"Humanity has no chance."

"Except for the Mary Sue God Queen Dragon Whisperer and her giant ass empire of fantasy Mongols."

Martin lost his mystique when he let two Mary Sues survive as long as he has. Don't pretend it still has the same doom and gloom anyone can die vibe. The sarcastic midget and the mystical waif both survived two full books longer than they should have, with no impending death in sight for either of them.

Shingeki no Kyojin is more doomed than GoT. Berserk is a better Game of Thrones than Game of Thrones. At least there, Daenerys is the fucking villain.

Dark Lord Potter: Come for the quality writing and sarcastic assholerly, stay for the shitty twelve year olds and the neckbeards who shove Dresden Files into everything and insist Mab is totally Elsa from Frozen.

 

That last bit, I laughed out loud and woke up my father. Great.

 

You are the only person I've ever encountered who thought Game of Thrones is too light. Actually, you're probably the only person alive who thinks that.

 

Yeah I know pretty good books with a handful of Mary Sue characters but no series in my memory has as many calamitous, "holy mother of god" moments than Martins. Except maybe the bible (Old Testament of course) and that still wraps up with ask for forgiveness and get out of hell.

 

Then I guess it's my solemn duty to stand alone on a hill and call all the GoT fans fucking plebs then, isn't it?

The problem I have with Game of Thrones is not that it is too 'light.' The problem I have with Game of Thrones is that it failed it's premise, which was a bitter and realistic telling of a kingdom adrift in war and murder, where no one was safe, and anyone could be killed or ruined, because that's the way life is.

To say that Game of Thrones is worse than, say, Eragon, would be false. As a whole, as a body of work, it most certainly is not. But it hurt more than Eragon. Eragon you knew was going to be shit from the word 'go.' It's literally every cliche in the book crammed into a single story. 95% of the entire work is stolen from other places, and not even obscure places either, where people might not notice. We're talking about stealing shit from Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and the Dungeons & Dragon's Monster Manual. Places where people are going to notice if you start taking shit from, like that old mentor in a hooded robe with a special sword who gets you a special sword too and then teaches you how to use the special gifts you have to move things with your mind and fight like a warrior of old. That sort of thing.

You knew what was going to happen, you knew it was going to be bad. Unless you had literally never read a fantasy story before in your life, you could see all the twists coming from half a book away.

Game of Thrones held itself to a higher standard than that. Point of fact, it held itself to the highest standard a fantasy story can. It held itself to the standard of a saga, a true epic, a story spanning generations and decades featuring a cast of hundreds, touching on themes like hatred, revenge, rape, murder, monarchy, forgiveness, redemption, war, tyranny, conquest, rebellion both justified and not, the toll of taking life on the soul of a man, and death, of men, women, and children alike. None were spared. There were no 'marked' characters.

And yet that wasn't entirely true, was it? Someone was spared, repeatedly, from situations they should have never survived. And yet that wasn't entirely true, was it? Because someone was marked, someone did rise to greatness without any real effort or sacrifice. Somebody was the chosen one. It just wasn't who we thought it was.

The fall of Game of Thrones was not as long as the fall of Eragon. But it hurt more, because it was from a much greater height.

Contrast this with, say, Shingeki no Kyojin, where, although we know at least one person is (likely) protected (Erin), the mangaka has proven that literally everyone else can die at any given moment. There are no promises there. Life is cheap, and heroes die futile deaths in a world where honor cannot clothe the naked or feed the hungry. Shingeki no Kyojin was more true to it's promise of not showing favorites than Game of Thrones.

Or contrast this with, say, Berserk. Berserk does show favorites, to a degree. Miura has show that he's more than willing to place every head on the chopping block for the sake of drama and creating truly vile villains. The entire original Band of Hawk was horrifically butchered for the ambitions of the antagonist Griffith. But there are still a core group of 'heroes' that hold greater immunity to death than all others, those individuals who ally themselves with Guts.

And yet in spite of that, the work succeeds in maintaining a darker tone, moreso than Game of Thrones. The narrative is set in such a way as to frame whatever victories made by the protagonists against the backdrop of the antagonist's successes. In point of fact, the antagonist, Griffith, has already won. He has succeeded. His every wish granted, his every desire fulfilled, his kingdom delivered to him on a silver platter, his sought after bride fallen willingly into his arms. His dream of a kingdom of magic and wonder granted, complete with all of the monsters and horrors such a fantasy world would entail.

The silver light of hope that shines from the crown of the chosen in Game of Thrones is the light of a "pure and honest heart, which is surely the greatest power in this world."

The silver light of hope that shines from the crown of the chosen in Berserk is the mask that hides the true face of evil.

Both of these series have maintained the atmosphere they set out to accomplish. They have earned that triumph. But Game of Thrones has not. The greatest boast it can make is that it tricked it's readers with a false protagonist.

Again, that doesn't make it bad. It's not. But it did fail to live up to the standard that it set for itself. And again, the fall was not as long as the fall of some, but it hurt more, for it fell from a much greater height.

The disappointment always hurts more than the hate.


tl;dr, call me when the midget accidentally implodes the Mary Sue Dragon Kingdom and gets everyone in it killed because he's a lightning rod for disaster, and then maybe we can talk.

 

I'm sensing some pent up frustration over the copious amount of love heaped on the series. And to be fair, actual history has stories of actual Mary Sue like people. To have two in the entire series, where at least a score of fleshed out characters have been murdered, maimed, flayed, castrated, beheaded, raped etc. which all brings me back to my first sentence. At this point I guess I wouldn't be able to swallow a story that incredibly dark and therefore should just tap out of the arguement.

 

To be fair, if I wanted something resembling actual history, there are plenty of books in the library that don't involve dragons eating people.

Also:

So you're illiterate? You can't read? All those words up there explaining that it's the lack of consistency I don't like, and your first response is "so you hate it because other people like it?"

What the actual fuck are you doing on this site if you don't want to read what other people have to say? Because that's literally the whole point of what surrounds you right now, and if that's not your bag, that's fine, but I don't think there's anything here for you. You're really just wasting your time.

 

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"You ever wonder why we're here?"

"It's one of life's great mysteries, isn't it? Why are we here? Are we the product of some cosmic coincidence, or is there really a God, watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff. I don't know man, but it keeps me up at night."

"... What? I meant why are we here, on DLP?"

"Oh. Uh... yeah."

"What's all that stuff about God?"

"Uh... hm? Nothing."

"... You wanna talk about it?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

/and then the topic changed.

 

That was my case when I read Eragon. Literally, the only other books I've read when I first read it was the HP series. And I really liked it, hell I haven't even watched Star Wars when I first read it. As I get older, I simply can't hate it, it is too much of a part of my childhood, and I'm even more guilty about it now, thanks Raine. Again

About GoT, I have to agree about Daenerys, she should have won or crashed and burned after book 3. She isn't a video game character, she can't have training levels like she is having. All things considered, she has more luck then everyone else there together. I disagree about Tyrion, except getting killed every other shit happened to him. Everyone can die, but everyone shouldn't die. Actually, I just really like him and would hate it to see him go. He is the only characters that can at least in a tiny amount work as an audience surrogate. Plus, Peter Dinklage.

 

So back on topic because this should be about movies:

I'm finding myself branching out to Foreign English Speaking films lately. I watched Tomorrow When the War Began and now a new Aussie film called These Final Hours has caught my eye. Any other "local" blockbusters coming out that might be entertaining or interesting?

 

Not 'local', but have you seen Iron Sky?

 

That's the one about Nazi's and a black guy on the moon, correct? If so then I tried and failed.

 

How can you not like Space Nazis? It is so deliciously cheesy!

 

I just couldn't get into the movie. It wasn't a failure on the movie's part, I'm just not a huge fan of cheesy movies that are intentionally cheesy.

 

Ah, that's fair. Okay then

 

Well, there is this film--it's gonna be a small one, (kickstarter funded); a horror/documentary type thing. Should be good.

 

Hm...well, there's a New Zealand vampire comedy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv568AzZ-i8

3 vamps cohabitating a single flat. Film documentary style.

 

So watched the new movie Transcendence with a few friends. It got a lot of negative review, for example a 6,4 on imdb, so I didn´t expect much from it. But to my surprise I ended up liking the movie. .

It has an fascinating idea, the uplifting/loading of humans into cyberspace, and the issues around that. (Is the Uploaded programme the person or just an advanced AI?, what is with his soul) etc. In the film itself a wife uploads her husband after he got mortally poisoned and thus creating the first true AI. But while she believes that the AI is truly her husband everyone else thinks it is still just a programme that has some data from his brain but is unable to really feel/be.
The movie also shows various futuristic technologies like nanobots, gentherapie(Making an old man young again, a blind one see etc.).
Those technologies and the possibilities shown,especially the whole uplift thing, creeped a few of my friends really out. For them it showed an unethical,dark future where everything seems permitted. I on the other hand think that they are the next logical step on human evolution and something that will improve our lives.



Edit. Hopefully this is more coherent.

 

You gotta give context, I've no idea what you're talking about.

 

Ehh... people have sucked more dicks for worse reasons.

In a word, "This."