Hello! I love your art- you have a real talent for expressive eyes. You're a great cartoonist, and I can't wait to see more of your work
It's a little silly, but I just wanted to say- don't beat yourself up for having a reaction to needles after a bad experience. On a moral level, yes, but also a practical one.
It's normal for a body to react to a bad experience with fear. That's what fear evolved to do, warn you about something that could go wrong next time.
However, fear can be reinforced. If your body responds to a stimulus with fear, and then you feel a negative emotion around that memory, your nervous system goes "Wow! That was so bad that even thinking about it stresses me out. I'd better make sure to never let this happen again. Time to dial up the fear signal!"
Being kind to yourself about something frustrating or painful is hard in good conditions, and I don't want to minimize that. This isn't "don't let it bother you" or "just get over it" or "think positive" advice.
When a fear of needles happens to me again (the fear comes and goes), I try to treat it like I would a food aversion resulting from food poisoning. You know when you eat something bad, get sick and then the thought of the food is really gross for awhile? Like that!
I try to let myself be mildly annoyed, but not so much it gets my blood pressure up. Sadness doesn't seem to extend the length of the fear either. But anger, guilt, or shame for me really seem to reinforce the fear reactions.
Your mileage will vary, of course! For me, I went from no fear of needles, to fainting when an IV was put in, back to no fear with patience and time. Maybe this can be a bit of hope for you too! I wish you luck and a smooth road!
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Okay so the ROTTMNT Twitter QnA was a while ago, but I cannot stop thinking about the turtle sister that is trapped in the void.
Where is it? How did she get trapped there? Do you think time works differently there? Could she pop out a fully grown woman or an itty bitty baby? When was she made? Is there other life in the void? Species?
I don’t think I have the following for this so I humbly request help from the collective minds of the Rottmnt fandom to bring forth their headcanons!! You can include any about Big Mamas assistant too.
Please reblog with your thoughts, reblog to spread! Comment, like share whatever
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I’m really curious where you come up with prophecies and Valyrian lore from? It’s canonically different as Vermithor and Vhagar aren’t siblings. Nor are there any confirmed prophecies about Aemond. There are no multiple dragon riders, even Danaeyrs only rode Drogon. Is the lore canon divergence, or your interpretation of what cannon could be?
Yeah sure I'm happy to compile all of my reasoning for the different magical decisions! I've grounded all of these decisions in different parts of canon, and took a ton of care to make sure I never once explicitly contradicted canon laws surrounding things like magic and dragon heritage. So even if you disagree about the source material I've based these decisions off of, you at least have to acknowledge I haven't violated anything by introducing this lore. I'll mention my sources more explicitly below, but I've drawn from A Song of Ice and Fire, House of the Dragon, Fire and Blood, The World of Ice and Fire, and remarks made by House of the Dragon's showrunners and actors. So let's go through it (for other Stormbreak readers, there might be some interesting hints in here...):
Vhagar and Vermithor
First, a tiny correction: Vhagar and Vermithor aren't siblings in Stormbreak. They're parent and child. This isn't confirmed in canon, but there's a ton of evidence to suggest it, drawing from Fire and Blood and House of the Dragon. According to canon, Vhagar and Vermithor are the only two dragons alive during the Dance with multiple, highly-specific features: Their size, their coloring, and even their bone structure. I've written about this biology aspect in more detail here and here.
It also fits very well into GRRM's narrative arc for Vermithor to have hatched from either Vhagar or Balerion's egg. Jaehaerys with Vermithor is set up as a direct parallel to Aegon on Quicksilver. Aegon dies fighting Maegor, who's riding Balerion, specifically because his dragon is too young and small. Vhagar was still bonded to Visenya at the time, so the next best option for a thematic match to Balerion would be either Vhagar or Balerion's offspring.
Additionally, it's significant that Rhaena, who's coded as a potential dragon dreamer, is the one who puts this egg in Jaehaerys's cradle. Perhaps she foresaw some part of the conflict that would happen, and knew Jaehaerys would need a formidable dragon that would allow him to go up against Balerion and Maegor. I've written about this in more detail here.
Even if you don't believe Rhaena's a dreamer, it's canon that the tension between Maegor and Aenys existed long before Aegon or Aenys ever died and Rhaena would have known her family's political position was very precarious. In this case, it makes even more sense for Rhaena to use Vhagar's egg specifically; at the time Jaehaerys was born, the only dragon on Maegor's side was Vhagar. It would make sense for Rhaena to want to arm her family against the dragon she knew would fight for Maegor's claim and would be trying to counter Vhagar in particular with her choice of egg. And what better counter to a gargantuan dragon than its own child, guaranteed to also be huge?
Aemond as a dragon dreamer
There are a few different parts to why I felt Aemond could have a connection to the future. My sources for this are the HotD showrunners, Aemond's actor, and the ASoIaF series.
I drew inspiration from the writers of House of the Dragon, who talked with Aemond's actor at length about intentionally basing his character off of the myth of the cyclops from Greek and Roman mythology. The cyclops has only one eye because he traded the other for knowledge of his future death. This idea of trading an eye for foresight is pretty common throughout mythology; another example is the god Odin from Norse mythology. From the interview, it's clear that Aemond has some knowledge of the future, because the actor was specifically asked to consider how that knowledge would impact Aemond's personality when deciding how to portray him. I've talked more about this here if you're curious!
The interview then made me wonder whether there might be reasons for two of Alicent's children having explicitly confirmed abilities to see the future (though to varying degrees). So in Stormbreak, the dreaming abilities of Aemond, Helaena, Jaehaera, and the fourth mystery dreamer are all related to their Hightower heritage. I've based this on canonical theories by the Maesters as to how House Hightower originated, plus canonical details about the structure/foundation of the Hightower itself.
As a hint: According to The World of Ice and Fire, the Hightower is built upon a second, much older fortress of unspecified origin. It's made of fused black stone and contains "gloomy halls, vaults, and chambers," so it's a veritable castle/fortress in and of itself. I wonder where else we might find fused black stone in the ASoIaF universe...?
Multiple dragon bonds
This is going to be the shortest part of this ask, because I've already explained everything in a separate post here, but maybe you had some trouble navigating my blog and couldn't find it. For your future reference, I have a document here with a directory of every post I've ever made. If you navigate using the outline on the left-hand side, you'll be able to get pretty easily to the portion that deals with my posts related to Stormbreak.
TLDR: The multiple dragon thing isn't an Aemond-specific ability. None of these things are. And if some of y'all would wait until the fic is finished to come after me for unfairly favoring him, you'd understand that! I mean, I have 2+ members of Team Black planned to end up with two dragons. It's a Targaryen thing, and they're all Targaryens, so statistically it's going to happen.
Part of reading a WIP is that you need to have faith in the author; if anyone struggles with that, they should stay away from WIPs in general, including this one. Remember, that's the joy of fandom- you get to choose to engage with the content that best fits your preferences!
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hate teacher.
so angry.
he told me my 6 months worth of work has to be scrapped and entirely redone in 2 weeks. thats literally impossible. i am the tiniest inconvenience away from having an entire meeting with him to read him a 5 page essay on how he has been of no help this entire semester and last and how he has done nothing but inconvenience me all year.
hes seen the work many times before but only brought up the issue now. 2 weeks before a progress report. He told me the thing hes been having me work on for an entire month cant be part of my progress report because its not specific enough.
IF THIS WAS GOING TO BE A PROBLEM HE WOULD HAVE ALREADY KNOWN AND HE SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME BEFORE I WAS 6 MONTHS IN.
he blatantly holds favoritism as every other student (they all happen to be cis men) get all the help in the world yet i get no help at all and when he tells me i have to scrap all my work he doesnt even point me in the right direction just says redo it you have 2 weeks.
this is a group project but every other group is doing one project with all people working together yet mine is doing one project each person meaning i cant even get assistance. two of the people in my group HAVE NOT SPOKEN A WORD TO ME SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR.
he is also needlessly rude. instead of just politely saying there might be an issue he feels the need to make me feel like an idiot for not realizing it sooner. I am half convinced this man finds joy in publicly humiliating and shaming me in any way possible. You are a grown ass man what the actual fuck. You are in your god damn 50s.
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