Has anyone got either the Blue Rose preview book for backers (missed the goddamn kickstarter) or Numenera's Into the...

This is some fanfiction.net tier Mary Sue bullshit. What the fuck, GoT fans?

>a tomboy who was called "horseface" by her Mean Girl big sister and other girls around the castle
Funny, considering Sophie Turner is the one with the horse face.

(continued) So basically she's the ultimate fantasy trope.

Meanwhile, Maisie herself has proven to be very engaged with the fans, done some funny viral videos, and has grown into someone who's pretty but not unattainably hot. And a little wild. For most of her time on GoT, she's been jailbait, which can be titillating for some neckbeards. Now she's 19, so 100% legal in all 57 states.

Then she did a brief recurring role on Doctor Who where she played another action girl, and then a movie with a widely republished sex scene (clothes on, heavy grinding).

She's basically the 7/10 girl who is nerdy and wild enough that she's attainable, and cool enough that you'd love to hang out with her. She looks like a girl you know, not a girl you watch on TV. Put both together, and she's a girl most people would give their left nut/ovary to have at their gaming table, and it's at least believable that she could be a gamer. Oh, and a delightful english accent, which adds +1 to hotness and +10 to estimated IQ.

In other words, her character and her off-screen persona are essentially catnip for fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls**, unless you're so completely /r9k/ that you are going to bitch about her just because she's so widely loved that it's a meme now and you're defiantly never going to give in to memes.

Pic related.

** I guess I shouldn't be surprised that bi/lesbian girls are way, way, way more comfortable admitting that they have the hots for her.

Yeah as cast she never looked much like the character as described in the books. She was cast for her personality, build, and acting chops. And those eyes. Arya in the books was tall, thin, with the long Stark face. Oh, and supposed to look almost exactly like Lyanna.

The point is, she doesn't look the part, but she plays the part very well. IMO Jon Snow doesn't much look the part either. But both basically play the roles as written and that's what's important. It could be worse: the Sand Snacks basically don't act anything like their equivalents in the books.

It's part of the point. Re-read the series and start watching for the tropes. Asha Greyjoy is the pirate princess, Cersei is the Bitch Queen, etc etc etc. The male characters, too. If you haven't read the books, it feels like it'll be cliches-ville, but GRRM is bringing up these tropes and then totally playing them in a novel way.

Most assassin princess action girls enter the plot after all the bad stuff has happened to them, and it's a story about them kicking ass and learning to open her heart or whatever. Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy is a great example-- the exact same fucking backstory and archetype. In Arya's case, we've followed her misery through and felt her awful childhood and traumas. She hasn't even reached the age where she'd be popping up in a normal story yet-- we're feeling her brokenness and suffering alongside her.

What GRRM is trying to do is what he always does in his writing: present a cliche and then add a little miserable reality to it so you see that cliche in a new light. A little like Joss Whedon: instead of playing the tropes or ignoring them, he takes advantage of the fact that you know the cliches and expect them, uses that so he can surprise and horrify and entertain. The story's written for a reader who thinks he knows what to expect so that the author can deliver the unexpected.

The only Stark child who was even close to looking the part was Robb, ignoring the fact that he is nearly 10 years too old.

Everyone in the story was aged 7ish years for the show. It's not that they were miscast, it's that the canon was altered for sake of their prudish American viewership.

Yeah I more or less agree with that. Hell, I still get annoyed that Danaerys's eyes are the wrong color. And I get why they had to do that. And they've never managed to do the dire wolves well, which is probably why they have such little screentime.

I'd say Varys, Littlefinger, Pycelle, and Qyburn all look pretty much exactly written. Littlefinger is pretty much written all wrong. Tywin mostly looks the part, but although his hair is wrong the *performance* is spot-on.

Cersei was written too sympathetically, which is a pity because Lena Headey being more of a magnificent, unrepentitent, glorious bitch queen would have been the role of her career (GRRM wrote cersei inspired in part by Polly Walker's Atia in the Rome series). Jack Gleason's Joffrey was spot-fucking-on, an incredible (and faithful to the books) and villainous performance. Kevin and Jaime Lannister don't look like my mental image of them, but they mostly look and act as written.

There's no way you'd find enough weak-chinned, weaselly actors to play all the Freys you'd need.

Roose Bolton more or less matched his part. Ramsay was a little different but close enough (and the performance was epic). Joffrey was so much like his

If David Bowie had been in his 20s (and alive) when this show was filmed, he'd have been Rhaegar fucking Targaryen come alive. A perfect match. Like, ominiously so.

Aidan Gillen and Peter Dinklage both own their roles, despite their differences from the descriptions the books. The faggy guy they had playing Daario at first was also perfect for the role.

No character is further from the book than Littlefinger.
In the show he is a moustache twirling obvious bad guy.

Not just that. There's a grain of truth to it. GRRM originally wrote the series after 10 years of filming TV pilots that never aired-- he wanted to write something you couldn't possibly film. Having sex scenes with underage characters-- perfectly common in medieval settings-- was something he knew they could never film. Along with The Wall and a dozen other things. Little did he realize that CGI would change everything. Anyway, that wasn't the major consideration.

GRRM originally planned a five year gap. That is, Storm of Swords ends and then the next book picks up five years later. Dany has been ruling Mereen and Jon has been ruling the Night's Watch. Arya has been training with the Faceless Men, Bran with Bloodraven, and Sansa with Littlefinger. Cersei has had five years to rule in Tommen's name, slowly driving Westeros into ruin.

GRRM tried to write it that way, but kept having too many flashbacks and too much exposition. He couldn't stop writing to fill in that gap. So finally he chucked the whole idea and tried to just speed up the plot. If you think Feast for Crows and Dance With Dragons has a lot of weird filler and pacing problems, that's why. Baelish even alludes to it at one point, saying "I knew Cersei would beggar the realm and destroy herself, but I never expected her to do it so quickly."

So he started the characters that young so they'd be the right ages by the time the series reaches its climax. Instead, he's got woefully underage characters.

Long before he signed the deal to make the series, he admitted he regretted making them this young. He said if he'd had a chance to write the whole series before publishing book one, like Tolkien did, he'd have re-written it to make them older.

Gillen looks the part, but the character as scripted has very little in common with the Littlefinger of the books. There's a nasty joy to Littlefinger, an unpredictability, a diabolical glee to him. You really have no idea what he'll do next. He's frivolous enough that people don't take him completely seriously, but he's useful enough that he's in the halls of power.

In the show, he's a pimp whose motivations are much more clear and who is a little more boring and predictable. Much more obviously a bad guy, but not actually as villainous as the Xanatos-tier bad guy in the books (liek said). I'm not saying Gillen couldn't play the book's Littlefinger, but sadly the writers decided not to write him that way.

Those scenes with Littlefinger and Tyrion are supposed to be rare moments when he drops the mask to duel with an equal. Instead, Littlefinger is basically always like that, like a Milo Yiannopolous, frivolous and catty and outrageous and harmless, but lurking underneath is a very, very sharp intelligence and head for strategy and intrigue.

Peter Dinklage IS Tyrion, obviously. He plays that role perfectly, delivers GRRM's dialog perfectly, makes the non-GRRM written dialog sound at least plausible. Other actors come alive in his presence. No he doesn't look the part, other than his size, but without Dinklage the show could never have been made. And without the books, we'd never have realized what a fucking incredible actor he is. He's so good that I didn't bother praising him because basically everyone knows it.

I consider Gillen as Baelish the same as Cumberbatch as Khan. They're both absolutely flawless for the role they're playing, which isn't actually the same character as the one they're named after.

That's a good way to put it.

I agree, though Cumberbatch got a rawer deal in terms of what to work with.

GoT's Littlefinger is a perfectly fine character within the bounds of the show, if one that diverges from his book counterpart. You don't need to have read the source material to enjoy him, and some people might even like him better because they have not.

Khan in Into Darkness is wonderfully performed, but a stillborn bastard of writing. The script cannot decide whether they want to abandon the old timeline such that its a firm reboot and you don't need to know what happened back there, and making it so large chunks of the narrative progression and emotional weight outright depend on you knowing about Khan being a big deal already. They want to have their cake and eat it too, and Cumberbatch got caught in the middle.

7/10?!?!?! You have pretty low standards.

I'f give her a 6/10 myself, but 6/10 is by far the broadest category.

>outright depend on you knowing about Khan being a big deal already
The biggest problem I had with it isn't that it required you to be an existing fan, it's that the character was such a slap in the face for existing fans. You can argue about how well they managed to pull it off, but Khan in TOS and STII was supposed to be the ultimate human, in the sense that he's the embodiment of everything that humanity entails. He's confident and intelligent and emotional and sexual and ambitious and insatiable. He's a villain that represents everything Kirk is and believes and represents, taken to the absolute extremes. That's why he's such an iconic character.

And then in ST:ID, he's just an angry Vulcan. I suppose it makes some kind of sense with him being Spock's adversary in the inverted Wrath of Khan plotline, but he's so different from the existing Khan character that they should have just given him a different name. As much as I though Cumberbatch's performance was the only worthwhile part of the whole movie, he was so not Khan that I actually found myself offended at his portrayal. I think that's the only time in my life I've ever found myself offended by art.

Legs, man. Fucking legs. Also her eyes have a mischievous sparkle.

Also, she's pretty, but pretty in a different way than that anonymous hollywood hot where they all kind of blend together. Her looks are distinctive.

Yeah shitty writing is the curse of our age. Even on GoT, you can tell when Tyrion is using lines that GRRM wrote or something written by someone else who's trying to sound smart.

The thing is, these days the author of a work is supposed to be the director (movie) or executive producer (tv show). So they feel like they're better writers than actual real life writers. And so usually the script follows the storyboard rather than vice versa, which leads to mediocrity.

You know, I mentioned Ricardo Montalbon to a bunch of millennials, and they had no fucking idea who he was. They knew who the Most Interesting Man In the World is from the Dos Equis commercials, though, so understanding that he's the guy the character in the beer commercials is based on was a starting point.

Does Hollywood even have someone like that now? I mean yeah they have some old guys, but nobody in their prime can really match that.

>Ricardo Montalbon
>the Most Interesting Man In the World
What? I mean, he's not as recognizable when he doesn't have his tits out, but I'm pretty sure he's not the same guy.

>basing attraction on looks alone
wonders never cease

>Have some Maisie

Do you hate us op? :"(
FAS isn't that interesting, see that every day in the good ol UK.

What really ticks me off about the non-GRRM parts of GoT's writing is the blatant missuse of simple in-universe terms. It's almost like the writers only skimmed the books.

>Cersei was written too sympathetically,
given how much hate the actress is getting, because of how much people hate the character (which is ten types of stupid, but moving on), they probably couldn't have written her as more hateful without losing people.
I do feel she does the role very well.

>Jack Gleason's Joffrey was spot-fucking-on
I think he added something that might have been in the books, but I missed until I saw his performance.
That Joffrey is also rather pathetic, and overwhelmed by the position he's in. He's cruel, and abuses his power, but he's also extremely weak for all his power, and just smart enough to know this.

Also, in interviews it's very clear he's a smart, funny, and nice kid. I hope he goes places.

I think it's generally agreed that while Dinklage is too attractive to look the part described in the book, they could not have casted anyone else.
If you've seen him in his previous roles (which I admittedly didn't do till after seeing the show), it's clear he's an amazing actor.

I do like that they added a line tipping the hat to Dinklage actually being a fairly attractive person. It makes the hate Tyrion gets seem all the more unfair too.

look, a mary sue

Is based on, is what I said. And he is. Actually, Montalbon was one of several inspirations for the character.

Jonathan Goldsmith (who plays that character) is also much more famously based the character on his lifelong friend Fernando Lamas (father of Lorenzo, also an actor). Lamas was also the inspiration for a similar character played by Billy Crystal in SNL (Fernando's Hideaway).

youtube.com/watch?v=QPKJM7QKuO0

Yeah Dinklage is absolutely incredible. If he'd been a normal-sized person, they would still have had to have cast him as Tyrion and then just used CGI or something. I'd seen him in other roles but frankly nothing had used the full range of his talents until GoT. He's one of the only actors who doesn't diminish when he's in a scene with Charles Dance. (Maisie is another, incidentally.)

Jack Gleason is the man, I agree. These days pretty much everyone knows that he's as cool and sweet as his character is awful. I'm not sure he added anything to the character in the books, but he REVEALED stuff that was already there in the subtext that the script was in danger of losing.

With Lena, I think they chickened out. I don't know if it was her call or the producers, but they shrunk from making her a glorious, unalloyed villain. People will forgive someone who's wild and ferocious and almost gleefully evil, where they won't accept someone who's small and wishy-washy.

Here's a contrast. Cersei was inspired in part by Polly Walker's Atia of the Julii from the HBO show Rome. She does some pretty fucking evil things in the name of power. There's another scene that blue board won't let me show that's pretty fucking dark-- she has another woman raped and tortured until the torturer runs out in disgust and self-loathing. But viewers loved Atia because she so obviously reveled in it.

youtube.com/watch?v=W6s-dRlGcxc

At her best, Cersei took a savage joy in destroying her enemies. In the show, she's motivated by love for Jaime and her children.

In the books, she's motivated by hate for her enemies. She tells herself she loves her children, but to her Jaime is her strong right arm (ie a servant) and her kids are tools to be used.

Audiences love a good villain, but many actors don't like playing someone who's totally, deliciously unsympathetic. They'd rather imaging themselves as heroes, at least in the character's own eyes.

Fucking youtube disables embedded links now?

This. She might be a cool person, but she isn't hot in the slightest.
It's people who can't develop relations with the other gender that are you sexual drooling all over her.

What's she singing along to?

I'd say Atia isn't nearly as bad of a character as Cersei is.
First, I truly believe Atia loves her children. She can't afford to be soft with them, but she does love them and want them to prosper.
Also, her flaws are less cruelty than lust. She's willing to be cruel as fuck, but that's not what she truly revels in. What she revels in is sex and joy, food. She's a hedonist like Anthony, but less foolish and pettily greedy.

Atia has another women tortured who she'd had a long building hatred and rivalry with. Cersei tortured her baby brother because he was ugly. There's a difference.

So while I agree that they could have had Cersei revel in her power some more, some level of sympathy could have still been brought by having her really love her kids. Those aren't exclusive to each other.

Couldn't agree more. Bridge troll bred and raised.

Its also worth noting that Cersei is only really sympathetic on two notes: That she got a raw deal with marrying Robert, and that her children keep dying on her.

She is an absolute bitch on every other front.