#euron greyjoy's characterization

[horizon-verizon]

You know what’s crazy is asoiaf fans, both the Daenerys antis and the Jonerys shippers (they’re the same people), will claim the Rhaenyra/Aegon II parallel is Daenerys/Young Griff. But Young Griff is a mere puppet Blackfyre and he’ll die for it and chances are they will likely never meet. The real threat will be a legitimized Jon Stark. Like Aegon II, he is the son by a Targaryen man’s second “dalliance”. Jon IS the parallel to Aegon II in this situation. It’s actually even worse for Daenerys because she’s Aerys II’s daughter, a big pockmark against her. Her rumored infertility, her liberated sexuality, her conqueror status, against solemn male heir ? I get more and more scared everyday the more I think about this.

I've been thinking that if there ever was a Bloodstone Emperor figure to be Dany's enemy, it would be Euron Greyjoy and not Jon Snow bc Euron has many materials and intentions for becoming a magical enemy to dragons with his horn and goal to basically conquer Westeros. one user remarks that he might instead tear down the Wall and thus usher in the new Long Night--paralleling and repeating what the Bloodstone Emperor did to bring about the first. I don't see Jon bringing about the Long Night, even with how intimidated I am about the possible effects of his resurrection.

We shall see.

[ladystoneboobs]

an examination of theon greyjoy's feelings about and (implied) relationship with evil uncle euron

Theon searched for his uncle Euron's Silence. Of that lean and terrible red ship he saw no sign, but his father's Great Kraken was there, her bow ornamented with a grey iron ram in the shape of its namesake. [...] It might be only a caution, now that he thought on it. A defensive move, lest the war spill out across the sea. Old men were cautious by nature. His father was old now, and so too his uncle Victarion, who commanded the Iron Fleet. His uncle Euron was a different song, to be sure, but the Silence did not seem to be in port. It's all for the good, Theon told himself. This way, I shall be able to strike all the more quickly. -Theon I, aCoK

the first we read of euron is in theon's first pov as he searched the harbor at lordsport for euron's ship. no reason is given for singling that ship out nor an initial reaction to its absence. later down the page euron is described as different from balon and victarion, with none of an older man's caution to be expected from him. that's why theon thought it for the best that euron's ship was not in port, though at this point it appears his only concern is being the boldest greyjoy around, commanding the fleet all the more quickly for its already being assembled, and not being outshone by euron. the only hint at more is his description of the ship as "terrible".

"You can marry off your sister," Esgred[Asha] observed, "but not your uncles." "My uncles . . ." Theon's claim took precedence over those of his father's three brothers, but the woman had touched on a sore point nonetheless. In the islands it was scarce unheard of for a strong, ambitious uncle��to dispossess a weak nephew of his rights, and usually murder him in the bargain. But I am not weak, Theon told himself, and I mean to be stronger yet by the time my father dies. [...] [Asha-as-Esgred, to Theon:] "Euron Croweye has no lack of cunning, though. I've heard men say terrible things of that one." Theon shifted his seat. "My uncle Euron has not been seen in the islands for close on two years. He may be dead." If so, it might be for the best. Lord Balon's eldest brother had never given up the Old Way, even for a day. His Silence, with its black sails and dark red hull, was infamous in every port from Ibben to Asshai, it was said. -Theon II, aCoK

by theon's next chapter, when he and (unknown, to him) asha discuss their greyjoy uncles, theon has learned that euron hasn't been seen in the iron islands for two years. atp, rather than just noting that euron's not at home, theon has decided it's for the best if he's died somewhere and can never return. the word terrible is again used wrt euron and it's also said that his ship is infamous all over the world. euron is the only greyjoy never to have given up the old way in any sense, and the implied danger to theon is that he could also partake in the old tradition of a strong, ambitious uncle murdering his nephew. euron has thus been establishled as a villain, a threat, and possible kinslayer more specifically but we have yet to learn all the other, more unique aspects of his villainy. i think it likely that grrm, with his gardener-writing, had not yet decided that euron was an incestuous sexual predator. the risk of nepoticide is enough to explain theon's nervous shifting at the mention of euron's cunning and the terrible things said of him, but it could also apply to euron's full characterization only revealed years later in aeron's pov, one of those little half-open seeds gardener-grrm could decide to grow later.

[Robb Stark, to his assembled bannermen and his mother:] "Euron Greyjoy is no man's notion of a king, if half of what Theon said of him was true. Theon is the rightful heir, unless he's dead . . . but Victarion commands the Iron Fleet. I can't believe he would remain at Moat Cailin while Euron Crow's Eye holds the Seastone Chair. He has to go back." -Catelyn V, aSoS

our next clue about theon/euron is not from his own pov but in the book between his arcs when he's "offscreen". i'd say the fact that theon had confided to robb at all about euron is significant, let alone that he related enough things about euron for robb to rhetorically dismiss half of what theon told him and still feel confident of ironborn infighting with euron on the throne. (with theon's status unknown and asha absent from the isles too, euron would have a claim to that throne and a better one than victarion regardless as the eldest surviving greyjoy. vic is the dutiful younger brother who wouldn't normally make any power play, so for robb to know that euron's rule would be challenged by his younger brothers shows he does indeed have insider intel wrt euron.)

this accurate read from robb stands in pretty, ahem, stark contrast to everything theon must have told robb and himself about the likelihood of a robb/balon alliance. an impartial observer who knew (as theon did) that balon's first rebellion was about bringing back the old way more than just independance from the iron throne would have known those goals were not in line with the kitn's cause and that alliance was a no-go from the start. we see in the quoted portion of theon i above how he lied to himself about balon becoming a cautious old man and this being his time in the sun, yet it seems euron was the one family member he couldn't lie to himself about. not only did euron make such an impression on him that theon always remembered him very clearly but the effect was such that amid all his hostage time at wf fantasizing about his return home, he felt the need to tell robb the truth about this one scary relative by confiding in him with multiple stories. (though if euron had sexually abused theon, i can't imagine him ever explicitly revealing that to robb or anyone else.)

"My uncle[Victarion] is never coming back," Reek told them[the ironmen Victarion abandoned at Moat Cailin]. "The kingsmoot crowned his brother Euron, and the Crow's Eye has other wars to fight. You think my uncle values you? He doesn't. You are the ones he left behind to die. He scraped you off the same way he scrapes mud off his boots when he wades ashore." -Reek(/Theon) II, aDwD

this is euron's only name-drop in theon's dance pov, significant only in that it shows theon had recent news of his uncles, enough to know that euron dgaf about keeping balon's northern conquests and had instead drawn vic and the other captains far away. which brings me to ...

Crowfood. Theon remembered. An old man, huge and powerful, with a ruddy face and a shaggy white beard. He had been seated on a garron, clad in the pelt of a gigantic snow bear, its head his hood. Under it he wore a stained white leather eye patch that reminded Theon of his uncle Euron. He'd wanted to rip it off Umber's face, to make certain that underneath was only an empty socket, not a black eye shining with malice. Instead he had whimpered [...] -Theon I, tWoW

here, we have theon meeting a non-bolton northman he's known before, no different really from all the non-bolton northmen inside wf or any others he'd met growing up there, none of whom really seemed to scare him as his captors did, yet the mere sight of mors "crowfood" umber's eye patch is enough to freak theon the fuck out, wanting to rip off the eye patch for reassurance that crowfood was just a regular guy. this is the kind of terror we'd expect wrt ramsay, which would make sense in that regard, as ramsay had been his most immediate abuser, torturing theon in every sense for around a year almost right up until the moment of his escape, and ramsay's still right there in wf, so theon had good reason to still fear recapture by him. euron, though? that's an uncle he hadn't seen in over ten years, who theon knew to be far from wf as seen in the above dance quote, so he had no reason to expect to see him again in that part of westeros and one would think he had enough immediate problems not to worry about someone he hadn't seen in so long. you'd think his pre-ned, pre-ramsay childhood with all the greyjoys would feel a lifetime away with all he'd been through since, esp the reekening. but whatever impression euron left on him was still just as clear and fresh as ever, so that anyone with an eye patch could suddenly make him feel fear of an uncle hundreds of miles and a decade removed from him. from this moment i take away two things: 1) theon will survive stannis and have to meet uncle euron again bc otherwise i don't see the point of grrm throwing this in here and 2) it now feels a helluva lot more likely that theon was another csa victim of euron's bc i don't think this kind of sudden fear could be accounted for with just general scariness from euron. feels more like being triggered by a trauma flashback (just as aeron had as soon as he heard that euron had taken balon's throne), doesn't it? and after having been recently sexually abused by ramsay all that time it makes sense that he'd be even more sensitive to reminders of another abuser as soon as he'd finally escaped ramsay, moreso than when he was just nervously shifting as he and asha vaguely talked of euron's terribleness.

after all, theon/aeron are already linked in the feastdance as both are youngest greyjoy siblings who happen to also be victims of abuse who had buried their old selves in a new identity. aeron's old self even sounds a lot like pre-ramsay theon. theon remembered pre-born-again aeron as the "most amiable of his uncles, feckless and quick to laugh, fond of songs, ale, and women", and aeron described his younger self as "a sack of wine with legs. He would sing, he would dance [...] he would jape and jabber and make mock. He played the pipes, he juggled, he rode horses and could drink more than all the Wynches and the Botleys, and half the Harlaws too." doesn't that sound like the ever-smiling and joking unserious theon we first met, fond of wine and womanizing, once a good dancer, and better ahorse than most ironborn? the only part really missing for theon is aeron's ability to always win literal pissing contests. you'd think being sexually abused by two different evildoers (euron and ramsay) would be enough of a parallel, but this winds preview chapter certainly makes it seem like they also shared the specific experience of being abused by euron in childhood too. our poor youngest kraken really did never have a chance, did he?

shoutout to this post detailing the evidence of theon's sa by ramsay for inspiration. ik i'm not the first to suggest abuse by euron too, but thought it useful to make the case by laying out all the relevant quotes as evidence.

[pessimisticpigeonsworld]

On Euron and Daenerys

Something I don't think I'll ever get over is the absolutely devastating effect Game of Thrones had on how Euron Greyjoy is perceived by the fandom. In the show, because they were allergic to magic for some reason, they totally took away the supernatural elements from Euron. This left them with a villain with no motivation so they created the dumb fucking man we got in the show. A man who wants power and is apparently planning on marrying a queen to get it, end of story.

People for some reason decide to project Euron's characterization from the show onto his books counterpart. In the books, Euron wants to bring about the apocalypse, that's his goal, that's why he's collecting Valyrian artifacts, why he wants a dragon, and why he wants control of the iron fleet. And yet, people believe that Euron will end the books in much the same position as the show, except this time he'll be allied with and possibly even married to Daenerys. This makes no sense for both characters.

First of all, Dany would never marry Euron. Ever. He's a psychopathic misogynist who wants to destroy everything she holds dear. Even by Dany anti standards this doesn't make sense, after all, how can their "mad queen" become the supreme tyrant of Westeros if Westeros is gone? Also Euron has very little political power in the grand scheme of Westeros, sure the iron fleet is powerful, but a marriage alliance with the ironborn is far from the most advantageous match. Dany marrying Euron makes no sense for her character, even the extremely wrong interpretation of Dany antis.

It also makes no sense for Euron's character. Yes, he sent Victarion to try to broker a marriage pact, but this is influenced by a fundamental misunderstanding of who Dany is. Both Victarion and Euron are operating with the misogynistic idea that Dany could be easily controlled by a man. Euron has a history of sexually exploiting people for his gain, Falia Flowers for example. Dany has been around men who employ similar methods before, she wouldn't fall for any of his tricks and could easily get rid of him. So, once Euron actually knows about Dany as a person rather than a far off legend, he would know that killing her is his only option. Therefore, he wouldn't bother pursuing a marriage pact. Also it could be said he's using the marriage pact as a way to get the dragon binder close to the dragons, instead of actually pursuing it, which is why he sent Victarion, who hates Euron. But I'm not going to go into that theory lol.

All this to say, the way the show chose to protray Euron Greyjoy has caused the fandom to develop a very warped perception of the character. Euron is not seeking regular power, he doesn't want to rule Westeros, he wants to destroy it. On top of that, the deliberate misinterpretation of Dany's character leads to the prevalence of the Dany x Euron theory. They will not get married, they will not be allies, Dany will be key in defeating the Others, and Euron will die having failed his goal.

[alleyskywalker]

THROBB FORTNIGHT Fic Recs: Days 6-10

Day 6: Role/Fortune reversal

A Different Tide by VagrantWriter (M, 54k)

This one is a true classic! A fortune reversal romance/coming of age novel where Robert's Rebellion fails and after Ned is killed in the fighting, Robb is sent to live as an exiled bastard on Pyke, under the guardianship of Quellon Greyjoy. Meanwhile, the Greyjoys never fought in the Rebellion and just generally the things go a little differently for them because of that. Theon grows up at home, but as a third son, not the heir, and with the menacing presence of his brothers still very much around. This story tracks Robb's and Theon's friendship as it grows and flourishes into romance, and as they are forced to navigate the drama and intrigues of the Greyjoy family and Euron's deadly power games. The ending is a bit bittersweet but ties up all the loose ends nicely and with hope, and takes exciting turns getting there!

Day 7: Pining

Artificial Respiration by cheerynoir (T, 3.7k)

This fic is actually part of a series but honestly can be read on its own (though the series overall is great too)! A modern AU with a seemingly very simple, cliche premise: Robb gets dumped and turns to Theon for comfort and snuggles. Now, the hurt/comfort is cute and sweet but the pining is what gets me every time. Theon is so far gone, but also so convinced that Robb will never reciprocate - it's exactly the right type of painful. The POV is heartbreaking and masterfully done, exactly Theon's combination of internal chaos and external projection of confidence/nonchalance. But what makes it even better is that Theon is definitely an unreliable narrator and it becomes obvious at one point or another that perhaps his pining is not oh so unrequited after all. But of course, in true throbb fashion, they are incapable of actually communicating with one another, so they pine and suffer and cuddle. And it's honestly a joy to read.

Day 8: Execution/“Robb’s Choice”

Tears in Waves by Rovardotter (T, 1.3k)

An excellent, tragic rendition of this genre! More gen than ship, but Robb's pain at having to Do The Deed is heartfelt and genuine. I appreciated how this fic did the characterization, how there was no pretending that Robb would ever consider endangering his family or honor for Theon, but that doesn't mean the situation is easy for him and he suffers from the resulting guilt. This is just a beautifully executed (…no pun intended) bit of angst with a gut-punch of an ending.

Day 9: War (Romance)

Babel by mautadite (E, 6k)

Perhaps a loose interpretation of this prompt but I'm glad I have a chance to rec this fic, because it's one of my favorite No Defection AUs. In this one, Theon never goes to Pyke and ends up taking the arrow meant for Robb at the Crag. As he recovers, the boys have to deal with the wartime politics of Balon's rebellion that they suddenly hear about as well as their own relationship. The tension and characterizations are really well done in this one! And! Smut I actually enjoyed (lol)! If you know me, you know that's kind of rare for me. But it really does fit in so nicely here, and really plays up Robb being eager but a bit inexperienced.

Day 10: Reincarnation

Phantom Life by VagrantWriter (M, 15k)

A really cleverly done reincarnation fic where Theon lives a life in the "real" modern world and has a lot of the things he didn't get in canon - a happy love and marriage with Robb, children, a close relationship with his sister, even a reasonably supportive father. But then one day he begins to remember his past Westerosi life (while no one else does) and it drives him a little mad. This fic is engaging and enthralling and keeps up the suspense where you keep wondering how this will all resolve. It's got both that fluffy modern AU feel in part but also deals with Theon's (and Theon and Robb's) canon issues. A bit of both worlds! And of course, a satisfying resolution and happy ending ❤

[aegor-bamfsteel]

From our glimpse into the ironborn political sphere in a ACOK, ADWD and especially AFFC, other than Victarion and Aeron, which notable lords tended to come across as actual supporters of the old way philosophy?

Actual supporters of the Old Way I’m taking to mean men who view reaving as a calling and follow the drowned priests seriously, rather than just to get free stuff and kidnap women; which knocks out a lot of Euron’s immediate supporters (Houses Wynch and Orkwood come to mind) And notable lords I’m taking to mean from lordly houses; which knocks out all of the cadet branches from Goodbrother and Harlaw, plus those lesser Houses like Weaver/Humble/Codd etc. Then there’s got to be enough circumstantial evidence to indicate they’d follow the Old Way seriously rather than just showing up at the ACOK feast or voting Victarion or Euron at the Kingsmoot. That said:

Lord Gorold Goodbrother is definitely someone who takes the Drowned God seriously, sending his son Gormond (who was ritually drowned, meaning he’s religious) to tell Aeron about Balon’s death. He wanted the priest’s advice on whether he should rebel against Euron usurping the Seastone Chair, even if Aeron thinks less of him for living inland. He does switch over to Euron after supporting Victarion, but after the Shield Islands invasion he’s expressing doubt over longterm gain, so he’s clearly not a Euron supporter just in it for some quick loot.

I think Lord Sparr is a follower of the Old Way. He tells Aeron about how he was drowned along with his heir Steffarion on his nameday. He brings Aeron news of Balon’s death rather than joining up with Euron immediately like some other lords. While he doesn’t speak at the Kingsmoot, and he doesn’t join in the Shield Islands invasion, the Sparrs seem to be in Victarion’s camp, and one of them is part of his Iron Fleet, so Euron didn’t see them as reliable.

Lord Dunston Drumm probably takes the philosophy seriously. He has a proud house history that he goes on about, including taking a Valyrian sword with trickery, so reaving isn’t just for personal glory to him, but a way of life (even if the returns haven’t been that great). He supports himself over any Greyjoy and doesn’t switch sides. He, Gorold, and Rodrik all talk about how they’re worried about how little the Shields are worth compared to how the Reach will respond, so he’s not hyped up on the quick victory. His sons are likely loyal to him, since Euron names the captain Andrik over them as Lord of Southshield.

Possibly Lord Kenning of Harlaw, who doesn’t answer Rodrik’s summons to Ten Towers to support Asha. His relative Ralf was one of Victarion’s strongest supporters who urged him to press his claim

Possibly the Stonehouse of Old Wyk, even though he wasn’t seen voting at the moot. But his relative Red Ralf was one of Victarion’s champions, and Victarion was Aeron’s chosen candidate

Possibly Lord Maron Volmark, since it seems his House is traditionally friendly with the drowned priests, he’s a scion of the extinct House Hoare, plus he was one of Victarion’s supporters during the kingsmoot. However, he doesn’t have enough solid characterization to say for sure

[navree]

Do u think greyjoy will succeed in taking oldtown?

I will readily admit I'm not nearly as well versed in ASOIAF theorizing as I am in HOTD theorizing (mostly because that allows me to pull on already knowing what's happening and more focusing on things like adaptation changes and characterization and also on the fact that, as much as I hate to brag, I am a good writer and I know what makes stories work and what doesn't) so this is much more likely to be horseshit than most things. I will also admit that my primary interest when it comes to the Greyjoys is a) Theon's arc and b) anything about Aeron Damphair because I for some reason really like Aeron Damphair, so Euron isn't a subject I'm incredibly well versed in.

I think the Euron likely will take Oldtown. It's subject to change, but from what we know of released Winds of Winter chapters, Aeron is forced to drink shade of the evening and that gives him a shitton of visions, and enough of the context of those visions (Euron on various thrones, Euron as a kraken, etc) makes it clear that Oldtown is not the be all end all of Euron's plotting, and the only way Euron is going to somehow be stopped at Oldtown is if he's killed at Oldtown. There's a theory floating around that Euron is a warg, and that when he summons krakens against the Redwyne fleet, he'll be able to warg into them to take the fleet down, thus then being able to go against a defenseless Oldtown. So I'd be incredibly hardpressed to see a future where he doesn't succeed in taking it.

That being said, I don't think it'll be the smoothest of sailings. There's not going to be any new POVs in Winds, and I don't think Aeron's going to last long (waaaaaaaah), so the only other Oldtown POV we could get is Sam, who is a major player and whose head we're likely goign to be spending a lot of time in, so it could take some time. There's also a lot of plots set up in Oldtown that are very mysterious, that might come into play, like there being at least one Faceless Man in Oldtown, Mance's son is in Oldtown with Gilly and we all know how important king's blood can be especially in magic, the fact that Sam might have the Horn of Joramun and how that can tie in with bringing down the wall or with the Dragonbinder horn. That's a lot of set up that's going to need some sort of payoff, and that's set up in Oldtown (that's not even touching on the Hightowers and how the current one is locking himself in the Hightower potentially with some rituals and all the magic and king's blood that flows in the Hightower veins and what Euron might need with that).

The taking of Oldtown likely won't be instantaneous, and it will likely involve a lot of plots and a LOT of magic, given just how Oldtown is and all the various magical elements that are in/associated with Oldtown in the story. In my ideal world Euron wouldn't take Oldtown and would immediately die horribly and graphically for my own pleasure and also Aeron doesn't die and gets Westerosi therapy, but I'm not writing this, so I'd assume that Oldtown will be taken, but not easily, and not without significant consequence to the overarching plot of the series.

[littlerockerao3]

Why an accurate animated asoiaf series would do us all some good:

characters looking like their book descriptions

would do justice to the books

although visual effects in the show were actually good, there would be no complaining such as “this doesn’t look real enough” cause it would be all drawings

we’d get to see all of the minor characters that were left behind

showing how asoiaf isn’t only about political stuff and that the only magic element aren’t the dragons, but that there’s also this whole thing related to dreams and visions and the gods as well

we would get to see the Night’s Watch boys be their usual selves but AS CARTOONS like, Pyp would be twice more hilarious and Sam would be adorable

we’d get to see all the cute moments between Jon & Ghost that the show robbed us of

a decent characterization of Euron Greyjoy

more fanfics in the throbb tag

[dicapriho]

Important quotes to take from this article, that sums up perfectly why Daenarys’ treatment in season 8 was so heartbreaking..(long post with bullet points for easy reading):

Game of Thrones is "a world where women are often treated as disposable objects, Daenerys outwitted and overpowered her male enemies. As the sole protagonist in her own storyline, far from the rest of the characters, she was set up to be one of the few unambiguously [female] heroic figures in the series."

"in just a few episodes, she quickly transformed from a woman who has prided herself on saving the downtrodden to one who burns the innocent."

"[Daenerys’] treatment this season from the makeup of the writers’ room: The writers and directors on the show have always been overwhelmingly male, and women were shut out of both writing and directing jobs for every episode in season 8."

"Throughout her life, Daenerys has shown a commitment to justice...She freed the slaves in Meereen... When Drogon burned one child, she chained up her other two dragons, leaving herself more vulnerable...She put her fight for the Iron Throne on pause to fight in Jon’s war against the White Walkers [in the North where she knew she would feel unwelcome]."

"She was called the “Breaker of Chains” for a reason. When she misstepped, we forgave her, as we forgave, say, Tyrion for strangling Shae." [And Jon for killing a child for betraying him!]

“Daenerys has certainly used “Dracarys” to punish plenty of people during her reign... she always gave some compelling reason for doing so.”

She first used her dragon’s fire to kill a warlock who tried to imprison her, and again against a slaver who tried to cheat her...she crucified all the masters in retaliation for them having killed slave children — but they had killed children...She burned all the Khals who were threatening to keep her as a slave or rape her, or both."

Dany’s advisors gave awful advice:

"Daenerys agreed to make Tyrion her hand because Tyrion said he “knew things”...specifically, he claimed to know how to make alliances in Westeros and exploit people’s hate of Cersei in order to put Daenerys on the throne. Except, Tyrion did…none of that."

"...when did Tyrion convince a single lord that if they joined their side, they could get a new title and nice castle and see the land’s most hated woman [Cersei] burned to a crisp? Never."

"...what Tyrion did do: Try to cut a deal with slavers that would have kept slavery legal for a longer period of time, until Daenerys decided to burn their ships instead; convince Dany not to fly to King’s Landing and burn the Red Keep, which would have resulted in far fewer Kings Landing deaths; come up with the horrible plan to capture a wight that almost got Jon killed and lost Daenerys a dragon and still didn’t earn Cersei’s allegiance; convince Daenerys to trust Cersei, who has never proven herself to be trustworthy; forget to remind Daenerys that Euron and the Iron Fleet would almost certainly be waiting near Dragonstone, thus losing Daenerys another dragon; free Jaime from captivity in an effort to help both his brother and Cersei escape death at Daenerys’ hands..."

"Don’t even get me started on Varys, who didn’t write a single letter to a single lord to gain intel against Cersei or an ally for Dany but did find time to spread the word about Jon’s true parentage...”

“Tyrion and Varys were supposed to be her helpers. They failed her. Instead of owning up to this and realizing the part they have both played, Tyrion and Varys begin to worry that Daenerys is a flawed ruler exactly because she’s losing faith in them over their terrible decisions."

On the Sansa v Dany struggle:

"...The writers of the show cited much more petty reasons for their [Sansa and Dany's] conflict: “[Daenerys is] also very pretty, and how much does that factor in? Sansa starts off this season very suspicious and not at all friendly with Dany.”"

Her Isolation:

"In the last few episodes, Daenerys finds herself envying the love that Jon’s people feel for him...it’s destabilizing for her to arrive in Westeros and find that people are not eager to see her. Why, exactly, the Northerners don’t appreciate her dragons — without which they could not have defeated the Army of the Dead...."

"Daenerys rightfully glowers at Jon as his countrymen celebrate the fact that he mounted a dragon a couple of times when Dany has been riding one for years [Not to mention she is the first Targaryen in hundreds of years to have successfully mothered & raised/trained dragons]...In a mission to make Dany feel as isolated as possible, the show killed off her closest advisors, Jorah and Missendei."

"Daario is controlling Slaver’s Bay in her absence. Yara Greyjoy is sworn to her. In theory, the new Prince of Dorne would be allied with her since Daenerys struck a pact with Ellaria Sand. Daenerys could have called on any of these allies when she faced Cersei’s army but didn’t — simply because the show needed her to be alone ."

On Missandei:

"Game of Thrones fridged Missandei. There’s no other way to put it. Her capture and death happens just so Daenerys would feel isolated. The fact that the writers turned the only major black female character on the show into a device to motivate Daenerys feels even more cringeworthy."

"The fairly quick transition from complicated hero to totally mad villain leaned heavily on an oft-repeated line: “every time a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin”. But should Daenerys’ Targaryen blood necessarily doom her? After all, Jon is half Targaryen, too. So why does he get to sit comfortably on the other side of the coin?...The show has long been obsessed with various characters’ struggles to shake their family’s legacies. Tyrion killed his own father and joined Team Daenerys, only to betray Daenerys in order to help his family again." 

"Daenerys has long tried to differentiate herself from her father, the Mad King, only to become her father’s daughter."

"...the show’s most recent plotting flaws was Varys’ rushed decision that Daenerys was a terrible enough queen that he would endeavor to poison her — quite a stretch for a man who served under King Joffrey...Remember that Varys once wanted to put Dany’s brother Viserys, a demonstrable megalomaniac, on the Iron Throne."

"...when Varys found out Jon was a Targaryen, he began openly conspiring to undermine and overthrow Daenerys...He accused her of being paranoid while simultaneously conspiring against her, which means she had every right to be suspicious...Again, it’s a failure of the show that the man who was once revered as Master of Whispers walked up to Jon in the middle of a crowded beach and suggested he usurp Daenerys."

"Other rulers we think of as heroes in this story have executed men for less than attempted murder: Robb Stark executed Rickard Karstark for killing the Lannister hostages, against Robb’s orders...Ned Stark executed someone for abandoning the Night’s Watch...Jon Snow executed the men who succeeded in murdering him (before he was resurrected) including Olly, a young boy."

"...Jon betrayed Daenerys’ trust by telling his family, and Tyrion betrayed her — twice. Davos also betrayed her too for totally inexplicable reasons by helping Tyrion smuggle Jaime to Cersei...Her advisor’s lie to her and gaslit her, plain and simple. And yet the way that Daenerys’ destruction of King’s Landing is shot, we are supposed to see her as the irrational one and Tyrion as one of the victims of her terror."

"...either due to time restrictions or lack of source material or just plain lack of creativity, the show took shortcuts this season...And those shortcuts tended to rely on the laziest of sexist stereotypes about crazed, power-hungry women."

"Maureen Ryan at the Hollywood Reporter put it best: “Inescapably, infuriatingly, what we’re left with is apparently the central message of Game of Thrones: Bitches are crazy.” "

"...Had [Dany's] paranoia been seeded many episodes ago and grown over the course of several seasons, it would be an epic Shakespearean tragedy. Instead we must infer this descent based on her frizzy hair."

"Worse, the moment when she seemingly decides to rule with fear, not love, comes after she’s romantically rejected by Jon...” [Suggestible that the lack of requited love is a strong enough reason for a level-minded strong woman to fall into a pit of craziness, despite all the good she has ever done and vows to continue doing..]

"Varys suggested that Jon would be a better ruler exactly because he did not want to rule. Figures in mythology and history ranging from Moses to George Washington to Harry Potter have been heralded as heroes because they came to power reluctantly. Those figures also tend to be male. How do our stories cast women eager for power? As evil queens. And now Daenerys is a cliché."

"There have been a lot of problematic characterizations of women this season, as revealed by the writers’ own commentary surrounding the episodes...Sansa essentially parroted what the writers have been saying for years about her rape by Ramsay Bolton — that it made her stronger...and the showrunners called Cersei, one of the smartest, most vicious characters on Thrones, “just a girl who needs the comfort of a man..”

"...in the end, Daenerys cycled through several tired stereotypes: Another evil, power-hungry queen literally shot with a dragon’s wings behind her; the crazy lady that a noble man has to heroically overcome..."

Like Cersei, Dany was a character introduced in the first episode, who ws incredible meaningful in the narrative of Game of Thrones. Instead of going out with a bang, Daenerys’ death wasn’t a bang like she truly deserved, but a whimper and forgotten to emphasise the man’s conquer and victory.

[sheikah]

Outside the context of “bad writing” and the fact that as a character, Dany was done hella dirty— would you have expected anyone to still be loyal to a queen who committed murder on a scale like that? She did deserve a trial, but I’m just asking if in your opinion based solely on Dany’s actions, her once-followers should remain loyal to someone who did that.

Well, the thing is, I think it’s hard to even answer this question outside the “bad writing.” Or, more accurately, I don’t know that my answer to this would even matter, because Dany would never do this. I know the writing shows us that she literally did do this, but the actual character would never do this. 

Game of Thrones was 73 episodes long and for 71 episodes Daenerys Targaryen did not kill innocents. She inadvertently killed one when Drogon killed the shepherd’s daughter back before she had control over him. But otherwise, she’s never killed innocents. On the contrary, her show!characterization was in-keeping with the book claim about her that she is, above all, a rescuer. 

So it’s hard for me to speculate about what should happen in the wake of her destruction of King’s Landing because it’s so ridiculous and out-of-nowhere to me. Dany’s potential darkness may not be out of nowhere, but Dany murdering civilians on a larger scale than anyone in the history of the show sure was. Even Emilia Clarke, who played the character for nearly ten years, couldn’t see this coming and was shocked and deeply upset by the turn. So again, I think it’s kind of irrelevant whether or not anyone should follow her after she’s done this because the fact that she’s done it isn’t believable, realistic, or sensible. 

But just for the sake of your question, I think it’s important to consider who her followers are. 

Her remaining army is made up of dothraki, Unsullied, Greyjoys, and Northmen. 

The dothraki were portrayed as savages who were only tamed by Dany’s leadership and guidance. Setting aside the problematic racial implications of that writing, the dothraki have burned civilians by putting villages to the torch and raping innocent women. Had they the power of a dragon, I suppose we can assume that under the leadership of a khal, the dothraki would have no problem with acts like Dany’s destruction of KL. They believe themselves superior in kind to other civilizations, like the shepherd village where Dany met Mirri Maz Duur. They had no problems with inflicting extreme violence on others. 

The Unsullied, similarly, were raised on a creed of merciless brutality and violence without thought or question. Emotion, remorse, and humanity were systematically stripped from them. Jacob Anderson said in his tribute to Grey Worm that he was a “robot” at first. Essentially Dany and Missandei showed him his humanity. Without them, he would have presumably participated in atrocities akin to what happened at KL without a second thought. So, again, I think it’s safe to say that the Unsullied would not be appalled by Dany’s actions in KL and feel compelled to throw down their weapons and abandon her cause. This is especially true because above all they were raised to be obedient and unquestioning. Dany is their queen. They would never defy her.

And again, the same argument partially applies to the Greyjoys. When Dany treats with Yara and Theon in s6, the terms specify that the Ironborn must stop their practices of raping and pillaging. Yara argues against this, insisting that it is the Ironborn way of life. It is only under Dany’s laws that they would cease this sort of violence and “paying the iron price” for the spoils of war. If Dany abandons those ideals, wouldn’t they celebrate this? It would mean they could go back to their old ways. I would also point out that Yara and the Greyjoys also hate the Lannisters for allying with Euron and sanctioning Yara’s imprisonment and the destruction of much of her fleet. I imagine they’re pleased with Dany’s vengeance, up to a certain point. 

So when it comes to the dothraki,Unsullied, and Greyjoys, my answer to your question is yes–they should still follow her. Not because following someone who would commit mass murder is the right thing to do, but because it is apparently in-character for these groups to accept extreme violence (granted, to an extent) and respect strength, even when it’s terrible. 

The Northmen are a little more complicated. The show tried to beat us over the head with superior Northern morality this season. At the same time, the moment that Dany started burning the city, the Northmen (with the exception of Jon Snow, of course) were quick to join Grey Worm and the Unsullied in the butchering of unarmed Lannister soldiers and civilians. The attemped rape scene was perpetrated by a Northern soldier, not a dothraki or Unsullied. So, without prompting and even against Jon’s pleas for them to stop, the Northmen readily and enthusiastically participated in extreme violence, despite Northern revulsion toward Dany earlier in the season. They didn’t do it out of loyalty to Queen Daenerys, they did it because, apparently, they wanted to and seized the opportunity to commit violence without consequences. It stands to reason, then, that the Northmen are just as “savage” as anyone else, with just as much innate proclivity to violence. This message isn’t new to the show. The Hound has waxed poetic about how “killing” is the greatest pleasure a man can find. I disagree, obviously, but I think that’s part of the message the writing tried–and failed–to deliver with 8.05.

That being the case, why not follow Dany? She didn’t force them into acts of senseless and appalling violence. They gladly took part in it. They’re equally culpable. The only difference is that they had swords instead of dragons at their disposal. Why should they turn on the Mad Queen when they took part in her madness unprompted?

All that being said, everything that happened from 8.04 onward makes no sense to me whatsoever. None of the characters, even minor characters and average soldiers, have motivations that I can understand. I don’t really feel that my analysis matters because the show went so wildly off the rails that trying to pick apart the morality or logic seems pretty pointless. 

Thanks for the ask!

[justadram]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the more or less subtle differences between GOT characters in book vs show. Which character from the books would you say is the most different when portrayed on the show? (Disregarding Jon from the time he became a non-character and onwards) For me I think it would be Ellaria Sand, who is an entirely different person on the show, but among the main characters I’d probably go with Sansa (much more bratty and interested ind becoming a queen) or Tyrion (much nicer).

This is an excellent question, and I feel like I could find fault with all the important players by the final season. But some of them also went off the rails long before that. The ones that come to mind? Cersei (omg, so much Cersei… right from maybe the first episode, they really didn’t know what to do with her), Tyrion (not really morally grey at all), Sansa post-Ramsay, Littlefinger (a total idiot, but can teleport!), Euron Greyjoy (lol, Party City pirate). I could keep going. First season characterizations were the strongest for me, but even in that season I could quibble. Those are some biggies for me though!

[horizon-verizon]

One question, why Dany fans are against her and Euron being together? People say he is a misogynist and evil but it's not like the ones they ship her with are champions of good morals, same goes for the people around her. He is a king chosen by his people ,has a large fleet and a potential dragon rider . He even captured the warlocks who were after her. Not to mention he is handsome and totally her type personality wise (Daario but more dangerous). Who are the other candidates? Faegon the pretender, Sweet Robin the sickly and somehow one BASTARD when it doesn't make any sense even if her brother was his sperm donor.

Short Answer -> Because Euron Greyjoy is the antithesis of Dany in every way and will try to depower or debase her in any way he can. And that's not Dany's arc nor is it logical, narratively, with the direction Dany's arc has gone. This would never be a happy or constructive union.

He would never be satisfied with a a spouse--and female spouse, as if there would be any other kind in his hypothetical case--having the power of a true monarch or leader that he has enjoyed his entire life. A spouse that the armies, subjects, etc. are paying the obeisances that they would to Jaehaerys, Viserys, Aegon I, etc. One who is not merely a consort but has the authority, power, higher status, etc. of a Queen regnant and an ordinary king. While Dany is raised to goddess-like status among some of her people not because she thinks herself in that vein and thinks it her due to be their queen, Euron plainly is in the process of thinking himself as godlike and deserving of higher and the highest as possible seats of power no matter how he will get to that but in underhanded and sinister ways of persuading people that he'd be in some type of service to them or really that he'd be their way to gain power for themselves, esp how he frames himself as the way for the ironborn to conquer Westeros by invoking their heritage. And he ends up being the one to become their king. That's really his only aim--how to use people and persuade them to give him power so that he may rise to that position. that's why his never taking anything in those raids he has with his crew is also sinister--it works to inspire more loyalty from them.

Dany constantly interrogates whether or not she is doing what is best for those under her care, she feels a sense of responsibility to her people and those she observes she can protect. Power is not a luxury or a right in of itself to her; it is an inevitable tool for any possible happiness or peace.

In the leaked Winds of Winter "The Forsaken" chapter, we see that he ties a tongueless, naked, pregnant Falia Flowers--his "bedmate" from when he took the Hewetts' castle (A Feast for Crows)--to his ship. The same girl in the TWoW chapter says to Aeron that Daenerys will be Euron's "rock wife" (the ironborn's terms for their main consort) and she'll be his "salt wife" (a sort of concubine, slave wife). Daenerys is not be anyone's consort of any kind for her to be safe and able to actually exercise the power that she needs to enact great social and magical change, as Fire and Blood has shown us time and time again. We didn't even really need F&B (if we were thinking persons) to know this because Drogo would have never allowed Dany to do the stuff she'd currently doing or be at her side while she makes decisions for those she takes on as her people...they'd and she'd be "his". But F&B is great to introduce us to other characters and to reemphasize Dany's importance AND understand histiography, misogyny, and propaganda.

Back to Euron, those people that he captures, he's not doing that with the intention of being her consort, but just to bring her to feeling of comfort so she'd be open to having him later on and get him into that space where he'd do whatever he thinks of doing. Just as he's doing with Aeron and the ironborn and Falia Flowers and his own crew.

And there is reason to believe that he SA'd his brother, Aeron (Damphair) when they were children [the 3rd quote down]. Aeron is deathly afraid of Euron and most people who aren't in his crew dislike, are wary of, or are also afraid of him for good reason.

Godless? Why, Aeron, I am the godliest man ever to raise sail! You serve one god, Damphair, but I have served ten thousand. From Ib to Asshai, when men see my sails, they pray. (A Feast for Crows, The Iron Captain.) We are the ironborn, and once we were conquerors. Our writ ran everywhere the sound of the waves was heard. My brother would have you be content with the cold and dismal north, my niece with even less ... but I shall give you Lannisport. Highgarden. The Arbor. Oldtown. The riverlands and the Reach, the kingswood and the rainwood, Dorne and the marches, the Mountains of the Moon and the Vale of Arryn, Tarth and the Stepstones. I say we take it all! I say, we take Westeros. (A Feast for Crows, The Drowned Man.) That man is dead. Aeron had drowned and been reborn from the sea, the god's own prophet. No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness could . . . nor memories, the bones of the soul. The sound of a door opening, the scream of a rusted iron hinge. Euron has come again. It did not matter. He was the Damphair priest, beloved of the god. (A Feast for Crows, The Prophet) Kneel, brother. I am your king. I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest. (The Winds of Winter [not released yet, leaked], The Forsaken)

Gods don't answer to "mere" men, much less women. As her consort, Euron would have to "answer" to her.

Then there is the dragon horn he says he got from Valyrian ruins. Mind you, dragon horns--"hellhorns" as the Valyrians called them--are thought to have been used by the Valyrians alongside spells to control dragons by "binding" them to a person. Daenerys is the one who supplies us--in the main series, in A Dance with Dragons--with this information.

The text shows that Euron is one of the worst possible candidates as a consort for Daenerys or any female monarch--much a less a dragonriding woman who hasn't reawakened dragons and magic into the world. Every thing shows that this man will use magic horrendously and oppressively to not just those close to him but wide swaths of people. Unlike Daario, he actually presents a some sort of threat to her ideologically and numbers wise. He, of most men aside from maybe Jon, has a stronger narrative relationship and familiarity with magic and has magical secrets that may contend with Dany's. It's all so ominous and foreshadowy.

As for other candidates, people have brought up Aurane Waters, some in her khalasar, Jon Snow--if he/they manage to have his influence over others undermined or he announces/swears himself to Daenerys, so people do not look at him as a viable monarch over her. Euron, again, would never allow himself to be a mere consort. And Dany can never be a consort to anyone for her story to make sense. A story of a woman, not a man, being the "messiah" figure by crushing gender roles and tropes or subverting them under her pretty little feet.

Euron is a classic case of the a smart and devious "psychopath" always looking for power and charming people to think him less of a threat than he actually is.

[boiledleatheraudiohour]

BLAH 93 | A Song of Ice, Fire and Water, with Sean T. Collins

Ice and fire, snow and sand, Stark and Targaryen, Others/wights and dragons--that's the dominant binary for the series, obviously. However, water is also a key "element" for the setting in general and the books in particular.

The Iron Islands, the Riverlands, Dorne, and the Stormlands are all characterized by their relationship to water. House Greyjoy and House Velaryon and (though less prominently) House Redwyne derive their power from the water. The Rhoynar remain a water-based culture, centuries removed from the Rhoyne. The Rhoyne itself was the locus of an entirely unique form of magic, with water wizards and their giant turtles, and the Bridge sequence shows some of that magic is there still.

The smoking seas around Valyria are, apparently, truly full of horrible creatures. Back in the day there were the Deep Ones and remnants of their culture remain to this day, both in that oily black stone architecture and in the legends of the squishers and the merlings. The Drowned God and krakens look set to play a major role courtesy of Euron Greyjoy's fleet.

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[ao3feed-gendrya]

The Game Remains the Same

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2WP31EC

by wickedrose16

LISTEN—if D&D can do whatever they want—so can I

Most of the conflict in S8 could have been avoided if these characters were given the opportunity to actually SPEAK and EXPLAIN themselves to one another.

Happiness and support for Daenerys (because the poor woman deserves it after the bullshit that was S8)

Jon can’t be a know nothing sad boy forever (S8 forced it, and its not endearing anymore)

Bran and Arya’s characterization leans on their book counterpart.

After seasons of being forced into the game, Sansa has learned to use it to her advantage, but I’d like to think that she wouldn’t care for a crown. (Even if she deserves one)

Words: 3713, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Game of Thrones (TV)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Categories: F/M

Characters: Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Sansa Stark, Theon Greyjoy (mentioned), Arya Stark, Gendry Waters, Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Grey Worm, Missandei of Naath, Cersei Lannister, Sandor Clegane, Tyrion Lannister, Bran Stark, Meera Reed, Gregor Clegane, Balon Swann, Euron Greyjoy, Tormund Giantsbane, Ghost, Rhaegal, Drogon, Varys, Qhono (Game of Thrones), Yohn Royce, Podrick Payne, Qyburn

Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Theon Greyjoy/Sansa Stark (Mentioned), Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Grey Worm/Missandei, Bran Stark/Meera Reed

Additional Tags: Fix-It, s8, Takes place after the Battle of Winterfell, Fic for coping, i hope y’all like it, If anyone is still out there, My first fic, I was so upset I decided to write, I’m indifferent to Lannisters, ...Sorry, I will try and make Braime shippers happy, ...because I love Brienne, and Brienne deserves love

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2WP31EC

[blindestspot]

No Bastard Ever Won a War by Dying for His Country

Over the past year I've gotten a lot of asks about Jon and what I think is going on with him. During that time I've also managed to calm down about the inconsistent number of redshirts during the Wight Hunt. Yes, I remember that this was a thing that happened, along with a bunch of other dei ex machina, like Cersei's brilliant strategies for everything, Jon's repeated, increasingly dumb survivals and the whole Winterfell plot.

But calming down about them meant that I could think about Game of Thrones again in a manner that kind of naively assumes that the work is coherent . That 2+2=4, not 5, or orange, or a tiger. And this is what I think is going on with Jon and why it is so crucial to the whole work.

George R.R. Martin once said that A Song of Ice and Fire is supposed to have a bittersweet ending. Now that phrase covers a lot of ground. A bittersweet ending might be just ASOIAF's Scouring of the Shire (which at this stage is assured) and a few good guys passing into the Great Beyond (also nearly certain) – which would be a copy of Lord of the Rings.

A bittersweet ending might also be Davos, Brienne and Sam emerging alone from the rubble like the unhappy winners of a Battle Royale. A few good guys surviving would technically make the ending not a complete downer and thus "bittersweet".

However, a more nuanced look at a bittersweet ending should look beyond mere survival and destruction but at an ending that irrevocably changes the characters and how and what we think of them.

An issue that strikes readers as unrealistic about Lord of the Rings is  that a lot of its human and hobbit-y heroes move on from the events of the story into psychologically very ordinary, uncomplicated lives that they would have lead even without the events of the story. Sam, Merry, Pippin's (and to a lesser degree Faramir, Aragorn and Eowyn's) easy passing into normalcy feels vaguely hollow.

If GRRM really plans to have a realistic take on Lord of the Rings and its "bittersweet" ending (and with his complaints about Aragorn's tax policy it appears that this is a crucial element of ASOIAF), then obviously he is going to continue what he has been doing all along and create an interplay between narrative events and characterization. Take Arya, for example. In the early parts of AGoT she would have not wanted to become a Faceless Man – for obvious reasons. But Arya from a few books later, after events have matured and traumatized her, wants to become one. And that choice will again impact her characterization and that will in turn impact future events. 
It is logical that this interplay will continue right up until the end. So speculation has to take into account that these characters are dynamic and can be pushed by events into new directions. And not just "can" – but will be.

The question is not who will be alive to experience the Scoured Shire but who they will be at this point. And that change shouldn't just be cosmetic or physical, it needs to be psychological, visible, noticeable and profound. We shouldn't get an Aragorn who just walks into a kingship after a two battles, marries the cute elf girl and then doesn't have a tax plan.

And obviously, I am not talking about Gilly. I am very much talking about ASOIAF's Aragorn. I am talking about Jon.

...

Now here is a hypothetical scenario for Season 8: Jon with the help of Dany and her dragons (and, to paraphrase Roger Ebert, the usual stock characters who fight every fictional war for us, even those in space), fight the White Walkers, win, then fight Cersei, then win (the order of this is might be reversed) and then Jon's revealed to be true heir and has to rebuild Westeros.

How does any of this really change and mature Jon as a character? How does being right about everything (the White Walkers being the real threat), then leading a righteous force to victory over evil make him a realistic take on Aragorn?

It doesn't.


What Jon needs after five books and seven season of making serviceable to great, sensible, ethical, right strategic choices (with admittedly a number of great tactical errors in between) is being wrong. And not just being wrong about failing to communicate to his sworn brothers what his strategy is, not just wrong about going on that Wight Hunt, not just wrong to send Sam away, not just lightly ethically challenged for exchanging a pair of babies against one mother's will or misleading his love interest on his commitment to her political cause... but wrong in a truly profound way that the audience cannot blame on stupidity or short-sightedness.

I admit that calling it "wrong" or even "profoundly wrong" is a bit of misnomer. What I am trying to get at is the character going into a direction where the audience cannot and should not easily follow. Those actions would be too alien as might be their rationalizations. These actions should strike the audience as questionable, reprehensible, immoral, unethical, or dishonorable.

A perhaps too perfect example of such an action is Cersei firing up the Sept. It's mass murder and it's intended by her to be mass murder. If anyone in the audience found it not reprehensible and immoral, I would have some questions for these people.

But Cersei firing up the Sept was a success. Her survival was at stake - and she survived. Before her kingdom was full of powerful enemies and afterwards it wasn't. And she even snatched the Iron Throne afterwards despite having no royal Targaryen or Baratheon ancestry.

In realpolitik terms, Cersei made the "right" choice. All other choices would have lead to her death. The first rule of anything is that you cannot do anything if you're dead.

And frankly, that's a lesson Jon desperately needs to learn. His twice-tried strategy of rushing alone against an army of his enemies is idiotic. It might be honorable for a war leader to be the first person on the battlefield but it's not a winning war strategy.

It's not a nice thing to say, but it's necessary for a war time general or commander to be willing to have other people die for him and his goal. And not just for him but in front of him, literally shielding him. An army commander who isn't willing to ensure his own survival, is gambling with such terrible odds that he has already lost the war.

Cersei's strategy of killing her enemies instead of allowing herself to be killed is profoundly wrong, immoral and yet Jon needs understand that when mankind's survival are at stake an immoral action like that might be a necessary choice.

His attempt to drown in an ice lake alone is a sign that at this point he hasn't understood the necessity of being alive to lead a war at all. As George S. Patton put it: "no poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb son-of-a-bitching bastard die for his country."

Out of all our main protagonists, Jon has never been willing to play as dirty as it should be necessary for an apocalyptic fight such as his. Unlike Sansa's willingness to go along with Littlefinger's nefarious plans for her cousin in the Vale, Arya's willingness to kill potentially innocent people for the Faceless Men, Tyrion raping a prostitute and killing Shae, the torture of innocents during Dany’s Slavers’s Bay arc, Bran warging Hodor... Jon has nothing in his arc that is as dark, dishonorable or questionable as these things. Jon appears to be a character class apart, like the hero of a more classic fantasy epic.

Is this because Jon's so special that his arc is a whole different genre or is this because he hasn't leveled up in realpolitik yet?

Or is there perhaps even a third option to deal with his relative over-the-top good guy characterization?

***

You know, when it comes to stories about morality like Game of Thrones a crucial factor for their success is not just the quality of the good guys but also the quality of the villains.

And what makes a compelling villain?

IMO, they hit more than one of these characteristics:

1. They are well-rounded, fully realized characters, drawn with the same care as the heroes.

2. They are able to win against the good guys. They are not a cardboard that will be blown over once the heroes wave a magic stick or sword around.

3. Their evil deeds get an emotional reaction out of the audience. (Most audiences tend to have a vague discomfort with CGI mass carnage while reacting to a well-executed scene of high school bullying with actual empathy or even horror.)

4. Their motivations are understandable, perhaps even sympathetic. At best they are a well-intentioned extremist, utilitarianism gone wrong, rather than setting stuff on fire because their mom was mean to them once.

Now looking at this list, it becomes obvious that GOT has a problem with its current crop of villains. Any of the three that are left (Cersei, the Night King, Euron) could be the Final Boss – to use a video game term. But none of them are very compelling villains. Two of them are inhuman monsters. To call their characterization shallow would be an insult to puddles.

And Cersei, the only one with a decent characterization (and some past Mean Girls bullying sins of her own) suffers from being incredibly stupid in the books, having a prophecy running against her and stealing Aegon from Essos' story in the show. In other words, Cersei's chances of success and survival and actually making it this far in the books are as good as that of a snowflake on a hot summer's day. One suspects that she is a show-only final-ish villain, so if one looks for GRRM’s final-ish villains, they would not find Cersei.

Talking about chances of success – the Night King isn’t winning this either. Because then ASOIAF would reveal itself to be a nihilistic mess in which all the human storylines were nothing but shaggydog stories. So the Night King is  bound to melt in the summer sun along with Cersei. There is little question about it. And is Euron "was he even mentioned in the first book?" Greyjoy  really going to win the Iron Throne in the end? Is anyone taking this possibility seriously?

And what are their motivations? Ambition, being evil and being anti-human. None of them are particularly sympathetic.

In one word, GOT's current crop of villains is not particularly exciting – especially if you compare them with some of the villains that came before them. And if one of these three is the Final Boss, he or she is gonna be lame.

But a lame Final Boss is actually a great tradition in the genre. In Lord of the Rings Sauron appears to be literally two-dimensional and about as interesting as a character. (Gollum gets to be the well-written villain and he is doing very little damage to the world at large.) Voldemort in Harry Potter is completely outshone as the most despised, scary villain of the series by the one-book-wonder Dolores Umbridge who excels at committing low-key evil deeds that make every reader/viewer wince in sympathy. The Emperor in the original Star Wars trilogy is... there and then dead and has fewer fans than a one-line bounty hunter. And the same fans that endlessly shout "Han shot first", don't even appear to care that he got a complete face replacement in the Special Editions. And if there is one consistent complaint about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's that its villains tend to be boring and forgettable. Yet they're lame and forgettable to the tune of billions of box office dollars.

So a lame Final Boss for the heroes to fight... that is indeed a thing. And that might be just the thing GOT/ASOIAF is doing. This is what we have to seriously consider. We are likely to get a MCU villain... you know on the level of Ronan the Destroyer or Malekith, the Dark Elf. And you probably need to google in which movies those two turned up.

That would be a terrible let down.

Or maybe it's not actually that terrible of a thing? Because if our final boss and villain is not Cersei, the Night King, or Euron, it's a good guy gone bad. Someone who is currently fighting on the side of the living before becoming someone who needs to be fought.

It's possible that this is in the cards. After "Ozymandias", the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad, aired, GRRM wrote on his blog that "Walter White is a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros, I need to do something about that."  

The thing is that White appeared to start out as a sympathetic if flawed hero you were rooting for even as he was making meth. What made White monstrous is not doing depraved psycho shit beyond comprehension (like nailing a living, pregnant woman to a ship like Euron Greyjoy) but that he appears to evolve into this monster before the audience's eyes.

Breaking Bad tricks the audience into liking a character for much longer than he ever deserved and that becomes crystal clear in that penultimate episode. If GRRM wants a monster like White he can't use his old, repetitive trick of making a one-dimensional psychopath do depraved stuff. He has to logically progress a character we root for into a monster.

(Of course, GRRM might also not be able to pull it off, however much he wants to. It could be that he has not prepared the ground to make a main character go Walter White and thus it will always fall short of Breaking Bad's accomplishment. Sure, Greyworm or Dolorous Edd could become evil and monstrous but even GRRM should know that's not quite the same as making your main protagonist evil.

I might also be wrong on GRRM understanding what makes Walter White feel so monstrous. The first big sign that White took the road down to hell is not an act of murder or sadism but simply not helping someone who is choking to death. His monstrosity is based in a three-dimensional characterization, not in particularly outrageous acts of evil. He is monstrous because he used to be likable. If GRRM doesn't see that, he might actually think that one-dimensional psychopath Euron nailing his pregnant girlfriend to a ship is nailing the same kind of monstrosity.

He also could be talking about a plot point we now know about but that he has not published yet – like Stannis burning Shireen. So one should be careful looking for ASOIAF's Walter White.)

Interestingly enough, the trick Breaking Bad is pulling is quite old. White isn't making meth by chance, it was the worst thing his creator could think of besides him becoming an arms dealer. The twist of Breaking Bad's "Ozymandias" is actually not that White becomes bad but that he has always been bad. You'll find a similar character in Humbert Humbert in Nabokov's Lolita where his monstrosity is barely a plot twist and even Milton's Paradise Lost where it's none at all. (The trope of the protagonist being a piece of shit throughout the whole story usually goes down as "villain protagonist" and the list of stories containing one is pretty expansive.) But the plot twist of a surprise villain protagonist is such an old one that Aesop already codified it in his fable "The Farmer and the Viper" around 600 B.C. (Farmer helps harmless looking viper, then viper bites him because it's a viper. And has been a viper all along. Duh.)

Now if Dany, for example, turned into a villain then she would fall squarely into villain protagonist territory. But the fun thing is that doesn't mean that she is already one. The viper is not a villain until Aesop has it biting the farmer. If Dany decides to slaughter her future subjects by the thousands just so she can have the Iron Throne (and this is portrayed as despicable) then this will be in line with the Dany from the first season/AGoT who wanted the Dothraki to wage their type of warfare (pillaging, raping, enslaving, killing) onto thousands of her future subjects, so she could have the Iron Throne. But that doesn't mean that Dany will cross this particular moral event horizon.

Whether Dany will turn out to be a villain protagonist is not a question of foreshadowing. It's a question whether the authorial intent will will it into existence. The viper is a poisonous snake but if the author hasn't it biting the farmer, that poison doesn't matter at all.

Now Dany is a well-rounded character (same as Cersei) and might be difficult to defeat but her most likely, hypothetical, evil deed (mass carnage via dragon) is not particularly compelling and neither is ambition as her motivation. Villainous Dany is about as compelling as Cersei. Keeping Cersei for so long when there is Villainous Dany in the wings strikes me as a weak narrative choice: “Meet your new villain, same as the old villain...” The difference would be the element of surprise but that's a paltry surprise, especially since Villainous Dany was supposed to be The Big Plot Twist.

Honestly, Dany as the mass-carnage causing, ambitious type of villain is a low-hanging fruit. Call me edgy, but it's just nowhere near "Ozymandias". It's Boromir getting seduced by the Ring.

And there are not a lot of precedents for that storyline in ASOIAF. You know the story of a good guy gone beyond redemption evil. There is Theon, whose ambition, jealousy and insecurity drove him into sacking Winterfell and killing two children – but even he turned out to be not to be beyond redemption. There is Catelyn, but she goes crazy and becomes a zombie, so it's hard to compare.

But there is, of course, the most compelling, interesting and meaningful character arc of a good guy gone bad: Stannis Baratheon. But he isn’t a good precedent for a mass-carnage causing, ambitious type of villain.

***

You see, Stannis starts out as not exactly the most sympathetic character: he burns people and places of worship, he is a religious nut, he has his brother killed. But after getting defeating at the Battle of Blackwater, his arc does a 180. He gets the call from the North to save the realm, and out of all of the five Kings involved in the war of the same name, he is the only one he realizes that in order to "win the realm, you have to save the realm."

That isn't a coincidence. Stannis is also the only king who fights for a higher purpose. Joffrey, Balon, Robb, and Renly just fight for power (be it the power over all of Westeros or the power that lies in independence). Stannis is fighting not just for power but also for his religion, for his one true god; he is fighting a crusade. That out of all the kings, the king who believes that his religion will save Westeros ends up wanting to save it from a supernatural threat is not a coincidence. One thing clearly causes the other.

And once he makes this choice, Stannis, the Mannis (as he was lovingly called by his fans once upon a time) always fights the bad guys, he fights for the living. Of course, he doesn't stop being a religious nut, he doesn't stop burning people, he is inflexible in his beliefs, he still thinks he is the chosen one, he is Azor Ahai, he is the One True King, he belongs on the Iron Throne. But he is also the man who executes soldiers of his army who rape. He has good sides. But what weighs so heavily in his favor is that out of all the people in power in Westeros, he is fighting the bad guys.

And that matters – until it doesn't when Stannis strikes out to fight the Boltons. The Boltons are special because they are despicable without exceptions. Even the Freys have Robb's squire in their midst to have that one decent family member/bannerman that all of Westeros' notable houses appear to have. All but the Boltons anyway. There is not a good or decent living Bolton. They are the literal worst Westeros has to offer.

And yet, Stannis manages to cross a moral event horizon that makes everyone forget that he is doing it to fight the Worst. And that moral event horizon is not the sacking of a city, the killing of hundred of thousands. He is not extinguishing a house or a people. He manages it, doing something every single GOT character could do right now (save for little Sam.) He kills a single person.

And he doesn't come back from that. Like a proper Ozymandias, his hubris, his pretension to predestined, prophecied greatness is followed by his inevitable decline. Killing Shireen has Stannis losing his real world fans and his in-story followers, his wife, his fight, his priestess, his army, his purpose and consequently his life. He proves very quickly that not all ends justify all means. He is the living embodiment of the Friedrich Nietzsche quotation that "those who fight monsters should take care that in the process they do not become monsters themselves."  

Stannis' final turn into villainy is actually paralleled by something another character does in ASOIAF. Except he is not a character we meet; he is a story-within-a-story; a legend, a prophecy or both. He is who Stannis thought he was: he is Azor Ahai.

And Azor Ahai absolutely does what Stannis did to turn into a villain, a monster: he murders... sacrifices an innocent to forge Lightbringer to end the Long Night. The way the story gets told makes that murder necessary, but Azor Ahai as the hero and winner of the Long Night gets to tell that story, gets to tell history his way. It's a legend and of course Azor Ahai is its hero. But remember the first person who claimed that "only death can pay for life" was a liar who wanted to make sure that "The Stallion Who Mounts the World" died in the womb. (The second was Melisandre who tends to be wrong on a lot of things and whose track record on human sacrifice is abysmal.)

So there is absolutely a chance that Nissa Nissa's death was as necessary as Shireen's. We won't get the opportunity to fact-check the legend, the ancient history. But if it's a prophecy we might see its reality.

Of course, if GOT really goes the way of making a good guy go bad, then they can do this the middling way, the mediocre way. Theon's Sack of Winterfell Redux or Catelyn's descent into madness and murder. Or by making Dany a villain protagonist who is basically just another Cersei with dragons. And despite not quite measuring up to Stannis' dark turn – ambition, grief, fear, insecurity, jealousy, vanity, or disappointment leading to mass carnage delivered onto a hundred-thousand computer-generated extras is still more interesting than the Night King Sauron with his ice dragon.

But the reality is that we don't care about the 100,000 inhabitants of King's Landing. We will cry over a single Hot Pie before ever giving a fuck about a massive number of fictional people without any characteristics. Mass carnage is easy to oppose morally because it's something we oppose in real life but emotionally there is no difference between 10 fictional people or a billion fictional people – if they are simply there to be nameless, featureless cannon fodder. The ability to cause mass carnage doesn't make you the most emotionally effective villain by default. Quite the opposite.

If Bran were to warg a dragon and set King's Landing on fire, we would get that this whole Three-Eyed Raven thing didn't work out well for his ethics and be, like, "okay". If Bran set fire to Arya, he would immediately become the most hated character ever on GOT. (And that isn't an exaggeration for effect). And any good intentions regarding defeating evil would matter as much as the fight against the Boltons did once Shireen started screaming.

I would like to add that Stannis died pretty much immediately after killing Shireen, blown over like a cardboard once Brienne showed up. But who would defeat or want to defeat a Stannis, an Azor Ahai who succeeded at ending the Long Night?

The ultimate story subversion when it comes to the classic "good vs. evil" plot is that the bad guy wins.

And wouldn't that be something if it was surprise villain protagonist? We get someone winning that we would have been okay with winning until they turned into GOT's least liked character? Wouldn't that be bittersweet? Getting who you were okay with, perhaps even wanted on the Iron Throne, who might even know which is the right tax plan and what to do with baby orcs...  except they suck now?

Now who could that true Azor Ahai possibly be?

Is there someone who has been fighting monsters longer than anyone else has? Who has been so corrupted by that fight that he has tried and sacrificed already everything he could and had to defeat them? A man on quasi-religious crusade? A man who has the sort of righteous hubris and single-minded focus on the White Walkers that makes him often deaf to good advice? Who who has already laid down his life for a chance... and even a "no-chance-at-all-now-let-me-drown-in-an-ice-lake" at defeating the Night King? Is this possibly the same guy who we think is going to be crucial to the defeat of the White Walkers?  The one who has the perfect bloodline to claim the Iron Throne in the end? The one who is shown to Melisandre when she looks for her prophecied chosen one in the fire? The one who appears to be the straight hero of the story, the Luke Skywalker, the only major character where pulling a Stannis would actually shock us?  The one who has never been "profoundly wrong"?

I am not saying, we are getting "Aegon, the Worst of His Name". I am saying that if I wanted to create a villain who subverts all expectations while fulfilling them, a villain who is truly compelling and whose turn emotionally wrecks the audience, I would not make it happen by having Daenerys or Bran roast King's Landing. I simply would choose a more likable and successful version of Stannis and have him doing something terrible, wrongfully believing it's the right thing to do.

Now theoretically this could be anyone but little Sam. And regardless of that character's identity, they would be a great, compelling villain. Practically though, the best candidate for going off that particular deep end is not some random second tier character. And it's not Daenerys "What Even Are White Walkers?" or Bran "I'm a robotic, omniscient plot device now the Three-Eyed Raven now" Stark either.

It's Jon.

***

There is an issue with this though. Stannis murdering a family member/sacrificing a child for their royal blood to win a battle was simply a continuation of Stannis' previous actions. Stannis had no issue with his wife's uncle being burned as a sacrifice to R'hllor, had his brother murdered to win a battle, and attempted to have his underage nephew (Edric Storm in the books, Gendry in the show) sacrificed for his royal blood.

Killing Shireen is Stannis taking this to its logical extreme. Everything he does is simply something he has done before. Except this time the audience isn't given an out: Shireen doesn't escape like Edric/Gendry, we care for her (unlike Alester Florent) and she isn't Stannis' opponent in battle (Renly).

What Stannis is doing, is not surprising or entirely unprecedented. It is ultimately just a darker twist on something he has done before. Which is weird because you would think that something that crosses a moral event horizon would be a real departure from his previous actions. But it's not and that is really crucial if we want to discuss Stannis 2.0.

If a good character goes bad then having them simply do something they've done before –  except this time it's just too much – makes sense. Just like the road to hell is paved with good intentions, escalating villainy should be a slippery slope of ever indefensible bad deeds.

And this is why it makes no sense to look at Jon and wonder who he is going to burn at the stake for R'hllor – because he won't.  What he would do to incur the audience's disdain needs to be something he has kind of done before. And that he has done on the show before, because it stands to reason that the show would want to keep its foreshadowing. (Hence Gendry's slightly pointless kidnapping by Melisandre in the show.)

So the the baby swap is out since it didn't happen on the show. Breaking a vow is a bit too generic and on its lonesome will not evoke any emotional reaction. And making high-handed, impulsive decisions that end up with terrible consequences has been already done with Jon making a series of high-handed, badly thought through decisions that netted the Night King a dragon and destroyed the Wall and yet netted Jon no audience disdain at all. So probably not that one either.

That leaves his relationship with Ygritte. In the books, we only see this relationship from Jon's point of view with all his justifications and inner struggles and his self-knowledge that while he lies about his allegiance to the Wildlings' cause, his feelings for Ygritte are real.

Now if one imagines that relationship from Ygritte's point of view (as she is in the books), Jon would come out of that as a supreme douchebag. He lead her on, lied to her, pretended to have feelings for her, then left her, publicly humiliated her and finally participated in a battle with her on the other side. Jon doesn't kill her but he is willing to do so by fighting her.

Now a real neutral point of view that doesn't vilify Ygritte to prop up Jon as a cool dude (as the show has done with her allying herself with cannibals and the village massacre), would be more of a wash, ethically speaking. Jon lies to Ygritte but his life is at stake and it wasn't even his own idea in the first place. There are consent issues with their relationship and Ygritte is as willing to kill Jon when she participates in that battle as it's the case the other way around.

But then Stannis wasn't that unjustified to go after Renly who was willing to fight and kill him in battle after all. Killing Renly nearly rates as self-defense. And Edric Storm got away. The question is not how horrible Jon's actions towards Ygritte were. But rather what the escalation of that sort of overall action would be like.

Now due to time constraints the only relationship where Jon could pull an escalated "Ygritte" is his relationship with Daenerys. And here I am kind of puzzled by the discourse around the idea. Because as passionately as people argue about it, they actually agree quite fundamentally: that Jon is doing it/not doing because he is the quintessential good guy.

That he either betrays his lover or the plutocratic will of his nation is disregarded as some sort of higher purpose collateral that doesn't at all reflect on his moral character.

But isn't Occam's Razor to the question of how a "good guy" manages to betray either lover or nation simply to question the "good guy" part?

But let's step back a bit. The theory that Jon is playing Dany proposes that Jon initiates this emotional manipulation because she wonders aloud about two things (while he wants her commitment on the fight against the White Walkers): 1. Her ability to achieve her overall strategic goal of winning the Iron Throne 2. What happens to her rear if she pulls all of her forces north.

Now, Jon never actually answers any of these questions (or any questions on how to get the Northern Lords to remain loyal to him and Dany) and that is a bit problematic. Because the second question of what happens in a war if you leave one side open to your enemies is an enormously important one.

What Jon appears to do, is rely on a truism about the North: that it cannot be conquered in Winter (and Winter is here.)

*beleaguered sigh*

This truism exists in our world about two countries. One is considered unconquerable in Winter, the other unconquerable in general. And while these truisms have held true for few centuries now, the reality is that attempts to conquer them have devastated both countries on more than one occasion to the sound of millions of dead inhabitants and bombing it to the bottom of the HDI.

If Jon relies on Winter to protect him and his allies from Cersei, he is an idiot. If Cersei attacks the unprotected North from the South, his ability to fight the White Walkers will be profoundly diminished even if Cersei fails at conquering the North itself. Dany is right to ask this question and he is wrong to ignore it.

And if that theory pans out and Jon took these strategic, legitimate concerns as a sign that he needs to loverboy it up instead of thinking how to protect the North from the South, then that's next level mansplaining.

But forget that point for a bit and go back to the situation in which Jon supposedly initiates it. He is recovering after the Wight Hunt and Dany swears to avenge her dragon while musing on her overall strategy of winning Westeros. And while Jon isn't in good shape, he is not in mortal danger. Not in general, not specifically by Dany. She is letting her hair down and she's pledging her support to his cause.

Jon's life is not the least on the line and the question whether Dany would or would not have pulled out of the war against the White Walkers if Jon hadn't started flirting with her in that moment is an unanswerable hypothetical. No matter how you slice or dice it, it's not certain at all (not to the audience, not to Jon) that she would have pulled out.

So Jon had three choices in this moment: not initiate a romantic relationship with Dany, initiate a romantic relationship out of genuine feeling, initiate a romantic relationship to manipulate her.

None of these choices would spell certain doom. It's not at all like the relationship with Ygritte, where not going along with it would have blown his cover and cost his life. It's also distinct from that situation insofar as he didn't choose to go undercover with the Wildlings in the first place but was commanded into the situation by his superior officer.

If Jon initiated the relationship to manipulate Dany, he chose to do this voluntarily without true necessity. It's, in fact, as necessary as Littlefinger manipulating Lysa into intrigue, murder and ill-fated marriage was. Of course, without that manipulation Littlefinger would have never advanced at court and become Master of the Coin, Lord of Harrenhall and Sweetrobin's guardian. But none of these things were necessary to grant his survival at any time.

The key difference between Jon and Littlefinger is that Jon allies himself with Dany to ensure mankind's survival instead of personal gain. But on the balance, another difference between Littlefinger and Jon's situation is that the romantic relationship wasn't necessary to ensure Dany's support. In fact, even the idea that Dany's concerns are sign of her wavering in her commitment is a minority if not fringe opinion among GOT's audience.

And that makes the idea of Jon manipulating Dany very unpalatable. The lack of necessity makes him a Littlefinger, rather than a Robb or a Ned or even the Jon who lied to Ygritte. And audiences prefer to see their heroes as honorable fools rather than manipulative, emotionally abusive jerks.

Because there is the heart of the problem. If Jon is truly manipulating Dany, he is an emotionally abusive jerk. He is profoundly wrong. He is the guy that your BFF has warned you about. "He is just using you for [something.]"

And that hits home in a way shadowbabies and Frey Pies and Qyburn doesn't. We don't know any necromancers who vivisect people. But we know the kind of jerk that Jon would be. It's not theoretical, it's something we know and because of that will not appreciate.

***

But while this absolutely checks off “make the evil deed painful to the audience” point in the “compelling villain” check list, it’s still nowhere near as ethically questionable as Stannis burning Shireen.

But Jon's Ygritte storyline doesn't end with him duping, betraying and leaving her. It ends with her getting killed. And not just killed, but killed in battle against Jon and his brothers. While Jon is not directly responsible for her death – he neither instigated nor executed the killing – he was willing to risk that his actions would kill her in that battle. The goal of a battle is to win and to use the Patton quote from above "make the other bastard die for his country." Of course, Jon acted in self-defense, Ygritte was fighting that battle against him and the NW voluntarily, fully willing, ready and able to kill him.

But then, to go back to Stannis, Stannis was also just acting in self-defense when he send the shadowbaby assassin to kill Renly. Renly had the superior force and showed himself fully willing, ready and able to kill Stannis in battle. The question whether Stannis' assassination of Renly is justified is a digression too far because that is not the point. The point is that Jon and Stannis got some person killed who was really close to them (brother, lover) and that was kind of, maybe, perhaps justified self-defense. You can argue for it in both cases.

However, as I mentioned before, Stannis' ultimate escalation of Renly's murder is killing Shireen. There is no maybe, perhaps, kind of, about the lack of justification for it. Stannis did not act in self-defense, Stannis was not provoked. The true necessity was also absent... although the proof for that is just hindsight. The sacrifice was supposed to save Stannis and his army. It did not. Thus it was never necessary. The whole thing is just wholly indefensible.

Now would an escalation of Jon's Ygritte storyline limit itself to the affair and betrayal or would it go all the way down to that self-defensive arrow that Jon wasn't directly responsible for? Except for a Stannis-like escalation that arrow could not be self-defensive, it would have to be undeserved, unjustified, unnecessary and Jon's responsibility.

The audience doesn't even have to like Dany at that point. That would be just crossing all moral event horizons, turning Jon into a villain and serving a "King Arthur Aragorn Jon  Snow is the final villain" plot twist that makes R+L=J look like child's play in comparison. It would be truly an epic twist, ending up in the plot twist pantheon next to "Bruce is a ghost" and "Soylent Green".

However, I don't think this is gonna happen. A villain protagonist on that level would have been foreshadowed much, much more, both in the books and the show. "The villain wins" is also really nihilistic and ends up on a quite bitter note with very little sweetness. Davos, Brienne and Sam emerging alone from the rubble would be a more positive and happier ending. It's also the sort of plot twist you think of five books and seven TV seasons later (too late), not when you conceive the story.

So what will happen to Jon instead if he doesn't become a villain?

There are really only two options: his characterization remains in a class of its own and he remains the only truly good guy protagonist or he takes a level in realpolitik and starts to play as dirty as necessary in whatever way. Not quite Jon, the villain but Jon the ethically challenged, Jon the Utilitarian.

(By the way, I am not saying that he has to play dirty with specific characters to qualify, just that that he has to play dirty somehow. In fact, playing dirty with certain characters might evoke a negative, emotional audience reaction that is not in proportion to the ethics violation it presents and thus the whole Utilitarianism bit might accidentally devolve into perceived villainy.)

The really fascinating bit about this is that Jon's characterization will define ASOIAF quite significantly. Jon is so crucial to the story's most fundamental conflict, that even if you discard the idea that he is The Protagonist, you would still have to agree that he is one of the most important protagonists. His characterization will contribute and lead to the resolution of that conflict. If he resolves it by playing dirty, the moral of the story will quite different than it is if he resolves it by always taking the heroic, high road.

And it's not just the moral of the story. Once the story decides to land on "Jon, the moral" or "Jon, the Utilitarian", the question whether we are consuming "Lord of the Rings with boobs" or a true deconstruction of Lord of the Rings will answer itself. And that will reflect on more than just Jon's storyline. If Jon stays heroic, Night King Sauron, our final, two-dimensional villain and other neat and flat resolutions become much more likely.

As such I would argue that the Jon’s characterization will define how good ASOIAF's famed realism truly is, what ideals it propagates, and what kind of story ASOIAF is.

I honestly can't predict how this will play out. But I remember that Ned and the Red Wedding promised a deconstruction of the genre, an acknowledgement that taking the high road constantly can be a dead end in real life. Jon not needing to be smarter than them in the end would break that promise.

[paraxdisepink]

trying to like actually watch Game of Thrones

s1-4 were pretty good but s5 on is just . . . wtf?

none of this shit happened in the books (well okay a few things) most of these characters aren’t even near each other in the books. it’s like they made everyone do the opposite or something. none of these people talk in this clunky too-modern dialogue the plot is bad and one day dany’s gonna go full targ on like whole cities or something. idk. 

in the books stannis and shireen are alive, euron greyjoy is creepy af, bran mighta eaten jojen, there’s a fake aegan, and most of tormund’s dialogue is about the size of his dick. also theon might still have his favorite toy. we’re not sure. grrm said reek rhymes with peak and we had to wait to find out. we’ve waited 8 years.

please tell me there will be a better reboot once the last two books are finished. this poorly characterized fanfic of the later seasons does not amuse.

[ao3feed-theonsa]

The Game Remains the Same

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2Rik4Oi

by wickedrose16

LISTEN—if D&D can do whatever they want—so can I

Most of the conflict in S8 could have been avoided if these characters were given the opportunity to actually SPEAK and EXPLAIN themselves to one another.

Happiness and support for Daenerys (because the poor woman deserves it after the bullshit that was S8)

Jon can’t be a know nothing sad boy forever (S8 forced it, and its not endearing anymore)

Bran and Arya’s characterization leans on their book counterpart.

After seasons of being forced into the game, Sansa has learned to use it to her advantage, but I’d like to think that she wouldn’t care for a crown. (Even if she deserves one)

Words: 3713, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Game of Thrones (TV)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Categories: F/M

Characters: Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Sansa Stark, Theon Greyjoy (mentioned), Arya Stark, Gendry Waters, Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Grey Worm, Missandei of Naath, Cersei Lannister, Sandor Clegane, Tyrion Lannister, Bran Stark, Meera Reed, Gregor Clegane, Balon Swann, Euron Greyjoy, Tormund Giantsbane, Ghost, Rhaegal, Drogon, Varys, Qhono (Game of Thrones), Yohn Royce, Podrick Payne, Qyburn

Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Theon Greyjoy/Sansa Stark (Mentioned), Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Grey Worm/Missandei, Bran Stark/Meera Reed

Additional Tags: Fix-It, s8, Takes place after the Battle of Winterfell, Fic for coping, i hope y’all like it, If anyone is still out there, My first fic, I was so upset I decided to write, I’m indifferent to Lannisters, ...Sorry, I will try and make Braime shippers happy, ...because I love Brienne, and Brienne deserves love

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2Rik4Oi