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

post-fantasy

Is that a younger Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley? xp

That's Martin Starr from the well pre-SV (and probably ultimately superior) Party Down.

lol younger Gilfoyle

I think you mean older Haverchuck

Martin Starr debating hard sci-fi with that woman in Party Down is probably the funniest thing I've ever seen on TV. As well as his attempt to point out that Jim Morrison didn't write the lyrics to "Light My Fire".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCqjR1gHyIQ

I know this show is really popular but I've been surprised by how often I hear supermarket workers talk about it and people I know who I never imagined would like it.

Sullivan: Oh, Gilbert! You and your world of topsy-turvydom. In 1881, it was a magic coin; and before that it was a magic lozenge; and in 1877 it was an elixir.

Gilbert: In this instance it is a magic potion.

Taystee drops a "Winter is coming" in the latest season of Orange Is The New Black.

Hoping Cersei will respond in kind with "trust no bitch".

would sound better than other houses

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Tuesday, July 5, 2016 2:14 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

warmer, too

cut down on your electric

The actress they got to play Lyanna in the last episode actually looked quite a lot like Emilia Clarke in her scene. Theories ahoy!

everyone in the world: i usually dont like shit with dragons and swords but i like this
nerds: ahhh nooo this really freaks me out for some reason

This is the TV equivalent of nerds throwing tantys because Normal People all play games not but theyre not REAL gamers.

http://www.nappertime.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/milestones-grrm.jpg

Quite like this picture

This is the TV equivalent of nerds throwing tantys because Normal People all play games not but theyre not REAL gamers.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Wednesday, July 6, 2016 1:25 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah it's the classic nerd backlash pattern: lamenting the lack of respect or appreciation for a treasured show/genre/movie/book/band/whatever but flipping out when it actually receives some

Have to admit that it annoyed me when some people sold it as "fantasy for people who hate fantasy", partly because this style of fantasy has been quite popular for a long time now.

There's a huge crossover in the readership of historical fiction and fantasy, so historical fantasy is also popular.

Yeah it's the classic nerd backlash pattern: lamenting the lack of respect or appreciation for a treasured show/genre/movie/book/band/whatever but flipping out when it actually receives some

― Rob Boss (latebloomer), Thursday, July 7, 2016 11:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

everyone is the world: i usually dont like shit with dragons and swords but i like this therefore it must not be fantasy.
nerds: Yes it is. Some fantasy is really good, we've been trying to tell you.

― chap, Tuesday, July 5, 2016 2:58 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's a variation on this with comics - had this conversation a lot circa 2007

"Watchmen is amazing! Have you read it?"
"Yes! Also, if you enjoyed that, these are some really good comics you might like..."
"Nah that's nerd stuff"

i.e. Frustration is seeing people miss stuff they'd probably enjoy, not being protective of our precious genre boundaries. It's like when your grandparents can't be arsed to figure out how the digital TV works - "But you love nature documentaries and channel 43 is nature documentaries ALL DAY" "Nah it's too much effort I'll stick with BBC 1 thanks"

it's not like gRR martin is hiding his devotion to jRR tolkien

busted!

But you know what people meant when that say they like this but they don't like fantasy, right? They mean they enjoy the real world stuff, but aren't interested in the fantasy stuff. I like fantasy, but at the end if the first book I would have loved for it to continue without dragons or white walkers. I think that's what people mean - what they enjoy is not the 'fantasy' tropes.

Ha, and sometimes I feel like Patrick O'Brian's books could use the odd giant octopus

Dowd- I feel some of that. I love otherworldly fantasy but in the case of GOT it is mostly the historical style stuff I love. I could easily leave the dragons, but without white walkers or any fantasy at all, it probably wouldn't be as good.

I'd say HBO's Rome and the two different shows about the Borgia's would be examples of ancient age soap operas that have been tried in the past decade or so.

In my mind invented cultures, societies and histories are just as much fantasy as dragons and zombies. Not trying to diss anyone else's perspective, though.

sometimes I feel like Patrick O'Brian's books could use the odd giant octopus

You should probably read "The Terror" by Dan Simmons.

^ That's about to be a TV series on AMC

Oh shit!

Read some off-putting things about Simmons but have had him recommended to me a lot. (Sorry, can take that to the SF thread on ILBooks.)

In my mind invented cultures, societies and histories are just as much fantasy as dragons and zombies.

Sure, I agree - but that's not what people are talking about when they discuss whether or not GoTs is 'fantasy' or not.

Well I'm not sure I have much helpful to add to that version of the discussion.

Xposts - Simmon's politics are... odd, but he's a good storyteller with some great ideas. Very offbeat.

TBH I don't think I've ever heard someone say e.g. "This would be great without dragons!" I mean, I don't really care that it's snobby about genre, it's more that it's a dopey call about what works for the story.

Dragons just never did it for me somehow. I love loads of mythical creatures.

xps Simmons' books are hit & miss. Hyperion/Endymion are probably my favourite sci-fi books ever and also really enjoyed Illium/Olympos and The Terror. Flashback is absolutely awful though as his right wing political views come crashing to the fore

Never heard of Dan Simmons, where to begin? The Terror?

Yes. Begin with The Terror. Survival/historical/horror. Endymion/Hyperion is Chaucer in space.

TBH I don't think I've ever heard someone say e.g. "This would be great without dragons!"

I cant be 100% certain, but I swear at least one person said something along these lines on the original thread.

Probably me.

I skipped several episodes of this season but did just catch up with the last two. Battle of Bastards was great from start to finish, I think, up there with the best of the show, which clearly does better with action than with talking (which is perhaps why all these hours of talking the last couple of seasons have been problematic). It and the season finale were a great mesh of set pieces and, like, Silence of the Lambs-y, with very satisfying grisly, gothic revenges eked out, even if they were mostly yet again more hitting the reset button than advancing the story. Season finale was a lot more uneven than the penultimate episode, with more of the sorts of head scratching decisions/confusion endemic to the series. Like all the books in the library (which would only be plausible if those were literally all the books), or Verys in Dorne one scene and back on the ship with Dany the next (even if it was a flash forward, showing passage of time is not the show's strongest suit). Or returning to Dorne at all, even if it becomes important for some reason later on. Or still total lack of clarity of what the Three Eyed Raven even is/does, a subplot which to me rivals Twin Peaks for inexplicable bullshit thus far, albeit of a more joyless bent.

Curious how the Dorne stuff or even Littlefinger's obscure machinations will play a roll in the last remnants of this tale, as there doesn't seem like there's a lot of room for soapy political maneuvering when the show is still ultimately set up to be an epochal battle between dragons and zombies. Maybe the Dragon Queen will show up to King's Landing with her fleet and army, and the Iron Island guy will show up, too, and they will fight over who gets to fight Cersei. And then Dorne will show up and lay claim to fighting her, too. And then just when it's all about to go down, it starts snowing and zombies (on boats?) attack, and they all have to attack the zombies, and Sam swoops in with the vital information re: dragon glass, and then they win, and then they all turn to each other again and are all, OK, the great evil has been vanquished, so where were we? Ah, yes, time to battle each other for the Throne!

xpost Having skimmed some of his book descriptions, is a lot of Simmons sort of high concept riffs on old lit and/or Stephen King?

Like all the books in the library (which would only be plausible if those were literally all the books)

I don't get your issue.

I didn't think about it until now, but that scene before the Battle where Ramsey keeps calling Jon "Bastard" is probably meant to remind of the scene in the first episode of the series where Tyrion calls Jon "bastard" a bunch of times and then tells him to wear the name like armor.

I thought Ramsey's villainy was run into the ground several seasons ago, but he was super effective (or better written?) in the Bastards battle.

xpost I think it was discussed upthread? From what we can tell most of this world is functionally illiterate, and certainly not doing a lot of readin' and writin', certainly pre printing press. So kind of crazy to suddenly see a library stuffed with thousands of books. Who wrote them? About what? Instruction manuals? Beach reads? Who's reading them? Just a handful of Maesters? It was a shot designed to be spectacular - which is fine and effective - but it doesn't make much sense. Then again, the ancient libraries of Greece supposedly housed hundreds of thousands of books, so I dunno.

weirdest nit pick evah

Yeah I guess it's safe to assume the majority of Westeros is illiterate, although I don't think that's been explicitly stated, but there has certainly been a large enough literate elite for long enough to create many large libraries worth of books. As you say, they existed in the mostly illiterate middle ages so this really is not an error at all as far as I can tell.

xpost Oh, for sure. It's absolutely minor, like the crates at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Just saying that I had nothing bad to say about Battle of Bastards, but started noticing some familiar little things bugging me again in the finale. But that's just me.

I don't enough about the history of books, but I think a lot of Greek society was well read, but European middle ages was ... not? Certainly religious books abounded, and poetry and stuff, recopied over and over again by monks and whatnot. I suppose in this GoT world, maybe the Maesters have spent millennia doing the same. And certainly no one being able to read would explain why no one knows shit about the impending doom of historical precedent.

I don't think the overall literacy of the population means much here. This library is restricted for the use of maester's. They probably had to institute the policy after too many beggars came in just to wash themselves in the restrooms.

I suppose that goes back to the show's issues of scale, then, too. How many Maesters are there?

It seems like your sort of repeatedly going "here is some information the show has not provided, and here is a list of potential plausible explanations which I came up with really easily." I don't think the onus is on the show to provide explanations of that kind.

*you're