fashioned for love

and what is this really except the traditional family model exaggerated to more blatantly horrifying degrees. how many parents are Good Parents until their child doesn't fit the ideal societal mold. how many mothers push their daughters to get married and have children because that's just How It Goes. what is the scene of isabella telling emma to give up and become a mom if not her saying to adhere to the system that she has fully accepted as normal and undeafeatable. how many times has this conversation happened in reality and been considered reasonable without the backdrop of fantastical monsters.

the events leading up to the weirwood dream lure readers into believing jaime is as cynical as his internal monologue makes him out to be until the last possible moment, when the contradiction between informed intent and action is undeniable. the chapter ends there because he can't quip his way out of "i dreamed of you."

re: the discussion about karma in asoiaf, i think it's so fascinating that one of the things that damns cersei in the end is her relationship with lancel. lancel is so constantly treated as a joke by the lannister kids in the earlier books, as an unimportant person, that it would have been easy for george to push him out of the narrative as soon as he outlasted his usefulness after the battle of blackwater bay. but the narrative cares about lancel, cares about his emotional state, about his victimization. it doesnt treat the fact that he was exploited by cersei as a vulnerable 16 year old as a joke like the other characters do.

arya's decision to kill chiswyck because of how he raped and murdered layna is one of those storytelling choices that really show how the little people are prioritized in the narrative. like sure arya couldve used her jaqen h'ghar genie wishes on killing tywin or whatever. but the whole point is that layna mattered too. the death of mycah weighs heavily on arya and ned, and the fact that of all of the Hound's crimes it’s mycah’s murder that he stands on trial for at aryas insistence is significant as a story choice.

in a series where the meaning of heroism is constantly upheld and subverted in different ways by characters such as stannis and rhaegar and robb, it stands of note that the most consistent way a hero is identified by the narrative is how they uphold the worth of the ordinary person, even when it doesn't benefit them, even when it hurts them. lyanna “that’s my fathers man you’re kicking” stark, the knight of the laughing tree, stands up for howland reed. dunk kicks a prince of the crown for the sake of a puppet girl. maybe it's true that there's no such thing as a true hero, and that all honor is a mist that melts in the morning. but a common person is not "no one."