#when bran was like

[jon-sedai]

Thinking about how one of the most important motifs in Dany’s childhood memories is a seemingly nonexistent lemon tree. Or rather, a tree that her memory insists exists where it naturally shouldn’t. And thinking about how, in her last Dance chapter, at a pivotal moment of development, she reflects that while she wanted to plant trees and watch them grow, dragons don’t plant trees. But how funny is it that her narrative ancestor, Princess Daenerys of Dorne, left behind a legacy of planting an entire garden of trees — a place where children of all backgrounds could come and bloom within it? And then thinking back to Dany’s moment in Clash, when she comes upon a barren wasteland. A place that, despite its harshness, has many types of trees growing within it. For a brief moment, she considers staying to nurture and watch it bloom.

Sure, her childhood memories are false. But the lesson isn’t that she doesn’t belong anywhere because she dreams of lemon trees in Braavos, where they don’t exist. Maybe the lesson is that she can plant these nonexistent trees elsewhere.

Lemon trees don’t grow in Braavos, but Dany can grow them wherever she chooses to plant them. And this is something she will have to understand when the Long Night comes. Winter means death. It means the trees will wither and no new ones will grow to replace them. But Dany is the mother of dragons, and her life is tied to the very process of life and death, destruction and renewal. The Long Night will be marked by dead trees that bear no fruit. But that’s okay. Because Dany has spent her entire arc dreaming of trees where there aren’t any. And isn’t THAT the dream of spring?

[ilynpilled]

Wait, it's been a long time since I read ASOIAF, but did Jaime flopping at Joffreys nameday journey change the history of Westeros? (In addition to leaving Ser Addam Bongwater destitute). Cause Littlefinger lost the Catspaw dagger to Robert in a bet, which was then used in the Joffrey ordered assasination of Bran, which lead to Catelyn taking Tyrion prisoner.

The flop heard around the world.

everything that ever happened in the history of asoiaf is a result of an action jaime did or did not take once he can be blamed for everything ever

[mariuspompom]

George Martin, 2013: "In a very basic level winter is coming for all of us. I think that’s one of the things that art is concerned with: the awareness of our own mortality. “Valar morghulis” – “All men must die”. That shadow lies over our world and will until medical science gives us all immortality… but I don’t think it makes it necessarily a pessimistic world. Not any more pessimistic than the real world we live in. We’re here for a short time and we should be conscious of our own mortality, but the important thing is that love, compassion and empathy with other human beings is still possible. Laughter is still possible! Even laughter in the face of death… The struggle to make the world a better place… We have things like war, murder and rape… horrible things that still exist, but we don’t have to accept them, we can fight the good fight. The fight to eliminate those things.There is darkness in the world, but I don’t think we necessarily need to give way to despair. One of the great things that Tolkien says in Lord of The Rings is “despair is the ultimate crime”. That’s the ultimate failing of Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, that he despairs of ever being able to defeat Sauron. We should not despair. We should not go gentle into that good night".

JRR Tolkien, 1962 : "One reviewer once said, this is a jolly jolly book, all the right boys come home [...]- this isn't true of course, he can't have read the story. [...] Human stories are practically always about one thing, really, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . . . (He quotes Simone de Beauvoir) 'There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that ever happens to man is natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows it he would sense to it an unjustifiable violation.' Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord Of The Rings".

"Lotr is all rainbows and unicorns and Asoiaf is nihilistic and grimdark". Wrong, and wrong. In all its hope and radiance, lotr often gets very dark, and despite all the death and suffering, the hopeful moments in asoiaf shine bright. The meeting point of these two is this: having hope while in despair, and even better, refusing to give up because you have to go on despite not having any hope left.

[melrosing]

you know how in hp all Harry and Ginny’s kids are named after like. his dead parents and his dead godfather and the various teachers he wants to remember. and for Ginny there’s maybe like one kid who gets Luna as a middle name for whatever that’s supposed to mean to Ginny idk

anyway nedcat kind of the same

[15-lizards]

It fucks that there are so many characters that are an antithesis to one of The Seven while still embodying their traits and technically representing them. Cersei is the Mother in that she only has love for her own children, but no mercy or any sense of nurturing. Tywin represents the Father’s protection, his justice, but that justice is always unfair, and serves only him, not even his own children. I have a Rolodex of all the knights that warp the values of the Warrior. Jamie and Arthur have to break one vow to stay true to another. Sandor is vile and cruel and dishonorable, but still protective of the innocent. Tyrion does his best to mend the broken city and protect its people like the Smith would do, but is also actively destabilizing things and fucking shit up for his own personal gain. Margaery had managed to maintain being the idea of the Maiden while being married three times, and hiding her plotting under the guise of innocence and virtue. Bran is a young Crone, his wisdom and foresight forced upon him instead of being obtained naturally through age. And Arya is a wanderer with no identity, a killer who takes life at random. But unlike the Stranger, Arya is still Arya, no matter how she tries to hide herself. She is a scared girl with a bias, not killing unthinkingly but rather in order to enact her revenge and seek justice, the opposite of what Death would do. Anyways these kinds of foils absolutely fuck

[atopvisenyashill]

yeah it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do?

[bastardofharrenhal]

my inner demon trying to convince me to only read sansa's jaime's davos's and catelyn's chapters in asos

[spectrum-color]

Truths the aSoIaF fandom isn’t ready for: Jaime is just as deluded as Cersei in Feast.

The man spends his chapters patting himself on the back and talking about how he’ll be remembered as the legendary Goldenhand the Just after he goes after a few outlaws while he has spent the entire book…trying to forcibly consolidate the Riverlands under Lannister rule after his family terrorized them for years, sent brutal gangs of mercenaries to rape and burn peasants, and broke guest right (and thousands of years of Westerosi tradition with it) to murder their Lord Paramounts daughter and their king, whose corpse was mutilated and paraded around after the fact by the family his father installed in their traditional Lord Paramounts seat. All of this for a war he started because he was having an incestuous affair with his sister. Sure Jaime, you’re gonna be a beloved figure!

[mrsthunderkin]

Its my favorite FAVORITE thing to draw Sam next to taller characters

He's just so LITTLE

Hare and Bran being fangirls is also my favorite

[ladystoneboobs]

when it comes to the theon/starks pov trap, so many fans just assume jon's and bran's dislike of theon must be only bc they're just smarter, better judges of character than dumbly friendly robb, even somewhow foretelling theon's later actions at wf in clash. all of them missing that the explanation for why theon was closest to robb is clearly stated in his own first pov, after we've gotten to know jon and bran.

As for their[Ned/Catelyn's] children, the younger ones had been mewling babes for most of his years at Winterfell. Only Robb and his baseborn half brother Jon Snow had been old enough to be worth his notice. -Theon I, aCoK

when you've been sent to live with an unknown family in a strange land and the only boys in that family are ~5 years younger than you, it's natural you're going to learn to ignore that age difference to socialize with the only peers available. but that doesn't mean doing the same with little babies born after your arrival with 10+yr age gaps, that's an age difference too far. jon and robb have to care for all the starklings younger than them, that's their family, but theon was never a member of that family. it's only natural to only want to hang out with your friend and not adopt their hangers-on younger siblings as yours too. idt bran or rickon can be blamed for only robb ever being brotherly toward theon (as he once retorted to maester luwin while hunting for them in the wolfswood), they're little kids, but the point is everyone was reacting in regular kid patterns. bran had no reason to warm up much to an older boy who stole robb's attention from him while having no time for bran in return. (or at least that's how he'd see it.) the notion that bran was rejecting theon from a place of moral superiority implies there was something more there to be rejected. but i think it's more likely that, had it not been for the natural results of a ~12yr age gap, if bran had been a little older or theon had been a little more willing to befriend little kids, then imo bran would have been eager to join the club with all the older boys and truly feel like "a man grown". imho, a closer reading of agot would show that this explanation was also right there in starkling pov all along.

He[Jon Snow] missed his true brothers: little Rickon, bright eyes shining as he begged for a sweet; Robb, his rival and best friend and constant companion; Bran, stubborn and curious, always wanting to follow and join in whatever Jon and Robb were doing. -Jon III, aGoT Even when he was home at Winterfell, Robb the Lord seemed to have more time for Hallis Mollen and Theon Greyjoy than he ever did for his brothers. -Bran IV, aGoT

as for theon/jon ...

The bastard was a sullen boy, quick to sense a slight, jealous of Theon's high birth and Robb's regard for him. -Theon I, aCoK

i think that jealousy for robb's regard must have been mutual, and yet we know who'd win that contest as idt robb would ever yell at jon for saving bran's life. jon had reason to envy theon's station when he was sidelined on special occassions, the same as theon envied jon's relationships with non-catelyn winterfellians. (ie, "Even the bastard Jon Snow had been accorded more honor than he had." theon had a father who was likely a miser with affection even before his wars and here's ned stark and a good part of his household treating even a bastard better than balon greyjoy treated his youngest child, almost as good as the stark heir and more welcome than the ironborn heir who should be robb's equal.) wf castle may have been huge but still not big enough for two liminal quasi-outsiders/not-quite-starks in the same official household with only so much respect, regard, and honor to go around.

there's also just a bit of a personality clash from jon's side of things. idt theon ever really knowingly or intentionally hurt jon, much less bullied him. but look at the rest of his behavior in that first theon pov chapter, casually seducing the captain's daughter and quipping about getting her pregnant, with no thought of ever seeing her again, making it unlikely he'd acknowledge, much less care for, this hypothetical greyjoy bastard. imagine how this attitude comes off to a proudly voluntary celibate teen who at least once declared he would never father a bastard. theon doesn't understand jon's baggage anymore than jon understands why theon, living under an implied threat of possible execution, might make light of beheadings. (some of their reasons for sullenness were similar but others were different enough to ensure that the wf household wasn't big enough for the both of them rather than them finding common ground.) to jon, it's all one and the same, part of theon being a selfish ass. but jon is also the same guy who later kept loving ygritte after she murdered an old man right in front of him, so it's not impossible that he could have befriended theon if they'd met later under different circumstances.

the real difference wrt the wf boys and theon is that robb was just the right mix of naturally friendly extrovert, close enough in age, and without too much baggage of his own to be theon's closest friend.

but we can also see that dislike of theon =/= distrust of theon. bran, as a little kid, is bewildered by theon's invasion of wf, not really getting what it meant that he was always ned's hostage as well as ward. jon may understand more of the background there and reiterated to himself that he never liked theon when hearing of the sack of wf, but he was still confused by the details of what he learned, thinking theon would never do that. and he was right about theon then! the boys theon killed were not bran and rickon, and it's true he would never burn and sack wf, that part was entirely ramsay. theon would emphatically never sack and burn his great war prize, which meant so much more bc he grew up there. that's so true, jon! so, far from sensing a deeper depravity in theon or always seeing him as an enemy, (which rather goes againt the false impression that theon was practically an adopted stark with reason to be equally brotherly to all ned's kids) when jon is objectively right about theon, it's actually in a positive sense, just that he was a skilled archer who wouldn't murder bran and rickon and would never sack wf. that's the jon who sees more and understands when his understanding applies to theon.

[jon-sedai]

I feel so dumb for never having realized this before but I was thinking about the bookend in AGoT between the Others, the dragons, and two heroes: Waymar Royce and Daenerys Targaryen.

While squaring off against the Others, Waymar Royce asks for a dance.

Ser Waymar met him bravely. “Dance with me then.” He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night’s Watch.

It’s notable that this scene is eerily silent save for the bits of dialogue. And when Waymar’s dance finally begins, there’s a notable lack of music.

The pale sword came shivering through the air. Ser Waymar met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of metal on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal screaming in pain. Royce checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again.

I’ve always asserted that Ser Waymar is a failed last hero if we judge his success based off Old Nan’s blueprint.

So as cold and death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him, and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders big as hounds—”

Both Ser Waymar and the last hero lost their companions and both had their swords shatter to the cold. Yet Waymar failed to complete one important step: find the children of the forest. The children are also known as “the singers”. So it’s notable that Ser Waymar attempts to dance without any music(ians) to accompany him. And because he does so, his dance ends in failure.

But then we have Daenerys Targaryen in the Dothraki Sea.

As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.

Dany performs a miracle in bringing dragons to life, the first person to do so in centuries. And these dragons sing a song that proclaims her, an exiled young princess and a widow, Azor Ahai reborn - the champion of fire, and warrior of light.

This bookend between the first and last chapters is so poignant. It’s not just that fire has returned to combat Ice. It’s that Dany brought back the music necessary to complete this dance. We start the book with a failed hero and end it with the rise of a true one; also interesting that Waymar’s end comes while he’s down on his knees whereas Dany rises to her feet reborn.

This makes Dany’s identity as the promised prince(ss) all the more impressive.

“He has a song,” the man replied. “He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.” He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany’s, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door.

Waymar failed because he didn’t have a song to accompany him. Yet Dany has a song to dance to. A song of fire.

I think this raises some interesting questions regarding the nature of this great conflict. There not only has to be a song to dance to, but it seems that there is a key distinction between the singer and the dancer. Rhaegar Targaryen failed to fulfill the prophecy because he was the singer and not the dancer. His role was to provide the hero’s musical accompaniment. In a way, it’s almost like he as the bard is the herald. And the herald is rarely, if ever, the main character. So notice how Rhaegar heralds the hero, the king, while looking at Dany.

But! - there’s different kinds of songs. Dany has one, made by her dragons. But it’s not be the only one. The children of the forest are heavily associated with the last hero and while Waymar Royce is dead, there lives another: Bran Stark.

Bran found the children, the singers, and is a step closer to completing the last hero’s journey.

Now Bran is an interesting case.

“Go,” Bran whispered to his own horse. He touched her neck lightly, and the small chestnut filly started forward. Bran had named her Dancer. She was two years old, and Joseth said she was smarter than any horse had a right to be.

He has a dancing horse but at some point has to leave her behind. So does that mean that he has to learn to do the dancing in his own way?

And I find it interesting that Bran has a female dancer horse because this creates a neat parallel with Dany, a dancer who may also be the stallion that mounts the world; if it’s not her, then it has to be her mount, Drogon. This is important if we consider that the last hero, Azor Ahai/the promised prince, the Stallion That Mounts the World, etc. are all different yet complimentary manifestations of one heroic legend.

But the issue of songs doesn’t end there because there still exists one Jon Snow, another version of the last hero and promised prince. Jon isn’t a bard but he has been positioned as being adjacent to dancers. I won’t harp on about Jon’s parallels with Waymar Royce because they’ve been done to death. But it seems that Jon, like Bran and Dany, will succeed where Ser Waymar failed.

Because not only does Jon have music to herald him:

That night he dreamt of wildlings howling from the woods, advancing to the moan of warhorns and the roll of drums. Boom DOOM boom DOOM boom DOOM came the sound, a thousand hearts with a single��beat.

But he is also positioned as a last man standing among many dead heroes:

“Stand fast,” Jon Snow called. “Throw them back.” He stood atop the Wall, alone. “Flame,” he cried, “feed them flame,” but there was no one to pay heed. They are all gone. They have abandoned me.

And he has a sword that will not shatter against the cold:

“Snow,” an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders. Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist.

It’s noteworthy that Jon is the son of a singer, Rhaegar Targaryen. The very singer who sang the song of ice and fire; and notice how Jon is clad in both. Plus he has been mentored by another, Mance Rayder, whom he eventually succeeds.

At a quick glance, it’s very interesting to me that Jon is constantly listening to songs beyond the Wall. There’s the song of the blue winter rose (which in a way heralds his own birth), the song of Joramun and the Horn of Winter, and many others.

It’s also noteworthy just how often giants are mentioned as the subject of songs in Jon’s POV chapters. I bring this up because of the Last of the Giants:

Ooooooh, I am the last of the giants, my people are gone from the earth. The last of the great mountain giants, who ruled all the world at my birth.

I think there is a parallel here between the dragons, the giants, and the children of the forest. These are all dying species, yet they linger on for the song of ice and fire still needs to be brought to completion.

And let’s consider where our heroes fit in all this. Dany commands the dragons, Bran learns from the children, while Jon begins to befriend the giants. All these creatures make musical accompaniments for our heroes to dance to.

Lastly, I’m inclined to think of the Stark girls though I’m not entirely sure where they would fit in all of this. Arya, at some point, trains to be a dancer:

On the way back to his chambers, he came upon his daughter Arya on the winding steps of the Tower of the Hand, windmilling her arms as she struggled to balance on one leg. The rough stone had scuffed her bare feet. Ned stopped and looked at her. “Arya, what are you doing?” “Syrio says a water dancer can stand on one toe for hours.” Her hands flailed at the air to steady herself. Ned had to smile. “Which toe?” he teased. “Any toe,” Arya said, exasperated with the question. She hopped from her right leg to her left, swaying dangerously before she regained her balance. “Must you do your standing here?” he asked. “It’s a long hard fall down these steps.” “Syrio says a water dancer never falls.” She lowered her leg to stand on two feet. “Father, will Bran come and live with us now?”

Now Arya is no singer, but her wolf is.

In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her.

On the other hand, Sansa is no dancer but she is known for her ability to sing. And boy does she sing beautifully.

Her throat was dry and tight with fear, and every song she had ever known had fled from her mind. Please don't kill me, she wanted to scream, please don't. She could feel him twisting the point, pushing it into her throat, and she almost closed her eyes again, but then she remembered. It was not the song of Florian and Jonquil, but it was a song. Her voice sounded small and thin and tremulous in her ears. Gentle Mother, font of mercy, Save our sons from war, we pray,

In fact, a lot of Sansa’s songs are prayers for those who dance to the music of swords. Her songs are soothing, calming. And see this during Stannis’ assault on Kings Landing when she is able to calm Sandor and the noble women through the power of song. Hers is not a song to dance to, it’s a different kind though I’m not entirely sure what it entails. I do want to say, though, that Sansa is often paralleled with creates that take flight; various birds and bats. So she is a singer, much like the dragons.

I may have neglected other characters here, but I just thought it was intriguing that our main heroes (Jon, Bran, Dany, maybe Arya) are all positioned as dancers for the song of ice and fire.

[ilynpilled]

another thing with denying jaime agency is that a lot of his character is initially constructed around what his physical power means when it comes to choices that he makes. physical strength and combat prowess, violence, is a specific form of power that he has over others and can choose to extend to other parties. it is an integral aspect of every power dynamic, be it with his king, his sister, the rest of society etc. the knight is also an examination of power and responsibility. that is why their oaths are constructed around protecting the weak. it is what’s so interesting with the kingsguard too, especially aerys’s. they are the most skilled in combat and physically powerful people in the room. they had a form of power to act and prevent what aerys kept doing. and they are on a leash through oaths, law, order, obeying authority, and a status quo, a different kind of power that functions to give the man with a crown, in this case a tyrant, absolute power. you are sworn to obey, not to judge. you have to abide by your role. that is also what makes him eventually killing aerys and breaking these oaths so transgressive and threatening to the westerosi paradigm. his motivations and the circumstances aside, jaime in specific killing his king as a member of his elite guard undermined westerosi order and framed power as something that resided with the man with the sword and not with the man with the crown or even the lords with bannermen and armies who won the war that they started. it breaks these constructs apart with the precedent it sets. and on top of that, he gets away with it because of his status and relationship to tywin. the act itself is still something when it comes to westerosi order and class stratification, but it is also threatening in general because, yes, it does make him a loose cannon in the eyes of other people. and yeah he stagnates and falls into cynicism and begins to reject ethics and law in dangerous ways and ends up abusing that physical power and causes real harm to people who do not deserve it. he does embody a dangerous kind of anarchy that is the product of the flawed and dysfunctional social order that he experienced with a front row seat with the absurdly cruel tyrant that was systematically enabled. everything was reframed in his head. if there is no justice and order you can have faith in, who cares? he doesn’t fear death, and that is combined with the belief he can cut through anything now, he has the power to do so. be it a king, a lord, or virtually any power over him when it comes down to it. how much can a crown be worth…? he even argues to brienne that robert tearing the realm apart with his war is worse in a pragmatic sense. he rejects the existing laws, ethics, and moral constructs of his society that have a monopoly on violence because he is disillusioned with them, and he operates solely by his twisted reconstruction of morality (also obviously affected by his trauma) that atp primarily revolves around love for his family, especially cersei. he chooses to become the sword of his loved one, having lost faith in the purity of everything other than this delusional idealized relationship that is the only thing that is sacred that remains to him. and ofc all of this is another layer that makes george stripping him of this particular power through his maiming so functional in causing crisis

[falllpoutboy]

HOTDs messaging of divine intervention, divine right of kings being good, actually, and self-determination is so fake woke and so out of touch with the themes of the books but it also so unaligned with what happens in Got, you know. the complete story that, for better or worse, succeeds hotd in terms of chronological events post Dance of dragons. daemon seeing dany hatch the dragon eggs as some sort of prince that was promised foreshadowing really doesn’t mean shit according to what happens in season 8. she didn’t unite the realm, she didn’t personally stop it herself or with her dragons and she wasn’t the reigning monarch when the long night happened. in fact she was quite adamant in not caring about it until she became personally invested in stopping it via losing viserion. she did in fact add more numbers to the fighting force by having her dothraki and unsullied fight but if that counts as being TPTWP, then i guess she, jon, sansa and arya all share that title because he had to unite the north and engage in diplomatic relations by getting her armies and the wildlings there, sansa for continuing diplomatic relations to get the vale soldiers there and arya for striking the killing blow on the night king. hotd doesn’t wanna acknowledge that at all i guess LOL

[gyarueranana]

show dany and show jon have done so much irreparable damage to how fans talk about them online now like i am so sorry book jon and dany you didnt deserve this

[fromtheseventhhell]

Remember George's outline notes that had "joy of giving" and "mercy at the gate" for Arya? Mercy is crossed out and we obviously have that as her sample chapter, so what if Arya's next alias is "Joy"? Over-thinking the significance of that phrase and how it could apply to the rest of her Braavos arc🤔

[bastardofharrenhal]

sorry but if u hate the idea of bran becoming king consider urself an opp