When you’re ten, your father sends you to King’s Landing to befriend a princess and woo a prince.
A lioness growing up amongst dragons is a dangerous thing indeed.
crossposted on ao3 masterlist word count: 8.1k notes: no one kill me i’m sorry 😭 i hope all the aemondwives are still around to read this <3 pls enjoy!
King’s Landing is as ugly as a city can be. Famously, it stinks of shit and sweat and, though the city was only built two centuries prior by the Conqueror, it always looks grimy and unkempt. As fond as you are of the Red Keep and the family that lived within its walls, you can’t say the same for the city that housed them.
But in the dazzling sun, with golden and green streamers strung high above your head and Targaryen and Hightower flags streaming in the wind, you can almost be fooled into thinking that King’s Landing is as beautiful as your beloved Rock.
When you’re ten, your father sends you to King’s Landing to befriend a princess and woo a prince. A lioness growing up amongst dragons is a dangerous thing indeed.
crossposted on ao3 masterlist word count: 6.4k notes:late update which is 100% on me so my bad! but anyways, a lovely and beautiful anon made a playlist for this fic so give it a listen! here’s a nice reprieve after the drama of the past chapters (:
Once, as children in your library, you had tried to convince Aemond to read the tale of Lady Jonquil and Florian the Fool. He had scoffed at you - it wasn’t the usual history or philosophy the two of you poured over together. It was a silly romance story, nothing to do with the important matters of state he was obsessed with understanding, but you had pressed it upon him to read.
You can still remember pushing your book of songs over his own book about the maesters of the Citadel, determined to present your case. ‘It’s not quite as serious as everything you like to read but it says something about men, I feel. Ser Florian may have been a fool but he was wise where it counted.’
‘Singers and bards are invested in us thinking that, my lady, but I don’t think it’s true,’ he had responded, rolling his eyes, but he had taken your book and read it. He had never once talked about it with you though, simply returning the book to you the next day and distracting you from asking him about it by dragging you into a debate over whether or not Lann the Clever was the bastard son of Floris the Fox or even Rowan Gold-Tree, a topic sure to rile any Westerlander, leaving you to completely forget about silly love songs as you had argued over your ancestor’s own ancestry.
‘I am as great a fool as ever lived, and as great a knight’ Ser Florian had told his lady when he had crowned her. ‘All men are fools and all men are knights where women are concerned.’
With as much love as you have for the songs, you never could quite believe that line, could never make it quite click in your head.
But now, with the screaming all around you, as Aemond stands at your side, arm in arm and having crowned you with a crown of bloodied roses, you wonder if he’s remembering the songs as well as you are, if he’s realizing that maybe the singers were right in some respect.
Thor, Asgardian and naive: Loki, I’ve been meaning to ask. Are you and the Grandmaster involved in a… romantic relationship?
Loki, also Asgardian, naive to a degree: No, we have a mutually beneficial relationship that means I get whatever I desire from him, like wealth, and he gets whatever he desires from me.
Bruce Banner, Midgardian, knows exactly what a sugar daddy is: oh sounds great
I think a surprising amount of writers don’t realize that tragedies are supposed to be cathartic. They’re intended to result in a purging of emotion, a luxurious cry; the sorrow caused by a great tragedy is akin to fear caused by a good horror movie – it’s a “safe” sorrow, one that is actually satisfying to the audience. It can still be beautiful! It’s isn’t supposed to just be salting the earth so nothing can grow.
But that’s how you get grimdark: writers who don’t realize that they’re supposed to be doing something with the audience instead of to the audience.
my favorite video game quest trope is “HELP US, THEY ARE STEALING OUR ANCIENT ARTIFACT. THANK YOU FOR HELPING US, AS A REWARD YOU MAY HAVE OUR ANCIENT ARTIFACT”
the ancient artifact was less important than having agency in its distribution
Nothing is more important than keeping it out of the hands of the British museum
that summer between botl and tlo,, i feel like percy went to camp but he and annabeth swung wildly from arguing/fighting constantly to getting along (cough flirting cough). approaching annabeths birthday, they got into a big fight and annabeth is kinda upset bc every year, since he found out, percy made it his mission to make annabeth’s birthday a Thing but this year everything is so tense and he’s not gonna be around for her next one (or the ones after) and they’re fighting and he doesn’t care about her and-
and he’s sitting next to her on the pier and it’s sunset and no one is around and it’s quiet and oh shit he’s handing her a present
“happy birthday, beth.”
he’s so quiet and he’s still holding out the present that’s wrapped in the little mermaid wrapping paper that he bought as a joke when they were younger that he insists on wrapping every single one of her presents in and he’s just staring at her with nothing but love and warmth in his eyes, no anger or frustration, the setting sun painting his skin a brilliant gold and a small, soft smile on his face as if they’ve never fought a day in their lives and he’s still holding out the present-
