#losttreemonster

[joannalannister]

I hope you had a wonderful birthday! I was wondering about meta about Ice and Fire, Daenerys versus Twyin and Roose. You discuss how Twyin and Roose are associated with the cold and atrocities while Daenerys is connected with fire and freedom. Do you think there is in significance to the Starks being connected to the cold and ice? Thematically, I mean.

[ Ice & Fire meta ]  Thank you so much for the birthday wishes! It was great!

I would personally say that the Starks are connected to winter, or more specifically, a warning against winter. The Others are winter personified. (Similar to, but opposite from, Daenerys being “fire made flesh” or fire personified.) The Others are cold and ice and death. 

The Starks are the guardians of humanity, the sentinels. For thousands of years, the Starks have stood against the Others’ coming, ready to light the metaphorical beacons and call humanity to war, “to rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

But “some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for [a fuckton of] years,” the Others were little more than tales to frighten children. 

The Starks forgot. All of humanity forgot, but the Starks, with all of their reminders… Winterfell, their ancestral sword Ice, their house words … it’s like the Starks stuck Post-It notes all over their castle saying, “REMINDER: the Others are coming the fuck back. Stand ready.” And still they forgot. 

And if the Starks forgot, what hope was there for the rest of us? 

Consider Ice, for example. The Starks’ ancestral sword. It’s named Ice. Why? Why is this sword named Ice? Because it’s a reminder of who it is to be used against: demons made of ice, not deserters running for their lives, half mad with terror. 

But Ned Stark has forgotten. That’s how we meet him, executing a deserter, in the first chapter of the series. He has forgotten that Ice, “dark and strong,” was forged “to fight against the cold.” Its true purpose lost, the blade breaks. 

(Ice was broken long before Tywin touched it; you just didn’t realize it.**)

“But now the world is changing once again. A new hour comes. […] Battle is at hand. The Sword shall be reforged.” –FOTR

Ice will never be made whole again. Like Ned, it’s gone. But it is being reforged, in Brienne’s hands***. It is a metaphorical reforging, to remind the blade that it fights against the cold, as Brienne defends the innocent from those who would do them harm. “Renewed shall be blade that was broken…”

So do you see? Ice, Winterfell, all of it – it is not a connection to the cold. It’s a connection to the war against the cold. 

The Starks are all about fire; they’re just coming at it from the other side. 

Have you thought about the fires of House Stark? Beneath Winterfell fires burn, deep within the earth: 

The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and the scalding waters rushed through its walls and chambers like blood through a man’s body, driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a dozen small courtyards. […] Catelyn’s bath was always hot and steaming, and her walls warm to the touch.

In the winter, the Starks allow everyone to come to the winter town to take shelter from the cold. (The inn in the winter town is called the Smoking Log - definitely not a connection to the cold.) 

The Starks’ entire purpose is to keep people warm. (And I mean that quite literally; if people get cold and die, they swell the ranks of the Others. The goal is to keep people alive, warm, breathing, and not fighting for the enemy.) 

The Starks have a garden that blooms in the dead of winter. That’s … that’s the whole series right there. Flowers blooming in the snow against all odds. A great fire in the cold, icy dark.**** 

Because humanity is fire (life, passion, love, hate (“Cersei was all wildfire”), hunger, power). 

Humanity is a bonfire, blazing in the darkness of a cold, cruel, uncaring universe. 

That’s the point GRRM is making: The universe does not care about us, so we have to care about us. We can’t treat each other like things. We have to care about the wellbeing of our neighbors. We have to be our own light in the darkness, when all other lights go out. 

We shine brighter when night is all around us. That is The Point of the series, that is why ASOIAF is so dark – to make the lights brighter. 

Humanity is fire. The Others are ice. That is why we’re having the War for the Dawn. Will the sun rise at the end of this? Or will Westeros fall into cold, endless night? That’s why it’s A Song of Ice and Fire. It’s the Others vs Humanity, with a lot of shitty icy human beings working on behalf of the other side. (Tywin and Roose and Randyll are like wights that the Others didn’t even have to ~activate~.) 

Look at that description of Winterfell again. Specifically, look at the part where the castle has water running through it “like blood through a man’s body.” If you recall from my previous post, the people GRRM describes as “cold” are bloodless, practically dead. Yet Winterfell is filled with the fires of the earth, with scalding waters like blood through a man’s body. 

Even the Starks’ castle is more alive and more interested in the wellbeing of humanity than Tywin is. 

The Starks are all about that Fire and Blood life.*****

And that is why I believe that Jon and Dany are getting together in the books. Thematically they are already bound together. 

It bears repeating: “the real enemy is the cold.” 

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**Tywin simply made the break visible for all to see, because Tywin is a very concrete kind of person who doesn’t deal in the abstract. The problems of Westeros are so much bigger than any single villain, or even a handful of villains. The problems of Westeros are systemic evils, with GRRM’s great villains simply serving as handmaidens to these evils. 

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***And idk about you, but I’m super eager to find out who’s going to get red and black Widow’s Wail. Will it be Young Griff? Daenerys? Jon? Tyrion? idk but some shit’s gonna go down with that sword.

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****Something I have been wondering about lately – I think Sansa/Arya/whoever is holding Winterfell in the war for the dawn and giving the dragonriders time to do their thing – Whoever is holding Winterfell, I think they will need to burn it. (Again, I mean.) The ice zombies are going to make it over the first wall, and it’s only a matter of time before they make it over the second. So just before you’re overrun, you gotta light it all up. At least I think. Only GRRM will tell.

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*****In previous centuries/millenia, “rage against the dying of the light” was literally what House Stark and the northmen did in bad winters. When the winter was especially bad, a lot of northmen would decide to die in war instead of starve, and they would make it easier for the people left behind to survive. Known as Winter Wolves, these people would come down from the North, looting and burning and killing and “fighting to the last man because there was nothing for them up North.” All about that fire and blood life indeed. Please see this post for more information about the Winter Wolves. 

[onionjulius]

losttreemonster replied to your post: So Edmure was probalby 10 or so when Cat got...

Under normal relationships and circumstances, I would say yes, but Catelyn’s relationship with Hoster isn’t exactly a normal father/daughter relationship. Catelyn is a parentified child and she has expectations of being a sort of emotional partner to Hoster, so in way I don’t think it would be unreasonable to believe he would have written about it. I don’t think Brynden would have known because he is in the Vale. There are other possibilities.

Edmure’s wenching is so legendary that word of it travels straight up the kingsroad all the way to Winterfell!

Pretty impressive for a floppy fish.

[samwpmarleau]

losttreemonster replied to your post “How would the rebellion have gone if Stannis was out in field instead...”

I don’t like the implication that it was Rickard or Ned’s fault what happened to Lyanna. I don’t understand the need to vilify them over something that was not a simple situation and I don’t think it’s fair to say they didn’t care. Maybe they didn’t react they way Lyanna wanted them, but Rickard didn’t deserve to die and Ned didn’t deserve to have his life destroyed and threaten. I don't think that's what you were trying to say, but I just don't like the blame game.

Uh........what??

If that’s your interpretation of my post, then you severely misread it.

The anon asked what would happen if Stannis were out in the field--which I answered--and if it would have been smarter to marry Lyanna to Stannis--to which I answered that’s really an irrelevant question because it would never happen. Literally nothing in there addressed whose fault the Rebellion was (Rhaegar and Aerys, for the record), let alone held the assertion that they deserved to die. What the hell?

Rickard, and to a lesser extent Ned, CAN be taken to task for their decisions. Rickard did not care about the interests of his children, but rather the furthering of his house for a larger scheme. Ned deliberately ignored his own sister’s reservations. Those are just facts. We can take Brandon to task too for doing something as stupid (noble, but stupid) as ride into King’s Landing and demand from the Mad King that his son come out and die.

These characters were brutally murdered and didn’t start the Rebellion, but they were far from perfect and I’m not going to whitewash their faults.

[dknc3]

losttreemonster replied to your post “Don’t let this writer’s so called “inspiration” bring you down! You...”

Which is why I believe fan fiction is so important to young writers. I think you have handled this situation with grace. I will certainly follow your lead and give her work a chance. I do hope she continues to write. And good luck finishing your story! I’m intrigued, because I wasn’t initially sure if I wanted Ned and Cat back together, but I might be coming around and my shipper identity crisis resolved. Good luck to both of you!

Thank you very much. I am about 3/4 of the way finished with the last chapter and I do hope that you find the resolution both realistic to the situation and satisfying. I’m working very hard to get it right. This particular fic is rather complex in terms of the various emotions and real problems involved so it takes me longer to write, I’m afraid, because I get obsessive compulsive about making it “real.” And, of course RL went a bit haywire in recent weeks which didn’t help, LOL!

Thank you also for what you said concerning my response to the fic writer who plagiarized (completely non-maliciously, I believe) this story. She has responded as positively as anyone possibly could in this situation, and I wish her nothing but the best in her writing endeavors.

[starkfish]

losttreemonster replied to your post: Your new story was wonderful and a welcome rare...

I find it odd too that Jon is suppose to be pretty, but he looks like Ned. Different points of view, I guess, But I think of Brandon as someone who was model pretty while Ned is more salt of the earth, ruggedly handsome. Good-looking, but not a pretty boy by any means. That doesn’t really mean Catelyn is shallow if she has a type she is attracted to and then comes to realize that there are more important things.

I guess it’s more that he has Ned’s ~look~ (ie the Stark look) but maybe the ‘he’s a hottie’ vibes are supposed to be because he actually more closely resembles Lyanna? Go figure.  Meh, Ned is described as plain-looking, long-faced, grim-looking, and I don’t really headcanon him as undercover-handsome or anything. I think he’s just a normal looking dude. Not ugly but not one you’d describe as particularly good looking, rugged or otherwise. And that’s fine! There are more important things that being good looking, and based on how she waxed poetic about his strong hands and grey eyes, Catelyn clearly thought he had it going on. Loving someone makes them beautiful in your eyes even if they aren’t conventionally good looking. 

[bitchfromtheseventhhell]

How do you think Dany, Sansa, and Arya would react to R+L? I would love to know how they would feel about a man putting aside his honor/pride for his sister given their relationships with their brothers-Viserys being abusive, Dany believing only the best of Rhaegar, and Arya questioning if Robb the king would pay to get her back. (Personally, I feel the heart behind R+L is Lyanna and Ned-I mean, I don't know if anyone would agree, since we don't know how she felt.)

I’m not really sure in all honesty.  It would really depend on the context in which the information is presented to them and who they’re hearing it from.

Like--if Dany hears a story about abduction and rape (which is what the Stark girls grew up hearing probably) I think she’d probably be very unhappy and uncomfortable with it given her own personal perspectives on rape and not having consent in a relationship.  Where she goes from there would depend a lot, and might also depend on how she chooses to examine her relationship with Drogo (which she doesn’t examine very much, probably because it’s painful to examine).  If she heard a version from Ser Barristan, though, she’d get a very different version of events, given that he polishes a lot of things up in his own internal narrative and also doesn’t like telling Dany things that are toooooo bad about her family, even if she should hear them.  She definitely idealizes Rhaegar, but I also think she does a decent job questioning the filters that Viserys did give her and so the way that he (and thus she) idealized Rhaegar might be more fluid.

For the Stark girls--they grew up learning that Rhaegar abducted and raped their aunt.  There’d have to be a massive reveal of motive in order to make that feel smoother in their minds and they still might have a lot of trouble with it.  I doubt very much it would shape Arya’s views on Jon as her brother; for Sansa it’s a little more up in the air.

All this is to say IDK and we’ll find out.

[charmedrumblings]

Well, that’s why I’ll need to check the timeline when I go through the episodes. I suppose the question is, if you’re having a fertility test and they find scar tissue, is it possible for them to miss a pregnancy? (I mean, I don’t think it is, because doesn’t the lining get thicker or something and make it obvious? idk I’m not a baby person. But it might work????)

[thestagthatlovedthewolf]

@losttreemonster said: Yeah, private schools are different because their funding doesn’t come from the government, so they don’t have to follow some of regulations that public schools have to. Public school are at the mercy of tax revenue and government budgets. That’s why you will hear a lot about budget cuts and the danger or art programs getting cut. (Just to give you an idea about how much budget cuts can impact school. For my senior year of high school, the budget cuts were so bad, we got extra credit for bringing in reams of printer paper. The school didn’t have enough money for paper during the recession of 2009.)

Since private schools have more freedom, they can have religious programs, more advance curriculums, and smaller class sizes. But many private schools have longer hours and sometimes school on the weekend, which allows them to give their students more time off. (There’s a regulation about how many hours students have to be in classroom, but it varies from state to state. Public school students generally go for 7 hours.)  Most of them will take off for federal holidays, but they don’t have to. Sometimes, private school will use federal holidays for make up days. (This means that if the school has to close due to bad weather such as snow, then they can use a holiday like MLK day to make up the hours instead of extending the semester.) 

That’s probably more information than you wanted!

I knew about the funding, budget and even school curriculum in private school vs public school, it’s something that also happens here and I imagine everywhere. But I had no idea that private school had independency over holidays and stuff like. Ohhh… and I didn’t know you had to make up things like snow days, but that makes sense… but it still sucks cutting into holidays

Ohhh… I didn’t know it had been that bad – having to bring printer paper and getting extra credit for that…

I love learning new things, so really thank you for this information :)

[onionjulius]

losttreemonster replied to your post “losttreemonster replied to your post: So Edmure...”

I can imagine if Robert heard the song, he would have found the whole thing hilarious and send Ned a raven just to let him know about his brother-in-law and his floppy fish. Ned would totally cave and tell Catelyn.

LOVE this headcanon!

[samwpmarleau]

I wanted to let you know that I love your blog and I love reading your thoughts. I love your posts on Elia Martell and Rhaegar was the worst! (After reading the latest breakdown of the leaks, it's good to be remind of the problematic aspects of his story and how it isn't okay.) I don’t know. I feel weird about getting more involved with the tumblr and fandom but when I see your blog and I don’t feel so alone in my thoughts. I learned my lesson with Supernatural. Thank you! I appreciate it!

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoy what I post and that it helps you 😊

[bitchfromtheseventhhell]

I was reading your meta on Rickon Stark's wildness and I thought it was wonderful. I think he was experiencing regression due to his trauma. But do you think it was possible Rickon was seeing Stark ghosts in the crypts and that's why he kept "willfully" forgetting Eddard was dead- he was confused between ghost father and dead father? (Ned in his first chapter mentions feeling the eyes of dead and them listening in the crypts. Maybe Rickon felt them too and was confused by his father's present.)

Hmmmm....I’m not sure.  I’ve never really been sold on there being ghosts in the crypts, tbh, but I suppose it could be the case.  If there are ghosts, my inclination is to say that he’s confused more than willfully forgetting because he is so young.  Like if you see a ghost and you’re told your father is dead but you see your father then surely everyone else is wrong and your father is still alive, right?

[thestagthatlovedthewolf]

losttreemonster (can’t tag you for some reason) said: It’s a little more complicated in America, because Spring Break isn’t something that is decided by the federal government, but by a local government. Schools are overseen by their school district. (There are federal regulations, requirements, and standards, but for other things like school schedules, they are decided by the school district’s school board.)              

Everywhere is going to be a little different, because it is up to the school board of the school district to decided. Sometimes, it’s going to be around Easter. But it doesn’t have to be. Private school make their own schedule and some public school in America go year round, so they may have like two weeks off. It really just depends on what the school board wants to do.                          

Good Friday isn’t recognized as a federal or state holiday and those are the only holidays that all schools are required to take off. (Although, private school may not be required to take federal and state holidays off. But I’m not sure). But in theory, a school board could decide to take Good Friday off.                          

Thank you so much for answering :) That was a very complete answer :) It’s interesting to me that it can be so different from school to school, here everyone’s holidays is at the same time.

Ohhh, I didn’t think so about Good Friday, but when I heard it being mentioned on the YouTube video, I got confused.

Ow, really?! Private schools don’t have to allow federal and state holidays, I had no idea…

[thestagthatlovedthewolf]

@dalzonii reblogged and added: Rhaegar would definitley fanboy all over Jeff Buckley!  

I can see that, even Catekyn as well, but Brandon I don’t see him liking Jeff Buckley...

losttreemonster (can’t tag you for some reason) said: I feel like all their taste in music would be different. Rhaegar would be indie/alternative rock with all the saddest songs (The Smiths, Bon Iver). Brandon would be either all rap or all country-no in between. Catelyn is a bit trickier, but I think she would be a classic rock girl (ACDC, Bad Company), because of her uncle. If you’re looking for a song that all three of them like, that’s a little trickier

I guess it kind of depends on what type of scene, you’re trying to write. If you want it to be more serious or silly. I go with something popular slightly embarrassing, but instantly recognizable. Like  “I Want It That Way” or “Call Me Maybe.” If you want something more serious, then I would still recommend popular songs. But if it’s more modern then something like “Lost Boy” by Ruth B. 

20th Century-The Beatles “Hey Jude” or “American Pie” by Don McLean. If you don’t like any of those, I’m sure I could think of a few others! Good Luck writing! I love your writing!                             

Their taste is so different, that’s why it’s hard to find something in common, but I like your suggestions... especially Catelyn, I hadn’t thought of classic rock for her, a bit but mostly because of Ned (he and Brandon got it from Robert, who I believe listens to a lot of hard rock), but now I really like the idea of Brynden introducing it to her. Next chapter has a Brynden POV, so I’ll probably include that :)

Probably silly, I can try to look up some of the popular songs of the time, see if anything sparks somethin :) But yeah, classics like The Beatles and American pie would work

(Ohhh... I had never listened  to “Lost Boy” by Ruth B before and that was very nice and beautiful song :) Thank you so much for the rec :D )