Game of Thrones Season 4 discussion (book spoilers included)

[Scrib]

Wow. I'd forgotten/never really realised how dodgey the Shae situation was from Shae's point of view. Just remembered how much of an idiot Tyrion was about keeping her. The kitchen thing, well she was being childish about that, she ran away from home because she was sexually abused by her father. But yes it was dodgy and Tyrion had all the power there.

Let's not overstate it. Book Shae never showed any signs of being particularly smart, but she was damned good at getting Tyrion to love her and I think she knew that she had him wrapped around her finger. Otherwise he would have done the smart thing and used his position of power to force her to get the fuck out of Dodge before his father found out. And given how terrified Tyrion was of his father that takes a hell of a lot of leverage.

Tyrion initially kept her out of sheer rebelliousness. He'd known her for only a short time so I don't think that Shae weaved some magic spell on him with her vagina, he did it precisely because his dad told him not to take her. So he apparently isn't that terrified is he?

As for the rest...Shae was good at her job.Which was pleasing Tyrion This changes little for me.Honestly, in the face of Tyrion's overwhelming privilege the ability of a whore to be appealing seems pretty weak. Compared to the TV relationship the general problematic nature of both the relationship and Tyrion himself is far more pronounced precisely because there's pretty much none of the romance in the series( whenever Tyrion starts to think like that in the books he beats the impulse down).

Whether or not Tyrion was weak when it comes to Shae seems a bit uncontentious. He was. However, at the end of the day I cannot see TV!Tyrion slapping TV!Shae nor can I see TV!Shae losing her payment in a way that didn't explicitly remove the interpretation that was a unilateral decision by Tyrion.I could never see him placing ugly men with Shae (looked it up and this was explicit, it wasn't his Valemen, he asked Varys specifically for ugly men and homosexuals) I could never see these things happening in the way they did in the books. If anything happened it would be in the way they did last episode: with a clear noble motive for Tyrion.

[Ralin]

Tyrion initially kept her out of sheer rebelliousness. He'd known her for only a short time so I don't think that Shae weaved some magic spell on him with her vagina, he did it precisely because his dad told him not to take her. So he apparently isn't that terrified is he?

I was thinking more about later on after Tywin came to King's Landing and took back the office of Hand. He's clearly terrified because he knew his father doesn't make idle threats, but he still can't bring himself to force Shae to leave.

And it doesn't take magic vagina spells to do this. It's pretty clear that Tyrion desperately wanted someone to love him. Give him a hint of that and he'll trip over himself convincing himself that it's legit.

As for the rest...Shae was good at her job.Which was pleasing Tyrion This changes little for me.Honestly, in the face of Tyrion's overwhelming privilege the ability of a whore to be appealing seems pretty weak.

I just think that you're discounting Shae's own agency here. Like I said, Book Shae never shows any signs of being particularly smart, but if there's one thing someone in her line of work is going to be good at it's reading people. It’s pretty damned obvious that Tyrion had a huge emotional blind spot here and I doubt Shae didn’t realize that it gave her the upper hand despite all of Tyrion’s money and power. Let’s not take that away from her.

[Scrib]

I was thinking more about later on after Tywin came to King's Landing and took back the office of Hand. He's clearly terrified because he knew his father doesn't make idle threats, but he still can't bring himself to force Shae to leave.

And it doesn't take magic vagina spells to do this. It's pretty clear that Tyrion desperately wanted someone to love him. Give him a hint of that and he'll trip over himself convincing himself that it's legit.

I'm responding mainly to the claim that Shae made Tyrion love her to the point that he had to take her despite his fear of his father. This clearly was not what happened in the beginning. Tyrion chose his own path.

When it comes to what he could or could not bring himself to do: I suppose I'll either just be unsympathetic (and skeptical) or an unsympathetic compatibilist. Not sure yet.

And what you mean by "give him a hint" is: "do your job" and Tyrion, who clearly knows better (he even notes that Shae doesn't love him because of the way she reacts to his marriage-she doesn't even pretend jealousy or the like) will tie himself in knots.

I just think that you're discounting Shae's own agency here. Like I said, Book Shae never shows any signs of being particularly smart, but if there's one thing someone in her line of work is going to be good at it's reading people. It’s pretty damned obvious that Tyrion had a huge emotional blind spot here and I doubt Shae didn’t realize that it gave her the upper hand despite all of Tyrion’s money and power. Let’s not take that away from her.

I don't think I am? I recognize that Shae possibly saw a good thing and stuck with it even after Tyrion...inconvenienced her. I just don't think it changes much for me when I'm comparing it to the TV relationship. I just think that there's a line past which "she went with/wanted it" stops being a defense, and the more uncomfortable and imbalanced the relationship the closer you get to it.

Sure, Tyrion has huge psychological issues and Shae had financial incentives. I just don't know what this is supposed to change. The way I look at it is: if I were looking at a relationship where Clinton did what Tyrion did to his intern-turned-concubine and comparing it to his relationship with say...his wife I would find the former problematic (not sure I'd find it more or less problematic given the systems we have in place) regardless of whether Clinton had a compulsive thing for young women and/or said young woman had a thing for Clinton. There's a reason that we don't look kindly on it even if Clinton says that the young woman wanted it.

I'm not making the argument that Tyrion tied her up or Shae was a slave without will. I'm just saying that Tyrion being a mental weakling doesn't change the nature of the relationship (or of course, the comparison to the show). Tyrion may be a weakling in the same way that Tywin was weak when it came to women influencing his family members. Didn't stop what he did to his father's mistress.

[Scrib]

Holy rape scene Batman. That was deeply uncomfortable. Ironic it comes after this discussion about whitewashing and Jaime getting a convenient pass with a silly break-up from teh evil witch Cersei. Yurgh.

[Vympel]

Holy rape scene Batman. That was deeply uncomfortable. Ironic it comes after this discussion about whitewashing and Jaime getting a convenient pass with a silly break-up from teh evil witch Cersei. Yurgh.

No matter whether Jaime raped Cersei or not (why they changed the scene from the books, I don't know) - he attempted to murder a child, and strangled his cousin to death. Both of those crimes are way worse than rape. Anyone who thought Jaime was being white-washed in the show just wasn't paying attention.

[Scrib]

Holy rape scene Batman. That was deeply uncomfortable. Ironic it comes after this discussion about whitewashing and Jaime getting a convenient pass with a silly break-up from teh evil witch Cersei. Yurgh.

No matter whether Jaime raped Cersei or not (why they changed the scene from the books, I don't know) - he attempted to murder a child, and strangled his cousin to death. Both of those crimes are way worse than rape. Anyone who thought Jaime was being white-washed in the show just wasn't paying attention.

Meh. You can get away with murdering a child. Perhaps not in a strictly moral sense but in appearing more appealing to the audience.Perhaps it's better to say that any rehabilitation of Jaime in the eyes of the viewers (which would be helped by not...y'know being with his sister) was...set back. I think rape has it's own quality in storyland. I'll be interested to see the fan reaction to this and any other scenes with Jaime that follow.

[Vympel]

Meh. You can get away with murdering a child. Perhaps not in a strictly moral sense but in appearing more appealing to the audience.Perhaps it's better to say that any rehabilitation of Jaime in the eyes of the viewers (which would be helped by not...y'know being with his sister) was...set back. I think rape has it's own quality in storyland. I'll be interested to see the fan reaction to this and any other scenes with Jaime that follow.

Well then the audience are fucked in the head, IMO. Sexualt assualt is horrible, but its not even in the same moral universe as murder, let alone child murder. I'm sure David and Dan will comment on it at some point, in any event.

[Scrib]

Meh. You can get away with murdering a child. Perhaps not in a strictly moral sense but in appearing more appealing to the audience.Perhaps it's better to say that any rehabilitation of Jaime in the eyes of the viewers (which would be helped by not...y'know being with his sister) was...set back. I think rape has it's own quality in storyland. I'll be interested to see the fan reaction to this and any other scenes with Jaime that follow.

Well then the audience are fucked in the head, IMO. Sexualt assualt is horrible, but its not even in the same moral universe as murder, let alone child murder. I'm sure David and Dan will comment on it at some point, in any event.

Again, I don't think it's just about a strict moral weighing. Politics and society has a lot to do with it. It's like the whole It's Never Okay To Hit A Woman thing;more about putting forth a strong moral position to prevent rationalization from the bad guys than making an objective claim.

I imagine that we could watch characters do a whole host of shitty things yet hitting or raping a woman marks them out as Bad and can bring the blogosphere to life. Why? Probably progressive movements focusing on those social ills as opposed to the more pedestrian (to them) evils of people just being generically bad.

As for the writers: should they comment? What are they going to say? If they're going to comment I'd like an explanation for how we go from a clearly distraught Cersei and a comforting Jaime to one that is apparently a "hateful woman" in Jaime's eyes,well...hateful and apparently overwhelmingly attractive when in close proximity to her son's body. The whole transition was rather awkward to be honest.

[Vympel]

Again, I don't think it's just about a strict moral weighing. Politics and society has a lot to do with it. It's like the whole It's Never Okay To Hit A Woman thing;more about putting forth a strong moral position to prevent rationalization from the bad guys than making an objective claim.

I imagine that we could watch characters do a whole host of shitty things yet hitting or raping a woman marks them out as Bad and can bring the blogosphere to life. Why? Probably progressive movements focusing on those social ills as opposed to the more pedestrian (to them) evils of people just being generically bad.

Ah, I se what you mean.

Alex Graves (the director of the episode) on the scene:

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watchi ... cle-deadly

(*) When I interviewed Alex Graves about "The Lion and the Rose," we also spoke briefly about the Jaime/Cersei scene and about how the encounter starts out as Jaime forcing himself on her, then turns into something else. This is what he said:

"Well, it becomes consensual by the end, because anything for them ultimately results in a turn-on, especially a power struggle. Nobody really wanted to talk about what was going on between the two characters, so we had a rehearsal that was a blocking rehearsal. And it was very much about the earlier part with Charles (Dance) and the gentle verbal kidnapping of Cersei's last living son. Nikolaj came in and we just went through one physical progression and digression of what they went through, but also how to do it with only one hand, because it was Nikolaj. By the time you do that and you walk through it, the actors feel comfortable going home to think about it. The only other thing I did was that ordinarily, you rehearse the night before, and I wanted to rehearse that scene four days before, so that we could think about everything. And it worked out really well. That's one of my favorite scenes I've ever done."

Episode 4 preview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2leyatpoRBU

In which Cersei continues to try and get Jaime to kill people. Gives us a nice look at the ripples on Oathkeeper - he'll be handing it to Brienne next week, I'm positive (note she has her new armor on).

[Guardsman Bass]

I never really got a consensual vibe even from the ending of it. I did read one interesting interpretation of the scene, which is that the consensual scene in the book happens all from Jaime's perspective, so it's possible that it wasn't really consensual at all - that's just how he chose to think about it.

1. I finally managed to watch it, and I'm pleased. That was a very good scene between Pod and Tyrion (one of the things I really like about the show is that you see minor characters really go all out, and Pod's actor was definitely stepping up on the emotion there at the end). The scene between Margaery and Olenna were good as expected, and I liked how they started off with Olenna making a rather snarky comment about her dead husband before at the end you see that it actually did hurt her to see him gone.

2. We also finally saw Daario seem Daario-ish with that wink just before he took down the Mereenese champion. About time.

3. Sam's scenes were a bit of a drag. I think the problem is that we can't just have Gilly sit off-screen forever until the story needs her again, and the same goes for Sam - so we instead get the whole "find a place for Gilly" storyline and presumably another storyline that will be "save Gilly".

4. So did the Space Jockeys Thenns just completely fuck over the plan, or did they already consider it fucked because Jon Snow got away alive? Seems like a rather stupid idea to give them warning in advance of the secret plant to attack from the South and open the gates.

[Vympel]

I never really got a consensual vibe even from the ending of it. I did read one interesting interpretation of the scene, which is that the consensual scene in the book happens all from Jaime's perspective, so it's possible that it wasn't really consensual at all - that's just how he chose to think about it.

Whoever read the book hadn't read it recently. Cersei says "fuck me fuck me fuck me". Pretty unambiguous.

4. So did the Space Jockeys Thenns just completely fuck over the plan, or did they already consider it fucked because Jon Snow got away alive? Seems like a rather stupid idea to give them warning in advance of the secret plant to attack from the South and open the gates.

Like they said at Castle Black, the attack wasn't a warning, its a provocation to lure the brothers out so they could get attacked and killed in the open.

[Ralin]

Well then the audience are fucked in the head, IMO. Sexualt assualt is horrible, but its not even in the same moral universe as murder, let alone child murder. I'm sure David and Dan will comment on it at some point, in any event.

I can think of plenty of situations where you could argue that you just have to buck up and murder an innocent person with your bare hands to avoid worse things happening. Can't think of a whole lot of situations where you have a pressing need to rape someone.

Really surprised that you're seeing this as anything other than clear-cut "Hold you down and stick it in" not even a Republican would claim otherwise rape.

[Ralin]

Hey Vympel: On re-reading the past page I am realizing that's not what you were saying and I apologize for accusing you of trying to downplay the whole thing.

[Spekio]

I had the impression Cersei was paying hard to get due to Jaime's travels with Brienne and the showverse Brienne being in love with Jaime.

And had a similar scene happened anywhere but where it actually happened (no Stinky Joffrey? Shame.) I would have assumed she was into it and merely putting up a token resistence due to how fucked the Lannister' family dynamic is.

However, wow. I have no idea where they are going with this.

[Raw Shark]

4. So did the Space Jockeys Thenns just completely fuck over the plan, or did they already consider it fucked because Jon Snow got away alive? Seems like a rather stupid idea to give them warning in advance of the secret plant to attack from the South and open the gates.

Like they said at Castle Black, the attack wasn't a warning, its a provocation to lure the brothers out so they could get attacked and killed in the open.

Sure, but this is a pretty significant departure from the books, where Castle Black offers no protection whatsoever from the South as a matter of political agreement, and the whole plan was to hit it from that direction without warning. At the point in the books where they are in the show, they were racing to Castle Black hoping that Jon would bleed out or go off the path before they get there, about 75% sure the plan was fucked but still trying to make it happen, and most definitely not screwing around trying to draw the Watch out of the indefensible shacks they live in.

[snip] (no Stinky Joffrey? Shame.) [snip]

It's Tywin's corpse that exhibits a noteworthy stench in the books (which IMHO supports my "Varys gave him the super-laxative" theory)

[Spekio]

It's Tywin's corpse that exhibits a noteworthy stench in the books (which IMHO supports my "Varys gave him the super-laxative" theory)

Indeed it is. Joffrey was just mourned by no one.

[Spekio]

(which IMHO supports my "Varys gave him the super-laxative" theory)

Also, by Varys you of course mean the Red Viper, right?

[Vympel]

Sure, but this is a pretty significant departure from the books, where Castle Black offers no protection whatsoever from the South as a matter of political agreement, and the whole plan was to hit it from that direction without warning. At the point in the books where they are in the show, they were racing to Castle Black hoping that Jon would bleed out or go off the path before they get there, about 75% sure the plan was fucked but still trying to make it happen, and most definitely not screwing around trying to draw the Watch out of the indefensible shacks they live in.

Well, Castle Black in the show clearly has a small wall and a wooden gate - its much easier to deal with an attack from that position than it is to just ride out into the country side and get ambushed by Wildlings.

Hey Vympel: On re-reading the past page I am realizing that's not what you were saying and I apologize for accusing you of trying to downplay the whole thing.

No worries.

[Raw Shark]

(which IMHO supports my "Varys gave him the super-laxative" theory)

Also, by Varys you of course mean the Red Viper, right?

No, I don't think the Red Viper poisoned anybody except Gregor Clegane. I may be getting confused by the thread title here; am I not supposed to be talking about stuff from the books that hasn't happened on the show yet?

[SCRawl]

(which IMHO supports my "Varys gave him the super-laxative" theory)

Also, by Varys you of course mean the Red Viper, right?

No, I don't think the Red Viper poisoned anybody except Gregor Clegane. I may be getting confused by the thread title here; am I not supposed to be talking about stuff from the books that hasn't happened on the show yet?

There is a theory that Oberyn did indeed poison Tywin. The evidence seems to point to it.

[Spekio]

No, I don't think the Red Viper poisoned anybody except Gregor Clegane. I may be getting confused by the thread title here; am I not supposed to be talking about stuff from the books that hasn't happened on the show yet?

There is a theory that Oberyn did indeed poison Tywin. The evidence seems to point to it.

Well, someone posted the link before me. But I was always under the impression it was the Red Viper - he after all, wanted Twyn dead more than anyone.

That said, with the ending of ADWD we know Varys wanted chaos, and putting Cersei in charge did accomplish that.

Also, this is the spoiler thread, so I am confident we can talk about things that have yet to happen.

[Raw Shark]

There is a theory that Oberyn did indeed poison Tywin. The evidence seems to point to it.

Hmn, I hadn't thought of that. I guess it could've been super-constipation courtesy of Oberyn rather than super-laxative from Varys with the same result so long as Varys knew about it, and the Widow's Blood, unlike the super-lax Tyrion dosed Cersei with earlier, would be an unfired Chekhov's Gun by now if it hadn't been used somewhere in the story after such a prominent mention by Pycelle, which tips the balance that way.

[Ralin]

There is a theory that Oberyn did indeed poison Tywin. The evidence seems to point to it.

Hmn, I hadn't thought of that. I guess it could've been super-constipation courtesy of Oberyn rather than super-laxative from Varys with the same result so long as Varys knew about it, and the Widow's Blood, unlike the super-lax Tyrion dosed Cersei with earlier, would be an unfired Chekhov's Gun by now if it hadn't been used somewhere in the story after such a prominent mention by Pycelle, which tips the balance that way.

Yeah, seemed obvious once someone pointed it out to me. No way in hell Oberyn wouldn't take a shot at Tywin while he was in King's Landing.

Though it does seem like a lapse on Tywin's part to share drinks or whatever with a noted poisoner who hates him.

[Thanas]

It doesn't make sense for Oberyn to poison Tywin. Far better is the other theory posted here as it satisfies the most obvious counter: Why would a noted poisoner take a shot at his favorite target when he would be the first accused?

[Ralin]

Well one, does Oberyn seem like a cautious man who carefully weighs the costs and benefits of his actions regardless of his personal feelings? I submit that no, he does not. Not sure how much of this I'm mixing up with the show, but Oberyn was pretty open about how he was planning to seek justice for Elia; not exactly something he would have done in enemy territory if he was concerned about the potential consequences.

Plus he was a member of the Small Council and brother to the prince of Dorne. He was politically in a very hard to accuse position and whoever took over after Tywin could be expected to know that it was a bad idea to antagonize Dorne even more when the Lannisters were disorganized and vulnerable. After all, who would dare accuse him of something like that without hard proof? Proof that most likely would not exist given that Oberyn was by all accounts really good at the whole poisoning thing.

And this is all assuming that Oberyn wasn't planning to quietly leave King's Landing with all of his people within a few hours of the duel with Ser Gregor, which he probably was.