OH FANDOM YOU NEVER DISAPPOINT: Game of Thrones edition

[pocochina]

So about five months ago, I had every intention of writing about at least one narrative decision which I love and which fandom hates. And then I got sidetracked from the meme (not sure why, since opening up this document I see that I had several of them either planned or done???) but also, which decision? I've already talked about plenty of roundly

Comments

[rosaxx50]

I have no idea of the context of this, but you've convinced me, well done. Lol.

[pocochina]

It's awesome. Admittedly my thoughts are partly motivated by INDIRA VARMA (!!!) but I think my arguments stand.

[sherrilina]

rosaxx50 just linked me to this post. I did not even remember Ellaria's speech about ~peace~ tbh, so that is not why I was irritated with her attitude in the episode. It's the fact that their tactic of choice now seems to be "mutilate and kill a little girl to get revenge!" instead of "let's put HER on the throne because according to our laws she would succeed Joffrey." That is what Arianne was actually pushing for, and I think it makes for a much more interesting story, highlighting how different their society is, and the gender politics in Westeros (like how if Cersei had been in Dorne, she would have been heir to Casterly Rock

[sakuraberries]

instead of "let's put HER on the throne because according to our laws she would succeed Joffrey.

Exactly. The entire point of Dorne is that it operates differently from Westerosi patriarchal norms, and yet that is totally excluded.

I think everyone assumed the Sand Snakes would all but cut and their characters merged with Arianne's, which would have made a lot more sense, which is why it was such a shock when we found out it was Arianne who was being cut.

[sherrilina]

Yes, that is what I remember everyone theorizing re: the Sand Snakes. It was when they began casting all THREE Sand Snakes that things became worrisome...

[pocochina]

"let's put HER on the throne because according to our laws she would succeed Joffrey." That is what Arianne was actually pushing for, and I think it makes for a much more interesting story

I don't think that would have been better, though? I think it would have created a lot of unnecessary complications. It's a plot that takes a whole book to go nowhere. It would have required introducing and centralizing a new character, because it is character-specific to Arianne. Arianne doesn't do it because it's a sincere feminist statement and/or an objectively good plan. She does it because she's afraid her father has passed her over for Quentyn and she wants to act against him and with her cousins. And it's not actually necessary to showing how different Dorne is from the rest of Westeros. The fact that Ellaria can get in the prince's face like that, when she is (a) a woman and (b) legally, no one important, shows us plenty.

obviously they had to cut somewhere, but why not one or more Sand Snakes?There are eight Sand Snakes and three have

[sakuraberries]

Maybe I'm biased, because my hatred for D&D and their creative decisions probably eclipses my reason by this point, but anyway.

I think the exclusion of Stoneheart is pissing people off because it's just a way for D&D to spit on Catelyn's grave after pretty much robbing her of a proper storyline in favor of Robb, though she is a POV character with a lot more depth in the books. There are far more convincing reasons that demonstrate why D&D are misogynists. Plus most of the diverse and complicated women from the books are shadows of their former selves (Arya's "I like being a girl" turned into "Most girls are idiots!", Cersei "defanged", Sansa's subtle acts of resistance gone, etc).

And while I understand that there are creative decisions necessary for book-to-screen adaptations (fusing Gendry and Edric Storm, for example) most of D&D's changes are completely unnecessary and are just pissing all over the source material for reasons unknown (to appeal to a broader white male audience?).

[pocochina]

Like I said, it's not "just" a way to hate on Catelyn. There are enough good reasons to cut that storyline other than hostility.

[sakuraberries]

I get that. I think the frustration comes from it being yet another exclusion/change of a beloved character/event. Straw that breaks the camel's back, kind of? Like, as a whole, a lot of D&D's changes and added scenes have been pretty gross (not LS, which is just disappointing, but others).

[pocochina]

This is what I mean about equating moral storytelling to fidelity to the book series. Whether or not she was a beloved character doesn't really have anything to do with to what extent the adaptational decision did or didn't play into gender norms and misogynistic tropes. Beloved characters can be plenty problematic, and socially responsible storytelling can fall flat

[pocochina]

I mean, I'm still just happy that they're doing Dorne at all, given how much they've (necessarily) cut out, but this was a sharp choice with a lot of potential.

For one thing I feel like sometimes adaptations have to change things radically in order to convey the ~spirit of the original work, if it's in a different medium.

lol, I blame Steve Kloves. I mean, I actually blame fandom, but I think the only fandom-favorite criticism of an adaptation I agree with is that the Harry/Ron/Hermione dynamic changed much for the poorer in the movies. And that's a big thing that most people read/saw and that sticks in enough people's minds that people universalize that disappointment and assume it's always valid.

the kind of arc we so often see for male characters after a fridging of a female love interest.Yes! It kind of flips the script on Oberyn and Elia

[pocochina]

Dorne provides a great counterpoint to King's Landing because it is more genuinely progressive in many ways, but it's not free of institutionalized misogyny by any stretch of the imagination and I loved that the dialogue pointed this out, that it's not a dichotomy (and doing so through these two characters specifically was a great choice.)Yes! I loved that scene as well, for those reasons. Like, it says really good things about Oberyn that he values the idea of not hurting little girls, and that he was willing to make his comment about all little girls and not just the special snowflake princess. But he was still speaking from a place where his aristocratic and male privilege allowed him to buy into Dornish exceptionalism in this way. And Cersei has the factual right of it, even though it's coming from a place where she knows because she has had a lifetime of trying to be the one woman in the world who's exempt from misogyny and it hasn't worked

[cold_clarity]

I'm so late to this party?

so perhaps these are like...now pointless comments, seeing how the rest of the season played out, but I had a rough time with the Dorne sideshow this season. I like your points about Ellaria (despite book!Ellaria being near and dear to my heart--and especially despite my very strong feelings about book!Ellaria and book!Doran serving as either compliments or foils to one another re: grief and trauma in a way that they don't in the show), but my god do I feel like the Dorne plotline was...largely a waste of screentime, in the end? I get why it had to happen, to lead up to what they were leading up to, but aside from The Big Twist, it mostly fell flat for me? I was never particularly compelled by the Sand Snakes in the books, and felt that they were even less well-delineated in the show (though I do grant that D&D were working under VERY REAL time constraints), and sort of turned into weird...repetitive iterations of one another? and again, I felt that they were already sort of flat in the books (again, in

[pocochina]

I'm going to write this assuming whoever might be reading this is caught up on S5 and ADWD because I really love ADWD and I want to talk about it, lol.

like the Rhoynish prince in the Turtle Wars with the Valyrians, Doran will live long enough to see Dorne burn in dragonfire

I did not catch that parallel but I think it's totally on point.

Doran evinces a strong, strong desire to put his people's safety before his own personal feelings--and yet, he's chessmastering all over the place precisely because he can't let go of his grief (and who can blame him, really).

Yeah, it's a complicated thing in a totally believable way. I've come to think that Doran's foot-dragging on his plotting and scheming was really about him knowing his plan was a terrible idea. Because the plan being to marry Arianne to a Targaryen so that she could become queen does nothing but put Arianne in the same position Elia was in. And to his credit, he really doesn't want to use his daughter as a replacement for his sister, he knows that the whole tragedy wasn't