Thanks for nothing, Douchebag and Dickface.
I haven't seen the latest Game of Thrones ep yet, and by the way things are going, I probably won't for a couple more weeks at least, either. Nor will I probably watch any new GoT eps for quite a while. I'd originally planned to watch the ep last night and then write a bit of meta on it on tumblr but I've had two days to think about it and I resolved not to watch it yet, but write the meta anyway. I also decided that I didn't want to write it on tumblr since like a million people have written about it on tumblr and I also think that LJ is still better suited to discussing things and to post really long meta.
So, for everyone who hasn't seen the ep yet but plans to and/or has not read all five books yet but plans to and does not want to be spoiled, this is the point where you should keep scrolling and not open the cut. Also, a strong trigger warning for rape and sexual violence since this is what I will be blogging about. Please do not open cut if this triggers or makes you uncomfortable in any way.
Okay, still with me despite the warnings? Alright. So, yes, this is about that scene, the one in which Jaime rapes Cersei in front of their dead son.
First of all, full disclosure: Jaime is one of my two most favorite characters in A Song of Ice and Fire (the other one is Brienne). And while I think that Cersei really is a bitch and that she needs to pay for her crimes, I also like Cersei from a writer's point. I love that her tragedy isn't that she's a good person who gets turned evil by circumstances but that she's a truly despicable person (and has always been that. Anyone remember Melara Heatherspoon?) who has the makings of a great villain but never gets there because of her own greed, impatience and because she overestimates her own intelligence and frequently underestimates those of others (and not because her brother rapes her and vicitimizes her but we'll come to that later).
I'm not sure how to begin, other than cursing the names of Weiss and Benioff and do the Mushu ("Dishonor on you, dishonor on your ancestors, dishonor on your cow!"). Of course I realize that you can't translate a book into a movie/TV show in exactly the same way and often enough, you shouldn't, either (case in point, Tom Bombadil and book!Faramir vs. movie!Faramir) and so far, I haven't had any real qualms with the alterations Douchebag and Dickface Weiss and Benioff made to the source material (although, on deeper inspection I realized that they have done shitty things before, see Stannis and Melisandre and the story of Ros) but this really took the cake.
You might say that the main reason this infuriates me is that Jaime is, as I mentioned above, one of my two favorite characters and that I'm mainly pissed off because this destroys my idealized version of his character. I have thought long and hard about this, because it is a good point but the things is: I haven't idealized his character. I was always aware of the fact that, all things considered, Jaime is at least a very flawed, if not a pretty bad person. Jaime had no issues with pushing a child out of the window because Bran's discovery would have meant an end to his relationship with Cersei (not to mention both of them probably losing their heads but I have a feeling that for Jaime, the first thing would have been much worse than the second) and I can't remember any instance in which he actually regrets doing that, for Bran's sake and nothing but Bran's sake. Jaime is also in a really fucked up relationship with his sister and the most disturbing thing about that is that the fact that it's incest is the least bad thing about it. Other than that, he never had any qualms about threatening Edmure Tully with sending his newborn child over the walls of Riverrun if he didn't cooperate and I'm at least 98% sure that he'd have gone through with it if Edmure hadn't surrendered Riverrun to him. And last but not least, he wasn't exactly nice to Brienne on their journey from Riverrun to King's Landing. Jaime Lannister is a soldier who enjoys killing men on the field, a ruthless commander who does what he thinks needs to be done and a supreme asshole to boot.
But there's one thing Jaime Lannister isn't: a rapist.
For all his innuendo and his ruthlessness and his enjoyment of battle, Jaime Lannister does not think rape is a legitimate way to treat a woman. In fact, Jaime abhors rape and book fans will know that this isn't an assumptions based on wishful thinking but an analysis based on actual, multiple proofs in the source material (I don't have the books here ATM, if you want, I can edit in the actual quotes later today). Not only does Jaime tell Brienne that if he were a woman, rape would be a fate worse than death and that he himself would die fighting off rapists, were he a woman, he also was the only one speaking out against having to guard Aerys while he rapes his queen Rhaella (and I think that the order to keep his mouth shut and do his job was one of the nails in the coffin of his honor) and he actually had a man beheaded because he raped Pia, a camp follower/whore. Whores aren't even worth the dirt under a man's fingernails in most of Westeros and yet, Jaime Lannister, the man with shit for honor, orders a man to be executed for raping a whore who has been raped repeatedly already and whom nobody cares about at Harrenhal. He also tells little Peck he can sleep with her, "if she'll have you", meaning that he doesn't want his squire to rape Pia, either. And for Heaven's sake, he loses his fucking hand for saving Brienne from being raped by the Brave Companions, even though he made it clear to her that the only advice he can give her is to "go away inside" and is in no place to help her (and also isn't obliged to help her, as he sees it).
So no, having him rape Cersei in that sept is not "a slight alteration", it's character assassination. It changes everything about his character and makes the arc he took in the books nearly impossible. Jaime was right, he really didn't have much of his honor left (not because he killed Aerys or because he was fucking his sister but because he nearly killed Bran) before he went on his journey to King's Landing with Brienne. In the books, it takes him a long time - they must have been on the road for a couple weeks, possibly months - to learn to respect her but he does. It takes him a long time to come to terms with losing his right hand - the only thing he thinks that makes him who he is - and I'm almost sure that he still hasn't fully managed that by his chapter in A Dance With Dragons. At the end, he still isn't over Cersei by a long shot but he does not rape her when he encounters her in the sept.
It's a fucking disturbing scene, yes, and Cersei says no in the beginning (but note that she says "No, note here..." for fear of being detected, not "No, I don't want to have you touch me here or anywhere else". It might be splitting hairs and I don't blame anyone who thinks that this is what makes it rape in the books as well, but I think that there really is a distinction between "no, not here, someone might find us" and "no, I don't want you near me in any place") but she's being very enthusiastic in the end. She actually "opens her mouth" and "guides him in" and there can be no doubt there that she is enthusiastically consenting after having a flicker of panic that someone might discover them. Of course, we have the problem of the unreliable narrator since this is from Jaime's POV but in not even one chapter from Cersei's POV is this ever mentioned as rape and since Cersei actually is a victim of having been raped multiple times, over years and is aware of the fact that what Robert did to her was wrong and horrific (which is, you know, one of the main contributing factors of why he fucking ends up dying a very painful and horrible death in the first book), I'd hazard the guess that even though she loves Jaime (which is doubtful even then but that's beside the point), she'd destroy him if he did the same thing to her that Robert did.
Cersei is a character who's really bad at forgetting and forgiving sleights and maybe she would have been in denial at first because she thought Jaime loved her and she loved him but this is a woman who was raped by a man she hated for years. Does anyone really think that as soon as she realizes that she has been raped by a man she loves or at least used to love, she'd just go on trying to make him the most powerful man on the entire continent? Spoiler: she wouldn't. Like hell she would go an and keep badgering him to take up the office of Hand of the King and like fucking hell would she write to him, begging him to be her champion in the trial by combat the High Sparrow offers her in A Feast for Crows. She'd annihilate him with dragon fire and then raze whatever scraps that are still left of him into the fucking ground and then torch the rest. Quite frankly, I'll be very disappointed if that isn't exactly what she's going to do with him in the show now.
Because, you know, if she doesn't, that also assassinates her character and turns her from a character who could have been a formidable villain but didn't because of who and what she was, is and will always be into a character who has been victimized again and doesn't act on her agenda but because of something someone else does to her. Having Jaime rape Cersei effectively takes all agency she had away from her and that pisses me the fuck off. Cersei is a bitch, Cersei is impulsive, Cersei acts rash and shortsighted but Cersei, for all those flaws, is a woman fighting with claws and teeth to gain independence and then to keep it. And Cersei strikes first. Cersei is, at some point, sick of reacting to everyone and wants to act, to strike first, to vanguish her enemies before they can vanguish her. Making her a victim of rape, again and by a man she at least used to love and still feels strongly for, destroys everything she was, is and will always be.
Which would be annoying, infuriating and downright insulting if it happened once but it's terrible and disgusting that this isn't even the first time Douchebag and Dickface did something like that to a woman on the show. To quote Thomas Fichtenmayer,
This would be a big deal on its own, but it’s not the first time David Benioff and Dan Weiss have changed a scene so that it specifically victimizes a woman. At the end of season two, Stannis Baratheon chokes Melisandre of Asshai because he lost a big battle (not in the books). Last season, Ros was forced into an abusive sex scene with Joffrey (scene not in the books, character named Ros not in the books). Then, Ros’s storyline ends with her being used as target practice by Joffrey for the crime of inconveniencing Littlefinger. The last shot of her in the episode “The Climb” is her posed in a sexualized manner, feathered with crossbow bolts.
(Source)
Three scenes, none of them in the books, all of them degrade and victimize women who are in one way or the other powerful, assertive, intrigant, self-confidant and/or sexually active (in Ros's case, the first four are arguable but she did work up her way from naive country whore to Littlefinger's assistant/second-in-command and used the power she had to mine secrets for Varys, Littlefinger's arch enemy and, going back to Season 1 especially, she doesn't mind having sex and she is confident about her body and has an agency of her own when setting off to King's Landing). Honi soit qui mal y pense, but am I the only one who starts to get the bad feeling that D&D just really hate have issues with women that don't fit into the traditional image? At this point, I honestly think that it's a miracle that Arya Stark, Brienne of Tarth and Asha Greyjoy haven't been raped and/or otherwise sexually assaulted yet.
There's also the issue that D&D changed Dany and Drogo's wedding night from consensual sex to rape but people who complain about that forget that he rapes her multiple times later on, even in the books and that Khal Drogo pretty sure isn't a stranger to rape even before marrying her. It was annoying that this detail was changed but then again, it actually made the whole relationship much more straightforward and honest. It didn't actually make a different character out of Drogo since it's in the source material that he doesn't mind raping women, not even raping his own wife, despite their first night having been consensual. And it didn't completely change the trajectory of his character arc, just for more shock value.
Jaime, on the other hand, will be much, much, much harder to redeem, if any at all now. Because, you know, one of his only redeeming qualities, from an objective standpoint, was that he abhorred rape with all his heart. Rescuing Pia from Harrenhal, executing the last man who raped her and taking her into his little entourage on his way to Riverrun, despite not being obligated to, was an important step towards regaining the last possibly salvageable scraps of honor he had left (probably even more important than send Brienne on the quest for Sansa Stark). Just how are we supposed to believe this now, if it is ever even featured in the show? How are we supposed to think anything besides "YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITE!" and throw things at the screen now? How are we supposed to not cringe every time he is in the vicinity of just about any woman now?
Also, nothing about Jaime makes any sense anymore. Jaime is, as I interpret him, a kind of cautionary tale, a self-fulfilling prophecy. After Jaime killed Aerys, everyone went out of their way to tell him how much of a monster he is, how he has shit for honor, how he doesn't even deserve to wear the white cloak he'd been covetting so much as a young boy and I think at some point, he started to believe them and act accordingly. His one big mistake wasn't killing Aerys, it was letting himself being pushed into believing he didn't have a choice and staying in that place instead of clawing his way out of that pit.
Jaime, at the beginning of his journey with Brienne, still likes to hide behind the facade of the Kingslayer, the man who doesn't have a choice but do evil but the entire point of that journey for his character is to realize that even as a man with shit for honor, you still always have a choice. Brienne was told all her life that she didn't have a choice but to marry a man and submit to him and she still chose to do different. Brienne had a choice to walk past two women having been hanged for sleeping with Lannister man and didn't. And Brienne was told by Jaime that she had no choice but not to fight the Brave Companions when they came for her but still decided not to go down with a fight. Brienne was the one showing Jaime that you always have a choice and letting Jaime lose the last scrap of honor he still had left in the show undid all of that in just a few minutes.
It really pisses me off that D&D would sacrifice all the painstaking character development, everything being on the road with Brienne taught Jaime for just one more completely unnecessary shocking moment. It majorly pisses me off that D&D would throw away the lesson Brienne and Jaime taught us - that no matter, how deep you think you have sunken and how bad of a person you are, you always have a choice to do the right thing - for some cheap shock value that ultimately serves no other purpose but to get revenge on Cersei in the most degrading, disgusting way you could punish a character as an author.
Fuck you, Douchebag and Dickface, just fuck you.
So, for everyone who hasn't seen the ep yet but plans to and/or has not read all five books yet but plans to and does not want to be spoiled, this is the point where you should keep scrolling and not open the cut. Also, a strong trigger warning for rape and sexual violence since this is what I will be blogging about. Please do not open cut if this triggers or makes you uncomfortable in any way.
Okay, still with me despite the warnings? Alright. So, yes, this is about that scene, the one in which Jaime rapes Cersei in front of their dead son.
First of all, full disclosure: Jaime is one of my two most favorite characters in A Song of Ice and Fire (the other one is Brienne). And while I think that Cersei really is a bitch and that she needs to pay for her crimes, I also like Cersei from a writer's point. I love that her tragedy isn't that she's a good person who gets turned evil by circumstances but that she's a truly despicable person (and has always been that. Anyone remember Melara Heatherspoon?) who has the makings of a great villain but never gets there because of her own greed, impatience and because she overestimates her own intelligence and frequently underestimates those of others (and not because her brother rapes her and vicitimizes her but we'll come to that later).
I'm not sure how to begin, other than cursing the names of Weiss and Benioff and do the Mushu ("Dishonor on you, dishonor on your ancestors, dishonor on your cow!"). Of course I realize that you can't translate a book into a movie/TV show in exactly the same way and often enough, you shouldn't, either (case in point, Tom Bombadil and book!Faramir vs. movie!Faramir) and so far, I haven't had any real qualms with the alterations Douchebag and Dickface Weiss and Benioff made to the source material (although, on deeper inspection I realized that they have done shitty things before, see Stannis and Melisandre and the story of Ros) but this really took the cake.
You might say that the main reason this infuriates me is that Jaime is, as I mentioned above, one of my two favorite characters and that I'm mainly pissed off because this destroys my idealized version of his character. I have thought long and hard about this, because it is a good point but the things is: I haven't idealized his character. I was always aware of the fact that, all things considered, Jaime is at least a very flawed, if not a pretty bad person. Jaime had no issues with pushing a child out of the window because Bran's discovery would have meant an end to his relationship with Cersei (not to mention both of them probably losing their heads but I have a feeling that for Jaime, the first thing would have been much worse than the second) and I can't remember any instance in which he actually regrets doing that, for Bran's sake and nothing but Bran's sake. Jaime is also in a really fucked up relationship with his sister and the most disturbing thing about that is that the fact that it's incest is the least bad thing about it. Other than that, he never had any qualms about threatening Edmure Tully with sending his newborn child over the walls of Riverrun if he didn't cooperate and I'm at least 98% sure that he'd have gone through with it if Edmure hadn't surrendered Riverrun to him. And last but not least, he wasn't exactly nice to Brienne on their journey from Riverrun to King's Landing. Jaime Lannister is a soldier who enjoys killing men on the field, a ruthless commander who does what he thinks needs to be done and a supreme asshole to boot.
But there's one thing Jaime Lannister isn't: a rapist.
For all his innuendo and his ruthlessness and his enjoyment of battle, Jaime Lannister does not think rape is a legitimate way to treat a woman. In fact, Jaime abhors rape and book fans will know that this isn't an assumptions based on wishful thinking but an analysis based on actual, multiple proofs in the source material (I don't have the books here ATM, if you want, I can edit in the actual quotes later today). Not only does Jaime tell Brienne that if he were a woman, rape would be a fate worse than death and that he himself would die fighting off rapists, were he a woman, he also was the only one speaking out against having to guard Aerys while he rapes his queen Rhaella (and I think that the order to keep his mouth shut and do his job was one of the nails in the coffin of his honor) and he actually had a man beheaded because he raped Pia, a camp follower/whore. Whores aren't even worth the dirt under a man's fingernails in most of Westeros and yet, Jaime Lannister, the man with shit for honor, orders a man to be executed for raping a whore who has been raped repeatedly already and whom nobody cares about at Harrenhal. He also tells little Peck he can sleep with her, "if she'll have you", meaning that he doesn't want his squire to rape Pia, either. And for Heaven's sake, he loses his fucking hand for saving Brienne from being raped by the Brave Companions, even though he made it clear to her that the only advice he can give her is to "go away inside" and is in no place to help her (and also isn't obliged to help her, as he sees it).
So no, having him rape Cersei in that sept is not "a slight alteration", it's character assassination. It changes everything about his character and makes the arc he took in the books nearly impossible. Jaime was right, he really didn't have much of his honor left (not because he killed Aerys or because he was fucking his sister but because he nearly killed Bran) before he went on his journey to King's Landing with Brienne. In the books, it takes him a long time - they must have been on the road for a couple weeks, possibly months - to learn to respect her but he does. It takes him a long time to come to terms with losing his right hand - the only thing he thinks that makes him who he is - and I'm almost sure that he still hasn't fully managed that by his chapter in A Dance With Dragons. At the end, he still isn't over Cersei by a long shot but he does not rape her when he encounters her in the sept.
It's a fucking disturbing scene, yes, and Cersei says no in the beginning (but note that she says "No, note here..." for fear of being detected, not "No, I don't want to have you touch me here or anywhere else". It might be splitting hairs and I don't blame anyone who thinks that this is what makes it rape in the books as well, but I think that there really is a distinction between "no, not here, someone might find us" and "no, I don't want you near me in any place") but she's being very enthusiastic in the end. She actually "opens her mouth" and "guides him in" and there can be no doubt there that she is enthusiastically consenting after having a flicker of panic that someone might discover them. Of course, we have the problem of the unreliable narrator since this is from Jaime's POV but in not even one chapter from Cersei's POV is this ever mentioned as rape and since Cersei actually is a victim of having been raped multiple times, over years and is aware of the fact that what Robert did to her was wrong and horrific (which is, you know, one of the main contributing factors of why he fucking ends up dying a very painful and horrible death in the first book), I'd hazard the guess that even though she loves Jaime (which is doubtful even then but that's beside the point), she'd destroy him if he did the same thing to her that Robert did.
Cersei is a character who's really bad at forgetting and forgiving sleights and maybe she would have been in denial at first because she thought Jaime loved her and she loved him but this is a woman who was raped by a man she hated for years. Does anyone really think that as soon as she realizes that she has been raped by a man she loves or at least used to love, she'd just go on trying to make him the most powerful man on the entire continent? Spoiler: she wouldn't. Like hell she would go an and keep badgering him to take up the office of Hand of the King and like fucking hell would she write to him, begging him to be her champion in the trial by combat the High Sparrow offers her in A Feast for Crows. She'd annihilate him with dragon fire and then raze whatever scraps that are still left of him into the fucking ground and then torch the rest. Quite frankly, I'll be very disappointed if that isn't exactly what she's going to do with him in the show now.
Because, you know, if she doesn't, that also assassinates her character and turns her from a character who could have been a formidable villain but didn't because of who and what she was, is and will always be into a character who has been victimized again and doesn't act on her agenda but because of something someone else does to her. Having Jaime rape Cersei effectively takes all agency she had away from her and that pisses me the fuck off. Cersei is a bitch, Cersei is impulsive, Cersei acts rash and shortsighted but Cersei, for all those flaws, is a woman fighting with claws and teeth to gain independence and then to keep it. And Cersei strikes first. Cersei is, at some point, sick of reacting to everyone and wants to act, to strike first, to vanguish her enemies before they can vanguish her. Making her a victim of rape, again and by a man she at least used to love and still feels strongly for, destroys everything she was, is and will always be.
Which would be annoying, infuriating and downright insulting if it happened once but it's terrible and disgusting that this isn't even the first time Douchebag and Dickface did something like that to a woman on the show. To quote Thomas Fichtenmayer,
This would be a big deal on its own, but it’s not the first time David Benioff and Dan Weiss have changed a scene so that it specifically victimizes a woman. At the end of season two, Stannis Baratheon chokes Melisandre of Asshai because he lost a big battle (not in the books). Last season, Ros was forced into an abusive sex scene with Joffrey (scene not in the books, character named Ros not in the books). Then, Ros’s storyline ends with her being used as target practice by Joffrey for the crime of inconveniencing Littlefinger. The last shot of her in the episode “The Climb” is her posed in a sexualized manner, feathered with crossbow bolts.
(Source)
Three scenes, none of them in the books, all of them degrade and victimize women who are in one way or the other powerful, assertive, intrigant, self-confidant and/or sexually active (in Ros's case, the first four are arguable but she did work up her way from naive country whore to Littlefinger's assistant/second-in-command and used the power she had to mine secrets for Varys, Littlefinger's arch enemy and, going back to Season 1 especially, she doesn't mind having sex and she is confident about her body and has an agency of her own when setting off to King's Landing). Honi soit qui mal y pense, but am I the only one who starts to get the bad feeling that D&D just really hate have issues with women that don't fit into the traditional image? At this point, I honestly think that it's a miracle that Arya Stark, Brienne of Tarth and Asha Greyjoy haven't been raped and/or otherwise sexually assaulted yet.
There's also the issue that D&D changed Dany and Drogo's wedding night from consensual sex to rape but people who complain about that forget that he rapes her multiple times later on, even in the books and that Khal Drogo pretty sure isn't a stranger to rape even before marrying her. It was annoying that this detail was changed but then again, it actually made the whole relationship much more straightforward and honest. It didn't actually make a different character out of Drogo since it's in the source material that he doesn't mind raping women, not even raping his own wife, despite their first night having been consensual. And it didn't completely change the trajectory of his character arc, just for more shock value.
Jaime, on the other hand, will be much, much, much harder to redeem, if any at all now. Because, you know, one of his only redeeming qualities, from an objective standpoint, was that he abhorred rape with all his heart. Rescuing Pia from Harrenhal, executing the last man who raped her and taking her into his little entourage on his way to Riverrun, despite not being obligated to, was an important step towards regaining the last possibly salvageable scraps of honor he had left (probably even more important than send Brienne on the quest for Sansa Stark). Just how are we supposed to believe this now, if it is ever even featured in the show? How are we supposed to think anything besides "YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITE!" and throw things at the screen now? How are we supposed to not cringe every time he is in the vicinity of just about any woman now?
Also, nothing about Jaime makes any sense anymore. Jaime is, as I interpret him, a kind of cautionary tale, a self-fulfilling prophecy. After Jaime killed Aerys, everyone went out of their way to tell him how much of a monster he is, how he has shit for honor, how he doesn't even deserve to wear the white cloak he'd been covetting so much as a young boy and I think at some point, he started to believe them and act accordingly. His one big mistake wasn't killing Aerys, it was letting himself being pushed into believing he didn't have a choice and staying in that place instead of clawing his way out of that pit.
Jaime, at the beginning of his journey with Brienne, still likes to hide behind the facade of the Kingslayer, the man who doesn't have a choice but do evil but the entire point of that journey for his character is to realize that even as a man with shit for honor, you still always have a choice. Brienne was told all her life that she didn't have a choice but to marry a man and submit to him and she still chose to do different. Brienne had a choice to walk past two women having been hanged for sleeping with Lannister man and didn't. And Brienne was told by Jaime that she had no choice but not to fight the Brave Companions when they came for her but still decided not to go down with a fight. Brienne was the one showing Jaime that you always have a choice and letting Jaime lose the last scrap of honor he still had left in the show undid all of that in just a few minutes.
It really pisses me off that D&D would sacrifice all the painstaking character development, everything being on the road with Brienne taught Jaime for just one more completely unnecessary shocking moment. It majorly pisses me off that D&D would throw away the lesson Brienne and Jaime taught us - that no matter, how deep you think you have sunken and how bad of a person you are, you always have a choice to do the right thing - for some cheap shock value that ultimately serves no other purpose but to get revenge on Cersei in the most degrading, disgusting way you could punish a character as an author.
Fuck you, Douchebag and Dickface, just fuck you.