On one hand it makes sense that medieval european social relations imply, well, medieval european social relations and it makes sense to use your novel (or your show) to examine those.
On the other I can relate to many people wanting to see women in medieval fantasy to be represented in some other way than constant misery porn.
That's just keeping true to Martin's style tbh. The amount of rape in those books is frankly gratuitous. I'm not even among the people who hates depictions of sexual violence in media in general, but it's really absurdly over-the-top.
I don’t recall any rape scenes in the books being superfluous to the plot, that were out of character and made no sense, but I could be misremembering it’s a while since I read them and there’s like 5000 pages so there’s going to be a lot of everything.
This is a feudal society during civil war with rampaging armies ripping apart the countryside pillaging and looting. To omit sexual violence would be a whitewash of war and reality
Oh, yeah, definitely. There's a lot of random, unnecessary, pointless and meaningless rape in basically every book. The most grotesque one I remember is the treatment of Lollys, who existed as a background character for a surprising amount of time considering her only character traits were being fat, dumb, and ugly, all three of which we were reminded of practically every time she was mentioned and then moved on.
Well, when shit goes down in King's Landing, she gets brutally raped by "half a hundred men" (a fact we are reminded of over and over again for some reason, about this character who has practically no traits and may never have even spoken as far as I remember) and the result is that forever thereafter she's even uglier and dumber. And that's it. And we keep hearing about it.
The people saying she is fat, ugly and dumb are the reactionary people of Westeros and not GRRM. It’s supposed to create a pit in your stomach, the unfair treatment. The rape happened during a siege and battle.
She eventually marries Bronn because he’s a gold digger without qualms and she’s royalty, who takes to protecting her from the barbarity of the rest of King’s Landing. It shows the ironic ethics of Kings Landing that he is looked down on and scorned for this, while the “righteous” knights did nothing to help her and mock her.
There are like 1,000 characters in these books, saying that a character is just a “background character” kind of misses the context that there are hundreds of these types of characters who often meet all kinds of unfair and grisly fates
Incorrect, it is GRRM's narration calling her fat, ugly and dumb, "like a cow" I seem to remember his favorite phrase being.
Have you read the books? Every chapter is narrated by a character via their internal monologues. It was the character saying that and you have a really hard time grasping this.
Was GRRM endorsing necromancy when he wrote a chapter from the perspective of Qyburn?
Of course I've read the books, I have detailed information about the way specific events were described happening to an irrelevant side character who may or may not have ever spoken a word. What the hell kind of question is that? lmao
Just because the books are written from characters' perspectives does not mean it isn't GRRM writing them. He wrote them, not the fictional characters, and inevitably his quirks will show through.
It just doesn’t seem like you understand the concept of fiction and would get mad at an actor who plays a villain
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Disengage now
Already on it buddy :sicko-biker:
I am not male, I’m not your “buddy” and I have been raped before. Think before you talk
Curious how everyone who tells me to "disengage" keeps on replying. Very interesting. Wonder why that might be. Could a person be disingenuously trying to weaponize rules meant for making this place safer and less toxic in order to make it less safe and more toxic? :shocked-pikachu:
You first called a rape victim a fan of rape for disagreeing with you, then you refused to disengage and then you misgendered me. I can make a response to this level of shit hurled at me
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I would frame it as “I don’t moralize over every fictional account of bad things and blame the author” but you do you.
No you responded to my request to disengage with a condescending misgender. That was you, not me
:cat-confused:
Literally what the hell are you talking about
In response to my clear request to disengage
It was clearly not a genuine request to disengage considering you're STILL REPLYING :bird-screm-2:
I didn't misgender you, I still literally have no idea where you got that from
Buddy is a gendered term, especially when used condescendingly and in the context of basically calling me a rape apologist. You know exactly what you are doing, and the disengage request has already been broken by you trying to get the last word in
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Geez, I wonder why the person who was hurt and asked you to stop talking didn't stop talking when you continued to talk. Log off
Pat Nixon is on this list but it's mostly men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_(nickname)
i don't really think of buddy as being gendered but i guess I can see why somebody would
I mean, I guess? I've never heard anyone express the opinion that "buddy" is a gendered term before. My entire life I have heard men, women, and nonbinary people referred to as "buddy" by men, women, and nonbinary people. It's not even like "dude" where it's mostly gendered but can be used in other ways, like it literally just doesn't have that connotation at all for me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/hq8zav/is_bud_genderneutral/
Ok, I mean, three commenters there say it is gendered, three say it is gender neutral. Regardless, you don't need to worry about me calling you "buddy" or anything because I will not be addressing you. Please leave me alone.
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when you definitely read what i wrote :shrug-outta-hecks:
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no. im not interested in continuing to argue about this, especially with those who are not actually reading the shit i've already wrote.
seriously, this was a whole ass struggle session. click on my profile and start reading if you want my thoughts
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I’m just calling a rape victim a fan of rape :smug-face:
Hey, just to be clear, when I said "please leave me alone" I meant that I wish for you to disengage. Sorry if that wasn't clear enough.
Sure thing buddy
:crazy-frog-trans:
I haven’t watched GOT or read ASOIAF and I’m just popping in to say that you are deliberately misinterpreting the other person’s words in bad faith. “I get that you’re a big fan of the portrayal of rape”??? What kind of asshole says something like this off the cuff?
Here is a quote:
This is the kind of thing :reddit-logo:ors say constantly in discussions about the merit of specific depictions of rape in order to shut down those discussions and act like the problem is the depiction of rape as a whole.
What are you even trying to argue here? That rape should never be portrayed in media in any way shape or form?
?????
No. What? Where the hell did you get that from? Nothing I have said has in any way implied anything nearing that conclusion. I have, in fact, explicitly stated otherwise at every single opportunity. :jesse-wtf: :jesse-wtf: :jesse-wtf: :jesse-wtf:
So then what are you arguing? What do you specifically disagree with in the quote? I don’t think portrayal of rape is a necessity when depicting war, but it is absolutely a reality of it. The focus should be on whether that portrayal is done in a manner that provides substance, or if it is simply exploitative.
I disagree that it has anything to do with the conversation. It is a disingenuous strawman intended to shut down criticism of specific portrayals of specific rapes.
To give a concrete example, the depictions of sexual violence against Daenerys in ASOIAF are well done. The depictions of sexual violence against Lollys are gratuitous, gross, and weird.
Fair enough, I can’t comment on either of these since I haven’t seen or read them. I’ll just say that from what was written in this thread, u/A_Serbian_Milf seemed to be making fair points concerning narrative voices, and accusing them of being fans of the portrayal of rape because of their opinion on a piece of art is a ridiculous escalation that no one should ever do, especially considering your target may in fact be a victim themselves.
The thing about that is, the books truly are not written from characters' perspectives entirely. Each chapter follows a character, and might include a good chunk of internal monologue from that character which gives an insight into how they think about other characters, themselves, the politics, and their place in the world. But there is also true narration, separate from the character's internal monologue, which is written in GRRM's voice, and it is parts of this narration I took issue with.
Where? He consistently writes in a 3'rd person limited style, from the perspective of the viewpoint characters. There's no 3'rd person omniscient perspective in the books where Martin is telling you what he thinks through his actual voice. Everything is told through the layers of the characters' perspectives.
I guess we have to get into narrative voice analysis to determine whether or not I’m a rape apologist
Oh wow, I saw where she called you that. That's pretty fucking horrible, even more that people are upvoting her.
People pick their side at the top of the thread and then just go vote accordingly, I doubt half of them even read it
It definitely does seem a bit :yikes: to have a character who serves as the butt of a joke for most of their presence be brutally raped. Again I can't give a proper take on this, and I don't know if GRRM managed to make a cogent point with this. Serb seemed to think so, but really my main issue here is what you said to them over how they interpreted the text. Please don't do that, it creates an extremely hostile environment, especially for victims. I like this place because discourse generally doesn't gravitate in that direction.
They want their Disney monarchist propaganda without any icky bad things that really happened under monarchies
Dude, fuck off.
In a lot of media there is a villain who kills a subordinate who messes up or delivers bad news or something. This subordinate is irrelevant to the story, the viewer is just supposed to see that the villain is bad or crazy.
I don't think writers want underlings to be vaporized randomly
I actually don't see how this is relevant to the conversation at all. What are you talking about?