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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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Question about Winterfell (really this applies to descriptions in both the book and show): why is there no moat? If Winterfell was built after the first Long Night you'd at least expect a moat around the castle to slow wights down and might have made the Ironborn easier to detect via all the sloshing sounds while trying to traverse it.

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11 hours ago, SeanF said:

They portrayed actions as being good or bad, simply on the basis of who was doing them.   

in a nuthsell, yes. or even with the same character, depending on when. sometimes dany burning is kind of inspiring, sometimes evil. but she's all over the place anyway.

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FIRE CANNOT KILL A DRAGON, CHAPTER 30. A LOT OF SOPHISTRY TRYING TO "DEFEND" EVIL DANY AND JUST SHUT THE BLAZES UP ALREADY, PART 2

EC: they periodically gave her notes on how to play. sometimes told them "don't tell me what to do w/ my girl. i know what to do!" she'd
sometimes fight back. "i get that she has to be steely and unforgiving and a powerful force. but in this moment she's also a goddamned human being. so i'm going to give you that and i really pray you take that in the edit."

[take careful note of the following]: "many others on the creative team likewise didn't have any idea that daenerys was headed for such a dark fate."

alex graves (director): "i actually did not know we were telling the story of daenerys going the way of her ancestors. i thought we were telling the story of her *not* doing that."

follows a summary of dany not being evil: unselfish hatred of slavery. [emphasis is off, though. see lindsay ellis and mauler's reviews, where it's shown very clearly that dany, even in the show, has good intentions and her purpose is to help the weak.] "daenerys was a character who always *preferred* to do the right thing, so long as doing the right thing didn't entirely thwart her own ambition or undermine her perceived authority to rule." [and how, pray, would not burning a city THAT HAD ALREADY SURRENDERED to the ground thwart her ambition or undermine her authority?]

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45 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Funny and interesting video about Season 8 (NSFW). I personally love the idea of Dark Dany, but this is still an interesting alternative.

 

It is obviously much better than s8. And despite the wtf moments of bran's soul that I don't get it is full of unexpected turns, a bittersweet ending and actually feels fulfiling...

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7 hours ago, Count Balerion said:

FIRE CANNOT KILL A DRAGON, CHAPTER 30. A LOT OF SOPHISTRY TRYING TO "DEFEND" EVIL DANY AND JUST SHUT THE BLAZES UP ALREADY, PART 2

EC: they periodically gave her notes on how to play. sometimes told them "don't tell me what to do w/ my girl. i know what to do!" she'd
sometimes fight back. "i get that she has to be steely and unforgiving and a powerful force. but in this moment she's also a goddamned human being. so i'm going to give you that and i really pray you take that in the edit."

[take careful note of the following]: "many others on the creative team likewise didn't have any idea that daenerys was headed for such a dark fate."

alex graves (director): "i actually did not know we were telling the story of daenerys going the way of her ancestors. i thought we were telling the story of her *not* doing that."

follows a summary of dany not being evil: unselfish hatred of slavery. [emphasis is off, though. see lindsay ellis and mauler's reviews, where it's shown very clearly that dany, even in the show, has good intentions and her purpose is to help the weak.] "daenerys was a character who always *preferred* to do the right thing, so long as doing the right thing didn't entirely thwart her own ambition or undermine her perceived authority to rule." [and how, pray, would not burning a city THAT HAD ALREADY SURRENDERED to the ground thwart her ambition or undermine her authority?]

That's a sign of remarkable incompetence on the part of the show runners and/or sign that vilification was decided very later in the day.

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10 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Funny and interesting video about Season 8 (NSFW). I personally love the idea of Dark Dany, but this is still an interesting alternative.

 

If Dark Daenerys had been done similarly to the way that Kim Wexler's character arc is being handled, in Better Call Saul, I think it could have been a very good character arc.  It's possible for any military leader to become corrupted and brutalised by war, and to resort to measures that would once have filled them with horror (you could argue that even our own military leaders were like that in WWII).  But, that takes good writing.

The problem is there was no point to burning civilians at random at the end.  The war was won.  IMHO, a better tale would have been if Daenerys was facing bitter street fighting, and had the choice.  Retreat in order to save civilian lives, and risk losing the war, or unleash fire on the enemy, knowing that tens of thousands of civilians will die in the inferno.  She makes the choice to unleash fire.  That keeps it as a deliberate decision on her part, but also shows the dilemma that many commanders  face.

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14 hours ago, Count Balerion said:

FIRE CANNOT KILL A DRAGON, CHAPTER 30. A LOT OF SOPHISTRY TRYING TO "DEFEND" EVIL DANY AND JUST SHUT THE BLAZES UP ALREADY, PART 2

EC: they periodically gave her notes on how to play. sometimes told them "don't tell me what to do w/ my girl. i know what to do!" she'd
sometimes fight back. "i get that she has to be steely and unforgiving and a powerful force. but in this moment she's also a goddamned human being. so i'm going to give you that and i really pray you take that in the edit."

[take careful note of the following]: "many others on the creative team likewise didn't have any idea that daenerys was headed for such a dark fate."

alex graves (director): "i actually did not know we were telling the story of daenerys going the way of her ancestors. i thought we were telling the story of her *not* doing that."

follows a summary of dany not being evil: unselfish hatred of slavery. [emphasis is off, though. see lindsay ellis and mauler's reviews, where it's shown very clearly that dany, even in the show, has good intentions and her purpose is to help the weak.] "daenerys was a character who always *preferred* to do the right thing, so long as doing the right thing didn't entirely thwart her own ambition or undermine her perceived authority to rule." [and how, pray, would not burning a city THAT HAD ALREADY SURRENDERED to the ground thwart her ambition or undermine her authority?]

Quoting this for the already huge and ever growing "yeah they totally changed course" file. And it wasn't only Dany's story where they changed course.

The show was not art, there was nothing profound or sacred about it. It was entertainment that required a lot of audience participation to make any sense of it.

Making a popular protagonist Suddenly Satan was such a bizarre choice.

They told the actors "just say the lines" and didn't let the directors know what was going on. That they had to fight to make the characters seem human, that says it all.

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6 hours ago, SeanF said:

If Dark Daenerys had been done similarly to the way that Kim Wexler's character arc is being handled, in Better Call Saul, I think it could have been a very good character arc.  It's possible for any military leader to become corrupted and brutalised by war, and to resort to measures that would once have filled them with horror (you could argue that even our own military leaders were like that in WWII).  But, that takes good writing.

The problem is there was no point to burning civilians at random at the end.  The war was won.  IMHO, a better tale would have been if Daenerys was facing bitter street fighting, and had the choice.  Retreat in order to save civilian lives, and risk losing the war, or unleash fire on the enemy, knowing that tens of thousands of civilians will die in the inferno.  She makes the choice to unleash fire.  That keeps it as a deliberate decision on her part, but also shows the dilemma that many commanders  face.

I love that Kim's darker side has come out. Did Jimmy bring it out, or was she drawn to Jimmy because she wanted to bring it out, or both. I like when stories explore the darker side of characters.

Dany was bullied by her brother and she and other characters in the story (like Sandor, Arya) respond to such bullying by trying to help others. But they are not perfect, so they help in imperfect ways.

It's just so interesting to see it play out. I think what GRRM is trying to show is that ruling is not an easy thing to do, and sometimes things just don't turn out perfectly. But he has a lot of compassion for Dany.

I would have liked to see this exploration continue, rather than making her Suddenly Satan, which was just really stupid.

(Also as you point out, you can't hold one character to different standards than the other characters. It's yet more evidence they were just throwing stuff at the wall. The show was not art, it was a wet fart.)

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13 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

I love that Kim's darker side has come out. Did Jimmy bring it out, or was she drawn to Jimmy because she wanted to bring it out, or both. I like when stories explore the darker side of characters.

Dany was bullied by her brother and she and other characters in the story respond to such bullying by trying o help others (like Sandor, Arya). But they are not perfect, so they help in imperfect ways.

It's just so interesting to see it play out. I think what GRRM is trying to show is that ruling is not an easy thing to do, and sometimes things just don't turn out perfectly. But he has a lot of compassion for Dany.

I would have liked to see this exploration continue, rather than making her Suddenly Satan, which was just really stupid.

(Also as you point out, you can't hold one character to different standards than the other characters. It's yet more evidence they were just throwing stuff at the wall. The show was not art, it was a wet fart.)

By all means, make the argument in favour of pacifism, but don't make it selective pacifism.

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Just now, zionius said:

Really? IMDB and a 2019 interview say he's ex producer till season 8. He even won the Emmy for seasons 6-8 https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0230361/awards?ref_=nm_awd

You are quite right. I don't know where I got the idea, but must have been misinformed. I stopped watching after the fifth season, so I didn't see post-S5 credits.

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they were always bad at management. the explosives in morocco and hodor's permanent back injury and the chap almost falling off a cliff and so forth are from when the show was good.

evil dany was a last minute decision. the original idea seems to have been dany accidentally setting off wildfire while burning red keep. we know tat it was widfire and not dany that was burning civilians indiscriminately.

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