#tyrion nomad

[angelwings-crossbowstrings]

Well, I was researching, but now I present to you the reasons chapter 28 is not yet finished.

[diamondperfumes]

I like and see the appeal of "Dany, Jon, and Young Griff" as the three heads of the dragon/"new Targaryen trio." I can't help but think, however, that people who are reluctant to acknowledge that the real three heads are likely Dany, Jon, and Tyrion, are simply being ableist.

It makes sense that the three heads are Dany, Jon, and Tyrion, centered around Dany (she is Aegon the Conqueror Reborn; this prophecy centers around her, whether you like it or not).

All three have dealt with an undying threat using fire (the Undying, aptly named; a wight; a stone man).

All three have connections to dragons (Dany the strongest connection, one I don't need to elaborate on, hence being the center of the trio; Jon, who wishes for a dragon "or three," who speaks of a dragon warming things up at the Wall; Tyrion, who adores dragons, who yearned for one as a child and even dreamed of them, who is an expert on dragonology).

All three have had concrete, extensive ruling arcs (and not just "for thematic exploration," as some would have it, but as tangible demonstrations of what Westeros needs, and how Westeros could benefit if they were in charge), as Queen of Meereen, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and (acting) Hand of King Joffrey I Baratheon.

Both Jon and Tyrion show up in Dany's House of the Undying visions; Jon as Dany's third ?* in her bride of fire prophecy, Tyrion as a white lion running through grass. Tyrion similarly hears a prophecy of dragons from Moqorro, a prophecy that likely refers to both Jon and Dany, among other Targaryens, and is said to be a snarling shadow amidst them all. If that doesn't scream Tyrion's importance, especially his future connection to Dany and Jon both, I don't know what does.

All three are the third child of their parents, whose mothers died in childbirth, and all three have some kind of rivalry with an elder sibling (though Jon's relationship with Robb is the healthiest and most loving). All three also look up to their eldest brothers. All three had a negative relationship with an authority figure while growing up: Viserys, Catelyn, and Tywin (and for Cat haters, no I am not comparing Cat to Vis and Tywin, except to demonstrate the similarities in thinking and emotional state between the three).

All three suffer a formative betrayal that leads to a physical or metaphysical rebirth, taking place over ASOS to ADWD.

All three know what it's like to starve, be hunted, and live in deprivation. These aren't just random experiences; it's obvious that George is setting them up to brave the harsh conditions of the Long Night, possibly to find the heart of winter together. Being able to endure and survive starvation and the extremities of physical environments like The Wall, the Red Waste, and Slaver's Bay, are building blocks to this.

All three have connections to nomadic cultures that are seen as savage and barbaric––the Dothraki, the Free Folk, and the Mountain Clans of the Vale.

All three are positioned to rectify the wrongs of their houses, though thus far Dany has done the most concrete work in this regard (this is not a slight against Jon and Tyrion). More on this later.

All three are "outcast" POV's, even explicitly referred to as such by GRRM. Jon because he was raised as a bastard, Dany as an exile, bridal slave, and teenage girl, Tyrion as a dwarf who has been abused and maligned his whole life.

All three have had arcs that take place away from Westeros proper; again, this geographic and geopolitical distancing from Westeros only serves to enhance their ideological values as rulers and leaders.

Under the complicated rules of succession, all three are positioned to inherit a title that is not immediately accessible to them: Jon as King in the North (Winterfell), Tyrion as Lord of Casterly Rock, Dany as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Why they can't access it is because of the very things that make them outcasts.

All three are foreshadowed to have three formative romances. Jon with Ygritte, Val, and ?*, Dany's marriages to Drogo, Hizdahr, and ?*, Tyrion with Tysha, Sansa, and ?**. Dany and Tyrion specifically share the parallel of having three marriages, with the first two "failing" in some way.

Their ruling arcs each deal with similar themes: the makings of war and peace, the line between compromise and justice, stirrings of revolution, poverty, hunger, disenfranchisement, exploitation, religion, ableism, classism, ethnic nationalism, etc.

Dany and Tyrion share in common being enslaved. This is a very important parallel that Jon does not have in common with them.

All three are related to, and have thus observed, kings: Jon is Robb's brother (biologically, his cousin) and observed Robert Baratheon; Tyrion is Joffrey and Tommen's uncle, and has extensively observed Robert and Joffrey; Dany is Viserys III's sister, and her POV is a bait-and-switch revealing that the protagonist of the Targaryen storyline is her rather than Viserys.

They have clearly outlined parallels with specific Targaryens from history: Dany with Aegon I, Rhaegar, Aegon V, Aegon III, and the first two Daenerys', most prominently, though the entire history of House Targaryen is centered around her so really every Targaryen could be counted here; Jon notably with the Targaryen bastards/dragonseeds, including Orys Baratheon, Jacaerys Velaryon, and Brynden Rivers; he is also paralleled with Aemon the Pale Prince; and Tyrion with Viserys II.

All three are romantic idealists; Jon and Tyrion are more outwardly cynical and ruthlessly pragmatic, however, a parallel they share with each other rather than with Dany, even if Dany will ~go darker~ in TWOW.

All three identify with beast/monster imagery, and not just because of their house emblems. All three have also been subject to malicious slander, in part because of their association with beastliness/monstrousness. All three are also seen as religious sinners/heretics.

All three have compassion for the marginalized (this is a fact; most ASOIAF fans tend to see Jon as a hero and Dany and Tyrion as villains, for obvious reasons, but as far as the text goes, all three are presented as empathetic toward the downtrodden and oppressed).

All three have both military and diplomatic experience; Jon is the only formally militarily trained one, with a traditional weapon (a sword), while Dany and Tyrion have to use more creative ways to wage war and fight in battle.

All three long for home, and feel guilty for doing so. Dany and Tyrion share a specific parallel of longing for an abstract ideal of home that may no longer be accessible (the house with the red door, the cottage by the sea).

Dany and Tyrion specifically share in common that they were suicidal. Dany was suicidal in AGOT, and Tyrion was suicidal in ADWD. Conveniently, the ASOIAF fandom wants both to die (as heroes or villains), and sees nothing wrong with such endings for them. One can argue that suicidal characters dying in the end is good, righteous, and beautiful, in the ASOIAF fandom (at least when it comes to these two).

Dany and Tyrion share in common that they failed to protect an innocent––Eroeh and Tysha––and this informs their political and spiritual development as rulers.

(*? = fill in the blank as you see fit; it is contentious in this fandom to admit who Jon and Dany's final romances are, and I am not in the mood to argue over this).

(**? = I genuinely am not sure whom Tyrion's third marriage will be with).

I could sit here all day and list parallels. These are just the ones off the top of my head. As you can see, Dany and Tyrion in particular share a lot of parallels unique between them. The experience of having a terrible father, and being alienated your whole life from your own family, while also taking pride in your family name, is something they will be able to help each other understand. The books are clearly setting that up.

Why then do people replace Tyrion with Arya or Faegon or Sansa or whoever else in the three heads of the dragon theory? Don't just chalk it up to different interpretations. The plain truth is that it's ableism. Tyrion isn't an able-bodied or conventionally attractive man and thus doesn't fit the aesthetic component of the three heads.

Yet for all the talk of wanting Dany to be the "antithesis" to house Targaryen, or wanting Dany, Jon, and Faegon to be Targaryens who "end the Targaryen dynasty" (is the dynasty not already ended?), why does no one speak of how Tyrion is the only Lannister in text to actually go against House Lannister, in concrete, material ways, and has suffered the consequences for it? The one Lannister who was barred from accessing his own identity? The one Lannister uniquely positioned to bring down his house?

Perhaps it's because what Tyrion represents is something people are afraid to admit about House Stark (upheld as unequivocally heroic) and House Targaryen (upheld as unequivocally villainous). Tyrion does not just foreshadow the ending of House Lannister as we know it; he foreshadows a RECREATION of it, a REFORGING in a new name and light. Tyrion has experience running the household at Casterly Rock, and did an excellent job of it. He was Hand of the King. He's known enslavement and hunger and violence, which a Lannister typically will never experience. This gives him a unique insight into understanding the plight and trials of the smallfolk who work Lannister lands and the commoners who work at Casterly Rock. Tyrion has not abandoned his identity as a lion of Lannister, even if he feels more alienated from it than ever. Nor has he abandoned love for his family, in spite of his dark spiral in ADWD. Yet his pride in being a lion, him being the only one of Tywin's children to truly resemble Tywin (as per Genna), while also undoing Tywin's legacy of oppression, and his idealism and desire for companionship and empathy, all exist in tandem.

Tyrion WANTS to be Lord of Casterly Rock. He WANTS to rule. He WANTS to be acknowledged as a Lannister. He WANTS vengeance against his enemies, including his own family. He WANTS a wife and family. All of this exists ALONGSIDE Tyrion wanting a simple life, to protect dwarves, enact justice for the disabled, care for the weak and innocent, create more equitable political institutions, foster more accountable ruling for the people, and pave the way for peace. Rather than Tyrion being part of "the good heroic house" (Starks) or "being the antithesis of House Lannister and dying to eradicate the house," Tyrion is clearly a balance forging new ground: an unabashed, proud Lannister, who envisions a future where a dwarf rules Casterly Rock, gets married, has children, may even be ruthless and cunning toward his enemies, but is also empathetic, compassionate, idealistic, dutiful, and kind. The crux of Tyrion's struggle is not "should I be good or should I be a Lannister," it's being accepted as a Lannister, knowing his disability, his status, his appearance, his values, his relation to his family. Tyrion as Hand of the King went against his own family, for both selfish and selfless reasons, and yet protected his family and heritage and strove to forge new ground AS a Lannister, rather than as an anti-Lannister.

This is anathema for ASOIAF fans, specifically in how they engage with Jon, Dany, House Stark, and House Targaryen. For the typical ASOIAF fan, Jon is a classic, traditional hero, unquestioned, unproblematic, unhateable. Jon is meant to "embrace" his Stark bastard identity and "reject" his Targaryen identity. His reunion with his siblings is meant to be nothing more than heartwarming and poignant. House Stark in this scenario is the "protagonistic heart" of ASOIAF, the unequivocal heroes, not problematized by the narrative in the slightest. House Stark "winning" is a moral victory, Northern Independence is reminiscent of anti-colonial justice, and a return to Stark rule is a proxy for GRRM's anti-feudalism, anti-war message, because the Starks are the good guys.

On the other hand, for the typical ASOIAF fan, Dany has to die. Now, some articulate this in the more honest, traditional way: Dany is a villain, destined to be a mad queen, and her death signifies the end of House Targaryen. Others articulate it in a more creative and deceptive way: Dany is just such a good person (with the caveat that she's still a "white woman whose arc is built on the suffering of women of color") that she clearly isn't like the rest of her family, and will happily die for humanity to redeem herself (because she'll still commit a sin; she has those dragons after all) and by dying, House Targaryen will end protecting humanity, where once it "colonized and enslaved humanity." The death of Daenerys Targaryen is supposed to emblematize a moral victory, anti-colonial justice, and a proxy for GRRM's anti-feudalism, anti-war message, because the Targaryens are the bad guys.

What we have here is that one side will win, reunite with his family, get the girl/the title/the house/the power, perhaps reject part or some of it so that the rest of his family can retain it, while the other side will have to die, either as a hero, villain, or redeemed anti-hero, and such death will thankfully symbolize humanity winning, order being restored, feudalism being destroyed, war coming to an end, peace flourishing, etc.

Where does Tyrion stand in this discourse? Usually nowhere. Most ASOIAF fans don't even care to write about his endgame; most of them write him off as a villain. Some think he'll die, some think he'll inherit Casterly Rock, but there isn't much passion in what most people theorize about his endgame. For better or worse, there is at least passion in people arguing over Jon and Dany's endgames.

In the TEXT, however, as I argue, Tyrion is someone who embraces his house identity and pride, while also going against the oppressive values of his family, and doing so in a material, concrete way. Tyrion doesn't cry about how awful Lannisters are, or hate himself for being a Lannister, or tell himself that he should give up his noble title in order to be a good heroic guy and save the day. But he DOES reflect on Tywin's evil, Cersei's greed, Jaime's stagnancy, Joffrey's petty tyranny, the near-enslavement conditions of the smallfolk at Casterly Rock, the corruption of the monarchic system in Westeros that the Lannisters benefit from, the ableism of his own family, how he benefits from the noble name that has also alienated him, etc. He seeks to protect victims of his family, like Sansa and Penny. Under the frameworks promulgated by the ASOIAF fandom, this should not be possible; he either should belong to "one of the good houses" (which the Lannisters clearly are not, and Tyrion is not Jaime, so he does not get the 50-page long PhD essays and dissertations on redemption, gender, and honor that Jaime does, despite being the more major Lannister POV character), or he should hate himself/distance himself from his evil family and die to eradicate their name (while Tyrion is suicidal in ADWD, it's not for selfless reasons; and he doesn't hate himself for being a Lannister, he hates himself for not being accepted by his family, for being a dwarf, for being a kinslayer, for being unable to save Tysha, for being hated by society).

Tyrion doesn't have to despise himself for being a Lannister in order to change his family and even be a class traitor to his own family. He also doesn't have to eschew his selfishly motivated ambitions and desires to effectuate real change. This makes him an excellent character, yet it also makes him one hard to parse for fans, not just because he is morally gray, but also because he defies the ASOIAF fanmade dichotomy of good house=good character/bad house=die (unless you're a teenage-girl coded cishet male character, e.g. Jaime, Theon, or Sandor). Tyrion isn't a selfless, abstract ideal of morally pure heroism. He has real flaws, often discomforting ones, and some of his desires are nasty. His ambition is ruthless. Yet he is still the one positioned to end House Lannister in its current form and recreate it completely.

It's clear that this is what unites the three heads: Targaryen, Stark, and Lannister, the actual heads of each house if they were allowed to be the heads if not for what makes them an outcast within their own family, embracing their names and identities while changing and recreating what it means to be each of these names. All three houses have been enemies at one point or another, but by coming together, these three will signify a real unity. Yet it's hard for fans to apply what Tyrion represents to Jon and Dany, firstly because most fans hate or ignore Tyrion, and secondly because Jon and Dany represent the two ends of the dichotomy I outlined. For fans to accept what Tyrion represents for the other two, they'd have to admit that House Stark is not the progressive, anti-colonial, feminist, pro-smallfolk force for change that fans claim it is, and they'd have to admit that Dany dying to end House Targaryen won't singlehandedly change the world and end oppression as we know it, and that House Targaryen isn't actually the devil.

A House Stark with a bastard as its head, mixed with Targaryen blood, is anathema to the history of House Stark. Have any bastards been Kings of Winter or Lords of Winterfell, save for Bael the Bard's child who killed Bael? Have any Kings of Winter had blood other than First Men blood (knowing that Starks only marry First Men-blooded houses)? Have any Kings of Winter intermingled with the Free Folk and reintegrated them into Westeros?

A House Targaryen with a teenage girl as its head may seem anathema to the history of House Targaryen, but it's not; really, it's a vindication for the women of House Targaryen. Certainly it's anathema to the WESTEROSI history of House Targaryen. What's even more anathema is a Valyrian heading an antislavery campaign and warring with other Valyrians to abolish slavery. This is the aspect of Dany's character that garners the idea that Dany is the anti-Targaryen Targaryen. Yet would not Jon be the anti-Stark Stark, by being half Targaryen and mingling with the Free Folk, when Stark identity for thousands of years has been rigidly defined in opposition to the Free Folk, exclusive of non-First Men blood, and in conformance with the Wall and what it represents?

That's what Tyrion is: House Lannister with a dwarf as its head, a dwarf who cares about women, smallfolk, bastards, commoners, children, and the disabled, who actually wants to protect the people rather than just exploit them, and who has killed and harmed other Lannisters both in the service of that cause and in service of his own goals. The other two heads of the dragon, Jon and Dany, are supposed to represent that balance and nuance as well, between embracing and embodying identity/rejecting its worst parts, destroying the old and ushering in the new.

But it's not in vogue to include Tyrion. He's not attractive enough and he's not able-bodied. He loves dragons, power, wine, and sex too much. He takes too much pride in his own identity and doesn't hate himself enough for being a Lannister. He's too ambitious. He's too ruthless. For a fandom so insistent on the aesthetics and performance of "ending the Targaryen dynasty and ushering in Northern Independence," he fits nowhere into that tapestry, so he is excluded. It doesn't sound as sexy to say he's the third head, not just because he isn't a Targaryen, but also because he doesn't fit the "pattern" ASOIAF fans want, of a "three heads" of the dragon that serves to uphold the centrality of House Stark as heroes and the centrality of House Targaryen as villains.

Yet it's for all of these reasons that TYRION is the third head of the dragon. People will continue to debate this and vehemently disagree (as if it makes sense for a completely minor character like Faegon to be the third head). However, only Tyrion thematically, philosophically, and plot wise fits the conception of the three heads of the dragon, and only he is foreshadowed to have that kind of relationship with Jon and Dany, but especially Dany.

[istumpysk]

"The Dothraki do not build."

"The Greyjoy words boasted that We Do Not Sow."

"Dragons plant no trees."

Yet people think that Dany will bring peace in A Dream of Spring.

Tyrion Lannister is an egocentric, power-hungry, vengeful, possessive, woman-hating, self-pitying, mouthy piece of shit.

Barristan Selmy is a stupid, xenophobic, outdated, self-righteous bootlicker, who can turn a blind eye to any atrocity being committed.

Jorah Mormont is a self-centered, entitled, immoral, jealous, predatory creep, who likes to dabble in slave trade.

Victarion Greyjoy is a dull-witted, violent, criminal warlord, who lacks basic empathy and compassion.

Daario Naharis is a living, breathing representation of Daenerys Targaryen's worst inclinations.

Skahaz Shavepate is a ruthless, manipulative, treasonous, authoritarian, who enjoys inflicting torture on people.

Reznak mo Reznak is the lone good guy who'll be killed for it.

The Dothraki are a nomadic band of horse lords, known for their brutality, rape, and pillaging.

All the sellsword captains are corrupt, unreliable, and lack any sense of duty.

Red priests like Moqorro and Benerro are intolerant religious zealots who propagate fear, practice blood magic, abuse their abilities, and have no qualms about using force to promote their agenda.

The dragons are wild, uncontrollable weapons of mass destruction.

The Unsullied are her slave army.

Irri is her bed slave.

Jhiqui is her slave handmaiden.

Missandei is her slave scribe.

[atopvisenyashill]

Top ten: the narrative did them dirty, what could have been (more interesting), and what one off mentions you want to see more of, and what Martin historical inaccurate stuff pisses you off (no child brides).

narratives did them dirty. that’s actually kinda hard bc like for example depending on how the story ends, lyanna & elia could be perfectly fine as they are OR i could be annoyed. i feel very silly being like "narrative did them dirty" when we just have no idea how the narrative ends alsjdfkl

arianne nymeros martell - simply should have been there earlier

areo hotah - like victarion, he’s a character that is meant to give us insight into a particular region, unlike victarion his inner narrative is largely nonexistent. he just loves doran & that’s it, we don’t really know him

irri - no explanation needed

lyarra stark - deserves more than “she died”

gaemon palehair - his death should have hit harder

alyssa velaryon - should have aborted jaehaerys in the womb

loreza nymeros martell - we don’t even know her name

dalla the wildling - she should have lived, would have been more interesting having her be our wildling voice in the north w jon

weasel - IF HOT PIE & GENDRY ARE OKAY WHY CANT WEASEL BE 🤧🤧

cersei - listen. listen to me. she is RIGHT to be paranoid, i think this is simply a byproduct of (similar to arianne) not introducing her pov until late in the game but she’s RIGHT just bc she’s crazy doesn’t mean she’s not CORRECT

one off/could have beens

whoever wrote that book about the similarities between the north and dorne. i want the whole thing.

rhoynar water magic

the black pearl of braavos. she just seems cool, give me more summer island diaspora stuff, it’s interesting!!!!!!

the entire jaehaera/daenaera thing. no reason for daenaera to have not been a lady of jaehaera’s, and even if jaehaera still ultimately dies before having children, just doing more with the three of them instead of whatever he did would have gone a long way

alysanne daughter of maegor forever

saera - i think her later years should have had more of a focus, she just disappears to be a brothel owner, feels like a lot of build up without enough pay off

myr. i’m very very interested in them, esp w the controversial maester comments about them being related to the rhoynar (are they or is that racism lol) and the fact that taena serala AND thoros are from there?? AND varys was castrated in myr???? i’m just curious bc we don’t know a lot about it!!

pact of ice and fire should have been MORE. LADY SWAP SOMETHING. COME ON.

MORE ALAYAYA. she just kinda disappears after tyrion leaves and i get it but i want to know she's alright!!!! how is her reading going!!!

literally a single fucking essosi point of view. a dothraki, a meereenese, a pentoshi tyroshi like ANYONE

historical inaccuracy nitpicks

the fucking dothraki. listen. the focus on the arakh as if any nomadic people place any sort of importance on metal tools?? the lack of any sort of armor?? the complete reliance on orientalism and anti native characterization of like, thoughtless hordes of hyper violent savages for their ENTIRE PEOPLE???? they have the aesthetics of mongolians and lakota but absolutely NOTHING that made them interesting cultures that had civilizations that lasted hundreds of years.

the small households in the north kill me. i think you could argue this is mostly a ned thing because everyone else is still fostering kids, making marriage pacts, etc, but there’s a real lack of it, and a huge lack of focus on the politics of each faction that would crop up esp re: the small council.

the lack of cool septas. i know this is part of his distaste for religion but there were a lot of very cool and interesting nuns who ran around doing cool and interesting stuff and i DO think the gender & class dynamics potentially at play there WOULD interest him so it’s a frustrating lack

the lack of saints. again, this is his disinterest for religion but like. what kind of religion doesn’t have a martyr or two they throw a festival for a few times a year like. everyone has a prophet or two that are regularly worshipped idk!!!

not enough peasant revolts!!!!! dragon pit? amazing. poor fellows? very fun!!! the riot scene in KL? harrowing!!!! but like people just rebelled way more in history than he writes about!

what’s the word yeoman i believe? more of them!!!!!

more guilds!!!

okay it’s not like,,,, necessarily a problem it’s just that societies that had Slaving Economies, not just places that had slavery but Economies Centered Around Slavery Exclusively number at like, three or four, while half the societies we have in terros are slaving economies. i don’t inherently mind this - for example, people have pointed out how much more volatile and brutal his world is but imo that makes sense when you have crazy seasons like they do & also magic, so that’s not a nitpick for me personally - but i guess i. wonder. if HE realizes this?

more festivals and feastdays and random holidays. these people don’t have any fucking holidays!!!! i feel like there should be waaaaaaay more yearly celebrations to help keep track of the passage of time since they don’t have regular seasons????

[missnobodymadness]

WARNING: This OC profile contains sensitive themes that aren't adviced for younger audiences, please, skip this post if you are under 18.

Below is Tirannia's profile, my Game of Thrones OC.

───── ⋆⋅ Tirannia⋅⋆ ─────

"For most, the sea is a frightening place, full of monsters and it's mysteries, but not for me; the sea is where I find inspiration and peace, for I aspire to be just as free and fierce as its waves”

General

Name: Tirannia Meaning: The one born to rule Date of Birth: 28, March Age: 28 Zodiac: Aries Gender: Female Pronouns: She/Her Sexuality: Homosexual Species: Human Music theme: Captain of my soul by Rita Redshoes Title(s): The Barren Misandrist Mother of the Sea Serpent Knight of the Fourteen Seas Status: Alive

Appearance

Height: 5’11” / 1,81m Weight:  Before escaping: 163lbs / 74kg; A year after:  194lbs / 88kg; Skin color: White Eye color: Blue Hair color: Auburn Hair length: Long Scars/Birth marks/Tattoos: A few scars on her face and body Body modification: None Other features: None

Relationships

Biological Family

Mother Unknown Tully female (Biological) Rohesia (Adoptive) Father Aerys II Targaryen Siblings Rhaegar Targaryen (Half-brother) Viserys Targaryen (Half-brother) Daenerys Targaryen (Half-sister) Partner None Children None Other family Jon Snow (Nephew) Unknown Tullys

Other relationships

Yara Greyjoy (Crush) Brienne Of Tarth (Temporary coach) Tyrion Lannister (Advisor and confidant) Sansa Stark (Respect but not friends post-ending) Arya Stark (Occasional ally/teamup post-ending) Samwell Tarly (The first man she bowed to) Jorah Mormont (Distrust)

Life & Occupation

Place of Birth Westeros Current place Essos (Before escaping) Nomad (After escaping) Westeros (While guarding Daenerys) Dragonstone and nomad (Current) House Targaryen x Tully bastard Occupation Sex Slave (Former) Pirate (After escaping) Queen’s Guard Sailor (Current) Affiliation Targaryen

Personality

Tirannia is a strong and independent woman, with a passion for the sea and combat. She is very good at hiding her fear and tends to be confrontational, even when she knows she won’t probably come out as the winner.

Positive traits

Courageous Self-sufficient Adventurous Resilient Adaptable

Negative traits

Distrustful Deceitful Resentful Violent May be intolerant around men

Likes Sea, sharks, travelling, swords and combat.

Dislikes Most men, slavery (especially sexual), snow.

Story

After the forced intercourse between Aerys II and an unknown female Tully, a homeless woman approached the Tully, trying to help her.

Feeling miserable, the Tully couldn’t help but feel embarrassed and quickly tried to push the homeless woman away, not wanting the news to spread, however, the homeless woman wasn’t intimidated by her reaction and assured her secrecy, desperate, the Tully finally accepted the help.

Eventually she found out that all the tea she had drunk that day wasn’t efficient when she started feeling the first symptoms of her pregnancy.

Feeling lost and too ashamed to admit she was abused and carrying the mad king children, she decided to look for the woman that once helped her. Their relationship had flourished into a beautiful friendship after the Tully came back to show her gratitude, finding her a place to stay and helping her with groceries.

She had no idea how she’d go through pregnancy without being noticed, however, she asked for her friend’s help once again and both agreed to a plan: once the children was born, the Tully would bring the baby to her and she would run to Essos and raise the baby as hers, that was the only way for her children to survive in case the truth came out.

She still didn’t know how she would get her friend on a ship but she would work on that and find a way, after all, there was nothing that money or favours couldn’t get.

The Tully isolated herself once her belly started to show up, using big coats and doing her best to hide it from curious eyes.

Eventually the day came and Tirannia was finally born, healthy and crying to the winds of the Winter.

Their plan was successful and they reached Essos a few weeks later, it wasn’t a easy life for them but eventually Tirannia started slowly grow up, until a tragedy happened, her adoptive mother got sick.

She was getting old and eventually ended up passing away months later while Tirannia did her best to help her by stealing food.

Tirannia was heartbroken and tried to survive on her own even though she was barely 10, getting quite the reputation as a thief that unfortunately came with a price: the price of vengeance.

She was violently ambushed by market sellers and then sold to a pleasure house where she lived for the next 10 years of her life until she was actually able to escape after deceiving a very important and regular customer.

Her life after escaping wasn’t easy, she was well known because of her bad reputation and eventually had to move.

Barely did she know that the truth had come out in Westeros months ago and with all the tension around Daenerys she was now being hunted down with a prize for her head; luckily for her, no one knew what she looked like and she didn’t share much in common with her father, taking way more after her mother who barely anyone knew.

Eventually she started to hear about it all around Essos as the prize was quite high and people kept coming up with conspiracies of who she may be, it took her some time to understand people were referring to her adoptive mother but all her doubts were gone when she finally heard her name.

She now knew she was the person they were looking for.

Curious about her family, she started adventuring and studying, making friends with sailors and later on used what she was taught at the pleasure house to once again deceive men to her own benefit, this time getting her own ship in return.

Her goal was to visit Dragonstone to connect with her origins and try to find more about herself and she did it.

Tirannia finds a mysterious semi-submerged cave at the island while exploring and an even more curious thing happened: She found something there, something round that looked like an egg.

She believed it to be some sort of a valuable egg from an aquatic creature and took it with her on her adventure for knowledge.

As one of the most desired sex slaves from her pleasure house, she found herself as wanted all around Essos and unfortunately she made the mistake of returning after finding out about her half-sister, she wanted to find her but was caught by surprise instead.

They took her back to the pleasure house, trading their catch for valuable favours but her suffering had barely begun.

Furious about her escape, the owner of the pleasure house severely punished her, not only with genital mutilation but also cold blood sterilization; little did he know that the egg he had just deemed as useless hours ago would celebrate all that carnage by hatching to the sound of her cries and the heat of her growing hatred towards men that burned like fire inside her.

“A life for a life”, that’s what she had heard and read several times about hatching dragon eggs, but what did it meant to her? That was when she stopped to realize she would never be able to generate life, it was an unwilling sacrifice but a sacrifice nonetheless.

When she finally gained her conscience back, she realized that the man who had so much power over her was gone, carbonized, right beside her, she felt a cold shiver on her belly, looked down and saw a small and very disproportionate dragon looking back at her, confuse, she took some time to realize she was finally free. Later on she finally finds her half-sister and pledge her loyalty to her, turning into one of her personal guards.

[st-clements-steps]

Ohhh, crunchy! 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 15, 24, 36, please :D

Hey, hey, hey, lovely, the questions are from here

2. A minor or extinct house you need more lore on; you think I'd go Mallister, but no, I want to be part of the people making the Mallister lore, I have stolen them from GRRM, they are mine now, I'll share them obviously with other patrek, patrek, patrek enthusiasts. All those really borderline magical houses intrigue me, House Reed and all the other Crannogmen please; the Knotts and the Liddells and the Flints of the mountains, all those nomadic northern ones; that one at the edge of the Iron Islands, House Farwynd, are they Selkies? Are they warging into seals? Are they just a little bit like Shetlanders? Also it's kind of basic bitch of me, but House Dayne, they're very bloody sexy but I just want to see their real depth. (Also were House Poole once Crannogmen, their name kind of fits?) 5. Dead female character I need to save: Kyra. Obviously. Also I really should save Elia because personal affinity reasons. And then I think I'd have to save Lyanna too (I have written a POV of an older, saved, her, thanks to Eva being galaxy brained, and oh it was so interesting). Also Dacey so I can marry her please. Plus let's save all the live women, Jeyne P. and Jeyne W. and Pia especially. 6. A book or character you didn't like at first but have come to love - had a difficult initial relationship with feast and at first I found Brienne's chapters tricky but I came to really enjoy them. (I love her and I love wee Pod). And I didn't dislike Arya at first, but I was a bit bored by her, she just seemed quite like all those tomboy preteens I'd read as kid, Scout and Lyra and Tyke Tiler (British 70s children's novel that was still the kind of thing forced upon you in English in 90s Britain). But actually once she gets to Braavos, I'm much more enthralled and the Mercy chapter, oh, it floors me. 9. Build your small council - Tyrion, Gilly, Missandei (even though she's 11), in fact let's go Shireen too, and Wex (master of whisperers), and then before Tyrion kills me for making it a model UN class project, Barbrey, Arianna, Davos, and one of Asha's ratboys to be master of ships (She's busy ruling the Iron Island in my head). 10. A quote so good it makes you crazy -  Tyrion ruminating on the inevitability of history (and it feels like nature and nurture too, how generational trauma gets woven into us); It all goes back and back, Tyrion thought, to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads. Theon arguing vociferously that trauma does not need to be physical; The noose I wore was not made of hempen rope, that's true enough, but I felt it all the same. And it chafed, Ser Rodrik. It chafed me raw. Sansa realising how her trauma has a molded her; My skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel. (I love this, I steal it for characterisation constantly, because being porcelain is such an interesting image especially)

And finally my boy Jon being a poet; The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brothers were encased in a fine glaze of ice.

So there is magic beyond the Wall after all. He found himself thinking of his sisters, perhaps because he'd dreamed of them last night. Sansa would call this an enchantment, and tears would fill her eyes at the wonder of it, but Arya would run out laughing and shouting, wanting to touch it all. 15. Favourite Parent - Cersei (she's a terrible parent I realise, but she's the only parent who lives in my pocket) 24. A ship that gives me the ick - Jon Arya (actually find shipping her with anyone very difficult, she's very 11 in my head, I know its weird because I ship Sansa with a whole raft of people and there's only 2 years between them, but it is what it is, but also for me the idea of them being romantic very much diminishes their current love for another, why does a heartfelt sibling (or platonic in some other sense) relationship need to be really just oh its actually all lust filled romance?) 36. All the dub-con, non-con that gets sexy, I'm just there scrunching my nose, wondering if there's something GRRM needs to properly address with his therapist rather than continually writing into asoiaf. Oh and the timelines piss me off no end, House Stark in charge of the North for 8000 years! Eight Bloody Thousand? Really? And there's been basically no systemic change in society over that time? Was feudal back then? Still feudal now? Hardly any linguistic evolvement over those thousands of years? Etc. Thanks so much.

[makerkenzie]

A Meta-Song of Meta and Songs

ASOIAF is a long and complex saga of meta-storytelling.

GRRM is perpetually telling stories about telling stories.

This is why theater and pageantry are so important in this universe. It's why we hear so much about storybooks and mummer shows. It's why Prince Aerion beat up Tanselle Too-Tall over a freaking puppet show. It's why Tyrion wants to have a singer killed. I mean...singers, in this setting, aren't all that powerful. They're not like pop stars in the real world, they're generally poor and nomadic. And yet...they can make the rich and powerful feel super-uncomfortable.

It's often said that GRRM likes to subvert tropes. And...okay, so, I will expand on that. All these players, starting with individuals and moving up through families and even entire armies, start with certain assumptions about how their lives are supposed to go. Ask any of them, "If your life were in a storybook, which story would it be?" and they'll all have answers ready.

...and for each answer, GRRM says, "oh, about that?" and he hangs the answer by its ankles and shakes it until all the trinkets fall out of its pockets.

It's not that the characters' starting answers are entirely wrong, necessarily. They're not entirely wrong, not always. They tend to be oversimplified, at best.

FOR EXAMPLE: Start with Jon. Ask him which story is his, and he'll say: "I'm Ned Stark's bastard." Oh, about that? The bastardy was the disguise that kept him alive all this time. Ned didn't have any children except those he had with Catelyn.

To be totally fair, it's not wrong to say Ned was his daddy.

[diamondperfumes]

But that's not true, which was the point of me bringing up the ethnic homogeneity of Westeros. People of color are presented exclusively as savages, exotic subjects, or uncivilized entities, in the rest of the white viewpoints, be they the various Essosi that Tyrion, Victarion, Jon Connington, or Quentyn meet in their ADWD POV's, or the Summer Isles characters in Samwell's POV & the various King's Landing court POV's in ACOK/ASOS, the various Essosi (including Dothraki) that crop up from time to time, like the Brave Companions in Arya & Jaime's ASOS POV's, Taena of Myr in Cersei & Jaime's POV's, etc. The North is so ethnically and racially homogenous that two white Northern women––Jeyne Poole and Gilly––at two different occasions comment on being "scared" of Summer Isles people and their skin color. The AFFC prologue presents the acolytes and maesters of the Citadel as deploring Marwyn because he has the "audacity" to hang out with the exotic subjects of Essos. Leo Tyrell, Cersei, and Jaime use racial/ethnic epithets to refer to Essosi people. There are more examples, but these points are what immediately came to mind.

It's true that the way George has written the Dothraki, when compared to how he's written the Free Folk, is extremely orientalist, especially considering that they are presented as similar nomadic cultures with similar lifestyles and values. Yet Dany's POV remains the only one wherein a white character befriends people of color and presents a version of them beyond the "criminal" (e.g. the Dothraki members of the Brave Companions), "exotic" (e.g. Taena of Myr), or mystical sidekick. Yes, there is just as much racism and orientalism in how George has written those characters in Dany's arc, but those characters at least have underlying motivations and relevance that extend beyond Dany's arc. For instance, you will never see a character like Missandei in the other white POV's. You will never see nonwestern and nonwhite people take up a role in a military revolution in Westeros, aside from Dany's own people who will of course accompany her to Westeros. Even the "war for the dawn" is presented as a problem exclusively for the white Western characters.

The Qartheen and Ghiscari are white. If you're including the otherized white Easterner in the category of orientalized subject in ASOIAF, then this should include Daenerys and other Valyrians. Daenerys is the only minor in the series whom George repeatedly and explicitly sexualizes. He isolates her by writing about her breasts, genitalia, and body, in a very Otherizing manner, and puts her in explicit sexual situations that he does not with other young female characters. Indeed, the way he writes about Dany's body is similar to how he writes about Arianne's, who is a textual example of the exotic-erotic trope. The characters within the series also Otherize her, namely the Valyrian, Ghiscari, and other slaver & slaver-allied characters who speak about Dany's sexuality and body, and disparage her for her association with the Dothraki. Westeros isn't even accepting of ethnic Valyrians, as exemplified by a reactionary mob in King's Landing murdering the Pentoshi Rego Draz and blaming him for the spread of the Shivers, or Aegon III's court being hostile to Larra Rogare, for being a Lyseni polytheist who spoke Lyseni Valyrian. Thus I'm not sure why "Qartheen and Ghiscari" count as "people of color" in your estimation when they are white, because if we do such a calculus then Valyrians would have to be included as well, which I'm sure you'd be opposed to doing.

Missandei does have more characterization than you think she does. At the age of 10 she rises from an enslaved scribe to a Queen's scribe, handmaid, translator, and advisor, offering explicit advice to the Queen that becomes policy, being part of her inner court, treating with her diplomatic allies, directly offering her opinions to the Queen. Her relationship with Daenerys is warm, loving, and one of the only sources of comfort Daenerys has in Meereen. Melisandre of Asshai remains the only formerly enslaved POV character who rises from slave to de facto queen (other than Dany herself)––there is no Westerosi equivalent to Missandei's character. George could do much better with the characterization of Irri, Jhiqui, Jhogo, Aggo, Rakharo, Grey Worm, Strong Belwas, and several others, but all of them are not presented as dubious allies to Dany, but rather as people she fiercely loves and cares about, and who have seen her at her best and worst.

When it comes to the Dothraki in particular, Dany is the only person in the series who actually cares about what happens to them. The reason she is Otherized by Ghiscari and Valyrians for associating with them is because she adopts the Dothraki culture as her own. Yes, she was sold to and raped by a Dothraki man. There are also Dothraki men in Westeros, among the Brave Companions, who rape and murder women. Those white women do not affirmatively adopt Dothraki culture (nor would I expect them to; I don't subscribe to a racial identitarian framework in which "talking about bad things happening to a woman who happens to be white = white feminism") and, if we took out Dany's POV, we would never learn about anything regarding Dothraki culture other than its imperialist political economy. Yet Dany accepts the culture as her own and comes to genuinely love it, feeling at one with the Dothraki sea and land (a motif that is ubiquitous in her arc), loving horse riding in the Dothraki style, wearing bells in her hair in the Khal's style, worshipping the Dothraki Horse God (she is religiously syncretic, and really one of the only religiously syncretic characters in the text), engaging in Dothraki rituals like eating the heart of a stallion and bathing in the Womb of the World and doing so seriously, and protecting her tiny Khalasar for the entire series, no matter who tells her to abandon them. She mourns Quaro even in the fifth book. Her Khalasar matters to her. The Stallion prophecy, which the entire fandom deems scary and a portent of genocide, is actually a positive prophecy for the Dothraki because it entails a unity within their culture and their survival within the Long Night. And Dany loved her Dothraki-Targaryen child, who was ripped away from her. This mixing of cultures and religious and cultural syncretism present in her arc is simply not present elsewhere in the text, even Arya's POV, where the "ethnic and religious diversity" in Braavos is mostly white.

I question why you're calling her a white savior not because I disagree that there is orientalism present in her storyline but because your definition of white savior is ahistorical. The white savior framework, as popularized by Rudyard Kipling and other ideological arms of European imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, explicitly called for white western civilization to colonize the third world as a project of civilizing and enlightening the third world "savages." This is not what Dany is doing, despite analyses to the contrary. She's not introducing Valyrian/Western institutions of education, religion, or governance to Meereen, or the Dothraki. She's not enforcing her language upon them. She's not installing Valyrian/Western rulers, or local rulers as proxies for them, to disseminate Valyrian/Western values. She's not partitioning or carving up Meereen or the Dothraki sea by using demographic/anthropological "studies" to categorize people based on ethnicity. White saviorism has an actual definition beyond "white woman was raped by man of color = white feminism." In fact, Daenerys herself is Essosi, her ethnicity is indigenous to the continent, and she grew up in both a culture and a geopolitical context in which slavery is the norm. She herself had to rid herself of the internalization of that norm through a gradual process of political consciousness. This is not a case of an enlightened Westerner using civilization, or progress, as an excuse to plunder and colonize. Thus your assertion that she's a white savior is at odds with your assertion that she isn't an imperialist, for fundamentally white saviorism is the epistemological arm of western imperialism.

"There are no good rulers" is not GRRM's thesis––if it was, then he'd be a hypocrite for gearing toward an ending in which the Starks regain their feudal, noble power, and absolute authority over the North (an authority that is unelected, inequitable, and has no reparations or redistribution of land for the populations that the Starks and their ancestors genocided in order to obtain their land and dominion). Which of course he is one, I don't deny that, but "ruling is hard" isn't the same as "no good rulers." With the very quote that you mention, George specifically said /Daenerys/ is his answer to Aragorn, which doesn't exactly evince the idea that George is writing Dany as a bad ruler. Dany fails in ADWD because she tries to compromise with a reactionary slaveowning elite, an action that would of course end in failure because her personal revolutionary values, and her values of her people, clash with that of the Ghiscari hegemony. Yet Dany is the only POV character who affirmatively learns and puts into practice the widest range of ruling skills and tasks. For example, she's the only one who levies taxes not at starving serfs or fleeing refugees, but at slaveowning nobles and their wealth. This clearly has significant precedent and isn't just something George wrote to condemn her as a failure (otherwise it wouldn't be unique as the only type of tax a ruling noble has levied against the ruling class).

Absolutely she ends ADWD on failure. But you're incorrect that she doesn't reject the ruling status quo in Meereen. ADWD presents a dichotomy between the dragon and the harpy (a dichotomy that was actually established at the end of ASOS). The freedmen of Meereen deplore the would-be dragon slayer, Harghaz, while the slavers hail him a hero. The slaves of Volantis believe Daenerys is Azor Ahai, that her dragons are a symbol of glory, and that the Triarchs are aligned with darkness, while the slavers of Volantis believe she is a sinner whose biggest sin is clouding the water of slavery that spans the entire world (including Westeros). The slaves want Daenerys to smash the Yunkai'i, while the slavers see Dany's dragons as monsters. The sons of the harpy are represented by a mother (the harpy is a woman)––two maternal figures going against each other, mother of dragons vs. mother of the harpy's sons. Within Daznak's Pit, the slavers sit closest to the carnage, while the serfs, servants, and slaves sit highest up. This is why the slaves are unaffected by Drogon's wrath and the slavers are the only ones burned or killed. One slave even tells Tyrion that he sat to watch the slavers get eaten because he came to see a show. It was the slavers relishing on lowborn humans being killed and dictating the terms of the violence, until Drogon arrived and the slavers became the victims of violence instead.

This culminates in Dany's own actions and thoughts in the Pit:

Ten thousand throats roared out their thanks; then twenty thousand; then all. They did not call her name, which few of them could pronounce. "Mother!" they cried instead; in the old dead tongue of Ghis, the word was Mhysa! They stamped their feet and slapped their bellies and shouted, "Mhysa, Mhysa, Mhysa," until the whole pit seemed to tremble. Dany let the sound wash over her. I am not your mother, she might have shouted, back, I am the mother of your slaves, of every boy who ever died upon these sands whilst you gorged on honeyed locusts. Behind her, Reznak leaned in to whisper in her ear, "Magnificence, hear how they love you!" … and folded. The dragon gave one last hiss and stretched out flat upon his belly. Black blood was flowing from the wound where the spear had pierced him, smoking where it dripped onto the scorched sands. He is fire made flesh, she thought, and so am I.

How is this not a rejection of the Meereenese status quo? It's a direct reclamation of her maternal identity, which she had compromised throughout ADWD:

Bless me, Dany thought bitterly. Your city is gone to ash and bone, your people are dying all around you. I have no shelter for you, no medicine, no hope. Only stale bread and wormy meat, hard cheese, a little milk. Bless me, bless me. What kind of mother has no milk to feed her children? – ADWD Dany VI The Great Masters had used the pit as a prison. It was large enough to hold five hundred men … and more than ample for two dragons. For how long, though? What will happen when they grow too large for the pit? Will they turn on one another with flame and claw? Will they grow wan and weak, with withered flanks and shrunken wings? Will their fires go out before the end? What sort of mother lets her children rot in darkness? – ADWD Dany II

Daenerys chains her own children, her dragons, in the very pit that the Great Masters––slaveowners––imprisoned people. She is unable to save the refugees of Astapor and has to close the city gates to them. She fails both of her maternal identities, Mother of Dragons and Mhysa, as those are interconnected, which is why the author parallels her thoughts: what kind of mother lets her children rot in darkness, and what kind of mother has no milk to feed her children? Her dragons are isolated, angry, and alone, just as her people are hungry, suffering, and poor, because her compromises with the Meereenese elite distance herself from them. In ADWD Dany IX, however, she reclaims both of her maternal identities: she is fire made flesh, one with Drogon, and mother of the slaves and people. She is not a Harpy, and she is not the mother of Meereen. Her embrace of her draconic identity is inherently connected to her rejection of the Meereenese status quo.

Before Drogon's arrival, Dany does something monumental yet subtle that signifies this:

"Khaleesi?" Irri asked. "What are you doing?" "Taking off my floppy ears." A dozen men with boar spears came trotting out onto the sand to drive the boar away from the corpse and back to his pen. The pitmaster was with them, a long barbed whip in his hand. As he snapped it at the boar, the queen rose. "Ser Barristan, will you see me safely back to my garden?"

The "floppy ears" are her Tokar, which her advisors cautioned her to wear so that she can align herself with Meereenese interests. Yet the Tokar is a slaver's garmet, a master's garment, a symbol of wealth and status. Dany donning the Tokar is a betrayal of her people, children, and values, forcing her to be a Harpy; by taking it off, running barefoot toward Drogon, she is rejecting the false peace and reclaiming her identity all in one. Where this will end up is her raining fire and blood upon the slavers of Meereen and Volantis, as she should have done instead of compromising. But she had to experience failure to understand the nuances of when to use violence, where to use violence, and how to use violence.

Indeed, the entire point of ADWD Dany X is showing her looking back:

Dany watched him go. When the sound of his hooves had faded away to silence, she began to shout. She called until her voice was hoarse … and Drogon came, snorting plumes of smoke. The grass bowed down before him. Dany leapt onto his back. She stank of blood and sweat and fear, but none of that mattered. "To go forward I must go back," she said. Her bare legs tightened around the dragon's neck. She kicked him, and Drogon threw himself into the sky. Her whip was gone, so she used her hands and feet and turned him north by east, the way the scout had gone. Drogon went willingly enough; perhaps he smelled the rider's fear.

This isn't just her running away from Meereen and seeking comfort with her son. Does she consider doing so? Yes, just as she considered running from her duty and settling down in Vaes Tolorro, back in ACOK. But while Dany thinks about how liberating it would be to live on the Dothraki Sea with drogon, eat horseflesh and live in the makeshift Dragonstone, she doesn't let herself accept the easy way out. That is why, rather than fleeing from Jhaqo's Khalasar, she stands with Drogon (as an equal) and faces the incoming Khalasar with him, which is exactly where the chapter ends.

Thus claiming that her failing in ADWD, or her being 14/15, or her being abused, naturally means that she's a bad ruler, doesn't conform to the themes of her storyline. Daenerys learns from every one of her failures. As an example, her failure to save Eroeh and the Lhazareen women is what leads her to understand that she has to conquer Astapor and execute the slaveowning nobles if she actually means to abolish slavery there. This is the next step within that process. While ASOIAF fans speak of abstract symbolism and scattered key words to support the idea that the other feudal noble POV's are "good rulers" with "good potential," Dany has concrete experience that concretely aligns with the rebuilding George wants to see in Westeros.

I take it you don't think of dany as an colonizer or imperialist either

I do not. She's not engaging in a project of colonisation in metropolis-colony terms, nor one of empire-building in the terms of late 19th, early 20th century construction of capital - which is what those words mean.

Is Dany's story laced with themes of white saviourism? Yeah, absolutely. Even if you don't think of her as *white*, the themes and imagery are still very much taken from orientalist fiction.

Is Dany a good ruler? Not really, and I think that the crux of her story in A Dance With Dragons is meant to mirror Jon's, of both of them failing their projects of power and retreating towards magic again after being touched by a whole book of counting beets and negotiating with the elites. Jon dies, and Dany is left stranded and captured by the khalasar. They are failure points, contrasting where they leave A Storm of Swords in triumph.

But she's not really starting up the British Empire or the Portuguese Ultramarine Empire in Meereen.

Oh, also. She's 14.

[kyliafanfiction]

What gets me, I suppose, about people whining about how the Dothraki and the Iron Islands don’t work, especially when compared to their RL analogues (insofar as they are analogues and not just inspirations) is... yeah, duh?

First of all, fiction is always going to need to be shallower than real history. 

Secondly, there are countless works of fantasy fiction that have the ‘Viking Style Raiders’ and the ‘Mongol Horse Nomads’ that are just as shallowly written as the Dothraki and the Ironborn. Shallow appropriation from real history is endemic to the genre. ASOIAF does not merit singular targeting here, except insofar as it is popular.

Now, yes, ASOIAF does attract a certain class of grimdark-loving dudebro who crows about how the story is realistic because of all the rape and brutality, but they’re just as wrong as the people attacking it because the climate makes no sense or because the Dothraki are unsustainable.

It’s not the point. 

The realism, insofar as there really is realism or even part of the goal here for Martin, is in consequences for people’s actions. In narrativium not serving to protect people. The dysfunction of the Iron Islands and the Dothraki fit right into that, because their non-functioning status is the natural followthrough of what happens when a society is as monotasked as the Dothraki and Ironborn (under Balon and other followers of the Old Way anyway) are.

In most High Fantasy, the Red Wedding doesn’t happen. In most High Fantasy, Ned doesn’t die after sacrificing his honor (either he dies defiant, or he lives after recanting). In most High Fantasy someone like Tyrion gets rewarded by his father for his cleverness, finally getting the paternal affection he never had before. 

In ASOIAF? Not so much.

Is ASOIAF perfect? No. Does it have certain things that one wishes GRRM didn’t include? Is it perfectly realistic?

No.

But it doesn’t actually strive to be. It’s realism in a specific category of approach, not realism in every way. So no, the agricultural economics of Westeros don’t make sense, the army sizes are hair-pull inducing, and the specific nature of the misogyny in Westeros is far less nuanced than the reality of the middle ages, but...

That’s not the point?

[sofiaottoman]

#thanksvember 2021

So here it is finally, the masterlist for all the fics I’ve recommended throughout Novmber (and the final 6 days + 2 bonus recs I didn’t share until Jan 2022). I’ve split the fics into fandoms this year, let me know it this works better. Last year’s masterlist can be found here if you want to check it out. I had fun re-visiting these fics in order to post about them. I’ve already started my list for 2022, hopefully I’ll manage to get them all up in November. Thank you to everyone who has liked or reblogged my posts. The list is below the cut.

All For The Game

Thanksvember Day 02: Brother of Mine by Paradoxolotl [Rated: Teen and Up | Andrew/Neil]

Thanksvember Day 16: wingpeople by likearecord [Rated: Teen and Up]

Batman

Thanksvember Day 01: Hey, brother by BearlyWriting [Rated: Mature]

Thanksvember Day 03: We’ll make it right for you by Ode_et_amo [Rated: Teen and Up | Jason/Dick]

Thanksvember Day 04: The 70 Days After Groundhog Day by Ptelea [Rated: Teen and Up]

Thanksvember Day 06: Unsteady by withthekeyisking [Rated: Mature]

Thanksvember Day 07: catch me by Periazhad [Rated: Mature]

Thanksvember Day 11: aura by envysparkler [Rated: Teens and Up]

Thanksvember Day 15: The Good Soldier Who Left by SoberFest [Rated: Teen and Up]

Thanksvember Day 17: qui coepit vobis opus bonum (Father Todd AU) by catie_writes_things [Rated: Teens and Up]

Thanksvember Day 21: in love with a fairytale (even though it hurts) by elareine [Rated: Teen and Up | JayDick]

Thanksvember Day 25: stay with me by envysparkler and Periazhad [Rated: Mature] (+ 1 more)

Thanksvember Day 29: Silence ringing inside my head (please carry me, carry me, carry me home) by elareine [Rated: Teen and Up | JayDick]

Crossover

Thanksvember Day 10: Son Shine by SandM1827 [Rated: Explicit | Teen Wolf x Sons of Anarchy | Juice/Stiles]

Thanksvember Day 18: Give Thanks to Broken Bones by thepartyresponsible [Rated: Mature | MCU x DC | Tony/Jason]

Thanksvember Day 19: Say a Prayer by mad_fairy [Rated: Not Rated | Harry Potter x MCU]

Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire

Thanksvember Day 09: Swamp Princess by Thesuspiciousflyingjellyfish [Rated: Teen and Up | Jojen/Sansa]

Thanksvember Day 14: The North Remembers by K_R_Closson & tasalmalin [Rated: Mature | Sansa/Tyrion]

Thanksvember Day 30: frame the halves (and call them brothers) by Kittycombs [Rated: Teen and Up | Catelyn/Ned]

Thanksvember Bonus #1: be unbroken or be brace again by SafelyCapricious [Rated: Teen and Up | Oberyn/Sansa]

Thanksvember Bonus #2: A Crown of Iron by kitkatkaylie [Rated: Mature]

Hannibal

Thanksvember Day 08: Making Headlines by maydei [Rated: Explicit | Will/Hannibal]

Harry Potter

Thanksvember Day 13: A Place Apart by Metalduck [Rated: Mature]

Thanksvember Day 23: Blessed Be by flitterflutterfly [Rated: Mature | Harry/Blaise]

Thanksvember Day 24: Innocent by MarauderLover7 [Rated: Mature]

Thanksvember Day 26: The Heir to the House of Prince by elph13 [Rated: Mature | Theo/Harry]

Thanksvember Day 28: Princeps by Lomonaaeren [Rated: Teen and Up]

MCU

Thanksvember Day 05: Sinking Our Teeth In The Heart Of The Sun by fallendarlings [Rated: Explicit | Steve/Bucky]

Merlin

Thanksvember Day 20: For Want of a Nail by 0hHeyThereBigBadWolf [Rated: Teen and Up | Merlin/Arthur]

The West Wing

Thanksvember Day 12: Further to Fly by Nomad (nomadicwriter) [Rated: Teen and Up]

The Witcher

Thanksvember Day 22: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack by inexplicifics [Rated: Explicit | Geralt/Jaskier]

Thanksvember Day 27: The god of scraped knees. by spqr [Rated: Mature | Geralt/Jaskier]

[niqhtlord01]

By now if you don’t know what time it is we’ll have Roman take you back stage and beat the shit out of you with his little cane grenade launcher thing, because it’s time for another round of ROOSTER TEETH CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!!! This week we have an up an comer from one of the company’s newer franchises and boy does her pluck show at being invited. (We told her it would be a sit down between all of the contestants to workout their issues as a group.)  This fire haired young lass hails from parts and has somehow survived against a governors champion, a giant bird monster, and nearly being shot in a dark abandoned mine. Let’s give it up for SKOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!! Skout:*Walks in, shuffles giant backpack around* Glynda: Do you really need all of that? Skout: Better have it and not need it than need it and not have it as my mama would say. Glynda: *Snaps riding crop* She sounds like a smart woman then. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skout:*Walks in, shuffles giant backpack around* Grif: Why are you called a “Scout”? Skout: It’s “Skout” actually, with a “K”.  Grif: *Hefts rocket launcher* Congratulations, no one gives a fuck.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skout:*Walks in, shuffles giant backpack around* Don: I’ve been ringing my bell for over an hour now; honestly, such terrible help these days. Skout: Did you forget the part were you fired me, and that you, well, died? Don: *Draws sword* Death tried to claim my soul with manicured hands so of course I wouldn’t go with him. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skout:*Walks in, shuffles giant backpack around* Valentina: You’re a plucky one to be a bounty hunter.  Skout: Well tar-nation I ain’t no bounty hunter.  Valentina: *Pulls out knives* Says the girl who hunted down a wanted man for fame and money.     ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ruby: *Whirlwinds in with rose petals* Skout: *In-hales* Are you magic!? Ruby: No, wait, yes, wait.....maybe.  Skout: *Cocks head to the side* Well shoot, which is it then? You’d think someone would know if they were magic or not.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tex: *Smashes through wall*  Skout: Toth? Tex: Who? Skout: *Shuffles in place* Sorry, just reminded me of someone.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nomad: *Casually walks in, straightens hat* Skout: Found you!  Nomad: *Jumps in surprise* Skout: *Straightens up* No escape’n me now Nomad!  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nemesis: *Emerges from a nano-tech cloud* Skout: They weren’t kidding when bout the dangers of magic.  Nemesis: *Leans down* Do I lookkkk like a fairytale to you?  Skout: *Takes two steps back* If I said yes, would you kindly not eat me?    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skout:*Walks in, shuffles giant backpack around* Roman: Scram; only room for one red head here.  Skout: Well what about that Pyrrha lady or Penny girl? Roman: *Points cane and gun cap pops open* Don’t worry, they’re next.       ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skout:*Walks in, shuffles giant backpack around*     Simmons: You the new recruit? Skout: Guess so. I sure do look forward to working with ya!  Simmons: *Draws assault rifle* I’m the only kiss ass around here girly.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Watts: *Walks in, brushes dust off coat* Skout: Listen I don’t want to fight, specially gainst someone who don’t even have a weapon. Watts: What, like this? *Pulls out custom revolver and spins it* Skout: Well shoot, there I go again opening my mouth and biting the gift horse. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Grey: *Walks in reading data slate, then tosses it away* Skout: Is it true you’re a doctor? We could sure use you back home.  Dr. Grey: The only way you could afford my services was if you gave me a kidney of yours.....or a chocolate bar.  Skout: *Takes two steps back* Riiiiiiight. Let me just go....find that chocolate bar.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skout:*Walks in, shuffles giant backpack around* Sun: Yo! Nice to finally come across another sand runner!  Skout: *High fives sun’s tail* Likewise friend!  Sun: *Unlocks weapon* We’ll have to grab a bite to eat after the match and trade stories.     ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Felix: *Walks in twirling knife*  Skout: Careful there partner; you could hurt someone.  Felix: Like this? *Hurls knife at Skout’s feet* Skout: *hops back* Hey now, that ain’t no way to greet someone!     ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skout:*Walks in, shuffles giant backpack around* Rufus: My dear I would advise you to turn around and leave at once.  Skout: *Puts up fists* Pardon me saying so but you don’t scare me old timer. Rufus: Well that’s understandable since I haven’t called my friend over. “Motions and Caliban steps into ring*  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skout:*Walks in, shuffles giant backpack around* Tyrion: You’re not the little red I was after, but I can spare some time to play hehehehh.  Skout: You alright mister? You’re acting funnier than a scorpion that just dung stung itself.  Tyrion: *Removes overcoat, tail extends* Funny you should mention that. hehe-hehe-hehahahahahahh!!!!!

[jonsafan-blog]

Sansa Made the Right Decision

Before the arrival of Daenerys and her army, winning the “game” for the Starks was to protect the North from the Night King and Cersei. If they were successful in those endeavors, the North intended to live peacefully with their allies as autonomous kingdoms. The Starks were not interested in building an empire.

It is important to understand this because it helps determine the likely series of events had Daenerys not arrived in Westeros - which will, in turn, help us to understand how Sansa intends to play the game going forward.

Surviving the Night King Means Fighting Cersei

Cersei has an unpopular rule and her family has not managed their reputation well in the War of the Five Kings. The people hate Cersei and most of the realm is against her.

However, that does not mean they would accept another monarch in her place. The Seven Kingdoms are just that - a vast empire of culturally unique regions which have deferred their autonomy to a distant ruler. There is no other contemporary political entity as large or as diverse as the Seven Kingdoms.

Only the Dothraki, the Yi Tish, and the Jogos Nhai appear to have as large a swath of geography, and all are minuscule in comparison to the breadth and density of the Seven Kingdoms.

It’s frankly impossible to rule Westeros effectively because of those factors in the traditional autocratic style most of the world is familiar with. Essos is dominated by city-states and nomadic peoples. Yi Ti was once a great empire ruled by a so-called god-emperor, but even that densely populated region is now ruled by decentralized princedoms and has had a relatively decentralized rule since the Long Night.

The Valyrian Freehold was also not ruled by a single autocrat, but rather a host of families who likely had dominion over specific regions.

Simply put, the Seven Kingdoms is an unnaturally large empire that has been brought together under one empire due to the threat of annihilation by an autocrat. But like all other empires, it is doomed to fail because it is too large.

The Targaryens threatened those who refused their rule with death, though Dorne held out longer because of their guerilla tactics, a trait which would have made the Free Folk impossible to conquer too if the dragons did not already do poorly in the cold.

Dorne was never conquered but became part of the royal family through marriage, and they retained their royal styling, becoming effectively autonomous in ways most of the Seven Kingdoms were not - and the Martells brag about it: “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken.”

Unfortunately, the Targaryens failed to make enough marriages with the other regions in order to give the disparate cultures a sense of connection to the throne. It’s no surprise that the Targaryens fell after brother married sister, and the Lannisters fell because of the same.

When houses isolated themselves but tried to control others, it does not lead to effective leadership, but tyranny.

This is where defeating Cersei would have been uniquely a Stark advantage: they listen to their people and rule for their people.

Northern Government in Collaborative and Autonomous

There is nothing tyrannical about the way the Starks have ruled the North. If you pay attention to the way they hold court, Northerners are used to having a seat in a Great Hall and being able to speak directly to their leaders about important matters. Petitioners also work in the same way. Everyone has a seat at the table, and everyone has the right to speak, with only a few notable exceptions (such as the Boltons and the Glovers).

This is likely a result of the North’s harsh winters. I believe that the North is largely autonomous because there is no other option: during the long winters, the lords are cut off from the rest of the region and must rule independently of any overseer. It also appears as if all their castles are much larger than they need to be in order to store food and house peasants during the worst of times.

This has led to the Starks respecting the autonomy of other houses. The Boltons have long been rumored to practice flaying, but it’s clear that as long they did not break the peace, the Starks would respect their rule. The North, in essence, works on a non-aggression principle of governance: you keep your independence if you respect the independence of others.

When Jon and Sansa hold court after retaking Winterfell, everyone has a seat at the table: the Northern lords, the Vale allies, and the Free Folk. Jon and Sansa also openly collaborate with their people when holding court, rather than announcing decisions determined through autocratic decisions or that of a small council.

This is the power of the Starks: building alliances.

Defeating the Night King was not just gathering dragon glass, but recruiting armies all over Westeros to fight together. Had Daenerys not arrived in Westeros this would not have changed.

However, I think it would have been approached differently. Sansa was not willing to ask for Daenerys’s help because she was a conqueror intending to take the Iron Throne - a replacement for Cersei.

Rather, Sansa reminded Jon that even though the Night King was a problem, Cersei was too.

I believe that Jon would have tried to capture wights and send them to various lords all over Westeros to encourage them to fight. However, without Daenerys Jon would have had more time and resources to organize an expedition that would have had fewer losses and more wights to send south.

This would have secured them allies, though I do not believe Sansa would have agreed to Jon seeking an ally in Cersei, and I do not think he would have done so.

But every other house?

The Starks would have sought allies in the most powerful families remaining in Westeros. They would have brought the proof and rallied the Seven Kingdoms to a single cause: survival.

And by bringing them to the table, it would be a lot easier for them to believe the Starks did not intend to conquer the Seven Kingdoms following the defeat of the Night King. Rather, they would have been willing to fight for the independence of the different regions against Cersei - a reverse Targaryen conquest, if you will.

The simple fact is that the fight against the Night King was a grand, world ending fight, but the fight against Cersei was a traditional military fight that only required sieging King’s Landing and killing Cersei. And perhaps it would have been enough to send Arya in to do it.

But that’s not what happened, because Daenerys did arrive in Westeros.

So what happens post 8x04?

The Game Has Changed

It is clear that Sansa has no interest in the Iron Throne. All her actions after escaping Ramsay was to reunite with her family and take back her home. She is concerned with safety, and she felt insecure about the Night King and Cersei before Daenerys’s arrival.

But when Daenerys arrived, Sansa’s goals in the game had changed. She did not want the Iron Throne, but she did see that the defeat of Cersei did not mean security of Northern independence and the safety of her family. Rather, a new tyrant would replace Daenerys.

It is true that Daenerys brought her armies to the North, but she did not do it to liberate them, but to secure the submission to her rule. Sansa knows that submission is a dangerous proposition, and it is not where she wants to be again.

Daenerys did not succeed in winning over Sansa or the North upon her arrival. She brought an army for the battle, but we see in Sansa and Daenerys’s interactions that Daenerys saw the Night King as “Jon’s war” and merely a stepping stone to taking the Iron Throne.

This meant that Daenerys’s help came at a great cost.

But there is another problem, and it is something I believe becomes clear in 8x04 in Sansa’s discussion with Tyrion.

Sansa suspects that Daenerys is not a benevolent ruler and will rule by fear. This is confirmed by Tyrion’s own uncertainty about the prospect of Sansa not acting submissive to a distant ruler.

And while we do not see Sansa talking about it, we learn by the end of the episode that Daenerys sees her purpose in life as overthrowing tyrants.

Notice the plural.

Daenerys believes she has been chosen by some supernatural force to liberate the people of the world from their oppressors. However, this is not limited to slaves, but to all people everywhere - Daenerys does not want to collaborate with anyone, she wants submission... and there are other tyrants in the world.

I think it is reasonable to assume that Sansa fears the Iron Throne is not the last throne Daenerys will fight for, but rather the first of many. What is stopping Daenerys from going to the Free Cities and freeing the slaves? Nothing. And that’s the problem.

But what was Sansa’s plan pre-R+L=J reveal?

She did not have one.

She could not have one.

Simply put, Sansa was at a supreme disadvantage in rallying Northern Independence. I believe she was simply hoping that, as a vassal to Daenerys, the North would somehow outlive her, her dragons, and her armies.

We see the possible future Tyrion observed for the North: Jon would spend most of his time in the south, and Sansa would effectively rule in the North.

But Sansa does not want to rule the North, because the North is not something that can be ruled in an autocratic way.

That is what Tyrion does not understand about Sansa’s motivations in opposing Daenerys, and also what most of the general audience does not see.

Sansa pushed Jon to take back the North to protect their family. They continued ruling in their collaborative, non-aggressive way. They were not autocrats.

Daenerys is an autocrat. She is willing to use fear to make sure the North would respect her rule.

Sansa knows that an autocrat has the power to burn a father and their son alive in front of an entire court of people who will not say a word.

Sansa knows that an autocrat can order the execution of a lord paramount despite the disagreement of his own mother and advisors.

Sansa knows that an autocrat can torment children with crossbows and strip them naked in front of the court to humiliate them.

Sansa knows that an autocrat only has as much control as their state of fear can ensure - the second it slips, everyone connected to that autocrat can be taken down as collateral damage, just as Sansa was nearly raped and killed in the riot.

Sansa knows that an autocrat, even your own aunt, can attempt to murder you because of a perceived slight.

Sansa knows that an autocrat can rape and torture you.

Sansa knows the danger of an autocrat because she has been uniquely positioned to suffer because of them.

Daenerys today might be okay, but the Daenerys of tomorrow might decide that the Starks are a threat to her rule and burn them alive in front of her entire court... and no one will do anything because no one has a seat at Daenerys’s table.

And Sansa recognizes that because she sees even her hand, Tyrion, does not have a seat at the table.

But then something unexpected happens: the autocrat’s claim to the throne is not valid, and the other claimant is a member of her own family who is loved by the people because he is not an autocrat.

Sansa and the Heroism of Truth

In the Battle of Winterfell, Sansa tells Tyrion that the most heroic thing they can do is look the truth in the face. In context, she was referring to the fact they cannot fight against the wights themselves because they are weak. However, I believe this comment extends to the fourth episode as well.

When Sansa tells Tyrion the truth about Jon, she is asking him to look the truth in the face about who Daenerys really is. She is an autocrat on her way to becoming a tyrant who rules by fear... and Tyrion is helping her along that path.

That is ultimately unnecessary because there is another alternative: Jon Snow. Or rather, Aegon Targaryen. If he is on the Iron Throne he will not rule by fear.

Sansa’s entire journey so far was about suffering under the rule of an autocrat, so it is no surprise that until this moment she had not considered taking the Iron Throne for the Starks. What good is it to conquer other people and rule over them? That is not how Starks live.

But the truth is that government in Westeros is broken. Cersei is on the Iron Throne and is about to be replaced with another ruler who will rule by fear -  someone who does not bring others to the table.

It is dangerous to fight for the throne and Sansa never wanted that. She is not a fighter - she’s a conservationist. However, the only way for her family to be safe, for the North to be safe, for all of Westeros to be safe, is to fight for the throne and make Jon king.

Sansa started a war before to take back her home, and I believe she will start a war again to protect it. Only this time, it means she will need to make Jon the King of the Seven Kingdoms.

We need to remember that Jon did not want to fight to take back the North before, and only did it because Sansa was going to do it anyway. This was meant to foreshadow what Sansa would eventually plan to do when she stood beside Tyrion in the fourth episode: she is plotting to overthrow Daenerys.

And it is the right decision.

We see that Daenerys is starting to unravel and become the very person she is trying to depose in Cersei:

Cersei had three children whom she loved more than anything else in the world.

Daenerys has three dragons whom she loved more than anything else in the world.

Cersei’s claim to power was through her children.

Daenerys’s claim to power was through her dragons.

Cersei would lose her children because of her own mismanagement of them.

Daenerys lost Viserion and Rhaegal because she impulsively went into battle.

Cersei was not always a mad queen. Tyrion even states as much, but she was driven mad by her losses. And even though her reign could end and her life would continue, Cersei will choose her reign.

Daenerys was not always a mad queen. Tyrion believes her worst impulses could be checked. However, Daenerys continues to lose more and more because of her misrule. If she abdicated some or all her power to Jon, her life will continue.

But Daenerys, like Cersei, will choose power: fire and blood.

Sansa saw that. Sansa is making the decision to act against Daenerys before Sansa is faced with another Cersei.

It is the right decision. The moral decision.

The only decision.

[sailoreuterpe]

GoT Endgame Shipping PREDICTIONS

Arya/Gendry as nomads or at Storm’s End

Brienne/Jaime at Casterly Rock or in Tarth

Dany/Jon in King’s Landing

Gilly/Sam at the Citadel or at House Tarley

Missandei/Grey Worm in King’s Landing or at Naath

Sansa/Tyrion in Winterfell

[writersblockandapotoftea]

Worldbuilding questions! In your world... What symbols are used to represent places or societies? What would be put on flags or banners? What do they represent and why is that important? | How are visuals recorded? Photography, painting, sculptures, or other mediums? What materials are typically used? How accessible are these to the general populace? | Who do people go to for advice? A religious figure, a leader, an educator? Or do different people specialize in different types of advice?

Thank you so much for the ask! So sorry that I took so long to answer! 

What symbols are used to represent places or societies? What would be put on flags or banners? What do they represent and why is that important?

The two main symbols I’m going to be talking about are the Tower and Crown of the Barlosian Empire, and  the Broken Lotus with the Sleeping Dragon of the Resistance. Otherwise, we will be here all night. 

The continent to the West of Unitien, Tyrione, is currently ruled by the Barlosian Empire, initially the Coalition. It bears the symbol of the crown of Thiago, the first leader of the Coalition, which is distinct from the current crown of the empire as it’s made of Dostinian Bronze and doubled as ornamentation on Thiago’s helmet. It had little wings on the sides. It’s currently buried with him in Aria. In the coat of arms of the Empire, it is wrapped around the base of the Library Tower, the oldest building in the capitol building, apart from the Tomb of Monks. They both hail from the time when Nevern was governed by a monastery and are about 2000 years old. It’s also where the motto of Nevern and buy consequence, Alveves, comes from. “So Long as the Monastery Stands, Civilization Will Live”. 

As the Empire bears the symbol of Alveves, the Resistance felt it proper to craft their coat of arms from the flags of the territories the Empire conquered. The Lotus and the Phoenix is the symbol of Bitai, and the Ruler of Xing is often referred to as the Phoenix Lord and their council is known as the Petals of the Lotus. The Dragon is wrapped around the Fists of the Marish, symbolizing the clan and blood they lost and share. So, the Resistance is the Broken Lotus, or the broken voices of the councils in Xing and the Sleeping Dragon, or the muzzle put over the mouth of the Marish people. 

How are visuals recorded? Photography, painting, sculptures, or other mediums? What materials are typically used? 

Cameras don’t exist yet, so photography is out. Painting is quite popular and talented mages and create paintings that move and breath. These are exorbitantly expensive, so only the wealthy have one. Churches often have stained glass and marble sculptures. In the homes of ordinary people in the Marish, there are carvings on the wall and usually one banner that every generation adds a line too. So old families have huge banners that are dozens of colours. In Bitai, decorative pillars of stone and wood in the center of homes are the norm, going back to the days when many of Xing’s people were nomadic and had a single tentpole holding up the middle of their roof. 

 Who do people go to for advice? A religious figure, a leader, an educator? Or do different people specialize in different types of advice?

It really depends on the region. Most people on the outskirts of the empire don’t have a formal education, but there’s usually three people that people go to in most towns. 

Shrines of Lila: Lila is the mother goddess, and she fills the same role as Zeus in ancient Greece where nearly everyone worships her. There’s always a shrine to her somewhere in a village, whether in someone’s home, or in the town proper. People go to the shrines to be heard more than anything else, although Lila is quite forward with her signs and blessings. If there’s a Lady of Lila, she’ll usually give you advice as well. Use caution with the Ladies, though, they are human and fallible. 

The Bartender: This is more common in the Marish and Alveves. In Bitai, it’s usually the owner of the local tea shop. Their advice is bountiful, so long as you buy a drink first. This is usually the person you go to when you’re having trouble with another person. 

The Local Water Source: Nymphs are plentiful and they’re always listening. So toss them a sparkly object and tell the water your problems. If the nymphs think they can help, you will find the solution to your problem on your windowsill. Do not ask them to kill people or wish to die, however, as they are very literal and will drown you upon request. It takes several sparklies to pay for that service.

All three sources recommend going to the healer’s house for medical questions. 

[aion-rsa]

Game of Thrones Spinoff Will Delve Into Essos’s Most Intriguing Region

https://ift.tt/2UjXOcL

First, let’s get the perfunctory out of the way: George R.R. Martin really is never finishing these books. Once you get through that mourning process, it becomes possible to appreciate that there is still plenty of life in the Game of Thrones franchise’s old bones. The latest spinoff announcement is just the latest example of how rich the remaining storytelling can be. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, HBO Max is developing two more animated spinoffs of Game of Thrones, set in Martin’s world of Westeros/Essos. Coupled with a previous announcement, this brings the number of animated Thrones spinoffs up to three. The nature of two of these animated projects remain unknown, but THR’s report reveals the setting of the third…and it’s awesome. 

One of the three series being developed will be set in the Golden Empire in the region known as Yi Ti. Yi Ti is mentioned only in passing in Martin’s original book series. Daenerys sees a trader from Yi Ti in A Game of Thrones and the nation that resides by the the Jade Sea is brought up a couple more times. Thankfully, however, Martin and Elio Garcia’s wonderful Thrones-world encyclopedia, The World of Ice & Fire, devotes a full chapter to the vibrant Eastern kingdom.

Both readers of A Song of Ice and Fire and viewers of Game of Thrones may have observed that there seems to be a whole lot of white people in Martin’s universe. That makes some sense on a storytelling level as the continent of Westeros is inspired by Medieval European history. The continent of Essos, however, is far larger and much more diverse. Yi Ti, which resides close to the Eastern edge of Essos (the only regions further east are the ominously named Shadow Lands and Grey Waste) is roughly analogous to China and it’s sprawling history. 

The history of Yi Ti is beyond fascinating. The region was formerly home to a dynasty known as “The Great Empire of the Dawn.” According to legend, the Empire’s first ruler was a being known as the Gon-on-Earth, the only son of Lion of Night and the Maiden-Made-of-Light. The God-on-Earth ruled for 10,000 years before passing the keys to the kingdom off to his son, the Pearl Emperor. After that, subsequent dynasties were named after precious jewels like The Jade Emperor and the Opal Emperor. 

Read more

TV

Game of Thrones: George R.R. Martin Admits He Should Have Stayed Ahead with the Books

By Joseph Baxter

TV

Game of Thrones at 10: The Series That Changed TV Forever

By David Crow

This history resembles a very basic reading of China’s long history, in which various dynasties conquer others, but each reign is viewed as a continuation of the other due to the “Mandate of Heaven.” In any case, the Great Empire of the Dawn ended when darkness fell in the Long Night and an unnamed hero wielded the sword Lightbringer to bring back the light. Yes, terms like “The Long Night” and “Lightbringer” should sound very familiar as Westeros and western Essos have similar legends that play on those same things. It really does seem as though Game of Thrones’ planet experienced a truly cataclysmic event thousands of years ago.

Now the governing body of Yi Ti is the Golden Empire. It is ruled by a series of God-Emperors whose dynasties take their names from various colors. According to The World of Ice & Fire, the current God-Emperor is the 17th azure emperor, Bu Gai. Of course, this wouldn’t be Game of Thrones if there weren’t some political intrigue. It appears as though the age of empires is waning. Bu Gai’s supremacy in the capital city of Yin is challenged by a sorcerer lord claiming to be the 69th yellow emperor in Carcosa, and a general named Pol Qo styling himself the first orange emperor in Trader Town. 

To complicate matters, the Golden Empire exists in a constant state of war against the Jogos Nai, a nomadic people akin to the Mongols. It also has a complicated relationship with an island nation in the south known as Leng (which is likely based on Japan).

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

While there haven’t been any current day stories told about Yi Ti or the Golden Empire in the Game of Thrones TV series or books, it’s quite undeniable that the set up for compelling tales is all there. It’s certainly frustrating that we’ve gone more than a decade without updates on Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, and the like. But at least Yi Ti provides the opportunity for a whole new tale to become obsessed with all over again. 

The post Game of Thrones Spinoff Will Delve Into Essos’s Most Intriguing Region appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[keprambles]

Tagged by @amortentia-on-her-lips​

GOT PREFERENCES (THIS GOT SO LONG. I AM SO SORRY.)

Do you watch the episodes when they air?

I do. I still do. At least most of the time. I think I was late for a few days of the last season but I was also in Europe at the time and in Europe HBO won’t let me access my HBO account so...Um...I was late to the show then....Literally. 

I also didn’t watch season 4 when it aired because I was in a place where I was not able to access the internet for very long. So I watched that all a little later...In a hospital...2014 was a weird year.  

How often do you rewatch it? Do you rewatch it from season one?

I used to re-watch it a lot before things went to shit in Season 5. God damnit Season 5.

But anyway I re-watched season 1 and 2 in the ICU in 2013, and later I watched all of season 4 one of the times I was hospitalized for either a bowel obstruction or to recover from the first attempt to repair my damaged abdominal wall in 2014...Those things were all related.  Don’t...Get Acute Necrotizing Pancreatitis guys 0/10.

ANYWAY, Aside from those events I also did a bunch of non-hospital room re-watching back in the day of seasons 1-3 between 2011(it might have been 2012)-2013 This is all way too specific.

Do you rewatch the previous episode before the next one airs?

No. Definitely not for seasons 5-7 at least. I don’t struggle keeping the events in order since I am obsessed lol.

Do you eat anything while watching? if so, what do you eat?

Not usually. 

One character that everyone seems to like that you don’t care much for:

Oh my God, probably so many. I don’t like Davos, or Samwell and Robb Stark is the only name I have in Tumblr Savior. The reasons I dislike them are also THE WORST. It’s mostly because they are all good people who wanted to do the right thing and have MORALS and don’t fuck up everything they look at... Robb to be honest though is TumblrSaviored because I don’t have any interest in Throbb...And most people don’t tag it as “Throbb” so I just blacklisted ALL of Robb. Nothing against Throbb fans. I’m just not into it. 

Your 3 favourite pairings:

Theon Greyjoy x Ros/Kyra [AKA the empty sex ship of disaster]

Theon Greyjoy x Sansa Stark [Sass Prince + Sass Princess = the King and Queen of Sass and tragedy and bad life choices and living with your mistakes. They are very similar characters actually. ]

Theon Greyjoy x Ramsay Bolton [I think a lot of antis think this is seen as a romantic ship... It’s not to me at all. It’s the relationship between an unchecked sadist who gets to torture a POW and the POW whose every choice led him there. It’s a lot of things to me, personally...Also some people are really into guro, torture porn...I’m in it for the pure tragic violence.] 

[all ships lead to Theon lol]

Favourite scene:

All the Theon scenes. But LET’S DO ONE FOR ALL 7 SEASONS. OKAY. LET’S GO: “Now here you are, your enemy’s squire...” SE1 EP4 I like A LOT scenes from SE1. But I am posting THIS ONE BECAUSE IT’S THE ONLY SCENE WHERE THEON AND TYRION TALK BEFORE SE6 AND UNLIKE WHAT TYRION SAYS IN SE6 THE ONLY PERSON WHO WAS AN ASSHOLE BACK AT WINTERFELL WAS TYRION. GDI SHOW. FOLLOW YOUR OWN CANNON. GOD DAMNIT.  Well...No, there is also this NSFW-scene with Theon being a jerk about everything ever. but TYRION WAS NOT THERE. Also, this is AFTER the last scene. AHHHHHHHHHH- “I’VE TAKEN YOUR CASTLE!” SE2 EP 6 “IT’S PRINCE THEON NOW.” I love this scene. I love how Theon is like I AM A PRINCE NOW. I love how how when Bran is like “No, I’m not giving u the castle! NO CASTLE 4 U >:(” Theon is like “YES YOU WILL >:((((((((” like a petulant child. I love how Theon sits on Brans’s bed like “OK. U CLEALY DON’T KNOW HOW THIS WORKS. I WILL EXPLAIN IT TO YOU.” and Bran is like :| I love Theon’s conflicted expression when Bran asks, “Did you hate us the whole time?” “So Let’s Play a Game” SE3 EP6 On a very personal level I have never seen something before or since that looks and sounds like how my C-PTSD feels. It’s not just the torture, it’s...Everything. For that reason this is my favorite scene in the entire show. I think it’s my favorite scene in anything.  Also: “I win” :)

Bring me Moat Cailin  SE 4 EP 8 I really liked this scene in the book, and It’s condensed to Hell but I liked the show version a lot too anyway. Also if you pay attention you can hear Theon do the “My name is Reek, it rhymes with LITERALLY ANYTHING THAT RHYMES WIYTH “REEK” insanity mantra. I thank God everyday this part of Theon’s arc didn’t get murdered like the rest of his arc in the shit show that is the bullshit of SE5...SPEAKING OF SE5!!

“I can’t talk to you anymore.” SE5 EP8 [this season was only almost saved kind of by Alfie Allen’s and Sophie Turner’s A++ chemistry.] This scene is so hard to find for no reason but I liked this scene because Theon verbally transitions from Reek to Theon to Reek again and he does this a lot in the books but it’s harder to see in the show (duh) BUT this scene makes it REALLY clear as it’s happening. Theon goes from saying “There is no Theon” to “I (Theon) deserved everything” to “I (Theon) can’t talk to you anymore” to “Not Theon! Reek.” “You’re...Not Coming With Us?” SE6 EP2 God damnit show you ended the one good thing you still had going for you for NO REASON. So anyway Theon leaves Sansa but the amazing actor chemistry remains and A++ guys. You did it again...See also this is not the dumb Tyrion/Theon scene mentioned above in SE1′s rant because while that scene is good in many ways it’s also NOT FUCKING TRUE. AHHHHHH-

Theon’s last scene in Season 7 SE7 EP7 This scene came around when I really needed it. It says a lot of things to me. Mostly that trauma, and horror and missing body parts do not have to condemn you to the fucked up bullshit everyone and everything tells you it does. And also it proves my point that castration is A. Not a punchline and B. doesn’t make a man not a man and C. THEON WILL FUCK YOU UP AND SMILE ABOUT IT. >:D 

One character you wish got more appreciation:

...THEON GREYJOY. 

Fanfic or nah?

Nah...

Favourite quote:

“I’ve been a cynic as long as I can remember.” -Tyrion Lannister EDIT: OMFG I FORGOT. IT’S NOT THAT ONE. ITS: “There’s no men like me. Only me.” -Jaime Lannister Also let’s be real Cersei’s “I choose violence.” is good to.  WHY NO THEON QUOTES??? All of his best quotes are in the books.

Do you avoid spoilers?

NOPE. I don’t avoid them for almost EVERYTHING. 

Favourite house words:

WE DO NOT SOW.

One character you’d bring back from the dead:

RAMSAY...AND ROS.

Which was more satisfying: Ramsay dying or Joffrey dying?

You know what. Ramsay’s death in the show SUCKS. Because for TWO reasons, ONE it was predictable. And that’s a thing with the later season of the show, they are 100% predictable standard averageness. But also because Sansa was DRAGGED INTO THEON’S ARC AND THEN SHE KILLED RAMSAY AND IT’S LIKE...WAIT WHERE WAS THEON? Ramsay was literally MADE MY GRRM FOR THEON’S ARC. FOR THEON.  But the show fucked up in SE5 and then they were like OH SHIT. EVERYONE IS MAD WE DID THIS TO SANSA UH...WE SHOULD HAVE HER KILL HIM AND SEND THEON FAR AWAY AND NEVER TELL HIM LALALALAA. FUCK. So Joffrey. Joffrey’s death is better. Sansa’s even THERE TOO BUT SHE DIDN’T KILL HIM (knowingly) AND IT MAKES SENSE ON EVERY LEVEL. UNLIKE THE GARBAGE SITUATION IN SE6. GDI. AHHHHH- 

One character you’d kill, or kill sooner than they were killed?

...Samwell Tarly...Because he annoys me and I am mad that I had to watch him clean bedpans and shit in SE7. 

Direwolves or dragons?

TROGDOORRRRRRR

Wildlings or the dothraki?

The Dothraki are more interesting IMO even though they are kind of like just The Worst Aspects Of A Nomadic Warrior Culture. 

Favourite lannister?

Tyrion Lannister of course. Tyrion’s arc and character is so good...Fuck it’s good. I would have been obsessed with him if not for Theon. 

Tyrion Lannister | The Way -by Heroes Fan Productions

Favourite stark?

The lady, Sansa Stark of Winterfell. Duh.

Sansa Stark | Survivor -by Tap101Dancer

Would you rather be able to be resurrected anytime, but gain scars and all like Beric, or become a faceless man?

I literally already am Beric Dondarion. 

Would you rather have the rebellion tv show or the conquest tv show?

This is such a weird question that no one can make sense of from what I can see...Also uh... @quarkitty did you get tagged yet? I am so bad at tagging.  /End of this novel of a post.