The Only Reason Jon Views Catelyn As A Mother Figure/maternal Figure Is Because Ned Neglected Him Enough

ok I knew Jaskier was a master of the seven liberal arts but I had no idea what they actually were until I looked them up and wouldn’t u know it, astronomy is one of them, which encompasses navigation, mathematics and actual physics. Now I’m laughing at this thought:

Some mage who Geralt got hired to kill a monster or smth for idk: damn this equation I’m doing for a spell isn’t working

Jaskier, a bard who the mage saw being yelled at by Geralt earlier because he tried to fuck the Lord’s son and nearly succeeded: that’s because you’re doing it wrong lol

Mage: you are literally a bard wdym

Jaskier, a bard who has the equivalent of a physics masters degree: yeah and

any time someone says "you really think they'd make mike lie in his speech to eleven? how are they going to address that in season five then? 🙄" i have to laugh. as if the villain of this story isn't someone that literally and specifically targets people who feel shame and guilt and lie LMAO

Currently obsessed with the idea of a Jaskier’s-immortal, it’s-modern-times-now AU where some of Jaskier’s songs have survived to the modern day. They’re not like, widely sung or anything, but people know they exist. Most of them survived as scribbled lyrics but in one or two cases the music survived as well. Those get sung at ren faires by the REALLY dedicated people.

And like, some of them are barely even the same songs anymore- verses got added and changed and lost over the years, somebody added a The Moral of This Story Is verse to “Toss a Coin” like a century after Jaskier wrote it and to the horror of everyone involved, it stuck, the second verse of “Her Sweet Kiss” got lost to time aside from the first line, so everybody knows it’s supposed to be there but nobody knows what it was-

The academic debates surrounding these songs are furious and intense. People kinda know who Jaskier was, in the sense of “we know there was a bard, at about this time, named Jaskier. We know when he was born, he flits in and out of the historical record for close to a century, and we can attribute these seven songs to him.” But then you’ve got the people saying “these songs are autobiographical and we can work out the details of his life from them” vs. camp “he was clearly just making shit up,” you’ve got Shakespeare-style authorship debates (”these other ten songs were also his!” “this song is weird and bad so clearly he didn’t write it!” “this song is weird and bad and that’s probably because it’s the earliest song we have from him!” “Jaskier didn’t write his own music!”), you’ve got some historians who study witchers very politely asking if they can play with the songs for a minute-

So. Many. Theses. Have been written about “Her Sweet Kiss,” with subjects ranging from “how many people is this song about, actually? Two? three? four?” to “who were these people to each other” to “can we pin down specific historical figures for these people” 

Meanwhile Jaskier’s a super obscure indie musician who occasionally tweets things like “The subject of whether or not I am gay is the subject of much scholarly debate. This isn’t just invasive, it’s stupid, if you’ve heard any of my songs you know I’m bi” and has REALLY STRONG OPINIONS on what those obscure, seven-century old ballads are about.

He sings “Her Sweet Kiss” at some open mic night and everybody’s like “Oh, that’s cool, you made up a second verse” while he grumbles under his breath that he made up the first verse, too, but nobody ever gives him credit for it these days

Thinking about it, I’m pretty sure my ancestors would be horrified with me.

Not because I’m lazy or unworthy or anything like that…

…but because one of my distant uncles was among the eight survivors of the Essex, the ship that inspired the ending of Moby Dick and sank after being rammed by a whale, and what do I fuckin do after my bloodline has this Ordeal at Sea?

I get a fuckin degree in Marine Science and go back the fuck out there.

Mad Men doesn't have a significant fandom because aside from the period setting there is almost nothing fantastical about it. No action, limited violence, mystery mostly cleared up within the first season, no overarching love story you're pushed to root for, the rich people use their money to live comfortable, pretty unremarkable lives, most of the action takes place inside on sets we're familiar with. So then what you're left with is the nuance of reality which uh, people don't like, especially when it results in them relating to people they saw do bad things. Obviously in fandom villains and antiheroes are often glorified (and/or blorbofied) but that usually comes with some trappings of separation from our reality.

People wonder why Mad Men never got the treatment Succession is getting. Ostensibly they're extremely similar, but Succession and its constantly changing scenery and helicopters and ease of access to influence over politics are much, much farther away to us than the time period of our parents and grandparents and the people who are our parents and grandparents. When you look at the way people talk about Mad Men characters, they are very afraid to come right out and say they like them. There's usually a justification and disclaimer coming with it that no one feels the need to apply to their enthusiastic comparisons of Tom Wambsgans to Princess Diana. People are afraid that if they just say they love Pete that denotes condoning his actions whereas it's implied you don't condone anything bad the Roy siblings do. And this is not a Pete defense post but he's outspokenly liberal and means it, yet people stay terrified of identifying with him because that might mean they're also capable of hurting people they care about in the fruitless search for finally getting something they really want, all at once. Identifying with the Roys mainly involves sympathizing with their reactions to things that have been done to them while eschewing thoughts of the harm they inflict, because they inflict harm on a scale you could never actually achieve.

As an aside I also think those of us that love Mad Men enough to rewatch and rewatch get hooked on it from the humor which is simply not going to hit for the average viewer, as harsh as that is to say. How often do you hear people who watched it as part of their golden age of television curriculum mention that it's funny? Usually doesn't come up

lots of artists can fill their work with aching homosexual tension, but no one else can make the impending sodomy look quite as classy and exquisitely dressed as Leyendecker can. God bless you, sir.

When I was a kid, I thought those pillars went down to the sea floor.

In reality, they usually go down to some large submerged floats.

I’m crying like a baby

mike (on his own):

the party (as a unit, but without mike):

the contrast always gets me. how did they expect to clear eddie's name if they didn't even stand up for him to the police that would have to decide he's innocent. they don't have to say they're helping him and risk getting him caught, but the whole town knows that dustin and lucas are his friends at this point. it makes complete sense for them to not believe he's behind the murders. mike would've made it crystal clear how idiotic they are for believing eddie's responsible