Join us tomorrow, April 13, at 9:00 PST for the live-tweeting of the second episode of Game of Thrones: hashtag #GOTNOC. I’m up to bat this time, though I usually recap The Legend of Korra, I hope I don’t slip and accidentally call Daenerys Targaryen a Firebender. I align Chaotic Good, and therefore am House Targaryen all the way. I’m also a hardcore Brienne-Jaime ‘shipper, but that’s a discussion for another day.
To whet your appetite, I list six reasons why I imagine Dany, Mother of Dragons, just might be Asian… or at least she should be.
[Note: Before I defend my Asian Dany hypothesis, it behooves me to state that I mean all this in jest. Well, to be more accurate, wishful thinking.]
- Daenerys has silver-blonde hair, violet eyes, and dark eyebrows. You know who also had blonde hair, violet contact lenses, and dark eyebrows? Any Asian girl in her early college years.
Those eyebrows don’t lie: total bottle blonde. - Daenerys married a foreign man who was much more sexually experienced than she was. When confronted by her own ignorance, what was her first instinct? SHE GOT A TUTOR. That is the way we solve any problem, my friends. I totally would have done the same thing, and my mom would have paid for it.
There’s a cram school for everything these days. - Girlfriend is not afraid to eat blood and organ meat. She once ate a raw horse heart with an enthusiasm that would make any Tiger Mom proud.
And she did this while pregnant with a son! Bonus tiger mom points. - She can spend the night inside a bonfire like it’s no big deal (thus earning her the title The Unburnt). At the Korean sauna, there is one especially hot room called the bulgama which is usually set to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and little grandmas hang out in there like that’s no big deal. (True story: one time, my husband braved the bulgama but forgot to take off his glasses beforehand. When he came out, he noticed odd things with his vision… it turned out his LENSES MELTED.)
Dany awaits her scrub-down at the jjimjilbang. - She has a tendency to fall in love with and adopt everything she runs into: dragon eggs, the Dothraki horde, slave cities, etc. But sometimes, she has trouble taking care of them all. I also have a problem with this, although I don’t know if this is a generalized Asian tendency. Let’s discuss.
Plus the dragon obsession…come on now! Tell me you see it too! - Last season, Daenerys totally pulled the Asian trick where people were talking shit about her in Valyrian, thinking she wouldn’t understand, and she went along with it until the time came for her to make her move. Then she busts out with fluent Valyrian, and rubs their ignorance in their faces with savoir flare, heh heh heh. I’ve totally done that with both English and Spanish before. Sometimes you gotta let the stereotypes work for you, you know?
How do you say “You’re so screwed” in YOUR language?
Hey, this article was a joy to read.
I’m always on the lookout for people with a different spin on Game of Thrones or a cool analysis of one of the characters. This hit the jackpot. Well done!
Thanks so much! I am really impressed by your blog, by the way. You have a new fan!
Thank YOU so much! I appreciate that. I get stupid excited about Game of Thrones.
What in the world is so Asian about responding to marital rape by seeking sex technique advice? I realize this post was intended in jest, but it’s hard for me to imagine that an Asian response to sexual terrorism would be intensive sex tutoring, paid for by one’s parents. I don’t know what’s worse here, the model minority stereotyping or the bizarre implication made here about sexual relations between interracial couples that involve Asian women, but I do know that HBO’s depiction of Daenerys Targaryen’s fate upon her marriage to Khal Drogo is violent and tragic and repulsive.
Daenerys Targaryen’s problem was that she was sold to Khal Drogo by her brother, and endured forced sexual intercourse during the early days of their marriage. She’s not crying in the picture above because she lacked sexual experience, she’s crying because she’s being raped.
Julie, if you want to see Daenerys Targaryen as Asian, whatever. But using her experiences as a rape victim to justify that view is just disgusting. I understand that this post was made in jest, but some jokes just aren’t funny.
I still haven’t watched Game of Thrones. But online clips paint one screwed up series. My friend was right when he said Game of Thrones reflects European royal families. It’s incestuous through and through. They’re still doing it today. Guess which young darling couple are distant cousins? A girl with a dragon seem cool. The clip where she frees the Unsullied reminded me of Prince Arslan.
It would have been nice to see the fire side of the whole fire and ice thing be influenced by East Asian culture, not only on a visual level, but as a contrast with the Dothraki, but I’m fairly sure you couldn’t have a character like Dany cast as Asian without cries of her being a Dragon Lady. In much the same way you can’t have her being white and worshipped by the non-white slaves she frees without her being deemed a White Saviour.