A giant theme of GRRM's writing/work is his obsession with characters being drawn in shades of grey, right? He doesn't want anybody to be truly all good or all bad, because people aren't. A couple quotes you can skip if you already know all about this.

AbeBooks: Not many of your characters are free from sin, in many ways, which is interesting.
George: I wanted to affect a certain human reality. I don't like fantasy where everybody is either a hero or a villain, black or white. I prefer to paint with shades of grey. I think it's more true to life. We're all of us angels and demons in the same skin. We do good things and the next day we maybe do terrible things. (https://www.abebooks.com/docs/Fantasy/george-martin.shtml)

At greater length, GRRM "famously" said:

"Much as I admire Tolkien, and I do admire Tolkien — he’s been a huge influence on me, and his Lord of the Rings is the mountain that leans over every other fantasy written since and shaped all of modern fantasy — there are things about it, the whole concept of the Dark Lord, and good guys battling bad guys, Good versus Evil, while brilliantly handled in Tolkien, in the hands of many Tolkien successors, it has become kind of a cartoon. We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys.
"It is certainly a genuine, legitimate topic as the core of fantasy, but I think the battle between Good and Evil is waged within the individual human hearts. We all have good in us and we all have evil in us, and we may do a wonderful good act on Tuesday and a horrible, selfish, bad act on Wednesday, and to me, that’s the great human drama of fiction. I believe in gray characters, as I’ve said before. We all have good and evil in us and there are very few pure paragons and there are very few orcs. A villain is a hero of the other side, as someone said once, and I think there’s a great deal of truth to that, and that’s the interesting thing. In the case of war, that kind of situation, so I think some of that is definitely what I’m aiming at."

A few characters threaten to suggest that much as GRRM wants to write a world in which everyone has serious, meaningful moral failings, he can't help but give us a few out-and-out "good guys". Sure, they may have superficial failings, but nothing that we really care about or judge them for.
Now, who's one character who seems almost indisputably good?
How about Davos Seaworth? I'm certainly not the first one to think so. LiveVirus wrote up an entire post called "The Good Guys" in which he called out Davos as one of four characters who, they said, "appear to be inherently good, motivated by service to another, loyal to even their own detriment, bound by honor and sense of duty, and lacking their own agenda." (The others were Sam, Areo, and Selmy.) They noted that yes, Davos was a smuggler, but dismissed this—quite correctly I think—as not actually creating any meaningful "moral ambiguity" as far as readers are concerned.
It's my belief that GRRM didn't just fuck up and make Davos, for all practical purposes, all good. Davos has done something that, when revealed, most readers will have to admit was objectively shitty (although built-up sympathy for him will cause many, I think, to "understand" and not thereby adjudge him damned, which is something I suspect GRRM wishes humans would do a lot more of, when faced with the failings of others).
What did Davos do that's so shitty?
Keeping in mind my overarching belief that our text is highly artificial, not in a pejorative sense but in the sense that it is not at an organic outflowing of some guy "spinning a yarn" using the best picture-painting words come to mind, but rather a carefully crafted, self-consciously textual construction constantly engaged in wordplay and "rhyming" parallels that go far beyond what most readers imagine possible, let's consider some of the very first things we're told about everyone's favorite Braavosi brothel, The Happy Port. Here's its very first mention:

"He [i.e. Sam] is not a lord," a child's [i.e. Arya's/"Cat of the Canala's"] voice put in. "He's in the Night's Watch, stupid. From Westeros." A girl edged into the light, pushing a barrow full of seaweed; a scruffy, skinny creature in big boots, with ragged unwashed hair. "There's another one down at the Happy Port, singing songs to the Sailor's Wife," she informed the two bravos. (FFC Sam III)

Thus the first thing we know, before we're even sure what this "Happy Port" is, is that one of our main characters, Arya Stark, knows someone there called "the Sailor's Wife". Structurally, then, it seems this "Sailor's Wife" may be important to the drama of our narrative.
Sam soon circles back to this point, underlining it in the reader's consciousness:

"You said you saw a singer . . ."
"At the Happy Port. He's going to wed the Sailor's Wife."
"Wed?"
"She only beds the ones who marry her." (ibid.)

Of course, we soon find out that this Sailor's Wife who "weds" her clients once loved and was wed to a sailor, who was seemingly lost at sea, leaving the Sailor's Wife and (presumably) his daughter by her, Lanna, to work as whores in the Happy Port:

The other whores said that the Sailor's Wife visited the Isle of the Gods on the days when her flower was in bloom, and knew all the gods who lived there, even the ones that Braavos had forgotten. They said she went to pray for her first husband, her true husband, who had been lost at sea when she was a girl no older than Lanna. "She thinks that if she finds the right god, maybe he will send the winds and blow her old love back to her," said one-eyed Yna, who had known her longest, "but I pray it never happens. Her love is dead, I could taste that in her blood. If he ever should come back to her, it will be a corpse." (AFFC Cat of the Canals)

There's no mistaking how we're supposed to feel about the Sailor's Wife: She's a good person who goes out of her way to be kind to Arya, but a tragic figure who clearly lives with great pain from her loss:

Whenever Cat happened by with her barrow, the Sailor's Wife would insist that her new husband buy some oysters, to stiffen him for the consummation. She was good that way, and quick to laugh as well, but Cat thought there was something sad about her too. (ibid.)

This isn't the first time Arya mentions the Sailor's Wife in her POV chapters, though. She first thinks of the Sailor's Wife just after telling some sailors that "the best whores are at the Happy Port". Arya thinks of the proprietor, Merry, then about Merry's "girls":

Her girls were nice as well; Blushing Bethany and the Sailor's Wife, one-eyed Yna who could tell your fortune from a drop of blood, pretty little Lanna, even Assadora, the Ibbenese woman with the mustache. (ibid.)

Notice, GRRM pairs "the Sailor's Wife" with a whore named "Blushing Bethany", whose sole further role in ASOIAF is to be a target of seduction for Dareon, a deserter and a clear liar and cad who no reader would be so foolish as to believe truly cares about Bethany:

When Dareon had first appeared at the Happy Port, Arya had almost asked if he would take her with him back to Eastwatch, until she heard him telling Bethany that he was never going back. "Hard beds, salt cod, and endless watches, that's the Wall," he'd said. "Besides, there's no one half as pretty as you at Eastwatch. How could I ever leave you?" He had said the same thing to Lanna, Cat had heard, and to one of the whores at the Cattery, and even to the Nightingale the night he played at the House of Seven Lamps. (ibid.)

It is, I believe, no accident that GRRM introduced "Blushing Bethany and the Sailor's Wife" as a pair at the beginning of a sentence which then proceeded to list the remaining whores as individuals. Indeed, this pairing and sentence structure is particularly odd since we'd surely expect the Sailor's Wife to be paired with her daughter, Lanna, if anyone. There's certainly no narrative/in-world reason for Arya to think of Bethany and the Sailor's Wife as a unit. Hence it seems at least plausible, especially if ASOIAF is constructed as painstakingly as I believe it is, that the unusual pairing is (a) quite intentional and (b) has a significance we're not yet aware of — perhaps one that will one day make re-readers smile as they at last get GRRM's little joke.
What "little joke"?
Consider that pairing again: "Blushing Bethany and the Sailor's Wife", whose "true husband", a sailor, is "dead", "a corpse".
Davos Seaworth is a Westerosi "sailor… meant to die at sea—

Davos had always been a sailor; he was meant to die at sea. (ASOS Davos I)

—who captains the Black Betha.
To be sure, I'm not arguing that Davos named Black Betha after the Sailor's Wife's fellow whore Blushing Bethany.
I am arguing that this is an authorial, metatextual "rhyme", a wink nudging us readers to connect Black Betha's captain Davos to "Blushing Bethany" and hence to her textual companion, the Sailor's Wife.
Because, of course, the sailor-captain Davos Seaworth is the Sailor's Wife's Sailor.
Davos is not just a "sailor… meant to die at sea" as we might speculate the Sailor's Wife's long-lost Sailor has; he is "known" to be and repeatedly referred to as a "dead man"—a figurative corpse, so to speak:

The onion knight had not forgotten Wyman Manderly's last words to him. Take this creature to the Wolf's Den and cut off head and hands, the fat lord had commanded. I shall not be able to eat a bite until I see this smuggler's head upon a spike, with an onion shoved between his lying teeth. Every night Davos went to sleep with those words in his head, and every morn he woke to them. And should he forget, Garth was always pleased to remind him. Dead man was his name for Davos. When he came by in the morning, it was always, "Here, porridge for the dead man." At night it was, "Blow out the candle, dead man." (ADWD Davos IV)
Robett Glover filled a wine cup and offered it to Davos. He took it, sniffed it, drank. "How did I die, if I may ask?"
"By the axe. Your head and hands were mounted above the Seal Gate, with your face turned so your eyes looked out across the harbor. By now you are well rotted, though we dipped your head in tar before we set it upon the spike. Carrion crows and seabirds squabbled over your eyes, they say." (ibid.)

Davos's story highlights the idea that someone "dead" is not always dead—

"You're bloody mad," said an oarsman off Storm Dancer. "The Beggar King's been dead for years. Some Dothraki horselord cut his head off."
"So they tell us," said the old fellow. "Might be they're lying, though. He died half a world away, if he died at all. Who's to say? If a king wanted me dead, might be I'd oblige him and pretend to be a corpse. None of us has ever seen his body." (ADWD Davos II)

—and re-highlights it even when people (think they) have "seen his body":

"Your Grace, glad tidings," he announced. "Wyman Manderly has done as you commanded, and beheaded Lord Stannis's onion knight."
"We know this for a certainty?"
"The man's head and hands have been mounted above the walls of White Harbor. Lord Wyman avows this, and the Freys confirm. They have seen the head there, with an onion in its mouth. And the hands, one marked by his shortened fingers." (AFFC Cersei V)

Davos is thus "dead" and in a sense a walking "corpse", and will in that sense be "dead" and a "corpse" should he ever again visit, say, Braavos, thereby satisfying one-eyed Yna's prophecy:

"Her love is dead, I could taste that in her blood. If he ever should come back to her, it will be a corpse." (AFFC Cat of the Canals)

I suspect Dareon's seduction of Bethany is something of an ironic reenactment—perhaps a grotesque parody—of Davos's action's with the Sailor's Wife. Here, it's interesting that Black Betha's captain Davos has traded with the Watch at Eastwatch, from whence came Dareon, Blushing Bethany's would-be seducer:

Davos had traded at Eastwatch in his smuggling days. The black brothers made hard enemies but good customers, for a ship with the right cargo. (ASOS Davos V)

It's more interesting because we learn this mere moments after we see Davos think of his wife, for neither the first nor last time:

"Only a starving man begs bread from a beggar," [Davos] muttered.
"Pardon, my lord?"
"Something my wife said once."

Indeed, Davos's seeming devotion to his wife Marya—

When [Davos] thought of Nissa Nissa, it was his own Marya he pictured, a good-natured plump woman with sagging breasts and a kindly smile, the best woman in the world.

—and their children is a major factor in making him as sympathetic a character as he is for so many readers. It's a huge part of why he seems so uncharacteristically good, so pure of heart, which invites critical readers to wonder why he doesn't have some flaw that matters, dramatically, to the audience… especially given that it just so happens to be in Davos's story that GRRM's obsession with "grey" characters is spelled out, in-world:

Would a good man be doing this? "I am a man," [Davos] said. "I am kind to my wife, but I have known other women. I have tried to be a father to my sons, to help make them a place in this world. Aye, I've broken laws, but I never felt evil until tonight. I would say my parts are mixed, m'lady. Good and bad."
"A grey man," she said. "Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?"
"What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey." (ACOK Davos II)

But notice: "I have known other women". The same thing recurs when Davos, believing he is going to die, writes his "last letters" to his wife Marya (rhymes with Arya, our guide to the Happy Port) and his sons, with his letters being another huge part of why so many people like Davos so much):

Davos sat beside his candle and looked at the letters he had scratched out word by word during the days of his confinement. I was a better smuggler than a knight, he had written to his wife, a better knight than a King's Hand, a better King's Hand than a husband. I am so sorry. Marya, I have loved you. Please forgive the wrongs I did you. Should Stannis lose his war, our lands will be lost as well. Take the boys across the narrow sea to Braavos and teach them to think kindly of me, if you would. Should Stannis gain the Iron Throne, House Seaworth will survive and Devan will remain at court. He will help you place the other boys with noble lords, where they can serve as pages and squires and win their knighthoods. It was the best counsel he had for her, though he wished it sounded wiser.
He had written to each of his three surviving sons as well, to help them remember the father who had bought them names with his fingertips. His notes to Steffon and young Stannis were short and stiff and awkward; if truth be told, he did not know them half as well as he had his older boys, the ones who'd burned or drowned upon the Blackwater. To Devan he wrote more, telling him how proud he was to see his own son as a king's squire and reminding him that as the eldest it was his duty to protect his lady mother and his younger brothers. Tell His Grace I did my best, he ended. I am sorry that I failed him. I lost my luck when I lost my fingerbones, the day the river burned below King's Landing. (ADWD Davos IV)

Sure, we've all read Davos say he's cheated on Marya. But it's had no dramatic impact, has it?
Until now.
Until we realize that Davos deliberately abandoned Arya's friend the Sailor's Wife and hetheir daughter Lanna to their present fate.
Until we think about the Sailor's Wife—clearly cut from the same "kindly", "good-natured" cloth as Marya—still mourning Davos, all these years later, believing him lost at sea, waylaid by forces beyond his control, when in reality he'd simply chosen one family and one life (as a Lord, no less) over her and Lanna, leaving them to a life of whoredom.

Further Discussion: Lanna's Hair, Lanna's Name

Yes, yes, we all know "Lanna" has "golden" hair:

Yna was there too, braiding Lanna's fine long golden hair (AFFC Cat of the Canals)

GRRM tells us "men see what they expect to see", but the joke is often on us for seeing what he shrewdly invites us to see, but which is not necessarily there. Surely the name "Lanna" primes our narrator Arya to think of Lannisters and their much-vaunted "gold" hair, and thus she sees Lanna's hair as "gold", per se, and more importantly most of us therefore accept it as unproblematically and distinctively "gold", per se and period. But as I've discussed extensively elsewhere, "gold" hair can easily mean "blond" tinged by expectation.
Notwithstanding the brown hair on his head, Davos's son Devan has "blond hair" on his face:

"Good morrow to you, Father," the boy greeted him. He looks so much like Dale did at his age, Davos thought. His eldest had never dressed so fine as Devan in his squire's raiment, to be sure, but they shared the same square plain face, the same forthright brown eyes, the same thin brown flyaway hair. Devan's cheeks and chin were dusted with blond hair, a fuzz that would have shamed a proper peach, though the boy was fiercely proud of his "beard." Just as Dale was proud of his, once. Devan was the oldest of the three children at the table. (ASOS Davos V)

More importantly, we are pointedly never told what color the Sailor's Wife's hair is. This invites readers to argue that Lanna's gold hair "must" therefore be unusual (since it's mentioned) and hence must derive from her father rather than from her mother. But we don't actually know that the Sailor's Wife doesn't also have "golden"/blond hair, do we? And of course, Lanna could have been sired by someone other than "the Sailor", who is never explicitly stated to be Lanna's father, just the Sailor's Wife's "true husband". (Note that it could be true that Lanna is someone else's daughter in fact while at the same time that the Sailor's Wife believes her father to be the Sailor.)
If the Sailor's Wife loved/loves Davos and believes or knows he sired Lanna, why is Lanna named "Lanna"? A likely explanation comes from—where else—Davos himself:

Roro Uhoris, the Cobblecat's cranky old master, used to claim that he could tell one port from another just by the way they smelled. Cities were like women, he insisted; each one had its own unique scent. Oldtown was as flowery as a perfumed dowager. Lannisport was a milkmaid, fresh and earthy, with woodsmoke in her hair. (ADWD Davos II)

From AFFC Arya II:

But Braavos lay before her. The night air smelled of smoke and salt and fish.

What kind of smoke? "Woodsmoke", perhaps:

[Aemon] shivered in Sam's arms. "Why is the room so cold?"
"There's no more wood." Dareon had paid the innkeep double for a room with a hearth, but none of them had realized that wood would be so costly here. Trees did not grow on Braavos, save in the courts and gardens of the mighty. Nor would the Braavosi cut the pines that covered the outlying islands around their great lagoon and acted as windbreaks to shield them from storms. Instead, firewood was brought in by barge, up the rivers and across the lagoon. Even dung was dear here; the Braavosi used boats in place of horses.

And from ADWD The Blind Girl:

As [Arya] made her way past the temples [which we've otherwise heard of in the context of the Sailor's Wife's prayers for her true husband], she could hear the acolytes of the Cult of Starry Wisdom atop their scrying tower, singing to the evening stars. A wisp of scented smoke hung in the air…

Braavos and Lannisport, then, share a smoky quality, and Davos's sense-memory of Lannisport smelling like a "milkmaid" more or less screams "newborn child". It thus seems plausible that Davos suggested the name "Lanna" for his infant daughter by the Sailor's Wife because she evoked his sense-memory of Lannisport. And regardless of Lanna's name's in-world origins, these textual connections allow "Lanna" to work well as a metatextual clue to readers that Davos is the Sailor's Wife's Sailor—albeit a far more subtle (and clever) clue than "oh so her dad must be a Lannister, so maybe the Sailor's Wife is Tysha or maybe she married Gerion".
(For what it's worth, Davos's children's names are Dale, Allard, Matthos, Maric, Devan, Stannis and Steffon. 4 of 7 have a double consonant (like Lanna). Two contain Ls as in Lanna. "Stannis" contains "ann" like (Lanna). No, none of this would mean anything on its own, but we can at least say that "Lanna" isn't totally out of place.)

Further Discussion: Allard Seaworth's "Girl In Braavos": Like Father, Like Son

Davos being the Sailor also pays off some throwaway information about one of his sons we're given as Davos awaits his death (the first time) on a rock after the Battle of the Blackwater:

When they find me dead here, if ever they do, perhaps they will name the rock for me, he thought. Onion Rock, they'll call it; it will be my tombstone and my legacy. He deserved no more. The Father protects his children, the septons taught, but Davos had led his boys into the fire. Dale would never give his wife the child they had prayed for, and Allard, with his girl in Oldtown and his girl in King's Landing and his girl in Braavos, they would all be weeping soon. (ASOS Dav I)

Like son, like father, I suspect: Davos, too, once had a "girl in Braavos" (and now has two, in a sense). Just as Davos imagines Allard's "girl in Braavos" cries for Allard, who is presumed dead, so does Davos's former "girl in Braavos", the Sailor's Wife, cry for him.

Further Discussion: Davos's Textual Connections To Braavos, Overt and Poetic

GRRM manages to directly connect Davos to Braavos in the text (and not just via the obvious literal rhyme of the names), at first only in passing:

The Lyseni shook his head. "Of ships, His Grace has none, and Salladhor Saan has many. The king's ships burned up on the river, but not mine. You shall have one, old friend. You will sail for me, yes? You will dance into Braavos and Myr and Volantis in the black of night, all unseen, and dance out again with silks and spices. We will be having fat purses, yes." (ASOS Davos II)

Could GRRM be making some coy allusions to Davos's past here? Dancing, "silks and spices" could evoke a wedding/wedding gifts. A fat purse, pregnancy perhaps? In other words: what happened the last time Davos went in and out (so to speak!) of/in Braavos.
Saan later persists in suggesting they make for Braavos, crowbarring in a reference to the Faceless Men, with whom Arya is training even as she tells us all about the Happy Port, the Sailor's Wife, and Lanna:

"Someone," said Salladhor Saan. "Yes, just so, someone. But not you. You are weak as a child, and no warrior. Stay, I beg you, we will talk more and you will eat, and perhaps we will sail to Braavos and hire a Faceless Man to do this thing, yes? But you, no, you must sit and eat." (ibid.)

Make no mistake: It's not that the mere mention of Braavos in Davos's storyline "proves" anything, but that passages like these will read differently—they'll be poignant, even—if Davos is, indeed, the Sailor, for whom a return to Braavos would be fraught with emotion. And that, for me, is good reason to think he is the Sailor, given that our text is written by an guy who has stated his interest in stories that are not just fun to read but fun to re-read.
Davos's "last letter" to Marya makes a far more concrete suggestion that he's quite familiar with Braavos:

Should Stannis lose his war, our lands will be lost as well. Take the boys across the narrow sea to Braavos and teach them to think kindly of me, if you would. (ADWD Davos IV)

His notion to "teach them to think kindly of me" is potentially ironic, inasmuch as the Sailor's Wife in Braavos with his (maybe) daughter thinks "kindly" of him. It also recalls Arya's Kindly Man, under whose auspices Arya is acting as the Sailor's Wife's friend, Cat of the Canals.) (h/t IllyrioMoParties)
There's another Davos-Braavos connection that's far more subtle, but also in a way more auspicious. Yna believes the Sailor, should he return, will be "dead", a "corpse", right? Now, who calls Davos "dead man" over and over, effectively tagging him as a figurative corpse? Garth the jailer, who wields an ax called "Lady Lu" and a rod called "The Whore". Meanwhile Luco Prestayn of Braavos, "Lu", perhaps, to his friends, has a ship called Lady Bright. So on one side of this little "rhyming ledger", Garth, "Lady Lu", and "The Whore", together with Garth's partner Ser Bartimus, "a cadaverous one-legged knight", watch over Davos, a "dead man" who came to White Harbor on a ship called of all things the Merry Midwife—

She was not a ship to draw a second glance, unless it was to wonder how she stayed afloat. (DWD Davos II)

—and who is a "sailor" who captained "Black Betha"; while on the other side of the rhyming ledger in Braavos we have "The Happy Port" Whores "one-eyed Yna" (a la "one-legged" Bart) , Blushing Bethany and Bethany's textual companion, the Whore and mother-to-Lanna known as "the Sailor's Wife", whose Sailor is "dead", and Lu's Lady Bright, whose owner is, I suspect, a kind of barely-walking cadaver (a la Bartimus and the "[you] wonder how she stayed afloat" Merry Midwife) himself:

Prestayn sat alone, a man so ancient that you wondered how he ever reached his seat… (tWOW – Mercy)

This incredibly dense web of "rhyming"/symmetry makes a weird kind of poetic dream-sense if there's a firmly identical element on either side of the Narrow Sea-spanning rhyme in the form of Davos, who is both Garth's/Lu's/The Whore's "dead man" off the Merry Midwife and the Happy Port whore-mother-called "the Sailor's Wife"'s Sailor. Call it… allusion-by-"rhyme".
"Ah-ha!" some astute readers may be saying. "Sure, Davos's ship at the Battle of the Blackwater was called Black Betha, which 'rhymes' with 'Blushing Bethany' of The Happy Port (where dwells one-eyed Yna) in Braavos, where Lu's Lady Bright is based, but later, while freshly off the Merry Midwife and jailed as a 'dead man' under the watch of Lady Lu, The Whore, the cadaverous one-legged Bartimus, etc., he thinks of how his jail cell is bigger than his cabin aboard the Black Bessa!" Bessa! Not Betha.
Very, very true:

Davos rose and paced his cell. As cells went, it was large and queerly comfortable. He suspected it might once have been some lordling’s bedchamber. It was thrice the size of his captain’s cabin on Black Bessa, and even larger than the cabin Salladhor Saan enjoyed on his Valyrian. (DWD Dav IV)

Except what allusion does "Bessa" have?
The other Bessas in ASOIAF are (a) a serving maid who partakes in a threesome with Theon, (b) Chett’s Hag’s Mire "slattern" Bessa, and (c) Bessa of the song Bessa The Barmaid "with its ribald lyrics". Arguably, then, "Bessa" everywhere recalls "whores", a la the Sailor's Wife, Blushing Bethany, etc.
Perhaps even more pointedly, though, the name "Bessa" also works with the allusive "rhyming" scheme I just sketched between Davos's story in White Harbor (with Lady Lu, etc.) and Arya's story in Braavos (with Lu Prestayn's Lady Bright, etc.). How so? Well, when we (via Arya, our guide to the Happy Port) first lay eyes on a Prestayn (very probably, I believe, Lu of the Lady Bright himself), it's mere seconds before she sees another Braavosian. Not only is this fellow grossly fat like Davos's captor in his bigger-than-Bessa's cabin cell, Wyman Manderly, but he's named, of all things… "Bessaro":

In one box sat three scions of Otharys, each accompanied by a famous courtesan; Prestayn sat alone, a man so ancient that you wondered how he ever reached his seat; Torone and Pranelis shared a box, as they shared an uncomfortable alliance; the Third Sword was hosting a half-dozen friends.
"I count five keyholders," said Daena.
"Bessaro is so fat you ought to count him twice," Mercy replied, giggling. (DWD Mercy I)

Again, the symmetry suggests a connection, and I believe Davos is the lynchpin, the element-in-common, because Davos Seaworth is the Sailor's Wife's Sailor.
(And yes, I think it's entirely possible this was no mistake, and that certain other famous "errors" aren't mistakes at all.)

Conclusion: The Tysha Hypothesis and Dramatic Possibilities

One possibility worth mentioning in light of popular opinion: I think it's at least possible that Davos is the Sailor's Wife's Sailor, having wed the Sailor's Wife but abandoned her to attend to his duties with Marya as a newly minted lord under Stannis, but also that the Sailor's Wife is Tysha, as even casual readers are clearly invited to believe via the most obvious interpretations of the golden hai"Lanna" clues.
Indeed, I suppose it's even possible that the Sailor's Wife is Tysha and that Davos is Tysha's Sailor, but that Tysha's daughter Lanna is not Davos's daughter but rather the child of the dozens of rapes by Tywin's garrison. I, especially, must admit this would be a neat extension of what I believe to be the deep irony of Tysha being gang-raped at Tywin's orders, given my belief that Tyrion is himself the chimaeric son of an orchestrated gang-rape by dozens of men—possibly exactly 108 of them, if you buy what I'm selling HERE about Tyrion being a genetic chimera as well as a Minotaur-figure and Pan-figure.
Davos being the Sailor but Tysha being the Sailor's Wife could set up some compelling drama/tragedy: Tyrion spends his life dreaming of/still in love with Tysha, half-consciously half-hoping she is waiting for him somewhere, etc, whereas in reality she's long since moved on and fallen in love with someone else altogether, about whom she is as despondent and forlorn as he is about her.
On the other hand, perhaps the Sailor's Wife isn't Tysha, but will end up with Tyrion, with both of them realizing bittersweetly that it's time to stop dreaming of "foolish" things that are lost to them forever.
As for how this all might come to light in the narrative, it's possible Davos will be diverted to Braavos. But I think it's more likely Justin Massey will find himself in need of some R&R while in Braavos on his mercenary-recruitment mission for (whore-hating) Stannis and just-so-happen to mention the name of his king's Hand to the whore he's just "wed" at the Happy Port…

(You Can Definitely Skip This) P.S.

This post was inspired by a flash of inspiration/revelation I had over the last summer while in PMs with IllyrioMoParties regarding some massive additions I made to my Mother of Theories related mostly to Ashara Dayne. (See mostly Part 5 and the Ashara Dayne postscript post in the foregoing link if you are familiar with my MoT and missed/want to see the Ashara-centric changes/additions.)
The Davos epiphany happened because when I was doing the research and writing about Ashara, I was constantly immersed in Braavos. I ended up thinking about Davos a lot because of a bunch of weird connections there seemed to be between his story (mostly known) and hers (mostly a mystery), at least as I was drawing it out.
If you're curious about the Ashara stuff I wrote up this summer which ended up indirectly producing my "oh shit Davos is the Sailor's Wife's Sailor would-be revelation", here are some key points, boiled down from a very long and complicated argument. (These will feel utterly out-of-left-field and unmoored in this context, but maybe that'll suck some of you into checking out my giant corpus of horseshit totally reasonable ideas.) I suspect Ashara is alive, living in Braavos in the house of Moredo Prestayn, fucking Lotho Lornel (i.e. "doing the bookseller") when Moredo leaves town while also "doing the books" for House Prestayn, as she's lately become a financial genius in the vein of Elaena Targaryen (Ashara's youth having echoed Elaena's sister-in-the-maidenvault Daena [get it? Daen-A/A Dayne]). Ashara is a kind of much younger, female version of the aging head of House Prestayn, Luco "Lu" Prestayn—a "Lady Lu", if you will, which is funny, since I also argue that after her supposed suicide Ashara was kept for a time in White Harbor (where I suspect she fucked Wyman Manderly's father, possibly to death, a la Elaena Targaryen and Ossifer Plumm) in the same Wolf's Den cell that houses Davos, who is supposedly dead (as Ashara is supposedly dead) at the hands of a headsman who wields an ax named "Lady Lu". That's just whimsy for the readeGRRM to chuckle at, though. In-world, Ashara may or may not be referred to as a "Lady Lu", but she is definitely, I think, Luco Prestayn's "Lady Bright" (as in "smart lady"), and thus the referent for Luco's ship, the Lady Bright. There's so, so much more. It's fun, if you're so inclined. Of course, it ties into my theory that Ashara fucked and secretly wed Brandon Stark and is Brandon's son Jon Snow's mother (Jon being in fact the trueborn lord of Winterfell, making Ned a guilt-riddled usurper who did what he did at Lyanna's dying behest for "the greater good", as she/they understood it), which most people don't like very much. So: fair warning.

This may get a little long so TL;DR at the bottom.
I've found myself in a bit of a confusing mess that I was hoping someone here may be able to advise me on.
At the end of September, my partner and I purchased our first car (2011 Hyundai ix20 1.4l with 70k miles on the clock for ~£3,200). It seemed to fit the bill and we were relatively happy with it. We took it for a service and it only needed some minor work which we were happy to pay for.
6 weeks of very small amounts of driving later and the check engine light had come on. After a bit of googling I decided to buy an OBD2 reader which gave out a p0420 code. After more googling I took the car for an emissions test, which it failed. The garage (kwik fit) suggested a new catalytic converter and estimated that it would cost >£1000-1500 to replace.
As we hadn't had the car long, I decided to contact the dealer, who after some backwards and forwards, agreed to get the car repaired at their cost, but as we were in the November lockdown it would have to wait.
In mid-December I was able to drop the car at the dealer and they took it to a garage to be repaired.
4 days later I picked the car up. They told me that the O2 sensors were faulty and replacing them had fixed the problem. I was pretty dubious that the car was actually fixed but drove it home anyway. At home I looked through the documentation of the previous MOT and work carried out around that time and saw that the O2 sensors had previously been replaced in April 2020, by the same garage.
Of course, by mid-January the light was back on so I called the garage again. Once again they agreed to repair the car but as we were in lockdown again, we would have to wait - again.
My issue now is that there is no end to this lockdown in sight and the MOT is due at the end of next month. I've heard that and warning light is an automatic fail. I've emailed the dealer this week, asking if they could organise a repair where we could drop the car at the garage ourselves, but they are yet to reply and are no longer taking my calls.
Does anyone know what my options are either legally or mechanically? Part of me just wants to pay to get it sorted so I don't have to think about it anymore, but I'm reluctant to fork out nearly half the value of the car on a repair.
After a bit of reading around it sounds like I could probably get the car through an emissions test by getting the engine really hot and using fuel additives? But I would rather the core issue was fixed as the fuel economy is atrocious while that light is showing.
Also, what actually happens if you fail an MOT? I've never had to get one done before.
Cheers for any help :)
TL;DR - Bought a used car in September with (potentially/probably) faulty catalytic converter. MOT is due 31st March, what are my options?

A giant theme of GRRM's writing/work is his obsession with characters being drawn in shades of grey, right? He doesn't want anybody to be truly all good or all bad, because people aren't. A couple quotes you can skip if you already know all about this.

AbeBooks: Not many of your characters are free from sin, in many ways, which is interesting.
George: I wanted to affect a certain human reality. I don't like fantasy where everybody is either a hero or a villain, black or white. I prefer to paint with shades of grey. I think it's more true to life. We're all of us angels and demons in the same skin. We do good things and the next day we maybe do terrible things. (https://www.abebooks.com/docs/Fantasy/george-martin.shtml)

At greater length, GRRM "famously" said:

"Much as I admire Tolkien, and I do admire Tolkien — he’s been a huge influence on me, and his Lord of the Rings is the mountain that leans over every other fantasy written since and shaped all of modern fantasy — there are things about it, the whole concept of the Dark Lord, and good guys battling bad guys, Good versus Evil, while brilliantly handled in Tolkien, in the hands of many Tolkien successors, it has become kind of a cartoon. We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys.
"It is certainly a genuine, legitimate topic as the core of fantasy, but I think the battle between Good and Evil is waged within the individual human hearts. We all have good in us and we all have evil in us, and we may do a wonderful good act on Tuesday and a horrible, selfish, bad act on Wednesday, and to me, that’s the great human drama of fiction. I believe in gray characters, as I’ve said before. We all have good and evil in us and there are very few pure paragons and there are very few orcs. A villain is a hero of the other side, as someone said once, and I think there’s a great deal of truth to that, and that’s the interesting thing. In the case of war, that kind of situation, so I think some of that is definitely what I’m aiming at."

A few characters threaten to suggest that much as GRRM wants to write a world in which everyone has serious, meaningful moral failings, he can't help but give us a few out-and-out "good guys". Sure, they may have superficial failings, but nothing that we really care about or judge them for.
Now, who's one character who to many seems almost indisputably good?
How about Davos Seaworth? I'm certainly not the first one to think so. LiveVirus wrote up an entire post called "The Good Guys" in which he called out Davos as one of four characters who, they said, "appear to be inherently good, motivated by service to another, loyal to even their own detriment, bound by honor and sense of duty, and lacking their own agenda." (The others were Sam, Areo, and Selmy.) They noted that yes, Davos was a smuggler, but dismissed this—quite correctly I think—as not actually creating any meaningful "moral ambiguity" as far as readers are concerned. (After all, the books were written for people raised in the same world that produced Han Solo.)
It's my belief that GRRM didn't just forget his mantra and make Davos, for all practical purposes, all good. Nor, I suspect, will Davos prove to be merely nominally grey. Davos has done something that, when revealed, most readers will have to admit was objectively shitty (although built-up sympathy for him will cause many, I think, to "understand" and not thereby adjudge him damned, which is something I suspect GRRM wishes humans would do a lot more of, when faced with the failings of others).
What did Davos do that's so shitty?
Keeping in mind my overarching belief that our text is highly artificial, not in a pejorative sense but in the sense that it is not at an organic outflowing of some guy "spinning a yarn" using the best picture-painting words come to mind, but rather a carefully crafted, self-consciously textual construction constantly engaged in wordplay and "rhyming" parallels that go far beyond what most readers imagine possible, let's consider some of the very first things we're told about everyone's favorite Braavosi brothel, The Happy Port. Here's its very first mention:

"He [i.e. Sam] is not a lord," a child's [i.e. Arya's/"Cat of the Canala's"] voice put in. "He's in the Night's Watch, stupid. From Westeros." A girl edged into the light, pushing a barrow full of seaweed; a scruffy, skinny creature in big boots, with ragged unwashed hair. "There's another one down at the Happy Port, singing songs to the Sailor's Wife," she informed the two bravos. (FFC Sam III)

Thus the first thing we know, before we're even sure what this "Happy Port" is, is that one of our main characters, Arya Stark, knows someone there called "the Sailor's Wife". Structurally, then, it seems this "Sailor's Wife" may be important to the drama of our narrative.
Sam soon circles back to this point, underlining it in the reader's consciousness:

"You said you saw a singer . . ."
"At the Happy Port. He's going to wed the Sailor's Wife."
"Wed?"
"She only beds the ones who marry her." (ibid.)

Of course, we soon find out that this Sailor's Wife who "weds" her clients once loved and was wed to a sailor, who was seemingly lost at sea, leaving the Sailor's Wife and (presumably) his daughter by her, Lanna, to work as whores in the Happy Port:

The other whores said that the Sailor's Wife visited the Isle of the Gods on the days when her flower was in bloom, and knew all the gods who lived there, even the ones that Braavos had forgotten. They said she went to pray for her first husband, her true husband, who had been lost at sea when she was a girl no older than Lanna. "She thinks that if she finds the right god, maybe he will send the winds and blow her old love back to her," said one-eyed Yna, who had known her longest, "but I pray it never happens. Her love is dead, I could taste that in her blood. If he ever should come back to her, it will be a corpse." (AFFC Cat of the Canals)

There's no mistaking how we're supposed to feel about the Sailor's Wife: She's a good person who goes out of her way to be kind to Arya, but a tragic figure who clearly lives with great pain from her loss:

Whenever Cat happened by with her barrow, the Sailor's Wife would insist that her new husband buy some oysters, to stiffen him for the consummation. She was good that way, and quick to laugh as well, but Cat thought there was something sad about her too. (ibid.)

This isn't the first time Arya mentions the Sailor's Wife in her POV chapters, though. She first thinks of the Sailor's Wife just after telling some sailors that "the best whores are at the Happy Port". Arya thinks of the proprietor, Merry, then about Merry's "girls":

Her girls were nice as well; Blushing Bethany and the Sailor's Wife, one-eyed Yna who could tell your fortune from a drop of blood, pretty little Lanna, even Assadora, the Ibbenese woman with the mustache. (ibid.)

Notice, GRRM pairs "the Sailor's Wife" with a whore named "Blushing Bethany", whose sole further role in ASOIAF is to be a target of seduction for Dareon, a deserter and a clear liar and cad who no reader would be so foolish as to believe truly cares about Bethany:

When Dareon had first appeared at the Happy Port, Arya had almost asked if he would take her with him back to Eastwatch, until she heard him telling Bethany that he was never going back. "Hard beds, salt cod, and endless watches, that's the Wall," he'd said. "Besides, there's no one half as pretty as you at Eastwatch. How could I ever leave you?" He had said the same thing to Lanna, Cat had heard, and to one of the whores at the Cattery, and even to the Nightingale the night he played at the House of Seven Lamps. (ibid.)

It is, I believe, no accident that GRRM introduced "Blushing Bethany and the Sailor's Wife" as a pair at the beginning of a sentence which then proceeded to list the remaining whores as individuals. Indeed, this pairing and sentence structure is particularly odd since we'd surely expect the Sailor's Wife to be paired with her daughter, Lanna, if anyone. There's certainly no narrative/in-world reason for Arya to think of Bethany and the Sailor's Wife as a unit. Hence it seems at least plausible, especially if ASOIAF is constructed as painstakingly as I believe it is, that the unusual pairing is (a) quite intentional and (b) has a significance we're not yet aware of — perhaps one that will one day make re-readers smile as they at last get GRRM's little joke.
What "little joke"?
Consider that pairing again: "Blushing Bethany and the Sailor's Wife", whose "true husband", a sailor, is "dead", "a corpse".
Davos Seaworth is a Westerosi "sailor… meant to die at sea—

Davos had always been a sailor; he was meant to die at sea. (ASOS Davos I)

—who captains the Black Betha.
To be sure, I'm not arguing that Davos named Black Betha after the Sailor's Wife's fellow whore Blushing Bethany.
I am arguing that this is an authorial, metatextual "rhyme", a wink nudging us readers to connect Black Betha's captain Davos to "Blushing Bethany" and hence to her textual companion, the Sailor's Wife.
Because, of course, the sailor-captain Davos Seaworth is the Sailor's Wife's Sailor.
Davos is not just a "sailor… meant to die at sea" as we might speculate the Sailor's Wife's long-lost Sailor has; he is "known" to be and repeatedly referred to as a "dead man"—a figurative corpse, so to speak:

The onion knight had not forgotten Wyman Manderly's last words to him. Take this creature to the Wolf's Den and cut off head and hands, the fat lord had commanded. I shall not be able to eat a bite until I see this smuggler's head upon a spike, with an onion shoved between his lying teeth. Every night Davos went to sleep with those words in his head, and every morn he woke to them. And should he forget, Garth was always pleased to remind him. Dead man was his name for Davos. When he came by in the morning, it was always, "Here, porridge for the dead man." At night it was, "Blow out the candle, dead man." (ADWD Davos IV)
Robett Glover filled a wine cup and offered it to Davos. He took it, sniffed it, drank. "How did I die, if I may ask?"
"By the axe. Your head and hands were mounted above the Seal Gate, with your face turned so your eyes looked out across the harbor. By now you are well rotted, though we dipped your head in tar before we set it upon the spike. Carrion crows and seabirds squabbled over your eyes, they say." (ibid.)

Davos's story highlights the idea that someone "dead" is not always dead—

"You're bloody mad," said an oarsman off Storm Dancer. "The Beggar King's been dead for years. Some Dothraki horselord cut his head off."
"So they tell us," said the old fellow. "Might be they're lying, though. He died half a world away, if he died at all. Who's to say? If a king wanted me dead, might be I'd oblige him and pretend to be a corpse. None of us has ever seen his body." (ADWD Davos II)

—and re-highlights it even when people (think they) have "seen his body":

"Your Grace, glad tidings," he announced. "Wyman Manderly has done as you commanded, and beheaded Lord Stannis's onion knight."
"We know this for a certainty?"
"The man's head and hands have been mounted above the walls of White Harbor. Lord Wyman avows this, and the Freys confirm. They have seen the head there, with an onion in its mouth. And the hands, one marked by his shortened fingers." (AFFC Cersei V)

Davos is thus "dead" and in a sense a walking "corpse", and will in that sense be "dead" and a "corpse" should he ever again visit, say, Braavos, thereby satisfying one-eyed Yna's prophecy:

"Her love is dead, I could taste that in her blood. If he ever should come back to her, it will be a corpse." (AFFC Cat of the Canals)

I suspect Dareon's seduction of Bethany is something of an ironic reenactment—perhaps a grotesque parody—of Davos's action's with the Sailor's Wife. Here, it's interesting that Black Betha's captain Davos has traded with the Watch at Eastwatch, from whence came Dareon, Blushing Bethany's would-be seducer:

Davos had traded at Eastwatch in his smuggling days. The black brothers made hard enemies but good customers, for a ship with the right cargo. (ASOS Davos V)

It's more interesting because we learn this mere moments after we see Davos think of his wife, for neither the first nor last time:

"Only a starving man begs bread from a beggar," [Davos] muttered.
"Pardon, my lord?"
"Something my wife said once."

Indeed, Davos's seeming devotion to his wife Marya—

When [Davos] thought of Nissa Nissa, it was his own Marya he pictured, a good-natured plump woman with sagging breasts and a kindly smile, the best woman in the world.

—and their children is a major factor in making him as sympathetic a character as he is for so many readers. It's a huge part of why he seems so uncharacteristically good, so pure of heart, which invites critical readers to wonder why he doesn't have some flaw that matters, dramatically, to the audience… especially given that it just so happens to be in Davos's story that GRRM's obsession with "grey" characters is spelled out, in-world:

Would a good man be doing this? "I am a man," [Davos] said. "I am kind to my wife, but I have known other women. I have tried to be a father to my sons, to help make them a place in this world. Aye, I've broken laws, but I never felt evil until tonight. I would say my parts are mixed, m'lady. Good and bad."
"A grey man," she said. "Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?"
"What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey." (ACOK Davos II)

But notice: "I have known other women". The same thing recurs when Davos, believing he is going to die, writes his "last letters" to his wife Marya (rhymes with Arya, our guide to the Happy Port) and his sons, with his letters being another huge part of why so many people like Davos so much):

Davos sat beside his candle and looked at the letters he had scratched out word by word during the days of his confinement. I was a better smuggler than a knight, he had written to his wife, a better knight than a King's Hand, a better King's Hand than a husband. I am so sorry. Marya, I have loved you. Please forgive the wrongs I did you. Should Stannis lose his war, our lands will be lost as well. Take the boys across the narrow sea to Braavos and teach them to think kindly of me, if you would. Should Stannis gain the Iron Throne, House Seaworth will survive and Devan will remain at court. He will help you place the other boys with noble lords, where they can serve as pages and squires and win their knighthoods. It was the best counsel he had for her, though he wished it sounded wiser.
He had written to each of his three surviving sons as well, to help them remember the father who had bought them names with his fingertips. His notes to Steffon and young Stannis were short and stiff and awkward; if truth be told, he did not know them half as well as he had his older boys, the ones who'd burned or drowned upon the Blackwater. To Devan he wrote more, telling him how proud he was to see his own son as a king's squire and reminding him that as the eldest it was his duty to protect his lady mother and his younger brothers. Tell His Grace I did my best, he ended. I am sorry that I failed him. I lost my luck when I lost my fingerbones, the day the river burned below King's Landing. (ADWD Davos IV)

Sure, we've all read Davos say he's cheated on Marya. But for many of us, that has little if any dramatic impact. It's "data", not something we're led to feel. He hasn't hurt anyone readers care about.
Until now.
Until we realize that Davos deliberately abandoned Arya's friend the Sailor's Wife and hetheir daughter Lanna to their present fate.
Until we think about the Sailor's Wife—clearly cut from the same "kindly", "good-natured" cloth as Marya—still mourning Davos, all these years later, believing him lost at sea, waylaid by forces beyond his control, when in reality he'd simply chosen one family and one life (as a Lord, no less) over her and Lanna, leaving them to a life of whoredom.

Further Discussion: Lanna's Hair, Lanna's Name

Yes, yes, we all know "Lanna" has "golden" hair:

Yna was there too, braiding Lanna's fine long golden hair (AFFC Cat of the Canals)

GRRM tells us "men see what they expect to see", but the joke is often on us for seeing what he shrewdly invites us to see, but which is not necessarily there. Surely the name "Lanna" primes our narrator Arya to think of Lannisters and their much-vaunted "gold" hair, and thus she sees Lanna's hair as "gold", per se, and more importantly most of us therefore accept it as unproblematically and distinctively "gold", per se and period. But as I've discussed extensively elsewhere, "gold" hair can easily mean "blond" tinged by expectation.
Notwithstanding the brown hair on his head, Davos's son Devan has "blond hair" on his face:

"Good morrow to you, Father," the boy greeted him. He looks so much like Dale did at his age, Davos thought. His eldest had never dressed so fine as Devan in his squire's raiment, to be sure, but they shared the same square plain face, the same forthright brown eyes, the same thin brown flyaway hair. Devan's cheeks and chin were dusted with blond hair, a fuzz that would have shamed a proper peach, though the boy was fiercely proud of his "beard." Just as Dale was proud of his, once. Devan was the oldest of the three children at the table. (ASOS Davos V)

More importantly, we are pointedly never told what color the Sailor's Wife's hair is. This invites readers to argue that Lanna's gold hair "must" therefore be unusual (since it's mentioned) and hence must derive from her father rather than from her mother. But we don't actually know that the Sailor's Wife doesn't also have "golden"/blond hair, do we? And of course, Lanna could have been sired by someone other than "the Sailor", who is never explicitly stated to be Lanna's father, just the Sailor's Wife's "true husband". (Note that it could be true that Lanna is someone else's daughter in fact while at the same time that the Sailor's Wife believes her father to be the Sailor.)
If the Sailor's Wife loved/loves Davos and believes or knows he sired Lanna, why is Lanna named "Lanna"? A likely explanation comes from—where else—Davos himself:

Roro Uhoris, the Cobblecat's cranky old master, used to claim that he could tell one port from another just by the way they smelled. Cities were like women, he insisted; each one had its own unique scent. Oldtown was as flowery as a perfumed dowager. Lannisport was a milkmaid, fresh and earthy, with woodsmoke in her hair. (ADWD Davos II)

From AFFC Arya II:

But Braavos lay before her. The night air smelled of smoke and salt and fish.

What kind of smoke? "Woodsmoke", perhaps:

[Aemon] shivered in Sam's arms. "Why is the room so cold?"
"There's no more wood." Dareon had paid the innkeep double for a room with a hearth, but none of them had realized that wood would be so costly here. Trees did not grow on Braavos, save in the courts and gardens of the mighty. Nor would the Braavosi cut the pines that covered the outlying islands around their great lagoon and acted as windbreaks to shield them from storms. Instead, firewood was brought in by barge, up the rivers and across the lagoon. Even dung was dear here; the Braavosi used boats in place of horses.

And from ADWD The Blind Girl:

As [Arya] made her way past the temples [which we've otherwise heard of in the context of the Sailor's Wife's prayers for her true husband], she could hear the acolytes of the Cult of Starry Wisdom atop their scrying tower, singing to the evening stars. A wisp of scented smoke hung in the air…

Braavos and Lannisport, then, share a smoky quality, and Davos's sense-memory of Lannisport smelling like a "milkmaid" more or less screams "newborn child". It thus seems plausible that Davos suggested the name "Lanna" for his infant daughter by the Sailor's Wife because she evoked his sense-memory of Lannisport. And regardless of Lanna's name's in-world origins, these textual connections allow "Lanna" to work well as a metatextual clue to readers that Davos is the Sailor's Wife's Sailor—albeit a far more subtle (and clever) clue than "oh so her dad must be a Lannister, so maybe the Sailor's Wife is Tysha or maybe she married Gerion".
(For what it's worth, Davos's children's names are Dale, Allard, Matthos, Maric, Devan, Stannis and Steffon. 4 of 7 have a double consonant (like Lanna). Two contain Ls as in Lanna. "Stannis" contains "ann" like (Lanna). No, none of this would mean anything on its own, but we can at least say that "Lanna" isn't totally out of place.)

Further Discussion: Allard Seaworth's "Girl In Braavos": Like Father, Like Son

Davos being the Sailor also pays off some throwaway information about one of his sons we're given as Davos awaits his death (the first time) on a rock after the Battle of the Blackwater:

When they find me dead here, if ever they do, perhaps they will name the rock for me, he thought. Onion Rock, they'll call it; it will be my tombstone and my legacy. He deserved no more. The Father protects his children, the septons taught, but Davos had led his boys into the fire. Dale would never give his wife the child they had prayed for, and Allard, with his girl in Oldtown and his girl in King's Landing and his girl in Braavos, they would all be weeping soon. (ASOS Dav I)

Like son, like father, I suspect: Davos, too, once had a "girl in Braavos" (and now has two, in a sense). Just as Davos imagines Allard's "girl in Braavos" cries for Allard, who is presumed dead, so does Davos's former "girl in Braavos", the Sailor's Wife, cry for him.

Further Discussion: Davos's Textual Connections To Braavos, Overt and Poetic

GRRM manages to directly connect Davos to Braavos in the text (and not just via the obvious literal rhyme of the names), at first only in passing:

The Lyseni shook his head. "Of ships, His Grace has none, and Salladhor Saan has many. The king's ships burned up on the river, but not mine. You shall have one, old friend. You will sail for me, yes? You will dance into Braavos and Myr and Volantis in the black of night, all unseen, and dance out again with silks and spices. We will be having fat purses, yes." (ASOS Davos II)

Could GRRM be making some coy allusions to Davos's past here? Dancing, "silks and spices" could evoke a wedding/wedding gifts. A fat purse, pregnancy perhaps? In other words: what happened the last time Davos went in and out (so to speak!) of/in Braavos.
Saan later persists in suggesting they make for Braavos, crowbarring in a reference to the Faceless Men, with whom Arya is training even as she tells us all about the Happy Port, the Sailor's Wife, and Lanna:

"Someone," said Salladhor Saan. "Yes, just so, someone. But not you. You are weak as a child, and no warrior. Stay, I beg you, we will talk more and you will eat, and perhaps we will sail to Braavos and hire a Faceless Man to do this thing, yes? But you, no, you must sit and eat." (ibid.)

Make no mistake: It's not that the mere mention of Braavos in Davos's storyline "proves" anything, but that passages like these will read differently—they'll be poignant, even—if Davos is, indeed, the Sailor, for whom a return to Braavos would be fraught with emotion. And that, for me, is good reason to think he is the Sailor, given that our text is written by an guy who has stated his interest in stories that are not just fun to read but fun to re-read.
Davos's "last letter" to Marya makes a far more concrete suggestion that he's quite familiar with Braavos:

Should Stannis lose his war, our lands will be lost as well. Take the boys across the narrow sea to Braavos and teach them to think kindly of me, if you would. (ADWD Davos IV)

His notion to "teach them to think kindly of me" is potentially ironic, inasmuch as the Sailor's Wife in Braavos with his (maybe) daughter thinks "kindly" of him. It also recalls Arya's Kindly Man, under whose auspices Arya is acting as the Sailor's Wife's friend, Cat of the Canals.) (h/t IllyrioMoParties)
There's another Davos-Braavos connection that's far more subtle, but also in a way more auspicious. Yna believes the Sailor, should he return, will be "dead", a "corpse", right? Now, who calls Davos "dead man" over and over, effectively tagging him as a figurative corpse? Garth the jailer, who wields an ax called "Lady Lu" and a rod called "The Whore". Meanwhile Luco Prestayn of Braavos, "Lu", perhaps, to his friends, has a ship called Lady Bright. So on one side of this little "rhyming ledger", Garth, "Lady Lu", and "The Whore", together with Garth's partner Ser Bartimus, "a cadaverous one-legged knight", watch over Davos, a "dead man" who came to White Harbor on a ship called of all things the Merry Midwife—

She was not a ship to draw a second glance, unless it was to wonder how she stayed afloat. (DWD Davos II)

—and who is a "sailor" who captained "Black Betha"; while on the other side of the rhyming ledger in Braavos we have "The Happy Port" Whores "one-eyed Yna" (a la "one-legged" Bart) , Blushing Bethany and Bethany's textual companion, the Whore and mother-to-Lanna known as "the Sailor's Wife", whose Sailor is "dead", and Lu's Lady Bright, whose owner is, I suspect, a kind of barely-walking cadaver (a la Bartimus and the "[you] wonder how she stayed afloat" Merry Midwife) himself:

Prestayn sat alone, a man so ancient that you wondered how he ever reached his seat… (tWOW – Mercy)

This incredibly dense web of "rhyming"/symmetry makes a weird kind of poetic dream-sense if there's a firmly identical element on either side of the Narrow Sea-spanning rhyme in the form of Davos, who is both Garth's/Lu's/The Whore's "dead man" off the Merry Midwife and the Happy Port whore-mother-called "the Sailor's Wife"'s Sailor. Call it… allusion-by-"rhyme".
"Ah-ha!" some astute readers may be saying. "Sure, Davos's ship at the Battle of the Blackwater was called Black Betha, which 'rhymes' with 'Blushing Bethany' of The Happy Port (where dwells one-eyed Yna) in Braavos, where Lu's Lady Bright is based, but later, while freshly off the Merry Midwife and jailed as a 'dead man' under the watch of Lady Lu, The Whore, the cadaverous one-legged Bartimus, etc., he thinks of how his jail cell is bigger than his cabin aboard the Black Bessa!" Bessa! Not Betha.
Very, very true:

Davos rose and paced his cell. As cells went, it was large and queerly comfortable. He suspected it might once have been some lordling’s bedchamber. It was thrice the size of his captain’s cabin on Black Bessa, and even larger than the cabin Salladhor Saan enjoyed on his Valyrian. (DWD Dav IV)

Except what allusion does "Bessa" have?
The other Bessas in ASOIAF are (a) a serving maid who partakes in a threesome with Theon, (b) Chett’s Hag’s Mire "slattern" Bessa, and (c) Bessa of the song Bessa The Barmaid "with its ribald lyrics". Arguably, then, "Bessa" everywhere recalls "whores", a la the Sailor's Wife, Blushing Bethany, etc.
Perhaps even more pointedly, though, the name "Bessa" also works with the allusive "rhyming" scheme I just sketched between Davos's story in White Harbor (with Lady Lu, etc.) and Arya's story in Braavos (with Lu Prestayn's Lady Bright, etc.). How so? Well, when we (via Arya, our guide to the Happy Port) first lay eyes on a Prestayn (very probably, I believe, Lu of the Lady Bright himself), it's mere seconds before she sees another Braavosian. Not only is this fellow grossly fat like Davos's captor in his bigger-than-Bessa's cabin cell, Wyman Manderly, but he's named, of all things… "Bessaro":

In one box sat three scions of Otharys, each accompanied by a famous courtesan; Prestayn sat alone, a man so ancient that you wondered how he ever reached his seat; Torone and Pranelis shared a box, as they shared an uncomfortable alliance; the Third Sword was hosting a half-dozen friends.
"I count five keyholders," said Daena.
"Bessaro is so fat you ought to count him twice," Mercy replied, giggling. (DWD Mercy I)

Again, the symmetry suggests a connection, and I believe Davos is the lynchpin, the element-in-common, because Davos Seaworth is the Sailor's Wife's Sailor.
(And yes, I think it's entirely possible this was no mistake, and that certain other famous "errors" aren't mistakes at all.)

Conclusion: The Tysha Hypothesis and Dramatic Possibilities

One possibility worth mentioning in light of popular opinion: I think it's at least possible that Davos is the Sailor's Wife's Sailor, having wed the Sailor's Wife but abandoned her to attend to his duties with Marya as a newly minted lord under Stannis, but also that the Sailor's Wife is Tysha, as even casual readers are clearly invited to believe via the most obvious interpretations of the golden hai"Lanna" clues.
Indeed, I suppose it's even possible that the Sailor's Wife is Tysha and that Davos is Tysha's Sailor, but that Tysha's daughter Lanna is not Davos's daughter but rather the child of the dozens of rapes by Tywin's garrison. I, especially, must admit this would be a neat extension of what I believe to be the deep irony of Tysha being gang-raped at Tywin's orders, given my belief that Tyrion is himself the chimaeric son of an orchestrated gang-rape by dozens of men—possibly exactly 108 of them, if you buy what I'm selling HERE about Tyrion being a genetic chimera as well as a Minotaur-figure and Pan-figure.
Davos being the Sailor but Tysha being the Sailor's Wife could set up some compelling drama/tragedy: Tyrion spends his life dreaming of/still in love with Tysha, half-consciously half-hoping she is waiting for him somewhere, etc, whereas in reality she's long since moved on and fallen in love with someone else altogether, about whom she is as despondent and forlorn as he is about her.
On the other hand, perhaps the Sailor's Wife isn't Tysha, but will end up with Tyrion, with both of them realizing bittersweetly that it's time to stop dreaming of "foolish" things that are lost to them forever.
As for how this all might come to light in the narrative, it's possible Davos will be diverted to Braavos. But I think it's more likely Justin Massey will find himself in need of some R&R while in Braavos on his mercenary-recruitment mission for (whore-hating) Stannis and just-so-happen to mention the name of his king's Hand to the whore he's just "wed" at the Happy Port…

(You Can Definitely Skip This) P.S.

This post was inspired by a flash of inspiration/revelation I had over the last summer while in PMs with IllyrioMoParties regarding some massive additions I made to my Mother of Theories related mostly to Ashara Dayne. (See mostly Part 5 and the Ashara Dayne postscript post in the foregoing link if you are familiar with my MoT and missed/want to see the Ashara-centric changes/additions.)
The Davos epiphany happened because when I was doing the research and writing about Ashara, I was constantly immersed in Braavos. I ended up thinking about Davos a lot because of a bunch of weird connections there seemed to be between his story (mostly known) and hers (mostly a mystery), at least as I was drawing it out.
If you're curious about the Ashara stuff I wrote up this summer which ended up indirectly producing my "oh shit Davos is the Sailor's Wife's Sailor would-be revelation", here are some key points, boiled down from a very long and complicated argument. (These will feel utterly out-of-left-field and unmoored in this context, but maybe that'll suck some of you into checking out my giant corpus of horseshit totally reasonable ideas.) I suspect Ashara is alive, living in Braavos in the house of Moredo Prestayn, fucking Lotho Lornel (i.e. "doing the bookseller") when Moredo leaves town while also "doing the books" for House Prestayn, as she's lately become a financial genius in the vein of Elaena Targaryen (Ashara's youth having echoed Elaena's sister-in-the-maidenvault Daena [get it? Daen-A/A Dayne]). Ashara is a kind of much younger, female version of the aging head of House Prestayn, Luco "Lu" Prestayn—a "Lady Lu", if you will, which is funny, since I also argue that after her supposed suicide Ashara was kept for a time in White Harbor (where I suspect she fucked Wyman Manderly's father, possibly to death, a la Elaena Targaryen and Ossifer Plumm) in the same Wolf's Den cell that houses Davos, who is supposedly dead (as Ashara is supposedly dead) at the hands of a headsman who wields an ax named "Lady Lu". That's just whimsy for the readeGRRM to chuckle at, though. In-world, Ashara may or may not be referred to as a "Lady Lu", but she is definitely, I think, Luco Prestayn's "Lady Bright" (as in "smart lady"), and thus the referent for Luco's ship, the Lady Bright. There's so, so much more. It's fun, if you're so inclined. Of course, it ties into my theory that Ashara fucked and secretly wed Brandon Stark and is Brandon's son Jon Snow's mother (Jon being in fact the trueborn lord of Winterfell, making Ned a guilt-riddled usurper who did what he did at Lyanna's dying behest for "the greater good", as she/they understood it), which most people don't like very much. So: fair warning.

I've asked this in CarTalkUK but thought I might try here too. Also, this may get a little long so TL;DR at the bottom.
I've found myself in a bit of a confusing mess that I was hoping someone here may be able to advise me on.
At the end of September, my partner and I purchased our first car (2011 Hyundai ix20 1.4l with 70k miles on the clock for ~£3,200). It seemed to fit the bill and we were relatively happy with it. We took it for a service and it only needed some minor work which we were happy to pay for.
6 weeks of very small amounts of driving later and the check engine light had come on. After a bit of googling I decided to buy an OBD2 reader which gave out a p0420 code. After more googling I took the car for an emissions test, which it failed. The garage (kwik fit) suggested a new catalytic converter and estimated that it would cost >£1000-1500 to replace.
As we hadn't had the car long, I decided to contact the dealer, who after some backwards and forwards, agreed to get the car repaired at their cost, but as we were in the November lockdown it would have to wait.
In mid-December I was able to drop the car at the dealer and they took it to a garage to be repaired.
4 days later I picked the car up. They told me that the O2 sensors were faulty and replacing them had fixed the problem. I was pretty dubious that the car was actually fixed but drove it home anyway. At home I looked through the documentation of the previous MOT and work carried out around that time and saw that the O2 sensors had previously been replaced in April 2020, by the same garage.
Of course, by mid-January the light was back on so I called the garage again. Once again they agreed to repair the car but as we were in lockdown again, we would have to wait - again.
My issue now is that there is no end to this lockdown in sight and the MOT is due at the end of next month. I've heard that and warning light is an automatic fail. I've emailed the dealer this week, asking if they could organise a repair where we could drop the car at the garage ourselves, but they are yet to reply and are no longer taking my calls.
Does anyone know what my options are either legally or mechanically? Part of me just wants to pay to get it sorted so I don't have to think about it anymore, but I'm reluctant to fork out nearly half the value of the car on a repair.
After a bit of reading around it sounds like I could probably get the car through an emissions test by getting the engine really hot and using fuel additives? But I would rather the core issue was fixed as the fuel economy is atrocious while that light is showing.
Also, what actually happens if you fail an MOT? I've never had to get one done before.
Cheers for any help :)
TL;DR - Bought a used car in September with (potentially/probably) faulty catalytic converter. MOT is due 31st March, what are my options?

Theory: What if Anakin had saved the younglings, not killed them? { warning: Spoilers for season 2 of the mandalorian}
We see Anakin walk into the council chambers where the children are hiding, ignite his blade and then the scene cuts away. The obvious answer to this is that they didn’t want to show anything horrific in a family film, BUT let’s get crazy and really over analyze this. I think It’s possible they did not continue the scene because they wanted to leave an opening in the Star Wars continuity. What if it was later revealed Anakin did not kill the children?
My Reasons for thinking this are as follows:

1. The clone wars series shines a light on how caring Anakin was, and while Darth Vader is capable of anything, I don’t think Darth Vader truly took over until Anakin was sliced in half.
   
2. While Obi Wan explicitly states that Anakin killed Children, he has a history of speculating about Anakin and hiding the truth if he believed it helped the greater good.
   
3. Revealing he did not kill the Younglings could do a lot for exploring the Prequal characters in the upcoming Kenobi series.
   
4. It seems more younglings are surviving the Jedi Purge each year. This would be an obvious reason as to why
   

Throughout the clone wars saga, we see Anakin defy the jedi order by being empathetic to the plight of others. Clearly remembering his childhood gave him a connection to people that the jedi order normally tried to snuff out of their initiates. We also get to see his connection with Padme We know that Padme would have never wanted her life traded for others, and being Pregnant we can assume that she and Anakin would be more empathetic to children. We also know that he went out of his way to save children, including at the start of the Clone Wars series and in Season 2, ep 3:
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While Anakin became more violent and less forgiving of the Jedi or Separatist’s throughout the clone wars he didn’t stop caring about others. We see him cherishing his bond with Ahsoka til the very end and going out of his way to help Rex save his friends. It is hard to believe that he would throw that away. What isn’t hard to believe is that he would have a problem Lying to the Palpatine to get the secrets he though Palpatine had about sustaining life.
What also makes sense is Obi-Wan and Yoda believing that he killed younglings.
In the Clone Wars we see more exploration into the relationship of Obi-Wan and Anakin. In Season 3 Obi Wan speaks to Qui Gon about Anakin: I thought this was interesting, because it points out that Obi Wan is doubting his own training, and as such he does not have full faith in Anakin.
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As their trials continue on Mortis, Anakin does get tempted by the Dark Side. Obi Wan’s first reaction to even hearing Anakin was in trouble was to assume the worst about his apprentice. Here we can see that Obi Wan was always afraid his teaching would fail Anakin, and so he would protect himself emotionally by assuming Anakin was already fated to fall to the dark side.
We see a few instances of Obi Wan acting to the benefit of the republic at the expense of his relationships. I’m not trying to say Obi Wan isn’t great in his own Way. He’s an honorable, dutiful Jedi, but this leads to some potential trust issues. Like when he fakes his death to help out the Jedi Council, but does so without regard to how this would hurt his friends; or when he alienates himself from the Ahsoka trials. When given a choice Obi Wan always chooses to act on what he believes would help the republic.
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This is an admirable trait in a Jedi, but during these crucial times Anakin needed Obi Wan more than the council did.
The struggle Obi wan has between his relationships and the Jedi Council is the catalyst for the temple scene in Revenge of the Sith. Before knowing who was behind the attack on their home, Obi Wan Seemed quick to form a conclusion.
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And Yoda was quick to feed into this:
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To me, this didn’t seem to be based off Jedi Intuition, but off their predetermined fears of Anakin and their own failures as masters. In their defense, Most the people they have ever known just died. This has to be hard even for someone who trains to close of their emotions.
BUT if they had kept faith in Anakin they may have noticed a few odd details in the holotapes
A:
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Obi Wan watches only a short recording of Anakin’s Siege, and in it he is focused on a Jedi master. This makes sense logistically. If 2 jedi masters were able to secure a portion of the temple back from the clones then clearly the 501st would want their strongest soldier focused on the other Masters in the area. Obi Wan never actually sees him fight or kill anyone but the combat ready jedi in the temple.
B:
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Why was there a recording of Palpatine and Anakin talking inside of the Jedi’s security tapes? Either they wire tapped the senate office (in which case, why did they never see the separatist meetings Palpatine would have in closed quarters) or Palpatine planted evidence so that the Jedi would be quick to turn their back on Anakin. Palpatine knew that true masters in the field like Yoda were likely to survive so he wanted to plant some insurance that the Jedi would go after Anakin and help sow the rift between him and the order. The issue is that rather than use his tactical mind to think about why this recording was in front of him, Obi Wan let his deeply ingrained fears of Anakin Swell.
Now assuming Obi Wan did not see Anakin kill the children, based on his past doubts and the Jedi’s fear of the Sith he would be quick to assume Anakin was capable of any dark act. The jedi’s duty was to destroy Sith, and this needed to be accomplished by any means. He knows Padme is pregnant, so the news of Anakin hurting children would be deeply unsettling to her.
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And we know from the original Trilogy that Obi wan did not have a problem stretching the truth or hiding information (like Leah being Lukes Sister) if he felt it would help the greater good.
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So, Obi wan telling Padme this, even though he did not actually see it happen, makes sense.
To be clear, Obi Wan is not completely at fault for how things ended between him and Anakin. Palpatine ultimate deceived everyone, including Obi wan, the council, and Padme. However, Obi Wan was always deeply conflicted between caring for his friends like Anakin and Following the jedi tenants. An inner conflict between loved ones and duty is not just an issue Obi Wan has. We see Anakin deal with this as well, and In the Last Jedi we see an older, disillusioned Luke Skywalker Make the same assumptions about Ben Solo. This means that Obi Wan’s inner struggle is a common one the Jedi Order would instill into their best and most caring members.
However, if Obi Wan had declined Yoda’s demand to fight Anakin, and had not made the assumption Anakin fell so quickly that he was willing to Kill children, then it’s possible he could have reached out to Anakin emotionally and saved him before it was too late
Instead, we get another assumption of Obi Wan when they finally meet.
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I personally believe the revelation Anakin did not kill the younglings would be so damn important because it adds more gravity to the duel the two have on Mustafar. At any point Anakin was still redeemable but Obi Wan made his choice.
Now about Mustafar, Anakin never actually confirms Padme’s fear that he hurt children.
The Dialogue goes:
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What if Anakin believed what he was saying here? And what if that’s why he got so mad when he sees Obi Wan come from the ship. Maybe when he shouts Liar he was really directing it to his old master:
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Mustafar is extremely powerful in the Dark side, its possible that Palpatine hid the separatists there because he hoped any final conflict between the Jedi and Anakin would be spurred by those Dark energies. It could be that if Obi Wan and Padme had waited for him to Return to coruscant everything could have gone a lot more smoothly.
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However, the fact that it did turn into a duel and that ObiWan won is also indicative that Anakin did not kill the younglings. Anakin was supposed to be the strongest force user to ever exist. Don’t get me wrong, Obi Wan was a bonified Sith-Fighter at this point. However, Anakin was far above him in terms of skill and potential. He was even able to bring celestials on mortis to their knees. In an earlier scene, we see him handle a jedi master with one hand, and before that we see him beat Count Dooku while Obi wan was taken out of the fight almost right away. We had seen numerous substantial feats by Anakin up to this point, yet he wasn’t able to beat his old master. Keep in mind this is someone who’s fighting style he knew intimately. The mot noted reason I see for Obi Wans success is that he knew how Anakin fought, but Anakin would have the exact same advantage against Obi Wan.
The most noted reason for this is that Anakin was “between worlds”. There was Darth Vader, and Anakin sharing one body. In the Jedi temple I imagine he was damn certain at that point that he wanted to kill the Jedi Masters and the temple guards. He saw what they had done to Ashoka and knew they were a huge part of the war. Of course, he would have no issues dispatching them like he did Count Dooku, so Darth Vader and Anakin’s motive were not in conflict. I think at this point Anakin would have been the dominant personality though, so her would have elected to not kill the Children.
However, while facing Obi wan on Mustafar he was evenly matched the whole time. I feel like with the revelation of the dark creatures that lived on Mustafar it’s possible the planet was sinking its claws into his head and feeding the Personality Darth Vader. So, Anakin was fighting with the idea of Killing his old friend the whole time on the inside and subconsciously pushing back against the Dark Side.
Now Sidious was a monster but he was also tactical, and he has a history of trying to keep force sensitive younglings when he can find them. He wanted Anakin to kill the younglings because this horrendous act would allow him to fully embrace the Dark Side. If he had fully succumb to Vader on Coruscant and killed the younglings like Palpatine had orders him to do then I think Anakin would have been far gone enough for Vader to have no remorse about Obi Wan or Padme.
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I like to imagine a part of Anakin was still holding on, and helping Obi Wan fight Vader here.
All this is well and good, but assuming Anakin did not kill them, we would now be asking ourselves what exactly happened to the younglings.
So, going back to the Jedi temple siege:
We the viewers know that a lightsaber did strike down padawans, but we only have video footage of Anakin fighting masters. And logistically this makes sense. The lore surrounding the inquisitors shows that there were other Jedi that turned against the order. Some of these would include temple guards like the Grand Inquisitor, implying he would have been present at the siege of the Jedi Temple. While it seems dark for another jedi to be willing to Kill children, this would not be the first time a “youngling purge” happened in Jedi history. Normal jedi did not have the same empathy that Anakin or Ahsoka had or that Obi Wan struggled to repress. To them and a normal person, killing children would be heinous. But most Jedi were emotionally stunted monks who had spent the last few years devoted to nothing but war.
Given the information we have on jedi morals, it’s likely that a combination of newly minted Dark Jedi and clone troopers took down the Padawans and younglings that were scattered across the temple while Anakin handled the masters.
Still, there is at least one group of younglings that Anakin did face:
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I personally assume that Anakin had someone in the temple take them to safety, and there is some evidence to support this.
For starters, least one high profile Jedi master who never left the temple survived the purge: Jocasta Nu – the Master Archivist
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It’s possible Anakin let her go since he didn’t see her as a threat and let her take the children with her. But If this is the case, it would still leave a question on where the Younglings went by the next time, we see her.
This would b just one example of a master surviving inside the temple. There is at least one canon case where a jedi master confirmed she saved younglings as well: Cere Junda:
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There is also one high profile, adorable Youngling who did live.
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It seems hard to believe that Anakin would not know about Grogu. Most of Anakin’s Jedi contacts were Masters Ahsoka confirmed that Grogu had already been trained by many of the Masters at the temple.
But we do know that Cere’s group of younglings and Grogu ended up with the empire. It is possible Grogu was with this group, and this was the group Anakin saved by letting them get away.
This would also tie into the current direction star was is going. Right now, the timeline is focused on 8 years after the fall of the empire. Surviving younglings would be the perfect way for them to pull more trained, adult Jedi into that timeframe.
Now to be clear, while I do not believe Anakin did kill children, I fully understand that Darth Vader had the capacity to murder anyone young or old. Despite being christened on Coruscant, I do not think Anakin became Darth Vader until he dawned the mask.
Bear in mind that Anakin only got to the point of needing to live in this casket because his closest friends were ready to believe the worst about him, including that their hero could stoop low enough to kill children.

Introduction

Today, I’m going to tackle a topic that’s been on my mind for a long time. Let’s talk about Kris. The original avatar, hailing from Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem. It is my belief, from my time spent in the community, that Kris is heavily misrepresented. While it’s perfectly valid to like or dislike any character, I feel the reasons behind the dislike for Kris often involve overblowing problems or misinterpreting aspects of the character entirely. I believe that Kris is the best implementation of an avatar in Fire Emblem, is a boon to the Archanean cast, and an interesting character in their own right.

Establishing Kris

Let’s begin by talking about Kris’s place in New Mystery. For somebody who didn’t exist in the original telling, I found Kris to be surprisingly well established within the world of Archanea and within their role in the story. Kris is from a small village in the Altean countryside called Sera. There, they lived with their grandfather, MacLear, a retired Altean knight. MacLear inspired Kris to someday become a knight as well, and so from a young age, Kris trained and studied hard every day so that they could one day follow in their grandfather’s footsteps and join the Altean army. MacLear instilled in them many lessons and strict discipline for training. In fact, this lifestyle of training is really all Kris has ever known. Therefore it comes to no surprise that when Kris arrived at Altea Castle to officially become a knight, they were the best in their platoon and took on a leadership role. Kris wasn’t handed their position for free. It wasn’t natural-born talent or fate that made them a star among the recruits. It was years of slaving away with a training sword and reading countless books on strategy and tactics. Kris is an ordinary Altean with a dream, and the will to pursue it. There is an important connection to note, however, between Kris and the Altean knights. MacLear used to be a friend of Jagen’s until he left the knights due to injuries. Jagen describes MacLear’s loyalty to House Altea as ‘unmatched’ and he notes that Kris is as capable as they are because of all the training MacLear put them through. This connection between Kris and Jagen sets up their relationship as Marth’s most trusted advisors, and for Kris to one day succeed Jagen entirely in that role when he passes away.
Kris’s ascension to royal guard is a result of gaining Marth’s trust after saving a village from bandits despite it going against orders. This follows Marth’s personal philosophies to a T. Marth also heard from Jagen how exemplary Kris’s skill was. With Kris’s efforts and morality on full display and with a good word from his most trusted advisor, Kris seems like a natural fit for the demanding role of being the prince’s personal bodyguard.
If we dig deeper into their supports, there is one more connection to the pre-established world of Archanea to be found with Kris. When Kris was a child, MacLear used to make them deliver firewood to a nearby village as part of their training. It’s there that Kris met Norne, a young Altean woman who fought with Marth in the War of Shadows (in the Shadow Dragon canon). While all Kris remembers of their childhood is their intensive training, Norne recounts how Kris was somewhat famous in her small village, and how Kris was the inspiration for Norne to join the Altean army. When Norne was lost in the woods one day, Kris found her and comforted her. This jogs Kris’s memory a bit. Back then, Kris shared their dream with Norne about becoming an Altean knight, and that spurned Norne to do the same.
So, Kris is established in the world of Archanea via the relationship between MacLear and Jagen, as well via Norne. Their ascension to royal guard is explained through the intensive training and studying they did growing up and through their actions in their time in the 7th platoon. It doesn’t feel like their position was handed to them simply by the privilege of being a main protagonist, rather it feels like they’re a main protagonist because they earned an esteemed position in the Altean army.

Avatars

Kris is no ordinary main protagonist, however. Kris is notably the first “avatar” character in the series. This means that their appearance and name can be customized. I personally believe that Kris is the best implementation of an avatar in Fire Emblem. I believe that all 4 playable avatars in Fire Emblem: Kris, Robin, Corrin, and Byleth, are each quite easy to treat as their own character, and is in fact how I choose to treat all of them. Kris isn’t me, Kris is Kris, same goes for the rest of them. However, there are people that do treat these characters as self-inserts, and I believe Kris achieves that purpose the best.
First, and perhaps most importantly, the plot does not revolve around them. Beyond the prologue establishing Kris as a character, New Mystery is first and foremost Marth’s journey. Kris is along for the ride just like Jagen, supporting Marth through his hardships, but rarely taking centre stage. Robin, Corrin, and Byleth are absolutely essential characters to the plots of their games. Robin is a deuteragonist that makes important plot decision after important plot decision. Corrin is the main protagonist and the entire plot of their game revolves around them. Finally, Byleth is the most central character to Three Houses and is the key to almost every major development. Kris is a supporting character to Marth, occasionally providing insight but never deciding for Marth. It’s easier to self-insert when a character isn’t making major plot decisions that you might not agree with.
Second, you can personalize Kris’s backstory. This helps make Kris distinctly your character. For example, my Kris is the child of a priest. Your Kris might be the child of a noble or even an orphan. You can also choose personality traits. While not affecting the dialogue, this still allows you to build a story up for Kris. My Kris is diverse and honourable, but your Kris might be wise and a humanitarian. Also, since there are few set in stone details about Kris’s past, it’s easy to fill in the blanks with whatever story you’d like. This differs from Robin, Corrin, and Byleth whose lives are very much set in stone outside of Robin’s decision on how to end Grima, Corrin’s on which path to choose, and Byleth’s on which leader to support. You even get to choose Kris’s starting class, further building them into the type of character you want them to be. It immensely boosts the role-playing aspect of having an avatar character.
To be clear, I prefer Robin to Kris as a character. Just not as an avatar. Robin fails as an avatar in my eyes because they are too ingrained as a central story figure in Awakening. I can’t see Robin as anyone other than Robin. Robin’s story is Robin’s, Robin’s actions are Robin’s. It just becomes weird if I try to insert my own name onto their character. Corrin fails as an avatar for the same reason. Byleth comes a bit closer, but they fail in the complete opposite direction. They’re too much of a non-character to be relatable. Byleth also fails in being customizable in any way beyond the name, making it even harder to make them your own.
One last small detail that I appreciate about Kris’s implementation as an avatar is how the customization options you choose have some minor impact on dialogue. For example, Luke will have a different nickname for Kris depending on which type of eyes you choose. Merric will comment on the colour of Kris’s hair, and further yet if it’s blue, he’ll comment about the similarity to Marth. Little details like this really help the Kris you designed feel like a natural inclusion in the world.
For these reasons, I believe Kris has been the best implementation of an avatar character in Fire Emblem so far. I don’t particularly care for Intelligent Systems to try their hand at it again if I’m being honest, but if they do, I hope they take an approach closer to Kris.

Kris Improves The Cast

Kris strengthens the cast of Archanea. From established fan favourites to those that weren’t much more than walking stats with a portrait, I believe that Kris’s presence helps the cast of New Mystery become more interesting characters. Let’s begin with a major example, Jagen. The first, albeit minor, thing that Kris brought with them that made Jagen a bit more interesting was MacLear. Jagen only ever interacts with people much younger than him, acting as a mentor. It’s nice to know that he used to have a friend in the army, somebody he could call his equal. Kris themself helps Jagen’s character arc end on a much more satisfying note. In Mystery of the Emblem, all we know is that Jagen eventually died, and Cain took over his duties. But in New Mystery, we get to see Jagen build Kris up to one day be his successor. It’s Jagen that tells Kris what the situation is before each chapter. Jagen and Kris are Marth’s two closest advisors during the war, but they’re not equals. For most of the game, Jagen is clearly the lead advisor. However, towards the end of the game, Kris takes on a more substantial role. In fact, Kris takes lines that Jagen spoke in MotE. Never entire parts, but a paragraph that used to be entirely Jagen in MotE may now be spoken half by Kris and half by Jagen. I can sympathize with Jagen fans for feeling scorned that a character made up for the remake would say lines originally said by Jagen. The reason I believe this to be a positive for the narrative, however, is because of the progression. The only instances of Kris taking lines from Jagen in the early game is in Chapter 8, where Marth is escaping to Khadein, and Kris tells Marth to be careful instead of Jagen (although afterwards, Jagen jumps in reassuring Marth as well) and in Chapter 9 where Kris asks Marth what to do next instead of Jagen asking Marth. Although in my opinion that instance in particular just strengthens the gap between Kris being a newbie advisor and Jagen being a veteran. It’s not until Chapter 15 you have the first real instance of Kris splitting a speech with Jagen that was originally all his. This happens several more times in these later chapters. But to note, by Chapter 19 it’s been a year since Chapter 1, which is a lot of time for Kris to mature into their role as a close confidant to Marth. I think it just makes sense for Jagen to slowly let Kris take over as the main advisor. He knows he’s old, he says as much several times throughout the game, and preparing a successor is a wise and responsible thing to do; an act of service to Marth and Altea.
Another major character I believe Kris as a positive impact on is Marth. Kris’s presence makes Marth seem a lot more competent relative to MotE. Marth’s already an experienced leader and warrior after the War of Shadows. This impact is seen as early as Chapter 1. In MotE Jagen explains to Marth their path to victory (kill the bandits, talk to Lorenz) which should be laughably obvious to Marth. In New Mystery, it’s instead Marth explaining this to Kris.
In Chapter 3 Kris butts into the confrontation with Lang, which doesn’t help anything at all. Marth even apologizes for Kris’s actions before moving back into the script from MotE (and then Jagen’s a badass and challenges Lang to a fight but that’s neither here nor there). I think this adds some interesting extra depth to Marth in this scene. He’s shown to be very much in control of his emotions, and won’t let Kris speak for him. Despite making a diplomatic statement by apologizing for Kris’s behaviour, he immediately switches tone and comes crashing down on Lang for all the trouble he’s caused. It’s a super cool showcase of Marth’s abilities as a leader both in regard to his own men and in dealing with problematic leaders from other countries.
In Chapter 7 of MotE, Jagen tells Marth the legend of Naga after he asks about it, though afterwards Marth hilariously says “I have heard that before”. It’s clearly just exposition for the player and they couldn’t find a natural way to write in that exposition. On the other hand, in New Mystery Jagen asks Kris if they’ve heard of the tale, and as Kris is ignorant of many things after growing up in the countryside, they haven’t. This gives Jagen a reasonable excuse to tell the tale, still exposition for the player, but in a way that makes sense in the context of the story.
In MotE, Jagen tells Marth the tale of Anri and Artemis on their way to see Gotoh. Tales that he should already be well aware of considering it’s the history of the country he rules over. In New Mystery, Jagen instead tells these tales to Kris, where it’s much more believable that they may not have heard the stories.
Kris taking on the burden of all these tutorials and exposition scenes makes Marth wiser and more experienced in comparison.
Beyond Jagen and Marth, Kris gets a support conversation with every character in the game. I believe this to be especially a boon to the Archanea cast because of how underdeveloped most of them were before this. With the exception of a handful of major players, most of the Archanean cast were nobodies; with only a hint of a personality, if that. Kris is a relatively blank canvas that the cast can paint their personality onto, creating a clear picture for the player to understand a bit of who they are.
While I do think it is a shame that many characters are relegated to having a support only with Kris and nobody else, in a cast as large as New Mystery I believe this was the most efficient way to convey the cast’s personalities. That said, there are still 31 non-Kris supports in the game. Many characters still get a support with at least one other character for pairings where it makes sense (the only major exceptions, in my opinion, are Merric/Marth and Cain/Abel, but they’re relatively big players in the Archanean cast anyway, we know more about them than many of the lesser-seen characters). Also, supporting Kris specifically is a way to see these characters without the implicit biases that come with talking to somebody they’re already familiar with. For example, you learn things about Bord and Cord in Kris’s support conversations with each of them that you don’t learn in their support conversation with each other, because they’d never bring those topics up in front of each other! Before New Mystery, Bord and Cord were really just memes because of their appearance and names, but their supports with Kris gives a bit of insight into the type of people they are. You learn that Cord single-handedly rushed in to save a village being attacked by bandits. You learn he has a sense of duty and is always willing to help out those weaker than him. You learn that Bord has a deep sense of camaraderie, and scolded Cord for trying to take on so many bandits by himself, but he’d never abandon his friend. They’re not particularly deep characters, but now they feel like people to me. They are now characters that are possible to relate to and empathize with in some way.
It would take far too long to go through every support with Kris and explain how it expanded on the personality of the other character involved, but I’ll go through a few of my favourites to illustrate my point.
Warren: We learn that Warren is accustomed to being alone. So much so that when he’d go hunting in the mountains, he’d sometimes wait in a hole for days at a time to wait out a blizzard, doing absolutely nothing. He says that if everyone else were to disappear it’d make no difference to him and if he were to disappear it’d make no difference to the world. Kris assures him that this isn’t true since they’d be sad to see him gone. In the end, Warren learns that the feeling of loneliness doesn’t come from being alone, it comes from becoming alone. Before reading this support Warren was about as “nobody” as you could get, but honestly, I found this to be one of the more fascinating supports in the game. Warren’s depressing view of the world is challenged by somebody who heavily values comradery, and he grows as a character because of this.
Jeorge: Jeorge has very low self-confidence. He denounces the rumours that he’s one of the best archers on the continent, claiming his family spread the rumour to help bolster their status. Kris sees beyond the surface of Jeorge. Though he’s a pretty nobleman, he’s not frivolous. Jeorge wants other’s to see him that way so they underestimate him. He’s cunning and calculated. Kris’s grandfather taught them that you can learn a lot about a person by watching them fight and deduces how every one of Jeorge’s actions was premeditated so that he could eventually switch sides from Archanea to Altea. Jeorge’s heart is at odds with his mind. Though he wants to live free, he can’t help but see people as chess pieces. His nature is to scheme and make cold, calculated decisions. This support helped make Jeorge one of my favourite Archanean characters. It reveals a lot of depth to his personality and made me sympathetic to him.
Cain: Kris’s support with Cain starts out as your run of the mill training support. Cain was the instructor back during Kris’s training, and they wish to receive further instruction. There’s an amusing moment in the support after a training session where Kris says that it reminds them of their training sessions with MacLear. Cain responds that it’s really depressing that he reminds them of their grandfather when he’s only in his twenties. The meat of the support happens in their final conversation though. Cain warns Kris not to lower their guard because he doesn’t want them to experience regret as he has. He opens up about the time before the War of Shadows where he failed to protect Marth’s father, King Cornelius, and was forced to flee back to the castle. He explains how there is no greater disgrace for a knight than losing their liege, and he couldn’t even come up with the words to describe how he felt when he had to tell Marth his father’s last words. As Kris is now Marth’s Royal Guard, he doesn’t want them to experience the pain he went through, nor does he want to lose Marth; that’s why he’s working so hard to train Kris. This is a tender, emotional moment for Cain that you don’t often get to see. It’s also a natural progression for his arc, as he eventually takes over for Jagen as commander of the Altean Knights. He ends up essentially doing what he’s doing for Kris on a larger scale. He’s making sure nobody has to suffer the loss and humiliation he did.

Kris Themself

These supports are fantastic, but admittedly you can only give so much credit to Kris here. While Kris’s personality and position in the army make them an optimal candidate for these supports to take place at all, Kris is not the highlight of any of these conversations. However, that’s not the case for all the supports in the game. There are others that do put more of an emphasis on Kris, so now I’d like to highlight some of my favourites in that regard as well. However, from this point I’m going to be switching from referring to Kris, in general, to specifically referring to F!Kris. Quite a few supports vary depending on if Kris is male or female, and these differences lead F!Kris to be my favourite of the two. Although, this preference actually begins before supports are even unlocked. I personally prefer F!Kris’s dynamic with the 7th platoon in the prologue. For example, she amplifies Luke’s stupidity, which is pretty amusing:

Luke: It's a challenge, man-to-man! Kris: But I'm a woman... Luke: Well then it's a man-to-woman challenge!! Kris, you're not afraid to fight me, are you?

Furthermore, she balances the ratio of women to men in the group a bit better. With Roderick, Luke, and Ryan all being men, Cecil is the only other playable woman in the 7th Platoon (Katarina is there as well, but isn’t playable at this point in the game, and leaves the group for a majority of the game afterwards). Even after splitting off from the 7th platoon and becoming royal guard, she continues to help balance the gender ratio. With the main leaders of the army being Marth and Jagen, I think it’s nice to get a female presence in there as well.
As a final more shallow reason for my preference towards F!Kris, I think F!Kris’s default design stands out more compared to M!Kris’s default design, which feels like a Marth lite. I also prefer the customization options for F!Kris.
So, what is Kris like as a character? We’ve already covered that she’s spent her childhood laser-focused on her goal of becoming an Altean knight, training every day with her grandfather, and reading anything she could get her hands on to help her improve. Her supports with Caeda, Rickard, Dolph, and Macellan reveal that she’s an awful cook. In her Caeda support, she reveals that her grandfather thought her cooking tasted like steel.

Kris: When I told him I would become the world's strongest, he'd tell me: "I'm sure you can do it." But when I said I wanted to make dinner, he'd say: "If you must insist, then you must strike me down first"... just like that

Despite her childhood focusing only on training, she expresses interest in becoming more skilled in things like cooking. She fails miserably at it, but Caeda is polite about it.
Another character that takes notice of her cooking is Rickard. He is surprised to see Kris trying to cook despite being a knight, but she doesn’t let her prestigious position go to head. He respects that about her and gives her a hand with her awful cooking, saving the day for all the knights at dinner. She doesn’t attempt to take credit for his work though and is honest about who did the actual cooking.
In several supports, most notably her Caeda and Phina supports, it’s revealed that she gets embarrassed easily. She’s a mess when it comes to talking about love or the thought of being in revealing clothes like Phina’s.
F!Kris in particular has a sassy and sarcastic side to her that is really enjoyable, something that doesn’t come across with M!Kris. You can see this in many of her supports, including Luke, Navarre, Phina, and Samuel.

Luke: Heh. Kris, don't fall in love with me! Kris: Oh, I wouldn't worry about that.
Navarre: ...You again? Kris: Yes, it's me again.
Kris: ...I've decided. If it's to learn a new skill, I'll do whatever it takes. Besides, revealing clothes are nice. Look, I prepared some for both of us. Phina, try these clothes out. Phina: Huh? T-these clothes are... Can you even call them clothes...? I-I might as well dance naked! Kris: Come on, take your clothes off. Phina: J-j-just wait a minute! These clothes... I'm fine wearing them, but are you, Kris? What would Prince Marth think of us if he saw us wearing THAT...? Kris: I am fully prepared to fall from grace together with you.
(later in the conversation)
Kris: Phina... Phina: Huh...? Kris: Gotcha. Phina: Eh? Whaaaaat! Kris: You asked me to tease you back, didn't you? So I did. But, to see you all flustered like this. So you are a little girl after all, Feena.
Samuel: Eh? Say what? Kris, your eyes are kinda scary... You sure you're not angry? 'Cause you look really angry. Kris: Teehee, why would I be angry...? Come over here!

Another amusing part of her support with Samuel is when he brings up how there are a lot of cute girls in the army. M!Kris says that he’s never really thought about it. F!Kris, on the other hand, responds with:

Kris: Now that you mention it, I think you might be onto something. I can't believe I never noticed before.

She gets embarrassed again when he flirts with her saying that she’s one of them, but it’s interesting to note that she’s got an eye for beauty, even if she’s not one to make a move.
Her support with Belf reveals that despite her prestigious position in Altea, she lacks proper etiquette. Growing up in the country, she’s not used to castle manners and gets scolded by Jagen often. She hilariously describes speaking to be a chore.
Finally, there are two traits that are seen time and again from Kris. Traits that you’d expect from somebody who has studied their whole life to become a knight. She displays chivalry through compassion and loyalty to her liege, Marth.
Despite her commitment to comradery and becoming familiar with others who serve Marth, she is distrusting of Sirius and Astram at first and is unafraid to show it. Kris once more employs her grandfather’s age-old technique of watching how others fight to judge their character and concludes that Sirius is a true knight after all and somebody she can trust. With Astram, she realizes that just as she is fiercely loyal to her liege, Astram is fiercely loyal to his. She empathizes with him, puts herself in his shoes, and realizes that she’d have done the same.
She shows this empathy in many of her other supports as well. She indulges Yuliya in her unfair rudeness, knowing the hell Yuliya’s gone through in her life. She helps Jubelo understand that everyone fears death, but they can be more confident and grow stronger by working together. This inspires Jubelo to become strong so he can protect those that protected him. She makes sure Cecil understands that it’s totally alright if she’s afraid of ghosts. Nobody is perfect, and regardless of any fear, Kris is counting on her. Similarly, she makes sure that Sheena isn’t embarrassed by the doll she carries around from her late mother. She even tells Sheena that she also likes cute things, hopefully making Sheena understand that if even one of the army’s strongest knights is okay with admitting that, then she can be true to herself as well.
Above all else, Kris is humble. In this game, subtitled “Heroes of Light and Shadow”, Kris is the hero in the shadow. While Marth feels bad that their deeds are being told as his work and his work alone, this is exactly what Kris wants. Kris understands that the world needs a hero to look up to, and nobody is better suited for that than Marth. She is content with her duties as royal guard, serving by Marth’s side as his shadow.
So, as you explore her supports and her dialogue in the story, it becomes clear that there is a lot more to Kris than seems at first glance. I found myself highly entertained reading many of her support conversations and was pleasantly surprised to see that she’s got a bit of character to her.

Kris As An Avatar (Further Thoughts)

Something important I’d like to talk about in regards to Kris’s avatar status is that there is a difference between a character obsessing over Kris and Kris happens to be an avatar, and a character obsessing over Kris because Kris is an avatar. There are examples of both, and the latter is undoubtedly a negative stain on the character. That said, it’s minor in the grand scheme of things.
The character that obsesses over Kris with their avatar status not mattering at all is Katarina. The reason Katarina obsesses over Kris is well explained through her backstory. Everyone she knows treats her like dirt. Her sister, Clarisse, is constantly belittling her and putting her down, and that’s the person she’s closest to. Her mother, Eremiya, literally tortures children into becoming killing machines. Kris is the first person she meets when she arrives at Altea castle on her mission to get close to Marth for an assassination attempt. In her year in the 7th platoon, however, she’s treated with nothing but respect and kindness, a stark contrast to the world she’s known up to this point. I think it’s only natural that she grows so attached to Kris. They’re like an angel compared to the rest of the people in her life.
To contrast that, there are two glaring instances of uncharacteristic adoration towards Kris that can only be reasonably explained as pandering. The first is at the end of Kris’s support with Caeda where she says the following:

Caeda: Say, Kris. Stay my friend forever. Someday, when this war is over and peace returns... Wouldn't it be nice if we could spend our time... like this, the three of us...?

It’s natural that Caeda has made friends with Kris, but in this instance, she’s putting her on the same level as Marth, her fiancé. While I’m sure the three of them would spend time together after the war, this level of adoration is off-putting. There’s an argument to be made that her request to Kris in Prologue 8 to protect Marth in her stead is also out of character, but this harkens back to a similar conversation she had with Ogma in Shadow Dragon. Caeda cares deeply about Marth, and it comforts her to know somebody else is watching his back. Ogma isn’t here, so Kris, as the newly appointed royal guard, seems like a natural replacement.
The most glaring example of avatar worship is at the very end of the game after you beat Medeus. There’s a specific line that Marth says that is just atrocious:

“You’re my other half, my true friend…”

He says this when Caeda is right there. After a year of working as his royal guard, Kris and Marth would undoubtedly grow close, but that phrasing is far too over the top.
That said, I feel strongly that every other aspect of Kris more than makes up for these transgressions. It would be disingenuous to ignore them entirely, but they don’t ruin the character for me.

Conclusion

In what is a hilarious coincidence, in the middle of my writing this, Kris was revealed for Heroes! I was very excited to see her finally show up after so many years. I’m a huge fan of how her VA did her voice, it fits her absolutely perfectly. And the lines couldn’t be better, including referencing her awful cooking and MacLear’s lesson on learning about people through fighting. Daisuke Izuka drawing her is perfection, her artwork is amazing! The Forging Bonds has stayed true to Kris’s character. It’s post New Mystery, and so Jagen comments on how they’ve grown to be a true knight. They also reference their lack of cooking skill and even how Caeda specifically was teaching them things. Kris and Kris’s interactions with each other are pretty amusing as well.
Through reading all of their supports and replaying the game in the process of making this write-up, I actually grew to like Kris much more. I originally wrote this merely as a defence of an over hated character, but I came to have a real appreciation for her by the end of it. Kris is pretty rad! Whether or not you feel the same, I hope I was able to showcase the aspects of Kris I believe to be well done. Thank you for reading!

(wall of text warning)
so I think a lot, and well it's easy to guess of whom I am thinking of, prepare for all my thoughts of Shyvana!!!
(due to the Reddit rules, this wall of text has been filtered, and to be sure I don't cross any lines at all I simply filtered out anything remotely considered NSFW)
straight out I'm going to say that her angles are sharp and wonderful, yeah sometimes her elbow or hip jabs into me but it's fine.
so ill start with her skin, a lovely mix of a beautiful midnight blue and soft nightshade, combined with a perfect mix of endless dusk, truly a perfect tone, slate nightshade/indigo as we can see in her splash art, her skin has different textures on which part there are, there is her soft skin, her tough skin, her really tough skin, and her scales; her soft skin covers her color, face, thighs, and parts of her upper arms. her tough skin is what we see along her waist, lower arms, legs, and most likely hands and back. her really tough skin would be her equivalent of our callus, hardened where it needs to be, such as places as her palms and her feet. and her scales, we see them lining her face, arms, torso, thighs, legs, and they are most likely along her back as well, they are most likely strong enough to resist a direct blow from nearly any weapon. her sensitive parts are well, sensitive, soft, and squishy, they are most affected by her core's reaction to her emotions and as could be guessed, they are her lady parts so I'm not talking about them.
now her eyes, a glowing flame from a burning earth, flowing heat and a flaming passion, the color of both life and destruction, fire is a very dangerous tool that perfectly reflects her, both heat, warmth, love, and rage, death, and pain, much like her. her eyes reflect her mood, her fury is visibly seen, the whites of her eyes are well, white when she is feeling mot any mood, but with rage, they tint to orange until her slitted pupils are seen in a sea of fire I imagine that, like a cat, her pupils slit as they deteriorate, the more dilated they are the more round, but as they grow smaller they also grow more narrow. but unlike a cat, she can control them by will and it is not up to the light, she can have her eyes be either slits or round to perceive the world in different views via light intake, she can choose to see this world however she wishes but of course, her pupils expand when she is excited or happy, like all of us, and when around someone she finds attractive they get pretty large, so unless she chooses to look cross or hide her emotions i almost always see her with full rounded pupils.
her hair, yet another perfect blend of colors, a deeper purple then her skin, closer to exactly washed out violet, rather than a nightshade/indigo. she has long hair, although it is longer in the back then her front, it falls to her knees her front hair runs a little over her chest, the varying lengths are very interesting and in a very unique, but still lovely. she wears her hair in three braids, two with her front hair that is pretty short, but her third braid runs along her back and takes me a while to do, and takes a lot of hair. when she chooses to wear her helm, she has metal plates over her third braid. it falls to her knees when braided, I can promise you it is even longer when unbraided. she does not grow hair anywhere save for scalp, so she has no need to shave her legs or other places, she never cuts her hair anyways she enjoys to keep it long, all the razor's in the house are mine
her arms, strong yet slender, covered in both her soft skin and scales, making for a perfect combination of chaotic texture, this happens just about everywhere on her. her biceps have visible muscles and some nice curvature, I freaking love it. the lower down her arms you go the more her scales vary, they dot all along with her outer biceps and her outer forearms, but there are only a few on her hands. once you reach her hands where her palms have both really tough skin and soft/tough skin alike, giving her a strong grip on anything she doesn't want to let go of. she can hold fire without it affecting her, so this goes to show that she is immune to heat most likely to massive extents, more on this later, but each finger is beautiful and curves into a claw, not sharp enough to cut me unintentionally but if she wanted to she could easily draw blood, it goes to show how careful she is and how much control she has over her body.
her waist, again a perfect combination of different textures. her waist hits a sharp hourglass that goes wider to her hips, then to her thighs and is slightly smaller but a more curved transition to her arms and back. we see right below her chest scales and soft skin, but as you go down to her tummy and belly button there is tough skin, so my guess is, like dragons, that she has her soft skin all around her waist but it hardens where it is revealed when I amble to feel in between her rougher skin it is very soft, why this is I have no idea, let's just write it off as draconic forming also, she has abs, and that is amazing
her back, like all of her, has sharp angles, her spine is very visible and can go unnoticed if I choose to ignore it, but most of the time I pay attention to it, like all of her small details, her shoulder blades also are very notable her upper back is covered in scales, they fold along from her back to her shoulders then her arms, a few of them scattered up to her neck at her lower back, her scales mostly follow along her spine, but they stop when they reach her rear end
her thighs, also different textures combined, but mostly made of her soft skin, though we do see it being designed with her tough skin and scales as if she has been painted like a portrait, and despite her thigh gap yes she is thicc, I have a lot to say about this part of her their shape is absolutely beautiful, like all of her they have the most perfect shape and curve i have ever seen. we see waves of a tougher skin flowing around her, and although i narrowed her skin to three classes her thighs ignore this, painted along only her thighs are waves of tougher skin over soft skin, the closer you get to her, er, yeah that part the more the waves come closer together but overall her skin and the waves become more sensitive and soft, when I push on her waist I barely move her skin but when I push on her inner thigh it makes a very notable displacement, and unlike the rest of her skin she has sensitive thighs, they don't go with her other sensitive parts (as that's just a name I gave them) but she feels them, really feels what contacts them, (more on this later) her waves often split and she has smaller circles of tougher skin within these splits, but they always reseal her waves are only on her thighs, I am not sure why though I do not complain about them to be unique when the waves meet her hips and her rear end they subtly fade, they all fold back from her front to her sides and back when they meet to her lower legs they sharpen then slowly transition to a tougher skin, but the color change is more notable to the point like her other 'sensitive' parts, and because they are close to each other (also generate fiction as she walks) her thighs are always warm, and because she has softer skin there, the heat does not disperse on her outer layers like on the rest of her body where her skin is toughethickesmoother, although they meet these three by just a little, they disperse heat quite a lot more
her lower legs, her knees down are of her tough skin and scales, as in an evolutionary standpoint this is where she would need a lot of protection as her legs are too priceless to let any sort of stinger, thorn, bricket, claw, or other damage it, I mean, have you tried living alone in a wilderness without any legs? not to mention how strong they are, keep in mind not only does Shyvana have scales, but her skin is tough and would be thicker than normal human skin, combined that with a digestive system able to finish animal matter within a short amount of time (keep in mind marrow is not easily digested) and her legs are able to carry her while she runs, jumps, kicks, etc, without showing any sign of fail, dang she strong uwu side note, with all of this she would weigh more than the average human woman by at least a few pounds, feels nice
and to her ability to hold fire, since she is able to do this without showing any sign of it hurting, or even affecting, her this goes to show that she is able to resist massive amounts of heat, but cmon everyone could guess that, so ill do yall one better now a [camp]fire burns around 2,200 Fahrenheit, and Shyvana is able to hold that in her hand without showing a second thought, and since the body is much hotter on the inside then it is on the outside, when using this she burns inside maybe around 3,000, but this would only be in the heat of battle, blood, and passion, but even then she would not be able to contain the fire to her hands, in order to keep her blood boiling to hold fire like that in her arms she would have to heat her core, and thus would ignite all of her. either that or it is not biological at all and she is using magic
her walk is graceful and majestic, each step is taken with a purpose
now for some overall thoughts, like all dragons, she would be able to breathe smoke and fire, so the term 'blowing smoke' is very literal for her, and since she can literally spit fire at you, be careful what you say and don't get on her bad side XXD also like dragons, they have to heat their core, so it is not unreasonable to suggest that Shyvana would be able to heat her core when she chooses to wield fire, which would cause her chest to glow and her bones to be seen through her translucent (soft and squishy) skin, she would be able to do this by will even if she does not use the fire within her, so even cuddling with her can get pretty hot, even though her skin would only be felt with a small amount of her inner heat, it would still be felt, if you have ever run your hand through hot water and felt it after, this is almost what it would feel like but of course, she can choose to light her core as if she were to attack but keep the fire in her, keeping a notable glow along her chest and a subtle glow for her waist, her skin stays remotely affected by her internal heat but she still gets very, very warm when she chooses to
and there is the overall risk of burns, no matter how careful she could be it is still possible for a little fire to escape her at seemingly random times, due to this, and also just being a dragon in general, it would be hard for her to suppress her emotions, so you would know what she is feeling when she is feeling it, I don't mind them though
and of course, there are those myths that once one owns a dragon's heart or receives a dragon's kiss they become immune to burns, so I am glad I am her special one uwu
due to Shyvana having her tougher skins and scales, she barely feels anything, as a form of desensitization, of course, she feels more in some places than others, specifically her sensitive parts, but despite how much of me she does not feel, she still loves to be held, it is especially cute when she isn't satisfied with how I currently hold her and just pushes herself even closer, often leaving little room to breathe, she almost always has contact with me along her front, hands, thighs, and waist, when I am holding her from behind she requires I press her against me so my pressure across her back is more noticeable, it really keeps her happy
and her true form, hard, smooth, heated scales all over, beautiful wings and lovely limbs, strong arms and sharp claws, despite her change in mentalities, she still loves me the same and would never hurt me, I love to be around her as a dragon just as much as I love being around her human form, she is always generating a heat that gives a very unique comfort, she folds her arms around me and curls her tail protectively, using her wings to make a dome of sorts, or just folds them at her side, either way, I feel protected and warm, I don't mind being held by a dragon.
her soft golden flame is mine to claim my rough bleeding soul is hers to name a simple love from simple starts a single love shared two hearts
so here's a picture of her if you wish to behold her beauty yourself

Car nerds of the t'interwebs, I need help.
I have owned a C4GP for three years, some of which have been interesting.
So, I'm a mug who paid for the AA Warranty but also an Emac service plan. Each time the car has been serviced, I've informed the garage I have a DPF warning on the dash (not a lit light or anything, just a warning which disappears), and nobody has touched it.
This year, the MOT apparently would fail on this DPF issue, so I raised it to my other garage in Southport (I'm in Liverpool), who identified the Eolys tank was empty, then checked the car info and the sensor was registering 1000ml. They filled the tank and hoped for the best, but pushed me back to Robins and Day Liverpool to look at the Eolys properly.
It's been in today, they've identified that there seems to be an electrical issue, so the pump is not receiving enough power (believe he said 9v, and it needs 12v - please don't quote me on this as I'm useless with electrics).
In the 3 years of ownership, I've never had anyone identify the DPF issues, nor have I had any other warnings for the fluid being running low or empty etc. So possibly my pump and sensor are fubar. They're reluctant to replace the battery at the minute, but I'd rather do this myself since they clearly didn't care.
I haven't paid for anything yet, as their diagnosis seemed to do nothing. In my head, the process of diagnosis should be "we've done xyz and this is the issue", not "well we know there's not enough power, but why that is, we don't know yet. Pay more monies".
Can anyone suggest things to try, or have been through this themselves?

Warning It's bad.
"Quand il me prend dans ses bras Il me parle tout bas Je vois la vie en rose..."
The words echoe, muffled explosions ring in the background as large skyscrapers collapse into the deep blue where the preassure snaps through their windows, it bends their aluminium binds and cracks the concrete walls - the distant ring of bullets being shot echoe too, the empty shells falling gently to the stone floor where they roll to a stop. Yet above it all one sound muffles all others, La Vie En Rose was being sung by a child - no, she was no longer a child..
Her milky eyes stare forwards, her tattered and dirty dress hanging onto her almost malnourished form, and her tiny hands hug around the arm of a woman. Blood drips from the side of her head, her sky blue eyes dialate as they fail to focus onto the girl before her, and her fingers fail to muster the strength to touch the girl, prompting the Little Sister to press the hand against her cheek. Soon the vision of this woman fades, it collapses into nothing and then she awakes..
Elizabeth finds herself upon a beach, in the distance a lighthouse sweeps the land with its beacon, and in the skies she can see it - she can see the Doors, what's behind all the doors, and what will happen in each door. She knew this wasn't real, was it her mind collapsing into itself as it tries to find a alternate way to keep her alive, perhaps? Could it be this was some pre-death hallucination? She didn't know, and as the waves crash against the sand and push gently against her shoes, the woman began to walk forward and the ocean began to bubble, from it sprung out boards and wooden poles which formed a almost deck like shape. She continued to walk, soon enough slivers of reality appeared as her memories began to fade back - her own memories, her countless selves sprung out of her into their own universe where each bit became their own Elizabeth. As she kept walking her eyes connected to each Tear Subject Delta, the death of Ryan, Tenenbaum, the Little Sisters ending Fontain - and finally she found herself closer towards the lighthouse.
Her hand reached towards the golden door where one half reprisented Raptures Art Deco, and the other showed the Great Prophet and his city - then her hand retreated in reluctance. "No, I don't want to.." she spoke, beggining to step back only to gently bump into something solid, turning around she saw the man, Booker. "Booker!" She exclaimed in a chime of hope only for it to die as she realized that he wasn't real, "Why are you here?.." she asked, and he simply watched her only to then speak, "I could say the same to you. You know there's no going back, you can't bring yourself back from the dead.."
And she gulped, staring into him as her eyes shifted down to the wet wooden boards as her heart beat rapidly in her chest. "Booker, Sally what if she-" and then he cut her off with a calm "Elizabeth," he would gesture to the trillions of Tears constantly opening and closing. "You can see the doors now, and you can see what's behind the doors.." he would then point to the golden tinted door behind her, "Now tell me, what do you see behind THAT door?" He questioned, and she turned around to find it replaced by a bright light, the sun.. pressing onwards towards it she would focus, and then she saw it. He saved them, he saved her, "She's saved.." Elizabeth uttered, knowing what comes next.
"And she grows up." Booker spoke, "You're not really Booker, are you?.." she asked, and she knew that he nodded in agreement. "But you have to let go, like I did, like the Elizabeth before you did.." she simply stared at the sunlight as its warmth radiated against her skin, she squinted her eyes and walked inwards. Then her vision swirled as various moments flashed from Jack arriving to Rapture, to the Little Sisters being saved, of Ryan's death and than to Fontaine dying and Sally being saved by Jack. Then her vision formed back into reality where she stared at Sally, who just kept pressing the large hand against her small cheek -
"Il me dit des mots d’amour Des mots de tous les jours Et ça me fait quelque chose..."
And soon a smile formed on Elizabeth's face, her fingers finding the strength to caress Sally's cheek only for her to finally lose her strengths as the hand falls to the floor. Then, the dolls head rolls from her open hand and onto the concrete floor where it simply stares into the darkness..

Hi ARMY! 💜
I’m stuck in quarantine, depressed about the tour being postponed, and very bored, which led me to fully gemming my MOTS Army Bomb!
(I’m definitely not writing this to avoid studying for my finals.. definitely not..)
I actually attempted this once before and royally messed up. It was a sad, expensive mistake. I know a lot of ARMY have been inspired to decorate their bombs by the boys’ mics (or maybe Joon and Hobi’s recent Vlive), so I thought I’d put together a guide with some tips and tricks I’ve learned throughout the process. Hopefully this will help some of you avoid the mistakes I made initially!
Note: I would consider myself to be a pretty experienced crafter, and I’ve done my fair share of gem projects (including 3 pairs of Vans with 10-12k crystals each!). This isn’t necessarily a difficult project, but it requires a lot of time, patience, and focus. Go slow, and take breaks. The full project took me about 12 hours.
✨ album of the final result ✨
✨ video ✨
Sorry in advance for this guide becoming so lengthy - I wanted to be as thorough as possible!
What You Need
1. Light stick (duh)
Tip: make sure your light stick is working and syncs properly before starting! Fake light sticks will NOT sync to the ARMY Bomb app. This is a long, potentially expensive, and irreversible project, so be sure to check there’s no issues with your ARMY bomb before starting!
2. Rhinestones
I initially attempted this project using ss9 (2.5mm) crystals, but found that ss12 (3mm) crystals were easier to work with.
In addition to the ss12, you’re going to need some smaller size stones (ss3, ss5, or ss7) to fill in any small gaps and work around areas like the buttons and logos.
For any lettering and the BTS/ARMY logos, I used ss3 (1.5mm).
Here is a size chart for reference.
Rhinestones are typically sold by gross (1 gross = 144 stones).
I strongly suggest buying extra, you will drop/lose/ruin some rhinestones in the process.
Please note: these numbers are for the MOTS ARMY Bomb, and may need to be adjusted for v3 ARMY Bomb.
For my MOTS light stick (strap included) I used roughly 3000 stones.
Here’s the breakdown:

• 15 gross ss12 Black Diamond Shimmer
• 1 gross ss5 Black Diamond Shimmer (to fill in any gaps)
• 1.5 gross ss12 AB Crystal (for lightstick strap checkerboard)
• 1 gross ss5 AB Crystal (wrist strap detailing)
• 2 gross ss3 AB Crystal (used for ARMY/BTS logos and strap detailing)
• Half gross ss12 and a few ss10 Electric Violet Delite (these ones glow under black light, they’re so cool!! Used for the heart and ARMY/BTS lettering on strap)

Decorative gems:

• 1 8mm AB Crystal heart bead
• 2 10mm AB Crystal Edelweiss (fancy star) flat back gems
• 13 5mm Crystal AB spikes (round)
• 12 4mm Crystal AB spikes (round)

All of the above were made by the brand Swarovski.
I picked Black Diamond Shimmer because they remind me of the MOTS:7 album artwork, but you can choose any color you’d like!
What kind of rhinestones should I use?
This is entirely up to you! I’ve done a fair amount of crystal projects with both generic plastic crystals and Swarovski. I generally gravitate towards using Swarovski crystals because in my experience I’ve found them to be the best quality and the most sparkly. The sizing is consistent (sometimes with cheaper gems, the gem sizes (in a pack of one size) varies a tiny bit which can mess up your alignment). They’re also more durable, I was able to salvage a lot of gems from my failed project and reuse them.
Choosing to use Swarovski makes this project a lot more expensive. Personally, I found it to be worth the money. If you don’t, that’s fine! You can find lots of cheaper rhinestone options at AliExpress/Amazon etc. that will also look very nice. If you go the non-Swarovski route, look for glass crystals instead of plastic. Glass crystals usually have a lot more sparkle to them and hold up better than plastic.
Tip: I know a lot of us can’t go outside right now to physical stores to pick out colors. If you’re stuck trying to decide on a color, try searching for it on YouTube. There’s a bunch of Swarovski unboxing and close up videos to help!
Regardless of what you decide to go with, I strongly recommend buying some cheaper ones to practice with on a flat surface before attempting to use more expensive stones/starting the light stick!!
Hotfix vs. Non-hotfix
Hotfix rhinestones are rhinestones meant to be used with a hotfix tool. They have a thin layer of glue on the back that is activated with heat (usually applied with a hotfix applicator or iron) - these are meant for fabric application. The light stick is made of plastic, so hotfix tools and irons are NOT suitable for this project. You could use a hotfix applicator for the strap, but I used Gem Tac for mine.
You can still use hotfix rhinestones without a heated tool. Just apply with normal glue as you would with non-hotfix stones.
Make sure you are buying FLAT BACK rhinestones. There’s many different types of rhinestones, but you need the ones with the flat surface on the back for this project.
Where can I buy rhinestones?
I purchased my Swarovski crystals from rhinestone-specific websites. I found it was much cheaper to buy in bulk from stores that specifically sell rhinestones/beads vs. craft stores.
My go-to site for gemstones is Dreamtime Creations, but I’ve also purchased from Blue Streak Crystals and various sellers on eBay. These stores also have a variety of good quality non-Swarovski stones. They also have a big selection of different flat back gem shapes and beads to decorate with! Be Createful has an awesome selection of non-Swarovski glass rhinestones as well.
3. Glue
A few other ARMYs who have done this to their light sticks suggested B7000 or E6000 glue with great results. I am the only one I’ve seen do this with genuine Swarovski, and have come to the conclusion this may be a Swarovski problem.
I don’t recommend E6000 glue and B7000 because these are industrial strength adhesives and that level of strength isn’t necessary for this project. They use much stronger chemicals that can eat away at the silver foil backing on the Swarovski crystals (plastic crystals without foil backings may not have this issue). Here is a picture of what it looks like when that happens - as you can see, there’s a clear ring around the base of the gem where the foil was eaten away. Note: this effect isn’t immediate, it takes about 24-48 hours to appear. So you might do it perfectly and it looks great, and then the next day the rings appear. Also, these glues can be a bit goopy and harder to work with for beginners.
Personally, I had the best success with Gem Tac glue. You can buy small bottles with fine tips (see here). Gem Tac is generally used for dancewear and is very strong. Gem Tac is white when applied but dries clear. It fully cures in 24 hours. The bond strengthens with heat (I go over this later in the guide). I haven’t noticed any gems falling off or feeling loose, and it didn’t damage the crystals. Plus, there is no super strong chemical smell (another problem I had with E6000/B7000). If you do choose to use E6000 or B7000, I suggest wearing a mask and working in a well-ventilated area as the chemical smell can give bad headaches.
I only used about 3.5 mini gem tack tubes of the 12 pack I ordered. You really don’t need much more than a tiny dot for each gem.
More glue =/= better.
I know you’ll be tempted to add extra glue to make it “feel more secure” but trust me, it doesn’t work like that.
A tiny dot of properly placed and distributed glue will hold better than coating the gem with a giant glob. Using too much glue can also cause the gems not to align properly.
4. Tools

• Gem pickup tool. I liked these pencils. They are made of wax, so the gem will stick to them without leaving any residue. The wax may lose its’ stickiness over time, you can just sharpen these with a regular pencil sharpener. If you find that the wax is leaving residue (it brushes right off, don’t worry) or the pencil is breaking often, you’re applying too much pressure - try a lighter hand.
• Tooth picks or similar small pointy sticks - this is to help push the gems into place and spread the glue neatly. Ideally use some that are disposable/you have plenty of as they can get clumped up with glue residue.
• Tweezers. I have been using these, I liked the silicone tip on the top to push gems into place.
• Ruleanything with a blunt side to check everything is lining up level.
• Small cups/plates to sort the gems with.
• Rubbing alcohol - not necessary, but I like to use this for prep.
• Nail polish remover (make sure it has a high acetone content) - should you accidentally get glue somewhere you shouldn’t, put some nail polish remover on a cloth and it’ll wipe right off. You can also use Q-tips for tighter areas.
• Optional: painter’s tape or washi tape, if you’re nervous about getting glue or something on areas you shouldn’t.

IMPORTANT: Because the MOTS light stick is dark shimmery black and the stones I used were dark, I did not feel the need to paint my light stick. If you’re using a lighter color, you may want to paint your light stick to match before gemming it. If done correctly, very little of the actual stick will show between the gems. Here is a picture of the Koya figure I’m also working on. I didn’t paint it, and as you can see the color doesn’t really show through despite the gems being a lot darker than the base
Pre-painting is just a personal preference and not necessary, but I’ll link some videos by other ARMYs who painted their light sticks at the end.
Ready, set, and begin!
Before you even think about starting your light stick, PRACTICE. Seriously. Even if you’re an arts and crafts pro, do a small practice section on a random surface just to get in the groove of it. The gems are a pain to remove if you mess up, so it’s really worth it to take 10 min to practice beforehand.
me @ ARMY who try to skip ahead without practicing
First off, prep your light stick. Make sure any stickers are peeled off, then take a cloth with some rubbing alcohol and wipe it down. This isn’t necessary, but I like to do it to ensure there’s no dirt or residue that could affect the adhesive. I would recommend this step for ARMY bombs that have been used before.
Application
The cleanest way to go about this is to place the gems in a staggered pattern (if you were ever a dancer, windows and lines!).
Example of stagger vs. straight placement.
As you can see, the staggered gems come out a lot more neatly with less background showing. This is VERY IMPORTANT, my first attempt at a gem light stick I tried to do it all in straight lines and it was a mess. You can still try the straight line method if you’d like, but this guide will be covering the stagger method.
Choosing where you start is a personal preference, I started from the bottom and worked my way up in rings. I found it best to work in full rings vs random sections so you don’t have to worry about getting the sections to joint together seamlessly.
I usually put a thin line of glue (enough for 3-4 gems) and place the gems on the glue one by one. Example. If the glue line comes out too thick, I use a tooth pick to thin it out before applying the gems.
Make sure you are placing the gems on top of the glue line vs sliding them into the line. Sliding them into the line will create a glue ring around each gem which doesn’t look great and will cause the alignment to be off. Placing it directly on top of the line ensures there’s no excess glue sticking out from around the gem.
For the MOTS light stick, I used 15 ss12 gems for each ring around the base. There was a tiny amount of space left (but not enough for a full gem) so I left it blank and went back after it was dry and filled it in with ss5 gems. Here is a pic of before and after adding the ss5. Note: you can’t gem the line where the battery cap unscrews, or else you won’t be able to get batteries in and out.
Patterns, Hearts, and Letters
As I recommended before, PRACTICE. Especially for patterns and letters.
I used this bead chart and colored it in on my iPad to map out and test patterns. If you are having trouble making your own pattern, try searching for “(your idea) bead pattern”. I found way more results looking for bead patterns vs. rhinestone patterns.
You could just freehand the shape and try to work around it, but getting the gems to all sit flush is very difficult when you break the stagger.
I chose to do a checkerboard pattern and letters on my light strap. I made up my own pattern for this. One thing I noticed was that for the checkerboard, you have to do 5 of one color and 4 of the other to get the pattern to look right. Doing 4 of each ends up looking more like stripes. See here.
Here are the patterns I made and some practice attempts. Feel free to use them!
For the strap, I found it best to do rows of 4 and 5 ss12 gems. On the rows of 4 gems, I added 2 ss3 gems to each end of the line to fill the gaps.
It will look like this:

• •••••
• :••••:
• •••••

I found it easiest to finish the whole strap and then go back in to add the ss3 gems.
For letters, you kind of have to use a mix of stagger and straight lines to work around the shape of the letter. Smaller gems work best for this, I use size ss3 for the majority of my lettering.
Here are some lettering examples from my v3 ARMY Bomb. I just followed/filled in the existing lines for these.
Buttons/Bluetooth Sensor
So this is probably one of the more challenging parts of the whole project.
Here are some close up shots of how I maneuvered around the the buttons and sensor.
I got as close as I could to the buttons with the ss12 stones and then went back in with the ss5 stones later.
For the black area surrounding the sensor, I continued the stagger pattern and did the sides first. Then I worked my way inward to the red part using a mix of ss5 and ss12 stones.
DO NOT COVER THE RED BUTTON ON THE TOP. THIS IS THE BLUETOOTH SENSOR. The black part is fine to decorate, but covering the red part will block the Bluetooth ability from working. This is how the light stick syncs at concerts, so it’s very important to leave this uncovered!
Finishing
When I finished the light stick, I did not add any kind of top or sealing coat. I feel that the gems on my light stick are very secure and don’t need anything extra. This is a personal preference. If you want to add some sort of top coat, make sure you test it on some gems first, as some types of top coats can dull the gems and there’s no way to reverse that.
Gem Tac strengthens a tiny bit more with heat. It’s still very strong without heat, so this step is optional. After I finished, I used a blow dryer on a low setting for 2 minutes (rotating the light stick frequently). Do not do this until the gems have dried for at least 12 hours and you are sure you’re happy with the placement. You have to be VERY CAREFUL and make sure you don’t overheat the light stick.
Let the light stick dry fully for 24 hours. The Gem Tac does dry quicker than that but it is not fully cured for 24 hours. It may feel dry, but it’s best to leave it be so you don’t accidentally budge any stones.
Optional: Light Stick Dust Bag
I also decided to add gems to the bag that comes with the ARMY bomb.
Same technique as before, fairly simple.
For the bag you’ll need:

• 2 gross ss12 rhinestones (ARMY/BTS logo)
• 1/2 gross ss5 rhinestones (ARMY/BTS words)
• ~ 100 1mm rhinestones (for the SPECIAL EDITION words)

Note: I used Black Diamond Shimmer for the logos, White Opal for the ARMY/BTS words, and Crystal AB for the SPECIAL EDITION words). The first two I mentioned are from Swarovski. Swarovski doesn’t make 1mm flat back gems, so I used some random nail art gems I found on eBay).
I finished it and ran it over with a blow dryer as I normally would...
Fun fact #1: The light stick bag is made of polyester.
Fun fact #2: Polyester melts with heat.
And well... (πーπ)
RIP dust bag.
The official dust bag, IMO, is not worth gemming. It’s very cheap and prone to ripping (even without heat).
If you’re looking for a similar bag, wine bottle bags fit pretty well. I purchased this velvet wine bag and freehanded the BTS logo using the failed dust bag as a guide.
Did you see my bag?
Removing Gems
Removing gems is a pain, but if you’re anything like me and have awful OCD that makes you need to redo the same section 3x, it’s just part of the fun!
Gem Tac, E6000, and B7000 glue can all be removed with acetone (commonly used as nail polish remover).
For large sections, dab a cloth in acetone and then press it on to the section you want to remove for about 30 seconds (if they’re still stuck, try another 30 seconds. Be careful not to drench the lightstick). This should loosen the gems enough so you can start peeling/scraping them off with tweezers.
For small sections or cleaning up areas with excess glue, use a q-tip dipped in acetone.
Warning: Removing the gems most likely will scratch the light stick, so just be wary of that if you’re planning not to recover it with more gems/paint etc.
The glue is a bit more forgiving to remove on the base of the stick.
If you try to gem the clear globe part and mess up, it’s near impossible to remove without scratching and/or leaving residue on the globe. The glue residue unfortunately looks even more obvious when it’s lit up. For this reason, I really don’t recommend gemming any parts of the MOTS globe. If you do, proceed with caution!! The v3 globe has some frosted parts which makes mistakes easier to hide, but it’s still risky.
Miscellaneous Tips and Advice

• Attach the lightstick strap to the ARMY bomb before gemming it, it’s difficult to pull through the loop when it has gems.
• Another tip for the lightstick strap: initially I planned to add more beads around the heart, but it was impossible to pull the strap through with any more beads on it.
• As you finish each row, push down LIGHTLY with an object with a blunt edge (like a ruler or the side of the tweezers) to make sure the gems are level and there’s no gaps.
• If you get some extra glue somewhere, don’t stress - Gem Tac dries clear.
• Make sure you are putting the cap back on the glue so it doesn’t dry out. This sounds like a dumb tip but I forgot to do this frequently throughout the project, lol.
• Add filler gems AFTER the main gems have dried.
• Don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t come out perfect on the first try. You will probably mess up, and that’s okay! Most people won’t be able to spot a tiny gap inbetween gems or a bit of excess glue, especially when you’re holding it in the dark at a concert.

FAQ
The gems are sliding after I place them down, how do I stop this?
I noticed the MOTS light stick had a much smoother surface than the v3. If you work too fast and are flipping the the stick as you go, the gems can slide if you’re going too fast. I slowed down my pace after it first happened and it was fine. You could also lightly buff it with sandpaper.
Is the light stick heavier?
It’s a tiny bit heavier but not so much that it would be uncomfortable to hold at a concert.
Do the gems make it uncomfortable to hold?
The gems (except for the spike ones that are at the top) are rounded and feel comfortable to hold. If you only do a few accents, it might feel less smooth.
Can I use smaller or larger stones?
Yes, and the process and technique would still be the same. I found the ss12 (3mm) was the easiest and neatest to work with. Going smaller would require a lot more gems (and work!) and if you go larger the gaps between the gems will be more visible.
How durable is it?
On a scale of one to ”would I allow Namjoon to hold this” I’d say about a 9.
Seriously though, these gems are not going ANYWHERE. It feels very sturdy and I’m not worried about anything falling off during the concert. Tbh I’m more worried about dropping it and the globe breaking than I am about the gems falling off.
Here are some links to videos by other ARMY doing the same project that might be helpful.
TheYoon
vantes collection
...and that’s all, folks!
If you have any questions or I didn’t cover something clearly enough, feel free to reach out :)
You can share/repost this anywhere you’d like, just please give me credit if you do.
Also if you do this project using my guide, tag me in a picture of the finished product!! I’d love to see it.
Good luck, and I hope to see all of our sparkly ARMY Bombs at the MOTS tour!!
bonus meme: me waiting for the new tour dates to be announced.
(If you liked this guide and would like me to make more for my other art projects, let me know! I’m stuck in quarantine so I’ve been doing a lot of crafting lately. I am currently working on gemming a Koya piggy bank!)