The last issue of the Marvel/Epic comic Wild Cards was published with a pull date of December 1990. The issue had 3 writers, 5 artists, and 2 colorists. ("Spadework", Wild Cards 4, Marvel/Epic Comic Event)
Jetboy's (Robert Tomlin) grave was bombed by a wild card that began an investigation in the first issue of the Wild Cards, pull date of September 1990. The investigation went back into the past as far back as the 1940's and included such figures as Albert Einstein and John F Kennedy. ("Heart of the Matter" Wild Cards 1, Epic/Marvel Comic Event)
so, @length-of-rope sent me an ask regarding a thing I mentioned a while ago, as in:
You’ve also made a post the other day about how GRRM is actually more into happy endings than people believe and that he gave J/B like pairings happy endings in the past. I was wondering if perhaps you might be willing to share a bit more about those pairings? I haven’t read his other works and I’m pretty curious about those :-)
and I figured I’d answer it public for everyone’s enjoyment of My Speculation With Tinhats Re Why A JB Happy Ending Is More Likely Than You Think.
now, my speculation is mostly based on one specific couple but I’ll go at it largely. obviously: spoilers for all the mentioned GRRM books including the endings/specific plot points.
first, ‘GRRM is more into happy endings than you’d think’: while I haven’t seen his beauty and the beast and I haven’t read everything of his, I read dying of the light, fevre dream, armageddon rag and all of the wild cards series other than asoiaf including his work (also dunk and egg but d&e doesn’t count). spoilers: none of those books actually have a sad ending. or better, most have a bittersweet one and it doesn’t end technically well for everyone and/or people die/suffer through it, but in all of them (WC is ongoing but I’m on that later) the protagonist(s) eventually either found happiness or died after a long and fulfilling life or got to their objective;
like, they were angsty af books, but believe me none of that was total nihilism;
now, before I go to his ship preferences, I’d like to spend a few words to say that if anyone wants a good insight into what’s most likely george’s proto rhaegar/lyanna you really should read dying of the light (which is basically the rebellion in space with one of the protagonist who’s so rhaegar it’s not even funny) - that one counts as ‘the protagonist gets an okay-ish ending but two other people get the happy one’;
fevre dream is the ‘people suffer but eventually it goes well and the protagonist lives a happy fulfilling life before leaving the mortal coil naturally.
now, what I want to go into are actually the other two instances, ie: the armageddon rag and one specific wild cards couple.
armageddon rag is the shortest one to deal with and honestly if you want the crackiest shit ever where an has-been rock journalist prevents the end of the world that should come through a metal band named NAZGUL while reflecting on the vietnam war and the failure of his generation, you should totally give it a go because it’s great fun, but other than that...
fact one: the protagonist (the has-been jaded rock journalist) is basically.... okay he’s named sandy (short for sander if I don’t recall wrong) which is already HMMM but personality-wise he’s way more like jaime - he REALLY believed in 60s counterculture and he loved rock music and now EVERYONE HAS SOLD OUT AND EVERYTHING IS SHIT, like he has a very jaime-like attitude on all of that, and while it’s not the main part of the plot, at some point he goes reconnecting to all his old friends from college (including one who came back from vietnam with ptsd who’s kinda theon but nvm) including his ex-girlfriend whose name escapes me right now but who was described as a) not particularly beautiful, b) with a broken nose and/or crooked teeth, c) very no-nonsense and after they reconnected and had sex they actually got back together at the end and stayed together, so while that wasn’t the main point.... YOU FEEL WHERE I’M GOING;
that said my case isn’t based just on that because then it’d be fairly weak. my case is based on the aforementioned wild cards couple (jay and hastet) which instead has similarities in spades which I’ll put under the cut because LONG STUFF.
now, in order: wild cards is a shared series grrm has going on with a bunch of his friends from the new mexico scifi club where they roleplayed in the eighties, the basic premise is that an alien virus is dropped on earth and gives people mutations (in the ratio where on 100 90 die, 9 get a bad mutation that gives them deformations and the likes and one gets the cool power), the aliens are the takisians and the virus is the wild card virus. grrm wrote a fair chunk of stories for it until the early 00s and now edits them along with his pal melinda snodgrass (this is relevant information don’t worry). also, one of the aliens, a scientist named tachyon (created by snodgrass) arrives on earth to help people deal with the virus and stays on there for half a decade. now, who we’re talking about here:
one of grrm’s earliest/longest-living characters in WC is jay ackroyd, who (starting from the name) is imo a freaking obvious template for jaime, I mean if you take out the incest (since this guy has no sisters to speak of) and the looks (he’s average-looking) this guy:
a) is a PI with a serious bad case of sarcasm/sense of humor, like he snarks all the time in also fairly vulgar ways;
b) has a fairly good sense of honor even if he’s not exactly Lawful Good and always tries to do the right thing even if it’s not convenient or if it means harming his friends;
c) has a superpower that has to do with his right hand (he can teleport people by pointing at them);
d) has a fairly shitty life ie very few friends and not one single lasting romantic relationship;
e) is fairly realistic and not an unrealiable narrator.
there’s also other stuff but like guys trust me that dude is basically pre-jaime when it comes to attitude, life choices, relationship with decency/his moral compass and bad sense of humor;
now, grrm’s written him most of the time except in book ten of the series, which was written by melinda snodgrass, but they’re like very close friends and he most likely gave her at least the story when it came to his character, so we need to work with the idea in mind that this was sanctioned by george himself;
what happens in book ten is that because of VERY LONG PLOT REASONS THAT I WON’T BORE YOU WITH ALSO BECAUSE IT’S COMPLICATED AF and you don’t care for the whole shebang, tachyon has to go back to takis because his insane nephew who’s basically joffrey and ramsay’s lovechild (yes, he is) has stolen his ship and wants to conquer it blah blah and he enlists jay and another one of the mains to help him, so jay goes to takis and finds out a bit about alien society on there;
now, takisians are weird af because while they’re pretty advanced on a lot of things (not just technology) ie they’re okay with same sex marriages and they’re down with sex changes which they can accomplish with their amazingly advanced technology, they have a very classist society in the sense that if you’re *noble* you can’t have children with *commoners* and it’s seen as impure and shit;
so what happens is that jay walks into this restaurant and chats up the owner - hastet - who’s a fairly nice takisian lady (takisians look human btw XD) and he does it by flirting like a fifteen year-old and she replies telling him to go fuck himself and pay for his lunch and he’s like OOOH I’M IN LOVE;
then he’s promptly discouraged by tachyon’s friends from pursuing her because hastet is basically seen as trash by the other takisians because at some point she had a thing with a noble guy while she’s a commoner and became pregnant but they forced her to abort the baby/get a sterilization and since Having Children Is The Most Important Thing On Takis she’s basically seen as wholly undesirable;
obviously jay Cannot Give Two Shits about that and keeps on courting her while she thinks he’s being Not Serious until she doesn’t anymore;
they bicker all the damned time until at some point she helps him, tachyon & co by risking her neck when she has literally no reason to and actually hates tachyon’s crowd because they ruined her life;
after then they hook up and they get captured by the joff/ramsay lovechild.... who deals with getting rid of jay’s power by *cutting off all of his fingers* (don’t worry they get re-grown later thanks to the amazing technology);
mind that when they hooked up it was strictly described from his pov as ‘he never felt that way for someone else’ and all the extra sappy romantic shit;
then after jay gets his fingers back he asks her if she wants to go back to earth with him in an immortal exchange that went like ‘how much can you stand?’ ‘a lot’ ‘that would include me?’ ‘I think I could’ ‘WANNA COME TO EARTH WITH ME???’ and she leaves with him after they keep on bickering all the time;
we can add that post-that-book the most immortal scene together they had was when some other teleporter who had to recruit jay to stop the bad dude of the trilogy appeared in their bedroom while she was riding the hell out of him if you get my meaning but nvm that.
now, jay and hastet have serious jb vibes going on and not just for the stuff that I hope was clear from the above, but:
she absolutely sees herself as wholly undesirable and hates that others see her like that too but that doesn’t stop her from doing what she’s good at regardless of a society that hates her;
he’s a complete social disaster like he’s very good at his job but he’s an extremely lonely person desperate for a connection with someone he really gets;
she helps him when she barely even knows him and she’s more fondly irritated than else;
he gives literally zero shits about the fact that she’s Not Desirable For Her People’s Standards nor cares that she can’t have children which is seen as The Most Important Thing In Her World and cares about her personality first;
they 100% help each other through traumatic experiences;
the bickering is mostly him being extra and her rolling her eyes like ‘this is the idiot I chose why’;
eventually he gets his own nice agency while she opens a successful restaurant on earth and like.. they get to put their talents at use how they want and while being happy instead of miserable because they’re together, get what i’m aiming at? ;)
now sadly the entire book wasn’t just about their romance because let me tell you it was the best thing about that lsd trip that was book ten, but thing is, I read wild cards after asoiaf and let me tell you those two were giving me jaimebrienne vibes for days like I think I got the message from the description but believe me when you’ve seen how many jaime vibes he has it’s kind of obvious (the part where HE LOST HIS FINGERS was like ‘you fucking serious’ but never mind that). and like.. that was book ten, we’re at book 27-ish and while jay hasn’t been a main since the reboot (sad, I miss him) he’s still around and kicking and they’re still happily married and being horrible saps whenever it’s mentioned.
now, given that this is one of the longer lasting couples in those books, that there’s another jb template going on in the armageddon rag and that in everything of grrm’s that I ever read no single book had an actual nihilistic/bad ending - all the contrary, grrm likes a good love story deep down - and that jb are one of the most obvious romantic set-ups on those books never mind that jaime’s sl is cersei’s foil most likely and since she’s definitely not going to live I would like to presume that he might...... I don’t want to say that the above means that FOR SURE THEY’LL LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER, but since grrm already made two versions of them live happily ever after previously and he obviously likes his tropes because he recycles them all the time (I mean honest dying of the lights has proto rhaegar, lyanna, joncon and sandor at least, in the armageddon rag there’s one proto jaime and one proto theon and possibly the proto brienne, fevre dream is a vampire thing but is2g there’s one guy who could have had reek’s dialogue/looked like theon in his reek povs, the turtle from wild cards is so proto sam tarly isn’t even funny [another character of grrm’s by the way] and tbqh if you ask me lohengrin [another wild cards guy] totally would have gotten along with brienne)... I mean, why the hell would he do the jb dynamic twice and then not go for it the third time? ;)
(premise: I have endless other reasons to assume that neither jaime or brienne are dying but this is the one I’d bring up for the ‘grrm hates happy people and he wants everyone to suffer’ no he doesn’t, especially people who follow his ship preferences and he obviously likes this dynamic because he’s done it more than once.)
