(no subject)
Reflections from most of the way through A Game of Thrones (the book):
* Basically I do not care about any Starks except Catelyn (CATELYN HOW SO AWESOME) and Sansa, who, you know, oh honey, but I strongly suspect she's got a brain under there somewhere. Arya is pretty badass as well, I suppose, but in that way that... well, she's tomboyish and violent and way, way too young to be sexualized even by this society, and somehow you put all that together and it spells "the one people who talk endless amounts of shit about everything else with a vagina will then turn around, point to and say 'but I don't hate ALL the female characters!'," you know? So I'm ambivalent about her, although some of what I've read by way of spoilers makes me hopeful about her future development.
ETA II: Actually, you know what, I think Ned and Sansa have the EXACT SAME PROBLEM, which is a fundamental inability to actually cope with the way shit works outside of this very narrow and fairly unrealistic paradigm. His belief in honor and duty and what-not makes him just as helpless in King's Landing as does hers in handsome princes. It's just a lot cuter on the eleven-year-old.
* The degree to which I really, REALLY do not care about Jon Snow can only be expressed through interpretive dance.
* Likewise Dany. I... you know, I can SEE where she OUGHT to be interesting to me, and possibly it's just my particular mood at this time, but my feelings on her continue to be "meh. she's there. she's doing some stuff. I wonder whether I ought to be slightly skeeved by the portrayal of this vaguely-non-white barbarian horselord she's married to. seriously, are the Targaeryns all required by law to have either an AE, a Y, or both in their first name? and is the whole silver-hair violet-eyes thing supposed to be a subversion of a trope or is it just slightly embarrassing? and she's there. and she's doing some more stuff." Not my archetype, possibly?
ETA: ... welp. Like about twenty pages after I hit Post, she went batfuck insane and got AWESOME. Okay, I can live with that.
* LANNISTERS LANNISTERS LANNISTERS. Seriously, the only thing keeping me going, I think, is knowing we get Jaime and Cersei POVs in future books, because even the glances we get at them in this one are enough to make me absolutely certain that I am going to love them FOREVER. I mean, really, I imprinted early on Iris Crowe, I was hooked the minute the kid went out the window. Tyrion, also pretty awesome. LANNISTERS LANNISTERS YAY LANNISTERS YAY. Hi, I am Team Incest and Dwarfs.
* Just once, you know, I'd like to see a fantasy eunuch who was a perfectly ordinary, fairly mellow, non-scheming, non-perfumed human being. Also a fat dude whose fatness wasn't synonymous with moral weakness.
* I am entirely prepared to have my pants charmed off by Littlefinger -- the raw material is there? -- but, I don't know, I'm not 100% feeling it yet. And, um, please can we be done with the Doomed Childhood Romance trope, like, permanently and for always? I mean, yes, Cat is indubitably badass and I am a little bit in love with her too, but -- not with a vastly idealized version of her at age circa fifteen, you know?
* ... this might sound like I'm not really enjoying it all. Actually I am! It's actually a really fast, grippy read -- Martin's prose isn't, like, deathless, but it hooks you and hauls you along pretty nicely -- and I'm having a much easier time following everything than I thought I was going to. I think I'm going to enjoy the sequels more, partly because MORE LANNISTERS and partly because I'm more interested in the aftermath of the whole succession clusterfuck than I am in the clusterfuck itself? I mean, in some ways I think this one is 674 pages of set-up for the REAL story. Which I'm excited for!
* I also think I'm probably going to be watching the TV show. I have heard too much about Lena Headey's performance NOT to, you know?
This entry was originally posted at http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/227534.html. Please comment there if you can.
* Basically I do not care about any Starks except Catelyn (CATELYN HOW SO AWESOME) and Sansa, who, you know, oh honey, but I strongly suspect she's got a brain under there somewhere. Arya is pretty badass as well, I suppose, but in that way that... well, she's tomboyish and violent and way, way too young to be sexualized even by this society, and somehow you put all that together and it spells "the one people who talk endless amounts of shit about everything else with a vagina will then turn around, point to and say 'but I don't hate ALL the female characters!'," you know? So I'm ambivalent about her, although some of what I've read by way of spoilers makes me hopeful about her future development.
ETA II: Actually, you know what, I think Ned and Sansa have the EXACT SAME PROBLEM, which is a fundamental inability to actually cope with the way shit works outside of this very narrow and fairly unrealistic paradigm. His belief in honor and duty and what-not makes him just as helpless in King's Landing as does hers in handsome princes. It's just a lot cuter on the eleven-year-old.
* The degree to which I really, REALLY do not care about Jon Snow can only be expressed through interpretive dance.
* Likewise Dany. I... you know, I can SEE where she OUGHT to be interesting to me, and possibly it's just my particular mood at this time, but my feelings on her continue to be "meh. she's there. she's doing some stuff. I wonder whether I ought to be slightly skeeved by the portrayal of this vaguely-non-white barbarian horselord she's married to. seriously, are the Targaeryns all required by law to have either an AE, a Y, or both in their first name? and is the whole silver-hair violet-eyes thing supposed to be a subversion of a trope or is it just slightly embarrassing? and she's there. and she's doing some more stuff." Not my archetype, possibly?
ETA: ... welp. Like about twenty pages after I hit Post, she went batfuck insane and got AWESOME. Okay, I can live with that.
* LANNISTERS LANNISTERS LANNISTERS. Seriously, the only thing keeping me going, I think, is knowing we get Jaime and Cersei POVs in future books, because even the glances we get at them in this one are enough to make me absolutely certain that I am going to love them FOREVER. I mean, really, I imprinted early on Iris Crowe, I was hooked the minute the kid went out the window. Tyrion, also pretty awesome. LANNISTERS LANNISTERS YAY LANNISTERS YAY. Hi, I am Team Incest and Dwarfs.
* Just once, you know, I'd like to see a fantasy eunuch who was a perfectly ordinary, fairly mellow, non-scheming, non-perfumed human being. Also a fat dude whose fatness wasn't synonymous with moral weakness.
* I am entirely prepared to have my pants charmed off by Littlefinger -- the raw material is there? -- but, I don't know, I'm not 100% feeling it yet. And, um, please can we be done with the Doomed Childhood Romance trope, like, permanently and for always? I mean, yes, Cat is indubitably badass and I am a little bit in love with her too, but -- not with a vastly idealized version of her at age circa fifteen, you know?
* ... this might sound like I'm not really enjoying it all. Actually I am! It's actually a really fast, grippy read -- Martin's prose isn't, like, deathless, but it hooks you and hauls you along pretty nicely -- and I'm having a much easier time following everything than I thought I was going to. I think I'm going to enjoy the sequels more, partly because MORE LANNISTERS and partly because I'm more interested in the aftermath of the whole succession clusterfuck than I am in the clusterfuck itself? I mean, in some ways I think this one is 674 pages of set-up for the REAL story. Which I'm excited for!
* I also think I'm probably going to be watching the TV show. I have heard too much about Lena Headey's performance NOT to, you know?
This entry was originally posted at http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/227534.html. Please comment there if you can.