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[Book Spoilers] EP404 Discussion


Ran
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One of Martin's themes in his book is that there is no natural/intrinsic evil.

I've always felt this applied more to the main characters. Jaime, Dany, Stannis, Theon, Tryion etc... But you can't dispute that there are plenty of characters in the story that have no redeemable qualities and are almost cartoonishly evil.

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As I said. No natural or intrinsic evil.

Right, natural and intrinsic are synonymous. I'm saying there's plenty of intrinsic evil in Planetos. The story isn't evil vs. good, but this idea of grey and nuanced characters applies to the main characters. Plenty of minor characters are just horrible fucks naturally. I mean he even wrote in a character whose blood smelled evil...wtf?!

Edited by DarkAndFullOfTurnips
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Right, natural and intrinsic are synonymous. I'm saying there's plenty of intrinsic evil in Planetos. The story isn't evil vs. good, but this idea of grey and nuanced characters applies to the main characters. Plenty of minor characters are just horrible fucks naturally. I mean he even wrote in a character whose blood smelled evil...Like wtf?!

They can be, Inherent can be used instead.

There is no Sauron/Orc. There might be true psychopaths. The Mountain might be a good candidate. But the barbarity of the time Martin has studied was greater than it is now. There are heinous acts, and characters committing atrocities, but there isn't any inherent 'evil'. That's a simplistic viewpoint that is a hangover from High Fantasy.

Horrible is not 'evil.'

Edited by Halb
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I also don't understand what people expected was supposed to be happening at Crasters. In the books it is made clear they are being raped. These are men that have profaned their vows, who are at the watch because they were murderers and rapists to begin with, who now have a degree of autonomy from their former lives and are surrounded by young women who they have complete control over. Did you expect them to be sitting around drinking tea and singing songs?

Enough of the pointlessly silly comparisons already - it hate debating a topic when people with differing opinions suggest stupid alternative of what could be shown. Statements like this one make discussing this tiresome and lower the quality of this forum debate considerably. But hey, let's not discuss it seriously, with arguments or the like, let's just make fun of people who are trying to offer different views -.-

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They can be, Inherent can be used instead.

There is no Sauron/Orc. There might be true psychopaths. The Mountain might be a good candidate. But the barbarity of the time Martin has studied was greater than it is now. There are heinous acts, and characters committing atrocities, but there isn't any inherent 'evil'. That's a simplistic viewpoint that is a hangover from High Fantasy.

Horrible is not 'evil.'

I'm not going to debate semantics so I'll agree that GRRM is plainly creating a world where it's not good vs. evil, but I'm not really even sure what your initial comment is aimed toward, then? I don't think the show is just going to make the WW's evil beiings fighting against the "Good" dragons or whatever, if that's what you were getting at.

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The thing that people are forgetting is that watching something happen, even in the background of a TV scene is much different than reading about it. You can choose to visualize it or not when you read, and you don't hear cries of pain or torment. You can kind of block it out and deal with it yourself. Honestly the books are like 100x worse than the show, imagine they showed someone raping a septa and literally chewing her tits off? Or starving a woman and having her chew off her own fingers? It would be ludicrous.

:agree: I am personally glad that they are toning down thing for the show: not sure if I could handle watching Ramsay's victim being torn apart by the hounds. I just don't understand why apparently any rape/violence described by GRRM serves plot or character development purpose while if depicted on the show it is gratuitous and only serves to fulfil HBO boob quota.

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The thing that people are forgetting is that watching something happen, even in the background of a TV scene is much different than reading about it. You can choose to visualize it or not when you read, and you don't hear cries of pain or torment. You can kind of block it out and deal with it yourself. Honestly the books are like 100x worse than the show, imagine they showed someone raping a septa and literally chewing her tits off? Or starving a woman and having her chew off her own fingers? It would be ludicrous.

My point exactly. Honestly, which scenes from seasons 2 and 3 that showed explicit nudity, sex or rape made you think "wow, showing that totally gave depth and credibility to the story". I'm completely okay with scenes that show nudity and sex, sometimes even if it's pointless, just to set the tone and create the roughness of the world the story is set in. However, if those scenes have people roll their eyes or place bets on how many boobs you see per episode, that's bad storytelling, plain and f*cking simple. And it seems that this is where we are going. Think of the 'walk of shame' for a moment. Will that scene still have an impact? Or will viewers, by that point, just say: "Yes, finally we see her tits as well!". My guess is, the second reaction is become the more likely one. And how awful that would be for this unforgetting scene ...

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The thing that people are forgetting is that watching something happen, even in the background of a TV scene is much different than reading about it. You can choose to visualize it or not when you read, and you don't hear cries of pain or torment. You can kind of block it out and deal with it yourself. Honestly the books are like 100x worse than the show, imagine they showed someone raping a septa and literally chewing her tits off? Or starving a woman and having her chew off her own fingers? It would be ludicrous.

No because a person telling a story about how someone was rapped and murdered isn't as powerful as showing it. You're getting books mixed up with tv. In books you can either have a character hear about how someone was harmed or have the character experience the harm and still keep the same effect. On a tv show or movie everything has to be shown visually. That's just how tv works.

Edited by sifth
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I am not saying the scene in Craster's Keep was an easy thing to watch. Not at all. I skipped it on my rewatch of the episode because it is simply too disturbing. But it felt completely in-style with George's writing. He tends to go over the top with the description of violence and it's hard to find a chapter, in which someone is not raped, threatened with rape or someone is not boasting about how they raped somebody. It's just that reading about it is slightly easier than watching it. It's been awhile since I read ASoS so I don't remember the details but Sam's description of what was happening at Craster's after the mutiny was a pretty disturbing read.

The mutineers were mostly rapers and murderers who were forced to join the Watch. I think it portrayed "nicely" how they are basically dead men walking living in the moment: they have no structure, no organisation and no purpose. If they go back to Westeros they're dead, if they leave Craster's and head north they're dead. We see the stage between the "kids thrown into a candy shop" to the "Craster's larder is not infinite and this is the rest of our fucking lives".

I don't see a problem with them keeping Ghost. Direwolf is a rarity, a source of entertainment, and they (or especially Karl) might have though that they could tame him eventually (Jon did why can't they?). A trained direwolf could hunt for them, protect them, intimidate others etc. They probably just fed him scraps or some junk that nobody else would eat anyways.

:agree:

This is an excellent point just because they took the Black did not mean they stopped being the Men that forced them to take the Black in the first place. You did not see this happen with Grenn and others because they were not murderers and rapists at heart. I've been saying this since yesterday that while some seem to be on an offense of rape being shown for rape's sake these are the types of men that they are, there is a Heart of Darkness in them they are vile inside they are not good men because it is not a part of who they are it is not in their make up.

As Ned said in the first novel the most dangerous of men are those who have nothing left to lose. These men have nothing left they can be as vile as they wish because yes they are dead men anyway. As for people saying why Craster's Daughter's did not really fight back an allow it to happen first no one allows themselves to be raped but you can be quite conditioned to sexual and physical abuse especially if this is all you have ever known. I think they are in essence (the writeres) are trying to handle the psychological make up that comes with not only people who have sociopath natures, but also people who are battered, conditioned into submission whether it is from their own Father or other men.

Oh and while I was so upset to see sweet Ghost trapped I was really happy he made an appearance I screamed Ghost when I saw him and then was mad at the same time :)

Edited by Alia Atreides
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My point exactly. Honestly, which scenes from seasons 2 and 3 that showed explicit nudity, sex or rape made you think "wow, showing that totally gave depth and credibility to the story". I'm completely okay with scenes that show nudity and sex, sometimes even if it's pointless, just to set the tone and create the roughness of the world the story is set in. However, if those scenes have people roll their eyes or place bets on how many boobs you see per episode, that's bad storytelling, plain and f*cking simple. And it seems that this is where we are going. Think of the 'walk of shame' for a moment. Will that scene still have an impact? Or will viewers, by that point, just say: "Yes, finally we see her tits as well!". My guess is, the second reaction is become the more likely one. And how awful that would be for this unforgetting scene ...

Some viewers will think the latter, but the show can't help that. There's always going to be some viewers who care more about nudity than plot, and it's more of a loss to them. I'm sure it'll try its hardest to show how humiliating and degrading the experience is for Cersei (if it doesn't, then that's a whole other kettle of fish). But this Craster's scene is *nothing* in tone like Cersei's walk of shame. It serves to show how evil the mutineers are without the degradation of a main character who the viewers have grown to care about. The degradation on show is definitely impactful though, it's just that the point of the scene isn't the same.

This feels like a circular debate at this point, to be honest. Some people aren't going to feel like the rape scenes work, some people are. I just think that it's upped the hatred of the mutineers and created an excellent sense of dread in the final 15 minutes. To each their own.

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I'm firmly in the camp of thinking that there was nothing wrong with having rape scenes at Craster's Keep. Well, obviously it's horrifically wrong, but from the perspective of the TV show I think it was necessary. The implication of rape has nowhere near the same effect (in my opinion, at least) as gruesomely showing the horror of it when in the following scene involves characters you love being captured by the bad guys.

They made it tasteless, they made it terrifying and they made us hate the characters. That's exactly what that scene needed, I thought.

So what if we're not given a backstory about why these people are evil? When a minor character goes around doing selfless things, do we demand an explanation on why they haven't descended into anarchy? Karl Tanner will almost certainly be dead soon, what's the point in fleshing out why he's horrendous?

The best example of why I thought it worked was Meera's reaction to realising that the Night's Watch people at Craster's are rapists. She's the one who cowered in fear upon realising what these people are capable of, while Bran - who is seemingly too young to understand what evil men can do in the world of Westeros - is oblivious. I immediately empathised with Meera's fears, knowing how awful the people inside that shelter were having seen moments ago, and wanted them to get away. When they get caught seconds later, it makes the feeling of dread intensify too.

I don't think that Bran is ignorant of the evil men can do in the world of Westeros; he lived through the Ironborn taking Winterfell!

Apologies if this has been mentioned elsewhere on this thread (did not have a chance to go through all 50 pages) but did people spot that little reference of Tyrion's regarding Sansa: "she is not a killer... not yet"

Things not looking too rosy for Sweet Robin it seems ...

I believe that while Book!Sansa knows that Littlefinger is having Maester Colemon dose Robin more regularly with sweet sleep than he should, I don't think she'll have a hand in Robin's death. If anything, she's going to get some sweet motherfucking revenge on Littlefinger's ass both in the book and the show, and I predict that I will thoroughly enjoy both depictions!

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:agree:

This is an excellent point just because they took the Black did not mean they stopped being the Men that forced them to take the Black in the first place. You did not see this happen with Grenn and others because they were not murderers and rapists at heart. I've been saying this since yesterday that while some seem to be on an offense of rape being shown for rape's sake these are the types of men that they are, there is a Heart of Darkness in them they are vile inside they are not good men because it is not a part of who they are it is not in their make up.

As Ned said in the first novel the most dangerous of men are those who have nothing left to lose. These men have nothing left they can be as vile as they wish because yes they are dead men anyway. As for people saying why Craster's Daughter's did not really fight back an allow it to happen first no one allows themselves to be raped but you can be quite conditioned to sexual and physical abuse especially if this is all you have ever known. I think they are in essence (the writeres) are trying to handle the psychological make up that comes with not only people who have sociopath natures, but also people who are battered, conditioned into submission whether it is from their own Father or other men.

Oh and while I was so upset to see sweet Ghost trapped I was really happy he made an appearance I screamed Ghost when I saw him and then was mad at the same time :)

Very well said, I couldn't agree more.

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No because a person telling a story about how someone was rapped and murdered isn't as powerful as showing it. You're getting books mixed up with tv. In books you can either have a character hear about how someone was harmed or have the character experience the harm and still keep the same effect. On a tv show or movie everything has to be shown visually. That's just how tv works.

Wow, thank you for explaining the difference between watching and reading, and also saying exactly what I said but pretending to disagree with me.

Edited by DarkAndFullOfTurnips
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Did anyone else notice that Littlefinger told Sansa that they were going to the Eyrie? So they are not going to the Fingers first? I was so hoping for the lines, "Lord of Sheepshit and the Drearfort?" and, "Nothing says home like the smell of burning dung."

Yeah, based on the promo they're heading right towards Lysa. They've got a lot of ground to cover before the Moon Door though, and only 4 episodes left to do it (episode 9 is eaten up by the battle).

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Did anyone else notice that Littlefinger told Sansa that they were going to the Eyrie? So they are not going to the Fingers first? I was so hoping for the lines, "Lord of Sheepshit and the Drearfort?" and, "Nothing says home like the smell of burning dung."

I suspect the Fingers is the sort of thing that can get cut (no pun to Davos!)

On Locke:

I think he is being set up at the Wall to take Bowen Marsh's place and will be the one to stab Jon eventually. What do people reckon?

And if that's the case, maybe that's a nod to the theory that the "Ides of Marsh" are orchestrated by the Lannisters/Boltons...

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