#nettles thoughts

[ride-thedragon]

I do love the fact that Nettles is just seemingly both aware and empathetic. Because the men around her are celebrating a victory, while others are mourning Driftmark and what was lost, some become hardened by the personal stakes losts and she's at the centre of it all with no one around her for comfort and she just cries. It's recorded as it being for Jace, but she just fought in a battle, burned the place she grew up, and was met with nothing. Unlike everyone else she can't be knighted and isn't given titles.

My preferred instance is in Maidenpool when the Queen of the Realm says she must die and the men contemplate for all sorts of reasons. Fear of Daemon, fear of Rhaenyra, fear of the destructions of dragons and curses that held men to oaths of centuries and when it comes to Nettles, the person who could cause them so much strife, their defence for her and her life is that she's a child. She's an innocent in all of this no matter what she is accused of, rightfully or not.

That's not a quality we get from members of the small folk often. It's a quality mocked in Sansa and Arya and Daenerys. She's aware of the world and circumstances. She's branded as a thief with a visible scar and whore, the daughter of one even. She's empathetic and innocent. She leaves the narrative and is forever haunted by the politics of the world, but she leaves alive because of who she is inherently.

[drumlincountry]

If your life is horrible and you need a new source of meaning and direction.... Do NOT find religion. Learn to identify plants.

[ride-thedragon]

George was on something when he wrote her. I'm thankful for it every day.

And he gave her the best dragon to cement it.

what i think could be incredibly narratively interesting about nettles being as far removed from targaryen/valyrian-ness as one could be whilst still being an accomplished dragonrider is what her concept of character says about the mythos of valyrian-ness and targaryen-ness.

there will of course be discourse about her lineage, but i don’t think it matters! what we’ve seen with the targaryens is this carefully curated mythology and an entitlement to a divine right to rule based on that mythology, and a sense of exceptionalism based on that mythology. and it’s self fulfilling in an ouroboros kind of way.

they are dragon lords because they are valyrian and because they are valyrian only they can be dragon lords and because they are dragon lords they are entitled to absolute power.

but then here comes this girl with no surname, who doesn’t look valyrian, who tames a dragon all on her own because she just figured it out how much like the first valyrians (which is kinda ironic— she’s valyrian at their beginning, the targaryens are obsessed with valyria at its end). she wasn’t given an egg, she wasn’t trained to ride. nettles just worked at it and did it.

and that’s what threatens rhaenyra by the end because what nettles represents is the shattered illusion of their dynasty, their exceptionalism. the proof that the targaryens arent special. the white hair and pale skin doesn’t make them special. it’s that there’s no one to stop someone like nettles from becoming as great or greater than the targaryens think they are.

this black girl from the gutter shook the entire foundation of the targaryen dynasty simply because she did what they promised the rest of the world was only unique to them and that’s why they were entitled to be their overlords. and in doing so, exposes the fallacy of hereditary feudalism. the fact that’s all this and black is just a bonus for me especially

[qyburnsghost]

They deleted Nettles to make Rhaenyra look better, but invented Dyana to make Aegon look worse!

[malaiikka]

The news about Rhaena/Nettles legit managed to erode all the excitement I had about season two during the past few weeks in a matter of seconds.

Nettles is canonically the only non-Targ dragonrider, her story and arc is so important in challenging the beliefs about dragons and Targaryens and blood magic incest that exist in Westeros and among the Targaryens, why would the writers look at such a character and decided to mesh her storyline with Rhaena’s?? Are they just so uncreative they couldn’t figure out something for Rhaena to do in the Vale?? Or can this show only handle no more than three black characters, all the while they continue on cooking up new storylines and arcs for the white characters that don’t exist in the book??

[groenendaze]

hiiiiiii sorry for the radio silence life is wild. anyway. here’s the dogs from yesterday

[tragedy-peanut-gallery]

Sometimes friendship is a teenage girl with her minecraft grass block dragon

[vaguely-concerned]

...the 'almond room' thing in the unwanted guest IS a reference to/play on words on amygdala, right? (amygdala comes from the greek word for almond!) I didn't read that wrong? it is stupid sexy Ianthe coyly inviting Palamedes into a different chamber of her brain, as it were?

(also the pieces of meat -- the feeding or kissing, it's hard to say which of it all -- being present right from the beginning... ianthe DOES know exactly what has happened to her, doesn't she. palamedes is just cutting his way through her layers of denial and repression all merciless and scalpel-like to get her to admit it. or, she knows subconsciously at least -- each person comes in and feeds her something that she's helpless to stop from becoming a part of her even in her coffin, with bloody kisses. oh baby love is feeding me bad meat and I have no choice but to swallow it down. like yeah I suspect that is how human contact can feel when your sense of self and boundaries developed to be a specific kind of Fucked Up lol. that shit could make a person dream of being a diamond in a glass of wine; perfect, inviolable, untouchable, eternally separate and safe. In the words of Andrea Gibson in Prism:

They say the womb is where we learn love is knowing the cord that feeds you could at any moment wrap around your neck

that is quite literally ianthe's first introduction to love -- her sister, a cord around her neck. Corona is Ianthe's other self, a second soul running around outside of her body, and she seems to consider herself as responsible for (and entitled to) the preservation of Corona's soul as her own. the way this mirrors that growing up, Ianthe had to be two necromancers in one body to let them stay together. (twins and ghosts all the way down I guess.) she's still just trying to do the same thing, I think, she's simply put on some bigger boots about it. the central problem of lyctorhood, self vs. connection/love, rears its head once again -- Ianthe existentially wants total self-contained self-sufficiency, perfect control, sovereign sway and masterdom over her soul... but she wants that at the same time as being in uninterrupted (uninterruptible!), eternal and indelible intimacy with her sister, whose soul also cannot be allowed to change. which, you know. freedom and love don't coexist the way you want them to, Ianthe, no matter how clever you are there won't be a way to get what you want. (especially not with a sister whose idea of what love is seems to go more towards being consumed, made one, by whatever violence necessary -- 'she could have taken me'.) man. Ianthe is a spectacular and ongoing piece of work, but sometimes it's hard to see how she could ever have turned out otherwise considering the conditions she was born and raised under haha.

the two-way street of the horror of digestion, whether you're the devourer or the devouree. part of you in me, part of me in you, whether either of us likes it or not we're both changed by this. bad news: you can't get out of interconnectedness by finding the cleverest loophole around it, ianthe. nice try, though)

[marsskaterboii]

Nothing is more gratifying to me than witnessing how much Bee hates the royal lifestyle at Buckkeep. Kettricken, Chade, Dutiful and especially Nettle insisted that Fitz should have raised her as befitted her, at court. His whole reason for keeping Bee at Withywoods was to protect her against court politics, and guarantee her freedom. Countless times he was told how that's silly, just look at Nettle and all the things she missed by not having been raised at court. But what happens within 5 minutes of Bee living at Buckkeep? She's pulled into court politics and looses her freedom. And she hates it, knowing that her Da was right. Bee truly is Fitz's daughter and I wish she'd had the chance to tell him he was right. It would have made him so happy.

[fairweathermyth]

i've been hit with a rote thought: both of fitz's daughters have names that sting.

[ride-thedragon]

Nettles: A Retelling of Snow White.

This post comes from the conceptualisation from my mutual @lilyofthevalley-11

She pointed it out, and I've been spiralling about the concept ever since. Nettles is a character you can find a lot of parallels/ foils with in both her own story and context (dance era) and the main ASOIAF series (Daenerys and Brienne come to mind most obviously). So with both those characters being major subversions of the fantasy and story formation (Daenerys as the lead and saviour in the narrative/ Brienne as the white Knight and beauty of her story) it makes sense for George to use that method on a character he favours. With that in mind, this is meta and entirely speculative with proof I find, let's begin:

Tldr: Nettles is like snow white in the same way Jaime and Brienne are like Beauty and the Beast. George loves weird stuff like that. It's not exact, but it's prominent enough for this post.

THE OBVIOUS PARALLELS.

1. THE EVIL QUEEN:

The evil queen in the original story is the wife of the king after his first wife dies. In Nettles' story, the evil queen would be Rhaenyra. The similarity posed with both would be being replaced by a younger woman. Nettles is positioned as a character foil to Rhaneyra much as the evil queen is positioned as the foil to Snow White. Nettles is Rhaenyra's exact opposite in the narrative.

2. Mirror Mirror

Daemon gives Nettles a silvered looking glass as a gift in Maidenpool. we are told. Mysaria, in this instance, is the proverbial mirror that alerts the queen that Nettles is sleeping with Daemon.

3. Ways to kill.

Rhaenyra wishes for Lord Mooton to take Nettles head of at a table (eating) or in bed (sleeping) to 'free' Daemon from the spell he has placed on her.

This is the equivalent to the huntsman who was asked in the story to kill Snow White and bring back organs as proof of the murder.

4. Gifts and So on.

So Daemon at this point is essentially training Nettles in the ways of court and etiquette. He's also buying her a lot of gifts. In Snow White, she gets a lot of gifts as well, but they are meant to kill her.

Nettles gets a hairbrush, and Snow White gets a comb. Snow White gets a ribbon, and Nettles gets a bunch of clothes, but the famous apple can be seen as either the romantic relationship she and Daemon have that calls for her life or the actual food they were eating which technically was red due to the beets. But I have a third and better option for the apple.

5. Ser /Prince Florian.

Ser Florian is a character that adds a plea that Nettles is a child no matter what she's accused of or is doing. He shares a name with the prince from Snow White.

6. Caves, Houses, and Cottages.

It's basically up for grabs because she is sentenced in Maidenpool (like the dwarves cottage), and then she is in the Vale for a time but is found by the Arryns who fought for Rhaenyra to her knowledge (another cottage) but when Sheepstealer takes her away she finds the burned men who devote themselves to them (kinda like the castle in the end). Again, this isn't a 1 to 1 comparison.

INTERPRETATIONS

1. An obvious Appearence.

They both have distinct appearances that cause them some strife. Snow White is the most fair girl alive, and that's why the Queen wants to kill her. Rhaenyra reasons that Nettles is so common and un- Valyrian that she must've used spells to claim a dragon and get with Daemon.

2. Apples and Letter

In this context I think the most symbolic thing for the apple would be the letter and decree Rhaenyra sends to Maidenpool, disguised as a plea to save Daemon.

3. Dwarves, Maidenpool Men, and The Burned Men.

Thematically, I believe that both the men of Maidenpool and the burned men serve as different counterparts to the dwarves, Nettles learns and lives there for about 5 months and helps about by protecting them from Vhagar.

But when she leaves after the letter she runs into the burned men who become a sort of protection from what she believes would be a call on her life by a queen she doesn't know is living or dead.

MORAL PURPOSE.

Innocence and True Beauty.

I think the strongest argument for this comparison stems from the way both stories play out and how they are meant to be interpreted in a moral sense.

Both are stories where a vain queen can not fathom being replaced, so they choose to murder a young girl rather than deal with it.

The point of Snow White was that true beauty is more so aligned with behaviour more so than just looks. Snow White, being the fairest, doesn't mean a lot because we don't know anything about the queen other than the fact that she's older than Snow White.

Nettles is never said to be beautiful at all, but she is often contrasted with Rhaenyra as being caring and innocent. The looks don't matter as much as the innocence of youth and kindness.

SUBVERSIONS.

1. How does innocence look?

Now George chose to make Nettles a black girl at the centre of all this. Snow White is literally as white as snow, so there is a purposeful intentionality of changing the look of innocence. There is a history of Black girls being treated as women and not seen as innocent no matter how young they are, so it is important and influences the story.

2. What is true Beauty?

The Valyrians are seen as the ideal of Beauty in asoiaf but they are also not good people by any stretch of the imagination. In every way Nettles is described, she is the opposite of Valyrian beauty in every way, but she is also a marker of how beauty can be internalised as opposed to the decisions of others. True Beauty like in the original story is internal.

3. Damsels

A complaint I keep seeing about Nettles is that she does nothing in the narrative. As in all, her actions don't have a major narrative change and that she's mostly a passive character. But that kinda makes her a damsel trope. In the story, Snow White doesn't do much but clean and get almost killed a few times. The point of these characters isn't to drive the plot with action alone (she fights in the Gullet, takes over King's Landing, becomes a fire witch in the Vale, and tracks Aemond in Maidenpool) but to motivate other characters and become a catalyst for their introduction in the story.

Maidenpool is still loyal to Rhaenyra without Nettles, Daemon lives if she remains, Aemond doesn't fight if she still flies with Daemon, etc.

4. Kisses from Princes

What does the kiss from the prince do to Snow White? It wakes her up, gives her a life she wouldn't have, true loves kiss. In the original, it's funnier because he literally moves her from her coffin and dislodged the apple in her throat. Daemon saving Nettles serves the same purpose. It has the flare of Daemon Targaryen, but the point is that when he lets her escape, he saves her life from both Rhaenyra and having to fight Aemond.

5. Wrong and Right.

Finally, wrong and right. Snow White does nothing wrong despite what the woke mob (I'm being sarcastic because I've been rambling) wants you to believe. But Nettles isn't innocent. She might be stealing sheep from the shepherds to claim her dragon. She kills innocents in the Battle of the Gullet no matter how remorseful she is and then has a probable affair with a married man. But like snow white, Nettles is consistently said to be and treated like an innocent in the narrative. Her actions don't stain her as a bad person because she isn't. Put quite literally into perspective, she's one of the most innocent characters we meet because of the world she exists in. In a world that kills children for the sake of war and revenge, that starve and tax populations for the sake of power, a girl with the infathomable height of power that is flying a dragon, cries and mourns after what she experiences. When a prince pulls a sword on a maester after reading a letter, she asks what's wrong, and when she leaves the narrative, it's in tears again. Right and wrong in both stories mean many different things, but George adapted it to fit in alignment with Nettles' story and his world.

That's it.

🍎

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Is your chosen username anything to do with Ray Bradbury’s story by chance? If so, Mildly ironic given the current stete of fandom

It's not the primary reason for my URL (that would be the Simpsons), but yes, "A Sound of Thunder" and the butterfly effect are among the many reasons I love butterflies. I don't think it's ironic re the current state of fandom though, I've long noticed GRRM citing the butterfly effect to explain how a small adaptational difference can lead to great changes by the end, since 2011, and particularly since GOT S5 and S8. So it's not surprising GRRM cited it again re HOTD, it's one of his standards along with Scarlett O'Hara's kids. Heck, he cited both things in an interview (regarding the question of whether HOTD was "canon") only 2 years ago. By definition the butterfly effect is just a single wingbeat that eventually makes a hurricane, but for GRRM it's a drum he's never stopped beating.

So, regarding the butterfly effect in GOT... let's give some examples. One of the butterflies GRRM used to talk about was that in the show, Khal Drogo killed Mago (in the epsiode airing June 5, 2011) whereas in ADWD (released July 17, 2011), Dany is captured by the khalasar where Mago is a bloodrider, and GRRM has said he'll be a significant character in TWOW. How the show handled it... they basically replaced him with Khal Moro, and tbqh, due to GRRM's own flat characterization of the Dothraki, it's hard to tell if there will be any difference between one brutish thug threatening to rape Dany vs another brutish thug with a slightly different name. Maybe TWOW will surprise us there, but if so, I really will be surprised.

Another butterfly (mentioned in the Mago link above) was that in GOT, Marillion never went to the Eyrie, and instead went to KL and got detongued by Joffrey. Thus, Marillion never became Lysa's favorite, and his plot with Sansa in ASOS/AFFC never happened. So Petyr didn't have anyone to blame for Lysa's murder... and yet in the show, he really didn't need Marillion, he convinced the Lords of the Vale that Lysa committed suicide. However, this was done by Sansa revealing her true identity to them... which cut off the Alayne plotpoint altogether. And that leads to what GRRM might call the greater "toxic butterfly" of Jeyne Poole not being an actual character in the show (she appears for half a second at Winterfell and never again), and thus Sansa took her place in the Ramsay storyline. But to be frank, I don't believe Jeyne's absence had any real "butterfly effect" on the show... even if had she been an actual character and Sansa's companion that Littlefinger made into a prostitute at one of his brothels, D&D never would have brought her out again to play "Arya". David and Dan deleted the Alayne plotpoint and Sansa's AFFC/TWOW storyline, and instead sent Sansa north to be married and raped because that's what they wanted to do with her character, not because they "had to" because Jeyne wasn't there. (And if they ever told GRRM otherwise, they lied.)

And that's the truth about the "butterfly effect" straight up. GRRM seems to believe a story must flow logically to its conclusion and thus removing even a small element changes that conclusion. But the truth is that D&D could have done whatever they wanted, dead/nonexistent characters or otherwise. Aegon and JonCon not existing is not what made Dany a mad queen and burn KL, they chose to make her a mad queen because that's the story they wanted to write. The bizarre nonsense of the show Dorne storyline is not because they removed Arianne, but because they wanted to make Ellaria both vengeful and uncaring about her lover's family. Smalljon Umber surviving the Red Wedding is not why Osha and Rickon died, it's because they wanted to kill off Osha and Rickon and add another heartless Northern villain. Flow does not truly apply, this isn't an atmospheric system and it's not a real history. Nothing forced D&D into doing anything except budget/orders from above/other business issues. It's fiction, it's the story they constructed, they chose to construct it that way, because "Creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen."

Now, regarding HOTD -- let me first provide a quote from GRRM from the "canon" interview I linked above:

George: And the more you read about history, the more inconsistencies you had. So I thought it would be fun to do that in Fire and Blood. And so when I’m relating what happened here, and I’m thinking about what can happen. Yeah, I… oh, this would be great. This would be really outrageous, it would be… and then, eh, it’s probably too outrageous. Here’s probably what… the more realistic version of it. And wait a minute, this version makes Fred the villain and Bill the hero. And this version makes Bill a villain and Fred the hero. And then at some point it hit me. Why don’t I give all versions? Cause history is uncertain. I’ll give all versions and it’ll be fun for me. I can put in all the really outlandish scurrilous things, the way Mushroom sees it, but I can also put in the things that are probably more…  Aziz: They’re sources, yeah.  George: And that worked fine for those who liked that thing, although some don’t. But if I was writing it as a novel, if I’d been writing this in the form of the books in A Song of Ice and Fire, like Winds of Winter, which I’m writing now. When I get to a chapter in The Winds of Winter and I know something’s gonna happen. How does it happen? What are the things? I think I could do it this way. I could do it that way. I have to make up up my mind. In Fire and Blood, I didn’t have to have to make up my mind, but Ryan and Miguel, when they’re adapting it, they largely had to make up their mind. 

So. In his (deleted) blog post, GRRM talks about the absence of Maelor being a butterfly, so that the Blood & Cheese scene didn't have Helaena choosing between two sons (only between a son and a daughter), and he thinks it's unlikely they'll have the Bitterbridge scene with the Kingsguard Rickard Thorne heroically trying to protect Maelor (who is torn to pieces by the crowd). GRRM said that this will affect Helaena once again, because Maelor's death is why she commits suicide in F&B and he says in the S3 outline Helaena does it for "no reason". Welp. First of all, it's kind of hilarious that the wiki immediately cited GRRM's blog post, because IDK if GRRM recalls that in F&B he gave multiple reasons for Helaena's suicide (several weeks after Maelor's death!) through the book's conceit of multiple historians:

because she learned she was pregnant after being gangraped in a brothel along with her mother per Mushroom's wild story of the "Brothel Queens" (though Gyldayn reasserts no part of Mushroom's story is credible)

because she watched two knights who had tried to rescue Corlys be hanged and this upset her, per Munkun (though Gyldayn thinks it's unlikely because she didn't know them)

because Mysaria told her that night that Maelor had died and how he died, per Septon Eustace (though Gyldayn says it's hard to understand what motive Mysaria would have had for doing so)

because she didn't actually commit suicide, she was pushed, because Rhaenyra ordered her murder (what the smallfolk believed, which per Mushroom was a rumor spread by Larys Strong, and note Gyldayn does not discredit him here)

So whatever reason they're choosing for Helaena's suicide in HOTD (I doubt it will remain "for no reason" between outline and script and broadcast), it may be hard to argue it's not textually based given the multiple choice options in the text. Plus, there's a possible reason in the book that is unmentioned by Gyldayn -- that only a short time before, Daemon had his murder-suicide battle with Aemond above the Gods Eye. Though it seems that the news of that battle didn't reach KL until a day after Helaena's suicide, book!Helaena was not a dreamer the way show!Helaena is. And the show has already drawn a connection between Helaena, Daemon, Aemond, the battle above the Gods Eye, and prophecies. So again, I very much doubt she will kill herself "for no reason" in the show. It may not be the same reason as in F&B, but there should be some reason.

But the fact that GRRM stated outright that the Maelor reason is the real one and therefore he's an important character who should not be butterflied away -- well, that blog post did what his book deliberately failed to do. GRRM wrote a book with so many multiple choice conflicting narratives, deliberately, because he didn't want to make up his mind, so in its adaptation the HOTD writing team chose to write a narrative that picks and chooses among them (and sometimes, yes, makes up new shit), because they did have to make up their mind (and not do a Rashomon framing device). And only now he's like "no that's wrong, there is a real true history there and I'm mad they're not doing it"? I'm sure it's frustrating to GRRM, but if it's a problem, it's been a problem since the very start!

I mean, I am deeply sympathetic to him being disappointed by an adaptation once again, especially if he thought being an executive producer would give him more power than GOT's co-executive producer status but again that was just an empty title with no power at all. And especially if he has been telling the HOTD writers truths the book didn't, only to be dismissed with something like "well you didn't say that in the book so we're doing it differently". And especially if he thought a particular scene was very fine writing and characterization, and is disappointed that the show is unlikely to broadcast it to a greater audience. Y'klnow... damn the NDAs, but someone really ought to get GRRM's opinion regarding Septon Meribald's broken men speech, frequently considered one of his best, and how they did something rather different in GOT... and lbr, the Rickard Thorne Bitterbridge scene was a nice bit of a knight actually keeping his vows for once, but it doesn't compare.

(Seriously, let's be real. We all know GRRM's real issue is with what GOT did to his legacy. HOTD is just the one he thinks he might be able to nip in the bud before they make so many changes... and if he can't, that's just the wound of GOT all over again.)

And I do agree that Helaena's suicide is important, however it happens. The KL riots being sparked by her suicide are also important. (Though I very much doubt they won't exist at all in any form -- again see that vision from S2E8 and the fact that it included a scene evidently from the Storming of the Dragonpit.) And Maelor is important as well for something GRRM didn't mention (perhaps he thought he couldn't get away with it, though evidently he couldn't get away with saying anything) -- the fact that his death is what causes Daeron's heel turn from a sweet kid to a war criminal, and thus the Sack of Bitterbridge and Lady Caswell's own suicide (imo far more emotionally moving than Thorne's stand against the crowd). But... those butterflies don't necessarily have to be "killed", as GRRM fears. Daeron (who at least we know exists in the show) can have a heel turn for a different reason. Bitterbridge can be sacked for a different reason.

If that's what they choose to do, because yes, Daeron doesn't have to have a heel turn at all, Bitterbridge doesn't need to be sacked at all, the entire southern campaign can be a different story, they can write anything they want, as faithful to F&B as they want or otherwise. But GRRM's greatest worry seems to be that a less-than-faithful adaptation won't be a "logical and convincing" story where all the points lead to a conclusion, and... I'm truly sorry to say, that does not necessarily follow. Whatever conclusion HOTD reaches will be the sum of whatever came before. If some parts aren't built up as well as they should be, lbr F&B's Dance has had the same critiques for years. And again, the multiple-historian conceit, as well as it being a history and not a POV narrative, has never helped this issue, because it lead to one of F&B's greatest faults -- that it is not consistent with itself. (Unrelated to the Dance: see Alysanne's attitude towards Baelon inheriting at the end of the Long Reign chapter, vs pages later in the Heirs of the Dragon chapter. "You will be a great king" vs "a cock is not essential"... these chapters were written years apart, and not edited together nearly as well as they should have been.) If GRRM has a different story in his head that is more consistent than was put on the page, again this may be too little too late for all the work already put into the show.

However... I have a very strong feeling that it's not "Maelor the missing" or even whatever's happening with Helaena and the riot, or Daeron and Bitterbridge, that's GRRM's real worry about "toxic butterflies". I think the subject he really wanted to talk about, and knew he absolutely could not (and yet perhaps hoped that post could pressure HBO about), is the absence of Nettles. Her absence would greatly change the relationship of Daemon and Rhaenyra, who we've seen HOTD has chosen to portray as an OTP, a toxic one perhaps, "always meant to burn together". But it was already portrayed as odd in F&B for Daemon to lose his head chasing after a teen girl (if IMO entirely consistent with his personality), but with HOTD's apparent Daemon/Rhaenyra plot... Well, see S2's process starting with him leaving her in ep2, to their reunion in ep8 convinced she's the queen chosen by the gods... is Nettles going to come in and blow that up? Make Daemon abandon Rhaenyra again? It could be told in a "logical and convincing" way, I still think it should be, but at this point it's hard to see how it would be. (And looking at GOT in comparison, Nettles does not have either the textual value nor the fanbase that Brienne has, and just look how they ended their toxic OTP of Jaime/Cersei, despite the books.)

But plot and relationships aside, Nettles is a character whose meaning reaches well beyond F&B, to affect ASOIAF itself. Her legacy regarding Targaryen exceptionalism, to the subject of who can really ride a dragon, her legacy regarding the Vale's Burned Men... all these are elements that may be extremely important in TWOW and ADOS. So if GRRM has been trying to convince Ryan that Nettles is the most important character that should not be eliminated, and yet has been shut down... well, no wonder he's been depressed about his own legacy.

And again, I'm sure it's the deeper wound of GOT's ending that's been truly paining GRRM regarding his legacy, that their ending that may be the only thing anyone ever sees. Perhaps he was hoping that HOTD could help correct the issue. That its foreshadowing would help readers understand the truth, what happens in TWOW and ADOS, the real ending. But... again I'm deeply sympathetic, and I'm sorry HOTD couldn't be that for him, but the truth is no other television show can be GRRM's legacy in that way. The only thing that can correct GOT is his own words. The only thing that truly matters is him finishing TWOW and ADOS... and it's been 13 years since ADWD, 5 years since GOT S8. I want to tell him, so much, fuck the butterflies-- as you've said so many times yourself, the show is not the books. Leave them be in their other universe and focus on your own, please. Please.

Because, again, let's be real. If GRRM does finish his grand epic and completes his legacy, his last word on the subject... if this makes HBDiscFlix want to do a GOT remake once they have an actual story to adapt "correctly" (which they still won't)... you know that when the final season of Game of Thrones Brotherhood comes out in 2050 and Tyrion rides a dragon despite having no Targaryen ancestry... all the clickbait sites and YouTok will have vidposts like "The Missing Character from House of the Dragon - What You Don't Know About This GOTB Development!" It won't matter what HBO did or didn't do with HOTD. It's just GRRM's own words in the end... if he has them.

[c-rowlesdraws]

As much as Snowpea is great I do wanna throw some love out there for Nettle too. She's got great goblin design and everything I've seen with her in it has been real fun.

thank you! I have fun drawing her.

(shirt inspired by a real one seen on @shiftythrifting, one of the best blogs on this website)

(also her gnoll friend's name is Sweet Pea, not Snow Pea, but that's ok Snow Pea could be a cute nickname)

[hyzenslay]

Judas kiss

[groenendaze]

sometimes with pictures that i don’t originally think i can save/arent “ideal” for a variety of reasons, i try an experimental or artsy style on them…..most of the time it doesn’t work but, hey! sometimes it gets you some fun end products

[wintywriter]

Just something casual about Daemon who literally changes because of Nettles but who can’t be changed because it def goes against his whole nature.

That’s why he commits suicide. That’s why he ends his life. That's why this change, putting someone else's life before his own, is killing him. This is his first and last sacrifice and his redemption at the same time. Nettles is his redemption. His life is his sacrifice.

The aforementioned sacrifice and redemption, however, do not concern the remnants of his family. They're both his victim and his sacrifice.

Duty over love. Love over duty. Duty is the death of love. Love is the death of duty.

Daemon Targaryen. Rhaegar Targaryen. Jaime Lannister. Always at cost of their families. Always for the sake of love.

Nettles. Lyanna Stark. Brienne Tarth.

Rhaenyra Targaryen. Elia Martell. Cersei Lannister.

Jon Snow. Finally, for the sake of love to his family.

Arya Stark.