#it's obviously been a second since i've seen the s6 finale but shit was going on

[imjustavenuxwithaboomerang]

is anyone else thinking about the fact that the actresses playing jeeyun and charlie in 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: lone star respectively are gonna be visibly older by the time filming starts...

[janiedean]

Hey, lately I've seen a lot of people hate on book!Tyrion and talk about what a terrible person he is and wanted to hear your take on that, because I don't really get it. I think that he is a really interesting character in the books, more so than in the second half of the show, if you ask me.

(sorry for replying this late I needed time to get to it and stuff happened haha)

soooo... tldr: I think *tumblr* has a shitload of issues with tyrion that are 90% rooted in the fact that this website thinks hating men is cool/that men are the worst always *and* also only cries ableism when it’s convenient or to call ableist things that are not in fact such (ie ‘omg if you use stupid is ableist’ which... automatically implies that anyone with a disability is *stupid* and the likes), and in tyrion’s case there’s.... an overlap of those specific issues added to the fact that since he’s a general fan favorite regardless of any fault of his then it’s fine to trash on him. going in depth on it:

now, there’s admittedly a difference in between book and show tyrion in the sense that the show version is a lot less gray and has cut on a lot of material in that sense, but like...... it’s d&d who after they decided to chunk the book storyline couldn’t write him properly so I’m not touching that topic because it’s not *his* issue, it’s theirs, and as you said... well obv. he’s more interesting in the books, because he has a lot more layers and he actually does something post-asos instead of rehashing the same three jokes that aren’t even on par with *his* book humor because he’s too smart for d&d to pull off correctly (I mean from S6 to S8 they managed to give him good lines in... the finale? PROBABLY? but they can’t write him, it’s their problem);

when it comes to book!tyrion, he obviously has faults same as 99,9% of the characters in these books, but all of those faults are... absolutely understandable given his background? I mean, so he hates his father and his sister, has fairly unhealthy coping methods and that got worse after asos, but... he comes from a lifetime of parental/familial abuse that crowned with tywin forcing him to rape his then-wife who actually did love him and convincing him he was unlovable, cersei was molesting him in the cradle and the only person who cared about him outside the uncles brigade which wasn’t around all the time was jaime who went off to get traumatized for himself at thirteen, and that just because of how he looks and for his disability, do we ask him to be a perfectly adjusted person? not really, and actually the fact that he tries to be better than 99% of his family all the time and that he actually has a lot of empathy for disadvantaged people and empathy in general says a lot about how he’s a pretty damn decent person, not a terrible one;

now, I think that this fandom on tumblr has ten problems with him because in order, the fact that he’s a man already puts him on a disadvantaged level but that’s common to most guys in this fandom like on tumblr in this fandom if a female character fucks up and a male character fucks up, the latter will be called out upon it way more than than the female character. also, abused male characters don’t get recognition for that 99% of the time. but that also means that his disability gets brushed off/ignored because since **according to tumblr standards** it’s not stopping him from doing most of what he’d like and no one takes it into account, his abuse gets brushed off/ignored because WELL HE’S NOT THE ONLY ONE, the fact that he’s a man means he has male privilege and whatever the fuck else and since he’s technically (in the book at least) Not Standard Attractive then he doesn’t even get the shitload of excuses hot people get in virtue of being hot;

also, there’s a certain attitude I really don’t like at all whatsoever to describe the fact that in his POVs he always goes about how much he hates his father/cersei or WHERE DO THE WHORES GO in adwd as whining/being unable to get over it/dying of self-pity but like.......... that’s..... how he copes with knowing he’s been treated like shit? like, thing is: in a literary genius foil with his brother who has no idea of the crap he was unjustly subjected to if not very subconsciously and whose coping method is *going away* and/or forgetting about things and/or not thinking about them, tyrion’s coping method is never letting himself forget it and honestly.... so he thinks shit about his father and sister all the time? tough luck, they’re his abusers, ofc he does. he can’t get over thinking no one will love him because of his looks? tough luck, he was told that all his life and when he found someone he thought did tywin organized that rouse so he’d think she was with him for money and he forced him to rape her which is also called rape by proxy so he’s also a rape victim and he was thirteen? wow, if I were him ie someone whose first advice to a main character in these books was ‘never forget about your weaknesses and make them your armor so people can’t hurt you with them’ then I also would be thinking about that all the time. he’s an abuse victim and he’s not away from his abusers until the end of asos, what are we expecting, that he’d get over it? actually it’s a way healthier method than jaime’s because at least he knows he’s been wronged all along and he can see both c. and his father for the assholes they are but at least he knows that and he harbors no illusions about them even if he still kind of wants them to love him same as most people would, but like... that’s not whining? that’s stuff that it’s absolutely normal he should be thinking? also, the where do the whores go thing in adwd is....... basically he just learned that his biggest trauma was not what he believed it was and he has to reconcile himself with the fact that a) tysha never not loved him, b) jaime was in on it even if he subconsciously knows that he also was a victim in that ploy (when he dreams about killing him in adwd he’s crying, sooooo) and he has to know because jaime told him out of *guilt* and he damn well knows it, like he’s re-elaborating the entire thing, obviously he’s fixated on it??? I mean the moment I figured out a specific thing that I hadn’t realized about an unhealthy relationship I had with someone I spent a month thinking about it every other moment for a month and it was nowhere near that same level of terrible, and I’m surprised that he thinks about that for all of adwd? like, I find those justifications very iffy and incredibly dismissive of a) his trauma b) his abuse victim status;

also there’s the whole HE KILLED TYWIN thing but..... I honestly am baffled it’s even a thing fandom thinks he should pay for or anything. like, the problem is that he killed *shae* in that context, and that was also out of feeling betrayed after just learning of how it really went with tysha, and that’s why he’s on the downward spiral/his lowest point in adwd, but.... tywin? really? like tywin is an asshole period, he abused him all his life, he traumatized the shit out of him for his entire life and made him grow up thinking he was unlovable and outright told him he wanted to drown him, and not even counting what tywin did to *him*, we’re talking about someone who went and calmly planned the red wedding the moment he realized there was no way he could take out robb without treachery and didn’t feel particularly bothered by it on a moral level, and we’re sad that he died or think that tyrion has to pay for it because he killed his abuser who also never really was a father to him in any sense of the word? like what the fuck does tyrion owe tywin? literally nothing and tbqh it’s tywin narratively reaping the seeds of what he’s sown if tyrion goes and offs him. like, a lot of people re fixed on this thing about OH HE KILLED HIS FATHER HE DOESN’T DESERVE REDEMPTION but the narrative doesn’t ask it of him. he has to make peace and find his own redemption for killing shae at that point, not tywin. tywin had it coming since the moment he showed up. like, saying he’s a horrible person for offing someone who only ever abused the shit out of him doesn’t really fly as far as I’m concerned;

at this point we get to ‘okay but in adwd he does a lot of questionable things’, but..... a) he’s supposed to be at his lowest narrative point and a lot of people have done a lot of questionable things at their lowest narrative point in these books, I mean if I think theon can have a nice life and get better after his WF stint I can think that tyrion can have a nice life and get better after his adwd stint, b) it’s nothing he’ll be proud of when he pulls his shit together (and he already had started by the end of adwd) but I mean... it’s nothing worse than most people who have to pull their shit together in these books have done lately, like honestly writing him off as a horrible person because of his adwd stint reaaaaally reeks to me of double standard which is based on the fact that no one around here wants to recognize that he’s an abuse victim and his reactions are valid and that yes his disability singles him out and is the reason people target him and not his merits or demerits. I mean he even spells it out, he’s been on trial for being a dwarf all his life/everyone already judged him for that regardless of his actual faults, and that’s not him being delusional, it’s the truth. he’s a person who certainly has faults same as anyone else but guess what a lot of people around fandom do what tywin does and exacerbate them if you ask my opinion;

(that also can be seen when it comes to what people think of the guy being shipped around because believe me I wish I hadn’t seen people saying he couldn’t be a good option for sansa because he’s not the beautiful gallant stainless dude she deserves, and I’m saying it as a sansan shipper first but come the fuck on) (other than that tyrion/bronn is ofc the superior ship but nvm me)

also there’s the whole thing where people decided that since tyrion is a general fandom fave in between the w.org/reddit crowd/general audience then obviously if the dudebros (ugh i can’t with that generalization anymore sure af freefolk is less puritan than tumblr from what I see) like him then he has to also incarnate the Worst Type Of Male Fan Of Asoiaf In Existence and like........ now, I don’t doubt that when it comes to the *general audience* there’s a lot of misconceptions going around plus a lot of his character faults get ignored (I mean when I went on w.org the first time the first thread I ran into was like ‘wow sansa is a bitch for not kneeling at once when they married and making him feel like shit’ I mean that’s a situation where you should feel bad for both but calling her a bitch for not wanting to kneel while marrying a guy she was forced to who also belonged to the family that killed her brother and mother and her father too is like......... come on seriously?) but that’s the same with most fandom faves in any fandom, it doesn’t mean that if some of his fans see him with rose-tinted glasses then on this side of the pond we have to decide he sucks when he doesn’t, and as I said time and time again..... do we remember the last time that in any fandom the general audience favorite character who sells the merchandise more than anyone else is a disabled abuse victim who doesn’t shut up about it and tries to be better than anyone else thinks them able to? because I don’t and while tyrion is not top five asoiaf for me I’m very glad that *he* is the general audience favorite. so they don’t get the point or see him with rose-tinted glasses? happens to fandom faves in general, but it doesn’t mean that he’s a terrible person in the text just because the dudebro crowd (if we wanna call it like that but meh) likes him. so what, he is the audience fave? good, I’m beyond fine with him being the audience fave. I honestly don’t think it’s an argument that should even be brought up because ‘that character’s fans are shit so the character is automatically shit because we judged the fans on their supposed gender’ is not an argument. *shrug*

tldr: I think people on here exaggerate his flaws (that everyone has) and are bitchy about the fact that he is the general audience favorite because how dare a guy who’s as far as we know cishet (which is already bad for tumblr standards), not standard hot (crime!!), has a disability (which gets ignored 90% of the time when discussing his privilege or lack thereof), is an abuse victim who won’t let you forget it and you can’t deny/headcanon differently (which is a thing tumblr can’t accept - I mean, men being abuse victims, and with hc differently I mean that people outright deny that idk jaime was one because he doesn’t realize he was so you have to actually read into the text to realize it, but they can decide he’s not because it requires effort to put it together - or deny sandor was one because we don’t have his pov and we only see his destructive coping methods and so on - with tyrion they can’t because he never lets you forget he was and admitting it is apparently hard, also one of his abusers is a woman and We Do Not Admit That Women Can Be Abusers On Tumblr Dot Com) and who has fucked up but not worse than most people in these books be the audience favorite? WE JUST DON’T KNOW. personally I think he’s pretty damn great and an amazingly conceived/written character (I mean in a series where all the characters weren’t so well-rounded and I didn’t have other people I latched on before that he’d have totally been top three material for me he just got unlucky to be in the one series where everyone is well-rounded and there’s people that I resonate personally more with but really he’s an amazing character all around) and I can’t wait for him to pull his shit together in the next book and possibly get the nice ending he deserves along with better dialogue than d&d gave him, but from there to say he’s a horrible person.... geez. my list of horrible persons in these books runs very long and he’s nowhere near it. ofc he has faults but no character in these books is faultless except maybe gilly, and not even people under the age of twelve are faultless in these books come on. 

[thisisevenharderthannamingablog]

(1) Hello! I've seen many of your posts and meta and love your analysis of the story/characters, and with everything happening (or not happening) on the show lately, I was wondering if there is a point throughout the entirety of the series that you think they started to go off the rails? For me, S4 felt like a hot mess but finished with a fun finale and a great cliff-hanger leading into a fantastic S5A Camelot arc which could have easily been a full season. Since then, I feel like things have be

en on this downhill spiral with the writers not really knowing what to do with these characters anymore, rehashing the same storylines/drama/angst. They created such rich, dynamic characters throughout those first three seasons, and now they seem to have forgotten how to write for them, or perhaps it’s boredom. S3 seemed like it would have been a fantastic series finale, everything was, for the most part, wrapped up tidily with happy endings all around, and I often wonder if perhaps that was

the intent, not anticipating needing to write more and that’s why things have felt so off/forced ever since? Obviously not looking for answers on behalf of the writers, but curious as to your take on the progression of the stories as a whole. Seemed like things were done very deliberately early on, but not so much anymore. Perhaps it’s just me though and I missing something that a rewatch of the season/series as a whole will reveal, like the writers did indeed know exactly what they were doi

ng and where they were headed the whole time. Thank you again for sharing all your metas and posts, and for any insight you can provide with my very long and rambly question! :)

Wow! First of all, thank you. I have very much enjoyed writing about this show over the past few years. I’m delighted to hear that it’s provided some amusement to others in turn. :)

I’m not sure it’s possible to pinpoint “the” moment when things went south. I feel like there’s more than one factor at play.

First, I think they had a multi-year skeleton plot for SOME of the characters at the outset. They obviously did for Emma. I will grudgingly consider the idea that they had a plan for Regina, however little I enjoy the results. If they had one for Snowing, they threw it out when Ginny got pregnant. Rumple I’m not so sure about. I don’t think that plan was enormously detailed, though, at least in the later years; I feel like they’ve been winging it more every season.

This has led them to a bit of a stop and start pacing problem, like when 5a had everything in the universe crammed into it and 5b dawdled along without doing much, and now S6 has been largely spent treading water. They’ve run out of meat for Emma’s story. For Regina it seems like the idea they had, they did not execute very well, while Rumple’s current plot is something of a retread of his origin story.

So that’s one problem. I have sympathy for this one. They had no idea when they started it how many years they would have to tell the story. Pretty difficult to spread out your plots evenly in that case.

On a related note, most of the world-building has clearly been done just-in-time, leading to the rampant inconsistencies we all know and love. This one I do not have much sympathy for. It annoys me. These problems are largely avoidable. .

Second! Disney meddling was clearly A Thing in 4a, like holy shit what were they thinking. The episode summaries on Wikipedia are telling in their length. They are impossible to summarize, because there is too much going on, and the stories don’t mesh well at all. (I’ve got meta analyzing the problems with that arc as an entity, so I won’t go into that here.)

S4 also seems to be when the story… disconnected from itself, to some extent? I didn’t hate 4b like some people did, but I feel that it suffered a lot from that “just in time mythology” practice. So much of that arc felt off the cuff and clumsy - and none of it has ever been referred to again except in passing.

Remember back in S3, how rooted everything that happened was in the recent history of the main characters? And now we’ve got drive-by appearances by characters who are supposed to be incredibly important – Ingrid, Maleficent, Chloe, Lily, Hades – many of whom by rights should fall under the “family” umbrella that ties the show together, but have never been mentioned before, and will never be mentioned again.

This is a form of lowering the stakes, of reducing the consequences to the characters as a result of their choices. If life-shattering events happen on the regular and no one in the story even notices, the audience stops caring, too.  

Maybe 4a threw them off their stride, I don’t know, but it seems like they never quite recovered afterward. They have had great episodes and decent arcs, but they lost something. Adam and Eddy in particular have done a worse and worse job with the episodes they personally write starting with the 4a finale.

Which leads us to problem number three, in the current writer’s room. I haven’t seen Lost, so I have no idea what their writing was like in that series. I don’t know if this is a case of people who need editing not getting the constructive feedback they need, if they’re distracted by other projects, if they’re bored, if there was some change of personnel that had a major ripple effect, or what.

They wrote some fantastic early episodes. They were grim (“Heart is a Lonely Hunter”) and quirky (“Dreamy”) and they brought the story home with a bang (“A Land Without Magic”). They wrote my all-time fave “New York City Serenade,” for Pete’s sake.

And then S4 happened, since when they have written some of the hands-down worst episodes of this show. “Heroes and Villains” was an incoherent mess (which I actually took it upon myself to rewrite). “Dreamcatcher” was meh. “Swan Song” gleefully trampled over acres of relevant show mythology, relied on dubious characterization, and stated its own theme out loud five times, sign of a timid writer. “Souls of the Departed”… had some issues, and the less said about “An Untold Story” the better (for my blood pressure). And so it goes.

They seem determined to own the start and the ending of each season, but those episodes seem less and less connected to each other and to the rest of the story. The S3 finale was a thematic capstone of that season, based strongly on family, home, and new love. The S4 finale was fun, but sloppy. Since 4b was already thematically dubious, the connection to the preceding arc (you make yourself) wasn’t strong, and there was no unity at all with 4a. The S5 finale wasn’t even fun and literally had nothing to do with the stuff that preceded it. So while the S3 finale worked *because of* S1, the ones since then have felt increasingly less like part of their own story.

Ironically enough, the S3 finale that was supposed to be all about not changing anything in their AU is the only one of the three that was actually allowed to have any consequences, even if they turned out to be stupid consequences. The stakes have diminished every time.

To put it bluntly, at this point they don’t seem to know what they want to *do* with the story. They’re running out of important development points for the characters, and filling in with enough padding to open a couch factory. Cause and effect appear unreliable. They are recycling entire scenes from the same actual season – did no one notice? did someone notice and not bother speaking up? did someone get overruled? ‘Cause none of those are good things.

Character dynamics sound the same notes as they did two or three seasons ago. That’s jarring, because this is not otherwise written as an episodic, time stands still kind of show. They’ve always had a problem with writing toward an effect they want rather than figuring out the effect from the causes, but it seems to have gotten worse over the course of the show. It gets even worse when the characters appear to all have recurring amnesia regarding their own recent lives.

So… yeah. I don’t know what happened to them in S4, but it seems like that’s when they got off track, and it’s been getting worse.

Some negativity to start the day. :) Thanks for all the kind words. I am sure the S6 post-game analysis is going to be intense!