#‘it’s not like the religious zealots were portrayed as good people what’s the issue’

[francy-sketches]

Whenever people talk about lack of media literacy they always bring up people who think a character doing bad things=the author endorsing said bad things which are very annoying but I feel like we're ignoring the opposite, equally annoying side of the discourse who think if you criticize the inclusion/depiction of dark/sensitive topics in any way it’s bc you’re a dumb baby who can’t separate fiction from reality. and it's like no I know I’m not supposed to clap and cheer at violence against women I’m criticizing how much of it there is. Idiot

[beyondthecosmicvoid]

~Henry VII: The Red Dragon’s Unlikely Triumph~

Henry’s victory to success is simply amazing due to how far down he was in the line of succession -if he was at all! Of all the Tudors, and don’t get me wrong I love them all! He had the most adventurous life! His life is the stuff of movies and you’ll see why. Henry was born to Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond and Margaret Beaufort, heiress of Lancaster in Philippa Gregory’s words. But she was far removed from the line of succession! The Beauforts derived their name from a castle John of Gaunt had in his possession in English occupied French territory. John of Gaunt married three times, the last to his mistress Katherine Swybford. When they married their children were already grown up but by no means less ambitious. In an effort to ingratiate himself with the shifty king Richard II, John betrayed many of his comrades and persecuted anyone who stood against the king, his nephew. In return for his good services, Richard II legitimized all the Beauforts but that’s it. No say if they were inthe succession or not. Later after John died, his firstborn, Henry Bolingbroke ascended to the throne after he deposed Richard. He didn’t overturn Richard’s legislation but added a new restriction: The Beauforts were legitimate in the eyes of the law of men but due to their revious bastard status they were excluded from the line of succession. So bye-bye ambitions. By the time Henry IV’s grandson had issue, this changed altogether. Their descendants were still seen as progeny of a bastard branch (albeit legitimized) of the House of Lancaster but their status had changed overnight as support build around the Duke of York and his Neville relations (who also descended from the Beaufort line, but through the female line). Henry VI betrothed his young relation, Margaret Beaufort to his half brother Edmund Tudor. He was thirteen years her senior and while it was common for women to be married at a young age, people still found it disturbing because the groom didn’t wait for her to grow up. As soon as she was 12, he married her and the next year she was pregnant.Edmund and his brother Jasper had supported the Duke of York on various occasions but when the conflict escalated to war, the Tudor brothers sided with their kin. Edmund was captured during battle in late 1456 and died in attenpts to escape, possibly of sickness. Margaret , thirteen at a time, was already a young widow and expectant mother. She feared for her safety and the safety of her unborn child so she started a dangerous sojourn to Wales, to Pembroke castle where her brother in law resided. There, she gave birth to her only child, a boy she named Henry.Henry did not have a lonely childhood like some Ricardians and fiction writerss love to depict, nor was his mother a crazy fanatic. She was the same as the rest of the women. Religion was not separate, it was part of women’s lives, especially the adoration of female saints and the virgin Mary from whom women kept relics and images to pray to so they could be safely delivered or to protect their young. Of this latter cult, Henry became a firm follower, worshipping the image of the blessed mother with the same fervor as his mother. Likely, the little boy had childhood companions like David Owen, the illegitimate son of his grandfather by an unknown mistress. In spite of her second marriage, Margaret was allowed to visit her little boy and spend hours teaching him, but then her fortunes changed when Edward Earl of March forced the Lancastrians to flee and was declared king by popular acclaim in March 4 1461. Margaret and her new husband now had to curry favor with the new regime and to prove their loyalty, they had to let her son go. Edward saw Henry Tudor as a potential threat and to neutralize this threat he gave his custody to a loyal Yorkist, William Herbert and his wife Anne. They raised Henry as if he was one of their own, and he had the company of the new Earl’s other wards. But Henry knew that a prison made of gold was still a prison. One mistake from his mother, his guadians or worse, his runaway uncle and he would be dealt with.After the Lancastrian Readeption which only lasted a year, Jasper Tudor was forced to flee yet again. This time he took his nephew with him. The deaths of every Lancaster made Henry a potential threat. Every male Beaufort was also gone. Margaret had to let him go once more, this time she would not see him for another fourteen years.Bad weather brought them to the court of Francis II, Duke of Brittany. There he continued his education, by the time of Richard III’s accession, he enjoyed the company of many English exiles, among them the formidable and staunch Lancastrian loyalist -Earl of Oxford. It was in Brittanny, that December of 1483 after it was clear that the princes were gone for good, that he made a promise to marry Elizabeth of York and become King of England, thus uniting both bloodlines, the Houses of York and Lancaster into one.The next year and a half he spent his time planning, borrowing money and now in the court of France, currying favor with the French king. He had tried to invade England but failed. What made Henry think, the French king and others told him, he could succeed? But they didn’t know Henry. He was by now an educated, cosmopolitan young man who was also confident that god was on his side. On July 29 1485, Richard III gave the seal to Barrow, one of his officials to carry out his orders in the counties nearby and prepare for war.To be fair, Richard III was the most experienced soldier here. He had known the horrors of war since he was very little and his life parallels Henry’s but unlike the latter he had been participant in many military campaigns and had the entire North at his disposal. Henry had mercenaries, disatisfied English exiles, Edwardian Yorkists and most of Wales with him, but that was not enough to beat Richard’s armies. On August 7, Henry’s ships docked on Milford Haven. According to Fabyan when he disembarked he knelt and thanked god, reciting the Psalm 43: ‘Judica me deus & discern causam mean’. -Judge me, Oh god, and distinguish my cause. The following days he spent recruiting, some of Richard’s most staunch supporters defected to Henry, others refused to fight and just stood by as the two armies clashed on August 22. Others like his stepfather, chose to intervene in his favor only when the tide turned against him. After William Brandon, his standard bearer was struck down, Stanley and his brother with his armies charged down, and with their combined forced Richard’s was cut down. Richard, according to various sources screamed 'traitors’ and refused to go, instead seeking to confront Henry, but he never got to. The enemy got to him and he was forced down from his horse and minutes later, killed. It was a glorious day for Henry Tudor, now Henry VII. He had won against all odds, but the war was from over. Henry would face many pretenders and plots against him, his mother knew and she cried tears of fear, likely anticipating all her son would have to endure. He died in 1509 after twenty four years of reign.

In relation to Paul Atreides from DUNE MESSIAH onwards …

While DUNE, the first published novel of Frank Herbert set in the Dune universe is the book every reader should start with; DUNE MESSIAH is the most crucial one of ALL Dune novels because rather than reading like a science fiction novel or another inclusion into this space opera, it reads like a narrative tale that is chronicling events that already happened. For a history buff, this novel is the deciding book in the series that sets the tone for the rest of the saga. Additionally, aside from being a deconstruction of the hero mythos, it is also a critique of history. From the onset, the book starts with one of many historians being killed simply because he wanted to tell the truth. But obviously, Muad’Dib, the grand emperor Paul Atreides with his ongoing Jihad spread across the Known Universe can’t have that. So … what does he do? He starts rewriting the past, allowing only a few historians (who in reality are propagandists and religious zealots) to tell his version of history. Irulan is (thankfully) exempt from this. Despite being made fun of by the ‘I do not need to read books because thanks to the spice melange and the superior breeding program of the Bene-Gesserit I am a product of, I can access all the knowledge stored in my super evolved brain to keep feeding my ego’ crowd, she stays a true historian until the very end. She doesn’t agree with Paul Atreides or his other crazy fam, but slowly comes to realize that what they are doing (while terrible) needs to be done to free humanity of pre-destination and oblivion. And due to being understimated by the pretentious Lady Jessica, her husband’s concubine and true love, the Fremen Chani, and of course, Paul and his whole band of Jihadists, she gets to write down history as it truly transpires. But she does it in a way that makes him look less of a tyrant and more of a reluctant hero.

This historical treatment is the same kind of treatment that was given to the Tudor Dynasty starting from its very first monarch, HENRY VII. 

I long for the day that Henry VII is correctly portrayed on screen because the way that the Tudors have gone down in history is how the Atreides clan did in the Dune universe. For every history buff that has enjoyed Dune, I urge that likewise, Dune readers do a deep dive into Tudor history to further appreciate both fandoms and see how the two can be studied together and dissected. Currently, revisionist historians who want to restore Richard III’s reputation have not ended up doing that. Instead, they have swung the pendulum the other way. As DUNE MESSIAH teaches us (through Irulan’s writings and Alia’s observations), the best way to understand saviors and deified leaders is not by extolling or vilifying them. Rather, see them as individuals trapped within their time period who feel as though they are ahead of it, and have to do what they must because otherwise darkness will reign.

Paul and Henry Tudor started off as exiles. Their foes never expected them to beat the odds but they did. But part of the reason why they did is because of the element of prophecy. And I am not just talking about the whole Henry Tudor claimed to be the long lost descendant of Arthur Pendragon and what not. Edward IV and Richard III did that too (though it worked less for Richard). I am talking about the issue with the whole Welsh prophecies that supposedly predicted the rise of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Before he was born, a prophecy was sung that from his father’s line, the savior that the Welsh were hoping for would come. This prophecy in itself was a call back to a much older one which said that eventually one of the Welsh royal houses would rise to claim the English throne and unite all of the Isles. Well … Henry didn’t unite all of the British Isles but he did start the process when he married his eldest daughter Margaret to the King of Scots, James IV. Their descendants, from James VI of Scotland and I of England and Ireland, ruled all the British Isles.

In an interview, Frank Herbert said that he chose to take the direction of Paul Atreides and (especially) his son, Leto II’s stories in the way he did to caution about the danger of charismatic leaders who reach messiah or (in the case of Leto II) divine status. It’s not so much the power they possess or how evolved thy are that makes the Atreides so revered, it is their genius at how they present themselves and understand that the power of propaganda (be it religious, political or both) is the stronger force in the universe and what shapes human events. In studying the Tudors and Dune we learn that history is a collection of accepted events that are part factual, part propaganda, and part a reflection of the time period when they were written.

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 19

it’s 2021 now!! time for more transformers 

we start off w/a flashback showing tyrest retrieving ultra magnus’s body from the ship - and we get a look at magnus’s spark, which is the green color of a 0.1%er [eyes emoji]

tyrest punching magnus..... grrrrr leave my dad alone bastard man

‘the divided self’ what a good title 

rodimus is like listen man this is a lot for my poor thot brain to take in

in flashback land, we see tyrest immediately launch into a crazy person spiel about how he can and will edit the law as he sees fit to conform to the situation, because that doesn't seem like a blatant abuse of power or a huge conflict of interest or anything 

oooh the screen in the corner that says ‘thought warfare,’ I see that

oof, poor magnus. its gotta be rough to hear your boss rant about how bad at your job you are....especially bc this is right after overlord called magnus a joke and nearly killed him

its especially brutal bc as magnus says, his job is his life 

augh, I love the panel where the armor is falling off around minimus, and then the one where he’s holding the ultra magnus head...poetic 

its fascinating that there was an ‘original’ magnus who was an actual guy, and then tyrest chose to make him into this legacy symbol - I'm assuming the OG magnus had no say in this, and probably didn't even know that he was gonna become this lawman legacy figure

I do wanna know though - obviously everyone thought that ultra magnus was one dude, but how did the different guys wearing the armor deal w/that? like, did minimus have people coming up to him like ‘hey ultra magnus old buddy! remember when we fought those guys in that one place? good times!’ like, do they have to study up on the lives of the past armor wearers to prepare for the role of ultra magnus?

augh poor minimus, of course he’s been wondering about what happened with overlord after he was KO’d

oof, drift...I feel like minimus looks surprised and a little skeptical at the idea that drift was the one behind the entire overlord thing - which is interesting bc as we saw at the beginning of the story, he doesn't exactly trust drift, but it’s still pretty far-fetched that one person orchestrated the entire thing

tailgate :(

the concept of a load-bearer is SUPER cool, I love it so much

it also puts a much-needed limit on things - as in, there IS a limit to how much weight/mass a normal cybertronian frame can carry, which is why you don't see everybody upgrading to be Massive - bc they actually CANT

oof, the worst part is that tyrest is RIGHT, minimus essentially DID have a nervous breakdown after the war ended bc of the rigid way he views the world

mental health support is clearly in shambles for cybertronians, yikes. they literally have 1 therapist for their entire race, and he’s not even licensed anymore due to hipaa violations. what a mess

the ‘attention deflectors’ thing is so cool and clever and also a great explanation as to why ratchet or anyone else never said ‘hey wait a minute, you're actually a much smaller dude in a trench coat’ 

I love tailgate knowing all the stuff about the autobot code bc of magnus...my BOY

and THATS why minimus was asking about skids specifically earlier!

oh minimus, please don't put so much stock in tyrest being stable and resonable...

aaaand there's skids and swerve! brainstorm says it best - ‘because something unexpected hasn't happened for at least nine seconds.’ lmao ily brainstorm 

finally checking in w/whirl and cyclonus - god I love that. whirl asking cyclonus how many cons he killed and cyc is like psh I wasn't keeping count....................ok it was six

hhhhh cyclonus IS looking for a cure for tailgate, even though he told tg that there wasn’t anything to hope for....excuse me as I go be emo 

and now we flash over to the unethical medical conduct hell zone, where pharma is being weird and horny and ratchet is appropriately horrified 

I seriously love how unhinged pharma looks, the art & colors do such a good job conveying his feral energy 

ratchet has some massive dick energy for taunting pharma when he’s currently just a head and pharma has dual chainsaws for hands 

ugh, I love whirls speech about anger...and I feel like he really does see cyclonus as a peer, despite cyclonus wanting to kill him, which is why he tells cyclonus all of this 

I fuckgin love that cyclonus’s reaction to very suddenly getting stabbed thru the abdomen is to just glance down at the sword, looking mildly inconvenienced 

back over to ratchet - and at first its like oh wow I can’t believe pharma was stupid enough to let ratchet goad him into this contest....but then you see first aid and ambulon and its like UH OH this is gonna be BAD

the idea that getting sliced in half is no big deal for a cybertronian is wild

‘you're gonna let doctor djd cut us in half?’ yeahhhh that's an appropriate reaction, yikes

FUCKING LENGTHWAYS GOD

pharma you piece of shit

poor ambulon :( :( :( that's fucking brutal. amazing panel but....jesus

and like, to further my point from last issue’s liveblog - the fact that this very gore-y panel is okay, but swearing isn't...that's really funny honestly. I guess robo-gore is acceptable, while I'm guessing regular ole run of the mill human gore wouldn't be

then back to cyclonus, who is still looking only vaguely put out by the sword stuck right thru him

and then cyclonus just pulls it right out, which is a very bad idea for humans but probably not as big of a deal for big near-immortal alien robots

circle of light stuck in capitalistic urban hellscape cubicals 

poor skids, being asked to stand trial while having no idea what his crime is due to Big Amnesia 

OH SHITTTT I totally forgot that getaway shows up here

that is super clever though, with chromedome confusing the name ‘getaway’ with the concept ‘needing to escape’

cant believe tyrest is really dumb enough to tell minimus all his evil plans

BUT that means its time for some very important forged vs constructed cold lore

jro spelling ‘program’ as ‘programme’ made me remember when he said that he considers everyone on the lost light to be british, which is perhaps the least valid thing he’s ever said vhbghjsdbfjkhasbjk

the idea that they used the matrix - which is portrayed as kind of a holy object - in reproductive experiments is really interesting

AUGHHHHH this is all so good and interesting...im really fascinated w/this particular brand of like, alien robot racism/constructism/whatever you wanna call it - I feel like it does such a good job as a plot device, where many other ‘fantasy racism’ concepts from other franchises fail, bc there's not really a ‘human metaphor’ being used here (as far as I know/can tell) - as in, this isn't a thinly veiled metaphor for something that happened/could happen in human history

in fact, this type of bigotry (or w/e you wanna call it) isn't something that is even really possible in humans - I guess if there was a stigma against being born via ivf or something...? but there isn't, so there's no obvious real-world equivalent, which I take as a sign of good writing and worldbuilding - it makes the cybertronians feel more Real, bc of course they would have their own types of bigotry based off of completely different things than humans 

additionally - and this is crucial - tyrest is wrong: there’s no like, inherent moral corruption in cold constructed bots. there's no difference at all, other than method of construction. fantasy racism plotlines often flounder here, with the oppressors having a ‘valid reason’ for oppressing the oppressed, but tyrest is just operated on religious zealot bs and some biased science

like, dude, did you ever think that maybe there are other reasons why your trials only condemned cold constructed bots? like, maybe the trial itself was biased? or societal conditions were to blame? correlation is not causation, my dude, especially when the conclusion is ‘cold constructed bots are inherently SINNERS’ lmao 

like, tyrest rlly said ‘FUCK separation of church and state,’ huh

anyways I just think the whole cold construction vs forged thing is really interesting and well-done, and serves as a good precursor to the more fleshed-out functionism stuff we see later 

so tyrest is clearly off his rockers w/the whole drilling thing - dude, you accidentally gave yourself a lobotomy, okay - but I find it kinda funny that he’s right about a lot of that stuff he said at the end, about primus and the guiding hand and stuff being real 

cyclonus saying ‘tailgate and the others’...I see you, man, I see you

also cyclonus looks fine now??? didn't he just get stabbed??? 

ah, tyrest sprinkling a little light genocide onto his plan to find salvation. nice, dude!

MINIMUS NOOOOOOOOO

‘fully deserved’ SHUT UP BIIIIITCH

poor minimus is taking a lot of Ls this arc, geez

oof, great issue! again, as usual....I loved the lore we got this issue, its so interesting...and some good character stuff too. I love minimus, I feel like he’s gonna be my fav this readthru; my first read my fav was brainstorm, second readthru was whirl, and I feel like its minimus/magnus this time. I just love his character arc...

hype af for more B) 

[tomjopson]

hey that lt irving, you know him?

Irving is such a fascinating character for me in The Terror. But. It’s taken me like an entire month to reconcile book!Irving vs show!Irving.

I adored Irving in the book. He was, hands down, my favorite character. I was invested; I wanted him to be happy and succeed. His death in the book was very abrupt, and lemme tell you, I sent some all-caps texts to some buddies because they had to know how Mad how I was. 

(this is going to get longwinded, so the rest is under the cut)

Disclaimer: I read Dan Simmons’s book before I watched the show. I know there’s some beef in the fandom with the book, but I enjoy both book and show for different reasons but especially for how they complement each other.

Because I am an impatient person, I spoiled a lot of the show because I was curious about how the show handled things differently, what actor played who, etc etc etc. So, I was confused by all the religion-based jokes on Irving’s character since that was never a part of his book counterpart.

Then I watched the show. And I immediately hated Irving. 

Let me try to explain why his douchier moments really rubbed me the wrong way.

1) His book relationship with Silna is completely gone in the show. Which is totally fine because I love the autonomy that the show producers consciously gave Silna by updating her story arc; plus the Goodsir and Silna interactions were a nice nod to historical trivia (Goodsir’s dictionary) and just super sweet, period.

I was disappointed that they removed this relationship from the show, because Irving’s ridiculous starry-eyed fascination with Silna was adorable. Like, he was awkward, and she just tolerated this bumbling Englishman who was trying his best??? The scene that really stuck out to me was when Irving searched for her, found her in the igloo, and took to her a gift of the marmalade -- that he painstakingly saved for her over time - and the handkerchief. His delight at her reaction (holding the handkerchief to her cheek and smiling at its texture to the handkerchief) was so sweet, which of course was followed up by her returning the same handkerchief to Irving’s body following his murder (I’m still crying about that, okay). 

2) His religious zeal was not a part of his character in the book at all, but obviously, played a pretty big role in his tv persona. (second disclaimer: I have personal issues with uber religious people because of my own past, so that was automatically one mark against him) But, this religious fervor of his made his interactions with, say, Hickey a lot more ominous. As well as the implied subtext that he might have said something to Crozier about the sodomy which resulted in the “dirtiness” charge being tacked onto Hickey’s punishment.

Book!Irving did not do this. At all. He wouldn’t. Hickey’s line in the show about how Irving is a man who fears chaos is the most accurate description of Irving as he was portrayed in the book. (so, honestly, part of me thinks that show!Irving didn’t tattle on Hickey either, but that’s a topic for another meta rant) If anything, book!Irving was really uncomfortable around Hickey and might have been a tiny bit scared of him.

3) JFC THE SCENE WITH MANSON COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GHOSTS. That wasn’t even Irving in the book!

So, much like giving Silna her autonomy which removed the Irving/Silna relationship, the show producers also changed the Hickey/Manson dynamic with Hickey/Gibson. Again, a smart choice because it removed a sexually/emotionally abusive relationship. 

But it made Irving’s I’m going to order you scene with Manson really mean. Irving didn’t had any negative interaction with Manson, so his weird flex of “I’m an officer, and you are a seaman paid to do what you are told to” feels a lot of bullying. Like, does this guy just wander the lower decks looking for infractions??? Because that it is how it felt.

--

So, that pretty much covers the basics of what I disliked when I first watched the show. I’m sad to say that I dismissed a lot about show!Irving because of my first impressions. Upon rewatching the show a couple times, I have warmed up considerably to Ronan Raftery’s portrayal of Irving. 

His religiosity makes him a tragic character in that 1) he still is trying his best but 2) it makes him come across as very uptight and unforgiving. There is a subtext when he confronts Hickey later about “seducing” Gibson that everything Irving is saying to Hickey sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself than Hickey. Now, who knows then what Irving is running from? But there is definitely some spiritual self-flagellation going on that is, in turn, making him seem harsh to the men under him.

His harshness may also be his manner of trying to be a good officer. He only acts that way around the lesser ranked men. The rest of the time, he seems quiet, a little sweet (his interaction with Jacko! oh my god!), and very much a young man excited to be a part of a groundbreaking, scientific expedition.

Lastly, his final scene with the Inuit family (while greatly condensed in the show for brevity’s sake) is the closest we get to seeing Irving the man. Not Irving the sailor, not Irving the officer, not even Irving the zealot. Obviously, he’s desperate for food and help at this point. But I also like to believe that some of the earnestness of book!Irving is still in show!Irving, and that is why he is quick to reach out to the Inuit family. Why he doesn’t let himself be blinded by English racial prejudice, and why he introduces (with his voice cracking, ugh my heart) himself with his first name. John. Just John.

--

ANYWAY, IF YALL WANTED A HEARTFELT AND LOGICAL CONCLUSION, I DON’T GOT ONE. This is the extent of what my brain can handle right now, so please take my meandering thought process with a grain of salt. I was just thinking a lot about Irving, and wanted to explain (maybe just to myself, who knows) why I didn’t initially like him but have come to appreciate his show adaption as well.

[snow-storm27]

Game of Thrones, or, How to Mismanage Your IP

           This has been coming for a long, long time… Now that it’s over, it’s time to address what I feel went wrong with Game of Thrones.

In April 2011, HBO premiered what would become one of, if not the, most influential television program of the 2010s: Game of Thrones.  Based on the book series A Song of Ice and Fire by author George R. R. Martin, the series began as a gritty, grimy, medieval fantasy drama, rooted mostly in the feudal politics of managing money, conventional weapons of war, arranged marriages, and the ever-present threat of backstabbing noblemen.  However, the show has consistently had underpinnings of a far higher fantasy, with rumors of zombie hordes in the far north and legends of historical, but now extinct, dragons.  As the seasons went on, these two fantastical elements began to slowly take center stage.  In the finale of season one, dragons were reborn into the world, and after four years of once-a-season appearances, the nefarious threat of the White Walkers took center stage in an episode late in season five, as they prepared their army of the undead to mount a threat against the living.

The show slowly progressed from a low fantasy drama about politics and conventional warfare to a high fantasy struggle of the living versus the dead, aided by dragons and giants and other supernatural forces on either side.  However, despite the increase in both budget and viewership, Game of Thrones has reached its end not with a triumphant bang but with a dull whimper.  Why has this happened?  Three major themes of the development of the show have ultimately contributed to its downfall: adaptational changes, overtaking the source material, and poor treatment of minorities within the show.

I.                Changes Made in Adaptation

As with any adaptation of a book, or any other work for that matter, certain changes must be made.  George R. R. Martin is quoted as saying, “I knew that, when writing a book, you’re not constrained by a budget.  You’re not constrained by what you can do, in terms of the special effects technology. You’re not limited to any particular running time.”  He is correct.  In his book series, he describes people of fantastically large stature, and creatures beyond the scope of reality, and often he describes creatures and events beyond the scope of what HBO’s CGI budget can pay for.  While his written creations may be as different and varied as he chooses, two major CGI creations have dominated the show: dragons, and direwolves.

The dragons are largely faithfully recreated.  They are the symbol of House Targaryen, amazing beasts rendered in picture-perfect, hyper realistic computer graphics.  They grow incrementally each season, mandating new art and new computer models and more money to render with every passing year. Starting as newborns the size of housecats in the final moments of the first season, the dragons are the size of aircraft throughout the final season.  These creatures have been stated as a major draw of the show, especially to casual fans and fans who have not read the books.  The dragons are huge, dramatic creatures, and whenever they appear, they dominate the action, flying and breathing fire and generally creating a spectacle.

Conversely, the direwolves are treated as an afterthought at best.  They are kept offscreen most of the time, are seemingly forgotten about when not absolutely essential, and have been largely killed off to save money in the CG budget, but more on that in a minute.  This really smacks of poor analysis of the books, is the issue.  The Starks in the novels are subconsciously creatures known as wargs, or, humans that can psychically link with other creatures, feel their feelings, use their senses, and other related abilities.  Each Stark gets a direwolf at the beginning of the story, episode one in the show.  These creatures bond with their owners and allow the protagonists to develop their own psychic powersets.  There is no hint of this in the show, except in the oft-forgotten Bran storyline from the early seasons.  Dragons get to be large and in charge, yet the direwolves, described as nearly the size of horses in the books, are relegated to being somewhat-large domestic dogs in the show, before being killed off.

Part of the tragedy of the final season is that the last living direwolf that has stayed with his master, Jon Snow’s wolf Ghost, is summarily told to leave and head north with Tormund Giantsbane, who has never interacted with Ghost before, at least not in any measurable capacity.  Jon sends him away without so much as a pat on the head because he was too hard to animate, and Jon never really bonded with him. Ghost has been a fan favorite for years, with every second of screen time met with joyous reactions from the fanbase. And yet, he gets sent to a farm upstate by our ostensible hero.  It’s hard not to feel that the direwolves as a whole were completely useless and wasted. They are a thematic tie to our heroes’ home of Winterfell and a reminder of better days gone by.  In the show, they are a liability to be ignominiously killed off for shock value.

Speaking of killed off for shock value, how many characters die in the show before their time in the books?  Around season five, this became less of a rare occurrence, and more of the norm.  Ser Barristan Selmy, a point of view character with a compelling arc in Dance with Dragons and an actor who is a fan of the books, gets killed off in season five episode four in a confusing back alley brawl that doesn’t even happen in the books.  King Stannis Baratheon, a major character in both book and show, first kills his daughter, who is still alive in the books, leading to the suicide of his wife, who is still alive in the books, and he is summarily executed by a character who isn’t even in that location in the books.  At the end of season six, after the time covered in the books, Queen Cersei blows up an entire cathedral full of about a dozen named characters, all of whom are still alive in the books (every Tyrell except for Olenna, Lancel Lannister, the High Sparrow, the entire Sparrow movement). These are merely the more dramatic deaths that occur in the show but not the books.  I didn’t even touch the bizarre treatment of Dorne in the show, the characters that were excluded despite being key focuses of the plot (such as Arianne and Quentyn Martell, Victarion and Aeron Greyjoy, and Young Griff), entire plots that are cut and pasted with different names.  For a more complete list of dead characters, see http://mentalfloss.com/article/65078/dead-game-thrones-tv-characters-who-are-still-alive-books.

Deaths and direwolves are not the only changes made in the process of adaptation, but oftentimes the characterizations of the characters must be changed to better fit the narrative told on the screen.  However, these changes rarely make characters more compelling, no.  They often just serve to make characters either more aggressive or less likeable, seemingly at random.  Brienne of Tarth is a devout knightly figure in the books.  She is a point of view chapter in Feast for Crows, and one of her chapters contains what is arguably the thesis statement of the entire series: War is Hell.  It’s hardly an uncommon theme of fiction set during wartime, and author George R. R. Martin was himself a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.  It is baked into the books that war is never a good thing.

In the show, Brienne of Tarth is an aggressive, seemingly areligious bully.  She swings her sword and rather cruelly pushes around her squire, Podrick, under the guise of tutelage.  Setting aside the fact that Podrick is a child in the books and an adult sexual fanatic in the show, itself a confusing twist of the character, Brienne is charged, as a knight, to protect and defend the weak.  She seemingly traded off her obligation to help those weaker than herself for additional combat training because she gets into a lot of fights that she does not face in the book.  She fights the Hound at the end of season four, gets into a high-speed chase a few episodes later against Littlefinger’s men, and by the end of season five she beheads Stannis after a battle at Winterfell before smugly rubbing it in Stannis’s friends’ faces in season six.  She is rude and arrogant where her book counterpart is kind and just and faithful. Brienne is hardly the only character to undergo such changes.

Brienne’s chosen king in season two is Renly Baratheon, younger brother of Stannis and Robert Baratheon.  He was made more charismatic and sympathetic in the show, less aggressive and more progressive. This had the effect of making the Tyrells, a rather power-hungry house in the books, into a group of kind angels in the show.  A scene was added to showcase the charity of Margaery Tyrell in season three, because the audience was supposed to like them more.  Conversely, making Renly nicer and more likeable made Stannis, his killer, far less likeable. Setting aside the fact that Stannis is in both works for far longer than Renly, incentivizing writers to make him a more tolerable character, Stannis’s positive character traits are stripped from him.  Where he was a caring, if emotionally stunted, father in the books, in the show he is downright abusive and murderous.  In the books, Stannis’s relationship with religion is tenuous at most, but in the show he is portrayed as a zealot.  Stannis ultimately dies a child-murdering religious fanatic, humiliated in battle after being deceived by a foreign temptress with a foreign religion, itself a complex and uncomfortable situation that will be discussed in more depth later. Stannis’s character had to die so that Renly’s could live for all of four episodes in season two.

The show’s relationship with religion is very lopsided as well. Religious characters, such as Brienne, Sansa, Davos, and Jon, often lose their religion in the show where they are still devout in the books.  Meanwhile, religious organizations and priests are treated as insane or villainous, despite their more nuanced portrayals in the books.  Examples include Stannis, who goes from nearly an atheist to a fanatical champion of R’hllor, the Sparrows, who go from a group of concerned albeit religious citizens to violent puritanical moralists with a homophobic streak, and the Hound, who in the books is implied to become a silent monk who finds peace, but in the show is incited back to violence, with an implied message that “real men” are violent, and peaceful religion is namby-pamby kid’s stuff.  George R. R. Martin is not a religious man, but he handles the subject with far more nuance and a wider array of perspectives than the show does.  It would be easy to place the entirety of the blame in the hands of D. B. Weiss and David Benioff, the showrunners.  I wouldn’t say that they are entirely to blame, but I would say that these major changes in theme, character, and sensitivity in the show can largely be attributed to the two of them.

Really, it’s unfortunate.  The books handle a great deal of subject matter with care and sensitivity, but the show seems unable to deal with the inherently morally ambiguous work without drawing hard lines between the “good guys” and the “bad guys”.  Renly is Good, Stannis is Evil.  Religion of any kind is Bad.  Tyrion Can Do No Wrong.  Stripping the subject matter of its nuance leaves the whole experience feeling hollow and frankly lesser than both the books and other dramas on television. It’s honestly sad to see such a rich, developed world be reduced to such moral absolutism.

II.              Passing the Books

It was inevitable that the show would, one day, pass the books. Shortly after the release of the first season, the fifth book in the series was published, all the way back in 2011. Since then, eight seasons have come and gone, and the story of the show has finished.  Meanwhile, the last book published is still the fifth, Dance with Dragons.  The next book, The Winds of Winter, is still some distance away, but its plot, as well as its distant successor, A Dream of Spring, has been loosely adapted by the show.  Very, very loosely.

While some early story beats of Winds could be reasonably predicted, from season six onwards, the show went off of an outline from George and the creativity of the show’s writers. It could be easy to presume that Jon Snow, seemingly heralded as a chosen hero in the books, will return from the dead in the next book.  Similarly, the general story of the White Walkers marching south and attacking the living could be predicted.  Daenerys heading to Westeros could be predicted.  These are long-foreshadowed story threads that would be disappointing to see unfulfilled.

However, once the show ran out of material to adapt directly from the books, the writing suffered.  Twists began to appear almost for their own sake, such as Ramsay suddenly killing his own father, and Ramsay killing Osha, and Ramsay killing Rickon. Honestly, the show got way more mileage out of Ramsay than the character deserved.  Brutal scenes of horrific torture and death can only go on for so long, but not with Ramsay around I suppose.  Meanwhile, characters went from developed people to stock tropes almost immediately.  Sansa stopped being an empathetic and caring young woman and she became a frosty ice queen, mistrustful of everyone around her.  Bran stopped being a sweet little kid with psychic powers and he became an emotionless robot, taken from scene to scene to exposit new information.  Arya stopped being a sweet, if misguided, girl and became an autonomous shape-shifting mass murderer.  Jon stopped being a wise, calm commander and became an easily duped and often ignored loser.  And those are just the Stark kids!

Otherwise brilliant Tyrion has not made any good plans since season four. He gets passed across Essos in season five, then he fails to preserve the peace in Meereen in season six, fails to launch a successful campaign against Cersei in season seven, and jeopardizes the more successful campaign against Cersei again in season eight. His wight-capture plan was an unmitigated failure in season seven.  It was an attempt to gain support from Cersei that never came, it ended in the death of Viserion, and it seemed to only exist to set up the scene in the Dragonpit where all our big actors shared some screen time for half an episode.  And yet, despite his constant failure, Tyrion is still propped up by Sansa and Jon and Jorah as a brilliant mind with outstanding potential.  He shouldn’t lose his position as Daenerys’s Hand because he’s still smart, despite all evidence to the contrary.  It feels that Tyrion’s sudden loss in brain cells is due in part to no more existing book material to use that demonstrate his genius.  His failed plan in season six is remarkably similar to Barristan’s book five chapters, which I guess they needed to steal to give Peter Dinklage something to do for another year.

Jaime’s book arc deals primarily with him falling out of love with Cersei, and it happens across the end of book three and book four.  This arc is stretched out and seemingly ignored across seasons four, five, six, and seven, until finally he leaves her in the finale of season seven, only to turn right back around and head back to King’s Landing again to die in her arms, negating his entire emotional journey four episodes later.  There are superficial similarities, such as his sojourn to Riverrun in season six, but a story is more than its locations and characters.  Jaime’s arc is really bizarre in the show.  He seemingly recognizes Cersei’s mistreatment of him early in season four, but then just kind of ignores it or puts up with it for four more seasons of the show.  That’s not even getting into the change from his and Cersei’s consensual sex scene in the book (gross though it may be) into an act of rape in the show that the showrunners, writers, and directors can’t seem to agree is or isn’t rape, which is utterly baffling and sickening.  Jaime’s arc in the books is about self-acceptance, coping with physical disability, and recognizing bad relationships.  In the show Jaime just sort of doesn’t do any of those things. He never feels absolution about his messy past, he seemingly becomes a competent swordsman lefthanded over a couple of sparring sessions, and his recognition of Cersei’s abuse is just muddled by his own horrible treatment of her.

I feel that the character who suffered worst due to lack of available book material though is Daenerys.  Daenerys is established across the beginning of her arc as a liberator and a revolutionary.  She’s an inspiration to all around her, the Mother of Dragons and Breaker of Chains. She frees slaves, deals with harsh consequences of complex political maneuvering, accepts her role as potential ruler of a continent and does her best to become worthy of that title.  The last book ended with her having visions in the Dothraki Sea as she embraces her heritage as a conqueror.  A similar scene ends season five for her, as she is captured by Dothraki.  Since then, she has gone on to return to Vaes Dothrak, she killed the khals, she claimed all of the present Dothraki, she spontaneously learned how to ride Drogon, she returned to Meereen, handed it over to Daario for some reason, and she headed to Westeros.  She then sniped at Jon Snow for a while before apparently falling in love with him, saving him from a horrible wight-capturing plan, saving Winterfell from an invasion of zombies, and promptly turning evil just because the people of the North like Jon more than her, just so she could become a bait-and-switch final boss so a man could swoop in and be the real hero.  Theories abound that she would become her father, a Mad Queen, so to speak, in the books, but little evidence has been offered for that. Furthermore, several changes in other arcs have made hers play out differently.

In the books, Tyrion is allied for a time with a young man named Young Griff who claims to be Aegon the Sixth, son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell, who was supposedly killed as an infant during the Sack of King’s Landing during Robert’s Rebellion.  He claims that that baby was traded out, and he is the heir to the Iron Throne.  He leads the Golden Company, and it is somewhat anticipated that he will somehow supplant Cersei in the forthcoming Winds of Winter, and he will likely come into conflict with Daenerys when she lands on Westeros.  And they’ll have elephants in the book too, unlike the show. Tyrion is abandoned by the Golden Company when he is captured by Jorah, and later they join a sellsword company near Meereen as a battle is about to begin, but that is neither here nor there. The point is, the Aegon plot got split a few different ways.  Tyrion did not support Aegon, but Daenerys.  Young Griff is not Aegon, but instead Jon Snow is for some reason, so Daenerys comes into conflict with him.  And the Golden Company that Daenerys will be expected to defeat is in Cersei’s hands, not Aegon’s.

Aegon’s storyline is long and complex, changing many presuppositions about the backstory, as well as affecting many characters in the present.  The Dornish story in the books largely deals with him as well, and his removal from the show’s narrative further makes the Dornish subplot irrelevant.  This large removal has radically altered large chunks of the narrative as it effects the characters, the overall tone and themes of the story, and it thoroughly robs Jon, Daenerys, and Tyrion, ostensibly the main three characters, of any semblance of whatever their future plot in the books may be to compensate for this excision.  Cersei must become hyper-competent, somehow securing more money for the Iron Bank in order to net the Golden Company as a reserve army out of nowhere.  Jon post-resurrection pivots into first filling out Stannis’s book role of recapturing Winterfell from the Boltons before seemingly completing his own arc of stopping the army of the dead, only to pivot once more into becoming Aegon, the highly revered prophesied king of Westeros who comes into conflict with Daenerys.  It’s just a mess and running out of book material really caused the writing to have to bend over backwards to attempt to look like the books while completely losing the characters and motivations and relationships that made the show one of the most successful on television.

I’ll admit to being a book fan first, but the show suffered most when it was divorced from its subject matter.  With no real material to draw from, the show just circled the drain in season six, redoing or reintroducing new arcs for old characters.  Jaime’s trip to Dorne tried to combine his arc from Feast for Crows with the Dorne arc from the same book, but it didn’t work, so season six sent him to Riverrun because it looked like the book.  They hadn’t done the Kingsmoot yet, so that went into season six, despite having far less gravitas and far less significance.  (As an aside, Euron is the ultimate wild card in the books, a pirate warlock bent on world domination, and yet he’s just Cersei’s lapdog/bootycall in the show, which is depressing.)  Stannis didn’t take Winterfell, so they gave it to Jon.  It is sort of expected that Cersei will destroy King’s Landing with wildfire in the books, but that would mean no conflict in the South for Daenerys, so I guess she just blows up Baelor’s Sept because it is superficially similar to something in the books.  Ultimately, these hollow reimaginings of events from the books just serve to cheapen the narrative for book readers and muddle otherwise interesting arcs from the show.  It would have almost been better if the show had fully committed to being fan fiction after season four or so.

However, there remains one more damning mark against the show, the real elephant in the room.

III.            Minorities in Game of Thrones

The worst-kept secret about Game of Thrones is that it treats its nonwhite, LGBT, and especially female characters horribly.  As a disclaimer, I do not claim that all shows must aspire to some fictitious degree of “wokeness”, or else it is a bad show by any stretch of the imagination. I think that for conflict’s sake, all characters must in some way face compelling obstacles that they must overcome in order to have any semblance of a plot.  However, over time, certain patterns begin to develop in the show that leaves one suspecting some implicit biases of the showrunners.

Persons of color in the show suffer disproportionately compared to white characters.  By the end of the show, the only living character who isn’t white is Grey Worm, a castrated soldier who is a former slave.  In addition, his love interest, with whom he was one of the most stable and emotionally balanced couples in the show, is brutally and seemingly randomly killed off mere episodes prior to the finale.  It was questionable that Euron’s fleet would randomly capture one person who happened to be the only black woman in the cast, and then kill her and only her that same episode.

A single episode prior, during the Battle of Winterfell (like, the third or fourth one in the show, the one with the zombies), the entire Dothraki army is killed offscreen.  An entire legion of ethnically diverse characters is killed to demonstrate how intimidating the wights are, I guess.  Or maybe, they were okay all along, because some Dothraki are just kind of at King’s Landing two episodes later.  The writing was crazy inconsistent in the final season.  In any event, it kind of makes Daenerys’s arc in Essos largely pointless if her armies of ethnic soldiers are just used as cannon fodder for one mildly interesting, dimly lit, shot, and then the remainder are shown pillaging the terrified, white, populace later on.

Meanwhile, Daenerys’s arc smacks of white savior tropes.  Setting aside the racially dubious shot from season three where the blindingly white Daenerys is raised up by a very nonwhite crowd in adoration, it was never made clear in the books whether the peoples of Essos were darker skinned or not.  In a show where one’s bloodline and the purity thereof is of paramount importance to many of the major characters, racial sensitivity in casting should have been a higher priority.  Daenerys’s entire arc, and the sympathies of the audience, change dramatically if Daenerys is supposed to be a liberator of the oppressed, but she is presented as merely a white savior bringing civilization to the backwards and savage brown people.  Aside from not representing the books and not playing well on television in the 2010s, Daenerys looks like a monster because she is constantly at odds with the only minorities in the cast.  She seems almost like a white supremacist, dictating that it is her right to rule due to her family’s heritage.  Having a startlingly white woman with pale hair announce to her black former slaves that she is the only person with the right to rule looks really racially insensitive.

Also in her arc, Xaro Xhoan Daxos in Qarth is not a black man in the books.  He is also not dead in the books, nor did he spontaneously steal her dragons in the books. While that change in story may be entirely coincidental, the fact that a major character’s plot was changed to feature a sneaky, greedy black man instead of a kind, albeit self-interested white man is suspect.  The fact that that man dies as a result of the change raises further eyebrows.

Across the sea, Areo Hotah is changed from a white man to a black man.  He is heralded as a tremendously successful warrior in the books.  In the show he is killed without a chance to demonstrate any skills other than standing around looking intimidating, which feels stereotypical of a black man.  Meanwhile, the other Dornish folks are also distinctly not white, and they are all killed in the adaptation as well.  Oberyn suffers the same grisly fate as his book counterpart, but Doran is unceremoniously killed despite being a master-class schemer in the books. Meanwhile, his daughter and son, Arianne and Quentyn Martell, have their subplots extricated entirely due in part to the removal of Young Griff, while his other son Trystane is also randomly killed on a boat in a scene that is played for laughs.  His killers, the similarly Dornish Sand Snakes and their mother Ellaria Sand are brutally murdered on-screen by Euron and Cersei, who isn’t even near them in the books.

It would be easy to pass this off as mere coincidence.  After all, people of all colors and backgrounds die all the time in Game of Thrones.  However, something I find interesting is that as Game of Thrones was winding down, Weiss and Benioff pitched a series to HBO about what would have happened if the Confederacy had won the Civil War.  While interesting as a thought experiment, it feels strange that creators with such little regard for racial sensitivity wanted to cover such an inherently racial subject as that for their next project.  It has seemingly been dropped in favor of their Star Wars trilogy, but I remain skeptical.  These creators have inspired little confidence in their treatment of minorities, which is deeply troubling and will render the show very difficult to enjoy for any length of time in the future.

Next on the list is the show’s poor treatment of LGBT characters. This is a little less prevalent, but no less obvious.  There have not been many prominent LGBT characters in the show.  Beginning in season one, Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell are gay.  The very next season Renly dies and Loras hits on his also-gay squire.  His squire then turns him in to the show-only Sparrow Inquisition in season five who, only in the show, have a tremendous hatred for gay people.  Loras spends the next two seasons in chains, largely offscreen, then he is humiliated at a religious trial before being incinerated by Cersei.  So, yeah.  Our gay men main characters either die or betray each other to religious inquisitions. Not awesome.

In season four, we are introduced to Oberyn Martell.  In the books, his bisexuality is rather implicit, but in the show he is introduced in a brothel, attempting to recruit some mixed-gender company for himself and his paramour, Ellaria Sand.  Already the show falls into stereotypes about the promiscuity and near infidelity of bisexuals, but I guess both of them are into it, so it’s not so bad.  Oberyn dies in the books in about the same way he dies in the show, which is fair enough for an adaptation.

However, then Ellaria briefly hooks up with Yara Greyjoy in season seven.  Yara had demonstrated her interest in women in season six, but it all felt rather forced, as if the depiction of a woman’s romantic or sexual interest in another woman was for show, in order to titillate the audience.  It would hardly be the first time the show used the female body as an excuse to excite a presumably male audience.  In any event, the very scene after Ellaria and Yara get together, Yara is captured by her uncle while two of Ellaria’s children are brutally killed before her eyes.  Ellaria and her third child are also captured, then poisoned and left to die in front of each other in the next episode.

There are no transgender characters in Game of Thrones.

Olenna Tyrell and Tywin Lannister share a scene in season three in which Olenna insinuates that it is a natural part of life to experiment with one’s sexuality.  She implies that Tywin is somehow weird or abnormal for never even considering some homosexual experience in his life.  Tywin is astonished by her suggestion.  Due to the show’s framing of the Tyrells as a more heroic house than the Lannisters, sympathies should theoretically be with Olenna.  However, the show falls pretty hard on the side of Tywin.  By the end of the show, the only character with any same-sex attraction left alive is Yara, who is sexually promiscuous, aggressive, refuses to truly disavow the rapacious practices of the Ironborn, and is left unattached romantically at the end of the show.  All the other characters have died, often gruesomely and on-screen.  The show, which prided itself on being subversive and different, instead seemingly gives everyone a heteronormative, socially acceptable ending, presuming they live.

The discussion of LGBT and nonwhite characters pales in comparison to the utter failure of the show with regard to its treatment of women, however. The show’s gross depiction of repeated, ongoing sexual violence directed towards women in particular is frankly disgusting, and it spans all the way back to the very fist episode of the show. On her wedding day, Daenerys is raped by Khal Drogo.  In the book, the matter is a little more complicated at the very least.  By modern jurisprudence, it’s not like Daenerys could consent at all, as she is a minor in the book, but at least she has some small say in the matter.  In the book, Daenerys and Drogo certainly do not get off on the right foot, but Drogo doesn’t rape her at least.

Also in the first episode, Tyrion is shown cavorting with some sex workers, clearly put in the show to mainly introduce Tyrion’s dwarfism, but secondarily to titillate the audience.  The show continues to use the female form to distract from large amounts of exposition to such an extent that critics coined the word “sexposition” in order to describe the sheer number of sex scenes used to accent plot information. The entire setting of Littlefinger’s brother practically exists to convey information about plot while enticing casual fans with nudity.  Everyone’s motives were revealed here: Littlefinger, Oberyn, Tyrion, Tywin, even Varys, a man who categorically cannot engage in sexual intercourse.

The use of the female body to convey information to the audience is entirely inequitable.  The number of times male genitalia is on screen can be counted on one’s hands, and there would be fingers left over.  Furthermore, the male body is not used in the same way, as a tool to excite the audience.  In fact, the preference seems to be for male genitals to be used to shock or disgust the audience rather than anything else.  Hodor’s prosthetic penis and the Braavosi actor checking himself for warts is about as far from titillating as one could get.  But I digress, there are far worse things in this show’s treatment of women than just the lack of male genitals.

Back on the subject of sexual violence, it seems as though the show cannot film a scene of consensual sex.  The complex sexual dynamic between Jaime and Cersei is shifted into an entirely different, far more concrete, and far less comfortable one in season four when a scene of consensual sex in the books is transformed into a scene of male-on-female sexual violence as Jaime forces himself on Cersei despite her protests, and the scene in question fades into the next to Jaime stating “I don’t care” to her pleas.  The scene is truly horrifying, and when I saw it as it aired in 2014, I was left appalled that the show would throw away such major characters’ entire personalities, but of far more significance was my horror that the writers, directors, and show runners couldn’t decide whether the scene was a consensual sex scene or whether it depicted an act of rape.  It is disturbing that adults of seemingly average sensibilities can’t understand such a basic concept as consent.

Furthermore, rape is used as a tool and a plot element far more often than it ever needed to be.  Sansa is nearly raped in season two, Jon stops an attempted rape in season eight, the Dothraki rape a conquered city in season one, and when Daenerys protests, she is just told to not get in the way.  The Ironborn are notoriously rapacious, as a civilization of pirate raiders, and Yara Greyjoy only agrees to give up their reaving lifestyle in order to form an alliance with Daenerys, which is presumably off the table after her death in the finale.  No change in the culture in-show occurs, and it is just accepted that sexual violence is a part of life for the characters, from episode one all the way to episode seventy-three.

The show’s fraught relationship with sexual violence is best demonstrated through the arcs of two characters: the show-only prostitute Ros, and the vastly altered story of Sansa Stark.

Ros is an invention of the show, a prostitute at Winterfell in the beginning of the show who relocates to King’s Landing for greater business opportunities.  She is introduced alongside Tyrion to further his arc as a philanderer, and she is again shown alongside Theon to demonstrate his affinity for sex workers.  After relocating to King’s Landing, she takes a job at Littlefinger’s brothel, where she features in several “sexposition” scenes across season two.  By the end of the season, she is seemingly promoted to overseeing the other workers and essentially providing acting lessons for them.  It’s somehow the most respectful thing the show does for sex workers, demonstrating that they are actual people with careers and aspirations, no matter how untraditional.  It would have been subversive to allow a sex worker to get to enjoy some semblance of status for a change.  Perhaps she could have been a foil to Bronn, both unlikely lowborn folks with unglamorous jobs who nonetheless manage to rise high due to their wit and cunning. However, whereas Bronn manages to make increasingly ludicrous demands of the Lannisters before being gifted a castle in the finale of the series, Ros faces a much darker fate.  Rumors abound that the actress behind Ros, Esme Bianco, desired greater screen time and pay, as many actors do after a few seasons of a hit television show.  This demand was met with her character being written out of the show in a truly barbaric fashion.  She becomes essentially middle management at Littlefinger’s brothel when she is contracted out by Varys to spy on his political rival.  She accepts the job, and when she is discovered, Littlefinger hands her over to Joffrey for target practice.  The last we see of Ros, she is bound, tied to Joffrey’s bed, and has been shot by a crossbow through the chest and groin.  The overarching message of Ros’s arc seems to be that women who try to take control of their situation are disregarded and removed with great prejudice by stronger, smarter men.

Even more fraught with unfortunate implications than Ros is Sansa’s storyline.  For the first four seasons, Sansa’s storyline largely follows that of the books.  She is a young woman who is engaged to Joffrey Baratheon, a sadist who insists on having her physically abused for his own pleasure.  She manages to escape from the situation with the assistance of Littlefinger, essentially a medieval pimp with an unrequited crush on Sansa’s mother, and whose affections have seemingly transferred to her daughter by the time of Cat’s death.  In fact, once they escape King’s Landing, he forces a kiss on her in the Eyrie’s courtyard, which is a precipitating cause of Littlefinger’s murder of Lysa Arryn.  So Sansa briefly stays in the Eyrie at the mercy of a pedophilic pimp at the end of season four.  But then everything changed between the filming of season four and the filming of season five.  Sophie Turner, the actress behind Sansa Stark, turned eighteen.  I know this because she is literally four days older than me, and I also turned eighteen in there.  Also, the show passed her book plot, and desperately needed to give her something to do, so they took a horrible, tragic plot from the book and gave it to Sansa.

In Dance with Dragons, Sansa’s childhood friend Jeyne Poole is given to Roose Bolton, the traitorous warden of the North, to disguise her as Arya Stark and marry her to his bastard son Ramsay Snow, in order to legitimize the Boltons’ hold on the North.  While she is there, she is forced to marry Ramsay, and he abuses her horribly.  We do get confirmation on the page that she is sexually abused by her new husband, which is horrible, but no actual scene depicting a sexual assault occurs. Meanwhile, in Feast for Crows, Sansa Stark is learning the politics of the Vale in order to marry the new Lord of the Vale for the stated purpose of riding north with the Vale’s knights to liberate Winterfell.  Littlefinger orchestrated both the events with Sansa and Jeyne, and Littlefinger would never endanger Sansa knowingly because of his weird fascination with her.

The show thought that the best version to handle these plotlines would be to send Sansa to Winterfell in order to be raped on-screen by Ramsay.  This scene plays out in perhaps the most-despised episode of the show.  Meanwhile Littlefinger’s defense of this change is that he, a master of spies all over the country, didn’t know that Ramsay, a notorious serial killer and molester, was a notorious serial killer and molester.  It strains not only his credibility as a spymaster, but also the premise of the show that Petyr Baelish wouldn’t know about the most obvious villain in Winterfell, much less that he would give Sansa away from his custody on bad information.  Furthermore, it is downright offensive that this change was made in the first place. The show had faced a similar scandal the previous season, turning a scene of consensual sex into a scene of seeming rape.  They should have known better.  Furthermore, the Vale setting could have been much better integrated by simply not changing things like that.  Maybe Sansa’s season five could have been spent learning how to do political maneuvers, and then the Vale could ride north and be a surprise extra army for Stannis. They could lose and Sansa could still end up going to Castle Black on the run from Ramsay and his forces at the beginning of season six, all without the frankly gross and unnecessary rape scene. There were so many other ways it could have gone.

In season eight, Sansa credits her rape at the hands of Ramsay as a formative moment for her that was essential to her growth into the strong and powerful woman that she became.  I feel that this not only gives Ramsay far too much power in a storyline that didn’t need it, but it seems like the writers just giving themselves an unwarranted pat on the back for a deeply unsettling and unpopular change to the narrative.  The change to Sansa’s story in season five turned her into a victim, seemingly for the benefit of Theon’s character arc, as he ends up having to save her from Ramsay’s clutches.  I credit Sophie Turner and Alfie Allen for their powerful performances, but they never should have had to give the performances that they did.  It is just sad and a waste and a really disgusting misuse of the characters and the actors.

However, the character that I feel was most mistreated by the writers was Daenerys Targaryen, who was thoroughly misunderstood by the entire creative team and her entire storyline suffered tremendously as a result.  To begin with, the scene of consensual sex that she has with Drogo on their wedding is turned into a rape scene.  Already, we are off to a bad start.  Then, when her incestuous, abusive, unstable older brother is killed by Drogo, her reaction is relatively passive.  The writers would later cite this moment as proof that she must be crazy, because her abuser died and she had no reaction.  Later, she was very much neglected in season two because her dragons were expensive to animate and her adventure in Qarth is admittedly a little bit strange.  However, her visions with the Undying are fundamental foreshadowing to the rest of the narrative.  These were cut out, and I understand why.  They could often be a little esoteric and strange, but without those visions, she seems adrift and aimless.  She instead has visions of turning away from the Iron Throne, and meeting Drogo and their unborn child in the afterlife beyond the Wall.  These scenes were evocative, and I’ll admit I enjoyed them at the time.

Later, she enters Slaver’s Bay, from seasons three through six. This part of her story was deeply criticized in the books for feeling like a waste of time, especially in Dance with Dragons where she has mixed success ruling Meereen, and a bunch of other characters go on great quests to find her and are generally disappointed with what they find.  It is easy to feel a little less than enthused about that arc. However, the most damning critique of Daenerys’s liberation quest in Slaver’s Bay comes from the mouth of Tyrion in the show’s finale.  He cites her killings of the slavers and masters, or upper class, in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, and claims that every time she killed these horrible people, she felt a little more empowered to do whatever she wanted and got a little more crazy and detached from reality.  This culminated in her killing of the Dothraki Khals, which garnered her a Dothraki army.  Tyrion alleged that the adoration went to her head, and she felt empowered to do anything, and Jon presenting even the idea of a challenge to her rule caused her to somehow lose her mind in its entirety, torching King’s Landing in the process.

This sequence of events is fundamentally ridiculous.  Perhaps she felt gratified from receiving praise, but that does not lead to insanity.  Furthermore, her defining character trait, and a constantly restated goal of hers, is that she wants to help the people on the bottom.  She gives water to the dying people of Slaver’s Bay, she opposes the fighting pits to preserve the lives of the poor who might otherwise be forced into them, she fights the slavers over and over again, not to mention the obviously good deed of freeing the slaves in Slaver’s Bay.  In America, Abraham Lincoln is often cited as one of, if not the, greatest presidents who ever lived, for preserving the country while also outlawing slavery.  (As an aside, I am aware of the Thirteenth Amendment’s exception in the case of prisons, which is a problem that we are still dealing with in 2019 with the school-to-prison pipeline and the issue of private prisons, but Lincoln made a big step, and that should be recognized.)  Our society places a high value on freedom, and therefore freeing slaves should be an unequivocally heroic deed.  And yet the narrative punishes Daenerys for doing this, constantly.

In season six, Tyrion criticizes her approach, and claims that reparations should be made to the slave holders, and the plan should have taken longer to occur.  Essentially, Tyrion would rather be kind to the slavers and leave people in chains for longer because freedom would be inconvenient.  Such a thorough undermining of Daenerys’s message is given to Tyrion, ostensibly the show’s main lead, two seasons ahead of his criticism of her entire arc.  Furthermore, no real reason is given why she turns against the common people of King’s Landing.  Sure, she could be a little annoyed that Northerners seem to like Jon more, but those are his people.  It makes sense that his friends would like him.  And yeah, sure, Tormund’s comment about how he’s so cool for riding a dragon would definitely be obnoxious, but that’s hardly a reason to go insane.  The seeming reason for her sudden descent into madness would be the sudden deaths of her advisors Jorah and Missandei, as well as the spontaneous, poorly executed death of Rhaegal.  In addition, the actual betrayal of her confidantes Varys, Tyrion, and Jon would make her descent into madness seemingly justified, rather than an instability.  You’re not insane if everyone around you is actually out to get you, you know.  But, her issue should be with her advisers, and Cersei.  A sensible solution during “The Bells” would have been to destroy the Iron Fleet, destroy the scorpions, kill the Golden Company outside the gates, and then fly Drogon to the Red Keep to kill Cersei.  It is fundamentally out of character for her to turn Drogon, a sentient weapon of war, on the poor, destitute common folk of King’s Landing.  She wants to be a liberator, and up until that very moment, she was a liberator.  Who is liberated when all the people are dead?

In the finale, she gives a very uncomfortable speech that implies that she will kill all the nobility in Westeros before taking her army to take over the world.  The imagery in this speech feels very similar to speeches given by Nazis, given the identical, orderly, masked troops in front of the black-clad and impassioned speaker.  In addition, the shot of her approaching the stairs while Drogon’s wings unfurl in the background was very well-made, and successfully made her look like the actual Devil.  Later, in her scene with Jon in the throne room, she makes a desperate plea for him to join her in her global conquest.  I understand her desire to keep Jon close, after all she seems to love him very much, and he is handsome and charming and all that.  But in her plea to him, she makes a very out-of-character argument that she and Jon have the power to enforce their will upon the world, for the betterment of mankind. Jon asks her why others can’t choose, and Daenerys seemingly says that they are just more important than the rest of the world, “They don’t get to choose.”  What?  Daenerys is all about the common people, or at least she was until she found they were very easy cannon fodder for Drogon.  But it seemed that she was more interested in hurting people loyal to Cersei specifically, even in her discussion with Jon.  So, her sudden disregard for the common people of the world remains completely bizarre.

And then she dies.  Jon kills her, and Drogon flies off with the body.  The entire “Mad Queen” storyline came right out of nowhere after the threat of the White Walkers was dealt with startlingly fast.  It seemed the writers wanted a twist ending, so the Night King was killed surprisingly fast, then Cersei surrendered so Daenerys, a generally kind, good-hearted person could spontaneously become the villain of the piece in the last two episodes.

The writers said in an Inside the Episode feature that when a Targaryen is born, the gods throw a coin and the world holds their breath.  When Daenerys was born, the gods threw a coin, and they allege it landed on madness.  I don’t buy that, because for seventy episodes, she had been a good, fair, just, kind ruler.  Sure, her callous disregard for abusers, rapists, and slavers might be a little cold, but in all fairness, it is hard to feel sympathy for abusers, rapists, and slavers.  Her love of the common people, slaves, and the poor has always been her predominant character trait.  It’s ridiculous to believe that suddenly, she’s just evil now.  The writers blame her flip-flop on her Targaryen genetics.  And maybe the history of inbreeding has damaged her genome some.  But then, if Targaryen genes are the problem, why would Jon be a better fit as king, like all the characters argue for?  He’s a Targaryen too, why has his coin landed on goodness?  It feels very much that he is trusted because he is a man with a penis. Varys says as much when he decides to support Jon over Daenerys, his status as a man will make him easier to support among the lords of Westeros.

In universe and in real life, Daenerys is torn down because she is a woman.  The writers turned her evil because of her seemingly random emotions, which is a stereotype about women, that they are too emotional to be in charge.  Daenerys is given no credit despite her humanitarian accomplishments, yet Jon is supported because he is a man.  To Daenerys, being a Targaryen is a mark against her, a sign of her madness.  To Jon, being a Targaryen is a mark of legitimacy, it makes him the rightful king of Westeros.  Furthermore, Jon’s legitimacy isn’t even all that important, because he gets randomly shipped off to the Wall and Bran becomes king anyway, so I guess both Jon and Daenerys were just red herrings all along.

In Conclusion:

Game of Thrones ended with a resounding whimper.  The defining television program of the last decade has ended, and most fans are just glad that it’s over.  Given the rushed pace of the last two seasons, the directors are probably just glad it’s over as well.  HBO offered them more money for more episodes, but they turned it down.  I’m not optimistic for their take on Star Wars in a few years.  I feel that the actors did their very best, and they deserve praise, but they had really bad material to work with.  And, ultimately, that is the point.  Game of Thrones, as a television show, is already showing its age, and it ended yesterday.  The early seasons especially are awful towards, in particular, women, and the casual abuse of women makes rewatching it unpleasant. Later seasons make wild changes to the plot from the books, the writing suffers as a result, and it feels that without source material, Benioff and Weiss can’t write an original story that respects the lore.  Hopefully George R. R. Martin will finish the final books, and we’ll get a more complete ending.  But for now, this show is what we have.

Allegedly, there are a few successor shows or prequels in the works. The one that has been more formally announced has a woman at the helm, and a woman in the role as the lead. With no specific source material, hopefully that will require more quick thinking, better writing, and better treatment of women.  The cast is far more diverse already.  Hopefully it stays that way.  The legacy left behind by this show will be complicated to navigate.  I have no interest in watching this show again.  Maybe I can get excited about a future project in this universe, but as things are, Game of Thrones was the defining show of the 2010s, and as it leaves its audience with a messy legacy of unfortunate implications in its treatment of the source material and its minority cast members, that is just a shame.

[viralhottopics]

Every Episode Of Reza Aslan’s ‘Believer’ Will Piss Somebody Off (And It’s Awesome)

Reza Aslan is a scholar and writer whose best-selling books include Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam. His personal journey took him from being a refugee from Iran as a child, a conversion to Evangelical Christianity as a teenager and now his embrace of the Sufi mystical tradition within Islam. His new show,Believer with Reza Aslan, will debut on CNN Original Series on Sunday, March 5,at 10 PM ET. He spoke with Voices Editor Paul Brandeis Raushenbush about his new series, how he understands religion, and the fact that someone is going to really love each episode, and someone else wont.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: Given your own spiritual journey Im thinking that there was something about you that was ready to go out and make this series.

Reza Aslan: No question. My spiritual journey has essentially paralleled my intellectual journey and the meeting of those two has led me to a foundational belief that religions are just different ways of saying a similar thing. Theyre different languages, different symbols, different metaphors for expressing what is oftentimes an identical sentiment or an identical quest or search for transcendence, for meaning, for an experience thats beyond just a material world. My entire goal here is to get the viewer to recognize that these different traditions, they may look weird, they may look foreign, they may look scary, but once you break through them, once you see me experience them, then theyre going to come across as a lot more familiar.

PBR: One of the tensions of the series is that you put yourself in some of the most extreme manifestations of religion, the mountaintop experiences. But these people also have jobs and theyre caring for their elderly parents or their young kids, so I think that its really interesting to also have a sense of how these experiences translate into normal life.

RA: So many times our conversations about religion are on such a weird theoretical level. You have critics of religion essentially using the words of a religious leader or even the text in order to make broad generalizations about religious people when, in reality, there is a world of difference between the top-down religiosity and the actual lived experience of religious people.

PBR: A lot of the traditions covered in the series are formed out of intensely political realities that theyre reacting to and interacting with. Im just curious to what extent politics was overtly present in the conversation or is that always subtext?

RA: I define religion as an identity, not a set of beliefs and practices. Thats probably postulate number one for me. People tend to think that, Oh religion is just something you believe in, right? Well, not for most people, actually. The vast majority of people who raise their hand and say, Im Jewish, Im Christian, or Im Muslim are making identity statements much more so than belief statements.

So, if religion is a matter of identity, then it encompasses every aspect of your life. It cant be divorced from your politics or your social views or your economic views. Its all wrapped up together as one. Even when youre talking about religions that are on the margins like the Aghori in India or Voodou in Haiti or Santa Muerte in Mexico, these are religions that have no choice but to be engaged with the world in which they live. Sometimes (its) because that world is attacking them; sometimes because that world is the enemy; but sometimes because what they are trying to accomplish in the spiritual realm is reflected in the world.

PBR: Much of this series must have been created prior to the election. Does the show have a different kind of edge to it now?

RA: Im going to be honest with you about something, Paul. If you are Black or Latino or gay or Muslim in this country, Trumps election should not have surprised you in the slightest. The show is certainly much more important now. The themes are much more vital because more people are aware of this undercurrent in American society than I think they were a year ago. As someone who has always been aware of it, my goal with this show was from the beginning to make the exotic less exotic, make the fearful less fearful, make people realize that they have a lot more in common with each other than they would possibly imagine. Yes, I think that thats a more important message today than it was a year ago but the message hasnt changed.

PBR: What was the moment when filming for the series when you were like, Get me the hell out of here?

RA: [Laughter] You actually see it happening. There is a moment in the premiere episode, the episode about the Hindu sect the Aghori, when Im at the mercy of this Aghori Sadhu (Holy Man) who take part in ostentatious displays of self-pollution in order to shock the system. So, I knew it intellectually, but being on the sand with a group of them, I did not feel safe and I literally say to my director at one point, Get me out of here. Only later on I realized that he thought I was joking. I was not joking. If I do this show again, Im definitely going to make sure that the director knows what my safe word is because I wouldve used it then.

PBR I love that, a safe word. The flip of that question is, what was the moment when you were tempted to just join and said bye-bye to your crazy life and join up.

RA: Well, I will say, I spent a week among this doomsday community in Hawaii under the leadership of a self-styled messiah named Jesus. The first few days I said to myself, Oh my goodness these people! And in my first conversation with Jesus I thought, Huh! This guy is unhinged and it took maybe two or three more days before I was able to sit down with him again. But I was hanging out with all of his followers and they were all like, Yes, dont worry. Jesus always does that. Hes always like that with people. It takes a while to get to know him. I just kept thinking to myself, Okay. These people are on another wavelength.

Then I had a second conversation with Jesus that we show and I just flat out told him, Stop being messiah and just be a human being and talk to me, and we had like a two-hour conversation. At the end of which I thought to myself, just for a second, Hah! I kind of get why people are drawn to this guy. There is something really honest and authentic about him and he has created this paradise on the Big Island where everything is shared and common and its self-sustaining.

His doomsday message is very much geared on the reality of climate change, so you can make fun of him all you want, but the truth of the matter is that he is right. It is a catastrophe just waiting to happen.

PBR: Spiritual curiosity is almost a tagline for your show. Curiosity is an undervalued religious virtue, but curiosity is perhaps the best trait to have in life and certainly if youre investigating other peoples spirituality or your own for that matter.

So, what is the secret thing you have been dying to tell me that you have told nobody else that is going to be my headline?

RA: Well, I think each one of these episodes is going to piss somebody off.

PBR: Thats a good headline.

RA: That may be, in many ways, like the story of my career, basically. I swear to you, its not something I aim for. Its just something that I dont consider when I make my decisions about what Im going to write or what Im going to say. Im not courting controversy. Im just interested in these issues and Im not going to be constrained by what I think may or may not get me in trouble. There is something in every one of these episodes thats going to get me in trouble. I know

PBR: Is it going to get you in trouble with the people who practice that religion or other people or both?

RA: Yes, sometimes both. I think that there will probably be some very conservative religious people within each one of these traditions that will be unhappy with the way they feel their religion is being portrayed. I just think of the Scientology episode. Whats great about (that) episode is that theres something there for everyone to be angry about. And something for everybody to love. At one point or another everyones going to find something to be angry about.

Trust me.

A version of this interview first appeared on Voices at Auburn.

Read more: http://huff.to/2mxB5am

from Every Episode Of Reza Aslan’s ‘Believer’ Will Piss Somebody Off (And It’s Awesome)

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

#also sometimes a work DOES reflect the author's bigoted views lol #why are we acting like that's unheard of #anyway I thought about when I argued with d&d apologists over the way they adapted loras now I’m mad again #‘it’s not like the religious zealots were portrayed as good people what’s the issue’ #the issue is that storyline wasn’t in the book they went out of their way to make the one gay character be tortured for his sexuality #'why are you upset that bad things are happening to the characters' book loras got deepfried that's not what i have a problem with

Whenever people talk about lack of media literacy they always bring up people who think a character doing bad things=the author endorsing said bad things which are very annoying but I feel like we're ignoring the opposite, equally annoying side of the discourse who think if you criticize the inclusion/depiction of dark/sensitive topics in any way it’s bc you’re a dumb baby who can’t separate fiction from reality. and it's like no I know I’m not supposed to clap and cheer at violence against women I’m criticizing how much of it there is. Idiot