December talking meme: 12/25
I'm starting to go out of order on these because I'm so far behind anyway but I'm not skipping any, just postponing.
Was show-Jon/Ygritte a faithful representation of book-Jon/Ygritte, for Horatio, who clearly knows me well.
I thought to mention this on the day I did because I had just read this post via
metanews . And I didn’t want to get into it there, because it had the usual grossness (“you know nothing, person whose opinion makes mine look bad, and on the occasions I have to admit you have a point, it was THE RITURRRZZZ being wrong because obviously you couldn’t possibly have a point” which in and of itself is pretty meta but I'm going to resist rn) and because it was tough to isolate from my usual hissing and snapping in defense of Jon, who becomes more of a favorite of mine the grosser fandom gets about him.
I think that Jon’s relationship with Ygritte is something that, in order to be faithful to the events as they occurred in the book, had to be presented in a very different way as they would seem to a casual book reader. The big thing is that we see the relationship entirely through Jon’s POV. Jon is personally inclined, socially conditioned, and situationally disposed to accept a high level of mistreatment. Dispositionately, he’s a sensitive kid, and so bad behavior that might roll off of some people tends to wear him down. That doesn’t mean he’s the problem for being bothered by it, it means that certain behavior will constitute other people making a problem for him. Socially, the “bastard” stigma is a big thing in Westerosi society and seems to be stronger in the North. He expects people to introduce themselves by saying “BEHOLD THE SPAWN OF ILLICIT RELATIONS.”* That is to say, Jon is highly conditioned to accept people being mega-dicks to him. Just because he, in his POV, does not consciously know to object to something or other Ygritte says to him does not mean that it is not actually harmful to him. On top of that, HE IS A DOUBLE AGENT. Ygritte is the only thing in the world standing between Jon and summary execution, and if he weren’t keenly aware of it, which he is, she’s perfectly happy to remind him CONSTANTLY.
People are incredibly adaptable. Jon needing to put those things out of mind as much as possible, in order to survive or in a puppy-love determination to focus on the best, or his mind taking that puppy-love crush and turning it into full-blown Stockholm syndrome? Not exactly a radical departure from the text. Given the bleakness of the ASOIAF ‘verse, it’s a good deal more likely than TWOO WUV.
And can all this happen without the direct participation of a designated baddie? YES IT CAN, and again, this is the strong suit of both ASOIAF and the adaptation, that everyone has their reasons for acting the way that they do. Ygritte really doesn’t know any different. Her sexuality is, for her, heavily tied into commodification as a status object; I really don’t think she knows what she’s doing when she turns that onto Jon. But for the HUNDRED THOUSAND MILLIONTH TIME, “makes psychological sense and isn’t entirely morally damning” isn’t the same thing as “technical flaw/inaccuracy.”
If anything, the show actually has its thumb pretty hard on the scale in Ygritte’s favor. Jon is aged up a bit, being an older teen rather than a kid, and Ygritte’s own youth is a lot more apparent than it is through Jon’s eyes, as he sees her as such a ~woman of the world. A great deal of what Jon interpreted as confidence and insight was really so much bravado. It’s hardly D&D’s fault that people are, APPARENTLY, perfectly content to adopt the perspective of a traumatized teenager as gospel fucking truth about human nature.
**Some day I'll do the whole thing about this, but: People who project modern ideas about illegitimacy onto Westeros chap my ass. Jon’s whole social identity is defined by his role as one of a few scapegoats for this society’s sexual hypocrisy. That’s not a make-or-break deal when you’re a Sand Snake in the south** and your six sisters have your back. It’s a VERY big deal when you’re the highest-profile, and effectively only, bastard in not just a family but an entire region - and a prudish, puritanical region at that.
**AND EVEN THEN I’ve seen the Sand Snakes cited as evidence that bastardry is not that big a deal (and, presumably, that Jon should just get over it already) and like…this is so wrong??? Allowing more sexual liberty is one of several aspects of Dornish culture that they use to distinguish themselves as being more ~urbane and progressive than the rest of Westeros. A big fuss gets made over the Viper’s bastards BECAUSE their situation is unusual, and his insistence on arming them with practicality is an outright acknowledgement that even in Dorne the default experience of bastardry is relative disadvantage to your siblings. His ability to fix them up for good lives is ostentatious swagger because it is neither common nor easy.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/323578.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
Was show-Jon/Ygritte a faithful representation of book-Jon/Ygritte, for Horatio, who clearly knows me well.
I thought to mention this on the day I did because I had just read this post via
metanews . And I didn’t want to get into it there, because it had the usual grossness (“you know nothing, person whose opinion makes mine look bad, and on the occasions I have to admit you have a point, it was THE RITURRRZZZ being wrong because obviously you couldn’t possibly have a point” which in and of itself is pretty meta but I'm going to resist rn) and because it was tough to isolate from my usual hissing and snapping in defense of Jon, who becomes more of a favorite of mine the grosser fandom gets about him.
I think that Jon’s relationship with Ygritte is something that, in order to be faithful to the events as they occurred in the book, had to be presented in a very different way as they would seem to a casual book reader. The big thing is that we see the relationship entirely through Jon’s POV. Jon is personally inclined, socially conditioned, and situationally disposed to accept a high level of mistreatment. Dispositionately, he’s a sensitive kid, and so bad behavior that might roll off of some people tends to wear him down. That doesn’t mean he’s the problem for being bothered by it, it means that certain behavior will constitute other people making a problem for him. Socially, the “bastard” stigma is a big thing in Westerosi society and seems to be stronger in the North. He expects people to introduce themselves by saying “BEHOLD THE SPAWN OF ILLICIT RELATIONS.”* That is to say, Jon is highly conditioned to accept people being mega-dicks to him. Just because he, in his POV, does not consciously know to object to something or other Ygritte says to him does not mean that it is not actually harmful to him. On top of that, HE IS A DOUBLE AGENT. Ygritte is the only thing in the world standing between Jon and summary execution, and if he weren’t keenly aware of it, which he is, she’s perfectly happy to remind him CONSTANTLY.
People are incredibly adaptable. Jon needing to put those things out of mind as much as possible, in order to survive or in a puppy-love determination to focus on the best, or his mind taking that puppy-love crush and turning it into full-blown Stockholm syndrome? Not exactly a radical departure from the text. Given the bleakness of the ASOIAF ‘verse, it’s a good deal more likely than TWOO WUV.
And can all this happen without the direct participation of a designated baddie? YES IT CAN, and again, this is the strong suit of both ASOIAF and the adaptation, that everyone has their reasons for acting the way that they do. Ygritte really doesn’t know any different. Her sexuality is, for her, heavily tied into commodification as a status object; I really don’t think she knows what she’s doing when she turns that onto Jon. But for the HUNDRED THOUSAND MILLIONTH TIME, “makes psychological sense and isn’t entirely morally damning” isn’t the same thing as “technical flaw/inaccuracy.”
If anything, the show actually has its thumb pretty hard on the scale in Ygritte’s favor. Jon is aged up a bit, being an older teen rather than a kid, and Ygritte’s own youth is a lot more apparent than it is through Jon’s eyes, as he sees her as such a ~woman of the world. A great deal of what Jon interpreted as confidence and insight was really so much bravado. It’s hardly D&D’s fault that people are, APPARENTLY, perfectly content to adopt the perspective of a traumatized teenager as gospel fucking truth about human nature.
**Some day I'll do the whole thing about this, but: People who project modern ideas about illegitimacy onto Westeros chap my ass. Jon’s whole social identity is defined by his role as one of a few scapegoats for this society’s sexual hypocrisy. That’s not a make-or-break deal when you’re a Sand Snake in the south** and your six sisters have your back. It’s a VERY big deal when you’re the highest-profile, and effectively only, bastard in not just a family but an entire region - and a prudish, puritanical region at that.
**AND EVEN THEN I’ve seen the Sand Snakes cited as evidence that bastardry is not that big a deal (and, presumably, that Jon should just get over it already) and like…this is so wrong??? Allowing more sexual liberty is one of several aspects of Dornish culture that they use to distinguish themselves as being more ~urbane and progressive than the rest of Westeros. A big fuss gets made over the Viper’s bastards BECAUSE their situation is unusual, and his insistence on arming them with practicality is an outright acknowledgement that even in Dorne the default experience of bastardry is relative disadvantage to your siblings. His ability to fix them up for good lives is ostentatious swagger because it is neither common nor easy.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/323578.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.