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Controversial opinions on characters


INCBlackbird

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Jaime Lannister: he was always a good guy, he didn’t become one after he lost his hand. The reason I consider him this way is because of what happened to him in the past. He clearly got traumatized by what aerys did and the fact that just because he swore an oath (which was supposedly all about doing “the right thing”) he had to let aerys do whatever horrible things he wanted and he even had to protect him! And I think Jaime considered all of this very wrong while tons of people around him told him that this was what he had to do because he swore an oath, which is apparelty more sacred than doing the right thing. So Jaime started to “go away inside” as a way to deal with traumatic events, it’s a common defense mechanism. And at the same time I think he grew very bitter that the world he lived in worked this way. I can imagine him being rather naïve and romantic (kinda like Sansa and her stories) when he was younger. And then eventually when he’s had enough and decides to do the right thing, kill aerys to prevent him from killing all of king’s landing. And what does he get for it? Mockery, and yet he still considers it his finest act. I think this is the moment when Jaime just goes “fuck humanity, if they think this is wrong than I don’t care anymore”



the Petyr and Sansa relationship: I don’t think littlefinger is replacing Cat with Sansa. But rather I think he’s still trying to get Cat (even beyond her death) through Sansa by making her his “daughter” as a sort of “if she’s my daughter, Cat and I must have been together”.



Lancel Lannister: there’s the thing where I find him an interesting character who gets way too little attention and way too little love, That’s rather controversial.



Ned Stark: I think he meant well but his moral code was very flawed. Because it’s a “rational” moral code, based on rules he’s desided on where important to him because it’s what he was taught, not an emotional moral code based on what feels right/wrong.



Theon Greyjoy: I think Theon Greyjoy was always a good guy, he had just lots of issues and defense mechanisms and spent half his life in captivity which prevented him from having some basic life experiences that he needed, as a result he’s completely lost and hasn’t had the chance to build up a moral code yet, but he does during the Winterfell disaster, and it’s completely based on what’s right and what’s wrong.



do you have any controversial opinions on characters, you'd like to share?

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jaime: i think he is and was a jerk . he is not a monster ever nor a terrible person but just a jerk i think i am sort of with you



LF and sansa: i think your opinion is what LF thinks he is doing but not what is happening.



Lancel: he kills robert strong i get that feeling he general want to be a better person.



Ned stark: he has PTSD and survivor's guilt. Everyone he loves, and his friends all die. but he becomes one of the most important persons of the realm, get a beautiful wife and son. i think that is killing him inside.



Jon Snow: will break every vow but never leave the NW. he will hate himself for this as he becomes more famous and powerful.


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I think this is the moment when Jaime just goes “fuck humanity, if they think this is wrong than I don’t care anymore”

You know that's called "being a bad guy" by most people, right?

Please explain how "always a good guy" remains such after murdering 3 innocent men to "teach their boss a lesson" and never feeling the least bit guilty about it.

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I think Jaime's so-called redemption arc is sort of like a false redemption. Kind of like a very self conscious act, to pat himself on the back and to have other people see him as honorable or whatever but the change isn't necessarily coming from within. A giveaway of this, I think, is when he tries to act like he thinks Tywin would to prove Genna wrong. He's still trying to juggle his newfound purpose to be better and keep his vows with all his shitty traits

I think his real redemption, if he gets any, will begin when the Brotherhood captures him

In contrast, I think Theon's redemption arc is the real deal

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Gotta pity Jaime. He asked Rhaegar for him not to be left with Aerys


LF is using Sansa like he uses everyone. He has no feelings for her


Ned. honorable but thick as Tormund`s member


Theon. Jerk from when we first meet him and finds a beheading funny and he`s older than the Stark kids


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Jaime: Was not a good guy before losing his hand and he isn't much of one after. I like Jaime as a character but he's not a good guy. He's better than he was but still not good. The Murder of Aerys is why people in the story dislike him. Fans have their own more accurate reasons to think he's a bad guy. For example, one of the first things we see him do is try to kill a kid in order to hide the fact that he's fucking his sister -- kind of a bad guy thing to do.



Littlefinger: I'm convinced the relationship he actually wants with Sansa is not father/daughter if you know what I mean. He may be smart enough to avoid his temptations but they are there.



Lancel: I agree he doesn't get enough attention, I don't think he deserves much love though.



Ned Stark: Moral codes shouldn't be based on what "feels" right and wrong. Many things Ned did felt wrong but were the right thing to do.



Theon: He may have been a hostage but he still enjoyed a higher standard of living than 99% of the people in the society in which he lives so that's not much of an excuse for not developing a moral code.


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Throughout the books, Jaime becomes somewhat sympathetic and less of an asshole, that's for certain. But in a story where there are no absolute good or bad guys (with very few notable exceptions), where most characters tend to be very grey-ish, to call Jaime (and Theon), of all people, "good guys", is a very strange (and shallow) way of looking at things. They are both highly immoral, ruthless and self-absorbed characters.


My controversial opinion: I heavily dislike Theon and although I don't think he really deserved all that has happened to him, I can't say I feel sorry for him.

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brienne of tarth is dumber than ned and victarion put together



the ironborn aren't badass, they are the rednecks of westeros



petyr is more lucky and sly than intelligent and devious. He has no hope whatsoever of getting what he wants -- he is already at his peak.



Rebels calling Jamie kingslayer is driven by petty jealousy, nothing more. Ned is probably the root of this prejudice.



Jon snow is morally corrupt, unwilling to listen to good council, and just plain inept as a leader. He scammed his way into power and him getting killed is a good thing.



And lastly....the knight of flowers is grossly overrated as a fighter.


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1, I agree that Jaime didn't start as a bad guy and with the general assessment of his character, but it makes no sense to cut off at the Sack of KL and leave it at that. Up until that point I agree, but he's gone down a very dark path since and it's taken a major loss for him to start questioning his life's choices again. As he says himself, he wanted to be Arthur Dayne and became the Smiling Knight instead. His quest to reclaim what he once was seems on the right track but he still has to face a major challenge. We will see how far he's progressed when doing the right and honourable thing comes with an actual personal sacrifice - I think it will be soon.



2, LF seems to go through phases when it comes to his behaviour towards Sansa, but (pretend) fathers don't want to sleep with their daughters so I think this is off.



3, I used to pity Lancel when he was screwing/being screwed by Cersei and especially at BBW. I have lost a lot of that sympathy since he decided to become a raging hypocrite and put his personal salvation before his duties.



4, Ned - I don't think it's helpful to distinguish between a rational and emotional morality. What does that even mean? No one is a strictly rational creature, especially when it comes to things like right and wrong. Do you have a concrete example of Ned doing something wrong because of not being in touch with his feelings?



5, Theon starts out as an asshole, and continues down that path until confronted with the consequences of his actions. He's on a genuine redemption act and becoming a decent person, however. I hope he finds peace.



Controversial opinion: I love both Jon and Catelyn. I also still can't get past Stannis' people burning thing. I find Arianne extremely dull. I have so far been completely underwhelmed by Euron. I keep liking Varys despite myself and despite knowing what he's responsible for. And Mance is a true hero.


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You know that's called "being a bad guy" by most people, right?

Please explain how "always a good guy" remains such after murdering 3 innocent men to "teach their boss a lesson" and never feeling the least bit guilty about it.

when it's based on him having problems with the morality of most people in the world he lives in and being generally done with those people I don't see how that is equal to him being a bad guy. in that case i'm a bad woman, cause i'm pretty much done with the world I live in and all the morally apprehensible people in it...

come one, you're reading asoiaf there's very few people who haven't murdered innocents... how does it make jaime a bad guy and not the others?

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I think Jaime's so-called redemption arc is sort of like a false redemption. Kind of like a very self conscious act, to pat himself on the back and to have other people see him as honorable or whatever but the change isn't necessarily coming from within. A giveaway of this, I think, is when he tries to act like he thinks Tywin would to prove Genna wrong. He's still trying to juggle his newfound purpose to be better and keep his vows with all his shitty traits

I think his real redemption, if he gets any, will begin when the Brotherhood captures him

In contrast, I think Theon's redemption arc is the real deal

I'm not a big fan of redemption arcs tbh. or rather, I don't really believe in them in the sense that either a person lacks empathy (like Cersei, Ramsay...) and they do bad things for their own benefit/because they like it and have no moral code about any of it because well lack of empathy. or a person does have empathy and they can do bad things but realise they're bad things and would want to change them if they could. I consider the first group bad people, the second one good people and not in need of a redemption arc (obviously all of them have shades of grey but I just don't think people really change, they just evolve through what happens to them in life)

so in my opinion Jaime and Theon didn't need a redemption arc to begin with. that's just my opinion though and I can see why people do think they're on a redemption arc/ need a redemption arc.

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I'm not a big fan of redemption arcs tbh. or rather, I don't really believe in them in the sense that either a person lacks empathy (like Cersei, Ramsay...) and they do bad things for their own benefit/because they like it and have no moral code about any of it because well lack of empathy. or a person does have empathy and they can do bad things but realise they're bad things and would want to change them if they could. I consider the first group bad people, the second one good people and not in need of a redemption arc (obviously all of them have shades of grey but I just don't think people really change, they just evolve through what happens to them in life)

so in my opinion Jaime and Theon didn't need a redemption arc to begin with. that's just my opinion though and I can see why people do think they're on a redemption arc/ need a redemption arc.

This is a good starting point but unless it's followed by them making up for the bad things they did and/or at least refraining from doing such bad thing in the future, it is just self-pitying waffle. Especially if you just end up justifying your evil and insisting you're not really at fault because reasons.

Victarion- why big up a character then have him appease 2 gods at opposite ends of the spectrum- there can only be one conclusion

That an average castle wall wishes it would be half as thick as Victarion?

same

:cheers:
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Gotta pity Jaime. He asked Rhaegar for him not to be left with Aerys

LF is using Sansa like he uses everyone. He has no feelings for her

Ned. honorable but thick as Tormund`s member

Theon. Jerk from when we first meet him and finds a beheading funny and he`s older than the Stark kids

how are people still misunderstanding this? I think i've explained this about a million times over and really, I didn't understand the first time WHY I even had to explain it cause GRRM makes it pretty damn clear. so yeah hereby I'm just gonna copy and paste one of my previous explanations on this :

“The head bounced off a thick root and rolled. It came up near Greyjoy’s feet. Theon was a lean, dark youth of nineteen who found everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot on the head, and kicked it away.”

This is the first time we meet Theon and it’s a very defining moment. Bran remarks that he finds everything amusing and throughout the rest of the book we find that Theon smiles A LOT. But if, with the background information we now have on a reread, we look back at this moment, it’s already been made clear why Theon smiles so much. Theon is a hostage under threat of death, a position he has been in since he was 9. And at this particular moment he has just witnessed an execution knowing that any day it could be him on the block being decapitated with the same sword, by the same man, and he is helpless to do anything to stop it, his own fate is beyond his control.

So Theon developed a defense mechanism, this particular defense mechanism is called reaction formation (Reaction formation is a defensive process in which emotions and impulses that are anxiety-producing or perceived to be unacceptable are mastered by displaying an exaggeration of the directly opposing tendency.) Theon smiles to hide his fear, sadness and feelings of helplessness. And it goes beyond hiding them from others, more so it’s about denying the very existence of them to himself.

I’d like to skip ahead a little to Catelyn’s first chapter in a clash of kings:

When Robb pretty much spells out Theon’s hostage situation, Catelyn notices him smiling again. We can’t know what Theon is thinking but it’s not so difficult to guess.

“’I shall release my own captives taken in the Whispering Wood and the Battle of the Camps, save Jaime Lannister alone, who will remain my hostage for his father’s good behavior.’ She studied Theon Greyjoy’s sly smile, wondering what it meant. That young man had a way of looking as though he knew some secret jest that only he was privy to; Catelyn had never liked it.”

notice how again, when something painfull connected to Theon's situation is mentioned and Theon is smiling. yeah... Theon was clearly the person there who found that execution the least fun of all of them.

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Jaime Lannister: he was always a good guy, he didn’t become one after he lost his hand. The reason I consider him this way is because of what happened to him in the past. He clearly got traumatized by what aerys did and the fact that just because he swore an oath (which was supposedly all about doing “the right thing”) he had to let aerys do whatever horrible things he wanted and he even had to protect him! And I think Jaime considered all of this very wrong while tons of people around him told him that this was what he had to do because he swore an oath, which is apparelty more sacred than doing the right thing. So Jaime started to “go away inside” as a way to deal with traumatic events, it’s a common defense mechanism. And at the same time I think he grew very bitter that the world he lived in worked this way. I can imagine him being rather naïve and romantic (kinda like Sansa and her stories) when he was younger. And then eventually when he’s had enough and decides to do the right thing, kill aerys to prevent him from killing all of king’s landing. And what does he get for it? Mockery, and yet he still considers it his finest act. I think this is the moment when Jaime just goes “fuck humanity, if they think this is wrong than I don’t care anymore”

the Petyr and Sansa relationship: I don’t think littlefinger is replacing Cat with Sansa. But rather I think he’s still trying to get Cat (even beyond her death) through Sansa by making her his “daughter” as a sort of “if she’s my daughter, Cat and I must have been together”.

Lancel Lannister: there’s the thing where I find him an interesting character who gets way too little attention and way too little love, That’s rather controversial.

Ned Stark: I think he meant well but his moral code was very flawed. Because it’s a “rational” moral code, based on rules he’s desided on where important to him because it’s what he was taught, not an emotional moral code based on what feels right/wrong.

Theon Greyjoy: I think Theon Greyjoy was always a good guy, he had just lots of issues and defense mechanisms and spent half his life in captivity which prevented him from having some basic life experiences that he needed, as a result he’s completely lost and hasn’t had the chance to build up a moral code yet, but he does during the Winterfell disaster, and it’s completely based on what’s right and what’s wrong.

do you have any controversial opinions on characters, you'd like to share?

I'm with you about 50% on Jaime and 100% on Lancel and Theon. I disagree about LF and Sansa, but that's more of a gut feeling than anything else. I disagree STRONGLY about Ned, but that's because I am not a Jedi and 'trust your feelings' does not seem to me to be the right way to come up with a moral code. An 'emotional moral code based on what feels right/wrong,' while of course very human and real, doesn't stand up well philosophically.

Personally, my controversial opinion is this: Varys IS a good guy, and he IS serving the realm. How's that?

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how are people still misunderstanding this? I think i've explained this about a million times over and really, I didn't understand the first time WHY I even had to explain it cause GRRM makes it pretty damn clear. so yeah hereby I'm just gonna copy and paste one of my previous explanations on this :

“The head bounced off a thick root and rolled. It came up near Greyjoy’s feet. Theon was a lean, dark youth of nineteen who found everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot on the head, and kicked it away.”

This is the first time we meet Theon and it’s a very defining moment. Bran remarks that he finds everything amusing and throughout the rest of the book we find that Theon smiles A LOT. But if, with the background information we now have on a reread, we look back at this moment, it’s already been made clear why Theon smiles so much. Theon is a hostage under threat of death, a position he has been in since he was 9. And at this particular moment he has just witnessed an execution knowing that any day it could be him on the block being decapitated with the same sword, by the same man, and he is helpless to do anything to stop it, his own fate is beyond his control.

So Theon developed a defense mechanism, this particular defense mechanism is called reaction formation (Reaction formation is a defensive process in which emotions and impulses that are anxiety-producing or perceived to be unacceptable are mastered by displaying an exaggeration of the directly opposing tendency.) Theon smiles to hide his fear, sadness and feelings of helplessness. And it goes beyond hiding them from others, more so it’s about denying the very existence of them to himself.

I’d like to skip ahead a little to Catelyn’s first chapter in a clash of kings:

When Robb pretty much spells out Theon’s hostage situation, Catelyn notices him smiling again. We can’t know what Theon is thinking but it’s not so difficult to guess.

“’I shall release my own captives taken in the Whispering Wood and the Battle of the Camps, save Jaime Lannister alone, who will remain my hostage for his father’s good behavior.’ She studied Theon Greyjoy’s sly smile, wondering what it meant. That young man had a way of looking as though he knew some secret jest that only he was privy to; Catelyn had never liked it.”

notice how again, when something painfull connected to Theon's situation is mentioned and Theon is smiling. yeah... Theon was clearly the person there who found that execution the least fun of all of them.

Or he`s a jerk. If you paste the link of GRRM expressing your opinion i may change my mind

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Jaime pushing Bran out of the window is (although a dick move) justifiable.

Well, I don't know, it's really Jaime covering his tracks and saving his own skin (along with Cersei's and the children's, yes) because of his unnecessary antics

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