#asoiaf misogyny

[horizon-verizon]

To be clear, this is also disparagement of the court during Viserys’ time: the presence of sexism on Alicent and the Court's parts.

Alicent and the court of the Red Keep both in HotD and F&B all anticipated or gossiped that Rhaenyra's three boys would not have their dragon eggs hatch when presented int their cradles because they were rumored to not be Laenor's kids (they said that Rhaenyra cheated on Laenor and had an affair with Harwin, this the three Velayron boys' brown hair, brown eyes, and "pug" noses).

However, all the V boys eggs hatched not long at all after they were born.

The reason why Alicent and the court believed that Rhaenyra's kids would have hatched eggs is because Westerosi tend to believe that a father rather than the other passes down the most distinctive or powerful treats to a child. It did not ever occur to them that Rhaenyra would pass on her family's dragonriding abilities to her sons on her own "merit", or on her own (as if this were an active decision, but that's a separate issue).

Also, Alicent wants her own son, Aegon the Elder, to be the heir and inherit the throne, so any pretext that could have Rhaenyra removed (since women's fidelity is treated more seriously as a fault and crime than a men's) is something she wants to both believe in and actively use for that end.

I feel it’s important to know that when Rhaena Targaryen (the princess-turned-forced-bride-of-Maegor the Cruel) gave her siblings Jaehaerys and Alysanne their dragons by placing their eggs in their cradles, she did so out of love because she herself grew more confident or willing to confront and interact with others after bonding with her own dragon, Dreamfyre, at age 9.

So when she was 13 and her siblings were born, she wanted them to experience that unique, character-developing event like she did as early as possible. (Maybe I’m just projecting, but this is such an lonely, new older sister move.)

Rhaena is not at fault for displaying such care towards her siblings. This moment of Targ history just goes to also show that dragons, eggs or already hatched, are directly linked to female power, autonomy, etc. Other examples of femininity linked to magic and magical connections, supplying and advancing them even include:

Dany "Stormborn” (obvious, her hatching stone-cold eggs)

Rhaena (Laena’s daughter) -- she was the last dragonrider before Dany and she manged to hatch Morning (interesting name for the “birth” of a dragon...)

Laena Velaryon (she loved flying more than most things)

Alysanne (loved flying, cried when she couldn’t anymore)

Rhaenys the Conqueror (like Laena, also loved flying more than anything)

Alyssa (the only one of Jaehaerys’ daughter successfully claim a dragon; as soon as she could, strapped her two sons on top of Meleys for a ride with her)

Saera, who would have claimed a dragon to escape the unfair and Amisogynist imprisonment her father enforced on her

Aerea, Rhaena’s daughter, who claimed Balerion to escape her mother and upset in her loss of title/heir position 

Nettles (who though not seemingly Valyrian in face, managed to get a dragon to trust her enough to bond with her)

This are the most emotionally-packed stories of the Valyrian human-dragon bond that, again, are also connected to the life cycles and regeneration of Targ dragons and Valyrian power. So it’s ironic for Alicent and the court to perceive and anticipate Rhaenyra’s kids not being able to bond with dragons at the cradle on account that their bio dad is not a dragonrider.

But I also think it’s funny how the that idea turned into a justification to see if a Targ royal child was a “true” Targaryen, trueborn or not (as some people think) by the time of Viserys I. "True" as in they have the makings of a Targ, or truly, truly their legitimacy.

If people hadn’t read Fire and Blood, they wouldn’t know that it’s actually very strange and new in the entire timeline of the Targaryen dynasty that children born from Targaryen men--trueborn or illegitimate--were expected to have a dragon egg beside them and have it hatch so the child can bond with the hatchling.

It was only a mere 3 generations after Aegon I conquered Westeros that this practice came to be, but the Targaryens have had many more generations of people mainly claiming their dragons way after they’re able to walk on their own. Until Rhaena did what she did. 

Including Aegon the Conqueror himself, who had to claim Balerion. Balerion, who was one of the dragons that was brought to Dragonstone many generations before Aegon the Conqueror was even born. 

And Viserys, her own husband, claimed/first rode Balerion in his 20s. Her own daughter, Helaena, claimed Dreamfyre, who once obeyed Rhaena (mentioned above), which means that she also did not cradle-bond with her and lived some time without being bonded to a dragon. So these people are also illegitimate, or should have their parentage questioned?

What does that mean for Alicent saying how she couldn’t understand how Rhaenyra’s first children could have had their eggs hatched in episode 6 of House of the Dragon and in Fire and Blood, when both her own husband and brother-in-law both claimed, rather than cradle-bonded with their dragons? What does it say about the entire court who doubted Jace, Luke, and Joff in Fire and Blood?

Cradle-bonding is a sign of a "blessing”. Yeah, sure. 

And I said children of Targaryen "men" earlier because the Westerosi has had a bad habit of assuming that the father is the more likely subject to pass on his physical or nonphysical traits to his children. Why wouldn't Rhaenyra be capable of passing on her dragonriding to her sons on her own merit? Why is it when Cersei had her children, the maesters automatically assumed that the Baratheon blood would give the kids darker features when the Lannisters also have repeatedly sired blondes in its own lineage? (No one truly knew that Cersei's kids weren't Roberts.)

Finally, with the cradle-bonding vs the longer Targ history of claiming, I find even more reason to call “inconsistency” at HotD: Daemon ignoring Rhaena & favoring Baela in episode 6. 

Why would he do that when he would intimately know the practices and habits about his own house, including the fact that Targaryens mainly claim their dragons? When he himself, his own brother and niece all claimed their dragons way after their time in the cradle? As I mentioned above, Rhaena Targayren bonded with Dreamfyre when she was 9. She also started riding her when she was 12. 

Daemon, a Targaryen, would have known all of this. 

We see him reading about Old Valyrian dragonriders in episode 6.

We hear him talk about brining the Targs to their “glory”, which tells us he has a certain knowledge concerning the progression of the dynasty--meaning he had to have looked back for comparison.

Nah, I call bullshit. The writers of this show are doing too much without ever actually reading the source material carefully, or caring to.

[catofoldstones]

The fact that the episode where Arya assists Tywin and famously says “most girls are stupid” corresponds directly with the chapter in the books where she overhears Chiswyck laughing about how the mountain and his lackeys (him included) gang-raped a 13 year old child, and this harrows and angers Arya so much that she adds all of these people to her prayer kill list and uses her one of her three precious death-wishes with Jaqen H’ghar is the reason I will be personally beating the bloody shit out of d&d.

[knightsickness]

the team green ‘criston isnt actually a misogynist because he said all women are an image of the mother to be revered’ brigade are so funny girl that was also misogynistic. ‘you shouldnt say crude things about women because theyre Mothers. the virgin mary was a woman’ is NOT a laudably women-respecting stance come on now

[fromtheseventhhell]

"I've never seen such anger in a girl" and it's literally just a nine-year-old being quiet after an upsetting event, Arya really experiencing the universal girlhood experience of having your emotions policed for not responding in the "right" way

[visenyaism]

What do you think of Mysaria from the book?

so imagine if there was a book with varys in it. but it was written exclusively from the perspective of his most racist opps who depict him as a scheming evil foreigner evil advisor and he never got to speak for himself like he does in the main series where he’s clearly aware of that narrative and working it to his advantage. but this time instead of being a eunuch and facing misogyny and discrimination for that the varys of this book is a sex worker and faces extreme misogyny both within the narrative and by the narrators themselves. and then dies in a hypersexualized humiliation ritual and that’s that. if you’re thinking wow that sounds like it would not be enjoyable to read you would be correct

[pessimisticpigeonsworld]

Mad Queen Misogyny

All the mad queen Dany takes, from both D&D and the audience, are just plain misogyny. They are literally just repeats of common misogynistic ideas. D&D have given a few reasons for why they wrote the mad queen ending for Dany, and all of them are the same old misogynistic tropes of fantasy and mythology.

The Mad Queen:

I'm going to start this off by going into how the mad queen trope itself is rooted in misogyny. This is one of the oldest tropes in fantasy/fairytales. Whether it's Snow White's evil step mother or the Queen of Hearts, literature is riddled with mad queens.

The idea of the mad queen is informed by the desires of men to keep women out of power. Yes there are historical women who were horrible people and unstable when in power. However, those examples are not enough to justify the amount of times the trope occurs, especially since some of the examples occur after many stories have already been written (ie, Mary I and medieval fairytales). These fictional women were written as cautionary tales of what happens when a woman is placed in power.

By writing the mad queen Dany arc in GOT, D&D are perpetuating an old trope rather than "subverting" anything as they claim. The most powerful woman in the world turning out to be a war mongering and mass murdering tyrant isn't subversive in any way. The only reason it was surprising was because it came out of nowhere narratively.

ASOIAF fans who constantly try to justify this turn for Dany's book character are attempting to do the same thing D&D did. They want to employ an ancient trope to justify their dislike for her in name of being "subversive".

The Violent Woman:

A trope that stretches back all the way to the Ancient Greeks is that of the angry, homicidal woman in power. From Hera to Medea, the myths are full of women who commit atrocities simply because of anger. This trope isn't just about avenging a slight or retribution on the guilty; it's about a woman taking out her anger on innocent parties.

Daenerys has fallen into the role of the avenger many times throughout both the show and and book. She killed Mirri Maz Duur for the murder of her son and husband. She killed the Undying for attempting to trap/kill her. She kills Kraznys mo Nakloz and many other slavers for the atrocities they commit constantly on the people they enslaved.

In the show, she imprisoned Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Doreah in a vault for killing Irri and helping the warlocks steal her children. She killed the Khals who threatened to rape her. She kills the Tarleys for rebelling against the Tyrells, thus getting them killed, and refusing to bend the knee.

Every time Dany killed up until season eight, it was purely because those she killed harmed her or her allies/children. That is why none of her past kills justify her burning KL. The people of KL did nothing to her; it's not an established part of her character to harm innocents out of anger. She even outright condemns the killing of innocents in earlier seasons.

The inconsistencies show how D&D chose to blatantly ignore the complexities of Dany's character in favor of a sexist trope. They perpetuated the idea that a woman in power who is angered will ultimately commit injustice and atrocities.

Dany antis in the ASOIAF fandom are no different from D&D. A common argument used by Dany and Targaryen antis is that they are bound to be corrupt and tyrannical because they have dragons. Essentially saying that Dany was doomed to be the villain the moment she hatched her children.

They point to her dragons' existence and her conquest in Essos as reasons for her "villain arc", despite the fact that none of her actions reflect the things they claim. Dany is simply being condemned for being a woman with power; it's expected of her to be a tyrant for those reasons alone.

The Woman Scorned:

This reasoning given by D&D in a behind the episode interview is probably the excuse that I hate the most. They said that one of the reasons for Dany's descent into madness was because Jon Snow refused to kiss her back once he found out they were aunt and nephew. This is an insanely misogynistic trope.

Used time and again by writers (mostly male), this trope is about a woman who becomes an antagonist due to rejection, unrequited love, or betrayal from a lover. In the case of Dany and GOT, it's Jon refusing to continue their romantic relationship.

For some reason, this is seen as a breaking point for Dany. A woman who has endured poverty, homelessness, sexual slavery, a traumatic miscarriage and death of a spouse/protector, and the stresses of war was broken by a man refusing to kiss her. Doesn't that sound fucking stupid? Well that's because it is.

Dany has never felt entitled to people's love (with the exception of shitty writing from D&D) let alone someone's sexual/romantic reciprocation. It's out of character and flat out insulting to women to believe that is enough to make Dany into a mass murdering tyrant.

Once again, there are members of the fandom who espouse this reasoning into their own theories and metas. Jonsas especially are guilty of this; some claiming that Jon's rejection of Dany in favor of Sansa will be a catalyst for the "mad queen".

An offshoot of this thinking, is the idea that Dany went/will go mad because she was rejected by the realm.

In the show, the Northmen are dismissive or outright hostile to Dany when she arrives (even after she saves them). Due to this rejection by the Westerosi people, Dany decides "let it be fear" and chooses to burn KL to the ground.

Once again, this idea isn't grounded in her past actions at all. Dany has always known she needs to earn people's love and respect as a ruler, why should she change her mind the moment she steps onto Westerosi soil? The answer is simple: she's a woman, so she can't possibly be able to deal with rejection.

Fans theorize constantly that Dany is going to go mad and destroy KL and Westeros because the people will definitely reject her in favor of Young Griff/Jon Snow/any other king they can think of. This theory is simply clinging to misogynistic ideas about women and it's disgusting in every iteration (it also dismisses the fact that there are people in Westeros excited about the idea of Dany and her dragons in the books but that's a different post).

The Woman Bereft:

This argument is probably the least outright in its misogyny. The idea that a woman who has lost everything will lose her mind isn't a new one and it can be played in a non-sexist way. However, GOT played it completely in the sexist roots of the trope.

Throughout seasons seven and eight, Dany loses basically everything. All but one of her children, her closest advisor and best friend Missandei, Ser Jorah, a massive chunk of her army, her other advisors, most of her allies, and is rejected by Westeros and Jon. That's a lot of loss to endure.

However, Dany has endured severe loss before and never reacted by murdering a city full of innocents. Again, this decision and descent isn't backed up by anything else in her storyline.

The sexism of this idea, that loss produces mad women, is that it's rarely applied to men in the same situations. For example: Tyrion lost everything he cared about, yet he's never written by D&D to be in danger of becoming a mass murderer. He even outright says he wishes he'd poisoned the whole court, but is never portrayed as a mad man by D&D or fans.

Dany is expected to go insane after enduring loss because she's a woman. She's perceived as being fundamentally weaker, mentally as well as physically, so she must be more vulnerable to madness than the male characters.

The Foreign Seductress:

The idea of the foreign seductress is a xenophobic and racist stereotype. For Dany, her antis use the instances of her exercising sexual autonomy and her life in Essos as fodder for this disparaging trope.

In the books and the show, Dany pursues sexual and romantic relationships outside of marriage. This is something that doesn't fall in line with the medieval setting of the world. In Westeros and Essos, it's common for men to do that, but not women, due to systematic misogyny. Because of this, Dany's antis often feel free to argue that because she doesn't act "pure", she is wrong and evil. Dany's bound to become a villain because she isn't a chaste and "good" woman.

In the same way, Dany is painted as wrong for wanting to take her family's throne purely because she wasn't raised in Westeros. She's perceived as a foreign invader by both her antis and D&D.

D&D wrote many scenes of outright xenophobia from the Northmen, Sansa, and Arya towards Dany and her forces without ever condemning those ideas. In fact, they justify them by writing the mad queen ending. The fact that Dany isn't "one of them" is used as an excuse for her descent.

Dany antis also employ this rhetoric, especially when people compare Dany's conquest for the IT to the Starks' desire to retake Winterfell. It's good for the Starks to want to retake their throne because they were raised in Winterfell, but Dany has no right to her ancestral home because she wasn't raised in Westeros.

However, this idea is never applied to Young Griff, who was also not raised in Westeros. Despite this, people will talk about how excited they are for his story and how sad it is that he's totally going to be murdered by his evil aunt. Once again a double standard is applied to Dany.

All this is because Dany is a woman who refuses to conform to patriarchal standards and was raised in a foreign country.

Never Good Enough:

Dany antis and D&D thrive on applying a different set of standards to Dany than other characters. They do this an a way that's reminiscent of the double standards set for women even today.

No matter what Dany does, it's never good enough for them. She dealt with Viserys and his death in the wrong way. She didn't protect her people in the right way. She tried to abolish slavery in the wrong way. She saved the goddamn world wrong. Like nothing Dany does is right in their eyes.

In their minds, Dany should've died in AGOT being a perfectly passive woman. She refused to submit to those (men) around her, and for that they punish her.

She's wrong for fighting the slavers, she's wrong for trying to avenge murdered children, she's evil for killing to protect herself. D&D used each of her actions throughout the show that they seemed too aggressive as justification for what they wrote. Dany's antis do the exact same thing in their theories.

The mad queen Dany theory is rooted completely in misogyny. It has no true justification in the narrative and every argument conjured up is just as sexist as the trope they want to perpetuate.

[lizzie-queenofmeigas]

There is something very wrong with this fandom. In the asoiaf fandom the women with character, ambitious of willful are deemed as "not worthy" of love in comparison to the passive ones. Sadly, I have seen that people who share this opinion are mostly women.

They always want the male characters who love them to not love them.

They do this with Rhaenyra, Arya, Daenerys, Lyanna and Cersei.

In exchange we have show! Alicent, Elia and Sansa and their rabid fans who write 30k words about them being the best and the most loved.

The hate of active female characters is mostly rooted in misogyny and is sad that most female fans hate them.

[franzkafkagf]

i honestly think helaena will have to choose between jaehaera and jaehaerys in the show instead of maelor and jaehaerys. and i'd love it. why do i think so?

maelor seems to not (yet) exist in the show

the writers want to highlight the role of women and girls within feudal society, they're really adamant about that; this is the perfect opportunity to do that

b&c will make her choose between her twins. between her daughter and her son. helaena will choose her daughter. she'll agonize over it, of course. offering herself to be killed instead.

but she will choose her daughter, eventually.

she will choose her daughter to die because she isn't a son. only a son can take the throne, right? this is what is expected of her as queen, right? a daughter is worth less, right?

"a son for a son"

the boy was dead from the very beginning. b&c knew, they went there with a clear task. rob aegon of his heir. who cares about a daughter?

but they still made her choose. they still made helaena play that sick charade. they still made her look at her daughter and choose her to die.

"did you hear that, girl? your mother wants you dead."

helaena will go sick with grief. how can she ever look at her daughter again, knowing she chose her to die? she's just another cog in the machine.

alicent was there. she was there. she saw it happen. maybe, secretly, she hoped they'd take jaehaera too.

aegon's only son is dead. his heir. his heir is dead. he is a king without a son. like his father. he is left with a daughter. worth less than a son. less less less.

he cannot name her heir, can he? no. never.

and what of the girl? what of jaehaera? how will she grieve (her twin, her innocence, her family)? she knows her life is lesser than her brother's. was lesser.

jaehaera never cried when she fell, nor did she giggle when happy.

[mummer]

i see the term gender horror used alot in certain parts of asoiaf fandom and i dont think i fully get it like sure theres def a rigid and violently enforced structure to gender and sexual violence is both ubiquitous and a currency but is it just those things or is there something beyond i feel like its not clicking for me

honestly im p sure it is just those things lol you got it. i think asoiaf does take the violent structure of gender and commits to exploring it to its most remote extremes, so you get stuff like sam being chained up and bathed in blood or gilly being forced into marriage with her father or however many other examples of gendering as an abusive practice (as requiring you to either do violence (masculinity) or bear violence (femininity) to participate in society). which i think is where the horror part comes from, the extremity of it? the no-holds-barred dont-look-away blood-under-everything structural inescapability of it. idk that’s how i view it at least

[lagosbratzdoll]

This is a very very unfinished thought but I've been thinking a lot as I reread the books about how the women of House of the Dragon don't really get catharsis and how that'll likely be worse in S2. Say what you want about asoiaf but a number of named women there experience catharsis.

They kill their abusers (Lysa, Cersei, Dany). They regain some agency after a violation (Lysa, Cersei, Lady Stoneheart, Dany), and they refuse to forgive the people complicit in their subjugation (Lysa, Cersei, Dany, Lady Stoneheart, Jeyne Westerling).

Obviously, three or four isn't enough in such an expansive cast of characters but the point remains that they claw back their autonomy however they have to. They're allowed to be angry, bitter, unforgiving and cruel to their abusers in a way women in House of the Dragon just aren't allowed. They're allowed grief, grief that is violent and destructive.

The women of House of the Dragon don't get angry. They stand around and stare plaintively at the camera, they cry prettily, and they plead for peace and non-violence. They suffer and suffer and suffer and there's no relief.

[horizon-verizon]

It’s crazy how most Green stans like Otto who literally pimped Alicent out but try to make a villain out of Rhaenyra because “she lied to Alicent and made her feel isolated.”

Not to elevate this show past what I think it deserves, Show!Rhaenyra happens to be in a position that looks better than Alicent's because some people think that Viserys has never actively tried to suppress Rhaenyra's actions into models of female aristocratic "respectability" before he named her heir. Thus they often conflate Rhaenyra's princess title and status as her having a better deal than dragonless, nonTarg Alicent.

The problem with this assessment is even the Targ women are victims of patriarchy, even if we argued with what they argue what makes Alicent a victim:

being a child bride (Rhaenyra, Rhaenys, both Daeneryses,

being forced to marry against will (Rhaenyra, Rhaena [Maegor], Naerys, Daenerys Stormborn, etc.)

losing family members to greed or ambition of men/other family members (Rhaena --Aenys's daughter)

birthing very, very young

marital rape (Rhaelle [Aerys II] and Naerys, esp)

disenfranchisement or removal from power/position (Rhaenys, Rhaenyra, Rhaena -- Aenys's daughter).

Book!Rhaenyra is forced into child marriage. Canonically, she was 17. In the show, she marries Laenor at 18 and when he's presumably 20.

Book!Rhaenys was 16 when she married 37-year-old Corlys canonically (and of her own will). There is no indication or announcement that the show changed this. She also wasn't allowed to become Queen Regnant due to her gender and could be casually mocked as the "Queen Who Never Was" as if she were some of an upstart who got taught a lesson--witnessing how no one wanted her to rule for herself. She herself says as much to Rhaenyra is episode 2.

And the show made an emphasis Rhaenyra's fear of motherhood because Rhaenyra lost a mother to this compulsion to produce a male heir for the sake of her husband's house. Childbirth endangers the woman and it is considered her duty, but she has little real compensation or praise for it other because it is considered her natural role to produce heirs for the sake of her husband.

Show!Rhaenyra is afraid of being relegated to the side when she is pregnant or in labor and having interloping, doubting men encroach her already-doubted authority--the little political participation and authority that she never asked for but is compelled to perform for the sake of her father's contentment (episode 10).

Basically, Older Rhaenyra is doing everything for her father as well, and little for herself. Just like Aemma. And it really kicks in when Laenor's lover dies.

[spacerockfloater]

The “the whole theme of Fire and Blood is about how bad misogyny is!” rhetoric actually makes me laugh, because not only is GRRM himself one of the most misogynistic fantasy writers out there, but his lack of understanding when it comes to one of the fundamental ideas of feminism, which is that all women deserve respect, is evident when you look at the type of women who are uplifted in his work:

1. Beautiful preteen girls who get sexually/ physically abused (Sansa, Daenerys, Shireen)

2. Virginal girls who swear off men and their traditional roles (Arya, Brienne)

3. Mothers (Catelyn)

And that’s it. A woman is valued in his story only when she is either pretty and young and pure but suffers for it, a virgin that renounces sex completely or has children. Every other single female character is treated like absolute garbage and ridiculed for her weight, age, sex drive, ambition, beliefs etc.

This man is a textbook misogynist. And you know that because his favourite characters are Jon Snow, a byronic hero, and Daemon Targaryen, a controversial deuteragonist. His male characters are part of a spectrum and he adds nuance to all of them by making them complicated, morally challenged yet still somehow superior, macho men with hard abs. They all make difficult decisions that are based on their trauma/ experiences and personal values/ ambitions, they’re all multidimensional beings that can’t be described as purely good or evil, but! The women in his works are helpless little creatures that stuff just keeps happening to them and he praises them depending on if their reactions to these situations appeal to the male fantasy and ideal of what a good woman should be, but punishes them when they make decisions for themselves. In his work, men are proactive, but women are just survivors.

Both Rhaenyra and Alicent are evil caricatures. An evil stepmom, a spoiled bratty daughter. He never meant for his story to make us think “wow! patriarchy is bad!”, even if we obviously thought it anyway and it’s true. All he wanted was to tell a shocking story full of badass men doing badass things.

[sare11aa11eras]

I think it’s crucial to note that while I am DEEPLY fond of nedsei, ppl seem to think that this is one of those I Can Fix Him situations, that Ned could fix Cers. No. False. Incorrect. Cersei is (probably) capable of growth and change given the right conditions, but Neddy Stark is NOT gonna be the one to provide it. She could absolutely make him worse tho.

[fromtheseventhhell]

One major factor missing from most debates on Arya and Lyanna's beauty is that they're being judged by their society's extremely patriarchal values. In both looks and personality, that context is essential to understanding how others perceive them. George explores the misogyny experienced by non-conforming women, especially with Arya, and it's interesting how he plays with that regarding their physical beauty.

Her mother used to say she could be pretty if she would just wash and brush her hair and take more care with her dress, the way her sister did. (The Blind Girl, ADWD) "You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert," Ned told him. "You saw her beauty, but not the iron underneath. She would have told you that you have no business in the melee." (Eddard VII, AGOT)

These two quotes offer a nice summation of this idea. With Arya, her supposed lack of beauty is defined by her being a non-conforming wild child. Her hair is messy, her face is dirty, and she's often in "lower class" clothing while engaging in unladylike activities. None of this says anything about her physical beauty but it tells us everything about how she's perceived. Arya could be pretty...If she conforms to society's standards for a highborn Lady. With Lyanna, however, we get the opposite. Where Arya is judged based on her personality, Robert's romanticization of Lyanna is rooted solely in her looks. He doesn't know anything about the person she really was. There is an assumption that, because she looked a certain way, her personality must fit and Robert imagines her much softer and more passive than she actually was.

That Arya isn't pretty or Lyanna wasn't wild are two perceptions that George specifically pushes back against. This is where people miss the brilliance of them being linked as literary mirrors; it is largely about us learning more about Lyanna, but it touches on more than that. The significance of them being written as wild, willful, and with their own beauty is that George isn't writing his female characters around patriarchal expectations. When people debate their beauty, that's often the trapping they fall into. Beauty and non-conformity are treated as mutually exclusive factors when the story itself never makes that point; this is also the logic that leads people to the (incorrect) conclusion that Lyanna and Arya aren't meant to be similar. Arya's self-esteem issues around her looks and being a Lady make this a topic certain to be addressed in the future; George has made it a part of the story. The conclusion shouldn't be that "looks don't matter", but that looks aren't indicative of a character's value, personality, or morality.

[visenyaism]

But do u have any thoughts on the dragons themselves. I think they’re neat. Would be fun if they were personally involved in the drama somehow

i mean i love the idea that in bonding with the dragons just as they have this close bond with the rider’s soul the riders get a little bit of that dragon’s personality in return. like viserys losing balerion but carrying their lifelong homesickness for valyria with him. daemon’s inability to stay in the same place for long and feeling of being a perpetual outcast from caraxes. rhaenyra’s tendency to feel backed into corners and lash out coming from syrax being raised entirely in a cage and knowing nothing else. aemond getting a lot more arrogant and aggressive the SECOND he claimed vhagar. aegon’s refusal to die coming out of sunfyre’s pride and devotion. it’s sooooo fun to me

[la-pheacienne]

Okay nobody asked for this but I have some thoughts about Anna Karenina. I read that book in highschool and it was a pain in the ass but still a rewarding experience. I remember liking it, but at the end feeling like "okay, an adulterous unstable woman, at the time when it was written I suppose it was really ground-breaking, it doesn't seem that relevant anymore, who would condemn Anna today for wanting to leave her miserable cucumber of a husband for a hot blond horse rider with BDE, relatable, no one would stone her alive for that today, that was then".

Wrong. So Wrong.

It was obvious to me that Anna was unfairly punished by society for being human and the author intended to present it that way. Apparently, it is not so obvious to a big part of the readers. The discourse I saw online is extremely disturbing:

"I felt like she chose her lover over her son? To me she just seemed extremely selfish. She has a loving and rich husband".

"yes, she did ultimately choose her lover over her son. It's terrible that she lived in a culture that forced her to make that choice, but that's the choice she made. Her own happiness was more important to her than her child's. That's not a choice most parents would make".

"She is not even a good mother she hated her daughter when her daughter Anya was sick only thing that was important to her was that Vronsky didn't came home at the time so she started using opium".

"I don’t like her. She made a poor decision that left a child without a mother and a husband without a wife. Any woman who puts their own selfish desires over their family is not to be liked".

"I can not abide women who let themselves be pushed around so much by society and the moralists of the day; I keep wanting to give them a good shaking and say "Stand up for yourself, girl!"

"One of the reason that Anna is so hard to like is that she only defines herself in relation to other people. Wife to a husband. Mother to a son. Lover to Vronsky. Who was Anna? What did she like? What were her passions (besides men)"?

"Vronsky said that while Anna seemed only to have him to care for, he had many friends and many interests and responsibilities. Adults usually do. Anna was an eternal child, wanting gratification, indulgence, entertainment". 

The first observation is of course, how completely off the mark these takes are considering the particular female experience in 19th century Russia. Especially the comments about her not acting like an adult or her being boy-crazy are laughable, as if a woman in that time period could just "stand up for herself" or even define her life and choose her course of action indepentently of men in any fundamental way. As if she would have ever comitted suicide if she could do any of those things. If she could still keep the boyfriend and her son, if she could decide to have a divorce whenever she wanted to, if she could be allowed to simply exist on her own, she wouldn't have committed suicide. A person who commits suicide is a person who doesn't have a way out. She didn't. And it is pretty obviously stated in the text.

The second remark is that in this story we have a (female) character that is so appallingly victimized and crushed, entirely at the mercy of other men, circumstances or even pure chance, while at the same time keeping her personality, desires, and agency intact. This is why this story is so great and this is why these people do not get it. Tolstoy, consciously or not (probably consciously) really outdid himself precisely because he told the story of a victimized woman who was also kind of a bitch, to put it bluntly. She was both. You can't talk about Anna just by focusing on gender inequality. Being a victim of patriarchy is not all Anna was. Anna was selfish yes, she was irrational and obsessive and ruthless and she wanted it all and she wanted it now. It wasn't enough for her just to have an extramarital relationship, tolerated by social norms, allowing her to keep her son and her lover. No, that was not enough, she wanted to live with her lover freely, she wanted to make the rules and she didn't understand why she just couldn't. She felt terribly guilty for abandoning her son, yet she didn't give a single fuck about the kid she had after, the one kid she could actually take care of. Horrendous. Her husband offers divorce, she doesn't want it. He later refuses the divorce, now she wants it. She is not ready to travel and wants to wait, and when her lover tells her they have to wait one day because he wants to see his mother, she suddently wants to leave now. She is strongly advised not to go to the opera because that would bring herself and everyone around her misery, she goes to the opera. She does exactly the opposite of what she was supposed to do at any given circumstance. What she wanted was bigger than what life could give her, and she killed herself.

Now that may be Tolstoy just showcasing what happens to lusty restless adulterous women. Tolstoy, after all, had the misogynistic factory settings of his time. He was also a genius. I don't believe there is anything about this thrilling, vibrant, catastrophic portrait of a woman that came by chance. The inequality, the unfairness of it all is so palpable everywhere in the book, her absolute lack of freedom constrasting with the freedom of her husband lover and brother. All of these men can do whatever they want, they can fuck, cheat, dominate, determine their life and other's without any criticism or consequences whatsoever, and she can't even leave the house without it being a major scandal. She doesn't control anything in her life, she is completely ostracized. She is considered an actual criminal, a pariah, for having human desires.

And yet, despite all that, she has the audacity to want for herself. In her ultimate victimhood, seemingly at the loss of all agency she still does not let others define her inner world one bit. She absolutely defines her life, she makes autonomous decisions, she even defines her own demise by suicide. She chose this, she could have chosen differently, but she didn't want to. The social setting was horrible for women, but if she was slightly more reasonable she could have had a better outcome. She didn't want that. Crazy right?

And that's why modern readers cannot get this book. We are used to media that convey a "message", ready to consume on a plate with a pink ribbon. We are used to passively watching women reacting to horrors imposed on them, and feeling sorry for them. We are used to a Handmaid's tale type of social discourse. We are used to dystopias. We are used to good guy - bad guy dichotomies. We empathize with female characters getting killed, tortured, physically and sexually abused, because they are the victims. But a woman who dares to leave her kid and go away with her lover? Abhorrent. Inconceivable. It is so extremely difficult to empathize with a female character that is just palpably human, it is confusing, she is not victimized enough to deserve empathy from the modern audience. A victim is a symbol, it is an abstraction. Give a victim a mind of her own and human desires, and she is suddenly a whore.

Tolstoy in all his moralizing puritanical 19th century glory, gave us an actually "complex" (as much as I have come to hate the word) female character, and by "complex female character" I mean a fictional woman that maintains her spiritual autonomy while seemingly being entirely determined by other people or circumstances. I cannot say the same for the vast majority of "strong female character" models of contemporary media.