@viking-hel / viking-hel.tumblr.com
Welcome to my masterlist of ficlets and prompts! This will be updated every time I write a new one!
Update: 14th May 2024 - these will also be posted on my AO3 - same name - including some I forgot to put here lol.
Please note: I hate JKR, and I don’t endorse anything that woman says.
I can be trusted with photo mode
This is just davrin's phone gallery
God grant me the strength to write another 1000 words tonight
I honestly don’t get people who call book!Alicent an “evil stepmother” or a power hungry woman who ‘seduced’ V*serys and then tormented Rha*nyra for years.
There is literally nothing in F&B stating or even eluding to Alicent even wanting to be Queen or seducing Vis or even having an affair with him while Aemma was still alive (which is heralded as a mere rumor).
For all we know, book!Alicent may have been in the same situation as her show counterpart: a young girl forced to be married to the king despite not having any desire to do so. However, unlike her show counterpart, book!Alicent seemed to understand that it would strengthen her family’s status and at least made the best of her situation and embraced the power she had if she truly was forced to wed the king (again, nothing in the book stating so).
As for the whole “evil stepmother” stuff, all that’s said is that Alicent and Rha*nyra started off with a decent relationship before they grew apart because of their own personal ambitions, and most likely because both wanted to be in Vizzy’s favor due to the fact that both girls desired to be Queen.
Also people love to talk about how Alicent “tormented” her stepdaughter (despite having no evidence) and having beef with a child, meanwhile Rha*nyra openly mocked her siblings at court due to them being a threat to her claim and Da*mon was noticeably cold towards his nephews because they pushed him further down the line of succession.
Book!Alicent was literally just a normal medieval woman who wanted to protect her children and was a little bitchy. That’s it. Honestly, compared to the atrocities committed by characters such as Rha*nyra, Da*mon, Mys*ria, and others, she’s really not that bad.
God I wish elections in the fucking US wouldn’t affect literally every other country in the world
"I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone."
Worst thing dany did? I’m a little torn. My gut would have me jump to the execution of mmd but I’m not sold. I’m also tempted to consider her agreeing to take a cut of profits from slavery or agreeing to allow those people to be tortured. Other things she did wrong seem more like inexperience and things that were results of her imperfect but not wrong actions. Burning someone alive is pretty cruel, but dumping burning oil and tar is also something Jon and the other boys at the wall do, and I think Dany believed she might die in that fire as well—kind of like a moment of if I am wrong may I suffer the same fate moment. I guess her intent doesn’t really matter in the assessment but I think I’m a bit swayed by the fact that in that moment her world had fallen apart twice over and she also had suffered a miscarriage versus her comparative safety and stability when making seemingly cruel decisions in Meereen
Ya i go back and forth too.
The thing with Mirri is that Dany is well aware that what happens is not Mirri’s fault and that’s a bit of a pattern with Dany - she lets her anger run away with her & she does some heinous shit because of that. I don't think Mirri was purposefully trying to kill Drogo and Rhaego. They specifically don't listen to her advice-
His eyes were fixed on distant brown hills, the reins loose in his hands. Beneath his painted vest, a plaster of fig leaves and caked blue mud covered the wound on his breast. The herbwomen had made it for him. Mirri Maz Duur's poultice had itched and burned, and he had torn it off six days ago, cursing her for a maegi. The mud plaster was more soothing, and the herbwomen made him poppy wine as well. He'd been drinking it heavily these past three days; when it was not poppy wine, it was fermented mare's milk or pepper beer.
He takes her poultice off with his dirty hands and she puts a soothing - but likely not antibacterial - poultice on it instead.
Mirri Maz Duur studied Drogo, her face still and dead. "The wound has festered."
That's not a woman who is purposefully trying to get one over on Dany. That's a woman who is frustrated that her patient is not doing what she told him to do while her life hangs in the balance. Mirri warns Dany not to come in the tent, Jorah brings her in anyway, and Dany recognizes that this was Jorah's fault. The very first "if i look back I am lost" comes during this moment-
Ser Jorah had killed her son, Dany knew. He had done what he did for love and loyalty, yet he had carried her into a place no living man should go and fed her baby to the darkness. He knew it too; the grey face, the hollow eyes, the limp. "The shadows have touched you too, Ser Jorah," she told him. The knight made no reply. Dany turned to the godswife. "You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse." "No," Mirri Maz Duur said. "That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price." Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost.
This is why I think it's kinda crazy when people make her "if i look back i am lost" into some sort of powerful rallying cry of justice or feminism or whatever. It's a rationalization. Instead of confronting the fact that Drogo got himself killed and that Dany understood very well the consequences of the magic she asked MMD to do, she buries it, and burns Mirri alive. I get she just had a miscarriage. I get she's young and upset. But Mirri is nothing but good to her and dies for it.
That's why I tend to come at this as being her worst moment, even if it doesn't have quite the level of destruction as sacking Astapor or torturing the wineseller and his daughters. Those are like, colossaly bad decisions but they're ones she's making on a political level. This one is all personal and all the more cruel for it to me.
I think it's a common misconception that domesticating animals is somewhat like enslaving them. It really is more of a symbiotic relationship. No wild animal would have willingly put up with early humans if they didn't get something out of it. Wolves wouldn't have stayed with us and become dogs if they weren't getting food and safety out of it. Many large herbivores that are now domesticated could and would have easily trampled their early human captors or broken their enclosures open if they didn't have a reason to stay. Sometimes individual animals still do if we don't give them what they need.
The animals that have stayed with us for thousands of years have evolved to cooperate with us better. Dogs have additional facial muscles around their eyes that wolves lack in order to mimic human facial expressions. Sheep grow their wool perpetually while their wild counterparts don't because a bigger fleece means they're more likely to be allowed to breed and be kept around. Domestic dairy cows produce much more milk than wild bovine species and domestic hens lay more eggs. Do you know how energy costly producing eggs or milk is for an animal? It's pretty intense! They wouldn't be able to do that if we hadn't given them the food and safety from predators and the elements to.
And we really need to show these animals respect and gratitude for what they give us by taking excellent care of them. They gave up a lot to be with us, often including the means to take care of themselves in the wild. That's a huge reason why I'm not against using animal products, but I hate factory farming. They are still living, breathing creatures with needs and feelings. They deserve a comfortable life and, when the time comes, a humane death.
Fun fact! Not only is everything here correct, it's the reason we haven't domesticated bears!
This is a bit to the left of my area of expertise, so bear with me (heh), but there had been attempts to domesticate brown bears several times in human history! Vikings were the first ones we have records of (that I know of) and also in the Roman empire, India and even the Victorians. There were absolutely a few generations of tame brown bears, from pets to zoo performers to hunters and war bears. They did have a chance of being domesticated like the wolves had been.
And all of that effort? Resulted in jack shit. Level of domestication remained zero. The bears got out of that domestication experiment with zero genes altered. There is several reasons for that, one of which being that they live too long and don't breed as fast, and also they are very individual animals as opposed to wolves, so they don't play well in groups, which is kinda necessary.
But the biggest reason? BEARS DON'T NEED HUMANS. There is absolutely no point in a bear's life cycle where it's survival would be immensely impacted for the better by human intervention. They can hunt and forage on their own, no help necessary. They have no trouble surviving harsh climates, so human houses weren't a temptation. They're solitary, so they didn't seek out companionship when alone. They occupy a similar dietary niche as humans so were more competition for resources that an opportunity for mutualism. They certainly didn't need protection.
So even though humans (being human) tried to domesticate bears, bears weren't really playing ball with that. They were just fine on their own, and saw no sufficient incentive to change themselves to fit into a relationship with humans. Sure there are some weirdoes who got fairy-napped as cubs and are happy living with humans, but their genes aren't useful enough to bring into the pool. They saw what happened to the wolves who got too close to the human fire and missionaries are mauled on sight.
The bears are bears, and bears they will stay.
@mediterranean-ground-cuckoo you have activated a sleeper agent I didn't know I had in my brain.
Because it's kinda already happened, but not really? The thing about cheetahs is that they are very, very endangered, part of the reason being that cheetah cub mortality rate is something like 80%, which is abnormally high even for wild animals. Cheetahs don't make dens where they can stash their cubs, so they have to sort of drag them around with them and hope predators mistake them for a badger and don't attack them (cheetah cubs have very fluffy fur on top of them as camouflage).
Add in the fact that tjey're basically horse software running on cat hardware? These guys are an anxious wreck, every single one of them. And if left on their own they will absolutely form a positive feedback loop of scaring each other half to death and be too stressed to breed.
Enter wildlife conservation scientists.
These guys really want cheetahs to stay around, and stay wild animals. They are very fucking careful to let cheetahs be wild animals while making sure they don't perish entirely to enviroment, starvation and predation, and that they preferably breed.
Cheetahs see humans staying back and keeping a respectful distance but helping whenever they need it. Everyone who knows cats knows this is basically a marriage proposal done right.
So humans want cheetahs to be proper wild animals. Cheetahs have tried being wild animals and said 'Fuck that shit! That's hard! Come pet me and keep me safe!'
Add in the fact that cheetah gene pool is so fucking limited they can basically all be each other's organ donors, you also gotta bolster their diversity, preferably with healthy cheetahs from zoos, and those are so used to humans some of them will just come up to you and demand to be petted. If it's one of those that was raised with helper dogs? That's basically an oversized housecat, or at least it really wants you to think it is.
And there is also a historical precedent for this! Fucking pharaos kept cheetahs as pets, and if taken young they can be tamed in, like, a year. Tame cheetahs were noble gifts in the Ming dynasty. The Mughals used them as hunting animals (though it might have been carcals or leopards).
Quite frankly, the only reason cheetahs HADN'T been domesticated so far is because getting them to breed in captivity is real fucking hard, and consistent sucesses were achieved only in the seventies. The males need to have their bromance packs (pardon, coalitions) and females need to have a large area to roam. Kinda hard to arrange without a whole lot of land.
So this is, in fact, the exact reverse of bears.
I know that hard luck and trouble Is coming my way
Whitesnake: Is This Love
Is this love that I'm feeling? Is this the love that I've been searching for? Is this love or am I dreaming? This must be love 'Cause it's really got a hold on me A hold on me
Whitesnake: Fool for Your Loving
I'm so tired of trying I always end up crying Fool for your loving, no more I'll be a fool for your loving, no more
the deeper the love the stronger the emotion
