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[No Spoilers] Episode 104 Discussion


Ran
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Back to creepy, dour, dreary, claustrophobic King’s Landing, which holds no joy, light or elegance, whether in the Keep or down in Oldtown. The ugly and misery of everything that is KL emphasizes the ugly that is sex in KL too – whether the compelled coupling in King V’s bed or in the alleyways or in the version of Plato’s Retreat going on in Oldtown – where Daemon informs his niece that there’s the misery and ugly of the marriage bed or this place’s version of people finding pleasure and taking what they want in the (not so vast after all versions)  coupling on display. Then he proceeds to attempt coupling with his niece, but, as Elizabeth Taylor's Martha said upon return from the bedroom where she’d taken pretty blonde Nick, in the screen version of Edward Albee's Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,*  "he’s certainly a flop in some departments."  So. Both times we’re shown Daemon doing the sex, he wilts.  Why is that? Is this why he has no children by his wife, because he's impotent? (Recall his fantasy that he'd gotten Myseria pregnant.)  Does limp dick run in Targaryen men in These Times, which is why there are no dragons by the Time of GOT?  Which is the only interesting dimension to this misery and ugly. So, of course now Rhaenyra runs back to the palace (also having learned the people of KL don’t love her and don’t want her to rule them) and promptly does what she wants and takes what she wants which getting White Cloak Criston to take the virginity that Daemon could not (the after show confirms that it was impotence that stopped him, just as we saw him exhibit in the first episode, leaving Rhaenyra frustrated). At least she takes Criston in her room, which unlike Dark Town -- er Down Town Plato's Retreat -- er Oldtown, is clean, has a bed and no crab lice.**

In the meantime, stiff upper lip. friendless Alicent, who’d made good with Rhaenyra. prior to being summoned by oozing sores King Viserys who is grunting on top of her while she frequently closes her eyes and thinks of England, we see Alicent has come to see why Rhaenyra thinks marriage is a trap for women.  All it gets women is miserable, ugly coupling, screaming babies, and death. Also, she learns her father is a shit when he reveals to King V he's been spying on Rhaenyra. Which she may or may not support, which really should not have surprised her in any case, and which she may or may not have suspected would end badly for him -- which won't be so good for her either.

IOW, the moment Daemon returns he sows discord and chaos among the royals and the court.

When, how, and why did Myseria return to KL? Which is really begging the question as to why Myseria went off with Daemon in the first place, since it was so duh that Myseria could make a living in KL w/o owing it so directly to some miserable and ugly man -- only indirectly though, since she's spying for the King's Hand.

Why are the wigs in the episode so obviously wiggy / ill-fitting?

*   As there was a play of sorts in this episode, and the Albee play is more than equal to HOT D in toxic masculinity, femininity, gender relations, family relationships, and lordessa the meanest, most degrading, nastiest quipagge going, I naturally thought of it last night.

** Funny coincidence today: returning from my Omicron jab I encountered at NYU a very fine -- and I do mean fine! --  fellow in a right out of the box new bright yellow hoodie, with big white lettering on the front proclaiming, “VIRGINITY ROCKS.”  I laffed.

Edited by Zorral
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Further takes concerning Daemon's impotence.

Daemon's contributed no kids to the Targaryan line. And now we know why.

For reasons unfathomable even reviewers-racappers for non-fringe venues steer clear of naming what Daemon's problem is -- impotence.  That's why he stopped with Rhaenyra in the brothel -- It quit on him, just as it did, and was made perfectly clear in that first episode brothel scene -- which was even a little less ugly and miserable as this King's Landing brothel. Could Daemon have shown his contempt for both Rhaenyra and his brother by attempting/faking deflowerment there?????  The showrunners and post show show last night even used the word impotent when talking about Daemon and that scene.

He may or may not have had a plan to coerce brother King V -- who despite his oozing sores doesn't seem to need any V -- into giving him Rhaenyra to wife by doing something so insane as to do this in public in a brothel.  But the point was that Daemon's a failure when it comes to fathering children.  He can seduce and coerce, but he can't effyouseekay. Again, he hasn't any children, and never lets go by an opportunity to speak ill of his wife and how much she doesn't attract him.  So many men do this bs of blaming the wife, holding her responsible for lack of heirs, when it's he who is responsible.

Edited by Zorral
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6 hours ago, Zorral said:

He may or may not have had a plan to coerce brother King V -- who despite his oozing sores doesn't seem to need any V -- into giving him Rhaenyra to wife by doing something so insane as to do this in public in a brothel.  But the point was that Daemon's a failure when it comes to fathering children.  He can seduce and coerce, but he can't effyouseekay. Again, he hasn't any children, and never lets go by an opportunity to speak ill of his wife and how much she doesn't attract him.  So many men do this bs of blaming the wife, holding her responsible for lack of heirs, when it's he who is responsible.

Yeah it seems clear her being such a mean woman is likely due to his inability to perform in the bedroom. To save face he stays away from her and makes jokes about her.

The brothel scene was inevitable as far as the two of them almost hooking up, seemed telegraphed from Ep 1 but it didn't make it any less creepy. The best thing the did was have her get aggressive towards him when he started pulling away. Kind of let everyone see she was wanting this as much as him. Then of course poor Christen is now part of the drama. He didn't protest too much though.

The poor Queen can't enjoy being the Queen since the Princess keeps pointing out she is basically just there for the name and breeding.

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On 9/13/2022 at 12:17 AM, Zorral said:

Back to creepy, dour, dreary, claustrophobic King’s Landing, which holds no joy, light or elegance, whether in the Keep or down in Oldtown. The ugly and misery of everything that is KL emphasizes the ugly that is sex in KL too – whether the compelled coupling in King V’s bed or in the alleyways or in the version of Plato’s Retreat going on in Oldtown – where Daemon informs his niece that there’s the misery and ugly of the marriage bed or this place’s version of people finding pleasure and taking what they want in the (not so vast after all versions)  coupling on display. Then he proceeds to attempt coupling with his niece, but, as Elizabeth Taylor's Martha said upon return from the bedroom where she’d taken pretty blonde Nick, in the screen version of Edward Albee's Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,*  "he’s certainly a flop in some departments."  So. Both times we’re shown Daemon doing the sex, he wilts.  Why is that? Is this why he has no children by his wife, because he's impotent? (Recall his fantasy that he'd gotten Myseria pregnant.)  Does limp dick run in Targaryen men in These Times, which is why there are no dragons by the Time of GOT?  Which is the only interesting dimension to this misery and ugly. So, of course now Rhaenyra runs back to the palace (also having learned the people of KL don’t love her and don’t want her to rule them) and promptly does what she wants and takes what she wants which getting White Cloak Criston to take the virginity that Daemon could not (the after show confirms that it was impotence that stopped him, just as we saw him exhibit in the first episode, leaving Rhaenyra frustrated). At least she takes Criston in her room, which unlike Dark Town -- er Down Town Plato's Retreat -- er Oldtown, is clean, has a bed and no crab lice.**

In the meantime, stiff upper lip. friendless Alicent, who’d made good with Rhaenyra. prior to being summoned by oozing sores King Viserys who is grunting on top of her while she frequently closes her eyes and thinks of England, we see Alicent has come to see why Rhaenyra thinks marriage is a trap for women.  All it gets women is miserable, ugly coupling, screaming babies, and death. Also, she learns her father is a shit when he reveals to King V he's been spying on Rhaenyra. Which she may or may not support, which really should not have surprised her in any case, and which she may or may not have suspected would end badly for him -- which won't be so good for her either.

IOW, the moment Daemon returns he sows discord and chaos among the royals and the court.

When, how, and why did Myseria return to KL? Which is really begging the question as to why Myseria went off with Daemon in the first place, since it was so duh that Myseria could make a living in KL w/o owing it so directly to some miserable and ugly man -- only indirectly though, since she's spying for the King's Hand.

Why are the wigs in the episode so obviously wiggy / ill-fitting?

*   As there was a play of sorts in this episode, and the Albee play is more than equal to HOT D in toxic masculinity, femininity, gender relations, family relationships, and lordessa the meanest, most degrading, nastiest quipagge going, I naturally thought of it last night.

** Funny coincidence today: returning from my Omicron jab I encountered at NYU a very fine -- and I do mean fine! --  fellow in a right out of the box new bright yellow hoodie, with big white lettering on the front proclaiming, “VIRGINITY ROCKS.”  I laffed.

Someone somewhere should give you a column this is better than most of the proffessional recap/reactions I've seen.

Somehow I don't think Rhaenyra's upcoming marriage will go off with out a hitch. But I've no idea what the hitch is except the King dying but it feels a little early for that. I do wonder though with Rhaenyra so worried about childbirth maybe Daemon isn't that bad of a match after all. 

And who will be  named hand I wonder? The next episode's title "we light the way" makes it seem that the hightowers might not take Otto's dismissal lying down. And Otto certianly won't. Overall I'm very excited to see how the drama of this episode pans out in the next. 

For those of you lurking be the change you want in the world and post we need more people in the unsullied section. 

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@Darzin  -- I don't know about you, of course, but I wonder largely at much of the discussion around the behaviors of the royals.  In any time, any place, where there were / are royals, emperors, King of Kings, Priest Kings, Sons of Heaven, you name it -- it is ingrained in them all they are vastly superior to everyone else in the universe, and that people will as a matter of course put their desire and well being far above their own. They are by-and-large infantile, spoiled rotten, and its a matter of course for them and court. Surely there is a unacknowledged dimension to this enablement to infantilism by the court, which those with the capacity to do so, can manipulate the ruler for one's own interests, particularly the interests of one's own lineage, and perhaps, even, ascension ourselves to the throne.

The entire strata of society are sworn to loyalty to the Top Dog, the ever descending family, etc.  They WILL DIE FOR THEM. That is the Way, whether that of Confucius and the Son of Heaven, Czarina Catherine the Great, or the Church of England and Charlie III, or Genghis, the Khan of Khans. Everyone is born inferior literally to them, and must do what they say.  This doesn't mean in the least, which such shows as that treason doesn't get plotted -- particularly when one great lord's feefees and entitlements are infringed by a monarch -- and vice versa, indeed, particularly in  the relationships between someone like Richard II and the vastly wealthy and powerful and popular Duke of Lancaster and his family -- not to mention jealousy, thus the banishment of Henry Bolingbroke, which we all know how that turned out.

But these characters' actions are forever being analyzed and criticized or praised by the media commentators entirely from the perspective of 'democracy' which is so vastly different from that perspective as to have made Revolution around the world after it emerged out of medieval and renaissance, to the 'modern' and 'enlightenment.'

The one thing that doesn't change, is that one and all, at every level of society, everywhere: women are inferior by birth to males.  Period.  Which made the Anarchy in the first place: a woman refused to accept that. Eventually she won, but only via getting her SON on the throne.

Fortunately he was a worthy ruler, providing his obligation of "good lordship",* and for decades provided not only a secure English realm, but brought them the Angevin Empire -- which had only his sons as a serious threat because he was such a short-sighted father. Then his feckless son John promptly lost the empire, and back to mess we are.

This is indeed the world of Hot D, but with dragons. :dunno:

* This essential medieval concept out of European feudalism seems unknown to google -- it only understands "lordship."  This is too bad, because there were quite a few specifics as to what this signifies, which doesn't include being a "good man" in terms of Christianity. 

And that's another thing -- supposedly this universe is NOT a montheistic, Christian, Jewish or Islamist culture.  So those murals in the personal royal chambers are not pornography, but fertility expressions, like the herms (almost entirely phalluses) all over Rome, outside and inside private as well as public edifaces.

 

 

Edited by Zorral
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@Zorral Again  a very good take.  One of the things that first struck me with these books is the story of Micah the butcher's boy. It shows the powerful impact of  class duty and station on the world. Arya and Micah both step outside their role and obligation. Arya loses a wolf for it because of who she is it's really a slap on the wrist wheras Micah gets killed but because he doesn't matter it's rather brushed off even by the "good" characters even if it upsets them. 

I think pop culture commentators are used to writing about media and content through a modern cultural lense and not a historical one. They analyze Game of Thrones the same way they do Breaking Bad. And in some way that works Game of Thrones does resemble a soap opera with Dragons a lot of the time. But it would come off a bit better if they blended those lenses of pop culture, history, and pop history as Game of Thrones itself does. 

Edited by Darzin
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10 hours ago, Darzin said:

rya loses a wolf for it because of who she is it's really a slap on the wrist wheras Micah gets killed but because he doesn't matter it's rather brushed off even by the "good" characters even if it upsets them. 

I'm assuming it's understood I'm not endorsing the monarchal - court - class hierarchy political and cultural systems, or support them.

It seems to me if writers are comfortably knowledgable in European political - court - and feudal societies' histories, culturally and politically, they could write these matters and characters as they did behave while not endorsing that sort  of behavior, yet making clear what was expected and accepted, and taken as matter of course -- and further, even consciously practiced.  One of those sorts of practices, of course, is treating anyone not a peer as non-existent, thus the matters discussed in front of servants as though they weren't there even as they perform the most exquisitely intimate body services (certainly how Southerners behaved with their enslaved labor). Again, perhaps a reason that eventually many of those services evolved into court positions to be vied for, even unto wiping the king's shitty ass, as at Versailles.  We can talk safely for we are the real people and won't inform the unwashed masses of our plans for them!

But it is what humans had versions of in most parts of the world for centuries, because it (supposedly) was the best political safe guard for economic stability.  These systems didn't necessarily all follow the European versions, of constant desire of expansion and conquest -- that was antithetical to the embedded Way of Confucius and the Dao. This led even to the discontinuing of the exploration fleets to the West of the middle Ming dynasty -- even outright prohibition -- even beyond that the destruction of the pilots' and captains' logs, all the records of the fleets (though some survived, as they'd been so popular there were so many copies and so many also survived the orders of mass destruction). The reasoning was this knowledge and contact was morally antithetical to Confucius's philosophy, and there was nothing of worth out of the West, other than curiosities (such as giraffes), and those had no moral value for China's carefully stratified and ordered society.

This idea that contact with others, even via conquest and expansion, was without value, is as far from the perspective of the Western powers as one can get!  And neither one was capable of understanding the others' view.  Eventually with the relentless imperial pressures of the European nations, some from both sides, in whom the impulse to learn and understand the Other burned so strongly they even learned each others' languages, appreciated each other's religions, and studied deeply.  They were deeply suspect and tended to be ostracized by both sides too, as being labelled, "going native."  Never appreciated by the dominant perspective.

There are so many missing links to make the worlds of Westros really dimensional and interesting, it feels to me.

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