omega 616 said:
None of that can be shown any other way, it has to be with blatant sexual scenes? Sounds like iffy writing
Sorry if I'm dragging you back into the conversation, I just hear this a lot, how nudity is a fanservice and how it is "not really needed". It's the same in the books. People get naked, people have sex, there are detailed descriptions in most cases, in some cases a bit less. That's why, when characters in a book/series have sex, you have three choices: a) fading to black after a kiss b) showing most but not all c) showing a lot. Both the books and the series opted for the b) and c) options, because a) option is silly. It has always irked me, when someone has sex and they are strategically covered and will not show naked bodies to each other even though
they just had sex. That happens due to censoring and it happens because our culture kinda doesn't show naked people and sex in prime time on television, we frown at public nudity and we cover our children's eyes when there are naked people on the screen (or the street). It's dragging me out of immersion because I know this happened because of meta reasons; it looks like the characters on the screen know that I am watching and they are behaving like... well, actors and not people they are acting. Lately, censoring sexual content became less and less strict and we can finally show people acting like people when they are being intimate. It was in the books a long time ago anyway. Since the book is detailed on almost everything and it shows characters as people of flesh and blood, there will, naturally, be sex. And it will also be detailed because it would be silly if the author details every single meal on a feast and intricate embroidery on someone's clothing, but is scared to write about a penis entering a vagina. I understand if that's strange for you to watch and it puts you off, but there is literally no logical reason for it. You are missing out on an incredibly well made story, in both the TV show and the books themselves especially, because of an illogical and probably cultural disdain to look at naked people (and because you immediately link it to pornography. Which is not true; naked people don't immediately mean that the material is pornographic).
Legion said:
It's the scenes involving Theon screwing random girls, or the brothel girls having sex that were completely made up for the television show that irked me
Theon is having a lot of sex in the books. They made his scene with the whore Ros for the show, but it is directly said that he had sex with numerous women throughout his life in Winterfell. That scene was maybe created for the show, but it is by no means different from the book nor does it deviate from his character in any way. Some poster already said that because of his lack of real power, Theon constantly tried to show it by dominating women. There is an especially horrible scene when he has sex with the captain's daughter in the ship while he travels to the Iron Islands, in book two and season two. The scene is directly copied from the book, but is way less horrible and way less implicitly misogynistic than it is in the books where it shows what opinion Theon has about women. It is a very important part of his character and without it, we would understand him poorly. Of course, we can argue that it could've been said "Theon forced the woman to oral sex because he hates when women try to talk to him. The weather is also very nice", but when we saw the scene, it had a much greater impact and it gave us insight into his character in a much better and purer way. When it comes to brothel girls and sex, there's much of it in the books as well. I don't think there's a single out of place and out of character sex scene in the show. Maybe people thought so because it has much more impact to see something visually in a show, than to read about in the book.
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About giving up on reading/watching after the Red Wedding; really? Sure, it shocked me too when I read about it, but it absolutely forced me to read not only further, but
faster. It's horrible and shocking and sad, but it is necessary for the overall progress of the story. A book that large, with so much different details and people and wars and plots, it would be bad if the story was stagnant and focused around a few characters with plot armor. The Red Wedding completely changed the stakes and many plots; it created possibilities for something new and fresh. Watching Robb trying to get to King's Landing and kill Joffrey for 10 seasons or reading about it in 7 books would've been pointless and ridiculous. Something had to change, and change it did. I was shocked and sad as well, I couldn't believe what I read, but it got me far more interested in everything. I did not think about stopping there, not for an instant. I simply don't understand why would something like that force anyone to lose interest. Don't you want to know what happens now? "Rooting" for someone is not the sole purpose of the story. If you rooted for someone who died, there will always be someone who will vow to avenge those that were killed. Someone who will fight back still. Someone who will do something interesting, something that will make you flip your table. A Storm of Swords has many interesting and incredibly important moments yet to come after the Red Wedding. Stopping at that point seems to me like you were never even that interested in the whole story and setting, other than a few characters that you chose to identify as heroes (and you chose it yourself, because the book never implicitly states that anyone is the hero).