#asoiaf and the american mythos

[joannalannister]

Anonymous asked:

Hey there, Lauren! I love your blog and metas! I have a question for you, in terms of the book, could you tell me when and where Daenerys shows signs of being a tyrant or a fascist? I see lots of metas say that she is, but from what I've read, I don't see any signs of that? Sure, she kills her enemies, but what powerful monarch doesn't? I just feel like the fandom has a very biased and double standard hatred when it comes to her, and I would like your opinion! Thank you!

Before I answer your question, we need some sort of working definition of fascism. To achieve this, I would like to quote a disabled person who helped lead the fight against fascism for years, and who died in the line of duty:

Over a year and a half ago I said this [...]: "The militarists in Berlin, and Rome and Tokyo started this war, but the massed angered forces of common humanity will finish it."

Today that prophecy is in the process of being fulfilled. The massed, angered forces of common humanity are on the march. They are going forward [...] 

We will have no truck with Fascism in any way, in any shape or manner. We will permit no vestige of Fascism to remain. [...]

In every country conquered by the Nazis and the Fascists, or the Japanese militarists, the people have been reduced to the status of slaves or chattels.

It is our determination to restore these conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate, entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

We have started to make good on that promise. I am sorry if I step on the toes of those Americans who, playing party politics at home, call that kind of foreign policy “crazy altruism” and “starry-eyed dreaming.”

--President Franklin D. Roosevelt, July 28th, 1943 Fireside Chat

What did the fascist Nazi Party stand for in WWII?

Historically, there was no Nazi Party apart from their racial and social agenda. It was a party founded on racial distinctions, with a vision to dramatically transform their society. The Nazis disliked and persecuted anyone who they did not consider Aryan. They persecuted and killed Jewish people, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and communists, and they wanted to eliminate people with mental or physical ailments. The Nazis pushed women out of the workplace and actively promoted patriarchy. [x]

But where does GRRM come into this?

I wasn’t a complete pacifist; I couldn’t claim to be that. I was what they called an objector to a particular war. I would have been glad to fight in World War II. But Vietnam was the only war on the menu. [x]

GRRM’s ethical views are at their clearest and most concise while discussing slavery and dehumanization in his (most excellent and highly recommended) vampire novel, Fevre Dream:

I never held much with slavery […]. You can’t just go… usin’ another kind of people, like they wasn’t people at all. Know what I mean? Got to end, sooner or later. Better if it ends peaceful, but it’s got to end even if it has to be with fire and blood, you see? Maybe that’s what them abolitionists been sayin’ all along. You try to be reasonable, that’s only right, but if it don’t work, you got to be ready. Some things is just wrong. They got to be ended.

Some things are worth fighting for. Fascism requires opposition, some form of opposition, or it will steamroller all over you. 

My regret now is not that I stayed my arm, but that I remained aloof in my window while others protested peacefully outside. It would be naïve to think that those marching in neo-Nazi parades could have a change of heart from such efforts, but I am more concerned with those who are not marching for anything. We must convince the apathetic to care, and stop those who are walking down the path of hatred before it becomes too late.

--David Olin, The View from My Window, Berkeley 2018, written for the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity 

Now, let me apply this to ASOIAF piece by piece. 

In every country conquered [...] the people have been reduced to the status of slaves or chattels.

This is Tywin. This is Tywin enslaving people as part of his militaristic campaign of aggressive force in the Riverlands. This is Tywin sanctioning the capture and torture of innocent people. This is Tywin “using” other kinds of people and disregarding the fact that they are human beings. This is Tywin enslaving Arya Stark. This is Tywin impressing people to work in his gold mines on a whim, as we learn in AGOT. This is Tywin reducing people to the status of slaves or chattels. This is Tywin. 

I don’t know how many different ways I can say it, but as I’ve said before and will say again: Tywin is the character in the ASOIAF books who most prominently espouses fascist ideology. 

There are other characters in the main series -- Roose Bolton and Randyll Tarly, for example -- who also exhibit characteristics of fascist ideology, but I would argue that it is Tywin who is the fascist poster boy of ASOIAF ... and it is also Tywin who is one of the main villains who is drawing humanity’s attention south away from the true threat of the Others, who wish to turn every living thing into their slaves and playthings. (Littlefinger also comes to mind.) Tywin is an unwitting general in the Others’ army. Tywin is fighting the Others’ Campaign of Dehumanization on their behalf. 

The Nazis disliked and persecuted anyone who they did not consider Aryan. 

Substitute “Aryan” for “Lannister” and this is Tywin. “a Lannister, and worth more.” It is Tywin who pushes an agenda of Lannister superiority and it is Tywin to whom non-Lannisters aren’t human, to the point that he had to marry his own cousin. He dislikes non-Lannisters so much he had to marry his own cousin!!!! It’s Tywin who passed down his obsession with blood purity to his children to the point that they literally have to fuck each other. It’s Tywin who puts his House (a proxy for his race) above the individuals in it; it’s Tywin who doesn’t care if Cersei and Jaime and Tyrion are ground to dust under his disgusting ideology as long as House Lannister reigns supreme. 

"Spice soldiers and cheese lords," his lord father called them, with contempt. 

This is Tywin. 

Non-Lannisters aren’t fully human to Tywin. This is fascist ideology!!!!

It was a party founded on racial distinctions

This is Tywin and Kevan, refusing to allow the Westerlings to marry into their family because of “doubtful blood”!!!!! (”Ser Kevan seldom had a thought that Lord Tywin had not had first.”) 

It was a party founded on racial distinctions

This is Tywin and his refusal to allow a betrothal between Jaime and Elia. 

they wanted to eliminate people with mental or physical ailments. 

This is Tywin and his hatred toward disabled Tyrion. This is Tywin and his refusal to allow a betrothal between Jaime and disabled Elia. 

The Nazis pushed women out of the workplace and actively promoted patriarchy.

This is Tywin. This is Randyll hating on Brienne of Tarth. (And you can bet your ass Tywin doesn’t approve of women with swords.) 

I don’t know how many ways I can say it: Tywin and others like him are the fascists. 

Tywin is one of the cold fucks the AGOT prologue warns us about in the very beginning: “the real enemy is the cold.” 

The central conflict of ASOIAF is between the living (the fire) and the dead (the cold), those who would recognize your humanity and those who won’t. 

It is our determination to restore these conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate

^^ This is Daenerys Targaryen ^^

Daenerys Targaryen is a freedom fighter who kills slavers in the books. 

Her breakup of the economic system of Essos (meaning SLAVERY) is more akin to a communist revolution than a fascist takeover imo. Daenerys associates herself with people of all races, all classes. She gives Missandei, who canonically has dark skin in the books, a place as one of her closest advisors. Unlike Tywin, Daenerys is not pushing an agenda of Targaryen superiority. 

Daenerys is not perfect. She does not always get it right. Daenerys has got some things wrong. But I don’t think there has been any other option for Daenerys. You ... you can’t just look the other way when evil men are crucifying children, and I truly do not think that non-violent opposition would change anything in Essos. “Better if it ends peaceful, but it’s got to end even if it has to be with fire and blood, you see?” 

Sometimes innocents like Hazzea have died on Daenerys’s journey. 

And I fully believe that more people are going to die in TWOW, and that Daenerys will hold herself responsible, whether she is or not. I know that TWOW will give all the antis of every character a lot of ammunition. TWOW is going to be a dark and depressing book. 

I think that Daenerys is going to reach a very low point in TWOW, just as Tyrion is nose-diving in ADWD, but I think that’s just what GRRM does with his greatest heroes. It’s the moment in a movie when the hero falls off the cliff, and the Evil Villain starts cackling maniacally and you think all is lost, and then you see the hero’s hand reach up over the edge and the music crescendos as the hero pulls himself up. Except the real villains that GRRMs heroes are battling are themselves. The cliff is a metaphor for our darkest impulses. 

Characters tell Dany in AGOT that “she is nothing” but Dany’s story is about proving them wrong. It’s about her finding her own dignity and worth as a human being out on the Dothraki Sea, and becoming the master of her own fate. As her story progresses, she helps others to do the same, helping people to rediscover their dignity, to regain their names (or take new ones), to find the humanity that was stolen from them. 

(This is why it’s so important to me that her story intersect with zombie!Jon, so that she can help a dead man remember what it is to be human and remember why it all matters. Because if none of it matters ... if a man can’t find a fuck to give, well, that’s Tywin Lannister, who was a cold dead man long before Tyrion shot him.) 

I brought up FDR in the beginning of this post. Although FDR died before GRRM was born, he was one of the great American cultural figures of the 20th century and I have no doubt FDR’s legacy was a formative influence on GRRM. And that’s the thing - so many of these, these great American cultural figures of GRRM’s life died before their work was completed: FDR, JFK, MLK, so many others... The promised land is somewhere ahead of us, despite the opposition making accusations of “crazy altruism” and “starry-eyed dreaming.” No one is going to drive us there and drop us off; we have to get there by ourselves, and the journey isn’t an easy one. It’s a place we have to keep striving for, working for. A dream of spring...

It’s not Daenerys’s destiny, I think, to rule humanity in the long term; Dany’s destiny is, I think, to make sure that humanity doesn’t, well, lose their humanity. To make sure that humanity doesn’t fall into eldritch slavery.

The Others would make us automatons in their icy, inhuman regime. The Others would steam-roller all over humanity, and take away humanity’s freedom to choose, as Tywin Lannister tries to do to his children, trying to take all of their choices away and control them completely. The Others would take away our self-determination, our freedom to choose good or evil, our freedom to be the rulers of our own fate. 

I don’t think it’s Daenerys job to be a ruler in the end. I think she’s fighting evil now so that other people can keep fighting that good-and-evil “human heart in conflict with itself” fight long after she’s gone ... I’ve never believed in a “Targaryen restoration” ending although I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to it. 

Like Moses, Daenerys won’t lead us into the promised land ... we have to get there ourselves. 

And I’ve strayed from your question into a topic that’s more interesting to me because I cannot fucking belieeeeeeve that you are even asking me if the compassionate, caring, teenage-girl, sexual-abuse-survivor, messiah-figure Daenerys Targaryen is a fucking fascist when everything Daenerys “the fire is mine” Targaryen does is in narrative opposition to Certified Fucking Fascist Tywin Racist Lannister oh my god I cannot believe this is where we’ve come to as a fandom, I cannot fucking belieeeeeeve. 

Anon. Honey. Baby. I say this gently, with love: Whyyyyyyyyy are you reading “Daenerys is a fascist” metas? That didn’t even work on the show. 

When I googled “Daenerys Targaryen fascist” to try and figure out what you could possibly be reading to argue against it, the top result is an alt-right thinkpiece website about how dangerous Dany was all along in freeing slaves!!!! And the next results are people who think the iron throne actually matters when GRRM himself has said that the political war is a red herring. 

The endgame rulers don’t even particularly matter because what matters in the end is that humanity wins against the Others and we still have control over ourselves, what matters is for that human heart conflict to continue to exist inside ourselves and that we rule over that conflict inside ourselves. 

"We all must choose," she proclaimed.

Practice some self-care; go read Armageddon Rag, and remember this: TWOW is not going to save us. 

[joannalannister]

I'm not sure if I'm wording this appropriately, but has there ever been a suggestion that Tywin suffers from an emotional disorder? The apathy, suppresion of emotions and the inability to form meaningful relationships makes me think there might have been some sort of underlying issue.

I don’t think Tywin suffers from any disorder, I think it’s more about Tywin trying to conform to the 20th century American Westerosi masculine ideal. Like, even Arya remembers Cat telling Ned “to put on his lord’s face”. Tywin just takes this concept to extremes. 

Think of the myth of the Hollywood Cowboy that GRRM grew up with, which is a good approximation for the ~~~”””ideal”””~~~ American male. According to this myth, men are not supposed to be emotional or overly sentimental. They are supposed to be men of steel: hard, remote, resolute. In this myth, the ideal man is supposed to be ~~”””racially pure”””~~ / white. (Many, many, many cowboys on the American frontier were not white in real life.) The Mythical Cowboy is supposed to be The Man Alone. Women are supposed to be something distant in this myth; women are extremely important to the Pop-Culture Cowboy but they are to be kept apart, in the past, or dead, or w/e, as if femininity is contagious. (Think of Randyll Tarly in the books.) The relationships men are ~allowed~ to form with other men have a strict and severely limiting code of conduct. 

I think Tywin fits – or at least he would like us to believe that he fits – a lot of this myth. Like, there’s even this idea that the Cowboy is supposed to be virile - think of how Tywin impregnated Joanna with twins at a time when Aerys’s children were miscarried / not surviving infancy etc.

There are mythical elements to Tywin that – well, they’re not things you go out in search of a real world explanation for, imo, the same way that GRRM says there is no real world explanation for the seasons. That’s just the way it is. The point is the myth, the wonder, the magic – not the explanation behind it. (“With Morning Comes Mistfall”) 

(I have. A lot of thoughts. About the westerlands. And. The name. Is. Not least among them. While “The North” as a name is suggestive of something constant / true (TrueTM) / dependable, the westerlands is … well, I would argue it bears similarities to the American West, and especially the myth of the American West as portrayed by popular culture. Consider:

a remoteness from the traditional centers of political, economic and cultural power (Think of how there is no Starry Sept in Lannisport, no Citadel. Think of how we’ve never been there in the books.) 

a feeling that the […] riches of the West are being exploited to serve the needs of people in the East (Think of how Tywin had to bail Aerys out sometimes vs how Tywin utterly refuses to bail out the Iron Throne now.) 

feelings of superiority / a collective sense of inferiority regarding the East (Lannisters view everyone else as inferior.)

But when success can be achieved quickly, it can seem tenuous. And the fear of losing ground can breed a determination to maintain the status quo (The Lannisters are very afraid of losing their status.) 

The American west was largely seen as a place of upward mobility (The Reyne-Tarbeck Rebellion was arguably fought over social mobility.)

“law was dispensed out of a holster instead of a law book.” (via) (Think of how Tywin rules through fear and violence.) 

I don’t think it’s an accident that I’m comparing Tywin to cowboy movies. I think that it all ties into the concept of fascist masculinity that GRRM is critiquing. Like, if you’ve read The M@n in the H*gh C@stle, the point of the book is that mid-20th century American society was “only a few shades removed from the European fascism we were so proud of smashing in World War II.” Fascist aesthetics were present in these cowboy movies, and Tywin is a major embodiment of the fascist aesthetic in ASOIAF.) 

So anyways. To fully answer your question, let’s look at the myth of this man who allegedly comes “along once in a thousand years.” 

You mention Tywin being apathetic, but is he, really? Really? The man who is so obsessed with his reputation that he built a secret tunnel into a brothel to hide his sex life for decades? That man? 

Tywin cares Quite A Lot about certain things. It’s just that 99% of those things are Lannisters. Like, I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: the majority of the world’s population are not people to Tywin Lannister. They’re not real people to him; therefore they don’t matter to him. Why should they matter to him, if they’re not real human beings? 

What makes someone care about one group of people, but not another? 

What you’re calling apathy is what I would call a politician in DC. 

In terms of suppressing emotions … well, Tywin’s not very good at it. There’s a barely concealed rage constantly lurking under the surface with Tywin. 

And as for meaningful relationships … could you form a meaningful relationship with a cockroach? Most people are not real to Tywin. They’re not people. They’re furniture, or insects, or computers, or robots (if Westeros had robots). You can’t form a meaningful relationship with someone who isn’t real to you. And the list of people who are real to Tywin is … tragically short. 

Consider: Lannister females in Tywin’s age cohort, listed by rank: 1) Genna 2) Joanna 3) & 4) Jason’s unnamed younger daughers … etc

Genna was out, because brother-sister incest is taboo in Westeros, and Tywin may be evil, but he is lawful evil. Joanna was the highest ranking bachelorette who Tywin considered to be a real person. 

And … I mean … Tywin was friends with Aerys … He was arguably friends with Steffon … able-bodied males of similar political station, and therefore “real” and worthy of friendship. 

So I don’t think the lack of relationships has anything to do with a disorder. It’s Tywin’s own bigotry. If you’re misogynistic and racist and classist and xenophobic and ableist … well, you’re probably not going to have many friends. 

[joannalannister]

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.

Walter Lippman

[joannalannister]

Daenerys Targaryen & JFK

“...let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. 

“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”       --President Kennedy's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

“Shall we begin?”      --Daenerys Targaryen, Game of Thrones 7x01

This post was inspired by a Dany quote from the show, but imma do what I usually do with the show, which is project my book!feelings all over it. This post is not intended to be a commentary about the show**, it’s about the books.

**There is one other Dany quote from the show that I intend to comment on below, but only because I feel it ties into the above JFK quote, in terms of ASOIAF themes and Dany’s book!characterization.

I’ve been thinking about this since the summer, when I first saw show!Dany trailing her hand lovingly over the Painted Table, over the hills and valleys, the rivers and mountains, places she’d heard about her whole life. A quote from A Game of Thrones was playing over that scene in my mind:

Somewhere beyond the sunset, across the narrow sea, lay a land of green hills and flowered plains and great rushing rivers, where towers of dark stone rose amidst magnificent blue-grey mountains, and armored knights rode to battle beneath the banners of their lords. 

And when Dany went to stand at the head of that table, it was one of the only times in season 7 where I felt I caught a glimpse of things to come in the books. A pale shadow of GRRM’s Westeros, to be sure, but I could see it. 

Tiny, slender 16-year-old Daenerys, her hair shining like molten silver in the gloom of the Stone Drum. Daenerys, standing where Aegon the Conqueror had once stood, at the head of a great painted table stretching away from her into darkness, as a great Night falls over the continent. And this table! A table -- a map of Westeros -- so large that, if stood upright, it would be over five stories high. GRRM’s Westeros has such grandeur, “like in the great stories [...]. The ones that really mattered.”

(Like, I don’t think Dany would be in that special seat where Dragonstone is located on the map, I think GRRM would deliberately put her at the head of the table, beyond the Wall, foreshadowing her true destination.)

I have no idea what wondrous and highly quotable things GRRM would have Dany say and think while standing there. But that question show!Dany asked -- “Shall we begin?” -- that question captured the essence of it for me. 

And you’re all gonna think I’m lame, but my mind jumped to President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, to that similar line, “let us begin.” And no, I don’t claim the showrunners intended this parallel between Dany and JFK, and tbh I don’t care what they intended, but I feel like it’s an apt comparison when talking about GRRM’s Dany. 

(GRRM has spoken very highly of the Kennedys, saying on his livejournal: “They were men like any other, not plaster saints, and had their share of failures and mistakes. But they fought the good fight, and left the world a better place than they found it, and no more can be asked of any man.)

I see Dany as a dark horse in the race for the Iron Throne, similar to JFK’s unexpected win in 1960. More importantly, though, I see Daenerys as a reformer, as someone young and vibrant who wants to shake up the Old Guard and change the world. 

And like, I’ve said this before, but Westeros is currently without justice, without peace, without the rule of law. It’s a place where the Lannisters can enact a dwarf genocide with no one to stop them. Where no one speaks for the smallfolk, where families’ ancestral homes can be seized and sacked, where murder goes unpunished, where a Mengele-esque mad scientist runs free. 

And those are the kinds of things that Dany stands against:

“Justice . . . that's what kings are for." --Daenerys, ASOS

She values “peace, prosperity, and justice” while a lot of the people in charge of Westeros right now value vengeance. And sure, Dany obviously doesn’t always get these things right every time, and she makes mistakes, but she’s fighting to make the world a better place.

Daenerys cares about people. When most nobles in Westeros feel little or nothing for people of low birth, Dany raises the lowborn up and gives them a place at her side and on her councils. Think of Missandei, Grey Worm, her handmaids. 

Dany’s outlook is more radical imo than Arya befriending prostitutes, or Stannis raising Davos to a lordship -- which are both good and admirable acts -- because Dany goes further. Dany wants to get rid of this whole system that grinds the lowborn to dust under the indifferent heel of the mighty. Just consider how GRRM wrote Dany’s attitude toward the tokar: “It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master’s garment, a sign of wealth and power. Dany had wanted to ban [it.]” 

She wants to bring change. She wants to stop the abuse of power, and help people. 

It’s as if Westeros and Essos both have already been under a Long Night of dehumanization, one created not by the Others, but simply by other people. And when Daenerys takes that torch from her bloodrider’s hand and lights the pyre that night in AGOT, she’s lighting the world on fire. 

And it’s a good fire, my friends. It’s this kind of fire, the kind that gets passed around, and that makes your heart swell to see it:

It’s the kind of fire that rallies people to Daenerys like iron to a lodestone, and it’s what makes cynical people disparage Dany as a “Mary Sue” (whatever that is) when she gains followers. It’s the kind of fire that makes the Widow of the Waterfront dare to dream. It’s the kind of fire that gives Tyrion purpose and direction in the darkest depths of his depression. It’s a fire of hope: “...and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.”

Daenerys was the first spark in the forging of a brighter world. 

Light it up, girl.

(And while we’re talking about lighting fires, just FYI, I really fuckin’ hope Dany burns Randyll Tarly in TWOW, because he is a horrible person who represents everything that is wrong with the current Westerosi system. In GRRM’s early novel, Armageddon Rag, there is literally the prototype of Randyll Tarly, who GRRM describes on the page as a “fascist pig”. Burn him, Dany. And somebody necromance Tywin so she can burn him too, because only one death wasn’t enough for that bastard.) 

.

So when I heard “Shall we begin?,” Kennedy’s words echoed in my mind. “Let us begin.” Let us have “a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.” 

“Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?" --Daenerys, ASOS

“Peace is my desire.“ --Daenerys, ADWD

Kennedy considered “tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself” to be the “common enemies of man” and it’s these things that Dany is fighting against. It’s this type of stuff that ASOIAF is all about imo. (It fascinates me to consider things like the pale mare in the context of this speech that GRRM grew up with.) 

But unlike Kennedy’s, Dany’s words were a question. An invitation, the way ASOIAF is an invitation: 

A Song of Ice and Fire [rubs] our faces in the reactionary brutality of its world, in the hope that we’ll see it more clearly, and fight it more fiercely, in the world we see when we look up again. [x]

I think I’ve said this before, but ASOIAF is the kind of work that requests audience participation. It doesn’t want you to remain passive. “Rage,” it commands, “rage against the dying of the light.” 

So I loved those three little words. Dany looks straight at the camera, straight at us, and she asks us, “Shall we begin?” 

“...let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.”

A new endeavor. A new world of law. Not a new balance of power. 

I said up above that Dany wants to get rid of this whole system that grinds the lowborn to dust under the indifferent heel of the mighty. 

She doesn’t want simply a new balance of power. She wants a world of laws, of justice, of peace.

Did you agree with me when I said that stuff above, about book!Daenerys? 

Because Dany says something similar in the show:

“Lannister, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell, they’re all just spokes on a wheel. This one’s on top, then that one’s on top, and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground. I’m not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.”

And, like, ok, this is not my favorite show quote, and I don’t like talking about the show, but people use this quote to condemn Dany (even book!Dany) for not wanting to create a democracy or a constitutional monarchy in Westeros (and no one demands a democracy of the other (male) contenders for the Iron Throne). (I have #receipts on this fandom, just send me an ask.) 

Quoting from the book, “Mastering the Game of Thrones” by Battis and Johnston, it gives historical background and analysis to this wheel quote:

If Martin is the god of the text, he is not a benevolent deity seeking to punish evil, reward the good, or console his faithful readers. His characters’ lives are unpredictable, violent, and often brief, and beloved figures quickly fall from happiness and security to suffer betrayal, maiming, illness, and death. In the middle ages and Renaissance, such downfalls were often subscribed to Fortuna, whose wheel pulled men up to success and tossed them down again in failure. Fortune, like Providence, is a guiding force whose motion is inevitable. Her effects, however, were unpredictable; how quickly her wheel might turn or how high or low it threw those caught on it could not be foreseen. Unlike providence, Fortune does not seek to punish ill or reward good; her only motivation is movement, her only constant change itself.

In both the books and the show, Daenerys wants to punish wrongdoers and reward good. She wants justice. Justice is not compatible with this concept of Fortune’s Wheel, hence the “breaking the wheel” line on the show. The “wheel” speech is where she literally says on the show that she doesn’t want the little people crushed by the nobility’s political machinations. (It’s reminiscent of Varys’s line, “Why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?”)

Dany doesn’t want people to live merely at the whim of a tyrannical ruler. That’s no way for people to live, always uncertain whether or not they have the royal favor of the person currently at the top of the “wheel”, like when Cersei throws Falyse to Qyburn, who experiments on Falyse and murders her. 

Or like when Cersei approves of people bringing her the heads of people with dwarfism. 

Or when the Tyrells, while clawing their way to the top, throw Sansa and Tyrion under the bus. 

These are the types of things that Dany wants to stop (“break”), because life is not a zero-sum game, no matter how much Cersei would like us all to believe that “you win or you die” is the way the world works. Absolutist views like Cersei’s, where you’re either on top of the world or crushed underneath it, leave no room for the kindness and compassion and love that GRRM advocates in every chapter. That’s why people like Cersei are wrong, and why Dany will cast her down in the books. 

The entire time, books and show, the Dany I’ve seen and read wants to change how the world works, and create something bold and revolutionary. 

“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

This was the other reason that Dany’s “Shall we begin?” jumped out at me, because I knew what came before JFK’s “let us begin” in his speech, and I knew what came after in 1963.

In all the GRRM books and stories I’ve read, he has this tendency to leave a lot of things unfinished. Not in the sense that TWOW is currently unfinished as of January 2018, but in the sense that ... the worlds he creates go on without us, and often without the characters we love. There are things left undone at the end GRRM’s stories. 

Because, like, obviously I don’t know how ASOIAF is going to end, but I strongly believe that Dany sacrifices herself to save the world. (Like a president dying while serving his country?)

“All this will not be finished [...] But let us begin.”

For example, I get the sense that we’ll never see things all neatly wrapped up in Meereen, or see slavery completely gone from Essos. But Dany set it all in motion. Let us begin. She was the spark, and it’s now up to the people of Volantis, Lys, Myr, everywhere to fan the flames and keep them alive, even after Dany is gone. 

I was saying this in another post, that there’s a Romanticism to Dany, and in a way that’s similar to the Romantic-capital-R fairy tale attached to Kennedy and the “Camelot Era”. I’m just gonna quote myself (and Steven again) cuz I liked what I said the first time:

[...] “Coming out of the tradition of chivalric romance - where the point was about the purity and intensity of longing *from afar* not its consummation, which threatened the social order and had to be punished with a tragic end - a lot of the classic romances are cases of “star-crossed” love”. Steven cites classic examples of Guinevere and Lancelot, Tritan and Isolde, and Romeo and Juliet. Dare I add Dany and Westeros? The intense longing from afar, the threats to the social order, what I suspect will be a tragic end?

[...] I believe Dany would give everything for the people of Westeros, for the people of the world, that she would forsake her heart’s desire, her lifelong goal … that she would tear out her own heart for Westeros, and not expect to get it back, if only to keep her people safe … 

[post]

“...and it has been saved, but not for me.”

And after Dany dies -- if Dany dies -- it’ll be up to other people to pick up the pieces of Westeros and rebuild. But I don’t think Reconstruction is something we’ll ever see in Westeros. Like I said, GRRM tends to let his stories go on without us. 

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Dany reminds me of the heroes in the big fantasy stories: Frodo from LOTR, or King Arthur from The Once and Future King (who Jackie Kennedy was arguably trying to build JFK’s legacy around with the “Camelot” comparison -- and I believe GRRM was a T.H. White fan? But I don’t remember where I read that), etc. Anyways. The Fantasy Hero often leaves us in the end, and it becomes time to stand or fall on our own as we turn the last page. 

But that’s what I think some of the best Fantasy stories are about: teaching us to stand. To hold. 

“I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.“      --The Lord of the Rings movies

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wow ok that was a long post, sorry. idk man. those three words just gave me a lot of feelings. I’m sorta afraid now what TWOW’s gonna do to me because I think it’s gonna be a lot longer than just three words

im not gonna go back up to the top and read over this mind dump so i hope that made sense.

[joannalannister]

There is a road, no simple highway, Between the dawn and the dark of night.

--“Ripple” by the Grateful Dead, quoted by George R.R. Martin in Dreamsongs

[ Listen ]

Behind The Song: The Grateful Dead, “Ripple” by Jim Beviglia

Yet in 1970, the Dead released a pair of studio albums within months of each other that seemed to both capture the unease of an entire generation unmoored from their ideals and act as a balm to soothe those disappointments. [...] In the studio, the band caressed the song with the gentleness of a lover. [...] The ensemble voices on “Ripple” provide comfort when the words evoke hardship.

Hunter delivers lyrics that evoke cosmic wisdom and serenity without ignoring the darkness on the fringes of even the most blessed lives. The song nods at different religions and philosophies, from the Christian overtones of the lines about cups both empty and filled, which recall the 23rd Psalm, to the Buddhist koan feel of the refrain. The chorus even breaks off from the relatively straightforward rhyme scheme of the verses to form a haiku, another example of East meeting West in the song.

The song opens up with Garcia opining on the power of music, or perhaps it’s better to say the lack thereof. Even if his words glowed and were majestically propelled through the air on a “harp unstrung,” he has no certainty that they’ll have any positive impact on the listener. Still, ineffectuality aside, he also concedes that the world is better for having music: “I don’t know, don’t really care/ Let there be songs to fill the air.”

In the second verse, things turn much more somber, as the narrator, after wishing good tidings and full cups on his audience courtesy of that magical fountain, warns of a “road, no simple highway/ Between the dawn and the dark of night.” On this path the traveler will enjoy no company: “That path is for your steps alone.”

With these unanswerable mysteries still lingering, the chorus interrupts and the mandolin played by David Grisman seems to suspend the song in mid-air so Garcia can deliver the hauntingly lovely imagery of the chorus: “Ripple in still water/ When there is no pebble tossed/ Nor wind to blow.” We can envisage those lines, their inherent contradictions no match for the music’s ability to put them across.

The final verse returns to again strike a somewhat ominous tone, but the last line offers some consolation. “If I knew the way, I would take you home,” Garcia sings. That the narrator would offer assistance if he could is all the succor he can give to his companion, and somehow it’s enough. In this hard world, it has to be.

And if you do have to go it alone, there’s always music to bring along as company [x]

“I'm going to go ahead and try, whatever the odds, and I hope you add your voice.” [x] [x]

[joannalannister]

I was reading more about gender roles and perceptions of gender roles in mid-century America as part of my background research into Tywin’s fascist masculinity. Because Tywin is, like, medievally perfect (by perfect i mean perfectly horrible). But Tywin is also, like, a perfect representation of some deep psychological issues of the American culture wars of the 20th century (which is perfectly reasonable to me, because a lot of GRRM’s writing is pushing back against the traditional ideas of his time).  

And so, among other things, I was reading this:

Philip Wylie’s [1942 book] Generation of Vipers [...] argued that America was dominated by tyrannical, castrating wives who held all the power in their relationships. Wylie [...] inveighed against the typical American woman as a sexless, controlling, violent beast. “She is about twenty-five pounds overweight, with no sprint, but sharp heels and a hard backhand which she does not regard as a foul but a womanly defense. In a thousand of her there is not sex appeal enough to budge a hermit ten paces off a rock ledge,” and charged that “momism” was producing a generation of emasculated, ineffectual men. [...] Keep in mind: This thinking arose out of the 1940s and 1950s, a time when women had vanishingly little social or political power.

And this, to me, really speaks of Genna, who is like the flipside of Tywin. Genna is overweight, she’s bossy, she’s “mom-ish” with her sloppy kisses, she’s emasculating, and she’s basically what every man in Westeros fears. 

And so, it’s just, so fascinating to me, how House Lannister can fit into these 20th century patriarchal fears.

Don’t reblog this, I’m still thinkin about this but I just had to put this down

[joannalannister]

I’m talking myself into it, I’m going to write an essay on “ASOIAF and the American Mythos: the intersection of literature and culture”

[filinaz]

!!! Excellent Lauren !!!

Anonymous asked:

Hey there, Lauren! I love your blog and metas! I have a question for you, in terms of the book, could you tell me when and where Daenerys shows signs of being a tyrant or a fascist? I see lots of metas say that she is, but from what I’ve read, I don’t see any signs of that? Sure, she kills her enemies, but what powerful monarch doesn’t? I just feel like the fandom has a very biased and double standard hatred when it comes to her, and I would like your opinion! Thank you!

Before I answer your question, we need some sort of working definition of fascism. To achieve this, I would like to quote a disabled person who helped lead the fight against fascism for years, and who died in the line of duty:

Over a year and a half ago I said this […]: “The militarists in Berlin, and Rome and Tokyo started this war, but the massed angered forces of common humanity will finish it.”

Today that prophecy is in the process of being fulfilled. The massed, angered forces of common humanity are on the march. They are going forward […] 

We will have no truck with Fascism in any way, in any shape or manner. We will permit no vestige of Fascism to remain. […]

In every country conquered by the Nazis and the Fascists, or the Japanese militarists, the people have been reduced to the status of slaves or chattels.

It is our determination to restore these conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate, entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

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