K, thanks.
Alright, since you keep posting about it. The problems with Talisa have been much discussed by the fandom. I don’t loathe Talisa, but she is a problematic character, because she is a cliche, and A Song of Ice and Fire is very much about subverting the usual…
To be fair, I really don’t think they left Jeyne out because they think there is something wrong with those kinds of people. Like it or not, this is television. This is media. There are a lot of people in the world that are great people. They are useful to society. There is nothing wrong with them in any way … but they do NOT make good television stars. They aren’t the kind of people that are fun to watch.
I am one of them. I am a boring average girl. I wake up in the morning play on the internet, then go to work and serve tables. I come home, cook, do laundry, and play with my puppy. I like my life. I’m happy with it. But people really don’t want to watch or know me, and that doesn’t make screen writers sexist. It just means they want to make their TV show a success. It means they accept that some people are mundane and don’t translate well onto screen.
Jeyne is one of those people, as well. In the book, it was one thing. We were never in Robb’s POV or hers. She was just a filler - a random face in the background. There was a lot more to read and understand in the book. So skimming over one person wasn’t that big a deal. But in the TV show, the story is absorbed differently. You aren’t getting Cat’s narration. You aren’t reading her thoughts. You are watching it. You notice the people in the background. The random girl from the Crag with no real personality or story to offer the plot would stick out like a sore thumb. In the TV show she’s more difficult to skim over. So they needed to do something with her that didn’t bore viewers to tears.
They might have chosen a “cliche” character to replace Jeyne. But honestly? I don’t see how it’s a cliche. I can’t think of even ten characters that are like Talisa - not well known ones, at least. Her story might not be overly imaginative, but it’s hardly cliche, and it’s a hell of a lot more entertaining than Jeyne Westerling.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say there was a lot to fill in with Jeyne and that she was boring. Plenty of people tried to tell me Robb was boring in the first book. But I was fascinated with him from the first words about him I ever read. It’s what we as readers see in the characters that make them boring or flat. If you didn’t take the time to read into the details of why Jeyne isn’t boring, that doesn’t mean she’s boring.
Furthermore, Jeyne did not have a “mundane life”. She was of noble birth, did not lack for spirit, was becoming aware of her place in the world, was a WOC and was very beautiful. She fell in love with her family’s mortal enemy in the middle of a war and stood up to her mom trying to make decisions for her. She went to Cat for help because she had no idea how to be a wife and no one was helping her and she was so young and so lost and all she wanted to do was be good. She was discovering her sexuality with a boy she was crazy about. How is that boring???? I struggle with stuff like that every day man. I think a lot of girls can relate to that. And those stories deserve to be told. They are worth being told. A “mundane life” in Westeros would be a farmer’s life or fisherman’s life. The idea that Jeyne’s story isn’t worth telling is sexist. I don’t care how you try to justify it.
I am sick to death of being told what viewers will and will not watch. Maybe I don’t want to be told what I will and will not watch. Maybe if audiences were shown more storylines where women were realistically portrayed and we stopped reinforcing a societal stigma that a feminine girl on her own has no story worth telling we’d start seeing the worth in their stories and they would be perfectly successful. Has TV never been progressive? Have we never made social strides through media??
Talisa is cliche because she’s the spirited young female who “isn’t like the other girls”. Man, I don’t even know the last time I got to see a show or a movie that realistically portrayed “the other girls”. I wanna meet them. I bet they’re really fucking cool.
It doesn’t mean I dislike Talisa as a character. I fucking love Talisa. I just wish we hadn’t ditched Jeyne.