None of the child sex in ASOIAF feels as narratively unnecessary as the child orgy in IT. None of it really felt particularly gratuitous because it all moved the plot forward. Like I guess you can say he chose to put it there when he didn't have to but for what I've read it made sense when it was done.
Like Martin absolutely is guilty of the "overuses rape as a plot device" thing that so many male authors are guilty of but still.
Part of the reason I never watched the show was that they felt the need to add more sexual violence to a series that was already an intensely miserable slog of violence, torture, sexual violence, and extremely unlikable characters.
I actually really appreciate GRRM as a writer and really liked the show (sorry everyone) but I’m frustrated at how GRRM’s characters are frequently remarkably...foolish. Yes, much of the story is driven by the contradictions of feudalism, yes, the characters grow, but in the first book, Sansa and Eddard in particular just keep fucking up, over and over again, to a really frustrating extent, due to their pettiness and ignorance. Something about GRRM’s writing also seems extremely coddling to me, but that could just be because he’s a master of rhythmic sentences and paragraphs.
Sansa is a tiny child, it would be way more frustrating if the little kids weren't dumb as fuck because then I'd be asking why they weren't just written as older characters.
Ned just fucking sucks tbh but Sansa is a prepubescent child at that point and is a very realistic portrayal of one. She's actually my favorite character.
Martin's psuedo historical setting is extremely indulgent in a lot of ways. The average age of first marriage in the middle ages was like 23 for women and 27 for men, not thirteen. Were their child marriages for political purposes? Certainly. But there were plenty that weren't. Martin chose to have a child marriage, then chose to describe the sex scenes, and chose to have it be a major character development moment for the 13 year old protagonist. Plus there's obvious practical issues; Medieval people weren't stupid. They knew that a child had a much, much higher chance of complications in pregnancy than an adult woman.
He could have made her 18. He could have done a fade to black way, way earlier in the scene. He could have done a lot of things. But he did what he did. It's not especially egregious by the standards of fantasy writers, but taken as a whole with the gratuitous misery of the whole series I think it adds up to a pretty good reason not to recommend ASOIAF.
OK I have to rewrite this post after it was eaten by the temporary lock lol.
CW: discussion of sexual assault and CSA
spoiler
Wasn't it that the "marriage was actually usually in the late twenties in the middle ages" thing actually only for peasants and for the nobility child marriage was indeed common? Thats what I read anyway.
I categorically agree with your point that "he chose to have it that way" but for me, there are a number of reasons why I don't think changing Dany to 18 would have worked. First of all, its an important part of [i]Viserys[/i] character that he is a huge bastard for giving away his little sister to Drogo, and for treating her as property to be given away in the the first place. He is a desperate kid who wants to be king and will literally give his 13 year old sister away to a war lord to get it. Its also important to Dany's character because like, here's the thing. Dany doesn't act like a young adult who's canon age happens to be 13 (like a lot of children in fiction). She's a realistically portrayed child I think. Martin is shockingly adept at writing children, in many cases from the child's POV. The Stark kids (especially Sansa) are very well written children with realistic trauma responses. Joffrey and Tommen are also good examples. And yeah, so are Viserys and Dany.
The books also don't portray Dany/Drogo as romantic like the show does really. It does portray Dany as being genuinely in love with Drogo which... I'm ambivalent about because is decently realistic for a child to have that as a trauma response but Martin is still an adult man who chose to write her that way. So I get how people would be put off by that. There's also the whole mess with the different portrayal of the "sex" scene itself between book and show. Since, in the book, Dany is portrayed as giving nominal consent to Drogo (which many idiot fans think means it was consensual despite Dany being 13 and Drogo a grown man). The show meanwhile does away with this and instead explicitly portrays it as rape... but then goes on to romanticize the relationship after? And I think the show decided to do that to put rape porn on tv for shock value not out of perceived moral obligation to portray rape as rape.
![[CW: Pedo shit] Pillar of american culture](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/w7IraBiZuk.png){kind=link}
George R. R. Martin has entered the chat.
From what I understand current Stephen thinks that passage is just as what the fuck as everyone else and regrets writing it.
CW: Discussion of sexual assault and CSA.
spoiler
None of the child sex in ASOIAF feels as narratively unnecessary as the child orgy in IT. None of it really felt particularly gratuitous because it all moved the plot forward. Like I guess you can say he chose to put it there when he didn't have to but for what I've read it made sense when it was done.
Like Martin absolutely is guilty of the "overuses rape as a plot device" thing that so many male authors are guilty of but still.
deleted by creator
There's a fair amount of it in the background I guess
But yeah the show is way worse with this.
Part of the reason I never watched the show was that they felt the need to add more sexual violence to a series that was already an intensely miserable slog of violence, torture, sexual violence, and extremely unlikable characters.
I actually really appreciate GRRM as a writer and really liked the show (sorry everyone) but I’m frustrated at how GRRM’s characters are frequently remarkably...foolish. Yes, much of the story is driven by the contradictions of feudalism, yes, the characters grow, but in the first book, Sansa and Eddard in particular just keep fucking up, over and over again, to a really frustrating extent, due to their pettiness and ignorance. Something about GRRM’s writing also seems extremely coddling to me, but that could just be because he’s a master of rhythmic sentences and paragraphs.
Sansa is a tiny child, it would be way more frustrating if the little kids weren't dumb as fuck because then I'd be asking why they weren't just written as older characters.
Ned just fucking sucks tbh but Sansa is a prepubescent child at that point and is a very realistic portrayal of one. She's actually my favorite character.
My first exposure was the show, and I still like the first four seasons, but yeah thats a fair opinion.
background rapiation
Martin's psuedo historical setting is extremely indulgent in a lot of ways. The average age of first marriage in the middle ages was like 23 for women and 27 for men, not thirteen. Were their child marriages for political purposes? Certainly. But there were plenty that weren't. Martin chose to have a child marriage, then chose to describe the sex scenes, and chose to have it be a major character development moment for the 13 year old protagonist. Plus there's obvious practical issues; Medieval people weren't stupid. They knew that a child had a much, much higher chance of complications in pregnancy than an adult woman.
He could have made her 18. He could have done a fade to black way, way earlier in the scene. He could have done a lot of things. But he did what he did. It's not especially egregious by the standards of fantasy writers, but taken as a whole with the gratuitous misery of the whole series I think it adds up to a pretty good reason not to recommend ASOIAF.
OK I have to rewrite this post after it was eaten by the temporary lock lol.
CW: discussion of sexual assault and CSA
spoiler
Wasn't it that the "marriage was actually usually in the late twenties in the middle ages" thing actually only for peasants and for the nobility child marriage was indeed common? Thats what I read anyway.
I categorically agree with your point that "he chose to have it that way" but for me, there are a number of reasons why I don't think changing Dany to 18 would have worked. First of all, its an important part of [i]Viserys[/i] character that he is a huge bastard for giving away his little sister to Drogo, and for treating her as property to be given away in the the first place. He is a desperate kid who wants to be king and will literally give his 13 year old sister away to a war lord to get it. Its also important to Dany's character because like, here's the thing. Dany doesn't act like a young adult who's canon age happens to be 13 (like a lot of children in fiction). She's a realistically portrayed child I think. Martin is shockingly adept at writing children, in many cases from the child's POV. The Stark kids (especially Sansa) are very well written children with realistic trauma responses. Joffrey and Tommen are also good examples. And yeah, so are Viserys and Dany.
The books also don't portray Dany/Drogo as romantic like the show does really. It does portray Dany as being genuinely in love with Drogo which... I'm ambivalent about because is decently realistic for a child to have that as a trauma response but Martin is still an adult man who chose to write her that way. So I get how people would be put off by that. There's also the whole mess with the different portrayal of the "sex" scene itself between book and show. Since, in the book, Dany is portrayed as giving nominal consent to Drogo (which many idiot fans think means it was consensual despite Dany being 13 and Drogo a grown man). The show meanwhile does away with this and instead explicitly portrays it as rape... but then goes on to romanticize the relationship after? And I think the show decided to do that to put rape porn on tv for shock value not out of perceived moral obligation to portray rape as rape.