The Minor Character you despise the most

[Walda]

I did not mean to imply Illyn Payne was a shell - in my experience, people who have difficulty communicating are perpetually brimming with things to say. It's just that the extra effort they have to take to make even their most necessary and obvious needs understood, and the fact that not everyone is switched-on and focused enough to even divine that much, severely curtails their expression.

 

In the medieval, they did not have braille or sign language, and they often associated deliberate maiming, like the loss of a hand or tongue or a burnt face, with criminality or being cursed by god (as it was commonly known as a punishment for criminals). However, being a knight often meant such injuries were given an heroic interpretation (while a common soldier would be shunned as a poacher or a liar).

 

It would not change the basic desire of a person to be understood, and to make themselves understood however they could (a need that remains even in this modern world, where very few people understand sign in any language.) 

 

In modern times, we tend to focus on the way medieval people with disabilities were stigmatised, and the cruel treatment meted out to them, especially for the amusement of others. What we don't look at so closely is the way they remained an integrated part of normal society - a concept that seems less than forty years old to us, and in many parts of the world the idea that it is somehow more compassionate or worthwhile to institutionalise people with disabilities 'with their own kind' still holds sway.

Sometimes, medieval people even thought the disabled were blessed - GRRM picks up on that strand of thought with Baelor the Blessed.

 

My bitch is with things like "Ser Ilyn opened his mouth and made a clacking sound. A laugh, Jaime realized."(FfC, Ch.27 Jaime III) when a/You don't need a tongue to laugh and b/ It's very difficult to make a clacking sound without a tongue.

 

You can blame it on the dragons, or claim it is authentically medieval, but I blame lazy disability tropes that GRRM too frequently resorts to, tropes that will date his work and make his views seem the way medieval views seem to us now, and undermine his merits as an author in this century and the next.

[Lady Blizzardborn]

I did not mean to imply Illyn Payne was a shell - in my experience, people who have difficulty communicating are perpetually brimming with things to say. It's just that the extra effort they have to take to make even their most necessary and obvious needs understood, and the fact that not everyone is switched-on and focused enough to even divine that much, severely curtails their expression.

 

In the medieval, they did not have braille or sign language, and they often associated deliberate maiming, like the loss of a hand or tongue or a burnt face, with criminality or being cursed by god (as it was commonly known as a punishment for criminals). However, being a knight often meant such injuries were given an heroic interpretation (while a common soldier would be shunned as a poacher or a liar).

 

It would not change the basic desire of a person to be understood, and to make themselves understood however they could (a need that remains even in this modern world, where very few people understand sign in any language.) 

 

In modern times, we tend to focus on the way medieval people with disabilities were stigmatised, and the cruel treatment meted out to them, especially for the amusement of others. What we don't look at so closely is the way they remained an integrated part of normal society - a concept that seems less than forty years old to us, and in many parts of the world the idea that it is somehow more compassionate or worthwhile to institutionalise people with disabilities 'with their own kind' still holds sway.

Sometimes, medieval people even thought the disabled were blessed - GRRM picks up on that strand of thought with Baelor the Blessed.

 

My bitch is with things like "Ser Ilyn opened his mouth and made a clacking sound. A laugh, Jaime realized."(FfC, Ch.27 Jaime III) when a/You don't need a tongue to laugh and b/ It's very difficult to make a clacking sound without a tongue.

 

You can blame it on the dragons, or claim it is authentically medieval, but I blame lazy disability tropes that GRRM too frequently resorts to, tropes that will date his work and make his views seem the way medieval views seem to us now, and undermine his merits as an author in this century and the next.

I didn't say you implied he was a shell.  I was pointing out that the comment you responded to had been part of a discussion/debate about whether or not he is a shell.

 

I don't see having lost your tongue to a crazy king as a disability exactly.  My definition tends more toward things that could not necessarily have been avoided (in Ilyn's case he could have kept his big mouth shut) like car accidents, genetic conditions, progressive illnesses, my boys who have autism and have trouble communicating...etc.  So I would not castigate GRRM for using disability tropes over Ser Ilyn.  As a writer I also know there's a difference between what characters say or think and what the author thinks.  You might consider withholding judgment pending what happens with Hodor, Bran, Tyrion, and other disadvantaged characters.

 

Sadly, there are still people who think that illness and disability are some kind of divine punishment.  And there are still people who mock and abuse the vulnerable just because they can.

 

As to clacking...do we know that he lost his entire tongue?  I've never been sure on that myself.

[Endymion I Targaryen]

The old women in Harrehal that Arya saw.I don't remember their names.And Wyze.

[PodrickMayne]

Patchface and his shitty poems... I know oh oh..

[Lady Blizzardborn]

Patchface and his shitty poems... I know oh oh..

Those are supposed to be poems?

[Queen Sansa Stark]

Randyll Tarly. 

 

Craster. 

 

Gregor Clegane. 

[Batbob45]

Patchface and his shitty poems... I know oh oh..

Patchface is more for creating songs

I find it hard to hate Westeros' version of the Creeper.(a DC Superhero)