#no but seriously visual art depicting that specific subject is so meta it makes me feel sososo sooooo good

[coquelicoq]

my two favorite subjects for a painting:

light reflecting off water

a woman sleeping soooo comfy cozy in bed

[secretlyatargaryen]

Tyrion and Zuko: Puppets Dancing on Strings

This is part two of a series comparing these characters. Click here to read part one.

"The seven-faced god has cheated me," he said. "My noble sire he made of purest gold, and gold he made my siblings, boy and girl. But I am formed of darker stuff, of bones and blood and clay, twisted into this rude shape you see before you."

The above quote is from one of the most meta-textual moments in the ASOIAF series. In Essos, Arya witnesses a play portraying the events of the series from a very skewed viewpoint. It’s Lannister propaganda, and Tyrion is portrayed as a Richard III-esque villain in contrast to his father and siblings of “purest gold.”

Similarly, ATLA also shows its awareness of its own narrative in the episode “The Ember Island Players,” in which the gaang witnesses a play of the events of their adventures. This play is Fire Nation propaganda, and portrays Zuko in the most negative light, as incompetent and then eventually killed as the villain of the story.

What these two moments in each narrative show us is not only both series’ meta-textual awareness, but also serves as a commentary on the story and characters from within. By the time we see this episode in ATLA, Zuko has joined the gaang and so we are inclined to sympathize with him and see the portrayal as skewed. In ASOIAF, the last time we have seen Tyrion is after he has been exiled from King’s Landing, and we know that the propaganda put forth is specifically meant to villainize him and portray him in the most inaccurate way possible, as we also know that he was not guilty of the crime of which he was accused.

What’s also interesting about the play, though, is that the words said by the Tyrion character mirror the fascist ideology of House Lannister and identify what marks Tyrion as separate from them. This fascist ideology is also present in the Fire Nation and is the reason for Zuko’s conflict with his family.

This article discusses the “fascist aesthetic” and how it often appears in science fiction and fantasy narratives, as well as its use in ASOIAF/GOT. It’s common with villains, who usually also represent a fascist ideology, but, as the article points out, it can also crop up with heroic narratives in some insidious ways.

Fascist art depicts, in Sontag’s words, “unlimited aspiration toward the high mystic goal, both beautiful and terrifying.”  It “celebrate[s] the rebirth of the body and of community, mediated through the worship of an irresistible leader.” It focuses on “the contrast between the clean and the impure, the incorruptible and the defiled, the physical and the mental, the joyful and the critical.”  It fetishizes “the holding in or confining of force; military precision.” Its characteristic subject matter is “vivid encounters of beautiful male bodies and death.”  In short, fascist art depicts the perfected, disciplined body in service of the perfected, disciplined state.  Its aesthetic principles are, in visual terms, clean geometric lines, chiseled physiques, and slow motion; and in musical terms, brass fanfares, pounding drumbeats, and pipe organs.  Its moral principles are strength, skill, obedience, order, joyful submission, and apocalyptic dissolution… and it’s this last that really set it apart from other aesthetics that glorify strength (of which, to be sure, there are plenty to go around).

Both the Fire Nation and the Lannisters embody these fascist aesthetics, as well as fascist ideologies. To understand what I mean by fascist ideologies, and how that ties into fascist aesthetics, look here:

Common themes among fascist movements include; nationalism (including racial nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, militarism, quasi-religion, masculinity and philosophy. Other aspects of fascism such as its "myth of decadence", anti‐egalitarianism and totalitarianism can be seen to originate from these ideas. These fundamental aspects however, can be attributed to a concept known as "Palingenetic ultranationalism", a theory proposed by Roger Griffin, that fascism is a synthesis of totalitarianism and ultranationalism sacralized through myth of national rebirth and regeneration. (source)

A lot of fantasy fiction uses these ideas as shorthand for villainy, even just using the aesthetic without a particular ideology behind it, but in both ASOIAF and ATLA we see both fascist aesthetics and fascist ideologies. Both House Lannister and the Fire Nation royal family have an obsession with national honor, pride, and debt. Both are capable of unspeakable cruelty in the name of superiority. Both also follow this narrative of rebirth which is upheld by Tywin when he restores House Lannister to a terrifying state of glory after his father’s disgrace, and Ozai when he tries to become the phoenix king. Both also have a frightening obsession with perfection, which is the heart of Tyrion and Zuko’s traumatic relationships with their families.

The above linked article on fascist aesthetics discusses Tyrion as a character who challenges fascist aesthetics, not just due to the fact that he has a congenital disability but because of the traits that make up his character.

The real challenge to fascist aesthetics comes from the series’ unperfected bodies. Some bodily abnormalities can be reconciled with fascist narratives — Jaime pretty clearly loses his hand just so that he can, through agonized struggle, climb the mountain, touch the peak, and reclaim his status as a perfected instrument of death.  Brienne’s harped-on ugliness is there so that we can focus on her bodily perfection in terms of skill and strength.  Varys’ castration is tied in with his utter dedication to serving the realm — the fascist body needs to be disciplined and perfect, but in all three of these cases bodily imperfections are just opportunities for more and further discipline.  But the same can’t be said of Tyrion.  He is quite precisely undisciplined. He drinks to excess.  He likes his food.  He has sex — he doesn’t make love, he has sex, and often, and never in idealized terms.  He pisses.  I don’t remember whether he shits or not, but others shit in his presence.  He cracks jokes.  He loses his temper and alienates his friends. All of this brings in the spirit of the carnival and the grotesque, which is the mortal enemy of fascist self-seriousness.

Here I discuss Zuko’s attempt to fit into a fascist aesthetic which is introduced only to be undercut in the narrative pretty early on - Zuko, despite the appearance he wants to project, is decidedly undisciplined - and then slowly eroded as his character undergoes a change. Tyrion undergoes some similar costume changes, going from proudly wearing his Lannister colors to wearing clothes that are not his own while in exile and having a crisis of identity. Tyrion’s dwarfism, like Zuko’s scar, is something that marks him as the unperfected, as it is something that he cannot change about himself even if he changes his appearance.

Both House Lannister and the Fire Nation royal family also embody fascist ideologies on a personal level within their own family structure.

Warning for in-depth discussion of abuse below.

At the beginning of ASOIAF we get the sense of Tyrion as someone who was fairly directionless. This post speculates about what Tyrion’s life may have been like pre-series. He’s the son of a wealthy lord and technically the heir, although the unspoken truth - until Tyrion’s conversation with his father in ASOS - is that Tywin will never let him inherit Casterly Rock, and indeed Tyrion was never treated as the heir, which is why Tyrion realizes during that conversation that it was something he “must have always known.” Tywin sees Tyrion as unsuitable to inherit because of his dwarfism, but cites other traits - real and imagined - as reasons why he will never let his son inherit. But the kicker here is that a lot of this is stuff that Tywin created and nurtured. Tywin creates Tyrion’s complex with regard to sex workers and then treats it as a sign of inherent weakness. He dismisses Tyrion’s intelligence as “low cunning.” He humiliates and belittles his son in private and in public, and then treats Tyrion’s justified frustration and anger as if it is a natural state that reinforces his unworthiness. Tywin’s abuse of Tyrion is systematic, punctuated by brutal violence but also infused with subtle gaslighting, to the point where Tyrion internalizes this belief.

This is strikingly similar to what Ozai does to Zuko, who is similarly directionless at the beginning of his story, removed from succession, and on an impossible mission to chase the Avatar, who hasn’t been seen in a hundred years. There are many points in the series, in the flashbacks to his childhood, in how Zuko thinks about his father, and in his relationship with Azula, that tell me that Zuko’s banishment was not just the result of one incident of defiance (and I will talk more on the actual incident of Zuko’s banishment later). It was the result of years of failing to live up to his father’s impossible standards of perfection. There is something in Zuko from even his earliest childhood that is abhorrent to Ozai’s fascistic worldview. Zuko’s inability to be as good at bending as his sister - and what’s worse, his younger sister - his emotional nature, displayed both positively (shown in his love for his mother and his tendency towards nonviolence in the flashbacks), and negatively (displays of frustration and anger which show a lack of control), and his inability to control himself when he speaks out in the war council, all of these things mark him as imperfect and therefore weak. And Ozai’s response to this is to put everything into his other child, grooming her as his true heir, while treating Zuko in a way that only reinforces the perception that Zuko is unworthy. Zuko absolutely believes this about himself at the beginning of the series.

Zuko: You're like my sister. Everything always came easy to her. She's a firebending prodigy, and everyone adores her. My father says she was born lucky; he says I was lucky to be born.

The way that Ozai scars Zuko during the agni kai that results in his banishment is an outward physical manifestation of Zuko’s (perceived) imperfection. The difference is that while Tyrion’s physical imperfection - his dwarfism - was something he was born with that caused Tywin to perceive it as a symbol of all that was inherently wrong with Tyrion’s character, Ozai scars Zuko to make what he sees as Zuko’s flawed character appear outward for all to see. Both these things stem from the same source, or rather, the same two things, inextricably linked: pride and shame.

Iroh: Pride is not the antidote to shame, but its source.

I’ve written a lot about how Lannisters are obsessed with shame, because Lannisters are obsessed with pride. This is shown symbolically in their association with Lions (”Hear Me Roar”) and the colors red and gold. The Fire Nation colors are also red and gold, evoking royalty and strength, plus the added symbology of fire, which actually is also associated with the Lannisters. Game of Thrones made good use of this imagery as well to show the Lannisters’ power in King’s Landing:

Compare to the Fire Lord throne in ATLA:

This is all part of the fascist aesthetic, of course. Both ATLA and ASOIAF acknowledge that fire can have other, less destructive meanings as well. More on that later.

Aside from the history of constant emotional abuse, Tyrion and Zuko also have a striking parallel in what is the most traumatic moment of either of their lives. For Zuko, it’s when his father burns and scars him during the agni kai. For Tyrion, this is when his father forces him to participate in Tysha’s abuse. These two acts are horrifically similar in their motive, the way they are carried out by the abuser, and what they were designed to do to the victim. They also both happen when the victim is thirteen years old, an age when children start to begin their long journey to adulthood, but still have far to go before they can be considered separate from their parents.

Upon first viewing the scene where Zuko's father challenges him to an agni kai, it's framed as being about honor, and Zuko refuses to fight his father on the grounds that it would be dishonorable, but that's exactly why Ozai challenges him in the first place. Because Zuko has already challenged his father by speaking out against him in the war council, and this is the point of Ozai's lesson. He is saying to his son, you have no honor and no right to challenge me, in any and all ways. I control you. And when you look at it after viewing the entirety of the history of abuse in that family, it becomes something deeper than just being about honor and it's not even about what Zuko did. Because the constant dynamic in that family was one in which Zuko was repeatedly dominated and taught that he was inferior. And the way it's framed by Ozai, as being about regaining lost honor, is a lie. Because in Ozai's eyes, Zuko never had any honor to begin with, and that's what he shows him by burning him and scarring him. In that context, Zuko was never going to be able to stand up to Ozai, and it becomes less about a child refusing to fight his father and more about a child too terrified and downtrodden to even know how to stand up to his father while his father mutilated him. Ozai knows this and does it deliberately, which makes the whole thing even more horrifying. And at face value, it initially appears that Ozai's burning of Zuko is much more violent and motivated by anger than Tywin's abuse of Tyrion, but realizing the dynamics at play here and realizing that Zuko would have never been able to fight back and that Ozai deliberately intended it that way, this makes it a much more cold, calculating attack on his son in the context of a lifetime of convincing his son not only of his own inherent unworthiness, but that Zuko was actually to blame for it. Which makes Ozai very like Tywin in his calculated cruelty, his ability to convince his victims that he is right and all-powerful, and his campaign of dehumanization against his own son.

Similarly, when Tywin forces Tyrion to watch and participate in the gang rape of Tysha, his first love - raping Tyrion as well in the process - he frames it in the context of honor/shame/pride. He tells Tyrion that this is a lesson about marrying below his station, and manipulates Tyrion into believing it. I’ve written a lot about Tyrion and Tysha on my blog so I’m not going to rehash all that. What I am going to say is that these two incidents, both violations of their victims’ bodily autonomy, are horrifically similar in their ability to convince their victims that they were the cause of the abuse, and unfortunately in the ASOIAF fandom there are a lot of people who seem to believe that Tyrion is at fault. The difference, I suppose, is that Tysha was also abused, whereas Zuko’s action of defiance hurt no one but himself, but I would argue similarly that Tyrion had no possible way to stand up to Tywin; that, similarly to the impossible situation of the agni kai that Ozai puts Zuko in, it would not have mattered whether he had fought back or cowered in fear. The purpose is to ensure that the victim believes that the abuser is the one in control. The effect is an inability for the victim to trust their own judgments and perceptions, thus keeping them dependent upon the abuser. We see this in the way that both Zuko and Tyrion have internalized the guilt of what was done to them. Both of their narratives hinge on unlearning what their fathers have taught them in the most violent way possible.

And all this creates a never-ending cycle of shame. Tywin and Ozai attacked their sons because of perceived weakness which was seen as a shameful reflection of their own self image, because of the intolerance of any sort of imperfection in both men’s worldview.

We don't actually get a whole lot of characterization of Ozai as a person. What we get is mostly through others, how he treats his son, how he treats his daughter. But another way that we can understand Ozai and learn more about the dynamic in that family is through Iroh.

Iroh is a character who we are introduced to as something of a mirror to what Zuko could be. While Zuko is indoctrinated into the Fire Nation ideology, Iroh has already undergone his transformation from star general to the wise mentor and guiding light that he tries to be for Zuko by the time the story begins. And Iroh's story is one that is firmly opposed to the fascist belief in superiority and particularly, military greatness. Iroh is another example of the unperfected, both physically and mentally, although it might be more accurate to say he is the once-perfected. Iroh's biggest tragedy is his military disgrace following the death of his son, who he loved deeply. Even before this occurrence, though, Iroh is identified as weak by both Ozai and Azula, and this is used by Ozai to usurp him in the line of inheritance. But it's his emotional breakdown after his son's death that really cements him as a character opposed to the fascist ideology, because it's a firmly anti-war, anti-imperialist message. An acknowledgment that you can have all the power in the world and still lose what is most valuable to you. By the time we see him in the series, he is fat and elderly, kind to even his enemies, makes clear both his love for his son and his love for his nephew, and indulges in simple pleasures, like tea and pai sho. He's a pretty identifiable "good" character, although he does sometimes enable and justify Zuko's bad actions, particularly in the first season.

There are several characters who I see as parallel to Iroh in Tyrion’s narrative. One is Tytos, the father that Tywin despised and sought to distance himself from due to his weakness, who dies fat and old and disgraced and informs much of Tywin’s ruthlessness, and whom Tywin projects onto his son. Another is Gerion, laughing, kind, something of a mentor to Tyrion before his disappearance. The third is Jaime, who, like Iroh, is an older figure who tries to protect Tyrion but who can’t protect him entirely, partially due to a certain aloofness of personality. Tyrion also has the moment in ASOS where he rejects Jaime’s apology with the Tysha revelation and by the end of that chapter identifies himself as Tywin “writ small,” while Zuko has the moment under Ba Sing Se where he rejects Iroh’s advice and chooses to side with Azula instead. Both are morally gray actions tied to the abuse and gaslighting the characters have experienced. Tyrion feels betrayed by Jaime because of Jaime’s role in what happened with Tysha, while Zuko is pretty clearly manipulated by Azula.

Another similar familial relationship is Zuko and Azula and Tyrion and Cersei. Both Tyrion and Zuko are abused by their sisters, who are cruel, ambitious, and totally subsumed by the fascist ideology of their fathers, and who abuse their brothers out of a sense of identifying with their abuser.

One of the main differences between Tyrion and Cersei’s relationship and Zuko and Azula’s relationship is that Tyrion is MUCH more capable of seeing through Cersei’s manipulations than Zuko is, and I feel like that has to do with the gap between their ages. Although Zuko is the older sibling, Azula is much more dominant than him and the closeness in their ages makes that much more personal.

I’ve talked before about Cersei’s abuse of Tyrion and why it’s important to recognize that she is abusive to him and his negative actions towards her are not equal to her abuse of him, and one of the things that highlights that is that there is such a wide age gap between them. I’m looking at this partially from the perspective of someone with an older brother and sister with a similar age gap (and a younger brother who is much more closer to my age). And when I was a kid I tended to see my older siblings as other adults that lived in my house. I am close to my siblings and we never had a hostile relationship - although I did feel somewhat jealous of my sister growing up - but I am much closer to my sister now as an adult than I was when I was younger, and we have a much more equal relationship. But given Tyrion’s lack of non-abusive adult authority figures in his life, Cersei’s treatment of him becomes a reinforcement of Tywin’s abuse, and that’s why his hostility to her is not equal to her hostility towards him.

Zuko and Azula’s relationship is different. He is an older sibling but because of their closeness in age, they experienced abuse in the form of Ozai pitting them against each other. Tyrion and Cersei have a similar intense rivalry but it’s much less personal and much less tied to shared childhood trauma. And it’s the fact that for Zuko and Azula, that trauma is shared and experienced together, that makes it easier for Azula to manipulate Zuko and play on his inability to trust his own perceptions even though he definitely doesn’t trust her.

I also think it’s a difference in personality. Tyrion’s much more extroverted and analytical which makes him much more able to question Tywin and his sister despite Tywin’s repeated gaslighting and despite the fact that it does often work. One of the things that Tyrion and Zuko have in common is that they simultaneously realize that their family’s beliefs and especially the way their family has treated them is wrong, yet they also consistently internalize those beliefs. Yet Tyrion never feels inferior to his sister the way Zuko feels inferior to Azula, and I feel like that has to do with Zuko’s tendency to internalize more and withdraw inward.

Another difference would be that whereas Azula is the star sibling to Zuko’s disappointing sibling, Jaime plays that role for both Tyrion and Cersei.

Finally, both Tyrion and Zuko have moments of calling out their abusive fathers on their bullshit. Zuko has the one central moment of speaking out against his father’s ruthless military strategy with disastrous results when he is thirteen. Similarly, there are several moments in ASOIAF where Tyrion calls his father out on his ruthlessness and Tywin rebuffs him with gaslighting and plausible deniability. Both Ozai and Tywin are masters at gaslighting, and it takes a long time for both Tyrion and Zuko to be able to resist. However, both Tyrion and Zuko have similar moments of declaring independence from their fathers. 

And I’ll talk about that in part three, which will focus on recovery, resolution, and redemption.

[mild-lunacy]

Our Fanon, Our Memories, Our Selves

So I was thinking about my most recent rant about fanon earlier today, specifically about how people seem to totally accept headcanons or established fanon about a character's appearance as 'fact'. This isn't just about race-bending, but also stuff like people's attachment to Adam's freckles, and other minor things you see mainly in book fandoms (though you also have stuff like Sherlock's supposed scars after the hiatus). It occurred to me that people don't really seem to see any aspect of a book character's appearance as 'factual', except in very broad terms (particularly if you include fanart trends as part of fanon, which I do). Even without race-bending, people constantly misrepresent Hermione's or Adam and Ronan's appearance or apparent personality in Raven Cycle fanart in many significant and rather minor ways. So it just strikes me that maybe for most people it just... isn't such a big deal, because their mental image is so flexible that it doesn't matter except on an emotional level of what's 'cute' or 'preferable'. I guess what I'm saying is, it's highly counterintuitive for me when it comes to basic facts, but I think a lot of fans, writers or fanartists, don't necessarily have a great memory for little canon things, let alone caring about them.

I've often heard that some writers in particular may not have a clear image of the characters, or their visualization greatly varies. Book fans may picture the character as this or that actor, and/or multiple actors, and it's all very much up for grabs, whatever appeals to fandom's aesthetic and sense of social justice (hopefully both at the same time). To be clear, this is very unnatural to me; I pretty much *never* associate any actor with a book character, even if they later play them in an adaptation. Like, Emma Watson is not Hermione to me anymore than Noma Dumezweni. It's not even a question. I enjoy Dan Radcliffe as Harry, but he's not *actually* my Harry (his hair is wrong and his eyes are even more wrong... I could go on). I'd even go further and say no adaptation of Sherlock Holmes has the actual 'Sherlock Holmes', though I suppose Granada comes closest. The others are nowhere in the vicinity. Anyway: basically I'm not swayed by visuals. I have my own visuals, thanks but no thanks. Perhaps more to the point, these mental visuals are actually based on canon facts that I know I do recall correctly. I realize this is not necessarily the case for everyone, or even most book fans, especially when they're immersed in visual media adaptations or fandom stuff, with lots of fanart and edits to go around.

Specifically with fanart and art in general, I think there might be an attitude that it doesn't matter or doesn't mean much, because it's 'just' art. That is, no one really analyzes or expects fanart to stand up to canon-based analysis in the way they'd expect from a (good, in-character) fic. I'm constantly and intuitively taking fanart seriously, probably nearly as seriously as fanfic (and/or other forms of art). I consider art and illustration (which fanart is part of) to be a serious and communicative medium no less than fan writing. I absolutely think that (fan) art or edits make a statement, can include implicit analysis, communicates a perspective on canon and stands as an interpretation and commentary thereof. It's just more abstract and indirect than an actual text shitpost or headcanon, but in many ways it's more powerful and more 'real', or truly reflective of the artist's thoughts.

As a fanartist and a fan writer (and also a meta writer) myself, I'm aware of the differences, but nevertheless feel qualified to highlight the similarities anyway. However, I'm also aware this is not the predominant view, to say the least. Metas are simply the conscious, formal and straightforward expression of underlying thoughts or canon interpretations that get unconsciously or indirectly expressed in art. (Note, this definitely isn't to say that everything artists and writers express is literally their own opinion, let alone that they automatically approve of it or believe it if it's depicted.)

It's not really that I'm saying people are necessarily unaware Harry Potter is white in canon, for example. And yet, I had a conversation about this with my friend who's read the books but isn't in the fandom, and she wasn't sure his skin tone was ever referenced. I mean, most people must be aware that obviously he's not actually Indian in canon, but there's often room for a sense of ambiguity unless you've spent a whole lot of time dwelling on the minor (and major) details of canon (as I have, for way, way too many years in this case). I guess there's a sort of fuzziness there, even if you've reread the books several times (which I haven't, because I never reread books... but then neither do I need to). Plenty of people who say they've reread The Raven Cycle multiple times don't seem to necessarily grow in their understanding of it with time. It takes ongoing attention and critical thought and close reading specifically, not casual rereading. It may seem counterintuitive (to me) to say you have to be an expert to clearly recall central facts about a canon character's appearance, more or less, but if you're in fandom and under constant pressure to muddle your recollections with fanon (or invented memories, more or less), it becomes more of an issue. After all, human memories are known to be delicate and easily influenced things at the best of times, let alone about highly emotional subjects we may be motivated to fudge mentally.

After all this, to get to more ambiguous things than a character's appearance, such as their orientation or the nature of their canonical feelings, platonic or otherwise, I suppose it's a wonder that anyone can agree on the most likely or reasonable interpretation. It's really a mess. I mean, obviously, people may have very different abstract ideas as to what really constitutes romantic attraction than the author (Stiefvater, for example). My default is close reading and following the direction of the narrative or Authorial Intent, but understanding the underlying flow or intent of the narrative is probably even more complex and difficult than remembering the main character’s exact skin tone. I say all this mostly to remind myself of these things; understanding is so tricky, and is a mishmash of memory and a given fan's desires. Adding social justice justifications to the mix was bound to wreak havoc with something that was never a super concrete and rational process to begin with. Fandom was never really about deference to the creators or underlying facts of the text in the first place, too.

At least I feel better about the situation knowing it's simply that I process both canon and fandom differently. People aren't aware of all the facts and the options, but then ignoring them. We're playing with different ideas of canon, of the importance of facts and the nature of individual and group memory (or fanon). It's probably more amazing there's any kernel of truth in anything people believe, in fandom or out of it.