A Dance With Dragons

[mouse_rat]

Halfway through the book I was ready to come and write a really angry post. Decided to finish it first, and now I just feel kind of drained and moody. It's not that it was bad per se, just that people wiser than me were right and GRRM clearly cannot conceive of competent women. They have to fail and be patronized and rescued and sexually dominated

Comments

[ladyelleth]

BAM. I'm kind of dreading to read the book now, but your rant (especially the end point) made me cheer. Perhaps it's time for an installment of If Women Had Ruled Westeros?

[mouse_rat]

Not a bad idea! Or maybe just a crapload of feminist AUs with the tagline "how it SHOULD have happened..." That should irritate him. ;) Love your icon.

You should still read it though, so we can discuss.

[ladyelleth]

Or maybe just a crapload of feminist AUs with the tagline "how it SHOULD have happened..."

Very much in favour of that. Mini AU feminist drabble series?

You should still read it though, so we can discuss.
Yes, certainly! I'm sort of tempted to keep a body count, too. Read the prologue for now, already one woman dead - but she was an 'ugly spearwife', so I guess it doesn't matter? -_-

Love your icon.
Thank you. She's River Song. She's making Daleks beg for mercy. What's not to love? :D

[mouse_rat]

Mini AU feminist drabble series?

I'm in. Do you want to wait till you've read the latest or should we just commence? I have ideas already. Some might be a bit silly.

[mouse_rat]

Pretty much. She lost the kingsmoot, lost Deepwood Motte and most of her men, is currently a prisoner of Stannis and potential sacrifice to R'hllor. The worst part for me in this book was a sex scene she had with one of her men. She tells him to leave her alone and instead he cuts her clothes off and has her till she screams and sobs. It's consensual, and obviously some people are into rough play. But Asha? Didn't work for me. Afterward she muses that he's too low-born to be her husband but not too low-born for her to suck his cock. (Obviously not a reciprocal act.)

Meera is still holding her own, but she's a pretty marginal character. Arya too, but of course, these aren't women trying to gain any political power.

[cirdan_havens]

Mostly the American Tolkien thing. But even worse, one reviewer said: "Tolkein is dead. And long live George Martin."

[mouse_rat]

Blasphemy! If Tolkien was still alive he could have finished a detailed publishable version of the Silm. ;_; But then there would have been less work for us, I guess.

[furius]

I just finished the book. Agree with everything.

Happy birthday! I hope you had a great day and a year filled with good books!

[ithilwen]

I still haven't had a chance to crack open my own copy of ADWD - but it seems a lot of people (not just you) feel the book is a disappointment. Now I find myself less eager to read it. Oh, well, I've read enough fanfic to know you can't judge a story's quality until the very last word has been penned, and ASOIAF has had the feeling of an unfinished WIP for a long time now. It will probably remain an unfinished WIP for me even if GRRM does get around to writing the last two (or more?) books.

[mouse_rat]

Good to know I am not alone! And he may surprise me yet. But reading it I definitely got a feeling like, "Ohh, this is why it took forever. He could probably tell that these parts SUCK." I found a lot of the mid-to-late Daenerys chapters kind of clumsy and contrived.

Oh well, at least we can look forward to another season of Game of Thrones, I guess?

[ithilwen]

Yes - and since book 2 was good, season 2 on HBO ought to be good as well!

I think AFFC and ADWD probably should have been kept as a single mega-book, and ruthlessly edited. It would have helped both works immensely.