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razieltwelve · 1 year

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English Class

Every now and then, I'll get an email from someone who wonders if they can be a good writer despite having done horribly in English class. My usual response to that is to tell them not to worry. English, as a subject, is not exactly geared toward producing good writers, especially when it comes to creative writing (i.e., fiction).

To some extent, this makes perfect sense. The majority of people have no great interest in doing creative writing. Instead, their interest is in finding stories they enjoy and reading those. That's fine. Writing is like any other pastime. Not everyone will like doing it, and that's okay. I don't particularly enjoy swimming since the ocean has demonstrated on multiple occasions that it wants to kill me, and I'm not about to give it any extra chances. That said, I've got nothing against people who enjoy swimming, and I understand why some people really like doing it.

The main objective of English class is to develop a basic level of literacy in students and to provide them with a basic grasp of certain forms of writing (e.g., essays, reviews, etc.). For various reasons, these forms of writing are considered important not only in class but also in the wider world. Whether or not that's actually true doesn't matter in the context of the current discussion. What matters is that these are the forms of writing that governments and school administrators consider to be most useful.

English classes do cover fiction, but that coverage usually involves reading a book (usually a classic of some kind), followed by lessons reviewing its themes and the various writing techniques employed. There may also be discussion of the book in a historical context, especially if it proved influential in its particular genre. Students may also do some creative writing themselves, but this is generally quite limited. I remember my high school years. For each book that we covered, we would have done perhaps two thousand words of creative writing total.

As you can imagine, it's going to be basically impossible to improving your creative writing when you get so little practice at it. Moreover, how good a writer (of fiction) you are is not going to be very closely related to your marks in English if almost none of the assessments involve creative writing. It would be like trying to assess how good a driver someone is by asking them to build a car.

There are also a variety of reasons why someone who is good at creative writing might struggle in English class. The one that comes to mind from personal experience is boredom. If you're not particularly interested in writing essays or reports, then you're probably not going to bother study and will thus do fairly poorly.

My marks for seventh grade and eighth grade English led my teachers to remark on my being barely literate. What was actually occurring was that I was bored out of my mind and detested all of the books we were assigned to read. I would read the book the day we got it, never read it again, and then do all the work based on nothing more than my memories of what happened. Forget studying. I was able to pass while doing that bare minimum of effort, which allowed me to spend my time doing others things I enjoyed more. In my case, it was video games and reading. Naturally, my teachers were shocked when I actually started to take English more seriously from tenth grade onward and my marks improved. Subsequent experience has suggested to me that many students would do better if they enjoyed the subject.

However, I did take a course in twelfth grade (the final year over here in Australia) in which the main component of assessment was an 8000 word short story. You would think I would do well in that, right? Oh, sweet summer child, have I got news for you. It turned out that the kinds of stories I wanted to write and the way I wrote them was antithetical to the assessment criteria.

The course demanded a journal of my writing efforts, one that was to cover the course of a year. I beg your pardon. A year? An entire year to write 8000 words. Even then, I found the idea bizarre. Why would I spend a year writing a story when I could write multiple drafts, polish them, and then deliver a final copy in less than a month. Indeed, I wrote the first draft in a weekend. That led to the rather hilarious (for me) situation in which I had to basically lie in the journal about how long it was taking me to write my story and how I spent an entire year agonising over every detail.

I don't mean to be rude, but there is no reason you should take a whole year to write 8000 words.

My second mistake was writing a story in the fantasy genre. A review of the stories that the examiners favoured the most suggested that they were looking for several things in stories:

Existential angst

Engagement with "important" contemporary topics

Avoidance of genre writing unless that genre was teen-angst, existential philosophy, or maudlin reminiscence

I remember very well the remarks my fellow students and my teacher made upon reading my story. They found the characters and plot engaging to the point that they would find themselves thinking about them in their free time. I even went so far as to send the story to several people whose opinions I trusted due to their own writing skill since, back then, I was a member of a number of writing forums. The most common description was 'haunting'.

My mark was, shall we say, not particularly inspiring.

The larger point I'm trying to make here is that English class, as it is currently run in most school across the Western World (I cannot speak to other parts of the world since I do not know them well) has particular expectations. Meeting those expectations will serve you well while straying outside of them will not. It is not a coincidence that various personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness and agreeableness) correlate with academic performance, especially at lower levels of schooling.

Now, don't get me wrong. I do think that the English courses I attended in high school did a decent enough job of fostering basic literacy. I went to a school that excelled academically, and I can tell you with all honesty that some of the most brilliant people I knew would not have known how to write a report or a review without the aid of English class. There was more than one fellow I knew who had no problems with numbers but was clueless when it came to verbal expression. If your goal is to ensure that students can function in broader society, I do think English classes have done all right.

However, if your goal is improve as a writer, particularly of fiction, then English class is not going to help very much. Indeed, it may do the complete opposite. Stories of teenage angst, existential conundrum, and seemingly endless tragedy may score well with examiners, but you are not going to sell very many books writing that way unless you are one of the true masters of the genre. The limited practice you receive in English class is about as useful as learning how to play basketball by dribbling a ball for ten minutes every six months.

So what can you do if you want to become a better creative writer?

Once upon a time, I would have recommended joining a writer's forum. But, good grief, have times changed. I last set serious foot into a writer's forum almost a decade ago after realising that the overwhelming majority of them have become snake pits where the main goal seems to be ensuring that everyone suffers. Ever now and then, I'll peek into various writer's forums, but I've found that little has changed. It's not so much about lifting each other up as it is about grabbing each other's ankles to make sure everybody gets to drown.

I recall once giving a detailed review to someone of their book, complete with pages and pages of notes and examples. I was told to stop being a hater. Keep in mind, I thought the book was all right. I gave it a 7/10. But the hostility I was greeted with for trying to explain why it wasn't perfect was off-putting, to say the least. It was an experience I would repeat several times before swearing off such things entirely. You cannot help someone who does not want to be helped.

There also remains a subtle (or not so subtle) divide between those who are self-published and those who are traditionally published. There are people who will insist that no self-published author is a professional until they have been traditionally published. To which I would reply: not professional? I pay my bills with my writing. I would say that makes me a professional.

Indeed, I have always been of the opinion that anyone who can make a living with their writing deserves to be called a professional. I do not care if you make your living as a self-published author, or if you make it by writing snappy fortunes in fortune cookies. If you write, and your writing pays the bills, you are a professional to me.

What I would suggest is to practice.

There is a theory that says it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert in something. I believe that may even be an underestimation. Overwhelmingly, the common factor you will find in successful writers is that they write. Sure, not all of it gets published, but they write. They look for the flaws in their writing, and they write to fix those flaws. They find the strengths in their writing, and they write until those strengths become unbreakable foundations around which stories can be built.

Before I ever self-published a single story on Amazon, I had already written multiple novel-length stories. I won't lie and say they were all good (I do have a soft spot for them), but they were the price I had to pay. It's like a basketball player practicing. You might see the shot they make to win the game, but you won't see the thousands of hours on the court getting up shots every day until the shot became automatic. Writing is the same way. Don't focus on the end product of an author's hard work. Think about how many years they had to practice before they were good enough to get there.

When you practice, you need to look critically at your writing. What works? What doesn't work? Why? And then you need to address those areas. It sucks to be critical, and it can painful when you ask someone to review your writing and the reviews aren't all positive, but you can't flinch. You can't turn away. You have to meet those challenges head on. It's not about being fearless or about the process being painless. It's about conquering your fear and fighting through the pain because you'll come out better on the other side.

Now, I realise this post has gone somewhat off the rails. That happens when you're basically writing an extended stream-of-consciousness post while trying to will your belated lunch into cooking faster. But don't get discouraged if you do badly in English class. It doesn't really say all that much about you as a writer. In the end, it's hard work and dedication that will get you there.

P. S. My best subject in high school was Physics. I even managed to major in Physics at university before realising I couldn't do that for the rest of my life and shifting gears. How exactly I ended up writing humorous fiction is a story for another time.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here or on Audible here. I’ve also just released a new story, Cosmic Delivery Boy!

Also, Cosmic Delivery Boy is now available on Audible! You can get it here.

#writing #musings #personal #motivation #education

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aboveallarescuer · 4 years

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Daenerys Targaryen in A Storm of Swords vs Game of Thrones - Episode 4.1: Two Swords

In this series of posts, I intend to analyze precisely how the show writers downplayed or erased several key aspects of Daenerys Targaryen’s characterization, even when they had the books to help them write her as the compelling, intelligent, compassionate, frugal, open-minded and self-critical character that GRRM created.

I want to make it clear that these posts are not primarily meant to offer a better alternative to what the show writers gave us. I understand that they had many constraints (e.g. other storylines to handle, a limited amount of time to write the scripts, budget, actors who may have asked for a certain number of lines, etc) working against them. However, considering how disrespectful the show’s ending was to Daenerys Targaryen and how the book material that they left out makes it even more ludicrous to think that she will also become a villain in A Song of Ice and Fire, I believe that these reviews are more than warranted. They are meant to dissect everything about Dany’s characterization that was lost in translation, with a lot of book evidence to corroborate my statements.

Since these reviews will dissect scene by scene, I recommend taking a look at this post because I will use its sequence to order Dany’s scenes.

This post is relevant in case you want to know which chapters were adapted in which GoT episodes (however, I didn’t make the list myself, all the information comes from the GoT Wiki, so I can’t guarantee that it’s 100% reliable).

In general, I will call the Dany from the books “Dany” and the Dany from the TV series “show!Dany”.

Scene 1

While seeing show!Dany with her dragons is always enjoyable on its own, I have some problems with this moment. The first is that we'll begin season four with show!Dany worrying about her dragons' behavior here and, later, end it with her locking two of her dragons away. These scenes don't focus as much on show!Dany herself as they focus on her relationship with her dragons, which I think is quite a problem in comparison to how ASOS and ADWD (which will be the book that the writers will adapt starting from episode 4.6) begin and end:

Dany begins ASOS hopeful and happy that she's finally going to Westeros. She ends the book disillusioned because her efforts to help the former slaves didn't pay off like she expected, so she calls off her dreams of home in order to stay and fulfill (what she thinks is) her moral duty as queen.

Dany begins ADWD distraught because she's still dealing with the nobility's backlash and retaliation against her authority even now that she has tried to be conciliatory and rule in peace. She ends the book a) disabused of the notion that peace is possible and b) directing her eyes to Westeros again.

As we can see, these two books begin and end displaying Dany's multiple dilemmas: home vs duty, other people vs herself, peace vs war, conciliation vs use of force and so on.

In the show, while her last scene in the season four finale at least highlights her compassion towards her people, I'd argue it still mainly focuses on her relationship with her dragons (which is only one of many issues that Dany deals with in the books) rather than on grappling with the questions above in a way that centers primarily on show!Dany herself, like the books do with Dany.

My second problem is that having show!Dany be concerned about her dragons' behavior that much earlier than in the books poses another problem:

In ADWD, Dany ultimately failed in protecting her human children during her tenure because she chose peace with the slavers and was, therefore, detached from her dragon children, from her Targaryen heritage and from her identity as the Mother of Dragons. By meeting Drogon again, getting in touch with who she was and choosing fire and blood (war), she will be able to protect her people again and be a better mhysa. Ultimately, mother of dragons and mhysa are complementary parts of who Dany is.

In the show, however, the dragons begin to seem troublesome before we get to Meereen, before show!Dany begins to rule and before the issue of peace vs war becomes a major dilemma for her. This happened for two reasons: a) D&D are bad writers who dismiss themes as only being necessary for eighth-grade book reports (here, I imagine they probably just wanted to add more shock value to show!Dany's plotline) and b) D&D think that peace = good (even if it privileges a status quo that normalizes slavery) and war = bad, so killing slavers = bad, dragons = bad and continuing on with an anti-slavery revolution = bad (failure to understand reason 1 of why Dany's storyline matters).

My third problem is that, in the books, it's clear that what really upsets Dany is not that the dragons are eating goats, but rather that, as they grow and become more independent, the chances of her dragons a) hurting other people or b) running away increase:

“They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi,” Irri told her. “Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit me.” She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand.

“Did any of them try to burn their way free?” That was the thing that frightened Dany the most.

“No, Khaleesi. Drogon breathed his fire, but in the empty air. The slaver men feared to come near him.”

She kissed Irri’s hand where Drogon had bitten it. “I’m sorry he hurt you. Dragons are not meant to be locked up in a small ship’s cabin.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

There was no sign of Viserion, but when she went to the parapet and scanned the horizon she saw pale wings in the far distance, sweeping above the river. He is hunting. They grow bolder every day. Yet it still made her anxious when they flew too far away. One day one of them may not return, she thought. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

Her dragons were growing wild of late. Rhaegal had snapped at Irri, and Viserion had set Reznak’s tokar ablaze the last time the seneschal had called. I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them? (ADWD Daenerys I)

If I look back, I am doomed, Dany told herself … but how could she not look back? I should have seen it coming. Was I so blind, or did I close my eyes willfully, so I would not have to see the price of power?

[...] At Astapor the slaver's eyes had melted. On the road to Yunkai, when Daario tossed the heads of Sallor the Bald and Prendahl na Ghezn at her feet, her children made a feast of them. Dragons had no fear of men. And a dragon large enough to gorge on sheep could take a child just as easily. (ADWD Daenerys II)

Before what happened to Hazzea, she was okay with the fact that they were hunting and devouring sheep:

Viserion sensed her disquiet. [...] “You should be hunting with your brothers. Have you and Drogon been fighting again?” (ADWD Daenerys I)

Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they’ll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day. (ADWD Daenerys I)

Basically, this is my way of saying that, if they needed to have a scene where show!Dany is uneasy about what the dragons were doing, they should've shown them almost harming one of the people in her retinue or something along those lines (rather than being shocked at seeing them hunt and eat), for that would showcase her empathy like in the books.

My fourth problem with this scene is that we see part of it from show!Jorah's point of view:

JORAH: They’re dragons, Khaleesi. They can never be tamed. Not even by their mother.

In the show, he gets the first line of show!Dany's season four storyline, he gets to be anxious about the dragons before show!Dany is (which undermines how reflective she is in the books) and he is the one who warns her of their wildness when, in the books, she is aware of it without anyone having to tell her. It's another subtle way of undermining show!Dany's agency in comparison to her book counterpart, unfortunately.

My fifth and final problem is that, well, this scene was written by the same people who thought that it was necessary to have show!Dany's dragons taken from her in season two (which never happened in ACOK) and show her going "back to being a really frightened little girl" because she is "so defined" by them. It's the opposite in the books: the dragons only turned into weapons to fight against slavery because of her choices. So, with that in mind, I don't like how they made them so important in her first and last scenes of the season when they never were in the books. And all of this conflict feels superfluous in retrospect, when one remembers that show!Dany doesn't struggle to control them in the last three seasons at all.

DAENERYS: Ser Barristan.

BARRISTAN: Your Grace.

DAENERYS: Where’s Daario Naharis? Where’s Grey Worm?

BARRISTAN: Gambling, Your Grace.

DAENERYS: Gambling?

I have problems with how show!Barristan and show!Dany are being portrayed here because it feels like the show writers switched their characterizations when we consider what we know of them in the books.

First, why is show!Barristan holding his laughter about this situation? In the books, Barristan clearly dislikes Daario and his influence on Dany:

On the day that he returned from his latest sortie, he had tossed the head of a Yunkish lord at her feet and kissed her in the hall for all the world to see, until Barristan Selmy pulled the two of them apart. Ser Grandfather had been so wroth that Dany feared blood might be shed. (ADWD Daenerys VII)

“This is your gift? A scrap of writing?” Daario snatched the parchment out of the Dornishman’s hands and unrolled it, squinting at the seals and signatures. “Very pretty, all the gold and ribbons, but I do not read your Westerosi scratchings.”

“Bring it to the queen,” Ser Barristan commanded. “Now.” (ADWD Daenerys VII)

“...Poor Daario, her brave captain … she will never forget him, no … but better for all of us if he is dead, yes? Better for Daenerys too.”

Better for Daenerys, and for Westeros. Daenerys Targaryen loved her captain, but that was the girl in her, not the queen. [...]

Her love for Daario is poison. A slower poison than the locusts, but in the end as deadly. (ADWD The Kingbreaker)

Now, Barristan is a product of his misogynistic society and I do think he's wrong for thinking (in the last quote above) that Dany's love for Daario is a sign of immaturity, but my point here is that he wouldn't be laughing about something that Daario was doing behind Dany's back; in fact, he would've most likely informed her as soon as he learned about it because he respects her authority.

Additionally, he's known for lacking a sense of humor and not being relaxed, which makes this scene even more OOC for him:

The old knight was a good man, but sometimes very literal. It was only a jape, ser, she thought, but she sat on one of the pillows just the same. (ADWD Daenerys II)

“She needs a spear,” Ser Barristan said, as Barsena vaulted over the beast’s second charge. “That is no way to fight a boar.” He sounded like someone’s fussy old grandsire, just as Daario was always saying. (ADWD Daenerys IX)

Second, why is show!Dany being portrayed as the uptight one here? In the chapter that they are drawing from, there are several moments displaying her carefree side:

“Five, were there? Well, that’s a confusion. I could not give you a number, my queen. This old Plumm was a lord, though, must have been a famous fellow in his day, the talk of all the land. The thing was, begging your royal pardon, he had himself a cock six foot long.”

The three bells in Dany’s braid tinkled when she laughed. “You mean inches, I think.”

“Feet,” Brown Ben said firmly. “If it was inches, who’d want to talk about it, now? Your Grace.”

Dany giggled like a little girl. (ASOS Daenerys V)

He tried to spare me the sight of the dead children too. He should not have done that, but he meant it kindly. And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never did. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Besides admiring Daario's sense of humor and swagger, Dany also appreciates that she can let go of the burdens of queenship (and luxury) and be more spontaneous and frugal when she's with him:

In Meereen I was a queen in silk, nibbling on stuffed dates and honeyed lamb, she remembered. What would my noble husband think if he could see me now? Hizdahr would be horrified, no doubt. But Daario ...

Daario would laugh, carve off a hunk of horsemeat with his arakh, and squat down to eat beside her. (ADWD Daenerys X)

Unfortunately, the show never allows any of those aspects of Dany's characterization to come across onscreen because the writers wanted show!Dany to appear very stoic, which we know because Emilia's said in an interview that they wanted her to "sit up straight and don't smile, you're not funny", which is quite a shame; not only the writers would've been more faithful to the books by allowing her to smile and laugh and enjoy herself, it would've made show!Dany more endearing.

Ultimately, I think the change in these characters comes down to a) D&D not really understanding any of the characters of the books and b) their sexist assumptions that men are funnier than women and that powerful women are all ice queens.

I also need to talk about how show!Dany's connection to the Dothraki, the Unsullied and the freedmen is being undermined onscreen in comparison to what we get solely from ASOS Daenerys V.

In the show, the Dothraki only appear briefly in the background of this episode to never be seen again through the rest of season four and the entirety of season five.

In ASOS Daenerys V, we see how Dany's time with the Dothraki influenced her when she judges the slavers' reaction to her army or assesses the way that Oznak fights:

They are pissing on slaves, to show how little they fear us, she thought. They would never dare such a thing if it were a Dothraki khalasar outside their gates. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Oznak zo Pahl charged a third time, and now Dany could see plainly that he was riding past Belwas, the way a Westerosi knight might ride at an opponent in a tilt, rather than at him, like a Dothraki riding down a foe. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We also see her interacting with her khalasar and considering that her bloodriders a) are too important to send to fight against Oznak and b) aren't the most adequate men to send to Meereen's sewers:

Her bloodriders were in such a fever to go meet him that they almost came to blows. “Blood of my blood,” Dany told them, “your place is here by me. This man is a buzzing fly, no more. Ignore him, he will soon be gone.” Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts too. (ASOS Daenerys V)

“When cowards hide behind great walls, it is they who are defeated, Khaleesi,” Ko Jhogo said.

Her other bloodriders concurred. “Blood of my blood,” said Rakharo, “when cowards hide and burn the food and fodder, great khals must seek for braver foes. This is known.”

“It is known,” Jhiqui agreed, as she poured.

“Not to me.” (ASOS Daenerys V)

“These sewers do not sound promising.” Grey Worm would lead his Unsullied down the sewers if she commanded it, she knew; her bloodriders would do no less. But none of them was suited to the task. The Dothraki were horsemen, and the strength of the Unsullied was their discipline on the battlefield. Can I send men to die in the dark on such a slender hope? (ASOS Daenerys V)

So, despite not getting enough characterization to be set apart as their own individuals because of GRRM's racism, the Dothraki people's influence on Dany's decision-making is still clear. Unfortunately, this is completely absent from the show.

On HBO, when show!Dany passes by the Unsullied, they are shown standing still in silent ranks for no reason while their commander show!Grey Worm is on a contest against show!Daario because the writers wanted it to happen, even though it doesn't gel with his characterization (more on that later).

In ASOS Daenerys V, when Dany passes by the Unsullied, a) they are shown separated in groups that are either training (along with Grey Worm) or bathing and b) we get information on their hygiene practices:

As they rode past the stakes and pits that surrounded the eunuch encampment, Dany could hear Grey Worm and his sergeants running one company through a series of drills with shield, shortsword, and heavy spear. Another company was bathing in the sea, clad only in white linen breechclouts. The eunuchs were very clean, she had noticed. Some of her sellswords smelled as if they had not washed or changed their clothes since her father lost the Iron Throne, but the Unsullied bathed each evening, even if they’d marched all day. When no water was available they cleansed themselves with sand, the Dothraki way. (ASOS Daenerys V)

It's lovely to see Dany returning the Unsullied's greeting, which is another example of how she (relatively speaking) sees lowborn people as equals to her:

The eunuchs knelt as she passed, raising clenched fists to their breasts. Dany returned the salute. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We also get to see the Unsullied cheer for Belwas after he won his duel:

The besiegers gave him a raucous welcome as soon as he reached the camp. Her Dothraki hooted and screamed, and the Unsullied sent up a great clangor by banging their spears against their shields. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We get to see Grey Worm openly objecting to Daario's suggestion that the Unsullied are immune to the boiling oil that the slavers would probably throw at them if they tried to storm the gates. While he and the Unsullied would still do this if Dany had given them the command, this is a subtle sign of his character development because it displays that, unlike with the slave masters, he's at least now able to speak out about the risks that he and his men would face:

“...We can storm the gates with axes, to be sure, but ...”

“Did you see them bronze heads above the gates?” asked Brown Ben Plumm. “Rows of harpy heads with open mouths? The Meereenese can squirt boiling oil out them mouths, and cook your axemen where they stand.”

Daario Naharis gave Grey Worm a smile. “Perhaps the Unsullied should wield the axes. Boiling oil feels like no more than a warm bath to you, I have heard.”

“This is false.” Grey Worm did not return the smile. “These ones do not feel burns as men do, yet such oil blinds and kills. The Unsullied do not fear to die, though. Give these ones rams, and we will batter down these gates or die in the attempt.” (ASOS Daenerys V)

And then, we see Dany deciding not to endanger the Unsullied's lives (similar to how she sought to prevent too many former slaves of Astapor from dying in the battle of Yunkai), which highlights both her compassion and her intelligence (since she shows knowledge of the Unsullied's particular strengths to conclude that they shouldn't be sent to the sewers):

Dany sighed. “I will not throw away Unsullied lives, Grey Worm. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Sadly, the show ignores all of this.

On HBO, show!Dany walked past the freedmen on her way to meet show!Daario.

In ASOS Daenerys V, Dany chose to go meet the freedmen because she didn't want to spend time distracted by her feelings for Daario:

“Missandei,” she called, “have my silver saddled. Your own mount as well.”

The little scribe bowed. “As Your Grace commands. Shall I summon your bloodriders to guard you?”

“We’ll take Arstan. I do not mean to leave the camps.” She had no enemies among her children. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We learn that the fighting men were provided with weapons from the other two cities and were now being trained (though not at the particular moment that she chose to meet them):

South of the ordered realm of stakes, pits, drills, and bathing eunuchs lay the encampments of her freedmen, a far noisier and more chaotic place. Dany had armed the former slaves as best she could with weapons from Astapor and Yunkai, and Ser Jorah had organized the fighting men into four strong companies, yet she saw no one drilling here. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Besides the fighting men, we also get information on children and women:

They passed a driftwood fire where a hundred people had gathered to roast the carcass of a horse. She could smell the meat and hear the fat sizzling as the spit boys turned, but the sight only made her frown.

Children ran behind their horses, skipping and laughing. [...]

Dany had stopped to speak to a pregnant woman who wanted the Mother of Dragons to name her baby[.] (ASOS Daenerys V)

Then, there's also how the freedmen perceive and act around Dany:

Some of the freedmen greeted her as “Mother,” while others begged for boons or favors. Some prayed for strange gods to bless her, and some asked her to bless them instead. She smiled at them, turning right and left, touching their hands when they raised them, letting those who knelt reach up to touch her stirrup or her leg. Many of the freedmen believed there was good fortune in her touch. If it helps give them courage, let them touch me, she thought. There are hard trials yet ahead ... (ASOS Daenerys V)

Instead of believing that she has a "glorious destiny" (like the show writers put it), Dany's actual thoughts display that she only allows the freedmen to revere her because it helps them to feel safe; this is another sign of her empathy, not of her self-gratification or entitlement as many often think.

Finally, the chapter shows the freedmen killing a man for Dany:

Mero went sprawling, blood bubbling from his mouth as the waves washed over him. A moment later the freedmen washed over him too, knives and stones and angry fists rising and falling in a frenzy. (ASOS Daenerys V)

In the books, the former captain of the Second Sons, Mero, hid among the freedmen and bided his time to kill Dany out of revenge for having been deceived by her in Yunkai. Barristan defended her and defeated Mero with a stick, which then led to the freedmen ultimately killing him for their mhysa (and to Barristan's identity and Jorah's treason being revealed).

On HBO, because a) show!Barristan's identity was revealed right away and b) show!Mero was killed by show!Daario (who is part of the Second Sons onscreen rather than the Stormcrows onpage), this scene never happened, making this another example of Dany's connection with the freedmen being undermined from books to show.

If the writers really cared about "the people who may be suffering the repercussions of the decisions made by those heroic people" (which was their justification for leaving show!Dany out of the picture in the second half of the episode where they had her decide to kill thousands of innocents out of nowhere), they would've shown the (already limited) interactions between Dany and her khalasar, the Unsullied and the freedmen at the very least. In fact, if the writers really cared about them, they could've gone further and explored characters that GRRM himself didn't:

“Nine, the noble Reznak said. Who else?”

“Three freedmen, murdered in their homes,” the Shavepate said. “A moneylender, a cobbler, and the harpist Rylona Rhee. They cut her fingers off before they killed her.” The queen flinched. Rylona Rhee had played the harp as sweetly as the Maiden. When she had been a slave in Yunkai, she had played for every highborn family in the city. In Meereen she had become a leader amongst the Yunkish freedmen, their voice in Dany’s councils. (ADWD Daenerys II)

Rylona Rhee was a character whose existence we only learned about in ADWD, after she was already killed by the Harpy's Sons. As the quote shows, though, she represented the Yunkish freedmen's interests in Dany's court and had a lot of potential as a character that GRRM didn't tap into. The show could've easily improved this... Think about it: if Rylona was among the Yunkish freedmen, this means that she met Dany at the end of ASOS Daenerys IV (which, in the show, was episode 3.10). From that point until ADWD Daenerys II, the entirety of season four and the beginning of season five went by (this happened because the show writers reaaaallly stretched out the events of ASOS Daenerys V and VI and parts of ADWD Daenerys I and II). This span of time would've been the perfect opportunity to introduce Rylona's character, flesh her out and give us more information about the freedmen.

Now, the show writers would've never done something like this, of course; they only cared about the lowborn people's deaths and the shock value that would come with them, not about their motivations and lives in general.

DAENERYS: How long have they been at it?

MISSANDEI: Since midnight, Your Grace.

DAARIO: Ser Worm is stronger than he looks. But I can see his arms beginning to shake.

DAENERYS: What’s the prize to winning this stupid contest?

DAARIO: The honour of riding by your side on the road to Meereen.

DAENERYS: That honour goes to Ser Jorah and Ser Barristan, as neither of them kept me waiting this morning. You two will ride in the rear guard and protect the livestock. The last man holding his sword can find a new queen to fight for.

I already talked about my first issue with the scene, which is that it portrays show!Dany as rigid and strict while it ignores that her book counterpart is allowed to be playful and not take herself seriously in several moments in the books, including in this chapter (see above).

My second problem with it is that ... why would either show!Grey Worm or show!Daario think that this contest would give one of them "the honour of riding by [show!Dany's] side on the road to Meereen"? Did they forget that this choice is show!Dany's to make? Did they forget that she is their leader? By comparison, this is what Grey Worm says when Hizdahr tries to give him orders after Dany departs Meereen:

Hizdahr’s blunder with Grey Worm had cost him the Unsullied. When His Grace had tried to put them under the command of a cousin, as he had the Brazen Beasts, Grey Worm had informed the king that they were free men who took commands only from their mother. (ADWD The Queensguard)

Considering that Grey Worm only respects his queen's authority in the books, I doubt that he would've accepted to join this contest because he would know that its "prize" is worthless to begin with. Same goes for Daario. Unfortunately, this goes in line with how the (sexist) writers of this show have show!Dany's men make decisions among themselves and forget that show!Dany is their liege (another example: show!Barristan asking show!Jorah (rather than show!Dany) to take part in the battle of Yunkai), which is something that would've been fixed by simply paying more attention to the books. Unfortunately, this will only get worse as time goes on.

DAARIO: You like this girl? Must be frustrating.

GREY WORM: You are not a smart man, Daario Naharis.

DAARIO: I’d rather have no brains and two balls.

I'm fine with the show introducing a romantic relationship between show!Grey Worm and show!Missandei (which doesn't happen in the books because Missandei is 10-11), but it bothers me that the writers thought that the very first scene suggesting that show!Grey Worm has feelings for show!Missandei should feature show!Daario making an eunuch joke. Not that this would've been better if it weren't the first scene hinting at MissWorm, of course, it's needlessly offensive regardless and, while GRRM isn't immune to stuff like this either, it's true that this doesn't even happen in the books to begin with.

Scene 2

DAENERYS: Have you ever been to Meereen?

MISSANDEI: Several times, Your Grace, with Master Kraznys.

DAENERYS: And?

MISSANDEI: They say a thousand slaves died building the Great Pyramid of Meereen.

DAENERYS: And now an army of former slaves is marching to her gates. You think the Great Masters are worried?

MISSANDEI: If they’re smart, Your Grace.

This detail about a thousand slaves having died while they built the Great Pyramid of Meereen is a show only invention.

Show!Missandei telling show!Dany that the Great Masters should be worried about the latter's army if they are smart is also a show only invention (which leaves a really bad taste in my mouth in retrospect, since this original bit of dialogue most likely stems from their impression that show!Dany is "becoming more and more viable as a threat" based on her campaign in Slaver's Bay, which will also inform why, six years later, they'll think that it's okay to say that show!Dany's actions in King's Landing were foreshadowed by her "willingness to go forth and conquer all [her] enemies"; failure to understand reasons 1 and 2 of why Dany's storyline matters).

It makes no sense that the writers felt the need to add original lines when we could've had what ASOS Daenerys V actually gave us:

When she looked over one shoulder, there it stood, the afternoon sun blazing off the bronze harpy atop the Great Pyramid. Inside Meereen the slavers would soon be reclining in their fringed tokars to feast on lamb and olives, unborn puppies, honeyed dormice and other such delicacies, whilst outside her children went hungry. A sudden wild anger filled her. I will bring you down, she swore. (ASOS Daenerys V)

As the quote above shows, Dany's discomfort with the Meereenese slavers' privileges and traditions stems from the fact that they only have these things to begin with because they've maintained and benefitted from the slave trade for centuries. That's why she no longer enjoys eating puppies:

“...We give each boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Good dog in Astapor, little queen. Eat?” He offered it with a greasy grin.

“That is kind of you, Belwas, but no.” Dany had eaten dog in other places, at other times, but just now all she could think of was the Unsullied and their stupid puppies. (ASOS Daenerys II)

Or why she asked Jhogo not to use the whip inside Astapor:

He stopped before a thickset man who had the look of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up sharply, laying a line of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood there, bleeding. “Would you like another?” asked Kraznys.

“If it please your worship.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Make way for the Mother of Dragons!” But when he uncoiled the great silverhandled whip that Dany had given him, and made to crack it in the air, she leaned out and told him nay. “Not in this place, blood of my blood,” she said, in his own tongue. “These bricks have heard too much of the sound of whips.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

Or why she considered banning the tokar, though she ultimately kept it in an attempt to help to make peace with the slavers:

Walking in a tokar demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master’s garment, a sign of wealth and power.

Dany had wanted to ban the tokar when she took Meereen, but her advisors had convinced her otherwise. “The Mother of Dragons must don the tokar or be forever hated,” warned the Green Grace, Galazza Galare. “In the wools of Westeros or a gown of Myrish lace, Your Radiance shall forever remain a stranger amongst us, a grotesque outlander, a barbarian conqueror. Meereen’s queen must be a lady of Old Ghis.” Brown Ben Plumm, the captain of the Second Sons, had put it more succinctly. “Man wants to be the king o’ the rabbits, he best wear a pair o’ floppy ears.” (ADWD Daenerys I)

Or why she was intent on keeping the fighting pits closed:

“Ask her if she wishes to view our fighting pits,” Kraznys added. “Douquor’s Pit has a fine folly scheduled for the evening. A bear and three small boys. One boy will be rolled in honey, one in blood, and one in rotting fish, and she may wager on which the bear will eat first.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Why?” she demanded, when Ithoke had finished. “You are no longer slaves, doomed to die at a master’s whim. I freed you. Why should you wish to end your lives upon the scarlet sands?” (ADWD Daenerys II)

Or, finally, why she chose to replace the previous throne for an ebony bench:

Her audience chamber was on the level below, an echoing high-ceilinged room with walls of purple marble. It was a chilly place for all its grandeur. There had been a throne there, a fantastic thing of carved and gilded wood in the shape of a savage harpy. She had taken one long look and commanded it be broken up for firewood. “I will not sit in the harpy’s lap,” she told them. Instead she sat upon a simple ebony bench. It served, though she had heard the Meereenese muttering that it did not befit a queen. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

All of these examples highlight that Dany struggles to accept the Meereenese slavers' culture because of her desire to end slavery and achieve equality. The quote from ASOS Daenerys V above could've easily been added in the show during a conversation between show!Dany and show!Missandei like this one.

Now, one could argue that this couldn't have happened in this episode because show!Dany hadn't yet a) seen the one hundred and sixty-three dead children, b) arrived in Meereen, c) seen the Great Pyramid and/or d) faced the risk of her people starve during the siege, all of which increase her righteous anger and determination to move forward with her crusade and do justice. That's true, but it leads to another question: why didn't they let this episode begin with show!Dany in Meereen like how ASOS Daenerys V begins, that is, with her having to face Meereen's champion?

Meereen was as large as Astapor and Yunkai combined. Like her sister cities she was built of brick, but where Astapor had been red and Yunkai yellow, Meereen was made with bricks of many colors. Her walls were higher than Yunkai’s and in better repair, studded with bastions and anchored by great defensive towers at every angle. Behind them, huge against the sky, could be seen the top of the Great Pyramid, a monstrous thing eight hundred feet tall with a towering bronze harpy at its top.

“The harpy is a craven thing,” Daario Naharis said when he saw it. “She has a woman’s heart and a chicken’s legs. Small wonder her sons hide behind their walls.”

But the hero did not hide. He rode out the city gates, armored in scales of copper and jet and mounted upon a white charger whose striped pink-and-white barding matched the silk cloak flowing from the hero’s shoulders. The lance he bore was fourteen feet long, swirled in pink and white, and his hair was shaped and teased and lacquered into two great curling ram’s horns. Back and forth he rode beneath the walls of multicolored bricks, challenging the besiegers to send a champion forth to meet him in single combat. (ASOS Daenerys V)

That's a problem that I have with how they adapted ASOS Daenerys V. The chapter can be divided in a list of four parts, which goes like this:

How Dany deals with Meereen's champion (this happens in episode 4.3)

Discussions on how to take Meereen (this never happens in the show)

Dany's thoughts on/flashbacks with Daario and Jorah (this more or less happens in episode 4.1; some are show only inventions)

Dany a) meeting her children and Mero and b) finding out the truth about her knights (a never happens; b happens in episodes 3.1 for show!Barristan and 4.8 for show!Jorah)

Despite being a chapter jam-packed with action and drama, the show adaptation diluted its impact by 1) fragmenting it, 2) overfocusing on certain parts over others, 3) creating new (and often unnecessary) scenes and 4) displaying its events out of the intended sequence. Problems 1-3 were already present in the adaptation of Dany's first four ASOS chapters, but I'd argue problem 4 is more serious in ASOS Daenerys V.

In the case of this particular scene, again, because it takes place before show!Dany reaches Meereen (and because the show writers never understood reasons 1 and 2 of why Dany's storyline matters), we don't get to see how her problems with the Meereenese slavers' culture are tied to their practice of slavery. This, unfortunately, is another case of the show undermining Dany's characterization from page to screen.

DAENERYS: You were told to ride at the back of the train.

DAARIO: Yes, My Queen. But I need to speak to you about something important. A matter of strategy.

MISSANDEI: Your Grace.

DAENERYS: All right, what is this matter of strategy?

DAARIO: A dusk rose.

DAENERYS: Would you like to walk at the back of the train instead of riding?

DAARIO: And this one’s called lady’s lace.

DAENERYS: Would you like to walk without shoes?

DAARIO: You have to know a land to rule it. Its plants, its rivers, its roads, its people. Dusk rose tea eases fever. Everyone in Meereen knows that. Especially the slaves who have to make the tea. If you want them to follow you, you have to become a part of their world.

DAARIO: Strategy. Harpy’s Gold. No tea from this one. Beautiful but poisonous.

DAENERYS: You are a gambler, aren’t you?

DAARIO: Your Grace.

This exchange is adapted from this part of ASOS Daenerys V:

On the road from Yunkai, Daario had brought her a flower or a sprig of some plant every evening when he made his report ... to help her learn the land, he said. Waspwillow, dusky roses, wild mint, lady’s lace, daggerleaf, broom, prickly ben, harpy’s gold ... (ASOS Daenerys V)

I have some problems with it, though. The first is that they have show!Daario tell show!Dany that she has "to know a land to rule it". In the books, at this point in time, Dany does not have any intention to stay and rule Meereen because she thinks that abolishing slavery was enough on its own; she only changes her mind after seeing the aftermath of the sack of Meereen, hearing news of Astapor (where her council was deposed and slavery is being reinstalled by a former slave named Cleon) and Yunkai (which was rumored to be making alliances with sellswords to defeat her) and understanding that her anti-slavery measures can be easily undone if she leaves so soon. Additionally, I dislike that they chose to only adapt a (veeery brief) scene from the chapter where she's shown to lack knowledge. Why not also adapt, for example, the scene in which she chooses Belwas to fight for her against Meereen's champion and we get to see her whole line of reasoning for doing so? That they even added the detail (that isn't in the books) about how a ruler should have knowledge of the region (which show!Dany doesn't yet) only adds salt to the wound, since it subtly indicates that the show writers themselves find her ineffective as a ruler when she certainly isn't.

The second problem is that show!Dany's feelings for show!Daario are not that clear onscreen in comparison to what we get in the books:

Dany found herself stealing looks at the Tyroshi when her captains came to council, and sometimes at night she remembered the way his gold tooth glittered when he smiled. That, and his eyes. His bright blue eyes. On the road from Yunkai, Daario had brought her a flower or a sprig of some plant every evening when he made his report ... to help her learn the land, he said. Waspwillow, dusky roses, wild mint, lady’s lace, daggerleaf, broom, prickly ben, harpy’s gold ... He tried to spare me the sight of the dead children too. He should not have done that, but he meant it kindly. And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never did.

Dany tried to imagine what it would be like if she allowed Daario to kiss her, the way Jorah had kissed her on the ship. The thought was exciting and disturbing, both at once. It is too great a risk. The Tyroshi sellsword was not a good man, no one needed to tell her that. Under the smiles and the jests he was dangerous, even cruel. Sallor and Prendahl had woken one morning as his partners; that very night he’d given her their heads. Khal Drogo could be cruel as well, and there was never a man more dangerous. She had come to love him all the same. Could I love Daario? What would it mean, if I took him into my bed? Would that make him one of the heads of the dragon? Ser Jorah would be angry, she knew, but he was the one who’d said she had to take two husbands. Perhaps I should marry them both and be done with it. (ASOS Daenerys V)

As one can see, Dany's crush on Daario is significant for highlighting a) how Dany is a romantic person who associates sexual attraction with love and marriage (hence why she compares Daario with her first husband) and b) how her feelings for Daario are tied to her desire to find a home or, in this case, someone who she can rely on (hence why she remembers the prophecy of the three heads of the dragon when she thinks of him).

It was particularly important to display her crush onscreen because of what happens later in ADWD. Unlike what certain people think, Dany's dilemma between Daario and Hizdahr doesn't just represent the choices that she needs to make as a ruler (war or peace), it also illustrates the clash between her main motivations, home and duty: Daario is the former (what Dany wants for herself) and Hizdahr is the latter (what Dany thinks she must do for her people).

Unfortunately, this doesn't come across in the show. To be fair, at least we get to see show!Dany shyly smiling here, but this will be undermined later. In episode 4.7, show!Daario will say:

DAARIO: Never met a woman who didn’t like wildflowers.

In episode 5.7, this is how show!Dany will answer to show!Daario's marriage proposal:

DAENERYS: Even if I wanted to do such an inadvisable thing, I couldn’t.

Then, in episode 6.10, this is what she tells show!Tyrion after rejecting show!Daario:

DAENERYS: Do you know what frightens me? I said farewell to a man who loves me. A man I thought I cared for. And I felt nothing.

I wouldn't be surprised if the show writers made these changes because they a) are among the readers who think that Dany is unlikable/irresponsible when she expresses her romantic feelings for Daario in the books (whereas I happen to think that that makes her more relatable) and b) wanted her to appear more regal (based on their ideas of what that means, of course) in the show because she's older, but, regardless of why they did so, this is quite a problem: if show!Dany isn't in love with show!Daario, her conflict becomes much less pronounced in comparison to her book counterpart's (which, as we'll see later as the show progresses, it did).

JORAH: There’s one on every mile marker between here and Meereen.

DAENERYS: How many miles are there between here and Meereen?

JORAH: One-hundred and sixty three, Your Grace.

BARRISTAN: I’ll tell our men to ride ahead and bury them. You don’t need to see this.

DAENERYS: You will do no such thing. I will see each and every one of their faces. Remove her collar before you bury her.

This is my favorite moment of the episode because it's a major example of how Dany's leadership style is defined by her desire to protect the ones who can't protect themselves (which applies to both book and show versions). Now that she wields power, she won't remain passive when she sees injustices occur, in fact, she'll want to confront them in order to remember why is it that she's fighting:

“I will see them,” she said. “I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember.”

By the time they came to Meereen sitting on the salt coast beside her river, the count stood at one hundred and sixty-three. I will have this city, Dany pledged to herself once more. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

Being a queen is not about self-gratification for Dany, it's about her responsibility and duty towards others, which is what this scene ultimately reinforces.

That being said, there are still some problems with the scene.

One, while the scene on its own does illustrate the kind of ruler (and person) that show!Dany is regardless of what the show writers were intending, I think that their primary intention was to provide shock value with the sight of the dead children (which is also the most likely reason as to why they succeeded in depicting how horrific the Unsullied's training was). If they had intended the scene to showcase show!Dany's selfless motivations like in the books, they wouldn't have later stated that her war in Slaver's Bay was defined by "that willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies" or by how "she's not seeing the cost" (failure to understand reasons 1, 2 and 5 of why Dany's storyline matters). Unlike them, Dany knows that some wars are morally righteous because there are cases in which the status quo is not worthy of being uphold, especially not one that allows children to be murdered without their killers being punished (which also informs her views on Robert, his supporters and the Baratheon regime in general).

Two, the show leaves out the fact that, in the books, the Meereenese slavers burned their own city's lands in order to prepare for Dany's arrival:

The Great Masters of Meereen had withdrawn before Dany’s advance, harvesting all they could and burning what they could not harvest. Scorched fields and poisoned wells had greeted her at every hand. (ASOS Daenerys V)

This is important for two major reasons.

One, it raises the stakes of the conflict in the moment. If Dany continues to besiege the city for too long, her people will starve. If she gives up on conquering Meereen, on the other hand, not only slavery will remain, but her people will die of starvation on the way back to Westeros. If she wants to protect the freedmen that followed her, then, her only choice is to take Meereen.

Dany set great store by Ser Jorah’s counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms pointing up the coast road. “Ser Jorah, you say we have no food left. If I march west, how can I feed my freedmen?”

“You can’t. I am sorry, Khaleesi. They must feed themselves or starve. Many and more will die along the march, yes. That will be hard, but there is no way to save them. We need to put this scorched earth well behind us.”

Dany had left a trail of corpses behind her when she crossed the red waste. It was a sight she never meant to see again. “No,” she said. “I will not march my people off to die.” My children. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Two, it raises the stakes of the conflict in ADWD. By scorching the fields, the slavers deprived Meereen of one of its main sources of income: olives. Now the city's economy is stagnant because it has neither olives nor slaves (because, as we know, Dany abolished slavery) to sell:

For centuries Meereen and her sister cities Yunkai and Astapor had been the linchpins of the slave trade, the place where Dothraki khals and the corsairs of the Basilisk Isles sold their captives and the rest of the world came to buy. Without slaves, Meereen had little to offer traders. Copper was plentiful in the Ghiscari hills, but the metal was not as valuable as it had been when bronze ruled the world. The cedars that had once grown tall along the coast grew no more, felled by the axes of the Old Empire or consumed by dragonfire when Ghis made war against Valyria. Once the trees had gone, the soil baked beneath the hot sun and blew away in thick red clouds. (ADWD Daenerys III)

“The sea provides all the salt that Qarth requires, but I would gladly take as many olives as you cared to sell me. Olive oil as well.”

“I have none to offer. The slavers burned the trees.” Olives had been grown along the shores of Slaver’s Bay for centuries; but the Meereenese had put their ancient groves to the torch as Dany’s host advanced on them, leaving her to cross a blackened wasteland. “We are replanting, but it takes seven years before an olive tree begins to bear, and thirty years before it can truly be called productive.” (ADWD Daenerys III)

However, because the show didn't bother to depict how the slavers destroyed their own city's fields, we don't get to see neither a) how it becomes harder for Dany to sustain a siege (and how conquering Meereen became her only choice if she wanted not only to free the slaves, but also to protect the freedmen that came with her) nor b) how, later, she struggles with reforming the city's economy (which is one of the many ways that the show adaptation undermined her political arc in ADWD).

For this review, there’s no comment of mine on any Inside the Episode because D&D’s Inside the Episode 4.1 doesn’t talk about show!Dany’s storyline. I’m not commenting on show!Dany’s clothes either because she’s wearing the same clothes from season three and I’ve talked about them before in past reviews.

#daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #asoiaf vs got #asos vs got #daario naharis #grey worm #rylona rhee #barristan selmy #s4 #a storm of swords #a dance with dragons

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ellcrys · 3 years

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4, 15, 31, 62 ^^

ok for some reason these were all harder to answer than I anticipated lol

4. how did your elementary school teachers describe you? Shy and quiet, probably. Those are the first two words that come to mind at least, so I’ll go with that. :P I was very shy in elementary school; it wasn’t until eighth grade that I really started opening up. I’m still very reserved but I definitely wouldn’t consider myself shy/quiet anymore. But yeah, I feel like I definitely remember my elementary school teachers commenting on my shyness/quietness and how I should try to speak up more/be less shy in report cards (holy shit does anybody still remember report cards) and parent teacher conferences :P (or were they called parent teacher meetings? I don’t remember)

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment? Jane Eyre! I also loved Crime and Punishment, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Odyssey. I probably owe Jane Eyre a re-read though; apparently there are some problematic bits in the novel that we obvs didn’t cover in high school and that 17yo me wouldn’t have realized.

31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names? Oh, I have two work pants that are my go to when I need a pick me up or want to look good/feel good. They are so comfortable but look so chic and professional! There’s also this long tannish cream cardigan that is my go to sweater - it layers well with everything. and my black heeled ankle boots are my favourite pair of shoes. idk, I don’t really ‘kick ass’ lol. but these are some of my favourite pieces in my closet.

62. seven characters you relate to? oh boy, 7! 1. kei shindou from ef - a tale of memories. I just finished my ef rewatch so she came to mind immediately lol. she made some pretty mean decisions that I definitely wouldn’t have made but personality-wise, oof. I actually relate to both her and hiro. in terms of never sharing my deepest feelings and also waffling/being indecisive. 2. jo march from little women. jo march should really be number 1 on this list lol but I’m just going to list the characters as they come to mind. 3. belle from disney’s beauty and the beast. she’s my favorite disney princess, undoubtedly because of her bookish personality and “I want adventure in the great wide somewhere.” 4. shinako from yesterday wo uttate. this show went so bad so fast in the second half of its run lol but i related pretty heavily to shinako. i just suck at relationships seems to be the theme. def may or may not have strung a guy along for the better part of year but like. i didn’t want things to change and i didn’t want to acknowledge that things had changed. 5. kimiko tohomiko from xiaolin showdown. 90% of my fanfics were written from her perspective and I projected a lot of myself onto her when I wrote so. questionable how much I actually relate to her and how much I forced her to relate to me lol ok the rest are just characters i’ve seen aspects of myself reflected in, either in terms of personality, actions, logic/reasoning, worldview, etc 6. akane from psycho-pass 7. sayaka from madoka magica bonus: yusei from ygo 5Ds - he was my character representation for DES (old youtube amv studio I was a part of, and I did a whole MEP part on why I chose yusei as my chara rep so I felt I needed to include him here lol) (funnily enough, kei was my character rep for FSS, another old youtube amv studio I was a part of)

this was long! I always answer these with paragraphs instead of one word answers! thank you for indulging me! <3

#lordsardine #ask

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moonlitgleek · 4 years

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How do you still believe that Dany will sacrifice herself when George has said that the ending of the books and the show is the same except for minor characters? It's easy to find the book foreshadowing for what happened in the show. Or if you just listen to what George has said over the years, or read what he's written in Fire and Blood. There is no doubt about it.

It’s easy to find foreshadowing for Dany going murderous over bells and burning innocent noncombatants for revenge after she already won in the books? Which books?

However, I do agree that listening to George is a good idea.

How will it all end? I hear people asking. The same ending as the show? Different?Well… yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes.

So you’re gonna be somewhat surprised by [Benioff and Weiss’] ending then, perhaps …Well, to a degree. I mean, I think … the major points of the ending will be things that I told them, you know, five or six years ago. But there may also be changes, and there’ll be a lot added.

“Major points” is not the same as “the ending is the same except for minor characters”.

Not sure what Fire and Blood has to do with anything, but okay. I’m glad that for you there is no doubt that the ending of the show and the books are the same. But from where I’m standing, I see two people who more or less recently admitted to having no clue about the meaning of what GRRM wrote, who are notorious for ignoring story structure and narrative coherence for cheap twists and shock value, who have repeatedly took a character’s story and gave it to another (bells is a trigger for JonCon) and whose writing decisions can best be described through “creatively it made sense because we wanted it to happen”, “themes are for eighth grade book reports” and “Dany kinda forgot about Euron’s fleet”. And I’m supposed to buy that their travesty of an ending is the book ending, even when some of it literally can not happen because the books already contradicted it.

#Anon asks #ask box #anti got #asoiaf

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tomakeitbeautifultolive · 4 years

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Hmmm, you know it's funny that you ask if I tag anything anti s8 Dany or anything to differentiate between Dany before and after S8. The honest answer is I really haven't. It's interesting cause on the surface it seems I've been easily able to dismiss S8 Dany to the point where she doesn't really exist in my pov of Dany, but for some reason the S8 version does. This may be personal to me though, I have a few theories why that is but the truth is IDK for sure WHY that's gotten under my skin. (1/?

The first reason/theory being that I didn't watch the last two episodes of the show in their entirety - once it was revealed what would happen I just watched certain clips from youtube and such. Therefore I didn't really watch the scene where Dany burned KL. I didn't watch Arya running through KL trying to save people. But I did watch Daenerys' murder scene like the masochist I am ugh. I really regret that. Because that's the iamge that pops up when I think of S8, not KL burning. (2/?)

The second theory/reason being that I, myself, am an abuse survivor and the abuse I survived was, for the most part, at the hands of a man. T throne room scene and the way it was framed/filmed really triggered me (which is a reason why I should've known better and not watched it at all, stupid past me). And perhaps, if I'm trying to dig deep, it maybe just confirmed a deep-seated trauma response in me where I just ... fear that all men are capable injuring or even killing their loved ones. (3/?

And the response of some people saying shit like "see, he HAD to do it" just ... really made that feeling worse. Which is ... really fucked up. And I should probably talk about that in therapy and work through that cause that is some HEAVY baggage. Thanks for letting me spill my guts on your page lol (4/4)

Oh, and a third theory/reason may be that as an abuse survivor I specifically bonded with Dany, not just because of her story, but also because of her characterization as an abuse survivor that wanted to prevent further abuse. And it may be difficult for abuse survivors who looked up to Dany to see her as an oppressor, especially since it was so abrupt and poorly done. It could be a combination of all of these really. Emotions are complicated. (5/5)

. . .

Hi again, anon! First, it is my honor to have you spill your guts on my page. ♥

I unfortunately did suffer through the penultimate episode (I had a friend over that night and, bafflingly, she wanted to watch it). While I have not seen episode six in its entirely, like you, I am a masochist and I have watched the death scene. I had to know.

The scene absolutely hits you in the gut with a visceral reaction. An unforgivably vile scene that I wish I had never watched. As a life-long fan of true crime stories, the first place my mind went to was how women are most likely to be murdered by their romantic partner - and D&D saw fit to turn this cowardly, dishonorable, and deplorable act into an act of heroism?

Utterly disgraceful.

Please, please remember that behind Jon Snow's action in that throne room were two very real and very ignorant men who were not only grossly insensitive but completely lacking in any empathy or awareness beyond their immediate experience on earth.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss never, for one second, understood what a symbol of hope Dany was. Further, they have no remorse for all of the hearts they shattered in their pitiful attempt to turn the series into their 'Breaking Bad'.

After all, David Benioff said:

"Themes are for eighth-grade book reports."

Meanwhile, women all across the world found comfort and solace in this fictional character who showed them that it was possible not just to overcome the most heinous acts committed against you, but to come out stronger for it. To become powerful. Following season eight, I had many one-on-one conversations with abuse victims who shared stories similar to yours - and, as someone who is very lucky not to be a victim of physical abuse, I'm eternally grateful for this insight. I know how devastated and betrayed I felt - but it goes so, so much deeper for those who have, like Dany, encountered abuse. It, in fact, tops the list of reasons what D&D did to Daenerys is absolutely unforgivable and unjustifiable to me.

And I'm truly unsure as to how my words have gotten so twisted on Tumblr here tonight - but I must reiterate - I don't see Dany as an oppressor either, anon, no matter how hard the writers would've liked me to. Dany’s heel turn was the very first part of season eight canon that I rejected because it was so extreme, so over-the-top, and preposterous.

Now. There's a line in your ask that brought me to tears.

"I just fear that all men are capable injuring or even killing their loved ones."

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss took Jon Snow, the most chivalrous male character throughout the series, a character you probably put your trust in for that exact reason - and they saw fit to use him in a way that affirms that this suspicion you have about men is right.

It is cruel. It is devastating. It's not right.

The true tragedy of season eight is how much hope these thoughtless men robbed from their audience by failing to consider the implications of their choices and only how much they could 'shock' the audience.

Please, please know that the people who argue that Jon "had to do it" are simply looking for some depth in the shallow kiddie pool of season eight. And by the gods, anon, it’s just not there. If you don’t believe me, believe the millions of signatures on that petition for a rewrite.

If you see an argument like that again, I strongly urge you to look past Jon Snow and see the two careless men standing behind him known as David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, because they were the ones who put that dagger in Jon’s hand. Jon Snow’s actions in season eight were just another asinine attempt to subvert our expectations.

I know it’s not much, but if ever you need someone to talk to, I can be pretty good at lending an ear, so don’t be afraid to come off anon and say hi. I think there are a few gals/guys around here who might still vouch for me 😅 Regardless, I really enjoyed hearing from you, so thanks for the asks! ♥

#answered #don't know how to tag this so I won't #🐉

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meridianrose · 5 years

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Themes are important in storytelling

“Themes are for eighth-grade book reports” is not a good sentiment from men who are supposed to tackle Star Wars, a franchise built on themes of hope and triumph and love. Star Wars films are fairy tales, with knights and villains and good vs. evil.

The most powerful, defining moment of the entire Star Wars franchise is the most subversive, but not because someone dies brutally. It’s when Luke Skywalker tosses his lightsaber aside and refuses to kill Darth Vader. We’ve been building to Luke killing Vader and saving the day for an entire trilogy, and Luke does that by redeeming Vader with his compassion for his father.

Benioff and Weiss would’ve probably had Leia create her own Death Star to be subversive.

There’s also the idea that Star Wars is trying to be more inclusive, and Benioff and Weiss may think they’re inclusive but are really just hell-bent on centering narratives on white men and white characters while demonizing women and brutalizing characters of color.

The Game of Thrones Showrunners Should Not Be Writing a Star Wars Trilogy by Kate Gardner at themarysue(dot)com

I don’t always agree with everything the MarySue says but they often make sense, especially here given how the final episodes of GoT played out (bolding in the quote mine)

#anti d&d #star wars #got #dany defence squad #missandei deserved better #daenerys deserved better

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extraneousdominomask · 5 years

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theme work makes the dream work

“Themes are for eighth-grade book reports.” So said Game of Thrones co-showrunner David Benioff, because apparently the biggest television phenomenon of the last decade was managed by two dummies who can’t write good. (That’s certainly the impression I got from the Internet’s general reaction to the ending.)

Until quite recently, I too scorned themes. But my thinking was too binary, too coloured by kneejerk reaction to what we label as “““real art””” - which, imho, is incredibly goddamn boring. Literary classics are rich in theme, to the point they can feel like they lack in character or plot. Catcher in the Rye is considered good, for some reason, but on an immediate level it’s just an unpleasant idiot wandering aimlessly around.

But as with all things, there is a balance to be struck. This almost feels redundant to say, but a story can have great characters and an engaging plotline and an overall sense of fun and some underlying themes bubbling happily under the surface.

Theme without content is unentertaining, and content without theme is just sound and fury, signifying nothing. The right balance makes the story enjoyable, and adds an extra optional layer of enjoyment for those who want to dig for it. We like to overthink Sly Cooper here, if you haven’t already heard.

This overlong introduction probably sounds like I’m ramping up to dunk on Thieves in Time. I’m actually not! I could. I absolutely could. It would not come out well in this analysis. But I’m actually going to do something even worse and brag about my OCs.

Maybe the most important place to put theme is to pin it to your villain. A strong, thematically-based relationship between your hero and their adversary is where the real magic happens. Indeed, the original trilogy does this well. Clockwerk’s hatred and self-obsession contrasts with the Cooper Clan’s lineage of honourable crime. Neyla’s string of betrayals really emphasises the Gang’s brotherly bond, as does Doctor M’s bitter isolation and greed.

I’ve got two more ideas for future themes for the series, both of which I think have some great potential:

Family. This was why I was so excited about expanding the character of Sly’s mother, that is, giving her any fucking character whatsoever. My version is a small clan of assassins, but there are plenty of angles to take on this; Sly realizes his mother had a life and history, just as his dad did. But in sharp contrast to his knowledge of Cooper lore, here, he knows nothing. which is also metatextually pointing out how she was completely ignored thus far. These new relatives may or may not be direct antagonists, but either way, Sly must confront the fact that being a Cooper is only half of who he is.

(Alternatively, giving an otherwise unconnected villain strong family bonds would be very interesting. Think Panda King if his relationship to Jing had been emphasised in the first game)

Selfishness. I was wondering how to make a compelling villain with no direct link to Sly, because frankly, that well has run dry. I have a simple answer. Picture a villain who, when confronted over their motives, merely replies they attacked Sly because they felt like it. When pressed, they counter that Sly doesn’t have the high ground; he just does things because he feels like it too, right? Because from an external perspective, that’s how it looks! We know Sly is a good boy, but ultimately he’s still a thief, out there having fun adventures that benefit him first and everyone else second. also it’s metatextually pointing out how every game revolves around sly. From there, of course, Sly must demonstrate that he can and will put other people’s desires before his own.

by letting murray have an arc

#long post #long ol post there for sure #I just started typing and apparently did not stop

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ewh111 · 5 years

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2018 Annual List of Favorite Film Experiences

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I hope you’ve been having a great holiday season. It’s been another fun year in film, television, and streaming. It felt like a particularly good year for diverse voices, visions, casts, and storytelling. While I still feel like I’m catching up on year-end releases, here’s my annual list of the ones that have entertained, moved me, provoked thoughts, or just plain stuck with me the most with their story-telling and artistry (In no particular order).

All the best for a wonderful 2019!

Cheers, Ed

Indelible (But VERY Different) Cinematic Experiences

Roma—I wasn’t sure what the hype was about for the first hour which leisurely unfolds before you, but it’s just the build-up as Alfonso Cuaron’s beautiful and powerful film slowly draws you in, and then suddenly grabs you with unexpected emotional impact. An intimate, yet sweeping story of a maid who holds together a crumbling family as her own life combusts. Based on the director’s own life and the woman who raised him, Roma is a complex multi-layered domestic/social/political drama with some truly haunting and indelible sequences. Some may be challenged by the pacing and seeming lack of narrative. Be patient and stick with it; it’s worth it.

Sorry to Bother You—Audacious, original first film and new vision from rapper/hip hop musician Boots Riley starring a terrific Lakeith Stanfield as down on his luck young man who gets a job as a telemarketer and advised by veteran caller Danny Glover to use his “white voice” to become a power caller. The story then takes a twisted wackadoodle turn that truly defies description. This bold and outrageous absurdist social satire/surreal anti-capitalist black comedy also stars an excellent Armie Hammer in a bizzaro role.

A Full House of Documentaries: A Pair of Giants of Our Time and Three of a Kind

Won’t You Be My Neighbor—Celebrating a true hero, it’s a warm and loving look at this pioneer of children’s television who became a role model of kindness and compassion for generations. Little did I realize when watching him as a child the bold and courageous manner in which he addressed the social issues of the day. And it is worthwhile to see the full six-minute video of Fred Rogers Senate testimony that saved funding for public television: https://youtu.be/fKy7ljRr0AA.

RBG—An inspirational telling of the brilliant legal mind who shaped America’s legal landscape on gender equality and women’s rights and became a pop culture icon.

Three Identical Strangers—Fascinating documentary that starts as a “can’t believe it’s true” tale of separated-at-birth triplets who miraculously find each other as young adults, and then takes a very dark turn as the layers of the story are revealed, raising some real ethical questions about research and the debate about nature vs. nurture.

Additional Docu-series to watch: The Staircase (a gripping and powerful docu-series that is an intimate and detailed look at our criminal justice system as seen through the eyes of a man accused of murder who claims the death of his wife was an accident); The Fourth Estate (a fascinating behind the scenes look at the NY Times and their reporters as they cover the beginning of the Trump administration).

Historical Dramedies

The Death of Stalin—Dark and bitingly funny, this relevant political satire by Armando Iannucci of Veep portrays the intrigue surrounding the flock of sycophantic bureaucrats who vie to become the next Soviet leader after the sudden stroke and death of Stalin. A masterful historical farce with a great cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Palin, and Jason Isaacs. And it’s worth noting that the most absurd moments actually did take place (e.g., a rerun concert just to make a recording for Stalin; the alcoholic and meglomaniacal son of Stalin who lost the entire national hockey team by ordering their flight into a snowstorm and then replacing the dead players in hopes his dad wouldn’t notice).

The Favourite—While I decidedly did not care for filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’s much acclaimed The Lobster, this is a much more accessible outing. A highly original period/costume piece with an amazing trio of performances from Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone, The Favourite is a dark and wickedly humorous look at the conniving palace intrigue, love triangles, and back-stabbing world of Queen Anne’s court, complete with fops, duck races, pigeon shooting, and rabbits that rule the roost.

Vice—Not your typical biopic. From the man who brought you The Big Short, Adam McKay delivers an entertaining dark dramedy. Christian Bale wholly transforms into the enigmatic Dick Cheney in this boldly told tale (including a faux Shakespearean pillow talk bit and a mid-film happily-ever-after credit sequence) of a ne'er do well who becomes the most powerful man in the world, all “in the service of the people.” With a very strong supporting cast of Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney, Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush, and Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld.

BlacKkKlansman—Director Spke Lee and the producers of Get Out deliver the unbelievably true buddy-cop tale from the 1970s of a black man who goes undercover to infiltrate the KKK by phone while his white Jewish partner stands in for him in face-to-face meetings. Told in a funny and entertaining manner, it’s one of Spike Lee’s best film in years, though it’s unfortunate how little the racial issues have changed over time.

Odes to Stan Lee and the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Black Panther—This is not just another Marvel superhero movie. This is what every origin story should be: a totally immersive world is created with a sophisticated and impressively well-told story, balancing big themes, character development, action, mythology, and strong messaging, including female empowerment. Black Panther is perhaps the best (and most political without being heavy-handed) entry in the MCU while leaving a very large cultural footprint on Hollywood.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse—I really didn’t think we needed another entry into the Spidey world, but this one was truly fantastic, perhaps the best of the bunch. With visually stunning animation unlike anything I’ve seen before, it’s the most trippy, inclusive, and soulful Spider-Man ever, and the one most true to its comic book roots.

More Fantastic Animation, Stop Motion, and CGI

Isle of Dogs–I am an unabashed fan of Wes Anderson, and here he creates a masterful stop motion universe, much more sophisticated and intricate than his last one, the wonderful Fantastic Mr. Fox. Taking place in a fictional dystopian Japan, he creates yet another Andersonian obsessively detailed world, infused with Japanese culture and canines. On the surface, it’s a simple story of a boy seeking his pet dog in a world where dogs have been banished to a trash-filled island, but it works on so many other levels, existential and political. A great cast of voices infuse each character with individuality and nuanced personalities, including Brian Cranston, Edward Norton, and Bill Murray.

Ready Player One—An unexpectedly wild and entertaining journey, this Spielberg film that takes place in a dystopian future steeped in the nostalgia of the 1980s (video games, movies, music) where its citizens find salvation and escape in a virtual world called the OASIS. The central story of a teen in a whirlwind contest seeking control of the OASIS is a visually stunning and thrilling ride combining live action and CGI that is thoroughly satisfying (though I feel I need to go back to take in all the pop culture references that whirl by).

Incredibles 2–Well worth the wait after 14 years. Just what you would hope for in summer film. Well-developed characters, action, and story with amazing animation and a terrifically snazzy Michael Giacchino soundtrack.

Other Enjoyable Film Experiences Worth Mentioning

22 July, A Quiet Place, Beautiful Boy, Boy Erased, Crazy Rich Asians, Eighth Grade, Green Book, Love, Simon, Mary Poppins Returns, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Paddington 2, The Price of Everything, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Science Fair, Searching, The Hate U Give, Tully, Victoria & Abdul

In the Queue

A Star Is Born, Burning, Cold War, First Man, First Reformed, Free Solo, The Frontrunner, If Beale Street Could Talk, Shoplifters

Binge-Worthy Television

The Americans, Barry, Succession

For the Foodie Set

Fat Salt Acid Heat, Ugly Delicious

Favorite Theater Experience

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child--if you’re a HP fan, it’s like being reunited with old friends. Great story and incredible stagecraft.

Trailers

Black Panther: https://youtu.be/xjDjIWPwcPU

BlacKkKlansman: https://youtu.be/0vWHEuhEuno

Incredibles 2: https://youtu.be/i5qOzqD9Rms

Isle of Dogs: https://youtu.be/dt__kig8PVU

RBG: https://youtu.be/biIRlcQqmOc

Ready Player One: https://youtu.be/cSp1dM2Vj48

Roma: https://youtu.be/6BS27ngZtxg

Sorry to Bother You: https://youtu.be/PQKiRpiVRQM

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: https://youtu.be/g4Hbz2jLxvQ

The Death of Stalin: https://youtu.be/kPpXFnHoC-0

The Favourite: https://youtu.be/SYb-wkehT1g

Three Identical Strangers: https://youtu.be/c-OF0OaK3o0

Vice: https://youtu.be/jO3GsRQO0dM

Won’t You Be My Neighbor: https://youtu.be/FhwktRDG_aQ

#favoritefilms2018 #submission

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coffee-counts-as-a-meal · 1 year

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not to be a GoT/ASoIaF meta writer but I'm re-watching the first season and re-reading A Clash of Kings and its occurring to me something something patriarchy something something society but anyway its just really interesting to me how Catelyn (and also Sansa at the beginning) are very good at working within the rules and social mores of their society

of course, we see examples of women who struggle to fit within the rigid definition of "womanhood" that Westeros demands (Arya, Brienne, even Cersei to an extent) whereas Catelyn and Sansa, while clearly finding the limits within their roles (thinking about Catelyn's "I did my duty all my life" monologue), still manage to perform and excel in it. And idk where I'm going with this but I think it's really interesting how Catelyn and Sansa get a lot of hate thrown at them, when in reality it's less about them as people and more about the society that is pointing at them and saying "performing womanhood like Catelyn and Sansa is the only acceptable way"

Arya and Brienne actively rebel against a world that is telling them to be one thing when internally they'd rather be something else. Sansa and Catelyn don't feel the same discomfort, it's easier for them to "fit in", and they do benefit but it's not a character fault.

#i'm sure this has been discussed to death in the past twenty years lol #also Cat gets so much shit fandom wise for keeping to her gods and like...not being thrilled that her husband had an extramarital affair #(in her eyes at least like YES WE THE AUDIENCE KNOW JON ISN'T NED'S)#idk where I'm going with this I disliked Cat the first time I read the books and watched the show #but now rereading it i'm kinda like 'damn she's got a point'#we get mad at characters for not breaking the rules of their society #when honestly i think is one of asoiaf's strengths is how it portrays #society and culture AS a character that is able to influence the plot #themes may be for eighth grade book reports but #nonconformity to a role says more about the society that is creating that role #than the person who is choosing to perform or not perform it #it's been so long since i wrote an essay plz don't quote me on any of this i am talking out of my ass

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phosphorescent-naidheachd · 6 years

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@sixth-light replied to your post:swtlj a condensed review

My main fear/feeling about the sequel trilogy at this point is that there IS no overarching plan, there is no follow-through, it’s just…three movies with the same characters.

Ughhh, same. After seeing TLJ, it feels like they either don’t know where the sequel trilogy is going or they’re fighting over where the trilogy is going. And lbh, the end result is going to be similar in both of those cases.

(Still, as long as TPTB don’t go the route of the GOT showrunners, who have notoriously said that “Themes are for eighth-grade book reports” *headdesks*, I’m going to hold out tentative hope that they may manage to tie it all together in the final film. ‘Tentative’ is the key word here, though lol.)

#phos replies #sixth-light #3~~#4~~#5~~#6~~#swtlj #star wars sequels

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bitchfromtheseventhhell · 7 years

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oh boy ok oh boy

a year late with starbucks, here i am with book-and-show sansa #discourse. because i finally watched her stuff in s6 and while i don’t think i have anything #new to all y’all who watched her stuff in s6 as it was airing, i needed to process my thoughts about the entire seasons 5-6 conundrum so here they are.

some structural elements before i dive in:

i recently rewatched the entire series with my roommate who loves the show. she keeps me honest about my thoughts regarding the show because she demands an internal cohesion of me that i tend to be more fluid with online. in that spirit, i’m going to be looking at the characters equally. book!sansa is book!sansa; show!sansa is show!sansa; neither will be written below as sansa. the only instances where there won’t be a show!- or a book!- before any characters name is when that character does not exist in one of the two canons and thus i expect you to know which canon i’m talking about.

i will be discussing--specifically--the information that would cover affc-twow and beyond in book!verse, and the second half of s4-s6 in show!verse. the emphasis will be predominantly on the show, though, with supplementary information from the books where it makes sense for what i’m talking about. while there are still differences between both sansas in earlier books/seasons, i am considering that out of the scope of my thoughts for the sake of keeping my thoughts from going all over the fucking place which--you guessed it--they already are.

my reasons for this are also linked with narrative structure. if you are assuming a structure for both media where you have an a-b-c structure, where a is the first chunk (agot-asos; s1-s4); b is the intermediary getting from a to c, and c is the #final countdown, you must look at b as a complete entity. for a song of ice and fire--and specifically sansa’s case--it’s easy: she doesn’t appear in half of the b section (affc-adwd; though when twow comes out we may have to adjust this assumption of the b section, i think it’s a fair assumption to make now) since she does not have a pov chapter in adwd. for game of thrones, it requires looking at s5 & s6 in tandem. i honestly do not think it’s fair (in either direction) to judge s5 without looking at s6, and i do not think it’s fair to judge s6 without looking at s5. they comprise the same narrative chunk.

i wear my biases on my sleeve: i think that s5 was a revelation in terms of the showrunners really being complete fools when it comes to confronting major adaptational challenges that they were facing. while i do not--and honestly have never--expected perfection from them in terms of a perfect page-to-screen adaptation, this season to me was a sign to me that they were not equal to the task facing them. this is not to say that martin is: the jury will be out until we have twow and possibly ados in hand.

to me (and this does not mean you have to share this opinion), a good adaptation is not whether or not characters’ lines are reflective of the book, it’s whether the grander theme of the adaptation matches the original’s. it’s a metric i use for all book-to-film adaptations, be it the lord of the rings, the handmaid’s tale, harry potter, american gods, the various pride and prejudice adaptations, and whatever else the film industry throws at us next. this is an unfortunate metric for game of thrones, however, because the showrunners hamstrung themselves fast on that front, and it’s something that they even admitted to when saying “Themes are for eighth-grade book reports.” [source]

thinking something is a (not-)well-done adaptation and thinking something is a (not-)well-done show are two completely different things in my mind. i don’t necessarily think that the harry potter movies are good adaptations; i think they’re decent movies--and the later ones are even full-on good. in the case of show!sansa and the storyline constructed for her, and looking at them not as an adaptation but as a creation, here is what i will be considering

does the character make internally consistent choices?

are the choices the character makes substantiated by their experience?

how does the character fit in with the larger story?

lastly, this is a critique of seasons 4-5-6 of game of thrones. i understand completely that there are folks out there who prefer game of thrones to a song of ice and fire; i know there are folks who prefer a song of ice and fire to game of thrones (i am one of this latter crew). this is not meant to be a value-judgement on what you find enjoyable. you do you. i’ll continue to do me, and i do have major criticisms of various narrative arcs and setups in the books, though, due to the differences between the two media, they tend to be of a different variety. if you don’t feel like reading through a long critique of this arc (because god knows there have been enough of them at this point since i’m a year late with starbucks) by all means skip this one. i am processing for my own sake, and wanted to share what i think in case it’s constructive for others who haven’t had it already with the books-vs-show discourse on this particular arc.

a point that doesn’t easily go anywhere: a major difficulty when encountering books-vs-show, with really any of the characters but in this specific case definitely so: age. book!sansa is 13 going on 14. show!sansa is at least 18 if not older. the difference between how a 13 year old would behave and process and how an 18+ year old does behave is vitally important and rarely discussed. for all my frustrations with benioff & weiss’ adaptation with the series, i wonder to what extent (and i mean i literally wonder--i can see it going many ways) a lot of the deviations from between book!- and show!sansa comes from their respective ages.

show!sansa & rape

show!sansa was raped.

she was raped on her wedding night to show!ramsay, and was raped repeatedly and psychologically and physically abused afterwards. at the time that the episode aired, there were many comments flying around, but especially you have the following comment from brian cogman, one of the lead writers on the show:

“This isn’t a timid little girl walking into a wedding night with Joffrey. This is a hardened woman making a choice and she sees this as the way to get back her homeland. Sansa has a wedding night in the sense she never thought she would with one of the monsters of the show. It’s pretty intense and awful and the character will have to deal with it.” [source]

there are two things i want to unpack from this quote; i’ll get to the second of them in a different section. the first part i will fixate on is one that frequently gets fixated in on in discussions of season five--specifically that show!sansa’s wedding night is one of “a hardened woman making a choice.”

the problem we have here is that we don’t see her “making a choice.” there are many discussions to be had about the nature of agency within westeros--both in the books and in the show, and involving characters beyond either book!- or show!sansa--but it is fairly certain from the beginning that show!sansa does not have a choice in the matter. from the moment that show!petyr brings her away from the vale (not even telling her where she is going) and then surprises her with the view of the north at moat cailin, it is clear that he is not interested in her “choice.” the “choice” that show!sansa has to make is what to do with her newfound situation--which she had no hand in choosing.

one of the seminal issues with season 5 is the way that benioff and weiss ended season 4 for show!sansa--specifically they had her looking at show!petyr and saying “I know what you want,” and then had her descending the staircase in the vale in a dress of her own making, hair freshly dyed, and seemingly liberated after three seasons of captivity in king’s landing. this makes the transition into season 5, where you have a show!sansa who is distraught in episode 3 at the concept of going north to the boltons, who is blindsided that show!petyr would have masterminded this for her--inconsistent with the end writing of season 4, and with the commentary on the show from the episode where show!sansa did say “I know what you want,”

“Up to now, Sansa has been a piece that other people have moved about the board to achieve their own goals, using her, discarding her, using her for a different purpose, you know, ‘You’re gonna marry Joffrey.’ ‘No, you’re gonna marry Loras.’ ‘You’re gonna marry Tyrion.’ She is beginning to at least try to understand how she can play the game of thrones and be, not a piece, but a player with her own goals and moving other pieces around. And she’s not a warrior like Robb, Jon Snow. She’s not even a wild child like Arya. She can’t fight with swords, axes. She can’t raise armies. But she has her wits, the same as Littlefinger has.” [source]

perhaps, instead, it was arrogance; alternatively, it is hubris that she assumed she knew what show!petyr wanted; or perhaps she is not in fact a player (to use terminology that is based in book!sansa’s arc), but still a piece, and a piece whose player has misread the board--show!petyr telling her “Better to gamble on the man you know than the strangers you don’t. And you think you know me?” could well be mocking of both her and her strategy for he himself is about to gamble on strangers he doesn’t know--and drastically so. that’s a valid interpretation of the beginning of season 5 in my view, but it stands at odds with her trajectory in the second half of season 4, while being consistent with her trajectory in season 6--where you can argue that show!sansa does begin to emancipate from piece-dom to player-dom. this is something even sophie turner made note of while discussing season 5:

When I got the script, I was shocked to my core. Because I was just like, is this really going to happen for her again? It’s really quite devastating. It is “Game of Thrones,” but when you had the moment at the end of Season 4 you think, “Oh her life is going to get better. She’s going to take matters into her own hands and she’s gonna be this powerful woman and liberate people and manipulate people.” And then it was just kind of like, “Oh.” [source]

regardless--this makes the setup to this entire arc a rocky one because even the actor involved feels as though it’s a major step back for the character. it makes the characterization inconsistent since it doesn’t seem to follow naturally from the end of season 4 and thus how the viewer comes to see show!sansa in the a section of the narrative. it makes the justifications for the need to have her fill the role of show!ramsay’s wife and rape victim seem all the more nonsensical.

benioff’s commentary is revelatory on the matter:

“Sansa started as such a naive innocent...She’s been traumatized by what she’s seen and she spent almost a couple years in shell shock. At a certain point she’s either going to die or survive and become stronger. She’s chosen the latter option and she’s learned from an incredibly devious teacher in Littlefinger. The interesting thing about Littlefinger is he seems to have no almost no weaknesses aside from his affection for Sansa. He’s been obsessed with her since that early episode at the joust.” [source]

the tricky thing about this comment is that it has two theses: the first is that show!sansa’s only options are “to die or survive and become stronger.” this comment in and of itself is not one that is necessarily untrue: book!sansa, after all, definitely spends the course of several books trying to figure out how to survive the situations she has found herself in, noting even that “one slip and [she is] dead,” even after she has left king’s landing. it is certainly true of show!sansa, who during her time in king’s landing definitely was playing a game of survival and one the likes of which she in season 1 would not have imagined.

what is frustrating is that the idea that this version of “survive and become stronger” was not something that they had already set up at the end of season 4, that show!sansa has thrown herself in with show!petyr and is prepared to outflank everyone for show!petyr has “almost no weaknesses aside from his affection for Sansa.” she exited season 4 with that “survive and become stronger” mentality, only to have it torn to shreds in season 5. the idea, then, that show!petyr’s affection for show!sansa would blind him into sending her to this specific marriage reflects that he does--in fact--have a weakness (his own hubris) and that, furthermore, show!sansa’s strength (which, quite apart from “shell shock,” was what carried her through seasons 2 and 3) came not from her trying to take advantage of her situation as she was at the end of season 4, but rather from her being raped instead. independently about what that means for the character, it says rather a lot of misogynistic things about the showrunners.

i stand firmly believing that the showrunners mishandled show!sansa’s rape. i do not particularly think they handled the episodes immediately following her rape in a consciencous way, though i think they do manage to capture show!sansa’s nihilistic desperation at her situation which leads her to insult show!ramsay to his face and to leap off the walls of winterfell with show!theon, both actions that display a brash bravery that she is rarely credited with (either because insulting show!ramsay to his face is deemed “stupid” and “dangerous” because he will abuse her further, or because it stands at odds with the idea of show!sansa as one who waits, and thinks, and uses her wits before acting--a trait that is frequently talked about in commentary of the show). to stand up for oneself against a rapist, abuser, and--beyond her relationship with him--torturing murderer and to declare that this is an unacceptable situation to exist in is an act of profound backbone.

the simple fact of show!sansa unflinchingly and unapologetically overseeing the death of her rapist and the man who murdered her brother is the only way to have ended that subplot. it was a good ending to a storyline that was shoddily structured in both its preparation and in its early execution.

show!sansa & the north

i mentioned above that i would have a second thought about that quote. here it is. the point of show!sansa going north to marry show!ramsay was to get her north. her “choice” was to try and reclaim her homeland, however she could, after having been separated from it and her family for so long while held in captivity, and after having mourned and longed for it during that brief period in the vale of arryn.

both sansas are characters who want to go home, who long for paths to bring them home, who miss their family. book!sansa assumes that the vast majority of her family is dead (it is a shock for book!sansa to remember that book!jon is alive--the sole family member from her nuclear family still remaining to her; she has an uncle and a great uncle in the riverlands, but those don’t cross her mind particularly, possibly because they are tullys and not starks) and is completely unaware of what the reader knows is going on in winterfell (which book!petyr is involved with by virtue of jeyne poole’s presence there). meanwhile, show!sansa knows that arya lives, learns from show!theon that her younger brothers are alive as well before physically reuniting with show!jon early on in season 6.

i completely understand the need to change the way that martin has been writing his story in order to fit the constraints of television, and the story that the showrunners have been working on since the first season. i understand, furthermore, that while martin has the luxury of being able to miss every deadline set before him for whatever reason he sees fit--that’s not something that benioff and weiss are able to do in order to write a season of game of thrones.

if it were simply a matter of show!sansa working to reclaim the north, i would have many fewer quibbles with the execution of this storyline. the problem is that that the emphasis of season 5 (and thus something that they had to fix in season 6) was not the north; it was the rape.

The showrunners first thought about putting Sansa and Ramsay together back when they were writing season 2. “We really wanted Sansa to play a major part this season,” Benioff said. “If we were going to stay absolutely faithful to the book, it was going to be very hard to do that. There was as subplot we loved from the books, but it used a character that’s not in the show.”

Writer-producer Bryan Cogman had some insight, as well. “The seeds were planted early on in our minds,” Cogman said. [source]

there are many elements to the subplot that they chose to adapt that were not present in season 5. the major elements of the subplot that were present involved the marriage of show!/book!ramsay and the horrificly abusive marriage that that becomes, the psychological grapplings of show!/book!theon, and show!/book!stannis’ march from the wall to winterfell (though there are major differences in the adaptation of this march; i won’t be discussing them here). the problem is that while all of those are vitally important to the book plot, the reason that they are all there in the books to begin with is the power vaccuum of the north following book!robb’s death--and none of them would be present without the political pressure of what is going to happen in the north, and that is the vital backdrop of everything. it is startlingly absent in season 5 and has major ramifications in the writing of season 6, especially for show!sansa, though also for show!jon.

in the book iteration, you have the northern lords who have gathered in winterfell for the marriage of book!ramsay with jeyne poole. the marriage is a way to legitimize bolton rule, since one of the “stark daughters” will be married to book!ramsay before all of the north, making it that much more difficult for them to rally against the boltons and say that their rule is illegitimate. one of the many points of the subplot (and certainly one of the most important) is that it happens where everyone can see it, and yet book!theon is the only one who knows all the details.

the northern lords--for the most part--are disgusted with the entire situation. they are livid with book!theon for having (supposedly) murdered book!bran and book!rickon, they hate the boltons for being turncloaks who participated in the red wedding, where many of their brethren were slaughtered (not to mention the starks who died there), but they are also fully aware that many of them still have living family members who are held hostage beneath the twins and so they must make nice with their new lords, lest something bad happen to their family members. it is in this subplot that we have some insight into seeds laid in book!davos’ storyline--that wyman manderly is working to undermine the boltons and the freys, that there is someone in winterfell who is murdering turncloaks (though that person is unknown), and that “the north remembers” what happened to the starks, to their own families, and that they hate the boltons for it. furthermore, they are flatly disgusted with book!ramsay’s treatment of jeyne, whom they believe to be book!arya.

“Not me,” the Lady of Barrowton confessed, “but the rest, yes. Old Whoresbane is only here because the Freys hold the Greatjon captive. And do you imagine the Hornwood men have forgotten the Bastard's last marriage, and how his lady wife was left to starve, chewing her own fingers? What do you think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant Ned's precious little girl.” [source]

the show’s adaptation of this scenario does not include the northern lords. it mentions--briefly--ramsay terrorizing the old lord cerwyn and replacing him with a new one in the first episode of season 5, but after that we have literally nothing for an entire season. the only sign that “the north remembers” comes from a little old man and a little old woman who ally themselves with show!brienne and show!sansa. indeed, this brave woman ends up being murdered and flayed by show!ramsay after he discovers her plans to help show!sansa escape and that, it seems, is that. “the north remember[ing]” seems to be a flimsy, hopeless thing, and not enough to help show!sansa at all in her current situation, for it cannot connect her with show!brienne (present and earnestly hoping to help show!sansa, if unaware of the explicit details of her situation).

stepping away from the issues that arise from adaptation here and looking at game of thrones without a song of ice and fire to compare it to--in order to be sure that show!sansa was isolated enough for show!ramsay not to worry about having to rein himself in, the showrunners left several major worldbuilding plotholes and really shot themselves in the foot for the next season and the character development they could have had for show!sansa. for all they say that the “choice” that motivated show!sansa’s actions was an attempt to reclaim her homeland, their focus in this arc for an entire season was her abuse, and then her desperate need to escape from it, not her political aims. rather than giving show!sansa scenes where she was interacting with lords and ladies she would have to convince in season 6 to join her cause, scenes where northern lords might see how show!ramsay truly was treating their beloved show!ned’s daughter, or where they might be appalled that show!sansa would agree to marry him, or whatever could be written to add in conflict later, they gave show!ramsay pointless scenes with his girlfriend, a poorly contrived plot involving being able to see a candle in a tower window, and an isolation that made no political sense given that the whole reason that show!sansa married show!ramsay from the bolton perspective was to legitimize bolton power in the north. they did not care to focus even a little bit on the rest of the north and showed literally no perspective on the match from any northern characters. it was only show!sansa and the boltons.

the trouble is--the rest of the north does exist, and show!sansa (and show!ramsay) has to confront that in season 6, since it was not done in season 5.

the first thing to bring up before diving into that, though, is the red wedding. the red wedding--in both books and show--was an event orchestrated by the rooses bolton, the walders frey, and the tywins lannister. in both cases, you have an event where the robbs and catelyns stark were slaughtered--but also where members of other northern houses were slaughtered and/or taken captive. this is vital to the frustration of the northern lords in the book as described above. they blame the boltons far more than book!robb for the red wedding, not least because many of them still have family members held hostage at the twins, pending their allegiance to house bolton’s regime in the north. they recognize book!roose as a traitor, and that book!ramsay is his son and heir and thus as vile a kingslayer and traitor as they could find, on top of being the fiend who married lady hornwood and then left her to starve to death and eat her fingers so that he could claim her lands through marriage as his own. it is not simply a matter of being frustrated with book!robb’s choice to marry jeyne westerling (though there is definitely frustration there)--they know that the destruction of--not just their king but their autonomy rests on bolton shoulders.

the northern lords in the show, far from blaming the boltons, seem to blame the starks for it. they blame show!robb’s marrying talisa and shirking his commitment to marry one of show!walder frey’s daughters. and while i think, given what happened at the red wedding, it is justifiable from their end to see their king as having not taken his oath seriously, the leap from “show!robb did a bad thing” to “the kinslayer of the kingslayer of show!robb now sits in winterfell and should sit in winterfell” makes legitimately no sense as a baseline for why northerners would side with show!ramsay and it is the baseline.

there are, of course, logical explanations to why many of the northern lords chose to absent themselves from season 5, and to help substantiate the decision season 6 in aligning with the boltons (even the ones who want to “stay out of it” have chosen house bolton over house stark). the problem remains that none of those explanations happen in the show canon until season 6, making it impossible to deny that season 5 wasn’t about the north it was about rape. there is no dialogue to explain it, and there aren’t any of benioff & weiss’ much beloved monologues to explain it and, given how frequently they use monologue to provide political backstory/understanding to their viewers, the lack of it in this plotline which is supposed to be about show!sansa “see[ing] this as a way to get back her homeland” is really noticeable. there are explanations for the choices, but those explanations must come from the viewers, not from the show itself, which makes it no more or less canon than the questions demanding to know why the north did or did not remember in this way.

it means that the northern plotline has to play catch-up with itself in season 6 and that show!sansa shows an understanding of the north and its politics that were denied her by the showrunners not sending any northern lords to winterfell in season 5 in the first place. her understanding of the north was that brave woman’s assertion that “the north remembers,” and it gets flung in her face repeatedly when she brings it up. and while it would make sense for her to have some instinct for politics after her time in king’s landing and her time with show!petyr, and for her to understand show!ramsay better than show!jon and show!davos in anticipation of the battle of the bastards, it doesn’t make sense that she would have a better sense for northern politics as a genre than show!jon, who has been much closer at hand to the north than she has since the beginning of the show by never having left it and who has had to deal with a northern political backdrop given his stance about the wildlings since season 2.

the first instances of northern lords being present in winterfell are a karstark and an umber. the karstark’s justification for supporting ramsay makes sense, even if it’s belated: there’s a great deal of bitterness for show!robb’s beheading of show!rickard karstark in season 3. it’s a clunky scene but it follows from what came before. this is not even a little bit the case with the umber who brings show!osha and show!rickon into show!ramsay’s hands. the scene in which this umber is showing that he supports show!ramsay follows literally no logic. the reason for support is that show!ramsay slew his “cunt” of a father. what made show!roose a “cunt” is hard to say--it’s never explained. perhaps, it’s that he slew his king in cold blood; if that’s the case, one wonders why a man who kills his king is worse, somehow, than a man who kills his father in plain view of his vassals. but that is speculation. there is no mention of the red wedding (where presumably show!greatjon was...but who knows because he hasn’t appeared since season 1), of the betrayal of the starks and the umbers’ fellow northern lords by the boltons, and no real understanding of why show!rickon and show!osha, who presumably have been in last hearth since the end of s3 when they said that was where they were headed, would go from being people who deserved protection to prisoners of the house who slew show!robb and show!catelyn.

the only conclusion that can be drawn, given the lack of setup for it, is that benioff and weiss were ramroding their plot into place, just as they did by sending show!sansa north to begin with, and are trying to convince the viewer to “just go with it” in order for the rest of the season to make sense and to have the military setup they so desire for the battle of the bastards in episode 9. in focusing only on show!sansa’s rape the season before and none of the northern politics, we then are left questioning why the everloving fuck the karstarks and umbers think the manderlys would throw in with show!ramsay when benioff and weiss were so proud of having a manderly at the red wedding (presumably to die or be captured) to when season 3 aired. it does not follow logically or politically--it only follows if you stop assuming that this house, and other northern houses, has any memory, agency, goals, familial relationships, and has miraculously lost the sense of honor that led its members to crown show!robb following show!ned’s beheading and that they only exist as a function of show!ramsay’s power in the north...and the whole point of show!ramsay’s marrying show!sansa was that the power he held in the north was unstable to begin with.

ironically, the lord glover that show!sansa and show!jon have to try and convince to join their side gives a better justification for it than either of these two more powerful houses--in pointing out that show!ramsay helped retake his keep from the ironborn, and that show!ramsay helped him rebuild his home (which....he didn’t need to marry show!sansa for, and which is a very different tune from show!roose’s warning to show!ramsay in season 5 that “We can't hold the north with terror alone”). his refusal to help show!jon given that it is an army of wildlings show!jon’s asking him to join also makes sense, but it is so belated and following so contrived a setup that it feels like an afterthought for the baseline above, rather than the primary motivation of mistrusting show!jon’s choices. but at the same time, this lord glover does address the fact that it was the boltons who perpetrated the red wedding which destroyed the lives of so many including his brother, pinning the blame on show!robb and his choices instead. it perpetuates--rather than the boltons being hated for turning their cloaks--the idea that they might, in fact, be liked for it which is so mindboggling when you also have this mentality that “the north remembers.” treason and kingslaying are suddenly oddly forgivable in a region that prides itself on having an ancient honor.

the viewer has been given the sense since the very first scenes of the show that the northerners care intensely about the old way, about righteousness and justice. but what we see from the northern lords--or rather, from the lack of the northern lords in season 5--stands at odds with the starks and the northern “old way” of making justice with their own hand. show!sansa and show!jon alone seem to remember it, seem to care about the boltons and justice for the red wedding. the rest are unwilling to help, and the reasons that they give do not align with what the viewer has been led to believe about the north in the a section of game of thrones. if it does remember, it remembers the wrong things and is better to think that, in fact, it might not.

and--to make the whole mess even more frustrating--in the scene in which show!jon is crowned the king in the north, the northern lords speak of how he avenged the red wedding, which they had seemed to forget or not care about in joining the boltons or rejecting show!jon’s and show!sansa’s call for aid. little show!lyanna mormont declares that “the north remembers” to murmured assent and that’s true: she did. the others--they made it quite clear that they didn’t remember the red wedding or the horrors that show!ramsay was capable of throughout the entire season.

show!sansa & herself

now is where i’m going to shed commentary from the showrunners for a section. the reason being that in order to look at show!sansa as her own character--no matter what my frustrations are with the crafting of her arc--it is a waste of energy to compare what the showrunners intended for her versus what was actually depicted on the screen. it means that book!sansa in the vale, grappling with the web of lies she’s found herself in, must cease to exist for a time, and that benioff, weiss, cogman, and martin do not get to say a word. only show!sansa does.

show!sansa begins calmly confident in her choices, since the end of season 4 ended with “i know what you want,” the dyeing of hair, and a confident stroll that implies that show!sansa is ready to take control of the situation. that calm confidence slips away very quickly when she finds that she has been sold into marriage as she was by show!petyr and finding herself in the wolf’s den with those who slaughter wolves.

it results in an understandable, natural irascibility. show!sansa in her newfound freedom is infuriated by the presence of the boltons in her home. she speaks and acts boldly. she seems to have forgotten everything she learned in king’s landing, that the viewer spent several seasons watching her navigate with enough capacity for her to have made it out alive--with show!petyr’s help. show!sansa knows the boltons to be terrible for they murdered her mother and brother; show!sansa knows that they have the capacity for craftiness, for their betrayal was not discovered before it was too late. and show!sansa behaves almost as show!ned did in season 1: speaking her mind and damn the consequences. perhaps she is trusting in the fact that show!petyr, her ally, made the match for her; perhaps she is trusting in her name and status as a legitimization of show!ramsay’s position to serve as a protector for her. perhaps, still, she is determined that in this place, in her home, in winterfell, she will not be the sansa stark who had to hide everything about herself in order to escape abuse at show!joffrey’s hand. she is determined to retain a part of herself no matter what. as she tells show!theon in the last episode of season 5 “If I’m going to die, let it happen while there’s some of me left.” she is not there yet, of course, but i think this line is vital to understanding her earlier behavior in the season, especially when considering her history in the a section of the narrative as an abuse victim who was never allowed to be herself and who routinely had to denounce her father, brother, and mother as traitors, and tell everyone who would listen that she had the traitor’s blood also.

show!sansa is allowing herself to be “herself” as best she can, which is jarring for a character who has existed to be different versions of herself depending on those around her and what they need from her. this version of herself is an impulsive one ( “You can’t!”) and one who digs into her abuser where she can (“Or maybe he’ll give me yours”). the viewer knows more than show!sansa does: we know what show!ramsay did to show!theon, we know that show!ramsay has literally hunted like game a woman who no longer pleased him and set his dogs loose on her to kill her, we know that he is a different breed of cruel from show!joffrey. but show!sansa does not yet. she will learn all this--she will see hints of it when she finds show!theon in the kennels--thinking that he deserves his state, given that he supposedly murdered her little brothers--but she will not learn for true until after she is married.

she marries show!ramsay, is repeatedly raped and beaten and abused psychologically by him, and she tries twice to convey to show!brienne that she needs her help, that she needs to get out. both are failures that result in the death of others: in one case, the old woman who told her that “the north remembers,” the second in show!myranda, whom show!theon kills before he and show!sansa leap to their freedom and potential death from the walls of winterfell. the progression of season five, for me, is a smash repeat of seasons 1-2 for show!sansa, only this time for an older woman with an older abuser. she thinks things will be fine, they are not fine, she is sexually and psychologically abused. there is even the hope that show!stannis will kill her captor for her which happens on neither count. the difference is capacity for agency: show!sansa in seasons 1-2 was thirteen-fourteen years old and is being watched very closely at all times in a place she doesn’t know very well. in season 5, she is a stark of winterfell in winterfell and is able to slip out of the room in which she is being held and sneak her way to try and transmit her plea for help. and, when she is unsuccessful, she chooses to leap from the walls with show!theon, rather than choosing to stay in a space of abuse. in king’s landing, there remains some hope for her--that show!robb will live and come to find her--in season 5, whether or not there is hope for her safekeeping doesn’t matter to her. she’d sooner try all she can to get free.

there are inklings of show!sansa’s pride throughout season 5. i should note: pride here is not intended as a value judgement for show!sansa, though frequently it is used against her. i think she is entitled by her experience to have her pride. people have tried to strip it from her throughout the seasons. her holding onto it, even when it causes conflict, i think is a sign of her tenacity in light of abuse. she is proud when she arrives in winterfell, head held high to face show!robb’s and show!catelyn’s murderer and his son, she is proud before the wedding while dining with the boltons, refusing to be brought low, she is proud in interactions with show!theon before she is married, and she is proud enough to say that she’d rather die while there is still some of her left than to return to her chamber and face whatever show!ramsay has in store for her. that pride takes on a different shade in season 6 when she finds show!jon at castle black.

there, her pride becomes more mixed. it flares at random moments. sometimes she is proud in a way that includes show!jon--making him a cloak like their father’s, for example--and other times she is proud in a way that doesn’t include him. show!sansa’s pride, to me, helps explains why she doesn’t tell show!jon about her contact with show!petyr when he first comes to molestown to see her, and then returns to the knights of the vale at moat cailin. she doesn’t want to admit to any contact with him, because it is both painful and humiliating to acknowledge that show!petyr has anything valuable to convey to her after what he was responsible for in season 5. it is pride as well that means she doesn’t tell show!jon that she is sending for the knights of the vale after house after house after house has closed their doors to the starks’ plea. show!sansa has been told that “the north remembers�� by the brave old woman. there were no other northern lords in winterfell to prove otherwise while she was there as well. she clung to it as hope in her most nihilistic moments and now that hope has been turned on its head and it is something she refuses to accept because she’d rather die than go back to ramsay--so she calls upon show!petyr. it can only be pride that keeps her from telling show!jon, fear that he will call the move stupid, that he will call her stupid for trusting show!petyr in an hour of need.

and, of course, it is pride that leads her to reconnect with show!petyr wordlessly when show!jon is crowned: if show!jon gave her credit privately, no one gave her credit for helping to retake winterfell during that meeting--not even her half-brother--no one except show!petyr and her pride is wounded and he is planning to prey upon it once again.

show!sansa & the larger story

while drafting this, i reread the post that i wrote in the immediate aftermath of unbowed, unbent, unbroken. it, like this, was a processing post, though of a very different variety, and it, more than this, was expecting a tighter adaptation to the books. one of the major points that i was making was that, in sending show!sansa north to fill the role in this subplot, there was a major ripple effect in the larger story--beyond just what happened in the north. this ripple effect struck out as far as dorne, for that was where show!jaime found himself in season 5, rather than in the riverlands where his book counterpart was. book!jaime would be lured away by book!brienne on lady stoneheart’s orders while book!brienne is still on her thus-far fruitless quest to find book!sansa. because of the adaptation of show!sansa’s storyline, you can’t send show!jaime to the riverlands just yet (this will happen in season 6) so instead he goes to dorne, which changes the dynamic of his and show!cersei’s relationship, which changes the moves that show!cersei makes, which changes the moves the faith makes. you also have show!petyr who inexplicably tells show!cersei precisely where show!sansa is and why and somehow doesn’t end up dead but instead gets show!cersei to agree to name him warden of the north at the end of everything (an additional interesting layer to his shared glance with show!sansa at the end of season 6).

the trouble i find here is simple--and to me much shorter than any of the points i’ve made above--the decision to send show!sansa north in season 5 is directly connected in my view to the dorne subplot was poorly conceived on every possible count (“i’m going to honor my dead lover by....killing his entire family....” + badly shot fight sequences). and while i think that the king’s landing plotline in seasons 5 and 6 was better upon a rewatch than i was anticipating it being, i also think that there are major gaps in it and in how the north is being treated by a show!cersei who is doing what she can to consolidate her power, especially a show!cersei who has just lost the second of her three children and who believes that one of those responsible for the first’s death is in the north.

i think that more broadly, the writing and worldbuilding in season 5 went downhill; i can’t parse out if i think that’s because of the northern plot, or if it’s simply a correlation. it’s hard to know since it’s the first season where they depart so thoroughly from the books, which makes it hard to know until the winds of winter has been released and until game of thrones is finished as a television series. in terms of the show independently from the books, however, i think it’s undeniable that season 5 is a weak point and that the victories of season 6 are still built on a bad foundation which makes them harder to see as full-on victories. you can’t leave out season 5 (unless you’re talking about show!bran since he--mercifully?--wasn’t in season 5) in terms of talking about narrative because it’s the linchpin and it’s a bad linchpin. it’s how you get from a strong start to a--hopefully--relatively strong finish.

final thoughts

looking at show!sansa in a vacuum (ie pretending for a second that book!sansa does not exist), i feel just plain bad for what the writing of her was. it was hamfisted, unsubtle, poorly conceived, and poorly executed. it frustrates me that a narrative arc with all of those traits has a ripple effect on the narratives in the rest of the series, but that’s how it goes i suppose.

i’m proud of some of her choices: i will never not be thrilled by the way she #ended show!ramsay, and i’m curious about what show!bran’s return to winterfell will mean for her. i’m frustrated with some of her characterization, but lbr here are there major characters on game of thrones whose characterizations i adore? because for the most part the characters i am at my happiest watching are the minor ones these days because most of the major ones are inconsistent in a way that personally is very frustrating.

i don’t really know what else i think.

i also don’t think i have to. i don’t know if i will until the show is over. and i imagine that my thoughts will continue to grow and change as time goes on because that’s what thoughts do. i literally could not have foreseen writing some of what i’ve written in here two years ago when season 5 was airing.

but i suppose all this is where i am right now.

#books vs show #show sansa #sansa #the show #a year late with starbucks #this was cathartic #honestly writing this was so similar to writing the dany meta i wrote a little while ago #talking about show!sansa is hard #largely because there are major systemic issues with her writing and narrative #which like...she as a character is not to blame for #she's the first victim of those systemic issues #on a number of counts #but it makes it really hard to unpack when trying to talk about her #because where are her flaws and where are her *writing's* flaws #and how do you dilineate #and different people will handle it differently #which only makes it harder

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tomakeitbeautifultolive · 5 years

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Hey I was just wondering on your interpretation of Jonerys in the books? Because according to the bad leaks we will get Jon killing Dany, but in the book version its pretty clear that these two will marry and I don't necessarily see how those two things jive with each other, unless we get a literal repeat of the Azor Ahai/Nissa Nissa bs with them🤷🏼‍♀️ Thoughts? Because I have given up hope for the show and need some reassurance on the books after reading all of them plus the history books,,

Look, anon. Even in the fucking show these two have been paralleled to death - in a way that inextricably links their lives together, as seen here and here and here. When you learn that when Ian McElhinney (Barristan Selmy) confronted D&D about how he thought it was too early to kill off his character, it made them want to kill him more, out of spite… it makes it pretty clear what D&D are doing.

In their effort to adhere to shock and subversion… they’ve left mounds of unused foreshadowing all over the place (I’m still working on a master post of unused foreshadowing and plot elements). As you might’ve guessed, Jonerys foreshadowing is among those casualties - such as Dany mentioning she may have to enter in a political marriage at the end of season 6 before setting sail for Westeros, or the four different instances that challenge Dany’s belief that she can’t have children, that her family hasn’t seen its end, and that Longclaw will go to Jon’s children after him. As of right now, none of the leaks indicate that any of this meant anything other than dialogue filler. If it was never intended to amount to anything, then the writers should not have included these lines at all, especially in a show that was cut down from ten episodes to seven. Way, way too much emphasis was put on challenging the notion Daenerys can’t have children. It’s what a good writer might call ‘trimming the fat’ from the story, otherwise, it does nothing but muddy up the story unnecessarily.

Jonerys aside, D&D have killed so much foreshadowing in the series just to make a shocking ending (which by the way, makes no sense at all). I was flabbergasted when I read this quote from 2013:

When I asked Benioff and Weiss if it was possible to infer any overall intentionality to the upcoming 10 episodes, they sneered. “Themes are for eighth-grade book reports,” Benioff told me.

Uh, what?

As you may have seen, I already recently covered why Jon shouldn’t care so much about the incest aspect - in the comments I received, there was a great point about how Jon has borderline romantic feelings toward his cousin Arya (who he believes is his half-sister), tending to think of her when he wonders what his love interest’s (Ygritte) body looks like under all those clothes. In the original outline for the series, Jon and Arya were supposed to end up together or at least be involved in a love triangle with Tyrion.

As you see, in the books, Daenerys has already been groomed for the reality of being wedded to her brother, so her nephew won’t be some grand depature from this. She’s a dragonrider, and if the shows are to be believed, Jon will be, too - and if the majority of fans are to be believed, then there might be something magical about Targaryen blood that makes them different or unique or magical, hence the incest.

When you look at just how finely crafted this book series by GRRM is… it makes it really hard to believe that he’d throw out all of his foreshadowing for shock value.

“It’s easy to do things that are shocking or unexpected, but they have to grow out of characters. They have to grow out of situations. Otherwise, it’s just being shocking for being shocking.”—George R. R. Martin

I think we can all agree that season eight of Game of Thrones is all about futility, shock, nihilism. So, check out this quote:

Q: Early on, one critic described the TV series as bleak and embodying a nihilistic worldview, another bemoaned its “lack of moral signposts.” Have you ever worried that there’s some validity to that criticism?

A: No. That particular criticism is completely invalid. Actually, I think it’s moronic. My worldview is anything but nihilistic.—George R. R. Martin

It was George who said we’d get a bittersweet ending, not D&D. It was George who said he wanted a LotR-style ending, not D&D.

While there are many conflicting quotes out there about GRRM’s ending vs. D&D’s… This recent article published right after episode 3 had some interesting lines:

“Of course you have an emotional reaction. I mean, would I prefer they do it exactly the way I did it? Sure. It can also be… traumatic. Because sometimes their creative vision and your creative vision don’t match, and you get the famous creative differences thing — that leads to a lot of conflict.”—George R. R. Martin

My interpretation currently is that yes, Jonerys is real in the books…

(just as it was in the fucking show until they decided to abandon all preestablished groundwork and foundation) …and has been thoroughly foreshadowed - and not in a tragic way.

First of all, the series is called ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ - while this stands for many things from literal to metaphorical, I’d say it absolutely encompasses Jon and Dany. I have some very unpopular ideas that ice actually represents Daenerys and fire, Jon. Whether or not I’m right about that, we have some hints that Jon will ultimately accept his Targaryen identity…

Subtle clue about who he is, in one of his true house’s colors:

“The next time I see you, you’ll be all in black.”Jon forced himself to smile back. “It was always my color.”

He idolizes historical Targaryens:

“Daeren Targaryen was only fourteen when he conquered Dorne,” Jon said. The Young Dragon was one of his heroes.

He’d pretend to be Targaryens while playing as a child:

“I’m Prince Aemon the Dragonknight,” Jon would call out.

For Daenerys, we get this curious line:

“Mother of dragons, bride of fire…”

Bride could also be metaphorical in some way, sure, but let’s just say it’s literal. Jon is the dragon, the fire.

Okay, so for the books, I’ll try to hit the bullet points:

First and foremost, the pair are incredibly similar, both stepping into positions of rule after immersing themselves into a foreign culture, adapting to their way of life before making allies. Both Jon and Daenerys make grave mistakes while wielding power, and they learn from their mistakes. They’re being shaped into rulers.

Both fall in love, yet still feel alone:

“Her captain slept beside her, yet she was alone.” / "Even with Ygritte sleeping beside him, he felt alone.“

Daenerys dreams of her lover:

“It was never Jorah Mormont she dreamed of; her lover was always younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting shadow.”

Jon is described as a shadow:

“A shadow half-seen behind a fluttering curtain.” / “He would be condemned to be an outsider, the silent man standing in the shadows”

Daenerys also dreams of life as a wife and mother:

“In her dream they had been man and wife, simple folk who lived a simple life in a tall stone house with a red door.”

Both dream of children they will never have:

“I might someday hold a son of my own blood in my arms.” / "I will never have a little girl.“

From Jon’s first chapter, there are hints that Benjen knows his identity and that family might someday be important to Jon:

"You don’t know what you’re asking, Jon. The Night’s Watch is a sworn brotherhood. We have no families. None of us will ever father sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor. You are a boy of fourteen, not a man, not yet. Until you have known a woman, you cannot understand what you would be giving up.”

“I don’t care about that!” Jon said hotly.

“You might, if you knew what it meant,” Benjen said. “If you knew what the oath would cost you, you might be less eager to pay the price, son.”

We have those quotes from Maester Aemon, that hint that Jon might choose love or a child over duty:

“What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”

While yes, Aemon hints that it is both glory and tragedy, we’re coming off a long, long line of tragic Targaryen love stories - the difference here being that one of these Targaryens is out to break the wheel that destroyed so many of these star-crossed, doomed Targaryens loves (Rhaegar/Lyanna, Duncan/Jenny, Daemon/Daenerys, Aemon/Naerys, etc).

Blue roses are linked to Lyanna Stark or even House Stark in general. In a vision, Daenerys sees:

“A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness.”

Meanwhile, there is foreshadowing that Dany will help Jon’s effort against the white walkers with lines like these:

“He might as well wish for another thousand men, and maybe a dragon or three.”

Daenerys, herself, has a weird moment with some ants while she wakes in the Dothraki Sea, brushing them off of her body as they swarm over a wall:

“To them these tumbledown stones must loom as huge as the Wall of Westeros. The biggest wall in all the world, her brother Viserys used to say, as proud as if he’d built it himself.”

Around the same time, Jon is killed, whispering to his wolf:

“Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. He gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold…

Meanwhile, after ‘opening her third eye’ with some berries, Daenerys hears the call of a wolf all the way over in Essos:

“Off in the distance, a wolf howled. The sound made her feel sad and lonely.”

We can extrapolate that this is, in fact, Ghost… as first, there don’t seem to be wolves in the Dothraki Sea, but also this line from Bran also provides context:

“Here in the chill damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched Ghost and talked to Jon.”

Now that we know Jon’s true name (at least according to the show), this curious line from Daenerys also hints she might marry Jon:

“A crown should not sit easy on the head. One of her royal forebears had said that, once. Some Aegon, but which one? Five Aegons had ruled the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. There would have been a sixth, but the Usurper’s dogs had murdered her brother’s son when he was still a babe at the breast. If he had lived, I might have married him.”

Meanwhile, Jon is infatuated with Val, a woman who sounds an awful lot like a precursor to Daenerys, who is a warrior woman with silver-pale hair… Jon is also reminded of Val’s hips and breasts and that she’s 'well made for whelping children’…

“The light of the half-moon turned Vals honey-blond hair a pale silver and left her cheeks as white as snow. She took a deep breath. The air tastes sweet.”

“Lonely and lovely and lethal, Jon Snow reflected, and I might have had her.”

“A warrior princess, he decided, not some willowy creature who sits up in a tower, brushing her hair and waiting for some knight to rescue her.”

As for GRRM, he told a helpful clue to director Alan Taylor circa season one of Game of Thrones:

“Anyways, he alluded to the fact that Jon and Dany were the point, kind of. That, at the time, there was a huge, vast array of characters, and Jon was a lowly, you know, bastard son. So it wasn’t clear to us at the time, but he did sort of say things that made it clear that the meeting and the convergence of Jon and Dany were sort of the point of the series. So, I was happy that a big step forward was taken in the episode I got to do this season is where he has fallen for her both, you know, emotionally and politically I think.”

But that’s not all. I did write a meta about the mother goddess Danu and her parallels with Dany - and this, to me, rings much more true to who Daenerys is in the books rather than whatever impostor is parading around in Dany’s skin on screen in season eight.

There is a lot of proof that GRRM puts a LOT of thought and detail into his books - even down to the Starks ‘howling’ and ‘growling’ and the Lannisters ‘roaring’. I’ve uncovered a cool trend where many of the names he assigns to characters reflect their numerological gemstone house colors - and the names he chooses all shed some light on the characters they are given to, such as Bran meaning ‘raven’ or Sandor meaning ‘defender of man’ or Gendry meaning ‘son-in-law’.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about these things, and I just cannot see GRRM throwing out all of his foreshadowing or all of the clever little things he’s been hinting at since book once, all for the sake of shock value or subverting expectations… That’s not his style and he speaks out against it.

Bearing that in mind, the clear mad queen is Cersei, who shares virtually every parallel to Aerys Targaryen - the way she tortures parent and child chained just out of reach from one another, the way torture sexually excites her, the way she was tortured into madness, and straight down to her wildfire use. Daenerys better fits the archetype of an anti-hero rather than a straight villain. With only two books left and still no signs of madness… I just don’t see it going down this way in the books.

As for whatever just happened with Daenerys, I’ve been given a compelling argument that in the books, as she squares off with (f)Aegon Targaryen, or, Young Griff, in an effort to expose the Mummer’s Dragon, she might accidentally set off these wildfire traps that make her look just like her father, and perhaps she even goes a little mad with grief.

Especially considering that ASOIAF is so heavily based on Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, which share countless parallels, such as:

Norn (White foxes) → The Others (White walkers)

Sithi (Dawn children) → Singers (Children of the forest)

Witchwood → Weirwood

The Storm King → Night’s King

Ineluki → Azor Ahai

Sorrow → Lightbringer

Black iron → Dragonglass

Nisse → Nissa Nissa

Hayholt Castle → Winterfell Castle

Green Angel Tower → Winterfell Crypts

Simon Snowlock (secret heritage) → Jon Snow

Princess Miriamele (disguised as a boy) → Arya Stark

Warring brothers King Elias/Josua → Stannis/Renly

Tailed star → Red comet

Black priest Pryrates → Red priest Melisandre

Daenerys is suspected to be the Princess Maegwin figure, a woman who “is forced to watch as forces conquer her people and is eventually driven to madness in her desperation to save them.”

You make a good point about Fire & Blood and ASOIAF prehistory, too. Aside from the doomed Targaryen love stories I mentioned earlier, we get another history book that basically gives us a rundown of various Targaryen ladies who never got to be queen. I’d say this book has a strong feminist message - and might even hint that the last vestige of House Targaryen just might accomplish what her foremothers could not - finally becoming the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with a clip from the man, himself, about Dany:

youtube

“From my mother’s stories, I always had this kind of sense that I was like disinherited royalty. Here was this dock that my great-grandfather built - it wasn’t ours anymore. Here was this house that my mother had been born in - we didn’t own this house anymore. We didn’t own any house, we had an apartment. So it was like, ugh, I came from greatness - like Dany! And I will take back what is mine with Fire and Blood! I think on some level, that must’ve gotten to me.”—George R. R. Martin

I could be wrong about all of this, of course… but that’s my current take. 🤷

#answered #got leaks #got spoilers #jonerys #anti got #anti d&d #yeah my friend is still over but caught a quick nap lol #I will get to messages and such later ♥

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simplemlmsponsoring · 5 years

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New Post has been published on http://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/copywriting/chief-content-officer-a-year-of-insights/

Chief Content Officer: A Year of Insights

Has it been a whole year already? Well, not really. As I write this it’s still November and as you’re reading this, it’s the third week in December. A lot can happen in that time. But, assuming this ball of rock we live on successfully completes its routine circuit of the sun once more without major incident, it seems as good a time as any to reflect on how much has changed over the previous 12 months.

One of the biggest changes for Chief Content Officer magazine happened at the beginning of 2018. After seven years and 36 issues, Clare McDermott handed the editor’s red pen over to me in an emotional ritual involving arcane incantations, a branding iron, and a pledge to forever cast out the Oxford comma. (Stares hard at the blog editor. Get out of that!) (Blog editor’s response: Sorry, we use that comma here. We can’t afford any penalties resulting from missing commas.)

While I waited for the burning pain from the ritual to subside so I could sit down again, Clare’s final issue in February set a high bar for me to follow.

Finding the right words (February 2018)

The theme of content effectiveness – never mind how many people clicked on the content but is it any good – popped up more than a few times across 2018. Fergal McGovern kicked things off in February with an article on the UX of words.

I’m a word nerd, grammar pedant, and clarity zealot in the same way a car mechanic is a pedant about the right and wrong way to connect the flange to the whotsit. (The last sentence is also why I don’t service my own car.) So, Fergal’s article felt like a rallying cry for me and any other writer who has had to argue with stakeholders about why their buzzword bingo content does not sound more “professional.”

Fergal points out that the average U.S. resident reads at a seventh- or eighth-grade level. Before you complain about the education system, a user’s experience isn’t just about reading capability. As he argues, “even highly educated people disengage rather than spend the mental energy to unpack dense, complicated prose.” If you’ve ever struggled to get past the opening paragraphs of an overly formal, dry-as-biscuits white paper, you’ll know what he means.

People don’t have the mental energy to unpack a dry-as-biscuits white paper, says @kimota. Click To Tweet

“While web analytics can show page views, dwell times and usage paths, they won’t reveal issues with the content itself,” he writes. Now that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.

Also in February, Dan Hatch explained How to Train Your Journalist. Disappointingly, his piece wasn’t a low-budget sequel to the popular animated film series about dragons. Instead, Dan described how to overcome the challenges many journalists face when they first start to write on behalf of a brand.

“Journalism is a vocation,” he writes. “It’s also a profession that has a special place in democracy – holding governments, corporations, and individuals accountable.

“Gosh, but that can give you an ego. For some reporters, that can be hard to let go. And what you, as the person employing them, end up with are writers who think they’re too good to be writing the content you’re commissioning.”

Ouch. But before you think Dan is arguing that journalists are prima donnas to be avoided, he provides advice on how to harness a journalist’s nose for a strong story and knack for compelling and highly readable prose.

“They will adjust, I promise. But they might find this uncomfortable to start with – after all, someone who likely isn’t a writer is telling them how to write.”

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

A Primer to Boost Your Content’s Readability 4 Real-Life Ledes: Why They Work (and What Could Be Better)

Changing tools and strategies (May 2018)

The May issue was my first as editor, so I’m incredibly indebted to the rest of the team for helping me to make it such a great one. I still adore the cover by CCO designer Crystal Madrilejos, who has an enviable knack for turning vague, half-baked ideas from me into incredibly striking imagery.

Inside, I interviewed the always fascinating Joe Chernov to get to the bottom of account-based marketing (ABM) and why content marketers should care. “Yes, the funnel still has a top,” Joe explained. “It’s just a narrower top.”

You still need that top-of-funnel content, but you need to resist the temptation to aspire to a larger audience. What you want is a greater composition of the right audience.”

ABM resists the temptation to aspire to a larger audience in favor of the right audience, says @jchernov. Click To Tweet

A couple of pages later, Clare talked to strategist and cultural mythologist John Bucher (winner of this year’s coolest job title award) about whether the oft-heralded virtual reality boom is ever going to arrive. “VR is a popular buzzword, but as far as everyone having a headset … we’re not quite there,” he said.

VR is a popular buzzword, but as far as everyone having a headset … we’re not quite there. @johnkbucher Click To Tweet

However, John’s enthusiasm for VR isn’t dampened. He is encouraged by the ways in which some companies have begun to experiment with augmented reality (AR), which he sees as a gateway into VR for many people. “Creators of this technology are using the tools people already have, their smartphones, to add practical functionality to their daily experiences – something that lies at the core mission of so many brands,” he said.

If you’re still not convinced, Clare and John provide examples of how brands are using AR and VR successfully today. AR/VR may not be everyone’s reality just yet, but it has certainly become enough of a reality for some brands to create powerful new experiences for their audiences and consumers.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 13 Smart Brands Using Technology to Power Their Content Different pathways to great content (August 2018)

The August issue celebrated the gaming theme of this year’s Content Marketing World by turning the magazine into a choose-your-own-adventure book, which some of you may be old enough to remember (please don’t let me be the only one). Every article concluded with a series of options to determine which article to read next and which page to turn to.

Whether any readers followed these options from article to article or merely chuckled at the running gag, I don’t know. But I can assure you, all the possible pathways through the magazine link up to lead the intrepid reader to the final confrontation with Andrew Davis’ Unsolicited Advice column on page 54. I know because I spent far more hours than I should have making sure all the options and pathways worked.

Click to enlarge

Speaking of Andrew, one page is never enough to contain his genius. I was more than excited when he agreed to also give me (and you) a feature article for this issue as well – Capture and Keep Your Audience’s Attention. This article was also the perfect appetizer for his knockout keynote at Content Marketing World, which kept the audience hooked to the end while telling us how to hook an audience to the end.

“If your ‘learn more,’ ‘download now,’ or ‘buy now’ buttons are the destination and your content consumers never make it to the end of the video, how can you expect them to take action,” he asked.

Andrew described how to create suspense within your content – not by adding monsters or serial killers but by keeping the audience curious, holding back the answers to central questions until the end. “When someone says, ‘Your content is too long,’ what they’re really saying is ‘I ran out of questions before you ran out of content,’” Andrew writes.

Create suspense within your #content by keeping your audience curious, says @DrewDavisHere. Click To Tweet

One of the most fun articles I worked on this year was Comics: The Most Powerful Medium You’re Not Using. Not only could I release my inner geek, but I got to interview content marketer Buddy Scalera (about his other life as a comic writer) and Darren Sanchez of Marvel Custom Solutions.

“We are visual learners,” Buddy said. “A picture can help somebody to understand what you want them to do, whereas prose requires an abstract to concrete translation that not everybody’s going to be able to do.”

Of course, most people associate comics with certain genres and particularly superheroes. In the same article, Elissa Johnsen of Takeda Pharmaceuticals described how partnering with Marvel resulted in a graphic novel and ongoing comic series designed to spread information and provide support to people suffering from inflammatory bowel disorder. “Using superheroes and the world of graphic illustration allowed Takeda to help empower people living with IBD to overcome the unpredictability, anxiety, and stigma around the disease,” Elissa said.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

The Content Marketer’s Guide to Story Structure 2 Things to Know About Visual Content Strategy in 2019

Data crunching or data crunched (November 2018)

The November issue delved into data-driven content, with a series of articles that explored data’s changing role at different stages of the content strategy. Carmen Hill spoke with Julie Wisdom of London agency ALIAS Partners about the types of data that can sharpen the focus of your content strategy before you really begin. Meanwhile, Clare discussed data’s role in the production stages, and how conducting some original research can give your content greater authority.

Finally, Sarah Mitchell took to her soapbox in 20/20 hindsight to argue that some commonly used metrics don’t actually reveal very much. With additional comments from Rand Fishkin, Sarah describes why certain metrics might look impressive but are quite useless when determining how the content impacts the business bottom line.

Too many marketers mistakenly rely on the same metrics regardless of #content’s purpose, says @SarahMitchellOz. Click To Tweet

“The marketing metrics we use are disconnected from the things that actually impact the business goal,” Rand said.

Beyond the numbers

My wrap-up started with Fergal McGovern arguing that most metrics don’t reveal that much about content quality. It ended with Rand Fishkin making a very similar point.

So what is quality content? What are the opportunities (and limitations) of data? I think it’s safe to say these are just two themes CCO will continue to poke with variously shaped sticks — and expert opinions — throughout 2019.

Ready for one more spin around the sun?

Want to make sure you’re one of the first to know when CCO 2.0 arrives on site? Subscribe today to the free weekday newsletter.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Chief Content Officer: A Year of Insights appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Read more: contentmarketinginstitute.com

#article #content #ndash #says #some #still #which #your #COPYWRITING

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