Most straight relationships in media: “Even though there's no development and no chemistry and we don't look like we love each other that much we'll date because we're straight and that's what we're supposed to do. Right??”
Most queer relationships in media: “If saving you is a sin, I'll gladly become a sinner.” — “Dying together also included a ‘together’.” — “You changed my destiny from the moment we touched.” — “I would know him in death, at the end of the world.” — “The hero and the warrior were like the sun and the moon...”
I’m thinking about how Wasteland, Baby was a call to action and a tongue-and-cheek acceptance of the end of the world. And how Eat Your Young and Unreal Unearth are about the nine circles of Hell, about the afterlife, about the consequences after death. I’m thinking about one album cover being under water and another being buried under earth, about NFWMB “ain’t it like thunder under earth the sound it makes”, about Unreal Unearth and unearthing something, un-burial, about Like Real People Do “what did you bury before those hands pulled me from the earth.”
I’m thinking Eat Your Young, about Kronos’ mythology, about hunger for and to keep power, about gluttony. I’m thinking about Swan Upon Leda, about the lust Zeus had for Leda, about the greed of man over bodies, about who is the sinner. I’m thinking about angels, about their lack of power in Swan Upon Leda “could never belong to angels”, about their fall from grace in the “Unknown” song “I thought you were like an angel/going unknown as any angel/you called me angel.”
Just a daily reminder that Queen Aemma Arryn had only one living child.
Alicent Hightower had four.
And yet the surviving bloodline which created a new Targaryen dynasty that lasted for many years after and produced several incredible Kings, beautiful Princesses, skilled warriors and a Queen came from the one living child of Queen Aemma.
thinking about crowley and "my lover's got humor, she's the giggle at a funeral" and "knows everybody's disapproval, i should have worshipped her sooner" and "if the heavens ever did speak then she's the last true mouth piece" and "the only heaven i'll be sent to is when i'm alone with you" and "my lover's the sunlight" and "i was born sick but i love it" and "there is no sweeter innocence then our gentle sin"
I don't resent A Song of Ice and Fire for itself, per se. I resent it by proxy for all of the "GrItTtY dArK fAnTaSy" we had to slog through for a decade after Game of Thrones became popular, and that is still impacting the way people write fantasy in the modern day (a particular sore spot for me is that Baldur's Gate III is being made by the same people who made the Divinity series and I can already tell that's going to be fucking miserable).
ASOIaF (and early Game of Thrones) was dark, yes, but at its heart it was surprisingly optimistic and idealistic. It was a world in which doing what was good and right was always hard, often unrewarding and would sometimes get you killed, but you should still do it anyway because goddamnit it's the right thing to do. Bad things happened to good people because they wouldn't compromise their own morality, but the books (and the early seasons of the show) never portrayed these peoples' choices as meaningless or worthless.
Writers of lesser talent and vision looked at GRRM's work and saw good people dying for refusing to compromise their morality, and their takeaway from it was "morality is meaningless" and we've been mired in this miserable genre of fantasy that @sahonithereadwolf named "mudcore" for more than a decade now - and worse, even Game of Thrones eventually fell prey to it.
It's not really GRRM's fault people didn't have the correct takeaway from A Song of Ice and Fire but I still can't quite shake the resentment of how it's shaped fantasy fiction over most of my adulthood.
When The Goo Goo Dolls said “I’d give up forever to touch you,” “you’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be” and when Hozier said “the only heaven I’ll be sent to is when I’m alone with you” and when Taylor Swift said “I would fall from grace just to touch your face” and when Hozier said “if I could hold you for a minute, I’d go through it again,” “I would not change it each time, heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I” and when Hozier said “I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door” and when George Ezra said “is the grass of Eden overrated? No one else is such a beautiful dream to me” and when Big Thief said “no love is like this, no sacrifices” and when Jeff Buckley said “my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder,” “all my riches for her smile,” “all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter” and when Johnny Cash said “you can have it all, my empire of dirt”
so long london is such a vile song?? how shitty do you have to be to villainize a man you're supposed to be in love with because he has depression and then blast him for the whole world to hear because you're "pissed" he had "the blues"??? shut the fuck up oh my god
and i won't confess that i waited but i let the lamp burn as the men masqueraded i hoped you'd return with your feet on the ground tell me all that you'd learned cause love's never lost when perspective is earned and you said you'd come and get me but you were 25 and the shelf life of those fantasies has expired lost to the lost boys chapter of your life forgive me peter, please know that i tried to hold onto the days when you were mine but the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light
Heaven was a preacher's spot
In that first church parkin' lot
Her hangin' onto me like a cross on a rearview does
Her eyes were blue, the words were red
On that half pack of cigarettes
At seventeen, that's what hallelujah was
(insp.)