Hate for Tyrion & Danaerys?

[Mithras]

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.

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.

I posted these two arguments to counter the shallow line of thought which lead to the ridiculous notion that half of Planetos are rapists. That is because people are projecting the modern definition of rape onto a story taking place in a medieval setting.

And about Irri; She acted like a bed slave without even thinking. Why?

Once, so tormented she could not sleep, Dany slid a hand down between her legs, and gasped when she felt how wet she was. Scarce daring to breathe, she moved her fingers back and forth between her lower lips, slowly so as not to wake Irri beside her, until she found one sweet spot and lingered there, touching herself lightly, timidly at first and then faster. Still, the relief she wanted seemed to recede before her, until her dragons stirred, and one screamed out across the cabin, and Irri woke and saw what she was doing.

Dany knew her face was flushed, but in the darkness Irri surely could not tell. Wordless, the handmaid put a hand on her breast, then bent to take a nipple in her mouth. Her other hand drifted down across the soft curve of belly, through the mound of fine silvery-gold hair, and went to work between Dany’s thighs. It was no more than a few moments until her legs twisted and her breasts heaved and her whole body shuddered. She screamed then. Or perhaps that was Drogon. Irri never said a thing, only curled back up and went back to sleep the instant the thing was done.

She took pleasuring Dany as a duty because she probably thinks that any disappointment of Dany with her might lead to saying goodbye to her privileges due to staying with Dany and being her hand maiden. Dany could taste the duty in her kisses.

[Hodor's Dragon]

I would word Eat My Steel's posts slightly differently to account for different ways of enjoying literature, but I 75% agree with him. I find it pretty odd to see significant numbers of people purporting to hate Tyrion and Dany but also continuing to read the books.

[Mithras]

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.

Falling from the grace of an absolute monarch and saying goodbye to the priviliges that come with that position can be considered as a punishment, especially if the other alternatives are significantly worse. When Dany talked to Irri the next day, we see that she completely defended her actions and still very "willing" to do more whereas as Dany thought, Irri was considering that night as a "duty", which makes the "willingness" part highly doubtful.

[Eat My Steel]

I never thought that the Tyrion scene with a Selhorys prostitute/bedwarmer/slave felt that "rapey" to me personally. Rape is a terrible act of violence and should never be condoned, but this one is a tricky grey area for me. The way I always read that part was that she was the equivalent of a Westerosi prostitue in Essos and that Tyrion had paid for the service. While prostitution is certainly a questionable practice and could very well be debated, the way I always saw the incident was only one of disgust from the girl because he was a dwarf, not that he was guilty of some forced rape. After reading some of the comments here I now see how it can be seen that way, but it still doesn't come across that way for me personally, although I don't blame anyone for thinking otherwise....

[Jasta11]

Everybody has that right, but . . . I'll be pretty surprised if those folks enjoy the last two books as much as I'm going to enjoy them. (If they ever happen, that is.) The best way to enjoy literature is to go with the authorial flow. Whenever I find myself hating an author or hating the main character half-way through the book, I don't think I've ever found myself enjoying the rest of the read. Fortunately, that's a pretty rare experience, because I make it a rule to . . . go with the flow.

The flow here, in terms of T, D & J, is pretty clear. Tyrion is supposed to be grey but fascinating, with his bad side fully explained by his history, and Dany and Jon are supposed to be heroes with real-life flaws. Obviously, I can't prove the truth of those statements, but I feel confident enough about them to state them as facts.

I compare it to evolution. Officially, evolution is just a theory, and unprovable, but if you really observe wildlife and nature, closely, you see evolution everywhere you look. That's what reading T, D & J is like to me. I see GRRM's intent everywhere I look.

You don't need to love even the main character(s) to enjoy a book series, or any story for that matter. I enjoyed the Harry Potter series even if I found Harry himself became annoying from book 5 onwards. I watched Breaking Bad and enoyed it immensely, despite thinking Walter was a straight up villain by the end. House of Cards is another example of a main character that's morally corrupt to the extreme, but they or the people around them are still interesting enough to keep going. While I'm sure the latter example was intended by the author, the first two probably aren't. Didn't stop me from liking the work at all.

For myself, I kinda like Tyrion even if he fell from my graces in ADWD somewhat. I think Jon was boring as hell in the first three books, Dance redeemed him to a degree but he's still nowhere near as interesting as the charatcers and events that happen around him. Dany I don't really like mostly since her story ever since Clash did not thrill me at all, among other things I'm not a fan of about her.

One thing I'm pretty sure, is that Martin didn't populate this series with 20 PoVs and dozens upon dozens of character, only to make Jon, Dany and Tyrion the ''main'' ones by the end. Sure, they will most likely be major figures, but between the Jaimes and Brans and Aryas and Sansas and Stannis's and Theons and Cerceis and all the rest, it's really, really hard to say who will become of paramount importance and who will just die.

[Hodor's Dragon]

Falling from the grace of an absolute monarch and saying goodbye to the priviliges that come with that position can be considered as a punishment, especially if the other alternatives are significantly worse. When Dany talked to Irri the next day, we see that she completely defended her actions and still very "willing" to do more whereas as Dany thought, Irri was considering that night as a "duty", which makes the "willingness" part highly doubtful.

I think it's also worth considering cultural differences here. I don't know as much about Dothraki attitudes toward sex as I would like, but we do know that Dothraki are a great deal more public about sex than are we in the West. Irri's actions are significant in themselves, given how little we know; so far as I can tell, pleasuring Dany isn't a big deal to her, either way, and far from appearing traumatized, she doesn't seem to have any trouble going right back to sleep when it's over.

My personal opinion is that our culture has dumped a whole buttload of freight on top of the simple sex act that leads to a lot of guilt and suffering that doesn't have to be there. To the extent that what Irri does can be considered "sex work," and voluntarily undertaken, I don't see any reason to condemn either her act or Dany's participation, nor do I see anything in the text that signals that either of them is wrong. Perhaps the Dothraki are more enlightened in regard to some aspects of sexuality than are we.

[Lady Baela Targaryen]

I never thought that the Tyrion scene with a Selhorys prostitute/bedwarmer/slave felt that "rapey" to me personally. Rape is a terrible act of violence and should never be condoned, but this one is a tricky grey area for me. The way I always read that part was that she was the equivalent of a Westerosi prostitue in Essos and that Tyrion had paid for the service. While prostitution is certainly a questionable practice and could very well be debated, the way I always saw the incident was only one of disgust from the girl because he was a dwarf, not that he was guilty of some forced rape. After reading some of the comments here I now see how it can be seen that way, but it still doesn't come across that way for me personally, although I don't blame anyone for thinking otherwise....

She wasn't "the equivalent of a Westerosi prostitue in Essos", she was a slave and Tyrion was well aware of it.

[Woman of War]

She wasn't "the equivalent of a Westerosi prostitue in Essos", she was a slave and Tyrion was well aware of it.

I think the whole debate if this is to be labelled "rape" is not necessary at all if we leave the wordfighting surface and try to be aware of the author's intentions concerning the role of Tyrion's fictional character.

Martin intended his readers to watch Tyrion do something ugly, something really ugly related to his so very hopeless and damaged sexuality, an act of hatesex, emphasized by him doing it again after he was aware of "having fucked a corpse". An expression of Tyrion's disgust with himself, doing something despicable because he sees himself as having become as despicable as people have always seen him.

The meaning of what GRRM wants to tell us here is so very crystal clear that it is totally pointless if we modern readers label the act "rape" or not. Tyrion knows that he does something dirty and Martin wants us readers to see this. So the sexually abused child becomes an abuser himself as it often happens in Real Life. Martin wanted to bring this complex protagonist down to his lowest point in order to restart the character's story from rock bottom again.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

The meaning of what GRRM wants to tell us here is so very crystal clear that it is totally pointless if we modern readers label the act "rape" or not. Tyrion knows that he does something dirty and Martin wants us readers to see this. So the sexually abused child becomes an abuser himself as it often happens in Real Life. Martin wanted to bring this complex protagonist down to his lowest point in order to restart the character's story from rock bottom again.

I completely agree with all of your post, specially the last part, and even more the bold. To me, that's clearly Martin's intentions: to break him before make him power through it. The problem here is a bit of (for lack of better word), underestimating of his own readership. Admit it: we're a hard crowd. Every character is analysed with a moral microscope in a way that I'm sure GRRM never intended. We act as though liking flawed characters make us or others, flawed people.

One of the most fascinating things about GRRM and ASOIAF is that the characters are very flawed, as we human being are. Some are more flawed than others, but all of them are at the end. Take, for instance, Jon. Jon is the less flawed of the bunch of main characters. And there is a need for him to "whitewash" his actions, finding loopholes and explanations of his actions. For instance, what he did with Ygritte. "It wasn't really breaking his vows! He didn't marry her nor father a child!". Or "he will have to die in order to leave the Wall because he took the vows!". That's grasping at straws. Jon did break his vows, and he tried to desert once. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with him being flawed? Is he less of a valuable good man because he made a mistake? That's definitely not GRRM's intention. As I see it, what he wants us to discover with his characters is that good people fails and that doesn't make him bad people at all.

And while we try to do that with a character, we inevitably bash another one. Maybe with the fake hopes to make our own favourites look better. Which is not needed as our favourites are simply other people's antagonists of their favourites :dunno:

[Stannis's Lawyer]

Personally I don't understand how anyone could hate any of the POV characters. There's a few I dislike and there's certainly a few I'm relatively neutral towards, but hate is far too strong when we're pretty much inside the head of all these characters.

Cersei???

[SeanF]

I think the whole debate if this is to be labelled "rape" is not necessary at all if we leave the wordfighting surface and try to be aware of the author's intentions concerning the role of Tyrion's fictional character.

Martin intended his readers to watch Tyrion do something ugly, something really ugly related to his so very hopeless and damaged sexuality, an act of hatesex, emphasized by him doing it again after he was aware of "having fucked a corpse". An expression of Tyrion's disgust with himself, doing something despicable because he sees himself as having become as despicable as people have always seen him.

The meaning of what GRRM wants to tell us here is so very crystal clear that it is totally pointless if we modern readers label the act "rape" or not. Tyrion knows that he does something dirty and Martin wants us readers to see this. So the sexually abused child becomes an abuser himself as it often happens in Real Life. Martin wanted to bring this complex protagonist down to his lowest point in order to restart the character's

story from rock bottom again.

I think that's fair comment.

I also like the comparison to Walter White upthread. White is a villain, but never entirely evil. Tyrion has the same anger, pride, and bitterness that White has, along with the courage and sheer refusal to be beaten.

[SeanF]

Falling from the grace of an absolute monarch and saying goodbye to the priviliges that come with that position can be considered as a punishment, especially if the other alternatives are significantly worse. When Dany talked to Irri the next day, we see that she completely defended her actions and still very "willing" to do more whereas as Dany thought, Irri was considering that night as a "duty", which makes the "willingness" part highly doubtful.

To be fair to Dany, I don't think there would be any adverse consequences for Irri, if the latter said no. But, Irri might not appreciate this.

[Stannis's Lawyer]

I compare it to evolution. Officially, evolution is just a theory, and unprovable, but if you really observe wildlife and nature, closely, you see evolution everywhere you look. That's what reading T, D & J is like to me. I see GRRM's intent everywhere I look.

Evolution has been observed in the lab, by some guy who observed bacteria for 20 years to get them to change their digestive habits.

[Mrs_Darcy]

Assuming Rhaego had been born, he would have become Viserys' heir to the Iron Throne.

The problem with Dany's choice of the word when is that Rhaego would have been Viserys heir at his birth, but it is not clear (or rather quite unlikely), that Rhaego would have stayed his uncle's heir. If Viserys had had a trueborn son (which at that time was still a big possibility, since Viserys' hand in marriage could for instance have been used to get the Tyrells or the Martells to join the alliance), then Rhaego would have lost his place as Viserys's heir after the birth of Viserys's first son, since sons come before nephews in Westerosi succession. Rhaego was the heir presumptive of Visreys, since he only was the heir as long as Viserys had no trueborn sons.

On the other hand there are people like Willas Tyrell, Robb Stark, Edmure Tully and Arianne Martell, who are the heirs apparent of their father's, since no birth can take them their place as heirs.

If Rhaego had been the heir apparent, then the choice of when would have been okay, but since the birth of a child of Viserys could have displaced him in the succession, it is a bit troubling.

[Mrs_Darcy]

Is it like how all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares?

How about this--- Not all slaves are prostitutes, but all prostitutes are slaves. (enslaved by a bad situation they've fallen into, or by drugs, or by their handlers/pimps, or by the delusion they're doing fine existing in a loveless condition while enduring all this McLovin. )

The side-point here being that we should also be bothered by the plight of all the earlier prostitutes in the story. We just forgot to be bothered because at the time we saw them they seemed to be playing along with it more, so it didn't stand out to us as abusive/unfortunate situations. I guess some of them like The Sailor's Wife were running their own show, which is sort of different, almost, but still is rarely healthy for someone in the long run.

I do not know, whether one can say this about all Westerosi prostitues.

There are some prostitues, who are clearly forced into the situation or do it, because they do not know how else to survive (like Jeyne Poole or probably Shae), but there are also women like Chataya and Alalaya, who clearly like what they are doing and even say, that the gods want them to do it.

The whore Robert got a child on also does not beg Jon Arryn and Ned Stark to take her away, even though it would have been easy given that Chataya was not there, when she talked to the men.

[Mark Antony]

Daenerys is cool

[Mrs_Darcy]

A mixture of a few factors: they're the most complicated original (living) POV characters, they're in a continent most readers don't care about at the end of the last novel, they spent the last novel at their lowest point (narratively), they've done some horrible things, they don't have the benefit of being part of the Stark family, and finally there tends to be a lack of empathy from a lot of the readers who don't like them.

Personally I don't understand how anyone could hate any of the POV characters. There's a few I dislike and there's certainly a few I'm relatively neutral towards, but hate is far too strong when we're pretty much inside the head of all these characters.

I think people use the word "hate" much too freely, when people talk about certain characters.

Sure, there are some characters I do not like, because they make a lot of amoral decisions or cause great suffering through their unwise decision (although I do like most of them as literary characters), but I would not say, that I hate them.

[Hodor's Dragon]

I think people use the word "hate" much too freely, when people talk about certain characters.

Sure, there are some characters I do not like, because they make a lot of amoral decisions or cause great suffering through their unwise decision (although I do like most of them as literary characters), but I would not say, that I hate them.

Some people really do seem to "hate," though. They certainly use some very intemperate language that isn't justified by the text, as if what they are writing is emotionally driven. And that goes in particular for these two characters.

[Crow's eye in the sky]

Daenerys is cool

But her chapters (in Dance) suck.

[K-26dp]

But her chapters (in Dance) suck.

No, they don't. It could be that you don't like them.