#wanting jon to die at the end for the sake of subversion

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

More recently, the dominant fandom narrative that’s been cropping up is the idea that ASOIAF isn’t a nihilist story but is instead a rather romantic story at its core. Or better yet, fans have come to accept that while it takes a more realistic approach to medieval fantasy, ASOIAF is essentially a tale about earned romanticism.

In the same story with Roose Bolton and Tywin Lannister, we have Davos Seaworth and Ned Stark and Brienne. The same story with dangerous ice elves who ride the waves of winter to threaten humanity with death and enslavement has characters like Bran Stark whose soul in animal form is called Summer (the opposite of winter) and Daenerys Targaryen who is the mother of dragons (representing heat and passion and life) and a liberator of slaves. So the idea that even in the face of evil and darkness, goodness and light still exist and will eventually prevail, right?

Ok. 

So tell me why people then use death and tragedy to define Jon Snow and his story even though he’s morally closer to Brienne, Ned, and Davos, and shares the same magical destiny as Bran and Dany? Why do people keep ascribing tragic endings to him and say he has the most probability to die (where are these statistics coming from)? Or they say that because he dies at the end of ADWD, then he’ll also die at the end of the story?

Jon’s death and resurrection (which happens during winter, mind you) is the idea of life everlasting. Even in death, life will continue to persevere. Jon’s great destiny is to fight the Others. It’s why GRRM made him the main POV in that magical war. His arc has always been related to the greater conflict that is coming. So Jon’s death and return to life is also going to be related to that conflict, right? 

See as the Others come riding the winds of winter, death follows. Of course this will affect the world. People may die and the land and its fertility might die as well, but ever persevering is the dream for spring. The dream that after a period of death and darkness and winter, life and light and spring will be restored. Jon, the main POV in the fight against the Others so far, is the embodiment of that. 

The next book is called The Winds of Winter and we can expect death and devastation to follow, but we can also expect new life to emerge. That new life is Jon Snow’s resurrection. He will be reborn and will gain new life in spite of winter. Jon’s rebirth in this book is a mirror of the life that will eventually be restored to the land after winter. Jon is literally a dream for spring and it’s actually quite poignant that these words are only ever said in his POV.

And, Jon’s mythological parallels are usually about life after a period of death. Usually there is death and sacrifice but then there is the promise of everlasting life that comes after. Jon is connected to spring and fertility and rebirth! 

He is the Corn King, a fertility god who dies and is reborn to bring about the rejuvenation of the land (spring). He is Persephone whose descent into the underworld is accompanied by winter, but whose ascent back to the world of the living brings about the spring. Other mythical parallels like Osiris are presented as gods of fertility who are connected to the promise of life after death. Not to mention the obvious messianic undertones that are everywhere in his story; a savior who dies in the place of his people and is reborn to ensure that they too see life after death. It goes on and on but a majority of the mythological influences in Jon’s story have to do with the concept of fertility and vegetation; NOT death.

So as I see it, the struggle between life and death is personified with Jon Snow. Jon’s death at the end of ADWD coincides with winter arriving in Westeros. But then he won’t stay dead because he will be brought back to life; though we’re not sure how it will happen, only that Jon will have a chance at rebirth. 

And Jon will be reborn during winter. Isn’t the idea then that even in the face of death, life prevails? That’s why it’s so thematically relevant that as the cold sweeps through Westeros, a bastard boy is brought back to life near the lands of winter so he can then beat back death. It’s what makes Jon the King of Winter. Not that he represents death but rather that he conquers it.

It’s thematically meaningful for Jon, one of the main heroes of the story, to actually wrestle with death and come out on top. So him dying again at the end of the story or having a tragic end, what’s the point of that? How does that track with the current thematic elements in the story? Yes, this is even if he is to die in an act of self-sacrifice. Jon has already done that at the end of ADWD. What will a second death show that hasn’t been done with the first one? What new understanding will we gain of the character?

I don’t understand why this fandom goes out of its way to deny Jon the romanticism that they ascribe to other characters, even though GRRM puts him at the heart of that struggle between life and death. It’s so vital that out of all the prophesied heroes in the story, Jon is the one who literally tastes death but ultimately defeats it through resurrection. Eventually, that has to mean something to the larger themes presented in the story.

So the point is not that Jon died. The point is that he died but did not stay that way. He lived. The boy lived. So stop using death to define Jon’s story!

[cchellacat]

Game of Thrones Finale

Here be spoilers for the last season of GoT.  Turn back now or forever hold you peace.  Trust me, I am not holding my peace, I feel like going to war and breaking a bloody wheel over the back of D&D’s heads.

I knew going in, this wasn’t the ending I had been hoping for, or even expecting for nine years.  After the penultimate episode the writing was clearly on the wall, so I watched this final chapter, ready for crushing disappointment and grief. D&D did not let me down. 

They completed their character assassination of Daenerys with all the clumsy, lazy, pretension and dreadfully written dialogue as one might have come to expect, if they had been paying attention since the start of the season. 

When left to flounder in the seas of uncertainty without the masterfully crafted scaffolding of GRRM’s books to hold them afloat, the writers sunk the whole thing gleefully. I’m absolutely certain they took great pleasure in destroying every logical expectation.

This constant need to justify their own twisted ending and eradicate certain characters development and arcs, left me feeling bewildered and horrified.  The beautiful woven foreshadowing that had been building since season one seemed to be cast aside at the last and replaced with some Frankenstein monster, cobbled together from a need to be “different”  to “surprise”, to be “edgy”  and “subversive”.  

This isn’t how good writing is done.  You don’t change the track of a story just because it’s deemed predictable or because fans guessed the ending. 

The onus then, is on the writer, to follow through and complete the story while still making it enjoyable and intriguing.  It isn’t to upturn the apple-cart and refill with limes.  It’s to take the damn apples and make pie.  Make it interesting, draw the audience in, there is nothing wrong with giving the audience what they want. There is nothing wrong with delivering a satisfying and sensible conclusion.  There is nothing wrong with giving the main character/s a happy ending.

Their fear of cliche, lead them straight into trope hell.  The “face heel turn” of Daenerys from Liberator and Mother to Tyrant and Murderer was sloppy, poorly written and did not have a justifiable history to back it up. 

Do not even get me started on how they killed her.  JFC.  Could they have been anymore obvious about how that was gong to go down?  Talk about cliche. 

Murdered by the man she loves, who loves her and who is also her only family.  We’ll talk later about what they did to poor Jon.  Just for reminders sake though, here she is, held in the arms of the man she loves as he promises her she will always be his queen, kisses her and stabs her right in the heart.  **blood boiling**

Turing Sansa into Littlefinger 2.0 made my inner rage monster scream.  Her transformation from  the “The High Queen”  to “The Chess-master” makes me think the North isn’t in any better hands than it would have been with Littlefinger in charge.  How convenient that none of her siblings will be nearby to notice.  Bran in the south, Jon in the True North and for some inexplicable reason, the girl who spent eight season finding her way home, decides to go gallivanting off into the west on some LotR, knock off elf quest. 

Arya’s end is as unsatisfying as every other one.   She spent years growing stronger, learning to kill, striving to be No-one.  Her whole character arc was about her coming to terms with her loss and recognising that no matter how far she ran, she would always be Arya Stark. 

Then is was her journey home, learning that she could go back, that even changed by war and blood, family meant everything.  Her clarion call, that the “lone wolf dies but the pack survives” has been with her every step.  It’s the message her father taught her, one she held too.  Why on earth would she leave her pack behind? 

What even was the point of having her and Gendry meet again and come together if she was just going to walk away?  I’m not saying a character has to be defined by a romantic relationship, but why bother giving the fans a few crumbs just to spit on it an episode later?  This is clearly baiting of the worst kind.  I’d rather they met as friends and parted as friends than the shit show of having Gendry propose, only for her turn him down.  I mean, she could have learned another lesson with the Hound, that defining your life by revenge and forgetting to live only ends in death.  Her returning to Gendry after that would have made sense.  It would have made sense for her to go build a pack of her own.  But no, that would be too easy.  What shall we do with Arya?  Lets put her on a bus!

He did love her.  Jon was crazy about Dany.  She was crazy about him.  This is the man who puts family first, who lives by his honour.  He is his Uncle Ned come again.  Ned, who lived and died by his oaths.  The only time he broke them was to protect his sisters son, to protect Jon, his family. 

This is why they had to destroy Daenery’s character so completely.  They had to make her the worst villain imaginable to make it look even remotely plausible that Jon would;

1. Break his oath of fealty

2. Murder his own blood.

3. Betray the love of his life.

They had to preserve Jon’s good name, oh yes, because Jon wouldn’t kill her for power or because she lost her temper and disagreed with him.  No.  They destroyed both Jon and Dany with this plot. 

Jon is now Queen Slayer and Kin Slayer and he has broken his word, his oaths of loyalty, his unspoken oaths of love and protection, which she rightly expected from him as her blood and her lover and has been reduced to a shadow of the man he was meant to be, the king he could have been. 

He is cursed by the gods in the eyes of most Westerosi, or he would be if they knew the truth.  After all, look at how the nobility treated Jaimie after he killed the Mad King.  It didn’t matter to them that the King was evil, no, what mattered was that he broke his oath.

Oath breakers are anathema in Westeros. 

So much for a Targaryen Restoration.  Goodbye Iron Throne.  The whole point of Jon’s character was just erased.  Did he defeat some great evil?  No.  Did he overcome war and death and end triumphant on the throne as the last dragon?  No.  There was no point in bringing him back after his death in season six.  Anyone could have went to bargain with Dany and the outcome would have been the same.  Ugh!

Jaime and Brienne.  The love story/redemption arc I was so invested in.  One hand gives and the other takes away.  In the end it seems that Jaime learned nothing, according to the writers that is.  I call bullshit.  Jaime had redeemed himself.  If he had to die, it should have bee while killing Cersei.  The foreshadowing of him being Cersei’s death has been around for years. Cersi didn’t love Jaime, she loved controlling him.  Cersei loved no one but herself.  That was the lesson Jaime was meant to learn.  Thanks so much for taking away eight season of character development and self realisation.

Tyrion got shafted too.  His speech near the end, it was a load of cow dung.  In the end they left Tyrion to be Westeros’ own comic relief.  The Small Council was a bloody farce.  All that scene did was reinforce my belief that nothing in Westeros has really changed.  It doesn’t matter what title you give someone, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Give it ten years and Bron will be the power in Westeros in all but name. 

Now who have I forgotten?  Ah yes.  My Special Mention.

Sandor went out the way he meant to, bringing an end to his brother.  But not before the writers gave him a brief moment with Sansa.  There you go Sansan fans, he called her little bird!  Now shut up and let us kill him in a fiery fall of doom. 

Death by fire, the worst death they could give this man.  He wasn’t a good man, it’s arguable that none of the characters were good people.  However, Sandor Clegane suffered more than most.  He spent his life, angry and bitter, seeking revenge for himself and his sister and father.  I think, if they had to kill him, they could have given the man a better exit than him tossing both himself and his brother into the flames.  It was cruel to make that the only way out, the only triumph he could claim.  I think Sandor should have lived.  He deserved to find a life of peace after all the fighting he did.   It is not poetic or clever to kill a character off with the object of their own fear.  It’s not clever when they do it to a villain, it’s doubly unfair to do it to a hero.  He was a hero by the end.  Sandor deserved better.

Now look, I‘m not saying that in a show like this, that everybody should live or necessarily get the end they deserve, but, they went too far in the name of shock value, leaving no one happy, well, virtually no one. I guess the rabid Sansa fans who loathed Dany are feeling pretty good about now. 

(Yes, okay that was mean, but I got sick of seeing it in my timeline and unfollowed a few people.) 

I was always very much of the belief that Sansa and Dany had more in common than would drive them apart.  I didn’t expect an easy friendship or alliance, but I did expect them to find common ground and be able to build a relationship over time.  Strong women supporting each other is what we need more of on TV.  Not this misogynistic desire to see two strong women fight over a man, which is essentially what they reduced Sansa and Dany too with poor Jon caught in the middle.  

In conclusion...

I feel as though the writers went into season eight with a clear idea of where they had been building and then someone get a bee in their bonnet and posed the question, “Who is the least likely to end up ruling Westeros?”

The answer of course is Bran.  Bran the Broken, how fucking ignorant is that?  How about Bran the Burdened or Bran the Broker or Bran the Benevolent, if you’ve really got such a hard on for alliteration?

So now Bran, who is so disconnected from feeling that he can’t love anyone, sits the Iron Throne and is somehow meant to be a good ruler. 

All that’s needed to achieve this happy ending for the writers?

Goodbye Character development and epic love stories, hello smear campaign, death, destruction and the end of one of my favourite canon ships to ever sail.

Rest in Peace Jonarys.  I believed in you. 

[inthefallofasparrow]

Game of Thrones: A Practice in Retrospect

Remember when those headlines started appearing a few years back saying George RR Martin wanted Game of Thrones to go for 10+ seasons and everyone was like, “What the hell, George! That’s just greedy. Why drag it out like that? If it’s simplified properly, one season per book has worked okay so far and the cast and crew don’t really want to commit that much longer. Just sit down and finish the books.”

But now that sentiment actually makes sense, given how rushed season 7 and 8 were and how jarring Daenerys’ turn around was. GRRM could see it wasn’t going to be enough screen time, but couldn’t explain why, so it just seemed like he was milking the fame for all it’s worth (which he arguably is still doing with all these five individual spin-offs he’s trying to pitch).

To be clear, I’m not saying I think the show should have gone for 10+ seasons. I think they should have just ended the story differently so that it made narrative  sense to end now as closure for the show, as opposed to heavily abridged closure for the books.

It reminds me of all the weird narrative decisions D&D were making at various points during the later seasons, that seemed bizarre and pointless at the time, but then made more sense in retrospect when you saw what happened later. Rather than developing the story naturally season-by-season, they were always trying to build up to predetermined ending. It didn’t mean you liked the changes being made, but at least you could understand why they were.

When Daenerys ignored Tyrion’s counsel and burned the Tarlys in 7x05, it seemed a bit bloodthirsty for her and an odd choice to waste characters that had only just been introduced, who surely would be useful to have on Cersei’s side for the endgame. But you can tell D&D were trying to foreshadow Daenerys turning evil, and also give Sam a reason to turn against her and begin the seeds of doubt for Jon. So, looking at it now, it kind of makes sense. But that’s not how TV should be written. Setting up dominoes that lead to ‘future’ plot developments is smart, but not if it’s at the expense of logic and continuity in the ‘present’.

When D&D cut the young Gryff storyline entirely from the show, it was unfortunate, but something you could excuse by chalking it up to time restraints. But now I suspect it was cut because it was always their intention to effectively merge him with Jon Snow, which is why Jon seemed so out-of-character in the last season. Because he was a different character.

I think cutting Lady Stoneheart was the first major change from the books that angered/confused fans. Everyone had been desperately waiting for that reveal only for it to never happen. The show released various cast and crew interviews weighing in on her absence as unimportant and downplaying the character, even suggesting Martin himself regretted including her in the books, in an attempt to convince readers they were overreacting to her being cut, despite her status as a fan favourite. But people were still flummoxed at the omission of a character with such potential, scrambling to find an explanation and constantly speculating that it was a trick, and her reveal had simply been postponed for effect.

In retrospect, I’m convinced the sole purpose of her removal was so that the audience wouldn’t predict Jon’s resurrection (a plot point that they also managed to screw up after all that). I’ll concede that having multiple dead characters come back to life does lessen the threat of death a bit within the story, but to truncate and remove an entire story arc, just to preserve a secret reveal coming three seasons later, is, well, dumb.

Randomly killing Myrcella the same season she was introduced, makes sense when you realise the crux of Cersei’s rise and fall rests on her childlessness.

Keeping Ellaria Sand around (while killing off Doran), and specifically making Tyene her daughter, makes sense when you realise it was all so that Cersei could have ironic revenge on them later.

Killing Barristan Selmy in an alleyway, rather than at least letting him die in the Battle of Meereen, makes sense when you realise Varys and Tyrion needed something to do in season 6, so they should randomly rule Meereen during Daenerys’ absence instead, making Selmy superfluous.

Littlefinger giving Sansa to the Boltons seemed stupidly out-of-character, but at least seems necessary given that Sansa taking Jeyne Poole’s role in the books, suffering and escaping to the Wall, was the way D&D intended to convince the show version of Jon to take back Winterfell.

Making Jaime constantly return to Cersei in King’s Landing after going on random missions every season, instead of just severing ties with her completely and staying away from King’s Landing like in the books, makes sense when you realise D&D always intended for Jaime and Cersei’s ‘love’ to be endgame, despite being toxic, abusive and generally disliked by the fandom.

Having Littlefinger give Bran the Valyrian steel dagger, and then having Bran give it to Arya seemed weird, but makes sense when you realise D&D wanted to have her kill Littlefinger, and more importantly, the Night King with it, despite neither of those deaths being logically ‘hers’ within the structure of the narrative.

Normally, I would applaud writers planning ahead in setting up future plot points, foreshadowing and building long story-arcs, but the jarring way D&D did it feels like cheating somehow; the developments unearned and revelations rushed or incongruous for the sake of narrative subversion and unpredictability.

[medschoolash]

People's expectations weren't weird considering the books and the fact that the NK/the Others were set out to be unlike any other enemy. But in the end he died by being stabbed just like any other living enemy except icier and the ability to bring back the dead, which wbk. D&D also said that the episode wouldn't just be 100% battle because, in their own words, that would be boring but that's what they did and it was boring. Every battle episode was better than this one.

the NK was unlike any other enemy. I mean he couldnt be killed by fire, he could sense every attempt on his life, he had unlimited power to raise the dead, he commanded a massive army of the dead. I don’t see how anything on the show made the NK seem regular. His death stuck to the established lore from the show so I’m still not seeing the problem here. Were they supposed to randomly create new convoluted magic with no background to kill him? Was Bran suddenly supposed to acquire new skills that no other 3ER has ever had just for the sake of making the NKs death more flashy for your liking? If DnD had done any of the corny stuff I’ve seen suggested y’all would have laughed at them for turning your precious books into a disney Joke. I honestly think there is nothing that can really satisfy you guys because you’re hell bend on hating the show not being able to translate every page of those large books and for not being able to fullfill every fantasy you guys have created in your heads for the last few years. People have been preaching for years that GRRM is so subversive and yet you think that he was gonna make some xtra special out of thin air magic to defeat the NK. Based on what I’ve read from him and his work, an “ordinary” weapon wielded by an EXTRAORDINARY girl that NOBODY expected to be the one to do it sounds like the kinda twist he would appreciate. 

The episode was 100% about the battle, but it wasn’t 100% about fighting that I think that’s the point DnD wanted to make with their statement. There was no way this wouldn’t be battle heavy when they advertised how much they put into it. It would be a flat out lie to say that battle was just non stop mindless sword fighting with no human elements to ground it. We saw Dany Grieve, we saw Jon desperate to get to Bran and his meltdown that he can’t get there. We saw Sansa and Tyrion reflect on their marriage and find comfort in each other as they braced themselves for death. We saw Lyanna Mormont bravely sacrifice herself to stop a giant, we saw Edd die to save Sam, We saw Jorah sacrifice himself to save Dany. We saw a terrified Arya run through her home to save herself from the army of the dead, We saw Mellisandre and Davos have a moment, we saw Mellisandre give Arya the push she needed to kill the NK and we saw her perform feats that had nothing to do with her swinging a sword. And Theon and Bran, I mean they had multiple scenes that had nothing to do with the greater war but everything to do with them as human beings with a past. Theon learning that Winterfell was always his him and Everything he’s done, good and bad was to bring him back to his home  was such an amazing human moment that I don’t see how it didn’t bring you to tears. If that one didn’t do it then the second scene where Bran visibly shows emotional distress as he tells Theon he’s a good man and the way Theon cries because he can finally be at peace with himself like.... I mean Bran, emotionless Bran looked pained at his death. There was also Dany grieving over Jorah, her closest confidant, her constant since the very beginning. I’m not even a Dany fan and I felt that. This episode was crafted with actions, stakes, suspense, and human emotion that reminded us what everyone was fighting for so I whole heartedly disagree that is was boring. It was crafted better and had higher stakes than every other battle on the show IMO. The battle of the bastards was literally just fighting and Jon almost dying the entire time outside of Rickon’s death and Sansa saving the day. I really don’t see how y’all can be so convinced that it can even compare to this even though it was a great battle and episode as a whole. The best parts of the battle of the bastards was AFTER the actual major part of the battle but I don’t think y’all ready for that tea today lol 

so yeah, based on the complaints I maintain that y’all expectations were weird and ya’ll criticisms are mostly petty. I haven’t seen anything yet that wasn’t extremely nitpicky because of bitterness over something else. 

[mmusicofmysoul]

Here it comes a rant I've been posponing since the moment I fell in love with Daenerys as a character and what I found first on internet were comments complaining about her and/or missing book/season 1 Daenerys because she "went so corrupt" after that. I'm far from being a good ASoIaF/GoT analyst, the saga has 10000000022992839283 issues and the tv show has 129829839283923 more, but I almost never see people calling out this attitude against Dany as I do see people defending Sansa or calling out other valid issues and I'm %100 done.

Tumblr aside, opposite to her haters who complain she's a popular character, I never felt on the "popular opinion" loving her. She has fans, but not close to other characters. Anyway, I understand there's a lot of valid criticism for the character, but rather than discuss the White Savior/Mighthy Whitey tropes present in the books and overplayed in the show (plus the good old trend the show perpetuates of violence as empowering, but that's a problem in all the characters), the most outrageous complains are 1) she's an hypocrite, 2) she's a Mary Sue. I love to read critical metas of all the characters, even my faves because asoiaf is full of gray morality and complex characters, but hell you fucking lose me with the Mary Sue thing.

It wouldn't piss me off so much if the reasons to hate her weren't so inconsistent, but here. If she's so flawed (because yes, hypocrisy is one of her many flaws) how the fuck is she a Mary Sue character? She's a psychological mess, can't we have a flawed, complex yet endearing female character who happens to have power and people who follows her for her good traits? Jon is MUCH MORE of a typical "Mary Sue" and he's still a fan-favorite because he "earned it" mhmmmm. Because men had the possibility to "earn" power, women did not (yet somehow noble-born bastard Jon is more of an underdog than a exiled noble-born woman). Dany had to do the best of her situation; an abusive marriage she was sold into by her abusive brother with a brutal man twice her age (in a Stockholm Syndrome situation that you'll never be sure if it was intended to be seen that way or at the end was just plain romanticized abuse) - it is hypocrite of her to stand against slavery and rape yet idolize Drogo, but that relationship is way more complicated than that: Dany was respected as a khaleesi, but when she actually put her feet down against the dothraki culture of pillaging and raping (see. Eroeh, Mirri Maz Duur.) was when all started to fall down - she didn't have much say on that; Drogo only listened to her because her fire was the fire of his son speaking or similar bullshit, when Drogo died she was a nobody to the rest of his men, even his bloodriders until she hatched dragons.

Here they come, the dragons!!! She has dragons, she has power, so she's a Mary Sue now, right? People follow her because dragons and Targaryen and not because she deserves it. I'm not going into monarchy-apologism, but I don't think you win that much loyalty and love of your people with just that - both Dany and Jon are characters who try to deal with With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, both of them fail in different situations (more clear in the books than in the show but still). Dany tries to do good, she is ~incompetent when she fails, yet she's a Mary Sue. She's an hypocrite, tho still a Mary Sue. She's violent and going mad, still a Mary Sue who needs to become a legit villain to be a subversion and not so Sue-ish. Jon doesn't need to become a villain to be a subversion of a traditional male hero. He's the most traditional of GRRM's character (Ned was there to actually die and that be Shocking TM so he doesn't count) but he can still be a fan-favorite.

GRRM loves to write flawed, complex characters. We can love a flawed male character for being Complex TM. Tyrion, Stannis, JAIME, even frigging Littlefinger. But asoiaf has a fandom where Dany, Sansa and Catelyn get the most hate for their mistakes. MMMMMMM.

I don't think you should like a character if you can't stand their hypocrisy and other flaws but for fuck's sake the "she needs to go villain to not be a Mary Sue, but here have a summary of all her flaws" gets the worst of me. I think there's enough foreshadowing of Dany going mad for it to be a possible development for the character, but not because "if she doesn't end as a villain - and thus she's away from the Iron Throne I want for my male fave - she's just a plain, simple Mary Sue". Not so much on tumblr but in any other site, you name it.

Basically STOP CRYING MARY SUE EVERY TIME YOU DISLIKE A FEMALE CHARACTER. It's so overused it doesn't make sense anymore, you can't have any kind of female character who's not accused of being a Mary Sue. She is a woman = Mary Sue. God fobid she has power!!! the fandom shall explode.