❛ batmanlovesnirvana ❜ ⭑.ᐟ

I know you mentioned that Joanna has a Walkman with her, what music genres do you think the each character would be drawn to if they could hear our music as well?

thank u ! they truly are an interesting duo ;)

jo's walkman is basically a little time capsule of the 80s/90s 😭 she's a huge stevie nicks fan, so ofc edge of seventeen is on there. she's also got sexual healing by marvin gaye, do ya think i'm sexy? by rod stewart, plenty of michael jackson (obviously) and a lot of sade, prince, Fleetwood Mac ect

- daeron would def like don't dream it's over by crowded house & stayin alive by Bee Gees is a vibe for him too

- baelor: every breath you take by the police, human nature by mj , and secretly smooth operator by sade because he'd think her voice is incredibly soothing. oh and i think he’d like wham — everything she wants and some enya (carribean blue)

- maekar: he’d insist he hates all of it, that it sounds broken and barely even qualifies as music. then, somehow, he’d be caught absentmindedly vibing to smalltown boy by bronski beat, know the lyrics to billie jean and another one bites the dust, and his biggest guilty pleasure would absolutely be whitney houston. he’d deny it until the day he dies ofc

- aerion: 100% claims modern music is beneath him, but absolutely blasts do ya think i'm sexy? bc his ego would eat it up.

- egg: anything michael jackson. he'd be trying to moonwalk around the Red Keep five minutes after hearing beat it.

your latest chapter was delicious to read, it lightened my day when i first saw you updated. it was a bit of getting ready to leave ashford chapter, and also the odds (valyrian gods i suppose, very normal) creeping tf out of annie and then she’s back at ordering men to build something useful and eventually everyone’s just accepting it with less drama and fuss. she worked pretty hard to get this point. she’ll be really knocking your teeth out if you make her repeat shit and i think that’s quite realistic after spending horrible horrible days in ashford. (literally telling maekar off with no witnesses and i really liked the tiny imply that she talked like an older sister would scold her young brother brother, and actually she’s the eldest kid and she has a younger brother back at home?? you knew what you were doing ;))

i personally think there are many moments to pause and yap about but personally i really liked how maester yormwell and annie became thick as thieves after baelor literally came back from dead. like, he doesn’t play about her. actually, neither duncan or baelor as well. but not only they’re weird work-circumstances-and-execution-almost-happened-but-we-both-care-and-love-the-prince-so-we-need-to-work-this-out-buddies, but they seem to understand one and other in ways that other characters would probably not expect to.

i’m yapping about this because anicia is someone who cares about her patients but also tries to stay professional and sensible in the best way possible, and she comes to be stern and more than often scolds people for not being careful with hygiene or wounds, but she is probably one of the kindest people if we compare the chaotic gang in the ashford keep. also yes, she’s from the modern world and she knows enough to not just set things aside because it’s how it’s supposed to be (blood of the propaganda maekar feeds everyone 7/24, peasent-nobility hierarchy, people not even considering to question those who are ruling them for centuries, and it’s definitely frustrating for her to be the one with probably most common sense and emotional intelligence).

speaking of these matters, i don’t know if you’re actively or used to read baelor or maekar fics or the works of this era in general, but i kind of like your writing about maekar. i hope i don’t get jumped in here but in the character, he tends to be an ass more than often he’s needed. i am excited for his love interest, which i have someone in my mind but i’ll wait until we get there, but i like how you show his roughened edges without a fear. i’m deeply intrigued about him (just as i’m the same for everyone in daeron ii’s family tree of this period), especially with his flaws and post-rebellion shapes he probably hadn’t figured out how to handle with PTSD and nightmares and death of dyanna, so your characterization fills his natural cup very smoothly. i like it. (note: you usually say sometimes you think your writing on baelor worries you that it may be out of the character, but i think you manage his shape quite well the same!)

since both annie and baelor are already grown people with families, strong experiences in their fields, married people they weren’t really into and then became parents (goodbye rosie xoxo) and then divorced / widowed, had traumas, had regrets, became frustrated and probably sometimes helpless in their own lives are very important to me. i, personally, still try to figure out how i should capture the earlier reign of daeron ii and young baelor, raw and tended to have the softer skin for insults about his dornish looks, but in WIDE AWAKE both annie and baelor already went through much before they even met. i think this (also binding this with your choosing of a title haha, excellent) is kind of what hooked most people in the story. mature and slow-building love, not necessarily insisting on choices nor forcing the other one to open up about their pasts. it comes not easy but it comes to them. probably for the first time, for both of these hopeless idiots, and they don’t know what to do with it (rip both of them they would thrive with middle aged people falling in love in the movies). for the first time they fell in love and they fell HARD, like real down bad, so they made it everyone’s problem and it’s not even the king’s landing saga we have witnessed. just everyone confused, shocked, irritated (maekar, because he’s the youngest sibling), and then so invested in their relationships afterwards.

these kind of small moments usually have your book more polished even if the plotline manages to shine mostly.

i yapped a lot, sorry about that! <3 have a great day!!

[ i actually read quite a lot of fics, although it's been a while since i actively went looking for new akotsk ones. these days i'm mostly keeping up with the ones i already found, but a lot of them haven't updated in months 😭 i can't even complain tho, bc i know exactly how it is as a writer. sometimes you lose motivation, sometimes your hyperfixation moves on to something else, and sometimes... ur just lazy. we've all been there ]

maekar characterization / him and annie

one thing i've noticed tho, is that maekar is almost always portrayed as baelor's best friend and, by extension, the oc's biggest supporter. and i don't really see him that way.

first, i think a lot of ppl forget that maekar is canonically jealous of baelor. it's even implied that he uses his own sons to compete with baelor's eldest, so that rivalry is def there.

that doesn't mean he doesn't love baelor (he absolutely does) but their relationship isn't all sunshine and rainbows. they're still brothers, and siblings compete. i think maekar prob envied baelor a great deal because baelor was the golden prince: admired by everyone, beloved by the smallfolk, the perfect heir, mommy’s and daddy’s pride and joy. i wouldn't be surprised if, at some point, maekar had fantasised about what it would be like to be the heir instead of always being the spare.

but i also think all of that disappeared the moment he actually lost baelor. bc when the reality of it finally hit him, it wasn't a victory — it was a nightmare. it's almost as if he realised “if this is the price of becoming the heir, then i never wanted it in the first place”

now, it's not that i think he's cruel for the sake of it, far from it. but i do think ppl tend to soften him a little too much. even in canon, he's very practical, blunt & not especially interested in ppl outside of his immediate concerns. in akotsk for example, dunk mentions lord dondarrion and maekar basically has no idea who he's talking about, despite baelor having been married to a dondarrion. i don't even blame him for that, it actually feels very in character. why would he know every relative of his brother's wife?

that's why i've always imagined him as someone who isn't immediately warm toward an oc who’s Baelor love interest. especially if that oc isn't highborn. if she's a noble lady, he'll prob be respectful bc etiquette demands it, but he'll still be rough around the edges. if she's a commoner or a bastard? that's an entirely different story. maekar is still a targaryen prince raised in a deeply hierarchical society. i don't think he naturally sees everyone as his equal.

that's why i enjoy writing his dynamic with anicia sm. it's different from what i usually read. he's not needlessly cruel, and he has reasons for behaving the way he does, but he also goes too far at times and anicia calls him out on it. repeatedly.

if i'm being honest, she's far more patient than i would be because i would've marched straight to baelor and told him everything. but anicia is a doctor before anything else. she knows baelor needs peace of mind to recover, so she chooses to carry a lot of that burden herself instead of adding to his worries.

it's a miracle nobody has told baelor what happened yet. in my head, maekar made it very clear that no one was to tell him unless baelor explicitly demanded the truth himself. and if baelor did ask, his word would obviously outrank maekar's — he's the heir to the throne.

i'm so glad you caught that little hint about anicia and maekar's dynamic!! i know there are quite a few people who ship them & i get the appeal!!! but personally, i've never really seen them that way. maybe it's because i've been traumatised by all the baelor fics that make it a throuple with Maekar 😫

to me, their relationship has always leaned much more towards siblings. it's funny because anicia is actually younger than maekar (she's 30 while he's around 34/35) but emotionally she often slips into that "older sister" role with him, especially when she's calling him out on his nonsense.

that said, i always want readers to have the freedom to interpret the characters however they like. if you ship them, that's totally fine! maybe i'll accidentally feed you maekar/anicia crumbs in future chapters... or maybe i already have 👀

i just know that if annie were real, her second most popular ship would 100% be with maekar 😭 I can already picture the edits lol

as for where i'm actually taking things romantically for Maekar ... i have something very specific planned with another character. a few of you have already guessed it, while others haven't picked up on it yet. all i'll say is that the dynamic is going to have a bit of a jaime and brienne vibes and i'm ridiculously excited to get there!!

we've just got to survive months in king's landing and the spring sickness first... then we can finally dive into the arc i've been planning for ages. i genuinely can't wait 🙃

maester yormwell & Anicia

yes... yormwell & anicia are incredibly special to me <33 i've always written their relationship as smth almost parental. there's soooo much gentleness and quiet affection between them, so i'm really happy you're enjoying those moments. they make me think of Haymitch and Katniss !!

i have so many plans for yormwell!! i genuinely think he’s one of the characters i’m most excited to write because i have so many plot ideas for him. and look, i've always wanted anicia to have several father figures throughout the story, and yormwell is the first of them. their relationship means so much to me, and i think it's going to become one of the most important dynamics in the fic.

‼️ little spoiler... 👀 rn, i'm leaning towards yormwell being the first person to discover that anicia is actually from another world … or rather, the first person she chooses to tell. i'm still playing around with the idea, so it could change, but at the moment that's how i picture it. i just think there's smth really beautiful about him being the first person she trusts with the biggest secret she's ever had.

i def want to give him a bit more lore and a proper backstory bc well, he's kind of a blank slate. we know so little about him, which gives me a lot of room to build on his character.

he and anicia are also going to grow incredibly close. he's the one who'll start teaching her abt court politics, etiquette & how to survive in that world. there'll be someone else later on who helps her too, but in a much more maternal way... i'll keep that a secret for now.

yormwell & anicia are also going to become even closer during the Spring Sickness. they'll go through a lot together, and i think sharing something so devastating will naturally strengthen their bond.

baenicia

as for baelor and anicia… the whole idea started because i noticed so many baelor fics paired him with a cousin, a sister (😬), or another highborn lady. and i kept thinking… what if baelor fell in love with someone who had absolutely no place beside him? a commoner. someone whose very existence challenged everything he’d been taught about duty, class and marriage.

that immediately felt so much more interesting to me bc it creates conflict that's rooted in who baelor is. he's incredibly duty driven, and despite being one of the kindest targaryens, he's still a product of his upbringing. he has his own class biases that he has to unlearn.

i also never wanted anicia to be much younger than him. baelor has always struck me as someone who'd fall in love with an equal, not in terms of birth, but in terms of maturity and lived experience. someone who understands what it's like to carry impossible burdens. that's what draws him to anicia more than anything else. so like for perhaps the first time in his life, he meets someone who truly understands him in ways no one else can, and i think that's far more compelling than simple physical attraction 😎

but yh, you put it so beautifully overall, bc that's exactly how i see baelor. he's an incredibly restrained man. he's honest with anicia (we've already seen that when he admitted he'd been having rather sinful dreams about her) but he's also deeply disciplined. he doesn't act on every feeling he has.

i also think part of him has become a little... delusional, in a way 😭 now that anicia has been made a lady, he probably thinks, well, perhaps now i can actually court her and then marry her.

except it's not that simple.

anicia may have a title now, but she still doesn't bring the kind of political advantages a marriage to the heir is expected to provide. she doesn't come with armies, powerful alliances, or an influential family behind her. if baelor were simply a lord (or even a great lord like lyonel) this probably wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue….. but he isn't.

he's the prince of dragonstone, the Hand of the King, and the heir to the Iron Throne. every marriage he makes is expected to strengthen the realm politically, and the court will absolutely see it that way. so while baelor might believe making anicia a lady solves everything... he's about to realise it's far more complicated than that….

Was maekar watching when he daeron tried to offer her to ride on his horse?

yk that vibe of when you have to wake up early in the morning to transfer your packed luggage into the car for the roadtrip with the fam, the sky is dark blue as the sun is going up, your lowkey tired but your head is clear, the air is abit cold, anticipating a new change of enviournment while saying goodbye to your home

idk thats just how i imagine that scene when they were departing

i’m so glad!! sometimes i worry that people will get bored because i know a lot of you are here for the baelor and anicia moments ‼️

I meean she already did … ?

you have to remember that, atp in the story, anicia has largely adapted to the mindset of the world she's living in. that doesn't mean she's forgotten where she came from or suddenly agrees with everything around her. it means she's learned how to survive

after everything she's been through, her brain has shifted into survival mode. she's no longer in london, where she could call her mum, her cousins, or her friends after a man crossed a line, or vent online about it. none of those safety nets exist anymore. in westeros, drawing attention to yourself as a woman (especially someone in her position) can be genuinely dangerous :/

i think it's similar to how the brain sometimes suppresses traumatic memories to protect itself. in anicia's case, she's learned to register something as wrong, feel uncomfortable abt it, and then force herself to move on because dwelling on it isn't a luxury she can afford. if she questioned every sexist remark, every double standard or every red flag she encountered, she'd never get through the day…

that's why, when baelor says or does something we'd consider misogynistic or crosses a boundary, she doesn't immediately confront him or cut him out of her life. for example, when he insisted she drink even after she said she didn't want to, he absolutely crossed a line. she knows that. she doesn't like it. but she's also aware that she's living in a medieval feudal society, not modern!england. her priority isn't making a statement but staying alive

You said this to an early ask, was just asking if you might consider it later on or maybe as a subplot of WA because it is a really good idea🤔🤔

no, it'll be addressed in the next chapter!! for now, baelor believes all of his injuries came from the trial.

also, in my version, willem is prince maekar's kingsguard. that's just how i've always imagined it. roland and duskendale are baelor's — they're both assigned to him bc he's the heir and the Hand of the King. maekar, on the other hand, is only the fourth son so he doesn’t need that much “protection” (and is exactly the sort of person who insists he can defend himself)

him finally shutting the fuck up for once (for now at least).