HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

Does Stannis remind anyone else of Jason Statham? Just me?

he reminds me of Roose Bolton & a bunch of other minor characters. Give some of these dudes some eccentric hair-dos or trademark funny hats so I can keep up.

he reminds me of Roose Bolton & a bunch of other minor characters. Give some of these dudes some eccentric hair-dos or trademark funny hats so I can keep up.

Hate to harp on this shit in the spoiler-free thread but again, I think this is a (possibly inevitable?) failing of the tv show. In the books there is all the difference in the world between Stannis' monomaniacal drive for what he perceives as truth and justice vs Roose Bolton's peculiar concoction of the same cloak-and-dagger stuff they're all working and sheer pantomime-villain malevolence

Well there was one book scene featuring Roose in Harrenhal where, if the TV show had followed the book, would've clearly leeched the confusion with, say, Stannis.

xps taling to myself still: even like animated shorts telling us about the children of the forest and the first men, or whatever. like para-texts.

― ryan, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 5:36 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

these exist btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DytL8fXMEaA

roose is a try-hard, stannis is supremely disdainful

Still, you'd think the fact that they happened at all would make people a little more wary. If someone once told me dragons fried thousands and zombies took out a bunch more, I'm not sure how well I'd sleep, no matter how gone they supposedly are.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 4:22 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, well you'd think that ppl on our world would give a bit more of a shit about climate change but

wow thanks those videos are pretty neat. sounds like the actors from the show are narrating it?

Dragons and Zombies are infinitely more easy to understand and conceptualise than climate change.

xpost

Looks like a compilation of the little historical videos that are in the blu-ray special features. It's nice that someone pulled these together because watching them in a million 5 minute chunks is a pain in the ass

Giant fire breathing dragons that actually wiped out entire cities and killed thousands trumps scientific models and hypotheses. But speaking of climate change, you'd think some of these dudes might be preparing for potential endless winter, too. Winter is coming, etc. So we've got the threat of dragons (real, recent), snow zombies (mythical) and a long winter (people know about this, right? or was the last Westeros ice age eons ago, too.)

http://io9.com/5906300/5-scientific-explanations-for-game-of-thrones-messed-up-seasons

yeah there are tons of explanations for why a planet would have irregular seasons. a planet that would have both these irregular seasons AND an ecology that closely mirrors earth's is, however, ridiculous. but, you know, MAGIC!

it is magical how boring you are about this

That's my fave aspect of the show, actually. Magic is real but hardly pervasive. Just every once in a while, oh yeah, MAGIC. Like, you'd think a red witch with actual powers would be as pervasive as dragon skulls, but no, just another headache to deal with.

persuasive not pervasive.

i think the d&d dungeon master's guide would describe this as a 'low magic world'

in the books there are numerous hints about the seasons and seeing as a major theme of the series is a) magic is returning to the world and b) a really long winter (brought by the magical ice creatures* & their zombies) is coming and everyone's going to be fucked, I would hardly say it's a deux ex machina. there's clearly a resolution coming.

*not a spoiler, see end of last episode when guy drops the water & it freezes.

u just kill them w obsidian daggers not really that big a deal jeez

and they call them dragonglass. hmmm, makes you wonder....

interesting thing from those videos is that the Starks are sorta ethnically distinct from the rest of westeros.

I like that the different speakers in that video describe their history differently, depending on how their family was affected by the events.

i always figured the weird seasons were caused by their planet spinning on an irregular axis (i have no science credentials)

The sun probably spins around the earth in westeros

I imagine when shakey reads terry pratchett he is thinking " HM! Could a giant space turtle REALLY support four giant space elephants AND a whole planet?! SCIENCE, ANSWER ME!"

Giant fire breathing dragons that actually wiped out entire cities and killed thousands trumps scientific models and hypotheses. But speaking of climate change, you'd think some of these dudes might be preparing for potential endless winter, too. Winter is coming, etc. So we've got the threat of dragons (real, recent), snow zombies (mythical) and a long winter (people know about this, right? or was the last Westeros ice age eons ago, too.)

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 3:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

well but the targareyan's have been entirely wiped out excepting a teenaged girl from the pov of tywin lannister et al. "winter is coming" is basically a phrase that everyone makes fun of b/c lol the pessimist starks who shut themselves away in the north and are m/l a different race than the Andal people who control the rest of Westeros (excepting Dorne). The threat of dragons that last really laid any kind of waste to westeros is well out of recent memory (all the popular songs now are things like "Rains of Castamere," narratives about political treachery and military strength) and, "whoa a young lady has some dragons on another continent" isn't really actionable intelligence. It's kinda like Who Gives a Shit? The coming long winter, and the Lannister destruction of the bread basket of Westeros in preparation for it, is one of Martin's critiques of the short-sightedness of war and those in power. No matter how little food is available for the "small folk" Tywin and Cersei will have all the feasts they want! There's no sense of need for those in power outside of protecting that power so there will remain no sense of need. And as far as the White Walkers are concerned, it's been literally thousands of years since the wall has really been anything other than a kind of polite prison camp. White Walkers are a fairy tale. The watch is desperate for recruits, why wouldn't they say they've seen mythical bullshit coming to gain more men? They've got like a hundred dudes! They'd do anything for new blood!

anyways i have always read the White Walkers as a metaphor for the inevitable inaction on climate change until it's actually making the rich suffer, so props to whoever brought up the idea.

I usually avoid this thread cos of fear of spoilers and increasing distaste for the show's politics, bt awesome post man

def feel that they lost momentum with the white walkers after the end of season 2 - all that marching towards the wall but where are they now? meanwhile bran suddenly goes from a snail's pace north to suddenly at craster's in just a couple of minutes.

Didn't we determine they're just somewhere ... chillin'?

xpost Someone's been doing some out of class reading! Seriously, though, good post. I'm glad someone is paying attention. Speaking of which, though, the show's done a pretty poor job establishing the extent of poverty, starvation, etc., imo. It all just looks like generic grim movie Medieval misery and squalor to me.

I think the point of Feast For Crows, if indeed there was one, to establish said poverty and starvation. Not much smallfolk action in the first three books.

there's definitely a sense in books 2 and 3 that the countryside and villages have been devestated to a large extent

There are moments in the show where I totally expect it to bust out into:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfGpVcdqeS0

Iirc, the only real glimpse we've gotten of the plebes, at least in King's Landing, is the ep where Joffrey ventures out into the public and almost gets killed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xd_zkMEgkI

Sorry, been a while since I watched this, actually.

the thing this season with the hound and arya's encounter with the guy and his daughter was supposed to be a little bit of that flavour i guess

Python or just poor people in general? Because it was a bit of both.

Giant fire breathing dragons that actually wiped out entire cities and killed thousands trumps scientific models and hypotheses. But speaking of climate change, you'd think some of these dudes might be preparing for potential endless winter, too. Winter is coming, etc. So we've got the threat of dragons (real, recent), snow zombies (mythical) and a long winter (people know about this, right? or was the last Westeros ice age eons ago, too.)

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 6:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya but dude we see storms and icebergs melting on tv. in GoT there's no mass media or even real historical record and most people cant even read. they have more pressing things to worry about most of the time.

lol Terry Pratchett I ain't reading that crap
xxxxxp

The climate change stuff, sure, I get that. But dragons were 150 years earlier, which is not long ago, and there are actual giant skulls and real proof, and no one denies they existed and killed untold numbers of people. If the US Civil War was filled with game-changing, people-eating fire breathing dragons, I'm not sure any degree of illiteracy would make people forget that. It'd be like the dinosaurs lived not 70+ million years ago but in the 1800s and were a scourge and almost destroyed society.

Do we know if these people age like us humans?

yes but we live in a world of civil war docs and tv shows and books. there's no printing press even in GoT world!

at this point they're basically legendary

Do we know if these people age like us humans?

― Josh in Chicago

They do.

there are actual giant skulls and real proof

None of which the peasants get to see.

I think in a pre-mass media society the boundary between myth and history is far far hazier than what we're used to.

also they do mention them, they're just not freaking out about them, and they dont really have reason to

(that they know of)

I don't think anyone has ever treated dragons as legendary on the show? And why would they? We only disbelieve magic because where told to do so, for the largest part of human history, everyone agreed that a guy could be crucified and then come back to life three days later.

You guys are right that the boundary between myth and history would be hazy, but it really goes in the opposite direction. 150 years after dragons decimated a city, the populace would probably believe that the city had been full of unicorns. Stories rarely became less legendary over time.

also they do mention them, they're just not freaking out about them, and they dont really have reason to

Because they're fire breathing dragons who just a couple of generations ago were actual death-from-above beasts who destroyed cities? If someone had a baby dragon, I wouldn't think, aw, how cute, thank god that will never get bigger and try to kill me. But hey, that's just me.

150 years is really not that long.

ideology can do funny things to historical memory.

I guess it's like, I'm sure we're all concerned about the re-emergence of the far right and neo-Nazism in Europe right now, but we all spend the vast majority of our time worrying about personal shit rather than that. And we have much more direct evidence of that than the people of Westeros do of the return of the dragons.

And we have far less to worry about in our day to day lives.