“The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.” —J.R.R Tolkien, 1966
“Hail Gurthang! No lord or loyalty dost thou know, save the hand that wieldeth thee. From no blood wilt thou shrink. Wilt thou therefore take Túrin Turambar, wilt thou slay me swiftly?¨ And from the blade rang a cold voice in answer: ¨Yea, I will drink thy blood gladly, that so I may forget the blood of Beleg my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly. I will slay thee swiftly.”
Cursed??? This is… dare I say it… WHOLESOME, relatively speaking. I’m so on board for this!
ok I guess I’ll share my 1am venli x moash thoughts
I say cursed lightheartedly, mostly because back when I first came up with it it was inspired by this post and oof just imagine if that actually happened in canon, the fandom will be in flames. Also I don’t think romance would fix any of them. That being said,
I’ve seen a lot of takes about Moash being a foil for many other characters (like Kaladin or Dalinar), which is true! But I don’t see it mentioned a lot that Venli also falls into the same role.
The part that’s really interesting to me is how they deal with guilt. Venli blames herself for the genocide of her people. She spends RoW imperfectly trying to make up for that. She is not a hero, as she tells Timbre, but she still does the best she can.
Then there’s Moash, who won’t admit that he is to blame for any of the things he’s done, because to him humanity is rotten and he was doomed from the start by being a human. So why try to do better?
They both have these mini-bridge-four arcs, with Moash joining Saa and Khen’s group and Venli leading her own group.
And they both see Kaladin as this paragon of morality and strength. Moash needs Kaladin to join his beliefs to reinforce his world view (if Kaladin, the strongest and noblest, gives up, obviously that means no one else has a chance of resisting). Venli compares herself to Kaladin a few times in RoW, for example wondering why she didn’t feel grief as strongly as he did.
As of now, it seems that Moash is deteriorating - losing touch with his sense of responsibility and becoming more callous - while Venli is growing and taking more responsibility for her actions. Who knows where they will end up?
I just think it would be cool to see these two characters who have gone through somewhat similar journeys in different ways clash. Will they make each other see things differently? Will they fight over their supposed privileges? Will they be the only ones capable of understanding what the other is going through? And maybe showing each other some empathy? And maybe more? good shit.
No one is easily among my favourite characters in A Song of Ice and Fire and her POV chapters, along with Jon’s, are by far the ones I craved reading the most.
