|
Asgerd posted:“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends," Ser Jorah told her. "It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace." He gave a shrug. "They never are.” Which again is an instance of GRRM's writing being based on popular imagination of medieval societies, rather than actual societies. Historically peasants cared about politics a lot. Not in the "aristocrats are economic oppressors" sense we do in the present either, but in the "man that lord/the king is acting really stupid/impiously/violating social norms" kind of way.
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2021 20:54
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
|
| # ? May 4, 2024 21:13 |
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Which again is an instance of GRRM's writing being based on popular imagination of medieval societies, rather than actual societies. Historically peasants cared about politics a lot. Not in the "aristocrats are economic oppressors" sense we do in the present either, but in the "man that lord/the king is acting really stupid/impiously/violating social norms" kind of way. This is something that I wondered about in the Kingdom Come: Deliverance prologue, with everyone drinking and bitching about rival kings and popes and stuff. Cool to hear that it was (somewhat) accurate.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2021 21:10
|
|
|
Groovelord Neato posted:I'm one of the weirdos that much prefers the faux historical fiction aspect (which made the GRRM video I think I mentioned earlier funny) so Renly being taken out by a shadow baby feels so cheap and lame. Yeah that part never sat well with me. I think Melisandre would have been a lot more interesting if left ambiguous whether she is magic or not, and at times it seems the books want to do that, but this early instance kinda undermined and ruined that idea. Like there's the part where Stannis is talking with Davos about Balon and Robb's death and how it was thanks to Melisandre's leech magic and Davos says they could have been coincidence but like, my dude, you saw her spawn a demon baby how can you still be in denial that she is magical. And then later when we get a PoV chapter from Melisandre talking with Jon Snow she is like "oooh, my magic is stronger now that I'm close to the Wall and don't need to use my parlor tricks"...but AGAIN, YOU SPAWNED A DEMON BABY, YOU ARE MAGICAL. Make up your mind gurm I'd have liked it a lot more if Renly died some other death unrelated to Stannis
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2021 21:46
|
|
|
Strom Cuzewon posted:This is something that I wondered about in the Kingdom Come: Deliverance prologue, with everyone drinking and bitching about rival kings and popes and stuff. Cool to hear that it was (somewhat) accurate. Yeah Tides of History has some good episodes on it, the latter in particular: https://www.stitcher.com/show/tides-of-history/episode/classic-tides-peasants-and-the-medieval-countryside-78777891 https://www.stitcher.com/show/tides-of-history/episode/classic-tides-peasants-rebellions-and-resistance-79713774 And yeah KC:D is an interesting case, it has a lot of that, but it also has a lot of characters who are basically "people with present day sensibilities, but with old-timey swearing". I could have sworn Bret Devereaux at ACOUP had a writeup on it but it seems I imagined it...
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2021 21:53
|
|
|
Season 8 is good actually. (Could have used another episode or two to flesh out stuff) but holds the same theme as the rest of the show, namely real people are idiots and history is a hug mess with a few people getting a lot of lucky breaks. A lot of people hate the last season for the same reason they fell in love with the concept in the first place. Gritty fantasy. The way people act in the last season is how real people in the real world act all the time. They redeem themselves, and then go off and be idiots again.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2021 23:52
|
|
|
LionArcher posted:Season 8 is good actually. (Could have used another episode or two to flesh out stuff) but holds the same theme as the rest of the show, namely real people are idiots and history is a hug mess with a few people getting a lot of lucky breaks. A lot of people hate the last season for the same reason they fell in love with the concept in the first place. Gritty fantasy. The way people act in the last season is how real people in the real world act all the time. They redeem themselves, and then go off and be idiots again. they put the catapults in front of the infantry, man
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 00:27
|
|
|
Sanguinia posted:Its not like it never happened in Westeros before. That's what the Dance of the Dragons was, and as horrific as it was for the countryside it didn't collapse Westerosi society or end the notion of peaceful power transition. For that matter, it didn't when Robert seized the throne either. You've got to have a legitimate claim though. In real history this shows up time and time again even if that claim's a bit spurious. And it especially shows up during the Wars of the Roses which GRRM is using as his template. Renly does, as brother of the king. Even if Stannis is first, Renly has a decent claim and an army to back it. Just like during the dance of dragons - they've all got reasonable claims. Mace Tyrell isn't going to declare himself king, but Renly is absolutely fine to do it. See: Henry I of England as an example of exactly what Renly's doing.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 00:57
|
|
|
So here's a story I just read that makes me laugh knowing what we now know. You know the scene where Tyrion and Jaime are sitting there, and Tyrion tells the story about his handicapped cousin Orson who just sat there endlessly crushing beetles? "Thunk thunk thunk, smsh the bettles," that scene? Turns out that scene was a "gently caress you" by D&D towards Orson Scott Card. Orson Scott Card had heavily criticized their adaptation in even the earlier seasons. quote:But the screenwriters, perhaps compensating for their utter inability to find a filmic replacement for the deep-penetration viewpoint of Martin's writing, have taken any excuse for nudity and sex and blown it up into full-fledged, if soft-core, porn. So in retaliation, D&D created a mentally handicapped character named Orson, who just sits there smashing beetles all day, just as in Ender's Game: quote:The premise behind Ender's Game: a story about a child (children really), who are crushing bugs in a hypothetical future for absolutely no known purpose - other than because the bugs 'started it first'. In hindsight it makes perfect sense. They were utter hacks, Orson Scott Card called them on it, so they proved their hackishness by inserting a scene that did nothing but mock a critic. E: Orson Scott Card being a vile human being otherwise has no bearing on the fact that D&D could so little handle his criticism that they put an entire scene mocking him in their million-dollars TV show that was still getting rave reviews. Sky Shadowing fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Apr 22, 2021 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 02:39
|
|
|
Taear posted:You've got to have a legitimate claim though. In real history this shows up time and time again even if that claim's a bit spurious. You don't need a claim, Cersei becomes queen because she says is, all you need is enough power to make people accept it Sky Shadowing posted:So here's a story I just read that makes me laugh knowing what we now know. Stop trying to make me like D&D it won't work no matter how much they poo poo on Card Piell fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Apr 22, 2021 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 02:45
|
|
|
Sky Shadowing posted:So here's a story I just read that makes me laugh knowing what we now know. Telling Orson Scott Card to gently caress off in any medium is always an unalloyed good and should be done more often. D&D really loving suck, but at least they have not (to my knowledge) dedicated their whole lives to trying to making LGBT+ peoples' lives appreciably worse like Card has.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 02:59
|
|
|
You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to Orson Scott Card
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 04:39
|
|
|
Now I'm just imagining Dave Hill suggesting it and putting it in like Olly.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 04:44
|
|
|
Reminded of the mayor in Godzilla is Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel is his flunky. The movie still sucks poo poo but boy did they get a laborious own in on Roger Ebert. The Cousin Orson thing likewise is like ten loving minutes long and makes sense in no other context.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 04:51
|
|
|
LionArcher posted:Season 8 is good actually. (Could have used another episode or two to flesh out stuff) but holds the same theme as the rest of the show, namely real people are idiots and history is a hug mess with a few people getting a lot of lucky breaks. A lot of people hate the last season for the same reason they fell in love with the concept in the first place. Gritty fantasy. The way people act in the last season is how real people in the real world act all the time. They redeem themselves, and then go off and be idiots again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctr9ZfeyvXg
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 05:08
|
|
|
Strategic Tea posted:It's funny because the opposite is one of the things I enjoyed most in the Witcher novels (I guess the 'other' grimdark fantasy series). PittTheElder posted:Which again is an instance of GRRM's writing being based on popular imagination of medieval societies, rather than actual societies. Historically peasants cared about politics a lot. Not in the "aristocrats are economic oppressors" sense we do in the present either, but in the "man that lord/the king is acting really stupid/impiously/violating social norms" kind of way. GRRM's writing in both the books and the show shows that Jorah is a dumbass and entirely wrong about that. I mean, he's not wrong in that the idea that there will be a glorious peasant uprising when Dany rides into town just because she's a rightful heir and Robert is a usurper and they spend their days sewing secret dragon banners is entirely stupid, which is the point she's making. Viserys believing that codswallop Illyrio was feeding him was one of the many marks of what a dumbass he was, and Dany continuing to believe it was a mark of how naive she still was at that point, and Jorah was trying to dispel her of that illusion. But even a relatively cursory reading of the text makes is obvious that the feelings of the peasants vis a vis politics are in fact very important. The peasants decaying relationship to Joffrey was incredibly important several times in the King's Landing storyline. Rising religious radicalization among the peasantry is why the High Sparrow became such a threat. Ingratiating herself with the poor and downtrodden was how Margaery built a power-base for herself. And that's not even talking about how the peasents of Essos related to Dany as she became the Breaker of Chains and Mhysa. There's more examples, but I think you get the point. This whole element is of course abandoned after Cersei blows up the Sept of Balor, but that's just another reason the show went to poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 06:44
|
|
|
This thread has got me to do some 2 AM book rereading and god drat am I hungry now. For all it's faults, gurm is great at writing food porn.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 07:22
|
|
|
LionArcher posted:Season 8 is good actually. (Could have used another episode or two to flesh out stuff) but holds the same theme as the rest of the show, namely real people are idiots and history is a hug mess with a few people getting a lot of lucky breaks. A lot of people hate the last season for the same reason they fell in love with the concept in the first place. Gritty fantasy. The way people act in the last season is how real people in the real world act all the time. They redeem themselves, and then go off and be idiots again. People get lucky by being born rich not by having plot armor that magically decides they survive things that have been previously established to be lethal. People acting stupid and suddenly reversing character arcs isn't "gritty fantasy" its sloppy writing. I wanted MORE people to die, that would have been gritty fantasy. We see tons of characters in S8 get mobbed by enemy undead and just... survive inexplicably. That's not gritty at all!
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 08:23
|
|
|
I think I was more let down by the White Walkers being a one-and-done fight that ended up being basically unimportant beyond the fact that it briefly put most of the characters on the same side. It's literally the first plot thread you see in both the book and the show and it felt like it carried no weight at all.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 08:35
|
|
|
Zaphod42 posted:Robert wasn't the next in line; might already makes right. This is how I see it, as well. Sure, Stannis had a more "legitimate" claim to the throne...based on rules his brother broke to be King in the first place. The rules are stupid and arbitrary, and people only pretend to care until they have a good enough reason not to. Stannis had no charisma and then joined a weird fire cult. That probably seemed more relevant to a lot of Southern lords than the de rigueur preference for older sons, and so they backed Renly. I mean, in actual life a bunch of bigots decided their preferred candidate losing an election justified an insurrection to overthrow the democracy they claim to love. "But actually, the guy who won cheated," they tell themselves. Does that actually make sense? Is there actual evidentiary support for the claim? No. But it's a belief they accept because it supports their preferred narrative. I doubt a bunch of medieval lords would operate with a higher degree of reverence for the law as-written.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 09:44
|
|
|
Piell posted:You don't need a claim, Cersei becomes queen because she says is, all you need is enough power to make people accept it Cersei getting away with blowing up the Sept was one of the clearest signs that the writing was in steep decline, and is fairly representative of a few issues that would drag down the series; chief among them the fact that the story transitions from being about the society of Westeros to being about a small cast of plot armoured characters. There's zero reason why blowing up the Sept would do anything to secure Cersei's political postion. All she did was spurn the Lannister's crucial ally in the Tyrells, destroy the most important religious site in Westeros, and lose her a claim to any political authority with Tommen's death. However, because we're running on late season GoT rules, only 10 people really have any agency, so killing the named leader of a faction renders them completely inert. The Commons of King's Landing don't care that they're religious leader was martyred, the Tyrell's fold after two scenes in the next season, and Cersei assumes complete control over the House of Lannister with no objections from the extended family. Cersei blowing up the Sept and being ruined in the consequences would both make more sense and fit with the running theme of her character that despite her ruthlessness and short term victories the consequences of her plans usually spiral rapidly out of her control. Instead, D&D needed to rush all the peices into place for their terrible final season, and so she gets away with it Scott free. Vagabong fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Apr 22, 2021 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 10:40
|
|
|
I don't necessarily think its totally beyond the pale that Cersei cutting off the heads of so many opposing snakes in one stroke, including Uncle Kevan, makes it reasonable for her to be able to consolidate power for herself in a very complete manner. You'd have to accept that the huge bulk of the Faith Militant went up in the explosion and there just weren't enough left to keep their movement alive, which is pretty dumb, but if you accept that the lesser Lannisters bending before her and the Tyrells being paper tigers that Jaime can defeat easily, while cop-outs designed to speed up the story, are not totally beyond logic. The problem with it, as Lindsay Ellis pointed out and you imply, is the total removal of the agency of the peasantry. Even if the Sparrows are destroyed to the point of not being able to rebuild and the Tyrells are crippled, the PEOPLE should not be willing to let Cersei get away with killing their Pope, their King and their beloved Populist Queen who was ALSO a Redeemed Holy Woman and then seizing power. She should have needed to absolutely crush them under her heel to maintain the power she grabbed through that action, and instead they not only just roll over for her, but they don't even react to Dany appearing as an alternative to the loving horror that has been Lannister Rule. And of course this was necessary so that Dany being worse than her would be theoretically buyable.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 12:10
|
|
|
Sky Shadowing posted:So here's a story I just read that makes me laugh knowing what we now know. In all fairness OSC is a bigger hack as well as being a raging homophobe. Remember, the kids weren't killing bugs, they were killing "buggers."
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 15:03
|
|
|
The dumber part is “The Tyrells didn’t actually have an army”, when their army was literally the reason Kings Landing didn’t get sacked in Season 2
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 15:11
|
|
|
They had one but the Tyrells sort of forgot about it
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 17:18
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:They had one but the Tyrells sort of forgot about it It was hiding behind the Ironborn fleet.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 17:32
|
|
|
Sanguinia posted:She should have needed to absolutely crush them under her heel to maintain the power she grabbed through that action, and instead they not only just roll over for her, but they don't even react to Dany appearing as an alternative to the loving horror that has been Lannister Rule. And of course this was necessary so that Dany being worse than her would be theoretically buyable. This is the thing. If there was ANY consequence for her blowing up the Sept, then Dany would look not just like a reasonable option but overwhelmingly positive by comparison. If Dany is approaching King's Landing and the people hail her as a savior, she has absolutely no reason to go "crazy" and burn everybody. So they just... jammed that square peg into that round hole.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 17:46
|
|
bobjr posted:The dumber part is “The Tyrells didn’t actually have an army”, when their army was literally the reason Kings Landing didn’t get sacked in Season 2 To be fair, one of their main bannermen defected to the Lannisters just before the battle. You kan kinda sorta make it work by assuming he convinced a lot of the other Tyrell bannermen to join him, so they genuinely didn't have much of their army left. Even so, a full-scale invasion of the Reach, including, presumably, a siege at Highgarden should have taken A LOT longer than we are shown. At the very least, there would have been more than enough time to send a raven to Dany, so she could swoop in on her dragons and save the day. The fact that Dany is shown only learning about the invasion after Highgarden has fallen is completely ridiculous.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 18:34
|
|
|
lezard_valeth posted:Yeah that part never sat well with me. I think Melisandre would have been a lot more interesting if left ambiguous whether she is magic or not, and at times it seems the books want to do that, but this early instance kinda undermined and ruined that idea. Yeah I always liked the parts of Ice and Fire where you're not sure if magic actually existed or if there were just lots of coincidences. I thought it was cool that Stannis naming Robb, Joffrey and Balon could have just died because they were kings at war and that Stannis just used confirmation bias to think he was all powerful. Reading through the books, I can kind of see what the show's ending was going for. The problem was that even the endings that kind of worked sucked because of the heinously-bad and rushed writing. Jamie and Cersei going out like The Rains of Castamere (castle collapsing on them) isn't an awful idea, for example. It's just that there's no real set-up for that ending in the show, while it definitely would probably be more impactful as a book ending. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Apr 22, 2021 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 19:36
|
|
|
bobjr posted:The dumber part is “The Tyrells didn’t actually have an army”, when their army was literally the reason Kings Landing didn’t get sacked in Season 2 How much did the Tyrell army really contribute to that besides numbers though? Tywin's army was there too. I don't think it was much of a gauge of their fighting prowess.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 20:38
|
|
|
Sanguinia posted:How much did the Tyrell army really contribute to that besides numbers though? Tywin's army was there too. I don't think it was much of a gauge of their fighting prowess. numbers count for quite a bit and I don't think any of the major house's armies like, suck at fighting.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 21:22
|
|
|
bobjr posted:The dumber part is “The Tyrells didn’t actually have an army”, when their army was literally the reason Kings Landing didn’t get sacked in Season 2 It makes sense that the people from rich farmland in a medieval setting would lack warm bodies and the funds to equip them with weapons and armour. Whereas the people from the barren North and barren islands obviously would have armies. Because rough living makes hard men makes military might and easy living makes soft men makes military impotence and oops poo poo I accidentally adopted fascist ideology welp.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 22:15
|
|
|
Zaphod42 posted:People get lucky by being born rich not by having plot armor that magically decides they survive things that have been previously established to be lethal. Look, the bottom line is that Wheel of time was always better, (and even in death) Jordon and Sanderson did a better job ending their story than GRRM is going to do, since he gave other writers his plot and regardless if it was fleshed out or not it clearly made a lot of people grumpy. WOT actually stuck the landing. (Insert tired joke about women tugging on braids here.) But Art is subjective. I don't think the last season is the best the show ever was, but it's not "bad" like so many here and on twitter push. It was a solid B, or if I was being grumpy (I do agree more characters in episode three should have died, hubris and madness could have used another episode for sure, a little more thought into dragon/battle tactics would have gone a long way) I'd say it's a B-. It's a bit like Star Wars. There will always be fans who think the prequels are much better than the other films, or that x film is clearly the best. Or that the sequels are objectively bad. (Again, I don't agree). But there's no clear definitive answer, other than Empire Strikes Back is generally considered to be one of the best ones. (And it's very good, but I like others in the OT more).
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 22:36
|
|
|
LionArcher posted:Look, the bottom line is that Wheel of time was always better, (and even in death) Jordon and Sanderson did a better job ending their story than GRRM is going to do, since he gave other writers his plot and regardless if it was fleshed out or not it clearly made a lot of people grumpy. WOT actually stuck the landing. (Insert tired joke about women tugging on braids here.) I mean people basically use the same criticisms about WOT as they do about ASOIAF, that the plot fell into endless wheel-spinning, the author couldn't wrap things up and eventually died, leaving someone else to finish it for them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2021 22:42
|
|
|
Pattonesque posted:numbers count for quite a bit and I don't think any of the major house's armies like, suck at fighting. Given that the Rob's Northern army apparently involved a mass call up of peasants, it probably did, at least the parts of it that aren't Rob's closest bodyguards. It certainly performed terribly in the books, though Roose's apparent treachery may have compounded that. Then of course there's Ramsey's army using some sort of "first man gets a shield, second man gets a pike" principle. Which is proudly stupid but to it's credit they did manage to nearly annihilate yet another northern army. So yeah, the North might suck at fighting. Orange Devil posted:It makes sense that the people from rich farmland in a medieval setting would lack warm bodies and the funds to equip them with weapons and armour. Whereas the people from the barren North and barren islands obviously would have armies. Because rough living makes hard men makes military might and easy living makes soft men makes military impotence and oops poo poo I accidentally adopted fascist ideology welp. I lol'd. And as ever if anyone wants the long form essay version of this, go check out the Fremen Mirage over on the acoup blog.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 01:59
|
|
|
Zaphod42 posted:This is the thing. If there was ANY consequence for her blowing up the Sept, then Dany would look not just like a reasonable option but overwhelmingly positive by comparison. If Dany is approaching King's Landing and the people hail her as a savior, she has absolutely no reason to go "crazy" and burn everybody. A thought I remember having before S7 aired was that Cersei might frame Dany for what happened with the Sept, and now I wish that was what happened. Dany was already a scary thought to people in Westeros: the daughter of an infamous tyrant with an army of foreign invaders and 3 gigantic dragons. Dany was already a xenophobic nightmare, so it doesn't sound like a heavy lift to convince people that "the vanguard of the foreign Dragon Queen blew up the symbol of our religion using wildfire, in so doing killing King Tommen and Queen Margaery." It'd justify why Cersei suffered no consequences (her grift would work), and also solve a lot of problems with Dany's characterization. Dany had invested so much energy into the belief that she was a liberator, would be welcomed as a savior, and turning the Sept-plosion into a false flag attack would obliterate any chance of that reception. It'd justify how Cersei, an otherwise unpopular monarch, could shore up Westerosi support, and would justify people's racist fear over Dany and their hostility at her arrival.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 02:45
|
|
|
False banner attack.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 08:15
|
|
|
Piell posted:You don't need a claim, Cersei becomes queen because she says is, all you need is enough power to make people accept it Cersei is the regent for her kids and her just making herself the actual ruler only happens in the show, which is bad.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 08:28
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:False banner attack. :applause:
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 10:23
|
|
|
Sodomy Hussein posted:Reminded of the mayor in Godzilla is Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel is his flunky. The movie still sucks poo poo but boy did they get a laborious own in on Roger Ebert. And then Siskel said this in response: quote:"If you're going to go through the trouble of putting us in a monster movie, why don't you at least take advantage of having the monster either eat or squash us".
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 12:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 4, 2024 21:13 |
|
|
Taear posted:Cersei is the regent for her kids and her just making herself the actual ruler only happens in the show, which is bad. Counterpoint: The remaining books don't and will never exist, the show ending is the true canon
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2021 12:57
|
|