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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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8 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Right?  Jorah living and going back to the North is 'not credible' but 5 guys walking North in Winter to trap a wight for the country's most well known back stabber, that was credible.  You. Can't. Make. It. Up. 

Heh!  Yeah, another related thing that they evidently thought was "credible" about the stroll north o' the Wall was having an undead Night King with several magic, super javelins that can take out dragons...and having him not even think to use one on the hated Stark scion/LCotNW he had trapped about, oh, 100 feet away:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

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1 hour ago, Le Cygne said:

I remember I said at the time, Arya would have been the first to ask Dany for a dragon ride.

Dany IS one of them. She's Jon's closest relative. And that never made the slightest difference to them at all. But it should have, and it would have been a great story.

Why not have them all get the @#$% along? There were plenty of outside antagonists, hell, an entire army or two or three of them. Real enemies. Could they at least be polite hosts?

There's this whole side of him he must have felt all his life, but now he understands it! It's just so filled with drama. And they ignored it. And threw it all away on nastiness, like always.

The characters should have driven the ending, and instead all they cared about was their stupid WOW moments. They are just so bad at this, and their rotten outlook rained all over everything.

I think it makes sense that both arya and sansa don t like danny. From their perspective she is a foreign ruler with thousands of barbarians that rape and enslave people, a slave army and 3 dragrons that is demanding the northern allegiance... It would be weird if they liked her (and dont confuse young and inocent arya with the older arya). However they shouldn t be so bitchy, stupid and open about their dislike...

 

I wouldn t have liked it, but I think if they just commited to make sansa, bran and arya the end villains then it could have been a good story. They have reasons to not like targs or people that because of dragons have the ability to be absolute rulers of westeros. They could have agreed to plot against danny and in the end bran (now 3er) could have betrayed them and also ploted against jon so that he could be the king. And in the end jon basicaly hates his familly for what they did to danny and either exiles or kills himself (I would prefer if he decides to run away to someplace to raise his and danny's kid in secret and be done with westeros). 

 

While this isn t the type of story I liked at least it would be a story that makes sense...

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11 hours ago, SeanF said:

I laughed out loud when D & D said their original plan was to have Ser Jorah riding off into the wilderness with Jon, but they thought it would not be credible.

Since when was lack of credibility ever an issue for them?

I don't even think it occurred to them that admitting that Jorah's fate was in flux for them, during writing on Season 8 itself, is admitting that this probably isn't exactly how Jorah dies in the books - if at all.

It may in fact be a similar death.  But the very idea of admitting "oh yeah, for a while we considered letting him live and join the Night's Watch".....they really don't know how much that's admitting.

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20 hours ago, SeanF said:

I just don't understand how D & D could think that making Sandra treacherous, or Arya xenophobic, or having the Northerners act as if Missandei was diseased, would be well-received.

I think they deliberately set out to make the Starks assholes.

They turned Arya, who right up to her return to Winterhell made friends with just about every stranger she met, into a xenophobic asshole. She used a good friend as a boy toy, then blew everyone off.

They stripped Sansa of everything that made her who she was in the books. They had her choose to marry family killers. She betrayed Jon repeatedly. She broke a weirwood tree promise like breaking a nail.

Oh and they had Sansa and Arya almost kill each other in a season long cat fight.

Bran was largely ignored, not even fun for them to destroy. They made him a bot and then disparaged him for what they made him, calling him a creep. They made Summer commit suicide by wight.

They muted Rickon, wouldn't even let him say one word when he returned, and gave him as well as Sansa as playthings to their favorite "badass" Ramsay. His direwolf, too. They largely forgot the other direwolves.

They gave Jon a small penis out of sheer pettiness, and gave his big moments away, and made his common expression a clueless gape. They made his direwolf a forgotten dog. They made him a kinslayer.

They turned Robb into a cranky baby man. They had him choose to thumb his nose at the Freys, and flout the ridiculous Talisa in their faces.

They made Catelyn say she was the worst woman in the world, and had the ridiculous Talisa scene bomb her big moment at the red wedding.

They made Ned a backstabbing coward. And had his own kids mock him, because honor is stupid and gets you killed, you don't want to be like him.

So many rotten things they did to the Starks (and there's much more).

Now compare this to the Lannisters, who they loved and gave goodies while clearing their paths. (Minus Jaime who they gutted out of petty jealousy, the ladies like him, so he was toast from the start).

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9 hours ago, divica said:

I think it makes sense that both arya and sansa don t like danny. From their perspective she is a foreign ruler with thousands of barbarians that rape and enslave people, a slave army and 3 dragrons that is demanding the northern allegiance... It would be weird if they liked her (and dont confuse young and inocent arya with the older arya). However they shouldn t be so bitchy, stupid and open about their dislike...

 

I wouldn t have liked it, but I think if they just commited to make sansa, bran and arya the end villains then it could have been a good story. They have reasons to not like targs or people that because of dragons have the ability to be absolute rulers of westeros. They could have agreed to plot against danny and in the end bran (now 3er) could have betrayed them and also ploted against jon so that he could be the king. And in the end jon basicaly hates his familly for what they did to danny and either exiles or kills himself (I would prefer if he decides to run away to someplace to raise his and danny's kid in secret and be done with westeros). 

 

While this isn t the type of story I liked at least it would be a story that makes sense...

History shows that you need to think long and hard before inviting foreigners into your country, to fight your enemies on your behalf. (The Unsullied, are not slaves, incidentally).   I think it made sense (for the show at least) that Sansa would want to take Daenerys down, after she had destroyed Cersei (an even more dangerous enemy for Sansa.  Cersei would love to torture Sansa, whereas Daenerys only stands in the way of her crown). For whatever reason, they had transformed Sansa into a sort of Lady Macbeth/Livia Augusta figure.

IMHO, the purpose of revealing Jon's parentage was to drive a wedge between Daenerys and her advisors, and between Daenerys and Jon.  Plainly, Varys moved prematurely in striking at Daenerys - had he succeeded in overthrowing or killing her, the allies would have lost the Unsullied, Dothraki, and Drogon, likely resulting in a crushing victory for Cersei. 

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7 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

I think they deliberately set out to make the Starks assholes.

They turned Arya, who right up to her return to Winterhell made friends with just about every stranger she met, into a xenophobic asshole. She used a good friend as a boy toy, then blew everyone off.

They stripped Sansa of everything that made her who she was in the books. They had her choose to marry family killers. She betrayed Jon repeatedly. She broke a weirwood tree promise like breaking a nail.

Oh and they had Sansa and Arya almost kill each other in a season long cat fight.

Bran was largely ignored, not even fun for them to destroy. They made him a bot and then disparaged him for what they made him, calling him a creep. They made Summer commit suicide by wight.

They muted Rickon, wouldn't even let him say one word when he returned, and gave him as well as Sansa as playthings to their favorite "badass" Ramsay. His direwolf, too. They largely forgot the other direwolves.

They gave Jon a small penis out of sheer pettiness, and gave his big moments away, and made his common expression a clueless gape. They made his direwolf a forgotten dog. They made him a kinslayer.

They turned Robb into a cranky baby man. They had him choose to thumb his nose at the Freys, and flout the ridiculous Talisa in their faces.

They made Catelyn say she was the worst woman in the world, and had the ridiculous Talisa scene bomb her big moment at the red wedding.

They made Ned a backstabbing coward. And had his own kids mock him, because honor is stupid and gets you killed, you don't want to be like him.

So many rotten things they did to the Starks (and there's much more).

Now compare this to the Lannisters, who they loved and gave goodies while clearing their paths. (Minus Jaime who they gutted out of petty jealousy, the ladies like him, so he was toast from the start).

I'm not sure if it was that deliberate.  I think that D & D believe that stabbing people in the back, breaking oaths etc. is admirable.

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

History shows that you need to think long and hard before inviting foreigners into your country, to fight your enemies on your behalf. (The Unsullied, are not slaves, incidentally).   I think it made sense (for the show at least) that Sansa would want to take Daenerys down, after she had destroyed Cersei (an even more dangerous enemy for Sansa.  Cersei would love to torture Sansa, whereas Daenerys only stands in the way of her crown). For whatever reason, they had transformed Sansa into a sort of Lady Macbeth/Livia Augusta figure.

IMHO, the purpose of revealing Jon's parentage was to drive a wedge between Daenerys and her advisors, and between Daenerys and Jon.  Plainly, Varys moved prematurely in striking at Daenerys - had he succeeded in overthrowing or killing her, the allies would have lost the Unsullied, Dothraki, and Drogon, likely resulting in a crushing victory for Cersei. 

What good is it to even do the exercise of saying something nonsensical makes sense.

Their characters and plots were ever changing, as were their justifications. It's giving it more thought than they did. It's like building a house on quicksand.

Sansa was not Sansa at all, she was Sandra, who honored enemies throughout the series, right up to the very end when she thanked a sex trafficker and rapist. Book Sansa would laugh at Sandra until she realized in horror she was pretending to be her.

They used Jon's parentage like they used everything else, for cheap and meaningless twists and turns. I think their strategy, if indeed they had one, was to constantly keep everyone so confused, they started writing the story for them, filling in all the many blanks.

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1 minute ago, Le Cygne said:

What good is it to even do the exercise of saying something nonsensical makes sense.

Their characters and plots were ever changing, as were their justifications. It's giving it more thought than they did. It's like building a house on quicksand.

Sansa was not Sansa at all, she was Sandra, who honored enemies throughout the series, right up to the very end when she thanked a sex trafficker and rapist. Book Sansa would laugh at Sandra until she realized in horror she was pretending to be her.

They used Jon's parentage like they used everything else, for cheap and meaningless twists and turns. I think their strategy, if indeed they had one, was to constantly keep everyone so confused, they started writing the story for them, filling in all the many blanks.

I still fall into the trap of trying to impose some rational structure on to chaos.  Most people do with series that end badly and confusingly.

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I wonder if the show would have been as successful if they had always painted Dany is some shades of grey, and shown how she struggled to maintain control over her anger and channel it into positive actions and not revenge and how the various obstacles and set backs she encountered in Westeros chipped away at her good side?  The show was really heralded as feminist in the later seasons, after Sandra kills Ramsay, the SSs, Queen Cersei, and of course Blonde Jesus the Breaker of Chains.  I'm not sure, Dany and all of her victories and her feminism was a big part of the show's success.

Although I can't say GRRM has so far done that good of a job in portraying her as a grey figure either, since there have always been and still are multitudes of people who see Dany as wholly righteous because 'slavers' and justify every questionable thing she has done.

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1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

I wonder if the show would have been as successful if they had always painted Dany is some shades of grey, and shown how she struggled to maintain control over her anger and channel it into positive actions and not revenge and how the various obstacles and set backs she encountered in Westeros chipped away at her good side?  The show was really heralded as feminist in the later seasons, after Sandra kills Ramsay, the SSs, Queen Cersei, and of course Blonde Jesus the Breaker of Chains.  I'm not sure, Dany and all of her victories and her feminism was a big part of the show's success.

Although I can't say GRRM has so far done that good of a job in portraying her as a grey figure either, since there have always been and still are multitudes of people who see Dany as wholly righteous because 'slavers' and justify every questionable thing she has done.

I've thought about that, and I think yes it would have been as successful.

Suppose, for example, we'd actually seen Dany make good on her threats to burn Yunkai to the ground.  Perhaps you could have a scene where's she riding away from the burning city, past a row of crucified masters, and a pyramid of severed human heads.   I really don't think it would have dented her popularity at all.  I think a lot of fans would have just said it showed how badass she was.    But, it would have made the ultimate ending much less of a shock, at least in terms of the burning of Kings Landing.  I don't think there's any way that D & D could have made her becoming a demonic creature of pure evil seem believable.

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15 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I've thought about that, and I think yes it would have been as successful.

Suppose, for example, we'd actually seen Dany make good on her threats to burn Yunkai to the ground.  Perhaps you could have a scene where's she riding away from the burning city, past a row of crucified masters, and a pyramid of severed human heads.   I really don't think it would have dented her popularity at all.  I think a lot of fans would have just said it showed how badass she was.    But, it would have made the ultimate ending much less of a shock.

The show's problem was that even when they did show her do things that were not good....randomly killing a set number of slavers, burning the khals, it was always framed by the show as a triumph.  You can't have swelling music and an end shot of the blonde queen looking regal if you are trying to get the audience to think 'hmm, maybe things didn't need to be this bloody'.....or, where she kills the meereen nobles, you did have selmy talking to her about showing mercy, but then, she kills them and there are no repercussions for this act that are linked up in the show.  And then the last season, there simply wasn't enough time.  I loved the scene where she's sitting in the dark looking haggard, but we needed 3 or 4 episodes that built on that mentality.  Oh well.  Easy come easy go.  You would also need a better progression of 'bad acts' than what was shown.  And there should have been at least one larger scale atrocity in Westeros, her killing 2 named characters when she should have sat them in a cell wasn't enough, we needed something else, where she has her soldiers massacre a village or town for a shaky reason.  Then, maybe her burning KL would at least have felt somewhat believable in universe.  And of course she should always have gone for the Red Keep first.  Perhaps she could have just said send Cersei out and no one does and she burns it down but THEN gets angry and keeps going? Even that slight adjustment would have been much better.  But I guess they really, really felt the multliple shots of Cersei staring out at KL were super critical.  LOL.

 

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3 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

The show's problem was that even when they did show her do things that were not good....randomly killing a set number of slavers, burning the khals, it was always framed by the show as a triumph.  You can't have swelling music and an end shot of the blonde queen looking regal if you are trying to get the audience to think 'hmm, maybe things didn't need to be this bloody'.....or, where she kills the meereen nobles, you did have selmy talking to her about showing mercy, but then, she kills them and there are no repercussions for this act that are linked up in the show.  And then the last season, there simply wasn't enough time.  I loved the scene where she's sitting in the dark looking haggard, but we needed 3 or 4 episodes that built on that mentality.  Oh well.  Easy come easy go.  You would also need a better progression of 'bad acts' than what was shown.  And there should have been at least one larger scale atrocity in Westeros, her killing 2 named characters when she should have sat them in a cell wasn't enough, we needed something else, where she has her soldiers massacre a village or town for a shaky reason.  Then, maybe her burning KL would at least have felt somewhat believable in universe.  And of course she should always have gone for the Red Keep first.  Perhaps she could have just said send Cersei out and no one does and she burns it down but THEN gets angry and keeps going? Even that slight adjustment would have been much better.  But I guess they really, really felt the multliple shots of Cersei staring out at KL were super critical.  LOL.

 

Well, the show also portrayed such things as poisoning an entire family, feeding a man to dogs, gouging out a man's eyes, hanging a twelve year old boy, locking a sorcerer in a box for future torture, feeding a man his sons, shooting one's father with a crossbow, waterboarding a septa, etc. etc. as righteous and empowering.  It was show that positively revelled in cruelty, when it was inflicted upon horrible people. 

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Ugh, I was so disappointed when they had Sandra feed Ramsay to his dogs.  I wanted her to Stark out, bring him before the lords, list his many crimes and betrayals of the North, and then have him executed.  Show that she is better than him.  Show the Stark way is better than the Bolton way.

I admit I didn't mind the Frey deaths and I hope they all die also in the books that never will be written.

But, yes, the show did revel in cruelty, it was always exploitative..

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It is amazing how vikings can do a much better battle than what we saw in the last seasons of GOT with much less Money.

Despite all the problems with the story this last ep of vikings did what GOT should have been able to do. There is a huge battle, tragedy, abuse, tactics, the enemies talk to each other, wow moments, revelations, surprises… 

honestly, in terms of large scale battle only the battle of blackwater can compete with this episode of vikings...

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On 2/4/2020 at 10:22 PM, Le Cygne said:

I think they deliberately set out to make the Starks assholes.

They turned Arya, who right up to her return to Winterhell made friends with just about every stranger she met, into a xenophobic asshole. She used a good friend as a boy toy, then blew everyone off.

They stripped Sansa of everything that made her who she was in the books. They had her choose to marry family killers. She betrayed Jon repeatedly. She broke a weirwood tree promise like breaking a nail.

Oh and they had Sansa and Arya almost kill each other in a season long cat fight.

Bran was largely ignored, not even fun for them to destroy. They made him a bot and then disparaged him for what they made him, calling him a creep. They made Summer commit suicide by wight.

They muted Rickon, wouldn't even let him say one word when he returned, and gave him as well as Sansa as playthings to their favorite "badass" Ramsay. His direwolf, too. They largely forgot the other direwolves.

They gave Jon a small penis out of sheer pettiness, and gave his big moments away, and made his common expression a clueless gape. They made his direwolf a forgotten dog. They made him a kinslayer.

They turned Robb into a cranky baby man. They had him choose to thumb his nose at the Freys, and flout the ridiculous Talisa in their faces.

They made Catelyn say she was the worst woman in the world, and had the ridiculous Talisa scene bomb her big moment at the red wedding.

They made Ned a backstabbing coward. And had his own kids mock him, because honor is stupid and gets you killed, you don't want to be like him.

So many rotten things they did to the Starks (and there's much more).

Now compare this to the Lannisters, who they loved and gave goodies while clearing their paths. (Minus Jaime who they gutted out of petty jealousy, the ladies like him, so he was toast from the start).

They also made it readily apparent that basically none of the Northerners actually seemed to give one damn about the Starks.  What with them either betraying them (Umbers), disappearing, or just not supporting them until they took power again.

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On 5 February 2020 at 4:22 AM, Le Cygne said:

I think they deliberately set out to make the Starks assholes.

They turned Arya, who right up to her return to Winterhell made friends with just about every stranger she met, into a xenophobic asshole. She used a good friend as a boy toy, then blew everyone off.

They stripped Sansa of everything that made her who she was in the books. They had her choose to marry family killers. She betrayed Jon repeatedly. She broke a weirwood tree promise like breaking a nail.

Oh and they had Sansa and Arya almost kill each other in a season long cat fight.

Bran was largely ignored, not even fun for them to destroy. They made him a bot and then disparaged him for what they made him, calling him a creep. They made Summer commit suicide by wight.

They muted Rickon, wouldn't even let him say one word when he returned, and gave him as well as Sansa as playthings to their favorite "badass" Ramsay. His direwolf, too. They largely forgot the other direwolves.

They gave Jon a small penis out of sheer pettiness, and gave his big moments away, and made his common expression a clueless gape. They made his direwolf a forgotten dog. They made him a kinslayer.

They turned Robb into a cranky baby man. They had him choose to thumb his nose at the Freys, and flout the ridiculous Talisa in their faces.

They made Catelyn say she was the worst woman in the world, and had the ridiculous Talisa scene bomb her big moment at the red wedding.

They made Ned a backstabbing coward. And had his own kids mock him, because honor is stupid and gets you killed, you don't want to be like him.

So many rotten things they did to the Starks (and there's much more).

Now compare this to the Lannisters, who they loved and gave goodies while clearing their paths. (Minus Jaime who they gutted out of petty jealousy, the ladies like him, so he was toast from the start).

They loved the Lannisters, so they thought we would love the Starks acting like Lannisters.

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16 minutes ago, SeanF said:

They loved the Lannisters, so they thought we would love the Starks acting like Lannisters.

Yeah I think that is right.  They admire good liars, backstabbers, table turners, and maybe sadists, this is why they elevated LF, Ramsay, Cersei and why they totally destroyed Jon Snow and turned the rest of the Starks into Lannister Lite, same thing, liars, backstabbers, oathbreakers.  They really never did understand the story.  I guess thank god they were so pre occupied in the early seasons with getting the show together they didn't have much time to destroy the characters and themes from 1-4, for the most part.

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