#anti grrm

[venusintheblindspots-blog]

And to add more on my previous post, all of the main female characters (with the exception of Arianne Martell) in the main series of ASOIAF are representations of white femininity.

Every single one.

And that is because they are literally white. It doesn’t make them bad characters or anything.

I’ve talked about it before hand, but anytime George is writing a character of color, especially a black woman, he uses racist stereotypes and imagery. Every time.

There’s a reason why Dorne and the Summer Isles are sexually liberated, and why the Dothraki are portrayed as vicious ‘savages’ with hardly any redeeming values to their culture.

There’s a reason why Arianne’s exposure to sex and intimacy at ten years old is not framed the same way as say, Sansa’s.

There’s a reason why Chataya and her daughter are brutalized and reminiscent of the Jezebel trope.

[meanderingstar]

the way Daenerys treats Irri in the books is incredibly disturbing and I hate how it's overlooked by both the narrative and the majority of the fandom.

Daenerys uses Irri for sex at least twice over the course of the story, once in Storm and once in Dance. I really, truly cannot overstate how horrific the power imbalance between them is: Daenerys is her khaleesi, her queen and her employer; Irri was formerly a slave in her service and is now her maid with absolutely nowhere else to go. She has evidently been conditioned to believe that displaying absolute obedience to her higher-ups, including sexual services, is her "duty", which Daenerys recognizes and still actively exploits for her own pleasure. This is also why consent between them is utterly impossible – contrary to some asoiaf blogs who claim that consent was not a major issue in this situation (lol) or that Irri freely consented, Irri’s conditioning means that she will never be able to freely consent to someone like Daenerys, who is her employer and holds absolute power over her. Daenerys herself acknowledges this and feels guilty (damning in itself), but ends up using her in such a manner anyway, despite explicitly recognizing that Irri's kisses "tasted of duty" and nothing more.

What makes this even worse is that despite using her in this way in Storm, Daenerys has no issue saying that Irri and Jhiqui (who are her age and have had the same, if not worse, experiences than she has) are "only girls" in comparison to her. She also dismisses their (pretty sensible, imo?) concern about her touching sick and dead people by calling them "utter fools" and saying the Dothraki were only wise when it came to horses. She says all this AFTER sleeping with Irri, which makes it twice as bad - Daenerys considers her a little girl and a fool when it comes to advising her, but still finds it perfectly fine to use her for sex? This condescension extends to their sexual relationship as well, where Daenerys refers to Irri as "the maid", "her handmaid" and "the Dothraki girl" as she has sex with her. It's patronizing, disrespectful and exploitative at best, outright dehumanizing at worst.

While I highly doubt this was Grrm's intention, Daenerys's dynamic with Irri is clearly reminiscent of the horrific way Cersei uses Taena Merryweather. Dany is obviously not as vicious with Irri as Cersei was with Taena but that really doesn't change the fact that she was still a queen exploiting her employee's obedience and conditioned sense of "duty" for her own pleasure, made even worse by the fact that Irri, as a servant and former slave with no family, no connections and nowhere else to go, was 10x more vulnerable than Taena was and certainly more dependent on Dany. It's bizarre how Cersei's treatment of Taena is recognized as fucked up by most of the fandom but Daenerys's treatment of Irri is not, even though the power imbalance between them is infinitely worse. (also: Grrm writing about TWO white queens using their brown maids/ladies-in-waiting for sex is flat-out racist. I'm also extremely uncomfortable with how both wlw interactions are dubiously consensual at best and arguably revolve around Cersei/Dany's relationships with men to some extent: Cersei uses Taena to reenact her trauma by Robert, and Dany not only "pretended it was Drogo holding her...only somehow his face kept turning into Daario's" when she was having sex with Irri, but also explicitly states that "it was Daario she wanted, or perhaps Drogo, not Irri").

Certainly, Daenerys and Irri's dynamic is part and parcel of Grrm's fucked notion of consent and piss-poor writing of wlw relationships (both of which he should be called out for far more than he is, btw), but it doesn't change the fact that in-universe, these are Daenerys's textual actions. Grrm seems to believe that Drogo didn't rape Daenerys (a 13 year old who was forced into marriage) on their wedding night because she said "yes", just like he seems to believe that Jaime didn't coerce Cersei to have sex with him over their own son's dead body because she eventually responded to Jaime's advances, but I clearly recognize them as rape and coercion. The same logic and same standards apply to Daenerys and the way she uses and exploits Irri and she should be judged accordingly.

[idontreallyknow26]

We stan Criston for respecting sex workers and being the only feminist man in probably the entirety of GOT

And we hate Daemon for constantly making misogynistic remarks about any woman, generally his wives, that he doesn't like, emotionally neglecting his second wife, grooming Rhaenyra, cheating on Rhaenyra, neglecting his children, committing treason every other sentence, and that's not even half of it.

[katshuya]

No matter what George does. No matter if he twisted it into "Elia was ok and never felt humiliated nor used, and the Martells didn't mind what Rhaegar did" or if George decided never to talk about Elia. R x L will always be disgusting and not a tragic love story.

Any sane human being can see that.

Even in a creepy scenario where she was ok with it OR one where she didn't love Rhaegar, he will always be to blame, and he still used her.

That's why the R x L stans always try to either ignore her existence or reduce it into nothing and her into some kind of supernatural alien human that is ok with everything dirty done to her.

Because they know their oh so tragic, self insert true love story will always seem disgusting because of Elia's existence in the story.

No amount of excuses or fanarts will ever change this truth. No matter which characters George will make accepting and supporting of them (Ned, Arthur, Oberyn, Doran, Ashara, Lewyn and even Elia herself....ect). Why? Because it's unrealistic.

Even if R and L's were running away from Aerys, then suddenly *accidentally* saw a prophecy or fell in love.

OR Even if George made it that Rhaegar wouldn't have left her if she had been able to give him another child. It doesn't change that he abandoned her and their children in the worst way possible with no protection against Aerys and his loyal kingsguard. And even then, it's hard to believe she'd accept just because he told her : Hey, I see in my dreams that I have to have 3 children or we all die. Like, what is this? She almost died for that, no thanks to you and your one after another impregnation.

It's disgusting and not well-written at all.

That's just the plain truth.

That's why a huge part of the fandom dislikes it. Not because they "didn't read the books" or "they lack critical thinking".

It's actually because they know how to think instead of inserting themselves as not like other girls girl and shipping themselves with terrible husband and father, charismatic depressed prince charming.

Poor Rhaegar had a sense of doom following him and knew he'd die soon so Elia let him be? That's very idiotic.

No. Elia being fine with annulment or polygamy isn't normal unless she is forced to. And you know it.

[aangopologist]

Love how GRRM tried with every fiber of his being to make Team Green look like losers only for them to turn out more merciful and competent than Team Black

-Team Green only had 3 dragonriders Vs Team Black 7 dragonriders and they still make it hard for the blacks, to the point Daeron is considered the biggest threat to Rhaenyra.

-Daemon and Rhaenyra had Aegon's son killed and had their sights on the other one, but despite having tbe opportunity to, Aegon refused to kill Rhaenyra and Daemon's son.

-Daemon 50 smth ass had to die to defeat his nineteen year old nephew (in an incredibly illogical battle btw)

Martin knew he wanted the Blacks to "win" (in the sense their child sits on the throne because it's the beginning of the end for the Targaryens from now on) but didn't properly edit the story and as result ended making the Green look much better than he intended to

[alsethwisson]

If I was to choose single most f-ed up thing in Asoiaf, it would be whole thing about Danny Flint song. I have taken folklore studies, I know European folklore(s) well enough to confidently say: it’s total bullshit and pure rapexploitation on author’s part.

Folklore has its universal rules, universal narratives it uses to weave songs and stories. A woman pretending to be a man is one of those, and not once does it end with rape, much less gang rape. It has four possible outcomes: never discovered, discovered and rewarded, dead on discovery (usually via birth) or discovered and killed. Usually the latter is framed as defiance on her part - she goads her killer, shaming him and emasculating, and he is the villain of the story, a weakling unable to bear being bested by a woman.

If we play by the rules of folklore logic, Danny Flint would end either with her made single female lord-commander, or her killer being exposed and punished and she hailed as a hero.

Rape is never the endgame in folklore. It is only used either passingly in historical songs among other enemy atrocities, or as a starting point of revenge ballads. Never. and I can’t stress it enough, is rape used as comeuppance for a woman. Death is.

You can say “oh, but the song is not about rape, rape is what really happened”, but nope, the song is source material for those talking about this story. Just another grrm’s rapexploitation moment. Not the first, neither the last.

[catofoldstones]

WHY is there so much rape in ASOIAF? Hmm? Why did Lollys have to suffer so much? What’s the point of the black knights raping Craster’s daughter? Knights my ass. Like literally how does that push the story forward? HOW does that fulfill any theme in the books?

Fuck that. How does describing Sansa’s body like that serve any purpose, with grown men staring at her like that? Is this how he wants to portray girlhood and growing up? How does Dany being assaulted by Jorah and not having any power over it serve? It’s not even a commentary on no matter how powerful a woman (who’s literally just a girl right now) becomes she’s still susceptible to gendered violence. Also what does it say when you still want a powerful woman (🙄) get assaulted by her subordinate nonetheless?

What the fuck, George.

[tlaquetzqui]

The person in A Song of Ice and Fire who mocks a lord for letting peasants into a castle, is his sister.

What fucking “otome game villainess”-ass level of childish fucking idiot is this bitch supposed to be, exactly, George? Because “yeah honey the castle has to be so big so all the farmers can hide here if we get attacked, they grow our food” is a thing every noblewoman would learn around the time she loses her first baby teeth.

See this would be an example of Martin being a misogynist: clearly any day this bungler gets her coif and her smallclothes on the right ends of herself on the first try, is a good day. And Martin thinks a feudal society could afford to have any of its noblewomen remain so unspotted by the stain of basic sense? Women run castle logistics, you moron, she would know where the fucking food comes from.

[alethiaii]

YES GIRL, GIVE US NOTHING!

[ai-megurine]

I hate GRRM so fucking much.

[mneiai]

The problem with romanticizing Rhaegar/Lyanna is the way they ended means any romance there might have been was dead.

Either Rhaegar, or Lyanna, or both of them were monsters.

Either Lyanna ignored that her father and eldest brother were tortured to death, that Aerys called for the heads of her other brothers (and therefore more or less the complete destruction of House Stark), and that her one brother had been forced into war and the other was without family in Winterfell, something she could mitigate by reappearing alongside Rhaegar (perhaps even with Rhaegar finally calling for that Great Council). Which, even by our standards is pretty fucked but especially by Westerosi ones.

Or Rhaegar either hid everything that was happening from Lyanna, including that their disappearance helped to get her father and brother killed which sparked a war and that she was being used as something of a rallying cry, or he told her and then kept her captive, despite what would have been a highly distressed state and the implied lack of medical experts for her pregnancy.

Or they both were so caught up in prophecies or whatever they didn't care how many people died (or even needed people to die for the prophecy).

It's all well and good to say that they were in love (not that Mr Already-Wrote-A-Girl-Falling-For-Her-Rapist should ever be taken as an authority on love even in his own writing, because he's continually shown not to understand how relationship based trauma actually works to the point his successes have started to seem like coincidences), but there's no real way they could have been in some sort of sweet, meaningful love at the end. One or both had to be doing something horrible, no matter what gets put in fanfics.

(And, let's be honest, it's probably not the teenage girl, so stop it with the Lyanna hate on this post, you weirdo misogynists.)

[aegor-bamfsteel]

Do you think that there were chances to rebel against slavery in Slavers Bay?

Not only do I know there were, but the slaving societies that GRRM has written are so overinflated they should’ve been history long before Dány’s war.

The societies of Slaver’s Bay (and the Free Cities) are without a doubt slaving societies. A “slaving society” as described by influential historian Moses I Finley, is different from a “society with slaves” (which were most of ancient societies) where slavery was a small aspect of social/economic life; a slaving society had at least 20% slaves, there’s enough of them to create a cultural impact, and they’re an essential part of the economy. In Finley’s model, there are only 5 slaving societies in (Western) history: Greece, Rome, colonial US South, Caribbean, and Brazil. GRRM makes it clear that without slavery, Slaver’s Bay would collapse economically (as would the Free Cities further west). He provides comically high numbers of slaves in some of the Free Cities (slave to free are 3:1 in Lys, Myr, Tyrosh; and 5:1 in Volantis), but we hear of only a few slave rebellions in them (when the Doom of Valyria happened and they killed all the dragons surviving except the Targs’) until Dány, but why? In slaving societies, the threat of violence for rebelling was institutional and severe…but every one of those 5 had multiple examples of slave uprisings. And in some cases where the slaves outnumbered the elites by that level of magnitude, they were successful. The helots of Messenia took advantage of an earthquake and Thebes’ invasion of Sparta to revolt and eventually rebuild their old city, while the enslaved people of Haiti took advantage of the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars to win their independence. It stands to reason as a hub of slavery that Slaver’s Bay has an enslaved population close to that of the Free Cities, but there’s never any uprising mentioned until Dány comes? Even though we know that natural disasters and institutional warfare took place in that area. And don’t tell me the magical Unsullied just prevented all rebellions forever; the Spartans were allegedly the best warriors in Ancient Greece, whole kingdoms couldn’t win against Roman consular armies, the French army defeated practically most of Europe during the Revolutionary/Napoleonic period…but there were slave rebellions that managed to beat all of them, even if temporarily (poor Spartacus). But we’re just supposed to assume that after the fall of Valyria—which TWOIAF did tell us coincided with slave rebellions against the dragonlords—absolutely none of these cities achieved any sort of lasting freedom for its enslaved people? Even when the source of the Valyrian might, the dragons, was gone and the elite could no longer rely on that violence to keep the population in line? They were all just suffering and waiting for a savior for centuries, despite being most of the city’s population (including much of the army) and there being only some backup for the elite? The USA had to outlaw educating enslaved people for fear of rebellion, but there were still uprisings; meanwhile, in Essos there’s no ban on education, but we hear of none in Slaver’s Bay? It’s absolute nonsense historically, and only serves to make the slavers look super evil and Dány to look more like an apparent hero; the byproduct is that the enslaved people are robbed of the spirit, agency, and solidarity that they had in real life.

[fearthhereaper]

I really need to know what makes demon grrm's favorite character. Because he is not /that/ interesting or compelling and I would even argue that if he actually hadn't had an obvious boner for demon he would've been able to make him an even better character. The fact that he sidelined other characters and the main conflict of the dance because he needed demon to be the one that gets all the glory....not very 'professional, unbiased writer' of you george

[ladymelisande]

Forever mourning the older, more coherent Sansa Stark from GRRM's original outline, who betrayed her family because she had to choose between them and her actual son.

Instead we got whatever GRRM tried to do with an eleven year old that is too dumb for that age and talks to the evil queen despite her father's repeated warnings about her betrothed and his family because the guy really doesn't know how to write children.

[katshuya]

wtf

elua did not deserve the winter rose crown at all!! it belongs to queen Lyanna Stark! your fake princess exists just to get between the best ship like the brown whore she is. there is no mention of flowers and elus in same sentence yet i see you fans draw her with flowers that rightfully belong to queen Lyanna. shows how desperate your side are. elia never lifted a finger to save even herself much less anyone else. why should she get crown over Lyanna, when flowers as motif belong to Lyanna (and Arya, yet sandra fans keep using it too in fake ugly arts).

Do you see this shit, people?

I love how they expose their true colors while hiding who they are.

The obvious hate for Elia in their posts as they pretend to try to give her identity by saying she only cared about becoming Queen and her son the next king while also saying Ashara probably loved more lyanna and was simply just one of many handmaidens for Elia and Rhaella probably wasn't close to Elia.

Yes, winter rose is lyanna's. I was talking about the crown, you idiot. So what? It doesn't change the fact that even your oh so great self insert, not like other girls character was reduced to glorified womb. Greenseer or not. With Rhaegar's love or not. It's not pretty at all.

But I guess that means nothing to you compared to screwing Rhaegar in your imagination.

Elia wasn't able to save herself, no thanks to your stupid prince charming, but your dear lyanna didn't save herself either. In fact, Rhaegar is also to blame for what happened to her, as well as she was complicit in her fate, too.

Elia will always exist to show how much this ship is disgusting, selfish, and cruel. That's why you are so angry. Otherwise, why did you say Elia was there just to get in between your self insert perfect ship where Rhaegar is in love with you?

You all know it shows the ugliness of this ship. Oh, sorry! I mean the GrEYnEss.

You want to blame someone and then blame the author.

Because Elia being there shows not only Rhaegar as a selfish monster but it doesn't paint lyanna as a nice girl at all if she went willingly no matter how much GRRM would talk about what a lovely winter rose she was. Age can excuse actions to how far?

Get out and touch a grass. How long can this fantasy of special oh so different girl swinging sword and making most handsome men fall for her and other girls jealous of her could continue to please you? If anything, it's making you mad because of how badly written it is.

A reminder, Sansa is Arya's sister, you ugly heart. I doubt your Arya would be happy reading what you wrote.

[thewitchqueenofharrenhal]

Okay but I will die on the hill that GRRM was a coward for not letting the only surviving male Targ heirs to be Rhaenyra’s bastards.

The same way he was a coward for not letting us see the tragedy of a life long Jaehaera & Aegon marriage with children!!! Like can you imagine!!! How much more unhinged would characters like Baelor, Daena and Daeron been!!