Do you think Jon’s ever going to see any of the Starklings again? Jon’s destiny lies with being a Targaryen: he’s a product of Rhaegar’s prophecy, he’ll ride a dragon, he’ll romance a fellow Targ. I can’t figure out if seeing the people he once thought his siblings will be part of that turn from Stark to Targaryen, or if his death will serve that role (kill the stark boy and let the Targaryen man be born. Via Fire and blood maybe). Would love to hear your thoughts

There are two points of discussion here: the question about Jon seeing his siblings again, and the comment about Jon’s destiny lying in being a Targaryen. Let me start with the second point.

I vehemently disagree that Jon is taking a turn from Stark to Targaryen or that he’d even want to. There is no triumphant discovery of his Targaryen roots coming, no joyous claim of his “true” name and no embracing of a Targaryen identity. Jon’s entire identity is that of a Stark. Ned is the father Jon loves, idealizes and actively tries to live up to. The Starklings are the siblings he grew up with and loves. Winterfell is the only home he ever knew. To find out that Ned isn’t biologically his father isn’t going to come with any sense of validation or purpose or joy in his Targaryen heritage; it’s gonna come with a deep feeling of devastation that the man he loved so much lied to him for years.
What matters most about the parentage reveal isn’t that Rhaegar Targaryen is Jon’s bio father, it’s that Ned Stark isn’t. This gonna be devastating because Jon loved Ned so much and looked up to him so much. In Jon’s own words:

Lord Eddard Stark is my father. I will not forget him, no matter how many (shiny mystical dragons) swords they give me.

That’s a part of the resolution to Jon’s struggle after the reveal; the realization that this statement still holds true regardless of biology. Ned is the only parent Jon ever knew and the fact that he didn’t sire Jon doesn’t make him any less his father. The truth does not change or take away from Arya being the little sister Jon misses dearly and longs to see. It does not change how Robb was his constant companion and best friend. It does not take away from the love he feels for Bran and Rickon and Sansa. These bonds of affection are still as genuine and as significant as they ever were, even with the parentage reveal. So Jon is going to see his siblings again but it’s not going to be a meeting that enforces a split between him and the rest of the Starks, but rather one that reaffirms what they are to him: his siblings.

In terms of Jon’s destiny and how it relates to his heritage, it’s not like finding out that he was conceived for a prophecy is gonna
be a joyful discovery for Jon, neither is the realization of how many
people – including his grandfather, uncle, and mother – paid the price
so that Rhaegar could acquire a prophecy child.
That’s the make of an existential crisis, not a prelude to Jon turning
away from his Stark identity and embracing a Targaryen one as the prerequisite of being a savior. Which is why another part of the resolution in Jon’s story lies in the concept of destiny not being dependent on blood or heritage. Jon might have a great deal of magical affinity due to his blood, but his destiny does not lie in him being a Targaryen. Jon did not need to be a super special Targ to set his mind to fighting the Others, he did not need a prophecy to point him to the real fight or to make him do his damndest to save lives. He was already doing that on his own. Jon isn’t fighting because Rhaegar had him for a prophecy, he is fighting because Ned raised him to be a man who fights for life. He is fighting because that’s the right thing to do. Not only that but I’m really resistant to any theory that builds on the idea that some sort of special blood is a requirement for saviordom.
Viserys and Rhaegar had the same blood as Dany, but there is a reason they aren’t heroes and she is.

Tyrion doesn’t have a drop of dragon blood (please don’t mention the Tyrion Targ theory, that’s bullcrap), but he is still going to be both a dragonrider and one of the saviors of Westeros. Dragonriding isn’t even something that’s exclusive to the Targaryens in the first place. The moral here is that you don’t have to have super special blood (or name) to be a hero, and having super special blood isn’t enough to make you one. ASOIAF is a series that strongly advocates the importance of our choices and how they shape who we are, not what our parentage makes us to be.
That’s the whole point.

If you’re interested, I’ve talked more extensively about the effect of the parentage discovery on Jon, how it connects to his role in the War for the Dawn, and the different roles Ned and Rhaegar play in regards to his destiny
here and here. Hope that helps!


http://moonlitgleek.tumblr.com/post/172795243390/audio_player_iframe/moonlitgleek/tumblr_p6xl42Oftu1wcyxsb?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fia601509.us.archive.org%2F23%2Fitems%2Fdfghjy4565%2F178_ADTV_WCP%25201.mp3

acsversace-news:

Previewing the 2018 Limited Series Emmy Races – Awards Daily TV’s Water Cooler Podcast

The Cooler Gang wraps their preview of this year’s Emmy race with a look at the series in contention for the 2018 Limited Series Emmy categories. | 9 April 2018

iTunes

Aren’t you leaning a little hard (albeit consistently through this blog) on the technical legal determination of responsible age? It’s not like you flip a maturity switch at18. As specifically pertains to Lyanna, by puberty anyone should know that sleeping with a married person is flat-out wrong. Playing with swords & horses is less cute if it’s at the apparent cost of learning the political ramifications of royal marriages & liklihood of warfare. Her feelings can be excused, not acting on them

turtle-paced:

Wait, hang on a tic. Are you seriously arguing that it was on fourteen/fifteen-year-old Lyanna to a) understand the emotional implications and interpersonal power balances of a sexual relationship with someone not one, not two, nor even five, but nine years her senior, more than half as old again as she was, b) understand in full the legal and political implications of eloping with a married man and breaking her own betrothal in a charged and unstable political situation involving a king of questionable mental stability and a powerful bloc of nobles, without the aid of so much as a national newspaper, and c) police the marriage vows of a grown man possessed of a great deal more power and influence than her?

Those laws I keep referring to? One of the reasons I think they’re good is because they recognise that teenagers can consent – to each other. The age range where consent is possible is narrowest for young teens and more flexible for 16-17 year olds. They’re not there to stop teenagers having sex (because you’re right, there’s no “maturity switch,” but drawing a line is still necessary), they’re there to stop the experienced from preying on the inexperienced. And predation is what we’d call a twenty-three-year-old married man persuading an inexperienced, romantic fourteen-year-old to leave her home and family without consultation beyond maybe her kid brother and travel thousands of kilometres away with only him and his friends for company, completely and totally in their power, and impregnating her at the ripe old age of fifteen. That’s before we get into the issue where he’s the crown prince and what little power Lyanna has comes from her father – the very father that eloping with Rhaegar meant Lyanna could no longer appeal to for help.

Also, anon, if Lyanna was so immature that she didn’t understand the ramifications of leaving with Rhaegar, being too absorbed in her swords and horses to learn those lessons, she wasn’t mature enough to consent to him.

shiphitsthefan:

bettsfic:

smarsupial:

dorkilybeautiful:

k-vichan:

mittensmorgul:

prairiedust:

hazeldomain:

prairiedust:

hazeldomain:

whitmerule:

soupernabturel:

majesticduxk:

So last week I tried moaning every time I ate something delicious.

It was vaguely uncomfortable and unnatural

I actually love the idea of doing this trying out fanfic/literary cliche’s out in real life, kinda wanna make up a list and undertake it as a challenge.

don’t forget to make your butthole flutter today

Guess someone’s eye color from 20 feet away.

Be careful with these. I started reading fanfiction three years ago and now I have to toe my shoes off to get my feet out.

But do you pad across rooms? 

Yes but I often give away my position when I huff.

FYI, I’m smirking at all y’all.

I’m resisting the urge to card my fingers through everybody’s hair.

This is as good a time as any to admit that right now I smell like coffee, sandalwood soap, and something uniquely myself.

I hate this post so much I clenched my fists and looked away, muscles bunching in my jaw. 

i’m so glad to see i’m not alone, i let out a breath i didn’t know i was holding

one two three four, i declare a tongue war with anyone who stares longingly into my orbs

Are you going to watch 3rd season of quantico. Did you like 2nd season?

Yep! Season 2 was a mixed bag for me. They overcomplicated the plot of the first half and ended up chasing their tails and losing control of the plot towards the mid season hiatus. They made a ton of leaps without building them up properly and I ended up bloody confused and just wishing for the damn thing to end already. However, the season sprung back in the second half which I think featured a tighter storyline and showed the writing is far better when it’s self-contained and not focused on finding a shocking revelation to bookend each episode. I enjoyed the team dynamics and found the plot far more engaging than another generic “there’s a bad guy among us. Let’s investigate!”. There were things I could have done without (the Shelby-Clay thing) and things I’m still not sure what I feel about (the twins’ storyline) but it was still pretty good.

Has The Assassination of Gianni Versace been a disappointment?

acsversace-news:

Judged on chatter alone, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is an immense disappointment. Ratings have been down. Reviews have been mixed. It hasn’t reached the mainstream crossover event-TV status of its predecessor The People Vs OJ Simpson. People have been infuriated that – spoiler alert – in an entire series of television called The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Gianni Versace gets assassinated in the very first scene of the very first episode. Things are looking bad. Not quite True Detective 2 bad, but the consensus is that this did not go the way it should have.

In short, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story needs a defender. Reader, I am that defender. Because the chatter is nonsense. This is an astonishing, bold piece of television. By some distance, it’s the best of the year so far.

Of course it suffers by comparison. The People Vs OJ Simpson was a shameless crowd-pleaser. It was a retelling of The Trial of The Century, a murder case dripping with fame and sex and violence. Every character was a celebrity – many were Kardashians – and every role seemed to be filled by a down-on-their-luck megastar determined to chew every last piece of scenery available as aggressively as possible. Travolta, Schwimmer, Gooding Jr; all going goon-eyed hell-for-leather bananas in every single scene. It was precision-designed to draw eyeballs.

But that’s not what The Assassination of Gianni Versace is. This is a vastly different beast, and its weakest moments come when it overtly tries to ape the Simpson series. The scenes that actually feature the Versace family – played by Édgar Ramírez, Penélope Cruz and Ricky Martin – are ever so slightly too broad, even without the cognitive dissonance that comes from hearing a Venezuelan, a Spaniard and a Puerto Rican all loosely attempting to hit a convincing Italian accent.

Their scenes are rendered even flabbier by the fact that they butt up against a bone-tight horrorshow. Because The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t really about Gianni Versace. It’s about his killer, Andrew Cunanan, and the gut-churning tilt-a-whirl of his mid-90s murder spree.

The show’s entire mid-section barely features Versace at all, and it counts among some of the most gripping television in recent memory. Tracking back through Cunanan’s murders, episodes blast through genres with a breathtakingly confident swagger. The murder of Lee Miglin is shot and paced like a horror movie, full of lurching unease and escalating dread. David Madson’s death is a claustrophobic thriller that feels tragically inevitable right from the very first frame. And the episode about Jeff Trail’s murder is just a thing of towering majesty. It manages to simultaneously move the story along, draw a graceful one-off character arc and dish out the most stingingly furious rebuke to the US military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy I have ever seen. It was stunning and heartbreaking, and if there’s a better episode of television broadcast this year, I will be genuinely staggered.

Holding all these disparate tones together is a mesmerising central performance by Darren Criss. A former Glee star in danger of being lost to the world of cartoon voiceovers, Criss is horrifyingly convincing as Cunanan. He’s needy and manipulative and utterly empty; a blank that slowly draws you in to your doom. I’m watching the series at BBC pace, so I don’t know whether or not the wheels will fall off in the weeks to come, but for now it has the look of a star-making performance. Criss deserves to be huge because of this role. He cannot win enough awards for it.

American Crime Story’s producers Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson have previously said that their show exists to tell stories that say something “bigger and deeper and more disturbing about America”. So far, that’s exactly what The Assassination of Gianni Versace has been. It’s dark and complex and tragic, and it deserves a much better reception than the one it received. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out on something special.

Has The Assassination of Gianni Versace been a disappointment?

Hello! Do you consider Mellario to be part of the DLC?

blenderbender1811:

joannalannister:

blenderbender1811:

The Castaway Women make me so so bitter. Especially, as you all probably expect, Alannys Harlaw, but also the others.

Because @joannalannister  is RIGHT. We should have more information about them.

Alannys is the mother of two point of view characters and was the goodsister of two more for decades. They have nothing to say about her, even in memories. Where did she stand on the culture war? Does her family have a history of breakdowns when dealing with grief? What were her relationships like with her children before the Rebellion? What was her and Balon’s relationship like? What does she think of her intellectual brother? Did her breakdown happen right away or did it hit belatedly? Was it a process? How did she reconcile raising Asha to be bold with her duty to teach her to be a lady? Was she devout to the Drowned God? Would she be proud to see Asha as a captain or think this was a bit too far? Did she ever try to protect Theon from his brothers? Did she ever have a tense relationship with Euron like Balon did?

Lynesse is Margaery’s aunt and the daughter of the lord of Oldtown. Okay, I get it. We know the Mormonts. We know Jorah. They lived with her. None of these people are point of view characters, but they are important secondary ones (except the Mormonts who are more like minor secondary characters). Why can’t they talk about her? Did she try to make the best of Bear Island even while she didn’t enjoy it? Did she appreciate Jorah trying to make her happy? Was she ever particularly interested in Jorah? What did she think of the Mormont women? If she wasn’t capable of fighting, what did she do? Was Jorah selling slaves her deal breaker? How did she meet this lord she’s with now? Does she know her nieces and nephews? Has she heard from her family since she went north with Jorah? Did she ever really love Jorah at all or did he just think she did? How much did she know about the situation? Does she have children now?

Mellario is just as straight up inexcusable as Alannys is. We have Arianne and Quentyn as point of view characters and Westeros’ interactions with Dorne are IMPORTANT. Did she and Elia get along? How did she react to the Rebellion? How involved was she in Arianne’s education given that this was a Westerosi system she was unfamiliar with? What did she think raising her children would be like? Did she mentor Arianne? What did she think of the Sand Snakes and Oberyn and Ellaria? Did she ever have friends in Westeros? How did she feel about Areo staying with Doran? Has she ever returned to Westeros to visit her children? Did she have a history of mental illness or possible self harm? Did she and Doran ever try to reconcile? At this point I will settle for Arianne recalling stories or songs from her. ANYTHING.

I’m sure there’s more of the Castaway Women, but these three are bad enough.

Thank you, @blenderbender1811! You bring up really great questions, and at least some of them are questions that I feel like we should have answers to in the text, because our POV characters would have memories of various things here, but we don’t. To answer the question you sent me,

joannalannister:

Hi! I’m going to take a rather circuitous route to answer your question, but I promise we’ll get there in the end!

First, for anyone who doesn’t know, the Dead Ladies Club (DLC) is a term I made up to criticize a very specific type of misogynistic writing in ASOIAF that involves the conspicuous and unjustified denial of humanity of various female characters who died during the generation or two prior to the beginning of the story. It’s not something I think GRRM is doing maliciously, but, to give one of my favorite quotes from @cosmonauthill, “Casual misogyny is still misogyny.” 

This is my tag for it: #the dead ladies club

In addition to the DLC, there’s another group of background female characters in ASOIAF who aren’t, well, dead, but who are imo shafted by the narrative’s casually misogynistic writing. I’ve been thinking of these women as the Castaway Women.*** 

Like castaways on a deserted island, these women are “far away – not just physically far away, […] but psychologically far away, not in the present picture, a woman whose place (if she still has one) is very much not wherever she is being discussed,” to quote my friend @goodqueenaly. These women are background female characters who are still alive, but they are distant, rejected, discarded, isolated and left out of the main narrative. They’re often written rather two-dimensionally by GRRM, when they shouldn’t be two dimensional. 

***In the past, I conflated these two groups and sometimes included this second group of “Castaway Women” as “honorary” members of the DLC, even though they’re not dead, but I personally don’t want to do that anymore. Using the “Dead Ladies Club” as an umbrella term to include background female characters who aren’t dead caused confusion, and it created a loophole for misogynists in fandom to attack my criticisms of GRRM’s Sacred Text, and I think it was counterproductive to the specific things I was trying to criticize with the DLC. So I think it was a mistake on my part to conflate these two groups, and I now try to think of these two groups as distinct. (If other people don’t want to make this distinction, though, it doesn’t bother me; I’m not the fandom police.) 

The Castaway Women are women like Lynesse Hightower and Alannys Harlaw.

Keep reading

Who would you consider Castaway women? Are there more than Alannys, Lynesse and Mellario?

I can’t think of any others off the top of my head, but I would be happy to hear what other people think!

I will never not be hugely bitter about the lack of information we have about Alannys Harlaw. FOUR POINTS OF VIEW IN HER FAMILY. F O U R. Not to mention three for Mellario. There’s just no excuse for this. 

I can almost (ALMOST) understand Lynesse because her family aren’t POV characters, but come on. Alannys and Mellario are the mothers of four POVs between them. I get Theon is a tool who doesn’t like to think of his family, but Asha cares about her mother. She saw her mom’s breakdown. Arianne was FOURTEEN when her mother left – we are not dealing with a little girl here. Asha was THIRTEEN during the Rebellion and SEVEN when the Targaryens fell – there is no good reason neither of them think about their mothers reactions to the events that shaped their houses. Heck, even if Asha wouldn’t have understood the politics that went on when Balon ascended to Pyke and rescinded most of his father’s reforms, Aeron and Victarion were surely present (more so Victarion than Aeron, who would have only been like 11 when Balon inherited). Why can’t they remember what Alannys said? Or Areo for Mellario and conversations her children wouldn’t have been privy to?

MULTIPLE POVS. THEIR CHILDREN AND ADULTS. WHY DOES NOBODY REMEMBER THEM? 

And no, ‘it’s not plot relevant’ does not cut it for me. If we have time to watch a zillion sex scenes, we have time for them to think about their mothers for more than a line or two. 

I can’t think of more off my head, but just these three are enough. I’m sure I’ll write more headcanon/meta about Alannys at some point because I find her endlessly fascinating, but George RR Martin’s characters should be thinking about them too.