#debbie downering

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

(ASOIAF) I love Daenerys Targaryen. I'm not used to High Fantasy so it was hard for me, finishing the books, and even now I can't fully get invested in certain storylines (I just can't handle everything). But I love Dany, and reading her PoVs was one of my fave things to do. Most of the Mereen polithics whent well over my head but I can't express how scared I was for her, at the end of DwD... Do you think WoW might go tolerably well for her?

Sadly, no. :(  But I don’t think TWOW will go well for anybody, really. That book is going to have everyone’s dark night of the soul… it’ll be the big downbeat, climaxing with the worst things (the Wall falling, the KL wildfire explosion), before ADOS comes to give everyone a new purpose again and eventual triumph…

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Hi! Sorry to bother you with this but do you know if there is any news about The Winds of Winter release date? I’ve been away from the ASOIAF fandom for almost a year now but last time I checked a lot of people seem to think that the book should come out this year and I just wanted to know if that is still the case. Thanks.

As of the second-to-last report (in July 2017), GRRM was saying it was possible that TWOW could come out in 2018 along with Fire and Blood vol 1. However, as of the last report (in February 2018), he was only planning on F&B for 2018, and said it would come out before TWOW. Which means that whatever his estimated finish date was in February, it’s probably not soon enough that the publisher could get the book edited and printed before the end of the year. (FYI, his publisher turnaround time is about 3 months.) It might still be possible that TWOW could be out in 2018, especially if we hear something from him around July – giving us, say, F&B in October, TWOW in December 2018. But personally? I very much doubt it, and I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you. Take any article from clickbait sites with huge grains of salt.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

sorry if you have answered this before, i was just wondering whats your take on the fate of house lannister? and house targaryen for that matter. will they go extinct by the end of the series?

I’ve talked about House Lannister’s fate a bunch of times (most recently - 1, 2), but no worries. No, I don’t think they’ll go extinct – there’s a lot of Lannisters of Casterly Rock, not to mention the cadet House Lannister of Lannisport. But Tywin’s line, even Tytos’s line, may be wholly wiped out. Jason’s line – I suppose it depends on how many are attending Daven’s wedding (if it’s the “second Red Wedding” per theories). But I don’t think all of the Grey Lion’s descendants will be gone by the end. Most of them, sure. But not all. Though again, even if those don’t make it either, there are still more Lannisters left, reportedly. You can check out my post explaining the succession of House Lannister in the event of an apocalypse for some details.

House Targaryen is far more fraught, as there’s only Dany and Jon left. (As Aegon is a fake, and doomed.) I think it is very possible that Dany and Jon will die saving the world. (Same with Tyrion, which is why I never count him as a chance for House Lannister endgame.) Could they have a kid before the end? Maybe– but one child is still very difficult to keep a house going. And I think the whole point of the Targaryens, the blood of the dragon, is to destroy the Others. So I really don’t expect House Targaryen to continue after the end. Possibly Dany and Jon might survive (I give it about a 40% chance right now), and become a new Jaehaerys and Alysanne (with Tyrion as their Septon Barth), but we’ll just have to see.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

@danainthedogpark replied to your post “If Arya hadn't chased Nymeria away would Cersei still want Lady dead...”

ooooh punny. i see what u did there. lol. but seriously much of sansa's development is directly due to her NOT having lady. it's fucking sad but also necessary. and yeah, lady would not have survived book 1 no matter what.

Yeah, I mean, you can do a what if the fight at the Trident didn’t happen at all (there’s a nice time travel fix-it fic with that), and both girls kept their direwolves, and became wargs before the end of AGOT (like Bran did)... but that just makes everything with Cersei’s coup even worse. (Considering how shattered Sansa was when Lady died, how much more horrible would it have been if she’d formed a full warg bond and then her wolf was killed?)

And if you want to keep Lady and Nymeria alive through the coup somehow, you run into more logistical problems. How are two direwolves possibly escaping from the Red Keep, from King’s Landing? (Where were the direwolves even living in the first place, in the godswood?) How is Arya living on the streets accompanied by a very noticeable direwolf, or traveling with the NW recruits with a very noticeable direwolf? 

That’s why I said it was wish fulfillment, because it is, it’s not logical with the kind of story GRRM writes. It’s perfectly fine to save the direwolves in fanfic, but in canon, Lady’s death and Nymeria’s banishment are necessary to make the story work and to develop the characters of Sansa and Arya.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

If Arya hadn't chased Nymeria away would Cersei still want Lady dead or would she be ok with just Nymeria being killed? Also do you have any headcanons/fics about Lady not being killed and staying with Sansa?

Cersei would have insisted both direwolves were too dangerous to live, sorry.

I don’t have any headcanons on the subject of Lady living and staying with Sansa, or any fics that I can recommend as anything other than wish fulfillment,* because narrative causality requires that the girls not have their direwolves in King’s Landing, because Nymeria needs to be a queen of a wolf pack to fight the Others, and Lady would have been killed during Cersei’s coup anyway (and wouldn’t that be a joy, for Sansa to see Lady’s head up on the wall next to her father’s and Septa Mordane’s). Or to be clear, Lady is one of the story’s narrative casualties.

*IIRC my follower @lilinkind’s Sansa Madoka Magica AU did not have her wish to bring Lady back to life, just Ned, but that’s the only kind of wish fulfillment I could recommend in this case, a dark twisted one.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Going from sts's Lady ask, if GRRM had steered the Hound with dead Mycah to Ned before Lady could be killed, what internal thoughts or external pressures COULD have stayed Cersei's demand for Lady (had she'd seen the dead Mycah). I know it is LIKELIER she would have demanded Lady dead anyway (and intensely relevant to plot and character development) - even after seeing dead Mycah - but on the off chance she decided against, what factor(s) would have prevailed to see that happen?

Unknown factors that didn’t and would never happen. Cersei wanted the direwolves dead. The fact that Lady was completely innocent didn’t change her mind. The fact that Lady belonged to her son’s betrothed didn’t change her mind. The fact that her son’s betrothed was the daughter of the Hand of the King didn’t change her mind. I doubt anything would have ever changed her mind.

Cersei + wanting vengeance for her son’s injury + wanting to weaken the Starks + wanting to weaken a potential “younger and more beautiful” queen + not giving a fuck about other people’s feelings + Robert refusing to get involved = dead Lady.

That’s just the way it is. No deaths of innocent humans would have made any difference at all.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Piggybacking the Lady ask. What do you think would have happened if Ned refused to kill Lady? (I know it's unlikely, but I'm curious.)

I’ll let someone else reply:

@mrsjadecurtiss replied to your post “Going from sts’s Lady ask…”

Cersei would have found a reason, probably sendsome servant to provoke the wolf or whatever.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

George's own love for the BatB trope and admission to playing with the Sansan ship in canon have given a lot of people hope for its success (myself included). My biggest fear is that the real beauty of the ship, in George's way, will be its tragic end. Not that it may not be fully realized by the characters in question (which would be devastating), but that one or both may die (perhaps for the other). Do you think there's a possibility that this is how George may play out Sandor and Sansa's arc?

Yeah, I too have a lot of hope for the ship, as you may know (see these posts for more, in case you or others don’t). And yes, I also have that hope tempered by a fear of a tragic ending… and unfortunately GRRM’s tendencies make that fear very pressing sometimes. Also, for all the foreshadowing suggesting a Sandor/Sansa reunion and potential culmination of the ship, there isn’t enough saying there must be a Happily Ever After. GRRM doesn’t really do Happily Ever Afters. He’s a romantic, yes, but not a romance novel writer. Chivalric romance very often involves relationships that can never be, through death or other tragedies. And GRRM’s most famed Beauty and the Beast romance ended with the beauty’s tragic death. :(  (Note he has a recent interview talking about that, where he says her death was the best dramatic way to handle the actress leaving the show, but continuing the show afterwards didn’t really work.)

So… is there a possibility of a tragic ending for sansan? Well… there’s lots of possibilities of all kinds of things. Is it a strong probability of it happening? I really couldn’t say as yet, honestly we need to see Sandor again in the books, actively involved in the story, to be able to properly judge where his arc is going. (Since right now, by some opinions he has as good as a happily ever after as one could expect in ASOIAF, a therapy and rehabilitation island designed specifically for him.) Though for what it’s worth, I am very confident that Sansa will live with as close to a happy ending (with some bittersweetness) as GRRM will give her. And Sandor, it would seem repetitive to almost kill him, bring him back, and then kill him again for real this time, right? (Even if he dies in Sansa’s service, protecting her.) So… we’ll just have to see. Ask me again after we finally get TWOW, won’t you?