The whole "teleportation" thing

[RUSSELL BELL]

Yes I'd admit Varys appearing in Dorne was just bad editing and jarring. But this argument has been going on for far too long. 

 

 

[Danelle]

19 hours ago, Lord Lyman said:

What you are saying is true, and I'm fine with something like Arya who showed up at the Twins two episodes after leaving Braavos. But Varys is harder to believe. His in Dorne in one scene and then is standing behind Dany on a ship sailing for Westeros. Although I did see a Martell ship sailing with the rest of the fleet indicating how he got back to Meereen.

Yeah, I think there was a Martel ship, although I believe that it is insulting to refer to them as Martel ships, given what Ellaria did to Doran and Trystane. 

About Arya I am not bothered by the fact that the last time we saw her she was in Braavos and next time in the Twins.

I am bothered by the fact that the narrative doesn't seem to care for motives, deveolpent and actual storytelling.

It is not Arya or Varys who teleported but the plot.

It is as if someone tries to tell the story of Cinderella and goes something like this:

She was poor, she was not allowed to go to the dance.

She spends the night in her room, crying. 

Suddenly she arrives at the palace in a lavish carriage, wearing a lovely gown and glass slippers.

The only explanation for her new look is when she briefly thinks to herself how grateful she feels for her fairy godmother.

No further explanation of her fairy godmother and her intervention.

It is poor storytelling. 

Varys and Arya are present at those places because someone had to feed Walder with his sons and then kill him and someone had to convince the Sand Snakes and Olenna to join forces with Dany.

 

 

[Daske]

 After an initial double-take, I assumed we were meant to realise Varys was on the ship because the armada was not leaving Mereen, rather that it had already arrived in Westeros.

Damn fine shot of the fleet regardless.

 

[Lord Lyman]

1 hour ago, Danelle said:

Yeah, I think there was a Martel ship, although I believe that it is insulting to refer to them as Martel ships, given what Ellaria did to Doran and Trystane. 

About Arya I am not bothered by the fact that the last time we saw her she was in Braavos and next time in the Twins.

I am bothered by the fact that the narrative doesn't seem to care for motives, deveolpent and actual storytelling.

It is not Arya or Varys who teleported but the plot.

It is as if someone tries to tell the story of Cinderella and goes something like this:

She was poor, she was not allowed to go to the dance.

She spends the night in her room, crying. 

Suddenly she arrives at the palace in a lavish carriage, wearing a lovely gown and glass slippers.

The only explanation for her new look is when she briefly thinks to herself how grateful she feels for her fairy godmother.

No further explanation of her fairy godmother and her intervention.

It is poor storytelling. 

Varys and Arya are present at those places because someone had to feed Walder with his sons and then kill him and someone had to convince the Sand Snakes and Olenna to join forces with Dany.

 

 

I think a lot of the issues that get brought up, boil down to explanation and the reason GRRM once mentioned that his series is unfilmable. There are just too many storylines and not enough episodes. Many time a character may only get one 5 min scene in an episode because of this.

In regards to Arya, I thought her motive was pretty clear in this case. Walder is on her list to kill for the Red Wedding. Would it have been nice to show a scene where she kills the sons, probably. But we have other character arcs that need conclusion and so we aren't shown this.

[SuperMario]

Or the fact that Tommen aged up about 10 years within a few seasons just so they could have Marge fuck him while Gilly's baby has been an infant 4 years running. You can't explain that with different timelines.

[Liver and Onions]

I got it. There are multiple Varyses. He either cloned himself or was twins from the beginning.

Tyrion's going to open a door in the Red Keep when they return, only to find dozens of Varyses slowly turn to face him, saying nothing. Tyrion will back out of the room, shut the door, and quickly walk away.

 

[Snoop Arryn]

12 minutes ago, Liver and Onions said:

I got it. There are multiple Varyses. He either cloned himself or was twins from the beginning.

Tyrion's going to open a door in the Red Keep when they return, only to find dozens of Varyses slowly turn to face him, saying nothing. Tyrion will back out of the room, shut the door, and quickly walk away.

 

well done.

I don't have an issue with characters moving quickly or the pace of the story being quick, I just wish the show would acknowledge it somehow. Sometimes it would be a simple as just a one line of dialogue to acknowledge the leap in time or travel. But I think the show might purposely not acknowledge some of this. They may like having the ability to quickly get a character anywhere as needed for their plot, without having to think about it too much.

 

 

[sifth]

Months and years pass by from scene to scene, yet Gilly's baby remains timeless, lol

[Desert Fox]

There are huge timeline issues regarding people's ages. I'm also sure that if you went and tried to map timelines you'd find major inconsistencies. 

But this crying over teleportation is beyond stupid. There are implied time jumps. That isn't bad storytelling, it's good storytelling. If you are confused by it, the problem is you. 

though I bet there is a huge continuity error next season. Jamie and Cersei's conflict should pick up in the days after coronation and shouldn't take months to work out. But I bet Dany shows up right after. Even though her timeline should make that impossible.

[Landru]

1 hour ago, Desert Fox said:

There are huge timeline issues regarding people's ages. I'm also sure that if you went and tried to map timelines you'd find major inconsistencies. 

But this crying over teleportation is beyond stupid. There are implied time jumps. That isn't bad storytelling, it's good storytelling. If you are confused by it, the problem is you. 

though I bet there is a huge continuity error next season. Jamie and Cersei's conflict should pick up in the days after coronation and shouldn't take months to work out. But I bet Dany shows up right after. Even though her timeline should make that impossible.

So, to sum up your opinion, confusing storytelling is excellent and people who don't agree are stupid?

Sure, most people who saw Varys in the closing shot assumed he sailed, rather than teleported back. But even a number of people in this topic didn't realize that shot took place in Slaver's Bay not at a rendezvous at Westeros.

Furthermore, did the Tyrells and Sands send all of their ships or only the ones that were in port? Did Dany take all of the Dothraki and all of their horses? If she did, how long did it take to load all of those horses, men and supplies off of the small Meereen docks? At least a few months had to have passed and perhaps as much as a year did. What happened in Mereen during this time? We got intimate details for several seasons yet now how no idea. Yet you so aggressively believe this is excellent storytelling that you're willing to dismiss anyone who disagrees as stupid?

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. 

In the case of GoT the warping of time and space is a bigger problem because the writing has become increasingly sloppy, with individuals acting out of character or motivation, characters knowing what they should not or not knowing what they should, glaring continuity errors or just ridiculous situations (eg Arya running around with a serious abdominal injury or baking human pies in the Frey's kitchen). It's funny that a show that has some very subtle visual and musical cues also contains so many raging contiuty errors. 

 

[Ser Gareth]

7 hours ago, Rhaegun said:

Meanwhile, in book Westeros, five years takes twenty years to depict.  We can expect that the actual departure from Mereen will be depicted with a few chapters about the Sailpainters Guild and their colors and how they got started by running away from the barn painters guild. Not to mention a few chapters about some character getting sick over the side of a boat.

Would anyone feel better if they superimposed, "Meanwhile, six months later" a la comic book movies?

You forgot to add that Dany will be halfway to Westeros when she realises that to go West she must go East.  And promptly turns the whole Armada around to visit Asshai....

[Desert Fox]

3 hours ago, Landru said:

So, to sum up your opinion, confusing storytelling is excellent and people who don't agree are stupid?

Sure, most people who saw Varys in the closing shot assumed he sailed, rather than teleported back. But even a number of people in this topic didn't realize that shot took place in Slaver's Bay not at a rendezvous at Westeros.

Furthermore, did the Tyrells and Sands send all of their ships or only the ones that were in port? Did Dany take all of the Dothraki and all of their horses? If she did, how long did it take to load all of those horses, men and supplies off of the small Meereen docks? At least a few months had to have passed and perhaps as much as a year did. What happened in Mereen during this time? We got intimate details for several seasons yet now how no idea. Yet you so aggressively believe this is excellent storytelling that you're willing to dismiss anyone who disagrees as stupid?

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. 

In the case of GoT the warping of time and space is a bigger problem because the writing has become increasingly sloppy, with individuals acting out of character or motivation, characters knowing what they should not or not knowing what they should, glaring continuity errors or just ridiculous situations (eg Arya running around with a serious abdominal injury or baking human pies in the Frey's kitchen). It's funny that a show that has some very subtle visual and musical cues also contains so many raging contiuty errors. 

 

No my opinion is that it isn't confusing at all and if it is for you it's because of some problem with you. You said stupidity not me. I'd argue it's more like an unwarranted assumption that an episode must be contained within a short period of time.

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But even a number of people in this topic didn't realize that shot took place in Slaver's Bay not at a rendezvous at Westeros. Furthermore, did the Tyrells and Sands send all of their ships or only the ones that were in port? Did Dany take all of the Dothraki and all of their horses? If she did, how long did it take to load all of those horses, men and supplies off of the small Meereen docks? At least a few months had to have passed and perhaps as much as a year did. What happened in Mereen during this time? We got intimate details for several seasons yet now how no idea. Yet you so aggressively believe this is excellent storytelling that you're willing to dismiss anyone who disagrees as stupid?

None of this really matters yet, and maybe never will. The point of the scene is that Dany is finally coming in force to westeros with a massive army. Whether she has 80k Dothraki or 110k doesn't really matter.

Moreover, the show barely got into these sorts of issues unless they were about to have an impact. The storyline of the military campaigns was really fucking vague. I'd argue too vague.

Re:mereen, it's just not a major part of the story anymore. It's only important so long as major characters are there. The show isn't about what happens in Mereen after Dany leaves. I seriously doubt GRRM will spend a lot of time on it either. This story doesn't have the space for side stories like that. It's already too rushed as it is. I didn't imply that you caring what happens in Mereen makes you stupid. I implied that skipping over small unimportant details is good story telling. And it is. You could do ASOIAF 24 style and do the whole thing in real time, but it would suck.

Quote

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. 

There is no need for that just to set up a simple scene with Varys standing next to Dany. The show usually does a panoroma of the location to establish where the characters are when it's necessary. And that's exactly what happens in the shot with the ships. The important information is that they are sailing en masse to westeros. The show the thousand ships, the different groups who all swore allegiance to dany. Exactly where they are is not relevant. Just adding Varys stepping onto a ship is a waste of effort. It woudn't add anything. Do you want a map with red dots tracking the characters?

One example, where that might be important is suddenly Jon met with Jaime. The show better show where the fuck the meeting is taking place otherwise it's confusing. But Ayra getting to the Twins isn't hard to understand. She got on a ship and went.

Other times its better to not set it up on purpose. Would ACOK be better if we had a POV showing Tywin approaching KL on the same day of the blackwater? I'd argue no.

If the time jump is important to the story (which is often is) then you need to set it up somehow. But it's not really important for Dany sailing to westeros. Does that scene mean any more or less if it took 30 days or 120 days? Maybe you argue the weather might be important. But we still don't know when winter coming intersects with that timeline.

Quote

In the case of GoT the warping of time and space is a bigger problem because the writing has become increasingly sloppy, with individuals acting out of character or motivation, characters knowing what they should not or not knowing what they should, glaring continuity errors or just ridiculous situations (eg Arya running around with a serious abdominal injury or baking human pies in the Frey's kitchen). It's funny that a show that has some very subtle visual and musical cues also contains so many raging contiuty errors. 

There are no readily apparently time issues on the show that people could pick up on without looking for them. Even when thinking about it I cannot think of anything. Though I'm pretty sure the events in KL will have one next season. I'm sure if you ploted each plot point out to create a timeline many would show, but since the show is vague about it, you can't see it on a regular viewing.

I don't see how this is a problem for anyone who enjoys reading the books. The books certainly don't have a linear timelime and each plot is definitely not time synced.

[Cas Stark]

Gilly's baby being an infant for 3 seasons when Myrcella had been in Dorne for "years" and clearly more time is passing than a few months was pretty bad.

As was the Stannis can walk to Winterfell/Mel can ride from Stannis to camp to Castle Black in a single day, and Sansa and Bri can get to Castle Black from Winterfell in a couple of days.  That was really poorly handled and no matter how hard people try to make the timeline work there, it won't.

[BootySeeker]

15 hours ago, Nordahl iceskin said:

Who's to say Cercei was crowned the day after Tommen killed himself? maybe the Sept had been burning for days or weeks. How did all the northern lords get to Winterfell so fast. How did arya get to the riverlands. How did Vary's get to meereen and back. How did bran go from the tree all the way to the wall in a few episodes when it took him damn near a season and a half to get to the tree in the first place. How did Sam get to Oldtown in a few episodes Did they all teleport?

No, lots of time passed. For all we know Vary's met Dany in Dorne and they are already heading to KL. It was the last scene of the seasons it could take place 4 months after the scene preceding it as far as I'm concerned.

Her hair didn't seem to grow half an inch though.

[No One of Importance]

Maybe in a world where the seasons last unpredictable numbers of years, time just works differently? (I'm only mostly kidding.) I assume the Dornish and Tyrell ships had to go to Meereen because otherwise Dany couldn't successfully move all of her forces. That doesn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that Dorne should have no appreciable number of seafaring vessels what with Nymeria famously burning them a thousand years ago.

[TepidHands]

18 minutes ago, BootySeeker said:

Her hair didn't seem to grow half an inch though.

She's got a standing appointment with Pierre, her stylist at Le Salon de Fond aux Puces.

[Landru]

2 hours ago, Desert Fox said:

No my opinion is that it isn't confusing at all and if it is for you it's because of some problem with you. You said stupidity not me. I'd argue it's more like an unwarranted assumption that an episode must be contained within a short period of time.

None of this really matters yet, and maybe never will. The point of the scene is that Dany is finally coming in force to westeros with a massive army. Whether she has 80k Dothraki or 110k doesn't really matter.

Your quote was:

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But this crying over teleportation is beyond stupid. There are implied time jumps. That isn't bad storytelling, it's good storytelling. If you are confused by it, the problem is you. 

You were stating your opinions as facts, which is what I objected to. You have every right to have opinions but you're not the global arbiter of what constitutes good storytelling are what is a reasonable vs. a stupid argument. 

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Re:mereen, it's just not a major part of the story anymore. It's only important so long as major characters are there. The show isn't about what happens in Mereen after Dany leaves.

<snip>

If the time jump is important to the story (which is often is) then you need to set it up somehow. But it's not really important for Dany sailing to westeros. Does that scene mean any more or less if it took 30 days or 120 days? Maybe you argue the weather might be important. But we still don't know when winter coming intersects with that timeline.

Except major characters are sitting in Meereen for who knows how long while waiting for Varys to return. Even more importantly, Dany has never met Varys before, so their meeting takes place off-screen. Which is even more amazing because Jorah told Dany that, when he was spying for her, he was reporting to Varys. This is a major plot point that has been completely discarded in the name of expediency. 

Quote

There are no readily apparently time issues on the show that people could pick up on without looking for them. Even when thinking about it I cannot think of anything. Though I'm pretty sure the events in KL will have one next season. I'm sure if you ploted each plot point out to create a timeline many would show, but since the show is vague about it, you can't see it on a regular viewing.

I don't see how this is a problem for anyone who enjoys reading the books. The books certainly don't have a linear timelime and each plot is definitely not time synced.

Well, 'readily apparent' are in the eyes of the beholder. Where's Brienne? Jaime went to the Twins, had dinner and made it all the way back to KL yet Brienne is either dead or still rowing. You may claim that WF and KL are on different timelines, which, while it may be the case, is terrible to me. It's not difficult to tie things together from time to time and it's necessary to understand developments. For example, why hadn't The Citadel heard of the demise of LC Mormont when Tyrion told Jorah last season? Is Sam years behind everyone else or was it just a ludicrous oversight on behalf of the writers? The fact that I can even ask this question and you cannot honestly answer goes to show how bad things are. 

You may argue that this is nitpicking and none of it matters for the story and to you it may not be. You may watch for the payoffs and not really care about the path to get there. That doesn't make you stupid or a poor judge of television but it's surprising to me that you seemingly cannot understand that other people may actually care about continuity and consistent plot and character development. 

It's funny that you bring the books into it because, while the books don't have a linear timeline, GRRM tracks and accounts for time very carefully, which is why the Meereenese Knot exists. In that regard, GRRM and D&D are polar opposites.

[ummester]

On 28/06/2016 at 11:04 PM, sifth said:

Months and years pass by from scene to scene, yet Gilly's baby remains timeless, lol

Exactly - I don't know why so many people are worried about teleportation when Gilly's baby is stuck in some kind of time bubble - I blame Bran, for all of it

[sifth]

On 6/28/2016 at 10:12 AM, Desert Fox said:

There are huge timeline issues regarding people's ages. I'm also sure that if you went and tried to map timelines you'd find major inconsistencies. 

But this crying over teleportation is beyond stupid. There are implied time jumps. That isn't bad storytelling, it's good storytelling. If you are confused by it, the problem is you. 

though I bet there is a huge continuity error next season. Jamie and Cersei's conflict should pick up in the days after coronation and shouldn't take months to work out. But I bet Dany shows up right after. Even though her timeline should make that impossible.

Notice how these rather massive time jumps didn't start happening until season 5. I wonder why...............seriously...............it could be anything, ha ha ha

[Maid So Fair]

• 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?