Hate for Tyrion & Danaerys?

[Mikkel]

We have a public confession by Ned and we know the truth behind it as readers but ...

Yes, this is why I am talking about a public confession in the first place: the Lannisters' insistence that Ned give a (false) one is the only kind of "evidence" that can be found in a pre DNA-testing society. Without wanting to get into details with the clusterfuck of misery and mutual abuse that was Robert and Cersei's marriage, they did have sexual relations from time to time, so there's always going to be the possibility to claim the kids are Roberts.

[Elbereth]

Personally, I still rather like Dany even though I don't think I should but her chapters in ADWD did bore me for the most part.

Tyrion on the other hand I really did start to hate once he commited that rape. Maybe he can come back from that if he improves and genuinely regrets his actions but until then i'm gonna continue to hate him.

In reply to the OP, well, you can hardly be surprised if people dislike characters who are rapists or order innocent people to be tortured. I mean, sure they're important to the story but that doesn't mean we have to like them. In fact, you don't even have to like them to enjoy reading their chapters. I don't think GRRM wanted them to be universally popular either after the stuff he had them do in ADWD.

[Illyrio+varys forever]

A slave and a prostitute are not one and the same. Tyrion is a rapist.

then half of the people in essos are rapist

[LordStoneheart]

then half of the people in essos are rapist

Yes

[Mithras]

Yes

Zhak too?

A former slave came, to accuse a certain noble of the Zhak. The man had recently taken to wife a freedwoman who had been the noble’s bedwarmer before the city fell. The noble had taken her maidenhood, used her for his pleasure, and gotten her with child. Her new husband wanted the noble gelded for the crime of rape, and he wanted a purse of gold as well, to pay him for raising the noble’s bastard as his own. Dany granted him the gold, but not the gelding. “When he lay with her, your wife was his property, to do with as he would. By law, there was no rape.” Her decision did not please him, she could see, but if she gelded every man who ever forced a bedslave, she would soon rule a city of eunuchs.

[BastardlyRock]

then half of the people in essos are rapist

Yes

Glad we got that cleared up. :D

[LordStoneheart]

Zhak too?

Yes

Glad we got that cleared up. :D

:cheers:

[Mithras]

Then, we can count Dany among the rapers as well.

Irri slept soundly beside her, her lips slightly parted, one dark brown nipple peeping out above the sleeping silks. For a moment Dany was tempted, but it was Drogo she wanted, or perhaps Daario. Not Irri. The maid was sweet and skillful, but all her kisses tasted of duty.

When there is duty, there is no consent and so Dany is a rapist.

[LordStoneheart]

Then, we can count Dany among the rapers as well.

Irri slept soundly beside her, her lips slightly parted, one dark brown nipple peeping out above the sleeping silks. For a moment Dany was tempted, but it was Drogo she wanted, or perhaps Daario. Not Irri. The maid was sweet and skillful, but all her kisses tasted of duty.

When there is duty, there is no consent and so Dany is a rapist.

Not at all.

First, in her thoughts right after her declaration she gives the reason why she did not declare it rape. Because she would end up gelding basically every man who wasn't a slave before she arrived. When I said yes I was talking about the man and the woman involved. Dany making the call is not equivalent to her endorsing rape, but rather working with the legal definitions. Just as there is no "marital rape" in Westeros because no such law exists. In many cases, it is still rape but the law doesn't define it as so. If Tyrion had raped Sansa during their wedding night, it would not be the small council/set of laws in Westeros that make it rape. It would be Tyrion's actions, just as it is later in Selhorys.

Second, Irri's first time with Dany was brought on by Irri, who was glad to do it. She started it and was willing. Later it's a bit more blurry because it's Dany who instigates it, but this is well after Irri did it the first time willingly. There's nothing to suggest that Irri wasn't just as willing as before.

"When there is duty, there is no consent and so Dany is a rapist."

Just no. Mr. Fantastic never even stretched this much.

[sj4iy]

I don't "hate" either of them, I simply didn't like their storylines in ADWD.

[Hodor's Dragon]

Then, we can count Dany among the rapers as well.

Irri slept soundly beside her, her lips slightly parted, one dark brown nipple peeping out above the sleeping silks. For a moment Dany was tempted, but it was Drogo she wanted, or perhaps Daario. Not Irri. The maid was sweet and skillful, but all her kisses tasted of duty.

When there is duty, there is no consent and so Dany is a rapist.

Then, we can count Dany among the rapers as well.

Irri slept soundly beside her, her lips slightly parted, one dark brown nipple peeping out above the sleeping silks. For a moment Dany was tempted, but it was Drogo she wanted, or perhaps Daario. Not Irri. The maid was sweet and skillful, but all her kisses tasted of duty.

When there is duty, there is no consent and so Dany is a rapist.

Total hogwash. Irri offered. Later, Dany thought she did it for duty, not for desire, but that was only a thought in Dany's head, not something that was ever manifested by word or deed, and post facto to boot. That is not rape under anybody's definition.

Did you really think that is rape? That's a mighty tendentious proposition, if you ask me.

[Faint]

Yeah, what's wrong with that? I hate both Theon and Ramsay, but the first few Reek chapters were just wonderful.

And plenty of readers dislike characters as people but still like to read about them.

See, that's the whole point. How can you like "characters as people"?

The characters in Martin's books are not people, they are fictional creations. If you happen to enjoy reading about a character, then you like that character.

Moreover, what does it even mean to like a character as a person?

That, in an insane hypothetical in which a fictional character from some fictional fantasy world happened to come into existence, you do not think you would care for their company?

Well, that might well be the case, you know yourselves infinitely better than me, but how is that exactly relevant?

After all, you have not met any of Martin's characters, or will meet any of Martin's characters (at least I hope not), so why is that the metric being used to evaluate their relative merit?

It makes no sense.

So, yeah, guess what? If you happen to like reading about Tyrion or Theon, or anyone else from Martin's books, you also necessarily like them as characters, which is what they are.

[Mikkel]

It's to differentiate between appreciating the literary construct that is the character ("liking the character"), as opposed to supporting the actions or thought processes of said character, I think. That doesn't mean any of us expect the characters to come to life, it's just a way to say that you can like reading about something, without necessarily hoping it will happen in reality.

But because that quickly becomes cumbersome to read (and write), we use the shortcut of liking the character versus liking the person. Doesn't mean we think they're actually real people.

Naturally I'm only speaking for myself here, there isn't (to my knowledge) any communal agreement on exactly what the terms mean.

[SeanF]

Then, we can count Dany among the rapers as well.

Irri slept soundly beside her, her lips slightly parted, one dark brown nipple peeping out above the sleeping silks. For a moment Dany was tempted, but it was Drogo she wanted, or perhaps Daario. Not Irri. The maid was sweet and skillful, but all her kisses tasted of duty.

When there is duty, there is no consent and so Dany is a rapist.

It would be rape if Irri faced some form of punishment, had she refused. But, we have no reason to believe that she would have.

A slave who refused her (or his) master most likely would face punishment.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

It would be rape if Irri faced some form of punishment, had she refused. But, we have no reason to believe that she would have.

A slave who refused her (or his) master most likely would face punishment.

Not really. Irri (and Jiqui) have been taught all their lives that serve is the right thing to do. It's normal for them in the way is normal for the slaves being slaves, and behave because if they don't, there are consequences. It won't be consequences with Dany, but is already printed in their minds.

No, I'm not saying Dany is a rapist, but Irri and Jiqui are already conditioned to thing in the way they think. They have been broken at some point of their lives.

[Hodor's Dragon]

It's to differentiate between appreciating the literary construct that is the character ("liking the character"), as opposed to supporting the actions or thought processes of said character, I think. That doesn't mean any of us expect the characters to come to life, it's just a way to say that you can like reading about something, without necessarily hoping it will happen in reality.

But because that quickly becomes cumbersome to read (and write), we use the shortcut of liking the character versus liking the person. Doesn't mean we think they're actually real people.

Naturally I'm only speaking for myself here, there isn't (to my knowledge) any communal agreement on exactly what the terms mean.

Let's break it down.

There are two things you might mean by "liking" a character. You might mean (1) "I think if this character were real, s/he would be a cool and/or admirable gal/dude, and I would love to met him/her for drinks and dinner and just to hang out." Or you might mean (2) "This is a very enjoyable character to read about."

So the question then becomes: which of those two concepts am I more likely to think about or talk about? Or to put it differently, if I want to avoid confusion by only using the word "like" one way, which way is more useful to me?

And the answer to that is fairly easy. It's not at all unknown for me to play a fantasy game of pretending a fictional character is real and I'm having a pretend conversation with him/her, but it's certainly not something I do frequently. Whereas, when I'm reading a book I think about whether characters are "successful" (which means they're entertaining and serve the story's needs) quite frequently. Those are the characters that give me pleasure. I probably judge whether a character is successful (overall or in this scene) 20, 30, 40 times for every one time I think about them as if they were real people.

So it's far more useful for me to say I "like" a character when the character amuses me and serves the story than to say I "like" a character because s/he has a morality that is similar to my own. Some of the most entertaining characters in the series, such as Cersei and Joffrey, are quite villainous. If they were real, I would loathe and despise them with the fire of a thousand suns. But as ASOIAF characters, I dig 'em.

In sum, I would rather have to use a few more words to describe my evaluation of a person's morality, and save the word "like" for the more frequent evaluation of whether I enjoy reading about the character.

[Mikkel]

Let's break it down.

<snip>

I think your second (2) definition of liking a character is pretty much the same as I describe.

But because definitions vary from person to person, and the written medium is often bad at conveying nuances, I think it's just fine to use the term "liking the person" to describe scenario (1).

[Chebyshov]

Not really. Irri (and Jiqui) have been taught all their lives that serve is the right thing to do. It's normal for them in the way is normal for the slaves being slaves, and behave because if they don't, there are consequences. It won't be consequences with Dany, but is already printed in their minds.

No, I'm not saying Dany is a rapist, but Irri and Jiqui are already conditioned to thing in the way they think. They have been broken at some point of their lives.

Yeah, and there something to be said for Dany's position of power to be one that inherently coerces them into the act. But Dany had a conversation with Irri after their first encounter (which was at Irri's initiation), to explicitly tell her that she has rights and the ability to say "no." Now, Irri's answer is one that is a sign of her conditioning, but the fact that Dany went out of her way to explain Irri's rights is telling.

[Eat My Steel]

My main point for the OP was that people who are big fans of the books (as I would presume we all are on this forum) seem to stongly dislike two of the main, pivotal, important characters of the books and often wish death to befall those characters well before the books have reached the end of the tale. This just seems odd to me as it would seem that these two drive the overall narrative more than most of the other characters (with the few exceptions of Jon, Arya, Bran, Davos, and perhaps even Jaime/Brienne). Considering the importance of these characters (notwithstanding their obvious character flaws) it would seem counter productive for one to actually root for their demise as it would seem their deaths would both change the entire structure of the tale into a completely different paradigm while at the same time making most of the storyline up to this juncture moot/pointless. To destroy them would seem to irreparably alter the world they have had such a big hand in creating, a world we have all come to love and anticipate.

[Eat My Steel]

I completely understand not liking a character as much as others, we all have our favorites and those we care less for but Dany and Tyrion seem like such fundamental characters to the essence of the books that to tear them down seems to also tear down the books in some manner.

Many characters I like have some unsavory qualities. I am a huge Stannis fan and he birthed a shadow-Stannis to kill his own brother and cooked leeches to kill Robb Stark (although with the latter came a tradeoff with Joffrey and Balon so that was a wash). Tyrion and Dany having a couple of bad moments reminds us of their realistic humanity, that none of us are without our weak moments or bad aspects. I am not a huge Dany fan overall, but saying that I hate the character would make me not like the books in general...