#rhotten

[amuelia]

    Ygritte and Jon Secret Santa gift for @rhotten , hope you like it!! ❤️❤️❤️

[onionjulius]

Yeah... the Sansa and Arya twow chapters make me really wish the 5 year time skip had worked. (Wouldn't make things *that* much better but yknow.) Could not agree more with wanting to get their storylines going, not really here for the ever expanding plotlines of Greyjoy nuncles. -_- I envy you for not being done with adwd lol, the wait for twow has been terrible and idk if that Targaryen book coming out soon makes it feel better or worse.

These days I am much more open to the expanding plots, and also the characters whose stories weren’t initially my favorites when I first read. I think my break helped with that. Like, in some ways ASOIAF is feeling more like an encyclopedia than a driving narrative? There’s so much great worldbuilding, but it’s way less streamlined than when we started. So I feel like now I’m just nerding out about Westeros, thus things like the Targ book don’t really bug me and I think I read that much of it was already written anyway (STILL NOT AS COOL AS THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KERMIT TULLY BUT W/E). But Sansa and Arya are two of my more emotionally involving POVs so I am kinda needing them in the mix.

[onionjulius]

rhotten replied to your post “Can someone explain to me why I love Steve Rogers but not Jon Snow?”

Maybe it's the whole secret prince magical destiny thing?

veliseraptor replied to your post “Can someone explain to me why I love Steve Rogers but not Jon Snow?”

I agree with above - for me at least, it's because there's no aspect of prophecy or destiny. Steve becomes Captain America because he's a good person at the core; Jon's narrative about being a Targaryen makes it seem like he was born special.

I try to analyse my feelings towards Jon Snow by two general prongs: my reaction to Jon Snow the Good Person, and my reaction to Jon Snow the Special Snowflake. And I definitely agree that the Special Snowflake part is key, because the first time I ever rolled my eyes at him was in AGOT Bran I when GRRM kept going on and on about how he was so Different Than The Rest. Quick instead of fast! Slender instead of muscular! Goth instead of jock! And of course he was the only one who could see Theon for the asshole he was. It only got worse as the description of the north’s uniqueness (and Jon’s true northernness) got so heavy-handed.

But then, I wasn’t even thinking along the lines of secret prince or magical destiny at that time, I didn’t catch R+L=J until I read about it online after . I almost feel like having the explanation that he is a secret prince with a magical destiny made me feel better? Like, at least there’s a reason that GRRM is making him so special -- because he is! In my case, Dany doesn’t bother me nearly as much or the same way as Jon because her specialness is overtly there right from the beginning. It’s almost like it’s more honest. 

For me, it’s almost like the journey to discovering that Jon is a secret prince with a magical destiny is more annoying than the actual fact of it..???! Maybe that’s key in my case, because I definitely have more time for Jon Snow as the series goes on and his chapters get down to business.

As for his goodness, to me Jon seems like a good person at the core too, and he should get credit for every just and fair-minded thing he says and does, but I’m just largely uninterested in it all. And it’s just interesting to me how uninterested I am, because I love Steve Rogers’ goodness, yet all Jon’s goodness can’t begin to counterbalance his special snowflake quality in my eyes (in my feels? in my feels’ eyes?). In fact it almost makes his goodness more obnoxious to me :-/ I don’t want it to, but it seems to. For example, when Jon uniquely realizes that all the men at the Wall are like links in a chain, all needed in their own way, I don’t cheer. I just roll my eyes. I know that GRRM is trying to indicate that being an outsider, an outcast, of a minority and/or oppressed status, etc., gives you empathy and understanding. But I think he plays it too heavy-handedly. I feel like Jon would be better served as a character to have a few more pseudo-medieval attitudes and feel just a tiny bit native to his setting (which he doesn’t much at all to me beyond his skills).

I mean, clearly, his goodness and his specialness are related. But isn’t King Arthur’s, also? And yet I can find interest in the goodness of Arthur, a special prince raised as a nobody, giving him a unique perspective on justice and goodness etc etc. But then, maybe that has partly to do with the fact that Arthur has been written and re-interpreted so many times and the source texts are so old as to be from another culture with which I have limited baggage, while Jon Snow is defined solely by one individual. I just think GRRM would have been better served if he hadn’t written Jon’s special goodness so heavy-handedly.

nottron replied to your post “Can someone explain to me why I love Steve Rogers but not Jon Snow?”

better writing, ascent to greatness feels earned and not accidental?

Well I must admit, a serum helped Steve along, I’m not sure how “earned” that is. But then again, Steve chose it, it wasn’t something forced upon him reluctantly. Reluctantly Awesome Jon is possibly my least favorite Jon.

And on first thought, it’s hard for me to assess writing since both the Marvel comics and the MCU movies have been written by a few different folks and we have medium differences and so forth. But whatever else, within the context of ASOIAF, Jon’s goodness feels hopelessly superior to others’. Within the context of MCU, Steve’s goodness feels rare, but not unattainable. To the extent that Jon’s goodness inspires goodness in others, it all feels like a way to further aggrandize Jon Snow. Whereas with Steve Rogers, his goodness is -- shared? within all of us? perhaps lying dormant but still belonging to everyone?

????!!!?!?!?!??!! Is this bullshit I’m blowing up everyone’s asses or...!?!?!?!??!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??

bidonica replied to your post “Can someone explain to me why I love Steve Rogers but not Jon Snow?”

what the others have said, also in the context of the MCU Chris Evans lends him a particularly endearing charisma imo

It is hard to compete with this:

[onionjulius]

Oooh questions time... How do you feel about the Stark girls' respective storylines at the end of aDwD/start of tWoW? And also do you have any opinions on Young Griff and his party/plot

Oh man, I have yet to finish ADWD XD But I have read spoilers. I’m going to put this under a cut since TWOW is involved.

I think they’re in an interesting enough place, the leaked chapters are definitely showing big jumps in their trajectory. But also, the sexual nature of some of the elements in those leaked chapters is … well I’m waiting to reserve judgment. I don’t know how to feel about that right now though. Obviously, yes, you become a teenager, you’re going through puberty, people in a sexist society will respond to you a certain way. But it also seems like a potential area where the trope is not examined enough. IDK.

Apart from that, I thought it was really conspicuous that they’ve had such few chapters since ASOS. It speaks to a certain lack of endgame, at least at some point in the story’s development. I feel like their chapters have had some really good writing, but I am more than ready for their shows to get on the road. Probably the way a lot of people felt about Dany in, like, ACOK. I also relatedly feel like their fates are more up in the air than the Tyrion/Dany/Jon/Bran lot. Arya was supposed to be in a love triangle with Jon and Tyrion, so now what! Sansa was supposed to be the turncoat or such of the family, so now what! Etc.

The thing is I haven’t really come across any fanon endgames for them that I really like, and for me the biggest thing is to have a certain thematic and character cohesion. So maybe that reflects a kind of latent frustration with their characters too. I feel like their stakes are not defined, other than that they want to go home. So maybe that’s all it’s about, but I dunno … I think so many fanon endgames center around who is ruling what, and I want more than that. Or, like, other than that.

I will give you my opinions about Young Griff as soon as I have them, lol XD I AM TERRIBLE ADWD HAS BEEN OUT FOR YEARS WHAT IS MY PROBLEM.

[onionjulius]

lilyavara replied to your photo “Progress!....?”

Your spreadsheet is so pretty!

rhotten replied to your photo “Progress!....?”

Aaah I love it!! and I love that you threw Grrm in there hahaha

Thank you both! And thanks to everyone who has weighed in on the tarot deck related questions! Everyone is so nice <3

I had Petyr Baelish in as the Wheel of Fortune, but then slotted him over to Two of Pentacles. The former is more about fate/chance, the latter about multi-tasking through multiple objectives. So when I tried to think of a LF-like figure for the WoF, only GRRM sprang to mind, heheheh. Maybe there is something to be said for Bloodraven but I feel that is still far away from being apparent.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

@rhotten replied to your post “do you think Visenya I, killed king Aenys I ?”

Huh... Sounds like he had crohn's disease or something similar?

I doubt it, Aenys’s stomach issues are not mentioned in any other context than after the revolt of the Faith. Although he seems to have been nervous in general, born “weak and sickly”. As a baby he refused to nurse off any woman except his mother. And after Rhaenys died when he was 3, apparently he stopped walking and went back to crawling, and cried all the time and they thought he would die. (Which is when Visenya took the time to conceive Maegor with Aegon.) But after he was given his dragon, he grew stronger. Well, not remotely as strong as Maegor, but there wasn’t much stronger than him.

Anyway, unless he was poisoned (possible but unanswerable as I said), his stomach issues were probably just a physical reaction to extreme psychological stress.

Although there have been other Targaryens born with congenital issues. Like, at least three mentally disabled princesses, Gael, Vaella, and Jaehaera (who may also have been on the autism spectrum); and Jaehaera’s twin Prince Jaehaerys (born with 6 fingers on one hand and 6 toes on each foot). Not to mention all the madness. “Keeping the blood of the dragon pure” through incest has its tradeoffs.

[baratheon]

rhotten replied to your post:I’m so glad Stannis is free seriously I never...

I’m almost glad they ruined him last episode because this episode would have been way too fucking depressing

It’s so obvious they ruined him so Brienne would seem unambiguous in her actions. I’ve never seen a more obvious emotional ploy in my life. There were so many ways to make that better.

At the very least it seemed like a mercy for the character in and out of universe at this point. I think Stannis will die in the books, but will sure as fuck be better written than this.

[fauxkaren]

rhotten replied to your post “Daredevil spoilers under the cut. But I just want to talk about Claire...”

I'm thinking she exited Daredevil because she'll turn up again in Luke Cage's story

I was actually thinking the same thing.

But I didn’t see Rosario Dawson listed on the Luke Cage show’s wiki. But that might just be because they’re not filming it yet..