[Spoilers] Rant and Rave without Reprecussions - Season 6 Edition

[mormont]

[mod] This isn't the Sopranos forum, folks. Stick to discussing GOT. [/mod]

[Le Cygne]

So how much will they wreck Lyanna Mormont? They'll make her a little badass.

As much as I want Jon to take front and center in his own story (that the dreary rape and revenge fanfic is taking over), I bet she's the standout of these scenes.

They included her letter: "Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is Stark."

[Tijgy]

6 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

So how much will they wreck Lyanna Mormont? They'll make her a little badass.

Do you know if she will appear today or will she appear later in the season?

[Le Cygne]

12 minutes ago, Tijgy said:

Do you know if she will appear today or will she appear later in the season?

Yes, she's expected to appear and say she wants Jon as King, according to speculation (the scene in the previews with the Mormont banners is in this episode).

So there's Sandor and Lyanna expected, that will likely save this episode from ZZZzzzzzzzzz...

[SerMixalot]

There is also the bloody fist banner so are Sansa Jon and Davis doing a northern tour?

[Tijgy]

1 minute ago, SerMixalot said:

There is also the bloody fist banner so are Sansa Jon and Davis doing a northern tour?

Apparently we will have also the amazing Robett Glover , the guy who was the leader of the group Northeners infiltrating Harrenhall, tried to raise an army to get his castle and family back and the trusted co-conspirator/follower of the one and only Wyman Manderley.

It is apparently the time for the audience to remember what happened during the Red Wedding.

[Le Cygne]

I wonder if they will bother to mention that Lyanna is related to Jorah (something they didn't do when LC Mormont died, it's not like his dying wish mattered or anything).

[Ibbison from Ibben]

I'm rather stunned at how slow this season is moving. The KL arc hasn't quite got to the end of Dance yet. (As of 606, Marge just got out of jail and the epilogue scene hasn't happened.) The North has consisted of Jon's resurrection (which was so dull and meaningless everyone has already forgotten about it), three major POVs at Castle Black avoiding the conversations they would naturally have, and Ramsay the Piranha getting a minnow tossed in his tank once per episode. Tyrion is stalling in Meereen. He's not even making dragon saddles or lists of possible dragon riders. Arya's material just got to TWoW in the last two eps. Jaime is headed to the riverlands to finally finish up with Feast. 

Other than Jon, the only storylines that have really pushed into TWoW territory are Dany's and Bran's. They cut all those storylines (no fAegon, no Dorne in KL, cut short Stannis, no northern lords in WF, no Vale), they didn't replace them with anything, and they're still not making progress. We'll get one big battle in the north in 609, and some sort of season-ending slaughter plus R+L=J in 610. Will they even manage to get to the end of TWoW? There's no way Dany can make it to Westeros - she'll barely have time to leave.

[TepidHands]

To restate my point, violence, like any other character action,  must be organic to the story or it will feel forced and silly. That kind of unearned violence will be shocking, of course. It may outrage the audience. But if it's not integral to the story, it's just there for the outrage and shock, and there's never consequences. 

And GoT has really fallen into that pattern: Ramsay tortures and castrates Theon in Season 3, rapes Sansa last season, kills Roose, kills Walda, kills his half-brother this season, and what are the consequences? He gets legitimized, gets a girlfriend, and is given fealties and even a new Stark to torture! Whoopee!

Dany burns a guy alive, gets a husband out of the deal... only to lose the same husband in an attack by the local terrorists, and WOW! A DRAGON! She escapes! Has she spent a thought on Hizdar or even her BFF Missy since leaving the pit on her spiky savior? She kills all the khals and gets another nation out of it! 

And now we've got Euron, who the audience doesn't know, shows up and his brother and king,  threatens his niece and nephew, and gets a throne out of it. 

Even the worst, most awful violence in the books seems to have consequences, and the characters remember. Jaime losing his hand in ASoS affects him and others in almost every scene  in the subsequent books. Jeyne Poole's audible suffering affects dozens of characters, from Roose to Theon to the Northmen, and motivates them. 

 

[Tijgy]

28 minutes ago, Ibbison from Ibben said:

I'm rather stunned at how slow this season is moving. The KL arc hasn't quite got to the end of Dance yet. (As of 606, Marge just got out of jail and the epilogue scene hasn't happened.) The North has consisted of Jon's resurrection (which was so dull and meaningless everyone has already forgotten about it), three major POVs at Castle Black avoiding the conversations they would naturally have, and Ramsay the Piranha getting a minnow tossed in his tank once per episode. Tyrion is stalling in Meereen. He's not even making dragon saddles or lists of possible dragon riders. Arya's material just got to TWoW in the last two eps. Jaime is headed to the riverlands to finally finish up with Feast. 

Other than Jon, the only storylines that have really pushed into TWoW territory are Dany's and Bran's. They cut all those storylines (no fAegon, no Dorne in KL, cut short Stannis, no northern lords in WF, no Vale), they didn't replace them with anything, and they're still not making progress. We'll get one big battle in the north in 609, and some sort of season-ending slaughter plus R+L=J in 610. Will they even manage to get to the end of TWoW? There's no way Dany can make it to Westeros - she'll barely have time to leave.

Wait, I still thought they were still adapting ADWD and AFFC. They just gave the storylines to other characters. Jon is actually now doing what Stannis was doing, Tyrion is doing what Dany, Barry and Quent were doing, ... I think they were stuck without any source material left so they decided to adapt ADWD and AFFC for the second time? 

[Cas Stark]

I'm simply not engaged enough to rant any more.   But I was thinking what a huge missed opportunity with the Children and them being the creators of the WW.  That should have been an absolutely monumental reveal, with some level of poignancy and tragedy, that in their desperation at being wiped out, they created a weapon that has since turned on them.  Of course to make that work, you might have wanted Leaf and Bran and Max to have 1 or 2 minutes of convos on some of the back story.

In fact I would argue that Hold the Door should have occurred in a separate episode from the Children/WW reveal.

Of course it's typical of the show that now they can't even discern what the real dramatic moments are and should be or how to handle them.  Jon and Sansa blabbing about soup, LOL, Children created WW and fuck all was said, and even Max didn't get any kind of decent death speech, unless he's going to come back to Bran as Obi Wan Raven.

 

[Liver and Onions]

1 hour ago, Ibbison from Ibben said:

I'm rather stunned at how slow this season is moving. The KL arc hasn't quite got to the end of Dance yet. (As of 606, Marge just got out of jail and the epilogue scene hasn't happened.) The North has consisted of Jon's resurrection (which was so dull and meaningless everyone has already forgotten about it), three major POVs at Castle Black avoiding the conversations they would naturally have, and Ramsay the Piranha getting a minnow tossed in his tank once per episode. Tyrion is stalling in Meereen. He's not even making dragon saddles or lists of possible dragon riders. Arya's material just got to TWoW in the last two eps. Jaime is headed to the riverlands to finally finish up with Feast. 

Other than Jon, the only storylines that have really pushed into TWoW territory are Dany's and Bran's. They cut all those storylines (no fAegon, no Dorne in KL, cut short Stannis, no northern lords in WF, no Vale), they didn't replace them with anything, and they're still not making progress. We'll get one big battle in the north in 609, and some sort of season-ending slaughter plus R+L=J in 610. Will they even manage to get to the end of TWoW? There's no way Dany can make it to Westeros - she'll barely have time to leave.

Excellent observation. For all the talk about how the show is surpassing the books, the only real instances of this are Dany's Dothraki bonfire, Jon coming back, and Arya's Mercy chapter. Sansa and Jon are indeed stuck in Stannis' storyline, as @Tijgy pointed out. Most of the character deaths are guaranteed to be different in the books, if they occur at all (Doran, Trystane, Areo, Osha, Shaggydog). And there's  some evidence in the world book that the revelation of the COTF and the WW isn't going to be the same in the books. At the very least, it will be given more narrative weight.

Slow the plot down, laddy! Slow the plot down!

 

[Le Cygne]

You found their playbook!

And yet, the one thing they'll never do is take the time to give the characters life, they are back to season 1, or swapped nonsensically for another character, or in a bad soap plot where bad things happen, all they want is revenge, that's all that matters.

[Dolorous Gabe]

34 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I'm simply not engaged enough to rant any more.   But I was thinking what a huge missed opportunity with the Children and them being the creators of the WW.  That should have been an absolutely monumental reveal, with some level of poignancy and tragedy, that in their desperation at being wiped out, they created a weapon that has since turned on them.  Of course to make that work, you might have wanted Leaf and Bran and Max to have 1 or 2 minutes of convos on some of the back story.

In fact I would argue that Hold the Door should have occurred in a separate episode from the Children/WW reveal.

Of course it's typical of the show that now they can't even discern what the real dramatic moments are and should be or how to handle them.  Jon and Sansa blabbing about soup, LOL, Children created WW and fuck all was said, and even Max didn't get any kind of decent death speech, unless he's going to come back to Bran as Obi Wan Raven.

 

Wholeheartedly agree with all of this.

I would do more than argue the bolded, I would insist it.

[Davros Seaworth]

Though I was still unable to catch up, it seems that this place has been less busy for the last episode, is it because so many people have just stopped watching altogether, or has the show just become so absurd that there's really not much to say anymore besides "this is stupid" "that is stupid" etc. I'm really annoyed by many things like the unceremonious removal of one of the most central parts of the Starks - their dire wolves, but the show is just so off to me that it seems off.

[sweetsunray]

1 hour ago, TepidHands said:

To restate my point, violence, like any other character action,  must be organic to the story or it will feel forced and silly. That kind of unearned violence will be shocking, of course. It may outrage the audience. But if it's not integral to the story, it's just there for the outrage and shock, and there's never consequences. 

And GoT has really fallen into that pattern: Ramsay tortures and castrates Theon in Season 3, rapes Sansa last season, kills Roose, kills Walda, kills his half-brother this season, and what are the consequences? He gets legitimized, gets a girlfriend, and is given fealties and even a new Stark to torture! Whoopee!

Dany burns a guy alive, gets a husband out of the deal... only to lose the same husband in an attack by the local terrorists, and WOW! A DRAGON! She escapes! Has she spent a thought on Hizdar or even her BFF Missy since leaving the pit on her spiky savior? She kills all the khals and gets another nation out of it! 

And now we've got Euron, who the audience doesn't know, shows up and his brother and king,  threatens his niece and nephew, and gets a throne out of it. 

Even the worst, most awful violence in the books seems to have consequences, and the characters remember. Jaime losing his hand in ASoS affects him and others in almost every scene  in the subsequent books. Jeyne Poole's audible suffering affects dozens of characters, from Roose to Theon to the Northmen, and motivates them. 

 

Fully agreed. Sex, violence, horror can be ok if it is an organic part of the story. It is gratuis when the story is shoehorned in such a way to show shocking imagery.

GOT shoehorns the story in order get Sansa raped. GOT throws characterisation, scene and setting logic, realism and inner-world values out of the window to burn Shyreen, have Walda and newborn fed to Ramsay's dogs, throw Shaggydog's head on a table, etc...

(Note: the following is on topic comparisons with other shows). Shows like Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Black Sails, etc also depict a lot of violence, gang rape, murders, sawing a man's head off, beating someone to a pulp, sex, and so on and so on, but it serves the story, serves characterization and no Hollywood-ninja fighting, but fighters grabbing and using whatever they can get their hands on to best the other, and it always has consequences.

[sweetsunray]

11 minutes ago, Davros Seaworth said:

Though I was still unable to catch up, it seems that this place has been less busy for the last episode, is it because so many people have just stopped watching altogether, or has the show just become so absurd that there's really not much to say anymore besides "this is stupid" "that is stupid" etc. I'm really annoyed by many things like the unceremonious removal of one of the most central parts of the Starks - their dire wolves, but the show is just so off to me that it seems off.

The characters have become so cartoonish, the plot so illogical and incoherent that I personally stoped caring about anyone in the show. I haven't watched the previous episode anymore, except for a clip here or there. It just isn't a story to me anymore in any way at all. Just a bunch of clips pasted together that have little relevance to me. Besides, George has released awesome chapter transcripts that satisfy me far more than watching the smoking remains of the trainwreck the show has become to me. And when I'm not spinning my mind over those transcripts, I'm watching and rewatching Black Sails instead.

[Davros Seaworth]

2 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

The characters have become so cartoonish, the plot so illogical and incoherent that I personally stoped caring about anyone in the show. I haven't watched the previous episode anymore, except for a clip here or there. It just isn't a story to me anymore in any way at all. Just a bunch of clips pasted together that have little relevance to me. Besides, George has released awesome chapter transcripts that satisfy me far more than watching the smoking remains of the trainwreck the show has become to me. And when I'm not spinning my mind over those transcripts, I'm watching and rewatching Black Sails instead.

Oh, I'm much more interested in Winds of Winter, and I like Black Sails too, though here in the UK I've only seen the first 2 seasons, and thanks to tennis, I've missed episode 9 and it looks like a lot of good stuff happened there.

I was asking as in earlier episodes there was such much ranting and now, I know what you mean, there's no logic in the show things just sort of happen, or sometimes don't happen at all. I am just so disappointed still since it started out so good.

[The Fattest Leech]

47 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Fully agreed. Sex, violence, horror can be ok if it is an organic part of the story. It is gratuis when the story is shoehorned in such a way to show shocking imagery.

GOT shoehorns the story in order get Sansa raped. GOT throws characterisation, scene and setting logic, realism and inner-world values out of the window to burn Shyreen, have Walda and newborn fed to Ramsay's dogs, throw Shaggydog's head on a table, etc...

(Note: the following is on topic comparisons with other shows). Shows like Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Black Sails, etc also depict a lot of violence, gang rape, murders, sawing a man's head off, beating someone to a pulp, sex, and so on and so on, but it serves the story, serves characterization and no Hollywood-ninja fighting, but fighters grabbing and using whatever they can get their hands on to best the other, and it always has consequences.

I'm glad you mentioned the compare/contrast to other tv shows and Hollywood. 

Not to sound braggish, but last Monday I was at a small coffee talk with GRRM and about eight other people and GRRM made a point to say (and demonstrate) how what certain shows and Hollywood depict as battle fights and violence is ridiculous compared to how it would be in reality. 

Now compare a story written by someone with a historical background or other real world experiences to financially privileged people that just started writing scripts and you can see how shows like the Sopranos is superior to GoT. 

In one you can fully immerse yourself in the story and get attached compared to the other where every new scene brings on a slew of questions that confuse enough viewers that they have to start threads to get help figuring it out. 

[Davros Seaworth]

1 minute ago, The Fattest Leech said:

I'm glad you mentioned the compare/contrast to other tv shows and Hollywood. 

Not to sound braggish, but last Monday I was at a small coffee talk with GRRM and about eight other people and GRRM made a point to say (and demonstrate) how what certain shows and Hollywood depict as battle fights and violence is ridiculous compared to how it would be in reality. 

Now compare a story written by someone with a historical background or other real world experiences to financially privileged people that just started writing scripts and you can see how shows like the Sopranos is superior to GoT. 

In one you can fully immerse yourself in the story and get attached compared to the other where every new scene brings on a slew of questions that confuse enough viewers that they have to start breads to get help figuring it out. 

You met GRRM? Oh, was it good?