#imagine being a stannis stan

[atopvisenyashill]

Bro the ppl you stan are so at odds with the other, your level of starkcels are always alicent-sansa stans, which is a shame bc if they open their eyes they'll see the sansa-rhaenyra-catelyn parallels 😔🥀

Messing with my stats fr 😒 (no hate btw, I'm also a sansa-rhaenyra stan)

it GENUINELY causes me pain, and like i get it, the fandom beefs go crazyyyy and i blame both d&d and the shitty way we teach literature analysis in high school for it getting as bad as it has. one of my xwitter moots got into asoiaf thru hotd bc she saw “lesbian undertones & dragons” and got curious & she said the other day never has she been in a fandom as genuinely evil, she was NOT prepared & i would say that’s just xwitter but we’ve ALL seen crazy behavior on every platform & also i can fully acknowledge that i, like many others, have gotten pettier & more quickly annoyed over the years ajsjdj. but my GOD i really do choose the toughest battles for no goddamn reason 😭🤧.

it’s pretty much like a two way split in fandom the way i see it, and i’m speaking in just the most broad, wankified strokes imaginable but -

targnation aka tb/dany(/arya) people who will genuinely honest to god argue that nettles is valyrian & daemon’s daughter bc only valyrians can ride dragons & really disingenuously misunderstand every point you make about how few good options a lot of the people on tg had.

the starkcels, infamous for being staunch jonsa shippers and/or sansa qitn truthers/stans, & they are all hardcore tg-but-usually-specifically-alicent stans. these people never stop BITCHING and NITPICKING, with the worst of it very much directed at being disingenuous about rhaenyra & baela’s motivations, in a very *dakota johnson voice* ellen you know that’s not true, sort of way.

(there’s other radioactive flavors, we don’t need to get into the aegon ii/king jon-or-stannis types on reddit, for instance).

and the problem here is that i call that second group my home bc it is a break off from the Main Branch which is very hostile to jonsa & associated theories, and therefore a lot of the most intensely starkcel people (such as me 😁) congregate there

(which, bizarrely to me, the Main Branch consists of largely tg/dany stans IF they watch the show seriously, if they don’t watch the show well that’s just main branch & it takes a second longer rant to explain that one but all of these groups are very hostile to starkcels & tbf starkcels are incredibly hostile to them aksjd). i Do believe i get the worst of both worlds as i try to exist in multiple subfandoms, altho i’m sure people at other intersections in fandom will disagree (they’re wrong i have it worse).

and this is a fandom just WILDLY HOSTILE to comparisons. u even think the words “sansa & ned are a little similar” and u get tomatoes thrown at you and that’s just her FATHER. i saw a minor meltdown on two different websites bc someone called margaery “the little queen” when “well that’s DAENAERA’S TITLE” brother no character owns a phrase or archetypes, and george’s style is basically just writing the same 12 archetypes that he really enjoys and doing them slightly to the left each time and as someone who loves doing that (there’s so many things to say!!! so many ways it can go if you just tweak one thing!!!!!) this series is crack to me, but if u dare compare two characters that have a different group of stans, even if those characters dead ass have the exact same life on paper, they try to execute you in the town square. so we just ignore the sansa-rhaenyra and rhaenyra-catelyn parallelism even tho it’s very obvious to me, bc it is apparently an insult to george himself to compare two characters he wrote 🤧

anyways sansa-rhaenyra stans of the world unite, there are dozens of us. dozens i tell you!!!!

[cwcthzl]

Also those photos of Andy Bean being fucking RIPPED? I love the concept of their aged and imperfect bodies or wtv, but I love to imagine Stan taking off his shirt at some point and Stan has to think about 1: "he has tattoos." And 2: "HE'S FUCKING RIPPED?!??!??!"

DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THAT BECAUSE OH MY FUCKING GOD.

i am like %99 sure we share the same braincells because yeah. they are old and their body is changing or whatever but no one can convince me stan doesn't at least have some muscle. like, this guy played baseball for 5 years for his father, there's no way he let go of that habit of working out.

i always imagined (because of the fic i read) the first time richie saw stan's actual body was when they defeated the bitch and went to quarry, and stan didn't take his shirt off until they were sitting on the rocks. a lot of teasing from losers and getting sick of it, he takes it off.

oh my fucking god. richie is fucking drooling, savoring, inner voice barking because what the fuck. what the actual fuck. who is this man pretending to be stanny from his childhood? why is he fucking covered in tattoos and why does he have wide shoulders and biceps what the fuck is he doing with his free time isnt he an old man????? and oh my god why the fuck is he so HOT

[baelorbreakbeds]

imagine all the dumb discourse if the starks and dany were genderswapped

girl robb is a bad uncaring sister for not tending to the children and a classist bitch for calling girl!jon "snow" when saying goodbye to her also shes a bad daughter and her fathers death is her fault somehow

girl!jon is either a cinderella who will claim a dragon and burn her evil stepfamily to the ground or Mad and Evil and a bitch for thinking rude thoughts about idk stannis or tyrion

girl!robb and girl!jon are also pitted against each other constantly with delusional meta being written everyday about how one of them is Angel and the other is Devil

male!sansa probably gets called stupid and theres probably dumb discourse on reddit about how hes not a "true stark" and WF should go to his much cooler brother

male!arya being a 9 year old assassin is cool and not traumatising in the slightest also he deserves winterfell and is the starkiest stark to ever stark

girl!bran is Evil just the most evil little girl ever proof-she was shown not wanting to play with her younger sister which shows her lack of maternal instincts!!!she will stay in her cave and rot😷😷begone witch

male!dany gets the jon snow treatment and all the girl stans fight over who gets to date him and theres probably not any weird pointed essays about his mental health or his ability to have children i wonder why

[irlplasticlamb]

now we need to know your book asoiaf ships omg

OH MY GOD THERE’S SO MANY LET’S GO LET’S GO

let’s start with ones that make a bit more sense/have some book evidence, in no particular order: jaime/brienne (okay this one IS my favourite asoiaf ship…… you can’t even imagine how hard i cried over the “i dreamed of you” scene OKAY), ned/cat, theon/jeyne (jeyne poole is my BABY btw!!! need to draw her at some point!), stannis/davos, jon/satin, jon/val (jon IS bisexual, grrm told me himself), roose/barbrey (coming out as a house bolton stan. so sorry, their pink murderous charm bewitched me. also barbrey dustin is so 💘💞💝💕💖💓💝💕💝), robb/theon, jon con/rhaegar (i am a rhaegar HATER but i also cannot get over sad pining and the inherent tragedy of this ship…… i love being a hypocrite hehe), renly/loras (they’re so slay in the books), ashara/ned, robert b./ned

and NOW for the ones that simply exist in my head because i am UNWELL: sansa/aegon “young griff” (they’re my RIDE OR DIE!!!! RIDE OR DIEEEEEE!! also there IS a very compelling theory about the possibility of aegonsa becoming canon so i shall remain delulu forever), jaime/elia (i once read a fic in which jaime helped elia and her children escape and rhaenys kept calling him “sir lion” and oh my god… oh my GOD), jon/satin/val (jon and the two bad bitches he pulled by being a good boy), arya/myrcella (I JUST WANT ARYA TO KISS GIRLS, honestly this ship mostly applies to the insane modern au i have in my head but shh), sansa/dany, cersei/melisandre (when they’re evil and they’re sapphics….. also the fire motif……….)

and honestly…… there’s probably more and i just DON’T REMEMBER

[hello-nichya-here]

Been a long time since I sent an ask but I'm hoping for your forgiveness xD

Anyway, I've been in a Stannis staning mood recently and remembered a theory.

Apparently the reason Stan is popular is because he serves as the replacement Ned Stark due to his strict adherence to honor, law and morality. Any thoughts?

I do see similarities but I've always felt them to be different people. They had respect for each other yes, but were never really friends.

Plus their flaws and shortcomings are different. Ned could have prevented the war by not telling Cersei but he was too merciful of a person for that. Stannis greatest mistakes and vile deeds came almost always when he compromised on his code.

I guess what Game of Thrones teaches is that both good and evil deeds, both selfish and selfless actions can have negative consequences. People don't act in isolation, the results always depend on how other people react.

While they both are characters that fully believe that "What's right is right", the are some key differences between them.

The first and most important one can summed up in an exchange that happened between Davos and Stannis:

"What is the life of one bastard boy against an entire kingdom?"

"Everything."

Ned covered up the truth about Jon being Lyanna's son with Rhaegar, spoke out against the plan to kill Daenerys (who was 14 and pregnant at the time), and refused to just let Cersei's children be executed despite knowing that they were bastards born of incest. All of that was because his honor and his idea of what's right says that protecting the weak and innocent is his obligation - especially if said weak and innocent are children.

Stannis meanwhile was fully ready to kill Dany and Viserys as children, nearly burned Edric Storm alive, and will 100% kill any of Cersei's bastards if he ever comes across them. That is because Stannis's morals are all about the good of the real and the rules of society.

This isn't always bad - he is sexist and racist, but won't allow his men to rape women of the free-folk because to become a rapist is to become a dishonarable man, and he won't tolerate that kind of shit.

But it also means that he is fully okay with Melisandre burning people alive because her God told her to and (more importantly) plenty of said people were enemies of his that were breaking the law by supporting other kings. Why would he have a problem with that? What's the difference between burning people in the name of Rhollor and stabbing a bunch of them to death in the name of the Seven/the king? War is war, and sacrifices have to be made.

Ned meanwhile will NOT accept that kind of thing. He has killed people before, and he WAS willing to let Cersei and her children be executed if she didn't run away with - but he still gave her the warning. He gave them a chance to survive. To end this conflict without anyone's death being necessary. Stannis meanwhile fucked off to prepare for war.

Another key difference between them is that Ned is much more forgiving in general, and especially with the people he cares about. He killed the guy who deserted the Night's Watch, but only because he did not believe his story about the White Walkers attacking them - if he had, the guy would have lived and not suffered any punishment. Ned was also not okay with cheating, excessive drinking, or people neglecting their responsibilities - but he was best friends with Robert, the guy who full on said "Hey, be my Hand, so you can do all the work for me while I eat, fuck and drink."

Can anyone even imagine Stannis Baratheon EVER letting someone get away with saying that kind of crap to him? For fuck's sake, Davos is his best friend AND smuggled food to Stannis in a siege in which he nearly died... and Stannis still cut off Davos's fingers as punishment for the crime of being a smuggler.

We also have the fact that, while Ned didn't really understand the Game Of Thrones. Like, at all. He legit thought Cersei wouldn't stab him in the back after he said "I know about the treason, incest, and I'm also gonna accuse you of murder." Stannis never made that kind of mistake. He despises the empty flattery and courtesies their society relies on, yes, but he always makes sure he has some card up his sleeve that allows him to get away with not enganging on that part of the game.

This also connects to another thing: Stannis changed, Ned did not. Ned Stark died because he could not addapt to the place he was at, not even long enough to just get enough time to go back to Winterfell and leave Robert holding his dick. Stannis meanwhile addmited that Davos and Jon Snow were right - just going "Fuck you, I'm the king, bow to me!" was not working, would likely never work, and if he wanted people to support him, he'd need to change tactics and help them with their problems instead of focusing just on his. He went from the king that even rejected, and who despised his subject, to "the king who cared." Quite the drastic change.

Finally, we also have ANOTHER way in which Stannis changed, and that ties into something he does NOT have in common with Ned: the way they handle being the second son.

Stannis went from sleeping with Melisandre just because it was necessary (both in the sense of "the red God wants it" and "It will kill your rival in a second"), to not so subtly bragging about the fact that she is his mistress and that she scares the fuck out of everyone but is his loyal servent.

This "sudden" change happened because, while Stannis never really asked to be king, he was always the unloved child. The one who was too difficult to deal with. The one who just needed to lighten up a little. The one who didn't have Robert and Renly's charisma. The king NOBODY wanted.

And then here comes Melisandre, telling the is the literal chosen one. The most important man in the whole world. The one who will save everyone and be seen as a legend forever and ever. And he buys into that pleasant lie because it validates all the anger, resentment and loneliness he felt all these years, and tells him "It was not your fault, you were right all along. Everyone else was the problem, not you"

Ned meanwhile, despite loving Catelyn and the life they had together, would often get all melancolic over the fact that he was not supposed to be the heir, the ruler of Winterfell. And when Robert comes in offering to give him MORE power, MORE responsibility, MORE of a great status, he fucking hates it. Unlike Stannis, Ned doesn't resent the time he spent in his brother's shadow as the "least important one." He seems to miss it and the safety it brought to him.

Which is why he often refused to play the game, unlike Stannis. Playing is the only way to have even a CHANCE of winning. And when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.

[svconfessions]

It's wild the sort of Shen Jiu discourse exists in this fandom.

First group will be the people who like him for being such a complex character, acknowledge that he's an asshole (abused multiple disciples including luo binghe, essentially continued the cycle and became like qiu jianluo), but like him for his complex assholery (i am one of them).

(and before someone says "well hes a csa survivor who had it rough uwu" i know that is a common interpretation, i myself subscribe to that interpretation, i know being a slave was super hard on him, i know his life was hell in a lot of ways, that does not justify his assholery????? also i just said i like him????)

The second group will be the people i am making that last paragraph to: the Shen Jiu woobifiers. There will be people who deny his abuse of other disciples (...), say Shen Yuan was a thief who didnt care about others and stole Shen Jiu's hard work (shen yuan did not want to be shen qingqiu At All, he just made the best of the situation), say Yue Qingyuan was evil for not telling him about Xuan Su (have yall forgotten he is Also severely traumatized. guys hands were literally shaking with ptsd in the lingxi years, over a decade after he was locked in there), and generally say he was always a misunderstood victim. Like... y'all know you can like genuinely shitty characters, right? Shen Jiu doesn't have to be a kind or nice or selfless person for you to appreciate his character.

And the third group, which I half suspect is a myth at this point: people who actually hate Shen Jiu and his fans. I have never met these people in all my time as a Shen Jiu stannie, and honestly think they only exist in the second group's imaginations at this point. And let's remember everyone, someone pointing out Shen Jiu's canon flaws in the Shen Jiu tag is not! Hating! Shen Jiu stans! It is discussing a character in his tag! It is not even slander if its only talking about canon! Theres a difference between "i hate shen jiu because xyz" and "yall do remember shen jiu did xyz right".

all in all im very very tired of the endless wank. anyone in this thread smoke weed.

well? anyone?

[jackoshadows]

So as another Westeros.org veteran, I don't recall Jonsa ever being a thing on the forums pre-GOT and even after ADwD was released - at least for Jon Snow fans.

From what I recall, most Jon Snow fans who hated Dany - Apple Martini for instance - shipped Jon Snow with Val - a tertiary, non threatening character whom Jon Snow likes and at one point imagines marrying and having children with when Stannis offers him Winterfell in ASoS.

I remember being on there discussing Jon Snow - mostly his arc at the Wall, the Freefolk, prophecies, R+L=J etc. - but Sansa hardly ever came up in his threads because she didn't have much to do with his story.

Haven't been on there for a while but I am sure that even today Jonsa as a theory would be rightly laughed at and ridiculed. There were a few Sansa fans - like Rose of the Red Lake - who turned up after the TV Show and started peddling Jonsa and Dany hate and all I saw were other readers mocking her nonsense.

For Sansa fans, there was not any Dany hate going on - Dany and Sansa have nothing to do with each other in the books and so their stans mostly liked both characters or stanned for one and didn't bother much about the other. Instead most Sansa stans hated Arya - this is where Arya got twisted into some kind of dark, evil, sociopath who is destined to die and warg into Nymeria who would then become Sansa's direwolf.

SanSan was the most popular Sansa ship for and by Sansa stans on Westeros.org in those days. GRRM was more interactive with fans those days and SanSan was an acknowledged ship. I didn't talk or discuss much about the character in those days so I have no idea if she was shipped with Loras and Willas and similar types. I remember coming across Sansa/Gendry fanfic one time and being like WTF! That was the first inkling I got that Sansa was the fandom bicycle for shipping.

As they do now, back then as well Sansa stans were rewriting Sansa's relationships with Arya and Jon. Sansa and Arya were just siblings being siblings, all that bullying and betrayal is no big deal. Jon loves ALL his siblings the same. Sansa was 'subconsciously' basing her pretend bastard persona on Jon Snow - despite there being no evidence of all this in the books. They were not shipping Jonsa - just that Sansa was their favorite character and they wanted her to have the same strong sibling relationships that Arya had, they wanted her to have Arya's direwolf, Arya's narrative importance in the text etc.

[PS - Benioff and Weiss being big Sansa fans, it was not surprising they did they same thing on the TV show, appropriating Arya's subplots and narrative themes and handing them off to show Sansa.]

So as a Jon stan, there was never much discussion of Sansa. As an Arya stan her threads were full of Arya vs Sansa discourse.

Many Jon Snow Stans on Westeros.org were also house Stark stans, which included Sansa. I doubt she was ever shipped with anyone on there because she was seen as 'passive' - there were entire 'Pawn to Player' threads making up all these headcanons about how she was very smart and was going to be best political player of the series.

As a veteran of westeros.org, it's so funny that Jon and Dany being together is now considered by many as a stepdown for Jon.

Back in the day, if you suggested Jon and Dany get together, most people used to accuse you of being a rabid Jon stan trying to make him into a Gary Stu who gets everything, claims and dragons and the love of the most beautiful woman in the world.

And from my observations from then till now (my personal observation, there might be outliers), there are mainly two types of jonsa shippers that used to exist then (and evolved in number now):

1) those who are actually Sansa stans and want her to have the best guy possible. In-universe there are many great guys like Willas Tyrell, but at a narrative level, Jon is one of the big damn heroes who is also able-bodied and likely good-looking

2) A extreme type of Jon stans who really don't want Jon to get together with a woman who is his equal. On westeros.org and reddit back in the day, they used to really hate on JonxDany and their rhetoric would make it clear that it was because that would mean Dany wouldn't be the villain whom Jon will defeat and from whom he will take everything. Instead, she will be his equal or even his superior, who has equal or more narrative importance and messianic potential in the story. That they both might be Azor Ahai and not Jon alone. Many such stans much preferred Jon get together with a more "passive" and "safe" woman who would always be secondary to him and that Dany would be a villain instead.

[tipsytabellion]

ugh stannis sucks just die already

[kaymcgivemeacall]

istj characters are the best bc you get like. javert from les mis. ned stark and brienne from game of thrones. stan from it. it's a grab bag of lawful characters but all in drastically different ways and that's very sexy of them

[irellia]

#caitlyn being a canon pop stannie is my fav piece of lore#imagine she's on runeterras version of stan twitter#'sorry guys I haven't updated because I got a gf and indirectly started a civil war lol'

listen to ravenkinnie. they're right

people hc that cassandra knew caitlyn is a lesbian because caitlyn would sneak girls into her room but I like to think she actually found caitlyn's seraphine x reader fanfiction once and chose not to speak of it

[jackoshadows]

So some thoughts in regards to the person going on reddit to complain, with a disingenuous post full of blatant untruths, to the mostly white male readers of asoiaf about mean tumblr fans who push back against existing narratives, white supremacy, sexism and racism on here.

This is, more or less, an explanation of what I mean by using the term ‘neutral’ for some asoiaf fans. I have read other excellent posts explaining the same and this is mine. I use the term to highlight the hypocrisy and double standards of certain readers who hold different characters to different standards and analyze them differently because of an inherent bias that they claim they don’t have.

I am just writing here about what I have encountered browsing the Jon Snow tag and fandom double standards.

The term ‘neutral’ has nothing to do with not being a Dany fan.

Disclaimer if you don’t want to read any further : I am a Jon stan first and foremost. The reason I even started making Dany posts was because there was just so much Dany hate and misinformation on the Jon Snow tag by Jonsa fans that I would end up responding to it.

And yet I get along well with Dany stans, some of whom even dislike Jon Snow.  Because liking our favorite characters is not based on hating other characters or taking away from other characters or their relationships. We freely accept our bias towards certain characters and don’t pretend to love all the female characters because ‘feminism’ or engage in performative activism.

To give an example, I think Jonarya and Jonerys are two plausible ships and yet Dany Vs Arya is not a thing. Dany and Arya are two of the central female characters in the series. Arya has the most POV chapters of all female characters and Dany has the largest word count of all female characters. They have dragons and direwolves. And yet there is no competition, ship wars or hate between their fans.

The only reason there is even drama between Martell ‘fans’ and others is because Sansa fans co-opted the house and certain characters to engage in performative activism and attack other posters for stanning and shipping other characters. Imagine being a white person accusing a POC of having internalized racism because they don’t subscribe to the same headcanons and then thinking that they have the moral highground! It’s farcically ridiculous but that is the state of the asoiaf fandom today.

It’s Sansa fans who seem to be picking fights with everyone. So, to the Sansa fans who whine about other fans being mean to them, to quote Raylan Givens:

'If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.'

Now with regards to what I am  talking about when I use the term ‘neutral’. This post is the opinion of a Jon fan since that’s what I have encountered. Dany/Arya and R/L fans have already talked about this here and here.

In essence, I am referring to people who write things like this:

Jon, a privileged (despite his bastard status) teenager, sees rows and rows of food and thinks that these stores seem more than adequate stores to last the winter; having lived much of his life in the longest summer in living memory as the acknowledged son of one of the greatest lords in the kingdom, having never had to manage the requirements of a household (much less the Night’s Watch or its new guests), Jon has absolutely no clue what good and bad looks like in the context of food stores.

and as Jon either declines to explain (because he himself has no explanation) or fights Bowen’s suggestions (insisting on feeding the free folk and Stannis’ people, refusing to put the men on winter rations), Bowen Marsh has yet another reason to see Jon, eventually, as a danger to the Watch who needed to be stopped.

or like this:

which is part of the point I was making;  in Bowen’s mind, Jon has created the problem by allowing the free folk to come through the Wall (putting greater pressure on limited stores), and when faced with the consequences of the problem has no solution to offer.

Also:

And the idea that Jon as Jeor’s personal steward was being trained on stores and figures is simply not supported by anything in the text,

Meanwhile in the text of the books:

The black brothers set new recruits to many different tasks, to learn where their skills lay…[F]or every day spent hunting, he gave a dozen to Donal Noye in the armory…Other times he ran messages, stood at guard, mucked out stables, fletched arrows, assisted Maester Aemon with his birds or Bowen Marsh with his counts and inventories. - Jon, AGoT

And then the same person writing things like this on what Sansa will do in the North:

Organizational and diplomatic, I’d guess. Swords and dragons will be necessary to fight and defeat the Others, but they need to get to the front lines first before that fight can happen. Someone will have to convince the various Houses not already committed to the cause that they should be focusing on this supernatural threat - no easy feat, given the thousands of years that have passed since the Long Night - and will have to keep track of the forces and supplies of humanity’s host before the actual fighting begins. Sansa, who has already proven herself as a planner, critical thinker, and politically pretty savvy person, is exactly the sort of individual who could be useful working on behalf of the Starks to rally everyone under the same banner.

What long term planning has Sansa done so far in 5 books? Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to form a judgment. Except for that one single time where Sansa guesses that Lyn Corbray maybe LF’s man and needed LF to confirm this, where is this demonstration of Sansa being a critical thinker?

She saw Joffrey sadistically brutalize a child and Cersei order her pet wolf killed and still trusted them more than her own father. She knows LF last had Jeyne Poole, knows that LF needs SR to die for his plans to succeed, knows that LF had Lysa poison her husband, knows LF is hoarding food and engaged in a price gouging scheme. Where is her critical thinking for analyzing all this information available to her and coming to any kind of judgement?

Or this:

Sansa’s quick pronouncement of Harry’s high place in the Arryn succession reflects more credit on her than it might appear. Unlike the reader, who has the benefit of perusing the information presented by Littlefinger and rereading where some fact was unclear, Sansa has been tasked with piecing together this conclusion merely by listening to Littlefinger’s tale. She has managed to keep straight the names and ranks of the not-insignificant number of people in the story and identify the most relevant portions for the final conclusion. Her answer demonstrates the development of her character as a new but quickly maturing player, which has been at the heart of her arc in A Feast for Crows: from the “absurd” pride Sansa felt back in “Sansa I”, when she puzzled out the implications of Littlefinger’s gift to Nestor Royce, she now practices this sort of political analysis swiftly and correctly.

Littlefinger explaining the whole plot to Sansa in detail and Sansa catching on is evidence of smart Sansa, politically savvy, genius, critical thinker who excels in organization and diplomacy because she helped plan the feast and tourney with all the vast resources available to her.

Meanwhile Jon Snow who learned same as Robb about food stores from Ned, who knows as does every Northerner the food scarcity in the North, rations food, thinks of getting food from the fertile Vale, thinks of building glass houses to grow food, getting items he can sell for food from the Freefolk, getting a loan from the Iron Bank to buy food = privileged teenager with no clue about food.

This is what I am talking about in terms of fandom double standards where these characters are judged differently using the same standards. Jon has gained an education from Ned, Luwin, Jeor, Aemon, Donal etc and is yet relegated to privileged teenager who has no clue about food stores in book 5. Sansa who learned from Septa Mordane is an organization and diplomatic wonder who will go North and sort everything out.

And this masquerades as ASoIaF analysis that needs to be taken seriously because this person is supposedly reading the text with no bias for their analysis of character story arcs and endgames.

Example 2.

Sansa is also going to change the system from within the system.

In general, though, I think Sansa is going to continue to contrast with Arya (who I think is more likely to work on lasting change by not taking up a role expected of her, and forging her own path instead). Sansa’s the one who’s getting the training to change the system from within the system, to shift it into being better from inside, and for that I think she’s going to take up a pretty conventional leadership role in the end.

Mind boggling analysis coming from an asoiaf non biased expert. I mean, first of all, there is Arya who has been rebelling against the system from the very first line in her POV chapter. However, apparently Arya is going to bring about change by .... not doing anything and going away? Meanwhile it’s Sansa - the one character who does not introspect ever on the current status quo - who is going to bring about change.

However, the same person also thinks that change is hard, the feelings of the bigots matter and that instead of working on reform, Jon should have spend time either dealing with or removing his top qualified steward while facing a labor shortage.

What Jon does have to do is realise that Bowen Marsh and people like him are relevant to what he’s trying to do. For the purposes of the setting, the reactionaries at the Wall are real people, with real feelings, and real power to act. Whether Jon chose to accommodate them, convince them, or confront and neutralise them - doesn’t matter. What he did was dismiss them entirely, to his fatal surprise when Marsh et al actually decided to act on their feelings and opinions.

In my opinion Jon was working on some really farsighted ideas and bringing some much-needed modernisation to the Watch. That was good. But basically he was looking at the forest and tripped over a tree root.

See my response here.

Pretty much most of my Bowen Marsh posts on my blog are arguments with BNFs who think that Marsh had a right to his anger because Jon did not explain things, or was rude and dismissive or ignorant about the situation.

The author himself has expounded at length about how ruling is hard

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

In real life, real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with. Just being a good guy was not the answer. You had to make hard, hard decisions. Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was the law of unintended consequences. I’ve tried to get at some of these in my books. My people who are trying to rule don’t have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn’t make you a wise king.

GRRM’s leaders, including Jon, are put into impossible situations with no easy solution. And yet the same people criticizing Jon for not seeing ahead and dealing with Bowen Marsh also write this about SweetRobin and the Sweetsleep

This is a pretty logical and reasonable train of thought from Sansa. Sweetrobin’s doctor has approved some medicine for him to take when he needs to be calmed down -> Sweetrobin needs to be calm to get off the mountain -> now is a good time for Sweetrobin to take some medicine.

Remember, Sansa has exactly zero grounding in science and medicine. The concepts and mechanics of medication are not things she’s come across before. Unlike the reader, who has access to Arya’s PoV to give them the sort of quantities that will be fatal.

Colemon says she doesn’t understand, and then he doesn’t explain what it is she doesn’t understand. I think all evidence points to Sansa not knowing exactly what risks she’s running with Sweetrobin’s health and that she is unaware that Littlefinger is pressuring Colemon into overprescribing sweetsleep, to Sweetrobin’s detriment.

This explanation conveniently leaves out this part of Sansa’s thinking “Maester Coleman cares only for the boy though. Father and I have larger concerns” which indicates that Sansa does indeed understand that SweetSleep is dangerous to the health of a frail, sick boy but that she and LF have to look at the bigger picture, mainly their plotting against the Vale lords. But no, as per this unbiased analysis, Sansa is not to blame because Maester Coleman didn’t explain things to her properly. Or how Arya knows that Cersei is not to be trusted because she has the  privilege of not being a lady unlike poor Sansa.

Meanwhile Jon Snow is expected to play 4D chess at the wall and be 4 steps ahead of everyone in order to get to the same level as smart Sansa.

Many folks have already talked about Asoiafuniversity being run by Sansa stans who spend their time reblogging Dany and Arya critical posts because they are neutral and doing proper analysis of flawed characters and yet Sansa somehow apparently lacks any flaws to get the same treatment.

They call Arya fans bad fans and reblog from people like this

about how Jon should really not have hired Satin because change is hard and it’s easier to please the bigots. Toxic Jonsa fans who reblog about how Dany raped her handmaidens is no problem for asoiafuniversity. It’s fans who don’t slobber over how awesome Sansa is that’s the issue. 

GRRM has talked about how R+L=J is the central mystery of the book.

We will meet Howland Reed, but not in the next book... he(Howland) knows just to much about the central mystery of the book...

However according to asoiafuni, R+L=J is about a character who died in the first book and has nothing to do whatsoever with Jon. Just like in the show, ASoIaF expert analysts think it won’t affect Jon in any way other than to hate Rhaegar (Cause that’s important!) and do penance like Dany. Meanwhile it’s also full of nonsense posts like this about Sansa’s connection to the North or speculation on how natural born diplomat Sansa can rule the North . I am searching and searching and am unable to find one post on there critical of Sansa. It’s amazing really. A character with no flaws.

Their double standards with respect to shipping is too vast to write about. It would require an entire other post. Sansan, Jaime/Brienne, Jonsa, Jongritte etc. etc. shippers mocking Rhaegar/Lyanna shippers displays such a lack of self awareness. And not just mocking, but actively bullying R/L shippers.

Bloggers who ship the 11 year old Sansa with the 27 year old hound and then talk about being made uncomfortable because we are apparently saying that ‘Arya is hot’ when others simply point out that Arya is canonically pretty and that is important for Arya’s story.

Quiet a few of these people, not all of them, also pretend to be above fandom wank and then engage in wank, vague posting, taking screenshots from other blogs and using it make disingenuous arguments. I think that’s well explained here.

And this double standard in the asoiaf fandom is what is being highlighted when the term ‘neutral’ is being used.

It’s highlighting a trend where big name fans who are primarily Sansa fans have controlled the narrative around these characters for a long time. And now other readers are noticing and using the text of the books to point out the fallacies in these metas and writing their own analyses.

And that’s all there is to this.

[esther-dot]

There are some BNFs who hate Rhaegar, Viserys and Aerys and some deranged Targs, think that Martells especially Elia and her children deserves better but go ahead and stan Dany. They think Dany is a hero. Because apparently Dany is nothing like her deranged family and breaking traditions of Targ legacy. Dany hero-worship her brother after knowing his deeds and refused to acknowledge her father tyranny would somehow is better than her family. Plus the way they excuse the racism in her story.

I mean, they have a point. If people choose to just stand there and burn, that’s their fault. Dany is a hero and the smallfolk really should consider the consequences of their actions (making Dany, a hero, look bad) when they opt to die.

(I feel compelled to say that I am not being serious there!)

I recently unfollowed a blog I like because they had a little spiral into the “Dany can be the hero even after she mass murders the people of KL” cesspool, and I understand how having so many morally grey characters can make us ignore red flags, but Martin already indicated what he thinks about this issue.

Stannis’s choice to continue on his path of burning people alive will result in him burning his own daughter alive.

Let’s think about that.

The point is that these steps the characters take mean something. They’re being led down a path to their own destruction. These characters aren’t purposing to do evil, they do evil because they convince themselves it’s ok when done in service of their greater good.

Dany kills masters because slavery is wrong but then uses unpaid labor, she profits off of slavery, not because she thinks those things are right, and she certainly isn’t doing them because they’re evil, she just decided it’s worth it to get her throne.

Stannis and Dany are both doing this. It’s an incremental descent, and denying the descent might make fans feel better, but there’s a clear destination. Stannis allows kinslaying to get his crown and will end up killing his daughter. Dany burned a woman alive to get her dragons and will end up burning countless people to get her throne. How can we all recognize the horror of Shireen’s death and deny the horror of Dany burning KL just because many of her victims will be unknown to us? Burning KL is an atrocity and Dany’s point of ultimate corruption, just as burning Shireen will be Stannis’s.

It makes no sense to insist that all the steps leading these characters to such acts don’t matter, or that Dany will be a hero even after she does that. Isn’t that the moment the audience realizes, “oh shit, this is what her choices/experiences made her.” I understand that other than Sansa stans few people will admit this, but I think that’s clearly what we’re meant to do. See and think about the descent of these characters, not pretend that actually what they’re doing is fine and things will be ok for them in the end because they’re a hero, dammit! The group think around Dany and the weird “she’s a girl, we can’t judge her” is bizarre because these are often the same people who think it’s imperative Sansa prove she is no longer shallow by ending up in a romantic relationship with a grown man who assaulted her. If they’re finding fault with Sansa, I’m not sure why they can’t be critical of AGOT Dany pouring oil on Mirri’s head and burning her alive. Actually, it’s weird that a lot of the BNFs are S@ns@ns or adopt a lot of their interpretation, love the Hound, a burn victim, feel immense sympathy for him even to the extent of denying his actions, and still stan a woman who burns people alive. Idk, his wounds sound pretty horrific to me, his trauma pretty severe, if they can extend their sympathy to him, why aren’t they thinking of all the people who haven’t ever murdered a child who Dany is about to burn? All the children she will murder?

Also, Dany specifically says some crappy things about Elia because she can’t imagine blaming Rhaegar for ya know, publicly humiliating his wife and paying what may (or may not) have been unwanted attentions to a teenager. Like, how do you hear that story and think, “Elia made him do it.” How do you read Dany thinking that, and not wonder, “huh, maybe not recognizing that Rhaegar caused this mess is a bad omen for Dany’s ability to understand what her family did to Westeros/how she will be viewed.”

Rhaegar is a real mystery to me because he totally changed who he was to save the world and either threw that aside because he fell in love with Lyanna or he was willing to kidnap/rape her to get his prophecy baby. I really don’t know how Martin will depict it because it seems like both interpretations involve some contradictions to how he is presented elsewhere. Either way, I still hate him because to me, his choices are what led to the death of Elia and her children, and I will never forget little Rhaenys hiding under his bed (it may be the most upsetting line in the series to me). But, even so, his desire was to save the realm, Dany’s is to conquer it. Dany is setting out to cause a war.

That’s Dany’s intention. 

How is Dany the aberration from the Targaryen legacy when she is setting out to conquer and reinstate Targaryen rule? How is that breaking traditions? It’s more of the same. Actually, her whole story is very enmeshed with Targ proclivities and some similarities to Rhaegar specifically. Rhaegar wanted three heads of the dragon which led to Lyanna’s death, and a woman dies in the funeral pyre from which Dany got her three dragons. We don’t know exactly what happened with R/L, and Rhaegar wasn’t there when his family died, but the idea of human life paying for Rhaegar and Dany’s ambition, for their dreams being born in death…let’s not ignore this stuff.

Actually, it’s interesting that Rhaegar’s father was mad and Viserys reads similarly, and we know Aerys was worried about plots and Viserys was showing the same kind of paranoia, and we read them as villains (they are), but their feelings weren’t unfounded. Rhaegar was planning to depose his father (or by another name, usurp him), and Dany effectively did usurp Viserys. Obviously he was abusive and threatening her life so we don’t care, but Dany determined he was no dragon before he threatened her child. Again, I don’t mind, but Dany is planning to take Westeros a la Aegon, she has some ties to Rhaegar’s story beyond just romanticizing him and imaging herself to be him. She’s already burned someone alive and even BNFs admit she will burn KL, so uh, there’s a connection to Aerys. Just because we know her (and some love her), doesn’t mean we can pretend the author isn’t writing this stuff into her story.

I mean, think about what their saying. They’re pretending there is no correlation between Dany burning KL and her father wanting to. How is wanting to do it evidence of Aerys being a monster, but Dany actually doing it doesn’t alter her hero status? How is thinking to do it worse than actually doing it?

If it was right to kill Aerys to prevent it (a universal sentiment in the fandom), then uh, it’s right for Dany to die for doing it.

I do think some people are reacting to our anti Targ sentiment because they’re thinking we are holding people responsible for their parents and that’s unfair, or saying Dany is doomed by her blood. But, that’s why Aegon matters. Bringing Aegon into the story is fun because he and Jon are what allow shades of grey rather than making this a screed against Targaryen blood. The Martells will support a Targ (Aegon) and also fight (Dany) a Targ. The Starks have Jon so they will support and also fight a Targ (Dany). It’s possible for Rhaegar’s sons to have the blood of Targaryens but not actually be Targaryen in the way that means death because ultimately, it’s your choices that damn you, not your blood. But Dany, Dany is a Targaryen in the worst way.

I wrote this sometime after the show ended in 2019 when a Dany stan was accusing us of sexism for saying Dany was a villain:

Even though that’s what I think, let’s say you guys are right though. Maybe the books will be kinder to Dany. Maybe book Dany is a hero, maybe she’ll have a grand romance with Jon before she dies a hero's death saving humanity. But if our heroes run around leaving the corpses of countless children in their wake as the cost of their ambition, I'm not sure that we should want them to be successful. I'm not sure that we should want them to survive.

If our heroes aren’t thrust into war but pursue it, choose to wage it because they want power, if they choose to paint their road to victory with the blood of innocents, well, with heroes like those, who needs villains? (Link)

This is why I call both incarnations of Dany villain. Book Dany is far more nuanced, I get that, but if this was anyone else we all would recognize her for what she is, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. I guess if I cared about the opinion of the ASOIAF fandom beyond our little circle, wanted to be popular or make money off of them, I’d deny the obvious too. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[blue-shaded]

On the topic of yesterday’s charity stream. What Sean and other Youtuber’s are doing probably IS because of taxes, it also probably is because they want attention, it also probably is because they think is the only way they can help (we’re not them we will never know what is on their weird minds) but I do want to ask (and this is in no means trying to be mean to you I really want to know your views on this) the majority of the money donated was from the viewers and they could have donated by their own means to whatever charity they want without having to stroke other person’s ego, but isn’t 7 mil dollars donated to one charity making a bigger and better impact than a dollar to 7 mill different charities?

Sean probably did his research (or had someone else do it for him) to make sure that the money was going to what the charity said they do, because if someone found out they didn’t it would look bad on him, or maybe because he actually wanted to be nice. Again, I’m not him I will never know and honestly I don’t want to, because after all 7 million dollars are still 7 million dollars, and I do think that that money distributed to different charities may not have the same impact as to one focused donation -🐝

It's to cleanse them off all negative media attention they've had in the past year. And let's be real. Sean's had it ROUGH. Hard proofed claims of basically every type of bigotry, racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism. EVERYTHING bad you could possibly have labeled on you as a content creator. Sean has the whole package. And what better to get rid of that? A buzzfeed article with the catchy press news headline "youtuber raises 7 million dollars for the homeless" And magically with that all your wrongdoings from the whole year vanishes. EXCEPT FOR ME. You cannot just buy a clean sheet. I don't even want it to be a threat. But bigotry will follow Sean in 2022. The fact someone's been a horrible homophobe and a straight up asshole in 2021 cannot be bought away with this. This is just one of many reasons why charity streams exist. None of them are actually ever about making a difference or doing something good. It's ALWAYS with the main focus being the person who's hosting it and having them look good. Nothing else matters. Sean isn't your holy angel who provided roofs for homeless people. Sean is a bigoted piece of shit that prefers your money to do his tax writeoffs and thinks 7 million dollars is going to make him look like a good person. Imagine. Any bigoted republican could do the same and would that change your opinion? Ofcourse not. because this is your beloved Sean we're talking about. Fucking stannies need a wake up call. also dont take this personal, I’m not calling you a stan. I’m just really impressed with how some people still think charity streams in general are innocent.

[kybee-the-bee-cat]

So there’s this Warriors fangame I play called “ Warriors: Road to Immortality “ and in it, it’s possible to get the warrior suffix ‘marsh’, as in one of the times I played it, I got the name Lionmarsh.

So it’s time to test something . . .

Gonna try to make Stanmarsh a warrior name. Let’s do this!

Yus

Uhhhh . . .

Yeah . . . I guess we’ll go with that. I mean, it won’t appear very much at all and being a kittypet isn’t the focus of the game at all so I guess so.

Yes. . .

Yeah, that looks about right for how I imagine Stan looking as a warrior cat, minus the collar (which we’re gonna say is his hat throughout this whole thing).

Never been more sure about anything in my life.

Okay, guys, our Stanny boi is done. Time to roll the dice and see what we get.

I wonder if when the characters say that name, they say it like we sound out the abbreviation or if they pronounce it as “ I don’t know “ or they say ‘idk’ as if it were a regular word. 

YEAAAAAAAAAH!

See, I played the game a bunch of times, but throughout all of them, I’ve been too chicken to keep the collar (which is his hat in this case like I said before). And because this is pretty much a joke playthrough, we’re just gonna keep it on this time.

Apparently, this makes some cats show distain towards you. (these feral cats are prejudiced against kittypets because they’re soft or smth. A kittypet’s basically a house cat, so a collar is a dead giveaway of being a kittypet which these cats don’t like for some reason.) So we’ll see how that goes.

I’ll update you if anything interesting happens or when our boy gets his warrior name.

Summary: We were kicked out of our home and now we joined one of the Clans, because it was either that or lose tryna fight the dude who kicked us out of our home. That’s all the context you need.

[7-wonders]

A O V Y for Mr. Vogel! - xavierplympton 🪨

AH I HAVEN'T WROTE ANYTHING FOR STAN YET LET'S DO THIS

A - Alone time (how do they get off when they’re all by themselves? do they watch porn, is it all in their imagination, do they jerk off, do they use toys?)

Being that he's a park ranger in an isolated area, he's alone a lot. He's also horny...a lot. He has pictures and videos of you, but his cell phone is often so finicky in the woods, and he tries to use it only for emergencies. Thus, he has what is arguably the most romantic form of nudes--Polaroids. All sorts of different Polaroids, whether they be your solo nudes that you send him tucked in his monthly care packages while he's on rotation or the ones of both of you having sex in all sorts of positions, the images all taken creatively, that he snaps before he leaves for work. He can never say that he's lacking in erotic material to jerk off to.

O - Outdoor sex (have they ever done it in public? would they? where?)

He's a park ranger. He's also kinky. Of course Stan has had sex outdoors. Of course, it's not "public" in the way that one would expect, because he sees maybe 20 strangers a week during the offseason. Instead, it's in the forest, probably against a tree. Sometimes he takes you for picnics, and you'll do it there; other times, it's in your tent in the quiet of night, far away from the feral people that allegedly stalk the woods.

V - Voyeurism (do they like to watch, or are they more hands on? are they more of an exhibitionist?)

He sees so little of you when he's on rotation that Stan can't not have his hands on you when there's any sort of sexual activity happening. Sometimes he'll sit back and watch as you lay under him, but even that only lasts for a couple of minutes before he's all over you again.

Y - Yes, Master (what kinds of names are used during sex? do they like being called master / mistress, daddy, etc…? what names do they call their partner?)

Stan's not really into the whole 'daddy' or 'sir' bit during sex. He much prefers that you moan his name. You call him Stan, Stanny, baby, babe. You also sometimes call him Park Ranger or Mr. Ranger or Ranger Stan when you're trying to rile him up or spice things up with a bit of role play.

Stan calls you baby, love, and sweetheart, usually.

Dirty A-Z headcanon game

[hologramcowboy]

No birthday wishes for Gen, but Danneel finally posted a picture of herself for the first time in months. Either she was getting a bit jealous from the attention Gen was getting, or the speculations as to where Jensen was flying to got to her. So her she is to remind us that she’s the world’s coolest, most hands on mother to ever live. At first I was confused as to who would send her merch… then I realized it was Rob Benedict’s (he played Chuck/God on SPN) band. It’s almost sad that without her husband’s name and connections she’s nothing. Did she make JJ take the picture before letting her go to school? We all know it wasn’t Jensen like she wants us to think, the angle is all wrong for it to have been an adult.

Her stans cries about makeup being the reason D looks so different now has also been refuted. No makeup, no drawn on eye brows, still a brand new face. Still looking puffy and like her nose is made of clay. I can’t imagine how much worse things look without the hat, sunglasses and instagram filter.

She definitely redid her lips again. The rest I can't tell because she is wearing shades, yet again hiding. Starting to wonder if she has body dysmorphia or something similar. She is wearing make-up though. It's called the no-makeup make up for a reason, people aren't supposed to tell you actually have foundation on, blush and lipstick/lipgloss. Her skin looks completely different without make-up.

She think dressing like a hobo is cool? She has no style as always (Elta those shades aren't even right for your face shape lol not even gonna touch on the rest cause my fashion police game is strong and Elta stannies will faint). She looks rough, so I am guessing the makeup she has on is to cover her still recovering face. Sorry, guys, my inner mean girl comes out sometimes. I just can't stand her. It's nothing personal, I just don't like her vibe at all. Cool will never be your vibe Elta, let it go. Seriously, you're embarrassing the really cool mothers out there. I guess she's a Lounden Swain fan now. lol

@emmaromano regarding your comment, I think that is her sleeve and her hand not her leg, in the reflection I mean:

So this is a selfie.