HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

If we're going to get nerdy about how their world works... I always wonder- the maps for both this and LOTR look like they can't be much bigger than say south america or something. Maybe even that is too big. Is the rest of the planet(?) ever mentioned?

Tolkien makes multiple references to things that aren't on the maps - "the West" etc.

implying a much larger world beyond Middle Earth

xpost Yeah the Walkers have been mentioned in King's Landing least once, but the response from all quarters was essentially "Riiiiight, whatever you say buddy" before everyone got back to plotting and spying and having clandestine meetings and whatnot. Which tbf is not an unreasonable reaction to have in that situation given that this is pretty much tantamount to claiming to have been abducted by aliens irl

xxxxxpost
http://io9.com/5906300/5-scientific-explanations-for-game-of-thrones-messed-up-seasons

Has the Nights Watch sounded the alarm to Kings Landing yet? Is there any awareness of the Walkers south of the wall? You'd think the really clued-in powerbrokers like Varys or Littlefinger or Tyrian might have at least heard the rumours

― brio, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 1:41 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tywin I mean

― brio, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 1:42 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually Tyrion was acting Hand when the NW sent a representative to KL to argue for reinforcements re: the impending Otherpocalypse. But yeah, everyone was more wrapped up in material and immediate concerns of internal KL politics.

xxpost iirc in LOTR the part of Middle-Earth that we see is meant to be approximately the size of Europe, with fuck-off huge spaces to the east that are never shown as well as the maps showing at least two more continents that are barely referred to at all even in The Silmarillion and all of the extended writings

wight btw

Essos is pretty big. and there are two other continents that are basically unknown.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4/Werthead/Maps/WorldofIceandFireNamesandScale_zps2aecc8fb.png

lol at 1000 islands

xpost yeah - I remember it being pretty well-established in Season 1 that nobody in the South took the Night's Watch particularly seriously, and stories from the Wildlings even less so... was just wondering if any of the more recent sightings had been factored in yet. I guess we as a TV audience see them more consistently than the characters in the show.

so is the whole series leading to all the humans eventually forming an uneasy alliance against the Walkers?

its leading to a) more murder and b) more boobs

Shakey otm.

More seriously, the only sightings of the Walkers have been North of the Wall, which they have yet to breach.

I forget if the KL people dismiss the NW's claims as fairy tales dressed up to get more funding.

Maybe the dragons will melt the snow zombies.

don't forget that maester aemon & sam sent all those scrolls to the various kings asking for help etc. Stannis got one too.

^^^this seems like the most predictable scenario but otoh really expensive can they even afford that much CGI? this is a show about medievel shit that has yet to stage an actual battle scene iirc.

xp

Tbh if "A Song of Ice and Fire" doesn't eventually lead to Daenaerys conquering Westeros before melting the White Walkers with her dragons the someone done fucked up

maester aemon has no fucking pull

Ah, right, ian. My bad.

For a story that gets a degree of kudos for being unpredictable the ending really is the most obvious thing.

Guys down south are clearly gonna continue pooh-poohing tales of the White Walkers until some really drastic shit goes down, which I agree might not be an ideal scenario for this show because as Shakey says, action is not the strong point here

getting a scroll from maester aemon about ice zombies is like an email from a Nigerian Prince, I guess

The end of the last season certainly gave the impression that Stannis and Melisandre appreciated the extent to which shit was about to go down North of the Wall, but then we fast forward to the season and Stannis is just standing around complaining about not being King as usual.

oh yeah that's right - and she knows whats up with supernatural shit, so maybe more inclined to take it seriously. totally forgot that.

Does Stannis remind anyone else of Jason Statham? Just me?

he reminds me of Roose Bolton & a bunch of other minor characters. Give some of these dudes some eccentric hair-dos or trademark funny hats so I can keep up.

he reminds me of Roose Bolton & a bunch of other minor characters. Give some of these dudes some eccentric hair-dos or trademark funny hats so I can keep up.

Hate to harp on this shit in the spoiler-free thread but again, I think this is a (possibly inevitable?) failing of the tv show. In the books there is all the difference in the world between Stannis' monomaniacal drive for what he perceives as truth and justice vs Roose Bolton's peculiar concoction of the same cloak-and-dagger stuff they're all working and sheer pantomime-villain malevolence

Well there was one book scene featuring Roose in Harrenhal where, if the TV show had followed the book, would've clearly leeched the confusion with, say, Stannis.

xps taling to myself still: even like animated shorts telling us about the children of the forest and the first men, or whatever. like para-texts.

― ryan, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 5:36 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

these exist btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DytL8fXMEaA

roose is a try-hard, stannis is supremely disdainful

Still, you'd think the fact that they happened at all would make people a little more wary. If someone once told me dragons fried thousands and zombies took out a bunch more, I'm not sure how well I'd sleep, no matter how gone they supposedly are.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 4:22 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, well you'd think that ppl on our world would give a bit more of a shit about climate change but

wow thanks those videos are pretty neat. sounds like the actors from the show are narrating it?

Dragons and Zombies are infinitely more easy to understand and conceptualise than climate change.

xpost

Looks like a compilation of the little historical videos that are in the blu-ray special features. It's nice that someone pulled these together because watching them in a million 5 minute chunks is a pain in the ass

Giant fire breathing dragons that actually wiped out entire cities and killed thousands trumps scientific models and hypotheses. But speaking of climate change, you'd think some of these dudes might be preparing for potential endless winter, too. Winter is coming, etc. So we've got the threat of dragons (real, recent), snow zombies (mythical) and a long winter (people know about this, right? or was the last Westeros ice age eons ago, too.)

http://io9.com/5906300/5-scientific-explanations-for-game-of-thrones-messed-up-seasons

yeah there are tons of explanations for why a planet would have irregular seasons. a planet that would have both these irregular seasons AND an ecology that closely mirrors earth's is, however, ridiculous. but, you know, MAGIC!

it is magical how boring you are about this

That's my fave aspect of the show, actually. Magic is real but hardly pervasive. Just every once in a while, oh yeah, MAGIC. Like, you'd think a red witch with actual powers would be as pervasive as dragon skulls, but no, just another headache to deal with.

persuasive not pervasive.

i think the d&d dungeon master's guide would describe this as a 'low magic world'

in the books there are numerous hints about the seasons and seeing as a major theme of the series is a) magic is returning to the world and b) a really long winter (brought by the magical ice creatures* & their zombies) is coming and everyone's going to be fucked, I would hardly say it's a deux ex machina. there's clearly a resolution coming.

*not a spoiler, see end of last episode when guy drops the water & it freezes.

u just kill them w obsidian daggers not really that big a deal jeez

and they call them dragonglass. hmmm, makes you wonder....

interesting thing from those videos is that the Starks are sorta ethnically distinct from the rest of westeros.

I like that the different speakers in that video describe their history differently, depending on how their family was affected by the events.

i always figured the weird seasons were caused by their planet spinning on an irregular axis (i have no science credentials)

The sun probably spins around the earth in westeros

I imagine when shakey reads terry pratchett he is thinking " HM! Could a giant space turtle REALLY support four giant space elephants AND a whole planet?! SCIENCE, ANSWER ME!"

Giant fire breathing dragons that actually wiped out entire cities and killed thousands trumps scientific models and hypotheses. But speaking of climate change, you'd think some of these dudes might be preparing for potential endless winter, too. Winter is coming, etc. So we've got the threat of dragons (real, recent), snow zombies (mythical) and a long winter (people know about this, right? or was the last Westeros ice age eons ago, too.)

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 3:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

well but the targareyan's have been entirely wiped out excepting a teenaged girl from the pov of tywin lannister et al. "winter is coming" is basically a phrase that everyone makes fun of b/c lol the pessimist starks who shut themselves away in the north and are m/l a different race than the Andal people who control the rest of Westeros (excepting Dorne). The threat of dragons that last really laid any kind of waste to westeros is well out of recent memory (all the popular songs now are things like "Rains of Castamere," narratives about political treachery and military strength) and, "whoa a young lady has some dragons on another continent" isn't really actionable intelligence. It's kinda like Who Gives a Shit? The coming long winter, and the Lannister destruction of the bread basket of Westeros in preparation for it, is one of Martin's critiques of the short-sightedness of war and those in power. No matter how little food is available for the "small folk" Tywin and Cersei will have all the feasts they want! There's no sense of need for those in power outside of protecting that power so there will remain no sense of need. And as far as the White Walkers are concerned, it's been literally thousands of years since the wall has really been anything other than a kind of polite prison camp. White Walkers are a fairy tale. The watch is desperate for recruits, why wouldn't they say they've seen mythical bullshit coming to gain more men? They've got like a hundred dudes! They'd do anything for new blood!

anyways i have always read the White Walkers as a metaphor for the inevitable inaction on climate change until it's actually making the rich suffer, so props to whoever brought up the idea.

I usually avoid this thread cos of fear of spoilers and increasing distaste for the show's politics, bt awesome post man

def feel that they lost momentum with the white walkers after the end of season 2 - all that marching towards the wall but where are they now? meanwhile bran suddenly goes from a snail's pace north to suddenly at craster's in just a couple of minutes.