Omg did you hear that y’all, I’ve grown!

I’m pretty sure you can actually see me shift my opinion starting some time in early 2015/late 2014, but I’m not going to go dig those posts up right now. When I first came into the fandom I had very much bought into the idealized, romanticized version of R/L because it is admittedly very easy to buy into. It’s got a lot of classic love story elements and huge secrets and is just an overall appealing ship at the start. I even wrote tons of fic for the ship, some of which became wildly popular even though now I look back on it and groan.

And then I pulled back the curtain and realized that none of it is okay. Lyanna’s age, Rhaegar’s actions, the location of the Tower of Joy, Elia’s situation, the final showdown at the ToJ, all of it began to rub me the wrong way until I basically decided that yeah, Rhaegar is a piece of shit and what he did was nothing short of predatory, regardless of Lyanna’s feelings towards him (or lack thereof). It took me reading meta and then starting to write my own to get into a mindset that allowed me to find stuff to criticize, really. A lot of @joannalannister‘s writing was especially formative at the time.

And now, here I am! All grown up!