shiteatinggrin

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Honestly, one of my favorite things about GRRM's writing in asoiaf is how it turns the reader's bloodthirstiness against them.

Take Theon in ACOK, you are cheering in his final chapter because finally! Just desserts for that arrogant foolish bastard!

You read how the Bolton's have him captured in ASOS and say "Heh, good riddance".

And then... you read Reek chapters and with growing horror, you realize who is the person narrating. And suddenly, this need for payback, for him to face justice, doesn't feel that righteous anymore. No person should go through this.

The same goes for Cersei, her blaze of cruelty and scheming catches up to her when the sparrows imprison her. FINALLY, justice! and... you can only stare in horror and disgust at the walk of atonement scene. There is no vindication to be found here.

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excuse me... olive garden bitch? before you finish grating that cheese on my salad i'd like to talk about borderline personality disorder

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I was in Paris last weekend too and I saw a homeless woman ask a man at a cafe for a cigarette and he acted annoyed and rolled her an entire cigarette my hand and gave it to her

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also can’t stop thinking about that post that says kyle maclachlan looks like a porcelain wedding cake topper who wished to be a real man

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obsessed with how jaime looms like a spectre over the characters and the reader alike in agot and to an even greater extent in acok. you've actually witnessed him firsthand a few times with characters like jon, tyrion and sansa, but most of him is just the golden-haired man haunting bran's dreams, terrifying him, tyrion's brave, strong, impulsive brother who has to be saved, the kingslayer of the smallfolk, the one whose incest and kingslaying has brought down the wrath of the gods upon them, ned's jaime, who is vile and never to be trusted, not worthy of any empathy, the kingslayer that is more idea than person for the younger characters like jon, arya and sansa, the kingslayer that theon almost crossed blades with, his chance for glory (which...okay theon...) the kingslayer whose vile deeds don't erase the fact that he is a knight for stannis, the kingslayer who murdered daenerys' father. he's mentioned in so many conversations. cerwyn mentions him to bran and he feels like he's falling again, renly talks about him and cersei with catelyn in front of brienne, brienne and catelyn mention him in their conversation when they're going to riverrun, robb and tyrion and tywin are all thinking about him. grrm does such a good job at just establishing his presence and significance (not only in the narrative but in a meta way as well, a hint for what's to come) in this world, which just elevates that scene when cat and brienne go down to the dungeons to meet him to an insane level.

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ACOK prologue is not talked about enough and it honestly continues to haunt me despite being so short. to introduce a character (stannis) who was only previously mentioned as cold and harsh and unlikeable through the eyes of the one person that loves him and tragically tries to save him one last time … is insane.

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I was going through your meta links (I find your meta a really insightful reading of the books and it's made me look at them with fresh eyes which is a lot of fun) and was especially curious about your answer to why Jaime told Brienne about the wildfire and Aerys, but the link is broken and I can't find it by searching your tags or blog :( would you be willing to share your thoughts on it again?

idk what i said but i think it is a culmination of factors. brienne embodies true knighthood/heroism, and is an indisputably good individual and is a person whose approbation part of jaime actually deeply craves (george has expressed this in an interview before) to the point that he will actually justify himself to her and open up to her + jaime was also stripped bare of all of his walls throughout asos, and the bath itself + injuries etc have him in a state where his control is not the best obviously, but still, brienne is his past self’s idealistic mirror. if anybody on earth will listen, and hear him, deep down he knows she is someone who would. one of the most gnawing fears that jaime has as per the asos dream is that his society, including the people who he idealized as the epitome of knighthood and honor, would reject him even with the confession and still believe he was wrong to do the right thing even with the context, and that is something that would snuff that fire out in him permanently. it is a confrontation that would lead to the justification of his extreme cynicism regarding how the world functions and how human beings are like, which is the most heartbreaking thing for an idealist. but by the confession he viscerally knows that brienne would not do such a thing. and she doesnt. because people can be good, and they can understand. there are true heroes! “i dreamed of you.”

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The people in front of you at the post office are always the most insane creatures you didn’t know god could make whose one goal is to waste away the day. The people behind you at the post office are desperately trying to feel the warmth of human touch via your back

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the other night i was jacking my meat off but had to stop because i was suddenly overcome with a new interpretation of the problem of evil and my fucking vibrator died because i was too busy pondering that particular theological quandary to think about sex. so that's how i've been doing

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“What kind of person was Lancelot? I know about half the kind of person he was, because Malory contented himself with sharing the obvious half. He was more interested in the plot than the characters, and, as soon as he had laid down the broad lines of the latter, he left it at that. Malory’s Lancelot is: 1. Intensely sensitive to moral issues. 2. Ambitious of true - not current - distinction. 3. Probably sadistic or he would not have taken such frightful care to be gentle. 4. Superstitious or totemistic or whatever the word is. He connects his martial luck with virginity, like the schoolboy who thinks he will only bowl well in the march tomorrow if he does not abuse himself today. 5. Fastidious, monogamous, serious. 6. Ferociously punitive to his own body. He denies it and slave-drives it. 7. Devoted to ‘honour,’ which he regards as keeping promises and ‘having a Word.’ He tries to be consistent. 8. Curiously tolerant of other people who do not follow his own standards. He was nor shocked by the lady who was naked as a needle. 9. Not without a sense of humour. It was a good joke dressing up as Kay. And he often says amusing things. 10. Fond of being alone. 11. Humble about his athleticism: not false modesty. 12. Self-critical. Aware of some big lack in himself. What was it? 13. Subject to pity, cf. no. 3. 14. Emotional. He is the only person Mallory mentions as crying from relief. 15. Highly strung: subject to nervous breakdowns. 16. Yet practical. He ends by dealing with the Guenever situation pretty well. He is a good man to have with you in a tight corner. 17. Homosexual? Can a person be ambi-sexual - bisexual or whatever? His treatment of young boys like Gareth and Cote Male Tale is very tender and his feeling for Arthur profound. Yet I do so want not to have to write a ‘modern’ novel about him. I could only bring myself to mention this trait, if it is a trait, in the most oblique way. 18. Human. He firmly believes that for him it is a choice between God and Guenever, and he takes Guenever. He says: This is wrong and against my will, but I can’t help it. It seems to me that no 17 is the operative number in this list. What was the lack? On first inspection one would be inclined to link it up with no 17, but I don’t understand about bisexuality, so can’t write about it. There was definitely something ‘wrong’ with Lancelot, in the common sense, and this was what turned him into a genius. It is very troublesome. People he was like: 1. Lawrence of Arabia, 2. A nice captain of the cricket, 3. Parnell, 4. Sir W Raleigh, 5. Hamlet, 6. me, 7. Prince Rufant, 8. Montros, 9. Tony Ireland or Von Simm […] or whatever, 10. Any mad man, 11. Adam.”

— T.H. White’s notes on the character of Lancelot.

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crash out KING Jeremy Irons ranting about not being allowed to smoke in Central Park will never not be funny to me.

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Men love me for my cadaver swag. The way my skin is cold like a corpse, my off-putting demeanor, and the way I stand in the threshold of the still-living and the dead.

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Wishing you a happy solstice (winter or summer, as the case may be). Unless you're a flat earther, in which case, Happy Inexplicable Phenomenon!

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Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it was all straight up and down like Fifth Avenue. All the cross streets numbered and big honest labels on everything. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993) dir. Martin Scorsese