#(killing for no good reason in the case of brickon's presumed deaths)

[ladystoneboobs]

In the dark crypts below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father's likeness in granite. [....] Rickon even showed them [the walders frey, big and little] the deep vaults under the earth where the stonemason was carving father's tomb. "You had no right!" Bran screamed at his brother when he heard. "That was our place, a Stark place!" -Bran I, aCoK

He did not like the crypts, had never liked the crypts, but he was no stranger to them. -Theon V, aDwD

relationship to the crypts could best exemplify theon's paradoxical position in the stark household: discomfort and familiarity all mixed together, not a stark, yet not always an outsider either. bran treats the freys' invitation to the crypts as an unheard-of sacrilege though he must have been aware that the previous winterfell ward was "no stranger to them."* theon was more a part of winterfell to bran than the frey boys could ever be, even if bran never much liked him. he'd been there since before bran was born, and was close enough to the family that his being in the crypts was unremarkable. (bran deems it not just a northern or winterfell place, mind, but a stark place.) one does not have to like extended family members or friends of the family, after all. don't we all have that uncle or cousin or sister's bf or brother's friend that we don't really care for or want to spend time with? but you still feel that person is one of you whether you want them to be or not if you attend enough family gatherings together. sometimes familiarity breeds a weird sort of acceptance.

while i do think it is important to note that theon was beaten at winterfell, which none of the starklings (including jon) ever were, and that the adults there certainly understood his position as a hostage better than bran and rickon (or sansa and arya prob) could, idt that means he was always seen as an enemy foreigner by all of them and treated accordingly. after all, even if he was meant to be punished for his father's sins if balon rebelled again, that was not really the only purpose of his being there, more a last resort. everyone was hoping and (vainly) expecting that balon would not make war on them again if his only son's life was on the line, that theon's time in winterfell would bring peace with the ironborn for the forseeable future, and that, in due time, he would end his time as a hostage not on the chopping block but as the new lord of the isles having become a friendly ally to the mainland.

that was what truly messed theon up, the insidiously damaging part of his situation: that he was always ward/fosterling as well as hostage at winterfell, contradictory as that may be. theon was never one of ned's kids, but ned "had tried to play the father from time to time", even if he mostly kept more of a distance with theon. unlike sansa with joffrey after ned's death, or theon's later captivity with the boltons, this was not blatant abuse all the time. that's what made theon want to be a stark even while he still had reason to fear for his life as a hostage, to the point that he was trying to seem like a lord like ned even when taking winterfell in balon's name. when theon expects the winterfellians to accept him as their new prince, that's obviously delusional, (bc he just became no more than an enemy foreigner by taking their home by force, promising to be a good and just lord after some of his men raped palla and while others beat poor hodor at his command!), but idt that means he totally imagined that some of these people liked him well enough beforehand, these men he'd diced, hunted, drank, and "wenched" with, and all the women he'd kissed or had sex with. they were wrong to think he was one of them in the sense of owing the starks absolute loyalty, but idt that means it was unnatural for he or any of them to sometimes feel like he was one of them all the years he was part of the winterfell household.

imo that's part of theon being foils with jon snow, the way that neither of them could ever truly be a stark yet neither was ever a total outcast with no place at winterfell either. they're stuck in a liminal status. bc that's grrm's thing more than any straight either/or categories! jon ofc did have the stark blood and had lived at winterfell since infancy, a major difference from theon, but they each had different advantages over each other while never quite seeing the areas where the other may not have had it better than them. is it coincidence that theon felt unwelcome in the crypts and jon had nightmares of wandering the crypts unwelcome by his own stark ancestors? jon's last crypt dream(s) in asos even include sounds of feasting overhead, as if he's hearing theon's dream feast of the dead**, the same dreamworld for two people dreaming months apart, each visited by bloody grey wind in turn.

*(unless robb only took theon there in the years before bran was born or was old enough to remember, ofc. but i find that explanation very unlikely, given that we know robb and jon still played down there after bran was old enough to go with them, and that theon was still familiar enough with the tombs to recognize the stone starks on sight, both with lady dustin, and before when rickard and brandon appeared in his dream feast of the dead.)

**it's commonly said that theon's feast dream was due to using ned's weirwood bed, but i think that must be a conflation with jaime's weirwood stump dream, bc i cannot find any textual ref to a weirwood bed in winterfell. people are just assuming theon must need a similar weirwood source for his dreams but if rickon could share bran's dead ned crypt dream without being a full greenseer like bran, then why can't theon (whose evilest uncle euron is likely a fallen protege of bloodraven's) have at least one magic dream without being plugged into any weirwood?