Observations on A Song of Ice and Fire - massive, careless spoilers. As in literally, I just talk liberally about all four books, so yeah, stay away if you haven't read the books.
#1. Is Arya a "psychotic?" (No)
"'Is there gold in the village?' she shouted as she drove the blade up through his back. 'Is there silver? Gems?' She stabbed twice more. 'Is there food? Where is Lord Beric?' She was on top of him by then, still stabbing. 'Where did he go? How many men were with him? How many knights? How many bowmen? How many? How many? How many? How many? How many? How many? Is there gold in the village?'" - A Storm of Swords
Weirdly enough, I always connect Arya's journey to two Christian Bale movies: Empire of the Sun and Batman Begins.
Arya is a hardened, devastated, bitter, vengeful 11-year-old girl who has killed more people than most people twice her age, but she's not a psychopath; psychopathic tendencies are mostly innate, but she's purely a product of her environment. She isn't Sansa, who's coping with her best attributes - charm, tractability, meekness - she's discovered the power of brute force, and she's made the journey from willful little girl to a brutal, realistic war survivor. Complete with John Malkovich character.
And as someone whose world has been destroyed through murder and injustice - her father executed with a lie, her mother and brother slaughtered without honor or mercy - she's the classic self-appointed vigilante who regards the world around her as a place without honor or justice. The justice system is broken in her eyes, and it can no longer be relied on after failing her and her family so utterly. Naturally, she pursues her own unique brand of justice instead. She still has honor, certainly, but it fits the dog-eat-dog style of her environment, more anarchic than the genteel form of honor that undid her family. She learns this lesson much more quickly than Cat, who if you notice, also turns to a ruthless style of justice after her world collapses. In fact, Catelyn has arguably further gone than Arya, considering the fact that Catelyn is a fully-grown woman and has rejected a lifetime of principles. Arya can also be compared to Sansa, who is also learning to survive the hard way, albeit with different skills suited to her environment. Arya's irrevocably changed by her experiences, as any war survivor may be, perhaps damaged, but she isn't lost, by a long shot. I can't wait to see how her story turns out.
#2: Why are all the Tully children so inept?
Catelyn is a well-intentioned and intelligent, but she is the mother of all trainwrecks, being truly her husband's wife. She seizes Tyrion Lannister on the road without giving a modicum to the thought that it's not the best idea to kidnap the son of the oh, MOST POWERFUL HOUSE in the seven kingdoms. I know you're pissed off about your son, but how about a little consulting or even restraining oneself from making spur-of-the-moment decisions that will obviously have powerful reverberations? Ultimately, Catelyn does everything out of love for her children, but these acts have a habit of having a worse effect on her family than anything else. Also frees her worst enemy, Jaime Lannister, during a moment of extreme vulnerability, which is the dumbest fucking idea in the entire world, even for a woman who is mourning for her murdered sons. Did she honestly, honestly believe that he would even have it in his power to return her girls to her? I respect Catelyn and her late fate in the books is kind of awesome, but she is such a naive and reckless dumbass. Seriously.
Lysa is in plain terms, utterly batshit. She's a simpering, inept, deluded weakling who is arguably much to blame for the War of the Five Kings, and all for a man who has clearly only loved her sister, and does not give a flying fuck for her. Lysa's many notable acts, all of them crazier than the last, include, 1) being infatuated with said man and persisting in the facade of his love, though she has always known that he doesn't care for her. Evidence: When Robert Baratheon accidentally uttered the name of his true love "Lyanna" while lying with Cersei, it killed any possibility of love or affection in their relationship. The same thing happened to Lysa, more or less, only it had the opposite effect. 2) poisoning her husband on the command of her lover, and pinning the blame on others, planting suspicions that trigger a freaking war 3) continuing to breastfeed her child even though he's already EIGHT FUCKING YEARS OLD 4) refusing to aid her own family despite the immense resources and arsenal at her command, for pretty much no reason at all. This one pissed me off the most, because it doesn't really matter what deranged crap she gets up to in her home, but this had the most dire impact. It is really not okay to stay neutral and stay lalalalala when your only sister's children are lost, missing, captured or dead, and the rest of your family is getting massacred and their cause going the same way. What the fuck do you do in your spare time, anyway? Oh yeah, 5) stalking your loveless husband and trying to push your 13-year-old niece, who is as far as you know, possibly the only remaining blood relative you have in the world - off a castle because you saw your husband give her a kiss in the garden.
Edmure Tully
Also a royal screw-up. A screwup in the battlefield (you know you can't do anything right when you end up apologizing to your sixteen-year-old nephew and promising to make amends), whines entirely way too much in a period of warfare (nobody gives a shit who you marry), complains about everyone else, makes inept threats (next time for starters, try NOT being in a bathtub when you threaten to kill a dude), falls for Jamie Lannister's entirely raw deal. Edmure, do you really think that your worthless life is worth your family's ancient stronghold and the sacrifice of your badass uncle, who is one of the greatest characters in the series as well as the only Tully that's not a complete inept fool? Use your brains. They can't kill your unborn child because it's half-Frey and the only heir to a powerful house, and it would serve the Freys better off alive than dead, and you'll have to spend the rest of your life as a Lannister servant anyway. YOU WITLESS COWARD. Even some of the things he does that's entirely not his fault - like bedding your new bride while her brothers are butchering your relatives downstairs - is indicative of his general cluelessness and futility.
So Edmure is more or less slave to his greatest enemy, Catelyn is undead, Lysa is murdered by her own husband, and justifiably so. Brindyn "Blackfish" Tully, their aged, formidable uncle who is possibly the only character in the series that possesses both deadly good sense and unshakeable loyalty and honor, is on the run thanks to his useless nephew.
Forget it. I was all for the Starks/Tullys but the latter house really doesn't deserve to survive, to an extent. There's the good-hearted loveable fool, like an 11-year-old Neville Longbottom, and then there's the really really exasperatingly stupid gobsmacking incompetent fool of questionable morality that makes you go, "eh, probably would be more beneficial to evolution if they're just all wiped out, anyway."
No comments:
Post a Comment