#i’m not making the argument for asoiaf characters because game of thrones wasn’t real and can’t hurt me

[amarimeta]

i’ve said this a million times before but truly no matter how crazy you think the crazy woman from your tv show is. she can never be nora durst.

[basilone]

Top 5 Ships and also, Top 5 Assholes (Characters that are absolute dumpster fires but you gotta love em!)

Thank you! ❤️Okay, for ships I’m totally gonna stick with HBO War (the only non-HBO War ship that would ordinarily make top 5 on any occasion is Kastle - Frank Castle/Karen Page so it’s not like you’re missing out on much by my limiting the ask as such lol) but for the assholes-one I’m gonna expand our horizons a bit because I’m having a hard time coming up with that..

Top 5 Ships

Speirs/Grant (aka the one that blindsided me, abducted me in the middle of the night, and intimidated me into changing a whole fic just to suit it -- not bad for a ship that has almost zero shared scenes and a character whose characterization changes depending on who you ask.. for me Grant’s the loudmouthed challenging one in this ship though, and if I was a braver woman it’d give me the means to write bottom!Speirs)

Leckie/Hoosier (the hill I’m gonna die on and die on fondly, these two just jive and make beautiful argumentative stuff together -- I’m very soft for the way they look at each other and I gotta just say that the non-verbal communication?? even better than them mouthing off at each other)

Andy/Eddie (soulmates soulmates soulmates -- where one is, the other is. and look, I know my mom wasn’t paying close attention to them but when Andy died she said “didn’t he already die” and fuck if that didn’t hit me -- Andy dies twice in this series, and I will spend a lifetime indulging in the darkest angst while also coming up with any way to let them both live happily ever after)

John/Lena (!! my kingdom for John/Lena!! they’re just.. ohhh. I love them so much. and it’s made even better/worse by the account of real-life Lena never remarrying etc.. like get yourself a forever love like that, even though it’s tragic and hurts my soul)

Speirs/Nixon (because that’s the bender I’m currently on and it’s not my fault Speirs is this shippable okay it’s just not -- I feel like we’ve collectively been sleeping on the potential of two wildly intelligent yet feral men alternating between indulging and denying one another everything, and the fact of the matter is that these two may be each other’s true equals in this narrative and we gotta explore that more I’m begging)

Top 5 Dumpsterfire Characters

Long John Silver - Black Sails (like, he’s alone at the top. the rest of this top 5? don’t even touch the tier he’s on. good gods I love him beyond all reason but the man is just.. he’s.. whew. he’s a mess, and that’s putting it lightly. his life choices? forever questionable. his silver tongue? trouble. his existence? a mirage, a shadow, a question we will never know an answer to. every time I think about him I just need to take a moment to recognize that he will always be the most exquisitely written and acted character on TV)

Robert Leckie (I will fight him in the middle of a bookstore I swear to all that’s holy in this world I will absolutely 100% hit him in the head with the biggest book I can find because this man aggravates me to no fucking end and YET I cannot bring myself to hate him)

Ward Meachum - Iron Fist (dumpsterfire character, you said? Ward’s entire life is a dumpsterfire, thank you very much, and he is slowly but surely beginning to realize that he does not exactly have access to a fire extinguisher. and sure he is someone to feel bad for but holy moly he’s also a rich kid whose problem-solving skills are problematic in their own right and his issues are through the roof lol)

Lewis Nixon (listen to me he is the epitome of a flaming pile of trouble and yet I love him an unreal amount, he has no coping skills whatsoever unless you count his copious amounts of alcohol and he is very ill-equipped to deal with life and boy howdy it shows but I LOVE HIM ANYWAY)

Jaime Lannister - ASoIaF/GoT (it’s him. the dumpsterfire I’ve loved since I was 15 and first caught sight of him in the books. it’s been 16 long years of loving this trashpile, I have ugly-wept/grieved over what Game of Thrones’s final season did to him, and words cannot quite express how utterly stupid he is and how stupid I am for latching on to him and going “this one please”)

[lightninginabottle0613]

some post-ttlr reflections 🚌💛

typing this from beyond the grave, as you all have killed me/are continuing to kill me with your sweet comments on this epilogue. what are you all doing, why are you all perfect angels. why was my “””epilogue””” the longest goddamn chapter of this story. i have so many questions and not a single answer.

if you are at all interested in some deeply personal ramblings and feelings (tw: depression and mental health and all of that), those are below the cut. i was honestly just looking for a place to dump them all, so i could properly process this whole experience that completely turned my life upside down in a matter of months. but if i learned anything from writing this story, it’s that maybe some people can relate to what i’m feeling! so they’re there - if that’s something that floats your boat.

if not (and you will not offend me, seriously, it’s long lol), then please please please just know one thing - i love every single person who read this story. i can’t believe it’s over and i’m going to miss the fuck out of it, but i’m so happy that i could write something worthy of consumption for a fandom/pairing that is so close to my heart. i sort of felt the whole time like i wished i had waited until it was finished to start posting, instead of updating after i was done each chapter, but looking back - i’m so glad i didn’t. this story was so heavy in so many ways, and every comment and private message made me want to keep writing. so much about this felt like a shared experience and a collaborative effort, even as the author, so i just want to say thank you to anyone who showed it even the slightest amount of attention. i can’t wait to keep writing both for and among such incredible people.

(also, i would be remiss if i didn’t say a special thank u/i love u to @yanak324 and @harrenhollaback. for the emotional support and for gifting me with friendships i never expected when i joined this community. i owe you both more than i can say.)

ok hey! i’ll get right to it - 2019 was the worst year of my life, and i very nearly didn’t survive it.

i’ve struggled with depression for about ten years, to varying degrees. it runs deep in my family, in pretty much every person on my mother’s side, and i didn’t learn that until about four years into my own mental health journey. my entire life, a lot was expected of me - not a super uncommon thing for an eldest child, i think. but as a result of a lot of repression from other people in my family of their own mental illnesses, i was confused by a lot of the heaviness i was feeling, and i thought i needed to handle it the same way, because that was the only example i had.

a lot of my progress was stunted after that, but i did start trying to make some changes when i turned 18. even so, i was doing a lot of the work on my own and in silence, and i still made a lot of decisions based on what i thought i should do, instead of giving myself the space and time to figure out what i actually wanted to do. i think my main focus for so long was just on not feeling sad anymore - because i was still so in the dark about the complexities of depression, and i had no idea how much work it actually takes to undo a lifetime of destructive behaviors and negative thought patterns.

my life was pretty nonstop from 18-24. for six years i dealt with one crisis after another. i was forced to react to all of them in real time, but i wasn’t able to thoroughly process any of them, and it wasn’t until may of 2019 that i realized just how brutal and damaging that pace was. that month was the first time that my life was even remotely calm for the first time in six years, and once my mind had a second to breathe, i realized just how numb it was.

i really, really did not want to be here anymore. i was so far down in the pit (something i’ve been calling it for about five years), that i could barely breathe. i can remember one specific saturday that month where i sat on the floor of my apartment for three hours in silence and didn’t eat a single thing until 6:00 that night. even now as i type this, i’m curbing the urge to call myself dramatic (ha), but i don’t know how else to describe it - other than saying that i quite literally could not function.

as suuuuper dumb and cheesy as this probably sounds, this was all concurrent with the last season of game of thrones and my subsequent discovery of the character of arya (i hadn’t consumed any asoiaf content prior to last year). i was so fascinated by her - i know so many arguments can be made that show!arya was not really her by the end of it, but trust and believe that i have read everything about book!arya that i can get my hands on. i had never seen so much of myself in a character before - both book and show - and i found such a comfort in watching her navigate childhood and deal with trauma and learn how to be vulnerable.

i couldn’t tell you the first fic i found or even how i stumbled across ao3 to begin with. but i can tell you that - not unlike probably anyone reading this, lol - i think i tore through like five stories a day for the entire summer. you know that post that’s like ‘all i did this summer was read fanfiction and cry’ ? hello. LITrully all i did. reading so many different authors’ takes on a character that i connected with so deeply and how she leaned into love/grew from pain/strengthened her convictions was a catharsis i’d never experienced before.

i had a massive upheaval in my personal life toward the end of august that resulted in my living out of a hotel room for five days, and one of those days i blinked and had 6K words of a gendrya fic written. it contained zero of the angst and pain i was feeling, and i still have no idea which deep recess of my brain it came from. it was light and silly, and i had no intention to continue beyond that, honestly. and then the literal first comment i ever got was from someone that said ‘please don’t let this be a one-shot,’ and i suddenly realized i was doing something so harmful (something that’s been a habit of mine for so, so long, but one that fic-writing has forced me to break) - i had found something that i genuinely enjoyed, but i was talking myself out of pursuing it, because my own insecurities were telling me it wouldn’t be worth it.

ttlr was supposed to be similarly light. i’d seen a post on a really long prompt list that was written by someone whose parents actually met in the same way that gendry and arya meet in the story, and i thought it was hilarious and serendipitous and perfect for their canon storyline, which is very much a pseudo-road trip in a way. i wanted arya to have struggles with depression and self-worth, because that’s true to my interpretation of her character, and i knew i wanted to sort of explore her conflicts with catelyn as a bit of a side plot, but nothing could have prepared me for how heavy the story became. the basic gendrya plot remained the same, but the rest of the story strayed so far from the outline i planned out, in the best way.

i really hate to call it self-insertion, because i think that sort of cheapens the messages i started to try to send with each chapter, but almost every non-gendrya detail in the story is something that’s happened to me. 99% of arya’s conversation with catelyn in chapter 10 came from verbatim text messages between my mom and me, that i had to scroll back to in order to reference. i struggled so much with how to characterize ned, because i think he’s sort of difficult to get right since a lot of his canon characterization is learned through memories that other people have of him, but in this story, he is my dad. all of arya’s introspections and bad habits are mine, her conversations with her therapist are mine (adapted accordingly), and her attitude toward romantic love is mine. i do my best to keep a journal, but writing this story all but replaced that for me, for months.

so EVEN AS i slowly started to adjust to what this story was turning into for me personally, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for how it resonated with other people. depression is like a tailored suit. on the outside, it looks like any other suit for any other person, and it has a lot of the same surface-level features. but beyond that, it preys on your specific insecurities and traumas, and no one person’s experience is exactly the same as someone else’s - obviously, because no two people are exactly the same. so when i started getting comments and messages from people saying they felt seen and understood, and that my depiction of mental illness was like a punch in the gut/made them cry/was so true that it was at times hard to read, i knew that there was a reason that my brain wanted me to write this story, beyond my need for my own healing.

one of the best comments i got was from someone who said that in the future, if they ever met someone who said they didn’t understand depression, they were going to show them ttlr. i cried for like half an hour after i read that (like the choking, sobbing kind), because all i ever want to do is educate myself and other people on this really hard stuff, and make people feel like they have the right tools to be empathetic. i know that the story ended on a hopeful note - because there is always hope but it’s also a fiction story (and i would never write an un-hopeful ending for gendrya…miss me with that) - but i also really hoped to convey the idea that she still has work to do.

because i am so far from done, myself. i’m still living in the city i moved to when i thought that all i needed was physical space from my problems, and i’m finally (sort of) at a place where i can take the time i need to figure out where i’m meant to be next. i’m in my last semester of grad school, studying something that i recently learned i hate, because i picked it thinking it was the logical decision, and now it would be stupid to drop out. and i really did have that text conversation with my mother, but that was about nine months ago, and i currently haven’t spoken to her since new year’s day.

i’m also in therapy, and i’m slowly starting to reach back out to some of the people i love, who i’ve shut myself off from for the past eight months. i’m at a job that i kind of hate in a lot of ways, but it also allows me to have one-on-one time with people and help them develop, and that’s super fulfilling. and i have a real hobby now that i previously hadn’t done since before i was a teenager. that’s thanks in large part to arya, but it really comes down to this community of people.

i am fully aware that i’m on the younger side of the people in this fandom, and the last thing i want to do is come off as preachy. but while i have big plans to continue writing for these characters and treating them with the care they deserve, i also do really want to continue to be someone that can make people feel a little bit less alone (through the stories i tell, and beyond that). the entire journey of this story for me was a lesson in how to say what i feel in an unapologetic way, treat even the darkest and saddest parts of myself with the same amount of love that i do the happy parts, and hopefully create a space where people feel like they can do the same thing.

i read something once that said that a member of a family who actively chooses their own healing will go through a period where they become the enemy, because they’ve disrupted the family system. i don’t know that this is true all the time, but i think it’s a really eye-opening way to think about a lot of situations where people find themselves isolated even more for prioritizing their own recovery. it was certainly the case for me, anyway. again, i know that i’m young and i have a lot of life left to live, but (at the risk of sounding ….. dramatic) i have that life to live because i’m making that prioritization. if ttlr, and any other story i write, can serve as the reminder for at least one person that healing is a choice we make and a long road to travel - and based on the comments i’ve gotten, it sounds like it has - then there’s nothing more that i could ask for.

this story is my entire heart and soul. i worried every step of the way about whether i was doing justice to the characters, but i mostly just loved having an outlet for such tough stuff. i’m excited to write more, but i don’t know that anything will ever mean as much to me as this has. so thank you to every person that gave it the time of day (or night lol). writing it genuinely changed my life.

(also as an additional resource, i’m sharing this podcast interview with none other than the hero of winterfell herself. i watched this when it first came out, and i’ve watched it probably 50 times since. if you’ve made it this far in this post - first of all, omg. but also if anything i said struck a chord and you haven’t seen this, it’s a must-watch. she hits the nail on the head perfectly, and she puts so much into words that i was never able to before.)

my messages are always open. i am always free to talk about anything and everything mental health. if you’re struggling, just know that i’m with you and i love you. 💛

[mytargaryenchildren]

How a historical analysis might help reconsider the need to accept Game of Thrones’ TV ending

I’m dedicating this post to @bendthekneejon ❤️

I wrote this weeks ago but real life got in the way of finalizing it, but here you go. Almost 2 months later and I’m still angry about the Game of Thrones ending. And here’s how I am getting over it.

Most people I see online have been upset about the way the Game of Thrones TV show ended, including me. I have been a mega fan since 2013, read the books, spent a lot of money traveling to filming locations and on cosplay, went out of my way to meet Kit Harington, but most importantly I have used the story of ASOIAF as escapism for these past 6 years. It’s so ingrained in my daily imagination, so it’s been really difficult to come to terms with the butchering of characters and their arcs, sexist/racist writing, and an overall unsatisfying ending that we got just for the sake of ‘subverting expectations’.

To come to terms with my disregard for Season 8, I was thinking about a lecture I attended back in 2018 at my undergraduate university by Ayelet Haimson Lushkov. She wrote You Win or You Die: The Ancient World of Game of Thrones as a comparison of the events and tropes within ASOIAF with ancient Roman and Greek history. Usually, the comparison is made with medieval Britain or European history, but I found many of the parallels, especially from Essos, to be more interesting than the typical feudalist reading of ASOIAF that we get by historians. That’s not my main point here, though I would definitely check her book out if you’re a fan of history and ASOIAF like me. My main point is how to reconcile David and Dan’s ending or George R. R. Martin’s future ending with an actual satisfying end, and how modern fandom culture is actually the perfect way to bridge this gap.

Lushkov spoke about the formation of ‘canon’ in this lecture.  She explained how interesting it is how exactly ASOIAF canon has come to be: one author began it, which would usually be considered the one and only ‘true’ canon of a certain media. However, when it went to D&D and HBO, especially once they surpassed George’s books, that canon splintered into two. There’s book and show canon. Up until season 8 I was a fan of both; I liked each one for different reasons. I saw it as getting two separate stories told by two different entities, just using the same characters. In my heart I never preferred one over the other, I saw them as two different canons, two stories. I’m arguing that this is how we must think of the world of ASOIAF now. The book and show are completely different stories, and should remain that way. HOWEVER I’m taking it a step further.

Fandoms are just an authoritative source of canon as the ‘original’ creators. There, I said it. Now, let me explain this view by using Lushkov’s explanation. Because she looked into classical history, she naturally used Homer’s epic poems as a source to compare the content of ASOIAF with. Then she made the parallel, or reverse parallel, with the formation of these stories. First, it is important to understand the theories around Homer. “There are scholars who see (most of) the Iliad and sometimes the Odyssey as the work of a single inspired poet, a genius whom they call Homer.” In my parallel, this theory reflects GRRM and most singular content creators. However, the other argument helps my view, that “the Homeric poems are the product of a long series of compositions and re-compositions,” where “Homer is seen as a ‘movement’ rather than as an individual”. This theory states that the Greek Epics were compiled over time, by many people, until eventually it became one single canon. This isn’t only applicable to Greek poetry. Let’s look at where the word ‘canon’ comes from: religion. The Bible for example was written over time by different contributors into one eventual canon that’s followed by millions today. Each of the four gospels has its own version of the story of Christ, and even they differ from one another within canon!

So, why is this important? What does it have to do with the ending of Game of Thrones? Well, what I’m saying is that if we all agree that Game of Thrones season 8 was the worst thing to happen to the world of ASOIAF, we can throw it out the window of canon if we want. By reversing the formation of canon, us fans have just as much authority over it as David and Dan. Of course I’m not saying that every headcanon is 100% legitimate, no, but what I’m saying is that due to the widespread disdain and hatred for the ending, and overall agreement that it wasn’t up to the standards of the rest of canon, it’s acceptable for us to disregard it completely and feel no guilt in that. I don’t want anyone to say “no, I’m ignoring the final 3 episodes” and then to feel that underlying guilt or belief that you’re turning your back on a story you’ve loved for years. I know how much effort has been put into metas, theories, and fanfics. Some of you have spent way more time on this canon than D&D combined. It’s such a personal thing too, loving these characters, reflecting on our lives through them, and wanting to see them thrive. This analysis should help you disregard season 8 and feel justified about it under the definitions of canon.

Lushkov mentioned that modern fandom culture is so important in the acceptance of canon, and she was the one who suggested this reversal of roles. The definition of “Canon” is where my argument is strengthened: “Canon is a source, or sources, considered authoritative by the fannish community. In other words, canon is what fans agree "actually" happened in a film, television show, novel, comic book, or concert tour. Specific sources considered canon may vary even within a specific fandom.” Note the importance of fan’s acceptance in this definition. In Lushkov’s analysis, the fans play the same role as the original orators of the Greek epics before the Homer canon was solidified. Modern fandom is defined by many people sharing a story, and especially sharing extra content like metas and fanfics.

There’s a precedent for disregarding canon set already, though, and hopefully this can convince you more that you’re justified in throwing season 8 in the trash. When Disney bought Star Wars, they threw out everything that had been done in the Extended Universe and made up their own new canon. The Extended Universe was an example of one canon being created by one person, and then authors taking that and making their own additional stories in universe, that counted as canon. So, are all of their stories, their hard work, is it all invalid now? I wouldn’t say so. There’s just two separate canons now. Also, how many times have comic books been retconned? Just think about how many different superheros have 5 different film versions!  Creators ignore the past, or change it, and then new canon is accepted or not accepted by fans. I mentioned the Bible earlier; even THAT split into multiple Canons due to disdain for creators misusing canon! My years of studying Martin Luther have finally come in handy! Am I really comparing 1.5 million Game of Thrones fans signing a petition to remake season 8 to Martin Luther’s 95 Theses against the Catholic Church? You know what, yeah, yeah I am. 

If 1.5+ million people have signed the petition to remake Game of Thrones season 8, if 90% of the articles I see online hate the ending, if almost all of tumblr discourse says that the ending was gross and sexist and racist, well let’s throw it out the window. Clearly almost every character was acting out of character. The people we saw in the last 3 episodes of Game of Thrones were not the characters we grew to love in the previous 7.5 seasons.

I hope by pointing out real historical canons, as well as modern fandom interactions and media consumption, I’ve shown that the idea of one unifying ‘canon’ has never been as clear cut as one might hope. In this, I hope that everyone who is considering ignoring season 8 and turning to fanfiction to correct the mistakes made by David and Dan feels no remorse in doing so. GO FOR IT!! If Martin Luther could, you can too.