Game of Thrones Season 6 general discussion.

[Terminal Blue]

The bookish lad who wanted to be a wizard as a kid, and who sort of achieves that in the eyes of his beloved through his book-learning? The young man who just doesn't have a taste for violence, and frankly LOOKS like a young RR? It might be the case.

It might, but I like to pretend there's a difference between writing what you know or using a character as a mouthpiece and author insertion. Plus, young RR..

Also, book Gilly doesn't worship or idolize over Sam in anything like the same way.. their relationship (or at least the sexual part of it) has a more credible basis in mutual grief, rather than cutesy hero worship (which becomes arguably rather creepy in context).

It's a TV show, it's necessarily going to lack the subtlety and depth of books which include extensive 1st person narration.

I know.

As mentioned, I spent most of last season arguing from the position you are in now. I don't expect adherence to the books. In fact, there are times when I genuinely feel the TV show has handled something better than the books (Ramsey's upbringing, for example, makes hugely more sense in the TV show). I don't mind the show being a big dumb exploitationfest, because I like exploitation. Moreover, I have no problem overlooking physical plot holes like Littlefinger's jetpack because sometimes you need to have a character in a particular place to convey information or advance the plot.

But here's the thing. This particular case isn't down to the lack of first person narrative. The primary (or POV) characters and secondary (or non-POV) characters are the same as would happen in a book. It's simply a basic failure to consider the unfortunate implications of having characters act a certain way. In a show which still ostensibly sells itself on dark subject matter and moral complexity, downplaying those very features in order to facilitate simplistic pandering to one assumed audience demographic does not strike me as very good screenwriting, regardless of medium. Part of the appeal of game of thrones has always been the absence of plot armour, the fact that even the "heroes" and protagonists can be held responsible for their actions. Yes, that's always been quite shallow but it's been responsible for many of the most shocking (and best) moments.

Part of that, I feel, is that a character should not be entitled to the somewhat incredible adoration and worship of a smoking hot girlfriend because noone else understands how secretly awesome they (and by extension all bookish, socially awkward guys) really are. The violation of this normally soft rule becomes much more jarring, in this case, because said girlfriend actually has an incredibly dark backstory which seems to have been completely forgotten about..

 

[Adamantium93]

I have a question for folks who both read the books and watched the show:

Is Stoneheart going to make an appearance?

Previously, the writers said no, but that was before GRRM told them how the story would end. In recent weeks, the show

1. Reintroduced the Blackfish and made his capture of Riverrun important.
2. Moved Brienne to the Riverlands
3. Moved Jaime to the Riverlands
4. Introduced Randyll Tarly.
5. Brought back the Freys.
6. Gave a shout-out to the Brotherhood Without Banners (as if to say, "hey, remember these guys are a thing")

With all of this going on, could it be that they've decided to go forward with the Stoneheart story?

 

[FirstNameLastName]

https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a750325314474485e11d572de28a05a2?convert_to_webp=true

Is anyone else getting sick of the High Sparrow ending pretty much every scene with his smug "I'm such a devious bastard" face? Part of what makes him such an interesting character is that he seems to be honest and actually believe in his own bullshit, for good or for ill. The fact that he doesn't answer to the authority of moral men yet can't be easily disposed of makes him an interesting problem for the other lords, which is why it kind of annoys me that they keep trying to make him seem like this scheming villain. I like the overall conflict with the religious zealotry and the way most of that's playing out, but the way the character is presented seems to be approaching Lord Baelish levels of deviousness.
I don't think he really needs to end every scene by smirking at some other character and twirling his non-existent mustache at them.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I have to say I'm easily enjoying this season more than the previous two combined. I can't even be bothered about how much they changed and left out from the source material, because it's been years since I read the books, and the TV show is at this point completely divorced from the books anyway. I actually had to look up what one of my favorite characters from Dance of Dragons was (Victarion Greyjoy) just because it's been so long. And watching it as its own thing it's quite entertaining. Not as good as seasons 1-3 as it will never be again, but entertaining for sure.

On one hand the writing has become a lot more "TV" and predictable, with characters having plot armor (RAMSAY AHEM) and things like the last minute rescue of Sansa and Theon. I also don't really like how they seem to rely on "kill long time familiar character" for shock value, and man, usurping someone in Westeros seems really easy. Just bribe some guards and stabby stab stab you go. Fuck's sake man, they've done it three freaking times this season alone and it's only 2/3 done.

But on the other hand passing the source continuity (which, let's face it, they were splitting off from pretty heavily already two seasons ago) has allowed the writers some real freedom. If you've seen the Honest Trailer for GoT's seasons 4&5, you'll know the grounded realism has given way to "crazy heavy metal album art", and I actually enjoy the show just letting loose with the crazy fantasy concepts. The plot finally feels like it's progressing despite it being absolutely batshit at times. How does Dany just suddenly get the entirety of Vaes Dothrak to follow unquestioningly by desecrating and burning their most sacred and holy tradition? 'Cause plot, that's why! I'm not sure if the tradeoff between the plot progressing at a snail's pace, only to suddenly backtrack a 100 yards (seriously, count how many times someone is planning to do something in the books only to have it backfire and effectively rewind the clock on their plot) and the plot progressing in bullshit ways is, but for now I'll take it.

I don't miss those zillion sideplots from A Feast for Crows. The Iron Islands actually feels relevant now that Theon's back in the game instead of being a source of perpetual misery porn. They're actually somewhat going back to the original plotline from the books with Jaime. It might be possible that we see Lady Stoneheart after all. I actually squee'd out loud at Sansa and Jon's reunion. I like how the plots don't take several millennia to actually advance. They seem to have toned down the gratuitous boobage, and holy shit, we're six episodes in and not a single rape scene has taken place! Honestly, I'm really close to saying something horrible, so I'll put it in spoilers just for caution.

Spoiler: TRIGGER WARNING: HERESY, FAN RAGE, STUPIDITY, OUTRAGE. READER DISCRETION HEAVILY ADVISED

Maybe, just maybe after the show was freed from trying to stick to book continuity, Martin's glacial pacing and ninehundred zipetygillion sideplots, the show actually got more entertaining.

In summation I'd probably say the show has gotten better from the past 2 seasons, still doesn't hold a candle to the first 3 seasons, is much dumber and just rife with little stupid moments in nearly every episode, but goddamn if it isn't entertaining. I no longer try to think of it as some cerebral high-class political drama, but a dark fantasy epic that seems to be building to one heck of a final season.

 

[freaper]

https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a750325314474485e11d572de28a05a2?convert_to_webp=true

Is anyone else getting sick of the High Sparrow ending pretty much every scene with his smug "I'm such a devious bastard" face? Part of what makes him such an interesting character is that he seems to be honest and actually believe in his own bullshit, for good or for ill. The fact that he doesn't answer to the authority of moral men yet can't be easily disposed of makes him an interesting problem for the other lords, which is why it kind of annoys me that they keep trying to make him seem like this scheming villain. I like the overall conflict with the religious zealotry and the way most of that's playing out, but the way the character is presented seems to be approaching Lord Baelish levels of deviousness.
I don't think he really needs to end every scene by smirking at some other character and twirling his non-existent mustache at them.

You're sharing my thoughts. Considering we're viewing the events at King's Landing unfold from the higher classes' perspective, I always have to remember that what the Sparrows are doing is meant to benefit the whole city, and yes, that would require a crafty individual who can navigate an intricate political web, but that doesn't mean such a person would've had to sell their soul to do so.

Maybe the writers just want to pull a gotcha-moment out of their hats, pinning him as some sort of deviant or whatever, I wouldn't be surprised.

Also, does anyone know if the Red Priestess in Mereen is important? She seemed to be on top of her game for someone who received only one scene's worth of attention.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I like the overall conflict with the religious zealotry and the way most of that's playing out, but the way the character is presented seems to be approaching Lord Baelish levels of deviousness.

The comparison is interesting, because I like both characters for much the same reasons. They're both antiheroes. They both absolutely and completely believe their own bullshit, but sincerity doesn't make them good people. You can believe passionately in something which is actually very mean spirited and horrible.

In a sense, what unites both those characters is that they both see how incredibly unfair and downright evil the world around them is. Baelish is an incredibly smart, competent person who was nonetheless doomed to failure from the start because in this world all that matters is having the right surname and being good at beating people to death with metal objects. The high sparrow, if we believe his account of his own backstory, is a person who struggles to be genuinely moral in a world where those with money and titles don't have to be. They can literally do whatever they want, provided the only people who get hurt are the poor and helpless.

The biggest villain in ASOIAF, I think, is the world itself. All of the horrible characters are created and enabled by a system which gives people arbitrary rights and privileges while denying others any form of basic dignity, where rational argument doesn't work because if certain people disagree with you they can have you killed just for looking at them funny.

I'm not sure how long any of us could live in that world without going mad and just wanting to burn the whole thing down.

Also, does anyone know if the Red Priestess in Mereen is important? She seemed to be on top of her game for someone who received only one scene's worth of attention.

She seems to have three roles:

1) To stand in for the characters of Moqorro and Benerro, who don't appear in the TV show.
2) To reinforce the notion, very evident in the books, that the red priests actually seem to be genuinely powerful and that it's quite possible that R'hllor (the lord of light) is real.
3) To make clear that at this point the highest leaders within the R'hllorian faith believe that Daenerys is the reincarnation of Azor Ahai.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I have a question for folks who both read the books and watched the show:

Is Stoneheart going to make an appearance?

Previously, the writers said no, but that was before GRRM told them how the story would end. In recent weeks, the show

1. Reintroduced the Blackfish and made his capture of Riverrun important.
2. Moved Brienne to the Riverlands
3. Moved Jaime to the Riverlands
4. Introduced Randyll Tarly.
5. Brought back the Freys.
6. Gave a shout-out to the Brotherhood Without Banners (as if to say, "hey, remember these guys are a thing")

With all of this going on, could it be that they've decided to go forward with the Stoneheart story?

My take is that Martin always planned for a "perfect storm" of Lannister unfinished business to come crashing into the Lannister's tenuous grasp of the seven kingdoms as part of the run up to the ending. The Lannisters have failed to kill Dany, failed to wipe out the Stark's, they have not stomped out the last remaining Stark supporters (Tully's most notably) nor gotten control of their own lands, with the BWB being a major presence in the Riverlands. In the books they also fail to realize that their main ally/subject, Dorn, is actually run by a guy who is plotting to aid Dany's return to the seven kingdoms and in the series the Sand Vipers are poised to start a war to avenge Oberyn. They've unwittingly eroded their own power base by resurrecting the militant arm of the Church and arming it and alienated several of their actual allies within the Kingdoms by acting like jerks.

To me it seems pretty clear that all these things are important to establish that the Lannisters grasp of the throne is quickly slipping as all their unfinished business and mistakes are catching up to them. Whatever it means Lady Stoneheart returns I don't know, but it obviously means the show is putting more focus on things that haven't been mentioned for several seasons, because they will be important in the last 2 seasons of the show.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Do you think Game of Thrones (the TV show at least) will suffer Mass Effect 3 syndrome?

Define what you mean by that.

But if you just mean "a crap ending that kinda comes out of nowhere"; probably not. They likely have an endgame in mind but they're still trying to figure out how to get there.

Spoiler: Sam

Everything about this was glorious to watch, especially Gilly standing up for Sam at dinner. Though the decision to steal the sword comes off as creating conflict when Sam doesn't seem all that relevant to the rest of the threads. Similar to Arya in that way.

With regards to this particular spoiler:

Spoiler

Sam taking the sword kinda makes sense the way I see it. I wouldn't be surprised if it was done partly out of spite but Sam knows as well as anyone that they need all the Valyrian steel they can get to fight the White Walkers.

Spoiler

Yeah I was a bit surprised he didn't bring up the fact that Valyrian steel can kill White Walkers. I suppose he could present this to the Maesters and reveal the White Walker's weakness, but the scene presents it more as Sam screwing over his father, and rightfully so because his father was so deliciously hateable.

I realized comparing this show's ending to Mass Effect 3 is not fitting.

A better comparison would be the ending to the Sopranos.

Would it suffer Sopranos syndrome?

 

[Politrukk]

-puts up gritty coloquial British accent- Sam the Slayer come to steal my Valyrian steel sword?

Sam is just an odd character in the entire setup and a lot of his story and meaning has been cut away anyway.


The series itself.....

In season 6 we've seen them just lazily tying up loose story threads by killing everyone off, pandering to the most popular book theories (this will be proven if John turns out anything close to a targaryen, there has to be a reason that Bran warged into past visions as he did) and then when I was absolutely done with the show... in the most recent episode they tied everything back into the book progression.
Examples:
Benjen=Coldhands
Jon=ressurected/possibly the prince of light.

It's as if they've taken things like Jon's ressurection,Sansa's anger at Baelish and Daenerys return to the Dothraki to quickly progress the plotlines of the most popular characters and to shock the bookreaders and are now settling into actually properly talking about the story again.


Hell look at the ridiculous amount of characters that aren't dead or betrayed in the book that are dead now.
Examples: Selmy,Hodor,Osha.

Edit:
I only just realised, but isn't Jon's the only direwolf still alive?
that's pretty lame as well.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

...

I only just realised, but isn't Jon's the only direwolf still alive?
that's pretty lame as well.

http://winteriscoming.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/nymeria-1.jpg

There's still one more, although I can't blame you for forgetting about them, since the show writter seem to have done likewise. I still wonder when/if Nymeria will return with her massive wolf pack.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

...

I only just realised, but isn't Jon's the only direwolf still alive?
that's pretty lame as well.

http://winteriscoming.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/nymeria-1.jpg

There's still one more, although I can't blame you for forgetting about them, since the show writter seem to have done likewise. I still wonder when/if Nymeria will return with her massive wolf pack.

.....Must resist the urge to call out that that is not a real Wolf but a hybrid Husky Wolf Dog

And call out the show makers for being lazy not using real and trained Grey Wolves at the very least:

Or they could have gone the Aslan rout and made CGI Dire Wolves because in reality Dire Wolves are as Large as the biggest Lion and Tiger.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

...

I only just realised, but isn't Jon's the only direwolf still alive?
that's pretty lame as well.

http://winteriscoming.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/nymeria-1.jpg

There's still one more, although I can't blame you for forgetting about them, since the show writter seem to have done likewise. I still wonder when/if Nymeria will return with her massive wolf pack.

.....Must resist the urge to call out that that is not a real Wolf but a hybrid Husky Wolf Dog

And call out the show makers for being lazy not using real and trained Grey Wolves at the very least:

Or they could have gone the Aslan rout and made CGI Dire Wolves because in reality Dire Wolves are as Large as the biggest Lion and Tiger.

I think they made the right decision there. They seem to use CGI for the full grown wolves, but the picture I posted is from the second episode, so they are still supposed to be pups at that point. They kind of need them to be large (since they're direwolves) but still look like pups (which they really wouldn't if they were real wolves), so using a wolf dog was probably a good idea.

 

[Evonisia]

...

I only just realised, but isn't Jon's the only direwolf still alive?
that's pretty lame as well.

http://winteriscoming.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/nymeria-1.jpg

There's still one more, although I can't blame you for forgetting about them, since the show writter seem to have done likewise. I still wonder when/if Nymeria will return with her massive wolf pack.

Given how more and more TV-like the show has become in recent seasons, it wouldn't surprise me if Nymeria comes back, presumabley holding a sword Sif style, to save Arya from that assassin wench.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I just hope these last 3 episodes will be good. All the seasons of this show is at its best near its end.

I mean Season 2 we have the Battle of Blackwater Bay.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Just saw the episode.


A certain Arc:

Spoiler

CLEGANBOWL....CONFIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRMED!!!!!

King's Landing Arc

Spoiler

So Queen Margery is playing it all up being this faith loving queen, probably to aid her brother Loras and mabye manipulate the King even more

Arya Arc:

Spoiler

Arya's stabbed in the gut yet has not died yet....will she survive?! Or will the theory be true and Arya will warg into her Dire Wolf and live the rest of her life as a leader of a Wolf Pack

Northern Kingdoms Arc:

Spoiler

2 big battles to be excited about is the Siege of Castle Riverrun and the Battle of Winterfell also I knew you were gonna suck it up and call Petyr Baelish for aid Sansa I just knew you would, exactly as Petyr planned I guess ;P

Anyway so all the set up/filler episodes are over, now the last 2 will be the pay-off episodes, lets just hope all this build-up will not dissipoint.

 

[Evonisia]

Spoiler: Sansa

Sansa complains about not having enough troops yet refuses the aid of her cousin's unscathed army. That Mormont debate was fun, though, even if I have no idea why Lady Mormont decides to head to the camp.

The momentum of all this buildup is starting to wear thin, and this was a pretty filler episode. I just hope we get a Battle of Winterfell, or Cersei finally does something about the High Sparrow soon.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Spoiler: Sansa

Sansa complains about not having enough troops yet refuses the aid of her cousin's unscathed army. That Mormont debate was fun, though, even if I have no idea why Lady Mormont decides to head to the camp.

The momentum of all this buildup is starting to wear thin, and this was a pretty filler episode. I just hope we get a Battle of Winterfell, or Cersei finally does something about the High Sparrow soon.

Which will be the final 2 episodes judging from the trailers. And what has transpired just now especially concerning Cersei.

 

[Evonisia]

Spoiler: Sansa

Sansa complains about not having enough troops yet refuses the aid of her cousin's unscathed army. That Mormont debate was fun, though, even if I have no idea why Lady Mormont decides to head to the camp.

The momentum of all this buildup is starting to wear thin, and this was a pretty filler episode. I just hope we get a Battle of Winterfell, or Cersei finally does something about the High Sparrow soon.

Which will be the final 2 episodes judging from the trailers. And what has transpired just now especially concerning Cersei.

Then I imagine the next episode will probably be Cersei's trial. Last season's eighth episode was the Hardhome battle, and much as that episode irritated me it was at least exciting, and hopefully the trial will be too.