#((It has been a long time since I drew something complex traditionally))

[eri-talks]

Happy birthday to my favourite DL boy~

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 54: How linguists figure out the grammar of a language

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 54: How linguists figure out the grammar of a language. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 54 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today we’re getting enthusiastic about how grammars come into existence. But first, we are doing a liveshow in April. We will be doing a liveshow recording on the internet so that we can all be in the same place at the same time on Saturday the 24th of April, Eastern Daylight Savings Time in North America, which will be early on a Sunday morning for us here Australia.

Gretchen: That’ll be 6:00 p.m. for me on Eastern Daylight Time. We will include a link to a time zone converter so you can figure out when that is for you.

Lauren: We’ll be doing the whole show about backchanneling, which is all those ways that you –

Gretchen: Mm-hmm.

Lauren: – actively listen to someone as they’re talking. Thank you for that excellent backchanneling, Gretchen. Something I think a lot about in our era of lots of video calls and online chats.

Gretchen: You can’t see me, but I’m doing a thumbs up right now.

Lauren: Excellent backchanneling.

Gretchen: These are some kinds of backchanneling. We’re gonna be talking about lots more. I think it’s fun to do a liveshow about backchanneling because it means that you get to backchannel in the chat while the show’s going on and chat with each other. That’ll be fun. We’re running the ticketing of the show through Patreon. If you’re a patron, you’ll automatically get a link to the liveshow to join. If you’d like to become a patron, you can also do that to get access to the liveshow stream.

Lauren: Patrons also get access to our recent bonus episode on reduplication as well as 48 other bonus episodes because we have almost 50 now.

Gretchen: That’s a lot! Lots of Lingthusiasm for patrons, which helps keep the show running.

Lauren: Our liveshow is part of LingFest, while will be taking place across the last week of April, which is an online series of events about linguistics. You can find out more about LingFest at lingcomm.org/lingfest.

Gretchen: That’s “comm” with two Ms as in “communication.” Speaking of LingComm, if you’re interested in communicating linguistics to broader audiences, you can also join the LingComm conference, which is a conference for practitioners of linguistics communication such as ourselves and many other cool LingCommers to learn from each other and help produce more interesting and engaging materials for all of you.

Lauren: LingComm, the conference, is taking place online the week of April the 19th.

Gretchen: You can also go to lingcomm.org/conference to see the schedule and other details there.

Lauren: That’s “comm” with two Ms.

[Music]

Gretchen: Lauren, how many people would you say you know who have written a grammar of a language?

Lauren: Hmm, okay, well, both my PhD supervisors. I’d say half the people in the department that I current work in. I have written a grammar of a language. This is a perfectly common activity among my professional cohort. I assume it’s a thing most people do and know about, so we don’t really have to explain it for this episode at all. This is fine.

Gretchen: [Laughs] Yeah, I would say that at least several of the people that I went to grad school with – not necessarily at my university – people I knew from conferences, professors that I knew – one professor I knew had her grammar come out the same year that her baby came out, and she posted a photo of the grammar and the baby, which were about the same size, on Facebook after that happened. It was really cute.

Lauren: Grammars definitely take longer than nine months to gestate. I can definitely confirm that.

Gretchen: I have not written a grammar. So, when someone’s going about writing a grammar, what – okay, here’s a language. There isn’t a grammar written or the grammar that’s written of it is not adequate. What do I do to start?

Lauren: What you’re talking about is taking all of the amazing complexity of how humans use language and finding the rules that reoccur within a particular language and then finding a way of articulating that concisely in written form in a grammar so that, by the end, you’ve worked through most of the common features you find in this language – all of the variations and irregularities – and you’ve put that into some kind of readable book format for other people to then learn about how the grammar of this language works. That is the overarching aim of this endeavour.

Gretchen: I’ve consulted grammars in the process of doing linguistics. I have the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language sitting on my desk. When I was in grad school, I spent a lot of time consulting Valentine (2001)’s grammar of Nishnaabemwin. There are grammars that I’ve consulted. They’re 1,000 pages, 2,000 pages long. Sometimes you’ve got a really massive grammar. Sometimes you get a shorter sketch grammar. They have certain similarities in the structure and the types of things that people cover in a grammar.

Lauren: Absolutely. You tend to start, traditionally, with smaller bits and work upwards. You’re likely to find a description, if it’s a spoken language, of the sound system or, if it’s a signed language, of the hand shape and body space phonology at the beginning of the book and then work up to word-level – you probably expect if a language has adjectives, a section on adjectives, which we’ve talked about before.

Gretchen: We have talked a little bit about adjectives.

Lauren: And then if you’re look at sentence-level stuff, like asking a question, how you do that, it happens at the level of the sentence, that tends to be more towards the end. You’re going from smaller bits up to bigger bits. It really depends on the tradition. We talked about lumpers and splitters before. If you like to split things down, a grammar is great because you can have so many sub-headings. I remember reading the rules for one set of grammars where it was like, “Please do not go beyond five layers of headings,” and I was like, “That’s actually quite a challenge.”

Gretchen: Because you have your chapter level headings, and then you’re like, “Oh, okay, if this chapter’s about verbs, you’ve got this type of verbs and those type of verbs – within the transitive verbs, you’ve got this type of verbs and those type of verbs,” and so on and so forth.

Lauren: Then you’ve got the irregularities. They might need their own subset. You can go from – the table of contents, you can get this big picture and then go down and down and down into the different sections. The grammar that I wrote of Lamjung Yolmo was a sketch grammar, so it’s only a couple of hundred pages. It makes sure to knock over – it would be very weird to have nothing about nouns in a language that very obviously has nouns – but it doesn’t go into the deep level of detail on some things that a longer grammar gets to. There’s always more to be done as well.

Gretchen: Any grammar is gonna be incomplete – even these massive doorstop-sized grammars. You’re gonna leave some stuff out where you’re a speaker and you’re like, “I know this,” but you don’t necessarily include it in a grammar. I’ve also read, in grad school – I don’t remember what language it was of – but I picked up this grammar that was written in, like, I wanna say maybe the 70s or 80s. There was clearly some sort of fad for doing this very abstract schematic thing of sentences or verbs or something. It didn’t have any complete sentences or complete verbs just written there. It drew them all on this diagram that I have never encountered before or since where everything was piece-able together. I was like, “Oh, wow. You’re participating in some sort of grammatical tradition that I’m just not aware of here.”

Lauren: I mean, I think the important thing is that grammars are written by humans, and humans are trained by other humans within particular traditions. I remember when I was building my sketch grammar, it was while I was also working on my thesis because I was looking specifically at evidentials, but you can’t know what’s happening with evidentiality without understanding how verbs work and how verbs relate to other parts of the sentence. And then I realised I was accidentally on my way to writing out the bones of the grammar of Lamjung Yolmo.

Gretchen: Sometimes you just accidentally write a grammar.

Lauren: That is how I accidentally started and very deliberately finished writing that sketch grammar. But I remember talking to my supervisors. One of them found it quite unusual that I wanted to include the methodology in my grammar. I wanted to explain specifically who I’d worked with, what I’d recorded, what kinds of elicitation I’d used. That wasn’t in that supervisor’s grammar tradition, but it was something I wanted to include.

Gretchen: A lot of grammars aren’t gonna include the gestures of the language or something, which I know is one of your things that you enjoy.

Lauren: Yes. There are traditions that do focus more on narrative structure, and you might find more about the structure of narratives in a grammar, and others that focus more on verb structure. There’s a very brief few pages on phonetics and then a really massive chapter on verbs. It’s sometimes because the language has lots of really fun, complex things happening with the verbs, but sometimes it’s just because that’s what that person was interested in.

Gretchen: This person was a verb fan.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Some parts, you know, it’d be pretty hard to do a grammar without doing some level of phonology at the beginning. But, yeah, what level of pragmatic stuff at the end, discourse stuff, or like, “How do people of this language talk to children?” or something like that – that might not be in a grammar.

Lauren: I’m doing a paper with a colleague on onomatopoeia at the moment. Some grammars will have a separate section on that. Because it’s not as central to every single sentence as, say, nouns and verbs can be for a lot of languages, it doesn’t tend to crop up as its own specific subsection in a lot of grammars.

Gretchen: Which doesn’t necessarily mean that language doesn’t have onomatopoeia. It’s just that it didn’t get the focused attention that got put there.

Lauren: This is always the question that you have while reading a grammar, right. It’s about what makes it in, but it’s also what doesn’t. Sometimes things don’t make it in because of trends or because of what people are focusing on or sometimes just because they’re important but incredibly low-frequency things that happen. Or if someone is doing fieldwork, and they come into a community as a man, they might spend a lot of time around other men and recording a particular variety. That’s where the methodology was really important for me to make clear why I was making choices. Also, the title of a grammar – I find it really interesting whether people say, “The Grammar of” or “A Grammar of.” I, very consciously, called it, “A Grammar” or “A Sketch Grammar of Lamjung Yolmo” because this is just my analysis and my take. Other people might come to exactly the same data with different conclusions. Or they might be way more into adjectives than I am, and that section is way more fleshed out in someone else’s analysis.

Gretchen: That’s an interesting side effect, as you were saying about, okay, well, if we wanna look at onomatopoeia in a bunch of languages, or if you wanna look at any sort of thing whether it’s verbs or sounds or handshapes or something in a bunch of different languages, okay, how can – if you’re making those beautiful graphs like are in the WALS database, which we’ve mentioned before, or if you’re gonna write a Wikipedia article about like, “Here’s how this language works,” or “Here’s how this phenomenon works,” the grammars turn into this input material of what gets cited there.

Lauren: Those big overviews are often built up from these grammars of different languages. That’s where having structures that are easy for people to access in the table of contents becomes really easy because, just as a human writing the grammar, there’s another human reading that grammar to put into those databases.

Gretchen: Dictionaries are often a very collaborative project where you have a bunch of people contributing words or contributing entries. You can say, “Okay, you need to take care of the letter P and see what’s going on here.” But a grammar is often written by one person, and so it reflects that one person.

Lauren: Almost, like the very overwhelming majority of the time, it’s people who aren’t members of that community. It’s a linguist who’s trained as a linguist and then come into this community and often built incredibly long-term, deep relationships with those communities and speak the language but not always. I know I’m kind of – it’s very easy to over-problematise something you do and spend a lot of time thinking about but, again, it’s worth remembering while reading a grammar.

Gretchen: Right. And what types of things you think are interesting, what types of things you think are novel or worth drawing attention to, or what types of things you think are common is a function of what you’ve been exposed to from a grammatical tradition. I’ve been thinking a lot about this question of “What do we put in a grammar” and “How is a grammar constructed by the societal context in which it’s written” because I’ve been reading this book called, Grammar West to East, by Edward McDonald. The subtitle is “The Investigation of Linguistic Meaning in European and Chinese Traditions.”

Lauren: Cool.

Gretchen: I will say, at the beginning, this is an academic book. It is a monograph. If you don’t have a background in linguistics, you’ll find it fairly dense going, potentially. But, as someone who does, it’s really interesting.

Lauren: Awesome! Pick out the anecdotes for us.

Gretchen: One of the first observations that it makes – and, when you think about this, it’s totally true – is that – so the European grammatical tradition is based on Latin and Greek. Latin and Greek are languages where you do a lot of changing the endings on words – sometimes the prefixes, but often the endings – on words to make them do grammatical things. The European grammatical tradition is a lot about making tables of all of the different ways that a word can inflect and being like, “Well, it does this and it does this,” and giving names to the different sorts of groupings and patterns that you find out of that.

Lauren: Which is great, but doing those things, it makes it a little bit confusing sometimes when you apply it to a language like English that doesn’t have the same ending changes, but we give them the same labels. That’s because the analysis of English is very much in that Latin tradition.

Gretchen: It’s inherited from the Latin tradition. There’s a pedagogical motivation for some of this because Latin and Greek were not just the languages that started out analysing themselves, although they were that as well, but they were also considered prestigious languages that you needed to learn. So, a lot of the grammatical analysis of Greek and especially Latin were in terms of how to teach them to speakers of other European languages. And it’s like, “Here’s a bunch of endings, and you need to learn them, and you need to learn what they correspond to and what their function is.”

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: What’s interesting is that the grammar of Chinese is different from that. They don’t do endings. What they do instead is you have things that have a grammatical function, but they’re considered to have the same status as full words. And so, the Chinese grammatical tradition is concerned with looking at those particles that have grammatical functions but are hard to write definitions of and cataloguing them and figuring out what’s going on with them and grouping them into groups. There are some words in the European tradition that are invariant – they’re often all lumped together in “adjectives” – words like “often,” or “always,” or something like that, which are – they just look like that all the time. They don’t have endings like the verbs and the nouns do. The Latin tradition grammarians didn’t care about those words, and they were really into the endings. The Chinese grammarians were really interested in, first of all, this fundamental duality between words that had a meaning to them, had what they called, “full words,” and words that were only for their grammatical function, what they called, “empty words.”

Lauren: That is a great metaphor. I like it.

Gretchen: Also, because culturally they were really interested in dualities, you know, the sun and the moon, and the full words and the empty words, and having a nice, mirrored duality was really appealing to them for aesthetic reasons in the same way that the European grammatical tradition is often descended from the rhetorical tradition because they were really interested in the aesthetics of rhetoric when it came to doing that sort of analysis. What your culture’s into aesthetically brings forth, okay, what are we trying to explain this. So, both of these are sort of ancient history, you know. Around 2,000 years ago they were the beginnings of this doing their own analysis grammatical traditions. You get this really interesting descriptive grammar that was published in 1898 by China’s first grammarian, Ma Jianzhong, called, Mr Ma’s Compleat Grammar, which I think is great.

Lauren: That is an excellent late-1800s name of a book.

Gretchen: It is exactly of a particular era. It’s “compleat,” E-A-T, not E-T-E, which is just –

Lauren: Perfect.

Gretchen: He was a native speaker of Chinese who had also been educated by Jesuits in French, and so he had exposure to both the French and the Chinese grammatical traditions. He writes this grammar where he distinguishes between full and empty words the way that the Chinese had – introduced these particles to be these “empty words” – but he also further subdivides the full words into the lexical categories that Europeans had been doing, which are verbs and nouns and so on. This distinction between verbs and nouns and so on was really important to the Europeans because verbs and nouns have different types of endings. You know whether something’s a verb or a noun because the endings are all different because this is a really endings-based grammatical system. The modern linguistic conception of how languages and their structures work is, to a certain extent, a hybrid of that because these full and empty grammatical categories is now reflected in what linguists call, “content words” and “function words.”

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: You have words like, “dog,” and “cat,” and “run,” and “see,” and stuff like that where you can actually write a definition, and then you have your grammatical words like “of,” and “is,” and “to,” and stuff, which just have this grammatical function. So, this category that’s still really relevant in modern linguistics is there in one country’s grammatical tradition, but also modern linguistics does also still talk about “nouns” and “verbs.”

Lauren: Absolutely.

Gretchen: The history of the contact between these two grammatical traditions and how they figured out how to adapt things to each other is an interesting way of looking at what is it that we think of as important when we’re trying to write a grammar of a particular language or we’re trying to do grammar. A lot of ancient grammar traditions were really concerned with describing one very prestigious, golden-age language – or one or two – you’ve gotta write your grammar of Latin or of Greek or of Old Chinese because that’s the one everyone thinks is fancy. And the local vernacular that ordinary peoples talk, like, no, no one’s gonna write a grammar of that. It’s a very interesting way of thinking about, okay, what were people concerned about and how did those interests derive from the structure of the language or languages that they were familiar with.

Lauren: This book sounds so great, but I wonder if actually the title of it should be, “Grammars from East to West,” because if we look where our modern tradition of writing grammars in Europe is, it’s very much motivated by those Latin grammars and grammarians of old, but it’s also very influenced by Paṇini and the Sanskrit grammarian tradition that is two-and-a-half, three thousand years old as well.

Gretchen: One of the things that I was thinking about reading this, being like, “Wow!” – I knew some of the stuff about the European tradition, not all of it, but I didn’t know most of the stuff about ancient China – thinking, “I know that there was a really interesting grammatical tradition going on in India, like, right between these two major geographical regions.” There’s a bunch of stuff going on in Arabic as well, at a slightly later time. Can I have a book that writes about all four of these, please, in comparison to each other?

Lauren: Yeah. I know very little about the Arabic tradition. Most linguists at least know the name “Paṇini” That first N has a little dot under it in English, so it has a kind of palatalised vibe, but it also means his name is great. I know more than one university that has the “Paṇini Café and Sandwich Shop” because that’s a great multilingual pun to use.

Gretchen: Who can resist a pun? I learned a bit about the Arabic grammatical tradition when I was taking a bit of Arabic in undergrad. There are a whole bunch of things that that grammatical tradition does also in the tradition of “We’re going to look at our language and catalogue it in exhaustive detail and figure out exactly what’s going on in it.” One of the things that I remember was that there’s an exhaustive catalysation of what they call the “binyan,” which are the templates that you can slot your three-consonant roots into, and how you put the vowels in between them that mean all of these different things.

Lauren: Because Arabic is very interested in what happens in shifting the vowels of the language rather than what happens at the end of a word like the Latin tradition.

Gretchen: It’s very relevant in Arabic all of the different things you can do with the vowels in between them and whether, maybe, you double a consonant in a particular context or you put this vowel here or that vowel there. The classic tri-consonantal root that everybody cites is K-T-B, /k/-/t/-/b/, which has to do with books and writing. “Kitab” is “a book,” and “kutub” is “books,” and “maktab is “office,” and “kataba” is “He writes.” You can do all sorts of things with those three consonants and how you arrange the vowels between them. There’s an abstract way of representing “Here’s what the patterns are” with a template verb that you can show all the patterns with and going through and exhaustively cataloguing the patterns. This is the exciting thing to do if you’re an ancient Arabic grammarian. I’m excited by just thinking about it. But that’s very much influenced by the structure of the language. I don’t know as much about what Paṇini was doing except for the fact that he gets cited in a lot of Intro Linguistics classes as the first grammarian.

Lauren: Part of why he gets cited a lot is because he’s excellent. I’ll talk about that. I think part of why as well is that Paṇini synthesized and brought together everything that had been happening in the Sanskrit grammar tradition. Sanskrit is kind of like the Indian linguistic area equivalent of Latin, which is that it was the language of sacred texts and religion. It’s a language that is still handed down. People still learn Sanskrit in the way they learn Latin. But in that area, languages like Hindi and Nepali, the Indo-Aryan languages, are all later siblings and children of Sanskrit. It’s a very convenient analogy to Latin to draw with Sanskrit. I think, also, the motivation for thinking a lot about the language came from a theological attempt within Hinduism to understand truth through language and understand how language works. It was one of the core areas of study within the larger religious tradition. So, that was the motivation. But Paṇini – we know his name. We know not too much else about him except that he wrote at least two-and-a-half thousand years ago. He synthesized this work, and he name drops ten other people whose work he draws on. We’ve lost the record of all of their work. I think he’s excellent. That’s not in dispute. But it’s also just a convenient prominence he receives through being the kind of earliest record we have when the work was going on for thousands of years behand.

Gretchen: The person whose manuscript survives with his name attached to it.

Lauren: Absolutely. A very convenient way to appear to be very excellent is just to have none of the foundational work you draw on exist still.

Gretchen: No. This is like the Library of Alexandria all over again.

Lauren: What made Paṇini’s approach really distinct – and distinct from what was happening with those learner-driven motivations for analysing Latin – is that there was a logical progress to how he set out his description of Sanskrit. Similar to what we talked about with modern grammars where you start with the base elements of the sound system and then build up to words and parts of words. If something goes on a word after another bit, so you’ll describe the earlier bits first and build outwards. It’s this logical order and progression.

Gretchen: In a very real sense, the order that Paṇini devised over 2,500 years ago is reflected in the order of the grammar that you wrote a few years ago?

Lauren: It’s absolutely not an accident. The early 20th Century linguists like Saussure, Franz Bopp, where directly reading Paṇini and going, “This guy was doing this stuff thousands of years before we started thinking about it” and were directly influenced by Paṇini’s approach to thinking about how the language worked and thinking about it very descriptively. This is why he’s known as the first grammarian within even the Western tradition because he was like, “Look, there’s these words and they have these histories, but actually, the important thing is that we think about how the words are being used by people now.” The funny thing is he wrote that about what we now think of as Classic Sanskrit. People have not moved on from thinking about Classical Sanskrit in that way, and it’s become a learning tool, but –

Gretchen: We should all just be speaking Classical Sanskrit.

Lauren: The motivation is exactly the same motivation we use in a descriptive grammar now. It’s not about setting out the rules of a language and how it has to work, it reflects how a linguist has analysed that people are using that system.

Gretchen: I think that’s one of the things that comes up when we talk about a grammar is, particularly because grammar in the Western tradition is associated with Latin, and, okay, you’re learning about the grammar of English only so that you can translation Latin into English better rather than learning about the grammar of English as an object of its own study. This translates into, “Okay, well, what if we made the grammar of English more like Latin because that would obviously be better.” That’s where this secondary meaning of “grammar” as, you know, “Thou shalt not split an infinitive,” does – because in Latin an infinitive is all just one word. You can’t split it. It’s just one word.

Lauren: You can’t split it.

Gretchen: This idea that grammar is a tool to beat people over the head with comes from this, “Well, you’ve got to learn this language in school because this is how you’re gonna access all these classical texts that you are supposed to access, and you need to do it a certain way because it’s dead now, and it’s not evolving, and so you’re just learning to do this very particular thing,” that’s where this additional connotation of grammar as a stick to beat people over the head with comes in.

Lauren: That’s that very Latin tradition that we still have.

Gretchen: And it’s not only English that had a grammar as a tool to stay in touch with a lost golden age. This is also what they were doing in ancient Chinese of like, here’s this older thing. One of the other interesting things that I learned about the Chinese grammatical tradition, in particular with the writing system – because the writing system in Chinese can obscure different pronunciations – you could have a poem that you could still read in the written sense that’s very old but, for a modern reader, it doesn’t necessarily rhyme. At a certain point, when they were doing more historical linguistics, they realised, “Oh, this poem actually rhymed back in the day.” The pronunciation has changed so much that we weren’t really thinking about it because the characters look the same, but it actually used to rhyme, which sometimes shows up when you’re reading Shakespeare or something, and it’s got “thrown” and “drown” or something. Like, “Wait, those probably were supposed to rhyme based on where they are in this poem.” You can use that to reconstruct what was going on.

Lauren: It can feel a bit anxiety-provoking about committing an analysis to paper because you are pinning a butterfly for a moment in time. People are still speaking the language, and it moves on. As long as you don’t think of the descriptive grammar as anything more canonical and authoritative than people’s actual intuitions, that’s an important thing to remember. Especially if you’re working with a grammar that’s more than a few generations old, it may be that the person didn’t quite capture what people were doing. It may be that the language has changed again.

Gretchen: Another thing that I found really interesting about “What are the ideas that people were thinking about at the time” – so this is from Grammar West to East again. The author points out that when Chinese characters first became known in Europe, it was late 16th Century and, in Europe, for unrelated reasons, the idea of a universal language was the hot philosophical topic. You had people like John Wilkins, who ultimately created Roget’s Thesaurus, but he was really just trying to make a universal taxonomy for understanding the world, he ended up making quite a nice thesaurus but not with making a universal way of understanding the world. What was actually going on in China at the time was that Classical Chinese was a scholarly and diplomatic lingua franca of the East Asian region. It was acquired as a learned language in the different parts of those regions. The Chinese words were given a local pronunciation. So, children in different parts of China would learn to read using a literary register of the local dialect, and there wasn’t the idea of a standard spoken language for the whole country. That’s a modern innovation. This is a situation that was a lot like Latin in Europe at the time. But Europe, you know, “Oh, you learn Latin in school so that you can do the literary thing.” But European scholars misunderstood the situation and thought that this meant that Chinese characters were interpretable by speakers of any language without them being based on one language, even though they were very much based on an ancestral language of the region.

Lauren: Oh dear. And their obsession with universality that they came to this very functional but still based on a language thing. Oh dear. I see exactly where this is going. That’s not good.

Gretchen: Also, they did the same thing with the Egyptian hieroglyphs, which had not yet been deciphered yet. They were like, “Guys, we found it! We found the universal language of ideas, and it’s not tied to a particular language!”

Lauren: Not translated adds an extra air of mystery.

Gretchen: European scholars thought this was great. Francis Bacon thought this was amazing. It’s interesting to see not just, okay, here’s this thing that was going on in China at the time, which is interesting, but also, here’s how these things get reflected and refracted, whether that’s the Europeans approaching Chinese grammar as maybe this is a thing that’s universal or this Chinese grammarian, Mr Ma, looking at it and saying, “Okay, how can I merge these two grammatical traditions of the full words versus the empty words?”, and then also “What if I have nouns and adjectives and stuff?”, and “How could I group them in ways that make sense for the grammar of the language?” Everyone’s bringing their own preconceived notions to this space.

Lauren: I think the descriptive grammar has really figured itself out as a genre in the 20th Century. A lot of the discussion around how to make sure people aren’t just bringing themselves to it has been to widen the scope of what gets included. One really big influence has been the idea that you need to have the grammar, but it has to be presented alongside the wordlists because the grammar just tells you the rules not which words go in which places and also a collection of texts that are broken down and translated so that people can access what’s happening in narratives. That solves a little bit of that what gets included problem.

Gretchen: Because somebody could always go back and look at the text again and say, “Well, what if I interpreted them differently or wrote this grammar differently based on what I can see here in this longer thing?”

Lauren: Yeah. “The author didn’t get around to a section on the use of particles in narratives, but there’s enough texts here I can see what’s happening.” This little trio of publications is sometimes known as the ��Boasian trinity,” which sounds a little bit more pompous and religious than it actually is, but it’s part of this expanding what gets included.

Gretchen: This is after Boas, whose first name I have forgotten.

Lauren: Franz Boas.

Gretchen: Franz? Franz Boas. He was one of the early grammarians in this descriptive and comparative tradition where it’s not just, okay, every intellectual in this one country or this one society is devoting themselves to this one language but, “Oh, what if we looked at lots of languages? What if we compared them?” This goes along with the colonial project of like, “What if we went and conquered some people?”

Lauren: Yes, there’s a lot of scientific rationalism happening here.

Gretchen: This is not entirely unproblematic either. It is interesting how the forms of the grammars start shifting when it stops being this sort of seeking this one language of like, “Oh, everything descends from Greek” or “Everything descends from Sanskrit.” Even the Europeans, at a certain point, when they encountered Sanskrit, were like, “Oh, everything must descend from Sanskrit,” and said, “Okay, well, what if we realised that we can’t actually know what the first language was? This is lost in the midst of time,” and figured out “What can we know about relationships and what is the possibility space for what are different things that languages do?”

Lauren: I mean, I think it’s also worth pointing out a lot of 20th Century language description has happened to try and translate religious texts and political documents and that is a subset of problematic colonisation within the grammatical tradition.

Gretchen: The longest text that’s been written down in a lot of languages is the Bible, which has all sorts of really weird consequences when you start using those parallel texts as the input for something like machine translation because you can have machine translation systems start spitting out things that sound like religious prophecies because they’re just regurgitation versions of that Bible input, which is pretty weird.

Lauren: Such a weird consequence of a weird set of earlier decisions.

Gretchen: Exactly. Here was this earlier decision that maybe this was even a religious text that was created 100 years ago by some missionary, but it’s the longest text that’s available in this language, and the grammar is more or less accurate – and yet. It wasn’t trying to record the stories and the oral histories of the people who actually spoke that language that they cared about themselves, it was trying to introduce this foreign religion to them.

Lauren: Again, it’s one of those things that is hard to avoid and so it’s just important to be aware of when you’re looking at some grammars. They may have a lot of Christian religious texts. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the religion of the speakers so much as the religion of the person doing the documentation.

Gretchen: Going back to that theme of grammars that are made by people and sometimes people’s agendas for making a grammar is –

Lauren: A different endpoint.

Gretchen: It’s less about like, “Oh, I want to help this language be taught in schools and support its speakers in their own goals” and more “I wanna impose my goals on the speakers.”

Lauren: I think another important change that has happened across the 20th Century in terms of grammars is the increasing availability of recording equipment and, therefore, the ability to make recordings of the language as a fourth part of that three-part collection of what’s important when documenting a language.

Gretchen: There are some really interesting ancient recording technologies like the wax cylinders that were used –

Lauren: You say, “ancient,” but you mean, like, 150 years ago.

Gretchen: Yeah, not ancient compared to Paṇini.

Lauren: Not Paṇini ancient, just, it’s really that the story of the 20th Century descriptive tradition is the story of embracing these recording methods.

Gretchen: There was a really cool thing where they had these old, cracked wax cylinders, I think it was in the Smithsonian, and they couldn’t put them on a machine to read them because, obviously, the needle would stumble over the cracks. It’s kind of like a record.

Lauren: They just fall apart.

Gretchen: Picture it as a tall record with all the lines tall rather than a flat record. But it was cracked, so they couldn’t put it in the thing, and they eventually figured out a way with lasers to read the recordings. I got to hear, you know, here’s a song in this language that hasn’t been heard for 100 years because the cylinder cracked. If it’s online, I’ll try to find a link to it.

Lauren: With recording technology, early on, and even for some linguists, it’s mostly about doing recordings so you can go back and listen yourself and really identify that you’re correctly analysing structures. But I think the more exciting thing is that it lets you really observe more people using language in more natural ways. The “Can you say this?”, “Can you say that?”, “Does that sound grammatical?” way of eliciting stuff can lead to an unusual way of approaching the language, but really drawing on people singing songs and telling stories not only makes for a richer, more realistic grammatical description that allows you to see those fuzzier, more complicated bits of language, but it also means that you can make those recordings available for speakers who are interested in going back to an oral history of the language for people who might come in the future and go, “Ah, you didn’t look at the way people’s prosody goes up and down and their intonation changes in stories. I’m gonna look at that, and I have access to these recordings.” I think this is where grammars are more exciting as we integrate more of that richness of actual language and bringing the people who speak the language back into real prominence within the grammar document.

Gretchen: Yeah. Because there is a certain way of writing a grammar which is very old which just assumes that whatever bits you have about “Here’s how this language works,” that information just exists at this abstract level, and it’s not necessarily tied to particular speakers or particular communities, and saying, “Oh, it would be good to give credit to the speakers who were saying this, or to identify this is a particular way that a language is spoken in a particular region,” or “Here’s something that’s going on here.” There have been some initiatives to do things like pair people who are trying to revitalise their languages with linguists to try to understand what’s going on in some of these older grammars because they can be hard to decipher without the special training. The one that I’m familiar with is Breath of Life.

Lauren: There are the Paper and Talk Workshops in Australia as well where you’re coming full circle and making sure that you give people the tools that they need to access the materials about their own language because you can make grammars for many reasons, and we’ve discussed some of them but, at the end of the day, the most important reason to me is that speakers of a language can access the materials that were created for that language.

Gretchen: I think when we look at the multi-thousand-year-old history of making grammars and the very different sorts of questions that people had about language thousands of years ago, I find it very humbling because we can think about what are the questions that people might be asking in another thousand years, and how can we make things that would help with that?

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, schwa pins, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found at @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can get access to 49 bonus episodes to listen to right now at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards, as well as helping keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include reduplication, Q&A with a lexicographer, and a Q&A with the two of us in honour of our 100th episode. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[errgative]

Japanese Literature Essentials

This is a list of five classic Japanese books and short stories that I feel are essential reads for anyone interested in Japan. I’ve chosen these books not only because they are excellent literature in their own right, but because they offer unique insight into Japanese culture and showcase the differences between Japanese and Western literature. Whether or not you are studying Japanese, I think you can gain something valuable by reading them. I know there are many great books I’ve left off this list, but Japanese literature is just too expansive to be summarized in one post - feel free to reblog with your own favorites if I didn’t include them!

Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji (源氏物語)

Recommended Translation: Royall Tyler

The Tale of Genji is one of the most iconic and foundational works in the history of Japanese literature. Written at the peak of the Heian period, it combined aspects of Chinese literature with traditional forms of Japanese storytelling, resulting in an 1100 page (written almost entirely in kana!!) epic that follows Genji through his adventures and romantic pursuits while giving insight into Heian court life. I feel that Tyler’s translation brings the beautiful Classical Japanese prose to life while preserving the original aesthetics of the tale.

The author, Murasaki Shikibu, was a lady-in-waiting at the Imperial Court. Although women were traditionally not taught Chinese, she was able to study it due to her immense talent. Her mastery of literature is shown in that Genji was greatly praised even at the time of its release, despite her being a woman. 

Soseki Natsume: Kokoro (こころ)

Recommended Translation: Edwin McClellan

Soseki is often regarded as the founder of modern Japanese literature. His works are informed by his life experiences, as well as issues salient to Meiji-era Japan, such as the westernization of Japan and conflicts between modern and traditional culture. 

Kokoro takes place during the transition out of the Meiji era. The central characters are a young student and the man he idolizes, called Sensei. Through the young man’s relationship with his parents and Sensei, Soseki explores the boundaries between urban and rural values, as well as what it means to receive an education. The third and final part is in the form of a letter from Sensei, and deals with themes of guilt, isolation, and the egoism of youth, as the reality behind the student’s idealization of him is revealed. 

In the interest of full disclosure, this is my favorite book on this list and definitely in my top five books of all time - it has only a spare, basic plot, but manages to convey the feeling of an entire nation in a time of transition, while not sacrificing beautiful language or complex, nuanced characters.

Akutagawa Ryunosuke: Hell Screen (地獄変)

Recommended Translation: I actually don’t know who translated the version I’ve read, since it’s a pdf that doesn’t include the title page. Contact me if you want it, or pick a translation that sounds good to you.

Akutagawa was one of the most influential Japanese writers of the twentieth century. Japan’s most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He is probably best known outside of Japan for his story Rashomon, which inspired Kurosawa Akira’s film of the same name. Much of his work deals with what he perceives as the corruption and spiritual anxiety of modern life, as well as themes of obsession, isolation, and illusion. 

Hell Screen is a short story set in an ambiguously medieval Japan, potentially the late Heian period. It centers around the painter Yoshihide, who is the finest painter in the land, but hates everything except for his art and his daughter. He is commisioned by a lord to create a screen painted with the Buddhist hell. Through Yoshihide, Akutagawa explores the nature of artistic obsession and the conflict between art and moral behaviour, all while creating a sense of uncertainty around the truth by choosing an unnamed courtier who is devoted to the lord as a narrator. The end result is a wonderfully disturbing story that subtly critiques modern ways of thinking in the guise of a Buddhist parable.

Warning for implied rape.

Mishima Yukio: Forbidden Colors (禁色)

Recommended Translation: Alfred H. Marks

One of the most well-known postwar Japanese authors, Mishima wrote about themes such as beauty, gender, sexual desire, and patriotism, and his work has been equally praised and criticized for its long, flowing descriptions and decadent prose. Today, Mishima is known almost as much for his gruesome death by ritual suicide as for his literary accomplishments.

Some of you might wonder why I chose to include Forbidden Colors on this list rather than the better known and less disturbing Confessions of a Mask. While it’s true that both of them feature gay protagonists and involve similar themes, I feel that the viscerally disgusting nature of Forbidden Colors makes it a much more powerful read. It is by no means enjoyable, essentially being 400 pages of nothing but hatred and vitriol. Both the protagonist, Yuichi, and his ‘mentor,’ Shunsuke, are amoral, manipulative, and hopelessly misogynistic. The plot is based around Shunsuke’s quest to get revenge on the entire female population by using Yuichi’s good looks as his weapon. Yuichi starts out as somewhat naïve and afraid, thinking he’s the only man to ever be gay, but begins to become more and more like Shunsuke, adopting his misogynistic habits and using his experiences in Tokyo’s gay scene to learn how to weaponize his beauty. The horrifying story of what Yuichi does and experiences provides a harsh, angry critique of Japanese society without any moments of hope or levity.

While I do highly recommend this book, please know that it is highly disturbing and if you cannot read books that contain rape/dubious consent, graphic violence, extreme misogyny, or homophobia, it might be a good idea to skip it. 

Enchi Fumiko: Masks (女面)

Recommended Translation: Juliet Carpenter

Enchi is probably the most well-known female Japanese writer from the Showa period. She drew attention to the plight of women in an increasingly militaristic and patriarchal Japan, and achieved success after World War II despite the male-dominated Japanese literary establishment. Her works explore gender and the nature of power.

I had a hard time deciding whether to include Masks or The Waiting Years; both are powerful explorations of female forms of power, and both are quintessentially Japanese in nature. Ultimately Masks won out because of its direct ties to The Tale of Genji, which opened this list. Masks draws on countless layers of Japanese culture, from Genji to traditional shamanistic practices to Noh theatre and art. The story is told from the perspective of men, but as the novel goes on, it becomes clear that the men are being manipulated by the crafty Mieko, whose schemes quickly ensnare the narrators. Central to the story is an essay Mieko wrote on the role of the Rokujo Lady in Genji. Ultimately, Masks is about power, how it can be subverted, and the results of those subversions, while simultaneously exploring the nature of gender, revenge, and legacy. It’s hard to summarize the genius of this book - the way Enchi weaves together differing sources and plot threads into a cohesive, indictive whole - in one paragraph, but I hope you all will read it. 

Once again, I’m including warnings, this time for graphic sex, dubious consent (in that one party does not know who the other is), graphic descriptions of blood, and death.

More Recommendations:

Soseki Natsume: I am a Cat; Botchan

Akutagawa Ryunosuke: Spinning Gears; Kappa

Oe Kenzaburo: The Silent Cry; Hiroshima Notes

Enchi Fumiko: The Waiting Years

Tanizaki Junichiro: Naomi

Kawabata Yasunari: The Old Capital; Thousand Cranes

Mishima Yukio: Death in Midsummer - Onnagata, Patriotism

Murakami Ryu: Almost Transparent Blue

Abe Kobo: The Woman in the Dunes

Yoshimoto Banana: Kitchen

[mysticsparklewings]

Fairy Enchanting‪

A bit later than I expected, but here we have the art that I used for the examples on my Commission Sheet! (Unoriginal title is unoriginal and also a pun based on "very enchanting") When I started thinking about putting together a commission sheet in the first place (which was something I wanted to do for the new year, as before I was just using a lengthy pricelist), I knew that I wanted to make a piece of art specifically for it and track my progress as I went, so that I would have an example for each stage in the process I take commissions for. And for the art, I more or less wanted to "go all out" since it's supposed to be an example, and I figure the example needs to be as close to top-notch as possible. Admittedly, I probably could've done even more than this, but me being me I procrastinated and ended up having less time to work on this that I initially expected, so... In deciding what the drawing would be, I also decided to return to my roots a little, and a do fairy as an homage to back when I used to do Winx art all the time. Likewise, as Enchantix to this day is my favorite transformation from the show, I drew heavy inspiration from it, and I'm sure that's so obvious that if you know the show I probably didn't have to point it out to you. Anyway. I actually didn't start completely from scratch with the sketch; I re-used this pose from a previous sketch I did that never saw a full-finished piece. I liked that other sketch okay, but it didn't feel like a "finish me" project. I did have to alter the feet because the original sketch was made with feet for ballet slippers (bigger heels, more rounded/curved toes, etc.) and much later on in the process I ended up angling the leg on the left more outward, as that felt more natural for the direction I was taking this new sketch in. In sketching all the bits that make this sketch otherwise unique from the old one, as I mentioned, I was taking heavy inspiration from Enchantix. One of my favorite parts of the transformation has always been the leg-wrap/barefoot sandals, for reasons I can't explain. So those were a must. I also really like how the Enchantix outfits tend to be short dresses that are more form-fitting at the top and more flowy and soft at the bottom. Here, I decided to bring the ribbony look on the leg wraps up into the bodice, and to frame the collar/shoulder area I used a sleeve & choker style similar to what I did for the dress for Ink Dance, which itself was based on a dress I actually own and love to pieces despite never getting a chance to wear it because of how fancy it is. The main difference for both of the drawing versions is that I skipped the lace overlay that connects the sleeves and choker, mostly because both pieces are traditional and drawing lace/mesh traditionally, especially when it's so teeny, is a nightmare I do not want to engage with. And the choker part fits nicely, as in Enchantix each fairy has a necklace (usually a choker) that holds their fairy dust bottle. I'm not sure if this fairy has one or not, but she very well could! Enchantix usually has long gloves, but I altered these to be shorter and fingerless (more like Magic Winx or Believix gloves) since this fairy is also based partially on myself, and I'd be more likely to wear that kind than the full-length formal gloves. And for the hair, as is maybe obvious, I was primarily inspired by Stella's for her Enchantix, since I've always loved that part of the transformation sequence for her's. Also, even though it doesn't look that way on my commission sheet, IRL I drew only one wing and left it separate, off to the side, to make positioning and flipping it easier. Once the sketch was done, I did try inking it traditionally/by hand once, and I just really wasn't happy with how it turned out. And I also realized I had drawn the skirt billowing/ruffling in completely the wrong direction anyway; It was moving to the left when it should've been moving to the right like the hair. So I had to take time out to fix that. As opposed to wasting more paper trying to ink traditionally after that fiasco, I instead went with what had been my gut instinct anyway; I scanned the sketch in and did the lines in Photoshop. Well, most of the lines. I was a dumb-dumb and when I did the lines for the wings, 1. it took forever because they're large curves everywhere and 2. I used a slightly bigger brush than for all the other lines, as I had mistakenly thought I was going to be re-sizing them significantly and the lines would be altered to for me when I did that. When I realized that wasn't the case, I did not want to have to redraw most of those curves again and risk not being able to get the right a second time. So I ended up booting a copy of the wings I'd already done into Paint Tool Sai and made use of the linework layers to redo the wings without having to draw the same line fifty times. Then I booted that back into Photoshop and adjusted the wings to be angled/aligned with the rest of the lines as I saw necessary. It was also at this point that I played around with positioning the leg on the left more outward than what it was on the sketch and ended up going with the position you see here. I could have then gone back and added weight to the lines in some places, but at this stage, I was already thinking that I wanted to print the lines out and use my digital lines to hopefully get cleaner traditional ones, as opposed to just printing the lines off outright. (Mostly because I wanted to use some super thick mixed media paper that I would bet serious money will not go through my printer.) That's what I ended up doing, and I have to say that attempt went a lot more smoothly than me trying to ink from the original sketch. And once I had the initial lines done, then I went back and thickened them in certain places. And I should probably mention here that the wings were a little tricky to figure out how to handle traditionally, as that's not something I've had to do very often. I ended up using my clear stardust gelly roll when I did the normal inking, and then, later on, I used colored pencils to go back over the outlines before coloring them in. After doing some tests, I started coloring with markers for the hair and skin, and a little colored pencil for some blush. I tried to get a little more bold with the shading than I usually do, which I'm sure still looks pretty tame compared to most. But I'd rather the shading be too light than too dark. Originally, I thought I was going to do all or mostly all of the coloring with alcohol markers. (Sidenote: is it just me or does it seem like there’s a lot of alcohol marker related stuff going on in the art world lately??) But then I did some testing with the lines I originally inked and didn’t like, and was reminded why I normally don’t use alcohol markers for gradients like the one on the skirt...frankly, I’m not very good at them...yet. Even though the test went better than expected, I still wasn’t happy with it. Then I tried a few more tests with watercolor, and that didn’t fare much better. Watercolor would’ve worked if the gradient wasn’t also supposed to be shaded, I think, but trying to shade it without using another supply wasn’t working. That left me with good ol' tried and true colored pencils. But colored pencils are relatively slow and textured, and I didn't really want that for the skin. The texture would've worked for the hair, but I didn't want to make the time investment for it either. And so I ended up sticking to my mixed media instincts and I used the colored pencil exclusively where I had to (on the dress so I could get the gradient for the skirt right) and then I used alcohol markers everywhere else, shading and all. With the alcohol marker doing most of the work, then I came back and added additional shading/highlights with the colored pencils as needed to everything except the skin. I added blush, but otherwise, I was quite pleased with how the skin turned out and didn't want to touch it for the risk of ruining it. The dress is supposed to be black/really dark gray, but I did brighten it up a bit with some of the blues from the skirt gradient as opposed to pulling out specific grays, so it definitely looks/feels more navy in the final product. Although my relatively dark/saturated color choices for her outfit made figuring out what to then do with the wings more challenging. I didn't want the wings to be the exact same colors as the rest of the drawing, because then they'd blend in too easily and be too distracting from the rest of the piece. But at the same time, I wanted them to match/look like they belong. (Again, similar to how the wings are in Enchantix) After some back-and-forth testing and a LOT of color sampling, I decided to color the wings in with alcohol markers in colors that were similar to her clothes but overall lighter/more pastel and outline them and the sections inside the wings again in colored pencil. Most of the colored pencil is slightly darker than the marker colors I picked, but I went with purple for the black/gray rims of the wings because I thought a dark gray or black would be too harsh. I'd already decided I wanted to do a slightly more complex background digitally, but even with that in mind, the traditional drawing still felt like it was missing one more thing after that. Namely, the wings didn't seem special enough. I realize that sounds a little weird; I was just talking about how I didn't want the wings to be too distracting, but I think there is a delicate balance to having them be special in the way fairy wings should be while still not overpowering everything else. And I'm not sure I achieved that, but I at least tried to. Though not a perfect solution, I ended up adding some metallic watercolor on top of the "true" (less purple-y) blue and pink sections on the wings.  You can't really tell here on the scan, and what little you can appears to be the wrong color, but in person, both colors now how a lovely pink or blue sheen to them when you move the picture in the light. (The metallic paints, in this case, are very opalescent, so they're almost completely transparent when you see the flat color despite still have a really pretty metallic sheen in the light.) After that, I felt there wasn't much more I could do traditionally, so I scanned it and moved on to that background. At this point, I was kinda pressed for time because me being me, I had unintentionally put making my commission sheet off to the last minute. I really wanted to have it finished before the ball dropped on New Years' Eve ("new year, new me" and all that jazz), and I still hadn't finished my example art by sunset time the day of. So I had to keep things moving. Early on, I'd had the idea to either digitally make a slightly more complex (but not too complex; I wanted to keep at least a little of the sanity I have left) background or perhaps make a special watercolor piece to use as the background. Unfortunately, I just didn't have the time for that anymore if I wanted to have the commission sheet finished by my self-imposed deadline. (And if we're splitting hairs, in theory, I could still go back and change the background if I wanted to, for reasons I'm about to go over, so of all the things to get rush-cut that's really not so bad.) What I ended up doing instead was taking some of the left side of my Starfall Mountains painting (I was looking for a background-type thing I'd already done/made that would suit this drawing or that I could quickly tailor to make it work, and I'm just as surprised as anyone else that this frustrating tiny painting ended up being the one I liked best of my options) and I blew it up to comfortable cover the background here, flipped it around so the colors would flow a bit better, and used the hue/saturation slider to make it more of teal color for a little more contrast. But of course, there was still just one more thing missing, even after all that. After a little tinkering, I decided I didn't like trying to making the wings transparent (I could do it, I just didn't like the way it looked in this case), so I went in and added a touch of sparkles digitally to both tie them more into the piece as a whole and to give them a little more pizzazz. And finally, blessedly after all of that, the artwork was finished, I was very happy with it, and I could move on to making the actual commission sheet.   I have to say, for as rushed as it was towards the end, I do really like how it turned out. More particularly I like just how blended both digital and traditional art ended up being here. To me, this is the next step beyond what I was able to do for mixing digital and traditional art with my Doodle Moon piece, and if I weren't currently in the middle of a tablet crisis, I'd really want to do more with this concept of going back and forth between the two on one artwork. However because of the tablet situation, the thought of really trying to do that right now kinda fills me with dread, so we're gonna have to wait a little while on that. I do also really like the anatomy/proportions in this. Which is not something I normally feel comfortable saying.   It's not the best art I've ever made or anything, but looking at it makes me happy. It's good to see it finished and it's good to think of where a lot of the ideas for it came from. (Re: Nostalgia for my life a few years ago) I'm not sure if I will since it kinda counts but also kinda doesn't(?), but I'm tempted to put this and some of my old Enchantix drawings up on the "Draw This Again" template, just to show how far I've come. I'm still thinking about it, we'll see. Speaking of "we'll see," I got word that the sketchbooks from the contest I made Designiest Design for back in October are finally in, which means the prize packs should be sent out anytime now! I'm excited to see how the sketchbooks turned out and get my hands on the Powder Pack and see how said powders work! I was admittedly starting to wonder how that was coming along, so that was some good news and a nice surprise I'd really been needing here lately. Rest assured, there will almost definitely be an art piece talking about that stuff once I have it in my hands! 

____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[thebethbits]

on beauty and art.

Marble busts. A clean, organized desk. Pastel colors, Baroque art. Listed, these items may not seem at first related, but they do in fact share a commonality: they are all different examples of aesthetics. Meaning: they are ideas, concepts, or items that all have a very specific appearance or style to them, that one may find enjoyable to experience. This could stem from the appearance of an object, to the history of it, the way it is made, or colored, or simply gleams in the light. The impact, or experience we receive from looking at one of these items or others, may have a certain aesthetic appeal to you, or others.

To grapple with the relationship between art and beauty is to grapple with how we go about seeing art, seeing the world. Asking the question what is art, what is beauty, can feel vulnerable. It tilts our worldview on an axis we aren’t always comfortable with. It questions how we view our reality, which can feel like standing on crumbling ground.

This is why, historically, “beautiful art” over the last few thousand years, before the nineteenth century, has meant objectivity. That beauty lies within the piece of art, in the harmony of its elements, the symmetry in its appearance, as well as the emotion expressed or conceived that made a piece beautiful. But this perspective changed in the nineteenth century, when Immanuel Kant and colleagues wrote that it is within judgement, within critique that beauty is found, relying on the subjectivity of the experience of art, as its audience, to find beauty. (Art Must Be Beautiful) This changed the game, leaning on audiences to find beauty rather than the objectivity of beauty from the art itself. Traditional western ideals have commonly attributed “beauty” to pieces that showcase incredible skill: landscapes, still life, portraits, where traditionalism and true-to-life, near-photographic styles, or examples of Realism, are favored.

The relationship of art and beauty dances on this line of objectivity and subjectivity. Some say that you cannot have one without the other, others saying that art can exist without having to be considered beautiful at all. In this argument, many bring up Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. It is incredibly hard not to, the piece is incredibly controversial, and considers the arguments of beauty and art’s edges, the argument’s extremes. The title of Duchamp’s piece may remind one of the many majestic fountains from all over the world, with statues and architecture that is synonymous with traditional ideals of beauty. But the actuality of it is a little more every-day than, say, Florence’s Trevi Fountain.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, replica 1964. Tate.

Pieces along this narrative are defined as “anti-art,” or art that defies existing expectations of what art is supposed to be. (Anti-Art, Tate) Here is where the relationship between art and beauty splits, depending on your own view of the discussion. To some, a urinal brought into a gallery may be called art, but it isn’t beautiful. To others, the message of what the action of bringing a urinal into a gallery means, makes the piece beautiful. There is another group, to who a urinal could just be beautiful. The architecture of it, all slopes and curvature, may be considered beauty and worthy of being art in itself, whether it is being shown in a gallery or bathroom.

This challenge of expectations, this split from the ideals of western traditionalism, was a curveball thrown into the history of art. What started as objectivity, symmetry and fractals, turned to subjectivity, as observers sought to define their own beauty in art. Changing again in the late nineteenth century, with the start of Expressionism rebelling against Impressionistic ideals and traditionalist art, where the likes of Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch, among others, were famous for their Expressionist works, inspired by widespread anxiety of divergent views worldwide of authenticity and spirituality. (Wolf, 2019) Through Expressionism, beauty in art was shown through what was within, complex thought and processes, rather than from the current affairs of what the world had to offer.

Then, an explosion of radical and new age thinking in the early twentieth century. Movements like Surrealism, Bauhaus, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, among many, many others created as time went on. More artists were moving away from Realism and towards different ways of showing the world through a stylized lens, testing boundaries of meaning and definitions of what art is, what art could be.

These changes are attributed to the postwar culture left after the second World War. America having escaped generally unscathed, victorious of both a cultural and military war, among the millions of traumatized immigrants starting new lives far from their home countries. The culture that began of this mixing of ideals, of histories and cultures, jumpstarted a new age of movements every decade, one rebutting against the next. Art made in protest against elitism, against simplistic thought, against capitalism, against traditional limitations. (Willette, 2012) Like dominoes, one is the critique of the next, again and again. Old ideas turned on their head into new ones, beauty reinvented, revisited, over and over.

To talk about the change of art and beauty in art history and not mention the works of Mark Rothko would be a tragedy. Rothko’s works have been a centerpiece of abstraction and a spark to the discussion of art and beauty since their creation. His works are featured in museums around the globe, and have started a conversation of massive discontent and debate of beauty in the art world.

Mark Rothko, No. 37/No. 19 (Slate Blue and Brown on Plum) 1958. MOMA.

To many, Rothko’s works don’t feel beautiful when you first walk up and look at them. They may seem misleadingly simplistic. They may seem dull, rectangle upon rectangle of hazy dim color. But there is something about them that one cannot discount: there is a ubiquity present. Rothko’s pieces seem to loom over the gallery, viewers walking between them like they’re drowning in them, swimming from depth to depth. They are not pieces you forget it after you’ve walked away. Rothko didn’t need narrative to assist the color present in his works, an idea new in the 1950s, where having color, and color alone drew out emotion in audiences. (The Case for Mark Rothko, 2015) With this structure for his art, Rothko has said that: “‘he could deal with “human emotion; with the human drama, as much as I could possibly experience it.’ He said this style offered him ‘the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer.’” (The Case for Mark Rothko, 2:02-2:13) This experience-based narrative that Rothko stood so strongly by – in my eyes, is the goal of beauty, down to the simplest, core concepts, of color and shape.

Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue is a series of four paintings by the late artist Barnett Newman (1905-1970). The third in the series, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III, isn’t particularly groundbreaking at first glance, the same perspective as Rothko’s pieces showcase.

Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III, Barnett Newman, Stedelijk Museum.

The piece features an ocean of startling red, bracketed by vertical stripes on either side: blue on the left, and yellow on right. It is featured on a massive piece of canvas, nearly 18 feet wide by 8 feet tall. It hung in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam for seventeen years. Then, in 1986, it was murdered. It was actually murdered twice, within the timespan of about five years, but we’ll come back to that.

These pieces look similar because they are both connected by being created in the same style, that of the movement of art that began in the 1940s: Abstract Expressionism. This movement has a power that not all movements of art do: their presence alone enrages some viewers. The simplistic look of the paintings makes some feel like they, or even their children, could reproduce an exact-looking copy with little to no effort, compared to some of the other, more traditionally styled pieces featured in museums. This elicit and intense reaction from audiences goes so far to where some even leave museums entirely – vowing to never go back in. (99 Percent Invisible, 2019)

Abstract Expressionists are shaped by Surrealism, a movement known to have been created as a response to the global attitude shaped by post-war anxiety and fear and trauma. These artists vowed to explore art through self-expression, through color, and abstraction, and gestural emotion featured loud and proud on the canvas. (The Art Story Contributors, 2011) Some may say that these pieces should not be considered art, let alone carry the title of beautiful. But when we are grappling with the idea that we are capable, as a species, of such intense horror by our own hands, how do we go about making something like that – beautiful? How do we look at these faces, these beautiful landscapes, and not think of those who will never be able to see them again, or those who were never able, and will now never even get the chance? How do we hold that, and how can we capture it within art?

Beauty is constantly evolving, and not everyone is comfortable with that fact. But there is a difference in turning your nose up at modern art movements, and actively seeking out to destroy them. Here is where we come back to Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III, and it's unfortunate murders. The first begins when the painting is being exhibited at a museum called the Grande Parade, where it is being shown among other pieces to pose the question of what makes a painting, a painting. (99 Percent Invisible, 2019) During the exhibition, a man devastated the canvas, making long horizontal slashes with a box cutter. By the time he was finished, fifty feet of the fabric had been gouged out.

The man, Gerard Jan van Bladeren, was an artist himself. He considered this action one of artistic vandalism, where the painting itself was asking for it, that it provoked this action out of its audience, and he, the first to act upon it. (99 Percent Invisible, 2019) After, many Dutch citizens wrote to the museum letters of recognition, not for the fallen painting, but for the destroyer of it. “‘This so-called vandal should be made the director of modern museums’ read one. ‘He did what hundreds of thousands of us would have liked to do,’ read another.” (99 Percent Invisible, 2019)

The restoration of the piece led to another issue: how do you make a piece so thoroughly destroyed, whole again? How do you make it the same, colors beautiful and dimensional once more? Conservators have a rule of only using restorative elements that can be removed at a later point in time, in case the piece needs to be worked on later. (99 Percent Invisible, 2019) But Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III was a momentous task to uphold: the simplicity of it would make a restoration job incredibly easy to spot.

The Stedelijk ended up hiring a New York based conservator to take on the task, one by the name of Daniel Goldreyer. The job took three years to finish. By the end of it, Goldreyer was paid $270,000 plus expenses for his work and the museum finally had their painting back, sans slashes. (Vogel, 1993) Happy ending, except, when the museum put the painting back up, there was another immediate reaction from its audience. Not of violence (though this was not the last of Newman’s work to be vandalized in such a manner, or by the same man that had attacked this one), but of confusion. There was no sign of the gashes, yes, but the painting was now different in another way. The red, the color that took up nearly the entirety of the painting, didn’t have the same quality anymore. The painting had lost its depth, it’s shimmering dimensions within the red color. (99 Percent Invisible, 2019) The museum was now stuck with a different painting than one that had hung on its walls for nearly two decades.

The story of this painting brings up an important question: though “fixed”, and similar from afar, was the painting considered the same by some in the quality of its beauty? If audiences could tell the difference, was it still beautiful to those who found it so before? And to those who did not, was there a new beauty found in its narrative deaths, a “rebirth”? Further, if more people know about Newman’s work and the journey of this piece, would they think different about abstract art? If they were more educated on Rothko’s works, emotion and color and asking more of the viewer than a common passing, but to think, and feel, and spend time with his pieces, would they do it? Or is it easier to follow the group mindset, to snidely object to these types of art as not beautiful? To not think that the thought, the hours, the concept behind the piece as motivation for the beauty of the piece itself? If this would not change their minds, what would?

Today, the way we see beauty and art has changed. We have art museums that have been built to focus on abstract, modern concepts of beauty. Where photo-like accuracy, traditional western concepts and ideals do not equal the experience of beauty we get from viewing art. Where beauty is treated like an involuntary action, seeing an aesthetic and feeling like it fits into our catalogue of likes and views subjectively.

Beauty and art still have a complicated relationship. Beauty is specific, striking, hard to pin down and define. Art, as we considered last week, hides both in plain sight, and bursts from every corner, expressive and blinding. There is a connectedness between them that feels like a balancing act – one leaning into the other. But this doesn’t mean that art needs to be beautiful to be considered art, or to be considered worthy of attention versus another piece.

All of this leads me to believe that maybe beauty, below the surface, is subjective, but in a way that is almost domesticated. Habitual. If we truly felt the beauty in everything, we’d be struck still by it. We’d have to stop what we were doing – walking, talking, breathing – and stare. It would be like seeing everything for the first time, over and over. The stars. Mountains rising into view over the horizon. Every color of the sky. The sound of someone’s laugh. Where beauty is both caught in the fleeting feeling of itself, alongside a kind of seeping feeling, full of contentment. But this is only half the story.

There is another side to beauty, and one that has only seen light since the movements started in the twentieth century: unorthodox beauty. Experiences, pieces of art that do not fit the contented, fleetingly tender concept of beauty. Genres like horror, for instance, can be beautiful. Sad movies with unfulfilling endings can be beautiful. Historically, from the many, many pieces of religious art, and especially seen in old Greek theatre: tragedy can be beautiful. These pieces do not fit into the general and common notions of beauty that we are comfortable with. They split at the seams, they are filled with the unknown, full with the feeling that something is waiting just beyond the corner, and it is waiting for us. In this way, curiosity is beautiful. Mysteries, stories that end mid-sentence, art that is worn, fragmented, broken by the process of time, can still be beautiful.

So this leads us to the ultimate question: where is the line drawn? Where does beauty begin, and where does beauty end? What happens if we ask, rather: where do we stop looking for beauty? In our environments, our interactions, in ourselves? But if art is an expression of who we are, and art is capable of beauty, what does that say of the source? The subject? Maybe whether or not beauty is really found – as in named, as in seen or discussed – subjectively or objectively by anyone other than you, as the viewer or the artist – doesn’t really matter. But even if beauty is relative, that doesn’t make it unimportant. Rather instead, it makes it the most important quality of art. Because to see beauty is to be affected by everything. To pursue beauty is to be affected by everything. By finding beauty you are finding the light in how you see in the world, whether it is peeking through the cracks, or pouring from the sky. You are looking, actively, for where and who and what is calling for your attention, demanding your eyes.

If you find beauty, and think about it, just hold it in your mind for even a moment, there begins a possibility that someone else is seeing the beauty there, too. And there, you are bridging a gap – between geographies, millennia of lives lived, stories told, meals cooked and served, sunsets and sunrises – by finding beauty, you are bringing all of us, just a little closer together.

So as you go about your day, commuting, doing work, finishing deadlines and attending meetings, try looking up. Try to see. The world is exploding with beauty.

Works Cited

“Anti Art.” Tate, The Tate, URL.

“Art Must Be Beautiful”, YouTube, uploaded by The Art Assignment. 15 Feb. 2018. URL.

The Art Story Contributors. “Abstract Expressionism Movement Overview and Analysis”. The Art Story, The Art Story Foundation. 22 Nov. 2011. URL.

“The Case for Mark Rothko”, YouTube. uploaded by The Art Assignment. YouTube, 2 July, 2015.  URL.

Fecile, John. “The Many Deaths of a Painting” 99 Percent Invisible, Radiotopia. 26 March, 2019. URL.

Vogel, Carol. “Inside Art.” The New York Times. 10 Dec. 1993. Section C, p. 26. URL.

Willette, Jeanne. “Post-War Culture in America.” Art History Unstuffed, 21 Jan. 2012. URL.

Wolf, Justin. “Expressionism Movement Overview and Analysis”. The Art Story, The Art Story Foundation. 01 Oct 2012. URL.

Art Cited

Duchamp, Marcel. Fountain. 1917, replica 1964. Tate Modern, London. Tate. URL.

Newman, Barnett. Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III. 1967-1968, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Stedelijk. URL.

Rothko, Mark. No. 37/No. 19 (Slate Blue and Brown on Plum). 1958, MOMA, New York. MOMA. URL.

[katherinemacbride]

Slow Burn: Diary of a changing institution

(K MacBride and Miriam Wistreich)

…to maintain is also to keep buoyant; to maintain one's mood could be described as buoying oneself up, keeping oneself or someone else afloat during difficult times. Maintaining that the Earth is round when it looks flat is about upholding an idea, defending, and affirming it when it is challenged or attacked, raising its profile when it has slipped off the agenda. To maintain is to underpin, or prop up from below, to hold up when something or someone is flagging. The time of maintenance lies therefore at the intersection between the lateral axis of stumbling blindly on, and the vertical axis of holding up, orientating us towards a future, even when that future is uncertain, or may not be our own.

(Lisa Baraitser, 2017, Enduring Time. Bloomsbury: London. p. 53)

 For more than twenty years Hotel Maria Kapel has been an artists' residency, cinema, and contemporary art space in Hoorn, a town thirty minutes from Amsterdam. The venue, which is located in an impressive sixteenth century chapel, started in 1983 as an artists' initiative in the abandoned Maria Kapel and subsequently grew into what it is today: a publicly funded institution with national and international connections. In 2019, after the departure of Creative Director Irene de Craen who had led the institution through a period of (still ongoing) professionalisation, the board of Hotel Maria Kapel instigated a "year of reflection and reorientation" for which they hired an editorial committee consisting of artists Griet Menschaert and Maja Bekan, and curator Miriam Wistreich. A mix of artistic research and curatorial experimentation, the editorial committee's 2020 programme Slow Burn focuses on questions of care to channel institution building and its entailing questions into HMK's residency and exhibition programme. Through six thematic chapters (space, navigation, work, endurance, community, and time) the team of HMK, with its artists in residence, are trying to understand what it means to practice care — for our artists, our institution, our team, and our publics. Who do we care about and for? How can we qualify care through feminist politics and avoid the pitfalls of caring badly or caring too much? Is this even possible and what happens when we fail? And ultimately: how can we build practices and spaces of care within the limits of an exploitative system with which we are all complicit?

This text was co-written in June 2020 by Miriam Wistreich (Creative Director, HMK) and Katherine MacBride after the latter's residency at HMK. The point of departure for the writing process was a set of journals written by the HMK team — Annelien de Bruin (Coordinator), Miriam, and Rik Dijkhuizen (Communications Manager) — during March 2020, recording their experiences of running the organisation. This exercise was intended to form part of HMK's research into its own working practices, but since the Dutch government's measures to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic came into effect in March, the journals also offer insight into sudden changes in modes of working and the possibilities and challenges this opened up in a small team.

To write this text, Miriam and Katherine drew on four recurring themes that emerged from the journals: buoyancy, stress, structure, and listening. Each wrote two sections of what follows, drawing on differing positions in relation to HMK and wider experiences of collective work; some are descriptive, some propositional. Different voices inhabit the text together. The section "Stress" is formed of direct quotes from the journals that are used here with permission.

Buoyancy

Buoying one another along and up, on the surface, in the air, not drowning or falling, afloat; maintained in space and time. Vulnerable and precarious, buoyancy is a never ending processual task. The buoy will need new air pumped in, its rope replacing, eventually the anchor will rust. Someone will attend to these things, keep them maintained, as long as the buoy and the buoyancy of those who depend on it are deemed necessary, or as long as the maintaining attention itself can be kept buoyant. Otherwise the buoy might degenerate or disappear, bringing risk to those who depend on its buoy function for their own buoyancy. Unplanned parts of the structure, like the algae and small bivalves who grow on the rope, might outlive the maintenance energies, for they are not dependent on the buoy's intended function but will too find their environment disrupted and at risk as the buoy degrades in time. Who is maintaining the buoy in your collective work? Who do you know and not know that depend on it?

Stress

There are not enough hours in the day (and I really value sleeping).

Finished translation of project plan. In the afternoon I had a migraine.

Tired from yesterday, my other job ran late, the day started with a feeling of being behind, underperforming, lacking in discipline and efficiency. I pour myself a coffee before our weekly meeting. 

I enter in a state of near panic, thinking of a reprimanding email and all of the funding I am behind on. I do seven day work weeks at the moment and am running behind on deadlines in all of my jobs (currently only around three employers) and feel I am underperforming everywhere. 

Institutional trauma is carried in the bodies of the workers.

Things have been evolving rapidly. People are falling ill, we are advised to keep distance, work from home. We close HMK. My friends and community experience the consequences without delay: cancelled jobs, plans put on hold. Over the course of one day, my teaching jobs fall through, my side gig is cancelled, my exhibition is postponed indefinitely, my writing jobs are put on hold. I am tense thinking about them. I reach out to precarious friends (work, mental stability etc.). I go to bed exhausted.

I have a toothache and have to go to the hospital. I go to bed with a numb mouth and exhausted brain.

I spend the day feeling stressed about how to live up to everything that is demanded from me at work, from friends, as a person. I am overwhelmed and unable to focus. I feel lonely, who will be there to comfort me when I collapse?

I lose the day to a migraine.

I finish the day dancing alone in my room. I chose UB40 to get good vibes in my body. 

Structure

We maintain the chapel every Thursday, 15.00. We sort through twenty years of paperwork, two years of exhibition materials, wood everywhere, bags of plastic. We haven't seen the mice yet but we know they are there.

We invent meeting protocols.

We mop the floors before opening hours.

We sing together every month.

We disagree on the relationship between structure and freedom and the virtues of each.

Sometimes we don't know what we're doing. Other times we know really well.

A score to prepare listening attention in a meeting

At the last meeting responsibilities for the preparation, happening, and follow-up for this meeting were shared out. These vary for each meeting group but probably cover the following areas (broken down into separate tasks so one person does not cover an entire  category by themselves): admin (reminders, agenda, minutes), group process (facilitation, timekeeping, attending to unspoken dynamics), reproductive labour (attending to bodily needs of everyone, including the space). Responsibilities rotate for each meeting regardless of role hierarchies outside meetings.

Someone, or everyone, brings food to the meeting so no one is hungry.

Adjust the temperature. Human bodies do not have universal experiences of hot/cold.

Arrange enough seating. Can everyone in the group sit on the same kind of seats?

Adjust the lighting — bright enough to see each other but not so bright that those with light sensitivity are uncomfortable.

Prepare drinks that everyone can drink.

Develop a group agreement on start and end times based on the needs and capacities of the group. For example, people with caring responsibilities, health issues, or precarious work (often this is the whole group) might not be able to stay over time, or arrive exactly on time.

Develop a practice of checking in at the start of the meeting. This gathers the capacities, needs, and complexity of each individual and draws them together into the group.

If the meeting has an agenda, someone reads it aloud. Agree together what is possible to address in this meeting. It is important to develop a practice of setting realistic agendas over time.

During the meeting, listen: to the threads of the content; to your own thoughts before you speak them, considering if they need to have space in the available time; to learn about processes you are not actively involved in and modes that feel different or difficult for you; for feedback from others; to moods; to the unspoken.

Record something of the meeting so that the people who cannot be present, which is usually some people, can clearly understand something of what happened.

A short reflection on the effects of journaling within the organisation

The journals were shared between the members of the team and discussed during weekly meetings. Journals are tools for self-reflection, channels for venting, and traditionally also containers for secrets and contradictory, sometimes shameful, emotions. Within the HMK team, the journals functioned as access tools into each other's thoughts and allowed conversations to arise that would not otherwise have been given space in a hierarchical, professional context. It allowed the team to discuss subjects such as fears connected to work, differences in coping strategies, levels of engagement and excitement and the histories leading to those emotions, and the pressure we put on ourselves and others. Ultimately the journals led to increased vulnerability and openness within the small team, no doubt aided by a simultaneous feeling of breakdown and dissolution of boundaries between work and life caused by COVID-19 measures.

published https://newiseverything.com/slow-burn-diary-of-a-changing-institution.html

[lovethisskin]

In Conversation: Destiny Birdsong

We are beyond excited and honoured to start 2018 talking to acclaimed American poet, essayist and editor; Destiny Birdsong. Destiny has won the Academy of American Poets Prize, Naugatuck River Review’s 2016 Poetry Contest, and Meridian’s 2017 “Borders” Contest in Poetry. She’s had fellowships from Cave Canem and Callaloo among others.

She openly speaks to us about her experience with albinism, her family, writing out her fears and her hopes for young people with albinism

Photo: Hunter Armistead. Makeup: LaRisa Jones

We work in African communities and mostly have an African audience - Your background is different from that of our readers, tell us a bit about your community and how you grew up.

I grew up in the American South—Shreveport, Louisiana, to be exact. It’s not a big city, but it’s also not a small town. I haven’t lived there in many years, but it’s a place I love deeply. There’s something about the miles and miles of flat land, the pine trees, and all the waterways that will forever be a part of my concept of home, even though there are other places that share that moniker for me. Shreveport is an interesting place; it’s not in the part of the state most heavily populated by French-speaking Acadians or French Creoles (whose cultures Louisiana is most famous for), but it is definitely influenced by them in terms of food and other forms of celebration (like Mardi Gras), as well as in how the people around me thought about race and color. I grew up in an African American family where people were a range of colors, and my albinism never made me feel out of place in that regard. There is no general phenotype for us; I was just one color of many. So many of my family members’ nicknames are based on appearance, and particularly color. I have an uncle called “Fat Ear,” another called “Black Boy,” and yet another called “Red Boy.” When I was a baby, my uncles nicknamed me “Honey,” which they thought matched the color of my hair. I spend most of my life away from my family, and something in me starts to heal from the world when I walk into a room and my Uncle Carlos yells: “Honey Bunny!” I love my family for taking one look at me and naming me after something carefully made and harvested, something precious and sweet.

Of course, people outside the safe space of my family still said and did mean things during my childhood, but I was rarely—if ever—made to feel “less black” than others. And, while I was certainly made fun of, I felt physically safe in most of my environments. I do have one distinct memory of being bullied, however, and it was in pre-school. I’ve worn glasses since I was three years old, and this girl who had been hassling me on the playground one day smacked them off. Apparently, that was the last straw: somehow, I got a hold of her finger and bit down to the bone. She was rushed to the emergency room, and I was sent home. I love that story, especially since it’s the one time I got in trouble in school, but didn’t get in trouble at home. My mother knew the girl had been picking on me, and she understood why I retaliated. My mother never condoned violence, but she did give me space to stand up for myself, and she and the rest of my family made me feel like I had the right to do so. I also use this story to remind myself of something that I apparently knew then, but sometimes forget now: I matter, and no one has the right to treat me poorly simply because they feel like they can.

Do you remember when you initially became aware of your hyper-visibility?

There are two distinct moments that come to mind. The first happened when I was perhaps three or four years old, and I overheard my mother tell her best friend that, when she was at the grocery store, shew saw two children who looked like me. I wasn’t there with her, but I remember understanding that, when she said that, she also meant that we didn’t look like everyone else. The other time was a bit later—five or so—when I drew a picture of an imaginary friend named “Samantha.” Samantha had yellow hair and wore glasses, and my mother was touched, but also a little tickled; she showed that picture to everyone she knew. Although she understood better than I did at the time, we both knew who Samantha looked like, and why: I needed to see someone else who looked like me.

How have you navigated your albinism in your writing, what are some issues/aspects related to having the condition, feature most in your work?

This is a tough one, because, like everyone else (I imagine), this condition is one part of my identity, but doesn’t encapsulate the totality of my experience. I write about a number of things: love, sexual trauma, mental and physical health/illness, my family, my belief systems—so, whenever any of those things comes to the page, I let it come. I’m not sure if I ever developed a strategy for navigation. I do think, however, that in recent years, I’ve been more forthcoming about my fears and insecurities in my work, and albinism is certainly a part of that conversation, so I write about it more freely now. But, as I was recently telling a friend, I don’t come to the page with intentions so much as I come with questions, and if I am interrogating something about my experience with albinism and I feel like writing it out, then I write it out.

Oh! Ok, so I do have a caveat. I recently started writing fiction, and I deliberately made my main character a woman living with albinism. My decision was based on a few things. First, my best friend writes urban fiction, and we once had a conversation about how some writers in the genre create heroines who are cookie-cutter tropes: fair-skinned, long-haired, thin—very traditionally beautiful by some cultural standards. As such, these characters easily attract the interest of lovers and they are the darlings of whatever space they inhabit. I can’t speak to the motives of those writers, because I don’t know them or live inside their heads, but my first thoughts were: if these writers create such characters because they believe that a specific kind of beauty is more palatable for readers, and more believable, then that’s unfortunate for us as the audience, but also for the writers themselves (especially if they too don’t fit into that paradigm). There is a certain kind of trauma in never seeing yourself depicted as beautiful anywhere, not even in your own work. So, when I started writing fiction, I made a decision that my narrator would have albinism, and she would be desirable. She’s also really regular-degular (shout-out to Cardi B): she has no superpowers aside from code-switching and humor. I wanted her to be unique, but also just a person—someone you could imagine being friends with and commiserating with and understanding. I rarely see people with albinism depicted as such anywhere. And, of course, since I’m a hopeless romantic, her love interest falls in love with her. Well, eventually—I haven’t written that part yet.

There’s often a struggle between being vulnerable in talking about one’s experience with having albinism, and protecting yourself; how have you balanced being open and willing to educate others, and not feeling too exposed?

I practice one rule in this regard: people can ask me anything, but I reserve the right to refuse to answer. That’s my general rule about most things, and I try to offer that to others whenever I ask them questions about any subject I perceive as sensitive. I think that, as relational beings, we have all, at some point or another, fallen into the trap of assuming that, because we know a person who is privy to a particular experience, then they are conveniently available to provide the narrative of that experience for us. I’m certainly guilty of having done it in the past. However, I’ve learned that I don’t have the right to anyone’s body of knowledge, and they don’t have any right to mine if I don’t want to make it available to them. There are other ways to learn a thing, and to be informed.

There are some people who feel PWA should always self-advocate, what’s your view on this? Should we always carry the responsibility to help educate others?

Absolutely not. For instance, in public spaces, I often get the question: “Are you related to [insert the name of some other person they know who has albinism]?” Sometimes, I want to say “No, because not all of us are related. This is a complex genetic condition that spans ethnicities, countries, and cultures.” However, that is emotional labor, and I reserve the right not to perform it if I don’t want to. Sometimes, I just want to be doing whatever it is I was doing before I was interrupted: shopping for groceries, dining with friends, or taking a walk in a park. To be called to step out of the normalcy of my life to explain something to a person who perceives my body as abnormal, and thus demands that I explain this to them, is intrusive, and I don’t owe them anything. It can also take a toll on my emotional equanimity—especially if they prolong the conversation with follow-up questions, which they often do, and which are almost always deeply personal. I reserve the right to choose when to subject myself to that.

Do you have anyone in your family/community/role models of people with the condition, how did you find this experience?

No, I didn’t, and I was about to say “unfortunately,” but that’s a difficult thing to gauge in hindsight. I also don’t want to detract from the legacy of the people who were there. I was raised in a family of talented, innovative, and fiercely loving black women who have taught me a great deal about how to be a woman; and yet, whenever I hear the following words from Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me,” I always think of coming into womanhood as a person with albinism: “i had no model…/what did i see to be except myself?” In Clifton’s words, I made a lot of it up. I just did my research and/or figured it out and/or kept trying until I got what I needed. In so many ways, I am still doing that.

What words would you like to share with parents of children with the condition?

I don’t have any children, so it’s hard for me to tell any parent how to raise theirs, but I can say that it was—and still is—important for the people I love to give me space to feel what I can’t always articulate, and what people without the condition cannot always understand. There is something about my being hypervisible for every moment of my life outside my house that is both exhausting and exhilarating. I have a few other conditions—anxiety, depression, etc.—that sometimes make leaving the house an act of defiance. That is difficult, but I’m quite proud of that, and proud of the person I’ve become in spite of it. It’s important for the people around me to acknowledge that struggle, even when it looks effortless. I have a lovely family and wonderful friends who ask “Why are you so hard on yourself? You’re beautiful!” That’s important for me to hear, but it’s equally important for them to understand that everyone doesn’t see what they see; and, sometimes, I’ll be sad or frustrated by reactions that aren’t as complimentary, or as kind. If you are raising someone with albinism, give all of their feelings space, even as you remind them that one person’s opinion shouldn’t determine how you feel about yourself.

To young people with albinism, what are you hoping they take away, not only from your story, but their own experiences?

This one may take a bit of time to unravel, but trust me, I’m going somewhere! So, I spent most of the early part of this summer outdoors, which is rare for me: I’m a bookworm and not much of an athlete, and, of course, I burn easily (not to mention the fact that I often forget to wear sunscreen). But this summer, I spent four days at an outdoor music festival, and then travelled with my sister to the Bahamas. All around me were tan, thin, beautiful people, and I felt so self-conscious about my skin. This is unkind, but I literally felt apologetic that people had to look at it and spend time around it. Anyway, a few months later, I developed a skin condition that is temporary, but also incredibly uncomfortable, and it drastically changed the appearance of my skin. Fortunately, it’s finally resolving itself, but in the meantime, I’m realizing that I haven’t been loving my skin the way it deserves to be loved. It doesn’t do what everyone else’s skin does, but it is healthy, for which I am fortunate, and it’s beautiful, period. No caveats. I wish I had understood this earlier. I wish I hadn’t internalized so much of everyone else’s opinions about it. I wish I had known that one person’s recoil doesn’t mean I am unsightly or damaged or worthless.  I feel like it’s never too late to change anything and enrich the quality of one’s life, but I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time thinking otherwise.

From their own experiences, I’d say: live your whole life. Albinism is an anomaly that you can’t change, and that may sometimes bring you grief, but don’t try to normalize the rest of your life as consolation for those around you. If you are quirky, if you have interests that differ from people around you, if you think differently from them, hold on to those things. Cherish them. In childhood, they might make you the butt of someone’s joke, or the object of ridicule, but hang on to them. Those opinions change over time, and in adulthood, those traits could make you an artist, a millionaire, an inventor, a world-changer—we won’t know if those parts of you don’t survive. Also, celebrate your albinism. As part of my faith practice, I believe God specifically made me to be myself. He determined my tastes and my cravings, my talents and challenges, my complex desires, and who and what I would come to love. Albinism was part of that plan. It too has its purpose, even though I’m still figuring out what that is. How wonderful it is to think that, years before I would learn to smile or wash my face, God set the bones in it to look like my mother’s and her mother’s, then covered them with a different skin. Then, He set my eye color to match my father’s, though they move differently. I’m no admixture of anything. I am a body curated from my ancestors, but also completely different from them. I can’t say I’m always happy about it, but I can say that, fragile as it often is, my body has survived. So has yours. Every cell in our bodies is narrative and counternarrative, plot and plot twist. We are also vulnerable, but we are also brave enough to be so. That is something worth celebrating.

Photo: Noelle Théard

[butterflies-dragons]

SANSA STARK: A WOLF WITH DRAGON WINGS

I. AN INTRODUCTION

This is an extract from what George RR Martin wrote regarding what happened to Sansa in the sixth episode of the fifth season of Game of Thrones:

How many children did Scarlett O'Hara have? Three, in the novel. One, in the movie. None, in real life: she was a fictional character, she never existed. The show is the show, the books are the books; two different tellings of the same story.

There have been differences between the novels and the television show since the first episode of season one. And for just as long, I have been talking about the butterfly effect. Small changes lead to larger changes lead to huge changes. HBO is more than forty hours into the impossible and demanding task of adapting my lengthy (extremely) and complex (exceedingly) novels, with their layers of plots and subplots, their twists and contradictions and unreliable narrators, viewpoint shifts and ambiguities, and a cast of characters in the hundreds. 

There has seldom been any TV series as faithful to its source material, by and large (if you doubt that, talk to the Harry Dresden fans, or readers of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, or the fans of the original WALKING DEAD comic books)… but the longer the show goes on, the bigger the butterflies become. And now we have reached the point where the beat of butterfly wings is stirring up storms, like the one presently engulfing my email. 

Prose and television have different strengths, different weaknesses, different requirements.

David and Dan and Bryan and HBO are trying to make the best television series that they can.

And over here I am trying to write the best novels that I can.

And yes, more and more, they differ. Two roads diverging in the dark of the woods, I suppose… but all of us are still intending that at the end we will arrive at the same place.

In the meantime, we hope that the readers and viewers both enjoy the journey. Or journeys, as the case may be. Sometimes butterflies grow into dragons.

Sometimes butterflies grow into dragons. 

Sometimes butterflies grow into dragons.

SOMETIMES BUTTERFLIES GROW INTO DRAGONS.

That line really stuck in my mind. Because, beyond its literal meaning within the text, it is so beautiful and powerful, and gives me so much hope about Sansa’s future, because, indeed, she is a butterfly that could grow into a dragon.

Just look at what I found about Sansa’s butterfly symbolism:

[…] when Sansa’s dragonfly, wings, and butterfly symbolisms are born. Game of Thrones embroidery and animal motifs, especially with the female characters, employ subtle clues to the characters’ narrative evolutions. Sansa’s “spirit animal” motif is applied to her costume over and over as her character and story develop.

There are many theories about the Stark girl’s flighty, winged creature crest, from Sansa’s moth ring to her embellished gowns. Cersei calls her “little dove,” and winged creatures are traditionally symbols of beauty and fragility. However, I feel that Sansa and her symbolism are far more complex than this. Moths, dragonflies, and butterflies are metamorphic creatures that, despite their visually flimsy allure and delicate nature, evolve and grow as they shift and change. I feel like they are a very apt metaphor for Sansa Stark, who, through her pain due to her fragile place in society as a woman, is never broken entirely. She only evolves and grows as she shifts and changes through self realization.

It is also discussed that the story of The Prince of Dragonflies — a Targaryen prince who gave up the throne to be with his love — influenced Michele Carragher’s choice for Sansa’s personal emblem. Sansa’s obsession with courtly love, which is dashed time and time again, is mirrored in this tragic tale.

—Sansa Stark’s Fashion Evolution Through ‘Game Of Thrones’ And How Her Wardrobe Mirrors Her Character

After reading that article I started doing research for references about Sansa & dragonfly symbolism and/or Sansa & the Prince of Dragonflies in the books. And I ended up writing this long long post about it, where you can find a lot of Sansa Stark and Jon Snow connections and parallels.

So, since I already wrote about Sansa and dragonflies, now it is time for me to write about dragons, about Sansa and dragons.

II. DIFFERENT ROADS SOMETIMES LEAD TO THE SAME CASTLE

YES, I know that when George said “Sometimes butterflies grow into dragons”, he was talking about the changes the Show decided to make in Sansa’s story. While in the Books she is in the Vale in the guise of Alayne Stone, eating lemony lemony lemon cakes and trying to charm, entice and bewitch Harry the Arse the Heir, the Show put her in the place of Jeyne Poole or Fake Arya. So Sansa ended up being repeatedly beaten, raped and tortured by Ramsay Bolton in her own home. HER OWN HOME! A place she yearns for; a place where she finds courage and strength within its walls. Again, I will always hate D&D for what they did to Sansa... BUT, as George himself said: “Two roads diverging in the dark of the woods, I suppose… but all of us are still intending that at the end we will arrive at the same place”. So that makes me think that in the Books, Sansa and Jon, against all odds, will meet again.  

[x]

And I will give you more reasons why I think that: 

“Two roads diverging in the dark of the woods, I suppose… but all of us are still intending that at the end we will arrive at the same place”. Where do I read that before? Oh yes, in the Books: 

Jon messed up her hair. "I will miss you, little sister." 

Suddenly she looked like she was going to cry. "I wish you were coming with us."

"Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle. Who knows?" He was feeling better now. He was not going to let himself be sad. "I better go. I'll spend my first year on the Wall emptying chamber pots if I keep Uncle Ben waiting any longer."

Arya ran to him for a last hug. "Put down the sword first," Jon warned her, laughing. She set it aside almost shyly and showered him with kisses.

—A Game of Thrones - Jon II

I know that this dialogue is between Jon and Arya and it shows the endearing love they have for each other; but believe me, every time I read that last conversation between them, the way Sansa is so very present during that exchange of words always amazes me:

I have something for you to take with you, and it has to be packed very carefully.

"Her face lit up. "A present?"

"You could call it that. Close the door."

Wary but excited, Arya checked the hall. "Nymeria, here. Guard." She left the wolf out there to warn of intruders and closed the door. By then Jon had pulled off the rags he'd wrapped it in. He held it out to her.

Arya's eyes went wide. Dark eyes, like his. "A sword," she said in a small, hushed breath.

The scabbard was soft grey leather, supple as sin. Jon drew out the blade slowly, so she could see the deep blue sheen of the steel. "This is no toy," he told her. "Be careful you don't cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to shave with."

"Girls don't shave," Arya said.

"Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa's legs?"

She giggled at him. "It's so skinny."

"So are you," Jon told her. "I had Mikken make this special. The bravos use swords like this in Pentos and Myr and the other Free Cities. It won't hack a man's head off, but it can poke him full of holes if you're fast enough."

"I can be fast," Arya said.

"You'll have to work at it every day." He put the sword in her hands, showed her how to hold it, and stepped back. "How does it feel? Do you like the balance?"

"I think so," Arya said.

"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."

Arya gave him a whap on the arm with the flat of her blade. The blow stung, but Jon found himself grinning like an idiot. "I know which end to use," Arya said. A doubtful look crossed her face. "Septa Mordane will take it away from me."

"Not if she doesn't know you have it," Jon said.

"Who will I practice with?"

"You'll find someone," Jon promised her. "King's Landing is a true city, a thousand times the size of Winterfell. Until you find a partner, watch how they fight in the yard. Run, and ride, make yourself strong. And whatever you do …"

Arya knew what was coming next. They said it together.

"… don't … tell … Sansa!"

Jon messed up her hair. "I will miss you, little sister."

Suddenly she looked like she was going to cry. "I wish you were coming with us."

"Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle. Who knows?" He was feeling better now. He was not going to let himself be sad. "I better go. I'll spend my first year on the Wall emptying chamber pots if I keep Uncle Ben waiting any longer."

Arya ran to him for a last hug. "Put down the sword first," Jon warned her, laughing. She set it aside almost shyly and showered him with kisses.

When he turned back at the door, she was holding it again, trying it for balance. "I almost forgot," he told her. "All the best swords have names."

"Like Ice," she said. She looked at the blade in her hand. "Does this have a name? Oh, tell me."

"Can't you guess?" Jon teased. "Your very favorite thing."

Arya seemed puzzled at first. Then it came to her. She was that quick. They said it together:

"Needle!"

The memory of her laughter warmed him on the long ride north.

—A Game of Thrones - Jon II

See? Arya named the sword Jon gave her “Needle”. Jon thought about the same name for the sword, even before he gave it to Arya. And all that was because Sansa was extremely good at embroidering and Arya wasn't. I believe that if Sansa hadn’t been so good at it and if Septa Mordane hadn’t always compared Arya's stitches to her sister's exquisite ones, needles wouldn’t have been so relevant to Arya.

So, it is very obvious that when Jon said that “different roads sometimes lead to the same castle”, he was hoping to see Arya again, the same way Sansa waited, wished and prayed for Robb to come rescue her from the Lannisters, during her time in King’s Landing after Ned’s death. And since George has used the same phrase while commenting the decision of the Show to put Sansa in the north playing the role of Jeyne Poole as Fake Arya, I believe that this is the reason for the change of Sansa’s storyline from the Books; so she could run to the Wall in order to reach Jon for help and shelter. I mean, I believe that in the Books, Sansa and Jon will be the first Starks to meet and be together again. I believe that Sansa will be the girl in grey on a dying horse of Melisandre’s vision:

Surprise made him recoil from her. "Lady Melisandre." He took a step backwards. "I mistook you for someone else." At night all robes are grey. Yet suddenly hers were red. He did not understand how he could have taken her for Ygritte. She was taller, thinner, older, though the moonlight washed years from her face. Mist rose from her nostrils, and from pale hands naked to the night. "You will freeze your fingers off," Jon warned. "If that is the will of R'hllor. Night's powers cannot touch one whose heart is bathed in god's holy fire."

"You heart does not concern me. Just your hands."

"The heart is all that matters. Do not despair, Lord Snow. Despair is a weapon of the enemy, whose name may not be spoken. Your sister is not lost to you."

"I have no sister." The words were knives. What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister?

Melisandre seemed amused. "What is her name, this little sister that you do not have?"

"Arya." His voice was hoarse. "My half-sister, truly …"

"… for you are bastard born. I had not forgotten. I have seen your sister in my fires, fleeing from this marriage they have made for her. Coming here, to you. A girl in grey on a dying horse, I have seen it plain as day. It has not happened yet, but it will."

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon VI

Meanwhile in The Vale:

There’s a new High Septon, did you know? Oh, and the Night's Watch has a boy commander, some bastard son of Eddard Stark’s.”

"Jon Snow?” she blurted out, surprised.

“Snow? Yes, it would be Snow, I suppose.”

She had not thought of Jon in ages. He was only her half brother, but still… with Robb and Bran and Rickon dead, Jon Snow was the only brother that remained to her. I am a bastard too now, just like him. Oh, it would be so sweet, to see him once again. But of course that could never be. Alayne Stone had no brothers, baseborn or otherwise.

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne II

So, we have Sansa in the south (which was nothing like she imagined it to be) waiting for Robb, her big brother, the trueborn, the Heir to Winterfell. And he never comes for her. When Sansa hears the news of his demise, she believes she has lost all her brothers, until she hears of her half brother Jon Snow. But she’s not a Stark by then, just a bastard girl in the Vale, who has no brothers, trueborn or otherwise.

On the other hand, we have Jon in the north, who has taken a vow to serve for life in the Night’s Watch (which was nothing like he imagined it to be), missing Arya, his beloved sister, madly. He even decided to forsake his oaths for her, which in turn caused his betrayal and stabbing by his brothers. And yet, it was all for naught, because, unbeknownst to him, the little sister he yearned for wasn’t even close to the Wall. Oh the irony...

If one believes in dramatic irony, it is that thoughtlessness in regards to each other (and possibly Sansa’s anvilicious “that could never be” when thinking about seeing [Jon] again) that gives them the best chances of being the first (if not only) Starks to reunite.

—blindestspot

YES, as Jon Snow is the silent, unknown and unthought answer to Sansa’s hopes. I think Sansa will be the half sister cousin he will meet again, because as Jon said himself: “different roads sometimes lead to the same castle”.

III. GOLDEN DRAGONS

As prosaic as it sounds, I’m going to talk about money. Golden dragons are the most valuable coins in Westeros.

Golden dragons are more frequently used by rich merchants and noble lords and ladies. Smallfolk, who do not have such riches, tend to exchange copper and silver coins, or turn to trade. The minting of the coins, exchange rates, and like matters are overseen by the master of coin.

The king's coinage is one of the most visible manifestations of royal authority. Golden dragons bear the face of the king in whose time they were minted in, as well as his name. On the other side, the golden dragon bear the three-headed Targaryen dragon. [x]

In the Books, the first time that Sansa is mentioned in relation to Dragons was when Queen Cersei offered a reward of a hundred golden dragons for Nymeria’s skin, after the direwolf bit Joffrey’s arm.

Nymeria accompanies Arya south on the journey to King's Landing. When Joffrey Baratheon and Sansa stumble upon Arya playing at swords with her friend Mycah by the Trident, Joffrey challenges Mycah to a duel, and cuts Mycah in the process. Joffrey refuses to relent which leads Arya to hit him with her stick. Joffrey attacks Arya with his sword, and Nymeria lunges at Joffrey and bites him. After letting him go, Arya and Nymeria flee. Fearing for Nymeria's life, Arya and Jory are forced to chase her away. [x]

Because Arya Stark's direwolf, Nymeria, attacks Prince Joffrey Baratheon along the banks of the Trident, Nymeria is ordered to be killed but she cannot be found. At Darry, the spiteful Queen Cersei Lannister orders Lady to be put down instead. In spite of Sansa's protests, her father Eddard Stark performs the execution himself, as is his custom and to spare Lady pain she might suffer if the royal executioner Ilyn Payne performs the deed. The trusting Lady does not sense Eddard's intention and is killed with a single blow of his greatsword, Ice. Eddard orders her body to be brought north and be buried in Winterfell. [x]

The passage in AGOT where Queen Cersei offers a sum of golden dragons for Nymeria’s skin is the following:

Robert started to walk away, but the queen was not done. “And what of the direwolf?” she called after him. “What of the beast that savaged your son?

"The king stopped, turned back, frowned. "I’d forgotten about the damned wolf." Ned could see Arya tense in Jory’s arms. Jory spoke up quickly. "We found no trace of the direwolf, Your Grace."

Robert did not look unhappy. "No? So be it.”

"The queen raised her voice. "A hundred golden dragons to the man who brings me its skin!”

“A costly pelt,” Robert grumbled. “I want no part of this, woman. You can damn well buy your furs with Lannister gold.”

The queen regarded him coolly. "I had not thought you so niggardly. The king I'd thought to wed would have laid a wolfskin across my bed before the sun went down."

Robert's face darkened with anger. "That would be a fine trick, without a wolf."

"We have a wolf," Cersei Lannister said. Her voice was very quiet, but her green eyes shone with triumph.

It took them all a moment to comprehend her words, but when they did, the king shrugged irritably. "As you will. Have Ser Ilyn see to it."

"Robert, you cannot mean this," Ned protested.

The king was in no mood for more argument. "Enough, Ned, I will hear no more. A direwolf is a savage beast. Sooner or later it would have turned on your girl the same way the other did on my son. Get her a dog, she'll be happier for it."

That was when Sansa finally seemed to comprehend. Her eyes were frightened as they went to her father. "He doesn't mean Lady, does he?" She saw the truth on his face. "No," she said. "No, not Lady, Lady didn't bite anybody, she's good …"

"Lady wasn't there," Arya shouted angrily. "You leave her alone!"

"Stop them," Sansa pleaded, "don't let them do it, please, please, it wasn't Lady, it was Nymeria, Arya did it, you can't, it wasn't Lady, don't let them hurt Lady, I'll make her be good, I promise, I promise …" She started to cry.

All Ned could do was take her in his arms and hold her while she wept. He looked across the room at Robert. His old friend, closer than any brother. "Please, Robert. For the love you bear me. For the love you bore my sister. Please."

The king looked at them for a long moment, then turned his eyes on his wife. "Damn you, Cersei," he said with loathing.

Ned stood, gently disengaging himself from Sansa's grasp. All the weariness of the past four days had returned to him. "Do it yourself then, Robert," he said in a voice cold and sharp as steel. "At least have the courage to do it yourself."

Robert looked at Ned with flat, dead eyes and left without a word, his footsteps heavy as lead. Silence filled the hall.

"Where is the direwolf?" Cersei Lannister asked when her husband was gone. Beside her, Prince Joffrey was smiling.

"The beast is chained up outside the gatehouse, Your Grace," Ser Barristan Selmy answered reluctantly.

"Send for Ilyn Payne."

"No," Ned said. "Jory, take the girls back to their rooms and bring me Ice." The words tasted of bile in his throat, but he forced them out. "If it must be done, I will do it."

Cersei Lannister regarded him suspiciously. "You, Stark? Is this some trick? Why would you do such a thing?"

They were all staring at him, but it was Sansa's look that cut. "She is of the north. She deserves better than a butcher."

He left the room with his eyes burning and his daughter's wails echoing in his ears, and found the direwolf pup where they chained her. Ned sat beside her for a while. "Lady," he said, tasting the name. He had never paid much attention to the names the children had picked, but looking at her now, he knew that Sansa had chosen well. She was the smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She looked at him with bright golden eyes, and he ruffled her thick grey fur.

Shortly, Jory brought him Ice.

When it was over, he said, "Choose four men and have them take the body north. Bury her at Winterfell.”

“All that way?” Jory said, astonished.

“All that way,” Ned affirmed. “The Lannister woman shall never have this skin.”

—A Game of Thrones - Eddard III

I have quoted the entire passage due to its instances of symbolic foreshadowing, which are very important in the support of the ideas I wish to expound in this post. Let’s see:

In the end Queen Cersei didn’t have to pay the hundred golden dragons she offered for Nymeria’s skin, because she turned her vengeance against Lady. And Sansa’s direwolf, despite her innocence, died to placate Cersei’s and Joffrey’s wrath.    

But I want to point out the reward Queen Cersei offered. She is a Lannister. House Lannister is very rich. Their unofficial motto is “A Lannister always pays his debts”, so the wealth of her house allows her to offer a huge amount of money for just a pelt; “A costly pelt” as King Robert said.

So, although not directly, this event is only the first time rich and powerful people offer golden dragons as a reward for Sansa Stark:    

“Lord Petyr,” Dontos called from the boat. “I must needs row back, before they think to look for me.

"Petyr Baelish put a hand on the rail. "But first you’ll want your payment. Ten thousand dragons, was it?”

“Ten thousand.” Dontos rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “As you promised, my lord.”

"Ser Lothor, the reward."

Lothor Brune dipped his torch. Three men stepped to the gunwale, raised crossbows, fired. One bolt took Dontos in the chest as he looked up, punching through the left crown on his surcoat. The others ripped into throat and belly. It happened so quickly neither Dontos nor Sansa had time to cry out. When it was done, Lothor Brune tossed the torch down on top of the corpse. The little boat was blazing fiercely as the galley moved away.

"You killed him." Clutching the rail, Sansa turned away and retched. Had she escaped the Lannisters to tumble into worse?

"My lady," Littlefinger murmured, "your grief is wasted on such a man as that. He was a sot, and no man's friend."

“But he saved me.”

“He sold you for a promise of ten thousand dragons. Your disappearance will make them suspect you in Joffrey’s death. The gold cloaks will hunt, and the eunuch will jingle his purse. Dontos … well, you heard him. He sold you for gold, and when he’d drunk it up he would have sold you again. A bag of dragons buys a man’s silence for a while, but a well-placed quarrel buys it forever.” He smiled sadly. “All he did he did at my behest. I dared not befriend you openly. When I heard how you saved his life at Joff’s tourney, I knew he would be the perfect catspaw.

"Sansa felt sick. "He said he was my Florian.”

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa V

The direwolf of every Stark child is a part of them, so just as Nymeria’s skin was “A costly pelt”, Sansa Stark herself was “A costly hostage” that became “A costly fugitive” valued in Lannister gold:  

“That’s too soon. You have me shut up here under guard, how am I to find witnesses to my innocence?”

“Your sister’s had no difficulty finding witnesses to your guilt.” Ser Kevan rolled up the parchment. “Ser Addam has men hunting for your wife. Varys has offered a hundred stags for word of her whereabouts, and a hundred dragons for the girl herself. If the girl can be found she will be found, and I shall bring her to you. I see no harm in husband and wife sharing the same cell and giving comfort to one another.”

—A Storm of Swords - Tyrion IX

Woman was marginally better than wench, she supposed. “You and good Ser Creighton have much in common, then.

"Ser Shadrich laughed. "Oh, I doubt that, but it may be that you and I share a quest. A little lost sister, is it? With blue eyes and auburn hair?” He laughed again. “You are not the only hunter in the woods. I seek for Sansa Stark as well.

"Brienne kept her face a mask, to hide her dismay. "Who is this Sansa Stark, and why do you seek her?”

“For love, why else?”

She furrowed her brow. “Love?"

"Aye, love of gold. Unlike your good Ser Creighton, I did fight upon the Blackwater, but on the losing side. My ransom ruined me. You know who Varys is, I trust? The eunuch has offered a plump bag of gold for this girl you’ve never heard of. I am not a greedy man. If some oversized wench would help me find this naughty child, I would split the Spider’s coin with her.”

—A Feast for Crows - Brienne I

“Perhaps you will try the melee instead?” Alayne suggested. The melee was an afterthought, a sop for all the brothers, uncles, fathers, and friends who had accompanied the competitors to the Gates of the Moon to see them win their silver wings, but there would be prizes for the champions, and a chance to win ransoms.

“A good melee is all a hedge knight can hope for, unless he stumbles on a bag of dragons. And that’s not likely, is it?” “I suppose not. But now you must excuse us, ser, we need to find my lord father.”

—The Winds of Winter - Alayne I

Even the honorable Brienne of Tarth used Lannister gold given by Jaime Lannister during her quest to find “her sister”, a certain beautiful highborn maid of three-and-ten that has blue eyes and auburn hair:

“Where?” Brienne slapped another silver stag down.

He flicked the coin back at her with his forefinger. “Someplace no stag ever found … though a dragon might.” Silver would not get the truth from him, she sensed. Gold might, or it might not. Steel would be more certain. Brienne touched her dagger, then reached into her purse instead. She found a golden dragon and put in on the barrel. “Where?”

(...)

“No, but I can take you to one.” The coin danced one way, and back the other.

“Take you to the Whispers, m'lady.

"Brienne did not like the way his fingers played with that gold coin. Still … "Six dragons if we find my sister. Two if we only find the fool. Nothing if nothing is what we find.

"Crabb shrugged. "Six is good. Six will serve.”

—A Feast for Crows - Brienne III

From this last quote I want to rescue this line: “Someplace no stag ever found… though a dragon might.” This words are talking about stags and dragons, not silver and gold, just the animals that the coins bare on one side. The stag is the sigil of House Baratheon and the dragon is the sigil of House Targaryen. And this makes me think about the Tourney at Ashford Meadow, where the first and the fifth of its final champions belonged to these houses. And according to this theory: “When you look at the names of the champions' families and the fact they fight for a 13 year old maid, especially with the family Hardyng, we find out that they correspond strongly with Sansa's suitors in A Song of Ice and Fire.”

So, following the pattern established by the five final champions of the Tourney at Ashford Meadow, I believe that the stag in this line represents Joffrey Baratheon (Sansa's first betrothed), while the Dragon who might find Sansa is Jon Snow, the Targaryen Champion (Sansa’s actual betrothed).This last idea is going to be developed throughout this post.

Now, back to Lady’s death. We know that this event is a turning point in Sansa’s arc, but other than that, the paragraphs leading to the direwolf’s execution are laden with symbolism and foreshadowing, not only for Sansa, but for Ned as well.

During the “trial”, Ned decides that he will take Lady’s life himself, in order to avoid having a butcher like Ilyn Payne do the execution. Then, before he struck, he pronounced her name in the same fashion Robb and Jon called the name of their direwolves before they both died. This for me foreshadows Ned’s own death. Also, before Lady’s death, Ned pleads King Robert to change his decision on putting down the direwolf, appealing to the memory of Lyanna, the woman Robert loved. Similarly, before Ned’s execution at the steps of the Sept of Baelor, Sansa pleads King Joffrey to spare her father’s life, appealing to the love he has for her. As we know, both pleas fell on deaf ears and both Lady and Ned lost their lives; bringing the story full circle, as Ilyn Payne himself cut off Ned’s head.

Another interesting thing is that before Lady’s death we have direct and indirect references to Lyanna Stark. We have the direct reference when Ned appealed to the love Robert Baratheon bore Lyanna, in order to save Lady’s life, and the indirect one when he ordered Jory to choose four men to return Lady’s body to the north, to bury her in Winterfell. This order Ned gave to his men alludes to his own decision to take Lyanna’s body to Winterfell to be buried in the crypts, after her demise, brought on by her doomed love affair with Rhaegar Targaryen. Again, here we have the two extremes of the pattern stablished by the final champions of the Tourney at Ashford Meadow: the beginning (the stag) and the end (the dragon) of Sansa’s possible romantic cycle. History repeats itself all the time in this universe, and with luck, certain twists could change the final outcome.

There are plenty more parallels between Lyanna, Sansa and at least one other lady before them, whose story included a Baratheon betrothed and a Targaryen Prince, and although this post is not the place to discuss them, just think about Duncan Targaryen, his betrothed Baratheon and Jenny of Oldstones, a story extremely similar to the one of Rhaegar Targaryen, Lyanna Stark and her betrothed Robert Baratheon: A Targaryen prince breaking an engagement with a member of House Baratheon that then originates a rebellion.  

Now think of this: Sansa was betrothed to Joffrey “Baratheon” and the engagement was broken in the middle of war with the north, sparked by Ned’s death. Robb Stark called the banners against King Joffrey in rebellion, while Jon almost broke his vows to join Robb’s army. What drove them to that point? The need to avenge Ned’s death and the at the same time rescue their sisters. All of which makes me think about these parallels: Sansa being a hostage in King’s Landing/Lyanna’s “abduction”, Ned’s death/Rickard’s death, Robb’s death/Brandon’s death. And that leaves Jon Snow to possibly play the role of Ned Stark in the future.  

As I said, history repeats itself all the time in this universe, and with luck, certain twists could change the final result. And I believe Sansa has a chance of change the many preceding sad patterns reflected in her story and she will compose her lucky song along with the help of Jon Snow.

Talking about luck and change in history, since Lady was part of Sansa, and her body, pelt and bones, now rest in Winterfell, just like Lyanna’s corpse, I believe Sansa is destined to return to the north as well. But unlike Lyanna and Lady, Sansa will return to the north alive (to meet Jon Snow) and she will make her life safe and happy within the walls of the ancestral seat of her family. And as Ned himself said: "She is of the north. She deserves better than a butcher." And we all know that Sansa already had enough butchers in her short life:   [Part 1] [Part 2].

Again, since Lady was part of Sansa, and Cersei never got her skin; I believe Cersei will never put her hands on Sansa again, no matter the amount of golden dragons she offers as a reward for her. Because as Ned said “The Lannister woman shall never have this skin.”

The moral of the fable here is that “Not all that glitters is gold”. Sansa fell blindly in love with the fake glitter of Joffrey and Cersei, the south and King’s Landing. And from the golden lions, the Queen and the Prince, she only received pain. They took Lady and Ned away from her. They treated her as a possession, as a prize, they valued her in golden dragons. And the south and King’s Landing only gave Sansa false friends and sadly, a long list of butchers instead of gallant true knights... AND SHE DESERVES BETTER!

While Sansa is in the south, we witness her objectification numerous times, by every character she interacts with. She’s not only being valued in golden dragons, she has been practically transformed into a stone castle, Winterfell, and the north itself, since the one controlling her would obtain all her lands and power. Or, to use the euphemism used in the Books, she is “the key to the north.��

Sansa reflects about this objectification in the Books and articulates inside her mind one of the saddest lines in ASOIAF, especially for a girl who yearns to be loved and always dreamed of getting married: “No one will ever marry me for love” (because everyone only wants her claim to Winterfell). But instead of Tyrion, Willas or even Robert, who pursue Sansa’s claim over her, unbeknownst to her, faraway, at the other part of the world, there is a man who has been offered Winterfell and choose her over it: “By right Winterfell should go to my sister Sansa.” “Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa.” Among all the high lords interested in becoming the Lord of Winterfell by marrying Sansa Stark, the bastard Jon Snow refused to despoil his sister Sansa of her rights, even if her claim is the one thing he has wanted as much as he had ever wanted anything.

Sansa had to learn that “Not all that glitters is gold” in the cruelest of ways, by the harshest of teachers. Her innocence was taken away from her, but her wits and intuition got sharper and now she knows better.

The pale sunlight flashed off the golds and reds every time Joff moved. Bright, shining, and empty, Sansa thought.

—A Clash of Kings - Sansa V

Ser Harrold Hardyng looked every inch a lord-in-waiting; clean-limbed and handsome, straight as a lance, hard with muscle. Men old enough to have known Jon Arryn in his youth said Ser Harrold had his look, she knew. He had a mop of sandy blond hair, pale blue eyes, an aquiline nose. Joffrey was comely too, though, she reminded herself. A comely monster, that’s what he was. Little Lord Tyrion was kinder, twisted though he was.

—The Winds of Winter - Alayne I

As we can see, the external beauty of golden and gallant knights does not so easily impress Sansa anymore. After all, according to her previous experiences they are empty and hollow, despite appearing shiny and bright.

But there is hope for her to find a brave and gentle and strong man, someone who embodies all the qualities of a true knight, anointed or not; something that she always wanted but in a different way. She is done for good with golden knights, but what about a Black Knight, a Dragonknight?

They were inside a long gallery. Along the walls stood empty suits of armor, dark and dusty, their helms crested with rows of scales that continued down their backs. As they hurried past, the taper’s light made the shadows of each scale stretch and twist. The hollow knights are turning into dragons, she thought.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa V

‘Hollow knights turning into dragons’ make me thing about a change in Sansa’s taste in men, but maybe not a change to something new, but a change back to her first instincts regarding men. After all, this line is from the day she left King’s Landing, the day she started her journey back to the north, her journey back home. So there is hope, because a dragon is waiting for her in the north.

IV. THE WAY NORTH

If Lady’s death wasn’t enough to open Sansa’s eyes and see the true nature of Cersei and Joffrey, Ned’s death certainly was:

"I don't want to marry you," Sansa wailed. "You chopped off my father's head!"

"He was a traitor. I never promised to spare him, only that I'd be merciful, and I was. If he hadn't been your father, I would have had him torn or flayed, but I gave him a clean death."

Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vain and cruel. "I hate you," she whispered.

King Joffrey's face hardened. "My mother tells me that it isn't fitting that a king should strike his wife. Ser Meryn."

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa VI

Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father's head. Sansa would never make that mistake again.

—A Clash of Kings - Sansa I

It is truly very interesting how Sansa’s first true impression of Joffrey is almost identical to Jon’s first impression of the crown prince. They even commented on Joffrey’s lips and eyes in the same manner:

Prince Joffrey had his sister's hair and his mother's deep green eyes. A thick tangle of blond curls dripped down past his golden choker and high velvet collar. Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey's pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell's Great Hall.

—A Game of Thrones - Jon I

This ‘coincidence’ of impressions regarding Joffrey, makes me think that in the future, when Sansa and Jon meet again, for the first time, they would see the world through the same eyes. Sansa would even know by then what it means to be a bastard, thanks to her time as Alayne Stone.

Sadly, Ned’s death was the catalyst for Sansa to finally open her eyes to reality, but that event also awakened her inner ‘Starkness’, because if any of the Stark children is the epitome of endurance, that is Sansa. So, after Ned’s death, we see Sansa always finding her strength and courage in the memories of Winterfell and her family, yearning to go back to the north; back home:

The hot water made her think of Winterfell, and she took strength from that. She had not washed since the day her father died, and she was startled at how filthy the water became. Her maids sluiced the blood off her face, scrubbed the dirt from her back, washed her hair and brushed it out until it sprang back in thick auburn curls. Sansa did not speak to them, except to give them commands; they were Lannister servants, not her own, and she did not trust them.

— A Game of Thrones - Sansa VI

And to the north …

She turned that way, and saw only the city, streets and alleys and hills and bottoms and more streets and more alleys and the stone of distant walls. Yet she knew that beyond them was open country, farms and fields and forests, and beyond that, north and north and north again, stood Winterfell.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa VI

"Loyal," the dwarf mused, "and far from any Lannisters. I can scarce blame you for that. When I was your age, I wanted the same thing." He smiled. "They tell me you visit the godswood every day. What do you pray for, Sansa?"

I pray for Robb's victory and Joffrey's death... and for home. For Winterfell. "I pray for an end to the fighting."

—A Clash of Kings - Sansa III

Sansa tried to run, but Cersei’s handmaid caught her before she’d gone a yard. Ser Meryn Trant gave her a look that made her cringe, but Kettleblack touched her almost gently and said, “Do as you’re told, sweetling, it won’t be so bad. Wolves are supposed to be brave, aren’t they?

“Brave. Sansa took a deep breath. I am a Stark, yes, I can be brave.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa III

That was such a sweet dream, Sansa thought drowsily. She had been back in Winterfell, running through the godswood with her Lady. Her father had been there, and her brothers, all of them warm and safe. If only dreaming could make it so . . .

She threw back the coverlets. I must be brave. Her torments would soon be ended, one way or the other. If Lady was here, I would not be afraid. Lady was dead, though; Robb, Bran, Rickon, Arya, her father, her mother, even Septa Mordane. All of them are dead but me. She was alone in the world now.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa IV

Sansa was tempted to beg off. I could tell him that my tummy was upset, or that my moon’s blood had come. She wanted nothing more than to crawl back in bed and pull the drapes. I must be brave, like Robb, she told herself, as she took her lord husband stiffly by the arm.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa IV

The Broken Tower was easier still. They made a tall tower together, kneeling side by side to roll it smooth, and when they'd raised it Sansa stuck her fingers through the top, grabbed a handful of snow, and flung it full in his face. Petyr yelped, as the snow slid down under his collar. "That was unchivalrously done, my lady."

"As was bringing me here, when you swore to take me home."

She wondered where this courage had come from, to speak to him so frankly. From Winterfell, she thought. I am stronger within the walls of Winterfell.

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa VII

As I said before, I believe Sansa is going to get back north, Lady is already there waiting for her. But how can Sansa find her way to the north? What will lead her there? Would you believe me if I told you that to get north you have to follow a dragon? But not any dragon, an Ice Dragon:

“Osha,” Bran asked as they crossed the yard. “Do you know the way north? To the Wall and … and even past?”

“The way’s easy. Look for the Ice Dragon, and chase the blue star in the rider’s eye.” She backed through a door and started up the winding steps.

“And there are still giants there, and … the rest … the Others, and the children of the forest too?”

"The giants I’ve seen, the children I’ve heard tell of, and the white walkers … why do you want to know?”

—A Clash of Kings - Bran V

When they lost their way, as happened once or twice, they need only wait for a clear cold night when the clouds did not intrude, and look up in the sky for the Ice Dragon. The blue star in the dragon’s eye pointed the way north, as Osha told him once. Thinking of Osha made Bran wonder where she was. He pictured her safe in White Harbor with Rickon and Shaggydog, eating eels and fish and hot crab pie with fat Lord Manderly. Or maybe they were warming themselves at the Last Hearth before the Greatjon’s fires. But Bran’s life had turned into endless chilly days on Hodor’s back, riding his basket up and down the slopes of mountains.

— A Storm of Swords - Bran II

At the north window, he leaned against the sill for a breath of the cold night air, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mad Prendos raising sail, but the sea seemed black and empty as far as the eye could see. Is she gone already? He could only pray that she was, and the boy with her. A half moon was sliding in and out amongst thin high clouds, and Davos could see familiar stars. There was the Galley, sailing west; there the Crone’s Lantern, four bright stars that enclosed a golden haze. The clouds hid most of the Ice Dragon, all but the bright blue eye that marked due north. The sky is full of smugglers’ stars. They were old friends, those stars; Davos hoped that meant good luck.

—A Storm of Swords - Davos VI

There is a slightly difference between how the constellation is described in Westeros and beyond the Wall. Osha said that the blue star is the rider’s eye, but Bran said that the blue star is the Ice Dragon’s eye. But I like the idea of a blue-eyed Ice Dragon rider better, for reasons…

But what exactly is an ‘Ice Dragon’, besides a constellation that marks the way north?

Of all the queer and fabulous denizens of the Shivering Sea, however, the greatest are the ice dragons. These colossal beasts, many times larger than the dragons of Valyria, are said to be made of living ice, with eyes of pale blue crystal and vast translucent wings through which the moon and stars can be glimpsed as they wheel across the sky. Whereas common dragons (if any dragon can truly be said to be common) breathe flame, ice dragons supposedly breathe cold, a chill so terrible that it can freeze a man solid in half a heartbeat.

Sailors from half a hundred nations have glimpsed these great beasts over the centuries, so mayhap there is some truth behind the tales. Archmaester Margate has suggested that many legends of the north—freezing mists, ice ships, Cannibal Bay, and the like—can be explained as distorted reports of ice-dragon activity. Though an amusing notion, and not without a certain elegance, this remains the purest conjecture. As ice dragons supposedly melt when slain, no actual proof of their existence has ever been found.

—The World of Ice and Fire - Beyond the Free Cities: The Shivering Sea

So, Ice Dragons are colossal beasts many times larger than dragons of Valyria. Did Rhaegar Targaryen know about theIce Dragons? Was he trying to create an ‘Ice Dragon’ by impregnating a maid from House Stark? Very interesting…

"As you wish," said Whitebeard. "As a young boy, the Prince of Dragonstone was bookish to a fault. He was reading so early that men said Queen Rhaella must have swallowed some books and a candle whilst he was in her womb. Rhaegar took no interest in the play of other children. The maesters were awed by his wits, but his father's knights would jest sourly that Baelor the Blessed had been born again. Until one day Prince Rhaegar found something in his scrolls that changed him. No one knows what it might have been, only that the boy suddenly appeared early one morning in the yard as the knights were donning their steel. He walked up to Ser Willem Darry, the master-at-arms, and said, 'I will require sword and armor. It seems I must be a warrior.'"

—A Storm of Swords - Daenerys I

Being “bookish to a fault”, Rhaegar probably knew about Ice Dragons, about The Pact of Ice and Fire, and about something else that connects all that with the prophecy of the prince that was promised. But the answer probably awaits in TWOW or ADOS.

Also very interesting that in ASOIAF, the Ice Dragon is mentioned nine times, six of these nine times in Jon’s chapters. Apparently Jon is a big fan of the Ice Dragon:

So many stars, he thought as he trudged up the slope through pines and firs and ash. Maester Luwin had taught him his stars as a boy in Winterfell; he had learned the names of the twelve houses of heaven and the rulers of each; he could find the seven wanderers sacred to the Faith; he was old friends with the Ice Dragon, the Shadowcat, the Moonmaid, and the Sword of the Morning. All those he shared with Ygritte, but not some of the others. We look up at the same stars, and see such different things.

—A Storm of Swords - Jon III

Thunder rumbled softly in the distance, but above him the clouds were breaking up. Jon searched the sky until he found the Ice Dragon, then turned the mare north for the Wall and Castle Black.

—A Storm of Swords - Jon V

The ice pressed close around them, and he could feel the cold seeping into his bones, the weight of the Wall above his head. It felt like walking down the gullet of an ice dragon. The tunnel took a twist, and then another. Pyp unlocked a second iron gate. They walked farther, turned again, and saw light ahead, faint and pale through the ice. That’s bad, Jon knew at once. That’s very bad.

—A Storm of Swords - Jon VIII

The wind was gusting, cold as the breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan had told when Jon was a boy. The heavy cage was swaying. From time to time it scraped against the Wall, starting small crystalline showers of ice that sparkled in the sunlight as they fell, like shards of broken glass.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII

The road beneath the Wall was as dark and cold as the belly of an ice dragon and as twisty as a serpent. Dolorous Edd led them through with a torch in hand. Mully had the keys for the three gates, where bars of black iron as thick as a man’s arm closed off the passage.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon VIII

The snowfall was light today, a thin scattering of flakes dancing in the air, but the wind was blowing from the east along the Wall, cold as the breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan used to tell. Even Melisandre’s fire was shivering; the flames huddled down in the ditch, crackling softly as the red priestess sang. Only Ghost seemed not to feel the chill.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon X

Jon is also a big fan of various Targaryen heroes:  

Jon’s cup from the table, filled it fresh from a nearby pitcher, and drank down a long swallow.

“Daeron Targaryen was only fourteen when he conquered Dorne,” Jon said. The Young Dragon was one of his heroes.

“A conquest that lasted a summer,” his uncle pointed out. “Your Boy King lost ten thousand men taking the place, and another fifty trying to hold it. Someone should have told him that war isn’t a game.” He took another sip of wine. “Also,” he said, wiping his mouth, “Daeron Targaryen was only eighteen when he died. Or have you forgotten that part?”

—A Game of Thrones - Jon I

When Jon had been a boy at Winterfell, his hero had been the Young Dragon, the boy king who had conquered Dorne at the age of fourteen. Despite his bastard birth, or perhaps because of it, Jon Snow had dreamed of leading men to glory just as King Daeron had, of growing up to be a conqueror. Now he was a man grown and the Wall was his, yet all he had were doubts. He could not even seem to conquer those.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII

Every morning they had trained together, since they were big enough to walk; Snow and Stark, spinning and slashing about the wards of Winterfell, shouting and laughing, sometimes crying when there was no one else to see. They were not little boys when they fought, but knights and mighty heroes. “I’m Prince Aemon the Dragonknight,” Jon would call out, and Robb would shout back, “Well, I’m Florian the Fool.” Or Robb would say, “I’m the Young Dragon,” and Jon would reply, “I’m Ser Ryam Redwyne.

"That morning he called it first. "I’m Lord of Winterfell!” he cried, as he had a hundred times before. Only this time, this time, Robb had answered, “You can’t be Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born. My lady mother says you can’t ever be the Lord of Winterfell.”

—A Storm of Swords - Jon XII

I think that in those quotes the mention of Daeron Targaryen, The Young Dragon, is a foreshadowing of Robb becoming King in The North, a boy king called The Young Wolf who died, indeed, very young. So, maybe Jon could never be like The Young Dragon, but he could be his heir, because it is probable that Robb had named Jon his heir on his will. Jon is also the heir of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, called The Last Dragon.

Sansa is also very fond of certain Targaryen hero: Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. She compared Joffrey with the Dragonknight in her first chapter in AGOT:

"It would be my pleasure, Mother," Joffrey said very formally. He took her by the arm and led her away from the wheelhouse, and Sansa's spirits took flight. A whole day with her prince! She gazed at Joffrey worshipfully. He was so gallant, she thought. The way he had rescued her from Ser Ilyn and the Hound, why, it was almost like the songs, like the time Serwyn of the Mirror Shield saved the Princess Daeryssa from the giants, or Prince Aemon the Dragonknight championing Queen Naerys's honor against evil Ser Morgil's slanders.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

When she proclaimed her love to Joffrey, she compared her love to him with the love Queen Naerys felt for the Dragonknight:

“I love him, Father, I truly truly do, I love him as much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian. I want to be his queen and have his babies.”

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III

Even after her father’s death, she would seek for comfort in her favorites stories. One of them was the one of the valiant Dragonknight:

She pulled a chair close to the hearth, took down one of her favorite books, and lost herself in the stories of Florian and Jonquil, of Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight, of valiant Prince Aemon and his doomed love for his brother’s queen.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa IV

When she dreamed of traumatic events, she wished to be saved by the heroes from the songs, among them, the Dragonknight:

That night Sansa dreamed of the riot again. The mob surged around her, shrieking, a maddened beast with a thousand faces. Everywhere she turned she saw faces twisted into monstrous inhuman masks. She wept and told them she had never done them hurt, yet they dragged her from her horse all the same. "No," she cried, "no, please, don't, don't," but no one paid her any heed. She shouted for Ser Dontos, for her brothers, for her dead father and her dead wolf, for gallant Ser Loras who had given her a red rose once, but none of them came. She called for the heroes from the songs, for Florian and Ser Ryam Redwyne and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, but no one heard.

—A Clash of Kings - Sansa IV

As you can see, another favorite hero of Sansa is Florian the Fool. But sadly, Robb who called out to be Florian the Fool during his trainings with Jon, failed in rescuing Sansa. In the same way, Ser Dontos Hollard who also claimed being Sansa’s Florian, also failed in rescuing her, he just handed her to another butcher.

But there is hope for Sansa to meet true knights in her life, even if her true knights happen to be a woman and a northern boy who doesn’t follow the Faith of the Seven. And here we have one of the greatest foreshadowings of the Books, delivered by none other than Queen Cersei herself:

"True knights would never harm women and children." The words rang hollow in her ears even as she said them.

"True knights." The queen seemed to find that wonderfully amusing. "No doubt you're right. So why don't you just eat your broth like a good girl and wait for Symeon Star-Eyes and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight to come rescue you, sweetling. I'm sure it won't be very long now."

—A Clash of Kings - Sansa V

So, who could it be Sansa’s Symeon Star-Eyes?

Symeon Star-Eyes is a legendary figure from the Age of Heroes who was blind. He is described in tales as a knight even though chivalry came to Westeros thousands of years after. According to legend, Symeon was a knight who lost both of his eyes. He replaced them by putting star sapphires in the empty sockets, or so the singers claim. He fought with a long staff with blades at both ends and would spin it in his hands to chop down two men at once. He once visited the Nightfort where he saw hellhounds fighting. [x]

I think the answer is Brienne of Tarth, a knight who is not really a knight with beautiful sapphire blue eyes, like the waters of her homeland, Tarth.

And who could it be Sansa’s Dragonknight?

“There was a black brother,” Sansa said, “begging men for the Wall, only he was kind of old and smelly.” She hadn’t liked that at all. She had always imagined the Night’s Watch to be men like Uncle Benjen. In the songs, they were called the black knights of the Wall. But this man had been crookbacked and hideous, and he looked as though he might have lice. If this was what the Night’s Watch was truly like, she felt sorry for her bastard half brother, Jon. “Father asked if there were any knights in the hall who would do honor to their houses by taking the black, but no one came forward, so he gave this Yoren his pick of the king’s dungeons and sent him on his way. And later these two brothers came before him, freeriders from the Dornish Marches, and pledged their swords to the service of the king. Father accepted their oaths …”

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III

I believe the answer is Jon Snow. The Dragonknight and Jon Snow share many parallels: both second sons, both had a brother named Aegon, both were members of a lifetime order: Kingsguard & Night’s Watch, both wielded Valyrian steel swords: Dark Sister & Longclaw, both willing to defend their sisters from abusers. Also, and maybe the most important, both Targaryens. Besides, take note that Aemon the Dragonknight was Daeron Targaryen - The Young Dragon’s first cousin, just like Jon Snow was Robb Stark – The Young Wolf’s first cousin.

On top of all that, in its very unique way, the Show just confirmed that Brienne and Jon would play an important role helping Sansa in the future.

Back to Jon and dragons, he is certainly really fascinated by these creatures, he talks a lot about them, especially during his time in the Wall and beyond.

In summary, so far, we know that the way north is marked by the Ice Dragon and Jon Snow seems to be fascinated with the Ice Dragon. But note also that Jon Snow embodied the north in him, despite the fact of being a Targaryen.

Indeed, Jon is not only a ‘Snow’, he is the bastard of House Stark, the Wardens of the North. The Starks motto is “Winter is coming”. And, precisely Jon is always associated with snow (his surname and his -white as snow- direwolf Ghost); ice (The Wall); winter (Starks motto) and Winterfell, his home. He is the “Snow of Winterfell”:

The boy absorbed that all in silence. He had the Stark face if not the name: long, solemn, guarded, a face that gave nothing away. Whoever his mother had been, she had left little of herself in her son.

—A Game of Thrones - Tyrion II

She might have overlooked a dozen bastards for Ned’s sake, so long as they were out of sight. Jon was never out of sight, and as he grew, he looked more like Ned than any of the trueborn sons she bore him.

—A Game of Thrones - Catelyn II

“A shade more exhausting than needlework,” Jon observed.

“A shade more fun than needlework,” Arya gave back at him. Jon grinned, reached over, and messed up her hair. Arya flushed. They had always been close. Jon had their father’s face, as she did.

—A Game of Thrones - Arya I

Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only two years apart, could be so different. It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother Jon. She even looked like Jon, with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her coloring.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

“Who’s this one now?“ Craster said before Jon could go. “He has the look of a Stark.”

“My steward and squire, Jon Snow.”

—A Clash of Kings - Jon III

His northern features are the perfect disguise to hide his true parentage. He is acknowledged as a Stark just by looking at his face. He looks like a younger version of Ned.

Now let’s ask the following question: It is posible for Sansa to be attracted by a man with the Stark look?

As I said earlier, this line: ‘Hollow knights turning into dragons’, makes me thing about a change in Sansa’s taste in men, but maybe not a change to something new, but a change back to her first instincts regarding men. So, this is a good time to remind you all that Sansa’s first crush was a Brother of the Night’s Watch:

“Bronze Yohn knows me,” she reminded him. “He was a guest at Winterfell when his son rode north to take the black.” She had fallen wildly in love with Ser Waymar, she remembered dimly, but that was a lifetime ago, when she was a stupid little girl. “And that was not the only time. Lord Royce saw … he saw Sansa Stark again at King’s Landing, during the Hand’s tourney.”

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I

And how does Ser Waymar Royce looked?

Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife.

—A Game of Thrones - Prologue

Shall we see Jon Snow’s description now?

Jon's eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see. He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast.

—A Game of Thrones - Bran I

Sansa also compares and/or associates Bronze Yohn, Ser Waymar Royce’s Dad, with her own Dad, Ned:

Last of all came the Royces, Lord Nestor and Bronze Yohn. The Lord of Runestone stood as tall as the Hound. Though his hair was grey and his face lined, Lord Yohn still looked as though he could break younger men like twigs in those huge gnarled hands. His seamed and solemn face brought back all of Sansa’s memories of his time at Winterfell. She remembered him at table, speaking quietly with her mother. She heard his voice booming off the walls when he rode back from a hunt with a buck behind his saddle. She could see him in the yard, a practice sword in hand, hammering her father to the ground and turning to defeat Ser Rodrik as well. He will know me. How could he not? She considered throwing herself at his feet to beg for his protection. He never fought for Robb, why should he fight for me? The war is finished and Winterfell is fallen. “Lord Royce,” she asked timidly, “will you have a cup of wine, to take the chill off?”

Bronze Yohn had slate-grey eyes, half-hidden beneath the bushiest eyebrows she had ever seen. They crinkled when he looked down at her. “Do I know you, girl?”

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I

See? Solemn faces and grey eyes. There is a pattern here: Waymar looks like a younger version of Bronze Yohn, just like Jon looks like a younger version of Ned. Sansa compares and/or associates the older men and the younger ones both ride north to the Wall and become Sworn Brothers of the Night’s Watch…

…And Sansa fell wildly in love with Ser Waymar, and Jon fell in love with a wildling girl kissed by fire…

…And guess how Sansa’s hair is described???  

“A shade more exhausting than needlework,” Jon observed.

“A shade more fun than needlework,” Arya gave back at him. Jon grinned, reached over, and messed up her hair. Arya flushed. They had always been close. Jon had their father’s face, as she did. They were the only ones. Robb and Sansa and Bran and even little Rickon all took after the Tullys, with easy smiles and fire in their hair. When Arya had been little, she had been afraid that meant that she was a bastard too. It had been Jon she had gone to in her fear, and Jon who had reassured her.

—A Game of Thrones - Arya I

See? Fire in her hair.

Fire in her hair.

FIRE IN HER HAIR.

OH GEORGE!

Besides all that, take note that Sansa, before she met Yoren, had always imagined the Night’s Watch to be men like her Uncle Benjen -who had the Stark look-. She recalled that in the songs, they were called the black knights of the Wall. That is to say, Sansa had a high regard for the men who take the black and associated them with her beloved knights from the songs.  

And finally, let’s ask this question as well: It is posible for Jon to be attracted by a womanlike Sansa? I firmly believe that the answer is YES!

As Bran pointed out, there was little Jon’s eyes did not see. Jon was able to describe exactly what Sansa was feeling while walking inside Winterfell’s Great Hall beside Joffrey: “Sansa looked ‘radiant’ as she walked beside him” Jon thought; and after all, back then, Sansa thought this about Joffrey: “He was all she ever dreamt her prince should be, tall and handsome and strong, with hair like gold.” Jon could sense Sansa’s emotions regarding Joffrey even if those emotions displeased him, because Jon was also able to clearly see Joffrey’s true nature: “but Jon did not like Joffrey’s pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell’s Great Hall.”

As observant as Jon is, he knows Sansa very well, even if they are not close; and I believe that Jon also knows a lot about Sansa due to Arya. In fact, Jon appreciates many of Sansa’s traits, which others seem to dismiss as stupid [1] [2] [3]: her innocence, her singing, her courteous nature, her love for pretty things, and her naive belief in romantic stories:

The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brothers were encased in a fine glaze of ice.

So there is magic beyond the Wall after all. He found himself thinking of his sisters, perhaps because he'd dreamed of them last night. Sansa would call this an enchantment, and tears would fill her eyes at the wonder of it, but Arya would run out laughing and shouting, wanting to touch it all.

—A Clash of Kings - Jon III

"Gilly, he called me. For the gillyflower."

"That's pretty." He remembered Sansa telling him once that he should say that whenever a lady told him her name. He could not help the girl, but perhaps the courtesy would please her. "Is it Craster who frightens you, Gilly?"

—A Clash of Kings - Jon III

He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon's breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady's coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird's nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back …

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XIII

So, YES, I firmly believe that a man like Jon, lacking and in need of the sweetness of a woman, could easily fall for a loving creature like Sansa. There’s also the red hair issue featuring Catelyn and Ygritte.

Jon and Sansa also share the dream of rebuild Winterfell and the Stark dynasty by having children with the names of their beloved father and siblings.

See? They are destined to meet again in the north and help each other to slay their enemies and achieve their dreams together.

[x]

V. BETROTHED TO THE DRAGON’S HEIR*

(*Although is not confirmed in the Books yet, from now on I’m going to assume openly that R+L=J is true and also that Jon possibly is Rhaegar’s -trueborn- son)

Now we just got to the part that makes me decide to write this post. Because while I was searching for any connections between Sansa and dragons I found a passage that contains a huge foreshadowing of ‘Sansa being the betrothed of the dragon’s heir’. And this foreshadowing could be the confirmation of the fifth Sansa’s betrothed being a member of House Targaryen, according to the Theory of the Tourney at Ashford Meadow.

As I said before, following the pattern stablished by the five final champions of the Tourney at Ashford Meadow, Sansa Stark first betrothed would be a man of House Baratheon, as it actually was. Joffrey Baratheon was Sansa’s first betrothed. And Sansa’s fifth betrothed would be a Prince of House Targaryen. And I believe that man would be Jon Snow.

Let’s go back to this line: “Someplace no stag ever found… though a dragon might.” In the text the word ‘someplace’ refers to where Brienne’s supposed “sister” is -the beautiful highborn maid of three-and-ten that has blue eyes and auburn hair-. But in the history of ASOIAF universe, the word ‘someplace’ could also refer to the heart of a Stark girl.

Joffrey and Jon, Jon and Joffrey. I have a theory about them, I called it the ‘JoJo Theory’. Maybe one day I will turn my thoughts on them into words. But for now, let’s talk about these two in relation to Sansa.

Joffrey and Jon are supposed to be the sons of two best friends: Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark respectively. But none of them are really that. And I think they both were living the other’s life. I mean, Joffrey took Jon’s real place in the world, as Jon took Joffrey’s.  

Joffrey, who is supposed to be the trueborn son and heir of King Robert Baratheon, is truly a little shit bastard, the illegitimate child of Jaime Lannister. And he is the vicious, despicable type of bastard as well.

On the other hand, Jon who is suppose to be the baseborn son of Ned Stark, is actually the son of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and the last Targaryen heir to the Iron Throne. And he is the very opposite of the vicious, despicable Joffrey. Jon is brave and has a noble heart.

Also note that the real fathers of Joffrey and Jon are the men who Cersei and Lyanna choose over Robert; that is to say: Jaime and Rhaegar.

So, reading again this line: “Someplace no stag ever found… though a dragon might.”, we know that in the past that line was true, as Robert Baratheon never found his way to Lyanna Stark’s heart unlike Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. And it could be true again, in the future, as Joffrey (no stag) never really found his way to Sansa’s heart, but Jon (who is also a dragon) might do. Let’s see:  

His half sisters escorted the royal princes. Arya was paired with plump young Tommen, whose white-blond hair was longer than hers. Sansa, two years older, drew the crown prince, Joffrey Baratheon. He was twelve, younger than Jon or Robb, but taller than either, to Jon's vast dismay. Prince Joffrey had his sister's hair and his mother's deep green eyes. A thick tangle of blond curls dripped down past his golden choker and high velvet collar. Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey's pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell's Great Hall.

—A Game of Thrones - Jon I

Jon was obviously jealous of Joffrey, in the same fashion he was of Robb. Joffrey was ‘trueborn’, a royal prince, the heir of the Iron Throne, with a place of honor at the table just below the dais where the King and Queen were seated, handsome, taller than him despite being younger, and on top of all that, Joffrey got the beautiful radiant girl by his side. Jon just couldn’t believe why, while having all of that, Joffrey and his pouty wormy lips gave Winterfell’s Great Hall a bored and disdainful look.  

You don’t believe Jon was jealous of Joffrey? Read this then:

"Then you saw us all. Prince Joffrey and Prince Tommen, Princess Myrcella, my brothers Robb and Bran and Rickon, my sisters Arya and Sansa. You saw them walk the center aisle with every eye upon them and take their seats at the table just below the dais where the king and queen were seated."

"I remember."

"And did you see where I was seated, Mance?" He leaned forward. "Did you see where they put the bastard?"

—A Storm of Swords - Jon

I know that in this scene, Jon was trying to convince Mance that he really wanted to join the freefolk. He was trying to deceive him and infiltrate into the enemy’s camp. Despite that, the things Jon said to Mance at that moment, rang true. So in the end, Jon did convince Mance and he ended up joining the freefolk, as a covert mission entrusted to him by Qhorin Halfhand.

Still you don’t believe me when I said Jon was jealous of Joffrey? Listen to Sansa herself then:

"What did you think of Prince Joff, sister? He's very gallant, don't you think?"

"Jon says he looks like a girl," Arya said.

Sansa sighed as she stitched. "Poor Jon," she said. "He gets jealous because he's a bastard."

"He's our brother," Arya said, much too loudly. Her voice cut through the afternoon quiet of the tower room.

—A Game of Thrones, Arya I

Now tell me that Jon saying that ‘Joffrey looks like a girl’ is not proof enough of Jon Snow being obviously jealous of the crown prince.

But Jon Snow who knows nothing, except, maybe, that Joffrey is truly a little shit, has no idea that Joffrey was living his life.

And his sisters cousins, Sansa and Arya, unbeknownst to him, expose this truth to Ned while talking about Joffrey’s hair color (note that Ned always knew who Jon’s real father is):  

“Father, I only just now remembered, I can’t go away, I’m to marry Prince Joffrey.” She tried to smile bravely for him. “I love him, Father, I truly truly do, I love him as much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian. I want to be his queen and have his babies.”

“Sweet one,” her father said gently, “listen to me. When you’re old enough, I will make you a match with a high lord who’s worthy of you, someone brave and gentle and strong. This match with Joffrey was a terrible mistake. That boy is no Prince Aemon, you must believe me.”

“He is!" Sansa insisted. "I don’t want someone brave and gentle, I want him. We’ll be ever so happy, just like in the songs, you’ll see. I’ll give him a son with golden hair, and one day he’ll be the king of all the realm, the greatest king that ever was, as brave as the wolf and as proud as the lion.

"Arya made a face. "Not if Joffrey’s his father,” she said. “He’s a liar and a craven and anyhow he’s a stag, not a lion.”

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III

"All three are Jaime's," he said. It was not a question.

"Thank the gods."

The seed is strong, Jon Arryn had cried on his deathbed, and so it was. All those bastards, all with hair as black as night. Grand Maester Malleon recorded the last mating between stag and lion, some ninety years ago, when Tya Lannister wed Gowen Baratheon, third son of the reigning lord. Their only issue, an unnamed boy described in Malleon's tome as a large and lusty lad born with a full head of black hair, died in infancy. Thirty years before that a male Lannister had taken a Baratheon maid to wife. She had given him three daughters and a son, each black-haired. No matter how far back Ned searched in the brittle yellowed pages, always he found the gold yielding before the coal.

"A dozen years," Ned said. "How is it that you have had no children by the king?"

—A Game of Thrones - Eddard XII

I can clearly imagine Ned thinking about how he had to hide Jon Snow, the heir of the Last Dragon, as his bastard; while Joffrey, an actual bastard, was living the life that could have been Jon’s, had Rhaegar prevailed over Robert. 

This kind of ‘switched at birth’ case between Jon and Joffrey and the possibility of Jon being Sansa’s fifth Targaryen betrothed, is actually foreshadowed in the Books. Let’s read this passage from Sansa’s first chapter in ACOK:

The morning of King Joffrey’s name day dawned bright and windy, with the long tail of the great comet visible through the high scuttling clouds. Sansa was watching it from her tower window when Ser Arys Oakheart arrived to escort her down to the tourney grounds. “What do you think it means?” she asked him.

“Glory to your betrothed,” Ser Arys answered at once. "See how it flames across the sky today on His Grace’s name day, as if the gods themselves had raised a banner in his honor. The smallfolk have named it King Joffrey’s Comet.”

Doubtless that was what they told Joffrey; Sansa was not so sure. “I’ve heard servants calling it the Dragon’s Tail.”

“King Joffrey sits where Aegon the Dragon once sat, in the castle built by his son,” Ser Arys said. “He is the dragon’s heir—and crimson is the color of House Lannister, another sign. This comet is sent to herald Joffrey’s ascent to the throne, I have no doubt. It means that he will triumph over his enemies.

"Is it true? she wondered. Would the gods be so cruel? Her mother was one of Joffrey’s enemies now, her brother Robb another. Her father had died by the king’s command. Must Robb and her lady mother die next? The comet was red, but Joffrey was Baratheon as much as Lannister, and their sigil was a black stag on a golden field. Shouldn’t the gods have sent Joff a golden comet?

— A Clash of Kings - Sansa I

See? From “Glory to your betrothed,” to “King Joffrey sits where Aegon the Dragon once sat, in the castle built by his son” “He is the dragon’s heir” Every word from Arys Oakheart’s mouth evokes Jon, not Joffrey. Joffrey is not a dragon, far less the dragon’s heir; he’s not even a stag.

If Joffrey had truly been the son of Robert Baratheon, he indeed would have had a bit of Targaryen blood, because Robert’s grandmother was the Princess Rhaelle Targaryen, but that’s not the case.  

And the red comet could never be ‘Joffrey’s Comet’ as Sansa correctly pointed out when she said: “Shouldn’t the gods have sent Joff a golden comet?” The servants were right; the red comet was related to dragons, just as the person who knows everything in ASOIAF stated emphatically:  

Bran asked Septon Chayle about the comet while they were sorting through some scrolls snatched from the library fire. "It is the sword that slays the season,” he replied, and soon after the white raven came from Oldtown bringing word of autumn, so doubtless he was right.

Though Old Nan did not think so, and she’d lived longer than any of them. “Dragons,” she said, lifting her head and sniffing. She was near blind and could not see the comet, yet she claimed she could smell it. “It be dragons, boy,” she insisted. Bran got no princes from Nan, no more than he ever had.

Hodor said only, “Hodor.” That was all he ever said.

—A Clash of Kings - Bran I

Sadly the last part of this passage from Sansa’s first chapter in ACOK, also foreshadowed the Red Wedding. The Lannisters once more would take her family from her; this time Catelyn and Robb.

But let's stick with the good part, the part where she is called the betrothed of the dragon’s heir, that is not Joffrey, but Jon Snow, her own Dragonknight, her Black Knight of the Wall, her dark haired prince hiding in the north. We can only hope that this time the betrothal will end in a real marriage, because Sansa’s betrothal record isn’t so good thus far:

Joffrey Baratheon (the Psychopath Bastard), the betrothal was broken.

Willas Tyrell (the Cripple), the betrothal was cancelled.

Tyrion Lannister (the Imp), the marriage was not consummated.

Harrold Hardying (the Arse), the betrothal still stands but the bride is Alayne Stone.

Jon Snow (is dead but on the third day he will rise again from the dead).

But against the odds, I believe Sansa will wear a Targaryen Cloak, and under that protection, she will slay her enemies.  

VI. A TARGARYEN CLOAK

As I mentioned before, in the Books Sansa is in the Vale in the guise of Alayne Stone, eating lemony lemony lemon cakes and trying to charm, entice and bewitch Harry the Arse the Heir, her fourth betrothed:

Harrold Hardyng, often called Harry the Heir and sometimes the Young Falcon, is a gallant, handsome squire, and a ward of Lady Anya Waynwood. He is the heir presumptive of Lord Robert Arryn and would ascend to rule the Vale as "Harrold Arryn" should Lord Robert die without issue. [x]

The Arryn sigil is a sky-blue falcon soaring against a white moon on a sky-blue field. [x]

Shortly before Sansa found out about her fourth betrothal, while observing a blue falcon, she wished she had wings, but not precisely falcon wings; she just wanted to fly from her tower/cage and be free:

A falcon soared above the frozen waterfall, blue wings spread wide against the morning sky. Would that I had wings as well.

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I

Unbeknownst to Sansa, she is imagined by the smallfolk as a ‘winged wolf’ who freed herself from her captors and flew away:

“What wife?”

“I forgot, you’ve been hiding under a rock. The northern girl. Winterfell’s daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window. But she left the dwarf behind and Cersei means to have his head.”

That’s stupid, Arya thought. Sansa only knows songs, not spells, and she’d never marry the Imp.

—A Storm of Swords - Arya XIII

Big leather wings reminds me of dragons instead of bats, and I think that was George’s intention, he was subtly referring to dragon’s wings:

“Tell me how my child died.”

“He never lived, my princess. The women say …” 

(…)

“They say the child was …”

(…)

“Monstrous,” Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The knight was a powerful man, yet Dany understood in that moment that the maegi was stronger, and crueler, and infinitely more dangerous. “Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years.

—A Game of Thrones - Daenerys IX

In the center of the Plaza of Pride stood a red brick fountain whose waters smelled of brimstone, and in the center of the fountain a monstrous harpy made of hammered bronze. Twenty feet tall she reared. She had a woman’s face, with gilded hair, ivory eyes, and pointed ivory teeth. Water gushed yellow from her heavy breasts. But in place of arms she had the wings of a bat or a dragon, her legs were the legs of an eagle, and behind she wore a scorpion’s curled and venomous tail.

—A Storm of Swords - Daenerys II

So, the fascinating image of Sansa as a wolf with big leather wings created by George in ASOS, for me is a foreshadowing of her, in the future, wearing a Targaryen Cloak.

VII. THE PRINCE THAT WAS PROMISED BY NED

When Ned told Sansa that her betrothal to Joffrey was a terrible mistake, he also promised to make a better match for her:

“Father, I only just now remembered, I can’t go away, I’m to marry Prince Joffrey.” She tried to smile bravely for him. “I love him, Father, I truly truly do, I love him as much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian. I want to be his queen and have his babies.”

“Sweet one,” her father said gently, “listen to me. When you’re old enough, I will make you a match with a high lord who’s worthy of you, someone brave and gentle and strong. This match with Joffrey was a terrible mistake. That boy is no Prince Aemon, you must believe me.”

“He is!" Sansa insisted. "I don’t want someone brave and gentle, I want him. We’ll be ever so happy, just like in the songs, you’ll see. I’ll give him a son with golden hair, and one day he’ll be the king of all the realm, the greatest king that ever was, as brave as the wolf and as proud as the lion.” 

Arya made a face. "Not if Joffrey’s his father,” she said. “He’s a liar and a craven and anyhow he’s a stag, not a lion.”

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III

It is very probable that Ned was not thinking about Jon Snow when she promised someone brave and gentle and strong for Sansa. But the mentioned qualities certainly suit Jon very well. And the mention of Prince Aemon the Dragonknight with all the parallels shared with Jon, make me think of no other than him.

Also, please read these quotes:

"You said you'd help me," Gilly reminded him.

"I said Jon would help you. Jon's brave, and he's a good fighter, but I think he's dead now. I'm a craven. And fat. Look how fat I am. Besides, Lord Mormont's hurt. Can't you see? I couldn't leave the Lord Commander."

"Child," said the other old woman, "that old crow's gone before you. Look."

—A Storm of Swords - Samwell II

Jon is brave, a good fighter and willing to help women and children in need, in other words, the epitome of chivalry.

"My father once told me that some men are not worth having," Jon finished. "A bannerman who is brutal or unjust dishonors his liege lord as well as himself."

"Craster is his own man. He has sworn us no vows. Nor is he subject to our laws. Your heart is noble, Jon, but learn a lesson here. We cannot set the world to rights. That is not our purpose. The Night's Watch has other wars to fight."

Other wars. Yes. I must remember. "Jarman Buckwell said I might have need of my sword soon."

—A Clash of Kings - Jon III

Jon is not only brave and a good fighter; he also has a noble heart and pursues justice, in other words, a man who is worthy.  

"Swimming? In the storm?" She laughed at the notion. "Is this a trick t' get the clothes off me, Jon Snow?"

"Do I need a trick for that now?" he teased. "Or is that you can't swim a stroke?" Jon was a strong swimmer himself, having learned the art as a boy in Winterfell's great moat.

Ygritte punched his arm. "You know nothing, Jon Snow. I'm half a fish, I'll have you know."

—A Storm of Swords - Jon V

Jon is strong, a strong swimmer. Have you seen the bodies of the swimmers during the Olympics??? He also likes girls kissed by fire with fire in their hair and that are half a fish… See? There is a pattern here: Catelyn, Ygritte… Sansa… OH GEORGE!

Who would be better for Sansa than a man who was raised by her own father? Also, take into account that our good old Ned Stark always, always, always kept his promises, no matter what, and not even the death could prevent him from keeping his word.

And just imagine how Sansa would feel/react when she finds out that:

Jon beheaded Janos Slynt.

Jon refused Stannis’ offer to get legitimized as Jon Stark and be named Lord of Winterfell, because he did not want to despoil her of her rights.

Jon fondly imagined her amazement should she gaze upon the magic beyond The Wall.

Jon put in practice her lessons about being courteous with girls.

Jon lovingly remembered how she’d brush out Lady's coat, singing to herself, before he died.

Jon was jealous of Joffrey because she looked radiant walking beside that little shit.

Jon had a wildling girlfriend with fire in her hair that was half a fish.

***FAITH IN MEN RESTORED***

I rest my case.

[meraenthusiast]

Are You Sure You Want that Big Promotion?

Are You Sure You Want that Big Promotion?

[Editor’s Note: Today’s article in a guest post from Michael Dinich who blogs over at Your Money Geek.  He’s worked in the personal finance industry since 1999, where he helped families plan for retirement, reduce taxes, eliminate unnecessary expenses, and plan their estates.]

One of the main levers you can pull to achieve financial freedom is the amount of money you earn.

For most people, earning more money requires getting a promotion at work. Maybe even getting multiple promotions over a career span.

Most promotions usually move you up a level in an organization or increase your compensation. They’ll generally require you to take on more responsibility, pick-up additional projects, or even supervise some co-workers.

In a traditional company, however, there is a specific type of promotion which takes you into a whole different realm of responsibility. It’s where the rules of the game change, and where your preconceived ideas of what you thought you wanted get tested.

I’m talking about getting promoted to a senior level within an organization. Typically the goal of many ambitious individuals looking to climb the infamous corporate ladder.

What is the Senior Level?

Titles can vary quite a bit across companies and industries. Traditionally, a senior level within an organization would carry a title which may include the following:

Chief of Something (CEO, CFO, CIO, etc…)

President

Vice President

Director

Some combination of the word senior attached to one of the above titles

I do not include titles which contain the word manager in the above categorization; I’ll get to why in a minute.

I couldn’t find definitive data on the number of individuals who carry these types of titles relative to the general employee base of an organization. Based on personal experience, I would expect approximately 3-5% of individuals to fit the senior level categorization in a given organization.

In my company, which is made up of approximately 15,000 employees, there are only 400 people who carry a senior-level title and corresponding role — starting from a standard director all the way up to the C-level suite. That’s almost 3% of the total employee base.

It’s possible that if you drew a similar line at your own company that some senior managers would make the cut, however, that’s unlikely to be universal. This is why I left out the manager titles from my list.

I’m talking about the upper levels of an organization, which usually take many years to reach. Not to mention a tremendous amount of sacrifice, perseverance, and in some instances, luck (i.e., timing, networking, etc.).

Think You’re Ready???

I’ve already covered some reasons why you may not be getting that promotion you’re chasing in an earlier article. The purpose of the present article is to make a case for why getting that big promotion may not be the best career move.

Again, when I say big promotion, I’m explicitly referring to getting promoted into that senior-level echelon of a corporation.

This type of promotion indeed carries some benefits:

Higher pay / Sometimes significantly more, but not always

Recognition / Tangible proof of your professional accomplishments

Prestige / It’s a select number of people by definition

Challenging Work / An opportunity to tackle challenging problems

However, the above benefits come at a high cost. Before you jump into one of these roles with both feet, you should consider not only the downsides but whether you want that promotion.

Here are some signs to watch out for and consider, before crossing that senior-level threshold.

Your BS Tolerance is Low

If you get easily frustrated by bureaucracy and having to jump through hoops for every decision, keep your hand down. Operating at a senior level requires a high degree of patience and the ability to put up with other people’s BS daily.

If you’re the type of person who likes to get things done quickly and prefers not to rely on others to complete an objective, you will struggle in a senior-level role. At that level, gaining consensus and addressing faux concerns is the name of the game.

Dealing with bureaucracy is indeed prevalent at all levels in a company, but the senior level takes it to another realm. Be prepared to spend a significant portion of your time in this category.

Don’t cross the threshold unless you’re willing to throw on some severe BS kevlar.

You Refuse to Play Politics

I get it, you have principles, and some strong convictions. Why should you compromise on a solution, or accept a less than ideal arrangement? Unfortunately, when you’re operating at this level, you’re surrounded by individuals looking out for their best interests.

Every statement you make and every decision you push for will need to be vetted with your peers to ensure it has the right level of support. Gaining that support may require compromises and concessions that aren’t always in the best interest of your team.

If you believe you can operate without playing politics, I can confirm it’s possible. But only if you’ve reached financial independence. Otherwise, you’re highly exposed.

You Hate Making Tough Decisions

One of the critical responsibilities of individuals in these roles is the ability to make hard choices. There’s a reason why most people punt decision making to their boss and beyond. Some of those decisions can be quite tough to make.

Most people don’t want that kind of responsibility and the pressure it entails. It could be making a choice about someone’s career, a risky decision on growing sales, or changing the company strategy. The potential pitfalls are endless.

The stress associated with that level of decision making is off the charts unless you’re a psychopath.

You Value Your Time

For most people working in a senior-level role, their time is no longer theirs to control. The boundary of work time and family time become blurred, and very little is off-limits. You’re expected both by your company and your employees to be available at all times, regardless of whatever work/life balance culture exists.

Although this is something that can be managed, it is challenging to do. If you prioritize your personal life overwork in one of these roles, you indirectly limit your progress.

It’s always essential to evaluate the benefits gained from such a role against the time lost, which is usually severely underestimated. This is one of the biggest traps of climbing the corporate ladder. Most people justify the sacrifice by convincing themselves they are doing it for their family, but in the long run, the opposite is often true.

You Don’t Like Exposure and Uncertainty

Whenever you take on one of these roles, your job becomes inherently at risk. It’s easy to hide deeper in an organization and go unnoticed. There’s a certain level of security in that diminished exposure. But once you step into the limelight and take on that big promotion, you’re exposed to all the elements.

Companies churn through those top-level jobs more than any other level in an organization. One day you think you’re doing great, and the next day the political tides have shifted against you almost overnight.

This is another excellent reason to be financially independent in those roles. You never really know when things can turn south.

You enjoy what you’re Doing

If you’re happy in the role you have, and you’re great at it, think twice before making this type of change. It’s common to see people get promoted to senior-level roles and become miserable. That’s usually because the kind of work at this level is very different from what they’re used to doing.

Senior-level roles tend to be very administrative, and the problems that need to be solved are more complex. The work also tends to be more strategic. Very little work is ever really “finished.” Instead, it’s progressed to the next step.

If you enjoy instant gratification, and the sense of accomplishment that comes from completing tasks, you may struggle with the adjustment.

Should You Walk Away?

Most people get blinded by the promotion’s compensation increase. They never bother to factor in the impact on their lifestyle, or even the personality changes they’ll need to adopt.

I’m not implying that you should walk away from a senior-level promotion. That’s, of course, a profoundly personal decision. I’m merely pointing out some elements of the promotion that many people either ignore or only figure out in hindsight.

All good decisions are made with eyes wide open. As someone who has had to learn some of these insights first hand, I can tell you they are real and challenging to address.

Coming up with a financial independence strategy before taking on one of these roles should be mandatory, in my opinion. These types of roles are not sustainable in the long run because they are too demanding. Something eventually has to give, either it’s your personal life or your career.

Make sure you have a solid exit strategy if you’re considering this type of role in your career. It’s also essential to have a very open and frank discussion with your family before considering that type of job. They will need to support you during your journey; otherwise, you will struggle to succeed.

In the end, you will need to balance the desire for financial independence and the sacrifices it may take to reach those goals.

This article originally appeared on The Money Mix, and has been republished with permission.

The post Are You Sure You Want that Big Promotion? appeared first on Debt Free Dr..

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[switchstrategyblog]

America – Tax-Free Zone Video Course

America – Tax-Free Zone Video Course

America – Tax-Free Zone Video Course

I’m talking about legally eliminating all taxation on the most common forms of investment income. Or running a business with 4% or less taxes on profits.

Never before have such incredible tax incentives been available to Americans so easily.

Dear Reader,

I did it.

I recently moved down to the Island of Enchantment with my family.

Not that they mind… it’s been sunny almost every day with a cool ocean breeze, and temperatures in the 70s and 80s.

Sure beats the freezing cold and snowy weather.

Our big workout down here is taking a swim in the pool or the ocean versus digging out of huge snow piles.

But it wasn’t just the sunny skies, year-round warm weather, and beautiful ocean beaches that drew us to Puerto Rico; it was the incredible tax breaks that are available here that are not available anywhere else in the world for would-be former US residents.

You see, to spur job growth and economic activity in general, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico introduced these enormous tax incentives for incoming residents and service businesses.

Specifically, for Puerto Rican residents and businesses that qualify—mostly expatriates from the US mainland or their enterprises—the recently enacted Act 22 and Act 20 provide for a zero tax rate on capital gains and certain interest and dividends earned by individuals.

And, if you a run a business that exports services like I’m doing here, they also provide for low single-digit tax rates on your profits. No double tax taxation, no income tax on profits, just a top 4% withholding on distributions to owners (and no corporate tax on profits sent to your partners outside of Puerto Rico, either).

According to Bloomberg, “The marginal tax rate for affluent New Yorkers can exceed 50 percent on ordinary income.”

By relocating to Puerto Rico, enormous tax savings can be achieved.

For certain investors, that could mean eliminating taxation completely. For the right businesses, it could mean tax rates of just 4% on earnings.

Anyone who relocates to Puerto Rico can apply for the tax shelter of Acts 22 and 20—including mainland US citizens, who cannot find similar benefits anywhere else in the world without significant complication and expense.

Now, I know it sounds too good to be true.

But I’ve done a comprehensive boots-on-the-ground investigation and found that the tax advantages are real, and that for many Americans they are a huge opportunity that could truly be life-changing.

Because, until now, there was no easy, legal way to escape US taxes… besides death or renouncing your US citizenship.

That’s because the US is the only country in the world that effectively taxes its citizens and former residents no matter where they live and make their money.

Sure, there are plenty of low-tax countries in the world. Singapore, the Cayman Islands, and Dubai come to mind—and chances are you’ve heard of them all for that reason.

These little countries have turned into financial and services meccas because any Londoner or Parisian or Canadian could head there and run a business or manage their investments in a much more tax-friendly climate.

America, not so much. While they do allow a small exemption for a minimal amount of income, with lots of rules, generally Americans are taxed no matter where they go. Especially the successful ones.

Many believe it’s these suffocating and unfavorable tax policies plaguing US citizens that are responsible for the record number of Americans saying goodbye permanently to Uncle Sam by renouncing their citizenship and heading to places like Singapore.

In fact, Forbes is reporting that the number of US citizens and permanent residents who gave up their citizenship soared 221% last year alone.

That’s what Facebook cofounder Eduardo Savarin did when he headed for Singapore.

But the penalty for giving up your citizenship is high if you’re wealthy—thanks to the enormous US exit tax.

The US worries about this trend, of course.

Jurisdictions like Puerto Rico want in on it to boost their own economies, like Hong Kong or Macau or Belize have. Because of those dual forces, there is now a much easier way to seek less-taxed shores, one of which is rooted in decades of US law and support and unlikely to change on a whim.

That’s where Puerto Rico shines brightly above all others…

By becoming a bona fide resident of Puerto Rico, you can escape paying high US taxes legally, still retain your American citizenship, and avoid paying the hefty exit tax.

You see, since Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory (commonwealth) of the US, it’s allowed to have a special tax arrangement.

Namely, legal residents of Puerto Rico who earn their income in Puerto Rico do not pay US federal income taxes.

All Puerto Ricans are already US citizens, and since it is a commonwealth of the US, Americans are generally free to stay on the island without restriction and do not even need a passport to travel there. It’s like visiting another state for most purposes, though one that predominately speaks Spanish.

But speaking Spanish is not a necessity to move there… you don’t need to learn Spanish to get around Puerto Rico. Many expats and relocated mainland Americans only speak English and get along just fine.

While mainland Americans who become Puerto Rican residents do not have to pay US federal income taxes on income earned on the island, they still have to pay local Puerto Rican taxes.

Traditionally, those taxes have been very close to those back home, so the island’s unique tax status didn’t net much benefit.

For decades, the US Virgin Islands have offered tax incentives to attract investors to the islands—with programs supported by the US government since the 1950s. However, these programs were complex and imposed huge regulatory burdens. And those islands are much smaller and with much less of the modern infrastructure Puerto Rico offers.

Over the last few decades, Puerto Rico caught on to the enormous benefits such tax incentives brought to its neighbors in the Caribbean and Central America, and provided incentives to draw big manufacturers like Pfizer, Bard, and Praxair to the island—all have facilities within a stone’s throw of my chosen home—even Microsoft has a presence here.

But, they were losing out on less environmentally impactful and better-paying jobs in finance, call centers, and dozens of other service businesses that headed elsewhere.

To catch up, Puerto Rico recently slashed its taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest to ZERO for new residents who apply.

This means that mainland Americans who move to Puerto Rico can eliminate taxation on investments they make on the island or in the markets. This is a huge benefit to stock traders, venture capitalists, M&A practitioners, or anyone who gets bitten by capital gains tax at the end of the year. This is what “Act 22” accomplishes.

On top of that, they’ve launched a set of incentives to draw service businesses down to the island. Everything from asset managers to marketers and public relations professionals. Computer programmers. Graphic designers. Or writers and researchers, like me.

Under this law—Act 20—any service business that can be operated in Puerto Rico for clients outside of Puerto Rico can apply for special tax treatment, including a host of benefits of which the most important is a tax rate of 4% or lower.

This is so small it’s almost a rounding error in comparison to the combined US federal, state, and sometimes city income taxes that you would pay on the mainland US.

For example, an investment manager based in Puerto Rico who performs services for US-based clients would be eligible for the lower income tax rate.

The tax benefits are so enormous that I brought my own family here to take advantage of them.

I would not have made the move and uprooted my family if I didn t think the tax advantages were real and here to stay.

With the extra income I make by residing in Puerto Rico, I’ll be able to provide my family with a better quality of life and still keep our US citizenship. In Puerto Rico you’ll enjoy a low cost of living compared to most island locations (I even still get free Prime shipping from Amazon), excellent health care, modern telecommunication services like high-speed Internet that’s faster than I could ever get in my home in Vermont… not to mention tropical weather, beautiful beaches, majestic mountains, good food, and a thriving arts scene.

On top of that, the business tax savings here and the great pool of educated labor allow me to reinvest more of my income into growing my business. And when I do turn a profit, I keep what I’ve risked so much and worked so hard to earn.

All on a tropical island in the Caribbean that’s 100 miles long and 35 miles wide… about three times the size of Rhode Island.

Now like everywhere else, of course, Puerto Rico has its negatives. Make a decision like mine and inevitably you will hear something about the crime. But to extrapolate the bad statistics to the entire area is a mistake. It would be like not moving to Michigan’s beautiful lakefront because of crime in Detroit.

Like any state with a dense metropolitan area, there’s crime in some areas. If you steer clear of those areas or take the same precautions you would in any big city around the world, you’ll be fine.

So if you’re an individual who makes most of your money from capital gains, a service provider who can provide services from Puerto Rico to your non-Puerto Rican clients, or a business owner with operations outside of Puerto Rico… then you could benefit substantially from very significant income tax savings with a move to the Island of Enchantment.

That’s why I was eager to make the move to Puerto Rico myself. And after traveling the island, meeting with real estate agents, lawyers, government reps, accountants, et al., I’m more convinced than ever that the tax benefits are enormous for those that qualify.

But there are some hurdles you need to be aware of. This is not a decision to be made on a whim; it requires a little bit of preparation and planning.

The good part is that my excellent colleagues at Casey Research and International Man who have been helping individuals make the most of their financial freedom for four decades now and I have done almost all the hard work for you.

We’ve put together the definitive, authoritative, comprehensive guidebook to the tax advantages of residing in Puerto Rico.

This guidebook, How to Legally Remove Yourself from the U.S. Tax Code, without Leaving America, thoroughly covers the unique opportunity for Americans that Puerto Rico’s Acts 20 and 22 offer.

We’ve put in hundreds of hours of research, with our sandals on the beach, to make this report a reality. It has been circulated for comments by attorneys and accountants in the US and in Puerto Rico to ensure the advice is as accurate and straightforward as possible.

In fact, one of Puerto Rico’s most prominent law offices, Pietrantoni Méndez & Alvarez (PMA) LLC, has lent its seal of approval to the report after thoroughly reviewing it. You know how much work it takes to get a lawyer to commit to anything.

If you’re considering the possibility of relocating to take advantage of these tax savings, our Puerto Rico guide is a must have.

I can tell you from experience, it will save you thousands in legal expenses by helping you understand how you and/or your business can qualify for these life-changing benefits.

Start here before you sit down with your own accountant or attorney. Or find out how, if you’re only taking advantage of Act 22, you can easily apply yourself.

The guide is packed with actionable information, including a multitude of professional resources (lawyers, accountants, real estate firms, etc.) that we have personally vetted.

We believe this guidebook is so important, especially right now, that we’ve arranged a way for you to get a free copy for a limited time by clicking here.

Inside, you’ll receive exclusive guidance available nowhere else, including…

How individual Americans can totally eliminate all taxation on certain types of investment income (capital gains, dividend, and interest income). How service businesses (like consultants, software development, accountants, financial planners, asset managers, etc.) can reduce their top corporate tax rate to 4%, a pittance when compared to the top corporate rate of 40% in the mainland US. The genesis of the new tax incentives in Puerto Rico and why we believe they are here to stay. How to apply for these tax benefits, including the written and unwritten rules you have to follow. How to qualify for many of these life-changing benefits without an expensive visit to a law office. Our top personal resources available to help you find a home, get tax help, structure businesses, network with expats, and more. The answers to a list of frequently asked questions about moving and living in Puerto Rico, including banking in Puerto Rico, the best places for expats to live (from a modest budget to more luxurious options), and how to navigate a real estate transaction. As I mentioned above, I have personally made the move to Puerto Rico to take advantage of the huge tax savings that as an American I cannot obtain anywhere else in the world.

So we’re not just reporting from theory here, but are actually on the ground in Puerto Rico gathering the facts on the rules and regulations that make these tax savings work to your advantage.

That’s why we’re excited to make available our guidebook, How to Legally Remove Yourself from the U.S. Tax Code, without Leaving America, to you today for free for a limited time. So that you can achieve substantially lower taxes—and a dramatically improved lifestyle—without leaving America behind.

America – Tax-Free Zone Video Course

America – Tax-Free Zone Video Course

The post America – Tax-Free Zone Video Course appeared first on Top Info Scout.

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[aion-rsa]

Priest Returns to Marvel to Crown the Inhumans’ Once and Future Kings

In 1965’s “Fantastic Four” #45, legendary creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced Marvel fans to a mythic secret civilization of superpowered beings known as the Inhumans. Eventually, we got to know their Royal family, including larger than life figures like Black Bolt, a monarch with a voice that can crack mountains; his insane mind controlling, brother, Maximus; and Medusa, the Inhumans’ fierce warrior queen. The Shakespearean-style drama of the Royal Family has been a pivotal part of the Inhuman mythos ever since, with readers gaining the occasional hint and glimpse of their past, though the full tale of how they came to be has yet to be told.

That changes this August when writer Christopher Priest returns to Marvel and teams with artist Phil Noto for the five-issue “Inhumans: Once and Future Kings” miniseries, announced today at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo. And while the pair have not yet begun work on their collaboration, the planned story will take readers back to a time just after Black Bolt underwent Terrigenesis, when a king now known as the Unspoken sat upon the royal throne of Attilan.

RELATED: New Inhumans Synopsis Teases Military Coup, Royal Family in Hawaii

We spoke with Priest about returning to Marvel, his take on Black Bolt, Maximus and Medusa, and what life was really like for citizens of Attilan during the reign of the Unspoken.

CBR: It feels like an early tale of the Inhuman Royal family would be an epic, almost Shakespearean tale that involves some of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s most inventive creations. Is that what drew you to this project? And had you written the Inhumans at all during any of your previous stints at Marvel?

Christopher Priest: No, I’ve never written the Inhumans before outside of, perhaps, a brief cameo or two. I was actually surprised and challenged when Marvel offered me the project. I see this series as part of a bigger and more complex overall history. As I see it, we can either bore people to death by trying to be too much, or we can go the “Rogue One” route and tell a fun story which embellishes key points of their origin. I presume if the audience wants to see more of this era of the Inhumans, Marvel will respond.

Nick Bradshaw’s cover for “Inhumans: Once and Future Kings”

Approximately how old is Black Bolt when you pick up with him in the first issue of “Inhumans: Once and Future Kings?” Has he undergone Terrigenesis yet? How similar and how different is he from the character we know now?

Neither Black Bolt nor Maximus are much like the characters they ultimately become. For one thing, Maximus is not yet Mad. He is a sane if hardheaded and strong-willed loyal brother, and the two are paired off for this adventure. Now, of course, Max’s unique character flaws give rise to certain rivalries and pettiness which will ultimately divide them but, from the beginning, they are Starsky and Hutch if not quite Quantum and Woody.

I’d prefer to avoid providing definitive ages because that sets off debates, but it’s fair to say the characters in this story are about the same age as the original Lee-Kirby X-Men. Most if not all have undergone Terrigenesis.

What’s it like writing a character like Black Bolt, where so much of his communication is not done through dialogue?

I’ve been writing a mute character, Jericho, for more than a year now [in DC Comics’ “Deathstroke”]. That has partly prepared me for some of the challenges we’ll face with Black Bolt. I also intend to explore the character’s dimensionality a bit more rather than limit him to seeming too flat or one-dimensional.

What I mean is, if you’ve ever had a deaf friend, you know that reading an email from a deaf person is no different from reading an email from any other person. That was a revelation for me and it changed my way of thinking about my deaf friends, many of whom I’d stupidly regarded as either less engaged or even less intelligent. They’re not. They’re informed, perceptive, brilliant. They are funny. My prejudice had been depriving them of much of their humanity. By allowing Jericho to speak mechanically, I’ve been able to explore the character in greater depth and have him emerge as a more rounded character capable of realizing a much greater potential.

I have a different path laid out for our young Black Bolt; not a mechanical device which would allow him to speak (although, frankly, this is not far-fetched technology. You can probably find something like that at The Sharper Image; surely Attilan technology could devise something), but an emerging way of interpreting not merely Black Bolt’s words but the intent behind them in greater depth and clarity. This presents a direct challenge to Medusa and Maximus, whose interpretations of Black Bolt’s hand gestures have traditionally been the most authoritative.

It sounds like Maximus will have a sizable role in “Once and Future Kings.”

These brothers are partners. They’re similar to Scott and Alex Summers, Chris and Liam Hemsworth. Ultimately, they become a bit more like Cain and Abel, as Maximus’ deep character flaws distract from their bond of trust and creates a wedge between them that grows exponentially until it reaches its ultimate conclusion.

The other important figure in Black Bolt’s life is, of course, his wife Medusa. Which aspects of her character do you find most interesting? What’s it like writing some of her initial interactions with Black Bolt?

Medusa represents the obvious flaw in a ridged caste system; she was born into a role she is genetically ill-suited to perform. Medusa was never going to host teas or perform ceremonial duties like a royal princess. From birth, she’s wanted to be on the front lines, with her male cousins, engaging the enemy, defending the realm.

At the stage of her life wherein our story is set, Medusa is terribly and completely sick of men falling in love with her. She is weary of all the speculative talk of who she will someday marry or who a prospective love interest might be. She’s a person, dammit, not a farm animal to be groomed and bred.

Our story presents several persistent suitors for Medusa, but she’s interested in none of them — including Black Bolt. She wants to be accepted, in the same way and on the same level as her male Royal cousins. The man who will ultimately win her over must first prove his acceptance of her as an equal partner in defiance of the stricter roles laid out by the Attilan caste system.

For me, the challenge of writing Medusa is to reveal her humanity and vulnerability without compromising her hard candy shell or writing her one-dimensionally “Hulk Smash!”

Will you get a chance to write much of the other Royal family members in “Once and Future Kings” like Gorgon, Triton, Karnak and Crystal? And if so, which of these characters are you especially enjoying writing?

They’re all in there, and they are a blast to write because what you will see in “OAFK” are these characters in their formative years with relationships just beginning to be explored and tested. “OAFK” is a lot like “X-Men: First Class” with The Inhumans. They are the characters the audience knows and loves but are fresh out of the gate and, therefore, different enough that following their development is fun and exciting.

What’s life like for Black Bolt and the Inhumans of Attilan when “Once and Future Kings” begins? Is this story set during the rule of the despotic king, the Unspoken? Is he sort of the central antagonist of your tale?

“The Unspoken” was never a despotic king. He was, in fact, The Good King. The theme of “OAFK” is communication, as the plot revolves around a series of miscommunications and wrong impressions in an operatic if not quite Shakespearean comic tragedy construction.

A young Black Bolt challenges the Good King’s thinking as regards to the semi-slavery imposed upon the Alpha Primitives. In so doing, and quite without realizing it, Black Bolt literally infects the Good King’s conscience to the point where The Good King begins to reevaluate his posture toward the Alphas if not the entirety of the Attilan caste system.

This ends up setting off a chain of events that leads to Black Bolt, Medusa and Maximus fleeing Attilan, with the help of a new friend, and taking refuge in the far away mythical land of Manhattan.

It seems like part of the fun of “Once and Future Kings” is the fact that this is a story that can be many things: an action story, a tale of intrigue, romance, and perhaps even involve some humor. Is that a fair description of what we’ll see? What can you tell us about the action and sort of overall feel of the book?

I’m not at all certain I am capable of writing a comic book that doesn’t have humor in it. Your description is spot-on. Rock and roll in two different worlds.

MINOR SPOILER: In the original comics, I found it ironic that The Good King Whose Names Is Unspoken was condemned, primarily, for wanting to destroy a terrible weapon designed to wipe out all of mankind. Yes, there were allusions to the Good King becoming The Mad King, but Black Bolt ultimately challenged his monarch because The King had stolen, with intent to destroy, The Slave Engine.

Now, I’m unclear of how that choice makes Black Bolt a “pure” hero any more than his attempts to destroy an obvious weapon of terrible evil made the King a “Mad” King. In that sense, “Once And Future Kings” is kind of a circular firing squad; a “Game of Thrones”-ish mashup of shifting alliances and changing motives.

If we get this wrong, this will be a confusing mess. If we get it right, “Inhumans: Once And Future Kings” will, hopefully, be a story debated over long after I’ve been drubbed out the business.

Finally, your last work for Marvel was in the early 2000s. What’s it like coming back to the company? Is there a possibility of more Marvel work from you after “Once and Future Kings?”

I hope so. Marvel has always been home. And it’s not like I’ve been in exile; I’ve had many conversations with the company over the years, but could never find quite the right project at the right time. Landing “OAFK” was really too easy. It was a project I wanted to do and something Marvel wanted me to do. I was a little shell-shocked at how easy the handshake was. We’d typically had these multi round-robins looking for projects or my pitching my own, which is [gouges his eyes out] exasperating for both for editors and talent.

The post Priest Returns to Marvel to Crown the Inhumans’ Once and Future Kings appeared first on CBR.

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[notdiabolika]

AYO? Bro looks majestic

Happy birthday to my favourite DL boy~