Do readers understand that when reading ASOIAF or Fire & Blood, we’re supposed to criticize the misogyny, not justify it?
We’re meant to read about women being usurped, abused, or sold into political marriages and disagree with it, not adopt the same misogynistic worldview the characters inside the story have. The text is showing a patriarchal society, but that doesn’t mean the reader is supposed to side with it.
GRRM is a known liberal, and that perspective shows in his books. He constantly critiques those systems through the narrative and through many of his characters, especially with the main five (arya, dany, jon, tyrion and bran), who are outsiders and society rejects
Like I’m sorry I know Dumbledore has to be the Ice-Hearted Chessmaster but!! I think when he saw ten year old Remus and his living situation (no friends, his parents terrified of anyone finding out), he saw his sister.
Just like when he saw Molly crying about Percy still not coming home, he spoke to her as someone who knows Exactly what Percy has to overcome. And truly empathizes.
He looks at Draco and feels real pity. He looks at Harry and feels a real sense of dread of what has to happen.
I think we can talk about Dumbledore’s flaws and his use of people…without denying his humanity and genuine feelings/fears about doing this The Right Way. The best way he can. And maybe he doesn’t achieve that—but he felt that burden, for sure. And not everything he did in his life was for power or to move a chess piece.
Honestly I feel like one of the most… upsetting… things about Dumbledore is precisely that: Dumbledore is warm and human and cares deeply about people. He cares deeply about Harry. He grieves over every ruthless choice he makes. One of the most unsettling things about Dumbledore is that he is not a heartless chessmaster. He’s a chessmaster who loves and cares for each one of his pawns and makes the plays he needs to make anyway.
I think the reason the fandom wants so badly to make Dumbledore a bad guy is that it’s kind of horrifying to think that a good person, who cares very much about people, could do what Dumbledore did. But Dumbledore does care, he wants to act for the best, he wants to be kind. Dumbledore wants desperately to be exactly what he appears most of the time: a kind old man with a preoccupation with muggle candy. Unfortunately, he’s also the Savior of the Wizarding World. He’s personally responsible for seeing that Voldemort is dealt with, and before Voldemort, he was personally responsible for dealing with Grindelwald. Is that responsibility self-imposed? Probably. But also, we don’t actually see anyone else stepping up to that plate.
Certainly, I think that’s the thing about Dumbledore that f***s Harry up the most: that absolutely, undeniably, Dumbledore loved him. Harry, who was with Dumbledore in the cave and on the Astronomy tower, knows how deep Dumbledore’s regrets went. The sacrifices Dumbledore made hurt him, and he made them anyway. And now Harry has Dumbledore’s job: he’s the Savior. And Harry has to wonder: would he be able to make the calls that Dumbledore did? Would he be able to set up some kid who had to die?
It’s a lot more comfortable to imagine Dumbledore to be cold.
SO the other day we were talking abt Gansey Family Homophobia and how you said gansey's family thinks/assumes he's gay - can u expand on that?
I had like, seven hundred words of an answer for this written, but hey! Whatever!
Disclaimer: I don’t think this was the authorial intent but I don’t care because the author is dead, the Gansey is bi, etc.
Basically, rereading that conversation where Helen finds out Gansey bribed the headmaster for one of his friends and immediately goes, “Are you sleeping with Adam*?” makes me feel like that’s a suspicion that Helen has had for a very long time.
(* I’ve seen people read this as her thinking it’s Ronan, but I read the scene over multiple times, and her dialogue is “Which one is it? The trailer park one? Are you sleeping with him?” and Ronan isn’t mentioned in dialogue until later on when Gansey says brings up a dead father. Also, Helen’s appearances largely tend to be connected more to Adam than to Ronan.)
I think that Gansey’s parents–much like Adam’s parents–probably get the impression that he’s not straight. With Adam, that’s textual canon–we have Adam mentioning that he’s terrified of what his father could have found in his room and then later mentioning that he has magazine clippings of men he finds attractive, and then we get the rude comments about his relationship with Ronan later on. With Gansey, it’s more of a thing that you can infer through reading back through the Gansey family scenes with Helen’s assumption in mind.
Helen’s very interested in Blue’s first introduction into the group, which follows a scene where Gansey is incredibly visibly edgy about Blue and Adam holding hands.
Helen makes several comments throughout the series about finding Adam attractive, and those comments start up after she sees Gansey’s response to Adam/Blue. (Her original comments about him before this scene are the general “Who, trailer park boy? The poor one?” etc classist garbage.) You can read this as her making flirty comments about Adam in order to see if she gets a rise out of Gansey, because she’s trying to feel out just who he was jealous of in that situation.
Gansey brings both Blue and Henry around to the Gansey Family Brunch or whatever, and I got the same impression about everyone trying to feel out which of the two Gansey was actually dating. He doesn’t say it out loud in this scene, as far as I remember. The Gansey parents are far more kind to Blue than they are about Adam and Ronan, regardless of Blue representing just as much of a departure from their lifestyle. Helen ends up prodding Gansey about how he should kiss Blue, and it’s–it’s again one of those things where, to me, it’s like, “If you’re dating the other one, keep her around anyway.”
The positive response to Blue from the Gansey family also like, reeks of “thank god he’s dating a girl”.
A lot of stuff in Gansey’s past that I talked about earlier this week also comes into play here–like, how little his parents seemed to be concerned about keeping him close as a kid. A lot of that is that Gansey’s response to trauma is not pretty or neatly packaged, which makes it good for them to let him be an Eccentric World Traveler instead of That Child Who Has Fits At Senator Johnson’s Brunch, but I think if they think he’s gay then letting him stay out of the public eye is also beneficial to them.
Lots of the comments about Adam and Ronan–Ronan specifically–make me think that the Ganseys know Ronan’s gay and don’t approve of Gansey’s closeness with them. Helen says something in the first book about how their father calls Ronan and Adam much worse things that she does, and I’m sure that in addition to poor/new money/etc there’s some shittalking about Ronan’s sexuality in there somewhere.
This post is not any shorter than the other one I wrote, but it’s hopefully more coherent, lmao. I could talk for days about the parallels between Adam’s relationship with sexuality and his parents and Gansey/Gansey’s parents, but that’s not what we’re here for!!!
i find it so interesting when people take adam’s analysis of gansey as fact when it’s clearly shown that there are parts of gansey that adam doesn’t know yet, and that sometimes both his idolization and resentment alters his assessment of him:
an example is adam saying to blue in trb that gansey is friends with ronan because “it makes him feel better about being gansey” which is such an interesting take that he says with such certainty. it definitely has some truth to it but also comes from adams at the time lack of understanding of ronan and jealousy of their friendship. gansey is friends with ronan because ronan is fiercely loyal and honest, which adam doesn’t really understand yet, so he states what he understands of it as fact.
another one is gansey on fire, which ronan clearly tells us that adam has never seen because gansey significantly calms down when he’s with adam. adam talks a lot about ganseys innocence and ignorance, especially when it comes to more of the darker things they deal with (whelk, kavinsky, greenmantle) but he has no idea that gansey himself can be just as wild (like he has no idea gansey watched ronan punch kavinsky at the substance party and threw a molotov cocktail at kavinsky car) so when adam describes gansey, especially at the start, he still thinks of gansey as this innocent magnanimous person because that is all he sees
taking adam’s perception of gansey at face value as fact really dilutes their relationship and their characters and i think is where a lot of mischaracterization of gansey comes from. gansey isn’t just the innocent golden boy, and adam is not a perfect narrator, especially when it comes to his view of gansey (but is also seen with blue and ronan too) — i think as their friendships deepens he gains better understanding but it’s important to remember for both of their characterizations!
Rereading the raven cycle for the third time since the first (first time was after Blue Lily Lily Blue came out) and I feel so paternal about these kids now. I was 15 reading these books and just turned 25. I see them and see younger self in them, but I still feel like I want to grow up to be like them. Is that odd? Probably.
During my first and second rereads (the last one was in 2020-2021 based on my handwriting) I annotated the fuck out of all the books. It’s interesting (read: slightly disturbing bc I was in the throes of unmedicated depression and anxiety) to see my thoughts down on paper and how they’ve changed since then.
It took me a while to realize that unfortunately (I’m sure Blue feels the same) guys like Gansey are my type. Preppy guys who are probably autistic and/or ADHD with a penchant for a wildcard hobby and are a little oblivious. Then again, I could be projecting the last time I fell in love with a guy into him.
What gets me about these books is how timeless they feel and how the prose is simultaneously poetic, crass, hilarious, heartbreaking, and mind shattering. To this day, a decade after The Raven King came out, I still remember certain lines that stuck with me through all the shit in my life, and I think that’s where I’ll end this post.
“A miracle in moving parts, a study in survival”
“What do you want Adam? To feel awake when my eyes are open.”
oh Adam Parrish you will always be so loved
“Trees in your eyes, stars in your heart”
“Poverty Twins” - One of the funniest lines in the series
It's such a disappointment that tearing someone's throat out with your teeth kills them. Sex would be so much more fun if we could maul each other and come back from it.
Anyone else ever think about the fact that in this scene…
…Will is basically telling a real woman to fuck off after she (gently and reasonably) invites him to reconsider the wisdom of his continuing affection for Hannibal?
And then when she’s gone, he goes back to hanging out with his imaginary projection of Abigail Hobbs.
And his projection of Abigail very conveniently understands and endorses Will’s continued attraction to Hannibal.
Which is a little bit weird, given that the real Abigail Hobbs was terrorized, held captive, and murdered by Hannibal.
“She just gets me.” BITCH THAT’S BECAUSE YOU MADE HER UP.
Honestly, I think it’s one of Will’s ugliest moments as a character.
It’s also extremely illustrative of how much Will is willing to lie to himself, even when those lies are unconscionably self-serving, and how easily he deprioritizes other people when he really, really wants something for himself.
On the surface, it’s a weird failing for a character so defined by his empathy.
[ How does Will’s empathy just turn off? ]
But it makes sense to me when I think of Will’s relationship to empathy as being analogous to my own relationship to risk-avoidance.
I have OCD. I exist in a constant state of low-level terror that if I am not careful enough, I will die prematurely, and it will be My Fault.
But sometimes, I do things like stand on a rickety cat tree in front of a second floor picture window to put up Christmas lights. Which, objectively, is a risk most people probably wouldn’t take.
And I think it’s just that I’m so used to ignoring false-alarms of the “THIS WILL SURELY LEAD TO YOUR DEATH!” variety that I just sometimes, subconsciously, decide ‘Fuck it’, and do whatever the fuck will get me to my goal the fastest. Because I am just so tired and frustrated and overwhelmed.
If we see Will’s empathy as a burdensome and intrusive thing - a distracting and often distressing mental process which he usually can’t turn off, and which makes his life much more painful - it kind of makes sense that under the right amount of stress (e.g. the kind he gets from thinking about Hannibal Lecter), he would be liable to just flip into emergency-override ‘Fuck it’ mode.
[ Abigail, Molly, and Will’s resentment of the perceived expectation of masculinity ]
I also think it’s really interesting to compare the lie he tells himself about Abigail (“the girl Hannibal literally murdered would want him and I to be happy together”) to Will’s other big lie (“She knows enough”).
Both Abigail and Molly are women who Will feels a sense of duty to, and who make him feel like he has to perform a stereotypically cis-het neurotypical masculine role - Abigail, as a father, and Molly, as a husband and step-father.
I think it’s possible to read Will as resenting both the duty, and the (perceived) pressure to perform cis-het neurotypical masculinity. And if we read him this way, I think it’s possible to extrapolate that his resentment of the “burdens” associated to these women for Will also made it easier for him to subconsciously justify lying about / to them.
baratheonpilled
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
origamiaround
dailybridgerton
