Chapter 21 of No Joy in Command is out for Squires!
Added 2025-05-26 06:35:20 +0000 UTCOkay, not as late as I feared. The chapter is of ordinary length, but it's sort of a trial writing style for me. I'm happy with how both came out, and I managed to tell everything I wanted to tell without digging into excessive detail. I'm extremely happy with the chapter as it is, but I realise it probably might be quite... weird for some, as I usually don't spin things like this. Lemme know what you think.
You can read the previous chapters in the collection.
Comments
I just realized something. Is it still a crack-fic anymore? It's gotten a great deal more serious.
eternalknight219
2025-05-28 01:15:45 +0000 UTCYou brought a crackfic about a 25 year old Jon who learned his lesson from dying and being resurrected, serving Stannis, fighting his wars the putting him on the throne, his time got nuked. He time-traveled into the past filled with dumbasses and expected maybe some "gripping character development" or something when his story technically ended. No shit, my guy Jon is basically a maxed character in a PS5 new game plus DLC.
Cinema Man
2025-05-26 23:14:19 +0000 UTCWell, as everybody else already noted, the Baela and Cregan situation is now neatly resolved. Moondancer is dead, the Winterfell Starks won't have dragons after their marriage, the King Starks won't have their cousins knocking on the Red Keep's door for the throne. Good writing, well foreshadowed, neat scene with Ice. Now for the negative part of this comment: I'm going to try and be as constructive as possible during this critique, but I'm no writer so forgive my failings. The scene with Jon's ghosts from the past (neat move adding Jenny's song from Rheagar to start the scene!) has completely failed to land any kind of emotional blow on me, I'm sorry to say. He's a man grown and fulfilled with extremely little of what can be described as a character arc in this fic. None of the ghosts' advice are anything but things he has already been doing or a pat on the back. Jon's attachment to them feels fleetingly pointless considering none have been mentioned by name more than three times in this fic. This is sort of correlated to a broader dislike I have with these latter, post-Cannibal chapters: it feels as if Jon has been handed a signed copy of the Prince from Macchiavelli translated into Common by the man himself and read it religiously every day since he was a child. You can substitute "Jon" with "the Prince" in every scene he had and it would change little. He acts like such a picture perfect depiction of a medieval ruler that it completely removes one of the most gripping parts of ASoIaF: the issues with allowing personal relationships and foibes to mix with political titles. Jon simply faces zero conflict within himself because he has no attachments to any part of the realm, thus his rule is perfect, thus he becomes - for me, personally, people might disagree - extremely uninteresting as a character and opposed to the things that made the original depiction in the original books captivating in the first place. That said, you did tag this as crack, so I suppose I was just hoisted by my own expectations. Don't regret buying the patreon though. Cheers.
Czar Zizi
2025-05-26 19:06:28 +0000 UTCDumbledore as eddard stark, now that's an idea
Abhishek Kumar
2025-05-26 11:23:39 +0000 UTCI'm honestly surprised at how positive the comments on this chapter are. To me it seems everyone consistently acts like an idiot whenever it suits the plot. If Seasmoke was known to be with the Hightower army, why wouldn't Jon and Rhaena just fly there and kill them. Even one of them would be enough. There is literally no immediate need to be in Kings Landing. Even if slmeone manages to take it who cares who holds the city? It's far more important to keep as many of your dragons alive while killing the enemy dragons. Idk just seems like you always have people act in exactly the way thats most convenient for your plot, no matter whether it's obviously stupid.
Val
2025-05-26 11:22:13 +0000 UTC
