Idle Thumbs 173: Ridonkulous Rift

[heinlager]

The question of if I'm acting in "good faith" keeps coming up, it appears you've had MRAs/trolls come in and you're on the defensive. I think ill just bow out of this conversation.

[CaptainFish]

Ell oh ell.

[namman siggins]

Speaking of Gamergate:

https://twitter.com/twoscooters/status/506223832890638336/photo/1

 

&

 

[chummer]

Speaking of Gamergate:

https://twitter.com/twoscooters/status/506223832890638336/photo/1

 

Whenever I read titles or headlines complaining about social issues, I can't help but read it in the voice of Kristen Wiig's Aunt Linda character- the constantly exasperated movie critic. (I'd link a video, but it looks like NBC has been merciless in taking that stuff down everywhere.)

[baekgom84]

I don't have much to add about what was said on the podcast (although I think for the most part it was a superb summary and commentary), but I did want to talk a bit about what was said earlier in this thread about how Game of Thrones can't use history as an excuse for its depictions of rape and other manifestations of sexual violence/misogyny, because it also has dragons and zombies and giant walls of ice. A Song of Ice and Fire may be a fictional universe, but (dragons and zombies aside) it is very obviously inspired by real history, and if it's reasonable for George R.R. Martin to liberally borrow ideas from historical places and cultures, why is it unreasonable for him to depict the kind of atrocities against women that were probably not uncommon at the time? Wouldn't it have been a cop-out if he had faithfully recreated a medieval culture, but simply glossed over the gross abuses and inequalities that women had to suffer through during that period?

 

When it was announced earlier in the year that Deep Down wasn't including a playable female character, there was a lot of outrage. I remember some people tried to offer a defense of the decision by suggesting that, historically, it would have been extremely unlikely (if not flat-out impossible) for a female character to assume such a role. The counter-argument to this was, 'That's a load of bullshit because the game has dragons, why can't it have a woman wearing armour and wielding a sword?' And while I can understand that argument, I still don't agree with it. I don't think it's right to be critical of narrative choices based on historical or cultural precedents, just because it chooses to flaunt other historical precedents (e.g. the non-existence of dragons). Surely it's not reasonable to expect all fictional worlds to reflect the kind of social equality that we would like to see in today's world?

 

Also I hope I don't seem like I'm shitting on the positive messages that have appeared throughout this thread.

[Problem Machine]

I don't think the argument is that people creating a fantasy world based to some degree on actual history shouldn't use situations inspired by historical social norms, even when those are distasteful to us, but that they shouldn't do so thoughtlessly. By all means, if the author wishes to write about a culture with regressive ideas about women, they can do so -- but it is a choice made by the author, and they have to defend it as a choice rather than citing history, since they're otherwise comfortable disregarding that history when it doesn't suit them. If the story abuses women, it has to justify that through its content, or else it's just using the suffering of its female characters as set dressing, which is gross and lazy.

 

Now, as to whether this devotion to history is actually accurate or just accurate to a vague cliffs-notes idea of what historical social norms were is a whole other debate, and one which I'm not really historically knowledgeable enough to contribute to. I've read enough words by persons more educated than myself, though, to know that often times the social ideas that people cling to as 'historically accurate' are only accurate to our misunderstandings and misrememberings.

[tegan]

I'm paraphrasing Anita here somewhat, but...

 

Because the way rape and violence is against women is depicted in media is never any more realistically than the dragons and zombies are. It depicts it as something that Snidely Whiplash figures do in back alleys and not as something that happens in suburban bedrooms, high school locker rooms, or in car backseats after parties; usually committed by people the victim knows and trusts; and almost always inflicts deep-seated psychological damage that rape in media never, ever explores.

 

In addition, saying that it's "unrealistic" for a woman to be in a position of power is to erase all of the actual women who totally were. The new Assassin's Creed is set during the French Revolution, but doesn't have female characters despite the most famous assassin of the French Revolution being female? I have no problem with calling bullshit on that.

 

Maybe you should consider asking yourself why it's so much easier for you to accept a world with dragons and zombies in it than it is to imagine one where women don't get raped or fight back.

 

 

 

 

(I seriously recommend that everyone read up on Julie d'Aubigny on the grounds that she's probably the closest thing the real world ever had to Jack Sparrow)

[Merus]

Wouldn't it have been a cop-out if he had faithfully recreated a medieval culture, but simply glossed over the gross abuses and inequalities that women had to suffer through during that period?

 

There's three problems with this.

 

Firstly, there's lots of historical detail that Martin glosses over, simply because he is telling a story and he has to focus his attention somewhere, so saying that depicting violence against women as 'essential' to reproducing the character of the period is actually sort of creepy. It's arguing, simultaneously, that Martin should be reproducing the medieval period, and that he needs to exaggerate the amount of violence done to women compared to history to make sure that everyone can see that it's medieval and cruel. It ends up being a lazy shorthand; instead of digging deep into the relationships between class, power and religion, you can throw in some dead hookers whose chief important to the plot is that they're dead flesh acted on by a monster. In that way, the prostitute that Joffrey shoots could be someone's beloved dog for all that their humanity is important.

 

Secondly, it frames women as victims, who are typically unable to defend themselves, with the characters we see who do defend themselves as an exception that others in the world couldn't expect. Women, as a whole, don't get to challenge this paradigm, because they have to stay pliant victims for the story to work as the author wants it to. Again, women don't get to be human unless imbued with humanity by the creator; men are assumed by the audience to be human by default.

 

Thirdly, it normalises sexual violence in the service of a grander story. Violence against women is probably not as important to this story as marauding zombies or smartalec dwarves; a core theme of the story is the victimisation inflicted by the powerful, but violence against women is considered about as important as victimisation of a princess's family by invading armies. It ends up being window dressing, not given the focus or attention it deserves. Given that including it is saying that of course it's supposed to be here, what does that say about violence against women in the real world? That it's obviously going to happen, and it's terrible, but it's inevitable? That's not actually true. That's not actually helpful. Power always corrupts, but patriarchy isn't inevitable. (This is the same problem that Bioshock Infinite had with its racist theming: Daisy Cutter's objections to racism are presented as being equally as bad - and also as justified - as Columbia's racism.)

 

Feminist Frequency's latest video is essentially about this. (Am I just trying to clumsily summarise the video? Absolutely.) As Anita says at the start of her series, this doesn't mean that you're not allowed to enjoy Game of Thrones or A Song Of Ice And Fire, you just have to be accepting of where it has problems, in the same way that readers of the books probably shouldn't aggressively defend the pacing of book 4. (Thinking about this did make me realise that a lot of the core characters have legitimate things to say about victimisation, and Martin has a character almost perfectly placed to comment both on the use of women's bodies as commodities, and societal silence around domestic violence.)

 

By the way, did you know the Tropes vs Women series is also produced and written by Jonathan McIntosh? Not to discount Anita's work, but it's funny how his name is almost never mentioned!

[Merus]

Here is an interview with an expert on bigotry that only has to do with games because I'm saying that it's surprisingly on-topic: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/07/23/interview-stephen-eric-bronner-about-bigot-why-prejudice-persists

 

I'm not entirely sure I agree with its conclusion, though - the parallels between the worldview presented here, and the worldview of the cult member, are striking.

[baekgom84]

I don't think the argument is that people creating a fantasy world based to some degree on actual history shouldn't use situations inspired by historical social norms, even when those are distasteful to us, but that they shouldn't do so thoughtlessly. By all means, if the author wishes to write about a culture with regressive ideas about women, they can do so -- but it is a choice made by the author, and they have to defend it as a choice rather than citing history, since they're otherwise comfortable disregarding that history when it doesn't suit them. If the story abuses women, it has to justify that through its content, or else it's just using the suffering of its female characters as set dressing, which is gross and lazy.

 

Now, as to whether this devotion to history is actually accurate or just accurate to a vague cliffs-notes idea of what historical social norms were is a whole other debate, and one which I'm not really historically knowledgeable enough to contribute to. I've read enough words by persons more educated than myself, though, to know that often times the social ideas that people cling to as 'historically accurate' are only accurate to our misunderstandings and misrememberings.

 

I guess the issue I have with your first point is that it's not always easy to determine what an author's intention is, or what an audience's interpretation is going to be. What if an author sets out to make some kind of point about the suffering of women, but because he/she lacks subtlety it comes across as exploitation? Should it still be treated as exploitation or 'set dressing' if it is seen as such, with no regard for the original intent? How exactly do we determine, for example, what is 'satire of sexism' as opposed to 'sexist satire'? In more extreme cases this may be more obvious, but at some point I imagine it gets much more difficult to tell.

 

As for your second point, I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, as I'm not enough of a student of history to comment on anything definitively. But I definitely agree that we should be careful about what we think we know about history.

 

I'm paraphrasing Anita here somewhat, but...

 

Because the way rape and violence is against women is depicted in media is never any more realistically than the dragons and zombies are. It depicts it as something that Snidely Whiplash figures do in back alleys and not as something that happens in suburban bedrooms, high school locker rooms, or in car backseats after parties; usually committed by people the victim knows and trusts; and almost always inflicts deep-seated psychological damage that rape scenes in media never, ever explores.

 

In addition, saying that it's "unrealistic" for a woman to be in a position of physical power is to erase all of the actual women who totally were. The new Assassin's Creed is set during the French Revolution, but doesn't have female characters despite the most famous assassin of the French Revolution being female? I have no problem with calling bullshit on that.

 

Maybe you should consider asking yourself why it's so much easier for you to accept a world with dragons and zombies in it than it is to imagine one where women don't get raped or fight back.

 

 

 

 

(I seriously recommend that everyone read up on Julie d'Aubigny on the grounds that she's probably the closest thing the real world ever had to Jack Sparrow)

 

I actually didn't know there were female knights, that's really interesting. And the point about the most famous assassin in the French Revolution being a woman is well taken. But I don't think anyone would disagree that knights were almost always men, and so I don't think it's completely unreasonable for a developer, making a game in which the main character is a knight, to overlook including a playable female character. I know there was a lot of controversy about Assassin's Creed as well, but I didn't follow that much so I won't go into that. For the record, I would love to see them include playable female characters.

 

As for realistic portrayals of rape, I can understand that people are perhaps sick of seeing the same 'TV-friendly' rape instead of a more realistic and sinister depiction of it (at least, that's how I interpreted your statement - correct me if I'm wrong). But again, I have problems with criticising media for what it doesn't include. Is Game of Thrones obligated to portray rape realistically? And is it really fair to call it's portrayals of rape 'unrealistic'? The kind of 'Snidely Whiplash back-alley' rape you describe might be statistically unlikely, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all, and it seems unfair to me to simply dismiss it.

 

As for your last sentence... well, yes, I think a world with dragons and zombies is at least as realistic as a world without rape. I don't believe that humans will ever live in a world free of violence or brutality. Do you really think we can eliminate violent crimes from human society? I ask that sincerely.

[baekgom84]

There's three problems with this.

 

Firstly, there's lots of historical detail that Martin glosses over, simply because he is telling a story and he has to focus his attention somewhere, so saying that depicting violence against women as 'essential' to reproducing the character of the period is actually sort of creepy. It's arguing, simultaneously, that Martin should be reproducing the medieval period, and that he needs to exaggerate the amount of violence done to women compared to history to make sure that everyone can see that it's medieval and cruel. It ends up being a lazy shorthand; instead of digging deep into the relationships between class, power and religion, you can throw in some dead hookers whose chief important to the plot is that they're dead flesh acted on by a monster. In that way, the prostitute that Joffrey shoots could be someone's beloved dog for all that their humanity is important.

 

Secondly, it frames women as victims, who are typically unable to defend themselves, with the characters we see who do defend themselves as an exception that others in the world couldn't expect. Women, as a whole, don't get to challenge this paradigm, because they have to stay pliant victims for the story to work as the author wants it to. Again, women don't get to be human unless imbued with humanity by the creator; men are assumed by the audience to be human by default.

 

Thirdly, it normalises sexual violence in the service of a grander story. Violence against women is probably not as important to this story as marauding zombies or smartalec dwarves; a core theme of the story is the victimisation inflicted by the powerful, but violence against women is considered about as important as victimisation of a princess's family by invading armies. It ends up being window dressing, not given the focus or attention it deserves. Given that including it is saying that of course it's supposed to be here, what does that say about violence against women in the real world? That it's obviously going to happen, and it's terrible, but it's inevitable? That's not actually true. That's not actually helpful. Power always corrupts, but patriarchy isn't inevitable. (This is the same problem that Bioshock Infinite had with its racist theming: Daisy Cutter's objections to racism are presented as being equally as bad - and also as justified - as Columbia's racism.)

 

Feminist Frequency's latest video is essentially about this. (Am I just trying to clumsily summarise the video? Absolutely.) As Anita says at the start of her series, this doesn't mean that you're not allowed to enjoy Game of Thrones or A Song Of Ice And Fire, you just have to be accepting of where it has problems, in the same way that readers of the books probably shouldn't aggressively defend the pacing of book 4. (Thinking about this did make me realise that a lot of the core characters have legitimate things to say about victimisation, and Martin has a character almost perfectly placed to comment both on the use of women's bodies as commodities, and societal silence around domestic violence.)

 

By the way, did you know the Tropes vs Women series is also produced and written by Jonathan McIntosh? Not to discount Anita's work, but it's funny how his name is almost never mentioned!

 

I can agree with your first point; lazy writing is shitty, and using heinous violence as a sort of prop is kind of tired and gross. I'm not sure that I agree that that's what Martin is doing in his books, but I can see the argument at least.

 

Second point: I'm not sure what you mean here. A lot of women are victims; a few of them get a chance to fight back, many of them do not. This is also true to a lesser extent of the men in the story. Isn't that the reality of a patriarchal society? That women generally have fewer avenues for dealing with abuse or mistreatment? I may have misunderstood what you were trying to say.

 

Third point: This is where I disagree. We can debate the extent to which women in history were made to suffer, but it seems like you're saying, 'If you don't have anything important to say about it, just don't depict it at all,' and I don't think that's a reasonable stance. I don't agree that Martin or any other creator of fiction has an obligation to make some sort of social commentary on the terrible things they depict - I think in many cases it's enough that they depict them and let the audience reflect on it in their own way. As I said earlier, I think that violence against women is inevitable regardless of the kind of society we live in. Is that considered a misogynist view? I mean, I obviously don't want that to be the case, I just see it as a sad reality. Given that, I don't think Martin is under any obligation to portray a world in which violence against women is not inevitable, because personally I don't think it will change anything either way.

 

Also I think the fourth book is vastly underrated. 

[clyde]

As for realistic portrayals of rape, I can understand that people are perhaps sick of seeing the same 'TV-friendly' rape instead of a more realistic and sinister depiction of it (at least, that's how I interpreted your statement - correct me if I'm wrong). But again, I have problems with criticising media for what it doesn't include. Is Game of Thrones obligated to portray rape realistically? And is it really fair to call it's portrayals of rape 'unrealistic'? The kind of 'Snidely Whiplash back-alley' rape you describe might be statistically unlikely, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all, and it seems unfair to me to simply dismiss it.

 

There's a video-series that you should watch if you interested in this type of thing. It addresses a lot of your points specifically and clearly. Check out 18:30 for an excellent counterpoint to your view.

 

 

 

I don't think the argument is that people creating a fantasy world based to some degree on actual history shouldn't use situations inspired by historical social norms, even when those are distasteful to us, but that they shouldn't do so thoughtlessly. By all means, if the author wishes to write about a culture with regressive ideas about women, they can do so -- but it is a choice made by the author, and they have to defend it as a choice rather than citing history, since they're otherwise comfortable disregarding that history when it doesn't suit them. If the story abuses women, it has to justify that through its content, or else it's just using the suffering of its female characters as set dressing, which is gross and lazy.

 

Now, as to whether this devotion to history is actually accurate or just accurate to a vague cliffs-notes idea of what historical social norms were is a whole other debate, and one which I'm not really historically knowledgeable enough to contribute to. I've read enough words by persons more educated than myself, though, to know that often times the social ideas that people cling to as 'historically accurate' are only accurate to our misunderstandings and misrememberings.

I guess the issue I have with your first point is that it's not always easy to determine what an author's intention is, or what an audience's interpretation is going to be. What if an author sets out to make some kind of point about the suffering of women, but because he/she lacks subtlety it comes across as exploitation? Should it still be treated as exploitation or 'set dressing' if it is seen as such, with no regard for the original intent? How exactly do we determine, for example, what is 'satire of sexism' as opposed to 'sexist satire'? In more extreme cases this may be more obvious, but at some point I imagine it gets much more difficult to tell.

 

It may be inconsiderate to call using harmful tropes by default "lazy", in many cases the author may just be unskilled. This being the case, it's a good idea for criticism to enumerate the tendencies of authors to bumblingly mimic previous works. It's helpful that critics are now providing clear explanations of how game-writers can better their craft. I don't expect every game-writer to actually create something well thought-out and intentional, but it excites me that the perspective of feminism is revealing low-hanging fruit for improvement in games-writing so that writers who have little ability to recognize their dependencies on duplicating sexist rubbish can actually express themselves instead of defecating oppressive cultural norms without consideration. 

Criticism that displays the artist's lack of ability to communicate their intention may remove some of the noise that you seem concerned with. I don't really see what the value of satire of sexism is if it comes off as sexist satire, until it is pointed out as a failure to communicate and its cause analyzed.

 

 

I actually didn't know there were female knights, that's really interesting. And the point about the most famous assassin in the French Revolution being a woman is well taken. But I don't think anyone would disagree that knights were almost always men, and so I don't think it's completely unreasonable for a developer, making a game in which the main character is a knight, to overlook including a playable female character. I know there was a lot of controversy about Assassin's Creed as well, but I didn't follow that much so I won't go into that. For the record, I would love to see them include playable female characters.

 

The developer is already doing whatever they want. Regardless of whether or not the decision to not include playable females is reasonable or not, by not including them the developer is making a statement that they prioritize the perceived benefits of not including playable females over the perceived benefits of including them. So my question for you is whether or not you would prioritize a statistically likely representation of gender-roles in a historical setting over the benefits of playble females, such as the ability for much of your audience to be able to identify with the avatar.

[Flynn]

An individual game that puts sexism in set of things it decides to represent historically is one thing.  A trend of many games coincidentally picking that same historical feature is a different thing to talk about.  Even if the historical sexism was thoughtful and nuanced in the individual cases.

[Merus]

Second point: I'm not sure what you mean here. A lot of women are victims; a few of them get a chance to fight back, many of them do not. This is also true to a lesser extent of the men in the story. Isn't that the reality of a patriarchal society? That women generally have fewer avenues for dealing with abuse or mistreatment? I may have misunderstood what you were trying to say.

They have fewer, but not zero. Like you've discovered, there were female knights. There were also female Vikings, female Zulu warriors, female warrior queens - despite our perception of women in patriarchal societies, women have always fought. But to depict a patriarchal society in the short space of time you have in a fictional story, you have to rob women of the agency they would have realistically had.

 

it seems like you're saying, 'If you don't have anything important to say about it, just don't depict it at all,' and I don't think that's a reasonable stance. I don't agree that Martin or any other creator of fiction has an obligation to make some sort of social commentary on the terrible things they depict - I think in many cases it's enough that they depict them and let the audience reflect on it in their own way.

...

As I said earlier, I think that violence against women is inevitable regardless of the kind of society we live in. Is that considered a misogynist view? I mean, I obviously don't want that to be the case, I just see it as a sad reality.

Part the first: patriarchy (if you are not familiar with this, Google it) is built on the silent consent of those inside it, of everyone agreeing that this is normal, that there's nothing unusual going on*. The people attacking Anita believe that those who are being silent about the abuse silently agree with them (Mark Serrels of Kotaku was talking about getting emails to this effect just today). Serial rapists consistently report that they assume every man would act as they do if they were bolder; rapists also cheerfully admit to raping women, so long as you don't actually say the word 'rape' in the question. If you have patriarchal attitudes in the work, and don't address them, it helps to reinforce the idea that this is normal. So, yeah, if you're a creator you can't just present it and leave it there; on the other hand, if you're a creator you're probably not keen on the idea of culture putting meaning into your work that you'd never put in there yourself. There's also the economic argument that just because you think it's necessary doesn't mean your audience wants to have that in their fiction, when they can enjoy something where patriarchy isn't expressed.

Part the second: patriarchy isn't universal. There are tribes that exist today, that you can fly over and visit, that do not privilege men over women. So patriarchy isn't inevitable, and so neither is systemised violence against women.

[feelthedarkness]

 Wouldn't it have been a cop-out if he had faithfully recreated a medieval culture, but simply glossed over the gross abuses and inequalities that women had to suffer through during that period?

 

Let me volley this back with something we talked about briefly earlier on. You know what was far more prevalent than violent sexual assault and brothels? Catholicism. The Vatican is still basically its own country. They controlled almost every major decision because everybody was DEEPLY religious. The church could and did burn people to death with impunity for suggesting the church be less wealthy. The Pope had a significant say in foreign affairs, and who the nobility could marry.

 

This doesn't get carried over to most fantasy. Why is it easier to accept all the sex? (Spoiler: It serves the predisposition of the assumed audience)

[Blambo]

@baekgom: You can't really depict anything artistically without placing value judgement on it. It's not the fact that these things are depicted but why its depicted and how often. I highly doubt that people collected porno cards in the Witcher and thought "hm what an interesting statement about objectification".

The problem is that it's depicted in a weirdly gratuitous manner that seems disproportionate

[Gormongous]

Let me volley this back with something we talked about briefly earlier on. You know what was far more prevalent than violent sexual assault and brothels? Catholicism. The Vatican is still basically its own country. They controlled almost every major decision because everybody was DEEPLY religious. The church could and did burn people to death with impunity for suggesting the church be less wealthy. The Pope had a significant say in foreign affairs, and who the nobility could marry.

 

This doesn't get carried over to most fantasy. Why is it easier to accept all the sex? (Spoiler: It serves the predisposition of the assumed audience)

 

Just to add some more force (again) to your excellent point, I am a professional historian specializing in medieval Europe and this exact phenomenon drives me nuts sometimes. Religious feeling was maybe the single most important cultural factor in Western Europe between the coronation of Charlemagne and the coming of the Black Death. The noble family I study, which has been typically viewed as one of the more pragmatic and cynical ones, spent millions every generation donating to monasteries and churches. Especially earlier in the tenth and eleventh centuries, many other families disinherited their children and grandchildren in order to give all their property to the church upon death. Even the worst raiders and rapists of the bunch, like James d'Avenes, gave amply, attended mass, and went on crusade both before and after their evil deeds. These were people who honestly believed that Christ was coming any day now and that he was going to judge everybody by the same rule, so there was absolutely no way for religion to remain just a private matter, like it is in most fantasy.

 

So yeah, sometimes I really can't stand the fact that the Church of the Seven exists in Game of Thrones mainly to provide swear words and to show that a character who believes in it is gullible. It's incredibly inauthentic but conforms very easily to the hard-bitten agnosticism that a twenty first-century Western audience expects from people living through hard times. That's what "neo-medievalism" is all about, really. We create a new (albeit consciously fictionalized) version of the past, where no one believes in God unless he gives you magical powers personally, in order to flatter what we see as the right order of the world today. The fact that sexual violence against women figures so prominently in our current vision of an "authentic" past should speak volumes.

[twmac]

Oh dear, I googled Jonathan Mcintosh and this is one of the first things that comes up:

 

http://anongamer.tumblr.com/

 

I don't recommend reading it but it is a weird collection of bits and bobs that some one has compiled as a way to discredit Sarkeesian and also share a bunch of her personal information and information on her family.

[juv3nal]

http://squinky.me/quing/

[Christopher]

I agree with the discussion of both too much sexual abuse and not enough of the church in fantasy literature that's ostensibly historically inspired. At the same time, I think A Song of Ice and Fire (the book series) is not a good example of fantasy stories doing this badly.

 

(1) A major theme in the King's Landing story of the most recent two books is the role of church power in the state. It used to have power, but it was suppressed after a political struggle precisely because the state was frustrated by exactly the kind of religious control over policy that you mention. As a result of the political turmoil within state institutions that the books depict, the church is gradually regaining its power over the state and the general populace.

 

(2) There are definitely problematic issues with its depiction of sexual abuse, but within the context of genre fiction it's better than most. (A low bar, I know.) It provides the perspectives a number of women (not first person, but with a narrative voice closely aligned with them using free indirect discourse) to examine the diversity of strategies they employ to deal with their low social status. Additionally, he depicts societies with relatively more gender equality and also provides perspectives from women living in those situations.

 

A lot of these issues are explored in the most recent two books, the ones that many people say are not as good or poorly paced. In my opinion, part of the reason for this negative reactions is precisely because he's complicating comfortable and satisfying fantasy tropes. I think the two more recent books are probably the best, because they take seriously major criticisms of the fantasy genre regarding both of these issues (sexuality and religion) and also another issue that hasn't come up here yet: noble savages and their white savior. 

 

I'm not saying that there's nothing problematic in these books. There are a ton of aspects of its depiction of women and sexuality that I find questionable. But I think it's worth getting outside of a binary between (1) "Martin doesn't need to be a social critic--it's based in history" and (2) "but he can create histories." In fact, in ASoIaF Martin is being a social critic, and he is creating his own history. It's not one flat world where all women are oppressed, regardless of what a lot of Martin's defenders and detractors try to reduce it to be.

 

(The TV show is a totally different issue altogether and frequently a total mess about some of the bad fantasy tropes the book is working against, so these comments are limited only to the books.)

[tegan]

(The TV show is a totally different issue altogether and frequently a total mess about some of the bad fantasy tropes the book is working against, so these comments are limited only to the books.)

 

Although I don't watch the TV show, I feel it's worth noting that the people involved don't even seem to understand that some of the rape depicted is clearly just that.

 

Well, it becomes consensual by the end, because anything for them ultimately results in a turn-on, especially a power struggle.

[Gormongous]

A major theme in the King's Landing story of the most recent two books is the role of church power in the state. It used to have power, but it was suppressed after a political struggle precisely because the state was frustrated by exactly the kind of religious control over policy that you mention. As a result of the political turmoil within state institutions that the books depict, the church is gradually regaining its power over the state and the general populace.

 

Side note, but even during the Sparrows arc of the later Game of Thrones books, vanishingly few of the series' characters actually have faith in the religion itself. Rather, they use it for political gain and disdain those who don't or can't idiots. The few who don't do this, like the High Sparrow himself, are painted as delusional if not outright insane. I know Martin's doing other things elsewhere, but I get really bored of the Borgia papacy being the only paradigm for centralized religious authority in fantasy. Hence, I don't feel too bad for thinking of it as lazy, although my complaints are more against the people reading Game of Thrones who defend ubiquitous sexual violence but not sincere religious feeling as necessary for the fiction. In reality, both are entirely the author's choice and up to him to justify through their intelligent use.

 

Actually, to go on an even further side note, the character in Game of Thrones who best approximates an authentically medieval religious outlook is Stannis. His devotion to the Lord of the Light is stubborn but honest, only that's how he is with everything, so it's not really anything special. And, let's not forget, every single person around him who's not personally profiting from his belief in the Lord of the Light constantly criticizes him (if only in internal monologue) for being silly and credulous, because what's the point of believing in God otherwise, right?

[syntheticgerbil]

FYI, as a gent who doesn't spend his days immersed in games-related twitters and forums and whatnot, I still have NO FUCKING IDEA what you all were talking about for the first 45 minutes of the podcast.

Yeah that's the only thing, I'm still confused about a lot of details because I was on vacation and honestly I don't really care to get super in depth outside of the cliff notes, but when events aren't explained ahead of time, it sort of makes for confusing listening. I imagine if someone listens to this episode two or three years from now it will just be impossible to understand without trying to run through news archives. I've had this problem when delving backwards in to more than a few podcasts lately where I wish they would summarize a little bit more on what they are referring to, especially since it's often hard to keep up with a lot of controversy and I try to not follow these blogs and sites that bring it up everyday,

 

 I've nothing against anime, heck, I'll take Cat Soup and Paranoia Agent over any Western animation I can think of off the top of my head at the moment.

Also Cat Soup is lovely stuff.

[juv3nal]

Yeah that's the only thing, I'm still confused about a lot of details because I was on vacation and honestly I don't really care to get super in depth outside of the cliff notes, but when events aren't explained ahead of time, it sort of makes for confusing listening. I imagine if someone listens to this episode two or three years from now it will just be impossible to understand without trying to run through news archives.

 

This Ars Technica article (via the latest TWIVGB) serves, I think, as a decent recap.

[Henroid]

Reading this over at Gamasutra filled me with a lot of hope and made me feel good. I was under the impression that nothing was going to change and shitlords were gonna keep shitlording. Which they will but they'll get bored and give up eventually.