#Meereenese blot

[agentrouka-blog]

do you think the meereenese blot guy is right when he says that jon will come back darker and might not care about civilians deaths?

The Meereenese Blot Essays are excellent reads and I recommend them so much!

I don't think that what you describe is necessarily the conclusion/prediction presented in the final Jon essay. It's more of a very potential path that heavily depends on how Jon will react to several potential variables (the situation at the Wall, Melisandre's influence).

My personal take is that GRRM will probably not veer too far into that direction.

The essays give three factors that might influence a dark turn: 1) conditions at the Wall becoming catastrophic, 2) a turn toward prophecy, 3) Ghost's influence.

We can't yet know how 1) will turn out, but Jon has been investing in institutional structures outside his own person even if the wildlings have sworn their oaths to his person. They are manning castles together, training people together. The assassins do not represent a known large mutinous faction that Jon has been oppressing all this time. Like with Caesar, the "liberators" may soon discover their act to be unwelcome by the "masses". The destructive chaos may not be as huge as the essay anticipates. We're likely to see a mirror to Meereen in Dany's absence.

Regarding 3), Ghost specifically is a remarkably chill direwolf with a pronounced solitary streak and a gentleness with various humans. The human-eating exploits of Summer and Nymeria specifically mirror their human counterparts rather than negatively influencing them. The same went for Grey Wind. Ghost represents escapism rather than abuse of power but probably also a strong reminder of his wolf and human families.

Regarding 2), Jon already knows that Melisandre has magical and prophetic powers (Mance's glamor, the murdered rangers), so the mere fact of the correct prediction of his assassination attempt will not suddenly make him trust her. He already took steps based on trusting her and learned to question the reliability of her predictions/interpretations of her visions.

Jon's ethical troubles have always been tied to concepts of identity, rather than destiny. Always "Who am I, who do I want to be", rather than "this is a goal I must inevitably achieve, no matter the cost". So given his always ambivalent relationship with Melisandre and Stannis, I don't suddenly see him outsourcing his ethical grounding to a prophecy.

He'll more probably be torn between harmful personal desires (impulsive wrath, the peace of freedom as a wolf) and competing frames of identity (man of the Night's Watch, a Stark, a human) and through those pick a path forward that will likely culminate in leaving the Watch and fully engaging in Northern politics against the Boltons who threaten the Watch and the North and the wildlings combined.

None of those options tie him to Azor Ahai or to a sudden disregard for innocent human life. That one is (to me) likely to remain Stannis's story, all the way up to the senseless burning of Shireen, which will end the influence of that storyline in the North for the foreseeable future and release its focus over towards what the Essosi slaves see in Daenerys.

So that would be my opinion. 😊

[esther-dot]

With the way sometimes Grrm talks about Dany "hot chick riding dragon" or her relationship with Drogo, idk how to say this, is jarring to say the least. We know he was surprised by people seeing san/san as romantic but I still don't know whether he intended Dany's wedding night to be rape (which it obviously is) but then he denied it. Sometimes I get the feeling he doesn't care for her the way he cares for say Sansa and Arya (he would never pair them with Drogo or Daario or Euron! yes Sansa married Tyrion but Grrm made it sure to be unconsummated and little more than sham), probably because he always intended for her to be doomed.

(in reference to this ask I think)

I don’t know that we can look at how much Martin makes a character suffer as an indication of how much he loves them. Tyrion has been misjudged/mistreated his entire life (even abused as in infant), and yet, he is Martin's favorite character. He’s not dishing out pain based on his affection for a character imo. I think he wants to look at certain ideas, and as much as he loves all his characters, as a writer, they’re tools he’s using to say certain things.

As fans, not the artist, it can be hard for us to emotionally disengage enough to think of it that way, but writers are trying to convey big ideas, and Dany’s lovers/husbands at times are representative of something about Dany, it isn’t always as simple as a sex scene, and if Martin is locked into that type of thinking, it may not be hitting him the way it hits us. I clearly remember being 13/14, I remember my friends at that age, so it offends me to read certain scenes or hear him talk about the girls in a certain way. I am with you in objecting to how he speaks about Dany.

That being said, I did have a new thought about this.

Martin endorsed the famous Meereenese blot essays, and in those, the author argues that Dany's choice in men indicates something about her--that she is moved by violence, that peace bores her. He relates what Martin has written about her sex life to Dany's character development, and I think that may be the light in which Martin views his choices, not the one we adopt, "this is a 13 year old child." If we want to extend that grace when interpreting his writing, we can assume that Drogo, as well as Daario, were created to show us Dany's desires--not write Dany as some sexual fantasy for pervs. They may both have been written to show us that Dany is drawn to violent means, even though it scares her, even though it hurts her, even though it may lead to her demise.

I hadn't really thought beyond my repulsion before, but this ask did remind me, there's a long literary history of writing land/countries as feminine, and seeing as how Martin has used the term, "come-into-my-castle" as a euphemism for sex, it's worth wondering what additional purposes some of these sex scenes serve. Maybe, they're conveying bigger ideas? As in, Sansa's choice to not have sex with Tyrion does mean she remains a virgin, but plot-wise, it matters because this actually protects Winterfell, the North, from the Lannisters. It can be read as Sansa (the North) will not be permanently conquered by the enemy (Lannisters), but will become free.

And if we look at Dany with the same idea, Martin's insistence that Dany's wedding day sex was consensual (yikes) and a “seduction” (fucking yikes) the literary point may be that scene is standing in for Dany being seduced by power and violent means, that rather than protecting her country (Westeros), she will willingly bring destruction and death. It is possible Martin's choices were less about whitewashing statutory rape (he goes on to write about Drogo brutally raping Dany so the way he objected to D&D's rewriting of the scene seemed odd), maybe the focus was always meant to be on what Dany loves, what she desires, it just took us getting to ADWD and her riding a dragon with some...uh, sexual sounding descriptions, for Martin to connect his dots.

All the same, I will not defend him. I am repulsed by how he has spoken about Dany in interviews, and I don't like how he sexualizes little girls. It disturbs me.

[racefortheironthrone]

could you link your take on the meereenese blot essay? read it a long time back, would love to read another take on it, cant seem to find it on here

Sure thing. The reason you can't find it on tumblr is that it's hosted on Tower of the Hand.

[branwendaughterofllyr]

Sorry girl, but you lost so badly, GRRM will never finish the books, meaning that there will be zero Stark restoration, zero Jonsa, and Daenerys is still alive. And the Greens are still utterly irrelevant and no character mention Alicent when they discuss the DoD. Stop stanning losers.

Oh honey. I know this is probably hard to you for hear, but I already have five books of Stark content to enjoy. I already have five books of Jon, Bran, Arya, and Sansa, not mention Ned and Cat, all pointing to a Stark restoration and the rebuilding of Winterfell. This entire series started with the scene of the Starks finding the direwolves. The original title of ADOS was A Time For Wolves. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Calling the Starks losers is very funny, when their enemies had to break the rules of their society to win and are already on their way out. The North Remembers and the mummer’s farce is almost done. Like, I don’t know what to tell you, the Starks still are at the heart of the books as written, doesn’t matter if George ever finishes ADOS, the Starks are still the heart. And that’s a win for me. And on Dany? Well. I mean. Girl is not exactly winning at everything at the moment, is she? One of the few essays about ASOIAF George has ever endorsed is the Meereenese Blot. Maybe go check it out? Or maybe reread ADWD? That’s sure to give you the warm and fuzzies about Dany all over again. And it’s funny for you to bring the Greens into this. Bc F&B is fundamentally an unserious book that I enjoy laughing at. Nobody looks good in it. I don’t even particularly like the book Greens. I just think that when a show tries push the framing of one side in what’s meant to be a bloody civil war where no one wins, I push back. And of the characters that get mentioned in canon during the Dance? Uh. I hate to tell you that Criston Cole gets equal mentions to Rhaenyra, and everyone else is pretty much not talked about. Daemon doesn’t even get brought up (overshadowed by all the Blackfyres I imagine). And we all know how the Dance ends. That story at least is done.

And this is the ASOIAF fandom. There are literally no irrelevant characters, lol. Someone can have nothing but one named mention, and there’s probably a fanblog about them somewhere. That’s simply not the insult you think it is. And as I recall, one of the og Dance novellas was “The Princess and The Queen”? Idk, someone’s talking about Alicent. Wonder who wrote that.

[thewingedwolf]

tumblr how dare you recommend me the dumbest “clearly dany is the hero and everyone calling the targs imperialists or saying the dragons are dangerous is reading too deep into the text” take ALIVE OMG how many posts do i have in my anti dany and anti targ tags, how many times does grrm have to compare dany to fucking george bush, say the meereenese blot essays which paint dany as a villain are completely correct, and compare dragons to nukes for people to stop saying that we’re reading the text “too deep” by saying “hmm so dany forgetting the name of the child her dragon murdered feels like a sign she’s slipping into villainy” LIKE. TUMBLR DO U WANT ME TO DEVELOP AN ULCER.

[istumpysk]

i was re-reading the meereenese blot essays (10 years old this year!) the other day and decided to peruse the comments, the most recent of which was from 2019, and they're all so funny. those essays are so much softer than readings of dark dany today and take every opportunity to hammer home her "good intentions" (...🙄), but even then people seem so genuinely shocked, SHOCKED, that her preference for war could mean a darker turn

even when people agreed she was "turning away" from altruism (...🙄), there's this stance that actually it's necessary, because obviously we all know she has a heroic roll to play fighting against the white walkers. maester aemon's guilt-ridden dying delusions of grandeur for his lost family have this fandom in a choke-hold i swear

Also noticed the writer making a deliberate effort to refrain from staining her character, lol. Perhaps it's for the best that he wasn't more candid, George might not have publicly commented on it if he had been.

Anyway, people are deluded. The man who wrote this,

"If Joffrey should die . . . what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?"

"Everything," said Davos, softly. - Davos V, ASOS

will never provide a rationale for her atrocities in the narrative. Get real.

[mneiai]

(I made the the first two and kept thinking up more theories lol)

Please reblog polls if you vote so they can get more votes!

[tartheanmaid]

I'm only on season 4 which makes sense as to why I thought it was incest lmao. nontheless thanks for the explanation and I'm curious how we'll find out Jon isnt Ned Stark's son

they do it pretty bad in the show. id recommend you stop watching after like 6.10 (and since you’re so early on, my like blog title thing is a reference to jon and sansa’s quite romantic reunion in season 6 episode 4 lol)

once you finish the show i’d reccomend reading a series of essays by adam feldman, called the meereenese blot essays. these are the only fan essays/theories to ever be endorsed by george, so they’re pretty on point.

after that, just dive into the books, no need to bother with the show any longer lol

[visenyaism]

have u every read the meereenese blot??

call me a fake fan but i do not remember what that is

[finitefall]

Hi! Love all your takes. Sorry to bother you, but I saw that allegedly George responded “this guy gets it” to a 2013 blog post about Dany becoming the Mad Queen? Have you heard of it? I admit I’m a bit worried.

Hi nonnie! I’m glad you find my posts interesting, and you're not bothering me at all :)

GRRM referred to the Meereen storyline in A Dance with Dragons as "the Meereenese knot" because of how complex it was to write. He talked about it in an interview:

Now that we know how the "Meereenese knot" played out, what was the problem with this? For example, was it the order in which Dany met various characters, or who, when, and how someone would try to take the dragons? Now I can explain things. It was a confluence of many, many factors: lets start with the offer from Xaro to give Dany ships, the refusal of which then leads to Qarth's declaration of war. Then there's the marriage of Daenerys to pacify the city. Then there's the arrival of the Yunkish army at the gates of Meereen, there's the order of arrival of various people going her way (Tyrion, Quentyn, Victarion, Aegon, Marwyn, etc.), and then there's Daario, this dangerous sellsword and the question of whether Dany really wants him or not, there's the plague, there's Drogon's return to Meereen… All of these things were balls I had thrown up into the air, and they're all linked and chronologically entwined. The return of Drogon to the city was something I explored as happening at different times. For example, I wrote three different versions of Quentyn's arrival at Meereen: one where he arrived long before Dany's marriage, one where he arrived much later, and one where he arrived just the day before the marriage (which is how it ended up being in the novel). And I had to write all three versions to be able to compare and see how these different arrival points affected the stories of the other characters. Including the story of a character who actually hasn't arrived yet. (source)

Someone wrote a series of essays called "The Meereenese Blot", which is also the name of his blog. They were written in 2013 (ADWD was published in 2011), and the thing is that many people thought the Meereen storyline was a mess, while the author of those essays made some good points about its relevance, the major storylines within the whole Meereen's storyline, the themes GRRM explored. Now, it’s been a very long time since I’ve read all of this, and I don’t remember it very well, but Adam begins his "Untangling the Meereenese Knot" with:

Meereen. The mere word probably makes you groan. It’s considered to be the weakest, most frustrating plotline in ADWD, and perhaps in in the whole series. It’s thought to be where GRRM lost the plot and spent endless chapters on pointless filler. The solutions seem so obvious, the villains seem obviously evil one-dimensional caricatures. And many fans see it as the plotline that ruined Dany’s character, revealing her to be a naive, incompetent, lovesick girl.

Because that's how people saw it, even some Dany fans were frustrated. And I can't find the link, but yes, GRRM did say "this guy gets it". However, is he approving literally everything Adam said? I don’t think so, I’m not sure he’s read all of it. He could have been saying that this guy understood the importance of the plotline. Without reading the whole thing again, it’s clear the peace wasn't real and that Dany chosing Fire and Blood in the end only means she understood the peace she tried to make in Meereen wasn't working. She will be darker in The Winds of Winter, like literally every character, but saying it’s her giving in to her selfish and darker impulses? No. So I have very mixed feelings about The Meereenese Blot, because making good points and getting people interested in the storyline isn’t a bad thing, but there are more accurate metas that have been written and aren’t used by antis for their Dark!Dany foreshadowing.

Edit: I’m adding the comments from nonnies on this post as I believe they’re relevant to your question:

GRRM complimenting The Meereenese Blot was so obviously him being happy someone wasn’t dismissing the subplot outright, not a full scale endorsement of a fan theory. People are so desperate to have Dany go mad that they will just ignore logic. Like yeah GRRM is gonna go out of his way to confirm 1 (one) single major fan theory as absolute fact despite him never doing that before or ever again. He even later denied parts of that theory outright (Dany burning the water gardens)

My understanding was that GRRM didn't even read Feldman's essay, he just heard about it from Linda, and who knows how she described it to him 😭 I'd be very surprised if he agreed with those essays because Feldman seriously mischaracterizes Arianne and Melisandre as well. On the whole, it's a bunch of misogynistic crap. Brideoffires has a really good, in-depth debunking of the whole thing.

[agentrouka-blog]

is grrm is a reliable narrator? sometimes he says one thing that does another since it seems retcons the story like a mf when readers figure shit out.

GRRM is a living human being, a writer or author, who employs literary techniques in his works, among them the unreliable narrator.

The concept isn't really something you can translate into real life. A person is not a narrator. That's an important distinction to make.

GRRM is sometimes bad at expressing things in interviews, I've come to believe. But I have found his actual writing to be fairly consistent with itself.

He rarely comments on his work in ways that give future plots away, but he has mentioned in the past that the Meereenese Blot essays capture much of what he is going for. Which he did not have to do. So I think it's extremely unlikely that as an author he would ever alter his work just because readers have correctly interpreted where his story is going.

That's not generally how most writers work, and certainly unlikely to be true of GRRM, who works with complex lines of foreshadowing and consistent political themes. He's trying to tell a story.

[swiftstigmata]

honestly i need to read the meereenese blot essays because meereen is confusing me SO much at this point. still having a good time it’s just like head empty vibing

[deadmegumi]

Reading the meereenese blot.... Let's get to the bottom of this ladies

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

I see your point, esp in regards to how GRRM sometimes unsuccessfully blends various historical elements when world building. With the aspect of ruling, he wants to tackle these issues not in the appendices of ADoS or extra-textual works. He wants to give a careful exploration as the story unfolds in the main story that the entire fanbase will read. Who ever reads the appendices? I mean how many people have even read The World of Ice and Fire in this fandom?

GRRM explores these things with Jon, based on my response to the screenshot in the first place, from ACoK up to ADWD; and presumably in TWoW and ADoS. He wants to actually show how Jon, his answer to Aragorn, evolves as a ruler before the story is done. How he succeeds, fails, succeeds again. So if Jon ends up in a position as a ruler, if he even survives the story in the first place, he as a writer will be satisfied with how he got there. It’s a personal thing for him—not a slight against Tolkien. I’m not too fussed about Rhaenyra and the events in F&B because he doesn’t really mention them when talking about “the tax policy”, and F&B has received enough lashings over the years for being his worst installment in the saga of Ice and Fire. It’s certainly not as well written as the main series for a start.

You bring up an important distinction with:

The fact that there's no longer a dark lord trying to conquer their lands suggests that this will be the case, since the kingdom's weakness was exacerbated by the threat of Mordor.

ASOIAF is more involved, since the political theatre has been evolving outside the magical threat so far. Defeating the Others won’t really settle the political matters as they’ve transformed over the series. GRRM doesn’t seem to think that he can give us a satisfactory resolution to what has occupied the biggest narrative space this far in the last few pages of ADoS. Now this series is incomplete, so we don’t really know what the climax will be. It certainly gets complicated when we factor in Bran as the intended final ruler, because he has nowhere near the level of experience that Jon and Dany have.

And re

It's not a sore point for me, it's the way the fandom acts as if Jon was making the right choices (the show certainly did so) when all it takes is a closer examination to realize how poorly he's governing.

Really? Because it’s usually Jon fans (specifically) trying to make a defense of his ADWD arc. The fandom at large seems to think he would be a terrible king and that he did a bad job as Lord Commander; this is no doubt exacerbated by the Meereenese Blot essays which have permeated fandom discussion over the last decade or so.

George's problem is that he ignores all of this and winds up making Tolkien out to be a less serious writer than he actually was.

Tbh, GRRM won’t stop gushing about the impact Tolkien has had on him as both as reader and writer of fantasy. But the problem is that a lot of things are projected over his relationship with his predecessor’s works. It’s like when you see a ton of articles saying “meet George R. R. Martin, the anti-Tolkien”….when GRRM himself has said that he wants to make ASOIAF the same level of low fantasy that LOTR was, and that he wants to explore the same themes LOTR did but in his own way. It is not so much that GRRM sets out to make Tolkien look bad on purpose, it’s that people are reading into his minor quibble with the quote. It’s the same thing with his opinion on Gandalf’s resurrection. He gets a lot of flack for it, and I’m not going to add to the dog piling. At the end of the day, he really should be allowed to have an opinion of a work he clearly cherishes.

This is actually so funny because….isn’t this literally the point of Jon’s political arc as a ruler in ADWD? 😭 What policies can he enact to ensure that the Watch and the wildlings are fed through the winter? The question even comes up during Alys Karstark’s wedding, because Jon knows that the Watch is down to its last sticks of butter. This is the same arc GRRM uses, along with Dany’s in Meereen, as a reference of how he would like to explore this very question. Btw Jon Snow is arguably Aragorn’s closest parallel in ASOIAF so 😭

[fedonciadale]

I think you treat Dany too hard. I mean, her stans can be annoying, but that's it. She really is victim of bad writing. She certainly care for slaves (come on, she freed them), small folk and women in general. Her awful interactions with Sansa are just last time effort to make her look bad(I don't know why people jump to call Sansa the evil one, but still). She tries so hard to be good and sometimes makes mistakes, but it's normal for such young person. Crossing lords was bad decision but (1/2)

she did it under a lot bad emotions. She just saw unimaginable cruelty and wanted to straight things up. She messed up things along the way, but she is learning. I'm sure in books she will see through her wrongdoings and will be better. I came here after reading anon ex-Dany Stan. And I wanted to say that I disagree with both of you. She is good person (only troubled). I mean, come on, she loves her dragons. And Jon. She's gonna change her ways for them. D&D fucked her up, thats it. (2/2) 🤗❤🤗

(3/2)[So sorry, there's so much to unpack] I think in show they wanted this super weird twist to make her villain to end series with BOOM. Martin has for sure better idea. She writes so multilayered characters, I'm sure she wants to showcase that sometimes ours expectations are impossible to face. Good, but in no means perfect. She and Sansa will teach each other how to be better queens. Sansa in The North and Dany on Iron Throne. Without Tyrion as hand (ugh, fuckin paedo). Have nice day 🙂

Hi there!

look, I really appreciate that you ask nicely and I hope I don’t hurt you when I tell you that you really haven’t come to the right place. I firmly believe that Dany is supposed to be the fire threat for Westeros and that she is meant to become a tyrant and a villain. And there is plenty of foreshadowing in the books for that. There is also plenty of foreshadowing on the show. If you are interested you can look up my master meta post and look at the DarkDany stuff. I don’t know if anything I say will convince you though. I will try to give you some major points though.

Dany was one of the major selling point of the series and D&D always prioritized Dany. I can’t believe that they would have done the twist to Dark Dany if it was not what Martin told them about the ending.

Then there are all the questionable things Dany does on the show, and even from the very beginning: Season 1 : she lets Drogo attack a peaceful people so that he can enslave them and sell them and get money for their journey to Westeros:

Which is directly from the book:

     Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver's Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne.                  "I've told the khal he ought to make for Meereen," Ser Jorah said. "They'll pay a better price than he'd get from a slaving caravan. Illyrio writes that they had a plague last year, so the brothels are paying double for healthy young girls, and triple for boys under ten. If enough children survive the journey, the gold will buy us all the ships we need, and hire men to sail them."  (AGOT, Dany VII)

In the books and the show Dany backpedals and tries to “save” some of the women (by marrying them to their rapists btw), but the further we come along in the books the more Dany succeeds in teaching herself how to look away and how not to have pity if is inconvenient for her politics.

Then there is her freeing slaves. She was absolutely o.k. to have slaves in book 1 and 2, it is only when she tries to buy the Unsullied and does not have the money for it that she puts freedom on her agenda. Let’s have a look:

"Unsullied!" Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. "Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see." She raised the harpy's fingers in the air . . . and then she flung the scourge aside. "Freedom!" she sang out. "Dracarys! Dracarys!"     (ASOS, Daenerys III)

Please note that she first gives the orders to the Unsullied and that she only throws away the symbol of her mastery aside. Please also note that she basically ordered the Unsullied to kill literal children (or are teenagers who are thirteen not children?)

In Meereen she actually agrees to let people sell themselves into slavery again and takes a tax for that! So much for caring for slaves.

As for loving the dragons that might be the problem: Because the dragons are brutal monsters and not pets:

Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.  (ADWD, Daenerys II)

Does she love Jon though? Is it love if you let him beg for help even though the threat that he fights will get at you after some time as well? Is that love? Is it love to demand of your lover to keep a secret from his family?

And sry, not sry. Sansa and Dany will not get along. Do you think Sansa would like the Dragonlady who wants the North’s independence? The independence Sansa was beaten for in King’s Landing? Do you think Dany would in any way trust Sansa when she calls Ned “the usurper’s dog” all the time.

Let me add just one more thing: There is foreshadowing for Dany burning King’s Landing:

But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King's Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind's eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind's eye, all the doors were red.   (AGOT, Daenerys III)

I mean I probably cannot convince you to rethink your take on Dany, but if you do not believe me you might want to give the Meereense Blot a try (here), a series of essays which GRRM approved of that show Dany’s turn to the Dark.

I agree that GRRM writes about hard choices and grey characters, but believe me, Dany is not grey and she is not a hero, only in her own head and she has already rejected the effort to build a slow peace in Meereen.

Again, I really appreciate that you asked nicely but I sincerely think that you are completely mistaken in your interpretation of Dany and Sansa is set up as a foil to Dany not as her future friend.

Thanks for the ask and have a nice day as well!