Anything that informs the viewer regarding the nature of a character or the relationship between characters is hardly without purpose. Still the complaint was about the supposed gratuitous nudity why are moving you the goal posts suddenly?



Try bringing an actual rebuttal next time.



Please, neither the captains daughter on the way to Pike or Daisy the whore were going to win any beauty pageants (or grace any catwalks for that matter). I'd actually commend the show for generally avoiding the aerobicised look when it comes to their female casting in truth.

Then explain Osha's bikini wax, lol. Natalia Taena even expressed surprise about being told she should shave her pubes for the scene.

I am going to retire from this post... as a person on it has in my opinion become continually confrontational.

These boards have always been a great place for discussion... and yes they have been heated at times but I don't think anyone has regularly been confrontational on them. It has generally been friendly. I would like it to continue to be... so to not escalate matters, I am retiring.

This is not a scored debate. No body wins the thread. Everybody says what the think and then we move on and talk about something else. We don't have to sugar coat everything and tip toe around hurt feelings, but this sort of antagonism and unyielding pugnacious mentality diminishes most peoples' enjoyment of the forum. I find that the majority of people are here to have fun and partake in friendly chats about subject matter that we all really like. Bickering debates can occasionally be informative, but grow tiresome and fruitless rather quickly. Maintaining some semblance of decorum and a polite acknowledgement of each others' right to view things as we see fit, is rather important to making a site/ forum a place that people actually want to visit and participate in. I know this is not everybody's opinion, but there does seem to be a bit of a ground swell of discontent surrounding point by point rebuttals and apparent haughty contempt for fellow posters. Obviously, everyone is free to post as they like, but once it becomes a burden to trudge through threads of querulous quarreling, forum membership eventually looses some of its luster.

I'll take your word for it. I'd say her and the girl from Volantis suffer a bit too much from the aerobicised look in truth (a sidebar to being credited stars I guess and wanting to look their best) where as the random bit parts, less so (I did say 'generally avoiding' after all).



Thank you for that valuable insight. I'll refer you to my earlier post: -



As long as what someone posts makes some modicum of sense and isn't derived from some misbegotten belief or a lazy fiction in their head (for example Witless Chums assertions about all the ladies being model thin, when they quite clearly aren't) vs the broader reality, they've not likely to get called on it. However I'm not one to sit by when mythologies are being concocted and say nothing. If that's somehow a crime, then colour me guilty I guess.

Unless the nudity is the purpose, and the relationship is only the excuse, which is the argument I think people are making. I don't think you'd hear the complaints about nudity if people thought the writers/producers started by having a story reason why, for example, Gendry and Mel had sex.


Generally? Mel, Ygritte, Ros, notJeyne, Dany, Osha...you think most of the female nudity screen time has been with actresses who don't conform to modern beauty standards?

Quit being deliberately obtuse. Mel explained exactly what she was doing in the scene beforehand with Stannis with the talk about the knife & the lamb.



Not particularly tbh. I wouldn't say any of them are out and out ugly, but similarly I wouldn't claim any of them are supermodels either (Emelia Clarke is no Kate Upton). Still bar Mel, most of the actresses are in their twenties so they're not exactly likely to be carrying around spare tyres either.

Huh, as a man who constantly criticizes people for 'dodging questions' and having no evidence I'm surprised that you have completely ignored the question gdsg and I posed about the incredibly biased ratio of nudity.
PS: Shadowstalker, I would agree that it is a problem with television in general if it was, but plenty of shows (True Blood and Spartacus for example) do a great job of keeping the distribution of eye candy fairly even.

Great episode. The A team did a good job with just two hosts.

Lmao at Amins ITunes rant.

As far as the spoiler debate I would love it if the podcast could continue with limited paticipation in the forums and wider fandom from the hosts who wish to remain unspoiled. There is plenty to disuse with chapter rereads, new theories , and whatever TWOW has in store for us.

Sure, but it didn't make a great deal of sense, given that he was restrained and frightened before the leeches went on. The question is, whether in this case, or Tyrion inspecting Pod's whores or Littlefinger's sexposition, did the writers/producers conceive of the scene first, and then think the plot or character development in that scene would be strengthened by nudity, or were they looking for a way to get more nudity on screen and then conceived of the scene.




There seems to be a lot of appreciation for them. On this site for instance, there's a 200+ post thread and a poll with over 400 votes cast. I don't think you'd see that if the average hewed closer to the captain's daughter than to Ygritte.


I don't quite get this myself. If I think they're wasting their time writing bad scenes to fanservice guys who can't pay attention for an hour without looking at some boobs, why would I want them to waste even more time doing the same for ladies?

It's more that if they insist upon putting that much time in on fanservicing guys in the first place, that they put more dick shots in.

I'm personally of the opinion that they should show less nudity in general, but if they are going to show that much female nudity while keeping the men fully clothed then I'm going to at least hope they'd try to even it out. (I also mentioned upthread that the blatant fanservice to straight guys actually keeps me from enjoying the naked ladies myself, which is a bummer.)

Given the show has been happy to show dick before (Alfie Allen and a few extra's), I'd put the lack of leading actor dick down to leading actor choice more than anything else.



Has there ever been any actual dick on display in True Blood? I'm not entirely sure there has as far as I can recall.



Well originally she was just going to kill him and drain his blood, but Davos had persuaded Stannis to ask for a demonstration regarding the power of kings blood so the leeches was a compromise that kept Gendry alive. The seduction was a means to constrain him. This was explained in the scene, I guess you were too busy having conniptions over seeing Carice van Houten nipples to pay much attention to the dialogue.



Bold for emphasis.

I'm definitely on board with more dick in sex scenes (generally, not just GoT) its immersion breaking when guys always have their pants on. I guess there are legal issues with erect dick though.


I'm just concerned that if the pervert producer mandates an average of 2:05 of boob per episode (note: I don't actually think it works this way) that demanding equal time just results in another 2 wasted minutes. If the sex/nudity was intended to drive story or character, then I'd be more interested in keeping it balanced, but when it's just dross I'm not bothered.

Out of curiosity, why does the fanservice-y-ness ruin the enjoyment for you? The lack of balance just pulls you out of the moment?

A fairly bizarre and overly complicated means, Stannis does still have an army. The police, for example, rarely use a seduction routine to restrain criminals.


Your position being that the feeling that the women of GoT are attractive is a localized phenomenon confined to fan sites?

I pretty much agree! I'd rather there be no wasted time..... ugh.


I guess my biggest pet peeve in a visual medium is the Blatant Fanservice Character (which is part of my general pet peeve for Obvious Plot Devices for fiction in general). Obviously, this character is 99% of the time female, so the sexism amplifies my hatred for this device and I proceed to flip a table if it gets to soft porn-levels of fanservice. If every show or anime or video game had the equivalent of, say, David Bowie in Labyrinth right alongside their Stripperiffic female character, I probably wouldn't mind so much. I do not experience this level annoyance in asoiaf canon, because, say, Arianne is checking out Darkstar or Dany is checking out Daario, or Drogo's glistening manhood.

And lack of balance does pull me out of the moment, I mean, a big part of it is also from the primary identification (why LF has to be watching Ros and her buddy play with each others' asses...), etc. If I had a scene of lesbians checking each other out and the camera didn't do anything to convince me that this was all for the pleasure of the straight guy watching in the corner of the scene as the stand-in for the audience (or who later arrives to finish them and make them come, because it ain't real sex unless there's a dick in it. )... I'd love that. There are pretty huge signals being sent about who's supposed to be enjoying this, and I'm not one of them, apparently, even though I am attracted to women..... (Like I said upthread, the primary identification and the focus of the shot are also important, not just screen time)

That all makes sense, thanks for explaining.

No problem!

The point isn't dick and I never said it was. Dick would be fine for making things equal or whatever, but as Ashley said in the episode there are plenty of other bodyparts that people enjoy. Mostly they show boobs and butts, I'm sure that throwing more abs and man ass in would make a lot of people pretty happy, balance it out somewhat, and not run against that much actor irritation. In fact they've done better in some episodes this season in this respect than they did in the previous seasons. The general problem is that there are many many scenes just filled with topless attractive female extras who serve no purpose, but there are rarely scenes with a bunch of equivalently topless men, which is odd because men are shirtless much much more often! It's as Mordion (I think) said, it takes me out of a scene when they contort it so that the man is fully clothed and the woman is naked. It's about making an effort to welcome all members of the audience, if you're throwing out fanservice at least make it equal opportunity.

And yet, season 3 had less nudity or sexposition than any of the previous seasons. In the firts 5 episodes there was barely any nudity, if at all, if my memory serves me right (ok there was Brienne and Jaime but they were in the bathtub in the book as well, and Jon and Ygritte was also a big part of the development of their characters and so these weren't exploitative). The only big complaints we had were the girls with Ramsay (episode 7), Melisandre (episode 8) and Talisa (episode 7) and that's it for the whole season so I don't think it's true that they shove sex down our throats at least in this season and it's likely that we won't get any more sex scènes because next week is the big climax of the season so they'll be busy enough with finishing Jon's, Dany's, Arya's and Catelyn's storylines for this season and they've told us over and over again that they've been looking forward to that moment for so long that I don't think they'll compromise their big showdown with unnecessary sex. This season was really tame compared to season 1 and 2 if you ask me.

I would agree! It's been a substantial improvement in fact

I'd refer you to the conversation Mel has with Stannis in the scene beforehand.



The very poll you cite is called 'Hottest chick in the show'. Go hunt down a few 'most attractive celeb polls' elsewhere and you'll find Emelia Clarke a fair way off the top spot.



If that's the case then why all the complaints about lack of dick?

It's shorthand, it's easier to demand more manwoody, especially on these forums, than to request more balanced nudity. Also, plenty of people do want dick! Which is also easy to deliver through extras and never delivered.

Thanks mate!

If you're referring to the 'lamb' discussion, then I think this discussion has become circular.


If Mel needs to seduce Gendry to keep him calm and happy, then the fact that she suddenly ties him him and scares the hell out of him ruins that. If she seduces him in order to constrain him, it doesn't make any sense given that Stannis has plenty of troops.


The fact that she'd even appear in such a poll only strengthens the notion that she does conform to modern standards of beauty. As far as the poll on this site, I don't think the fact that people here are fans of the show make them too biased to evaluate whether they find someone attractive.

Not really, you're just seemingly incapable of thinking beyond the boundaries of a scene it appears. I find having to constantly remind you of what was said or happened previously kind of tragic really.



Timing. By the time Gendry realized things were up, he was already bound. Being manhandled by Stannis guards would of taken far longer, and been more deleterious to the blood.



GoT is a main-stream cultural success with a large worldwide audience (it regularly trends high on twitter after each episode), the most attractive female on the show (according to the fans) managing to get into a top 100 female celebrities list is not a surprise. However she's hardly rocking a top ten position: -

http://www.maxim.com/hot100/2013

http://www.fhm.com/girls/100-sexiest-women

Anyway regardless I never said she wasn't pretty (if a tad on the short side) just that she's not supermodel casting. You sure do like to drift with your arguments it seems.



I've yet to see the distinction in effect.

Lol

Well put about E & L.

Excellent for book discussions, amazingly petty for show discussions. This episode was no different.

I can understand people who either like or dislike E&L. Im prett neutral. I enjoy the knowledge they have to share but
I do disagree with some of their opinions. I did think it was pretty funny when Elio said blue hair is totally normal, but maybe a forked beard would be just taking it too far.

I don't see any reason that should be true


That would make sense, if we had any reason to believe it to be true. But if we have license to assume things not indicated by the show, then just say that the blood is more powerful when sexually charged (which I think has been mentioned as a possibility)

This is really a side issue though, whether or not the getting Gendry's blood scenario makes sense, it still feels as though the purpose of the scene was to get some more nudity, and any justification about lambs and whatnot is just the excuse.


We may be inadvertently talking past each other here. I'm not asserting that that Emilia Clarke is or isn't 'supermodel casting,' I'm not talking about a supermodel standard, and I'm not talking about Emilia Clarke specifically. You seemed to indicate that many of the nude scenes included actresses who were either not slender or not groomed to a 21st century standard. I was (and am) disagreeing with that position.

That was when I turned it off...

But just to clarify, I don't dislike Elio and Linda as people or members of our fandom. What I don't like is the litany of complaints about minutiae or changes (such as the absence of lore and flashbacks) that the show has already been functioning with for two years, and which almost inevitably become subjects of discussion when they join the conversation. Elio and Linda are entitled to quibble to their hearts' content - and they certainly have the platforms for it - but it isn't an approach I find constructive or pleasant to listen to. (Which, again, is not to say that APOIAF shouldn't have them on. The needs of the many, etc.)

All that said, I'm sure that E&L are awesome people, and when The Winds of Winter eventually comes out, I certainly look forward to hearing their thoughts.