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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 4 years

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So due to popular demand I watched episode 2 of Walker for you guys. Part 2 of 2

The pilot was more interesting and it wasn’t interesting. But let’s continue, maybe it’s gonna get better.

So my cookies are ready now! I ate the smallest one to check if they’re good. They are. At least I have my cookies.

Apparently now they have to take a horseriding test. Walker puts the saddle on a horse. But he gets emotional. The flashback music starts. If I see more of these I will develop rabies symptoms. I’m sorry this is what we’re talking about. This is Geneviève Padalecki’s role in this show.

Walker gets on the horse. He touches the bad and the flashback sound effect plays. Rabies. “Walker are you okay?” Ramirez asks. He nods. I’m Fine Lie #9000.

No, wait. He gets off the horse. Dude it’s called handling a loss badly and they have therapists for that. Please go to therapy. There are literal professionals trained to help you with that.

He takes off his hat, which lets you know this is serious.

He goes at the bar run by the lady who was with Emily when she died. He is no longer a ranger until he passes the test. We are happy about it because he is not in the psychological conditions to be a law enforcement officer. Oh, wait, we’re supposed not to be happy about it. Honestly, I’m not sure. Is he supposed to be relatable, or are we supposed to think that he’s screwed up and should not be a cop or a parent right now? Because he’s ostensibly the latter but maybe the intentions of the writers are the former.

He says that James thinks he’s “not quite right in the head”. Mmm… are we supposed to think James is being exaggerated? Because it’s true. He’s not in the conditions to do this job… he needs to get professional mental health support, period.

They reminisce about Emily and Walker repeats the same things that made him think there’s more to the case than it appears, like the way her eyes were closed. The bartender confesses she closed her eyes. Well. That was anticlimactic.

In the meanwhile, Liam the gay brother meets his partner for lunch. He’s attractive. Liam would also be if he weren’t dressed and hair-styled like that. I dunno. The partner wants them to move to New York. They joke about dying of queso.

Augustus goes to take pictures with his mother’s camera and has a glowy flashback of his own. “He’s sensitive. He keeps a lot inside, like his father” his grandma comments to her husband. They talk about Walker fixing the house. “He wants to pick up where he left off” she says. I am hurting inside. Did they write this with the Supernatural pilot script open on the desk!?

Ramirez keeps working the case. Turns out, the horse that died wasn’t the horse it was supposed to be (a famous racing horse). Someone swapped the horses? I don’t care, actually. I’m gonna skip the case details.

Walker eats tortilla chips with queso. And begs Ramirez to let him work on the case because that’s all he knows how to do. That’s stolen from a couple Supernatural episodes when they talk about hunting, but okay.

“You know how you can see a horse’s soul in its eyes?” …no, but okay.

They’ll need to find the mysteriously disappeared horse… which is loose! In the hospital! No, not in the hospital. Just on a road. Best shot in the show, big dark horse walking around Austin.

They need to go find the horse. Obviously Walker volunteers to get the horse. “Might not be a ranger, but I’m still a cowboy”. I’m crying this is so cliché.

You know Walker is cool because he gets out of the truck without using the little step.

It’s so deep.

Oh my god. He. He follows horse dung. It’s. It’s literally a plot point. He tracks the horse following horse poop.

He finds the horse, feeds him a lil sugar cube, puts the reins on him. It’s a beautiful horse. Can’t the show be about this horse?

Billionaire bad guy (owner of the horse, set the fire to pretend the horse was dead because lots of bets were placed on the horse, but the horse was lightly injured so couldn’t win) driving towards his plane to catch his plane to escape. James and Ramirez do a car chase.

Bad guy lackey shoots at their wheels so their car stops. But Walker arrives on the horse, gets Ramirez on the horse and they ride the horse to the bad guys’ car. Ramirez gets on the car and punches the bad guys unconscious.

For some reason (I mean, budget limitations) the fighting sequences are very quick. I would have watched more of Ramirez kicking billionaire bad guy’s ass on a moving car. But it’s fine, I mean, if this show had a bigger budget they’d spend it on more cowboy hats, so it’s fine.

Walker, James and Ramirez celebrate at the bar. Apparently the bad guy’s lackey that was supposed to get rid of the horse loved the horse too much and set him free in Austin. Mood.

There’s still a third of the episode still to go, though. Drama will ensue. Indeed Liam arrives and is super pissed off at Walker for missing lunch, which he forgot because he was busy with his lil tests.

Liam says Stella didn’t show up to the game. Walker says he know where she is and gets Ramirez to come with him.

Indeed she’s thrown a party at their house. Walker asks her what she’s doing. “Being a disappointment I guess” she answers. He asks her why she missed the game. She says that it shouldn’t be so easy to get a second chance after messing up - like him. He’s like, a second chance? It’s not like a stopped being your father. Except… you did? You disappeared from their lives entirely. He calls her out for damaging the house and she’s like, it’s not even our home anymore but I’m supposed to treat it like a museum? Honestly her scenes are the only interesting thing in this show. He says he’s back now, but she says that being back isn’t enough, what makes a parent is *doing parent things*, supporting the kids.

“I wish uncle Liam had gotten custody of us when he tried” she eventually drops the big bomb. Ouch.

He’s super pissed off, takes off the hat dramatically, and drives back to Liam. He gets off the drunk and immediately assaults Liam. “You tried to take my damn kids!”

I’m flabbergasted. They. They just wrote a plotline where a gay man tried to ~steal a straight man’s children~ like it was a good idea. I mean! Liam getting custody of the kids would have been a VERY GOOD IDEA but what, we’re supposed to think he was wrong? I am so confused because I can’t tell if we’re supposed to be on Walker’s side or not. He is NOT in the condition of being a parent. The kids SHOULD be under the custody of their grandparents and/or uncle. Not because he’s traumatized by loss, but because he’s not trying at all. He keeps saying he’s trying but he’s not. He gets aggressive too easily and it could be dangerous.

Anyway the brothers have this physical fight which isn’t by far the most embarrassing thing in this show so I’ll let it slide. “You had no right!” Walker says, to which Liam replies that he gets it was rough but “you went dark! That was negligence!” Which is absolutely right and he should have gotten the custody of the kids. Liam mentions that their parents also agreed on the thing, and Walker yells “these are MY kids!” which is appalling, because being the biological father of some kids doesn’t make it okay to disappear on them for months and being mad if someone else stepped up to be their parent in your absence. “I didn’t want them to be orphans, did you!?” Liam yells back.

“I would never _take_ them, I wanted to protect them,” Liam says, and says more very reasonable things. “Even now you’re not here.” Walker yells that he is here (again, being physically in Austin doesn’t make you a parent, like Stella said), Liam replies that he’s chasing ghosts.

He brings up the things that don’t add up again, like the poker chip. I’m afraid that the narrative will prove him right, that there WAS something there and he was right to follow through the case despite everyone else telling him he was being delusional and that he should let it go and focus on the family. It would be actually good if it turned out that there was nothing there, that it was all coincidence (like the friend closing her eyes) and that he just chased ghosts for real, but I’m afraid this isn’t that kind of show. I think they’re playing it straight, that they’ll make Walker be right, and it will suck.

A note: now that he’s fighting and yelling and being angry, Jared is actually acting properly, which I don’t know if it’s a good thing or creepy.

Actually Liam says something very reasonable now, that answers will not actually satisfy him, her being gone will never make sense emotionally. The poker chip isn’t going to bring her back. He will lose everything if he keeps searching for something that isn’t there.

Now that Walker has calmed down, Jared returns to doing Jared mouth things. Oh no! Augustus watched them fight.

Oooh. Augustus gives him the present Emily was going to give him for father’s day. Poker chips. “She kept a few of the chips so she could show people” (what? But okay). Another of the mysteries was actually not a weird conspiracy at all. I suspect the narrative will make us believe there was nothing there to just pull a twist afterwards. It would be interesting if Walker were indeed looking for nothing, but I doubt that’s what they’re doing. They’re playing the tropes too straight.

Meanwhile Ramirez comes home to her boyfriend preparing a homemade dinner. She says she’s happy he’s there, and that scares the crap out of her. She wants to get both the job and the relationship right. They’re really cute and I hope their relationship doesn’t get drama-fied for drama. A healthy relationship where two partners figure out how to navigate it together, with normal minor bumps along the way they face together, would really be a good thing for the show to portray.

The next morning, Walker is making breakfast when Stella enters the kitchen. She doesn’t speak to him but gets on her phone so he starts texting her. They have a moment. He was looking for him mug and she gets it out for him. She says it reminded her of him being gone so she’d put it away. They do a bonding activity (bringing a memento from their old house to their new one), she cries, he hugs her.

Back at the ranch, Walker’s father has made him a new saddle. Gramps Walker is rough around the edges but has a hidden wisdom.

The emotional moment is kinda broken for me by the big Texas flag they have inside the house. I suppose it’s just how Texas is but it’s still funny for that very reason.

Augustus for his school project has put together a video from old family footage. Lots of flashback, but this time with a regular song and not the rabies sound effect and with the soft lighting but not the most extreme glowy effect, so it’s kinda okay.

Jared makes emotional faces and the episode’s over.

Well, at least the dead guy having been to prison wasn’t really relevant and the bad guy was a billionaire. An improvement from the previous episode.

I’m not going to give views to the youtube trailers, but I’ve been told in the next episode a new character will be introduced that is a childhood friend that is ~the Han Solo to Walker’s Luke Skywalker. *single tear of sorrow* They’re trying SO HARD to be Supernatural and they’re managing to pick the least interesting concepts of Supernatural to do so. Can’t wait to see Fake Dean. Also we haven’t seen Walker lasso a person either. I suppose I’ll have to watch more of this.

Honestly, it’s mostly boring with Stella being the only interesting part and Ramirez and her boyfriend being cute to watch. Walker is so unlikeable. You want him to get his shit together for the sake of the people around him, but not really for his sake. He should go to therapy but he is a manly cowboy man so obviously he won’t go (but I will be impressed if they actually have him see a therapist. It would be interesting to have a manly cowboy man see a therapist. But will they do it?) The idyllic flashbacks of Emily are so overdone and it’s only the second episode! Everything is cheesy.

This traditional Texan ranch aesthetic meets Austin city would be interesting if played in a way that genuinely questions the values of old, but the show doesn’t really, it uses the gay brother and the immigrant friend and the Latina cop and the Black boyfriend as props but the narrative itself doesn’t really do anything with the traditional Texan family thing. Unless they really pull the rug from under the audience’s feet and make some big twists regarding the way the narrative is presenting itself, there’s nothing really interesting or useful in the show. I’m afraid they will solve their problems by Wanting To Do Better and Sticking Together As A Family, which is just a conservative fantasy of how to fix problems.

By the way, the cookies were really good and my family loved them too.

#marghe watches walker for some darned reason #cw's jared: legit texan

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jackoshadows · 4 years

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One of the reasons for why I love Jon Snow in the books is because I find him to be the character who adheres closest to values I find admirable. IMO, Character traits like being broad-minded, intelligent and loyal tend to be more attractive in a character rather than than say good looks or good manners. Jon is selfless and honorable - to a certain extent. He can be pragmatic and bend the rules if necessary.

Jon Snow stands out as the only leader/main character in the series whose central narrative theme is about unifying people against a common threat. This is underscored by GRRM sending him off to the wall at the start of the books and Jeor Mormont telling Jon Snow:

When dead men coming hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits on the Iron Throne - Jon Snow, AGoT

With this in mind, we see Jon continually grow as a character from book one to book five gradually killing the boy to let the man be born.

When we first see him at the wall, he’s a bit of a privileged brat and offended by the other recruits. But after Donal Nye sets him straight, he uses his education and knowledge to help the other kids in the NW. Jon grew up otherizing the Wildlings and saw them as people to be kept on the other side of the wall. He then spends a lot of time with them and comes to see them as human beings same as him and the rest of Westeros. He wants his childhood desire of being Lord of Winterfell, but understands that he swore an oath to the NW and his job is to defend the realm.

There are two quotes that embody Jon Snow best in the books:

‘You know nothing, Jon Snow’ – First used by Ygritte to educate Jon Snow on his ignorance about Wildlings and then later used by Lord Commander Jon Snow to remind himself that he still has a lot to learn even as a leader of men. A take on Socrates ‘I know that I know nothing’ – a humble acknowledgment that even the best leaders are not experts but human beings who can mistakes.

‘We look up at the same stars and see such different things’ - Jon is able to understand that two people can see the same thing and have such different opinions and that their opinions are colored by their upbringing and situation. As someone who has to unite people against a common threat, this is an important understanding that Jon has earned – this could be why he is a damn good negotiator in the books, earning praise from even Stannis.

Jon is able to acknowledge these important little lessons because he is at heart a fundamentally good person. We see this in how he treats characters who are disadvantaged and mistreated by Westeros society. These are not big moments but small character relationships that highlight how Jon Snow often stands out in thinking differently to a majority of Westeros.

Jon Snow as a child comforting Arya when she comes crying to him about being a possible bastard because of her looks. Imagine how much this would have hurt? But he loves Arya enough to put aside his own hurt feelings to reassure her.

Once he gets to know Tyrion personally and differentiates him from the rest of the Lannisters, Jon is quickly able to see past appearances and Westerosi prejudices and considers Tyrion a friend:

He ran back to the common hall , where he found Tyrion Lannister just finishing his meal. He grabbed the little man under the arms, hoisted him up in the air, and spun him around in a circle. “Bran is going to live!” he whooped. - Jon, AGoT

Asks Tyrion to comfort and help Bran in whatever way possible. This is in contrast to Robb’s immediate dislike and distrust of Tyrion. Jon judges a person based on their actions.

“Thank you, my lord of Lannister.” He pulled off his glove and offered his bare hand. “Friend.”

Tyrion found himself oddly touched. “Most of my kin are bastards,” he said with a wry smile, “but you’re the first I’ve had to friend.” - Tyrion, AGoT

Realizes how Sam Tarly is ill equipped to fight, figures out what Sam is best suited to do, talks to Maester Aemon about it and arranges for Sam to work for the Maester instead.

Appoints Satin Flowers, a former male prostitute from OldTown as his steward despite opposition from his bigoted department heads. And he does this, because once again, he judges based on a person’s actions and skills, rather than on the labels society places on them

“My Lord, the boy’s a whore...a...dare I say... a painted catamite from the brothels of Old Town”

“What he was in Oldtown is none of our concern. He’s quick to learn and very clever. The other recruits started out despising him, but he won them over and made friends of them all. He’s fearless in a fight and can even read and write after a fashion. He should be capable of fetching me my meals and saddling my horse, don’t you think?”

“Most like,” said Bowen Marsh, stony-faced, “but the men do not like it. Traditionally the lord commander’s squires are lads of good birth being groomed for command. Does my lord believe the men of the Night’s Watch would ever follow a whore into battle?”

Jon’s temper flashed. “They have followed worse. The Old Bear left a few cautionary notes about certain of the men, for his successor. We have a cook at the Shadow Tower who was fond of raping septas. He burned a seven-pointed star into his flesh for every one he claimed. His left arm is stars from wrist to elbow, and stars mark his calves as well. At Eastwatch we have a man who set his father’s house afire and barred the door. His entire family burned to death, all nine. Whatever Satin may have done in Oldtown, he is our brother now, and he will be my squire.”

Jon appoints Leathers of the Freefolk as his Master-at-arms once again, against objections from the likes of Cellador and Bowen

Bowen: Is it true that you mean to replace Emmett with this savage Leathers as our master-at-arms? That is an office most oft reserved for knights, or rangers at the least.

Jon: Leathers is savage. I can attest to that. I've tried him in the practice yard. He's as dangerous with a stone axe as most knights are with castle-forged steel. I grant you, he is not as patient as I'd like, and some of the boys are terrified of him ... but that's not all for the bad. One day they'll find themselves in a real fight, and a certain familiarity with terror will serve them well

The Freefolk women: Jon sees them as capable and equal in all ways to the men. He sends Val off all alone to find Tormund. He garrisons Long Barrow fully with Spearwives, entrusting them to defend that castle and the wall.

And we find that Jon is hungry for knowledge, and in his spare time he learns the Old Tongue from Leathers so that he can communicate with the giant Wun-Wun. He is always reading the books Maester Aemon left him, conducting science experiments on wights and even thinks of building a green house on the Gift to grow food. Once again, Jon acknowledges the importance of learning that he picked up from characters like Aemon, Sam and Tyrion.

I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind.. and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” Tyrion tapped the leather cover of the book. “That’s why I read so much, Jon Snow.” - Tyrion, AGoT

There’s a reason for why Jon’s so good at what he does. Look at the people from whom he learns – Ned Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jeor Mormont, Donal Noye, Qhorin Half-hand, Maester Aemon, Samwell Tarly, Mance Raydar, Stannis Baratheon etc. Every one of these men gives him a tidbit of information that he ends up using in the books.

Jon is very astute and has a deep understanding of the way the North and people in general work:

"The free folk despise kneelers," he had warned Stannis. "Let them keep their pride, and they will love you better." Soon or late, however, Tormund Giantsbane would assault the Wall again, and when that hour came Jon wondered whose side Stannis's new-made subjects would choose. You can give them land and mercy, but the free folk choose their own kings. - Jon, ADwD

Early on he advises Stannis to go with the Umbers instead of the Karstarks. Later we see his advice hold true as the Karstarks betray Stannis while Mors Crowfood allies with him. He also advises Stannis to approach Manderly – a decision that once again works out right. He explains to Stannis in clear detail how to approach the mountain clans for help

“And they will fight for me, you believe?”

“If you ask them.”

“Why should I beg for what is owed me?”

“Ask, I said, not beg.” Jon pulled back his hand. “It is no good sending messages. Your Grace will need to go to them yourself. Eat their bread and salt, drink their ale, listen to their pipers, praise the beauty of their daughters and the courage of their sons, and you’ll have their swords. The clans have not seen a king since Torrhen Stark bent his knee. Your coming does them honor. Command them to fight for you, and they will look at one another and say, ‘Who is this man? He is no king of mine.’ ”

In a way, it makes sense that Jon tries to see the humanity of people, tries to teach them, weeds out talent and designates based on merit and skillset – he works with the lowest of the lowest. He’s the military head of a group of outlaws, murderers, rapists, bigots, smallfolk with no education or access to education. He has to be able to see beyond labels to get this ragtag bunch ready to face an apocalyptic threat.

Contrast this Jon Snow to Jaime Lannister in AFfC who hangs some outlaws in the Riverlands and then proudly calls himself ‘Goldenhand the Just’ for meting out ‘justice’, failing to even acknowledge that those hungry outlaws were created by his war – a war that started because of his incestuous adultery.

To conclude, Jon Snow ending an 8000 year old feud between the north and the freefolk, bringing them over to this side of the wall, including them in the realms of men, making real alliances between old Northern houses and the freefolk epitomizes what Jon Snow stands for as a character in the books.

There’s a reason for why GRRM describes Jon Snow thus:

Jon Snow is the truest character--I like his sense of realism and the way he copes with his bastardy.

#Jon Snow #ASoIaF #A Song of Ice and Fire

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thelawyerthatwaspromised · 6 years

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How Jon Completely Took Control of Dany in Season 7

“Do you know how many times that monster has been the difference between life and death for our rangers? Your uncle included. Like it or not, we need men like Craster.” ~ Jeor Mormont to Jon Snow

With this exchange as the premise to the entire post, I’d suggest not reading any further if you believe political!Jon permanently sullies Jon Snow’s character. The nice part is that the contents of this post are almost assuredly true regardless of whether Jon has romantic feelings for Daenerys or not. I happen to think he does not, but the way in which Jon consciously and deliberately influenced Dany’s behavior is a gigantic enough topic that it warrants a closer look.

Essentially, I’m going to show you why the overarching narrative of the entire back end of Season 7 revolves around Jon incrementally exerting more and more control over Dany to the point where she’s completely surrendered almost all decision making power to him.

First, I think it’s instructive to get a glimpse of what I believe is an extremely important lesson Jon learned along the way about dealing with those you might really not approve of in service of a larger objective:

[more under the cut]

In Season 2, idealistic and naive Jon gets his first lesson on difficult relationships from Jeor Mormont’s dealings with Craster. Craster verbally berates Jeor constantly. He insults his daughters/wives. He challenges the manhood of every ranger there. Jon hates him - and he foolishly lets it show. Jon is surprised to find out that Jeor lashes out at him for being a loudmouth.

“Jon”, Jeor essentially says, “you have to shut your mouth. This isn’t about Craster being a jerk. I don’t care if he’s a jerk. If I don’t care, then you shouldn’t care. What we’re doing is more important. If you want to lead, you have to learn how to follow.” Another double meaning to this, I think, is Jeor telling Jon that their mission is more important than whether Craster stupidly thinks himself higher and mightier than Jeor. Let Craster think what he wants, because we need his shelter and we need his food and if I humor him, we get that.”

This is only re-affirmed when Jon learns that Craster is sacrificing his children to the WW’s. Jon tells Jeor that Craster is a monster. And Jeor says, well, we need this monster. It sucks, but we need this monster to survive.

How does this lead me to Jon manipulating Dany? Well you might already have an idea but I’ll walk you through what I see is a very very clear process Jon goes through as he figures out how to “speak” to her. For the record, I don’t think Jon views Dany like she’s a Craster-level monster. That’s stupid, so don’t bother jumping to that conclusion. My theory is that Jon is using lessons from what he’s experienced, like with Craster, to get what he wants out of Dany.

First step: the “sizing up” phase

Listen, Jon’s really uncomfortable in these situations. Everyone knows it. And it’s not that he’s intimidated by anyone. He’s stared down literally hundreds of people that want to kill him and refused to blink. Jon is uncomfortable with the formal setting and being viewed as if he is something special and uncomfortable that he’s made a decision in coming to Dragonstone that he knows could be a huge mistake. Just look how it starts.

Immediately, Jon displays some maturity in playing nice. He gives an ever-so-genuine smile to Missandei. I honestly believe that in this moment, Jon already regrets coming. But, the toothpaste is already out of the tube...so he’s got a job to do.

I’ve seen it theorized that Jon is simply in awe of Dany. That his looks are one of wonder and intense attraction. I’m utterly convinced this couldn’t be further from the truth. First, the power move by having Missandei tell Jon to surrender his weapons to the Dothraki gives a terrible vibe. Then, Drogon conveniently does a fly by right over Jon and Davos’ heads. No one else seems alarmed - and I think it’s a subtle clue that they knew it was going to happen. Everything about this first meeting is meant to make Jon feel small.

Like, even the camera work is designed to make him seem small from Dany’s perspective. Except Jon sizes up Dany and doesn’t back down.

Does this look like someone intimidated at this point?

Does this look like a man in awe and filled with attraction? Or a look of terror that he’s made a huge mistake and he realizes that Dany is everything he feared she would be? My vote is the latter - and I think this look tells that story a thousand times over.

Jon is NOT behaving like political!Jon in this moment. That’s why I strongly suspect that it was a change in approach that led to Jon’s success. This is Jon in his few moments of honesty during Season 7..and I have to say it was pretty glorious.

Jon’s pretty pissed at the end of this exchange..and his ship is seized and he’s forced to stay on Dragonstone despite his wanting to leave. (There’s a word for his status here, but I’m not sure what it is)

Jon has his talk with Tyrion that I’ve re-capped before - and the idea of political!Jon is born.

Phase #2: Behave as an equal and an ally rather than an adversary

Again we see Jon approaching Dany but this time attempting to mend the damage of their first meeting (which is what they’re both acknowledging in this scene)

Dany tries very hard to build a connection with Jon. He doesn’t answer when she tries to prod him on losing two brothers. And then she jumps right back into her belief that the North belongs to her.

Just look at how irritated Jon is behaving. It’s simple to see when you don’t take things at face value. This is right after Dany is asserting for the second time that the North belongs to her. Jon is agitated. Jon is not in love.

The very next scene they have together is Jon setting up a one-on-one and personal encounter with Dany in the dragonglass cave out of nowhere. And he’s clearly and intentionally initiating physical contact with her.

WHAT OF THEIR INTERACTIONS SO FAR HAVE TOLD US THAT JON WOULD BE ROMANTICALLY INTERESTED IN DANY!?

The dragonglass cave is a setup. He’s trying to make it very personal for her to convince her that they can be allies. The idea that Jon actually is attracted to Dany at this point is incredibly less likely than the idea that Jon is intentionally trying to make himself seem attractive to her.

And again, it just doesn’t work, as we know.

This is the look Jon gives when Dany asks him if the survival of his people is more important than his pride. It’s a dead stare. This isn’t love. This isn’t attraction. When he found out his play didn’t work - his practiced longing stares ceased and we got these looks.

Again, staring down Dany. Not intimidated or in awe. He’s seemingly no closer to getting her to commit than the second he landed on shore. He learned that her allowing him to mine the dragonglass was a play, again, to get him to bend the knee.

She simply will not allow him to be her equal. If she doesn’t believe him about the Night King, then this is all a facade for her to get him to bend the knee. If she does believe him, then he now knows she’s still prioritizing his bending the knee to doing the right thing.

Now he’s learned two things: she IS prone to his advances but ONLY if he also guides her to believe that he fits into her fantasy of being extraordinary and the dual fantasy of having an extraordinary warrior man to be at her side serving her.

Step #3: the pivotal moment where Jon truly becomes pro-active

THIS IS THE MOMENT. There’s absolutely no reason why Jon would just walk up and pet Drogon here except for the sole reason of having a Quentyn Martell moment with Dany.

Afterall, the last time they spoke, she AGAIN demanded that he bend the knee. The ONLY way he can get her on board is by influencing her. Jon is absolutely insane if he is doing this simply because he really wanted to pet Drogon.

It’s not because he likes Drogon either...

He literally scoffs at Dany calling them her children and her belief that they are beautiful. He very quickly feels like he has to correct himself, because his arrogance is showing again and he remembers that he cannot speak without a filter. Oh and he lies his ass off again 2 seconds later, for the “Jon can’t lie!” crowd...

Look at how genuine his smile is again!

What’s important to understand is that there’s still been NO personal connection made between Jon and Daenerys until this point. Dany is incredibly impressed by Jon’s demonstration - and that’s all it really was...a deliberate attempt at impressing her by Jon which clearly succeeded.

Dany puts herself out there and basically begs Jon to give her a heartfelt goodbye. This is what she gets...yeesh. Notice how Tyrion sees the whole thing...

So Jon is going on this death mission. He lives, but Viserion dies.

What does Dany care about more than anything? Her self-importance and being “extraordinary”. What is directly tied to that? Her dragons. She lost a dragon. Jon is scared shitless as soon as he wakes up that this means Dany is going to be too angry and/or heartbroken to help.

So JON APOLOGIZES. Are you kidding me? Then we see Jon assert control over Dany. This is the most aggressive he’s ever been about it (and, ironically, when he is physically at his weakest).

After apologizing, Jon seizes Dany’s hand. I say “seizes” because he literally reaches up and gives her no choice but to take his hand. She’s clearly mourning and this is his attempt at re-asserting his influence over her.

Dany pretty quickly pulls her hand away.

Jon does his absolute best at providing her with prolonged eye contact. If you’ve ever tried giving heart eyes to someone; it’s because you really want to focus their attention on YOU.

Ok, body language alert. A long pause, and swallowing before saying something means he’s not excited to say the words coming out of his mouth. Or that he’s incredibly nervous. What have we seen thus far that would cause Jon to be NERVOUS about expressing love to Dany? Is there any explanation besides Jon believing Dany is a holy Goddess that Jon is unworthy to speak with? I believe the better explanation is he’s playing the part that he knows he has to play and he’s making sure every word is measured.

Tips for anyone who wants to be a trial lawyer: if your witness is on the stand...breathes heavily before speaking...and pauses every 2 to 3 words when saying something...the jurors are going to believe they’re lying. Except this slow...monotone...rhythmic....pattern...is....played....to....be.....romantic.

But suddenly, the guy who stood up to every single foe along the way is now reduced to meek and mild ole’ bashful Jonny boy when expressing feelings to Dany? Sorry if I’m not buying what he’s selling. Here’s the thing: this works as visual clues for the audience...but what actually matters is the impact on Dany.

And she’s absolutely infatuated with Jon at this point.

Ha! It’s cute how he mentions that he’s severely injured so he can’t bend the knee after apologizing profusely 2 minutes ago for even going on the mission that Dany green-lighted and Tyrion thought up. I also love how he breaks eye contact AND bonus points for starting his exaggerated smirk.

Dany expresses doubt of her unworthiness. But NO. She CAN’T suddenly think she’s unworthy. That’s the entire play that Jon has built this act around. She’s extraordinary, and he is too, just not as extraordinary as her. Her self-doubts HAVE to be erased.

To this point, Jon has not ONCE expressed ANY belief that Dany is a good queen or an effective ruler. He’s expressed that she’s potentially magical and that she is supposedly a good person. And now we are, again, to believe that Jon is now of the opinion that she definitely should hold ruling authority over his home. Is this really what he thinks? Or...

“Do you want to lead one day? Then learn how to follow.”

Here is the absolute KEY SHOT for me this scene. Dany takes Jon’s hand again. His gravitational pull has her in his grasp.

And then she tries to pull her hand away...except...Jon physically grips her hand and will NOT let her go. I think this is more symbolic in nature, but this is a glaring demonstration that Jon is acting practically aggressively towards Dany while appearing passive (is passive-aggressive seduction a thing?) and he physically will not allow her to pull away from him.

Jon know he has her hooked but he still has to keep up appearances. How symbolic that Jon then clearly pretends to go to sleep when Dany tells him he should rest. Then we get a glimpse of real!Jon...who is clearly agonizing over this entire situation. What I wouldn’t give for Jon to have a thought cloud above his head in this last shot.

Step #4: Public declaration and assert dominance publicly

This sounds like Jon is the subject of an Animal Planet special.

The Declaraction

Jon is put on the spot by Cersei. He publicly declares his personal loyalty to Dany, which would seemingly torpedo the entire purpose of the wight hunt. Stupid honest Jon! Look how sad he is...except it had the exact effect he would have wanted; Dany is visibly turned on by his display. Look at what happens. She seeks him out to offer him at least a measure of consolation after her initial rebuke of him.

Dany then launches into more personal exposition (to which Jon has STILL never reciprocated with any personal stories of his own). Jon is observing Dany here. Call this love I suppose, but she’s talking about how wonderful and glorious the dragons were. We KNOW Jon doesn’t agree with this assessment.

Then she laments that they were ever locked away in “here”. Jon looks with what I would judge to be concern. But it’s a long pause AGAIN. Jon is so carefully deciding what to say next. Dany just expressed her fear of being ordinary yet again. So what does Jon say?

Jon identifies what Dany needs to hear. “You’re not like everyone else” and “your house isn’t gone”. This is Jon trying to make Dany feel like her specialness transcends the dragons. Dany, unfortunately, feels like her dragons DEFINE what makes her special. Her arc in Meereen (where she tried to lock the dragons away and was failing miserably) only confirmed that for her.

Oh look, another smile that we are to believe is romantic but one that looks exactly like all the other sarcastic smirks Jon’s given leading up to this point and one made after Jon states that he believes the world is going to end because they couldn’t get the ceasefire with Cersei. This is definitely a light-hearted moment for Jon.

Asserting Dominance

Jon pitches the idea of sailing together. Again - he fails to make eye contact except at the end of his sentence but he makes immediate and direct eye contact with Dany, knowing the effect he has on her.

Jorah had just gotten done making a very reasonable point that it’s safer to fly North and that sailing is unnecessary and more dangerous.

We get a “moment of truth” series of looks where Dany is choosing publicly whether to side with Jon’s proposal or Jorah’s proposal. Tyrion has given up even trying to exert influence at this point. His words to Jorah on the beach “our queen needs you now more than ever” serve as a warning to Jorah that he can see the growing influence of Jon over Dany.

This is essentially the crescendo for the season. Jon wants to get Dany alone so he can continue to be the only voice she hears and the only eyes she gazes into. Do you think this is romantic? I sure as hell don’t - in fact it’s very very dark. But this is how it’s presented. The moment where Dany decides...

Everyone in the room knows what this moment means....except Dany. She sort of gets it...she’s clearly uncomfortable with the looks she receives after making her decision...but it’s SOOOO obviously painting Jon’s reaction.

Jon just received good news. Why does he look so dejected about it? If he honestly believed it was the right thing to do for Dany - there would be no shame on his face. This is a look of shame. Very interestingly is the last bit where I believe Jon changes his gaze from Dany over to Jorah who offers this thousand-mile stare...

And there it is. Jon Snow, the Northern Fool just showed everybody in Dany’s inner circle that HE is calling the shots. Perhaps he doesn’t WANT them to know this yet outright, but his actions have made it eminently clear exactly who is in charge.

The scene following this one immediately?

Jon “confessing” to Theon that not everything he does is good or honest, despite what it might look like on the outside.

Jon’s completely manipulated Dany into doing exactly what he wants her to do. His groundwork from Season 7 is what will allow for dissension within team!Dany and will ultimately leave her heartbroken to learn that Jon has been pulling the strings the entire time.

Are you still holding out hope that Jon is desperately in love with Dany?

“It may seem that way from the outside ... but I promise you friend, it’s not true.”

#anti daenerys #anti targaryen #anti jonerys #anti j0nerys #Political Jon theory #political jon meta #jonsa politics #jon x sansa #jonsa #actuallyjonsa

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ironbloodaika · 7 years

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If there was a show you really wanted to reboot so you could go back and fix all the problems you had with it, which show would it be and what changes would you make?

Sorry for the delay in answering this Charlie. My memory’s been wonky lately. XD First off thanks for asking this, I love these sorta asks. I used to get these all the time from Jenn, but the less said about that the better.

I’ve thought about this and the one I REALLY think could use a reboot/fresh coat of paint is definitely Danny Phantom. It had a lot of strong points, but was also lacking quite a bit. Some I saw when it first aired and others only after re-watching and the gift of hindsight. So here’s a list of things I’d change/improve to the series if I could in no particular order.

*Have some solid continuity/character growth for the characters. A sad trend I’ve noticed with a lot of Butch shows is that they don’t tend to really have the characters under go arcs that span longer than an episode or even make reference or learn from past events. Occasionally they DO pop up, but they’re very rare and fleeting. It helps when you’re airing episodes without any regard to order, but it really hamstrings your ability to tell engaging stories or have the characters grow when there’s no guarantee that anything that happened is gonna carry over into future episodes.

*Give Danny a spine. Danny’s kinda stuck with one of the most annoying problems I see in a lot of cartoons, especially Butch shows I’ve noticed. The hero, despite having all these amazing gifts and powers, still doesn’t stick up for himself in even the most basic of circumstances. Look, I understand Danny can’t just go using his powers to push back against bullies or anyone who makes him mad. It’d be taking advantage of his powers and run the risk of abuse. But for the love of God, Danny, grow an f’ing spine! Despite facing Eldrich Abominations on a semi-daily basis, this guy still has to kowtow to the likes of Dash and the jocks for no real reason. For fuck’s sake kid, Peter Parker got bit by a radioactive spider and gained enough strength to bench-press a Buick. Yeah, he didn’t advertise he had powers and still acted meek around others, but he actually started standing up for himself. He didn’t fucking sitdown and take it. Instead the show seems to pain ANY attempts of him using his abilities for any sort of personal gain is wrong. And if we wanna play by that logic, fine, but have Danny at LEAST stand up to Dash. I’ve learned through my own experience that ignoring or running from a bully solves NOTHING. If Danny isn’t gonna tell a teacher or something of the blonde sociopath making his life hell, then fucking stand up for yourself. Teach kids to not take that shit.

*Okay that last one went on a bit. Sorry, that just really bothered me. Second thing I’d do is give Tucker some development. Of the main 3, he’s one who really never went through and arc and often times felt like a 3rd Wheel at best and an annoyance at worse. They keep playing up how his love of tech makes him unpopular, but it really comes off more he’s unpopular for just how grating he is. I’m not sure what school Butch went to, but in my days EVERYONE knew SOMETHING about technology. They weren’t fucking Luddites. Give Tucker SOMETHING to add to the story besides just being there and cracking wise.

*SAM. Sam needs a real overhaul. At first I didn’t mind her, but she’s really grated on me with the passage of time. I’ve shared my thoughts and feelings on her a LOT on this account, so I invite anyone who wants to check those pieces out to checked the Sam Manson tags for more on that. But to keep it short, give her SOME kind of depth. Sam really comes off as more shallow than the people she derides, constantly complaining about stuff by the mere fact it’s popular, propping herself and her interests up on a pedestal because they’re not “mainstream”, forces her friends and others to alter their life-styles to fit HER choices, and comes off as more of a contrarian lashing out at Mommy and Daddy than someone who legit BELIEVES any of the crap she’s spouting.

*Give the secondary characters some love. With how much we have episodes that focus on characters like Jazz, Valerie, Paulina, or Dash, they don’t really change all that much or have much going for them to begin with. Valerie has the strongest arc of the bunch, but it’s sadly dropped near the end of the series and doesn’t really get the resolution it deserved. Jazz played a roll as a secret keeper to Danny, but didn’t really do much before or after those episodes. It would have been cool to see the sort of relationship she had with her brother before knowing he had super powers and how their dynamic worked before then. Even get a glimpse to how she is at school. Maybe like how despite all the things Danny thinks about her being smart and perfect, it’s because of those things that’s she’s really not all that popular at school. We never DO see her really hang with anyone outside of Danny and his friends. And Dash and Paulina just serve to as foil to Danny or Sam respectively. Dash only serves to remind me how much the Casper High is dropping the ball on preventing very clear and public bullying and Paulina and Sam get into arguments that, let’s face it, are instigated 9/10 times by Sam for no other reason than she can. Have these characters GROW. There are a lot of parallels made between the cast of Danny Phantom and Spider-Man and here’s a bit some people tend to forget, the kids who bullied Peter Parker before he got his powers? They grew up. They stopped being bullies, made up for their short comings, and became actual adults. But everyone seems to wanna keep them as these static bullies who only serve to cause tension and nothing else. I’m not saying upgrade them to Sixth Ranger status, but if you’re gonna have them be in so many episodes and in such a chaotic series, have them add SOMETHING.

*Dig deeper into the Ghost Mythos. One thing they REALLY need to take advantage of is the fact that ghosts EXIST in this universe. There IS an afterlife or at the very least an alternate dimension we SUDDENLY have access too. I feel that this should be a much bigger deal to their world than it is, but everyone seems to just accept it and move on. Unless Danny really DOES live in the Marvel universe, I don’t think the fact his parents literally created a portal to the afterlife should be treated as an after thought. You have so many chances to explore with this concept, especially with the ghosts Danny fights themselves. So many different types of spirits and apparitions in folklore to take inspiration from. Hell, the series flat out tells us that a lot of these ghosts WERE people at some point. They had lives. Families. But they never really touch upon this fact and just treat them like a Monster of the Week. You’d think Danny would get tired of fighting and try to do something a bit more long-term with some of the ghosts who’d like to just be left alone. Instead we get a really weak ‘retcon’ that ghosts are just extra-dimensional creatures who THINK they’re the spirits of the dead. That seems like stupidly complicating the matter. Why even call them ghosts if they’re not?

*Speaking of ghosts, how about they finally explain why the fuck they can’t shut that damn portal down. Seriously. It’s the SOLE means the ghosts have of getting out as often as they do. Danny KNOWS this. But the fact he never ones tries to shut-down or disable the thing is astounding. If they just gave us a reason like it was too big to shut and the machine was there to keep it from getting BIGGER, that I’d buy. It’d at LEAST be an explanation. To me this is one of those elements that if you just removed, the series would literally end at that point.

*This is sorta looping back, but Danny seems to be very split in personality depending on the episode. He’s either cocky and brimming with confidence to the point of arrogance or a moppy sad-sack who is all to willing to quit and ditch his powers despite the levels of stupid such an act would bring. Look, I’m not saying a hero shouldn’t be confident or have low-points, but they feel very random and often time serve no other purpose than to force a scenario where he’s either humbled or turned into such a Butt Monkey by the narrative it starts getting sad. Even Spider-Man in the 90′s cartoon didn’t have it that bad. And he felt about quitting every other story arc.

*Give Sam and Danny better chemistry. IF you’re gonna have these two together, give us SOMETHING to work with. These two don’t have a lot of chemistry, all they do is blush and avert eyes. It’s really not that impressive. It’d be cute if they’re grade-schoolers and this was a story of young love, but they don’t really click in any kind of romantic sense with what we’re given. I know Valerie was given as a Romantic False Lead, but you wanna know something? They actually WORKED. There was some goddamed communication there. Some really adorable flirting, compliments, and sweet moments. They didn’t bicker every five minutes and made each other happy. Hell, if they had pulled an American Dragon and had Valerie find out about Danny and ultimately be okay with it after finding out she’d been played, I’d have completely been okay with it. Instead we have to accept him getting with a girl who can’t even bare the sight of him showing interest in another girl while STILL denying she has feelings for him. Look, I grew tired of that bullshit in Total Drama, Sam, don’t push me.

Well that’s all I’ve got to say on this end. Most of it springs down to character and story elements since I feel that’s where the show really frays out. Hopefully this answers your question, Charlie, and it was a good read. Thanks again for the question! :D

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taleweaver-ramblings · 4 years

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D&D Stories: That Time Our Friend Went Crazy and We Derailed the Session With a Moral Debate

So. Yeah. I want to be able to share D&D stories on here, and this seems like a good one to start with. Warning, this post is long.

For context, first: the campaign this took place in, Rise of the Shadowmaster, is a homebrew setting and story and such in which a motley crew of adventurers, brought together by chance, coincidence, and narrative force and held together by a semi-common goal, emotional attachment, and more narrative force, tries to fix the mistakes of a drow shadow monk who decided that the best way to fix a broken society is to break it more so heroes will rise up to defeat the world’s villains. (It actually is a really great campaign, and our GM does a great job, and I’m very attached to it. Lots of great moments and memories and all that. Just wanted to get that out there before someone thinks I’m complaining, because I’m not. It’s just that, in the words of one of the NPCs in today’s session, “This was not how I expected to spend today.”)

So. At the end of the last session, we’d returned to the home of our sorcerer, a silver dragonborn, for some rest and recovery after fighting (and nearly beating, for the record) a Rakshasa. We were down a fighter/warlock, who’d had a fight with the sorcerer over something stupid and had refused to teleport with the rest of us, and our sorcerer was acting weird. This wasn’t terribly unreasonable; we’d all had a pretty traumatic day, after all, and he more than some. We figured we could long rest and in the morning, everyone would be better, right? Right?

You can probably guess where this is going.

So. Cue the end of a long rest. Our ranger’s exhausted and super out-of-it; she got hit by the rakshasa and is therefore cursed, though none of us know that in-character. The party wizard (and team dad) and I (paladin and only member of the original party who hadn’t either died, turned evil, or wandered off to do something else) confirmed she’s alive and then went to go check on the sorcerer.

Who then pretends not to know who we are.

Who then says he’s decided that all the dragons and dragonborn need to die by his hand.

Who’s convinced that he’s cursed to hurt everyone around him and that he’s apparently caused half the major calamities in the last month (which is how long the characters have been doing stuff in-game), and believes that all this killing is the only way to fix his mistakes.

Flashback time. So, about half of the campaign to date has centered around traveling to the different dragon/dragonborn societies (which don’t hate each other in this world, for the record) and trying to convince them to redeem themselves in the eyes of the world (having previously been responsible for enslaving/being horrible to basically every other race in this world) by joining the fight against the Shadowmaster. This hasn’t gone horribly, but it also hasn’t gone well — of the five societies we have allied, one betrayed us and attacked the nearest human city not too long after we left them, and another two are only allied in the loosest possible terms. To top everything off, the ancient silver dragon, who’s also our sorcerer’s father figure and a major deity of this world, straight-up died about a week ago in-game from the effects of his fight with the Shadowmaster. Needless to say, it has not been a good month for any of our characters, but especially not for our sorcerer.

Anyway. Back to the present. The wizard figures out that our sorcerer is faking his amnesia and about half of his sudden switch in personality. I respond to this revelation by casting Zone of Truth, because even if I’m not lawful good, I’m still a paladin and big on the idea of truth as a resolution to problems. But it’s not just his truth that I’m interested in; I’ve cast it for another reason: so he knows I’m not lying to him when I inform him that his attitude — that his conviction that everything is his fault and that he has the right to commit genocide because of it — is insanely arrogant, even for him, and that even if he played a role in the stuff that’s gone wrong in the last month, it’s not his fault that other people made the choices they made, and you can’t just kill people because they live in a society, what the heck, man!

Before our sorcerer can even respond, there’s a voice from behind us. And it’s the storming Shadowmaster, who, yes, does have a habit of randomly showing up where we happen to be, usually to perform some combination of spouting questionable philosophy and telling us which of his messes he thinks we should clean up next. Anyway. He starts with the philosophy-spouting, and I turn on him and yell that we’re busy, and he needs to go have his bad ideas somewhere else. Somewhat amazingly, he does go stand outside to give us a moment.

Anyway. The sorcerer and I debate morality and ethics for a while before he tells us that we can settle this the way of one of the dragon societies — by a council of peers, by debating each other to a standstill (to the point of personal remarks), or by fighting each other. I tell him that I’ll argue with him all day, or I’ll make my argument to a council, but I’m not going to raise a hand to him unless or until he actively tries to carry out his plan and hurt someone undeserving. He says, fine, we’ll do a council of peers, and goes to get his choices.

We now encounter a problem. As previously mentioned, we’re in the city of the silver dragons, an ice-based small city hundreds of miles away from any other civilization. I know exactly three people other than the sorcerer in this city. That means my choices for my two council peers are:

Our wizard (an obvious choice, since he’s a follower of the same deity as I follow)

Our ranger (not a great choice based on her last-seen mental state)

And the storming Shadowmaster.

The wizard agrees immediately, and I go check on the ranger. She’s still not doing great, huddled up with her animals, though she’s a little more responsive than earlier. At this point, I’m thinking I’m going to have to ask the Shadowmaster; even if our ranger is more mentally there, she’s still not in a great place. But when I loosely explain the situation to her, she agrees, so that’s a crisis averted.

And then we spend pretty much the rest of the session with the sorcerer and I making mini-speeches presenting our arguments and reasoning and the council deciding who they agreed with. It was probably one of the most stressful moments of my D&D career, second only to a certain incident with an orc captain and a con of sorts pulled by the same sorcerer I was currently debating. Charisma-based caster I might be; good speaker, I am not.

But we managed to get through it all right, and we had a very touching moment with the ranger (who had previously been very much motivated by revenge) admitting that getting her revenge hadn’t really fixed anything (I came close to crying in real life, not going to lie) and with one of the dragonborn council members pointing out that whatever our sorcerer did, he couldn’t do it alone; he needed people who would support him and give him advice, and right now those people were telling him that what he wanted to do was not a great idea. Again, very stressful, but also pretty amazing.

And then I put my armor back on and we let the Shadowmaster back in so he could tell us the latest on his national disaster. But that’s a story for another post.

#d&d rp #rise of the shadowmaster #d&d #ttrpg #d&d story #I can't believe this actually happened #I also can't believe I won the debate #I never win debates #don't argue ethics with a paladin tho #and don't use the killing baby Hitler argument on a paladin of the goddess of family and restoration #it will not work

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thefaeriereview · 4 years

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Inside the Mind: Matthew Travagline

https://ift.tt/3dZxxoX

Welcome to Inside the Mind where we here at The Faerie Review interview authors and creators.

Our guest today is Matthew Travagline, the author behind Gleeman's Tales.

Lily: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview Matthew I really enjoyed reading The Gleeman’s Tales. The book is post-apocalyptic, but a gleeman makes the reader think of the past, what inspired you to merge the two?

Matthew: I really enjoy dystopic and post-apocalyptic fiction. I also love a more traditional fantasy. When it came time to planning out what would become my debut novels, I wanted to write what I haven’t seen a lot of – a blend of the two together. So often in post-apocalyptic fiction, the emphasis is on the future, of technological progression, of returning to where we (humans) were. But returning to the same level of technology that we have now after a world-breaking event would be nearly impossible, in my opinion. Everything from the power grid, municipal plumbing, the internet… these would all prove mighty hurdles for humans picking themselves up in the apocalypse. And that’s assuming that there is unity and cooperation. So I don’t think a widespread usage of, to use my own term, “first age” technologies, would be possible.

As far as the bard aspect…this came from a serious lack of culture, merriment, and the lighter arts within (fantasy and post-apocalyptic fiction). Yes, there are serious exceptions. Patrick Rothfuss’s The Kingkiller Chronicle and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel are books that heavily center around culture (in fantasy and the apocalypse, respectively). Mandel’s work, especially, I’ve been watching the popularity of with glee (her work is more closely tied to the premise of Gleeman’s Tales). Oh, boy, I’ve gone off on a tangent already.

Lily: I'll have to check both of those out. I loved the way you blended the two ideas! Were Gnochi and Cleo based on anyone?

Matthew: I tend to believe that a writer puts a little of themselves into each of their characters, even if that piece is an antithesis. I think Gnochi was cast from the idea of what role I would play in a similar situation. If a setting like that, I’m not likely to be at a forge, or on the front lines of battle, but comfortably settled into a story, perched atop a bar before an entranced audience. Neither of the characters, though, were literally based off of another person or even a likeness. I tried not to write them with too many exact, definitive descriptions (like Oslow’s beard) so the reader has more freedom to imagine them as they will.

Lily: I agree that even if it's not intentional a little of the writer gets into their characters. I can definitely see some authors turning into gleeman if the world was turned upside down. What was the highlight of writing this?

Matthew: Coming to a natural end on the first draft (which I hand-wrote) was definitely a highlight of the process. In that moment, when only a select handful even knew about its existence, and without the stresses of marketing or publishing, I had achieved my dream to write a novel.

Lily: That had to have been a great feeling! I like the idea of writing something by hand but I'm not sure I'd be able to read what I wrote afterwards. Without spoilers, what’s your favorite part?

Matthew: I really loved working Gnochi’s vignette stories into the central narrative. They were, after all, the skeleton of the idea before I had even outlined, so ensuring they had a contextual relevance was an enjoyable puzzle to parse out. Imagine crafting a rib cage out of a pile of loose bones. It required a little finesse, trial, and error, but ultimately became a viable structure that proved vital to the heart of the story.

Lily: Now we’d like to talk about you as a writer. When did you first consider yourself a writer?

Matthew: I’d written some stories and attempted a book when I was in in middle school, but it wasn’t until high school when I first learned that my writing was enjoyable for others to read. In my 9th grade English class, we had an assignment to write an additional chapter onto the end of Lois Lowry’s The Giver. What I turned in was particularly gruesome. A little dark. But my teacher read it aloud at the end of class. He then spoke to me about my writing and encouraged me to continue writing.

Lily: That's awesome! I'm glad your teacher encouraged you even though it was a bit dark. What is the most difficult part about writing for you?

Matthew: Battling with my own procrastination. Even with a full time job, I have plenty of time to work on my writing, but forcing myself to write or edit is often the real struggle, even if the ideas are there.

Lily: I can imagine it's hard to get into the mindset sometimes. Do you read your reviews?

Matthew: I’d love to get to a point where I have so many reviews, I cannot possibly read them all, but we’re not at that point yet. Maybe some of your readers can help me get closer to that point [laughs]. But, yeah, I do read my reviews, especially if they offer genuine critique. There is a difference between a troll one-star review, offering nothing concrete to justify the score, and a low-scoring review with solid criticisms.

Lily: I hope we get you some more reviews I definitely loved reading it! When I do feel like I have to give below 3 stars I always try to offer constructive criticism. When I see a low rating I always check to see if the reviews are constructive or just "I didn't like it", tells me whether a book is worth picking up. (Although if you want to know a secret I don't check reviews before I decide if I want to read a book an author has approached me with). Let’s finish up with some fun questions and get inside your mind. What is your favorite word and why?

Matthew: I’m not sure if I have a favorite word, if that’s possible. There are some words that I appreciate for their value, despite not being used colloquially. I think a better question would be, what is my favorite pun, to which I would say all of them, especially when used intentionally. (I never apologize for my puns!)

Lily: I secretly love puns, they're a great example of how amazing language and words are! Now for an important question, are you a morning person or a night owl?

Matthew: I work nights, but constantly am changing back and forth between day and night cycle, so I’m a little sparrow that’s tired all the time.

Lily: I've always been a night owl but I have to change to a day schedule once or twice a week, so I understand switching and being tired. What’s the worst or best job you’ve had?

Matthew: I really have had enjoyable experiences with all my jobs (which is rare), but a standout for me were the two summers I was a park ranger. I got to spend all summer outside, but had a lot of free time to read and, more importantly, it was during these summers when I really developed the plot of Gleeman’s Tales and The Harbinger of Change.

Lily: That sounds like heaven in a job! How many chickens would it take to kill an elephant?

Matthew: I’m wondering if this question was targeted specifically because of Typhus. If not, is this the first time you’ve asked it to someone whose written an elephant into their book? I feel like elephants can be spooked quite easily. Get the right chicken underfoot and the elephant could fall and break a leg. That might be able to do one over.

Lily: The opportunity was there I had to take it hehe. You're not wrong though. Although I wonder who would be more startled. The chicken at being released under an elephant or the elephant at the chicken suddenly showing up. Would you rather your only mode of transportation be an elephant or a camel?

Matthew: Elephant, hands down. They live for a long time and have great memories, so you can really develop a lasting bond with your elephant.

Lily: That's very true. How can readers discover more about you?

Matthew: Check out any of the links below:

Website | Amazon Author Page | Goodreads Author Page

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

To order a copy of Gleeman's Tales

Amazon US | Amazon UK

To order a copy of The Harbinger of Change

Amazon US | Amazon UK

If you're interested in a signed/doodled copy of either you can request one from this store (just give them a call, they will ship):

Bethany Beach Books

via Blogger https://ift.tt/2PBYqEE

#Blogger #interview

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wbwest · 7 years

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New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/06/09/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-6917/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 6/9/17

In an interesting shake-up over at CBS, Erinn Hayes has been let go from her role as wife to Kevin James in Kevin Can Wait. They say that the show is going in a new direction, which necessitated the firing. But here’s where it gets interesting. Leah Remini, who played James’s wife on King of Queens, popped up in the season finale as James’ former cop partner. Well, just before announcing Hayes’s departure, CBS announced that Remini would be joining the show next season as a series regular. Now, if you’ve never seen Kevin Can Wait, Kevin James plays a former NYC cop who tries to figure out how to adjust to his recent retirement. Based on the season finale, though, it seems like James’s character might be coming out of retirement. It’s just a strange move, seeing as how the show ended the season as the #1 new comedy on network TV – hardly a situation that necessitated a retooling of the show. Part of what critics praised was Hayes’s portrayal of James’s wife of 20 years. How do you just gloss over that relationship? I mean, they’ve gotta kill her off, but unless you do a time jump, you’ve gotta slog through all the grief stuff, which doesn’t lend itself well to a multicam comedy. And if they’re gonna fast track a relationship between James and Remini, will the audience accept it? It really feels like they blew a sure thing and, if they wanted to recreate The King of Queens, thy should’ve just revived The King of Queens! I’ve said that online since Kevin was announced!

Speaking of Remini, I’m starting to think she’s a Scientology double agent. Bear with me here: Scientology is a well-connected organization in Hollywood that allegedly has the power to ruin your career with the information that they have on their members. If you ever leave the church, you’re pretty much done. Just look at the list of former Scientologists. On that list, Remini and Jeffrey Tambor are the one ones who even have a semblance of a steady career right now, and Tambor kinda skirted the issue by saying he never really joined the church. Remini, however, joined up as a child, and was a HUGE booster of the church. Then, in 2013, she turned on the church – not for its negative views on homosexuality (which is why Crash director Paul Haggis left) or its alleged illegal activities. No, she left because she got her feelings hurt after leadership clapped back at her. At Tom Cruise’s wedding to Katie Holmes, Remini asked why church leader David Miscavige’s wife wasn’t in attendance, and they basically told her she didn’t have clearance for that info (formal speak for “Nunyo Biznazz”). She didn’t trust that answer, and went further to file a missing persons report on Mrs. Miscavige. Then, she made it her mission to publicly discredit Miscavige, criticizing his leadership, citing reports of abuse in the Sea Org, and more. She went straight to the TOP with her blame game, yet NOTHING has happened to her. In fact, it’s probably rejuvenated her career. She got a successful show on A&E called Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, where she’s basically telling all their secrets. When the show debuted, the church issued a statement attacking her. Yet, she’s working more now than she was before. So, there’s two things happening here: either Scientology isn’t as powerful and litigious as we’ve been led to believe OR they’re in on it. It’s yin and yang. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. While Scientology has its critics, it never really had an enemy before. Why not create one where they could control the narrative? It’s like learning that Captain America has secretly been Hydra the whole time. Long story short, I’m not entirely convinced she’s left the church, especially over something as trivial as what’s reported to have started the whole thing. And she’s laughing all the way to the bank.

In other TV news, Tia and Tamera Mowry (yeah, they got married and have new hyphenated last names, but I ain’t got time for all that) are trying to get a Sister, Sister revival off the ground. And I don’t know anyone who wants this. If you were cool back in the 90s you probably never watched Sister, Sister, where a set of adopted twins didn’t realize they were twins until a chance meeting in a department store, a la The Parent Trap. Then they all move in together. It was the definition of “mediocre”, yet once ABC canceled it, it gained a new life over on The WB. The most memorable thing about it was that Marques “Batman” Houston, of the R&B group Immature/IMx, played their annoying neighbor Roger (kinda like a watered down Steve Urkel), and they’d constantly yell “Go home, Roger!” at him. Other than that, it was just a bunch of zany, mistaken identity twin shit – stuff that I’d hope adult Tia and Tamera had outgrown by now. What’s the story to tell? They both get divorced, and move in together with their kids? Sorry, Kate & Allie, Getting By, and the upcoming Raven’s Home have already covered that old chestnut. Are they single in the city, doing the same twin shit? Not interested. I don’t have a lot of faith in this one getting picked up, though, because they’re far behind where they need to be. Right now, they say they’re looking for a show runner to guide the project, but then they’d have to find a network. Sister, Sister was NO Full House, so I doubt Netflix would be interested. If anything, the only place I’d put it right now would probably be Freeform, even though the twins are slightly older than the target demo of that channel. Let this just be a lesson that not everything needs to be revived.

In other television news, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow has cast Tala Ashe as Muslim “hacktivist” Zari Adrianna Tomaz for season 3. She’s a computer whiz from 2030, so basically the team’s got their own Oracle/Felicity now – not that they really need it, with Gideon and all. Anyway, in comics Tomaz is actually an Egyptian who uses the Amulet of Isis to transform into the hero Isis. Before the New 52 reboot of the DC Universe, Isis was an important character in the weekly series 52, as she was in a relationship with Black Adam, and her brother, Osiris, was eaten by Sobek. Oh, and she had a cheesy TV show in the 70s. None of that’s gonna be in the Legends, I’m sure. Given the current political climate, and how loaded the name “Isis” is right now, I doubt they’ll actually ever call her that onscreen, either.

Song of the Week

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Today I give you “Vampires”, by The Midnight. My pal and thrifting partner, “Special Forces”, and I decided that this is the official theme song for Thrift Justice should it ever become a real show. Synthwave AND saxophone?! I wanna direct Skinemax movies just so I can score them with this entire album. So sexy. Right now, Thrift Justice is a USA drama circa 1990, and I ain’t got no problems with that!

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

Modern Family‘s Sarah Hyland will guest star on Freeform’s Shadowhunters, which kinda sounds like a step back…

Speaking of Freeform, they’ve ordered a pilot for an American adaptation of UK hit Misfits. The network is a good home for something like this, but I’m still pissed over the American adaptation of Skins, so…

Rudy Huxtable herself, Keshia Knight Pulliam, escorted TV dad Bill Cosby to the first day of his rape trial. Whatever. Call me when Lisa Bonet shows up.

In next level pettiness, Taylor Swift put her entire catalog back on Spotify at midnight – at the very moment Katy Perry released her album “Witness”

According to Dan Aykroyd, Paul Feig blew his chance at a Ghostbusters sequel because he overran his budget on unnecessary reshoots. Sony refuted the figures Aykroyd presented, saying the estimates were off by about NINETY percent. Woo!

Jennifer Connelly will join Daveed Diggs in TNT’s Snowpiercer pilot, playing the person who makes the daily announcements on the train. Exciting!

Tom Cruise revealed that the title of the Top Gun sequel will be Top Gun: Maverick. I wonder if John McCain has any feelings about that. Coherent feelings, not ramblings about the Diamondbacks…

Speaking of Cruise, his The Mummy reboot opens today, and reviewers have called it “the worst Tom Cruise movie ever”. Wow.

Singer/actress/sister of Ray J Brandy was found unconscious on a Delta flight, and the doctor who came to her rescue was reportedly Kim Kardashian’s uncle! Considering Ray J put that family on the map, I figure it’s time the Kardashians did something to return the favor.

Gotham stars Morena Baccarin and Ben McKenzie got married. Knowing that show, it’ll probably revealed that they’re Bruce’s real parents or some shit. It’s not like it pays attention to any of the rest of the lore, so why not?

Fox canceled 24 Legacy after a low-rated single season, but they’re still committed to the 24 brand. They’re reportedly developing an anthology series to take the show back to its real-time roots

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Like Peter denied Jesus, Jerry Seinfeld denied THREE requests for a hug from Kesha. I don’t blame him!

In one of the strangest deals I’ve ever heard of, Epix has inked a deal to stream its content directly to 2018 Honda Odyssey minivans

Sony will begin selling clean versions of some of their hit movies. If you’ve ever accidentally bought a clean version of an album from Walmart, you can see why this decision might anger some folks

Hank Williams Jr is back singing the opening to Monday Night Football for the first time since 2011. I guess all his rowdy friends will be over after they finish burning a few more crosses…

George and Amal Clooney welcomed twins Ella and Alexander

Former Power Rangers director/producer/fight coordinator Koichi Sakamoto will direct the upcoming Ultraman Geed series, focusing on the son of the evil Ultraman Belial. Yeah, those words mean something to someone out there.

Newcomer Blu Hunt has been cast as Danielle Moonstar in the upcoming New Mutants spinoff of the X-Men films.

A live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop is being developed, and my heart weeps. As one of the few anime series I’ve watched, and loved, I kinda hope this dies in development hell

Hackers released 8 stolen episodes of ABC’s upcoming game show, Funderdome, and nobody cared.

Donald Glover will be retiring her Childish Gambino hip hop persona after his next album.

We got our first poster for the Black Panther film.

Last week I gave my opinions and feelings on the movie. This week, I’m just gonna stick to the facts:

92% on Rotten Tomatoes

$103 million opening weekend domestic box office

$220 million opening weekend global box office

Third highest opening for a DC film

Most successful female-directed film

Mot expensive female-directed film, with a budget of $150 million

Most tweeted about movie of 2017, with 2.19 million tweets

Won Best In Show and Best Fantasy/Adventure at the Golden Trailer Awards

Last Saturday, Wonder Woman Day was celebrated at comic shops around the world

You’ve seen it by now, right? RIGHT?! Then, what are you waiting for? For these reasons, and more, Wonder Woman once again had the West Week Ever.

#Comics #DC #Marvel #Movies #Music #Politics #Pop #Power Rangers #Race #Religion #Television #Thrift #Thrift Justice #West Week Ever #X-Men

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topmixtrends · 7 years

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WHAT’S MORE AMERICAN than unresolved racial anxiety bubbling over into violence? To say that the current cultural moment provides no shortage of examples is almost beside the point; that’s always been true and always will be thanks to the racial complexities of the American project. The scale doesn’t necessarily need to be monumental for this to become clear, however; micro-level conflicts can be just as illuminating. Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird, for example, takes these unconfronted histories as the setting for a sharp crime story, using them to propel a tight plot forward and create something greater than the sum of its parts.

Set in rural East Texas, Bluebird, Bluebird is a detective story steeped with history. Locke, who’s received great praise for the novels Pleasantville and Black Water Rising and her work on the TV show Empire, draws upon themes familiar to those who know her previous work to construct a well-structured plot: Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, is called to Lark, a tiny East Texas town that’s just seen two bodies (first a black man, then a white woman) turn up dead in the bayou within the last week. Lark’s the kind of place where everybody’s known everybody else for decades, though this doesn’t imply any kind of fondness. The black folks cluster around Geneva Sweet’s Sweets, the kind of small-town diner where “colored folks [come] from all over just to have a place where they were welcome,” while its white residents congregate at Jeff’s Juice House, an icehouse that counts Aryan Brotherhood of Texas members among its regular clientele. Part of what makes the investigation into the bodies so confusing, though, is the lack of a clear racial narrative: the order of the killings “didn’t fit any agreed-upon American script,” and Lark is so small and closely linked that there’s plenty of ties between the white and black sides of town. Although technically under suspension, Darren quickly becomes subsumed by the case, dealing with a collection of residents with decades of history in the town as he tries to achieve some measure of justice.

The term “tangled web” gets thrown around a lot with these kind of novels, and for a moment I reflexively reached out to type that tired phrase before realizing that doing so would be doing Bluebird a disservice. Locke’s novel deals with such a small cast of characters that astute readers could probably guess who’s involved in the solution to the mystery midway through, but the plot is in no way lessened by not having an out-of-nowhere arrival in the third act. Instead, Locke uses history to add depth in a way that’s all the more compelling for how fundamentally simple it can be. Geneva’s diner and Jeff’s Juice House, the novel’s physical and psychological endpoints, are only a stone’s throw apart on Highway 59, but the scope spans decades; Bluebird’s a quarter-mile long and a century deep.

Learning the full extent of the complicated relationships between characters is the best part of the book — Locke has a wonderful grasp of how to tell a story about the past. The idea of “fully formed” characters often comes hand-in-hand with the fallacy that there’s a hidden side to everyone; witness the way American pop culture loves to find the spark of goodness in every racist. This is obviously bullshit, of course: at best it’s the crutch of bad writers who don’t know any other way to construct a “whole” character and at worst it’s self-aware racist apologia. Not so in Bluebird, which has characters fully formed not in the sense that they have impossibly complex motivations but because they are believable people with actions that make sense considering the history behind them. Geneva Sweet, for example, serves as the lodestone for Lark’s black community because of her roots in the region, and her contentious ties with the wealthy white Jefferson family embroil her in the nastiness of the town’s racial conflict. She and her diner are a thorn in the side of Wally Jefferson, who seems to all but run Lark, but what passes between Geneva and Wally is more than just acrimony: “there was a familiarity there,” Darren observes, “well worn and yet reserved.” Their history, and the story of the rest of the town, is given piecemeal throughout the book, usually via recollections in which a longtime Lark resident gives Darren the low-down. There��s a supreme confidence in these retellings worthy of their role in the narrative — not empty exposition and never filler, these retellings are the story, and Locke’s ear for people makes seeing how the past redoubles and affects the present a constant delight.

With such an emphasis on the past, Darren Mathews plays a sort of dual role within the narrative. “Outsider investigating a crime and learning the history of the small town along the way” is doubtless familiar to anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of the genre, but all this is complicated by Darren’s position as a black Texas Ranger. Locke takes care to give the reader an understanding of what that position means in Texas, and for the most part it works — the disconnect between the respect a Ranger deserves and the weariness people have toward a black man in East Texas surfaces repeatedly to add another layer of discomfort and menace to the whole thing. Take for example when a county sheriff briefs Darren for the first time:

“Ranger Mathews,” he said, coming toward Darren but stopping just short of shaking his hand. “I’m gon’ be clear about this from the top. I don’t want you here, and I didn’t ask for you to be here […] “We gon’ do this real nice like. I’m gon’ be cordial and accepting of your presence in my county. But let’s be real clear, this is my deal down here. […] You’re just a prop down here, son, and nothing more.”

It’s emblematic of the tug between Darren’s two identities; when he reminds the sheriff that it’s “Ranger” and not son, the correction comes with a “tense nod.” Darren faces danger, but his fight is largely internal, weighing his identity as a Ranger against his sympathies as a black man. For him, the case is a chance to restore his good name and prove to his wife, who wants him to quit his job and finish up his law degree, that he was meant to be a Ranger.

The moments where Bluebird doesn’t ring true come when Darren faces violence; one showdown where Darren kicks a gun out of a white man’s hand seems transplanted from a different book. It’s not impossible, I suppose, but it doesn’t feel earned in the same way as the other interpersonal violence between the members of Lark. In contrast, Darren’s dealings with his wife or mother have no such ambiguity, and it’s here that Locke’s writing really shines. Take for example this description of Darren calling his wife from the road.

She said his name as a sigh, but it was a sound nearer to relief than exasperation. He heard something click against the phone, then a kiss of quiet, and he knew she’d removed her earring. She was settling in for him, a fact that cracked him wide open. “I miss you,” he said, the words tumbling out of their own accord, like beads that had slipped through his clumsy fingers, scattering everywhere.

The intimacy here works wonders in turning Darren’s as-yet-unseen wife from a figurehead into a character with meaningful weight, thus making the pull between his commitment to duty and his desire to please his wife far more effective than it would be otherwise.

A large part of the book deals with Darren’s attempts to prove something about his character to himself and others, and his history is at the core of his attempts to do so. The answers to why Lark’s residents (and the reader) should grant him any trust to achieve real justice come from the reasons a second-year law student would drop out, forsaking a safe and lucrative career, and join law enforcement. This might not all work as well as the ties that make Lark’s residents do what they do: I never felt Darren was ever in any real danger and maintained that his function was largely to be the conduit through which we learned who did what to make two bodies turn up in the bayou. Bluebird, Bluebird’s ending, however, turns Darren’s privileged position against him. Something rises out of the past to deliver a gut punch in the middle of what was to be a celebratory dinner, all the more effective for how smoothly it looks like Darren has resolved all lingering issues. The danger here’s not from violence but the weight of those aforementioned family ties. By using this as the conduit for her final ending, Locke plays to her strengths by bringing the intergenerational weight that makes Lark so fraught down upon Darren, showing that no one thing is capable of propelling someone clear of generations of black pain — not wealth, not a wife, not a law degree, and not a lawman’s badge.

Nathan Jefferson is a writer living in Mexico City.

The post A Quarter-Mile Long and a Century Deep appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2ydRtni

#Los Angeles Review of Books #topmixtrends

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thelawyerthatwaspromised · 7 years

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Jon Snow: Kill the Boy (S8)

JON: I need your advice. There's something I want to do, something I have to do. But it'll divide the Night's Watch. Bitterly. Half the men will hate me the moment I give the order. AEMON: Half the men hate you already, Lord Commander. Do it. JON: But you don't know what it is. AEMON: That doesn't matter. You do. You will find little joy in your command. But with luck, you will find the strength to do what needs to be done. Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy, and let the man be born.

Everyone remembers this scene. Jon Snow seeks Maester Aemon’s advice with regard to bringing the Wildlings south of the Wall into Westeros. He knows it will be controversial and he knows he will face scorn.

Aemon concludes that Jon must do what he believes to be the right thing, not matter what.

I believe this serves as a perfect mirror to Jon’s navigation of the alliance with Daenerys and the moral dilemmas he is sure to face in Season 8 with his family, the North, and Daenerys herself.

Let’s examine how it perfectly parallels political!Jon:

The Setup: In both circumstances, Jon Snow must leave the relative comfort and safety of his “base” of operations. In Season 5, Jon was a newly elected Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. He had made moves to reinforce his authority by having Janos Slynt beheaded for his repeatedly refusing to follow orders. In Season 7, Jon was newly chosen as King in the North. There, too, he made moves to reinforce his authority by mending alliances with the Karstarks and the Umbers.

The easy thing to do is stay there where he’s relatively popular (even if not universally) and also relatively safe.

The Conflict: In neither scenario does Jon WANT to leave. It’s a matter of what he MUST do. He must go towards danger to gain allies in the hopes of positioning the realm better against the WW threat.

In Season 5, Jon feels he must go to Hardhome to bring the Free Folk back south despite centuries of war between the Night’s Watch and the Free Folk.

In Season 7, Jon feels he must go to Dragonstone to bring the Targaryen army back North despite the fact the Mad King killed his uncle and grandfather and the North fought to overthrow the Targaryens.

The Setting: Jon, unique from every other character, is routinely presented as the most democratic political leader on the show. The High Sparrow talked like a populist but made unilateral decisions. Daenerys, Cersei, Stannis, etc. have all had councils to advise them but have ultimately never had their feet put to the public fire like Jon. Daenerys tried when she had Mossador beheaded, and it caused a riot.

Jon is different.

He answers concerns. Some of the other leaders on the show would consider many of the earnest opinions from his subordinates treasonous. No one allows people to speak out against him like Jon does. Part is his temperament, part is his undervaluing his own abilities, and part is his upbringing.

In Season 5, it’s at Castle Black with all the other brothers of the Watch having their say. It doesn’t mean Jon will be swayed by their opinions, but he will listen.

In Season 7, it’s at Winterfell. Some of his most important supporters speak out against him.

The Inner Struggle: In both situations, Jon knows that one course of action is right, even if it causes people to hate him.

That’s part of letting that man be born. Aemon wasn’t saying that you have to be ruthless to rule. He was saying that you WILL be faced with choices where both options are bad and people will be hurt but leaders are in their positions because they are required to do difficult things.

Some of those things might include leaving home. Leaving loved ones. Putting yourself in danger.

In Season 5, Jon’s most difficult disagreement comes with Edd.

In Season 7, Jon’s most difficult disagreement comes with Sansa.

However...Edd stuck by Jon and is basically the biggest reason why the mutineers were unable to destroy Jon’s body before he could be resurrected.

Similarly, Sansa stuck by Jon while he was gone by refusing to usurp his power, focusing on the WW threat on Jon’s word that it was more dangerous than Cersei, and eliminating Jon’s biggest (current) political problem by sentencing Littlefinger to die.

*SIDENOTE* All this talk about the Northerners (and Jon) so focused on the threat from beyond the wall that they’ve not yet understood the threat on the other side of the Wall.......... Ice and Fire ........ anyway...

The Decision: In both instances, Jon is forced to make an unpopular decision.

In Season 5, he makes his final pleas for understanding, not for permission.

In Season 7, he does the same thing. It’s interesting that when Sansa decides to speak, the camera emphasizes an unbroken and prolonged period of direct eye contract between Jon and Sansa whereas the other criticisms focus much more on the rest of the room. The cinematic reason is to show that essentially this became an intimate conversation between Sansa and Jon.

The difference in Season 5 has Jon at a super close up showing that the scene is primarily about him and how he is dealing with this situation. Before Sansa speaks, it is about Jon primarily. However from the time Sansa speaks, it shifts to equal zoom shots of both Jon and Sansa and it’s as if they see only each other.

It’s pretty cool. But why does that matter on a narrative level?

If both situations look so similar, doesn’t that bode poorly for Jon? He was murdered for his actions regarding the Wildlings. If he’s to become deeply unpopular from bringing Daenerys back (and he will, that’s why the show paralleled the Wildling scenario) - isn’t Jon’s death basically a guarantee?

My answer: No, due to one key difference.

The Difference

Sansa is the difference for Jon. Whether you think it will become romantic or not (I happen to think it will) the fact of the matter is that Sansa represents the exact opposite to Jon that Aliser Thorne represented in his absence.

Thorne represented the knife in Jon’s back that Littlefinger refers to as the more dangerous enemy in the books. While Jon SHOULD have earned his trust by naming him First Ranger, he instead plotted to have Jon killed.

Conversely, Sansa has worked tirelessly to maintain Jon’s political support. She has refused to entertain usurping his political power. She grew his army (if you think the number of men referenced by Jon and Sansa means anything) and she’s taken measures to make sure their fed (unlike a certain Dragon Queen who would prefer to burn the food). She’s juggled Bran and Arya’s returns, each with their own difficulties for her on a personal level - and yet the North remains intact upon Jon’s impending return with Daenerys.

When Jon was killed in S5/E10 he had no support system to fall back on once he returned. He granted Samwell's request to leave for the Citadel to protect him, Maester Aemon died, and he was left with no one to watch his back. Whether he got lured to the gate by Olly or not, his days were numbered.

When Jon faces political scrutiny, first for bringing a Targaryen back to the North and seemingly giving away his kingdom to her, THEN when it’s found out that he actually IS a Targaryen himself...there will be trouble. And the only person positioned to protect Jon in a way that he couldn’t be protected at Castle Black is Sansa.

It’s very possible he will be “unnamed” as King in the North - or his crown will only be allowed to stay with him on the condition that he “prove” himself to be loyal to the North. Those are possible scenarios.

Season 7′s Mr. Honesty will be the most disliked character in the North for a time. Daenerys is bound to have her suspicions regarding his loyalties and if there comes a rivalry with Sansa over Jon’s affections, it’s also possible that will factor into her mistrust of the Northerners as a whole. The Northerners, on the other hand, will find out that their king is the son of the man who caused a destructive war. They’ll learn that his grandfather is the one that killed Brandon and Rickard Stark. Even if he hasn’t lied, his existence will be seen as a lie - - unless someone whom the Northerners DO trust is there to pick up the pieces...and that person is Sansa.

A choice is coming for Jon. He will be faced with the prospect of losing either the support of his own people and severing his identity with House Stark or be faced with the scorn of his new ally (who also happens to be in love and/or infatuated with him) and risk imploding the alliance that he believes is the only way to save the world from the Night King.

If R+L=J is a problem for Jon from the Northerners AND with Daenerys...it puts Jon in a vulnerable position. It makes narrative sense that the only way in which Jon can survive this turmoil is for someone to be able to fix the problem for him.

Sansa Stark is that person. A marriage with her solves his issues with the Northern lords. It does NOT solve the problem of Daenerys’ scorn and suspicions. The alternative is Jon staying with Daenerys, embracing his name but not his claim, and severing his relationship with the North. If the Northern lords won’t back a Targaryen, it’s irreparable with regard to his relationship with the Starks.

That’s the nexus of the Dance of Dragons 2.0. Jon CAN’T serve two queens. There’s too much incompatibility between the Jon, the North, and Daenerys.

Jon cares about his home. Jon cares about his family. Jon cares about his people.

Daenerys wants to rule his home. Daenerys wants his family to be politically subservient. Daenerys wants to subjugate his people.

For Jon, it’ll be no choice at all.

There’s a reason they’ve shown Sansa to be Jon’s partner in a way that positions her as a wife rather than a sibling/cousin. She’ll be at his side because she’s already been at his side since they reunited.

His choices have already been difficult. He faces one more tough one in Season 8. I’m pretty sure I know what his choice will be. It will cause fallout and the fallout will be his song.

#jonsa #jon x sansa #political jon #political jon theory #political jon meta #undercover lover #sacrificial jon #king and queen in the north

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