Critiquing Art: A Failure of Character

Warning: This post will be full of spoilers regarding Game of Thrones, Season 8 Episode 4 ‘The Last of the Starks’. It also touches on rape, physical, and psychological abuse.

Normally, I try to avoid writing about Game of Thrones. There are numerous controversies around the show, but it’s a show I tend to sit back and learn something from as a writer. Sometimes (often), it’s something good. Sometimes, it’s an example of ‘How Not To Do The Thing’.

S8E4 was a stunning, sloppy example from start to finish of ‘How To Invalidate Your Characters Developmental Arcs’ (it’s firmly in the ‘How Not To Do The Thing’ category). After the credits rolled, my friend turned and asked me “Write a blog post about this. Help me understand why I’m so angry about this mess.”

I’m going to avoid the nit-picky writing issues, like the terrible Bronn/Jaime/Tyrion scene or the ridiculously impersonal abandonment of Ghost (which I can understand, however was done incredibly poorly), and stick to the scenes which truly undermined their characters. Let’s start with ‘The Big Woman’.

BRIENNE OF TARTH, THE KNIGHT OF SIMPERING

Brienne’s arc finished when Jaime knighted her. It was everything she wanted: to be respected and valued for who she is and not who she was expected to be. It was a meaningful scene. It could have led to a beautifully meaningful sacrifice during the Battle of Winterfell. Instead, Brienne survives to become the simpering sex doll.

A woman can be written as a long time, reluctant virgin, without losing everything that makes her ‘strong’ (read: generally masculine) when she becomes sexually active. I’m not arguing that Brienne can’t be upset with Jaime running from her bed to Cersei. But the choice to have Brienne follow him, to call him a good man, and then burst into sobs when he rides off undermines everything about her. There are numerous ways that the scene could have been written true to both characters (as Jaime throwing his sins at Brienne in a way that makes him appear proud of them is a serious whiplash of character regression for him as well). We have seen Brienne handle difficult situations with stoicism and anger, not tears.

An example of a better exit exists in the movie 300. When Leonidas leaves Gorgo (his wife, mother of his child, and Queen), she is upset but handles the moment with grace. He has her permission to leave, yet the viewer can see her heartbreak at sending him off to die. Brienne could have been given the same treatment. Stoicism, understanding, and composure. Instead, Brienne received the lazy treatment so many women characters receive. A rushed scene given little thought to either character’s actual character. A man has left his crying woman behind to go to war.

Do better in your own writing. Consistency in character makes characters lovable. Having them behave true to themselves in grief and in love means the viewer or reader’s heart breaks with them.

SANSA & THE HOUND: ABUSE AS DEVELOPMENT

Sansa hasn’t had time to process the abuse she’s suffered from Ramsey. Point blank. She’s gone from Battle of the Bastards straight to defending the North from the Night King. She’s been thrown into leadership, blossomed in it, but there has been no room for handling the PTSD that a man like Ramsey would have left her with. It’s not just the physical abuse. It’s the psychological scars left behind as well. Winterfell was the location she was raped and abused in, and being there would leave a complicated set of emotions. None of which we’ve been privy to on the show. Because the things that have happened to Sansa have made her better, smarter, and stronger than who she was before, she’s clearly fine. She even says so!

Excuse me while I vomit a little.

We know the show can handle showing a victim of unimaginable abuse rise above it. We got it with Theon Greyjoy. Sansa, unfortunately, has been shoved aside. Like many women in fiction (and life), she’s expected to put on her big girl boots and march forward because there is work to be done and no one else to do it.

I’m not against using rape and abuse as character development. But rape is extreme character development that shouldn’t be used and then shrugged off. Rape is horrific. It is life altering for the survivor. It should not be used cavalierly and then forgotten about — which is what makes the conversation between Sansa and The Hound uncomfortable at best. Painfully problematic at worst.

The Hound was not Sansa’s altruistic saviour in King’s Landing. He was intimidating. The looks he gave her were hardly innocent. Her fear of him was quite justified, and he enjoyed it. Sansa was young and terrified — and Littlefinger seemed like a safe man to her naive, sheltered mind. The Hound was not a safe option. Sansa approaching him at the feast is an odd choice, but one I can understand. He did save her life once. But during their conversation, The Hound deliberately speaks of her trauma with his usual uncouth manner. In a way he knows could send her away just as everyone else has left him alone to drink. Instead, Sansa grabs his hand reassuringly and informs him that without her abuse, she would still be that Little Bird she was when she last saw him.

Think on that for a moment. Sansa reassures a psychological abuser that she’s okay. She doesn’t have to break in front of him, she doesn’t have to be upset. But having a rape victim reassure a man who just attempted to trigger her that she’s okay is wrong. Nothing about this conversation moved either character’s development forward. Closure between these characters wasn’t needed. If Sansa were to thank The Hound for anything, it should have been for the time spent protecting Arya. It should have been for sticking around during the Battle of Winterfell, and having Jon’s back when they went beyond the Wall. It shouldn’t have been a tool for the writers to briefly touch upon how much Sansa has changed because of her abuse.

Abuse changes people. Hands down. Sometimes it changes people in ways they wish they could undo. Sometimes the recovery can help shape a person into someone they’re happy with. It is a complicated conversation, not one that should be spent reassuring a person who feels guilty that the abuse happened. It is not up to survivors to make silent witnesses feel better.

THE WOMAN IN CHAINS

There is not a lot of racial diversity on Game of Thrones. While I don’t believe that a character’s skin colour should act as plot armor, I do believe it should factor into the writer’s calculations about how the character dies. There is a very different feeling between Missandei dying because the mindless horde of the Night King tore through the crypt and killed her (along with many others). It’s another to have her captured, put in chains by a white man as a gift to his white woman and then killed to anger another white woman (AKA: the problematic death scene she received).

If Missandei weren’t the only black woman on the show, my perception of just how bad her death was might be a little more forgiving. But representation matters. Missandei died as a writing device for character development with Grey Worm, and to continue driving Daenerys overboard. It could have been achieved by her death in Winterfell. Optics matter. The parley scene could have been a clever battle of wits between Qyburn and Tyrion (see The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition scene with the Mouth of Sauron). There are amazing ways to make that scene hit home and antagonize Daenerys without putting Missandei in chains. Her death was unnecessary. It was shoehorned into the episode as a plot device.

BUT WHAT ABOUT REALISM?

People do regress and change from relationships. Rape and abuse survivors do end up comforting the silent witnesses. Black women die for the sake of others, time and time again. Nothing about those aspects are unrealistic.

Fantasy is not about reality. Escapism is not about reality.

At the end of the day, we’re all looking for escapism. For a fantastical world to dive into. We can’t argue that we need perfect historical reality when we’re watching a show with dragons and undead hordes. Some reality keeps us grounded. It helps us to suspend disbelief for an hour or two. But writers carefully craft the worlds and stories they write using many different plot devices and tropes. We want reality but only so much of it (see Arya’s story arc). The above points, while they all have likely happened time and time again in the real world, can be done better in fiction. They can be done in a way that doesn’t feel disingenuous to the characters, or disappointing for the viewer.

We, as writers, can do better. We should be expected to.

-LJ

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