Stuff Nancy remembers to bring on a case:

Stuff she forgets:

weird timing but s1 dads and their bastard fathers (and frank)

Really not a fan that "lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship" is being memed because so many people don't seem to realize it's in reference to a wildly inappropriate boss-employee relationship and not, like, two people who got overly distracted by their relationship.

Reframing it this way is exactly what Ned wants. He wants you to think it's a branding problem and not a Title VII issue. He wants you to ignore the power dynamics. He's trying to salvage his reputation and mocking his deliberate word choices for the wrong reason just helps him.

I ignore about 95% of the conversations surrounding Arya having killed people because, outside of Arya stans, people refuse to include the context of the very violent circumstances she experiences + her trauma which influences her actions. She wasn't destined to be a killer and her being forced on the run, having to survive during a war (at times on her own), having to witness countless people being tortured and murdered, being enslaved as a prisoner of war, having to witness the deaths of her family, etc. are all hugely important factors. Not to mention the times when her life is literally on the line and she has to make tough decisions to ensure her survival. The only time her trauma is acknowledged is when people are using it to prove she's "too far gone", otherwise it's essays on how she hasn't suffered that much. It's so boring how people ignore well-developed characters just to reduce them to one or two aspects of their story. And this treatment is only for certain characters; let someone mention Sansa being part of the plot to poison Sweetrobin and all of a sudden, people can understand being forced to make questionable decisions under difficult circumstances.

no of fence to jon snow fans who for some reason care about his exact age, but these discussions just annoy me no end. not only bc there's no way any weirwood flashbacks bran has to rhaegar/lyanna will come with time/datestamps, but also bc there's always comments like this:

SEVERAL turns of the moon (ie, months)?! have these people never seen a human baby before or just have no concept of their ages? even if we take into account travel time from the toj to wf, meaning jon was not a newborn too fresh out the oven when catelyn and robb arrived, there's still a difference between a newborn and a 3mo and an even bigger difference between those infants and an older baby 5-7mo. there's very good reasons these lines were cut. whatever birthdates can be worked out internally for jon and robb from when they're first mentioned as 15 and 16 don't matter in the end, bc grrm doesn't care about a consistent timeline and the actual text of catelyn's pov and ned's convo with robert about cheating on her should outweigh any guesstimates about jon's official nameday wrt robb's. catelyn may not have cared for jon, but she would sure as hell have noticed his nameday if it came before robb's and made him ned's firstborn. if jon's birthday canonically came before robb's then either ned's cover story would not involve adultery (not impossible for him to sire a bastard before his wedding), or he'd just give jon a new nameday along with his new name to fit the adultery lie. it makes no sense for him to lie about one and not the other, undermining the big lie with a little public clue of his story not adding up. whatever else she was as a stepmother, cat wasn't stupid and a bastard who was actually the eldest son being raised alongside her trueborn heir could be an even bigger insult than whether he was born of adultery or not.

BUT, the unknowability of jon's true birthday is not the only reason this annoys me, it's bc this is all based on the assumption that jon must be older since rhaegar/lyanna ran off together before ned married cat, as if both boys must have been conceived asap as robb canonically was when his parents consummated their marriage. and that's not how human reproduction works! even if you don't understand how fast babies grow in the first year, you should know that people who get pregnant do so through ovulation cycles and a lucky sperm finding an egg and all that, not just immediately getting knocked up as soon as one has p-in-v sex for the first time. not unless you only know mean girls sex ed where if you have sex you will get pregnant and die. (even tho lyanna did die, there's plenty of canon examples where pregnancy did not lead straight to death. also examples of people who did not get pregnant right away and even some who are/were sexually active and childless without always having moon tea on hand.) we can't know how long lyanna was having sex before that sperm+egg match happened or even how long she was with rhaegar before losing her technical virginity. if they were married, doesn't it make sense to think they didn't consummate their relationship until the wedding night either? that's the only leverage there is to ensure a status as wife rather than just mistress.

and while i just said grrm doesn't care about exact timelines and a lot is still foggy surrounding the rebellion and esp rhaegar, there is one timemarker wrt robert's rebellion he voluntarily threw in, time and time again: that stannis was besieged at storm's end for almost a whole year. that siege, which mind you, did not match the duration of the entire war. it only started after robert won his battles at gulltown and summerhall, returned to storm's end, and then went out and lost the battle of ashford, leaving his homeland open to the reachermen. the same siege which only ended when ned made a detour there after the sack of king's landing, before going to the toj. even if lyanna may not have given birth that exact day ned found her, she could only be waiting in that bloody bed for weeks at the most, not months. so if rhaegar knocked her up the very same night he carried her off and jon was still a newborn when ned found her after the siege of storm's end had ended, wouldn't that mean lyanna was pregnant for well over a year? that's not how human pregnancy works either! so, maybe that's proof that jon and robb, whichever order they were actually born in, were actually very close in age as babies, much closer than if they were both conceived asap.

and really, jon's actual birthdate does not matter imho, when he was raised not just as the bastard to robb's trueborn heir, but with robb also known by catelyn and the world as ned's firstborn (which he was, in any case, as jon was ned's nephew by birth). what difference could a birthdate before robb's make (even were there some means of discovery) after ned, cat, and robb are all dead? if one is looking only at his birth parents then he's only a firstborn child on lyanna's side, but definitely a second son on rhaegar's side. maybe he was always meant to be a second son with a not much older half-brother! even if the aegon fka young griff is not in fact rhaegar's son, he'll still be known as aegon vi targaryen, meaning jon will never be known as any father's elder son. if i may reference mean girls again, it's not going to happen.

House Dayne

take this bundle of dayne sketches bc idk what else to draw

We spent 8 seasons watching how everybody south and north of the wall scorned Jon for being a bastard and how even the doubt of the future king being illegitimate (while having the very plausible excuse of looking like his mother) burst a giant war where almost everybody dies and now we are supposed to believe Rhaenyra putting bastards (that don’t even look like her) on the throne has no political repercussions whatsoever?

Can we please talk about how hot it was when Stede told Ned to walk, PLEASE, I BEG

I will put this on my rules or on my pinpost so it's more visible, but all my blogs follow the R+L equals J. jon is always going to be rhaegar's biological son with lyanna. none of the other theories make sense to me (brandon seemed to be infatuated with catelyn enough despite being a flirt, ashara and ned are most likely the ones who had a thirst during the tournament but we have confirmation her child died and there is no reason for ned to hide who jon's mother is if it's ashara, brandon and ashara just no, zero sense for me, robert and lyanna makes no sense either, why would lyanna try and keep it a secret?) the only theory that makes sense to me is rhaegar and lyanna and so that's always going to be one truth that I follow.

I know not everyone follows it but I'm a Jon is a starkgaryen truther.

ed telling stede that them having sex was a mistake was such a bullshit move - stede's been trying SO fucking hard for ed for SO LONG (HE STILL HASNT GOTTEN A CHANCE TO TELL ED WHAT *ACTUALLY* HAPPENED THAT NIGHT HE NEVER SHOWED UP) and even izzy told ed to leave stede alone so he could calm down because he knew stede might lash out/react in an unpredictable way!!! and ed does what he always does which is act impulsively and stede was reacting out of trauma because he just killed a man in defense of the people (THE PERSON) he loves and he wasnt acting rationally and ed's basically like "well it's your fault that i fucked you when i asked to take it slow" like yeah stede shouldnt have jumped him like that but ed couldve said no!!! and chose not to!!! rather he chose to use it against stede!!! like omfg stede has been making him be accountable for his actions for the first time in his life but he still isnt doing it UGH it makes me mad!!! then he fucks off to be a fisherman which will last 5min because his impulsive nature makes it impossible for him to stick to anything but the most fucked part of it all is that even if ed apologizes stede gets to live with the fact that his first time not only having sex with a man but having sex with someone he actually LOVES has been viewed as another of eds impulsive mistakes!!!

Sometimes the fact that GRRM has, amid all his efforts to have nuance and a wide spectrum in his female characters and to deconstruct certain tropes, played the daddy's girl tomboy in contrast to the hostility or complete elimination of the female figures in her life trope completely straight over and over again, with basically every female warrior he wrote, from his female lead to two whole secondary POVs to one note extras (with the exception of the Mormont ladies yeah at least, maybe when we get more Alysane content I will be less grumpy about this), leaves me kind of bitterly shocked tbh

look at him GO!!!!!

i never thought that Ned Low and the guy that Stede burned, are actually dead, only that everyone just assumed they were. i feel like itd make for perfect comedy to have a scene where Stede is at Spanish Jackie's, beating himself up, weeping, because he thinks he's tainted and unlovable now that he's killed two men, then both of them proceed to hobble into the bar, Ned like a webkinz soaked in milk and the other guy covered in bandages from head to toe, and Stede immediately stops crying, and absolves himself of his own crimes. "Right, well, I've clearly done nothing wrong, as you are indeed still breathing, and I shall be leaving now! Post-haste."

Just remembered bushrangers were like. A Thing not even 200 years ago

Why the fuck does no one talk about that?? Why is that not like a Thing in our pop culture??

It takes two seconds for every "Sansa never bullied Arya, they just had a normal sibling relationship" post to devolve into "but if there was someone to blame, it would be Arya because she was soooo mean and calls everything Sansa does stupid". The only reason the "Stark sisters 4ever" hags want them to get along is because they're desperately hoping Sansa's behavior toward Arya isn't ever addressed so they can keep pretending she's a perfect angel who can do no wrong; they won't even try to pretend it's about anything else.

I was thinking about SPY and that we learn that Nancy's terrible baby habit was breaking stuff I feel like everyone else needs their own.

@papenniesandbentoboxes did help me out with some of these. Thank you!

Frank: Constantly asking "why?", locking doors, and a picky eater. Mrs. Hardy was constantly trying to get him to eat something and he absolutely would not do it.

Joe: Streaking. Could not keep his clothes on him. Would try to eat anything and everything. Also later asking "why?" constantly when he starts copying Frank.

George: A runner. Needed a baby leash. Think of that one scene from Modern Family with Lily and Cam. Also a literal ankle-biter. People have scars from her biting them

Bess: Cried over everything. Also clingy. If you held baby Bess and let go she would still be on you. Like an adorable piece of velcro that was also incredibly loud at the first sign of distress.

Ned: Climbing. I feel like he was an unreasonably good baby, but sometimes he was just higher than he should've been. Also never slept and would stand at the edge of his parents' bed watching them in the darkness. Always scared them. He thought waking them up would be rude, but the watching was worse.