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

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

I would like Carcetti to suddenly appear at my side to give me advice at times.

and then tell you he's untrustworthy

that gif is great!

excellent giffage

that gif reminds me of the nymag recaps (which have been great) where margaret lyons points out how creepy and rape-tinged almost every scene is

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/05/game_of_thrones_recap_a_newbie_1.html

she also makes one of my favorite character-based analogies, which is sansa:arya::becky:darlene

wau @ sansa:arya::becky:darlene

i love how it looks like he's being rolled into the shot!

I can't find a clip but imagine I'm posting, here, the scene from Dead and Loving It in which Dracula's diaphanous henchwomen are revealed to be rolled across the floor on a pull-board.

where are the dragons

why was jousting not any different from earth jousting