(no subject)
this is the kind of thing where i would say "why did i spend all my time on this when i could have been doing other things", except...i have no other things...? so it is totally justifiable that i spent so much time on this right
anyway that's a roundabout way of saying HERE IS A BUNCH OF PICTURES AND STUFF ABOUT GAME OF THRONES maybe you want to look at it if you are curious or if you already know all this stuff and wouldn't mind seeing it summarized in a witty manner
so, game of thrones! it is a show, but it is also a series of books, whoa. the books are called a song of ice and fire, hereby referred to as "the books", and the show is just called "game of thrones" because that is the title of the first book:
also lbr the best title in the series, i mean look at the others:
admittedly i do like "a feast for crows" but there aren't any particular amounts of battlefield corpses in that one so i don't know why it's called that
the others are pretty generic and don't really say anything about the contents
but anyway
mostly this is going to be about the show, because the show is the thing that can be screencapped. i will mention the books sometimes! but not very much the ones that take place after the second book/second season, because spoilers.
here is a promotional picture for the show that says basically nothing:
yup that's a sword and some faraway crows and blackness i bet those things are in there
so here's some actual stuff
there is a place called westeros, it has seven kingdoms and also there are some free cities and some other stuff
here is part of a map
that's westeros
here's the other part of the map
that's the part that isn't westeros
the seven kingdoms are ruled by one king who lives in a place called king's landing
the people who are not in the seven kingdoms have their own thing, it varies from place to place
mostly the show has only covered a few parts of the seven kingdoms and not a lot of the free cities, but the books do more so presumably the next seasons of the show will follow suit
the special thing about westeros is that it doesn't really believe in spring-summer-fall-winter. well, it kind of does! spring and fall are mentioned as existing, and right now things are currently in fall. but spring and fall do not last very long, because they are dominated by either a hell-ass long winter or a hell-ass long summer. i mean, the most recent summer was nine years long. pretty cool right?
well not when the long-ass winters come
and you may have heard this particular line a lot, because it is pretty cool
winter is coming
things are going to get fucked up good and everyone knows it but is trying not to think about it too hard
but the most recent summer was pretty peaceful, which was helped by a rebellion having deposed the previous line of crazy royalty, the targaryens. no seriously they were pretty dang crazy. well not all of them! but uh that did not really matter so much, and as far as everyone knows only two targaryens escaped the slaughter. we will talk about them later.
right now the realm is ruled by the baratheons, who are not crazy. good king robert may not be very sensible, but he's way better than the mad king aerys targaryen, so as long as he rules things are gonna be okay, right?
think about that phrasing for a second
yeah
let's talk about characters
this dude is eddard stark, he is almost always called ned and he is sort of the main character i mean he gets top billing in the show that's gotta mean something right
he is the lord of a place called winterfell! it's up in the north, so it's all cold and shit, and its people are known for being hardcore because dude they live in a place that is always cold and shit while everyone else gets nice weather sometimes
ned is super-honorable like i mean damn. way back before the story starts, he was a major player in the rebellion that overthrew the targaryens, and he's still kind of conflicted by this because killing kings is like...really bad...? even when they have burned your father and brother alive and had your sister raped and murdered...? when i said ned stark is honorable i meant he is seriously fucking honorable okay
anyway when that was all over and his buddy robert whom we will get to later was crowned king ned went back to winterfell and settled in to be peaceful and have lots of kids with his wife:
catelyn stark née tully. as you may have guessed she is not from winterfell, and had problems adjusting, but she's basically fine with it now even though the northerners can get kind of tetchy about non-northerners. marrying ned was not in her life plans; she was arranged to marry his brother brandon, whom she knew, but brandon died and laws and shit dictated she marry ned instead. she also had problems adjusting to that. but she's fine with it now! they are happy together. her people, the tullys, are from a place called riverrun and are all about fish and questionable marital decisions. she is really into keeping her kids safe. so let's introduce the rest of them!
this is robb stark, oldest of the stark kids. in the books he's like 14, but in the show he's like 16. not that this stops him from looking 25. as heir to winterfell, he must be all serious and shit most of the time, but he loves his family and is fully prepared to be a fair and just ruler when his time comes. so, uh. do you know that spoiler? it's really hard to have heard of this show and not know that spoiler. but i won't say it here, because this is my blog and i play by my rules. anyway, robb. i don't have any particular feelings towards him. each chapter in the books is from a different character's perspective, but never him. i'm really not sure why.
this is sansa stark. in the books she's 12, but the show thankfully aged her up to 14, although this is still kind of problematic for reasons. it is hard to find pictures of her that do not look like her staring vapidly into the distance. but here's one where she's being totally badass:
i mean, it doesn't look like it, but trust me, totally badass
sansa is pretty traditionally feminine. she likes pretty clothes, stories about heroic knights saving beautiful women, embroidery, and optimistic portrayals of royalty. you would think this makes her kind of annoying. you would be wrong. a female character doesn't need to have physical strength to be a good character, and sansa is, like, the embodiment of that. she is my queen and anyone who complains about her will get side-eyed with great prejudice.
she also uh kind of has to deal with some shit that i should mention but i'll talk about that later
this is arya stark with a knife
this is arya stark with a practice sword
this is arya stark with a real sword
do you get the picture
arya is pretty much 100% better than you, there is figuratively no denying this. in the books she's 9, but here she's...i forget, actually. older than 9. she is not a traditionally feminine girl; she likes fighting, playing with her direwolf (did i mention all the stark kids get direwolves shit i forgot anyway they find direwolf puppies and the kids each get one because that's the family sigil), and not being a lady. ned gets her a dude to teach her swordfighting, and the dude also happens to teach her all this fancy shit like not needing physical strength and being quick and quiet and how to catch cats. she is tiny, but she is fierce! and she doesn't like it when people call her a boy, even though that is like 90% of the time after the first book/season.
this is bran stark. ain't he a cutie? in the books he's 7, but in the show he's 10. it is not a spoiler to say that at the end of the first episode something happens and he wakes up without the use of his legs. this is upsetting, but he powers through it. also maybe he can do stuff in his dreams? the show has not yet specified, but it's pretty obvious that he ain't normal. basically none of the stark kids are. i mean, for a variety of reasons, but there's a really non-normal one that is super-concentrated in bran. he is a character who is disabled but still does stuff and is not considered less of a person. woo!
this is rickon stark, aka "wait, there's another one?". in the books he's 3, in the show he's 6. thus far in the show he has done literally nothing. i barely even remembered he existed. he does more in the books, though. if you're only watching the show you don't really need to know much about him so far. moving on.
this is jon snow. in the books he's 14, in the show he's 16. he is ned's bastard son, so he doesn't get to be called "stark"; the people in westeros have varying last names for bastard kids, and the one in the north is snow. he's never met his mom, and neither has anyone else in his family except obviously ned. his siblings like him, but catelyn never did and bastards kind of get shafted, so he joins this group called the night's watch.
the night's watch is like a mini-army stationed on this place called the wall, which is a wall. a really, really, really big wall. it's made of ice and misery and theoretically is the only thing between "civilized" westeros and the freaky wild north. nothing much freaky has happened there in a really, really long time, though! gee, i wonder how much longer that will last
the night's watch is mostly made up of criminals who get a full pardon if they dedicate their lives to being cold and miserable. very few people actually want to go there. jon was not aware of this. but hey, he's defending the realm! and he can never see the rest of it. fun times!
here is a picture of jon, bran, robb, and background rickon being all buddy in winterfell. ah, happier times
here is a picture of the starks! but none for you jon snow bye
also he is the three-time winner of westeros' "poutiest lips" competition
every house in westeros has a sigil and a slogan ("words"), and house stark is:
see i told you it was cool
when jon is at the wall he becomes friends with this dude named samwell tarly
sam is not very good at a lot of things and was forced to join the watch by his father so he seriously does not even want to be there but he and jon become friends anyway. he's good with books! this does not help much. except for when it does.
there are lots of people besides the northerners, though, so let's get into those!
this is queen cersei lannister. i guess you could call her cersei baratheon, since she's robert baratheon's wife, but nobody ever thinks of her as a baratheon because being a lannister is like bred into your bones. your dickish, egotistical bones. the lannisters are big on being 1) the richest motherfuckers in the seven kingdoms, 2) part of the royal family via marriage, and 3) not very nice people. cersei, as queen, can pretty much do whatever she wants, or at least convince people to do it themselves. these are not always nice things. she loves her children a whole lot, does not really love her husband all that much, outright dislikes her dad and younger brother, and her twin brother...well. like. you've probably heard about this.
this is her and jaime. not pictured: their inability to keep out of each other's pants. i mean, cersei doesn't wear pants, but still. you get my point.
cersei gets a lot of shit from the audience, because she is not a very nice person and kind of the villain most of the time. she would be perfectly happy to see all the starks dead, and tbh probably a lot of the rest of the world too. she just wants her family to be happy and powerful! and there are people who do not want that! it is just that the people who do not want that tend to be much more likable than she is. the show does a better job of making her a layered character; in the books she is just kind of evil, but in the show they make it pretty clear that everything she does is for her children.
here's more jaime:
it is difficult to find a screencap that adequately portrays his level of sass
jaime is kind of a weird character. like, we are told that he is super-crazy about cersei, and to a certain extent this is shown? but really only in the beginning? once he is separated from her, they no longer seem like the One Person In Two Bodies that cersei's inner monologue indicates they are. a lot of the time i get the impression he just wants to be left alone to kill people and grudgingly protect the realm. he's not really a villain, either; he is known as the kingslayer, because he was the one to actually kill mad king aerys. people kind of look down on him for this, because he is a member of the king's guard and as such should be loyal to the king at all times, even when the king is completely fucking psycho. so he's done good stuff! he's just also kind of a jerk most of the time. the only person he really cares about is cersei and it's totally going to stay that way forever right? right?
cersei and jaime have a little brother!
this is tyrion. it's not hard to find screencaps that adequately portray his level of sass.
tyrion's birth killed mama lannister, which has not endeared him to the rest of them. he likes books, knowing shit, alcohol, and whores. he's also a sassy little motherfucker, which is his only line of defense. of the lannisters, he is generally shown as the least evil, or at least the audience sympathizes with him more. sometimes it's hard to remember that he's technically one of the bad guys. he doesn't hate any of the other houses, even. he's also usually the smartest person in the room, but that does not always help much.
isn't that a nice promotional picture? such a happy family
there are some royal children!
this is joffrey, twelve-time winner of westeros' "most punchable face" competition. there is literally no one in the world who likes him. well, cersei and maybe his siblings. but in our world, he is one of the most reviled fictional characters of all time. there are good reasons for that! they are pretty spoilery, though.
also there are myrcella and tommen, aka "wait, there are others besides joffrey?".
in the show, they have not done much. they do later in the books, so presumably they will later in the show, too. but right now, they are not very important. moving on.
this is tywin lannister, aka "arguably-evil daddy warbucks". he doesn't really like his children. they don't really like him. it's a family tradition. as the head of the lannisters (and their home, casterly rock), he has All Of The Gold and is not afraid to mention this. he has a lot of experience with war, and also with being a hardass. a hardass who gets things done! but a hardass. nobody in-universe likes him, really. he's okay with that.
check out dat lion. people usually associate them with the phrase "a lannister always pays his debts", though. because they do! they have a lot of money and they like to make sure anyone who helps them gets a fair reward. so they have that going for them, at least.
but where's this king we keep hearing about?
robert baratheon used to be a great warrior, back in the days of the rebellion. he's been king for a while now, though, so he's grown old and fat and he knows it. he still loves alcohol, beautiful women, and watching honorable violence, but he leaves most the kinging to his small council, and he's not really a happy guy any more. he and cersei have never really gotten along, but they're okay with that; it was an arranged marriage and seemed like the best option at the time. he has two brothers:
renly, who serves on the small council and is mostly known for liking cool clothes. well, and he can fight, but the books take special attention to point out that he likes clothes. and is not super-into his wife. and hangs out with this pretty dude called the knight of the flowers. who is known for being beloved by ladies but not super-into them. are you seeing where i am going with this. the books are actually pretty subtle about it, but the show doesn't give a fuck and thus:
bless you hbo
loras tyrell, the knight of the flowers, is really seriously great at jousting, is really loyal to renly, and is very pretty. that's basically all we get to know about him.
sansa is totally into him. oh, sansa.
robert and renly have another brother:
stannis! he is a serious dude. he doesn't show up until the second season/book. i initially didn't much care for him--dude is very serious--but in the books we get to see him from the perspective of his right-hand man, who is much more likable and as such gives us more of a reason to like stannis.
this is davos seaworth, the aforesaid right-hand man. he was a smuggler but then he saved the lives of a whole bunch of stannis' men plus stannis himself, so stannis pardoned him and made him a knight. not before cutting off parts of some of his fingers, though. stannis is a very serious dude. they are total bros now, though!
most of the time i just picture davos thinking "what did i do to deserve this"
yup, them's the baratheons. well, stannis has a wife and daughter, but the wife hasn't done much in the show and the daughter hasn't been in it at all yet.
so now we've covered the three big houses in the series, right? stark, lannister, and baratheon are the powerhouses. so far. gradually other houses start to do shit. but remember how i said not all the targaryens were killed?
presenting my queen daenerys stormborn targaryen. in the books she's 13, but in the show it's never specified, which is good for a variety of reasons. when she was not quite born, her mother and brother got the hell out of the seven kingdoms, what with their entire family being slaughtered and all. daenerys was born during a storm. d'ya get it? stormborn? anyhow stuff happened their mom died and she and her brother viserys are traveling around the free cities asking for help reclaiming their rightful throne. they aren't getting a lot. but then! a friend of theirs says he can get them an army if daenerys marries the guy in charge of it!
daenerys is not super-into this idea.
she goes along with it, though, because at this point she has literally no agency. i mean none. the girl does whatever her brother tells her to.
this is her brother viserys. it's okay to hate him. everyone else does. including her, soon enough.
it does not take all that long for daenerys to get really into the lifestyle of the dothraki, her new people. her husband khal drogo is very intimidating, but that gets better too!
daenerys is doing pretty okay. viserys is not. this is as it should be.
there is a dude from the seven kingdoms who acts as interpreter and general envoy between the targaryens and the dothraki:
ser jorah mormont (yeah they spell sir "ser" in westeros it's very edgy), a knight who was exiled by ned stark because he was selling some slaves, which is bad. granted, the slaves were poachers and he really needed the money, but law is law. he really wants to get home, so he's helping daenerys and viserys do the same.
he's also kind of in love with her, but who isn't, really
i'm not even being facetious about that later in the books there are like five different dudes who want to marry her it's kind of hilarious
daenerys becomes more and more hardcore as time goes by!
this is her eating a horse heart to prove how hardcore she is. could you do that? no. could the starks or the lannisters or the baratheons? probably also no. anyway, stuff happens. you may have seen this image:
well if you haven't you have now. it's pretty iconic. i mean, dragons! i won't spoil you as to how exactly this comes about. but dragons.
the targaryens are pretty big on dragons, as you may have guessed
now we have covered the main houses! so let's move on to the people who are not from those houses. let's begin with joffrey's personal bodyguard/person-who-kills-people, sandor clegane, who is usually just called the hound, partly because he wears a scary dog helm and partly because he is not the best at humanity
he's all burned and shit. he doesn't like to talk about it. his life is not all that great and he literally thinks of himself as an animal whose sole purpose is to kill on command which doesn't improve his mood much
he is pretty much 50% anger, 40% self-hatred, and 10% weird relationship with sansa
(context: joffrey just had one of his guards hit sansa for being too badass and sandor was all :| so hey handkerchief/rare moment of humanity)
their dynamic is kind of awkward and creepy and confusing and great. in the books, the creepiness is ramped up a notch, but in the show he's a little nicer (not that that means much). it would be kinda sweet, except he kills a lot of people and hates everything and is not generally a nice dude, even to her. certainly she isn't all that happy about the whole thing.
are we supposed to ship it? we just don't know
friendly reminder that in the books sansa is 12
also if you don't ship it don't google image their names together mine eyes have seen too much
besides renly, there are three other people on the small council!
lord varys is 1) a eunuch and 2) the person who basically knows everything about everyone, and is not afraid to mention this. he has lots of people all over the city who listen to everything and report back to him. this makes him useful, and fortunately his motivation is genuinely to help the realm, plus he's generally a pleasant dude, so he's not a villain. this is not strictly speaking true of this next guy.
lord petyr baelish, nicknamed "littlefinger" because he came from an area called the fingers and was a very small child, ha ha how droll. when he was a kid he was raised along with catelyn and catelyn's sister lysa, and he was really good friends with them! how good friends with them depends on who you ask. he was and still is pretty openly in love with catelyn, but she had to marry brandon stark and then ned stark, so things didn't really work out for him. it probably wouldn't have anyway, because in one scene catelyn refers to him as both "like a little brother" and "my good friend".
here's an easy test for if someone has a good understanding of human character: should you feel sorry for littlefinger, or not? if you say yes then you are wrong, because he is a lying liar who lies and doesn't care about anyone besides himself (well, maybe still catelyn) and actively fucks things up for people. i'm weirdly fond of him, though, partly because--like the hound--he has an interesting association with sansa. to whom he is ever so helpful. and my, did anyone ever tell you you look exactly like your mother when she was young?
yeah sansa has to deal with some shit
additional friendly reminder that in the books sansa is 12
here's another picture of littlefinger, because why not
and here is a picture of him in his natural habitat
but seriously, never feel sorry for the dude. he's a young Nice Guy who grew up and got powerful, and being an interesting character does not make him an excusable one.
the last dude on the small council is:
maester pycelle. maesters are these dudes who are kind of like doctors but also know a lot of general shit. they train in a place called the citadel and wear a necklace of chainlinks. each link represents a different thing they've learned. really old maesters have a shit-ton of chainlinks. there are other maesters in the show--winterfell has maester luwin, the wall has maester aemon, and possibly there are others i don't remember. maester pycelle is kind of a dick. i honestly forgot he was even on the small council. i'm really only mentioning him to explain maesters.
stannis has another friend! well, i say "friend"
this is melisandre. no one even knows what her deal is
she likes burning shit. sometimes including people! it's all in the name of r'hllor, the red god and lord of light, who was not all that popular in westeros for a long time but is gaining popularity because reasons. the north mostly worships "the old gods", who have no names or faces or rituals; basically what you do when you want to be religious in the north is to hang out by the nearest heart tree:
pretty! anyway you sit there and look at the little face that was carved in way long ago and you think deep thoughts. or you don't. the old gods really just do not give a fuck. there is maybe a reason they are not as popular in the south any more.
the other big religious thing is the seven gods, who are really common in westeros and get all the fancy churches and prayers and shit. well, "churches" = "septs", because seven. also priests are septons and nuns are septas. it is much more complicated than sitting by a tree. it's really popular, though.
that is the outside of a sept
that is a septon
but anyway my point is melisandre is a priestess of r'hllor and she is super big on spreading his word, and she has latched onto stannis as being the next big thing in terms of prophecy. she sees the future in her flames! sometimes. mostly she is enigmatic and creepy. davos doesn't like her. pretty much nobody who does not also actively worship r'hllor likes her. once the books start having chapters from her perspective, though, she becomes more likable. funny how that works.
there is a dude who lived with the starks! and by "lived with" i mean "was technically a hostage given by his dad to ensure peace but basically grew up there so considers the starks his family"
well
considered
this is theon greyjoy. i don't care for him. stuff that makes him sympathetic happens later, but i still don't care for him. he has a much cooler sister:
asha greyjoy! her family likes her better than him
she also likes her better than him
for some reason in the show her name is yara? like there is another character named osha but i'm pretty sure they never meet so i don't know why hbo thought it would be confusing
anyway i think of her as asha even though i saw the show first, it's better than yara
the greyjoys get points for having a cool sigil. they don't really show up beyond theon until the second season/book, and i am not terribly into them. asha is cool! none of the others are. cool kraken, though.
there are people who live beyond the wall, and people on the "civilized" side call them wildlings. they call themselves the free folk, because they don't believe in kings or bloodlines and are all about proving your ability yourself. naturally, the civilized people think that is really weird. trusting someone's own merits over who their great-grandad was whaaaa
one of these free people is a lady named ygritte!
well she wouldn't like being called a lady but
she and jon snow have a meet cute kinda
the night's watch and the wildlings kind of really hate each other so she is never having any of his shit and it's all kinda complicated but cuties
yes cuties
she doesn't show up until the second season/book though so don't wait up for her
this is shae
she's a whore! she's pretty okay with that. we don't know shit about her, which she is also pretty okay with.
she's not just a whore, she's tyrion's personal whore, but really she's basically his ladyfriend because she's totally into him regardless of the pay
i like her a lot! he likes her a lot! and that's all i'm gonna say about that
this is margaery tyrell:
she has not done much in the show yet, but will, because once she shows up in the books she is super-important. i have no idea how the fuck her name is pronounced. like marjorie? is it just a fancy alternate spelling? probably they've said it in the show and i've just forgotten because i haven't rewatched the second season yet. she is a complicated person and would benefit from having some pov chapters, but i am predisposed to like her because she is nice to sansa. in a happier universe they would totally be bff and commiserate about bad luck with dudes. although margaery's bad luck with dudes is not so much "psychologically scarring" and more "causes bad luck to dudes".
this is gendry:
he is the apprentice of an armorer! at first. he becomes totes friends with arya, and is paired with her, like, a lot. which is justifiable! they have a cool relationship, and he is a cool dude, although not a very happy one. he might be important, he might not, who knows? in any case he's all grubby and makes good armor and is probably legal, i'm just saying.
this is brienne of tarth and she is the actual best
she doesn't appear until the second season/book, boo
but when she does she is the actual best
she is really loyal to renly because he was basically the only person to be nice to her, ever
in the books people rag on her constantly about being ugly, but the show doesn't have that as much
besides, jaime doesn't think she's ugly!
wait no he does sorry should have mentioned that
also they hate each other and then they don't hate each other and they are my fucking otp and i will hear no different
i am not even kidding their weird friendship made jaime one of my favorites
she becomes literally the second other person ever who does not hate him and that's just kind of adorable
(the other is cersei and that's going pretty south by that point anyway)
that is the face of a man who is questioning his life choices
that is the face of a woman who does not give a fuck
there are other people in this series but they are either unimportant or i just didn't feel like mentioning them
who can blame me there are a lot of people in this fucking series
anyway you should at least totally watch the opening sequence, it's crazy-great (and where i got the pictures for king's landing, winterfell, and the wall)
Click to viewin conclusion
this is a seriously great book series and a seriously great show and a staple of geek culture
the show currently has two seasons of ten episodes each, and the second season has just come out on dvd/blu-ray, just in time for the third season to premiere on march 31st
not gonna lie the books are fucking bricks you could kill a man with the hardcovers
there are five of them so far and well at least they'll keep you busy
until you finish the fifth and realize there are years and years between each book and book five was only released a year and a half ago
being an asoiaf fan is suffering
for a variety of reasons
but if you like great characters and interesting relationships and cool ladies and a story that sometimes makes you scream in a good way, game of thrones and a song of ice and fire are pretty dang great
fair warning though there are a lot of boobs (especially in the show, which likes to add random sex scenes because hbo) and if you have rape or sexual assault triggers this is definitely not the series for you. so far there's only been some dubcon for daenerys, but sansa's life becomes very unpleasant and there is background rape of extras all the time, plus rape is threatened a lot. also remember daenerys is 13ish and sansa is 12-14. i am not entirely certain george r r martin understands how young female sexuality works. but if you're not bothered by that, the series is pretty dang great! as i have been saying over and over
here is a bonus picture that i found
i have no idea what is going on
perhaps we'll never know