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Did the narrative require the destruction of Kings Landing?


ummester

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Why is it all so character focused? Why are we not looking at the larger symbolic elements at play - it is fantasy after all. Is Kings Landing more like Minas Tirith or Minas Morgul?

I'd argue there is a lot of corruption and evil in this story all the way around and that the Iron Throne and Kings Landing have always been the epicenters of that corruption. If the Iron Throne and Kings Landing were standing at the end, it would be a more bitter end than if they are destroyed.

With regards to the broader plot, it concerns a magical continent fully corrupted by successive human invasions, the descendants of which have a long history of violence and cruelty. Given that Kings Landing is the zenith of all these invasions, is not its destruction a good thing? I have personally been expecting it since the first season and always expected either Dany or the Others were the likely candidates to achieve it, so it actually feels somewhat of a satisfying conclusion to me to finally see it destroyed (by either fire or ice).

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Not really a good thing for the poor working stiffs who are now either dead or homeless thanks to the arrogance of the big game's players. But that's part of the corruption too, isnt it? Always the innocents who pay the highest price. That will continue to be the case and they won't take much comfort from the symbolic destructIon of the capital while they're sitting in the refugee camp.

I also liked the architecture of the city; nice gardens, windy cobblestone, red tiled roofs etc. Still wondering if they'd done anything nice with regeneration of the Sept of Baelor district. Doesn't matter now.

 

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31 minutes ago, ummester said:

I'd argue there is a lot of corruption and evil in this story all the way around and that the Iron Throne and Kings Landing have always been the epicenters of that corruption. If the Iron Throne and Kings Landing were standing at the end, it would be a more bitter end than if they are destroyed.

I can agree with the Iron Throne but not Kings Landing.

From a narrative point of view King's Landing disaster happened only to destroy Dany's character and arc. Otherwise can't find any necessity in that (the city had fallen). And this makes it so character focused. 

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1 minute ago, Kajjo said:

Stop it. The story is fine.

The telling is rushed and partly bad. But not the story itself.

LOL, right. And you are making sense here, I presume?

The show characters are internally inconsistent, the world is inconsistent and pretty much no character has any sort of consistent motivation.

Not to mention that they are not even trying to tell a story.

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1 minute ago, Lord Varys said:

Not to mention that they are not even trying to tell a story.

Well, I can see the story they are telling.

2 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The show characters are internally inconsistent,

I don't feel that way and in particular I can understand Daenerys' character very well, including the snapping.

2 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

pretty much no character has any sort of consistent motivation.

Most of them do. Jon, Arya, Sansa, Daenerys. Very well done.

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14 minutes ago, The Red Waste said:

Not really a good thing for the poor working stiffs who are now either dead or homeless thanks to the arrogance of the big game's players. But that's part of the corruption too, isnt it? Always the innocents who pay the highest price. That will continue to be the case and they won't take much comfort from the symbolic destructIon of the capital while they're sitting in the refugee camp.

I also liked the architecture of the city; nice gardens, windy cobblestone, red tiled roofs etc. Still wondering if they'd done anything nice with regeneration of the Sept of Baelor district. Doesn't matter now.

 

Well the innocents have been suffering in this story from the start.

You do have to wonder at the stupidity of trying to get into a city under siege by a dragon though :)

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10 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

What narrative? The show isn't telling a consistent story.

I believe the overall plot points have the semblance of a credible narrative but the connective tissue between them is totally off the rails coz D&D are hacks.

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3 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

Well, I can see the story they are telling.

I don't feel that way and in particular I can understand Daenerys' character very well, including the snapping.

Most of them do. Jon, Arya, Sansa, Daenerys. Very well done.

I guess you don't understand consistency all that well. Or character development as such.

You personally seeing things or understanding them based on you filling in blanks with your own ideas isn't consistency. Consistency is characters having understandable reasons, emotions, motivations, and goals. It also means the world makes sense and the dialogue doesn't sound like it was written by a 13-year-old playing video games.

1 minute ago, ummester said:

Well the innocents have been suffering in this story from the start.

You do have to wonder at the stupidity of trying to get into a city under siege by a dragon though :)

During the historical Dance of the Dragons the Kingslanders tried to (and did) get out of KL during a dragon siege scenario. The very idea that KL would be full of innocent civilians during a long due dragon attack is complete nonsense.

In fact, both the Greens and the Blacks lost control of the city and had to deal with bloody riots the greatest of which actually had five dragons killed by Kingslanders and Queen Rhaenyra hounded out of the city precisely because people were afraid that they would be trapped in a city the dragons would burn down.

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19 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Nihilistic insanity that makes you feel sorry for the poor old Night King.

Well, there is that :D I still can't believe D&D shafted my main man out of having any kind of motivation or story.

You have to admit, even if Dany's turn to despair/madness is handled very clumsily, episode 805 is miles better than 803

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4 minutes ago, ummester said:

I believe the overall plot points have the semblance of a credible narrative but the connective tissue between them is totally off the rails coz D&D are hacks.

What is the overall plot? That the Others are going to be defeated somehow? That KL is going to burn? That's not a credible narrative but rather the expectation any reader has when reading non-horror books and the other point is just an isolated event.

If we pretend Dany burns down KL even in remotely the same fashion we can just as well pretend Jaime and Cersei will die the way they do and have 'the arc' they have in the show, that Euron is going to become a silly pirate, that the Golden Company are all red exploding eventually, that Ramsay is, eventually, going to marry Sansa and rape her (or that somebody is going to rape Sansa, at least), etc.

Pretty much nothing of that is going to happen in the books.

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7 minutes ago, Wildling Queen said:

I think it did require the destruction of King's Landing. Radical change doesn't happen through an adherence to tradition. You burn it down and start over.

Yes, good point - she was breaking the wheel - in a very savage way, of course but then I don't think Dany has ever been the most subtle or peaceful of characters.

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13 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

What is the overall plot? That the Others are going to be defeated somehow? That KL is going to burn? That's not a credible narrative but rather the expectation any reader has when reading non-horror books and the other point is just an isolated event.

If we pretend Dany burns down KL even in remotely the same fashion we can just as well pretend Jaime and Cersei will die the way they do and have 'the arc' they have in the show, that Euron is going to become a silly pirate, that the Golden Company are all red exploding eventually, that Ramsay is, eventually, going to marry Sansa and rape her (or that somebody is going to rape Sansa, at least), etc.

Pretty much nothing of that is going to happen in the books.

As sad as it is for me to admit - yes, I think the Others will be defeated in the Winds of Winter. I don't like that idea. It will probably be a combination of Bran and Jon and Dany that defeat them, or at least drive them back. I am sure they will be more sympathetic in book.

However, it is possible that GRRM still does not know hat to do with the Others - that he created a kind of Checkov's gun/fantasy wrapper of these cold elflike dudes because he knew he was going to introduce dragons at the end of book 1 and needed a counter and just never worked out how to tie it together.

Ramsay and Sansa will not happen in the books - they did that in show to keep Sophie Turner more dramatically active in the plot, I am sure.

I think Dany going Fire and Blood was always part of the original plan. She was always set up as a king of subversion of the magical world changing princess character, of that I am certain. I think Jon was always destined to be her 3rd betrayal for love or whatever it is also. I also think that she was always planned to lose 2 dragons before spitting the dummy at Westeros. I do agree that D&D have failed to write her final descent properly, though.

Jamie and Cerise are odd ones - from season 3 on Jamie confused me as a character (well, not confused but I was never sure where he was going to end up).

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1 minute ago, ummester said:

As sad as it is for me to admit - yes, I think the Others will be defeated in the Winds of Winter. I don't like that idea. It will probably be a combination of Bran and Jon and Dany that defeat them, or at least drive them back. I am sure they will be more sympathetic in book.

No, that would even go against George's original outline structure - it was A Game of Thrones (Starks vs. Lannisters), A Dance with Dragons (Dany's Conquest), and The Winds of Winters (war against the Others).

The huge climax of ASoIaF is the Song of Ice and Fire, the fight against the Others, not some bickering over a throne. The entire point of the book series is to hammer home the fact that the people fight the wrong wars, waste their resources in pointless campaigns, etc. 

In the books - just as in the show - there would be zero tension on the question who rules in the end - because that's literally meaningless.

There might be some sort of cleaning-up plot after the Others are defeated but it is not going to be another climax, rather some sort of unpleasant epilogue.

The Others will not be defeated in TWoW. They have yet to affect the plot in any meaningful manner. And Dany is not even going to arrive in Westeros in TWoW, possibly not even starting her journey west in that book.

1 minute ago, ummester said:

Jamie and Cerise are odd ones - from season 3 on Jamie confused me as a character (well, not confused but I was never sure where he was going to end up).

There is no Jaime character from season 3 onwards in the show.

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2 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

No, that would even go against George's original outline structure - it was A Game of Thrones (Starks vs. Lannisters), A Dance with Dragons (Dany's Conquest), and The Winds of Winters (war against the Others).

The huge climax of ASoIaF is the Song of Ice and Fire, the fight against the Others, not some bickering over a throne. The entire point of the book series is to hammer home the fact that the people fight the wrong wars, waste their resources in pointless campaigns, etc. 

In the books - just as in the show - there would be zero tension on the question who rules in the end - because that's literally meaningless.

There might be some sort of cleaning-up plot after the Others are defeated but it is not going to be another climax, rather some sort of unpleasant epilogue.

The Others will not be defeated in TWoW. They have yet to affect the plot in any meaningful manner. And Dany is not even going to arrive in Westeros in TWoW, possibly not even starting her journey west in that book.

The trouble with this is that you are assuming, like D&D, that the Others are some kind of evil threat that has no narrative purpose other than to give the humans in the story a cause to unite over. I think there is a lot in the books, and even prior seasons of the show, that paint the Others as no more evil than the average of the human characters. I have always thought they must have a narrative point beyond being just the bad guys that bring us together, kind of thing.

You are asserting that you know what the point of the books are when I feel, to some degree, even the author has lost his way with that.

I have no idea what the purpose of the others is in a narrative sense now but am sure GRRM would not have painted them as an Orc like collection of baddies because he has said he hates those kind of monster/bad guy tropes.

Remember his original draft with the retracted part of text? I'd wager the redacted bit was about Dany going Fire and Blood when she makes it to Westeros - I think she was planned as a bigger harbinger of destruction than the Others from the get go.

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7 minutes ago, ummester said:

I have no idea what the purpose of the others is in a narrative sense now but am sure GRRM would not have painted them as an Orc like collection of baddies because he has said he hates those kind of monster/bad guy tropes.

Anyone who thinks that Martin is "all about shades of grey" hasn't been paying attention.

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1 hour ago, ummester said:

I believe the overall plot points have the semblance of a credible narrative but the connective tissue between them is totally off the rails coz D&D are hacks.

This is true; King's Landing is probably going to be burned in the books, but now it happened for little reason. GRRM will probably make it much more believable, like the fire spreading from a drawn-out battle instead of just burning civilians for no reason.

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