Hey! To add something to the Hodor discussion. And this is of course about the show, because we haven’t seen it in the books yet and chances are, the circumstances there will be very different.
Hi there! Thank you for taking the time to send me such a thoughtful message. I appreciate the effort you put into writing to me. I slipped your words under a cut because ... I don’t know what to do with this message. I’m not saying that to be flippant or rude, and I hope that you don’t take it as such.
I’ve been done with critical analysis of the show since season 5, and ... I don’t think I can engage with a discussion of this, at least not in terms of the show. The night after that episode aired, I was deeply upset, not in a “bad things happened to nice characters and I’ve been deeply moved by this piece of fiction” way, but in a “why are you doing this ableist ‘magical disability’ trope” way. (I was very upset. My friend @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly was kind enough to chat with me for a couple hours after that episode to calm me down, but it still upsets me to know that GRRM will do something even vaguely resembling that.)
At this point, the show is a ruin to me, and I just pick through the rubble trying to find shiny things like Tywin’s armor while trying to avoid stumbling over the show’s rampant ableism and misogyny. I’m waiting for the book, and in the meantime, I’m just gonna reblog things that bring up important issues I want to revisit while reading and can make a better assessment of GRRM’s writing than just knowing this spoiler.
So, anyways, I’m sorry that I can’t do more with your message. There are so many really amazing analysts like @him-e and @poorquentyn and @secretlyatargaryen and so many others who still engage with the show critically who might be great to talk to about how D&D handled this, but this is just beyond my threshold of things I can actively engage with on the show, I’m so sorry! I’d be happy to talk about ASOIAF with you tho!
@collectingthingsandstuff submitted:
But honestly, I’d argue that the discussion about show!Hodor’s decission or lack thereof is almost moot because the show didn’t do a good job at showing WHAT actually happened. I see people arguing about it, and the opinions on what exactly Bran did, at what point he was or wasn’t skinchanged into Hodor etc wary to a degree that shows how little the show succeeded in making it clear.
I see you think that it was all Bran. Meanwhile, the actor playing Hodor clearly disagrees with that. Or in his own words:
Although Bran was responsible for the whole chain of events that killed Hodor, Hodor didn’t have to hold that door. He wasn’t being warged into at that stage. It was Meera who asked him to hold the door, it wasn’t Bran. He wants to protect the little guy. That’s all he’s ever done. He wants to help — this is the ultimate helping hand here. (x)
In addition, I doubt that the showrunners wanted to imply that Bran killed Hodor (it wouldn’t be the first time they created very unfortunate implications without noticing it, though). Clearly, they wanted to show that it was Bran who caused Hodor’s disability, but I very much doubt they wanted to add actively killing Hodor to the list.
But no matter the intention, there seem to be three opinions on what exactly happened: 1. It was Bran the whole time. 2. It was present!Hodor himself, Bran merely created a bridge through which young Willis witnessed his death 3. It was young Willis, whom Bran skinchanged into present!Hodor. My point is that if you take that scene apart, every theory will have something that doesn’t add up. If Bran was skinchanging into Hodor the whole time, why was he still in the Winterfell vision, still reacted to everything that was going on there and looked completely unaware of what was happening in the cave? If Bran wasn’t skinchanging into Hodor at all, or only for a brief moment in the beginning, what exactly was the point? If it was young Willis, why would he be motivated to “hold the door” after suddenly finding himself in a 40-year-old body among zombies and protecting people he doesn’t know. The actor himself clearly thinks that Bran skinchanged into him first, but was gone at some point before “Hold the door”. At what point? How did it work? Still, why was Bran stuck in the vision and why did he look like he has no idea what was going on?
I see a lot of praise for that scene. And while yes, it was emotionally devastating, and in that sense they accomplished what they were going for, in terms of establishing the how and why… the scene fails. It didn’t bother to explain and that’s why I find it hard to take it seriously. I don’t know if GRRM will make it more or less problematic, but I’m sure he’ll actually make clear what happened. Although, I must add, that alone from the way Old Nan spoke about Hodor, it doesn’t seem like he started saying that word in similar circumstances.
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