˜ Thespian Lion & Loving Wolf ˜

Warning

Prepare yourself for a Game of Thrones rant. It’s short, but it’s potent. It also contains spoilers from the TV series (epi. 3.4), so you should scroll down if you don’t wish to be spoiled.

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Brienne had this little, wonderful chat with a broken-down Jaime on last Sunday’s episode. There, she told him that he needed to outlive his personal crisis… That his “taste” of the real world was just that, a taste. And that he sounded like a bloody woman.Yes, Brienne of Tarth, women’s paladin for a lost cause in Westeros’ male dominant world, verbalized that with her own mind and mouth. As a result, every book reader has seemingly come out from their cave and attacked the writers for writing such “out-of-character”, sexist non-sense. Blergh.

First of all, in the name of nuance, fuck nuance. In the tragic, unforgiving continents of Westeros and Essos, nuance of any type should be a commodity, not a rule. So, whenever a character displays some by smacking it against a wall, we should stop and listen. Here goes:

Brienne stands equal to everyone on the traditional, Westerosian perspective of women as being frail, and “not enough” to share ground beside men on a battlefield. Why does she think that? Well, because she’s that fucking woman that gets constantly mocked at and marginalized due to that very same perspective. She might think it wrong because she embodies something different, but her mind cannot deny that the world view is that… In fact, in Gwendoline Christie’s performance, we get to be witness of the after taste that brews on her mouth after spouting such filth… Because it IS filth.

But that’s the beauty of Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire and the world in general: beautiful contradictions like that. And I really appreciate the writers’ sensibilities for it. I remember when watching the episode, I turned to one of my best friends watching beside me right after that line came up and said “that’s beautiful, because it’s exactly the thing she wouldn’t say, and she did, and she feels awful and torn about it”. Being a minority, I’ve gone through similar situations, and I’m sure a million others, too.