#like it’s pretty divorced from the theme i was intending this to be lol????? idk what the theme is anymore actually!!!!!!!

[akkivee]

'RAWR XD' said kuukou's dragon

[unproduciblesmackdown]

mare internum

[[^ link to 1st page ^]]

this comic was completed in today and is available to read in full

it’s a scifi survival story about as long as that of a movie’s, although it probably takes longer than 2 hrs to read. 

it’s about four scientists on mars: astronauts mike and bex fall into an unmapped cave, encounter the remnants of martian life, and try to find a way back to the surface. of course this whole journey is a metaphor, and it’s about finding a way to keep moving forward despite not necessarily seeing a future, and the unoptimistic hopefulness of possibility alone

there’s lots of underlying themes, including: the dichotomous symbolism of water/oceans and stars....iteration vs transformation....being caught between pasts and futures that both seem too painful to handle (being...at sea??)..... struggles to connect........support which is earnest yet inadequate......the desire to find others sympathetic vs the need for a fundamental respect regardless of whether one Proves they Deserve it.......seeing oneself in another and seeking validation from them by idealizing them vs by recognizing their flaws and failures and weakness........trusting others vs retaining control..........classic stuff like abandonment, self-sabotage, confronting one’s own fallibility, shame, friendship, parenthood, yknow it goes on and on, there’s a lot. and there’s a.i., and aqueous tech, and bex is great and all the characters are interesting and engaging and good, and it’s funny a lot of times, and it all builds to such a solid ending that really it’s all worth it for that finale and one of the last pages in particular. natch the pace can be slower earlier on, but if you’re reading it and not really sure about whether the story’s going places hard enough for you, i’d say try to make it to the end of chapter 3 and see how you feel by that point. although plenty of wild stuff happens prior to that. 

in fact stuff is so wild that i have to say there’s a big need for Content Warnings (like, from the very first page) so i’ll get into a rundown of that below the cut, with a couple other comments maybe.

in conclusion............idk it’s a really unpredictable but solid story with interesting characters who are distinct but similar and whose interactions are more important to their survival than the “evade physical threats” thing, set against a scifi backdrop, exploring the issue of existing without expecting the future to necessarily be good or even better, with an ending that feels genuine and earned. and its completion means that now it can be read all in one go.

- the first page of the intro is the main character clearly about to attempt suicide, and continues to intend to kill himself into the second chapter

- one of the biggest things is the first interlude, which is a flashback scene where it’s shown that in the main character’s childhood he was (presumably regularly) sexually abused by an uncle. it’s a lot! but the entire scene is only six pages in total and can be skipped if needbe. the summary is: the main character (probably something like 8-10 yrs old) is in his backyard pool, and is worried about the unknowns in his future since his parents are getting divorced, and that things won’t get better, and the uncle who’s abusing him says that everything will be fine and he’ll be there for him.

- oh yeah and not long into the first chapter it’s revealed that the main character has prescription medication that he hasn’t been taking, so that he’s having withdrawals. his Diagnosis is never revealed but some of the effects of the withdrawal when unmedicated are paranoia / delusions. and possibly it plays into the attempting suicide thing.

- there’s not really body horror but still some Uncomfortable concepts. a symbiotic parasite fuses itself to the main character’s leg (this happens pretty early on lol) and can like. retract into the leg. haha gross

- a bit of eye trauma but it’s nothing too bad 

- oh yeah if you super don’t like stuff w/ needles, there’s kinda a part involving that.

just as a sidenote, sometime’s i’d just have trouble parsing the Visual Info...things sometimes aren’t exactly Understandable At A Glimpse storyboard style or anything, and the environment being largely “cave” doesn’t always provide great instinctive reference points....i just sometimes wouldn’t fully Get what i’m looking at. but yknow if you forge ahead, generally things will be explained well enough with a little further context in the next page or two

[jonsameta]

Hi, me again!

jesuiscommejesuis: Haha, I’m on that GoT grind and probably won’t stop until the premiere 😂. I trust your opinion so unfortunately you have to endure another ask from me. Anyway…I think that most of us have considered the possibility of Jonsa not being canon. (RIP me if that happens). But my question isn’t about whether Jonsa will be or won’t be (I’ve come to terms with the fact that GoT will end how GRRM always intended it to end) it’s about what that possibility means for all of the evidence, clues, foreshadowing, etc that we’ve gathered. In your opinion will Jonsa not happening render those clues and meta meaningless and we were all crazy after all? Or do they take on a new meaning and point us in a new direction? Idk if that even makes sense. Maybe I’m just afraid that Jonsa wont happen and I’m afraid for no other reason other than that I will have looked and sounded insane to all of my GoT friends and had nothing to show for it. Also do you know of any interviews or blog posts from GRRM possibly supporting Jonsa? Same for D&D? Or any other people on or working with the show? Thank you so much!! 💙

—-

Hi there, 

The thing about theories is they’re like Shrodinger’s cat. If you try to be objective, you have to entertain the possibility that it won’t happen, but it can’t completely be false until proven otherwise. That said, some theories are more probable than others because there’s material within the text that thematically undoes something. This is because a story’s themes (which differs depending on the adaptation but it can’t be completely divorced from the original source either) define its boundaries because they essentially make up “the heart of the story”, not the plot. They give the main characters a moral dilemma that drives their journeys. Considering the themes of the story - both bookwise and showwise - Jonsa is very probable because it answers a lot of long standing character arcs that go beyond these characters and provides a bookend that Jon/Dany cannot considering R+L=J. 

I think anything in this story has to be considered according to the politics - even the fantasy part because the personal is political. With such a spread out story only the themes and the morality dilemmas of politics that the smallest moment can have is what holds it all together. And I think the strongest argument for the probability of Jonsa comes from a structural level of gauging the politics. 

Jon’s parentage is a political game changer and the way it’s been built up it cannot just be for personal angst - especially when the element of his parentage revealing him to have a higher claim than Dany is brought up. It doesn’t just affect him or his relationship with Dany. It affects Westeros and Dany’s own longstanding goal.

Jon may not want to be king, but Dany is walking in as a very unpopular figure into the North and the way she has gone about her campaign hasn’t improved her reputation and only worsened it. And Jon himself will lose popularity after having 1) bent the knee to a Targaryen, 2) consorting with a Targaryen and 3) being a secret Targaryen. 

Dany doesn’t realise that although Jon claims to have pledged his allegiance to her, it doesn’t mean the North has fallen into her hands. He’s only lost their faith from this move so no Targaryen by themselves could claim the North. Not to mention the Vale and Riverlands are more allied to Sansa than they are to Jon. To regain faith, he’d have to separate himself from Dany and the Targaryen identity a bit and yet he would need a political statement that only a marriage alliance to Stark could give if he were to remain in power. There’s also the pesky issue of how unknowingly Sansa and the Starks have more allies than Dany (or Jon without the Starks) does as everyone comes into Winterfell. So Sansa’s constant label as “key to the North” and the importance of marriage alliances becomes very important here. He can’t become king or even gain the faith of the people (back) without Sansa. So in that case, the whole notion of the Pact of Ice and Fire being fulfilled through Dany and Jon falls apart because Jon will be seen as an outsider. @thelawyerthatwaspromised has even written a post with infographics to make it easier to understand. It’s like R+L=J resets the chessboard. Ironically, what the audience thought Jon/Dany’s union would do politically is far more possible through Jon/Sansa. 

As it makes sense as a political match, the possibility of it happening and impacting the narrative increases a lot more. The original outline also matters here because clearly the pseudo-incest tag didn’t stop the author. However, as the characters haven’t interacted in real time in the books and aren’t close, there’s not much people have asked him about it nor has GRRM has said about it unless you count his vague reply once (”I won’t say more than I’ve already said in the books”). I’d say there’s more to be gauged from what he has to say about other ships that fandom roots for, that isn’t as positive as they make it out to be - whether Jon/rya, San/San, San/rion or Jon/Dany. It’s not obvious because he hardly shuts down possibilities but there’s reading between the lines. It becomes more obvious through a process of elimination. It’s also because Jon/Sansa as a ship tramples over so many ships that fandoms have banked on that people are inclined to dismiss it rather than re-evaluate the pre-existing ships. 

On the show, people have been coy too but there’s more content to gauge as the characters have already reunited and their dynamic has become pretty pivotal to the story. Where D&D shut down Dany and Yara ever happening, in the same panel they evaded a question about Jon and Sansa being developed as a romantic relationship. Aiden Gil/lian commented on how Jon’s parentage opens up possibilities for Jon and Sansa’s relationship romantically at the end of season 6. Sophie was asked about it post season 6 and she said it was possible because it’s GOT and they’re cousins. Also, there’s Liam Cunnin/gham who once liked a Jonsa fanvideo lol and he barely has any likes. Sophie has said it’s possible, even as she joked about how it would be embarrassing to film an intimate scene. Kit has somehow avoided all questioning, but he has some pretty interesting reactions regarding Jon and Sansa’s relationship - either in the words he chooses (”She twists him like no one else”) or how over the top his reaction to Sansa is when he talks about how annoying she is to the point where he’s flushed and red and laughing while saying “I’ve gotten really animated now that Sansa has come into the story”. Bryan Cogman has a lot to say regarding this dynamic too, that he even wrote Jon leaving Ghost behind to watch over Sansa when he left for Dragonstone. 

What helps regarding the show is that it’s not just the actors or the political sense, but the camerawork and visual framing that makes their scenes very confusing because they’re shot as a romantic couple about to happen, as @trinuviel has explored in her series “All is Subtext”.  This notion that it was “framed” or “shot” that way was echoed by multiple reviewers and podcasts through season 6 and even into the beginning of season 7. 

A huge part of this was because it very subtly visually paralleled more positive romantic ships on the show like Ned/Cat, Jaime/Brienne, Robb/Talisa, Sam/Gilly, Missandei/Greyworm and even Jon/Ygritte to some extent. This is over a course of 7 episodes under 5 different directors. One of the most telling scenes for me was when they did two back to back parallels to Ned/Cat and Jaime/Brienne after Jon chokeholds Littlefinger over Sansa and they go on to give a Jaime/Brienne-esque goodbye. The same director Mark Mylod directed both the season 6 Jaime/Brienne and season 7 Jon/Sansa goodbye. Bryan Cogman even confirmed that the Littlefinger chokehold was meant to parallel Ned doing the same over Cat. 

But in my opinion, what weirdly cemented it was how Jon/Dany contrasted Jon/Sansa’s dynamic and framing. There were a lot of structural decisions made that undercut the Jon/Dany “romance” and made Jon/Sansa look more compatible and romantic, which is something I explored in my “Undoing Romance” series. Again, this is looking beyond the actors. The biggest tell for me was that they never got a first kiss so romantic tension was never released but just dissipated over plot exposition. Moreover, how is it that Jon and Sansa have more parallels with romantic ships than Jon/Dany do? Why do Jon/Sansa have more Robb/Talisa framing through season 6 than Jon/Dany through season 7 if that’s what’s happening? Why was there no passionate first kiss like theirs? We just skipped to the sex in between a montage that told us how related they are. 

Why didn’t Jon look back at Dany when Jorah did, while he looked back at Sansa? Why does Jon react more violently to Sansa’s suitors than to Jorah? Why are these characters caught in triangle with interlopers, who pose a political threat but are also interested in one romantically? Why is this dynamic given so much importance where there’s tension but also there’s emotional vulnerability that pours out contrasting Jon/Sansa’s and Sansa and Arya’s season 6 and season 7 battlements scenes respectively. Why did they reveal R+L=J at the end of season 6 - the season in which people questioned what the hell was happening in the Jon/Sansa dynamic and a whole season before Jon met Dany. Both season finales also teased conflict because of political claims that change because of R+L=J. Where his parentage reveal, relieves Jon/Sansa of the direct incest factor because it biologically distances them, it makes Jon and Dany biologically more related - especially because she’s heavily inbred herself. 

So it is a situation of “will they/won’t they?” but even more subtly because the cast and crew always skips past discussing it and with Jon/Dany happening people take it as accidental chemistry. There’s no heavy dismissal from the TPTB though when there could’ve been or laughing at it like Tormund and Brienne, which is totally for laughs and a show ship. What they do keep saying is that this relationship is key to watch and you have to wonder: why is it so important? To me it’s not about the actors chemistry or singular scenes. It’s about the story’s intrinsic narrative structure and the camera framing that makes the visual subtext convey more than the text does. 

The show frames Jon and Sansa’s relationship is odd because we know they weren’t close and Arya was his favorite and yet they take up quite an important part in each other’s arc at this point, where they both want to trust each other completely but don’t and yet their vulnerability comes out most around each other in these last two seasons. They’re being built up more slowly than Jon/Dany and more subtly so while people expect a full blown romance, I expect something more subtle, more quiet and thus emotionally rewarding for these characters individual and collective arcs. If it happens, D&D are building it up as a plot twist/game changer because it’s related to politics. But it’s not to say there can’t be emotional catharsis too because these characters have a lot of issues that they answer pretty well. 

Hope that answers your questions. 

- lostlittlesatellites