#vs having realistic expectations of our heroes; the story; and what the author can actually accomplish in the given setting

[lemonhemlock]

so, i'm going through your anti team black tag and living my best life, but one post in particular that you made got me thinking.

“george made damn sure rhaenyra’s bloodline sat on the throne at the end bc, if the hightowers won, house targaryen would have been reformed, and he couldn’t kill them all off at the end of the main series”

i'm pretty sure this might've just been a joke, but it makes me curious. do you think something like a targaryen reformation would be possible, hypothetically speaking? i certainly wouldn't mind it in a "greens win" AU scenario, but that's just me. i wanna know if anyone else sees potential in this. 💚💚💚

Hello, yes, this was mostly a joke, as it happens. 😅 (anon is referring to this post) To introduce another lengthy parenthesis, I remember at the time that some of the reactions to that post were in the range for "why doesn't anyone understand that the Hightowers are also feudal lords vying for their own interests and not some great reformists out to save Westeros", which... Listen. 😄 To put equitably, this fandom has a considerable issue with knowing when to level criticism and when to just treat banter as lighthearted horsing around and not take it too seriously. Something which even I'm not exempt from, I don't think. 🤷‍♀️

So, in the interest of making a meme, that post was kind of half-true in that it simplified a more nuanced concept (that was never an avenue that the author decided to explore anyway) for the sake of humour. I have, in the past, detailed my thoughts on House Hightower and what I think is their role in the wider narrative. This is based on the information we have on them presently. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. Who knows, maybe Lord Leyton and Melara plan on blowing Oldtown up for shits and giggles. We don't have to guess everything correctly - another aspect this community struggles with in their fandom wars and obsession with having the most correct, morally pure take.

Regardless, yes, the Hightowers obviously are a privileged family at the top of the social food chain, benefitting from the exploitation awarded by feudalism - a political-economic system based on vast inequality. Therefore, any type of reform they might be willing to undertake will be limited and not really something that significantly changes the status-quo. Just like the beloved, fan-favourite, and mostly confirmed "winners" - the Starks. A third element that our fandom has trouble accepting is the concept of incremental change. I feel like it would basically be a truism to point out that incremental change has been the most reliable vector of socio-economic evolution throughout human history. So, bad news for them, I suppose, but any superficial study of history will reveal that feudalism hardly collapsed overnight. Which leads us back to the idea that any small change, no matter how limited, does matter in the long run, because, as time passes, it will be compounded with another small change and so on.

Anyway, coming back to the question. Would Targaryen reformation be possible? Certainly! GRRM could have made up any story he wanted. Anything is possible if you plan for it and it makes sense within your worldbuilding. As it stands, the Targaryens are foreigners with a questionable culture, hailing from a land that used to engage in practices that even the feudal Westerosi found backwards, distasteful, barbaric or immoral: slavery, human sacrifice, incest, great feats of violence such as pillaging and conquering neighbouring lands for the sake of feeding their population to their volcano gods etc. The Targaryens also have fire-breathing monsters that, while not exactly enough all the time to prevent any rebellions from happening, are weapons that no one else has access to and that can cause a great deal of damage that no one else can replicate.

So, in order to "reform" and integrate, they would need to renounce all that. They would need to do it the traditional way. They do some of the work, but never go all the way. They accept the main religion of the land, but they don't let go of inter-marrying, because they don't want to lose their access to dragons. There are attempts to integrate, but, by the time of the events of the main series, they have returned to incest. Funnily enough, Aegon V plays a role in both - he marries outside of the family and has no dragons left, but his succeeding son and daughter marry each other and, eventually, Aegon decides that bringing back dragons is not such a bad idea after all. I do think that the symbolic weight of Daenerys having both her parents and her grandparents as brother-sister sets is laying the "dragon blood" metaphor thick - and that it holds more magical weight than any mathematical calculation of her actual watered-down Targaryen DNA.

In any such scenario where GRRM decided to go down a Targaryen reformation path, IMO it would have been thematically-relevant to ease into it via a marriage alliance with one of the oldest families in Westeros - a well-respected, rich house that also has close links to both the only centre of higher education and the main religious organization in the land. Hence the meme. :) But it doesn't last and the Targaryens go back to their dastardly ways eventually, that's the point of them in the story, because the author chose it to be the point.

[davidmann95]

Did you see the interview Morrison did with CBR on Superman and The Authority? Any thoughts on it if so?

Anonymous asked: You see that interview with Morrison about S&tA? They’ve got me excited, confirms it’s basically a spiritual successor to their Action Comics run, an ending story for the Golden Age Superman the way All-Star was for the Silver Age. Very intrigued at how they’re doing this older, kind of pissed off Superman

Anonymous asked: Morrison talking mad shit about Injustice and the Snyder film plans made me happy. Just wanted to share even though you have much more positive feelings on both than I do lol.

Anonymous asked: Well Superman editorial continues to suck massively per Morrison. Almost comforting how even after the entire department gets purged, the people there would rather continue to do evil Superman than anything else.

Anonymous asked: Any thoughts on the new Morrison interview?

Anonymous asked: Have you read the CBR interview with Morrison on Superman and the Authority? Interested to hear your thoughts.

Plenty of thoughts.

* I suspected pretty much from the beginning that their choice to go with The Authority had to do with that crew representing for Morrison a bittersweet nostalgia for the turn-of-the-millenium promise of a more radical, just tomorrow (especially given that they repeatedly noted in interviews at the time they felt it had rightfully supplanted their own JLA, and with Millar and Quitely doing the second run on it), so it delving into that makes sense to me. I did not expect that to be in the form of Kennedy showing up (add New Frontier to the list of stuff this is implicitly drawing on, another comic asking 'has Superman sold out?'), but it makes me ten times more fascinated; I assume that was allowed in the first place because this was planned initially as part of 5G where Superman would have debuted in the 60s, and now because of the post-Death Metal 'it all counts' ethos.

* The DC perspective is an unsurprising downer (I imagine Morrison pitched The Authority angle as a commercial way of doing that they could actually work with), but it's notable that those initial plans were in 2018; I think signs point to the perspective of the higher-ups on Superman having shifted pretty dramatically in the last couple of years. Also holy crap they had a Morrison Superman mini in cold storage for four years, I don't know if it's abhorrent that this was kept for us or admirable that they waited for perfect timing. It's also kind of shocking that this wasn't written contemporaneously with Wonder Woman: Earth One Vol. 3/The Green Lantern Season Two/Detective #26, because it seems so much the conclusion of the capstone they represent.

* In a weird way, this is them doing an all-encompassing take on Superman ala their Batman they never have before. All-Star and Action are often flattened out into 'Silver Age' and 'Golden Age', but really it's them doing their interpretation of classic, iconic Superman vs. their idealized personal reinvention drawing from several eras. This is the one that goes 'no he lived through it all, what are the consequences of this and what does he regret'.

* "It's kind of a reflective age for Superman who looks back and wondered if it worked, all that gaudy presentation, fighting with Doomsday, having Crises? Were we all wrapped up in our superhero bullshit and not dealing with all the problems that we started out with and tried to [solve]?" This feels almost ripped from the page from Blackstars and it casts that story in a very new light knowing that they'd already been writing this at the time, as if the take on Superman in there was built to ultimately justify the changes in here.

* I guess I'm not strictly as harsh as most but to qualify my feelings on Injustice or the Snyder movies as "much more positive" than most I'm pretty sure they would've had to run over a beloved childhood pet. Yes, I read some Twitter responses, they were hilarious.

* Talking up Clark's alien perspective makes me wonder if that's part of why the books doubling down on "he's half-human and born on Earth, in a way even his dad can't be he's seen and lives as one of us" with Jon as the impetus for his own apparent progressive journey in Son of Kal-El. Curious what capacity Jon might be in this, since again, Morrison played with him a lot in Blackstars and this apparently sets stuff up for his book.

* Superman as the dad picking you up after you get really drunk for the entire planet is such a killer framing, and also makes me think of this, which they wrote around the same time:

* Love the described stuff with Midnighter and Apollo, wild that it's just now a full decade after their incorporation that Apollo's meeting Superman and Midnighter still hasn't met Batman.

* Are those preview pages the final colors? I suspect not but I'd be so down with it if they were and this book was going with a bold near-monochromatic take.

* Finally, realized this is the conceptual sequel to Multiversity: a pulp-age hero (who's apparently been around since then) dealing with the 'successor' heroes of tomorrow, the post-Millar post-9/11 breed, hoping to act as a brighter example but terrified he's become inexorably an instrument of the status quo and that maybe it's all just shit. Think there's a low but non-zero chance The Gentry might show up to go after Superman for breaking all the rules. It is also, god help us, their Doomsday Clock - can Superman redeem DC's metatextual perceived embodiment of realistic cynicism?

[stillness-in-green]

I'm not really active in the MHA fandom or blog- but I agree a lot with your points on OH. To be fair though- I don't think weekly schedule in itself facilitate great writing imo b/c Mangaka's don't have the time to revise their drafts (they get usually max 6 hours of time to work on each page- everything from name to final touch ups- monthly authors get up to 2 days for each page), there's literally not enough time to think, reread or to adjust things. But I think Hori's reaching a point where it's not sustainable for him to keep at the pace he started MHA with. So he's cutting corners to move the plot faster- but compressed plotlines will come with executional pitfalls. That's just the limits of the medium when you don't have a dedicated writer/ don't have everything pre-planned. It's getting more apparant now, because we're in the final arc- and people are expecting pay offs to start happening. And in considering that the 'conversation' deku and OH had was supposed to be payoff on OH's character thread? It's a lotta waffling imo. I'm over it at this point- because If Hori is actually doing this because it's for his own health- then I'd rather he do that. regardless of whether I like his story or not- it's still his story- so the priority imo is so long as he's happy with his work- that's what should matter more. It doesn't mean it's above critque, or that we should all like it, not at all, ones reactions are one's own, and genuine in their emotions. There's nothing wrong with expressing such on ones own blog, and tagging it in the fanom. Critiques ultimately for those of us doing so, is moreso for ourselves, either those who want to work on creating our own IP, or just want some benchmarks to keep in mind in reading future stories and anticipating what actually appeals to one's own tastes. I just want to make a shoutout of all of that, cause I can tell some of the people reblogging your OH post don't get it at all and are too busy in the "I'm right, you're wrong mindset"- which is-realistically speaking nothing new when it comes to internet fandoms- but still missing the point of what you were saying. Unfortunatly- Tumblr's reply function is pretty much ass when it comes to anything of length on an actual post though. So hope you don't mind the rando tldr from a passer by.

Heya anon, I definitely don't mind the passer-by message. You're right about Hori's ridiculous work schedule. I complained during the war arc about all the breaks, but now I definitely wish he would take a few more than he has been. Not just for the story's sake, but also for his own--it's been AGES since he had one, it seems like. And in fairness, I can hardly expect him to make the time to do a bunch of research on e.g. the detrimental psychological impact of solitary confinement on his schedule.

In truth, the rant was mostly to get it off my chest. Normally, I save my most annoyed complaining for Discord, but sometimes when it feels like no one else is saying the things I want to see said (about Deku's motivations there, about the PLF arrests, about the MLA's views on quirk supremacy, etc), my motivation overflows.

Ultimately, I've been making my peace with the idea of jettisoning canon pretty much since Chapter 240 dropped and featured a Re-Destro whose characterization I liked considerably less than Chapter 239's Re-Destro,* so the idea of writing off the canon after a certain point and just writing the fic I want to write is something I'm very prepared to do.

Still, it'd be nice to be happy with the canon itself, and I really am hoping to be! There's so much good and interesting stuff going on in the series, really challenging material, and like many others, I hope that this arc is about really pushing Hero Society and its defenders to the breaking point so that they can see that the system they have does have to change--just to pick the obvious example, I don't want to see Hawks proven right that a system that could produce him and Lady Nagant is worth salvaging just because Deku is a good person.

Thanks for the message, anon! I grew out of the phase of being bothered by people who willfully miss my point or read me in bad faith many, many fandoms ago, so I'm not too concerned with the people in the comments doing that--I've gotten some very thoughtful responses and much more traction than I'd been expecting, so I'm glad the rant reached some like-feeling people! Here's to hoping Horikoshi gets some rest, and we all can find satisfaction in the story he's working so hard to bring us.

(*Regarding 239 vs. 240's Re-Destro, while I have my problems with how the MLA is being treated in general, the canon has given me more good RD material. I will probably never be over him calling Shigaraki "savior and liberator" and getting indignant about Shigaraki's safety GOOD SHIT GOOD SHIT. Also Clone!RD talking about the relief of only having to present one face to the world and wistfully reflecting on his group's sought-after Liberation as he falls into nothing I am still shook.)

[galvanizedfriend]

No offense to Borzoi, but Klaus in dungeons is very very ROMANTIC like mildly nauseatingly so, and we never see a single ‘dark’ aspect of him, I mean he’s the victim who heals in that book (rightfully so because the trauma he goes through in the writer’s created universe is unimaginable) but you’d never see him as a villain once through out the fic, I understand some ppl dig that and it’s an AMAZING book if you wanna read soft!klaus or lovey dovey klaus, but the way klaus is in your fics, temperamental egotistical “doing bad things for the bad causes doing bad things for the good causes” and more often than not an asshat, it’s nothing like that, but what you do see and just feel in that fic is his age, he’s very very very old and you can just understand his experience in life in that fic, ALSO THE AUTHOR HAS MADE THE BOOK SO CULTURALLY AND HISTORICALLY RICH it’s honestly romantic academia at its finest, but yeah Klaus is definitely a bit ooc in the fic, Caroline’s speech is, I am sorry to say, just always a note off, like it doesn’t flow and ebb in the way Caroline speaks, and there is like very little internal conflict between the main characters, I mean there is but it’s not too noteworthy, their conflict is always with outsiders so it’s kinda like hero painting, and a very unproblematic portrayal of the group, ALSO Damon is portrayed as a good guy, and actually develops a “friendship” of sorts with Caroline but doesn’t apologise until the second book, even then he doesn’t if I actually remember, I think he tries but ends up not doing it, SO YEAH. It’s kinda of a very long not-slowburn hurt and comfort extra sweet like sugary sweet book with all the problematic crap happens only against the mikaelsons, it’s a very clear cut black and white, them vs us book, so I guess if your looking for a read that doesn’t raise your blood pressure and only the sugar levels in your blood go for it.

(Ik you didn’t ask for this BUT if you’re gonna invest in a fic that is almost as long as your tW series, I just thought you should know what you’re getting into. )

I mean, I guess we each have our own tastes. I read just about anything if it’s well written. Even if it’s not how I personally view the characters or their relationships, I don’t really mind that. Each person is gonna have their own views of how it should go, especially in a canonical context, and what they can or cannot tolerate when it comes to that. It’s kind of not realistic to expect everyone to agree on those things. I’m sure many people don’t fancy my Klaus all that much precisely because he’s much closer to TO!Klaus than most people appreciate. 

I loved The Parisian Deal and Paradise Lost, read both more than once, and you could argue that Klaus is not that wild or chaotic in those either. In fact, he’s quite romantic. But tbh, I do think Klaus has a very old school romantic vein to him. Just the way he courted Caroline all through TVD, the kind of stuff he said to her. Some writers are going to explore that, others will choose to dive into other aspects of his personality. I guess it really depends on what stands out to each of us individually.

I think Borzoi is a fantastic writer and her stories are just so well built and developed that it doesn’t bother me in the least that her views are not necessarily the same as mine. I would still recommend her writing to anyone interested in fantastic, poetic writing. 

Thanks for your opinion, anon, but I really don’t mind deviating a bit and reading different versions of the characters. I’m sure it’s still a fantastic fic.

[jaimetheexplorer]

PROBABILITY DISTORTION - Or why Jaime Lannister is less likely to die than you think (part 3)

Once the narrative arcs and foreshadowing analysis pokes enough holes in the “inevitable death” prediction, the arguments to support it usually tend to turn to non-text-based points such as writing style and tropes. Most of these arguments generally revolve around the idea that GRRM is evil and kills characters off to traumatize his readers, and that Jaime’s story is a redemption arc and therefore will end in a redemptive death like all redemption arcs do. These arguments, however, do not really hold much water once you take into account that GRRM actually isn’t the sadist people like to think he is (including sometimes George himself, because it makes for good PR), and that one thing this series prides itself on is trope and expectations subversion.  

GRRM is a realist, not a sadist

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Of all the quotes that have come out of the show, this, right here, is the one I have come to hate the most. Not only because it is often irritatingly used as an empty argument against anything that suggests a non-tragic ending for a character (especially one like Jaime), but it’s thrown around as if it’s the most representative of ASOIAF/GoT ever. In part, I get why. It’s catchy, and the series has broken a lot of boundaries by actually killing people off, putting them through terrible ordeals, maiming and traumatising some for life. It gained its notoriety for killing off the perceived main character of the story at very beginning, and for the shocking bloodbath of “good guys” that was the Red Wedding. But I feel there’s a tendency, amongst fans and journalists alike, to exaggerate how gloomy and sadistic the story/GRRM really is, relative to the context it is set in (medieval war time).

GRRM often explained the reason why he kills characters off as fundamentally being down to two reasons: wanting to depict war realistically and annoyance at stories where the heroes are untouchable and survive, unscathed, any situation (which ties into the topic of trope subversion, too - more on this later).

“You can’t write about war and violence without having death. If you want to be honest it should affect your main characters. We’ve all read this story a million times when a bunch of heroes set out on adventure and [...] the only ones who die are extras. That’s such a cheat. It doesn’t happen that way.” (GRRM)

GRRM is a realist, not a sadist. And I would argue he’s not as bloodthirsty as people perceive him to be, when it comes to main characters. If you think about it, only *two* POV characters have been killed off so far: Ned and Cat. Jon, the other main POV to be killed off in the books, we know will be resurrected thanks to the show. And just as GRRM inserts POVs for a reason (when he needs that new perspective, or when a character’s story needs to be told), there’s a similar reason in his killing too. It usually comes when the characters have fulfilled their purpose in the story, or if their death is a plot point for someone else’s. In Ned and Cat’s case, they die after falling into Littlefinger’s scheme that pits Lannisters against the Starks, kicking off the War of the Five Kings. Ned’s purpose was to discover the true paternity of Robert’s children and Cat dies after tasking Brienne to bring Jaime to King’s Landing in return for her daughters (which sets off a massive domino effect of plotlines). They also both needed to die in order to break down centralized parenthood in the Stark family so that the Stark children could go their separate ways and have their own stories and development.

While POV and non-POV deaths alike can be shocking and/or heartbreaking, they aren’t thrown in there just to fill some death or shock quota for no other rhyme nor reason. This is not The Walking Dead. And “realism” also means a ton of other options that have nothing to do with death. It’s not just an issue of “death vs. survival”, to post another excerpt from the quote above:

“They go into battle and their best friend dies or they get horribly wounded. They lose their leg or death comes at them unexpectedly.”

Having a loved one die, or horrible injuries are also part of realism for GRRM, not just death. Does that “lose their leg” sound familiar? Thought so. So saying that Jaime (or any character) will most likely get killed anyway because GRRM is a sadist is not only a weak argument, but a big misrepresentation of  GRRM’s writing style. Jaime, who has already added his contribution to the “realism” jar by losing his hand, might die if and when he has fulfilled his purpose in the story, but not because “GRRM is a jerk”. 

Subversions

Perhaps a stronger case for Jaime’s survival odds is the fact that, if there is one thing this series loves to do, it’s subverting tropes and expectations, and, alongside Ned’s death and the Red Wedding, Jaime is perhaps one of the most famous examples of how this story does character trope subversion so well. 

Right out of the gate, it wants us to hate him, because he’s arrogant, ruthless and incestuous, he betrayed and murdered the King he was sworn to protect and he pushed a child out of a window. From book/season 3 onwards, that initial perception is slowly challenged and eventually subverted, especially throughout his journey with Brienne and with the revelation of why he killed the Mad King, but also in how he takes risks to protect Tyrion and Sansa from his own family. In the show this is particularly fun, because once you go back to earlier seasons, you notice several subtle moments of writing and acting where the seeds of these revelations were already being planted. While I understand he is not everyone’s cup of tea and some hate him just as much as day one, I think that we can all agree at least that this is what the story is aiming to do, even if not all readers/viewers embrace it. And that’s the most important thing when making a point about authorial intent.

I already mentioned when discussing narrative arcs, that the difference between the classic redemptive character trope and Jaime is that, in Jaime’s case, the story is exploring the process of redemption, rather than seeing redemption as the last minute goal, and how that makes a classic redemptive death less likely. But there is another difference with the traditional trope that makes Jaime not only subvert expectations but, partly, also subvert the redemption trope itself. And that is that many (not all, but many) of the things we are initially supposed to hate Jaime for, actually turn to be misconceptions or prejudices from other characters’ perspective (a huge point of having a POV structure). While Jaime undoubtedly goes through a transformation through the story, for many things it is our initial perception of Jaime is meant to change, not Jaime, the character (again, POV structure!). Looking at Jaime as the trope of the “bad man who is turned good by the good woman” (i.e. Brienne) is a complete misread of the character. Brienne exists to reawaken what Jaime used to be like in his past/can potentially still be, not to transform him into something else (it is Beauty and the Beast they are based on, after all - the beast used to be a prince, and gets turned back into that prince). Therefore applying the outcome of the traditional tropes to Jaime (i.e. a redemptive death) makes little sense when Jaime is meant to be a subversion of that trope to begin with, if not even a different type of character altogether.

Another trope worth considering is the “all the bad guys will die” trope.

Not only this view fails to acknowledge that most characters and families in this series (and its extended universe - see the Targaryen as portrayed in Dunk & Egg) aren’t 100% “good” or 100% “bad”, they sit on a spectrum, but even if you wanted to see a specific character or family as “evil”, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will die or go extinct. We can go back to his quotes about why he kills off characters to see how “bad guys will die” is also a trope he might be interested in subverting.

“It’s really irritating when you open a book, and 10 pages into it you know that the hero you met on page one or two is gonna come through unscathed, because he’s the hero. This is completely unreal, and I don’t like it.” (GRRM)

This quote above can be looked at in reverse too:  just as it is annoying to open a book and know 10 pages in that the hero will survive (and GRRM subverted that trope with Ned), it is annoying to know 10 pages in that the villain will die (and Ned’s villain counterpart in book one is Jaime), or that the family that is perceived as the “evil family” (i.e. the Lannisters) will go extinct in the end (let alone if it’s with the exception of the “good” Lannister, Tyrion, playing right into the trope of both “good vs bad” guys and “good vs bad families”, since the only Lannister allowed to survive is the “good” one).

So even if one doesn’t want to buy into Jaime’s redemption and trope subversion, and wants to hold onto the book/season one interpretation that he’s an awful human being, if the author(s) intend for Jaime to be a subversion of the redemption death trope, or to subvert the “all bad guys must die” trope (or both), then his odds of death or survival are not really influenced by whether the audience agrees with that or not.

GRRM is both a gardener AND an architect

As I wrap up my 3-parter, one final aspect of GRRM’s style is important to note, because it ties it all together.

GRRM says he is a “gardener”, who likes to plant seeds and see how they grow. So one might argue that there is no guarantee that just because he set off in book one to make Jaime the subversion of the villain who must die (through redemption), he will never decide at some point that, actually, a death will be a fitting and satisfying conclusion.

However, it is important to remember that when he talks about being a gardener he means it in the sense that he finds knowing the *details* of how a story will develop to be a turn off for his inspiration and motivation, not that he does not plan anything ahead and has no idea where the story is going.

“For me, writing a book is like a long journey, and like any trip, I know the point where I start the journey and the point I wanna get to. I also know a little bit of the route, such as the main cities in which I wanna stop by, and even a few monuments I would like to visit. What I do not know is where I will eat the first night or which songs will be on the radio. I discover all that details while I am writing the book and that’s the reason why I go so slowly: because sometimes I have to go back to change certain things.” (GRRM)

While he creates the story as he goes along, he does work with the broad strokes of the endgame and the final fates of the main characters in mind:

"I know the broad strokes, and I've known the broad strokes since 1991. I know who's going to be on the Iron Throne. I know who's gonna win some of the battles, I know the major characters, who's gonna die and how they're gonna die, and who's gonna get married and all that. The major characters. Of course along the way I made up a lot of minor characters, you know, I, uhm...Did I know in 1991 how Bronn, what was gonna happen to Bronn? No, I didn't even know there'd be a guy named Bronn. [...] So a lot of the minor characters I'm still discovering along the way. But the mains-"

[question if he knows Arya's and Jon's fates]

"Tyrion, Arya, Jon, Sansa, you know, all of the Stark kids, and the major Lannisters, yeah." (GRRM)

Furthermore, he absolutely loves to drop cues, hints and foreshadowing to future events and plot twists, something that would be completely impossible for him to do if he were writing with no clear ending and direction in sight. So he sets out to make sure his story adds up and makes sense, even if it means having to give up the surprise factor, either because someone already figured it out (e.g. R+L=J):

“The fans use to come up with theories; lots of them are just speculative but some of them are in the right way. [...] They say: “Oh God, the butler did it!”, to use an example of a mystery novel. Then, you think: “I have to change the ending! The maiden would be the criminal!” To my mind that way is a disaster because [...] the books are full of clues that point to the butler doing it and help you to figure up the butler did it, but if you change the ending to point the maiden, the clues make no sense anymore; they are wrong or are lies, and I am not a liar.” (GRRM)

or because the show surpassed the books:

Though he used to worry about it getting to the end before him, he's not even about that life anymore.

“I said, to hell with that. Worrying about it isn’t going to change it one way or another. I still sit down at the typewriter, and I have to write the next scene and the next sentence … I’m just going to tell my story, and they’re telling their story and adapting my books, and we shall see.” (GRRM)

Jaime’s fate, as a “main Lannister”, is therefore already clear in GRRM’s mind and he has been seeding and foreshadowing and working towards it, even if *how* he will get there is anybody’s guess (and the show and books have already substantially diverged in that sense). It will likely not change on a whim, invalidating everything that has been written all along.

So, as we reach the end of part 3 and take all the stuff I’ve discussed in this 3-parter in consideration, I think it’s safe to conclude that: given Jaime’s arc and related foreshadowing, knowing that GRRM develops his stories sloooowly, carefully and purposefully, always with a goal in sight, going back to change things if they don’t fit or contradict, relying heavily on the concept of butterfly effect across arcs and characters, and with a penchant for trope subversion sprinkled on top, you can see why I feel that the odds of Jaime’s death in the fandom and general audience are HIGHLY overinflated, and mostly due to selectively attending to one or two pieces of evidence, without considering how they fit in the overall picture. While this is still no guarantee he’ll definitely survive, I’d argue that a likelihood of survival follows from the material (and general writing style) more than death.

Now, if you’ve made it this far without falling asleep, congratulations! I’ve addressed pretty much everything I wanted to address to estimate Jaime’s survival odds from a relatively non-speculative angle, using the current material and quotes available, rather than theorizing too much about what I think are likely future developments for his story. I tend to dislike when people use events that have not yet happened and may never happen (looking at you, valonqarists), to make a case for their arguments, so I refrained from doing it as I don’t really think it’s helpful or even necessary to make my case. BUT, if you’re interested in taking a wild leap into theory-land and how that may further affect his survival odds, I’ll be posting a more speculative part 4 hopefully soon (which will be heavily Jaime/Brienne friendly - you’ve been warned).

[recentanimenews]

My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong As I Expected, Vol. 10

By Wataru Watari and Ponkan 8. Released in Japan as “Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatte Iru” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jennifer Ward.

This may be a first for this series. For the first time, I got through an entire volume without wanting to throw Hachiman out a window. This isn’t to say that he’s all smiles and warm fuzzies, but his cynical “this is what teenage life is really ,like it’s a jungle out there man” monologues are kept to a minimum and his attempts to solve the problem of the book involve actually talking with people about the problem rather than, say, throwing himself under the bus again. This volume was adapted into the final chunk of Season 2, so also is probably the calm before the storm that will be the final arc of the series. Things are moving pretty slowly – you can tell the author wants to wrap this up before they become third years – but we are starting to think about the future, which in Japan means what “track” will the kids be taking, arts or sciences?

Haruno is on the cover, and actually has a significant presence in the book as the “not quite evil but close” antagonist. The main focus of the book, though, is Hayama, who is the perfect boy that everyone wants to hang out with/date, but he’s refusing to say whether he’s taking the arts or sciences track, which has thrown his group into turmoil. Particularly Miura, who has a crush on him but is also concerned for his well-being – nearly everyone by now can see that Hayama is wearing a mask to hide his real self. She asks our heroes to find out what his choice is, which proves to be a very tough nut to crack, and mostly involves Hachiman doing a lot of detective work. In the interim, though, there is an ominous cloud on the horizon, and we see part of that cloud here, as we meet Yukino and Haruno’s mother, who is exactly what you’d expect she would be like. Oh yes, and there’s a rumor that Hayama and Yukino are going out which has spread like wildfire.

It’s pretty clear that Yukino’s family issues are gonna be the series’ endgame (which is bad news for Yui, and indeed she once again doesn’t have much of a role here – this love triangle is a bit imbalanced). For the moment, though, we’re dealing with Hayama, whose feelings for Hachiman are very conflicted – at one point he holds out hope that Hachiman is concerned about him as a friend, only to realize that it’s for his Service Club after all. It comes to a head in the school’s marathon, where Hayama bluntly talks about how he hates Hachiman, who may be Hayama’s opposite but also has managed to draw people to his actual self, crappy though that self may be. I was also very amused at the discussion of arts vs. sciences, some of which is “what am I best at” but a lot of which is also “how can I improve my social image?”.

So yes, this was a strong volume in the series, and I also really love the brother/sister relationship between Hachiman and Komachi, which is realistic and sweet. I am totally ready for Book 11. Sadly, the author is not, so get ready for 10.5, more short stories, next time.

By: Sean Gaffney