( continues...) other scene was “I’m home, and home means Cersei, and fucking her is one thing I can still do, godsdammit” this one is absolutely about him being angry AT Cersei. Yes, his feelings of uselessness may play into it (there’s a reason we got Jaime telling Tommen he’ll see that he’s safe at the top of the scene), but he starts out the scene in a pretty reasonable and honorable place (the conversation about Tyrion). And you can see Nikolaj play the entire transition between when Cersei recoils and his second line (“Why did the gods make me love a hateful woman?”)He has said that he struggled with this scene, and fuck if he didn’t make the best sense of it he could. His rape of Cersei is intentional, weaponized in a way that it was not in the books. And I don’t see how he can distance that from the behavior he so abhorred in Robert and Aerys.

Now, you can argue that he has just realized the extent to which she is and has been using him. She is a horrible person, which has been increasingly clear to him over these three episodes. Perhaps, in the next episode, we will find that, yes, this was him breaking up with her. Maybe we’ll find out that his actions have literally made him sick, and this will propel his arc forward (Wouldn’t that be a completely different spin on the “rape as character development” trope, if a deeply problematic one?) (Note: I’m not touching on the effects on Cersei’s end of the relationship, even though I think they are well worth discussing. This was enough for my brain today.)

And the point in the timeline is hugely different. He’s been trying, gods love him, to be a better person, to repair the tattered remains of his honor. This is a major backslide for him (Note his repetition of the line, “I don’t care.” I wonder if he’s trying to convince himself.)

Spoilers for presumed future events, based on the books: I really wonder how this will affect his process of deciding to send Brienne out after Sansa. Perhaps the most interesting choice would be that he wants her away, where she can’t see him turn to shit again.

If this is him breaking up with Cersei, then it basically puts him in a holding pattern up till burning her letter. I wonder how fast they can get him out of KL…not till after Tyrion’s trial, surely. If they get rid of the jailbreak, I’ma be pissed.

And maybe that is the most interesting character arc they can give him. Not the one where he’s a good guy now, but people don’t realize it, but the one where he isn’t the man he was, true, but he’s not really the person he wants to be, either. And, in this act, I think he was a worse person than he was at the beginning of the show; I think this is a line that he wouldn’t have crossed. Jaime’s arc maybe is best read not as one of redemption, but identity. Who is he now, when everything he was is lost to him? And in trying to figure that out, he struggles and fucks up (and, for Jaime Lannister “fucks up” generally involves dead bodies…and, apparently, raping your sister). What I’m not sure of is how far how much of the audience is willing to stick with him, especially since we can’t see inside his head. The writers have made their job—and the actor’s—a lot harder with this choice.

t curls up comfortably in Debet's brane

Jesus fuck.

But there's a lot of stuff he's not consulted on. I think Jezebel had the explanation of why it looked more consensual in the book, but I've read so many people saying it looked consensual TO JAIME and she does protest at first there too. Also, the director said that she was supposed be be active in it at the end of the scene.

I just...wasn't he always a horrible person? Can you weigh pushing a child out a window one one side against raping the sister you're in love with?

For all the reasons every other book-reader was pissed

Ok, speaking as just one book-reader, I'm not pissed. My knee-jerk reaction last night was to be pissed, but having processed it overnight, I've completely changed my mind.

In the book, the chapter is written from Jaime's POV, and if you ignore how he feels about it and just look at the events, it is pretty damn clearly rape. She is telling him to stop and pounding against his chest, which he ignores. In the book, he "doesn't hear her" (because he's too busy ripping her clothes off). In the show he says "I don't care." Yeah, the scene from the book didn't look like the scene in the show to Jaime, but to an outside observer I don't think there's as big a difference as the internet seems to think.

Yes, what ita said. I type too slow.

This seems very Seeing Red redux, except passions seem relatively modestly roused compared to the Buffy situation since Jaime/Cersei isn't fandom's dominant pairing.

On one hand, I think the show is rapey enough without pushing a fictional dub-con into a full-on non-con, although it's probably splitting hairs. I am of mixed feelings since for all his sins, Jaime has been portrayed relatively sympathetically in the last season and a half, so this felt a bit like a bucket of cold water to the face. On the other hand, fandom woobiefies and excuses Jaime a ridiculous amount and a bucket of cold water may not be necessarily a bad thing.

I am more conflicted about Cersei, honestly. I find TV!Cersei several folds more interesting and complex than the book version (mostly because I adore Lena Headey in general and think GRRM does a crap job giving Cersei any dimensions in the book, even in her POV chapters), and this felt... I dunno, a cheap way of making Cersei more sympathetic by making her a victim? The big question would be if there would be any fallout from this scene that's different from what happens in the book. My guess would be no.

why it looked more consensual in the bool

Being in his head absolutely makes a huge difference.

the director said that she was supposed be be active in it at the end of the scene.

Having seen it twice, that was not particularly clear.

I just...wasn't he always a horrible person? Can you weigh pushing a child out a window one one side against raping the sister you're in love with?

There is maybe one character in the books that isn't to some degree a horrible person, so it becomes all about nuance and shades of horrible (both on the more/less continuum and the different flavors continuum). Given the change in timeline, I think this is a different flavor of horrible. I can buy the book version as being unclear in his own head. What we saw onscreen, I really can't.

I don't tend to play the "who/which is worse?" game with this series. As much as I tend to dislike psychological studies of dislikable people*, I have fallen for this series, hard, as basically just that. People making impossible choices in a broken world. They're all broken by it, in one way or another, and I like the way the series grapples with morality and why people do horrible things (usually in service of power, love, or honor.)

Part of what I find compelling about Jaime is that he, more than basically any other character, starts out driven by love (His iconic line is "The things I do for love" for a reason) and does awful things in the service of that. What's brilliant and compelling, to me, is the way that that motivation changes over the course of the series. He's also one of the characters who could give a fuck about power.

* Although, now that I say that, I'm not sure it's as true as it was a few years ago.

passions seem relatively modestly roused compared to the Buffy situation since Jaime/Cersei isn't fandom's dominant pairing.

Ha. IO9 asked "Has Game Of Thrones Gone Too Far"? And it's full of people screaming "HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING THE SHOW???" It's not even the first rape...

And now people are complaining that Jaime and Cersei are now ruined--as noted, I think Jaime was plenty despicable before, even if everyone's all dreamy about him and Brienne now, and why does rape "ruin" the female character?

I also don't think it makes her sympathetic, FWIW. She's still an absolutely horrible person, just one something horrible happened to. Welcome to the series.

And now people are complaining that Jaime and Cersei are now ruined

Because...their love was so pure before?

Because...their love was so pure before?

Exactly. Now they're damaged. I feel like wandering around replying to everything in IO9 with "Psst! Khal/Dany?"