Dunno about that, but I do know that the slitting followed by blood just oozing out is not how it goes. Arterial spray…well, sprays.
I still remember the father of a friend telling us about his first night on call at the hospital. They had a throat cancer patient who’d just had surgery wake up in the middle of the night and come to the docs’ lounge to chat and pass the time. He said three words, the suture ruptured, they had to clean the ceiling.
I guess a completely severed artery would exert less pressure than that, but I’d still expect a bloody mess.
Maybe if you’re stressed and your heart rate is elevated, a slashed throat will cause rapid exsanguination, causing you to lose consciousness.
Yes, but you can choose who you fuck.
I disagree. It’s certainly a theme of the book that morality isn’t always black and white. The Starks aren’t capital-H-Heroes and the Lannisters aren’t pure capital-V-Villains. At the same time, throwing up our hands and saying “they’re all equally bad” is like saying “well, some atrocities were committed by American soldiers during WWII, so really, all the sides were equal”.
What WOULD be silly would be to assume that because the Starks are closer to being good guys (as they inarguably are, mr. jp’s bizarre and unspportable claims to the contrary notwithstanding) that means that they will somehow come out on top just because of their innate goodness. Might makes right in the GoT universe as it does in our own, and people aren’t perfect, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is equally imperfect.
Joffrey is a much much more evil person than Brienne. I’ll support that position to the death. And once you can make one such statement, you can make more, even if not all of them are that cut and dried.
And if you can’t fuck the one you love, honey…
You are clearly confusing self preservation with self defense. Two very different things.
Can I defend all my self-serving actions as self defense now?
I like you. Let’s make out. 
Is anyone else just skimming over the mr. jp vs. everybody posts?
Clearly people have differing points of view on morality. Perhaps such a discussion would be better served in Great Debates. ‘Inspired by the discussion in [this thread], is it more moral to [blahblahblah]’, or something like that. Or to keep it in Cafe Society, how about a thread called ‘Compare the morals of the families of Westeros’?
Just sayin’.
No. There’s that inability to figure out context again.
I kind of gave up the debate yesterday since I had to go to work but when I came back I saw other people took up the cause and I was amused by that. But it has become a bit too much of a “head vs brick wall” discussion and I think maybe a debate with Hodor about proper hodoring would be more productive.
Hodor.
The reason I talked about the oath breaking is that people claimed the Stark clan was better because they are honorable. I think this is an undeserved reputation, oath breaking is definitely not honorable.
My problem with Robb is not so much that he broke an oath. It is that he does not really show any concern about the common folk. The Stark clan are at least partly responsible for the war, which is really caused by an internal conflicts between the two families. But he leads the war, forcing thousands of his subjects die for him. And how much does he care about that? I dont hear him talking about or considering those lives. In fact, the cause that so many subjects had to die for, he was fully willing to jeopardize so that he could get the girl he wanted. This shows that he rates his personal love live higher than the lifes of his subjects. Cat also has no problem with starting a war, or with killing innocents, if it furthers the cause of their house.
Obviously the Lannisters have committed horrible deeds, and Im not saying they are better. But for the common people living in the kingdoms, this is a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Yes, it should be self preservation, not self defence. Point still stands.
I can figure out context. You should not kill an innocent girl UNLESS there is money in it for you!
What do I win?
So what were you saying in this post then? I can understand that I am incapable of empathy. And your rolleyes indicate that you doubt my claim that I wouldn’t kill the girl, don’t they? Or what?
I think it’s you who lack empathy, unless you are presented with an actual backstory. Bran was presented as a character, a kid, and thus it’s a tragedy when he died. But we had no introduction to the Frey girl. Maybe if we had followed her for a while, and her life in the castle, her dreams and desires. Her 15 year old girl problems and questions. Maybe then you would have felt more sorry for her getting killed, for matters she wasn’t involved in, had no say about, and tried to hide from.
Huh. I didn’t remember any of this FROM THE TELEVISION SHOW.
As one of the derailers, I apologize… so back to the episode.
Gilly says somethihng like “My father said ‘no Wildling has ever gazed on the wall and lived’”–clearly not true but are Gilly’s family considered Wildlings? I thought they were the equivalent of homesteaders. Just wanted that clarified.
Everyone that lives north of the Wall is a wildling.
There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that says Robb would care vastly more for the common people than the Lannisters did. And there’s no evidence at all to say that he WOULDN’T, other than that he is in fact fighting a war. Basically, every good dead ascribed to the Starks in the last several pages are evidence of their empathy, that they are bothered by other people suffering, and try to avoid causing it. Granted, we may have never literally seen a conversation on-screen with Robb in which he says either “hey, let’s go burn that village just for shits and grins” or “oh dear me, let’s make sure to have this battle as far from all the farms as possible to avoid injuring the smallfolk”, but we can make some inferences from what we’ve seen of the way he and his family act in general, as compared to the Lannisters.
As for Robb’s oathbreaking, it’s worth pointing out that once he fell in love with Talisa and boinked her, it would have been easy as hell for him to just keep her as his mistress, but it was his HONOR that caused him to marry her instead. Maybe not as honorable as not boinking her in the first place, but he only broke his oath when there were conflicting demands on his honor.