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

http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/game-of-thrones-season-7-stormborn-questions.html

Who is the most powerful person in Westeros?
Duh — Samwell Tarly with a library card.

They leaned hard on the "Samwell is GRRM" thing last night

I saw it pointed out on twitter that Euron's magic fleet is even more annoying since the show spent five seasons of Daenerys trying to find a fleet to get back...

They gave up on any kind of rules guiding Westeros, all sense of geography is out of the window, and nobody knows anything about military strength anymore. Which is ok, but the exhausting things is that they still have all these scenes of planning and strategizing which clearly don't mean a thing anymore, and is just a complete waste of time.

jesus

trouble is, what made this show great at its best was that the big moments and reversals were rooted in well-drawn characters behaving in character in a specific context
- jaime lannister resignedly pushing a kid out a window
- joffrey baratheon choosing cruelty over honor and reputation
- tyrion lannister using cleverness and charm to extricate himself from certain doom
- robb stark neddily trusting in custom while walder frey did what was best for walder frey
- oberyn martell overplaying his hand for style points at the crucial moment
- etc etc

i know i said this last season but it still feels true: without GRRM's words to work off of, this feels like just a TV show, and the more fan service we get the less interesting it becomes

i think the first four seasons are almost completely outstanding (the fourth less so), but the last two were this mix of source material and original ideas that didn't always work even remotely. i think the last two episodes of last season were very good though and this season is as well. nothing as knife-twisting and intelligent as the best of seasons 1-3 but i think it will finish strongly. albeit very predictably. i don't think this is a GoT problem, so many of these prestige shows, even the better ones, have moments that are easy to telegraph far in advance.

Euron seems like a good antagonist. better to have a cackling glam pirate than a dinner table sadist like ramsay.

I do like the idea of a guy who basically hijacks the kingship of a shithole land just to strip it of its trees and build a fleet he can use to sail around and swing his dick at everything

the books and early seasons felt as if they had some substance you could dig into, and while grrm is tying himself in knots trying to maintain that in the books, the show has gleefully jettisoned the conceit and we just have surface now, theater, spectacle and set pieces, often very entertaining and i believe worthwhile in its own right but not the same thing as it was.

and the thing with euron's armada is not just building the ships, which is logistically improbably enough on its own, but the crewing of them. their whole fleet has just fucked off, exactly how many sailors are still around? and hell, they're a rape and pillage based economy, how much of the adult population just left?

it doesn't matter anymore. there were big ships and fire. it was good.

Theon and sis only took the best ships (about 50?) from the fleet. Doesn't seem like it would drain the entire population to man that many boats.

I have been enjoying Jim Broadbent, he's way overqualified for that role

But yeah they're running full on with the "only nerds care about some of these details" mindset now

Nah. I wish they would run full on with that. Instead of wasting time arguing whether or not it's 'right' for Jon to go to Dragonstone.

It was just a way to show more tension with Sansa, and so we could see Littlefinger sneer.

just wait till they hold off for like four more episodes till Jon and Dany even bang xp

god, Sophie Turner is so awful

I laughed out loud when Dani said, "Bend the knee." (see Chapo thread)

yeah same lol

especially the way she said it after a dramatic beat, and that it was spoken by the character most frequently mocked by dirtbags

and the thing with euron's armada is not just building the ships, which is logistically improbably enough on its own, but the crewing of them. their whole fleet has just fucked off, exactly how many sailors are still around? and hell, they're a rape and pillage based economy, how much of the adult population just left?

― Roberto Spiralli, Monday, July 24, 2017 6:39 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and that his dope new fleet is equipped with machine gun cannons firing explosive ordinance

lol. contrasted with qyburn's super secret anti-dragon tech being a bog standard piece of iron age artillery.

Just picturing the GoT writers' room puzzling over how to give Cersei's army a chance against the dragons and someone saying, "Wait, have any of you ever read this book, 'The Hobbit?'"

Yara could take only the crew loyal to her over Euron and was outnumbered by the latter's followers and fleet. He also knew they'd attempt to ally with Danaerys as that was his own plan he revealed upon his return. It all made relative sense (handwaving timespan required for one or two things as you have to do every episode now).

Was kinda hoping Qyburn's plan involved just building a wheeled wooden AT-AT with the dragon skull as its head but nm.

half thought some harryhausen skeleton dragon shit was coming up

It was just a way to show more tension with Sansa, and so we could see Littlefinger sneer.

― President Keyes, Monday, July 24, 2017 11:52 AM (one hour ago)

Not really -- it also showed that Jon is capable of learning politics: he left the local management with Sansa, who has the best chance of maintaining the obedience of the Northern lords, and who had previously complained that he did not acknowledge her contributions to battle strategy. Notice she appeared mollified at that announcement, where before she had been critical.

plot-wise, it also ties in with the conversation they had earlier where Sansa talked about how well she knew Cersei and how she learned a lot from her ... so we will assumedly get to see what Sansa has learned.

Power is power.

theon jumping ship is the first show-only development i've been excited about in a while. it offers opportunities to juxtapose with the hound's story.

euron, i don't care about him. he'll kill some people then get killed.

boy that grey worm

"well now i know why they call you grey worm"

Euron seems like a good antagonist. better to have a cackling glam pirate than a dinner table sadist like ramsay.

― nomar, Monday, July 24, 2017 1:27 PM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cautiously agree with this so far

otice she appeared mollified at that announcement, where before she had been critical.

I shouted "that oughta shut you up" at the screen at her at that point, lol

So I was confused by the ending. When Theon is in the water, that wasnt Yara, hanging from a ship's prow, above him? Someone upthread implied Yara and Ellaria are kidnapped, not dead. The melee made it really messy to work out.

i thought that was Yara hanging from the ship, but was also confused that there wasn't like a confirmatory close-up of her face

body hanging there was wearing her clothes, so

that wasn't yara hanging

yeah it was confusing.. I'm of the mind that Yara and Ellaria got captured and two sand snakes got killed...?

I thought it was Yara hanging, but it was ambiguous.

It was the two dead sand snakes, I'm fairly certain.

I still really enjoy the show and like a lot of the changes from the books, but boy howdy did they fuck up the Dorne storyline. They might have been better off leaving it out entirely

Yara, Ellaria and (I thought) the Snake that was below protecting Ellaria are alive at the end of the ep. The two on the prow were Obara (impaled, alas Whale Rider!) and the Snake with the whip (who was dangling), both of whom died on the deck.

it says something about the nature of the scene (and the show atm) that i don't really care that much who died and who didn't die and who's gonna show up later

Its more that these are all tertiary characters at best who need to be culled before the characters we really care about start wrapping their arcs

*it's

I mean, sure, but do they need to be dead to just leave them behind? Wait what am I asking, this is GoT.

those were the two sand snakes on the prow. they were wearing sand snake clothes. one was hanging from her own whip. one was impaled on her own spear.

Yeah when put like that it makes sense.

Having watched this episode I'm not convinced that being flayed alive is really a price worth paying for another crack at getting out of the friendzone.