Game of Thrones

[insomniac7809]

@Warma-Sheen said in Game of Thrones:

I was pretty harsh about the show, but since last week, I think I've changed my opinion a little.

***=Having had some time removed from the episode that really pissed people off...***

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... I think people are being overly harsh because they didn't get the happy ending they wanted. A lot of people wanted a Disney ending. All the heroes die as saviors or live to glorious admiration and respect. Well, GoT isn't Disney. And it never has been.

No, I don't think this is it.

I mean, maybe some of it is, but
***=More Spoilery Goodness***

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I'm one of the people that was defending last week's Big Twist because, yes, 'burn people I don't like to death' has been Dany's solution to every problem since S1E10. But while Dany as conquering queen was beautifully done, they needed a lot more set-up to get to 'ranting delusional lunatic' where she goes full 'we needed to destroy King's Landing to save it! And next we're going to save the whole world!'

That the context was how a woman with power has gone cookoo for cocoa puffs from being in charge does not help.

So then we have her letting Jon walk right up to her without guards when the same scenes that we're supposed to be reading as her descent into madness also involved her losing trust with Jon, but I guess we forgot about that now. So he loves her, but he has to kill her, because there's nothing toxic about a man tearfully doing violence to the woman he loves because she drove him to it...

ANyway, then Drogon slags the Iron Throne instead of turning Jon into a crispy critter, which is an effective bit of SYMBOLISM but doesn't really make a lot of sense? Anyway, Dany's fanatically loyal soldiers and the murder-rapist barbarians then stick Jon into a cell offscreen; I guess touching Grey Worm's arm is a killing offense but regicide is something that needs to be talked out.

Anyway, then we get to the trial/council, which seems like it could be a neat return to the grimy politiking that made the first few seasons shine. Instead, we have Tyrion just dictating how the monarchy of Westros is going to go. While he's in shackles. And at least three of the people there wanted to just kill him. And then he picks... king Bran? Fucking what? And everyone just goes along with that.

("Who has a better story than Bran the Broken?" I mean, the guy in the cell was born the secret child of the heir to the throne, raised a bastard of the Starks, joined the Night's Watch, joined the Wildlings, joined the Night's Watch again, became Lord Commander, died, came back to life, was named King in the North, became the Consort to the invading Queen, and betrayed her for love of the Realm. Bran, meanwhile, got tossed out of a tower, then took a trip north, and has been cryptic and useless for two seasons. Which is kinda cool. I guess.)

And then Sansa declares she's going Nexit, and everyone kinda goes along with that too, and Dorne and the Iron Isles don't start voicing opinions on how they want to change their votes if that's apparently an option now and everything's just so... flat and lifeless and pat, there's no character motivation behind the decisions, it's just how the writers decided the series would end and all the characters know it so that's just what we're doing. And then there's the last scenes, where all the characters are in powerful positions because being a named part that survived to the end is all the qualification they're looking for at this point. (How does killing people for money and being handed a lordship qualify you for Master of Coin?) And Jon gets sent to the Night's Watch, even though there's nothing to Watch against, it's now literally what Ygrette always said it was: a bunch of asshole incels whose job it is to be assholes to anyone north of a random point on the map.

It wasn't all bad. The visuals were goddamn beautiful, there were some excellent callbacks to earlier seasons. Martin's author avatar inventing democracy and getting laughed at was great, as was Edmire's go at nominating himself as King and Sansa being all "honey, no." Brienne and Pod as Kingsguard at the end was great, as was the bit where she chronicled Jamie Lannister's service. Dinklage, as ever, does a superlative job with what he's given. I would absolutely watch the Nautical Adventures of Arya Stark, Murder Badass. And I, at least, interpreted Jon's finale as "fuck all y'all, Imma Mance Rayder this shiz." And Sansa Stark, Queen in the North feels earned, however awkwardly they handled the council scene.

But it was a shitshow overall. I was trying to like it, I really was, but the whole episode was just checking off boxes in a 'reach the end of the series' column. They flubbed everything that made the show shine--the ambiguity, the politics, the messiness--and just rushed the whole thing to an awkward conclusion of load-bearing bosses and twists that subverted expectations because they made no goddamn sense.

And did it bother anyone else that Jon Snow's mystery parentage made no goddamn difference to the conclusion?

[SG]

I feel like everyone would be happy with the heel turn if it happened seconds before the bells sounded. Going ape after you've finally won is stupid and clearly insane. Going ape because the city just won't effing surrender, 'okay you mofos, you're going to burn' makes all the sense that the writers are trying to talk about. Even having the bells sounding while she's razing the town is fine and still in character for her, but doing it after the surrender makes no sense at all. "It's personal" wtf is that?

[insomniac7809]

@SG said in Game of Thrones:

I feel like everyone would be happy with the heel turn if it happened seconds before the bells sounded. Going ape after you've finally won is stupid and clearly insane. Going ape because the city just won't effing surrender, 'okay you mofos, you're going to burn' makes all the sense that the writers are trying to talk about. Even having the bells sounding while she's razing the town is fine and still in character for her, but doing it after the surrender makes no sense at all. "It's personal" wtf is that?

Yeah, the whole thing...

***And So He Spoke Spoilers***

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Again, I think there was a lot of room for Dany to 'go bad.' She's got messianic notions that keep being backed up by her situation, she's spent her life feeling entitled to a land she's never seen, she's way too into torturing people to death. I mean, "the woman with an army of fanatical slave-soldiers, rampaging barbarian horsemen, and fucking dragons coming to conquer the kingdom she thinks is her birthright" is so obviously Evil Overlord that it's a mark of the show and the actress that so many people were Team Dany up to this point.

But instead of making her more and more ambiguous and uncomfortable, she just went went full Nuremberg Rally. There's a difference between being ruthless, capricious, and prone to OTT displays of force, and standing under the falling ashes of the city you just burned to the ground and going "we liberated these people!"

And then having handled Dany's turn to wackadoo world-conqueror with all the subtlety of a brick to the face, they try to play up the conflict in Jon and Tyrion by pretending she didn't go completely off the rails. It was just... rushed, and awkward. There's a story worth telling in there but they just wanted to finish the show.

[Sparks]

@SG said in Game of Thrones:

I feel like everyone would be happy with the heel turn if it happened seconds before the bells sounded. Going ape after you've finally won is stupid and clearly insane. Going ape because the city just won't effing surrender, 'okay you mofos, you're going to burn' makes all the sense that the writers are trying to talk about. Even having the bells sounding while she's razing the town is fine and still in character for her, but doing it after the surrender makes no sense at all. "It's personal" wtf is that?

What bothers me most about that is, as I've said before, here and elsewhere, it's almost trivially easy to make that moment work if you want to. I could justify it easily by adding a little bit of dialogue in three scenes this season and the addition of one action (and a set of imagery) in a fourth scene. If you want to go for a bigger change that's an even more blatant reason (but admittedly harder to come back from to where you need to be for the final episode), you can do it with one change to a scene and the addition of a brief flashback. (I think I already detailed these two methods of making her snapping feel natural last week, which is why I'm not reiterating the actual changes a second time here.)

And I am not an obscenely well-paid showrunner for HBO; I'm just a reasonably practiced writer and GM. I feel like they could've had this one with just a tiny bit more effort.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@Sparks said in Game of Thrones:

What bothers me most about that is, as I've said before, here and elsewhere, it's almost trivially easy to make that moment work if you want to. I could justify it easily by adding a little bit of dialogue in three scenes this season and the addition of one action (and a set of imagery) in a fourth scene.

There is nothing wrong with that heel turn that 10 episodes and a little more character work on relationships and motivations wouldn't have fixed for me. This is stuff the previous seasons of the show, for all their various flaws, did quite well, which is what makes this aggravating. In retrospect it's one of my smaller complaints with the season, though, because I can at least fill in the pieces in my head and see how it would've been fulfilling with pretty minimal work. There are others things that I'm just WTF and are not fixable, but so it goes.

[bored]

Uh still spoilering I guess? yabba dabba doo.

***=***

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My biggest issue with the Dany turn is that they did all the setup, and then decided the audience was stupid.

She's tortured a a lot of people to death in the course of the show. The witch, the khals, the masters, the Tarlys. The idea that we needed to 'up the ante' by 'haha now shes killing children teehee see she's a badguy?' is such a ham-fisted way of finally bringing that idea home. Just showing her recklessly (rather than intentionally) using her magical WMD, vaporizing troops as they surrendered, or just trying to melt the castle down to the ground in a moment of raw fury would have gotten across the unhinged just fine. You bring it home in the last episode with her Overlord speech and that sells it, because that scene was perfect. You didn't need the baby murder. You didn't need the 'I have literally won, but now I will spend 20 minutes killing totally random people for fun.'

Also, as kind of a side point, it made the scene with the Lannister executions fail to land at all for me, because it was too late to have impact and just so corny. Oh, we're going to get really worked up over executing enemy combatants now? It played as an extremely hackneyed 'Jon & North good, Dany & foreigners bad' moment where somehow none of his own soldiers are cheering on the Lannisters to their deaths. Because seriously, forget Dany, a Northern army in King's Landing would have wrecked the place in the name of Ned, Robb, and everyone else they lost fighting. So that good-bad dichotomy was forced and ridiculous.

[insomniac7809]

@bored Especially when they spent so much of Season 2 with the whole "the Stark troops aren't good guys, the Lannister troops aren't bad guys, they're all just guys--kids, mostly--dying because their respective hereditary dictators are having a tiff."

[Kestrel]

***Why this season was awful, viewed through a lens of real world understanding of war, politics and violence.***

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In war, people do terrible things. Full disclosure, I am Israeli, and yes, I have heard people justifying civilian deaths. There were parts of Daenerys' final speech that hit home because I'd heard fragments of it before in a real world context, said by close friends and relatives.

But to turn her into a cartoon villain, a raving genocidal lunatic, was not only extremely unnecessary, cheap, and a gross departure from her character — it was a very shallow critique of war.

George R. R. Martin has never written stories about good guys vs. baddies. With few exceptions (White Walkers), he has always done his best to show us the humanity behind every atrocity, and sought to explore moral quandaries with nuance and complexity. What Daenerys did in episode 5 wasn't human.

In war, people do terrible things, yes, but they do those things because they believe they're necessary. Israel doesn't bomb civilians for the hell of it, they do it because they believe the cost of "enemy" civilian life is worth it if it means taking out one key target, i.e. a terrorist, who's a threat to Israeli civilian life. And this is terrible, and I don't agree, but the thing is there are people who do agree and support it, especially if they have been on the front lines themselves, or have suffered attacks or know someone who has. And whether or not you agree, you can as a minimum empathise with why they hold this belief, the pain and anger that drives them. War is not only terrible, it is complex.

If Daenerys had burned civilians in the Red Keep on her path to Cersei, lost control of her dragon, or unwittingly set off the wildfire that her father had buried under key parts of the city, that would've been a much more compelling story. In the latter case I wouldn't have even minded if she'd chosen to justify/rationalise the destruction of King's Landing after accidentally destroying it rather than allowing herself to feel guilt or be seen as weak for apologising.

I'd detected a certain critique of American jingoism in her speech when she was talking about "liberating" the world, that would have been worth exploring if she had done something more firmly in the darker shades of grey, e.g. uncaringly burning civilians on her path to take out the foreign dictator, Cersei, and then delivered this speech to the traumatised survivors of King's Landing.

Instead they chose to simplify things by effectively drawing on a nefarious moustache for her to twirl and cackle under.

No one is buying this shit.

Also to everyone saying that "mass slaughter of innocents has always been in her character", were we watching the same show?

She conquered a city by catapulting them with the chains of freed men in order to inspire them to be the agents of their own uprising.

She burned down a tent of men in power who were threatening to gang rape her, and thus won the support of everyone standing outside the tent, who was left unharmed.

She executed two enemy soldiers who quite literally asked for it, the leaders of their troop, after offering them a way out which they didn't take, and thus conquered the remaining army without further violence.

She crucified the masters of a slave city as punishment for crucifying little slave children.

She executed traitors which is exactly the same thing Robb Stark, Ned Stark and Jon Snow, our "protagonists" have done, except when she does it it's framed as a doom and gloom act of pure evil. Frankly, this is nothing but a sexist double standard. This is the world they live in. What Ned did was worse; he executed a frightened young man who fled the Wall from certain death in literally the first episode. Where's the outrage over his madness and murderous intent?

She locked up her own dragons, her most powerful weapons, after they accidentally killed one child.

She has never been a person who hurts and tortures innocents for the hell of it. The setting of GoT is a harsh world of dog-eat-dog. She's done what it takes and never more than necessary.

But,

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” — William Pitt the Younger

Necessity would have made for a much more compelling story for the commitment of atrocities, and a better critique of the horrors of war. The shallow tale they chose to spin of, essentially, a "crazy bitch" who killed people because she was on her period or something, or because she couldn't get laid, or because that's what women do when they get too greedy for power in a man's world, was a farce.

[Arkandel]

***=First of all I completely agree with the sentiment about Jon's parentage***

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... being completely irrelevant within this season. It's mentioned, it's played up but ultimately - like a lot that has to do with Jon - it amounts to exactly nothing. When the actual question of succession comes up no one even brings it up! I'm not claiming that's the only or deciding factor but you'd think it'd be at least an option given how many people from that very gathering had spent entire episodes telling each other Jon was the best option!

But they did so little with the character. The entire storyline about the White Walkers flowed around him without the character truly affecting it much this season; his involvement could have well ended by bringing Daenerys into the fold. Sure, Arya getting the Night King kill is a perfectly legitimate way to go (even though to her story this all thing was a sidequest at best), but couldn't they have at least thrown him a bone and let him slay the undead dragon? I mean Viserion self-destructed ten seconds later anyhow, they could have written that in for one of their main characters.

One other thing. I was reading the transcript of an Emilia Clarke interview in which she says one the objectives for her downfall was to make the viewer feel guilty for rooting for her when she was only murdering a bunch of people we didn't care about or liked. So we were okay when she was (literally!) crucifying nobles who stood for slavery - or just didn't do anything to stop it - but now we're scandalized?

[Lotherio]

***=Bruins will be swept in Stanley Cup Finals***

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It is prophesied. Round One: Columbus swept Tampa Bay 4-0; Lost to Boston in Round Two. Islanders swept Penguins 4-0 in Round One, Then was swept 4-0 by Hurricanes in Second Round. Boston then Swept Hurricanes 4-0 in Conference Finals. Every team in the east that swept 4-0 is beat in the next round, its the trend, they can't break this whether or not they touched the Prince of Whales Trophy.

But in other news, aka GoT. There is a lot of picture missing, D&D did set it up to get to the round table election of Bran. A lot of conversation is made up and they did play a lot various governance systems, from Edmire saying he may be best suited or whatever to Sam's joke about elective democracy by the people (I'm being repressed, see the violence inherent in the system). We got Battle of Winterfell, Razing of Kings Landing, The King in the South, the Queen in the North and John the King in the North North (another plot line never touched in the series, but could be part of this, the protecting of Mance Rayder's son and the swap with Gilly's actual son before Sam and Gilly start the crazy ship voyage to Oldtown). Between, razing, and not-full circle round table equal voice among the houses of who is next, there is a ton of story missing that D&D probably just didn't know or elected not to know to stick on course for completing it in 7 seasons (8 season is 1/2 of an extended season 7).

Yes its all missing character development, but other than a few faces changing at the semi-circle of great houses, I'm sure its vaguely close with the ending in the books (if we get it, GoT is a cash cow, like every other week is a new app game). GRRM's yes, no, yes, no flippant response to me is, it will end with the same result, but some of the story, faces, and in between will be different.

I'm not a Dany's fan, I predicted death by Jon (but more in a fight like Arthur/Mordred), and Jon wouldn't be king (I thought he'd be more broken though). The show didn't show all the bad in her character that the books do.

They did show his lineage to bring some tension between the two and I'm certain he wasn't dragon fired cause of his blood. I was in the group that the throne would be no more, I'm holding out the books will end the same, but I'm still siding with Storm's End being the rebuild of Throne of the South. Its like the least touched major castle/stronghold outside of Dorne in the series.

There is a lot of missing puzzle pieces cause GRRM hasn't flushed out the developments and/or D&D skipped it over to stick to the central focus of a few characters at the ending sequences of the series.

The elective group electing Bran is good for me though, both books and series. It seems consistent with overlooked influences that contributed to the stories in the books.

[Sparks]

So, apparently the first GoT spinoff series will be set thousands of years before in the time of the First Men, long before the Andals invaded (and certainly well before the Targaryens did). And I guess it's going to be about the war between the Children of the Forest and the First Men? Maybe the creation of the Night King, the rise of the wights, the first invasion of the lands of men and how they pushed the dead back and then constructed the Wall. Stuff like that, apparently.

That could be interesting, because it's a chunk of history that even Martin hasn't really detailed in any canon sources; we only know what we do of the origins of the Wall through myth and folklore thousands of years later.

But if they're going to do a prequel series and dive into a notable area of ASoIaF history that's been left awfully vague, you know what I'd really like to see?

The Doom of Valyria.

We know what happened: five hundred square miles of the Valyrian Peninsula literally exploded, the entire volcanic chain (the Fourteen Flames) erupted, spewing molten rock and dragonglass a thousand feet into the sky, the lakes on the peninsula turned to acid, and a series of unbelievably strong earthquakes then shook the entire Valyrian Peninsula apart into a bunch of islands. And the entire Valyrian civilization was wiped out in this unthinkably huge cataclysm.

We just don't know why. In the world of ASoIaF, septons and maesters and others have put forward lots of theories, but there's no real proof for any one of them.

So, tell us that story. Show us this nation that ran openly on magic, which had secrets and technologies that can only be imagined by the time of the series we just watched. Who hoarded this knowledge away from the other nations of Essos, jealously guarding their power. A land of mages and dragonlords.

Show us how high Valyria had risen over all others.

And then show us why it all fell apart. What did they do that led to their downfall? Was it their hubris, digging into even stronger magics they couldn't control? Was it rivalries over power, a collection of mages hoping to win a power struggle against a coalition of dragonlords, unleasing destruction onto the land of those dragonlords? Was it purely a natural disaster they never saw coming? (Nah, that's boring.)

You could even frame the story. Start it after the Doom, when Valyria and all its secrets have been lost, and the rest of Essos is wracked by warfare between the city-states as they jockey for power in the post-Valyrian world. And among this, someone stumbles across an injured wanderer (escaped prisoner, hapless mercenary caught up in the wars, whatever) and realizes, as they clean them up, that this person is somehow—against all odds—a surviving Valyrian who was still in Valyria when the Doom happened (unlike, say, the Targaryens, who were a minor house of dragonlords that heeded a prophetic dream and got out of dodge a decade or so before things literally exploded).

And as this mysterious Valyrian survivor is tended to and nursed back to health, they begin to share with the people tending to them the story of what exactly happened in Valyria (and slowly unveiling who they are, and what part they themselves played in things). So even people not familiar with the history of the ASoIaF world will go through the series knowing that the end of Valyria is looming somewhere in the future, knowing that whatever happens... something is going to result in that.

Anyway. I think if we're going to have more GoT set in different time periods... sure, we can see the building of the Wall. We could go much closer to the show and cover the Dunk and Egg stories, and that might be entertaining. But if heading outside of Westeros itself for a show in a different time period is even an option, I think a series like this is one I'd love to see.

[Arkandel]

@Sparks All I wanted was Dunc and Egg. In fact it'd be so great because the time period isn't tremendously different and the budget could be held to reasonable levels - no dragons, no grand armies crushing into each other, just the brutal realities of Westeros seen through some young eyes.

[Warma Sheen]

@Kestrel said in Game of Thrones:

***Why this season was awful, viewed through a lens of real world understanding of war, politics and violence.***

click to show

Also to everyone saying that "mass slaughter of innocents has always been in her character", were we watching the same show?

She conquered a city by catapulting them with the chains of freed men in order to inspire them to be the agents of their own uprising.

She burned down a tent of men in power who were threatening to gang rape her, and thus won the support of everyone standing outside the tent, who was left unharmed.

She executed two enemy soldiers who quite literally asked for it, the leaders of their troop, after offering them a way out which they didn't take, and thus conquered the remaining army without further violence.

She crucified the masters of a slave city as punishment for crucifying little slave children.

She executed traitors which is exactly the same thing Robb Stark, Ned Stark and Jon Snow, our "protagonists" have done, except when she does it it's framed as a doom and gloom act of pure evil. Frankly, this is nothing but a sexist double standard. This is the world they live in. What Ned did was worse; he executed a frightened young man who fled the Wall from certain death in literally the first episode. Where's the outrage over his madness and murderous intent?

She locked up her own dragons, her most powerful weapons, after they accidentally killed one child.

She has never been a person who hurts and tortures innocents for the hell of it. The setting of GoT is a harsh world of dog-eat-dog. She's done what it takes and never more than necessary.

***I'm definitely not the biggest of GoT fans so these are pretty flexible observations and I'm likely forgetting plenty of stuff ***

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But please don't try to make this a sexist thing. Its a character thing. Whether it was a man or a woman, it goes the same way. There's no double standard. She spent a good deal of time considering her choice in that moment. They showed it and focused on it. Even she knew she was wrong and she did it anyway. It wasn't some crazy outburst. It was a decision. She made it deliberately. And the fact that she was a woman had nothing to do with it.

She definitely has her murder-meter stuck on incinerate for a while, it just kept going up and up and up. She started off on a righteous quest for freedom, but got buckled under the weight of her own power where the ends justified the means. A lot of your examples are perfect examples of things that didn't have to be solved with murder, but were. Killing became easier and easier for her as she went along. That's her story.

Remember, Thanos was just trying to help too.

Take the example of inspiring the uprising? Was that uprising done with wagging of fingers and an orderly peace march from the city? No. How many innocents died as they rampaged knowing they had an army of support outside their walls? Who knows. Who cares. Not Dany. To her, if the people in that city were living and working in that system, they weren't innocent and they deserved what they got. The people in King's Landing? Same thing.

Take the example of burning down the tent. There wasn't anyone innocent in the tent? They all threatened to gang rape her? (I don't actually remember the specifics, I was just happy to watch them all die.) There were no servants or other workers who suffered the same fate? Sure, all the people outside the tent were spared, but are we to believe that if any of them were inside the tent that she wouldn't have done the exact same thing? Nah. They'd have died too. The only reason they lived was cause they weren't invited to the party.

As for Ned, it was back on the first season, but they established quickly that the joining the Night's Watch was a death sentence. That's part of its purpose. You got to live until you died for the Watch. And if you left, you forfeited your life. That's the agreement. And he knew it when he ran. But that's exactly what Varys got. There was no double standard unless you wanted to see one. Many people, Tyrion included, stood by and watched him die because they all knew the deal. He betrayed her and he got dead. They didn't necessarily like it and Tyrion felt guilty as hell, but they all knew the deal and not one of them was surprised by it. Tyrion even said to Varys that this would be the result if he intended to move forward. There was no framing of doom and gloom act of pure evil. It was sad in that it was happening to a character that we knew, but that's it.

Now, King's Landing: There's certain things that happen in GoT that are established and acceptable punishments. Death fills a wide range of those punishments. And sometimes reactions to events result in murder. But what happened at King's Landing was not that. Dany gave her word that she would stop when the city surrendered by the ringing of the bells. That was the order she gave. That's how it was supposed to go down. Tyrion knew it, Jon knew it, Greyworm knew it, presumably the whole army knew it (since that's exactly what they did). Then she went back on her word.

That's what was different here. She heard the bells. She knew what they meant. She knew she should stop. Then she decided she wouldn't. She changed her mind and made a conscious decision that everyone would die instead. And most of her followers were more than happy to follow. It was open season on King's Landing and anyone in it. She crossed a line and did so willingly and they focused on her struggling with the decision enough to make that known. But it wasn't some huge leap to some unforseen character choice. She had wanted to do that from the beginning. She specifically said that it would prevent anyone from ever trying to use human shields against her again. She talked with Jon about being loved or feared and settled pretty firmly on fear. She had reasons. It wasn't some psychotic break.

So I think it was very much in her character, but I definitely don't think there was some sexist double standard. If anyone framed it that way it is because they see what they want to see, for good or ill.

Edit: I also just realized, Missandei, the one person who I thought might temper Dany's murderous vengeance basically gave her blessing to her Queen to burn them all, right before she was executed. So... there's that.

[Killer Klown]

So, yeah. I've been considering a few things - some of which have already been mentioned:
***=Stuff and things and whatnot***

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Endings:
-For the most part, the Starks got exactly what they wanted and were put exactly where they needed to be. From least to most
1- Bran. Ok, so... uh. Why? This is the reason I have the 'for the most part' disclaimer up there, because as presented in the show it doesn't make a damn lick of sense. I guess there's argument for wisdom and his namesake of Bran the Builder and such, but most every other in-show argument for this fell kind of flat.
2- Arya. Arya's ending was not great, but at least it felt more earned than Brans. After Ned's death, she became somewhat rootless and bounced from thing to thing; first in Essos, then Westeros. She started with a list, ammended that list, then eventually just dropped that list. She's a character in progress, so her moving on made more sense than not.
3- Jon. Most everything this season pointed to Jon's ending in one way or another. Tormund telling him that he's got the North in him; the real north was one hint, and him being sent to the wall when the Nights Watch wasn't really a thing anymore was another. He, historically, has always been one of the most honest people in the series - because he always says that him being leader would be a terrible idea. Then people make him leader. And he makes some of the most colossally bad decisions possible, thereby proving he had no business being leader. And the next time a catastrophe comes up? They make him leader again - because, hey, he survived the last one. When he was riding through, I thought at first he was just escorting the wildlings - then it hit me; first, why would they need an escort? It's their land. Second, when the Watch sends rangers, they go in groups - and he was the only one there. So, I'm guessing he's moving in with them - probably to become the next Mance Rayder. Because he doesn't want to be.
4- Sansa. Sansa's probably got the best character arc in the series, I think. She started off as wanting nothing more than to be a Princess in Westeros and marry an Prince and eat lemon cakes and ... yeah. And she hated being at Winterfell and how crude people were there. As the series progressed, she learned how terrible people could be, how dishonest, and ultimately her one goal was to return home to Winterfell; and she began to be very protective of the people under her charge there. I don't agree that she should have had the Iron Throne <or ... Iron slagpile, I guess> for reasons that she herself said in the last episode; even though Bran was a Stark, and ostensibly the heir to the house, the Northern Lords would not follow him if he was King of the Seven Six Kingdoms. The same would have gone for Sansa, for those same reasons. By separating the North, she didn't just free them - she liberated them. She gave them a ruler they would be willing to follow.

Dany... her arc was rushed, but it wasn't unexpected. She'd always had those tendencies - and like Tyrion said, no one complained because she only did it to people they didn't like. So long as folks agreed with her things were hunky-dory, but anyone who didn't... She also had a history of burninating unarmed opponents, from the slavers at Mereen, to the Lannister prisoners last season. It's just that they compressed so much this season that they didn't spend any time at all developing it properly. There are hints and one-notes, but no real fluid progression.

Jon being Targaryen? As much as I could figure, the only relevance this had was ... it made him stop bonking his aunt? Which, I guess, triggered her inability to deal with rejection and turned her into a literal flaming hose beast? That's about as much worth as the show put on it, anyway.

[Roz]

@Killer-Klown said in Game of Thrones:

So, yeah. I've been considering a few things - some of which have already been mentioned:
***=Stuff and things and whatnot***

click to show

2- Arya. Arya's ending was not great, but at least it felt more earned than Brans. After Ned's death, she became somewhat rootless and bounced from thing to thing; first in Essos, then Westeros. She started with a list, ammended that list, then eventually just dropped that list. She's a character in progress, so her moving on made more sense than not.

***thar be spoilers ofc***

click to show

I didn't like Arya's ending, tbh. Like yeah, it'd be cool to see her running off and having adventures. BUT. I felt like so much of her arc over the course of the show was trying to get back to family, trying to find her pack once more. And then she got back and they helped each other and now she is...leaving to go be alone again? The lone wolf dies, the pack survives, so now I guess it's time for Arya to go off solo??? Idk, I disagree that it made more sense than not.

[Lotherio]

@Roz said in Game of Thrones:

@Killer-Klown said in Game of Thrones:

So, yeah. I've been considering a few things - some of which have already been mentioned:
***=Stuff and things and whatnot***

click to show

2- Arya. Arya's ending was not great, but at least it felt more earned than Brans. After Ned's death, she became somewhat rootless and bounced from thing to thing; first in Essos, then Westeros. She started with a list, ammended that list, then eventually just dropped that list. She's a character in progress, so her moving on made more sense than not.

***thar be spoilers ofc***

click to show

I didn't like Arya's ending, tbh. Like yeah, it'd be cool to see her running off and having adventures. BUT. I felt like so much of her arc over the course of the show was trying to get back to family, trying to find her pack once more. And then she got back and they helped each other and now she is...leaving to go be alone again? The lone wolf dies, the pack survives, so now I guess it's time for Arya to go off solo??? Idk, I disagree that it made more sense than not.

***=Agreed and maybe the writers broke her ending some***

click to show

The going west was odd, its like reading LotR. Valyrian Doom was mentioned, but this is like the final nail in the coffin. Bran doesn't join the roots and become some weirwood in the massive network of weirwood roots under Westeros (the druidic database). So its like magic ended, so someone had to sail west in the tradition of 'this is the end of this age'.

I think they ended there because the choose not to include her pack. Nymeria and the wolf pack is still around in the south. For all we know, if the books end up with closed north (North Kingdom and Jon's North North), she may end up more hanging out with the wolves than the people, or any number of other endings that isn't Bilbo sailing off to chronicle more of his life with the elves.

[Pondscum]

Should this be in a spoiler tag? Pretty sure anyone that's wanted to watch the final episode has watched it by now. Regardless, spoiler tag in case! ***=NSFW content***

click to show

https://www.unilad.co.uk/film-and-tv/maisie-williams-tweets-asking-for-game-of-thrones-season-8-memes-gets-thousands-of-replies/?source=facebook

[Killer Klown]

@Lotherio said in Game of Thrones:

@Roz said in Game of Thrones:

@Killer-Klown said in Game of Thrones:

So, yeah. I've been considering a few things - some of which have already been mentioned:
***=Stuff and things and whatnot***

click to show

2- Arya. Arya's ending was not great, but at least it felt more earned than Brans. After Ned's death, she became somewhat rootless and bounced from thing to thing; first in Essos, then Westeros. She started with a list, ammended that list, then eventually just dropped that list. She's a character in progress, so her moving on made more sense than not.

***thar be spoilers ofc***

click to show

I didn't like Arya's ending, tbh. Like yeah, it'd be cool to see her running off and having adventures. BUT. I felt like so much of her arc over the course of the show was trying to get back to family, trying to find her pack once more. And then she got back and they helped each other and now she is...leaving to go be alone again? The lone wolf dies, the pack survives, so now I guess it's time for Arya to go off solo??? Idk, I disagree that it made more sense than not.

***=Agreed and maybe the writers broke her ending some***

click to show

The going west was odd, its like reading LotR. Valyrian Doom was mentioned, but this is like the final nail in the coffin. Bran doesn't join the roots and become some weirwood in the massive network of weirwood roots under Westeros (the druidic database). So its like magic ended, so someone had to sail west in the tradition of 'this is the end of this age'.

I think they ended there because the choose not to include her pack. Nymeria and the wolf pack is still around in the south. For all we know, if the books end up with closed north (North Kingdom and Jon's North North), she may end up more hanging out with the wolves than the people, or any number of other endings that isn't Bilbo sailing off to chronicle more of his life with the elves.

***=Yah. I do tend to agree***

click to show

I think she fell victim to so much else this season - where they had an idea and maybe something they wanted to execute, but didn't give it enough time or attention given everything else that was going on. It seems to me that they were setting Arya up to be the archtypical 'lone wolf', as you alluded to with her being away from her pack. Like just about every story, they spent several seasons building a slow burn - then had everything happen abruptly at once towards the end. Arya always ... didn't fit in. Whenever she found someplace to call home, it was either taken from her or she decided it didn't work for her. It started when she came down with daddy to Kings Landing... and we all know how that turned out. She hooked up with the Faceless Men, decided she didn't want to be one. She hung out with the Actors for a while, but that didn't last. She went on her own to murder down her List, until Sandor showed her what that path led to. She played at being the Chibi God of Death, until she saw the faces of it in Winterfell and Kings Landing and decided to Nope her way the hell out. As I mentioned above, she was probably the only character I can see who's not at, or near, the end of her arc. She's still evolving, still trying to find herself - but I don't think the show did a good job of portraying that here. It was a slow burn that suddenly exploded into a rapidfire series of beats with no real pacing.

I have to wonder if that has something to do with the way they were trying to handle security. From what I understand they had the actors shoot multiple endings so that even they didn't know what the real one was. That takes a lot of time and resources; which given the givens, is time and resources spent on effectively useless and pointless material - instead of devoting them to something that could advance or mature the plot. We already heard that animating Ghost was too expensive to use him much, so obviously their resources weren't infinite - I wonder how well the season would've gone if they hadn't wasted so much on keeping it a secret, and concentrated more on making it the best it could've been.

[Warma Sheen]

@Killer-Klown ***= I agree with the poor pacing of that story even though that was my favorite character. It was wonky.***

click to show

It felt like they were setting Arya up for a spin off. They've since said that they won't be using any existing characters for spinoffs, but that may not have been completely decided upon when writing her ending. Because clearly, it was not the end for her character. She's got adventures to do.

Her story was a lot of starts and stops and I never felt like she really found her place. I did like the 8 season arc of 'I'm in danger and I need my family to be safe', even though it ended poorly. I like that by the time she got back to them, not only did she not need them to be safe, she was the one doing most of the safeguarding - especially when her 'safe place' became the target of the huge zombie attack the moment she got back.

I am okay with her not having a solid ending, though. If she's not finished developing, no need to try to force it. But what I'm not okay with was that we never really got to see any of the stuff she learned in her journey be applied in any dramatic way. Killing the Night King was cool and all, but I never felt like Arya was uniquely qualified to do that. I would have liked to feel that one of her many adventures (or even better, a combination of skills from several of them) is what allowed her to succeed where others would have failed. He's been untouchable for 8 seasons. How was she able to get him when no one else could? Did I miss/forget something? Instead, it just felt like someone was gonna kill him cause the plot points said so and they picked her to do it. We just have to not look to closely and assume that all her experience applied somehow. And that's just... boooo...

[Arkandel]

@Warma-Sheen ***=To be honest this part is a month old now so I'm not sure we should be protecting it with spoiler tags any more but***

click to show

... the official justification is we wouldn't see it coming if anyone but Jon Snow killed the Night King. It's as simple as that.

If we did want to break it down though past that, different characters tried more direct approaches and they simply didn't work. Jon took several shots through military force or challenging him personally and he was pushed back each time - the NK wasn't interested in fighting him directly. Fuck that noise. Then Theon charged him directly (I think his was the biggest 'name' who attacked him) and he was stomped into the ground.

Arya just chose to do it from behind, assassin-style. That's her way. We can argue why none of them saw her, where she came from, all of that... but it's an explanation. Given a little bit more of a setup they could have sold it much better, too.