Game of Thrones: Season 4

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A system of cells interlinked
I finally got LT to read the books, but the show just passed her by as the season started. She best hurry!
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“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



Must be doin sumthin right
Ehhhh, now that the show has deviated far enough away from the books (and will a lot moreso in future seasons) I can understand wanting to finish the story with these characters and then maybe read the books after the fact to fill in what you missed out on.



In the Beginning...
Fair point. Although I wonder how many people will finish out the series and then never read the books. I've been raked over the coals many times because I said I would read the Harry Potter books after the movies were done. Still haven't read the books. Probably won't read them. I know a whole lot is different, but I still feel like I "completed" the story, you know?



Yeah time lines are about to get super muddled. If I am not mistaken we are already in fifth book territory with Theon.
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Yeah, I was only making a supposition, I've not read the books. The only thing for sure is that Tyrion is in trouble. Actually I believe that Jaime is gonna be fine.

Nobody hates spoilers more than me.



In the Beginning...
Yeah time lines are about to get super muddled. If I am not mistaken we are already in fifth book territory with Theon.
Indeed we are. And even more than that, they're really altering the path for Theon, Ramsay, and Roose:

WARNING: "A Dance with Dragons" spoilers below
Roose Bolton arrives after Moat Cailin surrenders to Ramsay (courtesy of Theon). Shortly after, they all travel to Winterfell to hold a wedding between his son (already legitimized as Ramsay Bolton in Book 3) and "Arya Stark," who is really Sansa's old friend Jeyne Poole.

In the show, Moat Cailin is still held by Iron Men and Ramsay is not yet legitimized, and he and Roose now know that Bran and Rickon survived. (Theon never shares this information with them in the books.) So I'm wondering how they're going to proceed. Will the show writers cut out Jeyne Poole? Wyman Manderly? Are they already sowing the seeds of animosity between Ramsay and Jon Snow?



Must be doin sumthin right
Would have been more effective if they'd just have given Alfie Allen a season or two off and made it seem like Theon was actually dead. Guess they don't give their viewers enough credit that they'd remember a major character from a couple years ago.



I'm guessing the contractual stuff has a bit to do with it. It would probably suck to have to take that hiatus and wonder about exactly when he'd be coming back while looking for other work. And his has been one of the better performances on the show, so I doubt they wanted to risk having to recast him.



In the Beginning...
More than anything this season, I'm excited to see...

WARNING: "Season 4" spoilers below
...Coldhands. Minor though he is, I really like how he's this mysterious supernatural figure helping Bran and crew, despite sharing all the same traits as the Others. He represents the more fantastical aspects of the story, which jazz me up more than anything. We should have seen him by now, but if Littlefinger's Facebook account is to be believed, we'll be seeing him this season (hopefully now that Bran has decided that his little group must move north).



A system of cells interlinked
WARNING: "Game of Thrones, season 4 and beyond" spoilers below
Yeah, I was trying to reconcile the timing of all the Moat Cailin events, but none of the players are where they need to be to get all that moving the way it happened in the books. Isn't it high time for Stannis to leave Dragonstone? I presume the Battle of the Wall will end up as the finale of this season, and many people need to travel many leagues before that can happen...

I realize they have to do it this way, but the first two episodes of season 4 have felt like a collection of vignettes, lightly touching on many of the characters in an effort to sort of catch up all the stories. Alas, can this method work in regards to unfolding a rich narrative that we can really sink our teeth into? Are there just too many (relevant) characters in this saga to work as a TV show while still developing the character arcs properly? There are still a TON of characters to come, and I already feel like we just get a couple of minutes in each POV before being whisked away to the next group of players.

This show has to be a nightmare to do season breakdowns for...



Ive rewatched the episode 3 times so I could figure out the murderer like Lisa did. Instead I think 2 or 3 other people could have done it now besides Old Lady Tyrell.



A system of cells interlinked
Well...do you want to know or...

Sansa touched the cup, Tyrion had the cup multiple times, Oberyn is a poison expert, Chesty McPolitics was standing next to Joffrey and had access to the cup and knew she had a life of abuse ahead of her, the cup was set down next to Lady Tyrell who knew Chesty had a life of abuse ahead of her. Varys, the master of spies, was in the vicinity. Oh, pretty much everyone hated Joffrey except Cersei. That leaves about 6,356 suspects.

Pretty sure is wasn't either Dany or Jon Snow...oh, or Bran. Probably not Bran.

Or Hodor.

It may have been Hodor.

But probably not.

Melissandre may have cast a spell during which she threw poison up in the air and it came down in Joff's cup.

See, looks more and more like it was Hodor every minute, mister!!





Its probably not as complicated as it seems, and It could have been just Ser Duncan! He hustled Sansa out of there because he knew it would hit the fan.

Bah! Im sticking with my first guess - Old Lady Tyrell with a Ser Duncan/Fool assist.



Oh, I almost forgot. Funniest scene in the episode was......

WARNING: "S04E02 Spoiler" spoilers below
When Bran was asleep and in his wolf kills the stag. Camera goes to its face, when it suddenly says Hodor. Hilarious!



Ramsay Snow...He and Joffrey would hit it off famously.

I think Ramsay would have had Joffrey pretty well mind-****ed before the first day was out.


Ser Dontos. Not Duncan.
Thanks Sleez. As I was catching up on the thread I was composing a far less eloquent address to this matter in my head, one that would have surely warranted a few thumbs downs.



Now, as for the disconnect between page and screen...I have so many unorganized and unresearched thoughts on the matter that I have to apologize if this post comes off as a bit ranty. I suppose that's what the internet is for, right?

Honestly, I'm developing a strangely obsessive sociological interest in Game of Thrones audiences, of both book and screen. (As a quick background I've read books 1, 2 & 3 and an caught up with the show).

It's not like GOT is the first story to be delivered in multiple medias to it's mass audience. I think of recent examples like webisode, videogame or graphic novel tie-ins, with popular properties like The Office, The Walking Dead, HALO, Animatrix, etc. where the story is delivered in as many as three or four medias at the same time. While I have no doubt that this approach is largely or entirely fiscally motivated, it offers its mass audience access on certain occasions to different parts of the story, more plotlines, characters, whathaveyou. The result is pretty simple: everyone's experience is mostly the same with small and largely inconsequential exceptions.



Then there are stories that are altered or revised over time, like The Lord of the Rings. . The delivery of the story altered over time, as medias developed, allowing the story to revise itself in pace with the mass audience it was intended for. When Peter Jackson's films came out, there was 1.) A familiar audience readers, & 2.) An unfamiliar audience. This led to an ongoing dialogue about the story itself in which the indispensable story elements are slowly revealed by comparing medias.



Now, for the most recent GOT episode I found myself in a room of ten people, three of whom have read books 1-3, three of whom have read 1-5, and four of whom are HBO-exclusives. Imagine the conversation following the Purple Wedding scene: some of us knew exactly what happened, some know some of what happened, and some of us knew nothing. (Needless to say some folks had to leave before revealing any spoilers)

Personally, as a books 1-3 kind of man, I was able to say with certainty what had transpired though I could not share it with the HBO-exclusives in fear of spoiling it. So I sat and listened to their theories, ideas, and fantasies, only interjecting every now and then with a 'That's interesting'.

Later that night I found myself thinking about the story. The real, culturally-owned story of Game Of Thrones, the same way Star Wars or Alice in Wonderland have become culturally-owned. There's nothing strange about a group of people sitting in a bar discussing the philosophy of Return of the Jedi; it has been around long enough that its mass audience is society itself (a stretch perhaps).



GOT, on the otherhand, is a story being delivered in two basic formats at the same time. This may not seem strange at all, but it is when you consider that both formats, each of which has an established relationship with a real-time audience, is still in the process of being written and revised, and therefore has created different subsets of the same mass audience, each of which might have different ideas of what the story means and what the story is and even where the story is going.

I suppose the best example is also from the most recent GOT episode. When the show cut to Joffrey's wedding scene, I immediately thought, 'Oh, this is the wedding scene. I know how this is going to play out.' But having already experienced the disconnect between page and screen I came to the realization that I have no real idea how this is going to play out. It's a different media, a different incarnation of the same story and there's no reason it couldn't play out differently.

I don't know. If you've made it this far in the post (kudos) you're probably wondering where I'm going with all this. Nowhere, most likely...I haven't come up with a thesis yet and probably won't get there. I just think it's interesting, the idea of two storytellers on opposite sides of the village sharing different elements of the same story. Or is it still just one bonfire, different voices?



Anyways. Winterfell High School Football Rules.