The Dragon Demands

I examined all the Tywin praise in an earlier video, which has clips in it. Benioff even says in it bizarre things like "Tywin was morally blameless for ordering the Red Wedding" The short version is this: we went into this thinking that Benioff is a sane person, with rational beliefs we just disagree with. From a rational point of view, he seems to be "embracing ruthlessness", or to have twisted the "theme" of the show into "being ruthless is right". That's not what's going on at all. If you actually sit down and look through all of Benioff's comments, he has a very warped view of the entire show....the psychological phenomenon of "Projection". Unfortunately, we've seen giddy, immature, shallow fans doing this on the forums long before there was a TV show: for some personal reason, some specific aspect that touches on something in their real life, people latch on to characters and idolize them. IDOLIZE them. Alternatively, demonize ones who remind them of real life people they don't like. You've all seen this: we've had blind praise for Daenerys to Stannis to even the Boltons, and also blind criticism. David Friedman is an emotionally stunted 13 year old living in an adult's body - that isn't an insult, and it's dangerous for us to think of it like that. In a rational, detached analysis....David Friedman suffered from severe parental neglect as a child. And all of his behaviors match the pattern you would expect from such trauma, to a shocking degree - shocking, in that no one in the media was willing to admit the emperor was naked, his bizarre behavior. He's not that dissimilar to Donald Trump, actually, and that's no accident: both are the neglected younger sons of Wall Street power brokers. Leaving them with a drastic need for attention, mixed with....a shallow, stilted IMITATION of the "swaggering power broker" persona of a Wall Street guy. Simply paying close attention to David Benioff's comments, you realize how much his father's neglect warped him; in a classic example of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Benioff simultaneously loathes himself, while at the same time, building up this "superman" persona of himself as skilled at all he touches. There's these disturbing rants his author-insert characters go on in his books; they see a man playing a guitar on the street, and despite not being a musician themselves, start a mental tirade about "I could be an expert at that if I wanted to; heck, with no training, I'm probably already an expert!" ....it's not hard to see how this is a man who walked around on set during production, with no prior experience, micromanaging trained experts in their fields, everyone from directors to set builders to cinematographers, that "I know more than you". My conclusion is that Benioff treated TV-Tywin as a "projection" of the idealized version of his own father he wished he had. Think like how book one Tyrion, Jaime, and Cersei...honestly seem like they still want Tywin's approval. That they hope that "deep down", underneath that hard exterior, he really does love them. And he doesn't, this is fantasy. Somehow....probably because he's openly said he identified as Tyrion for being a short runt of the family....Benioff started identifying Tywin with his own father; a powerful and wealthy man himself. And then he just started...writing an idealized version of Tywin. I myself like Daenerys BECAUSE she is flawed. But I've seen people idolizing her, putting her on a pedestal. People see what they want to see. This happens with politicians all the time. So you have to remember: Benioff doesn't have a...."coherent" theme or belief system, in Tywin being "ruthless". He's seeing what he wants to see and no longer living in the realm of reality. Heck, his actual statements are filled with contradictions - to use an extreme example, sort of like saying "Ramsay Bolton is great"....and we all run around going "He thinks Ramsay Bolton is great because he's ruthless"....but if you pay attention, his full statement is "Ramsay Bolton is great, and not really ruthless, but a misunderstood nice guy".......and you realize....this person is projecting things onto a character that do not match reality. HBO let a trio of fanboys run the biggest TV show of the decade, with no oversight; Benioff even fought off all their attempts to augment the staff with "real writers" from other TV shows. I don't mean this as a light accusation: what we saw from Season 5 onwards was bad fanfiction. The literal equivalent of if you'd hired a fanboy who read the first books, and he felt like showing the ending HE wanted. I worry about this issue of biases all the time. I'm a Rhaenyra fan, BECAUSE she's a flawed, contradictory character. Same with Stannis. It's a real problem when people don't get that's GRRM's point: you're not...WAITING to see whether Stannis is "good" or "bad"....like in a sudden revelation. It's layers. Similarly, I fear that while I hate Aegon II and Alicent....I also want them to be presented as realistic, 3 dimensional characters. It reminds me of that whole thing from Ender's Game: Peter and Valentine Wiggin INTENTIONALLY switch roles with their online personas, Demosthenes and Locke, so that the aggressive Peter is writing the ANTI-war one while the gentle Valentine is writing the PRO-war one. And they did this on purpose, so writing these personas wouldn't get away from them!

I'm busy with IRL work until the weekend, when I'll sit down to read it start to finish. unfortunately. ....it's WINTER, but there aren't significant amounts of snow....snow drifts impeding army movements - but just ENOUGH snow that they insisted on filming in the middle of winter? In a country where it rarely snows? So they had a full time fake snow dressing scene? Why wait for the cold of winter if they didn't even think it would snow? "Authenticity"? All the pipes burst in the toilets and they had no water at the set! For hundreds of people! He's never seen moonlight on snow?! Keep in mind he's repeating things Benioff yells at him. Did it even occur to Hibberd that in the chapter on the unaired pilot, HBO's Michael Lombardo SPECIFICALLY POINTED OUT that filming the original Dany/Drogo wedding scene in Morocco was a WASTE OF MONEY, because they filmed it at night? One of the most unnerving things is...I still like Sapochnik, and even his cinematographer Wagner ( I think it's silly people blamed the cinematographer as if this was some sort of accident: the Long Night battle looks like that because they wanted it to look like that, there were MULTIPLE ongoing discussions of this on a scale of weeks, it's not as if people didn't CHECK the DAILIES, and in the commentaries it turns out the VFX team was actively fighting them, pointing out their CGI was going to waste because you couldn't see it). But what was so unnerving is.....I realize Sapochnik & Wagner were working off all the gaslighting Benioff subjected them to, which they can't openly complain about, by mocking the fans....but for a solid 30 minutes, every 5 minutes or so, Sapochnik would bitterly say under his breath in a sing-song voice "ooooh, wait, we can't see anyone in this shot- oh wait, you're not SUPPOSED to be able to see anything!".....only to then alternate with "adjust your damn TV set". No one is EVER supposed to "adjust their TV set" we're watching what they choose to present; when has anyone ever used that defense? But the point is he just alternates between the two: "it's supposed to be dark!" "adjust your TV!" without giving a coherent explanation. .....what I...discern...is that Benioff & Weiss were stupidly rambling "it will look realistically dark!"....on a scale of MONTHS, not listening to any complaints that "we can't see anything". Not just that a battle is chaotic....they've given long defenses, I mean in that one chapter that really long defense that "we want to present battles as realistically chaotic!".....and you get the sense that this is the rationalization they developed for "we have no idea how basic battle tactics, or visual fight choreography, actually work". REMEMBER: In the commentary, Sapochnik explains the absurd original vision D&D had for the Long Night battle, as with many others: "Long Continuous Oner Shots". We'd stay with Arya for a solid 10 minutes, then Brienne for a solid 10 minutes, and so on, NEVER intercutting them. Benioff doesn't like things like "Montage" or "Flashbacks"....because he has no cinematography experience, and he's BAD at them! Like an art student who refuses to draw hands, because "Hands are hard, therefore they're stupid. It's never my fault!" So it's not just that the battle was "dark and chaotic and impossible to see anything"....okay, in SHORT bursts, that can actually be a great thing. Think like....a few of the really brief, chaotic moments from the Normandy landing scene from "Saving Private Ryan". HOW LONG were those "total visual chaos" scenes, in terms of actual screentime? Compared to...Benioff genuinely wanted it to be a closeup on a gang-pile of wights in near total darkness...for a SOLID TEN MINUTES. Is that even a coherent "ideology"? I mean is this some warped attempt at impressing us by showing chaotic realism? Is he imitating something he saw in another "realistic" movie? Or did this start out as just an excuse they ran with. (sigh) If nothing else, I do love how the Long Night battle was universally condemned as unwatchable, when they hyped it up as literally the next Lord of the Rings, AND that it was really a continuation of trends we'd seen getting worse for years on the show. Just how....pouty and insulted D&D + Cogman were after that. This was to be their crowning achievement, and not only that, all critics said it's something you'd fail out of film school for. And just how...unsettling and awkward it is, listening to the commentaries, like listening in on an abusive relationship, when you hear like the VFX team saying they were actually arguing against all that screen darkness for MONTHS. This wasn't...unanticipated. Benioff gets told something won't work, so he does it anyway to spite his critics....a bratty teenager in an adult's body....and then when he DOES fail.....I'm genuinely terrified that he'd lash out at anyone around him. The mind boggles at what it must have been like to be physically around Benioff as Season 8 aired and through the months of fallout afterwards. Was he in blissful denial the whole time? Did it ever really sink in that he wasn't going to sweep the Emmys in every category for this? (They got best series, but not best writing or directing, and I really think he was actually surprised, and for once knew real fear, that this would harm his Star Wars deal). But I'm ranting too much...

This gaslighting is exhausting. I take some solace in the fact that LARGE numbers of people in my YouTube comments who did a quick read of it all give the same description: that even to casual readers, it comes off as smug, deflecting, or blaming the fans. what I wouldn’t give to have a real moderator actually grill Cogman over the Sansa rape and not let up: HOW he filmed that one scene is irrelevant and a deflection.

Oh don’t get me wrong; just that I think the full context of this in the books will not redeem how Benioff and Weiss did it.

Hibberd has pervasively lied to us for years, and along with D&D twisted and distorted facts. We don't know if GRRM even said "Stannis" burns Shireen to him, or if he paraphrased that. But even if GRRM did say that, it's irrelevant: the context could be so radically changed that what the TV show did was still a truncated abomination. The simple answer is we won't know what happens in the next book....until we read the next book. He who sees through the eyes of Morgoth sees all things crooked. I take no meaning from his quote in Hibberd's book one way or the other.

James Hibberd Lies to Game of Thrones Fans at SDCC & in his New Book, " Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon "

James Hibberd Lies to Game of Thrones Fans at SDCC & in his New Book, " Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon "

I don't think it occurred to D&D or to Hibberd that within the same page of quotes, they desperately claim "we were setting up Arya as the one to kill the Night King!" and then admitting "actually for a while there we thought we might make it Sandor Clegane"....admitting just how in flux all of this was until Season 8 itself. When exactly was the change made? Apparently during filming on Season 7 itself. Because while there IS a picture of a Valyrian steel dagger...maybe that scene was a late addition. Season 7 feels like things were changing mid-stream; mid-filming; relic scenes like talking about Daenerys's not-pregnancy, or A SCENE EXPLAINING THE PRINCE THAT WAS PROMISED PROPHECY that same year they claim they abandoned it? (shrug) Well "Season 7" is a long time period, a process, lasting months. I do think they got the idea "very late in production on Season 7" but not merely "when we made Season 7"...no, not when you started it. Other quotes are out there like "we got the idea that Arya would use that knife drop move to kill the Night King when we saw her do it to Brienne"...NO, it wasn't "foreshadowing" anymore than Mel's Season 3 "blue eyes" line. They got the idea FROM the Brienne scene. The only question is, "do you mean they got the whole idea for her to kill the Night King in that scene, or just that she'd use that specific finishing move?"

Full list of chapters from James Hibberd's new interview book, "Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon": Preface - Finding Westeros Chapter 1 - A Dream of Dragons Chapter 2 - Casting Tales Chapter 3 - "You Guys Have a Massive Problem" Chapter 4 - "My Book Comes to Life" Chapter 5 - Enter the Dragon Chapter 6 - Learning to Die Chapter 7 - Fresh Blood Chapter 8 - The Battle of the Blackwater Chapter 9 - Fire and Ice Chapter 10 - This is Going to Be Good Chapter 11 - The Red Wedding Chapter 12 - Mummer's Farce Chapter 13 - "Go in Screaming" Chapter 14 - The Purple Wedding Chapter 15 - Trial and Tribulations Chapter 16 - The Biggest Show in the World Chapter 17 - The Forks in the Road Chapter 18 - A Detour to Dorne Chapter 19 - Running on Faith Chapter 20 - "Shame...Shame...Shame..." Chapter 22 - Playing Dead Chapter 23 - The Pack Survives Chapter 24 - The Magnificent "Bastards" Chapter 25 - All Shows Must Die Chapter 26 - Shipping Out Chapter 27 - A Sort of Homecoming Chapter 28 - Walks and Talks Chapter 29 - The Longest Night Chapter 30 - The Things We Love Destroy Us Chapter 31 - Many Partings Chapter 32 - And Now the Watch Has Ended

True, true. Just that he wasn't totally naive; there's points in the text when it says even he got annoyed at the grasping of Otto and Alicent. .....though yeah but the time of the ....incident, with Rhaenyra, that made him return to the Stepstones, he had plausible heirs.

THE PLOT THICKENS! Entertainment Weekly's article has been UPDATED since its original posting...specifically rewording the part about Alicent Hightower's children. I think enough people asked the article author about it on Twitter that, without publicly reacting, he went back and changed it - but to reflect what? The original version, posted Wednesday, which I had already screenshotted the day it was posted to remind myself about the clue it seemed to be giving, said: "Viserys' ambitious second wife and Rhaenyra's stepmother, who had three children of her own with the king" But logging in just now, late Friday night, this line has been revised so it now reads: "Viserys' ambitious second wife and Rhaenyra's stepmother, who had children of her own with the king." ...he took the "three" out. This gets us nowhere, though. As I said, three options, and they're still in play here: Option 1 - it was just a typo, but rather than draw attention to it, Hibberd just deleted it...but then...why not just fix it to say "four" children? Option 2 is that they're cutting Daeron the Daring and Hibberd accidentally let it slip. Option 3, which I still hope for, is that Hibberd let slip a relatively minor point...that Daeron simply hasn't been born yet at the start of Season 1, but he will be later.

Sunk Cost Fallacy. After charming HBO into trusting them, after the first pilot failed they just had to point out "if you ever want to see a return on your investment, you'll prop us up as figureheads by hiring the best directors and production staff you can find". A LOT of Seasons 1 to 4 actually wasn't going smoothly behind-the-scenes - but HBO hushed it up to maintain the value of the "Game of Thrones" brand name.

orly?

At least Taylor no longer seems boastful, but nervous about it.