#think asoiaf vibes but also

[franzkafkagf]

we came into this world together. we belong together.

vampire empire – big thief / princes in the tower– john everett / a feast for crows – george rr martin / game of thrones / a storm of swords – george rr martin / the penitent mary magdalene – eduard kasparides / unknown

[its-sixxers]

perks to gamer dad: his computer specs blow mine out of the water so housesitting is fun

how am i using said perks ? playing dragon age origins of course

[hetagrammy]

What better to put Miss Ireland in than The Green Dress™ from HoTD?

[carlsdraws]

love love love the mothers and boykingisms of westeros. catelyn and robb alicent and aegon cersei and joffrey/tommen. to crown him is to kill him etc etc

[aeriondripflame]

targaryens that would ride vermax

1. jace (canon!)

2. elaena targaryen (shrewd. often angry. reckless but in the annoying way where it usually works out.)

3. duncan targaryen (brown-haired. bold. falls in love with jenny à la sara snow.)

[mummer]

unfortunately i think that since mance was at the shadow tower not castle black he would have had a different maester but i support your vision regardless in my heart

see i did think about that but i think it’s more likely mance would grow up at castle black and THEN get transferred to the shadow tower when he’s older/swears his vows. like i feel like castle black would be better equipped for raising a small child bc it would be better supplied and once he was old enough to train he’d get to be around other new recruits... i mean he was in the watch for 40+ years and getting reassigned to different castles isnt wildly uncommon so that was my assumption… regardless we’ll never know so it’s all just headcanon anyway lol ^_^ i just think it would be neat if aemon got to raise him

[aerithisms]

booted up my ff16 save file i haven't played for a full year and i'm determined to finish the game this time even if it means playing on easy baby mode 💪

[la-pheacienne]

blankwhiteshield explains so eloquently what i tried to say in this post of mine and it has been bugging me ever since i joined the internet fandom.

i think a lot of fandom should learn to stop trying to grapple criticism from a doylist perspective with watsonian arguments. u can analyze the text for what it is, and decipher what the author’s actual intentions and the themes they are dealing with are (& see the merit in them), and criticize execution and the issues from outside. art is not something that comes from the ether, it is written by someone lmao. engage with fiction like it is fiction. it is criticism of author, not watsonian criticism of a character. it is also very obvious when u all just pretend to care and make use of legitimate grievances to support an unfounded watsonian read, which leads to criticism of author getting lost in criticism of a character (as if they were a real person), because of perpetual discourse brain.

[rappaccini]

do we need to like. talk. about how grrm taking so long to complete asoiaf means the original subversion of daenerys targaryen's character has been basically lost.

because aside from the show massively fucking the ending up, you also have to consider the seismic shift of the perception of fantasy as a whole since asoiaf hit the mainstream and since more intersectional perspectives and deconstructions of white saviorism have risen in prominence.

like it's a good thing that we're collectively critiquing and sideeying dany's storyline for the questionable, orientalist and often outright racist elements, and that the girlboss dany idea is being challenged. but uh guys. take a look at grrm. do you really think he was setting out to write a paul atreides style deconstruction of white saviorism with dany. or is it not more likely that he put those things into his story by mistake and didn't realize those problematic elements were there until decades later-- especially since girlboss feminism didn't fucking exist when he started writing asoiaf. is it not more likely that he missed the points he was trying to make about dany being a foreigner interfering in eastern politics and the white savior vibe her story sometimes puts off is completely accidental.

people do not seem to realize what the climate of fantasy was when grrm was writing asoiaf in the 90s-00s. the moral grays and grimdark elements of modern fantasy were in part popularized by asoiaf. grrm wasn't subverting the idea of dany being a good ruler. dany being a good ruler was the subversion.

daenerys targaryen is a deconstruction and subversion of the almost comically evil sorceress-queen antagonist of a fantasy novel that would never be written today.

think through what dany looks like from the outside:

she's the daughter of the mad incestuous king who terrorized westeros only a generation ago, and she's back to get his throne for herself.

she's going to make her arrival by invading from the Savage East and killing the one true lost heir, the son of the prince everyone loves and wishes were king, who was raised among the people, who's a boy, who practices the faith of the seven and will marry a westerosi lady. and she's going to destroy the shining city that he's going to rule from.

she rides a black and red dragon that spits black and red fire. she has two other dragons with her and used blood magic to hatch them. she killed a house full of warlocks, has prophetic dreams, talks to mysterious sorcerers and witches and is linked with magic.

she comes from a family of incestuous, weird-looking, magic-using, dragon-riding conquerors who are the last survivors of an empire that conquered half the world and decimated and enslaved an entire continent by using dark magic, dragons and horrifying experiments. and her family in particular is infamous for having a tendency to go insane.

she's so beautiful men are throwing themselves at her. she dominated one husband and killed another. her dragon set poor sweet quentyn martell on fire when all he was doing was trying to honor a betrothal agreement. she has sex with both men and women where she's in control of the encounters. she had a sexual relationship with her brother*. she 'bewitched' the most powerful warlord in essos with her sexuality, convinced him to kill her brother for her, took over his following, and will come to westeros with control of the most deadly cavalry in the world who are already considered to be 'savages' -- and her association with them has already started rumors that she fucks horses because she's so insatiable.

she's infertile and sacrificed her one pregnancy (gasp, the Firstborn Son!) to hatch her dragons.

kinslayer allegations: her brother, her son, and her (fake) nephew. even her mother, to an extent.

she has very tanned skin, spooky silver hair (that's very short) and purple eyes, a tyroshi accent and wears revealing clothing that would scandalize westerosis.

she's the savior figure for a Foreign Religion that's spreading in westeros and competing with the faith of the seven.

she's either the savior figure for the 'barbarian' nomadic raiders, or the mother of their prophesized savior.

she's leading an army of foreign (brown) slave soldiers, sellswords and 'barbarians.' she's being advised by foreigners. her handmaids aren't Nice Noble Girls-- they're nomadic horsewomen who are stereotyped as unmannered and promiscuous.

and the westerosis in her camp are the ones westeros hates: pirates that just destroyed oldtown, westeros's beloved center of trade, faith and knowledge. specifically euron, who wants to marry her. the dwarf that killed king joffrey and escaped and is now back because he wants to burn down king's landing. an ugly westerosi lord from backwater bear isle who was banished for selling slaves. a westerosi knight who refused to accept the king's wishes for him to retire and ran off to serve the opposition... and probably marwyn, a controversial maester.

she destroyed the essosi economy, has sacked multiple cities, turned the ruling class out of their homes, crucified a bunch of nobles, and will probably burn the volantene tower full of nobles on her way west.

she's a woman, specifically a teenage girl, who has power in her own right, who wants to claim more of it. and who has no more powerful man to answer to.

(*edit: k this keeps coming up so i’ll clarify— yes, viserys was abusing dany. i’m not phrasing it as a ‘sexual relationship’ because i’m denying that. i’m phrasing it that way because of how it would be perceived to outsiders, the way all these other bulletpoints are being phrased. context, people.)

daenerys is the embodiment of everything westeros hates and fears to such an extent that even if she does everything right, or doesn't do anything at all, westeros will never accept her.

we spent five books following dany off on her own in essos because that plotline's all about giving you context before she arrives: here's the Evil Queen's backstory, so by the time she does what she does, the reader completely understands and empathizes with her, even if they disagree with her actions. and when all our heroes hate her, and she decides to strip them of their power like she did in essos with the slavers, we don't know what to do.

the subversion is: what if our view of this evil antagonist is xenophobic and sexist, and all the things we're scared of her for were taken out of context or twisted to villainize her. what if the foreign culture she's from isn't evil, and what if her slave army is actually freedmen who chose to follow her, and she opposes the legacy of slavery her family sources their power from. what if she's 'mad' because she's understandably angry and upset, and not ~craaazy~. what if the nobles she was killing deserved it, what if the system they depend on was evil and deserved to be destroyed. what if our system that we've been fighting to preserve isn't much better and needs to go too, even if People We Like are in charge of it. what if she's a teenager who doesn't always make the right decisions, especially when much older adults with their own motives are manipulating her.

the subversion is: what if the evil sorceress-queen who's going to invade our wonderful fantasy realm and bring all her big bad scary changes with it is a complex person with good intentions who actually has a completely legitimate reason to burn it all down.

so if dany genuinely does go evil when she gets to westeros... there's no subversion anymore because the trope is played straight. therefore, she won't. but it won't even matter. we'll know that dany isn't a monster, but nobody else will see her that way.

[jaehaeryshater]

“Near the end, [King Jaehaerys] grew certain [Alicent] was his daughter Saera, returned to him from beyond the narrow sea.”

artist: @riotarttherite

I had the great pleasure of commissioning, in my opinion, one of ASOIAF fandom’s greatest artists on this gorgeous piece. I had never commissioned any artwork before and didn’t know what to expect, and this far exceeded my expectations. The attention to detail is beautiful and the overall piece conveys exactly what I was envisioning in my head, so I wanted to start off with a big thank you.

The idea for this art piece was originally a “what if” or AU where Saera either didn’t get caught at the brothel or was brought back from the Silent Sisters as was allegedly Jaehaerys’s plan (or if she had bonded with Balerion and gotten to stay! Would have loved that for her) so she stays in King’s Landing and becomes his caretaker in his old age instead of Alicent Hightower. As his daughter, she would have significantly more influence in being able to “speak for him” instead of a caretaker for another House, so although I do not take Saera as someone particularly obsessed with power, I do find it very interesting to imagine her deciding to cause chaos as the Old King’s mouthpiece. The streets of King’s Landing are burning as we speak! Even before Jaehaerys seemed to succumb to dementia, Saera did appear to have a strange influence over him, so once Alysanne passed away, it only makes sense that Saera would become the person in his ear. Not all that great for the smallfolk or even Lords of the realm, but great for drama and storylines. And Saera, of course! I’m sure she would have paraded everywhere, weighed down by jewelry and the finest wines. Perhaps she would have had a full menagerie, as she appeared to love animals. Definitely an elephant there somewhere.

As this piece was being worked on, however, I did think of a second meaning to the art that I also think is really neat. You could also view this as what Jaehaerys is seeing as Alicent is caring for him. He did believe her to be Saera in the end, as his mind was being lost. His Saera had come back to him, and although I do not like Jaehaerys and think he probably deserved worse, he most likely died happy at that thought, believing Saera was reading to him. So if you prefer to interpret this as viewing things through Jaehaerys’s mind, I welcome you because I love it at least equally to the first idea.

Lastly, the detailings are beautiful so I wanted to touch on them and give them the attention they deserve for the moment. I asked Riot to have a caring but sinister vibe, that she is caring for him for a plethora of reasons but certainly that includes self-serving reasons. I believe this was captured really well! I wanted it to be illustrated that Jaehaerys had lost his wits a while beforehand, so he has a vacant look, and Saera has the keys, showing that she is the real power behind the Crown. She has several expensive jewelry pieces (she has many from her lovers, but she doesn’t bother with them, leaving them to collect dust, only thinking gifts from the King are worthy to wear), but my favorite was one I specifically requested. Her jeweled bodice, which contains replicas of the King’s jewels that are present on his crown. Dare I say, she had her mother’s crown repurposed for herself? The intention is clear, Saera is effectively the Queen now, not in name, but Queen nonetheless. As for the general fashion, I told Riot that my favorite era of fashion was the Tudor era, more broadly 1300s- 1550s. As you can see, this was more than delivered and extremely beautifully inspired by historical fashion. GRRM doesn’t always describe his character’s outfits, and the GOT and HOTD outfits were often lackluster. This was exactly the type of beauty I was looking for. The dragon embroidery on Saera’s sleeves? Mwah!

Anyway, thank you so much for geeking out with me! The Saera/Jaehaerys dynamic is one of the most interesting dynamics to me. There’s simultaneously so little and so much there. It’s complex and layered, I can’t stop thinking about it. If you have been on my tiktok, you may have heard about my extensive theory regarding that dynamic, iykyk. If you ever want to talk about them, absolutely feel free to inbox me. More commission ideas coming this year definitely, at least a couple more of this dynamic, but I don’t know how a piece could be any more perfect <3

[lady-lye]

Alayne Stone / Princess Sansa Stark (2/?)

Uh.. hi! It has been a strong two months since I very brazenly announced my plan to draw every female ASOIAF character. Well, I never said I’d do it QUICKLY. Life happens! I won’t go into detail. So here is Alayne/Sansa. I also drew her in her Sansa era but it was kind of giving depression vibes so I probably won’t post it. Plus I don’t want to commit to having people appear twice in this series-- it would make the Arya situation a nightmare. Anyway. I appreciate all the lovely asks I’ve gotten about characters and YES I WILL DO THEM though I might be 93 by the time I finish. See you in 2023

ALso! I’m thinking of opening up a couple commissions this winter, let me know if you would be interested. <3

[visenyaism]

Hello! I just wanted to say that I love your posts and deeply vibe with many of your ASOIAF takes! Would you be interested in discussing the parallels you see between Dany and Melisandre, if you haven't already?

yeah!!!! it makes me go kinda crazy i wrote something like a year and a half ago it makes me literally insane to think about how daenerys is literally the prophesied hero melisandre has been looking for all her life and yet mel cannot recognize this because Melisandre has such a complex network of cognitive dissonances that just completely eliminate her ability to conceive of her own life improving or of her own liberation out of the system of slavery. the pain must be borne. she worships a god that is also her enslaver. And she can’t see the prophecy clearly in part because daenerys is a teenage girl raised on the streets trying to end slavery in essos, the system mel still lives under, as opposed to Stannis who she chose as the hero I think because he fits the conventions and trappings of power easier he’s a noble-born man she makes into a king. augh

[turtle-paced]

sorry for the subject matter but am I reading cerseis chapters wrong? Did Robert marry her and then immediately straight after wedding begin r-wording her and hitting her? Or was it he upset her during consummation, begun cheating on and ignoring her, then publicly shaming and neglecting her, then she naturally withdrew and revenge cheating with Jaime on greenstone six/seven months after wedding, then Robert begun r-wording her, then he begun the other physical and mental abuse? Again sorry for the subject matter I don’t know which way I’m suppose to read it

This is tumblr, not insta or whatever, and it's okay to type out the full word: rape. Since the site's not filtering it automatically I'd actually encourage you to use the uncensored word so that people can filter it accurately according to their own needs. Give the choice and the power to others, reduce the chances of an unpleasant accident from using a euphemism that someone hasn't put on their blacklisted tags.

I also write about ASoIaF. There's no need to apologise for asking me questions about the disturbing or upsetting content in the books!

Putting the answer to your question under a cut for the content, though.

The timelines aren't crystal clear. Robert was a shitty sexual partner to Cersei even on their wedding night. Given who we're talking about here, it seems unlikely the two had an honest talk about what went wrong and how they planned to deal with it in future once Robert had sobered up. While Robert made attempts to emotionally engage with Cersei at the start of their marriage, that consisted of "things he'd find fun" rather than "address Cersei's valid issues." Valid issues like the fact that he's raping Cersei regularly. Per Cersei VII AFFC, early in their marriage he was raping her at least once every two weeks. I seriously doubt he asked her.

As time went on, Robert found even those paltry efforts to deal with Cersei too much. The public cheating cranked up, the rapes became less frequent. I suspect also that this is where the physical abuse started. Personally, I think the rationale behind Robert's repeated rapes changed over time. The early rapes I suspect were Robert being horny and selfish and entitled; the later ones, the infrequent ones, I think were Robert's expression of his sheer hatred for his wife and his desire to 'put her in her place'.

Throughout this, Cersei is presumably continuing at least an emotional affair with her brother, even if the physical side was dialed down a bit initially (most likely due to scrutiny of a young queen who hadn't produced an heir for the king yet). Her relationship with Jaime is obviously a longer-standing thing. I've written before that I think Cersei initiates particular sexual encounters with Jaime over her anger with Robert's violations and abuse, while she continues the affair with her twin due to deeper-seated, non-Robert-related issues.

The timelines and progression aren't clear here not just because GRRM is bad at timelines. None of the characters have the language to describe spousal abuse or their need for consent. We're left with the vibes, the impression of selfishness and power taking Robert from a jerk to a monster.

[melrosing]

from a fellow "catholic i guess? i mean, culturally for sure i cannot escape it, but spiritually? eh" to another, i vibe so much with your analysis of brienne and religion but also, on the line of brie breaking bread with children, mendicants and all the forgotten people my brain went immediately "jesus brienne? brienne christ????" which. probably doesn't answer the "catholic?" question but says something alright

right like there’s just something about asoiaf that radiates ‘guy who was catholic at some point’. I haven’t been practicing since my confirmation (ironically) but I feel not just culturally but biologically catholic atp dfhjwfjh

and there’s something about Brienne!! I think it’s her constant reckoning with the concept of goodness and justice but on a small scale?? like you have characters like Dany who are addressing this w enormous scope, but w Brienne it’s more like small incidental scenes, e.g. the hanged women in Jaime’s first chapter, burying Nimble Dick, no chance and no choice, her dogged devotion to her quest to rescue the Stark girls. and idk I guess there’s something quite pastoral about it. that and her reckoning with ideas of forgiveness and redemption w Jaime, plus the whole conversation w knighthood, and how GRRM’s portrayal of that specifically seems to tap into his own wrestling w the moral tenets of his religious upbringing.

this is all really hard to articulate bc as I say it’s all vibes, but u get me, catholics

[daenystheedreamer]

what are your asoiaf culture/race headcanons?

ooo im siberian starks truther forever, or just general indigenous arctic circle north. general aesthetics of slav/kievan rus. like kokoshnik ushanka and ryasna are canon to me. harsh, stilted syllables like in russian.

the riverlands is the balkans + ireland to me for sure, cat is so irish to me. i think of like south slav folk costume for them :) lots of ribbons and embroidery and intricate braiding. lilting accent

i like east asian targs :) but also like, they just arent any earthen race to me. hate when people are like "erm they cant be coloured cos they have purple eyes and silver hair?" and its like do white people have purple eyes and silver hair??????

the dornish are a mix of indian subcontinent+west asia+sephardic/mizrahi jewish+palestine+turkish+arab. the melting pot of westeros! like the daynes are jewish to me, and the rhoynar are arab/turk/'moorish'. yronwoods are white latines. sea of dorne/narrow sea evokes the mediterannean :) dornish is described as melodic and drawling, def lots of rolled Rs

stormlands is very german+eastern europe. maybe im jsut thinking of oktoberfest but i always think of them bundled up. lots of headdresses. harsh accent.

vale of arryn is very anglo to me. french/english/swiss/etc. yodelling on the mountains. sweet and sing-song accent.

westerlands is italy to me cos i like thinking of the borgias and lannisters. lannisport gives off SUCH florence/venice vibes.

the reach is again quite meditteranean to me. maybe its the wine? but i hc the tyrells as black, i think the dynamic of "upjumped stewards" compared to the "blue-blooded" hightowers, florents, etc is interesting. its why i also hc the manderlys as black, since they're from the reach :)

iron islands... obviously norse/viking, but i like pasifika headcanons too. i like asha with moko kauae and i just love if the ironborn have cultural tattooing practices. this is lessened by how they do not at all have a pacific climate lol.