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Game of Thrones S3E8: Will you take this man?

Leigh Alexander — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:06:49 +0000

It's a war for the seven kingdoms! It's a soap opera with romantic weddings and blood sacrifices!!

It's the latest episode of Game of Thrones, and it's time to recap and discuss! When we last left Arya Stark, she'd gotten fed up with the fire-worshipping Brotherhood Without Banners and their gold-hungry ways and run straight into the arms of Sandor "The Hound" Clegane, who killed her friend Mycah in a more innocent time.

The Hound is a great character: He never pretends to be a good person, but in his blunt honesty about all his deeds, you can see he's maybe not such a bad one. As he reminds Arya, he saved her sister Sansa from certain rape and likely death in the slums of King's Landing. It's a crude, candid kind of bargaining that puts Arya off her notion to try to kill him, and that same bleak pragmatism looks like it'll even lead him to bring her to the Twins to reunite with her family, just in time for her uncle Edmure's wedding to Roslin Frey.

Clegane knew about the upcoming wedding and suggests the Brothers ought to have told Arya -- important note that occupied with other things and keeping to themselves, they probably just hadn't heard the latest, versus making an omission more convenient to their ends. In the massive world of Westeros information travels slowly and often unreliably, by raven or word of mouth, and by the time news reaches one's ear, the information may have changed.

That's actually a powerful plot device especially when it comes to the narrative of the Stark family, scattered to the winds, never quite sure if a brother or sister's last known location is accurate (Arya's family thinks she's still being held at King's Landing, for example, as the Lannisters have ensured the truth hasn't spread).

Arya sat side-saddle, clinging to the Hound, is a brilliant bit of scene framing. We usually see the camera close to her pensive face, or see her at an angle of some parity with the adults of her world. In this shot, she looks so tiny we can't help but remember she is a little girl, one who probably badly misses her family and wants her mom after all this time.

The slave city of Yunkai has hired a mercenary-for-hire army called The Second Sons to bolster its defense against Daenerys, her dragons and her thousands of Unsullied. In Qarth, she needed money, and in Astapor she needed armies, but this agenda against Yunkai is about her own savior complex and her well-intentioned, if ambitiously-simplistic, refusal to tolerate slavery. It doesn't seem likely that her upcoming fight against Yunkai's defenses is going to bear certain fruit for her war effort in Westeros, and in fact it might even be a costly distraction.

Again now the TV series does some tidy streamlining of the books -- handsome Daario Naharis, the mellower foil to the Second Sons' grotesque and lecherous captain Mero, canonically originates from a different mercenary group, the Stormcrows. In the novels once Daenerys reaches Yunkai a number of military factions begin parlaying for or against her loyalty -- it's so confusing I can hardly remember it myself -- but making lusty aesthete Daario one of the Second Sons makes her acquisition of a mercenary group easier to follow.

It also makes her flicker of evident desire for the young warrior a little more plausible (the book gives him a multi-pronged, blue-dyed beard?!). Apparently rather than assassinate Daenerys as Mero would have liked, Daario Naharis would rather behead both his comrades and serve Dany strictly because of her beauty. Do you trust him?

Of course, Emilia Clarke is a startlingly beautiful human being. As she slowly rose from the bathwater and crossed the room to confront her suitor I might have made aloud some kind of awestruck exclamation including the word "perfect," to which my guy friends watching with me politely demurred "nahhh," presumably for my benefit.

Meanwhile at Dragonstone, Melisandre has arrived with Gendry, friend of Arya Stark and bastard of Robert Baratheon, whose king's blood she needs for her Red God ritual. With all her talk of knives and lamb slaughter, we presume she will be wining and dining the boy to his death. And we join Davos Seaworth, one of the series most lovable characters overall, as he diligently continues teaching himself to read with the Targaryen history book given to him by Stannis' daughter Shireen.

Davos is called the Onion Knight because he was once a lowborn smuggler, but snuck onions and produce to Stannis and his armies during the siege of Storm's End amid Robert's Rebellion, without which none of them would have survived against the Redwynes.That act earned Davos his knighthood -- but it tells you a lot about Stannis that he nonetheless removed three of Davos' fingers in punishment for his past as a smuggler.

Still, for always telling Stannis the truth, Davos is his most loyal advisor. Stannis ostensibly comes to visit him in the dungeon to offer him his freedom in exchange for his acceptance of Melisandre and her sorcery -- but he has to know that's not a bargain Davos would take, when there is an innocent boy's life at stake. Even at the risk of his own ongoing imprisonment he counsels Stannis to be more true to his nature ("you're not a man who slaughters innocents for gain or glory,") and less so to the spectre of R'hllor.

Yet there's evidence of Melisandre's power, from the shadow assassin she birthed to kill Renly to Stannis beginning to see his own visions in her fires. When we see the Red Priestess is thus far only leeching Gendry's blood, not killing him, Davos once again looks unjustly mistrustful of her in his King's eyes. When Stannis curses one of his "false king" enemies for each fat leech -- Robb Stark, Balon Greyjoy and Joffrey Baratheon -- is he dooming them to divine redemption? Is this the will of a higher power, some black magic, or the manipulations of a mad sorceress?

This episode gives us an incredibly bleak and gutting wedding, as Tyrion has to wed Sansa amid the open loathing she isn't crafty enough to hide. He feels mocked, being made to marry a beautiful, miserable young thing while the woman he really loves maintains a ruse of handmaidenship in the background. We also get a wonderfully harsh little bit of Cersei Lannister, who lets Margaery Tyrell know she isn't buying the manipulative, sweet sister act and has nothing to gain from playing along.

Cersei is, against all odds, one of my favorite characters in the entire canon. She's not so great at playing the game, but she never loses her nerve in the face of impossible odds -- she's got a nightmare son, is a brood mare for her father's power plays, gets none of the regard of her famous twin brother and has even less value in her father's eyes than the younger brother he hates.

One can almost admire her unguarded nastiness. If she hadn't been so paranoid about her imagined rivalry with sweet-natured, bare-armed Lady Margaery, the Lannisters would have lost Sansa, and a crucial brick in their power struggle, to the Tyrells. Cersei's instincts are what began peeling back the layers of the obsequious Tyrell plan to usurp and undermine her family. Not that she'll be given the latitude to do anything about it, nor the credit for unveiling the problem.

When Margaery grasps Cersei's arm to ooze about being sisters, the Queen Regent lets her son's fiancee know, coolly, that the Tyrells are not fooling anyone. She explains the Rains of Castamere song to Margaery (sorry to have illustrated it for you a bit prematurely in last week's recap), the warning tune abut what must befall any family that tries to rival the Lannisters. And tells her in no uncertain terms that she has no interest in playing along with that fakey sister crap.

Cersei isn't graceful in general, simply brutal. But personally I can appreciate that rather more than Margaery's constantly-insincere, apple-cheeked opportunism. Machinations are going to go on at court either way, so it takes a certain bravery to be simply honest with your enemies, a certain toughness to refuse to play along.

Sansa is given away on her wedding day by the cruel little monster who had her father beheaded. No wonder this procession resembles a funeral. Joff thinks it's funny to torment his uncle by yanking away the stepstool provided to keep him level with his tall young bride, so that when Sansa has to be cloaked by her groom in the colors of her new family, the entire court assembly chuckles when Tyrion can't reach her.

Well. They chuckle until Tywin silences them with a stony look. And then Joff goes on laughing, a subtle bit of symbolism that even his powerful granddad can't get a rein on him. It's hard to read whether it simply does not occur to Sansa to kneel, or whether this is a subtle refusal on her part, the tiniest bit of claimed agency -- what do you think?

Either way, it's cruel to Tyrion; her youth and beauty are cruel to him, as is the flinch-making "what if I never want you to" response she makes when he gently declines to make her consummate the marriage later in the episode. I feel for Tyrion, but one can't exactly blame Sansa for having run out of sympathy for the Lannisters, either -- even her marriage doesn't look likely to free her from Joffrey's abuse, and Cersei's "suggestion" that her son pick on Margaery instead is easily rebuffed.

Poor Loras Tyrell, who will have to marry prickly Cersei now when neither of them want it whatsoever, is having a miserable time. He's also been made into something of a caricature, his homosexuality a sort of joke (note him eagerly chatting up a man to comedic effect as Margaery and Cersei stroll past). This portrayal of a flowery, lusty lad-lover is not exactly canonical with the quiet if lovely warrior who pined for the loss of Renly and probably would have never slept with Littlefinger's mole a few episodes back.

Joff has been particularly odious today, so when drunk Tyrion, pushed to his limit, threatens his nephew and sucks the last pretense of merriment out of the wedding day, it's a thrilling little moment. And no matter how drunk Tyrion has gotten, he can't bring himself to go to bed with a trembling 14 year-old girl who's near tears at the prospect.

This, of course, is much to Shae's delight when she checks the bedsheets in the morning. I still wonder why if she loves Tyrion so much, why she doesn't trust him or compromise with him, or leave King's Landing if these are circumstances she can't abide, but the look on her face upon stripping the unsullied marriage bed was very sweet.

Finally, Sam Tarly gets his chance to be a hero to Gilly and her baby, and we learn that "dragonglass" has some mysterious power against the White Walkers, news that's sure to be of use to the Night's Watch and the Wildlings alike. This scene is placed a little differently than in the books -- Sam's act of heroism actually occurs earlier in the story, and in order to save his Black Brothers, not Gilly, but since the relationship with Gilly is of primary importance to Sam, this was an acceptable (and appropriately-dramatic) edit.

This was a subtler, less action-packed episode than maybe we're used to, but then, there are only two episodes left in the season now, so expect this is some kind of calm before a storm.

Who did you feel sorrier for, Sansa or Tyrion? Would you declare for Lannister or Tyrell? What do you make of Daario Naharis?

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

Leigh Alexander — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:43:04 +0000

It's Sunday morning in London, where I'm living as of less than a week ago. I've got a hangover and kitchen cleanup duty, and on top of that, I'm out £10. An actual live baby fox entered our house last night. Last night was Eurovision. I've had my first Eurovision party as an embedded foreigner.

Wait, I'll tell you all about it, but let's back up a bit, first. My first Eurovision was last year in my New York home, playing host to English friends. Before that, I'm a little embarrassed to say I knew hardly anything of the pan-European song contest, and in watching it I experienced the kind of wonderment that's sadly pretty rare for us Americans: the world is so big.

I was also fascinated to learn about European politics in the guise of a pop competition. The winning nation has to host next year's event (this year Eurovision was in Malmo, Sweden, thanks to Loreen's victory last year) – but that's an expense some countries don't want. Sometimes when a country votes for you, as Portugal is wont to do for Spain, it's less support for your song and more trying to stick you with an inconvenient expense. Eastern bloc nations or Scandinavian countries have obvious alliances, where loyalty supersedes popularity or quality. It's not so much that the best song wins, but that the best-placed song wins.

Without a guide I might have bounced off it, but thanks to the inimitable Ste Curran – game designer, One Life Left radio show host and Eurovision Sage – I had an amazing time. This year we weren't at the same party, but his complete sincerity as regards the song contest, alongside his pure urge to immerse himself in unmitigated joy, are still with me.

“The ‘general' opinion in Britain is that Eurovision is ridiculous, a joke: dumb, homogeneous pop music for a competition that's decided more by politics than artistry," Ste writes me, when I extend clutching fingers for emotional support by mail. “‘Eurovision' as an adjective is more a pejorative than anything: everyone knows about it, lots of people watch, but largely to laugh. Appreciation for the event is often soaked in irony, the coward's way to enjoy anything. Never commit your heart to anything, never get hurt."

This 2007 Eurovision performance by Verka Serduchka of Ukraine is what I show my U.S. friends who don't know what Eurovision is. It's spectacular, and hilarious, and so genuinely awesome that if I'm in a bad mood I just put it on and it fixes everything. Try it.

Yeah, the pop songs are funny whether intentionally or not, and one should laugh. But truly enjoying Eurovision is about empathy for its narratives, Ste asserts: "Every four minutes a new artist appears, does everything they can to win the hearts and votes of 125 million people," he says.

“Think of that: for each of the performers this is their moment, as big a moment as they'll ever have, their World Cup, their Olympics, representing their country; likely the most visible they'll ever be and perhaps the single high point of their lives," he says. "They have trained and practised and dreamt and worried and oh my God here it comes, everyone is watching them, it is happening right now."

When I asked him what I should do at my first Eurovision party in London – a recently-blooded Eurovision fan (who still dances to Loreen's “Euphoria" and Tooji's “Stay") – his main piece of advice was to turn off the commentary. That and to watch out for regular, if ill-advised, dubstep breakdowns among all the songs.

UK commentator Graham Norton can get a bit derisive at times, right? When each contestant was introduced with a little visual montage of their home life, Norton called the framing convention “a bit banal." On Russia's singer's creatiive background, he said “she loves paintings, and... things."

“People often mistake the British allergy to taking anything at all seriously for cynicism," friend and British writer Laurie Penny explains to me. There are only a very few things, like Doctor Who and binge drinking, that we allow ourselves to enjoy unironically. Eurovision isn't one of them, particularly because we consider ourselves culturally and creatively superior to almost every other national entrant, despite our terrible food, horrible weather, Tracey Emin and Coldplay."

“We're also poor team players and worse losers; whoever invented the idea that it's the taking part that counts was not from the Home Counties," she adds. “So, we're only allowed to have fun watching Eurovision as long as we pretend to hate it and groan all the way through, and then console ourselves after another unsuccessful year with the idea that we're not really part of Europe anyway. Despite all of that, I imagine the growing xenophobic consensus in the screaming bear pit that passes for political debate in Britain right now would be blown wide open were anyone to suggest withdrawing from Eurovision."

Interesting! Now, on the big night my housemates made snacks – chips, oven pizza, and crusty things with meat in them that I've yet to fully understand. We went to the “American" section at Tesco, a shelf that had Aunt Jemima maple syrup (England has perfectly fine maple syrup and there is no reason to spend £6, or, like, $9, on the Aunt), and Lucky Charms, and strawberry-flavored marshmallow Fluff. We bought the Fluff. Everyone was surprised to like it on white bread with peanut butter. Yeah, that was my contribution to our Eurovision party. I'm sorry.

London is a place where people are fine with dipping Pringles in guacamole, and where guacamole is an odd, sour treacle resembling an avocado in color alone. It was good, though. Our housemates are wonderful, our friends are wonderful. There was some really nice liquor, and I think even Ste would agree with me that's all it takes to have a Eurovision party. Last year Ste brought me a bottle of cranberry Finlandia vodka as a house gift. I can't even tell you what all we drank this year.

Properly watching Eurovision requires a little research – there are semi-finals and eliminations rounds ahead of last night's Grand Final, and it's best to educate oneself ahead of time so that you know who you want to root for in the main event, whom to tell your friends about, when you can take a cigarette break and when you need to tell the whole room to quiet down and pay attention.

Last year there were a lot of songs we liked. This year I hitched my star to only one nation: Romania, and the incredible operatic acrobatics of Cezar Ouatu – a spangled, handsome Dracula accompanied by lyrical dance renditions of romantic blood rituals. My friend commented that songs called “It's my life" or including the lyrics “it's my life" generally represent a sort of tough everyman aesthetic, but in this case, the Romanian life is ballet blood sacrifices.

There's even a dubstep breakdown halfway through the performance that serves to remind what dubstep breakdowns can actually be good for. Oh man. Standout superstar of Eurovision 2013.

I couldn't wait for our friends to see Romania's entry. France was up first of all, with a blonde chanteuse in a fringed dress who reminded us all of Tina Turner (Graham Norton snarked about her being a little bit like Courtney Love). Her last name is “Bourgeois". No, really, it is.

Our friend Paul couldn't wait for us to see Lithuania's entry, a Morrisey-ish guy who used to be in a band called “Hetero," if we heard correctly, and sang a song about being in love because of one's shoes. Seriously.

Next up was Moldova's entry, who had a La Roux-ish coif and a massive dress that slowly elevated her taller and taller into the air. A Hunger Games-ish pattern of flames evolved across the dress; she was a real Girl on Fire, and I remember liking the song, but nothing else about it. Oh, but Finland's though, we'd already heard about – a cheerleader sort of lady in a saucy wedding dress singing a song called “Marry Me," which was more than a little misogynistic lyrically.

To address that criticism, “Marry Me" employed a trite sort of “surprise reveal": The tuxedo-ed backup dancers were actually women, and the singer kissed one of the women at the end of the song, which offended Turkey and threatened to interrupt the Eurovision broadcast in that country. Powerful gay marriage anthem this wasn't; I also heard rumors the singer wrote the song to enjoin her boyfriend to propose.

Belgium's was the sort of entry that reminds me of my friend Ste's encouraging us all to remember that for every silly pop act on that stage we might be tempted to have a laugh at, for those performers, this is their momentous big day on the world stage. Belgium's song itself wasn't especially remarkable, but the way the singer cupped his face at the end and hopped up and down to all of the applause was one of those touching Eurovision moments.

All I remember about Belarus is how much the song made me wish there were a “best legs" prize in Eurovision, is that a horrible thing to say, she came out of a disco ball, it was incredible. There's an interesting war going on in Eurovision between showmanship and actual excellent pop song, and a lot of times stunning showmanship lets people forget it's a song contest, and could you dance to it in a club and so forth.

Ah, there was the Maltese Doctor (Malta's entry was fronted by an actual adorable young doctor), with a sort of strummy twee jam band song that set everyone in the room to abrupt and fevered swaying. Think the Plain White Ts and their grating marshmallow-Fluff “Hey Delilah," that sort of thing. A collective awwww went up around the room here, and as much as any of us would gag to hear such a thing on the radio, the band looked so familial, so cheerful and sweet, it was hard not to like their performance.

Russia's performance last year was a set of dancing grannies, either an earnest subversion or an ironic cop-out (probably the latter, let's be real). This year Russia brought something more sincere, a balladeer that might have been even a little too dour, a little too restrained – aside from some lovely luminescent technology toward the end that saw audience members' glow bracelets glimmer on in convincing ripples as light-jellyfish seemed to rise through the air.

Germany came with “Glorious," an absolutely blatant rip-off of winning song “Euphoria" from Sweden's Loreen last year. I kind of liked Netherlands' Anouk and her patently un-Eurovision, minor key-heavy “Birds." Her odd voice put me a bit in mind of a Janis Ian or Melanie Safka kind of singer. Ukraine's act got voted very highly in the end, but she reminded me of a listless Rebecca Black-alike.

Erm. Okay. So. Here's where we got drunk and preoccupied, suddenly deciding that we would register with an online betting site and place £10 on Romania to win Eurovision. Not that we thought they would, really. We'd seen the odds sheet. But I was carried away with Eurovision fever, and thought if one is going to bet on Eurovision, why not do so in commitment to SPIRITUAL RIGHTNESS? The least opportunistic, least-cynical bet I could make?

It all degenerates from there, really. A baby fox broke into our house. A REAL LIVE BABY FOX. It was quite distracting. Then, our neighbor one house over yelled at us to be quiet because it was “ten minutes to one" (in New York, if someone tells you to quiet down on a Saturday night you yell even louder). People got into deep dialogues on the carpet and couldn't remember which member of Black Sabbath wrote Armenia's song (it was Tommy Iommi).

Azerbaijan had A SHADOW MAN DOING DANCE POSES IN A GLASS BOX. Seriously, that staging was brilliant. I heard one of the acts had a newly-nationalized American singing for them and that she was awful, but I never got to see her.

And yeah, my last note on Eurovision has to do with Graham Norton comparing the representative Ukraine had elected to announce its votes “Sideshow Bob." Tooji, who sang my favorite song last year, gave out the votes on his home Norway's behalf. It was nice to see him again. Denmark won, overall, as most people predicted they would going into the Grand Final.

Denmark's song was fine. The tinny drums and panpipes were a bit too Celine Dion for my taste, but the performers were captivating, the gold confetti was transporting, and I have to admit the tune is catchy. I'm still humming it a day later. It's no Romania, but it's all right.

At the time, by the end of Eurovision 2013, I was so busy drunk-Tweeting and trying to force the hashtag #RomaniaWasRobbed to trend that I hardly remember it. Denmark's singer looked like Isla Fisher and had a white dress, if I remember correctly. This year a good Eurovision drinking game would have been to drink whenever one sees a white dress (as Ste and his friends did), or whenever there was a dubstep breakdown, or whenever the TV marquee warned of seizure risk from flashing strobes.

Oh, Eurovision. Next year I aim to be in Denmark. Bet on it.

Photo: Montenegro's “Who See feat. Nina Zizic" [REUTERS/Janerik Henriksson/Scanpix Sweden]

Game of Thrones S3E7: I am yours and you are mine

Leigh Alexander — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:59:33 +0000

The song "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" that heralds the climax of this episode is about the comedy in unmatched relationships, in pairing yourself inappropriately in accordance with your station.

Yet that's the theme of this episode -- love, silly love, in all of its sick permutations. Once again into the breach!

In an episode strongly themed around unbalanced love relationships, the focus on Jon and Ygritte we get is lovely. Jon Snow, born and raised a lord of Winterfell and acquainted with the ways of warfare south of the Wall, is charmed -- and challenged -- in equal turns by her bafflement at their formalized ways. On one hand, he knows the understaffed Night's Watch is ill prepared to deal with a Wildling assault. And ill-prepared, too, to deal with an army founded in bravery, independence and self-preservation, rather than the marching orders of some distant lord.

When Ygritte mistakes a tumbledown windmill for a palace, we see both the good and the ill in her lack of acquaintance with Westerosi wealth and order. Yet when jealous Orell challenges Jon's ability to "hold onto her," (this is a woman doesn't even know what swooning is, literally) and when she once again reminds him he knows nothing, we can see him struggle with a value system that began unraveling when he failed to feel at home in the Stark family and that only continues when this new "family" not only rejects him equally, but makes him question his long-held values.

But on the other hand, the Wildlings have made six previous attempts to breach Castle Black and failed. If the Wildlings can win this impending battle, then he must break with everything he used to hold dear. If they can't, then Ygritte is likely to die. No matter what happens in the effort to come, Jon has lost things, and will continue to lose them. Ygritte seems to want to convince him that she can be his center -- that the loyalty of their love is more valuable than adherence to any side they fight for.

Her statement that they belong to each other recalls Shae's similar declaration to Tyrion last season (as well as Arya's plaintive "I can be your family" to Gendry), and illuminates how inherently untenable these promises are in the Game of Thrones universe when the power in the partnership is so uneven.

The scene with Osha back in Camp Bran illustrates the other side of being a woman like Ygritte -- it's a hard life North of the wall, where losing your partner to the White Walkers is a very real threat. Life and death mean entirely different things to Wildlings.

Meanwhile, Robb Stark is wondering how he's supposed to win a war with the distraction of his beautiful, beloved wife lounging around in the nude. How, indeed. And the Young Wolf's Lady Talisa is pregnant, an interesting development for the show to deal with so directly (in the books, the possible pregnancy of Robb's wife is just the stuff of unconfirmed conspiracy theories).

This is important. I had a discussion last week on Twitter about why, if Robert Baratheon could take the throne by rebellion, does, say, Tywin Lannister or some other close heir not now try to take it for himself. The answer is partially because Tywin prefers to rule from behind the scenes, using his children (primarily Cersei's marriage to the late king) to seize power.

But succession is essential to one's power claims -- Robert Baratheon had Targaryen ancestry, and lineage is important to the Iron Throne. It's the late king's (supposed) kids, not their grandfather, who are next in line, even arguably over the late king's brothers. Succession and bloodlines are paramount in this world, which is why Sansa's marriage is such a power play, and why Robb having an heir in the oven is a big deal. Talisa's baby would be a very valuable creature in the war for power among families.

The Stark and Tully family are on their way to the Frey-held Twins for Edmure's wedding to Roslin Frey (why did they have to change Asha Greyjoy's name to "Yara" to avoid confusion with Osha, and not change Roslin to avoid redundancy with the late and much-missed Ros?). Unfortunately they are delayed by weather, a hold-up cantankerous Walder Frey is sure to take personally.

Though Edmure doesn't seem concerned, Lady Catelyn is -- Frey is getting a wedding, though not "the wedding he wanted," she notes, looking pointedly at Talisa. Some of Robb's allies, including his own mother, have warned him all along that his marriage could lose him the war, and making it up to the Freys right now is essential.

Speaking of lineage, Margaery Tyrell tries to make Sansa feel better (Sansa's embittered reflection about being a "stupid girl with stupid dreams who never learns" is painfully striking) about her upcoming marriage to Tyrion by reminding her about the queenship it will create if she bears a child to the man they call "The Imp."

Poor Sansa's gone from believing she'll marry golden rose Loras and become a lady of Highgarden to being consigned to wed the youngest son of the family responsible for her father's death, and it's clear she's not attracted to Tyrion's stature. The books lavish on Tyrion as being quite ugly; it flatters the character to have him played by handsome Peter Dinklage, but I suppose one can suspend one's disbelief.

Margaery certainly can, and as she lightly encourages Sansa to be more open-minded sexually, the innocent younger lady wonders how Margaery, whom she assumes to have a similar upbringing to her own, learned such liberal values.

When Sansa asks if her mother taught her, Margaery's amused, condescending response is telling -- recall that her marriage to Joffrey depended on the idea that she's a maiden, and that she claimed Renly's "predilections" left her first marriage unconsummated. Margaery is clearly no maid, much more cunning than the sweet noblewoman simply obeying her family she represents herself as. It's good for her the Lannisters haven't quite figured that out.

Tyrion, too, wrestles with the moral dilemma of having to be wedded to an innocent young thing who is sure to loathe him. His friend and confidant Bronn counsels him against wanting to be liked by everyone -- a sellsword like Bronn probably couldn't see why marrying a beautiful young virgin and still getting to keep the saucy prositute with whom you're in love wouldn't be a dream bounty for everyone. These aren't thoughts Tyrion particularly wants to entertain, but can he help it?

On to more dark thoughts -- these Theon scenes are getting uncomfortably ruthless. Nearly everyone I know who hasn't read the books (and plenty of friends who have) are confused about what's happening to his character arc, why we need to see an illustration of him being so brutally tormented and broken by a man whose identity and motives are not even yet made clear. As we've said, in the books Theon disappears for a while after losing Winterfell, and emerges much-changed by his experiences since. We are now getting to view those experiences.

Last week readers speculated this choice is due in part to a contract issue; they might lose excellent actor Alfie Allen if the show followed the book's chronology and ignored him for two seasons. But it's hard to watch such unspeakable torture and mutilation happening to a character who was smug, unlikable, arrogant and stupid -- but fundamentally needy, relatable. He was so stellar last season, so touching as we watched his loss and increasing desperation in the name of claiming his identity and pleasing his father.

Onto further crimes of arrogance: Joffrey is cruel and not particularly bright, but he's noticed his grandfather has gently been freezing him out of any genuine tasks of ruling King's Landing. It seems Tywin plans to make good on his promise to Cersei that he can bring the King to heel, very quickly cowing Joff when he climbs the dais to the Iron Throne to fearlessly tower over the boy.

Yet Joff, who we know to be fascinated by the Targaryens' mad legacy of fire and ruin, is actually a little wiser than his elders here, evidencing genuine concern about the stories of dragons coming from the lands beyond. Yes, Daenerys' dragons are still little -- but they can grow big, can't they? Shouldn't King's Landing be concerned?

Remember how coldly Cersei once rejected the notion of sending resources to the Night's Watch to help protect against The Others? She disbelieves that "myths" can have more power than the sort she knows best. The Lannisters are generally too proud to be afraid of things they can't see, whether dragons or White Walkers. As unnatural threats of ice and fire descend on the kingdom from its periphery, we see that the ruling class might tear themselves apart over their own politics before they'll ever be prepared to unite against such things.

They needn't be worried about Daenerys just yet. When she negotiates with Yunkai, a city known primarily for the riches it's earned training and selling "bed slaves," even the promise of wealth and ships doesn't deter her from her slave liberation agenda. For her morals she desires to disrupt the entire economies of places and people she has yet to understand well, even at the expense of her original mission to reclaim her birthright in Westeros.

The Silver Queen's newly-large entourage does need food and resources, it's true, and the dragons -- though maybe still too small for war -- accord her enough power to make no compromises in the desert. She doesn't want to stop until she's freed the world.

Meanwhile, Tyrion makes an unfortuntely-symbolic gift to Shae of gold chains, which of course doesn't please her, as the man who purports to love her suggests she remain a kept woman while he undertakes the marriage in which he claims he doesn't have a choice. He really doesn't -- not so much because he's afraid of his father, but because he wants power, to play the game, and knows gratification from little else. Outside the realm of his status he'd be at an extreme disadvantage. Running away with Shae isn't an option.

And really, it's hard to tell why he even loves her so much. She often evidences admirable savvy and warm bravery in her dealings with Sansa, whom she seems to genuinely want to protect. But with Tyrion she is petulant, jealous, expensive, demanding -- on one hand rejecting the characterization of "whore," but on the other, requiring quite a lot of fancy treatment in order to be contented with their relationship. Whatever it is she wants, Tyrion can't or won't provide it to her, and rather than leave, she increases the pressure on his heart and his system of values.

Gendry learns he's a Baratheon bastard through Melisandre, who sails with him through the wreckage of the Blackwater battle. Recall she feels she could have prevented those losses if only Davos hadn't convinced Stannis to leave her behind (on the incredibly sound logic that nobody would respect a King who appeared to take the Throne by foreign sorcery -- the capital stands firmly in the faith of the Seven and might mistrust a red priestess).

Arya still hasn't forgiven the Brotherhood for accepting gold in exchange for Gendry's person, and when they decide to take a detour and chase a Lannister raiding party rather than continue bringing her to Riverrun to meet up with her family, it's the last straw for her, and she takes off running -- only to be taken hostage by Sandor "The Hound" Clegane. Oops.

In another unbalanced pairing, Jaime is allowed to be escorted to King's Landing by Bolton bannermen, an interesting move on the part of Roose Bolton, ostensibly a Stark ally on his way to Edmure Tully's wedding with the rest of the family. He needs to evade punishment by the Lannisters for what Locke did to Jaime's hand, but he seems a bit eager to curry favor with the Lannisters.

Notably Bolton doesn't seem to want to return Brienne, who should be allowed to go back to Catelyn Stark, if we're all on the same side, here. Jaime's farewell to Brienne is poignant evidence of the fact that despite what they've been through together, he still can do things she can't. The only thing he can do for her is make a promise that he'll see the Stark girls returned -- and you get the sense that Jaime means it.

Once he's departed, he learns more about unethical Maester Qyburn and his illicit "experiments" on dying people who wouldn't be missed. Everyone hates King's Landing's Maester, the crony Pycelle, but would this guy really be a better addition to the Lannister entourage?

Jaime also learns his throwing his weight around might have actually resulted in problems for Brienne. His lie about her being worth sapphires saved her from rape in Locke's camp, but has now stymied hostage negotiations with her father, Lord Selwyn of Tarth. When it dawns on Jaime she'll just be used as the "entertainment" for Bolton's unruly pets, Jaime once again plays the Daddy card to force his escort to turn around.

Side note: I've talked before about how Game of Thrones' factions are balanced like a game, and in the actual Game of Thrones board game, if you play as House Lannister, Tywin is one of the most powerful cards in your hand, and you will probably find yourself literally playing the Daddy Card repeatedly.

But it works, and when Jaime returns to Harrenhal to find Brienne facing a bear in a pit armed only with a wooden stick, he finally gets the chance to use his high-value person for something other than bullying people to do what he wants. By jumping into the pit to save her, the bannermen's cruel game is suddenly over -- nothing must happen to the Kingslayer, else all of House Bolton will be at risk. And he can leverage the Daddy Card to be allowed to leave with Brienne, too.

The motif that plays as the pair leave the dreary camp is Rains of Castamere, the Lannister fight song, so to speak. You can read the lyrics here or listen to The National's cover from Season 2's Blackwater end credits, but in summary it's a tune about what bleak ruin awaits those who stand up to the Lannisters.

What's notable about the song is the way the lyrics frame the historical narrative -- the sin of the decimated Reyne house was not so much its insubordination, but in the fact it even dared to compare itself, to claim its personhood was equal to that of The Lion.

It's an ambiguous anthem for Jaime's leading Brienne away safely from Harrenhal, because ultimately it reminds that despite making the honorable choice, the brave and the caring choice, his triumph over the situation came only from in the fact that in currency of Westeros, he simply had the fortune to matter more than anyone else in that scenario, including her.

For our discussion this week, if this episode was about the complicated fate of love and loyalty in a world of power imbalances, let's ask an easy question: Who's your favorite couple? And less easy, which pairing presented in this episode has the most complicated circumstances?

If Robb Stark were to win the war (and again, no spoilers further than this episode if you know them, please!) -- would it be because of love and honor, or in spite of it?

Finally, I'd love to know what you guys make of Shae. I couldn't figure her out in the books and I can't figure her out now. I look forward heartily to your enthusiastic, spoiler-free and respectful comments discussions every week. Please continue!

Game of Thrones S3E6: Hang in there

Leigh Alexander — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:11:57 +0000

The latest episode of Game of Thrones is called "The Climb," and it sees us crossing the Wall into the land of heavy-handed metaphors. What's the difference between a pin and a brooch, anyway?

Let's recap!

Gilly has a rescuer in Sam, albeit not your textbook hero, to say the least. She's not particularly impressed with his lack of skill in firebuilding, but as she's never left her father's twisted compound, stories of his high birth and the good food and camraderie promised at The Wall seem to interest her.

He tries to impress her by showing her the mysterious obsidian ("dragonglass") knife he found at the Fist of the First Men, but the only kind of bravery he's got is a willingness to sing for her in the dark.

On Team Bran, things are tense between Meera Reed and Osha, who doesn't seem to appreciate having a rival woman around. "You're a good little hunter," Osha snipes, when Bran urges everyone to relax. Through one of his greendreams, Jojen learns Jon Snow is no longer at the Wall in the sense they expected, which may complicate their plans to bring Bran north to reunite with his half-brother.

No, Jon is still a ways north of the Wall for now, in the Wildling band that still generally mistrusts him. Jon must still intend to rejoin the Night's Watch and betray the Wildlings once they arrive at Castle Black, but the relationship that's rapidly developed between him and Ygritte complicates things, of course.

She's never been beyond the Wall, nor seen the top of it, and it's this prospect, not necessarily loyalty to her fellow Free Folk, that motivates her. And she's decided Jon is going to be her partner now -- you can't really blame her, as despite the fact she has considerably more experience than Jon, she comes from a society where men giving oral sex to women is so novel as to be unheard-of.

She reveals she hasn't bought in to his act of loyalty to Mance Rayder, and that she doesn't especially care. "I'm your woman now, Jon Snow," she declares. "You're going to be loyal to your woman." She also threatens him never to betray her -- if things keep going the way they are, though, he may have to. Her assertion that "it's you and me that matters to me and you" will be proven later in the episode, when Orell nearly cuts them both from the wall to try to save himself, and it's Jon that rescues Ygritte even though he risks falling, too.

At the Brotherhood Without Banners, Anguy is teaching Arya to better her bow and arrow skills, when along comes Melisandre, in search of her king's blood sacrifice for the Lord of Light -- and for Stannis' campaign. The show has taken many liberties with the chronology of the books thus far, but this might be the largest one yet.

In the novels Robb Stark marries Jeyne Westerling, a woman we don't really get to know, but the decision to render Lady Talisa as a character lets us see the woman that might be worth risking a kingdom for, and is a solid choice.

The books don't show us the rather complicated process by which Theon comes into the custody of his twisted captor -- after losing Winterfell he merely disappears for some time -- but this arc of Theon's life will become significant, and to let us see it happen makes sense for a visual medium, especially as the show has fleshed out Theon so beautifully thus far.

As we mentioned last week, Sansa is written to marry a different Tyrell of Highgarden, but choosing to involve Loras instead simplifies the intended transaction and reduces extra characters without meaningfully changing its role in the plot.

The show has given us elements of Stannis and Melisandre's relationship that the novel only implies, and the men who imprison Jaime and Brienne, while loosely-allied mercenaries in the books, are made Bolton bannermen here to little loss, since the pair ends up in Roose Bolton's custody anyway. And Ros is invented for the purposes of the show -- the books show Littlefinger's actions through the brothel via a composite of various women, while Ros' character adds a sympathetic human face to the role of courtesans at King's Landing.

However, Melisandre of the books pursues other Baratheon bastards in the hopes of completing her blood sacrifice, and the decision to have her seize Gendry looks geared to encourage viewers to continue to engage with the characters they've already invested in rather than drag in new ones or emphasize further minor additions. She never encounters Thoros in the novels, but their interaction here is interesting -- they represent two approaches to the same doubtlessly-powerful faith.

"I don't like that woman," Arya snaps instantaneously upon seeing the lovely red sorceress. "That's because you're a girl," the brothers tease. "What does that have to do with anything?" She snaps back. It's a nice send-up of the conflicts going on among women elsewhere in the kingdom -- Meera and Osha, or Cersei and Margaery.

Arya is again let down that gold becomes such a major factor even for godly, noble "brothers", who are willing to sell their new blacksmith to Melisandre even though Thoros must know the grim purpose for which she and her red god need him.

The look on Melisandre's face when Arya aggressively grabs her is brilliant. The sorceress reads the hunger for revenge in the little girl's eyes, and certainly does not view her as a harmless child.

Theon is still being tortured by his captor. We've been talking about the Bastard of Bolton all along, but the show seems actually content to let viewers be as confused as Theon is as to the identity of this perverse man, who seems to enjoy physical as much as emotional abuse. Theon presumes he's being tortured by Stark allies, possibly an Umber or a Karstark, as revenge for his betrayal at Winterfell, and for a moment the young brutalizer even plays along, before relenting: "Everything I told you is a lie," he says. "This isn't happening to you for a reason."

The Starks actually have few allies left. Their last hope is the distasteful Frey family, whose elderly, cantankerous head, Walder Frey, is still sore about the fact Robb broke their alliance by marrying Talisa. There are a good many Frey spawn, and many of them are named after Walder: Here we have two Freys named Black Walder and "Lame" Lothar, come to negotiate on their patriarch's behalf with the King in the North, who despite winning every battle will lose the war without their help.

The Freys are not a handsome family, and Edmure is averse to marrying the proffered Roslin Frey, sight unseen. But with the help of his uncle Brynden the Blackfish and at Robb's stricken, humbled urging, he agrees to the arrangement.

The Freys also want the nightmarish, tumbledown Harrenhal holding, which is currently in the custody of Roose Bolton, and which the Lannisters have promised to Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish as part of his promotional package. It's funny that there are three different claims on such an undesirable bit of castle, but maybe not so -- if it's useless and no-one really wants it, it's probably easy for people to be contented with the offering or promise thereof.

Speaking of Harrenhal and Roose Bolton, it seems the Starks are fundamentally losing another ally. Roose has a maimed Jaime Lannister on his hands, probably the highest-value hostage in a war against King's Landing. This, despite the fact that Jaime literally cannot operate silverware and eat without Brienne's help any more. Not only could Roose buy some favor with the Lannisters in the face of Robb's losing war, but returning Jaime to his parents also might help House Bolton dodge consequences for what his uppity bannerman Locke did to famous Jaime's famous sword-hand.

Even though Brienne's vow involves taking Jaime to King's Landing on behalf of the Starks, it doesn't seem this is something Roose will allow her to continue doing, despite Jaime's insistence that she's the one best tasked with protecting him.

They've given her an awful pink dress to wear, here, a certain loss of Brienne's own center of power and dignity. If you want to disable this pair, take Jaime's hand away and put Brienne in a pink dress. Nonetheless, that Bolton begins acting on its own is a notable breach of loyalty to the Starks. Jaime notes Roose's refusal to drink alcohol is "suspicious to ordinary people." Nice emblem of the fundamental coldness of House Bolton (as if their X-shaped "flayed man" sigil wasn't enough).

Finally Olenna Redwyne has taken her verbal sparring straight to the top man, and finds a well-matched negotiating partner in Tywin Lannister. To bring the Tyrell family back under control after he discovered their plot to steal Sansa away by marriage to Loras, remember, Tywin has decided Sansa will marry his son Tyrion, and that his daughter Cersei ought to be the one to marry Loras.

Olenna thinks Cersei is too old for Highgarden's glorious son, as her childbearing years are running out. Tywin rather harshly points out that Loras is gay anyway, a predilection that doesn't fuss the boy's grandmother much. This entire scene is brilliant, but when she implies that even Tywin must have experimented with other boys when young, his mortification is hilarious. Olenna suggests Tywin shouldn't be concerned with rumors of Loras' sexuality, but moreso with rumors of Cersei and Jamie's illicit relationship. Even a vicious rumor has power at court and puts both their famlies at risk, she asserts, though clearly both parents here know it's not a rumor.

Tywin tries threatening Olenna instead: He has the power to name Loras to the Kingsguard, which would involve a sacred vow not to marry, bear children or hold lands. By this same vow, Aerys II stole Tywin's own heir, Jaime, from him (a theft Jaime himself was happy to abet, given he wanted to stay unmarried and near his sister). Yet just as Tywin prepares the order, Olenna snaps the quill -- Tywin is always ignoring all verbal challengers in favor of his mighty pen, so this is a gesture of her triumph. Probably doesn't mean she's consented to the wedding, though.

In case you've lost count, there are now three weddings in the works: Sansa's wedding to Loras via a secretive Tyrell plot has now been thwarted by Tywin's plan to step in and marry her to Tyrion first; Joffrey's extravagant wedding to Margaery Tyrell is still being expensively-planned, and Edmure is now committed to go to the Frey home at the Twins river bridge and marry Roslin. Weddings, yay! Finally a bit of light coming into the grim, dark Game of Thrones world of misfortune, right? Those weddings should all be really nice.

Poor Loras is so uncomfortable with Sansa it's cute, and the girl is still so obsessed with courtly fantasies she hardly seems to notice her groom is more excited about food, tournaments, and the aesthetic details of her brocade gown than Sansa herself. Cersei and Tyrion look on, knowing even that flimsy illusion will soon be shattered. Both siblings have been defeated by the vice of their controlling father and their mad, awful young king, whom Cersei admits she couldn't stop from attempting to have Tyrion killed, rather idiotically in the open, during the Blackwater battle as revenge for trying to discipline him.

Cersei's only hope is for Jaime to come and rescue her; Tyrion even implies that Jaime would kill Loras for marrying her, thus setting her free. Tyrion really has no hope at all. Both Lannister kids seem to enjoy, in this scene, an uneasy sort of bonding over their family's unfortunate noose. "We're all being shipped off to hell together," Cersei rues. "Seven kingdoms united in fear of Tywin Lannister," Tyrion agrees.

What's worse is that Tyrion has to grievously disappoint Sansa by telling her about the new plan for her marriage in front of his lover Shae, who's shown in the past how demanding and possessive she can be of her Lion. Awk-ward. I wish we could have seen that conversation, but when we cut to Shae's stony expression and Sansa's bitter tears as the boat she should have taken -- the one crowned with Littlefinger's mockingbird crest -- heads for the horizon, we can imagine.

Looks like Ros has been given to Joffrey and his perverse crossbow fetish to die in frankly horrifying indignity (the arrows in her body a callback to Arya's aiming lesson) -- this is the price Ros has paid for sharing Littlefinger's plans with Varys, apparently, and is a sick-makingly abrupt way for that character to go out. Littlefinger and Varys are both quietly machining constantly behind the scenes, but in the conversation we see as Littlefinger admires the Iron Throne (he's even counted the blades that comprise it), we learn about the differences in their approaches.

Varys believes in the good of the realm, and that there is salvation in order, while Littlefinger embraces the idea that chaos creates opportunity. He's obsessed with "the climb," the challenge of gaining station in life from his significantly low birth, and upheavals and disruptions present him the best chance to grab more opportunities for himself -- like his current chance to gain lands and a high-born wife by marrying Lysa Tully, the creepy sister to his beloved Catelyn and proprietess of the forbidding Eyrie lands. Thus far Lysa's stayed hidden from the war, paranoid about her over-mothered, sickly son, but the Lannisters hope this marriage will compel her to be an ally.

"Only the ladder is real," Littlefinger declares dramatically, as Jon Snow and the Wildlings reach the top of the wall. Yet when Ygritte looks upon the green lands below the wall from a great height, for the first time, and her eyes fill with tears and Jon kisses her, we wonder, isn't love real, too? It's sad love carries no currency in Westeros, is a weakness, a sign of things to come.

Oh man! But there's gonna be weddings! Can't wait!

To what extent do you think upward mobility is actually possible in the Game of Thrones world? Now that the various factions are looking to be at more complex advantages and disadvantages to one another, if you had to draw a score sheet, what would it look like? And another question for you: What do you think of the departures made from the books so far -- logical, streamlined editing that GRRM needed anyway, or major betrayals?

You guys are my favorite commenters on the whole internet, so I'm looking forward to your discussion. Again, please don't talk about any of the weddings, no colors, no initials, no vague allusions. We are all very excited, I know, but let's try to ensure the comments discussions don't progress any further than the show has illustrated thus far.

Game of Thrones S3E5: Through the fire and the flames

Leigh Alexander — Wed, 01 May 2013 07:00:16 +0000

The latest episode of Game of Thrones was, in my humble opinion, far and away the most exciting one yet. Fire, fire and more fire, fatherhood and impeccable crescendoes. Such payoff for book fans, but what do viewers think?

Let's recap and discuss. I can't wait!

We begin the episode right where the last one left off. With fire! Well, with Sandor Clegane facing trial by combat against the Brotherhood Without Banners. Thoros of Myr may be a witty, drunk sort of character, but we see the way he and his group take the religion of R'hllor quite seriously ('R'hllor' is silly and unpronounceable, so it makes sense he just gets called the 'Lord of Light' on the show). It's a particularly disadvantageous set of circumstances for the Hound, who deeply fears fire.

That we expect he should lose makes it seem divine when he wins: proof of his innocence of various crimes in service of the Lannister crown, most of which have been done by his brother Gregor. Unfortunately for Arya, the Lord of Light can't seem to be bothered to punish Clegane over the death of her little friend the butcher's boy. And he can bring back Beric Dondarrion from the dead a supposed six times, but not re-attach Ned Stark's head. Supposed heroes who claimed to love her father let their religion prevent them from delivering her justice, and plan to sell her back to her family at Riverrun. And Gendry, the only comrade she has left, has decided to stay on in the Brotherhood, as her gender and high birth form something of a ceiling for how close he feels he can get to her.

Poor Arya. All the kid has left is her "prayer" -- a list of the names of people she'd like to see dead.

The main religion of Westeros involves the "Seven", a pantheon of deity figures that represent the various faces of humanity (Father, Mother, Warrior, Maiden, Smith, Crone and Stranger). Robb Stark and Lady Talisa had a marriage that paid homage to the Seven, and that's Lady Catelyn's faith as well, although Ned Stark and much of the Northmen worship the Old Gods, as symbolized by the sap-weeping white weirwood tree we see in the season's opening. In the Brotherhood Without Banners, we see another side to the fire-centric religion of R'hllor -- we confirm it seems to conjure genuine magic, independently of Melisandre's fanaticism and apparent sorcery.

Other fanatics include Stannis Baratheon's wife Selyse, whom we meet for the first time this episode. Our introduction to Stannis' family serves to illuminate his ambivalence toward the fact he has to use the powers of the "Red Woman" to earn a crown he feels is his by fundamental rights -- his own wife is not hurt, but rather delighted by the infidelity he struggles to confess, and feels ashamed of their daughter Shireen, a sweet child deformed by a skin disease called Greyscale.

The jars of Selyse's stillborn sons, I'm fairly sure, are not in the books, and the unsettling imagery helps us empathize with Stannis' private uncertainty about having to consign his purest and most loyal friend, Davos "the Onion Knight" Seaworth, to his dungeons for the treason of speaking against Melisandre.

Speaking of fire, we see redheaded Ygritte continuing to stand up for Jon Snow among mistrustful wildlings like Orell the warg and bearded Tormund Giantsbane. She does this because she wants him, of course, and in this episode we see her get tired of waiting. Snow seems reluctant to fully sell out the defenses of his black brothers to the wildlings' oncoming assault on the Wall -- is he lying when he tells Orell which castles are manned? A thousand seems like a lot of crows relative to how badly the patchy Night's Watch has lately been struggling against the Others and one another.

It almost doesn't matter: Giving up his virginity to Ygritte is probably, to Jon, a more significant break with his old life than anything he's done so far. But what a beautiful little scene: She really, really likes and trusts him. Does he like her more than his black brothers, though?

Brienne and Jaime are delivered to Robb Stark's ally Roose Bolton, who enjoys tormenting the Lannister son by dangling details of the Blackwater battle at King's Landing. After losing everything, the idea that the woman he loves -- his sister Cersei -- might also be dead seems to render him unable to stand any longer. And there's more pain ahead, as malpracticing Maester Qyburn is engaged to try to help save Jaime's rotten stump.

Cersei is fine, of course. After her father rejected her mistrust of the Tyrells, she hasn't let the issue go, and instead engages Littlefinger to help her prove the Golden Rose is plotting against the Lion. Cersei lacks the tact of most of her rivals; threats seem to be the extent of her bargaining tactics, where her brothers seem much more skillful at dangling riches and glory.

We see terrifying Olenna Redwyne as more than a match for Tyrion, eluding his strategies to reduce the extravagant cost of the Royal Wedding, an expense the Crown certainly can't afford. Recall that being unable to pay its debts to the Royal Bank of Braavos might actually cause the powerful lenders to shift its financial loyalty to a rival war effort. Tyrion could just tell his father that, one supposes, but it's meant to be his job to deal with the situation.

We already know Olenna isn't necessarily passionate about the wedding itself -- we've seen her make fun of frippery and classism. But she'd probably prefer to bleed the Crown's cash for her granddaughter's sake: Her offer to pay for half the affair seems generous, but is probably geared at making sure the wedding remains as expensive and frivolous an event as possible.

The Northmen have gotten tired of waiting for their revenge. Robb's taken too many personal detours, and the loss of Jaime Lannister as a prisoner might have been irrelevant from a military standpoint, but devastating from a spiritual one. Mad with grief and impatience, The Karstarks, of a clan of distant Stark-cousins, kill the little boys Willem and Martyn Lannister (they're the sons of Tywin's brother Kevan, if you were wondering). These poor kids were the ill-chosen captives of Robb's uncle Edmure Tully, who for some reason decided to take a mill instead of fighting Gregor Clegane.

Robb's all but lost control of every thread of his war effort, and he can't afford to lose the military power of his longtime Northman allies. But when Rickard Karstark suggests Robb is powerless to actually punish him for his ill-advised initiative, Robb feels he he has to step up, even if doing so means he loses half his army. His family unifies to advise him against executing Karstark, but Robb is loyal to the ideal of justice to an actual fault, just like his dad. He'd rather pursue that than to win the war.

We know he's making a bad, bad choice. Then again, a certain dread has overhung all of Robb's choices so far. Now his last remaining option is to go and seek support from the Frey family, who he's recently spurned against his mother's advice so he could marry Talisa instead. An ominous thematic crescendo builds as Robb moves a wolf's head strategic piece toward the Twins, the fort of Walder Frey. Ah, surely this is going to fix everything. It's all going to work out great.

Why does Jaime Lannister have no problem entering the bath with Brienne, despite her mortification? Because he's disinterested in her sexually, sure. But mainly because he knows that if he, still unwell, passes out, she'll save him. He is absolutely safe with her, because she swore a vow, and even if he mocks her for her impressively-stubborn adherence to her oaths, he knows that in spite of her resentment, she will protect him.

Oathbreaking is the highest on the list of Brienne's list of reasons to distrust and dislike the famous Kingslayer. He's been seeing that aversion in the eyes of every foe and comrade alike since he stabbed King Aerys Targaryen quite literally in the back while the Lannister army sacked King's Landing, and never felt the urge to explain or defend himself until now. Maybe after everything he's been through, seeing that aversion in Brienne's eyes is too much to take, so he confides in her.

If Jaime had kept his oath to the hellish Mad King, had not been a Kingslayer, he would have been forced not only to kill his father, but also to watch the entire city and everyone in it burn to death. It was his father, the strategician Tywin Lannister, who gained access to King's Landing under the guise of aiding the Targaryens against Robert's rebels, and then promptly sacked it. Ruthlessly tactful, that. Then, the Lannisters apparently had the Targaryen babies killed. Next, Cersei's wedding to Robert Baratheon, cemeting the family's presence in the capital.

Then the King's Hand, Jon Arryn, died under mysterious circumstances. Then King Robert himself. Oh, except that was an accident.

We see how tortured Jaime still is by the fact he had to break that vow, and how traumatized he is by the things he had to do and see under Aerys. Most of all, the condescension of moral Ned Stark stings. The books show Ned frequently recounting his sense of apprehension at arriving at King's Landing after the Lannisters sacked it to find Jaime sitting in the throne room. On the Iron Throne, in fact. The memory of Jaime in that weaponized chair seems to have been instrumental in sowing Ned's mistrust against the Lannister family, and in bringing him to King's Landing to try to support King Robert. Yet we learn even though King Aerys' madness was poisonous to the city, Jaime still tried to warn him about his own father, even if taking his head was not something he could have done.

Honorable Ned never asked him though, simply judged. "By what right does the wolf judge the lion," he curses bitterly, a brilliant quote that illustrates the rampant Lannister pride, ruthlessness, as something of an understandable expression of a moral code that simply favors victory -- but is no less moral than a sanctimonious, slavish devotion to imperfect ideals of honor. We see that Brienne has heard him, judged him anew, when she forgets all modesty to rush to him and calls for help when he faints.

Margaery has assured Sansa that as queen, she'll have the power to make a wedding between Sansa and Loras Tyrell happen. In the books, Sansa is disappointed to find out she's intended not for Loras (who joins the Kingsguard and thus, like Jaime Lannister, avoids marriage via the station) but for his much less-appealing brother Willas. But the fact Sansa wants to become a Lady of Highgarden remains the same, and for the show's purposes involving Loras is not only simpler, but more dramatic.

Loras will fulfill his family's request even though he's not interested in women. How did his handsome young sparring partner detect his predilection? Well, Littlefinger must have told him, as the young man was a spy sent to find out what Tyrell plot might be underway. When Littlefinger invites Sansa to finally escape King's Landing with him, a friend of her mother's, and she declines, he has confirmation that the Tyrells have already gotten her to collude with the idea. Sansa seems thrilled that Littlefinger doesn't look likely to insist on upsetting her secret plans, but what she doesn't know is that when he says, "I hope you know I'm your friend," what he means is, "don't worry, you're not going anywhere, anyway."

We see a highly-satisfied Cersei at her father's side, positively glowing at finally having brought proof of the Tyrells' scheming to their dear old dad. That Tywin's plan to thwart the Tyrells by marrying Sansa to Tyrion instead absolutely mortifies her little brother only seems to please Cersei more. Tyrion knows how terrorized Sansa is already, and how disappointed she, barely older than a child nursing fantasies of courtly lords, will be in him as a husband, and protests. Tywin insists. He always insists.

Cersei hardly has long to gloat, either. Though she's proved her usefulness at court to her father and saved their family's grip on the crown, Tywin still plans to wed her to Loras Tyrell, to bring the rival family in line and to quell the "rumors" about Cersei and her brother. Her horror at being used as a "brood mare" again is palpable, gutting. Mean, aggressive Cersei is one of the show's least-likeable characters, but is nonetheless empathetic, a victim of her father's system with even less fortune than her brothers, by virtue of her gender and the mistakes her desperation tends to sow.

Some of the best dramatic moments in the entire series have come from Cersei stricken, calling tremulously for her Dad. When Tywin stages a last-minute rescue of his family at the end of the Blackwater battle of season two, we see her fling aside her suicide plan, forgotten at the first sight of Dad, rising to her feet with the soft cry of "father." In this stunning episode finish, she is begging again, her hard protest giving way to naked, broken pleading -- "don't make me do it again, please," so soft, so sorrowful.

Game of Thrones would be an entirely different narrative if rooting for the Lannisters to simply be stamped out of King's Landing like an infestation were an easy decision. Yet it is possible to respect Tywin, to feel Cersei's pain and anger, admire Tyrion or Jaime's complex, deeply-personal morality in the face of suffering.The house of the Lion is the red, beating heart of this series, and just when you find yourself wishing most fervently for the tide to turn against them, you end up feeling a little sorry that you did.

I think appreciating the Lannister family is among the most interesting choices one can make in the favorites-picking "war" that Game of Thrones encourages in readers and viewers. The narrative is not always sensible reading. It's not always brilliantly-plotted; it's neither literature nor high art. But it's most intriguing feature is the way it exposes systems within a society, and how systems handicap some and privilege others, affecting their value systems, mobility and the framework of their choices for life. It presents an idea that's obvious when you think about it, but radical in the context of a fantasy story or a hero tale -- that morality is in large part relative and dependent on context.

Here, a given faction might find no relevance in the storybook ideal of "the right thing". With an expansive and complicated system exposed, we can empathize with the idea that all most people are able to do is the right thing for them, within the limitations they're given, and that maybe that's heroic enough. Whether intentions are good or ill almost don't matter in a world where fire licks at one edge of the map and cold ice crumples the other.

What was your favorite part of this exciting episode? Yes, I did gloss over the lovely bit where Grey Worm reinforces his fealty to Daenerys, but if you couldn't tell, I was too busy feeling sorry for bad guys this week. Love your discussions in the comments each week. Please, please no spoilers related to any weddings or prospective weddings mentioned in this post. No colors, no initials, nothing. Thank you.

Game of Thrones S3E4: This is Madness

Leigh Alexander — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:20:55 +0000

A friend of mine has a very bleak assessment of Game of Thrones: If you love a character, they'll die unfulfilled. If you hate a character, you'll come to learn how they became so hateful and start to love them, and then they try to redeem themselves and die unfulfilled.

It's not quite like that, or else I'd be worried about spoiling by sharing the sentiment. But how the show will deal with the books' long march of constant thwarting and elusive pleasure, while adding additional characters all the time, and still keep interest, was one of the things I worried about last season. How will the show give viewers the emotional boost they need to stay invested while being true to the gruesome, occasionally-grueling canon?

Well, stuff like That Daenerys Scene, I guess. It's time to recap and discuss! I'll bring the words, you bring the animated GIFs.

Let's step out of the episode's chronology and talk about Dany's glorious triumph in Astapor first, since that's the part everyone's talking about in my social circles. A couple recaps back, a couple commenters (and you guys are brilliant, by the way, keep it coming!) said they were just waiting for the grand reveal, whereby we learn Dany's been able to speak High Valyrian all along and has been playing the dumb foreign girl as a strategic move so that the slavers wouldn't see her coming.

A lot of action and crime dramas lean on the tension in that big reveal, when a couple of factions one assumes are equally powerful do the anxious dance around the weapons exchange, and then one of them revels in a breathtaking coup. There's always the moment when you have to arm your opponent and trust they'll keep the deal, rather than use the ammunition you gave them to turn on you.

Keeping nobly mum about her disgust for the slavers and allowing them to underestimate her let Dany betray Astapor, keep her Dragon, and leave a liberated city behind her in a cloud of dust. The great joy moment comes from the fact she gets to have an army of freed men who serve her by choice -- and from the awed looks on the faces of Barristan Selmy and Jorah Mormont, who've been trying to mansplain her out of her agenda all this time.

The dragon who laid waste to Astapor is her largest and most aggressive, Drogon, named after her late husband Khal Drogo. The other two are Viserion, named after her mad creep of a brother Viserys (who died of a molten gold crown in the Dothraki encampment, if you recall), and Rhaegal, named after as-yet rarely-mentioned other brother, the late Rhaegar Targaryen, a charismatic hero and the best-liked figure in the Targaryen's spotty legacy.

The shadow of the Targaryens overhangs this episode, so if you're going to get excited about Daenerys' fire and blood, we might as well fill you in on how she comes by it. It's Dany's late family, former rulers of Westeros, about whose legacy of mental illness Joffrey squeals eagerly in the Sept where he's set to marry Margaery. Before the late Robert Baratheon led a rebellion, Daenerys' father Aerys sat the throne, reviled as the "mad king".

Slaying him is what earned Jaime Lannister the title of Kingslayer, as if slaying a mad king were an essential act of treachery coming from the Targaryen despot's own Kingsguard. As the story goes, Rhaegar Targaryen's two young children, one an infant, were murdered by some Lannister agent (one of the Clegane brothers, many think), to ensure Robert would take the throne and marry Cersei with no rival heirs from the prior house.

Intuiting that history even a little bit helps to shed yet more ambiguity on unfortunate Jaime Lannister, who is still a high-value prisoner, along with Brienne. His reputation is negative outside of Lannister allies, his talent and privilege goes widely resented long after he's lost his sword-hand, which he sees as his entire identity. Brienne seems to experience some sympathy for him, here, and pressures him out of giving himself up for dead by suggesting he's acting "like a woman" by feeling sorry for himself.

When she demands to know why he prevented her from being violated in last week's episode, he doesn't answer -- but then when we cut to Cersei confronting their father, we know why. Jaime has sympathy for how his twin sister has had far less renown than him, presumably just for being born a woman. He's not such a bad guy, this Lannister golden boy.

The Night's Watch, still installed at Craster's vile keep and helping him with chores in exchange for board and scraps, is not having a good time of it, either. Gilly returns Sam's mother's thimble, which he clumsily tried to impress on her as a romantic gesture last time he was here. Poor Sam; you can't really blame Gilly, though, busy as she is trying to spend what she thinks will be her last moments with her son before her father (also the baby's father) sacrifices him to the wights. Sam is bright, sensitive and fair, but action's what's needed here now.

Unfortunately, starvation, fear and dissent about how to handle the Craster issue culminates in a civil war of sorts among the black crows, in which both despicable Craster and beloved "Old Bear" Mormont are both killed, as Sam hustles Gilly and her baby out into the cold, dangerous night.

It looks like Ros and Varys were as confused about Pod's no-charge outing at Littlefinger's brothel last week as we were. Seems like the fact Littlefinger didn't notice the lost income was simply the catalyst for Ros to investigate Littlefinger's shipping documents as the latter heads to the Eyrie to woo Catelyn's distasteful sister Lysa into a strategic marriage.

Seems Littlefinger plans to smuggle Sansa Stark along on a visit to her aunt. Helpless Sansa is little more than a playing piece in the Game of Thrones, now, in that custody of any kind could bring the Northmen, loyal to her late Dad, to heel. Varys claims to be Littlefinger's friend -- he's everyone's friend, that Master of Whispers -- but no one wants to see a relatively low-born, dangerously cunning man gain any special advantage amid the unrest at court.

Varys tells Tyrion the grisly story of how he became a eunuch as a boy, in the service of some sorcerer's ritual -- but it's also the story about how the crafty man patiently worked his way up from the slums of Myr to the Small Council of King's Landing, patiently tending his information network over years, until he's finally able to bring the very sorcerer who harmed him to the castle in a box. The vengeance Tyrion wants for the mysterious attempt on his life during the Blackwater battle could take similar years, Varys implies.

Cersei Lannister and Olenna Redwyne discuss plans for Joffrey's likely improbably-lavish wedding to Margaery. Cersei is cold and short-sighted, and her fatal flaw is the fact she's felt she had to defer to her cruel young son to maintain her family's legacy. As Joff delights in squicky stories about the late Targaryens, whose madness emerges because of their family tendency to wed siblings, we see probably it's Cersei's secret choice of father for her child that's given pale-haired Joff the same violent, uncontrollable tendencies.

The Lannisters enjoy force and wealth; the Tyrells seem to like the simple charm of a golden rose, no matter how the family matriarch appears to disdain their non-threatening family crest. The conversation between Cersei and Olenna is excellent -- surely when the grandmother laments how hard it is to keep one's sons from the grave, it's not a threat, is it? "And yet the world belongs to them," Cersei says mournfully.

For her father's political plays she had to wed a womanizing drunk who apparently died in a hunting accident, just like the late husband Olenna scorns; she now has a son she can't control, and the one person she apparently loves is who knows how far away.

To make matters worse, a radiant, bare-armed and unguarded heroine of the common-folk seems to be better at manipulating her son than she is. When mobs start wailing outside of the Sept, we expect they want to throw more cow pies at bratty Joff -- remember how the royal family barely escaped savaging at the hands of commonfolk the last time they walked among them? But that was before charismatic Lady Margaery took over public relations.

When after plying Joff with a lie about her appreciation for viciousness she suggests he open the doors and greet the people, we wonder whether she intends to lead him to his death. But when they cheer him for standing beside her, the stricken-mother look on Cersei's face is priceless. She doesn't just fear losing her son bodily -- she fears losing her power to this pretty young rose.

Hunted into a corner and bereft of real allies, the Lannister lady approaches her father for help. Brilliantly, this scene is designed to mirror the one in which her little brother Tyrion dared to approach their detached father Tywin for control of Casterly Rock: The brilliant strategist takes his time about important business, making no secret of the fact any number of things are more important to him than his children. He claims he doesn't disdain his daughter's wisdom, such as it is, because she's a woman, but because she's failed her most important job. Which is to be a mother. Thanks, Dad.

We've seen Theon Greyjoy liberated from torture at the Dreadfort by a mysterious groomsman who claims to've been loyal to the Ironborn family. Should have seen disaster coming as soon as the rescuer began plying Theon's ego, which is his fatal weakness. We were able to feel quite sorry for Theon last season, caught between two houses where neither patriarch was totally willing to be his father. We understand his desire to please his origin family at war with his outsider status among the honorable Starks that raised him. "All he had to do was just be," Theon laments resentfully of Robb Stark, who'd been like a brother to him.

We see Theon on the verge of redemption, realizing how he chose wrong. You could almost well up at his revelation that his real father was Ned Stark after all. And that's when we learn the desperately-needed savior was just leading him back to the torture device from which he'd unpinned him and sent him fleeing.

If this episode has a theme, it's that madness is among the most fatal wild-cards in the Game of Thrones world. I imagine they'll finally let us know who this long-awaited character is really meant to be next week, but for now we're given to understand it's a presumably-insane tormentor who liked the pleasure of letting Theon go free just so he could hunt him down and bring him back. Sick, man. Look at that expression on his face when they put Theon on the signature Bolton family X-shaped rack again.

How are we supposed to have hope enough to stay with this story? Well, that Daenerys scene is coming up. My friend wants to make that unholy choir her ringtone. But before that, we find out Varys decides to collude with Olenna Redwyne and the Tyrells to marry Sansa Stark into the Tyrell family instead, which would be a major coup for the golden roses who're quietly "growing strong" all around the Lannisters' crumbling grip on King's Landing. Margaery tells Sansa she wants to be good friends -- but Margaery is also a very good liar.

Porridge Plague? Really? Sansa's crucial failing all along is she believes whatever she is told to believe, especially if it's consistent with the glossy fiction of handsome lords and noble ladies, no matter how many times those minstrels' fictions have let her down in the past. If you ask her to believe she gets to marry Loras Tyrell and become a lady of beautiful Southron Highgarden, she very much wants to. The reason she doesn't want to confide the nature of her prayers is that all she's wanted all along is for Joffrey to die. I mean, come on. It's what we've all wanted.

We close by learning a little more, in a sense, about the fate of the Targaryen babies -- specifically that it wasn't the Hound, Sandor Clegane, who killed them. We know, because he denies being part of the pillaging violations at the Mummer's Ford, and he denies being involved in the death of children, but has no trouble accepting brave Arya's accusation that he slayed her friend Micah, the butcher's boy, mistakenly blamed in her place for injuring Joffrey in a much more innocent time of riverside play with a couple of direwolves and her sister Sansa.

The one-eyed man we see here is Beric Dondarrion, whom Ned Stark assigned to find and bring justice to the Hound's brother Gregor the Mountain. Along with the Red Priest Thoros of Myr, they continue to carry out a dead man's orders, worshipping the Lord of Light (yes, that's the same religion as Stannis' uncanny sorceress Melisandre). Though he denies being involved in his brother's crimes, the Hound will, we learn, receive the fairly-common practice of a trial by combat against Dondarrion.

Recall Tyrion escaped capture by Catelyn Stark at the Eyrie when his now dear friend Bronn agreed to act as his champion; a trial by combat seems to be a fairly overconfident approach to prosecuting serious offenders.

By the end of this episode, the spirited inspiration we need to sustain engagement comes from the rapidly-encroaching, kill-em-with-smiles Tyrell family, and from Daenerys' inspirational victory over the slavers. We even have hope that poor Sansa will finally escape King's Landing, one way or another.

The show's treatment of the Tyrell family, particularly Margaery, has been interesting; the books leave it fascinatingly ambiguous just how independently Margaery acts, how witty she is on her own, whether she has a moral agenda or simply plays along on behalf of her family, whether she has the desire to be queen.

Presented as she is, Margaery Tyrell is almost an unfairly-stacked foe for Cersei at this point, especially in a series that begs us to take pity on anti-heroes. What do you think her fatal flaw might turn out to be?

None of the series' good characters are truly good (or in the rare cases they are, as with Daenerys or Arya, we watch them grapple remarkable disadvantages). And none of its bad characters are truly bad. If you haven't figured it out, I am an incorrigible Lannister sympathizer -- what keeps you watching (or reading, if you're a book fan)? Do you wait to see the evils get their comeuppance, or their redemption? Is this the kind of story where it even makes sense to long for the good characters to win?

Please continue joining the discussion in the comments, but bear in mind we're all trying to avoid any major book spoilers whatsoever for fans who are just following along for the first time. I can't wait to see what commentor "Roose_Bolton" will be able to correct me on this time.

The Targaryen family tree is a tough thing to memorize, and the show hasn't even started talking about Dorne yet. I even wondered whether it was a good time to offer context on the Targaryen backstory, in case the show deals with it, but I erred on the side of assuming some light context that's been implied so far might be useful to people without ruining the pleasure of seeing it explored further, if that happens. Feedback is welcome!

Priorities and privilege reign in Game of Thrones S3E3

Leigh Alexander — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:26:13 +0000

I’ve heard a lot of bewilderment across social media when it comes to keeping up with the ever-climbing number of characters in this show. Even fans of the books are having a bit of a tough time, since the written chronology is odd -- each character’s arc is written separately, so you might read in an entirely unpredictable order about events that are presumed to be happening simultaneously.

The show’s doing an incredible job of streamlining the chronology and making sure stories unfolding at different corners of the world keep reasonable pace with each other, and at uniting disparate arcs under a common theme. It’s titled “Walk of Punishment”, and it’s about the privileges each individual has (or has not), and what those things cost them.

Sigh. Trigger warning for discussion of rape.

Robb Stark and his army have come to Riverrun, the home of his mother’s Tully family, for the funeral of Catelyn’s father. That her brother Edmure wastes several flaming arrows trying to hit the pyre, ultimately forcing their uncle, Brynden the Blackfish, to step in, is a good analogy for how badly the younger generation’s botching this war effort.

The Stark’s greatest failing here is the very thing that makes them noble: the value they place on individuals. Robb sees his enemies by name -- Tywin Lannister, and Lannister-affiliated savage Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane. The Mountain’s been largely portrayed as a concept here, but he’s the brother of The Hound (responsible for burning his little brother’s face as a youth, creating The Hound’s fear of fire and telling you almost all you need to know about Gregor).

Rather than draw the Mountain into a more advantageous position as Robb had hoped, Edmure wasted resources and lives capturing a relatively-useless mill holding, along with two minor young Lannister cousins, who aren’t likely to be worth much as bargaining chips. Good job, family Tully.

This is not the kind of mistake Tywin Lannister, the ultimate general, would make. The only prisoner he really cares about is his son Jaime, a prioritization that doesn’t seem to escape the notice of his other two children. As the small council convenes to discuss strategy at court, we get a priceless sequence whereby Cersei determinedly moves a chair to sit alongside her father, across from the men (that’s Littlefinger, gossip-master Varys, and the Maester Pycelle). Tyrion one-ups her by pulling his own chair to sit at the table’s end, directly opposite their father.

As reward for his service to the crown, Littlefinger, who’s been running the books at King’s Landing, has been entitled Lord of Harrenhal, but given that Roose Bolton’s currently holding that awful shell of a castle for Robb Stark, that title hardly means much. Instead, Tywin “suggests” Littlefinger court Lysa Arryn, Catelyn’s sister, who’s fancied him since they were children.

Since the murder of Lysa’s husband Jon kicked all of these events off by bringing Ned Stark to King’s Landing in the first place, Lysa’s been hiding out in her mountainous tower home, The Eyrie, with her awful, sickly little son Robert, whom she still nurses at her breast even though he’s got to be six or seven years old by now. Marrying Lysa would bring the territory into Lannister hands, though, and give Littlefinger a better title, so he agrees to go -- leaving Tyrion to be assigned into the role of Master of Coin.

We join Jaime, Brienne and their Bolton-bannered captors. As presumed Stark allies, this group here couldn’t have a more high-value prisoner on their hands than Tywin’s favorite son, the famous swordsman. This group is led by a man named Locke, which I only know because of a wiki search. In the novels Jaime and Brienne are held by a group of contract grotesques called the Brave Companions, but the Bolton banner is meant to simplify the number of factions in play.

The song they’re singing is “The Bear and the Maiden Fair,” a popular ditty about a bear that poses as a knight to rescue a lady. It’s often used as a motif in the books, especially when one grotesque ends up in an alliance with a more vulnerable individual -- think of the Hound visiting Sansa Stark during the Blackwater battle, or Jaime and Brienne. Except in this case, the “maiden fair” is definitely the Lannister golden boy.

Brienne, less impressed by Jaime’s swordsmanship during their brief duel than she expected, insinuates that perhaps Jaime’s reputation owes a bit more to Lannister privilege and fame than perhaps Jaime would like to admit. In fact, he wouldn’t like to admit it at all, and revenges himself on the idea by reminding Brienne she’s liable to be raped in camp. Yet in his way, he also advises her not to resist, counseling her for her safety, even though he can admit he’d rather die than be in her position and he’s thankful not to be a woman.

At the village site of Thoros of Myr’s ragtag liberation group The Brotherhood Without Banners, Arya’s friend Hot Pie decides to stay behind at the camp. Having lost her pal Lommy in an earlier skirmish, she’s down to just one friend, now -- the young blacksmith’s apprentice Gendry, who doesn’t know he’s one of the late Robert Baratheon’s black-haired bastard (getting a look at Gendry was part of Ned’s research into the revelation that Cersei Lannister’s children are all inbred).

Help me out here, commenters: Why does Arya ask Sandor Clegane if he remembers the last time he was here?

Losing her father makes Catelyn worry about her own children -- remember when Theon displayed two child’s bodies of about the right size at Winterfell? Rumor must hold that Bran and Rickon are dead, but Catelyn and her uncle need to have faith, if only to keep Robb’s war effort spiritually strong.

Legends hold a lot of power in this world, of course. Note how Lady Talisa, of whose name no one’s been reminded since before her wedding to Robb last season, indulges in scaring the little Lannister boys as she treats their wounds.

And how thanks to their skin-changing warg, the Wildlings believe hundreds of the Wall’s black brothers might have been killed up north at the Fist of the First Men. Mance Rayder thinks it’s a good time for his army to breach the Wall, a long-standing boundary between the Wildlings and the rest of Westeros. That it’ll also breach the boundary between the White Walkers and the rest of Westeros doesn’t seem to concern him.

But they find only horse corpses, presuming there must be undead, instead of bodies, nearby. However, Jeor Mormont’s party of crow rangers is safely at Craster’s Keep, where Craster continues being the most awful person in the world. Remember that this man lives beyond the wall so that he can keep a homestead where he has children on his own daughters and sacrifices all his boy children to the White Walkers.

Even given the imminent threat of the undead, Craster saves his best food for his pigs, pitiless to the painful birthing cries of one of his daughters, and suggests everyone should eat Samwell Tarly, because he’s so fat. Sam is a bit tired, justifiably, of being made to feel worthless because he’s so fat, and Craster’s remarks prompt him to seek out Gilly, a girl he’d been fond of at their last visit to the keep, and watch her deliver her baby. Unfortunately it’s a boy baby -- but we think now Sam might have the chance to try to be a hero.

At Dragonstone, where Stannis is licking his wounds after his last decimating loss at King’s Landing, Melisandre is leaving to do who knows what in the ritualistic service of her Red God, the Lord of Light. She says Stannis’ “fires” are too low for her to birth another murderous spectre of the type that assassinated Renly, but hints that sacrificing someone else with Stannis’ “king’s blood” -- maybe one Robert Baratheon’s bastards -- would create enough magic for an advantage.

The books never tell us if Stannis is physically or romantically interested in Melisandre. He’s obsessively puritanical, rejects the idea of prostitution whatsoever, demands rigid order among his men, and supposedly maintains a loyal marriage to his wife (known to be ugly) and his daughter, who has a skin disease. That makes the fact he’s constantly in the company of the red sorceress more ambiguous, provokes more curiosity about his character. Seeing him patently crave her here makes Stannis seem a little more objectively distasteful.

Still in Astapor, Daenerys continues to be horrified by the consequences of slavery. Despite her promises to take her rights in fire and blood, she instead is negotiating for an army. Her close advisor Jorah Mormont (the son of the Old Bear, the Night Watch’s leader) thinks having an army of perfectly-trained slave soldiers is a better proposition for Dany’s value system than imperfect, personally-motivated men who often show their ugly sides as they raze and pillage in wartime, but last-gen Kingsguard veteran Ser Barristan Selmy believes in the value of personal loyalty, while Mormont doesn’t seem to think nobility gets you much.

The tension between Selmy and Mormont (“’We’ already, Ser Barristan?“) over Daenerys, in a sense, is quite interesting. We see Dany patiently considering both trusted viewpoints -- but neither of them think it’s a good idea for her to give away her biggest dragon in exchange for the Unsullied warriors. She does it anyway, and gains the translator Missandei as a companion in the bargain. She seems potentially drawn as an interesting character here, versus in the books when she’s often creepily referred-to as “the little scribe”.

Tyrion enters Littlefinger’s domain of prostitution to collect a wagon full of royal ledgers, where Littlefinger asks apparently-innocent questions about why Ros was punished by Cersei for Tyrion’s sake. There are no innocent questions at court, however -- Cersei mistakenly believed Ros was Tyrion’s lover, and nicked her instead of Shae. That Tyrion is keeping Shae (and hiding her as Sansa’s handmaiden) is a crucial weakness to him, since the consequences to the couple are liable to be dire if Tywin ever hears of it.

But when Littlefinger suggests Tyrion reward his squire, Podrick Payne, for saving his life, Tyrion takes the bait, leaving Pod alone with four of Littlefinger’s women. When Pod comes back with the money Tyrion paid still in hand, Tyrion and Bronn realize Littlefinger must have gotten something out of him. Not only that, but Tyrion’s got his work cut out for him, learning that Littlefinger’s manner of accounting mostly involves borrowing impossible sums. If the deeply in-debt Crown can’t make some restitution to the Iron Bank of Braavos, the Bravosi will fund Lannister rivals instead.

Theon’s set free from torture at the Bolton family's Dreadfort[*] by the mysterious sympathizer who’s promised him his sister Yara Greyjoy is waiting for him nearby. But he doesn’t get far before he’s hunted down again, and his mysterious savior somehow arrives just in time to rescue Theon from inevitable rape and murder. This guy’s pretty good with a weapon for someone we met holding a broom in the dungeon corner, and the last man to die at crossbow-point seems to know who’s killed him -- “you little bastard,” he marvels.

Brienne doesn’t seem able to either talk or fight her way out of what the men in Locke’s camp plan to do to her. Jaime is a talker, though, and manages to convince them to leave her alone by telling Locke she’s worth a load of sapphires to her father in Tarth. Tarth gets its name from its sapphire waters, not from any load of gemstones[**], but Jaime’s a charming liar. Brienne then gets to watch the special privilege the fancy, high-value Lannister prisoner looks likely to get from camp because of his rich father.

Jaime tries to impress his gift for fancy language was just due to the education his father forced upon him, but this expression of his privilege seems to alienate Locke, who slowly, insidiously reveals he’s a bit more clever than he looks and doesn’t appreciate Jaime’s efforts to manipulate him with the promise of his father’s gold, nor the automatic assumption that he ought to be grateful for whatever glories a Lannister wants to buy him with.

Is it his talent that makes Jaime special, or simply his father’s power and money? In a brutal attempt to force an answer to that question, Locke removes Jaime’s sword-hand, as The Hold Steady’s rousing cover of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” plays over the credits roll. In the end, privilege pays the highest cost and it’s Jaime, not Brienne, who loses something permanent in that encampment.

Jaime is my personal favorite character in the series. He has all the arrogance his class has bought him, but the mantle of Lannister privilege has harmed him, too. He’s carried the mantle of “Kingslayer” for his entire career, and it’s assumed he was simply the ultimate traitor -- slaying the mad king he’d sworn to protect. He’s famously handsome, but has only ever been with his sister Cersei, as the twins bonded during a tough and lonely childhood. Now, he’s simply the most high-value prisoner at large in the war effort, having lost the only thing that he truly owns -- his ability to use a sword.

Game of Thrones wants us to hate the way that privilege challenges others, but it also illustrates that incredible misfortune doesn’t discriminate. These are the more interesting subtleties that make us attach to the series’ major characters, and not mind so much when it starts throwing minor ones at us. I wonder if one is even meant, ever, to maintain an all-seeing grasp on the plot, its different factions, and their complicated constituencies; maybe it’s possible to just pick a favorite family or two and focus on them.

In last week's comments discussion, we talked about our favorite women characters. Whose narrative arc do you find most interesting (try to avoid spoilers, if you know them?) How tough of a time are you having keeping the story and characters straight, if you're new to the series? Do you do the special-nicknames thing (King, king's mom, jerk, jerk's friend, wizard lady, Jon Snow)?

[*I'd previously incorrectly-claimed Theon was being held at Winterfell, which House Bolton is meant to look after on Robb Stark's behalf now that the Ironmen have left. Instead, commenter Roose_Bolton (of course) lets me know they're more likely at the Dreadfort, the Bolton family home. I can't even tell you why I think he's right, because spoilers. **I'd also made the mistake of thinking there used to be sapphires in Tarth but aren't anymore; my pal Pete (of Anamanaguchi fame) reminds me that it's really just the water that derives the 'sapphire' legend, which makes Jaime's lie a bit bigger.]

Game of Thrones S3E2: Ladies, leave your men at home

Leigh Alexander — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:00:31 +0000

The Game of Thrones universe is all about how disadvantages are balanced against advantages: Every major character or faction has a unique set of challenges, and then a trump card. Tyrion Lannister's unfavorable height, scarred face and status as the family black sheep is balanced by his superior wit and endless disposable income; as Queen Regent, Cersei almost has the power she wants -- but then of course, she's tasked with mothering and managing awful Joffrey. Daenerys' dragons were her trump card even when she had nothing else. And young Bran Stark has lost everything, including the use of his legs, but he has "green dreams."

Magical phenomena in Game of Thrones are applied with a light hand, generally. You could almost forget you're watching a show about a fantasy universe instead of a show about medieval wartime politics until it asks you to believe in undead wights, or in skin-changing wargs, people that have the ability to project themselves into the bodies of animals. Bran's dreams of a three-eyed crow and a peculiar, small young man are more than ordinary dreams. When he sleeps he roams the world in the body of his direwolf, Summer.

After fleeing occupied Winterfell, Bran, along with the wildling woman Osha, his dear steward Hodor and his little brother Rickon, plans on going to the wall, from whence Bran doesn't know his half-brother Jon Snow has defected on a spy mission against the wildlings. But in this episode Team Bran meets the crannogfolk Jojen and Meera, who've presumably found Bran through the boy's nighttime searching in Summer's skin, and we get the impression this three-eyed raven of his dreams might become a more important quest.

The lost Stark children seem endlessly to orbit their family -- mother might be at Riverrun, Jon at the Wall, Robb on the warfront -- and as the courses of their travels attract new potential allies (will Littlefinger really help Sansa reunite with Catelyn, or use her for his own ends?), they seem always a step behind. The Stark family's wish to reunite drives what might be the primary narrative arc of Game of Thrones. We just want to know if their mother is going to get her children back.

Things aren't good for Lady Catelyn right now. Her eldest son blames her for the fall of Winterfell, the rest of her children are missing or captive, and she's just gotten word from Riverrun that her father, Hoster Tully, has died.

To make matters worse, Robb has broken an alliance with the Freys that saw him promise to marry one of their horrible daughters in exchange for passage at the Frey-owned Twins holding last season. He's married a Volantene girl, and you see how deeply Catelyn mistrusts this choice. If there weren't already enough people blaming her for the botched-up war effort, she confides she thinks the gods are exacting vengeance on her because she once wished for Jon Snow, her husband's bastard, to die, and then failed to be a mother to him.

Robb decides to divert his troops toward Riverrun so that the family can attend his grandfather's funeral. Family is core to the Starks' identity, and yet Robb's consistent choice of love and loyalty and the noble pursuit of vengeance over strategy is clearly threatening his bid for the throne. Northmen loyal to the Starks are getting restless, and grizzled Arnolf Karstark tells Robb of his bride, "I think you lost the war the day you married her." Ooh, was that the prickle of foreshadowing? I sure hope not.

Legendary swordsman and charming incestor Jaime Lannister is, at the behest of Lady Stark, remains in the custody of Brienne "The Beauty" of Tarth. She's clinging doggedly to her mission to bring this incredibly high-value prisoner to King's Landing, believing he can be traded for the Stark girls. The Lannisters, of course, have made sure nobody knows they only have one Stark girl -- Arya is, of course, posing as a sword-wielding boy in the countryside with her friends -- but let's worry about that later.

The characters discuss the late Renly Baratheon and his "degenerate" "proclivities" often during this episode. Renly, of course, was gay, and in love with Loras Tyrell, the handsome Knight of Flowers, but the books always made that fact implicit. The show's decision to deal with it explicitly, and even to portray the physical relationship between Renly and Tyrell in earlier episodes, is an interesting one.

I always felt dealing with issues of discrimination and oppression through period dramas is sort of the easy, or lazy thing to do -- of course everyone is racist and ableist and sexist and homophobic, that's just the world they live in, and so forth. But the show has taken pains to create empathy for the ways characters try to move within the limitations their universe has prescribed, so we feel for Loras and Renly's unexpressed love, and the fact that most characters seem to feel Renly's orientation would have made him unfit to be king.

Jaime insults Renly to Brienne and makes fun of her both for what he perceives to be her own "masculine" qualities, and for the fact she fancied Renly, but it seems he really just wants to upset her. Jaime is someone who behaves in an openly-arrogant fashion, but may conceal a more thoughtful moral code, if a personal one, than many of the other characters.

You can almost forgive him for having children with his sister Cersei, because through the horrible circumstances of a ruthless, motherless Lannister childhood, he's genuinely in love. When he's had his fill of tormenting poor Brienne, he relents, with probably this episode's finest quote: "I don't blame you, and I don't blame him either. We don't get to choose who we love."

You don't get to choose what your kids turn out like, either. It's hard to say what's a bigger challenge for Cersei: Her monstrous son, or the inconveniently young, beautiful and merciful Margaery, who stands a chance of upsetting the Queen Regent's sloppily-constructed power balance.

Desperate to control Joff, Cersei's expelled all of Tyrion's efforts to undo the damage the boy's done, and has replaced her most intelligent counsel with the kind of thugs and sycophants that will tell her what she wants to hear. Sad to see Cersei digging herself into a trench of destructive paranoia when there's someone out there who really loves her, but this isn't a series that likes happy couples.

The appealing Tyrell family represents a meaningful threat to Cersei, but Joffrey's so excited at the military power the Tyrells add to his kingdom that he derides his mother's insecurity. Luckily it's his very disgust for women that makes him utterly blind to any threat Margaery and her family could pose to his rule. He just sees a lady to impress and control.

The Tyrells also represent the possibility of salvation for Sansa, who, disappointingly, is still too much in love with fantasy courtly ideals for her own good. It's clear she's attached to the idea of picture-perfect Loras Tyrell helping her out, here -- she doesn't know she's not his type.

Book fans have been eagerly waiting this episode's introduction of Olenna "Queen of Thorns" Redwyne, the Tyrell family's intriguing matriarch (her son, Mace Tyrell, is Margaery and Loras' father, mostly renowned for eating too much). Her power seems to be in plain speech -- "the cheese will be served when I want it served, and I want it served now," she tells a manservant, and that's that.

She's summoned Sansa presumably to hear the truth about Joffrey. Terrified into silence at court, it's the Stark girl's first chance to speak anything other than the pleasant lines she's been parroting for her own survival, and she even has trouble at first, before at last she can confide to Joffrey's monstrousness. It's a risky move, of course, as the Tyrells are ostensibly Lannister allies, but with this woman in charge, you get the sense that if they have their own agenda, they have a good chance of executing it.

Speaking of executing, this episode brings us the most awkward conversation about anal sex that's ever taken place over a crossbow. Awful little Joffrey is clearly much more comfortable with weapons than with women, and we see Margaery tread into dangerous territory as she pretends to show an interest. There's a lot of subtext going on in this conversation -- unless she confesses her first husband (and her brother's love) Renly was gay, Joffrey might think she consorted with a "traitor", and failed her "job" of bearing a child to boot. A displeased Joffrey is a physical threat, but Margaery defuses it by claiming to share his appetite for violence.

Yet I wonder how much pretending Margaery's actually doing. We heard her grandmother tell Sansa that it's Margaery's father who insists the girl needs to become a queen, even if that means marrying whichever contender is the closest. When Joffrey tells her that she no longer belongs to her father, the reaction this elicits seems genuine, and when she lets Joffrey embrace her over the weapon, it looks like there's a real thrill there, a secret desire to claim some of that shameless, violent male power for herself -- even if it's at their own reflection in the mirror she ultimately ends up pointing the thing.

Ah, and Theon is back. Alfie Allen's portrayal of the character, desperate and insecure and ultimately hunted to a cliff, was among my favorite things about the last season. But his pointless seizure of Winterfell means Robb Stark's supposed ally, Roose Bolton, is sending his people to clean up the mess, and now Theon is a prisoner who'll continue to pay for his juvenile error of judgment and his betrayal of the Starks.

House Bolton has some issues. I mean, their house sigil is a flayed man bound to an X-shaped torture device. Now we see why. And when we see Jaime and Brienne set upon by a posse bearing that flag, we know suddenly the Beauty and the Kingslayer have much bigger things to worry about than one another [*].

Arya is in trouble, too. She and her companions (including Gendry, who doesn't know he's one of Robert Baratheon's black-haired bastards), encounter the Brotherhood Without Banners, a ragtag group of unaffiliated freedom fighters led by Thoros of Myr, a red priest. We were supposed to presume the posse pro-Lannister, as they were singing "The Rains of Castamere," but not so. Arya and friends were going to be allowed to go on their way, but unfortunately an inconvenient prisoner arrives just in time. Sandor "The Hound" Clegane's nightmarish brother, Gregor "The Mountain," has been wreaking havok all over Westeros, but it's the Hound that gets dragged in by the brotherhood.

Recall how, terrified of fire, he fled the battle of King's Landing and has, we assume, been drinking himself into a stupor ever since. Despite everything else Arya has tried to be, Clegane immediately outs her as a "Stark bitch," and we're left wondering what this will mean for her future.

A strong theme in this episode is what women can do with the poor hands they're dealt in this world; one can become ruthless like Cersei, charming like Margaery, or, like Catelyn Stark, root oneselves in motherhood and prayer. We see how the wrong marriage to an apparently-excellent, loving woman can do Robb just as much harm as a decisive battle, and we see how the blunt, fearless candor of Lady Olenna is what makes people fear her. Even Shae, who seems to be interested in securing some genuine safety for Sansa, wields a certain power over Tyrion, easily able to twist him into begging for her forgiveness when it comes to the roving eye of his past.

I'd hardly call Game of Thrones a feminist story, but it does emphasize the way that while the power and movement of women in this world is limited, they use whatever resources they can find to tilt a little favor in their direction. Throughout this episode, we see the male heroes disadvantaged -- Robb making every wrong decision, Theon in brutal torture, Jon Snow lost in a foreign society -- in favor of examining what the women are able to accomplish behind the scenes. "Men use brawn, women use wiles" is the sort of trite concept typical of reductive fantasy universes. And the exceptions to this rule -- Brienne's nobility and incredibly-confident sword hand, Arya's warrior ambition -- are somewhat blunted by the fact that in order to have access to that type of power, they need to essentially pass as men. And at the end of the day, what matters most about Arya on a practical level is simply that she's a "Stark bitch."

But there's still enough nuance to make it a pleasant journey for the heart, if one is willing to suspend some disbelief. Terrible things happen to everyone in this story, and we can find a point of empathy for everyone we're watching thrash in the grip of inevitability. We had a lovely discussion in the comments last week, so I'll ask you a question in the hopes of fostering another: Who's your favorite woman in the series, and why?

Finally, another reason it's fun to follow along with Game of Thrones is the social media culture. Here and there I'll try to direct you to neat things I find online, like Marissa Nadler's awesome, haunting a-capella cover of the opening theme. Or Arrested Westeros, my current favorite site, which combines Game of Thrones with quotes from Arrested Development. You wouldn't believe how well it works.

[*CORRECTION: I originally (incorrectly) presumed it was Ramsay Bolton who'd led the party capturing Brienne and Jaime, but friends remind me it's supposed to be the Brave Companions that take them captive here. The book's creepy Vargo Hoat seems to have been replaced with a Bolton-affiliated man-at-arms called Locke who's in charge of recapturing Jaime Lannister, whereas the novel's Brave Companions were mercenaries ostensibly favoring the Lannisters, if I recall. Was Vargo Hoat too awful for TV? Did the writers worry that introducing the Brotherhood Without Banners and the Brave Companions simultaneously would confuse people about unaffiliated teams? Either way, they're probably going to Harrenhal, and awful is awful, right?]

Game of Thrones returns with critical mass of politicking

Leigh Alexander — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:21:38 +0000

Funny thing about recaps: Some of the early feedback I got on the handful I did last season suggested people wanted less blow-by-blow, more macroanalysis. But I wonder how well that works for Game of Thrones: Friends, I've read all the books and watched every season so far twice, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't reach for a wiki a few times to make sure I had everything and everyone straight as we begin the third season.

I'm often afraid the show is going to shake less-obsessive Game of Thrones fans like a beauty in a bear pit, since we're reaching a critical mass of characters and politicking. Yet this is the season readers have anticipated most of all, and if the television adaptation has had one major strength so far it's its ability to abstract the muddy stuff and highlight over-arching themes.

I'll be your guide this season, and I'll try to focus on some of those themes, while seeing what I can do to help everyone keep their names, faces and facts straight as we return to the world of Westeros and beyond after a long, long winter.

I think the premiere deserves some extra details to make sure everyone knows exactly what's going on; if you just want some analysis, scroll to the end.

The season three premiere picks up quite literally where we left off: With unlucky Night's Watchman Samwell Tarly struggling through the snow as the blue-eyed, undead Others -- and the legion of Wights they seem able to reanimate -- begin approaching the Wall from the mysterious, inhospitable lands beyond it.

We've seen glimpses of this unknowable dread before in the series, but here's the point where we realize a legion of undead is going to be an issue for Westeros. An under-funded Night's Watch staffed mostly by ex-convicts and aging retirees is going to have a hard time holding these guys back -- and a harder time convincing anyone in the Seven Kingdoms to help out, given that their attention and their funds are tied up in their own wars for the throne.

We presume it'll be harder without Jon Snow, who's been dispatched to infiltrate the society of the Free Folk, who live beyond the wall so they can avoid the oppression and war that comes with living under a traditional king. In this episode, we meet Mance Rayder, leader of the free folk and former crow of the Night's Watch himself.

Mance is unimpressed when Jon awkwardly parrots rhetoric about freedom, but appreciates his more-truthful story about how the Watch's Lord Commander, Jeor "Old Bear" Mormont, ignored the sacrifice of male infants at Craster's Keep last season. Mance also probably appreciates the genuine romantic sparks he senses between Snow (who is adorably lateblooming about women) and Ygritte, the firehaired freewoman who's been his biggest advocate here.

Back at King's Landing, we join Tyrion, who's recovered from his war wound -- less so from the complete untangling his sister Cersei's done of his attempts to restore some degree of power and balance in Joffrey's mad kingdom. We find him examining a mirror and noticing his scar makes him even uglier than he once was -- a hallmark of this series is taking people in bad situations and making them worse.

Not that Peter Dinklage is actually ugly, mind. In the books, Tyrion actually loses part of his nose; the more restrained scarring he sustains here shows a healthy appreciation for his charismatic face. He will probably always be the best thing on this show, and HBO's April Fool's prank about him being replaced was momentarily sick-making, even knowing what day today is.

Lannister patriarch Tywin has come to town, after arriving at the last minute to save the city from certain ruin. Tywin brought me my favorite moment of last season: Cersei, about to take her son's life as she trembles with wine and brutal terror, leaping to her feet with all the delight and relief of a young girl when it's her father, not the invaders, who strides into the throne room to reveal he's saved her. There's an incredible dichotomy in Tywin Lannister, who as a character is getting one of the best and most luminous treatments of anyone on the show -- he's ruthless, yet we can admire him; we see why his children both hate and long for him. His scenes with Arya Stark (posing as his cupbearer) last season were some of the show's best.

Not that Tyrion can expect any similar sense of salvation from his father, who never conceals his open loathing for the son he views as twisted and deformed, and whom he will forever blame for the death of his wife in childbirth. Tywin is an excellent general but no kind of parent, and his attitude to strategy and efficiency strains and overhangs his dysfunctional, love-starved children.

Cersei's heard Tyrion requested a meeting with their dad, and comes to find out what he wants. "He's my father," Tyrion replies."Do I need to want something?" That's some elegant dark humor, there -- but there's also the leaden ache when we hear Tyrion describe to his sister how he lay with his face split in half, yet no visit from his only parent.

Tyrion may have had all his power taken away, but Cersei fears him anyway: She says she's afraid he'll tell lies, but it's plain it's the truth she's afraid of her father knowing: The nightmarish way she's let her son Joffrey trample the kingdom and run the family into the corner. Oh, yeah, and the whole bit where Cersei's kids are her brother's kids. That's kind of the big one.

All Tyrion wants, it seems, is stewardship of the family home back in Casterly Rock (his brother Jaime, having joined the Kingsguard, forfeits the right to hold lands). But even though Tyrion was the only Lannister kid to show any bravery during the fight at King's Landing, Tywin's venomous at the suggestion: In his eyes, his youngest son is the only thing he's ever done imperfectly.

Note dad's extreme offense at Tyrion's whoring; Tywin's own father apparently shamed the family by taking in a courtesan who indulged herself in the family's riches, and he can't abide the idea that his own son has brought a whore to King's Landing. Recall Tyrion confiding in Bronn and Shae about the nasty business his father put him through when he briefly married a whore as a youth. We see quite plainly how Tyrion came to be how he is: The cleverest of the children raised in the cunning Lannister mode, yet the least-loved. His closest ally right now is "upjumped cutthroat" Bronn, who's just asked for a pay raise for his "friendship."

Davos Seaworth has survived the wreckage of Stannis Baratheon's fleet during the Blackwater battle by clinging to a rock in the middle of the sea. When rescuers arrive, they demand to know what king he's served. The wrong answer, here, could have ended his life, and you see on his face how dearly he knows this. Yet Seaworth would die loyal, declaring himself for Stannis, the "one true king."

Seaworth is arguably one of the most moral and loyal characters in the entire narrative, yet Stannis is clearly twisted 'round the finger of the Red Woman, the sorceress Melisandre, and her fanatical worship of the Lord of Light. The pirate Sallador Saan, who contributed 30 ships to Stannis' war effort, believes Stannis' cause is lost and is bailing on Stannis, his ominous sorceress and her apparent penchant for burning nonbelievers.

Yet after everything Davos has sacrificed, Stannis, himself an obsessive, fanatical purist whose own late brother Renly told him no one wanted for king, sends his most loyal man to the dungeons for speaking agains the sorceress. We see how manipulative the priestess is when she implies she could have prevented deaths, including that of Davos' own son, if only Davos had not convinced Stannis to leave Melisandre behind during the Blackwater battle.

As for the Starks, they lost their Winterfell home primarily due to former ally Theon Greyjoy's prideful muddling, but it's clear Robb Stark's army blames the Lannisters, ignoring some of the subtleties of war in favor of a simplified -- and deeply personal -- vendetta against the family they hold responsible for the death of Robb's father Ned. In Robb's mind, the conflict is even more dangerously oversimplified: His main enemy is Jaime Lannister, and therefore the fall of Winterfell (and the slaughter of Northmen they discover here at Harrenhal) is the fault of his own mother, who set Jaime "free" (into the custody of Brienne of Tarth to be brought home, really) in a desperate exchange for her daughters.

Ros, the prostitute who ended up as Peter "Littlefinger" Baelish's business partner, tries to bond with Shae over having come up in the world; Shae, still successfully posing as Sansa's handmaid, evades the idea that they may have shared experience.The woman never says anything about herself, and wholly rejects Sansa's attempt to play imagination games with her. Littlefinger's attention to Sansa is slightly creepy, given the degree to which we know that he once desired her mother (and the degree to which we know he can't be trusted), but Sansa's finally brave enough to tell him to help her leave King's Landing.

The charismatic Tyrells have now joined the Lannisters via beautiful Margaery's wedding to Joffrey. But unlike the cowardly, squeamish and violent boy-king, she has no problem entering the poverty-stricken Flea Bottom to give gifts and food to the children -- and her willing vulnerability is an incredible foil to steely Cersei. The look on Cersei's face when Joff, who himself seems as interested in pleasing Margaery as anyone, suggests his mother is getting older is priceless.

Of course, no one in this show is simple, and viewing Margaery as simply a naively-charitable heroine would be a mistake. When she urges the head of the orphanage she visits to come to her if they need anything, her emphasis of "directly to me" could be viewed as a potential allusion to her motives. It'll be interesting, actually, to see how the show treats Margaery's objectives, since the books keep them obscured, and never let us get to know her well.

Finally, we rejoin Daenerys, who has reclaimed her dragons and escaped the incredibly inhospitable Qarth with a ship and the riches she's won from her enemies. Next, she needs an army, so she her right-hand man, Jorah Mormont, are headed to Astapor to check out some slave soldiers for sale. We see how the silver queen aches for her Dothraki, who are suffering sickness and terror for her, having never been on the "poison water" in the history of their tribes. We see how firmly the idea of slavery at all disgusts her; she'll be able to get a terrifying army bred from childhood for war, but given that each of them has to murder a baby in their training to ensure they have no "weakness," will she compromise?

Does she have a choice? Amid all the conniving and mistake-making of the Westerosi throne contenders, Daenerys' white-haloed morality is supposed to make us want her most of all for the throne. I wonder how people of extreme moral character manage to fare in this series?

For some analysis, I want to talk about Daenerys, because her story arc is obviously going to be the most challenging for the show's writers in the season ahead. Early in the story, hers is one of the most interesting narratives: She begins a terrified girl, estranged from her royal background and at the mercy of her vicious brother Viserys. She's managed to dodge the Targaryen family madness; he hasn't. While he makes a desperate, irrational bid for power, she simply dreams of having her own home. When she's sold as an adolescent bride to a terrifying, wild horselord, we feel for her, and when she falls in love and learns to claim some power within a society completely foreign to her, we root for her. By the time Khal Drogo dies and Dany takes leadership of the Khalasar, we believe she can be a contender for the Iron Throne in her own right.

But in the books, she often feels like an off-note from the time she comes into power onward: it's hard to forget she is written in lavish physical detail by a nerdy old guy who likes describing her breasts or her various states of arousal. There is a certain theft of dignity that happens to Daenerys that doesn't happen to Cersei, Arya, Sansa or Catelyn; Daenerys is a very young woman learning to become a moral authority, and this episode presents the way her desire to right impossibly large and deeply-ingrained wrongs such as global poverty or slavery in cultures that have a certain peace with slavery will conflict with her ultimate goal of queendom.

Emilia Clarke as Daenerys often wears an expression simultaneously noble and soft, the kind you expect to see etched on a royal seal, and the way the camera lavishes on her -- a small, beautiful but insistent figure surrounded always by eerie predators -- is currently maintaing a delicate balance between the ways we're meant to see her as simultaneously righteous and powerless. Readers who are Dany fans seem to often feel like they don't know what the books will do with her; it's interesting to see what the show will do with her (I've read that Clarke begged George R.R. Martin to know; if I were her, I'd be the member of the cast begging the hardest, too).

As the premiere closes, we see longtime Kingsguard commander Ser Barristan Selmy save Daenerys from a trap that exploited her own faith in people (believing a child offering her a ball was simply that, and not a warlock offering her a scorpion). Recall how Selmy was dismissed by Joffrey for being too aged? Now, Dany has a new champion -- and look how anxious this seems to make Mormont.

Loyalty is really the overarching theme of this episode; its title, Valar Dohaeris, is High Valyrian for "all men must serve" (versus the title of the Season 2 finale, Valar Morghulis, or "all men must die"). How important is allegiance, Jon Snow is wondering as he tries to prove himself to Mance, and what happens when you misplace your loyalty -- or in the case of Robb, or Tywin, or Cersei, or Davos, your blame?

This season's set to be disaster porn -- book fans are especially excited about season 3 because they cannot wait to see terrible things happen to important characters. Saying so is hardly a spoiler; it's Game of Thrones! If you want to see empowering narratives, watch Girls... er, wait. I got nothin'.

Black Mirror episode 2: White Bear and the culture of desensitization

Leigh Alexander — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:56:01 +0000

The last episode of Black Mirror’s second season airs tonight on UK Channel 4.

Do you remember the first profoundly shocking image you saw on the internet? Perhaps it would have been something you came across by accident; perhaps you followed, half horrified and half compelled, a trail of digital whispers to see if you could handle it.

Maybe you don’t remember the first one, but you remember some of them. Maybe you shut the window, sick at yourself, at the glimpse of a woman’s eyes glassed with something unsettling, not staged. Maybe you lingered on eruptions, lacerations, in spite of yourself. To see if the image could possibly be real.

You could have even been one of those who chased the rush, gaze fixed on the spectrum of human mortality suddenly available for analysis and consumption in ways far beyond what you will hopefully ever witness in your actual life. If so, you’ve probably seen someone’s victim, someone’s child, flicker by in your shock-zoetrope. That person is probably okay. It probably wasn’t real. It wasn’t really your problem. There was nothing you could’ve done anyway. You went to bed.

Now, you know that the world is full of upsetting and graphic things. You have seen communities form in dark little digital caves, faceless audiences forever upping the ante, worrying at a numb nerve ending that adapts, that wants ever more elaborate stimulation. . It is hard to feel shocked anymore; it is hard to feel moved. If you wanted to join them you wouldn’t have to dig through secretive channels; it’s just there, right over your shoulder. You probably already know where to look.

In the exposition of Black Mirror's season 2, episode 2 ("White Bear"), a woman awakes bound to a chair, alone in a house where the television radiates a stark, inexplicable sigil, an ominous whine. Disheveled, amnesiac, and clutching a photo of a child she can barely remember but who must be her daughter, she stumbles out into a suburban neighborhood, shouting for help. What greets her instead is an eager scattering of spectators wielding camera phones. Unmoved by her pleas, they film her from house windows, follow her down the street.

The voyeurs are possessed of a visible, quiet eagerness that you’ve seen on anyone looking at the world through a smartphone’s video recorder. Like what they’re seeing is just a moment to be captured, unreal. Immediately our heroine learns she’s being hunted; a masked man with a shotgun coolly advances, fires at her with no particular urgency.

No one helps. They just follow along and watch, like they’re hoping to be the first one with the video of someone dying. Who’d do that? Oh, yeah. You, maybe. It’s not that implausible a projection.

This episode is only tangentially about voyeur culture and our desensitization to the individual fostered by mass communications, though. It deviates from the usual structure of the series -- usually an episode opens with a scenario, a premise, an imminent reality enabled by our relationship to omnipresent social media and technology, and then explores the implications of that premise.

This one favors a long, action-intensive exposition that, beneath all the fleeing and gasping, the slow dread of violence, throbs toward a twist conclusion. It starts by placing us right into the circumstance of Victoria, shaken and bereft of her memory, fleeing the voyeurs and the videogame-like, masked “hunters” who seem to want to kill her for the benefit of the viewers. She’s assisted by Jem, a tough gal who explains that everyone’s under the influence of a signal being broadcast from a transmitter called White Bear (hence the episode’s title). The pair’s objective is ostensibly to evade the sadistic hunters and disable the transmitter.

All the while, Victoria has flickers of memory: Of viewing the child she scarcely remembers through a video screen, of being accompanied by a man with a sigil tattoo. And all along, the viewers, disturbingly gleeful, like they’re touring a theme park.

The reveal at the end doesn’t feel totally unexpected, but it’s still uncomfortable. Ultimately you can view the episode as a critique of all kinds of themes: Mob mentality, reality television, even the complicated treatment of women in the justice system, or the assumptions we bring to the things we see – we can capture nearly any issue from all angles and pin it to virtual glass forever, but still only own a piece of the story, the unknowable remainder filled in by our own preconceptions.

Primarily, though, this episode is a critique of our deep, often-unexamined mass desensitization, or at least a dread portent of its potential to grow. It aims to ask: To what extent can you stand by and watch horror before you are complicit, punishable?

Black Mirror decodes our modern dread of technology

Leigh Alexander — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:04:48 +0000

The English have a coy euphemism for addiction: “moreish.” It summons the delightful anxiety in surrendering your control to something else, the ambivalent cocktail of desire and guilt. We feel it flickering in the periphery, and we feel our smartphones in the middle of a restaurant dinner.

We live with the inability to fall asleep without a glassy black object nearby – you don’t need your phone when you’re going to bed, exactly, but you take no ease unless you know where it is. We lock our phones without a concrete reason besides the fact that letting someone else pick it up and look feels violating, too-intimate. It summons a nonspecific anxiety.

Game designer and critic Ian Bogost’s iOS-centric installation, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, aims to explore what the designer sees as a relationship between technology and religion; he likens the iPhone to a rosary, something we thumb automatically, observant. As a journalist on games I once craved the mainstreaming of designed interaction – now I startle to enter a silent subway car full of passengers with heads in laps, faces illuminated by screens, tapping.

The role of horror media in our culture is to show us our fears, to illuminate unspoken anxieties. Charlie Brooker’s Channel 4 series Black Mirror, something of a spiritual successor to The Twilight Zone, takes up the mantle for the digital age. Launched last year and now in its second season, it was inspired by the popular satirist and presenter’s own ambivalence to the increasing proliferation of these dark little screens; he found himself sincerely conversing with Siri (“a servile asslick with zero self-respect”), routinely performing the thoughtless tug-and-pop of Twitter refreshes.

Black Mirror's format is one I wish more American series emulated; rather than spooling shows into endless seasons of quick hits, it’s more common in the UK for quality TV to air robust, brief seasons. Black Mirror’s first season consists of three hour-long episodes, united by tone and theme instead of recurring characters or settings.

The third episode is called The Entire History of You, and it’s the one everyone talks about the most, with a sort of hushed dread (Robert Downey, Jr. reportedly optioned it for a film. Get the Arcade Fire to lend their song to the credits?). You ought not to watch it if you’re in a couple, they say, with a stricken look. This show has that kind of power: to rub your face in the viscera of everything about the modern world that you don’t want to think about. It is many things, but it is not pleasant viewing.

The boyfriend I’m in London to visit did not want us to watch The Entire History of You, which apparently involves a near-future where devices embedded in your body record everything you see, say and do – including your past relationships – for later viewing. In the browsing history of his iPad are several articles offering advice on overcoming jealousy of a partner’s past. He doesn’t know I’ve seen them, and he hasn’t told me about them; I know his mind from that black tablet.

The recently-aired first episode of season two explores just how much of a person can exist in the digital ether. It’s called Be Right Back, a play on the "BRB" notification people leave when exiting chat windows to go do real life.

A better title might have been Be Right There.

“Are we going to watch the new Black Mirror?” I asked my boyfriend.

“Be right there,” he said, immersed in a pretend city he was building on the iPad. I picked up my iPhone to kill time on Twitter until he was done.

“Are we watching it?” He asked ten minutes later. “Be right there,” I said. The irony of negotiating with our devices in order to watch a program about our relationship to our devices was pretty embarrassing.

Be Right Back is about a social media widow. Martha and Ash have moved in to a pastoral country house; Ash’s constant palming his stark black phone highlights the contrast between his social media use and the couple’s tactile life, framed in neutral tones with touching notes of green and turquoise. As characterization goes, Ash’s compulsion is wisely sketched with a light hand; he uses social media a lot, but not apparently dangerously so. No more than any of us.

The story begins in earnest when Ash is killed in an accident. A friend or relative–it’s not clear, as Black Mirror tends to place viewers directly into the flow of an episode without lavishing on background or irrelevant details –intrudes upon Martha at Ash’s funeral with an unsettling suggestion: There’s a new service that lets you talk to the dead.

Using the manifold digital fingerprints, photographs, voice recordings and text interactions he’s left in the social media space, this tech can serve Martha an interactive AI of Ash’s personality. It knows how he talks, his tastes and his memories – so long as he has shared them.

You can’t help but be gripped with the unease of wondering how much the black mirrors know about you. If it’s enough to resurrect you, how much of your essence have you divested onto the infrastructure? Twitter and Facebook obsess us with ideas about “sharing” and socialization, but is that really your life “on there,” or a thin, troubling simulacrum?

As we watch Martha, who learns she’s pregnant, succumb to her own grief-stricken urges to contact Ash’s memory through technology, the AI learns. It gains enough data to talk on the phone to her, and she reminds him of certain memories he’s meant to have, which he retains. When she nearly breaks her phone – and the increasingly-crucial lifeline, we feel her raw nerves.

We understand the ill junction of compulsion and disgust behind the mad, grotesque decision she makes next – a flickering car dash advertisement for synthetic body parts that we see at the episode's outset foreshadows a key clue. The episode’s best moment is a lovely exercise in restraint: Martha waiting restlessly in her living room for what she’s wrought to leave the upstairs bathroom. The calm, gentle voice of the man she loves pleads urgently with her not to turn the light on.

I won't spoil the ending, but I’ll tell you it’s not the shambling Night of the Living Dead you’d expect of typical horror. It is more subtle, more gently terrible, sawing slowly at the heart like a dull knife. Martha’s “resurrection” of Ash ultimately suggests that the parody of authentic-self that we serve to social media is unholy, a violation.

Black Mirror’s gift is that it presents a world where anything is possible thanks to technology -- and prickles our skin regarding the inevitable complications of that possibility. We are ever on a quest for advancement, and it’s quite likely that we’ll figure out how to do things we’ll end up wishing we never learned how to do and cannot unlearn.

This is a show about our fear that some line may loom in the story of humankind that we ought not cross, for our own good. Such a line feels tangible, near; maybe we’ve even crossed it already. It is considered unenlightened and luddite to fear technology, but Black Mirror makes it startlingly easy to admit that there is much to be unsettled about these days, quietly, ambivalently.

The newest episode airs on Channel 4 on February 18. Brooker’s said it’s “not for the fainthearted.” I know, because I follow him on Twitter. Can't wait. Show is moreish.

Previously: Black Mirror is black, and it's brilliant - best sf on TV

Meet the random shopper: Amazon gifts bought at a machine's whim

Leigh Alexander — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 16:55:28 +0000

Workers fulfull orders at an Amazon warehouse in Rugeley, England. REUTERS/Phil Noble

What would a bot buy from Amazon, if given life—and a gift card loaded with credit? Noam Chomsky's Cartesian Linguistics, apparently.

It's hard to believe that'd be a random choice, but it is, coming from a creature engineered for randomness by a man fascinated with randomness -- and consumerism. My friend Darius Kazemi, Boston-based developer extraordinaire, has a long-held interest in randomness. He's made the Twitter account @metaphorminute, designed to tweet a random metaphor every couple minutes, and OutSlide, which generates a random set of slides based on phrase-oriented Google image results.

With a background primarily in games, he's always been drawn to roguelikes and other games where random generation is a factor in the experience; he's attracted to the idea of "abdicating design decisions to a computer."

For example, he recently noticed an apparently-random area of Manhattan where real estate seems particularly expensive; for some reason, trading computers have superior latency there, leading financial firms to buy up real estate all to gain space for a couple of extra machines and the efficiency thereof. The whim of a machine caused an unpredictable spike in the value of a certain spot on the landscape.

"I like randomness because it's telling you straight up that there's a computer making this decision, and it's completely alien," Kazemi tells me over the phone. "It's based off no criteria that you'd ever use in your own life."

In the recent year he and his spouse have bought a house, and with it comes increased thought on the conscientious couple's part to ideas about consumerism, "things." Kazemi noticed how the occasional sudden arrival of back-ordered Amazon products he'd long since forgotten about ordering feels somehow more exciting, "like a gift you bought yourself," and wondered what it would feel like to design a program that buys you things seemingly at random?

The bot's purpose, in Kazemi's words, is largely to "fill [his] life with crap," to see if somehow those purchases feel more or less meaningful than something he would have conscientiously chosen himself; a way, if you will, of exploring his attachment to that "crap."

Thus Random Shopper was born, complete with controls that keep it from buying anything too expensive or too physically large (spouse Courtney was "supportive," Kazemi says, but "was also like, 'I don't want skis showing up at the house.'"). Random Shopper has its own Amazon account, and its budget is limited to a set amount on a gift card. For now, Kazemi's restricted its categories to CDs, DVDs and paperback books -- that keeps the size issue under control, and limits purchases to stuff that's easily digitized, consumable and can be given away or donated, "as opposed to, like, a plug for a device that I don't own," he explains.

The bot shops using a random word plucked from the Wordnik API. Since Kazemi is able to run simulations on the bot up to the point of actual purchase, he plans to experiment with other categories, like housewares, just to see what kinds of things the bot would send.

"It's like having a martian as a personal shopper," he reflects.

The first time he turned on the bot, Kazemi eagerly awaited his first shipment, which he knew would come the following week. "When I saw the Chomsky book, I laughed," he says. "My AI just sent me a Chomsky book; that's hilarious, because Chomsky did a lot of work that was instrumental in the early formulation of AI."

The second gift: A fingerprint-logo black CD case that simply read "Ákos Rózmann" on the front, a name Kazemi had never heard. "The first track is this really abrasive noise, and it sounds like there's something wrong with the CD, and I was going, 'well, either this is some very avant-garde music, or I got a defective CD...' by the second track, I actually really liked it, and I was smiling ear to ear," he enthuses. "It was like, 'my bot sent me an awesome present.'"

Personifying bots is easy and comes naturally, Kazemi reflects. When it comes to his @metaphorminute bot, "I certainly consider it to be like a child. Not a child I'm particularly attached to, and if it died, I wouldn't cry. But maybe to the extent your pet goldfish is like a child, and you are responsible for it," he says. Once, @metaphorminute accidentally used foul language, tasking the parent with teaching it how to talk politely. "I do sort of casually refer to them like you'd refer to a child -- 'one of my bots did the cutest thing today!'"

Since that initial purchase, Random Shopper has sent along The Oxford History of World Cinema, 1995 sci-fi film Screamers, and something called the Covenant Discipleship Parents' Handbook. And has drawn some criticism, too, of the developer's leisure to spend real money on a bot that always runs the very real risk of essentially wasting money.In a blog post Kazemi says he recognizes the validity of that criticism, but likens it to the cost artists invest in supplies or research.

And there is an element of very conscious subversion to Random Shopper: "I like the idea of jamming Amazon's recommendations slightly, by having a consumer that doesn't conform to any statistical models," he says. "It's a tiny subversion, but I like that idea. I have a friend who was obsessed with putting nonsensical information in his Facebook profile just to throw off their predictive algorithms a bit. It's kind of like that."

Theoretically, if a mass of people changed all their Facebook data to nonsense, or set random shopper armies loose on Amazon, it'd break these services' growing ability to know us through data, to target and market to people with increasingly-unnerving, ever more personalized aptitude.

"Something else that's interesting to me is that within randomness, there's the idea of apophenia -- the human tendency to find patterns where there are none," Kazemi notes, pointing to how people once saw gods in the patterns of stars, or see deities in stains and mottles. "It'll be interesting to see how my relationship to this stuff evolves."

"Mostly it comes down to my weird sense of humor," he adds. "It's not that technically challenging to do this stuff."

William Shatner talks slam poetry app

Leigh Alexander — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:20:52 +0000

Photo: Askew II Photography

It's almost 10 PM in London and William Shatner is on the phone, sing-speaking the word "algorithm" to me, trying out various cadences. It feels a bit surreal.

"I love to say the word, although I don't know what it means, aside from writing a numerical formula," he reflects. "I should."

A few hours earlier I'd been drinking at the flat of my old college roommate when I got an email asking if I'd like to talk to Mr. Shatner about his new iPhone app, Shatoetry, that just launched on Friday. Megan and I went to acting school together in New York City nearly a decade ago, and the storm back home is keeping me here, where she now lives, another week.

I tell her I have to interview Wiliam Shatner and we download the app, best described as a sort of magnetic poetry assembler where every word is read in the offbeat actor's distinctive tone. We pass the phone around and assemble phrases, and from within the glass rectangle of the iPhone Mr. Shatner reads them out loud. The app says we are making "Shatisms." Megan can't stop laughing.

"These are the first reactions, and everybody is so positive, I'm delighted," William Shatner tells me on the phone I'm borrowing from the person I'm staying with, after I race back so as not to miss the call. I hang on hold waiting for him to pick up, and in the silence I feel abstractly grateful for gin and jet lag. Thanks to those things, it is just another dreamlike and unbelievable thing when Captain Kirk joins the line and says hello to me, that it's "Bill Shatner" and it's a pleasure to talk to me.

Shatoetry's the debut release for Hollywood-based Blindlight Apps, and Shatner said he loved the concept at first sight. Over the years he's been offered various opportunities to enter the app space, he says, but he was attracted to the fact he hadn't heard of a concept like this one before.

William Shatner does not buy apps. "I don't play games -- I follow directions a lot on the iPhone, and I find the nearest coffee shop. I read the newspapers now from my iPad, and I've got a Nook from which I read books."

"It appealed to the poet in me," he says, "the one that likes to write poetry, and the one that likes to speak it. It's got all the elements of things I like to do. I thought, 'I would buy that app.'"

"So this is your App Store debut," I tell him. "Aside from app development, what's your background, exactly?"

There is a pause and he laughs and I laugh and I tell him I was kidding. He says I sound young and that it's hard to tell if someone is kidding when you cannot see their "bright and shining" eyes. Bill is a charmer.

His elocution, this gleefully-parodic Shatology -- everything about this conversation I'm having, really -- straddles some kind of line between irony and sinere enthusiasm. I ask him whether his interest in poetry and spoken-word falls into either of these camps.

"There's no steadfast belief in one or the other; it's all there," he says. "You can have blank verse, and rhyming poetry and iambic pentameter and there is all kinds of poetry... the rhythm is in the language, and it's all there for the speaking."

For some reason I tell him the friend I'd mentioned who enjoyed his app so much was my friend from acting school. We had speech classes. "So you understand," he says warmly.

For each word in the Shatoetry app, Shatner recorded three different performanes. "You can dramatize your message in any way you want... that's part of the fun of writing the message and communicating with others," he says. Multiple users (Shatner calls players "Shatoetists") can collaborate on and share poems amongst themselves

"I've been involved in all the modern means of communication, but this was totally new. To speak an idea and have it come out in, I guess, an algorithm..."

William Shatner demonstrates three ways he would like to say the word: Starkly, enthusiastically, and then with a pitchy quiver that sounds something like terror.

"There's gotta be other things out there that I have yet to imagine," he says of the future of the App Store. As for the future of Shatoetry, Shatner plans to continue recording spoken word performances to be released as purchasable content for the app.

"I'd like to tell people to get a hold of this thing," he says. "It's totally different than anything else you've seen before and we would love -- and that's Love and love and LOVE -- to have your reaction so that we can fashion the app to your liking."

Love and love and love, he performs.

Shatoetry is $2.99 on the App Store.

Why the fedora grosses out geekdom

Leigh Alexander — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 17:07:45 +0000

The fedora draws increasing controversy in internet circles. In just one hour I found no less than three Tumblrs related to shaming people who wear the creased, curve-brimmed hat—formal with a touch of classic dandy—and the censure is interestingly specific.

The targets are usually men. Nerdy men.

Although one of the sites, You Shouldn’t Wear That Fedora, chides the fashion-oops on men and women alike, the relatively-new Fedoras of OKC (where “OKC” means popular, endearingly-awkward dating site OK Cupid) focuses strictly on geeks who’ve made the choice to crown their search for love with the offending hat. Usually the humor derives from a presumptive consensus: that the fedora-wearers think they look much more suave than they do. Profile snippets, presented out of context, are often caption enough.

Fedoras of OKC doesn’t strictly limit its lambaste to the dapper caps. Once-weekly, it offers Top Hat Tuesday, when it’s time to pick on fans of the geeky “steampunk” trend, like this cog-topped gentleman who lists Japanese cartoons and comics alongside his predilection for dominance sex play. It’s such specific nerd-bullying that one starts to wonder: Is there some kind of correlation between earnest, romantic-if-awkward geeks and a blind faith in the appeal of classical hats?

A third Tumblr, Forever Alone Fedoras, correlates the hat fetish with the “Forever Alone” internet meme, born for high-volume forum users to tease one another about how their preference for online socialization and dorky interests will mean they might never find love.

This meme has an extra layer of mean. It's supposed to be "funny" that online geeks are even trying. In one incident, a flash mob was staged, using fake OKCupid profiles, to humiliate those who turned up. The explosive Cheezburger network is on top of the trend: its Meme Dates site relies on the pairing of sincere romantic hopefuls—fedora optional—with internet idiosyncrasies to humorous effect.

The concept of awkward men seeking online love appears to create a resentment issue for the women who end up fielding that search. Like Fedoras of OKC, Forever Alone Fedoras is apparently run by a woman fed up with the relative frequency of messages on dating sites from men wearing “these horrible hats that are an instant deal-breaker.”

Says Forever Alone Fedoras: “a fedora speaks volumes about one’s character. It implies that he is a basement dwelling, live action role playing, no social skills having, complete and utter geek in the worst sense of the word.”

Harsh.

So, some of these guys are a little awkward. But what's with the virulent derision? Especially since these Tumblrs and Fedora-memes tend to take a knowing tone, curated by people who come from the same world as the people they're mocking.

Just a glance at Forever Alone Fedoras, for example, generally requires you know what a Brony is, or at least net-literate enough to know what “duckface” means, to get the jokes. Why hate on your own kind? Hasn’t everyone been picked on enough? Shouldn’t geeks unite?

Well, yes, but that was before a great war in geek culture began. The internet has long been famously hostile to women: well past the turn of the millennium, an entire genre of online humor relied on the idea that there were no females on the internet.

Type “there are no women” into Google and see the results. Many of Google’s suggestions relate to baseline geek culture stuff, presumed to be closely associated with the average geek’s online experience. Like the internet, comic books, video games and lore-packed science fiction/fantasy also have a spotty record when it comes to being safe, or welcoming, for female participants.

Now, though, with the rise of social media, women are losing their fear of being shamed or shouted out of participating in arenas once seen as boys’ clubs. The rise of women on the internet coincides with the rise of women in just about everything, as an election year that has politicized birth control and motherhood (and made headlines out of gross misconceptions about rape) encourages more women to speak up about their experiences and claim their right to social equality.

Geeky girls need to fight. When, in the year 2012, even the New York Times publishes an article about harassment in gaming culture, you know you’ve got a problem – just as fans of other nerdy things often experience similar social dynamics to gamers.

One part of this battle, however, is not about facing down direct aggression or exclusion. It's a quieter fight against “nice guys”—gentlemen who are trying really hard, but who feel entitled to appreciation and attention because they've met a basic standard of human decency.

From them, one finds no overt verbal abuse or leering hostility. Instead, interests are found such as pickup-artist forums and other venues offering advice on talking to girls or support for dealing with unrequited crushes—the raw material for all those Forever Alone jokes.

Being nice is a desirable trait. However, thoughts that begin with “I’m nice, therefore you should...” are creepy for reasons that should be obvious. Just look at this XKCD comic, or this advice column, or this.

Inside the “nice guy” complex seethes a passive-aggressive fear of the so-called “friend zone.” It’s such a prevalent concept in internet culture that yes, there’s a (mean) meme for that. There’s even a bizarre Kickstarter up right now for “friend zone t-shirts,” and it’s hard to tell who exactly should wear them. Feel unlucky in love? Why not let everyone know! The creator says the shirts will take a “stand” against the issue, but a logical throughline for that thought remains evasive. Take a stand against who?

The undertone of entitlement inherent in the “nice guy” concept scares women who want to go online or attend conventions without all the uncomfortable pickup lines. Women hope to make geeky friends without fearing to hear, one day, the phrase “remember how you said I was such a great friend?”

Friend zone. Forever alone. And here we return to the fedora.

The problem is that the fedora has become a go-to accessory for a peculiar subculture of love-entitled male nerds whose social inexperience and awkwardness manifests in a world rocked by a gender revolution—a tectonic shift in the makeup of formerly cloistered, rule-bound clubs. They aren't bad people – they simply need a place from which to draw a sense of manhood, if not from women. When deciding how to represent themselves in a dating profile, why wouldn’t they cling to a fashion emblem from a bygone age, a time when guy was just a guy and a doll was just a doll? A fashion which recalls Frank Sinatra and Al Capone, a conventional masculinity marked by elegant detachment and an appeal to women that remains decidedly independent of their approval?

The fact that so many consider the fedora a personal “signature” item, added to Twitter avatars and self-portraits on DeviantArt alike, lend credence to this idea. Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, a game reviewer at The Escapist popular for his snarky humor and penchant for going against the grain used the trilby as something of a logo: a sharp-brimmed hat suggests a sharp wit, a certain whimsy and mystery.

But we geeks are late to the fedora party. The hat, often in plaid, made the same rounds through “bro” culture already, popping up on viewers of Jersey Shore and Entourage. Also, Jason Mraz wears one.

Conscious of culture and history as we are, we yearn for a touch of class. But when women online who’re fed up with online harassment and nice guy entitlement see an eager young man trying his best to strike a smooth pose under that infernal hat—pinching the brim, faux-brooding finger to chin and crooked smirk—we just see chasing ass. It’s become too intentional, too choreographed, too staged. It seems to hide something. It suggests inner conflict.

The person who started Fedoras of OKC goes by “misandristcutie” on Twitter, a good-humored dig at men who cry "misandry" in any gender conflict, pointing to some imaginary universe of female privilege so feared as to justify their sexist behavior.

Even if you disagree with the hypothesis linking the forever-alone fedora and the friend-zoned nice guy, you can at least see why it explains the high volume of mockery aimed at the hat—and why some defend it in militant tones usually reserved for explaining the right to make rape jokes.

There’s one more interesting tidbit. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, “fedora” came into parlance when Sarah Bernhardt played the title character in Fédora, an 1882 play by Victorien Sardou. That sort of felt hat was a women’s fashion item, and did not become popular among men until the late 19^th century.

Funny—a hat emblematic of privilege-denial in geekdom wasn't even cut for dudes.

The 1 Purr-cent: Internet fat cats

Leigh Alexander — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:13:29 +0000

Some months ago, I put a dollar bill on my cat Zelda’s head, took a picture and submitted it to cashcats.biz, then a fledgling Tumblr apparently devoted solely to images of cats with money. At the time, I didn’t think much about why I thought it was funny. I’m just one of those internet cat people.

I can’t even help it. When Facebook announced last month that it’d crack down on fake user accounts including cat profiles, I cringed guiltily. Not only does Zelda have a Facebook page, but she updates it regularly with her own frequently all-caps brand of communication, alternately surly and oblivious. Like a serial killer that secretly wants help, I keep pressing my cat’s internet presence, hoping my friends will tell me I’m mental. Instead they keep friending her, texting me pictures of their own cats, posting videos on her wall. Online cat culture is serious business.

I actually have two cats, and the other one is frankly much more charming than Zelda (sorry, Zeldy). Yorda is just about two years old but has remained small. When I first adopted her, a rain-soaked runt my friends found in their cheese shop, she used a brownie pan for a litter box and virtually grew up in my lap, snoozing and cuddling while I wrote on my laptop. She likes to grab people’s hands, can fetch a mouse toy, and often begs for attention by simply sitting as near to someone as possible, angling her head in a charming pose while gazing patiently with moist, sincere eyes.

I’ve been asked why Zelda is the one that gets the Facebook page, the trendy Tumblr photos, the defined online “personality”. At the risk of being excessively sentimental, I’ve always thought it’s a way to feel close to my aging, indifferent ol’ gal despite my more immediate (and reciprocal) relationship with the gregarious new baby.

And then I attended last night’s Ca$h Cats-inspired art exhibit, a gallery show sprung from the now-flourishing Tumblr that had given my dollar-decorated Zelda a few seconds of internet fame. Held at the Dumbo Loft gallery space in Brooklyn, Time Magazine declared (warned?) that it would be “the hipster cat event of 2012.” Awesome, now I’m not just a crazy cat lady, but I’m also a hipster. I write articles about how I hate calling creative people hipsters. This probably isn’t helping. Oh, god.

The brains behind Ca$h Cats and the exhibit itself is Will Zweigart, who tells me the original seed sprung from the concept of a “VIP room for cats.” We talk in the gallery space, hung with curated portraits from the cashcats.biz site portraying sloe-eyed felines indifferently sprawling alongside all manner of currency. Zweigart says at first it was just money, but then he began to receive submissions involving other status items. In one photo, a cat blankly lies alongside a rifle and a fan of big bills. Submissions involving piles of cocaine were left off the site. Seriously.

The cashcats.biz Tumblr has been alive for about 20 months, and has seen about 1000 submissions, 200 of which were actually selected for publication. I suddenly feel a little bit special about smug Zelda and her crumpled buck. The tagline for last night’s gallery show is “How the 1 purrcent really lives,” and it also features art inspired by the Tumblr: paintings, a taxidermy of a kitten batting at a wire-hung rain of dollars, and an illuminated, church window-style glasswork of a cash-wielding calico. Particularly popular was the big monocle-cat Pusheen canvas – those animated GIFs are just everywhere these days.

Somewhat disappointingly perhaps, Zweigart himself does not seem to be a crazy cat guy. His girlfriend has a cat and his parents have a couple, but he does not effuse about them. He’s no hipster, either, but a clean-cut social media marketing guy; after his “sketchy Santas” collection resulted in a Simon & Schuster book deal and a sale to the Cheezburger network, he wanted to do a non-commercial venture just for fun.

“[Cats are] already acting like the ruling class,” he tells me. “They look and act like they own the place, and I wanted to recontextualize some of their facial expressions. If you just take a normal cat’s facial expression and add money and status signifiers, you can really start to pull out the meme, this relationship between the cat and the money.”

“We know the cat places no value in that money,” Zweigart explains, as a plate of fig and goat-cheese crostini goes by. “But if you look at the photos, there’s this sense of ownership and attitude.”

In order for a photo to be actually published on cashcats.biz, “there has to be some relationship between the cat and the environment,” Zweigart explains. “We’re looking for that sense of awareness in relation to the money… a lot of these photos really create a situation, just by changing the environment with those additional things.”

“It’s that 1 percent, for cats,” he says. “You know when you’ve made it.”

Just recently, Gideon Lewis-Kraus penned a fascinating Wired story charting his journey to the heart of internet cat culture in Japan. He wanted to meet Maru -- with some 158 million YouTube views, among the most popular internet cats of all time - but was spurned, in part due to the highly private nature of fanaticism in Japan.

But visiting cat cafes, where customers pay to spend time socializing with cats, he mused on the “infuriating” reticence of felines and concluded that it’s precisely the animals’ total lack of interest in reciprocating affection that makes cats so compelling in this particular time. While everyone seems to be chasing attention and the promised riches of the social media age, the cat will only offer acknowledgment on its own terms, and mainly when you don’t ask.

As something of an amateur internet cat culturist myself, I recently hypothesized that cats in particular received preferential treatment online – despite the fact a greater share of Americans, at least, claim to prefer dogs when asked to choose – because they more closely align with the internet user’s sense of self. Dovetailing with Lewis-Kraus’ findings, a study I cited specifically said people who identify as “cat people” are “more neurotic” than self-styled “dog people.

Cats were crowned as a mascot early on, when the internet was first colonized by users quickly desensitized to the extreme shock imagery that became widely accessible for the first time. Attaching to something fluffy was both an act of subversion and an essential psychological buffer, and the cat was the perfect choice. Maybe it's an evergreen icon for the alienated and overwhelmed.

On the eve of Obama’s nomination speech at the DNC, where the president passionately criticized policies that favor the dispassionate rich at the expense of the working class, the Ca$h Cats’ exhibit’s indifferent cats snobbishly squatting on piles of money does take on an implicit subversive quality. It’s especially thought-provoking at this show where Brooklyn’s young nod along to M.I.A. and gratefully clutch drink tickets in the line for beer. I run into friends who talk grimly about the mad scrabble for employment in New York City.

Writes Lewis-Kraus: “The more neurotic the cat owner—the more desperate for fuzzy comfort and nuzzly security and unconditional affection—the briefer the interactions that damn cat would allow.”

Zweigart tells me his event received some 900 RSVPs. Proceeds from art and merchandise sales benefit the Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition, a long-standing local rescue org particularly beloved for its “cat loft,” a popular orphanage for would-be kitty adoptees. As enthusiasm around the Ca$h Cats’ cute provocation of classism ramped up, “we decided the cats should give back,” Zweigart explains.He still has no plans to commercialize the concept through books, advertising or any other outlet, and has been delighted by the groundswell of crowdsourcing that helped add so much original art to the show.

I’ve realized my dull, disaffected, chubby Zelda makes a better internet subject than cheerful Yorda because she suits the paradigm more. When I put that money on her head, she just kind of lifted her chin, as if to say, so? What a privileged fat cat. Let’s see if she still says nothing when they come for her Facebook page.

Game of Thrones: Valar Morghulis

Leigh Alexander — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 17:22:55 +0000

We’ve had a couple weeks to let the Game of Thrones finale breathe, so now we can talk about it, and we can reflect on season 2 as a whole. If you don’t like spoilers, you may not want to read an article about an episode you haven’t seen that concerns a point in the story you haven’t reached.

Have you heard the joke about how Game of Thrones is like Twitter? There are 140 characters, and terrible things are always happening. I didn’t make that up; I wish I knew who did. From reading Twitter (and Facebook, and occasionally actually talking to people), I gather a lot of people found the season 2 finale to be a little disappointing.

The preceding episode, about the Blackwater Battle, was a tough act to follow, centered on an epic confrontation for King’s Landing and the throne. The mostly-loathed Lannisters seemed poised to lose everything, and somehow or another they’d never been so empathetic doing it. But in order to portray all that dramatic tension, the show had to back-burner nearly everyone else’s story arc for an episode, leaving Jon Snow, Robb Stark, Bran and Rickon and friends, Arya, Daenerys, and Theon to be wrapped up in the finale.

Visually, the finale featured nice contrasts between ice and fire, in a nod to the books’ unifying language. I continue to be impressed the show’s creators are managing such sprawling and – let’s be real – often boring material as richly as they are. Still, the idea of a finale episode that ostensibly spends time catching up on the character stories that weren’t part of the real narrative climax isn’t exciting in concept.

Nonetheless, the finale actually did quite a good job of bringing everyone tidily to their next major precipice, while managing to unite them under the series’ thematic umbrellas: First, all of this throne-squabbling ignores the actual threat of unnatural evil in a slow but inevitable descent from the forbidding north. Second, all these people who scheme for power really want loving families even more, and they’ll actually make strategically-unsound decisions because of a desire to be closer to a parent or child (even if one’s children are dragons).

Serious Game of Thrones fans have been telling me they fear this is the point that the show might lose viewers who aren’t fans of the books, by virtue of the plentitude of characters and the odd, if faithful pacing. And it’ll get ever more challenging to wrangle this long, populous tale into something that makes sense on television: There will probably be edits and embellishments, and purists will complain.

But now that the season’s done and we have until 2013 to wait for season 3, it might be a good time to look at what the show’s doing right – and where we think it might run into some trouble.

The biggest complaint I hear from book fans is some of the liberties the show takes, occasionally sacrificing perfect fealty to the novel in favor of creating better dramatic structure. For example, in the novel it’s tough to tell much about Margaery Tyrell; the show created a more complex identity for her and crystallized her stated goal (to be queen at any cost) based on the most logical inference.

The show also brought to the forefront the clandestine love between Margaery’s handsome brother Loras and the now-late Renly Baratheon. The books only alluded to this affair on occasion, never making it explicit. This means more drama at the expense of ambiguity, true – but that’s the breed of ambiguity that works best in books.

The result of the trade-off for the viewers is more relatable characters, and that’s absolutely essential in a story that has so damn many people in it. In fact, most of the time the show trades restraint for big tells it’s to the benefit of the characters. Here’s another example: In the finale we see Robb wed his true love, flagrantly risking his family’s entire alliance with the cantankerous Frey family. Robb is clearly the kind of character who’s passionate and sincere to his own peril, so when the books let us know as almost an afterthought that oops, Robb’s just married someone, it’s not implausible.

It just makes the Stark son more vibrant, more of a pleasure to invest in, when the show lets us see it happen, lets us meet the woman worth risking a kingdom for. Small quibble: Lady Talisa is a Volantene, which means she’s from outside the Seven Kingdoms Robb wants to win. This would probably have implications on any son she’d bear, in that she brings no political advantage to the bloodline. The family of the books’ Jeyne Westerling is not particularly highly-placed, but they do have the Lannisters for allies, a fact that comes into play later on in the novels. Precise bloodline calculations often seem to bear on one's claim to the throne.

But yes – most plot adjustments pay off in that we see these characters in spectacular, plausible detail thanks in no small part to the impeccable casting and strong acting. Theon in particular has been an incredible addition to the forefront; the book’s mostly-repellent troublemaker has become a desperate “lost boy” whose vile behavior makes sense. In the books we just wanted him to die or something already; we want the show’s Theon to see the light, to have a chance to learn and be saved.

And therein lies what’s probably the biggest danger for the Game of Thrones show: They’ve taken intellectually-compelling characters and have made them present, dimensional and empathetic (for the most part -- I hate how Peytr "Littlefinger" Baelish's ambiguous but omnipresent role has just ended him up an annoying brothel-creeper in the show).

Where will the Stark children go now that all five of them have been relieved from some present tension and cast into new and dangerous territory? Will the kids find their mother? When is Joffrey going to get what he deserves? What about that slow-encroaching undead threat from beyond the Wall, and when is Jon Snow going to get with Ygritte already? These are things we’ve come to care about.

But the series relies on its bleakness. I’ve heard many people wonder why cast Sean Bean as Ned Stark, why make him essentially the first season’s anchor, and then kill him off? Because that’s just how the story is. It makes you care about people, and then it takes them away. It makes you want the emotional salve of seeing them succeed, and then it withholds it. If Game of Thrones is “fun” at all, it’s because just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do.

How long will the show’s complicated universe and all its citizens keep the average viewer’s attention without the gratification people come to crave at the end of that hour they’ve waited a week for? We keep hearing about how the show's success is evidence of how the appetite for high fantasy stories has become mainstream, but this tale, with its non-traditional pacing, will test how much this is true. We want to root for those we love; we want to see who wins. But Game of Thrones is vast, a marathon. We will wait a long, long time before it reveals those victories to us. We’ll lose people along the way. Oh yeah, and some characters , too.

The phrase that Jaqen H'ghar teaches to Arya Stark before he says farewell -- Valar Morghulis -- is High Valyrian for "all men must die."

Game of Thrones recap: The Rains of Castamere

Leigh Alexander — Mon, 28 May 2012 07:30:49 +0000

It’s a funny thing, those who begrudge others the modern privilege of simultaneous participation. Fans of Game of Thrones waited for the epic Battle of the Blackwater for weeks – it’s one of the few occasions in the books when a decisive battle involving major characters is shown directly in realtime, instead of as historical hearsay. Yet there are still show-watchers who complain about "spoilers!" when fellow followers discuss the much-anticipated proceedings.

Ladies and gentlemen, here’s your recap of the incredible Game of Thrones Season 2, Episode 9 – if you haven’t seen it yet and you want a pure experience, don’t read this. And, probably, edit your Twitter attention accordingly, because this is seriously fun to talk about.

The Game of Thrones series is, on the macro level, about a multi-theater war for the Iron Throne at King’s Landing. As you’ve surely gathered, though, it derives the drama in its storytelling through its portrayal of the side effects of war: Families in crisis, individuals crashing hard into the constraints of gender and class politics, the threat of the destabilizing forces of starvation and the other ways populations go neglected when their leadership turns all its resources to the struggle for power.

This episode’s military confrontation has been long in coming: To protect their family unit – spiritually fraught, but beyond wealthy in gold and pride – the Lannisters have bungled their governance spectacularly. They’ve put a dangerously cruel and impulsive child of incest on the throne after murdering and beheading almost all their potential allies, and have frittered away literal and political capital until they can barely defend their city against the advances of Stannis Baratheon, an uptight stick-in-the-mud with a creepy religion whose own brother (before Stannis’ sorceress murdered him) pointedly let him know that no one wants him for their king.

But this show is all about mysterious advantages. While the Lannisters are the ones to root against – the New York Yankees of Westeros, if you will – everyone’s favorite character is the “half-man” Tyrion, who seems to want nothing more than to mitigate his sister Cersei’s short-sighted, vicious ruling tactics and to please his dad, who crushed all three kids with a moral table that prized fear above all other emotions.

If not for Tyrion, who bravely stands at the vanguard of the Blackwater siege even as young King Joffrey flees for safer ground at his mother’s call, we might sorely be hoping for the Lannisters to lose the city: Poor Sansa could go free, then, and the stink of injustice, of rich and childish jerks cheating their way into leadership, might leave the city.

The Rains of Castamere is a song-story about Lannister pride that gets frequent reference in the books: When in fictional history a lesser lord defied the house, claiming not even a lion had the right to make other creatures bow low, the Lannisters crushed him. The lyrics serve as a reminder that standing up to these nobles generally means becoming naught but a footnote – the first time we hear it here, though, it’s being sung by Bronn, the lowborn sellsword who’s become Tyrion’s unlikely right-hand man.

As the city prepares for war, we get a clear illustration about this world’s stark (no pun intended) gender binaries: the men drink, mope and whore, while Cersei shuttles the women into a private bunker to await the outcome. She then proceeds to get absolutely smashed, lecturing Sansa on the likelihood that the city will fall – and the equal likelihood that all the women will be victims of rape at the hands of lusty soldiers. As a failsafe, she’s brought the royal headsman, Sir Ilyn Payne, to stand by. Cersei needs to play the role of sympathetic mother hen here to keep the women calm, but all the while she plans to have all of them killed should the Lannisters lose the war. Some mercy.

Although this episode is mainly about how brave Tyrion is, it’s Cersei who’s the immutable star here. You can’t tell what she feels most strongly: Resentment for the glass ceiling, worry about her sons, hatred of those who are younger and prettier than her, or her fierce wish for control. The beginning of the episode sees her procuring some deadly poison from the obsequious Maester Pycelle, and not until the end do you know for whom she intended it.

All you know is that even if all of her power is taken away, she is desperate to have even the end happen on her terms. Peter Dinklage gets much-deserved praise for his incredible, organic and nuanced portrayal of Tyrion, but Lena Heady’s Cersei is absolutely perfect, having mastered that bitter, silken grin, that chilling, self-aware and shameless fakery.

It’s the city’s store of wildfire, an infernal alchemical concoction made by magical pyromancers, that sets the stage for the battle itself – a blazing bomb of sorts ferried in on a deserted ship and lit by flaming arrows to catch Stannis’ fleet off guard. Quite well done on the staging front for the show to slowly build tension ahead of the epic magical blaze by a strategic palette of background candleflames. Seriously, watch this episode twice. Of particular note, early on when Sandor “The Hound” Clegane shows up to crash Bronn’s party, the side of his face that was burnt by his brutal brother Gregor when they were kids is framed by two little candle lights.

This is foreshadowing, of course, as fire-phobic Clegane will get spooked during the battle, get drunk and ditch out. We have spent almost two seasons hating smug, evil inbred brat Joffrey (and watching this on repeat for catharsis!). But when his face genuinely falls at the prospect of his Dog abandoning him, you realize he’s just Mama’s scared kid, automatic inheritor of Grampa Tywin’s ruthless morals. Even Joff seems helpless and a little sympathetic in the face of this truly scary battle on the home front, and we are denied the satisfaction of seeing him put at meaningful risk.

It’s this ambiguity that makes this show an edge-of-your-seat experience. In theory we want the Lannisters to lose, but not so much when we see Tyrion’s ballsy stand end in an axe to the face. We don’t want them to lose if it means he dies.

When all seems lost, we find Cersei sitting on the Iron Throne itself – this war’s ultimate prize, a seat she as a woman could never occupy in earnest – with her littlest boy, Tommen, on her lap. The soft-voiced fairy tale she tells him about the Lion’s right to rule seems sad, hollow. No matter what the outcome of this complex siege, people will die. It will be miserable.

In a dreamy montage, a stag-helmed specter suddenly enters the field. Probably only those who have read the books would grok that it’s the recently-dead Renly Baratheon’s set of armor, worn by his lover Loras’ brother Garlan Tyrell, to put a superstitious scare into Stannis’ army. In a last-minute deus ex machina, it seems Renly’s forces have joined forces with Tywin Lannister’s to defeat the invaders and save King’s Landing.

Tywin Lannister has cursed his poor, emotionally-arrested offspring with delusions about love, power and proving themselves. All three of his kids have complicated, painful relationships with their heritage. But just as Cersei is about to poison innocent little Tommen to spare him from the certain sack of King’s Landing, it’s Loras, not Stannis, that bursts into the throne room – with Tywin right behind.

“Father,” chokes Cersei poignantly, immediately spilling out the last-ditch poison onto the floor of the throne room. For a minute, she’s just a little girl whose Daddy has come to save her. The bad guys kept their throne, and yet somehow we’re glad.

Especially when the end credits are a cover of The Rains of Castamere by the National. The Pitchfork-favorite, just a little to the mass market side of indie, released its version just a little earlier this week, and singer Matt Berninger’s solemn baritone lends the tune the precise touch of sinister-but-inevitable a Lannister victory needs. Sidenote: the band also contributed Exile, Vilify to the Portal 2 game soundtrack, so it’s probably safe to say they’re making a savvy pitch for nerd cred.

Fascinating how a show about marginalized people makes it genuinely hard to peg anyone as hero or villain. It’s entirely new levels of ambiguity for the fantasy genre in mainstream television, thanks to brilliant actor portrayals. And while the show continues to diverge from the books just a little bit when it comes to visible detail (in the show Clegane did not drunkenly kiss Sansa, shippers beware; Tyrion, though grievously wounded, still appears to have a whole nose), fans should be quite grateful for the loving details applied to the book’s crucial subtext.

Pop and politics collide at Europe's awesomely trashy song contest

Leigh Alexander — Sun, 27 May 2012 07:34:53 +0000

You know the Ameri-centricism Europeans make fun of? I might have been an example of that, having not really heard of the Eurovision Song Contest until 2010 – and even then, the only reason I’d heard a thing about it was because of the Epic Sax Guy meme, spawned by Moldova’s hilariously neon-infused, incredibly euro-centric performance that year.

This year, a bottle of cranberry Finlandia and nearly four hours of completely un-ironic enthusiasm opened my eyes.

Luckily, I have a lot of British friends. One of them, game developer and unapologetic pop music aficionado Ste Curran, is spending the weekend with me here in Brooklyn, and although he’s quite a flexible houseguest, one of his immutable demands was that we get a group together and tune into the Eurovision Song Contest, which was streaming so that we could get it here in the U.S. this year.

Ste’s one of those people who’s absolutely immune to irony, and occupies every one of his interests with absolute sincerity. That means to join Ste in anything – even in what you’d assume is absurd, trashy Europop – means it crosses from ironic game into eager analysis.

The Brits generally wrap Eurovision in a veil of cynical commentary, but it was fun to gather a group of friends and dive into this weird, complicated political competition in a state of total innocence.

First up, a prebriefing on some of the most exciting contestants: Ste’s favorite was Loreen from Sweden, an exotic-looking soloist of Moroccan heritage. Her ingenue’s concentration and endless dark hair put me in mind of Molly from Widowspeak, a band presently popular here in Brooklyn.

Then there's Lithuania’s entry, a sincere young man whose song starts out a bit Clay Aiken before busting straight up into Jamiroquai territory. My favorite, though, was Norway’s entry Tooji, whose hoodie-clad frontman (of Iranian origin) is jaw-achingly handsome, despite the fact you get the idea nobody with lady-parts would have a shot at him. Look and swoon!)

Let’s back up: in the Eurovision competition, each nation elects an act to represent it in a pan-European competition – a sort of musical Olympics. The prize isn’t just national honor, but the opportunity to host the competition the following year. Yes, hosting nations earn essentially a four-hour advertisement for the glories and victories of their turf, as Azerbaijan showcased this year (“Land of Tea!” it promised in an interstitial, much to the consternation of my British guests) – but it’s also quite expensive. Azerbaijan built an entire new stadium, complete with all the special effects and fireworks of the post-Idol era.

Also, I know little about Azerbaijan beyond civil rights abuses my Euro friends tell me of; it's fascinating they’ve gone to such expense to stage this show, with all its swivel-hipped males and bondage-danger body displays.

The same friends have also explained to me nobody really wants to win Eurovision and end up bearing that hosting cost--just to make a proud showing. Each participating nation can allocate points toward their favorites, the exception naturally being that no nation can vote for its own entry.

Naturally, this means politics and national allegiances bear heavily on the outcome--Greece and Cyprus, as usual, each allocated their largest share of points of one another, to zero applause.

Lordi, Finland’s ambassador to the contest results, came onscreen wearing his heavy-metal monster costume, promising to award its share of points to the “hottest, cutest” contestants.

It is, in fact, the greatest collision of Europop aesthetics with bloc politics of which any naïve American could conceive. Even if you have more arch appetites than mainstream pop songs, you can be persuaded to appreciate the particular recipe of factors that reliably cause everyone to jump up and down in a club, potentially with shrieking. And when it comes to Eurovision, it seems pop acts can nail that recipe – and still lose, because the Eastern European nations all want to give their points to one another, same for the Scandinavian nations, and the songs with the greatest international top 40 potential can go completely overlooked. Seriously, it is so weird.

A total of 26 nations entered the Eurovision Song Contest. I was passionately interested in Norway’s entry, with its guaranteed song structure – thrumming beat, implacable middle-eastern choral flavor, iconic dancing, babe frontman – but also an advocate of Sweden’s wonderfully weird Loreen and her logic-defying body movements.

I’d love to be enlightened on what factors determine the contest performance order, but the UK was first, and their entrant was someone I’ve actually heard of: balladeer Englebert Humperdinck. I ultimately adored his song, a painfully sincere British Johnny-Cash-meets-Barry-Manilow universal love tune ("It’s like we’re actually trying this year,” reflected one of my UK companions). I could honestly picture myself having a little cry to this after a late night in the bar. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if an old-world tune, sung by the plastic-surgeried lips of a past-era chanteur, ended up sweeping this entire bass-pumping lightshow?

It finished second from last.

“We are to Europe what Japan is to the rest of Southeast Asia,” laments my UK pal. “Because we’re on an island, and because of our accomplishments, we’re seen as a bit smug. Of everyone in Europe, we were the last ones to have a great empire.”

If there were an international song contest, which suddenly seems to me a way more spiritually-sound way to promote national pride and global unity than the hyper-expensive Olympics, America would not often prevail.

I recommend that everyone watch all of Eurovision’s contestants for themselves, even thought there are panflutes and rock violins.

Much of the music would be embraced at a renaissance fair. Russia’s entry stages a handful of elderly grandmothers performing traditional song and dance to a club beat – it’s either the sweetest act of subversion you’ve ever seen or a total cop-out, an ironic pitch to the late ‘90s cynics who thought Hampsterdance was rad. It’s the most obvious avatar of the weird line these contestants straddle between ironic awareness and wide-eyed obliviousness.

As each contestant unveiled its three-minute act (all are time-constrained), part of the fun is compulsive hashtagging. I’m a video game journalist; my readership is mostly into interactive entertainment and social media and has little tolerance for my regular stints spamming my feed about party behavior. I expected to lose hundreds of followers as I virtually livetweeted Eurovision – but instead I gained hundreds, had dialogues with people in countries I barely knew existed. I’m embarrassed that I underestimated the size of the #Eurovision juggernaut.

When one of my friends thought it funny to tweet a quip I made about Malta (“isn’t it just a place made up for James Bond to go to?”), I heard from incensed Maltese. When I tweeted my staunch desire for Norway to win with its epic Timberlake-esque dance jam, I got thanks and debate and virtual beer toasts.

I thought the Ukranian entry was brilliant: A parallel universe Cher with incredible pipes, a set of hologram-neon backing dancers and a sprinkling of dubstep backbeat, she has the potential to be an international direct-to-gay-club superstar. Turkey’s group was memorable and bizarre – ripped from an imaginary Broadway pirate musical, the dancers even formed a boat with their capes by the end. And Macedonia’s black-haired metal queen rocked it, evoking a kind of late 1980’s metal drama that probably makes that woman from Evanescence wish she had been born a decade earlier.

When the voting phase commenced, though, I saw what I’d been warned about in terms of Eurovision's politics. My beloved Norway – they brought the best pop song, and it is a song contest – was shafted constantly. Meanwhile, Serbia, whose entry was not memorable enough to register at all, received support from almost every country for obscure reasons: my friends think they had a lucky place in the song order.

That said, I’m not at all displeased that Sweden’s Loreen won. Her impassioned, snowflecked solo was just the creative side of commercial, the kind of song that broadens horizons. She's adorable. I don’t have any data about the degree to which Eurovision leadership translates to universal success (Once in a while — Ed.), but I’d totally be first in line to buy tickets to a Loreen show around here in Brooklyn.

After it ended, though, we totally played that Norway song again. I wish we could go out tonight and just ask for it from the DJ. What a fun time; what a weird time.

Photo: Loreen of Sweden performs her song, "Euphoria", after winning the Eurovision song contest in Baku. Photo: David Mdzinarishvili / Reuters

Game of Thrones S2E8: It's family stuff

Leigh Alexander — Mon, 21 May 2012 11:00:31 +0000

Ravens are a big deal in the Game of Thrones universe. They’re used to transmit information from one place to another, and often seem to be portents of death. This week’s episode begins with a whole dead basket of ‘em, as Prince Theon, in his latest act of swaggering idiocy, has killed all of Winterfell’s birds so that no one can send word to Robb Stark.

Of course, sending notes tied to birds is generally a slow and imperfect form of info transit, especially in the world of this story, which is well-established as massive and hostile to easy passage. I’ve previously written that one of the reasons the series appeals in our current clime is its bold, dialog-provoking approach to patriarchy and sexuality – I wonder if its lavishing upon the preciousness of information and the incredible conveniences we now enjoy in the internet age is another?

This episode in particular illuminates the disadvantages of being unable to communicate well in wartime. Catelyn releases Jaime Lannister in the hopes of getting her daughters back fom King’s Landing – would she have done that if she’d been able to know that King’s Landing only has one of her daughters? People in Westeros are just now finding out that Daenerys is fast becoming a desert queen wreathed in dragons – no one knows, of course, that the Qartheen have stolen them from her. Arya's current ability to kill quickly with just a word, via her odd ally Jaqen H'ghar, is her biggest salvation right now.

We also see the extent to which the TV series is devoted to fleshing out relationships in ways the books don’t -- the books are written in a way that lets you infer sentiment from actions, but that doesn’t necessarily work on TV, where we’re analyzing the subtleties of behavior (and falling into Robb Stark’s eyes, like I was this episode).

So we’ve been getting this extensive development of the probably-not-a-good-idea relationship between politically-betrothed Robb and Talisa. She’s a character that could turn out to be entirely an invention separate from the books, which see Robb’s duty in conflict with his feelings over Jeyne Westerling of The Crag, not a runaway lady incognito as a battlefield medic.

It’d take a bit of creative writing at this point to make Talisa turn out to be the same woman, but it doesn’t really matter – sorry, purists, but at least when it comes to TV, this is a much more dynamic and more interesting arc; the books see Jeyne as herself barely a footnote, the kind of girl you can’t really imagine anyone thinking of risking an army, a war and a kingdom to marry.

Of course, the idea that the woman actually wasn’t especially worth it would enforce Robb’s major weakness – that he’s not disciplined or experienced enough to manage this highly complicated martial situation on his own, might bungle into such an impulse conflict. But this Robb is too likeable to be quite that dumb, so he gets the kind of woman a guy with good values would admire.

I'm okay with it, especially as that love scene between Talisa and Robb was so incredibly naturalistic, simple and clumsy, relieved of the touch-of-porn grotesquerie that sex in this show usually gets. I always suspected it’d be kind of awkward having to deal with so many leather laces in one’s leather jerkin or doublet or whatever, and look! She laughed, and it felt so genuine.

Tyrion is also someone for whom romantic love can be a weakness, which is why the only thing that’s struck an odd note to me about the show so far is that Cersei seems to have figured out her brother may be falling in love with “his whore” (even though she identified the wrong woman to keep as a hostage) before that’s even been clear to we the audience.

We know he confided in her and Bronn about his only traumatic experience with love as a young man under his dad’s thumb; we’ve seen him take pains to hide her in the castle – but also her stark refusal to surrender much of the material comfort she expects as the consort of a Lannister son. I guess we see it once Tyrion is out of Cersei’s sight, his panic when he runs to Shae, who is nonplussed, as dutiful about holding and kissing him as she is about brushing Sansa’s hair.

I suppose Tyrion is a person who’s learned well to veil his most vulnerable emotions -- which is why the scene of his pledge to protect her felt so vibrant, felt like it came from such a private, fragile place in him, even as the pair are positioned such that his physical smallness, face upturned, is emphasized relative to her.

We very much want, for his sake, to believe that she loves him, and not just the Lannister gold, but can you really tell?

The other whore, though, the one Cersei has kidnapped thinking it’ll force Tyrion to let her son Joff sit out the upcoming battle with Stannis – this one has seen some things. Remember her flashing her naughty bits farewell to Theon from the back of a horse-drawn cart, heading to the big city hoping to find better fortune?

She seems to have found her way into a leadership role at King’s Landing’s fanciest brothel, and now she’s in favor at the palace itself. Since then she’s been forced at crossbow-point to sexually abuse another girl in front of the young king and now she’s brought out before the queen with a badly-lashed back and a bloody face, accused of being the Hand’s woman.

I like this character; she’s sort of an avatar for the greatest disadvantages of Game of Thrones’ sexual patriarchy, and it feels like a more meaningful decision on the part of the show to represent prostitution and exploitation through a single character we can like and recognize, rather than portray a litany of nameless “whore” characters whenever the story required one, which it frequently does.

But despite the increased attention to romantic and sexual nuance, this episode thrives on its roots in family love. Since Theon seems stubbornly dedicated to his humiliating course, Yara shifts from shaming him in front of her men to talking to him in private about how her presence could soothe his screaming when he was a “terrible” baby. Catelyn has tried to give her son the space to win his war, but he can’t forgive the way her fear for his sisters broke her down and led her to interfere. The wincing agony of Tyrion’s ongoing cat-and-mouse with his sister continues; like Yara and Theon they have a ruthless parentage in common, but cannot bond as adults.

It’s true that Cersei is motivated by bitterness about how being a woman means she’ll never get the power she wants, so putting her son on the throne is the next best thing. But she really does love her children, and like any mother is desperate to keep them safe. Just like another “mother” -- Daenerys will risk her life to get her dragons back, because they are the only children she can ever have, now.

In all cases, major world events and the lives of smallfolk all around Westeros are being affected by subtle, complicated family attachments, whether that’s a mother’s love for her children or the burdens that adults have inherited from their parents. It’s that sort of detail that keeps Game of Thrones from being a simple war drama.

It’s not the fault of the show that Daenerys’ bit of the story has become the least interesting, after last season’s fascinating tale of a child-bride’s coming into her own in the arms of a brutal horselord – and losing a black-magic infused fight for his life, and hatching dragons in a fire.

I mean, you probably do have to go downhill from there. But watching her ineffectually crisscross foreign cities and lose some things and then get others isn’t very engaging – we want her to just reach the scene of all the action already, and it feels like it’s taking forever. Fortunately, these exotic cities she’s been in are breathtaking to look at, and so is actress Emilia Clarke’s expressive face.

Aren’t you glad that Bran Stark and his little brother Rickon are still alive after all? They're really the only full innocents in this thing, poor kiddoes. Wily Osha has hidden them away (along with Bran’s lumbering pal Hodor) in the crypts below Winterfell. Can’t wait to see what they’ll do now. This episode is called "The Prince of Winterfell" -- at the end we know that refers to the little boy that really holds that title, not the manchild that pretends at it.

Game of Thrones S2E7: You Sad Little Kids

Leigh Alexander — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:19:07 +0000

When I wrote about Game of Thrones last week, I talked about how I – someone generally averse to swords-and-dragons culture – found myself fascinated with the way this particular fantasy universe and its translation to high-concept television drama had some things to say about our modern environment. You know, the whole “questioning traditional social roles,” “finding value in diverse identities” “challenging the gender binary” thing. With that in mind, I’m quite excited that this most recent episode gives me so much to work with. Allow me to recap for you?

We open our episode with the fascinating condition of Theon Greyjoy. After having reunited with his family, he’s got something to prove to his father Balon, who has precious little pity for his son’s long lifetime away from home as a ward of the Starks of Winterfell.

His sister Yara (Asha in the books; the show’s creators feared audiences might get confused with the wildling Osha) recently took the time to mock her long lost brother’s sexuality before revealing she’s been proving her worth as a conqueror in her own right. As retaliation, Theon has somewhat clumsily taken the Stark’s homestead of Winterfell from its prior lord – little Bran Stark, paralyzed from the waist down. Good victory, bro.

It’s not a good day for Theon; his most recent act was to messily hack off the head of the man who first taught him how to use a sword, in a misguided attempt to gain Winterfell’s obedience. And now Osha, herself a Stark prisoner who became sympathetic to the family, has seduced Theon so she could sneak herself, Bran, his littlest brother Rickon and the slow-witted Hodor (who carries Bran in a basket on his back, thereby acting as Bran’s legs) – out of the occupied Winterfell. Mission accomplished.

Before you feel too sorry for Theon, keep in mind he's betrayed the family that raised him over a handful of childish daddy issues and the fantasy of being a prince with an armload of "salt wives" . But he's been thwarted at every attempt to prove his manhood: He’s let a “half-wit,” a “cripple”, a “whore” and a little boy out of his sight, and he must recapture Bran and Rickon if he’s to keep everyone believing that his ownership of Winterfell is really a “thing.”

The books portray Theon as a sad and disgusting creature who smiles too much and bullies too many women for his own good, but in Alfie Allen’s portrayal of the character we see some nuance – here’s a kid subjugated to his dad’s ideas about manhood, struggling to get right with himself. It’s surprisingly sad. One of the great things about this television adaptation is that we can see the flicker and flux of emotion of individuals forced into highly literal, pragmatic circumstances.

Meanwhile, the late Ned Stark’s bastard Jon Snow, a “crow” of the Night Watch, has gotten in over his head, too. While investigating the wild lands beyond the wall that separates Westeros from madness, he’s ended up alone with a captive, the fiery-haired Ygritte – and who knows who’s actually the prisoner between the two of them?

In the face of his chaste watchmen’s vows, the woman teases him relentlessly about the hard-on he got while they were forced to snuggle through the night for crucial warmth in the brutal cold. He has her bound on a rope lead, but he’s lost in the snowy lands while she needles him about his blue balls. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she tells him.

The core of the tension between Ygritte and Jon is sexual, yes – but she takes it further than that. His vows have prohibited him from flesh acts, but have also separated him from her people’s world of lawlessness and freedom. Her mockery of him as regards abstinence becomes a treatise on political liberty– who made any of these laws, anyway? Who has the right to claim governance of any place?

One of the more interesting liberties taken by the show is to shed some light on an inevitably complex relationship. There's Lord Tywin Lannister – architect of the war against the late Ned Stark's vengeful son Robb, and father of the incestuous twins that’ve secretly birthed Westeros’ current brutal brat-king Joffrey – and Arya Stark, the incognito daughter of our dear Ned. Arya’s stayed alive by posing as a boy, until Tywin’s keen eye found her for a girl and plucked her from Harrenhal’s torture pits for his cupbearer. You get the sense that he knows there’s more to her than she lets on, especially when he learns she can read – but this little short-haired tomboy keeps a straight face and a level head in the face of the lord whose family killed her dad and wants to kill her brother next. His underestimation of Arya is almost cute, and her resilience is incredible.

Last week, her mother’s friend Peytr Baelish almost spotted her, and Tywin’s knight Amory Lorch almost caught her stealing a message about her brother – good thing her unlikely pal Jaqen H’ghar assassinated Lorch on her behalf (that’s two out of three deaths H’ghar owes her for saving him from a fire). This week, little Arya’s wit keeps her one step ahead of Lord Lannister, universally adored and despised in kind by everyone from his subjects to his own golden-haired children. In the world of Westeros, dirty-faced girls always seem to be a little more powerful than the men with swords at their disposal. In an impromptu conversation about history, Arya reminds Tywin that two out of three of the prior age’s conquerors (who burned the very place they stand, even) were female dragonriders, where "a million men would have been repelled."

Back at King’s Landing, Arya’s elder sister Sansa continues to endure some brutal penalties for her girlish fantasies about noble princes and royal ladies. Virtually imprisoned at court as the vicious young king Joffrey’s fiancée, she barely escaped rape at the hands of an angry citizens' mob in our last episode – Sandor “The Hound” Clegane, the brutal knight with the burned face that Joff calls “dog”, was the one to save her.

Lots of people “ship” Sansa and The Hound, and the show seems to be capitalizing on this; he makes sure she knows that his particular brand of brutality is no less than what’s required to serve the royalty she so fantasized about as an innocent girl. The grotesque Hound is the perfect reality check for her naive dreams. We see Sansa's panic as she gets her very first period, a nightmare given that it means she must tell the nasty queen she's ready to bear kids for awful Joff. The first day a girl sees blood is scary enough without those implications -- even her biology is her enemy within her poignant captivity.

We see Joff’s mom Cersei Lannister, the duplicitous queen regent, shed some tears in front of her “half-man” brother, the uncommonly witty Tyrion Lannister. She says her kids are the most important thing to her, even as brutal and uncontrollable as her wicked boy Joffrey is – and no matter how heavy the mad spectre of the prior Targaryen dynasty’s incestuous heritage hangs. Meanwhile, her number one love – her twin brother – remains a prisoner in the Stark camp.

Jaime Lannister is a fascinating character. He and his siblings have all felt the burn of having Tywin for a father, but he’s always lived by his own code – even though he’s known for killing Westeros’ previous Mad King, you can tell he did it for probably a good reason. And even though he’s had three kids with his own twin sister, he purports to have never been with anyone but her (even though Cersei’s been hooking up with cousin Lancel in his absence!)

Yet when a previous squire gets thrown in prison alongside him – and confides that his day serving Jaime in a jousting competition was the best time of his life – Jaime has no reservations about strangling the poor lad in order to cause a ruckus that gets him out into the stockade. Although a much-honored knight, honor hasn't done too much for Jaime.

Robb Stark is beholden to a very important political marriage, but it can’t stop him – a little bit too righteous, too loving, too young to win this war, we can tell – from continuing a flirtation with a battlefield medic, the enigmatic Talisa. Meanwhile in his camp, the fervor for Jaime Lannister’s head grows. Only Robb's mom, Catelyn, can intervene on behalf of Jaime, the most valuable bargaining chip in her dreams of having her daughters returned. She’s going to let him go, isn’t she.

An ocean away, throne hopeful and Mad King descendent Daenerys Targaryen has lost her dragons to her manipulative Qartheen hosts. Her knight (and would-be suitor) Jorah Mormont investigates on her behalf, only to be witness to a creepy insurrection by the blue-lipped, magical Undying. Ygritte taunts Jon Snow to his limits and manages to escape, leading him into a wildling ambush. And at the episode’s close, Theon Greyjoy displays two tarred little bodies that he purports to belong to the unfortunate Winterfell children, much to everyone’s horror.

There were no boobs in this episode, actually. It was entirely a narrative about what insecure people do when their assumptions about power and privilege are challenged and threatened – there’s king Robb Stark’s inadvisable romance, Lord Tywin’s strange dialogue with his underestimated cup-girl, Jon Snow’s total failure to manage his fire-haired captive, Theon’s desperate actions at Winterfell.

This is a world where a sadistic child king is enabled to run rampant over his people, shattering noble ideals left and right as his prisoner-cum-child-bride still mourns her father, and where disempowered folk must grasp desperately for every advantage, for good or for ill, they can get. There are a lot of people with swords, but those with wits and wiles seem luckier still, no matter how fragile or how small.

The title of the episode is "Men Without Honor." Yes, all these mighty men have been disempowered -- but, okay, you've gotta feel for them a little too, seeing how little honor buys you around these parts.

Reasons to love you, Game of Thrones

Leigh Alexander — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:27:06 +0000

I became involved with the Game of Thrones TV series and books against all odds. After all, I don’t think of myself as a “geek” or a “nerd”, even if I am a video game journalist.

My interest is in unnatural universes and the potential in interactive fictional worlds, but the traditional wheelhouses of SF and high fantasy—and as terrified as I am of the people who won’t like to hear this, I’ll come out and say it—feel like something I grew out of. When I was adolescent, I ate up entire novel series about thrones and dragons and mages. In my work—where I look at the cultural context of the things we play, and the reasons we’re attracted to playing them—I click, tap and button-mash through countless products that owe everything to Tolkien.

Wandering though these exalted realms, I’m way tired of serving wenches and noble knights; weary of sack-clothed peasants and their thatched-roof cottages; sick to death of bikini armor, sigils, scale helms and sacks of holding. Enough, already.

So I thought it’d be more than safe to overlook Game of Thrones, a niche-bound, overcomplicated slice of knights-and-dragons that, for whatever reason, was becoming an ornately-armored TV show.

People will eat up all kinds of garbage; ‘media criticism’ often means gritting your teeth, convinced of your rightness, through the latest pop culture feeding frenzy until the blood has dissipated into the sea. This is what I was going to do about Game of Thrones, even though all of my friends—all of my people!—were stoked about it.

But then I heard about the boobs.

If you know nothing else about Game of Thrones, you know that there are boobs in every episode, that according to the TV show the world of Westeros (and the lands beyond the narrow sea!) seems preoccupied with relations after the canine manner. Even if you do not watch Game of Thrones and you never intend to, you’ve heard someone say that there are a lot of naked women, there are a lot of woman-subjugating sex scenes, and there'ss generally a lot of fleshy eye-candy in this show.

There are entire articles, from high-end magazines to lunatic blogs, which analyze, deride or scrutinize this particular element. And like any new media feminist, I got suckered into the debate before I’d read a stitch of text or seen a minute of the show. Voraciously eating up all of the discussion, the dread premonition settled in: I would end up reading all of George R.R. Martin’s books. I would tune in, with the fervor of religion, to the television series.

This happened to me before—and I take no pride in it—with the Twilight series. When something attracts so much online discussion (wondering why adult women would be attracted to an absurd tale of supernatural creatures warring over a clumsy, ordinary girl) I consumed it as thoroughly as any superfan. Twilight's disturbingly anti-feminist fantasy is compelling escapism, a deferral of obligations in the face of complicated things, a fear-response to overwhelming female empowerment rhetoric.

In an age where we’re whisking shame away from sex like so much stale old smoke, what woman wouldn’t daydream about being treasured by many even if she never puts out—even if she’s a powerless loser? In an era where it’s nearly a sisterly obligation for each woman to stand wholly on her own, who wouldn’t find some guilty pleasure in the admission of fear of male anger (facing the werewolf, Jacob) or of male sexuality (the chilly, chaste restraint of Edward)?

I kinda loved it. So in kind, I wanted to know: Why Game of Thrones, why HBO, why now?

I ate up the first book over the course of a work trip late last summer, and the first season of the show, always making sure to keep ahead in my reading. That way, a new episode carried with it the distinctly geeky pleasure of instant recognition: I already knew the television characters for who they were.

First, there's the brilliant casting. Every character reveal is a subtle delight, which alone seems a reason to keep watching: a fascinating translation from the text to the imagination and to sight. It shares this quality with the Harry Potter movies—fiction that captures the imagination creates a compulsive urge for imagery that’s more tactile, more relatable. Most of those who roleplay Harry Potter on the internet uses the series’ film actors for their avatar pictures, not the books’ official art nor any of the impressive fanart that exists.

There’s something about Game of Thrones that makes it more interesting than anything I’ve ever seen step over the crossmedia threshold. Martin’s writing style is frustratingly unsentimental—he’s like a lover who spends the night with his back to you. He describes incredibly complicated relationships in elaborate political climates; yet he creates empathy for these would-be rulers without giving us much insight into their inner worlds.

Events and behaviors are drawn as they are, and his skill is in letting his readers know plainly who the “good guys” are without writing anyone as particularly good. Much of the appeal of his novels lies in the pleasure of emotional inference; behavior hints at subtext, and you root quietly for your favorites, knowing that most of them will never gratify you, and may be yanked away at any moment for an inglorious death.

Well-cast and talented actors given such roles are light blades of clean light shone through a prism—suddenly everything bursts into color. Certainly, the show has taken liberties. As faultlessly loyal to the books as it often is, it feels somehow different; the actors add nuances to the book's characters without making meaningful change to their story arcs or to their dialogue.

How human written creatures are once we can look into their eyes! Game of Thrones is a fascinating essay in how television and literature are alike yet different; what does one medium excel at versus another, when telling the same story?

Back to the boobs, though, since that’s why most people know about Game of Thrones. If the fiction is as political as The Sopranos, and as socially complex as Mad Men, why does it need to rely on “sexposition,” the much-bandied term that refers to using erotic scenes as backdrops to illustrative revelations about plotlines or characters?

The fabric of Martin's universe, with multiple families, motives and allegiances, is pretty taxing. Perhaps HBO needs a way to keep people with short attention spans tuned in. Okay.

But through all of the banners and battlefields, through the trenchers of bacon and the heels of black bread—more on the books’ truly elaborate food fixation later, maybe—it’s a narrative about marginalized people triumphing in ironbound, ancient and ugly structures.

It’s a world that allows magic to creep in at its fringes, a variable that just might create future fortune for those who most need it. Whether they’re little-person “half-men” (as in the series’ best character, Tyrion Lannister, as portrayed by Emmy-winning Peter Dinklage), unwanted bastard sons, or frustrated women powerless in a patriarchal structure, Game of Thrones is about the heroism of fighting fate and the social order.

In The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum recently pointed out that Game of Thrones is just one of many high-concept television dramas fascinated with the nuances of old-fashioned “patriarchal subculture”. Meanwhile, our pop television breathlessly fans itself with White Girl Problems, 2 Broke Girls, Sh*t Girls Say, The New Girl, and—oh, wait, what’s that one?—oh yeah, Lena Dunham’s Girls.

Boobs on TV aren’t just boobs on TV at a time like this. Power structures are changing, so it’s not so surprising people would be drawn to a fantasy series about how power structures limit and exploit women—structures suddenly fragile in a fantasy world at war, ideologically and literally.

It’s the kind of thing that I feel rewarded by exploring instead of just talking about. You can be one of those people who calls "misogyny!" at the first sight of a naked woman on TV. Just as you can be one of those people—as I almost was—who sees Game of Thrones as just another sugary slice of fanservice.

Either way, you’d be missing out on something that’s not just a fascinating exercise in crossmedia storytelling, but probably has an under-addressed role in expressing our own culture's quiet revolutions.

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) is available from Amazon and bookstores.