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2013/04/04 00:48:03
Subject: Game of Thrones breaks torrent download record.
Kovnik Obama wrote: The feels during Tywin & Tyrion's meeting!!! I wanted to hug that handsome little man and tell him it didn't matter that his father was a dick, the world loved him!
Okay, so litterly, HUGE SPOILER HERE!!!
Spoiler:
I was ready to just yell out at the TV, tell Tyrion to pick-up the crossbow and just do it and get it over with!
The more you see of Tywin, the more you simply end up despising him entirely. With a father like him, it no wonder Cersi is the vile, cruel & spiteful b she is...
Most of Westeros going strait to hell in a giant hand basket is due to Tywin.
As for the rest of the season, look out for episode 9, which is titled 'The Rains of Castamere'...
...wonder what that's all about now?!
Well I think Tywin the way he is makes a lot of sense when you factor in how much his father screwed the pooch when it came to running things and how brutal and uncompromising he has had to be to reclaim the respect of his house. He makes no secret that the most important thing to him is his families reputation and his legacy. Blaming Tyrion for the death of his wife is a little fethed up but I can underestand his distain for the way Tyrion acts (drinking/whoring) and how that may effect the perception of his house.
Do you play 30k? It'd be a lot cooler if you did.
2013/04/04 03:03:50
Subject: Game of Thrones breaks torrent download record.
Hulksmash wrote: Also the doing away with some of the ridiculous sub stories is also nice. Granted, they added a few but I felt like it cleaned it up.
Some of the stuff they added is really good, for example ( Arya/Tywin season 2/A Clash of Kings spoiler):
Spoiler:
Arya being Lord Tywins cup bearer at Harrenhal added a huge amount of character development for both. I didn't like Tywin a whole lot in the books, but his dialogue with Arya was fantastic. Especially how she gives herself away a few times and he just smiles and tells her to to be more careful. The bit with Littlefinger was really good.
That actually annoyed me quite a bit, because everything good in the exchange is from the books, but between two other characters, in book four or five (I can't recall which one, seeing as how they take place concurrently and all).
Overall, GoT is probably the best adaptation of a book I've ever seen, and I absolutely loved it the first time around (I read A Song of Ice and Fire after watching the first two seasons of GoT), but everywhere the writers try to adapt it for time or just screw around with it because "why not?" (Example (from book/season one; season two is quite a bit more egregious with stuff like this): in the books Rob Stark splits his army, marching six thousand cavalry west, and sending twelve thousand infantry south (who immediately retreat on engaging with the enemy, and take up position to harass the east and guard the route north); in GoT he sends two thousand soldiers south (who are immediately annihilated on engaging with the enemy) and takes eighteen thousand west; the numbers are only ever mentioned in conversation, in both the books and GoT, and the change takes it from a cunning and audacious move to a nonsensical gamble and waste) they introduce plot holes (or just make the story make less sense overall) and it left the second season so grating I couldn't make it past the second or third episode when I tried to rewatch it.
And to everyone who stopped reading somewhere in A Game of Thrones: the first two books are basically just character introductions. They're dry, slow books whose primary role is to establish the characters and setting. The story only really picks up in book three, the latter half of which is basically just one disproportionate pile of awesome, as if the author was trying to apologize for some specific event (and the generally morbid tone of the first half; this season is largely going to be tense and depressing, fyi, while the next will be made of awesome) or something...
The plot is this: Political Intrigue and T&A... that's all you need to know.
It's political intrigue written by someone who's only source for human motivation is other peoples' novels. And I have a gf thanks
But it is excellent for a TV or cinematic drama. The plot of the books makes quite a bit more sense; a lot is lost to the difficulties of telling a story visually (leading to season one's frequent "clumsy plot exposition, sorry about this, have some tits while a character rattles off a loose, poorly written summary of a page of text from the book") and just weird meddling by the writers.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/04/04 03:15:20
2013/04/07 07:58:03
Subject: Re:Game of Thrones breaks torrent download record.
I just watched the first episode of season three and my main response was just boredom. As this is entirely at odds with my previous responses on watching GoT, I've spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out why. This turned into trying to thoroughly analyze exactly where GoT falls short in comparison to its source material. These are my conclusions:
***Bear in mind, if I didn't love A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, I wouldn't have bothered thinking about this so much, and certainly wouldn't have bothered typing it all up; positive thoughts at the bottom.***
I'll focus on S3Ep1, since it highlights the issues quite well: it was extremely jumbled and hurried. If I hadn't read the books, I'd have absolutely no idea what was actually going on with the story, or have the background and context to understand who the major characters even are. This is obviously an inevitable problem when trying to adapt a book into a movie (or any medium where the information is shifted from explanation to imagery), particularly one as information dense as A Song of Ice and Fire, but GoT seems to take pains to exacerbate this problem.
This seems to come primarily from an enlarged cast of pseudo-perspective characters: ASoIaF has a ridiculous number of perspective characters, and suffers the biggest problem you'd expect, that of the story getting bogged down. However, it handles them quite efficiently, and as a result doesn't suffer all that much: perspective characters provide a view into the overall story, and have more or less personal value in terms of what they contribute (that is to say, they vary between being primarily just a means of exposing the story in terms of what's happening in the world, and being an interesting and entertaining part of the work in and of themselves).
GoT, however, focuses on significantly more characters, which leads to problems mostly amounting to creating random side arcs that have nothing to with the story, and contribute nothing to it, at the expense of the actual, and far better written, arcs from the books. Most egregious example: Rob Stark showing up for more than about two minutes in season two. Resulting in that horribly contrived love story and a bunch of random out of character behavior (of course, being present at all is technically quite out of character for him...). I'll spoiler the details:
Spoiler:
In A Clash of Kings, Rob shows up to send Theon to the Iron Islands and Cat to the Stormlands, then runs off to rape and pillage Lannister territory for the sole purpose of pissing off Tywin in order to draw him west, and ensure that he can't move to aid King's Landing. In the next book he shows up again and we learn (previously, we only heard what was happening through brief third or fourth hand references) that he knocked up the daughter of a Lannister bannerman, and married her out of a misplaced sense of honor, leading directly to REDACTED.
In the same season, we have perhaps the two most singularly important arcs to the story butchered (the Night's Watch and Daenarys'), and without saving much, if any, time in either.Spoilered if anyone wants to know the changes:
Spoiler:
The Night's Watch fully expect to be able to rout Mance Rayder's army, despite being outnumbered ten to one (remember, the wilding host isn't just soldiers, it's primarily comprised of noncombantants). The Night's Watch being disciplined heavy cavalry (and the Frostfangs being more like the mountains in Monty Python and the Holy Grail; did I mention there's no snow anywhere, and the Fist of the First Men is a ruined ring fort on a mildly large hill, next to a river and a forest?) and the wildlings being a disparate collection of extremely irregular, extremely light infantry. Three scouting parties are sent to try to find out why the wildlings are in the Frostfangs (we see one, which Jon is in, and the others are only mentioned briefly). Aside from that, the differences are trivial, aside from the girl: Jon straight up lets her go, she vanishes into the night (to show up again later) and then he joins up with Qhorin and the rest of the party again, resulting in significantly less time being spent than GoT did with it's random alterations.
I'm not even going to bother enumerating the problematic changes with Daenarys' arc: from Qartheen dress and politics to Jorah's character in general, and literally the entire plot of the arc, everything got redone in an equally lengthy nonsense version, as if the writers were given the briefest, roughest summary of the plot possible and told to just go wild with it.
All that said, I didn't only feel boredom watching S3Ep1. While the old driving suspense is gone (since I know exactly what, overall, is going to happen, there's still the suspense of wondering just how many awesome things from the book will make it into the episode; it's kind of like gambling: if you couldn't lose, where's the excitement? Not that I like gambling (aside from blackjack), it's too simple and uninvolved (so I push a button/look at a number and either lose or... well, let's face it, lose? How is that even a thing?), but still...
Specifically in S3Ep1:
Spoiler:
Honestly? Everything that's actually from the book, or is sufficiently similar. Standouts:
Davos getting rescued.
The dragons. (Who now appear to have materials and textures in line with their description (specular/refractive highlights and whatnot.)
Knowing the truth about Melisandre makes her scene all the more entertaining.*
Astapor.
It also looks like some of the problematic scenes are just segues into getting back on the right track after season 2's randomness, so some of the problems may be resolved this season.
*Since you can't layer spoilers:
Spoiler:
The truth being that she's half right, and genuinely believes what she says. The error is introduced by a higher power, to end up placing her where she needs to be. She's of the few genuine "good guys" in the series, which is learned when she becomes a perspective character in the later books.
2013/04/07 12:34:18
Subject: Re:Game of Thrones breaks torrent download record.
Im REALLY hoping that eventually HBO realizes that they should allow HBOGo to be paid for and used like NetFlix. Hell, even if its just HBO streamed to my device Id be totally happy with that. Paying $10-$20 a month on its own would be worth it, and Im sure it would increase their subs by a gak load. Im not paying for cable AND THEN adding their cost ontop of it, but Id jump on that in a second if they started to stream as well
2013/04/07 12:43:31
Subject: Re:Game of Thrones breaks torrent download record.
KingCracker wrote: Im REALLY hoping that eventually HBO realizes that they should allow HBOGo to be paid for and used like NetFlix. Hell, even if its just HBO streamed to my device Id be totally happy with that. Paying $10-$20 a month on its own would be worth it,
The damning thing about this I am sure that they'd make more per subscription with this model then they get from cable operators. I mean, I don't know the numbers in their contracts, so I can't say this with surety - but just as I can look at income of 1 billion dollars and say "you're probably going to owe some tax on that"; I can look at the $9 or $10 that cable operators charge to add it and think, HBO would be getting a larger cut if they went directly. It's got to be killing them.
The TV show finally has veered from the books enough that it isn't the story I want to see anymore. The sad fact that Martin has found the career he REALLY wants (TV writer rather than book writer) has me scared for the vastly superior version of this story. I really hope the show bombs (unlikely, I know) so he can go back to writing GOOD books instead of mediocre soft core porn.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/04/08 01:39:35
Mannahnin wrote:A lot of folks online (and in emails in other parts of life) use pretty mangled English. The idea is that it takes extra effort and time to write properly, and they’d rather save the time. If you can still be understood, what’s the harm? While most of the time a sloppy post CAN be understood, the use of proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling is generally seen as respectable and desirable on most forums. It demonstrates an effort made to be understood, and to make your post an easy and pleasant read. By making this effort, you can often elicit more positive responses from the community, and instantly mark yourself as someone worth talking to.
insaniak wrote: Every time someone threatens violence over the internet as a result of someone's hypothetical actions at the gaming table, the earth shakes infinitisemally in its orbit as millions of eyeballs behind millions of monitors all roll simultaneously.
2013/04/08 03:16:28
Subject: Re:Game of Thrones breaks torrent download record.
I tried to read book 1 (AGoT) and failed to get into it.
I tried to watch an episode or three to see if it could galvanise me into giving the books another go. Failed again there.
I've read GRRM's SF stuff and it was fine. I've had beers with him at conventions (pre-AGoT, when his biggest hit was "Nightflyers") and found him to be a pleasant enough bloke.
His fantasy stuff just doesn't grab me.
I'm OVER 50 (and so far over everyone's BS, too).
Old enough to know better, young enough to not give a ****.
That is not dead which can eternal lie ...
... and yet, with strange aeons, even death may die.
2013/04/08 11:50:56
Subject: Re:Game of Thrones breaks torrent download record.
KingCracker wrote: Im REALLY hoping that eventually HBO realizes that they should allow HBOGo to be paid for and used like NetFlix. Hell, even if its just HBO streamed to my device Id be totally happy with that. Paying $10-$20 a month on its own would be worth it,
The damning thing about this I am sure that they'd make more per subscription with this model then they get from cable operators. I mean, I don't know the numbers in their contracts, so I can't say this with surety - but just as I can look at income of 1 billion dollars and say "you're probably going to owe some tax on that"; I can look at the $9 or $10 that cable operators charge to add it and think, HBO would be getting a larger cut if they went directly. It's got to be killing them.
My feeling is they are eventually going to start partnering with Amazon or someone like them that will handle the things discussed there.
Those are all good points I guess. But personally, Im still seeing them being able to continue with how they operate, but make even more money. Hell, I dont see why they CANT still stick with the cable company AND stream through Go. I mean, they stream through it anyways through a cable provider....in my mind itd be like free money for them. And since NetFlix continues to make enough money off subs to be able to make shows all its own (House of Cards is excellent BTW) it just seems like more proof that it can be done. And Ill be honest....Id probably pay $20 a month for HBOGo. I mean its frigging HBO!
she is...
