#and oh god my love for the lonely song of laren dorr - oh god grrm writing doomed lovers kills me

[joannalannister]

After GRRM said Jon is gonna be a fire wight in the books, I’m even more excited about Jon/Dany in the books because that feels to me exactly like the sort of doomed romance GRRM loves to write, like “The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr” or “This Tower of Ashes,” all doomed.  

Think of it tho!!! A fire zombie and the bride of fire!!! I think there will be elements of classic Beauty and the Beast to it because, in Cocteau’s BATB, which GRRM loves, “The Beast’s own task is [...] the reclaiming of the human within himself.” After Jon spends time in Ghost (not to mention the zombie part), I think he’ll be “less human” / more Beast for a while, and there will be such a great internal messianic struggle of why Jon wants to save humanity after he was betrayed by people he trusted. 

And what better way for Jon to find his humanity again than by falling in love, “our great glory,” the greatest celebration of our humanity, a defiant declaration of resistance to the Others when Jon and Dany visit the alien realm of faerie beyond the curtain of light at the end of the world

and just!!! a fire wight who’s already semi-dead but still has one last mission to accomplish, and a living girl who would give her life to save the world if that’s what it took, WHAT A GOOD DOOMED ROMANCE, I’M SO EXCITED, BRING ME THAT HORIZON

[joannalannister]

It’s always bothered me that Gandalf comes back from the dead. The Red Wedding for me in Lord of the Rings is the mines of Moria, and when Gandalf falls — it’s a devastating moment! [...] And then in the next book, he shows up again, and [...] ehh, he’s more or less the same as always, except he’s more powerful. It always felt a little bit like a cheat to me. And as I got older and considered it more, it also seemed to me that death doesn’t make you more powerful. That’s, in some ways, me talking to Tolkien in the dialogue, saying, “Yeah, if someone comes back from being dead, especially if they suffer a violent, traumatic death, they’re not going to come back as nice as ever." That’s what I was trying to do, and am still trying to do, with the Lady Stoneheart character. [...]

And poor Beric Dondarrion, who was set up as the foreshadowing of all this, every time he’s a little less Beric. His memories are fading, he’s got all these scars, he’s becoming more and more physically hideous, because he’s not a living human being anymore. His heart isn’t beating, his blood isn’t flowing in his veins, he’s a wight, but a wight animated by fire instead of by ice, now we’re getting back to the whole fire and ice thing.

--GRRM, when asked about Jon Snow being “drained by the experience of coming back from the dead”

I feel like this is relevant to what I was saying about Jon and the WftD, before this interview came out:

“In the cold night air the wound was smoking. […] He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …”

and this juxtaposition of cold and heat here is fascinating to me, you have the cold of the night’s watch, their resistance to Jon’s causes, and then you have Jon’s smoking, fiery passion to save everyone literally bleeding out of him as he dies

P l e a s e click the above link, I don’t wanna explain all those ice vs fire thoughts again, but anyways, to me, the War for the Dawn seems like the ice cold of the Others trying to destroy the fiery passion of humanity, and to chain and enslave humanity and turn everyone into their ice slaves to do their bidding, with no will of their own.

When the Watch stabs Jon Snow, they do the Others’ work for them, doing the work of ice, turning Jon cold and dead, and Melisandre is gonna have to bring Jon back in TWOW, lend him some fire to be able to do the work that he left unfinished. 

And if Jon’s a “wight animated by fire” to me it feels like Jon is being brought back for this one specific purpose - to fight in the War for the Dawn - so once that’s over, does he ... idk what words I’m looking for here ... expire? release his hold on life? Whatever it is Jon’s gonna do, I keep saying, I don’t believe Jon’s gonna be around after the War for the Dawn, and I really don’t think Dany or Tyrion are gonna survive it either. 

and this is reallyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy really speculative now, ok, im just spitballing in the absence of any new book material, but I’ve wondered for a while if Benjen is being held hostage by the Others, like “Aliens hold the initial human hostage in stasis to study him or use him as bait or w/e” kind of thing in a scifi. Like, the Others need an example of humanity’s “fire” for mass destruction or s/t idk. 

And so what I’m wondering now is, if the Others have this sort of ... “token” fire to use against humanity 

what if

one of the prophecy’s rhaegar read predicted that, predicted benjen being captured (not by name or w/e, just something)

and Rhaegar was trying to counter this prophecy, by building his Team Humanity of three fire babies

(oh, heyyyyy, Elia’s sigil was a sun, that’s pretty fucking cool, Rhaegar must have been pretty happy with that while he was making his first two babies)

so anyways

Rhaegar was trying to counter whatever the prophecy said the others were trying to do, with some sort of, for lack of a better phrase, “token” ice teammate, so he becomes quite enchanted by the idea of Lyanna, to create his third fire baby with a touch of “ice”

except as we all know, you can’t force prophecy, prophecy has a mind of its own, and maybe the prophecy was really about how jon would die by cold/ice and be resurrected in fire

idk, these are only half formed thoughts, I’m just spitballing here, please do not take this as gospel truth, you do not need to respond with a 5000 word essay on why i am wrong, this is just 10 minutes of a free thinking exercise, chill

i think this idea of “fire wights” is important tho

(and yes, if GRRM can write a story about a giant spider falling in love, then fuck yes I think GRRM can write a story about a fire wight falling in love with a doomed living girl, asoiaf is all about love, my god. i wish i had a gif of bart simpson on a skateboard wearing a jon/dany tshirt . “cliche” 👀  godddddd, have i told you all how much i love grrm’s doomed love stories, my godddddddd, i loved them in dreamsongs, i loved them, i am soooooooooo ready for twow, i am sooooooo ready for jon/dany in the books. so ready.) 

((the idea of “fire wight falling in love with living girl” makes me love J/D even more, it’s doomed, doooooomed, doomed like The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr, I still haven’t recovered from that. SO READY FOR TWOW. SO READY.)