Minor Character Appreciation: A Song of Ice and Fire’s Shae

(via TheMarySue)

Well, everyone, this is our last post before our summer vacation! We’ll be off for the next two weeks or so, but in the meantime, Game of Thrones is back on the air, and I don’t think many of you will be surprised to learn that I still hate it and question everything that’s happening. As such, I figured it was time to take another look at a minor character who has always stuck with me: Shae. Shae’s book and show counterparts couldn’t be farther apart. But if I’m being honest with myself, it’s another change from the books that I somehow actually enjoyed in the show. Part of that is because I doubt the show could handle Shae’s book storyline well because it’s consistently proven itself incapable of treating its female characters with any kind of respect.

Trigger warning for victim blaming, rape, sexual abuse, and murder up ahead.

Bows, Jails, and Prostitutes Who’re Impaled: The Worrying Trend of Misogyny in GoT’s Season 4 Finale

With this season of Game of Thrones finally at its close, it’s time to look back at where the season, and its finale, left us. It’s a shame that I found this season’s finale fitting for the season as a whole—in this case “fitting” meaning “I expected a lot more”. Season 4 felt like a season of mess-ups and scrambling to reach certain plot points, which only made the impact of these plot points suffer and the climax feel that much less… climatic. Honestly, some of this could have been remedied, I’m sure, if an entire episode wasn’t devoted to Jon Snow and the Wall. But an entire episode was devoted to it, and while it wasn’t a bad episode by any means, it just felt a touch unnecessary. However, on reflecting on the chaos and loss of the finale, I found that one thing in particular caused me to stare at my computer screen just a little more judgmentally. It didn’t ruin the finale, no, but it did continue the disturbing trend that started up this season, and I fear it’s only a sign of more of this kind of thing to come in the future.

WE COULD HAVE HAD IT AAAAAAAAAAALL. ROLLING IN THE DEEEEEEP. (x)

Spoilers for the Season 4 finale under the cut. Also a trigger warning for mention of rape and graphic images.

Game of Thrones’s Purple Wedding: Having Our Pie and Eating It Too?

Just about every Game of Thrones dream I had came true this past weekend. Well, not every dream. My OTP Jaime/Brienne is still not a thing, but hey, there’s still time. That said, our latest episode “The Lion and the Rose” finally featured what is known as the Purple Wedding—something that I had been waiting to happen for a very long time. And now that I’ve seen it, I can only wonder what’s in store for our characters in the future.

I have only finished the first three books of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which puts me quite a bit ahead of the show, for the most part. However, the show has already started to add in or hint at things in the fourth and fifth books. In some instances, this is needed—we don’t see Theon at all during the third and fourth books—but in other instances, the narrative gets changed completely. Sometimes this is for the better, but other times, I wonder how the TV series is going to tie everything together.

Massive Game of Thrones spoilers and a trigger warning for rape after the cut.