does Mason really not know where he is?

Could he really lack that much reasoning ability?

It’s possible. A lifetime of never asking questions, never truly pursuing answers….

Jon debates. Should he confront him? What if it’s an innocent issue, and he loses his job by being weird and popping out from behind a tree?

He knows it’s not an innocent issue.

Finally, Mason shakes his head, frowns, and turns back the way he came.

Invite me, the Beholding calls to him. I will show you his mind.

Oh, shut up, Jon tells it, and takes a few more moments to build his courage enough to leave the tree and go home.

Jon cleans the cottage. Removes all the spiderwebs he can find (just as many as usual, he tells himself). Checks the food he’s packed for their journey—some jars of preserved vegetables and fruit, some dried meat, some bread wrapped in cheesecloth to be edible in the days to come.

Then he’s done, and there’s nothing else to do.

Forty minutes until matriculation. He really has to leave.

He’s beginning to feel uneasy about tonight. No one around him has thought anything about the details, so he has no idea what to expect.

His broken, faulty intuition is telling him something bad is coming.

It can’t, of course, have anything to do with the King in Yellow. That’s completely illogical. No matter what his gut says.

He doesn’t even knowwhy Mason was following him, he tells himself. He has to go tonight if he plans to keep this job, he tells himself.

Jon thinks about running instead.

He thinks about Martin having to abandon everything he’s worked so hard for in West Village.

He thinks about how happy Martin is, telling him about things he helped grow, about friends he’s made.

Jon tells himself to stop jumping at ghosts. Martin loves this place, so Jon is going to make it work.

Even if he’s going to be late.

Jon cleans everything in the cottage again one more time anyway, just because.

He finds more webs, and tells himself he just missed them the first time around.

Jon is late, and he hopes it’ll be all right if he shows up anyway and makes his apologies.

The sky is ombré, shading from periwinkle into midnight, and Jon watches the stars as he heads back into Dandridge.

The whole town has gone dark but for the Grove. His footsteps seem loud; his breathing does, too.

There is some kind of music as he approaches—drumming, a wild, weirdly obscene rhythm that seems so at odds with the ordinary shallowness. It’s a strange and penetrative groove, a sensual and naked beat.

Jon pauses just outside the golden light of the Grove building, intuition screaming at him, reason finding nothing actually wrong.

He reaches (not hard, not much), and can see nothing of the minds in the building tonight.

It’s like the place is empty.

He’ll have to have to go inside to know what’s going on.

Curiosity will always outweigh his good sense. He’s going to go in—but at least he won’t be completely stupid about it.

Jon walks around the building, avoiding the main entrance. He happens to know of another door, a door kept locked—a door nobody seems to think about at all.

But Jon had noted the door, and been very interested in an extra exit. So one night, he and Martin had sneaked in and messed with the thing until it could be lifted off the hinges without anyone being the wiser.

It was harder to lift without Martin’s help (a lot harder), but Jon thought it wiser than walking into the middle of something unknown.

Jon leans the door against the frame, hoping it looks closed, and creeps toward the sound.

The drumbeat is even louder inside, thrumming through the walls and the floor. It’s hypnotic, vibrating something inside him he can’t name.

Some kind of… magic?

Jon hesitates.

He has to know what’s happening.

There is a circular courtyard in the center of the school. It’s wide open to the night sky, dirt kept free of grass or weeds, and that seems to be where everyone is. The row of doors around it—tall shapes in the dark—make it feel like an actual grove.

The way everyone is behaving, however, makes it feel like a bad horror movie.

He still can’t see a source for the drumbeat, but that doesn’t matter. Everyone—teachers and students alike—is on their knees, performing a weird, swaying sort of dance, arms outreached, visibly worshipful.

They’re all wearing matching outfits, strange yellow robes he’s never seen, and as far as he can tell, their minds are totally blank.

They can’t be blank, he tells himself, terror gripping him by the throat, because people can’t do this and still be alive, because he can’t think of anything worse than losing yourself in this way, emptied—

At long last and probably too late, Jon realizes he’s being that guy that Tim always ranted about in those horror movies.

Sims, you’re an idiot, he tells himself in Georgie’s no-nonsense voice, and backs away.

No one follows him. He reaches the door; gets out; replaces it.

Still, no one.

Does he run? Or try for subtle?

He has no idea what might be watching from the windows of the town, who might be tracking his movements. Running would be a dead giveaway, but taking his time could let someone catch up to him.

There’s no good option. Jon tries to keep to the darkest shadows and hurry-shuffle along.

He can’t ever return to this place.

He and Martin can’t stay here, after all.

His heart hurts. He hadn’t realized until it was taken away how much he wanted to call this home.

He ducks under windows and hurries past doors, keeps checking all around, but sees nothing, senses nothing.

Not that he’d be able to detect anyone, if their minds were still blank like that.

Puppeted, he thinks, and recalls the King in Yellow’s vision, shoved into him, of himself, hollowed out, speaking.

Were the citizens all sitting behind darkened windows, eyes flat, like unwound automatons?

Jon’s courage crunches like old grass underfoot, and he runs.

Too little.

Too late.

He feels it coming. Impossible not to feel, like atmospheric pressure and static discharge, punching at his ear drums and tingling along his fingers and toes.

Well, someone is making an entrance.

The King, heading toward the school.

Jon’s almost out of town—but he knows, as he leaps past the last paved stretch of street, that he’s insane to think leaving the town would protect him in any way at all.

Jon feels the King in Yellow change direction, feels the thing head toward him at a leisurely pace, and hears screams—

People in Dandridge, upset that he’s not landing on them, or whatever is going on.

(Puppeted, they’re puppeted, he’s making them cry out for him.)

Jon wants to flee. Dig a hole. Hide. But knows he won’t get away. He can’t outrun a god, much less something that can fly.

If he goes home, he’s leading danger right to Martin—Martin, who will be there by now, waiting for him with the wagon packed and the mule ready, all showered and warm and perfect.

Jon can’t lead this thing to Martin.

Though it costs him, Jon stops running, turns, and waits.

The King in Yellow comes out of the sky like a slow comet, huge and freakish and glorying in visibility and horror, and ignores all the cries in Dandridge as he lands before Jon without a sound.

Jon isn’t as good with silence as Martin. Never has been. “Good evening,” he manages, sounding choked.

“Walk with me, Archivist.” The King turns back toward Dandridge, indicating direction.

Is he going to be sacrificed, or something? What the hell is this about? He can’t, can’t, can’t keep silent. “Why?”

The King studies him.

A long moment passes, and Jon feels perused all over again.

“Strange manner of asking,” says the King.

“What? What do you mean?”

“You aren’t challenging my authority with your question.”

That’s a weird thing to say. “What? Of course not! Why would I be that stupid?”

The King turns. “Walk with me.”

And Jon knows the King is being patient, as patient as he ever could, feels the strain this being is under just to keep from lashing out at him.

Jon takes a step. Shaking. And he has to ask again. “Why?”

“Like breathing,” says the King as if to himself, studying him. “Because if you do not, I take you tonight. No more chances. No more time. You’ll never see him again. But if you walk with me, Jonathan Sims, and keep your mouth shut,” and here is a wicked chuckle, a terrible, dark humor as if that very idea is absurd, “then I will allow your trip to London to learn about me.”

So it’s damned or damned, thinks Jon, and then is annoyed because that wasn’t really an answer to his question. It was just a threat.

The King unfurls a human-like hand from somewhere in his cloak and holds it out. It’s huge; steady, darker than the night sky. And he waits.

Jon has to ask. “Will you… leave Martin alone if I come with you tonight?”

He feels the patience in this thing stretch to a hair’s breadth. “I don’t care about your lover. He can’t give me what I want.”

Is that an answer?

It’s as much as Jon is going to get.

Power wafts off the King, who seems to be in some sort of mood.

What the hell will happen if Jon actually touches him?

Jon doesn’t take the King’s hand, but he does start walking.

“You dare,” the King says, volume rising, and the ground shakes. “You dare disregard this honor?”

Jon takes a shaky breath. “I… I’m sorry. You said ‘walk with me,’ and I’m walking with you.”

The night holds its breath for one terrible moment.

Then the King in Yellow laughs. It’s a horrible sound, damning. “You did that out of fear, not rebellion,” he says.

Jon is really confused now. “Yes?”

“Interesting,” says the King, and he walks.

Slithers. Whatever.

Jon walks beside him, unable to calm his quivering, well aware the King is limiting his pace to Jon’s much smaller legs.

What is this thing, anyway? God is such a vague word, always colored outside the lines. What does he even want here tonight? Matriculation happens all over the country—why is the yellow king here? Does he attend each one? What for?

Are they all puppeted, or only the ones the King attends?

What is he made of? Is he an alien? Is he a mutation? Were Esoterics native to this world, or a recent invasion?

Is he something like the Fears?

Why the Fears? Why would he want them here? Why is—

“You never stop, do you?” says the King in Yellow.

“What?” says Jon.

“Fascinating,” says the King, and doesn’t speak again.

They enter the town, and windows open with cheers and bucketfuls of dried flowers, and a cacophony of musical instruments with absolutely no coordination between them blat and scrape and toot into the air, and there is not a single working mind anywhere around them.

Panic pushes at Jon’s ability to maintain control of himself.

The King in Yellow seems to find that funny. His chortle is terrible, is stomachache and night terrors, is the space between stars and the moldering of old graves.

(And why, what’s the reason for this, this fear doesn’t feed anything—)

He is given no warning before the god picks him up.

Jon strangles his shout as they rise into the air because (of course) the King is far too big for the Grove’s human-sized door, and must come into the courtyard by descending from the heavens.

Is that why the Grove is shaped this way? Jon wonders, clinging to questions, desperately trying to dwell in his intellect and not his screaming terror.

There is a lot of drama as they touch down.

The cheering makes its way through students and teachers alike. They’re screaming, crying. And they might as well be an old recording, for all that Jon detects a single thought or feeling.

“Bring to me the chosen ones,” says the King in Yellow.

And out comes the matriculating class, filing from different doors in perfect lines, like making some kind of snowflake. They gather in front of the swaying teachers and students and kneel, heads bent.

The King puts Jon down and moves toward them.

This is the moment. Jon could run.

If he were younger, he might have tried. He’s never been his smartest when afraid.

But time and tide have shaved at least some of that off him, and he knows he’d make it nowhere, and lose what little trust he’s been given. He stays where he’s put.

The King is tapping some of the matriculating students on the head, regardless of age, gender, or anything else Jon can determine. Reach for me, the Eye calls without words, and I will show you what is hidden from you.

It’s a lot harder to say no, tonight. Jon still does.

It might have been nice, though, to get some warning that heads were about to explode.

The people the King tapped look up at him, bliss stretching their features, absolutely ecstatic to have been chosen. Then they pop like overfilled balloons.

Jon’s high, choked cry is swallowed in the wild screams and cheers and celebrations of everyone who remains.

Bits of bone and blood splat into him, and he staggers back and falls. I’m not running! he thinks as loudly as he dares, not fleeing, being good, because his refusal to call the Fears already threatens to sever this thing’s patience, and if Jon makes him too mad, he could go for Martin.

He has to keep Martin safe, and if he runs—

“The chosen have ascended!” declares the King, and the place goes wild, applause and singing completely disparate songs and—

And people are rolling in the gore like painting themselves as offerings, and the students who weren’t exploded reach toward the King and plead.

And all of it is faked, puppeted, unreal.

Why? Jon all but bellows inside, unable not to, flooded with too many damned mysteries over the last several months.

For the first and only time, someone seems aware of him. Mason, who glances over, blinks at him, then pauses his ululation to look at the King. And Jon shouldn’t be able to hear Mason over everything, over all of this, but somehow, he does, as the Paragon looks at the King and says, “And the Unmarked?”

Unmarked? thinks Jon, and laughs bitterly. He’s covered in fucking marks.

“That one belongs to me,” says the King in Yellow.

Since when? thinks Jon, and nearly loses what nerve he has left. Good sense barely holds him down.

Mason’s face twists in what has to be envy, but only for a moment. He sort of acknowledges Jon, a half-bow head-nod kind of thing, then joins everybody else in celebrating the gruesome deaths of people they’ve known for three years.

“I’d give you this honor any day, you absolute jackanape!” Jon yells at him.

The King in Yellow laughs.

Martin has a perfectly normal day.

He starts with a shower, then heads to West Village, to the community garden.

There, he smiles and greets by name, and helps with preparation for the upcoming winter. He picks up whatever tools he needs without so much as a wince, as though his hand was not pierced and bleeding the day before.

He greets Julia, Mark, and Peter with a hug. They say he does not look like he slept well.

He says, truthfully, that he did not.

And Martin focuses, and takes hammer and repurposed nails, and helps the group to rebuild old widow Morris’ roof, and there are songs, and conversation, and good, clean work under the autumn sun.

And afterward, Mrs. Morris produces a surprise barrel of cider, and everyone is invited to join.

It’s good, so good. And Martin hates that it might be lost, because it is so good.

Martin refuses three dinner invitations. His light-hearted responses make two people blush. He leaves them laughing.

Martin finally bids them all goodnight when they haven’t yet finished the cider, and heads to Peter, Mark, and Julia’s house.

“We don’t have mules where we come from,” he lies easily. “I know oxen, but this is new for me.”

“Well, it’s not that different, all told,” says Peter, who is as like Peter Lukas as the sun is like a frog. “Biggest thing is mules have more personality. You’re gonna have to make Pepper like you.”

Martin chuckles and gives Pepper a good ear-scratch. “I’ll do my best?”

“Pepper will love you,” says Julia, clearly certain.

Martin beams at her, exuding gratitude and humility with every syllable. “I hope so. We’ll try to be back in three weeks.”

“Things do happen, especially in London,” says Mark, and takes Peter’s hand. “You could be delayed.”

That was weirdly ominous. Martin internally curses because he can’t ask a follow-up. “I’m sure we’ll manage,” he says, discovering Pepper’s sweet spot under her chin. “After all you’ve done to welcome us here, doing this trip for you is the least I could do.” He flexes. “Put all this to good use,” he adds in utterly self-recriminating tones, and it works. They laugh, and reassure him he’s not anywhere near as weak as he was when he’d arrived (which he’d blamed on a long journey).

“We can check on your home, if you want,” Julia says.

Nobody knows where Martin lives. He intends to keep it that way. “Thank you, but it’ll be fine.”

“Nobody knows when it could happen to them,” says Peter, who seems to be talking about something else.

“Never really know,” says Mark.

Julia leans into Mark’s chest, and they share a moment that Martin does not understand. It looks like grief.

What was this?

It’s the first time Martin’s seen anything but that constant, bland happiness from anybody, and he doesn’t know how to respond. He still can’t ask—it isn’t done that way, here.

Jon would just do it, of course, but Jon has the social skills of a hungry piranha.

“We’ll be off really early tomorrow, so I’m going to head back,” Martin finally says.

“Oh! Almost forgot,” says Peter, and hands Martin a stoppered bottle, about half a quart.

Martin blinks at it.

“Ink,” says Peter. “We aren’t… we don’t have a use for it, anymore, and you said you write poetry.”

That has to be a half a dozen guilders’ worth. “I can’t take that! You could sell it.”

Julia’s smile is sad. “No. It belonged to someone important to us. She loved to write, too. We want you to have it.”

Well, this was awkward. Also dearly unexpected. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” What can he do but accept?

“Off with ye,” says Mark, patting him on the shoulder.

And then Martin is driving an honest-to-Fears cart with a mule, loaded with goods to barter, carrying a precious paper list (faded from reuse) with names and addresses in London.

He feels almost giddy.

He can write poetry again. Sure, wicked gods are after them, and everything might be going to hell, but he’d missed this part of himself, missed quiet evenings with only a pen and the words inside his head.

Only Jon would be so ridiculously extravagant as to encourage what was, here, a truly expensive and impractical hobby.

For the first time in a long time, he calls to mind one he’d written ages ago—before it all went wrong, when he first realized he was falling for his grouchy, crunchy, adorable boss.

“I was not expecting this,” he recites to himself, thinking—as always—of Jon. “This was so much more. You have stayed the hungry hunters, You have locked Death’s door.

“For all your skulking, slinking, sneering, For all I was fearing; I was not expecting this:

“For you to step into the light And reveal yourself. I see you; I see the lamb you hide under the wolf’s skin.”

I see you.

How those words had come back around.

I see you. Jon saw him, and saved him, and loved him.

Martin takes a deep breath. They would get through this, chaos gods or no.

And it was going to feel so good to write again.

Martin smiles as he turns toward their cottage, pleased to see it appear as if eager for him to come home.

He can’t help feeling a little bit hopeful.

They were going to figure this out. They’d made it through so much already. They’d manage this, too.

He steers Pepper to the back of the place, where he’s laid some hay for her to eat.

Jon always gets along better with animals than people, for whatever reason, and he will likely pack-bond with the mule at once. Martin wants to get the silliness out of the way tonight so they can leave first thing in the morning.

Hopefully, this matriculation won’t be too intense. It’s supposed to be some kind of graduation. How long could that possibly take, anyway?

“Well, I hope he’s having fun,” says Martin, who does want Jon to make some friends, for goodness’ sake.

Taking his time, he packs the wagon. Jon already did most of the work, so it’s just about carrying things out and making room for it all.

Martin’s heart aches a little; if they do find some solution in London (which he doubts), he’s not sure they’ll be able to come back again.

He’ll miss the people, if they can’t.

Martin waits.

Eats some cold meats, some soggy vegetables.

Waits.

Ugh, he thinks, and wonders if they’re serving alcohol at the graduation. “Bet they’re serving alcohol,” he mutters, just for something to think about.

Martin falls asleep on the uncomfortable couch.

It’s somewhere near dawn when Jon staggers back into the cottage.

He’s in a daze. Utterly overstimulated with screams and blood and horror.

His side hurts, for some reason, but he lacks the mental capacity to care.

He doesn’t know what the point of that was. What the point of any of it was.

His brain feels bombed.

The King had let them all fawn and roll around in gore for hours, periodically turning back to check on Jon as if making sure he was watching. (Why?)

The drumbeat had pounded at Jon’s thoughts, trying to get in, never managing, still demanding, painful, if impotent. (Why?)

Then at last, the King just… picked Jon up, deposited him on the road outside the town, and floated the fuck away. (WHY?)

The FUCK, Jon keeps thinking, feeling ill not just from what happened, but from finding no damned answers of any kind.

He bangs in, staggers to the bathroom, leaves all his clothing in a pile, and then stands under very cold water until he aches.

He doesn’t feel clean.

Feels like there’s still blood and bone all over him.

They ruined SCHOOL, he thinks, helplessly, which is such a weird way to go with all of this, and he’s probably in shock—

“Jon?”

Martin. “In… in here.” His side hurts so much.

Jon’s voice sends Martin into emergency mode. It is weak, shaky; quiet in a way he hasn’t been since they first came here, and Jon barely pulled away from dying.

Martin frowns; he holds up a candle and follows the sound of the shower.

Finds Jon stepping out of what had to be freezing cold water this time of night, and in the flickering illumination, he looks pale, his dark skin grayed.

His side is bleeding, and Martin’s adrenaline spike is so sharp that he tastes metal.

“Jon!” Martin cries, putting down the candle, reaching for him.

Jon seems completely dazed. “We’re in the middle of something.”

“You’re bleeding!” Martin grabs him in their biggest towel and carries him at a run to the bed.

“We need to go.” Jon grips his shoulders. “The King in Yellow killed my students.”

Martin is applying pressure, Martin is trying not to freak out, because that is the same wound, that is the wound he ached over and sewed closed and agonized about for weeks, and— “What?”

“He killed them. He made them explode.”

The King in Yellow stabbed John? He must have. Nothing else makes sense. “Right. Hold on. Hold on, Jon.” Martin runs for their first aid kit.

Jon is passed out when he returns.

This is a nightmare, this is a recurring nightmare, the wound being reopened, Jon dying right in front of him. Martin cleans it as best he can (it’s bleeding so much), and then gets to work stitching.

He’s glad Jon stays out for that part.

Martin minimally clothes him and bridal-carries him out to the cart at a run.

And it’s nice to be so strong, nice that his body just does what he asks, but there’s no time to dwell on that right now.

He grabs their bags and extinguishes the candle, doesn’t say a word as he closes the door and urges Pepper to get them the hell out of this place.

Martin resists the urge to look back, to see the cottage vanish one final time, because they may never come back, and he wants his last memory of it to be there, present.

Jon comes to, shivering, staring at nothing. Shirtless, he looks so small, his damp hair clinging to his skin.

Martin rummages in the back and pulls out a blanket.

“No, I’ll get it wet,” Jon mumbles.

“Oh, shut up,” says Martin, and wraps him anyway.

“Martin, he… it was my students. Those are the ones he killed. And they wanted him to, and they were… they were grateful. Except it was all fake. He popped them like cherries.”

And it would figure, Martin thought, that this place that seemed so idyllic should in fact be a portal to hell, that a graduation ceremony would somehow involve gore and murderous gods, that Jon would come out of it with yet more trauma and yet more wounds that Martin doesn’t know how to heal. “How did you get away?”

“He let me go. I don’t know why. I don’t know why any of it.”

Martin’s heart sinks. It almost sounds like the unanswered questions might be worse than the deaths of innocent people.

“Is it a donkey?” Jon says after a little moment.

“A mule.”

“Does… does it have a name?”

Take time to pack-bond, or get the hell away first? Martin debates, and then decides he needs to check Jon’s side, anyway. He stops the cart. “Pepper’s her name. Come on—you’ve got to meet her.”

“We don’t… we don’t have time,” Jon says, weakly.

“You actually do have to. Pepper won’t obey you unless you make friends first,” says Martin in what he hopes is a gentle tone, and helps Jon down.

Jon is so damn cold.

But, as expected, he zeros in on the animal and sheds his horror like a heavy cloak.

While Jon is talking to Pepper, petting and feeding her a carrot, Martin looks him over.

He swears Jon’s gotten skinnier since that morning. But that can’t be, can it?

The wound is closed and no longer bleeding. So that makes no sense, even if it’s good.

It is, he’s certain, absolutely identical to the one he originally made. He could vomit.

Jon laughs; it’s strained, but it’s good to hear. “What a needy thing you are,” he says to the mule, who is nuzzling him for more affection.

“Come on, Jon,” Martin says quietly, and bundles him back onto the cart. This time, he burritos Jon before setting him down.

Jon peeks over the top of the blanket, his eyes huge, and does not say anything more.

Martin accepts that. He’s fine just driving them along, getting as far away as they can before they have to rest.

There will be time to talk.

Jon leans against him; he’s not so cold now, but he keeps shivering.

Shuddering, really.

Martin is greatly relieved when, at last, Jon falls asleep.

It’s after dawn when they finally stop again.

The fire is cheery, crackling in duet with the wind rustling lightly in distant branches. Martin was glad to find this firepit not too far off the road; it hasn’t been used recently, but often enough that the trees are cleared back, and the spot for the fire itself is a lovely little dimple, an indent in the earth.

He’s going to need more wood, though.

Jon rolls on the ground in front of it and immediately goes back to sleep.

Fine, thinks Martin. Fine. I’ll just handle this, like I handle the rest.

Then he feels bad, because that is completely untrue—and born of old things he still won’t talk about.

“It’s not like he doesn’t overwork all the time,” Martin mutters to Pepper as he curries her. “Man barely sleeps. No, you know what this is. This is what I get for wishing he’d stop trying to do it all on his own.”

And, though he won’t voice it, Martin finally admits to himself that seeing the wound he’d stabbed into his soulmate reopen had fucked him up just a little.

Something horrible had happened, and Martin hadn’t expected it, and could do nothing but try to fix the aftermath.

You couldn’t have seen this coming, he tells himself, but feels like he should have, somehow.

Pepper is happy to munch grass.

Martin wishes very much they had a map.

Jon’s assumption that Alba meant Northern UK seemed to make sense; the accents were right, and the climate. That meant just heading south would eventually get them near London.

“Someone will know how to get there,” Martin mutters as he unpacks the last of their filet. “I mean… everyone assumed I could find the place, even though they know I’m not from here, so how hard could it be?”

Pepper makes a decidedly dismissive noise.

“You’re right,” says Martin. “Jinxing us.” He takes up his axe and heads toward the trees.

A stroke of luck: someone piled firewood here not too long ago, and some of the pieces are dry. “Well, would you look at that?” says Martin, reaching for the logs.

“What a shame! I was looking forward to watching you swing that thing,” says Kayne from right above.

Martin stumbles back, dropping the wood, clutching his axe.

Kayne is perched on a branch.

He’s eating a bag of Gardetto’s.

It’s such an incongruous, bizarre thing to see that Martin feels slightly short-circuited.

“These are good. Want some?” says Kayne, spraying crumbs.

“Wh–” Martin shakes his head. “Is there a point to this, because that’s just… insulting. I mean, where did you even get that?”

“I live outside reality, my little cruller. I can get whatever I want.”

He could take us home, Martin can’t help thinking, tries to hide.

“Ha! Good one!” says Kayne, and leaps down from the tree like a gods-damned lion.

It’s such an inhuman movement that Martin stumbles back and actually raises the axe as if to defend himself.

That won’t work. He knows. He lowers it again.

“You can be so smart, sometimes,” says Kayne, “though I guess if you hadn’t learned something from all you’d been through, you’d really be hopeless, wouldn’t you? No, my little doughnut hole, taking you back home would just drag your Dread Powers back there again—oh, wait! I misspoke. That’s taking him home. You, my love, can go wherever you want.”

What the hell was up with these names? “I’m sorry, is that supposed to tempt me, or something?” Martin says, and he thinks it, so he says it, because there’s no point pretending this monster can’t hear: “I’m his anchor, and he’s mine.”

“And he hasn’t had to listen to you screaming as someone breaks every… inch... of bone in your body… just snapping you like twigs, keeping you awake, hour after hour while you howl until your throat bleeds, and weep until you can’t even breathe, and until you finally lose your sanity because it doesn’t end, won’t end, never ends… unless he gives in.”

Whatever Kayne was doing while he spoke, Martin could feel it.

A million little pings, all along his body, faint echoes of what’s described, starting from his toes and working up, a thousand hundred billion places where pain could hit with pinpoint accuracy, never enough to actually kill him, but enough to break anyone down.

He knows he wouldn’t be able to hold out forever under that. He knows that about himself. “The… the King’s going to do that?”

“Hm? Oh, not at all! He can’t. I’d be doing that,” says Kayne with a smile.

Martin feels faint. “Wh… why would you?”

“Iunno.” Kayne shrugs.

Martin is disgusted. “Great. Just great. What’s to stop the King from doing that to Jon, then, while we’re at it?”

“Did you already forget?” Kayne tsks. “That’s disappointing, my little bear claw, I won’t lie.”

These pet names are getting weirdly specific. “Your little what?”

“But you know, you’re so cute that I think I’m going to tell you anyway. Your boyfriend is stubborn, like unto the mighty oak! However, the King can’t torture him into it. Instead of bending like a reed, your little sweetheart would hold out until he snaps—and if his mind snaps, my darling Danish, so does the tether. Now, that was a freebie. I won’t be repeating myself again. It’s all because you’ve just got those cheeks. So pinchable.”

Martin has an epiphany. “So you’re saying the tether can be snapped without killing him.” Not that driving Jon mad was an option, either, but this was powerful information.

“Did I say that?”

Martin stares at him. “Why are you here, now? Just to see if I’ll abandon the love of my life?”

“No, no, no-no-no. I almost forgot! See, now, this is why I need someone like you around—keep me on track, focused, dedicated. I want you to reconsider going to London, my little waffle cone.”

Time hasn’t stopped. The breeze blows; Pepper eats. Why isn’t Jon waking? He wants to turn and check. He wants to make sure he’s breathing. He—

“Don’t bore me, butter-cake. I’ll walk away if you do, and I might not come back.”

“Would you stop with the names?” snaps Martin. “And why? Why not go to London?”

“Because the whole reason the King wants you there is to continue to insert himself into your minds and your lives. Well. His mind and his life. The King doesn’t care about you.” Kayne shakes his head. “Always missing the forest for the trees, but well, he’s practically a baby, so I guess it’s to be expected.”

“A baby?” Martin tries to imagine the thing Jon described growing to an immense size, and Kayne laughs.

“Comparatively, my cream-filled cannoli. Compared to me.”

If Martin thought about that too much, it would drive him insane, so he doesn’t. “Where do we go, then, if not to London?”

“Hmm, hmmm, let me think—well, you could both come with me to the center of Infinity. The King couldn’t touch you there.”

“What, into some sort of chaos realm? No, thank you!”

“It’s the only place, my little muffin, where the things he’s tethered to can’t follow. Wouldn’t that be great? Although if he does come, I should probably tell you just out of fairness, he’ll absolutely die.” Kayne laughs. “They’re keeping him alive, didn’t you know?”

Martin did know.

He’d denied it to himself. Held it back.

But he saw what happened in Salesa’s house, back in the middle of apocalypse. Saw that Jon not only got quiet and vague; saw that Jon got weak, stopped eating, had a slower, quieter pulse—and that was before he’d been fucking stabbed.

Martin’s lower lip trembles. He swallows and tries to press on. “So you’re inviting me to take him somewhere he’ll die, and you think that’s an idea I’m going to go for?”

“I think he will. Unless, of course, you ask him nicely not to.”

It’s worse when Kayne doesn’t engage in patter. More of what he is shows in his eyes—the malevolence, the utter inhumanity.

Martin can’t decide if the completely disembodied Fears are worse than seeing something like this in the flesh.

Kayne’s slow, unblinking smile decides it for him.

It’s worse. It’s much worse.

“There’s the smart little pumpkin pie I’ve come to love,” says Kayne as if he’s enjoying a lamb being butchered.

“Please go,” says Martin, because his composure won’t last much longer, and that’s not a place he likes to find himself.

“No, you wouldn’t like losing that, would you?” Kayne says, answering thought instead of word. “You know what’s really funny? When you’re actually scared, fritule, you don’t stammer at all. Not one little bit. Well, ta!” And he leaps back up into the tree.

Martin looks up, following the movement, but Kayne is gone. It’s as if he melted into the branches.

The Gardetto’s bag remains.

“Litter? Really?” says Martin, shaking, and picks it up because he can’t leave this here, because it’s not from here, and this is just wrong.

And it’s literally the only thing of Kayne’s that he can burn.

It smells awful, sending up black smoke.

Jon stirs. “Martin?”

Gods, he sounds shredded, Martin thinks, and kneels, pulling Jon against him. Jon feels… lighter than yesterday. “We need to talk. We’ve had a visitor.”

“What?” Jon stares up at him.

“Kayne showed up. With a bag of snacks,” Martin says, still weirdly insulted. “He says not to go to London. He says that’s what the King wants.”

“I know he wants that,” says Jon. “He said we could learn about him. That’s the whole point.”

“He said what?”

Jon licks his lips, and tries to tell Martin about last night.

It’s not a good retelling. There isn’t even mention of a stabbing—but then, Martin supposes, Jon is not the Archivist here.

That’s good, isn’t it?

Jon is trembling by the end, his gaze distant, fixed on the memory of unnecessary murder.

Martin frowns. “Jon. I need you to think with me, here. Why would he want us to go to London if there was anything there we could actually use?”

And there is desperation in Jon’s look. A panic, a deep need, and a hopelessness that Martin does not like to see. “It gives us more time,” Jon whispers. “He said he’d allow the trip. If we don’t go, he might take me early. Please, Martin.”

Martin pulls Jon against his chest so Jon can’t see his face.

He might take me early.

Martin cannot imagine worse words. Jon believes that the King will win.

Martin tries to stay calm. He can’t chop a god. He knows that. After months of feeling strong, feeling capable, he is suddenly reduced to the memory of being trapped in his apartment, crying and eating canned peaches, knowing no one was going to come.

“Well, that’s… really messed up,” he finally says.

“Yes.”

“All this for some fear gods,” says Martin weakly. “Is he crazy?”

“Arrogant,” says Jon. “At least I think your chaos god knows—sorry.”

“It’s fine as long as I get to say your yellow king.”

“I think that’s fitting at this point,” Jon says, softly. “At least your chaos god knows he wouldn’t do so well if the Dread Powers came through.”

“Does he?”

“I think so. I suspect he knows they’d make it all terrible for him.”

“Based on what? The apocalypse seemed pretty chaotic to me.”

“But it wasn’t. It was rigid, strict, all lines drawn and all domains organized. No freedom. Apart from you and me, no travel. Well, with a few exceptions, like Helen, but she couldn’t do it the way we did. There were rules for her, too, which is why I was able to destroy her the moment she lied to me.”

Martin swallows. Jon had not shared that little detail before. He has to wonder what else he doesn’t know.

“The King wants the fears. Given what I saw at the Grove, I think he likes the idea of regimented domains, with everyone controlled—but he doesn’t know what he’s asking for.” Jon takes a deep breath. “I still think we should go to London.”

“There’s got to be another way.”

“I’m open. What way? Tell me what you want me to do, Martin, and I will do it.”

And oh, this is familiar, and oh, they did this before, when Callum Brodie showed up as a horrifying monster in the body of a child, and Martin could think of no way to rescue children from the realm of the Dark. “That’s not fair.”

Jon looks at him. “I’m not trying to be unfair.”

Martin rubs his face. “I’m not ready to just roll over. We’re missing something. Do you think beings like this are patient? If they could just take what they wanted, they’d have done it by now, instead of waiting months. They wouldn’t be playing this game, and waiting for you to decide to obey. I’d be killed. You’d be in torment. Why are they doing this now?”

Jon is very pale. “They’d better not touch you,” he whispers, and there is something very bad in the way he says it.

“Jon.”

“I don’t know, all right? To play? Because they’re so arrogant that they believe they’ll win, anyway, and it’s a way to pass the time? Because they have an entirely different game they’re running, like Peter and Elias, and we’re just pawns?” He presses his face to Martin’s chest again, reminding Martin of nothing more than a cat seeking warmth. “I don’t have the power to keep you safe here. It’s not like walking through the Eye’s world, where it… cared about what I wanted. I can’t keep you safe.”

He sounds ready to cry.

“I didn’t ask you to,” says Martin, slowly. “The price was too high, Jon. The price was you, so, no. I’d rather it this way.”

“If you say so.” It’s a whisper.

Martin needs to redirect this. “This isn’t your fault. When bad guys come after you, it isn’t your fault. We don’t victim-blame, okay?”

That sentence is as close as they’ve ever come to discussing what happened.

Jon is silent.

Martin sighs. “I don’t think it matters, anyway. Your yellow king came for you. You could’ve been in bed, and he’d have come for you.”

Jon looks up. “You sound so certain.”

“Well, sure,” says Martin, cherubic. “If I were a big crazy baby tentacle monster, I’d absolutely bring you to my mindless blood-fest party. I’d want to impress you with how great I was, making you more likely to do what I wanted.”

Jon gawks. “You think he was showing off?”

Martin shrugs. It makes sense to him. “That’d be my guess. It’s why he wants us going to London, after all. To learn about him, yeah?”

Jon sputters. “He killed people!”

Martin sighs. “I had a thought, on the road. I don’t think it’s only students he kills. I think people get taken. Smart people.”

He’s thinking of the grief shared by Julia, Peter, Mark.

He’s thinking of the ink.

It’s a leap, but… his gut says he’s correct.

Good boy, says Kayne in Martin’s head, and he stiffens.

“Smart people,” Jon says, haggard. “So when I helped those students, I was sending them to their deaths.”

Well, that isn’t how Martin meant that to go. He ignores Kayne. “Jon, you didn't know.”

Jon says nothing.

Martin tries to push down his anger. Yet another wound, another arrow aimed directly at Jon’s heart, calibrated for him. It’s like these fuckers have Jon’s chemistry on a cheat card, or something.

Jon’s brow knits. “Martin, what are the chances of us landing in a world like this?”

It’s a good question. “I don’t know. Maybe all the universes are like this. Maybe you being tethered ensured that we would land here. Maybe your yellow King somehow directed us here. We’ve got no way to know, and it doesn’t really matter. I mean, we’re here, so the rest is just set dressing, you know? Jon—I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault.”

Jon kisses him, and this time, the desperation is on Jon’s side.

“Besides,” Martin says against Jon’s lips, “if your yellow king is anything like my chaos god, he said what he knew would really shake you up. That’s what mine did to me.”

Jon’s brown eyes are magical, warm, so warm that Martin could just melt into them and die happy, even though Jon’s words are painful. “I’m so selfish. I didn’t ask you anything about how you felt, how you are. Forgive me, Martin. This must have been terrifying.”

There, right there, was one of the reasons Martin loved Jon. No matter what happened—what took bites out of this man, what fire he had to walk through—Jon never stopped trying. It was a choice, and it mattered so much. “It was pretty bad, yeah.”

Jon touches his cheek. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I have you,” says Martin with complete honesty.

Jon kisses him like he’s the rain to Jon’s desert.

“Screw London,” Martin murmurs. “Let’s run. Get a boat. Run away.”

“We can’t.” Jon is completely sure of that. Martin doesn’t like how the admission sags his shoulders, turns down the corners of his mouth.

Martin sighs. “It feels like we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”

Jon laughs weakly. “I think we are. So. The least we can do is take the extra time given to us. London?”

Martin doesn't like this part.

It’s not the first time Jon’s put the heavy decision on him.

Martin suspects that Jon is trying very hard not to take away Martin’s choice, not to compel, not to control, not to betray. It still isn’t comfortable.

Still. Martin would rather Jon go overboard giving him options than make decisions without even consulting. “London it is.”

“Anything to stay out of the King’s hands.” Jon pauses significantly. “His tentacles. His limbs.” He looks pained. “His… muscular hydrostats.”

Martin’s lips quirk. “You’re ridiculous sometimes, you know that?”

“Yes,” says Jon primly, and then melts as Martin kisses him again. “I don’t want to think about this anymore.”

Martin smiles like the sun. “Good news: neither do I.”

Jon pulls Martin down into the short, stubby grass, pulling at his clothes, deepening their kiss.

It worries Martin, a little. Jon is affectionate, always—but full-on intimacy is so rarely his thing.

They hadn’t even had sex until they came to this place, this… Somewhere Else.

Initiating it like this makes it feel like Jon’s saying goodbye.

Martin doesn’t know how to talk about it, how to process, so pours himself into it, determined to make it damned memorable.

They don’t leave for over an hour. Pepper rests, munches, and doesn’t even watch their brief, grasped happiness.

(part four)

NOTES

The poem is from Epiphany, a delightful fluffy extra in the Magnus Archives.

All the rest of the poetry in this monster is mine, which is going to be painfully obvious. I apologize.

Also, Gardetto's because the the fandom has chosen.

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behrensallen14 · 2 years

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silvastampe8 · 2 years

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boysupe · 2 years

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MORAL ALIGNMENT TEST

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#( the writer ) - ooc #makes sense #Jon isn’t as lawful good as some may think

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entities-of-posts · 2 years

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Making this its own post to not clutter the notes of the other one any more than I already did, but @unravelingthread’s tags on the Spiral vs Unknowing post made me want to expend (read: ramble) on how I’d define the very narrow (but present!) difference between the Stranger and the Spiral. I think these are very good points! The Spiral is about your mind lying to you, your own perception being wrong, so it is quite often internal, but it can be external in the case where you think the entire world isn’t real, or doesn’t obey the laws you thought to be the bedrock of existence. Even then, the problem is mostly with you, for fooling yourself into thinking you understood reality, and less about any external intent to harm.

The exception to this is the “fake friend” aspect which (according to Jon’s admittedly subjective opinion) Helen embodied so well. While it could fall in the Stranger’s domain, I believe the key difference is humanity, and the biological nature of the deceit. A liar may have intent to deceive you which is more of a Stranger trait, but they’re still human, while something of the Circus’ ilk is by definition wrong on a fundamental, physical level. It isn’t what it pretends to be, not like a two-faced friend but like an orchid mantis. It often shouldn’t even be alive, and it disguises itself as such with intent to harm you.

There can be no manifestation of the Stranger without sentience. It has to be alive enough to want to hurt you, and it’s important that you actually notice… just when it’s too late. The distorted hallways may or may not be alive, in a sense, but whether or not they are/whether or not you realize it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t even matter if they’re physically real. The Stranger is, in a way, slightly closer to the Hunt, while the Spiral strictly deals in passive traps. You have to open the yellow door yourself, but the thing calling out to you with the sweet voice of a stolen throat might also come to your home and snatch you even if you don’t follow its siren’s song, if it really wants to get you.

In conclusion, this is why I believe the Unknowing as it was described to us actually lines up a bit more with manifestations of the Twisting Deceit than those of I Do Not Know You, since it leans so heavily on the witnesses becoming unable to tell what’s real or understand what their eyes are telling them until they lose their minds, which is textbook Spiral. I think a more fitting aftermath of the Stranger’s victory (had it been actually possible) would have been a world where basically everything is a mimic. You see a chair, and rather than being unable to process its purpose and existence, you can perfectly comprehend that it’s a chair, but when you go to sit it bites you in half.

But of course, we do have to remember that the Entities are a beautiful hateful rainbow, and some colors are simply harder to differentiate than others. We all know the difference between Vast blue and Buried brown (though they do blend in similar dark shades in one place and one place only: the abyssal depths of the oceans!) but there’s plenty of space for second guessing about exactly where Spiral yellow fades into Stranger sallow beige.

#I know beige and brown aren’t in the rainbow it’s a METAPHOR okay.#anyway. I know more about the Entities than Jonny and if you disagree I’ll remind you that I’m the one driving this mystery van <3 #< this is a joke by the way I’m always open to debating pointless details about my specific interpretation of these funky little fear gods #do I main tag this? I think I’ll main tag this #tma

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agentrouka-blog · 3 years

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I have a love/hate relationship with my step-mom. And Cat reminds me of her. More like Jon's scene with her in Bran's room, how wary he was of her, fearing to make her angry even if she was never violent with him, make me think about how I'm sometimes with my step-mom. Robb's worry how she was with Jon confirm what I believe was their relationship.

But even what Cat exactly did/didn't with Jon, at the end I can't hate her, because even if she did something horrible with Jon in modern times, in the asoiaf world, if someone is at fault, would be Tywin Lannister for doing something horrible with Jon's siblings, and Robert for allowing it.

Ned had some fault, sure, but I understand that a young man who married a woman who he didn't really know wouldn't trust her to tell her the truth about Jon's parents. May be he could have tell her something after a few years. May be he didn't because people would notice that Catelyn Tully was being nice with her husband's bastard, or he didn't tell her because he didn't want her to deal with the consequences if it was known.

But in the society of asoiaf, Cat wasn't a really bad step-mom. She wouldn't know how to be a good one with him. My step-mom is from a modern society, so she is at fault. But Cat doesn't.

Hi anon,

that is the mistake right there. Cat is NOT Jon’s stepmother.

A stepmother is something that you choose to be. You commit to someone who has children from a previous union. That is a stepmother. I had an evil stepmother myself, actually. But she chose to marry my father, knowing I was a factor. The key here is choice. If Jon had been the son of a previous marriage, Cat would have been his stepmother and she would have treated him very differently. He would have been the unquestioned firstborn son and heir to Winterfell. All good and proper.

(Incidentally, if Ned already had a legal heir to all his lands and titles, Cat would not have married him. Why? Because making Cat the mother of Ned’s legal heirs is the point of that high profile marriage. It’s what Hoster Tully gets out of that alliance and lending Ned his armies. His grandchild as the future Lord of Winterfell.)

The way it happens, though, is that Ned fathers a bastard, which is something entirely different and a transgression from the proper order of things that threatens Catelyn’s legal heir children. The only way their society has chosen to mitigate that threat is not for the Lord to face a massive legal dilemma with his wife or in-laws (because that would lead to very different marital rights for women right quick), it is to leave the entire burden with the child by making them a bastard, a legal status outside of the norm, no rights and no security.

And even so bastards remain a threat, especially if they have male genitalia and the legal heir doesn’t. Treating Jon like a member of the family increases that threat a lot. That is why Cat is cold to him. Is it fair? No. Is it at all comparable to an unkind stepmother? No.

In their world, she isn’t his stepmother, and in modern societies all children, born in or out of wedlock inherit equally anyway, and women DO have very different legal rights within marriage.

Seriously, she is NOT his stepmother. Their positions are entirely different.

#asoiaf #catelyn stark #bastardy #she is not his stepmother #that is not what a stepmother is

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honeywithblueberries · 3 years

Text

The Perks- Face to Face

I told you I was writing another one. It’s a bit meh, but I hope you like it! And there’s some light smut in it too :).

…………………….

Jack sat at the table across from the small ewe and glowered, the badge around her neck displaying her name.

Even her fucking name is annoying, the buck thought. Dawn Bellwether… Phft! Dawn! This bitch ain’t aptly named.

Skye had been initially excused from the meeting, though she took it as recommendation rather than an order. Her arms were crossed as she stood behind Jack. Her blue eyes were afire with rage but for all the good it did, she may as well have been in the kitchen. Still, the rabbit buck was comforted by her presence. The ewe simply sat calmly in front of them, unfazed by the angry predator.

Bellwether clacked away at the bulky laptop, a smug grin on her face as she did.

“Such a disgusting little shop,” she said, her eyes flicking up at the audible grind of Jack’s teeth. “My sister was here last week. Told me all about the filth and muck that was lurking here.“ The ewe tsked and paused her typing. “Can’t say I’m surprised. An owner that lets their morals fly as loose as yours? No wonder this place is a garbage heap.”

“Yeah, fresh sani buckets, sanitized sinks, up to code refrigerators and freezers with everything in them labeled and dated, and all of my employees have their food handler’s cards. Not to mention my grease trap and kitchen have been recently inspected and the fire department has already given their ‘OK’ after our last inspection.” Jack gave the inspector an almost friendly smile. “But you’re right! Such a filthy dump of free love and expression. Stick around long enough and you may get invited upstairs for our… What would you call it, Skye?” The buck gave a mockingly confused look over his shoulder at the vixen, who shot the ewe a toothy grin.

Her paws went to his shoulders as she leaned over him. “I thought we were good with calling it an orgy, handsome.” She maintained eye contact as she grinned, showing off every pearly white tooth, and lightly nipped Jack’s ear.

The buck grinned at the look of horror on Bellwether’s face, trying not to shiver when she hit a sensitive spot. His paw rose to cover Skye’s and gave it a small squeeze. With a shake of her head, her jaw obviously, painfully clenched, Bellwether tapped away at her computer.

“Fortunately for you,” she began, her eyes focused on the screen, “the law prohibits me from inspecting a private residence.”

“Yes, I feel myself drowning in fortune,” Jack remarked with a sarcastic smile. Bellwether merely huffed at him and continued to type.

“But be that as it may,” the ewe continued, “there’s still enough around this hovel to fail you. Or at least not give you the A you think you deserve.”

For the first time since they sat down, Jack let his temper rise out of his control. A bolt of righteous anger shot down his spine and he shot to his feet. His fur fluffed out and his ears were stiff as boards on his head.

“Like what?” he demanded. “The only thing you have on us is a grudge. The last three health inspectors have always rated us as one of the cleanest restaurants in the city and we've followed every code down to the letter. My mammals called me the Striped Dictator for the first six months we were in business!”

Skye looked at him in surprise before her ears picked up the sound of light laughter. Sandra, Bobby, and Kari were trying to hide their amusement by the register. Sandra caught Skye’s eye and nodded.

“It’s true,” she confirmed. “That was the nicest name we had for him.” Skye bit the inside of her cheek before turning her attention back to the ewe.

“So?” demanded Jack as he crossed his arms and looked at the ewe expectantly. “What possible reason could you have for giving us a less than perfect score? Or do I need to file a complaint with the health board and alert them of our previous exchange.”

With a falsely sweet smile, Bellwether stood and closed her laptop. Facing the buck fully, she gave him a look so cocky, Skye automatically put her paws on his shoulders to keep him from punching her.

“Minors under the age of fifteen can’t get their food safety cards in Zootopia.” Bellwether turned her smile towards Nick, Judy, and Gideon, who could be seen peeking out from the kitchen. Facing Jack once more, she handed him the inspection slip and gathered her things. “C minus. Tsk! Such a shame. Maybe next time we can bump it up to a C plus." Pulling her laptop case behind her, Bellwether marched towards the door. “Toodaloo!”

Both Jack and Skye glared after her, Skye more composed than her boss, who was practically quivering with rage.

“I will snap her,” he growled, his bright blue eyes still narrowed on the closed cafe door. “I will snap her like a fucking twig.”

Skye ran her paws up his arms to his shoulders, giving the tense muscles a reassuring squeeze.

“We can contest the grade, can’t we?” she asked him. Jack looked over his shoulder at her. “I mean, we can go to the board and file a complaint still. And challenge the grade she gave us. Clearly it was motivated by a personal vendetta and was undeserved.”

“We could, but that doesn’t rule out the fact that she’s right. The kits are too young to get their food safety cards so we’ll have to go through our parents.” Jack sighed and rubbed his muzzle tiredly. “We're going to have to get documentation."

Skye cocked her head at him. “So what’s the issue?”

“It’s not really an issue. Just annoying.” The buck shook his head and stood. “I can bet she’s going to use that against us. If she won’t change our grade after the extra legwork, then we’ll go big.”

Sandra blinked at him before looking at the todd in question. Nick just shrugged at her before the doe turned back to her boss.

“How could you, Mr. Nit Pick, overlook those details? It’s not like you at all.” All eyes turned to the astounded buck. Sandra let a small smirk cross her face before flicking her eyes over to Skye. “Distracted much?”

Jack frowned at her, his crimson ears falling to his back as the fur of his cheeks tinted pink. He opened his mouth to speak, only to be cut off by the sounds of angry yelling. Screeching, more like. Very familiar screeching. Jack, Skye, and everyone else present rushed to the windows to see what the commotion was. A snort escaped him when he saw the ewe rush out of the shop across the street, chased by a predator less than half Skye’s size.

“Cami,” Jack and Sandra said together, laughter in their voices.

“Who?” Skye, Gid, and Nick looked at them curiously as Judy giggled.

“Did someone let Cami out?” Jon asked from the kitchen, excitement in his voice as he rushed to see the spectacle.

All eyes turned back to the window as a vixen only a few inches taller than Finnick chased the ewe down the sidewalk. A broom was waved at her in a threatening manner, her angry tirade audible even from a distance.

“You get out here, you horrible, awful, dirty little creature!” Cami shrieked. "Get out before I shove this broom where the sun don't shine! I deny your entry to my business!"

“It’s a routine health inspection! It's required by law!” Argued Bellwether as she tried to re-approach only for the kit fox to wave her broom and gnash her teeth.

“Get her, Cami,” mumbled Jon, his fists closed in excitement. The mammals in the shop all looked at him. “Get her, get her!”

“Routine inspection! Ha!” Cami scoffed. “Routine inspection, my sweet, little tail! You’re targeting predator friendly shops and I WON’T STAND FOR IT! Hi-ya!” The broom was swiped at her and Bellwether leapt back to avoid getting hit. "That's what I think of your silly law!"

That set off another round of giggles from the occupants of the Perk. Trying to push down his amusement, Jack remembered he actually liked Cami and her being arrested for assault would do no one any favors. Least of all, the family waiting for her inside.

“I’ll be back,” Jack laughed as he headed for the door. Skye watched with interest as the buck raced over and stepped between the two, his paws raised in a soothing manner towards the vixen.

Her furious eyes were still ablaze as she tried to duck around the buck. Skye snorted with laughter as Jack succeeded in scooping up the pygmy fox and sling her over his shoulder. He spun to face Bellwether and address her. Though his words were drowned out by Cami's shrieks of rage and indignation.

“You will put me down right, Hopps, or I’ll yank that sad excuse for a tail out! Put me down!” She thrashed about, Jack nearly losing his hold on her. "I WON'T STAND FOR THIS! AFTER I'M DONE WITH THIS BITCH, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!"

A round of laughter erupted from the cafe. Skye was impressed at how well Jack was handling it. She was way bigger than the kit fox, but had no doubt Cami could lay her out like a rug.

“Give her a minute,” Jon commented, taking a sip of his coffee. Sandra nodded in agreement next to him. Kari and Bobby simply shook their heads and returned to work.

“She’ll tire herself out and crash,” Sandra chuckled and shook her head one more time before heading back to the register. "This isn't the first time something like this has happened."

And sure enough, as the ewe decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation and stormed off with a final glare, the vixen slumped over his shoulder in defeat. Jack wagged his fingers after Bellwether, his “Toodaloo!” audible as his fingers dropped to flip her back off.

“I’m putting you down now,” he warned, as Cami took deep breaths to cool down. “Are you calm?”

“I’m cool, I'm good,” she assured, smiling brightly over her shoulder at him. He nodded and crouched to let her hop off. Only to snatch her by the back of her shirt when she lunged in the direction of the vanishing ewe. “I WILL CUT HER!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you will, killer.” He jerked her back and cautiously released her when she stopped struggling.

She gave up and settled for giving the sidewalk an angry kick before turning to storm off. Curses were muttered under her breath as Jack sighed in relief before looking into the window of the Perk and giving Skye a smile and wave. She wasn’t exactly sure why that made him so sexy, but it did.

“I’m so locking that down,” she murmured to herself with a smile and waved back. The warmth that spread through her tickled and she chuckled a little to herself before turning around. And she nearly ran into Judy. The little bunny giggled and allowed the vixen to put an arm around her shoulders.

“Sorry about that, Bun-Bun,” the vixen joked, giving her a small squeeze and walking towards the coffee bar.

“Jack’s thinking the same thing, if it makes you feel any better. You don't need it, but you have my blessing," Judy grinned then skipped away.

Skye smiled after her, her ears twitching at the sound of the door opening. She turned to greet the buck, leaning against the bar and crossing her arms, her eyes silently inviting him to join her. He returned her grin with one of his own, leaning next to her once he approached.

"So…." She began with a smile. "Cami?"

He huffed and rolled his eyes. But they did light up a bit with humor when the kit fox was brought up.

"She owns the little bistro across the street.” Jack leaned into her space, her muzzle moving in, nearly touching his. “Mostly caters to predators, but she has an amazing black bean burger. She's a little…."

"Perfect," sighed Jon from the coffee maker, breaking whatever trance they were under. They blushed and looked over to him. .

"Bonkers,” Sandra gave the raccoon a droll glare which he ignored while he refilled his coffee. He was obviously day dreaming about whatever a guy like him dreamed of. “Bonkers, is the correct adjective. She’s nice and fun, but balls to the wall insane. Jon has a little crush, " the bunny added with a small smile. “Nevermind Cami’s like ten years older than he is and married.”

The vixen gave a light chuckle, before turning to Jack with a mischievous smile. “Whatever gets him going. Jack, can I talk to you in private? We really should go over that… meeting.”

Sandra nearly choked on her drink. Jon ducked his head to hide his smile and reached for the kits to herd them into the kitchen. Nick and Judy looked back towards their siblings and rolled their eyes but complied. Gideon paid no one any mind as he went right back to making his cookie list.

Jack- being a red blooded male and very good at reading between her lines- got it. His blue eyes became wide when Skye gave him a final, lingering look and moved to the stairs. He was so stunned that for a moment he could only watch her walk away from him, that lucious tail giving a far too appealing flick. She was halfway up the stairs before he came to his senses and tried to not make his haste too obvious.

“Yeah, yeah,” he answered, smiling as he gave a distracted wave towards the remaining employees and rushed after her. “Totally! We gotta lot to talk about after that visit. We gotta stay…” his mouth went dry when she turned to face him at the apartment door, completely out of sight of the main lobby. One white paw undid the top few buttons of her shirt and Jack’s train of thought was completely derailed. “...on top of…” He swallowed when another button came undone and the edge of her bra was revealed, “...of the…. thing....”

The giggles and scoffs from down below were ignored. Easily, in fact. Even Sandra’s offer to start making the appropriate phone calls fell on deaf ears. Skye opened the unlocked door with one paw, the other snatching him by the collar and crushing her lips to his. They stumbled over the threshold. Jack’s paws went to her hips and the door was kicked shut. Her paws stripped him of his shirt just as her ass found the dining room table. He helped her onto it as he finished unbuttoning her shirt and tossed it over his shoulder. Once it was out of the way, his paws went to her jaw to continue their kiss.

“I’ve been dreaming of this since I first saw you,” he mumbled as his mouth and paws began to explore. Jack dragged his lips down her throat making her groan and clutch at his shoulders. Her knees went to his hips trying to drag him closer and properly wrap her legs around him. His paws moved over her body, thumbs slipping under her bra strap but pausing until he got permission. She dropped her own to his belt buckle, feeling him pause and huff into her fur, inhaling her scent as deeply as he could.

Jack pulled back, panting heavily, and both sets of eyes dropped to her paws before meeting again. Her shifting hips put enough pressure on her target that he had to bite his lip to stifle his groan. A paw left to cup his jaw and brought his gaze back to hers. Blue met blue while Jack composed himself enough to focus.

“What do you want from me, Jack?” Skye asked, her voice laced with uncertainty. Jack smiled at her as if it was obvious.

“Forever,” he answered. “I want forever.”

Again, his collar was grabbed and their lips crashed together.

“I need you,” she muttered against his lips. “All of you…”

“I’m yours…” Was the passionate response.

Both sets of paws moved to the other's pants, frantically unbuttoning. Skye had his belt undone and was ready to shove them to the ground just as he managed to slip hers away from her hips. She pressed herself close against him, lifting and shifting to get them off and onto the floor. All she wanted now was to strip him naked as fast as she could.

And she would have…. if the door hadn’t banged open.

…………

“They’re going to do it somewhere gross,” Bobby muttered. Nick, who had grabbed a bus tub, pulled a face of disgust.

"Bobby!" He protested. Judy had begun to help Kari pull orders together and shared a short giggle with her. Nick caught her eye. "Why aren't you more grossed out by this?"

Judy shrugged and gave him a smile.

"I'm a bunny," she explained, boxing up cookies. "Some of the things I've walked in on still give me nightmares." The doe shuddered and earned a laugh from the young todd. "There's a reason some stereotypes exist. Jack isn't nearly as bad as some of my other brothers and sisters. At least, not while I'm here."

"Not while you're away, either," Sandra confirmed. "The last doe I saw him with was when Adrian Bogo got married last year. They were only together for a few weeks but we didn’t really see her at all. She cheated on him to try to make him jealous because he was so focused on work. I don’t think he ever noticed she stopped coming around." She winked at Nick who was listening in curiosity. “It takes a lot for Jack to notice someone. And Skye is something else.”

Her comment brought a smile to Nick’s lips. All he wanted was what was best for Skye, being his sister and all, and he wanted to make sure any future brother-in-law was worthy of her. Being related to Judy was a huge point in the plus column, but he owed it to his big sister to keep his eyes and ears open. She had such rotten luck with todds and dates in general.

"Your sister picked a good one,” Sandra stacked the orders together and passed the slips to Judy for double checking. Taking another tray of fresh cookies from Gideon she headed out to the display counter.

“The best one,” Judy assured. She also took up a tray as she and Nick exchanged one last smile before he got back to his task. Though she almost ran into Sandra who was paused in the doorway, staring intently out the window. Kari was also frozen, her brow furrowed and ears alert, staring intently at the car that parked in front.

“Isn’t that your brother?” the corasc asked.

Nick and Judy looked past the older mammals, the doe recognizing the beat up SUV. Tom had it since high school and the thing ran on prayers and stubbornness. Nothing anyone could say would make him give that hunk of junk up and he avoided driving long distances specifically so his ride would last longer.

“What’s Tom doing here?” Judy asked to no one in particular. Tom’s dark brown ears were straight as rods, his brows furrowed as he strode to the door of the cafe and marched up to the register.

Judy maneuvered around the adults to speak with him. But he cut her off before she could open her mouth.

“Where’s Jack?” he demanded.

“Uhhh….” Her eyes involuntarily looked towards the stairs, his following before he made towards them. Panic filled her, darting around the bar to try to stop him. “Tom! Wait! You can’t go up there!”

Tom ignored his little sister and took the stairs two at a time. Judy was almost caught up when he banged the door open. The sight of his brother half dressed between the legs of a mostly nude predator had him backing up in shock, his nose twitching like mad as he took in the scene. The amorous couple gasped and Jack spun around trying to use his body to keep Skye out of view. His paws snatched up his shirt, which Skye had dropped next to the table after relieving him of it, and passed it to her. She accepted it gratefully with a blush spreading over her ears and cheeks.

“Tom?” Jack gasped out, frantically trying to redo his belt and pants. Noticing his little sister behind him (along with over half of Perks staff) only made his fluster worse. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you working the market today?”

“Mom and Dad gave me the day off because I told them I had to see you right away.” His brown eyes were focused on the vixen behind his brother, watching her slip the tee-shirt on before hopping off the table to fetch her pants. Jack didn’t care for the appreciative gleam in his brother’s eye. “Maple’s been ranting and raving since she came home this morning about how unbalanced you are.” He met Jack’s gaze, his eyes full of humor with a touch of disbelief. “I’m guessing this is what she was talking about.”

Skye, now fully dressed, turned to face the newcomer with a nervous smile on her muzzle.

"Hi, I'm Skye. I'm Jack's new… GM…" her blush intensified, realizing how their situation must have seemed to his brother.

Tom bit his lip and pulled an expression that had her confused. Like he was trying very hard not to laugh.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Skye," he croaked out. His throat was cleared before he continued. "I'm guessing you're the reason our sister is screaming the burrow down."

Skye narrowed her eyebrows in confusion. She turned to Jack, who was rubbing his temples with his back to their audience. Realizing he now had everyone's attention, the stripped buck tried to furtively adjust his pants. He turned to make eye contact with her.

"What's he talking about?" She demanded.

"I didn't want to upset you," Jack took a breath and braced himself when Skye's expression became stormy and suspicious. "My sister had stopped by and saw us at the bar the other night. She came to the shop on your day off, we got in a fight, and she stormed out. I didn't tell you because she's a major speciest bitch, Skye, you didn't deserve to be subjected to it."

She didn't hesitate to stride to him, pulling him back into her arms with another kiss.

"I don't want this to come between you and your family," Skye said as soon as they pulled apart. "This can't destroy everything you worked for."

"Everything I worked for is here in this room." Jack smiled and kissed her again. Pulling back, he gave her a satisfied grin before scowling over her shoulder. "And I would appreciate some boundaries not being broken, thank you very much. "

Tom had been choking on his laughter, leaning on the door frame with Judy patting his back with concern. Nick, Sandra, Kari, Bobbie, and Jon looked between the two brothers. From the bottom of the stairs, Gideon's tentative "Hello?" had them snapping out of it.

Sandra looked horrified once she remembered the young todd was left alone downstairs. "Be right there Gid!"

Everyone but Nick followed her to rejoin Gideon downstairs. Nick's eyes were filled with suspicion and narrowed in on Tom. The brown buck was starting to compose himself and straighten up, putting his arm around Judy while turning to face their still shirtless brother.

“Sorry!” He said before pressing a kiss to his baby sister’s head. “Judy, why don’t you and your friend head down stairs? I'll be down in a bit.”

Skye felt a bit of protective annoyance sneak down her spine at the action. Her intelectual side knew this mammal was closer to the doe than she was, but close proximity with her made Skye’s sisterly instinct kick in. She must have growled because Jack turned to smile reassuringly at her. Once the door closed, he led Skye to the couch and took a seat next to her. Tom was waved towards the chair and Jack to a breath in anticipation for all the questions. From Tom AND Skye.

“So,” Tom cleared his throat and studied his paws, “How long has this been going on?”

The couple gave each other curious looks.

“I think since day one for me…” Jack answered with a smile.

“Sounds about right.” Skye grinned back and pulled him in for a kiss he happily returned. They shocked Tom more by getting a bit carried away. His shock wore off just as his brother’s paws went up the back of her shirt and he cleared his throat.

“Okay, but what’s the time frame?” He had a bit of an edge to his voice when they parted with embarrassed expressions and even more reluctance.

“Two week-mfpt!” came Judy’s voice before it was muffled with a giggle and soft “Shhh….!”

“Nick!”

“Judy!”

“Down stairs, please!” the trio ordered together. The pair on the other side of the door giggled louder and rushed down the stairs.

Tom was half turned in his chair facing the door when he began to shake his head. “I heard from Quentin that she was talking to a fox in the city. I’m guessing that’s him?” Jack nodded with a laugh. The situation was really quite ridiculous, but at least Skye was laughing with him. And he was very aware that she was wearing his shirt; it was really doing something to him. Really, REALLY doing something to him.

“Yeah, that’s my brother,” the vixen slumped back into the couch.

Close enough to Jack so he could pull her into him. It was bizarre for Tom to see his normally uptight brother so infatuated with something other than work. SO bizarre, he had to stand up and shake off the chills he got from the constant state of shock. When he returned to his seat, he took a breath and made his request.

“Okay, I’m just going to ask you both to go back and just catch me up on what’s going on.”

Jack grinned at his brother and got up to head for the kitchen. Shooting a quick text to Sandra updating her on the situation, he pulled open the fridge and grabbed three beers.

“I hope your meter’s paid up,” he said, passing him and Skye a beer each before settling back down with his own. “It’s a long story.”

…………

Greg was hunched over in his tent with every article of clothing he had pulled on. On occasion a drop of water would drip onto his nose, courtesy of the many holes in the roof of his tent. His sleeping bag was drenched but fortunately his clothing was waterproof.

It had been raining non-stop since they had set up camp. They hadn’t even been able to start a fire, getting only as far as setting up shelter before the area was flooded with a late spring storm. Fortunately, they had all been scouts together, and thought to bring rations that didn’t need to be heated.

But that was a small comfort as they gazed miserably out at the pouring rain.

“This sucks.” Greg smiled at the sound of Marco’s voice. The badger’s eyes could be seen glowering at the rain from his own tent.

“Yeah,” agreed Andrew, the meerkat, as Victor (the ferret) laughed next to him. “Whose bright idea was this?”

“Wilde’s,” Victor supplied.

“Said the group of males who claimed camping would help them get in touch with inner predators.” The todd shuddered as a particularly large drop of rain water landed on his nose. Looking up, he groaned as the once invisible tear in the seam now showed a small glimpse on the soggy canopy above them. “Though I’m willing to call a truce in this episode of Male Vs Wild. I mean, if anyone else is interested.”

There was a brief pause before his friends scrambled to their feet to pack up their things. With much slipping and sliding, tents, coolers, and sleeping bags were broken down and tossed in a muddy heap in the car.

“All right,” groaned Marco as he climbed into the driver’s seat, “let’s get the hell out of here. And you animals are cleaning my car when we get back.”

Sighs echoed around the vehicle when the air vent warmed up. They pulled out of the camp site towards the highway, Greg stretching as much as he could in the back and relaxing. Part of him was excited to be going home early. As much as he loved his friends, he found himself wanting a bit more curvier companionship. He couldn’t go back to the bar, on the off chance Duke was there, but he had a few places in mind that wouldn’t look too closely at his fake.

But there was something to be said about vixen he saw at the gas station. She was just the sort of companionship he needed right now. And the fact that she didn’t seem the least bit charmed by him made him pant harder.

Way to be a cliche, Wilde, he thought with a smile as he dozed.

The trip back home seemed to take no time at all. Before they knew it, the wild outskirts of Meadowland became more rural and cultivated before turning into the more familiar streets Savana Central. With rain left behind, the dreary twilight they left behind was now clear and (mostly) dry city nightlife.

After being dropped off in front of his building, Greg lugged his gear up and into the apartment. It was left in a damp heap by the door as the todd savored the silence for a moment before heading towards the bathroom. He sighed in relief when the hot water hit him, soaking into his fur, taking the dirt and grime with it down the drain. Suddenly he felt very tired. The idea of going out and finding some company lost its appeal and a new idea took form. Once he was clean and dry, he fell into his bed and opened his laptop. He scrolled a bit and found what he was looking for; he leaned back and pressed play on his favorite video.

“Okay, Greg!” His dad’s voice came from behind the camera as he focused on his nine year old son in the hospital bed. “How ya feelin’, buddy?”

“Really great, Dad,” he answered, looking exhaustedly into the camera. “Nothing like having your appendix taken out to make a mammal feel alive.”

The camera shook as Matthew laughed.

“Trust me, bud!” his dad’s voice assured cheerfully. “Someday you're going to watch this and thank me for making it.”

“Oh, honey,” his mother laughed when Matty swung the camera to her. She carried a bag of Greg’s favorite fast food for dinner and set it on his bedside. “Please give it a rest with that thing and help your daughter with your son.”

On his bed, Greg laughed with tears in his eyes when his father zoomed in on his mother’s rump and whistled. Vivian swished her tail in irritation but there was humor in her voice when she addressed him again.

“Matty, you’re going to scar our children for life.”

“Too late,” Skye chirped from somewhere off screen.

He could hear himself laughing off camera and the screen zoomed out again and focused on the bedridden kit. This time, Skye had come to stand on the other side of the bed and settled their little brother on the bed with him. The youngest Wilde snuggled next to his big brother and took a burger from his mom.

“I’m just making sure everyone knows who the world’s greatest family is.” The camera was flipped around and showed a close up of Matty’s nose before he adjusted it. The familiar green eyes were as bright as they had been the last time he saw him alive. “I have the world’s greatest family,” he declared. “That’s me, Matthew Wilde.” The camera went back to the Wilde’s eating their food while their patriarch amused himself.

Greg cried but was smiling as he clicked through his saved videos. But in the end it was just salt on his wounds. He felt a tug of loneliness and curled up and closed his eyes. His mind wandered to the vixen in the gas station. She was something else and if he had been in a better mood he would have gone out to find her or a vixen who looked like her. Falling into a fitful sleep, the todd dreamed about his father and their life before that horrible day.

And part of him desperately hoped he would find what the rest of his family was finding: Peace.

…………..

It was an interesting day for Tom. A whole new world of firsts that had been busted wide open and it was (if he was being honest with himself) a lot to take in at once. He knew there was a reason why Jack and Judy were so close. Ever since she was small, she and Jack had been like carbon copies of each other. Though she noticeably lacked his skills in the kitchen. But neither of them seem to fit the majority of the stereotypes for rabbits. Jack hated carrots and Judy had less interest in dating than her big brother.

But seeing the two oddballs in the family go ga-ga over foxes was rather… disconcerting. Almost as much as seeing the foxes go ga-ga over them. And even more crazy was Tom could see exactly what Jack saw in Skye. At least, physically. Tom was a normal rabbit in almost every regard and his own pants grew tight at the sight of the beautiful vixen in just her underwear. He wasn’t proud of his reaction, but what’s a guy to do? The vixen was hot! She and Jack made sense.

It was almost three by the time the trio had finished talking and made their way back down stairs. Skye was still wearing his shirt, something Jack was still very aware of. Turning back into the lobby, Kari and Bobby both snorted and giggled behind their paws as they left for the day. Sandra gave them a knowing smirk while Jon was showing Gid how to make different decorations with a piping bag. Nick and Judy were back by the sinks, giggling and washing dishes.

“Sandra!” greeted Tom as he held out a paw to her. “Always a pleasure to see you again.” She nodded and accepted a pawshake as he looked over her shoulder into the kitchen. “Judy? I’m leaving now!”

The doe looked over before dashing towards him to say goodbye. Tom noted the look of disappointment on Nick’s face when she did, but he carried on with his work without complaint. Judy gave her big brother a quick hug and kiss, bouncing back to her friend within seconds of leaving him.

“I’ll miss you, too,” the brown buck mumbled, feeling hurt that she didn’t pay much attention to her big brother. Jack looked over at their sister and shook his head with a smile.

“She’s smitten,” he explained. Tom’s eyebrows went up.

“It seems she’s not the only one smitten.” The brother’s shared a laugh as Skye joined them. Tom smiled at her. “Take care of my brother and sister, okay?”

Skye grinned and stuck out her paw. “Deal.” To her surprise, he batted her paw away and pulled her into a hug.

“Welcome to the family,” he whispered so low, only she could hear. Not even Jack picked it up, though he did see the happy smile on her face when she looked over at him. He was almost out the door when Jack called back to him.

"Hey, Tom? Let's keep this between us, okay?" Tom and Skye looked at him in confusion. "I want to tell Mom and Dad myself, face to face. With Skye next to me. Soon," he added with a reassuring smile at the vixen.

The brown buck grinned at the pair and nodded. Giving a final wave, he left for his car. Skye gave Jack a kiss on the cheek, relishing how he pulled her close and nuzzled into her neck. They pulled away from each other to give Tom a final wave though the window as he drove away. Just as they had turned to restart their day, when Brook and David appeared, walking and chatting as they reached the door. Both teens smiled at the couple when they entered.

“Hello, Mr. Hopps,” greeted Brook politely, looking from one to the other. “Hi, Skye. Are Nick and Judy around? We were hoping they might be able to come with us to the Canal district. There’s a boat parade and festival going on.”

The pair in question had spotted their friends not long after they had entered and rushed out to greet them.

“What are you guys doing here!” asked Judy, her voice filled with excitement.

“Boat Parade in the Canal District.” David answered, winking at Nick. “There’s a really good ice cream place nearby. Are you in the mood for some ice cream, Nick?”

The young todd grinned and looked down at the doe. “I think I can go for a scoop.”

Judy rolled her eyes, but smiled and looked over at Jack.

“Can we go? Gideon will love it and it gets us out of your fur for a few hours.” Judy looked over to Gideon through the window, returning the thumbs up he gave her.

“Imma call my sister and ask her now!” Gideon called out.

“And afterwards,” Brook chimed in, “I was hoping you could sleep over tonight, Judy.”

“And my parents said you can stay the night at my place!” Dave added with a grin. ”Gideon can join, if he wants and his sister’s okay with it.”

“We’re going to have to check with your parents, but I’m fine with it,” Skye said with a suggestive smile to Jack on her muzzle. He, however, looked concerned and opened his mouth to protest only to get an elbow to the ribs from her. She gave him a look until he realized what she was insinuating.

A night to themselves, no kits, completely uninterrupted and focused on just each other.

“Yup!” He agreed eagerly. “You can go! Have fun, be safe, have fun!”

Jack double checked Gideon’s work and spoke to both Daisy and Brook’s mother before allowing the kits to leave for the day. There was electricity in the air as they completed the work day and closed up, broken briefly by Cami when she barged into the cafe, shrieking about her master plan to get rid of Bellwether for good. She didn’t elaborate beyond a cackle and victory dance, her patient husband waiting outside the cafe doors, shaking his head with amusement. Michael gave Jack and Skye a small wave and smile before dutifully following his wife back to their restaurant. Once they were out of sight, their heated gazes allowed them to go on auto mode as their employees bid them good night. Now, with the lights off in the cafe and darkness surrounding them, they calmly took the stairs up to the apartment.

But all sense of restraint and decorum flew out the window before they had crossed the threshold.

……………………….

Maple was still fuming. Pacing the house, half completing tasks, slamming things around, and snapping at anyone who came near her. Including her parents. Bonnie Hopps was massaging her temples at the kitchen table as she tried to figure out how to handle her daughter. One of her other daughters who was helping with dinner put a glass of water in front of her with cucumber and mint added to it.

“Here you go, Mama,” she said with a kiss to her head.

“Thank you, baby.” The matriarch reached for glass and smiled at her husband entering from outside, Ben following closely behind him.

“Look who just pulled up,” Stu greeted happily. Bonnie smiled and stood to greet her son, when she was stopped by the cold, hard voice of Maple.

“Where the hell have you been?” Maple stomped into the kitchen and glared at her brother. Her siblings in the kitchen paused to gaze at her in amazement. Swearing was forbidden in the warren; both Bonnie and Stu were very militant about it. But neither had the opportunity to reprimand her before she plowed on, unbothered by her words. “Why do all the bucks in this warren think they can just run off and do whatever they want? What the fuck is the matter with you?! You’re just like Jack and, if you’re not careful, you’re going to end up just like him! A pathetic loser who can only find other bits of trash to tolerate him! Do you want to be trash like he is, Tom? Should I just drag you out to the curb and wait for pick up?”

It was well known in Bunnyburrow that Tom Hopps was the most even tempered rabbit in the area. No one, not even his parents, knew of a time he had lost his temper. He frustrated most bullies because they couldn’t get a rise out of him and it was usually he who stepped up to calm any squabbling within the family. The buck was just so damn calm and likable. When Maple wasn’t breathing fire, even she got along with him. And she was his opposite in nearly every regard.

But Tom was only mammal. And he wasn’t sure why he became enraged, but he did. Like everyone else at the Perks, he had recognized how good Skye was Jack. Even if it was just an infatuation destined to sizzle out. The two were consenting adults who were enjoying each other's company. Jack had seemed to skip over the doe crazy faze of his adolescence and dived right into workaholic. Up until his first visit home from college, Tom thought he was still a virgin. Walking in on him and a neighbor doe was shocking. But what he had now made that seem vanilla in comparison.

That reaction from Maple was the limit for him. Tom was not going to sit back and listen to her insult his brother and the perfectly lovely vixen he had chosen to be his mate.

“You need to shut the fuck up, Maple!” That earned an audible gasp from the kitchen. “Just because you’re bitter no one wants to touch your fun parts doesn’t mean you can rag on him for finding someone that’s willing to touch his. Even if she is a-” The horror Tom felt at his inability to keep in the next word was palatable. “-fox!”

Bonnie and Stu stood staring at him with their jaws dropped. Maple looked equal parts furious and smug. Everyone else took one look at their parents and filed out of the kitchen. Most pulled out their cell phones and started taping away. Tom knew within minutes, everyone in Bunnyburrow would know about this. He buried his face in his paws, hoping he was in a bad dream and trying to keep his tears to himself. Jack had asked him for only one thing in their entire history as brothers and Tom failed him.

“What do you mean she’s a fox?” Bonnie’s voice was deadly quiet.

Maple chimed in, in her most viciously smug voice. “She’s a smelly, evil, horrible-”

“I don’t remember asking you a godsdamn thing, young lady!” Maple was shocked into silence by the harsh comment. Her mother’s eyes flashed angrily at her. “Leave the kitchen.” The younger doe gulped but didn’t move.

“NOW!” Stu’s voice made her jump and dash for the door. He strode over to the kitchen table and yanked out a chair. “Sit!” he ordered.

Tom didn’t think to disobey. Once he was sat and joined by his parents, he braced himself for their questions. And question him they did. He wasn’t sure what happened to his resolve and backbone as he answered every question without resistance. After they had interrogated him, they sat in stunned silence before turning to each other.

“You have to call him,” Stu decided to his wife. “If I do, I’m going to scream at him and drag him AND Judy home by their ears.”

Bonnie nodded and pulled out her phone.

“Wait!” Tom begged. His mother paused to give him a very nerve wracking glare. “Please, just wait until morning. Give yourself time to cool off and at least meet her! She’s really great and has this adorable little brother who Judy has a huge crush on! It’s really, really sweet-”

“She’s bringing more foxes around our baby?” Bonnie practically screamed. She stood from her seat, trembling in fury and panting in nearly uncontrolled rage and pulled her phone from her apron pocket. “And you want us to wait UNTIL MORNING to call him? Are you out of your fucking mind?!”

This time, some tears did escape his eyes. “Please….” he begged, hoping to reach them. “Just wait. You know how Jack is if you try to strong arm him with anything. If you don’t want to lose your son, please just sleep on it.”

Stu and Bonnie glared at Tom, both standing now, Bonnie’s thumb poised over Jack’s number.

“Fine,” she decided. She navigated away from the call screen and turned abruptly to leave the kitchen. “Stu, deal with him, please.”

Their son watched her stride away from him before he focused on his equally furious father.

“You need to find somewhere else to stay,” the patriarch ordered with ice in his tone. “If you’re going to support this type of behavior, you’re not going to do it under my roof. Get out.”

Brown met brown as both bucks marinated in silence. Tom felt a numbness seep into him as he stood from his seat and walked back to the kitchen door. His paw fished his phone out as he turned the knob. He needed to warn his brother so he can at least be prepared for the fallout about to come his way.

“Leave your phone.” The younger buck stumbled in shock and looked back at Stu. “Your mother and I paid for it. We would like it back. Now.”

His eyes looked down at his brother’s number and contact picture and he swallowed. With a sullen nod, he turned and set the phone on the table before turning to leave again. Trudging to his car, he climbed behind the wheel and broke down. There was no way Jack or Judy would ever forgive him for this.

…………………..

Skye smiled down at Jack underneath her. His paws travelled up her thighs, sitting up once he got to her hips and kissing her. Pleasure, centered in the apex of her legs, ignited and warmth flowed through her, one of his thumbs moving gently, yet firmly, in place. Her paws cupped his face to deepen their kiss.

“You feel so good,” she whimpered when they parted. He thrust slowly and kissed down her neck while cupping her breast.

“Gods, you’re so beautiful.” Jack slid his paws to her cheeks, wanting to see her pleasure drunk expression as he moved with her.

He had always enjoyed sex, but truth be told, he could either take it or leave. With Skye, however, he had no idea how he lived without it. Without her. He felt he had been waiting his entire life to find her and now that she was in his arms, his world finally made sense. HE finally made sense. This realization had his passion overflowing, causing him to roll until he rested in the valley of her legs and showed her how much he wanted her.

And her moans and begs for more drowned out the constant pinging and ringing of the cell phone still stuck in his pants pocket by the front door.

#zootopia #wildehopps #savageskye #jacksavage #skyefrost #alternate universe #cafelife

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a-secret-bolton-vampire · 3 years

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The Coming War for the North, Part 3: The Battle of the Bastards

To see the previous installments of this series, part 1 and part 2 are available to read here and here, respectively.

The idea that Jon and Ramsay would fight has been around for a while, even before the TV show. There are a lot of signs pointing to a similar confrontation in the books, but how it unfolds might be a little different from the show. In this final section, I'll get right down to business on this final battle for Winterfell, and the purpose and themes this plot line.

Two Snows & Winterfell

Jon and Ramsay are two very different, and somewhat very similar characters. Throughout ADWD Jon has letters sent by Ramsay detailing events transpiring in the North, including the retaking of Moat Cailin, and the marriage of Arya Stark (really Jeyne Poole) to the newly legitimized Ramsay Bolton. Stannis also begins his campaign to take the North, and sends letters to Jon detailing his movements and what he is doing. When confronted by Melisandre, Jon learns that Mance Rayder was actually Rattleshirt in magic disguise, and Rattleshirt is actually Mance in magic disguise, and with Melisandre's nudging, agrees to send Mance and six spearwives to rescue Arya from Winterfell.

Then Ramsay sends the pink letter and tells Jon that he defeated Stannis, has captured Mance, and demands Stannis's family and allies or he will attack the Night's Watch. Don't forget that Jon is the one who started this, not Ramsay. He was the instigator, helping Stannis and taking Arya away from Ramsay. Not to say Ramsay is in the right here morally (quite the opposite), but Jon did break his vows for this to happen, and he wasn't really on Ramsay's radar until this happened. Thus, ADWD has set up a rivalry between the two. However, the two characters have a lot in common to be set up as foils to each other.

Both are bastards of a very prominent noble lord of the North. Both resent their bastard status and yearn for approval to be a trueborn member of their House. And both want Winterfell. Ramsay already has Winterfell and is declared the Lord of Winterfell, while Jon nearly took Stannis's offer to be Lord of Winterfell, before rejecting it to keep his vows to the Night's Watch, while still yearning to have Winterfell. However, from there, they are complete opposites.

Ramsay is a demon in human skin, a sadistic serial killer and rapist who enjoys torture and murder, and has no regard for the laws of men. Meanwhile, Jon, as raised by Ned, is a noble and honourable person who tries his best to keep his oath and honour intact (although he does forsake it at the end of ADWD). In the season 4 DVD extras for Game of Thrones, GRRM himself even talks about this.

The relationship between Roose and Ramsay is, in some ways, a dark counterpoint to the relation between Ned Stark and Jon Snow. In both cases, a noble father with a bastard son. Jon and Ramsay are literally the opposite to each other. Jon is very noble and honorable. And Ramsay is none of those things. Roose himself is a cold and calculating man. A dispassionate man. "I placed far too much trust in you." But their treatment of the bastard son is very different. Ned keeps Jon Snow at Winterfell and he's raised with Robb and Bran. For all practical purposes, he is one of Ned's sons. Ramsay gets nothing from Roose.

Given the fact we have good build up between a rivalry between them, and that they are foils of each other, a confrontation between the two seems very likely. And even more so when you look both at the past history and at ADWD. The Stark-Bolton rivalry is the longest and most prominent feud in the North, supposedly dating back to the Long Night. Numerous wars were fought between the Red Kings from the Dreadfort and the Kings of Winter from Winterfell, some of them ending in Bolton victory. At least twice, two Bolton kings (both named Royce) took and burnt Winterfell (and it happened a third time in ACOK when Ramsay did it). The Boltons also were alleged to have flayed and worn the skins of Stark princes as cloaks.

In a way, this rivalry is a very dark, yet still grounded fantasy version of werwolves and vampires. There are quite a lot of stories including werewolves and vampires that have the two be natural enemies, with feuds that go back centuries sometimes. Of course, both the Starks and Boltons take on very clear roles as werewolves and vampires. Starks have warg blood in them (even if not all of them were wargs), and many of them have dreams at night of being a wolf and rampaging around, which sounds very much like old werewolf legends. The Boltons being vampires, on the other hand, is less magical and more implied.

The Boltons have this unearthly, sinister feel and look to them that makes them appear somewhat inhuman, with pale eyes variously described as dirty chips of ice or pale moons, and a look about themselves that is similar to some descriptions of vampires. Then of course there is the Dreadfort, a spooky old castle ruled by a very spooky and yet somewhat cultured man (Dracula anyone)? Then of course we have all the very creepy images of Boltons flaying people, and Ramsay sometimes writing using human blood as ink.

Basically, what I'm saying is that ASOIAF has done what Twilight did but better.

To go back to the future, it makes thematic and narrative sense for the Starks to retake Winterfell from their ancient nemesis. The rivalry began between a Stark and a Bolton, and will end with a Stark bastard and a Bolton bastard, fighting over dominance of the North and of Winterfell.

The Battle of the Bastards

At first glance, it seems like it's a no brainer for how this battle will unfold. Ramsay is gonna lose a lot of support, and Jon will have all the support and completely demolish Ramsay. However, while I do think it will end in victory for Jon (and not without outside help), I think that both are going to be in rather desperate positions, Jon maybe more so.

After Jon's resurrection, there is no question in my mind that he is going to head south. Those were his last thoughts and actions as he died, similar to how Catelyn killing a Frey and her grief of losing her family was the last action and thought before she died, and Beric protecting the smallfolk from the Mountain was his last act before dying. Given the strong implication he is inside Ghost, coming back, we should expect a darker, different Jon, one who doesn't give a shit, is more violent, and more determined. Of course, if he is to retake Winterfell, he should need support.

Fortunately, right before he died, he got all the free folk to cheer for him and agree to join him. Mix those free folk with the giants and mammoths that were recently let past Eastwatch, and he might have a formidable force. However, of the 4,119 or so free folk that are currently south of the Wall, not all of them are fighters. If we take the estimate for 20,000 warriors and 100,000 free folk in total, then we should expect around 820+ free folk capable of fighting. Not a lot. He will need some outside help. Of course, there is already set up for that in ADWD, when he marries Alys Karstark to Magnar Sigorn of Thenn.

He tells a captive Cregan Karstark to send word to his relatives at Karhold and yield to prevent their deaths, but Cregan stubbornly refuses. Alys believes Karhold will open their gates to her, and Alys is thankful for Jon Snow providing her refuge at the Wall and a marriage to get out of an even worse one she did not want. The strength of Karhold may not be the best, but it seems very likely for Karhold to join Jon and his cause, under the banners of Alys.

As for the other houses of the North, I don't expect much more support. Think about how Jon will look to the Northmen. He is a bastard, and those are already quite condemned throughout the North (and Westeros in general). He broke his vows by leaving the Night's Watch, and since the North takes vows and oaths and honour much more seriously than the rest of Westeros, being an oathbreaker who abandoned the Wall is not going to make him popular. And finally, he is leading a band of wildlings south. The North despises the free folk, thinking of them as savages, thanks to centuries of conflict with them. So the picture of Jon painted as an oathbreaking wildling bastard is going to be a major problem for him. At worst, he would be viewed just as evil and treacherous as Ramsay, the other prominent bastard in the North.

In fact, even if Ramsay loses a lot of support from his own actions (more later), he could use this to his advantage. At best, the northerns who hate Jon will remain neutral in the conflict, but at worst, they might even ally with the Boltons. The clansmen have a deep hatred of House Bolton, but they also have a very deep hatred of the free folk, so they may actually remain neutral. The Umbers are another House that deals frequently with wildlings, and many years prior, Crowfood lost his daughter to wildlings raiding south of the Wall. So instead of Jon's presence invigorating the Umbers to fight against Ramsay, their own vehement hatred of the wildlings might lead them to simply stick with Ramsay.

However, that isn't to say everything will go swimmingly for Ramsay. Their hold on the North is tentative, and if Ramsay kills Roose and Walda and their child, it could become even more unstable. For one, Lady Barbrey Dustin isn't loyal to the Boltons, but instead loyal to Roose. Her sister was the former wife of Roose, and Domeric was her nephew, so Lady Dustin has reason to be on friendly terms with Roose. On the other hand, she despises Ramsay, blaming him for Domeric's death, and not even allowing him to step foot in Barrow Hall because of it. In turn, Ramsay also holds her in contempt.

"It should have been you who threw the feast, to welcome me back," Ramsay complained, "and it should have been in Barrow Hall, not this pisspot of a castle." "Barrow Hall and its kitchens are not mine to dispose of," his father said mildly. "I am only a guest there. The castle and the town belong to Lady Dustin, and she cannot abide you." Ramsay's face darkened. "If I cut off her teats and feed them to my girls, will she abide me then? Will she abide me if I strip off her skin to make myself a pair of boots?" "Unlikely. And those boots would come dear. They would cost us Barrowton, House Dustin, and the Ryswells."

If Roose dies, not only would Lady Dustin probably suspect Ramsay, but she would simply not follow Ramsay. So already, just by becoming Warden of the North and Lord of the Dreadfort, Ramsay would lose the Dustins and the Ryswells. Of course, since Lady Dustin does have a grievance with the Starks because Ned never brought her husband home from Dorne, I think she would probably remain neutral in the conflict.

Other houses might leave Ramsay too. Some might stay simply out of fear of retaliation for betrayal. It will depend on the House, their head, their own needs and goals, etc. As for the actual battle itself, who knows what will happen. However, I do think that Ramsay will likely try to lure Jon into some sort of trap rather than give him a direct face to face confrontation. There is also very interesting foreshadowing and even direct confirmation that the battle is going to be possibly more magical than we might believe it to be. Not only are there giants and mammoths... in the final script GRRM wrote for the show, he put in this note:

[N.B. A note for future reference. A season or two down the line Ramsay’s pack of wolfhounds are going to be sent against the Stark direwolves, so we should build up the dogs as much as possible in this and subsequent episodes.]

So the hounds are going to fight the Stark direwolves... wait, direwoves? Not direwolf? Curious...

The Pack Survives

I purposefully avoided the other factions of the North there, because the heart of the conflict will be Ramsay vs. Jon. But Jon won't be alone, at least not entirely. There is Rickon, who is to be touted as the Lord of Winterfell by the Manderlys so they can support Stannis. He isn't even the only Stark who could join in. Sansa is in the Vale under the guise of Alayne Stone. Arya keeps warging into Nymeria, who leads a massive pack of hundreds of wolves throughout the Riverlands. Bran is training his demigod greenseeing powers beyond the Wall with Bloodraven and is definitely manipulating events far south of the Wall.

So, the plural of direwolves makes me think Ghost won't be the only Stark direwolf fighting against Ramsay. We could get Nymeria's wolf pack joining as well, and Shaggydog, or even Summer (if Bran is in the North at this time that is). In fact, the idea that Ramsay will fight against Rickon is something that is heavily hinted at in ADWD.

The next litter to come out of the Dreadfort's kennels would include a Kyra, Reek did not doubt. "He's trained 'em to kill wolves as well," Ben Bones had confided. Reek said nothing. He knew which wolves the girls were meant to kill, but he had no wish to watch the girls fighting over his severed toe.

And then, more directly...

"Stark's little wolflings are dead," said Ramsay, sloshing some more ale into his cup, "and they'll stay dead. Let them show their ugly faces, and my girls will rip those wolves of theirs to pieces. The sooner they turn up, the sooner I kill them again."

Ramsay may be impulsive and unaware of intricate politics, but he seems prepared for what to do should Bran or Rickon show themselves again. This makes me worried for Rickon, honestly. Will Ramsay capture Rickon and keep him prisoner as hold over Jon Snow? Will he kill Rickon like he did in the show? I really, really hope not, but I'm afraid that's exactly what will happen.

There is a line that Ned spoke in AGOT that George says will eventually be very important, that I think perfectly applies to this situation.

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives."

Ned speaks to Arya about this in King's Landing, to get her to understand that the Starks should not fight one another in times of danger, or be isolated from each other, but look after one another, protect each other. Winter has now come, the snows are falling and the white winds are blowing. Who is the lone wolf in this scenario? While Jon certainly fits the bill (he literally is a lone wolf, it's very clear at the end of ADWD he was prepared to ride to Winterfell all by himself until he got the wildlings to his side), I think Rickon could too.

Rickon is very isolated from everyone else, even when he was at Winterfell. He was only 4 years old, and didn't understand why everyone was leaving him. Given the plan to use Rickon as a pawn to reinstall Stark rule of the North being something we can cheer for and expect to happen, I don't think it will happen. Rickon, the lone wolf, will be used to try to depose Ramsay, but it won't go well, and he will die because of it.

Jon will probably find himself in a bad position in battle too, and very nearly die as the lone wolf... but now that winter is here, and everyone is starting to converge on Winterfell at some point, I think that it won't be Jon who ultimately retakes Winterfell: it will be all the Starks. Sansa may be in the Vale, but Littlefinger plans to use her to take Winterfell back at some point (even if it won't go exactly to plan).

"When Robert dies, Harry the Heir becomes Lord Harrold, Defender of the Vale and Lord of the Eyrie. Jon Arryn's bannermen will never love me, nor our silly, shaking Robert, but they will love their Young Falcon . . . and when they come together for his wedding, and you come out with your long auburn hair, clad in a maiden's cloak of white and grey with a direwolf emblazoned on the back . . . why, every knight in the Vale will pledge his sword to win you back your birthright."

Arya is having a lot of wolf dreams as Nymeria, and GRRM has said that her wolf pack will one day be used as a Chekov's gun. Bran may be far away, but he is getting more powerful and beginning to influence events as far south as Winterfell. The pack comes together to survive in winter, to help Jon and the North by defeating their enemies.

So as Jon fights against the bastard he so deeply despises, it won't just be him. It'll be the Knights of the Vale, led by Sansa. It'll be Nymeria and her wolf pack, piloted by Arya. It'll be Bran, skinchanging into whatever is around. TWOW may end up being the darkest book in the series, and the retaking of Winterfell won't be as glorious as we imagine or even as I spelt it out (Rickon's death and the perception the North has of Jon should play very big roles in making it not entirely happy), but this will be maybe one of our only moment of deserved catharsis we might get from it.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #jon snow #ramsay bolton #bran stark #arya stark #sansa stark #rickon stark #winterfell #the winds of winter #the winds of winter predictions

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ladystoneboobs · 3 years

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You lied to me! My uncle is my father! My father is my uncle!

as a companion to my previous post, here are the thoughts i've had cooking about ned/jaime. most discussion about them focuses on honor and judgement, which i'm bored with by now, so this is about their familial relationships and emotional life. i haven't really seen that talked about.

let’s start with their sisters. we know ned/lyanna had a good relationship and he was devoted to her after her death, but before that he failed her when she tried to express her concerns about robert. in trying not to take sides and offering feeble reassurances (saying robert loved her isn’t even technically a promise he wouldn’t cheat or otherwise not be a good husband. imho more a hope that lyanna could learn to love robert despite his flaws like ned did.), he effectively sided with robert by ignoring lyanna’s feelings. a mistake he made up for as she lay dying, listening to her and promising his support against robert, a promise he kept to the letter with a secret he took to his grave. jaime has more the opposite relationship with his sister, an unhealthy relationship where he was too devoted to her, willing to murder anyone for the sake of their love. the turn in their relationship comes when jaime starts seeing cersei’s serious flaws more clearly, and then refuses to keep offering her his unhealthy kind of support, even when she needs him most.

because of these relationships, both men are uncle and father to the sister’s offspring. jaime is both by blood while ned was an uncle by blood but even moreso a father in spirit, adopting his nephew under the pretense of fathering a bastard and raising jon as one of his own kids. ned not only loved his nephew as his own son, he kept him closer and treated jon better than most lords would treat their actual illegitimate children. by contrast, jaime has to lie about not fathering cersei’s children instead of the other way around, not even allowed to hold them after witnessing their births. it’s not even clear how close he was to them as just a regular uncle. it seems he only started to re-think spending time with tommen and myrcella after his relationship with cersei started to sour. ned’s fatherly relationship with jon was based on his love for lyanna, but jaime’s chance at fatherhood was ruined by the illicit nature of his relationship with cersei.

next, while ned may not have been in the habit of “going away inside” the same way jaime did, both have a habit of repressing traumatic memories. we know he never liked to talk about lyanna after she died, and that the echoes of her death were very painful for him, never recalling the full context (obviously for r+l=j mystery but also in-character because of emotions). he blacked out the moments immediately after she died and only knew that howland reed must have found him at some point. the oft-cited line about rhaegar targaryen not visiting brothels is preceded by one about it being the first time in years he’d thought of rhaegar, (his possible secret brother-in-law), the man who impregnated ned’s sister and left him with the secret burden of raising lyanna/rhaegar’s child as his bastard son instead of his nephew. i think ned made an effort to only think of jon as his and to ignore the more painful true circumstances of jon’s conception. for jaime, i think he made an effort, conscious or not, to not think much about his mother, with the coldly indifferent way he thought of her sudden happening soon after she caught him and cersei in some inappropriate behavior and tried to keep him away from cersei. even when he dreamed of joanna the word mother was never used, and after he awoke, he gave no conscious thought of the vision he had of her. and while jaime may not have the same reasons ned did to keep his rebellion secrets (such that people always question why he never revealed the truth to anyone before brienne), i’d say it’s a similar problem where the trauma of all his time with aerys ate away at him but he didn’t know how to deal with it without re-living it. he was drunk when he told cat about aerys’ stark murdering, and feverish when he told brienne about the kingslaying. i doubt if he could tell either experience in such depth while sober and clearheaded. jaime is shown to be haunted by his early kingsguard time almost from the start of pov, but how to relieve that wound without experiencing pain along the way? the same is true for ned, who had promised to keep lyanna’s secret, but it was a promise that fit his natural inclination, not wanting to think about lyanna on her deathbed, and not speaking much about her, even unrelated to her death in childbirth. i believe ned too wanted to be able to unload his burden and would have felt some relief at doing so, but he lost his chance to tell jon, the person who most deserved to know. he couldn’t even do so in written form after varys set his terms for sending a message.

what i really think jaime/ned have in common is an impressive ability to compartmentalize when it comes to the people they love. jaime’s is more obvious with cersei and tyrion. he’d been caught in the middle there ever since he stopped cersei from abusing tyrion in the cradle, yet his sympathy for tyrion didn’t change the way he felt or thought about cersei, just as tywin and cersei’s hatred for tyrion did not stop jaime from loving him. it was only when cersei accused tyrion of joffrey’s murder and asked jaime to outright murder tyrion that he had to make a choice between them, as if realizing for the very first time that his family loyalties were in conflict just as much as all the vows he swore, a division which was ultimately impossible to sustain.

for ned, this compartmentalization is most at play in his love for robert and lyanna. the line in his first pov chapter about robert loving lyanna even more than ned himself seems fine on first read, but is actually wild to me when knowing the full picture, not just r+l=j, but also what an inadequate friend robert proved to be to the starks and how little he actually knew or understand lyanna. i’m sure she would very much disagree about the notion that the would-be husband she ran away from, the man who made her afraid for the life of her son, somehow loved her more than the brother who knew her her whole life and then kept her son safe for years after her death. after everything at the end of the rebellion, robert’s “dragonspawn” comments and ned’s promise to lyanna, ned still wanted to stay loyal to both of them. and loving each one separately meant still believing in robert’s love for lyanna while keeping lyanna’s son safe from robert. even though ned never budged from keeping his word to lyanna, i think the (completely separate) baratheon-loving part of him still wanted to believe lyanna could be wrong about robert, hence his disappointment and downright disbelief whenever robert spoke of killing dany, as if the murder of targ kids was an entirely new subject between them. a similar dynamic is at play in his love for jon and cat. when catelyn said jon couldn’t stay with her at winterfell without ned and that it wouldn’t be good for him if did, ned acted surprised, shocked even, to hear her say so. yet in the same chapter earlier, cat thought about how there was nothing she could say over the years to get ned to send jon away, which suggests the subject had already come up several times between them without any change. she may not have asked about jon’s mother again, but i think she wanted ned to know exactly how she felt about living with jon and her feelings about that matter should have been as clear as robert’s about the targs. and those are the only arguments we know they had about jon, no sign ned ever spoke to her about the way she treated jon. scaring her (!!!) into not asking about jon’s origins was just about keeping the secret and did nothing to make jon’s life easier. all he did was pray for robb/jon to grow up as brothers and for cat to forgive him and give over it, hoping that she’d magically change her mind like he did with robert, and ignoring his family dysfunction (or trying to) the way jaime did. ned’s objective of keeping jon alive and under his care at winterfell was more important than jon’s actual happiness and comfort in their home. which leads me to my next point...

if anything, ned kept his promise to lyanna too well, not telling jon anything, even details that would not reveal r+l=j. even if he still felt jon was too young to handle the full truth, the least he could have done was tell jon his mother loved him. and i see absolutely no reason the poor boy couldn’t even have been told whether his mother was alive or dead. even with cat, he could said something without going into jon’s exact parentage, like that jon’s mother died in childbirth and that’s why he felt such obligation, that he wasn’t in love with jon’s mother and never wished he was free to marry her instead, that he meant to raise jon with robb but this would never affect the succession, etcetera. remember, the conversation about jon’s mother must have happened fairly early in their marriage, before cat’s bad relationship with jon was established, when she was still an innocent party herself. this does not excuse her reaction and later treatment of jon, she’s still responsible for her own choices, but the point is none of that applied back then and ned could have handled things better from the start if he really wanted this situation to work, especially for jon’s sake. (i tend to think ned would have handled everything better if he actually had fathered a bastard.) the fact that there isn’t a rational justification for all of this is part of my belief that his silence was as much about his trauma and how painful it was to even think about it as it was about his promise.

jaime has the opposite problem with his paternity secret, never accepting the full danger of that truth for his children. he begrudgingly kept his silence and his distance on cersei’s instruction, willing to murder to keep the secret, yet he was relieved once it was out with stannis’s letter. he thought robert’s death was enough to solve their problem, and that the lannisters were then free to practice sibling marriage as the targs did, for both himself with cersei and joffrey/myrcella too. when he wanted to tell his surviving kids the truth he thought it was as simple as asking tommen whether he’d rather have a crown or a father, as if royal titles were all that was at stakes rather than their very lives, and as if a 8yo child could be trusted to make that choice and understand what it meant (consequences jaime couldn’t understand as a grown man). ned was so much better at living a lie that no one questioned it in-story and jaime thought sexual fidelity was the one area where he could claim more honor than ned. really, the difference was that ned knew how to lie when he really needed to and the fact that he lied so seldom helped make people ready to believe him. neither man really wanted to lie and would have much preferred an honest life.

lastly, while i don’t wanna focus on honor/morality, this final part also concerns ned’s family life. most would say the say the starkest (ha, pun intended) difference between jaime and ned is willingness to murder children, which jaime already demonstrated twice with bran and arya. but then there’s theon. there’s much arguing that ned would never actually kill theon, just as there’s argument about the sincerity of jaime’s baby-in-a-trebuchet threat, but in both cases it’s a bit beside the point imo. unless ned explicitly reassured theon that the threat was empty and that he’d never hurt him, theon had good reason to fear and believe there really was inherent danger in his fostering. (and edmure had reason to fear one of his family’s greatest enemies, working with the freys.) we know that reassurance didn’t happen as it should have been mentioned. why wouldn’t ned at least bluff about killing a kid to keep the peace when that was the entire purpose of theon’s (forced) wardship? an arrangement which only failed because of balon’s lack of love for his son, not because ned cared for theon too much. aside from ned generally upholding the traditions of his society, wanting to keep balon in check, and also valuing peace/safety over happiness/comfort with jon, i’d say the final proof comes in jon’s pov. jon told the northern clansmen that they could trust his willingness to kill wildling child-hostages for any misbehavior of their parents because he was ned’s son, which shows just how credibly the implied threat to theon was perceived among ned’s peers. jon didn’t have a private monologue aside about knowing ned would never actually kill an innocent child. i’d say that discounting theon’s conflicted feelings about ned as unfair and/or ungrateful is like saying edmure should have known better than to believe jaime’s threats, in that either case would be victim-blaming and a serious misreading of the situations of those hostages.

#asoiaf meta #valyrianscrolls #jaime lannister #ned stark #eddard stark #why am i trying my hand at this in the year of r'hllor 2021 #i guess i feel the need to produce something since i'm not giffing anymore #but i also just need to get these thoughts outta my head now that i'm no longer active #on any message boards #(this title is long but i wanted to be sure people got the arrested development ref)#(c)lsb

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taiblogcomics · 2 years

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Freedom Fighting

Hey there, whetstones. Nearly at the end, are we? Well, might as well keep on plowing through 'til we get there, eh?

Here's the cover:

Guilty! Um, yeah. He pled guilty in the last comic. It's not like this is a surprise or anything. In fact, it's not like they're declaring him guilty, he already confessed to it. There's also no reason for Solstice to be there, looking like an Army of Darkness poster. Bit reductive of her character, too. Anyways, why would another planet in the future use a gavel, except as shorthand for us readers~?

We open just after Kid Flash set off a bomb in the courtroom. Jon Kent writes himself out of the story by declaring the gravitational pull of the twin suns too strong, so he just floats away into space. The rest of the Titans continue the battle in the dome. Raven says it'd be easier if they picked a side, but Tim Drake declares that he just wants to keep the two sides from killing each other and sort it out later. Cassie uses her lasso to entangle Kid Flash's goony second-in-command. But suddenly the lasso wraps around her instead!

Cassie wonders if her armour has finally turned against her, but it turns out to just have been Kid Flash super-speeding the lasso around her. Kid Flash isn't really interested in hurting any of the Titans, but here's his chance to take out a bunch of the Functionary's high-level political types. In fact, it's the only reason he agreed to the witness protection thing in the first place. Cassie retorts that if he'd told them, they'd've worked something out together. Solstice blasts Kid Flash while he's distracted, backing Cassie up on this. See, Kid Flash may be fast, but Solstice's powers are literal light.

Meanwhile, over in another section, Tim Drake keeps fighting the various rank-and-files. He says both sides are as brutal as the other, but I notice it's really only Kid Flash's allies he's stopping from killing. He's not fighting the Functionary's guys at all. In fact, Brain-3 actually leaps in to fight alongside him. They start an argument over ethics vs the law, and really, guys, it's not the time. There are some good points here, but maybe save it for when you're not fighting for your lives, okay~?

So then Jon un-writes himself out and flies in to grab Kid Flash and pull him out of combat. I guess the gravitational pull of those suns wasn't so bad after all. While he's strangling Kid Flash out in space, he does raise the very good point that you can't replace something with nothing--i.e. Kid Flash's plan to just tear everything down has no follow-through. Kid Flash's response is to threaten to vibrate Jon's bones into dust and insult his heritage as a clone. So, you know, I think Jon's winning this debate here~

Suddenly, a third party is heard from. A huge Functionary ship shows up out of nowhere, and a hologram appears. The lady in the hologram orders Kid Flash to stand down, or she'll annihilate the entire base they're fighting on. See, while his plan was to get a bunch of Functionary higher-ups all in one place, his whole rebellion is also all in one place. Oh, and the lady threatening him? It's his sister, Shira. Somehow I guess she's not dead but working for the Functionary? Your guess is as good as mine! Let's agree to blame the comic for not explaining this clearly~

So, after Kid Flash super-speed-headbutts Jon into unconsciousness, the siblings debate. Shira declares that their parents died for nothing, believing in an imaginary higher power. But no such power exists, and they can't change a universe. Kid Flash instead believes their parents died because he couldn't protect them. But he's a man now, dog, and he should be able to do everything. Shira replies that he was a child then, and it doesn't matter. What did he do when they were orphans? He protected her and fed her. He's actually a good guy inside, and therefore needs to stop being a psycho revolutionary.

So the comic wraps up with Shira bringing Kid Flash before the remaining council members. She pleads for mercy, but they say it's way too late, and sentence Kid Flash to hard labor on Takron-Galtos (a long-standing prison planet in the Legion of Super-Heroes stories) for life. He willingly accepts the sentence, and Solstice begs to go with him. The council won't hear of it, she's committed no crimes. And so, Solstice blasts a messy hole right through one of the council members, declaring that to be her crime. Yeah, that's a crime, all right, and so is this comic~

Yeah, I kind of detest this comic. I mean, it’s already poorly written for stuff like Jon Kent writing himself out of the story and then back in with no explanation. The debate between Tim Drake and Brain-3 goes nowhere, even though it’d be a lot more interesting than this comic. Shira deus ex machinas herself into winning out of nowhere, and all the confusion I pointed out about that already. All of that is terrible on its own.

But for me, all of that is gravy compared to the shit sandwich that is the last bit of this comic: Solstice being so fanatically devoted to Kid Flash that she murders someone just so they can go to prison together. I think that’s a horrifying and disgusting thing to do to this character. I’m glad to be done this issue, so I never have to look at it again.

#comics #reviews #Teen Titans #Taiblog

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blacksunscorpio · 4 years

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Scorp you're a genius! So relatable and I love how you don't judge others or anyone who comes to you for help. Keep it up! I just had to ask since I see that you make pop culture references to make analogies with astrology. You've mentioned GoT a few times and im a huge fan! Can you do a quick post on Game of Thrones characters and their potential zodiac signs? I'd love to hear your input! Thank you so much!!

Game of Thrones Characters & Their Zodiac Signs

Aries

Khal Drogo- Impulsive. Warlike. Bloodthirsty. Alpha. Conqueror. Hardcore athlete [did you see him on that horse?] Extremely sexual. Forceful. When he first meets Daenerys, he forces himself on her. Afterward, however, he is the first to go to war if he feels the people around him have been disrespected.

Aerys Targaryen- Impulsive, sadistic. Boastful. imperial. He would be the Emperor [reversed] in Tarot, lol. Not as good with being a tactician as he ought to have been. Cruel. Rage problems. The need to be the first and the best. Fire and blood, anyone?

Taurus

Maergery Tyrell - Classy, wealthy, sexy, laid-back, frank but with an air of elegance. Highgardeners have a love for the finer things in life. A love of fine wines and foods. Beautiful clothing and aesthetics. RICH RICH. Get on their bad side and they will take their time finding a way to subvert your authority.

Robert Baratheon- Love of luxury, bullheaded, strong, takes no shit. Fixed in his opinions of others, highkey jealous. In his youth, he enjoyed the gifts of Venus: Charm, wealth coming from the noble house of Baratheon, widely considered handsome by almost all in the 7 kingdoms.

Gemini

Tyrion Lannister- Silver-tongued. HIGHKEY intelligent. Social. Charming. Great sense of humor. A freak [in the sheets]. Chatty. Always finds his way out of a sticky situation. Finds a way to use his intel to bolster diplomacy between his family and the families who hate them.

Little Finger- Cunning, quick-witted, works behind the scenes, manipulative, a snake, jack of all trades. Top dog in the social circles of the 7 Kingdoms. There wasn’t a person who didn’t know of him and his... reputation. He singlehandedly, through his Machiavellian tactics, caused the events of Game of Thrones to unfold.

Cancer

Cersei Lannister- Protective, moody, caring [to her kids], motherly, cantankerous, jealous. A savage. People don’t give Cancer’s the credit they deserve in terms of what they’re capable of. Cersei is a prime example of the type of person who can show unrivaled levels of devotion to the one’s they love. “No one matters but us.” She can be cruel because she lets her emotions rule her actions. When her safety is threatened, she makes sure no one else feels safe either. She loves with a ferocity only rivaled by...

Catelyn Stark- Another mother who would die [quite literally] for her children. Fierce, Protective. Doting. JEALOUS. Let’s not forget how she treated Jon all because she believed Ned’s lie about him being a bastard. Followed her son into battle. Damn near lost her hands fighting off Bran’s would-be assassin.

Leo

Jaime Lannister- Proud. Handsome. Princely. Funny. We seem him go from underdeveloped Leo [arrogant, selfish, bully, prideful, snob, loyal to no one but himself] to developed [Kind, helpful, warm, honest]. Fought bears for his friends. Skilled and proud fighter even without the use of both his hands. Unfortunately, his loyalty caused him to stay loyal to his twin towards the end, but such is the nature of a Leo. They’re hard-pressed to abandon those they truly care for.

Brienne of Tarth- LOYAL. Proud. Devoted. A bit of a flare for drama especially brandishing her sword. Brienne is the definition of Leonine traits. Hard to miss. Devoted to those who show her kindness, i.e Renly, Catelyn, Jaime, Sansa, etc. Always at the front lines in war screaming “STAND YOUR GROUND”. Unrivaled levels of bravery and courage. Not to be fucked with. A true Queen.

Virgo

Samwell Tarley- Intelligent. Scholarly. Methodical. Always with his nose in a book. Unproblematic king. Caught the things everyone else missed, especially when he was an apprentice in Old Towne. Figured out how to cure Jorah Mormont’s affliction on his OWN without any formal training. Genius.

Lord Varys- Remember, Virgo is also ruled by Mercury who is the most cunning of the planetary rulers. Varys always had a spy to collect intel on everyone. A tactician. Never lost his temper. Always had the scoop but didn’t partake in gossip for gossip's sake. Not afraid to be critical or tell those “in charge” his opinion. We can see this specifically when he critiques Aerys, Daenerys, and Robert.

Libra

Davos Seaworth- a skilled diplomat. Davos is always seen seeking balance and fairness in the situations he finds himself in. The minute you see this man in a scene you know he’s going to give a moving speech and get someone out fo a sticky situation. He convinced the Iron Bank to support Stannis. Convinced Daenerys to entertain Jon Snow when they traveled to Dragonstone. Always breaking up a fight. He is in full support of law and order, especially when he called for Melisandre’s head after discovering her part in Shireen’s death [RIP.]

Rhaegar Targaryen- Had a love of music. Harmony. Balance. He brought two families together [Stark and Targaryen]. He was also blessed by Venus in my opinion because he was said to be extremely handsome. A fabulous singer. A fighter yes, but a lover first. Very good with diplomacy but not the best with defending himself against his cousin sign, Taurus [Robert Baratheon].

Scorpio

Daenerys Targaryen- Many see her as an Aries but I have to respectfully disagree. Daenerys is a Scorpio in my opinion. Remember, Scorpio is honorary fire. She was literally “reborn from the ashes”. A Phoenix, Scorpio’s final form. She went from a silent and meek girl to a skilled and commanding Empress. Unlike Arians, she did not jump headfirst into battle. It took many arrows in her dragons, many slights to her ego, copious council from her advisors, dozens of her loved ones lost for her to go nuclear. Like her father, she hungered for power, a very Scorpionic trait. However she, unlike her father, listened to reason [Jorah, Tyrion, and Barristan Selmy]. She had a long fuse until she didn’t, and then that’s when she rained fire and blood on everyone in King’s Landing. She was skilled at retribution and was unapologetic with it *cough* the Tarleys *cough*.. Unlike Arians who pop off at the drop of a hat, she gave her enemies fair warning if/when they crossed her.

Arya Stark- You already know what it is with this one. Arya is pretty much death [Pluto], personified. Stealthy. A tactician. VENGEFUL. I think we all fist-pumped when she served Filch Walder Frey his sons in that pie. Never forgets a slight. Keeps a list of people who’ve wronged her [All Scorpios can probably relate]. You never see her coming. She is “no-one”. She is the assassin that slips through the back. She may seem calm at first but trust that she has been planning your downfall for a while. LOYAL. The definition of a Scorpio.

Melisandre- Dark. Mysterious. Unafraid of the occult. So much of her life is unknown and I’m sure that’s how she preferred it. Even her Lord of light was mysterious. Strong supernatural abilities and highkey psychic. Knew immediately how many “eyes” Arya would “close.” Had ties to the underworld which is demonstrated with her ability to resurrect the dead. Came through at the clutch in the last battle wielding fire [Mars] with her witchcraft. It’s no secret that Scorpios are some of the most skilled in sorcery.

Sagittarius

Missandei- Exotic. From Naath which is an island just above the mysterious continent of Sothoryos. A world traveler. Lucky enough to escape slavery [until the end]. Jupiter's influence is here in my opinion because she is so kind and friendly. Also a polyglot and gifted with the ability to speak 19 languages. Her fire is seen at the end of the series when she tells her best friend “Dracarys”-- meaning “fire” in High Valyrian. She isn’t afraid to call wrath down on others.

Olenna Tyrell- Loud, unapologetically blunt, zero-filter, feisty. Olenna to me is the definition of Sagittarius. Always speaks her mind. Clap back queen. Will call you out. Was also quite promiscuous in her younger years. Very charismatic and extremely likable despite her penchant for saying whatever was on her mind.

Capricorn

Tywin Lannister- I can’t see the patriarch of the most notorious family in Westeros being anything other than a Capricorn. Methodical. Structured. Business-minded. Karmic [A "Lannister always repays his debts"] Cold. Cruel. Unfeeling. Like Saturn, he is the father figure. Basically ran the 7 Kingdoms for Aerys, [which was probably why the latter was so salty towards him.] Always has a plan. The man you want in charge if we’re strictly talking about law and order. Vindictive [had the mountain kill Elia because Rhaegar rejected Cersei.] He’s the ultimate son-of-a-bitch.

Jon Snow- Brooding hero that he is, Bae Jon Snow is without a doubt a Capricorn in my eyes. Duty-bound. Serious. A leader in his own right. Could also be cold and unfeeling in terms of distributing karmic justice. Lest we forget the “fetch-me-a-block” situation with Janos Slynt. In addition, the moment he was resurrected he took vengeance against the black brothers who betrayed him. Saturn, Like Pluto, is all about karmic justice. The beating he put on Ramsey after The Battle of the Bastards was one thousand percent a karmic beating. A proper lover as well, according to Ygritte, Jon also knew how to handle himself in the bedroom, a trait very akin to Capricorns.

Aquarius

Bran Stark- I thought about making Bran a Pisces, but then I changed my mind. Remember Uranus rules sudden insights and hardcore psychic receptivity. It also rules sudden and unexpected catastrophes or surprises/ sudden breaks. Bran suffered a literal “tower” moment at the beginning of the series which resulted in his psychic powers developing. Once he became the three-eyed raven, he became very detached from the world.

Grey Worm- Aquarius is also androgynous. Grey Worm is a eunuch. He is always down to fight for a cause though, specifically his queen’s. Cares about others, specifically Missandei, and was seen towards the latter season speaking up for the Unsullied against the slavers. Fierce combatant but also very detached. His job is his job.

Pisces

Jaqen H’ghar- Much like Neptune, Pisces’ ruler Jaqen has a mysterious and illusive personality. He wears “many faces”. Skilled at illusion and very very intuitive. Has a soft side though which is clearly seen with how he treats Arya. Hardly ever flies off the handle. Calm. Cool. Collected.

Hodor- Sweet and gentle giant, Hodor is a Pisces to me. Affected by psychic trauma, it’s revealed why “Hodor” is the only thing he can say. Calm. A bit of a baby. Caring. Easily adaptable [think of all the terrain he carried Bran through]

Eddard Stark- I don't care what anyone says, Ned stark to me represents the most developed form of a Pisces. Like the Hanged-Man in Tarot that represents sacrifice and which Neptune Rules, he willingly sacrificed his reputation as honorable for his sister, Lyanna. He later sacrifices himself for his children when he died at Joffrey’s [little bitch] command. He is wise. Though appears cold, he is actually a well of feeling and caring. Unfortunately, he also suffered from the naivety of Neptunian influence which is why he wasn’t very skilled at the Game of Thrones, which calls for more tactical ruthlessness. Pisceans however also have the rage of Poseidon flowing through their veins [which people like to forget]. This was displayed when he pinned Petyr Baelish to the Wall in King’s Landing for daring to dishonor Cat by inviting her into a Brothel. RIP, King Stark.

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ultrahpfan5blog · 3 years

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My very belated thoughts on Game of Thrones and season 8 in particular

I feel like I have a somewhat unique perspective on GoT. The show has been such a pop culture phenomenon that I feel that fans have been invested in it for years, either having been book fans who watched the show, or those having watched the show for the better part of a decade. For me, I was never a part of the fandom because I never watched the show until it was in season 7. The books sound great but because I can’t stand reading incomplete series, I have never read them, and at this point, it just feels unlikely that GRRM will end up finishing the series. That sucks because its just the sort of fiction that I would love. I started watching GoT in season 7, and then in season 8. Obviously, I had very little clue what was going on other than the broad strokes and I was watching purely because the spectacle and scale was something I had never seen before on tv. On that front alone it was entertaining. Given the incredibly divisive reaction, I didn’t feel like spending the amount of hours required to watch the show from scratch, but because covid ended up impacting so many ongoing tv shows and movies, I ended up deciding to give it a go. I started a couple of months ago and just finished season 8 a couple of days ago. Its been quite an experience, belated as it may be.

I still feel that I view the show differently than a lot of people. Obviously, its a very different emotional commitment for me, having watched the show in 2 months whereas other have watched the show for about 10 years. Having not read the books, I don’t have the issue of comparing the quality of the books to the show. And given I saw season 8, I watched the show with the ending in mind, so I could understand if the ending made sense to me or not.

On the whole, the show is worth a lot of applause. The production, acting, music, writing, visuals etc... is something I have never seen on tv. Juggling such a huge cast of characters with so many ongoing storylines is an incredible achievement. Say what you will about season 8′s writing, but from a production, scale, and performance standpoint, the show remained stellar all the way through. And for that, I do think D&D deserve credit. I know that is an unpopular thing to say but they still have created something that is truly one of a kind. The show is definitely not perfect, even before season 8. There are storylines that drag, storylines that aren’t given the time they deserve, character developments that don’t completely work etc... but I feel that is part and parcel of every long running show. There are very few that are perfect, and for the sheer complexity of the narrative, its amazing that the show isn’t more convoluted. I do agree that the final 2 seasons are the weakest seasons of the lot. I still think season 7 is very good, and the first half of season 8 I also like a lot, but seasons 1-6 are superb. Its difficult for me the select my favorite season. I suppose season 4 is probably at the top. Its kind of the end of the era season, with the death of Joffrey, Tyrion’s trial, then him leaving Westoros. Arya and Sandor’s time together coming to an end with her traveling to Braavos, death of Tywin, and Jon rising in the ranks of the Nights Watch and becoming a more prominent character in the show. I love seasons 5-6 because of the rise of Jon. Season 2 arc of Tyrion as hand of the King was also excellent. My favorite episodes all come from these seasons. I love the battle episodes, with Blackwater, Hardhome, and Battle of the Bastards being 3 of my favorite eps. The Laws of Gods and Men is another episode I love just for the climax where Peter Dinklage just tears into the scene with his full might. I also loved Pedro Pascal as Oberyn in season 4. He added a unique quality and I was sad to see him not last past season 4. There were a few storylines that I wasn’t completely fond of. The early years of Daenerys weren’t the most compelling, Arya in Braavos was just too slow for my taste, the Littlefinger and Sansa storyline in season 4 also felt like they were treading water and then they backtrack on Sansa’s development in season 5. Also, Staanis was someone who went a little too batshit crazy in his lust for power. Felt a little out of character.

Now, when it comes to season 8, There are a lot of complaints about a lot of things. I will say that the main issue with season 8 is that it crams what should be 2 seasons of storylines and crams it into a single 6 episode season. I think virtually every complaint can be traced back to that. I actually really like episodes 1 and 2. Especially episode 2. Brienne’s knighting is actually very touching. Its great to see characters reuniting and characters meeting for the first time. I know lots of people complained about episode 3 and while its not as good as the other 3 battle episodes that I mentioned before, I still think its excellent. I did not have the lighting problem that others had. I watched it on my laptop and I could see everything. The episode is titled ‘The Long Night’ so I expected things to be dark, but it isn’t as if I had trouble seeing what happened. The episode is incredibly intense and while its a bit difficult o figure out how so many survived and there are some questionable tactics for sure, its still quite a spectacular spectacle. My only issue with the episode is really all Jon related, which I will get back to in a bit.

I know that Daenerys turning into the mad queen is a huge point of contention for the season. While I absolutely agree that that character arc went from 0 to a 100 way too fast, I don’t think it was completely out of the blue. Knowing the ending, I kept an eye on Daenerys, and I think there are a lot of instances where her first instinct to fixing problems has been to unleash her dragons. She has had characters around her like Selmy, Jorah, later Tyrion, even Daario, who have tempered that instinct somewhat. But that is still a natural instinct for her. Not to mention, in Essos, she was dealing with a fairly black and white issue when it comes to slavery. And she mistakenly thought, her experiences in Essos would translate to Westoros. She came with the idea that the common people would support her without fully processing the idea that she was bringing foreign armies into their land and three dragons, which had not been seen by people for generations. So they had legitimate reasons for fear. So it wasn’t completely out of the blue that she unraveled when confronted with the revelations that she was feared more than she was loved and that she did not have the sort of universal support she thought she would have. Obviously, that was compounded by the losses that she tacked up one after another. Definitely, one more season was required to make that a satisfactory arc, but I don’t think it was completely random. And honestly, once she did what she did in episode 5, she was never going to survive the show. I will say this, Emilia Clarke was outstanding in season 8. She was never the cast member who stood out in seasons past, but season 8 was really her season. While the character development was rushed, she sold every scene and earned her lead actress emmy nomination.

There are some endings which people hated which I understood. Like Jaime’s ending, which people were pretty pissed about, is an ending I quite get. As much as we love the story of redemption, the Cersei and Jaime bond was just too deep and toxic for him to so easily extricate himself. I get why he would be drawn back to her when he knew she was in danger. I think Lena and Nikolaj really sold their final scenes together. I felt for Lena as an actress. As a result of the short season, she really didn’t get much to do all season. Her death scene is really the only time she gets material to chew on. So that was a pity. I think Brienne and Sandor Clegane were two characters for whom their endings were perfect. Brienne becoming a knight of the six kingdoms and Clegane finally getting revenge on his brother was extremely satisfying. Theon’s ending was pretty much perfect. Sansa becoming queen in the North makes sense. The show seemed to be building towards it. Sophie Tuner gets some good material in the final season where you can see that there is a lot happening in her head and not all of it is altruistic. She does have a power hungry side to her, even if she’s not self destructively so. Maisie Williams was strong again. I wasn’t a huge fan of her getting to kill the Night King over Jon but there lots of good moments she has with Jon, Sandor, Gendry, Sansa etc... Bran becoming King of the six Kingdoms is definitely not the greatest ending. I don’t know whose decision it was to turn Bran into a robot and have him do nothing other than sit and stare, but it definitely wasn’t the greatest. I can’t imagine it was a particularly satisfying experience as an actor for Isaac. I did enjoy a couple of moments with him and Jaime, harking back to season 1.

The two other major characters are Tyrion and Jon. Certainly the finale is very heavily centered on those two. I do agree with the notion that they really dumbed down on Tyrion’s intelligence as he makes a lot of wrong moves in the last couple of seasons. But Peter Dinklage the actor has never disappointed. His performance in the finale ranks as one of his finest on the show. There has never been a time when he has not given his all. Him ending up as the hand is pretty effective ending. He is a humbled man, admitting that he’s not as smart as he thought he was. So maybe he would be a better hand as a result of that experience. Jon’s ending is another controversial one. I am in the audience who really wasn’t a fan of how Jon was treated in season 8. Kit Harington was quite poorly served in season 8, which was a bit of a whiplash since Jon was arguably at his most badass in season 5-7 and became a huge a fan favorite. Certainly he took over from Dinklage as the de facto male lead of the show. The character only comes back to life at the very end of episode 5. Part of that is probably the point. That Jon became too bent to Daenerys’ will, as Varys said.to Tyrion. It took Daenerys burning down King’s Landing to wake him up. I get that from a narrative standpoint, buts its dissatisfying from a character perspective when its the final season. Certainly I found it very strange how little role he played in The Long Night, given the White Walker storyline was Jon’s primary storyline on the show. Put aside killing the Night King, a showdown which was promised on the show, he didn’t even do much else in the episode. At the very least he should have gotten to destroy the undead Viserion. The memes about his dialogue in the season aren’t unfounded. But, I will say that Kit Harington is fantastic in the series finale. He arguable has the centerpoint scenes of the finale, the two scenes with Tyrion, and then the scene with Danaerys where he is literally begging her to give him a reason not to kill her and she keeps saying the wrong thing. Certainly Peter and Kit end the season on a high note. Him ending up with the Wildlings seems appropriate because Jon never seemed cut out to be King, nor did he ever want that responsibility. He probably would have been better than Bran, but its a decent enough ending for him. In the end, the way the show ends I was mostly ok with, but the path to getting there should have come with one extra season at least.

In the end, the production and the acting will always be something I will remember. I didn’t even mention great performances from Sean Bean, Charles Dance, Alfie Allen, Stephen Dillane, Conleth Hill, Aiden Gillen, Diana Rigg, Jerome Flynn, Liam Cunningham among many others over the years. So even though I do have issues with the final season, I feel that the good far outweighs the bad when it comes to the show. Its not a show I foresee rewatching any time soon since its one of those shows that requires some digestion and a lot of hours, but I certainly don’t regret the time I gave to it.

#game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #jon snow #daenerys targaryen #sansa stark #arya stark #jaime lannister #cersei lannister #tyrion lannister #bran stark #ned stark

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route22ny · 3 years

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Sky

Perhaps this will be hard to read. Laments often are. It may bring you comfort, or it may make you angry. It may make you think more of me, or less. It may offend you. Rest assured, it offends me. So be it.

Once upon a time, there was a man who spoke of torture as a good in and of itself, to be pursued whether it was effective or not. Who promised to use the power of the state to enact violence upon scapegoated religious and ethnic minorities. Who insisted upon framing our struggle against Mideast terror groups in the same religious terms the terrorists themselves insist upon. Who praised himself for nursing petty grudges, for treating revenge as justice. Who threatened the free press with retaliation for reporting certain truths about him. Who bragged about sexual assault. Who mocked people more brave than himself and called their bravery weakness. Who lied seemingly without strategy, as if lies were good to tell only for the telling, who showed a shocking indifference to the very concept of truth. Who praised brutal dictators for their brutal methods. Who seemed (and seems) to be receiving shadowy support from a brutal dictator. Who claimed dictatorial power for himself.

This is fine.

He appeared entirely confused about the basic facts of geopolitical reality, or of how our government works, or even of the function within our government of the role he proposed to take on. He had a clear and obvious history of fraud and hucksterism, of enriching himself at the benefit of others with less leverage, and was even engaged throughout his campaign in a lawsuit for defrauding college students, since settled for $25 million dollars. He speculated with frightening casualness about destabilizing actions: proliferation and even use of nuclear weapons, defaulting on our debts and our treaties, backing out of our most long-standing alliances. He publicly called upon the intelligence apparatuses of foreign governments to intercede in our election on his behalf, and it seems increasingly likely they may have obliged. He whipped his crowds into frenzies, then directed their ire toward journalists reporting the event, many of whom he threatened to prosecute once in power. He offered to imprison his political adversary, to the delight of his chanting crowds, who wore t-shirts decorated with the flag celebrating the war to preserve American slavery, decorated with vulgar slogans of violence and rage. He promised to steer us directly into the deadly heart of the oncoming climate catastrophe; having claimed the work of men more intelligent and knowledgeable than he was nothing but a Chinese hoax, he sneered at the very idea of new energy sources.

This is fine.

That’s a short list. It’s a hell of a short list. But wait, listen: The people went for it.

Tens of millions of people voted to make him the most powerful man in the world. He will soon have the ability to blast the planet to an irradiated cinder, if he sees fit. He will continue to run his business, which appears to involve sitting in a golden throne and putting his names on things. He's given every indication, despite some laughably thin feints toward divestment, he will run that business from the Oval Office. Maybe he’ll even put his name on new things, like laws. Laws: a whole new product line for Trump International, and a potentially lucrative one. He owes the banks of foreign powers millions and millions of dollars. One wonders what laws they’ll want passed. Word is, his first foreign trip will be to visit Vladimir Putin. Heigh-ho.

His party is in control, too. They don't seem bothered by any of this. They're a bit more focused on providing checks and balances upon ethics watchdogs who have pointed out their party leader's multifarious and historically unprecedented infractions. They'd rather ignore those, so they can immediately—immediately—get down to the serious business of divesting millions and millions of the most vulnerable people in our society from the only chance they have at affordable health coverage. They plan to replace this program with something...someday. Their speculation so far indicates they will be replacing it with the opportunity to save up hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for medical bills if you need them someday, or, if you don't have hundreds of thousands of spare dollars, to maybe go screw yourself. So, a lot of people are going to die in coming years, that would otherwise have lived, and they're rushing to make it happen. My, look at them laugh.

Republican lawmakers sign legislation to repeal ACA and defund women's health care access through Planned Parenthood, January 2016

Meanwhile, they're ignoring as peccadilloes the caricatured infractions of a man who intends to keep his own private security detail around him, who expounds upon provable lies, and then when exposed simply doubles down on the lie, who is considering throwing the press out of the White House, and other maneuvers straight out of the dictator handbook. It's really something to see. It's a new order, trumping the old. Isn't it great again?

Laura Ingraham, speaker at the Republican National Convention, 2016.

It’s hard to understand what people hoped for from him other than this. It’s hard not to assume they were responding to the shockingly frank bigotry, his promises to return to an earlier time, the knowing use of slogans used byracists and fascists of days past. These are certainly what seemed to generate all the most popular applause lines. But I don’t want to think that of my country or my fellow citizens. I really want it to be something else. Let us consider other possibilities. Many seem to think that a great thing about him was his frankness. They liked that he “tells it the way it is.” Then again, those same people seemed most likely to think that he didn’t really mean his more shocking proposals. It’s a bit confusing, then, parsing what is meant by ‘telling it like it is,' as it appears to rely on selective trust in insincerity. Many voters, excited by promises to “drain the swamp,” but now disappointed by the recent appointment of a Goldman Sachs foreclosure kingpin to Treasury, of a Putin-connected oil executive to State, and by other signals the new president has given about his eagerness to rob us all blind, have been admonished by a key advisor for taking his words so literally. The 'alt-right' Neo Nazis and the KKK are very excited, for what it’s worth, about the more shocking proposals, and they remain confident our new leader meant every word.

You're really going to want to go to video on this one.

Some people thought he would be less likely to make them pay more in taxes, I suppose. So perhaps at last now we know the answer to the old hypothetical about whether we’d be willing to travel through time and sacrifice our lives to prevent the rise of a self-professing tyrant. Answer: We wouldn’t even suffer a hypothetical increase in our income taxes. I'm told folks voted for Trump because they were tired of being called racist. I imagine that was hard for them—who wants to be considered racist? If this complaint is yours, I imagine reading this (if you're still reading) is also hard. I sympathize; it's not particularly easy to write. But then again, the response seems an odd retort to the complaint. If your persistent problem is people keep telling you there is spinach in your teeth, you might consider getting a mirror and taking a look, rather than voting for the Jolly Green Giant running on a platform of outlawing all floss. And, perhaps, if it is painful to be considered racist, consider this: it may be all the more painful to live under racist oppression.

KKK Newspaper, The Crusader, endorses Trump.

Many seem to have mainly enjoyed that he wasn’t Hillary Clinton, and it’s certainly true to say many concerns and criticisms could be levied against her. But the man they voted for as an alternative already stood actualized as the cartoon parody of any potential danger she may have hypothetically posed. Bad judgment? Corruption? Fraud? A proclivity to violent retaliation? A worry about temperament? Untrustworthiness? Lack of transparency? It’s hard to believe this all had much to do with Hillary Clinton and her faults. Hard to believe this list of concerns would yours, but your acceptable alternative would be Donald Trump.

Or maybe they believed the more lurid stories, the debunked, the ridiculous. Hillary’s murdered 80 people close to her. She invented cancer and put it in your cell phone battery. She is secretly seven tiny demons all stacked up in a pantsuit and glued together with the blood of aborted fetuses. She controls the Yosemite supervolcano, along with a cabal comprised of George Soros and 17 other Jewish industrialists. I don’t know what all. I know there are people like this, who have seceded from objective reality into a dystopian alternate dimension, where they can perhaps supplement the powerlessness they feel in their lives with the comfort of false control, of being one of the few with the secret knowledge unavailable to the masses. I don’t know what to do with them, because they live in an alternate dimension. And, it must be said, I don’t think there are 63 million of them.

So here we are. In grave moral and physical danger. All of us. And for what? I’ve heard the same line again and again since the election: “America isn’t a different country today than it was before the election.” Jon Stewart trotted it out. I think I heard it from President Obama.

I fear I agree with the statement. I’m puzzled, though, because I think it is meant to be reassuring, to think we’ve always been the country capable of such a choice.

The statement doesn’t imply that we’re still great. It implies that we were never good.

It has to be admitted, people responded to Trump for what he is. Which means we are left with the statements and proposals by which he distinguished himself. And millions of us—tens of millions—preferred him specifically for his points of difference. Excited by his promises to return us to a time when our system existed only for certain people, and the preferences and needs of all others were beneath consideration, or at least willing to overlook that, in favor of some material or policy advantage somewhere. And ultimately, the reason is immaterial. A man ran for president promising to use the power of the state to bring violence to scapegoated religious and ethnic minorities, to make America torture again, to make it easier for an already-militarized police force to employ violence, who praised dictators, who bragged about sexual assault, who praised vengeance as good, who promoted as fact debunked conspiracy, who stated his determination to ignore as conspiracy what the data overwhelmingly indicates is an oncoming extinction-level event. There was some other reason to vote for him, that allowed you to overlook these facts? Save it, please. It really doesn't matter. It was a bad reason. We have seen this movie before. Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed. That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore. They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding? What am I saying here? Am I saying we are Nazis? The answer, I suppose, has to be 'no.' Only Nazis are Nazis. We are Americans. But what that will mean in decades to come—'American'—has been thrown into hazard. We used to be the sort of place that doesn't allow Donald Trumps to happen. That's gone now, along with that specific sort of trust the world once had in us. In any case, what we seem to now be trying to redefine 'American' to mean seems like a rough beast, and omnivorous. Democracy reveals us by our choices and our actions, not our intentions. We are what we are. And Donald Trump will be president.

As a result, I’m bereft. Bereft of the country I thought I was living in. Bereft of the people I thought I lived among. Bereft of what I believed was a shared direction despite divergent opinions. Bereft of a belief in the possibility of a common dialogue or even a common reality. Bereft in confidence in basic decency and intelligence. Bereft of the spiritual heritage I was born into, because of course Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters were white Christians. Christians voting for a new Herod with the power of a Caesar is a pretty good joke for the universe to tell, I suppose. He’s even promised to go after the (anchor) babies.

My translation of the Bible is full of all this toff about loving your enemy, about how love of money is the root of evil, about showing hospitality to the widow and orphan and the immigrant, and admonishments against drawing the sword lest you die on it. My reading of the Bible doesn't ask "but who's going to pay for that?" My reading of the Bible suggests to me that if you wish to pretend to care about babies unborn, maybe you shouldn’t be so hostile to the idea of making sure they’re cared for once they are born and inconveniently and expensively needy, and perhaps you shouldn’t make so many of their mothers into the welfare-queen boogie-men of your whole realpolitik, and perhaps you shouldn't make weaponry a right more important than health and food. Maybe healing and wholeness and liberty is something that should be available to even the pagan. Maybe the door is open for the tax collector and the prostitute and the Samaritan. Maybe, unencumbered by the overweening need to be perceived as correct in every moral posture, they've even entered that door ahead of us as we do our best to hold it shut against unworthy access.

Maybe I got a trash translation. Maybe the other ones are all about the joys of using political power for your own aggrandizement instead of the call to self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, about the dangers of anchor babies and welfare mothers, about how paying tax money toward a shared life is tyranny, about how with terrorists you have to kill the families, folks, believe me, kill the women and children, you’ve got to go after the families, and we’re gonna torture again, folks, we’re gonna torture, believe me…

You know what? I believe him.

WWJD Check: White Evangelicals are the group most likely favor use of torture by a military superpower.

* * * You wake up and the sky is gone. At times that’s how it seems. You wonder at it: how could there not be a sky? What will become of us now, in this world without a sky? Was it ever there, or did we just imagine it there, as an exercise of collective will?

And then you talk to other people who insist the sky is there. They say: It’s not gone, it’s just red now. Don’t be a sore loser, just because you didn’t want it red. Accept that we did want it red. It’ll be fine if it’s red. And anyway, the banks seem to like it red. Move on with your life. Suck it up. Hope that the red sky will be as good as the blue one. But the sky isn’t red. It’s not anything. It’s just … not. It is a not-ness. An un-sky. A nothing.

And then you start talking to people who laugh, not without compassion, that you ever fell for the idea there was a sky. They say: That big vast emptiness? Oh, yes. That’s always been there for us. Is it there for you now? How… interesting. We can tell you a thing or two about that emptiness, if you’d listen. We’ve been watching it an awful long time.

American Nazi Rally, Madison Square Garden, 1939

Future Georgia Representative and Civil Rights pioneer John Lewis, beaten by a state trooper on "Bloody Sunday" in 1965.

Oh. Will he. Will he do that.

The sky is the future. Or it was the future. That’s how it seems, at times. How odd, to speak of the future in the past tense.

But the past tense presents us with further troubles. It seems the past is gone, too.

In 1965, everybody thought King was great, and nobody tried to dismiss him by tying him to violence.

Growing up, we were taught that we were a kind and good and just nation. The story we were given was of a nation born of a righteous cause, not quite made perfect by the godlike men who forged it, but honed to apotheosis over the decades that followed. The destruction of the native nations and their people, ah, tsk, a shame, we’d change it if we could, but unfortunately in the past and unrecoverable. Slavery, a dark stain, but by now expunged entirely. Jim Crow, its shameful cousin, absorbed by a saint named King, who led a boycott (a pleasant and polite and non-disruptive one, it seems, in our memories), then stood on some stairs to give a universally-admired speech about his dream of inclusion, and then, his work seemingly accomplished, having seemingly changed minds forever, ascended harmlessly into the clouds.

Somehow we are never culpable. It was always a long time ago. Mistakes were made, but we’d never make them ourselves. It was always somebody else holding the gun, the whip. We arrived here after that, you see, born blameless, without any afterbirth or shock, into the Greatest Country in the World. Our holocausts we absolved ourselves of, because they served to illustrate not the evil we’d done, but how far we’d come from it. We stood on the prow of the ship, looking forward as we cut new water, not aft looking back at whatever may have been churned up in the wake. Not big on the rear-view mirror, us, not fans of the over-the-shoulder glance. We’d tell ourselves stories of what lay behind. We’d imagine ourselves into those stories of darker times, making ourselves the protagonists. We would have been the ones to build false walls in our home to hide slaves. We would have marched with King. We would have spoken out against the Japanese camps. We would have stood at Stonewall.

Our moral arc bends ever toward justice; an inevitable thing. That was the story.

America was great, because it was good. All the old hits.

People still alive can remember this sort of thing very well.

This kid is probably still alive. As are most of his classmates. As are the children with whom he refused to attend school.

This also happened within living memory.

It's amazing what people consider communism. I mean back then, of course.

Sometimes you’d hear stories about a random injustice or brutality. A policeman who had become a little too enthusiastic. A bad apple, and surely justice was served. If not, it’d have been in the papers You’d hear about it in the papers if it hadn’t been. A gay teen beaten to death in a cornfield. A car with the banner of the struggle to preserve human slavery on the bumper sticker. The KKK marching again, how quaint. Ah, you’d think, if you were like me. We still have some work to do. Cleanup on aisle seven.

Technology has changed that. We see with new eyes now, unless we choose not to. We see videos, dozens and dozens of them now, new ones each week it seems, of police shooting unarmed black people. Again and again and again and again. Can you remember all the names? I can't anymore. And I ask myself: why can't I?

We see the speed with which so many seem willing to seek and find the nearest handy reason the victim deserved his or her fate. We see the news organizations find a Sunday School photo for the shooter and a mugshot to represent the victim. We see acquittal and acquittal and acquittal. We see failure to prosecute.

And, perhaps, we begin to wonder.

We see the people protesting, unarmed, asking only that their lives be thought to matter as much as another’s, and we see the stormtroopers with their massive guns and their tanks, arrayed against a civilian population almost reflexively, like defenses in an organism’s bloodstream mustering against a disease. And we wondered, perhaps: why do they look so much—so exactly, if we’re honest—like an occupying force?

We saw the white ranchers seize government land, pointing their guns directly at law enforcement officials, speaking openly of armed insurrection against the government, of revolution, of war. We saw them, later, seizing a government building. They weren’t protesting after centuries seeing their children and brothers and sisters killed without consequence by authority. Rather, they didn’t want to have to pay a grazing fee. Was it with surprise that we saw it: law enforcement seemed less frightened of these white men and their guns than they had an unarmed black woman in a sundress, or a 12 year old boy playing in a park? Were we surprised to see they seemed so level-headed in this situation, so much less likely to respond with immediate lethal force?

Why, those fellows with their arsenal didn’t even get convicted. They were less threatening to the system, apparently, than a man, arms up, lying on the ground next to his autistic ward begging not to be shot. (He was shot.) We might contrast to the treatment of the protesters at Standing Rock, and wonder…is the Holocaust against native people relegated only to the past? Would we change it, if we could?

We wonder: Are we seeing the system breaking down, unable to cope with new challenges? Or are we seeing a system working exactly as it’s always intended? Do we as a collective of 'white' people secretly want the police to control brown people by force? Are we secretly hoping that force will prove lethal, only occasionally enough to soothe our consciences, but frequently enough to promote an order less immediately costly, than the pain of culpability, than the justice of restitution?

If not, why are prosecutions so rare, and convictions even less so?

If not, why aren’t we protesting these killings? Why aren’t we in the streets?

Do all lives matter? If so, why wouldn’t we act like it?

White Christian America reveres Dr. King, it should be noted. You remember him—the peaceful guy who gave the speech that ended racism. If Facebook and newspaper op eds are any measure, we white Christians can’t stop bringing him up, almost as a cudgel, an admonishment to those today who would dare ask for their own human dignity, for not doing it as antiseptically as we remember it being done by him. And perhaps people begin to wonder: Why was King enshrined as 'the peaceful one' only once he was peacefully dead? Is King’s being safely dead our favorite thing about him? These days, we white Christians can claim to have brought his dream to reality (the white guy is usually the hero of the story in the movie), and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will not protest—and we white Christians don’t like protest. Heavens, no—it’s so divisive. Dr. King, he wouldn’t approve of this protest, nor that one, and certainly not that one. His protests were so polite! Why, nobody had any problem with them at all! Dr. King agrees with all of us in white Christian America so much, these days. Oh my, he never stops agreeing with us. Just ask us; we’ll tell you. Yes, and what ever happened to Dr. King, anyway, after he gave that speech that ended all inequality forever?

But no matter, I told myself. That’s a dying strain, it's not who we are these days. That’s just a few bad apples. We’ve made so much progress. They’ll exhaust themselves in a final futile sputter. We’re just about to turn the corner. Sure there are racists, bigots, white supremacists, lost-causers, and they're loud, but they're dying out, and they know it. They'll eventually run somebody on an overtly racist platform, and they'll lose huge—I disagree with Republicans, but most of them won't stand for stark white supremacy, surely, and obviously Christians won't be able to align themselves with it — and we’ll show them it’s no use, and they’ll retreat, retrench to even positions even more compromised, less fortified, further back, smaller, diminished. We’re a better country than that.

But then Donald Trump, a half-rate and transparently obvious bullshit artist, a greasy reality TV star most skilled at demonstrating his manifest ignorance, promising mostly the goodness of violence and the strength of vengeance, offering to return America to an earlier time, railing against the inconvenience of practicing sensitivity toward the perspectives of others (he called it 'political correctness'), received 63 million geographically-convenient votes to become the most powerful person in the world. Perhaps, if you’re like me, you took a moment then to ponder that statement about bad apples and what they do to the whole barrel. The meaning of it. And, perhaps, another saying, about recognizing a tree by its fruit. And, it must be said, though we refuse to face it: In America, our trees have long borne a strange fruit.

Here’s what we’ve lost, or at least what I’ve lost: The assumption of goodness’s inevitability. The assumption of goodness of those around me. The assumption of good intent in their hearts. The assumption that the future is still there. The assumption that most of us will die of old age. Here's what I've lost, the one favor Donald Trump may ever do for me: The wool from my eyes. An illusion, particularly a pretty and a convincing one, can be a painful thing to lose.

I’ve gained a vision of tens of millions of people desperate to bend history’s arc back toward an injustice that favored them, and willing to fight for that regression, willing even to risk species-wide extinction rather than suffer the pain of facing the consequences of their own mountainous indifference.

The moral arc of the universe may bend toward justice, but the gears of history grind the weak. There are people now who are giddy, almost with the air of a teenager behind the wheel of a sweet-sixteen hot rod, to test out their perceived new warrant to deliver retributive and violent indifference to the people they deem unlovely. A headscarf yanked off here. A slur shouted in public there. A swastika scrawled on a wall here. A Neo Nazi propagandist advising the President of the United States in the corridors of power there. A crowd of seig heils in a government building, in praise of our new leader here. A few million children stripped of health insurance with no serious attempt at a replacement there.

They think this is allowed now. Sixty-three million people, complacently or enthusiastically or ignorantly aligned with white supremacy, gave them the idea it is. It’s going to be our job to show them otherwise. We must show them otherwise. And. Even if you voted for Trump—especially if you voted for Trump—the door is wide open for you to join in that struggle. You show them otherwise, too. All you have to do to join...is join. Your intentions were good? Excellent. I believe you. I've badly misunderstood you? Excellent. I believe you. Now, show it. Show your good intention by your good actions. You, like all of us, possess tremendous moral authority. Don't lend it any longer to those who have promised to squander it on atrocity. They seem intent on doing as they say. If you wait too long, they will leave you with none left to withdraw. Use it to protect those different than you. Use it against your own advantage, for the advantage of those who have none. And. If you, like me, did not vote for Trump, there is the great danger of complicity. You will be offered, if you, like me are white and straight and employed and well-off and cis-gendered and able-bodied and healthy and property-owning, the opportunity to be indifferent. Resist that current.

If the universe bends toward justice, the engine it has chosen for this good work is the hard and sacrificial struggle of good people willing to acknowledge the basic humanity of all other people. People who don’t think profitability is the foundational metric of goodness. People who don't think life holds a value that begins at conception but ends the moment it enters poverty. People bold and willing to become peaceful pebbles in the gears. To give time and money. To link arms with a married gay couple. To take sides in a cafeteria skirmish with a transgendered teen. To take a truncheon in the head for a Muslim. To paraphrase Jesus (another favorite who those of us in white Christian America appear by our words and deeds to consider as safely dead as Dr. King): to live, first you must die.

Or, as another poet says, love’s the only engine of survival.

So, what’s next?

First, we lament. We acknowledge the un-sky, the void. We listen to those who’ve been staring at it far longer than us. We name the challenge with clear eyes. That, I suppose, is what this has been.

And then we get to work. Let us hope our leaders will prove other than than they say they will. Let us not be so naive to think it likely. Let us oppose in a fierce and broken love. Let us meet with friends, we eat good meals with them. Let us consider people before money, and notice where our society fails to do so. Let us make art, and we try to make it well. Let us refuse to allow a comfortable silence to enfold a hateful or ignorant statement. Let us stand up against hate, bodily if necessary. Let us learn our system, and work within it. Let us call our leaders, and advocate for those who suffer. Let us practice generosity without care for the merit of the beneficiary, but only for their need. Let us investigate before we publish. Let us loudly proclaim the humanity others try to diminish. Let loudly proclaim the humanity of those who do not share our values, even as we oppose. Let us never celebrate the suffering of those who oppose us, for they suffer, too. Let us seek to divest ourselves of unearned cultural advantage. Let us enter spaces where our voices are not primary, and listen without thinking to speak. Let us create space to speak, in places where our voices are primary, for those who have had no voice. Let us reject optimism and blind belief. Let us embrace hope. Let us work. Let us work. Let us work. We are a people who have dreamed of the sky. I’d like to see if we can make it real.

source: http://www.armoxon.com/2017/01/sky.html (January 16, 2017)

VOTE

#a.r. moxon #racism in america #american dystopia #VOTE #RESIST #long reads

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