jozor-johai

[jozor-johai]

Mother of Dragons, Bride of Fire...

(Daenerys the Unburnt. Art by Michael Komarck)

When Dany visits The House of the Undying in Quarth she has a number of visions – and at one point she is called “Mother of dragons, bride of fire…” (A Clash of Kings, Daenerys IV)

Many readers assume that this sentence means that Daenerys will becomes someone’s “fiery” bride. However, @thewesterwoman points out that:

“The grammatical construction ‘bride of’ is not meant to refer to a description of the bride, but rather to signify who the bride’s husband will be. Thus, rather than ‘bride of fire’ being a poetic way to describe Dany as a ‘fiery’ future bride, it seems instead to predict that she will be a bride who somehow ‘marries’ fire. For example, the Bride of Frankenstein isn’t a description calling the Bride ‘Frankenstein-like,’ it’s a title announcing the person who the Bride is a bride to: i.e., Frankenstein. Similarly, Dany has here been prophesied to be a bride to fire.” (x)

However, it is worth asking if these words “bride of fire” is a prophecy or simply a description of who she is? At this point in the story, Daenerys is already known as Mother of Dragons, so the first part of the litany “mother of dragons, bride of fire” simply refers to who she is. I would argue that the second part of the litany, “bride of fire” has the same function – because Daenerys became the bride of fire when she lit the pyre that hatched her dragons! What’s more, Daenerys had to become the Bride of Fire in order to become the Mother of Dragons.

Keep reading

[jozor-johai]

what I love about catelyn’s characterization is that she isn’t everyone’s mother. she refuses to treat jon like one of her own. she doesn’t have any “motherly instincts” towards theon. even with brienne, she connects with her on more of a woman to woman level than through some mother-daughter dynamic. she never feels obligated to play the angelic “mother to all” figure.

but that’s the best part about her journey as a mother—it’s kind of messy. she has a favorite child, she’s forced to choose between her kids, she actively resents a motherless boy, she dislikes the hostage child living in her home. like yeah catelyn’s love for her children is beautiful and “pure” or whatever, but it also makes her cruel, selfish, impulsive, ruthless, even vengeful.

tbh catelyn’s sense of motherhood is just so unapologetically human, so refreshingly honest. she may be a mother, but there’s nothing romantic or intuitive or easy about it. catelyn stark loves her children, but it’s not that simple.

[jozor-johai]

“Jeyne, Jeyne, it rhymes with pain.”

my Jeyne Poole commission drawn by @vienguinn 💙

[jozor-johai]

harrenhal, king's landing, and volantis are all metaphors for the same thing, that the structural injustices which led to the creation and maintenance of these places will eventually result in their collapse. harrenhal is a symbol of the worst of feudalism, i say 'worst' because the books do romanticise certain aspects of it, oathkeeping as fidelity is clearly intended to be beautiful and moving in brienne's storyline and "the north remembers" but what harren the black did was exploit the riverlands and the iron islands and employ slaves in its construction, thousands dead for one man's monument to power and dominion over others. it was a castle built on fear, not fealty. in a non magical sense, the curse of harrenhal is hubris. it was intended to be the height of feudual power because it was virtually impregnable - impervious to 'normal' medieval warfare, but ended up being destroyed by yet another king, this time in possession of a more fantastical means of power - dragonfire (the hubris theme is strong in the main series, the castle is awarded to scheming, ambitious, and amoral political players who either engineer their own downfall or are eventually pushed off the board by someone who can scheme better them).

but the thing that interests me is that the burning of harrenhal also positions the targaryens as capable of status quo upsetting, radical change. they can disrupt existing power structures because what are walls in front of a dragon? dragons fly. the visionary bit here is the unification of the realm, which is definitely framed as an admirable thing by the narrative because of the upcoming threat of the long night—what aegon invades westeros for. i don't think the targaryens are, like, evil for being conqueror kings, that's a disingenuous reading, but i do think this is a somewhat corrupt idea of 'unification' as it is primarily focused on the dynastic interests of this one family. because the other thing he did was make the iron throne, something that's currently the biggest obstacle to the possibility of the realm uniting in the face of a common enemy. it's significant that a fight over the throne is what kills their dragons, that's a very blunt way of saying that the the iron throne is what ultimately smothers their ability to enact any wider social change, by the end they weren't any different from the other houses. so king's landing is no longer a symbol of targaryen rule, both their dragons and their dynasty died there and any vision of radical change that they began the conquest with was consumed by the iron throne. kl as a whole is symbolic of the game of thrones, the city's geography is modeled after the iron throne with the king within the red keep on top of aegon's hill and the smallfolk left to rot at the bottom. and the inheritors of 'the game' are the lannisters, the ones who swindled the city and the throne from the targaryens. tywin continues aerys's legacy of violence, aerys would burn a city out of 'madness', tywin would do it out of pragmatism ("Lord Tywin would not have bothered with a search. He would have burned that town and every living creature in it"), so it makes sense for tywin's philosophy, that of exploitative and dehumanising violence in the pursuit of power, to be the cause of its destruction. several posts have been made about why joncon and cersei are the ones haunted by the memory of tywin's crimes with reasons to want to emulate him, so i'm not going there, but i feel it's also really important for king's landing to go out because of purposeful grasping over the iron throne and without any dragonfire (even accidental) involved. king's landing is doomed in a very apocalyptic sense because 'the game' is unsustainable. nothing new will come out of the city's destruction and dany's use of fire is always transformative, she creates life out of death. wildfire only destroys.

the city dany will bring fire and blood to is volantis, not king's landing. volantis is the final remnant of the freehold's imperial legacy. a society built on systemic evil, on the backs of slaves cannot go on. the cyclical story here is obviously that of the dragons being redefined and redeemed as symbols of liberation after they historically helped the freehold perpetuate the evil of imperial expansion and slavery. i think the error lies in assuming dany has a personal connection to king's landing but she really doesn't. it used to be their seat and then the targaryens doomed themselves in westeros because of the iron throne. dany is not here to repeat those same mistakes. where she must go instead, is harrenhal. aegon burned it on the first day of his conquest, a conquest he began because of the prophecy of the prince that was promised. the castle is left in a half ruined state so it's not allowed to, like, die. the targaryens kept returning there and got involved in events that altered course of their rule forever - the council of 101 which led to the dying of the dragons and the tourney at harrenhal that led to their line almost ending. i think the narrative 'curse' at its heart is that the castle is the site of unfinished business. it was a result of excessive feudal violence and the conquest was supposed to lead to a different, better model of governance, i do think the targaryens came close to achieving that at certain points in their history because it was a reign of both splendour and horror, but they also ended up being responsible for the perpetuation of that very feudal violence in king's landing. as the last targaryen, dany's destiny lies in unifying and protecting the realm during the long night, this is what they survived the doom for. and i think to do that she has to go to this castle that's a place of both narrative beginnings and endings but also in stasis, and finish what her ancestors began—what aegon and rhaegar wished to achieve at harrenhal but couldn't, one too motivated by conquest and the other by prophecy. because only then will the curse break and the song end.

[jozor-johai]

The two young lions of the Rock

[jozor-johai]

dany portrait :P

[jozor-johai]

Welcome to Direwolf Day.

I’ve been holding my tongue for months now, sworn to silence yet dying to tell the world. Pardon my shouting, but…

THE DIREWOLF IS BACK.

Extinct for more than ten thousand years, but extinct no longer, thanks to Ben Lamm, George Church, Beth Shapiro, and the rest of their team of mad scientists at Colossal, the world leader in the science of “de-extinction.”

I met them all in February, in… well, that would be telling. And I met Romulus and Remus too.

Here’s me and Romulus. (Or maybe Remus. They’re twins, and hard to tell apart.

- Grrm, NotaBlog, April 8 2025

[jozor-johai]

fly away, little bird

[jozor-johai]

"why does anyone believe in the seven when it's the only religion that doesn't have noticeable magic"

1. that's not the point of popular religion my guy

2. the seven have practically made davos immortal

[jozor-johai]

Ι think that the beauty of Sansa's character lies on the fact that Cersei and Littlefinger tried to teach her their cynic and pessimistic view of the world but she didn't accept it. She still believes in kindness and she's gonna grow up to be the antithesis of those two characters ( she already is) and that's beautiful.

[jozor-johai]

Dunk & Egg 🗡🥚

[jozor-johai]

Griff and his gang ! I always thought that when you first meet them in ADWD they sort of feel like a the main characters team from an action-adventure cartoon lol, so that's the vibe I went with here

[jozor-johai]

Reading AGOT Jon III and I thought this line felt like it could carry a double meaning, or maybe a future-forward weight:

"Life," Jon repeated bitterly. The armorer could talk about life. He'd had one.

This is really about Jon having a chip on his shoulder over sacrificing the potential of his young life for the Watch—but later, Jon actually sacrifices his young life for the watch. So I wonder if this might predict Jon's reaction to that, too—will there be a lingering bitterness over watching others speak of living a life that he's already given up, only literally this time? And I might have thought I was reading too far into this... except that the immediate next line of dialogue is this:

"Yes, life," Noye said. "A long life or a short one, it's up to you, Snow. The road you're walking, one of your brothers will slit your throat for you one night."

Which again: these are immediate circumstances that Jon has altered in the short term. But on this reread I've been feeling more than ever like GRRM is putting his characters into the same conditions iteratively, as though this is Jon's fate (though more realistically because this is the nature of Jon's personality and character)

[jozor-johai]

reblogging just in case before this closes

I'm close reading the series, taking a lot of notes about thoughts I have on potential symbolism and plot developments. My notes to myself are mostly stream-of-consciousness because I don't know yet what develops into what. My original intention here is to take detailed notes on a number of things that will turn into long-form essays and investigations.

In the meantime, I have a lot of posts in drafts that I can just polish up and share with you all, so it's not like you will hear nothing from me.

However, I'm curious what you think: should I also be posting regular updates with my thoughts on chapters as I reread them? Or better to wait until I finish everything so I can better structure things without "showing how the sausage is made" so to speak? I may or may not heed the results here but curious what people might want to see.

[jozor-johai]

any braime endgame theory where they end up married as lord and lady of tarth/casterly rock kindddaaaa misses the mark for me like i get it its very nice but i think part of whats fun about them is how they play with and constantly switch traditional societal roles. he's a man, she's a man, she's a maiden, he's a maiden, she's beauty and he's beast or she's beast and he's beauty. she brings him back to kings landing, and she brings him to stoneheart. he saves her from the bloody mummers but has her arrested in the red keep. and this kaleidoscope of perspectives allows each of them to see each other more holistically as people than as a specific role (which is why using each others first names rather than titles is significant) but for them to become lord and lady, husband and wife, diminishes the power of not only their genderfuckyness but also what made their relationship such a standout part of the books

[jozor-johai]

I'm close reading the series, taking a lot of notes about thoughts I have on potential symbolism and plot developments. My notes to myself are mostly stream-of-consciousness because I don't know yet what develops into what. My original intention here is to take detailed notes on a number of things that will turn into long-form essays and investigations.

In the meantime, I have a lot of posts in drafts that I can just polish up and share with you all, so it's not like you will hear nothing from me.

However, I'm curious what you think: should I also be posting regular updates with my thoughts on chapters as I reread them? Or better to wait until I finish everything so I can better structure things without "showing how the sausage is made" so to speak? I may or may not heed the results here but curious what people might want to see.

[jozor-johai]

❄️ An Anime of Ice and Fire 🔥

Part 5 - Eddard Stark (updated)