Yay! A chapter from the point of view of my favorite character so far! But before I address this chapter, I need to discuss something I omitted from last chapter's review. In chapter 4, it was made clear that women are not the only gender that gets treated like objects. Yes, in this world, it's equal-opportunity child bartering. Arranged marriages (like that the King makes between his son and Ned's daughter) remove choice from both parties involved, regardless of gender, and I really can't hate Theon for being kind of a butt anymore because his "ward" status actually means he was taken hostage by Lord Stark after Threon's father got a royal smackdown by King Robert and Lord Stark. I'd be bitter too. also being a ward means that you should be a martial-arts dominating sidekick to a flying-mammalian-themed superhero So yes! The lives of boys suck too. What a happy universe this is.
Anyways, moving on to this chapter, it's JON time! For some reason, I always picture Jon as being at least four or five years older than fourteen. It's rather jarring, really, given how I remember behaving as a fourteen year old, but as Jon notes, bastards have to grow up faster, particularly in a backstabby political-machination-filled world like this one. And while I could spend a lot of time discussing how sketchy the queen is, and how weird it is to be a royal bastard, and how the first time that I could really believe Jon was a teenage boy was when he was insisting that he knew EXACTLY what he wanted in this life, thank you very much, and it was to GET OUT OF HERE AND FIGHT, there's only one thing that really stuck out in my mind about this chapter:
IS THIS THE AWESOME DWARF? The queen's brother? IS THIS HIM? When he was first introduced, I was unsure, because he was being described as looking like some kind of gargoyle or some such. This didn't match with the image I'd seen from the TV show, but I guess that's Hollywood. And there can only be so many dwarves in this story right? Unless there is like a whole clan of awesome dwarves somewhere, which would be amazing. But this Tyrion Lannister proved himself to be almost certainly the dwarf in question when he says, "Oh, bleed that," executes a perfect backwards somersault off a ledge (a perfect backwards somersault off a ledge), sticks the landing, brushes himself off, describes Jon as a bastard to his face (stating it as fact, not an insult... I think), spouts off some obtuse wisdom, and then whistles as he walks away. I'm on board with this guy. I don't even care if he's "good" or "bad", he's just cool.
P. S. "Dwarves" or "dwarfs"? Apparently both can be correct, but which do you use?
Anyways, moving on to this chapter, it's JON time! For some reason, I always picture Jon as being at least four or five years older than fourteen. It's rather jarring, really, given how I remember behaving as a fourteen year old, but as Jon notes, bastards have to grow up faster, particularly in a backstabby political-machination-filled world like this one. And while I could spend a lot of time discussing how sketchy the queen is, and how weird it is to be a royal bastard, and how the first time that I could really believe Jon was a teenage boy was when he was insisting that he knew EXACTLY what he wanted in this life, thank you very much, and it was to GET OUT OF HERE AND FIGHT, there's only one thing that really stuck out in my mind about this chapter:
IS THIS THE AWESOME DWARF? The queen's brother? IS THIS HIM? When he was first introduced, I was unsure, because he was being described as looking like some kind of gargoyle or some such. This didn't match with the image I'd seen from the TV show, but I guess that's Hollywood. And there can only be so many dwarves in this story right? Unless there is like a whole clan of awesome dwarves somewhere, which would be amazing. But this Tyrion Lannister proved himself to be almost certainly the dwarf in question when he says, "Oh, bleed that," executes a perfect backwards somersault off a ledge (a perfect backwards somersault off a ledge), sticks the landing, brushes himself off, describes Jon as a bastard to his face (stating it as fact, not an insult... I think), spouts off some obtuse wisdom, and then whistles as he walks away. I'm on board with this guy. I don't even care if he's "good" or "bad", he's just cool.
P. S. "Dwarves" or "dwarfs"? Apparently both can be correct, but which do you use?
Definitely dwarves, for the same reason I wouldn't say "elfs."
ReplyDeleteI dunno-- for humans, saying "dwarves" feels funny. I'd probably go with dwarfs if we're talking about people with the medical condition.
ReplyDeleteIs "dwarf" really still the politically correct term for the medical condition?
ReplyDeleteI tend to instinctively agree with Aaron, though.
JULIA! When are you going to update this?? I want to see chapter 6! And I know you won't have as much time to do it once school starts.
ReplyDeleteDwarves.
HEY! HEY JULIA! HEY! LISTEN! HEY! LISTEN! You should totally get on Sunnie's suggestion. Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in reply to Stormshrug, Wikipedia says that "dwarf", "little person", "LP" and "person of short stature" are considered polite. Also, apparently "dwarfism" is actually the generic medical term.