* THE LOST LORDS.

ATHANASIOS , they/them , 25+

@badgersighted

i don’t know a lot about the behind the scenes of ttgot’s production, but that definitely sounds about right. since ttgot got shortened considerably, it makes complete sense that execs weren’t a big fan of a slowburn plot for her. i didn’t know about the andros or sera concepts, so that was definitely eye-opening and very different to what we got. i am quite endeared to the idea of mira blackmailing people, actually, and it seems like just the sort of thing she’d be able to pull off, so it’s a shame that she didn’t get to do a little bit more political intrigue type stuff. like, my wife and i watched a playthrough of married in red yesterday and i was tickled by how bok-su has to talk to various guests at the wedding to craft a believable false motive for murder. a scene like this for mira would have been a lot of fun to play! planting seeds in people’s minds through “idle” gossip and such.

that said, though, what you’ve described sounds like a really ambitious plot for telltale based on the formula of their games. it sounds like killing andros and killing sera would both be choices mira could make. these types of choices are tricky to write and code, and i think that’s led in ttg’s case to the very typical telltale-ism of killing off determinant characters or otherwise abruptly removing them from the story. we see this really prominently in twdg, where no matter if you save carly or doug, the other dies later, or how every season 2 cast member dies … and even characters that aren’t determinant have a way of disappearing from season to season ( like christa and omid, and even aj in season three ). and like, if you look at asher vs rodrik in episode five, the very fact that one of them can die means that the other one is kind of doomed. i wouldn’t care much for this sort of writing for a character like andros, but i think i’d really dislike the idea that sera would just die or vanish later because it would be difficult or annoying to write so many determinant scenes with her. the consequences for mira’s actions would also feel wonky, i think. telltale games historically tries to force you onto a uniform path no matter what your choices are, so i think, had these been determinant murders, mira would end up facing consequences that would seem disproportionate if you’d been playing her mercifully. like, think if gared was able to choose whether or not to kill britt. that imprisonment and desertion plotline would have felt way different!

*rubs hands together* okay, here we go.

the answer to your first question is sadly rather boring. i haven't watched the show beyond the first season, so i couldn't tell you concretely how sansa is handled in the following seasons besides what i know secondhand, and i don't really like doing that! however, from what i have watched of the show, the aspects of patriarchy and power that are highly prevalent in the books are dumbed down or even removed entirely. the game of thrones show is, in my opinion, really derivative and takes none of what i love about the books to translate to screen. house of the dragon seemed like it was going to do better, and then things went Fucking Off The Rails, and even though a knight of the seven kingdoms was good, there were a couple of glaring issues i took with it that i'm much less forgiving about than my wife is. with all that in mind, i think ttgot's writers made mira's plotline the way that they did because they were emulating aspects of the show. i don't know much about the show, but i do know that it's heavily misogynistic. there are several really bizarre choices made by the writers, and it's almost always where women are concerned. female characters in got are often nudged slightly this way or that to more efficiently shoehorn them into certain acceptable tropes. the confident femme fatale. the wide-eyed virgin. the passive and dutiful mother. the list goes on and on. and while i wouldn't say any of the women in ttgot suffer massively from this besides elaena, it's still obvious when you look at certain aspects of the plot.

take, for example, that marriage and sexual violence isn't really a thing used to threaten women until the very end of the story. or that royland is presented as exaggerating when he fears for talia's fate. even the ironborn aren't really mentioned despite being, like, rapers and pillagers? there are so many ingrained aspects of misogyny and the patriarchy's influence that are really painfully absent in both the show and the resulting game. i'd take more offence to it if ttgot claimed to be modelled after the books. but since it's not, i'm quicker to forgive it for its sins. but it does result in a lot of the women seeming like they have more power than they logically should.

as for my opinion on this, um ... i have autism <3 it's easier for me to work with what's already been established in a character and explore the implications of that situation in the world of asoiaf than to completely rewrite the situation. after all, none of these situations are impossible to have! elaena being able to marry for love or to have a say in which lord she marries is not normal, but it's possible for her to have this ... and that makes her father's betrayal later hurt all the more. elaena didn't have to confront the realities women in westeros have because she was sheltered by her father, but when he finally used her the way all fathers use their daughters, she's shocked and angry and still clinging to whatever she has left of her dignity and pride. that's way more interesting to me than just rewriting it so that elaena didn't have a say and so she and rodrik were just betrothed and they were going to either get married or not get married. similarly, i way prefer mira having a more androgynous view of herself and then navigating how her worldview is different from that of those around her. especially considering that i see mira as autistic anyway! i have always loved the diverse ways that women in asoiaf strive for the power that's routinely denied to them, and so i'm not overfond of mira copying other women per se. i think her plotline is rather unique! but in my rewrite, i'd obviously have the world creep in a bit. to me, it's clear that the tyrells wanted to use mira for her ironwood, and that many people along the way would think about taking her to bride for this sole purpose. for mira to be blind to this and to continue treating herself as equal to these men is a unique sort of tragedy to me. i think mira's ending brings the realism that we were missing in most of her route anyway. for a woman like mira, there truly were only two choices: be forced into a marriage or die a maiden. and while that's commonplace for all women, there's a specific horror to it when it's mira's story because she's done all of this to avoid being seen as just another woman, a body to use for breeding and political gain. so to introduce these aspects of her character makes her feel more real and satisfying in-game.

yes, many! i actually just finished my mira/margaery fic that i've been working on for several months, which i finally posted on ao3! pride month may be over but lesbianism is still alive. just be warned that this one has explicit content, so if you're not comfortable with that, then this fic isn't for you! besides that one, though, i'm sure it's common knowledge by now that @asherforrester / @lambjock and i are working on a rewrite of ttgot! that's much more of a lengthy process and, in my opinion, we've only just gotten into ttgot. i think we're coming up on our one-year anniversary of our first playthrough, or maybe we've just passed it? *checks discord* it seems like we played episode two on july 9th, so ... coming up! anyway, i think we still need to do more deep dives and really get to know the characters and the world, but that's okay! the rewrite is going to be a long project, which makes sense!

as for current fics though, my wife and i have been working on a writing challenge with each other where we try to post ttgot fics based around certain prompts. so technically, i have a lot of fics in the works! just looking at my scrivener, i have...

iron shocks -- a forrestercest wartime au fic in which rodrik and asher aren't brothers and meet for the first time fighting for robb stark. this was one of the first fics i ever started writing for ttgot, and it's just a lot of wacky wild hijinks! i don't know if i'll ever post it, but it's in my scrivener!

are my legs gonna last? -- a drabble of sorts about rodrik grieving asher shortly after the exile. i kind of based this off of alcoholism as a concept, so this is very much a Sad Fic, hence why i've barely written anything for it. angst is so much more grimm's area of expertise!

he was everything -- elaena grieving arthur fic. do we notice a trend here?

but it's no longer you -- BELOVED!!! i really need to finish this one. it's a gared/finn post-canon fic where they have the world's most astronomical fallout over things that neither of them were able to confront during canon. it's kind of my masterwork for them, where i pour in all of my headcanons and anguish about their ship. fun fact, they were my first ttgot ship!

dissociative love song title -- can you tell that i make my fic titles lazy or last? because i do. i'm terrible at titles! but this one is a missing scene kind of fic! it's set during arthur's nameday party, aka the last time that rodrik and elaena saw each other.

talia/rodrik -- again, no title for this one, but this one came about from my wife and i spinning a wheel and trying out different dynamics in our fics. this particular fic involves some wire-crossing on talia's end. i have a special place for this fic in my heart because it's helped me significantly with understanding talia more as a character and the sorts of things she was struggling with or would realistically be struggling with in canon.

mirgryn horrors -- this was a fic i started more recently! as the title suggests, it's set post-canon during mira's marriage to morgryn. post-canon for mira has always been a bit murky for me, so i decided to take on this fic to help detail some of that out. this one will definitely get finished sooner rather than later, since i have the ending already ironed out in my head and that literally never happens with me and writing.

mortal sins -- this one is a truly self-indulgent fic that will likely never see the light of day on ao3 or tumblr or, well, anywhere. it's another asher/rodrik au fic, but it's inspired off of a fic i read in another fandom. i just wanted to explore some of the darker themes present in a patriarchal society, and such and so.