Dept. of Back Up On the Bicycle Yada-Yada
Tuesday, 29 August 2017 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaffy_rDoing It Via Game of Thrones
Because I have thoughts about the most recent season of Game of Thrones, which just ended Sunday, and because I've listened to too many vloggers talking about the episodes WITH WHOM I DISAGREE AND THEY ARE OBVIOUSLY WRONG ON THE INTERNET, and because it appears to be the one thing that can jolt me into writing.
Really.
By "writing" I mean disjointed thoughts presented in rather lazy and unpremeditated fashion, lacking the benefit of intellectual discipline or an editor.
And of course, I judge the season with my Watsonian goggles on, because I can't be trusted at all to be Doylist with books or live series that I love. More, I work with the faan's and fic-writer's eye for filling in plot holes. I love making sense of things that don't make sense, by figuring out how to make those things logical within the world I love. I love creating the necessary context to do so. I am, thus, a completely ridiculous and ultimately Cheap Date, when it comes to buying into the universes I love.
Also, I've read all the books (although I need to reread them over the next year), and have kept up obsessively with the show via recaps, reviews and YouTube clips until this season, so anything I say can be greeted with an extremely jaundiced eye.
Plus, since I've already used the word "also," I might not be grossed out by things other people are grossed out by. Make of it what you will.
So here we go:
1) To all the people who bitched about Bran knowing or not knowing everything, all the time, despite being the Three Eyed Raven, or who bitched about him being "mean" to people with his emotionless affect? FFS, this is a teenager who lost his mobility as a 10-year-old (or so) when he was pushed out a tower window, spent at least six or so years on the run from the people who killed his father, mother, and older brother, in the wintry North, while dealing with the confusing onset of brain-meltingly weird power, then got even more of that power info-dumped into his head when his supernatural mentor died sooner than expected. He's got powers in his head that he still doesn't understand or fully control, he's losing his own personality under the weight of that info-dump, but he can't regularly benefit from it. Of course he's not going to see, get, or understand everything that flows into his head the minute he gets it! Plus, a little reminder that he's one of the three surviving Stark kids - a phrase that translates from Westerosi and High Valyrian as "Most Seriously Fucked Up Cases of PTSD in Recent Fantasy History." Even his slip up with Sansa, telling her how beautiful she was in her wedding get-up, is understandable; he's going to focus on the beauty of the dress and not what happened afterward because he's still essentially a kid, and the rest of the vision would have been horrifying, but he blurts things out because he's, in the vernacular, fucked up. Give the kid a goddam break, oh-so-snarky vloggers!
2) I'm not grossed out by Dany and Jon falling in love and having sex. Yes, they're aunt and nephew; I don't care. In the world of Westeros, in House Targaryen, where rulers wed their sisters in order to keep their line pure (and perhaps so that dragons could smell their blood, hmmm?), in a world where there are very few Great Houses and therefore where Great House marriages between first cousins are probably not unknown, and with a couple of people raised on opposite sides of the world? That qualifies as NBD. They certainly aren't, say, a brother and sister raised in the same house by the same parents who've had a secret affair for years and generated three children (and possibly one more) out of that relationship. Ahem. So, yeah, aunt-nephew love affair in House Targaryen? Color me unsurprised and undisgusted. (As to whether the love affair will end well or badly? I don't know, but I expect it will cause heartache for all involved before a final decision gets made by the people involved.)
3) I assume that Arya handed the dagger to Sansa in her chamber, then went to the door, made sure it was locked, and sat Sansa down to tell her, "Look, Baelish tried to play me with an all-too-easy to find letter that you wrote. Just to throw him off the trail if he was listening in the hall, which he does a lot - and to do one last check of your courage - I pulled a little bit of play-acting for him. Now, here's my plan; let's go talk to Bran, shall we? And while we're heading to his bedroom, let's review what we've told each other about our lives since Father was beheaded - everything we've talked about since our reunion in the crypt. We'll use the information to strategize with Bran and his visions. Time to take Littlefinger down, don't you agree?" Of course they'll have talked about those lives to each other - and Arya proves it after Baelish's death by telling Sansa that she, Arya, couldn't have survived what Sansa did. She wouldn't have known what Sansa went through unless they'd talked, no? Yes, I understand the writing should have handled that better, but ... WATSONIAN THOUGHTS ONLY, LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.
4) Also, I disagree with everyone calling Tyrion stupid this season, apparently because his strategy of taking Casterly Rock didn't work and because he proposed heading north to get a wight with which to convince Cersei. First off; it was a smart military strategy that didn't work, not a stupid strategy. It might not have been a brilliant strategy, but it was reasonable for him to believe that Casterly Rock would be a rich prize, and a great staging area for further southern incursion. For a non-military guy, he did a good job. You're not stupid just because you've been out-thought. His suggestion of getting a wight was, again, a smart one. He knew that if anything could convince his sister, something like that would. He'd had to switch horses from "Let's win the Iron Throne!" to "OK, we've all got to band together to fight the Night King" in mid-stream, and he had no experience of beyond the wall except what Jon told him. That Jon undertook the mission in such a reckless fashion is to be laid at his feet, not Tyrion's. As for meeting in King's Landing - that was the only place they could have convinced Cersei to meet, so he had to get in there and convince the one person who might coax Cersei into the meeting - Jaime.
Well, that was satisfying. Thank you for your patience.
Because I have thoughts about the most recent season of Game of Thrones, which just ended Sunday, and because I've listened to too many vloggers talking about the episodes WITH WHOM I DISAGREE AND THEY ARE OBVIOUSLY WRONG ON THE INTERNET, and because it appears to be the one thing that can jolt me into writing.
Really.
By "writing" I mean disjointed thoughts presented in rather lazy and unpremeditated fashion, lacking the benefit of intellectual discipline or an editor.
And of course, I judge the season with my Watsonian goggles on, because I can't be trusted at all to be Doylist with books or live series that I love. More, I work with the faan's and fic-writer's eye for filling in plot holes. I love making sense of things that don't make sense, by figuring out how to make those things logical within the world I love. I love creating the necessary context to do so. I am, thus, a completely ridiculous and ultimately Cheap Date, when it comes to buying into the universes I love.
Also, I've read all the books (although I need to reread them over the next year), and have kept up obsessively with the show via recaps, reviews and YouTube clips until this season, so anything I say can be greeted with an extremely jaundiced eye.
Plus, since I've already used the word "also," I might not be grossed out by things other people are grossed out by. Make of it what you will.
So here we go:
1) To all the people who bitched about Bran knowing or not knowing everything, all the time, despite being the Three Eyed Raven, or who bitched about him being "mean" to people with his emotionless affect? FFS, this is a teenager who lost his mobility as a 10-year-old (or so) when he was pushed out a tower window, spent at least six or so years on the run from the people who killed his father, mother, and older brother, in the wintry North, while dealing with the confusing onset of brain-meltingly weird power, then got even more of that power info-dumped into his head when his supernatural mentor died sooner than expected. He's got powers in his head that he still doesn't understand or fully control, he's losing his own personality under the weight of that info-dump, but he can't regularly benefit from it. Of course he's not going to see, get, or understand everything that flows into his head the minute he gets it! Plus, a little reminder that he's one of the three surviving Stark kids - a phrase that translates from Westerosi and High Valyrian as "Most Seriously Fucked Up Cases of PTSD in Recent Fantasy History." Even his slip up with Sansa, telling her how beautiful she was in her wedding get-up, is understandable; he's going to focus on the beauty of the dress and not what happened afterward because he's still essentially a kid, and the rest of the vision would have been horrifying, but he blurts things out because he's, in the vernacular, fucked up. Give the kid a goddam break, oh-so-snarky vloggers!
2) I'm not grossed out by Dany and Jon falling in love and having sex. Yes, they're aunt and nephew; I don't care. In the world of Westeros, in House Targaryen, where rulers wed their sisters in order to keep their line pure (and perhaps so that dragons could smell their blood, hmmm?), in a world where there are very few Great Houses and therefore where Great House marriages between first cousins are probably not unknown, and with a couple of people raised on opposite sides of the world? That qualifies as NBD. They certainly aren't, say, a brother and sister raised in the same house by the same parents who've had a secret affair for years and generated three children (and possibly one more) out of that relationship. Ahem. So, yeah, aunt-nephew love affair in House Targaryen? Color me unsurprised and undisgusted. (As to whether the love affair will end well or badly? I don't know, but I expect it will cause heartache for all involved before a final decision gets made by the people involved.)
3) I assume that Arya handed the dagger to Sansa in her chamber, then went to the door, made sure it was locked, and sat Sansa down to tell her, "Look, Baelish tried to play me with an all-too-easy to find letter that you wrote. Just to throw him off the trail if he was listening in the hall, which he does a lot - and to do one last check of your courage - I pulled a little bit of play-acting for him. Now, here's my plan; let's go talk to Bran, shall we? And while we're heading to his bedroom, let's review what we've told each other about our lives since Father was beheaded - everything we've talked about since our reunion in the crypt. We'll use the information to strategize with Bran and his visions. Time to take Littlefinger down, don't you agree?" Of course they'll have talked about those lives to each other - and Arya proves it after Baelish's death by telling Sansa that she, Arya, couldn't have survived what Sansa did. She wouldn't have known what Sansa went through unless they'd talked, no? Yes, I understand the writing should have handled that better, but ... WATSONIAN THOUGHTS ONLY, LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.
4) Also, I disagree with everyone calling Tyrion stupid this season, apparently because his strategy of taking Casterly Rock didn't work and because he proposed heading north to get a wight with which to convince Cersei. First off; it was a smart military strategy that didn't work, not a stupid strategy. It might not have been a brilliant strategy, but it was reasonable for him to believe that Casterly Rock would be a rich prize, and a great staging area for further southern incursion. For a non-military guy, he did a good job. You're not stupid just because you've been out-thought. His suggestion of getting a wight was, again, a smart one. He knew that if anything could convince his sister, something like that would. He'd had to switch horses from "Let's win the Iron Throne!" to "OK, we've all got to band together to fight the Night King" in mid-stream, and he had no experience of beyond the wall except what Jon told him. That Jon undertook the mission in such a reckless fashion is to be laid at his feet, not Tyrion's. As for meeting in King's Landing - that was the only place they could have convinced Cersei to meet, so he had to get in there and convince the one person who might coax Cersei into the meeting - Jaime.
Well, that was satisfying. Thank you for your patience.
