Game Of Thrones

They get into that popular (and populist) current pastime of painting institutions as inherently bad, where the Sparrows are concerned. They depict them as so anal about their beliefs and practices that they put the power and legacy of this movement ahead of the welfare of individuals.

Although to be fair, building and protecting legacy is the motivation of most of the major characters in GoT - Tywin Lannister even spells this out in the TV series.

The idea behind the Sparrows is likely inspired by the Cathars and various heretical pre-Reformation movements which championed ascetic life ahead of the opulent trappings of the elite (both churchmen and nobility) in medieval society. As with what actually happened in the past, this upsets the whole applecart of social order where the upper orders were traditionally seen as refined and superior, elevating the devout and not necessarily wealthy or noble in status and power.

You could assume that people were too afraid after the destruction of the Sept of Baelor to oppose Circe. What they actually practised in their own homes in private isn't part of the plot.
 
So I've been reading the books, then watching the tv series after, to see what they've changed.

Season 1 is excellent, truly. Ned Stark is too honorable for his own good, Sansa is a spoiled brat, Arya learns independence at her father's hand. Jon Snow is boring (beginning a trend that lasts for 5 books and 8 seasons, as far as I can tell). They didn't change too much, other than condensing some characters and such, but overall, a really strong season. I imagine the betrayal of Ned Stark and his subsequent execution shocked tv audiences fiercely.

Season 2 is...up and down. There's way too much Robb being a boring, whining idiot, and the change of his choice of lover from Jeyne Westerling to Talisa Magyar is #notgood even if Oona Chaplin is excellent in the role. Similarly, the introduction of the dragon-theft storyline is equally trash, and leads to some of the most mockable moments of the early show. "Where are my dragons!" is the kind of poor dialogue that stands out when there are so many other excellent speeches and exclamations - and should have served as a warning sign for how poor the show would become. That being said, the alteration of the story to make Arya the cupbearer for Tywin Lannister is significantly better than her time serving with Roose Bolton (and really gives the excellent Charles Dance and Maisie Williams a chance to play off each other, two of the top actors in the show sharing screen time is never bad).
 
The Dissident said:
To think they added more Robb scenes into season 2 and 3 because he was a popular season 1 character
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Robb is quite terrible, although there's not much in the show that was added, most of it is out of the books, with an extra splash of Talisa. The Robb in the books is much better, although he's primarily viewed through his mother. I like how they set up a proto-Robert the Bruce character (I mean, you don't think he was named Robb for no reason, hmm) only to give him a decisively William Wallace ending.

I just got to the part in S2 where Jaime kills his own cousin in the prisoner's pen in order to escape, which a) would make him a kinslayer, worse than a kingslayer, and b) shows how deeply the showrunners didn't understand Jaime's character.
 
LooseCannon said:
Robb is quite terrible, although there's not much in the show that was added, most of it is out of the books, with an extra splash of Talisa. The Robb in the books is much better, although he's primarily viewed through his mother. I like how they set up a proto-Robert the Bruce character (I mean, you don't think he was named Robb for no reason, hmm) only to give him a decisively William Wallace ending.
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Dude's from Elderslie, so makes sense.
 
LooseCannon said:
Similarly, the introduction of the dragon-theft storyline is equally trash, and leads to some of the most mockable moments of the early show. "Where are my dragons!" is the kind of poor dialogue that stands out when there are so many other excellent speeches and exclamations - and should have served as a warning sign for how poor the show would become.
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Almost all Daenerys's scenes were trash, whatever the season.
 
Now done with A Feast For Crows and most of A Dance With Dragons and watching season 5 of the show. I think the moment that Game of Thrones began its descent into stupidity begins the episode after Joffrey dies, and by S5 it's in full swing.
Arya is in the middle of a 2 season long plot that will get exactly 5 minutes of payoff.
Jaime and Bronn are in Dorne for reasons, because the entire Dorne storyline from the books has been shredded, so we get this buddy cop adventure that is incredibly, utterly stupid.
They set up Sansa being Alayne Stone for about 20 minutes, then Baelish goes to the north to build a treaty with Roose Bolton, and even though Ramsay has been flaying people alive and spreading rumours of his cruelty, Baelish, supposed to be one of the two most informed men in the Seven Kingdoms, says he's a nice guy but he doesn't know much about it.
Although the deaths of three kings being linked to Melisandre's magic was a big plotline in S3/4, the No One Cares (Iron) Islands have been completely forgotten about which will lead to the rushed introduction of Euron in S7.
But worst of all - Cersei has been portrayed as a stone cold genius, who has the Lannister skill for plotting, which means when she allows the High Sparrow to have a private army inside the walls of King's Landing it is even more of an unforgivable blunder than it is in the books. In the books, Cersei is clearly not nearly as smart as she thinks she is - she is Joffrey, through and through, except she was raised with limits, so this short-term thinking (give the High Sparrow an army so he can help her get base revenge on the Tyrells) is entirely in keeping with her character.

The show has moved to 75% stupid at a rapid rate.
 
I finally got to the Battle of the Bastards episode, and I think this is my least favourite episode of Game of Thrones. Jon Snow is one of my least favourite characters, anyway, but he is about the world's worst military commander, and the level of plot armour he has on in this episode is just unprecedented. The things he lives through, completely unscathed, are...ludicrous. It's so unbelievable as to be comical.

The mountains of bodies is also ludicrous, completely unbelievable. There's ways to write stuff that looks cool but makes sense and they just completely failed on that front. This looks utterly dumb.
 
LooseCannon said:
I finally got to the Battle of the Bastards episode, and I think this is my least favourite episode of Game of Thrones. Jon Snow is one of my least favourite characters, anyway, but he is about the world's worst military commander, and the level of plot armour he has on in this episode is just unprecedented. The things he lives through, completely unscathed, are...ludicrous. It's so unbelievable as to be comical.
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....also, Valyrian Rubber

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Night Prowler said:
Harsh.
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True. This is the stupidest thing. Ramsay's Super Phalanx is also dumb, especially since it's not introduced at all. Remember in Season 2 when Tyrion was preparing to fight Stannis? You see hints of it throughout the whole season. This? Ramsay spends his time "being generically evil" rather than "being prepared" but it turns out he's super prepared. Stupid ass writing.

Also, the Knights of the Vale fast travel 1000 miles to show up right on time. Fucking dumb as fuck. You even get a "That is no orc horn" moment. Fucking dumb, so fucking dumb. This is straight up the worst episode to this point.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
“To this point” is very true. My sympathies for your future viewing.
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I'm pretty sure it's worse than most of Season 7, although Fast Travel Dany at the end of S7 is pretty bad. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen on TV.

The Battle of Winterfell in the Long Night is equally dumb, maybe moreso, because it was clearly written by people who have no idea how medieval people would fight.
 
See, this is what puts me off so many period dramas and semi historical fantasy. If you know anything about military history and strategy, or know anything about the period that it's even loosely based on, it becomes hideously unconvincing.

That said, as soon as I found out there was dragony stuff in GoT (and some interesting characters with good lines), I was able to put it more firmly in the fantasy camp and found it easier to accept unrealistic/unlikely stuff.

Something I did like about GoT was that they didn't fall into stereotypes like 'poor = virtuous', and played up the mentality that family legacy was far more important to people in the past, perhaps more so than the happiness of individual members of that family. That's harder to grasp today, at least in some parts of the world, but it wasn't unusual or especially callous in the past.
 
Brigantium said:
Something I did like about GoT was that they didn't fall into stereotypes like 'poor = virtuous', and played up the mentality that family legacy was far more important to people in the past, perhaps more so than the happiness of individual members of that family. That's harder to grasp today, at least in some parts of the world, but it wasn't unusual or especially callous in the past.
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Well, George Martin is a smart cookie, and he really understood this. But he also understood that the actions of the powerful have ramifications among the weak, which is something that was totally forgotten by the end of Season 4 of the show.

As an aside, I've finished the book series, and it takes a real nose dive after A Storm of Swords. A Feast For Crows is actively bad and A Dance With Dragons is middling at best. That he ended everything with repeated cliffhangers and then failed to follow up with a new release with any urgency is one of the more insulting things I've ever seen from an author.
 
Paul read the books as they came out and felt Martin had lost interest but was still writing it for contractual reasons.
 
Brigantium said:
Paul read the books as they came out and felt Martin had lost interest but was still writing it for contractual reasons.
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I did some research on what happened, and it turns out that Martin was intending on "jumping ahead" several years, to when the children were now fully grown and had advanced forward, but apparently this idea wasn't popular, so he wrote to fill the gap. AFFC is the first result of that, and it's filled with a bunch of characters I don't give a fuck about (Aeron Damphair, Aero Hotah, Victarion Greyjoy), and some stuff I really enjoy (Cersei's incredible delusions, Brienne's questing). There's no way he wants to continue these books, but now he has to.
 
One thing The Walking Dead (TV not comics) has made me grow to intensely dislike, is the jumping ahead in time plot. It's been done far too much in TWD, ruining continuity without bothering to explain bits that happened betweentimes. It looked like there'd be some big reveal after they did it between the defeat of the Saviours and the events leading up to Rick's deathsappearance, but it never happened. And now there have been a couple more time jumps, with no satisfying infilling of plot and back story.
 
Meh, I thought Battle Of The Bastards was fun af. GOT stopped being realistic after the Red Wedding episode IMO. It doesn't matter anyway as the ending ruined the show completely for me.
 
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