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In last week’s Game of Thrones, Arya told Tywin Lannister that “most girls are stupid.” When we heard that line, were we supposed to think, “This is why Arya is awesome”? After watching The Prince of Winterfell, I can’t help but think that the answer is “yes.” While the books series presents a huge range of dynamic and well-developed female characters, the show writers seem determined to edit the story so that all normal women seem weak and worthy of disdain. Girls, like Arya, who fight to throw off femininity and become “one of the boys,” are the only ones who are really strong or worthy of respect.
Although some of the show’s changes to the story have been positive and potentially even improve on the novel, many edits in the last few episodes have reduced the series’ selection of varied, challenging female characters into cliches and walking confirmation of the idea that “most women suck.”
(Source: queenofthenorthx)
#In the context of this line everything Dean does in this episode that might suggest ‘forgiveness’ #just makes that ‘forgiveness’ look like another attempt to manipulate Castiel into doing whatever he wants. #’A hint of forgiveness’. Right.
#At this point #I’m convinced that Dean doesn’t understand Castiel. #Not because he can’t #but because he doesn’t care to. #They need a break away from each other. #Their relationship has reached the same toxic unhealthy and codependent levels that Sam’n’Dean’s relationship has. #Is this an unpopular opinion? #Oops. Don’t care.
It took more mental energy than it should have for me to make this, but I had to. Because in the midst of all that has gone on since the finale aired, I have come to realize that there is one thing that set my teeth on edge and had me weeping for humanity more than anything else. More than Dair breaking up (or something, must have missed the part where that actually happened), more than the ~romantic~ Chair reunion in which Chuck proves that no one does a grand gesture better than a Bass by being a first class douchebag and still gets characters sacrificed at his altar, more than even the Derena scene that still makes me want to bleach my brain. And that thing is this interaction contained within said soul-destroying Derena scene:
“I thought she’d changed.”
“She’s never gonna change. Don’t you see Dan the Blair you’re in love with isn’t the real Blair, it’s the one that you created in your book.”Part of me wants to say I’m not even going to dignify that with a response seeing as it’s basically a line right out of the worst kind of Twitter twit’s handbook and the writers pandered right on to that demographic (and probably laughed gleefully while doing so). However, the bigger part of me is just screaming at the wrongness of it all. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. The so wrong it causes babies to cry and angels to lose their wings kind of wrong. With that line, these writers have managed to fine tune inconsistency into an art form.
I remember when they brought up the idea that there was nothing actually wrong with the men Blair dated, but that the fault was somehow her own. That she “turns her men dark”. That she’s some sort of succubus-like being who makes good men go bad (or in Chuck’s case, bad men get worse). I loathed the direction this line of thinking was headed for in terms of how much respect that afforded Blair as a female character and the shades of victim blaming that it represented. But, then little by little, I started to think, maybe, just maybe the writers threw that idea out there in order to negate it. It seemed to me that Dan and Blair’s friendship/relationship as it developed through the season was being used as an example of how Blair didn’t need to choose between her “dark side” or her “light side” (represented by Chuck and Louis), but that she could be loved by someone for whatever she wanted to be. That she could be loved without any expectations of maintaining any “side”. That she could be loved by someone who has seen the best and the worst of her first hand and doesn’t expect her to change for him. If there was an example of Dan trying to change Blair during the course of their relationship arc or berating her for not doing so… well, nothing, because it never happened. Which is what makes the “I thought she’d changed” line so galling.
I’ve seen the idea floating around that Dan had put Blair on a pedestal. That he only saw the good in her and would run at the first sign of the bad. This is what happened to him with Serena essentially where he worshiped her initially and then became disillusioned as he got to know her. This however doesn’t quite work for Dan and Blair because Dan has had a front row seat to Blair’s worst moments since season 1. Heck, Dan has been the victim of Blair’s worst moments since season 1. He’s watched his sister be repeatedly victimized by Blair and has thought the worst of her for it. The idea that Dan harbored an illusion of who Blair is or that he had no clue about the ~darkness within~ is ridiculous when put into the context of their entire relationship preceding their friendship.
It is rendered even more ridiculous by the time-frame that the writers themselves chose to put on when exactly Dan fell for Blair. When they worked together at W. When Blair was plotting to get him fired and dispatching her minions and putting perfume in coffee and stealing staplers and insulting and berating him and his Brooklyn roots at every opportunity and sabotaging all the other interns and literally wrestling him to the ground. That’s when he fell for her. Does anyone disagree that Blair was the “real” Blair at that point in time? Or was that also the alternate universe Blair from Dan’s book (that hadn’t even been written yet)? That was Dan’s “idealized” version of Blair? That Blair? Really? To that I say a big fat pffft. By specifying that Dan fell for her at a time when she was quintessentially herself, the writers shot their own “he doesn’t love the real Blair” retcon in the face before it ever got off the ground. The entire premise of the “It’s you, it couldn’t be awful” line was not that Dan viewed her as flawless. The point was the exact opposite. That he knows her shortcomings and idiosyncrasies inside out, but accepts that as part of who she is.
Basically the idea that everything Dan saw in Blair (both good and bad) was “wrong” and that that Blair doesn’t exist angers me more than I can describe because what exactly are we meant to infer from that implication? The only thing offered up by the writers to counter Dan’s strong, independent, capable and supposedly non-existent version of Blair was that seed they planted about this girl who turns men dark. The girl who shouldn’t be idealized because in the end she “always lies” (thanks for that gem of wisdom, Serena). The girl who will never break free of her “love” for a man who is a text book abuser (don’t worry, I’m under no illusion that the writers are aware of the fact that that’s what they’ve created in Chuck). Chuck, who had very little trouble treating Raina and Eva with respect and reverence, but just can’t seem to manage that where Blair is concerned. My guess is because he and Blair are similar in the worst ways possible and that enables both their famed “dark sides” which would explain why they’re mostly miserable together. Chuck’s line about no one “good” ever being able to love him after Eva left was telling.
So, before the people who support this idea start celebrating their triumph. Before anyone breaks out the champagne because they were right, that everything Dan believed to be true about Blair was false, I just have one question. Why is that something you wanted to be right about? What was so offensive about the way Dan viewed her? And what does it say that validating Chuck as the best option for Blair involves invalidating all the good Dan saw in her?
