#like oh yeah sure grrm was definitely the one who told them what to go w & how

[asprettyasyourown]

How/Where do you think Jon and Arya will meet again? And how/where do you think Dany and Arya will meet?

Honestly, I can’t see Arya and Jon meeting anywhere else other than Winterfell. It would be such a satisfying “conclusion” to this aspect of their storyline. For Arya, both Winterfell AND Jon have been associated with home. She has tried since day one to return to either of them, and to see her do both at the same time would be so lovely. And Jon too, who has struggled for so long with his desire to have Winterfell (feeding his rivalry with Robb and his conflict with his status as a bastard) and Arya (contradicting his position as a member of the Night’s Watch, who have no family), would then get both at the same time. I know GRRM doesn’t like to hand things on a silver platter, and that “Be careful what you wish for” is a massive theme in the series, but come on. You can’t tell me they had it easy, and that they didn’t fight for it.

Now how and when is a little trickier.

Unfortunately, it won’t happen before a loooong time. Arya has a long way to go before leaving Essos, let alone reach Winterfell. She still needs to: 

Tie the story with the FM (including a “training” with the courtesans/the Black Pearl, and of course leaving them);

Deal with the wildlings women and children that are stranded in Braavos now that the Sealord captured the ship (= slavers) that intended to sell them;

As I’ve mentioned before, I very much see the Iron Bank being involved in her storyline, so there’s that to deal with as well;

Meet Dany (I’ll go back to this later);

Go back to Westeros;

Deal with the Riverlands, the Brotherhoods Without Banners and, most importantly, Lady Stoneheart;

Reconnect with Nymeria.

And all that doesn’t even take into account what GRRM could throw in her way on top of all of this. That’s a lot. And since Arya will definitively not see Jon anywhere outside of the North, it could only happen after she resolved all those things.

Jon too has a lot on his plate. He first needs to be resurrected (duh). He also needs to deal with the traitors who stabbed him and his future in the Night’s Watch. If you omit the whole murder thing (kinda hard to tbh), there is still the fact he broke his vows for Arya. He was already set to leave before he died. And since his last thoughts were about Arya, and we know the dead who get resurrected focus on their last conscious thoughts, his resolve to get her back will not be lessened.

Honestly, I think he’s done with the NW. I think he’s gonna do what he intended to before dying, aka kill Ramsay and get “Arya” back, whether by allying with Stannis or at the head of his own wildling army. I don’t know if he’s gonna become King in the North like in GoT, but he’s definitively going to be considered for the role; and since Bran, the legitimate heir, is still alive and will one day return to Winterfell, this could be the catalyst for the tension between these two George planned in his original draft. Not to mention the tensions it would create with the other northern lords, who would not see with a kind eye a bastard allied with the wildlings (enemies of the North for generations) and Stannis; or those who simply won’t appreciate a king not as malleable as a child (side-eye to the Manderlys).

(Oh, and there is also the matter with fArya and Theon. I’m going on a limb here, but I doubt he’s gonna be happy to learn that what he thought was his precious “sister” is really an impostor (though he might be happy to know the real Arya didn’t get what Jeyne had to endure). Or that she’s bringing along the guy who betrayed the Starks and supposedly killed Bran and Rickon. His first reaction definitively won’t be good, though it will probably soften once he learns what happened to them and how Ramsay is the real culprit. But I’m not anticipating much benevolence from him, especially since he’s in dark mode now).

So yeah. Lots of issues to be resolved before they can be reunited, and that’s without counting on the threat of the Others or what other characters might do. Honestly, I’m anticipating a reunion between the end of TWOW and the beginning of ADOS. On one hand, I think it would be more impactful in TWOW; most specifically, the last act of either Jon or Arya’s chapters. It would be a nice conclusion for the both of them, before the Others mess everything up. But I’m also aware that all the issues I’ve previously mentioned might not be resolved in one book, and that it might spill on the second one.

-----------------------------

Now Dany.

Honestly, it’s kinda hard to be sure of how they’re gonna meet. They will, that’s a certainty. There is so much hints, since the first book really. Remember this?

This time the monsters did not frighten her. They seemed almost old friends. [Arya, IV, AGOT]

Which is exactly how I’m anticipating their relationship. At first, things are going to be tense, especially on Dany’s side who has been fed lies about the Starks and their role in her exile (and who could blame her). So there’s definitively room for Arya to be frightened. But once she gets Dany to see her side to the story, and her vision of the events become more balanced, they’ll become fast-friends. They have so much in common, it’s impossible for them not to.

But, once again, the details of how they’re gonna meet is blurry. Arya will need to at least be done with the FM. And Dany... Dany has a lot on her plate too. She’s gonna need to deal with the khalasar she hears at the end of ADWD, and a possible confrontation (alliance?) with the Dothraki. She will also need to end the plot in Meereen (aka choose between “fixing” its whole culture or do what she always intended to, return to Westeros and seize back the Iron Throne). Of course, we know she’s gonna choose the latter - but a bunch of things can happen between that, and with them time passing.

At this point, Arya and Dany are very far away, each at one extremity of Essos. For them to have a chance to meet, I anticipate that Dany will end things with Meereen at the same time Arya closes the storyline with the FM (maybe even before, so Dany could already be on the road towards Braavos). Now is the tricky part. I have two theories on how they will meet: through the lost Wildlings and through the Iron Bank.

The lost Wildlings

We know the wildlings women and children in Braavos were “freed” when the Sealord seized the ship carrying them. Unfortunately, others were not so lucky.

“I know why the Sealord seized the Goodheart. She was carrying slaves. Hundreds of slaves, women and children, roped together in her hold.” Braavos had been founded by escaped slaves, and the slave trade was forbidden here. “I know where the slaves came from. They were wildlings from Westeros, from a place called Hardhome. An old ruined place, accursed.” Old Nan had told her tales of Hardhome, back at Winterfell when she had still been Arya Stark. “After the big battle where the King-Beyond-the-Wall was killed, the wildlings ran away, and this woods witch said that if they went to Hardhome, ships would come and carry them away to someplace warm. But no ships came, except these two Lyseni pirates, Goodheart and Elephant, that had been driven north by a storm. They dropped anchor off Hardhome to make repairs, and saw the wildlings, but there were thousands and they didn’t have room for all of them, so they said they’d just take the women and the children. The wildlings had nothing to eat, so the men sent out their wives and daughters, but as soon as the ships were out to sea, the Lyseni drove them below and roped them up. They meant to sell them all in Lys. Only then they ran into another storm and the ships were parted. The Goodheart was so damaged her captain had no choice but to put in here, but the Elephant may have made it back to Lys. The Lyseni at Pynto’s think that she’ll return with more ships. The price of slaves is rising, they said, and there are thousands more women and children at Hardhome.” [The Blind Girl, ADWD]

So the Goodheart was too damaged to go to Lys, but the Elephant wasn’t. It means there are still hundreds of wildlings women and children enslaved there. Honestly, I’m not sure how Arya could be involved in freeing them. Lys is a long way from Braavos, which means she would have to travel down there (with no resources and the other half of the wildlings), free them and get back up to sail across the Narrow Sea, deal with the Riverlands and then go North. It’s a little much for one girl, even one as resourceful as Arya. Sure, she could ask help from the Iron Bank (see my second point), but I doubt they would indulge her (high risk for no rewards).

But. You know who is as strongly against slavery as Arya, whose path might make her travel to Lys and who has the resources to fuck shit up? Yep, Dany.

The way I see it is, after being disheartened by Meereen and her failure to change the slaver(y) culture, Dany could very much decide to go home to Westeros - and set everything ablaze in her path. If she failed to abolish slavery from the inside, she might decide to do it by force, as a last FUCK YOU to the masters. This could be the beginning of her rock bottom, before she rises back again. It’s also coherent with the Dothraki culture of “Submit or be killed”, which could play a part if she allies with them again.

So I could see her attacking the big cities of Essos, destroying the masters and freeing the slaves as she goes along, until she reaches Braavos - who may be protected since 1. she would use its port to journey across the Narrow Sea and 2. they’re famously known for being founded by slaves and anti-slavery as a whole (and they actually enforce that rule, not just preach it and close their eyes when it counts). There, she could meet Arya through the wildlings women reuniting. Like I said, things would be tense at first, but if they might not be friends at first, they might respect each other for having their hearts set on the same goal (protecting their people). Friendship would come later, I’m not worried about that.

The Iron Bank theory

For me, the Iron Bank doesn’t get the recognition it deserves as a threat, and I fully anticipate them having a much larger role in the next book.

I really believe they will have a hand in Arya going back to Westeros. After she leaves the FM, I very much see them stepping in to offer their “help” to Arya. Personally, I believe the Kindly Man informed them of her real identity (though his motivations are yet unclear). I believe he’s aware of her value as a princess, and the (supposedly) last heir of the North. Look how people are rallying for her in the North when they hear “Valiant Ned’s precious little girl” is being brutalized. Do you think the Iron Bank is gonna pass on such a prize? I can see them trying to do to her what the Manderlys are doing with Rickon, or what Illyrio tried to do with Dany - offer their protection and help so she would be/feel indebted. They could get ahold of the North through Arya, and of the other Kingdoms through Stannis/the crown’s debt. Not too shabby.

But wait, there is a problem arising. A problem named Daenerys, who fully intends to take back the Iron Throne - and if she does, she’s not gonna care about reimbursing the debt her predecessors/usurpers left, thus lessening their leverage (and with three dragons, a Dothraki army and the Unsullied, threatening her is not gonna fly well). I can see them trying to step in too, promise the same things to her they did to Arya - except she’s not gonna fall for the same ploy like Viserys did with Illyrio.

(Btw, I’m sure Arya too will see right through them - she had a whole training dedicated to make her see beyond appearances, and she’s always been pretty observant (like when she didn’t fall for trap Cersei laid for her, with Lannister soldiers dressed as Stark men in AGOT). But she also don’t have the same resources Dany has, and if she frees the wildlings, she’ll have hundreds of mouths to feed and transport back to Westeros. I can’t see her do that without external help, so she might be playing along til a better opportunity arise.)

Now, both these theories have their flaws. The biggest one, for me, is time. Meereen is not gonna be resolved in a day (unless Dany just sets everything on fire the moment she arrives and takes off into the sunset, but I doubt that). She still needs enough time to travel to Braavos. Even if George takes his sweet time closing the FM storyline, dealing with the wildlings in Braavos and the Iron Bank, it’s not gonna take a million chapters. Unless he throws something in there to delay her departure, something that wasn’t foreshadowed yet? Because I don’t see them meeting first in Westeros. What would be the point of having them on the same continent if they don’t meet there? As always, there’s a lot left hanging in the air.

[janiedean]

When one of my favourite fic writers was asked why she doesn’t like brienne’s POV she said that she’s a minor character looking for two major characters whose location we already know, they lack suspense and it’s hard to see why they’re there :( I feel like a lot of people feel this way, but what do you think is the purpose of brienne’s chapters in the grand scheme of things?

well, there’s a lot to unpack here, but:

the fact that brienne is defined minor already says all because no, she’s a pove character. she can be a secondary or not one of the main ones, true enough, but minor character? yeah, nope. she has POVs. minor characters don’t have povs unless you count throwaways with just one, but then again, melisandre has one pov and you’d never say she was a minor character, would you? yeah, exactly;

also, ‘brienne is looking for sansa and we already know who she is’: yeah, except that it’s not about sansa whatsoever, it’s about lady stoneheart and brienne herself and their rship with jaime, which means that if you’re reading brienne’s chapters wanting to find stuff on sansa you’re already approaching it wrong because ofc we know where sansa is, but brienne’s arc in affc is about sansa as much as sansa is a pretext to show you a lot of things that grrm couldn’t do otherwise.

specifically, we have two main things: worldbuilding and brienne’s character development. in order:

worldbuilding:

now, what’s happened for the first three books? people went to war and it apparently ended (in westeros) with an unlawful massacre. all of our povs until now until davos have been from nobles/economically privileged people who have mostly survived the war. we had some inklings of how it went through a) the riverrun chapters in acok where you learn that edmure had let his people in, b) the cat chapters in general, c) something from davos because he has the not-noble perspective, but did we see how the war actually devastated the entire country? no. what do brienne’s chapters offer? brienne and pod going around one of the most war-torn areas of westeros (near where the red wedding had been) and showing you exactly how much it hurt the real people living it, and sorry but if grrm, a well-known conscience objector during the vietnam war who feels about the consequence of war and pacifism very deeply, has said in an interview that his favorite scene to write in the whole of asoiaf is brienne and maribald talking about how ptsd destroys soldiers’s lives in war and war ruins people, sure as hell I’m going to assume he thinks those povs were important enough to warrant their presence;

also, you get introduced in a very subtle but effective way to a lot of future key players. as in, randyll tarly is currently on the small council or should be soon, but we don’t see him first in a sam chapter, we see him in brienne’s affc chapters where he’s presented as being basically the asshole version of stannis who told her to go back home and find a husband when he technically saved her from the bet in renly’s camp, we find out sandor is alive (!!! THE QUIET ISLE!!!), we find out where the fuck gendry ended up, we find out where the bloody mummers have scattered, we have found out where the brotherhood ended up etc, and oh wait lady stoneheart shows up and scuse me but catelyn was a major character with a shitton of povs and you’re telling me it’s a coincidence she shows up with her purpose and all in the chapters of the female character she shared a bond with, that was sworn to her and who’d have fucking died for her even after cat herself died and it’s a coincidence? like, i know this fandom hates catelyn dead or alive but she’s important, deal with it;

this also means that through brienne’s chapters grrm deals with a lot of his favorite themes to touch in a general setting without going into character-specific things, specifically:a) war, the consequences of war on who fought it, which are all negative and peace being always the best choice over it;b) those same consequences on people who suffered it without fighting (ie: have a bunch of orphans being slaughtered by bandits because their parents died!)c) the fact that the people in power don’t give a single fuck about itd) justice and how it’s dealt (randyll tarly and his exemplary methods /sarcasm)

okay, all good, you say, and then why did brienne have to do it, couldn’t it have been anyone else?

no, it couldn’t have been anyone else, and this is where we touch the other point, as in, brienne’s character development. as in:

now, george is a good writer. he also knows that if you have to set a character up for something at the peak of the series, you have to build it up before (ie: if he knew that theon was gonna save jeyne and jump from that window after regretting he didn’t die with robb, he had to start working on it since his acok chapters which he did, but you couldn’t have told that would be his storyline reading acok, right...?) which means that you need to make sure the reader has a background and knows what the hell is going on with them and why they tick the way they tick. I have previously ranted about how you can guess a lot of things about brienne if you read just acok/asos when I explained why she’s important as a literary character and I refer to that for it, but until you get to asos, since you don’t have her pov, other than ‘she’s not conventionally attractive’, you can only go insofar as:a) at some point she was in love with renly enough she’d die for himb) she’s a very morally sound person who really believes in her knightly oaths to a point that’s maybe unhealthy sometimesc) she’d die for whoever she trustsd) she will change her mind if she misjudged someone but she needs to have proofe) she doesn’t trust people easilyf) she can fight pretty damn well and possibly best than any other man in westerosg) everyone thinks she’s a joke for wanting to be a knighth) she has conflicts about wearing dressesnow, that’s not little. but still, it’s not enough for what I think george has in plans for her. now, rewind a moment, because we need to establish another point, as in...

grrm has made A Damned Point in these books of deconstructing the concept of chivalry/knighthood and pointing out how people who are seen by others as perfect knights/Good People To Boot are actually anything but and people who tried to actually do knightly things aren’t seen as such for hypocrisy or because society sucks or both (jaime and sandor vs gregor vs jaime’s old kingsguard vs the gold cloaks etc) and he’s been pretty damn going at it with a flamethrower. what you know is that at the point in the narrative westeros is at knighthood is a corrupted institution, no one believes in it (or almost), no one fits the definition of what a true knight should be or if they do other people don’t see it, and not counting the above (sandor because he doesn’t see himself as one and he loathes it because the moment gregor got knighted he got his worldview of it tainted forever, jaime because he tried and he wanted to be it and all he got was the kingslayer name) no one in these books is a darned true knight and recognized as such. now, I’ll bring up the goddamned dunk and egg books again because in those books we have a) the actual knightly oath, b) an actual true knight, as in duncan, who is/was recognized as such by the entire damned realm and actually was one. now, the oath is:In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women....now, I’m gonna drop the question: who, while going around westeros with a *valyrian sword* she doesn’t think she deserves handling and duncan’s actual shield that she takes because there was a similar one in the armory while being on a quest to save a princess:- shows bravery at every other corner (no chance and no choice guys)- dispenses justice as much as she’s allowed to (the bloody mummers and most likely lady stoneheart later) because she kills people who did horrible things- defended the young and innocent (pod and the kids in the inn, again, no chance and no choice)- protected women (she’s out to find sansa and most people in the inn were girls and if you want to rape someone rape me)?answer: brienne of tarth. yes, brienne. no, no other. and no one else could have done that, because, and here we go to the last two points...

we knew what we knew about brienne, but the moment we go into her head we find out exactly all the reasons why she does what she does, we find out what she thinks about her life, jaime, catelyn, pod, the situation she’s in and whatnot, we find out what drives her, we find out why she was going to die with renly, we find out that her core problem (other than hating that people see her as ugly) is that she can’t reconcile being a lady and a knight and she hates disappointing his father and that she’s been subjected to a really damn crappy time in her life on account of her looks, which means that we saw her as a young girl who was about to get herself killed over renly and finally finds a woman who doesn’t laugh at her in cat chapters, we saw her as what jaime sees her as ie someone who gets him/changed his mind about him/a paragon of knightly strength and vows-upholding, but we hadn’t seen her from inside her own head.from where we find out that she’s a human being with very human issues, that she’s actually not a fluke in the sense that yes she’s that good of a person, yes she’s that nice, no she doesn’t care for glory or money or fame beyond ending up in songs where she’s celebrated as beautiful and strong and not called names like in real life, no she doesn’t have some hidden agenda to fuck things up for someone, yes she really believes in knightly vows, yes she really cares for the people she swears herself to that much, yes she suffers over catelyn’s death forreal, yes she really is gone over jaime that much, yes her self-esteem is crap, no she’s not gregor clegane.and she’s also duncan’s direct descendant, even if george isn’t dropping that bomb on her yet. (and her brother’s name is galladon like one of the fairest knights in legends and wait, in arthuriana the perfect knight is galahad of which brienne is a deconstruction in herself.)now, not to presume anything, but if I was writing a series in which I 100% deconstruct knighthood in every possible way - as an institution and as ‘what people thinks a knight has to look like’ - and I was planning to have as a plot twist to have a person who doesn’t look like a proper knight according to the audience and the other characters in the narration actually be officially hailed as The Best Knight In This Entire Fucking Realm I’d probably give them POV chapters instead of having them always be seen by someone else, because you can’t know if that person is deserving of the title until it’s always other people talking about it. the moment you’re in their head you know if they have what it takes for the job or not...

which means that the brienne chapters are there because from the moment she gets them and separates from jaime she starts on a journey which ends with her having to face her worst fears about her own shortcomings and put her in front of enormous moral and ethical choices (ie jaime - the man she loves - or stoneheart as in her former liege lady gone mad, also her mission for sansa vs saving the girls at the inn because if she’s dead she can’t find sansa... but no chance and no choice) which until now have about broken everyone who has faced them (even good people at heart ie jaime and sandor got their lives turned on for the worst when knighthood ideals and vows failed them) and guess what the entire point is that while everyone else couldn’t coherently live up to those ideals and vows, brienne most likely will because she’s exactly everything a true knight TM should be, and the moment she gets over it she’s going to get the results, and since I doubt grrm wanted anyone to say that if she got that he had written an overpowered mary sue who can fight anyone and take the moral high ground without being conflicted most of the time, he’s showing you where she comes from, that she’s hella conflicted and she has a hell of a lot of issues which still don’t stop her from pursuing her dreams.

and sorry but if she’s being written to become that (and the fact that she’s duncan’s direct descendant seals it nvm the knighting in the show which I’m 99% sure is one of the three book canon things they might have done this year because like hell dnd would have cared for knighting her before kingsguarding her, they’d have forgotten it as usual) then she can’t not have povs because then she really would look like your usual mary sue just not standard attractive, but then again you don’t get how much that hurts her or weights on her until you read her chapters. then it hits you in the face. like, reading it really cemented for me that she was top three for me and my favorite female character in existence, if it stuck at asos I don’t know if i’d have gotten it that much.

also, giving a pov to the only goshdarned canonically not attractive woman who stays not attractive with her experiences and background that ever graced mainstream literature has (for me and a lot of others I know) meant that for the first time we saw someone with our darned crappy childhood self-esteem destroying experiences being the protagonist of one storyline and believe me that didn’t hurt either, and most surely grrm also meant her as that specific rep, and that would be enough of a reason if he felt like it, but nvm that.

tldr: the purpose of brienne’s chapters is showing you that war sucks and make you understand that brienne is The Knight That Was Promised and they’re there so when she’s knighted and hailed as the best one since her ancestor and most likely even better than him you don’t go like ‘what the hell where did that come from she has no pov I’ve barely seen her in these books how am I supposed to buy it’, never mind that she’s fundamental to the conclusion of catelyn’s storyline whichever it is, and catelyn’s coincidentally an extremely major character in these series and one grrm also really obviously cares about. and grrm is doing the work now so no one falls off the chair gaping and wondering what the hell was her deal in ADOS. so if anyone thinks the purpose in those chapters is finding sansa they’re imvho very far off the mark. sansa being actually the purpose of the quest happens next book after the stoneheart situation is solved, then we can discuss it. but for now, it’s not what these chapters are about - they’re about brienne and her relationships and her quest and knighthood and the worldbuilding and about how war devastates the places it happens in always, and the fact that people read those chapters and then think ‘yes but what about sansa’ and/or ‘yes but what was the point’ is imvho a self-showing proof that it’s exactly why they need them: because like that, they them and only think about the other main characters or the overachieving plot or immediate gratification when grrm wants the reader to stop and think for five minutes about what he’s telling you and he’s pointing neon lights at brienne like ‘hey SHE is the one you need to keep an eye on because She Is The Quintessential Good Guy’. but the fact that I see people dismissing her chapters as useless and boring on principle because no plot gratification and ‘she’s boring’ about says everything that has to be said imvho, and that was my tea for today, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[kellyvela]

That "might burn your family" tweet is indicative of what I know is going to happen in fandom: sure, people are indignant now about Dany but most people don't like to be rebels; they like to be co-signed by authority (the "I'm right b/c its canon" crowd"). And no matter how it was sugarcoated, GOT canon is that Dany is a mass-murderer. Those who are not stans will slowly but surely fall in line with this reading of her, not the least b/c they don't want to be wrong AGAIN when the books come out.

If you didn’t see it already, this is the HBO_UK tweet the anon refers: 

You sound very hopeful Anon. I agree that, in general, most people don’t like to be wrong, and certainly they don’t want to be wrong again about the same issue. 

But this fandom is something else…

Certain part of it just decided to live in denial and delusion (oh the irony): “I would never post a pic of dead dany”, “dany belongs to her fans that really love her and not to the misogynist show/books creators” (copyright what?), “I would never read the Books if that is the final”, etc, etc, etc.

We also have the actress that played dany saying/doing things like these:

I stand by Daenerys.

Clarke revealed that she met Beyonce at an Oscars after-party hosted by the musician and her husband, Jay Z. There, she was approached by the host herself, who gushed about Daenerys Targaryen. Beyonce, however, like the rest of the world, was at that point ignorant about Daenerys’ dark turn in Season 8. “All I wanted to scream was ‘Please, please still like me even though my character turns into a mass-killing dictator! Please still think that I’m representing women in a really fabulous way,’ ” Clarke said of the encounter. [x]

About the backlash on the final season: “It was profoundly flattering. Is what it was, because when someone cares that much, that they’re ready to make such a noise about how they believe the characters should have been… should have been finished, and how the story should have been gone. That’s just enormously flattering, that just shows how much everybody loved it.”        

She is using Dany and Drogon images to promote her charity.  Dany is not bringing fire and blood for once, she is a cute little nurse bringing help to those in need.     

We also have certain group of “asoiaf experts“ so called BNF, that decided not to watch the Show years ago, because it’s “sacrilege“, only the books are canon (in this I agree), but they have created their own canon, the way they interprete and understand the Books, and their followers buy everything they say as “the canon”. They still believe in their 20 years old theories that include Dany is the hero, maybe she would have a brief “dark phase“ but then “enters Jon” and they gonna fall in love, make love, celebrate life, have a baby, defeat the big bad guys walk walkers and sacrifice themselves to save the humanity. Tyrion will be the third head of the dragon, etc.  

As you can see Anon, that very human sentiment to hate being wrong, sometimes includes the belief that you can’t be wrong. So all these people (fans/stans/experts/etc) will stand by their beliefs and theories till the very end (when the books are at last published and they read them). And even after that they would say that GRRM is wrong, just like right now they are saying D&D are wrong.  

Dark Dany is not new. It have been theorized for years, And according to Elio García, co-author of the World of Ice and Fire, GRRM himself complimented that Dark Dany essay: “(…) he referred very specifically to the Meereenese Blot website and the knot essays. He said he was told about them, read them, and was very pleased that someone was able to get his difficulties and his intentions perfectly.”

And for those that paid attention, it was clear that the Show was taking that route at least since season 2. Her conversation with the Spice King is very telling. There is also this conversation with Hizdahr Zo Loraq in season 5 that is very much the same conversation she had with Jon just before he killed her. 

The Battle of the Bastard’s script says: “She doesn’t have to look. She only allows the faintest hint of a smile. A smile that says: my tyranny is not ended, motherfucker. It’s only just begun.”

People also have season 7 and even after watching those seven episodes, they believed that GOT was going to have a happy ending, a Disney one, with Targaryen restoration, jonerice wedding, king and queen coronation, boat baby and all. 

But you are right, the sugarcoat was real. They change season 7 - episode 2 title from “The Mad King’s Daughter” to something more poetic/whitewashed: “Stormborn”: 

What I was impressed by was the little hints that we saw of potentially her (Daenerys) becoming like her father in those conversations ( her talking with Varys). You know, threatening to burn somebody alive, in any universes, it’s not great.

Bryan Cogman: She has dragons, an effective form of execution.

But knowing what her father was doing to people that line sticks in your ear and also when inviting him ( Jon) down and she wants him to immediately bend the knee

Bryan Cogman: Yeah, I mean, she sees this as her birthright… it’s plain and simple, you know, they took this from her, it’s hers.

And so much of the episode ( really the whole season) not just for Daenerys but for a lot of our characters is dealing with the legacy of their families and the generations that preceded them and dealing not only with how they feel about it and what they might share with some of those ancestors but how other people perceive you.

That legacy it’s kind of why I wanted to originally call it the Mad King’s daughter (I like Stormborn, I think is a great title actually), I really wanted to call it the Mad King’s daughter and actually it would have made more sense.

In the original edit there were more characters referring to her like this in pretty much every scene and I think some of that was lost in the final edit but in the original script and in the original edit ( which was longer) pretty much every character that wasn’t in the Daenerys‘s circle was referring to her as “the Mad King’s daughter is here” .

Considering this idea that she’s got a reputation before she has ever set foot there, because she has a brother’s reputation too, that first scene is definitely about her reconciling with that, wrestling with how much of that legacy is good for her brand and what isn’t and certainly that is a big part of the no-fire bombing strategy.

It’s like: you could come in here and torch the whole place and everyone would be horrified and what have you achieved? If you want to rule, you need to take a different approach.

But under that, and I think you picked up on something in that first scene, is that she’s got a real kind of need and desire to go in guns blazing and from an emotional point of view the scene has to set up this.

Game of Thrones’ Writer Bryan Cogman: In Conversation (Part 2)

The Mad King’s Daughter, she’s got a real kind of need and desire to go in guns blazing. 

Yeah, hero material you all.

And even during season 8, after episode 2, Bryan Cogman made this really telling comparison between Sansa and Dany:

Sansa knows that of all the Starks that were ripped from Winterfell, she suffered the most to get it back. She’s the driving force for getting it back. Now she’s being told, “It’s not yours, and it’s not the Starks’ anymore. It belongs to Hitler’s daughter, the worst person in the world’s daughter, the daughter of the person who murdered your grandfather and uncle in the worst way possible. And guess what? Your brother, who you convinced to step up when he wanted to fuck off because of his death experience, bent the knee to her and is telling you that she’s your queen.” What part of Sansa’s reaction to any of this is irrational?

At the same time, if you’re Dany, this is the family that stole your family’s legacy. You grew up as a child living in constant fear that you were going to be murdered the next day. Then you’re married off to a warlord, and you’ve scraped and suffered and endured, and here you are. You’re going to help these people who destroyed your life and your family’s lives. Where’s the gratitude?

Even if he described both sides’ positions and sentiments, if you say one side’s reaction is not irrational, and then call the other side “Hitler’s daughter”, you know exactly who is the good guy and who is the evil one. 

D&D surely sugarcoated Dany, they were not calling her plainly “The Mad King’s Daughter”, but they were subtly telling us that she indeed was Aery’s pretty version: 

Jon: She’ll be a good queen. For all of us. She’s not her father.

Sansa: No, she’s much prettier.

—GOT season 8 - episode 1

In that “I stand by Daenerys” article, the interviewer recalled Kit Harington’s words about Jon killing Dany, during season 8 filming:

“I think it’s going to divide,” Harington says of the finale’s fan reaction. “But if you track her story all the way back, she does some terrible things. She crucifies people. She burns people alive. This has been building. So, we have to say to the audience: ‘You’re in denial about this woman as well. You knew something was wrong. You’re culpable, you cheered her on.’”

Harington adds he worries the final two episodes will be accused of being sexist, an ongoing criticism of GoT that has recently resurfaced perhaps more pointedly than ever before. “One of my worries with this is we have Cersei and Dany, two leading women, who fall,” he says. “The justification is: Just because they’re women, why should they be the goodies? They’re the most interesting characters in the show. And that’s what Thrones has always done. You can’t just say the strong women are going to end up the good people. Dany is not a good person. It’s going to open up discussion but there’s nothing done in this show that isn’t truthful to the characters. And when have you ever seen a woman play a dictator?”

After reading what Kit said, Dany stans gone rabid. They said things like HBO forced him to say those words and others simply insulted and hated him. Because, you know, he is wrong. D&D are also wrong. They are just a pair of white misogynist dudes that can’t stand women in power… SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

I mean, look at these headlines. Dany stans/targ lovers are now justifying genocide. They are making/selling/buying “Her Satanic Majestic” T-shirts. 

So there you have it Anon. Some of them decided to believe Dany will still be the hero in the Books, because she ended slavery you know, that’s not what villains do, if you think different, you are a slavery apologist, also misogynist, and surely a Stark stan, those fucking classists xenophobes…   

Some others just joined “Her Satanic Majesty” cult. Those ungrateful peasants deserved to be burned alive because they didn’t love Dany. it was their fault that Dany had to go in guns blazing on them. Burn them all! Dracarys! Fire and Blood! 

It would be a long ride Anon.  

[daenerysstrangersagain]

The Logistics of Dragons

link

Or the Ecological Disaster that is The Dragon and the Strategic Implications

Now, what got me thinking about stuff like this, were the quotes regarding Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar and their size. We are told that at least two of the dragons could fit a horse in their mouths, and that Balerion could fit something even larger, perhaps a Mammoth or Elephant. Let's assume that horse are bite sized for most fullygrown untampered or restrained dragons. From the somewhat poor portrayals of the dragons in the TV series, the dragons seem to have a very large head to belly ratio but even so, thats freaking huge. And while I'm tempted to say that because they are reptilian that there metabolism would be slowish, but they fly and breathe fire, so I doubt that.

For that reason, I'm pretty sure that multiple meals per day is the normal for a fully grown dragon. And since I doubt they were using small breeds of horses for the description, we can use working breeds and war horses. So 3/4 ton to just over a ton. Which would put daily meals, assuming 2 meals a day, at 2 tons. Not 2 tons of meat, like just the muscles of a creature, but 2 tons of flesh and bone. I'd say that being dragons, the belly fire and internal heat help melt and sterilize bones and intestinal waste of a creature. Anyways, that's two horses. Or a few dozen sheep, or lots of boar, you get the picture. Now its not too bad if you only have half a dozen or fewer dragons, like the five that Aenar originally had, that's only 10 tons of meat a day. Or 20 horses.

Yeah at only five dragons, we're talking about 140 horses a week. Or to put that another way, 7,280 horses a year. Or the equivalent in meaty flesh, which comes out to 3,640 tons a year. That's absolutely monstrous......if they primarily eat off the land. Which excluding Drogon's behavior, I don't think dragons do or even prefer. I would think they prefer fish and other water creatures. What comes to mind is the scene from the first American Godzilla, where the beast was consuming entire ship fulls of fish in the movie. But I think the reason Drogon and his siblings eat like they do is that unlike the other Valyrian dragons, they were barely exposed to the open sea at all, only fishing in the ocean maybe once in their early lives, and the rest being land based and fed from land creatures.

Back to the the numbers and the intentionally false presumption for the sake of demonstration.

So literally thousands of horses, or tens of thousands of sheep and smaller animal over the course of a year. For merely five dragons. Now the dragons of the Dance of the Dragons were somewhat smaller, but for the purpose of demonstration let's assume that every named dragon eats horses by the mouthful. I believe there were 19 Dragons in the Dance? Let's go by the startling numbers.

19 dragons would consume 38 tons of flesh, daily. That's 266 tons of flesh a week. Or about 12 Semi Trucks a week.  Or 532 adult horses a week.  That's 13,832 tons of flesh a year, or 27,664 adult horses. To put that into perspective, 19 dragons could have eaten Genghis Khan's Mongol Army out of their horses in 3 years or less. And this is all being supplied by pre-industrial agriculture and herding. Even with the entirety of Westeros, they would be eating faster than the food could be replenished.

No wonder the Dothraki had to wait until the fall of Valyria to do anything, Valyrian Dragons could have eaten the horses into extinction if they wanted to! And of course, the most horrifying bit of all? I'm assuming that dragons are satisfied with just two mouthfuls a day. How many mouthfuls a day can you, personally, eat? Or any other animal?! DUN DUN DUUUUUN!

Luckily, GRRM seems to have thought of this. If you notice, the former shepherds don't actually expand that deeply into continental Essos and definitely don't expand that fast. They would know, the hard way, how voracious dragons are and how quickly they consume entire flocks of sheep and herds of cattle when they have the mood, thus developing an early caution regarding the power of dragons, and learning important environmental and conservation lessons. Again the hardest way. They have little desire to usurp and conquer the Rhoyne river system from the Rhoynish, a river system that appears to be nearly as powerful as the Mississippi system in terms of navigability and reach. And they didn't want possesion of it for themselves. Because it was too far away from the open sea, and thus too far away from the primary source to keeping dragons fed without everyone starving. What the Valyrian Empire did do, was establish sea ports and cities real close to the sea, all along the coasts. Their dragons are the source of their power, but also a logistical weight around their neck, because in order to meet the dietary requirements, its either consume from the bounty of the ocean or strip the lands bare of anything larger than a dog. So from the peninsula of Valyria, the old empire was more heavily bound to the sea ports and shores than the British Empire. Even more powerful in relative terms to everyone else, to the extreme, but also hobbled and restricted to that same extreme.

Their behavior in their two most notable wars demonstrate this. Against the Ghiscari Empire, after slaughtering their armies time and again, they took only a small portion of land for themselves, and were largely content with leaving Slaver's Bay cities intact and subservient. Qaath and Sarnor were left to be because they only had one port between them and were apparently non-hostile to boot. But the Valyrians did expand west and slightly up the Rhoyne, in addition to their port cities across Western Essos. An interesting note is that during this time, they were trading, and may have in fact founded, Old Town. Either way, Old Town and what would become Dorne are no strangers to dragons and Dragonlords.

However, while they didn't actually want to bountiful Rhoyne and all its lands, bringing and feeding dragons so far from the sea would be intensely devastating to the local ecology. Even just a few of them. The Rhoyne river system looks to be nearly as widespread and navigable as the Mississippi River System, so it would provide the water for massive amounts of food and trade from top to bottom, and with Rhoynish Water Wizards, it may have been engineered here and there for irrigation and fish farming. I would suspect that the Rhoyne valleys at the time were replete with artificial lakes and ponds for fish farming and such, with dams and berths everywhere. But a few millennia without maintenance and time would have drained and reshaped the entire system to something more natural, but still fertile. Without the Valyrians, the Rhoynish would have been a super power, based a vast and fertile continental heartland, supplying an endless source of manpower and riches. Similar to the Reach. But bigger. Way fucking bigger and with a deeper pool of manpower to boot. The 250,000 men raised was less likely an upper limit of how many were available, and more likely a limit based on transportation. And while it is portrayed as genocidally devastating to the point of forcing a mass migration, its not the numbers that really mattered. Its who was lost and how many. I'd guess they brought the majority of the most powerful and skilled water wizards with them to the battle, possibly all but a few in the entire empire, and their loss combined with the loss of all the others, would have been irreplaceable to a civilization dependent on them. Oh and the implied threat of extinction if they don't get stepping. Fast.

Shame that they thought they could use war as a diplomatic tool against a Valyrian colony. But what choice did they have with the dragons fucking shit up for the Southern most outpost of the Rhoynish?

The Valyrians were a brutal Slavocracy, conservationist tendencies aside, and I doubt they were particularly discriminating about where the slaves came from and had an endless thirst for them, for they were few in number and had an atrocious birth rate. I mean holy shit, several thousand years, and not a single colony majority Valyrian. Not a one, so in order for their port cities to even function, they needed slaves. An endless supply of them, from the planters of the field, even down to middle managers, the Valyrians at their height would have had a slave to free man ratio closer to Haiti than Rome, and with their dragons largely feeding from the seas, this vast number of slaves required feeding. The Volantenes moving up the Rhoyne would have rang massive alarm bells among the Rhoynish, who had most likely been supplying food to the ports and outpost of the Empire. Were they next for the yoke?

The Valyrian Freehold is perhaps the most brutally efficient and invincible Slavocracy of fiction. Dragons supplying the vast majority of military might that only those with particular genetics can even use, so they have no need for a large foot contingent. Endless amounts slaves supplying all essential labor that an ethnic Valyrian doesn't care to do, not a drop of pity for the enslaved among those who could do anything about it, which means no society upending war over it. No rival capable of fighting the full might of the Valyrian host, so no outside force can intervene effectively. The only weakness they had was keeping their dragons fed, which is the only thing, aside from their own conservationist tendencies, that prevented them from over-running Westeros and Essos a mere millennia into their reign. They had no choice in establishing a mostly by the sea empire if they wanted to keep using their dragons.

[maidenoftheforestlight-blog]

"I do have some issues with how GRRM chose to frame Sansa in AGOT". Could you expand on that? What are those issues?

Well I’ve reblogged quite a few metas on this subject and written a bit about it myself and I’d love to link some of that here but… how to find that stuff on my blog without slogging through months of irrelevant posting? Hmm… I really  need to organise this blog better… 

Assuming I don’t manage to find the relevant posts (or at least some of them) then I’ll just say that my issues with Sansa in AGOT have to do with how GRRM (apparently) originally conceived of her character and how much of that actually remained in the final product; that is to say, she was originally intended to be a foil to Arya and the one Stark kid who caused problems in the happy family group dynamic. This was apparently because GRRM thought it wouldn’t be realistic for all the kids to get along perfectly and for there to be no internal strife in the Stark family at all… but isn’t it odd that out of all the kids he chose the two girls to set at odds with one another? And isn’t it doubly odd that of these two girls it is the more stereotypically feminine one who was initially created to be that little “problem” in the family dynamic? Robb and Jon could easily have been the warring siblings instead, no? Or maybe Sansa could have been a boy instead and Arya could’ve had a male foil to argue with… but instead…

Sansa, despite clearly becoming a well rounded character in her own right by the final draft of AGOT, still retains quite a bit of that original character sketch. She is written to be a foil to Arya and to cause complications for her family due to her relationship with Joffrey. While with close reading - keeping in mind the social mores of her society and the way she has been raised - Sansa’s actions and beliefs about her world are quite understandable, she is not generally written in such a way that suggests the author meant to endear her to the reader… Contrast to the way Arya is written (because Sansa is her foil and GRRM wants us to compare them in this book!); introduced as a plucky underdog who challenges the status quo. We are meant to immediately identify with, like and root for Arya, and we do. We are not meant to immediately identify with, like and root for Sansa. 

We are introduced to Arya first and Sansa makes Arya feel bad about herself by being good at everything and prettier and getting her in trouble and… you get the point. Even though 9 year old Arya has biases, and we as readers should understand that, the mere fact that our introduction to Sansa comes through her POV already gives the reader a bias against Sansa on Arya’s behalf because that’s all we know about her! There’s also the fact that the quickest way to get your readership to identify with and like a character within a historical setting is to give them the values and opinions of a more modern person… and we get quite a bit of that with Arya, what with her challenging of gender norms and disregard for class and rank. We don’t get that short cut with Sansa. 

 When we actually meet Sansa in her own POV she is once again acting in her role as the foil… it’s the incident at the Trident where Sansa fails to stand up to Joffrey for Arya and Mycah the butcher’s boy and then doesn’t tell the king what really happened and “gets Lady and Mycah killed”, to hear some fans tell it (never mind her reasonable reasons for being confused about what to do and refusing to speak). It’s not a glowing moment for her here and tbh… there really is only one real glowing moment for Sansa in AGOT (before Ned’s imprisonment/death that is); the moment where she feels empathy for Sandor Clegane, overcomes her fear, and offers him the comfort he needs. 

Other than this, her POV mostly focuses in on the trivialities of her interests and concerns, on how very little she actually understands the adult world around her, and we hardly see her interact with others in a positive way. Again… other than Sandor Clegane! She and Arya bicker, her relationship with Ned is somewhat strained since the Trident, and you get the vague impression that of his children, Sansa is probably the one he is the least accustomed to spending time with or talking to (we get no scene of parental bonding with Sansa, unlike Arya) and even Jeyne - Jeyne who is supposed to be Sansa’s best friend - we get no scenes of them having fun together, braiding each other’s hair, gossiping about cute boys, playing cyvasse… nada. Oh we get scenes of them talking, but it’s mostly in scenes which, again, are there to place Sansa in her role as the foil; demonstrating her naivety and ignorance of the dangers at court. The actual fun times they have together as friends, the actual comfort and happiness they give each other, well we’re told about this in a few stray lines here and there… we don’t actually ever “see” it! 

And that’s important! That’s the stuff that makes you like a character! But GRRM didn’t want to show us Sansa being fun and a caring friend in AGOT or even showing off any of the things she is reportedly so good at (she does actually show off some of these things; she shows she is naturally apt at diplomacy and has a good memory for important persons, houses and sigils and rank in this book… but this is all quite subtly introduced. Her cleverness is not meant to be something the reader immediately picks up on). He didn’t particularly want us to start sympathizing with her until near the end of the novel… and it shows. Sansa’s more positive character traits are de-emphasized by the author for most of AGOT and this, more than anything she actually does in this particular novel, is why so many fans come away seriously disliking her as a character(imho of course); many with the claim that she has no positive traits!

This ties into my larger issues with GRRM’s writing of women in general. He definitely treats his POV female characters like people who deserve to be just as well developed and complex as his male characters, and I appreciate that! However, he seems to have problems with depicting women’s relationships with other women. That is to say, if he can avoid female friendships, he does… at least in the early novels (things may be looking up based on more recent stuff). We get great male friendships, and male/female friendships, but when it came  to showing women who genuinely like each other interacting, GRRM just… didn’t go there at the beginning. Yeah, you’ve got Arya and Sansa not getting along, and Sansa and Jeyne’s friendship happening mostly offscreen but surely there must be more women who can be getting along… right? Well… no. 

Catelyn seems to have no female friends or companions at all, even from memory (which is ridiculous!) and her relationship with Lysa is extremely strained. Later she meets Brienne and while their relationship is a positive one for them both, it is more that of a Lady and her sworn shield than of friends. Cersei has no real friends at all, let alone female ones… she actually killed her childhood “bestfriend”. Margaery and the Tyrell cousins were not real friends to Sansa, Arya’s best friends and travelling companions are all male (albeit she does have a brief but very sweet interaction with Lady Smallwood) and Dany’s female companions are all servants to her. All in all, the situation with regards to sisterhood and female friendship in ASOIAF ain’t great. 

Topping this off, there’s also the fact that while GRRM’s understanding of what medieval noblewomen actually got up to in a day’s work is better than GOT’s, there are yet still some suggestions that feminine gendered activities are quite trivial and frivolous, and these suggestions are, again, most evident in Sansa and Arya’s AGOT chapters where they, again, serve to highlight Sansa as the silly, blinkered, girly-girl, to Arya’s rebellious, open-minded tom boy. 

To sum it up, it is of great significance that Arya, who we are meant to identify with and like, is a tom boy and Sansa, her foil, is extremely feminine. The negative aspects of Sansa’s personality, the ones being highlighted above her more positive qualities in AGOT, are therefore associated with that femininity because her negative traits are framed in contrast to Arya’s positive ones, and Arya’s interests and behaviour are more stereotypically masculine. I liked Sansa despite all of this because, paying attention while reading her chapters and fed up with trope of cool tomboys vs annoying girly girls, I was actually able to see the subtle allusions to there being more to Sansa than what the author was choosing to place on the surface. However, I understand how a reader who has no inclination to pay such close attention while reading her chapters could easily be put off from her character. GRRM did that on purpose… and I just don’t think it’s fair to the character who otherwise might have been given more of a chance by so many readers who, even now, still disregard her value to the story.

Edit: A few discussions on this topic that I managed to find by searching the shadowy corners of my blog (this should be easier… I need to use better tags…) that elaborate a bit more on this...

https://maidenoftheforestlight.tumblr.com/post/163170555339/some-people-argue-grrm-has-done-sansa-a-disservice#notes

https://maidenoftheforestlight.tumblr.com/post/155575049279/what-is-your-opinion-about-the-friendship-between

https://maidenoftheforestlight.tumblr.com/post/148912128094/as-much-as-i-agree-george-couldve-done-better

http://asoiafuniversity.tumblr.com/post/119478322575/on-george-martin-ladies-of-asoiaf-and

http://nobodysuspectsthebutterfly.tumblr.com/post/149368992133/why-do-you-think-that-asides-from-jeyne-poole

https://maidenoftheforestlight.tumblr.com/post/158118270004/do-you-think-sansa-bullied-jon-snow-some-of-my#notes

[gotgifsandmusings]

Quick asks roundup

I’m going out of town this afternoon for labor dabor, and probably won’t be around much during the weekend. Thought I’d answer a few asks below--just a grab bag, with a vague focus on S7. Should be able to do a video one of these next week, and Julia and I are eyeing a UBS podcast episode pretty soon too.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: Have you read David Benioff's book City of Thieves? I'm curious how it compares to GoT.

I haven’t, no. I’m not sure if that’s something I want to subject myself to (it has been mostly positively received from what I know, though not across the board) when there’s so much I’ve been putting off reading as it is.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: Is cerseï pregananant in the boox?

She’s actually gregnant.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: Just read your criticism about Fair Game and wholeheartedly agree. You touched on the core of why your (and Julia's and Caroline's and Jess' and Turtle's) GoT analysis are so great: they understand the intersection of narrative flaws and social issues. Sure, some people may complain that they don't want "SJW" stuff, except, y'know, you don't stop being a feminist when you write a review. As you say, media is not produced in a cultural vacuum. Sadly, I admit I feel reluctant to...... Actively criticize GoT with people around me because the ones who dislike it also dislike ASOIAF and fantasy/sci-fi ("The show is bad because GRRM is a bad writer who isn't really character-driven, but it's not surprising since genre stuff is awful"). That sucks :(

Yes, exactly! This is in reference to this piece by myself and Julia, btw. That’s really depressing about that perception of genre fic, especially given what Martin does being so unique. I’ve never particularly understood that attitude; I want to read about cool places and stuff happening as much as I want to read about weighty character journeys, and why scoff at any that pull off both? Though Julia has a piece on that too. 

But absolutely, as we said, it’s asinine to ignore the ways culture shapes media and vice versa, and often the reason the writing is so poor is because it’s so sensationalist or reliant on shitty tropes and stereotypes. “Just enjoy it (or critique) without focusing on social issues” is the ultimate sign of privilege, and it drives me crazy because it’s tossed out as an appeal to “objectivity.” IF YOU’RE IGNORING PEOPLE’S EXPERIENCES YOU’RE ALREADY NOT BEING OBJECTIVE.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: I'm curious why you guys interpret Cersei's internalized misogyny as nothing to do with gender dysphoria. All because Cersei doesn't break down during her period doesn't mean you must read her as cisgendered. She treats femininity like her least-favorite subject in school, not like part of herself. You're welcome to read her story as about women internalizing misogyny, but her thoughts feel familiarly trans, and outright denying that reading closer-to-earths her

This is really interesting, and my assumption would definitely a result of my own distance with that experience. Are there any metas on it? I haven’t really considered this before (I’ve seen the case argued for Brienne), and I’m not very convinced Martin had much intentionality here, but that’s a reading of her character I’d definitely like to learn/think more about.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: How can Euron "Crow's Eye, Terror of Pentos" Greyjoy come across as such a wimpy villain that I'm missing Ramsay? Hell, effing Joffrey could have torn that cuddly pooh bear a new one.

But...he’s the storm. You weren’t quaking in your boots when his fleet armada magically descended on Yara’s?

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: I haven't seen anyone else comment on this, but did you notice Cheryl says "You expect me to command our troops to fight beside foreign scum?" almost immediately before telling Jaime she's bringing the foreign Golden Company from Essos to fight beside their troops? Do you think the writers ever make it to second drafts or do they just knock out the first on the back of a Hooters napkin over Natty Ices and fist bumps and say, nah, we're good bro?

A showpologist would tell you it’s clearly demonstrating what a horrible hypocrite she is and actually rather cutting commentary.

It’s really, really hard for me to imagine a world where Operation Capture a Wight received a look-over. A whole lot of what they do feels thoroughly unedited.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: Hey, I really appreciate all your GoT analysis. 1) Is Cheryl's assistant actually Ezri Dax? 2) Did you see Linda's episode review where she called D&D "smug idiots?" 3) Is it possible to enjoy GoT as schlock? I can't and don't, but It is certainly bad enough and dumb enough. Thanks!

Thank you :)

1) According to wikipedia, Ezri Dax’s actor is currently starring in “Corrupt aka Trust No One” and “Where’s my Baby”, but I’m glad you made me look her up, because the resemblance there is quite uncanny. The maid is played by Sara Dylan, and has actually been a consistent, recurring character since Season 2. Apparently her name is “Bernadette” because why not.

2) Was it her newest review? I do listen to those in the background of work when I’m doing spreadsheet kind of stuff, so I may not have caught that exact phrase, but I did hear the part where she basically said “just don’t even bother writing a plot. Only write battles because everything else is terrible.”

3) I mean, the people enjoying GoT are watching schlock, so it must be possible. I happen to think the ardent defenders/honeypotters aren’t the majority, and most people turn it on to watch dragons for 60 minutes, then talk about how cool the dragons looked the next day at work. It’s just that GoT comes with a stamp of “SMART ADULT SHOW” for reasons that will never cease to amaze me. So yeah, totally, but for me, I have a hard time enjoying something when the more you think about it, the worse it gets.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: I would bet my right hand that someone in the GoT writers' room probably rewatched season 1 which is why there's so many callbacks to it like Arya's "that's not you", Dany's infertility, Bran's "I told you not to trust me", etc etc. Like it just seems so obvious that they realized they ran out of content and decided to just revisit past seasons to make themselves seem smart and like they planned ahead so much.

Oh 100%. Season 1 was this year’s Lord of the Rings, which they had obviously binged before last year. I love it because then all the critics are like, “ohh my god it’s so well-planned and deep.” But no. It’s essentially grinning into the camera going “remember when?”, completely on par with Gendry’s boat joke.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: The writers gave up 3 seasons ago, but it feels like no one was really trying this year. The cast looked bored. The wigs were trash: Dany's fire-proof wig is also boatsex-proof and freezing wind-proof. The costumes were either too anachronistic for a so-called prestiege Medievalesque Drama or straight up uninspired: Cersei's modern office wear, Dany and LF are shopping at the same department store, Lyanna S dressed up for a college roman-themed party. I guess the special effects were ok.

I’m very, very hesitant to call out costuming because I know Michele Clapton is like, making up these immaculate honeypots and ordering the finest fabrics from Lithuania to pull everything together. But...yeah, as a viewer everything was kind of clearly ridiculous (Euron’s jacket), and EVERYTHING WAS BLACK with the exception of Deadpan’s coat, that was, I’m sorry, objectively hideous. The reason people fawned over it was because it was actually contrasting the blah they had been seeing all season.

As for the cast, I mean...I think these guys are decent actors who get into their roles when they can. But who could get into anything happening at this point? Stuff happens, don’t question it. The directing was probably fine (I don’t know enough about that stuff), but when the script is fundamentally lazy and uninspired, it’s going to bleed into everything.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: (Regarding episode 7) So the only leak that didn't come true was "Cersei's" bed of blood prediction and I'm wondering if she'll miscarry next season because morally evil incest women like Cheryl don't deserve babies while morally good (with the help of our friendzoned Saint T🙏) incest women like Deadpan get to conquer infertility and birth a Targ with the help of Jonny Cardboard's magic seed. That would be one boring Aegon 2(3?) infant. Thoughts?

Honestly, I can’t make heads or tails of why she was even pregnant. Larry didn’t need that to stay on her side at all, and the only thing I can think was that it added an extra TWIST for us. Haha, viewer! You thought she might have actually wanted to fight the threat because of her unborn kid and how many times we’ve told you her only redeeming quality is her motherhood, but now she’s EVHUL and even idealized motherhood can’t save her!

I guess it’s...kind of trope busting?

I kind of agree though, I don’t see them letting a BAD woman give birth and mother. At the same time, I don’t see how enough time can even pass where this would be a relevant plot-point to anything. So...I just, I don’t get it. I’ve gotta figure out how to structure my sexism & s7 analysis, and going back and revisiting Cheryl is probably going to be one of the most confused parts of it. I see many paths for how this unfolds, and none of them are really too promising.

Alrighty, gotta cut it here for today. Everyone have a safe labor day weekend (I guess there’s no heightened risk for non-Americans, but a safe weekend all the same), and I’ll talk to you guys later!