CletusMusashi

This is a thread to talk about death on the show, as general or as specific as you like. Long ramblings about what you think the Westerosi afterlife is like are fine. So are one sentence posts such as "Haha, fuck you, Joffrey!" Which brings me to my own first post about death. GoT has a reputation for killing so many people left and right that "life is cheap," yet I feel that it actually tends to take death very seriously. I should have been dancing and laughing when Joffrey died, but a king getting killed is a big deal, and triggers off a huge chain of events on those who are still living.. I was, and in fact still am, way too worried about what happens next to enjoy what just happened. Watching him get slapped and humiliated tended to make me giggle much more. I loved watching The Hound insult Polliver, and I loved watching him throw a table at him. But I didn't love watching Arya kill him. I didn't mind it, any more than I minded Joffrey dying. But I didn't cheer at his death. I just thought "Well, good riddance." I understood her wanting him to remember who she was and what he'd done, and I wasn't offended by it, but, again, I didn't cheer at it. Honestly, the only time during this series that I've actually laughed or gloated over someone dying the way I do at a good kill in, say, a Schwarzenegger movie, was when Dany took over the Unsullied and her dragon flame-roasted Evil Ghandi. I think that was partly because every single part of that story arc played out exactly as expected. It wasn't about shock. It was about showing that a cliche can still be awesome if it's done well. And also... the Essos storyline seems to be the most traditionally fantasy-based. It's the story where beautiful princesses frolic around with their pet dragons and their army of suitors (albeit some suitors less qualified than others,) and free all the slaves, punish bad guys, and kick ass whenever any conflict whatsoever arises. But in the Westeros arcs, death doesn't involve dragons or pink unicorns nearly as much as it involves your victim's angry relatives. Death, on most of the show, isn't Rambo blowing up a guy with an AK47 by shooting an exploding arrow at him. Most of the time, death is just death. It's serious business, and I appreciate the writers for their ability to so regularly depict it as such.

The more time goes by, the more amazing it is that the show was allowed to go downhill as far as it did. Seasons 4, 5, and 6 all have plenty of fans, but did even the writers think Season 7 was any good? The arcs weren't even fully written. they were sort of sketched out maybe twenty-five per cent, and then instead of connecting the dots all the empty space/time was simply filled up with whatever random crap could be used to fill a scene. Sometimes the dialogue was still good enough that the filler wasn't terrible. Sometimes. But the attention to actual story-telling was nonexistent. It was just an episode here, an episode here, an episode here, until: what's that? We need a solution about what to do about the ubervamps? Um, Okay... how about we just forget that their sternums were stake-proof last week? Cool, problem solved. And now for some more random crap...

They might have eaten a few red shirts I mean, so many characters are physically identical anyway, who would even notice?

I am embarrassed to admit that I liked some of these: (especially the Jon Snow one.) Oh, what the hell. As long as I'm here... Knock, knock. Who's there? Pycelle. Pycelle who? Pie selling a lot cheaper since that wedding fiasco.

The hair is starting to bother me. All of the females and some of the males have long, beautiful, perfectly shampooed hair. Even though many of them are convicts from a society in which water, various chemicals, and even room for a lot of showers is supposedly at a premium. Nobody seems to be growing a beard, despite that fact that all of these "children" are physically identical to 29 year old underwear models, so apparently they know how to prevent unwanted growth. But when it comes to head hair, anything goes. You want it perfectly coifed on the sides and back, but with a bunch of extra length in the front to show everyone that you're a bad boy? Sure, no problem. We'll send a Hollywood stylist right into your death row cell for you. Of course, we might be thinking about sending you on a dangerous mission that's critical to the survival of mankind... but seeing what's going on in front of you is over-rated anyway.

Knock knock? Whos there? Dire wolf. Dire wolf who? Dire wolf black and the Watch'll have to start paying him.

Also, we only saw two Vorlons, and we have no idea how many Shadows we saw, much less how many differences of opinions existed among Shadow ranks. We know that they both enslave sentient organisms, but at least the Shadows do it for useful things, like running a space ship. The Vorlons'll do it just so they can have an obligatory Jack the Ripper episode. Vorlons be crazy.

II'd say if I wanted to turn somebody on to the show with one episode, "A Day in the Life" is what I would go with. It does a great job of covering most of the things the show was good at without ever succumbing to issues of pace, accessibility, or melodrama. I'd any of the Callisto episodes, the earlier ones especially, on my list of favorites. Even back then, the schtick of a hero having a nemesis who they'd created wasn't new, but HOLY CRAP did that show do it well! And both actresses knew how great the relationship between Xena and Callisto was. In the body-switching ep, you could see them both having the time of their lives imitating the other one. And, at least every two years, when I don't think I can hear one more Christmas tune without strangling someone, I inoculate myself against the holiday by diving headfirst into the wonderfully over-the-top cheesiness that is "A Solstice Carol." Last I checked, you could stream it on Netflix for way less than five dinars.

I honestly liked his S2 teamup with Buffy because it made perfect sense. I didn't feel like "oh, he wants to save the world; see,he's not all bad." Of course he wants to save the world. He's in it! I'm sure Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and Carrot Top would rather not be plunged into hell either, but it doesn't mean they aren't supervillains. If anything, I'd rather have had a little more explanation about what The Church of Aurelius was trying to accomplish. Angelus, not so much. Angelus was a very flamboyant emo villain who usually overthought his villiany because he didn't have a mustache to twirl. So him plunging his world into hell in order to annoy Buffy, I could almost see, But Spike was the evil pragamatist. "We do still kill them, you know. We don't just leave gag gifts in their friends' beds." That was the real Spike.

Something's been bugging me lately about him. We've sometimes heard other characters describe him as a "halfwit" or whatever, but does he actually show any signs of real cognitive disorder? I'm leaning toward "no." At first I thought it was just the writers not wanting to go "full retard" with his writing, and just simplifying down to "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if he were so dumb he could only learn one word?" But he obviously understands people just fine. They don't even have to simplify their sentences down for him. His main problem seems to be in forming words properly himself. His condition doesn't say "stunted intellect," to me nearly as much as it says "aphasia." Very localized brain signal interference that does not affect his thoughts, or his cognition of others' speech, or his abiity to do jobs around the castle, but does block his ability to say anything back to people. I'm trying to think of anything else about him that they've shown to be mentally off, and the closest I can think of is his fear of storms. First of all, even a perfectly intelligent person can still have fears and phobias. If The Hound freezes up around fire, no one assumes it's because he's stupid. Secondly, the fear of thunder and lightning might not even be a completely independant problem. What if he could talk just fine, until one day he was struck by lightning? I believe deafness is the most common problem to affect survivors, but other things can happen instead. And aphasia can be caused tumor, stroke, all kinds of things. A lightning bolt to the head doesn't seem the most impossible of ways to end up with it. I like to think maybe it happened while he was running toward the safety of a brothel entrance yelling "Ho door!" but perhaps that's wishing for a bit too much. Besides, he doesn't seem to have a very high sex drive. If he did, we'd have seen him extrapolating with Osha by now. So that's how I've been watching him. This seems to fit the actor's mannerisms and voice tones better than the "Ha ha he's a giant stupid Pokemon" interpretation that seems to be more common.

I mean, obviously, most of the threads here contain jokes. But I'm talking about real, old-school, formulaic jokey-jokes. How many Lannisters does it take to screw a lightbulb? Lots of them, but Cersei isn't the brightest lightbulb... :Knock, knock." Who's there?" "Arya." "Arya who?" "Arya gonna to give me one of those chickens, or do I have to stick Needle in your eye?" Why is King Joffrey like a sandwich? Because he's in bread. Heard any others?

Simple game. Just pick another show and try to line up Game of Thrones characters with it. Obviously if you try to line up all the GoT characters you're going to go insane very quickly, but if you want to try, more power to ya. Me, I'm starting out small with these examples, because other attempts were, indeed, making me go insane very quickly... Seinfeld: Jaime Lannister as Jerry, the popular guy. Queen Cersei as Elaine, the girl who would be more popular if she didn't have so many issues. Tyrion Lannister as George, the one who gets no respect. King Joffrey as Newman, the one who is pure evil. And, of course, Robert Baratheon as Kramer, the blundering oaf who doesn't seem to be on the same show as the others. or... Scrubs: Tyrion as J.D.- He's a dreamer, and bullies tend to zoom in on him, but he's actually very competent at what he does. Turk as Bron- The other half of a perfect comedy duo. Sansa as Elliot- Straight-laced, highly stressed, and paired up by everyone with Tyrion whether she wants to be or not. Margery (sp?) as Carla: The wiser, worldlier friend of Sansa. Tywin as Dr. Cox: He actually does have higher goals behind his abuse, but it doesn't change the fact that he is abusive, especially to Tyrion. Joffrey as Dr. Kelso: back in the wonderful pre-character-development days when Kelso was gleefully batshit insane evil. Which leaves Cersei as The Janitor: not nearly as powerful as Tywin or Joffrey, but still very mean, especially to Tyrion. I suppose maybe I could stick Varys in there as Ted, but at that point I start going crazy trying to figure out who Littlefinger would be, so I'm just gonna quit while i'm ahead. You get the gist by now. Do another show, add to/change/improve on shows that are already listed... hell, do a movie or well-known book or music group or whatever if you want to. Have fun. ETA: I think that, at least back before he attacked Winterfell, Theon Greyjoy was The Todd. And Pycelle is Dr. Beardface.

I like him when he's subtle. Honestly: as much as I cringed at Ned Stark for confiding in Cersei, I could totally understand trying to work with Ho-Door. However, when he gets all deep and Batmannny and wants to growl soliloquies about chaos being a ladder, that, to me, ruins the whole point of having the character there in the first place. What's worse than "tell don't show" writing? Tell don't show" writing in which the other characters are usually too busy with more important things to do the telling. If he'd kept right on being convincing, with scenes of how duplicitous he was being with people, all mixed up with scenes of Varys and/or Tyrion talking about how full of shit he was... that would be the way to sell the character. Anyway, I do still wish him good luck in the Eyrie. He's gonna need it.

Insanely long fight scene,and I still have no idea what the rules are supposed to be. Wouldn't turning into a wolf before the battle generally be more effective than slugging it out for twenty minutes? Wait... weapons are allowed? Then why doesn't everybody have them? Even if there's a "no gun" rule that absolutely everybody no matter how devious agrees on, I find it hard to believe you can use knives and huge bludgeoning objects but, say, axes or swords or spears or whatever. If you think fighting as a human is better, use a tool. If you don't, then turn into a wolf and bite some throats out. Logistically, it doesn't seem like rocket science, and if there are important sociopolitical reasons for them to suddenly start settling almost everything with fisticuffs, then maybe they could have mentioned it at some point in the last, oh, I don't know... THIRTEEN HOURS! Maybe the CGI budget ran out? OK, improvise. It's not like those phony wolves were winning any awards anyway. Use close-ups of hand puppets. Or even just stick everybody who's supposed to have turned into a wolf into a gorilla suit. Hey, it was good enough for Seth Green...

I never heard of the books, but fell into the habit of watching the series because it was on right next to "Being Human." I like the mythos. I like the characters when I can remember which identical looking actor is supposed to be who, And I even like the overall arcs. But, as everybody else has mentioned, it takes forever for anything to happen. So I question whether or not this show alone will be enough to keep me tuned in on Monday nights.

Even Yara's name is perfect. I can totally picture how the birth certificate got written up. "King Balon, ye be havin' a wee pirate!" 'Yar!" "And it be a wench!" "Yar... uh..."

People seem really sure that he disowned him, but I'm not convinced. I mean, we've seen how Tywin acts when he wants to cut someone down a notch. At no point in the conversation with Jaime did he show the level of contempt or dismissal that we all know he is quite capable of. Also, I rewatched it tonight to check on somethng that I thought I saw the first time, and, yes, that second sword is way shorter than the one Jaime got. If both were similar in size, then I could hypothesize that one was for Tywin, one was for Joffrey, one was for something that we wouldn't understand until the next plot twist, or even that the other one was being traded to Roose Bolton or somebody for... whatever. But I'm thinking he made one for Jaime, and one for Tyrion, and he's going to play some kind of chessmaster schtick to determine who gets Castelry. I don't see playing them against each other as being effective; either one of them would be happy for the other one to get the gig. And I do think he's rooting for Jaime. But the short sword was fairly certainly made for Tyrion. And you don't just casually have a midget-sword reforged out of Valyrian steel simply to mess with the taller brothers head. I think?

I think that, in the books, House Greyjoy was originally founded by sailors who got tired of people making fun of them for being sailors. "Hey, I heard K-Mart is having a sale this weekend? Are you gonna put it on your boat?" That kind of stupid pun-based mockery. So one day, during a sports event, every time the score was tied, and some buffoon had to yell "Make Greyjoy untie it!" or "Well, what do you expect, with all these sailors here. All they do all day is make sure things are tied... HAHAHA!" Finally, it was enough already. The sailors got fed up with idiots making bad jokes about them, and they started kicking ass and taking over. The original motto was "House Greyjoy. We Do Knot. So?" Unfortunately, subsequent generations have continuously misinterpreted its true meaning. Yara probably knows, but doesn't really bother correcting anybody, because being a pirate chick is kind of awesome.

At least with the Thenns, we know what they eat. Most of the other wildlings, I'm a little confused about. I mean, it's not even winter yet, although, spoiler alert: , and everything north of the wall is pretty much Narnia. I know Ygritt and Osha eat rabbits, but I have absolutely no idea what the rabbits eat. Snow, dirt, and the occasional frozen twig, I guess. The Thenns apparently realize that they are not living in anything resembling a sustainable ecosystem, and so they have decided to derive a significant percentage of their caloric intake from the one thing that they can probably count on there being a lot of: redshirts! What I actually found most distracting about them was how cleanly shaven they were. I mean, those are some big, thick, bumpy, ritual scars they've got! You're really gonna shave over all that every day with a straight blade? I wonder if they have to spend a ridiculous amount of their before-battle time touching each other up and primping like a bunch of cannibal cave fops. "I don't look stubbly, do I?" "Oh, wait, just one... there, got it!" "All smooth?" "Oh, fabulously! Do me now!" Except they're still doing all this dialog in their regular tough guy voices,while eating suspiciously large drumsticks. ETA: I just realized I posted in the book spoilers thread! Getting the hell out of here before I sober up and actually understand any of the posts above me! Yikes.

Is that an African or European vulture?

Well, if you do, good luck.Stranger wishes have been granted- case in point: my post a few days ago! This is probably about as close to a random drunken wish being granted by supernatural powers as is ever going to happen. Shit, Netfoot, she might leap to hook up with you after a few seasons of this show, which I personally still love, but can see how it might get kind of old being her. "Hey, Hound, what are we going to do today?" "The same thing we do every day, Arya. Try to sell you for gold." ....They're Arya and The Hound, they're Arya and The Hound, One just wants vengreance, one wants all the chicks around, They're riding toward the Vale, Say no to death and jail, They're Anya, they're Anya and The Hound, Hound, Hound, Hound...

I'm not shipping him with anyone, but I am enjoying the hell out of him and Arya. Basically, she's Elwood Blues, the physically weaker straight-laced one whose obsession with mission drives them right into dangerous situations, and she's even little enough to fill up on two pieces of dry white toast. She's also the one more prone to lying about her identity. Elwood used Wrigley Fields as his driver's license address, Arya pretended to be a boy for as long as her appearance would allow. And Sandor is Jake Blues, the tough guy with a checkered past who has more feelings than he likes to admit, although still far less than a traditional nice person. He seems like he'd be the alpha of the duo, yet he constantly gets pulled into his partner's latest crazy path, and tends to just shrug and go along with it, winding up as a dominant contributor to the chaos. If there wasn't already a thread dedicated to him, I was going to start one and call it "Four Fried Chickens and a Massacre."

The hound is awesome. I kind of thought he'd be the straight man and Arya would be the smartass, but Sandor is frigging hilarious! I don't think Tywin originally planned on melting the sword down. I took it as him trying to throw a Jaime a bone. Doubt the idea even occurred to him until he found out that two-handed weapons were no longer an option.I mean, shields appear to be even less popular than helmets. I should feel terrible for Shae. I still like her a lot, in theory, but I kind of do miss the "funny whore." What's on my screen now is the soap opera whore who's giving me such a Ned Stark vibe that they might as well get it over with already. I mean, I'd rather things looked up for her, but I'm not holding my breath. Just finally realized why Bronn is so integral to Tyrion's effectiveness. It's not just that he's extremely tough and streetwise. Lots of soldiers are. Nor is it simply that some people warm up to him more quickly than they do to Tyrion, although that helps. What matters is that he allows Tyrion to maintain the necessary level of seriousness. Ever get mad at something at work, when you're busy, and you're ready to start complaining about it, but then somebody else does, and it's like a switch clicks in your head? "OK, good, as long as somebody said it. Now, on to more important things..." Bronn's venting is so similar to Tyrion's venting that having Bronn around allows Tyrion to be the serious one when necessary. Otherwise, I think he'd have either 1. Slapped Joffrey one too many times by now and gotten tortured and/or killed, or 2. Run away to Bravos with Shae to start a highly successful chain of whorehouses, occasionally using his profits to hire a Faceless Man to go to King's Kanding and slap Joffrey. Not that I wouldn't have loved watching the "Demon Monkey and Funny Whore Hour," but Westeros needs Tyrion to be more serious than he likes to be, and I think having a sardonic cohort like Bronn working closely with him helps a lot. Let's see, what else about the episode? Glad they took the Dani romance down a few notches. I mean, she's already a beatiful blonde princess out to reclaim her thrown from an evil king pretending to be the rightful heir, and freeing slaves and befriending dragons left and right. It amazes me that I'm not nauseated by her. I think a few more bath scenes with Fabio might have done it, and I'm glad to still be able to enjoy a well-done classic archetype. Oh, and when she asked where Grey Worm was, and Sir Barstool or whatever the real old guys name is did that awkward pause, did anyone else's inner fratboy think he was biting back a response somewhere along the lines of "Oh, I've got a grey worm right here for here for you, baby!" or some such? Glad he thought better of it, but I can see the wheels turning. Just wait until he finds out which local plant the slaves make Viagara from. They probably don't call it that, though. probably something more mythic-sounding, like milk of the pop-up. And, because I can not emphasize this enough, I love the Hound. Never expected that to happen. Even during the final ride-away shot, I started laughing again when I saw he was eating chicken. Besides being awesome, dark, and scary whenever necessary, the guy is also comedy gold. Watch and learn, Hot Pie.