as someone who's been a big nerd for a bunch of hbo content since i was a youngin', i feel like it's just so bleak and depressing to scroll through max now and see how much vapid, stupid reality tv stuff is in this catalog. i miss hbo getting to have its own streaming service with just hbo content on there!!!
the news that the strategy is to basically cancel everything that doesn't appeal to "middle america" (i.e. diverse storytelling and honestly maybe just thoughtful scripted storytelling at this point) is not a surprise, but gosh, it's still such a gross bummer!!! blahhhhhh!!!!!
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no of fence to jon snow fans who for some reason care about his exact age, but these discussions just annoy me no end. not only bc there's no way any weirwood flashbacks bran has to rhaegar/lyanna will come with time/datestamps, but also bc there's always comments like this:
SEVERAL turns of the moon (ie, months)?! have these people never seen a human baby before or just have no concept of their ages? even if we take into account travel time from the toj to wf, meaning jon was not a newborn too fresh out the oven when catelyn and robb arrived, there's still a difference between a newborn and a 3mo and an even bigger difference between those infants and an older baby 5-7mo. there's very good reasons these lines were cut. whatever birthdates can be worked out internally for jon and robb from when they're first mentioned as 15 and 16 don't matter in the end, bc grrm doesn't care about a consistent timeline and the actual text of catelyn's pov and ned's convo with robert about cheating on her should outweigh any guesstimates about jon's official nameday wrt robb's. catelyn may not have cared for jon, but she would sure as hell have noticed his nameday if it came before robb's and made him ned's firstborn. if jon's birthday canonically came before robb's then either ned's cover story would not involve adultery (not impossible for him to sire a bastard before his wedding), or he'd just give jon a new nameday along with his new name to fit the adultery lie. it makes no sense for him to lie about one and not the other, undermining the big lie with a little public clue of his story not adding up. whatever else she was as a stepmother, cat wasn't stupid and a bastard who was actually the eldest son being raised alongside her trueborn heir could be an even bigger insult than whether he was born of adultery or not.
BUT, the unknowability of jon's true birthday is not the only reason this annoys me, it's bc this is all based on the assumption that jon must be older since rhaegar/lyanna ran off together before ned married cat, as if both boys must have been conceived asap as robb canonically was when his parents consummated their marriage. and that's not how human reproduction works! even if you don't understand how fast babies grow in the first year, you should know that people who get pregnant do so through ovulation cycles and a lucky sperm finding an egg and all that, not just immediately getting knocked up as soon as one has p-in-v sex for the first time. not unless you only know mean girls sex ed where if you have sex you will get pregnant and die. (even tho lyanna did die, there's plenty of canon examples where pregnancy did not lead straight to death. also examples of people who did not get pregnant right away and even some who are/were sexually active and childless without always having moon tea on hand.) we can't know how long lyanna was having sex before that sperm+egg match happened or even how long she was with rhaegar before losing her technical virginity. if they were married, doesn't it make sense to think they didn't consummate their relationship until the wedding night either? that's the only leverage there is to ensure a status as wife rather than just mistress.
and while i just said grrm doesn't care about exact timelines and a lot is still foggy surrounding the rebellion and esp rhaegar, there is one timemarker wrt robert's rebellion he voluntarily threw in, time and time again: that stannis was besieged at storm's end for almost a whole year. that siege, which mind you, did not match the duration of the entire war. it only started after robert won his battles at gulltown and summerhall, returned to storm's end, and then went out and lost the battle of ashford, leaving his homeland open to the reachermen. the same siege which only ended when ned made a detour there after the sack of king's landing, before going to the toj. even if lyanna may not have given birth that exact day ned found her, she could only be waiting in that bloody bed for weeks at the most, not months. so if rhaegar knocked her up the very same night he carried her off and jon was still a newborn when ned found her after the siege of storm's end had ended, wouldn't that mean lyanna was pregnant for well over a year? that's not how human pregnancy works either! so, maybe that's proof that jon and robb, whichever order they were actually born in, were actually very close in age as babies, much closer than if they were both conceived asap.
and really, jon's actual birthdate does not matter imho, when he was raised not just as the bastard to robb's trueborn heir, but with robb also known by catelyn and the world as ned's firstborn (which he was, in any case, as jon was ned's nephew by birth). what difference could a birthdate before robb's make (even were there some means of discovery) after ned, cat, and robb are all dead? if one is looking only at his birth parents then he's only a firstborn child on lyanna's side, but definitely a second son on rhaegar's side. maybe he was always meant to be a second son with a not much older half-brother! even if the aegon fka young griff is not in fact rhaegar's son, he'll still be known as aegon vi targaryen, meaning jon will never be known as any father's elder son. if i may reference mean girls again, it's not going to happen.
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just love hearing kieran culkin talk about succession/roman because he always talks about, like, the process of it and it’s so interesting — the scenes that are kept, the scenes that are taken out, the choices writers made he didn’t agree with, the choices he made that the writers (originally) didn’t agree with…. always really hammers in not only how collaborative the show is in that input from the actors is taken very seriously but also just how much culkin cares about roman like as a character? which i mean ya know all actors do. but culkin always talks about being a fan of the show first and an actor in it second and i think that’s such a huge thing. like, the way he cares about roman isn’t just as the actor playing him, it’s as a fan of the show — he’s approaching it not just from, like, a This Is My Job angle but also from the perspective of a fan who is just genuinely invested in the character of roman and would feel frustrated if they saw him do something that didn’t feel in-line with his character! kc would hate tumblr just like he hates all social media but he would indeed kill it on here
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Welp, here is TBOSAS’ lead editor admitting that they cut down a lot of the romance (including a pre games kiss) while editing the movie🥴
Apparently they thought the love story worked too well in the first 2/3 and made Coryo’s turn in the third part of the movie seem too sudden. After all, it’s not like the romance between Coryo and Lucy Gray being believable and 100% true was at the heart of the story, right?? It definitely didn’t make Coryo’s eventual betrayal heartbreaking and tragic.
The theatrical version of this movie absolutely doesn’t look like Frankenstein’s monster as a result of too many cuts and edits. I’m sure the book wouldn’t have benefited from being adapted in two movies instead of being condensed into a single overlong one.
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What was baabaa like before the whole genocide of the sheep, or at least before their execution?
Baabaa was born in a distant village with population of only about 20 sheep, one of many dozens villages like that.
The village didn't have a name and wasn't associated with any cult, and despite not all of it's inhabitants being related by blood, everyone in the flock was equal and considered each other parts of one big family.
The life in the sheep village was simple — they've been living in tents, raising lambs and spending their time gathering and growing herbs.
Baabaa didn't stand out much. He was one of a few young rams, an older brother figure to multiple little siblings.
The genocide started when Baabaa was a teenager.
The village was very distant, so they haven't heard anything about the situation in the outside world for the longest time, and even when they did find out, it never really felt like something that would actually reach their godforsaken grassland. For them, the life just kept going…
At the point when Lamb was captured, he was in his 20s.
By now, Lamb's memories of his past life became a blur — part of it is a side effect of bearing a Crown, the other part is just effect of the time that has passed since then.
Baabaa has some of his old skills and habits, and occasionally gets déjà vu. He remembers only some fragments, the simple things — the faces of his flock and their voices, what they used to wear and do, but once he tries to focus on details like their names, the memories slip through his fingers like a fleeting fever dream.
They've been his family, the closest people he had until recently, and yet he doesn't miss them more than you'd miss a pleasant dream after waking up.
Their deaths may be permament, but life goes on, and everything keeps changing.
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the thing about 4.03 is that obviously the centerpiece of the episode and the most important part of it is the siblings reaction to logan's death but its a sequence that is so perfectly written and executed it feels unanalyzable to me. its such a perfect representation of grief in general but also these specific characters and who they are and the impact this event has on them specifically. there is nothing that I can say about that sequence which is useful or valuable or has any additional insight because its all right there. nothing me or anyone else says is going to do a better job of expressing what's going on and who these people are than 'you did a good job' or 'i can't forgive you but I love you' or 'are you just being nice to me?' or 'he never even liked me'. if the significance or impact of those lines isn't immediately obvious to you then I simply cannot help you
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