im clear headed billy

Day 2: Family

When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.

Day 4: House Stark

Arya, the lone wolf, still lived, but the wolves of the pack had been taken and slain and skinned.

House stark!

the way bran and sansa are kind of like contrasting mirrors, if that makes sense. they are both of gentle nature, they both grew up idealizing knighthood until that idealization turned on them, they both love stories and like to make sense of their world through them, they both suffered an impairment (bran losing his ability to walk; sansa losing her direwolf which was part of her soul and it rendered her to be the only starkling unable to skin-change so far), they are both heavily associated with birds, they are both currently being tutored/groomed by scheming men who have experience in controlling westeros from the shadows. but at the same time they stand in absolute contrast when it comes to their relation to magic, sansa's loss of her wolf left her without her sixth sense, grounded within physical reality, whilst bran became all the more elevated, all the more connected with the magical elements of the north. their association with birds differs in that for bran birds mean his learning to fly, while for sansa birds are an assessment of her being caged. they are full-blooded siblings and yet they are both the second child because sansa was born second but bran is second in the inheritance line on account of being male, and yet they would both be the unwanted heirs because sansa is a woman and bran is disabled. they would have to live under the great shadow of their older brother gone-tragically-too-soon that was everything westeros expected from a lord, and sansa and bran can never hope to match his 'greatness'. bran and sansa are the very definition of 'same, but different'.

starklings (sans rickon)

It fucks that there are so many characters that are an antithesis to one of The Seven while still embodying their traits and technically representing them. Cersei is the Mother in that she only has love for her own children, but no mercy or any sense of nurturing. Tywin represents the Father’s protection, his justice, but that justice is always unfair, and serves only him, not even his own children. I have a Rolodex of all the knights that warp the values of the Warrior. Jamie and Arthur have to break one vow to stay true to another. Sandor is vile and cruel and dishonorable, but still protective of the innocent. Tyrion does his best to mend the broken city and protect its people like the Smith would do, but is also actively destabilizing things and fucking shit up for his own personal gain. Margaery had managed to maintain being the idea of the Maiden while being married three times, and hiding her plotting under the guise of innocence and virtue. Bran is a young Crone, his wisdom and foresight forced upon him instead of being obtained naturally through age. And Arya is a wanderer with no identity, a killer who takes life at random. But unlike the Stranger, Arya is still Arya, no matter how she tries to hide herself. She is a scared girl with a bias, not killing unthinkingly but rather in order to enact her revenge and seek justice, the opposite of what Death would do. Anyways these kinds of foils absolutely fuck