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nineteensixtieschikadee · 4 years ago

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Arya Stark & Femininity

This might turn into a mini rant, so bear with me here. A lot of times whenever I watch old GOT clips, (bc I hate myself) and read stuff about Arya on fansites, I realize that there’s been a lot of misconception about her and her character. Particularly about her being a woman. And a lot of times i see this sort of “justification” from her fans that the reason why she’s such a fan-favorite character in the show (and to some extent, the books?) is because Arya is esentially this “bad-ass ninja asassin tomboy who’s out for revenge against those who’ve killed her family.” And some of her fans and especially her anti’s will call her out expressing that “Arya’s only a child who doesn’t like girly things like dresses and boys and doing her hair. She “identifies” herself as a tomboy because she likes “boyish things” like sword play, and playing in the mud, and gore, wrestling, etc. I was scrolling through the Jonrya tag here on Tumblr, this is a comment I found regarding Arya:

The moment I read that I straight up just wanted to rant! Lol! Also, I’m sorry for the formatting, I’m writing this on mobile. :( Anyways, these people who make those claims about Arya, esentially only see her as this small girl who likes fighting and getting dirty. They completely disregard everything else that makes Arya, Arya. Pretty much just limiting her to her sex, understanding that because Arya likes boyish things, she’s NOT ALLOWED to inherit things, like the North, fall in love and get married, have a high position in the hierarchy and in politics. It’s because that these people see her as someone who hates needlework or everything that isn’t Sansa, everyone believes that she hates everything that makes her FEMALE. Everybody here knows that Arya’s my favorite female character in the books, so I just wanna talk about how the general public views her, and how their views tend to go against Arya’s entire character.

People have this view that she is the “exact opposite” of Sansa. And while that’s true in terms of their different characteristics, it doesn’t mean that Arya is against everything that makes Sansa, feminine. Now lemme elaborate here. Sansa is everything that represents “femininity.” Especially in terms of the inspired time period that ASOIAF takes place in. She’s very girly & lady-like, is mannerful, “soft-spoken.” She daydreams about boys and being a princess. She’s graceful and elegant. She knows her place in terms of society, and as a woman. AND YEAH, Arya is the exact opposite of that. Yes, she has this boyish nature. She’s wild and free spirited. Loud also adventerous. But that’s the thing: Arya has a lot of femininity in her. It’s just not the femininity that we’re used to. What society percieves as “normally feminine.”

Arya is not Sansa. And it’s because she doesn’t act like a “lady” that the audience sees her as this girl who “doesn’t want” or most importantly, should not want/get the same treatment as the typical noblewoman in Westeros should recieve. This idea was engraved into people’s heads because of the show, and that’s how we’re supposed to see her. As this cold hearted ninja assasin warrior who happens to be a girl, but doesn’t act like a typical girl. The audience pretty much places her in the “I’m not like other girls” trope. Which is honestly, so wrong to me. Because yeah okay, Arya isn’t like the typical lady. But god, she is far deeper than that, and is a much more complex character.

Here’s the thing, Arya does not reject being a female, and most importantly, she does not reject the typical ideals of what makes a lady feminine. Of course not. In fact, she actively encourages that women be included in all things, especially in things only made for men. She believes that women should not be held back or ignored because of their sex and femininity.

“The Lannister’s are proud,” Jon observed. “You’d think the royal sigil would be sufficient, but no. He makes his mother’s House equal in honor to the king’s.”

“The woman is important too!” Arya protested.

This excerpt is from Arya’s very first chapter in AGOT. It is also my favorite Jonrya moment, lol. And asides from the scene foreshadowing potential plot points for not only Jon & Arya, the scene introduces to us and examines Arya’s perception of society and more specifically, the women in society. In this scene Arya joins Jon in observing Prince Joffrey, talking about the Lannister/Baratheon coat of arms. Jon makes a point that while the Baratheon sigil should be enough to prove that Joffrey is of royalty, the Lannisters (Cersei) are a proud house, married into the royal family. So therefore Joffrey is of house Baratheon AND Lannister. That is why the Lannister sigil stands besides the Baratheons. Because they, specifically Cersei, should be seen as equal to the king.

And while Jon makes this seem like it’s wrong or not needed, Arya disagrees with him. She tells him that the women should not be forgotten, as they should be seen as equal to the men. That the women are just as important as the men, and that it would be of good conduct to not forget that. And with that being said, she never acknowledges that Joffrey’s mother is too lady-like or too feminine to be seen as an equal to the king. Nope. Although she does question later as to why if women cannot fight, why should they have a coat of arms. Though that is hardly the point of her argument.

Another point that makes people believe that Arya is not feminine or does not support femininity, is when she flat out says to Ned that she hates the idea of being a lady.

“Your mother and I have charged her with the impossible task of making you a lady.”

“I don’t want to be a lady,” Arya flared.

Alot of people misinterpret this as Arya not wanting to be a noblewoman, because she only likes to play with swords, and get dirty. Because acting like a lady is stupid and not her. This is simply not true. Arya has no problem with women, or being a lady. She is a lady. A highborn one. What she does have a problem with is that being a lady often means being trapped in the conformities of what society percieves to be the acceptable standard for women in this time period.

All of the acceptable standards is what Sansa is. And she is not like Sansa. She does not believe herself to be a lady like her sister or her mother. When she first reveals her true identity to Gendry in ACOK, he immediately apologizes to her for his behavior and calls her m’lady. :3 Arya unfortunately sees this as a form of mockery and an attack because while Gendry acknowledges that she is a lady, Arya doesn’t act like a typical lady or even look like one. That insecurity of not being a lady like her mother and sister makes her believe that Gendry is using her sex against her. Like a form of irony. But I mean, we all know that’s far from the truth, lol!

And Jon recognizes this too! It’s the reason why they are so close and tightly knit together. Because Jon understands Arya, and sees her insecurity like how she sees his. They are one and the same. Jon sees and understands Arya’s frustrations of sexism viewed in Westeros. He acknowledges that Arya is to become a lady. But he also sees that Arya is not the conventional type of lady wanting to stick to the norms. She is a different type of lady, and to him, that is okay. He may tease her for it once in a while, pointing out all the unfair limitations that women have to go through. But he accepts her for being this unconventional noblewoman, and often encourages her to pursue being different.

“Girls get the arms but not the swords. Bastards get the swords but not the arms. I did not make the rules, little sister.”

Later when Jon and Arya say their goodbyes, Jon gifts Arya with the swords. Needle. This is his way of saying, fuck all them haters, be who you wanna be. Solidifying the idea that he supports her and accepts her for who she is. Kinda like how Tyrion told him to use his identity as armour, Arya should do the same to herself. It’s okay to be different than the rest. Fuck the rules.

It’s not that Arya hates the idea of being a lady. It’s a far cry from that. It’s the sexism that goes along with being the typical lady that infruiates her. Arya loves running around, riding horses, playing with swords, being loud and adventurous. She has a firery temper to her. And just because she likes doing all of that, and is all of that, it doesn’t mean, shouldn’t mean that she isn’t a lady. That she can’t be a lady. All of those things shouldn’t limit her to being viewed as a girl, a highborn lady. She is a woman, and she identifies as one.

“Listen to him, boy.”

“It was the third time he had called her “boy.” “I’m a girl,” Arya objected.

That is why, even though she sees herself as a woman, she often tells herself and other people that she is not a lady. Despite others telling her that she is one. Her insecurity and her frustrations do not allow her to see herself as a lady because she isn’t a “conventional woman.”

But the thing is, even though Arya doesn’t enjoy most of the typical lady-like things, she still has a ton of femininity to her. And people often ignore her more feminine traits in favor of her more “badassery” side, which unfortunately are most often occupied by men. People forget and downright ignore that Arya is really intelligent. She particularly excels in math. It’s one of the few things that she’s better at than Sansa. She loves flowers—like her aunt Lyanna. The very person who she’s said to look and act like the most. And a really important one is that she has motherly instincts. It’s what helps her protect other kids throughout her journey. Her ability to empathize enables her to be more social with outcasts and befriend others without judgement. She is well-mannered and kind to strangers. (An example of this would be when she apologizes to a common woman who lent her a dress to wear, and she accidentally destroys it because she and Gendry were playing by the acorn tree.) She can also cook and clean just like any other woman—or any other person. All of those are feminine traits, and are traits that make her more human. And the show opted to get rid of all that and gave us some cold-hearted, angry, ninja.

The audience perceives that because Arya is this ninja warrior who rejects the common standards of being a lady, it means that she can’t have these other more female traits. Nope. She’s not allowed to have or want more rights and power because that’s not her. She’s a warrior and nothing more. She can’t find love because she has to be this bad-ass independent woman who don’t need no man. That’s not her, that’s her sister. We can’t have Arya be any more female than she already is because she rejects the idea of being female. Leave all that crap to her sister! Sansa’s the princess—and we can’t have Arya being a princess or queen. Arya’s only allowed to carry a sword.

And it’s the audience’s perception of her that goes against everything that Arya is, and everything that she believes in. Because remember, Arya hates the idea that being a lady means being trapped in the societal norms. And it can be said vice versa too. Arya still respects those who want to be more of the conventional type. Arya may not have the more typical feminine traits that make her a lady, but to hell with it! It doesn’t mean that she’s not allowed to have the other things that the more conventional woman would/should have. That goes against all of her views and beliefs. The audience puts Arya at an unfair standard because she doesn’t act like a conventional woman.

It’s the same thing as the audience saying that Jon Snow doesn’t want a title or power, because he’s devoted his life to the Nights Watch and is unselfish. False. Very false. Just like Arya. Arya’s young. She still has time to grow, and no doubt she doesn’t think of all those things now because of other priorities. But she’s slowly getting there. And there is so much foreshadowing of her finding love, becoming a woman gaining power, etc, etc. She’s not there yet, but that’s a part of her growth. Just because she defies the typical female standards, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t want or wont want all those things later.

Like com’on. Everyone knows that Arya is the only legitimate candidate right now to inherit the North. Everyone knows. The Northmen know, the Nights Watch knows, the people in Kings Landing knows. Hell, even the damn wildings know this. And it’s because of this knowledge that formed the majority of the northern plotline in ADWD. People are going to war for her. She is the true key to the North, and that’s why the Boltons lied and said that they have her. It’s why Jon went to war and died for her. I don’t think Arya will truly believe it if/when she finds out that people are fighting for her because she holds the power to the North. Unless Jon’s gonna be the one to tell her himself. The fact that she is being set up to inherit all this power, and yet people deny it and believe that she doesn’t want it because it’s “not her” in regards that she’s not feminine enough, is seriously infuriating.

I mean look at the type of women Arya respects and idolizes. Where do you think she got the name Nymeria from? Nymeria’s name originates from the Princess of Dorne herself, Princess Nymeria of Ny Sar. Princess Nymeria was said be very beautiful, strong-willed, cunning, and full of wisdom. She was a “warrior-queen.” From that alone, her femininity clearly did not matter. She was a woman whose goals were not held back because of her femininity and sex.

Arya does not hate femininity or things that makes women more feminine. She doesn’t truly hate wearing dresses or being a lady. It’s being conformed to the general standards that she hates. It’s her sex being used against her that makes her angry. It’s not being able to be herself that she despises. And thanks to Sansa and her mother’s judgement of her, Arya’s insecurity only heightened. Despite looking exactly like Lyanna, Arya herself believes that she’s not beautiful enough to even be considered a lady. Only Jon and Ned allowed Arya to be Arya. Only they called her beautiful, and only they encouraged her to be who she wanted to be. Arya loves her fellow women. And yeah, she also loves Sansa despite her being such a pain in the ass bitch, lol.

Arya’s character encourages women to just be women. She encourages us the audience to just be ourselves despite all the conformities forced upon us. Her character explores the limitations of sex, gender, and especially the loss of identity. Arya not wanting to be a lady doesn’t actually mean she doesn’t want to be a lady. She doesn’t want to be held back by the standards of being a lady. Her question, her argument is that why should women be limited only to being this or that. Women are far more than meets the typical standard, and if society can’t accept it, then fuck that! Women can be knights and still be a lady. They can be fierce and passionate and emotional and still be a lady. Women can be warriors and still be a lady. Just because there are some women out there who don’t fit the ideal standards of what it means to be lady, it shouldn’t make them feel like less than one.

#Arya Stark #Arya Stark meta #game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #asoiaf #jon snow #Gendry Baratheon #Jonrya #Gendrya #Arya is a feminist #When is TWOW come out?! I miss her!!#Also shes going through puberty in the next book so uh that’ll be interesting hm?#Ya’ll Dany may be going mad in the books too #But I mean Dany and Arya NEED to interact at least 1 pls George give it to me :(#Anti GOT

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the-king-andthe-lionheart · 4 years ago

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A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes - Arya Stark and her Cinderella Motifs

In A Song of Ice and Fire, GRRM often uses fairy tale motifs to help tell a character’s story. Sometimes this motif spans all throughout the characters arc while other times it will only be used for one or two scenes, or anywhere in between. And often one character can have several fairy tale motifs at different times in their arcs or even running concurrently. For Arya, she has quite a few fairy tale motifs in her arc, but for now I’m going to focus on her Cinderella motifs that are mainly prevalent in A Clash of Kings but do show up at other times all throughout her arc as well. I’m going to focus primarily on Arya’s A Clash of Kings arc, but we will be stopping by A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows a few times too. And I am going to use several versions of the retellings of Cinderella, including the Disney version, but only the 1950 original and none of its sequels. I also want to note that not all the parallels are obvious due to things being more metaphorical or symbolic, while other times being whatever subversion that tickled GRRM’s fancy at the time.

There are many common aspects across the board when it comes to Cinderella retellings. Often it entails the heroine losing one or both of her parents, being oppressed by her abusive stepmother and stepsisters and being forced into menial, backbreaking labor that leaves the heroine dirty and often covered in ashes. It usually entails a magical guardian who helps the heroine, magical transformations, ballgowns and a ball where she falls in love with either a Prince or a King. An identifying item is also involved, usually a slipper made of gold or glass, where one of the pair is lost when the heroine is running from her beloved. And the Prince/King almost always searches the realm for the woman that identifying item belongs to, and when he finds the heroine they usually marry.

Written out like that it’s hard to believe that this is a motif used for Arya. After all she’s not in the position to be going to balls and she’s just a child so it seems unlikely at the time she’s at Harrenhal she’s going to fall in love. However, this motif appears all throughout her arc in various and creative and subversive and repetitive ways, and motifs don’t have to be all or none and they don’t have to be in the order the original stories were laid out. A lot of people also don’t like the idea that Arya has an actual Disney Princess motif in her story because she’s a “tomboy”, but the fact is that Arya is a Princess at the time she’s at Harrenhal, it’s even explicitly stated in Arya X ACOK, whether people acknowledge it or not, where a lot of these motifs take place. I know some people will be dismissive of this and think I’m reaching, but I hope upon reading this I’ll have convinced you of this motif being present. :)

Step-Mother and Step-Sisters

Some of the two most common features in any variant of Cinderella is the “Persecuted Heroine” and the “Female Persecutor”. Often this manifests as the wicked stepmother and the evil step-sisters, but in some versions a stepmother does not appear, and it’s the heroine’s older sisters who confine her to the kitchens instead. In the opera, La Cenerentola, Gioachino Rossini inverted the gender roles where the heroine Cenerentola is oppressed by her stepfather. And in some retellings at least one of the step siblings is somewhat kind to the heroine even. We symbolically see these archetypes many times in Arya’s narrative with various types of inversions.

When we enter ACOK, we find a dirty and disguised Arya traveling with Yoren and the Night’s Watch recruits, having just lost her father (a subversion of the prevalent theme of Cinderella losing her mother very young). She is also being bullied by two older boys, Lommy and Hot Pie:

At Winterfell they [Sansa and Jeyne] had called her “Arya Horseface” and she’d thought nothing could be worse, but that was before the orphan boy Lommy Greenhands had named her “Lumpyhead.” - Arya I ACOK

That wasn’t the hardest part at all; Lommy Greenhands and Hot Pie were the hardest part. - Arya I ACOK

“Look at that sword Lumpyhead’s got there,” Lommy said one morning […] “Where’s a gutter rat like Lumpyhead get him a sword?”

[. . .]

“Maybe he’s a little squire,” Hot Pie put in. […] “Some lordy lord’s little squire boy, that’s it.”

“He ain’t no squire, look at him. I bet that’s not even a real sword. I bet it’s just some play sword made of tin.”

Arya hated them making fun of Needle. “It’s castle-forged steel, you stupid,” she snapped, turning in the saddle to glare at them, “and you better shut your mouth.”

The orphan boys hooted. “Where’d you get a blade like that, Lumpyface?” Hot Pie wanted to know.

“Lumpyhead,” corrected Lommy. He prob’ly stole it.”

“I did not!” she shouted. Jon Snow had given her Needle. Maybe she had to let them call her Lumpyhead, but she wasn’t going to let them call Jon a thief.

“If he stole it, we could take it off him,” said Hot Pie. “It’s not his anyhow. I could use me a sword like that.”

Lommy egged him on. “Go on, take it off him, I dare you.”

Hot Pie kicked his donkey, riding closer. “Hey, Lumpyface, you gimme that sword.” […] “You don’t know how to use it.”

[. . .]

“Look at him,” brayed Lommy Greenhands. “I bet he’s going to cry now. You want to cry, Lumpyhead?” – Arya I ACOK

In the first two quotes we have Arya likening the behavior of Hot Pie and Lommy to that of Jeyne Poole and Sansa. In AGOT, Sansa and Jeyne took on the “evil step-sister” archetype (and before anybody attacks me, I don’t think these two are actually “evil”, just children who think it’s okay to bully someone who is different from them), but now we are shown that this archetype has temporarily shifted onto Lommy and Hot Pie, with some subversions. These two are now male and they aren’t related to Arya in any way. Some variants of the Cinderella story do portray male siblings mistreating the younger “Cinderella” sibling though. One of the stories in One Thousand and One Nights depict a story called “Judar and his Brethren”, in which the main character is poisoned by his biological brothers in the end, depicting a rare tragic ending for this retelling. However, these subversions are completely fine because either way, they took on the role of the “bully” to Arya’s Cinderella archetype currently in the narrative.

Furthermore, while Septa Mordane was the obvious “wicked stepmother” archetype to Arya’s Cinderella archetype in AGOT, I think arguably this has fallen to Cersei now (and the Lannister’s as a whole). Cersei may not be present, but she is the reason why Arya is in the situation she is in right now. After all, Cersei takes on the role of “Evil Queen” for Sansa and Jon (they both share Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs motifs) so I do think she is the metaphorical “wicked stepmother” in this equation regardless of the fact that Cersei isn’t anything remotely close to a stepmother to Arya in the narrative, but she fits the general archetype of “female persecutor” the most in the current situation. For the case about Septa Mordane being a “wicked stepmother” archetype, I want to point to Cenerentola by Basile, in which the “wicked stepmother” started out as being the heroine’s governess, and Septa’s are the closest substitute to a governess in the universe of ASOIAF.

This isn’t the end to these archetypes being in play. As the early chapters of ACOK go on we see the animosity between Lommy, Hot Pie, and Arya disappear to the point where they become allies and then friends. With this shift in dynamic we see the archetypes disappearing with some of these same characters taking on entirely new Cinderella archetypes, while the “wicked stepmother” and “evil step-sibling” archetypes move onto other characters as well.

At Harrenhal we are introduced to two wicked women who next take on the “evil step-sibling” archetype, Goodwife Harra and Goodwife Amabel. These two even comment on Arya’s feet:

When Arya's turn came round, Goodwife Amabel clucked in dismay at the sight of her feet, while Goodwife Harra felt the callus on her fingers that long hours of practice with Needle had earned her. "Got those churning butter, I'll wager," she said. "Some farmer's whelp, are you? Well, never you mind, girl, you have a chance to win a higher place in this world if you work hard. If you won't work hard, you'll be beaten. And what do they call you?"

Arya dared not say her true name, but Arry was no good either, it was a boy’s name and they could see she was no boy. “Weasel,” she said, naming the first girl she could think of. “Lommy called me Weasel.”

“I can see why,” sniffed Goodwife Amabel. “That hair is a fright and a nest for lice as well. We’ll have it off, and then you’re for the kitchens.”

“I’d sooner tend the horses.” Arya liked horses, and maybe if she was in the stables she’d be able to steal one and escape.

Goodwife Harra slapped her so hard that her swollen lip broke open all over again. “And keep that tongue to yourself or you’ll get worse. No one asked your views.”

The blood in her mouth had a salty metal tang to it. Arya dropped her gaze and said nothing. If I still had Needle, she wouldn’t dare hit me, she thought sullenly.

“Lord Tywin and his knights have grooms and squires to tend their horses, they don’t need the likes of you,” Goodwife Amabel said. “The kitchens are snug and clean, and there’s always a warm fire to sleep by and plenty to eat. You might have done well there, but I can see you’re not a clever girl. Harra, I believe we should give this one to Weese.”

“If you think so, Amabel.” They gave her a shift of grey roughspun wool and a pair of ill-fitting shoes and sent her off. – Arya VI ACOK

Later Goodwife Amabel even threatens to rape Arya:

Three Frey men-at-arms were using them that morning as Arya went to the well. She tried not to look, but she could hear the men laughing. The pail was very heavy once full. She was turning to bring it back to Kingspyre when Goodwife Amabel seized her arm. The water went sloshing over the side onto Amabel's legs. "You did that on purpose," the woman screeched.

"What do you want?" Arya squirmed in her grasp. Amabel had been half-crazed since they'd cut Harra's head off.

"See there?" Amabel pointed across the yard at Pia. "When this northman falls you'll be where she is."

"Let me go." She tried to wrench free, but Amabel only tightened her fingers.

"He will fall too, Harrenhal pulls them all down in the end. Lord Tywin's won now, he'll be marching back with all his power, and then it will be his turn to punish the disloyal. And don't think he won't know what you did!" The old woman laughed. "I may have a turn at you myself. Harra had an old broom, I'll save it for you. The handle's cracked and splintery—" - Arya X ACOK

Menial, Backbreaking Labor

When Arya is enslaved and forced into the oppressive walls of Harrenhal, she is forced to scrub floors and do other menial, backbreaking work from sunrise to sunset, just like Cinderella:

Weese used Arya to run messages, draw water, and fetch food, and sometimes to serve at table in the Barracks Hall above the armory, where the men-at-arms took their meals. But most of her work was cleaning. The ground floor of the Wailing Tower was given over to storerooms and granaries, and two floors above housed part of the garrison, but the upper stories had not been occupied for eighty years. Now Lord Tywin had commanded that they be made fit for habitation again. There were floors to be scrubbed, grime to be washed off windows, broken chairs and rotted beds to be carried off. The topmost story was infested with nests of the huge black bats that House Whent had used for its sigil, and there were rats in the cellars as well . . . and ghosts, some said, the spirits of Harren the Black and his sons. – Arya VII ACOK

She spent the rest of that day scrubbing steps inside the Wailing Tower. By evenfall her hands were raw and bleeding and her arms so sore they trembled when she lugged the pail back to the cellar. Too tired even for food, Arya begged Weese's pardons and crawled into her straw to sleep. – Arya VII ACOK

Magical Transformations and Mice

In Disney’s Cinderella, the fairy godmother transforms mice into different creatures. On the road to Harrenhal, Arya not only likens herself to a sheep, but a mouse and continues her time at Harrenhal referring to herself as a “mouse”. This is also a subversion, while Cinderella in the Disney incarnation befriends mice, in our story Arya becomes the meek mouse:

On the road Arya had felt like a sheep, but Harrenhal turned her into a mouse. She was grey as a mouse in her scratchy wool shift, and like a mouse she kept to the crannies and crevices and dark holes of the castle, scurrying out of the way of the mighty. – Arya VII ACOK

He does not know me, she thought. Arry was a fierce little boy with a sword, and I’m just a grey mouse girl with a pail. – Arya VII ACOK

She was very small and Harrenhal was very large, full of places where a mouse could hide. – Arya VII ACOK

Even Jaqen calls Arya a mouse:

She crept up quiet as a shadow, but he opened his eyes all the same. “She steals in on little mice feet, but a man hears,” he said. How could he hear me? She wondered, and it seemed as if he heard that as well. “The scuff of leather on stone sings loud as warhorns to a man with open ears. Clever girls go barefoot.” – Arya VIII ACOK

However, through Jaqen, Arya begins to feel more in control of her situation, stronger and is transformed, if only for a short time.

“…Some are saying it was Harren’s ghost flung him down.” He snorted to show what he thought of such notions.

It wasn’t Harren, Arya wanted to say, it was me. She has killed Chiswyck with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I’m the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought. And that night, there was one less name to hate. – Arya VII ACOK

I was a sheep, and then I was a mouse, I couldn’t do anything but hide. Arya chewed her lip and tried to think when her courage had come back. Jaqen made me brave again. He made me a ghost instead of a mouse. – Arya IX ACOK

Lucifer the Cat

In Disney’s Cinderella, Lucifer is Lady Tremaine’s cat who is described as being a sly, wicked, and manipulative mouse consumer. He spends the whole film trying to torment and catch the mice. I feel that Weese takes on aspects of this feline character, and I think this because of certain descriptors that are given to Weese to make him appear almost catlike:

“Weasel,” Weese purred, “next time I see that mouth droop open, I’ll pull out your tongue and feed it to my bitch.” – Arya VII ACOK

In his own small strutting way, Weese was nearly as scary as Ser Gregor. The Mountain swatted men like flies, but most of the time he did not even seem to know the fly was there. Weese always knew you were there, and what you were doing, and sometimes what you were thinking. He would hit at the slightest provocation, and he had a dog who was near as bad as he was, an ugly spotted bitch that smelled worse than any dog Arya had ever known. Once she saw him set the dog on a latrine boy who’d annoyed him. She tore a big chunk out of the boy’s calf while Weese laughed. – Arya VII ACOK

So here we have Weese purring, strutting, being compared to the Mountain who swats at peoples, and being watchful and observant, very much like a cat. And like in the movie, a dog attacks him. Now Weese didn’t fall from a tower window, but Chiswyck fell/was pushed. Considering these two are the two people Arya had Jaqen kill, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are meant to make up two halves of a whole in this regard. After all, they are both wicked creatures who prey upon the weak, just like Lucifer and they both got their just desserts for it.

Jaq the Mouse

In Disney’s Cinderella, Cinderella rescues mice from traps, as well as from Lucifer, and dresses and feeds them. They perform favors in return. At the beginning of the film, a mouse named Gus is trapped in a cage, and the leader of the mice finds him and retrieves Cinderella to free him. The leader of the mice is a mouse named Jaq, and he was also a mouse that was saved by Cinderella from a cage. This sounds awfully familiar…

Rushing through the barn doors was like running into a furnace. The air was swirling with smoke, the back wall a sheet of fire ground to roof. Their horses and donkeys were kicking and rearing and screaming. The poor animals, Arya thought. Then she saw the wagon, and the three men manacled to its bed. Biter was flinging himself against the chains, blood running down his arms from where the iron clasped his wrists. Rorge screamed curses, kicking at the wood. “Boy!” called Jaqen H’ghar. “Sweet boy!”

[. . .]

“Good boys, kind boys,” called Jaqen H’ghar, coughing.

“Get these fucking chains off!” Rorge screamed.

[. . .]

Going back into that barn was the hardest thing she ever did. Smoke was pouring out the open door like a writhing black snake, and she could hear the screams of the poor animals inside, donkeys and horses and men. She chewed her lip, and darted through the doors, crouched low where the smoke wasn’t quite so thick.

A donkey was caught in a ring of fire, shrieking in terror and pain. She could smell the stench of burning hair. The roof was gone up too, and things were falling down, pieces of flaming wood and bits of straw and hay. Arya put a hand over her mouth and nose. She couldn’t see the wagon for the smoke, but she could still hear Biter screaming. She crawled toward the sound.

And then a wheel was looming over her. The wagon jumped and moved a half foot when Biter threw himself against his chains again. Jaqen saw her, but it was too hard to breathe, let alone talk. She threw the axe into the wagon. Rorge caught it and lifted it over his head, rivers of sooty sweat pouring down his noseless face. Arya was running, coughing. She heard the steel crash through the old wood, and again, again. An instant later came a crack as loud as thunder, and the bottom of the wagon came ripping loose in an explosion of splinters. – Arya IV ACOK

So here we have Jaq who is leader of the mice, who also helps Cinderella by doing her favors. Then we have Jaqen H’ghar who is the leader of Rorge and Biter (this name seems even more fitting now) and who is performing favors for Arya, which leads me to Jaqen’s dual Cinderella archetype: Fairy Godmother.

Magical Helpers

Some versions of Magical Helpers come from fairy godmothers or talking animals or genies. In other versions this help comes to the heroine through her dead mother, often manifesting through animal aid. In One Thousand and One Nights, in the story of “Judar and his Brethren” Judar is our Cinderella figure, whose own brothers betray and poison him, but before that he was gifted a genie named Al-Ra’ad al-Kasif who granted Judar’s wishes. In the passage below Jaqen grants Arya three “wishes” which is typical for genies to grant in our popular consciousness:

She remembered that she hated him. “You scared me. You’re one of them now, I should have let you burn. What are you doing here? Go away or I’ll yell for Weese.”

“A man pays his debts. A man owes three.”

“Three?”

“The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life. This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places. Speak the names, and a man will do the rest.”

He wants to help me, Arya realized with a rush of hope that made her dizzy. “Take me to Riverrun, it’s not far, if we stole some horses we could—”

He laid a finger on her lips. “Three lives you shall have of me. No more, no less. Three and we are done. So a girl must ponder.” He kissed her hair softly. “But not too long.” – Arya VII ACOK

Later, we also see that “wishes” have consequences, which is also prevalent when genies are concerned. GRRM himself is a big fan of consequences and unintended side effects.

Jaqen is not Arya’s only form of Magical Help at Harrenhal however. Jaqen may take on the role of Fairy Godmother/Genie, but we also see Arya experiencing the help of not only an animal aid, but from a dead parent. For instance, the heroine in Aschenputtel, by the Brother’s Grimm, is given a hazel twig by her father that she plants over her mother’s grave. She waters it with tears and over the years it grows into a glowing hazel tree. The girl prays under it three times a day, chanting, and a bird emerges from it that grants her wishes. There are two instances of something similar happening in the books:

In the godswood she found her broomstick sword where she had left it, and carried it to the heart tree. There she knelt. Red leaves rustled. Red eyes peered inside her. The eyes of the gods. “Tell me what to do, you gods,” she prayed.

For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya’s skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.

“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”

“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”

“The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now. “I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth. – Arya X ACOK

Here we see an inversion. Arya’s mother isn’t dead at this time, but her father, Ned is. He is who we hear through the heart tree giving Arya this empowering “Mufasa” moment that gives way to Arya’s true transformation in this arc, she reclaims her identity. And as soon as Arya asks the old gods for aid, a wolf howls in the distance as if in answer. It’s not confirmed but I do truly believe that this howl came from Nymeria, by way of the Old Gods/Greenseers, who somehow helped strengthen their bond. It is after this moment that Arya starts having full on wolf dreams in earnest and it’s through her first wolf dream that we see that Nymeria may have become Arya’s animal aid:

Her dreams were red and savage. The Mummers were in them, four at least, a pale Lyseni and a dark brutal axeman from Ib, the scarred Dothraki horse lord called Iggo and a Dornishman whose name she never knew. On and on they came, riding through the rain in rusting mail and wet leather, swords and axe clanking against their saddles. They thought they were hunting her, she knew with all the strange sharp certainty of dreams, but they were wrong. She was hunting them.

She was no little girl in the dream; she was a wolf, huge and powerful, and when she emerged from beneath the trees in front of them and bared her teeth in a low rumbling growl, she could small the rank stench of fear from horse and man alike. The Lyseni’s mount reared and screamed in terror, and the others shouted at one another in mantalk, but before they could act the other wolves came hurtling from the darkness and the rain, a great pack of them, gaunt and wet and silent.

The fight was short but bloody. The hairy man went down as he unslung his axe, the dark one died stringing an arrow, and the pale man from Lys tried to bolt. Her brothers and sisters ran him down, turning him again and again, coming at him from all sides, snapping at the legs of his horse and tearing the throat from the rider when he came crashing to the earth. – Arya I ASOS

We see here that Nymeria and her pack protected Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie against their pursuers after their escape from Harrenhal.

Here is another instance of Arya praying under the heart tree:

Arya went to her knees. She wasn’t sure how she should begin. She clasped her hands together. Help me, you old gods, she prayed silently. Help me get those men out of the dungeon so we can kill Ser Amory, and bring me home to Winterfell. Make me a water dancer and a wolf and not afraid again, ever.

Was that enough? Maybe she should pray aloud if she wanted the old gods to hear. Maybe she should pray longer. Sometimes her father had prayed a long time, she remembered. But the old gods had never helped him. Remembering that made her angry. “You should have saved him,” she scolded the tree. “He prayed to you all the time. I don’t care if you help me or not. I don’t think you could even if you wanted to.”

“Gods are not mocked, girl.”

The voice startled her. She leapt to her feet and drew her wooden sword. Jaqen H’ghar stood so still in the darkness that he seemed one of the trees. “A man comes to hear a name. One and two and then comes three. A man would have done.”

Arya lowered the splintery point toward the ground. “How did you know I was here?”

“A man sees. A mean hears. A man knows.”

She regarded him suspiciously. Had the gods sent him? “How’d you make the dog kill Weese? Did you call Rorge and Biter up from hell? Is Jaqen H’ghar your true name?

“Some men have many names. Weasel. Arry. Arya.”

She backed away from him, until she was pressed against the heart tree. “Did Gendry tell?”

“A man knows,” he said again. “My lady of Stark.”

Maybe the gods had sent him in answer to her prayers. – Arya IX ACOK

In Cenerentola, the heroine’s (Zezolla) father is given a date seedling by a fairy and he gives it to his daughter. Zezolla cultivates the tree in which a fairy lives. This fairy gives Zezolla magical aid. When Arya prayed beneath the heart tree in the above quote it almost seems like Jaqen appeared from the trees, leaving Arya to question if the old gods sent him.

And like in Aschenputtel and Disney’s Cinderella, Arya spends time at Harrenhal singing/chanting to herself as well:

Barefoot surefoot lightfoot, she sang under her breath. I am the ghost in Harrenhal. – Arya IX ACOK

This is very strange for a couple of reasons. When we first meet Arya she claims not to like songs and doesn’t sing. She continues this up until she goes to Braavos. There she discovers that she likes the bawdy songs when she is using the name, Cat of the Canals. The only exception to this is when Arya is at Harrenhal. Another reason this is odd is because of where Arya is at physically and mentally. So either Arya was always lying about not liking songs, or Arya singing here is supposed to tell us something.

And while this might not mean anything, I found it interesting that Arya spends a lot of her time in ACOK barefoot. Now Cinderella isn’t really said to be barefoot in the stories, but she did usually lose a shoe when running away from the Prince/King, hence making her barefoot. When Arya decides to escape Harrenhal, she does don a pair of shoes again and from then on out she mostly wears them. This also leads to a fun bit of subversion. In the originals tales it’s always the Prince/King saving Cinderella from further oppression. But in Arya X ACOK, not only did she (a princess) plan the escape, but she saves Gendry, a lost (albeit bastard) prince, along with Hot Pie, from further oppression (and torture and death) by their slavers in their prison camp. (Hot Pie definitely reminds me of Gus Gus as well by the way :D)

From Rags to Riches

In many versions of Cinderella, we also see the heroine become physically transformed. The heroine is usually dirty, covered in ashes, and wearing “rags” before they are made over. In the most popular version, Disney’s Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother magically turns her from dirty household servant to highborn lady, adorning her in a silver ballgown and glass slippers. In Ye Xian, magical fish bones, help the heroine dress appropriately for a local Festival, including a light, golden shoe. And in Aschenputtel, the doves that emerge from her hazel tree, that grant the heroine wishes, drop a gold and silver gown and silk shoes down to her to wear to the ball. Also, noticeably, this is the time the Prince/King notices Cinderella and finally “sees” her.

While we didn’t get anything like that in ACOK, we don’t have to look much farther than ASOS, when Arya goes to Acorn Hall and meets Lady Smallwood, who puts her in two different dresses:

And afterward, they insisted she dress herself in girl’s things, brown woolen stockings and a light linen shift, and over that a light green gown with acorns embroidered all over the bodice in brown thread, and more acorns bordering the hem. – Arya IV ASOS

It was even worse than before; Lady Smallwood insisted that Arya take another bath, and cut and comb her hair besides; the dress she put her in this time was sort of lilac-colored, and decorated with little baby pearls. The only good thing about it was that it was so delicate that no one could expect her to ride in it. – Arya IV ASOS

And while there is no ball, Arya and Gendry spend their time in the forge together. This is the very first time Gendry has seen Arya look like a proper lady. Cinderella and Arya are no longer dirty and in rags and they are now in gowns looking their place in society, despite Arya’s dress not being nearly as grand. However, it’s enough of a change for Gendry to finally realize just who Arya truly is when it comes to her place in the world. And judging by his behavior after this event, he also begins to acknowledge that if he continues to stay by her side he could potentially love her romantically in the future as well:

Gendry reached out with the tongs as if to pinch her face, but Arya swatted them away.

[. . .]

Gendry put the hammer down and looked at her. “You look different now. Like a proper little girl.”

“I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns.”

“Nice, though. A nice oak tree.” He stepped closer, and sniffed at her. “You even smell nice for a change.” – Arya IV ASOS

Runaway Princess

Now we may not have had a ball, but while taking shelter in a stone stable with the Brotherhood Without Banners, Arya does run outside, trying to get away from everyone:

His words beat at her ears like the pounding of a drum, and suddenly it was more than Arya could stand. She wanted Riverrun, not Acorn Hall; she wanted her mother and her brother Robb, not Lady Smallwood or some uncle she never knew. Whirling, she broke for the door, and when Harwin tried to grab her arm she spun away from him quick as a snake.

Outside the stables the rain was still falling, and distant lightning flashed in the west. Arya ran as fast as she could. She did not know where she was going, only that she wanted to be alone, away from all the voices, away from their hollow words and broken promises. All I wanted was to go to Riverrun. It was her own fault, for taking Gendry and Hot Pie with her when she left Harrenhal. She would have been better alone. If she had been alone, the outlaws would never have caught her, and she’d be with Robb and her mother by now. They were never my pack. If they had been, they wouldn’t leave me. She splashed through a puddle of muddy water. Someone was shouting her name, Harwin probably, or Gendry, but the thunder drowned them out as it rolled across the hills half a heartbeat behind the lightning. The lightning lord, she thought angrily. Maybe he couldn’t die, but he could lie. – Arya VIII ASOS

Now it’s not explicitly clear that it was Gendry who ran after Arya, calling her name, but due to the possible symbolism in the scene, and also his behavior in AFFC, it makes me think it was him. But whether he was or not I believe just Arya believing it might be him makes this applicable enough as a loose parallel for the Prince chasing after Cinderella, only for Cinderella to disappear like in many of the Cinderella retellings.

Searching the Realm

At the end of ASOS in the epilogue we learn that Lady Stoneheart and the Brotherhood Without Banners, who Gendry is a part of is actively searching for Arya:

The outlaw gave him (Merrett Frey) an encouraging smile. “Well, as it happens, we’re looking for a dog that ran away.”

“A dog?” Merrett was lost. “What kind of dog?”

“He answers to the name Sandor Clegane […] Did you see him at the wedding, perchance?”

[. . .]

“He would have had a child with him,” said the singer. “A skinny girl, about ten. Or perhaps a boy the same age.”

“I don’t think so,” said Merrett. “Not that I knew.” – Epilogue ASOS

In many retellings of the Cinderella story, the Prince/King searches the realm looking for the heroine with an identifying item, and typically that item is a shoe of some sort. Once the shoe is placed on the heroine’s foot it symbolically means the heroine is reclaiming her identity. Arya, however, didn’t lose a shoe, and I’d argue that when Ned/the Old Gods/the Greenseers spoke to Arya through the heart tree, empowering Arya, that’s when Arya reclaimed her identity, at least for that time as Arya must reclaim her identity multiple times in her arc. I’d argue that Arya’s connection to the North and her family is her overall identifying item. But I fully believe Gendry himself might be another “identifying item,” along with him still taking on the archetypal role of “prince”.

Why do I say this? Because in AFFC Gendry is stationed at one of the last known places Arya was sighted at with the Hound, the Crossroads Inn, where he is blacksmithing while also helping to look after orphans. He was likely stationed there by Lady Stoneheart and the Brotherhood Without Banners because he knew Arya the best out of everyone (remember LSH would probably have a hard time recognizing Arya after two plus years and a resurrection). So if she returned, he would not only have a better chance at recognizing her, but also possibly a better chance at keeping her there compared to anyone else. If people are doubting that this is Gendry’s role, just remember that the BWB is actively looking for Arya, and also note Gendry’s personality shift post-ASOS. Gendry has always been rude and moody, but in AFFC it has been taken to the extreme. He is absolutely furious and instead of being just plain rude, he’s actually become mean and more violent. He also seems to have something against the Hound now, someone who he previously had nothing against during the Hound’s trial by combat earlier in ASOS:

…The boy came and stood beside her, his hammer in his hand.

Lightning cracked to the south as the riders swung down off their horses. For half a heartbeat darkness turned to day. An axe gleamed silvery blue, light shimmered off mail and plate, and beneath the dark hood of the lead rider Brienne glimpsed an iron snout and rows of steel teeth, snarling.

Gendry saw it too. “Him.”

“Not him. His helm.” Brienne tried to keep the fear from her voice, but her mouth was dry as dust. – Brienne VII AFFC

That “him” was very pointed and because of the symbolism in the scene surrounding that “him” and the overall change in Gendry’s behavior I definitely take it to mean Gendry does have a problem with the Hound now. So what changed? The Hound kidnapped Arya. I think it’s safe to say that Gendry is just as invested as the rest of the BWB, if not more so, to finding Arya again, hence making him the “prince” searching the realm for his lost Cinderella.

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

In Disney’s Cinderella, songs like “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”, “So This Is Love”, “Cinderella”, “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, “Oh, Sing Sweet Nightingale”, and “The Work Song” are included into the film. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this in the previous retellings however. Like I mentioned earlier the Brother’s Grimm, Aschenputtel, features this as well to some extant. In Aschenputtel, the heroine would “sing a chant” to call upon the white doves that came from her glowing hazel tree. These birds would help her grant wishes and help her complete tasks, and it was most likely the inspiration for why birds were included in the Disney version, although birds have featured in more than just Aschenputtel. I mention this because GRRM wrote Arya a song in the novels:

“My featherbed is deep and soft,

and there I'll lay you down,

I'll dress you all in yellow silk,

and on your head a crown.

For you shall be my lady love,

and I shall be your lord.

I'll always keep you warm and safe,

and guard you with my sword.

“And how she smiled and how she laughed,

the maiden of the tree.

She spun away and said to him,

no featherbed for me.

I'll wear a gown of golden leaves,

and bind my hair with grass,

But you can be my forest love,

and me your forest lass.”

This is very clearly a love song also and we know it’s most likely about Arya and her foreshadowing a possible future relationship with Gendry. And it’s very clearly about them as Gendry is a bastard Baratheon “prince”, hence the mentions of “yellow silk” and a “crown”, and also because Arya quite literally is dressed as an oak tree at this time and almost a maiden and will be a maiden when they reunite later in the series. We also know the song is meant to foreshadow them because of the context. Tom O’Seven’s specifically winked at Arya as he sang this song, and after the song was sung Lady Smallwood, when taking Arya to get changed into a different dress, said to Arya, “I have no gowns of leaves,” which further tells the readers that this song is Arya’s song, her future love song.

A Mother’s Legacy

In the Magical Helpers section above I mentioned that a dead parent may be the one to help the heroine instead of the typical fairy godmother, by either sending an animal to aid the heroine and/or granting wishes, or by the heroine’s mother transforming into an animal. In some Greek versions, in “the Balkan-Slavonic tradition of the tale”, and in some Central Asian variants, the heroine’s mother comes back as a cow who is then killed by the heroine’s sisters. The heroine eventually gathers the bones and from her mother’s grave the heroine is gifted wonderful dresses. In other variants, the heroine’s dead mother comes back as a fish or a female dog. These animals represent the heroine’s mother’s legacy.

Jon chuckled. “Perhaps you should do the same thing, little sister. Wed Tully to Stark in your arms.”

“A wolf with a fish in its mouth?” It made her laugh. “That would look silly…” – Arya I AGOT

That night she went to sleep thinking of her mother, and wondering if she should kill the Hound in his sleep and rescue Lady Catelyn herself. When she closed her eyes she saw her mother’s face against the back of her eyelids. She’s so close I could almost smell her…

…and then she could smell her. The scent was faint beneath the other smells, beneath moss and mud and water, and the stench of rotting reeds and rotting men. She padded slowly through the soft ground to the river’s edge, lapped up a drink, then lifted her head to sniff. The sky was grey and thick with cloud, the river green and full of floating things. Dead men clogged the shallows, some still moving as the water pushed them, others washed up on the banks. Her brothers and sisters swarmed around them, tearing at the rich ripe flesh.

[. . .]

The scent was stronger now [. . .] Only the scent mattered. She sniffed the air again. There it was, and now she saw it too, something pale and white drifting down the river, turning where it brushed against a snag. The reeds bowed down before it.

She splashed noisily through the shallows and threw herself into the deeper water, her legs churning. The current was strong but she was stronger. She swam, following her nose. The river smells were rich and wet, but those were not the smells that pulled her. She paddled after the sharp red whisper of cold blood, the sweet cloying stench of death. She chased them as she had often chased a red deer through the trees, and in the end she ran them down, and her jaw closed around a pale white arm. She shook it to make it move, but there was only death and blood in her mouth. By now she was tiring, and it was all she could do to pull the body back to shore. As she dragged it up the muddy bank, one of her little brothers came prowling, his tongue lolling from his mouth. She had to snarl to drive him off, or else he would have fed. Only then did she stop to shake the water from her fur. The white thing lay facedown in the mud, her dead flesh wrinkled and pale, cold blood trickling from her throat. Rise, she thought. Rise and eat and run with us. – Arya XII ASOS

“So you sewed his head on Robb Stark’s neck after both o’ them were dead,” said yellow cloak.

“My [Merrett Frey] father did that [. . .] I only drank some wine…you have no witness.”

“As it happens, you’re wrong there.” The singer turned to the hooded woman. “Milady?”

The outlaws parted as she came forward, saying no word. When she lowered her hood, something tightened inside Merrett’s chest, and for a moment he could not breathe. No. No, I saw her die. She was dead for a day and night before they stripped her naked and threw her body in the river. Raymund opened her throat from ear to ear. She was dead.

Her cloak and collar hid the gash his brother’s blade had made, but her face was even worse than he remembered. The flesh had gone pudding soft in the water and turned the color of curdled milk. Half her hair was gone and the rest had turned as white and brittle as a crone’s. Beneath her ravaged scalp, her face was shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her nails. But her eyes were the most terrible thing. Her eyes saw him, and they hated.

“She don’t speak,” said the big man in the yellow cloak. “You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep for that. But she remembers.” He turned to the dead woman and said, “What do you say, m’lady? Was he part of it?”

Lady Catelyn’s eyes never left him. She nodded. – Epilogue ASOS

In the Chinese retelling of Cinderella, Ye Xian, the heroine befriends a fish, which is the reincarnation of her deceased mother. In The Story of Tam and Cam, a Vietnamese version, the heroine Tam also had a fish which was killed by the stepmother and the half-sister, and its bones also give her clothes. And a typical scene in Kapmalaien tales is the mother becoming a fish, being eaten in fish form, the daughter burying her bones and a tree sprouting from her grave.

So not only is Lady Catelyn a symbolic fish, a daughter of House Tully, but she’s also been resurrected (reincarnated), and is looking specifically for our heroine, Arya, who I believe will be gifted several various things (both good and bad) by this incarnation of her mother, but we shall see if the parallel continues when TWOW and ADOS come out.

Conclusion

I really hope that after you read this monster you were as convinced as I am that Arya indeed has Cinderella motifs, and an extensive amount of them as well. Whatever it may mean I don’t rightly know, but what I do know is that at the end of the day, the many stories of Cinderella are an analogy. An analogy about someone “who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect”. Of someone whose attributes were unrecognized in their society, only for them to be recognized. And I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty hand in hand with one of her other biggest fairy tale motifs as well that runs concurrently with the Cinderella motif, and that is the story of “The Ugly Duckling”, who after years of neglect, finds acceptance within society, as well as self-acceptance within themselves. :)

#arya stark #gendrya #asoiaf

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esther-dot · 3 years ago

Note

One thing that has always baffled me about the fandom is how Sansa's mistakes are difficult to forgive than say the acts committed by other characters which are worse . It could be an unpopular opinion but I don't think it's rooted in misogyny even though a good chunk of it is . ASOIAF as a saga operates on POV structure and perception that we have as readers of a POV character is coloured by the said POV's interactions with other POV characters .

For example , in AGOT we have Sansa butting her head with her father and her younger sister both of whom are introduced positively . Then in ASOS we have her clash with Tyrion even though it isn't as active as the one she had with Ned and Ary@ . Obviously she clashes with Cersei who is another POV character but we don't get Cersei as POV till AFFC . Now there are 3 active POV characters with whom Sansa interacts and all of them are fan favourites and have underdog coding . So a zero sum analysis is framed while analysing Sansa wrt to them " Sansa the mean pretty girl to noble tomboy @rya" , " Sansa the vapid shallow daughter to noble Ned " or " Sansa the shallow ungrateful pretty maiden to kind ugly Tyrion " is how these dynamics are juxtaposed because Sansa as a character doesn't have underdog framing in comparison to those characters who have tropey underdog framing . It's interesting about how one day I was going through some old reddit forums about the topic of Sansa Tyrion marriage and I was surprised to see how the tone against those topics have shifted throughout the years . Earlier it was about sad Tyrion but now most of them are geared towards about how Sansa instead of being the shallow princess who has the upper hand is actually the one with the lack of agency . It's also interesting how in the recent years Ned's parenting failures are acknowledged in the fandom and that how Blackwater was an attempted assault rather than sexual tension culminating into wet dream . It's really a refreshing transition and thanks to the Jonsa fandom for that . That is why you have accusations about how Jonsas aren't true Sansa fans and that they are trying to make everything about Sansa and how we don't understand her character .

Regarding POV interactions , another interesting example is J@ime , a character that is easily forgived by readers once he gets his POV and I think that is one of GRRM's intentions . Yes, he clashes with the Starks but the thing is when he is introduced to us a POV, it is in ASOS at his lowest and halfway the book we get a flashback to his character about the things he had to commit while he was young and they are painted with tragedy . Later as I said about POV interactions , the ones he clashes with is his villain coded twin and that is how the POV trap is birthed in J@ime's arc and the so called redemption because this clash with a villain is to make the reader think that he was always a good person who was corrupted by his twin and is now taking strides to better himself . I have always wondered why Grrm didn't introduce him as a POV in the first book and the things that he does - throwing a kid and supporting the corrupt Lannister regime ( cuckolding the king ) would be pained in a negative light by the narrative and the funny thing is even after being assigned a POV , he is doing the same things in Feast Dance only this time it is under the garb of Goldenhand the Just instead of the damned Kingslayer .

Coming back to Sansa one of the accusations in her show version was that her S6-8 self was inconsistently written and that was because she clashed with characters . It's really interesting how the vitriol that was geared towards her in the later season is quite similar to that of the first season and the common factor in both of them is that she clashed with fan favourites . In S1 it was Ned and @rya and in later season it was Jon, @rya, D@ny . That's why I always lol when ppl say how they love book Sansa but hate Sandra Bolton when AGOT Sansa is perhaps one of the most hated characters in the entire fandom . If the later books have her in conflict with fan favs then the same worshippers will throw her under the bus .

I think whatever we perceive of a character is mostly not derived from canon characterisation but from POV placements ( when they are introduced as POVs and how they clash with other POVs ). I was reading an essay about a critic on GRRM's incoherent writing on Sansa and one of the accusations was that her transition from AGOT to ACOK was a bit incoherent as if there was some off page character development and growth . The thing was Sansa's act of kindness of saving Dontos in ACOK seemed a bit ooc to the essayist considering how she was penned by the author in AGOT . The problem is her first act of kindness in the books was not saving Dontos but consoling S@ndor in AGOT and as I said how POV placements color the view of the characters - in this respect it was the essayist's just because she clashes with underdog fanfav @ry@ , most people seem to think that her entire AGOT arc is being mean to her sister and betraying her family when it is not so . Thats why one of the judgements about Sansa's is that she garners sympathy for what she had to go through but that doesn't mean she is a kind person because her rude awakening made her think .

Regarding POV placements , it's interesting how D@ny hasn't had a conflicting POV character interact with her in 5 books ( Barristan doesn't count ) . We haven't had seen her clash heads with a POV character and maybe that will change as she journeys towards Westeros starting with Tyrion in TWOW .

Anon, I was gonna hit like and reblog and then remembered this was an ask so all I can do is hit post. You explained this all so well, nothing else needs to be said!

Actually, one thing I to add to the mix is that I think Martin is pulling from some classic lit that features naive/innocent heroines, and he may have not realized how modern fans who don't have the same literary background would respond to such a character, might despise those things that make her vulnerable. Naive is not stupid and it isn't a ruse to hide evil, it's innocence. I assume the fandom simply can't accept that because this kind of character doesn't feel familiar to them.

The combo of that and the POV issue makes me want to be sympathetic to them, but Sansa fans have been churning out content for years explaining her, so now those excuses don't quite cover the fandom's insistence on their negative interpretation. People lose all perspective when it comes to Sansa (in my experience), so I'm really surprised that you found Sansa positive content on Reddit which was the worst when I stopped going in 2018. I’m so happy that even there she has defenders!

#ask dot #long post

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istumpysk · 3 years ago

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You know antis use the " willowy" segment to throw shade at Jonsas because Sansa isn't as resourceful as warrior princesses and how she ain't his type . I think they forget 🤣😆 that Sansa plots her own escape , lies convincingly to a smart man like Tyrion and is actually able to escape her captors after also unknowingly killing a despotic tyrant. Also I am cent percent sure that Varys and his little birds were also unaware of Sansa meeting Dontos.

Alright now I do think GRRM was referring to Sansa or should I say she unconsciously hovers in Jon 's POV in ADWD ( Remember the fertile food and Vale 😉 ) . Now buckle up because I do think this might have been bought up earlier by an intelligent Jonsa but considering you want to hoard everything in the Jonsa treasury so that when TWOW comes you can unlock the treasury so that all of us can together use the coins to sneer at antis.

We know Jon has a fool imagery - " You know nothing Jon Snow " ( I hated how the show literally interpreted this line to make him look clueless and dumb ). Now this whole princess in the tower joke that Jon pulls doesn't only unconsciously refer to Sansa but also to his own mother Lyanna ( This is GRRM's doing ) . Now contrary to her " passive " niece , Lyanna was a gifted horse rider and an able fighter . But guess what unlike her passive niece who successfully plots her own escape , Lyanna tragically succumbs . Another anti parallel is how both of them pray for their elder brothers to come rescue them and kill their captors ( Jonny boy don't make fun of princesses trapped in tower ) , Robb fails to kill Sansa's captors and rescue her because he dies before he comes anywhere near Kings Landing whereas Ned happens to reach Tower of Joy and ends up killing Lyanna's captors. Sansa's hopes are dashed but later she flees whereas Lyanna's prayers are fulfilled but by that time it's too late.

So all in all, I think that passage of " Warrior Princess ... Willowy creature " neither tells us about Jon's preference for tomboys nor does it say anything about his preference for ladies. I don't think it has anything to do with attraction or types . It's more of a cruel twisted pun purposefully introduced by GRRM under the garb of the fool imagery - " Jon Snow, you know nothing about princesses trapped in tower so better not try to pull jokes on them because your mother was one and the girl perhaps who is unconsciously hovering in your POV while you made that joke actually subverted that trope . Never mind there is actually a legend about how she employed witchcraft to engineer her escape and oh btw a ghostly Direwolf was seen prowling while her captor was dying " . Twisted puns as literary devices are also employed in Jaime and Theon's POV ( both of them are foils to Jon ) .

Intelligent Jonsas have already penned metas on Arianne Sansa parallels . So to add, Sansa Lyanna aren't the only aunt niece Princess in the Tower duo . Elia and Arianne are another . The nieces' fates would be in complete opposite to the tragic fates of their aunts .

Well there you go. 😳 Well said, anon. What else can I say?

I always feel so much pressure when metas show up in my mailbox. Guys, I'm only going to ruin your work by responding with something juvenile, and entirely below the standard you’ve set, lol.

The only thing I'll add is that the people who weaponize the “willowy creature” quote, and believe it to be an actual reflection of Jon as a person, must not think highly of him. It’s a pitiful thing for him to think, and not a great moment.

Jon, almost every woman in your society is reliant upon a man for her survival and well being, you ignorant asshole.

(Please don’t come for me, I know he’s not being sincere. That’s not our boy. He’s just grouchy, give him a Snickers.)

#stumpy ask #anon #jonsa

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caithyra · 4 years ago

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I’m suuuure he’s shocked /s

GRRM: “Oh woes! I have created a perfect and supporting family for my main characters and I need conflict to make it interesting! What could possibly ruin a good family?”

GRRM: “Ah! A girly girl, of course!” *Creates Sansa.* “And a traitorous bitch at that who would chose to support and protect her child over her birth family who do not rely on her for protection! Surely all shall realize what a bad person she is! It’s not like her own mother would be condemned for abandoning a child that’s not even her own!” *Creates first outline.* “But wait! She shall be prepubescent at the start of the story...” *Starts creating the actual story.* “I shall introduce her through the resentful tomboy’s perspective! And I shall have grown men slobbering over this prepubescent girly girl because we all know that’s ~*historically accurate*~! Oh, people do not like her? I am shocked! Shocked!”

Like, it says a lot about a narrative that when the author wants to create conflict and shake up a healthy family dynamic in a supremely patriarchal world, that he introduces a prepubescent, feminine sister who is unfavored by her father compared to her tomboy sister (even Sansa’s betrothal is a sham even if it would have made her future queen-in-waiting. If everything went as Ned planned, her virtue would have been ruined on the Trident and after he breaks the betrothal with Joff by accusing him of being a bastard, Sansa’s play-acting at love and having been alone with Joff would have ruined her for good, future prospects and the best she would get is either a disinherited second son who no one else wants to marry or a jumped up house who wants some blue blood like the Freys, Baelishes or Westerlings-Spicers that no one important likes.

Arya, by being younger, and more like Lyanna, would have gotten the queenhood and crown prince by Robert’s second wife after Cersei is disposed of, since Robert really wants to marry his child to Ned’s children, so no one better tell me that Ned ever put Sansa ahead of Arya the same he puts Arya ahead of Sansa. He freaking hides behind his prepubescent daughter’s skirts while investigating what he believes are ruthless murderers who had no qualms killing the most powerful men in the realm in a hyper-patriarchy! And it is the other daughter he warns about dangers and gives lessons in fighting! Like what was Ned thinking would happen with Sansa? Did he even care? Did he think he could just sweep it under rugs and forget it? She will need to marry within recent memory of her scandalous conduct since she’ll be twenty in less than a decade! And marriageable age in Westeros is 16! And yet the fandom goes “Poor Ned to have that traitorous bitch for a daughter~” “She should have listened to Ned who never spoke to her and explained himself or the world wouldn’t be ending~” “I don’t hate Sansa but she was sooo stupid for not blindly obeying her loving father who punishes her for her sister’s sins and never explains himself~” is it any wonder my patience with Ned Stark’s parental fuck ups ran out? Congrats, fandom, you made me hate him by excusing his fuck ups and blaming them on his daughter all the time!).

GRRM tries to make it gray, but he knows full well what kind of audience he writes to when he writes the relationships between Cat and Jon, and Arya and Sansa and should have compensated.

Hell, he should have made Joff a good person, prince and promising future king that most girls would like to marry, only to show that’s not what Ned cares about (after all, unless Ned wants Sansa to be abused like half the fandom, he had no idea that Joff was bad when he betrothed them), he cares about birth and truth and “High As Honor” over practical things like “Winter is Coming and Staying for Ten Freezing Years and Does Not Care Who Sits On the Throne So Lets Not Start a Civil War with One of the Most Powerful Families in the Realm, hm?”.

I mean, no one likes Drizzt Do’Urden’s sisters/mother/the matriarchy as a whole, do they? The Dark Elf Trilogy predates ASoIaF by six years, and should have shown a competent writer exactly what the state of womanhood in the Fantasy genre was like. And if you’re going “well, the matriarchy is evil!” I would like to point out that people hate Cattie-brie who is not part of that matriarchy. Yeah. There’s a reason why Menzoberranzan could be written that way and published and become popular, and it was not that Fantasy readers love and support and makes the effort to identify with and understand female characters (nor does most authors, come to think of it... see female friendships in ASoIaF that are without any sexual, incest, or abusive~ Like Arianne and Tyene being as close as sisters in the Later Books Which Are Not Early Installment Weirdness... Oh wait...).

Heck, in the Belgariad, another series predating both of them, things were more subtle but hardly better for female characters; Polgara is a mother figure who gets to have a moment of being imperfect, but to anyone reading the story, it is clear that Garion is the true victim in the circumstances and conspiracies Polgara’s family has woven around him, and that his anger is the immediate reaction of finding out the truth (he just found out how/why he was orphaned and now has the world on his shoulders! And the characters bag on him for not being understanding of the 1000s of years old woman who lied to him and now is sulking. It is blatantly obvious to the readers that it is not the male character in the wrong). The less said about Ce´Nedra (half hyper-sexual dryad, spoiled princess who wants bigger breasts, et cetera) the better. Heck, the less said about the lovable oaf of the hero group committing marital rape on his estranged wife to cure her of being a bitch and turn her loving the better.

The Narnia books predates even that, and Sansa’s direct parallel is Susan, and, yeah... “A silly and vain young woman” with “Plenty of time to mend” sounds very familiar when you hear how people blame Sansa and wants to force her into abusive marriages with repulsive men to mend her.

Not to mention that in Lord of the Rings and related works women are either paragons of virtue, evil, unnamed or are chastised for being ambitious, with a few, notable exceptions allowed to make “wrong” choices, and, well, just see the Elwing discourse in fandom and how her murderers who kidnapped and kept her children (Elrond and Elros, yes, that Elrond for those not familiar with Tolkien’s Legendarium and only watched the movies) as hostages are their ~*real parents*~ after committing a third almost-genocide against her people.

Yeah, no. GRRM doesn’t get to pretend he’s shocked and/or confused by his readers’ reception to Sansa (and Cat). He does not live, read nor write in a vacuum. This shit has been part of Fantasy fandom since long before ASoIaF was an errant idea in his head.

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miraculouscontent · 4 years ago

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Askplosion #11:

(note that I know I mentioned a “Voiced Askplosion” last time in the tags for anyone who put a 🎤 in their ask, meaning they wanted to hear me respond verbally to it, but I only got one and it wasn’t anything serious - just a tease from someone I know - so I either won’t be doing it at all or will be holding off)

Asks responding to previous posts:

ALYA NO!!!

(the idea of Sabrina avoiding not only Ms. Mendeleiev, but also Alya, is very amusing to me)

The fact that the special focuses on the love square instead of Sabrina and Delmar is a crime.

(also note that “Need some help?” is rhetorical in this context; Alya doesn’t care)

Highly recommended, honestly, otherwise it just turns into a big shame because there are shows I really like but with some content that I don’t like, and why torture myself with it when I can cut it out instead?

Just to give a rough idea, here’s my cut of “Desperada”; mind you, this is just my quick cut of it (basically a “beta” version where I just removed everything I disliked without much care for transitioning/having everything make sense; some of Marinette’s friends talking, the guitar scene, Aspik, etcetera), as I’m not comfortable handing over my “perfect” cut of it since it’s like my personal copy.

Yeah, that’s a super awkward scene. As much as I’d like to imagine that Adrien just doesn’t understand the “guy time” thing (which I still hate), the fact that they use the word “guy” specifically is--ugh.

I wasn’t aware of what he said in the French dub, so thanks! It’s really painful to see her throw so much love his way, openly and publicly and obviously, then be so humiliated for it, only for Adrien to feel nothing for her.

Say whatever you want about Chat Noir’s advances and how sAAAAAAD he is when she rejects him, but her rejections are just that; in private. There aren’t other heroes who are around and Chat is never really humiliated. Even in “Prime Queen,” Chat wasn’t the target - Ladybug was, and then Ladybug shifted it to Nadja - so Marinette is the one taking all the heat in love while Chat gets to sit on the sidelines (plus, then “Oblivio” happened and now people probably all thing they’re a thing).

Yeah! That’s the group I was thinking of!

Thank you!

I’m so sorry that happened. ;—;

I’m not aro but I am ace and I’ve gotten the whole, “oh it’s just because--” stuff before, so I know what it feels like to have people put on the pressure/invalidate you.

YES.

IT’S GORGEOUS.

I’m not really familiar with how holidays are celebrated outside of the bare basics of Christmas/New Year (which I am trying my hardest to forget lol), so I couldn’t say.

Sorry!

New Asks:

10/10 thought, would fantasize again.

Though would also accept MC Audrey just doing some “spring cleaning” of the whole staff in general. I have no idea how she’d replace Jeremy since he’s the company’s poster boy but most of the writers have to go at the very least and Jeremy should be given less power.

I think MC Audrey would appreciate how Kagami carries herself, though potential bonus if - while Tom and Sabine just openly trust whatever Marinette wants - Audrey does a bunch of digging to make sure Kagami is “worthy” of being with Marinette (she takes this all very seriously).

Double potential bonus if Kagami takes it just as seriously, so here’s Audrey and Kagami acting as if Kagami dating Marinette is like some sort of job interview.

Kagami handing over a “resume” of her accomplishments to Audrey. Audrey has already looked all of it up herself but appreciates the effort put in.

If the question in Miraculous is, “Do we really need a--” and the thing being introduced is something the staff came up with then the answer is usually “no.”

The movie will look pretty and that’s all I’ll expect. It’s just Jeremy’s take on Miraculous. Luka and Kagami probably won’t even be around so I’m not even interested.

I’ll watch it, but I’m also not interested lol.

Honestly, I’d rather turn into bubble froth.

oddly specific but... I mean, damn

I have no idea, and I try not to throw around words like “spite ship” because I know people could genuinely like the ship, though I will say that I went on AO3 and - unless I read from - the first Maribat fanfiction on there was posted after the airdate of “Chameleon.” I think it might’ve started with inspiration from “Marinette moves schools” ideas at the very least.

Non-Miraculous Asks responding to previous posts:

Oh, I understood, no worries! It was just funny for the split second it took me to figure it out.

My bad, that’s not how I meant to come off (especially since “magical girl shows” is a little broad; I mean, obviously I don’t think something like Cardcaptor Sakura is aiming for fanservice when Sakura’s--like... ten). I answered all those asks in the last askplosion in the same day so my brain was a little fried by the time I got to that ask.

I’m not even talking about Sailor Moon either; it’s just that I knew there are shows with fanservice and there are certain magical girl outfits where I kind of give the side-eye.

Absolutely zero problem with girls fighting in pretty outfits though. I fully admit that I’m a bit of a prude so sometimes I see fanservice where there might not be any. Super short skirts without shorts, for example, inherently throw me off (shout-out to Saint Tail - which I discovered while looking up “pretty magical girl outfits” - because the main character does have a skirt in “magical girl” form but also tights/boots and a cute hat, which is one of the more unique ones I’ve seen).

Non-Miraculous Asks:

Do you mean Sailor Moon Crystal? Yeah, the only reason I hesitate on Sailor Moon in general is because I’m not crazy about the transformed designs. It’s not really a matter of animation but more a design choice that takes me out of the experience.

I have seen all of Cardcaptor Sakura anime though, and then all of the Clear Card arc. I like the former, despise the latter, and I tried to keep up with the manga but once one of the big plot details were revealed, I officially dropped it.

As for Revolutionary Girl Utena, I looked it up a while ago and don’t remember what exactly turned me away. It might’ve been the darker tone though if what you say is accurate that it’s a darker take on a magical girl show.

Also, I may or may not have looked up the ending of at least Princess Tutu and I’m sorry, I’m sure it’s a great anime, but if there isn’t a happy ending then I give whatever anime a hard pass.

(note: yes, I realize the hilarity of saying that when I continue watching Miraculous)

(More Madoka Magica talk/salt below!)

Ohhh, it started a trend? I had no idea since I don’t actively keep up with every anime out there; descriptions need to really pull me in (the only current anime I’m keeping up with is Hanyou no Yashahime, Otherside Picnic, and Cells at Work (Season 2)).

The focus on specific--uh--body parts in magical girl transformations also reminds me that I think that’s usually what kills it for me, not because of the sexualization but because I expect transformations (especially ones that get repeated over and over) to be really dynamic with changing angles and such, which is harder to do when the camera is trying to draw focus to specific places.

Obviously you have to do it for some moments (I’ve always imagined Miraculous transformations like a potential sheep or another one for rabbit, then rabbit!Jean from Leave for Mendeleiev and fox!Juleka from LadyBugOut) because things will be weird if you focus on nothing, but I think there are ways to draw the eye without trying to sexualize.

Not having Ladybug-esque bodysuits is a good start. It reminds me too much of the Catwoman with just a bodysuit so it leaves nothing to the imagination.

How did I forget about that Sayaka scene? omg (though I dunno if the Bechdel Test is hard to pass if there aren’t really any endgame male love interests? are there rules about that? not saying a pass isn’t a pass but it feels like cheating)

It is nice when fans can respect the opinions of others without having to outright attack. I have had a few people come to me with, “I see your point/respect it even if I disagree,” instead of accusing me/others of--well, you get it.

Fandoms can be really messy, particularly as they get larger. I think there’s a certain balance between small fandoms that all know each other and a big fandom that’s out of control. Then there are things like “loud minority” and it’s just uggggh.

Anyway, back to the asks themselves, yeah, I’m not crazy about taking things that are just meant to be positive/cute/whatever and being like, “OKAY BUT WHAT IF IT WAS EDGY AND SAD.”

n o , p l z

Oh, I’ve never heard of that one!

Sayaka dying didn’t really do anything for me either. It’s hard to explain when I saw it so long ago, but it was just Sayaka’s attitude about the whole thing and it made it feel underwhelming. It was a shame too because I liked her and she had potential.

She was Madoka’s friend so I was just like, “Yeah, she’ll die soon.” Probably didn’t help since I knew what I knew about the show being “dark.”

Madoka/Sayaka is probably what I’d support the most out of all the potential shoujo ai ships. To my knowledge, none of them are really canon, though I remember a special song after the death Sayaka and Kyoko which I guess makes them the most canon and that did basically nothing for me since their relationship didn’t interest me (nor did I care for Kyoko as a character). The PSP game might have more intimate potential between the girls, but I never played them so I can’t make those claims (I only remember something about everyone potentially living and then a bad ending for Sayaka where part of her body was decayed when they didn’t get her soul gem back in time).

The tomboy argument makes me think back to a conversation with a friend of mine where we were discussing tomboys in anime and... we couldn’t really think of any? At least any that really qualify as “tomboy” for me.

Like, Misty from Pokemon, for example. I knoooooow everyone really likes Misty, but regardless of my opinion on her, it’s hard to see her as a tomboy.

I feel like they try to lean that way by making her super aggressive and violent (because... m E N) and I think Ash makes a comment once about her not being “like a girl,” but... I feel like that’s just how general “aggressive” female characters are written?

I mean, that’s tsundere female characters I’ve seen in general. Really loud (and not in a “gIrlS aRe sO lOuD aND ScReEcHY” way but like... the way anime gives them big heads while they scream at whatever male character they’re mad at), angry a lot, short fuse, etcetera.

But Misty is still crazy about clothes and dolls, she still gushes about cute things and romance, and both of those things seem pretty indicative of what “standard girl character” would be defined by, since they’re all “stereotypically girl thing” (I say stereotypically for obvious reasons since boys can like blah and girls can like blah and gender exclusivity is blah--). I get that she dresses differently, but that’s about it, and it comes off like, “she dresses differently and she’s ANGRY and VIOLENT, so she’s a tomboy,” which... yeah. They even gave her three beauty queen sisters with CURVES and BUSTS as if to say, “See?? These are GIRLS, not TOMBOYS.” (busty females can exist who are also tomboys, thank you have a nice day).

This becomes more complicated in magical girl anime since girly clothes are usually part of that so “tomboy” means that frills and skirts probably wouldn’t be a factor.

I mean, if you gave those sorts of outfits to me, I’d be like, “SCREW IT, I’M NOT A MAGICAL GIRL ANYMORE. IF LOOKING PRETTY IS REDUCED TO SKIRTS AND FRILLS, SOMEONE ELSE CAN SAVE THE WORLD.”

I’d also like to see some mixes between personalites and “tomboy” things. Like, non-stereotypical tomboy personalities doing tomboy things. Mix and match, y’know?

This was really rambly, but to answer the question... no, I wouldn’t count Sayaka as a tomboy.

All of this.

I think it also exemplifies the whole “dark and edgy magical girl show” thing because... ugh, how do I put this...

The “girls are overly emotional” thing is already bad, but then you realize that there not being any magical boys is also because that doesn’t hit the “shock value” threshold as much.

Y’know, because boys equal dark and edgy shows, so if there was even one magical boy it wouldn’t be as shocking when Mami gets her head chomped. They could’ve done, “emotional teenagers are the target because they’re in that vulnerable stage; smarter and more physically capable than children, but not as mature/stable as adults,” but having some boys in there for balance (it makes me feel weird saying that when I’m all for girl power shows with an all female cast, but in this show’s logic, it’s a different ball game) would make the show seem less bright and “girly” and thus lessen the shock value.

Does that make sense?

#((Aspies who also deal with Winter Blues or Seasonal Affective Disorder))#((how do you do iiiiiit))#((my usual methods aren't working and I'm constantly sluggiiiish))#category: trash #special: Miraculous New York #MC's Art #art: single picture #relationship: alya cesaire & sabrina raincomprix #category: salt #episode: Party Crasher #relationship: love square #relationship: adrien agreste & marinette dupain cheng #MC: Audrey Bourgeois #relationship: kagami tsurugi & marinette dupain cheng #character: marinette dupain cheng #other: non ml talk

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crazycoke-addict · 4 years ago

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Winx Club: mini fashion analysis

When Netflix released the new trailer for the live action series, Winx Club. There was a lot of uproar. The most talked about on being the fashion. If you aren’t aware the show is about, I’ll give you the summary. A girl name Bloom discovers she’s a fairy when she says another fairy name Stella. Bloom and her friends goes through a lot of mission and rivals with the witches and even spark some romances with the boys from red fountain. Like many 2000s shows that catered to young girls like Bratz and totally spies. Fashion has always been a big in the show than you might think. So, when the new trailer came out and many of characters are darks and greys, it came to no surprise that there would be sheer hatred towards it. Netflix and many others have this thing by having the first season take place around Autumn and have the characters wearing dark and neutral to fit the narrative. I’ve already made my own inspired outfits on each of the girls, but I wanted to go into more details as to what each girl would wear based on their personality, interests and even colours themselves.

Bloom- we’ll start off with the main protagonist. In the series, Bloom is an ordinary girl who finds out that she’s a fairy due to her saving another fairy’s life. It’s also revealed that she was adopted and sets out on a quest to not only learn become a fairy but also find her real parents. In show,Bloom is mostly seen wearing a crop top and denim jeans, but she also seen wearing skirts as the show progresses. Because she was raised in the human world, Bloom’s go to style is mostly in casual look. Although many of the girls have their own casual looks despite some of them being princesses. Each of the girl’s fashion and accessories can also be more connected to their powers, meanwhile Bloom who lives on Earth for the majority of her life is more into normal look but as the show progresses she doesn’t add stylish whether it be the help of Stella. Bloom’s colour scheme is Blue. Although the colours Blue represents colour of the ocean and sky. It symbolise introspective journeys and the depth of understanding. Throughout the series, Bloom is learning about life as a fairy due to her living on Earth since she was a baby. While everybody has more experience with the fairy world, Bloom is seen as the odd one out. On, the other hand, Blue can also have an effect on the pituitary gland by affecting someone’s pattern of sleep. This also connects to Bloom during the series especially in Season 1. Bloom is having a hard time falling asleep because of her ambitions to figure who this daphne woman is that’s been haunting her in her sleep and even awake. She is also seen adding some pinks in her outfit. While I see Bloom going off the casual look than her friends do also see her having a feminine look as as well.

Stella- she’s the first fairy that Bloom meets and convinces her to go to Alfea when she believes that Bloom is a fairy like her. Stella has an outgoing personality who loves to shine and have the spotlight on her. Despite all that, Stella does have her own hardship with one of it being her parent’s divorce which took a toll on her. Out of all the girls, Stella appears to be more stylish even when she does wear her everyday outfit. Stella mostly seen wearing skirts, dresses and tube tops throughout the series. So, She should be wearing outfits that are seen as stylish and also fashion accessories that fits her best. I also see Stella wearing different variety of clothing and also being in with the trend that’s is she’s like them, this is due to her obsession with fashion. I don’t know who’s idea was to have Stella be dressed in black but that’s not her colour at all. Stella’s colour schemes is mostly Orange which fits more with the fact that her powers involves around the sun and also the moon. The colour orange is associated with joy and sunshine, which does fit the character of Stella. It is seen as an fun and bright colour. It’s also worth noted that orange trees are a symbol of love which fits Stella perfectly because in the series, one of the things she does is try playing matchmaker for her friends. The word ‘love’ does fit with Stella than you might think despite being selfish at times, she does care for her friends and will do anything for them. She loves her boyfriend even though lied to her about his real name and didn’t care that he wasn’t a prince. She loves her parents that the fact they aren’t together anymore hurts her but knows it’s for the best. Stella’s fashion should contain the colour orange and her go to style is mostly in skirts and dresses.

Musa- she is introduced when her and Techna come to Alfea. Known as the music fairy, Musa loves playing instruments, singing and dancing. Looking into her fashion, she appears to have a tomboyish look where her go to colours are mostly red, black and later on light purple. Since Musa’s style is more like tomyboyish looks than she should be wearing baggy pants and because of her love for music, she should also be sporting headphones around and look like a DJ. Red is known to be an emotional colour and it fits Musa. Despite having a tough look, Musa is the most vulnerable out of the girls. Although she puts on tough act to protect her emotions, she is due to because the death of her mother and that her father lives far away. Musa is of Asian descent and the colour Red is seen as good luck in Asia and its most popular colour in China. My guess is that because she’s far away from her father and the death of mother did take a toll on her, her wearing something red feels like her mother is always with her.

Techna- Techna first appears in Alfea, the same time when Musa comes in. Techna is known as the brains of the group and is the fairy of technology. Her styles appears to give her a preppy look but with more maturity than the rest of her friends and because she’s into technology, I think her style in the live action should have futuristic aesthetic in it. Through her fashion, Techna is seen wearing mostly purple although seen more as a lavender type of colour. The colour lavender seen as more closely link to intuition and mystery. It’s more of a thinker rather than living the moment naturally, preferring to go into daydreaming or deep thinking. In the show, Techna is seen as self-confident and also perfectionist. She uses practical and logical thinking as way to express her emotions and the bases of the majority of desicions. However as the seasons progresses, Techna does become more open and friendly towards her friends. Techna’s emotions appears to play a meaning role in the show with her, It’s possible because of her being the fairy of technology, she appears act more like a robot or an Advanced A.I. at first using her logical thinking and her intelligence to being more kind-hearted, it’s also worth noting that her colour scheme can from lavender to lilac which encourages emotional expression.

Layla/Aisha- Layla or Aisha is the sixth member of the Winx Club. Layla first appears in Season 2, when she was trying to save the pixies by entering the Darkar’s fortress. Layla appears have an adventurous personality and also seems to be athletic. Through her fashion, she mostly wears khaki shorts which is appropriate clothing for hiking and because she’s an athlete, her fashion is more of a tomboy look. Layla’s colour scheme is green. The colour green is mostly associated with nature, this fits Layla due to her having an adventurous personality and how adventure is similar to saying going on a journey thus going outside and being with nature. Green also symbolises envy, while Layla doesn’t show any envious towards the girls. During her early appearance in the show, she feels to be left out in the group meaning that some envy towards the girls’ friendship and wish to have one like theirs. If they made the live-action version correctly, I do see her wearing army green romper since it’s fits her athletic personality.

Flora- We first see Flora in the same episode where Techna and Musa are introduced, however Flora already there when Stella and Bloom arrive at their dorms. Flora is the fairy of nature and is considered to the second most powerful fairy. When looking into Flora’s style, you can see that she prefer feminine clothing with it being skirts, dresses, puffy tops etc. In the live action, not only Flora should’ve been played by a Latina actress, her outfits should’ve been reminiscent like the cottagecore aesthetic. It’s fits Flora very well because the aesthetic has a softer vibe where you’re in a peaceful and just one with nature. Flora’s colour scheme appears to be pink. The colour, Pink symbolises youth, good health and playfulness. It’s also seen as romantic. Flora specialises with making potions out of her plants and also experimenting, she ends up becoming the potion master of the group by brewing and creating medicines, basically Flora is the healer of group which fits in with pink being a symbolism of health. Pink is associated with qualities such as softness, kindness, nurturance and complassion, this definitely fits Flora’s personality very well.

#Winx Club #fashion #bloom #Flora #Musa #Techna #Layla #Stella

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kindred-is-obsessed · 5 years ago

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Reasons you should be watching Craig of the Creek

Not enough people are watching this wonderful show, so I thought I’d do my best to introduce people to it. It’s made by former Steven Universe crew Ben Levin and Matt Burnett, so if you’re missing Steven Universe while it’s on hiatus this is a great way to keep away the hiatus blues, or if you just enjoy in cartoons. It’s great for a whole list of reasons, which broadly fall into the two categories of great representation and great storytelling:

Canonical queer representation

- The witches premiere in the episode The Curse. If you aren’t sure if you want to watch this whole show definitely watch this one at least! It’s my absolute favourite not least of all because it’s about teen goth girls in love. It has a sequel The Last Kid in The Creek which is also wonderful, and the witches cameo throughout the series. I don’t want to spoil too much but The Curse is essentially about the two not wanting to be separated and struggling to admit their feelings for each other. (Spoilers: they do and walk off alone, blushing, staring at each other lovingly, while the kids aww at them)

- Bernard and his girlfriend watch a cooking show hosted by a gay couple.

- Other cameos, hints and coded queer kids such as JP’s sister (who has fancy dinner reservations with Kat, a woman with a shaved head who compliments Kelsey’s fake sword). There’s also Raj and Shaun (two very close friends), as well as several very boyish tomboys, including Handlebarb and Turner.

- All public bathrooms I’ve spotted in the show have gender neutral signs on them which is nice.

POC representation

- Craig, the main character, is black and has a loving family explored in depth, including an activist grandmother working for the council, a wise and fun grandfather, a supportive fun dad who loves his amazing wife, an adorable assertive little sister, and an angsty overachieving older brother who just wants to be a good grownup who loves his family and girlfriend.

- There are MANY characters of colour. There are black and brown characters, Raj is Indian, Stacks is Hispanic (and it’s implied she is an immigrant), there are several Asian characters, Kelsey is Hungarian and Jewish, a persistent background character wears a hijab (I’m pretty sure she was named at some point but I can’t find her name anywhere. She definitely has lines at one point). I’m sure there are others I have missed. No one is a stereotype as far as I am aware.

Subtle neurodivergent representation

- JP is possibly on the autism spectrum. I’d love neurodivergent people’s opinions on this, but while the representation isn’t canonical or obvious I think it’s good that while JP is represented as having different thought processes from his friends, he isn’t made fun of for it, at least not by them. It’s noteworthy I think that he’s the eldest of the core trio, probably because he finds it easier to relate to younger people who still share his imagination and care less about his unique way of thinking. His neurodivergence is explored most explicitly in the episode Jextra Perrestrial, so if you’re interested in this kind of representation definitely check that episode out.

Non-nuclear family representation

- While the main character is a member of the typical nuclear family you see on TV (except black, and actually interesting) most of the other families we see are not.

- JP is raised by his mother and older sister. His father is never mentioned and their house is definitely in worse condition than the others we see. His family works hard to take care of each other. His sister is a nurse and both her and her mother are away a lot of the time, but they both love JP very much. JP’s sister also happens to be really openly body positive. I love them a lot.

- Kelsey’s father is an only parent. There’s still a lot of mystery surrounding how Kelsey’s mother passed away. It’s a very subtle but important part of Kelsey’s character and comes through in really bittersweet adorable ways (not limited to Kelsey using her “half-orphan”ness to guilt trip a man into giving her money)

- Other kinds of families are scattered throughout the show, including families that move around a lot, a home-school kid with a strict mother, and more.

Unique approach to fantasy and sci-fi

- You know how most kids show will take a kid’s fantasy and bring it to reality? Well Craig of the Creek keeps the fantastical and nostalgic element of that line of thinking but never confirms or denies whether the kids fantasies are real or in their heads. And not in a Scooby Doo way where the fantastical elements are explained away, but are hinted as a possibility right at the very end. Instead, two perspectives (the fantastical perspective and the realistic perspective) are woven into every episode.

- This means there are two ways to interpret every episode. You can view the witches as real witches, or as goth teenagers. You can view Helen as a kid from another dimension, or a home-school kid who is never at the creek at the same time as the other kids. You can view Deltron as a cyborg from the future, or as an imaginative kid from a big city.

- This is super unique and fun to watch. They come up with so many new ideas and its always fun to figure out what’s actually happening, while still getting to relive childhood fantastical nostalgia.

- Almost all of these episodes use this to talk about an issue, but these issues can get quite complex and are definitely not shoved down your throat.

Overarching mystery plot about a colonialist kingdom / cult

- Love the slow burn storytelling of Steven Universe’s Diamond Authority? Love putting together the mysteries of Gravity Falls? Then you’ll love this plot about colonialism, classism, bullying, peer pressure and more and its mysterious build up including cryptic graffiti art and flower symbolism.

- Even before this arc properly begins, Craig of The Creek primarily centers around the microcosm of the Creek. Many of the episodes have a lot of commentary on society, politics and how different factions of people form and interact.

- The show is over 50 episodes in and this arc is only just starting to kick off so now is the time to catch up and watch.

- Fun complex villain(s)

Complex relatable characters

- Want commentary and nostalgia about horse girls, children’s tea parties, weird kids, angsty teens, young weebs, dweebs and more!? Every childhood obsession is represented in this show.

- Adults! All the parents and older teens in this show are just as rich and complex as the kids. They are all so interesting and fun.

- Want characters with arcs, aims, fun relationships and complexity!? Look no further! Redemption arcs! Revelations! Found family! It’s all here!

Great art and soundtrack

- Cute background and character designs that make you nostalgic as hell and are also beautiful and well thought out.

- Sometimes the art design is changed up for a particular episode to portray a certain fantastical / sci fi element. It’s very fun and engaging.

- An opening song that’s fun to sing along to, bittersweet ending song that makes me want to cry, a couple of musical episodes including a super fun rap musical episode, and a great OST

Queer headcanons

- There are tons of ways to interpret the show but here’s some of my head canons just to get an idea.

- (Note that despite my headcanons I use the pronouns for the kids that they use in the show cause I’m not certain about any of it and they’re kids who haven’t come out yet and also for clarity and consistency’s sake – I’m not saying trans people are not their genders. Don’t worry I’m nonbinary)

- I headcanon that all the main trio grow up to realise they are queer. They strike me as that weird group of friends that doesn’t fit in with the other kids and aren’t quite sure how they all came to be friends, only to later realise they all showed early signs of breaking gender roles and that’s why they stuck together.

- Craig definitely grows up to realise he’s gay, bisexual or queer. His admiration for characters like Deltron and Green Poncho are definitely crushes that he mistakes for a strong sudden and eager desire for friendship.

- Kelsey probably grows up to realise she is nonbinary, a trans boy or a WLW. I mostly headcanon this because I relate to her a lot and I’m nonbinary and queer so I said so. She reminds me a lot of myself as a kid. She throws herself into books, mostly fantasy for escapism. She fantasises and writes a lot for the same reasons. She dresses like a tomboy (She always wears her hair up in the same bun which strongly reminds me of my own childhood hair dysphoria) and she hangs out solely with male friends.

- JP gives me strong trans lesbian vibes, or to a lesser extent nonbinary vibes. (I know his sister is WLW coded but take it from me there can be more than one queer in a family). He is interested in girls, specifically Maney the horse girl (he even joined the horse girls for one episode). He wears a long V-neck shirt that is essentially a dress ALL the time. He’s aware that he’s different and while self conscious sometimes, mostly just wants to express himself the way he wants to. He also chooses to go by initials JP over his very gendered name Johnathan Paul (In a recent episode he names a ship after himself, calling it “The SS Johnathon Paulina”).

- (Sidenote if you do start watching this show and I see any nasty shipping of these characters in non puppy-love fashion so help me god)

Other reasons

- The show is at times very intertextual and references Princess Mononoke, Super Smash Brothers, Sailor Moon, Lord of the Rings, and a billion other things. It also has some fun cameos, including background images of the Tres Horny Boys from The Adventure Zone, a TARDIS from Doctor Who, and a Cookie Cat from Steven Universe.

- Honestly, this post hasn’t done the best job explaining why I love this show so much. You honestly just have to watch an episode to understand fully what I’m talking about, so give it a go! Watch The Curse at least, it only goes for 10 minutes.

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fairykeiheaven · 4 years ago

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translation of Shudo Takeshi blog on Kasumi and SatoKasu

#201 "I'm sorry. I forgot about Kasumi" 09-11-2011 To make the TRio prominent in „The Revelation Lugia”, I also had to firmly depict individuality of every other character that appeared less in the movie. I had a hunch that my preparations were done well, but to make assurance double sure, I tried to look again at the appearing characters. As a result, I noticed that my depiction of one important character is weak and I panicked a little. It was the main girl who was travelling together with Satoshi, Kasumi. Why is she travelling together with the leading character Satoshi? I wrote about this earlier, but there’s an answer to Kasumi’s words „It’s just a coincidence that the place where I want to be is where Satoshi is”. „The Revelation Lugia”’s guest character, Flora, said provocatively „Are you Satoshi’s girlfriend? He has such a bad taste” – however it was a provocation towards Kasumi’s existence in the movie, so to speak, they were inflammatory, tit for tat like words. There were also people who felt that there’s a hidden agenda in the line „It’s just a coincidence that the place where I want to be is where Satoshi is” - implying love interest in Satoshi which wasn’t even noticed by Kasumi herself. But, this was a fake (cheat) scene prepared by me to make Kasumi’s presence stand out. Kasumi doesn’t feel love for Satoshi. If her love for him became one of Pokemon’s plots, it would break all the Pokemon series’ structure. Pokemon’s theme is relation between fictionals creatures and people and also growth through think and thin of the young boy (this means an age period for both boys and girls), Satoshi. At least this topic was intuitively decided during the time when I was responsible for Pokemon series’ structure. I already stated in this column that Pokemon’s important theme was like in the movie “Stand By Me”. Even if people don’t want it, they get older and become adults – I came up with this extremely universal human theme in the episode of “The Magic Princess Minky Momo”. In Pokemon however, the most important theme is relation with fictional creatures, which was added to that theme. For Satoshi, who’s a child, Pikachu is th partne he can count on. For example, even if Kasumi fell in love with Satoshi, it wouldn’t be able to interrupt relation between Satoshi and Pikachu. If it was implied that Kasumi developed a childish kind of love for Satoshi, Pokemon would be constructed from different topics and the fundamental theme would not only become complicated, but dispersed. If Kasumi’s love towards Satoshi happened in Pokemon, it would be nothing more than seasoning added to cooking - and, to be honest, for Pokemon’s theme, seasoning that makes taste complicated would be only a disturbance. So from the start, there’s no such factor in Kasumi’s character as love towards Satoshi. Surely, it may be that Kasumi was in the ager when girls fall in love, but “Pokemon” isn’t either a shoujo manga nor a cellphone novel. That’s why, out of all the characters appearing in the Pokemon anime series, the one with the weakest existence is Kasumi. It was decided from the start, when Pokemon anime was during planning, that Satoshi will be character travelling with friends, because if it was only the boy and Pokemon it would become tasteless and it would be hard to introduce to the girls’ audience. This existence could be compared to a parsley in a dish. It doesn’t need to be there, but the dish looks better if you add it. Occassionally, there are people who like parsley in their dish, but it’s a minority. To make matters worse, in the early days of the series’ construction, the scriptwriters of Pokemon were all men, so Kasumi’s character lacked individuality. It would be good if she expressed delicate subtlety of changeable girl’s character, but in reality, Kasumi is only a stereotypical tomboy. Even if we don’t appear much, we’re the real main characters telling Pokemon story… that is, self-aware TRio (that’s what I told voice actors, which they understood at once and since the first TRio’s appearance they were memorizing the motto – I’m ashamed about this, but even if I wrote it, I couldn’t memorize it – I wrote about this earlier, but they were enthusiastic to make it popular at all costs) who are different from Kasumi. Since the beginning, you could feel the TRio’s presence in Pokemon anime much more than Kasumi’s, who’s ranked as the main character. In reality, when I was thinking about the Pokemon anime at first, my last intention was to make the TRio eternal main characters of the Pokemon world who’d surpass growing up Satoshi. Let’s come back to Kasumi. I’ve been worrying about Kasumi’s weak sense of presence since the anime first started. That’s why I took into consideration Kasumi’s presence in my script, even if it might be superficial. I also tried to make Kasumi’s lines hold emotions unique for her. From the start, I was put under great responsibility for the initialization of the Pokemon anime. My attempt to raise Kasumi’s sense of presence was out of sympathy. Pokemon is the anime that carried out a replacement of the main character Takeshi, because of some facial features of the Asian people the foreign countries might not accept. But in the end, we could see that he was accepted even in the foreign countries and came back to the anime as we know. As the show continues, and the ratings start to go downhill, the drama that is substitution of the main characters and rivals under the pretext of strengthening is held. And when it came to substitution of the main characters, the most endangered one was Kasumi with her low sense of presence. It’s not like that I wanted to replace her. But charming personality and sense of presence was necessary. I was making efforts, but to me, the TRio’s sense of presence was more important. The TRio also had skills of their voice actors as their presence felt satisfactory. They couldn’t be replaced. Even if 10 years have passed since I stopped writing scripts for Pokemon, the TRio’s existence is firm. Once in a while, there seem to be the episodes when I don’t know what they’re for, but if the TRio stopped appearing in Pokemon, it would be no longer Pokemon. I’ll go so far as to say that they’re landmark beings of Pokemon. Even when other villains appeared, the TRio was unperturbed. It’s impossible to substitute them. I feel sorry about Kasumi, but I considered the TRio to be the most important. Moreover, it may be only my one-sided view, but both higher-ups and and scriptwriters of the Pokemon production were mostly male. Men in this business, are attracted to various female charms, but they’re poor at getting them out (but this is my own, narrow view). In reality, according to my experience, many people of this business are unskillful in making advances to women. So, in my opinion, the secret of courting women is getting their charm out and praising them. As a digression, I have a strange theory, but I think that when courting a woman, it’s more efficient to tell her 100 times “You’re pretty” or “You’re beautiful” than attract her attention. Of course, it’s not worth considering if you don’t know her beautiful features nor features you want to get beautiful…. If you do so, your partner also will become beautiful for real. I agree with the opinion saying that it’s because both partners, a man flattering a woman with compliments and a woman who’s being complimented get under influence of autosuggestion. This is also the secret of creating a charming woman in the script. This is another digression, but in the most recent movies, dramas and anime created by male scriptwriters and supervisors, women are so uncharming, that it’s shocking. Even if it may look like they’re charming, but this is only thanks to actress’ looks, acting ability and sense of existence. Occasionally, when charming female characters appear in various productions, it turns out that supervisors and scriptwriters are female. In other words, women understand the charm of their own gender and they’re good at getting it out. And then, you would think that male supervisors and scriptwriters are good at creating charming male characters, but it’s not like that. They appear as male figures distorted in some way, someone who you wouldn’t want to associate with as friends. Back in the old days, there were male supervisors and scriptwriters who were skillful at getting out female charm, but I wonder what happened to people these days? But enough of digressions. The one who couldn’t create charming Kasumi was me, responsible for the series’ construction. I was planning to do it in some way in “The Mewtwo’s Counterattack”, when Satoshi said “I wonder, why I’m here?” and I wanted to make her to tell the theme of the movie with a meaning “We exist because we exist. And it’s fine this way”, but as the TRio said “Somehow it’s a very good feeling” in the last scene, Kasumi’s existence was blown off. In “The Revelation Lugia”, I prepared a scene where Kasumi rescued Satoshi who nearly drowned in the sea. She was resuscitating Satoshi by giving him artificial respiration, but in the script she was really only knocking many times Satoshi’s chest as he wasn’t breathing. If Satoshi dies now, what will happen to my existing position in the Pokemon? – it wasn’t like she wanted Satoshi to live because she loved him, but rather, I had an intention to show her filled with anger that her own existence would become even weaker, if Satoshi died. Because higher-ups thought that this scene could have been misunderstood by people in foreign countries as being too violent, knocking has been erased. As you couldn’t see Kasumi’s anger in this scene, it unfortunately made people get the wrong idea that Kasumi’s desperate attempt to save Satoshi was a sign of love. However, in this case, she’s nothing more than general, stereotypical girl. She ended up being very ordinary girl buried among many individual characters in “The Revelation Lugia”. Later, new series of Pokemon appeared and Kasumi was replaced by another girl. However, whether the new girl was more charming than Kasumi or not, was beyond my control. One of the things connected to my job as the series constructor I feel sorry about is that I couldn’t pull out Kasumi’s charm. I also felt sorry for the voice actress, but even if I was being told by other people that “Mr. Shudo is good at writing girls”, Kasumi’s case was quite painful for me. Ah, that reminded me that I’m not done yet with “The Revelation Lugia”’s talk. I can hear just now voices of the TRio saying “Write whatever you like! After all, the TRio are us…”. Also, the editor of Anime Style is telling me “Let’s get beyond ‘The Revelation Lugia’ talk arleady”. I’m sorry. Please forgive me, because next time I’m going to write about the TRio’s role and their awareness in “The Revelation Lugia”.

#pokeshipping #satoshi #kasumi #ash #misty #pokemon #aaml #satokasu #pokemon movie 2000

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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The Legend of Zelda: Are Zelda and Link Really Brother and Sister?

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In a recent look at the many unsolved mysteries and urban legends of the Legend of Zelda franchise, I briefly mentioned the idea that Zelda and Link are somehow related. At the time, I felt that the idea that those two characters could possibly be related was simply an urban legend. However, it’s since been pointed out that some interpretations of their relationship actually make that idea something closer to an unsolved mystery.

It sounds crazy, but what’s really crazy is that a deeper look into this subject reveals that the nature of Link and Zelda’s relationship throughout the years isn’t nearly as clear as it appears to be at a glance. Actually, if you spend enough time diving into this topic, you’ll not only start to see why people think that Link and Zelda are siblings; you may even start to convince yourself that it’s true.

Is it true, though? Could two characters most commonly associated with an epic romance that spans hundreds of years of history really be related? Here’s what we know about the long-standing mystery that has sparked a seemingly endless debate.

Princess Zelda Was Link’s Mom and Sister in a 1989 Manga (Kind Of)

Let’s start with one of the weirdest corners of the Zelda universe: the 1989 Legend of Zelda manga written and illustrated by Yuu Mishouzaki.

In that manga, Princess Zelda XVI has a forbidden relationship with an elf warrior named Rune. The two have a child (who turns out to be Link), but because the King of Hyrule is apparently prejudiced against elves, they decide to have Impa raise their child in secret. Later, Princess Zelda XVI has another child named (appropriately enough) Zelda XVII. So, in a weird way, there’s one Princess Zelda in that universe who is Link’s mom and another who is Link’s half-sister.

So was any of that information used in the games? Well, those early manga stories were technically based on the original Zelda games, but you have to remember that they were loose adaptations of games that were fairly light on plot. Their writers had to fill in a lot of gaps and were clearly afforded a lot of creative freedom in their attempts to do so. Still, it’s easy to see why these mangas have been dismissed as non-canonical over the years.

Interestingly, though, there are elements of these stories that did survive in later games. For instance, Zelda disguises herself as kind of a “tomboy” in one of the manga stories, which is an idea that we saw in Ocarina of Time years later. Another manga story suggests that Link is represented by a wolf in the Dark World, which is oddly similar to one of the core story/gameplay concepts of Twilight Princess.

Even if Nintendo has brushed aside those mangas as non-canonical over the years, that doesn’t mean they weren’t potentially inspired by some of their concepts when they were designing some of the future Zelda games. So was the idea that Link and Zelda are brother and sister one of those concepts? Well, that’s where things get even weirder and even more interesting…

A Link to The Past Created a Lot of Confusion About Link and Zelda’s Relationship

I mentioned this in my look at the various Legend of Zelda myths over the years, but it’s fascinating to see how many of the “Zelda and Link are brother and sister” rumors can be traced back to a Link to the Past.

To reiterate, there’s a scene at the beginning of the U.S. version of A Link to the Past where we see Link’s uncle say “Zelda is your…” shortly before dying. The dialog of that same scene roughly translates into “Y-you are the princess’…” in the Japanese version of the game. Both of those statements certainly seem to leave the door open for the possibility that Link’s uncle was about to say the words “sister” and “brother.”

Years later, the Game Boy Advance version of A Link to the Past seemingly clarified this matter somewhat by turning the Uncle’s line into the much more informative “You must rescue Princess Zelda. Our people are fated to.” That new line appeared to make it clear that the original confusion was the result of a questionable translation and old-fashioned speculation.

Still, some fans insist that it’s possible the Link to the Past writers knew exactly what they were doing. While it’s a very, very loose theory, it’s not technically impossible that the writers were inspired by the manga interpretation of these characters and decided to at least leave the door open for the possibility that Link and Zelda are brother and sister. Still, we have no way of knowing if that was actually the case, and most of what happens next makes it seem highly unlikely that Nintendo seriously considered officially making Link and Zelda brother and sister in that, or any other, timeline.

Ocarina of Time Is Sometimes Cited as The Most Likely Instance of Zelda and Link Being Brother and Sister

While A Link to the Past is the most commonly cited piece of “evidence” in the Link/Zelda sibling relationship debate, it’s very much worth noting that Ocarina of Time comes the closest to embracing that idea (at least in the minds of many fans).

Simply put, there are several moments during Ocarina of Time’s ambiguous story that at least hint at the possibility that game’s version of Link and Zelda are separated siblings. For instance, we know that Link’s mother delivers him to the Deku tree when he was just a baby in order to save him from the horrors of an ongoing war. She died shortly thereafter. Because we also never see Zelda’s mother in that game (or hear much about her), it’s been suggested that Link’s mother could have been the queen of Hyrule.

Later in the game when Zelda and Link meet, Zelda has a line about how Link seems so familiar to her. On top of that, one of the Composer Brothers mentioned how Link reminds him of Zelda. That last line also touches on the fact that Zelda and Link were clearly designed to look very similar in that installment. Put it all together, and you certainly start to see how fans could jump to the conclusion that the two were separated at (or near) birth.

Those who support the theory that the version of Link and Zelda in Ocarina of Time could be related often clash with those who suggest that Ocarina of Time was the game that actually strongly suggested that the two ended up in a romantic relationship. Those two ideas aren’t necessarily independent of each other (as Game of Thrones proved), but they represent the two most popular interpretations of the characters’ relationships in the revolutionary N64 game.

The fact of the matter is that the events of Ocarina of Time are open to a fair amount of speculation. Whether intentional or not, there are a lot of questions that this game doesn’t explicitly answer. You could play this game with the idea in your head that Link and Zelda are separated siblings, and the events of the game alone won’t necessarily shatter your perception of their relationship.

Having said that, the evolution of the Zelda franchise’s storyline beyond this point strongly suggests that the idea that Zelda and Link are brother and sister in Ocarina of Time wasn’t intended to be as aggressively implied as some believe it was.

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Skyward Sword (the First Game in the Zelda Timeline) Established a Clear Romantic Relationship Between Zelda and Link

I’m willing to bet that the idea of Link and Zelda being related is most often immediately dismissed by those who assume that the two are eternally locked in a romantic relationship. Well, the truth of the matter is that kind of relationship is rarely forced into the Zelda games. Romance is sometimes implied, it’s sometimes denied, and it’s sometimes loosely stated, but few Zelda games are outright love stories.

Interestingly, one glaring exception to that rule is the first game in the Zelda timeline: Skyward Sword. While it’s not the first game to suggests that Zelda and Link have a romantic relationship, it is the game that tells the clearest love story between the two in the history of the franchise.

With that information available, the question becomes “What does that tell us about Link and Zelda’s relationship in the rest of the series?” Well, considering that the Zelda timeline is one of the most confusing in all of gaming, the fact of the matter is that it’s difficult to say for sure. You also have to remember that the Zelda chronological timeline does not match the release order of the games themselves. That means that there could have been a time when Nintendo was open to the possibility of Link and Zelda being siblings or at least wanted to leave the idea open to interpretation.

Having said that, the fact the two major Zelda games that precede Ocarina of Time (Skyward Sword and The Minish Cap) are also two of the games that emphasize the Zelda/Link love story the most would seem to imply that Nintendo eventually decided to really drive home the idea that the earliest versions of Link and Zelda were romantically connected on some level. The latter game implied more of a childhood romance but it was a romance nonetheless.

There are two ways you can interpret the Zelda/Link relationship we see in early games. The first suggests that future versions of Link and Zelda could be directly descended from the Skyward Sword couple. However, that interpretation requires a lot of leaps in logic in regards to what we actually do know about each character’s (largely separate) bloodlines and their roles in the grander lore of that universe. While the various Zeldas over the years are related by blood, only some versions of Link are directly related in such a traditional way.

It’s much more likely that Nintendo eventually decided to formally shut down the brother and sister talk by thematically introducing early examples of the Link and Zelda relationship which don’t necessarily lend themselves to that interpretation.

Zelda Does Have A Brother, But He’s Rarely Mentioned

Link and Zelda’s families are rarely mentioned in any of the games (which is honestly a big part of the reason the “siblings” speculation exists), but there has been at least one notable reference to Zelda’s brother in the past.

In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link a passing reference is made to Zelda’s brother: The Prince of Hyrule. It’s suggested in supplementary material that Zelda’s brother was either corrupted or possessed by a magician who eventually puts Zelda in the enchanted sleep we find her in at the start of the game.

It’s not entirely clear what ultimately happens to the Prince of Hyrule, but that is really the only time that one of Zelda’s siblings is clearly featured (or at least referenced) in one of the Legend of Zelda games. Make of this information what you will, but Adventure of Link is one of the last games in the Zelda timeline. Then again, it may be more important to consider that Adventure of Link was always kind of an odd entry into the series. It influenced future games in the series in some ways, but it’s largely considered to be something of an anomaly across the board.

In the same way that many of Zelda 2’s gameplay ideas were abandoned by later games in the series, it’s entirely possible that Nintendo just never really liked the idea of Zelda having a brother or never felt the need to bring it up in any earlier games in the timeline. Then again, others argue that the implication that Zelda and Link are related in A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time (the next two major Zelda games for Nintendo consoles) suggests that Nintendo was interested in preserving that idea or were at least still playing with it.

So are Zelda and Link Really Siblings?

When you’re talking about The Legend of Zelda‘s various timelines, alternate timelines, and mythological mysteries, it’s hard to get a straight answer on anything. That being the case, there’s always at least a small possibility that Zelda and Link are related either directly or distantly in at least some of the games.

Having said that, so much of the evidence that sibling theory relies on is circumstantial and dependant on ideas introduced before Nintendo seemed especially concerned with the grander Zelda mythology. Granted, some would argue that Nintendo has never really cared about Zelda’s mythology and timeline, but it’s been made clear over the years that early Zelda games weren’t exactly designed to serve as the basis of some grand story Nintendo planned out years in advance.

That being the case, the most likely answer to that question is that if Nintendo ever intended for Zelda and Link to be brother and sister, they probably changed their minds at some point. Another possible explanation suggests that they looked at the interpretations fans developed in response to Ocarina of Time’s ambiguous plot points and decided to more clearly define the Zelda and Link relationships in future games.

Ultimately, though, Nintendo has never explicitly stated that Zelda and Link are brother and sister and the only instances where that idea has been explicitly stated in Zelda media are considered to be non-canonical.

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The more important point to keep in mind is that Zelda and Link are often destined to meet each other in every timeline regardless of the circumstances. The nature of their romantic or blood relationship has always been second to the idea that they’re tied together by destiny and powers that go beyond comparatively traditional relationships.

The post The Legend of Zelda: Are Zelda and Link Really Brother and Sister? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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theusurpersdog · 6 years ago

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Waking The Dragon

Due to. . .recent events. . .I think it’s important to go back through George RR Martin’s books and really understand what he was trying to say with Daenerys Targaryen. She occupies the same space in the narrative that Jon Snow does, where she’s just stereotypical enough, just fantasy trope enough, that people take for granted who her character is and what she represents. But, like Jon, if you read her chapters with an open mind, you’ll notice all of these great subversions and character traits that you miss the first time.

Breaking down the journey she takes in A Game of Thrones, GRRM lays a lot of tracks for where the story will take her. . .

The Outsider

The first thing about Daenerys is that she is instantly an outsider. GRRM loves writing outsiders, and a huge amount of the POV’s in book one are introduced as an outsider in some way; Jon being a bastard in a society driven by status, Arya as a tomboy in a patriarchal society, Sansa as someone who doesn’t fit with her family, Tyrion as a dwarf in an ableist society, and so on. Daenerys takes this concept to its extreme; not only is she an outsider within her own world, she is an outsider within the narrative. All the POVs we’ll have in this book were the victors of Robert’s Rebellion. They may have lost things (like Ned losing Lyanna) but Robert’s Rebellion worked for them in a way that they either ended up better off than before, or received some form of justice for the wrongs they’d suffered.

But Daenerys lost. She was supposed to be a Princess, to grow up in the Red Keep with an entire kingdom at her feet. Instead, we are introduced to a young girl who hasn’t truly known a home her whole life, a girl who thinks she was chased around a continent by assassins out to take her life. We know, because we’ve lived inside Eddard Stark’s head, that Daenerys’ family was unequivocally on the wrong side of Robert’s Rebellion, but suddenly we understand that even in a just war, innocent people will get ruined.

So, with Daenerys being the lone Targaryen POV we have, it creates a sort of dissonance where she is portrayed as sympathetic, yet is the natural enemy to the Starks who are our heroes. When her brother Viserys tells her these awful stories of “the Usurper and his dogs”, we know she’s being lied to because we know Eddard Stark, but yet we have to sympathize with this child who was supposed to have everything and, instead, was left with nothing. Like Tyrion, we as a reader don’t quite know how to feel about her, because she is the antagonist of our heroes, but when you see things from her perspective suddenly this black and white war turns into a hundred different shades of grey.

The House With The Red Door

Moving from what her existence means to the narrative, we begin to understand what Robert’s Rebellion did to her as a person. The first we see of her, she is feeling a dress so soft it scares her, as her brother Viserys tells her she must look like a princess:

A Princess, Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she had never really known.

For the first time in her life, she’s starting to get a real taste of what she lost as a child, and she’s scared. It becomes clear that Viserys is an abuser in her life, and seeing him so fevered is terrifying. For the first time in his life, he’s been given a clear path to reclaim the Seven Kingdoms and the Iron Throne that by rights should be his. Viserys was old enough to remember Dragonstone and King’s Landing and the throne he lost; these are all tangible things that he can remember, that he knows someone stole from him.

But Daenerys doesn’t have that connection to Westeros. She wasn’t even born when her mother retreated to Dragonstone, and just a baby when Willem Darry smuggled her and her brother to Essos. Home is a very loose concept that Daenerys can never firmly grasp because she never truly had one. She understands that she was never allowed to just be a child, but she can’t place where it all went wrong. Viserys has this clear line, when he was 8 and a Prince and had everything; then suddenly everyone he knew was dead and he had nothing. Daenerys doesn’t have that; all she has is this memory of a house with a red door.

This house with the red door is so important to her, because it is the closest she has ever gotten to home; the one place she can look back on and feel like she had what she was supposed to:

She remembered Ser Willem dimly, a great grey bear of a man, half-blind, roaring and bellowing orders from his sickbed. The servants had lived in terror of him, but he had always been kind to Dany. He called her “Little Princess” and sometime “My Lady,”. . . That was when they lived in Braavos, in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there, with a lemon tree outside her window.

Yet, Daenerys knows that wasn’t really her home, just the closest she has come. Her character will chase that feeling, of being safe and in control and having things, for the rest of the books. The house with the red door works so well as a writing device from GRRM, because it is this vague idea of a thing; from the beginning it is clear that Daenerys herself doesn’t really understand why this house with a red door appeals so much to her, so she can never get that feeling back. From the start, Daenerys is chasing this thing that we know she can never have. What she does when she realizes that, is a question for later books.

But what, from a Doylist perspective, is this house with a red door supposed to be? Daenerys thinks it is home, but the symbolism of this house is childhood and innocence. The things Daenerys remembers fondly about it are important; Ser Willem calling her “princess”, the lemon tree, having her own room. The first is very important, because being a princess is what Viserys has filled her head with – it’s the childhood Daenerys knows she was owed by blood. The lemon tree is a bit more complicated; A Dance With Dragons will really start breaking down Daenerys and trees and all the imagery that goes with her arc, but trees is what Dany wants to want. To watch the lemon tree grow, is to spend years in the same place. And trees also need peace to grow; you have to love and care for a lemon tree. Having her own room also means that Daenerys was well off. Safe, comfortable, and well-off princesses have their own room with a lemon tree outside. So while the house with the red door represents childhood and innocence, I also think it’s important to recognize that it also represents Dany’s longing for her life of royalty. She doesn’t have the same murderous vengeance as Viserys, but she has that same passion for what was taken from her; a sort of blinding desire that gets in the way of seeing things clearly, especially when it comes to understanding that the Iron Throne wasn’t stolen from her family – they murdered it away chasing dragons.

Speaking of Daenerys’ connection to home, there is some interesting symbolism at play when Daenerys visits the markets. Daenerys loves the sights and smells of the Eastern market, the excitement of trying and seeing new things, experiencing something foreign. But she turns toward the Western market because it smells of home. When she was younger and went to the bazaar with Viserys, they hardly ever had enough money to buy anything but a certain type of sausage that Daenerys remembers fondly. She finds it again with her handmaidens and khas:

“They taste different than I remember,” Dany said after her first few bites.

“In Pentos, I make them with pork,” the old woman said, “but all my pigs died on the Dothraki sea. These are made of horsemeat, Khaleesi, but I spice them the same.”

“Oh,” Dany felt disappointed

Something is lost on the Dothraki sea, and home will never be the same again.

She Forgot To Be Afraid

The header has a hopeful sound to it, and the tail end of Dany’s first chapters do as well, but the first part of her story is incredibly bleak. Fear is such a heavy element in Dany’s story, partially because it really sets up the decisions she’ll make in her final chapters, but mostly because it is the reason for her character growth. Once Dany finds her place and begins leading as a Khaleesi, we start to see her true personality come out and she is a person again. But for the first few chapters, Dany has almost none of the character traits that later define her, because fear has suppressed them. Living under Viserys as she grew up, constantly dancing around his “dragon”, she had no space to be the bold, fierce, avenging girl she ends A Game of Thrones as. A couple of her traits really shine through in these first chapters, like how much more intelligent and perceptive she is compared to Viserys and some of the adults around her, because her others characteristics have been put on hold; but it’s really just tragic to read about Dany’s life up to this point. Viserys has lied to her (unintentionally, since he is delusional, but…) and made her think she’s only been one step ahead of assassins her whole life, and then turned around and abused her for things out of her control (like her mother Rhaella dying in childbirth, or how he sold their mother’s crown to feed her):

His fingers brushed lightly over her budding breasts and tightened on a nipple. “You will not fail me tonight. If you do, it will go hard for you. You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” His fingers twisted her, the pinch cruelly hard through the rough fabric of her tunic

“We go home with an army, sweet sister. With Khal Drogo’s army, that is how we go home. And if you must wed him and bed him for that, you will.” He smiled at her. “I’d let his whole khalasar fuck you if need be, sweet sister, all forty thousand men, and their horses too if that was what it took to get my army. Be grateful it is only Drogo.

The picture this paints of what Viserys has been like to Daenerys for years now is shocking (later books will also elaborate that Viserys tried to rape her in the days after this, but Ilyrio’s men stopped him). And like I said earlier, the way Dany has to avoid waking his dragon consumes all of her mental energy. Between trying not to anger him, and longing for days before he became so cruel, there simply isn’t anymore left Dany can give.

The Blood of the Dragon

From the very first chapter, Viserys introduces us to a core concept of GRRM’s world, and for lack of a better name, I’d call it Targaryen entitlement. Even after Viserys dies demanding he be crowned in A Game of Thrones, we aren’t even close to understanding the full reach of Targaryens overstepping in the name of themselves. Fire and Blood Volume I shows us that Aegon conquered a whole continent to get his relative a girl, whether she wanted him or no. That’s the kind of history standing behind Viserys when he threatens Dany with Drogo’s khalasar.

But for now, Viserys is our look inside what led to the implosion of the Targaryen dynasty, and it’s not pretty:

The dragon does not beg

You do not command the dragon

The dragon speaks as he likes

The dragon is not mocked

And Daenerys’ inner monologue gives some context as to why “the dragon” sees himself as so far above the rest:

Dragons did not mate with the beasts of the field, and Targaryens did not mingle their blood with that of lesser men.

Later books and the extended canon will elaborate on this concept further, as we learn the Targaryens are quite literally the blood of the dragon (which is why their severe inbreeding leads to dragon/human hybrid babies); but the important thing here is that Viserys views himself as a God amongst men, a majestic beast unfit to mingle with the sheep. This god complex gives us an understanding of why the Targaryens act the way they do, though; when you’re so high above everyone else, their lives start to matter less and less.

The idea that Targaryens are inherently better than everyone else, drives Viserys as much as his own victimization does:

Ours by blood right. . .You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon remembers

Viserys’ language is filled with quotes like this. While he does talk of getting revenge for his brother Rhaegar, or killing the usurper who sits on his father’s throne, an equal amount of his anger is focused on being a dragon. Not only did the Usurper take what belonged to him, but he dared to think himself equal to a dragon.

And Daenerys does not seem particularly interested in either of these things:

“Please, please, Viserys, I don’t want to, I want to go home.”. . .Dany had only meant their rooms in Illyrio’s estate, no true home surely, though all they had, but her brother did not want to hear that. There was no home there for him. Even the big house with the red door had not been home for him.

From the beginning, Dany has found strength in being Daenerys Targaryen, but not in the way Viserys did. She is empowered by it because it gives her a sense of identity; even though she doesn’t have a real home or real friends or anybody, she knows who she is. Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen is not meaningless, she is important; and Dany needs that to hold onto. Her last name cost her so much, but it’s also what keeps her going.

Once her relationship with Viserys starts to fall apart, Daenerys’ relationship to being a Targaryen starts to change. When Daenerys embraces the khalasar, she suddenly becomes very powerful; as long as Khal Drogo is alive, all the men must follow her commands or risk their Khal’s wrath. And being Khaleesi also gives Daenerys a certain sense of place; it’s never going to be home to her, but she belongs there much more than she’s ever belonged anywhere else. She fully begins to embrace their customs by dressing as they do, learning to speak Dothraki, and respecting their sacred beliefs. For the first time in many years she feels comfortable, and she can’t understand why Viserys won’t at least try and join her. The more Dany finds a place for herself, the more determined Viserys is to demean and reject the Dothraki. Where Dany is enjoying their travels to Vaes Dothrak and wouldn’t mind staying with the Dothraki for any number of days before sailing to Westeros, Viserys pushes and pushes to get what he bought with Dany’s marriage. He has no interest in living with the Dothraki, much less wearing their clothes and speaking their language. This divide between them finally allows Dany to see Viserys for what he truly is:

He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been.

And seeing him for the pitiful man he’s always been starts to reshape how Daenerys sees herself. Like almost everyone from Westeros, Daenerys believes very strongly in two things: hereditary monarchy and the divine right of the Targaryen dynasty. Yet she sees Viserys, who by both those measures is the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms, and understands he doesn’t deserve it:

Jorah pulled up his horse and looked at her. “Truth now. Would you want to see Viserys sit a throne?”

Dany thought about that. “He would not be a very good king, would he?”

“My brother will never take back the Seven Kingdoms,” Dany said. She had known that for a long time, she realized. She had known it all her life. Only she had never let herself say the words, even in a whisper, but now she said them for Jorah Mormont and all the world to hear.

Ser Jorah gave her a measuring look. "You think not."

“He could not lead an army even if my lord husband gave him one,” Dany said. “He has no coin and the only knight who follows him reviles him as less than a snake. The Dothraki make mock of his weakness. He will never take us home”.

Before I continue, there is one thing I want to emphasize – Daenerys never gives up on her brother. David Benioff and Dan Weiss trying to paint his death as a moral turning point for Daenerys is simply not true. She does put him in his place, like when she takes his horse away from him, but those are not bad things; he physically abuses her, and she removes him from her space by having him at the back of the khalasar. It was a logical and reasonable punishment for his behavior, especially because as Khaleesi she could have had him killed for it. Up until he tries to cut her child out of her, Dany never considers harming him and tries very hard to make him see reason. Even though she feels incredibly close to her dragon eggs, she offers them to Viserys as a last chance to make him happy and to save his life.

While she didn’t give up on him as her brother, she did give up on him as her King:

When her son sat the Iron Throne, she would see that he had bloodriders of his own to protect him against treachery in his Kingsguard.

I wish GRRM spent more time elaborating on this quote of Dany’s, because it’s fairly revolutionary. We know from being in Dany’s head that she has no intention of harming or killing Viserys; and yet, she sees her son sitting on the Iron Throne. Does she just assume he will do something stupid to get him killed on the way? Or has she removed him from the line of succession because he’s a vicious idiot? I’d like to know more on what Dany’s head space is at that moment.

It becomes very clear what her thoughts are once he dies, though:

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon

Because Daenerys believes in the monarchy and in the divine right of Targaryens, she has to find a way to square Viserys being the “rightful” King and also being a monster she won’t put on the Iron Throne. And the concept of being a “dragon” is how she does it. Viserys constantly called himself one, and Ser Jorah Mormont said her brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, and once Viserys dies Dany realizes she is the dragon. Of course, everyone else was using “the dragon” in more metaphorical terms, but it becomes clear a little later in the story that Daenerys is much more literally a dragon. Viserys’ death is the first time we see Daenerys fully commit to who she is, the blood of the dragon. She rejects Viserys’ version of her family and starts seeing herself and her son as the future of House Targaryen.

Part of her really starting to embrace herself as being the blood of the dragon, is because she wants to go home to Westeros:

But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King’s Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind’s eye, they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind’s eye, all the doors were red

Before, when it was Viserys forcing Westeros on her, she never wanted it. But being Khaleesi, Dany realizes that she does want what her family lost:

If I were not the blood of the dragon, she thought wistfully, this could be my home. She was khaleesi, she had a strong man and a swift horse, handmaids to serve her, warriors to keep her safe, an honored place in the dosh khaleen awaiting her when she grew old. . . and in her womb grew a son who would one day bestride the world. That should be enough for any woman. . . but not for the dragon. With Viserys gone, Daenerys was the last, the very last. She was the seed of kings and conquerors, and so too the child inside her. She must not forget.

This is where some of Daenerys less charming qualities are coming out, as far as why and how she wants to take back the Seven Kingdoms. Wanting power or having it are not inherently bad things, but the problems start to show in how Daenerys wants to gain it. Her urge to conquer Westeros is explicitly tied to being Daenerys Targaryen; she wants to reclaim it in the name of “kings and conquerors”. There is no way to remove Daenerys from the long history of abuses Westeros had to suffer under Kings like Aegon the Conqueror, Maegor the Cruel, Aegon the Unworthy, The Mad King Aerys, etc, because Daenerys is coming for the Iron Throne in their name. She’s not just related to them, they are what drive her forward. Later books, and especially A Dance with Dragons, will dive much more into what Fire & Blood means to Westeros and Dany, but even in A Game of Thrones there is attention brought to the bloody history of House Targaryen. This passage also starts drawing attention to the two different people she is; there is Dany, who is a young girl eager for home and love and happiness and belonging, then there is Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them, the dragon’s daughter.

Daughter of Dragons, Bride of Dragons, Mother of Dragons

Beyond Daenerys’ familial connection to her house, there is a strong magical link to Daenerys and her dragons. Even though they aren’t born until the final chapter, A Game of Thrones really highlights the connection she has to them. She receives her three eggs as a gift at her wedding to Khal Drogo:

Dany gasped. They were the most beautiful things she had ever seen, each different than the others, patterned in such rich colors that at first she thought they were crusted with jewels

Right after this, Khal Drogo gifts her Dany’s silver, which she rides and for the first time isn’t afraid. There is a connection drawn between Dany receiving her dragon eggs, and then receiving a mount she finally feels comfortable on. For now, Dany will have to ride her silver, but soon her dragons will be her mount.

The parallels between Daenerys and her dragons are already very clear as well. When she first gets her eggs, they are beautiful but seemingly dead; hard and lifeless stone nobody expects to hatch. Similarly, Daenerys is overlooked by those around her in favor of her brother Viserys, and she’s seemingly dormant. She doesn’t have any ambitions to cross the Narrow Sea and take back the Iron Throne, and nobody is investing in her future. But instantly Daenerys feels something within the hard stone, and keeps them with her almost always.

When she’s at her lowest of lows on the Dothraki sea, at the height of Drogo’s abuse and her feeling lost and unloved, it’s the dragons that bring her back from the edge:

Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

After that dream, her chaffed thighs start to heal and she can ride her silver much better than before. Mentally she also finds a new strength and is able to keep going, which leads to her embracing the Dothraki. She is able to draw actual strength from the eggs, and in return they also find strength in her:

She touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the shell. Black-and-scarlet, she thought, like the dragon in my dream. The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers. . . or was she still dreaming? She pulled her hand back nervously.

As Dany starts to come into her own, her dragon eggs begin heating up. Both her and her dragons are starting to wake up. And as the book continues, Dany begins associating herself with dragons and as a dragon more and more; first when Viserys dies, then when Robert sends assassins after her, and again when she is claiming the Lhazareen women as her slaves:

The Usurper has woken the dragon now

“The dragon feeds on horse and sheep alike.”

As she grows more comfortable being the dragon, her eggs slowly get closer and closer to coming alive and Daenerys feels called to them:

Cradling the egg with both hands, she carried it to the fire and pushed it down amongst the burning coals. The black scales seemed to glow as they drank the heat. Flames licked against the stone with small red tongues. Dany placed the other two eggs beside the black one in the fire. As she stepped back from the brazier, the breath trembled in her throat.

Daenerys also has dreams of literally becoming a dragon:

A great knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew. The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a blur around her, the cold receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high and higher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings

Daenerys being pregnant with her son also offers a lot of insight into what her future is as the last dragon. All of the prophecies and foreshadowing surrounding Rhaego are actually about Daenerys, and it’s the start of her destiny being intertwined with the beautiful horror of dragons:

She was lying there, holding the egg, when she felt the child move within her … as if he were reaching out, brother to brother, blood to blood. "You are the dragon," Dany whispered to him, "the true dragon. I know it. I know it." And she smiled, and went to sleep dreaming of home.

“As swift as the wind he rides, and behind him his khalasar covers the earth, men without number, with arakhs shining in their hands like blades of razor grass. Fierce as a storm this prince will be. His enemies will tremble before him, and their wives will weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief. The bells in his hair will sing his coming, and the milk men in the stone tents will fear his name.”

The first quote really affirms Daenerys’ role in the story as the true dragon, the last dragon. In A Game of Thrones, as well as in A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons, Daenerys has dreams of turning into Rhaegar; while fandom argues what this means and there is plenty of different meanings it could have, I personally believe the foreshadowing is that Daenerys is the last dragon. Many times in the story that role is given to Rhaegar, but we see with Daenerys that she is more a dragon than he ever was.

The second quote is the prophecy given to Daenerys by the Dosh Khaleen in Vaes Dothrak, where they name her son The Stallion Who Mounts The World. This prophecy is obviously about Daenerys; the Dosh Khaleen assumed the future they were seeing belonged to her son, but they were actually seeing Daenerys’ own future. Rhaego dying makes it quite clear, but the prophecy referring to the Stallion Who Mounts the World as “fierce as a storm” really seals the deal; after all she is Daenerys Stormborn, named after the storm that destroyed her family’s fleet. This prophecy is extremely ominous, with lines like “His enemies will tremble before him, and their wives will weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief” and “milk men in the stone tents will fear his name”; this does not sound like Daenerys is going to be liberating Westeros (the “stone tents” is a reference to castles). The name this “prince” is given, The Stallion Who Mounts The World, is also very similar to another prophecy of Martin’s – the rape of Westeros Daenerys sees in the House of the Undying. The language used to describe how the Stallion comes to mount the world is bloody and violent; wives crying for their husbands, men living in fear, etc. It’s a very concerning look into the future.

If I Look Back I Am Lost

A lot of people had problems with Game of Thrones’ depiction of Daenerys in s8, based on the idea that her dark turn came out of nowhere. And in no way am I defending the show’s characterization of her, or the portrayal of her dark turn, but a lot of that criticism has gotten carried over to Daenerys as she stands in GRRM’s books, which is simply not true. Daenerys has struggled with darkness her entire arc, and it really comes to the forefront in her last several A Game of Thrones chapters.

The Dothraki raid of the Lhazareen village is a huge turning point for Daenerys. Once Robert attempts to have her assassinated, Dany is finally able to convince Khal Drogo to sail across the Narrow Sea and take the Iron Throne for her and her son. To do this, the Khalasar attack a peaceful village and a rival khalasar, and it’s Dany’s first real look at what her war for the Iron Throne will be like:

Dothraki hooves had torn the earth and trampled the rye and lentils into the ground, while arakhs and arrows had sown a terrible new crop and watered it with blood.

Daenerys see’s Khal Drogo’s men herding a young boy, teasing him until they get bored of the game and cut his head off. The men are also raping women atop piles of their dead people, and it’s sickening to her:

It was different with the townsfolk. Dany pitied them; she remembered what terror felt like.

As she continues to walk through the Dothraki’s destruction, she tries to steel herself to the horrors around her:

I am the blood of the dragon, Daenerys Targaryen reminded herself as she turned her face away. She pressed her lips together and hardened her heart and rode on toward the gate.

But as she realizes their captives will be sold into slavery, she breaks:

Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver’s Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne.

Notice what GRRM calls her here; in the first quote when she is able to harden her heart and ride forward she is “Daenerys Targaryen”, but in the second when she almost begins to cry GRRM softens and calls her “Dany”. I’ll get into it more below, but Daenerys is constantly at odds with herself and those are the two versions of her. Remember when I said the lemon tree is what Dany wants to want? There is a part of her that craves that simplicity, but life keeps pushing and pulling her towards that other part of her, the blood of the dragon, the seed of kings and conquerors, the part of her that is Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen.

But in this moment, Daenerys Targaryen loses. Dany, the part of her that remembers what it’s like to be terrified, to be a slave, decides to turn back:

Behind them, the girl being raped made a heartrending sound, a long sobbing wail that went on and on and on. Dany’s hand clenched hard around the reins, and she turned the silver’s head. “Make them stop,” she commanded Ser Jorah.

Notice how this passage starts: Behind them. Daenerys has to look back to save Eroeh. By the end of this book, Daenerys has made “If I look back I am lost” into her life philosophy, and it’s heartbreaking. Her last couple of chapters tell the story of a good-hearted person trying to help people and fix the mistake she’s made, yet when it all goes south she learns all the wrong lessons.

When Daenerys tries to claim these women to save them, she does it with all the naivety of a 14yo girl. We shouldn’t expect her to know what to do in these situations; she’s a young girl and she has a very simple understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong, and more importantly she has a very simple understanding of what is and isn’t a slave.

One of the women she saves in this town is Mirri Maz Duur:

They passed other women being raped. Each time Dany reined up, sent her khas to make an end to it, and claimed the victim as slave. One of them, a thick-bodied, flat-nosed woman of forty years, blessed Dany haltingly in the Common Tongue.

Mirri is the only woman who says thank you to Dany, whereas the others are terrified that Dany has spared them for something worse. So, when Mirri speaks up that she can help Khal Drogo, Dany stands up for her against the Dothraki and allows her to help him. The mental processes of Mirri Maz Duur are still actually very unclear, and I know a lot of people argue over when she decided what she was going to do and even what she actually did. But to me, it seems heavily implied that Mirri’s original efforts were made in good faith. Khal Drogo falls ill because he disregards every single one of Mirri’s instructions by ripping her poultice off, smearing his wound in mud, and drinking wine and milk of the poppy heavily. When Dany calls Mirri to look at him again, she instantly knows Drogo has ignored her:

“He has been dulling the hurt with milk of the poppy.”

“Yes,” Dany admitted.

“I made him a poultice of firepod and sting-me-not and bound it in a lambskin.”

“It burned, he said. He tore it off. The herbwomen made him a new one, wet and soothing.”

“It burned, yes. There is great healing magic in fire, even your hairless men know that.”

Mirri seems very genuine here, and lays out that Drogo ignored everything she told him. It doesn’t make logical sense that she could have done this to him, considering he ripped her poultice off almost immediately and preceded to do all the things she told him not to. I think Mirri made a genuine attempt to help Drogo, either altruistically or as an attempt to gain favor with her new master (Dany), and then is completely ignored, which seems to upset her. What also upsets her, is that Dany owns her:

“You do not ask a slave,” Mirri replied sharply, “you tell her.”

As we progress further, I really want to encourage readers to remember Mirri’s perspective in this story. I won’t dive too deep into her motivations, because this is about Dany and Mirri really deserves a meta of her own, but understanding her is key to understanding what GRRM is trying to say at the climax of Dany’s arc. Remember that Dany threw the first punch between them, and while Dany did try to help Mirri, Mirri tried equally to help Dany and Drogo and had her efforts thrown back in her face.

And while Mirri Maz Duur is entirely misleading at points, she never lies to Dany and she tries to talk Dany out of it:

Mirri Maz Duur sat back on her heels and studied Daenerys through eyes as black as night. “There is a spell.” Her voice was quiet, scarcely more than a whisper. “But it is hard, lady, and dark. Some would say that death is cleaner. I learned the way in Asshai, and paid dear for the lesson. My teacher was a bloodmage from the Shadow Lands.”

The first time Dany thinks to herself “If I look back I am lost”, is when Mirri tells her she knew that the price to pay was Rhaego and did it anyway. I’ve seen it argued that this is unclear or false, but I completely disagree. This quote here is evidence enough:

“Death?” Dany wrapped her arms around herself protectively, rocked back and forth on her heels. “My death?” She told herself she would die for him, if she must. She was the blood of the dragon, she would not be afraid.

Dany dying for Drogo would certainly lead to Rhaego’s death as well, since the sacrifice needs to happen before the night is done and Dany has no thoughts of going into labor. This quote makes it even clearer:

“No,” Mirri Maz Duur promised. “Not your death, Khaleesi.”

Dany trembled with relief. “Do it.”

She agrees before Mirri tells her what the sacrifice is. Dany would have given up anything in that moment to save Khal Drogo.

Like I said earlier, she is still a very young girl here and doesn’t have any reason to be able to handle the weight that’s been placed on her. But she gets incredibly focused on Drogo once he falls sick, and her care and compassion for anyone else seems to disappear:

Eroeh stared fearfully at Drogo where he lay. “He dies,” she whispered.

Dany slapped her.

Eroeh is the girl Daenerys saw gang raped atop a pile of corpses, the girl who’s wails turned Dany around.

After everything goes so horribly wrong, when Drogo’s men turn against her and Jorah brings her into the tent with Mirri and she loses Rhaego and Drogo and wakes up with nothing, Mirri tells her this:

“I spoke for you,” she said, anguished. “I saved you.”

“Saved me?” The Lhazareen woman spat. “Three riders had taken me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you rode past. How then did you save me? I saw my god’s house burn, where I had healed good men beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders drove them off with their whips. Tell me again what you saved.”

“Your life.”

Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. “Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.”

Mirri obviously makes some morally dubious decisions, but there is a lot of truth in what she tells Daenerys. What Dany viewed as saving, Mirri sees as a pitiful gesture; the damage was already done before Dany changed her mind, and she didn’t see or understand that. If Daenerys was in a more understanding mindset, Mirri has a great lesson to teach her about how you treat people, especially your slaves (because yes, Mirri is Dany’s slave).

That’s not the lesson Dany learns though, she learns If I look back I am lost; which is a callback to a passage from her earlier chapters:

Behind them the great horde might tear the earth and muddy the rivers and send up clouds of choking dust, but the fields ahead of them were always green and verdant

Deciding not to look back is a decision Dany makes so she doesn’t have to face the reality of her choices and mistakes. Everything is okay if she doesn’t turn back, if she doesn’t see the way her actions sow a crop of blood in the soil. But like I said, Dany’s best moments come when she looks behind her. If she didn’t look back for Eroeh, she would have left women to be raped and sold into slavery. Especially when we get to A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons, it’s just so clear that looking back is essential to Dany’s morality. She tries not to through those books, but she can’t stop herself. Yet every time she does, she hates it. She hates that she saved Mirri Maz Duur and cost herself so much in the process. That’s why she tells herself If I look back I am lost, to remember to never look back again.

Waking the Dragon

This is the climax of Dany’s arc in A Game of Thrones; everything in her chapters is leading her to the moment she steps into Drogo’s funeral pyre. From her first chapter, she dreams of her dragons:

There are no more dragons, Dany thought, staring at her brother, though she did not dare say it aloud.

Yet that night she dreamt of one. Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked, clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her. “You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.” Her thighs were slick with blood. She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid. . .

Her next dream has a much more positive feel, but carries the same language:

She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam

This dream really reminds me of GRRM’s inspiration for his title, Fire and Ice by Robert Frost:

Some say the world will end in fire/Some say in ice/From what I’ve tasted of desire/I hold with those who favor fire

When Dany is in Mirri’s tent, her dreams start to take on a very ominous tone:

…

She woke to the taste of ashes.

The progression of her dreams tell an interesting story. At first, when Daenerys wants no part of Viserys’ dreams or the Seven Kingdoms, the dragon in her dream terrifies her and she wakes more scared than she’s ever been. But when the dream comes to her on the Dothraki sea, after she’s received her eggs as a wedding gift, she embraces the dragon in her dream; lets the fire mold and shape her, burn away her fear and hurt. And when she’s fever dreaming in Mirri’s tent, she takes the next step and becomes the dragon; flying over Westeros, chasing the red door. As Dany progresses through A Game of Thrones, she slowly embraces the dragon until she is ready to hatch them in her final chapter.

What’s most interesting is the framing of what that means. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we are introduced to the concept of “waking the dragon” through Viserys’ threats to Daenerys. From the first chapter, we’re meant to understand that waking the dragon is really bad for Daenerys. She tries her hardest not to wake the dragon, because something very bad will happen to her if she does. And her first dream of the dragon from her second chapter feeds into this narrative; the dragon seeks to burn her.

In her second dream, she is much more comfortable standing before the dragon; but it’s important to realize that nothing has changed in the structure of the dream. Her dragon still wants to burn her, but now she finds strength in that; let this dragon burn away her weakness and temper her strength. She’s starting to grow closer to her eggs, and also more comfortable with her heritage. Being with the Dothraki stripped her of everything except herself, and she’s starting to fall back on that for strength.

A lot of time passes before she has her last and final dream before hatching her dragons, and the tone has now changed. She isn’t standing before the dragon; she is the dragon. In her dream, she hears Viserys saying “You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” and as she dreams it slowly falls away until all she hears is “wake the dragon”. Through her travels on the Dothraki Sea, she’s gone from a scared girl cowering before the dragon, to the one flying overhead, making every living thing tremble in fear.

She has gone from Dany to Daenerys Targaryen.

And this isn’t supposed to be a good thing. Like I said, it’s not a coincidence that we’re introduced to “waking the dragon” as something Dany should fear. The imagery of her dreams is very clear; Dany is burned away, and in the ashes rises Daenerys Targaryen, Queen and Conqueror.

The most ominous and foreboding part of how Daenerys wakes the dragons, is of course the sacrifice she makes to hatch them. It’s pretty clear in the text, but confirmed by GRRM in interviews, that Daenerys is able to walk into the fire unscathed and hatch her dragons because of blood magic. She has already lost Drogo and Rhaego permanently at this point, so I don’t take issue with using their deaths towards saving herself, but the sacrifice of Mirri is entirely different. I want to establish that Daenerys knows what she is doing when she chooses to burn Mirri:

“I remember what you told me. Only death can pay for life.”

I’ve seen many people who argue that Daenerys would eventually turn dark use this quote as one of the first signs:

“You will not hear me scream,” Mirri responded as the oil dripped from her hair and soaked her clothing.

“I will,” Dany said

But to me, the end of that sentence is much more frightening:

“but it is not your screams I want, only your life.”

Daenerys understands that Mirri’s death is paying for her dragons, and that’s why she does it. I would understand, I would be less worried for Dany, if her killing Mirri was a rash decision made out of grief, exhaustion, pure rage; but it’s not. It’s a cold, rational, calm decision; she thinks about it, understands it, and then burns Mirri alive.

Remember when I said Mirri had a valuable lesson to teach Daenerys, and Daenerys learned all the wrong things? This is what she learned, that only death can pay for life. Instead of hearing Mirri’s critique on what Dany was complicit in, Daenerys takes it to heart that death should not be meaningless; not in the way that life is precious and therefore should be preserved, but in the way that she should get something out of it – in this case dragons.

I also want to call attention to what Mirri is to Daenerys. A lot of Daenerys’ more adamant defenders will call back to the same argument every time: Daenerys kills slavers. Killing bad men, even if in brutal fashion, cannot just suddenly change into killing the innocent and oppressed. But remember, Mirri is where it all started; yes Daenerys was in some way involved in the brutality that befell the Lhazareen people, but it is clear she didn’t have a full understanding of what she was asking when she said she wanted to take the Iron Throne, and turned back on her decision to try and help the girls. Burning Mirri Maz Duur is the first death that is the direct result of Daenerys’ choice (Viserys’ death was the result of his choices). And who was Mirri to Daenerys?

Her slave.

This decision also highlights a certain capacity for cruelty. I previously mentioned that Daenerys slaps Eroeh, the girl she saw gang raped only days prior, and again she shows something similar with Mirri:

“I am tired of the maegi’s braying,” Dany told Jhogo. He took his whip to her, and after that the godswife kept silent.

I understand that Mirri has taken Rhaego from Daenerys, but it shows a certain tunnel vision Daenerys has that she cannot understanding that much more was taken from Mirri before the maegi resorted in blood magic.

This kind of tunnel vision Daenerys is something she has through all the books, Daznak’s Pit being the clearest example, and A Game of Thrones is no different. The simultaneous horror and beauty of Daenerys’ blaze is breathtaking. Something horrific is taking place; the horse murdered for Drogo is burning, Mirri Maz Duur is screaming, Jorah and the Dothraki are shouting and crying. Yet the language is beautiful:

Huge orange gouts of fire unfurled their banners in that hellish wind, the logs hissing and cracking, glowing cinders rising on the smoke to float away into the dark like so many newborn fireflies

The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils

The flames were so beautiful, the loveliest things she had ever seen, each on a sorcerer robed in yellow and orange and scarlet, swirling long smoky cloaks. She saw crimson firelions and great yellow serpents and unicorns made of pale blue flame

You can almost forget the horror of Mirri burning, because the flames are just so beautiful to Daenerys. The flames are described like dancers, floating and swirling and captivating her; everything else doesn’t matter anymore, only the flames. Yet GRRM doesn’t let us fully forget:

The pyre roared in the deepening dusk like some great beast, drowning out the fainter sound of Mirri Maz Duur’s screaming

She heard the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don’t you see? Don’t you SEE?

I’m not trying to say that Daenerys is a bad person now. She still has so many redeeming qualities; she still cares deeply for people, fights against slavery, wants to help her people. In lesser fiction, character arcs on a graph are a straight line headed up or down, but GRRM is writing a masterpiece. He has no interest in clean arcs because real people are not one note; if you plotted a real person’s choices out on a graph, it would be a series of small ups and downs while still trending one direction, there could even be massive rises or falls because real people slip and regress as they fall into old habits. Daenerys is on a path leading to a dark turn, but she still has many highs left to go. The speech she gives to the Dothraki before she lights Drogo’s pyre is evidence of this; she looks out and sees her people, those rejected by the khalasar that left her. The old, the children, the women, the sick or crippled; and she embraces them. Daenerys is fiercely loyal to this group of people who still stood by her after everyone else left her. And she sets them free; Daenerys’ new khalasar will not be built on the backs of slaves.

But the dragons call to her, and she can’t say no to them. She is the blood of the dragon, and the fire is in her. Daenerys wants many things, like peace and home and trees, but all of those things fall away when she sees the glory and bane of her house. When she stands in the pyre, everything else falls away; the roaring and cracking of the fire and her dragons hatching drowns out the screams and shrieks and cries. The fire dances in her eyes and pulls her forward. Her dragons are beautiful and terrible, awe inspiring and fear inducing. They will always be both, just as Daenerys herself has always had both callings inside her, and it is very fitting that her A Game of Thrones arc should end here

For the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.

#asoiaf #daenerys targaryen #anti daenerys #game of thrones #asoiaf meta

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