Winter Is Coming...

...And someone is going to have to clean up the mess.

As promised, this entry on my blog is going to be about HBO's Game of Thrones TV series.  Firstly, a spoiler warning:

Warning!  I am going to be discussing Game of Thrones, not just the television series but the Song of Ice & Fire novels from which it is drawn.  This article will contain spoilers.  And may possibly contain nuts.

First, I'm going to state what I like about Game of Thrones.

The casting.  I love the casting.  Overall the casting is inspired, which is always hard to do in fantasy novels.  Most of the characters I've grown to love and loathe in print form leap off the page and onto the colour TV screen.  The majority of the cast obviously get into their roles with relish which is important, since A Song of Ice & Fire is a series that focuses on many different characters, and George R.R. Martin is constantly challenging the reader by catapulting someone we thought was a bit-player into 3-dimensional prominence.  It's fairly apparent to me that the actors and director are taking this seriously - I don't get the impression that the show is a one-man band with supporting acts.  They are pretty much all good, with one or two exceptions.  The sets are sumptuous and immersive.  The costuming is brilliant, the locations are well shot.

Now for my issues with the TV series...

The sex.  Yes, sex does happen in the books.  There are prostitutes and incestuous relationships and all kinds of shenanigans, but HBO takes the dial and cranks it up to 11, then rips off the controller.  The last episode in particular seemed to be nothing more than some strands of plot framing softcore porn.  Sometimes they even mangle the characters solely for the benefit of injecting more porn.  Lets break it down a little...

Firstly, Theon Greyjoy having his way with the dimwitted daughter of the captain of the ship he's travelling on, making use of his elevated station to enjoy a kind of droit de seigneur.  This does take place in the book, right down to the chattiness of the girl in question while Theon is trying to get his end away.  It does serve a purpose, establishing that Theon when he's away from the Starks is a pig and a bully too,  taking over the captain's cabin and appropriating his daughter while the poor man seethes impotently.  Certainly not behaviour that Robb or Ned Stark would approve of or countenance.

Then we have Theon hitching a ride with some anonymous girl up to the castle, taking the opportunity to feel her up and 'flirt' - though his idea of flirting is to say "What a big castle I'll inherit!  Won't you be lucky to bear my bastard children?"  This is also in the book, and serves a similar purpose to the first sexual scene, reinforcing that Theon is a pig and, as it turns out, a bit of a fool too.  Actually, a lot of a fool, seeing as the girl is his sister, who he admittedly hasn't seen for 16 or so years, but he doesn't even stop to question why a plainly-dressed woman would be riding a horse up to the castle.  She could have been someone's wife, or fiancee - it doesn't matter to Theon, because he's entirely stuck on himself as the one true heir to the Iron Islands.   It also establishes certain qualities in his sister - namely that she's cunning, ruthless and willing to endure a little indignity for the sake of throwing a rival off-balance.

The brothel scene...  Yes, about the brothel scenes.  These started in the first season of GoT, averaging one per episode at least, and seem to solely serve the purpose of providing a whole lot of raunch mingled with a little plot exposition.  Though sometimes this focuses on the life and times of Ros, a prostitute who serves as a Greek chorus to highlight the qualities of various main characters, these scenes usually take the form of Littlefinger auditioning prospective whores, or talking to another character while in the background some noisy sex is going on, or going over his accounts while jadedly watching two girls indulge in lesbian action.

We get it, HBO.  Petyr Baelish - Littlefinger - is a bad, morally bankrupt, totally corrupt man.  We kind of got that in season one, when he turns on Ned Stark.  We understand that he owns brothels, and probably dabbles in the slave trade too.  And though I like porn as much as the next man, I really don't expect it served up in every episode of what is supposed to be an epic fantasy yarn filled with political skullduggery and mysterious forces.  It's as though HBO believe that they won't hold the attention of their viewers without throwing boobs at us every ten minutes, and I don't know whether to be offended at their presumption, or disturbed that they might be right in the majority of cases.

The Grand Maester, the wise old man who is supposed to counsel the king, is caught in bed with a prostitute.  This is true to the books, where he was an old goat and a generally despicable person.  The scene where he's dragged out of the young woman's bed and off to the cells is an important one, highlighting Tyrion's housecleaning efforts as he roots out his sister's spies.  There's no real gratuitousness in this scene - they played it straight from the original material.

Moving on, there's the scene between King Stannis and the mysterious red woman, Melisandre.  While it is confirmed that they do have sex in the story, it takes place off-camera.  It's something that Melisandre alludes to in a later chapter.  I won't spoil the rest of that plot point, and suffice to say it does serve a purpose.  But the showing of the two of them sawing away atop the war-room's map table is once more lowering the tone of the whole thing, in my view.

Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell.  Ahh yes.  Another plot deviation that particularly gets my goat.  We first saw these two in season one, lounging in a bath together and shaving each other's chests, apparently lovers.  That's fine and dandy, except they weren't lovers in the books.  The 16 year old Knight of Flowers was a talented and gorgeous knight who captured the hearts of everyone with a heart, but he wasn't, to the best of my knowledge, gay.  And nor was Renly Baratheon.  The two of them were close friends, and when Renly declared himself for the throne he accepted Loras as one of his Kingsguard - trusting the man with his life and safety.  They were close, but it was bromance, not romance.  I wouldn't care if they were lovers, it's simply that they were not written that way.

Which brings me on neatly to Margery Tyrell, Loras's sister and Renly's wife.  Wife?  Not in the novels.  They were betrothed, the beautiful bride and groom to-be, the first tie in a bond between House Tyrell and House Baratheon.  Margery was in the novels an apparently sweet girl, though not naive or brainless.  She was smart, and had good advisors, and made intelligent decisions.  She was capable of being ruthless (which we will see), but operated from the position that making friends was the best way of getting rid of enemies.

In the TV show, Margery is Renly's wife rather than fiancee, only Renly is gay.  Uh-oh!  So he can't perform with the lovely Margery, which leads to a nicely titillating scene where the naked 'queen' tries to cajol Renly into putting a baby in her, insisting that she'd be fine with sharing the bed with her brother Loras if that's what it took.  I don't know what purpose this served other than attempted titillation, to be honest.  Once more, HBO substituted prurience for plot.  The whole Renly / Loras / Margery triangle seems to be solely for the purpose of pushing the porn envelope.

The first season of Game of Thrones was good.  Award-winning, in fact.  But three episodes into Season Two, and I'm already at the stage of wanting to watch the next one solely in the hopes that the writers and producers will do better.  Because this last episode, broken down, was little more than HBO jumping up and down on a trampoline in a wet t-shirt, boobs bouncing saying "Look how naughty I am!"

Bah!

Mass Effect 3 Ending: The Five Stages of Grief

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/9476-Mass-Effect-3-The-Process

I found this incredibly funny... mostly because there's a grain of truth in it.

In fact, it pretty much describes my wife's reaction, only she doesn't have a Garrus body pillow... Though she definitely wants one.

I'm finding myself having a slightly more philosophical reaction to Mass Effect 3's ending(s).  More on that next time.