# 1 - Sansa Stark
Sansa is a character that I would have stayed neutral about if it weren't for her legion of self-righteous white knights who get super defensive anytime someone dares to criticize their precious angel.
I've criticized Sansa Stark before so I'll my past words do the talking:
"Something that I find interesting is that many of the arguments used by Sansa Stark apologists are similar to arguments that Screen Prism used to defend Cinderella in their video: “Cinderella Stop Blaming the Victim”.
Why am I bringing this up? Well, on the one hand I agree that characters who act more stereotypically “feminine” shouldn’t be shamed, degraded or hated, but on the other hand there’s a couple of issues that I have with the “feminine strength” crowd.
For starters, “feminine strength” is being unintentionally linked with abuse victims, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to suggest that feminine strength is only useful when you’re in an abusive situation.
I could also see people come to the conclusion that “feminine strength” is only useful in scenarios where “masculine strength” isn’t applicable or even a viable solution. It would be far better if “feminine strength” were shown in a context where the masculine alternative was viable too but the character chooses not to. A better example of a “feminine” female character would be….
One poignant example is when Winry goes face-to-face with Scar, the man who murdered her parents. There’s even a scene where she’s pointing a gun at him and comes super close to pulling the trigger. She doesn’t go through with it and the narrative of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood portrays this as a positive. Here is a clear cut example where Winry had a choice: She could take vengeance on her parent’s murderer, or not. Winry chooses not to and her choice is viewed as a morally strong one. This is a much better way to handle characters like that.
Getting back to Sansa, the fans were completely justified in being annoyed with her behavior in Season 1 / the first book. Sansa came across as bratty, failed to stick up for her family and saw Joffrey through rosy tinted goggles even though it was completely obvious to everyone else that Joffrey was a spoiled psychopath.
Sansa fans will point to her age as a common defense, but Arya is two years younger than her and was instantly able to see Joffrey for who he was so that defense doesn’t hold up. After Season 1 most people felt sorry for Sansa and her popularity has increased since then."
There's a couple of other things I'd like to say: I don't buy her character arc.
The idea behind Sansa is that she starts the series off from being a pawn that people used to being someone become a political mastermind, or a "player" in her own right. The problem is that neither the show nor the books have done a convincing job showing this transition. Both series spend more time on her being abused, and less time on her "learning to play the game."
In order for this arc to be convincing we would have needed more scenes showing her being taught how to play the game. We also would have needed to see a gradual transition where she starts progressively starts making bigger and bigger political moves and power plays. We never got that. As a result, her character development feels hollow and unconvincing and her supposed victories in the show feel unearned. It's a real shame too, because if her arc were written better I could have actually found myself liking her.
# 2 - Jon Snow
Jon Snow is a walking contradiction of everything Game of Thrones claims to stand for.
^ What's worse about that situation is that he had a brilliant strategy in an earlier scene that the show went out of its way to display. But once his little brother gets killed Jon throws his entire battle plan out the window and suddenly he acts like he can face down the entire enemy cavalry by himself.
Just like every male Stark ruler before him, he gets betrayed and killed by his allies. Unlike Ned or Robb though, Jon gets brought back to life. Everybody in the fandom saw his resurrection coming a mile away and in the show his resurrection has zero consequences and no effect on his personality. This is a huge departure from the books as well since George RR Martin strongly believes that resurrection should come with a price.
Game of Thrones is supposed to be a story where nobody is a hero, but in the show (and to a lesser degree in the books) he is that hero. It's also revealed that he's actually the heir to the Iron Throne this entire time. For a fantasy series whose calling card is genre deconstruction that's a pretty big fantasy trope to have. Having well recognized tropes isn't a bad thing, it's just that once again the show and the books defeat their own premise when they do stuff like that.
In the last two seasons of the show he turns into a spineless Daenerys yes man. In the second to last episode Daenerys massacres King's Landing, the place where the Iron Throne is. Jon Snow witnesses the entire thing, but still has the gall to defend her behavior when Tyrion's calling her out. Jon Snow needed to have a pep talk from Tyrion about why his girlfriend was a genocidal tyrant that needed to be put down. It also doesn't help that he's characterized as being emo, brooding and does a lot of sulking.
In the show he has sex with Daenerys...who is his aunt. Ew! The show also tries to portray his relationship with Daenerys as romantic (there's romantic music being played during their sex scene). This is a massive double standard because when Jaime and Cersei committed incest the show portrayed that as a bad thing (which it rightfully should have done). For some reason Jon and Daenerys committing incest is somehow okay and romantic. Double Standards much?
Plus the actors of Jon Snow and Daenerys had zero chemistry whatsoever, which made the whole thing even less believable!
No comments:
Post a Comment