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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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56 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

I agree, but would not offer that as an excuse. Directly related to these bad representations of women is that the old boys network keeps giving the showrunner jobs to men like Benioff and Weiss.

They were called on these issues all along. I have posted articles sounding the alarm in season 1, here's a good one:

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

Here's a later article, and there were lots of articles like this all along:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/game-of-throness-ugliest-legacy-failing-women

The viewers called them on it, too. There were uncritical media takes from those more interested in being fans and keeping access, but there were also honest critiques.

And apart from this, they knew, they aren't babes in the woods, they are grown men who thumbed their noses at critics, every time. There were many examples.

They blamed women for doing things they never would have done, then had the women thank them for doing it to them. It doesn't get more deliberate than that.

And HBO basically said whatever you want, boys.

I suspect the writers would have made those points even more strongly after Season Shit.

Cersei in the books is a sociopath, but a compelling character, nonetheless.  But her sociopathy is not portrayed as strength.   There's a darker side to Daenerys, Arya, Catelyn etc. even as they are broadly sympathetic characters.  They're nuanced, complex, human.  We should worry that Sansa might be totally corrupted by Littlefinger, and not see him as a role model for her to emulate in any sense. Cruelty and ill-treatment of women are facts of life in this world, but in no sense are they glorified.  Nor does Martin judge characters by differing moral standards.  

The two D's just misunderstood so much, that I sometimes wonder if they even read the books, instead of just relying on summaries.

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46 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I suspect the writers would have made those points even more strongly after Season Shit.

Cersei in the books is a sociopath, but a compelling character, nonetheless.  But her sociopathy is not portrayed as strength.   There's a darker side to Daenerys, Arya, Catelyn etc. even as they are broadly sympathetic characters.  They're nuanced, complex, human.  We should worry that Sansa might be totally corrupted by Littlefinger, and not see him as a role model for her to emulate in any sense. Cruelty and ill-treatment of women are facts of life in this world, but in no sense are they glorified.  Nor does Martin judge characters by differing moral standards.  

The two D's just misunderstood so much, that I sometimes wonder if they even read the books, instead of just relying on summaries.

Yeah, complex characters are great, and darkness goes with the territory of adapting these books. But the showrunners of GoT treated women like Joffrey with his playthings.

There's also in the midst of a dark story a need for levity, which the show never did get. The show was a misery slogfest, much of it dumped on women as their playthings.

Their idea of humor was Tyrion and Bronn joking about how prostitutes wanted to do Pod for free. 13 year old boy stuff that wasn't funny at all, just really pitiful to see grown men write things like this.

Here's another article written in the beginning that saw the problem with the show early on:

Just a few episodes into “Game of Thrones,” the central thrust becomes clear: after this revolution, there will be peace and then . . . another revolution. And though the years may come and go, the people will slit one another’s throats and covet their brothers’ wives, over and over again. It’s odd, seen this way, to call the genre “fantasy” at all.

“Killing clears my head,” Baratheon says. And fantasy clears ours. It’s strange, then, that fantasy writers would so often take the oddest quirks of the imagination and the loftiest flights of fancy and boil them down to the same pools of blood in the dust. Why invent nomadic tribes, noble kings and mythical creatures from whole cloth, only to doom them to repeat the worst mistakes of human history or reflect the saddest aspects of human nature? Surely, someone, somewhere can imagine an alternative to this endlessly repeated unhappy ending.

Ultimately, this is the worry with “Game of Thrones” — that, like so much in its genre, it will turn out to be all thrones and few games. Sure, the life-and-death, gods-and-girded-warriors gravitas of fantasy explains much of its appeal, but maybe we should try throwing in a gaggle of philosophers, artists, scientists and idealists, who might collaborate to lift us out of the mire of our shared dread, to prevent us from reproducing our own suffering in the generations to come. That way, maybe, instead of blindly fornicating and fighting ourselves to death in a repetitive loop, we might imagine a whole new ending. Isn’t that what fantasy is for?

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Riff-t.html

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10 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Yeah, complex characters are great, and darkness goes with the territory of adapting these books. But the showrunners of GoT treated women like Joffrey with his playthings.

There's also in the midst of a dark story a need for levity, which the show never did get. The show was a misery slogfest, much of it dumped on women as their playthings.

Their idea of humor was Tyrion and Bronn joking about how prostitutes wanted to do Pod for free. 13 year old boy stuff that wasn't funny at all, just really pitiful to see grown men write things like this.

Here's another article written in the beginning that saw the problem with the show early on:

Just a few episodes into “Game of Thrones,” the central thrust becomes clear: after this revolution, there will be peace and then . . . another revolution. And though the years may come and go, the people will slit one another’s throats and covet their brothers’ wives, over and over again. It’s odd, seen this way, to call the genre “fantasy” at all.

“Killing clears my head,” Baratheon says. And fantasy clears ours. It’s strange, then, that fantasy writers would so often take the oddest quirks of the imagination and the loftiest flights of fancy and boil them down to the same pools of blood in the dust. Why invent nomadic tribes, noble kings and mythical creatures from whole cloth, only to doom them to repeat the worst mistakes of human history or reflect the saddest aspects of human nature? Surely, someone, somewhere can imagine an alternative to this endlessly repeated unhappy ending.

Ultimately, this is the worry with “Game of Thrones” — that, like so much in its genre, it will turn out to be all thrones and few games. Sure, the life-and-death, gods-and-girded-warriors gravitas of fantasy explains much of its appeal, but maybe we should try throwing in a gaggle of philosophers, artists, scientists and idealists, who might collaborate to lift us out of the mire of our shared dread, to prevent us from reproducing our own suffering in the generations to come. That way, maybe, instead of blindly fornicating and fighting ourselves to death in a repetitive loop, we might imagine a whole new ending. Isn’t that what fantasy is for?

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Riff-t.html

Whores, poo, cocks and eunuchs are absolutely hilarious, when you're 12.

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They are arrested development boys, too. They can't imagine the joys of being a child, much less an adult.

Why did these characters want to be alive? To not answer that question in a meaningful way after 8 seasons is to fail, resoundingly. They are fighting for nothing.

Charles Foster Kane wasn't satisfied with power alone. Rosebud must have flown over their heads, too. Hell, the whole movie. Every movie. Everything. They are so clueless.

They mocked hopes and dreams. Sansa didn't want a tiara, she wanted love. Arya didn't want a boat trip out of the blue, she wanted to be with her pack. Dany wanted someone to belong to and a home, too.

You can bet if Dany dies in the books, GRRM will let her remember her sun and stars. But not the show.

Their story was just hell, then YAWN in the end, as they metered out empty endings. Empty endings for empty characters written by empty writers who couldn't tell a story.

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2 hours ago, SeanF said:

I suspect the writers would have made those points even more strongly after Season Shit.

Cersei in the books is a sociopath, but a compelling character, nonetheless.  But her sociopathy is not portrayed as strength.   There's a darker side to Daenerys, Arya, Catelyn etc. even as they are broadly sympathetic characters.  They're nuanced, complex, human.  We should worry that Sansa might be totally corrupted by Littlefinger, and not see him as a role model for her to emulate in any sense. Cruelty and ill-treatment of women are facts of life in this world, but in no sense are they glorified.  Nor does Martin judge characters by differing moral standards.  

The two D's just misunderstood so much, that I sometimes wonder if they even read the books, instead of just relying on summaries.

It's embarrassing. And look at what they did to Brienne, one of the best women in the books who started out so well in the show.

She convinces herself that Renly is worth dying for because he danced with her and showed her respect once. She is also convinced he is the rightful king of Westeros and that his death had to be avenged at all costs, even though the guilty person had no choice in it and was willing to give Renly just about anything except a crown (although he would have been formally acknowledged as his heir for a time) as a peace offering but was refused.

She also acted like killing him was a public duty of some kind when it was really about revenge. Oh and she kills random Vale soldiers who committed no crimes, and random Stark soldiers who did pretty much what all people do during a war.

I miss introduction tv show, and book Brienne so much.

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On 3/6/2021 at 7:55 AM, Lord Varys said:

From what I know, it is pretty well-founded that modern 'scientific racism' is basically the dark side of the enlightenment, where people had to come up with 'reasons' why Colonialism and slavery were already a thing ... and they really had to justify somehow to get over the cognitive dissonance that all the new rights and freedoms didn't apply to the people they were exploiting and enslaving. That's why Kant and Hegel and many other 18th/19th century luminaries have their own racist ramblings.

Essentially yes.

Medieval people didn’t have the same concept of race that we do: it was made up to retroactively try to justify the African slave trade.

 

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On 3/2/2021 at 8:58 PM, Lord Varys said:

George goes to great lengths to show the corruption and physical rottenness of places like Natchez (which is basically his inspiration for Norvos) and, especially, New Orleans - which occupies the place Volantis has in ASoIaF. There is high culture and stuff there ... but things are rotten beneath the fine exterior and that's because of slavery and, especially, the slave trade.

How are they Norvos  and Volantis?

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59 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

How are they Norvos  and Volantis?

Natchez is like Norvos in the sense that George describes it in Fevre Dream as essentially two cities - one, up on the hill, where the aristocrats live, and then another close to the river where the rabble have to live - like he describes Norvos in TWoIaF.

And Volantis is New Orleans in the sense that it is in the Mississippi Delta like Volantis is at one of the mouths of the Rhoyne. In fact, the Rhoyne is basically a gigantic Mississippi, flowing down to its mouth (north to south) very much like the Mississippi.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Natchez is like Norvos in the sense that George describes it in Fevre Dream as essentially two cities - one, up on the hill, where the aristocrats live, and then another close to the river where the rabble have to live - like he describes Norvos in TWoIaF.

And Volantis is New Orleans in the sense that it is in the Mississippi Delta like Volantis is at one of the mouths of the Rhoyne. In fact, the Rhoyne is basically a gigantic Mississippi, flowing down to its mouth (north to south) very much like the Mississippi.

All the great Eastern slaver cities are gradually rotting away.  Slavery results in political and technological stagnation.

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5 hours ago, SeanF said:

All the great Eastern slaver cities are gradually rotting away.  Slavery results in political and technological stagnation.

Of course, I just felt that there is a nod between George's depiction of New Orleans in Fevre Dream and the way Volantis is described in ADwD. It is somewhat subtle, but there are a lot of parallels between both river journeys. George likely didn't reread Fevre Dream before writing ADwD, but he already wrote another book about a ship going down a very broad and powerful stream. And alongside both streams there are slaver cities and slavery is a big problem, etc.

I think it is more subtle in ADwD since Fevre Dream very obviously plays with the fact the readers are aware of - that the Civil War is about to begin - whereas in ADwD the fact that the Volantene slaves are going to revolt soon is hinted at more subtly. In Fevre Dream it is spilled out directly that New Orleans feels and smells rotten - in Volantis it is more subtle.

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On 3/14/2021 at 6:34 PM, Count Balerion said:

to coin a phrase, tyrion kinda forgot. i may have mentioned my theory that he's actually his stupid twin morion.

CHAPTER DEFENDING ENDING EARLIER, PART 2

they didn't want to outstay their welcome, but to keep up momentum and "always leave them wanting more".

wanted to go out "on a good high place".

D&D came at it from a "position of principle" [!!!].

"s**t's going down, so s**t has to go down." [no comment!]

HBO was an "island of creative freedom" where D-chaps were "trusted to call their own shots".

ending GOT was "not a decision made lightly" but entailed a "significant degree of mournfulness".

benioff didn't "have any friends left". his colleagues were his friends.

D&D opened a bottle of bourbon in their tent and got "introspecive".


leaving GOT was like entering "some weird world where you don't know how people act anymore" (or words to that effect).

"the idea of continuing w/ other writers had never been considered." [interesting. why not?]

[OK, i'm not sure what this note means.] i wrote "if i want a chocolate bar, someone gets a chocolate bar. fun [to think of?] a tyrion joke like that." [???]

it was a "hard-drinking, hard-partying" group. one chap woke up naked and came to the hotel and they asked for ID; another woke up naked on pool slide being kicked in the ribs by an annoyed 8-year-old.

15 mill per episode in season 8.

  

17 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

A bunch of euphemisms and catch phrases they’re quoting off, imitating what they THINK a good leader should be saying. “Joffrey was the humblest and gentlest child the gods ever put on this good earth!”

...periodically punctuated by hints of their megalomania peaking through the cracks: has a line about “all my employees are my friends!”.... and a few lines later....wistfully lamenting that for ten years, they were literally waited on by dozens of staffers; “if I wanted a chocolate bar, someone would run and get it for me! It just appeared! Now that’s gone!”  —shows you what he really thinks of his “friends”.

Oh my goodness. Missed this.

I can't imagine Vince Gilligan having people bring him chocolate bars. If anything, he'd bring them chocolate bars unasked.

And there lies the difference in the showrunners and the shows.

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18 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

That was pbs Idaho. And it’s a false choice ignoring their privilege: only a handful of million dollar tv shows are made by hbo - why did THEY deserve to have their offensive writing ahead of real writers... on an adaptation?

Because George picked them, that's why.

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