|
TERFherder posted:Thank you for trying to bring us back on topic.Since you did attack me personally, I feel it is appropriate to respond. My story was meant to illustrate that deliberately ignoring something doesn't necessarily invalidate a persons ideals. Sometimes we don't want to argue about the ethics of using leather, we just want to play volleyball. I just want to enjoy the story of Dune without examining the accuracy of the myths or stereotypes that the author relies upon. This doesn't make me thin skinned or unable to accept criticism of Thing that I like. It's kind of remarkable that you probably completely misunderstood what that poor bastard in your story meant when he talked with you, because what I took away from that was more like "I don't have a ball with artificial leather here so we either can play volleyball with this dumb thing or not at all", which is not about ethics in volleyball, he pointed out that you lacked common sense since your weird "gotcha!" behavior negated the entire point of playing volleyball in this case, if taken fully seriously. But considering you think my observations about your own stories is somehow a "personal attack", this kind of misunderstanding of basic human interactions doesn't surprise me anymore, to be honest. I'm now pitying that poor guy, who must have had the patience of a saint. If I had to deal with your dumb poo poo back then, I'd started bouncing the volleyball of your face.  Shimrra Jamaane posted:What? They’re the supposed end game for the entire series. At least until GRRM stopped publishing books. Now it's just that weird spooky thing which looked like it might be important, but never was.  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 19:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 14:26 |
|
|
Shimrra Jamaane posted:What? They’re the supposed end game for the entire series.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 20:06
|
|
|
mind the walrus posted:Being real the White Walkers always were lame. It's so clear GRRM only ever envisioned them as a plot device, not a "thing" unto themselves. They would've been fine if the show never actually gave us their (really stupid) origin and if they hadn't been literal goddamn ice vampires.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 20:09
|
|
|
The ww having the alpha baddie vampire trope is one thing but they're also supposedly ancient and intelligent so why the gently caress did the night king march into the castle himself rather than have bran hauled out outside to be converted or whatever it is they planned, which, btw, we never learned what it was, the thing which the white walkers were trying to do, other than Kill All Humans, that is. Plot induced stupidity is one thing but when the supernatural antagonist you've built up for eight seasons pretty much just slips on a banana peel three episodes before the finale.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 20:22
|
|
|
I'm just saying that when you have an alpha baddie that you have to slay in order to defeat the army of evil the trope is usually that our heroes have to make a daring mission behind enemy lines, because the ancient evil also being stupid enough to expose its weakness to the point where it could get stabbed by any random enemy pawn and die just isn't exciting, it's not a narrative, it's what you get when you ask a five year old to come up with a story. And the funny thing is that GOT also had the stupid fellowship going into mordor subplot which was also pointless and also suffered from this reversed stakes issue where the heroes risked themselves and eventually a dragon so that they could capture a zombie which they planned to use to convince Cersei zombies are real. I know I'm going full comic book guy here but I'm enjoying myself and those plots were atrocious, Benioff is a con artist, God bless him.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 20:32
|
|
|
Honestly you can thank the Return of the King movie for that one, and then The Avengers for cementing it. Both of those movies hit the "you killed the thing so now all the minions die" button and both times it loving sucked.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 20:41
|
|
|
mind the walrus posted:Honestly you can thank the Return of the King movie for that one, and then The Avengers for cementing it. Both of those movies hit the "you killed the thing so now all the minions die" button and both times it loving sucked. Independance Day has done it twice now 
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 21:11
|
|
|
I thought that particular conceit came from the vampire?
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 21:15
|
|
|
Libluini posted:If I had to deal with your dumb poo poo back then, I'd started bouncing the volleyball of your face. yes, that seems the level of intellectual discussion you are capable of (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 21:57
|
|
|
wukkar posted:Independance Day has done it twice now Nah they didn't fully do that. There was that whole aside in the sequel about Aliens stranded on earth fighting a Bush war in Africa for 25 years, which sounds so much more loving awesome than anything else in the movie.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2021 22:11
|
|
|
mind the walrus posted:Honestly you can thank the Return of the King movie for that one, and then The Avengers for cementing it. Both of those movies hit the "you killed the thing so now all the minions die" button and both times it loving sucked. To be fair to the RoTK movie all that otherwise happens is a bunch of orcs run away, some dudes stand and fight and get beat conventionally but they've got a film to wrap up that's already long and has some ground to cover after Sauron falls. Films need reasonably tight pacing at the climax or they fall apart
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 01:29
|
|
|
wukkar posted:Independance Day has done it twice now They all still needed be nuked, blowing up the mothership just lowered the shields for reasons that only make sense to Roland Emmerich The sequel is an impressively terrible film.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 01:35
|
|
|
Algol Star posted:To be fair to the RoTK movie all that otherwise happens is a bunch of orcs run away, some dudes stand and fight and get beat conventionally but they've got a film to wrap up that's already long and has some ground to cover after Sauron falls. Films need reasonably tight pacing at the climax or they fall apart Just film some quick reaction shots of the Orcs looking at the eye exploding in horror, have a few run away from Aaragorn on a soundstage. Show some B-roll of Gondorian patrols and a throwaway line from someone about sending out patrols to make sure the remains of the army are properly routed and will keep Gondor busy for years. It's definitely more production work but in terms of destroying the tight climax pacing it's very doable.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 01:43
|
|
|
Yeah the ROTK ending is weird. The Eye blows up, Barad-dur collapses, the Orcs notice and decide to fuckin' bail, so far so good. But then the ground collapses right up to and around Aragorn's force, which is dumb as hell.mind the walrus posted:Just film some quick reaction shots of the Orcs looking at the eye exploding in horror, have a few run away from Aaragorn on a soundstage. Show some B-roll of Gondorian patrols and a throwaway line from someone about sending out patrols to make sure the remains of the army are properly routed and will keep Gondor busy for years. This would have been a much better way to close it out than "earth falls, Orcs die"
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 01:54
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
The real problem, as I see it, is that the Game of Thrones books started out as something that was legitimately kinda cool. I always viewed it as like... GRRM trying to tell the fantasy story from a sociological perspective, rather than a more character/hero-based perspective. Like, what I'm trying to say is that GRRM was not initially telling anything that remotely resembled a traditional story, and that was really cool. The first three books were like, um... The fantasy equivalent of a show like The Wire, say - trying to tell a story about how a society might actually function, hosed up violence and injustice and full of self-interested schemers lying for their own ends. And because it's telling the story in these terms, it allows the writer to kill off any character at any time, since no one character is meant to be anything resembling a traditional hero. Or not initially, anyway. I'll be the first to say that GRRM got a bit muddled in books 4 and 5, but at least he did not really destroy or sacrifice this central conceit of the books like the showrunners did. This is why the second half of the series was such a horrible betrayal of what the books were meant to be. In season 5 and onwards, they basically switched to telling a completely dumb, straightforward character-based fantasy series, and any and all cleverness, originality, and flair was excised accordingly. Did anyone really believe any remotely beloved or well-liked character would die? The show became totally about the characters FACES, not even the characters themselves. What an utter travesty and joke.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 04:50
|
|
|
the books are about the how the world is still hosed up and brutal and bad after the "good guy" wins the fairy tale and lives happily ever after
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 04:56
|
|
|
kaworu posted:Did anyone really believe any remotely beloved or well-liked character would die? The show became totally about the characters FACES, not even the characters themselves. What an utter travesty and joke. As a Brienne fan I really expected her to die in the Winterfell battle after the whole thing with her being knighted the episode before. like, that was death flags everywhere Then nobody died, and more fool me lmao
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 05:02
|
|
|
Papa Stark dieing and the Red Wedding was legitimately shocking. Then the subversion was expected and all the good characters are dead and we are left with Is Rob.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 05:32
|
|
|
kaworu posted:Did anyone really believe any remotely beloved or well-liked character would die? The show became totally about the characters FACES, not even the characters themselves. What an utter travesty and joke. The only time I think an ensemble show managed to duck this problem was FRIENDS because all the actors had some agreement to ensure they all got paid equally and the show was such an anchor at NBC that they got nearly every raise they could have wanted.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 06:05
|
|
|
Klungar posted:I thought that particular conceit came from the vampire? It's a trope that's so old that Slither made fun of it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 06:44
|
|
|
Really it's not the trope itself, there are so many examples of media that isn't poo poo that uses this trope, the idiocy of Benioff is that he doesn't understand that the trope still relies on some basic narrative logic wherein defeating the alpha bad MUST be difficult and MUST come at some personal price for the protagonists, you can say stuff like "themes are for book reports" but if your bigass plot resolution is a shaggydog exmachina you might have gone too far. It's funny because the well written first season gives us a great example of how a proper subversion of the trope is executed, Drogo is just that, he's a big bad whose army is disbanded when he dies, and he dies to a random fluke, that whole thing is made satisfying because the whole perspective is reversed, we follow Dany, and then we root for the big bad to survive even though he's into genocide and all that. You can subvert tropes or play them straight but you kind of need to engage with them, if you resolve your big plot by asking 'who should kill the night king?' and choose Arya cause 'wouldn't it be cool?' then you're just not asking the interesting questions, of course you're not going to answer anything the audience gives a poo poo about. And really this is why this bullshit type of 'introduced mysteries and their implied payoff' genre of writing is so poo poo, if the writers never had an answer for questions like 'what are the white walkers after?', 'what is the fatal flaw of the night king?', 'how will Jon play into it?' then every time they used cliffhangers and other story devices to imply that they do they basically just deceived the audience, like, Benioff trotting around pretending GRRM gave him an ending where really all it amounted to was 'the walkers are defeated somehow, they're not the real ending of the series, the ending is that Dany loses it', but really, maybe Benioff was just too stupid too understand that's not enough and that he actually needed GRRM. who knows. really. One thing I'm certain of is that Benioff is that sort of person who never experiences imposter syndrome.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 08:48
|
|
|
Invalid Validation posted:Papa Stark dieing and the Red Wedding was legitimately shocking and we are left with Is Rob. ah yes
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 10:04
|
|
|
emanresu tnuocca posted:One thing I'm certain of is that Benioff is that sort of person who never experiences imposter syndrome. It seems like rich people have reverse imposter syndrome.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 10:38
|
|
|
pseudanonymous posted:It seems like rich people have reverse imposter syndrome. That's just Dunning Kruger no?
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2021 14:53
|
|
|
mind the walrus posted:Honestly you can thank the Return of the King movie for that one, and then The Avengers for cementing it. Both of those movies hit the "you killed the thing so now all the minions die" button and both times it loving sucked. In LOTR it at least makes some sense that Sauron's destruction would cause a massive panic and confusion, since IIRC he's got some connection to things like Orcs and Trolls and whatever other poo poo Morgoth created, they could've skipped the whole "land collapses and swallows a bunch of baddies but not the thousands that flee in to north Gondor." ROTK's ending was already too goddamn long so I can't fault them for not covering the appendix stuff (since IIRC that stuff mentions stuff like how Gondor and Erador spent the following decades hunting orcs and trolls as people encountered them and survived to report it). But I don't forgive them for skipping the Scouring of the Shire. Peter Jackson not giving us the proper ending to Merry and Pippin's character arcs.  I legit have no idea how or why the Avengers had that same rear end-pull other than "we have no idea how to decisively end the invasion in a big cool way" since a dramatic showdown with Loki trying to directly fight someone would end, well, exactly the way Loki vs Hulk ended. Meanwhile the last time the White Walkers showed up they were driven back and sealed away for 7000(?) years, presumably because they weren't on the front lines, saw their invasion collapse at Winterfell, and fled before any surviving heroes could regroup and chase them down to kill them off. kaworu posted:Did anyone really believe any remotely beloved or well-liked character would die? The show became totally about the characters FACES, not even the characters themselves. What an utter travesty and joke. I think everyone believed Jamie and Cersei would die. I doubt as many expected Dany's death and it was fun seeing people get mad that crazy inbred Dragon Hitler turned out to be evil after 8 seasons of going from subtle to extremely in-your-face tells that she was highly unstable. I was hoping that the last scene for Arya would be her showing up at the House of Black and White. I was not at all expecting the "...and then Jon 'rejoins' the Night's Watch and promptly heads north of the wall with his horde of loyal-unto-death Wildling friends" scene and I'd guess he either immediately gets himself killed or spends decades exploring the frozen north extensively. Bran's ending was so stupid that if someone had posted the script here during the airing of the last episode I'd still have called it fake because surely even those hacks and HBO wouldn't write and ending so above and beyond the stupidity of the prior episode.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 00:55
|
|
|
Evil Fluffy posted:Bran's ending was so stupid that if someone had posted the script here during the airing of the last episode I'd still have called it fake because surely even those hacks and HBO wouldn't write and ending so above and beyond the stupidity of the prior episode. I think his ending is pretty good, the show just butchered it. I mean the guy who "won" the latest incarnation of the Game of Thrones really put in a lot of effort over like 500 years or something to get there. I did find it frustrating that I needed to read an additional series to learn about bloodraven or whoever ( which I'm not going to do ) - but perhaps grrm would have included some of the relevant information if had written the rest of the books. It's pretty brutal that grrm leaves Bran as a broken husk for some parasitic warging mage. I mean curiosity really killed the cat here. He sees too much, gets tossed out a window. Then he Sees too much, and gets possessed. Definitely a predatory universe.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 03:18
|
|
|
Quick check in on GOT cultural health: My wife is a high school English teacher and today she was talking about the tragic hero archetype and used Anakin Skywalker, Severus Snape, and Daenerys Targaryen as examples. Only one of the students had any idea who Daenerys was. Granted these kids, who are probably 14 now, are a bit too young to have watched the show but it was still instructive.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 06:59
|
|
|
pthighs posted:Quick check in on GOT cultural health: My wife is a high school English teacher and today she was talking about the tragic hero archetype and used Anakin Skywalker, Severus Snape, and Daenerys Targaryen as examples. Only one of the students had any idea who Daenerys was. One of those examples doesn’t quite track.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 07:31
|
|
|
hobbesmaster posted:One of those examples doesn’t quite track. Or alternatively, only one of those examples does track, because I'm pretty sure Snape--though the product of a mind who seeks to to deny basic human rights to a vast swath of people--did not commit or facilitate a genocide like Anakin and Dany did.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 09:16
|
|
|
nine-gear crow posted:Or alternatively, only one of those examples does track, because I'm pretty sure Snape--though the product of a mind who seeks to to deny basic human rights to a vast swath of people--did not commit or facilitate a genocide like Anakin and Dany did. Though if we view things through the lens of ancient Greek traditions, Snape is definitely not a hero, since he doesn't kill enough. And Anakin and Dany probably get bonus points for genocides, as per ancient Greek tradition more kills = better hero.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 10:43
|
|
|
I forget my prequel lore, is Anakin a half-god? There was something weird about his conception right?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 10:54
|
|
|
Yeah his mom was like literally impregnated by the force or something. I think this has been retconned along with all the other really dumb poo poo from the books, but I'm pretty sure one of the novels clarified that it was actually Palpatine who used the force to impregnate his mom to create the ultimate sith or some poo poo. Beef Stew fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Mar 10, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 10:59
|
|
|
Beef Stew posted:Yeah his mom was like literally impregnated by the force or something. Comic book, actually. But anyway yeah, Rise of Skywalker boils the whole saga down to a blood feud between two wizard families that are actually just one wizard family. Also Rey is Kyle Ren’s aunt or something so it’s just like Game of Thrones in the end.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 12:17
|
|
|
Have to love that two of the most populist works of genre fiction in the last half-century were exploited to the point where they're now both textually, subtextually, and metatextually all about blue-bloods and bad management.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 12:35
|
|
|
TERFherder posted:I think his ending is pretty good, the show just butchered it. I mean the guy who "won" the latest incarnation of the Game of Thrones really put in a lot of effort over like 500 years or something to get there. You really should read the Dunk & Egg books, they're probably the best part of the ASoIaF universe, and they're a LOT shorter than the rest of it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 17:24
|
|
|
dunk and egg are good. also unfinished but we know how they die eventually so meh
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 22:18
|
|
|
I wouldn't care about the absolute fuckre not finishing the main series if he was spending that time writing Dunk and Egg but he hasn't even done that
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2021 22:28
|
|
|
Desert Bus posted:You really should read the Dunk & Egg books, they're probably the best part of the ASoIaF universe, and they're a LOT shorter than the rest of it. I read the first two and liked them, but got bored halfway through the third.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2021 00:26
|
|
|
TERFherder posted:I read the first two and liked them, but got bored halfway through the third. Kinda funny, I had the same reaction the first time I attempted Dunk & Egg - part of it was reading them all in succession, I think, and Dunk & Egg #2 - The Sworn Sword is a little on the tedious and pointless side, plus it lacks both Targaryens (Egg notwithstanding) and any sort of broader historical context in terms of what most folks know about the series. I mean, it all takes place in some lovely backwater in The Reach, concerning some petty lords you've never heard of. I was more interested when I learned, long after finishing, that Rohane Webber (the Spider Widow) ends up marrying a sixth husband later in life - Gerold Lannister, and their first son is none other than Tytos Lannister - Tywin's dad. Which makes Lady Webber the great-grandmother of Cersei, Jamie, and Tyrion. Which helps a lot in terms of contextualizing The Sworn Sword at least a little bit, and making it feel as if it has some marginal bearing on the wider story. And then Dunk & Egg #3 - The Mystery Knight initially seems like it's going to be just as random and lacking context with the broader ASoIaF story as The Sworn Sword, but as those of us who have finished the story know, this is something of a fake-out and (as per the title of the story) there are several characters who could aptly be described as a "Mystery Knight" either in literal or figurative terms - and even the epic and awesome nature of the events aren't illuminated until the end. So you're reading through the story, and you don't really learn until the final act of the story that the character going by "Sir John the Fiddler" is actually freaking Daemon Blackfyre II - which then totally changes everything that Dunk and Egg have seen up to that point in story, and they (and you) suddenly realize that this is actually The Second Blackfyre Rebellion that's been going on around them this whole time. Then at the very end, you realize that the character of Sir Maynard Plumm was actually Brynden Rivers AKA Bloodraven AKA The Three-eyed Crow all along, and literally every other line of his has some hilarious or illuminating double-meaning, given that knowledge. After you know all of those things, the story is honestly way more interesting and you realize it's at least as good as the first Dunk & Egg story. But it definitely seems like it might be as tedious as the second one when you're reading it for the first time, unaware of who's who. kaworu fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Mar 11, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2021 01:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 14:26 |
|
|
Plus The Mystery Knight has Daemon hitting on an oblivious Dunk
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2021 03:43
|
|
