Undine

*** Edit: Please check the pinned post on this blog! This post will not be updated anymore as the original owner of the blog, my mother, has passed away.***

Master meta post

So I decided to put together some of my metas/ask posts (that tend to become metas occasionally) for convenience and pin this post.

I have not yet linked all (obviously), but I will revisit this post once in a while and add links…

Also for my numerous ask - evolved into metas I usually added some that I think are representative.

ASOIAF - Bookwise

Meta series on “Singers singing songs and their impact on character in ASOIAF”: part 1: Jon

part 2: Sansa

part 3: Daenerys

part 4: Starks and Lannisters

An ask about Florian and Jonquil (note the excellent additions!)

What is a bittersweet ending? (x, x, x, x)

Meaning of Ice and Fire

GRRM is not a Nihilist

First men and Children of the Forest

Politics in ASOIAF/GoT

Legitimacy of Kings in Westeros

Claim to the throne, right to the throne and the making of Kings

Daenerys and her understanding of history

Marriage annulment

Northern Independence asks (x, x, x)

Food sharing in Westeros

Parallels to Wars of the Roses

Starks

Sibling dynamics: Everyone was the odd one out once in a while

Sansa and Arya (mostly answers to Did Sansa bully Arya? (x, x)

Succession in the North: Was Sansa disinherited (x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x)

Septa Mordane

Dragons vs. direwolves

Targaryens

Would Jon on the throne mean a Targ restoration?

Why did the Targs practice incest and what are the political repercussions?

Jon Snow’s Targ name

Shipping:

Jonsa, Jon€rys and the logic of shipping

Shipping and canon shipping

Why is Jonsa hated?

Bulverism

Show rants:

Catfight at Winterhell: rant, asks (x)

Annulment of marriages in the Middle Ages

Daenerys and her understanding of history

Doubts prior to season 8

Circular storytelling

The full cirlce of Westeros

Why the endgame doesn’t make sense: 1 (Bran) , 2 (Tyrion), 3 (Arya), 4 (Sansa), 5 (Jon)

Women:

Women in Westeros and misogyny - Cersei

Women in Westeros and misogyny - Brienne

Sansa and Feminism

Arya and her feminitiy

Catelyn the advisor

Comparison of Jonsa with other ships

Jonsa and Jon€rys (my oldest post, Nov 2016)

In General: Incest, Endogamy, Exogamy, Genetic attraction phenomenon

Cousin marriage in the Middle Ages

In-world opinions on Cousin marriage, Targ incest

Does a Jonerys marriage solve any problems?

Foreshadowing for Jonsa, Jon€rys and J0nrya

Jonerys foreshadowing

Why Jonerys is incompatible

Comparison of Jonsa and Jonerys foreshadowing

What was GRRM’s original idea?

J0nrya and the original outline

So called J0nrya foreshadowing (= Jonsa foreshadowing in disguise)

Will there be a Jon€rys baby? (x, x, x, x, x)

Arya and Jonsa, J0nrya reunion

Political J0nrya marriage after Sansa’s death?

J0nrya as a possibility in books and show

Anti Dany/Jon/Sansa threesome for Targ restoration

Anti Sansan 

Anti Sanrion

Does Jon have a crush on Alys?

Alys Karstark as possible marriage candidate

Sansa Stark

The Trident incident (x, x)

The ‘Horseface’ question

Precanon crush?

Sansa is Jon’s type

Arguments against Sansa and “Rickard Forrester” as a rando last minute love interest

The Broken Tower in Winterfell

Sansa’s ‘betrayal’

Sansa won’t be disfigured

Sansa’s wishes

Sansa and the Northerners

Sansa and Alysanne Parallels

Sansa and Lady

Dany and Sansa as foils

Sansa as the ‘original villain‘

Does Sansa trust Littlefinger?

Is Sweetrobin getting poisoned?

Sansa and Sweetrobin

Ned and Cat

The man who passes the sentence

Was Ned in love with Ashara and did he have sex with her?

Ned and Cat as parents

The Starks value life

Literal tropes:

Relationship tropes in GoT and ASOIAF

Accidental incest and secret parentage and their outcoming

The function of secret parentage in fiction

What even is incest?

Jonsa and Beauty and the Beast

Fairy tales:

The trickster cat

The Bear and the Maiden fair

The Pig boy

Allerleirauh

Comparisons with Tolkien:

Beren and Luthien: part 1, part 2, part 3

Aragorn and Arwen

The Girl in Grey:

Various asks on the Girl in Grey (x, x, x, x, x)

DarkDany stuff

Why conquer Westeros at all?

A Storm that hits

Conquerors landing on the shore

Will Dany die as a saviour?

Questioning sharply (Dany’s descent into darkness)

Dany and politics

Dany’s ‘hero’s journey’

Dany and Galadriel

Setting up Dany as a villain: the Leni Riefenstahl connection (mostly @une-nuit-pour-se-souvenir but it started with my ask

Dany is not an abolutionist

Fire and Blood:

Methods of foreshadowing

Alysanne

Jaime

Succession in Fire and Blood

Fire and Blood tidbits

Will Arya kill Dany?

Archmaester Glydaen and his bias

Political Jon

Jon the Player, Jon the Deceiver?

Cersei and Aurane Waters as a parallel to Jon and Da€nerys

Deceiving and Lying Starks

Jon the Negotiator

Jon’s political skill on the show

Starks and their political skills

Asks about Political Jon (x, x, x)

Other:

Jaime Lannister as Hand of the King

Jaime as Hand - Hints in F&B (1, 2)

Tully mud, blood, death and sudden change

Rains of Castamere and the futility of revenge

Stark words and Stark obligations

Parallels to Outlaw King

Crack:

Why we should ship Tormund and Dany

HP Verse:

Everything wrong with the HP verse

Good Slytherins

Internalized misogyny in HP and the girly girl

Is S.P.E.W fake woke?

Grey characters in HP

Classism in the HP verse

Is Draco smart?

Hogwarts sorting: How it should go

JKR’s writing

Arthur Weasley and muggles or classism in HP

On redemption arcs: Draco,

On ships in HP: Fremione and Harmony; Anti Romione

but someone else could.

that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.

(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)

but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.

it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.

and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.

(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)

but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.

someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.

I'm really embarrassed but I drew these avatar emotes with the intention of selling them months ago but I've been procrastinating cuz I have no idea how to design backdrops >.<''

I’m sorry to tell everyone this but the original owner of this blog, my mother, has passed away at the end of November. I am her daughter and it was her wish that her Tumblr-Account doesn’t get deactivated just yet, so it is still possible to access her Metas and writing even after her passing. I know there are many who enjoyed her writing, her metas and her role in the fandom and that she will be missed. Everything on this blog and her AO3-Account, which is, as far as I know, linked on here, will remain online, as it was my mother’s wish. As of now, I will continue to manage her blog. I will not post anything new.

I want to thank everyone who made her fandoms a pleasant, fun and enriching experience that she wanted to participate in. She truly enjoyed it most of the time and I am glad she found a community. I am happy her writing and thoughts remain this way. I also want to express my condolences.

I want to ask you to please not send multiple messages or condolences to the inbox since I think it will be too much for me to manage. Comments should be fine.

HAPPY NEW YEAR (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

and while there are many things that do, i’d argue that the most special one is its earnestness.

characters in LOTR care unabashedly, with all their hearts, and love so easily, whether it’s platonic, familial or romantic.

the hobbits feel like the most obvious example - merry, pippin and sam follow frodo for as long as they’re able; their loyalty goes deep to their bones, and their relationships are so full of trust, joy, devotion, fondness.

but all of LOTR is just more examples of the same thing. after the war legolas spends the rest of his life in middle-earth with gimli - they travel together for over a hundred years - and then he decides he won’t just say goodbye when gimli dies! and he does something that hasn’t been done before and just takes gimli to valinor, but not before aragorn dies. because they both loved him, too. faramir asks “do you not love me, eowyn?“ and she realises she does, and he says he’ll marry her and they’ll grow a garden and heal, and he kisses her even though everyone can see them. sam loves frodo, and he loves rosie, and he spends his life with her, then joins frodo in the undying lands after she dies.

and it shines through in the movies, too! it’s thanks to both the direction and the acting skills of the cast, of course, that so, so often all emotions are on full display - whenever sam and frodo interact, when aragorn kisses boromir’s forehead, when the hobbits say goodbye at the grey havens, when pippin finds merry at the battlefield, the way gandalf reacts when frodo says he’ll go to mordor, the way theoden breaks down at his son’s grave, the way he cares about eowyn like she’s his own child, the way eomer reacts when he finds eowyn and thinks she’s dead. those are just examples off the top of my head.

it’s also very special to me because in many fictional works (not only in fantasy) people just aren’t allowed to be that open - mostly men, but not exclusively - meanwhile this earnestness is something i always look for in fiction.

it stands out especially if you consider some fantasy creators (not naming any names but you know who i mean ajsjdjfjf) saying they “just want to reflect the misogyny of the period” (which is just bullshit and also demeaning to people of all genders in so many ways), because while LOTR is heavily male-dominated, tolkien managed to do something very, very interesting and important there.

he says, “war is the province of men”, but it doesn’t mean you’re supposed to want to be there. you’re not supposed to want to go to battle, suffer and/or die. eomer wants eowyn to stay home because he loves her, and couldn’t stand to see her die in a cruel, gruesome way (and when he thinks she’s dead, it’s the most devastating display of grief in the whole movie trilogy).

the heroes go to war because there are things that need defending, and dying for a noble cause is honorable, but again - it’s about defending, not about fighting. the clearest villains of LOTR are people who want the war to happen. many of the heroes, most of whom are men, just want peace for their people, want companionship (one of the first things aragorn says to the hobbits is that he’d be happy to have more friends, because being a ranger means he’s lonely), or want a good meal and a good drink like the hobbits. they want comfort and warmth. they want to finish a book like bilbo. they want to live in a garden among all things that live and grow like faramir. they want to marry and have a home and kids like sam.

Nope. Each of them have faced An Issue and decided to ask Elrond for help.

I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."

He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."

He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"

I did.

"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."

It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.

Look at his smile!

And because I'm evil enough, I just wanna remind all of you, that he forge the 3 elven rings and he gave one of them to Galadriel. In the unfinished tales book, it's clearly said that he gave her the ring as a sign of his love for her. Even though Galadriel rejected his proposal hundreds of times, he still loves Galadriel. Here's the proof.

And even after she refused him somany times, and she choose Celeborn over him, he still cares for her just like in this scene. You can clearly sees he's really worried.

And annatar/halbrand/sauron will take him hostage, torture him and makes him watches all his relatives died on sauron's hands, and then he finally gave up and told him where all the 9 rings, but he never ever tell him where are the 3 elven rings. He kept it in his heart till his death. He endured all the pain, and he finally give up when Sauron beat him to death with his own mithril hammer. And then he hung Celebrimbor's body on a pole and used it to parade the body as a banner when he faced off with the remaining Elves.

He kept silent cause he promise to Galadriel, OMG my heart! Mr. Tolkien I respect you but his story is just tragic! 😭😭

Edit. I forgot to include this but Celebrimbor become a wraith cause of the tortured, and he literally stuck in mordor for a thousands years until Frodo destroyed the one rings.

"our son made it through the war to come of age, let's fucken party! rsvp only if you're a little bitch who's NOT coming. all y'all not dead of alcohol poisoning by morning (lmao losers) get dunkt on"