[ SECRET POST #1914 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1914 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]














12. [SPOILERS for ASOIAF/Game of Thrones]



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13. [SPOILERS for Honey and Clover]



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14. [SPOILERS for The Fault in Our Stars]



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15. [SPOILERS for 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors]



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16. [SPOILERS for The Hunger Games]



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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]















18. [TRIGGER WARNING for abuse]

[Merlin]


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19. [TRIGGER WARNING for rape]



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20. [TRIGGER WARNING for rape, child abuse, and shotacon]



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21. [TRIGGER WARNING for incest]



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22. [TRIGGER WARNING for suicide]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #273.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - hit/ship/spiration ], [ 1 can't unsee it ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fauxkaren.livejournal.com]

Robb is kind of boring as a character.

But Catelyn... oh how I love her. She is hands down my favorite character in the series. I was gutted when she died.

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think the fact that she came back as Lady Stoneheart - and went insane before they killed her - makes it all worse. And I am hoping like hell we never get inside Lady Stoneheart's head - GRRM said no new POVs, but Un-Cat technically wouldn't be new... *shudders*

I have a bit of a love/hate feeling on Cat - I love how devoted she is to her family, but I wish she could have taken her anger over the Jon Snow situation out on Ned, not Jon, much as I understand why she handles it as she does. (Because Jon and Cat are both up there on my fave character list, it's hard to decide whose side to take with that tension.)

[fauxkaren.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Lady Stoneheart is so chilling because it's just... NOT Cat. I mean, it is, but it isn't. Idk. I need to see how that story ends before I figure out how I feel about it and what exactly GRRM is trying to say with her.

I think Ned is really the one at fault there. If R+L=J (and I believe that theory is true), then at some point he REALLY should have told Catelyn about Jon's parentage. I think that would have completely negated her bitterness and really after a certain point, I think he really should have been able to able to trust her with that info. The fact that Cat takes her bitterness out on Jon instead of Ned is definitely her biggest flaw. But it's also really understandable. It's a lot easier to project her negative feelings onto a child that she purposefully keeps at arms length than to harbor those feelings towards the man who is sharing your bed, you know? Cat really did grow to love Ned and she wanted her marriage to work, so she put her anger onto Jon which isn't fair. But I still get why her mind worked that way.

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

I figured Lady Stoneheart's another deconstruction. I mean, basically that's what ASOIAF is, a fantasy world deconstruction. How many fantasies and fairy tales have someone coming back to life? To me it's a bit like a darker version of the Resurrection Stone in Harry Potter - this idea that the fantasy of the dead coming back should just stay a fantasy, the dead should not return because it never goes right. But, as you say, the end of that storyline will tell us more.

Oh, I completely understand where Catelyn is coming from. It's a major flaw but a humanizing one, and the thing that makes it such a sad side note to the Stark family dynamics is that you feel so bad for them both. Catelyn is the closest thing to a maternal figure in Jon's world, and she hates him. Whereas she knows on some level that blaming the boy is wrong, but she's dealing with her own pain and it's the only way she can really cope with it. I really just want to hug Jon - especially little-boy!Jon we never see, because it must have been worse for him then - and give Cat someone to talk to about it, vent all of the pain.

I do blame Ned more than Cat - whatever the truth of Jon's parentage (and yes, I prefer to believe R+L=J myself) he's the one who caused all this. He was right to raise Jon himself, whether Jon is his son or nephew, but there had to be something he could do besides basically say to Cat "He's staying, you can't know anything about him." Though I will give Cat this; while she was cold to Jon I can't recall any evidence that she was outright cruel save for that one scene in Bran's bedchamber, and... Well, grief excuses a lot. Other women might have done worse than she did. (Cersei, for example.)

Makes you wonder, if Jon is Lyanna's son by Rhaegar, say Ned had told Catelyn. I wonder how the family dynamics would have been then. (Sorry to ramble on like this; I'm new to the fandom and I don't know anyone, so no ASOIAF talking for me.)

[fauxkaren.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that one of the big things with Lady Stoneheart is the idea that dead things should stay dead. Because Cat comes back, but she comes back WRONG. I mean, there's also the ideas that in life, Catelyn was powerless and no one listened to her advice, and then in death he voice is literally taken from her. This also intersects with the idea that in life Cat had no martial power, but now she has this group of outlaws who will do her bidding.

Yeah, GRRM has clarified that Cat's behavior at Bran's bedside was an anomaly. Mostly she just kept her distance and was cold to him. The thing is, Cat isn't offended by Jon's existence so much as his presence at Winterfell. The standard practice in Westeros was for bastards to be raised elsewhere, but the fact that Ned insists on raising Jon at Winterfell and refuses to discuss his mother is what really fuels Cat's bitterness. It's really disrespectful to Cat for Ned to be raising Jon at Winterfell.

But I think that if Ned had told Cat the truth of the situation, she'd had been ok with it. As long as she knew the truth of Jon's parentage, I think she'd be ok with other people believing he was Ned's bastard because I really think it was Ned's caginess over the whole thing that really bothered her. I mean if Ned cares enough to buck Westerosi custom and raise Jon among his trueborn children and also refuses to talk about Jon's mother, I can see why Cat might resent what Jon represents in her marriage (a lingering reminder of a woman that apparently Ned loved a LOT).

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

Lady Stoneheart is interesting in a lot of ways, it's just... I liked Cat. She's not Cat, she's like this nightmare and as intriguing as that subplot is, I can't help but feel that Cat herself would have preferred to stay dead, over that.

Oh, yeah, by the culture of the Westerosi it's very disrespectful to have Jon there. At the same time, what could Ned have done with Jon? His brother is on the Wall, which is no place for a boy. If Jon really is his bastard he could have left him with Ashara or Wylla or whoever his mother was, but I suspect that if Jon really is Ned's son, his mother is dead and that's why Ned has him in the first place. It's kind of a catch-22 for him, though he could have handled said catch-22 with a little more consideration rather than just being concerned about honor and duty.

I think even if Jon really was Ned's bastard, it might be easier for Catelyn to accept if I'm right about the mother being dead. Then there literally wouldn't be much else Ned could do with his son besides maybe foster him out - but I don't think infants can be fostered, normally. She'd still have trouble, but it's Ned's caginess, as you say, which made things such a mess. And if Jon's his nephew by Lyanna... Why didn't he tell her? She's not about to go blabbing, especially over something like that. And Jon... It's not in the book, but in the show it kills me when Ned promises to tell Jon about his mother when they meet next, but we know they never will.

It's odd, how a man normally so honest as Ned keeps this huge secret, and seems either unaware of the tensions or not willing to do much to try and fix them. I seriously just want to shake the man, really.

[fauxkaren.livejournal.com]

The fact that Jon's mom isn't in the picture definitely complicates things. Ned probably could have arranged for Jon to be raised/fostered elsewhere, with one of his bannermen, or if Jon was Ashara's (for example) he could have been raised with the Daynes even if the mother was dead. But yeah, I think that even if Jon really is Ned's, Cat would have handled things better if Ned was just upfront about who his mother was. The fact that he was so cagey about it probably made her think that he still carried a torch for Jon's mom and idk. I think in those early years Cat would have been very insecure about her marriage to begin with just because it wasn't a love match. It was a political marriage and she was supposed to marry his brother. So I think that there was a part of her that was insecure about Ned's affection for her, so having Jon's mother hanging over her head constantly couldn't have been easy.

I think the reason Ned didn't tell is due to his weird sense of honor. Lyanna's final words to him were to make him promise (presumably to keep Jon safe?), and Ned clearly thought the way to do that was to make sure that NO ONE knew that Jon was a Targaryen (seeing as how Rhaegar's other children were killed). So the Top Secret-ness of it all was probably an attempt on Ned's part to protect Jon from Robert and his Targaryen vendetta (I mean look at how willing Robert was to send assassins after Dany). But like, COME ON NED. AT SOME POINT IN YOUR MARRIAGE, YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO TRUST CATELYN WITH THAT INFORMATION.

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

Well, in Ned's mind, it's his responsibility to raise Jon if his mother's gone, if Jon is his. So for him, at least, it's a catch-22. But yes, Ned's silence only convinced Cat that he must have adored Jon's mother, and add to that the fact that in the book Jon looks more like a Stark than any of her kids save Arya - though in the show I think Robb looks the most like Ned - and he's a living slap in the face to her. And yeah, I expect she was pretty insecure, especially since Ned isn't the most open of men.

Ned is definitely trying to keep something secret - I can't see him refusing to name Jon's mother just because he doesn't want to talk about it, after all. If R+L does not equal J, there is another good reason. But R+L=J is the most likely. And in that case, as you are saying, there is no reason not to tell Cat eventually. She's not about to tell Robert - in fact, with the truth out I could see her wanting to help her husband keep their nephew safe. Note the 'their' - if Jon is Ned's nephew, it's much easier for Cat to be his aunt than his stepmother. But she's a Tully; they're all about family and I think once she knew the story, she'd be on board with the plan.

Ned's silence is definitely due to his honor because he wants to keep his word. But it kinda backfired - since Catelyn has only reasons to resent Jon, she insists he is sent from Winterfell when Ned leaves, putting him in considerable danger on the Wall. Presumably, Ned didn't take him south in case someone noticed either traits of Lyanna or Rhaegar in Jon, because then there'd be trouble. (That's the only explanation I can think of, anyway.)

Damn it, now I want a Ned wises up and tells Cat fic.

[fauxkaren.livejournal.com]

Yeah, all of that is definitely true. I do think the reason Ned didn't want Jon to come south with him was because he thought it'd be dangerous for him to be around Robert and other people who want Targaryens dead.

I do think it's interesting that it's not Cat who suggests Jon goes to the wall. But she does latch onto the idea once Maeter Luwin informs them that Jon had already said he wanted to join the Night's Watch. The interesting thing though is that she's not heartless about it. She thinks that it would be good because then Jon could be like a son to Benjen. So although she herself might not want to be a parental figure for Jon, she seems to want to encourage that kind of relationship with other people.

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

It's really the only thing that makes sense - why else wouldn't he take Jon along?

I don't see Cat as someone who could suggest a fourteen-year-old go to the Wall, of all places. But yes, she does see the good part of it for Jon as well as look at it as an out - since she is insisting that Jon not stay at Winterfell. To her it's a win/win for everyone, really.

[aurorn.livejournal.com]

I really think that by not telling Cat - and her associated and somewhat appropriate reactions - made it that much more believable that Jon was Ned's bastard (if the theory of R+L=J is true). By telling Cat and having her be all warm and fuzzy towards Jon suddenly would set off warning bells in anyone who might have suspected the truth.

While I still think it would be better all around for the Stark family to have known the truth of Jon's parentage, whatever that may be, I can see where Ned (and you two) are coming from.