The missing sex scene

[brashcandy]

So... here's to wishing that either Renly or Loras had been a POV character so that we could have gotten a description of an intimate scene between the two in the novels (not the awful one from the tv show)

GRRM arguably gives Loras the most romantic line in the series: "When the sun has set, no candle can replace it" and it would have been great to see more of the intricacies of their relationship.

Instead we get two lesbian scenes - Cersei with Taena and Dany with her handmaiden that are so gratuitous (Cersei's more so) as to be laughable, and neither Cersei nor Dany even enjoy the encounters.

So what do you guys think? Had Renly been a POV do you think we would have gotten that scene, or was GRRM simply not interested in portraying it? And if he had, would it have topped the "myrish swamp"? :eek:

[Jude-the-Obscure]

I would have loved to read a romantic scene between Renly and Loras. Sex would have been great as well so long as there was some love, rather than the mechanical pleasure seeking that leaves the character and the reader feeling slightly soiled and cheated. It would be good to see R & L making love rather than simply screwing.

[Azerate]

I'm completely fine with no description of gay sex in the books.

[Black Amethyst]

So... here's to wishing that either Renly or Loras had been a POV character so that we could have gotten a description of an intimate scene between the two in the novels (not the awful one from the tv show)

GRRM arguably gives Loras the most romantic line in the series: "When the sun has set, no candle can replace it" and it would have been great to see more of the intricacies of their relationship.

Really? I kinda thought that Loras got the most cliched and cheesy lines in the book, but different strokes for different folks. The candle thing just kinda made me roll my eyes, personally. I can live without his point of view.

Renly OTOH, would have been a cool POV to have, I agree. I would have liked to experience more of his charismatic thought process. It would be interesting to get a handle on how much of an attention seeker he really was. Kind of a shame he got killed off so quickly. And such a hottie too. :leer:

[brashcandy]

Really? I kinda thought that Loras got the most cliched and cheesy lines in the book, but different strokes for different folks. The candle thing just kinda made me roll my eyes, personally. I can live without his point of view.

Renly OTOH, would have been a cool POV to have, I agree. I would have liked to experience more of his charismatic thought process. It would be interesting to get a handle on how much of an attention seeker he really was. Kind of a shame he got killed off so quickly. And such a hottie too. :leer:

:) Yes a Renly POV in general would have been cool - do we get any Baratheon POVs by the way?

And i always felt that line was great and indeed romantic, not cheesy, but different folks, different strokes.

[Monday]

I don't see any reason why we shouldn't have seen an intimate Renly/Loras scene if Renly had been a POV. I'm almost glad we didn't because I love Renly & Loras, but GRRM's sex scenes are rarely er....sexy. Fat pink masts, myrish swamps, and cunnies :ack: .

I don't imagine he'd shy away from writing a homosexual male scene if it worked in the story.

Also, Cersei's encounter with Taena told me a LOT about Cersei's character, so I don't believe it was gratuitous. Even if it was though, why can heteros have gratuitous sex scenes without provoking comment, but lesbian scenes have to be especially significant?

[Black Amethyst]

:) Yes a Renly POV in general would have been cool - do we get any Baratheon POVs by the way?

Now that you mention it, I don't think we have gotten a single one, which is a crying shame, because now they are mostly dead. I'd take Gendry's even! I don't think we even had a Stannis POV.....not that I would care. I think his stuff was all told through Davos and others.

[seanbean4lyfe]

Renly POV would have been AWESOME

most underatted character IMO

idunno. everyone freaked about the gay scene in GoT, but nothing about the whores having oral sex and fingering to LF talking about lfe...which was strange just for that, but nobody seems to bring THAT up.

i personally think innuendo was the best way to do the Renly/Loras relationship because 1. I don't think GRRM could write a gay sex scene that is actually love. The lesbian ones weren't about to women in love with each other. Actually, i don't think he is capable of actually writing a passionate sex scene with emotion. 2. It was kind of special that some people didn't catch tthat they were lovers until after the show. They seem to be the only couple who is truly in love, and I think making it obvious would have ruined that IMO.

I just don't think GRRM can write passionate head over heals in love. He can do girlish crushes like Sansa, and he can create family love, like the Starks...and that's ok. It's not a romance novel for gods sake.

[brashcandy]

Also, Cersei's encounter with Taena told me a LOT about Cersei's character, so I don't believe it was gratuitous. Even if it was though, why can heteros have gratuitous sex scenes without provoking comment, but lesbian scenes have to be especially significant?

Lots of heterosexual sex scenes are gratuitous, but the problem is that heterosexuality has been naturalized as the normal mode of sex, so when writers simply include a same sex scene for the sake of it being there, that does need to be highlighted because these relationships are (traditionally) never given the breadth and scope of heterosexual ones.

[Verboten]

So... here's to wishing that either Renly or Loras had been a POV character so that we could have gotten a description of an intimate scene between the two in the novels (not the awful one from the tv show)

GRRM arguably gives Loras the most romantic line in the series: "When the sun has set, no candle can replace it" and it would have been great to see more of the intricacies of their relationship.

Instead we get two lesbian scenes - Cersei with Taena and Dany with her handmaiden that are so gratuitous (Cersei's more so) as to be laughable, and neither Cersei nor Dany even enjoy the encounters.

So what do you guys think? Had Renly been a POV do you think we would have gotten that scene, or was GRRM simply not interested in portraying it? And if he had, would it have topped the "myrish swamp"? :eek:

...How was the one from the tv show awful? What was awful was the red-headed whore constantly flashing everyone and having a gratuitous sex scene in the middle of a conversation with Littlefinger.

[Monday]

...How was the one from the tv show awful? What was awful was the red-headed whore constantly flashing everyone and having a gratuitous sex scene in the middle of a conversation with Littlefinger.

I didn't find any of it awful. It's just sex people. Who cares about a little gratuitous sex? There was horses heads being cut off, people gored in the throat and drowning in their own blood, people's heads being severed and tossed around like a beach ball, etc. Never hear much about the gratuitous violence offending anyone's delicate sensibilities.

Lots of heterosexual sex scenes are gratuitous, but the problem is that heterosexuality has been naturalized as the normal mode of sex, so when writers simply include a same sex scene for the sake of it being there, that does need to be highlighted because these relationships are (traditionally) never given the breadth and scope of heterosexual ones.

I don't agree. Same gender sex scenes shouldn't be held to a higher standard in fiction just by virtue of it being less common. Almost all of the sexual encounters in the books are outside the confines of a healthy relationship and a person could argue that any of them are gratuitous as easily as they could argue that the Cersei/Taena scene is.

[brashcandy]

I didn't find any of it awful. It's just sex people. Who cares about a little gratuitous sex? There was horses heads being cut off, people gored in the throat and drowning in their own blood, people's heads being severed and tossed around like a beach ball, etc. Never hear much about the gratuitous violence offending anyone's delicate sensibilities.

I don't agree. Same gender sex scenes shouldn't be held to a higher standard in fiction just by virtue of it being less common. Almost all of the sexual encounters in the books are outside the confines of a healthy relationship and a person could argue that any of them are gratuitous as easily as they could argue that the Cersei/Taena scene is.

I'm not saying that we should hold same sex scenes to a higher standard at all, but the fact remains that same sex scenes - especially those involving women - are often times gratuitously done, and I would love to know why GRRM felt we needed that scene between Cersei and Taena or with Dany and her maid. What did we really learn besides the fact that Dany is lonely and Cersei is self obsessed? We knew this already. And no, many of the other relationships make sense from a narrative point of view - these did not, in my opinion.

The point is that same sex relationships are cheapened by this kind of off hand rendering, whereas heterosexual relationships are given a given full range - from the basic one night stand to the torrid, full on romantic portrayals.

A Loras/Renly scene would have been a nice corrective to this.

[brashcandy]

...How was the one from the tv show awful? What was awful was the red-headed whore constantly flashing everyone and having a gratuitous sex scene in the middle of a conversation with Littlefinger.

I'm not going to get into too much about the tv show since this is a forum for the books, but I personally found it distastely. Not the act of gay sex, but how it was portrayed. It took in my view all the depth out of their relationship. However, as noted, we're dealing with the books, not the show, and we did not get any description of the act in the books, hence why i feel it was a missed opportunity.

[Daenerys Faithful Servant]

I'm not going to get into too much about the tv show since this is a forum for the books, but I personally found it distastely. Not the act of gay sex, but how it was portrayed. It took in my view all the depth out of their relationship. However, as noted, we're dealing with the books, not the show, and we did not get any description of the act in the books, hence why i feel it was a missed opportunity.

I agree that given the Loras and Renly situation was never really explored in the books that what we saw on the show seemed more like the producers wanting to clarify that the relationship existed, even if it had nothing to do with how the relationship was suggested to be in the books. Why I don't care much for Loras and personally see Renly fitting the role of a minor Lord more than anything else (which makes sense given his actual distance to Lordship over House Baratheon or sitting on the Iron Throne) there relationship was one of a few where the characters genuinely like each other enough to be in a relationship. Oddly enough Lord Bronn (first time I had considered that title for the character actually) and Lollys marriage seems like a good one and the same can be said for Roose Bolton and his Frey wife. Truly Martin seems to have the oddest characters wind up being the most happy ones when it comes to their relationships with others and its rather interesting to consider how other characters would be if they had such relationships to fall back on instead of the ones they ended up in.

[Rinso]

I had two problems with the sex scene in the show.

1) It completely messed up both Renly and Loras' characterizations. Renly is not a weak-willed wuss who needs coercing from his boyfriend, and Loras was made to seem too scheming.

2) Loras only shaved one armpit... :dunce:

As to homosexual sex scenes... I wouldn't have minded. But, as I have admitted in other threads, sex scenes are generally not GRRM's strongest talent as a writer. I wouldn't want to read another myrish swamp or a fat, pink mast, or something like that. Then again, the relationship between Renly and Loras (as it is in the books) seems to be one of the healthiest and the purer we've seen, so maybe it wouldn't have been as god-awful as the swamp or the menstrual twincest next to Joff's corpse. But just maybe. That's still GRRM we're talking about...

Other than that it would have been cool to see either a Renly or a Loras POV in the books, but in the long run they are just not important enough. By the way, we never had a Baratheon nor a Tyrell POV.

[The hairy bear]

Then again, the relationship between Renly and Loras (as it is in the books) seems to be one of the healthiest and the purer we've seen

I'm not sure I'd call a relationship between a 20 year old lord and his 15 year old squire healthy... :ack:

[Rinso]

I'm not sure I'd call a relationship between a 20 year old lord and his 15 year old squire healthy...

Why not? It's consensual and loving. That's good enough for me, in a world where 15-16 years old girls get wedded to men older than their fathers because it's politically beneficial (Lysa & Jon Arryn) or where the wife is raped by her husband when he "claims his rights" (Cersei & Robert). A 5 years age gap is not something that awful, especially since at 15 most boys at Westeros are considered to be more or less grown up.

[VivaVictarion2]

I'm completely fine with no description of gay sex in the books.

Yeah, some how I manage to get by.

[The hairy bear]

Rinso,

You might be right from the Westerosii society pov, but it just feels really wrong to me.

I guess it's not the age difference (although those five years are a lot at those ages), but the situation: Loras was his squire and his ward, and he was the lord of the castle. I guess he could be considered some kind of fatherly figure to him. We do not know how or when the relationship developed, but Loras would be an easy target to manipulate here.

[Rinso]

Renly is not the type to manipulate or molest. I'm convinced that everything they did was with Loras' full and conscious consent. You're right that we know almost nothing about the how-s or the when-s, but judging from their personalities and their genuine affection towards each other, I truly don't think that there was anything messed up.