The other day I was thinking about dumb TV show pitches, and the first thing that popped into my head was ‘Game of Thrones in space’. You know what? I would watch the shit out of that show. Tell me literally nothing else and I will give at least the first couple episodes a try. All of this in spite of the fact that George R.R. Martin is a son of a bitch who makes you fall in love with an adorable puppy and then has it run over in the street and then set on fire, scraped off the pavement by a puppy mill owner and sold for medical experimentation. Kirkman made me give up comics at the end of the prison arc in Walking Dead (it was even worse in the books) but somehow I’m still glued to that show. #notreallydead goddamnit.
In other news, below I have illustrated Max’s Fourth of July weekend in a nutshell. Doberman owners can testify that there is something a bit surreal about this pic. Dobes are brave enough, give or take individual quirks, they have a kryptonite thing about water. Young Max would stop dead the moment water reached his chest. It took a lot of patience and a willingness early on to wade out after water toys myself but he eventually got over it. By now Max is halfway to a Newfoundland, the main difference being swimming speed (those big newfie paws make great paddles) and he probably would not rush out to pull someone to shore unless I threw them in first.
CaseyL
“Game of Thrones in space” = “Dune” (of the books, the first three; of the filmed versions, the SciFi mini-series). Sorta. Dune had a lower body count.
But another one would be aces, and I’d watch.
SiubhanDuinne
(Channeling Yatsuno):
MAXPUPPEH!!!!
schrodinger's cat
Greek kitteh has an answer for the Troika, check out the last panel.
Joel
@CaseyL: Dune (the first book) was great.
Everything else Dune-related.. not so much.
Elizabelle
Just cuz I typed it, bringing my Foo Fighters recap forward.
Hoping Redshift will see it and add his recap.
Link to fan footage of some of the show; you’ll see the motorized throne Dave Grohl scooted around on.
Major Major Major Major
You know the old joke right? (Heh. ‘Old.’)
George Martin, Joss Whedon, and Stephen Moffatt walk into a bar. Everybody you’ve ever loved dies.
In lighter news, I finally got to the theater for Jaws. So different on the big screen! The shark did not age well though. But there’s precious little of it (intentionally I’m told) so it doesn’t matter. Great movie. It’s no Indiana jones (I see spielbergs at rep houses for some reason) but still, what is?
Now I just have to figure out the DnD (3.5) levels for the crew of the Orca. Stay tuned :P
Elizabelle
As long as Max is not swimming off the North Carolina coast.
dum dum dum dum dum dum …
mclaren
@CaseyL:
No, Dune wasn’t a non-stop orgy of torture and mutilation and little girls getting burned alive by their fathers and preteen sex slaves getting sadistically raped and brides getting raped by their husbands on the wedding night and women and children and old men getting slaughtered at weddings.
There’s a slight difference. Dune was about politics. Game of Thrones is about sadism, rape, torture, rape, death, rape, mutilation…oh, and did I mention rape?
Game of Thrones is the perfect entertainment to appeal to the degenerate degraded diseased twisted American psyche, which abhors pleasure and joy and worships only suffering and brutalization and the savage torment of the weak by the strong.
Science fiction is about ideas and the joy of progress in a thrilling hi-tech future. Rape + mutilation + torture doesn’t really fit too well with that, so probably not gonna work.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: didn’t the Spartans lose?
ETA: oh god straight girl bridge and tunnel crowd in the gay pizza place arguing about bag taxes.
Elizabelle
@Major Major Major Major: They screened “Jaws” on the beach in Long Beach, CA a few years ago. Might do it annually. Great on a big screen.
First time I noticed how sharklike the 1970s Cadillac grill (as mayor and police chief traveled on ferry; foreshadowing.)
It’s a good flick.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat: I like it!
Major Major Major Major
@Elizabelle: my dad showed me a clip of somebody screening Jaws on a drive thru style inflatable thing but all the viewers were in a lake in inner tubes with their legs dangling. Shudder.
ETA: I was surprised how much foreshadowing the oxygen tank got.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: They did, but they went down fighting. Greece will eventually recover, but in the short term I predict a lot of pain. The currency union without a political union has become a straight jacket.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: ten cents or so (Bay Area, LA, Seattle style cities). Pigovian tax. Who the hell knows if it works.
schrodinger's cat
@Elizabelle: Thanks!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
MAX! A Dobe swimming like that is indeed surreal to see. How is DrMrsDrFJr doing? Does she swim with Max?
@schrodinger’s cat: Great bit!
dp
My Catahoula puppies have webbed claws, but they’re afraid to go more than chest deep in water. We’re working on it.
Major Major Major Major
@mclaren: I know I agree with you on a surprising number of things but I think, and I mean this politely, brushing up on history might help here. This kind of entertainment is nothing new, and humans have never been less barbaric. So we watch stuff. At least nobody is getting hurt this time around.
Surely you aren’t suggesting that the N64 Goldeneye game led to Columbine.
I mean games are ever more realistic even as kids are shooting each other less.
Tommy
@Major Major Major Major: Are you against a “bag tax?” When I lived in DC I walked to Eastern Market on Capital Hill to shop and brought my own bags.
When I moved back to rural Illinois I got lazy. The amount of bags that I would go into my recycle bin, and Iive by myself, was staggering.
IMHO you got to tax the darn things.
Major Major Major Major
@Tommy: like most policy, if it works, I’m for it. That’s all. Pigovian taxes are supposed to be pretty good, but ten cents is more of a public shaming than an actual cost. I carry a briefcase-y thing everywhere I go anyway so it doesn’t effect me much, but I do feel embarrassed whenever I forget my tote.
As intended.
Tommy
@Major Major Major Major:
One of the top five video games of all time. I am good with the sniper rifle, never thought for a split second to go kill somebody. Still got the console hooked up to play Goldeneye and Zelda.
Some of my favorite games are LittleBigPlanet and I don’t think about dressing up in a sock, flying, you name it. They are fucking games.
I am not a huge FPS just because I like puzzle game. Like Dots Connect on my phone. But a huge Civ fan and in my free time not trying to figure out how to take over the world.
All that shit is just stupid talk …..
Major Major Major Major
@Tommy: I will say that, as a Katamari fan, I do find myself occasionally sizing up obstacles to figure out if I could roll them up.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
My TV pitch: a show about fantasy-realm characters scheming and backstabbing each other in their fight for the throne, while scantily-clad concubines try to sleep their way into power. Only the ones fighting for the throne are women, and the concubines are men.
The key: the matriarchy isn’t the story, it’s just the setting. Usually when this sort of thing is attempted, every other line is something about how “a mere man could never do that.” The matriarchy should just be taken for granted, like the patriarchy in GOT.
Tommy
@Major Major Major Major: I agree ten cents seems high. People smarter than myself have to figure something out to make us not use those darn bags. I also notice it seems stores are offering bags in their store that are cheaper if not at about cost. Maybe put it on both the store and shopper.
Bruce Webb
@mclaren: Dude I think you need to go back to Dune and read the parts about Baron Harkkonnen and Beast Rabban. The former being a brutal pedophile and the latter a butcher of people on a huge scale. Just that a lot of that action perforce had to happen off stage due to the standards of the day.
I share some of your distaste for the gratuitous sex violence in GoT but Christ you go to rhetorical overkill in a way that would embarrass Glen Beck.
schrodinger's cat
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thanks! Kittehs is good at explaining the con in econ.
mclaren
@Major Major Major Major:
The claim that American movies and TV shows have “always been this way” is just plain false.
When I was kid, children were not regularly being depicted as preteen sex slaves on TV shows. Movies did not regularly show people being sadistically tortured in grotesque detail.
There’s a difference twixt torture porn and realistic storytelling, and American TV/movies have crossed it.
And I’m not the only person who has noticed this disgusting trend.
“Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn”, New York Magazine, 2014:
Tommy
@Major Major Major Major: I have my PS2 hooked up just to play Katamari. Play Kart on the PS3. I think that says enough. Maybe kindred spirits :)!
slag
@mclaren: Much of your comment I agree with except:
It’s not just an American thing, for whatever reason. Brutality has been a relatively common form of entertainment throughout cultures throughout history. While I, admittedly, don’t at all understand its appeal myself, brutality has a fairly universal following. For whatever that’s worth.
Of course, if we apply David Brooks logic, liberals are to blame because, “if it feels good, do it” and, in his mind, torture and brutality feel good. I’ll never understand it.
Tim F.
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: Kushiel’s Dart could make HBO a billion dollars.
Major Major Major Major
@mclaren: you’re the one who assumed I was talking about America and video media. Cf: all of civilization, beginning of recorded history – present (Earth). Pp. 1-ongoing.
Bruce Webb
@Tommy: Ten cents isn’t high once you get used to it. Berkeley (CA) went to this long ago and most people just saved a heavier quality plastic bag (like you might get in a clothing store or book store) and stuffed in their bag or purse as needed. Or if you know you are going to the grocery store just take a canvas grocery bag stuffed with five or six plastic bags. Now and again you get caught short and have to spring for a bag. But mostly those just get used as replacements, it doesn’t take much effort at all to cut your bag usage by 90% and never think to just throw one in the gutter or even the trash. I mean it just cost you a dime.
And truthfully a lot of the savings just comes because clerks ask “Do you need a bag?” and you realize “Not really, I’ll just put it in my backback” when otherwise you would just take the bagged goods and go. It injects that split second of thought you need to do the right thing for the Earth.
Starfish
Here is a link to a link to a John Roger’s piece about why movie execs do not lead happy lives that is relevant to this thread.
Joel
GOT, for all its flaws, has very little in common with Hostel.
mclaren
@Joel:
That’s true. Hostel does not feature non-stop rape in addition to non-stop torture.
Tommy
@Bruce Webb: I am in the middle here, or to the left moderate (not sure what that is, making it up). I am. I will walk in store once every few months and buy the largest laundry detergent. They will start to double bag it because it is heavy. I am like it has a handle like your bags, you know to carry it. Don’t need bags.
I walk in other shops with things I can put in my pockets or carry with my hands and say I don’t need a plastic bag. I can carry them. But few things I do need a bag and ten cents seems a large price.
Comrade Mary
MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
mclaren
@slag:
There’s some interesting psychological research that shows that children who are abused grow up to be highly conservative politically.
Source: Popular Science October 2012.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
Actually, though, the Spartans were famous for their austerity- we still use the word spartan to refer to something that’s plain and austere- so saying “This is SPARTA” isn’t a great way of expressing opposition to the austerians.
mclaren
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t recall any rape or torture scenes in The Epic of Gilgamesh. Could you point them out for me?
Major Major Major Major
@mclaren: ok, nice job cherry picking something half complete and damn near untranslatable.
Can you recall some murder and rape scenes from I don’t know the Iliad?
mclaren
@efgoldman:
I’m the opposite of a Puritan authoritarian. Note that puritans despise sexual content, but adore suffering and punishment.
I’m protesting the constant adoration and worship of torture and suggesting that some healthy sexuality in our entertainment media would offer a good alternative.
Incidentally, I’m not suggesting that anyone ban Game Of Thrones or any of the torture porn films at the local multiplex. If you really want to watch that vile swill, be my guest.
I do propose to continue to argue against it in an effort to persuade people that there are better and nobler entertainments out there than watching people get tortured or raped onscreen. If my logic and evidence make you uncomfortable, you may want to emigrate to North Korea. Very little free open debate there. Lots of torture and death, though.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: Being frugal, and austerity in terms of macroeconomics are two very different things. Besides, what I was trying to illustrate was that the Greeks are not going to rollover and and play dead and let the creditors have their way.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
Not really. The 300- who were actually more like 2400 when you count the poorly armed helots they brought with them- succeeded in their primary goal of delaying the Persian army for long enough for the rest of the Greek forces to get their shit together. It also gave the Athenians enough time to evacuate to Salamis, where they proceeded to win a decisive naval battle that led to the major military victory at Platea the next year. So while Leonidas and his crew were wiped out, almost to the man, their side was able to take advantage of their sacrifice to win the campaign.
mclaren
@Major Major Major Major:
Now that illustrates that you really don’t understand the issue here. Death in battle is an altogether different thing from watching a helpless victim getting tortured.
Let’s run through the differences, shall we?
[1] In battle, both combatants are armed. Neither is a helpless victim.
[2] In battle, you can see where the action is occurring and you can use tactics to improve your chances. Viz., if you see that giant guy with a war hammer and a broadsword to your left, you can dodge left.
[3] Death or mutilation in battle occurs as a result of some kind of rational calculation involving a reasonable goal, however bloody. For example: one army fights in the Illiad to get a kidnapped woman back. That may result in lots of casulaties, but it makes sense, in a broad general way.
Let’s compare with torture:
Torture involves a helpless victim, usually chained up. Not two equals, equally armed.
Torture does not allow the victim any choice. There’s nothing the victim can do to avoid endless unbearable pain.
Torture is not rational, it’s just sadism and brutality. Intelligence professionals will tell you that torture never elicits good info, it just makes people babble whatever lies they think will stop the torture.
I don’t recall rape scenes from the Illiad. Could you please show the underaged girls getting raped, the brides getting raped on their wedding night, and so on?
My point here is simple. War fiction has a long history. It involves bloody descriptions, death, and mutilation, but it’s not just gratuitous sadism.
George R. R. Martin’s child-burning and preteen kiddy-rape are just gratuitous sadism, obviously confected in order to titillate a degenerate American audience that has grown as jaded as the Roman spectators at the Coliseum who watched prisoners get locked into giant brass bulls and slowly roasted alive.
War fiction does not cater to sick debased tastes. Torture porn does. If you can’t tell the difference twixt war fiction and torture porn, that tells us you’re part of the problem. An inability to distinguish twixt war fiction and torture porn is one of the defining hallmarks of the sick twisted degenerate American culture, and a distinguishing characteristic of the diseased American psyche of 2015.
MBunge
@Bruce Webb: @mclaren: Dude I think you need to go back to Dune and read the parts about Baron Harkkonnen and Beast Rabban. The former being a brutal pedophile and the latter a butcher of people on a huge scale. Just that a lot of that action perforce had to happen off stage due to the standards of the day.
I really doubt “the standards of the day” had much to do with Dune being significantly less rapey and tortury than GOT. Ever read the Marquis de Sade?
Supposedly sophisticated grown ups seeing stuff on TV they never imagined seeing as kids has always been a big part of the appeal of these HBO shows.
Mike
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
Perhaps you should try Portal, which is a first person puzzle game and on the short list for greatest game of all time.
Major Major Major Major
@mclaren: so we’re just ignoring all the rape from the Greek epic cycle, ok. And the poisoning and the murder. Agamemnon anybody?
mclaren
@efgoldman:
We agree. Everyone is free to watch whatever they want, including torture porn. I will try to persuade people against watching that kind of stuff, but if you choose to do so, that’s your business.
BTW I’m a huge fan of Season 1 of True Detective, so I’m not particularly squeamish. That TV series used depictions of death and mutilation for something other than titillation, though. Ditto the guy getting his eyes burned out with acid in Season 2 of True Detective. So I’m not a complete prude.
I just don’t see the necessity for the constant non-stop rape and torture in Game of Thrones. And I’m not the only one bitching about it:
Source: Game of Thrones’ Relentless Misery.
Major Major Major Major
@mclaren: Marcus Aurelius
The north Germanic epic cycle towards the end (rape — killing children of rape and feeding them to rapist — burning down mansion) etc. You’re not even trying.
The Pale Scot
‘Game of Thrones in space’
Goody, I’ve been meaning to mention this. I highly recommend Defiance on SyFy.
Tony Curran and Jaime Murray chew up the scenery as the local run of the mill crime boss and his utterly ruthless incredibly devious wife. The plot are GOTisk now that I think about it. See if it’s on Netflix to watch the the first 2 seasons
Edit; link
mclaren
@Major Major Major Major:
“All the rape from the Greek epic cycle” is pretty vague. I’m asking for specific scenes. Game Of Thrones shows a scene (for example) of a bride getting raped by her husband on her wedding night, and it shows it in grotesque detail.
I don’t recall seeing any of that stuff in Greek plays or in Greek epic poetry. If rapes occur, they happen offscreen. The gods torture Prometheus for stealing fire, but that of course is a little different from the Illiad — for one thing because we don’t have any epic plays showing Prometheus getting endlessly tortured, nor any epic poetry that depicts that. For another thing, the people torturing Prometheus are not human, they’re gods. “Inhuman monsters” describes the Greek gods pretty well. I’m talking about depictions of rape and torture committed by people. There’s plenty of boogey-man fiction in world literature where icky creatures do icky things to humans, but that’s a different kettle of fish than torture porn.
“And the poisoning and the murder.” If this is all you’ve got, you’ve been forced back to trying to equate poisoning to torture and murder in some epic legend to an up-close-and-personal scene showing extended rape in some torture porn extravaganza like Game Of Thrones. At this point, everyone can pretty much see that you really don’t grasp the essential difference twixt torture porn and world literature.
Major Major Major Major
@mclaren: volsungasaga, Nibelungenloed, I don’t need to spell out chapter and verse on this epic cycle. Incest and rape and murder are pretty much it (that and dwarves and Dragons, reinterpreted as Jews and dragons if you’re Wagner or tolkein/rackham)
Major Major Major Major
@mclaren: my comment is awaiting moderation but suffice to say that the Germanic epic cycle from
Oh fuck it. Read the Old Testament if you want some rape murder and genocide porn.
mclaren
@The Pale Scot:
Defiance was great until they killed the entire Mcawley family at the start of Season 3. At that point, I stopped watching.
MBunge
@Major Major Major Major: Read the Old Testament.
Please quote, in their entirety, descriptions of rape and torture from the Old Testament and then quote such descriptions from the GOT books and blow-by-blow descriptions of such scenes from the GOT show.
Mike
Major Major Major Major
@MBunge: you first.
Lawyers, man.
It’s well known that the old testament condones rape, spousal and otherwise (as long as it’s Herero). And incest (somebody, was it Solomon? in a tent, Blah blah his daughter fucked him), not to mention slavery.
Just because it’s not explicit (and lo he stuck his hot member insideith her burning dentata) doesn’t mean it’s not there, or condoned “by god”.
Major Major Major Major
@MBunge: my attempt to do so got caught in moderation, if that tells you anything.
The Pale Scot
@mclaren: Rafe’s story arc was at its end, his mine was gone. His wife was irrational and dangerous, and Christie willingly sacrificed herself to protect her son. Doc Yewll cracks me up and if I grow 6 inches taller I’d dress like Sukar (Conan the leprechaun).
You should watch what happens after S03E01, I can’t watch SG-1 for the rest of my life.
mclaren
@MBunge:
You’re arguing with a brick wall here. These people have sunk so deep into the torture porn mindset that they no longer recognize anything that isn’t torture porn. These people are like pedophiles who think that using bogus slogans like “The right to say no means nothing without the right to say yes” actually justify their depravity.
At the end of the day, there’s such a thing as decadence, and when it sets in, the whole society goes rotten to the core. That’s what I’m seeing with America’s newfound love of torture.
And it’s interesting that lots of characters like the Major Major guy frantically try to convince us “it was always this way!” Uh, no. It was not always this way. 30 years ago, 80% of Americans said that torture was unacceptable when polled on the subject. Today, 68% of Americans approve of torture.
Source: “Most Americans Think Government May Be Justified In Torturing To Fight Terror,” Huffington Post, 9 April 2014.
This is the sign of a degenerating and depraved society. Societies in which the population approves of torture are doomed societies. And societies in which the populace enjoy entertainment showing torture and rape are sick twisted societies, limping along on their way to history’s ashcan.
Source: “Reveling in the Pain of Others: Moral Degeneracy and Violence in the “Kill Team,”” Truthout.org, 20 June 2011.
Source: “Merciless,” Charles Stross’ blog, August 2009.
mclaren
@The Pale Scot:
Yeah, I understand what you’re saying…but Rafe Mcawley was just such a great character. With Rafe on one side and Datak Tarr and his even creepier wife on the other side, you had this great power struggle. And Noland and his daughter and innocents like Amanda Rosewater and Mcawley’s daughter caught in the middle. That’s got the making of a real Shakespearan free-for-all.
Greasing Rafe and his daughter just damaged the whole dynamic of the show, I thought. There are no longer any human characters with the power to counter Datak and his wife. Nolan certainly doesn’t qualify. Just my opinion, YMMV.
Doc Yewll is fantastic. But there are so many great characters in Defiance — Berlin, Amanda Rosewater, Nolan, Datak’s son, you name ’em. They’re all great.
I was just really pissed to see such a great character as Rafe get written out of the series. It’s like Star Trek without Doctor McCoy. What the hell were they thinking???!?!??!?
Major Major Major Major
@mclaren: I can quote socrates too!
For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.” (Phaedrus 274c-275b)
Major Major Major Major
The invention in question was ‘literacy’, btw.
The Pale Scot
@mclaren:
I’m confident that the writers know what they’re doing, another power will arise.
At the moment Stahma Tarr is trying to manipulate the Omack to rescue her son. Jaime Murray is great. I’d check my pockets and make sure I had all fingers any time I was the same room as her.
opiejeanne
@Bruce Webb: it became a habit for us to bring our own bags, and some of the stores in our area give us a nickel for every bag of ours we use at the checkout. Target is one, but the one here is the only one I know of.
redshirt
If you haven’t seen Mad Max:Fury Road, do so now, in the theater. It’s a spectacle that needs to be seen on a big screen.
Mike with a mic
Got in space is warhammer 40k and is far more violent than got.
chopper
@Major Major Major Major:
the thing about all the rape, torture and death happening ‘offstage’ during so much of human culture’s depictions of the subjects is that it has in its own way desensitized us to the basic ideas.
the thing about the more graphic depictions of rape and torture of today is, it shows it like it actually is. it forces the viewer to stop and think okay, this is real, do i like this? instead of handwaving it away as something that happens somewhere else and not having to think about what it actually means for it to happen to a human being.
the problem in america is that lots of people will shrug their shoulders and say ‘oh well, sure’ instead of being rightly horrified. it’s what happened with violent murder and it’s sure to happen with rape, torture, you name it.
celticdragonchick
@mclaren:
+1000
celticdragonchick
@Mike with a mic:
Yes, Warhammer 40K is pretty violent(grimdark grimdark!)…but it is a game system marketed to teens (with rich parents) and goes real real light on rape and burning children alive.
I have played Dark Angels ever since 2nd edition back in 1995, and my kid plays Space Wolves. (I’m still wondering what the fuck GW just did to Warhammer Fantasy, however…)
MBunge
@Major Major Major Major: Just because it’s not explicit
Yeah…I don’t think I can do much with someone who doesn’t understand that explicitness, and the point of it, is what we’re arguing about.
Mike
NM
@Tim F:
Nobody else but, but I will. You are spot on – I forgot all about that book, much less the series. Billion$$$ to be made there, and they’ll sure as hell do it. May have to take down the parallel Xtianity bits a bit though.