Revisiting Daenerys Chapters

i think the apples rotten right to the core

Tomes & Tea | 22-05-2022

Cast out from home, sixteen and pregnant, Catherine Goggin boards the bus to Dublin to start afresh. Once there, she has no choice but to believe that the nun to whom she entrusts her child will find him a better life.

i am sooo normal about criston's loyalty to the greens haha i swear

I think I've figured it out 😅

genuinely do think house hightower is cooler and more interesting than the targaryens, like dont get me wrong i like both but the hightowers take it. easily. their shadowy history of alchemy and necromancy, patronage of westeros' cultural and religious institutions, and big fuckass taller-than-the-wall lighthouse has bewitched me body and soul. dragons, blood magic, and a destabilising obsession with incest is all well and good - but institutional corruption and the delicate mastery of soft power? just too tasty. been on the wrong side of several wars and never lost a head or a penny from their main line because they know how to play the game. one of the richest houses in westeros and they know how to do it right ! funding the arts, sciences, faith. controlling the narrative. every message goes through the maesters, them and septas tutoring little lords and ladies, all roads lead to oldtown, and thats just how its done why would you even question it. how could you question it. and all the while the lord of the hightower sits up in the clouds in a tower built atop an unsettling ancient labyrinth of black stone, burning a flame that can be seen for miles, lighting the city every night. like good luck getting away with shit when theres no shadowy corners to hide in. the metaphor isnt subtle. every other house would wish they were the hightowers if they could conceptualise the higher plane this familys operating on.

i do wanna say how it's interesting that aegon killing the ratcatchers is addressed as a thing that hurts their cause but rhaenys killing a bunch of smallfolk isn't. interesting indeed.

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Chaoyang Trap | Substack

A regular exploration of contemporary China, one important niche at a time. Click to read Chaoyang Trap, a Substack publication with thousan

~From the article~

Nísù (泥塑): an online subculture of female fans fantasizing about male celebrities being female, often in the role of a lover, a sister, a daughter, or even a stepmom. 

Literal translation is "clay sculpture." 泥 Ní is clay (n.) and 塑 sù is to mould (v.).

Sū (苏): originally a Chinese shorthand for “Mary Sue” (玛丽苏), a fan-fic trope of idealized self-depiction.

Nísù, then, is a homophone of 逆苏 (“reverse-su”) and it is the gender of the celebrities/fictional characters that is reversed here.

~Extra~

Xiǎo xiān ròu (小鲜肉): teen male idol

Nì (逆): inverse (adj.)

~Fav quote~

“If in nisu, you are slut-shamed, impregnated, humiliated, pursued, hurt in the name of love, it is not because I hate you—it is because I hate myself. I give you all the suffering and passion my gender has endured. I live and die with you. And in the ashes of our shared fate, there is just me, you, and our humanity.” - 白媚娘bfk

from all the things passed down from all the apples coming before