HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

seville isn't it? the executive hilton seville.

I usually go with the garden view room so I can get the breakfast package. Just my luck that I witness some murders as a result.

current game of throne storylines, ranked (i'm limiting myself to ~2 seconds of brain activity for each decision so this is from the heart)

sansa & theon & brienne & podrick
cersei and jaime destroy everyone else
jon snow for the love of the old gods and the new wake up and make this show more interesting
davos and a team of extras wait for someone to save the day
ramsay
sam working on getting tenure
bronn? i'm assuming he's doing something. whatever it is it's better than most of the rest of the show
margaery tries to ignore constant pleas to purchase a Lexus
bran and the 3 eyed raven
tyrion and varys have some decent conversations while stalling for another season
melisandre finally does something cool (?) and revives jon snow?
jorah and daario on the trail
arya's neverending bad day
daenerys kills some more time
direct to video dorne

Imagine Zombie Mountain will feature soon.

Is Littlefinger still in the Vale? I really can't remember

last we saw littlefinger he was leaving sansa with the boltons, right?

i'm expecting some big crazy metal underdog army of wildlings and vengeful greyjoys and undead jon snow coming together before the end of the season.

littlefinger was summoned by Cersei right?

It's not the Hilton fwiw

http://scribblerinseville.com/game-of-thrones-season-5-the-water-gardens-of-dorne-aka-the-alcazar-of-seville/

I don't think wondering what Bran is up to is odd, it seems like whatever mystery he's involved in is crucial.

Bran crew was one my favorite storyline because it was respite from politics and went on his very own trope. Not to say that I dislike the politics intensive narrative arcs (on the contrary!) but that was quite different.

At this point we know that the existential threat is even more looming than ever, and somebody is going to have to bring dragons to that party. Those are the two key ingredients of the finale. We have two more years to get there after this season (hopefully we won't get treated to more than 1 episode worth of post-white-walker epilogue).

The only person that really has any "plot armor" in the endgame scenario are Daenaerys, because dragons, and probably Bran, because warging into a dragon seems like a thing that needs to happen.
Everybody else is completely expendable really and I think that's what makes all the other disparate storylines seem a little dull. Like, we really cared about the consequences of stuff like the Red Wedding way back when, but that taught us not to get heavily invested in the characters, and then Hardhome taught us that there are not many problems in this made-up world, there is exactly one problem, and it is going to kill everyone.

We'll see how much the showrunners acknowledge this problem and try to give us something worth chewing on in the meantime. At the same time I totally see why GRRM can't finish writing any of it. He needs to tie up about 200 dumb side quests he made up for fun, get to the dragons vs. zombies fight and end it. I'd hate to sit down every day to that.

assuming the show sticks to its stated timeline, i'm hopeful that this season will take us to the end of Act II with all the pieces finally shuffled into their places and some downhill momentum at last

I didn't realise they had changed their minds about stubbornly sticking to 7 seasons. I'm a little disappointed that they couldn't just make season 7 a bit longer. Is 13 episodes really too much to ask of one season?

Speaking of Branquest, what's the last we knew of the Reeds? Jojen was killed by a skeleton, but Meera is still alive?

And yeah I REALLY hope she isn't just going to slowly learn how to deal with being a blind face swapper in training for the course of the entire season...
wasn't this addressed in one of the trailers with jaqar or wtf his name is saying she was getting one
more chance to prove herself? I didn't dream that did I.

Meera's still alive

I'm terrible with faces in a lot of these complex plot shows. With S5 having been so long ago, I was confusing all the middle aged men with grey beards. I keep mixing up Stannis, Davos, Jorah (to a lesser ext), and Alliser.

i wasn't sure if the ppl in jon snow's rooms were wildlings or nightwatch

watch men

i've read all the books and watched all the eps but honestly idk if i care how the story concludes anymore

Yeah I'm starting to find the whole thing a bit of a mess to follow. Someone upthread mentioned burning ships... hein!? Wasnt that burning buildings?

Nah it was the harbor

Dead @ Karl Malone ranking post

maybe I need 2 b less drunk when watching this show lol

No I think you're on the right track.

Finally caught up with this (the episode, not the thread). I'm glad to see that it's gotten back to being a bit self consciously campy again - the Dothraki Spanish Inquisition skit throwback was cute, and so was the negotiating through the door scene - but as I was reminding my wife who everyone was and why we (in theory) care, it was pretty rough going. "Oh, she is sworn to her because her master was killed by a mysterious vagina ghost assassin." "That guy, he used magic to ..." etc.

One thing I couldn't answer/remember is what happened to the dragons. The best I could come up with is that she flew one of them to Scotland with a broken engine and then crash-landed it in a field before she was captured by Dothraki?

BTW, if this ends with dragons vs. zombies - or zombies riding dragons? or zombie dragons? - I will be highly entertained and also drunk.

the others she locked in a cave because the one who is actually loose was behaving badly..

I think tyrion is gonna go check on them in the next ep due to the preview.

Are we mayb all struggling cos its been too long since the last season? I should have rewatched at least S5 again.

those sandworm girls are so annoying, dorne is stupid & looks like a myst add-on

i am nostalgc for the days of a mere 3 storylines

also did everyone always swear so modernly and casually in this

Yeah, there was a flurry of "fucks" in one bit that really stood out for me!

this wasn't very good was it

whenever I see the sandsnakes I regret watching the TMNT parody video last year because thats all I hear in my head

I didn't really see much similarity between them and Ninja Turtles. They have weapons and they're young.

have even wondered about rickon.

― japanese mage (LocalGarda), Tuesday, April 26, 2016 8:26 AM (14 hours ago)

I think Rickon might be back this season!!! He's like my favorite character after Dolorous Ed and the hippie red priest

this wasn't very good was it

― ulysses, Tuesday, April 26, 2016 11:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh cmon its flawed af but its not *bad*

whenever I see the sandsnakes I regret watching the TMNT parody video last year because thats all I hear in my head

And yeah, this was pretty silly, i.e. bad enough. We are at the point in the story where it is dangerously close to totally teetering over with the weight of all its not-terribly-compelling contrivances. Like, this far along and I still don't give a fuck about the Red Witch, and neither do I ever remotely understand her powers/role. Dorn stuff is stupid and cheap-looking, massive perils like Ice Zombies and dragons constantly vanish or get sidelined/ignored, 5/6 seasons in and magic powers present since the start have still not been explained/outlined, and so on. I don't get how shows, especially shows with huge budgets and huger audiences like this and Walking Dead (RIP to me) just can't manage 10 or 13 totally good episodes in a row. Better Call Saul did it. Hell, Veep has done it. And neither of these has the literally unlimited resources of imagination at their service.

And as far as the show's momentum goes, strictly as an entertainment and not as, like, a fake history of an ancient pretend land, it's just constantly hitting the reset button, like playing some maddening kids game that sends you back to the beginning when you're almost at the end. Makes it all feel padded, which maybe it is!

Show/story/Martin made a strategic narrative error by first) systematically killing off (temporarily or no) its most compelling characters and second) scattering the rest across the sidetrack gulag. I presume this season is already on track to remedying the latter problem; for once we have a whole bunch of related characters in the same place(s), talking to one another. As for the former, I think we'll have to wait and see, but it's happened so often now that it's tough to get totally invested in anyone's specific plight, and even when you do, expectations subvert drama, i.e. no one thinks Jon Snow is dead, no one thinks the Mother of Dragons is in any real danger.

Well, I guess she could be, and I guess they could all be killed at any moment, but that would be pretty shitty storytelling. This ep alone seemed largely about aggressively tying up a few loose ends lest they become more dead ends.

Khaleesi Widows Spa Retreat just felt like Bad TV Writing

so did the melisandre reveal

http://i.imgur.com/WEl2uHD.jpg

Lol

I giggled at it as an intentional subversion of boobs. OK, we made it to the episode of the season premiere with no nudity, so here is this person disrobing, just for you, and ... ha, now her boobs are old! Fooled you!

Are people out there really stoked for another dose of Bran and his loser mates? It's like looking forward to a Lost episode about Rose and Bernard.

the problem the show faces right here:

Are people out there really stoked for another dose of Bran and his loser mates?

magic powers present since the start have still not been explained/outlined

there was a ton of explicit two person dialogue exposition and a desperate need to make sure we hit every storyline for about four minutes... basically the two sins they've been good at avoiding until now

want at least two seasons of tmns and splintelaria biding their time in the sewers of kings landing

robberies mysteriously foiled, angry pizza maesters etc

after defeating mutant mountain, a stray canister of wildfire leads to a final showdown with super cersei. go snakey go snakey go

maybe the police from monty python + holy grail will show up and arrest dorne

This episode was basically the same as every season opener for the last couple of seasons, basically just the show going "remember this dude? Also these two are pretty important also, and don't forget about what's happening over here! There's also this happening even though nobody cares about this storyline, but maybe we'll make it work this season, etc."

I guess it's ok to complain about it, but it seems like most people would be completely lost if they didn't do it.

New Dothraki guy reminds me of Hari Kunzru

remind me, what happened to the dothraki when daenerys first met the unsullied? did they just ride away somewhere? do some of them still think that daenerys is the unburned mother of dragons etc etc etc etc etc etc? or was that a different band of dothraki that's unconnected to the new crew?

i can't fucking BELIEVE the dothraki are involved again, btw

i went from hating the whole S1 dothraki storyline to being sort of ok with it, but when they disappeared i assumed that we would never see them again and i was totally fine with that

"magic powers present since the start have still not been explained/outlined"

That's a feature, not a bug.

For sure. But when you start bringing characters back from the dead (like the Mountain), it'd be nice to know how or why they can't do that for everyone. See also: Red Witch's vagina shadow demon assassin, creation of wildfire, going full-wart (and why), etc. It would be helpful, this far along, to know why some people can do stuff and some people can't, and why those that can usually don't, and so on. And that's just stuff in the abstract. More specifically missing among many characters: motive. Or at least motive beyond merely generic "power." What does the Red Witch want and why? The asshole in charge of the Night's Watch now, what does he want?

Man, I just remembered all the other shit going on that we haven't even got a reminder of. Sam studying to be a book ninja, Littlefinger farting around in Cloudymountainland. Wyldling Stallions off somewhere (or were they all killed?). Vast army of unkillable Ice Zombies just ... chilling somewhere.

i think there are a bunch of dothraki clans or tribes or whatever that luv 2 fight each other