the iron underneath

north and north and north again AO3

[ghostinwinterfell]

possibly the greatest asoiaf moment ever is when jon gets the letter about bran waking up and mormont expects him to grieve because “sorry kid :( it’s actually bad news :( he’s never going to walk again :(” but jon is all like “my brother is going to live !!!” and then he races out of the room and tells everyone he passes that “my brother is going to live !!!” and he gets back to the common hall and picks tyrion up and spins him around and makes him read the letter too because “my brother is going to live !!!” and he’s so giddy that he befriends grenn and tells thorne to go fuck himself and then everybody laughs and jon is just so happy because “my brother is going to live !!!”

meanwhile bran is back in winterfell listening to robb’s bannermen whisper about how death is a kinder fate than his, how they should’ve just let him die, how he’s too broken to be alive—with no idea that his big brother is out there celebrating because bran is going to LIVE !!!

[ghostinwinterfell]

adding these lovely tags from @artemideaddams <3

[ghostinwinterfell]

it’s also worth noting that at the start of this same chapter, this is how jon thinks about donal noye’s disability:

jon claims that noye’s life is effectively “over” because (along with having lived a full life and being “old”), he’s also now disabled. but when mormont later displays this same attitude about bran, jon completely dismisses this idea and celebrates the fact that bran is going to LIVE! his life is not over!

it’s such a beautiful (if subconscious) moment of development for jon. it almost reminds me of his shift in attitude towards the free folk, with jon initially displaying period-typical attitudes towards a marginalized group of people before being directly confronted with their reality/humanity and shifting his worldview accordingly. I mean this entire chapter is about him dismissing and ridiculing “lowborn” recruits until noye gives him a dose of reality, leading jon to take accountability, reflect on his own classist attitudes, gets his act together, and build a brotherhood with his fellow recruits. whether it’s disabled people, common people, or the free folk, jon snow can be as ignorant as the next person, but the difference is that he learns.

[ghostinwinterfell]

opinions on jonsa?

pretty similar to how I feel about jonrya in terms of disliking starkcest and just generally preferring their dynamic as siblings. and even besides that, I just think that there are better ships for both them that are much more thematically-relevant and interesting (I won’t get into that rn since nobody asked lmao and also I don’t want this to come off as an anti post). also I’m too snowstorm/jeynsa pilled for any other jon or sansa ship rip (jongritte is a favorite too, but in a “I want to study them under a microscope” kind of way).

however jon and sansa are two of my favorite characters so I am deeply invested in their relationship!! the tension with jon, cat, and sansa (sansa remaining “loyal” to her mother), sansa’s classism towards jon and his “common” mother, jon missing sansa despite her only ever calling him her “half brother”, jon following sansa’s advice about girls, sansa praying for jon, alayne identifying with and missing her bastard brother after not thinking of him in “ages”, the messiness of the succession issue, the janos slynt karma moment, the general distance from each other that they consistently maintain even in their thoughts…it’s all so delicious and I’m very much looking forward to their reunion. I think the little moments we get from them are super fascinating, and I have no doubt that their reunion is going to be both deeply upsetting and a moment of reflection/development for both of them. I just really like the concept of them being the most distant of the starklings and then sort of rediscovering each other and creating a relationship that they never got to have as children, made all the more complicated by the fact that they barely recognize each other anymore.

that being said, I do understand the obsession with show jon and sansa because 1) kit and sophie’s chemistry is unmatched and 2) their characters are so wildly different from their book counterparts that they actually end up complementing each other very well and 3) jonerys is so poorly written/developed that anything else seems better in comparison (except jongritte which remains the height of romance in GOT, especially compared to the fucked up-ness of book jongritte). even if I don’t ship it, I have a major soft spot for show jon and sansa’s sibling bond. definitely the best part of s6-8.

[ghostinwinterfell]

Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?”

“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him.

[ghostinwinterfell]

rip sansa stark you would’ve loved having more fics than any other asoiaf character on ao3

[ghostinwinterfell]

hi hi hi I saw your Thanksgiving chapter we’re so so back im so excited for Christmas (it’s almost June)!!!!!!!

ah thank you!! 🫶 so hyped for this christmas chapter I’m trying to get myself in the spirit lmao, it’s probably going to be a bunch of mini stories in one because I have absolutely no self control when it comes to the holidays

[ghostinwinterfell]

every time I find myself baffled at how people interpret asoiaf so differently than I do, to the point that we derive completely different meanings from the text, I think of that one jon quote “we look up at the same stars, and see such different things.” yeah okay fine. I guess it’s pretty cool that the same text can come alive for people in so many different ways. FINE. I guess there’s something kind of beautiful about that. beautiful in a really annoying way.

[ghostinwinterfell]

“soft and ladylike snores” sansa my darling girl can we be so serious for a second

[ghostinwinterfell]

westeros when little girls are full people with a full range of human emotions and not little dolls you can dress up and play with:

[ghostinwinterfell]

goddd the way arya, sansa, and jon all believe that they have nothing left to live for after ned’s death:

[ghostinwinterfell]

do you ever think about how one of the last things that ned ever hears is the sound of sansa crying and screaming.

[ghostinwinterfell]

tbh even for asoiaf, ned’s death scene is pretty evil. he has no idea what’s happened to arya, sansa is collapsing with grief, the crowd is throwing rocks and calling for his death, he’s probably got “promise me, ned” playing on repeat in his head, he’ll never see catelyn again, he’ll never see his sons again, he’ll never get to tell jon the truth, he’s praying, he’s failed, he’s leaving his daughters all alone among enemies, it’s lyanna all over again, he’s right back where he started. and that’s it.

[ghostinwinterfell]

the starks are never beating the witch allegations:

[ghostinwinterfell]

rip jaime lannister you would’ve loved being pregnant

[ghostinwinterfell]

do you ever think about how one of the last things that ned ever hears is the sound of sansa crying and screaming.

[alayne-stones]

happy pride to ned stark 🏳️‍🌈

[goldcrescent]

Do you think Cersei would have been less or more insulted it Robert had called out Ned’s name on their wedding night instead of Lyanna’s

[sorcerervaati]

[courfeyrec]

it's a main character to ME

[spiribia]

i like how we all ignore that soldier / poet / king is probably supposed to all be descriptors for jesus christ and we're all just like this is my 3 blokes from the last television show i watched