#claw marks

Everything I love, I know I'll lose. Everybody leaves, they always do.

#SUKUNA

get up, there’s a next round waiting for you 👀

Slightly more explicit ver under the cut vv

I can imagine that Anicia personality will be completely different for sure in Claw Marks since she is from that universe and a high born.

baelor in claw marks is pretty different from baelor in wide awake. not completely different, but i think they're shaped by very different points in his life.

in claw marks, it's before ashford meadow. it's before everything really changes. jena has been dead for years, but it's still fresh enough that it affects him. they weren't in love, but he respected her deeply, and he especially respects her memory for the sake of his sons. because of that, he's a lot more guarded when it comes to relationships. he's very restrained, very chivalrous, very duty, duty, duty. that's who he is. he'd sacrifice almost anything if he believed it was his duty.

whereas in wide awake, he's still restrained and just as duty-driven, but surviving his own death changes him. he's gone through something deeply traumatic, and now he's trying to recover from it. i think that makes him see life through a different lens. he'll actually talk about that later in the story [i swear i'm working on those chapters 😭] it's just that i've had, like, six-hour internet outages lately, and when the wi-fi does come back i'm either out or just living my life, so i don't always get the chance to update.

but yh, wide awake baelor is more... open minded, i guess. not in the sense of "i'm going to marry whoever i want" or "idc about my duties as hand or as a prince," because that's never going to be him. duty will prob always come first. but he's a little more willing to look beyond what he always thought was fixed. a little more easygoing, if that makes sense. i don't know if you guys read him that way, but that's definitely how i write the difference between the two versions.

he's also much more aware of the magical side of the world in wide awake. it's a much stronger fantasy story. he doesn't know that anicia comes from another world or that she saved him because of a pact and everything that comes with that, but those supernatural elements are actually real and woven into the story. in claw marks, on the other hand, anicia is simply from westeros. she's a stark from the north, and the story is much more grounded in that sense. so yh i find it really interesting to write both versions of him bc they're the same person, but shaped by completely different circumstances.

as for anicia, she’s pretty different too. i mean, a modern woman and an anicia who was born and raised in westeros are two completely different people.

first of all, they don’t have the same worldview. especially when it comes to class and hierarchy. as much as i love the starks, they’re still nobles. they’re privileged, even if they don’t necessarily realize it, because that’s just the world they grew up in.

the biggest thing modern anicia and westerosi anicia have in common is that feeling of alienation. northern women are different from southern ladies. the customs, expectations, religion, etiquette… everything is different. so she constantly feels like she’s out of place.

it’s kind of like sansa going south, except in reverse. sansa grew up dreaming about the south, but she still had catelyn, who was born a tully. catelyn knew southern customs, followed the faith of the seven.

anicia doesn’t really have that. whether it’s modern anicia or westerosi/stark! anicia, she’s coming from a culture that’s very different. the old gods are different from the faith of the seven, northern customs are different from southern ones, and she ends up feeling isolated because she’s constantly surrounded by people whose way of life doesn’t quite match her own.

and modern!anicia is different for another reason too. she wasn't raised with just one religion. her mom is catholic, her dad is muslim, so she grew up with a mix of both. she wasn't particularly strict in either, but she was exposed to both perspectives growing up.

you could argue that catholicism and the faith of the seven have some similarities on the surface, but to modern! anicia, the faith is still something completely alien. it's not just about the religion itself, it's about the society that comes with it.

she grew up in a country where people from different faiths, or no faith at all, could exist alongside each other. ofc there are still prejudices and discrimination, and not every religion is equally accepted, but people generally have the freedom to believe what they want. that's very different from westeros, where religion is deeply woven into politics, social expectations ++ everyday life.

so there are a lot of things about the faith of the seven and the customs surrounding it that make her uncomfortable. not necessarily because she thinks religion is bad, but because she's used to a much more pluralistic society where there's more room to choose how you practice your beliefs — or whether you practice them at all. that makes adapting to westeros a lot harder than people might expect.