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Oct. 10th, 2015 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAlso today I started reading Game of Thrones. Technically re-reading but since I couldn't remember hardly any of what happened it didn't feel like it. I've owned the books since they were more or less new and haven't read them since then. Didn't grab me, or at least didn't keep me. And I didn't start on the TV series because it seemed to be full of blood and nasty, and to add more compared to the books, especially more nasty.
Having read the first book I can see why I bought the second and third - the sections are short and interesting, and kind of like eating crisps, cause there's always just one more bite. But I'm very dissatisfied with them on the whole.
It's only partly the gendered stuff - invent a world and invent sexism to go with it, blah blah tired, and men exist in networks of men while women are isolated or in competition.
It's mostly that humans just don't work like that. They've lost half their range. Only the nasty side shows up anywhere. It's grotesque, and after a while, boring. I mean if when you wonder what happens next the answer is always the worst thing you can think of, boring. Also nothing ever resolves, because it's not that sort of story. Which is why you keep reading it, but still.
It's like it's complaining about the chivalrous knights in shining armour stereotypes by inverting them, and it makes something just as distorted.
Also also I'd forgotten quite how very underage some of the women are. This is a story happening to 11 to 13 year olds, and a few of their mothers. And it's no excuse to say it's historical, because actually no, that wasn't normal at all. Someone just wanted to write about 13 year olds having sex. Yuck.
Plus the extreme youth of the people in power seems to be an excuse for them to act irrationally and do the stupidest thing. Which, okay, teenagers can plausibly believe most things, especially with the state of education what it seems to be in their world, but it seems like lazy writing. Of course they did the thing, teenager! Blah. Blah piled on blah since it's everyone.
And the whole plot only kicks off because Starks seem to find lying and politics completely new. Which I find implausible. But okay.
I mean it's actually a thing with Greek tragedy to have the One Honourable Person, who holds to their idea of honour in the face of all opposition and social convention, and so tears the world apart. But that's different from being ignorant.
Add it all together and I don't recognise these people, they're all chopped flat.
But it's... while reading it it seems fine because you never know what they'll do next so maybe they'll, you know, expand, become any good at all, have a world where moral actions are rewarded even on a chance basis. So I kept reading it, and it's only now it ended it just seems like ... ooze, or something. Something gone wrong around the edges.
It's well written, but then it feels wrong added together.
Or, as per usual, I'm just very grumpy.
Having read the first book I can see why I bought the second and third - the sections are short and interesting, and kind of like eating crisps, cause there's always just one more bite. But I'm very dissatisfied with them on the whole.
It's only partly the gendered stuff - invent a world and invent sexism to go with it, blah blah tired, and men exist in networks of men while women are isolated or in competition.
It's mostly that humans just don't work like that. They've lost half their range. Only the nasty side shows up anywhere. It's grotesque, and after a while, boring. I mean if when you wonder what happens next the answer is always the worst thing you can think of, boring. Also nothing ever resolves, because it's not that sort of story. Which is why you keep reading it, but still.
It's like it's complaining about the chivalrous knights in shining armour stereotypes by inverting them, and it makes something just as distorted.
Also also I'd forgotten quite how very underage some of the women are. This is a story happening to 11 to 13 year olds, and a few of their mothers. And it's no excuse to say it's historical, because actually no, that wasn't normal at all. Someone just wanted to write about 13 year olds having sex. Yuck.
Plus the extreme youth of the people in power seems to be an excuse for them to act irrationally and do the stupidest thing. Which, okay, teenagers can plausibly believe most things, especially with the state of education what it seems to be in their world, but it seems like lazy writing. Of course they did the thing, teenager! Blah. Blah piled on blah since it's everyone.
And the whole plot only kicks off because Starks seem to find lying and politics completely new. Which I find implausible. But okay.
I mean it's actually a thing with Greek tragedy to have the One Honourable Person, who holds to their idea of honour in the face of all opposition and social convention, and so tears the world apart. But that's different from being ignorant.
Add it all together and I don't recognise these people, they're all chopped flat.
But it's... while reading it it seems fine because you never know what they'll do next so maybe they'll, you know, expand, become any good at all, have a world where moral actions are rewarded even on a chance basis. So I kept reading it, and it's only now it ended it just seems like ... ooze, or something. Something gone wrong around the edges.
It's well written, but then it feels wrong added together.
Or, as per usual, I'm just very grumpy.