Disaster

I honestly love the grrm interpretation of magic more than whatever game of thrones had going on, specifically with the Targaryens. In got Daenerys is this almost superhero-like person who is literally flame-resistant. Screw the “-like”, she is a superhero. And it’s all tied to this dragon-not dragon thing and supposedly some Targaryens are generally resistant to any heat. But in asoiaf and f&b the Targaryens are just closer to magic in general than anybody else. Old Valyria is this supposedly very magical land, and dragons are definitely magic, and Targaryens are the only connection to both, so it makes them magical by extension. But not superhero-magical, it’s more mythos-magical. They look eerie: white hair, violet eyes, it’s fae-like. And the Targaryens are just slightly more resistant to heat than normal people, which is almost like balancing between two worlds: westeros and old valyria. Which is exactly the struggle of the Targaryens: they are not of this world, and yet at the same time they were born there, they rule it, they have to belong in the present, but the past devours it all. Targaryens in the books are these mysterious, mystical people whose biggest magical connection is dragons. The rest is very vague and hard to trace: unusual looks, slight flame resistance, the gift of foreseeing, they also almost never get sick. And that’s the nature of Martin’s magic — it’s vague. Does arya have warg abilities or are they but dreams? Like, magic is very much real, but the relations to magic are different. It’s always a blessing along with a curse, it’s always a thing to be feared, it’s always a key to going home, it’s always the thing that won’t let you ever again be who you were there, it’s a pathway to abilities and yet there is no peace in magic. Instead of magic being practical or “cool” it becomes a metaphor for longing and loneliness, and I think that’s a great choice.

A little obsessed with themes of haunting and ghosts in asoiaf. Characters are surrounded by ghosts, they are ghosts, they love ghosts, they are part of ghosts, they live in places that are ghosts, they unleash ghosts and they bargain with ghosts, most importantly they are haunted by ghosts. Ghosts and curses and prophecies are all very closely tied together in the narrative. Arya who is a ghost in Harrenhal, already a place full of them, Harren and his sons, countless lords and servants, burnt by wildfire, burnt again and again, because the place is said to be cursed. The Red Keep with bodies of its builders buried somewhere within, the Red Keep full of black cells with some half-men, half-ghosts still waiting for justice and sunlight. With skulls of dragons beneath its floors, a defeated legacy. Winterfell with its crypts, full of dead starks, and they are more than just crypts: they are a shelter, a haunted house, a sept in a way. The whole of the riverlands one single haunted space, as if executed with one giant hand of Tywin Lannister. He unleashes a curse with deeds so vile they start haunting lands and fates and houses, Westeros itself. That story Bran tells, about the rat cook who killed guests in his own house, and was cursed to devour his own sons; Walder Frey murdering his guests at the Red Wedding. Drogo is taken from Dany through a bargain with the dead. The dead haunt her: Rhaegar on the Trident, dragons and hundreds of her Targaryen ancestors. House Targaryen is a ghost. Westeros itself is haunting Dany, something she cannot remember. The entire white walkers story is literally the dead getting up from the graves, from the ground and walking, killing. Not alive, not dead, not exactly ghosts. What harm can Lyanna Stark’s ghost do us? Catelyn Stark back from the dead, mute. “She don’t talk but she remembers”. Idk it all seems very consecutive, as if the ghosts are active parts of the story, even from the grave navigating the characters, affecting reality. “It all goes back and back to our fathers and mothers and theirs before them”. Jenny dancing with her ghosts.

We all hate season 8 of got because of Daenerys and Jon’s destroyed characters, but I’ve been rewatching it with my brother, and the battle of Westeros bothers me more and more. The point of the prophecy that plays quite a big role in the books is that a Targaryen shall conquer the death that comes from the north with fire and blood. And yet, neither Jon, nor Dany did. They were both there, fighting, yes, but the conqueror was Arya. Which threw the entire prophecy arc (that served as a motivator to generations of Targaryens) out of the window. Asoiaf was about Targaryens as well as the Starks and the Lannisters, perhaps a bit more about the Targaryens, since Jon and Dany are both major characters and both are Targs, but got just made it all about the Starks in the end. The Starks sitting on the iron throne, the Starks winning against the Night King, the Starks getting their family home back. While Dany just got killed off so that Sansa and Bran could get an end to their stories that the show runners surely thought to be satisfying (spoiler: it isn’t).

The themes of home and homesickness and alienation and connection and tragedy and love in asoiaf really get to me. The way the Starks are always in some mind connection with their past and family, how the memories of each other’s brothers and sisters and parents are brought up so often in their chapters. Something always reminds them of each other, they fall in love with people who remind them of each other, they long to see each other, but it’s a dead longing. A longing that says “I wish I could be that little girl again, that little girl whose hatred for her siblings was love”. “I wish I could be her, but I never will, I wish I could see their faces again, because then part of me will reconnect to home”. The desperation, the sadness behind all that. The wolf howls, the wolf analogies, the wolf dreams. The way Sansa is cut off from all that, because she becomes a Lannister. The way Arya is trying so hard to forget Winterfell and Nymeria, and Jon, and Ned, and Bran, and Sansa, and Needle, but it can’t leave, it’s under the skin, the face beneath the masks is still Arya’s. The wolf dreams she has no control over. The way for Bran the wolf dreams, thoughts of Winterfell are a comfort rather than a faint memory, in his wolf dreams he is alive and well. In his dreams he is powerful, he is Brandon Stark of Winterfell, not a lost cripple boy among endless snow. How Jon has left home behind, and yet can’t help thinking of Arya and Sansa and Robb, and yet he rejects the title Stark, because for all he wants it, he can’t forsake his vows, because that is what his father had taught him, and it all ties back to Winterfell. Winterfell, the home and the tomb. The womb, the prison, the haven. The Stark children are scattered across the world like seeds in the wind, and yet even if they aren’t trying to come home, home is in their minds, always. The regret, the homesickness, the desire to return, and yet the way each of them choses leads them away from home. I wonder what will happen when they come back. Will they realise that Winterfell is home no longer? Will they rebuild it and make it home again? Like, the struggle is there. They can’t escape being Starks, no matter the colour of the cloak, the words they speak, the people they wed.

It’s really curious how the theme of death and power is explored in asoiaf. How intimately, dare I say, it is shown that no matter how much power you hold, you are still a man. A mortal man. Valar Morghulis — All Men Must Die. Arya saying ‘anyone can be killed’, Tywin Lannister, the most powerful man of Westeros, dying on the toilet. Shot in the gut. How all of them: Robb Stark, Robert Baratheon, Stannis dying, not just dying, but in situations unbefitting of kings. Robb is shot at a wedding, Robert is killed by a stag while drunk, Stannis is beheaded under some tree with no battle and no witnesses. Joffrey is poisoned at his own wedding, Tommen throws himself out of a window. Kings die. Kings are killed. Power can’t save you. And then there is Daenerys and Jon with the whole white walkers arc, an army of the dead who are not men. Daenerys who is named The Unburnt. Unkillable in a way. Who persists throughout the entire show, and Jon Snow, who has no power (in comparison to other characters) and who is literally fighting death. Who is brought back from the dead. And now in hotd the entire thing with Targaryens being closer to gods than men, the prophecy of a Targaryen stopping the death that engulfs all other kings, the death that is coming from the north. The Targaryens, the unburnt, not the Mad King (stabbed in the back by his own guard), Targaryens with dragons because it is said many times that they are nothing without the power of fire. It’s all very interesting how these themes are intertwined, and how Targaryens are this strange, ancient house with power over everyone else. As long as Targaryens have dragons, no other power can defeat them. In a way, not even the death that is coming from the north. The Targaryens aren’t undead, but they are more protected by their power from death than everyone else, because their power is of a different source. They are fire made flesh, they are dragons, no money on earth can hold a candle to that.

my favourite aesthetic

U know what’s one of the sweetest things on earth? Rose Leslie being married to Kit Harrington. Like…my fan dreams? Came true? In real life? They were my favourite couple on GoT? And their ending was super sad, cause it’s GoT, but they ARE actually MARRIED irl? Wow. Seems impossible but it’s true, and I love it!

Survivor — 2WEI

Run Boy Run — Woodkid

Blood // Water — grandson

Can You Feel My Heart — Bring Me The Horizon

See What I’ve Become — Zack Hemsey