Well, except one of the opening scenes with Jaime and Cersei fucking, so…
Maybe? Could be that he feels that this was something that was seen as a major problem from the historical period he’s pulling from to inform him world building (which is about the time of the War of the Roses)? But I don’t the answer to that…
He’s much better than other male fantasy writers, I’d argue, especially the ones who came before him? I do think he does a decent job of showing how women struggle within a highly patriarchal society. And I think most of his characters are pretty stilted, too, not just the women. I think he excels more a world building than he does at character building. And I agree that the show did a better job of character building… but I also think that that was part of the problem with the last couple of seasons, too. They came to depend too much on the characters inner psychology and not enough on the strictures of the society in which the character lived, which was a major driver of the story in the first place.
One of the scenes I’m glad the show left out was when Lollys Stokeworth (a mentally challenged noblewoman who is a recurring background character in the books) gets gang-raped by fifty men during the riot of King’s Landing and her resulting pregnancy is treated as an embarrassing nuisance for the nobility to deal with.
I’m on the fence about this, but this sets up a nice power void for some other streaming service to finally do justice to Anne McCaffrey’s dragons/series. GET ON IT, ALREADY!
It’s admittedly been a long time since I read the books or saw the show, but my recollection was that the “big” scene where Bran is pushed from the tower for catching them was sort of in the shadows and mostly implied with steamy audio and lighting, whereas the book was extensive and detailed about it. I also seem to recall they fucked a lot more often in the books (like, every chance they got) versus in the show, where it was more implied that everyone knew they were doing it but not much was shown. I went into the show specifically wanting to see how they’d handle it, honestly, since HBO has a history of being pretty brave about this sort of thing (I mean True Blood was straight up porn in several places) and was mildly disappointed.
Wait… maybe it’s me who has some sex issues to work out. Excuse me, I need to make some calls and maybe write some books.
Did we read the same books? Tyrion went to the brothels all the time and he kept Shai as his personal mistress, but he never even touched Sansa Stark despite enormous pressure from his father to bed her after they were forcibly wed.
Does anyone care about the Game of Thrones franchise anymore? David & Dan killed that show so utterly and thoroughly that it’s as if they actually went back in time and retroactively killed any interest that people ever had in the show to start with.
In A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion has sex with a brothel slave who the text makes quite clear was repulsed by him, and even goes so far as to describe the scarring on her back from past whippings by her enslaver.
I can’t recall if any of the sex workers are slaves in the HBO series, but if so, sex-slavery is by definition rape.
As for Tyrion, right from the beginning the show made his character far more sympathetic than the books, and he became more so as his character developed. I suspect this was partly down to the show-runners and Peter Dinklage not wanting to fall back on lazy bigoted stereotypes.
I was thinking specifically of the scene @GulliverFoyle mentioned among other times when Tyrion demeans and mistreats women.
Tyrion inquires about finding the services of a sex worker while he’s staying at Illyrio’s house. Illyrio informs him that his servants aren’t sex workers per se, but they won’t refuse him if he asks.
Soon after a 16-year-old slave girl sent to tend Tyrion’s room nervously asks if he will require any other services. Tyrion initially declines, but when he sees the relief on her face he changes his mind and decides to fuck her out of spite. He even orders her to be naked by the time he returns since he plans on being too drunk to undo her buttons.
Like I said, Book Tyrion is a rapey little goblin.
ETA: Oh geez, I just looked it up and it was even worse than I remembered. Tyrion not only forced himself on that girl but he even threatened to strangle her as he did to Shae:
“It might please m’lord to strangle you. That’s how I served my last wh•re. Do you think your master would object? Surely not. He has a hundred more like you, but no one else like me.”
That would be fun, even if the later (especially post-Anne) books got a bit formulaic. Certainly through maybe Harper Hall of Pern they were formative in my youth. Very excited, while somewhat terrified, to see what is made of Wheel of Time, but Dragonriders? Oh hell yes!!!
But yeah, go ahead and write us some fantasy! Please!