An old snowstorm doodle i never finished

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An old snowstorm doodle i never finished
My brain genuinely can't grasp how some people are convinced anyone but Dany can be Azor Ahai/The Prince that was Promised. Like, "wake dragons from stone", yeah it's definitely Stannis waking the gargoyles on Dragonstone đ Were you reading with your eyes closed?đ
And the fact that the prophecy is fulfilled already when we learn of it, it's so obvious
"And someone has to kill Nissa Nissa who is probably Daene-"
Drogo. It was literally Drogo. She put a pillow on his face and put him out of his misery. And then used the corpse/death to "pay for life". To wake dragons. On purpose. She was very aware she was doing it. And she told us.
attributing all failings of house targaryen to 'rot' they have inherited from their valyrian ancestors, to me, feels one metaphor away from interpreting generations of one family as ontologically predisposed to ruin. i understand the intent here is to speak of the general decline of their monarchical power, but dynastic declines don't happen in a vacuum because of there being something specifically, inherently wrong with one family. they're all actors within a violently misogynistic, feudal society. this obviously isn't an extraordinary observation, and discussions involving other noble houses get this, yet when it comes to the targaryens everything has to be chalked up to 'valyrian supremacy'. sorry but i don't think this achieves anything beyond simply moralising their behaviour in itself without recognising how it has been influenced and enabled by westerosi society.
like the thing about language such as this is that it's ceding all ground to aesthetic vibes based analysis. i'm obviously not saying nobody should ever use metaphors, the books do it as well. tywin's corpse visibly decaying in the sept despite the silent sisters' efforts to preserve it for his funeral in affc anticipates the lannisters' downward spiral in that book, that underneath the thin veneer of respectability, tywin lannister's legacy is nothing and will not last. and that's all there is to it, the metaphor doesn't extend beyond it. decay is a natural, vital process of life. a corpse decaying in itself is not saying anything, but that the lannisters cannot give tywin a spotless and clean funeral is symbolic of what his legacy will be. we are also given material reasons for the decline of the lannisters and the gradual collapse of westeros's power structures, tywin is not being served some kind of divine retribution. there is no divine retribution in these books! dynasties don't naturally collapse, the dance is commentary on gendered violence within westeros's feudal patriarchy and the institutional violence practiced by the crown to maintain their power, the combination of which results in a ruinous war of succession. the incest and the dragons are there to heighten the family drama aspect of it, not to prove that they're an anomaly, that such a conflict could've only ever occured within this one family.
i never got where people found the idea that rhaegar expecting to get back from the trident meant he was arrogant (?? why on earth would he walk into a fight he expected to lose??) or prophecy obsessed (he thought aegon was tpwp at that point. there was no magical destiny he could count on to keep him safe) but even if he was all that, id still cut him a break on account of the stress ulcers i just know he was getting. like first his dad crashes his attempt at organising a coup. ok. its his first time organising a coup, he was probably a little nervous. he'll do better next time. he falls in love. does an oopsie. then his father brutally executes three major lords (there was an arryn in the entourage too, lets not forget) and demands the heads of two more. somehow that still doesnt ruin his honeymoon because jon was conceived after the fact. THEN his dad kidnaps his wife and kids essentially and makes him go back to fight in a war he caused by killing those lords in rhaegar's defence, more or less, so in a way hes implicated in something he very probably found horrendously cruel and horrendously stupid AND hes got to go to war and kill people about it now. and its a little bit his fault too because his elopement with lyanna was what set things into motion. considering his whole life was built around saving the realm i am sure he felt some type of way about accidentally kicking off a war instead. and affording to jaime he then gets the very difficult task of convincing aerys to ask tywin for help, on top of presumably needing to explain where he'd been, what he'd been doing, where did he stash the kingsguard and lyanna stark and why he's justified in not revealing the location to a man who already suspected him of treason. and the whole time aerys wont budge and let him send elia and the kids to dorne or at least back to dragonstone because i imagine they were hostages for rhaegar just as much as they were hostages for dorne. and he's organising an army which also according to jaime kept him so busy he missed aerys rigging the city with wildfire like hes on the set of home alone. probably for the best because that'd stress him out even more. like yeah if he just decided to ragequit life and let robert deal with all that i'd understand the motivation. but i think people miss the part where grrm has never in his writing career written a quitter. all of his characters tend to have the tenacity to keep on going despite the horrors. and frankly the real tragedy of rhaegar's life is that he was clearly building up the courage to tell his dad to sock it and in fact getting the command of the crown's armies might have been part of the plan there but he never managed to do it because he went and died trying to clean up aerys' mess that was also somewhat his own mess
Noah Ritter as Rhaegar Targaryen with Kel Matsena as Ser Arthur Dayne, Huw Parmenter as Oswell Whent and with Elizabeth Ayodele as Elia Martell
Nevermind this one where Aerys is clearly screaming at him. He's so going through it.
I love this thread because it clearly shows how Daenerys values her people even if they are not tied to her by name, land or titles.
look winds would flat out destroy fandom if grrm released it, book and show. a whole bunch of fandom people's entire identities would crumble around them. that book would ruin lives
thinking of that scene in agot where ned tells robert that actually, lyanna would have put his stupid fucking nonsense right down too but its about him wanting to participate in a tourney so i love that ned is like "come on man, not even my sister (noted tourney participant, not that you know it) would have thought that was smart. thats how low youve fallen". and the perception of lyanna as someone who shoots down stupid impulsive nonsense can only means she was on brandon's ass so much ned got to hear about it all the way in the vale bc realistically there was only one person in that household that lyanna "hold my lance and watch this" stark might have told to chill tf out. much to consider.
Portrait of the Lady Lyanna
Unpopular opinion: but the extreme deification of Ned Stark in the asoiaf fandom has truly lowered the quality of all discourse. Every character is measured on their heroism based on how closely they reflect Nedâs values or how close they are to Ned themselves, and this is really impacting the discourse.
For example, the sansa vs arya discourse of who resembles Ned more, Danyâs executions being judged by the yardstick of Ned Starkâs execution philosophy (keep in mind that Dany asks herself questions Ned never did about the responsibilities of a king, and Dany is killing slavers while Ned since start of the series only killed an innocent guy running from Others and an innocent direwolf). The insistence that Jonâs identity crisis would only end with Jon resolving to be Nedâs son and that it would require him discarding his actual parents who had loved and wanted him)
Ned is amazing and a great guy, but if the morals of asoiaf had begun and ended with him, whats the point of the struggles every other character went through to forge their own morality?
A character can only be as moral as the system they uphold. The system in Westeros is extremely corrupt, so yes Ned is moral in the sense that he follows the law and system to a rigid degree, but the laws in Westeros are not moral themselves and very much favor the nobility/wealthy.
Ned being the pinnacle of morality in the fandom has done so much damage, because although Ned is a good character in comparison to characters like Tywin or Robert, heâs not an entirely Good Guy whoâs morality should be the standard for every other character.
I also think of the whole âthe man who passes the sentence should swing the swordâ thing. What about Ladies or Queens who might not be able to lift a sword as large as Ice? What about Tyrion or Bran? So, just because someone isnât capable of swinging a sword and killing someone personally means their sentence is inherently unjust? Having a headsman is immoral and wrong?
Robb for example tried to follow his fatherâs extremely rigid moral code and look where that got him. Nedâs own moral code itself indirectly led to the WOTFK.
And I like Ned, donât think Iâm dissing on him, but he is put on this weird pedestal that I donât think weâre actually meant to.
princess elia, ash dayne, princess arianne and lyanna
i always thought it interesting that all his life rhaegar liked to travel to summerhall and hang out there all by himself without even a kingsguard to his name because those are already some pretty bold moves from the only heir (pre viserys) of a dynasty with fertility issues but if you accept the interpretation that he wrote jenny's song then he must have been skulking around high heart in the riverlands too. and jon con's memory states he was visiting dorne before stopping at griffin's roost. its kind of funny because what aerys was up to in those years is very well documented and rhaella spent half of her life on house arrest so while theres very good reasons why grrm does not talk about rhaegar in twoiaf i find his glaring absence sort of hilarious. everyone just sort of forgot about him. aerystywin were having breakup number 264748 and he was somewhere backpacking through westeros. literally doing anything to avoid living at home. back in the pre internet days they had to have tv ads in the evening to remind parents they have kids roaming outside but unfortunately aerys was born before the invention of the tv. like jfc man. half your descent into madness is about dead kids but you have your heir chatting up witches in the riverlands
all i can hope from the mad king musical is that it inspires all the chappel roan girlies who were making edits with alicent and good luck babes to edit rhaegar to pink pony club
do you think the reason people are harder on daenerys than jon is because her characterization is more ambitious? so much of jon's arc is learning how to follow before he can lead (getting a whole Youre Not All That speech from Donal Noye) meanwhile Dany's pretty gunho about being blood of the dragon once Viserys is gone.
I think it's misogyny.
not trying to be flippant, I know there's nuance. we all have personal preferences, partiality to differences in POV voices, interests that draw us to unique storylines, settings, character arcs, etc. I certainly prefer the handling of the Free Folk in Jon's chapters to the Dothraki in Dany's, and personally find the Orientalism and racism in the Essos-based storylines (which belong almost solely to Daenerys) glaring detractions. but what you're describing here - being harder on the female fantasy protagonist for being "more ambitious" (and thus more frustrating/annoying), while liking the male fantasy protagonist who acts as her parallel - isn't a preference that exists in a vacuum.
both Daenerys and Jon are GRRM's responses to the chosen one archetype. it's part of the reason their core characters and narratives are so similar, and why we could spend all day outlining their parallels. but their respective relationships to the Chosen One trope itself are unique, and I don't think gender is irrelevant to that conversation. it informs it.
Jon's character is all about dismantling. yes, he learns to follow before he learns to lead. he is almost immediately stripped of all self-importance in his first few chapters. he's forced to let go of childish notions of individual valor and work with (and for) others. his most iconic refrain is you know nothing. even the supposed source of his hidden specialness, his secret parentage, is a more likely to take him off the path of heroism than inspire him to continue down it. from beginning to end, Jon's story takes the idea of a chosen one and interrogates it, peels it back layer by layer. it's a good deconstruction because we've already seen a hundred chosen ones where that status was never questioned.
this doesn't apply to Daenerys. Dany's story is about subversion; it takes the mantle of chosen fantasy hero so often given to a martial man, bound by duty and the greater good, destined for greatness, and gives it to a young girl longing for home. she doesn't have a character arc where she learns how to follow and take orders, because why would she? when we meet her, she is frightened, powerless, physically and sexually abused by her brother, and forced into a marriage with a man twice her age. Jon might be outcast from his society's titles by bastardy, but he has an amount of safety and familial love that Daenerys - despite having a legitimate bloodline and royal title - has never known. they're in inverse positions, and so Dany's arc is the inverse of Jon's. her refrain isn't you know nothing, it's if I look back, I am lost.
and again, these characters don't exist in a vacuum. there's a reason it feels novel and satisfying for the young male hero to serve and learn humility, to abandon ambitions of glory and work with those around him. and there's a reason it would be borderline insulting to put Daenerys through the same arc. this isn't about not allowing Dany to learn or grow (she certainly shares Jon's arc when it comes to working toward a greater good, and is currently GRRM's standing example of "ruling is hard"). this is about addressing why people think Daenerys, whose character revolves so much around agency and power and how best to use those things for good, needs to be humbled and less ambitious in order to become palatable.
that said, reading this in good faith: I understand where this sentiment comes from, particularly looking at ADWD. for all GRRM's worldbuilding strengths, the racism comes out in full force in the portrayal of Essos, and we never get anything like Jon's growing understanding of the Free Folk's culture. portraying other slave rebellions and revolutionaries should have been a big part of Dany's chapters and could have challenged her in really productive ways... but the Orientalism was never an intentional blindspot for the character; it's the author's biases at play.
robb is in the hunger games, theon is in a little life, sansa is in little women, sam is in bbcâs merlin, catelyn is in the bible, tyrion is in grand theft auto, jon is in a song of ice and fire