melrosing - Tumblr blog

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I got 78% . . .

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What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms… or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

Jon Snow - and family that haunts him, because sometimes ghosts make for the best love stories.

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“anyway the most gender years of my life“ are you any kind of trans? If it’s not a personal question

lmao no I am literally a cishet woman and have always identified as such. just decided I didn’t want to be perceived as a girl for three years of my life lol. which ig maybe sounds bizarre for a cis kid but I felt pretty clearheaded at the time about that being my objective and I can only imagine it was an experience very different from that of trans kids the same age. like for me it wasn’t about what I wanted to be, I just didn’t want the pressure of performing girlhood during puberty so…. I stopped performing it??? idk man. cis adventures

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every blow she dealt him was sweeter than a kiss

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right I think what I mean to say is the ugly duckling represents relief for the duckling, who once struggled under society’s beauty standards but now through sheer luck meets them. but the story does nothing to address the injustice of the underlying standard that still persecutes those without such luck. like that’s all it is: the ugly duckling doesn’t become beautiful through strength of character - just a genetic lottery. I get WHY people like the story, there’s a catharsis in getting to prove the other ducks wrong, but it’s like. the ugly duckling proves them RIGHT lmao like ‘your standards are correct but turns out I meet them’

like I think ultimately the problem is that the ugly duckling is not the story anyone needs about beauty. it’s true that some people ‘glow up’ but the reflection from many of them has been that it’s honestly disturbing how much better society treats them once they started aligning to beauty standards. so the disturbing fact remains that if you do not or cannot conform to those standards, you are never going to be treated like a swan. so again, fine if a character does grow up to meet those standards but it’s not really an uplifting narrative in the same way as a character who could never meet those standards finding empowerment beyond them is

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I understand u don’t want to continue this convo (bran and Arya are mean comment) that being said I also just wanted to thank you for being level headed? Like I started out a couple months ago full on AryaFan (0 social media for asoiaf before) and I followed like 5-10blogs that love her! I was excited but then they argued with ghosts in the tags “I keep seeing this awful take” and I just was like astounded they would use so much energy to argue and be like a reason to start disliking the fandom

ah I think tbh all of fandom has a tendency towards this and I won't even say I've never made that kind of 'i keep seeing this take' post before - when you know that a certain kind of take exists and you've seen it enough times, sometimes you're reminded of it and you want to explain your own opinion apropos nothing in particular, just to drown out that noise wherever it might be. like this definitely isn't unique to Arya fandom, and I'd say I've seen just about everyone I follow make one - again me included

but I do think it can get ridiculous when half ur blog is just fighting other users (or indeed invisible takes when other users aren't providing enough content to fight over), building some narrative that you're the most persecuted section of fandom and why is it that only you understand this character and that issue, and every time someone shares their opinion on your fave it's like they're stepping on your turf and you've got to come down on them like an anvil so they know who's in charge around here and it feels right and honourable when you're doing it but in reality you just look way too online.

BUT again this is a problem everywhere, I've blocked people in my own parts of fandom who I feel have too much of a tendency to constantly blog like this and I have talked to others about how we want to avoid falling into the same pit lol. it makes for a bad fandom ecosystem and like you say it discouraged you from enjoying fandom when you encountered it!

but also Arya is a great character and there are so many great Arya fans. some of the fanart and edits and meta on Arya is the best in fandom and really enrich my enjoyment for her POVs on rereads. I know the asoiaf tags can be a cesspit sometimes but I think the best thing you can do is just post the kind of stuff you want to see and you will draw others to your blog and you can encourage that kind of fandom culture amongst urselves.

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Brienne and Femininity (and Masculinity)

I’ve been musing how one of the most important topics in Brienne's storyline is femininity, and even though her story isn't finished, we can fairly see what some of her major themes are around this—particularly, how performing or failing at performing femininity affects her both internally and externally.

Often I see people pointing out that, in spite of all of Brienne’s traditionally masculine ways—her clothes, her skill set, her body shape, to name a few—she does not fully reject femininity. That she likes little cute animals and fairy tales and wears dresses, and is shy and blushes frequently. This is an important point because, very often, fantasy settings made the assumption that a woman can only be taken seriously if she goes beyond “her womanhood” and acts and thinks “like a man,” as opposed to other girls who are too busy mending or wanting romance. Brienne challenges those tendencies that GRRM saw in his contemporaries. Things have changed a lot since (hello The Locked Tomb, for example), but you can still see where he is working from, and how many of the aspects of Brienne's story still resonate with more modern audiences because, well, sexism hasn't stopped existing. It's also important because the larger asoiaf and got fandoms often refuse to see this side of her, reducing her to a walking sword or a cardboard cut out of a pushover.

Now, my main issue here is that I feel several interpretations of Brienne have now gone on the other direction, and focus so much on Brienne PERFORMING traditional femininity—wearing luxurious dresses, using make up, accepting lavishing gifts, or wondering if she can be desired, for example—that we've gone sometimes on the opposite direction. I feel like many times we’re afraid or do not know how to approach characterizing her as someone who rejects aspects of femininity without making her into another “not like other girls” stereotype.

My two cents on the matter is that if we focus too much in what Brienne can't but "wants" to perform, we forget that she is, in fact, gladly rejecting some common impositions of femininity in her society.

Beginning with swordplay at a young age, for example, she was very glad to ditch a more traditional education in order to learn how to fight the way we know men are taught in asoiaf/got. She is also explicitly more comfortable in men's clothes. We all like the scene where Jaime makes an effort to give her a dress and she appreciates it, but we don't even find out what happened to the dress, because, presumably, the dress itself is not THAT important, at least not as much as the fact Jaime gave her gifts as a form of appreciation. Dresses have been used in Brienne's past to mock her (the event with the bear being the most recent one), and the important part is that Jaime is the only one who has given her one without that ulterior motive. The point of the scene is that where everyone undermines and underestimates her, he is acting the opposite way. We’re seeing how the relationship between them has evolved and that he is doing his best to mend what has happened and what he has done. She is given a dress and a sword as symbols that someone else in the story is beginning to appreciate her for all she is.

Beyond that, we even get details on the old shield Brienne got at Harrenhal, but not a word about the dress. Brienne explicitly doesn't really like being in dresses, she prefers mail and breeches, and feels more at ease in them than anything else. This is not her hating dresses because she is above them. I can’t remember well but as far as we know it’s just her preference: I don’t recall her saying she hates dresses, just that she prefers trousers. She must have been wearing dresses her whole life! It’s not likely she is unused to them. But we do know the act of being given a dress is important in Brienne’s story. The problem is not that they can’t make dresses for her, the problem is that everyone who forces her to wear a dress wants to signal how lacking she is as a woman, trying to fit her in a box too small for her real shape and then mocking her because she doesn’t meet their standard. The problem is they want to make her uncomfortable and they want to humiliate her, because she dares to exist in a way that doesn’t conform to patriarchal ideals. And the problem is that she likes to wear trousers and mail. She likes to wear masculine clothes, and they want her to be very aware of how much they disapprove.

And we also hear a great deal about marrying and having children out of duty. There's a certain loss she feels there because she believes that, at that point, all those missed opportunities will never present themselves again. All her life, she grew up with a dichotomy that dictated that the chance of having a family or children was through duty or none at all, because she is her father’s heir and—they kept telling her—nobody would want an ugly, masculine, temperamental girl as a wife. They could only want her for the money she brought. The point of the story is that, once again, failing the standards of femininity has forced her into a mentality where she thinks she can’t be loved because nobody would like who and what she is. But even then, even with that thorn in her mind, she still feels relieved she didn't have to perform these particular duties. The only thing she’s sad about is that she thinks she's missed any chance at having a family at all and will never know what that might be like. She doesn’t actively want babies or even to be married. She is still young, and at least to me, she seems to view these things in hypothetical rather than explicit goals or wants. She thinks that, at 20, there is no opportunity for her to experience these things because of how her society works. It’s the lack of choice that she mourns, down the line. But she rejects that particularly role that femininity imposes on her now. She didn’t want it, and she is happy it didn’t go through. She literally fought an old man to prove how much she didn’t want those impositions.

All this is interesting to me because Brienne also sort of thinks of herself as her father's son as well as her father's daughter. It almost slips her mouth once or twice. She is aware, I think, that many times the differences between a son and a daughter boil down not really to gender but to the sort of duty they perform. And she wants to do the sorts of things sons do, too. Men regularly learned to fight and wore the clothes she liked best and used hard-earned skills in a way she wanted to use them. There are layers to this (we’ll get to that in a bit) but she is, I think, very aware of her masculinity, and, if left to her own devices, she seems comfortable in it. The problem is she is NOT left to her own devices.

Most of Brienne's self doubt comes from outside forces. As a woman, they underestimate her. As a woman, they think she is stupid. As a gender non-conforming woman, every jape uttered goes directly to her womanhood. As a woman, if she looks the way she does and dresses the way she does and fights the way she does, when she expresses any vulnerable emotion, any shred of “femininity,” she is mocked for it. She likes dancing and beautiful things and pretty boys but a woman as masculine as she is is not the sort of person who gets to express those preferences without judgment from those around her.

The point is Brienne’s world wants her miserable either way: being unable to be a woman the way they demand of her, because she is too much “like a man” for it, or being unable to be a man, because she is too much a woman for that. The point is she can’t win regardless of what she does. Because that’s how sexism works.

But Brienne’s story is, I think, one about choices. The thing is that the world makes it harder for her, but she shouldn't have to be one thing or the other. She shouldn’t have to be defined by one or the other. If she wants to fight in the mud and smell roses and wear chain-mail and talk to charming men, she should be able to choose all of those things. I think it’s easy to focus too much in what aspects of femininity Brienne likes or dislikes instead of looking at what the story is proposing, which is to look at what Brienne,as a person, likes or dislikes. What she wants. Her parallel story to Jaime is about how the world will always try to put folks in boxes, especially those who, for some reason or another, do not easily fit in those boxes. The question is not “what feminine/masculine parts of Brienne is she happy performing” but rather “what does Brienne want, and why does she feel like she cannot get it and doesn't dare ask.”

This is also what drives her to servitude. There’s a phrase out there that says that if you don’t think you can be liked, you try to become useful, so at least there’s a reason to keep you around. It’s heartbreaking to see how Brienne’s vision of herself has been so skewed by the emotional abuse, parental neglect, and bullying she’s experienced since a young age. She doesn’t think anyone will grow close to her, so at least she can be close to people by serving them. She wants to put her skills to use, she wants to find a place where she fits, where she can be more herself, but she isn’t sure what that looks like or how to find it. She’s still searching, and learning many things on the way.

And Brienne is still very young. We can see her confidence growing and her worldview challenged and she is beginning to see the realities of herself and of the world around her through various trials by fire. Misogyny makes her feel incomplete, but we know the things she trusts about herself while simultaneously seeing the way she constantly doubts others. How she can't never express all of herself without constant judgment or mockery.

I feel like yes, the fact Brienne doesn't reject all traditional femininity is really important to her themes, but by extension, it's as important that shedoes reject some of those traditional expressions of femininity. What she is truly rejecting is imposition, not femininity. What she truly needs to embrace is freedom, not masculinity. She's making her own vows, breaking her own promises, going through her own mistakes. She is learning the hard way. Agency in a world of limited choices is one of Brienne's main themes too. There are moral issues that go deep within her story as well as examinations of the effects of war and the struggle to find authenticity and connection in a community that refuses to acknowledge yours, a community drenched in pretense and lost in performance.

And I think it’s easy to get too caught up in her wanting to be a girlfriend or a mother or wearing a dress that we bypass the whole conversation around why that matters at all. I feel like Brienne's success isn't going to come from her fully embracing all her feminine traits or fully accepting all her masculine traits but from being able, down the line, to be exactly who she is.

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Blocking people instead of actually countering what they have to say doesn’t suggest conviction in your own opinion

okay but consider this: I’ve been here before, and in the end it doesn’t actually matter how much conviction I have in my opinion, they have full conviction in theirs and they will just. keep. going until my entire blog is just me having to make the same points over and over only for them to come back with the same rebuttals and then I get ANONS doing the same thing and it literally doesn’t end until I say ‘I am tired of this and want to talk about something else’ and then they go COWARD!! GIVING UP ARE YOU!!!

like yes i am! and this time im doing it sooner rather than later bc it’s exhausting talking to you people and I find myself having to argue points that were already made in the original post they’re replying to that they just refuse to consider in good faith so what’s the point! it isn’t fun!

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yeah tumblr blocking really sucks lmao but on desktop there is a spot under blog settings where you can block accounts from a sideblog. if that helps(?)

that does help merci!! will investigate when I’m back on desktop

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dressing as a boy as an exercise in body neutrality….. maybe I was cooking some kind of dish

that is exactly what happened to me after I sort of learnt personal grooming after high school and suddenly started to get attention from my peers. It did make me feel a lot happier but it’s been 10 years since then and looking back I just feel sad that that is what it took for some basic respect around here!

lol same to an extent? I fully just started dressing as a boy in secondary school so that people couldn’t judge my appearance as a girl bc whether it was people complimenting me or insulting me or telling me if I’d only do this I’d be pretty etc etc I just found it fucking unbearable lol. anyway the most gender years of my life

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sometimes if you block a person it only blocks them from one blog and since this is technically your sideblog that might be how they were able to reblog it? i've had that issue too it's annoying.

oh that makes sense?? kind of makes blocking feel pointless tho LMAO

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that is exactly what happened to me after I sort of learnt personal grooming after high school and suddenly started to get attention from my peers. It did make me feel a lot happier but it’s been 10 years since then and looking back I just feel sad that that is what it took for some basic respect around here!

lol same to an extent? I fully just started dressing as a boy in secondary school so that people couldn’t judge my appearance as a girl bc whether it was people complimenting me or insulting me or telling me if I’d only do this I’d be pretty etc etc I just found it fucking unbearable lol. anyway the most gender years of my life

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sorry I’m gonna avoid answering certain qs bc I really want to avoid this getting out of hand again (as it practically always does) so just psa

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like I think ultimately the problem is that the ugly duckling is not the story anyone needs about beauty. it’s true that some people ‘glow up’ but the reflection from many of them has been that it’s honestly disturbing how much better society treats them once they started aligning to beauty standards. so the disturbing fact remains that if you do not or cannot conform to those standards, you are never going to be treated like a swan. so again, fine if a character does grow up to meet those standards but it’s not really an uplifting narrative in the same way as a character who could never meet those standards finding empowerment beyond them is

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still here and unimpressed by the rest of ur argument 😭

the thing that annoys me the most about the bullying claim among the stark sisters is that they talk about how much it affects Arya that she thinks she’s ugly and such and like she does, but she’s so much more worried about being “bad” she killed a boy. She’s also going through poverty and war and starving and being introduced to cults/bands of “justice” by murder

but nooooo she totally is more affected by being called horse face despite being compared to SOOOOOO MANY PRETTY PEOPLE AND THAT MEANS SHES GOOD (never mind that good looking=good person should NOT BE YOUR BASIS)

I think most people, and especially girls, know exactly how it feels to worry about your appearance and feel ugly and unattractive, and I get that this is a particular pain for Arya, who apparently has never been called pretty except by her dad one time in AGOT, in an offhanded comparison to her aunt Lyanna. I don't think attractiveness is the most important thing to validate in any child, but I do think that it is good and nice to affirm to your child that they have their own beauty, so that they can then negotiate their relationship with that word from a safer place in adulthood.

It's not about telling your child they don't look a certain way (e.g. no good telling Brienne she's a normal height and her nose is hardly crooked at all), but that the way they look is something unique to them and something they should take pride in, regardless of what others say. Like I think it's an OOC moment in the show, but I think it's sweet when Olenna tells Brienne she looks 'marvellous' or something. She's not saying 'you look like bella hadid', she's saying 'I love the way you look!' to a woman who has received nothing but insults (despite looking like fuckin. Gwendoline Christie lmao). that is nice. it's not the most important compliment anyone can receive, but it embraces divergence as positive.

as it goes though, Arya is a pretty girl and it's just weird that the adults found countless compliments for Sansa and none for Arya. and that's why I find it so bizarre that everyone wants to pin Arya's self-esteem issues on Sansa, a prepubescent child!! like, would Arya have taken these insults so hard if Cat had stepped in and said 'don't listen, you're a lovely girl and your father says you look just like your aunt Lyanna! sansa i am telling you off for calling people names'. children are always going to call each other mean names! it is one thing that is practically guaranteed to happen in any sibling relationship, and anyone who says otherwise is an only child or lying.

but it is much harder for a child to manage that hurt if they're getting called those names, and society seems to be reifying to truth of them at every turn! Septa Mordane is calling her ugly! Cat is calling her a mess! Ned has never complimented her till AGOT! etc! she has never received a compliment before! so how on earth can you say 'and Arya's self-esteem issues can all be traced back to the playground bickering between she and Sansa and Jeyne' when Arya is obviously getting the same message from what seem like far more authoritative sources! is it not worse that those sources are all complimenting Sansa all the time and never Arya? does that not make it worse when Sansa acts like a child about it? like!!

and yeah I agree that there are other more painful insecurities Arya is struggling with. I do think at least part of the reason that this argument keeps coming up in fandom is that people keep trying to claim that Arya's story is similar to Brienne's, in that she IS ugly according to society's standards and that's ok! which isn't true, Arya is canonically a pretty kid with a dirty face and unbrushed hair. that's all it is. so if we could just accept that, there'd be no excuse for the insistence that this is an important aspect of Arya's story.

because it isn't. like im sorry but the ugly duckling means nothing when there are plenty of people who don't grow up to be swans. they get called ugly as children, and they get called ugly as adults. look at Brienne: she has suffered far, far worse prejudice as a result of her appearance in childhood, and she doesn't get the catharsis of growing up pretty to show them all how wrong they were. Brienne has been treated like a fucking monster for how she looks, all of her life. this is a character for whom her appearance IS actually an important theme, and it will be meaningful to see her realise it's a strength, and find love etc. I'm sorry but Arya growing up to be beautiful doesn't mean shit to me lol. I fully accept it's canon, but it is not a meaningful story beat, in a story with people like Tyrion, Brienne and Sam. Arya's story has so many more fascinating themes about identity, trauma, justice, war, friendship and family. if Arya was pretty all along, why should I care?