Game of Thrones: non-book-reading thread

I'm still thinking about what this does to directly benefit Littlefinger. Seems like everything's still coming up Tywin, so I'm sticking with the idea that he's behind it all. At this point though, I'm more curious where Tyrion's trial will go. Do the courts require 2/3 or a unanimous decision?

I feel like Tywin is involved, but whether he is or not, I can't figure out if he wants control of the trial in order to proclaim Tyrion innocent or guilty.

There is no love lost between him and Tyrion, plus if Tywin is behind this, people won't figure it out if Tyrion is decided to be the killer. On the other hand, Tywin cares for the Lannister name above all else, and does he really want to have two sons responsible for the death of kings?

Kinda back to boring here, huh? I liked the part with Blonde Lady Who Used To Be Naked More, as always, but the Fat Guy Gets A Date storyline remains super boring, and not too much happened with Joffrey's murder. I like the Dornish sex addict.

Sansa's Mystery Necklace was indeed A Thing. What was Littlefinger doing there? Was he showing that the crystal could be ground up and put in the wine and then Joffrey has to drink ground glass? No, right? If it was that easy they could have used any old crystal. Was it hollow and there was poison in it? I didn't really follow that. I did, however, find a thing on the internet about who might have enjoyed Sansa's necklace. You may consider this a spoiler:

Agreed with y'all: while Littlefinger is obviously a player, this isn't his game.

Sorry. I think the book readers are all still complaining about the added rape scene.

As for your point, that's definitely not a great passage of writing. I'd never call GRRM's style particularly great. I read the books because the characters are great, the plot is very interesting, his grasp of the details of the world is outstanding, and I love the point of view storytelling style which allows you to get inside the heads of competing characters.

Oh! Thank you, WKRP Jimmy Drop. That makes sense.

Desert Dweller, it's occurred to me that it's a bit unfair to take a sex scene out of context, since sex scenes in books are almost universally terrible.

I hope one of them is "They say if you piss on wildfire your cock burns off."

But seriously folks, I have a picture of the pyromancer taped to my instrument at work (explosives research) with the quote, "...it burns wood, stone, even steel. And, of course, flesh."

It's just the side of the mass spec instrument housing. There are high voltages about, it's more of a warning, really. Well, I'd take a picture to prove it, but no pictures on-site.

Okay, that seems like a worthwhile conversation too.

The Blonde Lady / Horse Dude rape supported my view of Blonde Lady as super tough and ruthless: she was able to take this nightmarish, powerless situation and figure her way out of it. She's a messiah superhero at this point, and knowing the well of misery she climbed out from helps me buy that. So for me, that plot served her character arc. (It feels weird to talk about rape and then say things like that, but...well, it is a TV show.) Horse Guy being a bad person showed me that his people are savage, so that made sense to me too.

This Cersei / Stumpy thing just happened, so I'm not sure how it's going to go down and I don't want to judge it too much before I know; if I'm all "This show loves rape!" and she cuts his throat next week, I will have wasted my time.

As you said, Tea Rex, clearly it's never Ladies Night in Westeros; from a story point of view I don't have trouble with any one event.

That said...I agree that we're starting to see what looks like a pattern here, where ladies get raped and end up not minding for one reason or another. That sucks because storytelling matters: it contributes to our understanding of how humans work. When you see a whole lot of stories where someone's brother rapes them and halfway through they're like "Actually this is pretty cool, let's go with this," part of your brain might file that away somewhere: "Sometimes ladies are into that, as long as it's their brother," or whatever fucked up message your brain ends up receiving.

For those of us who already read Flowers in the Attic, where this exact same thing totally happens, except not on the corpse of their incestuous son, y'know, we're on thin ice already.

Soooo I think what I'm saying is that it's cool for Game of Thrones to do this..."rape with ambiguous outcome"? Should I call it that? Anyway, whatever it is, it's cool with me for them to do it once; when they start doing it habitually, I start to get a little uncomfortable. I'd like to see what the fallout is here between Cersei and Stumpy.

The "What's in the book?" conversation seems like a rabbit hole to me; I'm sure there's tons of stuff that's not in the book, and I don't care overmuch about the book, so whatever. I think there's a decent conversation to be had about the show itself, so that's where I'm at.

Martin's sex scenes are always bad (that is not even the worst one) and his prose is largely functional, but brisk (and witty, a lot if Tyrion and Arya'd best lines are his; they are his favourite characters and it shows.) His strengths as a writer are basically the long, elaborate, intricate world-building that then comes together in clashing, magnificent climaxes, and the depth of character he can suggest economically - the Margaery the TV show shows us is basically a character who only exists to the situationally aware reader, as we 'see' very little of her in the books. There are a lot of hidden clues in the books as well; some fans have pieced together theories based on careful reading that subsequent books confirmed. Martin is very good at puzzles and this is an aspect many readers lament the absence of in the TV series; Dany's vision in Qarth in the books included a ton of carefully guarded Easter eggs for future events (she even sees Robb's body with his head replaced by that of his direwolf Grey Wind, though you don't know that at the time.)

There are better written books and better written fantasy books, but Martin does really great page turners, I finished evey one of these books - even the last two, which have the biggest pacing problems - in a matter of days.

This in itself is problematic as all hell, having a Dokrathi being mesmerised by the whitest white girl to ever white.  

Also it's my understanding Daenerys is 14 in the books, married off without any say so (as most women of noble birth likely were), and probably aware that yeah, Drogo can do whatever the hell he wants to her and no-one will say anything, because she's his wife. I don't particuarly consider that "consent".

Well that makes me less interested in the books. Margaery is easily my favorite.

Heeee, thanks!  My other favourite thingie like that is, "whiter than a white thing with a special reason to be white".

I assume they get a bit rapey when he's around.

Well, good job, Olenna boosters. Lady knows slight-of-hand, knows seduction technique.