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something about jaime and cersei both feeling corrupted and betrayed by the very things that they were supposed to want and which were supposed to bring them power and prestige. jaime's dreams and honor dying at the kingsguard's doorstep, "it was the white cloak that soiled me not the other way around", cersei facing an abusive marriage and a careless husband in her royal marriage. "i am a knight and cersei is a queen" jaime says to joanna and she just turns away crying

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the insane experience of missing a fictional character . like you can always go back and reread the book , replay the game , rewatch the show or movie , you can always go back & see them , but you can never experience them & their story for the first time again . its absurd to miss them because they'll always be there , but you'll miss when there were still new things for them to say .

for a small time they were real & growing and changing and you hung onto every new word, but now all they can do is repeat the same story forever&ever & they're not real anymore because you know everything they're going to do. & you miss them. its fucked man...

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what I love about catelyn’s characterization is that she isn’t everyone’s mother. she refuses to treat jon like one of her own. she doesn’t have any “motherly instincts” towards theon. even with brienne, she connects with her on more of a woman to woman level than through some mother-daughter dynamic. she never feels obligated to play the angelic “mother to all” figure.

but that’s the best part about her journey as a mother—it’s kind of messy. she has a favorite child, she’s forced to choose between her kids, she actively resents a motherless boy, she dislikes the hostage child living in her home. like yeah catelyn’s love for her children is beautiful and “pure” or whatever, but it also makes her cruel, selfish, impulsive, ruthless, even vengeful.

tbh catelyn’s sense of motherhood is just so unapologetically human, so refreshingly honest. she may be a mother, but there’s nothing romantic or intuitive or easy about it. catelyn stark loves her children, but it’s not that simple.

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the thing is Cersei could have no scoped that interrogation if she just decided to be catty about it. “Oh so it’s suspicious that all three of my kids are blond while Robert’s bastards look like him? Meanwhile I’ve been to your house and FOUR of your kids are improbably ginger and your bastard looks like you but did I barge into your kitchen and accuse your wife of fucking her brother 🤨?” like Ned would have had to back off immediately

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There are some characters where giving them therapy and cleaning them up is the fanfiction equivalent of buying antique furniture and painting it white

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Seven, Brienne thought again, despairing. She had no chance against seven, she knew. No chance, and no choice.

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one thing about asoiaf is that it frequently invites you to have sympathy for characters who've carried out varying degrees of morally repulsive acts (most apparent with pov characters such as theon, cersei, tyrion, and jaime but also sandor, joffrey, and even viserys). and most of these characters have received some equivalent of, what may look like 'narrative comeuppance' : theon flayed by ramsay, cersei made to perform her walk of atonement, tyrion sold as a slave, jaime losing his hand, joffrey's painful, drawn out death etc. except the scenes really aren't framed like that since the series doesn't seem to buy into that idea. all these incidents are not just deserts but moments of horrible injustice against these characters. and that's a little series thesis statement in itself, no neat category of monsters whose misdeeds can be addressed by a single moment of karmic justice but people like you and me who hurt others and have been hurt and continue on living. it's saying, here's this person who is capable of great cruelty influenced and motivated by their experiences with the world, but will you also hold understanding and sympathy in your heart for when the world is cruel to them in return? given what most fandom discourse looks like... the answer to that question is unfortunately a resounding no for a lot of readers.

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started the asoiaf series. why were jon and tyrion literally in the trauma olympics

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I can't believe this blog is 11 years old... That's like 80 in tumblr years

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She wants to feed the crows, like they did at the Red Wedding.

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Cy Twombly - Scent of Madness, 1986

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We’re standing here because of you. The battle was lost until the Knights of the Vale rode in. They came because of you.

Winterfell belongs to my sister, Sansa.

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I will do what queens do. 

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I think its funny that George RR Martin asks the question “what if the Habsburgs had nuclear weapons” and a lot of the show watching fanbase’s response is “we adore them”

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“She is an unabashed agent of the patriarchy, “an incubator who’s been indoctrinated to be fine with it, and to know her place within the court,” Cooke says. “But that’s not to say that she’s not got agency, or power and intelligence – it’s just a really interesting amalgamation.”

- Olivia Cooke for The Guardian