Ironically, After Falling In Love With GoT For Being Anti-Trope, Many Fans Now Seem To Want...The Tropes???

[sifth]

39 minutes ago, Daske said:

It's not an excuse; it's what happened. There on screen. It's not random; it is for the reason of undying messed-up love clearly between them expressed to us many times over the years (not just in season 1). It's not out of the blue.

He has always loved her. And at no time has this not been the case, even when they have been at the point of killing each other. He tried to move on but couldn't. Should grey characters should only be certain shades of grey? Only move in one linear direction?

I don't see this as an even remotely controversial move by Jaime. It's tragic in many ways - you could even say honourable - he knew there was a big chance it would just be for them to die together.

 

Sorry I just can’t agree. Jamie’s arc has always been one of redemption. They basically threw it all away in an extremely rushed and unbelievable way. On the show he basically just said “I’m a Lannister and like doing horrible things” after 7 and a half seasons of character development. The only tragedy is how poorly written this show is.

[RhaenysBee]

11 hours ago, Cron said:

Was your problem with 803 that Arya crossed off the Night King, or other production issues?

Will you give the new spin-off series a try, or no?

By the time we got to arya’s Killing the night king, I already went through 10 ministrokes, so no, that wasn’t my problem. I do agree that Arya’s killing the NK was a rather poor decision with very very very very poor portrayal, but it if Jon had killed the NK, I still wouldn’t rate the episode higher than 1.5 or 2. 

Eeeeeerrrrrrr, I don’t think so. If they happen to do a topic I’m actually interested in then maybe, otherwise, no.

 

 

[Apoplexy]

4 hours ago, joaozinm said:

Why do people keep thinking Jaime had some love for his children?

He didn't even Care...ALL she cared was Cersei.

Do i need to remind that he had sex on top of joffrey fresh grave?

Jaime certainly didn't care much about Joffrey, but he had shown a lot of concern about Myrcella. He had tried to develop a relationship with her before she died.

 

5 hours ago, Daske said:

It's not an excuse; it's what happened. There on screen. It's not random; it is for the reason of undying messed-up love clearly between them expressed to us many times over the years (not just in season 1). It's not out of the blue.

He has always loved her. And at no time has this not been the case, even when they have been at the point of killing each other. He tried to move on but couldn't. Should grey characters should only be certain shades of grey? Only move in one linear direction?

I don't see this as an even remotely controversial move by Jaime. It's tragic in many ways - you could even say honourable - he knew there was a big chance it would just be for them to die together.

 

You might (if you squint) say it was honorable had Jaime not gone out of his way to leave cersei and hurt Brienne in the show. If Jaime had never left KL, i wouldve been mad as hell, but then I wouldn't say it was out of character for Jaime to die with Cersei.

The show had Jaime slowly slip out of Cersei's influence, only to go straight back to her. Why go through that trouble? Why hurt one of the most honorable characters on the show in the process? It doesn't make sense.

[Davidlopan]

With trope subversion and pulling the rug, I always think the proof’s in the pudding. I could have swallowed the Others not being the endgame boss if the alternative was made to feel dramatically satisfying and inevitable, but it's been such a soul-crushing letdown (and totally implausible by the internal logic of the series). Ned's death and the RW were unexpected and shocking, but there was at least a sense of inevitability about them, both believable consequences of Ned's and Robb's choices and the machinations of Joffrey, Littlefinger and the Boltons/Freys. And they spurred the plot forward in various fertile ways.

To say that Batshit Dany feels like a wrench would be an understatement. And what's the dramatic pay-off, other than shock value? It's so jarring that I'm wondering (and I notice several others are wondering the same thing): is Bran warging her all of a sudden, for some dastardly reason that we'll discover next episode? It's the only scenario that might wrest some internal sense from this, unless they’re actually gunning for a Polanski-type ending where one's horrified disillusionment/disappointment is part of the desired effect? 'Forget it Jon, it's Westeros...'? Mother of fuck... Really??!!

[Apoplexy]

27 minutes ago, Davidlopan said:

With trope subversion and pulling the rug, I always think the proof’s in the pudding. I could have swallowed the Others not being the endgame boss if the alternative was made to feel dramatically satisfying and inevitable, but it's been such a soul-crushing letdown (and totally implausible by the internal logic of the series). Ned's death and the RW were unexpected and shocking, but there was at least a sense of inevitability about them, both believable consequences of Ned's and Robb's choices and the machinations of Joffrey, Littlefinger and the Boltons/Freys. And they spurred the plot forward in various fertile ways.

To say that Batshit Dany feels like a wrench would be an understatement. And what's the dramatic pay-off, other than shock value? It's so jarring that I'm wondering (and I notice several others are wondering the same thing): is Bran warging her all of a sudden, for some dastardly reason that we'll discover next episode? It's the only scenario that might wrest some internal sense from this, unless they’re actually gunning for a Polanski-type ending where one's horrified disillusionment/disappointment is part of the desired effect? 'Forget it Jon, it's Westeros...'? Mother of fuck... Really??!!

This is exactly what I texted my brother after watching the episode. 

In all honesty, I'm indifferent to Dany. But it just didn't make any sense even to me. Why did she suddenly start killing civilians? To show strength? REally? Killing defenseless, blameless people is showing strength? Burning the Tarlys could be interpreted as done to elicit fear, etc. But burning down a city? Really?

[Davidlopan]

Yep, it's soap-opera randomness

I'm still holding out a gullible hope that they'll somehow make a silk purse out of this sow's ear, but there's doubtless fresh travesties awaiting us in the final episode. GRRM will hopefully make all this feel warranted, if it's indeed the direction the books are going in, but just... ugh... 

I've an inkling GOT will eventually provide a euphemism (like 'pulling a Lost') for flouting expectations to the point of dramatic suicide, or simply for outstanding disappointment at the eleventh hour

[Cron]

9 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

By the time we got to arya’s Killing the night king, I already went through 10 ministrokes, so no, that wasn’t my problem. I do agree that Arya’s killing the NK was a rather poor decision with very very very very poor portrayal, but it if Jon had killed the NK, I still wouldn’t rate the episode higher than 1.5 or 2. 

Eeeeeerrrrrrr, I don’t think so. If they happen to do a topic I’m actually interested in then maybe, otherwise, no.

 

 

Regarding the spin-off, I think I heard it's set way in the past, involving the Children of the Forest and the origins of the Night King.

I think I heard that GRRM was calling it "The Long Night," but that's not it's official name (yet?).

Maybe someone else here knows more about it.

[Cron]

2 hours ago, Davidlopan said:

Yep, it's soap-opera randomness

I'm still holding out a gullible hope that they'll somehow make a silk purse out of this sow's ear, but there's doubtless fresh travesties awaiting us in the final episode. GRRM will hopefully make all this feel warranted, if it's indeed the direction the books are going in, but just... ugh... 

I've an inkling GOT will eventually provide a euphemism (like 'pulling a Lost') for flouting expectations to the point of dramatic suicide, or simply for outstanding disappointment at the eleventh hour

My understanding is that a decent amount (dunno how much) of what we are seeing will be book canon.

The questions are, "how much," and "which parts"??

Once we know the answers to those questions, it will be very interesting to see how history judges the HBO series.

[Danelle]

On 5/13/2019 at 8:55 PM, Cron said:

Many fans seem stunned by the fact that so many unexpected (and anti-trope) things have been happening in Season 8, but IS this really surprising?

I really don't know what you mean anti-trope. GRRM has written a story that generally focuses more on more mundane issues that ones that we are used to in very popular fantasy stories (such as political matters, loans and debts) and he does appear to subvert tropes but to be fair nothing is new under the sun. Killing your main character, the hero?

Not necessarily new 

Spoiler

It has happenned in Psycho and in Borderlands 2. Ned Stark also gave me an Obi Wan Kenobi vibe.

On 5/13/2019 at 8:55 PM, Cron said:

A huge part of what made GRRM's work so incredibly popular in the first place was the trope busting, yet now, it seems, many people WANT...the trope endings that we (including me) hoped for, dreamed of, and theorized about for years (and for some of us, like me, that's MANY years since we first read the books).

Well, I liked how darker certain characters were but Sansa reminded me of Beauty and the Beast and Jaime is the best example of a Byronic hero. A short definition by Camus: 

Quote

“The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.”

On 5/13/2019 at 8:55 PM, Cron said:

And so now, the show goes on a major trope-busting spree in Season 8, and people are ...shocked and appalled???

Consider Jaime's death. Now, I think LOTS of fans reacted very poorly to that, basically saying it was mundane and anti-climactic (which it was), but IS it surprising that a major character on GoT got crossed off in a mundane and anti-climactic way?  No, not at all.  Remember how Khal Drogo went out?  D&D had nothing to do with that, far as I know.

It is just about being mundane or anti-climactic. Khal Drogo did not die in an anticlimactic manner. His wound might have seemed harmless but it wasn't. He intended to reclaim his wife's kingdom, he was delirious and his men were abandoning him while his wife was suffering a miscarriage and a witch, who had a grudge against him made things worse. 

 

On 5/13/2019 at 8:55 PM, Cron said:

Many other tropes have been desperately wished for (including by me, I admit) over the years as well, and many (not all, though) are being brutally crushed by Season 8.   I could make a long list, and maybe you could too.  (Here's another doozy:  Many people, I think, were apoplectic that neither Jon nor Dany crossed off the Night King, despite the fact that it would have been a major literary trope for Jon or Dany to do it.  And I could go on and on with other examples.  Here's another: Jaime's redemption arc?  Trope.  So it turned out in the end that he was actually helplessly addicted to Cersei, even if it resulted in his own senseless destruction, which it did.)

Well, the main issue is that his death was inconsistent with his character development.

In the books, he follows a different path, literally and metaphorically.

Since they changed his reunion with Cersei in S3 his character has deviated from the books, a lot. 

Spoiler

• In the books, he betrays her in order to save Tyrion. In the tv series his divided loyalty is barely examined
• In the books he discovers that she had been unfaithful to him. In the tv series was this even mentioned?
• In the books he is sent on a journey where he redefines his purpose and distances himself from Cersei. In the tv series he remains her lapdog.
• In the books first he dreams of his mom who is like Cersei but she isn't and then he choses Brienne instead of Cersei. This doesn't happen in the tv series.
• In the books he wants to take care of Tommen. In the tv series his suicide is it ever addressed?
• Only when he discovers the threat against mankind he leaves Cersei  and he chooses Brienne.

 

Which is why it is problematic. 

His demise seemed rushed, too fast, poorly written. And D&D had written wonderful scenes in earlier seasons, such as Jaime and Ned bickering, Robert humiliating Jaime, Tywin chastising Jaime. I mean, he was one of the main characters, his story was most captivating, you wanted to find out about him, his motives and how everything was going to end.

Was he going to die? Yeah, I expected that. But going back and forth, Cersei-Tyrion, Cersei-Brienne, feeling no problem with the person that Cersei has become, he was more like a robot. Someone pressed his go back to Cersei and that's what he did. 

[Raven's Teeth]

I'm not the greatest Dany fan but I feel the fact she has gone the way of her father is not particularly challenging in a narrative context.

It seems lazy. Dany goes mad like her father. It’s basically saying you can’t fight your DNA. Biology trumps human agency.  Where is the subversion of tropes there?

[Apoplexy]

On 5/13/2019 at 12:55 PM, Cron said:

 

Consider Jaime's death. Now, I think LOTS of fans reacted very poorly to that, basically saying it was mundane and anti-climactic (which it was), but IS it surprising that a major character on GoT got crossed off in a mundane and anti-climactic way?  No, not at all.  Remember how Khal Drogo went out?  D&D had nothing to do with that, far as I know.

 

Drogo was never a main character, so him dying in an anticlimactic fashion is not the same as Jaime dying in the worst possible way.

 

On 5/13/2019 at 12:55 PM, Cron said:

 

Many other tropes have been desperately wished for (including by me, I admit) over the years as well, and many (not all, though) are being brutally crushed by Season 8.   I could make a long list, and maybe you could too.  (Here's another doozy:  Many people, I think, were apoplectic that neither Jon nor Dany crossed off the Night King, despite the fact that it would have been a major literary trope for Jon or Dany to do it.  And I could go on and on with other examples.  Here's another: Jaime's redemption arc?  Trope.  So it turned out in the end that he was actually helplessly addicted to Cersei, even if it resulted in his own senseless destruction, which it did.)

 

I didn't mind Arya killing the NK. It just seemed a bit too easily done for me. 

As for Jaime, had he suddenly become Ser Goldenhand the Just, that would've been a trope. He always struggled with letting Cersei go on the show, but eventually DID. Why have him leave KL only to come back? If he had never left, I would've been mad, but then his death wouldn't seem out of place/character. 

 

On 5/13/2019 at 12:55 PM, Cron said:

 

So, how much of a role does all of this play in the EXTREMELY negative reviews and comments out there regarding Season 8?  I think it's a LOT, and if we one day find out that a large percentage of Season 8 actually WILL be canon in the books, then I think that will be pretty amusing.

If the books play out like the show (I'm not talking just the end points, the sudden frenzy of people behaving out of character) my criticisms will remain the same about the books. It is possible to disagree with an author about how they wrote/interpreted how a character behaves in certain situations.

[Ghosteline]

The tropes is not an issue, unexpected 180-degree twists of the story and characters is definitely not an issue. 

It's simply lacking intelligent storytelling. Motivations of characters have become numb and blurry whereas earlier, even if a character made a very unexpected change of mind - I still believed it as part of this characters storyline. Now most of the choices the lead-characters are making seem forced just to satosfy the show, shock value. Characters don't seem believable anymore, I can feel the script too much and not the characters. In a good show you forget the script and you are so immersed in the world because you believe it. Well now it has a different flare - its not that anymore. It seems forced, rushed, I don't believe it, I can see some of the writing is there just "because" - and just because they need to speed things up and as if "this just happens because its TV and these things can happen" - not even trying to make sense in that Westerosi universe anymore but making sense in a TV universe. And thats the shit writing right there.

[iprayiam]

20 hours ago, Davidlopan said:

With trope subversion and pulling the rug, I always think the proof’s in the pudding. I could have swallowed the Others not being the endgame boss if the alternative was made to feel dramatically satisfying and inevitable, but it's been such a soul-crushing letdown (and totally implausible by the internal logic of the series). Ned's death and the RW were unexpected and shocking, but there was at least a sense of inevitability about them, both believable consequences of Ned's and Robb's choices and the machinations of Joffrey, Littlefinger and the Boltons/Freys. And they spurred the plot forward in various fertile ways.

I'm in the unbelievable minority here, but I was never that impressed by what the Red Wedding did to the narrative. Yes, I agree with everything everyone says about it being a well foreshadowed and executed subversion. But the momentum and the primary focal point of the story kind of got gut punched after that. Everything fractures and grinds down to a trot in Feast and Dance because of it. I think that GRRM's current struggles all fundamentally result from this choice.

See it's not that Robb was particularly important, as much as the narrative glue of the Starks coming for Joffery, and the Lannisters reacting. It was really killing Joffrey that killed the story for me. But once Robb was dead, there was nothing left for Joffrey (or Tywin), so narratively they had to be killed, and the focus of the story skattered as a result. (In fact, Varys killing Kevin was kind of in book lampshading that KL had become boring as a result of Starks vs Lannasters fizzling out).

I've always hated book and show Ramsay and Euron. They were just successive hammy reincarnations of Joffrey "Only EVILLERR!!", But Joffrey was kind of peak evil without getting silly, and he stood at the center of the conflict. Ramsay and Euron both sit at the outskirts of the main action, and thus either feel pointless or forced late into the narrative.

I beleive GRRM's intial idea was for Robb and Joffrey to collide, then just as the fallout is occuring, slide into Dany attacking, then just as the fallout is occuring slide into the Others attacking.

Maybe it would have been more "tropey", but it also would have been a much more graceful narrative and tremendously less "soap oprah-ey" Which is basically what the books and the show become after Joffrey dies to varying degrees.

 

[Vanadis]

"Ironically, After Falling In Love With GoT For Being Anti-Trope, Many Fans Now Seem To Want...The Tropes???"

I thought of something...

In how many stories is the most powerful woman wielding the most raw power not the villain?

Maybe the original poster got it all wrong. Maybe the problem is that Dany from the start was a "Morgan Le Fay" type of character, a witch, a freak, an embodiment of the dangerous feminine, who would always grow more evil the more power she got. And maybe one of the reasons we used to say that "this show subverts our expectations" was because it did a pretty decent job of hiding that Dany was only living up to her archetype after all. Dragon Queen finding love and ruling the world with a man who cannot match her in strength when it comes to raw power? Has it ever been done before? Maybe the reason fans are dismayed with this ending is that the story in the end didn't subvert the trope.

[MinscS2]

37 minutes ago, Vanadis said:

Maybe the reason fans are dismayed with this ending is that the story in the end didn't subvert the trope.

This isn't about tropes. At this point fans are (mostly) way more dismayed at how (and why) we got to the point where we currently are, and not really so much that we are where we currently are.

In Daenerys' case, people are more and more dismayed at how her decent into a psychopathic killer that is completely anathema to everything she's ever stood for is portrayed on the show, and not so much that she ended up a psychopathic killer.

I'm one of the biggest Daenerys-fans you'll find on these boards, and even I don't consider the idea of her ultimately descending into darkness unbelievable. I don't like it, and it's definitely not my preferred ending for her, but if her descent was carefully written with better nuances, pacing and groundwork laid out, I'd not just be able to believe it - I might even consider it really tragic(good) and touching TV.

But we didn't get that. Instead we got a sudden left turn that resulted in rushed, contrived and forced complete change of her character where she after 71 episodes as "Mhysa, breaker of chains and champion of the downtrodden" suddenly will spend the last 2 episodes as "Queen of Ashes, killer of innocents and incinerator of children" because... she's feeling unloved? Her nephew won't give her the D? Because her best friend just died? We genuinely don't know why she decided to do what she did, and that is a direct result of her portrayal into a psychopathic killer being really poorly done.

The way her arc is written isn't just unbelievable, it's outright immersion-breaking.
And this honestly goes for most of the main characters this season. They no longer feel real and authentic.

[Vanadis]

MinscS2, I do agree. I would gladly have watched a Dany Turns Dark done well.

I just feel that the premise for this thread is wrong, not only because as you say it was always about the characters and not the tropes anyway, but also because I don't think it's fair to claim that Dany as Mad Queen is not a trope, especially in the way it has been done in the show.

[Crona]

2 minutes ago, Vanadis said:

MinscS2, I do agree. I would gladly have watched a Dany Turns Dark done well.

I just feel that the premise for this thread is wrong, not only because as you say it was always about the characters and not the tropes anyway, but also because I don't think it's fair to claim that Dany as Mad Queen is not a trope, especially in the way it has been done in the show.

I think the reveal would have been more believable if they allowed Dany to have some grey where it is clear that the action is questionable (I’m not talking about burning the Tarlys). However they neglected to show this and this is probably because they feared for losing fans for Dany or that GRRM only told them the ending at very end.

[BlueNightzx]

3 hours ago, Crona said:

I think the reveal would have been more believable if they allowed Dany to have some grey where it is clear that the action is questionable (I’m not talking about burning the Tarlys). However they neglected to show this and this is probably because they feared for losing fans for Dany or that GRRM only told them the ending at very end.

i agree

[Runaway Penguin]

Sack of Astapor and crucification of Masters in Mereen were pretty grey however you look at it. Yes, they were shot to paint Dany in a good light - it was part of her arc and it fit the books where these scenes are form her POV, but do you think that, for example, in Mereen anyone stopped to ask the guy they were about to skewer "Hey, are you a slaver?". There isn't much difference between that and Khmer Rouge murdering people just because they were wearing glasses.

 

Contast that with Mel. She does same or less evil things (heck, her shadowbabies prevented a terrible battle an siege at cost of just 2 lives). 

[Parwan Nays]

On 5/13/2019 at 12:55 PM, Cron said:

...

A huge part of what made GRRM's work so incredibly popular in the first place was the trope busting, yet now, it seems, many people WANT...the trope endings that we (including me) hoped for, dreamed of, and theorized about for years (and for some of us, like me, that's MANY years since we first read the books).

And so now, the show goes on a major trope-busting spree in Season 8, and people are ...shocked and appalled???

...

So, how much of a role does all of this play in the EXTREMELY negative reviews and comments out there regarding Season 8?  I think it's a LOT...

P.S.  My grade for 805 is a "10."  Will I enjoy the ending in the books even more?  I fully expect to, since books are almost always better than the adaptation, right?

How much of a role does the "I don't want my favorite trope busted" complaint play in the negative reviews? I'd say not that much. At least, the comments in this thread show many posters who have very solid reasons for complaints that have little or nothing to do with tropes. Of course, "a lot" and "not that much" are not precise quantitative terms. We are not talking about gathering data by doing well constructed surveys of GoT viewers. What you consider a lot of people (probably from reading many posts) and what I consider not that many (also from reading many posts) might actually turn out to be about the same percentage of people who have commented either positively or negatively about the episodes. 

It's been a while since I've given a GoT episode anything above a 6. Episode 805 is about a 1 or a 2.  

On 5/13/2019 at 2:05 PM, Jabar of House Titan said:

We don't want tropes.

We want a good story with strong, consistent character arcs and without plot holes you can fly a plane through.

Yeah, that's the sort of criticism I referred to above. There are so many holes now that there isn't much plot left. 

On 5/14/2019 at 11:19 AM, Tadco26 said:

1.  the "surprises" are only surprising because they make little sense in the context of what has been going on.  

Main characters have been transformed into heroes who are now consistently put in situations where death is the only likely outcome, but they come out unscathed. 

2. How many times were Sam and Jaime and Brienne surrounded by wights and we come back and they are fine.  Jaime gets run thru twice and then manages just get up and go find Cersei.  This happens in action movies all the time...

It's not to say that the characters should have died in those spots.  It's quite possible to create dangerous situations that aren't so dangerous that death is the only realistic outcome.  In the last few seasons the "heroes" fight off dozens of foes and every foe dies with one swing and every hero gives little sense of being in danger at all. 

3. Dragons are either worthless or completely unstoppable based on the whims of the plot. 

4. None of the most intelligent characters have actually done anything intelligent in several years now. 

5. The Iron Fleet destroys Dany's navy, but Dany is still able to easily ferry people back and forth from Dragon Stone.  The consequence of losing her navy has no effect on the story.

6. There are plenty of shows and movies where this is expected, and can even be entertaining, but it's a far cry from the more realistic portrayal of danger in earlier seasons.  It's not about the show ending character's story arcs in a way that isn't how I wanted things to end.  It's about story arcs with minimal logic to support the direction they are taking being forced in.  It's about going from a show where it felt like any character could die at any moment if they were put in a life threatening situation, to a show where heroes are put in life threatening situations all the time with no consequences.

 

 

Very good points

1. Yeah, context just doesn't seem to matter. World building has become a really pathetic joke. If I am supposed to believe that the institutions and traditions of Westeros shown in the first few seasons were real things actually believed in by the various characters, then how can I be expected to believe that, say, even 10% or so of the people of Westeros would ever accept Cersei Lannister as queen? It should be damnably easy to get even Lannister soldiers to revolt against her. 

2. This is particularly true of Jaime the one-handed-wonder. Supposedly, losing the right hand was a major trauma. This is hard to accept when it seems that he is still close to unbeatable in most fights. 

3. Quite correct. This is one of many places where I can hardly even focus on the action. I just get irritated with the writing.

4. Oh, absolutely correct, one of the most important points. I can see the bit about Dany going mad. What is unacceptable is how fast she turned into a moron. But then, there may be some sort of brain disease going around. Her advisers turned into morons before she did. 

5. Hey, you have to remember about the Enterprise being up there in orbit. When necessary, the show runners have a character use sub space communication to tell Scotty where they want him to beam them. This, for example, is how Sansa wound up sitting next to Littlefinger when the Knights of the Vale charged in the Battle of the Bastards. 

6. If I want to watch an Arnold movie or an old cowboy shoot-em-up, then I'll watch an Arnold movie or an old cowboy shoot-em-up. Game of Thrones was once on a higher level than that. 

On 5/14/2019 at 11:35 AM, Dragonslack said:

...

Biggest sin is the subverting of expectations trope that is the joker that trumps all other tropes.

Unpredictable, non sensical. In the end Ned wakes and it was all a dream. They all take off their faces and are all Jaqar or a space lizard.

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, I love that. Given what has happened the last few seasons, that would be a fitting ending. Reading posts like this is one of the reasons I still watch the show and participate in forums. Maybe you should have been one of the GoT writers.