#out of asoiaf characters

[a-chaotic-dumbass]

favorite thing in asoiaf is that the stark family tree is just filled with haters in every generation. theon stark brandon snow alaric stark cregan stark even ned's brother brandon and lyanna too. even the current kids jon snow robb sansa and arya all have some kendrick lamar level of beef w at least one person. brandon the builder spawned an entire genre of haters

[sierrabravoecho]

Cat’s haterism strikes again

[wyattabernathyus]

Nettles & Sheepstealer

[swordmaid]

brienne but she's wearing 1949 cocteau's beauty and the beast inspired fit!!! this is the inspo pic i used if ur curious.

gonna be posting more of this redesign thing (and also jaime's ver) some time in the future but i just wanted to share this one <3

[addamvelaryon]

When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours?

— Franz Kafka

Corlys, Addam & Laenor by Imperiat

[themoonofblueside]

This part fucked me up so bad the first time i read about it and i do think i talked about this before but it just opens a whole can of worms about stannis' actions and how baratheon family(and basically the ideal of masculinity) is viewed in asoiaf universe.

From how Robert and Baratheons represent masculinity, men are expected to pick and choose the best servant that is ready for use. If you get stuck on a broken and weak servant you are bound to lose competitions and be mocked by your lords and peers. I think to grapple with the fact that he should not care and nurture for things he loves, and the fact that he will never, ever be good enough to be the best(as that is reserved for robert) stannis goes to the most extreme to abide by law and do whatever is necessary and nothing more. To contain the part that would like companionship, loyalty, and care, stannis resolves to seeing everything as duty and becoming a hypocrite in how he behaves towards people who care about him. But because he is human, every slight that is done to him turns him into more of a repressed hypocrite who is too petty for anyone else to love.

The funny part, and actually the whole point is, that stannis is that whenever stannis chooses to support and care for the lowly, broken, weak ones...he is rewarded. Davos is the biggest example of this, and later on going to the wall is another one. Stannis is slowly learning that he HAS to care and nurture and rule through that, and he HAS to be cunning and two-faced and also work with people he does not like because that is life. He has to be fair, but he has to learn what is fair and what is cruel.

It is honestly so fucked up that we know how his story will progress because there is no good ending for him, he will learn that some things are too precious to use as tools, and what is divine and fated and promised is never as important as what is here, now, with him. He will be a failed king that did everything he could, but what he did wrong still cost him his status and position as king.

[quiddling]

he's homeless

[sunny12th]

I don't think we need a monologue or explicit statement from Dany renouncing the Targaryens of Old Valyria for owning slaves and the Old Valyrians for spreading slavery through Essos. She never thinks about them, she doesn't have them on a pedestal in her mind. She has a favorable viewpoint of her immediate family, mostly Rhaegar, that she was taught by her brother. I dont think we need to see Dany explicitly state for the readers that her slave owning ancestors were evil and she disagrees with them because her actions show this.

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

I could say that ASOIAF is a very medieval lit story at heart and you’d be like, “well no shit Sherlock, tell me something I don’t know 🙄”.

And I’d say: “Ok bet. ASOIAF’s medieval core is best exemplified through Jon Snow and Bran Stark, two distinct yet mirrored iterations of one hero-knight whose origins can be traced to Percival and his magical quest. Both are Percival (and both are potentially the grail king) but one is as close a 1:1 copy as we can get (Jon) and the other is the Percival archetype completely flipped over its head before it even begins (Bran). Jon, by the author’s own admission, is the fantasy hero in the most traditional sense. He’s Percival who was inspired by the knights and left his mother’s castle to chase after chivalric glory (Jon III AGoT), only to find out that he has a massive misunderstanding of the knight’s purpose and honor (ACOK/ASOS arcs). No one told him of the ethical dilemmas involved with being a knight. No one told him that he could meet the fair maiden and either be completely incapable of helping her (Gilly) or help her, leave her, and be burdened by her death (Ygritte). No one told him how hard it would be to have his entire world view upended and upon going back to his fellow knights and saying ‘hey friends maybe we should all re-evaluate the system in which we operate and how it might be causing us to betray the vows we swore’ he’d be met with disdain. No one told him that, like Percival, he might look back to his mother’s home and see what has become of it (and his sister whom he left) and upon making the decision to go back to it he dies before he can even get his foot out of the gate. Percival made it back home and Jon might too, but where Percival still had his mother’s shirt to remind him of his boyhood Jon had to kill the boy because the fate of the world depended on it. Jon stumbles and rises, only to stumble again. But nonetheless, he gets to be a knight. But on the other hand, there’s poor Bran! He doesn’t even get to fail at being a knight in the first place because that storyline was fucking taken from him before he could realize his dream of leaving his mother’s home. Jon at least got his call to action. Bran’s dazzling dream of knighthood doesn’t even get off the ground (quite literally). He climbs, falls immediately, and once his eyes are awakened he realizes that he is now incapable of being Percival as he’d wish to be. There’s no battling evil knights. There’s no saving fair maidens. But then he’s visited by a wizened old man who’s like ‘hey Percival, you can never be a knight but I’ll teach you how to be a mighty wizard!’ And that would be cool and all….BUT BRAN WANTS TO BE A KNIGHT GODDAMNIT! When he auditioned for the medieval lit play, he picked up the Percival/Arthur script. Yet that’s not what he ultimately got when the cast list finally got out. Because who the fuck switched it out his hero-knight script for the Merlin one??! So now he has to try and figure out how to be a knight who’s actually a wizard, and it fucking sucks y’all.”

[rriverrunning]

lately i've been really interested in the portrayal of sansa & her ability to lie:

acok sansa i

acok sansa ii

acok sansa iii

also acok sansa iii

this early in the book, it seems like it's general consensus that sansa is a bad liar. it's something she and everyone around her are very aware of, yet she still manages to get herself out of these dangerous situations (joffrey's anger at his tourney, being caught sneaking back from the godswood, & being trapped in the hand's apartments where she'd be unable to sneak out, respectively) not despite, but because of this fact. because she's often telling these obvious, bald-faced lies, people easily project their own assumptions of sansa's thoughts onto her, though these assumptions are often wrong. being so obviously 'stupid' to those around her, few can seem to fathom that she could be planning anything else, or bother to seriously interrogate what she might be thinking but not speaking aloud.

like it's pretty obvious that sansa is not going to be able to escape king's landing with ser dontos any time soon, but it is her first foray into really making her own plans for her future. however it ends up failing, it is significant as a little piece of defiance that previously seemed impossible to her. it's also proof that no matter how bad at lying or naive she may be, those around her are also unwise for how they underestimate her. we're watching her slowly learn when and how to lie, right under her captors' noses.

in other words, this is a theme i'm definitely going to be tracking for sansa! it's the fallout of her storyline in agot, and feels soooo important bc of how vital these perceptions of her are to her survival.

[scudden]

Jon Snow :) Wanted to make a portrait with him with a medieval manuscript style border!!

[drakaripykiros130ac]

It’s shocking to see people consider Rhaenyra better suited with either Alicent and Mysaria, instead of Daemon. It’s all about political agendas, nothing else (apparently heterosexual relationships need to be avoided at all cost these days). Because if these people actually took the time to understand the story, they would know that these two women are responsible for destroying Rhaenyra’s life.

Alicent (greedy bitch) seduced her father, and took her throne.

Mysaria (devious wench) took advantage of Daemon being away from Court, and fed Rhaenyra’s paranoia, making her doubt her husband and the people who were truly loyal to her and her cause. And she did it all for power, to ensure that only she had the ruling Queen’s ear.

And you’re telling me that these relationships are healthier than the one she has with Daemon. Regardless of Rhaenyra and Daemon’s complex and tumultuous relationship, he has always been loyal to her and her cause. If all he wanted was the throne for himself, he had years and years to arrange it. If he had true devious intentions, he would have arranged small accidents to befall the Velaryon boys, so that his own sons would inherit the throne after Rhaenyra.

Daemon was always attracted to power, but not one he didn’t deserve. He wanted House Targaryen to thrive, and the opportunistic snakes away from Court. And he wanted to be in a position to protect his family’s legacy (not necessarily being King himself). He wanted to be the one the family depended on. And regardless of all appearances, Rhaenyra could depend on him.

If all you care about are two women getting it on, there are plenty of sites for that. Find a quiet space and do your thing. But leave this shit out of a good story, and stop destroying it.

[carlsdraws]

ur so right queen he IS in the walls

[visenyaism]

hi mirri asker again. i'll preface this by saying that i think you're one of the best asoiaf writers around and i agree with 95% of your takes lol so please don't take this as me being a hater™

(i'll also add that i believe dany knew rhaego was the price for saving drogo and jorah going to the tent is what fucked up the ritual and left drogo mostly dead)

i just can't reconcile your interpretation of dany as specifically breaking the cycle / being the antithesis to all targaryens who came before her when the very first thing she does upon being given real power is burn her slave alive as a human sacrifice, which (assuming you believe rhaella and/or rhaegar were going to be sacrificed at Summerhall + Valyrians used slaves as blood sacrifices etc) is kinda the most Targ thing you could possibly do

(that also being said i don't think her murdering mirri is a sign of her being super dragon hitler like in the show but more her being a deeply traumatised child who was a slave like five seconds ago lashing out horrifically + acting out her visions)

I think my interpretation of what happened with mirri is pretty much just what you said in that last paragraph. I don’t think she was like calculating this at all. she was a super traumatized 15-year-old who just had a really horrible magically exacerbated stillbirth and was lashing out at the person who she thinks caused it. I don’t think it was an “I will sacrifice her to get dragons back” situation like summerhall. I think she just wanted her dead because she was extremely upset. which isn’t necessarily an ethical use of power but it’s also pretty understandable how someone would get to that point, especially if they are a child. 

I also don’t think that’s antithetical to dany’s role in the narrative as a liberator or a cyclebreaker. she does not always get it right and I think the broader arc of narrative is about how trying to change the world or create a better society can also do a lot of harm because it is dangerous it is an overwhelming task. i think bringing the dragons back is her entry into this stage of being a significant global actor with huge amounts of power and I think it’s a lot more narratively interesting to have that moment be ethically complicated because she killed mirri. magic has a cost as does power even if you intend to use it to help other people. I think that says a lot about who she is and who she’s going to be.

[rise-my-angel]

Listening to Petyr tell Sansa that when he met her she was just a child, and now she's so much more then that. I am going to beat that man to death with a stick. Two days ago she was making a snow castle of her girlhood home and got into an immature spat with her cousin cus he stomped on it.

S H E I S S T I L L A C H I L D

And you Petyr, are a disgusting worm.

[fromtheseventhhell]

"Arya wouldn't have been able to survive in KL" is really one of the dumbest fanon takes where you can tell someone only believes it because they like the idea of Arya and Sansa being "exact opposites and perfect complements" (even though it goes against the books). Actual evidence from the books to back it up? Never anywhere to be found despite how confidently people make this claim.

And not only does it severely mischaracterize Arya and ignore what she's been through, it also ignores her importance as a political hostage. The Lannisters weren't searching for her, and lying about having her, for no reason. They needed her because having only one Stark after executing Ned put them in a poor position to negotiate. So Arya would have been more than capable of handling herself (thoroughly shown in her Harrenhal chapters) and the Lannisters would've done everything in their power to keep her alive but, somehow, she wouldn't have been able to survive? It's truly one of those takes that falls apart if you think about it for more than two seconds but apparently, that's too much effort for some people.