itreallyatemyhand:

itreallyatemyhand:

why do people who watch GoT feel compelled to talk about it to people who don’t watch GoT

i’ve heard of the show

i’m familiar

i dont know why you think your character ranking is interesting to me

i dont know why you think your analysis of why it’s actually super feminist is going to be met by anything other than “um okay”

lots of other people watch GoT

talk to them

they love talking about it

stop trying to make me talk about GoT

i swear to god next time i’m just going to stop them mid rant

and be like

let me talk to you about Sister Carrie

Theodore Dreiser’s 1900 novel which is actually a hilarious and scathing satire of capitalism

which totally subverts all narrative expectations

by having it’s crazy ditz of a heroine completely succeed in every aspect of life

while her loser mid-life-crisis-stage boyfriend straight up DIES

and then my friend will be like, oh, okay, sounds cool, I have no idea what you’re talking about

and i’ll be like, you THINK it’s going to be a story about a Fallen Woman

All House of Mirth-y

because the heroine is a poor woman, carrying on with a rich married man

and she has no discernible talent or moral integrity

and she likes shopping

which, in a 1900 novel, typically means this bitch will die, sad and chastened

but INSTEAD, after her deadbeat, middle-aged My-Wife-Doesn’t-Understand-Me-and-All-She-Cares-About-is-Raising-Our-Dumb-Kid boyfriend leaves his family for her, she gets super bored with his middle-aged ass, goes out, becomes like… an actress, I think? Dumps him, and suffers literally NO negative repercussions for any of her actions

–at which point my friend will be like, okay, but I don’t understand what you’re talking about–

WHICH IS GREAT

BECAUSE THIS A NOVEL PUBLISHED IN 1900

AT A TIME IN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LITERATURE WHERE FICTIONAL WOMEN DIE FROM SHAME-INDUCED CONSUMPTION FOR BEING MILDLY GAUCHE AT A PARTY ONE TIME

–and my friend will be like I just wanted to talk about tyrion–

AND THIS BITCH IS AN ADULTEROUS, FORNICATING FLAKE WHO FLOATS ALONG TO SUCCESS, MOTIVATED ONLY BY HER DESIRE TO HAVE BALLER CLOTHES

–and they’ll be like, I didnt ask for this–

Of course what the novel is really about is consumerism and how the american dream is really about acquiring a bunch of shit and the reason the loser boyfriend dies is not just because he’s a loser, but because he loses his desire to buy more stuff and therefore fails as a consumer, which renders him obsolete in industrialized america

–and they’ll be like, stop using the word ‘consumerism’ in normal conversations–

Also, it’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I’m pretty sure even the Nagging Wife ends up totally fine, and I feel like she’s sipping champagne on her way to a ski trip at the end, which is amazing because the second worse thing you can be, narratively speaking, in a late 19th century morality tale is a Nagging Wife

(the worst thing you can be is an adulterous, fornicating pretty young gal, because then you end up dead, but NOT IN SISTER CARRIE, PAL)

–and my friend’ll be like, why do u hate me why r u doing this to me–

And if you think that for any moment, the reader is called upon to feel sympathy for this dude, who dies in solitary obscurity, let me assure you, that you are not.

I cannot speak to authorial intent, but any author who expected any reader to feel sympathy for This Guy is utterly deluded. Because EVERY decision he makes is both morally bankrupt and incredibly stupid. This is not a Gatsby situation. This is not a woe is me, i have been betrayed by a pretty, fickle lady type of deal.This is like if Tom left Daisy for a younger woman and he stole a bunch of money and failed at fleeing to Canada and then was like, well, might as well marry the younger woman, but then the younger woman got bored of Tom because he was broke and mean, because its actually hard to succeed in business when you don’t have an enormous leg-up, and then the younger woman went and started a career as an actress, and then Tom died in obscurity.

I’m pretty sure this novel is just a giant roast of everyone involved, and if it’s not, it totally should be

–and my friend’ll be like, why would you tell me about this random novel that i have never read and have no interest in reading,

and i’ll be like, what do you think about the symbolism of the gloves in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900)? and they’ll be like, why are you like this? and i’ll be like, maybe you should join a GoT message board or something, because next time, I’m gonna talk about Jude the Obscure (1895), and that is weird, twisted shit that no one should have to endure