71 replies to this topic

[Jolene Brown]

Dr. Pepper, on 04 June 2012 - 04:31 PM, said:

The story would be ridiculously short if Martin didn't show how certain characters were bad.  How would people know that Gregor was a psychopath if Martin just wrote, "And Tywin Lannister sent out his dog, Ser Gregor, to take care of the Riverlands.  Ser Gregor is a terrible, crazy man who has done terrible, crazy things."  Well, what terrible, crazy things has Ser Gregor done?  Who thinks he's terrible and crazy?  It would be like reading a news story of a man named Greg being arrested for some vague crime that is only described as terrible and crazy.  How can he be judged unless one knows the details?  The crimes of fictional Greg and fictional Ser Gregor also aren't as atrocious without the details.

The same goes with Jeyne Poole.  We can't judge how awful Ramsay is or how terrifying Jeyne Poole's experience was if all we have is "Ramsay Bolton was a terrible man who did terrible things to women.  Jeyne Poole didn't like him and people in Winterfell can often hear her crying."  Terrible can range anywhere from ignoring her to forcing bestiality on her.  The context of his terribleness is important as ignoring one's wife doesn't make one a fully terrible person, but raping, flaying, forcing bestiality, etc does actually paint Ramsay as a fully terrible person.

I take your point, at the same time, if the only things you removed from the story were the specific detail that Jeyne Poole had to have sex with Ramsay's dogs or whatever happened, and the little narrative about Gregor's rape of the innkeeper's daughter, can you honestly say that readers wouldn't have 900,000 other things to show us how awful these two characters are?

[Dr. Pepper]

Jolene Brown, on 04 June 2012 - 04:57 PM, said:

I take your point, at the same time, if the only things you removed from the story were the specific detail that Jeyne Poole had to have sex with Ramsay's dogs or whatever happened, and the little narrative about Gregor's rape of the innkeeper's daughter, can you honestly say that readers wouldn't have 900,000 other things to show us how awful these two characters are?

I think the other awful things Gregor and Ramsay were said to have done would have made their characters more debatable.  Yes, as a boy, Gregor held his brother's head to a fire and nearly killed him.  That's terrible, but one terrible act does not mean that a man is condemned as a terror for life.  He's known for his brutality in wars, but the things he does is an accepted method of warfare within Westeros.  Should he be condemned based on following the accepted methods during war when it's also said that he rarely leaves his lands except for war or tourneys?  I think what truly condemns Gregor as an unrepentant psychopath is the story Chiswyck tells.  Gregor isn't just following the accepted rules of warfare when he rapes the innkeeper's daughter.  He's showing that he is cruel and brutal outside of childhood and war.  Furthermore, the laughing way Chiswyck tells the story also reveals a lot about Gregor as it details the type of men which Gregor chooses to surround himself.

Likewise with Ramsay.  We get a lot of hearsay about his character before ADWD.  A lot of that has to do with what happened with Lady Hornwood.  It was a terrible asshole move to marry her and then lock her in a tower to starve, but we can't know for certain if there was some other underlying factors or if he is just cruel and terrible for the sake of being cruel and terrible.  We know that he was cruel to Theon because Theon tells us that he flayed his fingers and cut them off and kept him in a dungeon without food for extended periods of time and we know that Ramsay hunted, raped, and killed an escaped female prisoner though left Theon to live but we also know that Robb had requested Theon be taken alive.  These acts are cruel in and of themselves but there's no 100% certainty that Ramsay is a deranged psychopath with the most cruel perversions until we see what he does to "Arya", the woman he took as his own wife.

If the very specific details of the innkeeper's daughter and the way Ramsay treated Jeyne Poole were repeated in every chapter of every book, it becomes nothing more than gratuitous brutality.  These specific scenes are meant to give the reader no reason to doubt the absolute cruel nature of these two characters.

[Ser Thomas Derpingham]

Queen Cersei I, on 04 June 2012 - 10:43 AM, said:

....and a handful of other issues strike me as unnecessary and rather gratuitious.

I, too, feel that we did not need to know about the whereabouts of the Titan's Bastard's Little Bastard in Dany's supposed lookalike( apparently there are many who have her face, if Jorah's discoveries are anything to go by ).

I use 'little' very loosely here.

[Maria Underfoot]

Victarion.... Nuff said
Let's put aside the fact that he beat his wife to death. His actions are exactly what the title of the forum says: full of unnecessary violence and cruelty. He killed the sailors on a ship he found, because they said that Dany was dead. That was what they knew and had heard, they obviously weren't lying, and that moron Victarion killed them because he "couldn't stand liars"

[Lummel]

Maria Underfoot, on 05 June 2012 - 02:36 AM, said:

Victarion.... Nuff said
Let's put aside the fact that he beat his wife to death. His actions are exactly what the title of the forum says: full of unnecessary violence and cruelty. He killed the sailors on a ship he found, because they said that Dany was dead. That was what they knew and had heard, they obviously weren't lying, and that moron Victarion killed them because he "couldn't stand liars"

But if Victarion didn't do those things might not readers be tempted to think he was just a heroic warrior, a bit simple maybe but a great fighter and someone to cheer for?

[Natalie_S]

Queen Cersei I, on 04 June 2012 - 10:43 AM, said:

However, other things-- including certain descriptions of Gregor Clegane's deeds, the story about Gregor Clegane raping the 13 year old girl and making her father watch and then taking back his money since she was not "good" enough; the details about how Ramsay made Jeyne Poole engage in beastiality with the dogs (indicating the abuse was more than enough, that was all that was needed, since Jeyne is a more minor character, and we can all imagine that Ramsay is no doubt clearly brutalizing and violating her without having to know that particular detail of it,) and a handful of other issues strike me as unnecessary and rather gratuitious.

I completely agree with you, the innkeeper's daughter story made me feel so uncomfortable reading the book, it was so unnecessary, cruel and it made me feel that the author was enjoying the tale just a little too much
Same for the feast scene in which the noble women had to serve naked etc.
I almost stopped reading the series after AGOT because i was so creeped out by these details (the lamb women raped and killed by the Dothraki etc)... and the worse was yet to come!
It seems that, if it's a minor character, then it's ok, the author doesn't really care and it's not a particularly bad or impressive scene... but it is, always!!!!

[Lummel]

I disagree.  The Gregor Clegane incident talks us to the heart of some big issues in ASOIAF.  Many of us are in thrall to the ideals of chivalry and knights in shining armour and so on, but what GRRM is saying is that that idealisation is an idealisation of violence and physical power and that this has become central to Westerosi society.  And one of the things that you get Gregor Clegane.  And don't forget that Gregor is a knight and that he was dubbed by Rhaegar himself.

That Gregor is a killer is not enough.  Knights are meant to be killers.  What we hear that he has done in that scene is break other duties that are laid on a knight - to protect the poor and to honour women, and we hear the reactions of the people involved.  The innkeeper acquiesces, Gregor's men laugh and find it funny - in other words we are shown that westerosi society at large has accepted the glorification of violence and arbitrary power.  GRRM is showing us the moral vacuum at the heart of society which is counter balanced by  Dunk and Brienne.  Two people who formally are not and cannot become knights but who (virtually alone) live up to the chivalric ideals of  knighthood.  They stand up for the weak and meek (and suffer for it too).

But yes it is meant to be disturbing and upsetting - that is the reaction that we share with Arya.  We with her are having the unpleasant side of westeros rubbed in our faces.  At once we see this as part of the damage that is inflicted on her as a child - but equally as readers we have to fear the consequences of turning to violence as an answer because we have just seen where that ends.  Why was Gregor sulking afterall - because he hadn't won the tournament...

The Euron scene is also unpleasant, but perhaps not unpleasant enough, you still read from time to time posters who think he's some kind of fun pirate...

[Ser Thomas Derpingham]

Lummel, on 05 June 2012 - 03:50 AM, said:

The Euron scene is also unpleasant, but perhaps not unpleasant enough, you still read from time to time posters who think he's some kind of fun pirate...

I don't see what's funny about genocide and rape, unless Euron did this to clowns.

Edit:  Seriously, did you guys mix up your Redwall and your Ice and Fire again?  I realize it's similar, what with the pirates, knights, rangers, castles, intense focus on feasting and food, and clever riddles, but they are distinctly different!  And Euron is definitely not a lovable, roguish fox pirate with a crew full of rats!  He wargs into women that his brother has his way with, by St. George!

...ecch...now someone's going to draw Euron as a fox.  Not that I mind, but now it's my fault.

Edited by Ser Thomas Derpingham, 05 June 2012 - 03:56 AM.

[kfharlock]

I'll go on the record as saying that yes, stuff like the description of Gregor's rapes DID make me feel uncomfortable, and when I was reading the fifth book, I actually had to put it aside a few times when reading about Ramsay's exploits... but i LIKE this. It's awful, just unconscionably awful, from a moral standpoint, but... I'm not reading the books for tutelage in ethics, I'm reading them to take away a powerful aesthetic experience, and from the standpoint of aesthetics, good lord, what an experience that an author can make me feel not just jubilation and other positive emotions, but also sadness and deep physical discomfort.

It's a judgment call that each reader has to make for themselves, but for me personally, I feel like the effort Martin has put into building his world, and the fact that he makes virtually every single person, down to the most tertiary innkeeper, seem like a real, fully realized human, absolves him of any accusations of sensationalism. I would consider a work sensationalist if it showed me images of uncomfortable violence tacked onto a paper-thin world with weak two-dimensional characters. For example, I was offended by the "baby scene" in one of those "Human Centipede" movies for this reason; I didn't feel the work had "bought" the right to show me something like that. By contrast, I've been reading David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" the last month or so, and the other night as I was reading in bed, I reached this chapter that was just plain horrible in what it depicted, to the extent of making me feel anxious; I had to struggle not to just skip past the pages. Ultimately, I didn't sleep at all that night, and felt kind of deflated and depressed much of the next day... and I loved it, because "Infinite Jest" is an amazing book!

Anyway, I know this is a fully subjective stance on the matter, but in my mind, Martin has done things in a way that justifies the inclusion of elements like this; their awfulness seems *powerful* to me, rather than gratuitous.

[Lyanna Stark]

Lummel, on 05 June 2012 - 02:38 AM, said:

But if Victarion didn't do those things might not readers be tempted to think he was just a heroic warrior, a bit simple maybe but a great fighter and someone to cheer for?

I was under the impression this was basically what people believed anyway, since he's got quite a sizable fanfollowing due to being "badass". So contrary to what people in this thread believe, perhaps Vicky needs to kill some more wives and sink some more boats with poor young women in them? Obviously, he has not engaged in enough forced cannibalism, mutilation and gang rapes for it to register that he's "bad" not "badass".

[Rinso]

The scene with Gregor's little gangrape is an example of a scene that absolutely had to be there. It shows you what sort of a person he is, which makes for a nice reflection of what sort of people support or work for the Lannisters, and that leads to the question of what type of society creates people like them. Remove the atrocities that Gregor commits and he becomes a big an' tough badass warrior. But read how he rapes, tortures and murders the small, nameless people and he becomes the biggest monster in this story so far. Remove his cruelty and you lose much of what makes ASoIaF so different and interesting. Yes, it's supposed to be nasty and terrible - you have to feel nasty and terrible when you read it.

Edited by Rinso, 05 June 2012 - 05:23 AM.

[Lummel]

Lyanna Stark, on 05 June 2012 - 05:13 AM, said:

I was under the impression this was basically what people believed anyway, since he's got quite a sizable fanfollowing due to being "badass". So contrary to what people in this thread believe, perhaps Vicky needs to kill some more wives and sink some more boats with poor young women in them? Obviously, he has not engaged in enough forced cannibalism, mutilation and gang rapes for it to register that he's "bad" not "badass".

*Sigh*  I think you're right.  I remember a thread arguing with some people who thought that beating your wife to death was ok in ironborn culture.  On the whole I personally think it's hard to miss the monstrous characters although apparently there is some room for differences of opinion.

[Lyanna Stark]

Lummel, on 05 June 2012 - 05:44 AM, said:

*Sigh*  I think you're right.  I remember a thread arguing with some people who thought that beating your wife to death was ok in ironborn culture.  On the whole I personally think it's hard to miss the monstrous characters although apparently there is some room for differences of opinion.

I think one of the reasons Euron and Victarion have a sizable fanfollowing is the same reason Bronn has one. They're "baddass" on the surface, hence it doesn't matter if they have any sort of moral compass, nor if they ever had one and what happened to it. Euron is a hawt pirate, Vicky kills shit like a boss and Bronn is funny, which apparently makes it easier to forget the bad stuff they did.

Personally I am far more inclined to find for example Jaime Lannister, Sandor Clegane and Jorah Mormont interesting over the above lot and worthy of debate/support/detracting since they're grey characters who have all shown they have some sort of moral compass and are all struggling with how to relate to it.

Euron, Vicky and Bronn (and many others) are in it for themselves with little care for anyone else or the cost other people have to bear for their success.

Edited by Lyanna Stark, 05 June 2012 - 05:59 AM.

[Lummel]

Ah so a bit like Tyrion-syndrome?  If the character is sufficiently endearing all manner of their sins come to be seen as virtues?

[Lyanna Stark]

Lummel, on 05 June 2012 - 05:57 AM, said:

Ah so a bit like Tyrion-syndrome?  If the character is sufficiently endearing all manner of their sins come to be seen as virtues?

Yes, I think so. This tends to happen to either funny or Conan flavoured "badass" characters.

[Toccs]

I'm not under any illusion that Euron is not a monster and I've never thought of him as a "fun pirate".
I like Euron because he does all of these horrible things with style and charisma and even a certain charm.  Gregor and Ramsay are just complete monsters but Euron has a personality on top of that which makes him a much more compelling character.  Also he's traveled the world and is deeply invested in the mysterious powers from the East.

Plus making a seal stand in for Asha at her wedding is just funny as hell.

Edited by Toccs, 05 June 2012 - 06:10 AM.

[LordBloodraven]

Gregor's rape of the innkeeper, although disturbing, made sense story-wise. We have seen many war destructions during Arya's chapters in ACOK, with burning holdfasts, burned fields, deserted villages.  We've heard of Elia's rape and Sandor's burning before but this happened right there with a POV in the vicinity. The innkeeper's daughter was raped and she's never going to get any justice: people are laughing about Gregor wanting his change. Smallfolk are powerless and at the mercy of crazy people such as Gregor Clegane. And Chiswyck laughing about it was the trigger for Arya accepting Jaqen's 3 debts.

The one stuff that I couldn't bear to read was Jeyne Poole's torture  in ADWD. Ramsay's antics might be too much for me. The bedding was very explicit and so were the bite marks on poor Jeyne's body.

[Lyanna Stark]

Toccs, on 05 June 2012 - 06:10 AM, said:

I'm not under any illusion that Euron is not a monster and I've never thought of him as a "fun pirate".
I like Euron because he does all of these horrible things with style and charisma and even a certain charm.  Gregor and Ramsay are just complete monsters but Euron has a personality on top of that which makes him a much more compelling character.  Also he's traveled the world and is deeply invested in the mysterious powers from the East.

Plus making a seal stand in for Asha at her wedding is just funny as hell.

Forgive me, I did not mean to insinuate that you adhered to "Euron is a fun pirate" doctrine, nor that you excused him of his bad deed.

I do agree on having a seal stand in for Asha being fairly humurous in a sort of twisted, facepalmy way tho.

[Natalie_S]

I agree that the innkeeper's daughter scene made sense story-wise, but I still wish GRRM spared us the details.
Raping a random girl is enough to make Gregor Clegane a monster without having half Lannister army joining him.

And there are just too many gang rapes in the series, I mean statistically.
After a couple of books they've almost become GRRM's signature.
There are so many that have little to no consequence in the story, for example all those women in Harrenhal that were shaved and chained, like Pia.
And in AFFC, after she lived all those horrors, she happily dates i don't remember which Lannister soldier, as long as he's gentle enough (as Jaime suggested). How likely is that a person that was abused like that is interested in romance after so little time?
The message that passes through the narration is that it's not really a big deal.
And this is one of the reasons why I find the books slightly disturbing.

[Lummel]

OK if that's your impression, my impression is that the message is that these horrors are a big deal and are the consequences of a culture that glorifies knights, nobles and their honour - they are fighting afterall in pursuit of family honour, Lannisters for the capture of tyrion, Starks for the arrest of The Ned and his daughters.  For their honour lives have been turned upside and ruined.

The message, I think, is about how the people who carry out such acts are monsters, that if they were 'normal' people once then the process of war will degrade them and make them monsters, like the woman in the harrenhall stocks threatening violence to Arya once the Lannisters retake the castle or lem lemoncloak.

In that sense I agree that the cruelty is useless, it is pointless.  But what it does is display the moral emptiness of the culture that produced it, that everybody is complicit and that everybody suffers.  Teach them mother a gentler way?

Edited by Lummel, 05 June 2012 - 08:52 AM.