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Game of Thrones

And Tits. Don't forget the tits.
 
You can find out everything by reading wikis and such, and the vast majority of the important scenes are on YouTube. It's actually pretty ridiculous. By Monday afternoon, you can find most of Sunday's episode on there and HBO doesn't seem to care that much.

Pretty cool, as there are a lot of memorable scenes worth re-watching.
 
dendrast said:
hylidae said:
dendrast said:
hylidae said:
It's about the extreme emotions the story puts you through, then you walk away, but you can't stay away...
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Like I said. Soap.
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If soaps had swords and dragons and lots of blood.
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Why not? Dark Shadows was about a vampire, it also had werewolves, zombies, witches, warlocks, etc. Pretty much the kind of characters.
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Oh yeah, I forgot about Dark Shadows. I notice a distinct lack of dragons and swords, so still kind of lame compared to GoT, though.
 
Nexus said:
hylidae said:
Dany's story has been absolutely amazing this season so far.
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This is not a spoiler rather an opinion. It appears to me that Dany is a Mary Sue in literary terms. I don't think Martin is a hack and is writing a Mary Sue to please people or himself. I suspect she is in for a huge downfall from him as he destroys that troup. I wonder how the show will handle her.
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Dany's story has made me cringe from the beginning. Every decision she made seemed like a setup for a comeuppance. But she kept succeeding in spite of logic, and I got used to it. I figured sooner or later she'd run into a situation that couldn't be resolved by slaughtering unsympathetic characters, or helping innocents, or making a big, dramatic speech, or by a character with much needed wisdom/skills/resources inexplicably swearing fealty to her at exactly the right moment.

It seems like

trying to actually rule Mereen on a day-to-day basis

might turn out to be that situation.
 
Unbeatable said:
It seems like

trying to actually rule Mereen on a day-to-day basis

might turn out to be that situation.
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I'm actually expecting worse. Just wait until some of the former oppressed start burning their own livestock hoping to get three times the value by blaming the dragons. Once she realizes most people are greedy treacherous scumbags I think she is going to snap.
 
Yes! Sometimes the heinous shit that transpires in this show can be so satisfying. First Joffrey, then


Brat Robin gets a smack in the face and Lysa gets thrown through her moon door. :D

 
Zeluvia said:
I am glad HBO has deviated firmly from that monstrous crap that was the books. I was suspicious on the third book, and downright pissed on the 4th, and my suspicions were confirmed in the 5th. Martin himself is lost in this crap.

The last episode gave me hope that there will eventually be a resolution in the TV series, and probably before the final book gets written, about 15 years from now.
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The books tell you that they are not sequential. The events of Storm of Swords and A feast For Crows occur in the same time frame. Hopefully he will finish within the next couple of years and not follow his habit of long gaps between books. I also have confidence the Series can end it for us if he does not finish them.
 
Unbeatable said:
Nexus said:
hylidae said:
Dany's story has been absolutely amazing this season so far.
Click to expand...
This is not a spoiler rather an opinion. It appears to me that Dany is a Mary Sue in literary terms. I don't think Martin is a hack and is writing a Mary Sue to please people or himself. I suspect she is in for a huge downfall from him as he destroys that troup. I wonder how the show will handle her.
Click to expand...

Dany's story has made me cringe from the beginning. Every decision she made seemed like a setup for a comeuppance. But she kept succeeding in spite of logic, and I got used to it. I figured sooner or later she'd run into a situation that couldn't be resolved by slaughtering unsympathetic characters, or helping innocents, or making a big, dramatic speech, or by a character with much needed wisdom/skills/resources inexplicably swearing fealty to her at exactly the right moment.

It seems like

trying to actually rule Mereen on a day-to-day basis

might turn out to be that situation.
Click to expand...

Dany is clearly not going about without thinking. Since taking her vengeance on the witch she has come unto her own. Her dragons are in their teenage years and will give her problems as we already see. However, they are her children and even though capricious in nature, myth tells us dragons are loyal and wise. BTW her story is very tame compared to that of most of the women of Westros. Even Cerci complains she is a mere brood mere being farmed out to drop babies.
 
Well.......fuck.


To be expected I guess but still sad, Oberyn was my favourite new character this season and to have him and potentially Tyrion go out in one episode is pretty shit. Should have just killed the mountain FFS.

 
You see, that would hurt the audience less.

Its all about hurting the audience.
 
Sarpedon said:
You see, that would hurt the audience less.

Its all about hurting the audience.
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Yeah, I had a thought along those lines this morning. I can understand that Martin wants to do something a little different with his storytelling, something out of the mould of the 'good guys' facing adversity, sometimes tragedy, but ultimately things work out pretty well for them. I respect that, I really do - there is so much same same pap bullshit coming out of the entertainment industry these days that it's refreshing to see it from an author and a production house like HBO.

Though now it almost feels like he is taking it a little too far, only inconsequential things really go right for the good guys, setbacks are similarly trivial for the bad ones. Your hopes are maintained by these trivial victories while the best characters, after sufficient development and screen-time for genuine appreciation to set in, are killed off ruthlessly. All the while the ultimate march of Lannister evil simply continues, with the odd speed bump along the way of course. In trying to be atypical Martin has become just as predictable as the rest of popular fiction.
 
Just wait everyone. Just wait.

Also, people have to realize that when Martin was writing the books the most important characters are the point-of-view characters, of which he has only killed off two by where we are in the show, and that's Catlyn and Ned. In this story arc, the one with the Lannisters, it has mostly been the story of the Lannisters getting the best of the Starks. But just wait. The last book was originally going to be titled A Time For Wolves.

Also, one of the biggest if not the main "good girl," Daenarys, has had a lot of less than trivial things going right for her. And remember, the Lannisters aren't suppose to be "evil." Well, Joeffrey was. But Tyrion is one of the most prominent sympathetic characters of the whole series, and in the latter half of the what has been written so far, Jamie has slowly become more and more redeemed the more we learn about him and his motivations. Similarly, Tywin isn't really portrayed as "evil," but more of a cold and calculating sort. Also, although I would agree that Cersei is "evil," she actually becomes a POV character later in the series and one starts to take pity on her. What she has become is understandable in the context of what she has had to endure in her life.
 
Iggy said:
Since taking her vengeance on the witch she has come unto her own. Her dragons are in their teenage years and will give her problems as we already see. However, they are her children and even though capricious in nature, myth tells us dragons are loyal and wise.
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Myth is by definition fiction. And even if it was non-fiction, it still wouldn't be binding upon other works of fiction. Or do you mean the mythology of the ASOIAF setting? Are dragons in this setting wise, canonically? As depicted in the TV series so far, dragons appear to be nothing more than animals that happen to have supernatural abilities, like the direwolves.

Narapoia said:
Yeah, I had a thought along those lines this morning. I can understand that Martin wants to do something a little different with his storytelling, something out of the mould of the 'good guys' facing adversity, sometimes tragedy, but ultimately things work out pretty well for them. I respect that, I really do - there is so much same same pap bullshit coming out of the entertainment industry these days that it's refreshing to see it from an author and a production house like HBO.

Though now it almost feels like he is taking it a little too far, only inconsequential things really go right for the good guys, setbacks are similarly trivial for the bad ones. Your hopes are maintained by these trivial victories while the best characters, after sufficient development and screen-time for genuine appreciation to set in, are killed off ruthlessly.
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Your hopes, maybe. I think that if you're the sort of person whose enjoyment of a story requires getting emotionally attached to a "good guy" character and rooting for them to win, and being disappointed that they don't get a happy ending, then this may not be the show for you. It seems to me that sort of emotional rollercoaster is liable to eventually induce burnout. Better to start out without investment and watch the show in a different way, I think.

I've never seen The Wire, but Game of Thrones has reminded me about the things that I've heard of The Wire. I looked to see if anyone's compared the two, and I found this article. I find it to be pretty good description of the essence of Game of Thrones:

Mike Cavalier said:
You might find certain people, like Tyrion Lannister or Jimmy McNulty, more likable than others, but this is not about them; this is not their story, nor is it their hero’s journey. If anything, it’s the world itself — Westeros or West Baltimore — that serves in place of the central character. The citizens are merely collateral damage, and the villain is The System itself (be it the Iron Throne or the city’s bureaucracy), with its countless instances of corruption, dysfunction, and dehumanizing indifference to suffering.

These are shows that are ultimately about power: the structures that organize it, and competing strategies to seize it. The different clans, cultures, religions, ideologies, professions, and social classes are forever locked in dialogical struggle, jockeying for dominance with a significant degree of futility. Both are bleak, fatalistic Greek tragedies, where hubris and naïveté inevitably destroy everyone involved, and no one is spared.
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