Discover Top Posts Tagged with #textsfromwesteros

A few months ago I was drunk texting Harry, you know, like I do. His response the next morning was "Those are so going on Texts from Westeros." The whole thing kind of spiraled from there.

The following three posts are the result of that conversation.

#personal #textsfromwesteros #textsfrombakerstreet #textsfromthetardis #yikes

Dual texts #764

Dollhouse vs. Game of Thrones:

(Source: textsfromthedollhouse)

(Source: textsfromwesteros)

#dollhouse #game of thrones #textsfromthedollhouse #textsfromwesteros #tfln #texts from last night

Dual texts #146

Game of Thrones vs. Grey's Anatomy:

(Source: textsfromwesteros)

(Source: sgmw-tfln)

#game of thrones #grey's anatomy #textsfromwesteros #sgmw-tfln #tfln #texts from last night

I'm reading textsfromwesteros, which is a combination of Game of Thrones and www.textsfromlastnight.com

and all I keep thinking is that someone needs to start a Texts From Hogwarts blog under the same premise.....

Weird, no? This is what happens when A.P.R. gets bored....

#textsfromwesteros

So. Apparently people are pissed off about this particular mix of tfln and Game of Thrones that has apparently been removed since I began writing this. It showed the moment where Robert strikes Cersei with the text: "On a scale of 1 to Chris Brown how angry are you?" First things first: is this graphic in poor taste/is it offensive?

Yes. It can be seen that way. It juxtaposes a highly publicized event of domestic violence against an instance of domestic violence. It has potential to offend people, for which the creator of the graphic apologized.

However, people who are angry about this have taken the scene in question entirely out of context:

First of all, assuming that what happens in art, especially mass media, has no effect on what happens in culture is downright naive. The fact that Cersei is a fictional character doesn’t matter. The fact that she ultimately becomes a pretty deplorable person doesn’t matter. The context of the screencap is that she’s furious that Ned Stark has hurt her brother and speaks her mind to her husband, who hits her.

That’s the context.

That is, in fact, not the context. Not even close. Cersei is not some quiet, demure lady who never speaks her mind to Robert. She influences him greatly. She was able, with a few words, to convince him to order his best friend to kill his child's pet. She speaks her mind to him constantly without physical repercussions.

The context of this scene is not that she speaks her mind. It is not nearly so simple as that, and Cersei's character is far more devious than that. All the characters themselves are far more complex than that. For all that Robert is constantly telling her to keep quiet and hold her tongue, she always manages to get on last word in that tips the scale of his decisions. The context is that she was attempting to convince Robert of (yet another) blatant lie concerning his friend (that Ned was returning drunk from a brothel and attacked Jamie, which was not true and was known to be not true) in order to remove Ned's influence in Robert's politics. She was not speaking her mind. She was besmirching Ned's honor and making an attempt at getting rid of him. For once, Robert caught her in her lie (Let's be honest, he's not the brightest when it comes to her machinations). And her reaction to being slapped by him? She vows to "wear this as a badge of honor". And she does. She knows exactly what she was caught in. (Honestly, I wanted to slap her myself, but seeing as I'm also female, it wouldn't have been a problem.)

Does that mean she deserved to be hit? No. In the scene itself, Robert admits he had never done it before and should not have done it at all. No character condones the fact that he strikes her. However awful Cersei is, however much you hate her for what she is doing, it is a moment that makes you sympathize with her just a little precisely because we are so sensitive to domestic violence issues. From a storytelling perspective, it is brilliant.

THIS is the proper context for the scene and why the tfln works with it, offensive though it may be. Whether we like it or not, "Chris Brown" has become a pop culture reference code for "fucking lunatic douchebag", which both characters in this scene are.

This brings to my mind another issue raised by the same person who wrote the quote above:

Do you think that the people who have been raped and who read these novels, which are SATURATED with rape and the threat of rape, care that it’s “not real?” Saying that these characters aren’t real so the crimes against them don’t matter is essentially trying to say that the crimes themselves aren’t real, or they’re okay when it’s someone you hate, or they’re okay when you think they’re deserved. This fandom is FULL of that shit. Hate Sansa? Sansa should be raped! Hate Cersei? Cersei should be battered!

While I agree with most of the bolded section, I do wonder: Does it never occur to anyone that saying "it doesn't matter because these are only characters" is a way of distancing oneself from the emotion of the event itself because that person is very much aware, perhaps too aware, of the reality and gravity of what is happening? Making a joke of a horrific event is the easiest way of shielding yourself from the full effect of it, even though it may seem callous to observers.

Game of Thrones is not shy about some very unsavory facts. While a fictional world, it is a fictional world that is just as deeply fucked up as our own. If it seems that rape and abuse are heightened in this story, that is because they are. These are things that are so hushed up in our own society that a story that is so blunt about them seems horrible and insensitive. The gender politics in GoT may be heightened just by the nature of storytelling, but they do reflect our own because that's what art and storytelling do.

#game of thrones #violence in storytelling #textsfromwesteros

m0ar Drunk!Sandor texting Sansa. She is totally his designated driver, now and forever. It's LUV, ppl!

(Obligatory warning: don't do as Sandor does. Aside from the obvious liver issues, the slinging a big-ass greatsword around while drinking heavily never ends well. Just trust me on this one.)

#tex #textsfromWesteros #sansan