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Erkki

Is Game of Thrones sexist?

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If a character is doing something that they don't have any logical motivation to do, then that's bad writing and it's pretty lazy, but it's not sexist. That would be like saying the aforementioned example of Anakin killing children is proof that the creators of Star Wars are child killers - they're not, they're just bad at writing.

Worst case scenario, stuff like Joffrey being a rapist for no reason is evidence of lazy writing, not of sexism.

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If a character is doing something that they don't have any logical motivation to do, then that's bad writing and it's pretty lazy, but it's not sexist. That would be like saying the aforementioned example of Anakin killing children is proof that the creators of Star Wars are child killers - they're not, they're just bad at writing.

Worst case scenario, stuff like Joffrey being a rapist for no reason is evidence of lazy writing, not of sexism.

 

I think you are conflating the author and the text. I have no idea whether or not G.R.R. Martin is sexist, and I don't think that reading ASoIaF provides insight into whether or not he, as a person, has sexist views (nor do I think that is a very interesting question). By saying that I think ASoIaF is sexist, I don't mean that G.R.R. Martin is necessarily sexist or that anyone who likes his books is a sexist. I like some things that are indisputably sexist (e.g. gangster rap). I think you can criticize a text without attacking the author or people who enjoy the text. 

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I would agree that just because an author writes a story about something like pedophilia, that does not make the author himself a pedophile. But I disagree with the idea that character actions don't have an effect on the quality of a piece. If the author can't justify why a character is doing something horrible then I have every right to ask why it was necessary to include this horrible act in the first place.

 

Going beyond Martin and Game of Thrones: I take issue with the way a lot of authors use sexual violence in their stories. Most of the time, I get the impression that an author includes this kind of action because they want to shock the reader; it's used as a lazy way to insert drama into the story, and very rarely do I think it's ever justified or done well. If an author feels the need to include something like this in their story (or murder or pedophilia or drug use or any of number of horrible things) then they need to provide a reason beyond 'I want to temporarily shock my readers.' Nabokov had a very intentional reason for making Humbert Humbert a pedophile, all I'm asking is that other authors be held to that same standard.

 

It is interesting to think of how this would be different if we were talking about a historical account of actual real world events rather than a work of fiction created by an author. If this was an account of actual events I would imagine that most people might not be so concerned with why horrible acts were committed by a person, but would just accept that they happened and use that fact to frame the person that committed them. In other words, when I hear historical accounts about what horrible people have done I don't tend to ask myself why that person did what they did, I just accept that it happened and that the person that did it is a horrible person because of it. Maybe asking why is appropriate for certain issues but if someone is talking about something like sexual abuse I don't think asking "Why did that person do that?" is going to get a person very far because that would be incredibly hard to answer without knowing every detail of that person's background and all of the events that shaped them into the person they are.

 

So while I don't agree that an author should have to justify why they have bad people doing bad things, I do agree that it is typically done in a lazy fashion and put there for shock value. I think it is fine for these things to be present in a story but I don't see the need for it to be in your face the way it is so often done. I think it would be more appropriate for these things to happen off camera or for it to just be inferred unless the story is centering on that one person involved and witnessing those acts is important to better understand that person's character development and motivations. After all, if I was there observing these stories taking place I would most likely not be witnessing all of these acts in gruesome detail, but might just be aware that they are going on.

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It's worth bearing in mind that Robert Baratheon is commonly thought to be based at least partly on Henry VIII, and that GoT takes a certain amount influence from the whole period of history surrounding the Tudors. Sometimes I've even though myself that Robert is a good analogy for the Young Henry, and that Joffery (despite his age) shares a lot with Old Henry.

Now idk how many of you have read either Wolf Hall or Bringing up the Bodies, but the world of the Tudors certainly doesn't seem to treat women kindly even in those books. With a few exceptions (Cromwell in particular) many of the male characters in the book are sexist by today's standards. Some even cruelly so.
So there's a argument to be made that if your drawing on a time period where sexism was rife as inspiration for your fiction, a author will struggle to maintain the flavour of that period without some of its less wholesome ingredients.
It's notable that the most common criticism I've heard of Wolf Hall is that Cromwell attitudes occasionally seem too modern in comparison to historical accounts (a point that has value for both sides of the argument here).

However even with all that considered I'm still not comfortable saying that the GoT TV series isn't sexist, in fact I think it might well be. But if it is I don't think the SoIaF books necessarily are, because the books unlike the TV series take the time to give the context to character's actions, and do (as zues put it) ask "why did that person do that?".

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It is interesting to think of how this would be different if we were talking about a historical account of actual real world events rather than a work of fiction created by an author. If this was an account of actual events I would imagine that most people might not be so concerned with why horrible acts were committed by a person, but would just accept that they happened and use that fact to frame the person that committed them. In other words, when I hear historical accounts about what horrible people have done I don't tend to ask myself why that person did what they did, I just accept that it happened and that the person that did it is a horrible person because of it. Maybe asking why is appropriate for certain issues but if someone is talking about something like sexual abuse I don't think asking "Why did that person do that?" is going to get a person very far because that would be incredibly hard to answer without knowing every detail of that person's background and all of the events that shaped them into the person they are.

 

 

It's worth bearing in mind that Robert Baratheon is commonly thought to be based at least partly on Henry VIII, and that GoT takes a certain amount influence from the whole period of history surrounding the Tudors. Sometimes I've even though myself that Robert is a good analogy for the Young Henry, and that Joffery (despite his age) shares a lot with Old Henry.

Now idk how many of you have read either Wolf Hall or Bringing up the Bodies, but the world of the Tudors certainly doesn't seem to treat women kindly even in those books. With a few exceptions (Cromwell in particular) many of the male characters in the book are sexist by today's standards. Some even cruelly so.

So there's a argument to be made that if your drawing on a time period where sexism was rife as inspiration for your fiction, a author will struggle to maintain the flavour of that period without some of its less wholesome ingredients.

It's notable that the most common criticism I've heard of Wolf Hall is that Cromwell attitudes occasionally seem too modern in comparison to historical accounts (a point that has value for both sides of the argument here).

However even with all that considered I'm still not comfortable saying that the GoT TV series isn't sexist, in fact I think it might well be. But if it is I think I don't think the SoIaF books necessarily are, because the books unlike the TV series take the time to give the context to character's actions, and do (as zues put it) ask "why did that person do that?".

 

I think both of these posts go more-or-less to the same argument: sexism is a historical reality; ASoIaF is historically inspired; and therefore ASoIaF can or must present sexist themes for the sake of authenticity. I don't agree with this argument for two reasons.

 

First, ASoIaF is not history. Martin departs very radically from history when he feels like it (e.g., the existence of dragons, the existence of ice people, the fact that seasons last very long, and so on). Presumably he could have presented a world that is sexist, but sexist towards men. Or he could have presented a world where women are not treated badly. That is kind of the joy of fantasy and science-fiction: you are not bound to the historical record. 

 

Second, even books that are actually historically bound still have an authorial lens. What I mean is that authors still choose to portray certain things and not portray other things. So for example, we generally don't hear about characters going to the bathroom, because that is not important to the author. This means when an author chooses to portray some things and not portray other things, we can (and should) ask why he or she made that choice. This question can be asked of writers both of history and of fiction.

 

Just as an aside, an interesting counterpoint to ASoIaF is Richard Morgan's "A Land fit for Heroes" series. That fantasy series also features a world that is pretty misogynistic and homophobic. However, the author tries to grapple directly with those issues: several of the main characters are gay, and in my view Morgan tries to use his fantasy setting in order to explore themes of homophobia. In other words, Morgan's grim fantasy world is put to an interesting use, in the same way that Humbert Humbert's pedophilia is put to an interesting use. 

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First, ASoIaF is not history. Martin departs very radically from history when he feels like it (e.g., the existence of dragons, the existence of ice people, the fact that seasons last very long, and so on). Presumably he could have presented a world that is sexist, but sexist towards men. Or he could have presented a world where women are not treated badly. That is kind of the joy of fantasy and science-fiction: you are not bound to the historical record. 

 

I see your point but regardless of how he chose to represent the world I think we agree that the "bad people" have to be doing bad stuff to be considered bad and provide a contrast against the "good people". I think what we consider "bad" is largely shaped by our observation of historical events and what horrible things have actually been committed. So while he could have presented a world that is sexist towards men, I don't think that would be very effective at painting who is good versus who is bad. In fact, I might feel quite the opposite because in reality men have been the oppressors and I might naturally feel that people are justified for being sexist against men.

 

 

Second, even books that are actually historically bound still have an authorial lens. What I mean is that authors still choose to portray certain things and not portray other things. So for example, we generally don't hear about characters going to the bathroom, because that is not important to the author. This means when an author chooses to portray some things and not portray other things, we can (and should) ask why he or she made that choice. This question can be asked of writers both of history and of fiction.

 

I think we actually partially agree on this. Your example of not hearing about characters going to the bathroom is somewhat similar to my statement that these things should be portrayed off camera or just inferred rather than showing it in graphic detail. It is understood that all human beings need to go to the bathroom, good guys and bad guys. But there has to at least be some mention of what the bad guys are doing that makes them bad. It doesn't need to be graphic, but as long as it is mentioned I can at least have a reason to feel the way I do about a character.

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I think both of these posts go more-or-less to the same argument: sexism is a historical reality; ASoIaF is historically inspired; and therefore ASoIaF can or must present sexist themes for the sake of authenticity. I don't agree with this argument for two reasons.

 

First, His work is "low" fantasy with the magic etc. kept to a minimum, a genre that to extent deliberately keeps a grounding in this world as much as it does in the authors imagination.

I'm not saying martin 'can/must' portray a world one way because of historical inspiration, I'm saying he has made a choice to pick inspiration from setting with clear bias's in one direction, but this does not mean he approves of that bias.

 

Second, as you say all authors working from historical inspiration have the same problem, just because fantasy like GoT is further from it source than a novel like Wolf Hall it doesn't mean that any incidents of sexism that occur in either are better or worse than the other.

What interest me is the fact that Cromwell's attitude is at times a recognisably modern one, despite having even someone as skilful as Mantel behind the help, that even she can't stop a dissonance forming with the rest of her portrayal of that era when she brings in more modern sensibilities to a character's thought process.

Basically what I'm saying is that authors shouldn't avoid making their worlds brutal, just because the process of creating sympathetic characters in those worlds is a tough one, because when they succeed in showing us why those worlds are so wrong, those characters are all the more powerful.

 

Both the books I mention and the one you mention author's have decided that the world their characters inhabit works a certain way, but it's how characters react to the world that is for me the most interesting thing about most fiction. Daenerys' constant conflict with the "Way the world works" is notable in the later books, and to a extent that reaction would be impossible without the horrors of the world that inspired it. 

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Just really quickly want to say something re Wolf Hall: Yes, Mantel is writing about a world where women were significantly powerless in comparison to men and yes, many of the male characters have less than enlightened attitudes towards women -- as would be expected from that time period. The reason it works (for me at least) in Mantel's writing is because it never feels like she's exploiting these attitudes to provoke some kind of reaction in the reader; she's just being realistic for the time period. Women are not well-treated in Mantel's universe, but they also are real characters and have agency. Compare that to other fantasy or historical-focused literature, where the author beats you over the head with how sexist everything was and how awful life was for most women, and you can tell the author wants you to think: "wow, things sure were terrible for women back then, glad that our modern age isn't like that at all!" These female characters have no agency; they're stand ins so the modern audience can feel better that women aren't treated this poorly anymore.

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Just out of curiosity Argobot do you know the name of the character killed off by the series? I'm wondering if the book's treat her the same way or if they handle it better. (feel free to put it under a spoiler for those who haven't read the books or aren't up to date with the series)

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Out of curiosity, how do you guys feel about Brienne of Tarth's impending rape being the catalyst for Jamie Lannisters redemption (an ongoing process from what I remember from the books as haven't read them in about 10 years)? Considering the problematic use of rape as short hand for the most evil thing and Jamie's characterization up to that point (a remorseless, honor-less childer killer), does it work? Does Jamie's development come at the cost of undermining Brienne? Is there something else that could have been used to stir Jamie to action? Is it even believable that Brienne's rape would do the trick? 

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Just out of curiosity Argobot do you know the name of the character killed off by the series? I'm wondering if the book's treat her the same way or if they handle it better. (feel free to put it under a spoiler for those who haven't read the books or aren't up to date with the series)

 

The character's name is Ros and from what I understand, she is a completely new character who was made up by the HBO writers. In the first and second season, she's basically an audience stand-in: characters use her as kind of an exposition dump (her scenes are some of the more infamous 'sexposition' bits). Based on the fact that she is an entirely new character in a story that is weighed down by its large cast, I assumed that the writers had a some grander purpose in mind for this character. That assumption was spurred on by the way Ros' story ends during the season 2 finale, where she is set up to be the aide to one of the bigger power players in the story. 

 

So the writers spent a lot of time building up a character, only to have her killed off-screen in a really throw away manner. It really felt like a cheap, lazy way for the writers to get rid of a character in an already bloated story, without having to come up with any kind of resolution for her character arc. That's already an example of bad writing, but the way she is disposed of is what really bothered me. Joffrey killed her off-camera by tying her to his bed and shooting her full of arrows. The viewer is spared that execution scene, but we're treated to this lingering shot of the aftermath, where the camera focuses on the arrows sticking out from her genitals and her breasts. We're clearly meant to feel disturbed and think 'oh wow, Joffrey sure is evil,' but to me it just felt so dumb and cheap and exploitative. 

 

Here's a female character that I was led to believe was going to do something meaningful and she ends up being killed in a truly disgusting way. I think the writers were trying to go for some variation of 'character makes a grab for power and mercilessly fails,' but because everything is so rushed, they completely fail on their execution. Seriously, if you're not really paying attention to what is happening in those final scenes, you might not even realize that it was Ros who was killed. I didn't even particularly like Ros' character on the show, but I absolutely hated how her death was handled. (As evidenced by my paragraphs-long rant against it)

 

Edit: I just want to add that the above is entirely based on my personal interpretation of that scene. Other people may not have been bothered by it in the same way I was. If you didn't have a problem with it, cool. I don't think that makes you a sexist or a terrible person, it just means we have different perspectives on a TV show that I actually don't like that much (but apparently I do because I keep watching it and writing about it on the Internet)

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...

I'm not saying martin 'can/must' portray a world one way because of historical inspiration, I'm saying he has made a choice to pick inspiration from setting with clear bias's in one direction, but this does not mean he approves of that bias.

 

...

Basically what I'm saying is that authors shouldn't avoid making their worlds brutal, just because the process of creating sympathetic characters in those worlds is a tough one, because when they succeed in showing us why those worlds are so wrong, those characters are all the more powerful.

...

 

I don't disagree with any of this. Authors can make their worlds brutal, and I have no problem with that per se. For me, the operative question is whether the brutality is put to an interesting purpose. I don't think brutality, including but not limited to sexual violence, is put to an interesting purpose in ASoIaF. In other words, the reason I think that parts of ASoIaF are sexist is not because it addresses difficult subjects, but because it addresses those subjects in a puerile and exploitative way (in my opinion, and again with the caveat that I've only read the first three books, and haven't seen the TV show). 

Another analogy might be useful. Django Unchained is a super-violent movie. I'm generally not that interested in super-violent movies.. But I did like Django Unchained, because although it was violent it was using that violence to say something interesting about slavery, oppression, and our relationship to it.

 

So again, in my view the question should really be whether the themes of sexism and sexual violence in ASoIaF are being addressed in an interesting or intelligent way. If they are not, then we should question why they are being included in the first place. 

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The character's name is Ros and from what I understand, she is a completely new character who was made up by the HBO writers. In the first and second season, she's basically an audience stand-in: characters use her as kind of an exposition dump (her scenes are some of the more infamous 'sexposition' bits). Based on the fact that she is an entirely new character in a story that is weighed down by its large cast, I assumed that the writers had a some grander purpose in mind for this character. That assumption was spurred on by the way Ros' story ends during the season 2 finale, where she is set up to be the aide to one of the bigger power players in the story. 

 

So the writers spent a lot of time building up a character, only to have her killed off-screen in a really throw away manner. It really felt like a cheap, lazy way for the writers to get rid of a character in an already bloated story, without having to come up with any kind of resolution for her character arc. That's already an example of bad writing, but the way she is disposed of is what really bothered me. Joffrey killed her off-camera by tying her to his bed and shooting her full of arrows. The viewer is spared that execution scene, but we're treated to this lingering shot of the aftermath, where the camera focuses on the arrows sticking out from her genitals and her breasts. We're clearly meant to feel disturbed and think 'oh wow, Joffrey sure is evil,' but to me it just felt so dumb and cheap and exploitative. 

 

Here's a female character that I was led to believe was going to do something meaningful and she ends up being killed in a truly disgusting way. I think the writers were trying to go for some variation of 'character makes a grab for power and mercilessly fails,' but because everything is so rushed, they completely fail on their execution. Seriously, if you're not really paying attention to what is happening in those final scenes, you might not even realize that it was Ros who was killed. I didn't even particularly like Ros' character on the show, but I absolutely hated how her death was handled. (As evidenced by my paragraphs-long rant against it)

 

Really? They did that >_<

FFS That's more than fully rant worthy in oh so many ways.

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The funny thing about bringing in Wolf Hall to the discussion is that it already has a TV counterpart of sorts in Showtime's The Tudors. I think the difference between the two is telling. While it does depict a sexist reality, Wolf Hall does not delve much sexual discrimination and violence because it has little bearing on the story of Cromwell, but The Tudors revels in it. The audience is treated to every fling that even the most minor character was rumored to have had, plus sex is used extensively as characterization on its own. I mean, George Boleyn Viscount Rochford seems like a pretty loving brother, if a bit slow, except that he's sometimes a homosexual who beats and rapes his bride on their wedding night. That's Lazy Writing 101 and, while Game of Thrones never even approaches that low, I'm sometimes reminded of it anyway, especially in scenes with Joffrey.

 

The thing is, fiction has the advantage of history and even historical fiction because there's a narrative. In history all the time, sometimes things just happen and there's no reason for it. Emperor Henry VI suddenly dies of malaria at Messina on the eve of his crusade, throwing Germany and Italy into twenty years of chaos. It helped some people and hurt others, but there was no through-line. Fiction can do one better, which is what makes A Song of Ice and Fire so great. Martin has created so many characters, all of whom have their motivations and plans laid out, which intersect to drive the events of the plot. So I kinda get pained when people imply that misogyny and rape are so thick on the ground because "that's how it was" or something. Sure, Martin's chosen to depict a grim world and he's chosen to have sexism be a part of that, but he's also chosen to say very little about it, as I Saw Daesin points out. It's certainly not ideal and I feel a little disappointed at times.

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It's also not a solution concocted by the shows writers, but was the same in the books, where the scene of the killing was described as well.

 

Please change this, Erkki, it isn't true, and may cause people who have read the books to assume it's safe to read the spoilers and then have the show spoiled for them, as just happened to me!

 

Ros isn't even in the books.

 

Argobot, a minor point:

 

This article has a more positive definition of "sexposition": http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Sexposition

 

And even more importantly: how is Anakin killing the younglings bad writing or out of nowhere? It's the point the entire prequel trilogy has been leading up to!

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So again, in my view the question should really be whether the themes of sexism and sexual violence in ASoIaF are being addressed in an interesting or intelligent way.

 

There's probably no way not to seem like the devil's advocate here, even though that's not my intention, but wouldn't that question be impossible to answer objectively?

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Please change this, Erkki, it isn't true, and may cause people who have read the books to assume it's safe to read the spoilers and then have the show spoiled for them, as just happened to me!

 

Ros isn't even in the books.

 

Argobot, a minor point:

 

This article has a more positive definition of "sexposition": http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Sexposition

 

And even more importantly: how is Anakin killing the younglings bad writing or out of nowhere? It's the point the entire prequel trilogy has been leading up to!

 

Regarding Ros from what i understand she is a mixture of a couple of character's combined for brevity/convenience's sake. Although in a way by combining several minor roles the TV series gives itself a opportunity to replace them with one more developed character. However when you then kill that character off in a way which sounds particularly unpleasant and doesn't bring anything new to the story arc in some ways it feels worse than if they hadn't bothered.

.

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That doesn't seem to be in response to anything in my post, Codicier...

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There's probably no way not to seem like the devil's advocate here, even though that's not my intention, but wouldn't that question be impossible to answer objectively?

Of course. There really aren't any objective answers when it comes to discussing a piece of art or culture. 

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Of course. There really aren't any objective answers when it comes to discussing a piece of art or culture. 

You can view art or culture through the lens of a specific ideology and ask "does this promote or contradict the values of this ideology". Does it promote feminist values? How about libertarian values? Non-violence? Abolition? Anti-racism? Anti-authoritarianism?

 

Now, if you want to ask if the failure to promote of those values is itself an objective moral failure, that's a harder question to answer. 

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Argobot, a minor point:

 

This article has a more positive definition of "sexposition": http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Sexposition

 

And even more importantly: how is Anakin killing the younglings bad writing or out of nowhere? It's the point the entire prequel trilogy has been leading up to!

 

That's an interesting view of the term, I'm not sure if I buy all of her reasoning though. But it's worth pointing out that just because a show has nudity doesn't mean that it's bad or bad for women (because let's face, most of the nude people are women on this show).

 

Certainly an interesting take though and one I'd never seen before. Thanks for linking to it.

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That doesn't seem to be in response to anything in my post, Codicier...

 

I was trying to clarify the creation of character being discussed, let me attempt to clarify further!

 

Since you brought up the point she isn't in the books I though it was important to point out that although she was invented for the TV show many of the things that happen to her happen to other character's in Martins work except notably the sexposition and the horrible death, both of which seem to be entirely new and not just something attributed to her from other characters. 

Because to me it seemed the important choice made by the TV series was not the creation of the character, but what they chose to happen to her that happened to no one in the book.

While the case for the sexposition's addition is (as the article you linked say's) that it gave us extra insight into littlefinger, the death Argobot describes really adds nothing to Joffery character we didn't already know which makes it seem a really unnecessary scene to me.

 

 

hope that's a bit clearer sometimes my hands forgets to add the context my mind sees for comments (that and it's 1:00 at night and its not firing at 100% efficiently).

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I understood what you were saying, but it seems to be responding to an argument I wasn't making. I was simply asking Erkki to fix a spoiler and pointing Argobot to the original, more positive definition of

sexposition (which I'm spoiler tagging as the term seems to be mostly associated with the character in question)

 

Oh, and I was also defending Revenge Of The Sith for some reason.

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I understood what you were saying, but it seems to be responding to an argument I wasn't making. I was simply asking Erkki to fix a spoiler and pointing Argobot to the original, more positive definition of

sexposition (which I'm spoiler tagging as the term seems to be mostly associated with the character in question)

 

Oh, and I was also defending Revenge Of The Sith for some reason.

 

Ok, sorry if I gave that impressions, I was trying to say in my own roundabout way why I basically agree that Erkki fixing that spoiler's accuracy was important. A process undoubtedly not helped by trying to play Neptune's Pride and browse twitter at the same time.

 

As for Revenge of the Sith, well defending it's a dirty job but someone has to do it!

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I basically agree that Erkki fixing that spoiler's accuracy was important.

 

Ah, okay, excellent! Erkki, that's my motion seconded.

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