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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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1 hour ago, Count Balerion said:

So ... Abraham Lincoln would be the badguy? Not that I think D&D are deliberately white supremacist. More like completely clueless. But that Dany's freeing the slaves is retconned into being a sign of latent evil AND they wanted to produce CONFEDERATE is an ... interesting coincidence.

I think the way they would have done it is this.  There would be brutal, bigoted, nasty slave owners.  And, they would have been portrayed as bad. Then, the Underground Railroad would have been portrayed as their polar opposite.  Idealistic, but wrong-headed, resorting to violence, when the correct course of action was peaceful persuasion.  Perhaps they would have been led by a silver-haired young woman, well-intentioned, but naive to the ways of the world.

In the middle would be the good slavers, like Hizdahr and his father.    They would be nice to their own slaves.   They'd only whip them if they stepped out of line.  Their slaves would acknowledge what good masters they were.  Some of them would probably explain that they were best off being slaves. They might actually come to the conclusion that abolition was desirable, but very much on terms that left them with their power and privileges intact.  

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37 minutes ago, Many-Faced Votary said:

I don't think Messrs. Benioff and Weiss are "deliberately" bigoted, whatever form that might entail. Certainly, they aren't foaming at the mouth in rage that women and people of color are increasingly entering different circles of society, or anything like that. However, they have an inherently bigoted worldview, and it shows in what they write and how they explain what they write. The sheer sexism, racism, classism, ableism, and so forth in Game of Thrones is virtually all the result of adaptational changes and original writing.

A case could be made that Mr. Martin might not handle race perfectly, especially considering how he does a great job with Dorne yet does not offer a single native Essosi PoV, but he otherwise masterfully writes characters and plots to egalitarian ends. In A Song of Ice and Fire, he consciously rejects the sort of sexism/racism/classism/ableism/etc. Game of Thrones seems to happily endorse -- at the very least, the audience should understand what is wrong with the picture he depicts and summarily dismiss it. (Unfortunately, many readers do not, hence the pro-slaver, anti-femininity, anti-smallfolk, and similar arguments that are disturbingly common in the fandom.)

I could readily believe that Daenerys would crash and burn, in Westeros, due to the prejudice against a woman sitting the Iron Throne, hostility towards "foreigners", and her being the daughter of "The Mad King."  In Martin's hands that would be portrayed as a tragedy.  In Benioff & Weiss' hands, these prejudices were portrayed as being ethical truths.

You only have to go to discussions on Quora to read - well - arguments that have not been seriously advanced for many years. eg Daenerys "stole the private property of the Good Masters of Astapor", "slavery is their culture", "Khaleesis have to enter the Dosh Khaleen.  What makes her so special to think she shouldn't?"

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18 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I need help from fellow ranters:

I keep running into people in comments sections and social media saying "the TV show always had Daenerys saying she'd burn cities to the ground! It was foreshadowed! This was always the ending!"

 

When....no, they just cherry-picked a bunch of vague quotes that couldn't have been intended as setup.

The big example is her in Season 2 at the gates of Qarth, threatening to burn cities - which WAS NOT in the books, first off, and second....even Benioff and Weiss claim (falsely) that they only thought of the ending in Season THREE...meaning they admit nothing before that was setup.

I mean, these are the guys who....in the SAME behind the scenes video for 8.3....well, in 8.3, they desperately try to claim that Melisandre's vague line to Arya in Season 3 that "you'll shut green eyes brown eyes and blue eyes" was foreshadowing she'd kill the Night King....when that character didn't exist yet, and ***They just openly admit, "oh yeah we came up with that only 3 years ago, when we were writing Season 7"

There's no such thing as "retroactive foreshadowing".  

So....what are other points people cite as "all those times they foreshadowed she'd burn cities"???

Qarth was the big one, but I'm trying to systematically shut down the other ones.

(sigh)

Not that they'll listen.

You know, I make this big script report, and not a single news site covers it.

At Meereen she talked of  crucifying the Masters and burning their cities to the ground - at the point when the Masters were lobbing incendiaries into Mereen. I took it to be like someone in WWII, stuck in air raid shelter, expressing the hope that the RAF would bomb the Germans back to the Stone Age.

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2 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

So....what are other points people cite as "all those times they foreshadowed she'd burn cities"???

I'm not sure there are more than three or four such instances, some of which are stretches of the imagination; and all of them are exclusive to the show.

However, I do not believe you need to argue the points on the basis of scene. What a character says is effectively meaningless if neither their behavior nor their actions reinforce the same, as is the case here. Daedpan (Daenerys) loved to talk about crushing cities and whatnot, but was very restrained in her actions, even when she started using dragons in war. Similarly, Carol (Season 5 Cersei) talked about burning the cities of Porne (Dorne) to the ground if they hurt Madison (Myrcella), but such wholescale slaughter did not fit her character at all until she suddenly transformed into Cheryl (end-of-Season-6 Cersei); but even then, there was no level or reasonable threat of violence that fit that statement.

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That's near the end of season 6, right? Tyrion talked her out of it pretty quickly, though. And in season 5, there's "let the dragons decide"; but then she's shutting away her dragons in the same season. And however unappealing that may be, it's hardly mass murder. Likewise the bit in season 2 where she locked Xaro Xerox in the vault. Dany's season 2 wwas a tad messy anyway.

The clincher is that they didn't decide to have her deliberately burn KL until well into filming season 8 -- so it CAN'T have been foreshadowed. How can they foreshadow something in season 5 or 6 when they didn't even decide to do it until well after season 7?

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2 minutes ago, Count Balerion said:

There's the burning of the khals. Again not commensurate with burning a city.

And that was shown as goooood... empowered female burns bad rapists! Not as “I’m becoming the love child of Satan and Hitler”.

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On 7/7/2020 at 9:22 PM, Many-Faced Votary said:

With all due respect, some of your posts, such as this one and your previous suggestion that A Song of Ice and Fire is cynical, lead me to believe you accidentally conflate books and show in your discussions and analyses. Be sure to look at the books with fresh eyes and without any context from the show when you do your next reread, should you opt to engage in one. I would not recommend rewatching Game of Thrones, but if you decide to, strip away all projections from the books and consider it on its own merits and as its own narrative. I am certain you will be surprised by how different they are, even as early as Season 1.

"Poor dumb/doomed Ned" is entirely a show invention. I tend to lament how the female characters were treated from the very start on the show and how it exemplifies the showrunners' misogyny, and rightly so; but the male characters were hardly unaffected by the bias and misunderstanding of the text on the part of the showrunners, though for different reasons, and Ned probably fared the worst among the gentlemen. In the books, it is bad luck and his unwillingness to see children harmed that leads to his demise; on the show, his honor is always pointed out as what got him killed. (Never mind that his ultimate downfall was, as consistent with R+L=J, choosing familial love and internal honor over his external honor... It is all but clear that D&D did not read AFfC or ADwD, but one has to wonder whether they truly read the first three books either.) Ned was also portrayed as out of his element on the show, whereas he is reluctant but quite competent in the books. Compare the context and framing with a few examples: Ned made multiple excellent logical arguments not to assassinate Daenerys while also reminding Robert of what honor necessitates in the books, whereas in the show he was reduced to piteously appealing to an abstract sense of honor; in the books, Littlefinger is a false friend who carefully ensures he is overlooked, and whom Cat eventually begrudgingly trusted due to their childhood, leading Ned to do the same, whereas he could not more clearly a moustache-twirling villain on the show; and so forth.

As for ASoIaF or Mr. Martin himself being cynical, I think contending that would result in a debate beyond the scope of this thread, and one that would be overly lengthy besides. However, I think it is important to note that he is manifestly a classical romantic whose other published works illustrate this fact, so this is highly unlikely to be true on that basis alone, never mind the hopeful tone the books have managed to capture. Beyond that, the differences in tone between the works are noteworthy: Game of Thrones is indeed cynical, utterly grimdark with very few moments of levity or love (and the vast majority of those that existed were blatant emotional manipulation), and ultimately nihilistic (with an empty, bleak ending to prove it); but A Song of Ice and Fire has many instances of genuine love with family, friends, and spouses, small moments of kindness and empathy by primary, secondary, and tertiary characters alike, warm humor, demonstrations of merriment, simple humanity of the PoV characters rather than unbroken stoicism, and so forth.  The show's treatment of Sansa and Sandor is a perfect microcosm of this: rather than Sandor tempering Sansa's naïvete, while realizing the world is not hopeless and that he can at least strive to do better (and possibly lead by example) according to Sansa's romantic outlook, Sandor's initial cynicism is always proven to be correct, and his effect on Sansa is amplified manifold while her effect on him is completely excised. (Refer also to the so-called Septon Ray and his community being brutally murdered in Season 6, an event anyone could see coming precisely because of the show's unrelenting nihilism, yet again proving Sandor's cynicism correct).

Hopeful? There’s nothing looking up for the Starks as the books currently stand as Sansa might be assisting in kinslaying and is close to losing her identity, Bran’s robbed Hodor of his free will, Jon’s attempt to save everyone backfired while Daenerys is failing as a ruler, Tyrion took a nose-dive and raped someone, while Jaime’s being led into a trap by Brienne. And that’s not getting into the societal level...

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3 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

Hopeful? There’s nothing looking up for the Starks as the books currently stand as Sansa might be assisting in kinslaying and is close to losing her identity, Bran’s robbed Hodor of his free will, Jon’s attempt to save everyone backfired while Daenerys is failing as a ruler, Tyrion took a nose-dive and raped someone, while Jaime’s being led into a trap by Brienne.

You're oversimplifying matters to make these phenomena seem hopeless, when that simply is not applicable in the books. Furthermore, all of the things you mention have context associated with them that, while it does not necessarily excuse them (Tyrion's case especially), makes them understandable. Tyrion is an outlier precisely because he is an anti-hero as compared to the other main characters, who are heroes. For example, it was impossible for Jon and Daenerys not to eventually fail as rulers, because Jon has tunnel vision and neglected to explain his actions to his subordinates, and Dany compromised her own values repeatedly for the sake of a false peace rather than bringing Fire and Blood where necessary. Things will necessarily get worse before they get better; that is the very essence of the Winds of Winter.

Quote

And that’s not getting into the societal level...

Improvement on a personal and hopefully societal level is the Dream of Spring.

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7 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Not going to lie, I'm falling into a deep depression over the lack of news attention to this.

Take solace in the fact that there is hope. The Emperor will not always be seen with his clothes on; we have the ability to eventually see the truth where necessary. This applies to everything from a simple television show and the power of privilege to the state of government and other social institutions. :)

In the meantime, hopefully some people begin to use your hard work so that others follow suit. We appreciate your research here, for what it's worth! :grouphug:

  

Just now, Angel Eyes said:

If GRRM actually finishes the series. As it stands now, things don’t look good.

Rising action and climax are impossible to achieve without conflict. Context matters. I can just as easily point to the beginning of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and pretend that the series is bleak and even nihilistic because Hogwarts is ruled by Death Eaters, the Ministry of Magic is thoroughly infested, and Voldemort has Horcruxes hidden everywhere.

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9 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Not going to lie, I'm falling into a deep depression over the lack of news attention to this.  Elio never gave his views on it at all.  Mainstream news didn't bother to report on it.  Vanity Fair's Joanna Robinson flat out said that I made it up -- not that I "misinterpreted" the script text, but some vague accusation that "I read the scripts, it doesn't say that, the on-screen version is the real ending!" when.....no, the WGA script is very different.

I mean, I do expect rational people to debate "well is it different ENOUGH to suggest a huge change?" etc.  But she just curtly accused in a single tweet "he made this up!" ....when....it's a public archive, anyone could contact the WGA library to confirm its veracity.

They don't want to.  The wall I'm running into, which I think we all have, are that the remaining TV show die-hards would never report on this...which makes sense....but a lot of news sites are of the mentality that "well, everyone knows the TV show was bad, it isn't news anymore, why bother reporting on it?"

….because you never DID report on it!  I'm thinking of Vulture, Variety, etc.

It's a sick world we live in where news sites only report on "good, happy" news, and after something goes bad, rather than a measured assessment or research into what went wrong, it's "I don't feel like reporting on it".  

(shrug)  Benioff is addicted to fame, sooner or later he'll try to get into the spotlight again with his Netflix deal, dragging all this up all over again.

I do hope that SDCC next week, well virtual SDCC, starts buzz going again about major franchises and that news picks up.

I despise the showrunners as much as anyone, and began ranting about the show back in season 3, and ranted and ranted until I could rant no more, but this is not 'news' in any way, shape or form.  Whether or not, or how much or when they made decisions about the final season is minutia, not news.  What kind of Variety story were you hoping for?  "Hollywood showrunners pull twists out of their a** at the last minute and then try to pretend it was their plan all along?"  You're never going to get that story because Hollywood showrunners/directors pull twists out of their a** at the last minute and try to pretend it was their plan all along happens ALL the time, and the only time this kind of story ever got any traction was the Star Wars reboot.

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46 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Not going to lie, I'm falling into a deep depression over the lack of news attention to this.  Elio never gave his views on it at all.  Mainstream news didn't bother to report on it.  Vanity Fair's Joanna Robinson flat out said that I made it up -- not that I "misinterpreted" the script text, but some vague accusation that "I read the scripts, it doesn't say that, the on-screen version is the real ending!" when.....no, the WGA script is very different.

 

The news outlets may be ignoring it; but we're paying attention. And when the history of GOT is made, they'll have to refer to your research. As for "made it up", that's blatantly false.

It's true that not many people have the same dedication to this issue; many have just ... moved on. But that shouldn't be discouraging.
 It's still worth reporting on.

 

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5 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I don't think they're "intentionally bigoted"....they're just utterly tone-deaf. 

In some ways, I find their stupidity more insulting than deliberate bigotry.

Yeah..."casually" or "ignorantly" bigoted is probably more appropriate (not that it's any better, mind you).  Also, I remember a thread awhile back that asked people to describe their feelings about the abomination in one word.  Your second sentence above reminded me that, for me, that one word was also "insulting". 

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4 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

And that was shown as goooood... empowered female burns bad rapists! Not as “I’m becoming the love child of Satan and Hitler”.

lol that's one of the most annoying parts of this. "How could you not see these acts that we told you to root for were not supposed to be rooted for, you Nazi enablers!" How dumb we were, to not know a killer when we see one.

4 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Not going to lie, I'm falling into a deep depression over the lack of news attention to this.  Elio never gave his views on it at all.  Mainstream news didn't bother to report on it.  Vanity Fair's Joanna Robinson flat out said that I made it up -- not that I "misinterpreted" the script text, but some vague accusation that "I read the scripts, it doesn't say that, the on-screen version is the real ending!" when.....no, the WGA script is very different.

Don't take it too personally. It's been a year now, so I think people are just over it. It's just us nerds that are still ranting about it. But we're still a sizeable group, and that's reflected in the 10k+ views on your videos.

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Look at it all together, it's a series of deliberate choices. And they are responsible for their choices.

Ignorance is no excuse. They are repeat offenders. There is intent. For 10 years they did the same offensive things, after being told they were offensive.

They ignored criticism and did the opposite of the source material. Over and over and over again. This is not accidental. This is a pattern spanning a decade.

They were taken to task for these things, and they chose to double down on it.

Look at this review from season one:

Historical accuracy and fear of anachronism are not good excuses for representing racial and sexual politics in the way that Game of Thrones does. Deadwood began its run with some similarly shocking occurrences of sexual violence and racial caricature. But that show also offered blistering and uncomfortable critiques of the culture that enabled and encouraged those acts, and it offered layered portraits of women and ethnic and racial minorities who survived and resisted that dismal age.

There’s no evidence of such critique so far in Game of Thrones. Every act of brutality, every assaulted woman, every exoticized barbarian is presented for the delectation of the audience. No prostitute appears on screen without her bosom already exposed, no transgressive sex act occurs without the frame of luxuriant tapestries or the glow of moonlight upon it. This show’s historical misogyny and racism are purely aesthetic, and that’s a problem we should hope this series works out on the double.

https://www.slantmagazine.com/tv/game-of-thrones-season-one/

They never said oh, thanks for pointing that out, we'll try to do better. It was quite the opposite. They enjoyed thumbing their noses at critics.

They are the ultimate good ole boys.

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7 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Not going to lie, I'm falling into a deep depression over the lack of news attention to this.  Elio never gave his views on it at all.  Mainstream news didn't bother to report on it.  Vanity Fair's Joanna Robinson flat out said that I made it up -- not that I "misinterpreted" the script text, but some vague accusation that "I read the scripts, it doesn't say that, the on-screen version is the real ending!" when.....no, the WGA script is very different.

I mean, I do expect rational people to debate "well is it different ENOUGH to suggest a huge change?" etc.  But she just curtly accused in a single tweet "he made this up!" ....when....it's a public archive, anyone could contact the WGA library to confirm its veracity.

They don't want to.  The wall I'm running into, which I think we all have, are that the remaining TV show die-hards would never report on this...which makes sense....but a lot of news sites are of the mentality that "well, everyone knows the TV show was bad, it isn't news anymore, why bother reporting on it?"

….because you never DID report on it!  I'm thinking of Vulture, Variety, etc.

It's a sick world we live in where news sites only report on "good, happy" news, and after something goes bad, rather than a measured assessment or research into what went wrong, it's "I don't feel like reporting on it".  

(shrug)  Benioff is addicted to fame, sooner or later he'll try to get into the spotlight again with his Netflix deal, dragging all this up all over again.

I do hope that SDCC next week, well virtual SDCC, starts buzz going again about major franchises and that news picks up.

Your videos have generated considerable discussion on social media.

As to the wider media, well, no one really cares about Game of Thrones any more.  It's almost as if it sunk into a an abyss.

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