Winchester Forever X

Winchester forever x

Why are you crying? Come, Give me your hand instead— promise again. To come in dreams. You and I Are like grief and the mountain, We will not meet in this world. But sometimes will you send across the stars A sign? 1946.“ — Anna Akhmatova, In a Dream, tr. by Lenore Mayhew & William McNaughton

The problem with Dean and Sam's relationship is that Wincest and gencest look identical for the winchester brothers.

Resurrection of Daenerys

4.14 (Script)

The Red Scrolls of Magic

Favorite Quotes

Chapter Thirteen: Dance Me to Your Beauty 🪩

Alec was very glad he was wearing a mask. He felt abandoned in hostile territory. Actually, he would much rather have been abandoned in hostile territory than left to stand around at a party.

He saw the boy texting, PARTIES WERE INVENTED TO ANNOY ME. THEY FEATURE MY LEST FAVORITE THING: PEOPLE, ALL INTENT ON MY LEAST FAVORITE ACTIVITY: SOCIAL INTERACTION.

“I don’t really like parties either,” Alec said sympathetically. “No hablo italiano,” the boy mumbled without looking up. “Er,” said Alec. “This conversation is happening in English.” “No hablo ingles,” he said without missing a beat. “Oh, come on. Really?” “Worth a shot,” said the boy.

“I get shy when there are strangers too,” Alec told the kid. “I’m not shy,” the boy sneered. “I just hate everyone around me and everything that is happening.”

“Can I have your autograph, Raphael?” asked the faerie lady. She produced a large, shiny green leaf and a quill. Raphael wrote LEAVE ME ALONE on the leaf. “I’ll cherish it,” said the faerie. She ran away clutching the leaf to her bosom. “Don’t,” Raphael yelled after her.

“Oh, right, you’re Magnus’s latest disaster,” she said. “That’s what Raphael calls you. I’m Lily.” She lifted her hand in a halfhearted wave. Alec glanced at Raphael, who arched his eyebrow at Alec in an unfriendly way. “Didn’t realize Raphael and I were on pet name terms,” said Alec.

“I’m just here to have a good time,” Alec added weakly. Disbelief flashed across Helen’s face. “In the subbasement of a former cult headquarters, during a Downworlder party full of miscreants, armed with a seraph blade?” “That isn’t your idea of a good time?” Alec asked.

The Clave should be set up to protect people like Magnus, not pose another threat to him. Alec had always believed in the Law, but if the Law didn’t shield Magnus, the Law should be changed.

Before he met Magnus, Alec was not sure he’d every really believed he could be entirely himself, and entirely happy. Then there was Magnus, and what had seemed impossible became possible. Seeing him was always a small shock, his face a glimpse of hope that everything might be all right.

Music and starshine filled the room, and Magnus shone brightest in all that bright company.

“This is DJ Bat, greatest werewolf DJ in the world, or at least in the top five, coming to you live from Venice because warlocks make irresponsible financial decisions, and this one is for the lovers! Or people with friends who will dance with them. Some of us are lonely jerks, and we’ll be doing shots at the bar.”

They were suddenly synchronized, gliding across the floor as gracefully as any other couple in the room, and all at once Alec knew how it was to really dance with someone—a thing Alec had never even known to want. He’d always assumed that storybook moments like these were meant for Jace, Isabelle, anyone but him. Yet here he was.

Maybe his life could be amazing. Maybe it always could have, and he’d needed Magnus to open the door and let him see all the wonders he held inside himself. All the capacity for joy.

Powers Greater Than Hatred

There are two passages that are often quoted of Daenerys from A Game of Thrones. The first, and most popular, are the final sentences in the novel.

As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.

It’s easy to see why these final lines are so often quoted within the fandom. They are poetically powerful; this is an impactful arrangement of words that have an emotional punch. The final chapter stands as some of George’s most poetic writing he has ever done. It is filled with mythology that has been lacking in the novel up to this point; for most of A Game of Thrones, the supernatural is related to long dead legends or psychedelic visions that make it hard to grasp exactly what they were meant to entail. The final chapter, the return of the dragons, turns the supernatural from vision quest into a tangible, real thing. And most importantly, this passage uplifts the book; it showcases that there is a reason to hope, that the dark turn after Eddard Stark’s execution is not what the series is about. Instead of leaving on a melancholic note, the novel ends with hope and wonder for what the future will bring.

I am not going to talk about that passage today. I want to talk about the second passage, one that I feel speaks much more closely to the themes that George is trying to hit with the series. This is from one of the final paragraphs of Daenerys IX, in the moments that build up to when Daenerys must euthanize Khal Drogo. Even when Daenerys is so full of despair, George still give us reason to hold onto hope:

She told herself that there were powers stronger than hatred, and spells older and truer than any the maegi had learned in Asshai.

The second half of the passage is directly rooted in the emotional context of the scene. Mirri Mazz Dur had used shadow magic to both rob Khal Drogo of all sentience and intelligence, as well as killing Daenerys’ son Rhaego in the womb. Most of Khal Drogo’s khalatar, his army of warriors that was the mightiest and largest in all of Dothraki recent history, had splintered and broken apart under a dozen different warlords. Daenerys is lost and alone for allies save for the exiled Westerosi knight Jorah Mormont, who has his own selfish wants in staying close to her. 

It is the first half that George establishes an important thread that he weaves throughout the series. Evil has its limits. Hatred, corruption, all of the sins of the world, there is a point where they are undone. This theme is manifested in the fourth book of the series, A Feast for Crows. Tywin Lannister has been murdered by the son he has abused for all of his life, and the Lannister regime that he betrayed and murdered to build is falling apart. The book is not just a reference to all those that have died over the course of The War of the Five Kings, but to the Lannisters. House Lannister itself is the feast for crows. It is a tower of dominos and it has started to crumble. All of the petty evils of that house is finally crashing down. Evil has limits. Evil is undone. There are powers greater than hatred. 

Paint that contrast with the Starks and the Targaryens. The swords of the North are riding to rescue “Ned’s precious little girl”. They don’t know that the little girl is not Arya Stark but Jeyne Poole who has been forced to masquerade as her to preserve her life, but that doesn’t matter. The fact that the Northern lords, even after being decimated at the Red Wedding, even after being forced to submit, will ride and fight and die in memory of Eddard Stark, that matters. Even after Daenerys flies away from Meereen on Drogon, her people are fighting against the masters in her name. It matters that they believe in her cause. It matters that the freemen will fight and die to make sure their children will never know what it means to be a slave. 

A Song of Ice and Fire is often painted as a cynical, bitter response to fantasy. It is the forefather of the grimdark subgenre. That is an erroneous attribution. The books remind us that there are powers stronger than hatred. Of course there are scenes that have grit to it, and it can be bitter at times, but the saga is never cynical. It doesn’t say that there is no meaning to the good fight.

If watching the fall of House Lannister should say anything, it would be that evil will always devour itself in time, and eventually, good and decent people will pick up the pieces.