stoneghost28

Excellent example. There's literally zero way to justify their story telling choices with Jaime. When he left, the relationship was severed on point of near murder/fratricide. Jaime then was pardoned more or less by his near murder victim in Bran, pardoned essentially by the people of Winterfell, and then allowed to fight on the front lines in a trusted, key position in the fight against the Night King, a fight that Cersei used to her advantage to murder key figures in the fight (Rhaegal and to a lesser extent Missandei) and to consolidate her power for the final battle. He survived the battle rescuing Brienne and also being rescued and saved himself by both Arya and others. He's a warm and accepted part of the post-victory celebration. He then learns that Cersei annihilated and Killed several of his fellow soldiers in the long night through a surprise attack, killed a dragon that nearly died in the battle versus the Night King, and captured and beheaded a defenseless female diplomat. He then decides that nothing else matters other than going to Cersei. This is the most ludicrous, impossible to believe horse bleep I've ever seen in my life. Literally NO ONE would behave in this way. NO ONE. It was absolutely moronic. For anyone that thinks its part of the long story, or it connects to this or that, or that there are logical strands to any of this I'll remind you, the show runners explanation of how the Iron Islands Fleet could kill Rhaegal w/the most accurately shot super crossbow bolts launched FROM MOVING NAVAL VESSELS ON THE SEA was because Dany "Forgot" about their earlier surprise attack on Yara's fleet etc. All you need to know about that explanation is that they were either too stupid to remember that issue itself, or didn't care, and thought it was perfectly acceptable to think a roomful of advisors, not just Dany, would neglect to mention the potential of a Euron ambush during said Grand Strategy Meetings at Winterfell before the disaster. Oh and there's that small issue of somehow Dany failing to notice an entire navy sitting on the water ahead and below ready to attack her while she was flying to Dragonstone. This is a case of either stupidity or a monumental underestimation of the intelligence of the audience and the ability of any adult to suspend disbelief.

#1: I hear you there, and I also fully understand what you're saying about medieval warfare, ancient warfare etc. The bulk of the world today has completely forgotten how hideous and brutal warfare was for 99% of human history. I'll grant that WWII was as brutal and worse in terms of scale than anything ever, and the behavior of the SS/Einsatzgrupen in Europe and the Soviet Union combined w/some of the brutality in the Pacific Theatre comes close, but generally speaking the surviving texts we have covering war particularly in the Ancient World would make a Horror Porn devotee never stop throwing up. The Assyrians come to mind again, in terms of the insane brutality they indulged in w/regards to defeated enemies. So none of this is unfamiliar to me. Ditto the sacking of cities as a form of salary for soldiers. I get that. My problem here is that Dany, on the show, was different. She was ruthless when she needed to be, but never strayed into an out of control genocidal psychopath until Sunday Night. #2 On Dany's transition. I understand what you're saying here as well. This is the case for it. But in the actual #1 pacing of the show and #2 character of the individual I just don't buy it. I suppose there's a core split here between people who seem to hue more closely to the book character, and those of who hue to the series character. I'm the latter. I'm judging entirely based upon what I'm seeing on the show (being the show thread), and while this inclination may be more clear in the books, it's not in the show. I can see what your saying about the things that have happened. #1: Suddenly Tyrion becomes a total halfwit when they move back to Westeros seemingly not making one quality decision in two entire seasons and the resulting disasters that befall Dany's allies as a result. #2 Losing Viserion #3 Discovering Jon's parentage and claim. #4 Losing Jorah, losing the Dothraki, and the Unsullied (a huge portion) and nearly losing both Dragons in battle w/Night King. #5 Losing Rhaegal and a Navy, AGAIN. #6 Witnessing Beheading of Missandei #7 Learning of the betrayal of Varys, Jon and to some degree Tyrion. That's a lot to handle, and part of the problem is that all of this has been compacted into basically what, 8 or 9 episodes, five of those seven things happening in just four episodes, so it comes across as a bit much when it comes to a show that's what 72 or 73 episodes deep. However, even w/all these things happening, why do you suddenly become a genocidal maniac? Everyone everywhere experiences tragedy. Even world leaders. I didn't see Joe Kennedy jump into a B-52 and Nuke Russia or hell, blow up the pentagon after he lost his second AND third son's to assassination. Tragedy and loss happens. Anger and Grief can be a response. But this? It's just crazy and Dany, in the show anyway, never came across as crazy or psychopathic to me. Ruthless sometimes. Sure. Shrewd, sure. But genocidal? No. This is a total negation of the intentions behind literally everything she was trying to accomplish: Rule and change the world in how she chose to rule. Instead she just fed a city into a wood chipper so to speak. Glad it worked for some people anyway. Just didn't at all for me. Glad Sapochnik got to direct it as well, he's marvelous at taking source material and making something unique out of it. I've never seen anything like Hardhome, Battle of the Bastards, The Long Night, or this one, so at least there was spectacle and it was amazing to watch. In regards to the writing, I'm critiquing what I regard as lazy, and hasty writing to wrap up a show. Everything I've seen the past two years has been actors and directors desperately trying to make something work out of hastily thrown together material from D&D and my suspicions all along have been that landing a deal with Kathleen Kennedy AND probably being bored being locked down for a decade w/this material is behind it, and what do you know, we get a press announcement just 24 hours or so after that episode that D&D will be helming the next unique Star Wars story to be released in movie theatres after IX (their working with Kennedy had been announced a few years ago, but this news was an update on that announcement). I think I nailed at least some of the issues behind the sloppiness in these final two seasons (not that it's an original idea or anything, I'm sure most have considered it largely responsible for the decline in quality as well).

This doesn't even work because they're basically all dead. How many survivors did we actually see w/Arya at the end? I'm sure in a technical sense, poof there will be plenty, like suddenly there were more than the half Dozen Dothraki we saw alive after the inept and moronic charge of the light brigade mass slaughter against the Night King (just one of numerous examples of idiotic writing, completely ignore the history of how city states deal w/defense against vastly superior numbers, sending a calvary charge against vastly superior numbers, not exactly how its done). At the end of the day, based on the depiction of the attack, there's little to no "subjects" left to fear her to begin with, at least in Kings Landing anyway. Most of this stuff is a product of rushed story telling and inept writing. I have no doubt devout book readers are right in arguing that this isn't against the depiction of Dany in the core material but I still have two problems with that. #1: Television and Movie portrayals of adapted fiction are their own entities period, they may hue closely to the source material, or not at all, and should be judged independently on their merits. #2 Regardless of whether they were loyal to Martins source material, they have repeatedly failed to do so in numerous other instances AND they did a horrendous job of telling the story in a convincing and reasonably logical fashion that rings true. It doesn't even remotely ring true. She was just ready to sacrifice everything for essentially a racist band of ingrates in Winterfell. Now, people who don't know her in the least and have done nothing to her are deserving of total incineration? It's absurd.

The weird thing about Carthage is that the Roman's provoked and instigated the final war, it was very much an Austro-Hungary gazillion demands placed on the Serbians 1914 scenario x10 (placing demands that are so insanely restrictive it was impossible to accede to them w/o retaining any degree of independence whatsoever). Carthage had no issue starting stuff early in the Punic Wars, but the finale involving the sacking/salting which can still be kinda seen from satellites etc was entirely the Roman's digging around for a pretext to squash and seize the independent territory still controlled by Carthage (essentially Carthage was thriving like Japan and Germany Post WWII, and Rome wanted the wealth generated from their thriving sea/port based trade for themselves, and decided to take it, by force, and Carthage made it difficult by repeatedly acceding to demands only for Rome to repeatedly renege on agreements and up the demands until finally Rome just sacked the largely defenseless city state/empire. If you already know all this, apologies, it's just a really interesting story with parallels to a ton of 20th and 21st century battles/wars/foreign policy incidents.

The Tarly's execution was the common price to pay for losing such a battle/war. It was nasty, and ruthless, but they were a hugely powerful house that refused to bend the knee. There were other options and I would've chosen them, but I could understand her reasoning when she decided to make an example of them. Burning a city alive a la Tokyo, Dresden, Guernica, Hiroshima, Nagasaki etc only makes sense in the context of an environment of Total War where civilians are considered fair game by all warring parties to some extent or another. That wasn't so in the context of this story. Sure civilians had it hard, but there's a reason the bells were used. The city fully expected to receive mercy and compassion, if subjugation in exchange for submitting. Instead they were treated like the Romans treated Carthage, like the Assyrians treated, well, everybody. It doesn't fit w/what we've seen of Dany. It just doesn't. Ruthless in her commitment to her cause? Yes, to some degree, but really, after having spent years having her titles focus as much as anything upon the concept of "breaking the wheel/breaker of chains" etc to then turn and engage in a Vietnamese era rationalization of "We have to destroy the village to save it," is just absurd. If they'd spent enough time developing this storyline it might have eventually been believable. Instead it plays like some emo lunatic losing their blank and slaughtering everyone left and right in a fit of pique. Yes she suffered. But try comparing stories with Arya. Did Dany witness her father being beheaded, finally after having suffered that trauma and much more, finally reached her mother and brother only to see them butchered as well as her future sister in law and niece/nephew in the most horrific way imaginable, and that was really only the first what, third of her journey? Dany didn't suddenly earn the right to go "mad" and become a homicidal, genocidal mast murderer because her boyfriend/nephew broke up with her, and a couple of close, close friends and dragons died. It just feels beyond ridiculous and lazy to me. The buddha told us life is suffering. This is nothing new. It's not ground breaking, the only difference is in the scale of the suffering. Dany was/is surrounded by people who suffered every bit as much as her and much worse. Someone who spent seven seasons and an episode or two trying to rebuild the world in a better fashion decides to burn it all down because of what happened over the course of a couple of episodes with Jon, Jorah, Missandei, Rhaegal etc? I just can't buy it. Maybe this was the story outline George gave them, but they sure as hell didn't deliver in making it remotely believable, and some of it was pacing, but a lot of it was just flat out ham fisted writing and character development down the stretch and the proof is in those "inside the episode" type mini-doc's where their explanations of "choices" are beyond pathetic.

It was ridiculous. I get that there was plenty of foreshadowing that she can be ruthless when dealing with her enemies but when did she ever actually annihilate civilians on the ground just living their lives? She was made more than aware that the everyday people of the city were being used as shields by Cersei. Arguing that she went mad is total horse bleep. I can get get w/showing the brutality of a city being sacked. Anyone who spends anytime studying ancient history, let alone medieval history knows what happens more often than not during sackings (mass slaughter, and the selling into slavery of the surviving women and children). Heck you can look at the 20th century to see what happened in the fire bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, what happened at Guernica or in the Rape of Nanking. We never needed dragons to accomplish much worse than what was shown here. My issue is that Dany hasn't really shown an inclination to slaughter civilians from what I've seen. Her enemies? Sure. But children? Mothers? The elderly? Come on. It was ridiculous. For me, watching last night, and in season 7 and 8, all I've felt the whole time is Ive been watching two guys that got a sweetheart deal with Kathleen Kennedy (wonder if she's having any buyers remorse? She's got no problem giving significantly talented directors the hook after all), and after spending at least what, 2008 or 2009-2018 working on the project and they're beyond over it. The half-blanked moronic answers they've given in "Inside the Episode" specials to explain character motivation etc has been farcical at best, and absurd at worst. For anyone else who read it, this whole experience has echoed finishing Jean Auel's Earth's Children series with a fifth book that was at best tedious, and a finale that was a complete and total abomination and essentially worked as a negation of everything that came before it, if it hadn't been a library book I probably would have given it the Tess of the d'Urbervilles treatment from my high school days (tossed out an open window and into my backyard upon it's denouement). It's just beyond frustrating to see these yokel's pull a Lindelof, secure a guaranteed stretch run of multiple years to wrap up the series on their terms, and then show that they were out of ideas the second they gained such a controlling interest, and indeed were hacks w/a flair for Michael Bayesque filmmaking, all hat no cattle. Martin may be cynical as hell and maybe he wanted this, but regardless at least his material would have came w/quality depth and pacing, and clarity and coherence. Instead it's a heaping pile of manure filmed quite beautifully. I feel for Sapochnik. The guy who gave us Hardhome, The Battle of the Bastards, and The Winds of Winter gave us something stunning to look at, but he couldn't overcome the inept writing of D&D (happy to see he also directed the series opener for Altered Carbon, one of my favorite shows of the past half decade or so).