Rant and Rave Without Repercussions - Includes Season 6 Spoilers

[Gustavo Fringed Sleeves]

That Ian McShane quote is so good, I'm going to take it for my signature.

[Gabriele]

What, no happy end for poor, misunderstood Littlefinger?

 

[Le Cygne]

4 minutes ago, Gabriele said:

What, no happy end for poor, misunderstood Littlefinger?

Nor Ramsay, sadly. They just want to play up the villains at the expense of the Starks. Nothing is just nothing.

[Ben H'gahr]

My rant about S6:

I fear the show is going fully into bro-mode, will focus less on storytelling, dialogue and character development but rather focus only on action, nudity, violence and shock/controversy. Seems like HBO figured out that this keeps GOT in the news and what binds the majority of viewers to the show. Instead of telling the story of an epic saga, the show becomes centered around popular characters (such as Jaime, Greyworm or Shae e.g.) or popular actors (such as Sophie Turner) and what happens to their lives (similar to post-S4 Dexter) because that's what (or better who) the mob wants to see. Popular characters who are going through some action/sex-event, the original book fans are kept somewhat satisfied by spoiling TWOW (for those who like that) or a very well crafted "epic" episode (e.g. Hardhome). It appears to me that GOT has developed from one of the best shows on TV into a giant spin operation. GRRM 'more like than not' won't be finishing ASOIF (i.e. TWOW coming out God knows when and ADOS most likely never) and that the show providing the only ending and closure of the story that fans will ever get, my ASOIF-experience feels kinda spoilt. 

That's at least what I fear, but maybe D&D and S6 (as well as GRRM w/regards to the books) prove me wrong. 

 

[Gustavo Fringed Sleeves]

TL;DR It's only tits and dragons.

[aFeastForDragons]

30 minutes ago, Ben H'gahr said:

My rant about S6:

I fear the show is going fully into bro-mode, will focus less on storytelling, dialogue and character development but rather focus only on action, nudity, violence and shock/controversy.

 

You mean like S5? 

[A_Cornered_Wolf]

The trailer has confirmed for me that I am not the audience for this show anymore.  It literally did nothing for me, I care no shits about anyone or anything shown in that trailer.  It may be my bias, but again I felt like there was a strong Lannister/Bolton emphasis.

 

It is also laughable, not in a funny way, but is a sad and almost tragic way, how much better the Expanse has managed to adapt similar material (in terms of content, structure and storytelling style) without having to resort to any of shock tactics.  It pretty much does everything better than GoT claims to do, without any of the pandering.  I can only hope it builds enough ratings to highlight what a poor job has been done with GoT, particularly in recent seasons, and that you don't have to rely on the bullshit to be successful.

[Le Cygne]

1 hour ago, Myrish Swamp-Thing said:

That Ian McShane quote is so good, I'm going to take it for my signature.

It's only tits and dragons! That's so good.

So the Hound and the Peaceniks running across the Outlaw Band sounds like when Brienne and Pod/Nimble Dick ran across the Bloody Mummers. So here, Septon Meribrother is killed a la Nimble Dick. The Hound kills the three outlaws in one go. Maybe makes one bury Septon MB.

This would account for Finn Jones, Natalie Dormer, et al saying the Hound is fucking cool with a good heart. Not his story, but hey. (The outlaws are in 2 episodes, maybe to set up they are villains, the show likes villains, we can imagine what it was like when they were a boy.)

[Alayne's Shadow.]

1 hour ago, A_Cornered_Wolf said:

The trailer has confirmed for me that I am not the audience for this show anymore.  It literally did nothing for me, I care no shits about anyone or anything shown in that trailer.  It may be my bias, but again I felt like there was a strong Lannister/Bolton emphasis.

Agreed. There's nothing for me in this show. I know that Cogman said Sansa's story in season 5 is not the end, and that she apparently has a great story about becoming a major player and reclaiming Winterfell, but huh? Even if I were to believe that (Which is clearly a lie, since the care given to the character was Chaotic Evil) and they somehow become Great Writers, then it still means they thought raping Sansa was a "valid" choice to get her to that point, as in, rape substituted her journey as a character and is treated as empowering and as character development, which is in itself, disgusting.

Show!Sansa realistically would have killed herself, what's the point of staying alive when you're being repeatedly raped in your childhood home, after being a prisoner of war for several years, with your entire kin, as far as she knew, dead and buried? This is what Book!Jeyne wants. You don't get STRONGER from rape, you don't search for a way to escape and "redefine" your goals, you're just traumatized. The fact that this needs to be pointed out to them is offensive in itself. 

[Le Cygne]

You know, even if you get past all the fuckery of that storyline, they had a Stark raped by a Bolton, that didn't happen in the books, and are just pretending it's no big deal. There's no amount of revenge that resets that, and makes it like it didn't happen. They made Ramsay, that sniveling little shit in the books, Super Ramsay. And Jon can't beat him without help from Super LF. Yuk.

(Oh, and that's not even getting into the yuk of his return centering on Mel's boobs.)

[Alayne's Shadow.]

3 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

You know, even if you get past all the fuckery of that storyline, they had a Stark raped by a Bolton, that didn't happen in the books, and are just pretending it's no big deal. There's no amount of revenge that resets that, and makes it like it didn't happen. They made Ramsay, that sniveling little shit in the books, Super Ramsay. And Jon can't beat him without help from Super LF. Yuk.

Exactly. The way they act is like, "Well, Sansa and the Starks will win anyway, so she'll have her revenge, and then she'll just forget about the whole issue". Yeah, because it works just like that. 

I'll just focus on the laughable parts now, Mel resurrecting Jon via necrophilia, Asha and Qarla, Theon becoming empowered by trauma and leading armies (Not without two or three dick jokes). 

[LadySoftheart]

2 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

I don't think so. I think they set up something with Sandor. They just want to make her suffer some more.

Themes are for 8th grade book reports, but they took time out from boobs for all of this, and a whole lot more.

(And let's not forget this...)

All true, and I sincerely hope you get something that you like out of this show ... but they also took time out from tits and dragons (bless you Ian McShane!) to have Jaime rescue Brienne from the bear and give her Oathkeeper only to have Jaime obsess about his lover Cersei and not getting to choose whom he loves and Brienne focus on killing Stannis to the detriment of the promise she made Jaime, and they set up Tysha back in season 1 only to have her drop out completely. They also forget things they set up in their own made up stories (Cersei's black-haired baby, the necklaces, the number of Doran's children...) So ... I really don't trust them to follow up on season 2 foreshadowing when they can't keep straight from one episode to the next who knows that Bran is alive!

Again, I hope for your sake that I am wrong - I just have a low-trust relationship with Benioff and Weiss (and in the case of the ASOIAF Beauty & the Beast story that I'm invested in, I'd even go so far as to say that even if they do have Larry and the Brute meet again and love each other, I just can't bring myself to care about these pale imitations of their book counterparts.)

[Alayne's Shadow.]

9 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Quote Glitch

I'm interested in seeing Brienne and Jaime reuniting too, but I'm not sure how that'll work on the show. They'll probably make Jaime either 1) Continue his monstrous streak or 2) Make a 180 so it's shocking when he leaves Carol. 

[Le Cygne]

6 hours ago, LadySoftheart said:

Again, I hope for your sake that I am wrong - I just have a low-trust relationship with Benioff and Weiss (and in the case of the ASOIAF Beauty & the Beast story that I'm invested in, I'd even go so far as to say that even if they do have Larry and the Brute meet again and love each other, I just can't bring myself to care about these pale imitations of their book counterparts.)

And I hope for your sake you are wrong. I like both stories, but the books are the real story, so fuck the show. My guess, they are back loading both stories for the last part of the series. I think it's a big mistake, because these were great stories they could have and should have been telling all along.

(I also don't think this is the same as numbers of necklaces and children and the like... they have been dropping hints for both stories up to and including last season. I think they are going there because the books are going there. I think they just don't know what the hell they are doing.)

Here, the director called out this as foreshadowing, too, maybe by the 80th time he says that, it will finally be about them:

[Le Cygne]

44 minutes ago, Alayne's Shadow. said:

I'm interested in seeing Brienne and Jaime reuniting too, but I'm not sure how that'll work on the show. They'll probably make Jaime either 1) Continue his monstrous streak or 2) Make a 180 so it's shocking when he leaves Carol. 

I think it's 2). I think it's always going to be 2) with them. That's how they roll, always has been.

[Tijgy]

For them it is just a matter of showing some plot points. And the best way to show those are by using SHOCK. 

(Kilgrave is btw the most scariest villain I have ever saw. Really scary)

[Le Cygne]

Yeah, they don't know how to build up to things. So they don't even try. They sprinkle pixie dust here and there, and then get back to the really important stuff of exploring what it was like when Ramsay and LF were boys.

[A_Cornered_Wolf]

5 minutes ago, Tijgy said:

For them it is just a matter of showing some plot points. And the best way to show those are by using SHOCK. 

(Kilgrave is btw the most scariest villain I have ever saw. Really scary)

JJ another show that deals with grimdark and serious issues extremely well (though I'm not sure I'd call it a good adaption because I feel it improved on the original significantly).  Of course, its also clear the writers believe in things like themes and metaphors and weaving them across the entirety of the work so clearly its meant for the 8th grade and not Prime Time, Emmy winning Television.

[Arrow of the Morning]

4 hours ago, LadySoftheart said:

L. And it angers me so much that two people who supposedly are creative artists - one a novelist - can look at this character and decide to throw out everything that GRRM did with him in three books, and have him regress back to being his sister's lapdog - WHY??? Is it just that they're so enamored of their Show!Cersei that they can't fathom anyone rejecting her? (I think some of their love for Show!Cersei is bleeding into their portrayal of Sansa as well; in the books, Cersei is contemptuous of every woman who isn't Cersei, and that contempt is particularly stark in her cruel treatment of Sansa, but the showrunners seem to have bought right into Cersei's perceptions of Sansa and show her as the naive, silly girl that Cersei believes her to be.) 

That is the reason the show became just a bad fan fiction. In the fan fiction universe exist what they call 'Possession Sue', when the author became so attached with his favorite canon characters that he "improve"them, cannibalize the story and butcher other characters in favor of them. Cersei, Tyrion, Ramsay and Littlefinger in the last season were the primal example of that. Watch Tyrion in Season Five was not different of reading a Harry Potter fanfic where the author liked Severus Snape so much that made the other characters mention his big nose and greasy hair as beautiful.

Fanfic authors are most beginners that are learning how to write and do it as a exercise, so it is not surprising that they commit some mistakes. But, when two supposed professional writers do such errors as a job it is embarrassing.   

[Tijgy]

18 minutes ago, A_Cornered_Wolf said:

JJ another show that deals with grimdark and serious issues extremely well (though I'm not sure I'd call it a good adaption because I feel it improved on the original significantly).  Of course, its also clear the writers believe in things like themes and metaphors and weaving them across the entirety of the work so clearly its meant for the 8th grade and not Prime Time, Emmy winning Television.

I believe it is well done to deal with those issues. D&D probably won't even deal with Sansa's trauma . I am just at the end of episode 6 which is so vile. 

And here at least (until now) they are not wanting us to sympathize with Kilgrave unlike D&D want us to do with their psychopaths (poor Ramsay who is not appreciated by his father). I believe there is a difference in making the audience understand why people became what they are and in making the audience justify/excuse characters just by a sad backstory. Some things cannot be justified/excused and only understood.