Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Toronto Public Library, of which I am a card-carrying member and all, decided to remake its’ website fully, and so now I had to re-register myself online and all. It was unnecessary, redundant, and all, but they did it regardless. Damn them.
The weather is just as bad – this winter is a bad one
and the weather network cheerfully reiterates it day after day. Between that,
and our apartment needing repairs, life sucks. So, let us look at HBO’s ‘Knight
of the seven kingdoms’, shall we?
…Well, my first avenue of escape from reality was our
RPG, based on D&D 3.5. (Why is a story for another time). One of our
opponents was a Green Star Adept, that is to say something of a magic user who
is slowly becoming a construct instead. The person who was designing this
opponent just had the GSA be a wizard before becoming a GSA; one of our players
wanted the GSA’s base class story to be more diverse, and so the gaming session
just imploded; person 2 proclaimed that the GSA was just a basic wizard with the
prestige class tackled on and that the base class history should’ve been more
diverse, and person 1 pointed that a lot of GSA’s skill requirements were
Knowledge skills, and so a wizard was a best choice… it was a mess. Onto the ‘Knight’?
Eh, after watching the series’ premiere I have one
question: what happened to HoD? GoT was able to finish itself, though no one
was pleased as to how it happened, and HoD? HoD ended with S2, so far there is
no info when HoD will go onto S3, and HBO is already presenting an entirely
different Westeros show. Is HoD on a hiatus or something? People would like to
know, I bet…
As for ‘Knight’ itself… it is an RPG. It is a
quasi-historical RPG, set in a quasi-England, with Dunk and Egg being the main
players. They have to pass obstacles, surmount challenges, flat-out survive and
all… it is not a bad concept, and not a bad delivery, and I, for one, have no
problem with ‘Knight’, but that robin…
One of the scenes in 1x01 is Duncan hearing – and seeing
– a robin in a tree. Since Westeros is based on England (of Shakespeare, and
Chaucer, and even Bearns, just a bit), I am guessing that it is a European
robin rather than some other – in our times the name ‘robin’ is applied to
several bird species, not really related to each other. Of course, given how
Westeros is imaginary, and that Mr. Martin tends to use animals in his novels
as random monsters if at all, HBO could’ve used an American robin just as well,
seeing how no one cared; but.
But what exactly did they do with the robin? I am
reckoning that they could have gone into public video domain and got the
footage of the European (or any other) robin to use in their show. Instead, I
am mostly convinced, they used some sort of an AI to generate the bird; it is
not a bad idea, it just makes the bird look rather fake. Duncan’s (ok, his
actor’s) look at the singing bird only drives this point further – it’s quite
fake and the show didn’t even tried to pretend that the fellow was really
staring at an actual bird; instead, the actor just did his best to look incredulous…
at nothing in particular. Fun!
That said, CGI-birds and the like aside, ‘Knight’ is
a good TV series and I am surprised at the general lack of reaction towards it.
Sure, there are reviews about it online, but little else; seemingly the
Westeros fanbase itself is suspicious of HBO’s new move, even though ‘Knight’
does work. Oh, and Mr. Martin is teasing his new book, ‘The Winds of Winter’.
Sigh.
Did not want to go there, but perhaps part of Mr.
Martin’s, and HBO’s, problem is that people are moving past Westeros; his books
aren’t selling as they did before, and overall the franchise’s popularity is waning;
HBO tries to fix this, and they’re doing it better than how Disney did with SW,
but regardless…
Regardless, it might not be enough. Right now, it’s
winter 2026, it’s a bad and snowy one, and the Donald seems to be trying to
destroy democracy on the planet, so of course people will watch anything to
escape reality, and ‘Knight’ is a good show. Of course, so far, it is just the
series’ premiere, so what happens next is anyone’s bet, but so far, the show is
promising, so let’s be optimistic for the moment, even though real life still sucks.
Well, this is it for now, actually. See you all
soon!
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