A feminist take on Game of Thrones

I was a little heartbroken over Shae if I’m honest. She’s totally different from the books in that she’s Westerosi and much more obviously in it for the money. In the show she was fierce, charming, intelligent and went up to bat for Sansa. The fact they defaulted her back to “book Shae” was a complete injustice to the her in the show because they changed her

I think this was an error that was made because they were mistaken to change her so much in the first place. In the book she really functioned mainly to tell us some important things about Tyrion and set up some of his important conflicts.

They must have known though that they had to tone all of that down a notch, in order to make him likeable. For some reason television and movie characters can't manage to be as complex as the ones in books without being totally rejected by viewer, and that seems to be across the board in any adaptation I've ever seen, it just comes across differently.
But then they decided to make her a totally different person. Maybe because they wanted more female characters that were admirable, I don't know. But the disintegration of her and Tyrion's relationship never worked very well, it was always difficult to believe someone as bright as she was and with her background could be so unrealistic about Tyrion's political and family obligations, and at the end it just seemed very implausible. It also didn't really set up Tyrion's breakdown nearly as well, his break from Jaime and murdering Shae and his father made some sense given the revelations jaime made to him in the book, but not so much in the show. He just seemed a lot more well-adjusted, up until the trial, whereas in the novel he clearly wasn't.

I generally think of the books as basic, and the show as secondary. There are some differences in the way they depict women, mainly to allow them to show naked women in provocative situations.
I don't really think its accurate to call characters like Arya men with tits .

I do think in some cases there are writers who do that, in those cases I often think its shallow writing and the men are often shallow as well. In GoT they do take on some male social roles, but it is very much part of their experience as women. But I do think the way that readers, and especially viewers, respond to those characters can often be about the way that person thinks of male and female roles.
Just as an example, Sansa and Arya are both at various times annoying and cause huge issues by being naive and inexperienced. Many viewers seemed far more sympathetic to Arya because she was tough and cool, while they thought Sansa was shallow and silly. Which was never true, Sansa's chapters were always very enlightening, she noticed what was going on around her, how people responded, how power and status were manipulated in politics, she understood people's psychology and motivations really well as she became older. Things that Arya was never particularly good at or struggled with.

Tyrion was a misogynist and the fact that he is portrayed as a one of the more heroic characters is worrying and an indicator of how blind we are to misogyny.

All of the characters have an arc. Tyrion certainly starts as a misogynist but he worships Danearys, the first powerful women meets other than his hate-filled sister, and he’s devastated when she turns bad. It takes a lot to turn him against her.

The Tyrion we see in Season 8 is not the debauched Imp of Season 1.

Actually the “but it’s historically accurate” people piss me off much more than the honest “It’s absolutely fantastic- I love all the sex and violence and dragons. Fantastic stories with added soft porn-what’s not to like?” fans!

This. I thought it was all a bit gross .

I think Rose’s death was to show more of Littlefinger’s true colours, not Joffrey. We already knew Joffrey was a monster, and so did Littlefinger, and he handed over his employee without a second thought because it was expedient and gained him a minor advantage.

She was used to show how much of a monster he was, I thought.
Shame for her character, but most characters were disposable in those early series

It was already painfully obvious that he was a monster, it just felt like a half arsed, 'let's wrap this up before anyone realises we've run out of ideas for her'. Much like most of season 8 tbh (who said D&D were crap at foreshadowing?)

I was a little heartbroken over Shae if I’m honest. She’s totally different from the books in that she’s Westerosi and much more obviously in it for the money. In the show she was fierce, charming, intelligent and went up to bat for Sansa. The fact they defaulted her back to “book Shae” was a complete injustice to the interesting direction they had chosen to take her in the show.

I love fantasy but so much is hard to read because of the underlying sexism.

Someone up thread asked for recommendations. I’d suggest Kate Elliot, Catherynne M Valente, Zen Cho, Theodora Goss or Naomi Novik’s latest as fantasy written unapologetically for and about women. I did a year of reading women authors (managed to go from 25% to 60%) and it really opened my eyes to what I was missing and so many amazing voices.

Her death through sexual brutality as the hands of Joffrey also showed that they didn't give a shit about her or her story, she was just being used, funny that.

She was used to show how much of a monster he was, I thought.
Shame for her character, but most characters were disposable in those early series.

The show did away with any kind of allowance that I gave the books when they introduced Rose the Happy Hooker. I know D&D have always said that she was a device to help pull together narrative threads when the action initially moved from Winterfell to Kings Landing in season 1, but there were better ways and they could have avoided the trashy soft lesbian porn element (clearly they didn't want to). Her death through sexual brutality as the hands of Joffrey also showed that they didn't give a shit about her or her story, she was just being used, funny that.

The books are brutal, but then again so is the history that the books are very loosely tied to. The rape and beatings that female characters throughout are subjected to, or risked being subjected to, would have been very real women of the period and realistically you wouldn't have had many physically strong female types to fulfil the Buffy-esq criteria. I gave them a pass because 1). The women characters at least felt well developed and the author himself didn't seem to be revelling in titillation (his readership another matter) and 2). it at least felt that the male characters were equally shat upon, so while sex as a weapon was wielded against women, as it was and still is, you didn't feel like they were being singled out for torture on the merits of being female.

There were a lot of significant female minor characters as well. It was a world peopled by both men and women in all sorts of roles and with agency and the capacity to influence events.

Also think the "men with tits" comment is hugely unfair, and pretty sexist to be honest.
Arya and Sansa are a contrast - they're sisters, but one is a "girly girl" who dreams of being a princess and one a "tomboy" who hates all that stuff and wants to fight with the boys. This is in the first episode.
Take take one and ignore the other misses the point.
Both characters are equally valid types of women.

Also, the Robin Hobb book I read - the only notable feminist thing I noticed that the "henchmen" guards, were equally likely to be female and no big deal was made of it.
However the main female character was extremely wet.

As others, I reject that the 'men with tits' concept is a thing. Women come in all kinds of characters, period. And I think GoT has done a good job in depicting a lot of very diverse women who were strong and shaped their own destiny and the world around them in their own ways and were relatable, no matter whether they did good, bad, ambiguous or outright evil stuff. I liked that.

Also, their characters usually weren't all good or all bad. Take Daenerys. I would dispute that she was mad. She just wanted to create this 'better world' by force no matter the human cost. Not so different from historic precedent. I believe Stalin wanted that, too. Was he mad? I don't think so. The Jacobins wanted that. Were they mad? The 'Neocons' and the 'Responsiility to Protect' crowd? To the extent they truly believed setting the Middle East aflame would enable them to build Democracy on its ashes - were they mad?

However, it is telling that people would call Daenerys mad for what she did and planned to do in the end. Looking at historic precedent, I sure wonder whether it takes being a woman to be called mad for such actions.
The other thing is that Jon Snow with his lack of strategic thinking, his lack of embracing power, his impulsivity... would never have been considered for any top job - be it King of the North or King of the 7 kingdoms - had he been a woman.

GOT does at least pass the Bechdel test, both the books and the show.

Do I think that any man could write a good female character, yes

I give you Granny Weatherwax

Haha, I had Pratchett in mind when I wrote that. He has some great female characters.

My feminist take - Tyrion was a misogynist and the fact that he is portrayed as a one of the more heroic characters is worrying and an indicator of how blind we are to misogyny

Apparently there is a theory that Tyrion will end up the villain in ASOIAF due to his actions/nature and at this point in time, due to the nature of his narrative (his wit and perception etc) the audience side with him at the moment, and D&D took the wrong end of his character to run with ... after all, in the show he doesn’t become a bitter and twisted repetitive (“and moon boy for all i know”) sob!

I think there are a number of strong female characters, weak female characters- I think it is wrong to assert that Brienne and Arya are “men with tits”. Briennes POV chapters talk about how she suffered from being different from other women, that her height and strength have been something she has had to accept and work with - to the detriment of many things.. these are all things a woman can relate to (i work in a 90% male dominated physical environment and the desire to be STRONG to compete but also be seen as a woman is something i relate to).

Arya is developed well - many chapters talk about how she and sansa have a fractious sibling relationship due to arya’s inability to “act a lady” and her tomboy nature is well established, her love of Jon etc. Her becoming an assassin is an interesting opposition to what sansa does - she uses weapons as her weapons, sansa uses words - who were their tutors at the start? For Arya syrio forel and for sansa cersei!

I think any adaption from literature to screen suffers from simplification of many many pages of insight into characters ... as potentially the above shows

I think we would be fair to say that to criticise a writer for writing women 'badly' then it must be clear from the writing that the female characters (although of course the male characters too..) are actually written badly.. whatever 'badly' would mean e.g. one-dimensional etc. However in GOT (books and the series) there are a huge number of female characters who seem extraordinarily diverse and are engaging with the power structures the writer has set up in a variety of ways. I am also very uncomfortable with the 'men with tits' description.

Actually the “but it’s historically accurate” people piss me off much more than the honest “It’s absolutely fantastic- I love all the sex and violence and dragons. Fantastic stories with added soft porn-what’s not to like?” fans!

Medieval England was full of men casually revealing their full backstory and ambitions while ordering a pair of prostitutes to play with each other's arses...nothing to do with the desires of a modern TV audience then?

“It's real, it happened, let's not sugar coat over it,“

Let’s not get our rocks off over it either.

Because*

To those saying they stopped becauy of the treatment of women...it was fantasy, based on medieval England so of course women were treated fairly badly. Would you not watch a programme/ film based on Medieval England, because of the portrayal of women? It's real, it happened, let's not sugar coat over it, it's important we know it happened to learn from it.

I do wish Marion Zimmer Bradley hadn’t turned out to be such an appalling human being and had been born a few years later.....

A key plotline in the first book is a 13-year-old falling in love with her rapist

Amazingly, the show managed to be even more misogynistic than that...