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what motifs and symbols that are associated with theon do u like and what do u think they mean: like water for instance.

anon i salivated at this and then went full on make-me-shut-up-about-theon-greyjoy mode over it so this got long...

i like:

dogs, which appear in different ways, first when he (albeit ineffectually?) kicks at a dog, later when he becomes a kicked dog himself, a play on victimisation & what i called the 'everything that was ever done to you you did to yourself turncloak' effect, which i love: theon reacts to the ways he was wronged by wronging after which he is wronged again in thematically connected ways a hundredfold. (his suffering is senseless but justified as both just and necessary to keep systemic balance, i like that).

also dogs are associated with loyalty and being a dependable follower, which theon both is presumed should be (the starks take his loyalty curiously for granted) or is presumed to be too much (on the iron islands he is shamed for having been an obedient little hostage, for not simply taking what is his) & of course he very much isn't--he disobeys his father, he disobeys robb in other words he disobeys both his kings both claiming authority over him, he disobeys ramsay, he disobeys roose... 'a dog who turns against his master is fit for naught but skinning' hother will say about theon and, well, is that so?

ghosts appear repeatedly in theon, first in acok when he silently gazes at the heads of the murdered children and "the wind tugged on his cloak with small ghostly hands", then again after jeyne and ramsay's wedding in adwd, after which a gust pushes back his hood "as if a ghost had plucked at him with frozen fingers, hungry to gaze upon his face". ghosts then here are linked to guilt and grief. these are the ghosts theon created. theon himself becomes a ghost--"winterfell was full of ghosts for theon greyjoy // there are ghosts in winterfell, and i am one of them". one of his chapters is called the ghost of winterfell.

several things here: for one, the ghosts appear in winterfell; not at the dreadfort, not on pyke, not at moat cailin. theon is a prisoner at winterfell and ends up haunted by and haunting the place, it's somehow bound to location (here's an interesting take on theon & winterfell's revival).

ghosts are dead but haunting, and theon, while alive, has been socially dead for a while: balon considers him lost to the enemy & prays for his death, the starks use him as hostage as well as presumed-loyal member of the household but there are no 'plans' for theon ever being anything but a captive, for him to get a life of his own. (fandom often stark-sympathetically surmises that of course the point was to eventually send him back to pyke as ally, but if that was so, there is neither evidence nor any indication of this in the text.)

theon's narrative runs parallel to arya's here (the ghost of harrenhal, the ghost of winterfell). while imo quite different things seem to be happening to them psychologically when they "ghost", what these pov have in common is that extreme repeated trauma & visceral proximity to death and dying "unlock" a ghost state or connection to ghosts that isn't just psychopathological (like trauma induced psychosis, dissociation, etc) but also "real" in that ghosts/the dead do speak to arya, gods/ghosts do interact with theon, etc.

i like: theon in between life and death, not dead but socially dead, traumatised away from identifying as human, looking undead, close to death, a ghost in contact with ghosts. but what is dead can never die but rises again, etc...

cut off heads appear repeatedly in theon: first, gared's head. gared is the man of the night's watch ned beheaded for 'deserting'. because we read the prologue, we understand why gared ran and we know he is telling the truth about the monsters. ned doesn't believe him and anyway it makes no matter: deserters get killed. this is actually a pretty disturbing introduction to the story (both how gared was treated as well as bran's seven year old pov struggling to witness the execution; "father will know if you look away". the idle chatter about who the man was and if he died "brave" but his name and truth never mentioned, etc). in any other story, this would be a villain-introduction, but not in asoiaf. theon, disrespecting the ritual and (some argue) maybe also the dead, kicks the head. he's actually right, imo. theon isn't very developped yet, here, but it's already: here's a guy who will bother the heroes' hero narrative.

"take his head!" theon later advices robb. why so bloodthirsty, we might wonder. later again, theon created his own beheaded heads: he will gaze at the spiked heads of the children he had murdered, while ghostly hands tuck at his cloak. also in acok, theon has a prophetic dream of a beheaded robb, robb's head replaced with a wolf's. in adwd, ramsay throws him the rotting head of a man he had beheaded. theon is to catch it, but he can't (fetters, fingers, clumsiness). "pick it up," ramsay orders and theon obeys, but the head crumbles under his fingers; it is rotten. in contrast to the introductionary agot chapter, theon will take the risk to quietly ask after the man's name and story: "who was he?".

what is this all about? i think for one a beheading marks the power of the lord: ned had the authority to behead theon, he had the authority to behead gared. theon suffers under this authority but also covets this authority, part of the violence-war-loops in theon. 'the head' of a household, of a castle, of a kingdom can be a term for its ruler. theon deals with disrespecting and disrupting this authority: characteres assume themselves in control of theon and theon proves them wrong. and the trajectory of how theon interacts with severed heads follows his own trajectory of violence: a victim but defiant which if you don't pay attention makes him simply look like "an ass", later an actual menace hounding for violence, later the villain murderer of children, later victim again, but how he interacts with what he witnesses is now very different.

hunger and distress around food & eating is present in theon from the very start. i have a quote collection about this here.

witnessing fandom talks about how different characters come into contact (or not) to food crisis and react (or not) to food crisis made me even more interested in how it is a theme introduced in theon's povs actually! theon-even estranged as he is-knows the iron island to have a ressource crisis (it is one of the first things we learn & see him think about) and every somewhat educated/intelligent ironborn character will have opinions on the subject (asha, tris, aeron, rodrik, theon, we can surmise balon). it's a discussion point at the kingsmoot. signs are all over the islands: balon's big feast for his captains and kings in preparation of going to war again was a meager, culinarily unimpressive affair. most ironborn characters are slender to lean to gaunt. the islands have not recovered from the last war but also we learn they were not doing well even before that. so to me food/hunger/ambition is about theon but also about theon as ironborn character. this is very interesting to me because while the ghost-theme is linked to winterfell as location, hunger is a lot about the iron islands and theon as ironborn, imo.

of course theon spends most of his narrative unable or unwilling to eat. his homecoming and asha's advances put him off his appetite. his tension and paranoia in winterfell have him angrily brush his dinner from the table. his teeth hurt too much to eat. he is too scared, nauseated, tired, etc, etc. whenever he eats with appetite (a rat, some porridge) he gets interrupted, the meal cut short after a bite or two. there is no straightforward arrow from hunger to need fulfilment, from ambition to result. it is perpetually thwarted. it is a continuous struggle. theon is suicidal and wilful to live, is both (self?)destructive and resilient. but in in end, he still lives. i like that all these are not just metaphors in theon: the death threat is real, the captivity is real, the hunger is real, the survival is not 'psychic' or 'emotional' alone but very physically raw.

names, well that's an obvious one, but there are a few moments i particularly like, mostly this about hodor/walder. the layers!

hunting is another obvious one, theon, the archer, liked to go hunting, later becomes hunted (in his dreams, by ramsay, etc). one can do fun things in art & such with it though ^^

godliness or gods is another interesting one. theon gets introduced as atheist character, however there's a catch: he has been landlocked against his will for a decade. to listen to the drowned god, to pray, necessitates contact to the sea. theon later gets tangled with god themes. "no godless man shall sit on the throne" says aeron and well, is theon a godless man? theon looks at his seven fingers and remembers seven to be a holy number. theon meets a figure who might or might not be the stranger. theon is spoken to by the old gods. they are not his gods but he prays to them. "the gods are not done with me" he tells the stranger, explaining his continued breathing.

the noose and related objects: the golden chain around his neck, the dog collar; all i want to point out here is that these follow a pattern, all linked to captivity. i was so interested that grrm in that interview said that theon, had his father rebelled, was to be hung. like most i assumed he'd be beheaded; theon seems to consider that a possibility as well. yet, in his reenactment of what was done to him using little beth cassel, he uses the noose and he tells rodrik cassel that the rope around his own neck chafed him raw. i once saw this situation summarised as theon answering his metaphorical strangling with a literal strangling, but both situations have the exact same ratio of literal to metaphorical: neither beth nor theon ended up in fact strangled, so what is the fuss and complaining all about? well but the threat itself is real and so is the violence.

water is what you ask about, and i'm maybe more interested here about what you see, than i have anyhing to say myself! theon is associated with water in a way, yes, but much less so than other ironborn characters or even arya or cat. this broken association makes sense, though: theon loves the sea, it is one of the first things we learn of him. yet when aeron baptises him, the sea water stings his eyes. the drowning rituals disturb him. some water memories relate to winterfell's hot springs, far away from the sea: this is where he soaked his bruises--a caring/healing memory. the hot springs are to be found in the godswood in winterfell, where theon prays in adwd, where he first had sex we learned, where he liked to retreat to, where he gets threatened and recruited by the spearwives, where he gave jeyne to ramsay... moat cailin, a chapter that will be much more relevant to theon morally i think than it will be to us, plays in a swamp. so water seems ambiguous and fractious in theon, which makes sense for someone who comes from a peole that deify the sea and make access to sea water a central tenet of ritual, prayer, culture, etc, who was severed from this.

speaking of moat cailin, betrayals are rotated this way and that in theon. of course this is a repeat topic in many asoiaf characters, but theon really is known as 'the turncloak'.

everybody remembers him "betraying" house stark but of course, he was a hostage and might or might not have sworn anything; he did betray robb's trust though. theon also betrayed palla, whom he had promised protection but then offered to 'reek' as price. he betrayed kyra, both by hurting her and by planning to leave her behind during their flight. he betrayed the miller's wive, whom he knew and had had sex with, by having her children murdered for a ploy and also delivering her to 'reek'. he betrayed jeyne, by aiding the wedding and helping to hurt her.

these are betrayals under increasing amount of duress and lack of choice, but never no choice, and imo they should weigh heavier than his betrayal of robb. i think that the way theon gets to interact with "bitches", girls and victims now in adwd as one of them shows the direction this is taking. satisfying evolution for theon lies not in serving another good lord again, but loyally so this time. it lies in the budding solidarity with those harmed. imo at least.

theon was betrayed by his father, who broke an assumed contract by discarding him: theon is a hostage to keep his father in check, if his father attacks anyway while knowing this spells the hostage's death, it is a betrayal. theon feels (and is?) betrayed by his sister, who harrassed him and also failed to help him. he gets betrayed or at least disobeyed by various ironborn who don't follow his orders.

he betrays his own people in moat cailin and this-and jeyne's wedding-is something that he gets accused of ("He was the traitor who had taken Winterfell by treachery, slain his foster brothers, delivered his own people to be flayed at Moat Cailin, and given his foster sister to Lord Ramsay’s bed.") and that will come to matter in his future interactions with ironborn, i think. he betrays roose by fleeing with jeyne and if that phrasing makes you ??? remember this is the charge stannis lays at theon's feet. ("Unchain me, and I will serve you." "As you served Roose Bolton and Robb Stark?" Stannis snorted.)

basically the theme of betrayal, what is betrayal, who defines betrayal, the morality of betrayal, who is called turncloak, (etc) get belaboured in theon, a character written into situations where he will be the turncloak no matter what, and is there potential in that?

lastly, (i put this last because that's contentious etc) the dogs in theon are specifically "bitches", both the one he kicked at and the ones he becomes part of under ramsay's control-- in ramsay's and theon's world also objects of sexual amusement/torture, of which theon becomes one.

being a too loyal follower and being victimised (but it's your fault) and femaleness get associated onto theon several times (as in theon himself never makes this association, but other characters associate this onto theon): balon's assault on theon calling him 'ned's sweet daughter' and 'whore' while ripping off his golden chain (a symbol of captivity), ramsay who puts a dog collar onto him and also makes him a 'handmaiden' and offers/announced he will put him in a dress, for instance.

now this one is emotionally ambiguous for me because the cishet-center reading is this: theon's a young man who gets abused/humiliated by being associated with women/'made into a woman' because that is sooo humiliating&insulting in a patriarchal society and will hurt the ego of a guy so choke full of masculine ideals as theon is, haha. and like... this is not so interesting to me. more interesting maybe that theon never protests this and never is humiliated by this particular association: the thought of ramsay putting him in a dress does not shame him, he readily identifies with jeyne, understands them both to serve the same function (a-also sexual-plaything for ramsay). with balon, too, the angst was mostly about location: being ironborn or not, who are my gods, where are my gods, what is my place in the world, where is home. this having to be more of one is a result of violence done onto theon of course but also in the end (maybe) a potential. of course this is me twisting this into something that pleases me more to serve my own nonbinary tastes...

yeah that's what i have for now, always interested in additional takes! 🦑🦑🦑

#this is great !!!!! wowww #words are wind #to keep #fave #prince

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