#butterbumps

All the ladies checkin' out my Butterbumps (they drive the ladies crazy)

Huevember day 4

All black and brown and covered in hair!

Join us on Friday at 3 PM EST for Dig Lost's performance of Sansa III ASOS. He will be reading in a series of southern accents inspired by DavidReadsASOIAF's take on the Tyrell's.

This was a lot of fun the first time around, and I cannot wait to hear it again. If you need additional encouragement (it's a Sansa chapter, what more do you need!?) Dig is a former music instructor who's got the pipes for Butterbumps*

I've been interested in how fools are regarded in A Song of Ice and Fire. I remember reading some books about the history of clowns, which went into some detail about medieval jesters with many anecdotes about them as gifted performers and sometimes valued confidants.

Later, however, I came across several notes in history books where it showed that at least some of them were mentally disabled people who were essentially kept as pets. One of these sources pointed out that as shocking as that sounds, it also may have saved the lives of some of these people.

Since A Song of Ice and Fire is told strictly from the point of view of individuals, fools only appear as background details. The only time any of the viewpoint characters suspect a fool is not a fool is when they are suspecting them of spying for someone.

Spoilers, profanity, Jaime x Brienne. Game of Thrones. A Song of Ice and Fire.  ASoS Sansa I (repost)

Close The Door And Come Here - ASoS Sansa I (repost)

I think you are quite right.

Butterbumps is pretty obviously a well-versed servant to Olenna, since he knows to turn up the volume and put on a distracting show when Olenna wants to have a quasi-private conversation with Sansa about Joffrey's true nature.

Moon Boy is capable of biting satire, as Sansa notes.

And Dontos obviously is giving us the greatest insight into a, you know, regular man trying to live up to his job description by putting on silly acts, but having various motivations, personal backstory and the theoretical ability to be quite something else (a knight, a spy, a henchman...). Florian is famously "a fool and a knight".

Then you have the different fools, who are given the role because of a disability. Jinglebell comes to mind. Patchface was trained to be a brilliant fool, and only retained the role by default after his traumatic near-death. He is closer to a variant of, oddly enough, Aeron Greyjoy.

"And what of you, Uncle?" Theon asked. "You were no priest when I was taken from Pyke. I remember how you would sing the old reaving songs standing on the table with a horn of ale in hand."

"Young I was, and vain," Aeron Greyjoy said, "but the sea washed my follies and my vanities away. That man drowned, nephew. His lungs filled with seawater, and the fish ate the scales off his eyes. When I rose again, I saw clearly." (ACOK, Theon I)

Aeron is, surely enough, introduced as a POV in a chapter titled The Prophet. Patchface's songs are prophetic in nature, even if they seem nonsensical.

The fiction that Moon Boy is "simple" is actually an interesting play on the duality of such a role. His true capacity is unknown. Which is, you know, useful. The famous Mushroom used that to his advantage.

"Soon or late you must meet Myranda Royce," Petyr had warned her. "When you do, be careful. She likes to play the merry fool, but underneath she's shrewder than her father. Guard your tongue around her." (AFFC, Alayne II)

A fool does not need to be someone else's agent. They can be their own disguise, for their own purposes. The equivalent of a lady's armor.

“It is so kind of you to sup with me and my foolish flock of hens.”

“[Renly] knew how to dress and he knew how to smile and he knew how to bathe, and somehow he got the notion that this made him fit to be king.”

“As to your father [Mace], would that I’d been born a peasant woman with a big wooden spoon, I might have been able to beat some sense into his fat head.”

“Hush, Alerie, don’t take that tone with me. And don’t call me Mother. If I’d given birth to you, I’m sure I’d remember. I’m only to blame for your husband, the lord oaf of Highgarden.”

“[Sansa] might think we have some wits about us. One of us, at any rate.”

“The thought that one day he may see his grandson with his arse on the Iron Throne makes Mace puff up like... now, what do you call it? [...] My son ought to take the puff fish for his sigil, if truth be told. He could put a crown on it.”

“Once the cow’s been milked there’s no squirting the cream back up her udder.”

Sansa: “The Tyrells can trace their descent back to Garth Greenhand” Olenna (snorting): “So can the Florents, the Rowans, the Oakhearts, and half the other noble houses of the south. Garth liked to plant his seed in fertile ground, they say. I shouldn’t wonder that more than his hands were green.”

“I’ve never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they’re only men with the useful bits cut off.”

“Alerie, will you have them bring the food, or do you mean to starve me to death?”

“Here, Sansa, sit here next to me, I’m much less boring than these others. [...] No, don’t blush, with your hair it makes you look like a pomegranate.”

“The rest of you be seated, do I have to tell you everything? Sansa must think that my granddaughter is attended by a flock of sheep.”

“[Mace's] father was an oaf as well. My husband, the late Lord Luthor. Oh, I loved him well enough, don’t mistake me. A kind man, and not unskilled in the bedchamber, but an appalling oaf all the same.”

“A lion is not a lap cat, I told him, and he gives me a ‘tut-tut-Mother.’ There is entirely too much tut-tutting in this realm, if you ask me. All these kings would do a deal better if they would put down their swords and listen to their mothers.”

“Yes, all the Lannisters are lions, and when a Tyrell breaks wind it smells just like a rose.”