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[Budi]

I mean, more than a few women, including me, have issues with GoT's portrayal and treatment of female characters, and not just because of the violence=empowerment fallacy. There's definitely a problem there.

Well sure, as I said earlier in this thread. I don't feel I personally can argue with you on your personal views on it, being a male and all. But other people have done better job convincing me on it's feminist aspects (like that article). It's very possible that the showrunners have done few problematic choices. But I've seen much of good too. Atleast the show isn't inherently sexist, while the show's world pretty much is.

 

[Ratrat]

Can I add that we never see Varys and Dany discussing, oh, I don't know, the fact that he tried to poison her and her unborn child in season 1? Do D&D even remember that happened?

She knows Varys is Roberts spymaster and technically a traitor to her father. She is either super dense or selectively harsh to Jorah. lol

 

[Disagree Guy]

Personally I think it's shit.

Terrible acting (the young prince guy is absolutely atrocious)
Terrible choice of accents (as an english person - a west country accent is grating as hell when done poorly)
Terrible set design (it all looks am-dram)
Boobs for Boobs sake

Nope. Given it a chance - I think it's dreadful.

 

[xevis]

OP is on the money. GoT began strong and turned to trash. Everything up to the Red Wedding was great. S4 was OK, I guess but S5 and especially S6 were utter trash. The plot goes nowhere then suddenly everything is wrapped up with a bow. Awful. There's also an increasingly bigger emphasis on magic and dragons and zombies and just stupid shock-value theatrics.

I'm not sure if I'll tune in for S7.

 

[NeoGiff]

I'd recommend anyone who is frustrated by debates on the books vs. the show to take a year or so away from both. I did and it's worked wonders for my mental health.

It's a topic many people feel very strongly about for different reasons, all of them valid in their own regard. I just think people generally get way too invested in their own POV.

While I personally agree with some of OP's statements and disagree with some, that's fine. I mean, the title of the thread could have been less antagonisingly written, but those are just the OP's opinions.

There's really no need for people to "blow OP out of the water" (wtf?) and sit smugly back because they've proved him/her wrong. Like... what? The books are very popular, the show is very popular. It's impossible for the show to maintain the level of subtlety and carefully crafted undertone that the books possess. One medium cannot simply be transcribed into the other.

I dunno... it just makes me a bit sad that something I used to love is the topic of such vitriol and raised tempers when really we should be able to have a civilised discussion and celebrate either or both in our own way.

 

[Ratrat]

I'd recommend anyone who is frustrated by debates on the books vs. the show to take a year or so away from both. I did and it's worked wonders for my mental health.

It's a topic many people feel very strongly about for different reasons, all of them valid in their own regard. I just think people generally get way too invested in their own POV.

While I personally agree with some of OP's statements and disagree with some, that's fine. I mean, the title of the thread could have been less antagonisingly written, but those are just the OP's opinions.

There's really no need for people to "blow OP out of the water" (wtf?) and sit smugly back because they've proved him/her wrong. Like... what? The books are very popular, the show is very popular. It's impossible for the show to maintain the level of subtlety and carefully crafted undertone that the books possess. One medium cannot simply be transcribed into the other.

I dunno... it just makes me a bit sad that something I used to love is the topic of such vitriol and raised tempers when really we should be able to have a civilised discussion and celebrate either or both in our own way.

Its because the streams have merged.

 

[Vagabundo]

I find the show a bit hit and miss at times, but its still on the awesome side.

I think people are spoilt with TV nowadays

Also book readers can be some of the most irritating show critics. I was glad to have the threads segregated here.

 

[Disagree Guy]

I find the show a bit hit and miss at times, but its still on the awesome side.

I think people are spoilt with TV nowadays

Also book readers can be some of the most irritating show critics. I was glad to have the threads segregated here.

Yeah that is a strange point.

The Walking Dead discussion makes people spoiler tag content from the literature. Everyone seems pretty clear on the fact that the TV show is 'based' on the comics/graphic novels and not a like-for-like copy.

 

[KahooTs]

My favourite was their explanation for the assassination attempt on Bran and the whole dagger trail.

 

[Elfotografoalocado]

I think the first four seasons of the show are amazing, and have fairly decently written characters that are likeable, complex and who interact in meaningful ways. I don't doubt the characters in the book are much more so, but being a show there are time constraints.
Season 5 is a dumpster fire, just plain horrible, and where some problems stemmed that remain in Season 6. Namely, the writing took a dive in quality, characters are now simpler and more predictable (In Season 5 they were parodies of themselves, Season 6 made it better)
What also happened in Season 5 that remains in Season 6 is, the photography of the show became terribly inconsistent. They keep having telephoto, creamy bokeh shots cut back to back with wide andle, deep DOF shots, and none of them goes usually beyond being serviceable, particularly because they barely convey any information. So the show keeps cutting between terrible shots and it slows it down a lot. Also, because the shots are terrible and plain, there is nothing to edit with, so the editing has lost a lot of fluidity. I remember the religious zealots fucking shit up in King's Landing in Season 5 and that shit looked amateurish.

 

[CloudWolf]

That sounds like something an edgy teen would write between visits to hot topic and cinnabon.

Yeah, it's weird that the OP points that out in a thread about the bad writing on the show, since that is pretty universally regarded to be the single worst line of text in the books.

 

[Back-In-Black]

I might be mistaken, but I thought you were trying to refute that article which was linked?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2016/...ros-6-reasons-game-of-thrones-is-a-triumph-f/ This is why I said the books have no bearing on this. But the article gives examples on how the show can be viewed as feminist in other ways than just through power by violence. You should check it out, if you didn't. Sorry if I misunderstood you.

That was the article I was referring to, it basically makes the same point but phrased differently, "women in power=feminism." Except for the fact that A) that's not how feminism works and B) those individuals came to power through their sheer use of violence. Just because Cercei is now the one having a women raped instead of a man doesn't make it "feminist." The show has a problem with the way women are written.

My favorite recent Game of Thrones moment is how they killed Margaery, Loras, and Mace Tyrell.

The whole scene of their death is one of the best in the show's history in terms of how well it's directed and acted, but the reason why it happens is hilarious.

Margaery meets with her grandmother, the queen of thorns and basically makes it clear to her that these people are holding her captive. She fears for her grandmother's safety.

So Olenna Tyrell just...leaves. So Margaery is stuck in her situation but she lets her father stick around because fuck him, right?

Then the sept explodes killing everyone so Olenna is for whatever reason the commander of all the Tyrell forces, despite the fact that Tommen would have more than likely demanded their fealty ahead of the sept explosion and women hold no power in Westeros, something which also calls into question whether Cersei would be queen at all.

Then Olenna asks for the Dornish help, even though they're a bunch of psycho murderers who poison innocent children and Olenna has been shown to care about the plight of the truly innocent.

And to top this all off, Dany accept the help of the combo of Tyrell and Dorne, despite her own professions of wanting to break the wheel and end the cycle of Westerosi politics once and for all.

The books will likely kill the Tyrells too, but in the show's situation, wouldn't just sneaking Loras, Margaery, and Mace out in the night have made more sense?

I mean...to hear the show tell it, Varys cares more about Tyrion than Olenna did about her own blood.

Breh, you just tipping the iceberg with this post. I could spend hours tearing apart the stupidity of that scene and its results. It looks cool and seems "badass" but it is the result of stupidity at every level.

 

[weekev]

It's pure escapism, as a work of fiction it is highly flawed I agree, but its incredibly enjoyable as far as consumable entertainment and I'm talking about both the books and the show.

 

[Micael]

Yeah, it's weird that the OP points that out in a thread about the bad writing on the show, since that is pretty universally regarded to be the single worst line of text in the books.

Especially considering that it was pretty unlikely that she would know how sperm worked, so she either had some ideas of how sperm worked, or she sucked a whole lot of dick.

 

[mantidor]

Can I add that we never see Varys and Dany discussing, oh, I don't know, the fact that he tried to poison her and her unborn child in season 1? Do D&D even remember that happened?

It's mentioned in a throwaway line by Tyrion lol Dany is like "he tried to murder me!!" and Tyrion answered "he did what he had to survive!" and then Dany just shrugs it off.

D&D are hacks, no question about it, one of the most infuriating things I heard from them was when trying to explain the mess of Sansa's storyline, it was along the lines of "well this Ramsay marriage is a big emotional thing! We can't waste it on a minor character, We have to give it to Sansa!", It's literally admitting that for them rape and torture is emotional development, screw consistent character arcs, or logic.

But that is their thing, they only thinks in terms of instant gratification and "cool/shocking moments", Oleena might be very capable of taking over the Tyrell house but should we explore it? No! It's more important to have the "cool moment" of her saying some wise crack lines to the sand snakes. The show feels literally made for YouTube reaction videos, which I will admit are my guilty pleasure.

 

[CloudWolf]

We have a lot more main gay characters in the book series than the show.

Like Daenerys, Cersei, Euron Greyjoy and Jon Connington

Daenerys and Cersei even have a sex scene with another lady.

And a lot of explicitly gay side characters Daxos, Irri and Taena Meeryweather.

And Oberyn is explicitly mentioned to be bisexual by Jaime Lannister and Arianne Martell.

Main gay characters? Aside from Connington (who isn't in the show), there isn't really. I mean, the examples you mention are debatable at best.

On Dany and Cersei: Both one-time experiences, that doesn't make someone gay or bi.
On Euron: He violently rapes people of both sexes as a power trip, I'm not sure you can count that as a gay character.

 

[pashmilla]

Main gay characters? Aside from Connington (who isn't in the show), there isn't really. I mean, the examples you mention are debatable at best.

On Dany and Cersei: Both one-time experiences, that doesn't make someone gay or bi.
On Euron: He violently rapes people of both sexes as a power trip, I'm not sure you can count this as a gay character.

Suggesting Euron is gay because he molested his brother is reeeeeally uncomfortable tbh

 

[WinterIsComing]

I have mixed feelings about the show but essentially everything in this strikes me as wrong

(...)

The show is not an amazing show for so many reasons (pacing, plotting, overly literal interpretations of the book, boring combat setpieces, stale writing, sexposition, too many characters, too much moving the pieces around the board, inconsistent characterization being passed off poorly as nuance) but almost none of them have anything you raise here.

Thanks for saying everything i wanted to way better than i could have.

 

[KahooTs]

Irri lusts after Rakharo.

 

[gollumsluvslave]

I have mixed feelings about the show but essentially everything in this strikes me as wrong



You seem very upset that the books aren't the TV show.



Because the writing is so bad we actually have a very good understanding of why she did this. She announces to the king that she is murdering him because he sat idly by as Oberyn's sister was raped and murdered, and as Dorne's stock in the world declines.



The Waif hates her because she feels, probably correctly, that Arya is not worthy of the invitation to train. Jaqen explains what happens after that: the Many-Faced God (i.e. Death) had a kill stolen from him, and the kill must be repaid, it seems unimportant to their philosophy who the kill is. Again, this mostly seems a projection that you like their philosophy in the book better than in the show. And it's not really clear that Arya is in any """"official"""" capacity "No One", rather that she mastered the skills required to quit and go on her own. If someone drops out of school 3 years in, they don't get a degree, but that doesn't mean it's surprising that they have enough knowledge to go do a job. If you're asking why Jaqen doesn't try to kill her for leaving, that seems to be a loose end, but not one you expressed in your rant.



I have no idea what any of this is about but the show pretty clearly motivates Stannis (and his wife's) actions by their religious fervor and delusions of grandeur. It's also pretty clearly articulated that Stannis in some regards rejects his daughter because of the greyscale. He is a bad father and a bad man. It's not exactly confusing what goes on here, and even during the burning his wife realizes what a grave transgression it was and how they've lost sight of what's important



I have no idea what you're talking about here, but the show pretty straightforwardly motivates him as doing whatever it takes for love, which is a motif that is recurrent in the show: Brienne; Jaime; and Jon. Making a character have less connection to Ned and more to other characters thematically isn't a right or wrong decision, it's just you're mad that the show isn't the books.



Almost all of this seems based on maps in the books. The world is smaller in the show. There are occasional instances where continuity gets whacky, particularly with respect to Littlefinger and Varys, but you seem very upset that the TV show doesn't go into as much geographic detail as the books.



There is a lot here, but lots of themes exist in Game of Thrones. From the outset, Ned Stark executes a traitor--one that we sympathize--for honor. This sets up Ned as an honorable person, and the value and costs of honor are a theme that the show engages with repeatedly. Consider the execution of the traitors against Jon Snow. A perverse karma: that cruelty happens to good and bad alike is also a feature of the show. We see bad people be punished and cheer, but we equally see unfair and despicable acts of cruelty. Brienne repeatedly engages with her gender, both in totally over the top exposition dialogue sequences and in how she carries herself. How many times does she have to correct people about not being a knight? This season featured an entire bottle episode about the Hound whose primary theme was an examination of whether it is possible to escape the trauma inflicted on one by one's upbringing (the show answers a pessimistic no). The show's politics repeatedly have a hoist-by-ones-petard quality: Cersei takes action against Margaery, and the same action has her swept up by the sept. Ditto the Red Wedding. Ditto basically every story, including the origin story of the White Walkers: in their efforts to control men by creating White Walkers, the Children of the Forest are destroyed by their creations. The shift from a Machievellian realpolitik where all political actions are motivated solely by power to the nuance of making the world a better place expressed by both Dany and Tyrion mirrors the shift from pre-modern Divine Rule of Kings to the prescriptions of modernity and liberal thought. Dany's takeover of the Khal mirrors Muhammed's takeover of Bedouin Arabia. Just because you miss this stuff doesn't mean it's not there. Sorry.



Every serious examination of violence, including rape, motivates and grounds it in the expression of power; and every serious examination of power, including political power, motivates and grounds it in the expression of violence. You would be laughed out of a room of anyone with ten brain cells if you claimed that violence and power were not connected. That the show is also pornographic in its depiction of violence and much of it is thematically unearned is a problem, but you badly miss.



This is so explicitly a metaphor for Muhammed's taming of the Bedouin Arab world it isn't funny. The rules and guidelines of Islam are all clearly and cleanly read as a historical response to divisions in the Bedouin world: Why is Islam so hung up on the sanctity of Allah and his name? Because of idolatry and multitheism in the Bedouin world. Why does Islam have such specific rules about marriage? Because even though they seem premodern, they replaced sexual conquest and slavery from the pre-Islamic Arab world. And like Danaerys, Muhammed subdued the Bedouin world through conquest and violence, not merely preaching and conversion. Modernization processes (or development processes if you rather) is sometimes organic, and it is sometimes through violent conquest. Your desire to see this through a racial lens misses and obvious and nonracial historical metaphor. Even the horses are a 1:1 metaphor.



You seem to view this as racist, but you correctly observe that Tyrion's privilege is addressed and problematized in the show. A show engaging with imperialism is not the same as a show being imperialist.



Yes, because the church's hypocritical and abusive moral code causes a pogrom across the city, one that ultimately ends in violence to all parties.



However the books write these two, the show writes them as libertines and hedonists. This is both a historical thing and something present in the modern world. The show doesn't slut shame them and they are given ample opportunity to explain their philosophical views on love, sex, possession, jealousy, and pleasure. That they happen to be what appears to be southern Italian or north African seems wholly unimportant to their portrayal. I guessed that Dorne was supposed to be Majorca or maybe Crete geographically and the people were somewhere between Sicilian and Moroccan. I'm not an architect but visually the setting made me think of Islamic Spain. Is there a racial stereotype about people from that part of our world and unchained sex? To me libertinism and hedonism seem more to be an indictment of historical cultures like late Rome or post-revolutionary France. Do you have a different read of history?



This is totally bizarre. Modern dis/ability studies and standpoint theory typically reconceive "disability" as diversity: that each person has something to contribute, and while we require respect and awareness of disability, we also need to allow the disabled to forge their own paths, and recognize that to the extent that disability shapes someone, it also gives them a valuable and different perspective. This is true for everything from studies of autism to studies of intellectual or physical impairment. Certainly it would be eye-rolling and ableist if this was a Captain Planet 1980s Liberal Superpower thing, but that's not at all how the show portrays it. In that particular fight, Jaime tries to catch the sword out of reflex, as we see several characters (including the Hound) throughout the show do. It's a risky gambit that comes with great chance of injury, but can provide the character the opportunity to counter and go for the kill. At the moment Jaime grabs it, there's a Wile E. Coyote moment where he's off the cliff but hasn't realized he's going to fall yet. Jaime and his aggressor alike are not expecting what happens. Jaime quickly capitalizes on the opening, showing his tactical skill in spite of the fact that he's a weaker swordfighter than he once was. Moreover, above you complain that Jaime's disability is insufficiently relevant to the show--but when would it be relevant if not combat, and how would it be relevant if not a scene that primarily demonstrates Jaime's diminished capacity as a swordsman?



This is a thematic statement about a recurring thing in the books where the elite, the nobles, and the strong use and discard the weak and ordinary. Hodor is a peasant kid growing up in the circle of nobility. He is loyal and wants to help. And in the end, due to time loop shenanigans, a little noble just now understanding the burden of leading makes a choice to sacrifice Hodor's entire life. It also recasts Hodor as a tragic figure: the person we once thought was simple but happy in fact suffered from being locked in his entire life, knowing the fate that would one day befall him. Poignant.



This is an extremely bad blog rant and I have no idea why the thread was left open because there is essentially no argument made here, it's just an enormous info dump about book canon combined with some recycled Vox thinkpiece rants about social issues in Game of Thrones.

The show is not an amazing show for so many reasons (pacing, plotting, overly literal interpretations of the book, boring combat setpieces, stale writing, sexposition, too many characters, too much moving the pieces around the board, inconsistent characterization being passed off poorly as nuance) but almost none of them have anything you raise here.

Excellent post.

 

[NeoGiff]

What also happened in Season 5 that remains in Season 6 is, the photography of the show became terribly inconsistent. They keep having telephoto, creamy bokeh shots cut back to back with wide andle, deep DOF shots, and none of them goes usually beyond being serviceable, particularly because they barely convey any information. So the show keeps cutting between terrible shots and it slows it down a lot. Also, because the shots are terrible and plain, there is nothing to edit with, so the editing has lost a lot of fluidity. I remember the religious zealots fucking shit up in King's Landing in Season 5 and that shit looked amateurish.

Now this is a good criticism, whether one agrees with it or not (I've only gotten into editing and cinematography/direction over the last year or so, so I can't comment either way without a rewatch). Criticising the show on the merits of its actual medium.

 

[Ocarina_117]

Yup that would've been a much better discussion.

Lots of people have brought this up throughout the thread.

 

[riotous]

But that's the problem. He's the same vengeance-obsessed dude he was in season 1.

If he had taken out some development from his time in the village to permanently affect his character, I could see it but he just regresses back to who he was.

He's still trigger-happy to kill those outlaws. If he had instead reflected on the Septon's words to instead give up vengeance-killing in the end when he catches them then we might have something here.

This is such a binary / straw man way of looking at things; if he doesn't completely turn the other cheek when his new mentor is killed, he hasn't changed at all?

He changed throughout the show; from the beginning, to when he decided to abandon King's Landing, to his time with Arya, to the point where he was able to be mentored into living a peaceful life. He's a changed man living in a world that hasn't changed; his pacifist mentor was brutally slain because of that world. I have a feeling that his real "change" isn't in becoming non-violent in a world that will eat you alive for being so, the change is WHY he is going to fight. Instead of being essentially a hired hand for corrupt leaders, he's going to choose righteous fight.

This thread is full of claims that don't fit how I ended up seeing these characters; without reading the books my impression of these characters is essentially the same as book readers. This thread is full of "because character X did this, it made the character Y" and I just don't agree.

 

[Vagabundo]

Yeah that is a strange point.

The Walking Dead discussion makes people spoiler tag content from the literature. Everyone seems pretty clear on the fact that the TV show is 'based' on the comics/graphic novels and not a like-for-like copy.

Sorry I should have been more specific; Game of Thrones book readers can be some of the more irritating and nitpicky critics.