Even if it's not brother doing sister, the great families of Westeros are all already slightly inbred from having bred with each other for thousands of years. Royal families are more inbred because they have fewer peers, but the whole aristocracy in a feudal society like this is chronically short of unique great…

Although the Queen of Thorns and Margaery get less page time in the books than they do screen time on the show, they're equally successful, and QoT is clearly the shotcaller in the Reach, so there's one counterexample. Dany is also showing every sign of being capable (and likely to) achieve power. Historically, the…

No, he's right. Rape of Thrones is not a pun. It's not a play on the various meaning of rape, nor is "rape" alike or nearly alike in sound to "game." I'm not sure what the title is, but it's not a pun.

He's not dumb, he's just drunk.

I can't remember how much of this made it into the show, but Catelyn and Ned have consensual sex. Jaime and Cersei are consensual, prior to his capture. Dany's relationship with Khal Drogo is difficult to parse, but eventually she was definitely having consensual sex with him. She later has consensual sex with…

Sam I covered, Brienne I'll concede, and Bran we'll both ignore as a barely-a-character plot device.

I'm not going to defend the writing in those excerpts, but the books are massively superior to the show in basically every way except that you actually need to read them. If you like the show, you would like the books, probably much more.

No, the wildings, for all their problems, are surprisingly modern on the whole gender equality angle. You can own a woman or a knife, but not both, and all that.

Yes, his reason for throwing that child from a tower was that he was fucking his sister, the Queen, sowing the seeds (no pun intended) of a civil war that would devastate a continent just as a world-threatening menace gathered to its north.

I think they're just trying to skip the "exploring Cersei no longer reciprocating Jamie's affections and maybe never having really loved him at all" thing from the books by just having her be kind of a dick to him and then him rape her and justify her shutting him out. It's a shortcut, and it's lazy.

I would love if they would just let him sound however he really sounds instead of doing that voice. I also love the interpretation that, once out of King's Landing, he lets his backwater accent fly and revels in his low beginnings and all that.

Right, but contextualized in the world, Khal Drogo still comes off surprisingly well, and better than he does on the show. The books, and the show, to a lesser extent, have a very Hobbesian view of the world. Any deviation from that is notable, and Khal Drogo's asking for Dany's consent is especially so, given the…

I actually largely agree with Sonia's criticism of the adaptation—and I hope the show runners make an effort to hew a little closer to the books' approach to issues of female power and agency—but I seriously doubt anyone's upset because now they can't like Jaime. You can't like anyone in this show, with the possible…

I'd have to watch it again to be sure, but I thought she did unequivocally say something like "no, don't" at least once. I certainly came away from the scene with no doubt that it had been rape, and was perplexed by the departure from the novel. I mention that because I kept waiting for the scene to get less rapey,…

Isn't it weird that the actor is actually Irish, but his American accent is much more believable than whatever he's doing on the show?

This is what happens when you let a Scot write Captain America.

That's funny, I had heard that Evans (and Chiklis) were actually comic fans, which is why they both had such a blast doing the first Fantastic Four movie. Also why they were the only people in that movie who seemed to have any idea how their characters were supposed to look, act or sound.

So in other words, you believe that God exists and that he created the universe as described in the bible, except that to the extent the bible contradicts observable reality, it is to be interpreted metaphorically. Is that a fair statement?

It is an answer, but it is not an answer to the question asked. The question asked was "What makes you believe that god created the universe?" The answer boiled down to "I believe that it is impossible to exclude the possibility that god created the universe."

So, just so I understand you, are you a creationist in the sense that you believe God created the world in seven days and there's no such thing as evolution (or macroevolution or whatever distinction you want to draw) or are you a believe in God as a first mover who "created the universe" in a way that is knowable to…