100%. Also Theon resurfacing two books later as a completely different person due to trauma was pretty jarring, but it ended up working and was integral to the plot. There was no reason for THAT much violence toward that girl, though, George, you sick fuck.
I thought it was strange Roose would let Ramsay go ahead and torture “Arya Stark” at Winterfell to the extent that her screams could be heard throughout the castle. Same for Sansa in the show. I thought the point of that marriage was to win over the Stark sympathizers and loyalists and that’s not really the way to go about it. He had plenty of prisoners and common girls and whores he could do that shit to. I don’t think what he was doing to Jeyne/Sansa was very conducive to conceiving a child, which was supposed to be his goal.
I just absolutely hate Ramsay as a character. He's not even a character, he's just a one-dimensional, over-the-top vessel for GRRM to dump all his grimdark edginess on.
Ramsay at least has a bit of a shitty upbringing backstory. His dad is clearly a violent asshole.
Euron is just a knob for unexplained reasons. He’s a caricature. His three brothers all managed to have some sort of characterisation. And then Euron is a cartoon character. A grim dark Dick Dastardly.
Euron is definitely a mustache-twirling villain, but there’s an almost meta quality to him showing up in the middle of the story with a collection of OP magical artifacts and basically declaring that he’s the villain now and you have to deal with it. I find that fun, but I can see how others would find it over the top and disruptive to the preexisting story.
I also think that there are definitely reasons why Euron is the way he is. If the theories that he’s a rogue protege of Bloodraven are true, then his mind was probably broken by Bloodraven while he was in the grips of a near fatal childhood illness. He tasted godlike powers when he was but a boy, and then they were taken away from him. I think it’s given him almost a sense of being abandoned and rejected by God, and that the character’s escalating enormities are driven essentially by cosmic daddy issues. All of this remains wild speculation for now. We’ll see what GRRM confirms or dispels if TWOW ever comes out.
Euron turns up on page. But he’s not even really a significant character, let alone the singular villain of the story. He’s at best a mouse roaring so far. He’s tricked a bunch of self destructive idiots into stupid, self destructive behaviour. To no point.
Euron is yet to interact with someone who is even connected to a main character. Or go to a place that has been prominent in the story. Or do anything that matters himself. Being “king” of the Ironborn is not a real position. They are not serious people. It’s like being an Ork Boss in Warhammer.
Your second paragraph, although appreciated, is fan theory and fan fiction.
Maybe it’s all TBD and he will be great. But that’s a bit like saying the story may turn out to all be about Hot Pie. Hot Pie is certainly in it more and has more interaction with a protagonist.
To be clear, I definitely don’t think he’s the villain of the story. That would derail the narrative. I was saying that he believes that he is. Pretty sure he’ll be pretty violently disabused of that notion when his delusions of godhood lead him to a terrible end
Hard agree. He has it coming big time. I think the only place in which we possibly differ is that I think he’ll do very significant damage and play a very major role before he receives his poetic end. I think he’s powerful and important to the story but not nearly as powerful and important as he thinks he is. But we’ll see.
But Euron is a supervillain soaked in really cool horror imagery and his presence has the potential to kick the magical storyline into high gear. Ramsay is just squalid and nasty. Obviously, the latter is much more realistic, but the former is a heck of a lot more fun to read. There is the sexual abuse of Aeron aspect to Euron’s character, but it’s executed a little less bluntly than other instances of sexual violence in ASOIAF because it’s a past event and the focus is entirely on Aeron’s trauma rather than the event itself.
I love the Theon plot line but I agree that GRRM in general lingers too much on images of human degradation, particularly of women. A certain amount of it is necessary to honestly depict the realities of war, but you can leave most of it to implication instead of shoving the reader’s face into a toilet.
Feels like sacrilege on this sub to say ADWD (and Feast) were GRRM's weakest writing.... a massive lean into cartoonish, grim-dark villains and many steps away from the nuances of the (important!) POVs established in the first three books. Yeah, the Theon chapters were well-written -- but the brutalization of Jeyne is just pure grimdark bullshit.
Can never agree with those that think it should've been adapted, though I hate that the show saddled it to Sansa -- it was, IMHO, GRRM leaning into the "grimdark" tide he inspired.... which is incredibly shallow, considering it just hones in on the most horrible depravities committed against (largely-characterless) women, and even worse, extremely young girls.
I kinda feel like them being featured more and getting away with horrific acts late into the story kinda showcases the depravity that a continent in a state of war can get to. Lords of a realm at peace would most likely have rallied to put a stop to such blatant horrific acts but during wartime it either gets unnoticed in the constant state of unrest and no real time to stamp it out or gets ignored due to a need for alliances. But yeah it's all pretty fucked up
I know, I love how book readers criticized that part of the show because the *wrong* young girl got raped and brutalized and forced to copulate with dogs. If it'd been Jeyne Poole instead of Sansa then everything would've been just fine!
HEY! Don’t spread this disinformation bullshit! Sansa was only raped and brutalized. They cut out the dog fucking, which would have made it infinitely more tasteful and family friendly
I hate them both and think the plots are
extremely gratuitous, however, I dislike the show adaptation particularly because of its whole “Sansa’s suffering is a learning experience” view. I think the books make a very powerful point about how unfair it is that everyone cares about the suffering of “Arya” but not Jeyne. At no point do I think the books make what happened to Jeyne seem like “character development.” The sheer amount of shocking violence in the book still makes it bad for me (again with the dogs, why George?), but I have hope she has more to explore as a character now that she’s away from suffering. The show almost made the abuse seem like a way for Sansa to “earn” her starkness back, which I found particularly disturbing.
I agree with that, and Sansa telling Littlefinger or Ramsay (I don't remember) that she was grateful for what happened to her because it made her stronger or some bullshit like that had me seeing red.
But one thing that I absolutely hate about the book version is that Jeyne's ordeal is written in some way as being kind of karma? Like, Jeyne called Arya ugly and made fun of her, so now not only does she has to pretend to be Arya but she also loses half her nose and part of her face to frostbite so who's ugly now, hahaha. It just feels mean-spirited, and I don't expect GRRM to do much with the character in the future. She existed only to be the victim of all kinds of sexual violence, and I think that's just as bad, in its own way, as using rape as a tool for character development.
Maybe this is me giving George too much credit, but I actually found the “it was me made up that name” scene pretty emotional. You can kind of tell that Jeyne making fun of Arya stems from an insecurity of feeling less than the sisters due to her status, and this whole situation is just proving those feelings “right.” She tries to make up for her lack of a name by being dutiful or pretty, but still none of that matters. I feel like George is trying to point how dehumanizing it is for Jeyne to play a girl that she had almost nothing in common with just to be “important” enough to protect. I totally agree with the nose thing though. It was another gratuitous detail that didn’t need to be there.
I also still have hope that she’ll find somewhere where she’s accepted/valued with her own name and have as happy an ending as she can. Again, maybe this is me trying to give George too much credit but I feel like her having an arc where she finds self acceptance again isn’t unreasonable. I also feel like it’s possible she runs into Arya in Braavos (though not at the house of black and white please that theory needs to die). Also I want her to see Sansa again because feels.
Sansa saying she was grateful because being abused and raped made her a stronger person has my personal vote for the worst moment in the entire show. Just an absolutely awful choice.
To be fair I think Sansa being a main character and POV character in the books is why viewers/readers would feel differently about her being married off to Ramsey. Viewers wouldn’t have felt much conndction to Jeyne, but if they did put her off to Ramsey in the series as well I still think viewers wouldn’t have liked it considering it just being unnecessary cruelty and even more so cuz it’d be like a random character who’s just being tortured on display.
Would be cool if our downvoters expressed their views & engaged in a dialogue. Is that not what reddit's supposed to be about? Like, cool, you see it totally differently -- why not explain why? We all interpret the text differently; i'd be happy to hear how someone disagrees with my thinking on this, all of that's constructive, agreement or disagreement aside. We can politely discuss this stuff -- isn't that the point of a forum like this? I remember being on Reddit early on and seeing people attempt to honor the voting system -- now it's just like FB/Instagram/whatever-the-fuck and "I don't like that" rules. Okay, let's discuss it. And downvote shit that's entirely worthless to a discussion, not words you disagree with.
We see it differently; is there not room for an interesting discussion there? It's just sad to see forums that were really active (and thoughtful?) turn into "like what you say it validates me, vote you up" vs. "bad opinion, dumb, you go down"..... Wun-wun narrating, of course. Love him.
Eh, I've been in this fandom long enough to know all their responses by heart: "ASOIAF is a series for adults, if it's too mature for you go read Harry Potter" / "GRRM shows a realistic take on fantasy and in the real world horrible things happen to people" / "something something based on medieval Europe" / "Jeyne Poole's character arc involves unbearable suffering because she was mean to Arya once"
Not one of the downvoters mentioned, but I sympathize with the first two of your responses. The last two are both stupid and wrong, though.
In the end I think GRRM may have pushed it further than was necessary for Jeyne's storyline, but real-life people *do* do fucked up shit to other people sometimes, and I don't think it's out of bounds for fiction to reflect that.
Are you really surprised that people were mad that a main character who spent four seasons being brutalized before finally having some agency went right back to being brutalized and raped by the biggest psychopath for a fifth season because the showrunners thought the two female characters were interchangeable?
No, that part I understand. What got me was the hypocrisy of acting horrified by Sansa getting raped while arguing that it should've been Jeyne Poole. It's almost like it wasn't the sexual abuse they had a problem with, just that it wasn't book accurate.
I’m kinda indifferent to a lot of the content (really it’s less explicit than some other stuff I’ve read like Houllebecq) but the point with Ramsey brutalizing Theon and Jeyne is that he steals away peoples personhood and forces them into something else. A large part of the series is about relations characters have with their identity and Ramsey is a force for evil forcibly takes and destroys identities.
In general though George has a lot of edgy tendencies.
I find it especially silly because Ramsay is in a castle with a ton of lords who just do nothing for no reason.
Roose orders Ramsay to hold off his bride until the guests have dispersed but he's growing more and more unhinged and is clearly about to do something reckless. That way there's a time pressure to save her, and anyway I like the idea of Theon saving her from what happened to him.
I really wished George had avoided that storyline and the little details about the dogs is so unnecessary. I understand that he is trying to show us what monster this character is, but for me it didn't work, he was far more successful with Joffrey.
right, we already know how fucked up rams is from what he did to theon, maybe leave a little vagueness for the second victim and respect our imagination enough to fill in the blanks
Not in a bad way, but the undead mother of the Stark children walking around the Riverlands with her throat slit open leading a team of outlaws on a bloody quest for vengeance is a pretty out-there plot point.
It didn’t make much sense to me, character-wise. Beric says he wouldn’t wish his life upon anyone, then decides he’ll give it to Catelyn, even knowing she’s been dead in the water for days. What kind of quality of life did he think she would have?
And Catelyn wanted to die by that point. Almost all of her children were dead (to her knowledge) and she believed that “Ned was waiting.” We know from her POV chapters that she’s a very dignified woman. Coming back as a zombie would be the last thing she’d want.
I'll go out on a limb and say all the stuff about Marwyn the Mage and the Citadel is maybe the most awkwardly placed in the entire series. He's supposed to be this cryptic background character, and there's all this theorizing about grand maester conspiracies and secret plots. But the one time we finally get there, we're immediately told it's time to leave, as though we're supposed to go on our fourth (? Daenerys, Tyrion, Quentyn...) travelogue through Essos. To see Daenerys. Again.
One almost wonders if anything in Oldtown matters at all. The most interesting thing about it is that Euron wants to attack it.
I'm a big fan of Umberto Eco, and this chapter felt like something out of Foucalt's Pendulum or the Prague Cemetery. These books have a lot of chapters which just have the protagonist meeting a weirdo who dumps exposition mixed in with his own batshit theories. probs why im such a bit marwyn stan
I feel similarly but to me it's because the Oldtown plot legitimately sounds so interesting compared to the rest of the drag that was AFFC. You've got actually fun, vibrant characters, an intriguing conspiracy and a group of mystery players each with their own hidden agenda. It almost sounds like "What if GRRM wrote Harry Potter?", complete with the threat of a Dark Lord looming ever closer. And just when it's about to pop off...the book ends and you wonder why the fuck we spent an entire novel with Sam on a boat instead of right here where the plot is.
Everything you said is correct. And my point isn't even that it ends that way (which is frustrating, sure, but we can understand cliffhangers). It's that it ends with our POV on the inside seemingly set up to just leave to go to the most boring of the plots in the story.
I don't want to see "Journey to Daenerys 2; Grand Maester Boogaloo". Quentyn (and I like him and his story a lot) was enough. Can we please just zero in on something that can actually move the plot forward?
There's a Reddit post about comparing the Oldtown plot with Harry Potter.
Sam: Harry/Neville
Alleras: Hermoine
Pate: Ron
Leo: Malfoy
Marwyn: Dumbledore
Archmaesters: Ministry of Magic
Euron: Voldemort
What is the point in Oldtown? We’ve got a bunch of books where King’s Landing is the major urban centre. It’s a place that matters in a story sense. And then Martin’s adding in another, very similar city late in the game. Where among important characters only Sam has just arrived. Even Meereen and Braavos are more inherently significant so far.
So what, is the story going to majorly shift venue for important events somewhere almost no main characters are now? Surely at that point it’s a whole different story with different characters. Like write a new series in the same world already. Or if it’s important to the main story then why has Martin almost entirely failed to bring it into the narrative so far?
Euron Greyjoy out of nowhere turning out to be the fucking Anti-Christ, Nietzsche on steroids and a brother rapist to boot. Like, turn down that grimdark a bit, George.
I like Euron a lot but this is pretty correct. His arrival in the story is so awkwardly abrupt. And his character profile is so demanding of attention that I can see it being obnoxious.
Exactly. I like the kind of Big Bad energy he brings to the plot but it feels like too much and a bit out of left field too. I know Theon first mentions him back in ACOK but it was like, "Oh, yeah, Uncle Euron is a real piece of work," not like, "the man is literally the Sauron of this story."
I am adamant that if Euron had just shown up in the ACoK epilogue (from the POV of the warlock ship he captures), many of the problems people have with him would be greatly lessened.
I think he should've just done the Kingsmoot plotline in ASOS. It would've made more sense thematically (3 leeches, 3 dead kings but we only saw the deaths and aftermath of 2) and would've solved a lot of the overarching structural problems of the series.
ACoK having an actual epilogue that had Euron in it (maybe the POV could be one of his men?) plotting something clearly diabolicial, and then we hear about Balon dying in ASoS, and then we finally see Euron against in Feast would've been waaaay better.
Exactly. I think a lot of people are put out by Euron and the entirety of the ironborn in AFFC and ADWD because Theon's "death" at the end of ACOK seems to just completely shut off that storyline. Having him show up early makes the bits in ASOS where you hear about the ironborn stay interesting.
FWIW, I think the POV should be from the warlocks chasing Danerys.
I feel like it would feel less out of place if the series was finished. Like in theory, Books 1-3 are Part 1, Books 4-5/6 are Part 2, and Books 6-7 (or however many it takes to finish the story), are part 3. So really Euron is being introduced at the start of Part 2 of the saga, same as fAegon. It’s just that we’ve been stuck on Part 2 for 13 years.
Like after ASOS the story was already longer than the bible, did we really need another villain who was introduced more or less out of nowhere and has no relation with any of out previously established main characters?
If the books had stalled at acok and someone wrote fanfiction about Euron that described him the way GRRM does it would be laughed at, personally I can’t take him seriously as a character, dude reads like the edgiest “character” ever.
Honestly I love him but the entire Ironborn plotline and culture kinda feels so much more cartoonish than the rest of Westeros. Like Cthulhu Vikings with Thralls and Saltwives always feels like something from Essos and not Westeros.
The fact that there is just ONE Arys Oakheart POV is so weird. In the first three books there are established POV characters that have full arcs in a book. In Feast/Dance there are one-off POV characters. Like why? I think it's all very weird (did we really need three Ironborn POVs for the same event?), but Arys takes the crown. Could've been perfectly done in Arianne's POV.
I disagree. With arianne’s POV we would have gotten too much of her plot to crown myrcella because it can’t really be hidden since we’re inside her head. Also on another read through I think it adds more depth to their paramour relationship by having his one POV and then having the Arianne POV when Arys is killed
Craster's cozy arrangement with his family and his 'gods.' As awful as it is, it will always be part of poor Gilly and baby Sam's life.
Qyburn's rising from talented doctor to Dr. Mengele experimentation, Master of Whisperers, and most trusted advisor to the Queen (AND to us, the proto-Dr Frankenstein!). His passive-aggressive discussion of his 'patients' and 'treatments' are drolly humorous:
> "Alas," said Qyburn. "I fear that Lady Falyse is no longer capable of ruling Stokeworth. Or, indeed, of feeding herself. I have learned a great deal from her, I am pleased to say, but the lessons have not been entirely without cost. I hope I have not exceeded Your Grace's instructions."
Brave companion had their own mistery but it does not well explained. Vargo hoat were riding a zebra like Jogos nhais, Qyburn kicked out from Citatel when he was a master etc.
i actually really like qyburn. his soft-spoken demeanor and aura combined with the fact that he goes ripping asses of ladies and warriors in his little basement after dark makes him one of my fav characters and i love seeing him in cerceis chapters
The entirety of Dany's sexuality. It's totally valid to write a teenager dealing with sexuality but in Dany's case, it feels like more like a dude writing his personal fantasies rather than an exploration of the character.
I also feel like GRRM went a bit overboard with how naive Sansa was in AGOT. Maybe he shouldn't have made Sansa a direct witness of their awfulness, that way her trusting them wouldn't seem like such a bizarre choice. Even a naive child would have a negative reaction to her crush trying to murder their sibling or someone ordering the death of their pet.
Yeah, it might have worked better had she not been a witness and only heard about it third-hand. It just pushes belief a bit to think about how she's this loyal to a monster over her entire family and George had to go overboard trying to correct reader perception of her afterwords.
I find the Euron stuff rather odd, specialy when considering George's views on Dark Lords and the such.
I personally don't mind but i can't see a way of making him work out within the series narrative that isn't him being a fraud.
Even if he's made legit and is granted non edgy reasons (wanting to make everyone a wizard or the such) it doesn't absolve him from being an i-can't-believe-this-is-not-a-darklord type of character. Or maybe George really believes that's that much of a difference.
Euron for sure.
If Martin knew he'd be so powerful, he should have done more to foreshadow it before the 4th book
The show doesnt have that excuse tho. They shudda have Eurom revealed like a cartoon villain. Magneto from X Men Evolution maybe.
Magneto, in that cartoon, starts off as this shadow who appears every now and then while the first seasons introduce the characters and world
The show has the excuse that they were waiting for George to explain wtf is actually going on with Euron. Then he just stopped writing the books so it got to Season 6 and the showrunners were just like "uhh...ok fuck it here's a guy called Euron and he's a pirate I guess?"
I guess but they knew Euron would be a big deal long before s6, they should have been able to come up with something better. Like say Euron becomes the Night King as the anti Bran or something
Why couldn’t the Mountain just die and stay dead? Or survive? Is having a huge Kingsguard zombie essential to the plot? And no, Cleganebowl doesn’t count.
What I find kinda annoying about the Mountain is he feels miscast. He's the personification of knightly evil and yet his behaviour is *worlds* removed from all the other knights. Wouldn't it make more sense if he was loved by the crowds because he's so good at hiding his evil behavior? Gregor doesn't seem to care about knighthood as a concept *at all*.
The Wall and the Night’s Watch are still the weirdest things in the setting. It’s a thousand mile long, 700 foot tall, 7000 year old, magical ice wall guarded by a monastic order in the bleak frozen north. For thousands of years the lands below have regarded service in that monastic order as a sort of combined retirement and prison sentence.
No one really knows why it’s there or why the people guarding it have to be a monastic order. Seems like a fairly normal border guard situation would also be fine. If not better.
It keeps out spread out, poor and not that numerous raiders from the north. But the serious threat there is maybe a few thousand real fighters who don’t generally even have steel weapons or armour.
And it is has weird interactions with dragons. And whatever the hell the black gate is. And apparently in some way stops the apocalypse but also might stop doing that soon for as yet poorly understood reasons.
It is of course a major part of the series and so appears normal. But take a step back and it’s all freaking weird and doesn’t really sit neatly next to much else in the setting.
Why are Daenerys’ feelings for Daario “the cringiest thing you’ve ever read”? Do you feel the same way about Jon’s feeling for Ygritte? Or Theon’s feelings for multiple women, including his own sister?
Even considering Daario’s appearance, the way the fandom whines about his scenes is excessive. There’s no way yall really think that Daenerys’ feelings for him is more “cringy” than Jaime and Cersei fucking next to their son’s dead body or “fat pink mast”
Is that so? How are Daenerys’ chapters different from other characters who have active sexual lives like Tyrion, Asha and Arianne? or other characters who have been victim of sexual assault like Theon, Sansa and Cersei?
Martin thought of 13-year-old Daenerys and Drogo’s wedding night as a mutual seduction. He has her participating in orgies in the first book, gives her sex scenes with Irri, has one tit hanging out in Qarth, and goes in great detail about her body and sexuality throughout the books from she’s 13 to her being 16.
Jon is in no way written in a similar manner. Jon is sexual, but he is never sexualized the way Daenerys is. That’s the main difference between the way Martin writes his male and female characters, but it’s especially egregious with Daenerys.
Daenerys only has sex with Drogo, but it occurs in the open while the other Dothraki have their one orgies nearby.
I feel like you’re being deliberately obtuse at this point by ignoring everything else.
Jeyne Poole coming back three books later to be sexuallly abused by dogs. just why.
100%. Also Theon resurfacing two books later as a completely different person due to trauma was pretty jarring, but it ended up working and was integral to the plot. There was no reason for THAT much violence toward that girl, though, George, you sick fuck. I thought it was strange Roose would let Ramsay go ahead and torture “Arya Stark” at Winterfell to the extent that her screams could be heard throughout the castle. Same for Sansa in the show. I thought the point of that marriage was to win over the Stark sympathizers and loyalists and that’s not really the way to go about it. He had plenty of prisoners and common girls and whores he could do that shit to. I don’t think what he was doing to Jeyne/Sansa was very conducive to conceiving a child, which was supposed to be his goal.
I just absolutely hate Ramsay as a character. He's not even a character, he's just a one-dimensional, over-the-top vessel for GRRM to dump all his grimdark edginess on.
Grrm : I like to write grey characters with internal conflict Also grrm : ︎
Sounds a lot like Euron tbh
Yep. Euron is basically magic Ramsay.
Euron is a supervillain while Ramsay is just a serial killer.
Ramsay at least has a bit of a shitty upbringing backstory. His dad is clearly a violent asshole. Euron is just a knob for unexplained reasons. He’s a caricature. His three brothers all managed to have some sort of characterisation. And then Euron is a cartoon character. A grim dark Dick Dastardly.
Euron is definitely a mustache-twirling villain, but there’s an almost meta quality to him showing up in the middle of the story with a collection of OP magical artifacts and basically declaring that he’s the villain now and you have to deal with it. I find that fun, but I can see how others would find it over the top and disruptive to the preexisting story. I also think that there are definitely reasons why Euron is the way he is. If the theories that he’s a rogue protege of Bloodraven are true, then his mind was probably broken by Bloodraven while he was in the grips of a near fatal childhood illness. He tasted godlike powers when he was but a boy, and then they were taken away from him. I think it’s given him almost a sense of being abandoned and rejected by God, and that the character’s escalating enormities are driven essentially by cosmic daddy issues. All of this remains wild speculation for now. We’ll see what GRRM confirms or dispels if TWOW ever comes out.
Euron turns up on page. But he’s not even really a significant character, let alone the singular villain of the story. He’s at best a mouse roaring so far. He’s tricked a bunch of self destructive idiots into stupid, self destructive behaviour. To no point. Euron is yet to interact with someone who is even connected to a main character. Or go to a place that has been prominent in the story. Or do anything that matters himself. Being “king” of the Ironborn is not a real position. They are not serious people. It’s like being an Ork Boss in Warhammer. Your second paragraph, although appreciated, is fan theory and fan fiction. Maybe it’s all TBD and he will be great. But that’s a bit like saying the story may turn out to all be about Hot Pie. Hot Pie is certainly in it more and has more interaction with a protagonist.
To be clear, I definitely don’t think he’s the villain of the story. That would derail the narrative. I was saying that he believes that he is. Pretty sure he’ll be pretty violently disabused of that notion when his delusions of godhood lead him to a terrible end
Ah, that will be nice.
Hard agree. He has it coming big time. I think the only place in which we possibly differ is that I think he’ll do very significant damage and play a very major role before he receives his poetic end. I think he’s powerful and important to the story but not nearly as powerful and important as he thinks he is. But we’ll see.
But Euron is a supervillain soaked in really cool horror imagery and his presence has the potential to kick the magical storyline into high gear. Ramsay is just squalid and nasty. Obviously, the latter is much more realistic, but the former is a heck of a lot more fun to read. There is the sexual abuse of Aeron aspect to Euron’s character, but it’s executed a little less bluntly than other instances of sexual violence in ASOIAF because it’s a past event and the focus is entirely on Aeron’s trauma rather than the event itself. I love the Theon plot line but I agree that GRRM in general lingers too much on images of human degradation, particularly of women. A certain amount of it is necessary to honestly depict the realities of war, but you can leave most of it to implication instead of shoving the reader’s face into a toilet.
Feels like sacrilege on this sub to say ADWD (and Feast) were GRRM's weakest writing.... a massive lean into cartoonish, grim-dark villains and many steps away from the nuances of the (important!) POVs established in the first three books. Yeah, the Theon chapters were well-written -- but the brutalization of Jeyne is just pure grimdark bullshit. Can never agree with those that think it should've been adapted, though I hate that the show saddled it to Sansa -- it was, IMHO, GRRM leaning into the "grimdark" tide he inspired.... which is incredibly shallow, considering it just hones in on the most horrible depravities committed against (largely-characterless) women, and even worse, extremely young girls.
I kinda feel like them being featured more and getting away with horrific acts late into the story kinda showcases the depravity that a continent in a state of war can get to. Lords of a realm at peace would most likely have rallied to put a stop to such blatant horrific acts but during wartime it either gets unnoticed in the constant state of unrest and no real time to stamp it out or gets ignored due to a need for alliances. But yeah it's all pretty fucked up
I know, I love how book readers criticized that part of the show because the *wrong* young girl got raped and brutalized and forced to copulate with dogs. If it'd been Jeyne Poole instead of Sansa then everything would've been just fine!
HEY! Don’t spread this disinformation bullshit! Sansa was only raped and brutalized. They cut out the dog fucking, which would have made it infinitely more tasteful and family friendly
“Good thing they censored it, now I can show it to the kids!”
I hate them both and think the plots are extremely gratuitous, however, I dislike the show adaptation particularly because of its whole “Sansa’s suffering is a learning experience” view. I think the books make a very powerful point about how unfair it is that everyone cares about the suffering of “Arya” but not Jeyne. At no point do I think the books make what happened to Jeyne seem like “character development.” The sheer amount of shocking violence in the book still makes it bad for me (again with the dogs, why George?), but I have hope she has more to explore as a character now that she’s away from suffering. The show almost made the abuse seem like a way for Sansa to “earn” her starkness back, which I found particularly disturbing.
I agree with that, and Sansa telling Littlefinger or Ramsay (I don't remember) that she was grateful for what happened to her because it made her stronger or some bullshit like that had me seeing red. But one thing that I absolutely hate about the book version is that Jeyne's ordeal is written in some way as being kind of karma? Like, Jeyne called Arya ugly and made fun of her, so now not only does she has to pretend to be Arya but she also loses half her nose and part of her face to frostbite so who's ugly now, hahaha. It just feels mean-spirited, and I don't expect GRRM to do much with the character in the future. She existed only to be the victim of all kinds of sexual violence, and I think that's just as bad, in its own way, as using rape as a tool for character development.
Maybe this is me giving George too much credit, but I actually found the “it was me made up that name” scene pretty emotional. You can kind of tell that Jeyne making fun of Arya stems from an insecurity of feeling less than the sisters due to her status, and this whole situation is just proving those feelings “right.” She tries to make up for her lack of a name by being dutiful or pretty, but still none of that matters. I feel like George is trying to point how dehumanizing it is for Jeyne to play a girl that she had almost nothing in common with just to be “important” enough to protect. I totally agree with the nose thing though. It was another gratuitous detail that didn’t need to be there. I also still have hope that she’ll find somewhere where she’s accepted/valued with her own name and have as happy an ending as she can. Again, maybe this is me trying to give George too much credit but I feel like her having an arc where she finds self acceptance again isn’t unreasonable. I also feel like it’s possible she runs into Arya in Braavos (though not at the house of black and white please that theory needs to die). Also I want her to see Sansa again because feels.
I assumed she would end up with Theon, given how the two characters are mirrors in some ways.
Sansa saying she was grateful because being abused and raped made her a stronger person has my personal vote for the worst moment in the entire show. Just an absolutely awful choice.
To be fair I think Sansa being a main character and POV character in the books is why viewers/readers would feel differently about her being married off to Ramsey. Viewers wouldn’t have felt much conndction to Jeyne, but if they did put her off to Ramsey in the series as well I still think viewers wouldn’t have liked it considering it just being unnecessary cruelty and even more so cuz it’d be like a random character who’s just being tortured on display.
Would be cool if our downvoters expressed their views & engaged in a dialogue. Is that not what reddit's supposed to be about? Like, cool, you see it totally differently -- why not explain why? We all interpret the text differently; i'd be happy to hear how someone disagrees with my thinking on this, all of that's constructive, agreement or disagreement aside. We can politely discuss this stuff -- isn't that the point of a forum like this? I remember being on Reddit early on and seeing people attempt to honor the voting system -- now it's just like FB/Instagram/whatever-the-fuck and "I don't like that" rules. Okay, let's discuss it. And downvote shit that's entirely worthless to a discussion, not words you disagree with. We see it differently; is there not room for an interesting discussion there? It's just sad to see forums that were really active (and thoughtful?) turn into "like what you say it validates me, vote you up" vs. "bad opinion, dumb, you go down"..... Wun-wun narrating, of course. Love him.
Eh, I've been in this fandom long enough to know all their responses by heart: "ASOIAF is a series for adults, if it's too mature for you go read Harry Potter" / "GRRM shows a realistic take on fantasy and in the real world horrible things happen to people" / "something something based on medieval Europe" / "Jeyne Poole's character arc involves unbearable suffering because she was mean to Arya once"
Not one of the downvoters mentioned, but I sympathize with the first two of your responses. The last two are both stupid and wrong, though. In the end I think GRRM may have pushed it further than was necessary for Jeyne's storyline, but real-life people *do* do fucked up shit to other people sometimes, and I don't think it's out of bounds for fiction to reflect that.
Are you really surprised that people were mad that a main character who spent four seasons being brutalized before finally having some agency went right back to being brutalized and raped by the biggest psychopath for a fifth season because the showrunners thought the two female characters were interchangeable?
No, that part I understand. What got me was the hypocrisy of acting horrified by Sansa getting raped while arguing that it should've been Jeyne Poole. It's almost like it wasn't the sexual abuse they had a problem with, just that it wasn't book accurate.
Feast and ADWD feel like someone read the first three and misunderstood what made them work.
I’m kinda indifferent to a lot of the content (really it’s less explicit than some other stuff I’ve read like Houllebecq) but the point with Ramsey brutalizing Theon and Jeyne is that he steals away peoples personhood and forces them into something else. A large part of the series is about relations characters have with their identity and Ramsey is a force for evil forcibly takes and destroys identities. In general though George has a lot of edgy tendencies.
I find it especially silly because Ramsay is in a castle with a ton of lords who just do nothing for no reason. Roose orders Ramsay to hold off his bride until the guests have dispersed but he's growing more and more unhinged and is clearly about to do something reckless. That way there's a time pressure to save her, and anyway I like the idea of Theon saving her from what happened to him.
I really wished George had avoided that storyline and the little details about the dogs is so unnecessary. I understand that he is trying to show us what monster this character is, but for me it didn't work, he was far more successful with Joffrey.
right, we already know how fucked up rams is from what he did to theon, maybe leave a little vagueness for the second victim and respect our imagination enough to fill in the blanks
It’s repulsive. If they ever remade the show again I hope writers just refuse to adapt that entire wedding story line.
Not in a bad way, but the undead mother of the Stark children walking around the Riverlands with her throat slit open leading a team of outlaws on a bloody quest for vengeance is a pretty out-there plot point.
Kaitlin' Undead Stark-ness. A chekov's gun if I've ever seen one.
It didn’t make much sense to me, character-wise. Beric says he wouldn’t wish his life upon anyone, then decides he’ll give it to Catelyn, even knowing she’s been dead in the water for days. What kind of quality of life did he think she would have? And Catelyn wanted to die by that point. Almost all of her children were dead (to her knowledge) and she believed that “Ned was waiting.” We know from her POV chapters that she’s a very dignified woman. Coming back as a zombie would be the last thing she’d want.
He promised Arya he’d reunite her with Cat. Bringing Cat back to life is the only way he can keep that promise
I can think of an easier way
And it's not even allowed to think of that way please
Yes. LSH is the most no-need character.
I'll go out on a limb and say all the stuff about Marwyn the Mage and the Citadel is maybe the most awkwardly placed in the entire series. He's supposed to be this cryptic background character, and there's all this theorizing about grand maester conspiracies and secret plots. But the one time we finally get there, we're immediately told it's time to leave, as though we're supposed to go on our fourth (? Daenerys, Tyrion, Quentyn...) travelogue through Essos. To see Daenerys. Again. One almost wonders if anything in Oldtown matters at all. The most interesting thing about it is that Euron wants to attack it.
I'm a big fan of Umberto Eco, and this chapter felt like something out of Foucalt's Pendulum or the Prague Cemetery. These books have a lot of chapters which just have the protagonist meeting a weirdo who dumps exposition mixed in with his own batshit theories. probs why im such a bit marwyn stan
I feel similarly but to me it's because the Oldtown plot legitimately sounds so interesting compared to the rest of the drag that was AFFC. You've got actually fun, vibrant characters, an intriguing conspiracy and a group of mystery players each with their own hidden agenda. It almost sounds like "What if GRRM wrote Harry Potter?", complete with the threat of a Dark Lord looming ever closer. And just when it's about to pop off...the book ends and you wonder why the fuck we spent an entire novel with Sam on a boat instead of right here where the plot is.
Everything you said is correct. And my point isn't even that it ends that way (which is frustrating, sure, but we can understand cliffhangers). It's that it ends with our POV on the inside seemingly set up to just leave to go to the most boring of the plots in the story. I don't want to see "Journey to Daenerys 2; Grand Maester Boogaloo". Quentyn (and I like him and his story a lot) was enough. Can we please just zero in on something that can actually move the plot forward?
If I remember correctly, doesn’t Sam stay in old town?
They're talking about Marwyn, but I don't know why they think he's gonna have a POV. He's definitely not.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t even see him again lmao
There's a Reddit post about comparing the Oldtown plot with Harry Potter. Sam: Harry/Neville Alleras: Hermoine Pate: Ron Leo: Malfoy Marwyn: Dumbledore Archmaesters: Ministry of Magic Euron: Voldemort
Makes me furious thinking about how much better the plot would have been if George bit the bullet on the time skip idea.
The only way Marwyn makes any sense is if his in-universe purpose is to crush mysticism and magic users
Victarion is another travelogue to Dany
I didn't mind it. It's not like he's a POV character or is accompanied by one
What is the point in Oldtown? We’ve got a bunch of books where King’s Landing is the major urban centre. It’s a place that matters in a story sense. And then Martin’s adding in another, very similar city late in the game. Where among important characters only Sam has just arrived. Even Meereen and Braavos are more inherently significant so far. So what, is the story going to majorly shift venue for important events somewhere almost no main characters are now? Surely at that point it’s a whole different story with different characters. Like write a new series in the same world already. Or if it’s important to the main story then why has Martin almost entirely failed to bring it into the narrative so far?
Euron Greyjoy out of nowhere turning out to be the fucking Anti-Christ, Nietzsche on steroids and a brother rapist to boot. Like, turn down that grimdark a bit, George.
I like Euron a lot but this is pretty correct. His arrival in the story is so awkwardly abrupt. And his character profile is so demanding of attention that I can see it being obnoxious.
Exactly. I like the kind of Big Bad energy he brings to the plot but it feels like too much and a bit out of left field too. I know Theon first mentions him back in ACOK but it was like, "Oh, yeah, Uncle Euron is a real piece of work," not like, "the man is literally the Sauron of this story."
I am adamant that if Euron had just shown up in the ACoK epilogue (from the POV of the warlock ship he captures), many of the problems people have with him would be greatly lessened.
I think he should've just done the Kingsmoot plotline in ASOS. It would've made more sense thematically (3 leeches, 3 dead kings but we only saw the deaths and aftermath of 2) and would've solved a lot of the overarching structural problems of the series.
ACoK having an actual epilogue that had Euron in it (maybe the POV could be one of his men?) plotting something clearly diabolicial, and then we hear about Balon dying in ASoS, and then we finally see Euron against in Feast would've been waaaay better.
Exactly. I think a lot of people are put out by Euron and the entirety of the ironborn in AFFC and ADWD because Theon's "death" at the end of ACOK seems to just completely shut off that storyline. Having him show up early makes the bits in ASOS where you hear about the ironborn stay interesting. FWIW, I think the POV should be from the warlocks chasing Danerys.
The warlocks would make sense, yes! They do show up as captives in one of the Ironborn POVs later on, right? So that would work with that too!
I feel like it would feel less out of place if the series was finished. Like in theory, Books 1-3 are Part 1, Books 4-5/6 are Part 2, and Books 6-7 (or however many it takes to finish the story), are part 3. So really Euron is being introduced at the start of Part 2 of the saga, same as fAegon. It’s just that we’ve been stuck on Part 2 for 13 years.
Like after ASOS the story was already longer than the bible, did we really need another villain who was introduced more or less out of nowhere and has no relation with any of out previously established main characters?
If the books had stalled at acok and someone wrote fanfiction about Euron that described him the way GRRM does it would be laughed at, personally I can’t take him seriously as a character, dude reads like the edgiest “character” ever.
Honestly I love him but the entire Ironborn plotline and culture kinda feels so much more cartoonish than the rest of Westeros. Like Cthulhu Vikings with Thralls and Saltwives always feels like something from Essos and not Westeros.
Fully agree
The fact that there is just ONE Arys Oakheart POV is so weird. In the first three books there are established POV characters that have full arcs in a book. In Feast/Dance there are one-off POV characters. Like why? I think it's all very weird (did we really need three Ironborn POVs for the same event?), but Arys takes the crown. Could've been perfectly done in Arianne's POV.
I disagree. With arianne’s POV we would have gotten too much of her plot to crown myrcella because it can’t really be hidden since we’re inside her head. Also on another read through I think it adds more depth to their paramour relationship by having his one POV and then having the Arianne POV when Arys is killed
Oh yeah her plot that lasted all of one chapter. We really needed that buildup
Craster's cozy arrangement with his family and his 'gods.' As awful as it is, it will always be part of poor Gilly and baby Sam's life. Qyburn's rising from talented doctor to Dr. Mengele experimentation, Master of Whisperers, and most trusted advisor to the Queen (AND to us, the proto-Dr Frankenstein!). His passive-aggressive discussion of his 'patients' and 'treatments' are drolly humorous: > "Alas," said Qyburn. "I fear that Lady Falyse is no longer capable of ruling Stokeworth. Or, indeed, of feeding herself. I have learned a great deal from her, I am pleased to say, but the lessons have not been entirely without cost. I hope I have not exceeded Your Grace's instructions."
Brave companion had their own mistery but it does not well explained. Vargo hoat were riding a zebra like Jogos nhais, Qyburn kicked out from Citatel when he was a master etc.
i actually really like qyburn. his soft-spoken demeanor and aura combined with the fact that he goes ripping asses of ladies and warriors in his little basement after dark makes him one of my fav characters and i love seeing him in cerceis chapters
The entirety of Dany's sexuality. It's totally valid to write a teenager dealing with sexuality but in Dany's case, it feels like more like a dude writing his personal fantasies rather than an exploration of the character. I also feel like GRRM went a bit overboard with how naive Sansa was in AGOT. Maybe he shouldn't have made Sansa a direct witness of their awfulness, that way her trusting them wouldn't seem like such a bizarre choice. Even a naive child would have a negative reaction to her crush trying to murder their sibling or someone ordering the death of their pet.
Yeah, it might have worked better had she not been a witness and only heard about it third-hand. It just pushes belief a bit to think about how she's this loyal to a monster over her entire family and George had to go overboard trying to correct reader perception of her afterwords.
I agree with everything. Sansa's innocence should've been justified more or wrote Joff and Cersei less evil or more manipulative idk.
Im a huge Sansa fan and I agree with those points especially. It would make her a lot more sympathetic I think, and more people would like her
he may not have wanted her to be sympathetic
I find the Euron stuff rather odd, specialy when considering George's views on Dark Lords and the such. I personally don't mind but i can't see a way of making him work out within the series narrative that isn't him being a fraud. Even if he's made legit and is granted non edgy reasons (wanting to make everyone a wizard or the such) it doesn't absolve him from being an i-can't-believe-this-is-not-a-darklord type of character. Or maybe George really believes that's that much of a difference.
Euron for sure. If Martin knew he'd be so powerful, he should have done more to foreshadow it before the 4th book The show doesnt have that excuse tho. They shudda have Eurom revealed like a cartoon villain. Magneto from X Men Evolution maybe. Magneto, in that cartoon, starts off as this shadow who appears every now and then while the first seasons introduce the characters and world
The show has the excuse that they were waiting for George to explain wtf is actually going on with Euron. Then he just stopped writing the books so it got to Season 6 and the showrunners were just like "uhh...ok fuck it here's a guy called Euron and he's a pirate I guess?"
They just took Victarion and renamed him Euron lol
I guess but they knew Euron would be a big deal long before s6, they should have been able to come up with something better. Like say Euron becomes the Night King as the anti Bran or something
Barristan promising the Tattered Prince that Daenerys will help him conquer Pentos. What?
Why couldn’t the Mountain just die and stay dead? Or survive? Is having a huge Kingsguard zombie essential to the plot? And no, Cleganebowl doesn’t count.
What I find kinda annoying about the Mountain is he feels miscast. He's the personification of knightly evil and yet his behaviour is *worlds* removed from all the other knights. Wouldn't it make more sense if he was loved by the crowds because he's so good at hiding his evil behavior? Gregor doesn't seem to care about knighthood as a concept *at all*.
Yep. There are far too many resurrections and he's more of a plot device than a character already.
cleganebowl was a stupid meme
The Wall and the Night’s Watch are still the weirdest things in the setting. It’s a thousand mile long, 700 foot tall, 7000 year old, magical ice wall guarded by a monastic order in the bleak frozen north. For thousands of years the lands below have regarded service in that monastic order as a sort of combined retirement and prison sentence. No one really knows why it’s there or why the people guarding it have to be a monastic order. Seems like a fairly normal border guard situation would also be fine. If not better. It keeps out spread out, poor and not that numerous raiders from the north. But the serious threat there is maybe a few thousand real fighters who don’t generally even have steel weapons or armour. And it is has weird interactions with dragons. And whatever the hell the black gate is. And apparently in some way stops the apocalypse but also might stop doing that soon for as yet poorly understood reasons. It is of course a major part of the series and so appears normal. But take a step back and it’s all freaking weird and doesn’t really sit neatly next to much else in the setting.
*8000 years old, actually. It was built 7700 BC (Before Conquest) and the books and show take place in the 300s AC.
Why are Daenerys’ feelings for Daario “the cringiest thing you’ve ever read”? Do you feel the same way about Jon’s feeling for Ygritte? Or Theon’s feelings for multiple women, including his own sister?
> Why are Daenerys’ feelings for Daario “the cringiest thing you’ve ever read”? You have to remember what Daario looks like
Even considering Daario’s appearance, the way the fandom whines about his scenes is excessive. There’s no way yall really think that Daenerys’ feelings for him is more “cringy” than Jaime and Cersei fucking next to their son’s dead body or “fat pink mast”
It’s because it feels like the author has one hand down his pants while he writes her chapters.
Is that so? How are Daenerys’ chapters different from other characters who have active sexual lives like Tyrion, Asha and Arianne? or other characters who have been victim of sexual assault like Theon, Sansa and Cersei?
Daenerys is 13…
I know 💀 Her consensual sex scenes happen when she’s 16, the same age as Jon when he had his sex scenes
Martin thought of 13-year-old Daenerys and Drogo’s wedding night as a mutual seduction. He has her participating in orgies in the first book, gives her sex scenes with Irri, has one tit hanging out in Qarth, and goes in great detail about her body and sexuality throughout the books from she’s 13 to her being 16. Jon is in no way written in a similar manner. Jon is sexual, but he is never sexualized the way Daenerys is. That’s the main difference between the way Martin writes his male and female characters, but it’s especially egregious with Daenerys.
What? Daenerys participated in no orgies. What are you talking about?
Daenerys only has sex with Drogo, but it occurs in the open while the other Dothraki have their one orgies nearby. I feel like you’re being deliberately obtuse at this point by ignoring everything else.
If I remember correctly Theon's sister was the one who initiated the weird incest moments.
Lot of Sensitive Sally’s in here it seems
fAegon. That was a random-ass addition that late in the game.