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gondorosi · 4 years ago

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ASOIAF v/s GoT - Part 1: The Disdain for Vulnerable Heroes

Book to screen adaptations are tricky as it is. Adapting high fantasy is even trickier as visual artistry quite often takes precedence over plot and characterization. It’s difficult to adequately portray complex morality, hard decisions and internal agony. Characters are often simplified and pared down to only a few most visually arresting characteristics (mighty king/queen, unbeatable warrior, mysterious magic person, wise-cracking smartass etc etc etc). Plotlines are reworked to make them non-controversial, consequences are ignored and the more difficult subplots are simply done away with. Such actions are common across adaptations, and GoT is no exception.

The distancing of the show from the books started becoming significantly observable S5 onwards. At a certain pivotal point, the obvious heroic characters began to get pigeon-holed - the noble (Jon), the badass (Arya) and the conqueror (Dany). Crucial characters like Tyrion and Bran also began to lose all trappings of individual motives to dedicate themselves to a ‘greater cause’. Characters canonically unreliable and/or unfavourable such as Jorah, Sansa and Varys get painted in a far more positive light than they deserve.

Of course, in Martin’s world the characters are far more layered and conflicted. And thus, to stick to the massively simplified (almost bastardized) show characterizations, D&D quite happily chunked off LARGE plot points essential to the main characters, in effect neutering everything that makes ASOIAF so fascinating to begin with.

Let’s first consider the two most obvious leader-heroes of the saga. Both Jon and Dany start out handicapped and subjugated in their own way, before quickly discovering that they have innate capabilities suppressed by their respective environments. Both of them find a role they are good at and use that role to accomplish something revolutionary. Both of them disregard the dangers posed by proponents of tradition and both of them are brought down or grievously hurt by those resistant to change. However, both of them are young. Both of them struggle with self-worth, purpose and identity. They’re two deeply traumatized young heroes who keep the truths of their hearts to themselves. However, the show begins to distance them from their vulnerability somewhere around the middle of its run. There’s a deliberate choice made to move away from complex characterization and focus only on heroics - whether its raining down fire from atop a dragon, or cleaving through enemies with a sword in hand. And while this makes for arresting and unforgettable visuals, you have to wonder why two such beautifully layered characters had to lose their tender facets to continue being badass heroes.

Dany

No two ways about it - the show has done an exemplary job of building up Daenerys Targaryen the Queen and Conqueror (Season 8 exists only in the Upside Down). Her fiery nature, her courage and her incredible journey from a prized possession to a radical force commanding the very air around her. But before she earned all her titles, she was Dany - a quiet, observant and highly intelligent child who just just wanted to go home. The house with the red door is instrumental to Dany’s psyche as a person - and never mentioning it, or alluding to it takes away something vital from Dany’s story.

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. After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever.

All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known.

The red door features prominently in Dany’s thoughts, dreams and visions. To a young Dany, her name is as much a burden and a cage to her as the lack of a name is to Jon. He thirsts for the recognition and dignity of a true name, she dreams of the unfettered lightness of a life without the heavy legacy of her name.

It might sound contradictory, but for all that the show played up the power and near invincibility of the dragons, they skimmed over their ACTUAL importance to Dany’s entire Essos arc, and subsequently her identity. The show posits her as the Dragon Queen almost from the very beginning - whereas in the narrative of the books, it’s a realization she must come to after losing almost everything she’s fought for in Slaver’s Bay.

Remember who you are, Daenerys. The dragons know. Do you?

This line means much more in the context of Dany’s journey of self-realization than the show ever bothered to address. Through her entire arc Dany is struggling to place herself. She’s caught between the ‘Last Targaryen’ - the rightful ruler of Westeros set to take back the Throne stolen from her family by scheming enemies; and the Mother and Queen of the freed slaves of Slaver’s Bay who look to her to destroy a society which has progressed on the strength of broken bones of slaves. Beyond it all she is the Mother of Dragons - which brings all the boys to her yard. Dorne, fAegon, Victarion and Euron don’t give two hoots about the young girl who overturned the age old practice of slavery - they want her dragons. By the time she’s stumbling across the Dothraki Sea delirious, in pain and hallucinating, she knows not which of these three identities is who she truly is.

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.

That’s what the show misses. The crux of Daenerys Targaryen isn’t that she HAS dragons, it’s that she IS the dragon. The issue with this interpretation in the show is that to truly take Danerys being the last dragon to it’s intended narrative conclusion, you have to admit that her journey would not, and could not end with her becoming Queen of the 7K. The show turned her magic into a political prop which is entirely incongruous with the world-building elements established by Martin. ASOIAF’s magic doesn’t exist as a plaything and a tool for those desiring power. Magic exists to combat magic. Daenerys Targaryen is a conqueror, a queen and a rescuer but she is also more. (I could go on and on about Dany as the Last Dragon but that would be derailing the intent of this post.)

You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros. “It is such a long way,” she complained. “I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.”

This is not a Dany the show allows us to observe. The Daenerys Targaryen of the show is not allowed to be vulnerable or uncertain or crumble. She’s not allowed to question her purpose and path in the world. After all, how can the most powerful character in the show ever falter? This is where the show takes the easy way out of putting more emphasis on the visual extravaganza - dragons burning down ships and Emilia Clarke walking through flames unscathed are easy crowd pleasers. But these are also just surface level considerations of Dany’s power and importance. She isn’t who she is because she has dragons - she has her dragons because she is who she is.

But a major point of contention is - who DOES she need to be? See, Dany has always known she’s ‘important’ - in the way political prisoners are important. In the beginning it’s only her family name which holds her value. Her gradual journey from being only symbolically important as a Targaryen, to owning her own narrative as herself is fraught with considerable internal turmoil. The identity Dany cherishes most is that of Mother. Choosing to free the slaves in Astapor and Yunkai is the first decision she takes as a player with power and resources, and this decision has NOTHING to do with her destiny as a Targaryen. You identify a hero by their choices - and it is in this moment, uninfluenced by magic, or a greater power, this young girl sees the horror in a long established custom and CHOOSES to fight it. I would anyway have been invested as Daenerys as a character - but that one action firmly placed her on a pedestal .

In spite of where her destiny may pull her she wants to retain her softer dreams, her yearning for an uncomplicated happiness. At the same time, she’s voluntarily taken on the burden of ruling in Mereen, despite the responsibility very clearly chaining her. At the end of ADWD, her fevered dreams seem to suggest that both her softness and her duty are pulling her away from her true destiny. Dany’s struggles with self revolve around choosing between her identities as the Dragon, the Mother and the Conqueror - I personally subscribe to the belief that Dany ‘finding herself’ would mean realising that her three identities are not separate, but feed into each other to create the Daenerys Targaryen she is meant to be.

The show puts the cart before the horse and ignores the reverberating impact of a piece of Old Valyria being reborn on the shores of the continent where the empire fell. Her trek through the Dothraki Sea once she escapes on Drogon’s back is such a crucial pivot point in her story - it is literally the point where the old Dany is being left behind for who she will ultimately need to become.

And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. "The last dragon," Ser Jorah's voice whispered faintly. "The last, the last." Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.

After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the whisperings of stars.

She woke to the taste of ashes.

The show does make it clear that Dany’s ultimate destiny lies in Westeros - but the Iron Throne can hardly be it. Why will the last dragon be so singularly focused on a crumbling monarchy? Unjustly attacked and exiled and now fighting to retake their ‘rightful’ place - that’s a traditional fantasy storyline and in a purely monarchical power struggle needs neither Dany’s magic nor her dragons. The Iron Throne is such a low bar - what Daenerys attempted in Slaver’s Bay is ten times more difficult and impressive. As of this point in the books Mereen is on the brink of absolute chaos and the situation is much, much more convoluted than the show made it out to be. The political uprising of Mereen was dealt with so laughably on the show - ‘Bring dragons, Burn shit’ doesn’t solve any problems whatsoever but let’s save that for the next part.

Painting Dany’s journey back to Westeros as simply an exiled royal returning to take back what’s theirs removed the poignancy in Dany looking for home in Westeros. There’s this sense of yearning in her desperately looking for a place to belong in a country that’s little more than a fable to her. She tried SO hard to make a home with the Dothraki and to find a place as the ruler of Mereen - but if there’s one takeaway from ADWD it’s that Dany’s fate doesn’t rest in Essos. I expect WoW to be a bloody reckoning, an agonizing choice between Dany’s duty and destiny. The new world order she’s established is far too new and fragile to sustain itself. As we see from Cleon’s ascent in Astapor, evil opportunists exists everywhere, regardless of societal class. To cement her order, Dany and her inner circle need to stay in Mereen for a lengthy period of time. But Westeros is calling - she has to choose. It’s nowhere near as easy as the three Yunkish Masters being the only figureheads, the Greyjoy siblings traipsing into the pyramids with the ships she needs, and alliances falling into her lap just so that D&D don’t need to put in any effort into creating plot and can simply throw spectacular CGI at us.

My point is - you don’t need a dragon (or three) to fight Cersei Lannister and a court jester on ADHD masquerading as Euron Greyjoy (not Pilou, its obvious the dude read the books and expected great things from his character). You do however need them to fulfil the prophecy passed down generations of Targaryens, beginning from Aegon the Conqueror. You do need the last living embodiment of the magic of Old Valyria to combat the foul, unholy magic wielded by the utterly terrifying Euron Greyjoy of the books. The reason Aegon began his conquest of Westeros is beyond mere ambition - and if we go by what Martin himself revealed about his intentions, the Others ARE the final War. We had only 2 episodes in S7 to show Daenerys understanding the gravity of the Night King (godawful mission beyond the Wall and polar bear wights aside) - and then arrives the wrecking ball of S8 with its ‘Northern Independence’ and ‘my Iron Throne’.

The trouble with legendary heroes is this - they save the world for everyone else. Dany defeats all other claimants to the Throne and takes back Dragonstone, King’s Landing and the Seven Kingdoms, as Viserys wanted, and she believes her duty to be. She and Jon lead the Last Alliance against the Great Other. Maybe they win and live happily ever after. Maybe they win, but only after losing everything they hold dear. And maybe they win, and only lose part of themselves. Does that end Dany’s story? Is a Kingdom and a reign what she’s been searching for? Dany’s story only ends when she finds herself in front of that red door again.

Jon

It’s an infuriating irony that despite portraying him as MUCH softer than in the books, Jon’s vulnerability is either non-existent in the show, or is turned into a weakness. Where does the show ever dwell on his deep seated issues with identity, duty and survivor’s guilt? Where does the show address the raw power of his love for Arya? And why does the show think that the progression of Hardhome, being fucking murdered AND resurrected, and then Rickon’s death in front of his eyes would NOT leave a lasting mental impact?

To its’ credit, the show did clearly indicate Catelyn’s hatred for Jon. What we didn’t see, and thus don’t have a ready reference for (in the show) is how Catelyn’s treatment affected Jon. In the books though, you can clearly suss out the emotional impact of the years of Jon’s childhood.

He reached the landing and stood for a long moment, afraid. Ghost nuzzled at his hand. He took courage from that. He straightened, and entered the room.

He stood in the door for a moment, afraid to speak, afraid to come closer. The window was open. Below, a wolf howled. Ghost heard and lifted his head.

This is at Bran’s bedside when he’s still deep in a coma, with no certainty of whether he will ever wake again. Jon’s leaving for the NW, and this may very well be the last time he ever sees Bran again. Jon loves his little brother with everything he has, yet the overbearing emotion at this moment is his fear of Catelyn Stark.

Keep in mind that every POV hides something or the other from the reader. Thoughts and feelings may seem disjointed as a critical memory which aligns the two is missing. In this case, Jon is actively NOT thinking of any particular incident. Yet his fear is all pervasive. It’s an uncovered wound and it hurts him. We may not know exactly what has happened between Jon and Catelyn in the 14 years leading up to this moment, but Jon’s fear of her is very real. This almost paralyzing fear of Catelyn placed against the overbearing love he feels for Bran at this moment makes this exchange stand out for several reasons, chief amongst which is that Catelyn has left an indelible mark on Jon’s psyche.

Robb and Bran and Rickon were his father’s sons, and he loved them still, yet Jon knew that he had never truly been one of them. Catelyn Stark had seen to that.

By the time the moon was full again, he would be back in Winterfell with his brothers. Your half-brothers, a voice inside reminded him. And Lady Stark, who will not welcome you. There was no place for him in Winterfell, no place in King’s Landing either.

The fear lessens once he leaves the halls of Winterfell, and bitterness takes its place. Jon’s feelings about her are tinged with fury and resentment. He’s long past hoping for affection from her, but what still rankles and will never stop being a source of anger, is that she deliberately tried to sabotage his relationships with others who most definitely were his family.

Jon’s thoughts make it obvious that he is painfully aware that he doesn’t belong. For an awareness this heavy to be so deeply etched into a young boy’s entire being, the message has to have been reinforced intensely over the entire duration of his life in Winterfell. That’s not compatible with the assumption that Catelyn was only cold and dismissive of him. We don’t see the instances in either Jon’s or Catelyn’s viewpoints in the books, but the inference is all but thrown at us.

Jon’s growth as a person, a leader and a revolutionary is dependent on his time with the NW just as much as his time with the FF. The show cut out far too many important aspects of his time with the FF, but atleast that part of his journey was treated with more respect than his accomplishments as a man of the NW. (Let me not start on the absolute blasphemy to turn one of the most decisive characters in the entire saga into a dithering, uncertain, meek fool in S8.)

Unlike Dany, Jon has never been important. He has no name, no legacy to uphold, no shoes to step into. All he has are his natural abilities - his startlingly accurate powers of perception for someone so young, his capacity for taking feedback to change for the better and his razor sharp practical intelligence. The text seems to suggest that Jon was indirectly forced to downplay his abilities due to his status - besting Robb was just not done.

With her deep blue eyes and hard cold mouth, she looked a bit like Stannis. Iron, he thought, but brittle. She was looking at him the way she used to look at him at Winterfell, whenever he had bested Robb at swords or sums or most anything. Who are you? that look had always seemed to say. This is not your place. Why are you here?

It’s at the Night’s Watch that Jon first starts to become someone more than Ned Stark’s bastard - in his OWN estimation. The world will continue to see only a bastard and Ned Stark’s shame, but its here that Jon learns to accept and move beyond it. It’s in the yard of the NW training yard that Jon receives his first harsh lesson about himself - he’s lording the privilege of his castle education over boys far less fortunate than him. It’s at the NW that he has the opportunity to use his abilities. It’s here that Jon finds his calling as the champion of the misfits, the ill-begotten, the unwanted and the reviled. He becomes the de-facto trainer of the boys Alliser Thorne deems beneath his dignity. He’s the one convincing Maester Aemon of Sam’s worth as his squire. And it’s at the NW that Jon first begins forming his opinion of the wars of the south - something which he will carry till the end.

When dead men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits the Iron Throne?

The staggering impact of his experience in the NW to his character is an essay in itself. For the purposes of this post, suffice to say that without the NW Jon would never have grown to the position to have an impact on the greater story. As of ADWD, the Wall under Jon’s leadership has become somewhat of a rallying ground - hosting a King, a highborn Northern lady looking for deliverance and support, as well as the center for revitalizing the Watch, rebuilding the Wall and rekindling hope in the North.

At some point after his resurrection in the show, Jon’s portrayal starts edging over into the ‘noble, sacrificial hero’ archetype. This wouldn’t necessarily have been a BAD thing – if this ‘goodness’ and ‘nobility’ didn’t come at the expense of Jon’s overall characterization.

His ‘goodness’ comes in the form of forgiving Sansa for keeping the Vale army secret and keeping her as his closest confidant. This so-called goodness of heart is rank naivete the sharply perceptive and observant book!Jon would have been stupefied at. Jon knows to judge people by their actions – and Sansa’s actions made it obvious that she’s playing her own game and considers her brothers’ lives expendable collateral. The Jon who understood the heaviness of the mantle of leadership well enough to cultivate distance from even his closest friends in the NW would NEVER have allowed Sansa so close.

The ‘honourable’ show!Jon allows his Lords and his sister to question and challenge him openly. The ‘noble’ King Jon has to explain himself before undertaking a journey to gain a potential ally - the only possible ally against a War the North seems unwilling to believe despite the reports of the dead having been around since S1. The honest son of Ned Stark cannot lie to his House’s greatest living enemy. Lord Commander Jon would sooner have jumped off from the top of the Wall than take these decisions. He’s aware of the nature of power and authority, and that more than holding a position its important to make those around you believe you hold power. Power can do great good - but it is also fickle.

Despite the NK and the AoTD being turned into a cosmic farce in the last season, the show did quite a good job of building up the horror, menace and sense of doom in the previous seasons. Hardhome is prime example of why the show was once the pinnacle of television – and what Jon saw there, coupled with the utter failure of his mission to evacuate all the FF would have pushed Jon to the brink of insanity anyway. From what we know of Jon, he carries the deaths of his father, Robb, Bran, Rickon and Winterfell close to him. Compound the steadily growing pressure of that loss with the fact that he loses Grenn, Pyp and Ygritte in the same night. Three of the people most important to Jon but a loss he was never given the time to process as Stannis’s army arrives the very next day. He’s still carrying this heaviness when Hardhome happens, and Jon is exactly the kind of man to blame himself for the people he was unable to evacuate. Not to mention, this is the first time he sees the Night King RAISE the dead – this is the point where the true power of the enemy is fully revealed. That was existential horror at its most visceral and not a sight a man is likely to forget, least of all a man who’s trying his best to create the only resistance.

Let’s forego the changed circumstances of Jon’s murder in the show and consider the act as is – Jon does the right thing, knows he’s doing the right thing and is betrayed and murdered for it. He’s dead and then he’s not and while he’s still struggling with resurrection, betrayal and the memories of Hardhome, Sansa arrives and he’s in the middle of the quest to retake Winterfell. It’s traumatic experience upon traumatic experience, a never-ending series of emotional turmoil with no outlet or time to grieve. This is the only reason I see Jon’s actions at the Battle of Bastards being true to his mental condition in the show – having Rickon die right in front of him when his little brother was pretty much the only reason he was able to gather the mental strength for the campaign would have unhinged him to the point of that ridiculously suicidal move.

But see that’s the last time we see any strong emotion from Jon. He seemed mentally and emotionally exhausted in the Winds of Winter episode, and that’s understandable but only at THAT point. That kind of exhaustion sets in only once you’re done with your battles and Jon’s true battle was just beginning. It’s just never acknowledged – when in truth he would barely have a handle on his temper and would be obsessed with the NK to the point of delirium. We apparently can’t have a functional main hero with his emotions all over the place, gathering the strength to do what must be done while falling apart inside. Or if we DO show him as someone struggling with himself, it’s to paint him as someone too weak to see the truth. Someone too blinded by love who should never have been in charge in the first place.

Heroes are strong, brave, just and honourable. They are powerful and commanding and inspiring. And at the very core of it all, heroes are human. Wish the show had remembered that.

#ASoIaF #jon snow #daenerys targaryen #anti got #jonerys #book!jon #book!dany #show!jon #show!dany

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moonlitgleek · 5 years ago

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I really enjoyed your post on the Sansa/Daenerys feud. Something I hated about the Starks in Season 8 is Sansa/Arya's kneejerk dislike of Daenerys (at least, before episode 5). They actually had Sansa say "She's not one of us!" And that recalls nothing so much as Cersei telling Joffrey "Anyone who isn't us is the enemy." When Season 8 validates Cersei and repudiates Ned Stark, things gone done got crazy.

It was actually Arya that said that but it’s not like the scene didn’t frame this as a shared sentiment among the Starks. That was basically “we don’t like your girlfriend who we don’t know and don’t care to get to know. She is not one of us and that makes our hostility and pettiness totally justified”. My god, do I hate that scene.

It pains me that they did this to Sansa and Arya. It infuriates me that their supposed victorious ending not only rewarded and validated a rather prejudiced attitude but also leaned heavily into making their abusers define who they are. To be clear, this is not because I expect them to be “good victims” who can only rise above their trauma or behave in the most moral of ways, neither am I saying that experiencing a change due to a trauma is necessarily a bad thing, but the show fundemntally changed who Sansa and Arya are to become some distorted version of their abusers. Sansa was turned into a cross between Cersei and Littlefinger, a person willing to betray and manipulate even her own brother to her advantage and who honest to god smirked over the death of an innocent woman and used it to goad Jaime. Arya became someone whose first instinct is to kill and who absorbed an exclusionary xenophobic view that came out of nowhere. I’ve mostly put the stupidity of last season’s conflict between Sansa and Arya out of my mind because it was so illogical and forced, but the writers genuinely tried to affirm that this is who these two women became (and pls don’t @ me about how they were totally plotting together from the start to bring down Littlefinger. No, they were not and the show’s attempt to make it look like that post-fact was painfully transparent)

The show changed the core of who the Starks are in service to the plot then inexplicably framed this change as a good thing we should side with, which hits at the heart of this series. I am admittedly very attached to the book!Starks but this goes beyond my preference for my favorites to be about changing the very meaning of ASOIAF. This series was never about rejecting ideals or branding those who believe in them idiots. It was never about validating the worldview of the Cerseis and Tywins and Petyrs of the world. It’s about the struggle to hold onto your idealism in a cold and corrupt world that tarnishes it and hollows it out, a world that tries to convince you that idealism is a chain that brings you down and that ruthless pragmatism is intelligence. It’s about our heroes looking into an abyss that tries to convince them that letting the cold in is the smart thing to do, fighting against a world that tries to strip them of their beliefs and saying “no, you move”. The theme of this series lies in characters like the Starks, Davos and Brienne trying to do the right thing even when it looks hopeless. Especially when it looks hopeless. It lies in “he could have tried, he could have died”, in “is there no true knights among you?”, in “he was no true knight”, in “the North remembers”. The message is that honor lives on and trying to do the right thing always matters even if you lose your life. And so yes, it absolutely does go back to Ned Stark, not only as the person whose teachings and ideals the Starks espouse but as the first casualty of the show’s misunderstanding of the main thesis of ASOIAF.

Game of Thrones took the surface victory of nihilistic players and made it its core message. It genuinely embraced Cersei’s sentiment that you either win or die in the game of thrones, and affirmed the worldview that honor is futile and stupid and gets you killed. Oh and also that you cannot escape your past, your trauma or your paternity. Screw idealism and trying to do the right thing. That’s pointless and hopeless. Except that it is not pointless in the books, it never was. Ned died but his legacy, his benevolent ruling ideology, and his honor won by inspiring not only his children to hold onto their ideals but the entire North to rise up in his name. Ned stands as clear proof that Cersei and the entire Lannister ideology is wrong. ADWD openly goes to bat for Ned’s legacy and what he stood for. It proves that the argument that honor is stupid and manipulative pragmatism is better is bullshit.

But the show did the exact opposite and actually went to great lengths to frame honor as this hollow thing that only forestalls and impedes. It scoffed at idealism and made it this naive thing that brings the characters down, which is exactly how Littlefinger described it to Ned in the first book. The show made the North abandon the Starks despite setting up the Northern plot from the books and having Sansa deliver an impassioned speech about loyalty, only to prove her painfully wrong. Jon failed when he bargained on how Ramsay’s apathetic view of his men’s lives would make them abandon him, even when these men watched Ramsay coldly fire at his own forces, but Sansa succeeded when she withheld the information about the Knights of the Vale. It was only natural for Sansa to then brand Ned and Robb as naive men who made stupid mistakes. Why wouldn’t she when the show turned Robb’s story into a simplistic tale of a guy who was led astray by love and who was blamed for the horrendous treachery of the Freys and Boltons, when Ned’s honor was scoffed at and undercut by the show itself at every turn? See also that lovely detour in the Dragon pit scene last season where Jon’s refusal to lie to Cersei was designed to have everyone roll their eyes at the stupid idiot who put his precious honor above a needed cease fire.

It sure fits the story then to have Jon bending the knee to Dany stripped from its foundational motive of her earning his loyalty by answering the call for help to become about his feelings for her. It fits to have Sansa try and push Jon’s claim without caring about his wants or the precarious position this puts him in or even his emotional state because she knows he loves Dany. It fits to have a stunning mix of manipulation, xenophobia, hostility and ungratefulness framed as not only smart but something to be validated. It fits to have the Starks’ triumph be so soured and so meaningless in its willingness to sacrifice people for their advantage. By all means do have them pursue a plan that would necessitate a conflict between Jon and Dany all for Northern independence, or hint that Bran might have known what was going to happen and kept silent.

And when you pair that with them trying to evoke sympathy for Cersei but make Dany into a fascist (don’t think I missed the Nuremberg callbacks) and demonize her visually, with them validating Cersei’s racism by focusing on the Unsullied and the Dothraki brutalizing the King’s Landing population, just what message are they trying to send. Whose worldview are they trying to validate and why?

I missed the Starks this season, especially the girls. I missed the Arya who makes friends with everyone despite rigid Westerosi attitudes towards class and race, who is extremely sensitive to injustice and who would be the first to cheer a Breaker of Chains. I missed the Sansa whose compassion extended to even enemies and whose entire conception of rulership was about protecting people. I missed the Bran who is so connected to Winterfell that he compares its survival and its perseverance to his own. I missed the kids who held onto their compassion, their loyalty and their ideals in the face of a corrupt world trying to convince them such sentiments are futile. I missed the Starks.

#anti got

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rhegar · 5 years ago

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To go off the rails, and to deserve punishment, in a patriarchal narrative.

Stannis Baratheon was, indeed, the true king of Westeros by blood. He was the eldest brother of a childless king (at least no legitimate children). Then, he took up the Lord of Light’s religion and started burning lords who didn’t follow it. They hadn’t really done any evil deeds, they just... refused to follow his same religion.

So, when he decided to burn his own daughter, we understand why; it wasn’t the first time that he had killed relatives (killing Renly with blood magic) or burned them (burning Axel Florent, his wife’s brother); we’ve been feeling him going slowly off the rail for seasons. On a show full of people who commit atrocities in war and peace, Stannis’ atrocities were against innocents. Stannis had shown, time and time again, that he was a pragmatic man, cold and unfeeling. Not only that, but his daughter Shireen was always portrayed in the narrative as less than, not valuable enough, because she was a girl and because she was deformed in a way that made her “unattractive” as a future wife in a patriarchal society. When he decides to burn her, we’re pained, but we also understand that the decision was easier to him than it would have been if she were male, or prettier therefore a more lucrative match. It’s the reality of such an ugly society.

He was quickly punished in the narrative by dying, and we understood why it all happened and agreed.

Daenerys Targaryen was, indeed, the true queen of Westeros by blood. She was the only daughter left of its last legitimate king who wasn’t brought by by slaughter of heirs like Robert was (and even in the event that Jon is somehow legitimate, her claim still supersedes his because Aerys had cast aside Rhaegar in favor of Viserys as his heir, and Viserys made Daenerys his heir.) When she was in Essos, she managed to acquire dragons. She obtained an army by tricking a slaver into giving it to her and killing him. She also obtains the loyalty of the Second Sons by forming a relationship with their leader, Daario Naharis. She now has the means to take her kingdom back, especially that, in that particular moment, said kingdom is fragmented and in a civil war.

Daenerys sees the atrocities that are being committed against the slaves in Essos and decides to stay there, killing the men responsible for it (slavers, khals who enslave people and sell them to said slavers.) Those are, beyond any reasonable doubt, evil men who deserve to die; they had tortured, mutilated, raped and killed hundreds of thousands of people; to burn them alive or crucify them is but to give them the smallest of taste of what they had committed. Daenerys, in contrast to Stannis, shows love and affection to everyone around her; her handmaidens, her bloodriders, Jorah, Barristan, Missandei, Grey Worm... she is the leader they chose. She didn’t gain their loyalty by taking up a new religion, showing them visions in fires and burning those who refuse to follow; she shows them love.

When she arrives in Westeros, she decides to further derail her quest for the Iron Throne to save humanity from the Night King, and all she is shown is coldness, doubt, giving credit for her work and her legacy to a man who hasn’t done a fraction of what she has. She loses two children, her best friends and a huge portion of her army to save those people, and yet they conspire against her. But, remember: This is nothing compared to the abuse and losses she had already endured; certainly not being rejected by some guy with a small dick that she met like 5 months ago that’s going to drive her off the deepend. . It is certainly not enough to drive her crazy all of a sudden. If it were; if she were mentally that fragile; she would have gone crazy years ago.

And let me remind you, again, that this is a show full of people who have committed atrocities in war but they never turned mad. Tyrion used wildfire on Stannis’ army. Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton and Walder Frey orchestrated the murder of people under guest right. Sansa and Arya, again, used gruesome murder methods. Jon Snow (who happens to have Mad King genes yet was never called mad btw) executed a child who was manipulated by older men into betrayal. Some of those were considered evil, but never crazy.

So, when she decided to burn King’s Landing, we don’t understand why. When has she ever shown a tendency to kill innocent civilians? All she had ever done was kill the men who enslaved them. This is literally the polar opposite of everything that she has ever stood for. Even practically it doesn’t make sense; she had already won.

Then, as a justification for a narrative that makes NO SENSE, some men show up and tell us that, hey, she had always been burning people! You cheered her on, you were complicit!

Very convenient that the people saying that also happen to be white, isn’t it? People who haven’t had to read about their ancestors being bought, tortured, raped and killed, just for looking the way that they do.

No, killing slavers and poachers will never equate to killing innocent civilians. It isn’t “foreshadowing”. It doesn’t predict that this person has psychopathic tendencies. This is the shit that white people tell themselves to feel good: That standing by and watching slavery happen without attempting change is the right thing to do, and if you do attempt change, let it be by talking nicely. Well, what if those slavers, predictably, aren’t convinced? What if they refuse to give up the way of life that has brought them fame and fortune and comfort? Well, then, leave them be, otherwise you’re a psychopath/a colonizer (I’m looking at you dumbass sansa stans)

Dany has always been put under extra scrutiny for being a woman who has power, is unapologetic about it and practices it for the benefit of people of color.

Stannis Baratheon used fire to murder the innocent. Daenerys Targaryen used fire to defend the innocent and bring justice to those who harmed them. Stannis’ descent to burning his own daughter, therefore, makes sense. Daenerys’ descent to burning KL, therefore, makes none. We are not justifying that Dany decided to do that, we are saying she never should have, and it’s a fault of the writers not her own, because it happened because they decided to make it so and didn’t come naturally from her character development.

Is that clear enough for the incels now or

#daenerys targaryen #stannis baratheon #anti got

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mega-ringsandthings-world · 5 years ago

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@bilbomotherfuckerbaggins Number one: Sansa was presented as someone who's only concern was for the North, who cared only for Northern independence and only for Northern people, and who wanted only a Northerner to rule over the North, so it follows that she would want a Stark heir to continue the Northern legacy. If she doesn't want an heir, then that means that she only cared for the North as a means to have power of her own, and had no thought for the North's or future and her family bloodline beyond her own rule. This doesn’t mean she has to have a biological heir, she can appoint one, I suppose, but Sansa is being presented as a person who has no interest in doing so, so that makes her just power-hungry. Number two: I wasn’t downplaying anything. I wasn’t saying that Sansa should get over her rape because Dany did, you misread my words and the intention I was presenting. I was saying that in Got, the traumatic experience of rape is not going to protect a woman from being expected to marry if duty and social expectations demands it. I gave examples of women who had likewise traumatic experiences and yet were still expected/and made to wed, despite what they felt as a person. Yes, Sansa’s experiences will cause her personal suffering, but they will not hinder other people from placing the expectation of matrimony on her. Number Three: My point is that I don’t find Sophie’s interpretation of Sansa’s future to be flawed or heartbreaking, I simply find it to be devoid of any logic and thought. e.i Stupid. As for my words being problematic, it is possible to separate fantasy and reality, contrary to what you say, and while I was discussing Sansa’s experience through the lenses of the Got universe, I would never, ever apply that reasoning to a woman who has been abused in real life. Let me clarify. My meta on a Game of Thrones character, meta that I constructed using the social laws of the universe the character comes from, does not represent my views and morals in real life. Once again: My meta on a fictional character, which I made using their fictional world and their fictional social constructs, are incompatible with my thoughts on a real person. This should not be hard to understand.

#anti sansa #got nonsense

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cometsweepandleonidsfly · 5 years ago

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“Let me ask you this: What prompted Dany to burn King's Landing? In the moment, that is. The allied forces of Dany and the North had won. In the interests of time, let's leave aside the fact that it was comically easy to kill a dragon only a week ago, but this time, the dragon deftly avoided every projectile and Dany destroyed every scorpion without even breaking a sweat. That was the first laughable moment in an episode that, ultimately, was anything but funny, given how it left the HBO drama's unreliable reputation for quality in smoldering ruins.

In any event, when Dany rested her dragon on a King's Landing wall and realized that she was victorious and the Iron Throne was (probably) hers, what — right then and there — prompted her to decide to burn the city?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

There was no proximate cause, no essential reason for the character to take that horrific action at that moment. To say that a character — or a person — has mental illness in their family tree and thus has no control over their actions is astoundingly reductive and plays into harmful and lazy stereotypes. It's also just boring writing to make a character do something stupid and then handwave it away with "Something, something mental illness!"

That's not only offensive, that's a generality that does nothing to justify that drastic action in that particular moment. All in all, the show has done a piss-poor job of explaining why Daenerys would decide to destroy the very prize she had set her heart on ruling a decade ago. We watched eight seasons of a woman at least attempting to use or think about power differently. Until she didn't. Because … reasons.

Because she had been burned by personal losses? No, sorry, that won't fly. The deaths she's endured recently have certainly contributed to her current mental state, but in the past, we've seen her go through horrific experiences and major grief without murdering thousands of people. Even when she has made mistakes, it was usually in the midst of making strategic decisions that were designed to her get to the next stage of her plan. "Because she was angry" doesn't work, because we've seen her be furious while also demonstrating restraint and realistically assessing the best way forward.

Inescapably, infuriatingly, what we're left with is apparently the central message of Game of Thrones: Bitches are crazy.

Here's how little the show thinks of Dany and how ill-served she was in "The Bells": Once the attack on King's Landing began, we didn't see her face. A core character was reduced to a vengeance-fueled cypher. All we observed, for what felt like pummeling hours, was dragonfire roasting citizens, knocking down buildings, and terrorizing soldiers and civilians alike. Despite Emilia Clarke's superlative acting abilities, we didn't see Dany for the majority of the episode's running time. She was just a faceless, personality-free supervillain, the kind you see in a by-the-numbers blockbuster. We'd been invited to understand Dany's point of view for all these years, but as the endgame approached in "The Bells," the writing made her less interesting than the purple potato known as Thanos.

In its best moments, Game of Thrones has been so much better than this, but every season has been uneven, and this season has been the most slapdash, rushed and insulting of all. At this point, I don't care what happens in the series finale, because the show has already destroyed its legacy, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, a good chunk of that legacy has to do with how ill-served its female characters have been, and the show went out of its way to double down on that in "The Bells."

Brienne was last seen wearing her robe, crying over a boy who broke her heart. The show took the beauty of Jaime knighting Brienne and — again, thanks to tin-eared, threadbare writing — turned it into a bad subplot on a crappy soap opera.

Game of Thrones used to be intermittently interested in exploring and complicating Cersei, which makes sense, given how tremendous a performer Lena Headey is. But this season especially, Cersei has been reduced to a flat, one-dimensional villain, one who is mostly offscreen, except in the occasional scenes in which she smirks or drops smug, acidic commentary. Cersei barely spoke in "The Bells," except for when the show was about to kill her off.

Sansa wasn't even on screen. Everyone in Westeros has made mistakes in their time, Sansa included, but at this point, she's shown more wisdom than most of the characters left alive. She's the most level-headed leadership material the kingdom has at the moment. So, of course, she sitting around tending the hearth in the North and hasn't been given much of interest to do (aside from being portrayed as disloyal to Jon Snow). Not surprisingly, the continually ineffectual Jon Snow wandered around in "The Bells" and once again, didn't really accomplish much. And the show is apparently just dying to put a crown on his head. Because … reasons?

If the show had given us more than a couple minutes of Arya and the Hound actually interacting in the past few episodes (or seasons), maybe her decision to forego revenge on Cersei — you know, a huge part of the motivation that has driven her for years — would have made more sense. It's not that I needed her to kill Cersei, but once Arya was in the Red Keep, the writing for her was abrupt and took the path of least resistance. Maisie Williams gave a terrific performance in the episode, but the messages "The Bells" was sending were so depressingly incoherent that it was hard to care about any of it.

"The Bells" was full of sound and fury that signified nothing, aside from an ungainly sprint to the finish line. It made me feel ill to see so much effort and money wasted on such trivial, silly, nihilistic and sexist storylines. And honestly, the men didn't fare much better: All that character development of Jaime was apparently wasted, and I'm trying to come up with a list of good decisions Tyrion made lately and I'm not coming up with much. This superlative cast deserved better.

In "The Bells," there were moments that could have contained emotional resonance, but that potential was overshadowed by decisions that Benioff and Weiss set up and executed with little or no foresight or thoughtfulness. At this point, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Game of Thrones creative team thought spectacle would make up for the lack of well-honed concluding character moments. As impressive as the visuals in "The Bells" were, they were ultimately hollow: The explosions served mostly as a reminder that Game of Thrones likes to kill people in large numbers when it runs out of ideas.

Landing like enormous chunks of masonry were so many adolescent, superficial takes on what could have been meaty themes. If it was saying anything, "The Bells" appeared to be stating that cycles of oppression and abuse can't be undone. Rulers are always self-serving and driven by greed and paranoia. Most people can't see beyond their own self-interest. The little people will always get crushed. Douchebros like Euron Greyjoy will always wear leather pants.

So much money spent, so much time spent, all for a show that never knew how to write its women consistently well and that had immature conceptions of how to end their tales. The best-executed major plot turns are moving and tragic because they feel surprising and yet inevitable. Given the right kind of in-depth character development, we could have wept for the choices Daenerys, Brienne, Sansa or Cersei made. I grind my teeth when I think about what this show turned out to be versus what it could have been. At its best, its characters have given us moving and wonderfully complex moments, but "The Bells" was Game of Thrones at its worst, and it did untold damage to the show as a whole. It's going to be hard to think of the show without feeling nauseated by what it did — especially to its women — in the home stretch. “

#my god this #got8 #game of thrones #spoilers #but the real spoilers are how the show spoiled itself

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chenanarama · 7 years ago

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Random thoughts on Jon bending the knee

I’ve been bored and thinking about Jon bending the knee to Dany in episode 6. I was thinking about how all of this looked from Dany’s perspective and from Jon’s growing understanding of Dany’s perspective. I want to be clear: this is in no way criticism of Jon. I think we can all agree that the White Walkers are a way bigger concern at this point than the Iron Throne. But it’s always interesting putting aside what we, the relatively omniscient audience, know and considering things from the comparatively limited perspective of different characters.

I think the scene between Tyrion and Jon on the cliffs at Dragonstone is one of the more important scenes in season 7. Without this scene, Jon and Dany never would’ve connected. Jon has had the zombie apocalypse sitting on his shoulders for years at this point. He knows what’s coming, and he’s spent years singlemindedly trying to open people’s eyes to this threat. The problem is that it’s very much like Dany said: you have to see it to know. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t see anything else. It’s as if his head now exists on some other plane that others around him can’t quite reach. Tyrion helps Jon reconnect to solid ground by getting him to consider how things look from the other side. A zombie apocalypse is too much for anyone to wrap his or her mind around, especially when it’s coming from a complete stranger. For the first time, Jon is able to see things from Dany’s perspective and with Tyrion’s help, changes his approach to the situation. Somewhat. He scales back his request, asking for dragonglass instead of an army, and Tyrion convinces Dany to “give him something by giving him nothing” in order to gain an ally for her quest to win the Iron Throne. So…

Dany gives Jon access to the mines.

Dany gives Jon the men and other resources he needs to actually excavate the dragonglass.

Dany gives him these things and Jon takes them – and gives her nothing politically in return.

I want to emphasize the political aspect of this here because it’s crucial. A ruler’s modus operandi is to always operate from a position of strength. Compromise is not bandied about lightly. It teeters on the knife-edge of strength and weakness, wisdom and folly. From a ruling standpoint, ideally one would never need compromise. The more a ruler is forced to bend, the more precarious their rule becomes.

So here we have a situation where Dany has asked for uncompromising obedience from a king who is TECHNICALLY in open rebellion, only for him to not only refuse to bend the knee but to turn right around and ask her to help him EVEN AS HE IS OPENLY REFUSING. For a queen scrapping to solidify her authority in a country that sees her as a foreign invader, compromising here is not only messy, it’s potentially dangerous. In the right hands, the message is galvanizing (wise, strong, benevolent); in the wrong hands, though, it’s destabilizing (foolish, weak, grasping). It’s a risk. Dany takes it.

And Jon gives her nothing to further her own agenda in return.

Politically, what does this mean? Dany has stuck her neck out, run the risk of being seen as weak and vulnerable for pardoning and acquiescing to a usurper in her northern realm, and Jon, by not immediately meeting her in the middle, has left her even more exposed. This is further highlighted when Operation Wight Hunt is formed and Jon leaves Dragonstone, free and clear, to head north of the wall.

Why do I keep emphasizing how one-sided these political compromises are? Because it’s a key element why Jon bent the knee and why he fell so hard for Dany in episode 6.

When Operation Suicidal Wight Hunt goes totally wrong (seriously, what were they thinking? Not gonna lie, I watched those idiots about to get shredded on that frozen lake and thought, “Just so,” as I sipped a glass of wine. But I digress) the first thing Jon thinks to do is send for Daenerys. Now, I think we need to pause for a second and examine Jon’s thought process here. Earlier in this episode, Tormund calls him out for not bending the knee to Dany. He alludes to Mance and asks Jon to consider how many people were wiped out because of the unyielding pride of the “King Beyond the Wall”. When Jon sends Gendry to try to get help from Daenerys, in the back of his mind, a part of him – a big part, I think – has to believe she won’t come. Why? Because it doesn’t make sense! Jon knows that all of the compromising has been on Dany’s side, not Jon’s. She gave him the dragonglass, she gave him the resources he needed to mine, and she supported his expedition north by allowing one of her most trusted Queensguard to join the Fellowship of the Dead Things. And he gave her nothing in return that would aid her goals. Again, his reasons were totally valid. There is a massive zombie army threatening the whole of Westeros. Who cares about a stupid iron chair? But from Dany’s perspective, she has no proof these monsters are even real. So why would she stick her neck out any further? Tyrion helps Jon understand this. Jon is fully aware of how unrealistic it is to expect Dany to fly to a vast frozen wasteland she’s never seen, on the word of a stranger, to fight an enemy that may not be real, especially when she has already compromised herself politically and gotten no reciprocity from him for doing so. No promise of support. No meeting in the middle. Nothing.

Jon knows that Dany has no reason to help him further because he knows that he gave her no reason – no military obligation, no alliance.

He refused to bend the knee.

Jon knows that, from a political standpoint, she has every reason to simply let him die north of the wall and eliminate himself as a potential threat because he knows he gave her every reason.

He refused to bend the knee.

So when he is standing there on that rock in the middle of that frozen lake, surrounded on all sides by the army of the dead, resigned to his fate, these thoughts ran through his mind: 1) that he f*cked up (he wouldn’t be Jon if he wasn’t thinking this lol) 2) whatever he may have felt for her, to Dany this – he, she, and the “they” that they were becoming, whatever that was – was just a political game; letting him die was the best move so that was what she resolved to do and 3) she was what all rulers are, no less, arguably, but certainly no more.

And then…..She was there. Not with one dragon. With all three. Even though it didn’t make sense. Even though he hadn’t bent the knee. Even though it was AGAINST her own self-interest to save him. She was there. Because the fact is 1) Yes, Jon did fuck up but 2) he, she, the “they” that they were becoming was NOT just political to her and letting him die was never an option she would even consider, and 3) she is NOT like everyone else.

This is a queen that would save a “bastard from the north” even though he is in “open rebellion” because she took the time to get to know him and understands that he accepted the mantle of leadership for his people for all the right reasons. This is a woman that would put her life on the line for a man who has been so guarded and slow to trust because she could see through his walls and knew him to be the best that this life has to offer.

All of this comes crashing in on Jon when he is watching Dany swoop in on her dragons.

She is the best person he knows, and she has risked everything to save him, though he gave her no reason.

All of this breaks around him as he sees one of her beloved children plummet from the sky, a mess of fire and blood, right before his very eyes.

She is the best person he knows, and she has lost her child saving him, though he gave her no reason.

And all of this courses through him when he wakes up to find her by his side, heartbroken but determined, unblaming, ready, not to compromise, but to completely put aside every aspiration she ever had for herself and her family legacy to fight by his side.

She is the best person he knows, and she is sacrificing everything to save him and his people, though he gave her no reason.

So he gave her a reason. It wasn’t because she needed to be convinced. It was because he needed her to understand that he loves her and he sees her. She is not like everyone else. He sees her sacrifice; he matches it. He is the only man in the world that would be willing to do so. He is not like everyone else.

#jonerys #jon x dany #jon x daenerys #bend the knee #random

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wendynerdwrites · 7 years ago

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Now take Han Solo. The dude was presented as a smuggler looking for profit. Soon we learn that he is in debt to a very dangeourous gangster who has put a bounty on his head. What does this man do in the end of the movie? He could have gone to Jabba, paid his debt and live without a target on his back. Instead he chooses to come back and help Luke destroy the Death Star. (To be continued)

We are in Empire. He still got the bounty on his back and wans to settle it. What does he do? He went throught a blizzard in the middle of an ice planet to rescue his best friend. He risked his life to save Luke. With the Empire attackin Hoth… does he leave the base? He stays until he is sure that Leia leave the planet safely. He refuses to run even when Leia gave him permission to do it. (To be continued)

We jump to Return. Jabbae is dead. He is free of his debt. He can finally live in peace. He goes back to the rebellion and chooses to personally lead a suicide mission so the Empire can finally be defeated? He even let his firends to choose on their own terms to go with him on that mission. At the end of the movie he tells the woman he loves that he won´t stand in her way to happiness with Luke. (To be continued)

Jump to Force. He reappears again and chooses to help our runaway trio to find the Resistance and get BB8 map to safety. When the First Order starts it´s destructive rampage he chooses to help the rebellion, put it´s personal input on how to destroy the Starkiller (he raises the Resistance morale) and volunteers to infiltrate and put it´s shields down and rescue Rey. Finally he confronts his own son and tries to bring him back from the Dark Side. (To be continued)

What does this means? That Han Solo narrative is consistent. They presents us the character as the good guy deep down and he acts like the good guy deep down. Daenerys it´s a total failure as a character. She is presented as the character who will bring a new era to the world. But so far her Mereen and Westeros arcs haven´t show us any of that supposed change. Instead we have seen her creating mess after mess.

The visual narrative of season 4 and 6 suggests that Daenery’s wants to be worshipped in whole level ahead of a queen and more in a godlike manner. I’m speaking of the mysa moment and when she burned the dosh-khaleen temple. Plenty of critics of the problematic of such narrative have been written.

The slaves of slave’s bay submitted to mysa. The dothraki submitted to the stallion who mounts the world. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she is expecting the westerosi to submit to the Dragon. Olenna stroked her ego by telling her to be one. Then you got her whole speech full of self entitlement to Jon in their first meeting. Just think Jon talking that way to the wildlings in Hard home.

I definitely see your point in Han being an anti-Daenerys, but it should be noted that Han’s background and motivations are nothing like Dany’s. He’s never had some sort of legacy pressed upon him, or been wrapped up in carefully planned mystical shenanigans, nor did he aspire to power and/or authority, ever. In fact, he seemed to downright resent the responsibility that came with having a command rank among the rebels.

There’s of course nothing wrong with wanting power, of course. I’ve always despised the notion of “Not wanting power is the reason X person should be the one to have it!” It’s fucking gross and stupid. It’s a mentality that ignores the fact that power = responsibility and tries to discourage ambition from people by framing “knowing one’s place” as a virtue and aspirations as a vice. The person who doesn’t want power is a person who has not prepared for it. Reluctant Kings have, historically, tended to be as disastrous as any ruthless tyrant (and, on top of the failures of their own reign, often pave the way for said ruthless tyrants to take power). The problem isn’t wanting power. It’s clear that Leia is personally ambitious and very comfortable with authority and power. Wanting power is not the problem, it’s not understanding power as, ultimately, responsibility that’s the issue. That’s what Davos spent four seasons telling Stannis.

Daenerys, after personally losing a dragon, is now claiming she’s coming North to “save it, not conquer it”, but it’s very, very clear that she expects those things to go hand in hand and that saving it is secondary to taking the throne. Otherwise, she would have said to Hell with the ceasefire with Cersei and just gone North. She would not have ever even thought to fly to Winterfell instead of approach them like an ally. And it took a) developing an infatuation for Jon, b) him risking his life with only a dozen men to get her a wight for HER ceasefire, c) a promised armistice with Cersei, d) seeing the enemy with her own eyes and e) losing her “child” to agree to point her armies at the ARMY OF MONSTERS COMING TO KILL EVERYONE, INCLUDING HER AND HER PEOPLE.

She left Meereen a literal flaming shitpile with one criminal without an army to handle things there as she sailed to take her throne. She claimed that she would rule in Meereen to learn to be a leader, but Meereen, despite having a clear and present need and threat facing it, was really just a means for her to take her prize. Then she stopped caring about “learning” when it got really, really hard and she decided she didn’t care to do any followup after setting everything on fire because that big, shiny throne she’s never even seen is waiting for her in the West and is more appealing than making sure she’s preserved her “liberation” of millions of former slaves, which turns out to be much harder than she thought and a problem that isn’t solved with fire. And she takes literally EVERYTHING, all her means of security/preservation with her to Westeros without even bothering to check if MAAAYBE there might be some OTHER major powers wishing to restore slavery to the three cities.

She can believe in a prophecy that says SHE is the ultra-special hero of legend, but when someone shows up telling her of inconvenient monsters threatening to destroy everyone and everything, complete with witnesses and evidence of this, suddenly she’s a skeptic of the devastating oncoming threat because dealing with it means a) spending time and resources on something OTHER than the shiny throne she’s never actually seen and b) involves her acknowledging and tolerating someone with a title and rank equal to her own, and WE CAN’T HAVE THAT! (Regardless of what the actual people might think about that).

She only acknowledges what Jon said about his people AFTER he gave her what she wanted, and took it at face value when he told her that it wouldn’t matter after all because of course they’ll see she’s too wonderful to deny. That should tell you everything you need to know about how she views people, responsibility, and power. Literally everything about the people of the North (which she has no interest in) will melt away for her and the power she wants.

She shows no concern for her allies once they are no longer useful to her. She accused Jon of “pride” for not bending the knee after he downright told her his PEOPLE wouldn’t accept her and held the survival of literally everyone in Westeros hostage over a title, ignoring the point about the actual wishes of the people, because it’s not really important to her. She doesn’t care that Jon tells her, point blank, that his people won’t accept a Southern ruler. She doesn’t even bother asking why that might be. She is ignorant, and willfully so, of everything that has happened in Westeros that doesn’t directly involve her, and she has a double standard about anything in Westeros that involves her but is inconvenient (see: “My father was bad but don’t judge me for it, meanwhile, you totally should have to live according to a vow your ancestor made under duress three hundred years ago.”)

She only intends to help after SHE loses something of HERS in a way that directly threatens her power (losing a dragon.) and even then it’s conditional. AND EVEN THEN she doesn’t spare a thought towards, “Hey, maybe someone should send a message to the Northerners that one of my dragons died right in front of a terrifying enemy who has the power to reanimate corpses.” Because she isn’t interested. If that ended up mattering in a way beyond “oh, woe is me, I lost my child”, that would be inconvenient. Daenerys wants to assume power without caring for the responsibilities that come with it.

This is basically Dany’s theme song:

youtube

(substitute the “Janet Janet Janet Janet!” With her stupid ass list of titles)

But instead, the soundtrack is playing this triumphant, heavenly choir:

youtube

And to me, that’s the ACTUAL problem with narrative the show is trying to sell us, rather than the writing itself, necessarily. Or, rather, Dany’s words and actions on paper. Those two clips are basically Reality vs Perception to me when it comes to Dany, but the show is trying to sell us on the Perception, and it’s becoming more and more blatant and overwhelming how much this. Does. Not. Work.

For me, it isn’t what the characters say/do itself that makes the story poor, so much as how it is framed. Han claims to be in it for himself, but his actions tell a different story. The presentation makes that clear and works with that. Then you have things like Fifty Shades of Grey. 50SoG wouldn’t be a problem if it was a story about a controlling, psychotic predator, but it’s supposed to be a genuine romance, not a horror story and/or cautionary tale.

Same problem with Daenerys in GOT. Sure, she claims to be an altruistic messiah figure who cares about doing good, but her actions are every bit as contradictory to her claims as Han’s are to his. Only, as Han proves, it’s not saying one thing and doing another that’s the problem. It’s how this is framed. The way she is portrayed operates as if her words are to be taken at face value. She burns Westeros’s last autumn harvest and triumphant music swells. She spews her hypocritical BS about Jon’s pride and is given the last word. Jon’s response isn’t to be all “Is this motherfucker serious?!” but to look all guilty and self-reflective, as if what she said had any merit to it and WASN’T just a delusional, oblivious, moronic heap of bullshit so big that they can smell it in Yi-Ti. Sort of like how Arya’s shitty behavior since season 1 is framed as “cool”, “empowering”, and “strong” and her “Most girls are idiots” line is framed as being clever and of course SO TRUE and isn’t Arya just so great for being Not Like Other Girls. It’s not the writing itself that’s inconsistent. It’s the presentation that makes it so skewed and poorly done. Hell, they even go so far as to trot Missandei out every so often to give a speech about how great Dany is (even a speech about how Dany is a CHOSEN QUEEN NOT JUST BECAUSE OF HER DADDY thank you very much after scenes of Dany dismissing even the mention of any people’s wishes and holding everyone’s safety hostage because of who her Dad was). Missandei’s only function in the show is to talk about how wonderful Dany is. Incidentally, that’s become Tyrion’s only function in the show now, too (aside from constant failure, stating and somehow simultaneously ignoring the obvious, and reminding everyone of how smart he is, of course).

#anti-daenerys #Anti-daenerys targaryen #Han Solo #game of thrones meta

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mon-blanchetts · 7 years ago

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Thieves Among Us (Part 4)

Let Jon have his armies and his devoted wildlings and the love of their people, she thinks. Let him have his dragon queen. She’s in possession of a secret, tragic as it may be, but at least it’s entirely her own. For Sansa, that’s more than enough. It has to be. Rated M; inspired by content from S7. Previous chapters can be found here.

A huge thanks to @alittlestardustcaught for beta reading this chapter!

We used to play in the godswood together when we were children, me and you and Robb and Theon. You remember that, don’t you?

Jon stared at the ancient face carved into the heart tree. That was what Sansa had asked him when they had been in the broken tower, when the tension in that small room had been thick enough to taste on his tongue. There she was, looking out towards the godswood with her back facing him, her body a tense line, her voice soft and wistful. It wasn’t enough to fool him—Jon knew that she was barely holding herself together, but he couldn’t undo what had been done. Worse, he didn’t what she was referring to—not then, not now. It rang true, was the thing, authentic, and yet for the life of him he couldn’t conjure any memory whatsoever to fit with her words. All those moons ago, Jon had assumed that he’d been too wrapped up in his intentions to think about anything else other than what he had to do, what he had to end, but lately his perceptions had altered. More and more, he realized that there were other things he couldn’t remember, a dark space in his consciousness where something ought to have been, but no longer was. It left him feeling unsettled and out-of-touch, but he had yet to mention it to anybody. Jon wanted to change that.

The winds were biting this afternoon, moving all around him in a way he thought somewhat uninviting. Despite all the layers he wore beneath his cloak, Jon never felt warm, whether he was inside or out. It wasn’t a bad thing to lament over—at least it kept him alert, sharp. Warmth lulled him to sleep, wrapped him with a false sense of hope and security. Not a soul on either continent was in a place to think that, him least of all.

“Still praying to the old gods, are you now?”

Beric Dondarrion’s voice was smooth like marble, a calming sound that seemed fitting for the place they stood in. Jon turned his back on the heart tree, taking in the man approaching him. “No more than I pray to all the other gods,” he replied.

“Don’t believe in any of them, you mean?” Lord Beric smirked. “Not even the Lord of Light, who brought you back to life? Who chose you to be the Prince that was Promised?”

Jon huffed in response. That damned prophecy, not to mention that damned title—why did he have to be part of it all? He was a survivor, first and foremost; all he could hope for was to see the world he knew make it through whatever was coming for all of them, but Jon knew he wasn’t the only one who believed that. The Red Witch was entirely at fault for this, and for that he was even more exasperated with her. Where she had disappeared to after she’d been given a private audience with Dany remained a mystery, but there was not a doubt in his mind she would find ways to stir up trouble wherever she was.

“Maybe I don’t know what I believe in anymore,” he said, turning to the heart tree again. He tried to ignore the way his stomach throbbed to life again, just as it had when he woke this morn. “What I do know is that I’m here—I’m alive, and now there’s an undead army of thousands, maybe more, marching towards us…yet here I am, trying to convince myself and everyone around me that we can defeat them.” Jon knew it was the worst thing to say, but doing so had been strangely comforting. Remedial, almost, seeing as he’d wanted to let it out for ages.

Behind him, Beric Dondarrion said nothing. Strange to think that this was likely the first instance they were making conversation, despite the fact that they had journeyed beyond the Wall together in order to gather proof of the Night King’s army of the Dead. A white walker had dealt him a near-fatal blow to his stomach when that horde of wights had ambushed his party, a stab wound that had gone deep. Even now, Jon could remember with vivid clarity how it felt, as if the blood in his veins had turned to ice while the enemy’s spear was lodged in his flesh—but there was something else to it as well, something that he didn’t have the chance to reflect on until he’d reached the safety of the Wall. Jon couldn’t explain it, but in that moment he felt as if he had lost a part of him, as if the white walker had ripped something vital out of him when it had pulled its spear back.

Jon glanced over his shoulder. Lord Beric was studying the red leaves above him with his exposed eye, one gloved hand resting on the pommel of his sword. He had seen the man fight and drink and laugh, all the things that the living did, but there was always a haunted look in his eye that never went away, an emptiness that came through his voice no matter what he was saying. A shell of a man. That was what Beric Dondarrion was.

“When was the last time you set foot in the godswood, Lord Beric?”

The man snorted. “Barely even went to my own, back before everything went to shit.” He looked around, as if he was expecting someone else to be with them. “The people at the castle like to talk quite a bit. A fellow died here, no? That’s a travesty, in a sanctuary like this.”

Jon nodded. “So the story goes. They found the corpse lying about, but there isn’t anyone who can explain what happened, not even the maesters.”

“Was the man someone of importance?”

“That depends who you ask,” he said, unable to hide the smirk that formed on his mouth. He turned his gaze down at the snowy ground beneath his feet. Jon tried to imagined the corpse lying before him, facedown in the snow just like Maester Payton and others had described. The body had been given to the flames shortly after the discovery, just like he’d ordered of every corpse in their midst. Sansa had seen to that.

Beric Dondarrion cocked his head. “From the sound of it, you weren’t too taken by him. Am I right?”

“Petyr Baelish was Lady Sansa’s guest, not mine,” he said, his voice hard, unforgiving. “I’ve a feeling there aren’t a great many who miss him, but I could be wrong.” Sansa’s face flashed through his mind and his wound throbbed with more fervor than before. She had written to him personally about the whole thing, a detached, sterile piece that arrived at Dragonstone by raven. Littlefinger is dead, his body found in the godswood, but nobody knows how he got there or what happened to him. We’ve burned the body. Squabbles have begun over his legacy. If she had experienced any grief of loss, it was completely missing in her letter.

“One less corpse for the Night King to get his fucking hands on, that’s how I see it,” Lord Beric mused. He looked Jon straight in the eye. “Why did you ask for me, Your Grace?”

It was a last resort, but Jon felt that someone who’d been through the same experience might understand. Was his predicament truly his own?

“There are things I can’t remember,” he said, his eyes still focused on the face of the heart tree. “It’s just…at first, I thought it was only things that happened a long, long time ago, but now I’m realizing that there are more gaps in my memory, things that people discuss of recent that I can’t recall at all.” He let out a sigh, his breath floating before him.

When Jon glanced at Lord Beric, his expression was unreadable. His stomach knotted inside him. Jon didn’t know what the man was thinking, wasn’t sure if he understood. Suddenly he felt foolish about the whole thing, angry at himself for requesting his presence here, a man he didn’t really know about.

“You don’t get to come back the same,” Lord Beric said, upending the silence between them. “You forget things that happened in your life, and there’s no picking and choosing the memories that disappear. Those lost memories, though—you’ll never know how meaningful they were, anyway. You could say it’s a small mercy.”

“That’s no mercy,” Jon protested. He wasn’t sure why, but he was oddly affronted by the man’s comment. He felt swindled, incomplete.

Lord Beric lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t it? Those memories you say you can’t remember—they could have all been bad ones, something sad or tragic. That’s not a terrible thing to have away with.”

Jon scoffed. “I doubt the Lord of Light is benevolent enough to allow something as convenient as that.” He thought about what Sansa had made mention of in the broken tower. She had shrugged it off as soon as she realized that he didn’t know what she was talking about—she’d shrugged him off shortly after, but that hadn’t been a surprise at all—but her disappointment was discernible in that small chamber built high above the keep. Why had she brought up something that happened so long ago? Was it all to fill that ugly silence that pressed down on them while she came to terms with what he was doing, or was there more significance to it?

“I thought you weren’t keen to believe in the Lord of Light,” his companion pointed out, tilting his head to the side to scratch beneath his chin. Jon said nothing.

“Look at it the way a scale works. The Lord of Light puts you on one side, but there’s nothing else to put on the other side to make it balance. A life is owed, yours, but something has to give for you to come back. So a compromise is made. You get to come back, I get to come back, but we’re not the same people we used to be. Every course of action has a consequence.”

Jon tried to swallow what Lord Beric had said “How much have you forgotten?”

His companion shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. Sometimes I do things I find myself questioning afterwards and wonder if it’s because it’s to do with who I was before. Besides,” he reached forward to touch the heart tree, almost reverently, “how do you know what’s lost to you if you didn’t have any knowledge about it in the first place?”

An image of Sansa, splayed out beneath him, naked, her auburn hair spread over the pillow, her head tilted back in ecstasy to expose her beautiful throat. A better man wouldn’t have done what he did with her, despite Littlefinger’s own beliefs. It’s easy to fall in love with her, your sister, but even easier to fall in lust with. Any man able to withstand charms like hers might not be much of a man at all. Jon hadn’t been out to satisfy his lust, not while he’d been inside Sansa. He just wanted to help her forget, just like she had asked. Give me back a piece of home I’ve lost, Jon. Give me something to get lost in. A part of him knew that they were doing something wrong, filthy, but it had been too easy to push that away, too easy to forget the sanctity of their blood relations. And yet, Jon had taken Sansa to bed because he loved her. Perhaps it was that love that had become twisted when he had been brought back. Telling her he regretted it all when he didn’t had been a means to protect both of them, but it had ended up destroying what precious bond that they had forged, a bond that he realized could never be replicated or mended.

He thought of all the people he placed his confidence in, Sam and Ser Davos and Tormund. Jon thought about Dany and the ironies that the gods enjoyed heaping on him. He had known her for such a short period of time, and yet the history they shared was probably enough to span an entire lifetime. War had the ability to make time stretch when it saw fit; it was no wonder that one experience felt like it happened ages ago. He had questioned his connection with Sansa based off what he thought he knew—he had questioned his connection with Dany because of what he didn’t. Were all of his follies also the work of the same god?

“What goes through your mind, Your Grace?”

Jon blinked once, twice. He looked at Lord Beric. “Nothing worth voicing out loud,” he said, offering the man a tight smile. The leaves rustled above their heads while the wind wailed, a sorrowful sound that seemed to go straight to his heart.

“I’ll stay here then, if you’re finished with me,” his companion said, glancing at his surroundings. “Not a bad place after all, this.”

Jon left Lord Beric on his own. His wound was throbbing again, but he ignored it. A small worry had been accounted for, but it hadn’t been lifted, not really. His sporadic bouts of amnesia still weighed him down along with the rest of his troubles, but it was a small comfort knowing that he wasn’t suffering alone. He didn’t think he agreed with Lord Beric’s philosophies, but he had none to offer, either.

Every course of action has a consequence. That part was certainly true. There would have been consequences, severe ones, if he and Sansa hadn’t ended what it was they had, despite his own desires, despite hers. Littlefinger had veered too close to the truth, and Jon wasn’t sure how far the man would’ve gone with his suspicions, who else he would have passed them to. What if his lords had got wind of what he’d been doing with Sansa? His stomach twisted almost painfully from the thought. The King in the North, fucking his own sister. That’s how they would’ve all viewed it. Neither of them would have been able to hide behind the Stark name then. They would have been as corrupt as the Lannisters, as mad as the Targaryens, not a bit different than their enemies. What defense could either of them stand on, had their transgressions come to light? Would Sansa have wanted him then, knowing that he’d been an accomplice in her downfall?

He almost didn’t notice the entrance of the crypts, nearly passing it entirely, but he stopped in his tracks. The last time he had been there, he’d looked to Ned Stark’s effigy for guidance and strength; Jon had merely glanced at the statue of Lyanna Stark without giving it any thought whatsoever. There wasn’t a reason to pause and reflect, nothing to linger on. Lyanna Stark had been a tragic figure, no doubt, but her presence had been muted in favor of the battles and victories he and his brothers were more interested in. If only he’d known differently. If only Ned had said something. He had promised though, hadn’t he? His uncle had promised to discuss more about it when he came back from King’s Landing, but how much would he have let on?

Again and again, he dreamt of her. It was the same thing every time; always she would appear before him as a child, dressed in Stark gray, her eyes full of wisdom that wasn’t natural for her age. They both partook in that same game of hide-and-seek, that which he always lost because then Sansa would appear, always Sansa, completely oblivious to their presence, pulling out that casket from underneath her bed, its design so simple and nondescript that he couldn’t even begin to figure out what lay inside. It eluded him each time, its contents, despite the fact that he was always trying to see, always waiting for her to lift open the lid while Lyanna giggled behind the drawn curtains. Whenever he got close to finally satisfying his curiosity, darkness took hold of him and he found himself back in his own bed, frustrated and confused. Of all the things to grow mad about, it was being thwarted by his desires in a dream.

A raven squawked somewhere behind him, shaking him out of his contemplations. He looked up, but only overcast skies looked back at him. Gray, like the colour of his mother’s dress when he dreamt of her, like the colour of his eyes. The colour of Sansa’s gowns.

Something dawned on him. He hated looking back on their last conversation, considering the way he had ruined what could have well been his best chance at reconciliation, but he couldn’t ignore it any further. Sansa was hiding something. He had his suspicious even before that, but for the first time, Jon realized that she was keeping something from him. It was in the way she avoided him, the closed-off way she spoke with him when they happened to be alone. Jon thought her behaviour was in response to everything he had done wrong in her eyes, but something still didn’t sit right with him.

His wound was throbbing more strongly now, making it hurt when his stomach rose while he inhaled, and he wondered if it was going to re-open again, like it usually did. Sam would be as furious as he would be perplexed, but Jon couldn’t blame him for his reactions. Something wasn’t right about this injury; it was disquieting, to say the least, but not as disquieting as the thought that Sansa was hiding something from him. What was she hiding?

Jon walked on, leaving the crypts behind him. As badly as he wanted to know, how would he ever find out? Not from Sansa, unfortunately. His heart constricted when he remembered how she stared at him coldly at the feast held the night before he had traveled to the Gift, together with Dany. Sansa didn’t attend the banquet that had been held after the feast; his eyes had been searching her out the whole time, until an observant attendant informed him that Lady Sansa had chosen to retire instead. No, Sansa wouldn’t tell him anything, even if he demanded it of her. If he really wanted to know what she was keeping from him, he’d have to find out through other means.

He didn’t mean to be here, not alone. Not without Sansa’s permission. Her bedchamber was her private sanctuary and he knew he was intruding upon it, but the moment he’d made the decision to slip through the space left by the open door, Jon knew that there was no going back on his intentions.

Nothing had changed since he was last here; all of the furniture was still arranged in the same spot, tilted at the same angles. Everything looked as it should be. So why couldn’t he shake off the feeling that a great change had taken place? Why did something feel wrong in the air?

Jon always remembered how warm it was in her bedchamber, even when there wasn’t a fire blazing inside the hearth; but he was always cold now, even here. He hadn’t come back beyond the Wall right, he realized more often than not. The fact that he felt no warmth, not to mention that damned wound on his abdomen that refused to heal properly, were the most obvious signs. He was afraid to learn what else might be wrong with him, what other thing might wear his resolve down just a little more.

But, gods, he used to feel so warm in here. Jon was always warm when he had clung to Sansa like she was air—her hot, bare skin pressed tightly against his while he moved inside her to a rhythm that was exclusively theirs. And Sansa, achingly sweet and achingly beautiful, would match him with every thrust, chanting his name over and over and over again, an erotic hymn that brought about the most divine moment he had ever experienced. Jon screwed his eyes shut and drew in a shuddering breath, hoping to disarm the images that were shoving themselves to the forefront of his mind, but that only made things worse. More images flashed by with startling clarity: the curve of Sansa’s hips beneath his fingers, gripped so tightly for purchase that there would no doubt be a patch of bruises the next day—the little gasp that always came from her swollen lips just before her crisis washed over as reverently as his own did just a few beats later.

Jon knew that his mind was playing games with him, no longer a faculty he had as much faith in these days, but he could’ve sworn that he could smell vestiges of their sexual transgressions, thick and heady, so potent that it made his head swim. But there was something else lingering in the air, too; even though everything looked fine, he was positive that he could grasp the metallic tang of blood. The realization served to remind him again why he had chosen to come here in the first place. He’d been dreaming that same dream night after night—dreaming of Sansa so often, of that casket she always pulled from beneath her bed—that he began to wonder if there was any truth behind it. The idea was ridiculous; the chances that Sansa actually had a casket that she hid in her bedchamber seemed slim to none, but Jon could never extinguish the possibility completely.

He could feel his heart hammering against his chest; Jon reached out towards one of the bedposts to steady himself, confused by the sudden terror that gripped him. What was there to be so scared about? So what if he did find something beneath Sansa’s bed—what if he did find the casket he had seen in his dream? What would she possible have in there that was worth mulling over to this extent? Jon didn’t have the right to be here; he didn’t have the right to any information that Sansa decided she wanted to keep to herself. Should that include the things that he might be involved with?

What are you hiding from me, Sansa?

The silence in the room rang in his ears in a way he didn’t think possible; he felt as if his heart was trying to escape from his chest. Desperate to quell the panic that was growing, Jon walked to the side of the bed that Sansa always stood in his dream before he sank to his hands and knees, the cold floor against his palms sending a jolt through his body.

He ducked his head beneath the bed frame. Everything was just a dream. Only a dream, and nothing more.

There was nothing.

AN: If you got this far, I just want to say thank you for sticking it out with me. I don’t know how interesting this story is now that Season 7 has aired, but it’s where I’m getting all the inspiration to write, and I’m going to ride that high until it wears out, which I hope isn’t soon, because I do want to finish this story, bloody hard as it is. I also want everyone to know that the light is coming, but it time was needed. Again, thank you so much for reading; your feedback and comments are the absolute best a writer can hope for!

#jon x sansa #actuallyjonsa #jonsansaff #jonsansasource #gotfic #don't even know if this story's relevant anymore #but I had way too much written for Part 4 that I knew I had to release it in some shape or form #thieves among us #writings

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theculturalvacuum · 8 years ago

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A Feast for Fanfic Asks

Julia’s headspace last night: “Okay, time to get into Alysanne’s voice so I can start this next chapter. Patriarchy brain, abusive asshole husband, tinglies for a dilf, guilt about said dilf tinglies... This is really depressing, let’s do an ask round up instead.”

Anonymous said:

I really appreciate you doing the fanfic asks, it's really great to see all the thought you put into the characters and story you are creating. also its a nice thrill to see an answer to something dumb I asked. I know you've got a life and your busy with that as well as your fic and website work, so its really kind that you take the time to answer the asks about your fic as well.

None of my readers are dumb. And they all have excellent taste.

Honestly, I mostly do this to procrastinate.

Anonymous said:

TYBUTT DIES!!!!! It has to be him, hope its not Rhob after his little chat with Loree earlier on, that'd be terrible but I think its too soon for that. Or maybe its that old ass Florent.

All possible.

Anonymous said:

I always love your fic asks so much. It's so great to see how much thought you put into it all and which bits you haven't fleshed out yet and which bits are very clear in your mind. I enjoy the asks as much as the chapters themselves. I find the whole process of how someone writes things just as enjoyable as the end product, its all fascinating to me. Good luck with the rest.

Thank you, I need it. I’m so thankful I have engaged readers who care enough to send me asks. I never thought that would happen.

Anonymous said:

I like the way you write corret. It'd be easy as you said to make him an asshole like Tybutt but he's more nuanced than that they're both products of their world but Corret at least seems to care for people beyond himself and possess some decency even if its filtered through his extreme patriarchal world view, Tybutt just seems out for Tybutt and everyone else is there to furnish his needs and wants. The world tells him he can do what he wants within the bounds of his station so he does.

Westeros was made for dudes like Corret and Tybot, and they’re both soaking in that privilege. Just Corret is not an abusive, rapist fuckface. I think Tybutt would be like he is in any world you could invent, but Corret is much more just very, very normative.

Lucky for Taria, I guess.

Anonymous said:

Was Loree telling off Daeron the first time anyone had told him he was an asshole to his face? I feel like she might be one of the few people in the Seven Kingdoms who could do that and get away with it.

Well, yeah, Jerry more or less says so. Princely Privilege, yo.

I’m sure his dad tried to lecture him about duty and how he was fucking over the entire continent, but sometimes it’s easy to ignore your dad, you know? Or maybe by that point poor Egg had “dealing with my stupid kids and their love lives” fatigue and was just, “whatever, Daeron. I guess I just can’t have nice things. Like a legacy. I’m fine.”

Anonymous said:

Any chance that there might be another 25 random things about the world of ''a wedding in sunspear''? The first lot were perfect. Especially the little incite into Maron and his broken heart.

25 is a lot. Maybe I’ll do it to celebrate a milestone, like the official halfway point of the story. That will be in seven more chapters so… August, if I keep up with my 2017 Goals chart and do a chapter a month.

Anonymous said:

I get so conflicted over Olenna chapters, I don't like her in the books, she serves a purpose but all her bigotry puts me off but this chapter was a great way to really explore how different womens roles are in dorne and how that shapes women's characters and how they act. Alleza was just delighted to explore and learn and see new places but somehow that puts her in danger, what a world to live in. but it does highlight the patriarchy world she comes from and throws light on Eliotts views too.

Olenna did everything she was supposed to and followed all the rules and still got fucked over. And here are all these women who are breaking the rules and seem to get rewarded for it. She has a mixture of anger and jealousy about it. But at this point in her life, she’s not ready to give up on the idea that if she’s a good girl she’ll be rewarded.

Anonymous said:

There needs to be more Alleza Dayne's in the world. She's like the teacher no one knew they needed, who just throwing facts at everyone in the party. she's probably read every book she could find about everything and now she's getting to see bits of it which gives her raptures. It's great to see it be a girl too who's educated and want to know about the world, book smarts matters in girls in Dorne whereas north its about luck of the family you're in, if your a Tarly, sucks to be a clever girl

This actually got me thinking about women’s education in Westeros. Remember how Cersei asked Sansa if she “knew her letters” in aGoT? That implies to me that it’s not unthinkable that highborn women, even as highborn as Sansa, wouldn’t be literate. Or at least not literate enough to write a letter.

But if my stupid headcanon thing about women in Dorne being all about administration and taxes and whatever is right, then this is exactly the area of education that would be emphasized in girls.

Either way, it would always suck to be a Tarly woman, I think.

Anonymous said:

I should have known something was going on when Dany kept looking at the stairs. But for some reason I thought she was just hoping Daeron wasn't on his way to upset Olenna more. Maron is such an idiot, how can be think this will end well. I can understand Dany living in lala land during her first real crush and thinking they can marry and be together forever, but Maron is older and surely at least is aware of how little much a match really brings to either house.

Maron has penis feelings at stake here! He has a vague sense that maybe these penis feelings are not a good idea to nurture, but that sense only shows up occasionally. Usually when it will annoy Dany the most.

And I sincerely doubt he’s ever given a moment’s thought to the political implications of any of his actions.

Anonymous said:

God olenna really fucking irritates me ad yet I love her chapter. she's so full of pb, but she's also so ridiculously high and mighty. She's also is envious of Dany and Alleza and in some ways Loreza even if she'd never actually admit it to herself, she know shes a prisoner in her own life but lives in a world that teachers her that acceptable and normal so she accepts it because its all she knows. She may be scornful of the way the dornish live but she does feel some envy for it too.

Oh for sure, that’s quite insightful, anon.

I think part of her problem is that she has no idea what she could possibly be outside of being married to Daeron. It’s what everyone was telling her was going to be her destiny since she was quite young. And it’s been drilled into her head that she has to behave a certain way in order to not fuck it up. And that’s what she sees all these women as doing, fucking it up.

Anonymous said:

Can just say how delighted I am to see your write so many female side characters, and how you've made them all so unique and different. ASOIAF sometimes feels very male to me so I purposely pick out fics that have a wealth of women and this one does not disappoint. Alleza is wonderful in all her nerdy glory, Obella got some sass, Deneza and her work devotion which may lead to brain explosion, Joleta and her no shit attitude, Aelora and her cuteness, Sarra and her sweet badassness etc

Thank you! I hope I’m not buying into ethnic stereotypes with all these assertive Dornish women.

Anonymous said:

Water Gardens is cool, and little Dennet was very cute. Also those little interactions with people highlight the difference in status between sand bastards and other ones. He talked to a Princess so easily and casually, not half terrified he'd be in trouble. he sat at the table with her and everyone else, he talked to Joleta about his Aunt, Obella was there and he wasn't hidden or an issue. He'll be big brother to her children like Genna is her big sister it’s just normal to them.

Ha. Sand bastards.

Obella probably thinks Artyr looks super hot when he’s taking care of his sonion.

Anonymous said:

What Olenna needs to ask herself is who's talking about Genna Sand the way they are? Is it the dornishmen who are trying to force shame on her, or is it men from another land who are trying to force their standards onto her and shame her?

But the Dornish men don’t know any better! And a woman’s reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful, don’t you know.

Anonymous said:

As someone who spent a mind numbing 5 years in a country where I was the victim of so much casual racism that sometimes I wonder if I actually imagined it or people are indeed that dumb, I have to commend you on Olenna's POV in particular an how she just transplants her views to this new place she's in and spares no thought to how they may not share her values at all and they don't need her pity or ''help''. It's very realistic, she means no actual harm and yet…

Thank you, that’s high praise indeed. It must have really sucked to be in that situation for so long.

Olenna is eventually going to become the woman who calls Ellaria “the serpent's whore,” remember. (And a bunch of Dornish randos will almost start a fight defending her. God, I love them.)

Anonymous said:

Loved the Joleta -Loreza chat it was like a carry over from chapter 1. Joleta is the person who lays it out for emotionally, the one who makes her face reality. But really is there a specific way to deal with her fucked up situation, yeah she should have ended it sooner o he'd have more time to mourn privately and move on but she'd still have had to put aside her love for her duty no matter when she did it. Although someone needs to tell Joleta that Deneza is just busy and to get over herself

Loree is cursed with the Martell tendency to procrastinate; she was never going to send that dude away until the last possible moment. And Joleta just does NOT understand her INTP-ness. Loree doesn’t have any trouble facing reality. The reality is that she’s FINE!

Anonymous said:

Do you think the kids at the water gardens all wear the same thing? Like maybe just simple tunics, no special fabrics or embroidery etc? I'm conflicted about it, part of me thinks yes because they're all wards of the prince from highest to lowest they all play together, learn together, and naked there is no difference between them and maybe that idea stretches to the gardens in general. But they're so class conscious so I'm not sure, maybe they like making subtle distinctions from the start.

Honestly, Dorne is so classist that I think they couldn’t help but make distinctions, even if they were actively trying not to. I’ve always imagined that the common-born kids sleep five to a bed in dormitories, while the lil’ princes have their own rooms with their own servants and stuff.

I’ve always picture the Water Gardens as very colourful, so I hope they don’t all wear the same colour tunic.

Anonymous said:

Oh Olenna, next time there is a long silence just keep it buttoned and you'll be fine, sing in your head or something. Although she has been in dorne long enough to at least know that a loving familial bon isn't always between true born relatives.

But… it’s soooo… awkward.

That attitude towards bastards must seem unusual to her, since people in Westeros always talk about how bastards are a ticking-time bomb of betrayal. (The author side-eyes her sonion, looking for signs of treachery. Nope, he’s just watching Naruto.)

Anonymous said:

Oh dude Lewyn don't go after the reach bro's they're gonna say mean things about your sister and ladies of your land. although maybe considering he's got back up it might be a good idea and all those men can fight it out on how dornishmen let their women take too many liberties, lol.

Omg, keep reading.

Anonymous said:

Maron grow a brain man please, what is wrong with you. At least Dany has an excuse for her dumbness this is all new to her, but Maron you've had love before, you're old enough to know better, but obviously age does not always giveth wisdom.

As the god of this story I can tell you: Maron will never grow a brain.

Anonymous said:

Is it weird to ship Olenna x Obella

If you think trolling is a good foundation for a relationship, then I guess it’s fine.

Anonymous said:

Eliott's got to hit rock bottom and have his notions quashed before he can make a place for himself as consort and figure out how to navigate his new role. It's not the life or role he imagined I'm sure growing up but this is what he's got he just needs to learn a new way and adapt. He's clever he'll work it out, he just needs time. This is where Adwin telling him in advance would have come in useful. Or talking to Leygood and been made more aware from the get go would have eased his path.

Rock bottom, eh? Keep reading.

Anonymous said:

Oh your muse is mean to Jeyne Swann. did she at least get a few happy years with her daughters when they were small? Surely she had at least some happy memories full of joy to look back on from their 0-10 years before they started to become a bit too dornish for her. please?

God, anon. You really aren’t gonna leave me alone until I come up with an entire backstory for this woman, are you?

Yeah, she has happy baby memories. And it’s not that she didn’t like her anymore, or she didn’t like them, because of their Dornishness, they just couldn’t really relate. Her daughters wondered why the hell she was such a pushover, and she spent a lot of time telling Rebanna to stop criticizing her husband.

Anonymous said:

Joleta gurl how can you have a mama like Trystana and be so lost when it comes to people who prize doing their duty highly?

Probably has something to do with the fact that that mama has a terrible blind spot for her. You think she would ever let Linette get away with this shit?

Anonymous said:

I am both excited and terrified for Eliott's next chapter. I imagine to be full of a lot of shaming and slurs. But I'm excited too because the sooner he gets it out the sooner he can start to evolve into new Eliott. He wont be that different but he might become a bit more tolerant and open minded, a bit, a little tiny bit, maybe,...hopefully. Whatever happens Loreza's future has trophy consort in it so she gets to have some fun again one day if this one's a total dud.

Aw, Eliott’s not a dud. But I also suspect there will be a few slurs, and maybe even a bit of shaming.

Lewyn and his peeps will LOVE it.

Anonymous said:

Adorable nerd!Alleza is my new fave. I always imagined Arthur Dayne having a nerdy side, since his BFF Rhaegar had one so it makes sense that his mom was a total nerd too.

RhaeRhae would have loved Batara.

Anonymous said:

Oh Dany you idiot. Open your eyes girl. Although I suppose if she was full of insight and clear headedness she wouldn't be such a realistic teenager. Has she forgotten how marriage works though, or does she think because its a fine match status wise everyone else will be like okay cool even though it does nothing politically?

I don’t think she’s thinking in those terms. Teenagers can be a little... narrowly focused.

And not to give anything away, but you may have walked right into her character arc.

Anonymous said:

Will we get to meet young!Jon Arryn? Or was his bolting in the dramatis personae a seed that won't sprout?

I just made that dramatis personae too damn long!

Um, he may do some great deeds at the tourney or something. Maybe. If I remember about him.

Anonymous said:

do not know whether to love your fic ask responses or curse you for them. im way too invested in this fic, now I wanna know which inconsequential dude jeyne wyl is married to, what emma mertyn thinks of being barely wallpaper, and seriously if there is no a moment in this fic of alyse ladybright laying the groundwork for locking Owain down as her status elevating spouse ill cry.

Fine. Okay, so Jeyne is married to a dude named Ser Jon Carin. He’s a landed knight from the Bone Way (so one of her father’s bannermen) from one of those crazy families who was once really into raiding the Marches. They have two kids, who are both grown up and probably kicking around somewhere.

Poor Emma Mertyns. I don’t know. She takes comfort in her needlework.

And never underestimate Alyse Ladybright.

Anonymous said:

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the Ladybright homestead when her parents found out their clever little girls water garden bestie was princess loreza. I wonder have they even recovered yet, if they're still alive and kicking when she becomes treasurer that might finish them off.

I mean, they’re not peasants, but yeah, it was more than they thought they could hope for.

Anonymous said:

I love the newest chapter, mostly bc I love how write it proves me about the twist! The wedding we're getting is definitely going to be Loreza and Rolyn (he always reminded me of Oberyn), and the Reach lords can go skulk and then marry each other (Olenna and Luther)

Rolyn reminds you of Oberyn? How? They’re both bi, I guess.

I guess this would be quite a twist. And I’m all about the twists.

Anonymous said:

Luv ur awis fic!! I rly luv that Lewyn went after Elliot!! Pls tell me they get together <3 I ship it so hard!! Ellyn forever <3<3<3<3

This is adorable.

Anonymous said:

I know you've said before that Loreza isn't going to call off the wedding, but she seems so done with Elliot in your last chapter. She brought up her former lover in front of him, ffs. So maybe she's trying to get him to call off the wedding so she doesn't have to, and then you wouldn't be lying because she doesn't call it off, he does.

Are you a lawyer?

I just think Loree has no intention of going into a marriage where she’ll be slutshamed by her own damn husband. As for him calling it off; how do you imagine that will go over. Remember, Adwin totally knew about this. Her virginity wasn’t a stipulation of the marriage contract, not even an unspoken one.

#aWiS #A Wedding in Sunspear #aWiS asks

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esonetwork · 5 years ago

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A blog of ice and fire: Thoughts on Game of Thrones seasons 4 & 5

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/a-blog-of-ice-and-fire-thoughts-on-game-of-thrones-seasons-4-5/

A blog of ice and fire: Thoughts on Game of Thrones seasons 4 & 5

I’m still mad about the infamous “red wedding,” but nevertheless, my first-time viewing of Game of Thrones continues with seasons 4 and 5.

I’m really starting to pick up speed now — I watched the first season in about a month, but I finished season 4 in a week. It’s interesting because even though I heard what I thought were a lot of spoilers about this show, there’s still a lot of details I don’t know, and I’m dying to find out what happens to certain characters. (Also, they had better not let any harm come to poor Samwell Tarly — he has such a lovely, kind soul and at least ONE PERSON on this show deserves to find happiness, darn it!)

Revenge and forgiveness

***Warning: Spoilers ahead!***

The Stark family keeps running into worse and worse luck, but at least now it’s time for the Lannisters to have a little taste of their own medicine. Karma finally catches up with King Joffrey and he’s poisoned at his own wedding. Also, Tywin’s days of manipulating his family are over, as the patriarch also meets his end, at the hands of his son Tyrion.

While Joffrey’s death comes as a relief to viewers (and just about everyone in Westeros), his absence doesn’t really settle the political tensions in the realm. In fact, it kicks off a murder “trial” (I’m putting “trial” in quotation marks here because there’s nothing particularly just or impartial about it), which eventually leads to Tyrion first killing his father, as referenced earlier, and then officially joining #TeamTargaryen.

As viewers we’ve been waiting a long time to see Joffrey get his comeuppance. He’s both a terrible ruler and a terrible person, and he was bad news for the future of Westeros. And yet, it’s interesting how revenge is never really as satisfying as you think it’s going to be. Joffrey’s death doesn’t erase all the evil things he’s done; Ned Stark is still dead, and there’s still a war going on. The legacy he left continues to poison those around him.

Speaking of revenge, I’m curious to see how Arya Stark’s character continues to develop, and how her feelings regarding her quest for vengeance may or may not change. (Side note: Her time training with the shape-shifters is super interesting, and I’m excited to see more magic making its way into the show.)

Arya has experienced far too much trauma and tragedy for someone who’s still so very young, and I don’t blame her for wanting to avenge her family. Still, there’s a very fine line between justice and revenge, and a good person who’s consumed by a desire for vengeance can easily cross over to the dark side themselves.

The opposite of revenge is, of course, forgiveness, and I’m curious to see what Game of Thrones has to say in regards to this theme. We haven’t seen much forgiveness at work, which is a shame because redemption and forgiveness are two of my favorite themes in stories (it’s why I love Star Wars so much, and it��s also why “Return of the Jedi” is one of my top favorite Star Wars movies). I believe that forgiveness and healing are an important part of the human experience.

Game of Thrones is challenging, though, because there are some characters that I really, really hate, and who seem beyond redemption. Some of the villains on Game of Thrones display a level of evil and cruelty that force me to look away from the screen. How does a character like Arya reach a place of forgiveness and peace within herself, while also ensuring that justice is done and that corrupt leaders are prevented from harming others in the future?

Daenerys is also wrestling with these same questions, as she tries to cement her status as queen and end corruption in the realms she encounters. What kind of punishment should she dole out in the lands she conquers, to the people who have done genuinely bad things? How do you mix mercy with justice?

I don’t think the show has really revealed what it thinks the answers to these questions are yet, but I’m sure this will continue to be explored in coming seasons.

A dangerous dynasty

Even though I’m very much #TeamStark (a fact I’ve probably mentioned too many times already in this series of blogs), a character who has really grown on me throughout this series is Tyrion, and it was hard to watch almost all his friends and family abandon him during the trial where he is falsely accused of murder.

Peter Dinklage puts so much emotion and depth into his performance, and you can’t help but empathize with him. And what an epic speech when he tells off the entire courtroom full of people from King’s Landing; it didn’t exactly go over well with his audience, but I was definitely cheering!

It’s interesting to watch how the Lannisters regularly serve as the architects of their own doom. Jaime Lannister started this whole mess all the way back in season 1 by pushing Bran out the window. Joffrey’s selfish cruelty paints a giant target on his back. Then, Tywin’s repeated mistreatment of his son Tyrion leads to his own death and the loss of one of the best strategists in King’s Landing.

Well, the capital’s loss is Dany’s gain, as Tyrion takes his clever wits and political prowess to the Mother of Dragons, lending his support to the Targaryen dynasty. I can’t wait to see how their partnership plays out.

Tyrion will also be extra glad that he got out of King’s Landing when he finds out about the dumpster fire that place has turned into. Cersei gambles on an alliance with the High Sparrow, only to have him turn on her and throw her into prison. Cersei really can be a nasty person, but in the end I do pity her, because her life, on the whole, has probably been a very unhappy experience.

Cersei is smart and capable, but in the male-dominated world of Westeros, she’s treated dismissively. She has to fight for whatever power she does wield. If both she and Tyrion had been treated with more respect, and were placed in a more welcoming environment that allowed them to truly flourish, it’s interesting to ponder what they may have accomplished.

There are way too many other character arcs to cover in one blog, but it’s also cool to see Jon Snow emerging as a leader and trying to combat the growing threat of the White Walkers. Brienne of Tarth continues to be one of my favorite characters, and I love that we get to learn more about her backstory. Plus, Podrick is a great sidekick for her, and I love seeing their adventures together.

Also, in the beginning I really hated Theon Greyjoy, and I’m surprised to admit that I now genuinely feel sorry for him. He’s done some bad things, but seeing the way Ramsay Bolton has broken him physically, mentally, and emotionally is just gut-wrenching.

Speaking of Ramsay Bolton, he now joins King Joffrey on my list of most hated fictional characters of all time. I flinch every time he’s onscreen, and I’m getting mad just writing about him. Ugh ⁠— it’s time for him to go!

Responsibility in storytelling

This leads me to the final point I’d like to discuss, and it’s one I’ve heard other viewers talking about throughout the series. Does Game of Thrones sometimes go too far in its depiction of violence, particularly its focus on sexual violence against women?

There’s a scene in season 5 involving Ramsay Bolton and his new wife, Sansa Stark, that so deeply troubled me that I don’t even really want to write about it. I don’t cry a lot while watching movies/TV, but his horrible treatment of Sansa really got to me. We’ve seen many female characters who have been sexually mistreated throughout the series, including Cersei, Dany, and nearly Brienne.

Is this something that should be shown onscreen? I know that events like this happened in the real-life medieval era; however, any time you portray a sensitive topic in fiction, you have to do it responsibly. Hopefully Ramsay will be called to account for all the awful things he’s done, but that won’t erase the trauma Sansa has experienced.

I love Game of Thrones, but I believe it is perfectly fair to call out the writers, and to wish that they’d handled these sensitive scenes with greater care. Also, the scene of Jaime forcing himself on his sister Cersei felt out of character and has made it tough for me to root for a redemption arc for him anymore. According to an article I read, that scene wasn’t even in the books, which makes its inclusion in the show all the more frustrating.

This issue is more complex than can be covered in one article, but I think it’s good to talk about it. Fiction can raise awareness about the realities of rape and sexual violence throughout history, and motivate people to take action against it. But this topic should never be sensationalized or used for mere shock value, which is sometimes the case in Game of Thrones.

Closing thoughts

I am now over halfway through this series, and pieces of the narrative continue to fall into place. Also, thank goodness I have heard some spoilers about season 6, because the ending of season 5 is definitely a shocker. The Night’s Watch turns on Jon Snow and leaves him bleeding out on the ground, presumably dead.

I definitely would have been raging at “red wedding” levels of angry, but thankfully I already know he comes back, so the scene wasn’t as traumatic as it otherwise would have been. Still, I’m definitely going to be in a hurry to get to the library after work today to pick up a copy of season 6!

#Arya Stark #Game of Thrones #Jon Snow #season 4 #Season 5 #Tyrion #Westeros

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danithebookaholic-blog · 6 years ago

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Rogue Elegance Series

By K. A. Dowling

Publication: The Changing Tide - November 22, 2016 The Forbidden City - November 6, 2017 The Winding Maze - May 18, 2018 Genre: Fantasy, Historical, Romance

Some History:

KA Dowling is an award-winning writer living just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. She has been writing stories as long as she can remember, and has been daydreaming about fantastical worlds and imaginary heroines for even longer than that.

Dowling lives with her husband, toddler, and their smelly Boston Terrier, King Henry, all of whom graciously put up with her late night writing spells and her exasperating propensity to leave a trail of distracted clutter in her wake.

Her favorite animal is the Tyrannosaurus Rex and she has wanted to be a sea-faring pirate for much of her adult life. This story is her way of living vicariously through her fictional character.

Website / Instagram / Twitter

The Changing Tide: Book One

The Synopsis:

Emerala the Rogue spent the idle days of her youth dreaming of a life at sea. Now, suffocated by worsening cultural persecution in the tiny port of Chancey, she feels that she is destined for something greater.

In the wake of his wife's mysterious death, the king that sits the throne has strengthened his iron grip like a vise. Suddenly, Emerala's people are being subjected to swift and unwarranted executions. Emerala and her razor sharp tongue find it increasingly difficult to stay safely out of the hands of the golden soldiers that case the cobbled streets of her hometown. It is not until a mysterious pirate corners her in a shadowed alleyway that things begin to change. Leaving her armed with a stolen dagger and a dangerous choice, the stranger send Emerala stumbling headfirst into danger.

Emerala's small act of rebellion is the catalyst that awakens a long buried prophecy, setting into motion a series of events that will alter the course of history. She must quickly learn to keep her enemies close or pay the ultimate price.

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The Forbidden City: Book Two

The Synopsis:

All her life, Emerala wanted nothing more than to see the world. When her small act of rebellion agains the crown leaves her with a price on her head and nowhere to run, Captain Alexander Mathew offers her a way out. With the Golden Guard closing in, Emerala flees onboard the Rebellion and sets sail for that coveted line where the sky meets sea.

As it turns out, a life of piracy isn't quite as romantic as Emerala had always imagined it would be.

Alexander Mathew is a man haunted by his late father's aspirations. Desperate and determined, he drags Emerala and his crew through incresingly dangerous trials in a last ditch effort to honor a dead man's legacy. As whispers of mutiny rise, Evander the Hawk works to play both sides, straddling the line between ally and enemy. In a world where alliances change as quickly as the tides Emerala soon learns that the only person she can depend upon is herself.

Back in Emerala's homeland, political tensions continue to rise as the family she left behind struggles to find their place in a world that has all but cast them out. The increasingly violent clashes between the Cairan people and the brutal Golden Guard pushes the island of Chancey ever closer to civil war. In the midst of it all, Merani the Elegant grows continually closer to General James Byron, knowing all the while that the forbidden affair is likely to cost both of them their lives.

The Winding Maze: Book Three

The Synopsis:

All Emerala the Rogue ever wanted was to explore the world beyond the thin blue line. She never asked for a crown. She certainly never wanted the weight of a kingdom on her shoulders. But when a centuries old prophecy leaves her with a legitimate bid for the throne, the Chancian nobility stop calling for her neck in a noose and begin fighting instead for her hand in marriage.

Luckily for Emerala, she never believed in fate.

Offshore, the black ships circle like sharks as the kingdom of Chancey inches closer to a bloody civil war. With the seat of power shifting, the Chancians and Cairans struggle to adapt or die in the new world order. Emerala must find a way to forge her own path, everyone else be damned.

In the third and final installment of Rogue Elegance, the city of Chancey will burn.

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The Review & Wrap-Up:

When I first started reading the ROGUE ELEGANCE trilogy I didn't think I was going to like it. It took me three different times of starting The Changing Tide before I finally made myself read past the first few chapters...

I had promised K.A. Dowling that I would read her third and final installment of the ROGUE ELEGANCE trilogy back in April, however there was one small problem: I hadn't read the first two in the series. Because I was willing to spend my time reading the ending, she was kind enough to send me the beginning and middle to catch me up, and she sent them to me for free! I had to make sure I read this series!

But I just kept putting it off. I finished the book I was on when she sent me the first two. And then I picked up an ARC that I had been dying to get my hands on before I finally made myself sit down and get through the first five chapters of The Changing Tide.

Now, let me pause right here and say this: the first five chapters of The Changing Tide are NOT bad! It just wasn't what I was in the mind set for!

I didn't want to be in Chancey in 1525. I didn't want to be dealing with pirates and gypsies and tyrant kings.

It had been so long since I had last picked up a fantasy novel that my mind was just stuck on genocide, kidnappings, and everyday world problems. So I made myself sit down and get through the first five chapters of The Changing Tide.

And get through I did! I almost finish the book in one sitting!

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My review for The Changing Tide on Amazon/Goodreads:

Pirates, gypsies, and a hateful king, what more could you ask for? Overall a good story. A great ending, that leaves you wanting more! A lot of unnecessary detail, which adds to the length and causes the book to feel like not much happens, but a good story line. Can't wait to read book two!

My review for The Forbidden City on Amazon/Goodreads:

Book two: WOW! There are so many twists and turns and highs in this book it was hard to put it down for any amount of time! Just when your heart slows from the last turn of fate, it picks right back up again! THE FORBIDDEN CITY is a must read for anyone who loves pirate tales and fast pace thrillers! Love this book!

My review for The Winding Maze on Amazon/Goodreads:

The Winding Maze reminds me of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The whole book I was on the edge of my seat, thinking in the back of my mind 'these violent delights have violent ends.' Forbidden love, a fight for power and the war that brings an end to all, The Winding Maze was the perfect ending the Rogue Elegance series!

I loved these books! I'm incredibly angry with myself for taking so long to finally sit down and read them! What was I thinking?!

The Forbidden City was my favorite out of all of them, but the series as a whole was great! I'm very interested to see if there is going to be a spin-off from the trilogy based on how the series ends. I think that story would be very interesting. 🤔

From one bookaholic to another, I hope I’ve helped you find your next fix. —Dani

Dani's Score out of 5: 📚📚📚📚📚 (overall)

The Changing Tide: 📚📚📚📚 The Forbidden City: 📚📚📚📚📚 The Winding Maze: 📚📚📚📚📚

Start a conversation: If your people were in a war fighting for their rights, their rights to be people, their rights to live, and the love of your life was on the opposing side, who would you choose: your people or your one true love?

Have a book you’d like to suggest or one you’d like me to review? Please feel free to leave your comments down below.

#Rogue Elegance Trilogy #Rogue Elegance series #Rogue Elegance Trilogy by KA Dowling #Rogue Elegance series by KA Dowling #The Changing Tide #The Changing Tide (Book 1)#The Changing Tide by KA Dowling #The Changing Tide (Book 1) by KA Dowling #The Changing Tide (Rogue Elegance 1)#The Changing Tide (Rogue Elegance 1) by KA Dowling #The Forbidden City #The Forbidden City by KA Dowling #The Forbidden City (Book 2)#The Forbidden City (Book 2) by KA Dowling #The Forbidden City (Rogue Elegance 2)#The Forbidden City (Rogue Elegance 2) by KA Dowling #The Winding Maze #The Winding Maze by KA Dowling #The Winding Maze (Book 3)#The Winding Maze (Book 3) by KA Dowling #The Winding Maze (Rogue Elegance 3)#The Winding Maze (Rogue Elegance 3) by KA Dowling #November 2016 #November 2017 #May 2018 #fantasy author #fantasy #fantasy nivel #fantasy novel #historical

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