Elegant rooms

Obviously this blog is primarily about Game of Thrones, starting with season 6, but fair warning: I may occasionally post about some other tv show, a movie, or politics etc as I please.

The reason for the name should be obvious to thrones fans or regular watchers: it's a quote from Tyrion Lanister in season 6 episode 3, where he tries to engage Missandei and Grey Worm in conversation.

"A wise man once said the true history of the world is the history of great conversations in elegant rooms."

The wise man being himself, but it leads nicely into some of the things I like about Game of Thrones. So let's go!

What I love about Game of Thrones:

• Tyrone Lanister. Actually, he's just my favourite out of  bunch of compelling characters. That's the real point: compelling characters. Even characters who have done some seriously nasty shit, like Melisandre, have interesting character development. (Of course, there are some characters who I just want to see die a horrible death asap, like Ramsey.)
• The conversations, in elegant rooms or otherwise. The backbone of Game of Thrones are the conversations between the various compelling characters, in elegant and not so elegant rooms or in 'walk with me' situations. For example, I loved the season two interactions between Arya and Tywin - could have done with more. When well established characters meet each other for the first time, or characters long parted are reunited, it has the same kind of epic moment feel as Marvel tries to achieve when bringing its characters together for the first time. 
• Humour. Obviously the example I led in with, and any number of other Tyrion quotes. There's any number of one liners and character exchanges. They even do goofy situation humour, such as the when the Hound reveals to Thoros who Arya actually is, and the camera changes focus to the 'oh fuck' look on her face
• Production values. The quality of the production is excellent. The locations especially add a sense of epic sense that you can't get from pure CGI (I'm looking at you Star Wars prequels). The production design, cinematography and special effects are high quality
• The theme music. I mean come on... it's awesome
• The names! Missandei, Oona, Daenerys, Thoros, Oberon, Melisandre, Kevan... okay, not Kevan
• Story. Yes of course the twisty-turny storytelling is great. I'm not putting it last because it's the least important factor, so much as it's all those other things that make the story work, and make some of the shocking twists worth it.

What I don't like:

• the trite nature with which they sometimes treat sexual violence
• specifically, the way they take specific scenes from the books that are scenes of consensual sex, and for no reason change them to instances of rape. In particular, the weird scene in season 4 where Jaime rapes Cersi has absolutely no narrative value
• the defensiveness of some fans. Can a person not both like the show, but also criticise some aspects of it? I criticised Emergency Awesome's Charlie Schneider for his glib waiver of the murder of Shireen, arranged by Melisandre. He literally said "we" [meaning us, the audience of Game of Thrones] forgive the brutal killing of a child because the person who arranged it later brought back a cool character. It was a dopey thing to say on a number of levels, and he should have been called out on it.

Anyway, despite my reservations, Game of Thrones has proven to be one of the best shows on tv, and I look forward to the rest of season 6.