Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

[Blicero]

When I was reading the books, that fight pissed me off so much. Basically every part of that fight is set up to make the reader root for Oberyn. In one corner, you have an undeveloped one-dimensionally evil asshole in brute giant form. In the other corner, you have an exotic, rogueish bastard fighting for familial revenge and to prove the innocence of GoT's best character (it's true and you know it).

All of which made it very fucking obvious Oberyn was going to die. I'm pretty sure it's the laziest and most pointless death in the entire series. The trial by combat could have not happened, Oberyn could have just not existed, and things would have played out exactly the fucking same. Oberyn's sole raison d'etre is to be a semi-likeable character that gets dangled in front of the readers and then killed off. And it's so obvious it's stupid and completely ineffective. It's grimderp because grimderp.

And Oberyn's not the only one. I'm pretty sure Martin is running out of sacred cows he's willing to slaughter, and has resorted to a pattern of "introduce character, make reader like them, then slaughter them," but it doesn't fucking work. Because it's obvious. And the characters are boring.

Oberyn's death does give Dorne one more reason to fuck over the Lannisters. It's not like they needed another reason to hate the Lannisters, but it's likely to make one of Oberyn's relatives pissed off enough to murder Myrcella at the exact moment it would cause Cersei the most pain, since the plan to make her Queen and use her as a pupper was apparently never workable.

To DSM:

For what it's worth, I think Gregor Clegane is a total badass, and I would have been bummed if he had lost. He's the sort of character you want to keep around, because you know he's going to get up to crazy shit. And as hyzmarca sez, his presence (and specifically death) in the book accomplishes a nontrivial political goal. I think your complaint has merit (see: Quentyn Martell), but your specific example is total shit.

Here is stuff that happened in the book. Here is the shows fucking stupid adaptation of that. This is why that adaption is fucking retarded and destroys X or makes no sense in relation to Y.

This. A thousand times this. The showrunners have gotten pretty good at writing new material that fits into their story in place of book material. But they still have an obnoxious tendency to take a scene from the book, slightly change it, and render it significantly less effective.


I'm pretty sure Frank is full of shit on this one, in terms of GRRM's motivations.

[Username17]

I'm pretty sure Frank is full of shit on this one, in terms of GRRM's motivations.

He has literally and specifically said it is his motivations.

Most of us laboring in the genres of science fiction and fantasy (but perhaps not Diana Gabaldon, who comes from outside SF and thus may not be familiar with the case I am about to cite) had a lesson in the dangers of permitting fan fiction a couple of decades back, courtesy of Marion Zimmer Bradley. MZB had been an author who not only allowed fan fiction based on her Darkover series, but actively encouraged it... even read and critiqued the stories of her fans. All was happiness and joy, until one day she encountered in one such fan story an idea similar to one she was using in her current Darkover novel-in-progress. MZB wrote to the fan, explained the situation, even offered a token payment and an acknowledgement in the book. The fan replied that she wanted full co-authorship of said book, and half the money, or she would sue. MZB scrapped the novel instead, rather than risk a lawsuit. She also stopped encouraging and reading fan fiction, and wrote an account of this incident for the SFWA FORUM to warn other writers of the potential pitfalls of same.

That was twenty years ago or thereabouts, but that episode had a profound effect on me and, I suspect, on many other SF and fantasy writers of my generation.

He really believes that if there is fanfiction that successfully predicts the directions his stories go that he can be sued. Also he believes that if he doesn't defend his copyrights, he will lose them. Because he is fractally wrong, where every single individual thing he thinks about intellectual property is just as wrong as the whole thing.

GRRM is essentially insane, and motivated by an irrational fear that cannot even be explained with a straight face because it is based on counter factual ideas that could be dispelled at any time by like reading a wikipedia page on copyright or something. The reason why the plot sort of seems like it lurches around punctuated by random shit happening is that it literally does. GRRM is acting like those map companies that used to put fake streets and islands in their map to catch people copying. But he thinks he has to do this to stop fans from successfully writing his plots before he does lest he lose control over his estate. Really. He really believes that, and has said so repeatedly in public. I can only assume that when HBO's lawyers try to set him straight he looks at them with crazy eyes and shouts "LIES! You're after my pot of gold!"



-Username17

[TiaC]

He really believes that if there is fanfiction that successfully predicts the directions his stories go that he can be sued. Also he believes that if he doesn't defend his copyrights, he will lose them. Because he is fractally wrong, where every single individual thing he thinks about intellectual property is just as wrong as the whole thing.

How most sane authors responded to that lawsuit was by not reading fanfiction. That's all it takes.

GRRM is acting like those map companies that used to put fake streets and islands in their map to catch people copying.

Growing up, no one could find our house because the most direct route on the map required driving on a "road" that was actually a set of stairs.

[Blicero]

He really believes that if there is fanfiction that successfully predicts the directions his stories go that he can be sued. Also he believes that if he doesn't defend his copyrights, he will lose them. Because he is fractally wrong, where every single individual thing he thinks about intellectual property is just as wrong as the whole thing.

I'm not disagreeing with this. This is proof that GRRM is insane. He also posted a bunch of weird rants about how he was never going to ride an airplane again back when the TSA was gaining power after (I think?) the London Underground bombings in 2005.

The reason why the plot sort of seems like it lurches around punctuated by random shit happening is that it literally does.

This is the part of your claim that I am saying is probably full of shit. If you read the books and think about them, most of the twists are plausible. You might not have been able to predict them in advance, but, in retrospect, you can find evidence that points to them. If you can find specific examples of twists that genuinely make no sense, even to the fans on places like westeros.org, then I'll admit you're on to something.

The book series aSoIaF still has some nontrivial structural flaws that may or may not prevent it from being resolved well. A lot of them stem from the five-year-gap-that-didn't. And GRRM has serious bloat issues in his writing. But foreshadowing tends to be something he's good at.

[DSMatticus]

For what it's worth, I think Gregor Clegane is a total badass, and I would have been bummed if he had lost. He's the sort of character you want to keep around, because you know he's going to get up to crazy shit.

That is a downright bizarre string of words. After the fight with Oberyn, he gets up to no further crazy shit - he just dies off camera from poison. Well, I guess he gets animated as some sort of headless zombie bodyguard, but that is not an outcome in anyway dependent on having the fight, because the number of people who want to kill Gregor Clegane is "all of them." He "won" that fight in a way that totally satisfies your "would be bummed" criteria, so I'm somewhat confused.

And as hyzmarca sez, his presence (and specifically death) in the book accomplishes a nontrivial political goal.

Oh, you mean the nontrivial political goal of convincing the Martells, who already want to murder the Lannisters, to murder the Lannisters... harder? Seriously, Elia Martell. It's right there in the name. Wife of Rhaegar Targaryen. Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. The son that popped out of her vagina was 50% Martell and 100% heir. And then Tywin Lannister sent Gregor Clegane to murder both of them, killing the sister of the current ruler of Dorne and blocking their blood from the throne. There is no further justification for any given member of the Martell house to fuck over the Lannisters at any point. Because the extent to which the Lannisters fucked the Martells personally and politically is staggering.

[schpeelah]

The reason why the plot sort of seems like it lurches around punctuated by random shit happening is that it literally does.

This is the part of your claim that I am saying is probably full of shit. If you read the books and think about them, most of the twists are plausible. You might not have been able to predict them in advance, but, in retrospect, you can find evidence that points to them.

I believe the main criticism here is that the twists have no purpose from a storytelling perspective and exist only to throw fanfic writers off, not that they can't be made to make sense after the fact. And that the plot changes direction and pace all the time instead of following a decent arc, for the same reason.

[Blicero]

For what it's worth, I think Gregor Clegane is a total badass, and I would have been bummed if he had lost. He's the sort of character you want to keep around, because you know he's going to get up to crazy shit.

That is a downright bizarre string of words. After the fight with Oberyn, he gets up to no further crazy shit - he just dies off camera from poison. Well, I guess he gets animated as some sort of headless zombie bodyguard, but that is not an outcome in anyway dependent on having the fight, because the number of people who want to kill Gregor Clegane is "all of them." He "won" that fight in a way that totally satisfies your "would be bummed" criteria, so I'm somewhat confused.

Except not really? Now's he zombie-Gregor. That's also totally badass. And it's another opportunity for Qyburn to hang around and be creepy. It sounds like he might be Cersei's champion in tWoW, which is also cool. Not everyone wants Gregor dead. Most notably Tywin. He specifically sez to Tyrion earlier in aSoS that he does not intend to give Gregor to Oberyn.

And as hyzmarca sez, his presence (and specifically death) in the book accomplishes a nontrivial political goal.

[/spoiler]

Oh, you mean the nontrivial political goal of convincing the Martells, who already want to murder the Lannisters, to murder the Lannisters... harder? Seriously, Elia Martell. It's right there in the name. Wife of Rhaegar Targaryen. Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. The son that popped out of her vagina was 50% Martell and 100% heir. And then Tywin Lannister sent Gregor Clegane to murder both of them, killing the sister of the current ruler of Dorne and blocking their blood from the throne. There is no further justification for any given member of the Martell house to fuck over the Lannisters at any point. Because the extent to which the Lannisters fucked the Martells personally and politically is staggering.

Did you not read Feast? Oberyn's death spurs the Sand Snakes into action, and it affects Arianne as well. It doesn't change what Prince Doran intends to do. But it's still a major event for Dorne.

edit: Fuck, tags are hard.

[Blicero]

I believe the main criticism here is that the twists have no purpose from a storytelling perspective and exist only to throw fanfic writers off, not that they can't be made to make sense after the fact. And that the plot changes direction and pace all the time instead of following a decent arc, for the same reason.

If Frank is saying that the entire structure of aSoIaF exists as a giant fuck-you to fanfiction writers, then I actually don't know how to respond to that.

[Username17]

I believe the main criticism here is that the twists have no purpose from a storytelling perspective and exist only to throw fanfic writers off, not that they can't be made to make sense after the fact. And that the plot changes direction and pace all the time instead of following a decent arc, for the same reason.

If Frank is saying that the entire structure of aSoIaF exists as a giant fuck-you to fanfiction writers, then I actually don't know how to respond to that.

You're the person who's obsessing about the deep meanings and clever foreshadowings of the ramblings of an actual crazy man, not me.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

I love that Martin's entire thesis on fucking copyright boils down to:

Someone threatened to sue unless they got something completely bullshit, so the author gave up.

Anyone with even the most passing of familiarity with legal anything knows that literally anyone can threaten to sue you at any time for any reason or no reason at all. If they don't even get a lawyer, they just threaten, then you don't have to do a goddam thing differently. I mean, it is totally fine in MZB can scrap a book because being in a lawsuit is shit, but even if fanficition 100% accurately predicts something in Winds of Winter, like someone literally posts a "sample chapter" that is word for word what Martin has already written, all he would have to do was show the fucking metadata of some notes he has from 2010 about where the plot for character Z is going.

[Kaelik]

You're the person who's obsessing about the deep meanings and clever foreshadowings of the ramblings of an actual crazy man, not me.

Crazy is not particularly generalized. Being socially incompetent enough to not understand the legal system doesn't magically prevent foreshadowing. I mean, you are literally calling a bunch of actual books with actual plot and continuity and themes and characters and metaphors and foreshadowing "ramblings of a crazy man" because you have wedded yourself to this overly broad theory of motivation.

So what, do you think he killed Eddard Stark because he was afraid the fan fiction writers would read the first half of the book and predict him going to the wall? Or do you think he killed him because he wanted to characterize Joffery as a little shit for you to root against?

ASOIAF very strongly resembles a fantasy book series written by a crazy person, and not at all the ramblings of one.

[hyzmarca]

For what it's worth, I think Gregor Clegane is a total badass, and I would have been bummed if he had lost. He's the sort of character you want to keep around, because you know he's going to get up to crazy shit.

That is a downright bizarre string of words. After the fight with Oberyn, he gets up to no further crazy shit - he just dies off camera from poison. Well, I guess he gets animated as some sort of headless zombie bodyguard, but that is not an outcome in anyway dependent on having the fight, because the number of people who want to kill Gregor Clegane is "all of them." He "won" that fight in a way that totally satisfies your "would be bummed" criteria, so I'm somewhat confused.

And as hyzmarca sez, his presence (and specifically death) in the book accomplishes a nontrivial political goal.

Oh, you mean the nontrivial political goal of convincing the Martells, who already want to murder the Lannisters, to murder the Lannisters... harder? Seriously, Elia Martell. It's right there in the name. Wife of Rhaegar Targaryen. Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. The son that popped out of her vagina was 50% Martell and 100% heir. And then Tywin Lannister sent Gregor Clegane to murder both of them, killing the sister of the current ruler of Dorne and blocking their blood from the throne. There is no further justification for any given member of the Martell house to fuck over the Lannisters at any point. Because the extent to which the Lannisters fucked the Martells personally and politically is staggering.

The difference is that now they have a direct confession from Tywin's personal hatchetman. Not to mention all of Oberyn's apparently badass daughters will be wanting to hotbloodedly avenge their father.

[CapnTthePirateG]

So is it just me, or is The Event the stupidest TV show ever written?

[hyzmarca]

So is it just me, or is The Event the stupidest TV show ever written?

It's just you. The Event has many problems, but it's not the stupidest TV show ever written by far.

It's not even the stupidest NBC TV show ever written.

Even if you limit the contenders to prime time scripted live-action dramas aimed at adults on NBC (which does cut out a lot of stupid) there's still Supertrain.

But If I were compiling a list of stupidest TV shows, The Event wouldn't even make the top 100, probably. Certainly not the top 50.

And it certainly wouldn't come before Galactica 1980.

[CapnTthePirateG]

So is it just me, or is The Event the stupidest TV show ever written?

It's just you. The Event has many problems, but it's not the stupidest TV show ever written by far.

It's not even the stupidest NBC TV show ever written.

Even if you limit the contenders to prime time scripted live-action dramas aimed at adults on NBC (which does cut out a lot of stupid) there's still Supertrain.

But If I were compiling a list of stupidest TV shows, The Event wouldn't even make the top 100, probably. Certainly not the top 50.

And it certainly wouldn't come before Galactica 1980.

Eh fair enough. I need to concede that my knowledge of TV is limited, I'd forgotten all about 1980.

[Username17]

So I saw the new Robocop movie, and I was not terribly impressed. It's hard to put a finger on it, but mostly it just wasn't particularly engaging.

It seemed like the people making the film didn't actually want to make a Robocop movie at all, and instead wanted to make a political thriller about drone deployment policy. Most of the movie is not about Robocop, and Robocop never even sees several of the main characters.

It would actually be kind of a chore to fix this movie. Pretty much my favorite scenes are Samuel Jackson being a ranting news pundit in the future pushing a pro-drone deployment agenda. But... while that stuff is entertaining, it's not actually relevant to the main character's story. All of that is just background to the villain's motivation, which means that needs to get cut almost entirely. All the meetings of the Omnicorp leadership, that shit all has to go too.

The movie is called "Robocop" and needs to be about Robocop. He's the character we're actually supposed to be invested in. While the scenes of Michael Keaton talking to his head of marketing and developing a strategy to sell robotic law enforcement to the American people are entertaining, they aren't investing. Because when it comes down to it - none of that shit is directly relevant to the story arc of the main character.

They seriously made a superhero movie where they are desperately in need of less political philosophy and more faffing about with interaction between the main character and his mundane human partner on the police force and more time with the main character hanging out with his wife and kids. It's weird. I honestly didn't think that was possible.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

How about that other movie that criticizes drone policy (or more specifically, the American security state) Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Is that any good?

[Maxus]

I enjoyed it, by and large. There were some things I didn't like (Captain America's shield physics were different from the first movie and Avengers, in which it's established that no force is transmitted through the shield to him).

It's not as Ra-Ra Libertarianism as the trailers made it out to be. And had a very nice callback to the first movie and made Hydra a more believable threat.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Was it just me, or did it seem like the actual Winter Soldier plot was kind of just bolted on and vestigial?

[Prak]

It kind of was, yeah. 2014 is like the year of "The title character has little to do with the plot" "blockbusters" (Capt. America, Robocop, Godzilla)

[Maxus]

Pretty much. Apparently the Winter Soldier will be back in...8 more movies, by the actor's contract.

[ACOS]

@ Martin = crazy:
He really has bit off more than he can chew with aSoIaF.
There's been a couple of posts on his website that leads me to this:
(1) His forever-changing timelines for publication.
(1a) At one point, he got all mad and threw a shit fit over fans holding his feet to the fire over publication timelines HE put out. I don't think that he was just being a dick for the sake of being a dick; I think that he was simply projecting his own frustration at himself over the project.
(2) When talking about the ever-increasing time between books, he used very defensive verbiage when explaining he desire to do other work as well. It wasn't "yeah, I'm doing some other work on the side". It was "hey, why are you hassling me so much - can't I try to do some other work too? this thing gets tiring, after all".

He just won't admit that he got in over his head. And there is nothing in the rest of his body of work that is even in the same galaxy of scale. But his own ego won't let him truncate the work and finish it already, like he really should.

[hyzmarca]

So I saw the new Robocop movie, and I was not terribly impressed. It's hard to put a finger on it, but mostly it just wasn't particularly engaging.

It seemed like the people making the film didn't actually want to make a Robocop movie at all, and instead wanted to make a political thriller about drone deployment policy. Most of the movie is not about Robocop, and Robocop never even sees several of the main characters.

It would actually be kind of a chore to fix this movie. Pretty much my favorite scenes are Samuel Jackson being a ranting news pundit in the future pushing a pro-drone deployment agenda. But... while that stuff is entertaining, it's not actually relevant to the main character's story. All of that is just background to the villain's motivation, which means that needs to get cut almost entirely. All the meetings of the Omnicorp leadership, that shit all has to go too.

The movie is called "Robocop" and needs to be about Robocop. He's the character we're actually supposed to be invested in. While the scenes of Michael Keaton talking to his head of marketing and developing a strategy to sell robotic law enforcement to the American people are entertaining, they aren't investing. Because when it comes down to it - none of that shit is directly relevant to the story arc of the main character.

They seriously made a superhero movie where they are desperately in need of less political philosophy and more faffing about with interaction between the main character and his mundane human partner on the police force and more time with the main character hanging out with his wife and kids. It's weird. I honestly didn't think that was possible.

-Username17

The big problem with the new Robocop movie, I think, is that they completely missed the core of the original.

Robocop is a story of resurrection. Murphy dies and he's effectively raised as a mindless cyborg zombie named Robocop. Over the course of the movie he gradually finds his humanity and becomes Murphy again. The soulless undead machne transforms into a living person once more.

The remake doesn't have that dynamic. New Murphy doesn't die. He's merely grievously injured. New Murphy doesn't lose his humanity in the transition from human to cyborg, it has to be actively suppressed by his evil corporate masters.

And that's a big problem. Because you can't have a movie about a undead zombie cyborg gradually regaining his lost humanity if he never loses his humanity in the first place.

They can't focus on the story arc of the main character because he literally doesn't have one. Murphy doesn't change or grow as a person. He merely has a chip implanted in his head that overrides his emotions. And this isn't even much of a problem for him, since he can ignore it pretty much at will.




The other issue, of course, is that the villains are fucking right and everyone would be better off if they won. Their plan is utterly stupid and nonsensical, but their ultimate goal is correct.

I really can't state this enough.

In the original Robocop, OCP taking over the police department was a bad thing for a variety of reasons, up to and including fucking over the officers themselves with various cost cutting measures. But the most important of these was that the ED-209 didn't work right. It didn't work right and was equipped with lethal weapons, a fact which did result in a spectacularly gruesome death.


But the ED-208s in the remake are not so horrifically flawed. They work. They've been been deployed in the real world without incident for years. The technology is proven and mature. And unlike flesh and blood cops they don't leave behind widows and children when they're shot on routine traffic stops. Nor do they mistake wallets for handguns.

Mass deployment of the 208s in a law enforcement capacity would have saved lives. You remove their weapons and give them insanely restrictive ROE because it doesn't matter if they're shot on a routine traffic stop. They don't have the same cognitive biases as humans. They don't have flawed perceptions that fill in the blanks with pure imagination. They don't feel fear. They don't panic.

In sort, the anti-drone crowd are idiots.

How about that other movie that criticizes drone policy (or more specifically, the American security state) Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Is that any good?

Captain America:The Winter Soldier criticizes the actual problems with drone policy, that is unilaterally declaring people to be enemies on flimsy evidence and shooting them from guided missiles from far away instead of giving them a fair trial is morally dubious and will probably result in the deaths of many innocent people.

That's much better than Robocop, whose criticism seems to be with robots part instead of the murder part.

[Prak]

I am currently watching The Man With The Iron Fists.

There's some kind of variant of Poe's Law going on here. I know the intent is to evoke old Hong Kong action flicks, which were genuinely poorly made, but this is just... Well, the best part of it is the music, and I'm not that into rap.

edit: On the other hand, this movie has ninja prostitutes* so, I can't really say it's bad, now can I?

*Not kunoichi--ninjas who happen to be female and use sex, but rather prostitutes who are also black lingerie clad ninja.

[Mistborn]

Since the topic has come up I feel like airing my various grievances with the ASoIaF series.

-My biggest gripe is that the series as a whole hasn't just not advanced the progress of the main storyline, it's made negitive progress. Largely that's because G.R.R.M refused to let viewpoint characters succeed at things. The thing is that this doesn't make the narrative interesting, it just makes it tiresome. A lot of the plot points that got dangled in front of us in book one not only haven't been addressed but they're further from being addressed than they where at the end of book one.

-The Others are an especially big problem for the series, because they'er introduced in the prologe and that whole plotline makes the other 90% pretty much pointless. The first thing we learn about Westeros is that there are ice zombies who are going to wreck everyone's faces. That sort of existential threat makes the war over who gets the pointy chair kind of pointless.

-Arya's plotline in general, he goal was to reunite with he loving family, which almost happens but then lol red wedding. As of book 5 she is on another continent entirely training with some assassins we don't care about.

-Danny is another exemplar of the series's negative plot progression because is seems like she's further form invading westros now than she was in book 1.

-Tyrion in book 5 is particularly infuriating because we get something awesome like Tyrion becoming Danny's adviser dangled in front of us in the early chapters and then his plotline does fuck all for the rest of the book.

-books 4 and 5 in general are just irritating in general because instead of advacing the plots we care about new characters are introduced and their plots don't go anywhere either.