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

It's been a bit obscured by it being stretched over two seasons, but it's worth pointing out how incredibly stupid this five episode stretch has been.

Jon Snow is terrified of the ice zombies, so he hatches THE PLAN to go beyond the wall to find one, so that they can get everyone on board with fighting them.
THE PLAN immediately goes pear shaped, and he has to be saved by Daenerys and her dragons. But at the cost of one dragon.
Then it turns out that a dragon was the exact thing the Night King needed to get beyond the wall. If it hadn't been for THE PLAN he couldn't have attacked anyway.
Oh, but it turns out that Cersei tricks them, so THE PLAN doesn't even work to get everyone on board.
But then it turns out that not only does THE PLAN 1) fail and 2) end up helping the exact evil it was trying to combat, but 3) they win anyway without Cersei, so THE PLAN wasn't even needed to begin with.

And also, what was even supposed to be the point of getting Cerseis army anyway? They ended up planning to lure the Night King close to Bran, so more soldiers would just be getting in the way, and would mean more undead enemies eventually.

That said, all of it being so stupid makes me thing GRRM will just avoid anything having to do with that whole thing, and will just have the Night King be killed by Arya midways through book seven in a much simpler way.

it's a relief the night king isn't the final battle. the moans that the show doesn't surprise anymore don't really fit with the ppl complaining they'd built the white walker menace up too much to be dealt with so abruptly

The Night King hasn't even been introduced in the books, so maybe he just made up a rubbish villain of the top of his head to get them off his back.

Yeah but there's satisfying surprises and stupid ones xp

Hey Fred what’s your take on why they didn’t just ride the eagles to mount doom in the first place

I'm not much of an arya fan but I wld still say her suddenly killing the night king leans more towards satisfying than stupid

They made a big deal about this Winter being potentially like an Ice Age but also symbolic of the White Walkers plan. Arya has totally destroyed that, is the real climate change. Or Cersei is the real Winter.

Hey Fred what’s your take on why they didn’t just ride the eagles to mount doom in the first place

― El Tomboto, 30. april 2019 13:59 (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lord of the Rings is stupid as well :)

Xpost why not a fan? (Just curious. Not slamming you in any way!)

Btw totally not a Jon Snow fan. His facial expression is just....no. Also have to say, reading the books, even less of a fan.

I keep reading more and more hilarious meta-defenses of the show vis a vis budget. "They had to kill off the Dothraki because horses are expensive." "The giant wolf runs off because the wolf CGI was expensive." "Now that they've had this big battle they have to focus on talking and palace intrigue, because they blew the budget." And so on. The perplexing one I'm starting to see more of is "the show runners hate fantasy," "I'm glad the Night King is dead, I hate fantasy," and so on. The "zombies are boring and one-note" criticism I'm seeing is equally perplexing. It's all about the writing/plotting. If the zombies were boring it's because the show failed to make them more compelling. If the fantasy elements were unsatisfactory, unexplained or confusing, it's because the show never explained them or found a consistent place for them. (For that matter, if people were into this show but not fantasy, then I don't know what to say.) If supposedly dwindling budgets are shaping the plot, then the show didn't make the right use of budgets or wasn't smart enough to figure a way around them. And so on.

I read the first couple of books and was pretty underwhelmed, but the show seemed to do a pretty good job sticking to the script, as it were. I stopped watching the show a couple of seasons ago but have kept up, since it's a big cultural event. Yet more than ever I'm curious to learn if Martin had a better vision than what's apparently playing out in the show. I suspect he perhaps didn't, since he was constantly talking about Gordian Knots and whatnot, and also because he's struggling to write another book, but I also suspect however the show ends will at least in some way reflect his own narrative goals. I am a little surprised the show not only sped through his giant books so quickly but also seems to be in a strange hurry to wrap it all up. (While paradoxically doing a lot of wheel-spinning and stalling ...)

Arya delivering the killing blow was the one thing I did find satisfying about it, and as I and others have pointed out it's the plot point that reads most as a GRRM idea out of the episode.

It's the surprise of dispatching this threat that has been built up carefully since the very opening of the show so abruptly which is sloppy. That the threat is actually kind of boring and one-dimensional does not mean it's good writing to get rid of it and move on to more interesting things; good writing would have been making the threat more interesting, and maybe weaving it in with other threats and stakes in the dynamic manner the show used to be so good at. As they're doing it now, it's linear, like a platform game - we've defeated one boss, now on to the next one. And as the boss they've just defeated was set up (perhaps misguidedly) as being the biggest, the effect risks being one of bathos. Maybe the last few episodes will redeem this, though I'm not particularly hopeful (I'm sure I'll enjoy them nonetheless).

tldr - Weiss and Benioff are good at detail but shit at long term plotting.

I admittedly don’t really like fantasy and faux middle ages/magic/dragons stuff but they reeled me in with the eloquent dwarf and the nude women

I still want to know whether Bronn is still on his way to Winterfell to kill Cersei’s rivals! (There is no way he’s not going to flip allegiances at the drop of a hat)

As far as “where did Arya come from?!?” at the end, on rewatch, I have determined she must have gotten to the godswood before Theon’s demise, and hid herself amongst the corpses. Sneaky!

― El Tomboto, Monday, April 29, 2019 10:15 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, just two episodes prior, Jon Snow was standing in the exact same place in the godswood, turns around to see Arya, and says, "How did you sneak up on me?" It's her job, binch.

Eliza otm

My wife watched Joffrey die in bar in NY

Hubert Selby's Game of Thrones

Or Cersei is the real Winter.

Cersei *is* an anagram of "Ser Ice", after all.

I like the idea of Arya leaping out of nowhere and killing a major baddie at the end of every episode. Like Cato in the Pink Panther movies.

I hope there's still a chance that the end of this battle will influence what happens with the next one. That is, Sansa and Bran and Arya have shown their worth, while Dany and Jon mostly just flew around and didn't know what to do. Arya seems much more like a promised prince than either of them.

Is Jon not able to make the dragon breathe fire? I notice he didn't do this and kinda seemed pointless him riding around on it as a result.

lol Dany forgot to teach him "Dracarys"

Jon, I quite like book. Just reading the first one (and hopefully the others.) why did you dislike it? Too plodding?

arya has devoted her life to being a murderer, which I do not find endearing

I don't know how they cld have better dealt w the white walkers really. someone has to kill them and another big battle wld be a slog. I do not care for ppls normative ideas abt writing and plotting but I love a bit of juicy bathos & it wld suit GoT tho idk how much we'll get.

anyway we can shut down Twitter now, it's done

Valar Morghulis
Valar Dohaeris
Valar my ragtime gal

— 🌹🏳️‍🌈 Kissinger for the Hague 2019 🏳️‍🌈🌹 (@InstantSunrise) April 30, 2019

xxxpost How did Sansa show her worth in battle? Hiding well?

Between Bran and Dr Strange I’m frustrated by seers as characters. They’re terrible for plotting, boring to watch in action, eliminate all possibilities for suspense, and create far too many “well if [x] could see the future then why not [y]” after-impressions

arya has devoted her life to being a murderer, which I do not find endearing

on Twitter the term "Mary Sue" was trending due to people accusing Arya of fitting that description which obviously makes no sense and comes down to standard-issue sexism. but then Sonia Saraiya said it was a better fit for Samwell Tarly and a whole other set of people got offended (with at least one person accusing her of "hating fat people", sigh); to be honest, I think she's right, in the sense that having him hold his own as a fighter through the long night didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I thought it undid the nice scene where the people headed to the Cyrpts dealt with their guilt over not fighting, and there was some talk about having the courage to know when and where you're needed and not needed. In general, though, it fit the wider pattern of equating the ability to kill and perform acts of violence with virtue, exalting fighting ability as the highest virtue there is. I think it's too bad they didn't let Sam just be an incredibly useful scholar and a voice for the power of knowledge. Isn't that enough?

I kinda think it's Sams scholarly achievements that are most Mary Sueish. Him easily curing greyscale and finding a wedding document nobody else has ever found was pretty bad. But I think it's mostly an effect of the show not bothering that much with Oldtown and the Maesters.

How did Sansa show her worth in battle? Hiding well?

did you miss the earlier scenes where she took out a couple dozen of the wights using her nifty spear (with removable dagger head) weapon? she fled through the library only when she was overwhelmed and seemingly the only one left

Wrong Stark :)

But Sansa showed bravery along with Tyrion. She was calm, stayed out of the way, then was brave when it mattered. And then the show didn't have time for more, because we needed to see Brienne just about to be killed a few dozen times more.

sorry, brain fart

really appreciated Sansa's "maybe we should have stayed married" line to Tyrion

how exactly did Grey Worm survive

Some Twitterites are saying he didn't? I couldn't say either way.

― chap, Tuesday, April 30, 2019 7:34 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He definitely survived because considerably more marginal characters got the gushy sad music treatment when they died. He might be gravely injured I suppose.

Still, excellent defensive enforcer, the kind every fan would want on their team. 8/10 performance even if Arya takes home the match ball.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, April 30, 2019 7:39 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He's fine! They showed him plenty of times fightin' along with all the other named characters inside the walls late into the battle.

No offense to anyone here or on twitter or whatever but sometimes I feel like I'm one of the only people who apparently is able to follow the entire episode clearly? Granted in this case the broadcast of this particular episode was apparently extremely dark for most people. Just saying sometimes I'm surprised at the confusions that come up overall.

yeah, it was fine for me--on HBO Go and on a big screen tv.

lol this is why I don’t watch this in a room full of people, too many damn questions .xp

I watched the HD broadcast and it was really dark at times. Kept changing light levels in the room to see if it would help. Going to try watching it on HBO GO later this week to see if I notice a difference.

HBO Go seems to throttle the quality a little at really high-demand times but it's still not nearly as bad as the compression cable/satellite companies throw on there

I hate to weigh in on pedantic image quality junk but this episode is going to look a lot better on blu-ray/digital download

Same! But I'm speaking sort of broadly about general character mix-ups and weird scene misreads that have generally followed almost every episode. There's definitely a lot of characters and places to keep track of, though.

xxxp

iirc those misreads were what led to the creation of our long-standing Sean Bean casting joke

Only thing I couldn’t follow this episode was the specifics of why Bran was warging but it makes sense now. I was able to follow all the characters well.

he was busy flap-flap-flapping his way into the Night King's heart

Only thing I couldn’t follow this episode was the specifics of why Bran was warging but it makes sense now.

saw more than one person joke on twitter today that he was watching avengers: endgame.

irl lol

confusion over what bran was up to is pretty universal. maybe on a binge watch more people would remember the scene where NK spots a bird-warging Bran.

We watched it on a pretty good screen and I still saw somebody who looked like Grey Worm and somebody who looked like Gilly being killed.

confusion over what bran was up to is pretty universal.

From that lol reddit link:

https://preview.redd.it/kslke5z4h8v21.jpg?width=640&height=853&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=61947039dd1756787bf4b1c75adc2f59fc6b7ac5

Be funny if the next three episodes are just them all sitting down and writing a constitution.

I wish they'd had the white walkers not entirely destructible by both dragonglass and valerian steel. Like although both may be capable of blowing them to pieces it depends on their purity or something and in many cases it merely incapacitates or paralyses them more like a poison, just to keep everyone guessing.

No offense to anyone here or on twitter or whatever but sometimes I feel like I'm one of the only people who apparently is able to follow the entire episode clearly? Granted in this case the broadcast of this particular episode was apparently extremely dark for most people. Just saying sometimes I'm surprised at the confusions that come up overall.

― Evan, Tuesday, 30 April 2019 15:15 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OK so what's your take on where the budding Sansa and Theon romance plotline goes from here

it's a love triangle with Bran now iirc

love this: https://mashable.com/2016/05/03/game-thrones-heir/?europe=true#feTYi625sZqU