Christine de Pizan did not sit down at her desk and write The Book of the City of Ladies, advocating for women’s education and finding value in women of all social classes and backgrounds, in 1405 for this.
a woman was the first known author/poet in 2300BC - Enheduanna
the first novel in recorded history was written by a woman in 1010AD - Murasaki Shikibu
the earliest example of science fiction was written by a woman in 1666 - Margaret Cavendish
horror science fiction was popularised by a teenage girl in 1818 - Mary Shelley
a Scotswoman expanded childrens’ stories from moralising tales into anarchic adventures in the mid 1800s, well before it became popular in the early 20th century - Catherine Sinclair
the masked/costumed hero archetype that inspired Batman and Zorro was created by a woman in 1905 - Baroness Emma Orczy
And while she is problematic as all get out, we all know who is to blame for popularising Boarding School fiction (which is a huge inspiration of She Who Must Not Be Named) from the 1930s onwards - Enid Blyton
The way Maddy didn’t hesitate to believe Rue, she knew it wasn’t beneath Cassie and I can’t tell if that’s because she sees Cassie as loose (she doesn’t seem like one to slut shame Cassie) or because this entire time something has felt so off about Cassie and she couldn’t understand what it was even thought she suspected it was being single.
Hi everyone. If you have heard on the news, a tsunami hit Tonga's largest island, Tongatapu, after the Hunga-Tongq-Hunga-Ha'apu volcano erupted. There is currently a tsunami watch extending as far entire West Coast of the United States.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has compiled a list of organizations taking donations to assist those impacted and it can be found HERE
I'll be sure to reblog and update this as more information comes out. If anyone has additional information, please add them to this post.
i'm gonna need a fucking cigarette... no a whole pack... to get through every episode of this season because we two episodes deep and everything has already gone to shit like are girlies gonna even survive the season ???
Food, And Why Daenerys Targaryen's Invasion Is Doomed
One of the most interesting aspects of A Song of Ice and Fire is the way in which author George RR Martin attempts to ground his high fantasy series in a certain kind of reality. Many fans like to refer to his discussions of "Aragorn's Tax Policy," the author pointing out that many fantasy stories overlook the actual fundamental rules of their own worlds and essentially hand-wave any inconvenient or boring elements of that reality away.
A Song Of Ice and Fire has clearly gone out of its way to include those supposedly boring details, and it makes the narrative not only feel more realistic, but in many ways more interesting. And, one of the most vital facets of that pragmatic perspective on the world of Planetos that will undoubtedly become even more important now that winter truly is coming is the food situation in Westeros.
As fans have already pointed out, Game of Thrones made many missteps in the last few seasons of the series, but, despite the fact that this is an incredibly unglamorous aspect of the story, food scarcity is actually one of the most important elements that they incorporated into the early years and then abandoned when it became a genuine game-changer.
The show portrayed Daenerys and her massive army marching north to fight against the army of the dead, but it seems extremely unlikely that this would even be possible in A Song of Ice and Fire. Because, in order for this to even happen within the TV series, the writers essentially had to ignore the rules of their own world in order to make that happen, which is something that Martin has already made clear that he doesn't want to do.
It's difficult to say what kind of army Daenerys will be arriving with in Westeros, but if it's even half the size of her army that arrives in Westeros in Game of Thrones, then it almost certainly wouldn't even be physically possible for her to get her army to Winterfell. She and her forces rely on essentially pillaging what they need when they need it, and the North is so large and desolate that there literally would not be enough resources to sustain an army of a hundred thousand people on a march from White Harbor to Winterfell. And that isn't even touching on the absurd difficulties that an army from Essos would have traversing a massive snowbound tundra.
Game of Thrones clearly threw a few nods to the food crisis that is about to hit Westeros, but unfortunately, it never followed through on that in any meaningful sense. Yes, they had Daenerys burn wagons full of food as a hint that maybe she wasn't the conquering hero, and yes, they had Sansa mention the food problem when Daenerys first arrived in Winterfell. However, there were no actual consequences for burning the food in the Reach, and the interaction between Sansa and Dany was seemingly intended to make Sansa just seem like a petty Regina George rather than a leader making an incredibly important point about a dangerous lack of resources. And while these seem like small moments in the tail end of the show's narrative, they're honestly some of the biggest mistakes that the show made.
Because while it's not nearly as dramatic or intense as having Daenerys snap because she's not the rightful Targaryen queen and she's losing her armies and dragons by the day, the food issue can actually completely explain why Daenerys will never become the queen of Westeros.
Both in the books and in the early years of the TV series, the impact of food scarcity is a repeated theme that has massive consequences on the nobility in Westeros even though it doesn't negatively affect them personally. Honestly, the fact that Sansa is portrayed as a mean girl for bringing up the food issue to Dany when she was attacked and nearly violated by a gang of starving common people during a riot in King's Landing is more than a little infuriating. But, that experience is also incredibly informative as to what is going to happen when Dany brings her armies to Westeros in A Song of Ice and Fire, and likely indicates what should have actually happened when she arrived in the Seven Kingdoms in Game of Thrones.
Because her Targaryen ancestors, Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya conquered six out of seven kingdoms with three dragons. So Daenerys literally already knows that she can win the Iron Throne with three dragons and absolutely nothing else. And by the time she’s set to invade Westeros, she believes that her dragons are nearly indestructible and infallible, so there’s really no reason for her to bring her entire army to Westeros, and yet she does anyway.
It’s hard to say how big her army is at this point in the TV series, but they make mention a few times that there are 100,000 Dothraki screamers, and that’s just the Dothraki. So it’s incredibly likely that Dany is invading Westeros in winter with an army of over a hundred thousand people. And this isn’t like a Westerosi army that’s made up of random citizens, this is an army of men who only know how to fight. They can’t farm. They can’t build. They currently have no skills or ways to contribute to society besides making war.
It’s pretty much an accepted and known fact that when winter comes in Westeros, people are going to die no matter what. It’s to the point that it is even a part of the culture of the North for people to go out into the wilderness in winter so as to not take up resources. And, after the entire continent has been ravaged by war, there is already an impending food crisis that is going to lead to many more Westerosi starving and dying in the winter.
This creates an incredibly important source of tension between Dany and Westeros, because her game plan is always to take what is hers with fire and blood. When she invades cities and conquers lands, she doesn't come with her own resources and supplies. She relies on whatever she can take from the places that she conquers, and even in Slaver's Bay, her presence and the presence of her forces have a crippling effect on their infrastructure at large.
The books have also gone out of their way to lay this groundwork much more clearly than the show, which never really addressed the fundamental issues with Dany's rule in Slaver's Bay. Daenerys ostensibly stays in Meereen so she can have some practice ruling, which is an issue in its own right, but there is a specific mention of the food situation and Dany's failure to handle it.
When speaking with Xaro Xhoan Daxos in A Dance With Dragons, they have this exchange:
Xaro says: "How kind of my old friend to help with the digging. And how very unlike him. Is it possible he was given no choice in the matter? No, surely not. You have no slaves in Meereen."
Dany flushed. "Your friend is being paid with food and shelter. I cannot give him back his wealth. Meereen needs beans more than it needs rare spices, and beans require water."
Although it's a brief exchange, this moment makes a few incredibly vital things clear. Firstly, that Daenerys seemingly had no plans on how to actually provide for the people that she wanted to rule. Secondly, that her conquering essentially collapsed the economy of Meereen down to its basic foundations. And thirdly, that she is using slave labor in order to cultivate food for the city.
Not only is it terrifying that she conquered an entire region without having any legitimate plans on how to enable all of the people that she wanted to rule to actually just survive, but it's very telling that her solution to those problems was to essentially create a new slave class that she won't call slaves in order to provide for her armies and the people of the city. And if this becomes her go-to solution in a starving Westeros, it's going to undoubtedly be more catastrophic than it was in Slaver's Bay in a variety of ways.
So this significant impending conflict has yet to be addressed in A Song of Ice and Fire, and the fact that Game of Thrones never addressed it was potentially a fatal flaw in the storytelling. Because to put it simply, if Daenerys goes to Westeros and absolutely everything goes exactly how she plans, even if she arrives and every single house and kingdom surrenders to her without issue, her plan still guarantees that tens or even hundreds of thousands of people are going to starve to death so that her followers can survive a Westerosi winter.
According to Game of Thrones, Daenerys had over a hundred thousand followers by the time she invaded, which is the size of a small modern city. So the notion that her arrival didn't immediately cause a complete infrastructural crisis just does not make any sense. It's clearly not a fun narrative issue to actually have to write your way through, but the fact that Daenerys and her army are just chilling on Dragonstone, seemingly for weeks, and this presents no problem for her or for Westeros at large, is bizarre. But if the show had actually addressed that issue, then the foundation for the Westerosi to be against Dany's invasion would have already been laid before she even sets foot on the mainland continent.
When Daenerys and Jon first arrive in Winterfell with her army, Jon makes a point of telling her that Northerners don't trust outsiders. But basic common sense would indicate that they shouldn't be afraid of Dany because she's an outsider, but because she's bringing a seemingly endless line of soldiers with her without any food when winter has already begun and it's too late for them to cultivate any significant food stores to survive through the season. And especially in the North, this is something that every single person from high lords to common people would be extremely acutely aware of.
Dany's comment to Sansa about dragons eating "whatever they want" was meant to be a witty retort, but realistically, that should have made every person in that room's blood run cold, because if Daenerys and her army are going to take what they want with fire and blood then that means that everyone listening is either going to watch their people starve and die or starve and die themselves in service of keeping the massive caravan of followers that Daenerys brought with her to Westeros alive.
And considering the fact that the incredibly short final seasons of Game of Thrones made a particular point of including scenes of Daenerys needlessly burning food as well as the whole exchange with Sansa in Winterfell, it seems safe to assume that this will actually be a much more prominent storyline within A Song of Ice and Fire. And even putting those clues aside, it just makes sense.
The importance of food and the ways in which high lords can use and manipulate it in order to gain political advantage is an extremely consistent theme in the novel series, and it seems obvious that this will only become more vital as the food becomes more scarce and the population of Westeros increases. And there are obviously many more factors at play in A Song of Ice and Fire, but the principle issue remains the same, and it will be fascinating to see how it plays out.
It comes as no surprise that Game of Thrones overlooked this element of the story, as acknowledging the basic needs of the actual people who are driving the narrative would have hindered a great deal of the action that they wanted to put into the final season of the show. But it's a shame, because while Dany's army getting clobbered at Winterfell might be visually interesting, exploring the ways in which food affects the rise or fall of rulers like Daenerys, Cersei, and Sansa is much more politically relevant and narratively interesting than the bizarre grudge matches that emerged towards the very end of the story.
It's also incredibly unfortunate, because Game of Thrones already set the stage for something like this to happen and simply never followed through on it. Joffrey's reign was nearly ended even earlier because of his failure to account for the basic needs of the citizens of King's Landing, and that crisis will pale in comparison to what's coming.
Sure, it's not as dramatic as everyone loving Jon Snow more than Daenerys or Cersei executing Missandei in front of Dany's eyes, but it's actually realistic and makes sense. And, perhaps that's part of the problem. It does seem like the TV series relied on making Dany's destruction of King's Landing into the final big twist in the story, when, if they had actually acknowledged the importance of food supplies, it would have just been a logical progression of the narrative itself. After all, it would certainly explain why the people of Westeros would universally reject her as their ruler, and the show has never been shy about demonstrating that Dany will set the people who don't want to follow her on fire.
The Game of Thrones writers likely didn't want to address this particular plot point for a few reasons. Clearly, it would have been inconvenient to the story that they wanted to tell as quickly as possible, and if they were relying on Dany's dark turn to be a shocking twist, then incorporating this into the narrative would have made Dany's failed invasion neither shocking nor a twist. However, perhaps the reaction to the ending might have been better, and maybe the series as a whole would have been seen more positively if they had just recognized this boring but essential aspect of the world that George RR Martin has created.
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