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Yeah I thought the Bronn trial by combat worked. I don't think anyone made Lysa's knight out to be an amazing badass or anything. He was arrogant and kind of past his prime, and probably wasn't getting involved in too much active combat. Bronn was a mercenary who needs to stay sharp to stay employed, and was obviously a veteran of wars and had plenty of recent practice stabbing barbarians in the mountains. I can buy that this out of practice knight with an unfamiliar sword and armor he probably hasn't worn during a fight in years could get a little tuckered out trying to chase him around the room. Even if you're in great shape fighting is tiring. The armor stuff really disappears in later seasons. There is a scene in the later seasons where an armored soldier is wearing a shield on his back and the sword goes through the shield, through his armor, through his chest, and out the front plate. This is all done in service of the classic "Oh, I'm about to GET YOU!" shot where the killer winds up for a big blow and then notices the sword protruding from his chest, as seen in every dramatic moment in the Tolkien movies.
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Nov 13, 2021 03:56
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The maneuver that the Northmen pull off during the TV show Battle of the Bastards would only work with highly trained elite footmen, rather than the rabble that they are supposed to be. I'm okay with it. I don't think I've ever seen a 'realistic' ancient battle on film. Typically we get invincible horses that can just roll over anything and absolutely confused mishmash melees with no one wearing helmets. I think the closest we've ever got was during a short sequence in the HBO Rome TV show where the legions are fighting in a proper line and rotating men. One of the hotheads runs out to do the typical Hollywood poo poo and gets chewed out by his centurion. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MYlRzLqD0
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Nov 14, 2021 01:54
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RCarr posted:Lol this scene is poo poo I'm not saying it is amazing. I'm just saying it is the best we've got. If you've seen something that has done it better I'd be glad to see it.
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Nov 15, 2021 10:44
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I don't think GRRM ever intended his work to be a serious look at medieval history, but he does get some things right that were generally unusual in fantasy novels. Like every fantasy novel has these kings and queens doing stuff but they never really capture the idea that there are tons of other nobles with opinions and power. GRRM of course simplifies the poo poo out of it, but reading it as a kid I thought it was kind of astounding how I had not seen much of that before in a fantasy book. Usually they just lump aristocrats into some foppish stereotype that will play well with the audience who is supposed to identify with the Noble King or Peasant Hero Boy and all the rich people are just a bunch of whiners in silks, or not in existence at all. GRRM did a good job of showing that every ruler is surrounded by a bunch of armed militarized rich people that want their job and could turn on them or ignore their commands if it suited them. He did well at showing that kings did not have absolute power. I think the show itself did a decent job of this in the early half but then as time went on things got mashed into Only The Main Characters Matter and we have absurd poo poo like the Tyrells dying and then everyone else claiming 'The Reach is empty' as if there wouldn't be hundreds of noblemen all trying to jump into the vacuum they leave behind.
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Nov 23, 2021 02:57
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Jazerus posted:the longest english language fantasy series ever written, The Wandering Inn, at 8.6 million words and still ongoing, has been written entirely within the period between the releases of A Dance with Dragons and Winds of Winter I'm not sure a terrible shovelware LitRPG is really a good source of comparison. It's more of a fanfic. Don't get me wrong, GURM is a fucker and we're not getting the books, but really, I'd rather have nothing at all than something of the quality of the Wandering Inn, with its Trumpquotes and Harry Potter Houses and Leveling Up My Innkeeping Skill "Erin tossed a potato peel at him. Rabbiteater caught it, and munched on it. She shook her head. “It’s not an insult to me. Because…I’m a Hufflepuff, Rabbiteater. Me too.” He looked at her. “But you smart. You…are…smart.” He corrected himself. Erin smiled. “Not according to the online test. I’m 40% Hufflepuff, 60% Gryffindor. But everyone gets Gryffindor. And really—I’m good at chess. " Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Dec 1, 2021 |
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Dec 1, 2021 01:58
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People complain about the sexposition, but is that not accurate to the tone of GRRMs books? They are full of sex scenes and descriptions of titties. I can see why people would oppose it but it is certainly bringing George's vision to the screen.
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Mar 17, 2022 07:14
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The books are graphic to be sure, but I do appreciate that GRRM is willing to show the ugly side of war even on the good guys side. There are plenty of passages illustrating the fact that it doesn't matter who actually wins or who was correct in the first place, all sides of the war are raping, pillaging, and murdering innocent people in vast numbers. Rape in GRRM's books is not just for the bad guys. I've read a lot of fantasy books where the Good Guy Army marches around and they just magically happen to have food and everyone is motivated by Good Thoughts because they're the Good Guys and suffering never follows in their wake. Armies march on their stomachs, and that generally means completely devastating the areas they march through, regardless of whether those areas are supporters or enemies or somewhere in between. I think it gives better context to a Glorious Assault when we see that even the best and noblest of lords are pretty much incapable of stopping their men from turning into bloodthirsty animals the moment they breach the gates. Some of them try to stop it, while others encourage it, but none of them are innocent of it. Though it is of course a scene of threatening a child with rape, I think Queen Cersei's scene with Sansa in which she tells her to prepare for the worst during Stannis' siege is a good one. She's trying to open her eyes that a just cause or innocence is no protection from horror, and that even men fighting for the noblest of causes can be violent animals when it suits them. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 08:46
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Terrible Opinions posted:Part of the problem with these appeals to realism is the fixation on rape to the exclusion of most other messy bits of war. Even after killing dudes most people are far more willing to be a thief than a rapist. The books do not have the same fascination of depicting say foot soldiers ripping off all the valuable pieces of armor and clothing on a fallen knight compared or abandoning a fight to pilfer enemy saddle bags, at least in comparison to how much it loves to talk about rape. Does the book have even one instance of an army being beaten because it starts looting prematurely? You could argue that the Greyjoy northern offensive is defeated because they are essentially just going on a big looting spree and pissing people off rather than engaging and destroying armed enemy forces. They have no real objective in the war beyond 'proving themselves' and grabbing poo poo, they don't really seem to care one way or another who is actually king, unlike all the other major houses involved. I feel like in general the books haven't really described too many field battles at all? Like there is the siege of King's Landing where all the good loot is assumed to be inside the walls which they never truly breach, and then the field battle in which Tyrion gets injured and wakes up to the aftermath, which involves looting. I don't think there is as much rape depicted 'onscreen' as we like to imagine, though admittedly it has been quite an age since I've actually read them. As for Looting: I think it is repeatedly emphasized that the reason the Unsullied are considered good soldiers is their extreme discipline, and while they will happily murder and loot for you, they won't do it on their own initiative. - The Greyjoys go on and on about 'the iron price' which is looting. It's basically their whole thing. They seem like they don't really produce much themselves and rely on stealing everything. - The Dothraki are pretty famous for looting stuff rather than producing their own. - The King's Landing riots have a lot of people looting stuff. Rich folk are dragged down and people rip them apart while stealing their poo poo. - The 'inn at the crossroads' gets taken over by soldiers - The Brotherhood Without Banners are pretty famously gold hungry - The Bloody Mummers also are big into pillagers. Same with Clegane's men who are constantly torturing people and asking about their gold. - Tyrion's barbarian soldiers are specifically enticed into his service with the promise of being able to loot stuff at will. For barbaric-savages types they don't really have any descriptions of them raping but quite a bit of them enjoying stealing cool weapons and armor. - The Wildlings routinely cross the Wall just to steal poo poo on huge looting raids We see plenty of gruesome torture and mutilation involved with soldiers as well. Pretty much anything involving the Boltons or Clegane's men, as well as human sacrifice, genocide, disembowelment, crucifying people, burning them alive, and so on. I think GRRM certainly covers it all but from a modern perspective we consider all of that rather secondary in horror to rape. I think it is easier to have the rape events stand out because we see it as more horrific, while yoinking valuables is considered rather innocuous even though in a starving-peasant-economy it is pretty much a death sentence to steal someone's livestock. In any case, a 'realistic' medieval war is going to be mostly depicting small bands of soldiers terrorizing civilian populations. Field battles were incredibly rare, and most of the time the way to actually get a field battle going was to go around burning, raping, and stealing everything you could to provoke the local lord to challenge you instead of hide away in his castle. Large scale medieval warfare was mostly inconclusive sieges, rare field battles, with a whole pile of horror inflicted on the populace over and over and over. See the Hundred Years War or Albigensian Crusades for some good examples. All that being said: Realism is a crutch, GRRM can rely on history or ignore it in every sentence as he can and does. But, I think when he was writing them it was pretty common for most fantasy books to be of the Tor-style Friends With Swords On An Adventure and him throwing some ugly stuff into the mix was not so overplayed back then. Kind of like how most WW2 movies were pretty 'fun' and bloodless before Saving Private Ryan came along and thrust the horror into people's faces. I think he does a pretty good job of showing how the average peasant really doesn't give a poo poo whose pampered rear end sits on a fancy chair as long as they can bring in their crops and survive. Rape was (and is) a weapon of terror by an invader, and it was pretty common historically for it to be widely understood that a populace that surrendered immediately would be treated rather well, but resisting until they literally have to bash down your castle gate means everyone inside is going to suffer a horrible fate. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 10:34
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mind the walrus posted:Well-cited and good point. You're right - Vietnam movies were always kind of horrific, but Americans mostly had negative feelings about that war already. I think the big difference with Saving Private Ryan is that it took the Good Glorious War and showed how dirty and nasty it could be. It 'Vietnamified' WW2 in a sense. Previous to that, most big budget American WW2 movies were of the John Wayne type. Even if they showed the horrors of war, our heroes got to die clean deaths where they told their wives they loved them. It had Americans laughing while committing murderous warcrimes as soldiers beg and plead that they aren't even German and don't want to be there. It had descriptions of tragic command incompetence. And most of all it just had unrelentingly brutal violence that hadn't really been seen in any mainstream war movies at the time. It showed what war injuries could look like with shredded limbs, brains spilling out, caved in faces, troops drowning under the weight of their equipment, etc. It really showed WW2 as ugly when popular images of it rarely did so. Obviously other countries had done this before, like Das Boot or Come and See, but for average American viewer it really brought things into perspective. I can see why people are tired of the trope really. But it's also worth keeping in mind that the last time GRRM did any substantial work on the series was almost 20 years ago when the edgy stuff hadn't been so tired, at least in the genre. I know comics were going for Dark N Adult N Serious on a bit different timeline than fantasy novels.
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Mar 24, 2022 02:19
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Kuiperdolin posted:Even in America there was Iron Cross, The Dirty Dozen, The Caine Mutiny... Hell even Kelly's heroes. I love all those movies but you can see how they didn't really change the public's perception of how WW2 was fought or what it must have been like to be there. Cross of Iron was about the Germans, and every movie about the Germans has to be unrelentingly bleak because imagine if they made one where it wasn't? Not exactly a mainstream movie, either. Saving Private Ryan was the war movie that people who didn't like war movies were all watching. Kelly's Heroes and the Dirty Dozen are a bit closer to the War Is Fun genre since they were packed full of wisecracking character actors. No one watched Kelly's Heroes and left it thinking "drat, WW2 was surely hell!". It looked like a blast hanging out with your buddies. Dirty Dozen was a bit nastier but it still got away with it because they were all condemned criminals anyway so no one cares if they die and they were also clearly having a lot of fun making the movie. I'll quit with the derail, I was just trying to show that Martin did to fantasy what Spielberg did to WW2 movies. Obviously neither one were the first to make things gritty violent and nasty, but they were the first to really get massive audience eyeballs on their projects while doing so. Like, FPS existed before DOOM, but it was DOOM that made the FPS exist to the mainstream audiences who previously never cared about it. Fantasy as a genre was widely considered pretty chaste and sexless to a mainstream audience at least until GRRM added all those tits to the dragons. Like before GRRM fantasy was basically considered Tolkien/Potter powerhouses and then kiddie stuff like Dragonheart and various projects that had ambitions beyond their budget. Conan was cool and awesome of course but it never really took off beyond being a cult movie. For what it's worth I appreciate what he did but I also think he's an awful shitberg who can't write his way out of his hole (which would be fine) but fails to admit it (which is not). Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Mar 24, 2022 |
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Mar 24, 2022 09:07
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I am playing Elden Ring and I can't even imagine what he even did for it. I like it, but I don't like it because of its story or lore. I'm about 40 hours in and I still have no idea what's going on or why I should even care, but it is fun to stab dragons. Is this just like when Tarantino shoved his name onto every random grindhousey movie in the early 2000s?
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Mar 28, 2022 14:53
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I thought the prophecy was kind of dumb, but it does have some book references and to me at least I just see it as some dhalfassed justification for their rule that they tell themselves so they can feel good about being evil black-armored dragon dictators. They are the evil empire they just need to pretend to themselves that they are good people. Maybe at some point Aegon the Conqueror actually believed this or something but at this point it's just a story that they tell their kids to basically lean on Divine Right in a show/book that for the most part ignores religion.
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Aug 23, 2022 06:34
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Punkin Spunkin posted:incidentally, is Daemon supposed to be some sort of Darkstar-esque super badass? I don't really remember much of his feats since ive only just read the first part of fire and blood (and I guess I dont really remember it) and some asoiaf wiki bullshit. As far as I understood it, he is basically a Joffrey that got to grow up. He's a petulant little entitled shithead, but you are pretty much inevitably going to be decent at fighting if you're the son of a rich noble house. Your only job is really learning how to fight since childhood, and you've got the best trainers, weapons, and armor that money can buy. It's not completely ridiculous that he knows what he is doing because he has had every possible advantage to do it, and he still gets clowned on in the tournament by prematurely celebrating victory. The only reason Joffrey didn't get good at fighting was that his mom was overly protective and wouldn't allow anyone to hurt her widdle baby, but if King Robert had his way then that kid would have been out jousting and bashing poo poo with axes. It probably would have made him an even bigger rear end in a top hat if he had the power to gently caress people up himself instead of just ordering his goons to do it.
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Aug 24, 2022 09:28
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Back when I used to believe a new book was coming out I went to Game of Thrones themed trivia night at a pub. Our whole table had read the books. We were gonna crush this. The competition was fierce with one other table. We were tied for first, having gotten every single question correct over 3 hours. The quiz hosts had been hyping this for like 2 months and they had some serious prizes on the line - there was this pretty cool sword replica, a cookbook, and all sorts of Game of Thrones themed booze that ultimately was worth a few hundred bucks. The tie-breaker they came up with was that they would award the final point to the team that had the most clever or funny Game of Thrones name. We lost. Our name was "The Fat Pink Masts". The quizmasters had no idea what it meant. Our rivals won. They were called: "The Lannisters".
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Apr 19, 2023 11:53
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von Metternich posted:Jon is going to flex his hand a LOT. Because he burned it, and it gets stiff, you see. This will lead to the defeat of the Others. There were real medieval kingdoms that were essentially split by siblings. The idea could be that they understand the North is always gonna be fiercely independent and somewhat ungovernable, so better to let it do its own thing and be allies. Have to keep in mind that a lot of medieval monarchs don't think about what will make a more powerful nation, but what will be better for their own dynastic line. In the books that will never be written there could easily be some setup for this with the North making some deal about smashing the Ice Zombies. Sansa gets to rule because everyone else is dead, Bran is king, and Jon is bastard/Night's Watch/Targaryen depending on who is asking, but is not really in line. We can assume Rickon dies or is forgotten. As for Bran being king, it is a good way to get the electoral monarchy going. I understand Bran is paralyzed below the waist, so he's not gonna gently caress and have kids. If this electoral monarchy thing is going to work, then having the king being unable to conceive a natural heir will ensure that there will at least be a way to transfer power away from the Starks in the future. There were electoral monarchies on Earth and sometimes they would support a weak ineffectual king because that means greater power lies in the hands of his electors, and that he will be unlikely to establish a ruling dynasty that stays in power. King Bran can make sense. The show basically eliminated most of the minor nobility but if enough of them agree that he is good enough to stop fighting the war over then I can see it happening. Bran would be beyond getting revenge for grudges and a way to move on. As the show sets it up, Tyrion is the real king anyway and Bran is just the figurehead. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Jun 5, 2023 |
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Jun 5, 2023 09:30
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Anders posted:Denmark is a cursed country. Lego and Legoland is pretty drat awesome though I once taught at an international school for little genius kids. It was very progressive and they always learned every country in the world. The one 5 year old German kid absolute hated Denmark. He would refuse to draw the flag. He wouldn't put the Denmark piece into the puzzle. I asked him why. "Mr. Grapes. I have been to Denmark. It is not a real country. It is all Legos...
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Aug 29, 2023 09:34
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Waltzing Along posted:
Or it could be that Robb dies because he is too honorable. In the books at least he gets wounded in a battle, and is all hosed up on opium while a noble maiden tends to him. They end up loving, and he offers to marry her because it would be too dishonorable to treat her like a one night stand. To Robb it would be more honorable to marry a maiden he had deflowered than to keep his word to one he hadn't. He didn't want to make a bastard and was always thinking about his dad's one slip of his own honor that didn't actually happen.
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Mar 20, 2024 18:16
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