Accutane and percent of people with bowel issues

I personally have issues with "true repentance" (making a solid commitment + deciding to avoid grieving the holy spirit due to godly sorrow) and wonder about people who don't experience remorse at all, like people with ASPD. It's my understanding that the only prayer God hears from the wicked is a prayer of true repentance, so if a person is not truly repentant, can salvation be achieved, and if so, how?

28th December 1963;

Fort William, SCS;

“What in the actual fuck have you done? I’ve been sorting out papers for compensation to farmers for the ComCar’s technological demonstrations, and you’ve come out all red-faced with a box in your hand? Have you just been fired?!”
Gatley now stood face-to-face with a blushing Jarno Laymuse, as he sheepishly stood by Gatley’s desk, the senior civil servant blocking his path to the private office of the Member for the Interior. The cold drafts through the office had made a mockery of Laymuse already this winter - his office had a window that had to be set ajar each early-morning just to let some air into that hole in the department. Rugs, cardigans, and even a portable heater could not override the fact that the room was not linked to the office’s heating systems, and so lacked the same warmth that Gatley and the rest felt. Normally, Laymuse would just use a meeting room, and retreat to his office in the case that he had to take an important phone call or handle secure (or Monde Suffit) matters. However, the event that had arisen had made that office a bunker of safety.
“Well… WELL… I have to ask you about your work first… come on, it’s… important and I’m going to have to hear it sooner… or later. Before you… ask, I’ve still got my job.” He was even more clearly out of breath.
“Okay then, I shall do as my own boss says. ComCar wants to requisition a fair number of farmers’ fields across the lake in UP. Apparently we need to adequately compensate for them, as we’re funding the jet program they’re doing, and they needed an isolated, flat area without much in the way of people. Turbojets are pretty cool - pretty damn noisy though - so we’ve allowed the project ahead, but it’s still a joke what they want down there.”
“Go… on, tell me… what are we… doing for it. I’ll sign it off now if… you want to… let me get my breath first.” A capitulatory mood was what Gatley saw, and the usually-intense Member was in no rush anymore. Jarno was calming, but the blushing remained, so it wasn’t the running that caused the ruddiness.
“We’re upgrading their equipment, government-scheme, and putting more research into the universities in order to improve agricultural growth. Still, I reckon that we’re being a bit too generous, but once the plans leaked to the press, it was all over. They heard on the radio what our easiest demands were, and leapt onto it. Said they want easier connection to Wisconsin to sell their food, so I’ll contact Hoult soon to get that across. Now,” asked Gatley quite firmly, “can you tell me what has gone on. Is it Monde Suffit-related.”
Expectantly, Jarno replied “Yes,” but added on “and no also,” then looked around the room, and beckoned Gatley over. “Somewhere safer please.”
“Well, your meeting room certainly is draughty. Do you want me to get an excluder? They’re a nice fox-shaped one in the hall that we’d be fine to requisition.”
“It’s… fine, Andrew. It’s all fine. I have only one thing to tell you.”
“Spill it, the door’s now closed. We’re safe in here.”
“Okay then - picture this. It is the New Year’s meeting for the Liberal-Labour, and we have wished each other well, and we’re giving each other gifts for New Years’ Day. I gave some cards and pretty exotic spices - cajun apparently - to a few people, and then an old, vintage compass to Liukkonen, since he’s got those spices already. We were all making merry, and then came the question of what to do with all that’s gone wrong. Matias said to investigate the issues carefully to overturn every last stone, then got laughed at. He stated more, about the fact that the party really hasn’t fed into the Liberal side, what with the more closed in economics of the chains, then wondered whether they could be cause of such unrest, because things breaking means people buying.”
“And then you stepped in and concurred,” questioned Gatley, intent on hearing the end.
“I did not, but Nixon did instead. Talked a bit about Matias having a Finnish mindset, said that I’d said a few things like that too, but less so because I was mostly Canadian now. Didn’t know how to feel, so left it alone, but then there was a bit of a shouting match between Matias and Ed. The latter was a bit drunk, talked rubbish about commitment, and was commended by Nixon for that. The thrilling conclusion is that Liukkonen declared himself and me to be quite separate now, to keep our ‘Finnish Mindset’ to our side of the camp. George wasn’t too unhappy, but wanted us to keep with him for the moment, since he’d reckon we’d like the IUP less, and I’d agree honestly. George requested it be called the Investigatory Wing and for his other side to be called the Action Wing, we agreed since Investigatory Wing sounds far cooler, and…”
“You’ve certainly separated, just before the deadline too.”
“What........?”
“Never mind, it’s done. Now, we can really advance our cause. I’ll see you in January, Victoire will be with me, we’ll discuss more. Got it? Now I’m leaving, too bleeding draughty.”
“Alright, I’ll… do stuff then. Bye.”
“Farewell!”
{DP to Air Tech / Agriculture}

I (mid 20 F) have been seeing a guy (mid 30 M) for about 3 weeks. We've been on 4 dates with the first one being a coffee date turned 12 hour date after which I let him kiss me and we ended up hooking up (and was together for another half a day post). We've been to a musical, a market and drinks with his friends since then.
He did say he's looking for a relationship, not for hook ups - though wouldn't say no to one if the girl insisted. But because he's also new to dating (was in a long relationship until earlier last year, only dated a few girls since), I did encourage him to date around. He also never texts me but I did tell him I don't like texting and if it's okay we didn't text at all until the first date, and he's very happy to organize dates when I send the initial message. For context, I'm quite certain he's seeing and sleeping with other people from conversations we have had.
From the way he treats me and how he asks to hang out on every Saturday he's around (even when I say I have plans) despite hanging a luxurious choice of girls (he showed me a bit), it does seem he prioritizes me to an extent. I think my issue is I've only dated guys who either wanted to marry me by the 3rd date or I considered flings (though many I ended up in serious relationships with), and I don't really know how to proceed now.
I'll see him next weekend, which will be a month in and while I feel like it might be early, there's also the fact his condom keeps breaking (we've broken 6?) and I don't want to have to take anymore std tests. I'm also sexually strictly monogamous and if I wanted to see how it goes with another person, it wouldn't work for me (which is currently fine as I like him the most, but could change as I'm also going on dates)
I am thinking of telling him there's no need to change things immediately, but I am looking for something less ambiguous. I'm happy to become platonic friends, as I like him as a person, or if he has other ideas we can discuss down the line at some point, but still doesn't need to be now.
Is this scary for a guy? Honestly I'm scared of the talk myself and have no idea what's acceptable, "where do you see us going" sounds really intense and I am really okay with becoming friends.
Also, my friends keep telling me I need to have the talk before we have anymore sex, but if we're going to do it anyways I would rather just have a talk later but is this bad? Will I be taking advantage of him?

I'm noticing many sufferers on this forum and others on facebook being stuck as many literature and articles are providing conflicting messages regarding the bacterial involvement. Many have failed to find bacteria through conventional tests and some only found "pathogens" through a specific method like eps culture for exemple. Those who find e. Coli or e. Faecalis are getting different opinions from urologists and/or other people. MDX testing is making things more complicated as it increased the number of these findings. People are talking about biofilms and difficulty of detection/ eradication. I did myself many tests with negative findings, MDX did find low level stuff but not commonly known to cause issues. One of my urologists is convinced that if I do the test again I'll find other bacteria lol and that Abx are hit and miss.
I've talked to people who recovered after getting rid of the supposed pathogen, other got negative tests and never recovered (hence the confusion) and many couldn't eradicate what they found which is distressing
Most difficult part in this condition I believe is knowing if it's bacterial or not (especially when it doesn't start on its own but starts after a sex encounter or uti or gut infection). Many would argue that category 2 prostatitis only shows as episodic pain when there is an active UTI (what classification says), but many other readings are dismissing the episodic UTI thing and are also putting bacterial prostatitis in the chronic pain category "2024 official guideline of canadian urology" that you can download puts everything in the same chronic pelvic pain category.
I wish the testing for this thing was a yes or no so that everyone can move on. I tried my best to close the chapter, but talking to people with so many different results is confusing. My pain is not episodic which really bothers me.
Any insights are welcome. If anyone has improved despite positive tests and "pathogen" findings that would be interesting to hear their experiences. I just don't wanna end up spending all my energy trying to treat it as psychoneuromuscular or inflammation if there is a risk of having missed something

Hey all,
Currently own a 2021 Ranger which is getting the transmission “refreshed” by Ford after starting to have issues at 50k miles. Thinking of jumping ship and picking up a Tundra Crewmax 4x4. Had a few questions I was hoping you fine people could help me with.
When did the 38 gallon tank became an option on these trucks and how do you know they have it? I’m a pretty big off-road and overland guy so having 450+ miles of cruising range is a pretty big deal to me. One of my friends has a 2008 with the smaller tank and the range is hilariously bad. I’m looking to run 35s with a rooftop tent and some sliders/skids so I can imagine the smaller tank would be way too small for me. Is there a cheap way to upgrade to the larger tank if I find an older truck with the small tank? I would rather probably get an older truck and upgrade it myself but I want to make sure that’s possible and doesn’t cost a crazy amount.
Do all Crewmax trucks have the full sliding rear window? Also, how much does mileage matter? If I found, say, a 2015 with like 160k, would that be worth getting or is the high mileage a concern?
Finally, I would 100% want to add a rear locker. Has anyone here done this, and if so what would I be looking at for cost? I know a lot of people also regear but it kinda seems like that’s really only necessary for 37s and I rarely tow anything.
Thank you for any input yall have :)

Hello all. I've been struggling for a while with this and don't really have a community to discuss it with and would love to have any thoughts that people can muster on my situation: I'm 64, AMAB and have identified as non-binary for the past ten years. Recently my dysmorphia has gotten to the point where I've begun to think about the possibility of transitioning particularly starting HRT. I'm worried about the risks at my age, and as well with encountering other issues I may not be thinking of at this point. Frankly even writing this out is feely scary to me although I can't really say why. Any experience or thoughts people have would be most welcome.

My partner (32M) and I (33M) have been together for seven years, and engaged for two. We had our issues in the beginning, so much so that we’ve spoken about his reluctance to give our relationship a try… in couples therapy.
Well we haven’t been doing too good lately. The aggravating factor was that I’ve drunkenly hooked up with someone at a party and he took some time to come to terms with it and forgive me. In order to do so, we took a break for a couple of months because he said he needed some time to heal and focus on himself.
I’m not entirely sure why I did it - I guess the guy gave me the attention he wouldn’t give me, and made me feel attractive… something he hadn’t done. Because throughout our relationship he’s been someone who didn’t like cuddling, was uncomfortable with PDA and would usually like to spend time by himself.
Then there’s this friend. They became closer over the last couple of months, and I was already suspecting that there was something more there. He’s always been the kind of friend that people come to for advice and for a shoulder to cry on, which I’ve always admired about him, but in the current state of things his relationship with this friend is making me panic.
They’ve made out with each other before becoming friends (no sex as far as I know), and he seems different with him. He goes out of his way to make time for him, he does nice things for him, and is teaching him how to play pickleball (which used to be our thing). And then last week we were hanging out at our house and I saw them cuddling when I came back into the living room.
He’s different with him. And I’m afraid he’s not only fallen out of love with me but he seems to be falling for someone right in front of me. What do I do?

Purchased a 30 day pass because I just moved and it'll be a week till my Internet is installed. I purchased on my android phone and it was working fine until I connected my laptop. it logged me out of the wifi pass on my phone. When I go to enter my phone number and email on my phone in the login page for now Wi-Fi pass it says I don't have a pass even though I'm currently logged in with the same credentials on my laptop. I called customer service and they basically told me all they can do is refund me, or try logging in again in 30 minutes because it now says I have reached the maximum attempts to log in. Seems like a lot of people I talk to have the same issue. What's going on here?

Hey peeps, I don’t even know how long I been in the AF now and I probably sound dumb but what exactly is the difference between beneficiaries and death gratuity? I’m not too educated on these things. I am updating my emergency contacts and all that information. I’m married and on the death gratuity it says if I put someone else that’s not my spouse, they will be notified. That’s not an issue and I’ll keep my spouses name on that but I’m curious to know why? Also, if I put a minor as a beneficiary, will they be able to access that money immediately or when they’re of age? Is it guaranteed that the people listed will actually get that money? I ask that because an old colleague of mine had a family member that passed and they had a child as the beneficiary and the family pretty much did whatever they wanted with that money and blew it all and barely giving any to the child. Anyways, i want to know more about these things

Ok so this is about my mom, she is the crazy MIL from hell and may God bless my new sister in law for what she put up with on her wedding day and every second of planning. My (23f) brother (26M) brother we'll call Sam got engaged a few years back and got married in May 2023 to Ann (also fake name). I wish that they would have hired a videographer to capture the day because I feel like there are so many things I honestly can't even remember them all. For starters leading up to the wedding my mother was a problem. It started small here and there but the first big blow up on Sam and Ann was when they told her they weren't getting married in a church. My mom and my god fearing grandma acted like Satan himself was going to crawl out of the ground and damn them to hell right there. My brother unfortunately didn't do much to calm down the situation and just let them be mad as they continued to plan the wedding. The second blow up happened when my brother had the "audacity" to invite our dad and step mom to the wedding. Our parents got divorced about 6 years ago and she can't get over it despite their marriage being over for 10+ years. She still to this day calls him "satan". (For reference my dad is a great guy who has never done anything to hurt or abuse us) Again they pushed on with planning.
Finally we get to wedding weekend. I was beyond stressed. Things first started going south at the rehearsal dinner where my mom chanted Whore to my step mom at the top of her longs to a room full of people. (My step mom being a breast cancer survivor and the nicest woman I've ever met. The mom I never had). The unfortunate thing is you can't do anything when my mom acts like this because she feeds off the attention and loves to make everyone else's life miserable.
Finally we make it to wedding day. Most of the day started fine and I don't even see her until we are done with hair and makeup and at the ceremony space ready to do group and family pictures. That's when I see her walking over looking like she's being held up.... BY HER THERAPIST. Yes that's right, she invited her therapist to the wedding. We were mortified. She then refused to get into any pictures that involved my dad so pictures took ten times longer than they needed to cause be kept having to switch groups in and out. (Jokes on her though I just photoshoped her into all the pictures).
Then it's ceremony time. She looks awful. It's only probably 10am but it is clear that she might have already had something to drink. So we slowly all make it down the isle and stand at our spots and the ceremony was great, I cried a lot and I'm really happy for them both. And besides my mom falling asleep in the front not much happened. Her therapist woke her up and that was that. BUT THE RECEPTION. Here is some rapid fire of what happened because there is so much it could be a book. 1. She again kept walking past my step mom and calling her a whore (not as loud this time, how kind). Every time she tried to walk over to my step mom her therapist grabbed her arm and swept her away like a toddler. 2. She was grinding all over her boyfriend on the dance floor (her second cousin btw 🤢) 3. She yelled at my sister bf and spit on mine 4. She moved around place cards at tables so staff were scrambling confused why all the seats and dinner plates were so off 5. There's more but best for last. She was beyond drunk. Like you could tell she was not in the right state of mind. So fun fact, we told the bar staff not to serve her anything with alcohol. So the therapist (who ended up helping us big time) went up the the bar staff and started yelling at them for serving and over serving her. And they said "we've given her nothing but cranberry juice all night"
There is more but it starts getting into even deeper family drama and issues so sorry won't be sharing that, but I am happy to say that it has almost been a year since the wedding and that day was the day I decided to go no contact with her! I've been no contact since and living my best life!

Roughly the first decade of my life, maybe, was alright. I never recalled any moments of distress in my life to go back and consider traumatic. My mom had to raise me alone for a while because my biological father didn’t want to consider me his own; it didn’t affect me quite as bad since I have friends who have related to me about being fatherless. My mother had to work many times in order to support me; she would often leave me with my grandparents while she was away on her duties. This was I assume was the only times of my life where I can recall that my life wasn’t exactly a living hellscape.
Up until my early teens is where things started to take a turn for the worse. My mom was in the United States Naval Reserves at the time; during the early 2000’s when the Iraqi War was picking up. She was stationed to be deployed in Kuwait for around six months, and in another state during that time for an additional three months. When she came back from her deployment, she was complete alien to me.
For minor issues, it erupted as giant fights. I don’t remember much, but one incident I always recall in my flashbacks was being pinned down by my mom and having her choke me on my bed, as if I was a criminal and bad guy to her. She tells me today that she doesn’t recall and tells me I’m fabricating this. I remember crying; being scared suddenly that my mom of all people I’ve trusted all my life decided to invoke harm on me in the worse possible way. This was the beginning of this turmoil.

After she choked me, I immediately got scared, and with a rush of adrenaline and fear, dialed the emergency line on my phone and reported her as I was told to naturally. We are taught from an early age to immediately seek help under distress and harm, and that’s what I did. Thirteen years old about. I panicked a bit when the police department showed up; lied to them about the situation out of fear and regret of everything. That was the only time I was ever arrested, if you call it as, and my mom still blamed me for that night. 

Throughout my high school times, I would spontaneously break down in emotion and cry it out in class. Usually, these days happened after my mom and I would have fights in the morning about anything and often it would be aimed at me harder than what the issues were. I never told anyone in those classes who comforted me on why I was like that. I never told them how awful my mother was to me. My entire high school life with her was met with mostly mental abuse and a few bouts of where she inflicted harsh harm on me and left me bruises. Incidents where she’s kicked me while I was on the floor several times. She’s blamed me for ‘accidently’ bringing up the grocery bill in a time when I didn’t have a job and would of paid for my own share if I had the funding. She punched me in front of everyone at the store. During that drive home, she not only pulled my hair down to the seat and ended up tearing off a patch that’s left me with a semi-obvious bald also, but also spraying WD-40 oil on my face when I got out the car. I somehow find it unbelievable that this is the only incident she regrets out of all the times she’s abused me in every way.
I remember getting new glasses during this time, because she had slapped my face and my glasses broke on the spot. This wasn’t the only incident where she’s personally broken my glasses during our fights. Again, she blames me for inciting this to have my glasses broken. As sort of, ‘I deserved it’.

The biggest fight for both of us happened post high school during a heated moment. She threatened to report me to the police for self-harm, and I told her not to. I feared her authority. She kept stomping on my foot to pry my phone out of my hands, and bit a few areas on my body that left large bruises around me; I took photos as documentation to showcase to people who didn’t believe the wrath my mother was placing on me. She gaslit me into not seeking medical attention from the clinic about the toe she broke of me. She told me that was also my fault and that I deserved to have my toe broken. I finally went to the clinic after almost three months of mobility issues from the injury. Luckily, it wasn’t that much of an issue, and by then, I was making a complete recovery from it all. Her manic was also showing in a few incidents where, under stress, she acted out on violent impulses. One incident where I missed work because she decided to break all the dishes on the floor. I and myself only picked up every broken item on the floor, while she bad-mouthed me openly and blamed me for allowing this all to happen. Blamed me for her breaking the dishes on the floor because I was busy working long hours at work to try to clean up the house and dishes as much as I could. It was all my fault to her. This wasn’t and certainly not the last time she’s pointed at me for the house to be cluttered and dirty. I do my best daily to make sure the house is tidy and neat. She barely keeps, as much as she’s tried to. What also has bothered me that she’s never apologized for was comparing a dirty house of ours to black people’s house but citing the racial slur from it. Her excuse was about how my grandfather has quoted it and she because comfortable in her own ignorance from it. Somehow, I always wonder that after she’s even admitted her mistakes, she somehow casted her emotions back in and in order to not feel ashamed for being a terrible parent at her methods. The small incidents such as dumping pure garbage from the kitchen in my room for not taking it to the dumpster. She cited as it was because I wasn’t doing what I was told to. She kept telling me that this was all my fault, that I deserved this infliction to happen on me severely. All of these incidents for years have affected my health and mentality. I almost committed suicide a few times out of turmoil from her. She told me that all this on me was my fault for being a bad child to her. I assumed to myself, that if I was gone from her life, she would be a lot happier and not have to hurt anyone. I remember being close to ending my life and left a note then as an apology for being a burden on her. Why she had a right to hurt me. I woke up alive the next day and destroyed the note. Now, I’m glad to be alive. 

What also hasn’t helped with our relationship was her backing of her gambling addictive brother, my uncle. She’s even taken out loans personally to pay for his irresponsibility, because she has feared that he’ll hurt her again if he doesn’t get her ways. He’s gambled every bit he can and has affected us personally because of his irritation and attitude towards us when he is low on income from his habit. I just wished he wasn’t my uncle, or at least, didn’t manage his life so poorly that it’s affected my mom and I.

My roommate is genuinely one of the worst people I’ve ever met. She is racist, homophobic, fatphobic, transphobic, and just an overall bigot. She has no sense of boundaries and insults and embarrasses people in public with no remorse. She put me in a group chat today with my friends and said I was breaking HER boundaries by telling her to respect my friends. Sure I wasn’t a part of the initial issue but she kept pushing against my already very annoyed friend, so I defended her. I told her one sentence and her group chat messages were all about me and how it “wasnt cool”. My friend is going defended me saying my roommates beef was with her not me. The initial problem was that she kept knocking on my friends’ door for five minutes even when my friend texted her saying that her roommate was doing an interview. They confronted her in the dining hall because they were fed up. My friend said one knock should be enough and when no one answers she should leave. Pretty reasonable right? Unfortunately my roommate continued to press the issue saying two knocks. That’s when I told her to respect their boundaries because it’s their room. Another issue is her feeling so entitled to everything basically. I told both my roommates that I was going to Trader Joe’s on Saturday and asked them to let me know if they wanted anything. You would expect most to ask for one or two items right? She goes on to ask for an entire grocery list and over half the haul was her shit. I had just finished a full day of emt work and I don’t have a car so I had to take all of her shit back on the bus. And this was after she had taken multiple of my frozen foods and asked to eat them while high. It was too awkward to say no with the way she was asking. My condition was that she pay me back. She didnt. She actually just went on to ask me to buy her two of the frozen items she took from me for herself. I reminded her of her debt so she bought me one as well. That I had to carry back of course. These examples are nowhere near as bad as it gets. In the beginning of the year I had 3 rules for her when she would be drinking in our room with friends: don’t spill, don’t be loud, and don’t haze anyone. Guess which one she broke? She fucking hazed someone in our room in November while I was at my ex bf’s, and my other roommate recorded evidence but because of her busy schedule she forgot to tell me until a couple weeks ago. She is also disgusting and will throw her bloody pads unwrapped on the top of the communal bathroom trash can and proceed to change her pad in front of the sinks not even in a stall. She also would hound my other roommate for eating peanut butter because she thinks it’s disgusting and too many calories. We are both so done with her and want to her or us to move out. However there is only 6 weeks left of school so we are unsure if we should just do it and go through the process of moving with so little time left. Please give me some advice on how to handle this.

I’ve been posting a series of essays regarding Jon’s identity and I think most people didn't understand the point I’m trying to make, so I thought I’ll give it another try. There's a short summary at the end.
Here’s the point: I believe that we were fooled, ASOIAF is “the real story” that Bael’s song tells.
Let me please explain myself better.
ASOIAF begins with a mystery, a cold creature kills a boy, Waymar Royce, who seems to be the hero stereotype: he’s handsome, smart, and owns a nice sword, and the mean wildlings are trying to deceive him, so he goes there sword in hand, like a hero does.
However, when you pay close attention to his story, you realize the poor kid set himself for failure. He left his best swordsman guarding the horses, asked a man who was known for being silent to be his watcher, and went straight into a place that he had described himself as a suspicious scene.
His outcome was predictable.
In the following chapters, we get three seemingly fantasy clichés one after another, Ned, the honorable hero, Jon, the young hero with a mysterious parentage, and soon after that, we are told how Lyanna was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by the evil dragon, Rhaegar Targaryen.
Of course, the predictable outcome would be Jon being Rhaegar’s son, after all his mother spent the war with the man, right? Well,maybe she didn’t.
Why am I claiming that we are being deceived?
When you compare Waymar’s story to Ned’s fever dream, we are being told *the exact same story.*
Like Waymar, the prince seems to have left his best swords “guarding the horses”, he leaves a person in charge of the watch who seems to go against his interests, and goes straight to die a meaningless death like Gared when he decided to desert.
What’s the issue? *It’s a song.*
Ned’s story of what happened in the tower (his fever dream) follows Bael’s song to the letter, and the point of that song is the deception, it’s not about love or even the baby, but Bael being a liar.
That also happens in AGoT’s prologue, Waymar was being deceived but not by the wildlings as he assumed.
The biggest hoax is that Bael’s song tells three different stories in which the “hero” is always “Bael”.

1. The Stark of WF wanted Bael’s head, but couldn’t take him.He calls Bael “a craven who preys only on the weak”, so Bael decides to teach him a lesson and goes to WF.

Being a wildling song, we expect Bael to be the hero, so when the lesson comes we might be a bit lost.
What’s the lesson? The lesson is the Stark “calling” Bael, giving a name to the “craven who preys only on the weak”.

1. Bael fakes to be a singer called Sygerrik (which means deceiver) and spends the night singing for the Stark, when he’s done, the lord offers him to “name” his reward. Bael asks for “the fairest flower” and the Stark gives him a winter rose. After leaving with the lord’s daughter, Bael leaves the flower as proof.

What’s the lesson here? It can’t be the lord realizing who took the maiden since the singer gave him a fake name, and he was welcome because the lordhad never met him before. The flower proves the lord is a deceiver.
When the singer asks for “the fairest flower” the lord knows he is asking for his daughter (even when he never names her), and tries to deceive Bael by giving him a rose. The flower proves the lord lied.

1. Bael comes back years later with an army; he’s faced in battle by his own son who doesn’t recognize him. Bael stays silent and lets the boy kill him. The word “recognize” implies that he knew the man; the very definition of recognition is “the identification of someone from previous encounters.”

What’s the lesson in this one? Who raised the boy? Bael: a liar and craven who never told the truth.
The “young lord,” was a liar (he had to recognize Bael from his own experience), and a craven who took advantage of Bael’s own weakness (his silence) to kill him.
Basically, when you go over the song, the baby, the maiden, and “the singer” are all victims of the lord of WF who never told the boy who he was, took the child “as payment”, and blamed “Bael” for the things he did.

“Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner. "My mother told me that *dead men sing no songs*," he put in.” AGoT - Prologue

Bael is the lord of WF in the three stories and the “hero” of his own songs: a name that means something, a flower as proof of his deception, and dead men*singing songs.*
To summarize, the biggest deception in the song is the language, or rather, the way people are named.
We’ll now examine how Lord Stark deceived us all, and later why this is “a song of ice and fire”.

A hero of his own songs

We are first introduced to the song in AGoT’s Prologue when we meet three men on a mission: Waymar Royce, Will, and Gared.
Each of them helps us understand one of the stories told in Bael’s song. The prologue seems to be about these men deciding what to do regarding some dead people. In truth, they illustrate the lessons in Ned’s song for us, while we can also understand other stories of dead people: Rheagar’s and Lyanna’s.
One of the men, Will, is a craven who “wants nothing so much as to ride hellbent for the safety of the Wall”.
Waymar suspects that the wildlings are trying to deceive them, and notes that some things in Will’s story don’t seem to add up.
He wants to go personally to see the dead wildlings and prove his theory: someone is lying. Ironically his own broken sword is proof that he was right about the deceptionbut wrong about the author.
The third man, Gared,instantly recognizes what happened to the wildlings by Will’s description, even when he never actually saw them; but knew from previous experiences what “the cold” does, as he had found one of his brothers “with a smile on his face”.
Let’s examine how the song unfolds so we can find the real Bael.

1. The Craven and the given name.

In the song, “Bael” is a name that means something, is what you call a craven who preys only on the weak.
We get to see how Will exemplifies the concept of being a craven when the Others appear. I mentioned earlier that one of Waymar’s mistakes was sending a brother known for being silent to act as his watcher.
Will sees the entire fight while hiding on a tree (he’s a craven after all), and never says a word, not even when he sees the shadows moving, not when he sees the Other facing Waymar, and not while the boy is being mercilessly butchered.
He realizes, however, that he should “call down a warning” as the shadows start to appear, and ironically, Waymar shouts his name instead.

The Others made no sound. Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been a bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he seen, after all? "Will, where are you?" Ser Waymar called up. "Can you see anything?" He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see."Answer me! *Why is it so cold?"*

Interestingly, that’s exactly what happens in Ned’s dream, he tells us how he gets to the Tower with a bunch of shadows and how he sees three men in white waiting for him, and curiously, the person yelling in the dream was recognized before by Ned himself as being*so weak* that she could only whisper:

He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes.” Eddard I - AGoT

Lyanna’s fear as she dies seems far more interesting considering how Will never yells fearing “the shadows”, since Ned gets to his dream surrounded by shadows. Now, while we are told by Ned himself how she could barely speak, somehow, she calls ‘Bael’ loud and clear:

"As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. "Eddard!" *she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky,as blue as the eyes of death. *"Lord Eddard," Lyanna called again.

See the first lesson in the song?
Why would Lyanna use the word “Eddard”, to call her own brother; a brother that she, and everyone who knew himcalled “Ned”?
In the song, the Stark gives Bael a name because he doesn’t know the man, but he knows *he’s hiding his identity to take advantage of “the weak”.*
In the dream “Eddard” means Bael. *He’s lying.*
The “craven” who actually yells in the dream is deliberately hidden:

"The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me *but for Howland Reed*." Bran III - ACoK

In Ned’s “song” Lyanna yells even when she is so weak that she can barely speak. In truth, the one yelling, Howland, is warning him about the “white shadow”, Arthur Dayne, who was moving towards Ned to kill him as the shadows move to kill Waymar. That’s what Will should have done when he saw them: warn his brother.
The parallels between the Other facing Waymar and Arthur with Dawn in hand facing Ned in the dream are clear too. This is the Other:

The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

This is Arthur, holding his sword made from “no human metal”.

"And now it begins," said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass,*alive with light*. Eddard X - AGoT

You see, Ned did in his dream what Lord Stark does in the song: the “weak” (Lyanna), are identified as a Stark; Bael takes advantage of weak people to sing his song, to tell his own version of things.

"Your Bael was a liar," he told her, certain now. "No," Ygritte said, "buta bard's truth is different than yours or mine. Anyway, you asked for the story, so I told it." Jon VI - ACoK

In fact, Lyanna ends up buried in WF’s crypt (like the maiden in the song) because she’s identified by Ned as a Stark, so that was “her place”.
That’s the first lesson: In Ned’s song (his dream) he hid the truth by identifying the person who yells as Lyanna, when it was actually Howland Reed warning him.
The biggest clue is the person calling him in a way that’s not familiar to him, like “Brandon the Daughterless” is not familiar name to Jon when he hears Bael’s song. We’ll discuss that name later.
What was Ned hiding? That Lyanna was never in that tower, that’s Ned’sbiggest deception, hiding the fact that Rhaeagar spent half the war chasing shadows, like Waymar, and that Robert never “avenged” Lyanna as he believed,because the prince was deceived and Robert was too late to the vengeance train.
When Jon hears the song’s happy ending, he asks if Bael has brought back the maiden, to which Ygritte replies that she was “hiding with the dead”. Ned made people believe that he had brought Lyanna’s body from Dorne while he left his friends’ corpses buried there, but he didn’t. She died elsewhere.
As for “the craven”, Ned himself explained his issue with the man: the “laughter”.

"They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a man's laughter freezes in his throat and chokes him to death," Ned said evenly. "Perhaps that is why the Starks have so little humor." Eddard I - AGoT

Howland Reed was identified as “the Knight of the Laughing Tree” by his children, he wasn’t, but he’s one of the three main suspects: Howland, Ned and Lyanna. None of them was the “laughing” one though.
While Ned tells us how people’s laughter freezes in their throats and chokes them to death, look what happens to the craven Will in the prologue when he thinks of doing what Howland does: calling “Bael”.

Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and *the words seemed to freeze in his throat*.

You likely remember how Will dies, choked to death by the un-dead Waymar.
To summarize: in Bael’s song “Bael” is a name that means something, is what you call a craven who preys only on the weak.
In Ned’s dream, the word “Eddard” means “Bael”; he’s hiding the warnings: Howland warned him about Arthur Dayne trying to kill him, and Lyanna gave him her own warning:

"I hear he has gotten a child** on some girl in the Vale." Ned had held the babe in his arms; he could scarcely deny her, nor would he lie to his sister, but he had assured her that what Robert did before their betrothal was of no matter, that he was a good man and true who would love her with all his heart. Lyanna had only smiled. "Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but *it cannot change a man's nature*." Eddard IX - AGoT

What Ned is trying to hide (mostly from himself) is the fact that killing Arthur turned him into a kinslayer, since Ashara got pregnant in Harrenhal, explaining why he links “the laughter” with “the freezing cold”: he fathered a bastard.
Ned was great at hiding things in plain sight and being silent, yet his dream sang a different song.

2. The deceiver and the flower.

When Will reports he found the wildlings dead, Waymar doesn’t believe him. To confirm his suspicions he asks the most experienced of the group, Gared, his views about the scene that Will had described, andhe says without hesitation “it was the cold”.

"I've had the cold in me too, lordling." Gared pulled back his hood, giving Ser Waymar a good long look at the stumps where his ears had been. "Two ears, three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got off light. We found my brother frozen at his watch, *with a smile on his face*."

Waymar asked Will a series of questions that Ned diligently answer for us:

"Did you see *any blood?" "Well, no," Will admitted. "Did you see *any weapons?" "Some swords, a few bows. One man had an axe. Heavy-looking, **double-bladed, a cruel piece of iron.It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand." "Did you make note of the position of the bodies?" Will shrugged. "A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground. Fallen, like."

In Bael’s song, the lord offers the singer to “name” his reward, and the man asks for “the fairest flower” which as we know, is then left behind as proof of the lord’s deception.
When Ned comes home from the war with “proof” of his deception, his wife names “the reward”, Ashara Dayne, and Ned’s answeris priceless:

It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, in bed one night, Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face. That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her. "Never ask me about Jon," he said, cold as ice. "He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady." She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne's name *was never heard in Winterfell again*." Catelyn II - AGoT

In this memory, Catelyn parallels Bael singing (marshaling his courage) until he’s asked to name the reward, and not daring to name the maiden, he asks for “the fairest flower”, to which the lord gives him not what he asked for, but “a rose from the gardens”.
Ned gives Jon’s name when he’s asked about Ashara, most importantly,he establishes the link between Jon and “the blood” he later dreams of, meaning he makes us believe that the boy killed Lyanna while being born,that’s the deception.
Did you see any blood? Yes, a ‘brother’ “frozen at his watch”, a sister who allegedly died “in a bed of blood”, and the “fairest flower” blowing in the wind like the petals Ned sees when he hears his name.
They waited before the round tower, the red mountains of Dorne at their backs, their white cloaks blowing in the wind. And these were no shadows; their faces burned clear, even now. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, had a sad smile on his lips.” Eddard X - AGoT
Killing Arthur made him a kinslayer, but Will saw a “double-bladed” weapon.
Did you see any weapons? Yes, petals falling “dead and black”.

Ned remembered **the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, *dead and black*. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. "I bring her flowers when I can," he said. "Lyanna was … fond of flowers."

What about the position of the bodies? They all waited for Ned and ended up “fallen”: Ashara, Arthur, *and Lyanna.*
Let’s discuss the proof.
When Waymar falls, Will thinks he needs to take his sword as proof of what he saw, as if the entire thing had nothing to do with him.
Ned, as we know, takes Dayne’s sword to Starfall and after that visit, Ashara commits suicide. Yet, we have no idea what he told them. It seems kind of weird how Lord Dayne seems to highly respect the man who killed his brother and caused his sister’s suicide, right?
The point is how Will finds the sword that was supposed to be proof:

He found what was left of the sword a few feet away,the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof.

We know that Ashara killed herself (explaining the sword splintered and twisted like Bran). We also know that Ned killed Arthur since that was the talking in Winterfell when he returned from the war (as Will intended to get to the Wall with a story), the proof being he took Dawn to Starfall.
What matters here is “what was left” and Ned “snatching” something that ended up in Winterfell, even when he never brought his friends’ corpses back. You see, in Ned’s memory, he seems to do what Will does when everything is over, “look around warily”.

“…the rose petals spilling from her palm, *dead and black. After that, he remembered nothing. *They had found him** still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his…”

The scene is not just weirdly similar to the way that the un-dead Waymar finds Will withhis sword, but also the proof of the crime that “Bael” left behind for the lord to find: a dead flower instead of the maiden as proof of the kidnapping.
As I said earlier, in Bael’s song the flower doesn’t mean that the lord realizes who took the maiden sincethe singer *gave him a fake name, and he was welcome in WF becausethe lord had never met him* before.
The flower proves the lord is a deceiver. It wasn’t Jon being born what killed Lyanna, *it was Ned’s flower.*

Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood run down his fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark.” Eddard XV

Ned mentions how he always brings Lyanna flowers, and that’s exactly what happened the last time he saw her. Except this time the flower was poisonous and killed her.
That’s one of the “weapons” that Will sees in one of the “fallen” *“right by his hand”,* which makes Ned a “double-bladed” weapon, or rather a double kinslayer.

“…the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his…”

Howland clearly realizes what happened and takes her hand from Ned’s so he wouldn’t die too.
All the weapons used in Ned’s song are mentioned by Will in the crime scene beyond the Wall: “It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand.”
It was “the ground” that killed Ashara, Ned being “beside” Arthur, and the petals in Lyanna’s hand.

"The trees press close here," Will warned. "That sword will tangle you up, m'lord. Better a knife." AGoT - Prologue

We get to see the proof of all victims in the way that Waymar raises being a portrayal of all three fallen.

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him. His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from *his sword* transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye. The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.

Waymar is the proof: the white pupil “transfixed” by the sword is for Arthur he died from multiple stabb wounds, the right eye “burning blue” is for Ashara (what Catelyn saw) while the “dead and black” Waymar stands for Lyanna in “her bed of blood”.
She died surrounded by her "brothers" too.
When Waymar rises, his gloves soaked in blood go straight for Will’s throat, and the man never gets to tell what he knows.
To summarize: in Bael’s song the flower proves the Lord’s deception, and the lie isn’t just about the maiden’s disappearance, or the boy’s identity, but about his own attempt to deceive the person who asks about “the flower” (his wife).
Like I said, the lord didn’t know the identity of “the thief”.Jon’s father is never named in any of Ned’s chapters*, not once,* not because he didn’t know him though, but because Ned stole “his song” as Will intended to steal Waymar’s, proof included.

3. The cold ending

In the song, when Bael comes back years later he’s faced in battle by his own son who doesn’t recognize him. I said earlier how the lack of recognition is related to previous experiences that “the young lord” should have seen coming.
Now, for some reason, the most experienced brother, Gared, runs south, he’s caught and beheaded.
That’s Bael’s fate in the song, and therefore, Ned’s.
What’s interesting is how Ned gets to that point. He goes south when he’s named “Hand” in the crypt, which is ironic as hell, but he only accepts the position since he’s determined to investigate a poisoning, and how that’s related to his son’s “falling” from a tower. Of course, he loses his sword at the peak of his mission, though Tywing was no singer, just a common thief and mass murderer.
Ned died singing his own song, *like Bael.*

Your Bael was a liar.

Since we get AGoT’s prologue from Will’s point of view and Bael’s song from Ygritte’s, (therefore the song of ice and fire), we might forget that there are other songs to be learned here.

Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner. "My mother told me that dead men sing no songs," he put in. "My wet nurse said the same thing, Will," Royce replied. "Never believe anything you hear at a woman's tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead." His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest. "We have a long ride before us," Gared pointed out. "

I claimed at the beginning how the prince seemed to have left his best swords “guarding the horses”, how Lyanna seemed to go against his interests even when we are led to believe that she's there on her own will, and how Rhaegar goes straight to die a meaningless death.
All of that is true only if you believe Ned’s song.
When Waymar leaves Gared behind, they have a quite enlightening exchange:

Gared dismounted. "We need a fire. I'll see to it." "How big a fool are you, old man? If there are enemies in this wood, *a fire is the last thing we want."* AGoT - Prologue

We know that “a fire” was exactly what Rhaegar was looking for, what he called the “one more”, apparently a daughter to complete his three-headed dragon.
Interestingly, Bael’s enemy is called Brandon “the daughterless” and he’s the deceived person in the song.

"Will you make a song for him?" the woman asked. "He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany's, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. "There must be one more," he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. "The dragon has three heads." He went to the window seat, picked up a harp, and ran his fingers lightly over its silvery strings. Sweet sadness filled the room as man and wife and babe faded like the morning mist, only the music lingering behind to speed her on her way.” Dany IV- ACoK

See the issue? Rhaegar parallels “Brandon the daughterless”, while Ned parallels Aegon, the promised one, as if the heads *had been exchanged.*
Ned’s song, like Aegon’s, was about people believing he was “the one and true hero” versus the truth proved by what happens to Waymar and his broken sword, and the true Aegon’s broken skull as proof.
Ned is “the one” because he’s the only hero in his song, even when “three heads” (Ashara, Lyanna, and Jon) would like to disagree.
Now, let’s examine the music “lingering behind” the prince and the winter rose, and how the song was playing from their point of view of “daughterless” lord and disenchanted promised bride.

1. The first lesson in the song is The Stark giving a name: “Bael” and the future “king” deciding *to teach a lesson.*

There were three people suspected of being the KoLT in Harrenhal, (Howland, Ned and Lyanna), though none of them were the true one, the real one was “a craven” who hid, (like Will), on a tree.
His shield had a laughing weirwood tree. We already saw how Ned thought that laughing causes people to freeze and choke to death, perhaps explaining why Ghost is mute.

The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given. Swords rose and fell, all in a deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale blades sliced through ringmail as if it were silk. Will closed his eyes. Far beneath him, he heard their voicesand laughter sharp as icicles.

The lesson in the daughterless song is Lyanna claiming to be the knight to hide “the true Bael”, who was teaching a lesson to the squires who had bullied the little Howland when he arrived at the tourney.
That explains why in Ned’s dream she’s giving the warning instead of the person who actually warned him*. They all claimed to be the knight.
In this version of the song, Bael is “a craven” because he hides his identity and “preys only on the weak”; the weakness is not knowing, and this is relevant to understanding the rest of these songs.

1. The second lesson is “the singer” asking for a reward without ever naming it and *leaving the flower as proof.*

The flower proves the lord is a deceiver, meaning Rhaegar didn’t believe Lyanna was the knight but he understood why she lied, *she was in love with the man.*
The reward however, is Rhaegar winning the tourney using the mystery knight’s same strategy, cheating:

“The pale blades sliced through ringmail as if it were silk.” AGoT - Prologue

This is how Ned remembers the prince’s success in the tourney:

A plume of scarlet silk streamed behind him when he rode, and it seemed no lance could touch him. Brandon fell to him, and Bronze Yohn Royce, and even the splendid Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.” Eddard XV - AGoT

Truly, no lance could touch the man, that’s the proof that “Bael” left behind, “scarlet silk streaming”; he won by cheating.

1. The final proof is Bael coming back, and here’s where we need to split the songs between ice and fire.

Let’s start with the prince and something closer to Ygritte’s version of the song.
Rhaegar’s incursion to the Trident is explained *by what he lacked, the daughter he was searching for and, most importantly, *the promise of magic that “Bael” meant for him. When he learns that Elia can’t have more children, he does what “the daughterless” does in the song, ***send “the crows” to look for the maiden and her Bael.*
That’s how Ned finds them, the guards end up in the tower because they were deceived and went there thinking that Lyanna and “the craven” were there. They were never there. Howland and Wylla were in the tower, she was faking to be Lyanna.
The prince got what he was searching for though in a very twisted way but still. Dany hatched the dragon’s eggs that came from Asshai, like the silk that Rhaegar wore in the tournament.
He wanted magic so Elia could have the daughter he wanted, since apparently, *that’s what the prophecy promised:* a three-headed dragon.
When Waymar is told about the dead wildlings, as we saw, he asks about their blood, their weapons, and the position of their bodies. All those things are related to Rhaegar’s quest for dragons.
In the daughterless song, the line seems to end with the woman, and the lack of recognition that happens when (the liar) Bael comes back means that Aegon is a fake, which we all suspect already since his song seems a bit too convenient. The “song of fire” now is whatever Dany decides to become, it’s her song.
Now, when you examine the song from Lyanna’s position, the story is about the maiden hiding in the crypt, and you have a completely different song because down there you can only find dead Starks, swords, and direwolves.
We know that Lyanna went to the tournament and that months after that, she disappears roughly at the same time that Rheagar was seen in the Trident.
That doesn’t mean he took her, it means she was hiding from him, because the prince wanted Bael like Waymar wanted those “dead wildlings”. He wanted to know who the man was.
The point of Lyanna’s song, however, is not so much about the tragic way in which she died, but how she convinced her father to get what she wanted: her own “sword”.
Ice as we know was divided into two swords, “Widow’s Wail” and “Oathkeeper”. Lyanna was married when she died, therefore the widow’s “wailing”, the cry that Ned remembers when she died.
The oath-keeping, however, is about Rickard and the “smell of blood and roses” Ned mentions when Lyanna dies:

Lord Rickard Stark, Ned's father, had a long, stern face. The stonemason had known him well. He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers holding tight to the sword across his lap, but *in life all swords had failed him*.” Eddard I - AGoT

Rickard had broken his word towards Robert when he allowed Lyanna to marry someone she liked instead of the man whose “nature” wouldn’t change no matter what he vowed. Robert *was blind. He didn’t care.* His lack of interest caused his downfall starting in Harrenhal when Lyanna saw him for what he was, and she seized that chance.
Lyanna fell in love with another man right in front of him and he didn’t see it because he never cared about her until “she was stolen from him” as if the woman had been his property.
Lyanna came back from the tourney *with proof:* she knew about the bastard, and she had the flowers as proof that when the prince embarrassed her in front of the entire realm her betrothed told nothing, like Will, he just stood there.
What Ned remembers of Rickard is what happened to Lyanna in the tourney, she was sitting “holding tight” to the winter roses across her lap, the proof of her father's “sword” failing.

He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers holding tight to the sword across his lap, but*in life all swords had failed him*.”

She had “the blood” (the bastard daughter) and “the weapon” (the crown) that Waymar asks for as proof of the deception. The position of her body changes after that because *Rickard agrees with her.*** Like Will, Robert couldn't be trusted, he would ruin Lyanna's reputation making her the laughing stock of the realm.
In Lyanna’s song, Bael comes back with an army too, he sneaks into Winterfell when Robert comes looking for Ned, he uses a fake name “Mance Rayder” to introduce himself, and sings for Lord Brandon.
When they meet, the real Bael is singing “The Dornishman’s Wife”, a song about a man who dies singing and laughing.
Jon’s true name is Brandon, like “The Daughterless”. In the song, the name of the young lord is never told, but since he grows up to become lord and the only lord in the song is Brandon, well, that’s the young lord’s name.
That’s what the Song of Ice and Fire is about names that mean something, magical proof, and young heroes dying, only to rise again *singing their own songs.*
Jon’s survival is explained by Waymar’s failed song, when he’s stabbed (like Arthur), he falls face down (like Ashara), only to rise again when someone goes for his sword.
Jon himself found his mother’s sword, *and he has proof too.*
Jon’s sword was the bastard letter. The letter told him Bael’s song again, only the names are different. The letter mentions the blood, the weapons, and the position of the bodies: Mance is in a cage cloaked by the skins of women “for all the north to see”.
That’s what Will saw coming for Waymar: *silent watchers.*

“The Others *made no sound.* Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone.”

Jon is an “Other”, all you need to become one *is knowing,* finding the truth hidden inside the lies to realize that the lord is a liar and craven who preys only on the weak.
That’s how you find the winter rose and *her armor.*

"The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed, and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel.. Jon II - ADwD

If you know, then you’re not weak anymore, your “armor” is proof against ordinary blades, because some tales should be believed.
To summarize, I claimed at the beginning how the biggest hoax is that Bael’s song tells three different stories in which the “hero” is always “Bael”.
The stories are all related to the brothers in AGoT’s prologue:

• Waymar telling Rhaegar’s story and how his failure turned into success when Dany achieved what he never could, finding real magic.
• Gared telling Ned’s story, thinking how he “needed” a fire to keep away “the enemies”. As Aemon told Sam, “fire consumes, but cold preserves”, explaining why Ned wanted some fire.
• The silent Will telling Jon’s story of finding his own “broken sword” as proof of his identity: a widow and an “oathkeeper”.

Summary:

The song of ice and fire is about how we are told the exact same song in two different ways: from Will’s point of view in AGoT’s prologue were “the Others” are the villains, and from Ygritte’s point of view were the Stark in Winterfell is the villain.
Ned’s song, his fever dream, which was closer to Will’s version, meant that he’s the only hero in three different stories: Lyanna’s mystery, Jon’s parentage, and his family’s downfall.
Rhagar’s song was closest to Ygritte’s, as his intention was having another child, which explains why she calls the lord “the daughterless”.
In the midst of those versions you find a “grey one”, Lyanna’s and what she left behind as proof:a broken sword.
The biggest hoax in Bael’s song is that it tells three different stories in which the “hero” is always “Bael”. The stories are all related to the brothers in AGoT’s prologue and what they do regarding the dead people:

• Waymar tells Rhaegar’s story and how his failure was turned into success when Dany achieved what he never could, finding real magic.
• Gared tells Ned’s story, thinking how he “needed” a fire to keep away “the enemies”.
• The silent Will tells Jon’s story of finding a “broken sword” as proof of his identity: a widow’s wai and an “oathkeeper”.

I grew up being the “good” kid who had no needs or feelings and always had good grades, unlike my sister who was punished and eventually sent away (at the mature age of 8!) for always acting up. My mom and stepfather have a history of completely cutting people out of their lives as soon as they feel hurt by them. They have no contact with their other children or parents, and have cut off contact with their siblings for decades at a time because of some minor thing they said. Needless to say, I’m terrified of showing any feelings in their presence or saying the “wrong “ thing. As I’m working on myself and getting in touch with my emotions, it becomes hard to keep the mask up. I already live on a different continent and only call once a week or so, but I’m going through some stuff right now and frankly don’t have the energy.
You might have already guessed that I have huge issues with close relationships that directly relate to my upbringing but my parents feel my marriage struggles are clearly because of some personality flaw of my husband who they hardly know. Of course if I even hinted at that then our relationship would end and they would probably blame it on my husband. So I sit there with a frozen smile until my parents are done dispensing their advice.
I know I don’t have to call, but I know it would help me more in the long term if I could find some way of building a more authentic relationship with them. I’m just always completely frozen around them and that authentic self is still somewhat elusive…
I

not a loved one but the roommate 2 roomates before my current one. I got out of there asap but those two months are still haunting me. I still get flashbacks to the abuse.
For starters this person was very open about having BPD and autism, but I firmly believe NPD is also at play.
They communicated only through monologue. 20-40 Minutes of uninterrupted talking that you weren’t allowed to walk away from or interject to lest they start raging. Often times she would just word for word copy things streamers or youtuber she likes say. Im talking about stealing full 10 minutes bits or rants and pretending they’re her own. When you do get a word in edge wise she just starts from where she left off anyways.
In the early stages I tried being friendly anyways just figuring I’d seen stuff like this in other autistic people but the red flags got so much worse. She would very frequently talked about her mental health issues but if you talked about yours they were just silly and you needed to just stop being so pathetic. If you called her out on this her defense would be “Im not your therapist it’s not okay to dump that on me.” Me, her, and another roomate tried playing dnd and I built a train murder mystery. She immediately jumped off the train, and I didnt kill her character for some reason and the entire half hour session she just complained that the forest treck wasnt fun and “A DM should be ready for everything” She constantly threw out jabs but would throw a fit if you responded, or she’ll take it light heartedly and totally flip the script about the event after its done.
She would frequently talk about how hot and smart she is (she was average to ugly if im being honest) and was convinced magic was real and that she was a great witch chosen by Zeus.
Her window of tolerance was at 0, anything that mildly upset her would earn a full blown rage. Any crumb on the counter, a bump in the night, not agreeing with her (insane) political and religious beliefs. If she split on someone you needed to hate them too. She demanded obedience, another roomate moved out because she bullied her out of bringing her rabbit (who had no other home) because she decided it shouldn’t be allowed because of her “sensory issues.” In a similar vein she had a total meltdown on me for leaving my leftovers in a take out box instead of a plastic bag. She claimed it would “ruin the rest of the fridge with the grease.” She demanded everything be according to her “sensory needs” but would not could not consider the fact that her 3-4 phone calls with her mom in the living room are obnoxious. Especially when her only volume is shout.
She would always decide what your intentions were and those intentions are always sinister. A lot of accusations of jealousy. According to her she’s allowed to make threats and verbally abuse you because you deserve it. But god help you if you try and politely offer constructive criticism. Often times those insults dont even remotely apply to you, especially the focus on accusing me of being lonely. If you disagree with her narrative you’re gaslighting her. If you tell her “I think you take things too far without realizing it” you’re “trying to make her feel crazy”
eventually after our dishwasher had some leakage issues and the repair man came and said the drain pipe was clogged and that it was happening all over the building, I get a long scathing text about how I broke it. I told her i wasnt home and just listened to her rage on for a while. I moved out after that but I still get vivid flashbacks to all the crazy horseshit. After all that time of holding my tongue and trying to be the better person. I ended up confronting her, telling her I planted a camera somewhere to explain how I knew what the dishwasher situation was really about, and because I know it would drive her paranoia up the wall, and moved out. That last bit wasnt the wiset decision but I was under a lot of stress.
Thats my story. I just wanted to get it off my chest.

I’ve been posting a series of essays regarding Jon’s identity and I think most people didn't understand the point I’m trying to make, so I thought I’ll give it another try. There's a short summary at the end.
Here’s the point: I believe that we were fooled, ASOIAF is “the real story” that Bael’s song tells.
Let me please explain myself better.
ASOIAF begins with a mystery, a cold creature kills a boy, Waymar Royce, who seems to be the hero stereotype: he’s handsome, smart, and owns a nice sword, and the mean wildlings are trying to deceive him, so he goes there sword in hand, like a hero does.
However, when you pay close attention to his story, you realize the poor kid set himself for failure. He left his best swordsman guarding the horses, asked a man who was known for being silent to be his watcher, and went straight into a place that he had described himself as a suspicious scene.
His outcome was predictable.
In the following chapters, we get three seemingly fantasy clichés one after another, Ned, the honorable hero, Jon, the young hero with a mysterious parentage, and soon after that, we are told how Lyanna was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by the evil dragon, Rhaegar Targaryen.
Of course, the predictable outcome would be Jon being Rhaegar’s son, after all his mother spent the war with the man, right? Well,maybe she didn’t.
Why am I claiming that we are being deceived?
When you compare Waymar’s story to Ned’s fever dream, we are being told *the exact same story.*
Like Waymar, the prince seems to have left his best swords “guarding the horses”, he leaves a person in charge of the watch who seems to go against his interests, and goes straight to die a meaningless death like Gared when he decided to desert.
What’s the issue? *It’s a song.*
Ned’s story of what happened in the tower (his fever dream) follows Bael’s song to the letter, and the point of that song is the deception, it’s not about love or even the baby, but Bael being a liar.
That also happens in AGoT’s prologue, Waymar was being deceived but not by the wildlings as he assumed.
The biggest hoax is that Bael’s song tells three different stories in which the “hero” is always “Bael”.

1. The Stark of WF wanted Bael’s head, but couldn’t take him.He calls Bael “a craven who preys only on the weak”, so Bael decides to teach him a lesson and goes to WF.

Being a wildling song, we expect Bael to be the hero, so when the lesson comes we might be a bit lost.
What’s the lesson? The lesson is the Stark “calling” Bael, giving a name to the “craven who preys only on the weak”.

1. Bael fakes to be a singer called Sygerrik (which means deceiver) and spends the night singing for the Stark, when he’s done, the lord offers him to “name” his reward. Bael asks for “the fairest flower” and the Stark gives him a winter rose. After leaving with the lord’s daughter, Bael leaves the flower as proof.

What’s the lesson here? It can’t be the lord realizing who took the maiden since the singer gave him a fake name, and he was welcome because the lordhad never met him before. The flower proves the lord is a deceiver.
When the singer asks for “the fairest flower” the lord knows he is asking for his daughter (even when he never names her), and tries to deceive Bael by giving him a rose. The flower proves the lord lied.

1. Bael comes back years later with an army; he’s faced in battle by his own son who doesn’t recognize him. Bael stays silent and lets the boy kill him. The word “recognize” implies that he knew the man; the very definition of recognition is “the identification of someone from previous encounters.”

What’s the lesson in this one? Who raised the boy? Bael: a liar and craven who never told the truth.
The “young lord,” was a liar (he had to recognize Bael from his own experience), and a craven who took advantage of Bael’s own weakness (his silence) to kill him.
Basically, when you go over the song, the baby, the maiden, and “the singer” are all victims of the lord of WF who never told the boy who he was, took the child “as payment”, and blamed “Bael” for the things he did.

“Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner. "My mother told me that *dead men sing no songs*," he put in.” AGoT - Prologue

Bael is the lord of WF in the three stories and the “hero” of his own songs: a name that means something, a flower as proof of his deception, and dead men*singing songs.*
To summarize, the biggest deception in the song is the language, or rather, the way people are named.
We’ll now examine how Lord Stark deceived us all, and later why this is “a song of ice and fire”.

A hero of his own songs

We are first introduced to the song in AGoT’s Prologue when we meet three men on a mission: Waymar Royce, Will, and Gared.
Each of them helps us understand one of the stories told in Bael’s song. The prologue seems to be about these men deciding what to do regarding some dead people. In truth, they illustrate the lessons in Ned’s song for us, while we can also understand other stories of dead people: Rheagar’s and Lyanna’s.
One of the men, Will, is a craven who “wants nothing so much as to ride hellbent for the safety of the Wall”.
Waymar suspects that the wildlings are trying to deceive them, and notes that some things in Will’s story don’t seem to add up.
He wants to go personally to see the dead wildlings and prove his theory: someone is lying. Ironically his own broken sword is proof that he was right about the deceptionbut wrong about the author.
The third man, Gared,instantly recognizes what happened to the wildlings by Will’s description, even when he never actually saw them; but knew from previous experiences what “the cold” does, as he had found one of his brothers “with a smile on his face”.
Let’s examine how the song unfolds so we can find the real Bael.

1. The Craven and the given name.

In the song, “Bael” is a name that means something, is what you call a craven who preys only on the weak.
We get to see how Will exemplifies the concept of being a craven when the Others appear. I mentioned earlier that one of Waymar’s mistakes was sending a brother known for being silent to act as his watcher.
Will sees the entire fight while hiding on a tree (he’s a craven after all), and never says a word, not even when he sees the shadows moving, not when he sees the Other facing Waymar, and not while the boy is being mercilessly butchered.
He realizes, however, that he should “call down a warning” as the shadows start to appear, and ironically, Waymar shouts his name instead.

The Others made no sound. Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been a bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he seen, after all? "Will, where are you?" Ser Waymar called up. "Can you see anything?" He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see."Answer me! *Why is it so cold?"*

Interestingly, that’s exactly what happens in Ned’s dream, he tells us how he gets to the Tower with a bunch of shadows and how he sees three men in white waiting for him, and curiously, the person yelling in the dream was recognized before by Ned himself as being*so weak* that she could only whisper:

He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes.” Eddard I - AGoT

Lyanna’s fear as she dies seems far more interesting considering how Will never yells fearing “the shadows”, since Ned gets to his dream surrounded by shadows. Now, while we are told by Ned himself how she could barely speak, somehow, she calls ‘Bael’ loud and clear:

"As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. "Eddard!" *she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky,as blue as the eyes of death. *"Lord Eddard," Lyanna called again.

See the first lesson in the song?
Why would Lyanna use the word “Eddard”, to call her own brother; a brother that she, and everyone who knew himcalled “Ned”?
In the song, the Stark gives Bael a name because he doesn’t know the man, but he knows *he’s hiding his identity to take advantage of “the weak”.*
In the dream “Eddard” means Bael. *He’s lying.*
The “craven” who actually yells in the dream is deliberately hidden:

"The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me *but for Howland Reed*." Bran III - ACoK

In Ned’s “song” Lyanna yells even when she is so weak that she can barely speak. In truth, the one yelling, Howland, is warning him about the “white shadow”, Arthur Dayne, who was moving towards Ned to kill him as the shadows move to kill Waymar. That’s what Will should have done when he saw them: warn his brother.
The parallels between the Other facing Waymar and Arthur with Dawn in hand facing Ned in the dream are clear too. This is the Other:

The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

This is Arthur, holding his sword made from “no human metal”.

"And now it begins," said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass,*alive with light*. Eddard X - AGoT

You see, Ned did in his dream what Lord Stark does in the song: the “weak” (Lyanna), are identified as a Stark; Bael takes advantage of weak people to sing his song, to tell his own version of things.

"Your Bael was a liar," he told her, certain now. "No," Ygritte said, "buta bard's truth is different than yours or mine. Anyway, you asked for the story, so I told it." Jon VI - ACoK

In fact, Lyanna ends up buried in WF’s crypt (like the maiden in the song) because she’s identified by Ned as a Stark, so that was “her place”.
That’s the first lesson: In Ned’s song (his dream) he hid the truth by identifying the person who yells as Lyanna, when it was actually Howland Reed warning him.
The biggest clue is the person calling him in a way that’s not familiar to him, like “Brandon the Daughterless” is not familiar name to Jon when he hears Bael’s song. We’ll discuss that name later.
What was Ned hiding? That Lyanna was never in that tower, that’s Ned’sbiggest deception, hiding the fact that Rhaeagar spent half the war chasing shadows, like Waymar, and that Robert never “avenged” Lyanna as he believed,because the prince was deceived and Robert was too late to the vengeance train.
When Jon hears the song’s happy ending, he asks if Bael has brought back the maiden, to which Ygritte replies that she was “hiding with the dead”. Ned made people believe that he had brought Lyanna’s body from Dorne while he left his friends’ corpses buried there, but he didn’t. She died elsewhere.
As for “the craven”, Ned himself explained his issue with the man: the “laughter”.

"They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a man's laughter freezes in his throat and chokes him to death," Ned said evenly. "Perhaps that is why the Starks have so little humor." Eddard I - AGoT

Howland Reed was identified as “the Knight of the Laughing Tree” by his children, he wasn’t, but he’s one of the three main suspects: Howland, Ned and Lyanna. None of them was the “laughing” one though.
While Ned tells us how people’s laughter freezes in their throats and chokes them to death, look what happens to the craven Will in the prologue when he thinks of doing what Howland does: calling “Bael”.

Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and *the words seemed to freeze in his throat*.

You likely remember how Will dies, choked to death by the un-dead Waymar.
To summarize: in Bael’s song “Bael” is a name that means something, is what you call a craven who preys only on the weak.
In Ned’s dream, the word “Eddard” means “Bael”; he’s hiding the warnings: Howland warned him about Arthur Dayne trying to kill him, and Lyanna gave him her own warning:

"I hear he has gotten a child** on some girl in the Vale." Ned had held the babe in his arms; he could scarcely deny her, nor would he lie to his sister, but he had assured her that what Robert did before their betrothal was of no matter, that he was a good man and true who would love her with all his heart. Lyanna had only smiled. "Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but *it cannot change a man's nature*." Eddard IX - AGoT

What Ned is trying to hide (mostly from himself) is the fact that killing Arthur turned him into a kinslayer, since Ashara got pregnant in Harrenhal, explaining why he links “the laughter” with “the freezing cold”: he fathered a bastard.
Ned was great at hiding things in plain sight and being silent, yet his dream sang a different song.

2. The deceiver and the flower.

When Will reports he found the wildlings dead, Waymar doesn’t believe him. To confirm his suspicions he asks the most experienced of the group, Gared, his views about the scene that Will had described, andhe says without hesitation “it was the cold”.

"I've had the cold in me too, lordling." Gared pulled back his hood, giving Ser Waymar a good long look at the stumps where his ears had been. "Two ears, three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got off light. We found my brother frozen at his watch, *with a smile on his face*."

Waymar asked Will a series of questions that Ned diligently answer for us:

"Did you see *any blood?" "Well, no," Will admitted. "Did you see *any weapons?" "Some swords, a few bows. One man had an axe. Heavy-looking, **double-bladed, a cruel piece of iron.It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand." "Did you make note of the position of the bodies?" Will shrugged. "A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground. Fallen, like."

In Bael’s song, the lord offers the singer to “name” his reward, and the man asks for “the fairest flower” which as we know, is then left behind as proof of the lord’s deception.
When Ned comes home from the war with “proof” of his deception, his wife names “the reward”, Ashara Dayne, and Ned’s answeris priceless:

It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, in bed one night, Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face. That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her. "Never ask me about Jon," he said, cold as ice. "He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady." She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne's name *was never heard in Winterfell again*." Catelyn II - AGoT

In this memory, Catelyn parallels Bael singing (marshaling his courage) until he’s asked to name the reward, and not daring to name the maiden, he asks for “the fairest flower”, to which the lord gives him not what he asked for, but “a rose from the gardens”.
Ned gives Jon’s name when he’s asked about Ashara, most importantly,he establishes the link between Jon and “the blood” he later dreams of, meaning he makes us believe that the boy killed Lyanna while being born,that’s the deception.
Did you see any blood? Yes, a ‘brother’ “frozen at his watch”, a sister who allegedly died “in a bed of blood”, and the “fairest flower” blowing in the wind like the petals Ned sees when he hears his name.
They waited before the round tower, the red mountains of Dorne at their backs, their white cloaks blowing in the wind. And these were no shadows; their faces burned clear, even now. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, had a sad smile on his lips.” Eddard X - AGoT
Killing Arthur made him a kinslayer, but Will saw a “double-bladed” weapon.
Did you see any weapons? Yes, petals falling “dead and black”.

Ned remembered **the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, *dead and black*. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. "I bring her flowers when I can," he said. "Lyanna was … fond of flowers."

What about the position of the bodies? They all waited for Ned and ended up “fallen”: Ashara, Arthur, *and Lyanna.*
Let’s discuss the proof.
When Waymar falls, Will thinks he needs to take his sword as proof of what he saw, as if the entire thing had nothing to do with him.
Ned, as we know, takes Dayne’s sword to Starfall and after that visit, Ashara commits suicide. Yet, we have no idea what he told them. It seems kind of weird how Lord Dayne seems to highly respect the man who killed his brother and caused his sister’s suicide, right?
The point is how Will finds the sword that was supposed to be proof:

He found what was left of the sword a few feet away,the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof.

We know that Ashara killed herself (explaining the sword splintered and twisted like Bran). We also know that Ned killed Arthur since that was the talking in Winterfell when he returned from the war (as Will intended to get to the Wall with a story), the proof being he took Dawn to Starfall.
What matters here is “what was left” and Ned “snatching” something that ended up in Winterfell, even when he never brought his friends’ corpses back. You see, in Ned’s memory, he seems to do what Will does when everything is over, “look around warily”.

“…the rose petals spilling from her palm, *dead and black. After that, he remembered nothing. *They had found him** still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his…”

The scene is not just weirdly similar to the way that the un-dead Waymar finds Will withhis sword, but also the proof of the crime that “Bael” left behind for the lord to find: a dead flower instead of the maiden as proof of the kidnapping.
As I said earlier, in Bael’s song the flower doesn’t mean that the lord realizes who took the maiden sincethe singer *gave him a fake name, and he was welcome in WF becausethe lord had never met him* before.
The flower proves the lord is a deceiver. It wasn’t Jon being born what killed Lyanna, *it was Ned’s flower.*

Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood run down his fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark.” Eddard XV

Ned mentions how he always brings Lyanna flowers, and that’s exactly what happened the last time he saw her. Except this time the flower was poisonous and killed her.
That’s one of the “weapons” that Will sees in one of the “fallen” *“right by his hand”,* which makes Ned a “double-bladed” weapon, or rather a double kinslayer.

“…the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his…”

Howland clearly realizes what happened and takes her hand from Ned’s so he wouldn’t die too.
All the weapons used in Ned’s song are mentioned by Will in the crime scene beyond the Wall: “It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand.”
It was “the ground” that killed Ashara, Ned being “beside” Arthur, and the petals in Lyanna’s hand.

"The trees press close here," Will warned. "That sword will tangle you up, m'lord. Better a knife." AGoT - Prologue

We get to see the proof of all victims in the way that Waymar raises being a portrayal of all three fallen.

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him. His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from *his sword* transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye. The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.

Waymar is the proof: the white pupil “transfixed” by the sword is for Arthur he died from multiple stabb wounds, the right eye “burning blue” is for Ashara (what Catelyn saw) while the “dead and black” Waymar stands for Lyanna in “her bed of blood”.
She died surrounded by her "brothers" too.
When Waymar rises, his gloves soaked in blood go straight for Will’s throat, and the man never gets to tell what he knows.
To summarize: in Bael’s song the flower proves the Lord’s deception, and the lie isn’t just about the maiden’s disappearance, or the boy’s identity, but about his own attempt to deceive the person who asks about “the flower” (his wife).
Like I said, the lord didn’t know the identity of “the thief”.Jon’s father is never named in any of Ned’s chapters*, not once,* not because he didn’t know him though, but because Ned stole “his song” as Will intended to steal Waymar’s, proof included.

3. The cold ending

In the song, when Bael comes back years later he’s faced in battle by his own son who doesn’t recognize him. I said earlier how the lack of recognition is related to previous experiences that “the young lord” should have seen coming.
Now, for some reason, the most experienced brother, Gared, runs south, he’s caught and beheaded.
That’s Bael’s fate in the song, and therefore, Ned’s.
What’s interesting is how Ned gets to that point. He goes south when he’s named “Hand” in the crypt, which is ironic as hell, but he only accepts the position since he’s determined to investigate a poisoning, and how that’s related to his son’s “falling” from a tower. Of course, he loses his sword at the peak of his mission, though Tywing was no singer, just a common thief and mass murderer.
Ned died singing his own song, *like Bael.*

Your Bael was a liar.

Since we get AGoT’s prologue from Will’s point of view and Bael’s song from Ygritte’s, (therefore the song of ice and fire), we might forget that there are other songs to be learned here.

Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner. "My mother told me that dead men sing no songs," he put in. "My wet nurse said the same thing, Will," Royce replied. "Never believe anything you hear at a woman's tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead." His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest. "We have a long ride before us," Gared pointed out. "

I claimed at the beginning how the prince seemed to have left his best swords “guarding the horses”, how Lyanna seemed to go against his interests even when we are led to believe that she's there on her own will, and how Rhaegar goes straight to die a meaningless death.
All of that is true only if you believe Ned’s song.
When Waymar leaves Gared behind, they have a quite enlightening exchange:

Gared dismounted. "We need a fire. I'll see to it." "How big a fool are you, old man? If there are enemies in this wood, *a fire is the last thing we want."* AGoT - Prologue

We know that “a fire” was exactly what Rhaegar was looking for, what he called the “one more”, apparently a daughter to complete his three-headed dragon.
Interestingly, Bael’s enemy is called Brandon “the daughterless” and he’s the deceived person in the song.

"Will you make a song for him?" the woman asked. "He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany's, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. "There must be one more," he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. "The dragon has three heads." He went to the window seat, picked up a harp, and ran his fingers lightly over its silvery strings. Sweet sadness filled the room as man and wife and babe faded like the morning mist, only the music lingering behind to speed her on her way.” Dany IV- ACoK

See the issue? Rhaegar parallels “Brandon the daughterless”, while Ned parallels Aegon, the promised one, as if the heads *had been exchanged.*
Ned’s song, like Aegon’s, was about people believing he was “the one and true hero” versus the truth proved by what happens to Waymar and his broken sword, and the true Aegon’s broken skull as proof.
Ned is “the one” because he’s the only hero in his song, even when “three heads” (Ashara, Lyanna, and Jon) would like to disagree.
Now, let’s examine the music “lingering behind” the prince and the winter rose, and how the song was playing from their point of view of “daughterless” lord and disenchanted promised bride.

1. The first lesson in the song is The Stark giving a name: “Bael” and the future “king” deciding *to teach a lesson.*

There were three people suspected of being the KoLT in Harrenhal, (Howland, Ned and Lyanna), though none of them were the true one, the real one was “a craven” who hid, (like Will), on a tree.
His shield had a laughing weirwood tree. We already saw how Ned thought that laughing causes people to freeze and choke to death, perhaps explaining why Ghost is mute.

The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given. Swords rose and fell, all in a deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale blades sliced through ringmail as if it were silk. Will closed his eyes. Far beneath him, he heard their voicesand laughter sharp as icicles.

The lesson in the daughterless song is Lyanna claiming to be the knight to hide “the true Bael”, who was teaching a lesson to the squires who had bullied the little Howland when he arrived at the tourney.
That explains why in Ned’s dream she’s giving the warning instead of the person who actually warned him*. They all claimed to be the knight.
In this version of the song, Bael is “a craven” because he hides his identity and “preys only on the weak”; the weakness is not knowing, and this is relevant to understanding the rest of these songs.

1. The second lesson is “the singer” asking for a reward without ever naming it and *leaving the flower as proof.*

The flower proves the lord is a deceiver, meaning Rhaegar didn’t believe Lyanna was the knight but he understood why she lied, *she was in love with the man.*
The reward however, is Rhaegar winning the tourney using the mystery knight’s same strategy, cheating:

“The pale blades sliced through ringmail as if it were silk.” AGoT - Prologue

This is how Ned remembers the prince’s success in the tourney:

A plume of scarlet silk streamed behind him when he rode, and it seemed no lance could touch him. Brandon fell to him, and Bronze Yohn Royce, and even the splendid Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.” Eddard XV - AGoT

Truly, no lance could touch the man, that’s the proof that “Bael” left behind, “scarlet silk streaming”; he won by cheating.

1. The final proof is Bael coming back, and here’s where we need to split the songs between ice and fire.

Let’s start with the prince and something closer to Ygritte’s version of the song.
Rhaegar’s incursion to the Trident is explained *by what he lacked, the daughter he was searching for and, most importantly, *the promise of magic that “Bael” meant for him. When he learns that Elia can’t have more children, he does what “the daughterless” does in the song, ***send “the crows” to look for the maiden and her Bael.*
That’s how Ned finds them, the guards end up in the tower because they were deceived and went there thinking that Lyanna and “the craven” were there. They were never there. Howland and Wylla were in the tower, she was faking to be Lyanna.
The prince got what he was searching for though in a very twisted way but still. Dany hatched the dragon’s eggs that came from Asshai, like the silk that Rhaegar wore in the tournament.
He wanted magic so Elia could have the daughter he wanted, since apparently, *that’s what the prophecy promised:* a three-headed dragon.
When Waymar is told about the dead wildlings, as we saw, he asks about their blood, their weapons, and the position of their bodies. All those things are related to Rhaegar’s quest for dragons.
In the daughterless song, the line seems to end with the woman, and the lack of recognition that happens when (the liar) Bael comes back means that Aegon is a fake, which we all suspect already since his song seems a bit too convenient. The “song of fire” now is whatever Dany decides to become, it’s her song.
Now, when you examine the song from Lyanna’s position, the story is about the maiden hiding in the crypt, and you have a completely different song because down there you can only find dead Starks, swords, and direwolves.
We know that Lyanna went to the tournament and that months after that, she disappears roughly at the same time that Rheagar was seen in the Trident.
That doesn’t mean he took her, it means she was hiding from him, because the prince wanted Bael like Waymar wanted those “dead wildlings”. He wanted to know who the man was.
The point of Lyanna’s song, however, is not so much about the tragic way in which she died, but how she convinced her father to get what she wanted: her own “sword”.
Ice as we know was divided into two swords, “Widow’s Wail” and “Oathkeeper”. Lyanna was married when she died, therefore the widow’s “wailing”, the cry that Ned remembers when she died.
The oath-keeping, however, is about Rickard and the “smell of blood and roses” Ned mentions when Lyanna dies:

Lord Rickard Stark, Ned's father, had a long, stern face. The stonemason had known him well. He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers holding tight to the sword across his lap, but *in life all swords had failed him*.” Eddard I - AGoT

Rickard had broken his word towards Robert when he allowed Lyanna to marry someone she liked instead of the man whose “nature” wouldn’t change no matter what he vowed. Robert *was blind. He didn’t care.* His lack of interest caused his downfall starting in Harrenhal when Lyanna saw him for what he was, and she seized that chance.
Lyanna fell in love with another man right in front of him and he didn’t see it because he never cared about her until “she was stolen from him” as if the woman had been his property.
Lyanna came back from the tourney *with proof:* she knew about the bastard, and she had the flowers as proof that when the prince embarrassed her in front of the entire realm her betrothed told nothing, like Will, he just stood there.
What Ned remembers of Rickard is what happened to Lyanna in the tourney, she was sitting “holding tight” to the winter roses across her lap, the proof of her father's “sword” failing.

He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers holding tight to the sword across his lap, but*in life all swords had failed him*.”

She had “the blood” (the bastard daughter) and “the weapon” (the crown) that Waymar asks for as proof of the deception. The position of her body changes after that because *Rickard agrees with her.*** Like Will, Robert couldn't be trusted, he would ruin Lyanna's reputation making her the laughing stock of the realm.
In Lyanna’s song, Bael comes back with an army too, he sneaks into Winterfell when Robert comes looking for Ned, he uses a fake name “Mance Rayder” to introduce himself, and sings for Lord Brandon.
When they meet, the real Bael is singing “The Dornishman’s Wife”, a song about a man who dies singing and laughing.
Jon’s true name is Brandon, like “The Daughterless”. In the song, the name of the young lord is never told, but since he grows up to become lord and the only lord in the song is Brandon, well, that’s the young lord’s name.
That’s what the Song of Ice and Fire is about names that mean something, magical proof, and young heroes dying, only to rise again *singing their own songs.*
Jon’s survival is explained by Waymar’s failed song, when he’s stabbed (like Arthur), he falls face down (like Ashara), only to rise again when someone goes for his sword.
Jon himself found his mother’s sword, *and he has proof too.*
Jon’s sword was the bastard letter. The letter told him Bael’s song again, only the names are different. The letter mentions the blood, the weapons, and the position of the bodies: Mance is in a cage cloaked by the skins of women “for all the north to see”.
That’s what Will saw coming for Waymar: *silent watchers.*

“The Others *made no sound.* Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone.”

Jon is an “Other”, all you need to become one *is knowing,* finding the truth hidden inside the lies to realize that the lord is a liar and craven who preys only on the weak.
That’s how you find the winter rose and *her armor.*

"The armor of the Others is proof against most ordinary blades, if the tales can be believed, and their own swords are so cold they shatter steel.. Jon II - ADwD

If you know, then you’re not weak anymore, your “armor” is proof against ordinary blades, because some tales should be believed.
To summarize, I claimed at the beginning how the biggest hoax is that Bael’s song tells three different stories in which the “hero” is always “Bael”.
The stories are all related to the brothers in AGoT’s prologue:

• Waymar telling Rhaegar’s story and how his failure turned into success when Dany achieved what he never could, finding real magic.
• Gared telling Ned’s story, thinking how he “needed” a fire to keep away “the enemies”. As Aemon told Sam, “fire consumes, but cold preserves”, explaining why Ned wanted some fire.
• The silent Will telling Jon’s story of finding his own “broken sword” as proof of his identity: a widow and an “oathkeeper”.

Summary:

The song of ice and fire is about how we are told the exact same song in two different ways: from Will’s point of view in AGoT’s prologue were “the Others” are the villains, and from Ygritte’s point of view were the Stark in Winterfell is the villain.
Ned’s song, his fever dream, which was closer to Will’s version, meant that he’s the only hero in three different stories: Lyanna’s mystery, Jon’s parentage, and his family’s downfall.
Rhagar’s song was closest to Ygritte’s, as his intention was having another child, which explains why she calls the lord “the daughterless”.
In the midst of those versions you find a “grey one”, Lyanna’s and what she left behind as proof:a broken sword.
The biggest hoax in Bael’s song is that it tells three different stories in which the “hero” is always “Bael”. The stories are all related to the brothers in AGoT’s prologue and what they do regarding the dead people:

• Waymar tells Rhaegar’s story and how his failure was turned into success when Dany achieved what he never could, finding real magic.
• Gared tells Ned’s story, thinking how he “needed” a fire to keep away “the enemies”.
• The silent Will tells Jon’s story of finding a “broken sword” as proof of his identity: a widow’s wai and an “oathkeeper”.

So, I had it removed yesterday. Won't be taking the shot this week, I kinda wanna wait a few days, mostly because I'm constipated, and I want that to clear out before I start again. My surgeon said there wasnt an issue with me taking it right after, I'm just being cautious I guess. It's been painful, I'm bloated, I refuse to take the oxi, I read it can make you constipated also. Besides, I may be one of those rare people who don't get the benefit of no pain, i had it once and it just made me feel tired. Hopefully, I will get to feel better in a couple of days.

borderlands 3 is severely underrated and is overly hated
Now, I’m not gonna say the story is good. In fact it sucks… a lot. Twin sirens leading a cult is a great idea for villains and there was so much they could have done with them like having Troy betray his sister (which was hinted at but never happened) but they mishandled the villains and they just suck... and don’t even get me started on Ava. I want to take a buzzaxe and slowly slash and hack her, or better yet blood eagle (blood rakk?) her so she can suffer a slow, painful and agonizing death. Idc if she’s a child, she’s the damn Antichrist.
But I digress, while the story sucks, it’s unfortunate that the horrible writing overshadowed the other aspects of the game. I think people tend to forget that the first borderlands didn’t really have a great story either. The vault hunters didn’t even get a personality until the second game where they appeared as NPCs.
Speaking of characters and story, Borderlands 3 does introduce great characters. Each of the four new vault hunters are lovable in their own way. There isn’t really a “boring“ character like there was for borderlands 1 or 2, no characters like Axton who is just a basic soldier type. Both mechanically and personality wise, all four VHs are great. Amara is a head strong egotistical-in-an-enduring-way and hero-celebrity, Zane is a witty carefree irish man who cracks jokes, FL4K is primalistic, lovws his animals and is a hunter at heart, and Moze is…. I am a struggling to describe her personality but she is lovable… her love for her iron bear mech is oddly adorable ig? Outside the vault hunters the game has other great characters. Maurice is bestest boy, Wainwright Jacob’s is a natural fit for being Hammerlock’s lover, and the game has so many fun side mission characters
Of course, even if all the characters sucked… Borderlands 3 would still be a great game and that is because of it’s gameplay
The guns are fun and amazing to use, the skill trees and different character abilities, the mayhem system, being able to reach level 72 without DLC, and the numerous quality of life changes like being able to instant refill ammo at vending machines rather then having to purchase ammo individually or NPCs being able to revive your character.
I would go as far as to say BL3’s gameplay is better than BL2. Having to take time to individuality purchase ammo, or having to worry about relying on Slag in endgame, sucks.
Finally, BL3 is the first game where we go to multiple planets, opening up the door for future borderlands games to do new things aswell as expanding the borderlands universe. Had it not been for this, the borderlands series would have remained stuck on the desert planet of pandora. The wildly different settings of each planet helps shake things up and makes them feel less samey. From a rustic backwoods swamp planet to a sci fi planet containing a cyberpunk city.
borderlands 3’s horrible story should be criticized, but it shouldn’t overshadow the good things about this game. I’d rather gearbox give BL4 a good story and good gameplay rather then them giving BL4 a good story but horrible gameplay. I’m worried gearbox will see the hate for BL3 and think the game as a whole is bad and not realize that it’s just the writing that is an issue.

Hi there my fellow Heathen,
I’m MYO. I’m here to write unfiltered smut to meet my unfiltered needs. It’s only human x
I’m proudly a bisexual woman. I’m mostly submissive but I do enjoy domming on occasion. Especially if there is red wine involved 🖤
I did go under another name on this hellsite until recently where I experienced severe paranoia related to my many, many mental health issues. I deleted all my old scripts and am starting from scratch (almost).
I’m now feeling a lot safer and centred.
So, I’ve come to accept that we all have different needs and I’m not causing anyone legitimate, unconsensual harm, so I don’t need to be ashamed of my kinks. Just like how (given your kinks don’t harm nonconsenting people) you’re entitled to your play as well x
Because play is all it is.
I care greatly about the safety of others and in no way condone serious issues such as real harassment, violence, and abuse. Everything I write is play/fantasy only.
And, finally…
As I will be writing on each of my scripts; if you’re experiencing any issues with mental or physical health please contact your GP, the mental health helpline in your region, or emergency if life is at risk.
Have fun and stay hydrated, my darlings.
Xoxo MYO

Over recent years my relationship with my sister has seriously deteriorated. To cut a long story short, we’ve both had very difficult childhoods but she maintains that I have had it “easy” in comparison. She sees herself as the main victim and that I am the bad guy, when really, our parents are responsible for what we gone through.
Some background. We were very close but as I’ve grown older and developed more as person (basically stopping people pleasing, learning to stand up for myself), I’ve come to realise that she is a highly manipulative and a generally toxic person who takes no accountability for her words or actions. She isn’t there for me as a big sister and is never happy for me.
I believe the crux of the issue is that she is an extremely envious person and has always been jealous of me, even when we were young children.
I’ve gone through stages of minimal contact with her before and realised my life is significantly less stressful without her in it. It pains me to realise that I need to permanently contact with her but I feel this is the best way forward. I will see her at some family gatherings once or twice a year and I’m prepared to be civil with her on those occasions.
What saddens me is I’ve been at this point before where I’ve been the first person to reach out during a disagreement to make amends with her. I am not prepared to do that again with her. It’s not in my sister’s nature at all to make the first move (or apologise), so I doubt she would want to be proactive with me and work things out this time, based on her recent behaviour.
I would really appreciate some advice on how to handle this situation. Thanks in advance.

Over the years I've been using Upwork to build my profile and more importantly my career. During that time Upwork has gone through different changes and one of them which sucks is paying for connects starting at 16... Crazy stuff.
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But very similar to sales, Upwork has become a numbers game. I want to say it's how awesome your proposal is but let's be real... There are so many people applying for the same job that makes it really hard to stand out.
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One way that how I make sure I get hired is by doing this -

1. Keep my cover letter short but not too short. You want to be able to address how you'll be able to address your potential client's issue without drowning them with a crap load of testimonials, and a 5000-word essay on why you're the best. Get to the point and maybe send 1 - 2 docs unless requested for more.
2. Use Loom. I've used Loom to create short videos as my proposal and I've been hired several times if not given an interview by the very least. Video is a way to differentiate between the thousands of boring cover letters being sent out.
3. Have an updated profile and if you're new make sure your profile looks freaking legit. This gives a good first impression.

Happy to give more tips and how I've managed to grow my career using Upwork.