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kasamira · 1 month
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The Things I Do For Love: A Jaime Lannister Analysis 
So much discussion around Jaime revolves around the theme of redemption. What does it mean? Is it possible? How does one redeem themselves? However, another core aspect of what Jaimes character is all about is love, what he will do for it, and how it changes him.
When we first meet Jaime he is the mirror image of Cersei: beautiful, so confident that it is bordering on arrogance, and cruel. This is reflected in their incestuous relationship, one that has lasted since the twins were children. This relationship stems from the idea of Lannister supremacy encouraged and fostered by Tywin. It is through Tywin’s actions such as the extermination of the Reyne and Castamere families that the Lannister siblings learned that anyone who wasn’t a Lannister was inferior and beneath them. It is this sort of lion's pride that lives in each of them, even Tyrion. When it comes to Jaime and Cersei it manifests itself in their incestuous relationship. To them no one else was worthy of themselves, only another Lannister, and who else could they turn to but their identical twin? Through time the twins developed an “us versus them” mentality. That no one else mattered but them. It is this codependency that only grew as they grew up. It is this mentality that is key to understanding Jaime’s own identity.
Due to the belief that they were each other's mirror image, Jaime created an image of Cersei based off of himself. He thinks that Cersei may be a little mean and does some bad stuff but isn’t evil. It is this false image that helps Jaime repress (of which he often does with uncomfortable truths) the fact that Cersei is unnecessarily cruel and abusive towards his beloved little brother Tyrion. It makes it easier for him to love her too. It is this love for his siblings that defines Jaime. While a horrible thing to do, the whole reasoning behind pushing Bran out the window after catching the twins having sex is out of perverse protective love for Cersei. Jaime knows that she and himself will be killed if the truth comes out. While one can argue he also was considering the lives of their children it’s only till Feast that Jaime begins to care about Tommen. This protective nature also manifests itself later in AGOT when Jaime and his men kill Ned’s escort due to Tyrion being kidnapped and being placed under arrest. Yet another morally dubious action done out of love for his siblings. However, it is this love and ego that eventually shatters when Jaime loses his sword hand.
So much of Jaime’s identity revolved around his sword hand. It was the hand he used to kill Aerys and touch Cersei alongside many other things central to his person. By having it cut off Jaime learns that Lannisters can indeed be hurt just like any other person breaking down his image of an invulnerable golden Lannister. Through losing his hand, he is forced to ask himself the questions of who he really is and what that looks like. For a while, he holds onto the love for his siblings, especially his mirror image Cersei. However, it is this image that shatters. For Cersei, she sees that Jaime no longer resembles her and for this she goes cold. This being in direct contrast to Jaime’s idea that the love and codependency that they had created for themselves was unconditional. His relationship with Tyrion also implodes in ASOS with the Tysha reveal. The relationship with the twins further breaks down not simply due to Jaime now knowing of Cersei’s infidelity but also her growing darker nature. It is this that also shatters the mirror image. Cersei is unnecessarily cruel by burning down the Tower of the Hand with wildfire. By comparing her to Aerys, it is clear that Jaime’s image of her being just like him is gone. It is likely she has woken up his trauma that he desperately tries to repress. Jaime learns that her cruelty is not his own despite his prior morally dubious actions. While this relationship breaks down another grows. This being his relationship with Brienne.
In a direct contrast to Jaime and Cersei’s relationship, the dynamic that exists between Jaime and Brienne is based on reality not delusion. Brienne sees the worst in Jaime through his ego and knows of his most horrible acts. She bluntly calls him out on these and judges him for them. On the other hand Jaime insults her and plays on her insecurities. However, it is the loss of his hand that things change for the two. While still not friends directly after the injury, Jaime ensures Brienne is not assaulted after all the abuse both him and her have faced. Upon their arrival at Harrenhal, Jaime makes sure that her wounds are cared for as much as his.  For Brienne she learns the truth behind Jaime’s murder of Aerys. Through this and many other actions such as Jaime rescuing her from the bear and giving her Oathkeeper, she sees that there is some good in the man. On the flip side, Jaime develops one of the first relationships in his life with someone who is not a Lannister. He learns to both see and respect that Brienne is her own person, one that is complicated and does her own thing. It is this what Jaime is becoming. As such, Brienne is not a plot device for Jaime’s development but rather a catalyst. Through her Jaime learns to care about another individual and care deeply.
While we don’t know where Jaime’s story will go just yet. Perhaps he is the Valonqar or maybe he will be killed by Stoneheart. Regardless of where he goes it's clear that love and his falling out of it and arguably his falling into it has greatly defined his arc and who he is.
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kasamira · 6 months
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(Spoilers ahead for F&B) unfortunately it gets even less plausible the further you read. During the storming of the dragon pit, Dreamfyre (a dragon significantly older and larger than Meleys) flies into the ceiling of the Pit attempting to escape after breaking free of her chains. She crashes into the ceiling sending blocks of debris raining down into the Pit, killing both herself and many of the others below.
Episode 9 was truly a low point for S1. The way the breakneck speed of previous episodes grounded down to a halt could have been a wonderful change of pace. A cooldown period for character moments before the storm of chaos to follow.
Overall HOTD does a pretty good job of weighing book readers with shownlies, this Ep is the glaring exception. Book readers know she plays a major part in the war and thus cannot die in Ep9. And worse everyone knows Rhaenys can’t “win the war before it begins” and burn them if the series is to continue. Thus there’s no tension.
You’ve got the appearance of drama but none of the follow through.
Episode 9 could have been the eye of the storm, but was more like a wet fart. (And if one of the major points of the very next episode is “we don’t control the dragons” then maybe Rhaenys shouldn’t be doing such a bang up job with Meleys)
Meanwhile, hurried preparations were made for the coronation. The Dragonpit was chosen as the site. Under its mighty dome were stone benches sufficient to seat eighty thousand, and the pit’s thick walls, strong roof, and towering bronze doors made it defensible, should traitors attempt to disrupt the ceremony.
The Princess and the Queen & Fire and Blood (George R. R. Martin)
Ehm... reading comprehension anyone?
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The difference between "We've been thinking about everything" vs. "Ooops! This dragonrider we've been keeping prisoner managed to get out ~somehow~"...
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kasamira · 6 months
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the thing that is so nasty about androw farman defending is that there IS a little bit of nuance there. obviously you can see how rhaena marrying this seventeen year old as a beard and then ignoring him in favor of the partners she actually wanted to seek out but couldn’t openly because of systemic misogyny and homophobia would have made androw pretty miserable. And obviously we need to also interpret that as the actions of someone who has previously had all romantic and sexual autonomy violently stripped from her for years taking advantage of someone else to finally have a few years of freedom. 
BUT every single person who logs on to defend this guy is exclusively talking about how men committing violent homophobic anti-woman murder motivated by his own sexual jealousy is actually his bitch wife who won’t fuck him and wasn’t nice enough’s fault. come ON.
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kasamira · 7 months
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kasamira · 7 months
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Sandor’s Torment is Sansa’s Balm
I originally started writing this in response to someone saying they didn’t think Sandor was going to assault Sansa on the Blackwater, then it became a full on essay on why sandor needed to present a clear and present danger for the Blackwater to be an amazing scene.
If the threat, that Sandor was going to assault Sansa, wasn’t serious then the Blackwater scene loses effect.
Up to this moment, Sandor has tried to force Sansa to learn that the world is bad “strong swords and steel rule the world”, that the villains win, the gods aren’t just, and Sansa had best learn to live with it. To know that she herself will perpetuate this system willingly or not
The only choice that remains is whether she saves herself some pain and gives him what he wants— ie, if she learns to accept her lot in life. The same lot Sandor in all his misery and nihilism has. It’s on that certainty—that the world and the people of it are bad— Sandor has cemented his whole being.
That is the hard lesson Sandor was forced to learn. He learned with searing coals pressed to his face and his brother’s hand at his throat. The toy knight in his hand, the most painful symbol of loss there could be (reflected in another stark girl’s journey to understanding war and its realities)
finally Arya took the doll away from her, ripped it open, and pulled the rag stuffing out of its belly with a finger. "Now he really looks like a soldier!"
Sandor had the songs and stories burned out of him, yet Sansa clings And he hates it. Because at first he thinks it’s false courtesy, mockery even, empty twittering words of a little bird bred to regurgitate society’s pretty lies
But then he realizes the reality is far worse, that she believes them. They aren’t pretty lies to Sansa. And it pisses him off. That Sansa cuts through his nihilistic bullshit with sincerity.
“Pretty little talking girl, you believe that, you’re empty-headed as a bird for true…Look at me. Look at me!”
And she does. He commands her, forces her to look upon his face.
Tells her to deny reality so Sandor can proclaim her a liar, so sandor can assure himself she’s just like everyone else.
Because if Sandor cannot change the structures he deems endemic to their world, how on earth could Sansa?
So, he tells her how it is.
She’ll birth killers, sons to perpetuate suffering, and daughters to become mirror images of herself. The clock turns, day passes into night, and the cycle perpetuates itself.
But that’s where Sandor’s paradigm crumples. If Sansa decides not to give him what he wants. It’s not just her rejection of Sandor’s hard lessons on life, but her refusing to break when he becomes the threat he warned her about. Sansa doesn’t choose to spare herself some pain and sing Florian and Jonquil. All she can think of is Gentle Mother Font of Mercy.
If the threat was empty, then the catharsis of Sandor sobbing out his grief is ruined. Sansa held firm, it’s sandor who cracked open.
That’s what leads to Sandor on the Quiet Isle, unable to let this moment go. He can’t give up his memories to the river anymore than he can stop speaking of Sansa. And to Sansa in the Vale running over the same thoughts in her mind. To Sandor, they’re torment. To Sansa, a balm.
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kasamira · 8 months
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BABE WAKE UP NEW ELIZABETHAN HISTORY DROPPED?????
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kasamira · 8 months
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A Song of Fire and Ice is awesome if you pretend that they never made a tv show out of it and ignore all pop culture revolving around it outside of weird nerd shit from the 90's
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kasamira · 8 months
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no but it's the way for aziraphale "nothing lasts forever" meant "i'm willing to give up the bookshop if it means i can be with you safely" and for crowley it meant "nothing lasts forever, not the bookshop, not earth, not us"
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kasamira · 8 months
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aziraphale and crowley decide to get married in a church for shits and giggles but aziraphale has to carry crowley bridal style the whole time because it's sacred ground
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kasamira · 8 months
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Good Omens 2 + Text Posts
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kasamira · 8 months
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I kinda love how Gandalf just decided to tell people Bilbo was a thief looking for his next job and to vandalize his home.
Was under the impression Gandalf was a good guy but he’s a little troublemaker trying to tempt innocent hobbits into mischief and skullduggery
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kasamira · 8 months
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Oh my god. They’re singing about ruining his cutlery. I would commit actual murder
splash the wine on every door
Death.
Listening to the hobbit for the first time (mostly) and I am Bilbo.
I am exactly like this hobbit “good morning” can equal so many things, from actually “good morning” to “leave me alone”
I feel for Bilbo so much. This poor boy, trying to make dinner for everyone and feeling like you’ve got no help is awful.
Bilbo, babe, you need to set boundaries and learn Midwest hospitality
“Don’t let me keep you” = “get out”
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kasamira · 8 months
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Listening to the hobbit for the first time (mostly) and I am Bilbo.
I am exactly like this hobbit “good morning” can equal so many things, from actually “good morning” to “leave me alone”
I feel for Bilbo so much. This poor boy, trying to make dinner for everyone and feeling like you’ve got no help is awful.
Bilbo, babe, you need to set boundaries and learn Midwest hospitality
“Don’t let me keep you” = “get out”
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kasamira · 8 months
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Me the teacher: colors hair copper after work goes to work the next day
Student: did you bleach it with cheeto powder?
Me the teacher: ...
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kasamira · 8 months
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ASOS Prologue Readthrough Ramble: Chett & Class Dynamics
The ASOS Prologue is a continuation of the themes within AGOT's Prologue: class dynamics and the conflict that arises because of them.
This chapter serves multiple functions:
It carries on the AGOT prologue themes of continual friction between various factions of the Night's Watch (the internal class conflict, groundwork for the mutiny at Craster's Keep, foreshadowing of Jeor's death, hunter becomes the hunted north of the Wall)
The watch's leadership has lost focus. This was intended to be "A great ranging" yet somehow it went from investigating why wildings were deserting their villages, finding lost rangers, more information on Jafar and Othor's rising from the dead to "throwing back the wildings into their hoves for the next fifty years." As BFish once put it "mission creep".
Chett serves as an "on the ground" man so we can have a look at a typical watchman (since our only previous POVs have been highborn watchmen)
The class dynamics and the following friction are immediately apparent to the reader. Whether it is Will and Gared potentially disobeying "the order" given by Waymar, or the brewing mutiny under Chett at the Fist.
George began laying the groundwork for a mutiny that was realized two books later (the Mutiny at Craster's Keep). Though a member of the Night's Watch is the POV in both, Waymar and Chett are the focus of each respective chapter. Everything from their dress to their mannerisms displays their gap in status, even in a brotherhood of equals. Waymar and Chett might both dress in black, but Chett wears boiled leather while Waymar wore black moleskin gloves, and "a fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail over layers of black wool"
There is a repeated theme: how class affects members in a brotherhood that makes claims toward equity. The Watch claims to offers equal opportunities regardless of birth, yet Waymar took his title of ranger by right of blood, and Jeor gave him his first ranging so the Watch wouldn't risk losing the support of House Royce. Chett is out here "freezing his bloody balls off" because the position he was being trained for (Aemon's assistant) was taken by Sam, a highborn man, who by the virtues of his birth and training (training his status afforded him) took the job.
I should be safe back at the Wall, tending the bloody ravens and making fires for old Maester Aemon. It was the bastard Jon Snow who had taken that from him, him and his fat friend Sam Tarly. It was their fault he was here... deep in the haunted forest
Chett has taken charge of a pack of hungry dogs tracking a big black bear, in the same way that Will, a wonderful tracker, was tracking a band of wildings. There's a comparison to be made between the literal dogs Chett's wrangling and the Watch members he's leading towards mutiny.
The day was grey and bitter cold, and the dogs would not take the scent. The big black bitch had taken one sniff at the bear tracks, backed off, and skulked back to the pack with her tail between her legs.
The big black bear they're tracking is a delightful reference to Jeor "the Old Bear" Mormont and foreshadows his death. In Chett's mind, he's hunting both. It's a classic horror trope "the hunter becomes the hunted." All the characters believe they're in control, that they're hot on the trail of their quarry and closing in for the kill.
Mission Creep
Mission creep contributes to mutiny because the dynamics of the Watch leadership is completely out of touch with their men
Three hundred against thirty thousand
Smallwood and Locke want a final stand, their own Thermopylae. Chett wants to live. His motivations, on the face of it, are completely understandable. If he weren't' such a truly vile person, most readers would find his plight understandable.
Chett doesn't believe the Watch has his (or the bulk of the men making up the Watch) best interests in mind. But that their leadership is carelessly throwing away 300 lives, Chett wants to live and views LC Mormont’s decisions as "rank madness." Chett's got a point but it is because of his low status within the Watch that both Chett and the 14 other men involved in the mutiny, do not even attempt to persuade or bring these issues to their direct superiors. None of them believe they have the power to convince the Watch's leadership.
“The officers are in the Old Bear's tent again, talking something fierce."
That's what they do," said Chett. "They're highborn, all but Blane, they get drunk on words instead of wine."
We get a recounting of Chett's life and see that he's felt powerless through much of it. Whether it was under his father's roof in Hagsmire, working for pennies, or using their very blood as bait for leeches.
In Chett's eyes, every action made by those of higher status toward him is a slight. Every slight by those of lower status is an insult. Whether it's Aemon taking on Sam Tarly as steward or Walder Frey not coming down to convict him for murder himself. This fuels his feelings of low self worth and longing for more. Truly, if Chett didn't use every opportunity and scrap of power he could attain to hurt others under him his he would be a far more empathetic character. His position is empathetic, but he uses every opportunity to punch down
Though he spent four years as steward to maester aemon, tending ravens, Chett doesn't see Aemon as an example of how those in power can use their influence to benefit others. Instead, he finds a role model in Craster and wants to set himself up in a way that perpetuates the system of societal abuse that he himself was victim to. He doesn't want to escape the feudal system that has dominated his life, he wants to recreate it at its most extreme form with himself at the top.
This is most evidenced in his treatment of Bessa (and women in general).
Bessa
The worst was that slattern Bessa. She'd spread her legs for every boy in Hag's Mire so he'd figured why not him too? He even spent a morning picking wildflowers when he heard she liked them, but she'd just laughed in his face and told him she'd crawl in a bed with his father's leeches before she'd crawl in one with him. She stopped laughing when he put his knife in her. That was sweet, the look on her face, so he pulled the knife out and put it in her again.
This can also be related back to the class dynamics of the chapter but with the added angle of gender. Chett believed he had earned sex with Bessa. Her likes or dislikes, her agency, didn't enter into it. In the same way, Chett wants to set himself up as a lord like Craster because then he believes he would have "earned" sex with Craster's daughters as their lord (just like he paid for the sex workers in Mole Town).
Chett recognizes the disparity, but he never thinks to dismantle the system of discrimination, the system isn't the problem. The problem, in Chett's eyes, is that he's not benefitting from it. The problem is that he's on the bottom, not the top. That's the injustice.
This is why, when all hope of mutiny is lost because of the snowfall, Chett views it as the end.
There’d be no lord’s life for the leechman’s son, no keep to call his own, no wives nor crowns. Only a wildling’s sword in his belly, and then an unmarked grave.
The only thing left to him is revenge, or whatever paltry sum of it he can grasp. Chett wants to earn his death, he wants all of this to be worth something. And killing Sam is the best way to take back the power he's been denied. Only in violence does Chett find power. Which is why George's denial of that is so powerful. It puts the tiny conflict and clash of class dynamics into perspective, what are the petty squabbles of Chett compared to
—“Others” Chett made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob and suddenly his smallclothes were wet, and he could feel the piss running down his leg, see steam rising off the front of his breeches.
George's Threes Tally: They strike during the third watch, there are three hundred brothers, thirty thousand wildings, three days chett hasn't fed the dogs (fuck you chett), three ravens, three horn blasts
If you've made it this far, thank you very much for reading!
Edit: thank you @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly for pointing out that it wasn’t Jeor who wanted his own Thermopylae but Smallwood and Locke who were lobbying him for a “final stand”
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kasamira · 8 months
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It’s pretty rich that Mr. Weasley is angry at Fred for giving Dudley a Ton-Tongue Toffee
“It isn’t funny!” Mr. Weasley shouted. “This sort of behavior seriously undermines wizard Muggle relations! I spend half my life campaigning against the mistreatment of muggles and my own sons-“
After
not telling the Dursleys he was going to be arriving by Floo
scaring them half to death
blowing apart their living room
not explaining anything before destroying their property when they are clearly at a huge information deficit and terrified
He also treats them, their lives and possessions like they’re museum exhibits to be gawked at. He treats them like they are a freak show. (Yeah, that word choice was deliberate)
Arthur Weasley didn’t treat the Dursleys like they were human beings who should be afforded the same amount of forewarning, knowledge, or simple damn courtesy that wizards receive- so why would his sons?
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kasamira · 8 months
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I really think one of the funniest things about Harry is that he makes it really clear that the Black Family is just extremely attractive. Normally, he only notes people are good-looking if he likes them as a person, but he notes that Bellatrix was as good-looking as Sirius and even when he believed Sirius was responsible for his parents being murdered, he called Sirius handsome. The Black family’s looks are the exception to Harry’s morality-based attraction scale
Honestly, this makes it extra funny that when he sees a picture of Regulus, he's just like "ah yes, the less handsome version of Sirius" 😂
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