HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

"...it wouldn't be difficult to make such stuff titillating..."

Like are Littlefoot's two lesbians comparable to the strippers at the Bada Bing Club? The former seemed designed to titillate the audience and only failed to do so bc of how obvious that attempt was. Compare to the exchange between Ralphie and the stripper in Sopranos where the conditions of violence + depravity they live in practically made it impossible to ever enjoy watching them dance. xp

Maybe not put his foot down but would he really destroy his kingdom bc she asked him too?

You should imagine my whole last line in the driest tone possible, fyi. Yeah, I don't want to see an HBO-icized 14yo Daenerys get raped in public in front of the entire Dothraki population either, or any number of other horrifying things that are going to happen later in their full appallingness. I think our discomfort at that kind of scene is the GOOD and right thing. I do wonder a bit if it will start to undermine later elements, though.

Maybe not put his foot down but would he really destroy his kingdom bc she asked him too?

the significance of the "he can dominate everyone, if you dominate him it will drive him wild" conversation seems to have been undersold

basically Daenerys is an embodiment of the "magic punani" trope

um, i hope that wasn't spoilerz? sadface. xp

No, that was already supposed to have happened but the show took it out!

what exactly happened in the books + when?

on one hand there's this heavy theme of the consequences of noble politics. so you've got the butcher's son being killed, or the woman being raped/killed as consequence of war ("this is what war is") or the other casualties that come about because of the machinations of these nobles. at the same time, tho, there's this very real risk of aestheticizing in a pleasurable way these things we're supposed to find repulsive.

i think that in stories like this, we expect demonstrations of outrage at the human consequences of noble politics, but that such demonstrations are often mere pretense, social pleasantries adopted to disguise the fact that we enjoy the carnage, the spectacle and cruelty of power. we wouldn't build so many of our stories around ruthless rulers if we didn't find something fundamentally exciting about them.

tbh if you're waiting for Drogo to put his foot down, you've misread the Drogo/Daenerys relationship

― DJP

"Maybe not put his foot down but would he really destroy his kingdom bc she asked him too?"

the significance of the "he can dominate everyone, if you dominate him it will drive him wild" conversation seems to have been undersold

― DJP

stuff that should have already happened

Mordy, maybe I made that up/transplanted it from another book??? I'm not finding references to it online now and I haven't read Bk 1 in a long time, but I thought that at some point Drogo had to um well that it had to be in public under the stars, in the manner of the horses that are the Dothraki lifesblood. It DID happen, didn't it??

he's whipped. that's all they're saying.
xposts

jeez, I thought ppl were antsy about spoilers on the Doctor Who thread

we wouldn't build so many of our stories around ruthless rulers if we didn't find something fundamentally exciting about them.

I actually stopped reading the books because there wasn't anyone in them that I really found admirable, except maybe Arya. (I don't know why I don't find the Night's Watch compelling, but I don't.) Having actual human beings in the roles makes it easier.

If I hadn't read the books I don't know that I would like people to be correcting me, or telling me what actually happened, every time I tried to discuss the show. More fun to discuss when everyone has the same data.

So yeah I guess we need two threads for this now? One for those who've read the books and one for those who haven't?

not having read the books tho, i have no problem being brought up to speed on things the series might have omitted.
xpost

my comment was based entirely on what was presented on the show

I mean seriously, what has this board come to if I can't use several cryptic posts to set up a "magic punani" joke

Going back to the show ... did anyone else hate the scene with Jon Snow and the undead wight? Didn't work for me.

well it didn't bother me...

xpost

I thought it was OK. What didn't you like about it?

Laurel - I'm re-reading them now and the Dany & Drogo thing your thinking of is when she decides to ride him instead of being mounted. She takes him out to some soft moss in the middle of camp and they go at it.

I didn't like how the wight looked and moved at all. It felt like a z-budget horror scene. Like something out of a Mark Borchardt production.

had no problem with the zombie scene

I mean seriously, what has this board come to if I can't use several cryptic posts to set up a "magic punani" joke

lol. just wanted to make sure you wasn't giving the game away.

the wight being such a fat football hooligan made it less scary

Hm, thanks. I thought that scene was the analog to/sign of her adaptation to her status in contrast to an earlier scene in which he was um the agressor and it was against her will. Must have confused it w another book in the intervening years, tho.

daeny was clearly raped on the evening of her wedding, right? is that what you're talking about? didn't seem to happen in front of anybody though, at least not on the show.

the wight being such a fat football hooligan made it less scary

That might have been part of the problem. He certainly didn't look like a ranger. Was he supposed to be?

Mordy, maybe I made that up/transplanted it from another book??? I'm not finding references to it online now and I haven't read Bk 1 in a long time, but I thought that at some point Drogo had to um well that it had to be in public under the stars, in the manner of the horses that are the Dothraki lifesblood. It DID happen, didn't it??

― Back up the lesbian canoe (Laurel), Thursday, June 9, 2011 4:47 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

in the books, during the scene where danaerys introduces drogo to non-doggystyle sex, she drags him out into the middle of the camp. its a power display on the part of danaerys, and not rape (unless were talking a complicated definition of rape)

the wedding night sex, in the books, isnt rape either--he like... strokes her? all over? and then (barf) "slips a finger inside her" or something, and she is hrm "very wet" or something

i think its "to HBO's credit" that they have drogo rape her rather than pretend that he was able to seduce her somehow and that it makes it okay

It is what you think, laurel. It is the first time she asserts herself and takes command of her situation. Unlike other Dothraki wives, she is not a mare; she has power and will change things.

Sorry - couldn't see xposts on the phone.

No no there must have been this other book that we published that I picked up which also had a horse tribe of warlike people and their king took a wife from another society and their marriage had to be consummated out in the open in "horse" fashion in front of his entire assembled army or w/e and I must have conflated the two. I heartily apologize for this whole digression!!!!!

the wedding night sex, in the books, isnt rape either--he like... strokes her? all over? and then (barf)...

yes, barf. in the TV show, though the scene cut early on, it seemed non-consensual. she was weeping, forced down (iirc?), etc.

not barf at sex or even at the idea that she might have been attracted to drogo, but barf at lousy descriptions of sex in pulp novels

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no

no?

new

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ned stark is gonna be furious when khal drogo brings the rest of alien ant farm to his iron maiden revival gig

khal drogo's playing conan in shitty-looking new conan movie

If the fight scene in this episode is any indication, I may have to watch the Conan film.

Not afraid of being typecast then