zeno

[ghostapop]

i feel like a lot of fandoms pride themselves on being gayer than the source material but have they considered being less racist and less misogynistic than the source material as well . could be revolutionary

[queenslayeroflies]

Faegon and his bitchass threw a baby tantrum cuz tyrion showed him reality of his situation he kicked the cryvesse board. DANY got spat on her face and barely reacted and didn't even punish anyone for the disrespect. Guess who asoiaf fandom thinks is more suitable and acceptable for leadership. Dany antis are pathetic

[ghostkaii]

Dany and little Missandei

[weirwoodking]

three heads has the dragon

[jan-jan-binks]

If I have to go to YOUR feast, and you declare yourself king, and you switched religions, and there's a very ominous red comet in the sky, and I pull up in my best drip only to be served fish stew, for you to grind your teeth all the time, for your crazy fundementalist in laws with big ears and your smuggler sugar baby to chew the scenery and for no one to be having fun or laughing or dancing and the only entertainment you provide is an eldrich prophet clown who's seen the face of god and a poisoning attempt between an oldass maester and a scary fire lady; I'll just never take you seriously ever again, and I'll defect to your alleged nephew's side who you keep insisting is actually an inbred bastard and not your real nephew. You are a bad host.

[juliensorelapologist]

i don't like pop literature analysis of Wuthering Heights that are like. oh you shouldn't romanticize Heathcliff and Cathy relationship it's like dark romance it sells you a negative view of what love should be about whatver. first of all "not romanticize" i'm sorry my reading of this gothic novel isn't pure enough for you. second! heathcliff is nooot a fucking dark brooding mysterious love interest. the only person to see him this way is Isabella and she's uh pretty clearly wrong and the narrative doesn't shy away from telling you this.

he is! catherine's! childhood friend! she doesn't see him as a handsome mysterious stranger she sees him as her other half and as someone who was there for her and loved her when she was a kid running around and being dirty and improper and deeply disliked by everyone in her house including her father for daring to not live up to the gendered excpectations of what she should be. and she misses being that kid so so so bad, and she hates married life and she wants to go back home even though home was awful and abusive and she ran away from it because at leaaaast she was allowed to be herself there. and heathcliff is home.

and heathcliff isn't obsessed by Cathy the way people describe him she's not a thing to own. she's the only person to have ever loved him apart from his dad for like a few years. she's the only one that doesn't constantly dehumanize him or wait for him to turn into the savage beast they all think he is. he's deeply alienated from the society he grows up in because of his skin color and she! doesn't! care!

sure sure their love is bad for them and those around but you know why it is that way? not because they're toxic or whatever (i mean sure, in part, but) but because they're not fucking allowed to love each others. because god knows and Heathcliff knows and Cathy knows they could never get married. because the only way for Catherine to hope to help him is to marry a nice guy she kind of likes because as a woman she's powerless because even if Heathcliff comes back a gentleman he's only ever be perceived as a crook! because even if he owns "Wuthering Heights" he's "cheated Hareton out of his birthright", because Heathcliff doesn't and will never have a birthright!!

like. Heathcliff is a pretty terrible person. Cathy is sometimes unkind. i wouldn't want that relationship. but you know. if they weren't operating under the rules of the Racist Patriarchal Crushing Machine, they'd maybe get to be kinder to others and each others and themselves! They're not at fault for wanting to be with each others actually it's not a great woke reading to go "wellll they should have moved on and accepted their respective shitty fucking place in society". i'm glad you've moved on from being attracted to insane dangerous men, but then also iiiii think you're missing some themes. maybe.

[kingsmoot]

can i just say if you're in the got or asoiaf tags with your anti incest crusade posts that you can read any other book or watch any other show that does not include sibling incest as an integral theme of the work, a core plot point, and a favored authorial fetish... like there are billions of creative works that do not engage with this topic at all, which is clearly what you would prefer, so i would suggest engaging with those works instead!

[7seasofem]

been working on this for ages please don’t let it flop

[cainhurstundead]

You don't understand the importance of Tyrion finding love and I'm not only talking about romantic love. It is important by the end of the story that Tyrion has people around him that he knows truly care for him and hold him dear, who love not his gold or the Lannister name but him. One of the major things Tyrion desires is to be loved and accepted for who he is. Something that he has largely been denied and his disability is the reason for that. It's not one of many reasons, it's the only reason. It's why he was declared a monster from birth and why he suffers so much abuse because he lives in a world that believes people like him shouldn't be allowed to exist. 

If asoiaf reaches its conclusion and nothing has changed, Tyrion is still experiencing rejection and hasn't progressed from where he is in adwd or only continues to get worse and becomes a full on villain then what would have been the point? That's just an ending that not only vindicates the abusers but it also vindicates their ableism and the ableism of the readers. It’s an ending that reinforces the belief that Tyrion isn’t loveable, that he is a monster and that he was wrong for wanting to be loved in the first place. 

There's a reason people want Tyrion to lose his tongue, or be castrated, or be executed or simply die because he needs to be humbled as if he hasn't been getting humbled from the beginning. It’s because a disabled person wanting to be accepted and not simply tolerated, to not be mocked and laughed at for being disabled, and to be seen as a person worthy of the same dignity and respect as everyone else is seen as asking for far too much. If disabled people are not content with whatever scraps they're given then they are considered ungrateful and entitled. And Tyrion is not content, he's angry about how the world treats him and he wants something better and this is what the fandom considers to be his greatest crime and for that he must be punished. 

This is why Tyrion makes people uncomfortable because his character challenges their perceptions. That's why they need him to be a villain and have a bad ending regardless if it makes sense. It's why they don't even consider his role in the story and barely include him in their end game theories unless it's the things I've listed above. They want him to be a side character with little importance that can be forgotten about and kept away from their precious faves. 

It shows that people only want disability representation as long as it doesn't make them question their beliefs. They want something that keeps them comfortable that satisfies their ableist views but Tyrion’s character doesn't do that and they hate it. 

[belladonnafeli]

A fundamental issue when people are discussing Daenerys’ arc in Meereen is that people think it’s filler and means nothing, adds nothing to the story. If you think that then of course you think the arc is boring filler. It’s not. It’s very important to the story as a whole and it genuinely annoys me that people act like ending SLAVERY is some side plot.

Most other stories would have Dany abandon Slavers Bay and just go to Westeros, but he doesn’t do that cause it would reflect poorly on Daenerys’ character for a mother to abandon her children. Funnily enough if Dany did just leave Slavers Bay that would be used as a justification for her being a bad ruler and terrible person. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

[belladonnafeli]

No offense, but it makes me lose my mind how little comparison there is online between Daenerys and Aragorn cause it’s like extremely obvious that Daenerys is Aragorn and it feels like people just don’t see this simply because of the visual aspect. Like the Fall of Numenor and the Doom of Valyria. Them both being afraid they’ll be corrupted like their predecessors, Aragorn with Isildur and Daenerys with Aerys. The fact that George literally brings up Dany when discussing Aragorn. The entire concept of an exiled prince in hiding is Daenerys. George has said the subversion of this is that Daenerys is a girl and that he wanted to give the keys to fantasy that are normally given to men to a woman. The whole Aragorn tax policy and actual ruler ship is the plot of Dance for Dany😭

[evidenceof]

costume + color + scene

CHER HOROWITZ and EMMA WOODHOUSE 2/2 Clueless (1995) and Emma. (2020) adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma | Costuming by Mona May and Alexandra Byrne respectively

[folkwhore123]

men liking asoiaf feels so wrong. this is a girl interest. get the fuck out.

[ladystoneshart]

I think it's interesting that the character who paints the most...redeemable? flattering? picture of cersei in their povs is probably catelyn. I'm not saying cat doesn't hate her, she absolutely does and for good reason, but she also sees cersei as a sort of mirror to herself and her motherhood. when catelyn goes to the sept in the (spoilers for acok i guess) chapter renly dies, she takes a moment to think about how even though she hates cersei for what she did, she can't say she wouldn't have done the same in her place, for her children. she sees cersei in the image of the mother and wonders if she prays to her too, which is more humanising than pretty much anything her brothers have to say about her in their povs. and this coming from the woman who said "give me cersei lannister and you'd see how gentle a woman can be" btw. idk I just think it's interesting

meanwhile in her povs cersei is like "catelyn stark was a MOUSE"

[awildwickedslip]

something really painful and real about daenerys’ wedding night with drogo is like, yes, it’s rape, but she does not experience as such because he’s kinder to her while he does it than anyone has been in years and her entire point of comparison is the abusive brother who terrorizes her daily. and he eventually kills that brother for threatening to kill her and her unborn baby. and she always loves and reveres him in her memory. and then the piece about augusta britt - she was always grateful to cormac mccarthy because she was being raped and abused in her foster home, and he took her away from it, and said he would kill anyone who tried to take her back. and she clearly still loves him. and both that part of agot and that piece get reactions that upset me so much. because like, sometimes children have lives that are so unsafe that there is a hierarchy between people who are technically all doing them wrong. but it doesn’t always feel that way and i think that matters to really sit with.

[aching-vellichor]

liddle colored sketch of catelyn just after marrying idk idk

[ai-manre]

The older I get the more I realize that the best way to enjoy any books or any piece of media is to do it far away from its rabid fandom. Be it asoiaf or SnK or ATLA, the fandoms have the absolute worst takes from people entirely divorced from the context, the tone, the literal and structural elements of a story. From things the author makes entirely too obvious. Because turns out most people actually have no reading comprehension and rather than try to learn they instead double down on their bad takes.

For example it's clear that GRRM:

- loves Arya, she's his favorite as he's admitted many times. There's a reason Jon or Bran see someone random and think "oh she reminds me of Arya". Arya is one of the most heroic characters in the books (in league with Dany and Jon) and her heroism will definitely lead to a great payoff

- loves House Targaryen. I think House Targ is his thesis of duty vs love, greatness and tragedy all in one. He's written so much of House Targaryen, and "it's got to end, even if it's with fire and blood". Fire is life, cold is the enemy, the dragons are fire and will bring hope. They have already brought hope to characters who know about them (Tyrion, Maester Aemon, Sam, even Jon).

- Dany is the grand hero, she might "pass under a shadow" but she will reach the light. Any lover of fantasy who is a feminist should seriously celebrate this. How often does a fantasy series like this have the chosen one be a female character?? Dany is the big damn hero!

- GRRM loves Tyrion. He's his favorite character to write. Tyrion might right now be going through his dark turn, but he is someone kind and caring at his core, and it will shine through.

- all the setup to Jon's parentage will matter! Lyanna clutching the winter roses even on her deathbed, Rhaegar dying with Lyanna's name on her lips, the Kingsguard saying "Ser Darry is a good man and true but not of the Kingsguard. The Kingsguard does not flee" matters! Jon's crypt dreams of Stark Kings snarling at him, Moqorro's dream of "dragons true and false" and Rhaegar's "a song of ice and fire" were all setup with a conclusion in mind. Not as redirections.

All the literal, structural story elements matter! GRRM's story isn't hidden in obscure use of "white hot knife" in two random instances across 5 books, his story is right in the text, plain to see and follow.