SeanF

I think the two D's regarded Carol as a heroine, as Tyrion was a saint.

I never had to wait for AFFC, and ADWD, so I just went straight into them after the others. I wouldn't call them masterpieces, but I enjoyed them a lot. Unlike you, I found the Wall storyline very gripping. Like you, I found Meereen disappointing (until Daznak's Pit). The number of chapters could have been cut by half, along with Tyrion's journeying, giving us the two battles that ADWD was building up to. Then, I would have rated it the best in the series.

Henry VIII was actually very unusual for executing two of his wives, but it's quite true that adultery with a Queen (or royal princess) was viewed as treason, by both the man and the woman. The fate of the woman would more typically be confinement to a convent, in disgrace. The man would typically be dismembered.

The Starks are not the heroes, but George has called them heroes. The Lannisters threw the first punches in this conflict, and always sought to escalate the violence, rather than trying to limit it.

George in fact said he felt in need of a shower, every time he wrote a Cersei chapter.

Cersei and Jaime, if they were massively in love with other, could always have taken ship for some foreign country, where incestuous marriage is permitted, or no one cares about such things, and lived in comfortable obscurity. Cersei would have her jewels, and Jaime could find work as a bodyguard or city guardsman. But, that would mean their lives would be a lot less privileged than they were as Queen, and Lord Commander, respectively. So, count me very unconvinced that they had no option but produce children together, and then Cersei had no choice, but to murder other children in order to cover up their affair.

I find Cersei a lot of fun as a character. But, she’s a hateful woman. She murders children, sends people for vivisection, tortures the Blue Bard into madness, tries to frame Margaery and her friends for adultery, etc. etc.

Aegon’s Conquest is too one sided.

Incest is popular in porn. It only bothers me inasmuch as it harms others or involves rape. Cersei/Jaime’s incest (and the attempted cover up) crippled a child and plunged a nation into war. Aerys, Craster, Shae’s father all raped their respective partners.

@Ser Scot A EllisonI mostly agree with Scott Lynch. Yet, if someone really good were to produce The Children of Hurin, or the last years of Numenor, then I’d be interested. As for LOTR, I think the first two films and the first half of ROTK were very good. The second half of ROTK was a mess, however. And the less said about Denethor and the Scrubbing Bubbles of Death (or as I prefer, the Green Soap Bubbles of Death), the better.

Even in the Abomination, Dany just didn’t burn down Meereen and leave, after returning from Vaes Dothrak. The Slavers were crushed, some kind of ruling council established, and (unlike Astapor) she left them with an army. I could see her burning Yunkai to the ground, and slaughtering its elite, in TWOW, so it won’t be a thorn in the side of free Meereen, when she goes. But, she’s established a standing army for Meereen, so its leadership should be able to defend it. Almost certainly, revolution will come to Volantis, removing the biggest threat to Meereen. I don’t consider the fate of Kings Landing very important, in the scheme of things. What matters is the defeat of the Others.

I hear less of Stannis the Mannis. Perhaps if burning Shireen alive had actually gained him victory over the Boltons, he’d be more popular. People would see it as performing a soldier’s duty. As it is, it’s just seen as stupid act that hastened his defeat.

There was a show-only blogger called Esther Dot, who at one point was hugely influential. Her pieces on whore Daenerys vs madonna Sansa attracted a massive following. She could not decide if Jon was just deceiving the whore, to get an army, or whether he had actually been corrupted by the whore, and had to be thrown into the wilderness to atone. And, she believes herself to be a feminist.

Horrid, yet even Richie would despise Andrew Tate. I remember a conversation I had with my father about the racism scandal at Yorkshire County Cricket Club, where Asian players and staff were routinely called Pakis, Wogs, told they stank etc. He was 80 at the time, and I was 53. He said “I’m sure younger people don’t talk like that.” Then it occurred to me that the people doing this were all about 20 years younger than me.

If you’ve ever read The Stand, by Steven King, Harold Lauder is the perfect description of an incel, long before incels were a thing. Now, incels can form online communities. They have this fantasy of past ages, where beautiful women were mens’ chattels, and they could do anything they liked with them, not understanding that such societies, however sexist, were riddled with restrictions and taboos that governed male behaviour. The perfect example of such a taboo is in an episode of The Sopranos where Richie Aprile threatens to kill Christopher, on learning he hit his girlfriend, Richie’s niece. ”The day she takes your surname is the day you can raise your hand to her. Then, it’s none of my business”

I had only heard of Andrew Tate in passing, up till a few weeks ago, yet apparently, his videos are huge, among schoolboys. I think a lot of very young people have not truly formed well thought-out opinions, and are very prone to peer pressure.

That's the point, it's other peoples' sex lives. As to messed up attitudes, I'm not sure it's that much of a generational thing. I was surprised to read one survey that suggested that 45% of UK males, aged 15-24, approved of Andrew Tate.

I do find it quite blackly funny, how some fans (consciously or not) adopt not so much medieval attitudes towards sex (which were in some ways, fairly open-minded) as late Victorian/Edwardian attitudes towards sex, when discussing the characters. So, a woman who actually enjoys sex, with .... a man she is not married to ... is treated as "fallen", "a temptress", "a corrupter", along with more coarse terms. Added to that, is the fact Dany is at least slightly bisexual. It's also claimed that she enjoyed anal sex with Daario, at which point, the outrage goes off the scale. As against that, Sansa is pure, as a maid. Although, there's also a fairly widespread view that she needs to apologise to Tyrion, for refusing to consummate her marriage to him (as a twelve year old captive ought to have done). In fanfic, the rape of Sansa is quite a common plot element, because it's both shocking, and it enables Sansa to escape guilt, at having had sex. The rape of Daenerys is rare, on the other hand, because how could a whore be a victim of rape? And yet, I can sort of understand it. It was only in the early nineties, that it became accepted, in fantasy writing, for a woman to have sex with anybody other than her husband. And romantic fiction was using the rape of the heroine, as a plot device, well before that, and it's still a fairly popular trope to this day.

Funnily enough, I just found a really old thread from 2012, entitled “Daenerys is a Whore”, which @kissdbyfireasked the moderators to shut down.

“The Best”, as Alexander the Great put it. Who sits the Iron Throne matters only insofar as that man or woman is the best to defeat the existential threat posed by the Others. It makes no odds if that person is a brutal thug. We can rule out Euron, as he sees himself as an eldritch demigod, and would likely side with the Others; or else would rule in a similar fashion. We can rule out Tommen. Sweet boy though he is, he is simply the puppet of selfish, bad, people. We can probably rule out Aegon. He seems all flash and no substance, and his capture of Kings Landing will likely be accompanied by scenes of appalling cruelty, further dividing the Realm. That leaves any of Jon, and Stannis (who know of the threat) and Dany (who will learn of it).

Actually, that is a change. Ten years ago, I can remember quite a few comments here, about Daenerys being “whore”, “slut”, “skank”, as well as a real fixation with her alleged preference for anal sex. I expect the Moderators now simply delete such stuff, but it’s common enough on Reddit.

Really, things would have turned out much better if Cersei, Dany, and Sansa had just enjoyed a ménage a trois, in Season 8.

By contrast, the anti-Sansa fandom see her as a Lady Macbeth/ Livia Augusta figure, grimly plotting the destruction of anyone who stands between her and Winterfell. But, she’s rarely seen as a seductress.

One thing you see in parts of the fandom, is the madonna, Sansa, being contrasted with the whore, Daenerys. Sansa remains “pure”, as a maid, chastely in love with Jon, whereas Daenerys is “fallen”, a young woman who enjoys sex with people she is not married to, who tries to corrupt Jon.

Emilia, who always enjoyed the books, said she often wanted to inject more warmth and humanity into Daenerys, only to be told she had to be emotionless. That said, I don’t think the showrunners *intended* Daenerys to be seen more sympathetically in Season Shit.