#;; such an overwhelming role in the subjugation of targaryen women???

[kaerinio]

this is my reminder to write a thing about dany and westerosi notions of propriety. the short of it? she don't give not one f*ck

[gascon-en-exil]

Joining the Game Late: S1E1 “Winter is Coming”

I’ll be starting off with a brief synopsis of each episode, so those following along don’t have to go back and rewatch or look up what happens in each one.

Synopsis

Suddenly, ice zombies. There’s a dead man at court and the queen and her brother are acting suspicious. Rigid Anglo legalism on display in the North in spite of the aforementioned ice zombies. Heavy-handed foreshadowing with dead animals and Bran climbing stuff. The king has a request for Ned and they’re very close, but don’t worry - there’s a dead woman in there to make it not weird. Jon gets called a bastard every two sentences and this makes him sad. Daenerys’s creepy brother marries her off to ethnic Other eye candy, she gets dragon eggs, and then the eye candy rapes her. Dead man’s widow, also Catelyn’s sister, suspects foul play and flees the capital. Bran discovers the Lannister twincest and gets shoved out a window.

Commentary

I had heard that the first few seasons of GoT were consistently decent to good, and after watching this pilot I have to say I’m genuinely impressed. Admittedly if I were coming into the show completely blind back in 2011 I’d have been overwhelmed trying to keep up with the characters and plotlines this episode sets up in very short order, but that’s one of the perks of approaching this kind of media in hindsight like I’m doing. As it stands there’s some interesting plots and some good material for a number of character arcs already, and I’ll be looking forward to watching some of them in particular develop.

But...yeah, like I thought I’m immediately not really into the Starks as the main PoV family. Ned quipping to Cat that “it’s your gods with all rules” is such a lie even when I barely know anything right now about the pseudo-Catholic faith of the southern kingdoms (except that the tolling of their bells for a funeral service sounds suspiciously similar to the bells rung before Mass), because these Northerners and their “old ways” keep to such simple-minded notions of oaths and justice and such. Also, the men of the Night’s Watch have to be celibate for...some reason; I guess with them freezing half to death at the edge of the world for the rest of their lives they’re expected to have blue balls in addition to blue everything else. It’s not like any of the Starks individually offend my sensibilities - hell, if they keep building Ned like this I might actually have an emotion when he gets executed and loses his decoy protagonist role - but nothing about their culture appeals to me. I hope the action shifts to the south soon, even if it’s mostly to the treacherous King’s Landing.

As for the party come up to visit them in Winterfell: Robert’s a boorish slob and I totally get why Cersei’s not into him, Cersei appears to have been placed in a terrible situation to which she’s responded by becoming terrible herself (fully understandable), Jaime is a handsome dick who’ll attempt to murder kids and has the worst taste in places to have a booty call (I would not fuck anyone on the floor of such a filthy tower), Tyrion gets to be poignant with Jon and has a couple of funny lines besides (what do they say about Northern girls, Tyrion? That they wear medieval jockstraps?), and Joffrey hasn’t said anything but I have no idea why Sansa thinks he’s so hot when he’s decidedly average. A crown in your inheritance is like having everyone around you wear super beer goggles, I suppose.

The Daenerys plotline hasn’t got much to it other than what I’ve already mentioned so far. At first I thought the detail about the Dothraki cutting off their braids when defeated in combat was a sign that they didn’t fight to the death and were more pragmatic than might be expected of a warrior culture...but then one of them gets disemboweled at wedding party and his opponent chops off his braid so what’s even the point? Is it just a dick joke? If that’s the case Khal Drogo is fittingly packing, because up until the rape scene he’s really just a built half-naked guy to ogle if you’re into that primitivist look. It’s not like there’s any other male nudity on offer, apart from a scene of Robb and Jon (plus that one guy who hangs around with them who hasn’t been named yet) all shirtless together and looking as bloodless and unimpressive as Anglos always do. But there’s so many topless women, eesh. I guess I should just try to get used to it. It’s a bit odd, too, because already there’s this undercurrent of how men use sex to control women, or how it’s just a hobby for some of them (like with Robert and Tyrion) even as all these topless scenes were clearly shot with the (straight) male gaze in mind. This plays into my theory as to why the details of Dany’s wedding night were changed from the book, where I’ve heard it’s consensual but where she’s also noticeably younger. The way it goes on the show allows it to keep the creepy factor while also casting an actress old enough to expose herself for the camera. So sex as power play used to subjugate women + fodder for fap material, set against a backdrop of a seaside cliff at sunset like a twisted harlequin romance novel cover.

Oh, and I forgot about the dragon eggs. If dragons are supposed to be extinct or nearly so and their eggs so incredibly rare, isn’t it a little strange that someone just gives Dany three of them as a wedding present? I know she’s the one to eventually hatch them, but it’s not like she or anyone else knows that at the time. Would the Targaryen association with dragons count as reason enough?

One last note on the gore: a minor reason I was holding off on watching GoT was because I’d heard that it was graphically violent which is not something I care for. Based on the first episode however the gore seems unrealistic or stylized enough to not bother me, though that could always change later.