A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones Spoiler-Filled Discussion

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Out Of My Vulcan Mind, Apr 21, 2011.

  1. DevilEyes

    DevilEyes Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    And they look like they could be related, don't they?

    More than the whiteish people such as the Dane NCW, Brit Lena and American Dinklage, in fact.

    Heck, what you really should be complaining about is Isaac Hempstead Wright playing the son of Sean Bean and Michelle Fairley. Two people with blue eyes producing a brown eyed child? C'mon.

    He said he based it on his father's accent.
     
  2. Venardhi

    Venardhi Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I don't see it. Hopefully a bit of makeup and an accent will help, but details haven't ever been the strong suit with this adaptation.
     
  3. Turbo

    Turbo Changeling Premium Member

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    I was wondering if they were going to merge Ellaria and Arianne's roles. Indira Varma is fantastic, and only using her for four episodes seems a bit silly. This'll help cut down on the sheer sprawl as well - it's someone the audience is already familiar with, and she has a clearly established motive for revenge.
     
  4. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    I don't think genetics works the same in this world in general as it does in ours. In their world, the children of a parent "black of hair" should apparently also always be "black of hair", regardless of the other parent's hair color. Otherwise Jon Arryn and Ned Stark never would have found the blond hair of Cersei's children odd despite Robert's hair color and the information written in the History of the Great Houses of Westeros. I'm not a geneticist, but I'm pretty sure the hair thing is not true in our world.
     
  5. The Nth Doctor

    The Nth Doctor Infinite Possibilities... Premium Member

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  6. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    ^^^ Heh...methinks the reality and the pressure of finishing is finally catching up to him. Good to know that he's still working on it though...
     
  7. Drekstar

    Drekstar Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    Hope we see more sexy women in the next eps. I know a good few were lost to the "deaths," but hopefully more will come up.
     
  8. DevilEyes

    DevilEyes Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    That's not true. Or else, for instance, all Targaryen/Martell children would have had black hair, and they didn't, some were silver-haired and some were dark-haired. Same with many other examples.

    It's just the Baratheons who are supposed to have this "super gene" or whatever that makes all their descendents black-haired, apparently. (?) Which makes zero sense in terms of real life genetics, of course. But that's probably because GRRM has no clue about it either. If he just stuck to all Robert's kids having black hair, that would have made more sense. But all the Baratheon kids over the many generations, despite many marriages with Lannisters and others... that makes no sense. Actually, I can't even think of a hypothetical genetic rule that would somehow make sense of this.

    The Stark children in the books all have either blue or grey eyes (Catelyn has blue eyes and Ned has grey), none of them have brown eyes. What we have here is just the classic case of movies and TV shows casting actors most suitable for their roles even if they don't look like they could really be family members. I'm just saying it's weird to complain about the casting of Siddig and Pascal, who look like they could be related, rather than, say, casting Isaac as the child of Sean Bean and Michelle Fairley when he really doesn't look like the could be their child.
     
  9. Skywalker

    Skywalker Admiral Admiral

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    The Baratheons typically being dark of hair fits right in with other prominent families in Westeros. Lannisters typically have golden hair and green eyes. Tullys typically have red hair and blue eyes. Starks typically have dark hair and grey eyes. Targaryens typically have silver-gold hair and violet eyes. There are some exceptions, of course, but the implication is that members of these families routinely develop these particular traits. It's a fantasy world, so I don't find it particularly odd.
     
  10. Venardhi

    Venardhi Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It isn't that Baratheons always have dark haired children, but that according to their records: whenever a Baratheon and a Lannister had kids, the kids took after the Baratheon dark hair. They were looking for any scrap of evidence they could find and this was the best they had to make their case. In a pre-scientific time, Pliny the Elder and his ilk made proclamations considered fact for a millennium with far less evidence.

    Bran having brown eyes is far easier to overlook than two brothers of clearly different ethnicity. It is actually possible for two parents to carry separate "recessive" genes that require the other specific allele in some way to exhibit. Punnett squares aren't nearly the whole story. While it may be theoretically possible for two children of "multi-ethnic" parents to take dramatically after one and the other original ethnicities, it is far less plausible.
     
  11. DevilEyes

    DevilEyes Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    No, it's not. People don't have their ethnicity written on their foreheads. You're only saying that because you know who both actors are. Ethnicity is are a social construct and not a biological or genetic one.

    It's actually perfectly possible for two full siblings to look very different in terms of skin color, hair color, eye color, features etc. (not that this is really the case here, apart from maybe skin, and not to a huge extent). That's how genetics work. Even laymen know that it's not that unusual for one child to take more after one parent and the other more after the other.

    The problem is that in this case, one of the parents would have to carry a DOMINANT gene for brown eyes and still somehow have blue eyes. That's not possible. I think I may have heard that it could perhaps happen if there is a rare mutation of the gene, but that's all.

    Yeah, families retaining their physical characteristics for centuries is pretty unlikely (though when it comes to the Targaryens and, judging by the Stark family tree from the leaked pages from the World of Ice and Fire book, it's not that surprising, since there was a great deal of inbreeding involved). But still, we get no other examples of a family where one trait was always carried over in every child in the male line.

    For instance, in the book, the only Stark children who hae the Stark look are Arya and Jon, the other four all have the Tully auburn hair and blue eyes. Baelor Breakspear (son of Daeron the Good) and his sons had dark hair like Baelor's Martell mother, while his brother Maekar and at least two of his sons had the Targaryen look. Rhaegar's and Elia's daughter Rhaenys had dark hair while their son Aegon had silver hair. And as we find out in the WOIAF excerpt, the "Baratheon" look (and sigil, and words) is actually the Durrandon look - that's how king Argillac looked like, and presumably his daughter Argalia, who married Orys Baratheon (of Valyrian descent and probably bastard half-brother of Aegon, Rhaenys and Visenya). So, it's not like there's something special about the male line, genetics-wise; therefore, the last name should not always be reflective of the look.
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2014
  12. Venardhi

    Venardhi Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Would you prefer I said "ancestry" or "phenotype" or something else to that effect? Either way, they don't look like siblings.
    Brown is "dominant" because it exhibits. If it does not exhibit it is recessive. If the pigment production that causes brown eyes is caused by the interplay of two genes which would not exhibit without the presence of the other, they will be "recessive" without both genes present.
     
  13. Brendan Moody

    Brendan Moody Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Without getting into any of the casting stuff...

    What the books say about a Baratheon "look" is that all of Robert's bastards who were available to be checked have it, and that all the historically-recorded children of Lannister/Baratheon marriages have it, including those whose Baratheon parent was the mother. We know the look isn't automatically passed on by having a Baratheon parent, though, because Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was, had a Baratheon mother and the Targaryen look. I don't think the Baratheon look is meant to be absolute in a way that other house looks aren't; it's just somewhat more "powerful," in this nonsensical plot-driven theory of genetics, than, say, the Lannister look.
     
    Last edited: Jul 31, 2014
  14. DevilEyes

    DevilEyes Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    They look like siblings much more than Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams do.

    And no, I wouldn't prefer "ancestry" or "phenotype" because that doesn't make any more sense.

    You got that backwards. Brown exhibits because it's dominant. Brown is dominant, not recessive, so I don't get what you mean by "if it is recessive". It is not.
     
  15. Venardhi

    Venardhi Vice Admiral Admiral

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    You must either lack reading comprehension or are simply trying to rile me up at this point.

    Brown isn't a single-gene that is either dominant or recessive. It isn't just a switch that turns on. Brown is considered phenotypically "dominant" because blue essentially is the default setting for eye color if none of the pigment-producing genes are present or active (in some cases they produce very little, which can result in green eyes). Some of the genes and alleles that CAN result in brown eyes require specific combinations of genes in order to exhibit. These brown-eyed genes aren't always dominant and can "hide" in blue-eyed people until they are passed on in a combination that will produce brown-eyed offspring.

    Genetics isn't just a series of switches and sliders like a video game, and the way they teach it in middle and high school biology is a sham.
     
  16. Captaindemotion

    Captaindemotion Admiral Admiral

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  17. Venardhi

    Venardhi Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Dorne isn't all desert. It seems to have several climates: desert, mediterranean, steppes, etc.If Martin intended Westeros as a whole to be the size of South America (as he has said), then Dorne has plenty of space for a variety of climates.
     
  18. DevilEyes

    DevilEyes Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Thanks for the completely irrelevant "lesson". What the hell does any of this supposed great knowledge of yours have to do with the issue at hand? And how on Earth does it have to do with whether Pascal and Siddig look like siblings? They sure look a lot more like siblings than Bran looks like a son of Ned and Cat.

    Out of all the people playing family members in the show, you think that Siddig and Pascal don't look enough like siblings? Really?
     
  19. Venardhi

    Venardhi Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I was correcting misinformation, and then more misinformation in response to my correction, so I think it was fairly relevant knowledge. There is nothing "supposed" or "great" about it.

    I have problems with a lot of the siblings on the show and I've spouted off about them time and time again. This particular example is simply the one we're discussing.
     
  20. Brendan Moody

    Brendan Moody Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The Belfast Telegraph reports that an elderly actor named J. J. Murphy who died suddenly on Friday had been in the process of filming scenes as Denys Mallister for season five. No word on whether the part will be recast.