rodo | Entries tagged with fandom: game of thrones

Title: A Certain Silent Suffering
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Author:

rodo
Length: 4414 words
Rating: 6+
Genre: missing scene, 5+1, pining
Pairing: Podrick Payne/Sansa Stark
Disclaimer: GOT belongs to HBO, of course
Beta: sunlightstars

Summary: Five times Podrick Payne mooned after Sansa Stark and one time she acknowledged it.

( Squiring for Lord Tyrion wasn’t that bad. )

Title: Dungeons & Discourse
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Author:

rodo
Length: 1384 words
Rating: 12+
Genre: missing scene, friendship
Characters: Jon Snow, Samwell Tarly
Warnings/Labels: depiction of depression
Disclaimer: GOT belongs to HBO, of course
Beta: sunlightstars

Summary: Shortly before the decision about his ultimate fate is made, Jon gets a visit from Sam in his cell.

( If one thought about it, it was no wonder that the dungeons of the Red Keep had survived the fire of a dragon. Well, parts of them had. )

Sometimes, several creators working on the same thing and having nifty ideas means that these ideas interact with each other in even more interesting ways. This is the case when it comes to “Valar morghūlis”, the one bit of High Valyrian every Game of Thrones fan knows. It is also one of the few bits of High Valyrian that were created by GRRM, and thus one of the bits that David Peterson based his conlang on. And in creating his conlang, he put “Valar morghūlis” in a different light.

Originally, all we knew about the sentence was that “Valar morghulis” (spelled without a macron in GRRM’s books) means “All men must die”. An easy enough sentence with an easy enough meaning. After all, everyone dies eventually. When David Peterson created the grammar behind this sentence, he created the word “vala” and the word “morghūljagon”. “Man” and “to die”. “Valar” is the word “man” but in a different grammatical number – collective, a number English doesn’t have (it is restricted to singular and plural). “All men”, to make it clearer in the translation, although “Man must die” would work in English just as well. “Morghūlis” is the third person singular aorist – a tense English doesn’t have. In essence, it is used here to make statements that are unquestionably true. “All men die” would be an adequate translation as well. The “must” is added for emphasis, in this case.

( Where it gets interesting... )

Final Notes:

Preface | Phonograms | Declination | Conjugation | Logograms | Ligatures | Final Notes

Final Notes:

So far, so complicated, and I haven’t even started to get into the minutiae and all the exceptions to the rules. One thing I had in mind when I worked on this was Tyrion Lannister, who does his very best in the series but who struggles with Valyrian. A lot. I figure a writing system that is not very phonetic and which doesn’t rely on you being able to conjugate to understand a written sentence might explain that. He’s probably doing alright when all he has to do is read a text.

As I have hopefully made clear, there are several ways to write High Valyrian, and even single High Valyrian words, and a combination of all these systems is often used. In general, it is preferred to write as much in logograms as possible. One context where it’s generally accepted to use phonograms are personal and family names. This is partially for emphasis, partially due to many names not being Valyrian in origin.

hv nyke

This sentence is “Nyke Daenerys Jelmāzmo hen Targārio Lentrot” – “I [am] Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen”. “Daenerys” and “Targārien” are written in phonemes. “Jelmāzma” is written with a ligature after the word “jelmio”, and “hen” is written with a ligature. In addition to that, we see some case markers, although theoretically it would be possible to leave them off, provided “-āzmo” and “Targārio” were written phonetically to convey their case. Overall, there isn’t really a “right” way to write, much like there wasn’t before our languages were standardized.

I’ve actually got most of the words from Dothraki Wiki figured out, and an idea for a more aesthetically pleasing “font”, so to speak, for the phonograms, at least. If there’s any interest in it, I could post about the origins of the phonograms as well, or anything else you might want to know. Just let me know! Until then, valar morghūlis!

hv valar morghuulis

Valyrio Bardion^[1]

Preface:

First off, I am not a linguist. So take everything I do here with a grain of salt. Moreover, I’m not used to talking about this topic in English either. But still, ever since I read that dedalvs never got around to creating a writing system for High Valyrian, I wished there was one, and finally, I decided to try to create one myself, just for the fun of it. It is obviously flawed and not what dedalvs had in mind, which was a writing system based on hieroglyphs.^[2] Instead, the writing system I decided to create has more in common with Japanese. It has logograms, but also phonograms derived from them (as well as some ligatures). Since the grammar is somewhat complex, I also added symbols with varying pronunciations that represent the grammatical context of a word – for example a symbol that indicates that the logogram is supposed to be read in a certain case.

Some other quick notes: the writing system I developed does not have some of the characteristics we are used to from modern writing systems – there are no spaces between words, no punctuation marks and there is no set direction. It can be written left-to-right, right-to-left, top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top, whichever is most useful in a given situation. For simplicity’s sake, I will stick to left-to-right with my examples.

Also, don’t mind my terrible handwriting. I have yet to find a writing system I don’t produce chicken scratch in, and apparently I can’t even come up with one on my own.

Preface | Phonograms | Declination | Conjugation | Logograms | Ligatures | Final Notes

^[1] “Bardion” is not a canonical High Valyrian term. It’s a word I created myself using “bard-”, which is the root of the words “bardugon” (to write) and “bardun” (grammar), and combining it with “-ion”, a derivational affix that is sometimes used to substantivize verbs.

^[2] http://dothraki.com/2013/04/tikuni-zobri-udra-zobriar/#comment-1086

A/N: A good long while ago, someone on fail_fandomanon mentioned being interested in the parallels between Stannis and Daenerys and I ended up writing this. A recent comment reminded me of it and so I decided to post it.

Two Sides of the Same Dragon – Parallels Between Daenerys Targaryen and Stannis Baratheon

If there is one thing Game of Thrones has in spades, it’s monarchs, especially if you consider the ones we only know of as backstory to the main event. There are good kings, bad kings, drunken kings, lecherous kings, tragic kings and mad kings. There is no kind of king that Westeros and Essos haven’t seen at this point, yet it is quite interesting what an assortment we do see on screen. There is a mad king (Aerys), whose reign leads to the reign of an ineffectual and bad king (Robert). Robert’s reign, on the other hand, leads to a whole gaggle of king and queens fighting over the Seven Kingdoms. We have Renly, who doesn’t have the right but thinks he would be a better king than either of his brothers, who is kind but also shrewd, and an administrator more than a warrior. We have Joffrey, who is as mad and bad a king as Aerys. We have Tommen, who is like Robert, easily manipulated by his family, but kinder than his putative father. And we have Balon Greyjoy and Robb Stark, both of whom fight for independence for their people, and in part for their way of life.

In all these, we have some obvious parallels: Joffrey is Aerys reborn, from the family history of incest to his cruel streak. Tommen on the other hand is more like Robert, if he had been a better person. And Balon and Robb are two sides of the same coin. Renly and Cersei both claim the crown without having a right to it, strictly speaking, but think themselves more suited to the job than anybody else. Which leaves us with Stannis and Daenerys, two people who couldn’t be more different at first glance. Stannis is not charismatic, while Daenerys bewitches the people with her personality as much as her dragons scare them. Daenerys is young and supernaturally attractive. Stannis is balding. Stannis is considered the safe choice by the Iron Bank, since he’s reliable in a way the other monarchs aren’t. Daenerys is a wild card who upsets the status quo. And yet I’m going to argue why those difference only serve to highlight their similarities even more.

( Both Stannis and Daenerys have spent most of their lives in the shadow of their elder siblings and were deeply shaped by that experience. )