Game of Thrones
Apr. 14th, 2015 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2kI accidentally watched the four leaked episodes of Game of Thrones. I shall now proceed to wait for episode five like some kind of medieval peasant.
I know people were very nervous of some of the S5 spoilers, and S4 was, to be fair, shite, but I was pleasantly surprised by the first half of S5.
-Maybe it was a side effect of binge-watching, but I thought the pacing was much better than it has been in years.
-Dany's arc has reached its oh, Dany, no phase. So far it's actually making for better viewing that it did reading. I like that they're lampshading the a dragon queen without dragons is no kind of queen, because that plays into the larger themes of Dany's story, and stops us getting too bogged down in the Meereense knot. The fact that there are set photos from the fighting pits, and they can't possibly drag this out more than this season helps too.
-They're still not reaching parity in the nudity stakes, but at least the men of Westeros are no longer having sex with their trousers on. So, hey, points for effort!
-The existence of a Margaery/Tommen sex scene was dismaying, yes, and the less said about it the better. But it wasn't nearly as bad as it might have been. I did like that Margaery's reaction was basically: hmm, that was nice, no let's not do it again, instead let's talk about your mother with whom I am passive aggressively obsessed.
-I had a visceral do not want reaction to Sansa being given Jeyne Poole's plotline. But. I can see how it makes sense from an adaption point of view. They have a character they don't want to bench for a season and nothing for her to do, and this plotline that they'd otherwise need to introduce a new character for, so why not bring the two together? And Littlefinger's plan isn't actually bad; if Stannis takes the castle then as the Stark in Winterfell Sansa is well placed to assume rule of the North (though wardeness of the North? In this spell check and I are in complete agreement; stop making up words!), and if Stannis fails then maybe Sansa can leverage her relationship with the Boltons into real power; especially with the inhabitants of the castle whispering the north remembers at her. It's just a plan that doesn't account for Ramsey being a total fucking psychopath.
I mean, it may go horribly, horribly wrong in the back half of the season. But so far it's not nearly as awful as I'd worried it would be. Plus, I'm assuming that between Stannis and Jon marching south, Brienne and Pod trailing Sansa north, and Theon lurking around, something will happen before anything truly horrifying befalls Sansa. I hope.
-Man, I hate that Sansa refused Brienne's offer of protection. But it's the understandable ripple effect one of S4's more nonsensical changes. If Brienne had gone to Sansa in King's Landing, taken the knee and made her knightly vow I'm 101% sure that Sansa would have gone for it. As it is, not only does she have Littlefinger whispering in her ear, the only time she's seen Brienne before she was all chummy with the Lannisters in King's Landing.
I loved Brienne telling the story of Renly and the ball; I love that she's finally, finally bonding with Pod. There's maybe something interesting in the psychology of the bullied become a bully, but every time Brienne was mean to Pod it was like watching someone kick a puppy, and it was making me dislike Brienne.
I'm not sure what the fuck was going on with those knights that were chasing down Brienne and Pod, though. That seemed to escalate quickly.
-I'd been thinking that if the show did want to go with R+L=J as endgame it might come out of nowhere for show only viewers, but I was wondering if Barristan's story about Rhaegar and Littlefinger and Sansa talking about Lyanna at Harrenhal might be a way of starting to lead into that?
-The really egregious part of these first four episodes was Ellaria. Look, I was okay with Arianne's plot being given to Ellaria. Same rule of conservation of characters as with Sansa; why introduce a new character to a bloated cast when you have an existing character who can fulfill the same narrative function. And if they'd had Ellaria mastermind the queenmaker scheme that would have been fine, but having Ellaria Sand, mother of daughters, paramour of Oberyn 'we don't hurt little girls in Dorne' Martell want to mutilate and murder a little girl in revenge for a death she had no part in... I don't understand, and I won't respond to it.
I know people were very nervous of some of the S5 spoilers, and S4 was, to be fair, shite, but I was pleasantly surprised by the first half of S5.
-Maybe it was a side effect of binge-watching, but I thought the pacing was much better than it has been in years.
-Dany's arc has reached its oh, Dany, no phase. So far it's actually making for better viewing that it did reading. I like that they're lampshading the a dragon queen without dragons is no kind of queen, because that plays into the larger themes of Dany's story, and stops us getting too bogged down in the Meereense knot. The fact that there are set photos from the fighting pits, and they can't possibly drag this out more than this season helps too.
-They're still not reaching parity in the nudity stakes, but at least the men of Westeros are no longer having sex with their trousers on. So, hey, points for effort!
-The existence of a Margaery/Tommen sex scene was dismaying, yes, and the less said about it the better. But it wasn't nearly as bad as it might have been. I did like that Margaery's reaction was basically: hmm, that was nice, no let's not do it again, instead let's talk about your mother with whom I am passive aggressively obsessed.
-I had a visceral do not want reaction to Sansa being given Jeyne Poole's plotline. But. I can see how it makes sense from an adaption point of view. They have a character they don't want to bench for a season and nothing for her to do, and this plotline that they'd otherwise need to introduce a new character for, so why not bring the two together? And Littlefinger's plan isn't actually bad; if Stannis takes the castle then as the Stark in Winterfell Sansa is well placed to assume rule of the North (though wardeness of the North? In this spell check and I are in complete agreement; stop making up words!), and if Stannis fails then maybe Sansa can leverage her relationship with the Boltons into real power; especially with the inhabitants of the castle whispering the north remembers at her. It's just a plan that doesn't account for Ramsey being a total fucking psychopath.
I mean, it may go horribly, horribly wrong in the back half of the season. But so far it's not nearly as awful as I'd worried it would be. Plus, I'm assuming that between Stannis and Jon marching south, Brienne and Pod trailing Sansa north, and Theon lurking around, something will happen before anything truly horrifying befalls Sansa. I hope.
-Man, I hate that Sansa refused Brienne's offer of protection. But it's the understandable ripple effect one of S4's more nonsensical changes. If Brienne had gone to Sansa in King's Landing, taken the knee and made her knightly vow I'm 101% sure that Sansa would have gone for it. As it is, not only does she have Littlefinger whispering in her ear, the only time she's seen Brienne before she was all chummy with the Lannisters in King's Landing.
I loved Brienne telling the story of Renly and the ball; I love that she's finally, finally bonding with Pod. There's maybe something interesting in the psychology of the bullied become a bully, but every time Brienne was mean to Pod it was like watching someone kick a puppy, and it was making me dislike Brienne.
I'm not sure what the fuck was going on with those knights that were chasing down Brienne and Pod, though. That seemed to escalate quickly.
-I'd been thinking that if the show did want to go with R+L=J as endgame it might come out of nowhere for show only viewers, but I was wondering if Barristan's story about Rhaegar and Littlefinger and Sansa talking about Lyanna at Harrenhal might be a way of starting to lead into that?
-The really egregious part of these first four episodes was Ellaria. Look, I was okay with Arianne's plot being given to Ellaria. Same rule of conservation of characters as with Sansa; why introduce a new character to a bloated cast when you have an existing character who can fulfill the same narrative function. And if they'd had Ellaria mastermind the queenmaker scheme that would have been fine, but having Ellaria Sand, mother of daughters, paramour of Oberyn 'we don't hurt little girls in Dorne' Martell want to mutilate and murder a little girl in revenge for a death she had no part in... I don't understand, and I won't respond to it.