However, European sexual life was in fact quite active, and there are a great many reports of people actively engaging in sex. Are you taking the piss as the British say? Why do you assume anyone who doesn't agre with you must automatically be joking? You made a few historical assumptions and I went out of my way to point out where and why your statements were historically inaccurate. And now you're being rude by suggesting that I was doing this in the name of a good lark? That's a rather offensive position to take. You haven't pointed out ONE example that descends to the level of Martin's, that would suggest Martin was reading history and deciding to _base_ his stories on that history. [I] You'd have to care enough to go and read his interviews to know about this, where he states fairly clearly and explicitly things like, well: The medieval setting has been the traditional background for epic Fantasy, even before Tolkien, and there are good reasons for that tradition. The sword has a romance to it that pistols and cannon lack, a powerful symbolic value that touches us on some primal level. Also, the contrasts so apparent in the Middle Ages are very striking

Besides, one thing that is true of me and might not be true of other readers is that I don't read fantasy for escapism. I don't want to imagine myself living in Martin's or any other writer's world. I don't have to approve of the culture in which Daenerys grew up or the one into which she's marrying, because I don't have anything invested in idealising either of them. You read it to get a sense of what it was really like in actual history? That's such a blatant display of self-deception. It's also not what I said . . . you dumb cunt. It doesn't particularly matter to me whether or not Martin's cultures are close to those of history or not. Invent a culture unlike any that has existed on this earth, and write a good story set there, and I'll appreciate it on its merits whether or not I would approve of the culture you've invented. As I said before: I don't believe Martin intended to titillate with his de_script_ion of anything that happened to Daenerys in A Game of Thrones . She has at least one other sexual experience later in the novels which is intended to titillate, and quite obviously so - it's easy to tell the difference. If I don't agree that he intended to titillate, I don't think a dumb cunt like you has a leg to stand on when you accuse me of prurient interest in the sex lives of thirteen-year-olds married off to adult warlords. What happened to Daenerys is part of a story I find interesting, not wank material as you seem insistent upon treating it. I don't get emotionally involved or invested; I don't have to like what's happening to Daenerys to keep reading, and I don't have to stop reading if I don't like what's happening to her. You seem to think that Martin thinks what happened to Daenerys when she was married to Drogo is a good thing. I have no reason to believe that he thinks that, nor am I bothered that he's writing something unpleasant. The fact that her marriage to Drogo is *better* than being stuck with Viserys - whom she had grown up expecting to marry, mind you - doesn't make it good. I don't think arranged marriages between twenty-somethings in the real world are all that great of an idea, either, so I'm not going to say I'm fine with a thirteen-year-old girl (even one considered old enough to wed by her culture) marrying an adult man. That doesn't mean I have a problem reading that story. Why on Earth should I?

Actually, I take that back. You honestly seem to think that you are reading a novel describing a wierd alternate universe that is interesting for it's differences. I'm just trying to remind you that you are reading FICTION, and that it's effects on your perceptions of what is Normal in today's world may not be affected for the better. I don't get so emotionally invested in the novels I read that I start believing anything about the real world because of them. I explained in my other post that I'm not bothered by reading about fictional things I find unpleasant to contemplate; I don't have to approve of Daenerys's marrying Drogo to see that it's better than her being stuck with Viserys, or to enjoy the story in which that happens. It's interesting even if it's unpleasant.

AFfC was certainly a bad sign. Honestly, I don't know why people dislike A Feast for Crows so much.

AFfC was certainly a bad sign. Honestly, I don't know why people dislike A Feast for Crows so much. I can speak only for myself.  I found it boring and pointless.  Most of the threads didn't advance the story at all, and were lacking in both narrative drive and suspense.  The worst of it (in that respect, anyway) was Brienne's search for the Stark girls.  We know damned well she won't find them, because she's looking in the wrong places.  Nor is Brienne such an interesting character that we're happy just to follow her around.    Jaime's mopping-up exercises aren't particularly necessary to the story either, but at least he's worth observing.  The Cersei thread was a bit meatier, and the Sansa and especially the Arya were first-rate.  Overall, it was quite disappointing to wait five years for the thing and find that most of it was extraneous.

sanction adults fucking 13 year olds in modern times, right? Why sanction the depiction of it FOR ENTERTAINMENT in a MODERN  novel? I know you're not listening, but I'm pretty sure Danaerys was 15, not 13. Not that this makes her treatment any better. C@w