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darklinaforever · 7 months

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Why are you all so serious when it comes to imaginary characters? This works for both teams btw. It's okay to love books, characters, and so on, but you act like we live in real Westeros and choose who will rule us. Or as if the Targaryens are your real relatives during a real war. For God's sake. The fact that people love the blacks does not give them any moral superiority. The fact that people love the greens doesn't make them immoral or anything.

In fact, you really don't read any of my posts, and are you really content with the fact that I'm team Blacks and loving Daemyra to spit your venom in anonymous messages in fact ?! It’s just crazy at this point. You look like a bunch of weirdos.

I never claimed to be morally better, or that people who liked the Greens were immoral. Liking the Greens doesn't make you immoral. They are good villains, and most people, including me, like good villains. I'm literally a fan of the real Alicent in the book. She's a great villain that I love to hate.

And for your information, I also never said that Team Blacks were morally superior people. My god, I even once had an argument with a pro team Blacks and pro Daemyra person who hated the Velaryon children and the fact that they were illegitimate ! I never decreed that those who liked the black team were 100% good people VS those who liked the greens as bad ! Where does this bullshit come from ?!

On the other hand, what I denounce are those who claim that the Greens are not villains / antagonists. When that's literally what they are. This is their narrative function. They are not morally gray characters, anti-heroes or worse yet, misunderstood virtuous characters as some like to claim. Once again, there is no problem with liking Team Greens, but there is a problem with believing that they are justified in the story for doing what they do and that they are anything other than villains / antagonists. If you read Fire and Blood and end up being Team Greens at face value, you either have questionable beliefs or you simply have significant problems with reading comprehension (and I hope this is generally the second case for the ASOIAF and Fire and Blood community). The Greens are literally a bunch of misogynists fighting for patriarchal traditions, are blood purists and mostly rapists like Aegon II and Aemond.

The Blacks team is not perfect. Certainly, there are noble people among them, but also and above all morally ambiguous characters. However, they are not the antagonists and villains of the story. They are the protagonists. Team Blacks fights for a woman's right to ascend the throne. About keeping your promises and oaths. And even if it is not for feminist purposes, Rhaenyra on the throne would have given a precedent for women to subsequently also have the right to power. In short, Rhaenyra on the throne would have set a precedent to probably improve the situation of women in Westeros in the lines of succession. To be Team Greens in the first degree is in fact to deny power to women and change in a society. That's what it implies narratively.

It's the same thing for those trying to say they are neutral, trying to make people believe that the two teams are on the same level, probably to avoid feeling guilty for loving the Greens beyond simple villains, refusing to see them as such. To speak of being neutral is to deny that the Blacks are fighting for a much nobler cause overall than the Greens. Once again, the Blacks are fighting for a woman's right to the throne and respecting her words and oaths. While the Greens are literally treated misogynists and usurpers who fight for patriarchal tradition... Just like the simple fact that the number of war crimes are not at all equivalent depending on the team.

It's not the same thing. These are simple facts.

The narrative purpose of GRRM's for the Rhaneyra character is simple. She was usurped because she was a woman. By misogyny. And people who are first degree team greens or neutral have this great tendency to deny it. Simply because otherwise, they couldn't justify defending the greens.

Reading Fire and Blood and ending up at first level being team greens or neutral, once again demonstrates a huge reading comprehension problem. GRRM didn't write this story thinking that the Greens were right or that both teams were on the same level, otherwise, the Greens wouldn't get karmic punishment.

I realize that everyone can see what they want in a fictional work, but there are limits to stupid interpretation. Fire and Blood is very clear that the Greens are the villains / antagonists with very bad motivations, going against the law itself. Because yes, the word of the king is the law. Supporting the Greens or being neutral at first glance, without seeing them as villains / antagonists, is at this stage being willfully blind, unless once again you have questionable values or quite simply very, very poor reading comprehension, which you should be worried about.

The excuse of "it's fiction, so we can think what we want, it doesn't matter" is bullshit. An excuse for not thinking about the fiction you consume. This is proof of intellectual laziness. Do you really think GRRM wouldn't want you to think about his work ?

It's a naive and simplistic way of thinking, designed to justify supporting a misogynistic team, wishing to maintain patriarchal traditions. Once again, either it comes from your own problematic morality that you do not accept, or it is simply not having reading comprehension and supporting the fact of not thinking about what you consume in order to avoid not be aware of the problematic things about what you love in order to simply not give yourself a bad conscience.

Again, there is nothing immoral about liking the Greens. Most people like a good villain / antagonist. I've always said it. On the other hand, yes, it is problematic, to pretend that the Greens are not villains / antagonists, then trying to make them pass for more complex characters than they are, even anti-heroes, or worse, downright misunderstood characters who would be morally superior to the Blacks team. That's always what I talk about. Nothing more. And if this truth bothers you, you should question yourself...

Reflecting on the fiction we consume is not stupid. That should be the basis. And I won't apologize for thinking about what I consume.

And it's still cheeky to come and tell me that I'm lecturing people when it's me that people come to harass with private messages to wrongly explain to me that I romanticize grooming, that I'm a Bitch who doesn't understand anything about the characters I'm talking about, that I should be ashamed, close my tumblr, that Daemon Targaryen is the real rapist from Fire and Blood and that Aegon II is just a normal prince of his time doing his best. Ironically, it's the Greens and Neutral team who always come to me to spew their superior morality to apparently understand that poor little Aegon II is a complex and tragic character while Daemon is the real monster of the story and that the real The goal of Fire and Blood is to choose your favorite war criminal. Lol. That couldn't be further from the truth, and it's complete bullshit. Who once again tries to impose moral superiority on others ? (And again, I'm also entitled to this for liking Kylo Ren / Ben Solo and the Darkling) I think you're clearly talking to the wrong person in terms of promulgating moral oaths.

Love what you love. Just be aware of what it is and think about it. That's all I'm saying.

Once again, I have nothing against those who like the Greens. I have a problem with those who try to make people believe that they are not the villains / antagonists that GRRM made them out to be in the story. To try to make them appear as complex characters, anti-heroes, misunderstood characters who would have reasons just to act as they do. Worse still, to come and tell me that their favorite characters are morally superior to those of the Blacks team or even on an equal footing. Things that are completely false. And if these simple truths bother you that much, don't read my tumblr ! It's simple to do, isn't it ?

At this point of stupidity, I'm going to end up losing my faith in humanity...

@aleksanderscult

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drakaripykiros130ac · 9 months

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I don't understand how anyone can like the Greens in the series. I like them in the books because they are good villains, specifically Alicent. I would have given anything to see her come to life on screen rather than the pathetic thing we were treated to. That doesn't help with the fact that apparently Ryan Condal has finally confirmed he's team Greens... I'll never understand this guy. How could he read the book and say that no, the Greens were justified in any way ?! Also, the guts you have to have, even within this fandom, to openly say you support the group of misogynistic and blood purist usurpers... In the sense of saying that they are completely right or that Blacks are just as horrible! But in what universe ?! Ryan Condal would also have said that we would probably change preferred camps in season 2... Man, you can still dream, even with your stupid supporting documents for TG everyone still prefers the Blacks team. It's distressing that the director of the series himself doesn't understand anything he's adapting and that so many people are going in this direction. The number of idiots who tried to explain to me that both teams were equally horrible, that the Greens can't be pure villains because GRRM only writes complex characters, it's obvious. Like GRRM has never written a pure villain ? Are you sure you've read the books he wrote ? No but I swear that since the release of the series, asoiaf fans are worse than before in their unjustified hatred of the Targaryens... These people think they are moral by wanting to put the two teams on the same level or by saying that the Blacks are worse. That revolts me.

Essentially what neutrals think ;

“Yes, it’s not good what the Greens did, but the Blacks are no better seen as they dared to fight back for their rights.”

Like... What dimension did I land in ?!

Just last time, I received comments from someone supposedly accepting that the Greens were worse, but trying to explain to me that Daemon groomed Rhaenyra (which is false book or series), that the murder of 'a Greens child is unjustified (while the Greens shed blood first and we are in a feudal context) that Lucerys taking Aemond's eye is unjustified (Wtf ?!) ah and the best thing was to me say at face value that Daemon was not a gray character and that he was like Aegon IV... (Again... WTF ?!)

https://www.tumblr.com/darklinaforever/701570671006875648/i-hate-when-people-say-greens-and-blacks-are-on

(Afterwards I wasn't gentle in my answers either, but I'm fed up with this type of people)

I personally never liked the greens in the book. To me, they were always the villains. Always. I never viewed Daemon and Rhaenyra as pure innocent angels, don’t get me wrong. I recognize the few mistakes Rhaenyra makes in the book, as well as Daemon’s many, many faults.

For instance, yes, Rhaenyra should not have had Vaemond murdered (even though what he spoke was treasonous and threatened her position as well as the lives of her children). She should not have gone so far with the taxes during her reign (even though she was left with no choice).

However, in this story, despite all their faults, I always felt Rhaenyra and Daemon were perfectly justified. Because their good qualities kind of eclipse the bad stuff. The Blacks are the anti-heroes of the story. They have done some questionable things, but all of them have been justified/done with good reason and good purpose.

The Greens are a whole different story. Everything they have done (mainly Alicent and Otto), they have done out of jealousy and pure greed (hence why they were given the color “green” - the color of greed and envy). 95 % of the war crimes are done by the Greens. Literally the only thing the Blacks are to be held accountable for is B&C. Other than that, every crime was courtesy of the Greens.

To me, the Greens have always been split between those who are anti-villains (Aegon, Helaena, Daeron), and those who are pure villains (Alicent, Otto, Aemond).

For the anti-villains: The one time Aegon presents some goodness is when he has reservations about usurping his half-sister. Other than that, he is pure evil; Helaena can’t be considered a pure innocent soul either. She has good qualities, but she is extremely underdeveloped as a character in the book and we don’t know her thoughts, her motives. She didn’t protest the usurpation and accepted the position of queen consort easily; Daeron is somehow given a free pass by certain people because he is “the daring”, and while that’s true, these people forget how he burned a whole village of innocent people alive.

For the pure villains, not much need be said. Alicent and Otto are a bunch of opportunistic hypocrites and vicious upstarts. I haven’t sensed any bit of goodness in them. Aemond is a psycho with zero redeeming qualities.

Now, in the show, I don’t feel as if the Greens are portrayed better than they have been in the book. I feel like the show writers (mainly Ryan Condal) are trying to come up with lame excuses for them, and it’s just not working. The great majority of the viewers still hate Alicent as much as they did in the book, regardless how many times she presents those “doe eyes”, and the great majority still believe the Greens are in the wrong.

In the show, when it comes to the Greens, there’s always some sort of “reason”, some sort of “accident”. Alicent didn’t mean to shoot her mouth off and convince Larys to murder the current hand, Lyonel Strong, so that her father could return as Hand (even though that is exactly what she wanted). Aemond didn’t mean to let Vhagar know that he wants Lucerys dead (even though his pursuing and direct attack showed his intentions to murder the boy). Crispin somehow didn’t mean to crush Beesbury’s skull in that ball, even though he acted aggressively towards the man for simply speaking the truth and nothing but the truth at that treasonous Council meeting.

These excuses the show writers make for the greens make no sense whatsoever. They should have stuck with the actual canon portrayal, because it’s just ridiculous at this point.

So what if the two sides are not evenly matched?

They’re not supposed to!

GRRM doesn’t write purely good vs bad in his universe, that is true. He loves the complexity of the characters and the stories. However, that does not mean that he intended for the Blacks and the Greens to be evenly matched in this story.

He himself admitted that he wrote the book more in the Blacks’ favor because that’s how he felt (ironic, considering that Fire and Blood is told from the point of view of green supporters). It’s his story. I have seen people accuse him of being biased, always in favor of the Blacks.

Yes, he clearly wrote the Blacks as the protagonists, with better developed characters, with the best allies, the most heroic/epic deaths, most dragons, most Houses supporting them.

I mean, the Starks are TB, while the Lannisters are TG. That alone should give you a clue as to which side you’re supposed to be rooting for.

Clearly GRRM is Team Black, but who says he can’t be? Who says that the sides have to be evenly matched? It’s his story! If he says the Blacks are right, the Blacks are right.

TG stans are just in denial at this point.

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wyldfell · 2 months

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Why do you think there’s been such controversial reaction to s2?

I think it depends on who you ask! The critical response to the show has been fairly positive, with only a few articles pointing out plot holes and issues with its portrayal of women. Fans of ASOIAF and F&B, on the other hand, are more vocal in their dislike. I think the fandom feels very fractured at the moment because of the divides and subdivides between Casual Viewers & GRRM Canon Connoisseurs, Team Green & Team Black, and going even further back, probably to GOT Final Season Enjoyers & GOT Final Season Haters. There is just... a lot of baggage and people have strong opinions!

The more s2 goes on the more I think HOTD contributes to its own controversy by giving out mixed signals. It contradicts itself both conceptually and in the small details, in everything from timeline to character development. To me, that makes it a playground for confirmation bias. The writers and even the actors talk a lot about wanting to leave things "open to interpretation," but that's a device that works until it doesn't! Oftentimes, from these particular writers on this particular project, it feels like a fear to commit rather than an intentional choice, and in response to that, the audience overcompensates by planting their flag on one side of every divide or another, and that decision colors their interpretation of everything that follows.

Personally, I admit to not rating the writing of s2 very highly. I find the dialogue stilted and lacking in subtlety, there have been pacing issues throughout, character work is almost nonexistent in favor of furthering the plot towards confrontations that feel rather pointless in their execution. But I know some people disagree and have had fun with it!. That's why I say it depends on who you ask, because, being an adaptation, everyone has different ideas about what they find worth preserving in adaptations! I'm always wary to talk about this because I never want to make it sound like HOTD enjoyers are somehow less intelligent or less critical (that is never my intention - I err on the side of being as cautious as possible because I don't want to rob anyone of their happiness or satisfaction with a television series because, at the end of the day... it's really not that serious), but one of the things I've noticed in people who do enjoy the show is that they take the writing at face value. They go with the flow of the narrative, they suspend their disbelief, go without question where they are led and where their confirmation bias leads them. Their response to the show is reactive as opposed to analytical, and that is not a wrong way to watch the series!!! I say that with zero irony, zero sarcasm, zero intention of being the fandom police.

Again, I admit to my own bias when I say that I find the themes of F&B and ASOIAF more compelling than the show's themes, and that it's disappointing to not see what I found important about the story translated onscreen, and to feel... quite manipulated by the writing, if I'm being honest. And my opinion on that score is as valid as the next person's. But again, strong feelings.

If by controversy you are referring to reactions within the fandom... listen, this kind of discourse sells and HBO knew exactly what it was doing when it set up the marketing for this season to be "choose a side." The other day I was watching an unrelated show on Max and got hit with a popup that said "pick the character you want on the Iron Throne!!!" or something of the sort - I think my eyes rolled so far into my head that I saw god and my cerebral cortex. If by controversy you mean "why do some people absolutely love s2 while other people seem to do nothing but moan about it"? Maybe it's the corner of the fandom I've chosen to pitch my tent, but most of the #hotd critical people I follow are lovely and seem to criticize strongly, quite frankly, because they love this world. And I don't mean they're book purists. I mean they have a solid idea of what they find thematically important, and it goes beyond Green vs Black. But I do think the idea persists that if you love something, you shouldn't find fault with it, you shouldn't poke holes in it, you shouldn't criticize.

Basically, fandom in general has become very polarized and the way HOTD is written (vaguely, the pendulum swinging constantly, without rhyme or reason, between one stance and the next) lends itself to extra chaos.

Add to that the fact that the sophomore season of every show is do or die, the moment when it doubles down and has to commit to what it wants to say... except this show doesn't because it can't... and it's a recipe for disaster, my friend. We're in the trenches out here. I suggest finding a little corner that engages your mind and doesn't crush your spirit, putting on a helmet, and hoping for the best.

#asks #house of the dragon #hotd fandom

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thephantomcasebook · 1 year

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You know, about the Matt, Emma, Olivia thing … I’ve heard so many versions, one of which is that they were protesting Sapochnik/Hess’s script, not the new one, and they’re part of the reason for the rewrites and Grrm was on their side. This doesn’t completely make sense as it seems Emma and Olivia liked Sapochnik’s ideas… but then again Hess was the one who made Larys a creep and Daemon a domestic abuser, so maybe they were protesting those elements, which I’m sure she would have tried to make worse? Because I honestly can’t see Matt sticking his neck out over simple disagreements about the characters, even the DV stuff, he is on record saying that at the end of the day, he does what’s in the script. He gives opinions/suggestions and improvs some things as any actor does, but he seems pretty willing to do whatever. Like I just don’t think he cares that much about HOTD, beyond his job as an actor. I can’t see him raising a stink about the script unless it was truly egregious and Emma and/or Olivia were legitimately uncomfortable with something (and I don’t mean uncomfortable as in Olivia wants Alicent to be a lesbian and is mad she’s not, I mean there’s some really serious sexual or domestic violence). Idk, that’s just the vibe I get from him based on interviews, but maybe he’s more invested than I think. I do agree that Olivia is probably too invested in her headcanons and is arguing with the writers about it, but I think that might be a separate issue from the alleged meeting the three of them had with the execs. I guess I just err on the side of believing that HBO would absolutely be willing to put an actress in an unnecessarily degrading scene for shock value (and that Hess would insist on these scenes as part of her “men are evil” pseudo-feminist agenda) considering GOT’s history.

Look, I'll always be up front with you, nonny.

I'm completely open to being 1000% wrong on everything.

If Cooke was out there defending the sanctity of Alicent and Criston's relationship, cause, Hess wanted to ruin them, or ruin Criston's character. I'll gladly take my Katana, basket hat, and a bindle of food, and leave the village with my braid cut from my dishonor.

But from everything I've ever seen of Olivia Cooke through the years, I just don't believe she capable of something that selfless for the integrity of a show that she has made crystal clear that she does not care about. She's an activist first and an actress way down the list. Cooke would do anything to press her message, and I don't think that she'd go out of her way to protect a male role or character to the tune of fucking her entire career for the creative integrity of something she sees only as a stepping-stone.

From my prospective, as someone who deeply distrusts activists of any kind - for good reasons - I'd genuinely believe that Cooke was trying to defend Sapochnik and Hess's original creative vision of this being a tyrannical story of how patriarchy destroyed a Lesbian Romance. And that them going over the show runner's heads triggered the studio to bring in a ringer to completely dismantle that vision and bring the breakaway producers and cast to heel.

However, I do keep open and will entertain the slight - however small - idea that Hess had tried to ruin Criston's character and lean into that all the men on team green - all men in general - are evil. Just because, it seems that the studio acted by bringing in a third party to story edit after the alleged incident. And there is a possibility that they got Hess benched for the former head writer of "The Crown" who has experience writing character driven assembles about royalty.

But, like I said, I could be completely wrong. And I'll own it if I am ...

But I just don't think Cooke capable of falling on her sword. There is something incredibly angry and spiteful about her and the way she expresses her opinions and agendas, you can feel it. And I just don't think she's capable of anything but pushing her agenda and personal bullshit, not caring about anything or anyone.

As for Matt Smith ... look, I can't be objective about him. I've been a fan of Lily James for years and years, and he did something to that girl, something bad, and she's been running - hurting herself and others - to get away from it. And anyone who knows anything about her, knows that Matt Smith has everything to do with it. She ran all the way to Los Angeles, to the other side of the world, to get away from him. I don't know, so I don't comment ...

But I don't trust any story where Matt Smith stands up for women.

#House of the Dragon #Olivia Cooke #emma d'arcy #Matt Smith #Alicole

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aella-targaryen · 2 years

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I’m not that anon but holy shit ep 10 blew my mind. I read the books. I was hyped for Aemond to do The Thing. I follow the fan discourse online, people arguing back and forth bc “well fire& blood has an unrealiable narrator blah blah blah.” I was hyped to find out why see criston hates rhaenyra so much. I loved what they did with Daemon& Rhaenyras night out in the town.

But this? This was the ultimate “hey, heads up, even if you read the book - keep watching this series because we do have some aces up our sleeves.”

And it’s not even done for shock value I believe - GRRM was involved in the writing process for this episode.

And the more you think about it, Aemond Vhagar doing The Thing makes so much more sense and becomes so much more tragic in that context.

I’m firmly of the believe the Targa and their dragons were just diminished against me again over the centuries, making sure the family doesn’t grow too big. Keeping them around just to be there to fight the long night and then be discarded and extinguished once that job is done.

Some supernatural power going “Hm. Too many Targs, time to thin them out. Let’s get this Shakespearean tragedy started!” IS my overall Westeros headcanon tbh

Dear Anon

I'm glad that you enjoyed the ep. 10, what I wrote below is just my opinion and I hope that opinion does not change your enthusiasm for the series and its episodes.

-It doesn't bother me that they change some events, it bothers me that they change the personality of the main characters almost completely in such an important episode.In the case of Alicent , the change was good, because she is still a petty person, only with a good origin story for her evil. An explanation.

-I don't care if GRRM wrote every single word of the script of ep. 10 . The authors of the books can make terrible adaptations of their books. In Harry Potter jkr. She participated in the entire process of the movies, even so it is a bad cinematographic saga. HOWEVER, THE HP FILMS WERE SAVED BECAUSE THE ESSENCE OF THE CHARACTERS WAS RESPECTED.On FB jkr. She took care of almost everything and those are bad movies. That the author is involved does not mean that the series or the movies are good.

-Ok, the Aemond scene, I could have accepted it, but that scene at the moment is destroying the whole plot of Cheese and Blood and also the moment of his death. They will largely make Aemond's death the result of an accident and misunderstanding. A lack of respect for one of the best players on the team green.

-I a good tragedy you can't make all the characters pity.It's like you feel sorry for Benvolio, Tybalt and Mercurio in Romeo and Juliet or macbeth's wife.

-I've always thought the Targ died out because magic died out of the world.

#hotd #daemon x rhaenyra #daemon targaryen #rhaenyra targaryen #rhaenyra x daemon #rhaenrya targaryen #rhaneyra targaryen #hotd spoilers #house of the dragon spoilers #daemyra #ask anon

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poorquentyn · 7 years

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Men’s Lives Have Meaning, Part 5: The Hour of Ghosts

Series so far here

“There’s a tipping point in every tragedy where inevitability locks the exit doors on free will and you know that after this, there is no turning back.”

-- @racefortheironthrone

Hello everyone. My name is Emmett, and I could have been imagined, designed, constructed, and sold as a consumer for the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. I had just turned twelve when the first one came out at the end of 2001, I’d read the books that summer, and the infusion of swelling Hollywood orchestras and Peter Jackson’s beloved action schlock was perfectly calibrated to take my love for the material and shoot it into the stratosphere. I still look back on those movies with love...mostly. There are moments, especially in Return of the King, where the tone tips overboard:

youtube

On one level, that’s what we want our heroes to say, right? We’re up against the odds, we might not be rewarded for our efforts, but let’s do it anyway; that’s the lesson a lot of great genre fiction is meant to leave us with, in one form or another. The problem with that clip is the knowing wink, the sly acknowledgement that after they’ve escaped so many other hair-raising disasters, this is just another day at work. I get the joke, but it would make more sense for (say) a Bond or Indy movie, where it really is just another day at work and part of the enjoyment comes from how what’s over-the-top for us is normal for them. In the context of LOTR, it’s tonally off, because this is not supposed to feel episodic. It’s supposed to feel climactic, like our heroes are genuinely in danger as everything comes to a head, and that’s marred when you expose the plot armor so blatantly. If this is just another day, why are we supposed to be invested in their risk?

Of course, Peter Jackson didn’t invent that problem. It’s a storytelling problem. And that is why GRRM created Quentyn Martell. It’s why he tries to tame a dragon and why he fails: to reclaim the stakes and re-sensitize us to the risk. It’s not just that he dies, it’s how and why he dies. What does it mean to not have plot armor? What does it say about quest narratives that they can collapse so completely and yet the quester clings to tropes as if they’ll save him? How are we to live if Story fails as an organizing principle? “The Spurned Suitor” brings these questions to the forefront, right before “The Dragontamer” sets it all on fire. It’s the most reflective and dialogue-heavy of Quent’s chapters, the most thematically explicit; it’s the one that cuts through the hellish imagery dominating this storyline right to what it all means. In genre terms, where previous Quent chapters soaked the fantasy tropes in blood-red horror, this chapter has a distinctly noirish feel to it, in terms of both imagery and theme.

“The Merchant’s Man” introduced Quent reeling from his friends’ deaths; “The Windblown” caught up with him in the wake of the Sack of Astapor. In both chapters, as I said in the essays in question, GRRM’s focus is less the traumatic event itself than the psychological impact on Quent--both are about how one processes these existential challenges to the hero’s journey, and why one would keep going in the face of them. “The Spurned Suitor” pulls the same trick, but with a twist. In this case, the pre-chapter trauma that shapes the chapter isn’t an obstacle to the quest. It’s the outright failure of it. Quent reached the beautiful princess, proved himself willing (though not exactly eager) to transform from a frog back into a prince...but she said no.

To be clear, chapter title aside, the horror here is not getting rejected by a pretty girl. (Like I said last time, Dany doesn’t reject Quent in favor of the dark dashing Daario and his lust for open war, but in favor of the dishwater-dull Hizdahr and the peace he ostensibly brings; as she tells herself upon agreeing to marry the latter, she’s trying to act on behalf of her people.) The horror here is getting rejected after losing your friends and killing screaming teenagers along the way; the horror is selling your soul to live a life you didn’t want to live, only to find you’re not even going to get that. The horror is that it wasn’t worth it. It all meant nothing. Story is a lie. Of course, if that’s all there was to Quent’s story, it would be tired and boring. What grounds it emotionally is that laserlike focus on the aftermath of that revelation, as it hits home harder with each step of the descent. What do you do when your easy narrative falls apart and you’re left with no good options?

In “The Merchant’s Man” and “The Windblown,” Quent’s reaction to this trauma and disillusionment was to repress what he’d gone through and done, soldiering on with the Windblown repeatedly intervening (as if sent by some sinister observing God-Author) to allow him to do so. Now that he’s faced with the failure of his quest, all the kid wants to do is to go home, but he can’t bring himself to face the shame of failure and (even more so) his survivor’s guilt...

“We should be heeding Selmy. When Barristan the Bold tells you to run, a wise man laces up his boots. We should find a ship for Volantis whilst the port is still open.”

Just the mention turned Ser Archibald’s cheeks green. “No more ships. I’d sooner hop back to Volantis on one foot.”

Volantis, Quentyn thought. Then Lys, then home. Back the way I came, empty-handed. Three brave men dead, for what?

It would be sweet to see the Greenblood again, to visit Sunspear and the Water Gardens and breathe the clean sweet mountain air of Yronwood in place of the hot, wet, filthy humors of Slaver’s Bay. His father would speak no word of rebuke, Quentyn knew, but the disappointment would be there in his eyes. His sister would be scornful, the Sand Snakes would mock him with smiles sharp as swords, and Lord Yronwood, his second father, who had sent his own son along to keep him safe…

“I will not keep you here,” Quentyn told his friends. “My father laid this task on me, not you. Go home, if that is what you want. By whatever means you like. I am staying.”

...and so instead, he reaches out to the Windblown in the hopes that they’ll once again keep his quest going, even as their actions and attitudes continue to undercut the ostensibly righteous and hopeful nature of said quest. We see that right from the beginning of Quent’s penultimate POV chapter:

The hour of ghosts was almost upon them when Ser Gerris Drinkwater returned to the pyramid to report that he had found Beans, Books, and Old Bill Bone in one of Meereen’s less savory cellars, drinking yellow wine and watching naked slaves kill one another with bare hands and filed teeth.

This fighting pit, an unofficial but not-so-secret alternative to Daznak’s, is a glimpse of the Meereen outside the rarified domain of the Masters. The black market sprang up as the sanctioned one shut down, and that the Windblown are taking part reminds us of the sellswords’ own analogous role in The System, straddling the line between a standard part of Essosi military coalitions and a wild card constantly in the position to upset the applecart.

That backdrop provides the thematic and emotional context for the decision Quent makes in this chapter. The hour of ghosts, indeed; the shadow city of alleys and cellars into which Team Quentyn descends in “The Spurned Suitor” is haunted, not only by those already dead but also by the deaths to come. As has been the case throughout Quent’s storyline, his personal struggles dovetail with (and are influenced by) the big picture of the Meereenese Knot. Just as Dany’s refusal obliterated the remnants of the “tale to tell our grandchildren” veneer, leading to Quent betting his life on a wild roll of the dice, so has her departure at Daznak’s shattered the pretense of peace, leading to the whole pot boiling over as ADWD comes to a close. Indeed, I’d argue that Quent’s quest and Hizdahr’s peace are analogous. They sound good on the surface, appealing to values we instinctively support, but quickly prove rotten underneath the gild, enabling the worst actors in the Meereenese Knot instead of righteous causes, before they both finally come crashing down at the same place and time in the Kingbreaker/Dragontamer two-sided setpiece. It’s all approaching the tipping point, personally and politically.

But as I said, what makes Quent’s chapters more than glum grim deconstruction is the extent to which the characters are aware of this tipping point, that the story is falling apart around them, and that’s made explicit in “The Spurned Suitor.” On their way to their fateful meeting with the Tattered Prince, Quent and Drink argue about the former’s plans, and IMO it’s one of the most important and profound passages in the series. Let’s break it down.

“ ‘The dragon has three heads,’ she said to me. ‘My marriage need not be the end of all your hopes,’ she said. ‘I know why you are here. For fire and blood.’ I have Targaryen blood in me, you know that. I can trace my lineage back —”

“Fuck your lineage,” said Gerris. “The dragons won’t care about your blood, except maybe how it tastes. You cannot tame a dragon with a history lesson. They’re monsters, not maesters. Quent, is this truly what you want to do?”

“This is what I have to do. For Dorne. For my father. For Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry.”

“They’re dead,” said Gerris. “They won’t care.”

“All dead,” Quentyn agreed. “For what? To bring me here, so I might wed the dragon queen. A grand adventure, Cletus called it. Demon roads and stormy seas, and at the end of it the most beautiful woman in the world. A tale to tell our grandchildren. But Cletus will never father a child, unless he left a bastard in the belly of that tavern wench he liked. Will will never have his wedding. Their deaths should have some meaning.”

Gerris pointed to where a corpse slumped against a brick wall, attended by a cloud of glistening green flies. “Did his death have meaning?”

Quentyn looked at the body with distaste. “He died of the flux. Stay well away from him.” The pale mare was inside the city walls. Small wonder that the streets seemed so empty. “The Unsullied will send a corpse cart for him.”

“No doubt. But that was not my question. Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths. I loved Will and Cletus too, but this will not bring them back to us. This is a mistake, Quent. You cannot trust in sellswords.”

“They are men like any other men. They want gold, glory, power. That’s all I am trusting in.” That, and my own destiny. I am a prince of Dorne, and the blood of dragons is in my veins.

We see here that Quent’s sunk cost fallacy has completely taken over his decision-making process. Because his quest has already gotten people killed, it must continue, or in his mind, they died for nothing. This is, of course, extremely relatable. We’ve all made decisions like this, albeit usually on a much smaller scale. No one likes to admit failure, everyone wants to attach some meaning to their losses, and we’re meant to understand why Quent is so helplessly mired in panicked desperation. I can fix this, I will fix this, oh gods please I have to fix this...

GRRM makes this decision easy to empathize with in order to sucker punch us with the larger revelation: the basic mechanics of the genre are designed to create precisely such a sunk cost fallacy. You are supposed to lose companions--that raises the stakes, heightens our emotional involvement, and challenges the protagonist both externally (how do I logistically complete the quest without that companion?) and internally (how do I soldier on in the face of that loss?) You are supposed to have a low point where you question everything that’s led you to this moment. You are supposed to take an enormous risk. You are supposed to, literally or metaphorically, tame a dragon.

In Quent’s case, however, we’re dealing with a Last Hero who never finds the Children of the Forest--or perhaps, a Last Hero whom the Children pitilessly watch die. As such, when looking at his arc as a whole, those losses and low points don’t serve to allow our hero to prove himself and us to revel in victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Instead, they are warning signs that our hero ignores. Quentyn’s story interrogates reader assumptions about quest narratives: why do we embrace such a narrative? What are we overlooking when we do so? What if the quest in question rips those assumptions limb from limb and leaves them to bleed out on the deck of the Meadowlark, in the ashes of Astapor, in that hellish pit beneath the Great Pyramid?

As far as what all this looks like to Quent himself, it’s made clear that what he’s relying on to save his quest (and his soul) isn’t anything intrinsic to his actions. He’s not counting on courage or ingenuity. He’s not even counting, first and foremost, on the Windblown. He’s counting on the story itself to save him, the elements of his narrative that would seem to demand he succeed: his princely heritage, his lost companions, the fact that he’s taking a big foolish romantic risk.

But as I said a few essays back, the story is in fact out to kill Quentyn Martell, and so Drink does what good friends have to do sometimes: tell you that you’re spouting BS. “Fuck your lineage” is GRRM speaking through Drink, launching a deconstructive nuke at the idea that your bloodline is what makes you The Hero. That holds true with the *actual* heroes as well, of course--one of the major themes of Jon’s story is that everything he’s learned and struggled with is what makes him a worthy savior figure, not R+L=J in and of itself. But it’s different with Quent because he doesn’t have a grand destiny, earned or otherwise. As such, he’s left alone in an existentialist void, trying to create meaning out of what’s befallen his quest.

And just as I wrote my series on Davos’s ADWD arc in order to talk about his letter to Marya, I wrote this series in order to talk about Drink’s response to Quent’s desperate plea to the gods that “their deaths should have some meaning.” This is a bold statement, I know, but: “Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths” is the closest we’ve gotten to an overarching thesis statement for ASOIAF. It reaches all the way back to the first book, to Ned (who, like Quent, turns out to not be the protagonist after all) and his shocking demise. So many readers have interpreted that moment, as well as the Red Wedding two books later, as being indicative of nihilism on GRRM’s part. Everything is chaos, honor gets you killed and is therefore worthless, “power is power.” But this is not so. Ned’s legacy is not his death, it is his life. The children determined to find each other again because Dad taught them to stick together and be brave, the vassals who have set out to rescue and restore those children in his name, the memory both in-universe and IRL of a decent man who treated his servants like human beings worth listening to and who was determined to protect the young and innocent...all of this is the meaning of Ned Stark, not that he ended up as a head on a spike. By the same token, the meaning of Tywin Lannister isn’t that he died on the can. It’s why he died on the can, and that is because he lived a terrible life. His legacy is his family tearing itself apart, his hoped-for Lannister regime falling to pieces across Westeros, and his oh-so-symbolic reeking corpse. One of these men, for all his mistakes, found and spread a worthy meaning in his brief time on Terros, and the other, for all his triumphs, did not. We are all mortal; all of us, “from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat,” are ultimately helpless before the abyss that Quent leaps into in his final chapter. No one (not even Euron, try as he might) can change that. What matters, what makes us who are, what means something, is how we live our lives knowing that in the end, the house always wins.

“Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths” is also the first arrow in my quiver when it comes to defending the worth of the new characters and storylines in the Feastdance. Why should we care about the Martells or the “Griffs” if they’re just showing up now and will probably die before endgame? Because moving the plot along to book seven is not actually what makes a story meaningful. Lives lived make stories meaningful:

The door to the roof of the tower was stuck so fast that it was plain no one had opened it in years. He had to put his shoulder to it to force it open. But when Jon Connington stepped out onto the high battlements, the view was just as intoxicating as he remembered: the crag with its wind-carved rocks and jagged spires, the sea below growling and worrying at the foot of the castle like some restless beast, endless leagues of sky and cloud, the wood with its autumnal colors. “Your father’s lands are beautiful,” Prince Rhaegar had said, standing right where Jon was standing now. And the boy he’d been had replied, “One day they will all be mine.” As if that could impress a prince who was heir to the entire realm, from the Arbor to the Wall.

Griffin’s Roost had been his, eventually, if only for a few short years. From here, Jon Connington had ruled broad lands extending many leagues to the west, north, and south, just as his father and his father’s father had before him. But his father and his father’s father had never lost their lands. He had. I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.

And of course, Drink’s powerful words are GRRM’s message to us about how to think about Quent. Do not think that he meant nothing because he failed and died or because he was never going to be the protagonist, the author is saying. What matters is his life, the POV we have experienced and come to understand. He lived, he tried, he died. It is for us to remember him. I only wish he had heeded the lesson Drink was trying to teach him, before it was far too late.

Only with that why firmly established does GRRM move onto the what, knowing that the former will lend resonance to the latter. The plot of “The Spurned Suitor” concerns Quent turning in desperation to the Tattered Prince and his Windblown for help taming one of Dany’s captive children, despite having betrayed them. As the city simmers and seethes around them, the princes meet in secret.

The sun had sunk below the city wall by the time they found the purple lotus, painted on the weathered wooden door of a low brick hovel squatting amidst a row of similar hovels in the shadow of the great yellow-and-green pyramid of Rhazdar. Quentyn knocked twice, as instructed. A gruff voice answered through the door, growling something unintelligible in the mongrel tongue of Slaver’s Bay, an ugly blend of Old Ghiscari and High Valyrian. The prince answered in the same tongue. “Freedom.”

The door opened. Gerris entered first, for caution’s sake, with Quentyn close behind him and the big man bringing up the rear. Within, the air was hazy with bluish smoke, whose sweet smell could not quite cover up the deeper stinks of piss and sour wine and rotting meat. The space was much larger than it had seemed from without, stretching off to right and left into the adjoining hovels. What had appeared to be a dozen structures from the street turned into one long hall inside.

At this hour the house was less than half full. A few of the patrons favored the Dornishmen with looks bored or hostile or curious. The rest were crowded around the pit at the far end of the room, where a pair of naked men were slashing at each other with knives whilst the watchers cheered them on.

Quentyn saw no sign of the men they had come to meet. Then a door he had not seen before swung open, and an old woman emerged, a shriveled thing in a dark red tokar fringed with tiny golden skulls. Her skin was white as mare’s milk, her hair so thin that he could see the scalp beneath.

“Dorne,” she said, “I be Zahrina. Purple Lotus. Go down here, you find them.” She held the door and gestured them through.

Team Quent is going underground and behind the curtain in “The Spurned Suitor.” In terms of the big picture, we’re seeing a Meereen that Dany never even glimpsed from atop the pyramid. On a more intimate scale, this imagery reflects the scales falling from Quent’s eyes about how the world works. He never thought his quest would involve cutting ethically murky deals in back-alley parlors (again, it’s suddenly a noir story), but if he wants to keep going for his fallen friends’ sake, it’s the only avenue he has left. It’s worth noting here how Quent contrasts with his fellow Questers for Dany. Where Quent wonders why Dany would ever choose him “among all the princes of the world,” Aegon has never even considered that she would reject him, because he was raised in a Perfect Prince bubble while Quent was told out of nowhere to Go West East, Young Man at age 18. Tyrion, too, wanders the shifting political sands of Essos in the wake of Dany’s crusade, but at this point in his storyline, he finds it hard to care about most of it, so his bitter detached cynicism makes for another illuminating contrast with Quent’s grief and desperation. And Victarion...well, as I’ve argued before, his story is the black comedy to Quent’s tragedy. Vic’s doom is presented as a huge joke on him by his puppetmasters: Euron, Moqorro, and George R.R. Martin. There’s no tragedy there because Vic keeps rejecting the possibility for growth or change. He’s there to be laughed at, by us as well as the monkeys. But with Quent, there really was a worthy life he could’ve lived (as I’ll get into next time). It’s just not this one, this one-way ride into fiery oblivion, escorted and enabled by the Satan of Slaver’s Bay and his motley crew. Speaking of which:

An undercellar. It was a long way down, and so dark that Quentyn had to feel his way to keep from slipping. Near the bottom Ser Archibald pulled his dagger.

They emerged in a brick vault thrice the size of the winesink above. Huge wooden vats lined the walls as far as the prince could see. A red lantern hung on a hook just inside the door, and a greasy black candle flickered on an overturned barrel serving as a table. That was the only light.

Caggo Corpsekiller was pacing by the wine vats, his black arakh hanging at his hip. Pretty Meris stood cradling a crossbow, her eyes as cold and dead as two grey stones. Denzo D’han barred the door once the Dornishmen were inside, then took up a position in front of it, arms crossed against his chest.

One too many, Quentyn thought.

The Tattered Prince himself was seated at the table, nursing a cup of wine. In the yellow candlelight his silver-grey hair seemed almost golden, though the pouches underneath his eyes were etched as large as saddlebags. He wore a brown wool traveler’s cloak, with silvery chain mail glimmering underneath. Did that betoken treachery or simple prudence? An old sellsword is a cautious sellsword. Quentyn approached his table. “My lord. You look different without your cloak.”

“My ragged raiment?” The Pentoshi gave a shrug. “A poor thing…yet those tatters fill my foes with fear, and on the battlefield the sight of my rags blowing in the wind emboldens my men more than any banner. And if I want to move unseen, I need only slip it off to become plain and unremarkable.” He gestured at the bench across from him. “Sit. I understand you are a prince. Would that I had known. Will you drink? Zahrina offers food as well. Her bread is stale and her stew is unspeakable. Grease and salt, with a morsel or two of meat. Dog, she says, but I think rat is more likely. It will not kill you, though. I have found that it is only when the food is tempting that one must beware. Poisoners invariably choose the choicest dishes.”

“You brought three men,” Ser Gerris pointed out, with an edge in his voice. “We agreed on two apiece.”

“Meris is no man. Meris, sweet, undo your shirt, show him.”

“That will not be necessary,” said Quentyn. If the talk he had heard was true, beneath that shirt Pretty Meris had only the scars left by the men who’d cut her breasts off. “Meris is a woman, I agree. You’ve still twisted the terms.”

“Tattered and twisty, what a rogue I am. Three to two is not much of an advantage, it must be admitted, but it counts for something. In this world, a man must learn to seize whatever gifts the gods chose to send him. That was a lesson I learned at some cost. I offer it to you as a sign of my good faith.”

We’ve got a literal descent matching the emotional/thematic one, to make a foolish risky deal that will end up claiming our protagonist body and soul, with someone who’s lying and spinning right off the bat, his deceptively simple appearance hiding a cruel sardonic heart...so yeah, like I said, the Tattered Prince is the devil of the Meereenese Knot, the tempter-corrupter figure luring Quent into hell. “Tattered and twisty, what a rogue I am” is precisely the sort of way Satan and characters similar to him talk; they lie to you, and then they make fun of you for believing them. After all, Quent, you only got into Meereen in the first place because of the Tattered Prince’s deceitfulness...and because of your own.

The Pentoshi gave a shrug. “One thing I am certain of. Someone will have need of our swords.”

“I have need of those swords. Dorne will hire you.”

The Tattered Prince glanced at Pretty Meris. “He does not lack for gall, this Frog. Must I remind him? My dear prince, the last contract we signed you used to wipe your pretty pink bottom.”

“I will double whatever the Yunkishmen are paying you.”

“And pay in gold upon the signing of our contract, yes?”

“I will pay you part when we reach Volantis, the rest when I am back in Sunspear. We brought gold with us when we set sail, but it would have been hard to conceal once we joined the company, so we gave it over to the banks. I can show you papers.”

“Ah. Papers. But we will be paid double.”

“Twice as many papers,” said Pretty Meris.

“The rest you’ll have in Dorne,” Quentyn insisted. “My father is a man of honor. If I put my seal to an agreement, he will fulfill its terms. You have my word on that.”

The Tattered Prince finished his wine, turned the cup over, and set it down between them. “So. Let me see if I understand. A proven liar and oathbreaker wishes to contract with us and pay in promises. And for what services? I wonder. Are my Windblown to smash the Yunkai’i and sack the Yellow City? Defeat a Dothraki khalasar in the field? Escort you home to your father? Or will you be content if we deliver Queen Daenerys to your bed wet and willing? Tell me true, Prince Frog. What would you have of me and mine?”

You’ve been lying this whole way, to the world and yourself. What’s one more piece of wood on that fire? Again, though, it’s precisely that sunk-cost fallacy, the panicked certainty that it’s too late to turn back, that gets Quent killed. In so much of genre fiction, that “I started this, I have to finish it” drive is celebrated, even cast as the thing that makes you the hero. Here, it is revealed as a sad self-delusion that only serves to throw another body on the pile of the dead. Quent needs so badly to make his friends’ sacrifice worth it that he’s willing to sell out an *entire city* (namely, Pentos) to make it happen. The cynical world-weary Windblown are here to cut through that fragile narrative, telling Quent that neither he nor his story is special:

“I ask your pardon for our deception. The only ships sailing for Slaver’s Bay were those that had been hired to bring you to the wars.”

The Tattered Prince gave a shrug. “Every turncloak has his tale. You are not the first to swear me your swords, take my coin, and run. All of them have reasons. ‘My little son is sick,’ or ‘My wife is putting horns on me,’ or ‘The other men all make me suck their cocks.’ Such a charming boy, the last, but I did not excuse his desertion. Another fellow told me our food was so wretched that he had to flee before it made him sick, so I had his foot cut off, roasted it up, and fed it to him. Then I made him our camp cook. Our meals improved markedly, and when his contract was fulfilled he signed another. You, though…several of my best are locked up in the queen’s dungeons thanks to that lying tongue of yours, and I doubt that you can even cook.”

“I am a prince of Dorne,” said Quentyn. “I had a duty to my father and my people. There was a secret marriage pact.”

“So I heard. And when the silver queen saw your scrap of parchment she fell into your arms, yes?”

“No,” said Pretty Meris.

“No? Oh, I recall. Your bride flew off on a dragon. Well, when she returns, do be sure to invite us to your nuptials. The men of the company would love to drink to your happiness, and I do love a Westerosi wedding. The bedding part especially, only…oh, wait…” He turned to Denzo D’han. “Denzo, I thought you told me that the dragon queen had married some Ghiscari.”

“A Meereenese nobleman. Rich.”

The Tattered Prince turned back to Quentyn. “Could that be true? Surely not. What of your marriage pact?”

“She laughed at him,” said Pretty Meris.

Daenerys never laughed. The rest of Meereen might see him as an amusing curiosity, like the exiled Summer Islander King Robert used to keep at King’s Landing, but the queen had always spoken to him gently. “We came too late,” said Quentyn.

Interesting to note that Quent is pulling an UnKiss here, convincing himself that Dany did not laugh upon him revealing his identity and mission, when in truth, she did. That just goes to show how thoroughly he’s backed himself into a corner. “We came too late,” and so again, we have a Quent chapter ending with the Windblown enabling our hero’s descent. Of course, Quent is responsible for this decision--he came to them, not the other way around. I’m not trying to strip him of agency, as that would be a much less engaging story. But what I’m interested in here is how the failure of the quest, the shattering of the ideal, has led to Quent making this terrible decision. Here’s where GRRM’s existentialist-romantic take on the genre comes into play: Quent was taught to uphold and believe in certain norms because an ordered universe will reward him for it, not because following the rules is the right thing to do in itself. As such, when Quent’s quest proves over and over again that there is no inherent order to the universe, and as such no automatic reward, Quent loses all moorings; he doesn’t have that Davos/Brienne “no chance and no choice” ethos to keep him going in the face of the abyss.

And that’s why he makes a deal with the devil: it seems like his best option.

“I need you to help me steal a dragon.”

Caggo Corpsekiller chuckled. Pretty Meris curled her lip in a half-smile. Denzo D’han whistled.

The Tattered Prince only leaned back on his stool and said, “Double does not pay for dragons, princeling. Even a frog should know that much. Dragons come dear. And men who pay in promises should have at least the sense to promise more.”

“If you want me to triple—”

“What I want,” said the Tattered Prince, “is Pentos.”

And as always, making a deal with the devil lands our protagonist in fiery torment, condemned by his own folly. After Quent’s death, Barristan takes responsibility for delivering Pentos to Tatters, and come TWOW, I think Dany will fulfill the bargain after confronting Illyrio RE Aegon. Because a deal with the devil can’t be undone--it just transfers from person to person.

Indeed, it’s tonally appropriate that Quent’s quest climaxes not with him becoming the hero, but with him letting the devil back into paradise. One thing I noticed in this reread is how closely the form of “The Spurned Suitor” matches that of “The Dragontamer.” In both chapters, Quent trembles on the edge of the Void, wondering am I really going to go through with this, decides that he is, and this descent is promptly made literal. In his third chapter, he descends to the cellar to face the Tattered Prince and his cronies, sealing the doom that unfolds in his fourth chapter, in which he descends into the dank dark hell beneath the Great Pyramid to face Rhaegal and Viserion. One inextricably leads to the other; symbolically, the Tattered Prince is the dragonfire, the epitome of how Quent trying to “fix” his own story only serves to keep revealing how it cannot be fixed. This is your life, Quentyn Martell. You are not the hero. And just as with my second favorite character in ASOIAF, Stannis Baratheon, this revelation will be rendered in fire and blood.

#quentyn martell #quentyn in adwd #gerris drinkwater #the tattered prince #asoiaf meta #the windblown #meereen #a dance with dragons

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amorremanet · 8 years

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what's your novel about??

Oh my gosh, nonny, thank you so much for asking!!

Okay, so the absolute shortest version — the, “summarize this thing and make it sound as shitty as possible” meme version — is, “Superpowered LGBTIQ neurodivergent and/or mentally ill mutant weirdos with emotional problems (and their self-appointed sidekick, who isn’t a mutant but is very enthusiastic about the work) investigate some seemingly unrelated incidents and accidentally uncover a neo-fascist supervillain club that’s trying to take over the U.S. on as many levels as possible — currently, by pulling strings to sabotage the lead-up to the still-upcoming 2016 election — and the neo-fascist supervillains are, unfortunately, very good at this.

“Also, our heroes start out as a ragtag group of misfits with superpowers [or, in Pete’s case, enthusiasm, wit, dedication af, adaptability, and a rather sizable collection of lime-green hot-pants], and progressively become both an actual team and a set of accidental rising stars in the superhero world. Is it a bit of a tired plot? Yeah, especially given how often superhero teams have to do some kind of song and dance like this — but: 1. it’s done so often because it resonates with people and, when done well, it can work; and 2. tired or not, it’s something that viewers/readers deserve to actually see happening, rather than just being told, ‘oh yeah, now they’re a team, okay? okay cool.’”

At least, that’s the plot of the first book, since…… I can’t make anything simple or less-difficult for myself, series are often more fun in general, and I just have a lot of characters here who I love, so the whole, “These incidents are starting to string themselves together in really suspicious ways, oh shit fuck goddammit, the election is being sabotaged” plot is just the start of things.* The bigger series plot would be more about trying to deal with further attempts by the neo-fascist supervillain club to wreak all kinds of neo-fascist supervillain Hell all over everything.

Then, the way I’m looking at this, structurally? Is that I have an ensemble cast, in the end. There are different tiers of importance among the different characters, because that’s unavoidable — I mean, I rail against JKR’s habit of treating her characters as plot devices first and people second, but even if you all treat your characters as people, you have to prioritize some of them over the others at different points, or else you end up worse off than George RR Martin, drowning in impossible goals and strangled by the giant pile of fictional people you made up to tell stories about — but I still view the cast as fundamentally an ensemble.

However, for the sake of reining in my horrible attention span and trying to avoid GRRM’s example, each installment has a focal character, whose own personal story of the moment gets to exist alongside the bigger plotty plot-stuff of each book (…I am a serious business writer, oh yes I am). As an approach, this has its drawbacks — balancing things without making it all too coincidentally intertwined is a big one — but I also love it because, to me, it reflects the way that life has several different levels to it that aren’t always intimately woven together, but still affect each other and need to find some kind of balance if you’re going to get anywhere

Anywho, the focal character for book one is Sebastian, because on one hand, he was here first. Like, he was originally for a game that my Sunday night RP group was playing this past summer, which was still the same-ish idea of mutant superheroes, except that it was more closely modeled on the way that Aya Brea’s powers work in the Parasite Eve games

Meaning, “the system is very openly based on Parasite Eve, it says so in the player’s handbook and everything,” rather than a motley hodgepodge assortment of superhero comics and movies/TV, speculative fiction in general, LGBTIQ theories and histories and cultures, “okay, I’d kind of like to be more active in superhero-related fandoms, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that the stories I want to tell right now are not easily mapped onto characters who already exist, I won’t feel fulfilled in trying to change them so I can shoehorn Sam and Steve and Nat and Bucky or Dick, Jason Stephanie, Tim, Cass, Duke, and Harper into them, so I’ve got to just say, ‘fuck it’ and do my own thing”

and, “what if I did [something that is a big and very, very deliberate middle finger to either Marvel or DC, possibly both, for some reason or another]” — e.g., “what if I made a pair of characters who are a pretty blatant satire of/commentary on/response to/whatever Marvel’s perpetual, annoying as fuck Cherik-baiting, except that they’re actually married — and they will be literally married as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court rules on Obergefell v. Hodges in-universe — and also they are old lady lesbians, nah nah nah nah nah nah *flips off Stan Lee et al. with both middle fingers while doing a, ‘come at me, bro’ dance and generally being a Stunning Bastion Of Authorial Maturity Lmao Not Really*”

So, yeah. I had to rescope some things after my RP group dropped that game, but in the name of, “developing my character and giving Jake, my DM and high school friend, material with which to torment my character, and also, Double-Cross’s system actually makes character development and characterization pretty important elements to playing the game,” I’d already written way too much stuff to just let it go, and Sebastian had endeared himself to me in a big way, and I just went, “Fuck it, I’ll write my own thing with him in it, it’ll be fun.”

I don’t remember when he decided to look like Hayden Christensen, only that I tried to stop that mental image from solidifying, and trying to stop it only made it worse, so I just gave up and went, “Fine, whatever, look like Hayden Christensen, see what I care.” But then, more importantly than, “Sebastian gets to go first because in fairness, he was here first”? Well.

On a thematic level, I feel like this little mutant disaster’s biggest personal story of the moment (trying desperately to get his shit together after making it to 30 without his clinical depression getting noticed as depression, much less treated; trying to stay sober and find something to do with his life that feels even vaguely fulfilling, which for him would mean, “helping people, doing some kind of good in the world, trying to make someone else happy because he is fairly certain that he never will be, period”; trying to actually deal with the past and move forward, not forgetting it or forsaking it entirely, but also not being frozen and chained to the past, learning from it and building something new)…

…has the most common ground and overlap with the current round of big plotty plot-type stuff, since it’s all about things like, “whoo, the formation of a new team! whoo, the new team getting it together and learning how to work as a team and trying to figure out their team identity and values! oh no, emergence of previously unseen threats that have not actually come from out of nowhere, even though it kind of looks like they have, and are more complicated than previously estimated! oh no, we can’t just delete them from existence because they’re insidious and entrenched in more places than we entirely realize at first, so how do we even fight this! ohhh no, progressive realization that we’re fighting a symptom rather than the actual facts problem, but we can’t just NOT-treat the symptom or shit is even more fucked than it will be if we treat the symptom by not the actual problem, and in some ways we don’t even entirely know what the bigger-picture problem is yet! oh man, what do we do!”

—so, like. These two threads work together better than they would with different parts of the larger, longer story.

(And then there’s Pete, who is an admitted authorial pet of mine, just like GRRM blatantly favors Tyrion and JKR visibly projects onto Harry and Hermione, and who I feel lends himself better to a format more like, “Dunk and Egg”-esque novellas, or a collection of, “chronicles of side-kicking” short stories about his little side-adventures and myriad hijinks that aren’t always immediately relevant to the main story but that are really fun. But I also feel like that might just be an excuse to write more weird adventures for him that aren’t necessarily tied together in the right order, like novels generally need to be unless you have some kind of reason not to do that.

idk, man, I just really love my stale cinnamon roll Dramatic bb theatre kid with a heart of gold who will tell you that you’re wrong and he so does not have a heart of gold while he is digging around Seb’s kitchen and making dinner for himself and his Princess because an unfortunate side-effect of one of Seb’s superpowers — the toxin filtering part of his mutant healing factor — is that his body doesn’t only filter out poisons, gases, narcotics, caffeine, and alcohol… it also filters the antidepressants that he gets given a prescription for about ten hours before abruptly being thrust headlong into his newly-awoken mutant superpowers.

Which is a huge mess all over — though, yes, there is a huge part of this that is a pretty deliberate, “fuck you” to literally every piece of media that goes, “and then the hero found out they had superpowers or magic or the fuck whatever and lol suddenly no more mental illness or disabilities or any kind of neurodivergence or anything neener neener” — and anyway, Pete’s hypothetically just found Seb half-spaced out and listening to, “Careless Whisper” on repeat, and Pete is going to tell you that he doesn’t have any kind of heart of gold because he’s a heartless wretch shut your mouth……

…while he’s making them dinner and going, “okay, come on, Princess. Sit up, let’s try and get you through this. No, don’t argue with me. You did the same — or similar, anyway — for me in that entire ten-day stretch when you knew I wasn’t eating disorder okay but couldn’t get me to talk about it and we’ve been over this: if that’s what friends do for each other, then it cuts both ways, so come on. Dinner. Do you want me to put on Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, Female Trouble, Ten Things I Hate About You, or some other thing until you feel like talking.”)

But anyway, as I was saying.

I look at the attempt to find thematic crossover between the plot parts of a book in the series and the story parts of a book as being kind of like how, in the first three seasons of Community, whatever class the Study Group had together was a of synergistic reflection of certain season-long themes and developments for them as characters and in their relationships.

Like, in season one, they were learning how to talk to each other and the basics of building relationships with and understanding each other, so they took Spanish, a language class.

In season two, they took Anthropology — in-universe described as, “the study of humanity” and which is presented as being so open-ended that shitty memetic youtube vids are as valid an object of study as humanity’s development and use of tools, and the different processes by which humans work together to do greater shit than we can do solo — and in that year’s shenanigans, the Study Group cemented their trust as friends, but also went through Hell together in several cases, and in the last two episodes (the cowboy/Star Warts paintball two-parter), they had to face the question of whether or not removing one of them for his shitty behavior (Pierce) would be better or worse for the overall health of the group.

And in season three, they took Biology, defined in-universe as, “the study of life” (which isn’t wrong irl, but the specific phrasing is important to me, here), and they spend a lot of time exploring and developing their lives, both together and individually, both at Greendale Community College and more importantly outside its walls. There’s also the season-long theme of evolution, because the Study Group have evolved as people and continue to evolve — which reaches its biggest culminations in the finale, not just in Jeff’s Winger Speech, but also with five of the big seven (Annie and Britta are sort of adrift but Troy, Abed, Shirley, and Pierce all have moments, and Jeff has the BIGGEST, most obvious moment).

So, with the books, I’m trying to do something kind of similar. Not quite the same, because…… well, TV vs. novels, school setting vs. a variety of settings but none quite as structured as a school (even one that’s as, well, Greendalian as you get on Community), a million other reasons besides — but having some kind of thematic synergy between the plot part of each of the books and the focal characters’ personal stories in each book…… idk, it gives me a comforting sense of structure to play with?

And aside from that, I feel like it’s probably a better choice for the sake of the whole stories because having those points of connection means they can more easily work to enhance each other, rather than distracting from each other. Like, one of the biggest issues that I have with shoehorned-in romance plots in stories that don’t need a romance plot? Even overlooking how they are almost invariably white and m/f and heteronormative and can be all kinds of, “uggggh” in several other ways besides, it comes down to whether or not they work, thematically and tonally, with everything else.

[this is where i had a tangent trying to illustrate my point by talking about pointlessly shoehorned-in white, m/f romance plots in otherwise no romo stories, then cut it after i started to feel moderately ashamed of how many examples and trends about this that i just have in my back pocket]

The point being: you can use dissonance and conflicting juxtaposed parts of the story to different effects, but it’s often harder to pull off and you do need to have some idea of what you’re doing, otherwise you’re going to end up with a huge mess and no idea where to start sorting through it (I say this based on having done this exact thing several times before)

So, in the interests of not doing that, I like the idea of trying to find the big points of synergy and connection between any given book’s focal char’s story, and the plot points of that installment and how it fits into the larger story. And, for the sake of book 1, Sebastian’s big story of the moment is the one that lines up best with the plot stuff, thematically.

Also, apropos of nothing but, he spends like all of two minutes coming up with his nom de spandex, and ends up with Pete being Unimpressed at him because…… Really, Princess? Princess, really. Like. Princess. Really. Your family is obnoxiously insistent on your Frenchness, even though you were all born and raised in fucking Baltimore and your Dad’s family hasn’t been in France itself since your ancestor sold the old ancestral marquisate and came to save the Revolution with the Marquis de Lafayette… and now you turn into a nine-foot-tall wolf-man…… and you picked out the official, “it is on your actual facts government-issued vigilante hero license” name of…… Gévaudan.

Really, Princess. Fucking. REALLY. Ugggggggh, you’re more creative than that, why did you pick the stupidly obvious werewolf name ffs, your family isn’t even FROM Gévaudan or anywhere in its general damn vicinity, why did you have to pick THAT name, it’s BORING.

And now I don’t know how to wrap this up so I’m gonna abruptly stop talking (apart from the footnote below, which I wrote a couple hours ago, whoops)

Thank you so much for asking this and giving me a free excuse to talk about my novel, nonny

*: Given my chosen subject matter, I feel like it has to be? Partly, yeah, it’s authorial self-gratification because I love my weirdos and their adventures.

But another part of it is the idea that it’s not enough to punch fascists in the face. Like, yes, by all means, we need to do that, too — but fascism is insidious and easily enabled by so many aspects of our contemporary societies. So, we need to resist the urge to simplify the discussion. We can go, “Fascism is wrong, period” while also trying to understand the different ways that fascism draws people into supporting it, how it can spread so far and so thoroughly in nominally non-fascist societies, and its different manifestations and ways of working, so that we can better fight it.

Additionally, we’re products of the same societies that create people who do become fascists and we can easily become complicit in both fascism and oppression more generally, so we need to hold ourselves and each other accountable while trying to fight fascism, instead of putting it off for later, because…… historically, and based on several different precedents? Putting off addressing the internal issues among ourselves doesn’t work; it just creates fertile ground for more problems to breed and makes it even harder for people down the line.

And there aren’t any easy answers here. There are some part of them that are easy or at least easier than others — e.g., agreeing on the statement, “Fascism is wrong and we should oppose it” — but unfortunately, not everything in life and resistance can be as easy as, “This thing is wrong, we should oppose it.”

Even getting into the questions of HOW to best and most effectively fight back against fascism gets complicated, to say nothing of situations where there isn’t an obvious Right Side or Wrong Side, no matter how many people try to turn those discussions into Right vs. Wrong and get into a lot of binary-thinking moral absolutism that ultimately upholds a lot of the shit we’re nominally trying to fight, and does more harm than good to everyone involved.

(ftr, those discussions are not things like, “Fascism is wrong, Y/N,” but more like disagreements between people, none of whom are outright in the wrong, but all of whom have different sets of values, different kinds of grievances with each other [some fair, some not so fair], different points of view on any given topic, and so on, usually about things like, “is it more important for people to be free but with more potential for people to abuse that freedom in hurtful ways, or for people to be safe but in ways that give us new ways to hurt each other in the name of safety,” however the Hell these issues are manifesting in a specific context at any given moment)

And, well. It’s a precarious line to walk on, as someone who wants to be as ethical and responsible a writer as I can be and as true to my handful of basic guiding principles as possible. Principles that I have because…… uh, I want to be as ethical and responsible a writer as I can be? And I want to always work on failing better, as @saathi1013 would put it?

so, if you’re going to do that, you kinda need to have something to stand for and try to be more aware of what’s going on in the world, more aware where the content you’re making fits into those discussions, and more aware of yourself and how you work so that you can try to find places of potential Unfortunate Implications or places where you’re not actually living up to the values that you want to put in your work — c.f., JKR’s handling of House Elves and Muggles in the HP series, or how she wants the books to be anti-abuse but gives Dumbledore a free pass on hardcore manipulating both Harry and Snape [to say nothing of how he doesn’t do shit to make Snape act like a teacher, not a bully, because of reasons], and gives Molly and Arthur a total free pass on all of their unadulterated abusive bullshit

—and part of all this is knowing what you stand for, knowing what you think and feel as much as you can, and being willing to actually interrogate your positions and adjust your views and stances as you come into new information, new experiences, etc. Call it a belief, call it a good idea, call it whatever you want, but for me? You have to have some kind of principles to stand for/by, if you really want to be ethical and/or responsible content creator, because if you don’t have your principles, then what’s guiding you in this, exactly? Principles are what separate people who at least try to be ethical and/or responsible content creators from fuckbishops like the Dadaists, the Marquis de Sade, and the creative team of Family Guy.

And one of my principles here is, essentially, “People are people, and this means, on one hand, that all people deserve basic human rights and civil liberties. But on the other hand, it means that many of our problems are, in the words of Pterry and Gneil in Good Omens, caused not by people being either Good or Evil, but by people being fundamentally people. We’re all a bunch of disasters to varying degrees, and most situations are not going to come down to Good vs. Evil, but to (as Richard Siken puts it) need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone has the potential to be doing wrong by/unto someone else, even if some of us are going to come out more wrong than others based on our actions and/or the context of the situation.”

Which all basically adds up to…… yes, “Fascism is wrong” is a simple and straightforward statement, but there are situations and debates that arise surrounding most simple, straightforward statements that are tangled up and complicated. In this case, for example, how fascism takes root and spreads, how to best fight it in which situations, how it takes advantage of structures and practices even within non-fascist communities and uses them to fester and draw people into supporting it + what the fuck to do about that especially since at a certain point all of us become complicit in it to some degree or another, by virtue of being people who are alive and take part in our civilizations, and what’s at stake for everyone in all these discussions + how best to approach the question(s) of priorities

(…see, what I mean when I say that yes, I have interest in contemporary sociopolitical goings-on for their own sake but also bring them back to the novel pretty easily and regularly? It’s kinda unavoidable when you’re living in the times we are now, writing about superheroes who have to fight very explicitly neo-fascist supervillains)

So, anyway, the TL;DR of my basic point here is that I do try to approach my writing with principles in mind, but I don’t believe in oversimplifying shit — based on what I’ve encountered so far, I believe that oversimplifying things in a lot of these discussions usually starts in an understandable sort of place, but only ends up creating more problems for everyone in the long run, because it too easily fosters binaristic thinking and moral absolutism, dehumanizing each other, creating arbitrary hierarchies that we always end up using to justify hurting each other, and so on — and I don’t want to be a preacher in my work. I’d be a lot happier if I inspired actual discussions.

……Unfortunately, I’ve been in fandom and literature generally for too long to think that this is going to happen without the risk of people playing the apologist cards, the [douchebag character] in Leather Pants card, and all of that good stuff, but…… well.

I’m just trying to tell myself that this is a risk I’m going to have to live with, and if I do everything that I can reasonably do to prevent that and it still happens anyway, then hey, I’m in good company with George Orwell (all the people who have read 1984 as a defense or endorsement of right-wing anything when Orwell was a Socialist, he just opposed fucking Stalinism), Dr. Seuss (the anti-reproductive rights brigade who co-opted Horton Hears A Who to make it a screed against abortion), Emily Brontë (everyone who thinks Heathcliff is romantic and awesome when no. NO. fuck ALL the way OFF, he is an abusive jackass who literally kills a puppy and torments a generation of kids into reenacting his and Cathy’s relationship, just to get back at her for dumping him, and whose author was a fucking abuse survivor, now can everyone please get off her tits and stop using her book to justify their own abusive garbage behaviors), and so many countless others

But that’s a whole other kettle of monkeys, and I should only be so lucky to maybe someday have enough people reading anything I write that there are actually popular misinterpretations of anything. Like, would it be ideal if the misinterpretations didn’t happen? Yeah, but that’s not how writing works and it’s not how reading works and it’s not how most contemporary socialization trains us to read and see things, and everyone who reads anything I write is going to come up with their own interpretation because I can’t tell them how to read it, so

*shrugs* The Author Is Not God, y’know? I can do the work to try and best actualize my vision of things, but there will be things in it that other people see that I didn’t intend or didn’t notice, and my version of the story can’t be the absolute truth because the readers’ input is just as vital to the life of a written work as the work itself. It’s an unavoidable risk of writing shit on shit, so we make do, the end, I guess?

#that story with the mutants that i should find a working title for fml #sebastian moncrieff: mutant disaster #pete arden: dramatic disaster #pete x seb #mine: asks #mine: writing #nonny hi you're my favorite today if ur still around #reaction gifs//#depression cw//#writing meta #Anonymous

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