[Spoilers] Rant & Rave without Repercussions - First We Take King's Landing Edition

[LadyDoom]

1 minute ago, kissdbyfire said:

I bet they're going for a shock, another OMG DID NOT SEE THAT COMING. And they will wait to reveal Rhaegar is Jon's father to tie it in with something Khaleesi next year. 

This. 

I wouldn't be surprised if Jon doesn't find out about his parentage until he's riding one of the big lizards. 

[Liver and Onions]

Okay, having read some summaries of this episode's escapades (I don't watch), I need to ask; is the show continuing its proud tradition of faux-feminism with Cersei murdering a whole bunch of people and wearing a very... odd dress? I've seen reviews online on sites I browse through labeled "women are the future of Westeros" and I think, yeah, a very frightening future. Jon's the only one who seemed to actually care about his family. I somehow doubt if the show is going to remember that he knows Bran escaped Winterfell as well.  Loras and Margaery got exploded. Poor Lyanna Mormont apparently has to make up for all the other awesome female characters they cut from this poor pseudo-adaptation of ADWD. Did she have a family at all? Does she miss her mom? 

I guess this is the turnaround from all the viewers unfamiliar with the books passing judgment on the show in its starting seasons as sexist and horrible (wasn't there some article in the NYT or something blasting it for that, got a lot of backlash? I'm going to have to sift through the archives.) But now women are doing things! Like giving "tough love" to abuse/torture victims! And killing people who disagree with them! And apparently not caring two shits that their loved ones are dead! 

I get that the show is popular, and the articles recapping the show are there to get clicks from people looking to do some "virtual water cooler-ing" about DID YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENED? Hopefully now that the season has ended we can all go back to looking forward to the REAL Winds of Winter.

[The Wull]

People were wondering how D&D were going to compress the remaining story into what, 14 more episodes?  I think we just saw how they plan on doing it.  They'll just kill off vast swathes of difficult storytelling and act like it never happened.

Stannis in the way of Jon being KitN - burns Shireen, wife hangs herself, and Stannis get's Brienne'd.  Done!

Mereenese knot - No problem, burn a couple ships, threaten some diplomats, and put a foreign sellsword in charge.  Done!

Arming the Faith - Two whole seasons of trial drama, plots, secret messages, smallfolk unease.  Undone by Carol going all Guy Fawkes in an instant.  No more Faith, no more Kevan, no more Tommen, no more Marg, no more Tyrell army.  Just literally set the last two years' scripts on fire. 

 

So now all we have left is Dany landing in Dorne, Cersei in King's Landing, and Jon in the North.  They've completely wiped out all the other locations and plots.  At this point I'm actually wondering how they're going to spend all that time.  I can see a season of Dany laying siege to KL taking a season.  I can see Jon trying to get support / fight off LF's plans next season.  Then I guess Dany flies North for the final battle in the last season.  It's all just so unsatisfying and empty.  

My only hope at this point is that TWOW comes out sometimes in this timeframe and is completely different from this garbage, so we can all have a good laugh at the difference in writing talent.

[Le Cygne]

Those fug Cersei outfits or whatever they were. Looks like there were two of them nearly identical. Stiff black drapery jacket with shoulder armor and chain. Has nothing to do with her or Westeros or anything but fugness.

[Le Cygne]

And the music... from The Exorcist? What the hell was that about. So over the top. Music to mass murder by...

[Apathetic Onlooker]

I can't stand Arya.  

Like, she was fucked before all this but this show just did it in.  Putting aside the fact that the whole Frey Pie thing was goddamn ridiculous and ham-fisted in how it is played in this show, the crime of it all is that it's ARYA that does all this.  She actually somehow kills Walder Frey's sons... chops them up into pieces... and then cooks them into pies to serve to Walder before smiling as she cuts his throat. 

I'm pretty sure this girl just skipped PTSD and went full-on American-Psycho, Silence-of-the-Lambs, yandere-simulator ax-killer somewhere down the line.  What the actual fuck!?  I mean, Walder's sons were not even ON her little list... and she somehow kills , butchers, and COOKS them all into pies!?  And then we see her open up Walder Frey's throat with this crazy grin?  Jesus fucking Chris, whatever this mental girl is, she is not Arya Stark.  Someone lock this abomination away somewhere and throw away the key for the good of all humanity!

Her entire Braavos story is stupid.  But her character didn't seem totally ruined before.  But now?  This little monster is irredeemably sick.  I don't care if Walder Frey 'deserves' it.  It's one thing to have Wyman Manderly do this; another entirely to see the little daughter of Ned Stark so twisted that she is become Hannibal Lecter.  What is there to root for in this psychopath now?  How am I supposed to care if the Starks are reunited when you've turned them all into inhuman monsters, more depraved than all of their foes and the White Walkers put together?  

[LadyDoom]

Just now, Le Cygne said:

Those fug Cersei outfits or whatever they were. Looks like there were two of them nearly identical. Stiff black drapery jacket with shoulder armor and chain. Has nothing to do with her or Westeros or anything but fugness.

I think it's part of the backwards empowerment message they are showing. she hanged the girly dresses and she put on some man's clothes to go with her short hair. 

[Mister Stoneheart]

I would have liked it if Lena Heady chose something other than 1 or 2 on a scale of 1 to 10 of intensity to act in the finale.  She still did a good job, but other intensity points are accessible for actors.

[TepidHands]

3 minutes ago, Apathetic Onlooker said:

 How am I supposed to care if the Starks are reunited when you've turned them all into inhuman monsters, more depraved than all of their foes and the White Walkers put together?  

That may be exactly the showrunners' goal. The Starks are dishonorable boasters, oathbreakers, bad parents, bad children, really bad stepparents, traitors, serial murderers, forgetful about their pets, poor dressers, threateners of torture, eye-stabbers, and arrogant, lying liars. If Weiseroff had elevators, they would fart in them. If Weiseroff had telephones, they would crank call people. The Starks are BAD NEWS. 

[SuperMario]

10 minutes ago, The Wull said:

People were wondering how D&D were going to compress the remaining story into what, 14 more episodes?  I think we just saw how they plan on doing it.  They'll just kill off vast swathes of difficult storytelling and act like it never happened.

Stannis in the way of Jon being KitN - burns Shireen, wife hangs herself, and Stannis get's Brienne'd.  Done!

Mereenese knot - No problem, burn a couple ships, threaten some diplomats, and put a foreign sellsword in charge.  Done!

Arming the Faith - Two whole seasons of trial drama, plots, secret messages, smallfolk unease.  Undone by Carol going all Guy Fawkes in an instant.  No more Faith, no more Kevan, no more Tommen, no more Marg, no more Tyrell army.  Just literally set the last two years' scripts on fire. 

 

So now all we have left is Dany landing in Dorne, Cersei in King's Landing, and Jon in the North.  They've completely wiped out all the other locations and plots.  At this point I'm actually wondering how they're going to spend all that time.  I can see a season of Dany laying siege to KL taking a season.  I can see Jon trying to get support / fight off LF's plans next season.  Then I guess Dany flies North for the final battle in the last season.  It's all just so unsatisfying and empty.  

My only hope at this point is that TWOW comes out sometimes in this timeframe and is completely different from this garbage, so we can all have a good laugh at the difference in writing talent.

Great post. I was saying this last night after going over what happened in the finale. Other than a couple minor inconvenient plot points - Littlefinger, Sam, Brienne and Chubby, it is basically set up as Dany against Cersei and then Dany and Jon joining together against the WW. It comes across completely empty.

It just makes me want the books all the more because there's no way GRRM will make almost every storyline completely irrelevant.

[Apathetic Onlooker]

4 minutes ago, TepidHands said:

That may be exactly the showrunners' goal. The Starks are dishonorable boasters, oathbreakers, bad parents, bad children, really bad stepparents, traitors, serial murderers, forgetful about their pets, poor dressers, threateners of torture, eye-stabbers, and arrogant, lying liars. If Weiseroff had elevators, they would fart in them. If Weiseroff had telephones, they would crank call people. The Starks are BAD NEWS. 

This goes beyond farting in the elevator.  This is waiting for a bunch of people to get on, and then pressing every floor button available and the emergency call button-- THEN farting in the elevator.

[sweetsunray]

1 hour ago, Landru said:

There are two massive problems with the teleportation thing:

1) Viewers not only have no idea when time passes or how much, they have no idea that time has passed until something jarring like Varys on deck happens. Having time pass quickly is not a unique problem to GoT, it happens in many shows and movies and there are plenty of techniques to deal with it (e.g. exposition, a montage, or even showing a marked change in appearance of characters). This show doesn't even try.

2) Even more problematic, there are no consequences in other areas of the world for time passing. In the example of Dany's armada, not only did Varys sail from Dorne to Slaver's Bay, he apparently gathered ships from Dorne and Highgarden. Dany would have also have had to gather provisions, load them and 50,000 horses onto ships using the pathetic Meereen docks that we've seen, wait for all the ships to be loaded for t0he armada to form then set out. Realistically, a year or more could have passed. Meanwhile, we've been told that the only reason that KL isn't starving is because of food shipments from Highgarden. So what's happened in the capital? What about the White Walkers? Can Little Sam finally walk?

The teleporting and time separation or whatever honeypot explanation given for it is now way out of hand. It's not the Lost island located on a different timeinel in some weird wormhole, where one part of the planet is moving at lightning speed ahead of the other. If we were to accept there are different timelines then Dany is a year ahead in time of everybody else. Makes no fucking sense. Sure, shows can tweek a few days or a week here or there once in a while and allow for some discrepance... but not every episodes and it getting worse and worse and worse. A show shouldn't do that, unless minimally for one timeline in a premiere episode. And even then it can cause issues.

For example with Black Sails S3 months have passed. Issues that people expected to be shown in S3 were already settled and characters had different hairdos and other changed appearances. Except that one character seems to make it back to New Providence fairly quick from London (a voyage that at best would require 2 months). But the 2 month voyage works out if the reveal at the end of the S3 premier is considered more of a flashback that occurred before the rest of the events in the S3 premiere for other characters. So, it works out... and yet I have read many people comment how a certain interaction between 2 characters who made that voyage of 2 months could have altered so significantly, because people assume that certain threats were made just the day before or so.I'm pretty sure though that the writing team of Black Sails will learn from the fact that many viewers did not pick up on the fact that the 2 month voyage of those characters did not come across as 2 months for many viewers. Because they do their darnest best to keep timelines straight. 

[OldGimletEye]

25 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Those fug Cersei outfits or whatever they were. Looks like there were two of them nearly identical. Stiff black drapery jacket with shoulder armor and chain. Has nothing to do with her or Westeros or anything but fugness.

For some reason, that get-up Cersei had on, reminded me of that guy in the horror movie's Hellraiser. Maybe Cersei should have had some pins in her head or something.

[JGP]

27 minutes ago, The Wull said:

People were wondering how D&D were going to compress the remaining story into what, 14 more episodes?  I think we just saw how they plan on doing it.  They'll just kill off vast swathes of difficult storytelling and act like it never happened.

Stannis in the way of Jon being KitN - burns Shireen, wife hangs herself, and Stannis get's Brienne'd.  Done!

Mereenese knot - No problem, burn a couple ships, threaten some diplomats, and put a foreign sellsword in charge.  Done!

Arming the Faith - Two whole seasons of trial drama, plots, secret messages, smallfolk unease.  Undone by Carol going all Guy Fawkes in an instant.  No more Faith, no more Kevan, no more Tommen, no more Marg, no more Tyrell army.  Just literally set the last two years' scripts on fire. 

So now all we have left is Dany landing in Dorne, Cersei in King's Landing, and Jon in the North.  They've completely wiped out all the other locations and plots.  At this point I'm actually wondering how they're going to spend all that time.  I can see a season of Dany laying siege to KL taking a season.  I can see Jon trying to get support / fight off LF's plans next season.  Then I guess Dany flies North for the final battle in the last season.  It's all just so unsatisfying and empty.  

My only hope at this point is that TWOW comes out sometimes in this timeframe and is completely different from this garbage, so we can all have a good laugh at the difference in writing talent.

I agree with you, more or less. Were I a show runner, in broad strokes here's how I'd compress the remaining time:

 

Season 7.

The North: Jon fortifies Moat Cailin significantly and brings the crannogmen men into its defense as a bastion against the South, which also allows Howland Reed to be brought into the fold. Jon, being a former LC of the NW now KitN will focus on the logistics of a long winter [which is like a siege] by consolidating resources and focusing on the Wall, i.e. repairing and manning its forts and castles. Littlefinger will be a nuisance during this time, but I'd make that problem Sansa's to deal with and resolve. 

Kings Landing: Cersei and the Lannisters, I honestly don't know what to do with them given where they're at. She's completely on her own and doesn't have much ability to project power beyond KLs walls. They really wrote her into a corner. A siege is in her future I imagine, but it couldn't last long.

Riverun: The Brotherhood without Banners and Arya deal with Frey hold outs. Sandor and Arya need to get together again, and as an inverted parallel, a somewhat redeemed Sandor is now working on liberating Arya from her psychotic tendencies. 

The South: Dany lands in Dorne. Consolidates the South, as well as incorporating old Targaryen loyalists like the Hightowers of Oldtown [Sam will join her storyline here] and I'd have her sweep one arm slowly toward KL but the other upward in a fast conquest of the west to completely eradicate any support Cersei might get from the lands and Lannister bannermen. Converge on KL, and Dany or Jaime ultimately deals with Cersei-- with Jaime being spared by his little brother. 

Last few episodes of S7: The war of the Long Night starts in earnest, culminating with the fall of the Wall-- and the North, making their way south, are fighting a rearguard action against the Night's King et al under the command of Jon. Dany and the South start making their way north.

 

Season 8: All out war.      

[Tijgy]

2 minutes ago, Apathetic Onlooker said:

I can't stand Arya.  

Like, she was fucked before all this but this show just did it in.  Putting aside the fact that the whole Frey Pie thing was goddamn ridiculous and ham-fisted in how it is played in this show, the crime of it all is that it's ARYA that does all this.  She actually somehow kills Walder Frey's sons... chops them up into pieces... and then cooks them into pies to serve to Walder before smiling as she cuts his throat. 

I'm pretty sure this girl just skipped PTSD and went full-on American-Psycho, Silence-of-the-Lambs, yandere-simulator ax-killer somewhere down the line.  What the actual fuck!?  I mean, Walder's sons were not even ON her little list... and she somehow kills , butchers, and COOKS them all into pies!?  And then we see her open up Walder Frey's throat with this crazy grin?  Jesus fucking Chris, whatever this mental girl is, she is not Arya Stark.  Someone lock this abomination away somewhere and throw away the key for the good of all humanity!

Her entire Braavos story is stupid.  But her character didn't seem totally ruined before.  But now?  This little monster is irredeemably sick.  I don't care if Walder Frey 'deserves' it.  It's one thing to have Wyman Manderly do this; another entirely to see the little daughter of Ned Stark so twisted that she is become Hannibal Lecter.  What is there to root for in this psychopath now?  How am I supposed to care if the Starks are reunited when you've turned them all into inhuman monsters, more depraved than all of their foes and the White Walkers put together?  

I have actually read reviews in which people were writing that in order to have her revenge Arya breaks guest right just like Walder did when he murdered Cat and Robb.

They completely destroyed the Frey Pies. Wyman doesn't break really guest right - he gives them symbolic gifts to show the guest right is ended and he murders them then. He really feeds them the meat of the pie while Arya just shows "your kids are in the pies" because the Cook of the story is in the end punished by eating his kin. And in the book it is made clear Wyman wants to give them a divine punishment: he demands the singers to sing Rat Cook. While I know the pies should normally refer to that story, I do not think the casual (not-book) fan remembers that one story Bran told in season 3. In the show it is just completely out of context. 

And I also agree this is very dark act. And even before this episode, I said I would have a problem with the fact Arya made those Frey Pies instead of Wyman because I do not want to see Arya doing this. Wyman's actions have at least a perception of giving a divine punishment by his reference to the Rat Cook or basing his actions on Northern folklore; Arya doesn't. 

 

[SuperMario]

3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

For some reason, that get-up Cersei had on, reminded of that guy in the horror movie's Hellraiser. Maybe Cersei should have had some pins in her head or something.

HAHAHA. Cersei - Cenobite. It all makes sense.

[sweetsunray]

4 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

For some reason, that get-up Cersei had on, reminded of that guy in the horror movie's Hellraiser. Maybe Cersei should have had some pins in her head or something.

That's where I recognized the ugly thing from!!!!!! I only ever watched the first one, and that's been decades ago. I wonder if that very disturbed scene that didn't make the cut was something with hooks and tearing now. Wouldn't surprise me if it was... Carol Hellraiser.

[Apathetic Onlooker]

8 minutes ago, Tijgy said:

And I also agree this is very dark act. And even before this episode, I said I would have a problem with the fact Arya made those Frey Pies instead of Wyman because I do not want to see Arya doing this. Wyman's actions have at least a perception of giving a divine punishment by his reference to the Rat Cook or basing his actions on Northern folklore; Arya doesn't. 

 

Exactly.  Honestly, everyone's covered how the logic doesn't work and how ham-fisted it all is for the Frey pies to be served up in this way.  But what really digs at me is how window-licking mad Arya is in this.  This girl isn't supposed to kill with some gleeful smile and cackle at her own "poetic justice".  Even as a killer working for the HoBaW, she was never this bad, in show or book.  Killing was either something she did to survive, defend herself, or something she did quickly because she was contracted to do it.  The one time she let her emotions get the better of her because of revenge, she has a psychotic break.  It looks more like Ellie stabbing David in the Last of Us, not some cold, predatory joy-killing with 'bad-ass' one-liners and premeditated plans for grinding people up and serving them as food.

[CrastorsLivingSon]

1 hour ago, DutchArya said:

I'm just wondering what grrm must be thinking. Hopefully this spurs him on to finish Winds before s7.

I hope it spurs him to do the opposite (as much as it pains me) finish the thing and hold onto it so that d&d can dig themselves a plot hole so big they can't get out.  As soon as he releases more it gives them source material which they can use (even butchered source material was astronomically better then the shit we got this season). 

Finish it.  Start the next/plow into it.  Shows end.  Release as a big middle finger of how it should have gone.  

[sweetsunray]

2 minutes ago, Apathetic Onlooker said:

Exactly.  Honestly, everyone's covered how the logic doesn't work and how ham-fisted it all is for the Frey pies to be served up in this way.  But what really digs at me is how window-licking mad Arya is in this.  This girl isn't supposed to kill with some gleeful smile and cackle at her own "poetic justice".  Even as a killer working for the HoBaW, she was never this bad, in show or book.  Killing was either something she did to survive, defend herself, or something she did quickly because she was contracted to do it.  The one time she let her emotions get the better of her because of revenge, she has a psychotic break.  It looks more like Ellie stabbing David in the Last of Us, not some cold, predatory joy-killing. 

I'm simply not yet ready to comment on that at all. I've obliterated the scene from my mind.