The whole "teleportation" thing

[sifth]

6 minutes ago, Maid So Fair said:

• Dffetnt storylines proceed at different pace only works for scenes where there is no interaction between the storylines and that's increasingly not the case. For instance, we know that Sandra and Theon leave WF at the same time - yet he's now gone to the Iron Islands, attended a Kingsmoot, travelled to Meereen and is on his way back while Sandra only made in to Castle Black and back (via Bear Island). We have connection between KL and the North too via Brienne and Jaime at RR. 
• Framing is an issue as is the fact that only some characters teleport. If everybody zoomed about the place, I could get behind it but we just saw Varys get there and back from Meereen to Dorne while Sam only got from Horn Hill to Oldtown. And you cant say he set our layer because of Sansa and Theon. Same with Mace and his trip to Braavos where Tyrion has made it to Meereen in shorter time. This is especially annoying when scenes are framed against each other.
• Even in situations where the travel is plausible i if extremely unlikely if you really squint really hard there's the why of it. I mean, I could leave my house right now and be in Australia in about 24 hrs and then back again by the end of the weekend, but this would be considered slightly mad in most circumstances. You could fly from London to New York in the morning and be back for late dinner, but you probably wouldn't. It's even more egregious in a setting where travel between places would take weeks and is physically demanding and potentially dangerous yet you have people going all over the place with little justification. LF is the best example of this, popping up to Mole's Town seemingly to have a chat with Sandra or going from WF to KL to establish him and Cersei are still cool. Why does Varys need to be on Dany's ship?

What makes that scene even worse is the fact that Dany has not even met Varys once. Don't get me wrong Tyrion probably explained everything to her, but the fact that we're meant to assume this and it wasn't shown to us, is just poor story telling.

[TheSerb]

On 6/28/2016 at 6:28 PM, Landru said:

There are plenty of techniques to show the passage of distance and time. For example,min The Godfather, when Tom goes to Hollywood to meet Woltz, there is a shot of a plane landing, a panorama of LA, then a cab driving up to Woltz studios. So when we see Tom speaking to Woltz, we know they're in Hollywood and we know how Tom got there. If they'd just gone from New York straight to Tom speaking to Woltz in a movie studio, viewers may have guessed that it was in Hollywood but that wouldn't have made it strong storytelling because making viewers figure out what should be obvious isn't immersive. 

They already have trouble adapting the novels into 10-episode seasons. That's why so many things get cut or condensed. But why not waste more time by showing needless scenes of characters travelling, right?

[OrcusOfUndeath]

On 6/27/2016 at 9:29 PM, Survivor92 said:

The problem with the constant honeypotting that "time differs per scene and per episode" is that some kind of logical similarities/consistency with the passing of time is necessary to simply being able to follow the plot. In movies like Memento (brilliant movie btw), the constant flashbacks and switching between past, present and future scenes works because it's a single movie where the whole premise is built on that (but even so, it requires you to pay good attention and many people need to watch the movie a 2nd or 3rd time).

We know that Varys was in Dorne after the events of KL, shown in the same episode (Olenna's comment). We then see Varys with Daenerys on the ship a few scenes later. Let's do a huge handwave and say that Varys and the Dorne/Tyrell army (we see their ships) met up with Daenerys somewhere in or at the eastern side of the Narrow Sea. So basically Daenerys already made it like 80% of the way off-screen and them standing on deck is for television drama. That means that the politics scene in Meereen from this same episode happened weeks/months before everything else. Knowing that it should also take weeks/months to gather the Dorne/Tyrell army and get them to meet up with Daenerys, we basically have two Daenerys scenes this episode where one takes place months before everything else/ Kings Landing and the other scene is weeks/months later. That is a problem. How are we supposed to follow the story that they're trying to tell if there are such huge differences between timelines? Perhaps Jon being made KitN is irrelevant, because it happens months before the King's Landing plot? What can we believe? How can we connect any of these 10 different stories together, if we cannot even trust internal consistency with the passing of time?

This scene with Varys is just one example of the many problems that are created by the shameless teleporation D&D use and the total lack of effort they put into creating matching timelines. The timelines should be linked and roughly the same. That's the least you should expect from this show if you want to just follow the events. At this rate, we're watching 10 different stories instead of one. Maybe when Bran gets back to the Wall, Jon is still not resurrected. Maybe when the White Walkers invade, Daenerys is still in the Dothraki Sea.

This single post made the most sense in the entire thread and its 100% correct. The issue with the different timelines is that no one cues us in about when all of this is happening, because if they did, they'd have to pay a hell of a lot more attention to what they are doing with the passage of time and locations of characters. But its real easy to let this get away from you and allow yourself too much leeway. And I think this is exactly what is happening, especially since they are trying to set up everything as quickly as they can and it shows. I'm kinda afraid because they cut the length of the two final seasons.

[Dolphy's Lunch]

To me their explanation is telling. "We do this so we don't have to show long, boring traveling scenes." In their minds the only two options are 1. have characters teleport or 2. have long travel scenes.

But there's a third option, isn't there? The third option is "exercise some narrative discipline and don't write scripts that require characters to teleport all over the place." But that option never occurs to them, because the writers have the narrative discipline of a six-year old mashing action figures together.

[CrypticWeirwood]

54 minutes ago, OrcusOfUndeath said:

This single post made the most sense in the entire thread and its 100% correct. The issue with the different timelines is that no one cues us in about when all of this is happening, because if they did, they'd have to pay a hell of a lot more attention to what they are doing with the passage of time and locations of characters. But its real easy to let this get away from you and allow yourself too much leeway. And I think this is exactly what is happening, especially since they are trying to set up everything as quickly as they can and it shows. I'm kinda afraid because they cut the length of the two final seasons.

I believe that they years ago, after talking things over with George, laid out all the plot arcs to fit within a seven-season show at ten episodes per season. 

Then after the show’s ballooning success HBO came to them asking for an eighth season because HBO had nothing in the works that was looking to shape up to be as successful.

That’s part of why we’re getting eight seasons but only seventy-three episodes.  The other part of course is so that a season’s worth of money can be spread across fewer episodes.

[Kusanagi]

7 hours ago, Dolphy's Lunch said:

To me their explanation is telling. "We do this so we don't have to show long, boring traveling scenes." In their minds the only two options are 1. have characters teleport or 2. have long travel scenes.

But there's a third option, isn't there? The third option is "exercise some narrative discipline and don't write scripts that require characters to teleport all over the place." But that option never occurs to them, because the writers have the narrative discipline of a six-year old mashing action figures together.

This ^

It can be done by presenting a letter written by Varys with Dany's seal. No teleportation needed. Or just have Varys station there as an agent of Dany's getting ready for her to come, no need to send him back to Meereen.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

17 minutes ago, Kusanagi said:

This ^

It can be done by presenting a letter written by Varys with Dany's seal. No teleportation needed. Or just have Varys station there as an agent of Dany's getting ready for her to come, no need to send him back to Meereen.

He never went back to Meereen. 

Either way, I think of Varys appearance on the boat as nothing more than a visual cue that 'this is the team of people who will be fighting as a group next season', its nothing more than visual shorthand. Those getting up in arms about it.. well you know my opinion.

[Kusanagi]

11 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

He never went back to Meereen. 

Either way, I think of Varys appearance on the boat as nothing more than a visual cue that 'this is the team of people who will be fighting as a group next season', its nothing more than visual shorthand. Those getting up in arms about it.. well you know my opinion.

Sorry, I meant he teleports back to Dany's ship for he knows the exact coordinates to punch in. 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

17 minutes ago, Kusanagi said:

Sorry, I meant he teleports back to Dany's ship for he knows the exact coordinates to punch in. 

Dany went to meet up with the Dorne navy at some point, they are in the fleet.

[Kusanagi]

3 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Dany went to meet up with the Dorne navy at some point, they are in the fleet.

What Dorne navy?

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

1 minute ago, Kusanagi said:

What Dorne navy?

What I mean is there are Dornish ships in that final shot 

[Kusanagi]

3 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

What I mean is there are Dornish ships in that final shot 

I am guess it is hard to ask the show to maintain consistency.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

1 minute ago, Kusanagi said:

I am guess it is hard to ask the show to maintain consistency.

In what way?

[Kusanagi]

5 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

In what way?

In the way that if I have to full in the gaps with my imagination for the writers, I should probably go write my own story instead of watching the show.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

5 minutes ago, Kusanagi said:

In the way that if I have to full in the gaps with my imagination for the writers, I should probably go write my own story instead of watching the show.

.... ok..