#asoiaf wank for ts

[janiedean]

grrm: spends pages upon pages describing everything wrong with the westerosi ruling class and how their games are affecting the smallfolk and they have no say in anything and no matter how benevolent their rulers they end up suffering often because of politics and all the nobility continue to fight for power with no regard to human life --

fandom: here are 85 reasons why my favorite is ending up on the iron throne and why they deserve to and if you don't see it this way you are an idiot

(honest the one thing i loved from that dumb finale was drogon burning the fucking ugly chair lmfao not that it made any difference but yea)

I'll agree on drogon and again the spirit of the small council as the only two things that were sort of decent but I mean....... I'm beating on a dead horse here as you're pointing it out but again:

today it's apparently unheard of to actually read up on what an author thinks/their biography/their previous work and just go off but like.... grrm was a vietnam war conscience objector and he wrote an entire book about that specific matter and about how he thought his generation failed at changing things for the better and idk how to break it to people but being a vietnam war conscience objector in the seventies basically was... the most leftist position you could have, and we're here discussing who gets the iron trap as if it's a good thing? like grrm is anti-war, most likely as anti-establishment as a us american is going to get and a damned lapsed catholic and I have to presume he's telling me a story about how great it is that you have a good king ruling the land where the good people™ eventually get the happy ending by getting the iron trap and the bad people™ don't get redeemed and die?

because like....... that's not the story he's telling, there's a lot more there including the pro-environment angle but like grrm's politics are pretty obvious just reading asoiaf but if you read the rest of his stuff they're just blatantly glaring and if someone tells you hey I'm writing a thing to deconstruct stuff and then you interpret it straight-up.... then you're doing the contrary of what he's doing

also esp the fact that ppl with money and power don't gaf about the smallfolk which... let's just ignore that grrm said that his favorite part to write was brienne talking to the elder brother about soldiers with ptsd shall we

also the entire schtick is that pOWER CORRUPTS AND IT'S A BAD THING UNLESS YOU DON'T WANT IT AND YOU ONLY TOOK IT BC YOU HAD TO AND YOU KEEP THAT IN MIND and... the eventual reward should be having power? idt so

tldr: the day people realizes grrm is not writing a story about how great it is to live under a monarch we're going to actually get somewhere

[mariedemedicis]

okay i’m just going to come out and say it - if dacey’s younger sister alysane is old enough to have a child about the same age as bran, there is no fucking way dacey is anywhere around robb’s age and as such i really don’t see her being interested in a fifteen year old when she’s much closer to catelyn’s cohort than his

[queenaryastark]

It’s possible to like Alicent and not defend the indefensible. This is Sansa all over again. Apparently being critical of either of them means “hating women” as if the other female characters we like don’t exist. Guess what? To paraphrase Taylor Swift, women like hunting witches too, doing the dirtiest work for the patriarchy and that’s what Alicent and Sansa (and Septa Mordane and Catelyn, who I’m a stan of ) do. They actively uphold the patriarchy, harming other girls/women, and prevent progress for women within the story. And that’s realistic. Some of the biggest real world misogynists are women and those women are pushed forward by the men they serve as mouth pieces for their agenda. 

[lyannastark]

one of the reasons I love asoiaf: despite his faults, grrm provides a lot of complexity and nuance to his characters

one of the reasons I hate the asoiaf fandom: both extreme antis and fans deal in absolutes and refuse to allow the characters to be as multi-layered as they are in the text

[princessaryathevaliant]

People actually have trouble understanding why us Arya stans hate the idea of Arya working under Sansa as her counsillar/masterofwhisperers/excutioner/commanderofqueensguard but dont hate the idea of Arya working for Bran as much?

Well, actually it's quite simple, dearies: One treated her like shit, and the other didnt (and actually treated her with decency and respect.)

That, and ofcourse the fact that Arya ending the series as subservient to the same character she was subservient to at the beginning of the series means her whole character arch, development, plotline will all be for nothing, cause she will end the series the same way she began, except now she is happy about it?

[thelegendofclarke]

can you BELIEVE that sansa stark is somehow BOTH “the dumbest, whiniest, most useless, pointless waste of space to ever exist” A N D “the most scheming, conniving, backstabbing, power hungry binch who ruined literally the entire story and everyones’ lives” ALL AT THE SAME TIME?!?

like… d a m n, i am shooketh???

the DUALITY of an Icon™

[him-e]

Hi, I'm the anon who wrote the 5 asks about the Dany plotline and GRRM. I'd like to apologize to u for lashing out, it was uncalled for and u have every right to state those opinions regardless of what I (or anyone else) think. Feeling hurt by the show wrt Dany's story made me react badly to the idea that it was actually acceptable, especially coming from someone whose ideas I appreciate so much and have spent hours invested on. You can answer them, delete them, idk, I just wanted to say sorry.

No need to apologize, anon! I’m currently on semi-to-full hiatus and that’s why I’m being so slow at answering messages—and yeah, I understand the frustration completely, and I don’t blame you for it. ;))

I’m going to answer your ask anyway. Long reply after the cut:

I hope this doesn’t come off as offensive or confrontational bc that’s not the point, I’ve enjoyed reading your ASOIAF/GoT and TB metas for years and would not reply to them if I weren’t invested on them. That said, I’d like to ask why do you insist on 1) arguing that Dany’s dark turn was reasonable if you don’t hate her and 2) defending D&D and blaming GRRM for what happened on the show. When it comes to 1), sure, Dany might *accidentally* burn KL, but to willingly choose to burn thousands of innocents? She may accept that some casualties would have to occur, but not in the way that the show presented (in that she had the choice to not kill anyone but did). You argue that that direction was valid of because of the recurring theme of how power corrupts, but then I’d argue, what if it were Sansa, another character very much involved in the world of politics? Would you be ok if people argued that it’d make sense for her to give up her ideals and become just as power-hungry and cynic and bitter as Littlefinger? Probably not; what’s the point if those characters become their worst possible selves? Dany was made a villain, was implied to be mad and was called “your satanic majesty”. I really can’t see how you could call those writing decisions valid. When it comes to 2), I’m not saying GRRM is perfect, he’s been quite callous in the book series and especially in F&B when it comes to social issues, but D&D are also professional writers with critical thinking skills and moral values of their own who could have tried to alleviate the problems in the books and not made things even worse. That’s why I don’t get why you’re blaming GRRM for what D&D wrote when the former wasn’t even involved in the ending’s writing process aside from possibly giving them an outline of what happens. GRRM should be criticized for what he wrote and will write, and the finale may have feel been a product of his ideas, but he still has no (moral or legal) responsibility in helping to make the TV show better or worse.

The reason why I maintain that the show’s ending is a (badly written) version of GRRM’s ending is that I can 100% see Martin’s blueprint in the climax+anticlimax structure of the season. The way it twists the audience’s expectations and delves into what happens AFTER the final battle is won, the way it subverts the most reliable narrative conventions and, instead of building up in a crescendo towards a final spectacle where the heroes would sacrifice their lives to save the world in a blaze of glory, it shifts gears almost unpleasantly, slows down to show what happens to them once their heroic purpose is fulfilled and zooms in on their identity crisis, their depression and isolation and sudden lack of purpose… it’s all too deliberate, and IN MY PERSONAL OPINION it’s done with a vision in mind—something I don’t believe d&d would spontaneously put any effort in, especially not if GRRM had already served them a perfectly fine, crowd-pleasing endgame involving Dany’s heroic sacrifice against the Others.

I understand my stance might come across as “defending d&d and blaming GRRM”, but I’m really not? I’ve often repeated how I believe d&d messed things up and that GRRM’s version will make infinitely more sense and be infinitely better written, and I’m sure he will avoid the pitfalls of cynical, circular storytelling, because he’s ultimately a better writer and someone who believes in idealism and true heroism even as he deconstructs it. How can the overall narrative remain uplifting & give a message of hope and faith for humanity while still telling a story that ends with Dany’s descent into “true villainy” (but haven’t we repeated ad nauseam that heroes and villains are too reductive categories for asoiaf?), I don’t know, but it’s not my job to figure it out, and I ultimately trust & respect Martin’s vision and ability to tell the story HE wants.

sure, Dany might *accidentally* burn KL, but to willingly choose to burn thousands of innocents? She may accept that some casualties would have to occur, but not in the way that the show presented

1) I’ve always conceded that, while I think the gist of the storyline is Martin’s, there’s absolutely no guarantee that the battle of King’s Landing will go as we’ve seen in the show, or even happen at the same point of the story (for one thing, Young Griff & JonCon will probably be involved, and that seems more likely to happen before, and not after, the war for the dawn);

2) That said, what I’m relatively confident of, at this point, is that Dany will NOT die in the WftD as a self sacrificial hero (this is entirely FANON SPECULATION, and people treating it like a fixed point in the universe, something the narrative is “inevitably” building towards, is one of the reasons the fandom seems unable to critically analyze show!Dany’s evolution without going hysterical about it and resorting to no true scotsman arguments. I’ve often complained about the dangers of elevating fan theories to canon status, and trust me I never wanted to go full cassandra about this, but here we are). The details and plot points leading up to this might be wildly different from the show’s version, but I think Dany will survive the WftD, which will leave her directionless and purposeless and doubting the truth of her heroic destiny for the first time in her life after she hatched the dragons, and that she’ll cross the ultimate moral horizon in a hail mary to restore that sense of self, that sense of purpose, completing her parabola from princess in rags, to breaker of chains, to conqueror, to savior of humanity, to conqueror again, to TRAGIC HERO. How can this be a valid writing decision, you asked—well, why shouldn’t it? Is something only valid as long as it pleases the audience? What screams tragic hero more than the hero turning into the very thing she swore to eradicate, and realizing it only when it’s too late? There’s something genuinely chilly in Dany’s “if I look back, I’m lost” refrain. This is the mantra of someone who thinks the only way to stay alive is to cross one threshold after the other. So far this coping mechanism has brought her higher, and higher, and higher. But what if it will be her downfall? “I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell”, indeed;

3) Dany’s burning KL *accidentally* is like Stannis burning Shireen “but only if the circumstances are dire enough / the stakes are high enough”. No offense, but this is typical stan logic: you admit the possibility that your faves might go through a dark phase but you don’t want to have to unstan them, so you want them to do bad things for good reasons, or because there’s no other choice, or because “they didn’t know”. That’s understandable, but I don’t think Martin is the type of writer to give his character free passes or soften the blow of their moral crucibles like that. This is NOT to say that the show did Dany’s dark turn WELL, because it DIDN’T—her motivations were all over the place, the turning point (the bells) wasn’t believable because it lacked connection to her character arc, the narrative backed away from showing the attack from her pov which betrays the writers’ inability to make sense of this psychological downfall from HER perspective, etc. But to say “Dany will NEVER! BURN! INNOCENTS! ON PURPOSE!” sounds very, very premature to me.

(re: Sansa, hasn’t power corrupted her too, to an extent? Hasn’t she lied, schemed, manipulated, spilled secrets, in order to restore & secure the Stark hold on the North? Isn’t she queen, in part, because the rest of her family was scattered at the four corners of the known world? I’m not particularly happy with the way she was written this season, and I think some of her choices were questionable; but at the same time I reject the idea that a character ending up more flawed, or morally ambiguous, or less likeable than they were at the beginning must necessarily be bad storytelling)

I’m not saying GRRM is perfect, he’s been quite callous in the book series and especially in F&B when it comes to social issues, but D&D are also professional writers with critical thinking skills and moral values of their own who could have tried to alleviate the problems in the books and not made things even worse. That’s why I don’t get why you’re blaming GRRM for what D&D wrote when the former wasn’t even involved in the ending’s writing process aside from possibly giving them an outline of what happens. GRRM should be criticized for what he wrote and will write, and the finale may have feel been a product of his ideas, but he still has no (moral or legal) responsibility in helping to make the TV show better or worse.

Martin is not responsible of the show’s writing, but he is responsible of the outline he gave to the showrunners, and right now I have no reason to believe they didn’t follow it, at least for the most part. For years I’ve been told that “the show is not the books”, and while that’s certainly true, I can’t, and won’t, separate the show from the books when it comes to book speculation, because the show is still for all intents and purposes an ADAPTATION of the book series, and while it’s irresponsible to expect it to be a 1:1 transcription of what will happen in TWOW and ADOS, it’s also equally (imo) irresponsible to act like the two canons have nothing to do with each other and that it’s stupid to use the show as a resource for book speculation. If people want to pretend the show never happened, good for them, but that’s not the way I think, personally. I don’t blame GRRM for the show’s faults, and my reservations are actually 90% about the EXECUTION of the plot which is ENTIRELY on d&d, but there’s a 10% of my concerns that is about the IDEA in itself, regardless of context and execution—the idea of the story ending with a bittersweet anticlimax involving the death/downfall of the MOST PROMINENT FEMALE HERO OF THE SERIES, who is also the carrier of the most subversive anti-establishment political message in the story.

tldr: I’m not criticizing GRRM for what he hasn’t written yet, but I can certainly criticize him for what I think is a (however botched) adaptation of his outline, if the main selling points of said outline are questionable in themselves. No one can convince me that GRRM told d&d that Jon and Dany would die heroically to save the world and they ARBITRARILY decided to fuck it up for shock value or whatever, and just accidentally stumbled onto a more subversive and provocative ending than what Martin HIMSELF was planning. (that would make them two geniuses, even if the execution sucked, lol)

and if i’m wrong about it, well:

but until then…

[yennefers-geralt]

Any doubt about D&D being the absolute worst kind of S stans has been cleared up by the latest S7 got leaks/spoilers/rumors. tbh, though, all the signs were already there.

Whining about Arya being more popular than S? Check!

Dumbing Arya down to just physicality and vengeance? Check!

Disregarding or even straight up trashing S’s canon characterization in favor of an infinitely less layered and less interesting characterization of their own making that has no basis in any canon (even their own)? Check!

Putting S in a rape survivor to ultimate badass story arc that doesn’t make any sense. Check! Though to be fair to D&D, they raped Sansa far less often and far less graphically than a number of the fic writers in fandom.

Lessening the intelligence of other characters so S looks like a genious beside them. Check!

False concern over how far gone Arya is and how everyone should be concerned by how irrevocably damaged her character is. Check!

S7 spoiler: Creating an absolutely unnecessary and unrealistic team up of the *~*~*~Stark Sisters!!!!!!! *~*~*~ that relies on Arya being the inferior of the two and serving as S’s lapdog. Check!

S7 spoiler: The erroneous claim that Arya wouldn’t have survived in S’s situation despite the fact that she survived in a similar situation but with far less protection. Check!

[mariedemedicis]

i had to:

Why not? Stannis is the best man westeros has ever seen. Lyanna would be lucky to have him.

Best men usually don’t regularly perform human sacrifices for a god they don’t believe in, nor do they try to sacrifice their own nephew, or murder their brother, or neglect their wife and child. That’s not to say that Stannis is irredeemable, or the worst dude in the series, but he’s no angel nor is he the catch of the season.

[janiedean]

can I vent? (if not you can drop the ask ;)) I'm so pissed how the Sansa-standom (even though Sansa is my favourite female character in ASOIAF) created and popularized the narrative how Tyrion treated her badly, or when counter arguments point out how he protected her from Jeoffrey it was only for lust. They're so stooped in the "bad guy Tyrion" narrative, they twist anything to make him look bad.

part 2 (vent anon); Sorry but Cersei, Jeoffrey, and the apathetic king's guard frightened, isolated, humiliated, and abused a child but apparently the ugly looking characters who covered their body, interrupted her abuse are suddenly the bad ones? Maybe the wedding scene was uncomfortable af but neither Tyrion nor Sansa choose to be in it. Cersei threatened Sansa to drag her to the ceremony and enjoyed Tyrion's humiliation during it. then some ppl say Tyrion had a choice in refusing the wedding. Yeah sure, refusing Tywin's major order was always so easy to opt out for the son he hated the most. Okay, sorry. I'm not a Tyrion-fan, but this current reading annoys the hell out of me. Sorry but Sansa harbours kind thoughts for Tyrion and Sandor for having shielded her, and I wish the fandom would understand that Westeros is a messy world... god damn why do they even read that series?

I've asked myself the same question a lot of times anon but... idk honestly because the message is clear imvho but like as a person who likes tyrion in a 'he makes top twenty but not top ten' way the entire thing pisses me off to no avail because it just stinks of ableism and ignoring that tyrion is an abuse victim never mind the veiled tywin apologism at the end of the thing because like...... if you don't realize that tywin was abusive to all of his kids but especially to tyrion and that they all live in fear of him especially tyrion just the fact that he doesn't force sansa to have sex with him when he's being pressured when he had no choice in the wedding should say all about how much he was risking his neck for sansa, but no let's have the narrative where he was the worst? like... again he had no choice and he tried his best and it's pretty obvious if you read the thing and the show made it pretty obvious too for all its faults :))

apparently the ugly looking characters who covered their body, interrupted her abuse are suddenly the bad ones?

again a large part of this fandom is shallow af when it comes to sansa's obvious textual hints that whoever's her endgame it's not going to be a standard attractive person and I just wish they'd straight up admit it instead of turning said characters into villains when they're not :)))

[mariedemedicis]

cotter pyke sounds like the name of a cheese not the name of a man

[queenaryastark]

George needs to add a disclaimer to his books: "Stanning Sansa Stark has been clinically proven to rot the brain. Be wary of attempting to project yourself onto this character. We know it's tempting given how flat she is and how she's used as a camera. But fixating on this support POV is dangerous to your long-term mental health. "

[queenaryastark]

#i have a feeling tho that if they kept her the way she seems to be in the books she would be like sansa lite™#bc idk if the tv writers can appreciate the nuances or the differences between the two#the only way to distinguish arya and sansa was to make them two different archetypes - the tomboy vs the girly girl#and it is V imp to distinguish them all right away given how big the cast was so i get it from a tv writing pov

Unfortunately, this is the problem. Show!Sansa has no connection to canon!Sansa other than having red hair and blue eyes. D&D completely trashed her character and created a new one with stories, scenes, and skills that book!Sansa never has. In doing this, Arya was changed as well, usually to appear less complex and positioned to be inferior to her sister, even though book!Sansa was created explicitly as a foil for Arya and to add conflict within the Stark family. So keeping Arya in character wouldn’t have made her a lesser version of Sansa, it would have been an opportunity to bring a complex and layered take on a non-gender conforming character.

Arya Stark + Changes the Show Made From Her Novel Characterization

[lyannastark]

The funniest thing to me about anti targs/sansa stans is the fact that sansa actually likes targaryens

She pulled a chair close to the hearth, took down one of her favorite books, and lost herself in the stories of Florian and Jonquil, of Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight, of valiant Prince Aemon and his doomed love for his brother's queen.

"I love him, Father, I truly truly do, I love him as much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian. I want to be his queen and have his babies."

"Prince Aemon the Dragonknight cried the day Princess Naerys wed his brother Aegon," Sansa Stark said, "and the twins Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk died with tears on their cheeks after each had given the other a mortal wound."

She called for the heroes from the songs, for Florian and Ser Ryam Redwyne and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, but no one heard.

She is so brave, Sansa thought, galloping after her . . . and yet, her doubts still gnawed at her. Ser Loras was a great knight, all agreed. But Joffrey had other Kingsguard, and gold cloaks and red cloaks besides, and when he was older he would command armies of his own. Aegon the Unworthy had never harmed Queen Naerys, perhaps for fear of their brother the Dragonknight . . . but when another of his Kingsguard fell in love with one of his mistresses, the king had taken both their heads.

"Baelor starved himself to death, fasting," said Tyrion. "His uncle served him loyally as Hand, as he had served the Young Dragon before him. Viserys might only have reigned a year, but he ruled for fifteen, while Daeron warred and Baelor prayed." He made a sour face. "And if he did remove his nephew, can you blame him? Someone had to save the realm from Baelor's follies."

Sansa was shocked. "But Baelor the Blessed was a great king. He walked the Boneway barefoot to make peace with Dorne, and rescued the Dragonknight from a snakepit. The vipers refused to strike him because he was so pure and holy."

[thelegendofclarke]

some of y’all don’t know the difference between being “power hungry” and being able to competently serve in a leadership position for which you are qualified and it shows.

[him-e]

"IS CATEGORICALLY NOT THE SAME CHARACTER ENDING, NOT EVEN REMOTELY SIMILAR" I mean, Daenerys being attacked by Sons of the Harpy's then rescued by Drogo is categorically not the same as Drogo being drawn in by the blood of the fighting and Daenerys saving him from being attacked / the audience from him .... are categorically not the same. But the show did that. Why wouldn't the parts of the story they only have bullet points for be further away?

Why wouldn’t the parts of the story they only have bullet points for be further away?

This only works if you assume that the bullet point GRRM gave them was “Dany dies”, full stop, zero context. Can you believe Martin would do that? Why do people assume he would intentionally troll the writers of the show that’s based on his books? What does he even gain by doing this? Also, differences in the endgame tend to stick out like a sore thumb, compared to differences in the halfway plot points, which in hindsight can be rationalized as different roads leading to the same castle—whereas the endgame is either the same or NOT the same.

Also, false equivalence: while show!Daznak’s pit is tonally slightly different than its book counterpart (with, yes, some small but crucial differences, like Drogon not being there to physically save Dany from danger and Dany having to use a whip to tame him, and getting severely injured and burned in the process), the GIST of it is: the fighting pits represent the pinnacle of Dany’s internal crisis and discomfort towards the culture and the “peace” she is supposed to embrace by marrying Hizdahr; while the fighters perform their horror show in the pits, conspiracists attempt to have Dany murdered (it’s subtler in the books but yeah, the poisoned locusts were for her); shit goes down, Drogon suddenly bursts in, Dany realizes it’s the now or never moment where she needs to be a dragonrider or be not, she makes Drogon recognize her, she flies away with him leaving all this mess behind. Even more in a nutshell: Dany cuts the Meereenese knot by choosing her dragon, being a dragon, over politics and *floppy ears* (she has a whole chapter afterwards to intimately process and rationalize this choice, but it’s in Daznak’s pit that she begins to choose “fire and blood”)

And the gist is the same in both show and books. Your point ironically validates mine: if the extent of the show vs books differences re: endgame can be compared to how either canon treated Daznak’s pit differently, then… the show and book ending are essentially the same, bullet-point wise.

Dany dying in (redemptive?) self sacrifice against the Others VS Dany collapsing under the weight of her post-heroic destiny identity crisis, on the other hand, are TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SCENARIOS in terms of plot, character arc, themes, even archetypes and tropes. It’s not just a change of minor, albeit crucial, details, or a botched adaptation—IT’S A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ENDGAME! 

You do realize that in order to have Dany die heroically in the WftD the entire final storyline needs to be radically different, including multiple other characters’ endgames? You can’t just butterfly away an entire final narrative that deals with the main heroes’ failure to cope with a post epic war world. I mean how can you look at this and genuinely think it’s Benioff&Weiss’ work when you have Martin going on record several times with how much he loves the scouring of the Shire in LotR and how he strives to achieve a similar effect? While also criticising Tolkien for not showing what follows up the whole prophesied hero/king trope? You’ve heard of Aragorn’s tax policy, but here’s the rest: 

did [Aragorn] maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles? 

You can argue the show’s character development to get there was mediocre at best, or that it intentionally downplayed Dany’s greyness in order to make this twist more shocking, but the endgame in itself, if handled not as a plot twist but as a genuine tragic character arc, is something Martin would totally do.

I could believe the show inverted the order of the Battle of Winterfell and the Battle of King’s Landing when I still thought the latter was going to be Team Heroes vs Cersei, full stop (maybe because they couldn’t find a way to incorporate the KL plot with the war for the dawn so they just resorted to wrapping it up later), but not anymore, since it involves a major character beat for Dany including her endgame (and Jon’s endgame, by extension).