As is my custom, I'll likely post little or nothing over the weekend, so this Link Storm will have to hold you until Monday.
First of all, two of my articles hit the net over at Yahoo. My summer reading list, and a guide to the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield.
Over on Tales, we had the results of our first day of getting paid by Yahoo.
Here at After Hours, I've got Turn 0 and Turn 1 of the ongoing Dominions 3 Let's Play that I'm contributing to.
Finally, if you were interested in acquiring Dominions 3 yourself, you'd go here.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
The Rise of Pangaea, Turn 1
A splash of harpy droppings landed on the old god's driveway. Cursing, the Cranky Old Man looked up at the offending bird woman and narrowed his gaze. A beam of power erupted from him and engulfed the flying creature, and when the light faded, she was transformed. Her dark feathers had become the color of night, and all those who saw her knew that she'd been given a fraction of his might to use in his name.
"My...My god," she exclaimed.
He smirked, "Exactly."
She dropped from the sky and landed at his feet, "My lord, all that I am is yours. Command me, and I shall move heaven and earth to do thy bidding. I will proclaim your divinity to all, even to the gods themselves! What is thy will, oh great one?"
The old man pointed at the droppings. "Clean that shit up."
As Lilli pointed out in her Turn 1 post, there's not a lot of variation in an experienced player's first turn. Either you expand if you have the troops or SC Pretender for it, or you sit back. If you sit, you either prophetize your scout or send it off, well, scouting while hiring the unit you do want as your prophet. In this case having a stealthy flyer as my prophet can be very handy, so I'm perfectly happy to make my starting harpy my prophet.
The other thing you do if you're sitting is raise your taxes and get your troops patrolling to handle the unrest that a tax rate of more than 100% causes. In my case I jump my taxes up to 200% with the thought that I'll be able to patrol the huge unrest from that down in a couple of turns, but its worth it because I need Pans on the board, and I need 'em quick. Pans are great, but they cost, so I'm going to risk high taxes to buy 'em.
Which is a long way to say that my first turn was almost identical to that of most of my competitors.
"My...My god," she exclaimed.
He smirked, "Exactly."
She dropped from the sky and landed at his feet, "My lord, all that I am is yours. Command me, and I shall move heaven and earth to do thy bidding. I will proclaim your divinity to all, even to the gods themselves! What is thy will, oh great one?"
The old man pointed at the droppings. "Clean that shit up."
As Lilli pointed out in her Turn 1 post, there's not a lot of variation in an experienced player's first turn. Either you expand if you have the troops or SC Pretender for it, or you sit back. If you sit, you either prophetize your scout or send it off, well, scouting while hiring the unit you do want as your prophet. In this case having a stealthy flyer as my prophet can be very handy, so I'm perfectly happy to make my starting harpy my prophet.
The other thing you do if you're sitting is raise your taxes and get your troops patrolling to handle the unrest that a tax rate of more than 100% causes. In my case I jump my taxes up to 200% with the thought that I'll be able to patrol the huge unrest from that down in a couple of turns, but its worth it because I need Pans on the board, and I need 'em quick. Pans are great, but they cost, so I'm going to risk high taxes to buy 'em.
Which is a long way to say that my first turn was almost identical to that of most of my competitors.
The Rise of Pangaea, Turn 0
He was old. The world had passed him by generations ago, and still he sat in his isolated hut and listened to the music of his horned friends while he read his newspaper.
But then he felt it...the Pantokrator had fallen! Now was his chance! The world had gone to hell ever since they let everything get all civilized and sentient. The withered man's form hardened as he stood up from his easy chair at long last. He would show these whippersnappers the what for! The world should be quiet and green, there should be none of these cities and villages cluttering up the place and ruining his view!
It was time to war with gods.
He emerged from his hut, and as he did, the party that had gone one for centuries finally ground to a halt. Softly, so softly, the word spread from satyr and nymph to minotaur and centaur. It grew and grew, and soon the forest echoed with the old man's rage.
"GET OFF MY LAWN!"
And away we go. Lilli's excellent post starts our game off here, so I'm going to jettison most of my learning material since it'd be duplicated anyway and focus instead on my own personal point of view. You should definitely read her introduction first, though, since I'm going to be referencing it here.
As the title says, I'm playing Pangaea.
Pangaea is about as single focused a nation as exists in Dominions 3. That is not a good thing. All my primary spellcasters, the Pans, have good to great nature magic, a little Earth, and a little Blood. My only other native casters are my Dryads who have a tiny bit of Nature and are also my level 2 Priests. That's all I've got, and while you can do a little summoning with Nature and a few other things, being totally closed out of 75% of the magic in the game is rarely a recipe for success.
However, all is not lost. Because I have a Cranky Old Man!
Now Lilli already covered the fact that I've built Cranky to at least dabble in almost everything for casting purposes, but there's another factor at work here. Most combat spells can be cast as is, but Ritual magic, including summoning spells, needs magic gems to fuel them. And Pangaea only gets Nature gems. True, they get a lot of them, but once again, being unable to fuel other spell types is a crippling disadvantage. So I've built Cranky with the idea of being able to walk around in the wake of my armies and search for Magic Sites, which often (though not always) provides you with different types of gems. You can only find sites of your magic level or less, so the old coot isn't going to find anything higher than level 2, but the most common sites are the level 1-2 ones, so its a trade off I'm willing to make.
I'm also hoping to find a site that gives me access to other spellcaster types as I go. A nice Wizard site for Fire magic or a Sorceress site for Air and Astral would be perfect. Or maybe a Necromancer site? That'd come in real handy, because my national Summoning spells require Death magic, of which I have no gems and only Cranky able to cast in.
So why, you may be asking yourself, are you even playing Pangaea if its such a problem? Well, its the Pans, really. Because my Pans can autosummon a handful of berzerk naked chicks to fight for me every turn if there's Turmoil in my territory. And by god is there Turmoil! The advantage to this is mostly defensive. Sure, I can (and will) throw huge waves of Maeneds at my enemies to wear them down before the guys with weapons show up to start stabbing, but the big advantage is that the autosummon keeps happening even if you're besieged! So a fortress with a Pan or two will have its army grow and grow and grow, regardless of what the besieging army outside tries to do. That means that if you don't show up with a huge number of guys at the outset, a Pangaea fortress can be all but impossible to breach. I hope to take advantage of this to make it to the Midgame.
So, as the game begins, here's the plan:
1) Expand as best I can, which, given my only so-so troops and lack of a Super Combatant like T'ien's Dragon, will be rather slow.
2) Avoid war with other players at all costs until I can get multiple fortresses up, each with a Pan or two inside to make it a huge pain in the ass to take them away from me.
3) Get Cranky out there searching to get as many sites as possible, and put Pan Fortresses on the spots with good sites.
4) Build up my magic and try to survive to the Midgame where it starts being less and less about troops and more about magic.
That is the plan. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy...
But then he felt it...the Pantokrator had fallen! Now was his chance! The world had gone to hell ever since they let everything get all civilized and sentient. The withered man's form hardened as he stood up from his easy chair at long last. He would show these whippersnappers the what for! The world should be quiet and green, there should be none of these cities and villages cluttering up the place and ruining his view!
It was time to war with gods.
He emerged from his hut, and as he did, the party that had gone one for centuries finally ground to a halt. Softly, so softly, the word spread from satyr and nymph to minotaur and centaur. It grew and grew, and soon the forest echoed with the old man's rage.
"GET OFF MY LAWN!"
And away we go. Lilli's excellent post starts our game off here, so I'm going to jettison most of my learning material since it'd be duplicated anyway and focus instead on my own personal point of view. You should definitely read her introduction first, though, since I'm going to be referencing it here.
As the title says, I'm playing Pangaea.
Pangaea is about as single focused a nation as exists in Dominions 3. That is not a good thing. All my primary spellcasters, the Pans, have good to great nature magic, a little Earth, and a little Blood. My only other native casters are my Dryads who have a tiny bit of Nature and are also my level 2 Priests. That's all I've got, and while you can do a little summoning with Nature and a few other things, being totally closed out of 75% of the magic in the game is rarely a recipe for success.
However, all is not lost. Because I have a Cranky Old Man!
I'm also hoping to find a site that gives me access to other spellcaster types as I go. A nice Wizard site for Fire magic or a Sorceress site for Air and Astral would be perfect. Or maybe a Necromancer site? That'd come in real handy, because my national Summoning spells require Death magic, of which I have no gems and only Cranky able to cast in.
So why, you may be asking yourself, are you even playing Pangaea if its such a problem? Well, its the Pans, really. Because my Pans can autosummon a handful of berzerk naked chicks to fight for me every turn if there's Turmoil in my territory. And by god is there Turmoil! The advantage to this is mostly defensive. Sure, I can (and will) throw huge waves of Maeneds at my enemies to wear them down before the guys with weapons show up to start stabbing, but the big advantage is that the autosummon keeps happening even if you're besieged! So a fortress with a Pan or two will have its army grow and grow and grow, regardless of what the besieging army outside tries to do. That means that if you don't show up with a huge number of guys at the outset, a Pangaea fortress can be all but impossible to breach. I hope to take advantage of this to make it to the Midgame.
So, as the game begins, here's the plan:
1) Expand as best I can, which, given my only so-so troops and lack of a Super Combatant like T'ien's Dragon, will be rather slow.
2) Avoid war with other players at all costs until I can get multiple fortresses up, each with a Pan or two inside to make it a huge pain in the ass to take them away from me.
3) Get Cranky out there searching to get as many sites as possible, and put Pan Fortresses on the spots with good sites.
4) Build up my magic and try to survive to the Midgame where it starts being less and less about troops and more about magic.
That is the plan. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy...
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Link Storm 4/28/11
Today was a busy day, especially over on Tales. Most importantly, my first YAC article got published by Yahoo. You can have a look at it here. I also put up a couple of blog posts about it, both my Writer's Notes and some thoughts about the money side.
Over here on After Hours, I have the set-up post to a series I'm planning to do about my participation in a Let's Play of Dominions 3.
Pursuant to that, here's the first page of a similar project which will give you an idea of what a Dominions 3 Let's Play is all about.
Over here on After Hours, I have the set-up post to a series I'm planning to do about my participation in a Let's Play of Dominions 3.
Pursuant to that, here's the first page of a similar project which will give you an idea of what a Dominions 3 Let's Play is all about.
The Rise of Pangaea, Pre-Game
So there's this game I play called Dominions 3. I've written extensively about it over on my old LiveJournal, and the best summary of the game that I've done can be found here. I won't repeat it on this site, but you can give it a glance if you want to see my take on it.
The reason that I'm not going into too much details about how the game is played is because someone else is going to be doing that for me. You see, Dominions 3 is best played multiplayer, and the easiest way to do that is for someone to setup a server for people to submit their turns to. In the game we'll be discussing here, New Dawn, the turns are being monitored by an outside observer, Lilli, who isn't actually playing the game herself. Instead, she'll be commenting on each turn as it goes, with both descriptions of what happened and her take on it.
As it happens, I'm a player in New Dawn, so I'll be doing the view from the ground of my particular faction, Pangaea. Once Lilli starts getting her reports posted, likely tomorrow sometime, I'll put a link up here going there and a link there coming back here, as well as my Turn 0 and Turn 1 commentary.
So hop aboard as I try to conquer the world in the name of Nature, Revelry, and a Cranky Old Man!
The reason that I'm not going into too much details about how the game is played is because someone else is going to be doing that for me. You see, Dominions 3 is best played multiplayer, and the easiest way to do that is for someone to setup a server for people to submit their turns to. In the game we'll be discussing here, New Dawn, the turns are being monitored by an outside observer, Lilli, who isn't actually playing the game herself. Instead, she'll be commenting on each turn as it goes, with both descriptions of what happened and her take on it.
As it happens, I'm a player in New Dawn, so I'll be doing the view from the ground of my particular faction, Pangaea. Once Lilli starts getting her reports posted, likely tomorrow sometime, I'll put a link up here going there and a link there coming back here, as well as my Turn 0 and Turn 1 commentary.
So hop aboard as I try to conquer the world in the name of Nature, Revelry, and a Cranky Old Man!
Link Storm 4/27/11
Here's what's happening:
Back on Tales, we did more Yahoo and considered writing a mystery.
Over here, we recorded our first impressions of Age of Empires Online.
For the Link of the Day, here's another place to get into the AoEO beta if you like.
Back on Tales, we did more Yahoo and considered writing a mystery.
Over here, we recorded our first impressions of Age of Empires Online.
For the Link of the Day, here's another place to get into the AoEO beta if you like.
First Impressions: Age of Empires Online
So my brother Matt and I got into the Age of Empires Online beta. There are probably still beta keys available if anyone else wants to try it. You can have a look here. Rather than your usual MMORPG, however, Age of Empires Online seems to be trying to be a MMORTS, that is, a Massively Multiplayer Real Time Strategy game. And certainly I think that there can be large scale games that break from the World of Warcraft mode and all, but I'm not sure I'm sold on AoEO quite yet.
The big problems for me so far are a distinct lack of the "MM" so far. Granted, we've only played maybe three hours of the game, but the first two hours were stuck in mandatory tutorial quests that could only be played single player. And by the time we could actually play together, we had virtually identical setups, and it was kind of boring. Granted, beta. I understand that. Out of what appears to be maybe five factions (Greece, Troy, Egypt, Nubia, Libya) only the Greeks were playable, so that led to much of the unit overlap.
But still, the way that units and buildings are rationed out to you as you go along and earn them with gold and other currencies means that what you can do changes only gradually. All but the last two missions I played had only two ground combat units, a Scout, and Spearmen. And since you can't recruit a Scout yet, that meant that everything was just endless Spearmen. It got pretty repetitive very quickly.
Even worse there's hints in the game that you can pay to win. Heros that you can use to boost your army can only be hired in the Advisor's Hall, which in turn is only available to Premium Users. Which sounds like extra cash to me. Not great.
So far, then, Age of Empires Online has not really impressed me. I expect I'll dabble through out the beta, but unless they really wow me, I don't plan to spend any money on the game when the time comes.
The big problems for me so far are a distinct lack of the "MM" so far. Granted, we've only played maybe three hours of the game, but the first two hours were stuck in mandatory tutorial quests that could only be played single player. And by the time we could actually play together, we had virtually identical setups, and it was kind of boring. Granted, beta. I understand that. Out of what appears to be maybe five factions (Greece, Troy, Egypt, Nubia, Libya) only the Greeks were playable, so that led to much of the unit overlap.
But still, the way that units and buildings are rationed out to you as you go along and earn them with gold and other currencies means that what you can do changes only gradually. All but the last two missions I played had only two ground combat units, a Scout, and Spearmen. And since you can't recruit a Scout yet, that meant that everything was just endless Spearmen. It got pretty repetitive very quickly.
Even worse there's hints in the game that you can pay to win. Heros that you can use to boost your army can only be hired in the Advisor's Hall, which in turn is only available to Premium Users. Which sounds like extra cash to me. Not great.
So far, then, Age of Empires Online has not really impressed me. I expect I'll dabble through out the beta, but unless they really wow me, I don't plan to spend any money on the game when the time comes.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Link Storm 4/26/11
So here's what I've been up to today.
On Tale of a Fledgling Writer, we go a little more in depth into writing for Yahoo and ponder mystery short stories.
Back here on A Writer After Hours, we have some thoughts on Inception.
For the link of the day, here's something Inception based, a nice breakdown of what happened, on the offhand chance that you missed something.
On Tale of a Fledgling Writer, we go a little more in depth into writing for Yahoo and ponder mystery short stories.
Back here on A Writer After Hours, we have some thoughts on Inception.
For the link of the day, here's something Inception based, a nice breakdown of what happened, on the offhand chance that you missed something.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Inception Revisited (Spoilers!)
Note: There will be spoilers for Inception in this post. If you haven't seen the film yet, go do so, then come back. This movie deserves to be seen unspoiled.
So, I think its fair to say that I really enjoyed this movie. I don't see something on DvD then go and seek out a showing in the theater afterwards very often.
While the visuals and sounds are very well done, what really impresses me about Inception is how smart and introspective it is. In the end, Cobb accomplishes his goal not by shooting his way out, but by accepting his guilt over the death of his wife and deciding to finally move on with his life.
What's more, its a movie that requires your full attention to understand. I know the value of flicks that you can just turn your brain off and just enjoy for the spectacle, but it seems to me that we're getting too much spectacle and not enough brainwork. Inception is one of those rare movie that has grand spectacle and works the lobes, and that alone makes it special.
In particular, the ambiguous ending that makes you decide for yourself how the movie ends really works for me. It works so much that I've put in quite a lot of thought developing my personal theory. And I think that Cobb never got out of the dream, and more importantly, that the top doesn't matter at all.
The way I understand it, your personal totem is only useful if no one else knows how it feels. But Cobb took Mal's totem as his own after her supposed death. The problem with that, though, is that if he's wrong and Mal was right, when she "died" she just woke up in the next layer up. In which case the totem Cobb is using is compromised, since he could still be trapped in her dream and never know it since she knows how her totem works just as well as he does.
So ultimately, whether the top falls at the end or not doesn't change a thing. If he's in reality, then the top is irrelevant. If Mal is still alive, it's compromised. Either way, it falling means nothing.
The fact that Inception can make me think out the timeline of a top just shows how well done the movie was. May we get more movies like it.
So, I think its fair to say that I really enjoyed this movie. I don't see something on DvD then go and seek out a showing in the theater afterwards very often.
While the visuals and sounds are very well done, what really impresses me about Inception is how smart and introspective it is. In the end, Cobb accomplishes his goal not by shooting his way out, but by accepting his guilt over the death of his wife and deciding to finally move on with his life.
What's more, its a movie that requires your full attention to understand. I know the value of flicks that you can just turn your brain off and just enjoy for the spectacle, but it seems to me that we're getting too much spectacle and not enough brainwork. Inception is one of those rare movie that has grand spectacle and works the lobes, and that alone makes it special.
In particular, the ambiguous ending that makes you decide for yourself how the movie ends really works for me. It works so much that I've put in quite a lot of thought developing my personal theory. And I think that Cobb never got out of the dream, and more importantly, that the top doesn't matter at all.
The way I understand it, your personal totem is only useful if no one else knows how it feels. But Cobb took Mal's totem as his own after her supposed death. The problem with that, though, is that if he's wrong and Mal was right, when she "died" she just woke up in the next layer up. In which case the totem Cobb is using is compromised, since he could still be trapped in her dream and never know it since she knows how her totem works just as well as he does.
So ultimately, whether the top falls at the end or not doesn't change a thing. If he's in reality, then the top is irrelevant. If Mal is still alive, it's compromised. Either way, it falling means nothing.
The fact that Inception can make me think out the timeline of a top just shows how well done the movie was. May we get more movies like it.
Link Storm 4/25/11
So here's what happened around here on Monday, April 25th, 2011.
There was the introduction of After Hours back on Tales of a Fledgling Writer. I also posted my first thoughts on writing for Yahoo there.
There's also the introduction to this blog and first real post about Game of Thrones here on A Writer After Hours.
Speaking of Game of Thrones, there's no better source for information than straight from the horse's mouth, or in this case, the LiveJournal of writer George RR Martin. He's purportedly busy finishing book five of the series, Dances with Dragons, but having waited for six years now, I'll believe that when I see it on the shelf, and maybe not even then. Nevertheless, while his posting on LiveJournal may have been slow lately, patient fans of Game of Thrones will find information there that isn't available anywhere else. Enjoy!
There was the introduction of After Hours back on Tales of a Fledgling Writer. I also posted my first thoughts on writing for Yahoo there.
There's also the introduction to this blog and first real post about Game of Thrones here on A Writer After Hours.
Speaking of Game of Thrones, there's no better source for information than straight from the horse's mouth, or in this case, the LiveJournal of writer George RR Martin. He's purportedly busy finishing book five of the series, Dances with Dragons, but having waited for six years now, I'll believe that when I see it on the shelf, and maybe not even then. Nevertheless, while his posting on LiveJournal may have been slow lately, patient fans of Game of Thrones will find information there that isn't available anywhere else. Enjoy!
Monday, April 25, 2011
HBO's Game of Thrones, Thoughts on Episodes 1-1 & 1-2
The first question that always comes up when discussing an adapted work like Game of Thrones is inevitable: "Did you read the book?" As it happens, I did. Therefore, my point of view of the series is influenced by foreknowledge of what's going to happen next. So for me, watching Game of Thrones is less about what's going to happen as much as it's about how well they execute it. My comments about the show will come from that standpoint, with some discussions about the differences between the show and the book.
There will also be spoilers involved. I will likely be spoiling the actual episodes I'm talking about, so if you haven't seen that episode yet and don't want to be spoiled about it, by all means come back later. These posts aren't going anywhere unless Blogger is in financial trouble and no one told me. I will also be talking about differences from the book, so if you don't want to hear about what scenes were changed, omitted, or added to the show, you should probably skip these posts.
What I will not do is discuss things that haven't happened yet. I'd like these posts to be friendly to those who're only watching the show and don't know what's coming. On the off chance that anyone comments on these posts, I'd also like to ask you not to spoil things for the new people. You got to read what happened without prejudice, let the viewers have the same courtesy.
Everybody got that? Great. Let's get to talking about the Seven Kingdoms and the lords of Westeros.
Game of Thrones would not have been my first choice for a HBO TV adaptation. Granted, a TV series is far better than a film would have been where even more would have been lost, and having the series on HBO allows you to get the full impact of the sex and violence that are at the core of the books, which would have been impossible for network or basic cable TV. But even then, the format has its problems. The novel A Game of Thrones is nearly 700 pages long. With only ten episodes to play with, you've got to try and cover 70 pages of material in each and every episode. Inevitably, so much of the depth and characterization that is done so well in the books is lost in the rush to cover the major events.
I'm not just talking about scenes that are missing or abbreviated, either. The book has an interesting format. Every chapter is titled by the name of the character it follows around. So you'd have a chapter called Eddard where we see Ned's point of view as he talks to King Robert in the crypt, then a chapter called Catelyn where we see from her point of view as she and Ned talk about the offer to become the King's Hand and the letter from her sister arrives, and then we get one called Bran where the little climber climbs the wrong tower and gets shoved out the window, and so on throughout the novel.
The thing is, what we get in the novel is much more than just the events. Each chapter gives you what the character is thinking, as well as some history or cultural information that makes the world of Westeros feel more real. Now, arguably, one can say that about any translation from novel to the screen, but since so much of George RR Martin's book is in those details, it feels like that much more is lost with the HBO version.
Does that mean, then, that I don't like the series? No, actually. I do like it, despite my misgivings about translating the book to a show. Peter Dinklage as Tyrion is a delight. He nails the sarcasm and wisdom of The Imp perfectly. The opening credits are wonderfully done, and the music gets me in the mood for the show.
What's more, the use of visuals in the show is well done. The concluding shot of Bran falling into the camera to end the first episode and the shot of him waking up simultaneous to Lady's death were both striking. I particularly like the look off the Wall, as well.
But the shot that really affected me was nearly a throwaway on. Its the one in episode two where Jon rides away from his father. You can see the king's party moving slowly away into the distance while Jon races towards the camera, alone. The visual poetry of that scene, that of Jon leaving his family and all he knows behind, was a great visual metaphor, and I hope they keep it up.
So what's changed from the book? Well, the scene in episode two where Queen Cersei talks about her lost baby to Catelyn is new, as was our actually seeing Daenerys actually get sexual training from Doreah. In that both scenes give a little more depth to the characters they're about, I've no problem with their inclusion. The books give Daenerys in particular a lot of depth in the narration, and giving some of that to her in the series with an extra scene or two is a fine idea.
Cersei, on the other hand, often comes across as more obviously villainous in the novels, so taking the opportunity to soften her and make her a little more sympathetic early on is a pretty big change, but a welcome one. No one in Game of Thrones is a all good, nor all evil. The books in particular do an excellent job in showing the strengths and flaws of each character, and it is through the interaction of these traits that they succeed and fail. Anything that can show some of that depth on the show is worth the effort in my book.
So, what do I think about the show overall? In brief, I like it, I'm going to watch the rest of it, and presuming that all the sex, nudity, swearing, and violence don't turn you off, I recommend you watch it as well.
But I also think that you should read the books, as I think they're better.
(Programming Note: I'll be writing one of these every Monday until the first season concludes in June. Come on back next week for more on Game of Thrones.)
There will also be spoilers involved. I will likely be spoiling the actual episodes I'm talking about, so if you haven't seen that episode yet and don't want to be spoiled about it, by all means come back later. These posts aren't going anywhere unless Blogger is in financial trouble and no one told me. I will also be talking about differences from the book, so if you don't want to hear about what scenes were changed, omitted, or added to the show, you should probably skip these posts.
What I will not do is discuss things that haven't happened yet. I'd like these posts to be friendly to those who're only watching the show and don't know what's coming. On the off chance that anyone comments on these posts, I'd also like to ask you not to spoil things for the new people. You got to read what happened without prejudice, let the viewers have the same courtesy.
Everybody got that? Great. Let's get to talking about the Seven Kingdoms and the lords of Westeros.
Game of Thrones would not have been my first choice for a HBO TV adaptation. Granted, a TV series is far better than a film would have been where even more would have been lost, and having the series on HBO allows you to get the full impact of the sex and violence that are at the core of the books, which would have been impossible for network or basic cable TV. But even then, the format has its problems. The novel A Game of Thrones is nearly 700 pages long. With only ten episodes to play with, you've got to try and cover 70 pages of material in each and every episode. Inevitably, so much of the depth and characterization that is done so well in the books is lost in the rush to cover the major events.
I'm not just talking about scenes that are missing or abbreviated, either. The book has an interesting format. Every chapter is titled by the name of the character it follows around. So you'd have a chapter called Eddard where we see Ned's point of view as he talks to King Robert in the crypt, then a chapter called Catelyn where we see from her point of view as she and Ned talk about the offer to become the King's Hand and the letter from her sister arrives, and then we get one called Bran where the little climber climbs the wrong tower and gets shoved out the window, and so on throughout the novel.
The thing is, what we get in the novel is much more than just the events. Each chapter gives you what the character is thinking, as well as some history or cultural information that makes the world of Westeros feel more real. Now, arguably, one can say that about any translation from novel to the screen, but since so much of George RR Martin's book is in those details, it feels like that much more is lost with the HBO version.
Does that mean, then, that I don't like the series? No, actually. I do like it, despite my misgivings about translating the book to a show. Peter Dinklage as Tyrion is a delight. He nails the sarcasm and wisdom of The Imp perfectly. The opening credits are wonderfully done, and the music gets me in the mood for the show.
What's more, the use of visuals in the show is well done. The concluding shot of Bran falling into the camera to end the first episode and the shot of him waking up simultaneous to Lady's death were both striking. I particularly like the look off the Wall, as well.
But the shot that really affected me was nearly a throwaway on. Its the one in episode two where Jon rides away from his father. You can see the king's party moving slowly away into the distance while Jon races towards the camera, alone. The visual poetry of that scene, that of Jon leaving his family and all he knows behind, was a great visual metaphor, and I hope they keep it up.
So what's changed from the book? Well, the scene in episode two where Queen Cersei talks about her lost baby to Catelyn is new, as was our actually seeing Daenerys actually get sexual training from Doreah. In that both scenes give a little more depth to the characters they're about, I've no problem with their inclusion. The books give Daenerys in particular a lot of depth in the narration, and giving some of that to her in the series with an extra scene or two is a fine idea.
Cersei, on the other hand, often comes across as more obviously villainous in the novels, so taking the opportunity to soften her and make her a little more sympathetic early on is a pretty big change, but a welcome one. No one in Game of Thrones is a all good, nor all evil. The books in particular do an excellent job in showing the strengths and flaws of each character, and it is through the interaction of these traits that they succeed and fail. Anything that can show some of that depth on the show is worth the effort in my book.
So, what do I think about the show overall? In brief, I like it, I'm going to watch the rest of it, and presuming that all the sex, nudity, swearing, and violence don't turn you off, I recommend you watch it as well.
But I also think that you should read the books, as I think they're better.
(Programming Note: I'll be writing one of these every Monday until the first season concludes in June. Come on back next week for more on Game of Thrones.)
Have a look around!
So, here's my companion blog to A Fledgling Writer's Tale. As I discussed over there, I intend to keep that blog entirely about my writing and the selling of it. However, I do think there's room in my life to delve into the various life experiences and entertainment venues that are influencing me. Therefore, I'll be discussing things that amuse me (and why) as well as things that failed to amuse me (and how) on this blog.
I rather expect that I'll have more to say on this subject than on the primary blog. After all, I've only tried my hand at professional writing very recently, but people have been entertaining me all my life. Therefore, I'll be trying to maintain a post a weekday schedule on this blog. My weekends are busy enough that I doubt I'll have much to say then, and anyway it's probably a good idea to have a little time to myself to recharge the batteries and gather together another week of new material.
Today, we start with my thoughts on first two episodes of the new HBO series, Game of Thrones, found in the post right above this one. Enjoy.
I rather expect that I'll have more to say on this subject than on the primary blog. After all, I've only tried my hand at professional writing very recently, but people have been entertaining me all my life. Therefore, I'll be trying to maintain a post a weekday schedule on this blog. My weekends are busy enough that I doubt I'll have much to say then, and anyway it's probably a good idea to have a little time to myself to recharge the batteries and gather together another week of new material.
Today, we start with my thoughts on first two episodes of the new HBO series, Game of Thrones, found in the post right above this one. Enjoy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)