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A quick disclaimer right at the beginning: I’m going to talk about fan reactions and possible reasons for those. It should be obvious that I’m not claiming to know what any particular person is thinking or the reasons for why they like the characters they like. What I’m saying here is just based on observations on various forums over the last few years, when discussing these characters.
For the longest time I just could not deal with people, who liked Roose Bolton or Tywin Lannister. I just could not understand them. Just… why would you like these ruthless, merciless men, who would do absolutely anything to get to power and stay there? There are other characters who come to mind when thinking about this, but these two most often came up, when discussing such things, as who would make a good ruler. I always felt that those people would make horrible rulers, not in the least interested in the welfare off their country, but only in their own and possibly their families. So why do some people like them? Well, they win.
Just World Belief is something often invoked in discussing such things as victim blaming. Basically, it is the believe that people who are the victims of tragedies somehow deserve this. Not necessary because the are morally bad people, but because they did something wrong.
You got robbed? Well of course that happened, you did not lock your door right.
You got assaulted? Well of course you did, you were out alone at night.
The psychological mechanism behind these ideas are, that when the victim did something wrong, then that same thing cannot happen to you. You know what they did wrong. You don’t do that stuff, so you’ll be safe. Everyone does this occasionally. It makes people feel, like they can control their environment and ultimately their fate. It’s normal to try and get some control over a chaotic and scary world. So how does this relate to the discussions happening in the ASoIaF fandom?
Well of course Ned died, he told Cersei about his plans. What did he expect would happen?
Well off course the Red Wedding happened, it’s Robb’s own fault for breaking his word to the Freys.
Sound familiar? And it makes sense that we would react this way to the stories we read in ASoIaF. Rereading certain chapters sometimes almost fills me with dread. I just don’t want to experience all that suffering my favorite characters are put through again. So, if you tell yourself that Ned was an idiot for acting as he did and that he should have known better. that makes reading his death scene much more bearable (I engaged in that myself, listing all the stupid decisions Ned made, that brought him to his death). Seeing the Red Wedding as a great master plan of Tywin to end the war, certainly makes it far less horrible, than focussing on the dramatic sense off loss and betrayal you feel for the Starks. Does Tywin not say so himself? That he safes lives by ending it this way? Personally I don’t believe a word of that, but others do.
So is this way interpreting the books wrong? I don’t know. In the real world just world believe is certainly extremely problematic, as it leads to massive victim blaming and shaming. In the fandom? All I can say on that is, that it makes me extremely uncomfortable, when this leads to ideas such as Catelyn and Sansa deserved what they got, because they were stupid. Maybe because I always think that people who think this way about characters in a book, think the same way about real people in the world. As I said before, I engaged in this myself when it came to my reaction to Ned’s death. So maybe this is a good moment to check myself and look more closely at moments when I myself engage in the oh so problematic, but so human flaw of Just World Belief.
A quick disclaimer right at the beginning: I’m going to talk about fan reactions and possible reasons for those. It should be obvious that I’m not claiming to know what any particular person is thinking or the reasons for why they like the characters they like. What I’m saying here is just based on observations on various forums over the last few years, when discussing these characters.
For the longest time I just could not deal with people, who liked Roose Bolton or Tywin Lannister. I just could not understand them. Just… why would you like these ruthless, merciless men, who would do absolutely anything to get to power and stay there? There are other characters who come to mind when thinking about this, but these two most often came up, when discussing such things, as who would make a good ruler. I always felt that those people would make horrible rulers, not in the least interested in the welfare off their country, but only in their own and possibly their families. So why do some people like them? Well, they win.
Just World Belief is something often invoked in discussing such things as victim blaming. Basically, it is the believe that people who are the victims of tragedies somehow deserve this. Not necessary because the are morally bad people, but because they did something wrong.
You got robbed? Well of course that happened, you did not lock your door right.
You got assaulted? Well of course you did, you were out alone at night.
The psychological mechanism behind these ideas are, that when the victim did something wrong, then that same thing cannot happen to you. You know what they did wrong. You don’t do that stuff, so you’ll be safe. Everyone does this occasionally. It makes people feel, like they can control their environment and ultimately their fate. It’s normal to try and get some control over a chaotic and scary world. So how does this relate to the discussions happening in the ASoIaF fandom?
Well of course Ned died, he told Cersei about his plans. What did he expect would happen?
Well off course the Red Wedding happened, it’s Robb’s own fault for breaking his word to the Freys.
Sound familiar? And it makes sense that we would react this way to the stories we read in ASoIaF. Rereading certain chapters sometimes almost fills me with dread. I just don’t want to experience all that suffering my favorite characters are put through again. So, if you tell yourself that Ned was an idiot for acting as he did and that he should have known better. that makes reading his death scene much more bearable (I engaged in that myself, listing all the stupid decisions Ned made, that brought him to his death). Seeing the Red Wedding as a great master plan of Tywin to end the war, certainly makes it far less horrible, than focussing on the dramatic sense off loss and betrayal you feel for the Starks. Does Tywin not say so himself? That he safes lives by ending it this way? Personally I don’t believe a word of that, but others do.
So is this way interpreting the books wrong? I don’t know. In the real world just world believe is certainly extremely problematic, as it leads to massive victim blaming and shaming. In the fandom? All I can say on that is, that it makes me extremely uncomfortable, when this leads to ideas such as Catelyn and Sansa deserved what they got, because they were stupid. Maybe because I always think that people who think this way about characters in a book, think the same way about real people in the world. As I said before, I engaged in this myself when it came to my reaction to Ned’s death. So maybe this is a good moment to check myself and look more closely at moments when I myself engage in the oh so problematic, but so human flaw of Just World Belief.
