#also speaking of running. his performance fails when he runs away from battle. as sansa said: weakness is not accepted in the group

[nikolajrostovs]

we just had the most interesting discussion about war and masculinity in the old wap server and you gotta hear this.

If you wanna talk about nikolai rostov you will always, ALWAYS get to the topic of manliness. Because genuinely masculinity is such a core part of his character. There is no nikolai without masculinity, and that masculinity is as performative as it gets.

We like to joke about his tsar crush and okay yeah he definitely does have a gayass crush on the tsar. But he himself connects it to being part of a group, a group with a common interest. Everyone in the army loves the tsar.

Being part of a group is why he joined the military in the first place! He wants glory, he wants to prove himself, to be strong, and to be a part of this big group of manly men. And he needs to be a part of a group, because nikolai is a follower in every single way. He's not a leader at all. And the moment he becomes a hussar, he fixates on Denisov. Denisov is brash, headstrong, hairy, and so intelligent. He knows what he wants, he stands up for himself, but he also cares deeply for his men. He's a really great leader, but to Nikolai he's also the perfect manly man.

Weirdly enough, hair is such an important part of Nikolai's relationship to manhood. Denisov is consistently described as hairy. At the start of the novel, Nikolai has some very sparse beginnings of a mustache on his lip. A shitty teenage boy mustache, truly. Over the years it gets thicker as he gets better at performing his masculinity, and soon enough he's just like Denisov. He's the man he always dreamed of being (except a little worse because Denisov is a much nicer person than him).

Dolokhov's hands are also described as hairy. Sure, it's gay as shit, but Nikolai, in distress, fixates so much on the hair on Dolokhov's hands. He says himself that those hands hold him in their power.

And the gambling, too. Cards and gambling are very much a man's thing. No girls allowed. Nikolai is so terrible at cards, and he plays against a known cardsharp. You might think this is an idiotic move, and it is. But he is indeed kind of stupid, so he does it anyway. And why does he keep going? Well, one, gambler's fallacy. Two, he convinces himself it'll all be okay in the end. Gambling is a Man Thing, men gamble all the time and they turn out okay! It's okay! It always turns out okay, except for when it doesn't, but surely he's enough of a man to know how to gamble. But then Dolokhov is more masculine than Nikolai, and his hairy hands hold him in their power, and they ruin him.

So, Nikolai succeeds in his performance as a manly man. He becomes what society expects him to be, even if it's not his true self. And then he marries Marya, a woman, because what else would he do? Men like women, and men marry women. Men don't like men. Remember all of this definitely has to do with how he's at least a little bit aware that he's gay.

And what kind of husband and father does Nikolai become? A neglectful, dismissive, rude one. He's a masculine man, he doesn't have time for his family! Of course he has to have a family, because he has to pass on his genes and create a new generation of Big Strong Sons, but he shouldn't actually care about his wife or children. And he becomes a farmer, too, which is just THE most masculine thing he could do.

So do we ever actually get to see Nikolai being his honest-to-god true self? Does he ever drop the manly man act and just enjoy life? Well, no, it's never truly gone, but I think he's most comfortable with Natasha. I mean, Natasha is his best friend, really. She's his favorite person in the world, and he can be honest with her. They're very similar people, and thus she understands him and he understands her. Just read the Christmas part of the book please. It's so amazing.

In conclusion, in the immortal words of jimmy rostova, "he's trying so hard to transition to hussar gender"

#thanks to the wap server for awakening me in the enlightenment channel #war and peace #nikolai rostov #me actually having an intelligent thought about the Guy and running with it #also speaking of running. his performance fails when he runs away from battle. as sansa said: weakness is not accepted in the group #he's failed the tsar and his comrades and russia. in doing so he has also failed himself and the man he wants to be #also all of this was interspersed with me talking about this really cool finland-swedish book about war and guilt and generational trauma #every day i wish “heiman” by ann-luise bertell had an english translation. #discourse moomins

[swordmaid]

Hi! I really value your insight into Brienne, and I would love to pick your thoughts. So I noticed that in response to the parts of the fandom that downplays Brienne gentle, romantic side, Brienne fans have really been emphasising that part of her. However, I feel that it almost gone too far in the other direction, and now there is this attitude that Brienne would have chosen the life of a traditional lady with few, if any, regrets, if she had been beautiful. Here is where I struggle.

Brienne has been alienated from the role of lady due to her looks and size, but her decision to become a knight would have faced no more positive reinforcement. If anything, she would have faced more hostility. Westeros is a patriarchal, militant culture where strength is inherently linked to martial power. In becoming a knight, Brienne challenged masculine power, inciting not just ridicule, but disgust and revulsion, and violence born of anger. Therefore, the school of thought that

Brienne only became a knight because she felt she couldn't be a lady doesn't work because she would have been made to feel equally unfit to be a knight due to her gender. That she fought against these views to be a knight shows she feels a clear affinity for the role. Her match with Wagstaff, where she overcame her shyness to fight for her right to continue baring arms, speaks of that true desire.

So becoming a knight as a consolation prize does not fit Brienne's character, or Westeros as we know it. She truly wants both. Family and romance and music, but also to bear arms and fight for justice. As she feels that in becoming a knight she has lost the chance to be a lady, her sadness over that is more poignant, but her desire to be a knight is evident in her actually living that life, despite the roadblocks in her way. Sorry for the ramble! Would love to hear your thoughts. :)

OH thank you so much for sending! I love any chance where I can talk about Brienne lol. Brienne IS about the duality of being both the knight and the lady first and foremost. Even with imagery behind her: the pink and the blue, sun and the moon--hell, even with the castles in Tarth--Evenfall and Morne--it’s all about  duality co-existing in one space. That is the epitome of Brienne’s character communicated through imagery. She is both the lady and the knight and I believe her personal story is about achieving that imagery because so far she jumps on one side of the spectrum and never anywhere near the middle. 

Rest under the cut because it gets a bit long!

Though I believe that she chose to be a knight because she thought her body would be more fitting for it, there is this quote in her AFFC chapter: ‘[...] but a rose was no good, a rose could not keep her safe. It was a sword she wanted. Oathkeeper’ that I always found rather interesting and if anything, indicates WHY she chose to pursue to leave behind the life of being a lady and pursue being a knight. Brienne is powerless as a lady. She’s already deemed a failure from the start: she’s too big, too ugly, too clumsy, she stumbles over her words, she’s graceless, etc. etc. Society had already deemed her a failure because she fails to live up to the expectation of what a highborn female should look like, and she’s deemed a failure even more when she can’t perform like one. Her encounter with Ronnet and his rose is basically society indicating what happens if she tries to perform that role: after she gets judged for her appearance and mannerisms, she WILL get mocked and humiliated because they already decided from the start that she doesn’t fit that role. And I think Brienne realized that if she can’t be the lady then she’ll be the knight in the songs instead. Hence her training with Goodwin and her using her body for what it’s good for. So the next time around when Wagstaff came along and tried to humiliate her the way Ronnet did, she had something to defend herself with instead of just standing there and accepting their mockery.

I think that’s the biggest point as well, and that’s the difference between her choosing to be the knight than the lady. Because when she’s a knight---even if she gets mocked or ridiculed, she is able to defend and protect herself. The playing field evens out a little bit. When her maidenhood gets turned into a bet, she beats up all those men who played a part in it in the melee. She can defend for herself when she gets thrown into a bear pit, she can defend for herself when she meets the man who captured her before and threatened her with rape. When she was still a lady, she could do none of that; only stand there and accept the humiliation they were giving her.

And it’s just as you said: she’s not FIT to be a knight too, in a sense. Even if she’s a knight, she essentially longs for her home and wonders what her life would be like if she didn’t run off to Renly’s campaign. Even if she’s out there acting as a knight, she’s still very much the lady. Not to mention that her prowess, how she serves, the oaths she takes, etc. they don’t matter because Society still sees her as a woman. Jaime--one the best swordsman in the Seven Kingdom-- hails her as good when he was fighting her but Society doesn’t acknowledge that because her is what they see first. Even when she was in Renly’s campaign she had to WIN her chance of being a part of Renly’s campaign even though she proved that she was better than the knights there. Brienne as a knight has to constantly prove her worth to everyone she meets because her gender is an ever present shroud that clouds the judgement of others, which I find a really interesting contrast to Brienne being the lady who is INSTANTLY judged worthless because her appearance becomes said shroud. She’s not one or the other because Society tells her she doesn’t fit in those roles: She’s too freakish to be a lady, too woman to be a knight. And right now, Brienne is leaning on the ‘knight’ side of the spectrum but she essentially belongs in the middle and I think her personal story is about finding that balance.

Which is why I really like her with Jaime and why my favorite scenes with them is the Bear Pit and the White Tower in ASOS. I like the Bear Pit because it’s essentially boiled down fairy tale trope: lady is being attacked by a monster and the knight comes in to save her but it’s.....twisted and made crude and wrong. Brienne essentially becomes the lady in the songs except it’s made to be a mockery. She gets fitted into an ugly pink dress that doesn’t fit her---mildly unrelated but DON’T get me started on the way george ACTUALLY dressed them to fit the part. Brienne in a dress and Jaime in armor---which is SO significant because before Brienne had always been taking the role of the protector---essentially the knight-- to Jaime especially when they were captured by the Brotherhood. In those parts, Jaime was the lady that was distressed while Brienne was the knight who aids her. Jaime acknowledges her to be his protector, and it is shown in his Weirwood dream where he’s left alone in his doom with no one else but Brienne protecting him. But in the Bear Pit, the roles essentially gets switched--Brienne is the lady, Jaime is the knight who comes to save her but the fairy tale is all so WRONG and it’s so good lol. Jaime tries to defend her but Brienne is still defending him and in the end, they got saved by Steelshanks and his crossbow. On the opposite end with the White Tower Scene, here’s where they actually being the lady and the knight. Unlike the Bear Pit, it’s not made out to be crude or the mockery. It’s a knight and a lady, a sword and a quest. What’s interesting though is that the knight isn’t actively saving the lady, rather, giving her the tool so she’s able to save herself (and she DOES refer to Oathkeeper as sort of her safety blanket. The sword being the very thing that can protect her however it’s meaning gets twisted by the end of feast but I’ll talk about that in a different post because it’s not relevant lol) Jaime is not forcing her to be one or the other; he gives her the dress so she’s able to perform the part of being a lady without the ridicule she usually gets and he gives her the sword and the quest because she is that knight as well. Jaime acknowledges both sides of her and never makes her choose one or the other-- which is so important to her character because she’s always been forced to fill a role and when she does, it doesn’t fit her as well as she would’ve liked. 🥺🥺🥺

And as for the emphasis of Brienne’s more feminine side, I think that’s too contrast the all too familiar characterization of Brienne being just a knight/or just Sansa’s sworn sword. I do believe that if Brienne were--say, beautiful or someone that looks average (less freakish), I don’t think she would’ve pursued the life of a knight because the only reason she did is that she was able to defend herself. Her physique and size is more suited for battle and so she used it accordingly, and she turned out to be really good at it. But even with her prowess, she still has the desires to become a lady though she’s been pushing it away. There’s this part--I forgot which chapter it came from--but a scene where Brienne psyches herself up to ask these people and she mentions something along the lines of, ‘if she was too scared to talk to these people she might as well trade her sword for her knitting needles’. I think that indicates how much she TRIES to fit herself into this role of a knight, and tries to convince herself that the life of being a lady is unattainable because of how much she’s been judged and deemed as a failure by Society. 

I think it’s not really the fact that she wants to be a knight, rather, she wants to live a life where she’s able to defend herself and her own worth. She’s able to do that when she’s a knight but she doesn’t fit in that role exactly. Her ideals of what a true knight should be is very black and white, very based on the songs that she so wants to be a part of. I think her plot with Stoneheart and the reason WHY she’s the one who found out about Jaime’s kingslaying is meant to challenge those ideals but rather than turn her away from the role of the knight, it would allow her to actually understand what being a knight is thus letting her to fit herself on that role more fully because she actually understands what she’s signing up for. And with the presence of Jaime for their recent chapters, I hope the side of Brienne the lady gets explored and fleshed out too because currently it’s being repressed.

#i hope this makes sense ?? !!!!!! #but ty for the ask! i LOVE talking about brienne and if u want me to elaborate more #on certain points pls lmk i'd love to do that hehe #Anonymous