Sparkly emo tears!
So I'm catching up with fandom this evening, and I happened to be reading some posts about Game of Thrones and then watching 
thingswithwings excellent mainpain vid and reading her meta post about it, and it got me to thinking.
It's true that Jon is pretty emo for quite a while there, but I can't actually think of any cases within the story of a woman dying to advance the storyline of a man. And I CAN think of cases where men die specifically to advance the storyline of a woman. That's pretty much Dany's whole origin story: her parents die, her brothers die, her husband dies, and her son dies, and then she gets really pissed off and decides to take over the world. Jon Arryn's death sets events in motion and Robert and Ned's really kick them into gear, particularly for Cersei, Catelyn, Arya and Sansa. Zombie Catelyn comes into being because of Robb's death, and she believes that Bran and Rickon are dead as well. Robert wants to believe he has manpain over Lyanna's death, and it would make a classic sort of manpain arc - he goes to war to avenge her and winds up becoming king! - except that the book and the series both reject that reading pretty explicitly. And if Rhaegar and Lyanna really do turn out to be Jon's parents, I somehow doubt that she'll become your garden variety Sainted Dead Mother.
Which is not to say that the series is a feminist utopia, and Martin is able to kill off a lot of men and still have plenty to spare, but women in refrigerators are as common in fantasy fiction as they are anywhere, and it's nice to get a breather now and then.
Note to self: go find a good Arya icon.
(
comments at Dreamwidth)
thingswithwings excellent mainpain vid and reading her meta post about it, and it got me to thinking.
It's true that Jon is pretty emo for quite a while there, but I can't actually think of any cases within the story of a woman dying to advance the storyline of a man. And I CAN think of cases where men die specifically to advance the storyline of a woman. That's pretty much Dany's whole origin story: her parents die, her brothers die, her husband dies, and her son dies, and then she gets really pissed off and decides to take over the world. Jon Arryn's death sets events in motion and Robert and Ned's really kick them into gear, particularly for Cersei, Catelyn, Arya and Sansa. Zombie Catelyn comes into being because of Robb's death, and she believes that Bran and Rickon are dead as well. Robert wants to believe he has manpain over Lyanna's death, and it would make a classic sort of manpain arc - he goes to war to avenge her and winds up becoming king! - except that the book and the series both reject that reading pretty explicitly. And if Rhaegar and Lyanna really do turn out to be Jon's parents, I somehow doubt that she'll become your garden variety Sainted Dead Mother.
Which is not to say that the series is a feminist utopia, and Martin is able to kill off a lot of men and still have plenty to spare, but women in refrigerators are as common in fantasy fiction as they are anywhere, and it's nice to get a breather now and then.
Note to self: go find a good Arya icon.
(
comments at Dreamwidth)