#to make an asoiaf comparison

[lemonhemlock]

i know i've converted my blog into asoiaf meta for the most part, but now that the champions league is back and madrid are set to face liverpool again next week, i remembered this article and just... with all this talk of meta-narratives and arcs and symbolism... can you feel nostalgic for something that happened just last year??? this is going to be super indulgent but i am most definitely feeling thoughts & thinking feelings right now !!!

so for anyone who has no idea what i'm talking about, how about i introduce you to a tale of uncanny resilience in the face of the impossible? not just of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but of the over-praised, overachiever, drenched in privilege and exposure, that the rest of the world learns to despise, bc they become sick and tired of their (supposedly manufactured) success? what happens when you're the villain in everyone else's story and the world is rooting against you anyway but you also just kind of stop performing for whatever reason?

do you just lay down and take it? accept that your luck has run its course and endure the critiques and the slander with gritted teeth?? once you reach that level of transcendence, is there truly any going back? are you even of this earth anymore?

so that is how madrid dragged itself through the champions league in the 2021-2022 season. the undisputed queen of europe, with an unequaled (then-) 13 titles under her belt, the team that had achieved the impossible feat of winning 4 titles in 5 years, now became the team that everyone wrote off. cursed with the most onerous bracket in the history of the knock-off stages, doomed (blessed??) to face-off the most nefarious avatars of modern footballing culture - first paris saint germain, a PR-sanitizing tool for the crimes of the qatari political elite, then chelsea, a team owned by a russian oligarch with a similar function - also the acting champions of europe, to boot.

four difficult matches that no one expected madrid to survive and nearly took us out so many times. until they didn't. until we opened our eyes each time after the final whistle and there we were, still standing. and there they were, gone, vanquished. a nightmare you wake up from, disoriented, asking for the date, time, place, context. what year is this. is it safe to come out? is this real? have we done it again? what are the odds to us, other than mere suggestions, foolish calculations that only heretics give credence to?

Against PSG they had come down from 1-0 down, 2-0 on aggregate to win 3-2, gifted a way back and scoring twice in a minute, three in quarter of an hour. Against Chelsea they had gone from 3-0 down on the night, 4-3 down on aggregate, with 10 minutes left to win 5-4 on aggregate. It had been extraordinary that they were even standing, but this is the team you have to kill a hundred times. If not, know that they’re coming for you.

the whole world knows that you never, absolutely, under no circumstances, let madrid worm their way into the final, because that's as good as surrendering the title to them and calling it a day. as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. if divine intervention is needed, it will come. inexorably. real madrid are god's team, baby.

so the world throws the hardest hurdle at us for the semi-final. the greatest obstacle. the best chance at making us fail. pep guardiola's manchester city. another such propaganda toy, this time for the UAE, a soulless, plastic club. the embodiment of manufactured apathy. but who's counting. the first leg ends 4-3 for them. the goals didn't stop coming, so i remember asking myself why were they both dressed in blue. light for man city, dark for madrid. what a peculiar choice. what a peculiar year.

In Manchester Real Madrid faced 16 shots. They were beaten 4-3, but celebrated that almost as a victory given how overrun they had been, aware that the difference could have been far greater; rarely can City have felt more like they had lost a game that they had won.

but it is in the second leg that they remembered who they were. we had just forgotten, you see!! a momentary lapse of judgement. it is just before the finish line when you muster up that last ounce of strength and command your feet to press you forward. undaunted visionaries violently upturning any kind of logic or common sense! what was supposed to happen candidly did not happen. it's that easy. it's that simple. flippantly refusing to capitulate!!! our white flags don't mean the same thing as everyone else's! how silly they were to think... !

There were 39 seconds left and Real Madrid needed to score twice or they were out, halted at the gates of the final, their luck running out at last. Eighty-eight seconds later they had done, collective madness taking everyone. Somehow, they had forced extra time; soon, they had the winner, which by then you knew they would. Look in the top corner of your screen. It had shown 89:20 RMA 0 – 1 MCI (3-5). Look again and it showed: 94.13 RMA 3 – 1 MCI (6-5). And it had taken a few seconds to update the score.

delusion that becomes truth itself??? because you make it so???? sometimes seeing truly is NOT believing, you need to re-make reality in your image and according to your own hallucinations of grandeur!! sometimes you are pygmallion and that scoreboard is your galatea goddamn it. you're not lying to yourself, you're prophesizing what you will create out of this world!

The champions of France, Europe and England all eliminated at the Bernabéu.

What happened was the most ridiculous resurrection of them all: even more implausible, the margins finer, the race against the clock more frantic, like they were watching that video back again only on fast-forward, everything flashing by.

There was something mystical at play; some fate, some force that means that the more you fight it, the more inevitable it becomes.

liverpool surely hate our guts. two lost UCL finals against us, the first fraught with enough controversy to last a generation. i don't know what's going to happen next week. we might as well lose & forfeit this season. but, even so, we'll always have something other teams don't. that bright, celestial belief in our strength and our resolve, that vision that only we can see and deliver forth, even in the face of the absurd, of the hopeless.

and i think that there's inspiration in that. i think it's a neat reminder that we have so many stories of our own to tell and there's a power we wield in fleshing them into existence.

The players knew: they had seen the video that proves it.

so go forth and be brilliant!! bring around your own remontada!

“We’ve come back, we’ve come back!” he shouted, leaping about celebrating. There’s something about that “we” that stuck in the throat. He wasn’t alone, some fans turning and trying to get back in. Had they learned nothing? Do they not know this team they support? Of course you have come back, you fool.

[fromtheseventhhell]

"Sansa = Ned 2.0 and Arya = Catelyn 2.0" is one of those takes where you can just tell people are more attached to the aesthetic than anything. "The Stark girls are most like the parent they look least like" sounds good on paper and people run with the idea, regardless of how it actually fits into the story. A majority of the justification relies on misinterpreting all of their characters + a healthy dose of fanon. What gets me is that this is the same fandom that insists that Lyanna, only compared to Arya in the text, is equal parts Arya and Sansa but Ned and Catelyn, two fully fleshed-out and complex characters, have to be more like one girl or the other? There's just nothing in the story to justify being so adamant about these comparisons. Arya and Sansa have parallels with both of their parents but at the end of the day, they are unique characters with their own stories. I'll never understand why people want to flatten these complex characters down to their most basic tropes and fit them into restrictive boxes just for a "poetical~" comparison.

[la-pheacienne]

sam in asoiaf POVS is sending me into a spiral if u even care

[ladystoneboobs]

The princess might even have considered Willas Tyrell, crippled leg and all, but her father refused to send her to Highgarden to meet him. She tried to go despite him, with Tyene's help . . . but Prince Oberyn caught them at Vaith and brought them back. -Arianne II, aFfC

suddenly, out of nowhere, intriuged by what this match would have been like if she'd made it to highgarden, bc every tyrell besides willas is racist toward the dornish. or at least mace and olenna def are and they blame oberyn for will's injury even tho willas himself doesn't. but maybe margaery and garlan could be happy for their union (loras can be kind of a dick so i'm just assuming he shares his dad's racism), a crippled reacherman and a headstrong dornishwoman against the world.

[addamvelaryon]

Bittersteel & Bloodraven if the Blackfyre Rebellion never happened

[bwaldorf]

ITS LITERALLY HER......... book!alicent save me save meeeee (inspo)

[atopvisenyashill]

IF YOU LIKE THIS ASOIAF CHARACTER, I THINK YOU’LL LIKE THIS FARSCAPE CHARACTER

i did a “all gays” thing for my birthday last year but i was too lazy this year. instead here is my opinion of farscape & asoiaf characters, comparing characters i think are similar.

if you like theon greyjoy…i think you’ll like john crichton (he’s the main character).

Conga Line Of Trauma

Very loose grip on reality

Struggles with choosing between the family he’s been kidnapped into and the family he was born into

Top Two best story arcs about male victims of sexual trauma imo

Copes by imagining himself as a character in a story rather than face his reality

Pathetic wet cat of a man

if you like jaime lannister…i think you’ll like aeryn sun

theyre hot shit and everyone knows it even though they hate it - the ☀️ radiant aeryn sun☀️ and “was there ever a man as beautiful and terrible”

Well known for being good at their job (which is killing people)

Idealist that got that idealism beaten out of them

constantly repressing emotions

an arc that is very romance centered but atypical as a traditional romance

if you like brienne and/or sandor…i think you’ll like ka d’argo.

Young, experienced but not too experienced military type

Struggles with idealism and what being a soldier/knight should mean

Not forthcoming about backstory

Struggles with temper

Cool And Important Weapon And Mount

Considered mindlessly violent by many

Very weird about romance and sex

if you like catelyn stark…i think you’ll like pa’u zotah zhaan

religious and maternal

pacifist tendencies but also will cut a bitch if pressed

Infamous for being unpleasant

Traumatic death scenes

Questionable relationship with the concept of dying and staying dead

MILFs

if you like sansa and arya stark…i think you’ll like chiana

Their Series’ Hottest It Girls

Idolizes rebellion leading older brother (who ultimately abandons her in favor of his rebellion)

Desperate for family

Holds emotions close, but highly emotional

Taste for finer things in life

Baby of the group

Struggles with grief and anger

Spunky go getter

Questionable taste in romantic relationships

if you like tyrion lannister….i think you’ll like scorpius

mother died birthing him and he struggles with this immensely

tormented by a crazy ruthless woman in power

feels betrayed by a lover of a lower social status just trying to get by and gets real violent over it

The Anti Villain - has very good reasons to be insane but holy shit is he insane

Always survives despite all odds against him

If you like Joffrey Baratheon…I think you’ll like Dominar Rygel XVI (hear me out!)

Absolute ruler who faces civil war

Wildly misogynistic weirdo

Weak grasp on morality

Turned into a violent, selfish asshole as a trauma response

Hates women yet his deepest, most profound and intimate relationships are with a woman he’s not even fucking

Remains selfish and violent throughout the story but also, if you talk shit about him i will throw hands

if you like samwell tarly…i think you’ll like Pilot.

Couple of sweet fools

Underrated for being a bad ass

Intimate relationship with a Very Cool Lady From A Bad Situation (gilly/moya. moya is a living ship btw).

Just wants to be a nerd and hang with his gf (again, gilly and moya)

Doesn’t believe in himself the way he should

if you like stannis baratheon…i think you’ll like bailar crais.

Is he a hero? is he a villain? is he an anti villain? is he an anti hero? you decide!

loses his everloving mind after his brother dies

sad traumatic childhood backstory

an arc focused on what service and leadership means

[SPOILER REDACTED]

HE thinks he’s the straight man in a circle of freaks and he thinks this while being objectively the biggest freak there

and last but not least let’s go to my babies!!!!

if you like bran stark…i think you’ll like stark.

Overwhelming magical abilities

Connects magically in intimate, voyeuristic ways

Potentially unkillable

Considered a sweetie by Local MILF (his mom/zhaan)

Struggles processing a personal loss

A narrative focus on the importance of bodily autonomy

Doesn’t have as much screentime/page time as he deserves

[pixiecactus]

three stags and one bull

[inthecompanyofabengaltiger]

man am i over people who've never actually read asoiaf shitting on it lmao

[thelustybraavosimaid]

"None offered a name, but he marked their faces well so he could revenge himself upon them later. They shoved him down every time he tried to rise, and kicked him when he curled up on the ground. But then they heard a roar. 'That's my father's man you're kicking,' howled the she-wolf." (Bran II, ASoS)

--

"I won't hurt him…much," Prince Joffrey told Arya, never taking his eyes off the butcher's boy.

Arya went for him.

Sansa slid off her mare, but she was too slow. Arya swung with both hands. There was a loud crack as the wood split against the back of the prince's head, and then everything happened at once before Sansa's horrified eyes. (Sansa I, AGoT)

--

Thorne smiled. "The Bastard wishes to defend his lady love, so we shall make an exercise of it. Rat, Pimple, help our Stone Head here." Rast and Albett moved to join Halder. "Three of you ought to be sufficient to make Lady Piggy squeal. All you need do is get past the Bastard."

"Stay behind me," Jon said to the fat boy. (Jon IV, AGoT)

[althaeaofficinalis]

god help me the instagram hotd fans are trying to make political jokes about the show and someone said dorne has a parliament. bestie where

[thespoonisvictory]

It's honestly really insane how genuinely good asoiaf is and how wildly popular it got despite 90% of the opinions I've ever heard on it completely misrepresenting every single one of the actual merits of the series

[fromtheseventhhell]

"Arya wouldn't have been able to survive in KL" is really one of the dumbest fanon takes where you can tell someone only believes it because they like the idea of Arya and Sansa being "exact opposites and perfect complements" (even though it goes against the books). Actual evidence from the books to back it up? Never anywhere to be found despite how confidently people make this claim.

And not only does it severely mischaracterize Arya and ignore what she's been through, it also ignores her importance as a political hostage. The Lannisters weren't searching for her, and lying about having her, for no reason. They needed her because having only one Stark after executing Ned put them in a poor position to negotiate. So Arya would have been more than capable of handling herself (thoroughly shown in her Harrenhal chapters) and the Lannisters would've done everything in their power to keep her alive but, somehow, she wouldn't have been able to survive? It's truly one of those takes that falls apart if you think about it for more than two seconds but apparently, that's too much effort for some people.

[monarchetype]

[navree]

Can you explain what you mean by a mix of dany and a self-insert oc? Because I don't really see any resemblance between daenerys and rhaenyra since their backstories are totally different. I'm a show watcher only, but I don't mind spoilers. So, can you tell me if this is a thing or not?

Sure no pb!

Thing is, you're actually bang on the money. Dany and Rhaenyra are very different characters, their connections are entirely superficial; they're both Targaryen female throne claimants, and Daenerys is a descendant of Rhaenyra through her second child by Daemon, Viserys (eventually Viserys II), but that's the only thing that they have in common. Dany as a character is entirely different from Rhaenyra, she has a much firmer and more developed sense of justice, she cares deeply for the common people and the plight of the marginalized than Rhaenyra ever does, and she intimately understands what it means to be disadvantaged on the subject of gender and class and sexuality that Rhaenyra, from her position of privilege that she has held her entire life, keenly lacks. Dany grew up impoverished and abused and was literally sold into slavery at thirteen years old; Rhaenyra grew up royal and coddled and in a much greater position of power throughout her childhood than Dany ever got. They're nothing alike, and their stories are entirley different, even in terms of how they approach leadership and rule (in F&B Rhaenyra's reign is shockingly bad because she's exceedingly brutal and turns the population of King's Landing against her, whereas Dany is a lot more cognizant of needing the people on her side, due to having taken her throne in Meereen by right of persuasion and conquest as opposed to Rhaenyra assuming the throne should be handed to her because her dad said so, and Dany is a much gentler ruler who actually denounces the torture Rhaenyra relies on throughout her half-year queenship).

The thing is, the crucial key thing to remember in all of this, is that fandom is a breeding ground for stupidity. Fandoms, especially these days, rarely allow for any sort of nuance or understanding of intricacies, and it therefore breeds people who have a tendency to run their mouths without knowing literally anything of what they're talking about. So a lot of people saw that Dany was a Targaryen woman who called herself queen, and Rhaenyra was a Targaryen woman who called herself queen, and just went "oh wow they're so similar1!111!!!!!!11" without actually examining these characters as, you know, characters. And they don't really want to, because they don't actually care about these characters, they care about being right. That's why so many Team Black stans have a tendency to start creating moral equivalencies between characters people enjoy and who they are in real life, which is why you get things like "if you like Aegon you support rapists" or "if you aren't on Rhaenyra's side while watching the show you're sexist" or the people who leave insane comments on the socials of Fabien or Olivia or Tom or Ewan based on the actions of their characters. Liking Rhaenyra as a character, for these people, is about proving that they're morally superior and in the objective "correct" position, so they aren't interested in Rhaenyra's flaws, or the intricacies of her personality, or the reality of her show situation, which is that she's not popular and has no reason to be popular. She needs to be chosen by God and the people, she needs to be Dany-lite because Dany was popular and everyone liked her and was the most iconic face of GOT/ASOIAF, so if Rhaenyra is Dany, Rhaenyra gets all that too through transference.

Even the show's aware that Dany and Rhaenyra are totally different, there's literally an entire episode dedicated to Rhaenyra being selfish and spoiled without thinking of the consequences both to other people and to herself. Rhaenyra even knows that she has flaws, there's a reason why in episode 8 she's the first one to toast to Alicent (beyond her love for her) and why that toast explicitly includes her saying that she is offering Alicent an apology. But again, this isn't about Rhaenyra as a character, or those who enjoy Rhaenyra as a character, it's people who act like fandom is real life and who are more interested in broadcasting purity and being obnoxious than engaging in a piece of fiction either with enjoyment or a critical eye. And it makes them draw incorrect observations that have no basis and then go from there, like acting as if Dany and Rhaenyra are similar and getting upset when people point out that they're not.

[smallhatlogan]

i don't think a book series can be rightfully compared to asoiaf if the POV characters don't start-out already traumatized/broken/alienated or end up there relatively quickly