{"id":37166,"date":"2017-02-24T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37166"},"modified":"2017-09-08T13:19:21","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T17:19:21","slug":"game-of-thrones-griping-5-klingon-promotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37166","title":{"rendered":"Game of Thrones Griping 5: Klingon Promotion"},"content":{"rendered":"
This series analyzes the show, but sometimes references the books as well. If you read it, expect spoilers for both.<\/div>\n

I promised you two topics this week: Sansa Stark and Ramsay Snow. I’m going to have to punt on Sansa Stark. To coin a completely original expression, I’ve been hella sick recently. Not as sick as the baseball-bat-to-the-face-like Plutonian Death Flu the Young family got, but sick. I’m now better but I’ve fallen behind on a lot of things, including this one. So this week’s entry is going to be a bit shorter than originally planned. You may celebrate or grieve according to what you feel is appropriate.<\/p>\n

The Assassination of Roose Bolton by the Coward Ramsay Snow<\/h3>\n

I’m gonna switch it up a bit here and say something nice about the show for a change: they got Roose Bolton right.<\/p>\n

That wasn’t an easy task. Way back when Game of Thrones was just a twinkle in HBO’s eye, those of us in the online A Song of Ice and Fire book fandom would sometimes muse to ourselves about what actors would play what characters in a hypothetical dream adaptation. Some of it was prescient (lots of people saw Sean Bean as Ned Stark). Some of it was pie-in-the-sky stuff (Brad Pitt as Jaime Lannister! Vin Diesel as the Hound!). Some of it was predictable fan stuff (David Tennant as everyone!). But I remember that there was no consensus on who should play Roose Bolton. Suggestions ranged from Sir Anthony Hopkins to Cillian Murphy to Steve Buscemi and everything in between.<\/p>\n

Privately, I didn’t think that Roose Bolton was unadaptable, but I was certain that if anyone ever did adapt the novels they’d get him wrong anyway. They’d make him either too mustauche-twirly, too obviously creepy, too young, too old, or some combination of the four. But they wouldn’t be able to evoke that understated, unsettling quality the character had in the books. But damn if they didn’t pull it off. The actor’s name is Michael McElhatton, and I’d never heard of him before, but a look at his IMDB pageimdb.com\/name\/nm0568385\/<\/a><\/span> shows a guy who’s definitely paid his dues. I hope to see more of him after all this, because I suspect that Roose Bolton is a deceptively difficult part to play. You have to convey a menacing type of intelligence while also giving a low-profile performance. It’s a combination that Aidan Gillen’s Littlefinger never quite pulled off, for example.And I thought Gillen was excellent in The Wire.<\/span><\/p>\n

So that was me saying a nice thing about the show. Now it’s time to shift gears a bit. As you’ve all no doubt noticed, usually I write these pieces from a place of serene, magistrate-like impartiality. A team of lawyers and experts exhaustively reviews every sentence to ensure their complete and unquestionable objectivity. But there is one subject on which I must admit to having a tiny, almost microscopic speck of bias: I can’t stand Ramsay Snow.<\/p>\n

I don’t mean that in a “he’s the villain you love to hate” sort of way, either. I hate hating Ramsay. I hate being aware of his (fictional) existence at all. Even the manner of his eventual death irritated me. Rarely have I seen a more obvious example of a classic GM’s pet antagonist make it into a major movie or TV show. If Wesley Crusher was a villain, he would be Ramsay. If Kai Leng was a sadistic rapistIs he? I haven’t read the novels.<\/span>, he would be Ramsay. If Poochie got busy in a slightly more proactive way, and also hunted humans for sport, he would be Ramsay.<\/p>\n

I don't need Starfleet Academy. I need twenty. Good. Men.<\/div>
I don't need Starfleet Academy. I need twenty. Good. Men.<\/div><\/p>\n

The writers’ admiration for their character is palpable. They assume we’ll be fascinated by a scene where Ramsay tortures Theon even after we’ve already seen several such scenes already. Ramsay and his twenty good men can move through what we’re told are impassable snows to burn the supplies for an entire army. This so demoralizes said army that half of its soldiers desert overnight, through the same impassable snows. All this happened because Stannis Baratheon, who we’re repeatedly assured is the finest military commander in Westeros, apparently forgot to post sentries around his camp.They don’t even tell him until the next morning. If I were Stannis, I think I would say something like “you know, if half my army is deserting, you can go ahead and wake me up. I promise I won’t be mad.”<\/span><\/p>\n

An entire crew full of what we’re told are the finest killers in the Iron Islands will run from a half-dozen angry dogs – if they’re Ramsay’s dogs. Sansa Stark is the “key to the north,” and a marriage to her is vital to maintaining control of the northern lords… then the heads of what the show tells us are two of the three largest houses in the north show up at Winterfell to volunteer their services after<\/em> Sansa has escaped and is trying to raise an army against the Boltons.<\/p>\n

It's not easy to tell the blood splatters from the actual cuts, but my estimate is that Ramsay has taken at least four wounds to the torso here. Luckily, none of them are more than a quarter-inch deep.<\/div>
It's not easy to tell the blood splatters from the actual cuts, but my estimate is that Ramsay has taken at least four wounds to the torso here. Luckily, none of them are more than a quarter-inch deep.<\/div><\/p>\n

They like Ramsay so much that they don’t care that he killed his own father in cold blood.Then, just in case you thought deep down he had a heart of gold or something, he feeds his mother-in-law and her infant child to his dogs.<\/span> In fact, Lord Karstark witnessed it firsthand, with no warning, and barely even blinked. He seemed more offended that anyone would even briefly object to the murder than he was to the murder itself.<\/p>\n

Look, I know that the show is depicting a dark, violent world. But the number of what we nerds always used to call “Klingon promotions” happening here is getting silly. Lord Umber and Lord Karstark both know Ramsay killed his father, and if anything they seem to admire him for it. Euron Greyjoy admits to fratricide and regicide in front of the assembled nobility of the Iron Islands, and they elect him King shortly afterwards. Ellaria Sand kills the Prince of Dorne right in front of his guards, and they next time we see her she’s apparently in charge of the country.<\/p>\n

But all of the above have nothing on Daenerys, who burns down a Dothraki holy site, with the assembled Khals of the Dothraki inside it, and emerges as their ruler, or Cersei, who blows up the Westerosi equivalent of the Vatican, with basically the entire government inside it, and is crowned Queen later that episode. Given how consistently and spectacularly brazen murders of ambition are rewarded in Westeros, it’s a wonder the continent has any authority figures left at this point.<\/p>\n

If you haven’t yet noticed, this is something that bothers me, and explaining the full scope of why is probably going to take a whole other column. Basically, Roose Bolton’s death represented the death of all the things I used to like about the show. But that’s for next week.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This series analyzes the show, but sometimes references the books as well. If you read it, expect spoilers for both. I promised you two topics this week: Sansa Stark and Ramsay Snow. I’m going to have to punt on Sansa Stark. To coin a completely original expression, I’ve been hella sick recently. Not as sick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-of-thrones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}