More Impressions on Game of Thrones

[Inglorious Pencil]

If this is the wrong place I aplogize.

I don't like some of the visual style. It doesn't look like the pagaentry the books. I expected pavilions, and courts and the general colorfulness that characterized the book. The color hiding the grey inside. Unfortunatly, the world looks very dark and drab, with

While the style is good for the Starks and the north, it isn't good for the south in summer in my opinion and leaves out some of the books most interesting atmospheres.

Hey, that's a perfectly legit comment to me :) To be honest, this is a style I feared they would adopt since the series was announced, because that's pretty much the artistic direction most historical/fantasy movies have taken over the last... fifteen years or so? Desaturated cinematography and a dark, vaguely metallic look. While we know that the world GRRM has created is much more vivid and colorful - sometimes even garishly so, judging from the description of some Lannister and Tyrell clothes (which imo are the houses who tend to overdecorate and overdress the most) :) But personally the general greyness doesn't disturb me as much as some costuming which I think has already been debated at length - I don't agree with all of this post, but I can see where the OP is coming from re: the lack of internal consistency in some of the costuming choices. Again: the "wrong" costumes or cinematography aren't going to change the substance of the story, but on the other hand these details are important in terms of worldbuilding, so it's fair to nitpick, I guess :D

[mummer]

Hmm... I'm not sure we've seen any "dark and drab" scenes from the South, except for the over-the-top spookiness of the shadowy throne room in that last teaser which isn't actually footage from the show.

The previews so far have included quite a bit of stuff from the North - Winterfell, the Wall, etc. - and some Dany bits. This is most if not all of what we've seen from the South:

- A couple of street scenes in King's Landing (Street of Steel, and what looks like the showdown with Jaime). Not opulent, but not gray.

- Ned & Cersei in the Red Keep. Fairly opulent and colorful.

- Ned & Petyr in a garden somewhere in King's Landing. Sunny and green.

- Ned walking through the Red Keep. Red stone walls, color mosaics and ornaments on the walls, stained glass windows.

- Tyrion being arrested at the inn. It's an inn, it's not colorful.

- Brief clips from the Hand's tournament. Can't see much, but there do seem to be colorful banners and it certainly isn't dark.

[Medieval Housefly]

Something is really bothering me about the casing in GoT. I know this isn't a big deal, but it's very bothersome and I want to get it off my chest. Queen Cersei has Lena Headey playing her, and she is super pretty, but her eyebrows are way too dark. This may sound dumb, but she is supposed to be a natural blonde. In this type of movie there are certain things I expect... if there are nude scenes the women shouldn't have noticeable implants, people should look natural in general, and if you have to dye the hair to make the girl a natural blonde... dye the eyebrows too.

[Brienne the Beauty]

Something is really bothering me about the casing in GoT. I know this isn't a big deal, but it's very bothersome and I want to get it off my chest. Queen Cersei has Lena Headey playing her, and she is super pretty, but her eyebrows are way too dark. This may sound dumb, but she is supposed to be a natural blonde.

Natural blondes often have dark eyebrows... personally I find it more odd that the platinum blonde Targaryens have dark eyebrows, as in my experience natural platinum blondes never do.

[Medieval Housefly]

Natural blondes often have dark eyebrows... personally I find it more odd that the platinum blonde Targaryens have dark eyebrows, as in my experience natural platinum blondes never do.

They may be darker, but not that dark, and it still depends. I'm just shocked that something so easy to do to make it more believable wasn't done.

[Brienne the Beauty]

They may be darker, but not that dark, and it still depends. I'm just shocked that something so easy to do to make it more believable wasn't done.

If they were not going to do it for the Targaryens they were hardly going to do it for Cersei, who if I recall had golden hair in the books, not platinum.

I have heard this is something to do with light eyebrows being hard to see on screen, and thus some of the actor's expression is lost.

[Maltaran]

Also, actors may well not want bleach being applied near their eyes.

[Medieval Housefly]

Also, actors may well not want bleach being applied near their eyes.

They have skilled professionals that can safely accomplish such a task.

[Padraig]

They have skilled professionals that can safely accomplish such a task.

Is this normal? I honestly can say I have never paid attention to eyebrows (and I doubt I will start) but is it normal for actors to bleach them?

[Medieval Housefly]

Now that I think of it, I don't think natural blondes have dark eyebrows, I just don't think we see many natural blondes. Blondes are actually a dying breed that they say could become extinct in a couple hundred years due to its recessive qualities, people usually have to dye their hair to be light blonde. Owen Wilson is a natural blonde, with blonde eyebrows.

[Brienne the Beauty]

Blondes are actually a dying breed that they say could become extinct in a couple hundred years due to its recessive qualities

This is an urban legend.

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/blondes.asp

[Medieval Housefly]

Well, there is kind of an inevitability to it. My family used to be blonde a couple generations ago, but that has mostly been bred out of us. My father's side had blonde hair, but because of my mother we all have light brown hair. The recessive blonde gene may stay in me, but will probably be bred out eventually. Interracial marriage will also lead to the lessening of blonde hair, a blonde girl marrying an asian or african has almost no chance of having a child with blonde hair, and through genetics we know that that child may have a blonde gene, but it would take them marrying another person with a blonde gene for it to appear. The more we diversify the less we will see blondes, it is inevitable.

Oh, I'm not saying snopes isn't right here, but they've been known to get many things wrong.

[mummer]

The recessive blonde gene may stay in me, but will probably be bred out eventually. Interracial marriage will also lead to the lessening of blonde hair, a blonde girl marrying an asian or african has almost no chance of having a child with blonde hair, and through genetics we know that that child may have a blonde gene, but it would take them marrying another person with a blonde gene for it to appear. The more we diversify the less we will see blondes, it is inevitable.

No, recessive genes do not get "bred out." You may not see blonds as often, but that doesn't mean they will ever disappear.

You don't even have to read that Snopes page - it's just plain Mendelian genetics. Call the dominant brown-haired gene B, and the recessive blond gene b (and yes, I know it's a bit more complicated than this). Only people with bb will look blond. If you're a Bb, and you have children with a BB, each of the children has a 50% chance of being Bb too. If your mate is Bb, then there's a 25% chance of a bb child, and 50% chance of Bb. And of course all children of blond bb parents will have at least one recessive b. Given that, the b gene will never get eliminated completely and blonds will keep showing up, unless there is a serious reproductive disadvantage to having even one b (i.e. everyone gets genetic testing and those with any blond heritage are ostracized - or, the gene has some biological effect that can make you die or become sterile even when it's not dominant).

In fact, the more diverse interbreeding you have around the world, the more widely the recessive gene gets distributed, so it's even less likely that (for instance) an asteroid impact in Sweden would remove the trait from the gene pool to any significant degree.

Edited to add: Besides, the human race will always have to keep some of us around to apply white-out to the computer screens.

[lacuna]

My neighbor has naturally blond hair, with brownish eyebrows. His six year old son has very, very light blond hair, with eyebrows to match, which is how I see Dany in my head. If her hair has to be paler than that, make it like that of my grandfather a few years ago - white, sleek and shiny, more silver than white. Dany's hair in the clips looks a bit "lusterless", if you get my meaning. But ultimately it's of little importance, and Targaryens are supposed to be an anomaly anyway.

Oh, and the kid's mother's hair was blond, apparently, when she was younger. I read somewhere (which implies that it's probably untrue) that blond hair sometimes darkens as you get older, and that is why people, predominantly women, dye their hair blond, as it makes them appear younger.

[Medieval Housefly]

I know a lot about genetics thanks to my pursuit of higher education, and as you said we will see them less and less. Drop 100 blondes in the middle of the billions of chinese in China, if they each have ten babies chances are none of them will be blonde. Take 100 brunettes and drop them into a billion blondes and you have a new hair color for the group. The gene may survive for a long time, but eventually, not in the 200 years snopes says it will, it could possibly mean that there are very very few blondes. Now there are a lot less than there were 50 years ago, and 50 years from now there will still be less.

[mummer]

Sparkle Hound, what you're missing is that after you introduce those 100 blonds into China, even if none of their children are blond, in time the result is that the recessive gene spreads through the population where it formerly didn't exist at all. Assuming random interbreeding, Bb eventually becomes the most common genotype (and BB becomes as rare as bb), and you'll start seeing blond children where there didn't use to be any.

And it's not that the gene survives "for a long time", it's that it never, ever goes away, except under the special conditions I mentioned.

[Medieval Housefly]

Sparkle Hound, what you're missing is that after you introduce those 100 blonds into China, even if none of their children are blond, in time the result is that the recessive gene spreads through the population where it formerly didn't exist at all. Assuming random interbreeding, Bb eventually becomes the most common genotype (and BB becomes as rare as bb), and you'll start seeing blond children where there didn't use to be any.

And it's not that the gene survives "for a long time", it's that it never, ever goes away, except under the special conditions I mentioned.

I never said the gene would go away; however, blondes will eventually be very hard to come by. In the US they are very hard to come by now and most come from a bottle. I only brought genes into the equation to advise that a gene being recessive will not represent when accompanied by a dominant gene. So there could be many recessive blonde genes out there, but the more and more we intersex the more they start to disappear.

[SpaceChampion]

If there is no selection effects and no migration, the prevalence of the blond gene in the pool would not change over time. It would stay at about 100 in 1 billion. Of course, dropping the 100 blonds into China IS migration, and sexual selection will likely take place so it will increase or decrease, but probably not be expressed too often.

[mummer]

I promise I'll stop beating this dead horse after this comment, but science misunderstandings bug me a bit. When you say "there could be many recessive blonde genes out there, but the more and more we intersex the more they start to disappear," that's just plain false. A recessive gene doesn't disappear just because it's not expressed in an individual-- and as I tried to explain, if you introduce a non-harmful recessive gene into a population that didn't have it before (dropping blonds into China), it will actually become more common (again assuming random mixing and population growth), and eventually it will be expressed in that population where it hadn't been before.

In the long run, the prevalence of blonds in the global population doesn't change; all that's happened is that they're not all concentrated in specific places any more. This isn't the case for complex traits that depend on many genes (so, for instance, after 5000 years of random interbreeding there will be fewer people, if any, with a recognizably Dutch facial structure), but for simple dominant/recessive traits, yes.

So, yes, your family (the Hounds?) now has fewer blond children after intermarrying with a darker-haired family (the Foxes)-- except that the Foxes now have descendants who are much more likely to have blond children than they used to be, so you've in effect recruited them to help you make more blonds. Wait 200 years and let me know if I'm wrong. :)

[Angalin]

<mod gloves>

Take the genetics to another thread, please.

</mod gloves>