#gosh i love signpost sets

[dravidious]

You're the most amazing

creature!

I also filled the other 5 color pairs with various frogs

[joannalannister]

I love what GRRM built in House Lannister. I love the themes he explores via Lannisters. I’m just gonna ramble here...

The theme I was thinking about is loss. Loss is such a big theme in ASOIAF -- “I have a hole where my heart should be” -- loss touches everyone in ASOIAF, but I love it most wrt House Lannister because it’s like. 

The Lannisters have it all, but there’s no joy in it. Because what if someone tries to take it all away?

If one of the lessons of ASOIAF is to “savor ever last sweet moment” (ADWD), the Lannisters, as always, represent its antithesis. They savor nothing, because they’re too worried about “the jackals and the vultures and the feral dogs” moving in and taking it all from them. When Cersei dreams of her heart’s desire to sit the Iron Throne, the dream so quickly turns to nightmare, where she’s lost even her clothes. And Jaime’s dreams are little better imo, with him always losing people and having people leave him. (And gosh, that “people leaving’ is so fascinating from a valonqar perspective and the idea of self-fulfilling prophecies in play with Cersei/Jaime.) 

And goshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Tywin, MY LOVE. In one Tywin’s moments of greatest joy, when he marries Joanna, A/erys tries to take it all away, and Joanna is sent away to the fastness of Casterly Rock like a jewel to be hoarded, and Tywin was “often away” from her. And after Joanna dies, Tywin’s alive but he’s not living, definitely not savoring “every last sweet moment” as ASOIAF tells us to do, despite all of the advantages he has. (Tbh I don’t think Tywin savors much of anything because he’s too afraid of losing that trim physique.) 

And the Lannisters’ obsession with reputation, and the lengths they go to uphold it, gah. 

They’re so afraid of losing it all, so afraid of their vulnerabilities being exposed, that the Lannisters live in an invincible mountain fortress that would make Durin’s Folk weep with envy. There’s so much insecurity there that I don’t think the Lannisters are ever truly free of fear. And it’s these tragically ironic juxtapositions -- boldness and fear, vulnerability and strength, the Lannisters’ vast wealth amidst their terrible poverty - they slay me every time. 

And the Lannisters insulate themselves from anyone Other to protect themselves, so that we get things like Tywin’s xenophobia and the importance he places on blood purity, and, taking those things to the extreme, we get Jaime/Cersei’s incest, because Lannisters aren’t socialized properly and they can’t People. 

And Tyrion, my baby -- he, more than any other member of his family imo, occupies this liminal space between Lannister and Other*, and after ASOS, GRRM strips him of everything, his home, his family, his wealth, his freedom**, his name, even his own comforting lies, and he brings him to rock bottom, and we’re gonna spend the next book answering the question, “Where do we go from here?”

*I should expand on this at some point, but briefly - Tyrion has been Othered his whole life, his Lannister identity very deliberately called into question, repeatedly, both by characters (Tywin’s “I cannot prove that you are not mine” etc) and by the narrative (GRRM giving A/erys motive and opportunity, etc). While I firmly believe that #a plus j does not equal t and that Tyrion is Tywin’s biological son, I believe we’re being set up to look at Tyrion (originally one of the Big Five, probably one of the Big Three, probably a dragonrider) as someone ... for whom the lines are blurred ... a Lannister but ... distinct from his family, someone on a separate narrative tier than characters like Jaime or Cersei. Tyrion as ... someone who said “No” to Tywin, a more resounding “No” than the “No’s” we see from Jaime and Cersei. 

Cersei has been denied repeatedly by her family, but her ~Lannister-ness~ has never been in doubt. (GRRM repeatedly hits us over the head with it.) Meanwhile, Jaime is halfway down his page in the White Book, caught between the crimson shield and the white, seemingly torn between ~Lannister-ness~ and ~non-Lannister-ness~, but the ~non-Lannister-ness~ is an illusion, as false as the idea of Goldenhand delivering justice, because Tommen’s KG is merely another facet of the corrupt Lannister regime. And I do not think book!Jaime will ever (actively) choose to side with Dany (although there may be some ice zombie slaying in Jaime’s future idk). I do not see Jaime ever being Not Lannister in the way that Tyrion is being set up to be Other / ~Not Lannister~, because I think ~Lannister-ness~ (a shorthand I am using for Tywin’s values, toxic masculinity, fascist masculinity, etc)  is at odds with saving the world. I can’t keep going on about this here, it’s more nuanced than what I’ve made of it here, this needs its own post. 

**I love how Cersei and Tyrion parallel each other in ADWD, both losing their freedom, both alienated from Jaime, both suffering such terrible wounds to their pride, both suffering from Tywin’s death (albeit in different ways). 

Like, there is precisely one (1) line that I remember from Death of a Salesman, and that line is, “Life is a casting off.” And what I hope / imagine for Tyrion is that he can turn all of this (negative, depression-inducing) loss of House Lannister into a (more positive) “casting off” of Lannister toxicity, to the point where he is no longer tormented by the shadow of his father as he saves the world/dies. (I think Jaime is on an opposite trajectory, because I think passionately murdering one’s sister only enmeshes one further in Lannister toxicity. Saving life vs taking life seem like opposites to me. But GRRM may have something else in store, idk.) 

idk man, this theme of loss and attitudes/reactions to loss just fascinates me. Talk to me about loss wrt other Houses and I’m just like, “yeah dats sad.” But with Lannisters, here I am, too many paragraphs deep, and all I can think about is, “But I haven’t even mentioned Tysha or Jaime’s hand or Tywin’s legacy yet!!!!” but imma just leave this here:

it is high summer for House Lannister. So why am I so bloody cold?

Those ironic juxtapositions, man. Those signifiers of Wrongness, those hints that things are off kilter, those signposts that we’re behind Enemy Lines even here in King’s Landing, where the headquarters of Tywin’s campaign of (cold) dehumanization is doing the Others’ work for them ... and Tyrion so out of place - short where his siblings are tall, ugly where his siblings are fair, Othered by the people doing the Others’ work... the irony ... slays me every time....