A Look at Valar Morghulis

[Ran]

but I don't really agree with your interpretation of Qarth-as-written.

That's fine. I stand by the evidence that GRRM rather deliberately makes the place far less "real" than, say, his depiction of Meereen later on, his depiction of Braavos, his depiction of the Dothraki, and of course his depiction of Westeros, the wildlings, etc. It's a deliberate strategy on his part, with a specific purpose.

you know perfectly well that the lack of more extras and sets in Qarth was purely budgetary.

Yes, but you're missing the point: it doesn't take extras and sets to make Qarth feel like a real, living polity. It takes the noise outside that abandoned palace suggesting there's unrest. It takes Jorah saying, you know, there's trouble afterward. Or maybe he says, there's no trouble, but it's eerily quiet and everyone in Qarth is unsure. Or that sellswords that Xaro hired have moved in and are controlling the main squares. Whatever.

It takes some reference to the momentous change in Qarth. It takes, before the coup, maybe an introduction to the captain of the city guard (a good friend of Xaro's, of course -- perhaps even a cousin that his vast wealth bought into place), maybe a mention of this fellow here being the city treasurer. Again, whatever: what you're doing is building the picture of a living, real place with a suitably deep political structure that gives context and meaning to what happens in ep 7.

It's not enough to say "Well, it's a city, of course there's all that stuff." Vaes Tolorro is a city too, and it's a dead one. More importantly, the point is that those little references are world-building. They need it to sustain the reality of what they're doing. Without it, it's as I said: a pantomime, meaningless.

Some sense of political reality, to sustain political machinations. Without the one, you can't convince people of the other. You confuse them. It's not just "nitpicking" to say that people are indeed wondering why Dany isn't declaring herself queen of Qarth, or the wealthiest woman in the city. I've seen it on Twitter, on other forums. People don't understand it -- and I'm talking non-readers, here. They either vastly don't care, which makes it all, well, silly and overwrought pantomime which they could have achieved in some clearer and more effective way, or they're confused, which means they've erred in their storytelling.

I'm not sure what makes Qarth so much more otherworldly than, say, The Wall or The Sorrows.

The Sorrows are, indeed, very otherworldly. What made you think it isn't? The Shrouded Lord, the Bridge of Dream, the stone men, the whispers of curses, foul water, strange fogs and currents... yeah, that's otherworldly for the purpose of those chapters.

The Wall, well, we get the political structure there. We fully understand how it works. We understand what happens if the Lord Commander dies or is lost. We understand that there's a mechanism.

The same with King's Landing. If Tyrion kills Joffrey and takes the throne, we have a pretty good idea of what the fallout will be, what various groups will think and do.

They failed to establish any other groups in Qarth outside of that immediate group. They failed to establish a context within which we can understand what's happened there. And so, probably, they shouldn't have bothered. Steal the dragons. Have an assassin try to kill Dany, and Xaro helps kill him. Have him blame the Spice King or the Silk King or the Copper King. Have Pyat say he can resolve that, and recover the dragons, and answer all her questions. You know? There, they've established these characters, and they can explain through Xaro why they might have done such a thing, what the consequences are to Dany, because then the stakes are purely personal to her.

It's just telling a good story, really. You want viewers invested every step of the way. The coup is too much not-about-Dany and not enough about anything they've been signalled to care about.

The point, again, isn't that people who think deeply about this might realize, oh, of course she can't be queen or of course she can't claim Xaro's wealth for her own. It's that many people are thinking about this stuff, casual viewers who are getting more confused by what is tantamount to bad storytelling rather than the story just being "too big". If you are a person who complains that the story is already too complex or it's pushing the limits for viewers, you should be complaining about the coup and King Xaro stuff, too, because it's not good stuff (you admit it's underwritten) and it simply adds to confusion because of its being poorly written.

The coup and King Xaro plot is a total failure. The only thing that really mattered to them was steal dragons -> sense of danger -> Dany recovers them at HotU. The coup was ill-thought set-dressing, ill-thought set dressing which rather reveals they don't really understand fantasy like they maybe think they do. It can be unreal, but the actions have to stay unreal in that context. Slicing people's throats and declaring yourself a king is -- in a story largely dominated by the grimy political machinations to decide who sits the Iron Throne -- as real as it gets in the story, and it demands realistic context.

[Mexal]

Or are you going by the number of extras? In which case there's scarcely a hundred people in King's Landing...

He's clearly going by the number of extras. If we haven't seen people, they do not exist. There is no common sense allowed in inferring anything. If it's not shown, it is not there. Budget or necessity be damned.

Qarth storyline was problematic to me because it didn't accomplish anything. However, I have enough knowledge of power structures over the last 2000 years to realize that there are politics in every ruling structure and it's ridiculous to assume that there wouldn't be in Qarth because the writers couldn't get enough extras to throw into the city.

[Ran]

If you want to act the fool, I'm fine with that, you know -- it's your life -- but when you're willfully ignoring everything I've said before this and just "Oh, he just wants more sets and extras", you must realize that you're actually being one and not just pretending.

I mean, at what point does this stuff require more extras or sets?

There is no hint that there's unrest in the streets following the coup. No sounds of people running and fighting and screaming. No Jorah Mormont coming back to Dany to say that Xaro's putting down rebellious elements, or that sellswords have appeared hired by the sons of the Spice King, or what have you.

Dialog, folks. Dialog is world-building too. Acknowledging reality in dialog is what people do all the time in real life. It's what people do in good books and good writing. Words in the script are among the cheapest parts of making a show, and yet at the same time among the most powerful, because they can conjure things that $10 million more dollars and 4 weeks more shooting can't conjure.

That they didn't think of it, that they didn't contextualize, is an abject failure in writing a good sub-plot. It's "underwritten", absolutely. And it confused viewers needlessly, because they did such a bad job of it.

[Punchslap]

And it confused viewers needlessly, because they did such a bad job of it.

One of the things I find confusing about the criticism of the show are comments like this. Do we know viewers were confused by the Qarth storyline? Were they unhappy with it? I think there's a difference between whether you think the adaptation is being done well and saying whether it's worked for viewers or not. I realise you understand the show is a commercial success, but throwaway comments about reactions to Qarth (or whatever the topic at hand is) being a failure as if that applies to the most viewers confuse the issue--the ratings and accolades, seemingly, suggest that's generally not the case.

[Ran]

Given that I spend a great deal of time looking at feeds and Twitter and FB and so on as part of the job of running the site, yes, I've seen a lot of casual or commited, non-reader viewers, ask these questions and express confusion. It's anecdotal, because I can't give you exact statistics, but basically it seems clear enough people seem baffled by the political sub-plot in Qarth that it's a problem with how they wrote it. They gave Xaro a very major act in a place that they didn't build to sustain it, and so it sends weird and confusing signals.

Of course, the story is much bigger than "just" Qarth. But there's no real excuse to do poorly on one bit because you'll razzle-dazzle them with all the rest.

[Punchslap]

Given that I spend a great deal of time looking at feeds and Twitter and FB and so on as part of the job of running the site, yes, I've seen a lot of casual or commited, non-reader viewers, ask these questions and express confusion. It's anecdotal, because I can't give you exact statistics, but basically it seems clear enough people seem baffled by the political sub-plot in Qarth

That's useful to know. Many of the problems I've read here I don't see echoed elsewhere, but I'm not spending the time you do tracking down the resonances among the fandom. It's hard to judge what's insular and what's not.

[Reposado]

Because you imagine so, even though the show never provided even a hint or a single word about any of that? And thats reasonable?

but the show hasn't hinted that there wasn't either.

in the end it's stupid because the show has given us no reason to care about the people of qarth or xaro himself. it presents a superficial take on a city and gives us pieces of an undeveloped plotline.

[Mexal]

If you want to act the fool, I'm fine with that, you know -- it's your life -- but when you're willfully ignoring everything I've said before this and just "Oh, he just wants more sets and extras", you must realize that you're actually being one and not just pretending.

I mean, at what point does this stuff require more extras or

Two things. One, I wasn't talking about you but jaqen. Your argument is fine. Two, I hadnt read your massive post before mine where you break it all down as we cross posted. No need to say I am acting like a fool.