illfatedmusings

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The sequel to this: ASOIAF clothing styles!

The Westerlands and The Reach def have similar styles bc they’re so close to each other and have similar climates. Like with their hair, they love showing off their wealth and opulence, so gowns are made from the finest fabrics and are heavily detailed with embroidery, puffed sleeves, and short bodices

The North is so big that what a person wears definitely influenced by location (near the wall, near the vale, or near the riverlands) but in general, there are a lot of high necked, tight fitting gowns for practicality. Made of thick, heavy fabrics but with wide sleeves and lots of embroidery to make it look pretty!

Dorne is full of colors to offset the beige of the desert. They use a lot of long, loose, airy fabrics so that they can have detailed and intricate outfits but still be covered from the sun and not be overheated. Location determines how covered up they are because of the heat. Detailing is VERY big, especially golden embroidery and lining.

I think in the Stormlands, clothing is more durable than anything else, no wispy fabrics here.They’re fairly similar to the north, with thick and sturdy fabrics, high collars, and long sleeves to keep out the constant rain. However I think they love metal accessories and jewelry on their gowns, and put it everywhere

And the Riverlands have a much more “casual” silhouette than the Reach or the Vale, with a drop waist or a loose dress than only gives you figure when you wear a belt. Low necklines and long sleeves I think, because the weather is not freezing but not Dornish either. I think a lot of soft fabrics too, for those who can afford velvet and such

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When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.

But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.

As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.

The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork.  In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.

That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.

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true friends support your probably-slightly-unhealthy obsession with your favorite fictional character 

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Great scenes with my favourite Lost Girl couple.

LOST GIRL REWATCH : food for thought ( 1x06 )

“i’m not scared or anything, i’m just bored and you amuse me.”

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Sansa Stark Appreciation Month 2022 - day 25 - sibilings

She sang for mercy, for the living and the dead alike, for Bran and Rickon and Robb, for her sister Arya and her bastard brother Jon Snow, away off on the Wall.

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Just a picture of a bunny 🐰 Cause he’s cute 🥰

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Facts.

I think all Sansa antis need a primer on soft power and how women wielded power in the actual Middle Ages and Renaissance.

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So many characters in ASOIAF believe in the importance of vengeance even after the people who harmed their families are already dead, how it doesn’t matter which “Usurper’s Dog” killed the Targaryen children, or how “Though mayhaps [the murder of a nine year old] was a blessing. Had he lived, he would have grown up to be a Frey” is considered a funny/awesome line even by some of the audience. Characters like Ellaria Sand who don’t want to see their loved ones die in pursuit of vengeance and want to see the revenge cycle end are few.

Then you have Sansa Stark, who on several occasions has shown she does care which of the house members have harmed her family, and expresses some sympathy for the others:

Together, Sansa and the serving man got the wounded knight back on his feet. "Take him to Maester Frenken." Lancel was one of them, yet somehow she still could not bring herself to wish him dead. I am soft and weak and stupid, just as Joffrey says. I should be killing him, not helping him. —ACOK Sansa VII I hope he falls and shames himself, she thought bitterly. I hope Ser Balon kills him. When Joffrey proclaimed her father's death, it had been Janos Slynt who seized Lord Eddard's severed head by the hair and raised it on high for king and crowd to behold, while Sansa wept and screamed...Morros dropped his lance, fought for balance, and lost. One foot caught in a stirrup as he fell, and the runaway charger dragged the youth to the end of the lists, head bouncing against the ground. Joff hooted derision. Sansa was appalled, wondering if the gods had heard her vengeful prayer. But when they disentangled Morros Slynt from his horse, they found him bloodied but alive.—ACOK Sansa I Osney's brother Ser Osfryd was savagely punishing the frog-faced squire Morros Slynt. Blunted swords or no, Slynt would have a rich crop of bruises by the morrow. It made Sansa wince just to watch. They have scarcely finished burying the dead from the last battle, and already they are practicing for the next one. —ASOS Sansa I Podrick Payne had changed as well, and looked almost a proper squire for once, although a rather large red pimple in the fold beside his nose spoiled the effect of his splendid purple, white, and gold raiment. He is such a timid boy. Sansa had been wary of Tyrion's squire at first; he was a Payne, cousin to Ser Ilyn Payne who had taken her father's head off. However, she'd soon come to realize that Pod was as frightened of her as she was of his cousin. Whenever she spoke to him, he turned the most alarming shade of red. —ASOS Sansa I

Sansa Stark doesn’t believe in harming children based on the actions of their parents. She is going to be one to break the cycle of revenge and help build a brighter future.

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Sansa cloaking him, no symbolism there 😏

“i could fix him” “i could make him worse” well i could put him in so many outfits

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Jon being a secret romantic just melts my heart.

all the other stark kids: Sansa and her stupid love stories BARF 😒😒🙄🤮

Jon: “Old Nan used to tell stories about knights and their ladies who would sleep in a single bed with a blade between them for honor’s sake”

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One of the best insights into Snape’s background I have seen.

Two up, two down

We talk about Potter as a timeless series, as quills and parchment will never date, but there are a few key elements which are of their time, and I sometimes suspect that eventually, their original meaning may be lost.

Snape’s house in Spinner’s End is one of these.  If you visit Surrey, a house akin to Number 4 on Privet Drive can be found on hundreds of identical estates.  Indeed, the three-bedroom house with a garage, and both front and back gardens, situated on a private housing estate in leafy surburbia is one that most British people will have strolled through at some point.

But Snape’s house in Spinner’s End is the opposite of the Dursleys’ aspirational abode, and is somewhere that few modern readers will have seen in its original form with their own eyes.  Snape’s house in Spinner’s End is a traditional two up, two down through terraced house, mired deep in a maze of identical cobbled streets, overlooked by a looming mill chimney, and seemingly – by the 90s – entirely abandoned.

The difficulty that some may have in accurately picturing this scene is because these houses, in this state, no longer exist.  A large percentage of two up, two down terraces were demolished as part of slum clearance, which should tell you all that you need to know about the state of the houses.  

Those which remained have been extensively modified – usually knocking down the privy (outside toilet), and then building a two storey extension across the bulk of the yard to create a third room downstairs, and a bathroom upstairs.  Some houses only have a single extension; it is rather common in some areas of the Midlands to have a bathroom that leads off the kitchen downstairs – because the bathroom was the missing room, and it was cheaper to build one storey than two.

Pottermore had an article earlier in the year which explained how the filmmakers originally wanted to film on location, but could not, because the houses simply did not exist in their traditional state.

The houses were typically constructed with two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs with a tiny backyard entry leading to the outhouse. Craig actually considered shooting on location, but even though the buildings were intact, they had been brought into the modern era, with up-to-date kitchens and plastic extensions, so the set was built at the studio.

Throughout the 20th century, cobbled streets were routinely replaced by various other road surfaces, namely tarmac and asphalt – and, of course, the scarcity of cobblestones now means that such streets are aesthetically desirable.  However, the cobblestones in Spinner’s End are not an indication of affluence, but an indication of an area left behind. This is further illustrated by the rusted railings, the broken streetlights, and the boarded up windows.

These were workers houses, often funded by the owners of the mill, and therefore tied – meaning that rent was deducted from your wage before you received it.  There were benefits to being in tied accommodation, including being close to work and having a guaranteed landlord – but that was as much benefit to the mill owner as the worker.  Seeing great competition, some mill owners invested in their properties to entice workers – but Spinner’s End is not an example of this; Spinner’s End would’ve been regarded as little better than a slum even when fully occupied.

The narrow streets are indicative of when these houses were built, presumably in the late 1800s – cars were not a concern, and the attitude was to build as many houses on as small a piece of land as possible.

By the time the 90s roll around, and we see Narcissa and Bellatrix descend upon the street, Spinner’s End appears to be mostly deserted.  With the closure of traditional manual industries, families would be keen to relocate to where work could be found.  Estates which hadn’t already been cleared by the 60s would find themselves left to rack and ruin, their former occupants long gone – whether seeking a new life elsewhere, or having died.

For once, Bellatrix is not being anti-Muggle when she sneers at the Muggle dunghill; she is unnervingly accurate. It is a slum by her standards, but most importantly, it was a slum by everyone else’s standards as well.  By the time Severus was born, work should’ve been well under way to clear the area, or to renovate it.  This evidently did not occur – which itself explains how undesirable the area is; nobody wanted to spruce it up - they wanted to leave.  There were no jobs, no amenities, no services – and eventually, no people.

We often ponder why Snape remains at Spinner’s End, but perhaps there lies the answer; he wasn’t just hiding from the magical world, but he was also hiding from the Muggle world as well…

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Balm for my Jonsa shipping heart ♥️

does anyone else feel literally hmmmmmmmm insane when they remember how george had sansa and jon’s chapters in ASOS running in such a tight parallel they may as well be looking into a mirrror? from the forced relationships to the way their chapters are often placed together 

revisiting it but ygritte proposes they sleep together and lies to mance that they share fur coaxing/coercing Jon into a physical relationship. Next chapter is sansa being fit by a seamstress unknowingly for a dress to wear when she’s forcibly married to Tyrion:

“You said—”“—that we fuck beneath your cloak many a night. I never said when we started, though.” The smile she gave him was almost shy. “Find another place for Ghost to sleep tonight, Jon Snow. It’s like Mance said. Deeds is truer than words.” (ASOS, Jon II)

“What color will it be?” she asked the seamstress. “Leave the colors to me, my lady. You will be pleased, I know you will. You shall have smallclothes and hose as well, kirtles and mantles and cloaks, and all else befitting a … a lovely young lady of noble birth.” (ASOS, Sansa II)

both lie in their 3rd chapters with a dany chapter between them. sansa pretending to become a lannister wife and jon pretending to forsake the night’s watch to join the wildlings, both remembering their father:

But he was a man of the Night’s Watch, he had taken a vow. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. He had said the words before the weirwood, before his father’s gods. He could not unsay them … 

“You can’t make me.” “Of course we can. You may come along quietly and say your vows as befits a lady, or you may struggle and scream and make a spectacle for the stableboys to titter over, but you will end up wedded and bedded all the same.”

The ceremony passed as in a dream. Sansa did all that was required of her. There were prayers and vows and singing, and tall candles burning, a hundred dancing lights that the tears in her eyes transformed into a thousand. Thankfully no one seemed to notice that she was crying as she stood there, wrapped in her father’s colors; or if they did, they pretended not to. (ASOS, Sansa III)

A part, he tried to remind himself afterward. I am playing a part. I had to do it once, to prove I’d abandoned my vows. I had to make her trust me. It need never happen again. He was still a man of the Night’s Watch, and a son of Eddard Stark. He had done what needed to be done, proved what needed to be proven. (ASOS, Jon III)

GRRM pairing the sansa chapter “no one will ever marry me for love” with the next jon chapter:

“[…] How would you like to marry your cousin, the Lord Robert?“ The thought made Sansa weary. All she knew of Robert Arryn was that he was a little boy, and sickly. It is not me she wants her son to marry, it is my claim. No one will ever marry me for love.  (ASOS, Sansa VI)

jon is offered winterfell and legitimization by stannis, thinks of winterfell and the weirwood and the old gods:

All he had to do was say the word, and he would be Jon Stark, and nevermore a Snow. All he had to do was pledge this king his fealty, and Winterfell was his. All he had to do …was forswear his vows again. (ASOS, Jon XI)

jon thinks about becoming a lord of winterfell, turns it down, becomes lord commander instead at the same time sansa becomes a bastard as they swap identities:

Would I sooner be hanged for a turncloak by Lord Janos, or forswear my vows, marry Val, and become the Lord of Winterfell? (ASOS, Jon XII)

[…] this was not Winterfell, but the Eyrie. And I am Alayne Stone, a bastard girl. (ASOS, Sansa VII)

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I feel like this is an unpopular opinion, but more people should read incomplete/unfinished/in-progress fanfics.

I've noticed this huge trend where creators on tiktok and tumblr who will be explaining how to use Archive Of Our Own to new users and they always say "and make sure to scroll down and click completed only" or how people will go out of their way to mention they only read completed fics 'because they were traumatized when they forgot to check the dates and didn't realize this fic hadn't been updated since 2012'.

The thing is - I think by not engaging with and/or actively avoiding writer's WIPs readers are potentially adding to the aggregate of abandoned works. Now this obviously isn't the case for all abandoned fics, anything from major life events, to loss of interest, to getting busy can be a reason for a fic getting abandoned - but at least on some level I just know that writers are quitting while they're ahead when they aren't garnering any response or feedback because reading WIPs has become unpopular. If you're worried about reading something that hasn't been updated since 2012 then you can use the date updated function to sort out old fics.

Anyways, support your favorite fanfic writers by engaging with their WIPs.

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“Curses” is objectively the funniest minced oath because it’s literally just describing what you would say if you were allowed. It’s like exclaiming “ah, swearing! Profanity! Sundry vulgar words for genitalia!”

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let me be real for like 5 seconds.

i genuinely…do not understand what story they could possibly be wanting to tell with the jon snow show like, it does not add up.

kit said something along the lines of jon dealing with his grief of losing family, ygritte, coming back from the dead, killing dany, would all be interesting and like yeah i agree. i’ve read a plethora of fix-it fics dealing with this exact topic. but u can’t make a show about a man brooding for ten eps or whatever (do they intend this to be multiple seasons???)

you need catharsis and resolution. and like i’m sorry but jon just? finding some sort of peace and frolicking with ghost and tormund for the rest of his life isn’t that. jonsa ASIDE how would u not have the other starks in the show. s8 left everything resolved but open. all 4 of the remaining starks are separated and there is a distinct feeling of melancholy with all their storylines. sansa’s coronation is hollow without anyone we recognize there to celebrate with her. arya’s long sought after dream of exploration feels more like another escape of the horrors she endured. bran is king, but he has given up the very essence of himself to get there. jon is exiled after saving the entire continent from a tyrant. all any of these characters ever wanted was to be home, safe with their families.

so idk what the show, if it happens, will entail, but it will make me so sad if they don’t dive into what is actually interesting about the surviving starks and all they have lost by the end of the show. but also how they can heal and grow anew, together.

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The moment she became my favourite. ❤️

After I raise my armies and kill your traitor brother, I’m going to give you his head as well.

Or maybe he’ll give me yours.

SANSA STARK in GAME OF THRONES 1.10

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I am Jon fan & started shipping Jonsa recently. It feels very weird to me how most ppl just assume that Jonsa shippers are just Sansa fans. These takes come from same ppl who ship him with Dany or Ygritte other than Jonsas no one seems to care abt how abusive both were to him. Ygritte sexually assualted Jon in books, even in show he was still a prisoner. Dany was emotionally abusive,kept kissing him knowing he wasnt comfortable but ofcourse Jonsas are just Sansa stans who dont care abt Jon.

Welcome to the Jonsa fam!

Only the GoT/ASOIAF fandom would decide that if we object to women sexually harassing Jon, it means we don’t like him. 🤦🏻‍♀️

There are a number of Jonsas who were Jon fans before they became Sansa fans, and the most hardcore Sansa fans I have interacted with are not Jonsas, so I don’t think their accusation has any grounds. What I do think is the case is that the fandom has a default position that Jon, Dany, and Tyrion matter; Sansa doesn’t. So, to argue that Tyrion is a villain and Dany will go out as one, that Jon (brace yourself) will not be chill with Dany burning KL, that he (I mean it, hold onto something) might not hate Sansa, that (take a deep breath) their relationship might matter, well, that is blasphemy pie baked into a heresy cake slathered in some horribly offensive not-hating girls icing.

As soon as you elevate Sansa as an object of interest, someone who will interact with fan favorites in unsanctioned (meaningful and non subservient) ways, well, it must be that you’re just a Sansa fan who doesn’t know her place in the story. You couldn’t possibly think that Jon reuniting with a Stark post resurrection will have a huge impact on him. You can’t possibly think that Sansa —key to the North— herself might be a crucial element in the how/why Jon would accept a leadership position in the North even though he previously rejected the chance to take Winterfell because it belonged to someone else. Who was it again? The name escapes me!

Romantic Jonsa doesn’t have to be a thing in order to understand why a Jon/Sansa reunion will matter to the story and you certainly don’t have to be a Sansa fan to think it would bring about good things for Jon. And perhaps that’s why I have zero interest in the GoT fandom beyond Sansa fans/Jonsas. Even after s8, they still hate on Sansa. As a Jon fan myself (I’m a fan of both characters otherwise I wouldn’t want them to be together), I think Sansa gave Jon the trust and acceptance he always wanted and couldn’t have because he was a bastard, a crow, and then deemed a turncloak. Sansa was more loyal to Jon than anyone, consistently tried to protect him, and in spite of what she perceived as a betrayal of her trust, still planned to go to war to save him, still viewed him as her king.

I don’t think you can objectively look at that not think the girl was the best thing that ever happened to him. Especially when she’s the one who convinced him not to run away but to fight in the first place. Darn you s6. You gave me so much hope for how the show would wrap up!

If you feel like it anon, I’d be very curious to hear what made you get into jonsa.