Game of Thrones

[Dr. Insomniac]

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Looks like someone has had it with these mother fuckin' dragons on this mother fuckin' show!

[Dr. Insomniac]

So Season 7 spoilers may have leaked, and what I've read was worrisome.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

 So, Preston went ahead and cut together his own teaser for season seven: http://youtu.be/3vPt1wtGzAM

[Dr. Insomniac]

Preston made a video analyzing the trailer. I also rewatched some of his other videos, and I realized "Oh no, Cersei's arc is going to be their Trump allegory". Like when Jon's arc in season 5 was about whether the Wildlings should be let in correlated with the refugee crisis at the time, or the Faith Militant becoming anti-gay crusaders. I always found much of GOT's attempts to mirror modern real world politics to be awkward at best, and almost every form of media right now rolling out their hot take on Trump has already left me with fatigue. But I dread that D&D will probably focus on that instead of exploring the ramifications of Cersei destroying the King's Landing version of the Vatican or her inexplicably having a massive army to outdo Dany's despite the Lannisters having no money, their main liaison between the Iron Bank blown up, her claim to the Throne in question since she's a woman with no blood relations to any Baratheons. Or maybe Euron amassed a huge fleet of Greyjoy ships to help her.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Dan and Dave threw out any sense of coherency or logic way back in season five, and it has just been a roller coaster of big-budget fanfiction since then. I'm mainly going into this season to enjoy the spectacle and hopefully get some cool scenes from the better actors of the show.

And for the record, I don't care that the show is different from the books. I care that the show doesn't seem to follow any of its own logic or established lore and backstory, though. The writers are clearly just making up whatever they need to move the story along and facilitate cool action scenes without actually earning them through careful setup like they did in the first four seasons.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, in all honesty I'm trying to dial back the cynicism going forward and just view the show as fun fan-service, which for me at least is basically what it has become since it has long since gone past the point of holding up to any plot scrutiny.

That said, the opening scene alone had me rolling my eyes. Can't wait to see Preston tear into all of the logic holes with that one. The rest of the episode pretty much panned out as expected. Overall, The Hound's material was the best stuff here.

Also, I cracked up at the scene where they use Jorah's hand reaching out as a jump scare, but I get the odd sensation that it wasn't actually meant to be funny.

[Dr. Insomniac]

God, that Ed Sheeran cameo was dumb, making him a Lannister soldier, but a nice soldier who will give food to strangers and doesn't even think of rape. I was especially annoyed by the close ups of his face, as if the director wanted to go "Hey, it's special guest star Ed Sheeran!"

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh yeah, that. Kind of funny how they scrapped the George R. R. Martin cameo from the first episode, but this is just A-OK for them. Because, you know, nothing screams Game of Thrones material like Ed-fucking-Sheeran.

Having people like Roy Detrice show up in season two makes sense since he actually has something to do with this property. On the other hand, what did Ed Sheeran even do other than be popular? Is there some new Game of Thrones album he recorded that I'm not aware of?

[Dr. Insomniac]

There was a scene that Preston skimmed over that I personally didn't like: The one where Lyanna Mormont's calling out the Northern Lords for not letting women become soldiers. It just felt hamfisted and out of tone to me, like last season when Ellaria gave a speech over how Dorne wouldn't be ruled by weak men anymore, as she backstabbed an innocent crippled man who only wanted peace. Like I get it, Lyanna's cool for giving her soldiers to Jon while the other Lords chickened out at first. But it's still a 12-year-old girl arguing with middle-aged men and winning, so it seemed kind of silly.

[Dr. Insomniac]

So what was the in-universe reason for redesigning him? Hell, what was the behind the scenes reason for redesigning him? The gold armor looked better. Now he looks like a reject Cylon.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Preston released a Q&A for episode 1 of this season: https://youtu.be/r8jD6VL1QiE

I really like his answer to the question about D&D and agree with him completely. It also shows that he is not just a smarmy, biased book reader mindlessly bashing the show (he has even gone on record numerous times clarifying that he doesn't hate the show). Unlike others who don't comprehend how difficult writing is, Preston points out how insanely complex ASOIAF is, and how both D&D have written good material well before they worked on GOT. The Difference is in their fundamental values of writers in stark contrast  (pun fully intended) to GRRM. They tend to value thematic story-telling, which is why GOT makes sense in terms of how its themes progress. However, GRRM as a writer highly values logic and realism over simply telling a straightforward tale of good and evil. Using Arya as the case in point was the perfect example to send this message home. Not only would the cold open for this season never have happened in GRRM's books for logical reasons, but Arya also wouldn't exclusively kill one-dimensionally evil jerks and spare everyone else. The whole point of her story arc in the first place is that while she acquires the fighting skills that she always wanted, she ends up using them for means just as selfish and immoral as the people she hates. Her quest for revenge isn't some glorified crusade to slay evildoers, but just violence for the sake of violence.

Now, obviously I get that seeing a young girl brutally murder countless people without them seeming like pure evil wouldn't sit well with most casual audiences, which is why D&D have to write characters like Meryn Trant as a pedophile, or make all of the Freys into GOT's equivalent of a generic army of orcs from Mordor. However in doing this they sacrifice any real sense of logic in order to make the situation fit the themes that they want to explore. In GRRM's books, the very fact that the situations present don't fit the themes that we as people typically value in traditional story-telling is kind of sort of the whole entire point of this series from beginning to end.

For what it's worth, I also don't hate the show. I wouldn't still be watching it if I did. But to me it really is just fan-service of the week at this point. It's something that I watch for simple fun, rather than a genuinely intriguing story. On that level, it still works for me. However, I can't in my right mind call anything passed season four legitimately good television outside of some really impressive spectacle, because it's just not true from my perspective.

[Dr. Insomniac]

which is why D&D have to write characters like Meryn Trant as a pedophile, or make all of the Freys into GOT's equivalent of a generic army of orcs from Mordor.

The Meryn Trant deal still annoys me, because it could've been an opportunity to show that Meryn was just as human as everyone else even if he was an asshole, and that Arya killing him would've have had its own moral repercussions for both her and the viewers. But instead, he's a crazed pedophile who gets off to beating little girls, meaning the audiences doesn't have to feel the least bit bad about Arya mercilessly stabbing him. Along with how they made they implied that Harald Karstark liked little boys and how the Umbers betrayed the Starks out of prejudice for Wildlings, not to mention how the reason why the Night's Watch betrayed Jon is rewritten to make it seem like they killed him out of xenophobia for Wildlings instead of legitimate issues with his commanding, it just seems like D&D are trying too hard to make this a story between straight-up good guys and bad guys instead of what Martin intended. Where Jon, Arya, Dany, and Tyrion can do no wrong, while the villains have to be the kind who kick baby puppies until they're bloody pulps.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I was especially surprised by Tyrion in the books as he's far less morally-inclined than his show counterpart.

As for Jon, the funny thing is that he's a better ruler in the books than in the show. At least in the former he makes a number of fairly good decisions which benefit the Night's Watch. Yet he still gets killed for his more rash decision-making, particularly in that he clearly takes Stannis's side in the war, breaking his oath numerous times to help him out against the Boltons, which makes the Night's Watch a target of Cersei. He's killed for directly putting The Watch in danger by meddling in the affairs of Westeros, which has always been forbidden for that very reason just mentioned. While it's true that many of Jon's fellow commanding officers hate the Wildlings, they obey Jon's decision to let them through the gates as his point stands true that it's for the sake of their survival against the White Walkers. In the show Ser Alliser (who actually isn't present for Jon's stabbing in the books) claims that he killed Jin for letting the Wildlings through the gate, but then that brings up the question: just why the hell didn't he have him killed before Jon could do that. He knew at least days to weeks in advance what Jon was planning, and there isn't any reason that he couldn't have deat with him before then in the same way that he did afterwards.

And yeah, we already discussed where Arya's show story-line went off the rails. The X-Men Origins: Wolverine analogy works scarily well here.

I will say that thematically, Dany in the show is probably much closer to her book counterpart than most other main characters in the show, in that in both cases she's displayed as a fairly adept conqueror but a terrible politician who couldn't lead a country in peace time without her advisors. Either way, though, she's personally one of my least favorite characters from the main cast.

[Dr. Insomniac]

The final ten minutes with Euron was fun, but I hate that my "Cersei is a Trump allegory" fears are right. So she's gonna rally former Tyrell houses by appealing to their xenophobia and traditionalism, against an army that consists of multiple races and creeds, led by generals of multiple sexual orientations and classes? Feels too on the nose. I don't even know why the Tarlys are helping Cersei when her blowing up all the Tyrells is well-known by this point. Is "racism against Dothraki and Unsullied" really a good enough reason to forsake their loyalty to the Tyrells in favor of those who killed the Tyrells?

Anyway, I know the leaks are definitely real, but I really wish they aren't for episode 3. The spoilers I read for that one in particular sound dreadful.