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Game of Thrones

WalterTrull

WalterTrull

Godfella
Just me I guess, considering its popularity, but GOT seems like a celebration of human depravity. I will admit I haven't seen it. You can't miss the promos if you watch TV at all. Each one I happen to see strengthens my conviction. I have started changing channels as soon as one appears.
Crowds at a public hanging?
 
Woberts

Woberts

The Perfumed Seneschal
As much as it pains me to admit it, I agree with @Revoltingest. While it's not for everyone, there are a great many people who it is for. For example, there's the Battle of Winterfell later this season, which is expected to be the longest battle sequence in cinematic history. Whether you're a fan of depravity or not, that'll be a site to see.
 
Revoltingest

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Woberts said:
As much as it pains me to admit it, I agree with @Revoltingest. While it's not for everyone, there are a great many people who it is for. For example, there's the Battle of Winterfell later this season, which is expected to be the longest battle sequence in cinematic history. Whether you're a fan of depravity or not, that'll be a site to see.
Click to expand...
"Sight"...not "site".
 
WalterTrull

WalterTrull

Godfella
Woberts said:
there's the Battle of Winterfell later this season, which is expected to be the longest battle sequence in cinematic history. Whether you're a fan of depravity or not, that'll be a site to see.
Click to expand...
I am dismayed at times at the "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us..." process. It works, but uncomfortably.
I was once a midshipman, raised on the John Wayne ilk, and hoping to get to Viet Nam and drop napalm. Man, the flames, the flames!
Luckily, the process worked, uncomfortably, and I did not get there. I am happily no longer that person.
History seems very recursive.
 
S

Sanzbir

Well-Known Member
WalterTrull said:
GOT seems like a celebration of human depravity.
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Celebration?? No. More of a condemnation. Martin's books try to subvert fantasy tropes bringing the real horror of war into full display. The show is ... less adept at this than the books, ever since the show deviated from the books, but there's still a decent number of unapologetic portrayals of the horrors of war in there.

Last night's episode was interesting. It's already better than last season, but that's not really a high bar to meet. I hope they're going in the direction they seem to be and that the show's going to actually call out Daenerys for being a horrible leader and a brutal tyrant. My only real complaint about the episode is that some idiot on the writing staff thinks you can cast obsidian weapons. What's even the point, when the obsidian axe they showed looks like it was made by chipping anyways??
 
Nakosis

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Revoltingest

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
WalterTrull said:
Mmmm.... I really think I understand those horrors. I tend to doubt that the followers of GOT are repulsed by the horrors.
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You've not even watched it, so I recommend avoiding presuming too much.
Other shows have violence in the context of war....noble & necessary.
GOT also has a different variety.

Fellow viewers will think of Theon Greyjoy's suffering at the hand of Ramsay.
I ask of those who watched it...did you enjoy it? Or were you repulsed?
 
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S

suncowiam

Well-Known Member
Well, my wife and I tried the first several episodes years ago. However, she was pregnant and there were babies that were murdered so we just couldn't continue.

But now that we're done having more kids, we just discussed the other day to give it a try again. Plus, the walking dead pretty much sucks now so we need another series to gain our focus.
 
Nakosis

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Deeper Than Swords: 10 Reasons We're So Hooked On 'Game Of Thrones'

But their psychological complexity can also make them a little unknowable. In fact, the characters’ actions can be so unpredictable that it forces us to give up trying to decide who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy. It’s almost suggests that the old question of “good” and “bad” isn’t an even interesting one anymore

People struggle to survive in a barbaric reality. Often they have to compromise their moral values. You see the weakest character through the adversity they suffer become a threat to the most powerful. Except for a few definitely evil characters, most fluctuate on the moral scale.
 
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Sanzbir

Well-Known Member
WalterTrull said:
Mmmm.... I really think I understand those horrors. I tend to doubt that the followers of GOT are repulsed by the horrors.
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Possibly not, but that doesn't change the authorial intent. Martin's a pacifist hippie who has directly stated his intentions.

Compare to your incredibly common stories out there (especially in fantasy) where war is portrayed as glorious and just, a side of pure good fighting against un-redeemable evil.

Compare to Tolkien who (while he is a great author who accomplished his goal of writing a story in a mythological style) portrays war as a fight between good and evil. There are no redeemable orcs, and there is maybe one person fighting on the side of the good guys who is immoral. None of that is Tolkien's fault, his writing was trying to emulate the classical sagas which didn't exactly have complex morality to their battles either, so it's just a result of the style and medium he was writing in, but I'd think it far more destructive to present war as a thing where Good Guys fight Bad Guys and everything is simple and black and white.

Martin instead in his books gives us wars where there are horrible people on all sides of the war (even on the side of the heroes), and politicians are causing massive amounts of death, destruction, and hardship on the commoners for ultimately petty reasons while largely (except for Stanis) ignoring the looming existential threat of ice zombies. [Also a blatant and obvious climate change metaphor.]

The show is notably less good at this portrayal of war as hell than the books are, but even now in the show when everyone has acknowledged the need to band together to survive, we have characters like Sansa whining and complaining about petty concerns like titles of nobility while death itself marches towards them.

But of course you've not seen the show nor have read the books, so you've got no idea about any of this and are speaking from a point of inexperience.
 
T

Terry Sampson

Well-Known Member
Sanzbir said:
My only real complaint about the episode is that some idiot on the writing staff thinks you can cast obsidian weapons. What's even the point, when the obsidian axe they showed looks like it was made by chipping anyways??
Click to expand...

Obsidian weapons can't be cast? Melting point of obsidian

Screenshot_2019-04-15 Melting point of obsidian.png
 
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