#chapters: asoiaf

[reneewalkersknives]

one egregious thing the game of thrones show misses out on is that the stark kids are CONSTANTLY thinking abt each other!! there isn’t like a single POV chapter from any of them where they don’t long for their siblings!! Jon wants to have a son and name him Robb!! Bran wants to be a bird so him and his siblings can live in a nest together!! Sansa prays for her siblings every night and makes the Winterfell castle and then gets upset bc there’s no one to throw snow at!! Needle IS Jon!! Arya’s list is her own prayer for her siblings, she doesn’t care that Joffrey is dead bc Robb is too!! Every single one of them believes that their big brother will come to save them!! there’s sm love and tenderness there and GOT missed out on lots of it bc it tries too hard for the grimdark angle without realising that the center of the stark’s story is their love for each other. anyways.

[visenyaism]

nights watch onboarding process has to feel categorically insane but especially in adwd. like hello this is our boss. yes hes sixteen years old. yes up until like last tuesday everyone thought he was a terrorist. yes we democratically elected him. no hes not cool hes kind of a hardass. yes hes too short for his own sword dont point it out. no he doesn’t talk to anyone except for his weird freaky giant wolf he has some kind of unholy brain enmeshment with. are you swearing the kid lifetime fealty vows through the religious conversion blood sacrifice ritual or in regular church? yeah everyones been going with the old god blood sacrifice thing. i don’t know what it is. the bird can give you your w-2.

[carlsdraws]

a girl and her dogs

[hylora]

Went on a proper reread of ASOIAF in english recently and I don't know what happened.

Never really cared for Theon, never understood the obsession some had with him, and when reading his chapters in ACOK he was even worse than I remembered.

Then I got to ADWD again, and now I understand....

[ferretteeth]

favorite Cersei Lannister moments in the books

every time she's compared to a cat. I love that she hissed in her first POV chapter

her hearing that she will be killed by her brother/a brother and not once in all of 30 years thinking it might be the other one of her two brothers

the literally one scene in the whole book where her and Tyrion are happy with each other because theyre both laughing at how stupid Renly is (and then he poisons her with laxatives)

when she keeps fucking and seducing the Kettleblacks, gets one of them to kill the pope, and at no point seems to think her Kettleblack based infrastructure might have flaws

when she's like "ugh Robert only kept Jalabhar Xho around because he probably was thinking about Summer Island women… with their big dark nipples… wearing nothing but feathers…"

when she's running through the sept trying to evade capture and it genuinely reads like a Tom & Jerry scene

when she makes Aurane Waters her admiral because he reminds her of Rhaegar and then he embezzles all her shit and runs off

WHEN TAENA JOKES ABOUT MARGAERY AND LORAS HAVING INCESTUOUS SEX AND CERSEI IS LIKE "OK WRAP IT UP"

I really do think Cersei is smart and cunning and able to use many things to her advantage. I also think that she immediately got drunk on power and made less than ideal choices during AFFC

[partfae]

there’s something so special to me about the casual intimacy (both physical and emotional) of the stark family. robb carrying bran to his horse. bran holding robb’s hand to comfort him. jon ruffling arya’s hair and pushing her around and her laughing and pushing him right back. ned hugging sansa and arya in front of the entire king’s court. they’re always thinking about each other and missing each other. the kids cry and fight and play and are kids, and ned and catelyn are kind to one another, and it’s beautiful. it’s so warm, so human, in contrast with the coldness of other familial relationships in the book.

[dillydallyings]

tyrion!

[puppeteerpoet]

more people should talk about Rickon stark because wdym he has a soul-bound violent direwolf and he’s living with a wilding woman on an island full of cannibals and unicorns??? and he’s four years old???? Yet the one who lives in a cave with a talking tree is more talked about

[branwinged]

"dragons plant no trees" gets thrown around a lot as fact, but i think the veracity of that claim is still up for debate in the books. because dany (like bran and jon and many others) is a narrative symbol of hope and rebirth within the series because of her connection to dragons and fire, not in spite of it. this is because dragons in asoiaf have a much more expansive narrative function than simply 'nuke metaphor'. the 'exclusively weapons of war' image they have acquired breaks down immediately if you recall that the first thing dany does with them is begin dismantling an unjust status quo. she rallies the unsullied at the gates of astapor with cries of dracarys! dracarys! freedom! <- dragons as a symbol of hope and freedom for the persecuted. and obviously they've been built up as an oppositional force against the others. we're told when the last dragon died summers became shorter. in that respect the dragons, or more specifically, fire which is warmth which is passion—very much embodies life against the numbing, deadening threat of eternal winter that the others represent. but fire also consumes, which simultaneously makes dragons agents of destruction, or as adwd shows: the monsters who eat little girls and leave behind their bones. but when dany found herself chained to a false peace which effectively undid her cause in meereen, it was the dragon that rescued her and reignited her fire to fight back—which is to say that dragons represent a wealth of contradictions within the text and this is likely something grrm means to parallel with the others to some extent, by questioning their apparent narrative role as the one true evil. because i doubt the series is gearing up towards a spectacle-esque battle wherein our heroes get to practice righteous, easy violence on a monolithic army of monsters. that feels like it would undo a lot of asoiaf's preoccupation with investigating violence against socially acceptable targets, even if said target is ice sidhe. and this binary between a one true good and a one true evil, i.e. melisandre's philosophy ("if half an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. a man is good or he is evil.") is not something the story takes as given.

instead there's this exchange between bran, jojen, and meera in asos: "but you just said you hated them." / "why can't it be both?" / because they're different. like night and day, or ice and fire." / "if ice can burn. then love and hate can mate."—and i think it's talking about reconciling two conflicting ideas. because the dream of an eternal summer is just as unsustainable as the threat of eternal winter. i think the battle for dawn is more about questions of seasonal harmony. the first line from agot's summary says, "long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance", so it's not totally out of question for the series to end with that seasonal balance restored once more. and that question of balance and how it can be achieved then works as a metaphor for a bunch of other things. because asoiaf at its core is very interested in exploring big contradictions, like love and duty? how do you keep all your oaths without betraying someone you love? how can one hope for a just, rightful ruler in a world where the systems in place can never allow such a thing? how do dragons plant trees?

you cannot frame dany's arc as a binary choice between planting trees or embracing (dragon)fire. because the fire is hers, it is a part of her, that's who she is. and her character has always existed outside of rigid dichotomies. at the end of agot she had two options, resign herself to a life of seclusion as a widow or die with the last of her family in that pyre, instead she performed a miracle. presently, i think grrm means to explore necessary, revolutionary violence with her arc because you cannot deal with institutional slavery by simply negotiating with slavers like she does in adwd. and the consequences thereof because she's also been set up to be more reckless with dragonfire in the future. but i think there will be an eventual reconciliation there, between her dreams "to plant trees and watch them grow." and her role as the mother of dragons, as a revolutionary figure. because if ice can burn, then maybe dragons can plant trees. they'll learn how to.

[daphncart]

"Alayne, my sweet, more wine for our noble guests." "As you say, Father."

Serving the Lords Declarant, Alayne I, AFFC

[chickren]

one of my favorite little veins of pure gold in brienne’s story is how, despite the way she feels like an outsider, she’s basically catnip to people who get to know her. people just kind of go crazy around her?

spend enough time with her and you’re essentially guaranteed to become obsessively convinced of the depth of her honor. you will also believe wholeheartedly in her sheer competence as a warrior. and you might start trusting her to complete outlandishly heroic tasks in defiance of what other people would call logic or common sense. almost like you’re under some sort of hallucinogenic influence

you start with renly who, whatever else he thinks of her, makes her his kingsguard.

next cortnay penrose is all: if brienne isn’t on your side, you’re on the wrong side. i’d rather die than join you

and you move to catelyn giving her the most important job in the world

and obviously jaime and pod being lowkey and highkey hero-struck by her. jaime throws quests and loot at her like a lovesick buffoon

and even hyle quits his fucking job defending her badassery

septon meribald, the elder brother, jeyne heddle. kinda loras. maybe gendry?

hell, you’ll never convince me that even thoros wasn’t starting to fall under her spell. five more minutes and she’d have had him

[rriverrunning]

i really have to hand it to davos because when it comes to things that AREN'T 1) stannis 2) fingers 3) his sons he really is winning the idgaf war

[themoonofblueside]

Even without the shitty last seasons and character developments, asoiaf books take the W for the simple fact that the obvious young hero of the first book is like. 15. Like even in the pjo or hp series where there are fated young heroes haunted with tragedy something about robb stark just makes me want to sob.

He's 15 and his beard is just starting to grow, one day he's playing with his siblings and friends and the next day he learns that his father will leave for king's landing, and then his little brother falls from a tower and he is crippled. his father leaves his home and his men to his mother and him, but his mother does not leave his brother's side, doesn't eat, doesn't sleep. the whole castle and the region depends on him to function, he listens to everyone but it's not enough and he begs his mother for help, then he begs his mother so that she rests a little. His mother gets better but still leaves him, and now he functions fully as the heir of winterfell. he dislikes killing even the wildlings, but he recognizes the duty but he still sighs in relief when he's advised not to kill. He takes care of everyone and then he cries with his brother at night, his voice shakes when he defends his brother but his sword doesn't, even the ones he trusts the most does not run for his brother like he does. He's scared all the time but he keeps going and he keeps listening and he keeps caring and it's just not enough.

His father dies. he's the lord of winterfell now, and then king of the north. he's fifteen. no matter what he does, he's fifteen.

[greywoe]

"The she-wolf laid into the squires with a tourney sword, scattering them all. The crannogman was bruised and bloodied, so she took him back to her lair to clean his cuts and bind them up with linen."

[numbaoneflaya]

Top ten Theon Moments i can never forget is really him being cornered and outnumbered by the bannermen of the castle he besieged (stole from an eight year old) and while ppl are trying to explain to him like 'dude you either bend the knee now and surrender and spend the rest of your days cursed in a frozen hellscape in service of the realm you've betrayed, only allowed to wear the black cloth of the Nights Watch forever nameless without land or wife, OR you just straight up get tortured to death and dismembered with your rotting head on a spike outside these very walls you have like 11 minutes to choose.' And the whole time his internal monologue is like "fuuuuuuuuckkkk i dont even have enough black clothes to wear if I join the Nights Watch do you think theyd let me keep my jewelry. Why is everyone mad at me"

[aregebidan]

only sons (ID in alt)