Amph Game Of Thrones (uh i guess it's done now? Edit: No!)

. . .That's also why Robb agreed to marry a Frey in the first place. There was no other way to get his army across the Twins so they could actually fight. Did you pay attention to this show at all?

 

Yes and he got is army across after being extorted. Robb was well within his rights to have Walder executed for refusing to answer his liege lords call to arms and then extorting someone who wished to help him. And I doubt there would be anyone in Westeros who would object to that.

 

Yeah that's actually not how it works at all.

 

I'm pretty sure if Tywin Lannister of Staniss Baratheon were in Robb's place there would be no Freys left after that stunt.

Could Robb legally do it? Maybe, maybe not. But the Freys are so despised and hated that literally no one would care if Walder got executed, except the Freys and even they would be too busy fighting each other over the scraps Walder left behind.

 

Honestly, would she actually allow or approve of that?

 

She would be cognizant of the possibility, regardless of how she felt about it. Except in this show, she isn't, because for some stupid reason romance=marriage in this case, even though that is the opposite of everything else the show bothers to tell us about families in Game of Thrones.

 

Why is it stupid if something unprecedented occurs in this world? Is it also stupid that dragons were extinct for hundreds of years until one night someone decided to go into a fire with three eggs?

 

YES IT WAS. YES.

Which is why all the characters said she was insane. The show acknowledged that it was doing something weird. That's all I'm asking for here. It's an incredibly low bar.

 

I actually don't want to complain about the show in this thread. I was avoiding it until people were like "lol book readers" so I thought I didn't owe anyone the courtesy. Though I'm still not interested in pages of debate.

I don't really see why people don't understand this. In the book, Robb in a moment of weakness (he had just heard about the "deaths" of his brothers) deflowered Jeyne Westerling, a member of an impoverished noble family. Without her virginity she would not be able to be paired off with anyone of status, further risking her family's precarious finances. Robert Baratheon had done something similar; he didn't give two ****s and moved on. But Robb was his father's son, so he did the "honorable" thing and married Jeyne. Of course, the honorable thing would have also been to keep his oath to Walder Frey. It was an impossible choice and that made it more compelling.

Talisa was obviously not a virgin, she was effectively disowned and not Westerosi anyway, and people-- nobles especially-- never married for love. It shouldn't have occurred to Robb to marry for love because it wasn't a thing. It's as though he decided to become an anarchist (like the peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail); it's completely anachronistic given the setting. The philosophy behind it just isn't there. Hell, he should not have tolerated someone who was apparently a lowborn (or even lower nobility) talking **** to him. Most lords would have had the modern-woman-in-a-medieval-setting beaten or her tongue cut out. Robb probably would not have, but he also shouldn't have been charmed by it. Class distinctions and gender roles are very important to this society.

Not only did show-Robb marry her for love-- he insisted on parading her in front of the lord he had insulted. That doesn't make any sense even if you discount the previous paragraphs. Robb was young, not a complete moron. I don't see how "but magic!" explains all this away.

EDIT: I see the conversation has moved into weirder territory.

 

Well like you said, he's his father's son. He does stupid things for no logical reason and it leads to his death.

Clearly the change was the showmaker's greater focus on Ned Stark doing stupid things and lesser focus on Ned Stark's honor. In order to match up thematically between father and son, Robb had to start making bizarre decisions.

 

Yes

This is basically what I was going to say on that subject. It's not the showrunners. It's not the directors. They're not puerile and just in love with showing boobs -- it's part of HBO's brand. Neil Marshall said when he first came in to direct there was one HBO exec whose whole job it seemed to be to make sure there was sex and nudity in his episode, even though Marshall himself didn't think it was necessary. He specifically said in an interview that this was not Weiss and Benioff or even anyone else at HBO -- it was one guy.

Frankly I think HBO usually gets a huge pass on this and it's just not even noted with most shows. People rave about how superior HBO is to other networks, but in the end they have their own cynical marketing ploys just like anyone. They can show boobs, so they show a lot of boobs to attract some viewers but largely just to remind people that they are different. The same branding that allows them to fund a crazy dark show like GOT also means there will be unnecessary sex and nudity.

But yeah, every single critically acclaimed great HBO show has featured unnecessary sex and nudity. Whether fans actually want that or not, it's part of HBO's thing and it's hardly fair to lambast only GOT or act like this is a surprise from the great, artistically brilliant HBO.

I brought up Rome, but I think Jazib is even more on point with The Wire. Definitely one of the greatest things ever put on film, definitely has some unnecessary nudity. But again, this is not the choice of the showrunners so it should not be blamed on them.

Also, GRRM wrote plenty of gratuitous sex into the books and seems a lot more childishly pleased with its presence in the show than Weiss or Benioff (at least, he was the only one giggling about "boobies" at Comic Con). I think it's mostly harmless so I don't really care... But I'm just saying. It's not like they're adding sex scenes to the Chronicles of Narnia here.

 

The sex scenes in ASOIAF are almost universally disturbing for various reasons (rape, underage, dubious consent, incest, ugly people, completely unappealing descriptions, ****ing next to a corpse), except maybe Jon and Ygritte. GRRM may have a childish attitude about sex personally, but he wasn't writing pornography. GoT in contrast created an original character just because the actress looked good naked.

I don't particularly care whose fault it is (as I've said, I have bigger issues with the writing). I watched the entirety of the Sopranos last summer and even though Tony ran a strip club I don't remember anything like Littlefinger pontificating to an exaggerated lesbian sex scene.

 

and yet you kept typing.

 

The frustrating thing to me is that most of the worst examples of sexposition in the show are early on. They did seem to take that note and it's been a lot more toned down. But people don't seem to acknowledge that the people behind the show did actually take that fan note to some extent... It's not like it's True Blood.

I feel like there isn't that much actual sex now. There's nudity, but to be perfectly honest, it's in contexts where people would be nude and no one would bat an eye at it (like in brothels... I had no problem with that opening last week, for instance.) Maybe it just doesn't stick out to me as much because, as a woman, I honestly don't really think of female nudity as out of the ordinary. I genuinely don't even notice it half the time, and the other times I feel mostly at this point it's sprinkled into the show in a reasonable amount. But some fans don't seem to care that they actually did change that.

I'm just saying, as Jazib did, that it's not different than most HBO shows. I haven't seen the Sopranos but would remind that was very early and would be an exception. Every great HBO show I've seen has tons of it (The Wire, Rome, Six Feet Under). Usually the writers try to at least place it in situations where it makes sense.


Edit: And Roz was not created solely for nudity. She was clearly there so we would have a chance to see more of Baelish. Because obviously he's turned out to be very important, and otherwise in the story structure of the show, he'd pretty much disappear all the time until he had something super plot related to do, which is basically what happens with him in the books. But there at least you get Cat's memories and reminders.

In a show, if someone is important, you have to create things for them to do, ways for the audience to remember them and have feelings about them one way or another. That's what the Roz storyline did. Secondarily, it let us see the combined stories of several prostitutes in the books to give us a glimpse at that world. Otherwise you wind up having random faceless prostitutes in a bunch of storylines, and usually in TV it's preferable to give the audience a familiar face they might care about.

 

no, that's not it.

 

The Sopranos was contemporaneous with those others and I don't care that other HBO shows do it too, but whatever. My bigger issues with the show are shoehorned modern sensibilities, pointless diversions, dumbing down plots/characters for reasons other than time/budget constraints, and an inconsistent reality in general.

 

sj, your Baelish explanation doesn't really make sense. If the show wants us to follow the exploits of his character, why not just focus scenes on his character? That's how they've handled Stannis Baratheon, Margaery Tyrell, and Grey Worm. Let alone all the original POV characters. Why, in his case alone, do they need a newly inserted character that is frequently and conveniently nude?

 

You show characters through their interactions with other characters. That is the whole essence of drama, and one of the ways it can differ substantially from literature. We got to know Baelish largely through the way he treated Roz. But they also clearly didn't want to personally highlight him *too* much; if they had, we'd have seen all his plotting that obviously couldn't be revealed yet. There needed to be a balance and I think they did a pretty good job of giving viewers an idea of who he was without spoiling just what he was up to.

Evan, I do have rejoinders to all those complaints, as I mentioned to Jay. But I may go through them slowly since I can't sit up right now and can only post from my phone

 

I'd only ask whether you earnestly think the show has meaningfully lived up to that expectation? Baelish only has a few key character moments in the early seasons. One was a long monologue given while two women were having simulated lesbian sex on camera for several minutes. Was this the sort of meaningful character interaction that required Ros? Did it actually require anyone at all? Was it clear or sensible that he would've been talking to those individuals about the topics he raised at the time that he did so?

Or was it just a long sex scene crammed together with a piece of exposition?

 

In season 1, Littlefinger has several meaningful scenes, most of which involved Ned. Ros wasn't necessary for Littlefinger's character at all. Her character was a fill-in for some of the book's prominent prostitutes, namely Chataya and Alayaya.

 

Is Dany an idiot?

 

What in particular are you referring to?

Her scenes made a lot more sense than did the stated reason for Jamie's send off. Myrcella is the intended bride in an alliance-by-marriage. Why would her location be a secret? Even in openly abusive relationships (both in this show and in numerous feudal real life parallels), the victim's location was still known, and they still often had some level of communication with their family. If it was just trying to show Cersei's paranoia, that would be one thing. But how come Jaime didn't point out how completely insane it was? How would he go along with it?

 

Sorry, wrong thread.