Lady-Mother

Summary: What if Joanna Lannister, Rhaella Targaryen and Lyanna Stark had not died in childbirth? Three one-shots.
30k words

Very well written, all of them aren't glorified or anything and I liked how they were characterized the only thing is that I think it swung too far the other way sometimes. To the authors credit it's not because they're bashed or anything, just that all of what we know from canon paints them as not the most practical people.

The Joanna one was the first and longest chapter and imo was the most satisfying because it wasn't

Spoiler

Targaryen or Stark wank, though the third could be said too as well.

Also, it had the best plot twist.

I would give it like a 3-4/5 if I were to recc it. But while it was engrossing and I read it all straight through, it's still pretty short. The author says they might continue it but it was last updated in 2017 so I doubt it.

On another note, in general all of that authors fics are decent to brilliant so check them out as well if you're in the mood for more oneshots Sera-dy-Relandrant.

 

If only they would even be so bold as to save Lady, pointless as she is. Bran always falls, Dany always gets stuck in Mereen, and Myrcella absolutely will never get out of Dorne alive.

I've actually toyed with the idea of doing a fanfic where Myrcella keeps resetting after dying in Dorne, only to end up dying there in a new and interesting way. It's kind of funny how the plot to send Myrcella away was one of Tyrion's greatest tactical moves while simultaneously being an amazing strategic blunder, which really says everything about Tyrion that you need to know.

 

The hilarious thing about Show!Tyrion is how incompetent he is...he is supposed to be giving Dany advice and yet almost Everytime, his advice is trash.

More evidence the show fell apart after season 4.

 

I actually think this will play out somewhat similarly in the books. Tyrion sets out to give Aegon deliberately bad advice to invade Westeros without appealing to Daenerys first, and to come to her as a King instead of a supplicant. This advice, although given in bad faith, appears that it will be wildly successful for Aegon, setting up a Dance of the Dragons part 2 when Daenerys eventually arrives.

Conversely, I wouldn’t be surprised that true to the ironic symmetric style that GRRM likes writing, Tyrion sets out to give Dany good advice and fails spectacularly. This is conjecture, but I think it is foreshadowed enough that he will be in the thick the conflict, down to the green and black colors of his eyes, reflecting the two sides of the original DotD Civil War. Cutting Aegon out of the show removed this symmetry.

Actually, I’d argue that a lot of the later season writing flaws and poor character choices stemmed from cutting Aegon out of the show.

 

I still have trouble imagining Bran becoming King, Dany killing that many Innocents and the Others not winning-- those are, in order, the most hard to believe plot points of the show that I can't see the book achieving.

Like, in what universe does Bran become king? No one knows about him, would believe his greenseer powers, there's tons of other possible candidates before him, etc.

 

If that is book-canon (GRRM gave general notes to the writers about how the later books will go) I'm sure it would've been written in a way that made sense. Like the Others being a far more brutal fight, Dany devolving more over the course of a longer period of time and because of Aegon and Tyrion playing them off eachother like bonner said ^

Bran could become king if pretty much everyone else was dead and he had shown his power during the fight against the Others. A theory I have is what if Jon and Dany ended up having a kid? Do we know for certain if she's barren or anything? I could see Bran being a regent if that's the case. Or he tamed one of the dragons after she died.

 

Fuck dude. I have trouble imagining how GRRM is going to finish this with a win for the side of good without it being blatant deus ex bullshit

 

If I were to guess, if GRRM ever gets his books out it'll go something like this: Dragons are way more powerful than the show portrays. They're like WMDs. Drogan is Tsar Bomba. They are the true keys to winning against the Others, and don't die as easily as they did in the show.

I think The Winds of Winter will end right before the fight against the Others (ie that book will have to work really hard to get Dany to Westeros and get her to agree to fight the coming threat. It will also have to deal with Aegon landing in Dorne and beginning his campaign to end the suffering of the smallfolk due to Lannister rule/War of the Seven Kings). First half of A Dream of Spring will be the battle against the others, and the dragons will be very effective, but a lot of people will still die. Maybe the Wall comes down too, and the North is ransacked. As this is going on, Aegon is coming up from the South and winning the people over, and defeats Cersei.

Dany turns around after basically saving Westeros and sees that they already love Aegon. I think the books still ends up with her going mad and ransacking King's Landing, and her death (though perhaps by Jaime's hand instead of Jon, who knows?) and then at the end you have Westeros in a lot of turmoil. North is ransacked due to the fight against the Others, Kinglands are in shambles, many many people are dead. And the book ends with whoever is still left alive standing around thinking "What now?"

That could fit the bittersweet ending GRRM has talked about.

 

Agree with almost everything, but think that WoW will end with the final battle against the Others and aDoS will deal with everything else.

 

Hold On To Your Heart

-"Rhaegar Targaryen and his siblings have conquered the North with fire and blood. Lyanna Stark is left with no choice but to submit to save her family name-- even if it means she must wed their bastard brother Arthur Dayne."

-really nice character development, romance, angst, etc. The best enemy-->lover arcs I've read. Arthur and Lyanna are not mary-sues, but flawed characters with interesting quirks. The world-building that you can see behind the scenes is also done well.

 

I don't see the appeal of that story though. Would have been far better if Lyanna worked on turning brother against brother, rather than becoming lovers with her brother's killer. And I don't care much for the smut either.

 

I think the story will eventually get to that point. Already hints of conflict along those lines.

 

Save for the fact that she actually loves Dayne, that being my whole objection. I mean, it was pretty early on that he talked to her about how he killed Brandon - as if he was doing him a favor - and how Eddard and Benjen died by dragonfire. That's not how you endear yourself to anyone, let alone something that should eventually lead into two people becoming lovers. If she actually had one child by Dayne and had him killed, I could see myself reading this story for future scheming against the Targaryens, but as is, it's just a boring story, written by someone who seems intent on either pairing off Lyanna Stark with others or is using the character so as to self-insert without being too obvious about it.

Also, now that I've taken a look at the author's other works, I realize they were the ones who wrote that Robert's rebellion fanfic that got recommended a page or two back and it was just as terrible reading as this one.

 

This, is the biggest issue in the piece and makes the whole thing fall apart.

The first 10 chapters were fairly good, IMO. They had a compelling Man V. Self conflict in the form of Lyanna dealing with the desires of her body vs. that of her mind. Though, I’m not sure the author understands that hate sex exists. Dayne’s Siblings could have been the turning point where it pivoted into turning Dayne against Rhaegar with Ashara’s apparent background making for a perfect parallel or justification for it.

In general, the rest of it is kind of poorly executed. A great deal of the world building is poorly or just lazily done. Why is Moat Cailin in ruins? After all, if the North hasn’t submitted to the Targaryens, they kind of need it. Why the fuck are the Baratheon’s the Baratheons and not the Durrandons. And in general, what the actual fuck year is it and what the hell have the Targaryens been doing for three hundred years?

Hold onto your heart is a neat concept that is poorly executed in favor of a Lyanna/Arthur Dayne romance that isn’t really all that believable.

 

Eh, I think the world building is enough for the story because it's clearly a character focused fic, not a fic focused in the intricacies of current Westeros.

Small stuff like Moat Callin is the type of world building error a dedicated fan would notice, but not most others.

I think the way the author handles the sex is better than 'hate sex'. The guilt afterwards, the reluctance to enjoy it, all make more sense than hate sex to me.

 

The issue is the author basically equates sex to love and yet maintains that Lyanna hates Arthur all the way to like chapter 27 or something. There is never really a single indication of this beyond chapter 10 besides the author's say so.

 

Stannis Peggy Sue. It's not bad so far. Started at the siege of Storm's End, is up to the taking of King's Landing. Written by the same dude who did Alexander Hamilton in Westeros fic. Hosted on AH, so account required.

 

Yeah, this was terrible. It's all set up for an inveitable curbstomping of Westeros and when the outcome is predetermined and, what's even worse for, easy to see by any reader - then reading the fanfic loses any point in doing so.

At one point, I asked in the thread the author if they were planning on introducing some counterbalance to the return of Valyrian dragonlords, but they never answered and all I got in return was rabid fanboys frothing at the mouth for daring to say that if they were entirely unopposed by some force on an equal level then I would have no interest in reading such a piece any further. Granted, I might been slightly more blunt in expressing that opinion, but the way the author never replied to me, merely liking the posts of fanboys who were all but screeching "REEEEEEEEEEE" at my posts, yeah, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

I was feeling bored and decided to chance this. I remember coming across it before and mostly skimming, because the writing in the beginning was absolutely terrible. No form, no decent prose, incoherent at the best of times. But it's a wonder to me to see an author improve himself over time, to see his writing actually take shape and become something that a reader could look forward to in the future.

As mentioned, the Yi-Ti arc might not be something that could be considered particularly good reading, but in a way, it does build up Joffrey's character and to skip it entirely would do this piece of writing injustice. There is the odd few chapters thereafter that I could have done without, but again, if someone is really interested, just force yourself for a bit through this, because what follows is an absolute blast to read.

I mean, Joffrey. Who the hell could possibly want to read about that little shit? Even one going through a Groundhog Day scenario. But it all builds up to something absolutely magnificent, with the stumbling and rising along the way. I think what I enjoyed most about this fanfic is how places outside of Westeros are explored and written about. It's got that right sense of otherness, without the try-hard writing you could probably see in some other pieces of writing. In a way, I wish this lasted more and far longer. it's a joy to me to read about places and actually pause my reading for a while, while imagining these places taking shape in my mind's eye. I don't rightly remember doing that for quite some time, at least where ASOIAF fanfics are concerned.

If the author actually cleaned up the start of this, or perhaps entirely reworked it entirely in the quality of his current writing, it might possibly be even better. Or not. You could consider that the ineptness by which the beginning was made also reflects Joffrey's character and as he improved, so did the writing. Just something to think about.

In any case, it's been a great read, but now comes that terrible thing that I hate about good fanfiction: waiting for new chapters.

 

Well shit. Pigs do fly.