easy to forget but book jon snow is great actually. he gets so drunk he cries in his first chapter. he's 16 years old and laser focused on loan negotiation. he keeps getting promoted against his will. he's the chosen fantasy protagonist with the worst genre awareness ever. he implements pro immigration social reforms. he has a giant albino pet wolf. he cuts a guy's head off. he thinks he invented cunnilingus. he's been dead for 15 years.

book Alicent just going to viserys’ room to check that his ass is really dead then locking his body in there while she staged a coup. The Green Queen we deserved honestly.

the tragedy is that even if every single part of tywin’s legacy violently implodes on our page these ppl will still be like “well thats only bc he died” or “well he had one major blindspot which was abusing the shit out of his kids ig” and not confront that everything about tywin’s worldview and methods is anything but this necessary ruthlessly pragmatic utilitarian leader that westeros needs fantasy and he was actually an evil fragile moron who is the one who put his family on an unsalvageable trajectory to doom

the whole point of the Kingsguard is that they’re unbelievably fucking washed like zero heroic deeds on the board just morning noon night overtime fraud aura farming. Complicit in every act of patriarchal violence of the monarchy. Not even that good at fighting. Hypothetical victories only. Like “noooo Arthur Dayne would’ve—” except Arthur Dayne lay down his life to stop a pregnant 15 year-old dying in childbirth from seeing her big brother on her deathbed and then got fucking hosed by teenage Ned Stark and his gay best friend who does not hit 5 foot two. “Ohhhhhh aemon the dragonknight” kept his sister in that damn cage for decades and then died in the service of his brother which is dickrider behavior. Bystanderan Selmy? Washed.

he pushed a 9 year old out a window

yes he did. the man who pushed a 9 year old out a window was the best of aerys' kingsguard. the conclusion here isn't that jaime lannister is a good man, but that the kingsguard were all terrible.

imagine being a septon at a smaller castle in the reach and the lord wants to have a tourney for his daughters bat mitzvah. whatever sure. easy weekend for you, bless the tourney and go on with your day. maybe some last rites of the melee gets violent. then the royals arrive and shit hits the fan and suddenly you have to find the prayer to a combat trial that hasn’t happened in 100 years and then the future king DIES so you have to get the silent sisters out and perform all of that song and dance. and then at the end of the weekend the newly knighted fossoway dude and a woman who you’re fairly certain was in a different tent earlier come in drunk off their asses on apple cider wanting to get married.

and then a few months later the spring sickness comes and you die

i love the dunk & egg books so much. are there no true knights among you? ringing out across the centuries in both directions, the white cloak soiled him, not the other way around, the kingsguard standing by as aegon 4 abuses naerys, as aerys abuses rhaella, as baelor locks up his sisters. dunk standing by aegon 5 (no longer egg because he killed the boy to let the man be born) decades later as he accidentally blows up his entire family at summerhall. dunk saving rhaella and rhaegar, and dying as he tries to save everyone else. brienne being his direct ancestor. no chance! and no choice!

you can’t complain about cringe asoiaf ocs having hair streaks and heterochromia because george wrote that too many times for it to not be plausible

Iron Islander voice: Theon you [19 syllable dolphin noise slur] I see you came back WOKE and GAY and a WOMAN from us leaving you as a child prisoner to the guy with an 8 foot sword that makes you drag it around to executions in front of his screaming faced tree gods as a daily reminder that he can and will kill you (a child) just like he killed the rest of your family (some of which were also children). Did you have fun polishing his sword? I’ll bet. Did you write this letter yourself? Knowing there’s a one person literacy limit? Should we call you Theon the Reader, you reading fuck? And standing here in a jean jacket you bought yourself, may as well be sucking dick at old navy. You know who’s NOT woke or gay or a woman? Your sister Asha. Why can’t you be less gay and woke and a woman, like Asha? I bet she could run a democratic election because you know what isn’t gay Theon? Democracy

Under no circumstances do you have to hand it to Rhaegar Targaryen. however. Clapping the traumatized 17 yr old nepo intern knight you are leaving as sole protector of your wife and kids against your certifiably insane father the king in the middle of a civil war you caused that you are losing on the shoulder and going “well sport, i’m gonna be honest. I’m starting to get the feeling that some of this…is bad. and I prob should’ve changed things a while ago but I forgot to get around to it (oopsie daisy) anyway we’ll fix it when I get back” has got to be one of the funniest things to say before immediately dying in said civil war and leaving said intern with the dilemma of regicide or atomization-by-wildfire

second democrat targaryen. the first was egg who made some small minor improvements that maybe helped some people, only for them to get immediately overturned after he left office. also he killed himself like kennedy

at its core the story of daenerys targaryen is the story of how one can be kind and just in a world where you don't even have the vocabulary for the morality you want to express. and so you must invent it

my one and only sansa opinion i think is that everyone within the story who has repeatedly told her that she's stupid and wrong to have dreams and want good things for herself, then made this 'naivety' out to be the reason for her victimisation by the selfish ambitions of men and women around her and the readers who interpret her character like this, are wrong. that is, i don't accept the premise of a young girl being punished for her innocence and idealism and said qualities being something that needs to be crushed to give birth to a more hardened mindset because the world is a cruel place etc. like that message might belong in a nihilistic series but asoiaf is not that. sansa to me, is a character defined by her idealism and that needs to be cherished. i don't want her to end the series as a skilled player of 'the game' or as a schemer or a stone cold competent manipulator or whatever, i want littlefinger to be proven wrong. when he told her yes, it's all lies and lies and lies (except for you and me of course!) and that she was wrong to dream of a better world. he was lying.

asoiaf fandom is so good when you dont have someone whispering in your ear about the most shippable 12 year old or the prettiest 12 year old or the most ontologically evil 12 year old or