The Game of Thrones fandom is divided up into three groups:
- The group who have only seen the show.
- The group that has read the books and is dreading the Red Wedding.
- The group that has read the books and can’t freaking wait to enjoy the suffering of all the people who only watch the show and who haven’t read the books to experience the Red Wedding.
The saddest line I've ever encountered in any book, or: Why show watchers need to read the damn books.
“Rhaenys was a child too. Prince Rhaegar’s daughter. A precious little thing, younger than your girls. She had a small black kitten she called Balerion did you know? I always wondered what happened to him. Rhaenys liked to pretend he was the true Balerion, the black dread of old, but I imagine the Lannisters taught her the difference between a kitten and a dragon quick enough the day they broke down her door.”
-Varys to Eddard Stark, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
This is sad enough on it’s own, it really is, but it requires context in order to really appreciate it. The first thing you need to know is that little Balerion is still living in the castle. That last black cat that Arya can’t catch, the mean, scarred little animal that attacks servants and interrupts Robert and Tywin at dinner, making off with the roast, is Balerion, Rhaenys’ kitten. So just take a moment to imagine that little kitten, bruised and bleeding, latched onto the boot of Ser Amory Lorch, trying to bite through the leather, trying to save his little girl, staring up at her as she’s stabbed over fifty times. Imagine him being kicked away as they wrap her body up in a Lannister cloak and take it away. Imagine the kitten following them, limping, to the throne room, where the skull of the great dragon Balerion hangs. The bodies of his little girl, and her mother, and her baby brother, are all placed at the feet of the man who sits where the little girl’s father used to sit. And the kitten looks up, and sees the dragon’s headed mounted over the throne, and he knows how small and weak he is. If I were a dragon, he thinks, I could have saved her. And so, over the years, he becomes the hardest mother fucker in the entire castle. He does what he can to hurt these new men who murdered his little girl and stole her home. He’d kill them all if he was able. But he’s still too much kitten, not enough dragon.
If ASOIAF characters used tumblr.
Ramsay would have a goreblog, with gifs from horror movies and pictures of weird medieval torture instruments. He likes to post pictures of women covered in blood and torture porn. He constantly sends Theon a lot of very disturbing anon messages. He makes the occasional text post about how much he hates and loves his father.
Fat Walda would reblog pictures of serial killers and write about how ”hot” they were and send love letters to them. She’d also love vampires. Amongst her reblogs of serial killers and edward cullen she reblogs pictures of cute cats and cupcakes. Leaving people to speculate just what kind of person she really is.
Sansa has a typical teenage princess blog, it’s primarily fashion related, pink dresses and cute multi-coloured socks. She likes to reblog pictures of puppies and kittens and adores Disney. She’s known as a friend of Margaery, but she’s no where near as popular. She sometimes get the occasional compliment and graciously accepts, attemtping to befriend the person.
Cersei is a tumblr Queen. She posts a fuckload of selfies and consistently makes sarcastic and bitchy text posts about her enemies. She periodcally reblogs pictures of male models that look suspiciously like her twin brother. She’s not very nice, doesn’t take kindly to text posts about her and messages sent to her but because she’s so bitchy and catty, people flock to her, tagging their posts with ‘CERSEI MY QUEEN’ until Margaery turns up.
Margaery is a fairly new blogger, she is witty and smart and posts pictures of her philanthropic deeds and this only helps to garner her support and respect, she’s beautiful and occasionally postes a picture of herself with a small child or a homeless man, always in designer clothing though and making sure the camera gets her good side of course. She’s always sweet to messages, even rude anon messages and she often vagueblogs about Cersei (who, not so subtly in turn passive aggressively vaugeblogs about Marg). Amongst her animal activism and help the poor posts, Margaery likes to reblog pictures of nature and flowers. She occasionally reblogs other people’s selfies just so she can sweetly compliment them. Everyone loves her. Cersei thinks she’s a fake bitch.
Joffrey used to be pretty popular on tumblr, people would follow him for his hilariously angry text posts, they would sarcastically comment how great he was. This prompted him to start taking selfies of himself holding guns for attention. His blog was full of misogynistic dudebro jokes. When he realised people were taking the piss out of him, he went on a tumblr vengeance spree, spamming hundreds of members with death threats and petulant insults. He was permanently banned from the website for being an insane little shit. No body has heard of him since.
Daenerys posts loads of fantasy artwork, particularly dragons and she occasionally draws her own. Her father was famous, but she doesn’t disclose what for. Whenever she recieves insulting messages (usually from angry users who are tired of her patronising comments about race and feminism) she resorts to CAPLOCKS: DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM???!?!!?
Dany follows much of the social justice scene on tumblr, she makes a habit of telling people to check their privileges.
Jon Snow runs a black and white blog. He ocassionally posts a Joy Division or Smiths song. He reblogs a lot of pictures of wolves and snowy landscapes. The only colour pictures he posts are of red headed models. He rarely posts model pictures though, and when he does, he often feels guilty and deletes the post. Sometimes he makes vague, melancholic one sentence text posts that end in ellipsis.
Theon used to reblog a lot of pictures of naked women and speedboats, he’d make a lot of misogynistic text posts which in the end garnered him a lot of ”haters” he would repeatedly antagonise other users and make jokes about them. But then, out of the blue one day he made a series of incoherent, disturbing text posts. Now all theon posts are of self harm and depression. His blog is now black and white with melancholy music playing in the background. He no longer responds to anon hate, but DOES post a series of disturbing anonymous messages sent from an unknown source, he doen’t reply to them, but he posts them on his blog, however humilating and degrading they are. He no longer has as many haters and a lot of people who once disliked him now take pity on this strange, isolated man. He reblogs a lot of pictures from the horror game Amnesia.
Bran has an otherkin blog, he posts pictures of his spirit animals, in particular wolves. He posts a lot of pictures of nature and different landscapes. He loves the woods and snow. He never, ever makes text posts though and is a very mysterious user. He is set on remaining in an anonymous location and doesn’t respond to messages or asks. He occasionally posts pictures of girls (who look suspiciously like Meera) posing artistically and tastefully in nature.
Arya would repeatedly make text posts listing all the people she hates. She would take a lot of selfies of herself holding her antique samurai swords. She reblogs a lot of martial arts pictures but occasionally reblogs pictures of mean-looking cats and wolves hunting. Constantly changes her username.
Petyr Baelish is not an active user. Instead, he has a decoy blog with StatCounter installed onto it (for those unaware: StatCounter is a code you put into your layout HTML and it tracks the people who visit your page— it gives you everything from IP, general location, browser, screen resolution, etc… ). He stalks all the pretty tumblr girls and sends them anonymous messages, linking them to this decoy blog, claiming that the blog has been stealing their photos. He then checks the results after a few hours and thus has all of their information.
He is obsessed with Sansa’s blog, and though he doesn’t message her, he keeps an eye on her daily updates. She hasn’t taken much notice of the ”spam blog” that has followed her, unaware she is the only person that he follows.
Lord Renly laughed. ”We’re fortunate my brother Stannis is not with us. Remember the time he proposed to outlaw brothels? The king asked him if perhaps he’d like to outlaw eating, shitting, and breathing while he was at it. If truth be told, I ofttimes wonder how Stannis ever got that ugly daughter of his. He goes to bed like a man marching to a battlefield, with a grim look in his eyes and a determination to do his duty.”
A Game of Thrones, ch.27
it’s all fun and games until you unnecessarily shit-talk SHIREEN, YOUR LITTLE DISFIGURED NIECE WHO PROBABLY LOVES YOU AND THINKS YOU’RE GR9, MR. ‘MAN OF THE PEOPLE.’