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!

[kissdbyfire]

8 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

That was a clue that he arranged the execution later, one assumes - something the show never again touches upon.

Well, that sort of thing became one of their specialties, didn’t it? How many zillions or times it happened... and we’d be ranting about it here, and invariably someone would pop in to defend the show and say, “you can’t know it’s going to go nowhere! Of course it will be important! It’s obvious they’re going to address that later, just wait and see!”

Some defenders even came back later on to say, “yeah, you guys were right. They completely dropped that like a hot potato and completely forgot all about it”. 

[BlackLightning]

22 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

If Myrcella should play a role there, they could have just brought her and Trystane to KL for some shit to happen there - one could also drawn out Cersei's mental issues some more, or build those up by introducing things like Maggy's prophecy earlier in the narrative.

True. I love 99% of what you said and agree with about 98% of it.

But Myrcella should play a role. No ifs about it. She is one of the prophesized three. The fact that she is female does not make her any lesser than the other two. In fact, Myrcella will be the last one standing. That I know to be true.

23 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

My assumption is that Cersei will flee KL by ship rather than on foot/with horses (because that would force her to cross the war-torn Riverlands, making it almost impossible for George to create a plausible scenario where she isn't captured by the Tyrells or falls in the hands of some Riverlords/outlaws). She doesn't have the forces left to serve her as escort on such a long journey.

By ship she could intentionally or unintentionally (the Ironborn capturing her ship) meet with Euron on the Arbor after he has crushed the Redwynes and taken the island. There they could celebrate their marriage, have their proper coronation as king and queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and then Cersei could return to the Rock to assemble an army there. 

Agreed. There's no other way. Leaving by ship is the only possible way she can leave and not be caught.

That said, I don't think she will be caught by the Ironborn on her way back. I think that Cersei is going to make an overture to Euron from Casterly Rock (the rock wife symbolism) after getting there. The chief reason why I don't think Cersei is going to be meeting Euron at the Arbor is because I think Euron will be busy on the Iron Islands. I think Asha and Theon are going to survive The Winds of Winter and make it back to the Iron Islands. We already have had it established that a Kingsmoot election can be nullified if the son of the original king was not present. With that loophole established, Asha has a chance of overturning Euron's election in favor of herself, Theon or even her unborn child. Euron will have no choice but to go back to the Iron Islands once Theon's return is announced. I think Victarion will also feel honor-bound to go back despite the fact that he shouldn't really care as he will already be Dany's husband and king. So, yeah. That Kingsmoot will be a bloodbath. Cersei will, IMO, reach out to Euron afterwards. Or maybe she might actually interfere in the Kingsmoot on Euron's behalf as a way of winning him over.

Who knows?

23 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Vice versa, I expect Euron to sack and burn Sunspear after taking the Arbor, to send a message to Aegon and Arianne (whose move is going to be considerable blow to his plan to take the Iron Throne). And once he has teamed up with Cersei he will have no use for Dany anymore (who he will either see as lost or dead by that point) which could pave the way for him and his armada teaming up with the fleets of the Three Daughters to prevent Dany from coming to Westeros. I expect the biggest blow against Daenerys will come from Euron long before she even arrives in Westeros. Her armada will be most vulnerable at sea - on land they should be pretty much invincible.

snip

 

Oh, Jaime will end up with Aegon, in my opinion, to become another version of the Kingmaker Criston Cole, making him both a mortal enemy of Tyrion (due to his connection with Dany) and Cersei (because he turned his back on her, their children, and his house).

The Others thing will be the thing that severs the good guys from the bad. Those who team up to defeat them will be good guys (and should/might be able to overcome whatever differences they may have) whereas those who refuse to help save humanity (or backstab their efforts) will be the blackest of villains. Euron and Cersei are the primary candidates for the latter category, possibly Ramsay and Roose as well, if they live long enough.

While I do believe that Sunspear is doomed and will be left a ruin, I'm not quite sure Euron will be the one to do it. I can easily see Daenerys nuking the city and/or the city imploding with all of the anti-Martell sentiment that was well established in A Feast for Crows. Yep, I said it. I think Doran Martell and his household will get the Romanov treatment with Arianne being a stand-in for Anastacia.

But if there's one thing the show did right in its last two seasons was the naval battle. I think Euron is going to attack Dany's armada either before she even makes it to Westeros or just upon her arrival at Dragonstone. I think that when that happens Victarion will die and about a third (if not half) of Dany's enormous military machine dies.

Jaime ending up with Aegon? Interesting. I like that idea; I've never thought about it. I've always thought that Jaime would either die on command or go crawling back to Cersei after Catelyn is finished with him and moves on to greener pastures (i.e. Winterfell)

I totally agree with the Others. And I think that one of the Boltons will survive long enough to menace the Starks in A Dream of Spring. Personally, I'm thinking Lord Roose makes it to the last book and Ramsay dies. But not both of them. Nope. No way in hell do both of them survive The Winds of Winter, successfully fall back on the Dreadfort and not kill each other. No way. Something has to give. I think Littlefinger and...wait for it....Tyrion will fall within "the bad guy" category too.

23 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

No idea about that one - but I find the idea intriguing that she might be pregnant with Euron's child for a time. Considering the nature of the guy she might abort it, though. Or kill it with her own hands when they have a falling-out - which they likely will.

That I find not very likely. I don't think for a moment Cersei is going to be exploited by Euron - or the other way around. These guys are both people who know what they want and that they could do great things together while they goals are more or less the same. Neither will love the other, they will be united in hate and a desire to destroy - but it might turn out to be a workable partnership for a considerable time (sort of like Roose and Walda get along very well).

Pretty sure the valonqar is going to be Jaime - but whether that means a literal or metaphoric strangling/death I have no idea. I'm kind of confident that Cersei and Jaime will die together somehow, possibly killing each other.

There live hundreds of thousands of people in KL, and we saw how they dealt with five dragons during the Dance. Euron and Cersei certainly could take a depopulated or defenseless KL, but it is difficult to imagine that they could hold it for long, especially not when other armies/fleets come to threaten the cities (along with dragons). One also has the new power of the Faith to consider - Aegon is likely going to win the sparrows to his side, and they will never stand for an Ironborn king or the rule of a Queen Cersei.

One could, perhaps see Euron/Cersei take the city while everybody else is fighting the Others in the last battle, but their success there would then be about as lasting as Napoleon's return to power when he fled from Elba. Because the gang defeated the Others should make short work of them.

And it should even be easier if they got to power before Daenerys arrives - people might love Aegon, but nobody in KL is going to love Euron/Cersei.

Well, first of all, I don't think Cersei is capable of having anymore children. I think the prophecy will come true and that three live births with three healthy children who go on to become kings is all she'll ever get.

That's why I said she'll either be faking one to keep Euron close or she will hang on this wildly irrational, false hope that she is truly pregnant. I doubt that Cersei will kill any child of her own body after the previous three died. Even if it is by Euron.

Oh but come now. You don't think Cersei is going to be exploited by Euron? Are we talking about the same Cersei? This is the same Cersei who got outmaneuvered and outplayed by Bronn the illiterate sellsword-turned-Lord of Stokeworth. She's about as blind as Maester Aemon, even more stubborn than Lysa Tully and only marginally smarter than Victarion Greyjoy. No way she is not going to get had.

What happened to Falia Flowers will be along the same lines as what will happen to Cersei.

I think they will united in hate and a desire to destroy and burn. And I think they will get along fairly well for a while. The sex will probably be fantastic. But Euron is a crafty mother----- and wants to not only destroy the world but he wants to rebuild it with him as a god over it. I think he'll just use her as a means to an end and dispose of her as soon as he is secure on the Iron Throne and she shows herself to be a liability.

I think Jaime and Cersei will die together. But I think it will be Euron that will kill them both and that Daenerys (or Bran...or both of them) will in turn kill him.

The Faith? Meh. I don't think they will be a factor that far along. Between fighting Daenerys and fighting the Others, Aegon's supply of sparrows will be exhausted. They might not even be present to protest against a glorified Ironborn serial rapist and his vicious wife.

Like I said: I am almost convinced that Euron is a skinchanger. Not just any skinchanger but that he is just as powerful as Bran and was Bloodraven's original successor. If Euron telepathically enslaves the people of King's Landing and Bran saves them all and stops Euron, then yeah...I can definitely see why people want Bran to be king.

[Lord Varys]

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

True. I love 99% of what you said and agree with about 98% of it.

But Myrcella should play a role. No ifs about it. She is one of the prophesized three. The fact that she is female does not make her any lesser than the other two. In fact, Myrcella will be the last one standing. That I know to be true.

Oh, sure, I just meant that we didn't really need her Dornish plot to give her a meaningful exit. That's something the show could have cut while keeping the proper Dorne plot in connection with Aegon.

I've speculated that Nym and Myrcella never make it to KL but are captured by the Golden Company in the Stormlands, allowing Aegon to marry Myrcella to strengthen his claim to the Iron Throne. She would then suffer a Jaehaera-like death early on in Aegon's reign to ensure that Connington keep his promise of ending the line of the usurper as well as to make way for Arianne's own marriage to Aegon.

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

That said, I don't think she will be caught by the Ironborn on her way back. I think that Cersei is going to make an overture to Euron from Casterly Rock (the rock wife symbolism) after getting there. The chief reason why I don't think Cersei is going to be meeting Euron at the Arbor is because I think Euron will be busy on the Iron Islands. I think Asha and Theon are going to survive The Winds of Winter and make it back to the Iron Islands. We already have had it established that a Kingsmoot election can be nullified if the son of the original king was not present. With that loophole established, Asha has a chance of overturning Euron's election in favor of herself, Theon or even her unborn child. Euron will have no choice but to go back to the Iron Islands once Theon's return is announced. I think Victarion will also feel honor-bound to go back despite the fact that he shouldn't really care as he will already be Dany's husband and king. So, yeah. That Kingsmoot will be a bloodbath. Cersei will, IMO, reach out to Euron afterwards. Or maybe she might actually interfere in the Kingsmoot on Euron's behalf as a way of winning him over.

That strikes as vastly to complicated a setting. It should take Cersei a long time to get to Casterly Rock by ship, and the waters in the south she would have to cross are full of Ironborn ships. The idea that she could get through them without being caught by them would stretch credibility nearly as much as the idea she could just ride from KL to Casterly Rock without being captured by anyone.

I'd expect her to not even try to evade the Ironborn but to search out Euron directly, especially if she were to flee after the court got word that Euron crushed the Redwyne fleet (which is not unlikely to happen). In such a scenario she would see him as her natural ally, considering her own issues with the Tyrells. And only at Euron's side could she hope to regain the Iron Throne and punish her many enemies.

I expect the Theon/Asha stuff to be just a red herring - at least while Euron is still alive. He took basically all the Ironborn to battle. If they made a Kingsmoot right now pretty much nobody would attend. And who on earth would actually vote for a broken, crippled, eunuch king, especially while Euron still has success? Pretty much nobody.

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

While I do believe that Sunspear is doomed and will be left a ruin, I'm not quite sure Euron will be the one to do it. I can easily see Daenerys nuking the city and/or the city imploding with all of the anti-Martell sentiment that was well established in A Feast for Crows. Yep, I said it. I think Doran Martell and his household will get the Romanov treatment with Arianne being a stand-in for Anastacia.

Just an idea based on the fact that Dorne is awfully close to the sea and without as many defenders as it could have if they were not sending 20,000 men into battle. Also, Euron would have a strong motive to do something like that.

Dany, on the other hand, should have literally no motivation to target Sunspear (she wants the Iron Throne). Dany's dragon are not likely to ever be powerful enough to destroy Sunspear.

There was no real anti-Martell sentiment in AFfC - just a pro-Sand Snake sentiment, and Doran has overcome the issues he had with both his nieces and his daughters.

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

But if there's one thing the show did right in its last two seasons was the naval battle. I think Euron is going to attack Dany's armada either before she even makes it to Westeros or just upon her arrival at Dragonstone. I think that when that happens Victarion will die and about a third (if not half) of Dany's enormous military machine dies.

I'm not sure Dany ever assembles her armies on Dragonstone. That would make little point - unless essentially 90% of her people drown, or something like that. The island isn't that large or full of resources/provisions - and if she can land on/take Dragonstone, she will also be able to take KL. Which she then would do. She might certainly pay the island of her birth a visit and she should take possession of it, but I don't see her spending much time there.

I could see a vast navel battle during which Euron does a lot of damage, but is eventually beaten, with him getting away to come back with Cersei later on during the land-based battles.

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Jaime ending up with Aegon? Interesting. I like that idea; I've never thought about it. I've always thought that Jaime would either die on command or go crawling back to Cersei after Catelyn is finished with him and moves on to greener pastures (i.e. Winterfell)

That idea is based on all that Rhaegar guilt we get in Jaime's chapters since his weirwood dream, especially throughout AFfC. Also, the whole Criston Cole stuff in AFfC also would make little sense (the talk about 'the Kingmaker' does even feature at the end of one chapter) if we would not get some sort of Kingmaker in context of both Jaime and Arianne (where they discuss Cole, too). All that sort of points towards Jaime, being the only KG POV in Westeros (still alive).

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

I totally agree with the Others. And I think that one of the Boltons will survive long enough to menace the Starks in A Dream of Spring. Personally, I'm thinking Lord Roose makes it to the last book and Ramsay dies. But not both of them. Nope. No way in hell do both of them survive The Winds of Winter, successfully fall back on the Dreadfort and not kill each other. No way. Something has to give. I think Littlefinger and...wait for it....Tyrion will fall within "the bad guy" category too.

Tyrion could end up betraying Dany and Jon Snow if he turns out to be one of the dragon heads (i.e. a dragonrider with possible Targaryen ancestry) and there is going to be some sort of love/marriage triangle as Jorah suggested back in ACoK - Dany taking two husbands, like Aegon the Conqueror had two wives.

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Well, first of all, I don't think Cersei is capable of having anymore children. I think the prophecy will come true and that three live births with three healthy children who go on to become kings is all she'll ever get.

That might be true, didn't think of that.

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

That's why I said she'll either be faking one to keep Euron close or she will hang on this wildly irrational, false hope that she is truly pregnant. I doubt that Cersei will kill any child of her own body after the previous three died. Even if it is by Euron.

She could be pregnant and have a miscarriage/stillbirth, though. In fact, she might be pregnant by Jaime or one of her other lovers right now.

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Oh but come now. You don't think Cersei is going to be exploited by Euron? Are we talking about the same Cersei? This is the same Cersei who got outmaneuvered and outplayed by Bronn the illiterate sellsword-turned-Lord of Stokeworth. She's about as blind as Maester Aemon, even more stubborn than Lysa Tully and only marginally smarter than Victarion Greyjoy. No way she is not going to get had.

What happened to Falia Flowers will be along the same lines as what will happen to Cersei.

Oh, Cersei did change. We see a little bit of that in the Epilogue. The walk did something to her. During AFfC she was effectively mad with grief, having lost both her son and her father to the younger brother she believes will kill her eventually, too. But her mistake with the sparrows, her predicament and public humiliation are going to have an effect on how she operates.

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

The Faith? Meh. I don't think they will be a factor that far along. Between fighting Daenerys and fighting the Others, Aegon's supply of sparrows will be exhausted. They might not even be present to protest against a glorified Ironborn serial rapist and his vicious wife.

They have not been introduced at this point to just disappear again.

50 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Like I said: I am almost convinced that Euron is a skinchanger. Not just any skinchanger but that he is just as powerful as Bran and was Bloodraven's original successor. If Euron telepathically enslaves the people of King's Landing and Bran saves them all and stops Euron, then yeah...I can definitely see why people want Bran to be king.

Euron is fueling his magics with wine of the evening for the moment, but, sure he might have been a skinchanger candidate who was once in contact with Bloodraven. Don't think he is particularly powerful in this regard right now, but he certainly is going to become a powerful sorcerer.

Bran I don't see becoming king in KL or Winterfell - but her certainly could become some kind of spiritual god-king kind of thing beyond the Wall (or the king of the Children) because I don't think it makes sense for him to ever leave the cave again.

[The Dragon Demands]

6 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

his doesn't even properly come up when the truth about Jon comes up.

According to Cogman, the original version of the reveal scene in episode 8.2 (which may have been filmed) was much, much longer, "talking out all the implications of this"….but they cut it for time, due to 1 - basic bad time management with only six episodes, 2 - "the actors' nonverbal reactions with their faces can convey all of that anyway" etc. etc.

[The Dragon Demands]

6 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I think @The Dragon Demands makes a pretty good case with the idea that their obsession with showing off actors/things they think the actors they cast would be good at essentially shaped the story they told. 

If I made a pretty good case, I speculate it may have something to do with the fact that they openly rant about this in the Blu-ray commentaries, and in major panel interviews, "we changed it to show off the actors we like emoting with their faces using no dialogue".  

It's just that no one wanted to report on it.

[Prince of the North]

7 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Well, that sort of thing became one of their specialties, didn’t it? How many zillions or times it happened... and we’d be ranting about it here, and invariably someone would pop in to defend the show and say, “you can’t know it’s going to go nowhere! Of course it will be important! It’s obvious they’re going to address that later, just wait and see!”

Some defenders even came back later on to say, “yeah, you guys were right. They completely dropped that like a hot potato and completely forgot all about it”. 

No, no, no!  They had everything all planned out years in advance!  They said so!!

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

According to Cogman, the original version of the reveal scene in episode 8.2 (which may have been filmed) was much, much longer, "talking out all the implications of this"….but they cut it for time, due to 1 - basic bad time management with only six episodes, 2 - "the actors' nonverbal reactions with their faces can convey all of that anyway" etc. etc.

Yeah, sure, but I just realized that this incest tradition - possibly establishing that Dany herself would have no issue marrying a close relative - has never been properly established in the show. This is something they would have had her talk about with somebody - Viserys, back in season 1, Jorah for some reason later, Barristan, when talking about her parents or grandparents, Tyrion, anyone.

Something along the lines she thinks about in ADwD - that if Rhaegar's son Aegon had lived she might have married him, and back in AGoT that she had always expected to marry Viserys.

If Dany doesn't have positive feelings about an incestuous romance or marriage then the audience wouldn't really understand why only Jon but not both would have issues with that.

8 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Well, that sort of thing became one of their specialties, didn’t it? How many zillions or times it happened... and we’d be ranting about it here, and invariably someone would pop in to defend the show and say, “you can’t know it’s going to go nowhere! Of course it will be important! It’s obvious they’re going to address that later, just wait and see!”

Yeah, sure, I just cited that example because that was a subtle thing they did they could but never did elaborate on. That they later blatantly contradicted themselves and forgot entire stories or 'resolved' them by blowing buildings up nobody who is in their right mind doubts ;-).

8 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Some defenders even came back later on to say, “yeah, you guys were right. They completely dropped that like a hot potato and completely forgot all about it”. 

That is this emotional attachment/investment thing. The same kind of behavior why people being conned who should suspect they are conned continue to believe in the thing (or stay in cults or in a bad relationship, etc.) - because they have already invested too much money, energy, resources in the thing.

With TV shows you don't discuss them on line if you aren't invested in them to a pretty big degree. And then there is a strong tendency to stick to the thing and even defend it. I'm pretty sure I also excused some of the stuff from the first season as acceptable (but I had a lot of issues with things in season 2). Shows you really don't give a damn you just stop watching and forget about.

But when the thing ends - and on such a bad note as GOT - then many people are going to be pissed as we have seen, because up to that point one did not only want to know how the story ended but also could hope that it might get better/make sense.

I really got emotionally completely detached from this thing after this 'the Lannisters are broke' nonsense. I just couldn't process that for some reason, couldn't suspend disbelief. It all broke down like a card house.

2 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

If I made a pretty good case, I speculate it may have something to do with the fact that they openly rant about this in the Blu-ray commentaries, and in major panel interviews, "we changed it to show off the actors we like emoting with their faces using no dialogue".  

It's just that no one wanted to report on it.

Yeah, and especially the latter thing - this absence of dialogue in pivotal scenes - is, perhaps, the worst betrayal of the source material. If ASoIaF is prominent for anything than for its great dialogues, witty exchanges, and sarcastic mental commentaries. Trying to tell this story by reducing dialogue (which can work in some scenes) is just completely fucked up.

But the way they apparently tried to do it - by having actors convey complex emotional states and thoughts merely by means of facial expressions shows how incompetent those people were. As do the many things they did which didn't make sense in context. What was the point of having, for instance, Harryhausen-like walking skeletons in this show? That isn't scary and takes you out of the scene instead of helping to present a tantalizing scene in a convincing manner? At times the whole things as if they weren't making a TV show but some sort of fun park.

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[SeanF]

No one used dialogue to explain things by the end.  Dany ought to have explained to Sam that his father and brother had committed serious crimes, but were offered a pardon (or the chance to take the black) and rejected it.  She ought to have explained to Sansa that she had offered to fight the dead, without demanding fealty, and that Jon gave fealty voluntarily.  Jon ought to have explained to his lords why he gave fealty.  Jon ought to have explained why a relationship with his aunt bothered him.

Insofar as there was dialogue, it was used to confuse things.  Such as mixing up burning the Red Keep with burning Kings Landing.  Or else to retcon what had taken place in earlier seasons, eg Tyrion's "evil men" speech.

[SeanF]

It's finally confirmed that HBO will not be producing "Confederate".  Very wise.  You could guess the following:-

1. Confederate slave owners would be portrayed as the voice of reason, and we'd be invited to agree with them that slavery benefits everyone, even the slaves

2.  The Underground Railroad would be either neo-Nazis, or Trotskyists, led by a charismatic silver-haired woman with blue eyes

3. Black sex slaves would love their work, and offer it for free to a loveable white dwarf.

[Le Cygne]

They made the characters and the story all about themselves, it was all a game to them. They projected themselves onto the actors and then made them do whatever they thought would be awesome at the time.

It was just a bunch of disconnected skits.

In the end, there were lots of murders, suicides, and other senseless deaths, one after the other, and then the ones left standing went off alone or gathered around a table to do the same dull things as before. Awesome.

[Lord Varys]

On 1/16/2020 at 4:02 PM, Le Cygne said:

They made the characters and the story all about themselves, it was all a game to them. They projected themselves onto the actors and then made them do whatever they thought would be awesome at the time.

In part that, but in part it is even worse than that. Because they didn't really have their own ideas. They were essentially using this entire thing as a means to write scenes where the actors did what they liked them doing (especially famous actors they knew from other stuff but also the children/new guys after they got to know them) or what they found they were good at.

They were acting like fanboys, not professionals. And they were even doing a disservice to the actors in all of that because the whole point of acting is to play roles, not to be yourself or play the same part over and over again.

These guys were like people changing the characters in a Shakespeare play so story and characters better fit the personalities and (subjective) talents of the actors rather than the actors trying to properly play and interpret the roles and story they are trying tell in the play - which is completely ridiculous.

The same way they apparently drew 'inspiration' from other movies and stuff. I think @The Dragon Demands has a video where he points out that their of being inspired by Kurosawa was to watch their favorite movies a couple of times and then deciding they want something like that in their show, too - without having any idea how to do it.

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[Mystical]

Was it ever mentioned or explained in a commentary or interview why they changed the face changing in S6? It went from literal magic in S4-5 to Halloween masks when Arya got back to Westeros.

[Nowy Tends]

37 minutes ago, Mystical said:

Was it ever mentioned or explained in a commentary or interview why they changed the face changing in S6? 

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

Remember the first encounter with Children of the Forest; they're completely different from Leaf and her posse, and Jochen is killed by skeletons that are completely different from the wights we see in the seasons to come…

What happened to the Bolton hounds who were barking furiously at Sansa when she and Theon were intercepted on their escape from Winterfell? Were they and their kennel master so frightened by Brienne that they went through a tear in the space-time continuum?

There are so many such inconsistencies that people (including me) have given up giving too much importance to them… until it became systematic, like in S7…

[Lady Anna]

On 1/15/2020 at 5:43 PM, Lord Varys said:

And, frankly, both season 3 & 4 were shitty adaptations of ASoS. They contained a lot of garbage that had nothing to do with that book - a ridiculous battle at the end (although I think I liked the giant), a moronic Littlefinger, the ridiculous Robb-Talisa nonsense, a Red Wedding framed as a twist not as approaching doom, a Mance Rayder that was essentially a joke, Cat being sorry that she didn't care for the milkman's child, Stannis suddenly having a wife and daughter, etc.

Ok I just realized I had completely forgotten Mance was even on the show. Just blocked it out apparently. A disaster.

[Nowy Tends]

Ah ah ah nice career development 

 

https://youtu.be/5VBet-8UdMo?t=70

 

[SeanF]

The more I think of this show, the more I wonder what D & D were thinking (if they were thinking).

Did they really think that "subverting expectations" (Jon stabbing Daenerys, Arya killing the Night King, Jaime's redemption arc going nowhere, Daenerys turning into Old Yeller, Bran becoming King) would get them critical acclaim?   They must surely have known that fans of Daenerys (always the most popular character in the show) would loathe it, but did they think that fans of the other characters would love it?  Fans of Jon (the second most popular character) were just as unhappy to see him transformed from hero to treacherous hypocrite.  Nobody cared about Bran, because he had been so unimportant to the story and was just weird.  Nobody cared about Tyrion by this point, as he bore no relation to his book counterpart.  People who had liked the Starks hated seeing them transformed into the Lannisters.

Fanservice endings for Bronn and Sam were small beer.  They thought they were giving fanservice endings to the Starks, but people disliked what the Starks had become.  They thought people would see the Northerners as brave and feisty, while we saw them as selfish xenophobes.  They thought that Jon running Daenerys through the heart was tragic and romantic, and that we'd feel his pain (we feel his pain  the same way we feel the pain of Athos for hanging his wife from a tree in the Musketeers);  they thought we'd laugh indulgently with Bronn and Tyrion as they joked about brothels, but the joke had worn very thin by then.

 

[Nowy Tends]

7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

 I wonder what D & D were thinking (if they were thinking).

 

That's precisely the point. I believe they didn't take 5 mn of reflection on the whole picture. Like Preston Jacobs (I think) said, these guys were convinced that everything they touched or imagined was pure gold.

Rewatch Cogman reading the script of the Long Night in the lecture room, in the documentary. They ALL, writers and actors, react as if the finger of God has touched them...

[TheNecromancerofMirkwood]

52 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Did they really think that "subverting expectations" would get them critical acclaim?

In all honesty, yes. I think they bought into the drooling idiot narrative that what made A Song of Ice and Fire (and thus, Game of Thrones) unique was it subverted expectations, when it did no such thing. Nothing Martin did (relatively speaking) was not already done by Tolkien and people before him. Sure, the typical "high fantasy" schlock authors that came after The Lord of the Rings was published missed the point entirely and so people began to associate the kind of schlocky stuff with stuff Tolkien........like the hero going all mano-a-mano with The Dark Lord (funny, I think the last time Sauron went toe-to-toe with someone was against Huan the Hound and Lúthien Tinúviel, and they beat his ass, even if it left them weakened to do so. And that was all the way in the First Age). 

I think D & D took the wrong idea from the work of people like George Lucas (who himself fell into the same trap) of thinking the spectacle was more important than the story, when you don't have to sacrifice the latter for the former if you're even remotely competent. Or (also in the case of Lucas) you don't have people that tell you "NO!" (as the case of his ex-wife Marcia Lucas, who saved Star Wars in the editing room, and his friend Gary Kurtz who walked away during the preproduction phase of Return of the Jedi).