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Rant & Rave without Repercussion: Burn It All Edition


Corvinus85

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So many mixed feelings on this one. I'll start by saying that visually, it was an amazing episode of television. So in that aspect, they succeeded. As for the rest...well, that's a mixed bag.

  • Dany becoming the Mad Queen. I don't have a huge problem with this, because she lost people close to her, and after all she lost in defeating the Army of the Undead, she gets indifference and betrayal. All that being said, I'm not sure I saw where the madness knob got turned to 11, so she starts burning smallfolk. All because of one line about "well, then I guess they'll fear me". Just too much of a character shift for me. Burning your enemies, yes...burning smallfolk, need more convincing.
  • Entire Iron Fleet gets burned to cinders, but plot armor washes Euron up to shore just as Jaime is passing by. 
  • Jaime has a different internal organ structure than a normal human, as he can survive multiple stab wounds and still make his way through an inferno. Guess love triumphs over all.
  • So Cersei WAS pregnant!!! Now I understand why she wanted elephants so badly...she wanted to compare their gestation times. I think in show time, she was 2 years' pregnant by now.
  • We got the Cleganebowl, and it was what I figured it would be. The end of both characters...nothing to see here, move along.
  • Golden Company. Thoughts about them should be as short as their time/importance on the show.
  • My biggest rant has to be with Cersei. So we're supposed to view her as a sympathetic character now? That's my take from last night. The sweeping music, the tears, her only concern is her family...let's just wash away 7 seasons of her atrocities, because there's a new nutjob in town. Won't someone think of my baby!?!?!? 
  • Valonqar = Stone block. Although we never did see Jaime and Cersei actually die, so it wouldn't surprise me to see them holding hands and sailing off into the sunset on their little skiff in the season finale. 
  • Couldn't stop laughing at the Qyburn/Cersei scene. "The Iron Fleet will destroy the dragon. " "Um, maybe you shouldn't stand so close to the window, my Queen." "Well, we still have the Golden Company." "Um, about that, My Queen..." "Well, we have the scorpions." "Would my Queen like some wine?" "Well, the Red Keep has never fallen." "Would my Queen be terribly upset if her Hand decided to take one of the secret tunnels and start a new life in Essos?" :D
  • Super Plot Armor Arya. Look, if she wasn't going to factor into the episode and was nothing more than a giant red herring, I'd rather not see her survive things that people who are essentially right next to her didn't survive. She regains consciousness and there are charred corpses laying next to her. Then the white horse shows up...really??? I know, I know...Bran sent it. :bs:
  • So I'm guessing that next week is going to be a lot of hand-wringing from the remaining, non-insane characters, until Arya super-stealth kills Dany. Although it could be Jon as well, but you know Dany's going to try to fry anyone she considers to be traitors. That might include Jon when he tries to introduce the moral high ground.
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1 minute ago, athmystikal said:

True. At least the guy listens to good counsel and we all know where he stands on things.

Except when, like Daenerys after him, he gets inexplicably written to be an overly ambitious daughter-burner. Why nobody saw this hackjob coming is beyond me. D&D foreshadow their own moronic behaviour because they never learn from their mistakes. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

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3 minutes ago, Ice Queen said:

It was always there, but show watchers are suckers for pretty faces and pretty words.  

This is one of the bigger mischaracterizations floating around right now; that those of us that are unhappy with these developments have been duped that our hero is evil and we are simply angry that our expectations were subverted.:bang:

It is likely that Daenerys burning KL to the ground came from Martin himself, and, as a story element, I do not think that this is an unacceptable or even unexpected outcome. However, to have her "madness" just suddenly appear out of nowhere because . . . it had to? . . .is what makes very little sense. Yes, it has been set up that she has a ruthless side; yes, it has been set up that children of incest have a propensity for madness; yes, yes, of course. But her turn to madness was grounded in nothing.

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1 minute ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

Except when, like Daenerys after him, he gets inexplicably written to be an overly ambitious daughter-burner. Why nobody saw this hackjob coming is beyond me. D&D foreshadow their own moronic behaviour because they never learn from their mistakes. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

Oh, I was talking about book Stannis though. I would like to imagine that D&D replaced the real Stannis by a different character. If I rmemeber correctly, Stannis was the first character that they butchered, no?

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1 minute ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

Except when, like Daenerys after him, he gets inexplicably written to be an overly ambitious daughter-burner. Why nobody saw this hackjob coming is beyond me. D&D foreshadow their own moronic behaviour because they never learn from their mistakes. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

IIRC George confirmed Stannis will burn Shireen in the books.

 

Guarantee you Dany goes bad in the books, too, if they are ever written. What makes her character in the books sort of interesting is that her biography checks all the boxes for psycho villain, but she tries to be good anyway.

 

You can complain about the adaptation. It's probably impossible to cram a story of this magnitude into one season and not do an injustice to something. But this is George's story, George's mad queen, George's morality play about the dangers of unchecked power. He would do it better, if he still wrote, but I will wager a shiny nickel that all the major beats are his.

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32 minutes ago, Kimbono said:

Thanks, i kinda hoped Gendry crafting atleast some "light armor" for Drogon to give a payoff for the Lordship and maybe adding a scene where an arrow gets blocked from said armor, giving atleast some reason why the Scorpions were completly useless in comparison to last episode.

That would have been great. Many people have given good suggestions to how the dragons could have been used, and how the attack could have been improved. Alas.

One good suggestion I saw was that Dany would burn her way to the Keep, enter it to kill Cersei, then come out expecting to be worshipped in the streets, only to be attacked by a crowd for the burned buildings. Disappointed, she'd get up on her dragon and burn more.

Another good idea would have been for Rhaegal to be killed right before the attack on King's Landing, shocking Dany.

My idea: Dany's fire attacks would be limited and for military purposes, but would ignite stored wildfire that would cause the fire to engulf the city. That's what I suspect will happen in the novels, which is why we saw some green fire here and there in the episode with no explanation.

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1 minute ago, Direwolf Blitzer said:

Guarantee you Dany goes bad in the books, too, if they are ever written. What makes her character in the books sort of interesting is that her biography checks all the boxes for psycho villain, but she tries to be good anyway.

You can complain about the adaptation. It's probably impossible to cram a story of this magnitude into one season and not do an injustice to something. But this is George's story, George's mad queen, George's morality play about the dangers of unchecked power. He would do it better, if he still wrote, but I will wager a shiny nickel that all the major beats are his.

Including Arya single-handedly destroying the Night King, all the White Walkers and their undead armies?

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I don't even...

As I just said to a friend. Horseshit doesn't cover this anymore. We need GRRM to invent a new animal that  produces the vilest, most disgusting shit in the Omniverse, so that we can compare this episode to that shit.

Fuck. You. Dumb. And. Dumber. Fuck. You.

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This is so shameful.

Why did they even bother taking a year off if this is what they were going to produce?

It's not even about Daenerys. Jaime? Are you serious....do you seriously believe Jaime is going to girly-anime-run** his way back into Cersei's arms so that they can get a bittersweet romantic ending before they are crushed by the rubble of a situation Cersei created....even though Jaime's character is done with Cersei.

 

**This what I mean by girly-anime-run

https://preview.redd.it/5j76n9kqqb811.gif?width=500&s=5718141ae1f3e81cbc48d91a00fb709d2f2d0274

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1 minute ago, Chris is my name said:

This is one of the bigger mischaracterizations floating around right now; that those of us that are unhappy with these developments have been duped that our hero is evil and we are simply angry that our expectations were subverted.:bang:

It is likely that Daenerys burning KL to the ground came from Martin himself, and, as a story element, I do not think that this is an unacceptable or even unexpected outcome. However, to have her "madness" just suddenly appear out of nowhere because . . . it had to? . . .is what makes very little sense. Yes, it has been set up that she has a ruthless side; yes, it has been set up that children of incest have a propensity for madness; yes, yes, of course. But her turn to madness was grounded in nothing.

Her turn to madness has been a long time in coming. It did not just come out of nowhere. It's been there since the beginning. 

It's not that your expectations were subverted. It's that you were distracted by the glitter and not thinking about what she was doing and saying, or excusing her as somehow justified. I will remind you that Aerys was normal in his young years, too, and look what he became. The only thing that kept her from showing it sooner was Viserys. 

She is her father's daughter and always has been. 

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1 minute ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

This is so shameful.

Why did they even bother taking a year off if this is what they were going to produce?

Seeing how tasteless they are they probably went as War Tourists to Aleppo to get ideas for this weeks 80 minutes of torture porn.

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6 minutes ago, Direwolf Blitzer said:

IIRC George confirmed Stannis will burn Shireen in the books.

 

Guarantee you Dany goes bad in the books, too, if they are ever written. What makes her character in the books sort of interesting is that her biography checks all the boxes for psycho villain, but she tries to be good anyway.

 

You can complain about the adaptation. It's probably impossible to cram a story of this magnitude into one season and not do an injustice to something. But this is George's story, George's mad queen, George's morality play about the dangers of unchecked power. He would do it better, if he still wrote, but I will wager a shiny nickel that all the major beats are his.

At least in the books we'll get to see a play by play of her thought processes since she is a POV. By the end of Dance, though, she was boarding Crazy Train. 

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So, everyone is saying that they rushed this season, and 6 episodes were not enough to wrap it up.

...But the entire 3rd and 5th episodes consisted of three hours of dark slow-motion zombie swarming, gratuitous explosions, and video game dragon shots.  Over a third of the season wasted so we could break some record for long battle scenes or something

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1 minute ago, markdotinc said:

So, everyone is saying that they rushed this season, and 6 episodes were not enough to wrap it up.

...But the entire 3rd and 5th episodes consisted of three hours of dark slow-motion zombie swarming, gratuitous explosions, and video game dragon shots.  Wasted so we could break some record for long battle scenes or something

Had it played out over a longer stretch, more people would probably like it. I do understand why people think her descent into madness came out of nowhere--it was like watching Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith where it plays out in like 5 minutes.

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6 hours ago, Direwolf Blitzer said:

IIRC George confirmed Stannis will burn Shireen in the books.

Actually, just confirmed Shireen will burn. Given that Stannis is headed to Winterfell and Shireen is staying at the wall with her fanatic mother and Melisandre, I have no doubt she'll burn, just Stannis won't need to be butchered to accomplish it. See how a little context and buildup are important?

Edit: I might also add that, as many people have noted, in the books Dany is already boarding the crazy train by the end of ADWD. In the TV show, Dany has been an unflappable YAS QUEEN Mary Sue, who got the bloody surrender she wanted, but... I dunno, burnt a bunch of civvies because she hates the sound of bells. If you think this is justified because it follows basic story-beats, you're not very good at understanding how stories work.

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Just now, Ice Queen said:

Had it played out over a longer stretch, more people would probably like it. I do understand why people think her descent into madness came out of nowhere--it was like watching Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith where it plays out in like 5 minutes.

But with anakin you understand his motivations and why he thinks he has to obey palpatine.

Here the city just surrendered and danny decided to burn them to a crisp...

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4 minutes ago, Ice Queen said:

Her turn to madness has been a long time in coming. It did not just come out of nowhere. It's been there since the beginning. 

It's not that your expectations were subverted. It's that you were distracted by the glitter and not thinking about what she was doing and saying, or excusing her as somehow justified. I will remind you that Aerys was normal in his young years, too, and look what he became. The only thing that kept her from showing it sooner was Viserys. 

She is her father's daughter and always has been. 

Agreed.

I've made the point a fair few times now that anyway you slice it Daenerys goal was always to invade Westeros. I never really understood why some people were reluctant to acknowledge that.

 

Whether the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms was good or bad she was always gonna start a war.

 

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Actually I don't know if that's DD or the major plot points Martin was saying but nevertheless: 

  • Jamie going back to Cersei after she send Bron to assassinate him? :blink: You are really start wondering about how clever the characters are. How does he know she wont kill him or accuse him for abandoning her and put Mountain to squeeze him like an orange? Development nada, brain nada. 
  • Tyrion risking his life to free Jamie. Really? What about mad Queen Cersei who was after them?
  • Jamie and Cersei dying together: how romantic. Were we supposed to feel sorry for them after all the atrocities, the lies, the conspiracies, all the evil that was steaming out of their relationship?
  • Arya changing her mind after her discussion with Sandor. Was it that easy? Couldn't he speak like 3 seasons ago? 
  •  Sandor going after his brother: Oh, now he remembered, ok he wanted to suicide, whatever...
  • Dany taking Kings Landing on her own; oh it was so easy. Why didn't she burn the rest at least to direct her anger against the ones who got between her and her destiny? John, Davos, Tyrion? Plus they were useless; Now this is the correct way to make all characters seem unimportant and stupid. Again.

 

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