[Spoilers] Rant & Rave without Repercussion, Final edition

[Late to the Game]

4 minutes ago, lakin1013 said:

And one of the 3 determining Tyrion's fate was his legal WIFE.  The concept of fairness did not accompany the incursion of Starbucks into Westeros.

I assumed all the attendees wanted to negotiate for the release/sparing of the life of Jon and possibly Tyrion (with the exception of Yara, apparently). 

After all, Dany was planning to "liberate" the rest of Westeros in the same way she did Kings Landing and Jon/Tyrion stopped her.

The whole "fairness" argument applies to the choosing of the king, which came up almost as an afterthought during the meeting.

 

[Dragons Are Real]

14 hours ago, Nami said:

I for sure am burned out. They ruined this series. Who the hell is going to rewatch this ever knowing how it ends? Half the seasons are completely pointless! 

We're on a strict never watch again policy in my home.  We're giving away the boxsets we have, and we will not rewatch on streaming.  And the prequel/sequel potential is zero for us.  We won't watch, we won't look, and we won't buy in.  It's dead.  Period.

14 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Oh Bryan Cogman to do LotR on Amazon? If so, I sure hope he won’t be the “lore expert” and “true fan” as he was (supposed to be) on GoT. Yes, Sansa Poole, I mean you, and many other things. 

Oh fuck that.  If he's anywhere near it there's one more show I don't want to watch.

5 hours ago, JMCH said:

That's my feel for it myself. I actually don't have any problem with that story arc per-se, on the contrary it's that wonderfully tragic story that GRRM has woven time and again into the books. What really is out of place is the sudden transformation, it looks like the whole season was rushed through to fit in 6 episodes, when having 8-10 episodes as with previous seasons would have allowed more character development to fill the gaps, while still leaving it as enough of a sudden transformation to be a shocking surprise when she burns KL.

The whole Danny turn was SOOOOOOOO stupid.  I write as a hobby, and know most of my stories are hacky as shit, but in a few minutes I came up with a better story arc that actually would have invested the viewer in her turn.

Have her attack the Red Keep to kill Cersei.  The Red Keep rests over some of the network of wildfire that still underlays Kings Landing.  Oops, the whole place lights up.  Maybe this takes out as much of her troops as it does Cersei's?  Let Jon live through this so he can console her for a few days/weeks as she deals with the guilt and the other emotions you'd feel after accidentally killing an entire city of people you were trying to save from a tyrant, as they continue to make plans for "liberating" the rest of Westeros.  And Danny continues to spiral.

Then, she leaves in a huff during a strategy meeting after getting super riled up about how pointless it all is, and off she goes to burninate the country.  There.  Believable turn.

This is the fourth different way I've come up with of dealing with it.  The instant, "I WON!  KILL THEM ALL!" turn was the dumbest TV moment I've ever seen, and I watched WWF/WWE for decades.

Other's Opinions

So, my wife started a group text with her brothers asking how they felt about the finale.  One brother responds, "They answered every question and tied up all the loose ends.  Didn't like Bran as King, but everything else was great."

The other responds he loved it, it's still the best show on television.

I have to wonder what drugs brother #1 is on and why he isn't sharing.  Answered every question?  Yeah, except for LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE QUESTION RAISED DURING THE ENTIRE EIGHT SEASONS OF THE SHOW!  WTF?  That legitimately upset me.  And then they act like there's something wrong with us because my wife's stance is she hated it and is just glad it's over because she didn't even enjoy watching this season.  And I said it had good visuals but was otherwise garbage because: crap plot, no real resolutions and broken characters because the writers couldn't remember who they were scene to scene.

In the end they said it just felt rushed, but the "payoffs" were worth it.

I bowed out at that point.

I don't mind people watching just for the spectacle, but the show sold us a different vision for four seasons of what it was going to be, and then spent four more seasons destroying that vision piece by piece until this last episode literally took a sledge hammer to the foundations laid in season one and tore them apart.  What an utter disaster of an episode.  What a disaster of a season.  Which makes the entire show seem like a disaster in the end.

But the general public seems to be torn between those feeling this way, and those like my brothers in law that think it was great just because.  WTF?

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Ygrain said:

The sad thing is that sometimes, even if you write something with you heart's blood, it may not be enough. I believe that for many actors and crew this is the figuratively the case, and so they don't take the ctiticism well. Yet, nothing I see with Benioff and Weiss gives me the impression that there was this huge emotional investment on their part, definitely not with the latest seasons. Which is why I'm not going to spare them a thing.

The very fact that they cut the last two seasons from 20 to 13 episodes, when HBO had said they were willing to finance the full 20, shows that they had lost interest in the project.

WRT actors;' opinions, I'd say that Emilia Clarke has made her opinions quite plain.  Not to mention Isaac Hempsall saying "I genuinely thought it was a joke script."

[Gendelsdottir]

1 hour ago, Kikajon said:

They have made Bran king because he can tell stories.

Which D&D are not capable of.

It must seem a divine and majestic capability to them...it is a sort of coming out, isn't it?

"Who has the best stories?" That, to me, was like an upraised middle finger to the viewing audience.

[Lady Fevre Dream]

Hahahahaha, I've found a new Ranter!!  Aaron Rodgers, come on down!! 

 

 

[LokisRaider]

16 hours ago, TheFirstofHerName said:

Looks like HBO is anxious to move us on to the prequel.  Just noticed they have a teaser out today. 

 

I think the prequel will be well received by the people still saying GoT has amazing writing. The prequel will not have to worry about having any of the stuff that separated GoT originally from what you normally see on TV. You know a deep story with layers and interesting characters. 

It will be all spectacle with a basic story. They won't have to worry about being compared to a more intriguing story like GoT did so they already know they don't have to put much effort into it. We know that they will make sure their is an abundance of nudity and sex scenes, that every character needs to make a funny quip, there will be plenty of dick jokes, and the dialogue will equal to a kid that just learned what swear words are as the writer. Plenty of cock and cunts thrown in. As long as they can dazzle the people that still defend the poor writing they are going to make money off it. 

Personally I have no interest in any spin off series seeing what HBO put out when they had no source material to work with. Why would I want to watch a whole series that they are making up on the fly? And I am in the boat that is especially confused why they would even focus on the Long Night when the Night King is apparently a bitch. 

[darmody]

On 5/19/2019 at 10:22 PM, Wsc48 said:

Shouldn't Daenerys have had, like, a Queensguard? But no. She just wanders the Red Keep with zero body guards. And after Jon had warned Tyrion not wander around in the Red Keep because "it's not safe"  So stupid. 

Ah well probably the least of this episodes problems. 

She had a dragon who's telepathically connected to her nearby, to be fair. Jon passed the sniff test. 

[Kikajon]

31 minutes ago, Dragons Are Real said:

I don't mind people watching just for the spectacle, but the show sold us a different vision for four seasons of what it was going to be, and then spent four more seasons destroying that vision piece by piece until this last episode literally took a sledge hammer to the foundations laid in season one and tore them apart.  What an utter disaster of an episode.  What a disaster of a season.  Which makes the entire show seem like a disaster in the end.

This really makes me crazy...until last season I genuinely believed they were realizing such a poor and empty and stupid show out of incapability, but the last season and the ending in particular have really passed the line.

It is not only sheer incapability it is an insult to the logic, to narration, to the author, to the audience...but why?

I cannot understand why they had to be so gross and why HBO paid them for letting them be.....

[Nightwish]

1 hour ago, Low Sparrow said:

Such a truly horrible episode...

Why is Tyrion still alive? He said "our queen doesn't keep prisoners long" or something to that effect. Um, how long did she keep Vary or any of the others? SHE DID NOT! She just executed them. Grrr .. more bad writing and fanservice.

Why is John stll alive? Dogon or the unsullied should definitely have killed him

Why is Stansa still alive? Edmure Tully should have lopped off her bitch head after she ridiculed him like that. I know this one's a reach, but look, the precedent had already been set. Kill the Queen of the realm, you're sent to the Knight's Watch (kinda sorta). So, what would the punishment be for killing the "queen" of just one province? A few weeks in Dorne?

Why is Arya still alive? She should have died from that stab and twist to the gut a couple seasons ago. If not from the severity of the wound itself, which even with today's medicine survival would be far from assured ... most definitely from the infection after she jumped in the sewage filled water of Bravos afterwards.

Why is Bronn still alive? You mean NONE of the lords of The Reach, the wealthiest of the regions has enough money to hire a decent assassin to get rid of this shady character who has been made their Lord, and has no army? 

I thought D&D wanted to "shock" ... just kill off everybody then and elect some random guy you introduce in the last episode as the new king of Westeros.

It would be a better ending than this pile of dung I suffered through...

Tyrion is still alive so he could give a happy ending to Bran. Bran then is to make Sansa Queen and Arya free to follow her path (good riddance). And Jon is alive because he is also a Stark who killed the Queen and put his brothers and sisters in power. 

They are the happy end of the story - and this is it from the start: even Dany was nothing more than an antagonist to their path. 

Apparently we lost a bit the focus (the Stark children) because there were multiple arcs and characters, but at the end is apparent that the World OF Ice and Fire just revolved around them and all the rest was just a story. Any story would do actually because this is not about meaning, just a happy end fairytale for the Stark Family. And GOT became overrated in this sense, had nothing to offer than the adventures of the Stark Family. 

 

[darmody]

On 5/19/2019 at 10:25 PM, xerostomia said:

So let me preface by saying I am a fan of the show, and for the most part enjoyed all of Seasons 1-7.

I somewhat enjoyed episode 1 of season 8, but pretty much disliked episodes 2-6. Probably as most have mentioned, it seemed rushed, with to much changing too quickly.

I initially was not impressed with the way the episode started, but appreciated the cinematography and music. I think Jon killing Dany the way he did, and then Drogon burning the iron throne was fitting.

The court scene was adequate. I guess I was annoyed with just the way things ended up with my first knee jerk reaction not happy the ways things unfolded.

HOWEVER, now that I reflect on the ending, I am thoroughly impressed. The wheel is broken. No longer does genetic lineage make a difference. I guess we all want the happy ending and have 'the one true king' that is a blend of fire and ice, but if that was the case, the wheel would just continue. What they did do, however was to have the classic tragic hero in Jon Snow. He had no control on how he was born, all he wanted was a mothers love (and family's love), but gets banished to the Nights watch (with all its restrictions), finds love, loses love, dies, gets resurrected, fights endlessly for his 'family' and honors the oath of being a protector of the realms and men. He becomes a 'Queens' slayer', saves the realm multiple times, and at the end, gets banished to the night watch again by his own 'family' for the benefit of the realm and never to have a wife or kids (again).

I get a tear in my eye when I think of general human nature and how hard it is to self sacrifice, and what a person must endure to do so. What makes it harder is to be asked to endure again and again for the benefit of others and at the end have no recognition for it.

Maybe not the ending we 'wanted' but certainly a very creative and I think they succeeded with the tragic hero angle.

Is there any reason why you're putting family in quotation marks? We're talking about his first cousins, with whom he was raised. 

[Ser Hedge]

9 minutes ago, darmody said:

She had a dragon who's telepathically connected to her nearby, to be fair. Jon passed the sniff test. 

I'm wracking my brain, has any Dragon Rider been killed in the vicinity of their Dragon in FaB. I can't think of such an instance. Natural deaths, death together with Dragon, or Dragon predeceases Rider.

So not sure how Dragon should react to rider being offed. Maybe Drogon didn't light up Jon because he felt guilty letting him through after the sniff test. 

Actually how would it have looked if Drogon was about to fire up Jon, but was stopped by Bran warging him? (There is a Weirwood in the Red Keep right? Trying to remember Sansa chapters from Clash and Storm) 

Bran find warging a Dragon too much and collapses, but he did enough to make Drogon give up on the revenge arc and he flies off with Mummy. Melting IT optional.

[darmody]

On 5/19/2019 at 10:31 PM, Lord Varys said:

Still can't wrap my head around the idea that a Stark king would want independence for the North or that KING BRANDON STARK would want to give up the North - his own home - to his sister or that Sansa would not want the North be ruled by a Stark king.

Can anybody understand this? It feels utterly wrong.

The closest guess I can make is that they assumed people remember "The King in the North!" chant, have it in their minds that Northern independence is now a permanent Stark thing, and they owed a debt to Sansa for season Five and had to make good with a queenship . 

[Wsc48]

10 minutes ago, darmody said:

She had a dragon who's telepathically connected to her nearby, to be fair. Jon passed the sniff test. 

I don't know. The keep is full of secret passages and holes in the walls. Seems unsafe. I don't think Cersei ever went anywhere alone. 

[iprayiam]

31 minutes ago, LokisRaider said:

I think the prequel will be well received by the people still saying GoT has amazing writing. The prequel will not have to worry about having any of the stuff that separated GoT originally from what you normally see on TV. You know a deep story with layers and interesting characters. 

It will be all spectacle with a basic story. They won't have to worry about being compared to a more intriguing story like GoT did so they already know they don't have to put much effort into it. We know that they will make sure their is an abundance of nudity and sex scenes, that every character needs to make a funny quip, there will be plenty of dick jokes, and the dialogue will equal to a kid that just learned what swear words are as the writer. Plenty of cock and cunts thrown in. As long as they can dazzle the people that still defend the poor writing they are going to make money off it. 

I actually see the exact opposite problems. Without D&D, they will probably tone down a lot of the toilet humor, and with a basically blank slate, they could likely hire good writers and invent character intrigue that has actual depth.

The problem will be everything else. The Children of the Forest were the silliest and stupidest part of GoT (not of ASoIaF). The execution looked very silly and Hammy in GoT, like a highschool play. I don't think they really can be done visually and be taken seriously. That will be far more "in your face fantasy" than anything GoT had to deal with throughout most of the first several seasons.

The Others will be poison going in. Any slow-building of them as a threat will be met with serious skepticism by audiences that got burned last time. Yet shoving them in the face of viewers will get old fast and contribute to the "silly fantasy" pitfall with broader audiences. No matter what you do with them, they will amount to nothing.

Meanwhile, I don't think the 'same universe' effect will hold nearly as much appeal as people think. It is thrown around a lot with Harry Potter and Star Wars, but never actually done in practice outside of very close timelines and character connections to the OS. But thousands of years in the past? What if they made a prequel to "The Wire" set 3 thousand years ago in the same universe? WTF does that even mean? What is Westeros without any of the same people or politics or kingdoms, etc? The average audience will be confused / checked out. 

Again, it will become a tight-rope between being wildly unconnected, or panned for being nothing more than a series of call-backs. There is really only a very thin tight-rope that could be walked here and I can't imagine HBO getting it right.

The only in-universe prequel that I could imagine being an easy win was the obvious choice, that I cannot understand why they didn't go with:

The Last Days of Valyeria. The pitch is so simple: Ancient Rome...with DRAGONS. Rome Meets GOT. Rise of the Targaryians from lower aristocracy, ending with an apocolyse and the conquest of Westeros.

Other than the budget, how would that not have been the only serious direction to take a successor show?

[Ser Hedge]

1 minute ago, darmody said:

The closest guess I can make is that they assumed people remember "The King in the North!" chant, have it in their minds that Northern independence is now a permanent Stark thing, and they owed a debt to Sansa for season Five and had to make good with a queenship . 

Yeah seriously, Eddard's oldest living legit son (named Brandon that too for goodness sake) is not only alive, but has the power of the Old Gods, and you accept Mrs Lannister as your Queen, really? Wtf?

Even if the North is independent, it would be like James VI of Scotland and I of England, Bran should be king of both domains, though it beats me why the South would want him. You can have a  situation where uncle Tully and cousin Robin vote for him with other kingdoms all voting for themselves.

[teej6]

19 hours ago, Ygrain said:

- Now, I don't need Jon to sit a new IT to be happy, it just doesn't make any sense to me why this was never ever brought up.

It wasn’t brought up because in D&D’s world characters have collective amnesia or they have split personalities. Tyrion is not the same character from one episode to the next. Does D&D even remember that they had Tyrion super concerned about Dany not having an heir last season because not having an heir would be bad for the future of the kingdoms? But now he is of the opinion that the King/Queen having no heir is the perfect solution to ensure peace in the future. WTF! The inconsistencies in this show, the plot holes, and the illogical storylines are at an astonishing level, and to think it was the darling of critics and award shows. 

[darmody]

2 minutes ago, Ser Hedge said:

Yeah seriously, Eddard's oldest living legit son (named Brandon that too for goodness sake) is not only alive, but has the power of the Old Gods, and you accept Mrs Lannister as your Queen, really? Wtf?

Even if the North is independent, it would be like James VI of Scotland and I of England, Bran should be king of both domains, though it beats me why the South would want him. You can have a  situation where uncle Tully and cousin Robin vote for him with other kingdoms all voting for themselves.

The show wants us to believe Bran is on the...space where the throne used to be not because of blood but because he had a good story. And he remembers things. 

Seriously. That was the end of the game of thrones. Next monarch after Bran dies in 1,000 years shall have to write the bestest college admissions essay ever. 

[Wsc48]

2 hours ago, Low Sparrow said:

Why is Tyrion still alive?

Should be dead.

Daenerys should have killed him when she killed varys as Tyrion told Varys about Jon without informing her. That's treacherous. 

Cersei should have killed him with arrows at the parlay. Daenerys should have been informed immediately after Jamie escaped and killed him. And why did he suddenly care about Cersei...at all? 

Jon should have died first by Drogon and if not that, as soon as he confessed to greyworm, instant death. But it happened off screen so maybe we aren't supposed to think about it?

[Lord Varys]

Just now, darmody said:

The closest guess I can make is that they assumed people remember "The King in the North!" chant, have it in their minds that Northern independence is now a permanent Stark thing, and they owed a debt to Sansa for season Five and had to make good with a queenship . 

Yeah, I strongly assume that this is just some ridiculous fan service. Their way of apologizing for the ridiculous Sansa rape plot. If they had planned or prepared for anything of that sort then Sansa would have been chosen queen back when she had fed Ramsay to the dogs - but back then they were downplaying her role in everything, even rejecting Littlefinger's offer to bring in the Vale.

One could see the North being independent if the Seven Kingdoms devolved to a pre-Conquest state and no longer had a central monarchy, but giving it the special privilege of independence in light of the fact that they basically all worked together to defeat the Others and even installed a Stark king in the Red Keep that makes no sense.

That's like the King of England is chosen from the leading noble family Northumbria but Northumbrians themselves secede from England and crown their monarch, a sibling of the King of England.

That is utterly ridiculous and makes no political sense in any scenario whatsoever. Instead, it is a recipe for disaster and future political strife. After all, the successor of 'the King of the Six Kingdoms' could derive a claim to the North from the mere fact that his predecessor was of the same house as the current ruling family of the North and vice versa. Wouldn't Sansa's children - assuming she ever has any - get the notion they should succeed Uncle Bran?

[OldGimletEye]

25 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

snip

I am pretty suspicious that the Queen in The North thing was D&D giving the fandom the finger, one last time, for the criticism they received for season 5.