#jonsa?

Well Played

DECEMBER 27, 2020

In the deep of winter, the nights are long and dark… and we all need good books to read, good shows to watch.   We cannot go to the movies or to the theatre so long as the pandemic lasts (not if we are sane), but we still have television, with more choices than ever before.

Looking for something good to watch?   Then let me recommend that you check out QUEEN’S GAMBIT, if you have not done so already.

It’s an adaptation of the Walter Tevis novel about a chess prodigy in the 60s and 70s.   A very faithful adaptation (yay) of a very strong novel (yay), beautifully written, acted, and directed.   I think you will all like it.   If there is any justice, the series should contend for awards.

It also resonated with me very strongly.   I know that world.  Chess was a huge part of my life in high school, in college, and especially in the years after college, the early 70s.    QUEEN’S GAMBIT brought it all back to me vividly.   Like the protagonist, I learned chess when I was still quite young, and got pretty good pretty fast (though never nearly as good as her).   I was the captain of my high school chess team, the founder and president of my college chess club.  I wrote and edited the club’s newsletter, GLEEP.  The first two great loves of my life were girls I met at the chess club (but that’s another tale for another time).

The heroine of the Tevis novel becomes a Grandmaster and contends for the world championship; I topped out at Expert, and that only very briefly before falling back down to a lower ranking.   There was even a time, back in college, when I played with the notion of devoting myself to chess after graduation.   I chose writing instead.   I think I made the right call.   If I had lived and breathed and studied chess all day every day for years, I could have become a better player, I have no doubt… but only to a point.   It was not in me to climb the heights attained by the protagonist of QUEEN’S GAMBIT.

But even after I had stopped playing, chess was a big part of my life.   Back in the first half of the 70s, when trying to establish myself as a writer, I directed chess tournaments all over the midwest and south for the Continental Chess Association.   Indianapolis, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Madison, Milwaukee, Lincoln, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Cleveland… I was living in Chicago then, but every Friday I was on a plane (or a Greyhound) with a suitcase full of score sheets to set up and run another tourney in another city, usually in the center of the city in some grand old hotel that had known better days where the rooms… and the ballrooms… were cheap.   Most young writers had to work day jobs five days a week so they could write on the weekends.   I was lucky; I worked on the weekends and had the week to write.   Running chess tournaments did not make anyone rich, even in the Fischer heydey, but I made enough to pay my share of the rent on the rundown Uptown apartment I shared with half a dozen college friends and roommates.    And there was one point where I crossed the streams, where my two lives met: my first sale to ANALOG was not a story, but rather an article about computer chess called “The Computer Was A Fish.”   (Half a century out of date now, of course).   The first thing Ben Bova ever bought from me.  I never sold another article to ANALOG… but it opened the door for all the stories I would place there in the years that followed.

It has been many many decades since I last ran a chess tournament or even played a game of chess, and the memories had faded… but QUEEN’S GAMBIT brought them all back.   It’s a fine series in all respects, I think, but I was especially impressed that the producers and directors got the chess right.   All too many of the chess games one sees in films and television are crap.  Supposedly great players are shown making elementary mistakes, the pieces on the board are in impossible positions, the game is obviously over yet no one has resigned, and so forth, and so on.   Not here.   The games one glimpses in QUEEN’S GAMBIT are real.   It must have been a challenge for the actors.   Not only did they have to learn their lines, they had to learn their moves, and make them in the right order.

All in all, a terrific piece of television, says this old patzer.

Oh George!

A few curious facts: 

In Spanish the Queen is also called Lady (Dama) so the series’ name was translated as “Gambito de Dama.”

We have to say thank you to Anya Taylor-Joy who asked the creators of the show for Beth to be a redhead (in the book Beth had brown hair): “When I first read it (the script), I was like ‘She needs to have red hair because I want her to be completely identifiable event if she doesn’t want to be.”  

Finally, the only other Auburn haired girl George wrote in his short stories, besides Laurie from A Song for Lya, was the one in his Chess story, Kathy from Unsound Variations, who is described as a ‘sweet lady’: “She stood up, and shook loose her hair. It was long and auburn and it fell around her shoulders gorgeously, and Peter remembered the sweet lady he had married eight years ago, when he was a bright young writer working hard on his first novel. He smiled. ‘You look nice,’ he said.”

Now we all get why George likes The Queen’s Gambit so much.  

I think Jon and Sansa are on vacation. They deserve it. Fuck it, I deserve it. Might be a minute.

Something doesn’t add up. So we know that Daenerys’ last betrayal is from Jon thanks to the show, but we also know that her last betrayal is “for love” (her THOTU chapter). If Jon really loved her despite her dark nature then his betrayal would be “for people” or “for country” or “for duty”. But it’s not. The book says it’s “for love”. Which could mean one of two things 1) He loved her but he loved his family or someone else more or 2) He never loved her but loved his family or someone else.

Dear nonny,

I think there are several reasons for this. One is that in general people voice insults on the Internet they might not say irl. Another general reason is that somehow it has become a generally accepted idea that honesty somehow equals rudeness. I wish I knew where that idea comes from. I would like to eradicate it. Rudeness =/= honesty... All rudeness ensures is that the person you are talking with is disinclined to accept anything you say - no matter if it's true or not.

Another reason is that every fandom has its ship wars. Nothing to be done about that. It is in the nature of books, movies, TV that they can be interpreted differently. I sometimes imagine a medieval court and the Ginevra /Lancelot shippers at the throats of the Ginevra/ Arthur shippers and the crackship Gawaine/ Lancelot probably had a faction as well. And there is always one ship that gets the most hate. After a while this develops a dynamic of its own, a way for all others to unite. 'Othering' the Jonsas as delulus helps keep the rest of the fandom together.

There are also reasons within the Got fandom. Some book purists just hate the show and therefore they just ignore any hints the show might give us as to where the story is headed. They argue that Jonsa is a theory that only is derived from the show and the chemistry of the actors and the 'books will be different'. This is not true, Jonsa was a theory before the reunion in season 6. It is just that this major hint the show gave the fandom caused the MS Jonsa to get considerably more steam.

I myself would probably have shaken my head before season 6 at Jonsa theories, but since then I've caught up. And this leads me to my last point. People and BNF have theorized so long about the books. They think they have worked it all out: the three headed dragon, Jon€rys as endgame and getting killed on behalf of humanity or Targ restoration de luxe (tm)....

And they are so in love with their own theories and their own intellect that they are not ready to look at new theories. It is an emotional reason. Well, it sucks to be wrong. As someone who likes to get things right I can relate.

I knew all those theories and I believed them. I just never loved them. They did not satisfy my need for a good story. So, for me the jump on the Jonsa ship was easy. Because for me it never was about shipping, it was about a satisfying end, and before I considered Jonsa and the many things that come with this ship, I was emotionally invested in what I think is a much better story.

And I think that some of the Anti Jonsas at least suspect that Jonsa is a possible outcome. So, they act panicky and defend their takes. I mean if Jonsa really was a crackship they could just ignore us. No, they hate us for coming up with an alternative for their old theories. They thought they had the solution and as it happens their solutions do not add up.

I mean, I had a discussion with someone recently who told me that there is zero foreshadowing for Jonsa on the books... Well, if you cut out the Jonsa foreshadowing you might end up with only half the books left, but as long as GRRM has not finished the books this is a matter of interpretation. At another occasion I was arguing with someone who mockingly told me that I would have a hard time to come up with Jonsa foreshadowing and I answered that Sansa rebuilds Winterfell from snow. They have yet to answer to that.

So, several reasons lead to Jonsa - one of the healthiest ships in ASOIAF - being so hated. General society reasons, shipping and fandom dynamics and pseudo-intellectuals who tolerate Varys as a merman and Ned Stark as a pigeon theories to stress how open they are but cannot for the life of them have the balls to just take a look at an alternative theory that challenges their take on endgame, up to a point where theories like DarkDany or even Political Jon (first on Westeros.org in 2013) are officially stamped as Jonsa theories... (And apparently as delulu as Jonsa) - even though not all Jonsas believe these theories and even though they are not dependent on Jonsa. I know of one person who started drifting towards us because their DarkDany posts were always ridiculed as originating from a Jonsa.

You know in a way I was lucky that I never was emotionally invested in the old theories. That helped me being open about new theories. And now I can't understand how I didn't see it before. Once you look for it, Jonsa is the key to many of the riddles of ASOIAF. But to accept that you would have at least to try the key. And most Antis just look at Jonsa and say: this isn't going to open anything. Well the Jonsa key certainly does not fit their locks. But that is because their locks only lead to empty rooms.

You know that little smile Sansa had when Daenerys said “who manipulated who?” I think it clicked in Sansa’s mind that Jon might be actively manipulating the Dragon Queen. 

And I think she smiled because it means Jon isn’t stupid enough to give up his crown and give up their independence for love. She’s pleased he’s playing the game. Pleased because this means the consequences of his kneeling are more easy to reverse.

Or it could be because Sansa realized Daenerys is trying to manipulate her, and is pleased that she’s caught on so quickly.  Edit: never mind I’ve changed my mind on this part.

“How is her relationship with Jon now that he’s brought home his new girlfriend?

Her relationship with Jon is struggling because he’s so clearly in love with Daenerys and believes in her completely. Sansa thinks she’s power-hungry and not the rightful queen. There’s a huge amount of fighting between Sansa and Jon.