Post by Deleted on Jun 13, 2016 16:53:50 GMT
Well what did you expect?
That is the single question I was asked, weeks ago, that still resonates within me.
I’ve been up most of the night, part of which I spent slowly nursing a soothing tumbler of whiskey, examining a lot of the cold rage that is simmering inside me.
I’ve noticed it there for a while now, just beneath the skin, and it –would– be fair to say that seeing how far off-canon the HBO GoT series has wandered was the initial trigger for it. But caught in my hectic schedule I have not had the luxury to sit and examine what this all is, or what exactly was triggered.
I am making that time, now.
The ASOIAF series, which I first started reading in the early 2000s, captivated me in a way no other fantasy/sci fi series had before due to just how many rules it broke. There was no unquestionably good or evil (aside from the wight walkers, and now we know even didn’t just randomly decide to get up and start mowing down the living on their own). Everyone was a person, with reasons and motivation. You may not have agreed with their perspective, but at least it was there for you to disagree with. Just like real life, people died – even the ‘good guys’.
And also like real life, you had a vast array of different character types and, yes, sexualities.
Daenerys is bisexual. This is –canon-. To those who like to argue that point, I simply say ‘read the books’. HBO has essentially cut this portion of her character and personality, just as they have so many other things. That’s fine. No, she does not just sleep with women/handmaids as ‘experiments’. Dany actually gets frustrated with one of her lady lovers in one instance because she feels she is not reciprocating her passion – and she doesn’t want ‘kisses that taste of duty’. She wants her own ardor matched, and feels disappointed when it is not (this happens with Hizdahr as well, so it is not just a ‘woman thing’).
Arya is still young in novel canon, but even so you can see where her orientation is leaning. At least I hope you can, because it’s pretty obvious. There are now so many categorizations and terms for people I wouldn’t want to dare ‘guess’ and use the wrong terminology to describe her, but I can say this – she doesn’t want to be a woman. She dresses in boy’s clothing. She keeps her hair short even when she has the choice to grow it back out. She does not want to be a lady in any sense of the word – a point she reiterates countless times. She even calls herself a -wolf- in her own internal monologues. Even before life goes to hell, she’s railing and rebelling against all that society ‘expects’ of her, to a point where her own mother calls her ‘a trial, half a boy and half a wolf pup’.
So choose your favorite term for someone like this, but the end result will be the same – and we all know what it is.
In fact, this is what many of us here reading this forum are.
There are also homosexual males, more plentiful examples we all know about that I won’t bother to get into here. There are other sites out there for essays and thoughts dedicated to them.
So now that we’ve set the stage a bit, let me state why I actually became an Arya/Dany shipper, about two years before I finally broke down and wrote Allegiance:
It was due to canon.
No, I’m serious… don’t laugh.
If you have read the books, you know exactly how I came to that conclusion, and why.
Long story very short, in the novels the Faceless Men are entirely independent of Westeros and all of the chaos and upheaval the rest of the main characters are enduring – or so you’d think. What is actually revealed though, in the novels, is that ‘Jaqen’, who has taken on an identity called ‘Pate’, has stolen a key to the Oldtown Citadel vaults, where a particular treasure has been kept secret: a book called ‘Death of Dragons’.
In Arya’s chapters in Braavos, you start learning the history of the Faceless Men, and how they very likely orchestrated the Doom of Valyria to end slavery. Now, in Meereen, a new threat is arising – Daenerys Targaryen, already a proven conqueror of the blood of Old Valyria, and her three dragons.
All of a sudden the Faceless Men are not separate from the rest of the main plot, at all. And they are set to serve as a threat more deadly than any other.
And it just so happens a young, stubborn Stark is with them, apprenticing to become No One with the very man who has taken the key to killing dragons.
So, it wasn’t exactly a huge leap to see where an Arya/Dany connection would come into play. Whether it would turn into something romantic or not remains a mystery (but, considering personality and orientation of both, was absolutely a possibility, and a good one at that).
So when I watch HBO butcher the source material to a point where it’s becoming unrecognizable, I find myself angry. Because even though this fandom is small, it’s actually got a very solid premise- a hell of a lot more solid than most non-traditional pairings. The books are steering course right in this direction – and any reader can plainly see that. It’s not hidden; it’s right there in plain sight.
But it seems more and more likely that GRRM will keel over before he ever writes another book. So, all that’s left to provide any form of finality or closure to the series that some people started reading all the way back in -1995-, is Bloody HBO. And HBO, for better or worse, have the ‘keys to the kingdom’ in terms of GRRMs ‘end game’ plans for the ASOIAF series.
And this is where I get angry.
End of the day, anything unique and/or interesting about this world is being stripped away, and replaced with –ONE- end game play only-
The Farm Boy trope.
Poor Sad Jon Snow – born a bastard, but ends up King of the World.
Fuck all of the other characters and their own personal growth and journeys – everything is now gravitating toward the ‘King Jon’ endgame. Even down to Arya ‘suddenly’ ditching her FM training to rush back home.
The Faceless Men have become a total, unrelated waste of plot to the story in this series.
Just like Dorne.
Just like any growth Sansa may have experienced – all of her trials are now just relegated to ‘giving Jon the North’.
Even Rickon, who you can bet your bottom dollar will be dead next episode, will simply be used as fuel to Make Jon Angry/Sad During Battle.
Well what did you expect?
I expected a continuation of the good story I first started reading 10+ years ago.
I expected something more than the same old story that has been told since the days of King Arthur.
I expected here, now, this day and age in 2016, on a network that –never- shies away from controversy or shock, to –do something more than Walt Disney–.
And maybe that is my own fault. And maybe I am the architect of my own bitter disappointment for ever having even considered that media was at a point where it would change, even a little.
Or maybe the fault lays elsewhere, within the bleak mindset of ‘this is how it’s always been.’
Well what did you expect?
Not much. Just an adhesion to established canon, which does happen to include so much more than just a ‘King Jon’ endgame.
If that was ‘too much’ to ask, then I wonder why that hasn’t pissed off a hell of a lot more people.
That is the single question I was asked, weeks ago, that still resonates within me.
I’ve been up most of the night, part of which I spent slowly nursing a soothing tumbler of whiskey, examining a lot of the cold rage that is simmering inside me.
I’ve noticed it there for a while now, just beneath the skin, and it –would– be fair to say that seeing how far off-canon the HBO GoT series has wandered was the initial trigger for it. But caught in my hectic schedule I have not had the luxury to sit and examine what this all is, or what exactly was triggered.
I am making that time, now.
The ASOIAF series, which I first started reading in the early 2000s, captivated me in a way no other fantasy/sci fi series had before due to just how many rules it broke. There was no unquestionably good or evil (aside from the wight walkers, and now we know even didn’t just randomly decide to get up and start mowing down the living on their own). Everyone was a person, with reasons and motivation. You may not have agreed with their perspective, but at least it was there for you to disagree with. Just like real life, people died – even the ‘good guys’.
And also like real life, you had a vast array of different character types and, yes, sexualities.
Daenerys is bisexual. This is –canon-. To those who like to argue that point, I simply say ‘read the books’. HBO has essentially cut this portion of her character and personality, just as they have so many other things. That’s fine. No, she does not just sleep with women/handmaids as ‘experiments’. Dany actually gets frustrated with one of her lady lovers in one instance because she feels she is not reciprocating her passion – and she doesn’t want ‘kisses that taste of duty’. She wants her own ardor matched, and feels disappointed when it is not (this happens with Hizdahr as well, so it is not just a ‘woman thing’).
Arya is still young in novel canon, but even so you can see where her orientation is leaning. At least I hope you can, because it’s pretty obvious. There are now so many categorizations and terms for people I wouldn’t want to dare ‘guess’ and use the wrong terminology to describe her, but I can say this – she doesn’t want to be a woman. She dresses in boy’s clothing. She keeps her hair short even when she has the choice to grow it back out. She does not want to be a lady in any sense of the word – a point she reiterates countless times. She even calls herself a -wolf- in her own internal monologues. Even before life goes to hell, she’s railing and rebelling against all that society ‘expects’ of her, to a point where her own mother calls her ‘a trial, half a boy and half a wolf pup’.
So choose your favorite term for someone like this, but the end result will be the same – and we all know what it is.
In fact, this is what many of us here reading this forum are.
There are also homosexual males, more plentiful examples we all know about that I won’t bother to get into here. There are other sites out there for essays and thoughts dedicated to them.
So now that we’ve set the stage a bit, let me state why I actually became an Arya/Dany shipper, about two years before I finally broke down and wrote Allegiance:
It was due to canon.
No, I’m serious… don’t laugh.
If you have read the books, you know exactly how I came to that conclusion, and why.
Long story very short, in the novels the Faceless Men are entirely independent of Westeros and all of the chaos and upheaval the rest of the main characters are enduring – or so you’d think. What is actually revealed though, in the novels, is that ‘Jaqen’, who has taken on an identity called ‘Pate’, has stolen a key to the Oldtown Citadel vaults, where a particular treasure has been kept secret: a book called ‘Death of Dragons’.
In Arya’s chapters in Braavos, you start learning the history of the Faceless Men, and how they very likely orchestrated the Doom of Valyria to end slavery. Now, in Meereen, a new threat is arising – Daenerys Targaryen, already a proven conqueror of the blood of Old Valyria, and her three dragons.
All of a sudden the Faceless Men are not separate from the rest of the main plot, at all. And they are set to serve as a threat more deadly than any other.
And it just so happens a young, stubborn Stark is with them, apprenticing to become No One with the very man who has taken the key to killing dragons.
So, it wasn’t exactly a huge leap to see where an Arya/Dany connection would come into play. Whether it would turn into something romantic or not remains a mystery (but, considering personality and orientation of both, was absolutely a possibility, and a good one at that).
So when I watch HBO butcher the source material to a point where it’s becoming unrecognizable, I find myself angry. Because even though this fandom is small, it’s actually got a very solid premise- a hell of a lot more solid than most non-traditional pairings. The books are steering course right in this direction – and any reader can plainly see that. It’s not hidden; it’s right there in plain sight.
But it seems more and more likely that GRRM will keel over before he ever writes another book. So, all that’s left to provide any form of finality or closure to the series that some people started reading all the way back in -1995-, is Bloody HBO. And HBO, for better or worse, have the ‘keys to the kingdom’ in terms of GRRMs ‘end game’ plans for the ASOIAF series.
And this is where I get angry.
End of the day, anything unique and/or interesting about this world is being stripped away, and replaced with –ONE- end game play only-
The Farm Boy trope.
Poor Sad Jon Snow – born a bastard, but ends up King of the World.
Fuck all of the other characters and their own personal growth and journeys – everything is now gravitating toward the ‘King Jon’ endgame. Even down to Arya ‘suddenly’ ditching her FM training to rush back home.
The Faceless Men have become a total, unrelated waste of plot to the story in this series.
Just like Dorne.
Just like any growth Sansa may have experienced – all of her trials are now just relegated to ‘giving Jon the North’.
Even Rickon, who you can bet your bottom dollar will be dead next episode, will simply be used as fuel to Make Jon Angry/Sad During Battle.
Well what did you expect?
I expected a continuation of the good story I first started reading 10+ years ago.
I expected something more than the same old story that has been told since the days of King Arthur.
I expected here, now, this day and age in 2016, on a network that –never- shies away from controversy or shock, to –do something more than Walt Disney–.
And maybe that is my own fault. And maybe I am the architect of my own bitter disappointment for ever having even considered that media was at a point where it would change, even a little.
Or maybe the fault lays elsewhere, within the bleak mindset of ‘this is how it’s always been.’
Well what did you expect?
Not much. Just an adhesion to established canon, which does happen to include so much more than just a ‘King Jon’ endgame.
If that was ‘too much’ to ask, then I wonder why that hasn’t pissed off a hell of a lot more people.
Please do introduce yourself in the 
)
