searching, but not very hard

whatever au where ned survives king's landing would automatically make him the GOAT. not because he survived king's landing and the fall of robert's reign so much as because winter IS coming. winter is here. the undead are rising in masse and their overlords want to devour the world, and lord stark and the wolf-headed cane catelyn orders for him are ON IT. forget king of the north, he's taking his forces and staying in the north. lord stark is traumatized and guilty about not going to stannis' aid and extremely stressed, but the level of quiet, grim satisfaction and sense of purpose the others being a thing would bring him? unmatched. winter IS coming!! the lannistes' game of thrones is less than anything in the face of that. lord commander mormont is getting funds he didn't even think to request. that castle black spreadsheet inventory game is about to go on a whole other level now that lord stark is investing. and lord stark is invested. lord stark's last and youngest sibling has been eaten by the encroaching night and his king and friend is dead and he is dealing with this by making a whole bunch of people pissed off about his new policy for urgent apocalypse taxes. he's got the greatjon hugely pissed off about the wildlings but then he is also psyched against fighting against the end of the world so it evens out. the manderleys got a green light to build a flotilla against hypothetical zombies that might or might not freeze the sea, and they smile and bow and say that they are happy to do it but they do need some logistical help, and this is how catelyn stark negotiates the great riverlands-northern maritime treaty. ned is so down bad for her. ned is living vertiginously and his sleep his terrible and the chronic pain is terrible but he is so down bad for her. it's catelyn's idea to send karstark and his sons to negotiate with the iron islands. it's catelyn who writes the replies to stannis and her sister and her father and who mentions the idea of robb marrying shireen and shireen's beautiful dowry of dragonglass. but all the same, lord stark is not waiting for orders from his unlikable king. what he is doing is sending roose bolton to the wall to man empty keeps and have fun torturing wights in productive fashion. bolton is locked in, sure, but lord stark is the most locked in anyone has ever been. he is aura farming at mac capacity. at night he curls up around catelyn and buries his face in her hair while she strokes his neck. the sex has never been better. catelyn and him show up to meet with mance ryder and val and the sexual tension is palpable. songs will be sung about the foursome-that-never-was and the wildling truce. meanwhile jon snow is fielding nepo favoritism accusations and catching a thousand stray bullets but then what's new.

au where we have greta gerwig's penelopiad as the 250$ IMAX blockbuster of the summer. sit on that.

i do like the idea of grace not aging. not changing. the biodome has some weird relativity science going on. a bit of an unorthodox choice, to have it running on anthrophage energy, but that's the only way to make his human gravity working. don't worry about it. his classes of students grow older but honestly it's hard to tell at first, eridians aging as they do. his first class have their thicker carapaces and star producing adult pitches beyond his hearing, and grace of course is sentimental about it, but it's only sometimes that he thinks about how he never expected to live this long, despite all the work being put into to keep him alive by teams of engineers and teams doctors and rocky, who counts as a whole team by himself. all the while grace's body is falling apart much less than expected honestly. it's a sort of controlled situation and it keeps on being controlled. don't worry about it. he's been thinking about going back to earth for a good long while now but rocky says he can think about it however long he wants. grace rocky save stars, grace rocky friends forever regardless. forever and ever! and is that so bad? one of these days grace really has to ask rocky how the climate controls of his habitat really work. but it's not like there's any hurry. he can think about it for however long he needs.