I really enjoy neurodivergent readings of classic literature because the whole "i have an obsession with being pure/great/always seen as morally good" "sometimes I get obsessed with an idea and believe I'm on the right path and don't act rationally" "i feel uneasy and incapable of enjoying things since [traumatic event(s)]" "I feel alienated from society and don't understand it at all" bunch of thoughts that are very present in most classics are almost always big symptoms of some kind of mental illness (which, in fact, does add a lot to the story) and I love to see people talk about them from that perspective instead of just "lol this guy is whiny and dumb"
love how fucked up the ned/robert dynamic is. they grew up together and got attached because they both have brothers they aren’t close to and replace with one another despite the jarring similarities (brandon and stannis). ned loving robert despite the atrocities he committed and the ones he refused to condemn, hiding himself in the north so he doesn’t have to be faced with how much of a monster his friend actually is and feeding that lie to his children. robert forcing ned to come south with him and run his kingdom all under the premise they were always meant to rule together (they were full on married for the entirety of agot tbh). robert projecting how much he wanted to be with ned onto lyanna. robert loving ned arguably more than anyone else in his life and despite all that he refuses to respect his boundaries and wishes. their entire agot relationship is held together by nostalgia and like 20 layers of traumabonding that neither would ever work through. ned getting himself killed because he loved robert too much. god what the fuck is wrong with those two.
I love that the Prince that was Promised prophecy involves a mistranslation. Of course it could also be a princess--gender is only of the most inconsistent grammatical rules across language boundaries.
It seems all gruff and barbaric likewise that the Dothraki language has no word for 'thank you,' but why would it? The major plot point involving Dothraki culture is that gifts are given and repaid in their own time. If you pass someone horsemeat around the campfire, the action is not complete until they hand you fermented mare's milk a week later. Perhaps then you then say some polite phrase which we do not see and which does not translate into English, indicating the debt has been resolved. Language both forms and is formed by the society in which it lives.
Here's a question: when the characters in Westeros see 'lion lizards' and 'spicy peppers stuffed with cheese,' what are they describing? Unsurprisingly lion-lizards, the predatory, reptilian, swamp-dwelling sigil of house Reed, seem to be alligators, which get their English name from the Spanish for 'the lizard.' Peppers stuffed with cheese are just what they sound like, though in English we call them chiles rellenos, a name borrowed from Spanish. As the Spanish language has no presence and no analogue in ASoIaF, Westeros has to describe these concept using its own words and its own concepts.
Now imagine we have a character whose name is a common noun, being discussed with someone who does not speak the language that noun exists in. The name might be shared phonetically, or it might be translated to the new language--especially if, say, the communication happens more on the level of concepts than on the level of words. For a name like Bloodraven this is easy enough. All languages have a word for blood, and all have a word for shiny black corvids, although they may or may not distinguish them from crows. But what about a name that's a little more specific? A culture that's extremely tree-focused have a word for every part of a tree, for example, and they may have a name for every part of every type of tree. But when translating a name meaning 'two month old bud on the upper branch of a weirwood' into the Common Tongue, for example, perhaps the best translation they could come up with would just be Leaf.
Bran is another example. Someone from the North would know it's a nickname of Brandon. Someone without that context might assume it refers to the edible husk removed from grain. And finally, someone whose culture eats a grain without a husk that needs removing might understand Bran's name as simply "Corn! Corn! Corn!"
Hazel, while Bigwig is infiltrating Efrafa: I miss having Bigwig here.
Blackberry: He’s been gone for literally three minutes.
this was too violent for tiktok lol
the boys x my chemical romance
yes i know the baratheon brothers are all representations of the different types of toxic masculinity. im still doing fuck marry kill with them