Amph A Song of Ice and Fire Discussion Thread

Oh and uh is Balon dead yet? Do we care in the show? No? Ok, move along.

 

They probably won't inform us until we see Ash-- Yara again.

 

Not yet, and I would be very disappointed if they didn't show that scene. It's an afterthought in the books, but it would make great TV to see him make the fall.

 

I don't get this logic at all. The show already has a wedge between them. That's why they haven't restarted their sexual relationship in the first place. Cersei is resentful of what she feels is her abandonment. Jamie is angry that she seems to give no consideration to the suffering he endured during captivity, and also that she seems to value him less now that he is crippled.

Why wouldn't their alienation just continue to mount? Why did we need a second thing on top of that?

 

The reason it is offscreen in the books, besides no POV characters being present, is to make it ambiguous as to whether the death was accidental or Euron had him assassinated (presumably a Faceless Man).

 

I dunno, I didn't write the show. I'm speculating on why they wrote it the way they did. Why are you asking me?

 

Wait. What? Why am I following you on Twitter then?!

 

Because of my attractive selfies?

 

I know you are. I was just pointing out a hole in your theory: the proposed narrative purpose is redundant. That's one of the ways people commonly evaluate the likelihood that such theories are true, and I sort of thought you offered it so that we could engage in such speculation.

 

Fair enough. I still don't know why they're doing this, though. What I said earlier is plausible but I would assume they're more in-tune with things than to resort to something like that. It honestly just strikes me as an out-of-character moment for Jamie.

 

I'm not saying there's no spousal rape in Westeros -- far from it -- but rather, the fact that the culture can be kind of rapey doesn't mean that spousal rape is a necessary outcome of the culture for everybody. Sansa expects to be raped, but she also thinks Tyrion is pure evil. Cat was nervous because she was, IIRC, implied to be rather embarrassed by the bedding ceremony, and she had worked herself up for Brandon only for him to die and all of a sudden she's married to a complete stranger and of course it was awkward. But even among all that awkwardness, even with the fact that consummation was expected as a given, I doubt that meant that Ned walked in, shouted "Brace yourself!", went to town, and then rolled over as Cat sobbed. I think you're simplifying it incredibly if you think that Tyrion is some lonely exception to a rule of men who just don't give a **** and rape their wives, just because the women's consent isn't really legally recognized. I think we've seen way too many functional marriages to say that just because they can, every guy then must disregard relationship-building and tenderness in order to get his orgasm as fast as possible. I just think it's way too simplistic to say that because the culture is crappy, everyone in it has to be as bad as the culture possibly allows them to be in order to make the point of how awful the culture is. Lords have a lot of arbitrary power in Westeros, and we've seen plenty of people abuse that, but that doesn't mean that every lord has to be Roose Bolton, Robert Arryn, Tywin, or even Randyll Tarly. There are still plenty of Hoster Tullys and Jon Arryns and Renlys and Jason Mallisters and all the other basically decent types out there.

I really don't see how the situation being problematic requires a black-and-white approach to it, as if it's necessary to make it clear that having sex with an upset teenage girl you bought and coerced some relatively questionable consent out of by refusing to take no as an answer is a bad thing. It's just not in the character of the books; they're loaded with complex dynamics and situations that are bad without being black-and-white, and it's made clear over and over again that pretty much everything about this world is problematic. So I just don't see why here, they need to be didactic. Especially since it's a key aspect of Dany's journey; she falls for Drogo because he's not as bad as she feared, because he has some genuine affection for her and tenderness, because he cares about her enough to treat her well rather than like a bargaining chip he's free to rape (and, yeah, a little bit of Stockholm syndrome. There's nothing in these books that's perfect). That's the point, that Drogo is actually, against all odds, kind of a decent husband, and Dany reciprocates, and responds to that and empowers herself. It's preferable to just make that pure Stockholm syndrome as she falls in love with her rapist because he gives her a nice horse (and because she . . . tames him through the wonder of the cowgirl position? Show, you are weird)? I don't see what we get out of that. Really, I don't even get where the complaint about the "romance novel" thing comes from, because it's not a romantic scene. It's a written-out sex scene, yes, but I guess I'm at a loss as to what's romantic about a guy who wants to have sex continuing to play with a teenage girl who says no until she gets hot and bothered enough to say yes. The Jon/Ygritte sex scenes are romantic. This is only romantic if you have some ****ed-up Twilight notion of romance, which, sure, plenty of people apparently have, but that's their fault and I'm not confident saying that the scene here is deliberately writing to that demographic. Sure, Martin could have written it to make the problems even clearer, but I just don't see the reading of it as a romantic sex scene that's whitewashing the dynamics of what's going on, because the dynamics are either there, or the ones that aren't there aren't there deliberately because the point is that Drogo isn't being that way and you can't change those dynamics without altering the characterization of both parties and affecting Dany's whole arc.

I'm not familiar with the comments you're drawing on, but if Martin wants to go back to rewrite the scene to bring out the dynamics better or de-eroticize it more, fair enough -- but that doesn't mean that the events need to be changed to "fix" the scene. Even if you disagree with the presentation of the situation in the book, I don't think that changing the entire dynamic of what happens is the answer.

 

JMHO, but I can only surmise that they did it for the shock value, and didn't think through what they were doing. And this is indicative of a bigger issue, not just on GoT, but in any media that uses rape as a plot point, rather than realizing the bomb they've dropped in the character's lap.

From HBOs perspective, there's no such thing as bad press. It's all over the internet which translates into more viewers and DVD sales. For D&D it's troubling for their story going forward, if they want their show audience to rally behind Jaime Lannister going forward.

 

More than anything, I think D&D wrote themselves into a corner by having Jamie return to King's Landing early. The scene works in the book because Jamie's just returned and it's the first time they've seen each other. In the show, once Jamie has returned, and Cersei's disdain for him now that he's lost his hand has started, the scene as it was in the books didn't make sense anymore, and they couldn't just cut it, since it's such a big scene (and controversial one). So they fell back into "When in doubt, ratchet up the shock" mode, and this what we got.

You'd like to think they had Jamie return to KL early for a reason, and that we'll get some kind of payoff for it, but at this point, I doubt it. It seems they did so just because they felt it fit better in the finale last season.

 

While I agree that it's the result of bringing Jaime back early, they could have clearly made the scene consensual. It wouldn't have been hard to alter Cersei's book dialogue ("yes yes yes... do it now...do me now") to demonstrate clear consent on Cersei's part. It would still be easy for viewers to be squicked out by the incestuous sex next to Joffrey's corpse. And they could still have Jaime and Cersei's relationship fall apart.

 

They could have, but not after having made it obvious that Cersei has lost interest in him because of the lost hand in the first two episodes. And I think her losing interest as quickly as she does makes sense in both the books and the show.

EDIT: it's worth noting that in the books it's the last time they sleep together, and their relationship unravels fairly quickly after.

 

What a whammer! I never would have thought ... Viserys?

I really hope Benioff & Weiss do not cut that scene out of the TV show - it NEEDS to stay in.

 

Remind me, are you referring to the scene where Doran admits to Arianne about his plans to marry her to Viserys and jumpstart the Targaryen return to Westeros?

 

Well if she wasn't, she certainly knows about it now.

 

Yeah.

"Justice. Vengeance. Fire and blood." Gave me cold chills - and the whole chapter completely changed my view of Doran.

How long has it been at this point of AFFC since Viserys' death late in AGOT? At least a year, almost certainly, but longer than that?

 

Well, Drogo certainly ****ed that plan up.

Edit: Less than two years for certain. The series starts in 298 AL, and Joffrey's wedding day was on the first day of the new year in 300 AL. It's difficult to ascertain timeframes in this series unless characters explicitly stste their ages or how long it's been since a certain event.

 

Doesn't Dany's storyline actually run a little ahead of the main Westeros events as well?

 

Going by AGOT, it seems to - Danerys is already halfway into the Dothraki Sea by the time Robert and Ned are debating whether or not her head should be chopped off, IIRC.

 

Er, did Dany crucify the Masters in the book? I don't recall that.

Either way, I'm sure a bunch of show viewers agree with her sense of "justice."

EDIT: At least they kept Ser Pounce, Hot Pie's future Master of Coin.