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

my word, that recipe site

i think i suddenly stopped liking the books the fifth or sixth time someone ate an olive; that, i think, is what did it for me

i. the Mountain's lance slipped under an improperly fastened gorget and impaled him

ii. Littlefinger's motivations for most things he does tend to be rather oblique

I got the sense it was more a malfunction than intentional. People seemed pretty horrified and if the Mountain was known for killing his jousting partners presumably they would've known what to expect. Kinda a mirror to the Dothraki festival where they also kill ppl but they're all pretty cool with it. It makes a nice counterpoint that no matter where you are -- among the Dothraki or in the capital city, people are killing other ppl for pretty much no reason. The only difference is the civilized veneer applied in the capital.

^ Yeah I thought definite armor malfunction.

Sir Hugh was Jon Arryn's squire. Jon Arryn who was Ned Stark suspects was poisoned....

how is carcetti?

there are five olive-eating scenes in 'a storm of swords', by the way, and four in 'a feast for crows'; there are additionally four scenes between the two which take place in or proximate to an olive grove, and thirteen situations in which someone's skin is described as 'olive', in four of which it is immediately followed by a reference to the size of their breasts.

olive-eating data for the first two is proving hard to find.

that is an incredibly weird thing to notice. maybe in westeros olives are super plentiful. it's basically forecast: mediterranean in king's landing and south, so presumably they've got a lot of trees or summat.

now that i think about it, the real 'reason' littlefinger told that story to sansa is probably that they didnt want to shoot another scene & knew that 'Littlefinger does mysterious shit' would serve in the place of real character motivation - i think it makes way more sense coming from the Hound. in the book he also explains (as a way of mocking Sansa's belief that knights are valorous men whose only interest is in protecting the weak) in that scene that Gregor intentionally tilted at Hugh's weak spot cuz Gregor's just a brutal man who loves to kill

it's weird, but the hound is introduced and seems like the most boring notion of a character, & littlefinger seems exactly like what the book needs, but the hound's arc is actually pretty compelling until SPOILER, whereas that of littlefinger quickly reaches the level of 'oh, right, yes, go on then'; hopefully he will get killed off in a really entertaining fashion

bean i think it's an example of the paucity of martin's imagination but i am aware that it's not exactly the silver bullet that's going to convince anyone else -- i just found it incredibly annoying that the books go medieval diet medieval diet medieval diet, & then he decides that westeros is actually the size of a continent, and the books go OLIVES OLIVES OLIVES CHICKPEAS CHICKPEAS

all the olive-eating scenes take place in Dorne dont they? which is basically moorish spain

idk i never noticed the olives as much as, like, salt cod and freakin lemoncakes

it's moorish spain if moorish spain was cornwall, yes

i forgot about all those cornish deserts

toatlly going to make these: http://innatthecrossroads.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/lemon-cakes-part-2/

the tom colicchio game of thrones food truck did lemoncakes too, but the recipe is trickier:

http://www.makinggameofthrones.com/storage/got-lemon-cakes-recipe.pdf

dorne is prolly the goofiest the books get w/r/t nineteenth-century-style OMG EXOTIC, although the dothraki put up a good fight

like -- what bugs me about the books (apart from the narrative stasis) is that martin wants to have his cake and eat it too as to whether westeros is basically medieval england or whether it's a panopoly of various cultures -- so there's this 70s reader's digest cookbook idea of what people ought to be eating, and the logistics of empire are like the war of the roses when they ought to be like rome, and people in an area the size of south america have been speaking one language for six thousand years, before which there were two languages

ha i don't even think he even had the idea that dorn was going to be full of desert and shit until he was halfway through the second book, though

their foods are spicy... the women spicier!!!

reading the books made me realize i'm some kind of marxist after all, because it pisses me off how just totally bored martin is by "the smallfolk" and by any aspect of history that isn't the part where whispery eunuchs poison heirs in the west wing. i read an interview with him where he was like "i'm into history, but lol not the boring parts" and like oh you mean the relevant parts, dickhead

totally having fun watching this though

x-post lol

yeah that recipe might be a little too complex for my remedial baking skills - could prob handle the other tho.

where whispery eunuchs poison heirs in the west wing

this phrase is awesome! i want to embroider it on a sampler

(in the third book there's a bunch of tyrion/littlefinger/whoever stuff involving how much "coin" the "realm" has, and it's really basic and trivial and like someone eating their vegetables: "i guess there should be some administrative intrigue here but ugh why can't people get raped over grain prices")

x-post yeah it is

DLH you're a very good writer even on a msgbrd. I can't imagine what you write like elsewhere.

some friends say not as well!

i think hes more curious about it than you let on dlh - there's an entire POV in AFFC that's dedicated to just showing how devastated the commoners are by the wars being waged by all these narcissistic aristocrats (and from what i can tell the fans hated him for it) - i mean hes definitely more interested in the ~lords & ladies~ type stuff but i will give him credit if he concludes the series (heh) in a way that questions these power structures, because from a certain perspective basically everyone in the books is a villain

there's an entire POV in AFFC that's dedicated to just showing how devastated the commoners are by the wars being waged by all these narcissistic aristocrats

was afraid someone would say this cuz i haven't finished this one. but this is cool and makes sense; one of the neat things about him not planning the story from the beginning is his interests/priorities/style can shift.

i've read it and i don't know which one he means tbh. but the entire plotline with the brotherhood of the thingummy (i hope this is loose enough to not be considered a spoiler) is at least vaguely concerned with all of that, i suppose -- but in the vague-received-idea-of-robin-hood way, not the how-does-robin-hood-actually-function way

reading the books made me realize i'm some kind of marxist after all, because it pisses me off how just totally bored martin is by "the smallfolk" and by any aspect of history that isn't the part where whispery eunuchs poison heirs in the west wing. i read an interview with him where he was like "i'm into history, but lol not the boring parts" and like oh you mean the relevant parts, dickhead

totally having fun watching this though

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, May 10, 2011 11:19 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha otm i keep waiting for a collectivist religious movement or something and it never comes.

i've read it and i don't know which one he means tbh. but the entire plotline with the brotherhood of the thingummy (i hope this is loose enough to not be considered a spoiler) is at least vaguely concerned with all of that, i suppose -- but in the vague-received-idea-of-robin-hood way, not the how-does-robin-hood-actually-function way

― thomp, Tuesday, May 10, 2011 11:38 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

i will respond to this in the book thread so i can talk spoilers

yeah zip it up in this piece guys

sort of enjoying this tho it is kinda confusing still, perhaps i am dense (or stultified by having to ffwd the six ad breaks per show that sky atlantic has) but i feel like it keeps mentioning characters and i'm like "who..", i guess this always happens at the start of these shows, i should prob read the character guide...

This may seem like a silly solution but I've found reading Sepinwell + AV Club's reviews of the show has helped with characters + events that confused me the first time through. Might be worth checking them out just to clarify everything you saw in an episode.

I've been watching this with my flatmate who hasn't read the books and he literally doesn't know a single character's name. Don't blame him though.

HBO has a very handy viewers guide

http://viewers-guide.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/

boardgame

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6472/a-game-of-thrones

"You rolled a 6! Disrobe."

here is a detailed summary of the books if you are confused. problem is you might end up with spoilers if you unwittingly read too far

http://www.towerofthehand.com/books/guide.html

"You rolled a 6! Disrobe."

lol

two 1s=you must sleep with your twin sister

"A pair of threes: whore it up"

i tried playing the ccg based on game of thrones once; it was kind of tedious but intersting. i think once ya got the hang of it/bought enough good cards it could be fun.

okay, so i watched the first four episodes over the last couple days, never having read any of the books (i did like martin as a pop sci-fi and horror writer back in the 80s). pretty good, though very slow moving, thankfully light on faux-celtic swords & sorcery bullshit.

couple things:

1) i get that the dothraki are wide ranging barbarians who take tribute in the form of slaves from all over, and that their culture is therefore multiracial (to some extent). fine, but why are the people of the seven kingdoms so uniformly white? do the seven kingdoms form a closed society or one that hasn't traded much with the rest of the world? understand why winterfell, as a fortified outpost run by a single family, might be racially/culturally homogeneous, but i expected king's landing to be more cosmopolitan. do the books address this?

2) so, are people so politically moronic the books? i mean, everybody just seems to flat out announce their intentions when they first meet friends and even enemies. i get why ned, a somewhat slow-witted but basically noble soldier, might not get the nuances of political discretion, but the lannisters, supposedly these devious & sophisticated aristocrats, come across as total fucking idiots, never missing an opportunity to warn everybody around them that they're entirely self-centered and hostile towards any perceived competition.

anyway, it's okay so far, if a bit light on the wonder and creativity i go to fantasy for.

but the lannisters, supposedly these devious & sophisticated aristocrats, come across as total fucking idiots

well, the lannisters you've MET. cersei lannister is meant to be paranoid and shortsighted - she sees herself as a schemer, but all her machinations are transparent and predictable. jaime lannister's a career soldier who doesn't care about anything except fighting and banging his sister.

okay, that helps

I've totally been getting the impression that Jaime has designs on the throne.

Did Kat plan to bump into the Imp and have him arrested, or was it a spur of the moment thing?

just a coincidence

Yeah, that's what I thought. Despite a few unclear motivations etc I am really really enjoying this, by the way. People are saying it's slow, but I don't think so at all. I've found almost every scene so far to be compelling, and the production values are superb.

The time taken to introduce the characters and setup def pays off once the "game" really gets going

http://i52.tinypic.com/10y2wlk.gif

lol