GoT S1E2: Are the Books this Raunchy?

[canyonwalker]

I knew as I started watching Game of Thrones there was going to be a lot of raunchy sex in it. That's only what... basically everyone... joked about it when aired years ago. But here at just S1E2 I'm already wondering, "Were the books this raunchy?" Because when it comes to Game of Thrones, unlike Wheel of Time, I'm an NBV— a Non-Book Viewer. I haven't read these books. I can't compare the show to the source material. Is the level of sex because author George R. R. Martin wrote the series like novel-length Playboy stories; or is it because that's what HBO, known for playing up the amount of skin and voyeurism in its shows, ordered up in this screen adaptation?

The thing that had me rolling my eyes at how the plot and character development seemingly revolve around sex in this episode involved Daenerys Targaryen. In the previous episode she was married off to Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo, played by the one-note Jason Momoa. In this episode we see her continuing to suffer physically whenever he chooses to have sex with her. But then one of her maids tells her stories about her time serving in a brothel— which she was sold to at age 9, BTW!— and how better to satisfy a man sexually. After Daenerys "practices" with her maid in an ambiguously bisexual bedroom scene she proposes a different sexual position to Drogo next time he tries to grab her and throw her face-down on the floor. Suddenly, having sex while riding him cowgirl, she feels so much more empowered & physically comfortable.

If the books were like this there's no way I would've kept reading them. Understand, though, it's not because I'm prudish about sex or anything. They'd just be far too tedious as porn stories.

Comments

[khedron]

I stopped watching very early on, and only picked it up again for the very last season, so I'm no expert, but: my memory from both watching & conversations is that there was a lot of not-in-books nudity and sex, and it felt like it was there only because HBO felt the need to show that it was different than regular broadcast TV. It was totally gratuitous titillation - "instead of having exposition over here, why don't we have it over there with naked prostitutes in the background?" Later seasons didn't try so hard to be edgy AFAIK.

[canyonwalker]

Ha ha, you just totally nailed one of the scenes in the next episode, S1E3, which I watched last night. It was "Two main characters discuss an important and very fraught issue... but let's have them meet, improbably, in a whorehouse with topless chicks running around in the background." 🤣

Well, at least this pandering is better than its poor cousin we'd get on network TV, a mix of dick jokes, farts, and offensive gay stereotypes.

[ilyena_sylph]

Yep, the books were just like that.

It's one of several reasons I quit them.

[canyonwalker]

Yikes. I'd probably stop reading, too, if the books were as full of nudity and sex as the TV series. My issue, like I explained in another comment, isn't that I'm a prude about sex. I'm more willing to discuss it in frank terms than most people I know. The problem is, when nudity and sex are not just scene dressing but also the device through which character development and plot advancement occur, it's tedious, poor writing. In a TV show I can look past the soft core porn and still pay attention to what the actors are saying and emoting. In written form it's hard to pick out that signal from the prurient noise.