Feelings On Amma And How Desperate She Is For Affection? She Occupies My Brain Constantly But Im Not

Feelings on Amma and how desperate she is for affection? She occupies my brain constantly but I’m not smart enough to talk about her.

*Rubs hands together like an uggo little housefly* I have sooo many thoughts okay so Amma is an abused child whose choice of coping mechanism for said abuse is to try and make believe some sense of control over her situation by pretending that she is in a symbiotic rather than abusive relationship with her mother, that she and her mother have a mutual understanding whereby Adora gets to uhh umm straight up poison her, but in exchange must shower her with the love that Amma knows, deep down, isn’t really there. Amma wants this compensation for her suffering, and the only currency of any value to her is her mother’s love, and the only consolation she has is that she might someday get to be a beautiful, perfect ghost, like Marian. That maybe someday, Adora will kill her, and she will have secured herself the best case scenario for a women in Wind Gap, which is to be perceived forever as the feminine ideal without the possibility of disgrace always looming overhead (similar ideas of The Dead Girl being society’s underlying feminine ideal, the inevitable outcome of the expectations placed on women and girls, were also explored in Gone Girl). We see Amma’s relationship with both her mother and Alan reflected in her relationships with sex and boys, in that she lets older boys sexually abuse her and tells herself she’s the one using them, and that these transactions are just that, transactional, the only kind of love she knows, and the boys largely inconsequential. And her dollhouse, her fancy, needs to be an exact replica of her mother’s house because it allows her to exercise control over an environment she otherwise has no real control over. Adora striking up friendships with Ann and Natalie was a breach of contract that had to be rectified, and so when murdering Ann and Natalie only ends up elevating them to the lauded status of Dead Girl, and they receive more attention than ever, Amma is beyond furious, and receives Camille with some measure of warmth because she is primed to find a new mother if the old one can’t keep up her end of the bargain, though she can’t rule Camille out as competition. And while she most certainly felt antipathy toward her victims, her romanticization of death is what really enables her to kill without remorse. After all, what she wouldn’t have given to be Marian, loved by her mother, loved by everyone, forever, without ever having to bleed for it again. Because nobody in her life loved Amma enough to help her until Camille, and by then it was already too late. And she doesn’t stop killing even after she knows it won’t get her the outcome she wants, because she needs to feel it again, that power over another person, another child, another girl. Amma has never felt less like a helpless victim, less like those murdered girls, in her whole life. Which just makes the whole thing that much easier.

westerosi perfume culture thoughts based on medieval/early modern ^^

incense in septs to the point of both cat and sansa immediately thinking of the smell of it when thinking about the faith. this is fully a ‘the faith is just catholicism’ thing theres reference to a censer being used at tywin’s funeral, though this is also to cover the smell of the body - i believe its implied theyre using a lot more incense than they typically would and failing to overpower the rot smell

scented candles and incense are both used in septs and to scent rooms - scented candles higher-end, beeswax candles, which even unscented smell quite sweet and are quite expensive (they burn cleanly and don’t spit). animal fat tallow candles are much cheaper but perfume can’t stop rotting fat smelling of rotting fat it just combines with it. tallow tends to be used in poorer settings, for light not scent

scented beeswax candles used by tyrion and cat, and in the sept of baelor - imo v unlikely most smallfolk or smaller septs are buying them regularly, especially considering how many candles they need to keep lit. i’d say tallow 90% of the time beeswax on holy days

basically every noble in kings landing seems to wear perfume, ned specifically repulsed by the fact that robert now does which is crazy. whats roberts taste in perfume like

varys specifically is always described as perfumed, which is like. effeminacy due to eunuch status he leans into but also his ambiguous origin - while a lot of people in westeros wear perfume it seems to be significantly more popular in the free cities + beyond, vv frequently mentioned in dany chapters

perfumed and powdered often go together, varys and lysa off the top of my head - powders could also be scented, quite popular in france

multiple references to oldtown being heavily perfumed, dual reference to incense as a faith centre and worn perfume on a dowager, oldtown as a wealthy city and consumer centre

perfume also strongly associated with prostitution, an irony - septs and brothels often scented with incense, the ‘perfumed boy’ slaves victarion kills, satin wearing scent in his beard

popular scents rarely described in more detail than a type of flower or ‘sweet’ - most interesting perfume a westerosi lady wears is taena’s wildflower and musk, which cersei compares to the smell of moss

the tyrells seem to only wear rosewater this is pretty explicitly part of their branding as a house. even the blue bard a tyrell servant washes his hair with rosewater. most roses actually don’t distill well i’m assuming they have some westerosi equivalent to damask roses grown in bulk at highgarden or some other reach territory (probably at highgarden their scent in the gardens would be part of the tyrell image cultivation there. henry viii did this specific thing so you would smell his rose perfume in the gardens even when he was away from home which some historians have referred to as a ‘serve’) only like two varieties of rose work in perfuming. i’d also speculate that the roses margaery and her ladies brought to tywin’s funeral, if they were strong-smelling enough to cover the smell of an unnaturally rotting corpse, were probably roses scented with rosewater

perfume application on people typically oils, waters and more rarely waxes - multiple mentions of perfumed beards or hairstyles and waxes would be easier for that - perfume in baths common for the wealthy

no mention of scented accessories e.g. gloves or fans, though both immensely popular in elizabethan england - are there civet cats or equivalent in westeros? there are whales and thus presumably ambergris, taena’s perfume referred to as musky but unclear if this means it contains actual musk - animal perfumes are best for scenting leather, strong and waxy and other lighter scents can cling to them. dany wears scented silk clothes

tyrion associates worn perfume strongly with old whores, which suggests cheap perfume widely accessible, probably perfumer’s shops in major cities (notable bc otherwise we could conclude perfumers worked primarily for aristocratic patrons)

there are probably westerosi perfume-makers but its also likely theres a solid luxury import trade - dorne and the free cities both have established distinct perfume cultures and strong trade links with merchants

Broke: neil is sheltered baby who doesn't know media and is very confused all the time

Woke: neil actually is pretty well versed in media and slang all over Europe and America in order to blend in, lots of time in motels, cars with radios, and driving by movie theaters and listening to what kids his age talk about and their opinions to blend in.

Bespoke: Kevin is sheltered cult survivor who doesn't know media and is very confused all the time

theres no way gideon is a tank. i get that everyone at canaan house is impressed with her biceps but also theyre all either noodle armed necros or like rapier wielding cavaliers so. she might have way bigger biceps than them but thats really not saying much. she just trained with a heavier weapon. but theres no way malnourished, mushy gruel fed gideon had the opportunity to develop a huge amount of muscle mass. she can probably snap them all like twigs but SO COULD A GUST OF WIND

the House of the Sewn Tongue, the Jawless Skull of the Ninth House or Anastasia performing homebrew mandible surgery

I like theories that she had a sewn tongue after failed lyctorhood or the tomb

Idk how much is this possible but I wanted to draw this idea, let Anastasia spill the tea

and it's obvious that if the execution of his character was just a tinier bit worse, it would have been easier to equal him to a proper "big evil but a good dad" trope. like anyone outside of the fandom or with bad reading comprehension could just look at his actions towards gideon/kiriona on paper and go "but he's actually good? he's a good dad!"

i'm talking about this only because i don't want to even think about g/k feelings in this situation. like. he's the god. he's the emperor. he is also your depressed cringe dad who fucked admiral sarpedon. he gave you a new name that connects you to his roots and gave you his surname to show that you're family. one of the first thing you saw him do was murdering his lovers. he ordered one of his best friends to kill a girl you have a very important relationship with. he knows how you were conceived and didn't even try to kill you for that? he gave you everything you wanted before and it's rotten. he's not the best but he also is better than your mom who hated you and wanted to kill you and didn't see you as a child at all. like. where do you go from that especially if you are gideon who never had anything even resembling parental love before?

I will laugh so hard if it turns out that John is making a sincere effort at being a decent parent and it's such an awful outcome for Gideon that I feel like it's plausible. He's giving off such man who thinks of himself as a good guy confronted with oops baby vibes.