My Dear Lady Disdain: fauxkaren replied to your post: ivanolix replied to your post: Why do...
fauxkaren replied to your post: ivanolix replied to your post: Why do people…
I think that because Ned is a Hero, it’s tempting to give him this tragic love story background, and that’s why people look to Ned/Ashara.I mean the hero of the story has got to have a romance,…Well, I read a lot of novels in many different genres, and although I don’t NEED a tragic romance, I must admit that many of the things I read that are the most memorable to me involve tragic romances and I will further admit that I LOVE the doomed romances of ASOIAF (well, some of them, when they don’t involve 13-year-old Sansa, because I’m not into those at all, nor do I like anything involving Littlefinger but be that as it may …) And I really don’t think that makes me somehow a less discerning reader of fiction or intellectually inferior or even contradictory in the way that I both enjoy how ASOIAF deconstructs the tropes of chivalry while liking that they’re there in the first place. I’m really uncomfortable with the idea that there’s some “right” way to read and enjoy these novels or the characters in them (assuming that you don’t miss important ‘facts’ in your reading, so yes, obviously, if you assert that Robert Baratheon never hit a woman or something, then you’d be wrong). Personally, I loathe Stannis and Melisandre but I don’t feel qualified to make generalizations about people who love them.
Uhm … I don’t think I made a generalization about people who love them?
I questioned why there was a need to see one specific case as a tragic romance in a series that is very subversive about romantic tropes as one.
I don’t see how those are the same things? Am I misconstruing your intention?
I said a few times that people are welcome to their own tastes. But I’m looking at a larger pattern.
… ? What did I say that even approaches a generalization about people who like them?
I’m thinking about your earlier point about dudebros hating Sansa and yet still trying to make ASOIAF fit into a the traditional fantasy story/medieval romance mold (not only with the Ned/Ashara, but also thinking about how Arthur Dayne and oftentimes Rhaegar are idealized). I think a lot of it is because what I see GRRM doing in the series is not what THEY see GRRM doing in the series.
I think other people see ASOIAF as a gritty fantasy/political series. I tend to look for the ways in which it deconstructs and subverts typical fantasy and medieval tropes. So anyway, this made me think about Connor’s Sansa tag which is something to the effect of “sansa is the meta theatrical center of the series” because she’s the character who comes into it very naive and believing that things will play out like her songs, but she (and the audience) quickly discover that her stories are not like real life in Westeros. SO, I think that those of us who understands Sansa’s function in the series through that lens are more likely to enjoy her as a character AND to see how the series is challenging typical fantasy writing.
Hm. Not sure how much sense that ended up making. But I’ve had these thoughts in my head and wanted to get them out.
