Peonies

[smokingboot]

Sitting on the front room table cheering my soul. They were accompanied by cute carnations, but Mismatch is currently making it her mission to snap the stalks of the latter. The flower arrangement looks increasingly battered.The peonies remain undaunted, perhaps because their flowers start like curiously wrapped golf balls, and turn into bouffy strawberry sundae pom poms bigger than her head.

Game of Thrones the TV series is way cooler than GoT the books. Well do I recall groaning at the latter - I always felt that Tywin Lannister never needed to be smart, he just needed to wait for everyone else to be stupid. This adaption is so much better! Of course I love the Starks, and yes, Tyrion's great, but Tywin? There is only one Lannister and that is Charles Dance.

Comments

[tyrell.livejournal.com]

The Charles Dance / Maisie (Arya) scenes are so damn good.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen these yet, and can't wait!

[tyrell.livejournal.com]

Oh man, Dance is better in this than he has been in anything for ages, and little Maisie W is GREAT.

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I gave up on the books halfway trhough teh third one when I suddenly realised that I don't enjoy reading about rape, torture and abuse. Has the series toned that down a bit? I love the stories, just not the blithe way such gems as "The ugly women were merely raped and killed" were chucked about...

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more. It was a formula for the prepubescent squirties, and it recurred with such depressing regularity, I found myself doubting the author's personal respect for women.

Even with the 'It's just a nasty world for women' argument, his matriarchs Cersei, Cadelyn and Lysa each behave with phenomenal stupidity when it comes to their children. Breeders and sex toys may be his world's view of women, but the author gives mothers no benefit of brain at all, indeed his 'clever' girls either have no mothers or disobey them. It's as though the author is putting out the idea that women can only think before they give birth.

*Not buying it myself.

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Women only have worth as long as they are pretending to be men and do men's things.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

...I guess Martin might answer that the evolution of Danaerys disproves that, because she is in equal part used and user, sex toy and conqueror. But again, she has no mother to speak of, her blood is of the dragon, and she proves woefully poor in the fields of traditional woman power - she gives up her unborn son for the life of her husband, and loses both. So we see that f*ckd up partly inhuman woman can be a great queen if she's lucky, but not anything else, while ordinary human woman can be a great mother/wife, but for Christ's sake keep her out of government.

I was working on an RPG based on the books, read them over and over and grew to loathe them. It's a testament to the skill and cheesecraft of the series that I'm hypnotised!