HBO: Game of Thrones

[Vee]

She was absolutely wrecked by what happened at the Red Wedding. Her reaction was onscreen in those two episodes in Season 3. She wasn't catatonic, but she was certainly hysterical. I don't see how any of that makes her a sociopath. Nor does her enjoying getting revenge on that !@#$%^&*] knight make her a sociopath. Just because she enjoys becoming a, uh, swordswoman? and at times takes a little too much pleasure in what she's learning from the Hound doesn't make her a sociopath - and even as she did, she called the Hound on what she felt was unnecessary brutality towards innocent people. (And the Hound, while he can be rotten, is no sociopath either - he feels things keenly, even when he acts opposite.)

She's been going down a dark road, but it's all been fueled by her own loss and heartbreak and what she's suffered. Her reactions have all been based in emotion and trauma.

Edited April 22, 2014 by Vee

[Vee]

That's about it. Jaime hit it with his sister and has spent most of his life thinking that's the world; Cersei is smart enough and has been through enough to know better, and has never IMO, not in the world of the show at least, had the same emotional investment in Jaime than he does in her. She loves him in her own way, yes, but in the end, in a pinch, she has and will always default to using him as a tool - a protector, an executioner, whatever. She's not as besotted as he is, she never was, or at least not since adulthood. It's never been a relationship where they have mutual understanding and agency, because Cersei has always had it over on him. That has nothing to do with the scene the other night, either; it's just how I've seen it from the start of the series.

Edited April 22, 2014 by Vee

[YRBB]

All this RAPE DRAMA and yet no one's commented on the fact that we finally saw a depiction/explanation of bisexuality that felt authentic! lol

[Juliajms]

I guess because it doesn't feel like a big deal to me.

[YRBB]

Um, OK. I think it's exciting. Especially, from all shows, that it happened on GOT.

[Vee]

I find both Pedro Pascal and the other guy (Will Tudor?) exceptionally attractive and I think it's definitely eye candy, but I don't find it to be anything too new. Perhaps in terms of showing bisexuality, but I honestly don't think that's some new, edgy concept. I'm just glad to see more and more equal opportunity male-on-male nudity and sexuality on the show. It's been a while since Renly cacked it, but it's good to see the guys still getting play.

[YRBB]

I mustn't be communicating well today because I never said depiction of bisexuality was new. All I said was that it felt like an authentic representation of bisexuality, when usually it's treated as people being greedy, indecisive, or always needing to like one more than the other. But absolutely YAY for equal opportunity male-on-male nudity!

[Juliajms]

What can I say, I'm pretty uninterested in most of the GoT's sex scenes. There's no shock factor because I literally cannot be shocked by anything sexual. So in the end, it left me pretty bored. It was a couple people having group sex with prostitutes. Next!

[DRW50]

Oberyn leaving his pants on while the other guy was awkwardly positioned and women writhed...eh. Oberyn feels like the generic pervy male bisexual TV cliche to me. It doesn't help that the actor reminds me of Schneider on One Day At a Time.

I couldn't help comparing it to Renly/Loras, where we got a fair amount (well, two scenes) of somewhat graphic content.

Edited April 22, 2014 by DRW50

[DRW50]

I agree that it's not the worst thing Jaime can do, or that this makes him worse than other male characters. What bothers me is when people say (which I know you weren't saying), who cares if they randomly made him a rapist, he did bad things, this show is about bad people. Opening that door leads to normalizing rape and shrugging it off if every man on this show started going around raping women.

[DRW50]

I don't know if he's a monster, but I think he's a pretty shitty guy who gets a pass from fans because he's "funny" with Arya. I've heard people say he's a good father to her because look at what she's learning. This is a guy who kills children (unless my season 1 memory is wrong, which it may be), who abandoned his army after expecting them to die for the cause, and who has a hypocritical "code" that he uses to justify whatever he sees fit. There's no great life lesson here.

As for Jaime and Cersei, I agree that she won't see him any differently. The director said she was manipulating HIM in that scene, and that she wanted it, so that tells me what they will do going forward with the characters. Unfortunately I didn't see any of that onscreen, although I know others did. So instead of seeing a man who is trying to be better striving for old times with a grasping Cersei, I saw a woman saying "no" over and over until she sort of gave in. But I know that's not how the scene was intended, and I will try to go forward with their interpretation.

Edited April 22, 2014 by DRW50

[Vee]

Well, it's a personal thing - I just haven't been exposed to as many inauthentic representations of bisexuality as you. I can count scenes like those you describe that I've seen on one hand, but that's me.

I found the scene the other night to be more graphic than Renly and Loras's - I don't remember Finn Jones ever losing his pants on the show, which drives me nuts since he is amazing to look at. Olyver, OTOH, is often naked, both with Loras and now Oberyn. And I thought I recalled Oberyn having to put his pants on as he got out of bed to talk to Tywin, but I'd have to go back and rewatch.

[Juliajms]

But people are going to say a lot of strange things, I don't let what random people say bother me. Just like what you were saying about Arya laughing at Sansa, why let that bother you? It doesn't sound like the people saying these things are posters you have a posting relationship with, so why sweat it?

As for Sansa, I don't feel she was kidnapped. There was a second where she looked back and weighed her options and chose to go with Dantos. Under these circumstances she made the right choice. Cersei almost certainly would have had her killed. Maybe she should have left town with The Hound, but for all we know he wouldn't have been honorable and taken her to her family. It kills me to think she and Arya might have met up if she did go with him though.

The Hound did kill Micah, but if he hadn't he would have been killed. He sure isn't Ned Stark who would defy his king before killing a child.

[Vee]

I just think it's not so much about what other people say about the characters online as it is about what I see when I watch the show - I don't care if someone is or isn't someone else's favorite vs. someone else or how they treat Character X or Y, I just watch it as it comes. I can't internalize fan feedback on the Internet.

The Hound is a complicated character - he's nasty, he's brutish and he's done terrible things. But he's not his brother (the Mountain), and he has, like so many other characters on the show (including the Lannisters) been brutalized and abused since childhood and reared to a certain way of thinking. He killed the butcher's boy on the King's orders at Winterfell, like most of the knights and soldiers in Robert's employ would have, but by the time Joffrey's reign rolled around even his sense of duty had had enough. He saved Sansa, he stopped her from being raped or worse by both Joffrey and the folk in the streets, and then he abandoned the fight at Blackwater because he had no respect for Joffrey or for their use of wildfire on the battlefield. He was tired of living by someone else's code.

That's not to say the Hound's code is so superior - he is a brutal pragmatist because of the life he has led, and he often goes too far, as he did in the last episode. He seems to go looking for a fight, for death. But he also sees the harsh realities of Westeros and that changing world clearly for what they are, more than some others. The ultimate question for me is will he change Arya more, or will Arya change him more, or a little bit of both. He already stopped her from dying with her family at the Twins, and he didn't have to do that. I hate some of the things the Hound does, but I understand him and I find him extremely compelling to watch. It's the same with Cersei or Jaime, where I condemn a great deal of their behavior and find it ridiculous, but I understand and sympathize with them more now, over the last two years, than I ever thought possible before. That's the whole show, really, and most of its characters IMO. The books, and the show, I think, are about that kind of deconstruction of classical fantasy characters: The evil knight (the Hound), the evil queen (Cersei), the brave hero (either a Jaime or a Robb/Ned/Jon Snow, all of them found lacking except for the bastard son and the cripple), the helpless maiden (Sansa). Nobody is what they entirely appear to be at face value.

Edited April 22, 2014 by Vee

[DRW50]

I suppose it bothers me because I feel like this is where the direction of the show goes. That people who think Arya is some sort of sprightly action hero role model (instead of a teenager who is barely holding on to the last shreds of herself) and Sansa is just an idiot tend to help create that reality on the show, because that's most of what the show hears. I feel like the show simplifies the characters sometimes to help go along with what vocal fans push. It's a catch-22.