#//still holding out hope for TWOW that we get a better ending for these two

[jojomakesedits]

Jojo’s Top 100-Romantic Relationships

96. Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth [Game of Thrones]

[thebluelemontree]

Hi!!! love you blog!!! I am re-reading AFFC and it's look like GRRM is foreshadowing and setting up a showdown btween Sandor and Sir Lyle crackhall. Do you think they both you met in TWOW?

Hi and thank you!!! Um... Respectfully, my friend, no. I don’t think that’s what’s happening.  

I don’t think Ser Lyle’s (Strongboar’s) statements are a foreshadowing to a confrontation with the real Sandor Clegane anymore than Ser Tanton’s. Well, first of all, Sandor’s story doesn’t have any relevance to Lyle Crakehall. There’s no backstory between them. No conflict to resolve. Strongboar is in it purely for the glory-seeking. Hell, he even wanted a crack at The Blackfish. Hunting notorious outlaws is a means of earning honors and rewards for warriors not currently serving in military campaigns. There’s nothing that feels like his declared intentions have raised the stakes for Sandor in any way. This is a subplot of a subplot involving a tertiary character, which IMO, doesn’t feel like it fits with a redeemed Sandor’s return to the story. But even more than that, there are far better reasons to speculate that Lyle is destined to meet someone else instead.    

The biggest sought after fish in the region are Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr, the BwB, and the “Mad Dog of the Saltpans.” Rumor has it that all of these guys are in league with each other, which is not true at all, but this belief will be important later. It’s also important to note why this rumor was perpetuated:

"If [Sandor Clegane] is with Dondarrion . . . ?"

"He's not. Alyn is certain of that. Dondarrion's men are looking for him too. They have put out word that they mean to hang him for what he did at Saltpans. They had no part of that. Lord Randyll is putting it about that they did in hopes of turning the commons against Beric and his brotherhood. He will never take the lightning lord so long as the smallfolk are protecting him. -- Brienne V, AFFC. 

There are grains of truth but a lot of deliberate misinformation going around. Despite word of Dondarrion being killed by the Mountain, he’s still credited with leading assaults on anyone harming the smallfolk even well after he’s permanently dead. The BwB since broke into two factions, and one is now being led by Lady Stoneheart. Rumors of The Hangwoman, The Silent Sister, and Mother Merciless are just starting to enter the mix with their own partial truths. What matters is that the general consensus is that if you rout out the BwB, you find all the outlaw leaders, including Sandor Clegane. 

Of course, Sandor isn’t responsible for the Saltpans massacre. He was misidentified when Rorge stole the Hound’s helm from the cairn. Brienne killed Rorge at the inn at the crossroads while defending the orphans, but the true identity of the one responsible for the massacre is not yet common knowledge outside of the BwB. The Hounds helm found a new owner in Lem “Lemoncloak” of Stoneheart’s band.

"There is nothing good about that helm, nor the men who wore it," said the red priest. "Sandor Clegane was a man in torment, and Rorge a beast in human skin."

"I'm not them.”

"Then why show the world their face? Savage, snarling, twisted . . . is that who you would be, Lem?" 

"The sight of it will make my foes afraid."

"The sight of it makes me afraid." -- Brienne VIII, AFFC. 

Considering that Sandor is believed to be with the BwB, what do you think the chances are that Lem is being set up to be misidentified as the “Mad Dog of the Saltpans” in the very near future? The answer is high, very high. 

To trace Lem’s link to Strongboar, we need to back up a bit to the ASOS Epilogue and the hanging of Merritt Frey near Old Stones. The BwB lured Merritt under the pretense of ransoming his nephew, Petyr Pimple. It ends with the reveal of Lady Stoneheart, her confirming Merritt was a participant in the Red Wedding and Merritt’s hanging. Guess who is holding the other end of the noose when he’s strung up? Lem, identified as a man in a yellow cloak.  

Fast forward to Feast when Jaime has dinner with Lady Mariya (Merritt’s widow) and Lady Amerei Frey (Merritt’s daughter) who is now married to Lancel Lannister at Castle Darry. They have a long conversation about who killed Merritt, the Saltpans massacre, and the whereabouts of the BwB.  

[Jaime] turned back to Lady Mariya. "The outlaws who killed your husband . . . was it Lord Beric's band?"

"So we thought, at first." Though Lady Mariya's hair was streaked with grey, she was still a handsome woman. "The killers scattered when they left Oldstones. Lord Vypren tracked one band to Fairmarket, but lost them there. Black Walder led hounds and hunters into Hag's Mire after the others. The peasants denied seeing them, but when questioned sharply they sang a different song. They spoke of a one-eyed man and another who wore a yellow cloak . . and a woman, cloaked and hooded." -- Jaime IV, AFFC.

Guess who is also sitting at the table? Lyle Crakehall, who will now be on the lookout for the man in the yellow cloak. Surely, if/when he does see this man, he’ll also be wearing the Hound’s helm. 

Strongboar filled his cup again. "Lady Mariya, Lady Amerei, your distress has moved me. You have my word, once Riverrun has fallen I shall return to hunt down the Hound and kill him for you. Dogs do not frighten me." 

This one should. Both men were large and powerful, but Sandor Clegane was much quicker, and fought with a savagery that Lyle Crakehall could not hope to match.

Lady Amerei was thrilled, however. "You are a true knight, Ser Lyle, to help a lady in distress." -- Jaime IV, AFFC.

And uh, Strongboar might have also thought to sweeten the victory a bit because Amerei has a bit of a reputation and he’s seen her flirting with Jaime across the table as she asked him to hunt the outlaws. As Aunt Genna says “you know why they call her Gatehouse Ami? She raises her portcullis for every knight who happens by.”

Then later after Riverrun is sorted out:

Strongboar was the next to depart. He wanted to return to Darry as he'd promised and fight the outlaws. "We rode across half the bloody realm and for what? So you could make Edmure Tully piss his breeches? There's no song in that. I need a fight. I want the Hound, Jaime. Him, or the marcher lord."

"The Hound's head is yours if you can take it," Jaime said, "but Beric Dondarrion is to be captured alive, so he can be brought back to King's Landing. A thousand people need to see him die, or else he won't stay dead." Strongboar grumbled at that, but finally agreed. -- Jaime VII, AFFC. 

Darry’s ownership is currently in limbo since Lancel renounced his lordship and unconsummated marriage to Amerei so he could join the Warrior’s Sons. Genna speculates that Kevan will marry his other son, Martyn, to Amerei instead and claim Darry. But it is worth considering that a second son like Ser Lyle might then hope to wed Amerei himself and gain the lordship of Darry Castle in his own right. What better way to do that than by doing what Lancel could not? He isn’t allowed to kill Beric, but it’s open season on the Hound and he swore as a knight that he would avenge Merrit’s murder by killing the Hound for Mariya and Amerei.   

So where is Lem right now?  He has to be still around the outskirts of the Fairmarket area since that’s where he was last seen attempting to hang Brienne, Hyle, and Podrick. Brienne then shows up at Pennytree, just west of Fairmarket, where she reunites with Jaime, supposedly to lead him back to Stoneheart and the BwB. Brienne tells Jaime that the Hound has Sansa and that they are located not too far away. "A day's ride. I can take you to her, ser … but you will need to come alone. Elsewise, the Hound will kill her." There were two guards present to witness their exchange. 

Darry is half a day’s ride south of the Trident. If Strongboar is in Darry in TWOW, he will probably head north from there after word gets around that Jaime Lannister has gone missing (my guess) while riding out to meet the Hound, his quarry. That would be some powerful motivation to ride fast and headlong into BwB controlled territory, where he would see the man in a yellow cloak with a Hound’s helm. Who would win in that fight? No idea.  Maybe one dies, or both. I could definitely see Ser Lyle looking upon the unburned face of a nobody under the helm and realizing he didn’t bag the big prize he desperately wanted all. 

[joannalannister]

I'm feeling really frustrated with the fandom these days. The final season of the show, which I loathe with the ferocity of a thousand suns, is coming and is everywhere and is going to reveal the ending of the books, which frustrates me. There are shipping wars, which I loathe. The theories have dried up. People seem to be extra entitled about TWOW than usual and the people who make fun of it in a good natured are also frustrating me. I just feel disenchanted. What do I do?

I can only tell you what works for me. Idk if my methods would work for anybody else, and just to clarify, this is not me dictating what anyone else should do, this is just what I do. 

1) Block early and block often. I used to just mute people but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  As they say in ADWD, winter’s here babe and not all of us are makin’ it to spring. 

2) Blacklist like it’s 1947. I have three blacklists running simultaneously. Tumblr’s blacklist as a first line of defense, xKit’s blacklist for a “soft” hide because I also have xkit’s whitelist running, and Tumblr Savior for a hardcore blacklist without a whitelist. Blacklist everything. Politely (politely!!) ask people to tag a Thing for blacklisting if necessary. If that does not work, unfollow. Mute and/or block if necessary. I do not recommend using mobile. 

3) Focus on what you love. I’m here to enjoy ASOIAF content. I don’t talk about the characters I don’t like. I don’t hate-read. I don’t write hate meta. Some people define “fandom” as “hating things” and I avoid those people. The people who predominantly hate on things are currently drowning out the people who just want to enjoy things and we gotta turn the tide, we gotta be the change we want to see in the world. (By ASOIAF content, I mean Lannisters.) 

So ask yourself what you love about the books. What parts do you love? What’s your favorite passage? Favorite line? Go reread it. Go blog about it. Do it now, as if this were one of those writer memes. Talk about it or just quote it, but you need a reminder of what you love. Go. I’ll wait. We have time. 

4) Pace yourself. As you well know, this is a marathon, not a sprint. You gotta take breaks, or you’ll burn yourself out. Read other books and watch other tv shows. (I have recs if you need them!) And for the love of r’hllor, make sure you pick up a tactile hobby that doesn’t involve a screen. When I do other things and I enjoy other media, I come back to ASOIAF refreshed. I have new ideas. I look at certain passages with new eyes. So pace yourself. 

5) Brace yourself. This toxic storm is going to get worse before it gets better. I don’t just mean the trashfire that’s coming down the pipe over the next two months. I mean the years between TWOW and ADOS. TWOW is going to be a very dark book, where the Heroes make a lot of morally grey choices and do some terrible things that @ntis will hold up and scream, “see, they were the villain all along!!1!” Expect this with every pov character; batten down the hatches now (see #1 and #2).

6) Sow the seeds of kindness. I cannot change how toxic this fandom has become, but I can tend my small corner of it. I try to say at least one nice thing to someone every time I log on. Send a nice ask, comment on someone’s post, let people know how much you appreciate their hard work. Maybe if enough people did this, everyone together could turn the fandom tide. (Probably unlikely, but it never hurts to hope, or to dream.) 

7) Know your exits. Define precisely what will make you hit the eject button. This can be something(s) the fandom does, something GRRM does, something the show does, whatever, but I have my lines drawn in the sand and I know what will make me say, “I’m done.” I have my exit strategy planned, if necessary. 

8) Find a long term ASOIAF project. Write that looong fanfiction, draw that complicated thing, do that big analysis, whatever. I have more long term ASOIAF projects than I know what to do with, R’hllor help me, I need help with them. 

9) Be steadfast. Listen to me: the books are going to end with the Others defeated. No, I have not read ADOS, but I know this in my heart to be true. GRRM is a dreamer, not a nihilist. 

The show is also going to end with the Others defeated. (Permanently? I don’t know. But defeated? Yes.) The Others defeated - that is what I believe the “same ending” means in the books and the show. 

Everything else is up for grabs. I have sat in an auditorium with GRRM in 2018 and listened to him say – very forcefully – that characters who die on the show will live in the books, and vice versa. 

So when you say, the show “is going to reveal the ending of the books,” I have to disagree with you. I do not think that the endings are going to be entirely the same, aside from the fact that the Others are going to be defeated. I think the showrunners who tout the “same ending” are speaking very broadly, and they don’t care about anything except cool visuals and cold hard cash. 

That show could end with Jon and Dany sharing the Iron Throne with their ten children, and until GRRM says otherwise, I will maintain that the Iron Throne is gonna get melted, and that Jon and Dany will die in the books while saving the world. 

None of my ASOIAF predictions are changing until I have the books in my hands, or GRRM says something that disproves my theories. 

So my advice to you is: Be steadfast. The show is not the books.

The books are an emotional journey. It’s the journey that matters – it’s the range of emotions those words on every page inspire in you – it’s the journey, not the destination. 

I don’t know about you, but that tv show inspires no emotion in me. The books, on the other hand, inspire some of my highest highs and lowest lows. 

Even if everything else turns out to be the same, without that emotion, that is not the same ending. 

10) Theories. I can’t help you with theories, sorry, I hate 90% of ASOIAF theories, but can I interest you in some analysis? I want to talk about bath houses in ASOIAF, Jaime’s loss of faith, Roose and Fahrenheit 451, Jason Lannister, Tywin and remarriage… There’s still lots of things to talk about in ASOIAF. I’m just getting started. Maybe this is just me, but I can entertain myself on the current ASOIAF content for years, I’m mostly self-sufficient here. 

11) The show. It’s coming. We all know it’s coming. 

But that means it’s almost over. We’re almost there. It’s the final push. Our time of testing is almost over. We’re so close. This isn’t a time for despair; this is a time for rejoicing. 

[The peach] was so small she could almost hide it in her palm, and overripe too, but when she took the first bite, the flesh was so sweet she almost cried. She ate it slowly, savoring every mouthful, while Ser Jorah told her of the tree it had been plucked from, in a garden near the western wall.

“Fruit and water and shade,” Dany said, her cheeks sticky with peach juice. “The gods were good to bring us to this place.”

You wanna know what I love about ASOIAF? 

Vaes Tolorro. These past few weeks, I’ve seen it on the horizon, drawing nearer every day. 

So have faith. Be strong. Be steadfast. 

We’re gonna make it through. 

The Winds of Winter is waiting for us on the other side.

[theoldgods]

Game of Thrones has always been a hot mess in many ways, and I haven’t directly watched it myself since 2015. That said, I think the mess since 2015 has been in large part due to two things: Benioff and Weiss getting GRRM’s planned out endgame states for the main characters and some broad-stroked actual plot points (burning Shireen, the “Hodor = hold the door” revelation, and something along the lines of Dany burning KL/Dany ending as a villain/Jon having to kill Dany) and Benioff and Weiss having no idea how to get to those plot points (which, to be fair, GRRM also doesn’t know or we wouldn’t be eight years out from ADWD with TWOW still nowhere in sight).

I don’t attribute any sort of malice to Benioff and Weiss, nor do I think GRRM secretly hates them or anything (he’d have to hate himself just as much, since although the show’s failure to provide meaningful drama or good pacing or decent dialogue is on Benioff and Weiss, particularly with the note that apparently HBO was willing to fund several more seasons to flesh things out but they wanted to get it over with, their inability to plot this third act of the story is one he self-evidently shares). The idea that they purposefully torpedoed the end of the largest television show in the world, or that GRRM fed them fake plot points to sabotage them or whatever, is conspiracy theorizing from people who want to assume the book ending will play out the way they want it to, when it’s much easier to just assume some level of incompetence all around. I think Benioff and Weiss genuinely wanted to honor GRRM’s planned ending; it’s just that enough has changed in showverse that getting characters to those endgame states satisfactorily is pretty much impossible, but they doubled down and did so anyway, on a rushed schedule. They were in a no-win situation, partly of their own making, partly of GRRM’s. (I don’t feel bad for them; they catapulted their careers into the stratosphere off the back of this show and got paid handsomely for it [as did GRRM, incidentally], and I don’t see them suffering any consequences for the lackluster response to this final season unless something seriously hurts HBO’s bottom line or allegations come out about personal conduct or they just piss off enough financiers somehow.)

This is all to say that I think the GoT endgames for pretty much all the main characters are very close to what they’d be in bookverse: a Dany who dies viewed by the people of Westeros as a tyrant and not a hero, Bran and Sansa in leadership positions, Jon returning to the Wall and the wildlings, Arya freed from the need for revenge and off on adventures, Tyrion serving on a council and permanently cut up by his participation in mass devastation (perhaps realizing like Arya that revenge was not the relief he thought it would be), Jaime and Cersei dying in each other’s arms (either incidentally or as a part of some sort of murder/suicide thing). In particular, divisive as they are in fandom, I have a hard time seeing D&D coming up with Dany carpet bombing King’s Landing on their own (they like her character, maybe too much so/without enough villainous seeding in the show) or D&D deciding on their own to make Bran king (they’ve always struck me as barely giving a shit about his character).

ASoIaF fandom is going to be fractured for the foreseeable future in arguing about how much of the show ending is book canon, how bookverse would take characters to these places, what “broad strokes” means for how similar the endings are, and more. There’s a lot of ambiguity (on purpose; GRRM isn’t going to come out and say exactly what will be different, because then why would people bother to read the books to find out?), and desperation and strife thrive in ambiguity. Fans who hate aspects of or all of the show’s ending (particularly Dany’s ending) may be trying to take solace in the idea that “the books will be different,” which I, as someone who was deeply invested in another character who likes burning people who got a bizarre show ending, sympathize with. As time passes and books still aren’t released, making it all the more likely that the books will never be finished and we’ll never get closure, fans cling to the scraps we’re given to try to make sense of this story we’ve invested ourselves in and, if we’re disappointed with certain show endings, try to console ourselves with the idea that the books will save us. But I think it’s a fool’s errand, albeit a sympathetic one, to expect book Dany to die a hero, or Stannis to not burn Shireen, or Jon instead of Bran to end up king. The framing might well be different (we’d be in Dany’s head to better understand how she gets to that breaking point, Stannis would be burning Shireen in far more dire straits than the half inch of snow on the ground in the show, Bran may be a lot more human and Bran-ly in the books instead of entirely a creepy surveillance state borg) but the end is the same, and bittersweet (Dany and Jon and possibly Tyrion providing the bitter, the survival and relative triumph of House Stark and the younger Starklings providing the sweet).

(To give an example of my own hopes and assumptions the show dashed: I assumed the war for the dawn would be the absolute climax, with Dany and possibly Jon dying during it to save humanity and little discussion of the political situation afterward. A portion of the fandom definitely thinks that this may still happen, with Dany nuking KL first and then going to repent by dying a relative hero against the Others, and I wouldn’t rule it entirely out, but the more I think about it the more I see how even if it does happen that way, Dany and Jon might survive the Others and then still be unable to peacefully settle, with Jon having to kill Dany after she refuses to stop chasing the throne even if it means continuing to use dragonfire or something along those lines. It’s just hard for me to see B&W totally torching Dany’s character on their own if GRRM intends her to die a hero; they seem to like her character and would, given free rein, prefer for both her and Jon to have more traditionally heroic and/or happy endings, I think. They just sucked at making Dany’s heel-turn believable and added some pretty noticeable “women be crazy” framing, which enrages people and leaves them uncertain whether their anger should be directed at B&W or if that framing will also exist in the books and they should just cut their losses now.)

Anyway, it’s rough, and as a fandom we’re locked in seemingly eternal ambiguity with quite a good chance we don’t get bookverse closure, making everyone bitter and uncertain and generally desperate, which doesn’t make fandom any easier to participate in. I’d like to think things will calm down at least a little as the show recedes into the distance and people adjust to the probable endgame, but I’m not very optimistic about that.

[asprettyasyourown]

How do you expect the Hardhome plot to play out in the books? Especially with Arya’s and Faceless men’s investment in the same?

Hi anon. I assume you’re referring to what happened to the wildlings in Hardhome?

(For those who don’t remember, after Mance Ryder’s forces have been defeated south of the Wall by Stannis, some wildlings were led by a wood witch named Mother Mole to Hardhome. She predicted that they would “find salvation where they once found damnation” and had a vision of ships coming to sail them south. However, they didn’t fare so well there, the situation growing so dire they had to eat their own dead while they’re presumably surrounded by wights. Jon sent help to get them out (it’s not well received), but slavers came first. The wildlings, following the prophecy, believed them to be rescuers and sent their women and children to them. Of course the slavers had no intention to do any rescuing and thus roped them up to sell them in Lys. But while they were sailing a huge storm broke: they were separated, one ship ending up in Lys and the other in Braavos.)

Honestly, I think it might very well be the catalyst for Arya to leave the Faceless Men. Of course, there could be other factors as well (learning about Jon’s “death”, maybe meeting Jeyne and have her tell about the shit-show that is the North now), but it might be the breaking point for Arya.

Look, we know our girl doesn’t fare well with the FM. We know she struggles to leave her Northern roots behind when she killed Daeron, a Night’s Watch deserter - something the Starks are entrusted with. With her refusal to give up Needle because it reminds her of home, of family, Jon especially. And ultimately her warging of Nymeria, her other half, who now serves as a link to her identity and her land.

We know she is fiercely protective of the smallfolk and has a strong sense of justice, from Mycah to Weasel and Gendry and Hot Pie, or when she defended Sam against the braavosi who were looking to rob him. We know she loves them and being around them, like when she used to sit at her father’s side and listen to the travelers coming to Winterfell, how she likes learning about Braavos’ culture and people (though one can argue it is part of her training, I do think she genuinely loves doing it).

We know she struggles to adapt to the neutral stance of the Many-Faced God, since she had to convinces herself to kill her first target (the old insurance guy who was conning people) by thinking he was a bad man who deserved it, or when she exclaimed that the masters should have been the ones to die instead of the slaves when the Kindly Man told her about the story of Braavos.

So when she learns that a ship full of of wildlings women and children (Northern roots) are being held to be sold as slaves (sense of justice, love of people), she will want to help them (can’t hold a neutral stance). It’s in her core. I don’t see a situation that could draw Arya more than this one.

My guess is that she will beg the FM to intervene, or at least let her intervene. I see her trying to play into Braavos and the FM’s creation (by slaves who rebelled against their oppressors) to appeal to the Kindly Man. But he will refuse her because he’s a little bitch because the FM are neutral and rescuing them would mean taking lives that were not meant to be taken blah blah blah. This will be when Arya finally realizes that the Faceless Men are full of shit, and leaves for good.

(Btw, this would make a nice parallel to her begging Jaqen to help her escape with Gendry and Hot Pie, but in this case Arya doesn’t have any leverage against the Kindly Man - she can’t really blackmail him, it would backfire spectacularly - so she just says “fuck it” and leaves to do it herself, since apparently she has to do everything around here.)

Now how she would free the wildlings is a bit trickier. Arya is still a very young girl after all. Contrary to Dany, she doesn’t have an army or dragons - yet - so she can’t just barge in the ship, kill the slavers and take off. I mean, it would technically be possible, but the afterward logistics would be a problem (how would she feed such a big number of people? How would she get them back across the Narrow Sea? etc). So I have two theories.

One is that Arya’s wildlings join Dany’s Dothraki/Unsullied/etc and they all come back to Westeros together. But while Arya will definitively meet Dany and team up with her (there’s too many foreshadowings to be any way else), the logistics of their meeting is a bit hazardous to me, at least for now. Meereen is a long way from Braavos after all. Maybe if both crowds are travelling towards Westeros and somewhere on the journey they run into each other…? It’s a possibility, but I think the timeline would conflict. Dany still has to deal with the shit-show that is Meereen right now, and it’s not something that will be resolved in one chapter. I guess the Meereen storyline could be tied by the time Arya cut ties with the Faceless Men, but even if it did, Dany and her people still have a long way to get to Braavos/Arya. How is Arya going to feed her people by the time they get to her? So while this theory could technically happen, I doubt it will.

My second theory involves the Iron Bank. I saw a great theory (can’t remember where, if anyone has a link please give it to me!) that the killing of Raff the Sweetling in the TWOW Mercy chapter was actually orchestrated by the Iron Bank. They paid the Faceless Men to make it appear like Raff was the one who killed Mercy (believable, since Raff is a known rapist and no one would think that such a young silly girl could take down a grown soldier). When Braavos will learn that an official from Westeros killed a sweet young actress after possibly raping her, it will cause an uproar and finally give the Iron Bank an excuse to cut ties with the Iron Throne and engage in martial repercussions to pay for the huge debt the crown owns them (and probably to have a better stranglehold on Westeros). So that would mean Arya didn’t actually went rogue (except when she said “Think so?”, but the FM has very little chance to hear about that), and it creates a link between Arya and the Iron Bank through the Faceless Men.

Now I think the Kindly Man very much expects Arya to leave the House of Black and White one day. He knows she can’t bring herself to erase her identity, and thus will never be a true Faceless Woman. But he also knows how valuable Arya Stark is, as the (apparent) sole successor of the North’s throne. And since he works with (for?) the Iron Bank, I wouldn’t be surprised if he told them who she is. To the Iron Bank, this would represent an incredible opportunity: get hold of the Six Kingdoms through the crown’s debt AND the North through Arya.

So once Arya leaves the FM, I can see them stepping in to offer their help with the rescuing of the wildlings, kind of like Illyrio helped Dany for the promise of Viserys paying him back once he gets on the Iron Throne, or like the Manderlys are trying to do with Rickon. They could offer food and shelter and means to go back to Westeros, thus creating a debt Arya would have to pay once she regains her place as the North’s heir. It would also explain why the Kindly Man would let her leave the HOBAW unharmed while she knows so many of their secrets, because she would still be working for him technically - as a pawn.

(Of course, this plan would fall short since Arya is not actually the only Stark alive, and she isn’t next in succession. I mean, she does have a lot of foreshadowing of ending Queen, but that’s another topic. I also doubt Arya would let herself be manipulated like this, or that the other Northern lords (and siblings) would be fine with that.)

In terms of narrative, I think it makes sense. For someone with such a large amount of leadership qualities, foreshadowings and experiences, she has been surprisingly removed from anything political (well, not as much removed than a bystander). I mean, Robb was King in the North, Jon Commander of the Night’s Watch, Bran is the Prince of Winterfell, Sansa has Littlefinger trying to make her queen from the Vale and Rickon has the Manderlys working to put him on the North’s throne. Every Stark kid has had people working to place them in positions of power and back in Winterfell (some with good intentions, some not), except for Arya. Yet she actually proved she would be a great leader. I think the Iron Bank could very much play this role in Arya’s storyline.

Anyway, here’s my (very long) answer. I hope this is what you expected!

[gotgifsandmusings]

the way you guys handled the racism part of the podcast was just. awful i couldnt even finish the rest of the podcast bc i was so offput. expected better from you :/

I’m so sorry to hear that, seriously.

I don’t want to hide behind excuses; if our tone or words were hurtful, that’s the way of it, and all I can do is apologize for it and learn why. It was not our intent, and as we said at the start of it, we’re more than open to a dialogue.

I’ve received positive and negative feedback for pretty much every portion of the podcast, however (it’s not like “oh yay, person X agrees so we’re fine!” or anything, of course), and I do think there’s some value in digging into that.

Julia and I tend to be more forgiving of Martin, not that we’re asking anyone else to be. And given the virulence with which we go after D&D, I understand how hypocritical this can come across as, and how frustrating this can be too. But the reason we are is basically two-fold:

One is that we believe there’s a value to his books. Now, there’s also a value to the political discussion on Bill Maher’s show, for example, but yet amazingly, decent political commentary shouldn’t come with a side-serving of Islamophobia. I don’t watch his show, so why should I accept and praise books that don’t handle race well? That don’t handle female sexuality that amazingly, particularly in the cause of wlw scenes? That oftentimes do feel like the sexual violence could be easily toned down, or it’s unnecessarily gendered, or it does fall into unfortunate patterns with things like dead mothers?

The answer to that ties into the second reason, which is that his pattern is getting better. FeastDance felt more thoughtful, felt like there was more of an emphasis on female and other marginalized voices, and it felt like there was great intentionality on Martin’s part to do so. I haven’t read all his interviews; I can’t guess at what’s in his head beyond what his body of work shows us. But you can bet that if he was coming across as someone who was unwilling to reflect and engage with his own shortcomings, I wouldn’t be as invested.

I could be wrong about him. I’ve said this a lot before, but I could be really, really wrong. For now, he has my benefit of the doubt. I’m not asking you to bestow yours.

Back to the problems at hand though, and the value of his books. No, they’re not perfect at all. There’s a lot of issues, and these are issues that a more intersectional author likely wouldn’t have. To be perfectly honest, I think we’re starting to have a tendency of expecting perfection in every area from our media now. While I love that we’re finally in a place where our cultural dialogue is pushing for the change we want, and that storytellers are actually listening (look at like, Clexacon’s mere existence, for instance), I think this can easily become a double edged sword, where you’ve got the fandom raising pitchforks about Steven Universe not doing well with butch representation.

ASOIAF is no SU. It’s a book series written by a white dude in his 60s that spans twenty years. Which is why Julia and I put so much stock into the pattern and direction the books seem to be headed, because our social dialogue shifts so much. Well, depressingly not as much as it should, but I think it’s hard to deny that there is far less tolerance for bullshit in our media, and far more expectations of representational media that are not just once again glorifying the white male lens. 

I don’t believe the book series simplistically does that at all. I find there to be feminist takeaways in Martin’s critique of the patriarchy, and in the way Martin holds up a lens to the bullshit assumptions by this society, which is one uncomfortably reflective of our own history (though certainly not highly accurately so). I wouldn’t say my willingness is to forgive the issues in the books, but more like say, “these are here, these are problems, but I still find this text valuable. I still find the close-POV different and worthwhile.”

I can’t speak for Julia, but I can at least say this is what we had hoped to convey in the podcast. I believe we failed spectacularly. I think our tendency not to plan or overly structure our episodes went heavily against us here. Everything we were saying was in a larger context of “and this is a problem,” but wow we really didn’t make that clear.

What we did was basically raise the problems in turn, talk about what we think his intent was and what its function in the story has been, and then conclude on “this could have been better,” which after you know…like ten minutes of what probably sounds like rationalizations was not exactly going to come across as particularly meaningful. Had we structured more, I think we could have been clearer about “and it did not land.”

Showing Dany as completely unable to comprehend the political situation she was in, and being over her head with the complexity, did *not* require a lack of Essosi POVs, even if we suspect that’s partially why Martin made that choice, for instance.

But of course that didn’t come across, especially when there were some downright flippant things said that we also didn’t clarify. Like Julia mentioning she didn’t want a Dothraki POV, probably because it’d be very close to one as distressingly violent and patriarchal as Vic, which is simply unpleasant to read (and I’m also not sure I agree; I would have loved Dany eating the heart from a POV of someone in the Dosh Khaleen, for instance).

We know each other well, and we know the intent and place we’re coming from when we’re saying something, so I think that led to us not explicating stuff that absolutely needed to be explicated. Again, there’s no excuse. I wish we had planned  and presented everything differently, and it seems pretty obvious now how badly we needed to do that. I’ve learned a lot just in the past day, and all I can do is try to be better.

However, I will say…I suspect there’s also going to be content disagreements in the conclusions Julia and I land on. I’ve seen this with the fandom dialogue about the issues of sexism in the books before, and we’ve often received criticism for defending how he writes the patriarchy and women. Or for how women in the past basically are these pure, idealized victims, or they’re forgotten. We believe that’s to a point most of the time, that being one that provides a fuller picture of Westeros’s bullshit patriarchy (unnammed Mama Martell as an exception because there’s no reason for that at all), but we know it’s a point that doesn’t land.

Then there’s stuff like Arianne’s ‘hypersexuality’, which I simply don’t agree with. In my view, and something Gretchen and I were just discussing, Cersei is far more sexualized (she just tends to view sex from a manipulative standpoint always, instead of deriving pleasure from it, Jaime aside which is clearly unhealthy), and the degree to which this is a problem for a Dornish POV to have these traits (which I think is played up in the fandom) is one where I part ways with a lot of people. I can’t answer how I’d feel about it if I weren’t white, so I do my best to acknowledge that lens whenever I can. But in general, from what I can tell, my lens is also just a bit less Doylist than where some land.

And that’s fine, too. We’re all just engaging with the books how we like to do, and taking from it what’s there for us. There’s no objective takeaways, and not to belabor the point, but I could be so wrong about these books.

Why am I all Doylist with D&D? Because Watsonian analysis is useless in GoT, sure, but because they’ve violated my trust and my benefit of the doubt so thoroughly. I’m not there with Martin, and maybe that’s a problem. I suspect I might even be too Watsonian for my own good because of how engaged I find myself with certain aspects. Half of why we recorded that podcast was to kind of slap ourselves in the face with some Doylist realities, but I do now think the tone ended up being too dismissive, and I don’t feel good about it.

Anyway, this is just a super long-winded apology, as well as a meek explanation I suppose. Certainly not an excuse. This episode was requested a lot for us, probably because of how defensive of the books we get, and I feel like in our attempt to talk every angle of the issue, we ended up just coming across as doubling down on that defense. Moving forward you can bet your ass I’m going to be far more cognizant of this.

What’s funny is, feeling defensive actually wasn’t my experience at all recording it. Hell, even just pulling your asks for it, I was like, “wow this all really sucks,” and found myself getting a good deal more nervous for TWOW coming out. Because…god…I think I might be wrong. I’m back in that place I was in during season 5 where I was wondering if Sansa was going to get raped by LF (obviously a different context than the show), or if we’re not supposed to see Tyrion’s misogyny.

I’m not ready to give up on Martin yet, but I’m sure as hell not asking anyone else to forgive him. And if nothing else, I know now that at least a few takeaways we had were certainly not his intent, but the result of our own engagement and projections onto the media. I think I might be wrong (and where’s TWOW).

[thebluelemontree]

summer-turtle

  Would you ever write same-sex relationships...

Probably because a lot of people don’t trust Myranda with Sansa. This is backed up by Mya/Sansa being quite popular, and Mya being more trustworthy.

Yeah, well, people also tend to only take cursory glances at minor characters.  I can see why people think that, but they are also wrong, and I need to rant about it. LOL.  People who have that assumption that Mya = good, Myranda = bad, forget that Mya and Myranda are “close as sisters.”  They are best friends of similar age and grew up together.  So Mya, who already has serious trust issues from her father’s abandonment, would be “close as sisters” for years with a supposedly untrustworthy jealous schemer?  Myranda is smart and isn’t forthcoming on some things, but that doesn’t make her ill-intentioned toward Sansa.  That doesn’t really add up when we look at everything.

It’s Littlefinger that fears Myranda for being “shrewder than her father.”  So her father, Nestor Royce, is the one taking bribes from Littlefinger and supports his moves to take power as Lord Protector after Lysa’s convenient death and taking custody of Robert.  If Littlefinger fears Myranda’s interference, it’s because she’s not on board with her father being Littlefinger’s ally.  And that was before Littlefinger’s move to betroth Sansa to HtH.   "Soon or late you must meet Myranda Royce," Petyr had warned her. "When you do, be careful. She likes to play the merry fool, but underneath she's shrewder than her father. Guard your tongue around her." 

Personally, I think that if Littlefinger is wary of Myranda Royce, that’s a good thing.  She’s shrewd.  She’s not buying into his bullshit.  So Myranda is already suspicious of what Littlefinger is doing, so of course, she wants to meet this “daughter” of his that is so close to Robert Arryn.  What’s her part in all this?  Is Alayne a victim and forced into a situation against her will?  Or is she a willing participant in LF’s scheme?  And since she knows Alayne is really Sansa, the big question would be what the heck is Sansa Stark doing with Littlefinger?  She’s wanted for regicide in KL.  Is she a murderess that something to do with Lysa’s death too?  We forget that Myranda might have good reasons to not trust Sansa at first until she gets to know her better.  Just because we, the readers, know Sansa is not there by choice, doesn’t mean other characters do.  

So she does examine Sansa closely when they ride down the mountain together.  “She studied Alayne's face and chest. "You are prettier than me, but my breasts are larger. The maesters say large breasts produce no more milk than small ones, but I do not believe it. Have you ever known a wet nurse with small teats? Yours are ample for a girl your age, but as they are bastard breasts, I shan't concern myself with them."   

So while Myranda is chattering away about boobs, playing the merry fool, she’s disarming Sansa with humor and frivolity so she has an excuse to look at her face and features closely without it being uncomfortable staring, which would make Sansa instantly more guarded.  And Myranda doesn’t have a bastard prejudice.  That’s nonsense.  Her best friend is a bastard, so we know this is all a pretense. :P  When we know that, it seems like Myranda is testing Sansa with different subjects to trigger a reaction:  Lysa’s death, the mention of Jon Snow, if Alayne is still a virgin, how big is her father’s “little finger?” which is a bizarre question to ask, unless she’s trying to figure out what the nature of Sansa and Littlefinger’s relationship is.  Are they lovers and is she his accomplice? She needs to know because Robert Arryn is directly under Alayne’s care and she does seem to genuinely care about Robert.  Mya does too, despite the way Robert treats her.  After the ride down and Myranda seeing the person that Sansa is, especially when she sees Sansa helping Robert cross the stone bridge, I think Myranda comes away convinced that Sansa is a good person and she’s most likely Littlefinger’s victim.  

And that whole HtH subplot?  Myranda was rejected by Lady Anya and Harry long before LF or Alayne were in the picture.  Myranda is a great match on paper for Harry.  The junior branch of house Royce is still an ancient family name.  Catelyn advised Robb to choose an heir from that branch.  The Hardyngs are landed knights, and Harry does have a need to emphasize his more prestigious relations, which he does on his quartered shield.  Myranda is very sex-positive. witty, and fun, but she’s also fat, and Harry is horribly fatphobic.  Lady Anya knows that as she cleaned up the Cissy incident for him.  Of course, Anya rejected Myranda outright without hearing another word because she isn’t going to sour her relationship to her future high lord by betrothing him to a woman that would disgust him.  Now Myranda says it might have been about dowry (which Anya may have told Nestor as an excuse to avoid making a personal insult), but I think Myranda knows it's about her appearance.  Her first reaction to a mention of HtH is that she hopes he gets an STI, which is a pretty strong “fuck that jerk.”  People always love to trot out:

"The first Lady Waynwood must have been a mare, I think. How else to explain why all the Waynwood men are horse-faced? If I were ever to wed a Waynwood, he would have to swear a vow to don his helm whenever he wished to fuck me, and keep the visor closed." She gave Alayne a pinch on the arm. "My Harry will be with them, though. I notice that you left him out. I shall never forgive you for stealing him away from me. He's the boy I want to marry."

"The betrothal was my father's doing," Alayne protested, as she had a hundred times before. She is only teasing, she told herself...but behind the japes, she could hear the hurt.            

So we see Myranda firing back at Anya Waynwood’s appearance. Like “oh yeah, lady, it’s not like you Waynwoods have room to talk about how anyone looks.  Your sons don’t exactly do it for me either.”  Bullshit Myranda’s rejection was about dowry.  Fat people know when they’re being rejected for being fat.  It hurts!  There’s pain behind Myranda’s jokes, yes, not true jealousy.  We know Alayne never stole Harry from her.  Harry rejected her long before.  Alayne has never even met Harry before, so how could she steal him?  Myranda’s attitude toward Harry before the betrothal plot happened was that Harry is an asshole and an irresponsible cad.  She certainly didn’t say she had her heart set on marrying him then only that her father hoped to make a match.  So what is she doing then and how do we make sense of it?  Well, she’s reframing the narrative to a less painful version of events, one to where the reason has nothing to do with her weight and Harry wasn’t a cruel prick to her because I do think Myranda knows her own worth even if guys like Harry don’t.  That she sees herself just as much of a catch as Sansa Stark even if she’s a bigger girl.  Myranda is smart enough to know that whole narrative is bullshit, makes no factual sense, and none of this is Sansa’s doing, but she’s also human, and it really sucks to be grossly devalued like that.  If you asked her what she thought of Harry, she’d probably still say she hopes he gets the pox.  And Sansa’s reaction to her hurt is sympathy, which she gives Myranda over and over, as many times as Myranda needs to hear it every time she brings it up.  She rescues Myranda from being besieged by two gross men ogling at her.  Even with the death of Myranda’s first husband, Sansa reassures her that it wasn’t her fault he had a heart attack while they were having sex.  But behind the jokes, behind the merry fool, is someone who has internalized shame for being a “dreadful slut.”  She’s internalized some of her father’s criticism of the embarrassing way in which she was widowed.  It’s very hard to be jealous and hateful of someone when they treat you with kindness, sympathy, understanding, and support at every turn.  

And if Myranda really wanted to get Sansa out of the way, what is she waiting for?  She’s had weeks and months to reveal her identity and turn her in.  She could easily tell Lyn Corbray who she knows has a beef with Littlefinger and desperately needs the gold.  What’s stopping her?  Nothing.  She hasn’t made one move to betray Sansa.  Not once.  Again, would the supposed good and real friend Mya go along with that if she suspected her CLOSE AS A SISTER BEST FRIEND Myranda was going to harm Sansa in any way?  I don’t think so, because there is no plot to betray Sansa on Myranda’s end.

Later on, in TWOW sample, we learn that Myranda is being threatened by Nestor to marry her off to some nasty unwanted suitor.  Why?  She clearly runs Nestor’s castle capably, and with her family name, he could make a great match for her.  Maybe it’s because Myranda has voiced her opposition to what her father is doing and that is why he’s threatening to get rid of her, probably at Littlefinger’s behest if she’s even thinking of betraying THEM, not Sansa.    

And so what even if there’s a little jealousy there?  Jon was undoubtedly jealous of Robb’s advantages, but he could overcome those feelings and love Robb like a brother.  The love he got out of their relationship was worth more than his feelings of resentment. And readers give Jon that leeway to feel both love and jealousy and not hold it against him.  Girls aren’t granted that.  I hate it when people (general, not you) seem to think girls are incapable of overcoming their jealousies or petty rivalries, especially over a boy.  That any conflict between girls will cause one of them to slam their hand down on the nuclear option and destroy the other.  And I don’t think George is going that direction with Myranda

They made a race of it, dashing headlong across the yard and past the stables, skirts flapping, whilst knights and serving men alike looked on, and pigs and chickens scattered before them. It was most unladylike, but Alayne sound found herself laughing. For just a little while, as she ran, she forget who she was, and where, and found herself remembering bright cold days at Winterfell, when she would race through Winterfell with her friend Jeyne Poole, with Arya running after them trying to keep up.

By the time they arrived at the gatehouse, both of them were red-faced and panting. Myranda had lost her cloak somewhere along the way.

The girls have a race (a competition), but the race is framed around sisterhood and friendship.  There’s no winner or loser though.  And Myranda lost her cloak (as a marriage symbol) somewhere along the way, and it doesn’t matter because the girls were having too much fun together.  The friendship was more important than any rivalry, and that’s our lead-in scene to Sansa meeting Harry for the first time.               

AND THAT IS WHY I’m all fired up again, and I will make it a point to write a Sansa/Myranda bisexual slow burn with lots of fluff, mutual support, body positivity, and hot sex because both these girls deserve it and I love them with my whole heart XD