woorweid

[woorweid]

changing my life

pretty sure i think about asoiaf about as much as the beautiful theory builders and essay writers but for me i mostly spin theon with long hair around in my brain.

[woorweid]

George R.R. Martin on the process of creating A Game Of Thrones (1/3)

You hold in your hands the second volume of A Song of Ice and Fire… but not the second volume as originally intended. Although I wrote the opening of A Game of Thrones back in the summer of 1991, as related in my introduction to the Meisha Merlin edition of that volume, it was not until October of 1993 that I drew up a proposal for my agents to take to publishers. There is no mention of any book titled A Clash of Kings in that proposal. In 1993, I was under the impression that I was writing a trilogy.

Trilogies had been the dominant form in epic fantasy ever since J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings had been broken apart by publishers and released in three volumes. And the story that I wanted to tell divided quite naturally into three parts; much more so, in fact, than The Lord of the Rings, which is actually one fairly seamless narrative, and not a trilogy at all. I planned to title the books A Game of Thrones, A Dance with Dragons, and The Winds of Winter. I knew right from the start that they would all be large books. Huge books, even. But there were to be only three of them, and…and none were to be called A Clash of Kings. Sometimes the author is the last to know.

As I write this, I am halfway through the writing of A Feast for Crows, the fourth volume of my ‘trilogy.’ There is no mention of that title in my 1993 proposal either. These days, when pressed, I confidently assert that A Song of Ice and Fire will ultimately run to six books… but behind my back I know my lady Parris is smiling knowingly and holding up seven fingers. She may be right. Though I may dream of six books, plan for six books, work toward six books, the only thing that truly matters is the story. And the story needs to be as long as the story needs to be.

In Hollywood, the suits will tell you how long that is. A television show has to fit within its allotted time slot, of course, and you cannot beg, borrow, or steal an extra minute, no matter how much the story needs it. Running times are somewhat more flexible for films, though not as much as one might think. For the most part, the studios still want movies to run about two hours, so they look for screenplays of 120 pages or less, and demand cuts in any scripts that come in longer. My own screenplays and teleplays were almost always too long and too expensive in first draft, so in my later drafts, along with addressing the inevitable notes from studio, network, and producers, I was constantly trimming. In the end, I would deliver a shooting script that was the right length and under budget, but it was never a happy process… and I often went away feeling that the earlier drafts were the better ones.

The size of A Song of Ice and Fire was in no small part a reaction to ten years of trimming. I wanted to do something epic in scale, something at once grand and sprawling and complex and subtle, with a cast of thousands, huge battles, mighty castles, gorgeous costume, lavish feast, great rivers, towering mountains, vast fields… all the things I could not do in television. In short. I wanted to make a world. And for that you need a bit of room.

In my original proposal, I estimated that each volume of the trilogy might run as long as 800 pages in manuscript. The novels that I had written during the 70's and 80's, before Hollywood, had generally come in at 400 or 500 pages or thereabouts, so an 800 pages book seemed very lengthy indeed. The three books of the trilogy would be structured around the long, slow seasons of Westeros. A Game of Thrones would be summer’s book, A Dance with Dragons would take us through autumn, and The Winds of Winter… well, the title says it all. Even in the Seven Kingdoms, where a season can last for years, 800 pages ought to give me enough room to reach the end of summer and conclude the part of my tale, I reasoned.

‘Twas a lovely plan of battle… but no plan of battle ever survives contact with the enemy, it has been said. Writers know the truth of that as well as any general, though our wars are fought on blank white sheets of paper and empty computer screens. For the map is not the territory, the blueprint is not the house, the recipe is not the dinner… and the outline is never ever the book.

- George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings Limited Edition Introduction (2002)

[woorweid]

pretty sure i think about asoiaf about as much as the beautiful theory builders and essay writers but for me i mostly spin theon with long hair around in my brain.

#asoiaf #theon #<3 #fry thinks

[woorweid]

modern theon gets electrocuted by his strawberry mango lollipop sizzle flavored vape on the clock at his minimum-wage fast food job and passes out and hits his head on a shelf of molding bread and barbrey (shift manager) wakes him up by burning him with the end of the cigarette she always has in the corner of her mouth and forces him to take orders even though he’s actively concussed and seizing and when it’s time for him to go home he wraps balon’s 30 year old truck around a tree because he’s seeing double and he calls asha for help she picks him up and drives him to the er and steals the bars of hospital soap while her brother’s brain is leaking out of his ears and balon writes him out of the will for the whole truck thing but by god does theon clock in for his shift the next day. roose (store manager) lets him sleep on the floor if he promises to not tell the police about the time ramsay locked him in the walk-in for three hours and jacked off on the other side.

[woorweid]

appreciation post for the random ass horses with cool names of asoiaf. like, the silver? stranger? smiler? all of those are metal as fuck. dany, theon and sandor just woke up and went „let me give my newly acquired opinionated bicycle the raddest fucking name anyone has ever read on a fei registry“. could never be me. my horse‘s government name is lily.

#my babe was cassie. not metal … <3

[woorweid]

In modern asoiaf brienne still swears fealty to cat because she breaks her arm while she’s out dirtbiking with renly and co. and since none of them have ever broken their arm before, brienne convinces herself she’s faking it and continues biking and all of her friends are a little bit high and manage not to notice. the only reason brienne gets to the hospital at all is because loras was forced to bring margaery because mace is super overprotective and wouldn’t let her stay home alone even though she’s fifteen so she’s sitting on a lawn chair outside the bike loop wearing yellow heart shaped sunglasses and drinking lemonade while drawing a star chart for sansa, and she sees brienne ride by with a clearly broken arm and is like “dude. the fuck happened to you” and renly hears this and is like “shit your dad’s gonna kill me” so he and loras drive brienne to the emergency room but they ask if they can leave because hyle and the gang are still dirtbiking and brienne says sure she’ll be fine so she sits in the emergency room for a few hours until someone gets her and cat turns out to be her nurse and sets her bones all the while talking about her various problems because she is Stressed Out™️ (her son bought his girlfriend a promise ring, her younger son’s physical therapy isn’t going well, her daughter bit a kid yesterday) and brienne is totally unresponsive, like not even blinking, so cat assumes she can’t hear her, and when cat finally finishes, brienne, who is actually just super nervous and was trying to be polite by not interrupting, looks up at the woman who has just given her attention and mild painkillers and fixed her bones with eyes full of love and is like. Do you know that I would die for you and cat, unsure of what to say, is like 👍.

on the way back from the emergency room renly and loras manage to crash renly’s 2023 Subaru forester into a tree for unrelated reasons and this is somehow blamed on brienne.

[woorweid]

i feel like you give me a very warped idea of what asoiaf is like

honestly it’s mostly about people eating very sumptuous dinners and describing each other‘s cool outfits and then at a distant second place like also the cycle of violence and gender and misogyny and class and the dangers of reactionary politics and false prophets and also dragons. and not in the fun way it is also about tits. and orientalism. but really what these books are fundamentally about is that blonde people are dangerous and evil. 

[woorweid]

the fact that grrm consistently writes they/them lesbians when he probably doesn't even know what that is... his mind

grrm i need to introduce you to some crazy tumblr people we will blow your mind!!!!

#jon snow

[woorweid]

i will always feel frustrated about the ways ned and cat failed to fully show arya she was loved. she is failing femininity at winterfell and it really feels like no one but jon was stepping in and telling her that she’s ok.. that shes loved.. that there’s a kind of person she can be. and what she wants (to run and jump and fight and to not be failing all the time) is actually not so crazy???? starks live in the north, they know the lady mormonts at bear isle! and hell, other noble families seemed to have figured out raising gnc girls (brienne, asha, many others), including ned’s own sister!!! also.. cat literally grew up the way arya is needing so badly to live and cat can’t even figure out that it’s ok! that maybe someone can tell septa mordane to lay off! the feeling of rejection and inadequacy that arya carries her entire life is NOT bc of sansa, a litral child, it’s bc her parents can’t get their act together to show up for her fast enough. and it hurts her so much, she feels so bad, so guilty, so scared. jesus h christ…

#arya stark #asoiaf #she’s so important… #the starks #ned critical #lol #fry thinks

[woorweid]

Reek! I wanted to work out some clothing for him that was a little more defined than just 'rags'. His 'cloak' is a Dreadfort horse blanket, the tunic is a discarded undergarment- maybe one of Ramsay's. The leg and arm wraps are his old Greyjoy clothes torn into pieces. Thought a lot about the ways his humiliation and loss of status could be reflected visibly.

#theon boy

[woorweid]

ASOIAF POV characters ranked by how good of a guest judge they would be on drag race (definitive ranking)

24. Arys oakheart. spectacularly bad in a way that would also be bad TV because he simply would not know what to do. and would be icky about it.

23. Ned stark. canonically gets suspicious of people just because they are gender nonconforming.

22. Aeron greyjoy. people are going to wonder why i put him as Victarion on this list. this is because I think victarion has a better personality for reality TV.

21. Victarion greyjoy. good TV, would win reverse GLAAD award for most homophobic event on television.

20. Areo hotah. too stoic.

19. Quentyn. little nerd in over his head. if Barristan Selmy is telling you that you are not serving hard enough it’s already over.

18. Barristan selmy. a #ally for revealing that egg legalized gay marriage for his kid daeron and being happy about it, but does not have a lot else going for him. would probably say everyone looks nice

17. Bran. seven.

16. Joncon. IS gay, but does not seem like he’s super into all that.

15. Jon. Would probably awaken something in him.

14. Jaime. does not serve cunt, is one.

13. Brienne. Listen she’s trying her best okay.

12. Samwell Tarly. Would DEFINITELY awaken something in him. too busy blushing and telling everyone they look great to be an actual judge.

11. Arya. One thing about her is she WILL be finding people and she WILL be talking to ALL of them which makes her a great TV personality, but i think she would get bored.

10. Davos. Can’t explain this one i just think he would be down.

9. Cat. Serves, afraid to FULLY serve. Ally.

8. Asha. gets off on being mean to pretty boys so you know she is having a great time.

7. Dany. what can i say she’s a star.

6. Tyrion. definitely has the personality for it.

5. Cersei. is a fascist but showing up in full rhaegar eleganza to her husband who she murdered’s funeral. cuntress. You KNOW she would kill it.

4. Arianne. Definitely the first person you would think to ask to guest judge and for good reason.

3. Sansa. 13 year old fashion icon who loves gay people so much. Is so into it the whole time. meticulous notes.

2. Theon. could be the greatest to do it if he could ever get over himself but as it stands simultaneously knocks it out of the park and is a total train wreck. extremely fun to watch.

1. Melisandre. Serves like her life depends on it which she thinks it literally does. Obsessed with appearances and performances. off putting antagonistic cryptic and weird. fantastic TV.

[woorweid]

Sorry if this is reaching for something that isn't there but I was thinking about how tywin basically commiting raped to both his son and tysha (while watching), and than later went on to sleep with the same sex worker his son had been sleeping with, and how...strange that all is. Like two incidents involving some sort of sexual thing going on between them (on tywin's part). Idk if it's just abuse and tywin's need to have power over tyrion but is there more to it? Am I wrong? Sorry if this is a silly thought

no you are absolutely 100% correct that there is something extremely evil about the psychosexual enmeshment of all the lannisters which goes beyond jaime and cersei and seems to originate with tywin. the first thing he did upon attaining power was having his father’s mistress whipped naked through the streets for two weeks. tywin married his cousin joanna (who i would argue really ends up as like a proxy in whatever psychosexual humiliation rituals were happening between tywin and aerys). Tywin enacts these violent sexual humiliation rituals with his children (most often tyrion who i think reminds him of himself but also cersei) who in turn enact them on each other. Tywin also appears to be very fixated on the power and authority of house targaryen and passed this to his children as well. there’s something there.

#also aerys making jaime stand guard while assaulting the queen #always thought it was so fd up that tywin was sleeping with shae after the trial #so obsessively sexually strange #lannisters #jaime babe

[woorweid]

the people want rhaegar but if he existed in real time he’d be a 30yo adult ‘punk’ man garage band deadbeat who is dating a highschool student with clear misguidance issues that no one is helping her with and got her pregnant. and currently his mother is pregnant too snd surely he is very excited about this saying things like “aww you guys can bond lol” not seeing how weird it all is. he goes to parties (he recieves no formal invitation but he shows up every time) with a guitar people have told him expressly to leave at home and really needs you to listen to his christian rock cover band (he has never gone to church) that consists of himself and a picture of harrison ford. and yeah lyanna is there but she’s kind of too busy being in the middle of a messy as hell custody battle over herself with her brothers and a severely overbearing guy who was a senior in her lit class (she was a freshman) who became convinced she was his soulmate AND looking over her shoulder for hitmen from rhaegar’s last ex who was still not age appropriate for him but due to her vaguely mormon father is convinced lyanna is the one to target and organize school bathroom ambush fights for.

[woorweid]

book jaime lannister is the funniest boy because from birth he’s constructed a grand narrative in his mind that he is the perfect knight to his sister-wife’s perfect maiden, a relationship that exists solely to fuel their mutual narcissism and help him cope with his chronic identity crisis/trauma, only to see a buff girl naked for the first time and come to the subconscious realization that it’s actually HIM who is the maiden to brienne’s knight and proceeds to spend the rest of their trip using preschool tactics of annoying her to death so that she can notice him and sweep him off his feet (it works)

#jaime babe

[woorweid]

thinking about how dany would feel finding out she's not a natural targaryen child (i have a few ideas about how this would go, but for arguments sake let's say blackfyre) so secret blackfyre and how that would come in to play with faegon and the potential that maybe he IS aegon and the conflict of heritage versus dragons BUT ALSO her rationality when it comes to ruling, prophecy, and ego..............................the bells. joncon. the death of dragons book. speak to me on this.

who is going to call the only person in the world with dragons illegitimate. she literally has the targaryen mandate of heaven with that. came into all of this power that her ancestors used as a blank check to conquer and build a kingdom and decided to use it to try and liberate the enslaved instead. her problem is that she is constantly putting others needs above herself because she is so stressed out about being a perfect symbol of a ruler for the thousands of people relying on her to please any of them it’s not that she has a big ego

honestly her name is also holding her back because her whole thing is what she REALLY wants is to have a home for herself and to liberate the oppressed and BECAUSE she’s a targaryen and also has terrible self interested advisors she thinks the only way to do those things is to go to westeros and take the throne. if for whatever reason she thought she wasn’t a real targaryen it would immediately unlock the option of just building a better society she is at home in in essos. I feel like in that hypothetical. She has an identity crisis and then realizes she doesn’t want to go to that nasty continent full of stupid political drama when she can just build a city with red doors on the ashes of volantis

#dany

[woorweid]

sansa and tyrion's marriage is interesting from tyrion's perspective. he is canny enough to understand that she is only saying things to please and mollify him, but he also genuinely thinks that she is "so dutiful" that she would tell him what she prays for in her frequent visits to the sept (and he thinks she's excessively pious). as the reader we know she's praying for lannister annihilation and would never admit this out loud, but tyrion doesn't seem to really... get that sansa hates him and his family. even after everything, the multiple beatings, being terrorized by joffrey, the entire forced marriage, THE MURDER OF HER DEAR BELOVED DAD - he has a perception of her as a simple dutiful girl whose inner world consists of piety and supplication. that her prayers are a form of resistance and escape doesn't occur to him. he also exercises a very similar lack of understanding with shae - he thinks she's angry with him bc she lost her jewels and silks, not bc she is scared of her unstable position.

#sansa #tyrion #always thinking about this

[woorweid]

It's kind of underrated on how everyone was 100 percent sure Loras was going to commit regicide the second he saw Joffrey abuse Margaery, so the rest of his family had to hurry up and plot a murder before Loras could become a kingslayer. Aemon the dragonknight could never

#tyrell