#i actually liked his redemption arc tbh i liked how each person dealt with it differently and they didn’t have to forgive him and he didn’t

[relaxxattack]

i love how i was in one fandom where the author redeemed a child abuser and the whole fandom hated it even though the guy seriously regretted his actions and atoned for them, meanwhile in this other fandom i’m in child abuse is completely redeemable even if the guy doesn’t feel remorse about it ToT because it’s a “moral grey area”

[we-are-what-they-grow-beyond]

some seriously self indulgent TROS thoughts that no one asked for: spoilers ahead!

(i’m gonna try tag every spoiler tag I can think of just in case anyone out there does care, but tbh this is really just for me lol)

the following is going to be a very ‘off the cuff’ series of ramblings so I apologise if it’s all over the place 

Overall.. I think I liked it? I left the cinema feeling euphoric, which is honestly all I wanted from ix. While there were very few immediate things that I took offence to as I was watching it [unlike TLJ] I have a bad feeling that some doubts about certain scenes and character choices are gonna creep into my brain in the next few days. Like the longer I think about it, the worse it’s gonna get.

The beginning was a mess. I think every single person who has seen it can agree on that much. There was so much exposition and heavy handed course correction from TLJ that it felt laboured and disjointed. The pacing was at this crazy breakneck speed.. we must have visited at least six different planets in the first fifteen minutes. I think that Poe’s ‘hyperdrive jumping’ [?] sequence really set the tone for the first act - just a constant barrage of different locations and characters.

And I understand that they had to do this. The events of TLJ left them no choice, they needed to establish every main character’s position [both physically and mentally], portray the current state of the war as well as rebuild a believable rapport between our core trio all within the first fifteen minutes if they wanted to give the last act any chance of sticking the landing. And to some extent I think they achieved this. In all that running around on different planets, bickering amongst the trio and the funny asides from Threepio - it really felt like something straight out of the OT. For the first time since TFA I cared about these characters. 

However. In doing this, they continually broke the cardinal rule of screenwriting; show don’t tell. While watching the first act I felt weighed down with information, like every five seconds another character would pop in with a monologue that sent them on another wild goose chase in which they had to find another hundred things that I would inevitably struggle to remember. ‘So now they need to go here, to see where Luke went, because he wanted to find this guy, who has this object, that will bring them to this other place, so that they can see Palpatine?’ It was so heavily reliant on dialogue alone that it ultimately lead to this sense of utter messiness. 

Where the film thrived was in it’s action set pieces. I adored the way the force was portrayed in this film. The scene in the desert in which Ben [yes Ben, but more on that later] and Rey pulled that First Order Transport out of the sky sent shivers down my spine. We have never seen the force used like this before and the amount of power Rey held was absolutely staggering. I loved it.

The saber battle on top of the Death Star was a visual highlight. Even though I felt like I’d seen most of it in TV Spots the urgency never went away. The moodiness of the water and mist cut through by the blue and red light was beautiful. 

The one shot of Poe, Finn and Chewie running through the Destroyer hallway felt like an echo back to everything that lies at the heart and soul of this saga.

We’ve been begging for more space battles and boy did we get a good one. When Lando and Chewie sauntered in on the Falcon with their thousands of rebel support ships set to the theme I was sobbing. There were so many little references in that one shot, from Rebels to Resistance to even Wedge Antilles - My heart swelled. 

But where I really broke was on Ahch-To. One of my biggest gripes with TLJ was its treatment of Luke. Every time I watch it again that shot of his submerged X wing infuriates me beyond measure as Johnson never chose to do anything with it [despite there being an obvious answer]. We finally got that scene in this film, the scene I was so desperate for; a callback to perhaps my favourite moment in the whole skywalker saga entangled with an apology for TLJ’s treatment of our favourite jedi master. Set to Yoda’s Theme, I felt like for a split second like I was watching Empire, and that meant the world to me. Thank you J.J.

The characterisation is perhaps the most divisive part of the film for me. It took so many risks, it’s going to take quite some time for me to properly digest them all. 

I want to start with our beloved Leia. The CGI, although perhaps not quite as seamless as some reviewers are making it out to be, worked well enough. With the knowledge of Carrie’s passing, it’s easy to poke holes in the performance - I found the beginning of her screen time particularly jarring, with her mostly addressing Rey with one word answers. I knew that there was supposed to be an emotional weight to all her scenes, as there she was, our princess, somehow miraculously on our screens for one final time. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel as if she was truly there in body or soul, and the emotional power of her scenes suffered as a result. Maybe in time, as we forget about the circumstances under which this film had to be made, this obvious detachment might fade away. And I sincerely hope it does, because the backstory they gave her is what truly deserves to be remembered about Leia in this film. The flashback scene of her training with Luke was glorious, the cgi really worked well here, and for the first time we saw Leia as a fully fledged jedi. This is something I could never ever have even imagined and I’m so pleased they did it, it would have meant so much to me as a young girl. As for her death, I believe they did the best they could with it. She ultimately died saving her son, protecting both the light and her family - two themes that have been so central to this entire forty two year saga. I don’t think they could have done much more. 

I was shocked to see Harrison in this, surprised isn't even the right word. But this bewilderment that I felt thankfully didn’t overshadow his integral role in the so called ‘Bendemption’ arc, in fact I think it really tied the whole thing together nicely. I have hated the idea of Kylo’s possible redemption since the moment we found out his true heritage during TFA, I thought it was too simple, too obvious. But the way in which it was dealt with here was wonderful. It showed Kylo to be entirely complex and ambiguous, and at the end of it we saw Ben for what he was, a young and vulnerable young man who ultimately made some terrible choices, the conflict in him was brilliantly acted. It was ultimately his parents that pulled him back to the light, not just Rey, and that fact alone saved this story arc for me. 

[I refuse to talk about the kiss. I hated it. It didn’t need to happen.]

Rey is a difficult one. Was the Palpatine bloodline convenient? Yes. Terribly so. Did it make sense story wise? Only kind of. But, I think it drew a definitive line under the nine film conflict which was ultimately at its core just Skywalker vs Palpatine, so in that sense I’m happy it happened in the way it did. 

[Sheev on an aesthetic level looked dreadful I thought. Proper rubbery. And the logistics of how he survived/who all those chanting followers were/where he got all those Imperial star destroyers from is extremely questionable. I try not to dwell on it.]

My mixed feelings about Finn and Poe cannot be overstated. The film did a good job at giving them more to do, we really got to see John and Oscar bounce off each other and at the end of the day, that is my kryptonite. However, Finn had little to no character development throughout the whole trilogy. All he did was figure out that he didn’t want to be aligned with the First Order anymore, deciding he wanted to fight for what is right. But the thing is, we saw him make that decision about ten minutes into TFA. It didn’t need to be rehashed again and again in every film. We wanted more - we wanted him to be force sensitive, we wanted him to form meaningful connections with others. On some level they delivered on that, we saw a little force sensitivity, he got his own back with Hux, he found his tribe in Jannah and the other deserters.. but it felt like an afterthought. Nothing was ever dwelled upon- even his confession to Rey [whatever it was] was completely forgotten about in the end. Finn as a whole felt like an afterthought. 

[Don’t even get me started on Rose, Kelly deserved so much more. I was embarrassed by the amount of screen time she had.]

As for Poe.. Oscar did a brilliant job in this, he successfully harkened back to our favourite scoundrel Han Solo stereotype and I felt that gave the trio’s dynamic a clear anchor. His interactions with both Finn, Threepio and Chewie as he kept crashing the falcon really made me laugh, it was nice to have some actual humour littered throughout, unlike the goofy slapstick stuff in TLJ. But.. the Zorii love interest and backstory made zero sense canonically. Zero. Aside from the ‘can i kiss you’ stuff being extremely contrived, there is physically no actual way Poe could have ever been a spice runner on this new planet that I can’t remember the name of. He lived on Yavin his whole life until he came of age to join the New Republic Navy, and from there Leia recruited him into the Resistance. This much has been documented in countless books and comics. J.J really decided to throw that all away so that they could what.. get that universal key thing? Did they even use it? Was there any other point of Zorii’s character other than that key? Not really. Don’t try to tell me that Kes and Shara’s son ran away from home to become a criminal for no reason. Just don’t. [He was still wearing Shara’s ring throughout and they didn’t do anything with it.. I wonder will we get more of an answer to this in the novelisation?]

[While I’m on the subject of the comics and novels, the decision to kill off Snap was brave. I really loved him in the comics and I’m sad he’s now gone and Karé is now alone. Not that any of that was mentioned but-]

Lando was used just the correct amount. I’m happy he got the ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ line, and I think any more screen time and we could have seen some holes in Billy’s performance. [sorry Billy]

Chewie had some great moments in this surprisingly. He was essentially just an extra in TLJ so it was quite refreshing to have him be a key player again. [I had forgotten about the clips from the trailer that showed him aboard the Destroyer, so when he ‘died’ I really thought he was dead for a moment and I was so angry that that was how he went lol.] But his reaction to Leia’s death was so touching and although it was a tad fan-servicey, I loved the fact that he finally got the medal he missed out on in ANH. It made me chuckle.

The same can be said of Anthony Daniels as C3PO and all of the other droids. I felt as though they really clawed them back into the mix this time - Threepio’s worrisome queries were wonderfully nostalgic and not to mention hilarious, and D-0 was a great new addition. The droids always brought a levity to star wars, it was their job, and they did this to great effect in this film. There was some questionable switching around of R2 and BB8 which I didn’t appreciate - there is absolutely no way that BB8 wouldn’t be Poe’s astromech for the battle against the Final Order but I’m willing to let it slide.. [also why was he on Tatooine with Rey at the end?]

It really sounds like I had more problems with this film than highlights, and I promise that’s not the case. In the end, it made me feel happy, like I was watching something akin to the OT again, and yes some parts of it were clumsy, but the heart of it was there. It all really comes down to whether or not you believe a film must be ‘good’ in order to be.. good. With something as big and sentimental as star wars I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. Return of the Jedi was an utter mess- but yet we all still worship it and the characters it gave us. Why can’t the same thing be said for TROS? It was clunky, but it was surprising, and powerful and fun. It gave us the characters we loved and some interesting new ones, some top-tier lightsaber battles and a conclusive ending to the saga that has defined so many lives. At the end of the day I think that’s all it needed to be. 

[spaceshipkat]

Hey I wanted to know what your opinion on the whole gritty dark realism thing in modern media that we have going on??? I started watching a oldish anime (tbh it’s only from like 2011) and even though it dealt with pretty dark topics, I suddenly remembered how watching media is supposed to be fun, and I actually went and watched Good Omens afterwards, and I got that same feeling, and it just sucks how “realism” sucks the joy out of things. There’s a reason we turn to fiction after all

hi anon! so my answer is...twofold, i think, bc 1) i do enjoy the gritty dark realism thing going on (though i really, really wish people would move away from the whole “everyone must suffer and the ending can’t be happy bc that’s how you really drive home suffering and grimdark and current society”) bc it often sheds light on topics that need to have light shed on them, and 2) i also do enjoy the more upbeat fiction that’s been created over the years (the kind that ends with a happy ending hard-won and whose plots aren’t steeped, marinated, and glazed with suffering and darker than dark darkness), and i wish it would be much more commonplace in common media. GOT, i think, has simply ushered in this new era of “everything must be darker than dark”. 

re: Good Omens, if i understand you correctly, you think it falls into the gritty dark realism category? if so, i disagree (respectfully!). to me, Good Omens has that perfect balance of dark and light, and its stakes carry the same weight as the darker fiction out there without falling into the same category of “everyone must suffer and the ending can’t be happy” bc, in large part, the ending is very happy: Satan is no more, the end of the world isn’t nigh, everyone lived but they had to work hard to get there, Crowley and Aziraphale have their breathing space and, imo, the roots of a real romantic relationship starting (i mean it was always romantic but secretively, if that makes sense. now, they can hold hands and kiss in public without being worried that they’ll be immediately smote over it bc Heaven and Hell have both agreed to leave them be thanks to their body swap), and Adam is simply human. even though everyone survives (even the bookshop and the Bentley) we (or at least i and the GO blogs i follow/my friends who’ve seen the show/read the book) don’t feel cheated by the lack of loss bc the characters had serious problems to deal with that made the ending feel hard-won and satisfactory. the arcs the characters went through (though Aziraphale’s is the most overt, imo) were realistic, compelling, and fulfilling. 

to stop myself from rambling (i’ve been known to do that with GO lately), we can compare that to the ending of Game of Thrones and how i hope Supernatural ends. GOT’s ending was beyond disappointing bc d&d seem to think that the only plausible ending is one where the characters suffer and/or die, and the endings they give us are ridiculously unsatisfying. i mean, we have Bran on the throne (despite the fact he has never said he wanted it--and personally, i hate and disagree with the whole “you don’t want power and that’s why you deserve/need it” shtick), Jaime dead (despite his redemption arc and character growth that would make it implausible for him to return to Cersei in the hands of good writers), Jon exiled to the North (i wasn’t upset by his ending, but i know others were), Dany dead (again, i wasn’t upset by the ending bc i never really cared for her, but i know that there were a lot of people who were upset and i do feel for them bc it was a shit ending for her), and fucking Bronn on the council (or whatever the hell the term is). how does any of that make sense? i don’t personally know a single person who was completely happy with the ending, despite the stupid award nominations that the writers and show got. GOT is a show of constant suffering and unhappy endings, and the fact it ended that way, too, left a lot of people disenchanted with it and upset over it. and yeah, some people argue that it was realistic for the show to end that way and keeping in-tone, but therein lies the crux of the matter: why must everything be dark and full of suffering? (how many times can i say dark and suffering in this answer?)

in Supernatural, i’m in a few endgame positive camps: the Winchesters both surviving*, destiel being canon (even if that canon is literally just Cas and Dean holding hands or saying “to the world” to each other in the same tone of voice Aziraphale uses in episode 6: i, for one, would probably melt into a puddle of goo over either of those endings for destiel, bc they say a lot without saying much. i think a lot of people who aren’t endgame destiel positive don’t seem to understand that that would scream everything to those of us who are positive, or who want destiel to be explicitly canon by the end. we don’t need them to fall into bed with each other for us to be happy--or at least i don’t--but i digress), and Cas becoming human by his own choice. Supernatural is definitely a dark show, but it has its light moments (i wouldn’t have stuck with it and fallen so in love with it otherwise, unlike with GOT bc i was far more a casual viewer there) and i really hope that the writers decide to end on a light note, too, so as not to fall into the same camp as GOT. if it does fall into the GOT camp, this 15-season show will go down, at least to me, as one of the biggest tragedies in fiction of the 2000s and 2010s, and even though the show brings me a lot of comfort, i don’t think i could look at it the same way if that’s how they chose to end it come the finale. the characters deserve a happy ending (to quote Dean, him, Sam, and Cas retired with their feet in the sand--and with Jack now, too, obv), and i hope that the writers choose to make this the dark story with light at the end instead of the dark story with an even darker ending. 

and i think that’s the best way i can describe my opinion on the gritty dark realism stories that have become so pervasive. write those dark stories (my stories are always dark) but infuse them with enough light to make people find comfort in them, to leave them happy by the end, to give them that sense of satisfaction for a conflict with an ending of victory. for as long as i’ve been writing (literally half of my life now, since i started when i was 12 and i’m now 24), i’ve always written a hard-won ending with a bit of hope, even if there was a lot of darkness toward the end, even if it’s the first of a series. i don’t enjoy stories that are an entree of darkness with a side of darker darkness complete with a darker than dark dessert, so i tend to steer far from those or prepare myself going in (with Supernatural, i’m optimistic about a light ending, but i’m also keeping my expectations in-check bc i can’t be certain). 

i’ve said before that i hope that Good Omens the TV show’s success ushers in a new era of stories ending on a light note so people leave them happier than they came in (or satisfied by a hard-won victory that doesn’t end in suffering for everyone involved even if they’re on the winning side: GOT versus Good Omens, really, since GOT is 100000000% guilty of that fucked up kind of ending) and can find comfort in them. i want my books to be the kind where people can reread them for the comfort of finding that happy ending, and i hope i’ve achieved that (since i’m only just now getting into standalones, i’m really only just beginning to challenge my ending chops since my other books were the first of series and thus needed to have that hard ending with a dash of hope, whereas my standalones are free to end with hard-won happiness--tbh, @ripley-stark would be the only one who can say if i’ve achieved that, considering she’s the only one on here who’s read my first standalone from start-to-finish), bc those are the kinds of stories i seek and appreciate and love. 

does that answer your question? i think i just rambled a lot, as per usual. heh. 

*to go off-topic and fall into the land of speculations that i tend to stay out of, Jensen and Jared have both said they want Sam and Dean to die by the end bc that’s the only way they’d ever stop hunting. recently, Jensen said that the ending wasn’t what he expected and that he had to come to terms with it, though he now understands it and thinks that the audience will, too. there’s a huge part of the audience who want Sam and Dean to die by the end, too. however, Jensen’s comment has only further cemented my endgame positive outlook, since if Sam and Dean survive that would go against what he and Jared have wanted or expected to happen for years now, thus forcing him to come to terms with it. i know some people have been really worried by his comments, and obviously we shouldn’t put much stock into them bc the ending is a year away, it was an interview and you can’t rely on interview answers to make solid predictions, and PR isn’t showrunning, but it only helped bolster me upon going into the final season. 

[joannalannister]

Is there any chance of a happy ending for the Lannisters? I know they are awful people but why develop their motivations and give each of them a genuine moment of compassion if they are just going to murder each other? Every other POV gets a moment of truth/redemption why not the children of Tywin/Patriarchy/Aerys and Disability? I'm a bad person myself so I need to believe the Lions can defy themselves and prophesy and overcome their nature or what's the point? Not all of us are born Starks.

Hey! So it’s gonna take me a few minutes to answer your question, but I promise I’m gonna get there.

In one of the other shows I watch, an actor commented on the banality of evil. He said that evil is something commonplace. Given the right circumstances, great acts of evil could be committed by your neighbors, or your friends, or you, or me. Because evil is so easy. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” You needn’t be a monster like Gregor to commit evil; you need only be human. 

As that actor said, it’s very dangerous to think “If they do something evil, they’re a monster, because regular people could never do that.” But regular people could do that, and they have, throughout history. But in fiction, we like to other evil. We like to say, “Those are the bad guys, see their uniforms? They’re not us, they’re not on our side.” It becomes very black and white, and it’s one of the reasons for the enduring popularity of a certain type of movie. “We’re attracted to it because of its moral certainties.” For the record, I really like that genre of movie. But we should be asking ourselves why. We as human beings prefer to simplify and distance ourselves from evil, and to ignore or diminish our own atrocities, which we rarely make movies about. It makes us feel better about ourselves to ignore the bad parts of ourselves, and to play the hero. Even Cersei does this; think about Cersei’s revisionist memories of what happened to Melara Hetherspoon.

GRRM doesn’t want his readers to have an easy time distancing themselves from evil. ASOIAF is never, “Here are the Bad Guys in their Clearly Marked uniforms with their Bad Guy flag flying high.”** In fact, GRRM even said that he deliberately wanted the Night’s Watch, the people fighting on the front lines of the Other invasion, to wear black because he wanted to mix up the color symbolism in fantasy. “Before you can fight the war between good and evil, you need to determine which is which, and that’s not always as easy as some Fantasists would have you believe.” 

(Tangent, but an interesting thing about Jaime imo is that he doesn’t always know where he stands in terms of good and evil. Sure, he knows that things like rape are wrong on an individual level, but on an institutional level, he thinks nothing of the institutionalized rape of Sansa Stark or Jeyne Poole, and he legitimately thought Tysha was just a gold digger. He doesn’t think House Lannister as an institution is bad, so he willingly does things like kick the Tullys out of their own home. There’s this narrative going around in fandom that Jaime’s actions during the FeastDance are things he’s done against his will, but Jaime participates willingly, in thought and deed, and he actively wants to keep Tommen on a throne to which the boy has no right. Even in ADWD, Jaime still thinks, like, “Well, massacring a whole family takes care of the problem.” If you’re looking for someone who actively criticizes and rebels against the Lannister regime, both in his thoughts and in his actions, that’s Tyrion.) 

SO ANYWAYS, grrm doesn’t want you to be able to say, “Those are the Bad Guys over there. We’re gonna go fight them and kill them.” (He actually says the opposite tbh: “Those are brave men. Let’s go kill them.”) 

GRRM wants you to pull those Bad Guys in close and have them put their head on your shoulder as you whisper softly, “I understand. I know this pain you’re in. It’s my own.” And then, after you’ve smoothed their hair and made them a nice cup of hot cocoa and gotten them comfortable and maybe had a good cry together, you’re supposed to look into that character’s eyes and say, “WTF is wrong with you? Look at your life; look at your choices. I’ve dealt with these same issues my whole life and I never became a mass murderer or did any of the other horrible shit that you did. You need to shape up, or else you’re going to be fucking doomed. You don’t get to keep digging this hole deeper for yourself and think it’s gonna come out ok!! You’re literally in a fucking GRRM novel ffs, do you even know how high that guy’s kill count is???”

(This is literally like Sandor Clegane’s story. On the Quiet Isle, he figures out he needs to shape up. He no longer works for the Lannisters. Not everybody’s story needs to be about redemption, though. Some stories are tragedies.)

If the Starks are the characters you should aspire to be (and lbr, the Starks are who you should aspire to be; there’s a reason everybody in canon wants to be a Stark, from Robert to Theon to Barbrey etc)

then the Lannisters are the warning against who you could become, if you aren’t careful. You came to me saying, “I’m a bad person myself.” idk if you wanted me to tell you, “That’s ok, it’s all going to work out” but I’m not gonna do that. That’s not how it works, in either fiction or real life. 

I see a lot of myself in House Lannister. Selfishness. Avarice. Pride. Shame. Perfectionism. These things resonated with me when GRRM wrote about them in the Lannisters, precisely because he made the Lannisters so real. In other fantasy stories, sure, the villains are proud or selfish or whatever, but they’re so clearly the Evil Bad Guys that they were never relatable to me. 

GRRM brought so many of his antiheroes / anitvillains / villains so close to home that I couldn’t ignore them. I couldn’t other them and dismiss them. The Lannisters called to me. They demanded I read and write fanfiction, even, to explore these issues further. The Lannisters showed me who I could be, and what terrible, terrible things I might be capable of, in the right scenario. GRRM turns it up to 11, but still. The Lannisters warn me: don’t be that person. 

That’s why I get so happy at the idea of the Lannisters being brought down. It’s a very personal victory; that ugly, horrible person I could have been was defeated. 

Cersei has her moments of truth in the narrative where people tell her she needs to shape up, and she ignores them. Outside the sept of Baelor, the people tell her they don’t want vengeance; they just want to live their lives in peace. And Cersei doesn’t listen. If you’re heading for a trainwreck and you don’t heed any of the warning signs, I’m sorry but it’s not going to be okay in the end. For Jaime and Cersei, I think their story is about existential tragedy - they will ultimately be unable to rise above their Lannister ideology, and for that the narrative will demand their deaths. And that’s ok. The Bad Guy characters can crash and burn, but you don’t have to if you heed the warnings they ignored. 

The other thing I will say, after reading other works written by GRRM and getting a feel for his endings … it’s not about whether you live or die. We all die. Every single person who reads this is going to die. It’s not about the happy ending, either. Winter – the bad times – come for us all. Maybe the bad times will come again only after 10 years, or 20, but they will come. (lol at theories that the seasons will be “normal” in ASOIAF at the end.)

What matters in GRRM’s stories is whether the character took a stand. Did they fight for what was right? Did they do that good thing when they had the chance? Did they achieve that existential victory? I think this is the part that applies to Tyrion especially. 

Tyrion is GRRM’s fav and he’s one of the greyest of the greys. He does horrible unforgivable things in the books. But there’s going to come a pivotal moment when Tyrion has to choose, and I think that he will make the Good choice, even if it kills him. (Perhaps especially if it kills him, in the ultimate self-sacrifice.) Because it doesn’t matter if he dies. Like I said, we all die. What matters is what you did with your life. Were you victorious in that moment when you had to make a choice between Good and Evil? 

And that’s something that I love about ASOIAF tbh, that GRRM brings the War for the Dawn home. It’s a war inside each of his characters (#body as battleground, im gonna keep saying it), it’s in the conflicts of the human heart, in the choice between good and evil. 

“The war has been waged since time began, and before it is done, all men must choose where they will stand.” 

“It hurts, boy,” he said softly. “Oh, yes. Choosing … it has always hurt. And always will. I know.”

The point of art isn’t necessarily the art itself but how we respond to it. How did it make you feel? What did it make you think about? What did you do, after you put the book down and went out again into the real world? 

As we ride around in these characters’ heads, the War for the Dawn becomes our war too. It’s our fight between good and evil. It’s a war that’s more real than a battle against orcs and monsters. (Think about Jon Snow’s choice to let wildling refugees in through the Wall, and how many senior Night’s Watch officials oppose what he’s doing. Think about it.)

Like I said above, not every story is a redemption arc. I don’t think Jaime’s story is a redemption arc, for example. Some stories are tragedies, where the character dies in the end, because they couldn’t overcome their nature (like Jaime as the valonqar). It’s not the death that’s the point, but the journey you went on with that character. How did it make you feel? 

I mean, GRRM is literally making you feel empathy for murderers. 

Would you be half so concerned with what’s going to happen to the Lannisters at the end if GRRM wrote them as Pure Evil™, without any of those sympathetic moments? In other words, how do you feel about Gregor? Will you care when Gregor dies? I know I won’t. GRRM wrote the Lannisters the way he did, with complex motivations and heartbreaking moments and compelling backstories, because he wanted to breathe life into them and make them real. 

GRRM wanted to make you care before he kills them, so that their deaths will affect you more strongly, so that these feelings, these critical thoughts, these lessons you learned will linger looooong after you turn the final page. (Have I told y’all how much Fevre Dream and With Morning Comes Mistfall HAUNT me??? Oh god do GRRM’s stories linger. Y’all think this is all gonna be over and done with after we turn the final page of ADOS and Blood of Dragons and D&E. Heh. I know better. I know better. ASOIAF is for life.) 

If the thesis of ASOIAF is to recognize our common humanity and to understand that dehumanizing people is wrong, your sympathetic emotions toward the villainous Lannisters go a long way toward supporting GRRM’s thesis on a meta-level. 

**The Others are clearly evil eldritch slavers, but the focus of the story is never on them. We’re almost exclusively focused on what humanity is doing, for 5 books now.

***Also, I’m not sure why Aerys is included here when referencing Tywin’s children, but I’m going to overlook that and point you here: #A plus J does not equal T

EDIT: I think I said this better over here so I’m just gonna paste it below:

GRRM brings the war home when he writes about the conflicts of the human heart. It implies a personal battlefield inside each of us, a perpetual fight of Good versus Evil, consisting of all those choices we make, each and every day. (Even the choices you make about ASOIAF. Doesn’t that make you feel … idk … bigger … more important … more involved … as a reader, that one of the great battlefronts of the War for the Dawn is located inside your head, in terms of your opinions about and reactions to ASOIAF?)