and winter is here.
So after gnawing away at it for almost a month, I've finished A Game of Thrones. Obviously if you've seen or read it you know it's really disturbing! But we're going to have at it anyway! Content note about all the content!
I really like just how amoral it is. There's no divine right of kings; all of the major players are grasping for power in brutal, violent ways. It's a neat trick, how the Starks get the traditional heroic setup, and then we see just how much they aren't any better than their adversaries. The Dothraki are no better or worse than the people of the Kingdoms, but they're a lot more honest about the strong taking from the weak.
I admit I was kind of gritting my teeth and expecting a kind of very traditional moralism, where the benevolent patriarch is Good and Right and Everyone Knows That. But instead, the story trashes that at every turn. As much as he's the traditional young prince-soldier, I don't think we ever get Jamie Lannister's POV - it's all about his brother and sister. One of the moments that stood out to me the most was when the court adviser calls Ned out on his inability to compromise his pride even to give an order he knows he wants executed. I wasn't particularly taken with him throughout (lol surprize), but I loved that he eventually put reason before honor, and that it still didn't save him, thought it does seem to have protected Sansa for the time being. Seeing Ned's sentencing and execution solely through Sansa's and Arya's perspectives is such a brilliant inversion of everything I expected.
I loved both Sansa and Arya, and I can't appreciate enough how it was a believable close but not good sisterly relationship. Those poor girls, too, both have gotten their initial desires in the most brutal possible way. Poor dear Sansa and her self-deceptions - I was cringing a little for her sweet teenage willful idealization of Joff, but it's so very human for her to be optimistic about everything she's been told to expect out of life. And now she's in exactly that role of princess-as-object, and it's horrible. Arya gets off a little better, because being the younger child freed her of a lot of the performative expectations placed on Sansa and gave her the opportunity to be something a little tougher, but still, she's gotten her wish on not having to live up to the super-feminine princess expectations, AND HOW. (I'm not sure why I didn't warm to Catelyn more? It's not that I disliked her. I guess I feel like her strengths are so dependent on the formative experience of the sheer dumb luck of a marriage that worked out well, emotionally and socially, and I don't hold it against her, but the "good wife = good woman" thing is kind of a turnoff.)
I'm really intrigued by Dany's story. It did take a while to pick up, and while it was getting into gear, a lot of the book's skeevy woman-issues were at their most grating. Even through her own eyes, the fetishization of the child bride thing just feels like rape porn. The horse-heart-eating was so fucking gross, and it just grated, that this marker of her toughness was this punishing ritual for her to make herself the best vessel possible for the fetus-king inside of her. But things get fascinating with her at the end there! The image of this pregnant teenage incest survivor riding around siccing her bodyguards on rapists - SIMPLY IRRESISTABLE! But then, ew, she SAVES the victims by claiming them as her SLAVES: the platonic ideal of the whole I-saved-you-so-I-own-you bullshit that makes me rage-vomit when it's male protagonists doing it. An inversion, but still a really goddamn uncomfortable one, particularly since she is this white-fetishized Barbie princess ruling over the brown ladies. And then Mirri becomes my favorite when she challenges the hell out of that, with her super-feminine midwife knowledge no less. And then Dany has her killed because vengeance - something else that is disturbing anyway, but it being a conflict between women at least gives some nuance it almost never has.
Favorite though: I was totally into the story on the Wall, how they are kind of sealed off from the internal power struggle because of the threat of the Others, and so they end up being in some ways more peaceful and meritocratic than their protectees, even though they have to be such hardasses. It's not lost on me that the No Girls Allowed treehouse is the best and safest place for men to embrace anything other than violence, status-obsessed masculinity (and even then, it's hardly a picnic). Anyway, BOW BEFORE LORD SNOW. His whole internal conflict about agency and power is so compelling - he can take the smart, holistic perspective about Samwell, but he's constantly trying to prove to himself that he's not weak. I'm a sucker for that particular struggle. I love Samwell a lot, too, just as he is. I'm hoping he toughens up a little for the sake of life getting a little easier for him, but his aversion to violence is a breath of fresh air.
I'm reserving judgment on the Lannisters, but they're some of the most engaging bits of the story. They're the grasping social climbers with unseemly ambition - but why the fuck shouldn't they be? Everyone else is. They're just not quite as dumb about it. As much as the incest thing squicks me (and as much as I think it's there to squick me and keep me at an emotional distance from her, and I think that's a gross narrative device so I'm really bothered that it works on me to some extent) I find Cersei to have a lot of promise. Predictably, I adored Tyrion.
IDK. COME AT ME. I do plan to read on, so no spoilers please!
I really like just how amoral it is. There's no divine right of kings; all of the major players are grasping for power in brutal, violent ways. It's a neat trick, how the Starks get the traditional heroic setup, and then we see just how much they aren't any better than their adversaries. The Dothraki are no better or worse than the people of the Kingdoms, but they're a lot more honest about the strong taking from the weak.
I admit I was kind of gritting my teeth and expecting a kind of very traditional moralism, where the benevolent patriarch is Good and Right and Everyone Knows That. But instead, the story trashes that at every turn. As much as he's the traditional young prince-soldier, I don't think we ever get Jamie Lannister's POV - it's all about his brother and sister. One of the moments that stood out to me the most was when the court adviser calls Ned out on his inability to compromise his pride even to give an order he knows he wants executed. I wasn't particularly taken with him throughout (lol surprize), but I loved that he eventually put reason before honor, and that it still didn't save him, thought it does seem to have protected Sansa for the time being. Seeing Ned's sentencing and execution solely through Sansa's and Arya's perspectives is such a brilliant inversion of everything I expected.
I loved both Sansa and Arya, and I can't appreciate enough how it was a believable close but not good sisterly relationship. Those poor girls, too, both have gotten their initial desires in the most brutal possible way. Poor dear Sansa and her self-deceptions - I was cringing a little for her sweet teenage willful idealization of Joff, but it's so very human for her to be optimistic about everything she's been told to expect out of life. And now she's in exactly that role of princess-as-object, and it's horrible. Arya gets off a little better, because being the younger child freed her of a lot of the performative expectations placed on Sansa and gave her the opportunity to be something a little tougher, but still, she's gotten her wish on not having to live up to the super-feminine princess expectations, AND HOW. (I'm not sure why I didn't warm to Catelyn more? It's not that I disliked her. I guess I feel like her strengths are so dependent on the formative experience of the sheer dumb luck of a marriage that worked out well, emotionally and socially, and I don't hold it against her, but the "good wife = good woman" thing is kind of a turnoff.)
I'm really intrigued by Dany's story. It did take a while to pick up, and while it was getting into gear, a lot of the book's skeevy woman-issues were at their most grating. Even through her own eyes, the fetishization of the child bride thing just feels like rape porn. The horse-heart-eating was so fucking gross, and it just grated, that this marker of her toughness was this punishing ritual for her to make herself the best vessel possible for the fetus-king inside of her. But things get fascinating with her at the end there! The image of this pregnant teenage incest survivor riding around siccing her bodyguards on rapists - SIMPLY IRRESISTABLE! But then, ew, she SAVES the victims by claiming them as her SLAVES: the platonic ideal of the whole I-saved-you-so-I-own-you bullshit that makes me rage-vomit when it's male protagonists doing it. An inversion, but still a really goddamn uncomfortable one, particularly since she is this white-fetishized Barbie princess ruling over the brown ladies. And then Mirri becomes my favorite when she challenges the hell out of that, with her super-feminine midwife knowledge no less. And then Dany has her killed because vengeance - something else that is disturbing anyway, but it being a conflict between women at least gives some nuance it almost never has.
Favorite though: I was totally into the story on the Wall, how they are kind of sealed off from the internal power struggle because of the threat of the Others, and so they end up being in some ways more peaceful and meritocratic than their protectees, even though they have to be such hardasses. It's not lost on me that the No Girls Allowed treehouse is the best and safest place for men to embrace anything other than violence, status-obsessed masculinity (and even then, it's hardly a picnic). Anyway, BOW BEFORE LORD SNOW. His whole internal conflict about agency and power is so compelling - he can take the smart, holistic perspective about Samwell, but he's constantly trying to prove to himself that he's not weak. I'm a sucker for that particular struggle. I love Samwell a lot, too, just as he is. I'm hoping he toughens up a little for the sake of life getting a little easier for him, but his aversion to violence is a breath of fresh air.
I'm reserving judgment on the Lannisters, but they're some of the most engaging bits of the story. They're the grasping social climbers with unseemly ambition - but why the fuck shouldn't they be? Everyone else is. They're just not quite as dumb about it. As much as the incest thing squicks me (and as much as I think it's there to squick me and keep me at an emotional distance from her, and I think that's a gross narrative device so I'm really bothered that it works on me to some extent) I find Cersei to have a lot of promise. Predictably, I adored Tyrion.
IDK. COME AT ME. I do plan to read on, so no spoilers please!