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]

3 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

but I really don't see her as the villain in Jon's story.

The villains in everyone’s story are the writers.

[Cas Stark]

10 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I'm still trying to figure out why Littlefinger didn't leave so much as a single guard with her when he left for King's Landing. 

This is when the show totally lost it.  Between Sansa at WF and Stannis final ending, it became just extremely stupid.  Stupid like a bad B movie.  Not a single element of Sansa at WF with the Boltons makes any sense for anyone involved.  It is a testament to  how bad critics have become that none of them called the show out on this and  it was left to random  youtubers to do it.  

Contrast Sansa 1-4 with Sansa 5-8.  The Sansa of those seasons bore a striking resemblance to her book self.  She was prim, proper, polite at all times, using courtesy as her armor.  She trusted no one and almost never said anything that would put her in harm's way.  Season 5 onward Sansa bitched at anyone and everyone wherever she felt like it, gone was her courtesy, gone was her diplomacy, gone was her intelligence despite the words the writers put in her sister's mouth. 

[Le Cygne]

On 3/31/2020 at 2:23 PM, SeanF said:

I would see it as Sansa trying to kick off A Dance of the Dragons 2.0, between Jon and Dany, and between Dany and her advisors.   Obviously, Sansa would want Jon (or Tyrion or Varys) to kill her, but it could just as easily have resulted in Jon's death.

If Jon won, Sansa was heir to the Iron Throne, and one step closer to getting her Northern crown.  If he lost, well, he was a martyr in the cause of Northern independence.

Dany made plain to Jon that people would move against her, once they knew of his parentage.  Jon, dumb lug that he was made to be in Season 8, handwaved her fears, and insisted on telling his siblings who hated her.  

This.

The Queen of the Extras cut off the North from a Stark King. Let them eat cake.

They messed up the story in so many ways, but the death blow was when they went with their atrocious "I Spit On Ramsay's Grave" storyline.

The Sandra monster (aka Littlefinger II according to Benioff/Weiss) turned Jon into a gaping fool, and pit him against Dany, leading to his downfall.

Jon fought Ramsay to save Rickon. Sansa held back an entire army on Jon, because she wanted power for herself, they said. Just like Littlefinger, they said.

Sansa nearly killed Arya over the letter, because she didn't want the North to turn on her (and they already did when she chose to marry a Bolton, because, duh).

Sansa broke a sacred weirwood tree promise. Ned kept his promise, he took Jon's secret to his grave. A series long promise kept, and she broke it like breaking a nail.

And Jon didn't forgive her. They never got along, according to them, and he never even liked her, according to Kit. His favorite was Arya, like in the books.

And Sansa? She was an empty shell they used to advance their shitty plots. They hated her because she rejected their self-insert, Tyrion, so they gutted her.

And who cares, they are all asses, because the show made them that way. But this is their story. And there's no way it's the book story because it's stupid.

Also found this: Asked of the three, "Who would you betray, who would you marry, who would you kill?" Kit answered: I betray Cersei. I marry Daenerys. I kill Sansa.

[Lord Varys]

5 hours ago, SeanF said:

What could I imagine a hardened Daenerys doing?  I could imagine her executing captured enemy soldiers out of hand;  wiping out the Great Masters of Meereen when she returns to the city;  wiping out the remaining slavers who fought against her.  Or (in show terms) executing the Tarlys, although as I've argued, I can't imagine any medieval ruler doing differently.

Sure, all that is easily imagined, although I think nonsense stuff like the Tarlys is never going to be done by any Westerosi lord aside from, perhaps, Aegon's innermost circle or family - Varys, Illyrio, Arianne, Jon Connington, Duck, possibly others of his Kingsguard - if they are defeated in battle. If you lost a fight you bend the knee, you do not insult the person who is doing his/her best to allow you to keep your lives and titles.

And if we are talking about team Cersei or team Euron on the other side then their followers should jump ship as soon as they realize that their leaders are going to lose - because their reign will be a reign of terror, not Dany's.

I don't expect Dany to be involved in the destruction of Meereen or the punishment of the people there - that's something her people are likely going to do in her name. Once the battle is over, Tyrion, Victarion, and Barristan won't just sit on their asses. The Sons of the Harpy have shown their colors now, they will have to move now and crush Dany's people, or they'll have to fall back in line. And I don't think they will do that. Even if they tried - Dany's people will investigate the poisoning plot, they will get to the bottom of it, and they will kill all the people involved.

They might even decide to butcher all the surviving Great Masters and their families simply to ensure that they can keep the city.

5 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think it would be totally out of character for her to murder thousands of the Smallfolk at random, so far out of character that only a complete psychological breakdown would explain it;  I think she would continue to extend mercy towards the women and children of her enemies, unless the women were very active opponents of hers. I would find it unimaginable that she would order rape as a tactic of terror. 

Sure.

But my question there was what the other characters in a book setting where she would actually kill all the Kingslanders brutally would do? Would they really hate her, try to kill her? Why should they? Those people would abandoned mankind to the Others if the books were following the show there. Why should we expect that people living through the monstrous events that are going to be TWoW and ADoS would care about the smallfolk of the enemy?

Why should Jon and Sansa and Arya and Tyrion give so much as a fig about the lives of the Kingslanders? I don't even see any room there for moral outrage if we transferred the ridiculous show setting into a plausible book setting.

4 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

From what I can recall, Corlys Velaryon and Larys Strong made the decision to assassinate Aegon II because he refused to pardon the lords who defied him, and instead wanted them executed. He also planned on executing Baela, who hadn't even fought in the war, but was Daemon's daughter (she did fight Aegon on dragonback, but that was when he was attacking Dragonstone, where she had been living for years). If we use Aegon II as a precedent, then Dany will probably want to wipe out all of the houses who defied her, possibly down to the last man, like Aerys did with the Darklyns and Tywin did with the Reynes and Tarbecks. If Jon kills Dany (which I suspect he will), it will probably be to save Arya, thus completing the "treason for love." In the show, he killed her to save Sansa, but the show basically switched the Jon-Arya relationship for Jon-Sansa (similar to how they made Arya have a closer relationship with Sandor than Sansa did, unlike in the books).

Aegon II and Aerys II and Maegor (possibly) were all murdered because they lost their wars and were trying to drag what followers they had left into the abyss that awaited them. This reflects the overwhelming plot-driving force in George's books - that people who make stupid decisions get killed, not necessarily people who do cruel things. He even spills that out in-universe when he has Corlys Velaryon declare that Aegon II could have sit at the council table with them if he had but seen reason.

Tywin is not punished for the Reynes and Tarbecks, not even the Red Wedding or the Sack of King's Landing or any of that - he dies as pitiful a death as he does because he brutalized his dwarf son throughout his entire life. That was his great mistake.

Robb died because of succession of mistakes he made, as did Ned before him, and many other characters in the books.

This comparison would only work for Dany if she lost the war and refused to see it. Not a very likely setting in my opinion.

That said, I also cannot see any scenario where Dany would threaten the lives of any of the Stark children - they are still children and will remain children long before the series is over. Arya can at best turn twelve throughout the series, and Sansa may make it fourteen.

We are not going to see Dany threaten the lives of children for no reason. And if they were a reason I really can't see that since the entire Stark-Targaryen conflict story from the show is just nonsense. If Jon and Dany are together in some fashion there will be no Stark-Targaryen conflict.

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

Dany's problem is that she tried mercy and leniency at Meereen, and Yunkai, and it blew up in her face. The Great Masters and Wise Masters treated it as evidence of cowardice and weakness. Her decision in A Storm of Swords to leave these wounded tigers in a position to hurt her, proved to be a terrible miscalculation in A Dance with Dragons.

People try to interpret that kind of thing as her starting down a road to darkness, etc. - but it might just as well be a road to learning how to rule properly, to understand that you cannot just do something half-heartedly For Dany, people usually like to look for the worst signs, etc. but very few people consider Jon Snow having his Duskendale in his assassination, and coming back as a paranoid, raving lunatic, emulating his dear paternal grandfather.

I'm exaggerating here, but the likeliest lesson Jon will draw from his murder at the hands of people he worked with and trusted and thought of as brothers is that you better do not trust people and always expect the worst from them. If there is a character who is likely going to take a page out Rhaenyra's book (put down suspected traitors and ask questions later) it is, at this point, Jon rather than Dany. Because while she was nearly killed by the Meereenese she has so far not suffered any lasting personal injuries or losses - this could change in the future, of course, but at this point Jon is the guy who paid the ultimate price for being a trustworthy guy who thought he could convince people with words.

3 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Maybe D&D didn't do any of the work to make her turn logical because they didn't want to deal with her loss of popularity....so they convinced themselves that doing it out of the blue would work because 'subverting expectations/shock and awe' so, she will be popular and a marketing focus right up until the very end........also, let's face it, they were lazy writers.  The vast majority of the show's plot holes and continuity errors could have been fixed EASILY, very, very easily, with a little more attention to detail and changes in a few lines here and there. 

That is very unlikely if you look at how the show did actively never indicate anything of that sort up until the last season.

This was some kind of cheap last minute twist, not something they thought of even when they made season 7.

8 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

All of this.

And in a recent interview with magazine Fast Company, the franchise creator George RR Martin has given his thoughts on the differences between his books and the show, and how season eight wasn't "completely faithful".

Speaking about what can be lost in a book-to-screen adaptation, the author admitted: "It can be… traumatic. Because sometimes their creative vision and your creative vision don't match, and you get the famous creative differences thing – that leads to a lot of conflict."...

And speaking more specifically about Game of Thrones, he said: "The [final] series has been... not completely faithful. Otherwise, it would have to run another five seasons."

https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a29331023/game-of-thrones-george-rr-martin-season-8-not-completely-faithful/

Here he is again: "How will it all end? I hear people asking. The same ending as the show? Different? Well… yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes."

He often talks about butterflies turning into dragons, that's not "the same."

Benioff/Weiss are clearly not into "the same" and have never been averse to controversy with their carefully cultivated "we don't care" image.

We can also look at what Benioff/Weiss have been saying. They have often and consistently said they are not going to be faithful.

They said before they were going to do "the spirit of the books" - and we know how well they do with that. And here, note they keep saying WHAT IF:

WEISS: It’s kind of nice for him because — obviously through necessity we’ve pulled out ahead — the show has become so different that people will have no way knowing from watching what will or won’t appear in the books. And honestly, neither do we.

BENIOFF: We don’t. And George discovers a lot of stuff while he’s writing. I don’t think that final book is written in stone yet — it’s not written on paper yet. As George says, he’s a gardener and he’s waiting to see how those seeds blossom...

WEISS: It wasn’t like something where five years ago one of us said, “I think this has to happen and I know this is right.” [The final season storyline was] something that gradually unfolded with neither of us wanting to plant a flag in the ground right out of the gate. Because what if you’re wrong? What if there’s a better idea out there and you planted a flag on the second- or third-best idea? So it was always more a “What if…” conversation than an “I think that…” So by the time we got to the place where we were outlining we already knew most of the big things.

https://ew.com/tv/2019/04/09/game-of-thrones-season-8-showrunners-interview/

"What if" is making shit up. And @The Dragon Demands has some quotes upthread where they said they wrote the plot to the actors, not the book characters.

Also, they called Sansa's season 5 plot "a bold departure" from the books, and GRRM said he had "no idea what they were doing" with her, and wished they'd used his story.

There were lots of 180's with many characters that we know about. For example, at nearly every turn, they had Jaime do the complete opposite of the book character.

The complete and utter whitewashing of Tyrion, they stopped at nothing to erase his book personality and deify him. He was their self-insert, so he had to be perfect.

And so many more fundamental changes to characters and story. All these changes... and yet the ending is the same? It's not even possible. Butterflies turned into dragons.

Oh, and I want to stress that the morons actually weren't quite so moronic in some of those statements above.

While it is quite clear that they butchered essentially everything that makes ASoIaF great, it is also true that this story isn't written yet - and there is a reason why the writing process takes as long as it does: Because the author doesn't really know in detail where exactly he wants to go or how he'll get there. There isn't even a guarantee that he'll get to specific points he told them years ago because the things he write may make it more and more difficult to get at a particular plot point he always wanted to go.

3 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

They also turned Tyrion into St. Tyrion and had Jon remain completely unchanged by death. So I definitely agree that fan popularity played into their decision-making.

While that's likely accurate for some HBO interference, it likely also has little to do with stuff like that. After season 3 the show was so popular they could have done everything they wanted (i.e. stayed true to the characters from the books) without risking losing audiences. But they did not do that. Instead, they started to do mostly their own thing at that time.

3 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I see what you mean about Meereen and Yunkai, but I'm not sure if that's the way GRRM intended for us to see it. The reason why I say that is because he reportedly read the "Meereenese Blot" essays, which argued that Dany did achieve lasting peace in Meereen, and was very pleased by them, saying that the author was someone who "got it." I guess that leads us into another conversation about author intentionality and whether GRRM succeeded there.

That is a garbled report - he said the guy understood some of what he wanted to accomplish, but he seems to have rather strange views who did what in Meereen which I don't think George ever confirmed as being accurate.

Meereen isn't a place where Dany succeeded at, it is where she catastrophically failed at being a ruler. She started like Aegon the Conqueror and then she suddenly turned into King Aenys, trying to please everyone, including people who hated her, failing to understand that nothing she could do would ever convince these people not to hate her.

You can see such parallels when she beats herself up occasionally about the Meereenese not trying to cherish her for what she did for them, what she sacrificed to be a good queen for them (her dragons, Westeros, even Daario). And it is actually disgusting to see how she allows these people to corrupt her to the point where she is not only reopening the fighting pits but actually watching how these people kill each other again (not to mention marrying one of those slavers).

Giving the Meereenese a good Maegor treatment - especially after what they pulled with the poisoned locusts - would be absolutely fine. And her policies after her conquest should have been stern anti-slavery. Perhaps not the physical destruction of all the slavers, but the very loud message that the old times were over and that the new times had begun ... and that not everything would be permitted in this new world.

 

[Lord Varys]

3 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

The idea of subverting expectations is definitely flawed, and I think GRRM inadvertently started that idea thanks to events like Ned's execution and the Red Wedding; because something is not what is expected does not make it good, especially when it isn't tied down to the arc of that character, such as Arya being the one to finish off the Night King. Even D&D were building up to Jon vs the Night King in the Hardhome episode, which I might add is their storyline because Jon doesn't go to Hardhome in the books, and they decided to toss it out the window because it was expected. There's a reason why there are established tropes like The Hero's Journey; it makes things easier to understand, and indeed why something like Star Wars became so popular is partly because of how it's easy to understand and resonates with a lot of people.

George also likes his surprises - but when he builds up to something it usually isn't discarded, and he is very outspoken about that (although this might not go for everything - with the original outline in mind Jaime looking like a king to Jon definitely might be a remnant of the old plan to make Jaime one of the most crucial villains of the story; but then - this is not exactly clear foreshadowing).

The show definitely tried to build up certain things and then abandoned them. Among them indeed Jon playing a crucial role in the defeat of the Others. And they did also not build up Dany's finale in the show, either. Instead they build up something differently.

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

Elio Garcia explained that Adam Feldman "got it" in terms of the themes - of Daenerys being torn between Mhysa and Dragon.  Martin never said he got it in terms of the peace being sincere.

All the available evidence suggests the slavers were just waiting for the Volantenes to turn up and stamp on free Meereen.  Feldman has never addressed this point credibly.

IMHO,it's not either/or.  A good ruler must be both Mhysa and Dragon.

Yeah, essentially that. In this world you have to know when you have to let your Maegor out and when you have to talk like King Aenys. That is what the Conqueror and Jaehaerys I understood. And that's what our guys still can learn - neither Jon nor Dany are Joffrey or Maegor or Aerion or Aerys II material. They don't have mental issues nor sadistic tendencies.

If one looks at Jaehaerys I he had a very cruel streak - but he let that out only when he was unduly provoked. When the scum murdered his friend Rego Draz for no reason (nowhere else so far have we seen a Westerosi lord or king ripping out somebody's entrails when they were hung), when his daughter Saera showed her true colors, etc.

You have to find a balance there - but the message as to what the best/ideal ruler is in this world clearly is to be cruel and unforgiving if you have to. People have to understand that you mean business.

2 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

My memory of this show is (thankfully) fading, but what did Jon actually do after being resurrected? I honestly don't know what importance he was supposed to have oi the story following his death?

Nothing of substance. He didn't even win any victories - Littlefinger defeated Ramsay with his Valemen, Arya defeated the Night King, and Dany sacked King's Landing.

He was about as useless as Varys was once he went with Tyrion to Meereen after he came back from the dead.

[Le Cygne]

They destroyed the characters and story not because they ran out of material, but because they can't write.

[SeanF]

56 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

They destroyed the characters and story not because they ran out of material, but because they can't write.

A lot of people can't write, but for some reason, are put in charge of important shows.

[The Bard of Banefort]

Didn't Jon technically give up on Bran too? In the show, they had Sam tell Jon about Bran being alive, but after Jon left the Night's Watch, he just. . . never brought it up again.

Ehh at this point,  I can't try to reason with the show anymore. There are just too many errors to bother justifying.

[Angel Eyes]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Didn't Jon technically give up on Bran too? In the show, they had Sam tell Jon about Bran being alive, but after Jon left the Night's Watch, he just. . . never brought it up again.

Ehh at this point,  I can't try to reason with the show anymore. There are just too many errors to bother justifying.

I guess that Jon, after learning this, assumed that Bran would show up again... at some point.

[Lord Varys]

4 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

They destroyed the characters and story not because they ran out of material, but because they can't write.

They certainly also did that because they cannot write, but the main reason is that they did and could do what they wanted. Take as easy an example as Littlefinger. They didn't turn him into this silly clichéd creep from season 2 on because they could not write - they had tons of great Littlefinger plots and dialogue from George to fill a couple of seasons (including the tidbit from my signature) before the material ended and they forced to write great lines and plots themselves - they did this because they wanted it to be that way.

And the reason why is that they liked Gillen's acting and wanted his character to be more like the guy he played on The Wire.

Basically the only season of GoT where we got some real acting is season 1 since that's the show where most scenes where not written with the writers having specific actors for the characters in mind nor did they already have experience with those actors and knew what they liked about them. From season 2 onwards they started to write scenes for all the actors they knew/got to know over the years to repeat/continue to do stuff they liked them doing.

Only when new characters were brought in - like Ellaria Sand in season 4 - and they didn't know it would be Indira Varma when they were writing those scenes do those characters sort of resemble the source material. But if they had their actors the actors 'took over' the writing process - or rather: what the writers saw in those actors and wanted them to do.

The tremendous amount of influence those blasted actors had on the show was already there back in season 1 when Momoa apparently convinced them to give him this stupid Mago scene because he wanted to show off that Drogo was really a great warrior. And then they even brought him back for season 2, etc.

These people were not so much trying to adapt anything or write scenes for characters, they were writing scenes for the actors they knew. This is why most of the material sucks as much as it does.

And it is worse because they cannot write good material even when they try ... but the really worse part is that later on they even stopped writing actual dialogue and had people express 'the plot' with facial expressions and stares ... like in a silent movie without intertitles.

That could only suck hard.

It is one thing to change a story because you have to condense the plot or want to take a different take on a fictional character. That happens all the time when things are adapted. What doesn't happen, though, is that people adapting books or plays start to make the character fit the actor and do not try to find an actor who can best play the role they want them to play.

[kissdbyfire]

17 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

but the really worse part is that later on they even stopped writing actual dialogue and had people express 'the plot' with facial expressions and stares ... like in a silent movie without intertitles.

At this point I thank the Old Gods for this small mercy. 

[Lord Varys]

1 minute ago, kissdbyfire said:

At this point I thank the Old Gods for this small mercy. 

The show would have been better with some more dialogue in my opinion. This lack of dialogue made a lot of stuff essentially unwatchable.

Granted, too much dialogue made no sense and is painful to listen to, but there were quite a few scenes where basic plot information/info dumps should have been given via dialogue.

But then ... there were those endless speeches of the High Sparrow. I don't recall any of those but I know that those dragged through two seasons, no? He was introduced in season 5 and made it to the final episode of season 6. And he always said the same over and over again.

[kissdbyfire]

3 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The show would have been better with some more dialogue in my opinion. This lack of dialogue made a lot of stuff essentially unwatchable.

Sure it needed dialogue. But the complete rubbish David and Dan & co were able to give us was often painful. So, since they thought themselves too great to actually have a proper writers’ room, the less the better. Meaning, if my choices are, dialogue by David and Dan & co and no dialogue, I’ll go w/ the latter.

3 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Granted, too much dialogue made no sense and is painful to listen to, but there were quite a few scenes where basic plot information/info dumps should have been given via dialogue.

“You want the good girl, but you need the bad pussy.” ‘Nuff said.

3 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

But then ... there were those endless speeches of the High Sparrow. I don't recall any of those but I know that those dragged through two seasons, no? He was introduced in season 5 and made it to the final episode of season 6. And he always said the same over and over again.

Hahaha probably. I wasn’t watching anymore by then. I think?

[Angel Eyes]

43 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The show would have been better with some more dialogue in my opinion. This lack of dialogue made a lot of stuff essentially unwatchable.

Granted, too much dialogue made no sense and is painful to listen to, but there were quite a few scenes where basic plot information/info dumps should have been given via dialogue.

 

These guys thought they were Sergio Leone. Very few could beat Sergio Leone in telling stories with just facial expressions (ie Harmonica's flashback in Once Upon a Time in the West), and they definitely could not; ie the camera focusing on Theon's face when Ramsay rapes Sansa (though grant you nobody wants to see what's happening to Sansa), so that the suffering is on Theon rather than Sansa.

[kissdbyfire]

3 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

These guys thought they were Sergio Leone. Very few could beat Sergio Leone in telling stories with just facial expressions (ie Harmonica's flashback in Once Upon a Time in the West), and they definitely could not; ie the camera focusing on Theon's face when Ramsay rapes Sansa (though grant you nobody wants to see what's happening to Sansa), so that the suffering is on Theon rather than Sansa.

Ugh, these guys are not worthy of being spat on by Sergio Leone...

[Lord Varys]

2 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

These guys thought they were Sergio Leone. Very few could beat Sergio Leone in telling stories with just facial expressions (ie Harmonica's flashback in Once Upon a Time in the West), and they definitely could not; ie the camera focusing on Theon's face when Ramsay rapes Sansa (though grant you nobody wants to see what's happening to Sansa), so that the suffering is on Theon rather than Sansa.

Sergio Leone told a much more simplified story. And one has to differentiate between storytelling and staging. Leone didn't really *tell* his story by means of his long stares, he used that to create atmosphere, to symbolize and depict a conflict/confrontation, etc. but not to tell the story. That also happens by means of dialogues, how scarce they might be. And there are quite a few very poignant lines in 'Once Upon a Time in the West'.

ASoIaF is a very complex story, one that's very much based on dialogue - in fact, there are no meaningful stares whatsoever in George's writing (aside from, perhaps, the meaningful look Corlys Velaryon supposedly exchanged with Larys Strong when they decided to murder Aegon II ;-)).

Trying to tackle a story such as this would have never worked, no matter who had tried to do it ... although a man like Leone likely would have done a much better job at it if he had tried, most likely by simplifying the story so it could be told in that framework.

50 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Sure it needed dialogue. But the complete rubbish David and Dan & co were able to give us was often painful. So, since they thought themselves too great to actually have a proper writers’ room, the less the better. Meaning, if my choices are, dialogue by David and Dan & co and no dialogue, I’ll go w/ the latter.

“You want the good girl, but you need the bad pussy.” ‘Nuff said.

Hahaha probably. I wasn’t watching anymore by then. I think?

You really continue to discuss the show and you never even watched it? Hell, I rarely discuss it anymore, but I at least watched it through. Although I guess it might have been better if I hadn't.

[kissdbyfire]

2 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

You really continue to discuss the show and you never even watched it? Hell, I rarely discuss it anymore, but I at least watched it through. Although I guess it might have been better if I hadn't.

I did watch suffer the show until s05, although I had disliked it since s02. And I say s02 but there were red flags even in s01. 

And yeah, I still discuss it on and off because it still frustrates me immensely that the whole thing was such a waste: of opportunities, of my time, of everyone’s time. 

[BlackLightning]

 

The one thing that I find the most unforgivable in the way they treated Bran. Not only did they kick him off the show for a season, but they knew that he was going to become the king of Westeros at the end of the series and did nothing to further his character. Also, they never really explained his powers. 

6 hours ago, SeanF said:

A lot of people can't write, but for some reason, are put in charge of important shows.

Unfortunately, in our American society, it's not about what you know or how you know; it's who you know. That's the only thing that matters. Some people have great connections and they can play off of those connections to get things that they don't deserve and/or can't handle.

[Lady Fevre Dream]

13 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

At this point I thank the Old Gods for this small mercy. 

LOLOL  As irritating at the long look instead of dialogue was, looking back it was a blessing.  It was proved a blessing by those juvenile 'script notes' that filled up their bullshit scripts.

[Le Cygne]

On 4/2/2020 at 8:49 AM, Lady Fevre Dream said:

LOLOL  As irritating at the long look instead of dialogue was, looking back it was a blessing.  It was proved a blessing by those juvenile 'script notes' that filled up their bullshit scripts.

What you said made me start thinking of the whole show as pantomime. It would have been an improvement! It's not like the show was ever clear anyway.

They took advantage of the lack of clarity to drop storylines and change direction according to their latest whims. Their undoing was actually ending the thing.