Rant and Rave Thread

[RhaenysBee]

Where do I begin? 

Let’s begin with the beginning. The very first shot that we see of a main character is Arya staring into the camera like she’s Anna Wintour. Why. Why would you make that face? This is the set of Game of Thrones. It isn’t a vogue cover shoot with Sophie turner where it’s okay to make these faces because it’s supposed to be “sassy” or something. Why would Arya look at this procession like that? It’s her brother coming home with an army to save her people. Why. 

And then after she starts off with this Regina George attitude, she tells the Hound off for not being nice to Gendry and reminds him of how despicable the Hound is that he stole from people and murdered them. As if Arya hadn’t done despicable things. And then she giggles and banters with Gendry who doesn’t know any other rich girls, ha-ha-ha, before she dances out of the room with a flirty smile, alriiiiiite? 

And then Davos proposes a proposal as he watches our other two love doves coquetting in the middle of the military camp for all to see because who cares about the lives of these hundred thousand  people when we can just banter our worries away while we hold hands on the frosty fields? 

Meanwhile the smartest person in the world reunites with the most moral man in the world and ironically, neither of them remembers that they are still legally married. Or maybe there’s a footnote in High Septon Maynard’s diary about the expiration date of unconsummated marriages? 

And then the writers realized they’ve been in the writing room for 9 hours straight (“I propose a proposal!”) and they are just too tired to come up with more ingenious original scenes and there’s a global warming anyway, so why not reuse and recycle? Avatar got a shitload of oscars, we can’t go wrong spending the episode’s CGI budget on replaying the Ikran riding scene. And I’m not an Ygritte fan, but reenacting the cave scene was low. Not to mention the way Emilia Clarke said those words, you could feel even her cringing at the script. Oh god, it was sooooo bad. And Jon didn’t even say anything he just pretended this wasn’t the definition of deja vu.  And then they kissed oh my god, like you could see the awkward laugh and the cringe and the repulse frozen into the lines of their faces, ugh. And it says sooooo much about the scene when the best acting is delivered by the goddamn cgi dragon. Even Drogon was like, dude stop, I can’t even deal with your shit. 

Meanwhile. Cersei wants some elephants. Because the same way the meaning of Euron Greyjoy’s life is bedding a 45yearold unattractive publicly disgraced woman, and the meaning of a loyal-to-fault fire-hating Baratheon banner man’s life is to play matchmaker between Jon and daenerys, The meaning of Cersei’s life is to have elephants in battle. Because... they will burn slower than people? and HOW. IS. THIS. PERSON. NOT FIVE MONTHS PREGNANT ALREADY? Oh my god. Oh my god it was so bad. 

and then there was the “big” reveal. I can physically not deal with the fact that Jon’s name is Aegon. Rhaegar’s first son is Aegon. This is mentioned in the show. What kind of psychopath is show Lyanna that she named her newborn after a baby that was butchered just weeks ago? How is that for luck? How is that for respect? This is so lazy and so dumb and so ridiculous. And Jon is like, fine. His only problem is that Ned lied? Like, who the fuck needs proof? Like, what happened to that Robert Baratheon version in which Rhaegar abducted and raped Lyanna? Does he not remember that? And DAENERYS? Does he know that she is Rhaegar’s sister? Does he care? A goddamn frozen brick in the goddamn winterfell battlements would have more reaction to things than Jon snow. Jesus Christ, why. 

[sweetsunray]

1 hour ago, Ser Morbid said:

Is it just me but idea of sending Theon to Winterfell is ridiculous ? of all people Theon ? The guy who publicly executed ser Rodrik .. you know ... the very respected and loved northerman from noble house ?

My guess is that Theon's arc since helping Sansa escape WF walls and until his arrival back at WF is D&D invention.

[The Onion Kniggit]

Lovely to see Game of Thrones keep up its annual tradition of cringe-worthy dick jokes. 

[Jamie Lannister]

1 hour ago, Nami said:

I hate-watch it since season 4. I'm emotionally attached to ASOIAF and since GRRM don't write anymore, it's the only place I can see that universe again.

Ayup. S4 was the point of no return for me too, and it's just been morbid curiosity/a love for the world/a way to kill an hour every Sunday for me ever since.

I think the tail end of S2 is when I first started worrying. Sure, Blackwater was fantastic, but the rot was starting to show even then IMO.

[Ice Queen]

19 minutes ago, Jamie Lannister said:

Ayup. S4 was the point of no return for me too, and it's just been morbid curiosity/a love for the world/a way to kill an hour every Sunday for me ever since.

I think the tail end of S2 is when I first started worrying. Sure, Blackwater was fantastic, but the rot was starting to show even then IMO.

I feel like it's been nothing but one very long fanfiction. 

[Bear42]

Not a bad episode in my opinion, better than most of last season anyway (apart from the How To Train Your Dragon detour).  There were definitely some things that bothered me though...

Everything about Sansa is obnoxious.  All she ever does is back-sass Jon in front of everyone when he is trying to get people looking at the bigger picture and we're supposed to perceive that as her being clever now?  I expected her reunion with Tyrion to be a little less hostile since he was just about the only person in King's Landing that was ever actually kind to her, other than the hound of course who I'm sure she'll be equally dismissive of.

Jon and Arya reunion was cut too short and lacked the emotional depth I was expecting.  Less than a minute after seeing each other again for the first time they're arguing over Sansa.  See, Sansa even manages to ruin scenes she isn't in.  They brushed right past the whole coming back from the dead thing when that could've been an interesting line of dialog since Arya saw Beric do the same.  Would've like to have heard Jon give her a shout out for ending House Frey at some point to at least acknowledge that he's aware what she has become.

Cercei would never trust Bronn after she already thinks he betrayed her by going behind their backs and arranging the meeting with Tyrion last season.  If they cut all of her scenes and gave a little more time to fleshing out the character reunions we've been waiting years for I think everyone would be happier.

Yara rescue seemed impossibly easy.

Tyrion hasn't been funny or clever for several seasons now.

I hope before the season ends we find out that one of the wight walkers got their MBA through the Citadel's raven.edu satellite program while waiting for the Long Night and now he just goes on and on talking about branding and insisting they leave that spiral logo everywhere they go.  The Night King won't fire him though cause they're family or something so they just go along with it to shut him up.

Not enough Zombie Mountain (AKA TPTWP)

[Crona]

The show began pandering to fan service for favorite characters and that’s when the show went downhill. They have streamlined the story into making the characters not like themselves to fill in the gaps which make no sense. This is what happens when a story cuts corners and make other characters and places irrelevant.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Nami said:

I hate-watch it since season 4. I'm emotionally attached to ASOIAF and since GRRM don't write anymore, it's the only place I can see that universe again.

Just reread the books instead. This show has nothing to do with 'the universe'. It is shitty writing if it is writing at all. I mean, you can go and fetch yourself some tea, drink it, and take a piss before anybody on screen exchanges dialogue - and meaningful dialogue is exchanged pretty much never.

[Zorral]

This maybe was the most low key episode GOT ever put up.

Hate what they are doing with Sansa.  She's just all side-eye, pout and sneer -- and I don't believe that's who she is. It still bothers me that the marriage between her and Tyrion hasn't been legally resolved in some way or another.

What did this massive army + dragons + horses, etc. eat all the way to Winterfell?  And why are they without warm clothes -- when Daenerys, of course, is layered in the nicest of fur? Why does Winterfell, in a place of massive snowfalls have round roofs instead of peaked ones (so asks someone who grew up where winter's snow and ice were the predominate facts of our lives). And by the way, no castle, no matter how huge, can accomodate this many thousands and thousands and thousands of army and refugees.  Why aren't they already suffering typhoid?

Why doesn't Sam give Gilly the rightful credit for discovering Jon's parentage?  That Sam has some negative responses to Daenerys burning his father and brother did make some sense.  He loved his brother who was good to him.  His father was not good to him, which makes the death of a parent far more difficult to handle and process that a well loved parent's death.

Lady Mormont is just a kid and I don't believe in her any more this season that previously.

What are those frackin' White Walkers and what do they want and how in hell do they do body - meat art and get hold of chains, etc. etc. etc. They make no sense whatsoever, beyond being a symbol for climate change, maybe.

Despite the jokes, and the presence of thousands who have been castrated, nobody actually got castrated in this, the first of the finale.  That's something.  I suppose.

The real low though, is what should have been a high, that of Jon and Daenerys, actually being intimately romantic because they love each other,* a 'stark' contrast with the transactional couplings of Bronn and sex workers, and Cersei and Urine -- they travestied the cave hot spring of Jon and Ygritte.  Which is even more difficult as Harrington is married to the actress, Rose Leslie, who played Ygritte.  Unless the showrunners thought this was some sort of tribute to Leslie, in this first episode of the final season, which is all about calling back earlier episodes?  But they were doing that primarily with the first ep of the first season, and Ygritte doesn't turn up for several years yet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* I, for one, am not concerned about this supposed nephew and aunt incest, for reasons I don't even know. 

This in contrast to how I feel about Jamie and Cersie's relationship. There was so much dysfunction in the twincest, precisely because it was incest, such close incest, and because their family was already, at best, filled with wanton and deliberate cruelties, thanks particularly to Tywin. Because it was incest Bran got pushed out a window in one of the most heartless displays of criminal and sinful behavior ever.

Yet, somehow, the fans are determined that Jamie is really a good guy, a redeemed hero -- whereas the fans are all ewwwwwww about Jon and Daenerys, who 1) are much older; 2) don't know; 3) aren't anywhere near as closely related.

If this were medieval historic times, it would be OK -- just buy a dispensation from the Pope and all is covered with wedding roses.  Of course, even by early medieval decades, all sorts of physical and mental dysfunctions were showing up in the royal and noble lines due to so many marriages that weren't really exogamic couplings.

 

[Lord Varys]

Well, we can always hope Bronn dies of the pox before the series is over... That's something to look forward, no? Especially if they were to give us a lot of close-ups of Jerome's face the entire time...

[RhaenysBee]

32 minutes ago, Bear42 said:

Not a bad episode in my opinion, better than most of last season anyway (apart from the How To Train Your Dragon detour).  There were definitely some things that bothered me though...

Everything about Sansa is obnoxious.  All she ever does is back-sass Jon in front of everyone when he is trying to get people looking at the bigger picture and we're supposed to perceive that as her being clever now?  I expected her reunion with Tyrion to be a little less hostile since he was just about the only person in King's Landing that was ever actually kind to her, other than the hound of course who I'm sure she'll be equally dismissive of.

Jon and Arya reunion was cut too short and lacked the emotional depth I was expecting.  Less than a minute after seeing each other again for the first time they're arguing over Sansa.  See, Sansa even manages to ruin scenes she isn't in.  They brushed right past the whole coming back from the dead thing when that could've been an interesting line of dialog since Arya saw Beric do the same.  Would've like to have heard Jon give her a shout out for ending House Frey at some point to at least acknowledge that he's aware what she has become.

You hit the nail on the head there.  

At this point, it’s hard to tell who is worse in terms of stupidity combined with being obnoxious. Arya or Sansa? I have never in my life seen any two characters so unlikable and unrelatable and that’s something to say with their histories. And these are supposed to be our strong female character prototypes. 

[Nami]

1 hour ago, RhaenysBee said:

And then the writers realized they’ve been in the writing room for 9 hours straight (“I propose a proposal!”) and they are just too tired to come up with more ingenious original scenes and there’s a global warming anyway, so why not reuse and recycle? Avatar got a shitload of oscars, we can’t go wrong spending the episode’s CGI budget on replaying the Ikran riding scene. And I’m not an Ygritte fan, but reenacting the cave scene was a low. Not to mention the way Emilia Clarke said those words, you could feel even her cringing at the script. Oh god, it was sooooo bad. And Jon didn’t even say anything he just pretended this wasn’t the definition of deja vu.  And then they kissed oh my god, like you could see the awkward laugh and the cringe and the repulse frozen into the lines of their faces, ugh. And it says sooooo much about the scene when the best acting is delivered by the goddamn cgi dragon. Even Drogon was like, dude stop, I can’t even deal with your shit. 

Oh god that sequence was sooooooo cringe. But that's something D&D have been doing since season 6. They rehash GRRM ideas/dialogues and it all sounds and look awful.
Like you, I'm not a Ygritte fan. At all. Actually, I even celebrated when she died in the series. But I felt insulted by the waterfall scene.

[The Scabbard Of the Morning]

1 hour ago, RhaenysBee said:

Like, who the fuck needs proof? Like, what happened to that Robert Baratheon version in which Rhaegar abducted and raped Lyanna? Does he not remember that? And DAENERYS? Does he know that she is Rhaegar’s sister? Does he care? A goddamn frozen brick in the goddamn winterfell battlements would have more reaction to things that Jon snow. Jesus Christ, why. 

The writers actually don't know how to imagine themselves as the characters, instead they put themselves in the place of the characters. The characters only do and think how the writers do and think, and knows everything the writers knows. Since the writer knows that R+L=J, so Jon when he hears it automatically accepts it with no questions.

 

 

[The Scabbard Of the Morning]

4 minutes ago, RhaenysBee said:

You hit the nail on the head there.  

At this point, it’s hard to tell who is worse in terms of stupidity combined with being obnoxious. Arya or Sansa? I have never in my life seen any two characters so unlikable and unrelatable and that’s something to say with their histories. And these are supposed to be our strong female character prototypes. 

Part of the reason I can't watch any more is I can't stand who Arya is on the show, and she's my favorite character in ASOIAF, (I named my dog after her).

Most of the other characters I'm just apathetic about, but Arya is the one that actually bothers me, in that I don't want to spend even one second trying to believe that this show Arya is in anyway related to book Arya.

 

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, RhaenysBee said:

Meanwhile. Cersei wants some elephants. Because the same way the meaning of Euron Greyjoy’s life is bedding a 45yearold unattractive publicly disgraced woman, and the meaning of a loyal-to-fault fire-hating Baratheon bannerman is to play matchmaker between Jon and daenerys, The meaning of Cersei’s life is to have elephants in battle. Because... they will burn slower than people?

I think if the show had contrived to bring elephants into this, Ghost would have gotten up on his hind legs and rage quit. 

[RhaenysBee]

9 minutes ago, Nami said:

Oh god that sequence was sooooooo cringe. But that's something D&D have been doing since season 6. They rehash GRRM ideas/dialogues and it all sounds and look awful.
Like you, I'm not a Ygritte fan. At all. Actually, I even celebrated when she died in the series. But I felt insulted by the waterfall scene.

The stuff they write sounds like an amateur high school play on a parents’ fund-raiser event. It is so mechanical, so fake, so unnatural, so cringe.

and yes, 100% agree about the waterfall scene. I didn’t have a problem with Ygritte on the show, if anything she vastly improved the Jon scenes because Kit and Rose had chemistry and that somehow made him seem like he could act a little bit. 

6 minutes ago, The Scabbard Of the Morning said:

The writers actually don't know how to imagine themselves as the characters, instead they put themselves in the place of the characters. The characters only do and think how the writers do and think, and knows everything the writers knows. Since the writer knows that R+L=J, so Jon when he hears it automatically accepts it with no questions.

I suppose that’s the sad truth. 

2 minutes ago, The Scabbard Of the Morning said:

Part of the reason I can't watch any more is I can't stand who Arya is on the show, and she's my favorite character in ASOIAF, (I named my dog after her).

Most of the other characters I'm just apathetic about, but Arya is the one that actually bothers me, in that I don't want to spend even one second trying to believe that this show Arya is in anyway related to book Arya.

 

I feel that was about Daenerys. Except for the dog part. Though I must say there was a major decline in Daenerys’ character in the books too. Oh well. 

3 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I think if the show had contrived to bring elephants into this, Ghost would have gotten up on his hind legs and rage quit. 

What is a ghost? There are only zombies, dragons and cgi polar bears in game of thrones. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. 

[Nami]

11 minutes ago, The Scabbard Of the Morning said:

Part of the reason I can't watch any more is I can't stand who Arya is on the show, and she's my favorite character in ASOIAF, (I named my dog after her).

Most of the other characters I'm just apathetic about, but Arya is the one that actually bothers me, in that I don't want to spend even one second trying to believe that this show Arya is in anyway related to book Arya.

 

Dany is my favorite character in ASOIAF. She's someone I can relate to in a way. The character on this show is so unrelatable. They stripped her of all vulnerability to make her look like a badass empowered woman. That is not Dany.

[Cas Stark]

Its kinda bad when the best reunion is Theon and Yara in a scene with no dialogue.

Jon/Arya, Arya/Hound, Arya/Gendry...all disappointing. 

I wish the smartest woman in the world might be smart enough to keep her own counsel, and stop side eyeing her fellow leaders in public.

Why does everyone's hair look atrocious? 

[Heartofice]

Varys and Tyrion’s “witty” exchange kind of sums up the huge drop in writing in the show. Where once there might be some clever back and forth,  now all we get is ‘well at least I have balls’

Basically they are reduced to telling ‘Yo Mama’ jokes.

 

[Heartofice]

Also the Lucas Prequel technique of framing every scene with 2 people standing next to each other discussing the plot and not doing anything else is really quite apparent.

As is the hilariously Soapish technique of one actor randomly walking to the other side of the room and turning their back.. for no reason than to stop it being two people standing and not doing anything.

Awful.