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

Gwendoline Christie (Brienne) is so fun and charming on the extra interview shows. Only other things I've seen her in are small parts in Terry Gilliam films where I didn't notice her.

Ah yes, sell swords.

shell swords

they're swell swords when they're not being smell swords

wish they'd shown the set-up for Jon's death
"That Jon Snow needs taking down a peg or two. I've got a plan..."

"what shall we tell him? There's a white walker here to see him? but like a really hot lady one?"
"nah, just make up some shit about his family"

"and what is it really, again?"
"a plank of wood with 'traitor' scrawled on it"
"brilliant, brilliant. His face when he sees that!"

Cersei sells self swords by the narrow seashore

Magical assassins, witchy women, zombie monsters, dragon riders, wanton abuse and sadism, damsels in distress, actual cliffhangers.

Bah.

hearty lols at the piece of wood with TRAITOR carved into it

Yep, in case we didn't get it.

It did need an arrow pointing to a crudely drawn picture of Jon, though.

Should have put a mirror there

With the legend "Do you see?"

that little murder scene was basically the entire character arc of every dead stark combined and whittled down to one minute.

after sansa then shereen and now cersei idk how much more of this i can stand, this show is so hard to watch now

rip jon snow, i liked u even if everyone didnt. ps can i have yr big fur coat

You guys, it's spelled "warg".

ok i know this is dumb

but jon snow's eyes went cloudy and then normal again as he lay dying

i think it means somethink and i think he will be back or maybe he is a direwolf idk

its wldve been cool if at the end the wolf came up and started to eat his corpse

Probably the shadow of an ice dragon flying overhead. xp

just for nerds

Oh, you can do better than that.

Clearly be can't.

I'm finding it hard to load the bits of this thread that i missed since it goes back 5 years. Was looking for the beginning of discussion started last week and its among the 'now skipping x amount of comments' section which is several 1000 long & always loads so you're at the start of it.
Any chance of starting a new thread soon?

Saw the last episode yesterday and all the wrong people are dying.
JUst had to take the 1st book back to the library after only reading 1st 70 pages because it was on request and I'd been reading other things. Must get around to reading whichever volumes this is based on at some point. But my to read list is pretty large.
BUt does Martin have it in for the Starks? are they just too nice for a ruthless power struggle or something?

pretty sure Davos will return next season

With Snow dead and Sam out of the way, Davos is the eyes and ears of the viewer at the Wall, unless they spend a lot more time with Melisandre's character, or one of the random Watch dudes. I really hope he gets more to do.

Given they think John Snow is there, it's possible that Sansa and Theon might try and head to Castle Black, which would be a really bad idea.

For a second I thought that the dragon had taken Dany to Westeros and got all excited, but no, she's still on the wrong side of the sea.

Kinda missed Littlefinger for most of this season as well, with everything kicking off all over the place he felt conspicuous by his absence.

Loved how for just a few seconds, we got to see Dany all alone and not surrounded by hundreds of people, only for a whole battalion of Dothraki show up.

Brienne *might* have calculated that Stannis represents her best shot at getting Sansa out of Winterfell (although with no army I'm not sure how). So it's a question of whether her loyalty to the Starks trumps loyalty to Renly. Either way it's got to be significant we didn't see him die when they cut straight away to show Ramsey kill some redshirt no one cares about.

Given the show is now killing major and popular characters off at a rate of at least one a season, the Kingslayer will surely be the next to go?

unless they spend a lot more time with Melisandre's character,

iirc Melisandre became a viewpoint character near the end of the last book

as definitively dead as jon snow appears to be (unlike stannis as it happens, maybe brienne missed eh) there is a magic woman with powers bestowed from a god who's been known to resurrect people hanging around.

― Merdeyeux, Monday, June 15, 2015 11:50 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was thinking that myself. So wonder how permanent it is going to be.
Presumably does explain her turning up at that point if so, though don't know where else she would have gone.

xp You don't remember correctly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dance_with_Dragons#Characters

he does you know

as definitively dead as jon snow appears to be (unlike stannis as it happens, maybe brienne missed eh) there is a magic woman with powers bestowed from a god who's been known to resurrect people hanging around.

― Merdeyeux, Monday, June 15, 2015 11:50 AM (Yesterday)

Was thinking that myself. So wonder how permanent it is going to be.
Presumably does explain her turning up at that point if so, though don't know where else she would have gone.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHk9VZOWgAACaMI.jpg

Thought this was an okay season which, like the third, was redeemed by a pretty kickass last few episodes. The final scene was a bit close to misery porn for my liking though. :(

Also lol at GoT scriptwriters' Alanis Morrissettian concept of irony ("Jon always comes back").

xp You don't remember correctly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dance_with_Dragons#Characters

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/POV_character

A Dance with Dragons

Jon Snow - 13 chapters
Tyrion Lannister - 12 chapters
Daenerys Targaryen - 10 chapters
Theon Greyjoy - 7 chapters
Quentyn Martell - 4 chapters
Davos Seaworth - 4 chapters
Barristan Selmy - 4 chapters
Asha Greyjoy - 3 chapters
Bran Stark - 3 chapters
Jon Connington - 2 chapters
Cersei Lannister - 2 chapters
Victarion Greyjoy - 2 chapters
Arya Stark - 2 chapters
Areo Hotah - 1 chapter
Jaime Lannister - 1 chapter
Melisandre - 1 chapter
Varamyr Sixskins - 1 chapter (Prologue)
Kevan Lannister - 1 chapter (Epilogue)

Is she magic or just sometimes magic? Because it's possible Witchy Woman worships the god of coincidence, too. Either that or the fickle Red God told her to abandon Stannis and head back to help Jon Snow. But her Lady Macbeth deal has been pretty strong, so with Stannis (clearly) not dead, there is plenty of time for her prophecies to come true. It was impatient Stannis's fault for thinking they'd happen this season.

Lots of cliffhangers this season. Dany alone. Bros ride out to find her. Aria ... blind? Stannis ... whatever happened? Sansa and Theon jumping off a cliff. Jon Snow bleeding out. Anyway, I'd call this subversive storytelling - killing off or otherwise sidelining your strongest characters at a surreal clip - but I'm not sure Martin is that clever/mean. I think he really does see this fantasy show/story as a kind of history, where of course bad things happen at a rapid clip, over and over again. Yet it's hard to tell a story as TV/book entertainment (yay!) *and* as this-is-just-how-it-happened history (boo!) and keep it together, having it both ways. it's like his excuses for violence, rape, etc. "Well, this is the middle ages, when bad things like that really happened. Also, there are dragons and magic."

This episode really doubled down on an over-reliance on violence and sadism toward women as a means of storytelling shortcut, who if they aren't being tormented are more or less just literally sitting around, with as of yet no clear glimpse into their thoughts or goals or strategies. We know Cersei is a schemer. When will Sansa have some agency? Will she? What of Breanne? Is she just there as a perpetual honor guard? How about Witchy Woman? Will we ever know her inner workings, or is she just meant this be this vague boob baring figure? Even Dany has been weirdly passive; I'm not even sure why she was hanging in that Mereen shithole. At the very least, whatever happened to Aria resulted (as with Cersei) from her own theoretically bad decisions, which puts them on more equal footing with their equivalent male punching bags.

Anyway, tough show to watch, for many of those same contradictory reasons. It's a fun adventure fantasy but also absolutely no fun.

the impression i get is that ppl's reading of melisandre hightailing it was that she was fleeing for her life, but i think her abandonment of stannis was supposed to seem more significant.

http://i.imgur.com/DxmLEos.jpg

Mel was also shook that her god seemed displeased

or indifferent

The way I saw it was that she realized at that point that Stannis wasn't the rightful king and therefore wasn't the one the Lord of Light was backing

xxp

"NOW you tell me!"

On Melisandre's escape: it's hilarious how bad the show is at explaining this stuff. Perhaps we might get some satisfying explanation next season, but honestly odds are higher they'll think up some weird reason to have her raped, and then saved from a vengeful woman by a man.

Maybe her long game is just to one at a time convince everyone in the royal line to kill their children and then rush into battle, until there is no one left but her.

I wish this show were a little more clear with its magic. There is major magic: snow zombies, wargs, dragons, etc. No doubt. Then there is minor magic: walking into fire, seeing the future (maybe?). Then there is weird science magic: people back from the dead (maybe?) etc. It's just another frustrating inconsistency of Martin's real/not real world. At least in the middle ages what passed for magic was really some sort of science. Here, though, there is totally magic. Except when there isn't or when it doesn't work.

It's many times more clear in Martin's books. The show consistently fucks it up.

bviously the show compresses and expands time at will. Melisandre might not have been able to ride that fast to make it to the Wall when she did, but it was necessary for her to show up there to foreshadow Jon's probable resurrection. Who cares except you really. It's left fuzzy because we don't know exactly when things are happening in which place, which rings true for Medieval-ish times when peasants didn't find out shit about shit until months or years after it happened, if ever.

O

i once tried to figure out how much time was passing between scenes of The Room and it gave me vertigo.

YOU'RE TEARING ME APART DROGON

It's just another frustrating inconsistency of Martin's real/not real world. At least in the middle ages what passed for magic was really some sort of science. Here, though, there is totally magic. Except when there isn't or when it doesn't work.

this is a seriously dumb complaint

i understand the appeal of having firmly establish rules for magic but that is explicitly not what this story wants to do. in particular, the current context is that magic literally disappeared for generations, to the point where a lot of the population were and are skeptical about magic having existed at all (outside of dragons whose prior existence is clearly evident). magic has returned during the course of the narrative we are following and ppl are in the process of working out what it does and how. so as unsatisfying as it might be to have GRRM seen to make shit up as he goes along, he has built that licence in.

martin not having a magic "system" (as is common in the genre he works in) is one of his strenths imo. at least so far, magic remains mysterious, unexplained and unexplainable. the system approach is actually a sop to a more modern mindset i think.