Rant & Rave Season 8 [Spoilers]: When you are cool like a cucumber, as evil as the mother of madness, but never as perfect as the pet!

[Mystical]

1 hour ago, TheNecromancerofMirkwood said:

The worst scene in the later episodes for me was the LACK of reaction to Jon revealing his parentage to his cousins Sansa and Arya. All we got to see was their facial expressions for a moment before they even learn the truth. Literally, a moment many fans waited for because of the emotional impact it would have had and it was flushed down the toilet because "reasons".

There was no time for that kind of nonsense. We needed Tyrion/Jamie scene #3267312312763127635, especially if it involved talking about cocks and sex. This was literally the first time all remaining Starks were together alone in a scene since the freaking pilot episode of the show. Who wants to see that? Especially since it involves this huge revelation that their father never dishonored their mother and Jon is actually their cousin. Why would you want to see any of that on your screen when you could have sex and cock talk?

25 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Whereas in Season 8, they had the remaining Starks operating by the same code of ethics as Tony Soprano.  And, that's why so many people who had been rooting for the Starks ended up detesting them.

Not true. But it seems you extrapolate from your opinion to everyone elses.

[TheNecromancerofMirkwood]

29 minutes ago, SeanF said:

All of that.  Our being expected to feel Jon's pain, after running a knife through his lover's hear

While I thought Jon shanking her was stupid (it should have been Jorah Mormont, having survived The Long Night that killed her), I truly didn't care at that moment. I never bought them being in love since it was just so forced. Literally, not an ounce of on-screen chemistry. Jon and Sansa falling in love, on the other hand, I could buy because of the very obvious chemistry between Kit and Sophie in their reunion in Season 6.......

[Le Cygne]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

All of that.  Our being expected to feel Jon's pain, after running a knife through his lover's heart, or Tyrion's pain, after wringing his lover's neck, is part of the same literary tradition as being expected to feel Athos' pain after he hanged his wife from a tree, in The Three Musketeers.  And D & D think the final season will be viewed in a better light in the future!?  Yes, Western societies are really getting more sympathetic towards the man pain felt by those who kill their lovers!

And, they kinda forgot that what made Robb, Ned, and Catelyn so attractive as characters was their code of honour, even if it got them killed.  They tried to do the right thing, even when it cost them.  Whereas in Season 8, they had the remaining Starks operating by the same code of ethics as Tony Soprano.  And, that's why so many people who had been rooting for the Starks ended up detesting them.

Yeah, when I think of Robb, Ned, and Catelyn, the real ones, I think of real love. That's what drove them. That's why we cared about the Starks, but they turned them into detestable assholes.

Also, remember this? From the Lindsay Ellis video: perfect show Stark sigil

[SeanF]

22 minutes ago, TheNecromancerofMirkwood said:

While I thought Jon shanking her was stupid (it should have been Jorah Mormont, having survived The Long Night that killed her), I truly didn't care at that moment. I never bought them being in love since it was just so forced. Literally, not an ounce of on-screen chemistry. Jon and Sansa falling in love, on the other hand, I could buy because of the very obvious chemistry between Kit and Sophie in their reunion in Season 6.......

I don't think that D & D successfully wrote their relationship as a great love story, but I think they wanted us to think that it was.

[It_spelt_Magalhaes]

On 1/17/2020 at 3:42 PM, Nowy Tends said:

Explication: amateurism, couldn't-care-less attitude. (in French it's "je-m'en-foutisme", literally "don't-give-a-shit-isme.

That was so spot on I can't even.

Thank you.

They simply grabbed a whole steak dinner, post digestion, and served up a shit sandwich as if it were the original product.

I sometimes step back, simply haunt the book parts of the forum following threads that call out as I impatiently wait for Winds. Then, the whole indigestion comes back up and makes me nauseous as to how long I personally tried to make myself believe it simply couldn't be that bad.

Well, it was.

[Le Cygne]

Still sore about the way Game of Thrones ended? Well, George R.R. Martin may have you covered. The author of the Song of Ice and Fire novel series upon which the HBO show was based has teased a different ending than the one depicted on the show — if he ever finishes writing the last two books, that is.

"People know an ending — but not the ending," Martin told German newspaper Welt of his plans for the conclusion of the fantasy novels, as compared to Game of Thrones' divisive finale... As for whether fans will ever read "the ending," Martin told the same publication that he's still hard at work on the two final novels of the Song of Ice and Fire series, titled The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring, but that has been the case for years.

https://www.tvguide.com/news/george-r-r-martin-teases-new-game-of-thrones-ending/

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

Still sore about the way Game of Thrones ended? Well, George R.R. Martin may have you covered. The author of the Song of Ice and Fire novel series upon which the HBO show was based has teased a different ending than the one depicted on the show — if he ever finishes writing the last two books, that is.

"People know an ending — but not the ending," Martin told German newspaper Welt of his plans for the conclusion of the fantasy novels, as compared to Game of Thrones' divisive finale... As for whether fans will ever read "the ending," Martin told the same publication that he's still hard at work on the two final novels of the Song of Ice and Fire series, titled The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring, but that has been the case for years.

https://www.tvguide.com/news/george-r-r-martin-teases-new-game-of-thrones-ending/

That is somewhat hopeful, for those of who enjoy good story-telling.

[Le Cygne]

Here's a clip from the interview above:

WELT: We know the end, the world knows the end.

GRRM: Well, they know a end and... they got ahead of me, which I didn't expect, but I'm doing what I've been doing for years, and still trying to finish the Winds of Winter and then after that, A Dream of Spring. So those will be my things and then we'll see.

https://www.welt.de/kultur/video205089548/Exklusiv-Interview-George-R-R-Martin-im-Gespraech-mit-WELT-Autor-Martin-Scholz.html

Also he talks about the two versions of The Little Mermaid when asked about Dany and says choose the version you prefer. The mermaid suffers horribly then dies in the Hans Christian Andersen version. Very different from the Disney version, which he likes:

"Fantasy" covers a lot of ground. Going into this, I decided I had better exclude all animated films. Otherwise the list might well have been dominated by Disney's classic retellings of time-honored fairy tales: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, and The Little Mermaid.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-writers-top-10-fantasy-films

[The Dragon Demands]

12 minute montage clip of the Austin Film Festival panel from October 2019, in which Benioff and Weiss flippantly admit their total lack of writing qualifications - only to then be confronted about the lack of female or nonwhite writers -TRAINED writers - on Game of Thrones.  

 

 

[Le Cygne]

41 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

12 minute montage clip of the Austin Film Festival panel from October 2019, in which Benioff and Weiss flippantly admit their total lack of writing qualifications - only to then be confronted about the lack of female or nonwhite writers -TRAINED writers - on Game of Thrones.  

 

 

Their responses to that are so deceptive, so reprehensible, and yet so predictable, right from the good ole boys playbook.

[The Dragon Demands]

I’m interested in what specifically stood out to you.

Also I’ve been meaning to ask: you call yourself “the swan” in French: are you in France?

[Le Cygne]

4 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I’m interested in what specifically stood out to you.

Also I’ve been meaning to ask: you call yourself “the swan” in French: what is your physical location?

Oh, everything. I've been talking about their issues on this thread. Their issues have issues.

(I picked my user name for this... very pretty.)

 

 

[The Dragon Demands]

Clip: Benioff & Weiss At Austin Film Fest 2019 Admit They Rewrote Game of Thrones Characters Just to Show Off Their Favorite Actors 

 

 

[The Dragon Demands]

 

Benioff & Weiss Discuss Skipping Night Shoots for Season 8 at Austin Film Fest panel 2019

 

[SeanF]

12 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

 

Benioff & Weiss Discuss Skipping Night Shoots for Season 8 at Austin Film Fest panel 2019

 

The Austin Film Festival was their Gerard Ratner moment.

Ratner sabotaged his jewellers by joking that that the items he sold cost about as much as a Mark and Spencer sandwich and lasted as long.

[The Dragon Demands]

What baffles me is why the media finally reported on this incident, but not many others by D&D just as bad since season 5.

The ONLY other live-interview Benioff and Weiss ever gave between Seasons 3 and 8, that was a REAL interview, with just them and no cast members to hide behind....was the PBS Idaho Writer's Conference Interview from 2016, post-Season 6.

I'm still baffled why that didn't gain as much traction in the media, draw as much criticism, as the Austin Film Fest panel from October 2019. 

They say EXACTLY the same offensive things in it.

Idaho was even a video, Austin just a live-tweet. Was it..."too obscure"? Austin was also obscure.  What changed?  I think it was more than one thing.

 

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[SeanF]

Season 6 ended strongly, obscuring earlier weaknesses.  

Seaon 7 was weak, but had some good scenes.  In truth, both seasons should have faced much more criticism.

[Many-Faced Votary]

Please let me preface the following rant by saying that I try to be as objective as possible when analyzing the show -- although I am unapologetically snarky when discussing it, given my findings -- in an attempt to provide balanced and valuable criticism.

Indeed, I was a huge fan of the show in the first season, even declaring it as good an adaption as could ever be expected (at least when translating from the specific mediums of a book series to a television show), still considered myself a major fan of the next two seasons, and was ultimately a willing supporter of the fourth season (instead of considering it to have clear good and bad parts, with the latter having the definite edge, as is now the case). I even made apologies for most aspects of the show throughout the first three seasons, and attempted to justify the various -- to be diplomatic -- creative changes that multiplied exponentially in Season 4.

However, not to put too fine a point on it, I now know better. I had eventually realized there was something very wrong when I was watching Season 5, and by-and-by made the decision to watch it again after a few months so that I could approach it in a new light, and in so doing, take careful notes in an attempt to understand the point and implications of the narrative and to assess its strength as an adaptation, and even to try pinpointing themes for fellow eighth graders. With Season 6, I immediately realized that the endeavor of attempting to judge GoT as any sort of "adaptation" of ASoIaF was futile -- but I also found, when I followed the same procedure to analyze the narrative on its own merits, that virtually all of the plotlines barely even functioned as actual stories!

 

The misgivings I had formerly dismissed, ranging from the simplification and vilification of more traditionally feminine characters (especially Catelyn and Sansa) and casual whorephobia as early as Season 1, to the joke that was Qarth in Season 2, to Loras being obviously stereotypically homosexual and for some reason eager to sleep with any gay man he meets in Season 3, to the omission of the Tysha reveal in Season 4, among countless other examples, suggested consistently problematic outlooks at this point.

More generally, the gratuitous and meaningless use of nudity, violence, torture, and rape -- in direct contrast to Mr. Martin's careful use of these for world-building and serious storytelling -- as well as the removal of careful thematic cohesion and plotting in favor of shocking "twists" (the Red Wedding in ASoIaF seems inevitable in hindsight, particularly with all the foreshadowing that can later be deduced, whereas it was intentionally framed to appear as horrifically random as possible on GoT), started to become very clear.

I began to identify countless problems of perspective (meta) and framing (within the show itself) with respect to the show, and realized that these formed clear patterns: the misogynistic implications most of all. Now, this is not to say that Messrs. Benioff and Weiss decided, "Let's be sexist!" (or, "Let's make horrifically racist implications!" or anything else they are guilty of), but bigotry is rarely in the form of clear and malicious hate, and such is a reductive and dangerous view to take. What is ultimately clear is that how -- for the sake of the example of sexism -- the men and women on their show acted is truly how they believe women (and men, to an equally damaging albeit much lesser extent) do act, or else that they should act in these ways.

 

Quite frankly, in light of Seasons 5 through 8, Game of Thrones might be the worst show I've ever watched that isn't a throwaway sitcom when it comes to writing and literary merit. Certainly it is the absolute worst television show ever to accrue critical acclaim. I cannot imagine how anyone could consider the abomination a proper "adaptation" of A Song of Ice and Fire in any way, shape, or form; it is, at best, fan fiction inspired by it for the mist part. Even more so, I cannot fathom how anyone could consider the show on its own (lack of) merits and declare it -- for instance -- "bold" or "feminist" when it is among the most pedestrian yet illogical, and utterly misogynistic, works to ever exist.

 

Season 4 was the last season that was watchable for me, as it should have been to all viewers who care about any amount of substance in the works they choose to peruse, in my contention.

Season 5 was sufficiently coherent as to make sense without thinking about something for more than 30 seconds. However, virtually all of the little that was retained from the books ultimately proved to demonstrate the perfect thematic opposite on the show, which of course meant thematic changes for the worse. The veneer of faux-book material and mangled book dialogue successfully tricked most viewers, even book readers who later did not hesitate to be critical, into believing that it was at least decent. (From an analysis of the writing, every single storyline was approximately as bad as Dorne; that was merely the most obvious one, due to how unsubtle it was, and because even the acting and cinematography seemed to have suffered.) This was also the season that showed us precisely how D&D try to subvert expectations: rather than organically develop the plot from believable and sublime characterization in an often crushingly realistic fashion, as GRRM is wont to do, they literally present the opposite of the situation by which they wish to shock viewers and randomly flip it around. (Refer to Stannis sharing touching moments with Shireen, while Selyse seemingly despised her; and we know how that turned out.)

Season 6 was far worse than even Season 5, because it no longer even pretended to be an adaptation of the books. My hypothesis as to why people commonly say otherwise is that this is when spectacle completely overwhelmed substance, which spectacle appeased many viewers; the books were no longer commonly used as a comparison; and those who were critical of the show previously simply gave up or stopped caring. All of these "refreshing" and "original" plotlines fell apart with just the barest scrutiny; the entire season felt like a series of random plot points presented as a checklist, disconnected and with a complete lack of logic or themes. Granted, this is how D&D think adaptations should be handled, judging by how they (for example) believe that "For the Watch" was adapted in any real, meaningful way when all the context, complexities, and characterization were stripped away, and all the motivations changed. Yet this is ironically the season that began to drastically move away from the books, according to them. (In reality, Season 5 was clearly the first mostly original one.)

Season 7 was so absurd that it didn't make sense in the most fundamental ways, even at the surface level. This is beyond just "bad writing;" it's simply ludicrous, for a fifth grader taking creative writing would fail the course due to the inability to get from Point A to Point B exhibited in this season. The political foundation of the Wight Hunt and Meeting is the most obvious example. Yet it can be argued that Season 7 was still a story, even if it did lack almost all of that which makes a narrative logical or significant.

Season 8 could not even be called a story, and I cannot apprehend why anyone would give it allowances or the writers any benefit of the doubt -- and even more so, I question those who continue to defend it, either by saying that it was rushed but otherwise fine (manifestly false), or by asserting that people didn't like it because their favorite characters didn't end up how they would have liked (which, sorry to burst your bubble, but the content is simply irredeemably terrible).

 

There is a huge amount of cognitive dissonance when it comes to Game of Thrones. The most obvious way in which this manifests is book projection from those who have read ASoIaF, especially onto the show characters who bear virtually no resemblance to their analogues, but this is only symptomatic of a larger problem. GoT has been undeservedly treated as sacrosanct, with fans going out of their way to make excuses that usually wouldn't even work given the internal logic (or, more accurately, lack thereof) of the show and which are usually unwittingly debunked by the showrunners, personal attacks made by apologists when they failed to recognize the extremely offensive implications, critics falling over backwards in order to kiss D&D's butts, and Emmys thrown at the show for the seasons that should only ever have won technical awards.

 

When we divorce scenes from the (mostly) extremely talented actors and television crews, what do we have left to indicate any modicum of quality from a purely literary standpoint? The total number of scenes in the final four seasons that, strictly from a writing perspective, are successful -- which is to say, they follow basic conversational pragmatics such that people are talking to each other and not merely asserting things near each other, retain their current characterization throughout the scene and to a level that can reasonably be derived from their previous scenes, act in accordance to their interests, and so forth -- probably number fewer than a hundred. (By the way, this is very much an exercise we can perform on this show because, at least for the latter half, it is ultimately nothing more than a series of disjointed scenes that don't flow together very well.) Of the aforementioned scenes, those that are decent can probably be counted on three hands, and the ones that are good on three fingers.

 

I would like to point out that I likely missed a lot of basic criticisms, and could have chosen much more -- and better -- examples, but I should publish this post before I write a legitimate essay. In any case, I do sincerely appreciate this platform that enables me and others to express our contempt for the abomination.

This isn't merely empty venting. With time, I can explain in great detail what is wrong with virtually everything on the latter half of the show, and point out the many problems -- from adaptational decisions to social implications -- in the former part.

 

Incidentally, @SeanF, I'm not addressing you directly; rather, your post inspired me to say this in general, which is why some of it can be taken as a response to yours. I sincerely apologize if it seemed like I was vehemently disagreeing with you at any point.

[Le Cygne]

5 hours ago, SeanF said:

Season 6 ended strongly, obscuring earlier weaknesses.  

Seaon 7 was weak, but had some good scenes.  In truth, both seasons should have faced much more criticism.

Honestly I don't remember how season 6 ended, it's hard to delineate the sea of stupidity by season breaks. I've thought the show sucked since season 2 (and I had strong suspicions it would in season 1, based on super poorly thought out - aka not thought out at all and totally clueless about the story and ANY story - changes).

They kept changing things in ways that were not only offensive to me as a woman and human being, but really really really stupid in terms of storytelling, they consistently made really bad moves any time they changed things, putting the wrong people together or saying or doing the wrong things, then it all coming to nothing at all.

It's been clear to readers all along they were screwing up, but I do think the media has been at least low level criticizing them from day one, and at various points, very loudly objecting, however... as commercial enterprises were riding the gravy train. They made money off promoting the show, and keeping access for interviews.

So yeah, lots of people in the media knew it was crap. Some said so all along. Lots of them, however, would criticize then turn around and say the show is awesome. Some never bothered with the criticism at all (looking at you, James Hibberd, who was rewarded with the most access of all). The almighty dollar.

Then in the end, there was nothing holding them back, as the gravy train ground to a halt. All the viewers knew it was crap, so they started playing to that.