#ASOIAF isn’t grimdark

[dragondream-ing]

I think the people that screech “ASOIAF isn’t Disney/a fairytale” are up there with Dany antis. First of all, they say it to insult other fans, to signal that those fans are unrealistic. It’s reductive, it’s disingenuous, and it’s not even true—I haven’t seen a single take seriously claiming GRRM is writing a pure sugar-sweet story. I don’t know anyone who even WANTS that.

It’s worse because most of these “critics” think ASOIAF is grimdark or a tragedy or something along those lines. They think bittersweet means bitter. And they don’t seem to realize the original versions of the fairytales they hate so much are far closer to grimdark than ASOIAF will ever be lmao

GRRM isn’t some nihilist, and he’s not into tragedy porn. He never has been. He’s actually quite a romantic, even if his romances don’t end with “and they lived happily ever after without ever experiencing a single problem again.” He loves aspirational characters, and not because he wants them to fail. Actions having consequences in his stories isn’t the same as “it’s not worth trying, everything is terrible and nothing will ever be better.”

Here’s an actual example of bittersweet for the hidden prince trope, and it’s •definitely• not loosely based on a very obvious character in ASOIAF:

The enemy is defeated, but the prince loses his sword arm during the battle. Known for his prowess with a blade, he will have to endure living without such a defining aspect of himself for the rest of his life. He may be relieved he has an excuse not to take up arms again, or perhaps he’ll dedicate himself to learning to fight with his non-dominant arm, but he’ll never be the same as he once was.

The prince is devastated by a greater loss; when he lost his arm during the battle, his closest companion sacrificed themself to protect him. He will have to live without their steadying presence and spend many days finding himself unworthy of such a sacrifice. His loved ones will remind him his closest companion would want him to accept the gift and live happily. He’ll know this is true and will try, but he’ll only succeed on some days and fail on the rest.

The prince goes on to rule the kingdom with his queen, but they’re going to have to rebuild a world shattered by war and deal with the trauma of their experiences for the rest of their lives. Not all is lost, however: they have each other to lean on, being two people that understand each others’ suffering and struggles and love each other more deeply because of it. They also have the hope that their children and the generations to follow will live in a better world thanks to their sacrifices.

The end 🥲

When I think of bittersweet, I think of my grandpa. In his mother country, he grew up too poor to own shoes, then went on to be a shoemaker. He joined the military and was kind of a big deal in his impoverished village, but he left because the government was corrupt and he feared for his family’s safety in the long term. He lived his life in America being derided and underestimated, working menial jobs doing the dirty work many people never think about or value, saving every cent he could, and fighting tooth and nail to ensure his kids and grandkids lived in more security than he ever did. He lived across the world from his beloved siblings, never saw them again, and outlived them all. He retired as a janitor and died in the home he loved with his grandkids and wife beside him.

I’m proud to be his granddaughter. He lived an extremely hard life and struggled more than I can comprehend. And I can’t comprehend it because he made sure I wouldn’t have to. He’s the definition of planting trees under whose shade you’ll never sit. THAT is bittersweet. Bittersweet is poignant and painful and beautiful, joyful and tragic and compelling. It is not on the same thematic plane as House of 1000 Corpses.

I’ll say this in conclusion. If you’re running around insulting people with “ASOIAF isn’t Disney,” let me tell you, even Disney is closer to bittersweet than your nihilistic depressing takes will ever be. If you think Snow White can’t be a bittersweet tale, you’re disingenuous. She suffered tremendously (bitter) but never lost hope and was able to find love (sweet). Extend the ending and make it a bit more “realistic” by including some of Snow White’s and the Prince’s struggles and losses, and it would be a perfect example of a bittersweet tale.

[15step]

“oh, asoiaf, isn’t that like that show that’s grimdark lotr?” end me

[weirwoodking]

I just want Aeron to live, I just want him to survive 🥺

I honestly do think that he’s likely to survive. I feel like his story would be better if he lives through everything that he’s going through. Rising again, harder and stronger... I think that his story wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if he just suffers and dies. There’s an overarching theme in ASOIAF of continuing on no matter how bleak and hopeless things seem. Also, the idea that GRRM will kill Aeron to “free up space” in the manuscript is just really stupid to me. That’s not how you write a story. Also, it’s not like Aeron’s chapters take up a lot of space anyway. I’m gonna guess that Aeron will get 3 chapters in TWOW (including his sample chapter), and then 1 or 2 in the final book. I personally predict that he’ll be the last surviving son of Quellon Greyjoy

[kenobihater]

"tolkien's protagonists are all 100% good, and his antagonists are all 100% bad, which makes everything feel kind of hollow" first of all i am BEGGING y'all to read the silmarillion before you make blanket statements about tolkien's supposed penchant for writing black and white morality. yes there isn't an abundance of morally ambiguous characters in the hobbit or lotr (there's thorin, gollum, denethor, and even boromir and gandalf to an extent), but there are SO many morally grey characters in the silm that it completely refutes the idea that tolkien never wrote anyone who wasn't wholly good or evil.

secondly, hollow? really? how could such a detailed and lovingly crafted world ever feel hollow? "but it's not realistic!!1!" oh yes, and wizards and talking trees and magic rings are? no, they aren't! this is a fantasy book, and part of that means suspension of disbelief. yes, maybe you're right in saying nobody as noble as aragorn or as evil as sauron could exist, let alone exist on opposite sides of an epic conflict, but that's part of the fun! not everything has to be asoiaf. not everyone has to be george rr martin. grimdark is a very modern genre of fantasy, and you can't get mad at the most famous high fantasy series for not emulating it.

[cosmicwar]

asoiaf is grim and dark but it isn’t grimdark

[astradrifting]

I love your writing! Can you tell us your jonsa journey? Also, throw in some personal ASoIaF predictions, cause you have a knack for spotting the good stuff. ☺️

ahhhh thank you so much!

It’s funny actually, I came to ASOIAF purely because of Jonsa! Tbh I was pretty stubbornly against reading it or watching GOT for ages, partly because of how notorious the ending was and also I thought it was way too grimdark and misogynistic for me. The joke’s on me now because I’m completely obsessed :P But I read thimbleful’s brilliant they tumble down a couple of years ago, even not knowing anything about GOT, and loved it. I found it again this year and was really drawn to Jon and Sansa’s characters, so I decided to read ASOIAF to actually understand the canon behind them (I was still determined to avoid GOT too until I got curious about how the book scenes were adapted, so my sister finally wore me down into watching it).

I actually tried to avoid jonsa for a while after I started reading the books because I started to feel weird about the fauxcest, but the fics were too good and I got over it lol. I was only idly fanon shipping them at first, but then I started reading jonsa metas on here and found them so well-written and convincing, the level of analysis in them is so amazing. There’s so many parallels and layers of foreshadowing within the text, they can’t all just amount to nothing! I read through the books with a jonsa lens, and maybe it made me biased but it was so fun. That and the weirdly intense relationship Jon and Sansa had on the show have fully converted me, and now I’m in hell waiting for TWOW with everyone else 😋

Hmmm, one pet prediction I have is that Dany isn’t going to be kidnapped by the Dothraki, she’s going to force them to take her to Vaes Dothrak instead, as part of her conquering them. The show made so many weird adaptations around this point trying to obscure Dany’s responsibility for the unrest in Meereen, especially by making the Sons of the Harpy attack in the fighting pit, when Drogon was the reason it broke into chaos and people died. In s6 she was basically a damsel in distress puttering around until Daario and Jorah got there so she could be badass in front of them but, for better or worse, she’s going to have a lot more agency during this section in TWOW and her darkness will be a lot easier to see. Drogon flew away for no reason in the show just so she could be kidnapped, but he’s still with her at the end of ADWD when the Dothraki find her, and they were clearly terrified of him - she has the power in that situation. When she burns down the temple of the dosh khaleen, she’s going to use Drogon, not a convenient brazier, and it’ll be her first personal act of mass murder. Whether it’ll still be presented as righteous is a toss-up, it’ll be from her POV and GRRM could be gross like that, but I think from there we’ll finally get other characters’ perspective on her darkness.

For jonsa, I’m a big fan of the girl in grey being Sansa, or maybe, Alayne; I think Melisandre assumed it was Arya, then didn’t deny Jon’s assumption that it was Alys, because she saw that the girl had brown hair, and knew that there was only one Stark daughter who looked like that. Except Sansa is a brunette now too, and she’d hardly be able to wash the dye out of her hair if she’s on the run. It being Alayne would also fit with Mel’s thoughts when she looks for her again:

“A girl grey as ash, and even as I watched she crumbled and blew away.”

Alayne is a false identity, and will crumble away easily once Sansa no longer needs it.

I also noticed a description in the Jon chapter in ADWD where he finds a group of wildlings in the weirwood grove beyond the Wall:

“The evening sky had turned the faded grey of an old cloak that had been washed too many times, and the first shy stars were coming out.”

It’s an oddly specific description when grey has already been established as a significant colour in Jon’s storyline. I’m holding out hope that when Sansa leaves the Vale, she has to do so in a hurry, and the only cloak she can grab is old and grey, from being washed too many times.

Thanks for the ask!

[cappymightwrite]

Hi! I really like your opinions and my hope for jonsa has increased. I wanted to ask you what do you think about Jon pairings with Arya, ygritte and dany in contrast to jonsa? Have a nice day 😊

Thank you! I have to say @agentrouka-blog has really bolstered my belief in non tragic Jonsa. I actually think it would be truly more of a subversion, more of a twist, and more narratively satisfying to let them end the series together, in love and married. Everyone is so convinced that GRRM would never do that, the grimness of the narrative has completely eroded most people’s faith in goodness and love prevailing...and no doubt that is very intentional.

...it’s a narrative trap.

The majority of people think a “happy” ending is too easy or too expected, but obviously it isn’t because the current tone of the narrative has convinced so many people that it is impossible. And actually, finding happiness, championing goodness, especially in the world of ASOIAF is actually very hard and is not a given. In order to reach a dream of spring, not just the book, but what that title implies, GRRM has to do a lot of narrative work, it would be far easier for him to end it with, well, and then the Westerosi Ragnarök happened and these people died and this person suffered this and this downtrodden person became even more downtrodden, finally accepting the life has 99 thorns to 1 rose, etc., but isn’t that edgy, isn’t that grimness subversive and “real”? 

No it isn’t!!! It is very easy to tear things down, to deny people all that they value, to fall back onto the defeatist idealogy that “grimness” always prevails, that it is naive to believe in anything to the contrary. It is much harder to rebuild, to regenerate, to reimagine how life and love can continue despite all the pain that has gone before. THAT is a narrative challenge, that, in this day and age, is truly subversive. Frankly, GRRM is the laziest of writers if he chooses to end his narrative with a “grimdark” conclusion, with the bitter far outweighing the sweet (but I don’t think he is, or will). 

Anyway sorry, I shouldn’t talk about “grimdark”, it’s like a red flag to a bull, lol. Onto the second part of your ask...honestly, I try not to engage with these other ships, if at all possible. I believe and like what I like, and they believe and like what they like. I have an interpretation of the text, they have an interpretation of the text. I’m fairly confident that I’m on the money, that I’ve sussed out the author’s influences, his niche predelictions, but ultimately, only GRRM knows the truth. What I will say is that, when it comes down to it, in regards to those particular pairings I don’t read romantic love and marriage as being their deepest, truest heart’s desire, like I do with both Jon and Sansa. So, at their barest bones, discounting all other factors, for me, there is a quite fundamental incompatibility there. But frankly, the best way for me to sum up what I think about Jon’s other popular pairings, for the most part, is this:

[hamliet]

Hi! i've read some of your writing tips on tragedy and redemption story and find them really helpful in my writing. May i ask for some regarding how to write a bittersweet story? like a tragedy but with a sprinkle of goodness that will be there to soften the blow but also make the tragedy sweeter and more painful? thanks in advance!

Aw thank you! Hmmmm.

Well, I’d say people tend to misinterpret bittersweet, because it was egregiously used to describe GoT’s ending--and while I don’t doubt ASOIAF (if we ever get them) will have a bittersweet ending, GoT’s ending was just straight up grimdark misery. Bittersweet is really about a mix of tragedy and hope. A personal journey may not end with the character alive, but their death is not pointless and their fight and journey mattered.

Think of Titanic: Jack dies, so he and Rose aren’t together in the end; however, his life (and yes, his death, but especially his way of life) gave Rose life. You’re left satisfied even if sad, because his wish for Rose to live for herself came true. Did Jack fall prey to his flaw of hopeless romanticism? Yes, arguably. Does that make it a negative thing? No. 

So I think there are three key elements: fairness to the characters, appreciation for the journey, and hope. I’ll ramble a lot so idk if I’m answering your question but I hope so.

First up, characters and fairness. This itself is twofold: it must be fair in framing and to the characters’ journeys thus far. By framing I mean the standards for all characters have to be the same, or the narrative has to at least be aware of double-standards and call those out. For example, in GoT, this fails because we were asked to hold Daenerys to a different standard than we were asked to hold Sansa or Arya (Daenerys was portrayed as always cold to her victims--when this is demonstrably not the case--while Arya and Sansa engaged in an equally if not more disturbing lack of empathy for their victims). Thus we can’t be happy that one person got a happy ending and another a tragic one, because there’s no sense to be made of it.

However, in AoT, Eren’s arc is pure Shakespearean tragedy, while the overall ending is bittersweet. The reason is that Reiner, Annie, and Eren were all held to account for genocide; Eren was offered redemption time and time and time again, and he refused to take it while Annie and Reiner did atone. Their motives weren’t always pure (whatever that means), but they fought to stop the killing while Eren took every effort to refuse to stop, even wiping his friends’ memories. But while Eren dies, he is still loved by his friends even if what he did does not get a pass. Eren’s choices though were ultimately pointless: his genocide solved nothing, and his friends are trying to untangle his mess.

Fairness, as I implied earlier, doesn’t mean every character gets the same ending. For example, in LOTR, Sam is able to marry Rosie and have many children after the war. But Frodo cannot. He is forever affected by his journey and chooses to go across the sea with the elves. This is true to both their characters’ strengths and flaws, and so the ending is bittersweet because they move on, but it fits for each of them. You have to frame characters as either tragic or not from the beginning. You cannot switch halfway; you can insert red herrings for sure, but the reader has to be able to look back and be like “ah.”

Romeo and Juliet is the most bittersweet of Shakespeare’s tragedies imo, because their love saves the city. It’s a tragedy for the characters personally because they had no need to die and their flaws led them to, but unlike in King Lear or Othello or Hamlet, it’s also a love story at its core, and loves renews and heals. In the other three, which are also awesome and in some ways arguably stronger thematically than R&J, the characters’ flaws swallow everything around them and everything they fought for. There is no justice at the end of Hamlet even if Fortinbras arrives to set the kingdom right; Othello only acts the way everyone cruelly suspected he would; Lear loses absolutely everything and the only happy thing that happens happens off-screen and might not have actually happened in the play and even Edgar taking the throne can’t erase the hell that just happened. He can’t even save Cordelia despite Edmund trying to redeem himself in his dying breath by warning Edgar. Anyways, R&J is in other ways like AoT: main heroes are tragic, but the overall ending is bittersweet.

Penny and Pyrrha’s arcs give RWBY’s a somewhat bittersweet feel, even if I think the overall end of RWBY will be more hopeful (I still suspect we have at least one major death left but not in the main eight/ten). But the point of their deaths isn’t that it was pointless and didn’t have to happen, nor is it that they were always doomed. IT is that they made their choices, and their choices should be honored and because of their choices, they live on even if they are no longer present. Their arcs are tragic but their flaws do not consume everything they stood for (in contrast to say Ironwood, who dies crushed by the city he wanted to save and whose downfall he instigated).

I’ve seen people saying that because their friends are traumatized, it’s negatively framed, but I don’t agree. Penny’s death is going to traumatize her friends because her life mattered. She mattered.  But just because she is dead and chose to die on her terms doesn’t make it a negatively-framed suicide as opposed to a heroic sacrifice. Same with Pyrrha, who was very uncomfortable when asked to be a maiden, followed orders of adults, and in the end chose to fight Cinder as if she was a maiden despite having no powers and knowing she would almost certainly die fighting Cinder. Their loved ones do mourn them, but their sacrifices aren’t pointless, as Penny saves Winter’s life and many of her people’s, and Pyrrha is deeply remembered and honored by her family and village. But beyond what they do for other people, their sacrificial choices matter for their own arcs. Is it unfair they died? Yes. Absolutely. It’s wrong. It’s tragic. But the sweet comfort from it is that they both died knowing their lives had purpose and died in ways that defined who they were as people. Yet it’s also true their deaths were connected to their flaws--Penny’s struggles with self-worth and Pyrrha’s need to be the hero--but it wasn’t like them losing everything to their flaws like Ironwood gave up everything for fear and control, or Eren same deal, or Sauron. Lol.

So uhhh after all those rambles I’d say just know the theme of your story and know your characters and what you want their legacy to be.

[redteabaron]

Do you think Sansa gonna be punished with rape storyline? I'm actually scared about how many times she escaped rape. Plus grrm wanted to make realistic regarding violence against women which I abhor. I just know that Sansa is not safe until she meet jon.

Briefly: no. No I don't think she's going to get the "punishment of rape". While grrm does lean into suffering for the sake of suffering, and realistic suffering, I think the key here is in fact what hurts each character the most vs what grrm wants us to think of the person inflicting horrors on other characters (see Ramsay and Jeyne, Tywin and Tysha)

Sansa manages to avoid the worst because grrm wants us to see that she is in fact in peril, but she survives and avoids the worst outcome by adapting, I believe, better than ppl give her credit for in asoiaf and even endearing herself in one way or another to others even if it doesn't completely protect her (and to show that the name Stark is still a powerful tool for ppl to want to keep her alive for their own use).

While she's escaped some aspects of r*pe, we have to understand that this isn't the only punishment afforded to women in asoiaf. Torture exists, murder, loss of children, husband, home.

We also need to remember Sansa has been assaulted, stalked, hunted, groomed, gaslit, abused, and must rely on people who want her for their own ends. Her quote "No man will marry me for love" emphasizes how she views love, and herself as of now. And we know how important love is, for the self and for others.

I think grrm can be excessive in his adherence of grimdark fuckery, but I believe this is the true lance for her arc. Sansa's loss of innocence and self-love, her belief that someone may really love her someday, is her punishment for believing fairy tales and chivalry and songs. Not all terrible things are conventionally grotesque. Some things are uniquely horrifying, and for Sansa, I think that's what it is. Something tailored to hurt her specifically.

[lyannastark]

Lately I’ve been seeing people in the fandom claim that Sansa only saved Dontos Hollard out of self-interest, either to not witness his murder or to prevent Joffrey’s abuse. To be honest, I’m not sure where this idea comes from and have yet to see anything that supports this interpretation from the text.

Here’s where Sansa first speaks up for Dontos:

By then the crowd was howling with laughter . . . all but the king. Joffrey had a look in his eyes that Sansa remembered well, the same look he'd had at the Great Sept of Baelor the day he pronounced death on Lord Eddard Stark. Finally Ser Dontos the Red gave it up for a bad job, sat down in the dirt, and removed his plumed helm. "I lose," he shouted. "Fetch me some wine." The king stood. "A cask from the cellars! I'll see him drowned in it. Sansa heard herself gasp. "No, you can't." Joffrey turned his head. "What did you say?" Sansa could not believe she had spoken. Was she mad? To tell him no in front of half the court? She hadn't meant to say anything, only . . . Ser Dontos was drunk and silly and useless, but he meant no harm. (ACOK, Sansa I)

Between AGOT Sansa VI and this chapter, Sansa has been abused repeatedly and has learned to stay quiet and pretend to be loyal to Joffrey or else face his wrath. In spite of this, Sansa immediately stands up to Joffrey without thinking about it. In fact, she admonishes herself for doing so knowing she will likely be abused as a result. Sansa doesn’t speak up because she wants to spare herself the sight of seeing a gruesome death, it’s because “Dontos meant no harm.” His supposed crime of making a mockery out of Joffrey’s tourney doesn’t warrant being killed and Sansa recognizes this.

After this, Sansa lies and says there’s a superstition about it being bad luck to kill someone on your name day (a claim Sandor states is true in order to further convince Joffrey). Now, had this scene ended here I could potentially see why people think Sansa was only covering her tracks so Joffrey wouldn’t hurt her. Instead, Sansa takes it a step further:

Unhappy, Joffrey shifted in his seat and flicked his fingers at Ser Dontos. "Take him away. I'll have him killed on the morrow, the fool." "He is," Sansa said. "A fool. You're so clever, to see it. He's better fitted to be a fool than a knight, isn't he? You ought to dress him in motley and make him clown for you. He doesn't deserve the mercy of a quick death." The king studied her a moment. "Perhaps you're not so stupid as Mother says." He raised his voice. "Did you hear my lady, Dontos? From this day on, you're my new fool. You can sleep with Moon Boy and dress in motley." Ser Dontos, sobered by his near brush with death, crawled to his knees. "Thank you, Your Grace. And you, my lady. Thank you." (ACOK, Sansa I)

Sansa easily could’ve stopped talking because she was no longer under the threat of physical abuse thanks to Sandor’s intervention. But instead she chooses to manipulate Joffrey to sparing Dontos’s life by appealing to his cruel nature. This is why the idea of Sansa being selfish in the scene perplexes me. At this point Sansa has nothing to gain, but she chooses to speak up again in order to spare Dontos for good. 

Sansa - a child hostage with no friends or allies at this point - is the only one who has the courage to stand up to the King. In contrast, while she is being abused by the kingsguard, no one has the same courage to stand up for her until Tyrion interferes. In fact, the bystanders go so far as to laugh at her abuse. The tragedy here is that, even though Sansa saves Dontos, he only helps her later because of Littlefinger’s promise of gold.

Interpreting Sansa as self-serving/selfish in this scene both undermines her bravery and misses the point of Sansa’s arc in this book. GRRM spends ACOK shredding Sansa’s fairytale view of knighthood and life at court, but does so while contrasting Sansa’s innate morality and idealism against the cynical backdrop of King’s Landing. GRRM demonstrates this through the scene above, Sansa’s conversations with Sandor, Sansa’s contrasting worldview vs Cersei’s (”If I am ever a queen, I'll make them love me”), and her leadership during the Battle of Blackwater.

Fans often accuse GRRM of being grimdark/nihilistic, however I would say Sansa, as the metatheatrical center of the series, exemplifies the overarching theme GRRM is trying to achieve in ASOIAF. While reality often doesn't live up to the ideals of the songs, those values (such as chivalry, courage, and kindness) are still worth striving for in spite of the risk. No chance, and no choice.

[alexa-crowe]

“What the characters in a story want doesn’t say anything about what’s gonna happen.” LOL

Like, when I say that I think Jaime and Brienne will get a happy ending, this is what I’m using in tandem with the quotes about Brienne being sad and relieved + her being a mom to Pod, essentially + Jaime wanting to be a dad to Tommen and abandoning Tywin’s funeral, etc.

Why would GRRM introduce these facets of Jaime and Brienne if they don’t matter in the long run? ASOIAF isn’t grimdark; the ending is going to be bittersweet, not bitter. Bittersweet means “we lost parts of ourselves that we had at the start of the story as well as people that were vastly important to us along the way but we’re alive and can pursue the lives that we’ve always wanted to live.”

I truly believe that Jaime and Brienne will have somewhat of a happy ending, where they’ve lost people and parts of themselves along the way (which they already have, and will continue to lose) but have communicated with each other and come to terms with the fact that they’re in love and want kids and marriage and fluffy times but also sexy times and lots of swordfights.

[secretlyatargaryen]

Because I just had this referenced at me re: Arya discourse:

And that’s another of my pet peeves about fantasies. The bad authors adopt the class structures of the Middle Ages; where you had the royalty and then you had the nobility and you had the merchant class and then you have the peasants and so forth. But they don’t’ seem to realize what it actually meant. They have scenes where the spunky peasant girl tells off the pretty prince. The pretty prince would have raped the spunky peasant girl. He would have put her in the stocks and then had garbage thrown at her. You know.

I mean, the class structures in places like this had teeth. They had consequences. And people were brought up from their childhood to know their place and to know that duties of their class and the privileges of their class. It was always a source of friction when someone got outside of that thing. And I tried to reflect that. (source)

It’s not a stretch at all to connect GRRM’s statement here to what he depicts in the Trident incident in A Game of Thrones. This is a scene close to my heart not just because I love Arya, but because this is one of the scenes that drew me to the series, and immediately signaled to me that this was a fantasy series unlike most. As GRRM says, his fantasy world “has teeth.” Arya’s action of defending Mycah from Joffrey has consequences, and ultimately fails at protecting the butcher’s boy. But it’s absolutely wrong to stop there and say that this means that Arya shouldn’t have reacted the way she did, shouldn’t have tried to defend Mycah or shouldn’t have played with him to begin with, that she somehow messed up by stepping out of her assigned social role because her actions had consequences.

Because this is how GRRM writes conflict. To understand why this scene happens the way it does, let’s look at what else GRRM says in the interview.

Yeah, I’ve always been attracted to grey characters. I’ve always taken it as a code, William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech from the early ‘50’s, where he said that the human heart in conflict with the self was the only thing worth writing about. And I think that’s true.

The battle between good and evil is a theme of much of fantasy. But I think the battle between good and evil is fought largely within the individual human heart, by the decisions that we make.

I’m also going to keep harping on this particular point because I also love Faulkner and, like Martin, I believe that the only conflict truly important is the human heart in conflict with itself. And that’s where GRRM’s reasoning behind the creation of his world and characters comes in. It’s clear that Martin isn’t interested in writing about spunky princesses who easily tell off the prince, similarly to how he isn’t interested in writing about “the princess who rides off with the stable boy” without any consequences (and we can easily see his reaction to this trope in Lyanna, who is another female character that fandom likes to blame for being “impulsive”).

Martin is absolutely NOT saying that these female characters are wrong for going against an oppressive system. He’s saying that it’s HARD, but more importantly, he’s saying with these characters, that even though it’s hard, we do it anyway. To quote John F. Kennedy, we do it because it’s hard. Otherwise what is the point? What is the point of writing (or reading) about spunky princesses who face no consequences for going against the system? What is the point of a character who gets their way all the time, easily defeats every challenge and every conflict, and is only allowed to stagnate, never to grow? What is the point of writing about an oppressive system if it is never challenged by the characters and narrative? What is the point of writing about conflict if it is not about the decisions that we make, the choices that we have to make, not because they’re easy and free of consequence, but because they’re hard?

I’d also say that another important theme in Martin’s work is that it’s hard to do the right thing, but do it anyway. Oftentimes he also writes about characters who are victims of their circumstances, and of course those characters should not be blamed for their inability to “rise above,” but that makes it more powerful when a character does stand up for what’s right, even if they fail spectacularly. To believe anything less is to believe in the grimdark justifications that lesser authors make for including rape and misogyny in their novels, simply because it’s “realistic.” GRRM sometimes falls into this defense and his fans often do, but I don’t believe that’s what we’re supposed to get out of this series overall. In particular, I think it’s a misogynistic reading that is disappointingly popular in “feminist” circles because fans of the more feminine-presenting characters think they’re defending women this way, ironically. And on one level, I understand the impulse. Female characters should not be blamed for being victims of a system that oppresses them, but nor should they be blamed for standing up against that system, despite the consequences. ASOIAF has all sorts of female characters in it, ones who accept the system and ones who are defeated by it and ones who are able to break free to an extent, and ones who speak out against it and face consequences, but not a single one of them is unaffected by it. And to read this as a sign that the characters in their medievalish fantasy society (and by extension, we in our own society, because the society depicted in this fantasy series is really not that different from our own) should just stay in their assigned roles and not try to rock the boat is a serious misread. If the only conflict worth exploring is the human heart in conflict with itself, then we as readers must also look into our own hearts. We can’t avoid it. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.

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

She stepped out into the rain, Oathkeeper in hand. "Leave her be. If you want to rape someone, try me."

[agentrouka-blog]

For the life of me, I cannot see a Jonsa marriage that is NOT based on love as anything other than abusive toward both of them, but especially toward Sansa.

And I honestly think there is way more foreshadowing for romance and passion than there is for a "sensible" match without either. Which would actually be anti-climactic because that's what Sansa is resigned to since ASOS. Same with Jon. It would add zero poetry or balance. There is nothing sweet in that bitter.

But it would certainly waste a gargantuan amount of emotional and symbolic set-up.

GRRM isn't a troll and he isn't a nihilist. I have no idea where people get this idea from. There is a very humanist message to what he's doing in ASOIAF, even if he doesn't spell it out, and even if it's sometimes obscured in his parallels, mirrors and symbols. Even if some of his writing has unfortunately racist tones.

His point isn't to punish the desire for romance or love. His point is about indulgence v. responsibility in positions of power, and the social structures that subjugate and dehumanize people by concentrating that power in too few hands.

Look at Arianne and Daemon. They shared a passion but they both accepted that with privilege comes responsibility. It's sad but dignified and most importantly it doesn't diminish their chemistry or affection. Their desire for romance is neither a problem nor is it being punished for some haphazard grimdark twist. There is a logical tension between social mores and political ambition v. human emotional needs. The human needs aren't the problem. And there is actually every possibility that they will still find some happiness in each other because of the way power structures are shifting toward females.

I don't know why this upsets me so. It feels like slander to me. GRRM isn't trolling us. He's asking us to look with our eyes, not our trope goggles. Dany is a monster hidden in plain sight. Plain sight. No troll twist. There is no nihilistic trolling.

[weirwoodking]

Hot take but I don’t think the Dornish plotline will end in tragedy

[random-thought-depository]

Also, from Brett Devereaux’s latest Dothraki horde essay that I just posted about:

“This isn’t actually much of a surprise. Martin has been pretty clear that he doesn’t like the kind of history we’re doing here. As he states:

“I am not looking for academic tomes about changing patterns of land use, but anecdotal history rich in details of battles, betrayals, love affairs, murders, and similar juicy stuff.”

That’s an odd position for an author who critiques other authors for being insufficiently clear about their characters’ tax policy (what does he think they are taxing, other than agricultural land use?). Now, I won’t begrudge anyone their pleasure reading, whatever it may be. But what I hope the proceeding analysis has already made clear is that it simply isn’t possible to say any fictional culture is ‘an amalgam’ of a historical culture if you haven’t even bothered to understand how that culture functions. And it should also be very clear at this point that George R. R. Martin does not have a firm grasp on how any of these cultures function.

Once again, Martin has instead constructed this culture out of stereotypes of nomadic peoples.”

Ouch! This is a harsh dunk, but it’s also an insight into how to write speculative fiction that I’m going to take to heart. Well, I mean, it parallels thoughts and the approach I already have. Reading this makes me feel better about having the artistic process I have.

I know it sounds arrogant to think I’d do better than a famous and very successful big name author, but reading these essays I can’t help thinking that I’d have handled that stuff better. Like, at least before writing extensively about a steppe nomad culture I’d Google things like “what did the Mongols eat?” To be fair, I think ASoIaF was started in, like, the ‘90s, when it wasn’t so easy to just Google stuff, but still, I like to think stuff like “how did historical precedents for this culture get their food?” would be things I’d look into a bit before sitting down to write.

To also be fair, I have the opposite problem of spending like 90% of my time “worldbuilding” and taking forever to get around to actually writing anything. Maybe I should be more like George R.R. Martin! He‘s clearly doing something right!

But on the other hand, I think I do better work for actually thinking about stuff like this. Like, here’s another quote from Mr. Devereaux’s latest essay:

“But that leads into the larger problem, which comes out quite clearly in how Martin has carelessly separated the shepherds and the nomads into separate cultures living side-by-side. As we’ve discussed, that’s wrong: the shepherds and the fearsome riders were the same people. But Martin has stripped away not just the shepherding from the Dothraki, but also the cheese-making and wool cleaning and so on – after having already, as we saw last week, also stripped away the artistry, creativity and artisinal skill. His Dothraki don’t do anything as whimpy as herding sheep – something they regard as unmanly because of course they do – they kill the sheep (with arrows, which just makes it a double waste for every shaft that breaks or tip that is lost) and leave them to rot, like (very stupid) badassess.

He has stripped the Dothraki of every part of a Steppe nomads life, except the barbaric violence. And in so doing, he has taken one of only a handful of non-white cultures that we really meet and get a real taste of (rather than merely passing through) and reduces it from a complex culture which grows and nurtures and conserves (but also kills and destroys – we’re not going to don any rosy glasses about the violence of nomads here – that discussion is coming) into a pure vehicle of violent destruction, offering nothing of redeeming value.”

Like ... right now I’m planning out a story I intend to write in January; it’s supposed to be a kind of deconstruction of the Fremen mirage, and very much one of the thoughts going into it is “yo, a Proud Warrior Race would be a horrible society to live in or have as neighbors, we shouldn’t romanticize them!” and yet ... I feel that the “bad guy” culture in it is much better, from a literary viewpoint, for me having given some thought to the material base of their society and how that would shape their culture. I could have just written them as flat edgelordy-grimdark barbarians, but thinking about their culture in materialist terms gave me a more complex and nuanced picture that I think will make for a more interesting and nuanced story and a fictional society that feels more interesting and human and alive.

And to be really fair ... I think if I have an advantage over George R.R. Martin writing in the ‘90s, it’s partly from reading essays like this; because I was shaped by a geek culture that very much appreciates good worldbuilding and that is full of advice about it (of varying levels of quality, but lots of it is at least decent, and there’s a lot of it). If I do better, much of the credit belongs to the people I’ve interacted with and the people whose thoughts I’ve read and listened to over the years. “If we can see farther, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants” very much seems to apply. Except I don’t like that quote because I think it’s too implicitly elitist; “giants” implies a few outsize individuals. I think it’s more accurate to say that if we see farther it’s because we stand at the top of an enormous human pyramid; it’s not about any particular person, it’s that we reap the benefit of enormous collective efforts. And that enormous human pyramid dynamic exists in science and government and morality and so on just as much as it exists in writing science fiction and fantasy novels.

Side note: it was informative to learn that the big Mongol food animal was sheep (or at least that’s the impression Mr. Devereaux’s essay gave me). I knew Eurasian steppe nomads primarily relied on domesticated animals other than horses for food, but I never had a very clear picture of what animals, and I kind of vaguely thought it was cattle (I guess cattle-herding nomads were more of a thing in Africa and I just kind of assumed Eurasian steppe nomads worked the same way).

Side note 2: seconding a comment somebody with the username “Roxana” left on that essay; if Mr. Martin wanted something plausible-ish that would still make the Dothraki look all macho and badass, a good way to do it would have been to loosely base them on North American horse-riding bison-hunting cultures and have them hunt some sort of terrifying badass fantasy megafauna.

[absynthe--minded]

I liked your post about why Aragorn is qualified to be a king, and I wondered what you make of George R. R. Martin's answer to his own question? If the Game of Thrones show runners are being honest that king Bran is his plan, I'd love to know how you interpret that in relation to his criticism of LotR.

So first off I want to say that I’m not actually sure I buy that Bran is going to be King of Westeros - I tend to side with joannalannister’s endgame theories over GoT, though I think some things about the ending of the show are accurate (who lives and who dies, the Iron Throne being destroyed somehow, Sansa as either Queen in the North or Lady of Winterfell). I don’t recall who it is who told Bran that greenseers’ lives are short (I think Bloodraven but I’m not gonna say for sure, despite knowing quite a lot about ASOIAF I’m not a fan and can’t always cite accurately from memory) but I don’t foresee him living long enough to be a very effective king.

But.

Assuming he is king, and that there’s a Great Council that’s going to act as an oligarchy and elect a ruler every time the old one dies? I think realistically you’d see Bran dealing with the same kinds of problems that Jon (as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch) or Dany (as Queen of Meereen) or even Ned in AGOT might have dealt with - it’s hard to make good decisions when you’re governing a lot of people. It’s hard to be a good person according to your own moral code and to please everyone, especially when they’ll happily rebel against you or subvert your aims or straight up tell you they’re not listening. (Also frankly I want to see where Bran ends up moral-development-wise before I make a call about whether or not he even qualifies as a good person, because at the moment I don’t know where his warging-into-humans is going to take him and if he winds up king while still having some conception of that as being okay? Hm. Plus it’s just terrifying to think of a young king with the ability to take control of any animal or human he likes while also having greenseer capability - he could be spying on you at just about any moment, and ought one person have that much power? But that’s not what’s being asked.) I think King Brandon would have to face a lot of challenges and he’d have to do it without the stability of the old regime that kept the realm working even after Robert’s Rebellion, and if he wound up taking the reins he’d have a lot of long, hard work ahead of him to create a functional government, and Martin seems like the kind of writer who would temper any idealistic reforms with challenges and struggles. Also Bran would probably be in a position of having to rely heavily on more politically savvy advisors, and whether or not those advisors would be good people is up in the air.

I think Martin’s answer, that there is no such thing as an uncompromisingly good person who’s also a good ruler because ruling is hard, is a worthwhile examination of the question of morality in politics. It’s certainly more realistic-to-our-world than Tolkien’s “every good person is also a good politician who’s competent and well-trained for their role”, though I find Tolkien’s world more fun because it’s substantially less depressing. My issue with his comments on Aragorn comes from the fact that by painting Aragorn as a person who’s just Good At Ruling Because He’s A Good Man, Martin simplifies Tolkien’s worldbuilding and ignores or glosses over the very real work done to make Aragorn a good candidate for the throne of Gondor outside of his moral fiber or his divinely-ordained destiny. He’s not magically the best option just because he’s there and a Lawful Good type, he’s had 80 years basically of prepping for this job. It’s still an idealistic story, but it’s idealistic in a different way. And I’m frustrated by people who miss the canonical depth while also acting as if they can speak authoritatively on the choices JRRT made, or who act as if a deliberate choice for idealism and simplified good-vs-evil are immature and unrealistic and unsatisfying by virtue of not reveling in complexity and grimdark faux-history, and then pat themselves on the back for being objectively “better” when they’ve just made a choice that’s different from the one Tolkien made and isn’t better or worse solely on the basis of tone.

(I think the showrunners for GoT missed the point, tbh, by deciding Bran gets to be king. They’re derailing their “realistic” plot and perspective to end with a decision that makes very little sense according to even their own in-universe rules. I’m aware this probably isn’t what you wanted to hear and I’m sorry, lol, I got stuck on a tangent.)