hauntology 101 as taught by lyanna stark

30s, they/them; follows from @spectrumcore

[thelaughingtree]

early 30s | they/them | follows from @spectrumcore

doomed narrative enjoyer. faves include lyanna stark, jon snow, catelyn stark, the lannisters, stannis baratheon, the wall & beyond, dunk & egg, anything summerhall, and a handful of extra tragic miscellanous targs.

i write (slowly). some of my writing:

The Horn of Winter - Ned Stark & Jon Snow, Ongoing, 65k. AU: Ned Stark is spared execution and sent to the Wall. Haunted by his own ghosts, struggles to face the truth of the Long Night as much as he does his son, Jon Snow.

The Cave - Jon Snow/Satin of Oldtown, 4k. Horror, Gothic Romance. Satin finds his Lord Commander returned from the dead more wolf than man, to his wonder and his terror.

what a drowning man needs - Mance Rayder/Qhorin Halfhand, 2.5k. Bitter(sweet) reflection on romance, a little morbid, a little gothic, a little wild.

in which Jocasta devours the last light of the sun - Lyanna Stark & Jon Snow, 4k. Horror. Cannibalism. Other!Lyanna meets Jon Snow at Harrenhal and struggles to account for why his face is so familiar.

Would the darkness stay longer - Aegon V/Betha Blackwood, 1k. Under the cover of darkness, he mumbles softly into her shoulder, but what if we were Lord and Lady of Raventree Hall?

Shaera Targaryen's Thirteenth Nameday - Duncan Targaryen & Daella Targaryen. 700 words. A few months before marriage, Prince Duncan strays from his castle to pick flowers for his sister and watch his aunt unpick the embroidery from a marriage cloak.

[shebsart]

king of flames

[flapjacku]

Experimenting with Sansa and Arya’s winterfell designs 🌞

[elenyaart]

Margaery & Sansa are personal to me 🤍

(For this one I heavily referenced Maria Pascual Alberich, a Spanish illustrator whose colorful, whimsical style has captivated me for the longest!)

[mercyalayne]

Cat of the canals and her cats ♥︎

✎ kofi request from @hxjiime-art

[its-a-seikret]

Tbh I don't understand anyone who denies their favorite character's flaws and acts like they've never done anything wrong when that is like consistently the most interesting part of any character ever

[halidki]

Nettles

[thelaughingtree]

really surprised i haven't seen more people make something of how Jon has already made the decision whether to kill/not kill a girl behind enemy lines (Ygritte) as potential Azor Ahai subversion foreshadowing r.e. Jon and Dany.

[foudreika]

Jace sketches!!

[thelaughingtree]

14, 27 and/or 28 <3

14. Who are you bringing back from the dead with the power of R’hllor?

Dalla. All hail the wildling queen.

27. Favourite canon ship

Jon/Ygritte, without a doubt. That relationship is transformative for the both of them. Jon's choice to spare her was the reason Jon was not killed in the wildling camps, and that choice was fundamental for the two of them to form a bond. Jon learns the most about the free folk and free folk cultures from her, has the prevailing Northern narratives challenged by her, and is able to gain a glimpse into into a world where 'bastard' does not exist as a concept through her. Jon/Ygritte is key to Jon's own struggles with his sexuality and his overriding shame at his own existence for being a bastard, and Ygritte is key to Jon beginning to forgive himself for that. My own reading of Jon/Ygritte is as a conflict between Jon's desires and his moral codes, but rather than holding himself to impossible moral standards that are simply unfair and largely are punitive, Jon puts aside those moral concerns to actually pursue something he wants for once in his life - something I do think is a good development for him, but I think also introduces this question of when we should/shouldn't break vows, and is the beginning of a theme we also explore in Jaime's narrative as well in ASOS. I also think Jon turning on Ygritte was such an exciting sequence, and her eventual death... absolutely relentless section of chapters, honestly. But more than this, I actually think the way Ygritte haunts Jon in ADWD makes her death actually carry more weight, rather than it being 'disposing of the first love interest'? She's an emotional and ideological anchor for Jon even while he's putting on his "Lord's face" as the Lord Commander and acting as if he's impenetrable as ice.

28. If you write fic, is there a ship or AU you would like to write for, but haven’t yet?

In general, I'd like to write more women! I was largely known as a mostly-yuri writer in other fandoms; my ASOIAF writing has strayed from that a... lot, lmao, but I just don't think there's enough women interacting with each other romantically that capture my imagination. Anyway, there's some historic characters I'd like to tackle.

For instance. You have no idea how much I'd love to write about Egg's failkids more. Particularly his daughters. I wrote a very short piece with Duncan, but I'd also love to write a tragic piece about Shaera (who I like to imagine as a bit batshit, as well as groomed tragically) who refuses to recognise she's in too deep, or explore Rhaelle's rigidity, bitterness, and devotion to her father. That generation was the bridge from Dunk & Egg's optimism to the Mad King era and is the reason many of the pieces are set up the way they are.

I've also been spinning a Nettles/show!Rhaena fic but I'm certainly not the first person who's thought to fix it with tense class-difference yuri. (You know I love class differences and gay shipping, it's the reason I like Jon/Satin in the first place).

I also would like to write about Daenora/Aerion's failmarriage from Daenora's perspective, but Daenora Targaryen is essentially a canon OC that I've given a weird personality because she was free real estate. I think most Aerion x wife!reader types would loathe her because she's a talkative little philosopher and aesthete who was trained by her ambitious Arryn uncles to be Aerys I's heir, but ended up becoming a gothic heroine instead... wanted to explore a character who is atypical for the gothic genre ending up in that position. More horror than romance, trust me, Aerion is quite the monster.

The other thing that I'm really dearly attached to is my own versions of Rhaenys and Aegon (Elia's children) in an AU where Aegon is brought up in Dorne/the Citadel and Rhaenys brought up in Winterfell/King's Landing. I like carving a place in canon to invent my own characterisation and these two are blank states and I was interested in making an gay, disabled Aegon and a really mean, self-loathing, tragic Rhaenys. I think their relationship with Oberyn, Doran would be interesting in particular - this, IMO, is underexplored, as well as how the two would interact with the Sand Snakes, Arianne, or Quentyn. I'm more interested in Aegon & Rhaenys qua Dorne and their relationship with their own Dornishness than most people, I think, and Dorne's contentious relationship with the Targaryens and the rest of Westeros.

Send me an ASOIAF themed ask

[kada-kade]

[thelaughingtree]

18, 25, 33

I shall have a go at two of these, I'm notoriously bad at fancasting people.

18. A mystery you need solved NOW

How does dragon riding work in this universe? Was Valyrian blood magic a part of it, and to what extent? Is there a spell or a ritual that allows a chosen rider to then dominate it? Or was it more like standard animal husbandry and developing a trusting relationship? Is there a psychic bond involved? What was really going on there?

25. A crackship?

love the uncertain question mark in this question. ANYWAY I had a think and the award absolutely goes to my fail marriage supreme Arianne/Viserys III. She's feeding his delusions of grandeur and they're playing weird psychosexual games while cheating on each other and Arianne's having her cousin poison his wine while denying anything and I'm here for her every second of the way. I do just like Doran's plan playing out and it turns out it is a total fucking mess :)

Send me an ASOIAF themed ask

[notanotherbloodwizard]

The thing most people who read asoiaf don't understand is that it's about how love will save the world. Once you understand this the entire series will become clear.

[thelaughingtree]

17 pls!

17. Favorite theme

Perhaps surprisingly, my favourite theme in ASOIAF is the construction of the past. So much of ASOIAF functions in response to Robert's Rebellion and a historic period of war and strife where this magical dynasty - the Targaryens - was toppled. Narratives have been constructed, often false with a kernel of truth, often exaggerated, often overly romantic - about history-defining events that exaggerate some characters and minimise others. These define older characters in fascinating ways. We see some characters cling to nostalgia to the point of destruction (Robert, Jorah, Cersei to a degree), others prioritise the past injustice over living for those in the present (Oberyn) and others completely refuse to reckon with their past (Ned). We see how some characters, such as Rhaegar and Lyanna, are remembered and misremembered and through the multi PoV structure we get a sense of how false narratives are constructed and perpetuated, especially comparing Daenerys' understanding of the Targaryen regime to the understanding of characters in Westeros, or through comparing Robert's recollections with Ned's or the stories Jojen and Meera tell. We also learn a lot about forgotten narratives and lost history particularly in the North. Both Jon and Bran's PoV provide different aspects of this: in Jon, we get the missing narrative through wildlife folktales and oral history, the song of the last giants, Bael the Bard. In Bran, we get Old Nan's stories, the storytelling and mythweaving that goes far back about the ancient Starks, the Night's King & Queen, as well as the Knight of the Laughing Tree herself, and we begin to see how this may get further unravelled as Bran begins to use Weirwoods to look back into the past and retroactively alter it - here we have a character directly interfacing with history and seeing with his own eyes how narrative differ from events. In other PoVs we see histories constructed in real time, especially with Arya and Sansa, with the false Arya (Jeyne Poole) being a victim that the North tries to rally around while Sansa Stark is falsely depicted as a femme fatale for her perceived involvement with Joffrey's death, Lysa's death, and LF's fall - or at least, that's where I imagine those stories are going. In any case, I think it has such a good understanding of both how history is constructed and also why it is important to study history and reflect on it, as these narratives which are often false/biased become cornerstones of propaganda and help prop up, ideologically, certain movements which thus have an impact - Daenerys sees herself as the Blood of the Dragon as a way of empowering herself, Robb and the North construct the North as being consistently failed and misunderstood by the past, etc.

Anyway I do think it's fascinating particularly in how it treats women and particularly in how this theme interacts with the patriarchal society we have set up.

Send me an ASOIAF themed ask

[thelaughingtree]

10 & 21

10. A quote so good it makes you crazy

&

21. A moment that made you cry

At the water’s edge she stopped, the silver fork in hand. It was real silver, solid through and through. It’s not my fork. It was Salty that he gave it to. She tossed it underhand, heard the soft plop as it sank below the water. Her floppy hat went next, then the gloves. They were Salty’s too. She emptied her pouch into her palm; five silver stags, nine copper stars, some pennies and halfpennies and groats. She scattered them across the water. Next her boots. They made the loudest splashes. Her dagger followed, the one she’d gotten off the archer who had begged the Hound for mercy. Her swordbelt went into the canal. Her cloak, tunic, breeches, smallclothes, all of it. All but Needle.

She stood on the end of the dock, pale and goosefleshed and shivering in the fog. In her hand, Needle seemed to whisper to her. Stick them with the pointy end, it said, and, don’t tell Sansa! Mikken’s mark was on the blade. It’s just a sword. If she needed a sword, there were a hundred under the temple. Needle was too small to be a proper sword, it was hardly more than a toy. She’d been a stupid little girl when Jon had it made for her. “It’s just a sword,” she said, aloud this time... ...but it wasn’t. Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell’s grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan’s stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow’s smile. He used to mess my hair and call me “little sister,” she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

Send me an ASOIAF themed ask

[thelaughingtree]

39 :D

39. Your Drunk History topic (a character/theory/event/etc)

Haunting the Narrative 101 by Lyanna Stark

Where do whores go? Depictions of sex workers in ASOIAF: gender, class, & violence

Homosociality, violence, and why the Wall should be queer(er) - A comparative reading alongside Torrey Peters' Stag Dance

Send me an ASOIAF themed ask

[thelaughingtree]

giving u a handful of options here but 6, 30, 35 and 39 for the asoiaf ask game

Thank you <3 gonna look at two of these questions:

30. A POV character you wish wasn’t

This is an easy entry for Arys Oakheart. Really didn't need that sex scene lmao, and I think it's a real shame that he provides some of the introduction to Arianne as a character.

35. A character you just don’t get the hype of

This is probably Ashara Dayne. I'm surprised more people don't actually comment on how the in-universe narrative surrounding her is a such misogynistic construct - a beautiful and mysterious woman, who is impregnated by a man at Harrenhal, abandoned by him, and in so much sorrow she commits suicide after her child's death. In this prevailing narrative, her agency is nullified and she is a character who entirely revolves around the actions of a man. IMO, there's a great chance that this in-universe narrative will later be debunked - but what I find really frustrating is how little of the discussion about her is about misogyny and patriarchal standards and how much of it is obsessing over her beauty and fully buying into the allure of 'mysterious dead woman' rather than looking at it more questionably as a trope.

ASOIAF themed asks