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Write here your unpopular opinion about asoiaf


Odej

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I honestly feel like we are overexaggerating about ages. Surely Daenerys was wed to Drogo at a young age, but her situation is understandable because she was raped. On the other hand, we want our favorite children to be sexually matures, but the actual thing we have to realize is that we should just forget this kind of things to begin with (such as shipping ARYA with anyone, bruv), and at the same time realize how by modern standards 14 year old are pretty much sexually mature (at least they were when I was that old). Now, not in a legal way, but men, teenagers usually lose it around that age. And medieval marriages were consumed at that age, so I guess that's close to being realistic. Of course I'm speaking the mind of a 19 yo dude, but man, people should really forget about sexualizing children of ASOIAF. I mean, I freak out when I hear how people think Arya may be romantically involved with Jon at the age of 12-13, hell even 11.  

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25 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

I honestly feel like we are overexaggerating about ages. Surely Daenerys was wed to Drogo at a young age, but her situation is understandable because she was raped. On the other hand, we want our favorite children to be sexually matures, but the actual thing we have to realize is that we should just forget this kind of things to begin with (such as shipping ARYA with anyone, bruv), and at the same time realize how by modern standards 14 year old are pretty much sexually mature (at least they were when I was that old). Now, not in a legal way, but men, teenagers usually lose it around that age. And medieval marriages were consumed at that age, so I guess that's close to being realistic. Of course I'm speaking the mind of a 19 yo dude, but man, people should really forget about sexualizing children of ASOIAF. I mean, I freak out when I hear how people think Arya may be romantically involved with Jon at the age of 12-13, hell even 11.  

you see, that's exactly the problem . in medieval times people easily got married at 12 -13 and consummated it. there might have been some frowns when a 12 year old girl had a child but at 14, marriage and pregnancies were normal. George clearly wanted to adopt that and that's alright. it's also arguable that in a society such as that , children tend to mature more quickly leading to situations like 4 yr old Kathrin the great impressing the Austrian king or 13 yr old Elizabeth I be considered as a legitimate suspect in Thomas Seymore's alleged treason . BUT, for a modern audience it is somewhat difficult to see this completely with a medieval lense and fully enjoy it. in a world where 14 yr olds are considered mature enough to have sex , get married , lead armies and wear crowns , technically it's ok for 11 yr olds to fall in love and start getting involved with someone romantically , perhaps even make it sexual at 13 . simply put , ASOIAF's 14 yr olds are like our 17-18 yr olds and their 11 year olds are not that different from our 14-15 year olds ! is it disturbing ? yeah! that's why legal age changed from 13 to 16 to 18!.. so, all in all , aging up characters would have made it all easier for the readers. probably, you wouldn't have freaked out from the prospect of 16 year old Arya getting together with 20 year old Jon because that sort of match used to happen as close as 20th century!

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1 minute ago, EggBlue said:

you see, that's exactly the problem . in medieval times people easily got married at 12 -13 and consummated it. there might have been some frowns when a 12 year old girl had a child but at 14, marriage and pregnancies were normal. George clearly wanted to adopt that and that's alright. it's also arguable that in a society such as that , children tend to mature more quickly leading to situations like 4 yr old Kathrin the great impressing the Austrian king or 13 yr old Elizabeth I be considered as a legitimate suspect in Thomas Seymore's alleged treason . BUT, for a modern audience it is somewhat difficult to see this completely with a medieval lense and fully enjoy it. in a world where 14 yr olds are considered mature enough to have sex , get married , lead armies and wear crowns , technically it's ok for 11 yr olds to fall in love and start getting involved with someone romantically , perhaps even make it sexual at 13 . simply put , ASOIAF's 14 yr olds are like our 17-18 yr olds and their 11 year olds are not that different from our 14-15 year olds ! is it disturbing ? yeah! that's why legal age changed from 13 to 16 to 18!.. so, all in all , aging up characters would have made it all easier for the readers. probably, you wouldn't have freaked out from the prospect of 16 year old Arya getting together with 20 year old Jon because that sort of match used to happen as close as 20th century!

Not to mention some of the physical descriptions. Sansa has the body of an 18 year old. When Aemon married Jocelyn, he was 15 and she was 16, but she was 5’11” and he was 6’2” (and he wasn’t described as gangly or awkward either).

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2 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Not to mention some of the physical descriptions. Sansa has the body of an 18 year old. When Aemon married Jocelyn, he was 15 and she was 16, but she was 5’11” and he was 6’2” (and he wasn’t described as gangly or awkward either).

that one's on Martin . he certainly is human like the rest of us and as faithful as he wanted to be to his medieval settings , he must have found it easier to write as if they were young adults.

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40 minutes ago, EggBlue said:

ASOIAF's 14 yr olds are like our 17-18 yr olds

I mean, our 14 year olds are like our 18 year olds as well. 

If you want to read medieval fantasy, you should know the rules, that I think is an expectation. Medieval nobility and peasantry as well had their children marry even from the age of 9-10, but they didn't throw their children in a bed together. So no, in no way thinking that 11 yo Arya should sexually engage with anyone. And I agree that the story would be a lot easier, and a lot quicker to process that way, but that's just not how it is, altough I'm pretty confident we won't have our endings with Arya and Bran being closer to 10 than 20. But these kinds of things shouldn't be speculated, yet. When I see people that they think Jon Snow betrayed the Night's Watch because he's deeply in love with still a kiddo Arya, I'm disgusted and nothing will change that until the child is a child by every standard that has ever been.

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4 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

I mean, our 14 year olds are like our 18 year olds as well. 

If you want to read medieval fantasy, you should know the rules, that I think is an expectation. Medieval nobility and peasantry as well had their children marry even from the age of 9-10, but they didn't throw their children in a bed together. So no, in no way thinking that 11 yo Arya should sexually engage with anyone.

well , yeah they usually waited till 14-15 but 12 also wasn't out of option. and no , I don't think she'll be sexually involved either; romantically is another thing , though .

4 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

And I agree that the story would be a lot easier, and a lot quicker to process that way, but that's just not how it is, altough I'm pretty confident we won't have our endings with Arya and Bran being closer to 10 than 20. But these kinds of things shouldn't be speculated, yet. When I see people that they think Jon Snow betrayed the Night's Watch because he's deeply in love with still a kiddo Arya, I'm disgusted and nothing will change that until the child is a child by every standard that has ever been.

this I can fully understand . especially that Jon's last memory of her is his 9 yr old sister! 

2 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

He isn't an ordinary 10 year old, though. I'm sure they'll have no trouble electing him once he demonstrates his magical abilities. 

like the time they had an 8 yr old miracle high septon?:P

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I’ll probably go whine about this in the TWOW and Today’s Social Climate thread, but I have seen more heated debates during the last year about whether or not girls actually got married at age 12 in the Middle Ages or not than in the previous ten. This is probably because we’ve run out of other things to argue about re:ASOIAF, but  damn. Apparently everyone online is a medieval historian :rolleyes:

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12 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I’ll probably go whine about this in the TWOW and Today’s Social Climate thread, but I have seen more heated debates during the last year about whether or not girls actually got married at age 12 in the Middle Ages or not than in the previous ten. This is probably because we’ve run out of other things to argue about re:ASOIAF, but  damn. Apparently everyone online is a medieval historian :rolleyes:

In England, the lowest age for consummation was age twelve.....just look at poor Margaret Beaufort. Got pregnant at twelve, gave birth at thirteen and was so damaged internally that she never had another triangle. This I know because I had a recent obsession with the Wars of the Roses. 

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There is a lot to this bit. One, it was allowed. Two, the other nobles, I have read, didn’t like it. She had it written into a later, marriage contract that she was not required to have sex.( get pregnant  either ) women had a high rate of dying. The real weird one for me was Bloody Queen Mary. She wanted to do the right thing so much that she had two false pregnancies and no one would fill her in. 

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1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I’ll probably go whine about this in the TWOW and Today’s Social Climate thread, but I have seen more heated debates during the last year about whether or not girls actually got married at age 12 in the Middle Ages or not than in the previous ten. This is probably because we’ve run out of other things to argue about re:ASOIAF, but  damn. Apparently everyone online is a medieval historian :rolleyes:

yeah! George really should save us... our subjects are Moonboy , historical weddings , trashing D&D and fart jokes!

speaking of historical weddings , I found this on youtube about the worst wedding nights ( to clarify , I don't know how accurate it is) :

 

 

 

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ASOIAF is heavily focused on and centered around current western moral sensibilities in terms of how it wants to make us feel and evoke feelings as well as in how protagonists act and what their goals are. As a non westerner I find a lot of protagonists or supposedly sympathetic characters annoying or outright hate them. I hate Lyanna for being irresponsible and leading continent to war I hate Jon for his stupid ideas and bland character. I hate Robb for not holding to honor and agreements. I hate Tyrion and like Tywin. Tyrion is a bad man, a two faced man that is disgusted by idea of being with a dwarf woman, a man who believes whores ought to love him, a man who wasted handship on petty power struggles with his sister, most of them over a whore, he’s a man that was given chances over and over again to prove his worth to his father and he always failed. 

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You misjudge Tyrion.  You do him wrong.  He is uncomfortable with Penny.  He is uncomfortable with receiving love.  It's a strange mixture of feeling above her in status but also feeling unworthy of her love.  This is not a defense of Tyrion.  He can become the villain before the end.  But his feelings towards Penny does not make him a bad fellow.  Fans over estimate Tyrion's intelligence.  He is educated and observant but I do not find him that bright.  He is clever though.  Of the men, Petyr Baelish is the man blessed with intelligence.  Of the women, it is Dany who is blessed with high intelligence.  Arya is smart too but her mental illness compromise her.  Tyrion's inferiority complex is mixing with his inflated opinion of his own cleverness.  Tywin is smart and experienced.  His problem was pride.  

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21 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

but I have seen more heated debates during the last year about whether or not girls actually got married at age 12 in the Middle Ages or not than in the previous ten.

Probably the reason I am spending less and less time here. It was good until I could talk about House of the Dragon, but the people behind ASOIAF are really letting their momentum run away. Mostly George.

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4 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Probably the reason I am spending less and less time here. It was good until I could talk about House of the Dragon, but the people behind ASOIAF are really letting their momentum run away. Mostly George.

It’s so much worse on Reddit. I don’t have an account because I don’t want to fall down that rabbit hole, but I do read the threads, and there’s so much nitpicking about how problematic everything is. The worst are the complaints about “power imbalances.” Of course there are power imbalances! It’s a series about a medieval, feudal, patriarchal society. 

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1 minute ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

It’s so much worse on Reddit. I don’t have an account because I don’t want to fall down that rabbit hole, but I do read the threads, and there’s so much nitpicking about how problematic everything is. The worst are the complaints about “power imbalances.” Of course there are power imbalances! It’s a series about a medieval, feudal, patriarchal society. 

Oh, I'm not desperate enough to look at Reddit. To be fair, the way I initially found this forum is pretty logical. I was using simple google search to get my answers about the books. Mostly this forum and Quora showed up. When I realised this page has a section that only discusses the books, I was easily swithcing to this, and never visited Reddit or Quora ever after. 

What I meant is how I am less and less involved in any discussion regarding ASOIAF. And maybe that's a problem, but probably not my fault.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Daemon Blackfyre's rebellion was wholly justified and he should have won. Properly conciliating the current loyal supporters of the dynasty was more important than annexing Dorne peacefully.

People give too much credit to Daeron's so-called "nerd power" because of our modern sensibilities, and refuse to properly give weight to the enormous grievances that fueled the Blackfyre Rebellion. Thousands if not tens of thousands of men marched, fought, and eventually died for Daeron I. They waged a terrible war for him and won.

Then the Dornish murdered him under the guise of negotiations and Baelor bent over backwards to lick their bungholes, largely at the expense of the people who just rendered his royal brother service unto the death.

Aegon IV failed to solve this festering issue during his reign, largely due to his son Daeron doubling down on the Baelor policy of polishing Martell cornholes at every available opportunity. Then when Aegon died Daeron came to the Throne and immediately tripled down and went all in on getting his nose as brown as possible.

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