#ned no-head

[hyacinthecanard]

The traitor's daugther.

"And there in the midst was Sansa, dressed in sky-blue silk, with her long auburn hair washed and curled and silver bracelets on her wrists. Arya scowled, wondering what her sister was doing here, why she looked so happy." AGOT, Arya V.

My own interpretation of Eddard Stark's beheading time. I know there are a lot of representation of it already, but I don't know, I had a composition in mind and wanted to do it, plus treat myself with cool fashion.

And to illustrate such a pivoting event for Sansa of course. I just love her character so much and relate to the way her narrative depicts girlhood trauma. She also often reminds me of my own older sister for some reason.

[you-makestedehappy]

Dear Ed, I couldn't quite manage to find a tiger, but I'd like to think it's close enough.

[atopvisenyashill]

i was thinking more about characters Performing Gender, but not necessarily Transgressing Gender. I wound up focusing on Ned and Sansa bc I feel like I understand them the most but-

Sansa as a hostage is imo the most obvious (bc it’s so well done) moment of someone clearly Performing Gender but not being transgressive in that performance. Which isn’t to say it’s not a complicated performance; it’s a fine line Sansa walks between weaponizing her gender to protect herself without seeming too fake. She’s trying to placate the Lannisters by playing the perfect, dedicated, air headed betrothed because it’s the only defense she has - if she outwardly rebels, she will be punished in a likely violent and/or sexual way (which isn’t even conjecture - when she says “or maybe he’ll give me yours” Joffrey has her struck with an armored hand). She’s not quite successful in being convincing but that’s because it’s a rather extreme situation; despite no one believing her, she does make herself seem meek and stupid enough that no one suspects she’s plotting to escape with Dontos until she’s well away from KL. The fact that she even has Dontos to confide in is because of Sansa’s relationship with gender! When she saves him, she covers her rebellious slip by playing up Joffrey’s intelligence & his role as King; she reaches for “tools” of her gender AND of ~proper manhood~ to save a life and herself from another beating. Her retreats into the godswood and silence are very much Sansa attempting to recharge from these draining interactions, the same way a knight would need to stop and eat and rest after a fight. She is fighting, constantly, by forcing herself to stay within the narrow confines of a specific type of gender performance as a way of shielding herself from harm.

Ned yelling at Cat is another big one, and I’ve seen the scene referred to as Ned using his patriarchal power to scare Cat, which is a great description. It feels like a Performance because Ned is putting on this terrifying Lord Stark mask in an attempt to get Catelyn to stop asking about Jon (and Lyanna). This is not how he usually acts with those he loves! When Ned is with His People, he is welcoming of questions, curiosity, emotion, even transgressive thought (to a point! the idea that Ned is a feminist because he lets Arya learn to fight is Not accurate but you can’t deny he allows significantly more flexibility wrt gender expression than most of the fathers we meet in this series. the bar is in hell tho). Yet when Cat asks him about Jon’s mother, Ned scares her so well she stops asking & still remembers the moment bitterly over a decade later. And if that snippet we see through Bran’s eyes of Ned praying that Cat will forgive him does come after she asks (like it’s suspected), it’s clear not only that this is a performance he’s putting on & weaponizing against Cat, it’s one he does not like using as a weapon against someone he is close to. After using the power his gender gives him to cause harm, he retreats to the godswood and silence to pray and rest, much like Sansa. A spiritual cleanse, the way a soldier may pray after battle, to reset and reconnect Being A Proper Man to Being A Kind Man.

I think there’s something interesting in that two of the characters most widely defined by how well they adhere to Westerosi gender norms both dislike feeling like they had to weaponize their gender. They are exhausted by the performance, because it’s a performance. This isn’t Sansa getting excited over tourneys, or Ned teaching his sons to fight; it’s toxic masculinity, it’s structural misogyny. It’s something they’re good at, excel at, and connected to something they enjoy but when it’s paired with violence, whether done by Ned or done to Sansa, it crosses over in their minds from an innate part of themselves (The Gender) to a performance necessary due to survival (The Gender Role). And that after these performances, both retreat to nature & god as a way of resting and cleansing from the experience.

[sneez]

some viktors in czech and polish folk costume and a less specific miscellany from the past few months :-) i have to draw very very small with this pen which feels appropriate for him

[id: two pages of digital drawings done with a fine pixel brush. the first image is a series of coloured drawings of viktor standing in a variety of costumes. common articles across the outfits are puffy white shirts, colourful breeches, embroidered waistcoats, and decorative flowers. in each drawing viktor is smiling and leaning on his cane. the second image is a selection of drawings of viktor standing and sitting in various poses, looking generally cheerful. in one he is sitting next to barbie, who is smiling at him. the text beside it reads ‘Barbie (they are friends)’. end id.]

[long-claw]

there's a very small but distinct change from book to show in s3e9 that i think is fascinating. right before the red wedding, catelyn and roose bolton are discussing edmure and roslin's bedding ceremony, and when bolton references catelyn's own bedding, she says this:

"Oh, Ned forbade it. He said it wouldn't be right if he broke a man's jaw on our wedding night."

whereas in the book, not only does this conversation not happen, but catelyn specifically recounts her bedding happening and makes no mention of ned being opposed at all.

i don't know for sure why this change was made but if i had to guess i'd say it was at least partly to make ned more likable to a modern audience. it's almost as if they were trying to make ned fit his reputation "better" but i actually think it misunderstands it completely.

ned is known throughout westoros as being "honourable", within westoros culture. the bedding ceremony isn't seen as being "dishonourable", it's tradition. ned going against that wouldn't add to his honourable reputation, it would make him some weird progressive guy that shuns tradition.

but the one time he does shun tradition is by bringing jon home and giving him a place in his family, and i think the change in the show takes away from just how strange that was for ned to do. ned stark conforms to tradition perfectly, except for that one smudge.

[renonv]

Trying so hard to get this comic out of my system but it’s a big one and it’s gonna take a second to complete so here’s some drawings i like

[sasha-naell]

Catelyn : So there are these two guys who are in love with me. There is one that my little sister is in love with, and the other I prefer his brother. So my crush has like 200 crushes (no seriously this guy is attracted to everyone) and he has a best friend who is like simp a little for my crush's sister. Except that my crush's sister really likes the little cousin of my crush's best friend, and it's mutual. Except that the little cousin of my crush's best friend is already married to a girl and this girl has a crush on the little brother of my crush's best friend and her best friend has a crush on my crush. So it obviously becomes a little complicated.

Brynden : Yeah I understand.

Hoster : HOW ??

[sarucane]

Ed Teach's Stories

From practically the moment we meet him, Ed's identity is unstable. We know who is he (Blackbeard) from context, from the story told by the the room around him, by Izzy and the flag his crew. But the thing is, Ed doesn't fit the story of the Mad Devil Blackbeard. Two of his first few words are "good" and "love" for crying out loud. He's called "Blackbeard," but his beard is grey.

This instability exists because Ed himself isn't sure what story he's telling--or wants to tell. "I shouldn't be bored, I'm fucking Blackbeard!" All through his early episodes Ed is in increasingly desperate tension with his own identity. He's trying to tell stories within stories, wanting all the stories to be true at the same time, yet aware of the reality that the world is constantly trying to wipe one or another of the stories away. And not really trusting that he can tell the whole story of who he is.

In the first season of OFMD, Stede wears a different outfit every episode. Yet Stede remains the same: despite his internal tensions (almost despite himself) there's a stability to his identity. But all through both seasons of OFMD, Ed putting on a new outfit means he's trying to tell a completely different story about himself.

And underneath this cacophony, there's Ed. And Ed is himself a chorus of stories, a living contradiction. A patricidal murderer who was protecting his mother; a paragon of masculinity who longs for softness and fluidity; a man renowned for violence and madness who has in fact carefully cultivated that reputation and is extremely careful with his violence; a killer who doesn't kill, yet who does kill all the time just at a bit of a remove; a half a dozen names and personas and yet always Ed; unloveable, yet deeply loved.

At the beginning of the show, Ed isn't actually good at telling his own story. He's good at listening to other people's stories, and conforming himself to them often without conscious effort. But when he tries to really tell his own story--asking Stede to run off to China, singing his break-up song song, going to become a fisherman--he fails. We don't understand in the first season why his judgement clouds, why he becomes weak when he tries to tell his story. But in the second season after spending half an episode in Ed's mind, a painful truth is undeniable: Ed, like Stede, doesn't think he's worthy of telling his own story.

So instead of telling his own story, Ed let other people tell his story. In the first season, Ed built off what Izzy told him he had to be. But he couldn't lose himself in Blackbeard, no matter how hard he tried. So in the second season, when Ed couldn't face living with his contradictions anymore, he wrote an ending worthy of Blackbeard.

All this, because Ed thinks he can only be "himself" by telling one, single story about himself. By denying his contradictions, rather than embracing them. Splitting himself in two to tell himself a story, rather than telling the story himself.

What Ed doesn't believe or trust is this: For Ed to really be himself, he has to be impossible. Two contradictory things, at the same time.

The second season of OFMD is about learning to embrace all these contradictions. In each episode of OFMD, character look at the same object or situation (a wanted poster, a unicorn, a velvety suit, a relationship, a past trauma) and they tell two completely different stories about it. Sometimes one of those stories turns out to be wrong, but more often than not both are true, and something else--something beautiful-- is born from the place where those contradictions meet. And the characters, Ed most of all, learn to accept and balance this dissonance.

Thematically speaking, I'd argue that's why the second season of OFMD is more fantastical than the first: fantasies are contradictions, real and not-real at the same time. And isn't that what transformation is, in the end? What you are and what you are not, meeting and becoming "you"?

Transformation isn't all good. At first, Ed's fantastic stories hide his pain or invoke despair

But later, the fantasies make their way into reality. The impossible begins to shape reality--and opens a way for hope.

In the last episode of S2, Ed emerges from the waves as the kraken--but there's 3 musical tracks playing, three themes: the kraken, Ed, and Blackbeard. Then he reads a love letter, and has a deeply romantic moment with his boyfriend. He puts on a new outfit to escape the British, yet his personality doesn't change at all. When Izzy first apologizes to him, Ed says "I'm the one who should be apologizing," but then Izzy changes his entire understanding of their relationship. Becomes the first family figure to offer Ed permission to be himself.

Contradictions galore, and yet Ed is still Ed. Both who he was formed into by other people (his father, Izzy, Pop Pop) and yet who he is.

In the final scenes, Ed begins to finally accept the tensions of his life. He tells Zheng that yes, he wants to kill Richie--but he doesn't go on a revenge quest. And while before his forays into being someone else meant changing his name, his clothes and mannerisms, his whole story, he doesn't act like that at all in the last scene of the ep.

And Ed's been able to do all this, to come this far, because of Stede. Stede, who Ed was drawn to because he was a "fancy man who leads a brigade of imbeciles," yet had won a fight with Izzy. Stede, who looked at Ed at his lowest moment, after Ed had admitted that the entire basis of their friendship had been in bad faith, and said, "I'm your friend." Stede who, even knowing Ed wouldn't want to hear from him, poured his heart into letters about how their bond was unbreakable.

Stede is everything he is, all at the same time. And when Ed was drowning in his own contradictions, (a rope tied around him that he could not undo and yet had put on himself) trapped somewhere "inevitable, yet impossible," Stede appeared as a fantastic, beautiful creature and brought him home.

Stede lets Ed be everything he is, and sees it all as true and worthy of love. Even when Ed fucks up, it's all right.

And sometimes, telling two different stories about something doesn't lead to a fragmented self, doesn't drive people apart.

Sometimes, it means understanding. Means acceptance, safety, connection.

From discordance (contradiction), harmony. A gentleman can be a pirate. A man can be a bird, or a unicorn. Izzy can have been one of the good ones and a fucking nightmare. And Ed can tell all his stories, they can all be true--and he can still be Ed.

[cashmere-caveman]

little shouldve gotten that gun sooner

[abrahamvanhelsings]

for the ship asks: joplittle? i know i'm opening pandora's box with this

if someone already asked, then going for any other ned ship you might also like? choose freely my friend

AUGH my beloveds!! ill try not to make this a whole essay so ill point out a couple of things that i love about them at random

the way they interact with each other on screen has me obsessed. i wrote a post a bit ago about how we don't see them talk much together but they have a lot of potential anyway, and then @cinematicnomad made a great point about the fact that they DO interact but a lot it is nonverbal. honestly that opened my eyes to so much little things i hadn't noticed before. that they communicate through glances and gestures and that they understand each other, know each other well enough to have that kind of interaction... they may be background characters and we may not see the progression of their relationship much, but we can tell that it happens, and that they become close. you can tell that being in that precarious situation together, where crozier's alcoholism is affecting the entire expedition but it also has to be kept a secret, and they're the two people who know, and who are responsible for crozier/everything else, that really created a very tight bond between them.

speaking of tight friendships! we can tell that it happens bc edward, famously, is SO happy when jopson is made lieutenant. everyone at that table thinks it's deserved, and is happy for jopson, but edward is a beam of sunlight in that tent. genuinely can't stop smiling. it's so so lovely to me that he can't contain his own glee bc he's so glad and proud. get you a man who applauds your successes like edward little

there are so many ways their personalities fit together so well!! they're both extremely diligent in their duties, but it plays out differently in them both, and they both have different weaknesses. they're the type of people who are generally quiet and unobtrusive but steadfast and loyal, but where jopson tends to go sharp as a knife under pressure, edward always worries that he is doing the right thing (that's also bc for a large part of the expedition they have very different responsibilites and cares, but nevertheless). they're both guarded where it comes to showing their inner feelings, but it feels to me that jopson can provide a firmness, the assurance that edward needs to remain confident in who he is and what he does, whereas edward (once you've cracked him like an egg) has a warmth to him that can fold around jopson like a blanket, to let go of that tightly-controlled professionalism. each other's safety blankets, people who can mitigate the other's shortcomings, and provide space for their better qualities and their feelings to come to full bloom.

lower class/higher class dynamic is a weakness of mine. any fic that has thomas being a steward/valet to edward in any capacity with the victorian slow burn mutual pining/mutual 'he is to good for me' has me on my knees

[pussycattrevor]

I recently went to a GTA panel and got to ask a question to Ned Luke and Solo which I worded kinda poorly (because 1) I am literally unmedicated with crippling social anxiety, and also 2) that’s literally Micheal de Santa and Franklin Clinton I’m talking to lmao) which was if Micheal ever really liked Trevor. He used the analogy of Mice and Men of the character Lennie who loves a little mouse but ends up crushing it to death out of that love. And he said it was probably a love hate relationship but at some point for Micheal he just was like, yeah Trevor needs to go because he’s a danger to him and his family. And later he clarified that oh yeah they definitely were friends once, just a long time ago. I thought that was a really interesting!!!

Both of them said that they thought killing Trevor in ending A was the most in character, in fact Ned seemed like really excited about it lol. I’m just surprised XD as someone who’s only ever chosen Deathwish. I thought that throughout the game Micheal would have changed his mind about Trevor a little bit, especially after Trevor saves him at least 2 times I can think of off the top of my head. But ig it does make sense because Micheal will help you kill Trevor in ending A but Trevor won’t help you kill Micheal. Or so I’ve heard!!!! I like them all too much to kill any of them ^^;

I just thought it was fascinating. And even more so now I feel like if you look at the game thru Trevor’s eyes it’s tragic. I mean he mourned Micheal for years and he thought he was like family to him only to find out that he is hiding. And I don’t think he ever learned that that bullet was meant for him right? Just damn…. Micheal is just looking out for himself ig but in my eyes he’s a pretty stone cold dude ^^; it makes for a great story but poor Trevor

But that was like the coolest experience of my life and I have been ecstatic ever since!!!!!!

[fromtheseventhhell]

Ned having multiple angry outbursts throughout AGOT, even physically assaulting someone at one point, and still being viewed as the "calm and collected" counterpart to a "feral" Catelyn perfectly encapsulates this fandom's misogyny

[polka-spots]

I think Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fore would have been way funnier if Jon Snow was born with the silver hair and purple eyes of the Targs simply because I like to imagine Ned Stark coming up with ever more frantic reasons that Jon Snow looks like That. Imagine him going "oh haha his mum was Lyseni yes mhm don't look too hard at this excuse" or "he's uhhhhhh albino yep" or "he had an accident with some bleach". And Robert just fully accepts the ever worse excuses and thinks that poor little Jon Snow is an albino half Lyseni boy who has very unfortunate accidents all the time with cleaning products.

[ladystoneboobs]

A memory prodded at Theon. In one of his rare curt letters, Lord Balon had written of his youngest brother going down in a storm, and turning holy when he washed up safe on shore. -Theon I, aCoK

this little glimpse of balon/theon's strained long-distance relationship kinda fascinates me now. can't believe i'm going to defend balon as a father to theon in any way, however small, but i feel like hindsight has kinda blinded fandom into thinking balon gave up theon for dead and gone the moment he gave him away as hostage. this also carries the underlying assumption that balon was always going to rebel again making theon's life already forfeit to him.

thing is, while balon undoubtedly called his banners before theon came home, that also coincided with robert and ned both being recently dead, making that 2nd war seem really opportunistic. as if the only thing balon learned from his first rebellion was that king robert was strong enough to defeat him, the only man capable of defeating the great balon. so when that enemy dies, balon's crown is all but won in his mind, and with the death of ned too he could use his next war to take revenge on the (dead) man who took his son from him. maybe with robert's lifestyle he could have hoped to outlive him despite being older than robert, but robert and ned together? that must have seemed like a miraculous chance straight from the drowned god himself, a chance to rise up and take revenge that it was his duty to take for his people, even if it meant risking the life of his youngest child who'd been gone for 10 years anyway.

but before all that, even if robert being still alive was the real deterrant keeping him from warring again, he was, in effect, not only keeping theon safe by paying the hostage-ransom of keeping the peace, he was also keeping up a bare minimum connection with theon through rare and curt correspondence updating him on family events like aeron getting born again (and i'm assuming that's also how theon knew what asha's ship was named). idt we should so easily ignore that this is a society which views kinslaying as a grave offense regardless of circumstances or personal feelings, and one which greatly values male heirs over female heirs. i doubt balon was so much a feminist girldad that he just switched 12yo asha into the son slot right away as soon as all her brothers were lost. imo it was more likely a gradual process done not so consciously as asha proved herself worthy growing up and theon's time in the north stretched on and on. all until such point as asha had achieved son status and only son status at that, (maybe also coinciding with alannys leaving him so he had even less reason to keep up with her baby boy?), and then theon could be written off as belonging to the enemy, no longer ironborn or a son of balon, so sanctity of greyjoy life no longer applied to him. (real ironborn greyjoy son already killed by darth greenlander theon, from a certain point of view.) only then could balon be a not-father to theon, not welcoming him back home or even giving him a chance to prove his loyalty by providing intelligence on the northerners and the lands they were about to invade. (which could have made balon's war plans a touch less stupid. see, it all comes back to criticizing him in the end.)

in fact, come to think of it, i wonder if one thing ned and balon had in common is just not thinking of the danger of theon being executed as a hostage, not taking ownership of that possibility bc it hadn't happened yet. and hey, if it ever did come to that they could each tell themselves it would be the other guy's fault really, i was just doing my duty to my king/as a king to all my proud people. and that meant their actions didn't have to be obviously at odds with ned's view of himself as a good man opposed to killing children or balon's view of himself as great greyjoy patriarch and victim of the greenlanders (who could ofc prevail against them all if given the right chance).

[coline7373]

[horseshoe-bay-ledger]

NANCY DREW || 4x05: The Oracle of the Whispering Remains

"You're going to steal that bag of teeth, aren't you?"