[Post Content Advisory: Sexual Violence]
I finally started reading A Song of Ice and Fire, and finished the first book over the weekend. I really wanted to give it a detailed going over, but I find myself reserving judgement until I get further into the series. I went in already knowing the big twist at the end (here’s a 1996 spoiler—Ned Stark dies at the end), so I spent the whole time feeling like I couldn’t quite trust anything that was being set up. Oh well. I’ll figure it out eventually.
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I notice that a lot of these characters match a really distinct archetype, and then kind of goes “and here’s how that turns out” about them. Obviously, infamously, Ned Stark is the poster boy for this, but it’s true of I would almost say most of the named characters so far. You can’t fully trust the first impression you get of anybody, even though those first impressions are calculated to make you want to. I might have to really sit down and write a breakdown of this.
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I’d heard about the infamous sex scenes before I started and honestly I was braced for more and worse. I mean they were weird, sure, but so far the thing’s reputation seems worse than reality. I do think there were probably better ways to get across the point that was being made though. There’s this throughline of, here is this society that values The Manly Virtues above all else, and here’s all the ways that sucks. The sexual assault and domestic violence seem to be the go-to examples in how it sucks to be a woman in Westeros. It falls a little flat compared to the much more successful illustrations of how it sucks to be the wrong type of man in Westeros. That is also a post for another time. I’m gonna have to finish the series first for this one.
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I am, gotta be real –gotta be real—not sure Daenerys needed to be fourteen. No you know, what, I’m pretty certain she did not need to be fourteen. She coulda been older than that and still had no concrete memories of Westeros. Her having no memories of the place she’s now supposedly the last rightful heir to seems like it is going to be important to her character. The child bride situation uh. Less so. Not so fond of that. Her situation would still be wildly fucked up if she was not fourteen. That’s not a formal analysis, it’s just how I feel about it.
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Gotta say, I started A Clash of Kings about a day after I finished A Game of Thrones, and I have hardly ever had such a whiplash from screaming “You bitch!” to really liking a character as I did finding out what went down with Yoren after that cliffhanger.
Dramatic Pause 