#samwell tarly's characterization – @horizon-verizon on Tumblr

Anonymous asked:

“Viserys neglected Aegon and Aemond and that’s why they are sad little meow meow serial rapists and mass murderers.”

Samwell Tarly’s father forced him to wear his mother's clothes, bathe in blood, had him chained and manacled to a wall for three days, and threatened to kill him unless he joined the Night’s Watch yet he didn’t become rotten because of it and is one of the kindest men in the entire series. Sam went through HORRIFYING abuse and humiliations at the hands of his incredibly cruel father, infinitely worse than anything suffered by Aegon and Aemond, and he still managed to keep his heart pure, no matter how traumatized he was.

Good example, I'm stealing it. I already mentioned Jon and Dany and others, but this is a really good one.

Some might say we shouldn't compare people and berate them for not measuring up to others, but this is about the idea that the greens' entire personality and justification for being horrible is because their dad wasn't nice to them, when he could have been so much worse. Show!Alicent was the one to neglect/abuse Helaena and Aegon. She and Otto performed direct harm.

Also, the point is to show that it's not impossible to be a better person than your parents and that Alicent and Otto infused a sense of superiority in these boys that they also had the ability to reflect on for all the time they've been alive. You're telling me that Aemond supposedly read "philosophies" to be a consummate ruler or leader...and he couldn't bring forth the calm to not go after Luke and chase him for more than 6 minutes, laughing and terrorizing him?! Please. And if he and Aegon truly were inclined, they could have reached out to Rhaenyra of their own volition as they grew older, but they didn't. Especially, Aegon, who had many more years over Aemond. They chose to keep their distance, while Alicent was the one to enforce that distance and make sure Rhaenyra's kids wouldn't have a relationship of any kind with her own since R's kids were born.

In the book, the same goes about the superiority bit. The green boys genuinely felt that the throne belonged to them because they were male, end of story.

#asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #asoiaf asks to me #the greens #the greens' characterization #viserys i #samwell tarly #samwell tarly's characterization #agot characterization #agot #a game of thrones #alicent's children

horizon-verizon reblogged

jackoshadows

Just to reiterate how Arya and Sam have these parallels of not being able to comfortably fit into Westorosi society’s patriarchal ideals unlike their ‘perfect’ siblings and yet while the theme of toxic masculinity is acknowledged and recognized in Sam’s narrative by fandom, Arya gets hit with nonsense like being ‘male coded’.

In this too we can see the inherent misogyny in this fandom, where Samwell is allowed to be different and like different things and he is appreciated for loving songs and dancing. He gets sympathy for the abuse and toxic masculinity that he faces. His relationship with Gilly is celebrated, he is deserving of love and romance.

And yet Arya gets the hate simply for wanting to learn how to use a sword (And it’s not about using a sword either considering the male characters are badass for using a sword!).

She gets labelled ‘NLOG’, there are popular posts about how her journey is ‘masculine’ or how she is ‘masculine-coded’, posts about how she has ‘internalized misogyny’, where she will never be a Lady because she is not ‘feminine’ enough. How fans only like her because she’s ‘male coded’. How she is not ‘realistic’ or a boring character because she’s ‘male-coded’.

Posts on how Arya will never get love or romance, even when older, because she’s the wrong kind of girl. There are essays about how Arya did not try hard enough to fit in, that she’s equally at fault for the contentious relationship between her and Sansa because she did not spend enough time sewing and doing things that Sansa liked. That Ned not punishing Arya for picking flowers from the marsh or getting her a ‘dancing’ master is him showing ‘favoritism’ implying that Arya should have been punished for stepping outside the bounds of patriarchy dictated femininity.

Arya is treated by fandom like she is flawed for not being the right kind of girl. That she is not important in the narrative because she’s not the right kind of girl. The compassion and kindness so very clearly inherent in the character and embedded in the narrative is ignored in favor of her being a violent killer because she’s not the right kind of girl. Her intelligence, perceptiveness, quick thinking, critical thinking skills ignored because she’s not the right kind of girl. Also ignored widely by fandom that Arya too has taken abuse and kept silent because what good would it do to react and be killed?

These sexist double standards have only widened with the TV show’s horrendous misogyny in the way they wrote and depicted Arya Stark, stripping the character of all the nuance, complexity and everything that makes Arya, Arya in the books. Instead we got an one-dimensional trope in GOT, the complete opposite of book Arya Stark. As GRRM has stressed again and again, the show is not the books and the show characters are not the book characters. Take your ‘Arya has a masculine journey’ posts dripping with misogyny, elsewhere.

[Note:I am not denying the fatphobia with respect to Samwell which is indeed a thing and the reason for why, despite being one of those rare good guys in Westeros, he gets used the least for shipping. Something that GRRM himself bemoaned in one of his blog posts. I am just referring to the difference in how toxic masculinity and femininity are treated by this fandom because while the toxicity of one is recognized, the other is celebrated as a good thing]

#asoiaf fandom #fandom critical #fandom commentary #arya stark #arya stark's characterization #agot #a game of thrones #asoiaf fav posts #samwell tarly #samwell tarly's characterization #character comparison #fandom misogyny