HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

if you believed that all characters we believe to be dead are actually dead and dead forever then that's on you

Somebody upthread said they liked this season because the show stopped taking itself seriously.

j0rdan otm. what is (presumed) dead can never die

Question: has GRRM said whether he watches the show or not? Obviously he wrote a few episodes. I know he's working now, supposedly, but is he going to sit out as a show writer from here on out? Does he, in essence, have to avoid spoilers as well, or are they running all changes by him?

Brienne and jamie meeting eyes tenderly was *kisses fingers* so bad

― 龜, Sunday, June 12, 2016 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i ship

― J0rdan S., Monday, June 13, 2016 11:01 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seconded

i love this show but i think it fetishizes the lore of GOT too much to say that the blackfish/river run plot went nowhere

also it's like literally factually wrong i think to say that the arya/faceless man plot went nowhere

and the hound coming back is sick he's an amazing character and also he's noticeably changed so it also has a point!

the "that's on you" argument with this show is kinda mystifying; you think i'm somehow watching it wrong or incapable of following its machinations? It's not been particularly strong this season. It's okay if you don't agree but buttressing the argument against "reviving characters lowers the stakes" with "lol of course people come back from the dead, it's a teevee show" and "it's not like A LOT of people are coming back from the dead" sounds like bad boyfriend syndrome.

faceless men had a very inert quality as far as the storytelling, like it went somewhere plotwise, but it felt like nothing happened

the hound is rad glad to have him back and on a mission from god

the faceless men plot sagged for a lot of its runtime but i feel like the payoff this season has been pretty awesome

preview for next week seems to show where the budget for this season was concentrated.

never been quite drawn in by the arya plotline but i think it could now go in some interesting directions.

spent some time on the wiki last night looking at the different religious system of the world: will be fascinating to see how these play out in the end game, particularly the prophecies of the "lord of light" and the messiah figure.

prior to the high sparrow the faith of the seven seems sorta analogous to a corrupt and non-spiritual catholicism, with maybe the high sparrow as a Luther or Calvin type figure (without the schism...yet).

and not sure what to make of "the old gods." there is obviously a fuzzy line in this universe between the natural and supernatural and yet characters are often portrayed as skeptics of this or that religion, which is weird and interesting. not sure how well martin has thought all this through but it's one of the things im most intrigued by at this point.

I'm kind of glad the extravagant theories weren't right but perhaps it was too plain.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, 13 June 2016 08:32

I think part of why I feel like this is because there was at least a good and credible setup for the Waif failing as a faceless person, but somehow Jaqen is quickly convinced that Arya has become a nobody without any real proof. He's a really bad judge of faceless trainees. Which is a shame because I always liked him.

one of the pleasures of fantasy literature is that by constructing a universe from scratch its also able to hint at a pre-modern sense of a deep history that goes back infinitely into time and also a world still more or less available for new discoveries. arya's "what's west of westeros" is great because it widens the scope on an increasingly smaller world (always the saddest parts of fantasy epics is that the worlds becomes overly-explained and small-seeming).

one thing i really admire about martin's world-building is that he kinda did this on two levels: both the deep history and the conspiracies of the previous generation are driving the plot at the same time.

and "it's not like A LOT of people are coming back from the dead" sounds like bad boyfriend syndrome.

― De La Soul is no Major Lazer (ulysses), Monday, 13 June 2016 16:22

But there isn't a lot.

And while there are loads of unconvincing things, Dany flying back home at a good moment and one giant approving of Jon Snow are not examples of that.

I'd also really like to know how much GRR Martin is giving the show, because if he only gives major plot points then there's possibly going to be a lot of things in the show that go nowhere. I think lots of things will suffer. I've heard most of Tyrion's best parts come from the books so it's not surprising he hasn't really shone recently.
Would be funny if George had actually finished both books, given the tv writers a bare minimum and then got more readers from disappointed viewers.

and not sure what to make of "the old gods." there is obviously a fuzzy line in this universe between the natural and supernatural and yet characters are often portrayed as skeptics of this or that religion, which is weird and interesting. not sure how well martin has thought all this through but it's one of the things im most intrigued by at this point.

― ryan, Monday, June 13, 2016 11:47 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like this as well- I think it just illustrates how magic elements are just subtle enough and/or only prevalent among isolated groups given the lack of trustworthy hearsay or documentation, everyone who doesn't see something first hand discounts it as just stories depending on how farfetched those events sound.

meant to delete a few "just"s there

kinda wondering how arya will display the skills she got from the faceless men - maybe a scene where she navigates a laser tripwire field en route to hacking the mainframe for nuclear launch codes

The religious stuff, like the magic stuff (assuming there's a difference), is elided over in a really intriguing but confusing way in this show/story. It's pretty rare to find stories with gods *and* magic, no? That is, there is magic in this world, and there appears to be explicitly successful appeals to gods, but maybe that is actually magic, and there are no gods, because magic would kind of make gods redundant, unless the gods drive the magic. There's stuff that seems to be achieved through prayer/magic - like bringing people back to life - but then that's sometimes done with something approximating science (that is, whatsisname mysteriously bringing back the Mountain vs. Red Witch bringing back Jon Snow, or however Stannis staunched his daughter's greyscale, assuming it did not stop on its own). Have we seen any actual powers conveyed by the Drowned God yet? Certainly the Faceless Men straddle religion and magic. It's all an as yet tangled muddle, not necessarily in a bad way, but certainly supporting tautological arguments of the "this happened because this is what happens in this world" sort.

It's pretty rare to find stories with gods *and* magic, no?

in fantasy lit in general? no it is not rare at all. Foundational texts (Tolkien, Howard, etc.) all feature both.

But isn't the magic still basically godlike? Like, isn't Gandolf sort of elemental? He's not a mere mortal, at least.

im still thinking that jaqen is playing some longer game

yeah, I'd be surprised if this is the last time we see him

But isn't the magic still basically godlike? Like, isn't Gandolf sort of elemental? He's not a mere mortal, at least.

well the gods are more or less gone/absent/far removed from the action in LOTR. But their artifacts and servants (such as Gandalf) move the action. With Conan iirc it's more basic tribal magic sort of stuff, a transactional relationship - wizards/sorceresses/whatever are conduits for magical powers from various gods because they give the gods something (sacrifices, etc.)

jaqen and the faceless men subplot is basically a more violent reimagining of the origin story of every scooby doo villain imo right down to being thwarted by a meddling child

im still thinking that jaqen is playing some longer game

can't help but think the temple of the faceless god maybe has something to do with the banks of braavos, owed tons by the iron crown / lannisters, which debt hasn't been addressed or mentioned for a long time now

well and in the books there's the whole "jaqen in oldtown" set-up, supposedly trying to get his hands on some secret powerful shit

the thought had occurred to me that arya lives and becomes "no one" because her list includes people who a lot of other characters would want to see dead, as well as the iron bank, and the huge payoff on the contract(s) mean the faceless men stand to score big if they train up the person who made that list

honest question: why does everyone keep saying "the faceless men" when afaict there's only one faceless dude

Yeah there's like one guy, a dead waif, and some anonymous face harvesters seen many episodes prior.

How do we know this? Perhaps it's actually 1000 men using Jaqens face? But yeah, it was a pretty dumb thing to have 'Jaqen' turn up in Braavos, when he really had nothing to do there.

xp faceless interns

the thought had occurred to me that arya lives and becomes "no one" because her list includes people who a lot of other characters would want to see dead, as well as the iron bank, and the huge payoff on the contract(s) mean the faceless men stand to score big if they train up the person who made that list

― pratt truss it (dan m), Monday, June 13, 2016 12:21 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's an interesting take --- he seems so casual about her leaving at the end that i couldn't help but think this outcome (waif dead, arya back to being arya) was exactly what he wanted

not just casual, he actually smiled...a little bit.

It kinda made no sense.

I like the idea that they're happy to have her go kill Cersei

latest episode itself was kinda whatevs, but it's a table-setter, so that's fine

i understand forks' complaints about this season being way more fan-service-oriented and soap-operaish than previous seasons, but i don't think it's genuinely breaking any of its established rules and after the relentlessly bleak season that preceded it, it's an understandable move, it may be less weighty but it's also incredibly entertaining. at some point the show was gonna have to lean more into the entertainment camp

xp it made sense if you read that exchange as arya doing a mike drop and jaquen thinking "now... now the student... has become... THE MASTER"

look, i'll cop to getting too hung up on the death fakeouts. but those are good examples of the writing crew trying to unhinge all the unfinished GRRM directions and put their trains on different tracks. my sense is that the whole season is a table setter, bound to be capped by a few major deaths/alliance shifts. they're calling a do-over. it may not have been preventable given the utterly unique circumstances surrounding the source material but it's showing. A lot of the plot twists and character developments feel unearned and it's rubbing me the wrong way.

was also thinking that tyrion might have expected the slavers to show up because he figured dany would return with dragons, make a show of power, and then hey presto she's got the fleet she's always wanted

why does everyone keep saying "the faceless men" when afaict there's only one faceless dude

Budget, man. Do you know how hard it is to costume and feed a few more folks dressed in rags on location? They've got to save their money! Plus, did you know Peter Dinklage is a totally CGI creation? Shit's expensive.

latest episode itself was kinda whatevs, but it's a table-setter, so that's fine

I think it's a legit criticism to complain about table-settling 6 seasons in, let alone one (two?) episode before the finale. There have been several seasons of table-setting, it's time to eat, dammit!

...it was table-setting for events that will occur in the next two eps is what i meant (mostly in the finale, if ep. 9 is gonna be all bastard battle all the time as the preview seems to indicate)

So many of these complaints about this or that world-building storyline "not going anywhere" make me feel like I'm watching hundreds of fan sheep dogs trying to herd GRRM and the showrunners toward a predictable boring dragons vs. zombies conclusion.

dragons vs. zombies is pretty inevitable is it not?

The what's west of westeros line gave me hope that everyone would unite to go commit genocide on some undiscovered continent

Otherwise known as the conclusion GRRM was inevitably heading towards

Xp

camera pulls back to reveal the night king sitting with his eyes closed on a hilltop, his teeth bared in a wide grin
cue sound: "I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmonyyyyyy"

part of me suspects that GRRM had the ending first ("wouldn't it be rad if there was a big war between zombies and dragons?") and worked backwards from there.

And just kept going back, and back, and back, thousands of years ...

what're the odds on cersei blowing up king's landing in the final ep

The what's west of westeros line gave me hope that everyone would unite to go commit genocide on some undiscovered continent

― Blowout Coombes (President Keyes), Monday, June 13, 2016 2:28 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

varya and the iron born finally ascend the shores of a new continent, slow pan out to reveal buried hand of statue of liberty just a few dozen feet in

camera pulls back to reveal the night king sitting with his eyes closed on a hilltop, his teeth bared in a wide grin
cue sound: "I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmonyyyyyy"

― De La Soul is no Major Lazer (ulysses), Monday, June 13, 2016 2:32 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the night king is v misunderstood he broke all his vows and scandalized his child but he's an artist at heart