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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!


The Fattest Leech

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I honestly didn't see it. If anything, I thought the show played in the Petyr/Sansa relationship a bit too much. It got really bizarre before his execution. If I recall correctly, Sansa needed Bran to spell it out to her that Littlefinger was no bueno and she was just about to get rid of Arya lol? How completely unsatisfying yet completely unsurprising given the appalling writing of Sansa and Littlefinger's characters (ah, the whole show if I'm being honest).

In any case, this discussion reminds me, is Sansa still Lady Lannister on the show? Robb must be rolling in his grave lol. Or was just 'fixed' off-screen like Rhaegar/Elia's marriage? 

Regarding Cersei's death, I second the opinion that she'll be killed be Jaime and the show didn't want to be accused of even more misogyny if they had both Daenerys and Cersei killed be their lovers/former lovers.

I wish the show introduced Satin. I began to dislike Tormund's character because of how much of a self-insert he read as at some points. What was the whole point of that stupid Brienne-Tormund plot?

 

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1 hour ago, violentdelights said:

If I recall correctly, Sansa needed Bran to spell it out to her that Littlefinger was no bueno and she was just about to get rid of Arya lol?

That wasn't in the show. So you don't recall it correctly. Sorry.

1 hour ago, violentdelights said:

In any case, this discussion reminds me, is Sansa still Lady Lannister on the show?

Considering that she married Ramsey IMO we are supposed to believe her marriage to Tyrion was annulled.

1 hour ago, violentdelights said:

If anything, I thought the show played in the Petyr/Sansa relationship a bit too much.

They did both too much and too little. Petyr is pretty much inappropriate with her from their first meeting and we know about the sexual grooming. But both of these were cut out of the show. IMO the only misstep they did was in S4. When he plants a kiss on her, the way it was directed was completely wrong.

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35 minutes ago, Mystical said:

That wasn't in the show. So you don't recall it correctly. Sorry.

You’re right, it was a deleted scene. 

“We actually did a scene that clearly got cut, a short scene with Sansa where she knocks on Bran’s door and says, ‘I need your help,’ or something along those lines,” Wright said. “So basically, as far as I know, the story was that it suddenly occurred to Sansa that she had a huge CCTV department at her discretion and it might be a good idea to check with him first before she guts her own sister. So she goes to Bran, and Bran tells her everything she needs to know, and she’s like, ‘Oh, s—.’”

How bizarre. So how did the show go about Sansa, Arya and Bran choosing to execute him? Or was that predictably resolved offscreen? I thought that Sansa was still under his thumb right up to his execution?

35 minutes ago, Mystical said:

Considering that she married Ramsey IMO we are supposed to believe her marriage to Tyrion was annulled.

Was there anything to hint at her having her marriage annulled prior to her wedding with Ramsay? Smells like bigamy. 

35 minutes ago, Mystical said:

They did both too much and too little. Petyr is pretty much inappropriate with her from their first meeting and we know about the sexual grooming. But both of these were cut out of the show. IMO the only misstep they did was in S4. When he plants a kiss on her, the way it was directed was completely wrong.

I can’t remember much about the show but I do recall wondering if they were really going to go *there* with Petyr and Sansa’s relationship lol. 

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1 hour ago, violentdelights said:

How bizarre. So how did the show go about Sansa, Arya and Bran choosing to execute him? Or was that predictably resolved offscreen? I thought that Sansa was still under his thumb right up to his execution?

The problem with D&D is that they write from an audience perspective and not a character one. I believe the script even said that Arya and Sansa were contemplating killing each other. But it's similar to the Cersei scene at the dragon pit in the S7 Finale where the script said that Cersei is seriously surprised/angry that Euron took off even though it's later revealed was a ruse. Cersei's reaction wasn't a fake out, the actress according to script was supposed to convey the character feeling that way which makes no sense.

In the end with what the show did it seemed Arya was a bad assassin for show and the Arya/Sansa fighting was a ruse to fool LF. Eh, this storyline didn't do it for anyone in the audience.

2 hours ago, violentdelights said:

Was there anything to hint at her having her marriage annulled prior to her wedding with Ramsay? Smells like bigamy. 

I think we are to assume it happened, they just didn't tell us. The only thing LF (to Roose) and Sansa (to Ramsey) say about the marriage to Tyrion is that it wasn't consummated.

2 hours ago, violentdelights said:

I can’t remember much about the show but I do recall wondering if they were really going to go *there* with Petyr and Sansa’s relationship lol.

Oh yeah the end of S4 was freaky that way. Because we have the kiss which was filmed completely inappropriately which was followed by Sansa coming down the stairs in her Darth Sansa outfit making come hither looks at Petyr.

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7 hours ago, violentdelights said:

I honestly didn't see it. If anything, I thought the show played in the Petyr/Sansa relationship a bit too much. It got really bizarre before his execution. If I recall correctly, Sansa needed Bran to spell it out to her that Littlefinger was no bueno and she was just about to get rid of Arya lol? How completely unsatisfying yet completely unsurprising given the appalling writing of Sansa and Littlefinger's characters (ah, the whole show if I'm being honest).

In any case, this discussion reminds me, is Sansa still Lady Lannister on the show? Robb must be rolling in his grave lol. Or was just 'fixed' off-screen like Rhaegar/Elia's marriage? 

Regarding Cersei's death, I second the opinion that she'll be killed be Jaime and the show didn't want to be accused of even more misogyny if they had both Daenerys and Cersei killed be their lovers/former lovers.

I wish the show introduced Satin. I began to dislike Tormund's character because of how much of a self-insert he read as at some points. What was the whole point of that stupid Brienne-Tormund plot?

 

Yeah, never saw it. Nor did the cast, the crew, the directors, and the showrunners, who when learning about the crackship reacted the same way as Kit:

They wanted Jon with Sansa? What? That is weird!

Everyone did say however that Arya was his favorite, however. The actors and the showrunners went out of their way to point that out in the final season, but for no real payoff.

And then they revisted Sansa and Sandor here. Along with Arya and Jon, two relationships that GRRM has made remember each other a dozen times each in the books.

Yeah, way too much LF, they made Sansa's story about men she didn't want, and never bothered to address this by letting her make a choice of someone she wanted.

The things they made her say and do. All the women, but they especially screwed her over, and Dany. The women were puppets of the writers for their many women issues.

They made her say she's a slow learner, she learned offscreen (the deleted Bran scene). But they still made her honor LF, saying in his own way he "loved" her.

Nothing says love like framing for regicide, kidnapping, unwanted kisses and touching, and sex trafficking to family killers. If only they hadn't skipped the 8th grade.

Then of course, they made her thank him, and the Boltons, and especially the writers, for making her an interchangeable female unit, and taking away her own story.

They made her honor their self-insert Tyrion a lot, of course. They even made her honor Theon, who she had nothing to do with until they swapped in her body to prop him up.

They dismissed the Tyrion marriage in show canon: "Tyrion never consummated the marriage. By the law of the land, she's no man's wife." But she had to keep honoring him.

I would love it if Jaime killed Cersei, and what a contrast to what they did. And yeah, Tormond was yet another of their self-inserts (along with Tyrion and Bronn).

Basically where they excelled was messing everything up.

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51 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Yeah, never saw it. Nor did the cast, the crew, the directors, and the showrunners, who when learning about the crackship reacted the same way as Kit:

They wanted Jon with Sansa? What? That is weird!

Everyone did say however that Arya was his favorite, however. The actors and the showrunners went out of their way to point that out in the final season, but for no real payoff.

And then they revisted Sansa and Sandor here. Along with Arya and Jon, two relationships that GRRM has made remember each other a dozen times each in the books.

Yeah, way too much LF, they made Sansa's story about men she didn't want, and never bothered to address this by letting her make a choice of someone she wanted.

The things they made her say and do. All the women, but they especially screwed her over, and Dany. The women were puppets of the writers for their many women issues.

They made her say she's a slow learner, she learned offscreen (the deleted Bran scene). But they still made her honor LF, saying in his own way he "loved" her.

Nothing says love like framing for regicide, kidnapping, unwanted kisses and touching, and sex trafficking to family killers. If only they hadn't skipped the 8th grade.

Then of course, they made her thank him, and the Boltons, and especially the writers, for making her an interchangeable female unit, and taking away her own story.

They made her honor their self-insert Tyrion a lot, of course. They even made her honor Theon, who she had nothing to do with until they swapped in her body to prop him up.

They dismissed the Tyrion marriage in show canon: "Tyrion never consummated the marriage. By the law of the land, she's no man's wife." But she had to keep honoring him.

I would love it if Jaime killed Cersei, and what a contrast to what they did. And yeah, Tormond was yet another of their self-inserts (along with Tyrion and Bronn).

Basically where they excelled was messing everything up.

But that is what D & D think of as "love".  Like stabbing your girlfriend through the heart, or choking her with her own necklace.

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4 minutes ago, SeanF said:

But that is what D & D think of as "love".  Like stabbing your girlfriend through the heart, or choking her with her own necklace.

Oh yeah, I should have mentioned that, too. Look what you made me do! Nothing says love like murder. And then they had Jon think in the script, if only he could have more time with her.

When the scripts saw the light of day so that they were shown for the frauds they are, the Emmys hid them. The good ole boys look after their own, it's all about the money.

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On 6/22/2020 at 12:38 AM, The Dragon Demands said:

No.  It's not about twists.  They never talk about "story" of any kind in the commentaries.  Have you listened to the commentaries? It's just them ranting about "amazing emotive faces by the actors with no dialogue" over and over again.

This made me laugh, because it's true. I can't listen to them anymore, you are brave to do so. But this is just what they sounded like when I did. So smug in their privileged cluelessness.

They would always advertise they did things no good writers would ever do, not realizing they were damning themselves. Like the no dialogue thing, when conversations are what the audience wanted (and needed) to see.

Lazy and inept. And boasting about it. And picking up awards. That's them all over.

Basically their go-to trick consisted of putting a character into a situation they would never be in, then doing a close-up as the actor emotes (or the actor they were bodyswapped in to make emote).

A main character MUST be bodyswapped in to prop up Theon and Ramsay at the cost of her own story. Lots of women as sexual assault background scenery or happy hookers, propping up male characters.

Again and again, they'd have the characters do things they and no human being for that matter would ever do. It was all actors emoting, the whole damn show became that. And it became all about THE SHOT.

They went on and on about the shot of Sandra hungry like a dog when the hungry dogs ate Ramsay. They actually wrote this about a female character for the Emmy's, in their pitch for best script.

They made Dany "her Satanic majesty" with the shot of a dragon behind her, or was it Hitler with the shot of the banners and crowd, or was it Jesus with the shot of her murderer holding her like the Pieta (as they said in the script).

And so their self-insert Tyrion blathers on and on about murdering Dany like she was a prop, because that's what they made her. It was all about THE SHOT. Wow, look at that actor emote! No words are necessary! Nicely shutting her up.

They didn't even let her have dying words.

Oh and speaking of women as props, in the final Tyrion and Bronn scene, prostitutes were just talked about. It was always all about the men, anyway. Way to dismiss traumatized peasants, as a parting joke.

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1 hour ago, Le Cygne said:

This made me laugh, because it's true. I can't listen to them anymore, you are brave to do so. But this is just what they sounded like when I did. So smug in their privileged cluelessness.

They would always advertise they did things no good writers would ever do, not realizing they were damning themselves. Like the no dialogue thing, when conversations are what the audience wanted (and needed) to see.

Lazy and inept. And boasting about it. And picking up awards. That's them all over.

Basically their go-to trick consisted of putting a character into a situation they would never be in, then doing a close-up as the actor emotes (or the actor they were bodyswapped in to make emote).

A main character MUST be bodyswapped in to prop up Theon and Ramsay at the cost of her own story. Lots of women as sexual assault background scenery or happy hookers, propping up male characters.

Again and again, they'd have the characters do things they and no human being for that matter would ever do. It was all actors emoting, the whole damn show became that. And it became all about THE SHOT.

They went on and on about the shot of Sandra hungry like a dog when the hungry dogs ate Ramsay. They actually wrote this about a female character for the Emmy's, in their pitch for best script.

They made Dany "her Satanic majesty" with the shot of a dragon behind her, or was it Hitler with the shot of the banners and crowd, or was it Jesus with the shot of her murderer holding her like the Pieta (as they said in the script).

And so their self-insert Tyrion blathers on and on about murdering Dany like she was a prop, because that's what they made her. It was all about THE SHOT. Wow, look at that actor emote! No words are necessary! Nicely shutting her up.

They didn't even let her have dying words.

Oh and speaking of women as props, in the final Tyrion and Bronn scene, prostitutes were just talked about. It was always all about the men, anyway. Way to dismiss traumatized peasants, as a parting joke.

In my head canon, the pair were gelded by agents of Grey Worm and Yara, when they next visited a brothel.

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Just ran across this, from last year...

Martin added that watching the recent GoT final season was a bit of a strange experience given the different version he’s still writing. “The whole last three years have been strange since the show got ahead of the books,” he says. “Yes, I told [showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss] a number of things years ago. And some of them they did do. But at the same time, it’s different. I have very fixed ideas in my head as I’m writing The Winds of Winter and beyond that in terms of where things are going. It’s like two alternate realities existing side by side. I have to double down and do my version of it which is what I’ve been doing.”

https://ew.com/tv/2019/07/15/george-rr-martin-game-thrones-fan-reactions/

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On 6/23/2020 at 7:48 AM, Le Cygne said:

This made me laugh, because it's true. I can't listen to them anymore, you are brave to do so. But this is just what they sounded like when I did. So smug in their privileged cluelessness.

They would always advertise they did things no good writers would ever do, not realizing they were damning themselves. Like the no dialogue thing, when conversations are what the audience wanted (and needed) to see.

Lazy and inept. And boasting about it. And picking up awards. That's them all over.

Basically their go-to trick consisted of putting a character into a situation they would never be in, then doing a close-up as the actor emotes (or the actor they were bodyswapped in to make emote).

A main character MUST be bodyswapped in to prop up Theon and Ramsay at the cost of her own story. Lots of women as sexual assault background scenery or happy hookers, propping up male characters.

Again and again, they'd have the characters do things they and no human being for that matter would ever do. It was all actors emoting, the whole damn show became that. And it became all about THE SHOT.

They went on and on about the shot of Sandra hungry like a dog when the hungry dogs ate Ramsay. They actually wrote this about a female character for the Emmy's, in their pitch for best script.

They made Dany "her Satanic majesty" with the shot of a dragon behind her, or was it Hitler with the shot of the banners and crowd, or was it Jesus with the shot of her murderer holding her like the Pieta (as they said in the script).

And so their self-insert Tyrion blathers on and on about murdering Dany like she was a prop, because that's what they made her. It was all about THE SHOT. Wow, look at that actor emote! No words are necessary! Nicely shutting her up.

They didn't even let her have dying words.

Oh and speaking of women as props, in the final Tyrion and Bronn scene, prostitutes were just talked about. It was always all about the men, anyway. Way to dismiss traumatized peasants, as a parting joke.

Well, perhaps with Bronn, it serves to show that some things don’t change; Bronn is the new Littlefinger.

 

”And it’s hard to say”

”Just how some things never change”

”And it’s hard to find any strength to draw the line”

”Oooh, I’m just burnin’, doin’ the Neutron Dance”

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I thought this was interesting in terms of what went wrong with GoT. The showrunner for Better Call Saul, talking about how not to do it:

We really try to be disciplined about not forcing things to happen... You may have an image, like that one I talked about earlier, like doing a Midnight Run episode, I think the original idea was Mike and Jimmy get handcuffed or anklecuffed together, and have to get through the desert. And this was an idea we had before we shot a frame of season 1, because we have these two amazing actors, they are like peanut butter and chocolate, they're just great together. We could have put a card up in season 1, OK, episode 7, season 1, these two guys get stuck in the desert. But if you try to force that to happen, if you try to say well, maybe he's not ready to do this, but we'll go just ahead and do it anyway, as soon as you start making those compromises, that's when these characters stop making sense. And that's when you can feel the hands of the author moving people around like chess pieces...

This is good, too. With GoT, the focus was on the razzle dazzle, not the story. And it wasn't even very razzle or dazzle, more like drizzle and fizzle.

Everyone's focus is not on the razzle dazzle or making themselves look good, it's about telling the story... If you keep the focus on the story, then everything else comes in the train behind it.

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3 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

I thought this was interesting in terms of what went wrong with GoT. The showrunner for Better Call Saul, talking about how not to do it:

We really try to be disciplined about not forcing things to happen... We have these two amazing actors, they are like peanut butter and chocolate, they're just great together. We could have put a card up, OK, episode 7, season 1, these two guys get stuck in the desert. But if you try to force that to happen, if you try to say well, maybe he's not ready to do this, but we'll go just ahead and do it anyway, as soon as you start making those compromises, that's when these characters stop making sense. And that's when you can feel the hands of the author moving people around like chess pieces.

 

And once again the people in charge of BB and BCS show how it's done. Ironic that D&D were obsessed with GoT being the next BB but don't listen to any of their lessons.

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7 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Operation: Dragon's Wrath has been initiated.

This behind the scenes documentary took about a year to research:  not only obtaining the filming script for episode 8.5 "The Bells" from the Writer's Guild of America archives, but by watching and scrutinizing EVERY behind-the-scenes video on the Blu-ray set, and EVERY Blu-ray commentary track, no matter how obscure.  That's why it took so long.  I left no stone unturned.

It comes down to 3 points:

  • 1 - the filming script essentially describes King's Landing being consumed by a Wildfire chain reaction, not carpet bombing by Daenerys
  • 2 - the filming script itself is ridiculously short & vague in terms of what she's actually doing, barely a paragraph of information.  Always saying she's shooting "soldiers intermingled with civilians" but never "massacring crowds of only civilians".  Matching up with the relic dialogue they were setting up in episode 4, only to then abandon, of "Cersei is using human shields" etc.  The script is so vague, you begin to suspect it was deliberately vague, to hide it from the actors.
  • 3 - They actively hid what was really happening from Emilia Clarke - and instructed her not to look at the storyboardsAll she had to go on was a short, vague script.  In videos HBO tried to hide by de-listing them, Emilia Clarke outright contradicts the showrunners, saying "Daenerys is not insane", and other contradictory things (it sounds like she thought Daenerys would fly straight to Cersei at the Red Keep).  Essentially, it seems like Emilia Clarke in these videos is describing an episode that doesn't exist....because yes, she actually saw an alternate, earlier version of the script.  Leading to the obvious question:  why go through all the trouble of hiding it from Emilia Clarke and lying to her...if it happens in the books, and they could have just told her that?  Well, because it isn't the book ending.  They were afraid she'd pull a Mark Hamill and start complaining ahead of time that they had disagreements...or flat out go to GRRM about it, ask "is this the book ending?" and then raise a commotion in the press.

Benioff & Weiss have of course doubled-down hard that "of course this is the REAL ending, we've been planning it since Season 3!" (the meeting with Martin to discuss future book outlines happened in December 2012 in the break between writing Seasons 3 and 4).  We already suspected that Season 8 wasn't even what they intended to do when they were making Season 7 (abandoned Cersei miscarriage storyline confirmed by Lena Headey).  But it turns out, this isn't even the "final version" they intended when they STARTED making Season 8 - this isn't what Emilia Clarke even saw at the infamous table read in October 2017.   They rewrote Season 8 to make Daenerys, not Cersei, "the Mad Queen".....in the middle of filming it.

We can get bogged down in semantics over "what is the 'Real' ending?  Season 8 was 'real', it had physical substance, it's what they made, isn't it?"

The excuses of delusional cult members and Quislings.  First, yes, the fact that they changed it in the middle of Season 8 itself, it wasn't even in the original filming script version, proves it's not the book ending.  Second....how many MILLIONS of TV-only viewers, with no exposure to the books, are also deeply upset and feel this isn't what they were setting up in all prior seasons?  For all we know, each season branched off with a new idea for the ending they kept revising.  For all we know, they came up with a non-book Daenerys ending after the GRRM meeting, from Seasons 4 through 7...but THEN changed it to this, yet another alternate version, for Season 8 itself.  

It's a retcon.  None of this was being set up or planned in prior seasons.  Even ignoring the books, it's "not the real ending" in the sense of "it's not the real ending we were building towards, even in the immediately preceding season".  

As this is a book fansite, book fandom will probably benefit from having proof that this dumpster fire isn't the book ending. 

For that matter, HBO's upcoming multiple PREQUEL TV SHOWS, starring the Targaryen dynasty, will also benefit from having proof that *Targaryens are not inherently insane*, as Benioff and Weiss tried to claim.   

At the end of season 6, I recall watching the Inside the Episode, and the show runners were implying that a childless Cersei was dangerous:

Terrifying Cersei

From what they were saying, it does seem like Cersei was going to do some very horrible/crazy things.

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