#anti daenerys because none of her Fans want to read this

[ilargizuri]

Daenerys next Lover

Okay, the Tag and the title kind of contradict each other but let me explain, as far as we know GRRM has 2/3 of Winds finished for publication and as far as I understand capitalism if GGRM doesn't make a Michalamgelo Move and destroys that 2/3 of a Book, we actually can kinda expect these 2/3 of a Book being published if it isn't finished and published before GRRM can do that by himself.

To understand what I mean you should read stuff about Michelangelo, not only to understand my Reference but also because he was a great Artist and a fascinating Human being, even if he most likely had a Problem with Women because he probably preferred Men, at least when we take into consideration that his Portrays of Women are not part of his Masterpieces.

So, Daenerys next Lover, most will say: JON! I say: Nope!

Why? I had to reread all of Daenerys's Chapters for my Theory about the Sphinx and how that foreshadows the Fate of some of the Characters in my Opinion. And I realized something, Jon Snow is too young!

Let's recap her former male Lovers: First Kahl Drogo, a violent Dothraki Warrior in his thirties, with long dark hair, with Bells in it. Second Daario Naharis, a violent Sellsword, with most likely blond Hair that is coloured in flashy Colors although his Age is nowhere mentioned I think it is safe to assume that he is older than Daenerys because of the things he does and says.

Both are Violent Warrior-Types, both a lot older than Daenerys and in both cases, GRRM described their Hair a lot. So most likely Daenerys's next Lover will be an experienced Warrior, with special Hair and he will most likely be a lot older than Daenerys.

If we take all this into consideration and also that Daenerys is a Horny Teenager in the Books who even uses her female "Servants" for sexual pleasure, her next Lover will be Victarion Gryjoy, because he fits her Type and both of them will travel to Westeros on a ship.

Also, 2/3 of a Book is done, both Characters Tyrion and Victarion needed ONE whole Book to travel to Meereen. Also, they haven't even met Daenerys yet, so it is safe to assume that Daenerys won't arrive in Westeros until the End of Winds. So her next Lover will be on that Journey and if she leaves Daario in Essos as she did in the TV show, then Daenerys has a whole Book without a sexual Partner. This did happen before, but only if there wasn't any Person who fit her Type because then she did fall back to her female Servants to give her Pleasure.

So she will most likely end up with Victarion Greyjoy. So no matter what happens in Dream of Springs, these 2/3 of Winds exist and in this 2/3 it is more likely to happen that Jon meets Sansa and Rikkon, so no matter what, Jonsas will have more canon interactions in the Books than Jonerys fans will ever get. So I call this new Ship Daerion.

[pessimisticpigeonsworld]

She is a white savior that Daenerys believes to be the Mysha of the slaves, in addition to her arrogance of thinking that she is the only savior, she has that hero complex like her brother Rhaegar had that caused a war for his prophecy, I saw the publication and it makes sense Aegon according to what he dreamed of in the long night, but for me the author invented it to make it seem like the foreigners subjugated Westeros, for me it is not fair that Daenerys and her fans believe that she deserves the credit of many people who also fight against the others.

I'm sorry, have you ever read the books? Or even seen the show for that matter? Literally none of this is true in either one.

Dany didn't create the title of Mhysa, the Yunkai'i slaves she freed did. Then the name was picked up by the slaves in Meereen and others all over Essos. It's a title; it's awarded by others, that's how they work.

Dany takes this title as a responsibility. She feels a level of responsibility and care for the slaves and freedmen that no other pov ruler does. She understands the weight of ruling as no one else does; it's a ruler's responsibility to care for the people and do justice on their behalf. She is motivated by her genuine care in all the released books and in the seasons when she's in Essos.

Where are you getting that she has a hero complex? I'm assuming since you're talking about the Others, you're talking about the events of the show's ending. Well, even with how D&D royally fucked up, Dany didn't believe herself to be the only person fighting the Others, nor does she begrudge other people their credit.

She's rightfully upset when all the Northmen choose to ignore the fact that she literally saved them. Dany brought her dragons, saved Jon's life multiple times, and brought a massive army. She did literally save their fucking lives. No, she wasn't the only one to fight, nor was she the only reason they won, and she doesn't think that.

As for the slaves, she doesn't liberate them out of a hero's complex, she does it because slavery is a horrifying institution and she had power. People who have power should feel an obligation to do good with it; Dany does. She chose to put aside her conquest for the Iron Throne for the slaves.

Rhaegar didn't start the war, nor did he do it for the prophecy. Again, I don't know where you or any of Rhaegar's antis got that. Rhaegar ran away with Lyanna because of a mutual love. GRRM literally calls Rhaegar "a love struck prince"; meaning he isn't really thinking clearly.

As for the prophecy, yes, Rhaegar knew about it; but we have textual evidence that he believes Aegon is the Prnce that was Promised. He literally tells Elia when Aegon is born that, "His will be the Song of Ice and Fire." Yeah, he said there needed to be a third child, but why logically wouldn't he choose to have a third child with Elia? Well because he's not thinking logically, he's "lovestruck", and because he didn't run away with Lyanna for a child.

No, GRRM didn't make the Targaryen conquest to reflect foreign invasion or colonization. They're literally a Westerosi house, they came to Westeros centuries before the conquest happened. It's literally a different concept all together, why is that so hard to understand?

Literally none of Dany's fans believe that she "deserves all the credit" for fighting the Others. We just want her to get the credit she deserves, which is that she saved the Northmen's lives and without her they would have failed. These are all just facts in the show. As for the books, we know she'll play a large role in fighting the Others because GRRM makes it pretty fucking clear.

[horizon-verizon]

I’m so tired of people claiming that Targaryens would hate Daenerys. I mean, obviously, Maegor, Jaehaerys I, Aemond, Aegon II, Baelor I would despise her, and I don’t think Daeron II would see her as an important person (he would probably sell her off into marriage if it was up to him as well). But her ancestors show up in her dreams to cheer on her and her eldest brother told her the long held dream of their dynasty, transcending space and time.

Maester Aemon wanted to break his vows for her and weeped because he couldn’t reach her. Even Viserys III loved her and tried to protect her before he lost himself to his madness. Not to mention the repeated parallels the text explicitly makes between her and Aegon the Conqueror.

And they’re telling us that Rhaenys and Alysanne, two queens known for loving the smallfolk, women and children, wouldn’t like her ? Alysanne who lost her own Daenerys ? Or the dragon twins, Rhaena so sweet and romantic, and Baela who is fearless and scrappy ? Bold and audacious Targaryen women like Visenya, Alyssa, Rhaenys the queen who never was, Daena the Defiant, and Elaena ? Targaryen women accused of practicing witchcraft and bathing in blood, like Rhaena the Black Bride and Shiera Seastar ? Rhaena the BB, Rhaenys, and Rhaenyra should have ascend the Iron Throne but were usurped but they wouldn’t see Daenerys as their revenge ?

Aegon V wanted to bring dragons back to force the high lords to accept his radical reforms for the smallfolk. Why wouldn’t he like the girl who brings them back and terrorizes slavers with them ?

Aegon III spent his days visiting the sick and sat with them for hours, holding their hands in his own, soothing their brows with damp cloths, wanted to give the smallfolk “peace and food and justice” and claimed that “full bellies and dancing bears shall be [his] policy”. But he would hate Daenerys ? Seriously ?

Anyway maybe this is a long ramble, but House Targaryen isn’t a monolith. Each era is different, each person is different. I think Targ antis need to read ASOIAF and Fire & Blood, not just watch HOTD before making these claims.

I don't think most Targs would "hate" Daenerys, but many could be puzzled by how she is a lot more selfless or family-focused than not, like Visenya. Those men you mention, absolutely, but that just hammers in how none of them are really worth my respect. Jaehaerys, for ruling through choosing good council people and "listening" to Alysanne, sure, but eh 🤷🏿‍♂️. Rhaenyra might not have liked her but neither do i think she'd necessarily despise her. You make great points.

The house isn't a monolith as much as the flip a coin quote and how far the fandom//D&D ran with it to "explain" the Targs and Aerys II. It's not just HotD, it's has been a thing ever since people watched that episodes with Viserys' abuse (without the context of his losses and exile and possible selling himself), how exactly Aerys fell out with Rhaegar, Tyrion citing that Targ kign who said that quote, etc. And since the Targs were leaders in the feudal system, some fans are just never going to like them and fantasize about Westeros becoming democratic under Daenerys' rule or at least just get smashed into a "reset". Or they use Targ-madness to denigrate and diminish any sort of faith in Dany's rationality and compassion/leadership.

[finitefall]

Hill's Alive is hellsbellschime on tumblr. I hate her channel so much. The only reason her channel is popular is because most of her videos are about how evil Daenerys and the Targaryens are. Not only her takes are awful and wildly incorrect, her previous video on Rhaenyra had so many repugnant comments calling Rhaenyra bed hopper and disgusting for having bastards. She loves using misogynistic talking points against her hated female characters while prioritizing a specific type of female character (Sansa and Alicent).

She’s also a Klaroline stan actually and harassed Phoebe Tonkin so much that Phoebe herself got wind of it and specifically called her out by username and asked her to stop the harassment.

She knows her audience is mostly raging incels, dudebros and Targ haters who never read the books but do read the Reddit threads and watch YouTube essays. She knows she can leave out HUGE chunks of the text and key passages to lie about Daenerys because her audience won’t call her out. She also started making shit up about the Hightowers to please her anti Targ incel audience. The Hightowers are Valyrians (or better yet Velaryons) now but also they are from the Great Empire of the Dawn but also they are Daynes but also they are First Men but also they have magic but also. The gymnastics she does for making them relevant to the main story is INSANE.

Hi! Just a little disclaimer: I strongly advise my followers to not go on their tumblr to send hate, anon or not. I never do this, I answer, but I don't send hate or bully anyone, even if their behavior is awful. I like to believe my followers are smarter than this, so I hope none of you is feeling insulted, but since her username is being revealed to me and everyone else on this post, I don't want anyone to accuse me of sending people after her.

Of course she's a Sansa and Alicent stan, who's surprised?

I was in the TVD fandom so I heard about Phoebe Tonkin being bullied by Klaroline shippers. I'm a Klaroline shipper myself, but it's crazy how people don't make the difference between fictional characters and actors. Phoebe isn't Haley, Joseph isn't Klaus, and Candice isn't Caroline. TVD shippers were wild, it happened with Delena stans too. Again, I've always been a Delena shipper but it was crazy how fans reacted to Nina and Ian breaking up and him marrying Nikki Reed. Nina isn't Elena and Ian isn't Damon: they're real people, not their fictional characters, leave them alone ffs.

Phoebe was absolutely right to call her out, stop harrassing this woman who's never done anything to you...

Thank you for telling me about her, now I understand better why so many were talking about her and asking my opinion. Well, it's simple: what @queenrhaenyrah said here.

[daeneryswhitehorse]

Dany hate throughout the years.

( This is base on a reply I made in post create by @yendany . I also want to precise that it is only my perspective of the fandom as a dany stan, other people probably have a different opinion of what was going on. )

I came in the asoiaf/got fandom in 2011, when the show first came out. I fell in love with dany on my first watch and still like her after reading the books. I started to get involved in the fandom because I wanted to learn more about her.

I didn't know tumblr at the time so I was on westeros.org. The mad queen dany theory was already a thing, mostly for the persons who didn't like that dany could be azor ahai and not one of the male character. But the forum still liked her for her baddass moments in asos or her portrayal in the first season of got.

Everything changed when adwd came out. The incels in this site really didn't liked dany having sex with daario after rejecting jorah/quentyn. They also didn't understood her plot, were tired of her staying in Essos or not interacting with main pov character. It was enough for them to think she was boring.

From then on, there were a lot of bad take of her character. Grrm wanting to talk about the consequences of her mistakes and her decision of staying in meereen was understood as dany being dumb and incompetent as a queen. People made fun of her long list of titles and thought it make her look arrogant. They claimed she was nothing without her dragon, in contrast to male character like stannis. Or not a true warrior because she spend her battle hiding in her tent, unlike stannis or jon who fight with swords. Or that she didn't car about the common people, because she try to negociate with the meereeness nobles. Most of those claimed exist to prove why character like Jon or Stannis would be azor ahai or the true king of Westeros.

After season 3 of the show came out, a lot of people were rightfully offended by the final scene with daenerys where she surf on a sea of brown people. A lot of fans start seeing Dany as a white savior in both books and show, and a lot of essay were about how how her storyline was rooted in racist orientalist ideas. If you were a person of color and still stan her, it was probably because of internalized racism.

Before this season, feminist critized the butchering of most of dany storyline, like they did with other female characters. But none was as talk about then Sansa's, because the most popular female character like Dany, Arya and Brienne were seen as the cash grab of the show. It was considered more important to defend her in particular, and liking Sansa over them was seen as resistance act against D&D misogyny.

The intellectual part of the fandom really went out of their way in defending her. They liked her because she was a gateway to the political part of the story in King's Landing and the Vale. They didn't like how some fans victim-blamed her for the abuse she suffered with the Lannister, and praised the fact she didn't end up with stockolm syndrome like Dany or Theon. "Not everyone can be an Arya" did they said, as they wanted people to acknowledged she was the more relatable point of view and how her traditional feminity shouldn't be put down. They emphasis a lot on her kindness, her emphatie, or her observational skills but and said those qualities were unique to her and are what separate her of the rest of the cast. She was the representation of humanity in this crapsack world. And after outsmarting Littlefinger would probably be rewarded with an important political position and would be one of the builder of the new world after the apocalypse.

All of this probably wasn't meant to be interprete as hate toward other female and some of the male characters, but it sure did for the Sansa stan! Who would then create their entire defense meta around putting down any character they found and upliftting her above them. Their favorite target was Arya, but you could found from time to time one on Dany. I remember someone defending Sansa innocence in trusting Cersei in the first book, by emphasing on her age and naivety, and putting down dany for not knowing mirri maz durr would get revenge on her khalassar.

Talking about Dany, the intellectual part of the fandom didn't really like her. I mean they didn't hate her, and didn't diminish her importance in the story, but she clearly wasn't a fan favorite.

There was two angle in their analysis of daenerys: the political leader and the messiah.

For the first part, they were trying to define daenerys position in the story, and came to the conclusion she was the destroyer of the old world. In their point of view, dany didn't free the slaves in asos for pure reason but because she couldn't pay for an army, and then didn't know how to build a new economy, leading to the horrors in astapor in adwd and her failure in maintaining peace in meereen. For them, Dany is unable to control her emotion and confuse revenge with justice. They also think she is an incompetent queen who make decision on a whim and never listen to her adviser. Her relationship with Daario represent her want for easy solution through war, wich she embrace at the end of adwd. When she can't remember Hazzea name, it meant innocent would die in her violent path in twow. Because of this, the expression "the path of hell is paved with good intention" became popular to define her arc from asos to beyond.

For the second part, they were clearly interressed by the mystical part of her story. Dany has a lot of prophecy around her that can be used to determined the next plotlines post adwd. For some reason, they pushed their own obssession with it on Daenerys, who they now believed is blinded by her own destiny. They claimed she think she is the hero of story and is unable to see when she does something wrong. This until she will blow up King's Landing in ados. This would push her toward her true destiny in the fight against the others where she will sacrifice herself for the greater good.

And lets not talk about the weird part of the fandom who are obssessed with deconstruction and who would only acknowledge dany as azor ahai reborn if it meant the hero is actually the true villain of the story, and the Others misunderstood victims.

2015 arrive as well as season 5 of got. This season was so controversial it manage to divided the fandom in three.

The first one were book purist who were disguted by the total butchering of affc/adwd plotline to replace them with offensive mess, and decided to stop watching the show and focus on the books. While some of them were dany friendly, they all seem to favor character like Sansa, Stannis, Brienne, the Lannisters, or the Martells. A lot of effort were put into their metas to uplift their book plotline and personality above their show counterpart.

The second part is similar to the first one, exept they didn't stop watching the show but decided to view each season through critical lense to try to understand the sexism and racism of D&D. They were mostly Sansa and Martell stan.

Both of those point of view were seen as too radical and annoying by the dudebro show apologist. Being a Martell and Sansa stan also become a sign of being a woke feminist, a book purist and a show anti.

The third part of the fandom decided that the failure of season 5 was the responsability of Grrm for not finishing his books in time, and that the show writer had run out of material and were forced to improvised. Plus the book plots were too complex and boring to be adapted, they had to simplify them. And they were also given futur plot point by Grrm that could explain some of the controversial decision this season. Like Sansa wedding with Ramsay, it was probably made because the character would end up in the North in one of the next books.

Thoses three point of view are important to understand why when the theory saying dany is a villain not a hero became more popular, dany stan were pretty isolated.

And why did this theory became more popular? Well it's a mix of all thoses perception of daenerys that I mention above but mostly because of the peoples who decided that dany in season 5 was Joffrey.02. Like I say there were people who thought that D&D were now working with futur plot point given by Grrm. And since dany storyline was read as one of a white savior, and the fandom believed Grrm can't do no wrong, and dany did some stuff this season they disapproved of, they decided it meant dany should be seen as a villain. And in a way, it manage to reconciliate the feminist anti racist and the pro D&D point of view , now united in hating daenerys. It allowed them to still trust the show, because it meant it was not D&D and grrm who were racist but dany, and it made them feel smart for having figured out this big plot point. Plus a chunk of the show!jon stan decide the parallel between them this season meant he would become the true hero of the story. Because they thought janos execution was more honorable than mossador's, and jon fight against the wight walker to defend his brothers and the free folks was contrast with dany running away on drogon.

But there were people who didn't like dany and didn't think she would become a villain. Thoses people were feminist who thought daenerys, as the face of the show, was the embodiement of D&D fake feminism responsible of the ruined of character like Sansa or the Martells. Sansa in particular because they felt the show hated traditional feminity which is something Dany was not, which was what allegedly gave her more priviledge and love by the writer and fandom. When season 6 came out, they criticized the double standard between Cersei and Dany, where the former was demonized for burning a Church and the later was celebrate for burning the khals in their holy place. Obviously, the criticism of orientalism and racism within her story didn't make her very popular with feminist.

Season 6 end, and the sansa fandom decide to ship their fav with Jon Snow. But unfortunalty for them, it was obvious that jonerys would become a thing in later season.

Now Sansa was pretty well beloved by the fandom. Like I said earlier, the intellectual part of the fandom and the sansa defense squad really went out of their way to give a better image of the character, wich was fairly popular now that show sansa had a more active role. Plus the feminist adore her!

On the other hand, daenerys was seen as either a villain in the making, or the representation of the show fake feminism and racism. At this point dany stan were considered the dumbass of the fandom.

So, what happen when the jonerys vs jonsa shipping war happen? Well the jonerys shipper were seen as the big bully who victimized the poor sansa stan. Since in their point of view, dany stan were racist people who can't read, and the sansa stan were the woke book purist. Since Sansa was the underdog unfairly hated by the dudebro of the fandom, but beloved by the intellectuals. And Dany was the popular girl who got dumb stan and is only loved by pop feminism. People were naturally more incline into believing jonsa shippers as the victime of this war.

Even when the sansa stan were saying the most heinous things about dany and other female character to prop her up. Even when they were using the villain dany theory, the dark!dany theory, the white savior theory that had now become about dany being a colonizer and imperialist, or the ableist mad queen dany theory wich they backed up by diagnosis her with all the real life disorder they hated. It was seen as normal and dany stan just can't handle criticism. Even when multiple blog were created on tumblr to hate on daenerys which had almost no equivalent for the sansa/jonsa fandom, the jonerys shippers were the bad guys.

Jonerys was made canon in season 7. The intellectual part of the fandom either accept it but thought it was a cliche uninspiring ship, or they defend it for the themes but didn't see it as a complex relationship like jaime with cersei or brienne. The feminist, particulary the one who hated house targaryen, were shocked that grrm could romantize incest. And obviously, the jonsa hated it, and there ugliness started to be notice more with the weird theory they builted, like political!jon. The Jonerys fandom were finally getting some justice.

Plus more big name essayists in the fandom started debunking of the baseless incel hate dany receive post adwd. Dany had now the right to sleep with Daario, Jorah was a creep, Dany rejected Quentyn for peace, and Drogo being Dany rapist was getting more believed by the fandom.

During the hiatus before season season 8, @rainhadaenerys wrote down a lot of meta as a defense against the worst claimed that the fandom made about Dany. It gave hoped to dany stan, but it was crushed by season 8 with D&D deciding to make the mad queen theory canon the worst way possible.

Now the feminist and the intellectual part of the fandom are both defending daenerys. But there is the dominant idea that certain event of the last season could happen in the books, like dany burning King's Landing. And the possibility of her going insane should be accepted by the dany stan, and if not, it mean we are not real asoiaf fans.

[asoiaf-source]

Fighting Hate with more Hate. That always works, right?

“Sansa’s fans are so defensive of her because of the rest of the fandom demonize her and hate her for no reason.” - helenakey

So then the answer is to demonize the other women characters for no reason?

Of course there are going to be ‘fans’ that hate on a character for no reason, I’ve seen people post unnecessary and unreasonable hate on many of the characters, not just Sansa, and they can be as annoying, but they are not representative of the entire fandom. Not ALL fans are hating on her, and some are just looking at the character critically. I’m new to the tumblr metas (avoided for a long time due to the toxic reputation), but i’ve been on ASOIAF forums for a long time and there are plenty of Sansa supporters, even if she is still quite a polarizing character due to how people wish to interpret her... but Sansa stans on tumblr take it to the next level!

I’ve never seen this side of her fans before, or at least so much nearly every day, and subsequently the many rebuttals! And how often they like throwing other characters under the bus, often for hypocritical reasons. Like the OP yendany said, they ignore the trauma in other characters or dismiss it as not as bad, when it is often much, much worse. They criticize and attack other female characters to prop up Sansa ‘better’ survival skills, or attribute qualities to her she doesn’t possess (I see this a lot in fanfiction, before I realized the self-insert aspect), or use her age as excuse when all the main characters are young or even younger than her. The line porcelain to ivory to steel... can really apply to any character that has to grow up and face the harsh realities of the world... so it is really hypocritical to think Sansa is special in some way for overcoming her situation, all the characters are going through the same struggle, and many have it much worse. That is where I think so much of the anti-sansa stans come from, the hypocrisy and the tearing down of other just as deserving of sympathy/empathy characters, especially other women characters. It is a weird juxtaposition, that anyone with a reasonable sense of objectivity can pick up on and often do.

I mostly see it done against Arya and Dany, the two more prominent female characters in the books (thus the 2 who draw more focus than #3 Sansa?). The two female characters GRRM is telling a lot of his story through and spending a large amount of the text (right from book 1) to develop their growth as characters and showcase their strengths, intelligence, determination, fortitude, agency, cleverness, resilience and so much more. It’s as if because the other women are not ‘pure’ or see themselves that way and stronger in personality and character that somehow their suffering doesn’t affect them as much because they are tougher and didn’t let anything that happened to them stop them from growing stronger. They aren’t dwelling in victim-hood too long before they pick themselves back up and move forward.

And yet, they cheer when Sansa starts to grow stronger... Sansa’s growth has been much slower, we are moving into book 6 and she is just starting to gain a bit of agency, but she is still heavily under the tutelage of Baelish. We will see how far she gains in the next book and if she will break with Baelish by the end of it and be a fully independent player. But her development isn’t nearly on the same scale as Daenerys and Arya. That isn’t to imply that she isn’t going to be important, but it is clear from the text that she is not one of the main focuses for GRRM, or he would have developed her faster and given her more to do. We will see how much ground he can cover in 1-2 books, but there is only so much he will be able to accomplish and have it be believable, especially with so many POVs and story lines that he needs to develop.

I actually think their attempts to (over) defend her backfire, as so many feel the need to point out the falsehoods and misinterpretations, especially when they are wildly mean-spirited and completely refutable by the text. As I traverse through the ASOIAF metas I often come across fans metas writing rebuttals to other posts, to ‘correct’ their conclusion or ‘facts’. I’ve read so many of these they are starting to get repetitive, I also read some of the Sansa-stan posts they are rebutting and, yeah I can see why so many get upset. If you don’t like it when others tears down or dismisses Sansa, why do you think fans of the other characters wouldn’t comment when you go after their favs, especially so mean-spiritedly.

I don’t think I ever felt so much negativity towards the Sansa character until I had to read so many skewed and biased metas turning her into some kind of saintly YA Disney princess type that is just too good for this cruel world. That kind of character has no place in a series like this. You can’t help but want to point out the wild inaccuracies, and it makes me feel a negativity towards a character I didn’t feel negative to before. And I don’t want to feel negative towards her, she is a Stark and I root for the Starks, especially the kids. I often defended her against those who (I feel) just don’t understand what it is like to be a preteen girl, I relate to a lot of Sansa’s weaknesses and how she feels, especially at that age, and that is her appeal (to me) - the fact that she starts off very weak.

Sansa is weak both physically and mentally, she cares too much about rank, privilege, and what others think about her, her desire to conform, for everything to be proper, and properly in their place. She has the luxury to think that way because she is a rich, pretty, noble girl who ranks at the top of society, of course she sees life as great and never questions it... she is already at the top and winning from birth. This is why (I think) she is so hard on Arya, she messes with her idea of what is proper/good/right.  Arya isn’t pretty and doesn’t try to be, she acts more boy than girl, she plays with dirty, smelly, poor children, etc... Those are all an embarrassment to Sansa and go against what a proper lady of her rank should do and care about. Once they head south, all the things Arya gets away with at home will stand out even more and reflect badly on Sansa, by association. So, she criticizes and distances herself even more, because she wants to join the elite glamorous world of the nobility.

The other girls don’t have those weaknesses, that is why they are seen as better able to cope than Sansa does.  They grow quicker and stronger faster because they are not as inhibited by what the ‘rules’ are. This isn’t a criticism of Sansa, this is an observation and I think it is the entire point of including a character like her in the story. GRRM could have followed the original outline for her, but he wanted to ‘reform/rescue’ her character and give her (I hope) a better path back to her family and happiness. I think it is GRRMs way to show how young girls should NOT romanticize noble life or being pretty will lead to a ‘perfect’ life. That thinking of yourself as a lady or being a princess/queen isn’t what is important. That marring a ‘title’ (lord/prince) or a handsome face is not enough to lead to happiness. It is what you do with your life, and how you care about others and who cares about you - that is what is important. But some Sansa fans seem to miss that and want her to have all those thing and more... they want it both ways, her to learn all those things, and yet still get all those things... a beautiful princess life clear of the harsh actions to gain it and also a happy family married to the best, more heroic and honorable man - a fairy tale ending. And that is not ASOIAF.

They are reducing her entire arc to becoming a nicer, more pure, and pretty, prize for a man to love, marry and make their queen. If so, GRRM will botch the ending of his series and all the points he *seems* to be making thus far.

A major theme (to me) in Sansa arc is her lack of value in her home and family. Sansa (to me) is like the small town girl who can’t wait to leave her family / Winterfell behind and to move to the big glamorous city (King’s Landing) and become royalty. But once she got there wasn’t able to accumulate with its more complicated and corrupt realities of the court. Even setting the cruelty of Joffrey aside (he is an aberration, not a normal example), how everyone else ostracizes or ignores her (except the hound, and to some extent Tyrion - although he isn’t all that great). The way the Tyrells treat her before and after her wedding is much more representative of how typical court life and nobility behaves normally (I think). Sansa never saw the true value of being surrounded by people who love and care about YOU and whom you can trust and rely upon - until that is all taken from her. She slowly sees how the people at court are corrupt and deceitful under all the beauty and glamor she so aspired to only after being fooled more than once, and (to me) no longer wants any part of it, but is forced to play, thanks to Baelish.

This is a point I find many of her fan miss, they think Sansa is going to learn to play the game, destroy everyone with her cunning and beauty and rise to the top to be queen or a ruler - a path which will ultimately lead to down a very dark and cynical path... but somehow they think Sansa will be different, and her rise will be more like a Disney princess story, one where she will gain power without having to sink low to do it. That is NOT the kind of book GRRM is writing.

”I’ll make them love me.” - another childish statement, you can’t make people love you, you earn love and respect. And Sansa hasn’t done that once the entire series, she hasn’t made a single friend. No one is looking to follow or fight for/beside Sansa, save Baelish, and we all know that plan is doomed to fail, as he isn’t to be trusted or relied upon and wants to use her. I would even question her friendship with Jeyne Poole as it is clear she never saw them as equals, and that is not real friendship... more like Jeyne was a companion/lady-in-waiting type.

The few people who care about her (other than family) either are working on behalf of an oath to Catelyn, or have their own ambitions/sexual desires/pity for her and not necessarily care about her for herself because she was a good and loyal friend to them. Maybe this will change in the next book, but with Baelish keeping close tabs and guiding her, who knows how well she will be able to make any genuine relationships with others given all the secrets she has to keep.

Her only realistic path to leadership is through marriage and that is hardly giving her agency as a heroic rise to a leader of a men... more like sleeping her way to the top.  Not something I want for Sansa, and I hope her ‘marriage’ to Tyrion works as plot armor against her being used like that.

Besides GRRM has kinda stressed that ‘real’ leadership comes from understanding people, observation, and experience, and not just from strategics marriage (Margaery, Cersei) or inheritance (Joffrey, Tommen, Cersei - she could prove the point all on her own :). Every leader in the book so far has to make compromises, make hard decisions and even make harsh, sometimes very bad decisions and live with those consequences. None of the characters in the series have escaped this as much as Sansa has, since so much of her story thus far is about her lack of agency, and being a pawn used by others (and to some extent she still is with Baelish). For her to make it to the end w/o doing anything and staying ‘pure’ and that is how she ends up on top, by essentially not taking many large personal risks, allowing others to do all the heavy lifting morally, mentally and physically. If winning means standing on the sidelines watching everyone else do the WORK, and just giving suggestive nudges here and there to have things turn out in your favor so you can just coast to the top (that is the Baelish way)... well, that is kinda the worst message GRRM could leave us with.

If GRRM wants Sansa to become a leader, she will have to get her hands dirty too, she will have to take great personal risks to gain power and accept the consequences good or bad that result, learn from them and move forward... otherwise it defeats one of the main points of his series and turns her into a simplistic cliche version of a character.  Every character with a POV has gone through this, it is one of the major themes in ASOIAF, a more realistic, less easy way of looking at how you obtain power and learn by experience and a series of victories and defeats. Thus far Sansa has also avoided examining her actions and how they have affected her, she either never thinks about them, changes the facts to suit her better, or blames others without seeing the part she also played... I’m not blaming her, but her action did contribute to the situation... she never seems to realize this and I feel it is going to eventually hit her hard, she has to mature and grow out of her ‘unreliable narrator’ eventually, and it must lead to something for GRRM to make it such a large part of her narrative of coping with her trauma. I assume he wrote her this way for a reason and is going to do something with it.

I’m looking forward to a darker more realistic Sansa who has more agency and understanding, and I expect her to make her own mistakes and moral compromises (well she already has, but there was some coercion - but it also means she is capable of doing so) just like all the other POVs have had to do. I also look forward to her finally owning up to her past actions and how they also contributed to where she is now. If she can’t take some personal responsibility she will never grow. That is a part of having agency, understanding how your decisions and actions affect you and others.

I wish all the back and forth would stop, cause I’m tired of seeing it in my feeds, but I guess it has been going on for years - the same arguments/rebuttals - so I guess it will continue, even after we get the next book... I think only the completion of the entire series will end some of these arguments, but who knows - after some of the meta I’ve read, there will probably be even more, lol.

Well, I wanted to comment and give my two cents, but it ended up being longer and I guess for me all this is still new and offsetting.  I guess I had more to say that I thought, even though I edited A LOT out because I wanted to keep it focused. I’ve just started to dip my toes into this crazy platform, so I’m sure this is just the tip of the toxic metas that I heard can be found here... can’t wait to read the anti-dany metas... that is sure to fill me with a sad rage as well, i know the show did her no favors, sigh....

[stardyng]

Hi Arya stan from before here. I don’t hate Sansa I actually really like her character and started following her tag on tumblr and guess what it’s super annoying most of the time to try and appreciate her when there’s 1000+ blogs who can’t just like her without hating Arya and Dany. Season 7 had shit writing for all of the characters so I get being angry at Arya for the things she did then because some of it was dumb I get it. I just find it really annoying that Sansa stans have spent the 1/2

Have spent the last week or so trashing Arya and Dany because of a 10 second clip that nothing happened in. Why do you guys want her to come for Dany and Arya? Why do you want to watch a show where they make women fight because it’s fucking gross? I see no one comparing the male characters and preparing them to go against each other. I don’t think Sansa is an idiot. Dany is an important ally against the white walkers and I hope they come to appreciate each other and work together. I hope she 2/3

I hope she protects Arya and they actually get along like her parents would’ve wanted them to. The last thing I want to see is a season of Sansa passive aggressively berating everyone in the room just for the sake of her being a “bad ass” it’s stupid and doesn’t make any sense. Go watch the video where the writers discuss season 7 and you’ll see that Sansa was still being manipulated by Petyr and did want to take power from Jon. Arya had a right not to trust her in the beginning. 3/3

________

What’s so wrong about me having an opinion and expressing it? I can’t stand S7 Arya and Daenerys in the show, and I have every right to express why. If you don’t like that I do that, just block me or mute the anti arya stark and anti daenerys targaryen tags so none of that pops up in your efforts in finding someone who appreciates all three characters. I’m sure there are people who love Sansa that think really fondly of Arya and Daenerys. I’ve seen some of these people, and I even follow some of them. There’s two Daenerys stans on twitter that I absolutely love, and their analysis on her character (especially the book version of her) is outstanding. There’s a lot of Sansa stans as well who I see really appreciate the sisterhood between her and Arya, who have both of them as their favorite characters. All props to them. However, that’s not me. I don’t like these two characters (among many others) right now and I’m not going to pretend to like them, or filter my opinions because of some stranger on tumblr. If I like them later on, then that’s good, but we’ll get there when we get there. I’m here because I want to discuss the series in a candid manner, and how am I supposed to do that when whenever I talk about my negative feelings on a character, someone always complains on my blog about it. If you don’t want to see that negativity, block the tag, or me. Yes, I fully agree that Season 7 has been really bad for most characters. Not all though. Cersei stood out to me as being magnificent in the past season. She clearly surpassed her father in any way you could think of. Jaime I still really enjoy and find quite compelling. Even though I wasn’t satisfied with some elements in her story (aka. everything that has to do with Arya), I really enjoyed Sansa and her story-line last season as well. Plus, there was Theon, who’s character arc is turning out quite different from what I originally imagined. So there’s that. I didn’t like what was going on with pretty much everyone else, and I’ll elaborate on that if I wish to. 

The thing is that Sansa stans have said nothing about Arya in relation to the new content that has been put out. Arya stans just want to insert themselves in an argument that they play absolutely no part in. This has nothing to do with Arya. Yes, I did make a post elaborating on my frustration of how much of an absolute monster she was (don’t kill the messager, maisie williams said that first) last season and how the show is literally going to ignore it, but when it comes to the actual trailer and any of my post about it, Arya wasn’t even really on my mind. Nor was she on any of my mutuals mind either. That being said, let’s talk about Daenerys for a moment. I criticize Daenerys because she’s a tyrant, because she’s an imperialist, because she has committed literal atrocities, because she has been neglectful of the former slaves in Essos, because she is pretty much slated to commit atrocities in Westoros as well. She is a threat that needs to be dealt with, in the same way that Cersei and the White Walkers are, and I don’t even know how Daenerys stans manage to still ignore it when all of Emilia Clarke’s interviews about this new season alludes to the fact that Daenerys is going to snap soon. Plus, for starters, when has Daenerys been a good ally to the North? She has been more of an inconvenience in the fight against the white walkers than everyone else combined. She gave them a literal dragon that destroyed the wall. Because of her actions and general incompetence, thousands of people are going to die. That’s not forgetting that without Daenerys in the equation, all the seven kingdoms could have worked together to deal with the threat, but now Cersei is going to stab everyone in the back. So like…Daenerys really needs to clean up her mess. Also, the idea that having two female characters be against each other is ‘‘fucking gross’‘ is just weird. Y’all didn’t say the same thing when Daenerys and Cersei were fighting for the throne. Y’all didn’t say the same thing with Lysa was trying to murder Sansa. Y’all didn’t say the same thing when any of the male characters have expressed distaste with each other. There was a literal war of FIVE kings, but it’s so terrible to suggest that two women who would have very valid reasons to not like each other, don’t like each other. The trailer hints at that, all the casual fans are talking about it and articles that were written months beforehand even suggested this being an actual thing. This is not something that Sansa stans have created out of thin air. It’s a legitimate plot point in the story, that you will just have to learn to accept one moment or the other because it’s going to be an actual thing. And did you just say that you don’t see people pining the male characters against each other? Cleganebowl? Did you forget about that? People have been hyping it up for years now. Daenerys has been a liability thus far, and has done absolutely nothing to earn the trust of anybody in the seven kingdoms, so I really don’t see what Sansa has to like or respect about her, especially considering that she risked her life in order to take her ancestral home back and have it be independent again.

Honestly, Sansa and Arya are probably going to get along just fine next season. I don’t mind that, because that’s what I wanted in the first place last season, but that didn’t happen. Now, the writers made me intensely dislike a character that I really enjoyed, and that makes me extremely sad when looking at how much they could have done with their relationship and Arya as a character. I don’t really care that much about Arya in the books, but there’s a lot more to her character, and I understand why people love her that much. I don’t share the feeling, but I understand. Arya in the show is an empty vacuum of murder and sexism, and I’m not going to pretend that I like it. I also don’t want Sansa to be passive aggressive towards everyone. I hope Jaime pledges his allegiance to her, I hope we get more moments between her and Brienne, I hope they have more conversations between Jon and Sansa, hope we get more of her with Bran as well. I hope that we get to see her dynamic with all kinds of characters. Just because I pointed out that she clearly doesn’t like Daenerys doesn’t mean I want her to dislike everyone. Also, just because I want the show to recognize that Arya has lost herself, doesn’t mean that I want Sansa to hate her. I want the problem to be addressed in the narrative, and fixed later on. Also, Sansa wasn’t really manipulated by Littlefinger. He was incapable of making her do one thing. He told her to keep Brienne close yet Sansa sent her away. He tried to increase the divide between her and Arya, and she spotted his slipup and went to Bran to verify all the information with him. On the other hand, Arya was running around spying everyone at Winterfell like a little rat, and tormenting Sansa for being feminine every step of the way. The only one he did manage to manipulate was Arya. Plus, Sansa was literally offered to take Jon’s spot (and if she did it, I would have cheered)  but she refused the damn thing. Like, we seen the scene. Also, the fact that Sansa wanted power, but still pushed herself to the side to let Jon have and keep it just goes to show how much of a great and caring person she is. Sansa was an absolute queen this season and had not committed one wrong act and that’s the facts. So nope, Arya did not have any right to torment her, or to make her fear for her life seeing as Sansa did nothing wrong. I even made a post a while back elaborating on that, so if you want to read it, you can. 

[starringemiliaclarke]

Press: Emilia Clarke on Game of Thrones fans: 'Airports are a source of fear. It gets kind of freaky'

THE TELEGRAPH – Emilia Clarke walks into a suite at Claridge’s, a gaggle of publicists and agents surrounding her, with the kind of poise that you would expect from a queen.

  To the tens of millions of fans of Game of Thrones, the show that catapulted her to fame only a year out of drama school, it’s a not unfamiliar scene.

  Although of course, as Daenerys Targaryen, the all-powerful, slave-freeing queen of the show, it would be some kind of windswept castle or ancient pyramid, and her retinue would be in armour.

  Even her newly blonde hair is apt (until now she’s worn a wig on the show). Like the character she plays, Emilia’s is a story of success against the odds (of which more later), but there the similarities end.

  At 31, the English rose couldn’t be less like the prickly queen she plays (full title: Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, rightful heir to the Iron Throne, rightful Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains… or just Dany for short).

  Emilia is funny, light-hearted and, that entrance aside, a million miles from grand. She’s much more like the carefree, dancing girl she plays in the new campaign for the Dolce & Gabbana fragrance The One. (When the brand asked if she would be its new face, ‘I was like, “Well, yeah. Duh.”’)

  In the past, Emilia has had to deal with uncomfortable questions about how she, as a woman, justified the arguably gratuitous female nudity and gruesome violence for which Game of Thrones initially made headlines.

  But long before the Harvey Weinstein scandal turned Hollywood upside down, the show’s plot pulled a complete 180 – and now it’s the female characters who are fighting over the titular thrones. And everyone, but everyone, is rooting for the 5ft 2in Khaleesi, who is proving to be just as fierce as her dragons.

  Playing the role has sharpened Emilia’s own feminist impulses. ‘It’s given me a real insight into what it feels like to be a woman who stands up to inequality and hate. And as she [Daenerys] has become more empowered as a woman, you can’t hide any more,’ she says. ‘You are adding to the voices that are going to make people realise an equal society is what we’re aiming for.’

  Emilia grew up near Oxford with her older brothers, and was surrounded by strong examples of equality. Her mother, who worked as a marketing executive, was the primary breadwinner, while her father worked as a sound engineer in musical theatre – so it was the norm for Emilia to see a woman in a position of power at work.

  ‘That’s the lens through which I’ve been fortunate enough to view the world,’ she says. ‘It’s only when you go to school that you’re like, “Oh, that’s different, that’s weird.”’

  After attending the private boarding school St Edward’s in Oxford (where she discovered her love of acting through school productions), she was still studying at the Drama Centre in London – and earning money with a catering job – when she was cast in her first role, in an episode of BBC One’s Doctors.

  It was in 2009 that she auditioned for Game of Thrones. The casting director had been looking for a tall, willowy blonde. ‘I genuinely don’t know what it was that set me aside. I mean, I didn’t look the part at all,’ laughs Emilia.

  ‘I [readied] myself, listened to a little Tupac and bowled in, obviously still a bag of nerves. But I just tried to play the truth of it.’ It may have been her sense of humour that helped her win the role – the actress read for her part, but also broke into a ‘funky chicken’ dance in front of the HBO execs.

  As Game of Thrones gained momentum and Emilia has become a recognisable celebrity, she has struggled with some aspects of fame. She gets stopped on the street increasingly often, and finds crowds of fans incredibly stressful.

  ‘Airports are a constant source of fear,’ she admits. ‘When you’re in a really public place and someone asks you for a picture, then suddenly you get people who don’t know who you are, or really care, come up and join in. Then it gets kind of freaky. Because you’re like, “It’s just me. I’m by myself, feeling outnumbered.” It’s overwhelming.’

    One would think that all the nude scenes she’s filmed for Game of Thrones would also have caused her anxiety, but no. She has branded those who criticised her for going naked ‘anti-feminist’.

  Between seasons, Emilia has found time to film some major pop culture, including a role in Solo: A Star Wars Story, a prequel about Hans Solo’s early years to be released next year. The project remains shrouded in secrecy – all Emilia can say is that her character is ‘really cool’.

  She was also the lead in last year’s Me Before You, the adaptation of Jojo Moyes’s bestseller, and next summer she’s due to be reunited with its director, Thea Sharrock, in a West End play called Five Times in One Night.

  Both she and Kit Harington – who plays Jon Snow in Game of Thrones, and (spoiler alert!) is now her on-screen lover -flew to Naples to film adverts for Dolce & Gabbana (today, naturally, she’s in a black Dolce dress, with statement tiger-head buttons on the collar and sleeves). Set against the heady backdrop of a lively street festival, Emilia became swept up in the atmosphere.

  ‘I’ve been to Italy before, but not Naples,’ she says. ‘It was all locals in the advert, which was even funnier because it was so authentic. I think there were a lot of out-takes with me like, “What the hell is going on, this is so cool!” I feel Dolce & Gabbana is [for] girls [who] are at ease in their own skin,’ she says. ‘They have a frivolity and a femininity that I can relate to… It fits really well.’

  For now she’s now back on set for the final series of Game of Thrones. Last season, her Instagram feed was filled with videos of her and Harington goofing around behind the scenes. But this time around the restrictions are more serious.

  ‘We have a very strict social-media ban this year because people need to stop spoiling it for everyone,’ she says, pouting slightly. ‘It’s really frustrating.’ Even Emilia doesn’t know what’s planned for her character (the TV series has now gone past the point George RR Martin’s books have reached).

  ‘They’ve written a number of different endings,’ she says. ‘So none of the cast know what the actual ending is. If there’s ever a leak of any kind, don’t believe it because it’s probably not true.’

  No matter how it ends, Emilia seems deeply sad for Game of Thrones to leave her life. When asked how she’s feeling about it, she simply frowns and says, ‘emotional. It’s a big one.’ That said, being on the show is not without its downsides. During the seven months she spends filming each season, she typically wakes around 4am to head into hair and make-up, with 18-hour shoot days that can often involve riding prosthetic dragons in front of green screens for hours on end.

  As a result of this intense schedule, her personal life has fallen by the wayside. She dated actor Seth MacFarlane between 2012 and 2013, but isn’t currently romantically linked to anyone. Once Game of Thrones wraps for good in 2018, for the first time in seven years she will have free time.

  She often tries to remind herself that in order to create characters, you have to spend time in the real world. ‘The thing with being an actor is, to play the roles you need to have an idea of more than just getting into a car and getting to a set,’ she says.

  Her goal, lately, is to take more time to be herself. She and her best friend – the actor and writer Lola Frears (daughter of director Stephen), with whom she’s also writing a script – have been working their way through a list of 60 influential movies given to her by Solo screenwriter Jon Kasdan. The most recent: All About Eve.

  She’s reading Zadie Smith’s Swing Time, loves Kendrick Lamar and went to Glastonbury for the first time this summer. Fans filmed her dancing wildly to Stormzy’s set, but she didn’t care – she was having too much fun.

  Her family have always supported her dream of acting; although her father, being in the industry, joked early on that she’d only ever need to remember one line: ‘Do you want fries with that?’ Tragically, he died from cancer last summer while the actress was filming upcoming thriller Above Suspicion alongside Jack Huston in Kentucky.

  Now Emilia focuses on her mum and her brother, Bennett, who works in the camera department on Game of Thrones. She credits her interest in Star Wars and Comic Con culture to him. ‘My brother was a huge fan, and I wanted to be like my brother in every way,’ she laughs. ‘Sometimes he does the clapper before my takes [on Game of Thrones]. I’m always like, “Don’t f— it up!” It gets very unprofessional very quickly.’

  Game of Thrones has also brought her security – it has been estimated that she earns up to $500,000 per episode. She owns a house in the LA neighbourhood of Venice, although she admits that she rarely spends time there.

  ‘I can provide [financially] for my friends and family,’ she says. ‘Genuinely, that’s the best thing. Knowing that everyone I love is going to be fine. It sounds like a real Oprah Winfrey sob story, but it’s very true. It’s incredibly empowering as a young lady.’

  Emilia Clarke is the face of Dolce & Gabbana The One, £50 for 30ml edp.

  Press: Emilia Clarke on Game of Thrones fans: ‘Airports are a source of fear. It gets kind of freaky’ was originally published on Enchanting Emilia Clarke

[jodiwalker]

The Best Things Happening on Game of Thrones Right Now

If the current season of Game of Thrones is fan service, then consider me — a fan — serviced, and sign me up, baby. We've been through the hard stuff, we deserve this. This series has finally broken through the stratosphere of TV criticism and into the land of pure joy where Arya can be both a raging lil' sociopath and a beloved protagonist.

So this is neither a review nor a recap, a critique nor a thoughtful analysis influenced by my superior status as a "book-reader." Instead, it is the most advanced of all literary art forms: a list of I've been tickled by in the first two episodes of season 7. The best things happening on Game of Thrones right now definitively are:

Very Silly Reveals That Are Supposed to Change the Game (of Thrones) But Are Kind of Just Really Obvious Solutions

1. There's a Shit Ton of Dragon Glass at…Dragonstone

Of all the things I expected out of this season—reunions, rifts, Cersei dramatically guzzling wine, Arya masked-murderin', Dany sittin' on thrones, hopefully the glorious return of Gendry's biceps—I never anticipated quite this much focus on igneous rocks. Jon Stark's laser focus on digging up dragon glass is starting to sound like a Goop newsletter, and it's not that I wouldn't subscribe (imagine: the fur recs! the tips for sultry lashes! the straightforward syntax without any annoying exclamation points!), it's just all a little more plainly sated than I expected. Jon calls, like, eight Big Chamber Meetings to tell all the Northern elders, plus Lil' Lyanna Mormont that their number one priority is to find dragon glass because it's the only thing they can create weapons out of in mass to kill white walkers. Those meetings go a little something like this:

Jon: How are we gonna kill white walkers?!

Northerners: DRAGONGLASS!

Jon: And where are we gonna find it?!

Sam, from Oldtown: AT—AND YOU'RE REALLY NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS—DRAGONSTONE!

[Ed. note: I've edited out the regular interruptions from Sansa that give me extreme conflicting emotional anxiety, but we'll get to those later in the "So You're Co-Ruling with Your Half-Sister Who's Actually Your Cousin and She's Recently Developed a Mind of Her Own After Surviving Extreme Trauma" section.]

Sending Sam to Oldtown to train as a maester is like the coconut oil/Franks RedHot of Westeros: that shit works on everything. At the Citadel, Sam begins scooping soup, souping poop (in a scene I would have exchanged for an hour-long loop of gruesome murders), and most importantly, sneaking into the restricted section of the library like some sort of chubby lovechild between Voldemort and Harry Potter. He even gets shut down by Jim Broadbent (aka Archmaester Marwyn, absolutely killing the wise, gives-no-shits maester game) and sneaks in anyway. And what did Samwell find in the restricted section?

Well, Sam steals maybe five books and finds the exact answer he needs, plus one he didn't even know he should be looking for—more on that in a minute.

And you know what? That's kind of dumb and unrealistic, but Sam deserves this. He's had a tough life and his dad is a jerk that wanted to kill him and his brother is (well, used to be) the hot guy from Unreal, and everyone shits on him all the time even though he is legitimately the nicest person alive in their godforsaken, feces infested world — dude has earned finding the solution to saving mankind after exactly 10 minutes of cozy reading with his cute wildling life partner and their ageless baby.

So, Sam finds out (via a super lame picture that Jaime could have drawn with his strong hand) that there's a big ol' dragon glass mine at—you're not going to believe this—Dragonstone. All they've gotta do is dig it up. Well, and, y'know, get past Daenerys Targaryen, heir of Dragonstone who recently arrived on its sandy, glass-filled shores. And that other thing that Sam found?

2. The Cure for Greyscale is Just…Peeling Off the Greyscale

Well, no fucking shit, Sam.  I mean, listen, I know I was just singing the kid's praises, but it's pretty crazy to act like you just found the magical cure for Greyscale in your magical secret books when that cure is…peeling off the Greyscaled skin and then putting a bunch of medieval Neosporin on it. But whatever, it's really sweet that Sam wants to help Jorah Mormont so badly because of his affection for Lord Commander Mormont and is willing to flay him to save his life (and definitely give himself Greyscale with the way he's using those gloves). So go ahead, Sam, peel off that Greyscale in your secret Dr. Pimple sessions—your solution might be obvious, but at least it's not dumb, dumb, dumb…

3. The Dragon Feller That's Just…a Crossbow

So, John is concerned with defeating the white walkers because, y'know, strong moral fiber and a her survivor's guilt complex and all that. But Cersei is mainly concerned with defeating anyone who would try to take the Iron Throne from her that she didn't already blow up with magic fire. And that means she's got to look alive about the tiny blonde Targaryen heading her way who's bringing, along with her legitimate claim to the throne, her three big ass dragons that were, coincidentally, born from a magic fire.

It's going to take something big to defeat those dragons. Something magical. Something much more powerful than even wildfire. Something like…

A BIG ASS CROSSBOW, BABY! Yeah, that will be great for killing dragons — if the dragons are sitting still, 1,000 years old, and already dying peacefully of natural causes. It's okay, Qyburn. They can't all be skull-crushing Frankenzombies held together by Husky R' Us armor level ideas, buddy.

Arya and Her Whole Thing

I remember when How to Get Away With Murder premiered there were a bunch of think pieces that were all, Finally! A Female Anti-Hero for Us to Love Just Like All Those Dude Anti-Heroes We Loved on A&E and HBO! Of course, no one loved Viola Davis' anti-hero like they loved Walter White because people don’t like to love flawed women like they like to love flawed men (and the show's not as good, but Viola is). And so, when Arya gave the best revenge performance of all time at the top of the season 7 premiere, there were a bunch of (to be fair, legitimate) articles that were all Should We Really Be Rooting for Arya? Is Arya a Sociopath Now? Arya Sure Looked like She Wanted to Kill Ed Sheeran, an Innocent Soldier, Who We Will Tell You Later How WE'D Like to Kill, But for Different Totally Valid Reasons.

So let me just say, yes! Arya is a probably a semi-psychopathic now, and yes! We should be rooting for her. She is but a simple mercenary setting out to avenge the death of her loved ones using humble blood magic. Yes, she killed Walder Frey, and yes, she fed him to his sons, and yes she then skinned him and wore his face in order to poison all those sons who she had just fed a pie made out of their dad, but you know what she also did…spared the women who hadn’t done anything wrong except be born into that nasty family. And yes she maybe only spared them to have this bad ass parting line, delivered with just perfect level-headed menace by Maisy Williams: "When people ask you what happened here — tell them the North remembers. Tell them winter came for House Frey."

But she is Arya and I love her, and I support her in anything she does…unless she kills any of the characters I like, in which case I will have to write some think pieces.

Sibling Dramzzz: Stark Edition

And speaking of Starks you have to keep your eye on, Sansa and Jon are having kind of a hard time co-parenting the North, and that's probably because people just loooove putting Jon in charge, even though Sansa should kind of technically be in charge, the only problem is, that Sansa's so annoying. Now, Sansa has made large strides toward being less annoying. But for every two steps forward (occasionally telling Lord Baelish to go fuck himself, knowing about war, not being a moralizing idealist), she interrupts Jon six times in their council meetings and tells him how stupid he is.

And listen, I get it — I have siblings. No one knows you better, and no one knows they know you better. When someone acts like they understand you better than you understand yourself, and worse, they're probably right, it can be trying. When Sansa tells Jon that he's going to get his head chopped off like his virtuous father and brother before him, she's not necessarily, but she is annoying. In a made-up world with dragons and child-sacrifice and, like, constant incest that's often not very relatable, I find this Jon and Sansa stuff frustratingly relevant.

The complexity of familial bonds is a language that spans universes (I mean, I guess that's ignoring the thing I just said about near-constant incest), so when Sansa says just the right bratty thing — "Joffrey never let anyone question his decisions, do you think he was a good king?" — to set Jon off, or when Jon and Sansa get on the same page about something, then he immediately changes his mind and announces it at the dinner table, so she questions his decision in front of all their gossipy cousins…it's normal family stuff, just at much higher, head-chopping stakes.

My great fear is that the tentative but often sweet partnership these two eldest "children" of Ned Stark have formed will somehow be ruined by Littlefinger. So boyyyyyy was it gratifying when Jon choked his old ass out when he was all I wanted to fuck your step-mom and now I want to fuck your half-sister, just thought I'd tell you that right here in front of your dead dad's crypt. And mannnnn was it concerning when Sansa backed down from publicly challenging Jon about his decision to leave the North and sale to Dragonstone the moment she learned he was leaving her in charge of the North in his absence, then immediately looked to Littlefinger for…what? Approval? Guidance? Shared joy? None are great options.

Just get though this Jon and Sansa  — I promise you’ll be best friends when you’re adults!

Sibling Dramzzz: Greyjoy Edition

Yo, this family is Messed! Up! Theon jumped off a ship rather than risk saving his sister Yara from their super-pirate uncle who's now taking Yara, Ellaria, and the last remaining Sand Snake, Tyene as his gift to Cersei which will totally make her want to marry him so he can be king, I guess, and not just of his raggedy salt islands.

It will never not be distracting how much Euron looks like Pacey though. If Pacey had a run-in with an H&M clearance rack and the entire smoky eye section of Sephora.

Sibling Dramzzz: Lannister Edition

And speaking of Cersei's current romantic status: Jaime is giving her a looooot of side-eye because she's, y'know, terrible. But she is doing a really fun thing this season where she's constantly recapping how much she hates everyone while subconsciously remaining us how much everyone hates her in return. While roaming around her Etsy map of Westeros, Cersei tells Jaime: "Enemies to the east. Enemies to the south: Ellaria Sand and her brood of bitches. Enemies to the west: Olenna, the old cunt, another traitor. Enemies to the North: Ned Stark's bastard has been named King of the North, and that murdering whore Sansa stands beside him. Enemies everywhere, we're surrounded by traitors!"

Girl, anymore zingers and maybe a concluding paragraph, and they'll give you a byline at Vulture. It is my one true hope that Jaime will realize his sister is insane and kill her before she kills him or Tyrion.

Everything Lil' Lyanna Mormont Does

I don't care if it's Disney-Channel-level precocious, I don't care if they're just giving us more of what we want…actually, I do care. Give me more of what I want! And what I want is the Lil'est Lady of Bear Island repeatedly telling a bunch of giant grizzled dudes to STFU. "I don't plan on knitting by the fire while men fight for me," she says when it's proposed that girls should be trained to fight in the war to come. "I might be small and I might be a girl, but I am every bit as much a Northerner as you. And I don't need your permission to defend the North." Yes, my tiny queen! I don't know if they heard you in the back, but at this point in time, just about every major house in the realm is run by a woman And speaking of…

Jon and Dany Said Each Other's Names and Hopefully That Will All Be Fine

That's it, that's all I needed. Now they can either become best friends or fall in incestuous Targaryen love, there is no other option.

Images: HBO; BlondieTVJunkie/tumblr

[geekamarie]

Should Have Known Better

There are a lot of anti-Rhaegar blogs and I get it! I do. I know that I want Rhaeger to be a good guy more than there is actual proof that he is. But sometimes there are things that frustrate me with that dialogue and this is one of them:

“Rhaegar should have known better than to get Lyanna (15 year old) pregnant and to get Elia pregnant again so quickly (6 months between, by some timelines) because of what he saw his mother go through.”

Because, strictly speaking, Rhaella never became infertile and died in the childbed at age 38, well after Rhaegar’s death and his ability to see her go through that.

There are two levels to my frustration: 1) making a character exempt from the cultural norms of the author’s world building and 2) a skewed view of how those norms and personal experiences would interact.

GRRM, for all that he writes compelling female characters, also developed a purposefully misogynistic medieval-like world. A woman’s value in Westeros was largely predicated on her ability to have children and to form marriage alliances based on that ability. Children were paramount - for cementing alliances and for their ability to inherit and continue the family line - and sons most of all. This in turn leads to flowered girls (”women”) being married off sooner than they ought to be, and the strength and security of a family coming down to it’s sons and ability to have them. 

None of this should be news to fans of ASOIAF, and should bring up a lot of troubling elements that we must wrestle with as readers. However, while characters can be exceptionally good for not holding with bad cultural norms, characters should not be seen as exceptionally bad for following them. It does not absolve them of criticism, just an aspect of it - ‘x’ behavior by ‘x’ character is not condoned, but ‘x’character is not worse than other characters who engage in or allow ‘x’ behavior.

To put it another way, we can be outraged that Rhaegar got Lyanna pregnant so young or gave Elia two children so quickly - but we cannot then make Rhaegar the only person in Westeros who should know better. His behavior and likely attitudes concerning sex and pregnancy are not singular occurrences. And he certainly wasn’t the only one in a position to observe the detrimental effects of close pregnancies and young motherhood - and to ignore it in favor of broader cultural necessity (sons, alliances a child could represent, etc.).

[As an aside, given the state of Westerosi medicine, do we know that this is something collectively believed? Or is our acknowledgement of the complications from both grounded in reality?]

Which brings me to my main point: we actually have no idea what Rhaegar’s relationship with his mother was like. None. I believe the only text we have that directly links them is the quote about Rhaella welcoming her granddaughter Rhaenys at court. Everything else is guess work.

We presume, because Rhaella warmly welcomed Rhaenys to the family, that there was an affection for her son or for family and children generally (which would include her son) that motivated that. We could speculate that, because Rhaella was protective of Viserys, that she was likely protective of Rhaegar, at least at some point. Since Rhaegar was such a keen reader, it was said that Rhaella had swallowed a candle while pregnant - and perhaps she really did nurture his love of stories. We know Rhaella was mindful of her duty - wouldn’t loving and caring for a son fall under that?

However, it is also possible that Rhaella’s young age meant that she was ill prepared for motherhood. Or that Rhaegar’s birth during the tragedy of Summerhall may have intrinsically linked him to that event in her mind. Rhaegar, may have always been a reminder of her relationships with other men in her family - Aerys, her father, etc. - and not in a positive way. It is possible that Rhaegar, who is described as always reading until he decides for himself to become a warrior, was largely left on his own by both of his parents, and that there was a distance between them that meant he was not able to fully appreciate their natures or struggles. 

We do know that Rhaella had two miscarriages, two stillbirths and a son who died in infancy between the time that Rhaegar was born and his 11th birthday. It is important to note: that Rhaella, for all she was 13 or 14 when she had Rhaegar, would have been 21 or 22 by the time she next carried a babe to term; that she and Aerys seemingly did not start trying for children again until she was 17/18 and their father was dead; and that, until that last stillbirth in 270 (when Rhaegar was 10/11), Aerys was actually supportive of Rhaella and shared in her grief for their lost children. 

We do not know how far to term Rhaella carried her miscarriages, or how aware Rhaegar (4 then 5) would have been of them. While he likely understood the stillbirths and death of his younger brother, it seems unlikely that he would have internalized his mother’s age or the frequency of her pregnancies as a cause - if anything, his parents’ struggle to give him siblings likely only reinforced his sense of duty to carry on the family line. (It is also worth noting that the frequency and number of pregnancies is actually fairly reasonable so far?)

With the second stillbirth, we start to see a manifestation of Aerys paranoia and a turn in his relationship with Rhaella (which was never great). Aerys, suspecting infidelity, essentially locked Rhaella away in a holdfast - and while we can suspect that Rhaegar still had access to his mother, and that he must have been given some reason for her seclusion, we do not know what the repercussions of this change would have been for him. Rhaegar at 10/11 is perhaps beginning his training in swordsmanship, making his first friends, and becoming further removed from his family just as the dynamic sharply changes. (Or perhaps Rhaegar was forced to pick sides, etc.)

In the next four years, Rhaella would suffer another miscarriage and have two more sons die in infancy. Aerys' paranoia shifted to saboteurs and assassins, and, two years after that, when Rhaella was 30/31 and Rhaegar 17, she would give birth to Viserys. While Aerys abuse towards Rhaella increased, we, perhaps tellingly, do not have record of any miscarriages or pregnancies or births over the next eight years until Daenerys’.

All of which is to say, while the relationship between Rhaella and Aerys was one of escalating abuse, what we know of Rhaella’s pregnancies and miscarriages doesn’t seem to be too far from the norm of what would be expected. And wouldn’t necessarily have meant that Rhaegar would jump to the conclusion we want him to - that young motherhood is bad and frequent pregnancies are too.

Further... Aerys’ belief that infidelity and assassination (poisoning) was responsible for the death of his siblings is something that Rhaegar was certainly exposed to - though we don’t know how much he believed it. That his mother gave birth to him at a young age could have helped normalize that experience for him and made it seem more acceptable - he had lived and excelled, and his mother had lived to try for more children. Certainly his parents continued efforts (whether mutual or not) to give him siblings, would have inured him to the fears of infertility, while underscoring the importance of procreating.

None of which makes what happened with Elia and Lyanna okay - and, that’s not even addressing the circumstances that happened to get them pregnant or while they were pregnant. But it should separate out Rhaegar a little from the idea that he alone had this perfect understanding of the consequences of pregnancy - and what would happen to Elia and Lyanna in pregnancy - that he can be held accountable for. Especially when we are not also holding in contempt men who got “women” Lyanna’s age or younger pregnant - but that survived childbirth. Or men whose wives or lovers had multiple children within a little over a year who were not then infertile.