GreenHikingBoots

Do u think Rhaegar and Lyanna had a secret wedding?

Not in the sense of the stories of Jace and Sara, or Jenny and Duncan.

The kind of precedent I see for any potential wedding between Lyanna and Rhaegar is more in the following:

As in, it wasn't a freely made mutual pledge for love (the way the show suggested) but a ceremony under duress with select witnesses for the purpose of (a questionable) legal legitimacy for any resulting offspring.

I am undecided about it.

Pro:

Con:

Basically, for me it's a toss-up if there was a wedding that has remained secret, but I feel a great need to emphasize that theirs is not a love story and if there was a wedding it wasn't for love and it wasn't voluntary. Not with the way Lyanna's character has been presented to us in the books.

What do you think about Ygritte speech to Jon about why Wildlings are justified in stealing?

As much as I’m sympathetic to common people rising up against the rich who privatize things these people need to survive (food, water, shelter, medicine), Jon’s response is pretty much accurate: The wildling raiders aren’t stealing fish and apples, but iron weapons, luxury items to trade with smugglers (for weapons), and kidnap women to sexually and domestically exploit. They don’t have the manpower to take their fight directly to the lords, so instead they steal from the common people they deride as “kneelers”, burning their villages and killing the inhabitants (at Queenscrown and Mole’s Town). And they know these people aren’t harming them directly and often have the bare minimum to survive in the North, but the raiders feel entitled to it because they took it by force. The Iron Islanders’ way of the Iron Price has a similar philosophy, and it has also brought its people suffering because it’s ultimately unsustainable; a society that can only take from others has no way to grow, can’t forge alliances during hard times, and is liable to suffer once the people who do have enough manpower to defeat them come to fight.

I made a point in another post that not all wildlings go on raids, and some farm/garden, breed animals, mine, trade, and even bake or smith. Ÿgritte herself comes from a village, which judging by the other wildling villages we’ve seen (Whitetree), means a collection of timber houses, a well, some gardens, and a sheepfold. So the idea that the raiding way is the only one she knows seems doubtful, but settled village life isn’t romanticized in her culture. But tending apple trees and fishing takes patience, which she doesn’t have.

lol i can’t even defend grrm when ppl call him a pervert bc of the way he describes sansa’s body 💀 no 12yo should be “curvy”

On a purely technical note, as a member of a family of so-called "early bloomers" who was judged years older for basically the entirety of my teens, I beg to differ. There are plenty of 12-year-olds with various curves and plenty of adults who objectify them with almost no regard for their age.

Sansa also actually isn't described as curvy at any point. People just point out a lot that she has breasts at all. And yes, it's gross and contrived in plenty of scenes, but it's not JUST arbitrary perversion.

It's not some omniscient neutral entity describing her body. It's the Hound, pointing out she looks older than her age and slipping into his "song = rape" metaphor. It's Tyrion, pointing out the sexualised nature of her abuse by Joffrey (not that it will stop him later). It's Sansa noticing that grown men leer at her. It's a woman sewing a secret wedding dress for a child at Cersei's behest. It's creepy harrassment by adult men who think a bastard girl is fair game. It's Myranda Royce trying to make Sansa uncomfortable with disorienting switches between bawdy jokes to blur boundaries and subtle interrogation.

I'm not saying GRRM's treatment of women's and girls' bodies is not flawed. It is. It really is. But it's much more notable in characters of color where these descriptions may be part of a racist POV (Arys, Cersei) but they are still overt and contrived and unnecessary because they go far beyond merely making any kind of point.

With Sansa, usually, it is supposed to make you uncomfortable.

(I realize that at the same time it's also probably GRRM trying to prepare the reader for a teen pregnancy storyline he can't skip because it's plot relevant and he fumbled the passage of time. It's flawed. But it's not JUST arbitrary perversion.)

What do you think about Jon and Dany having sex thus supporting one eye Jon since it reminds us of Oedipus who also took his own eye as punishment of accidental incest?

I sincerely don't see GRRM aiming for an Incest Angst Inflation. Sister incest! Accidental Aunt incest! Who's next? Undead!Benjen? His brother Aegon? Is no one safe from this guy and his tough luck of always craving the sweet agony of incest?

I can't find the post right now, but I have speculated on this in the past, and themes from the myth of Oedipus tend to be present but not literal.

Ultimately, Jon marries into his mother's family (pseudo incest, cousin marriage) and rejects his father's prophecy-riddled line (metaphorical patricide) when a big riddle (the sphinx is the riddle, not the riddler -> RLJ) is revealed. Which is a very vague adaptation of the myth, with a twist. Jon's secret parentage is not an accidental incest trap. It's the key that removes the barrier of sibling incest. "Would you bed your sister?" -> "Longspear is not your brother."

The accidental incest aspect is something many people jump to when it comes to hidden parentage, and if Jonsa wasn't in the picture, the theory would be more probable, but since it is, I don't see how GRRM could do both pairings without devolving into painfully contrived soap opera drama levels.

How does the fact that Jonsa is widely considered a crackship and vehemently disliked by the majority of fandom (including fellow Sansa fans) affect Jonsa shippers? It’s a genuine question. Because I think Jonsas make a few points but when fandom is so overwhelmingly united either in favor of or against something, I do believe there’s reason for that

I wasn't around back when the Huge Backlash against jonsa shippers became a thing, so I can't speak authentically about the experience.

It's mostly the abject absurdity of how vehemently dismissive and insulting "enemies" of the theory of jonsa (not merely the ship) treated jonsas, though, that I see remembered and reflected in this corner of the fandom.

Simple disagreement isn't the issue. The abject hate is. Though the refusal to even consider a number of the theories on their actual merit within the fandom is pretty ridiculous. The hints jonsas consider credible follow the same pattern of foreshadowing as, say, RLJ, but somehow very few people doubt that theory. Or get rape threats over it. So the effect is mostly that there's less interactions with hostile factions of the fandom?

Which is sad for them because jonsas have a lot to offer.

In spite of how united the fandom is in dismissing Jonsa theories, they were mostly proven right by the show. Villain Dany? Sansa as an important character in a final leadership position? Girl in Grey? Sansa being instrumental in regaining Winterfell? Sansa and Jon forming a close bond? Sansa reconciling with Arya and forming a strong team? Northern independence?

It's disingenuious to claim Jonsas have no business making predictions because they must be wrong, because they are supposedly incapable of correctly interpreting the hints in the text or in the show. They were not. They were usually right. That's what convinced me of the theory. The evidence.

They weren't even wrong about Jonsa being an option in the show, considering the numerous intentional visual parallels created between Jon and Sansa and canon romantic couples (as opposed to the parallels created between Dany and canon villains), and the weird chemistry between "brother and sister" noted by a number of reviewers. The show ended up going in a different direction in a very erratically constructed final season that most would agree didn't bear the hallmarks of consistent storytelling. So the one thing jonsas got wrong was jonsa itself. In the show, anyway. ("Show, derogatory.")

Still a good average, no?

So maybe the idea that the fandom being united against the theory of jonsa does have a reason. Maybe it's that they hate that it contradicts many other theories that have been popular for a very long time. And that have been proven wrong.

I have nothing against people who don't ship jonsa. I have nothing against people who have given the theory thought but have plausible reasons to disregard it. I have nothing against people who don't care about it at all. But I do absolutely laugh at people who call it a crackship and then support theories with far far far less collective evidence behind it.

As a writer, what’s something you would have done to improve the ending of Game of Thrones?

I mean. You could add back in all the plots that were interesting, like Lady Stoneheart, Dorne... not the greyjoys though, I found Feast SO BORING because it was all greyjoys lol.

But honestly, I think the biggest misstep was trying to keep D's villain turn a secret for as long as possible. They clearly wanted to keep using her in their marketing as their girlboss naked dragon barbie to appeal to as many demographics as possible, but it was at the expense of the plot and nearly every other character, including D herself. They ruined her character, along with Jon & Tyrion most egregiously. She could have been such a GOOD villain. She could have been so INTERESTING. It could have been excellent.

But honestly, I think a lot of the writing issues were D&D trying to be *shocking*. Some of their dumbest scenes/plots were for shock value only.

D being a villain is the most obvious, but also Sansa not telling Jon she contacted Petyr? It was already done, why not tell Jon to keep him from rushing into battle? Because D&D wanted to surprise us with the Vale army. Why spend an entire season pretending Sansa & Arya are fighting? Surprise! They were working together the whole time. Arya killing the Night King? Surprise! Bet you thought it would be a character who actually had narrative ties to the Others, like Jon or Bran or even Sam.

Whenever people ask me why I don't write show-canon, this is why. The problems with the show, for me, start SO FAR back that by the time I ret-conned them, it's basically book canon.