Jump to content

Character arc ranto (SPOILERS)


Count Balerion

Recommended Posts

So … let's see where we are with the major character arcs:

 

Bran started out as a cute kid who liked climbing. After being tossed out a window, he's disabled and can't walk. So he goes north of the Wall, meets the three-eyed raven, becomes the three-eyed raven, and acquires weird powers. He also becomes rather bizarre and robotic, given to non-sequiturs like saying “I have to go now” and warging into ravens for the heck of it. It's highly probable that he has turned evil. This would explain why he didn't stop Dany from burning down KL. Perhaps he even warged her, and this explains her inexplicable heel turn. He is elected king, and goes off to find Drogon. One hopes this is to learn from Drogon's wisdom; but a more sinister alternative is that he wants to destroy Drogon or corrupt him.

 

Arya begins as a cute little tomboy who's rather spoilt, but who listens to her father. She has a bad case of sibling rivalry, which approaches hatred after an unfortunate incident involving a butcher's boy getting killed. After her father dies, she becomes consumed with lust for vengeance and has a thing for murther, eventually learning leet assassination skills from a death cult. She also develops some hardcore plot armour, to the point of being apparently indestructible. Her main things are: vengeance, and re-establishing ties to her family. These plotlines reach their acme in season 7, when she massacres the Freys and comes home to Winterfell. At home, she wants to defend her family by offing her sister, but changes her mind and becomes Sansa's BFF instead. In season 8, she has intercourse rather randomly (but so does everyone else) and kills the NK, becoming Azor Ahai. She then goes off to have zany adventures with Dear Old Uncle Sandor and is saved by her plot armour from getting burnt alive by Evil Dany. Her experiences lead her to decide that revenge is a waste and her family a bore; so she (again rather randomly) goes off on a ship to explore, being presumably saved by her plot armour from starving to death, drowning, or getting killed.

 

Sansa at the beginning is very kewl. She thinks Northern ways are lame (if she lived today, she'd doubtless be a Valley Girl) and is attracted to southern, courtly ways. She thinks knights and ladies are awesome and that Prince Joffrey is dweamy. She has no issues with sibling rivalry, because Arya is so clearly inferior. She doesn't care about the butcher's boy much, but misses her direwolf. After Joff kills her father, she realises that the prince is a jerk. This begins the process whereby she finds her Northern identity. She gets abused and tortured at court, and then gets abused and tortured at Winterfell by Ramsay. All this makes her Strong; meanwhile, she learns political savvy from LF. She meets her presumed half-brother Jon, who has been dead; after Jon almost gets killed fighting Ramsay, she calls on her Vale army (which she – cunningly or stupidly? – didn't tell Jon about), and saves the day. After Bran intervenes in the contretemps with Arya, she doesn't kill Arya, and offs LF instead. She proceeds to heckle Jon a lot, every now and then showing her Administrative Talent by saying something about food. After Jon teams up with Dany, Sansa either develops an irrational hostility towards the latter or has read the screenplay for season 8, episode 5. She's certainly not very impressed by Dany helping defeat the NK while she hides in the crypts. After Dany is out of the way, she is rude to her uncle and asserts Northern independence, hypnotising the Iron Islands and Dorne into going along. She becomes Queen of the North, proving that not all female rulers are mass-murthering maniacs – only most female rulers.

 

Jon begins as the bastard of Winterfell, then joins the NW. where he has to deal with the conflict between his Stark identity and his NW identity. The issue gets messier after he goes undercover with the Wildlings and has a conflict between his sympathy for the Wildlings and the NW's anti-Wildling bigotry. He also has somehow to make the NW understand that the main threat is the WW. After he gets killed and resurrected, the trajectory becomes less clear and Jon becomes rather useless. He does win back Winterfell, but his strategy and tactics aren't of the most brilliant, and the victory is more LF's doing. Thereafter the focus is on 1. the WW and 2. Daenerys. He falls in love with the latter, although it's not perhaps the most torrid possible romance. He wastes a lot of time on a stupid wight hunt, and in season 8 does and says hardly anything. He does discover he's Rhaegar's son (and that Rhaegar wasn't perhaps very imaginative when it came to masculine names); but this doesn't affect him much, as he obstinately insists Dany is muh queen. He plays hardly any role in the battle for the living, and his only accomplishment is to kill Dany. He's exiled back to the NW, though why it even exists now who knows, and it seems mainly a Wildling affair. He does get reunited with Ghost, whom he'd dumped with inexplicable casualness earlier (the snub that launched a thousand memes). But it's hard to avoid the sense that the mountains laboured, and a mouse was born.

 

Tyrion starts as the most brilliant person in the world. Well, not quite; but he's intelligent and able and his zingers are deadly. His main issue is his love-hate relation with his family. Then, after he murthers his father and escapes, he changes. He becomes in some ways a nicer chap, wanting the good of the common people and therefore admiring Dany, to whom he remains loyal until after the “siege” of KL. Sadly, he also becomes a bit of an idiot. He makes very bad jokes, but thanks to his delivery, they sound clever until you actually catch the words. He gives laughably bad advice, drawing out the conflict with Cersei beyond all semblance of plausibility. This is almost certainly connected to his feelings for his family; it seems that absence makes the heart grow fonder, even for such a cold and conniving lot as the Lannisters tend to be. After Dany turns Evil, he comes to an epiphany: he realises that he isn't smart. Unfortunately, he thinks the proof is that he believed in Dany; but this is nonsense, as no one who hadn't read the screenplay could possibly have known she would become genocidal. The real reason he isn't smart is that he gives rubbish advice and cracks bad jokes. Despite being supposedly on trial for treason, he becomes kingmaker and then Hand. And will probably spend the rest of his life making bad jokes and giving bad advice. Truly a fairy-tale ending.

 

Jaime. Forget all about book-Jaime. Show-Jaime starts and ends as an incest addict. But that doesn't mean there's no redemption arc. He begins the series as an incest addict who tosses boys out of windows and is generally obnoxious to everyone. And he killed his king in violation of his oath. After meeting Brienne, he develops some vague sense of honour. Also, he tells Brienne that he murthered Aerys in order to save the people of KL; but assuming there's any logical coherence to this story at all (stop laughing!), this is probably a lie, as we shall see. Jaime does try to be quasi-decent for a while, leaving Cersei to defend the living against the evil zombies. He apologises to Bran and knights Brienne. Unfortunately, after Leet Ninja Commando Arya kills the NK, Jaime goes back to being an incest-freak cad. He beds Brienne (even getting jealous of Tormund) and within 45 minutes (Westerosi morality having become weirdly Hollywood) dumps her and is back to Cersei. He even flatly contradicts what he told Brienne about his motivation for killing Aerys, saying that he never really cared for the people. Given how he treated Brienne, it seems more likely he'd tell the truth to his brother than to her. So kind of back to Square One. Not entirely, though, as he isn't throwing kids out of windows now – that we know of. Well, since he's now dead, it would be a bit awkward.

 

Dany is raised by her nutty and sometimes abusive brother, Viserys, who rants about how they're the rightful heirs to the Iron Throne in Westeros, a place where Dany has never been since birth. He then sells her to a horsy barbarian, but luckily the horse chap is relatively nice, as horse chaps go. She gains some experience wielding power as the horse chap's wife, or khaleesi; and she uses this power to stand up to her bully brother. After the Vis-man threatens her unborn child, Horsy puts him to a nasty death. Dany has decidedly mixed feelings about that, but inherits Vissy's IT goals, which makes up the first pole of her character arc. The second pole is her concern to use her power to defend the weak and innocent, as we see for the first time when she protects all the Lhazareen women from being assaulted. One of these women, a maegi, putatively heals Horse, but he turns into a vegetable and Dany's baby is sacrificed. So Dany burns her on Horsy's pyre, before entering the pyre herself and giving birth to dragons, thereby becoming the Most Powerful Person in the World.

 

After her “friendzone” advisor Jorah recommends that she get a slave army from a peculiarly nasty lot of slave traders, Dany kills the slave traders and frees the slaves. She becomes a queen and tries to balance the interests of the various classes of Meereenese – despite occasional outbursts of cruelty against enemies – even going so far as to lock them up her dragons after one is accused of killing a child. Tyrion arrives from Westeros, conveniently replacing Ser Barristan as her trusted (Heaven knows why) advisor. During the remainder of her time in Essos and also Westeros (until the very end), she only puts enemies and criminals to death – although the standard of proof and of due process is perhaps not of the highest. (And with khals she's a little wholesale.) Finally, she heads for Westeros, leaving her amigo Daario in charge (to quote Preston Jacobs, Meereen's lot is now “Peace and prosperity with Daario! Yay!”).

 

In Westeros, Dany has bad luck – or bad advice – and takes several episodes to defeat Cersei, despite the latter having very little support and being a psycho mass murtherer. Dany helps the Northerners defeat the WWs because she's in love with Jon (their amour is very subtle, so to speak). The Northerners, despite having been fairly supine under Ramsay, get rather rambunctious and are distinctly cool towards this foreign beauty. Meanwhile, Dany finds out that Jon is (or has been claimed to be) the rightful heir to the Seven Kingdoms, and is less than keen on this idea. Thanks to more bad advice from Tyrion and her own inexplicable fit of amnesia (she “kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet”!), Dany loses a dragon and her best friend. Having remembered the IF, she easily destroys it, and KL surrenders. But when she sees the Red Keep, she decides to “make it personal” by wiping out the population of the city while the presumed enemy Cersei watches from her balcony (perhaps Dany had another amnesia attack and wasn't sure who her enemy was, or perhaps she was in a mood because her Expectations had been Subverted). She apparently does this because 1. apart from Sansa, all female rulers are mass-murthering maniacs and 2. she's a Targaryen, and they're all like that (genetic determinism! We'd best wipe out everyone with Targaryen blood before they wipe out us!). This, incidentally, explains the paucity of cities in Westeros; there used to be many more, but each previous Targaryen ruler had burnt one to the ground on their eighteenth name-day. So, is Dany her father? Well, she's not her father and she is, depending on which interview you listen to. I hope that clears THAT up! Anyway, after Dany turns into Stalin, Jon kills her, probably as a mercy because her character had already been assassinated.

 

Drogon has too often been overlooked in analyses of GAME OF THRONES, but it is becoming more and more evident that he is in fact the centre, the moral heart of the story (to such an extent, indeed, that the entire series might be said to constitute Drogon's Bildungsroman; see Schmuck). His arc, after his childhood idyll playing with his brothers and his mother's handmaidens, may be said to constitute a number of responses to loss. His first great loss occurs when he is falsely accused of murthering and eating a child (Drogon has better taste than that!), and Dany locks his brothers up. Drogon's response to this is to do Adolescent Rebellion and go off on his own, probably joining gangs and doing drugs and whatnot. But he has an epiphany, realising that his mother was not to blame, and in her hour of greatest need he returns to her. He thereafter is for a time blindly loyal to her, serving her cause in Meereen and Westeros. He loses first one brother and then the other to bad advice, bad luck, and bad writing. This cements both his loyalty to his mother and his bitter hatred of Westerosi humans; so he willingly aids his mother in genocide. He has now reached the nadir of his arc, and suffers the greatest loss of all; for his mother is slain before his very eyes by an icky human named Jon! But this time grief leads not to wrath, but to wisdom. For Drogon perceives that the true murtherer was not Jon, but the lust for power and system of domination represented by the Iron Throne. So he magnanimously spares Jon and burns the Iron Throne, that “vile engine of sorcery” as Lewis called it, instead. He then takes his mother on a quest eastward, that she might be resurrected and that they might thereafter journey together on a higher, nobler errand, presumably to burn the scripts that got them in this mess.

 

(I tried to shorten the Dany section; but her arc is such a jumble that it just wasn't working out.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Welcome to the Hater's Club, matey, I'm always glad to bring another on board. It's a shame Drogon's arc was so underrated. Truly shakespearean, but like most of the good writing in Game of Thrones, offscreen.

It should be noted that D&D actively rely on 'honeypots' to explain their bullshit, because in truth, they just want their shocking moment. They don't really care about arcs, they never really had an explanation for Ellaria being a vengeance-driven madwoman or Arya wanting to kill Sansa, they just need them shock moments for the bar-watching idiots that go into reaction compilations.

Hence, as the Dragon Demands put it, they cold read, and have been for years. They rattle off a list of vague possible explanations, see which one the fans latch onto, then roll with it. It's like if you have a naked emperor, and he's brazonly walking around, expecting his subjects to praise his clothes.

Emperor: Dear subjects, aren't I wonderful? My clothes are a fine product indeed. There are many colours upon it.

Subject: Oh yes, Emperor, the scarlet ermine is fantastic.

Emperor: Yes, the scarlet dye was the finest in the land, and the ermine we killed for the pelt were specially bred.

Subject: Oh, of course, that's just what I'd expect of my fine, perfect emperor.

Me: Why aren't people telling the Emperor he's naked?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So much to say, so little time (right now). 

One thing to add: Jorah. I don't know why, but I felt extremely bad about the way Jorah died. He spent all 8 seasons looking like a kicked puppy. And then he died a kicked puppy (a heroic kicked puppy, but that's little consolation) I would've liked to see him survive. The ending where he could've joined Jon beyond the wall seemed better imo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

It should be noted that D&D actively rely on 'honeypots' to explain their bullshit, because in truth, they just want their shocking moment. They don't really care about arcs, they never really had an explanation for Ellaria being a vengeance-driven madwoman or Arya wanting to kill Sansa, they just need them shock moments for the bar-watching idiots that go into reaction compilations.

 

Pretty much.

I mean, Shae's betrayal of Tyrion in the books was heart-wrenching, but also completely in-character. Whereas in the show they changed her character to make it look like a genuine love story, so her moment at the trial ended up feeling more out-of-character and forced, but hey, at least they got to do their "you thought this was love? WELL GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE! GOTCHA!"

Then there was changing the character of Robb's wife and having her a) get pregnant and b) attend the red wedding, all so they could have the moment of a pregnant woman getting stabbed on-screen, cause apparently the Red Wedding just wasn't shocking for their tastes already. And also so they could have some cringe worthy dialogue where she tells Robb she wants to name their son Ned, all so they could do their "GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!" thing again.

In fact pretty much most of their attempts at "character development" can be summed up as "you thought it was like this? WELL GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!"

"You thought Dany had noble intentions? GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!"

"You thought Tyrion was smart? GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!"

"You thought Jon Snow was a central character in this story rather than a glorified extra? GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!"

"You thought the crypts were safe? Well...actually....no one with half a brain thought the crypts were safe but still GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!"

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Pretty much.

I mean, Shae's betrayal of Tyrion in the books was heart-wrenching, but also completely in-character. Whereas in the show they changed her character to make it look like a genuine love story, so her moment at the trial ended up feeling more out-of-character and forced, but hey, at least they got to do their "you thought this was love? WELL GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE! GOTCHA!"

Then there was changing the character of Robb's wife and having her a) get pregnant and b) attend the red wedding, all so they could have the moment of a pregnant woman getting stabbed on-screen, cause apparently the Red Wedding just wasn't shocking for their tastes already. And also so they could have some cringe worthy dialogue where she tells Robb she wants to name their son Ned, all so they could do their "GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!" thing again.

In fact pretty much most of their attempts at "character development" can be summed up as "you thought it was like this? WELL GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!"

"You thought Dany had noble intentions? GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!"

"You thought Tyrion was smart? GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!"

"You thought Jon Snow was a central character in this story rather than a glorified extra? GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!"

"You thought the crypts were safe? Well...actually....no one with half a brain thought the crypts were safe but still GUESS WHAT IT'S THE OPPOSITE!"

 

  

  

 

Basically, they went to the M Night Shyamalan school of plot twists.

'IT'S A GOOD TWIST IF NOBODY SEES IT COMING. JUST BUILD UP THE BUTLER DID IT, THEN SAY IT WAS THE CHAMBERMAID!'

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Our Expectations were Subverted! Azor Ahai is Mickey Mouse!

(The way I read it with Show-Shae was that she was bitter about Tyrion yelling at her about being a wh*re and whatnot, and was getting revenge. Dunno if I was trying to make sense of it and came up w/ this myself, or what.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Count Balerion said:

Our Expectations were Subverted! Azor Ahai is Mickey Mouse!

(The way I read it with Show-Shae was that she was bitter about Tyrion yelling at her about being a wh*re and whatnot, and was getting revenge. Dunno if I was trying to make sense of it and came up w/ this myself, or what.)

Yeah, at the time I was like "well he called her a whore to try and get rid of her, so I guess it kind of makes sense that she'd go from turning down a bag of gold from Varys to trying to get Tyrion executed and then trying to stab him when he finds her in Tywin's room....I guess"

I used to make excuses for their writing all the time cause I was convinced they must know what they're doing, but after season 8 I'm convinced they never had a clue, and a lot of moments from previous seasons are looking even dumber in hindsight.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Yeah, at the time I was like "well he called her a whore to try and get rid of her, so I guess it kind of makes sense that she'd go from turning down a bag of gold from Varys to trying to get Tyrion executed and then trying to stab him when he finds her in Tywin's room....I guess"

I used to make excuses for their writing all the time cause I was convinced they must know what they're doing, but after season 8 I'm convinced they never had a clue, and a lot of moments from previous seasons are looking even dumber in hindsight.

And that was the mistake we all made. When people already trust you, any deception you pull on them isn't cunning. It's just betrayal. And betrayal can only work so many times. There's several cases where people made excuses for this shit, promising that actually D&D were master plotters, there was all sorts of complex off-screen shit happening to explain the illogic (RIP Megorova, you tried your best to defend Season 7 with your elaborate theories).

I think the reason why so many people turned on Season 8 even though the show has been shit since Season 5 at least is because at least with Season 5, you can say 'the story isn't finished. Maybe it's just a blip in the writing. Maybe there'll be a reveal that makes sense of it all.'

But now it's finished. There is no reveal. The curtain has been lifted, and revealed two naked, ageing idiots who think they're still rich, spoilt college frat boys. I legitimately believe there was an Inside the Episode for Season 8 Episode 6, but HBO pulled it after realising that after Episode 5, there was no way the fans would accept a word from D&D's mouths.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

And that was the mistake we all made. When people already trust you, any deception you pull on them isn't cunning. It's just betrayal. And betrayal can only work so many times. There's several cases where people made excuses for this shit, promising that actually D&D were master plotters, there was all sorts of complex off-screen shit happening to explain the illogic.

I think the reason why so many people turned on Season 8 even though the show has been shit since Season 5 at least is because at least with Season 5, you can say 'the story isn't finished. Maybe it's just a blip in the writing. Maybe there'll be a reveal that makes sense of it all.'

But now it's finished. There is no reveal. The curtain has been lifted, and revealed two naked, ageing idiots who think they're still rich, spoilt college frat boys. I legitimately believe there was an Inside the Episode for Season 8 Episode 6, but HBO pulled it after realising that after Episode 5, there was no way the fans would accept a word from D&D's mouths.

Yeah, exactly. Most of the excuses I made for their writing were in the belief that once it came to it, they would be able to pull off a satisfying ending using the notes GRRM had given them. But it's been abundantly clear since season 5 (maybe even before) that they were going to bungle it.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Loosely, I'd say there were two tipping points: 1. Season 5, with Sansa (so disappointing; I thought putting her into Winterfell could have turned out brilliantly, even if the means employed to get her there were off), Shireen, and Porne. Then season 6 seemed better, and season 7 was stupid but at least mostly fun to watch. 2. Season 8, when it's impossible to say it might get better, for obvious reasons! There the first major disappointment was the NK, the second Evil Dany, which kind of ruined the whole thing, yes?

On a lighter note: Sam's arc is a doozy! Goes from bullied and threatened with murther by his father, to Sam the Slayer who's bro and kewl, to Citadel acolyte who doesn't need to learn anything b/c he can cure greyscale, w/ no side effects, overnight (!), to would-be-kingmaker, to Grand Maester. Bother, I left out the kleptomania.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

I think the reason why so many people turned on Season 8 even though the show has been shit since Season 5 at least is because at least with Season 5, you can say 'the story isn't finished. Maybe it's just a blip in the writing. Maybe there'll be a reveal that makes sense of it all.'

I would add that the show was pretty decent as compared to the rest of the stuff on TV. It wasn't as good as it couldve been, but it wasn't that bad. Season 8 was just terrible and most people dislike a bad ending. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, Apoplexy said:

I would add that the show was pretty decent as compared to the rest of the stuff on TV. It wasn't as good as it couldve been, but it wasn't that bad. Season 8 was just terrible and most people dislike a bad ending. 

I mean, you say that, but I'd say Bad Pussy ranks as one of the worst things on TV ever. Heck, Breaking Bad was around concurrent with Game of Thrones and it didn't even have a good source material to crib ideas from.

Edit: The production, acting, and cinematography has always been top-notch thanks to hard-working, wonderful people, but the writers ain't it chief XD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

I mean, you say that, but I'd say Bad Pussy ranks as one of the worst things on TV ever. Heck, Breaking Bad was around concurrent with Game of Thrones and it didn't even have a good source material to crib ideas from.

Edit: The production, acting, and cinematography has always been top-notch thanks to hard-working, wonderful people, but the writers ain't it chief XD

Bad pussy was one terrible line. Yes, within a terrible plot line that was Dorne. But as you say, the acting and production was fabulous, which made the show worth watching. We here (most of us) have read the books and are much more invested than the casual viewer. But most casual viewers must have thought that the end would explain some of the chaos that happened in the latter seasons. But unfortunately, the writing for the final season was so bad that no amount of individual performances or production value could compensate for it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

Bran started out as a cute kid who liked climbing. After being tossed out a window, he's disabled and can't walk. So he goes north of the Wall, meets the three-eyed raven, becomes the three-eyed raven, and acquires weird powers. He also becomes rather bizarre and robotic, given to non-sequiturs like saying “I have to go now” and warging into ravens for the heck of it.

So far, yes.

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

It's highly probable that he has turned evil.

No, not really. It is one possibility, but not very likely. But yes, he might have had the greed for power, too, or just thought or known that ruling Westeros is his destiny. His sentence accepting the throne might be about him knowing he has to do it.

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

He is elected king, and goes off to find Drogon. One hopes this is to learn from Drogon's wisdom; but a more sinister alternative is that he wants to destroy Drogon or corrupt him.

There is no indication that he can warg into Drogon. He can just find him by looking into the past scenes.

It would be reasonable to want to kill the last dragon. The dragon will feed himself on very many animals and humans and needs to be killed. It's not at all "sinister" to bring down the last dragon. Drogon is a threat to mankind.

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

Arya begins as a cute little tomboy who's rather spoilt, but who listens to her father. She has a bad case of sibling rivalry, which approaches hatred after an unfortunate incident involving a butcher's boy getting killed. After her father dies, she becomes consumed with lust for vengeance and has a thing for murther, eventually learning leet assassination skills from a death cult.

This is a quite unfair, one-sided depiction. "Rather spoilt" doesn't hit the nail. Yes, they are all children of nobility, all the Stark children, Cersei's children and so on. "Lust for vengeance" is too one-sided, too. Up unteil S4 she fights just for survival and learns to protect herself and that killing is necessary to survive. But yes, vengeance is a motiviation for her and a good one. Nothing bad up her killings or motivation up to end of S4. 

In the show all her killings are consistent with revenge and she kills those who wronged her and her family. Her killing Meryn Trant is absolutely understandable and the revenge for the Red Wedding is great. The Red Wedding was a replacement for battle, a coward and simply wrong assassination of Frey/Lannisters against Starks. Arya's revenge is understandable.

After that no further weird killings occur in the show at all. Arya returns without incidents to Winterfell, executes Petyr Baelish, but no more killings. 

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

She also develops some hardcore plot armour, to the point of being apparently indestructible.

Examples? You are just blinded by your hate and shitstorm mentality. Any plot armor before finale?

The only unrealistic plot-armor is surviving the waif's attack. She should have made the knife stab a bit less drastic and the healing phase a bit more complicated. But it is easy enough to imagine that the stab wound was "obviously" not as severe as it looked like during the stabbing.

Further plot-armor examples? Please explain in detail. 

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

In season 8, she has intercourse rather randomly (but so does everyone else) and kills the NK, becoming Azor Ahai.

Her erotic interlude was explained well and is believable. Gendry is not an arbitrary choice and was hoped for by millions of fans.

The term Azor Ahai is not mentioned in the show at all. Stop it.

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

She then goes off to have zany adventures with Dear Old Uncle Sandor and is saved by her plot armour from getting burnt alive by Evil Dany. Her experiences lead her to decide that revenge is a waste

Very many people in King's Landing survive and so does Arya. Yes, she is lucky a few times, but she also swift and sees the danger. I can easily accept that Arya survives the frenzy. 

The Sandor scene was just great, not wasting her life anymore for vengeance is a very nice turn. What so you have to complain about it? Why phrase it so negatively?

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

and her family a bore; so she (again rather randomly) goes off on a ship to explore

She never wanted to be a lady, never wanted the life as woman in nobility. She wanted adventures and she is in a position to fulfill her dreams. Perfect character arc for Arya. 

She gets a ship, a crew with all the knowledge needed and goes on discovery. I don't see why people are moaning and whining about that. It is a  very nice arc and a satisfying ending.

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

Sansa either develops an irrational hostility towards the latter or has read the screenplay for season 8,

Come on, that is simply unfair and even pure bullshitting. Sansa was very naive but through all the hardships she learned the game. She does not want to bend the knee, she embraces the North after being fed up with the South and her hostility towards Daenerys is almost natural. 

There is nothing irrational about being at least sceptical towards Daenerys and not wanting to submit to another ruler. Jon made a mistake. A big one. He should have never bent the knee. Daenerys already accepted the necessity to join forces.

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

Jon begins as the bastard of Winterfell, then joins the NW. where he has to deal with the conflict between his Stark identity and his NW identity. [...] But it's hard to avoid the sense that the mountains laboured, and a mouse was born.

Jon's arc is from bastard to bastard somehow. Yes, he is the tragic hero. Nothing new to that in drama. It happens in reality much more often than real heroes. 

We can hope that Jon will enjoy the Free folk life. He is admired by them, very well accepted and he has friends there, at least Tormund. The ending is not that bad. It's kind of realistic and a bittersweet ending in the best sense.

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

Tyrion starts as the most brilliant person in the world. Well, not quite; but he's intelligent and able and his zingers are deadly. [...]And will probably spend the rest of his life making bad jokes and giving bad advice. Truly a fairy-tale ending.

Agreed, Tyrion's arc is weird and why he ends up being hand is strange. Maybe just cut too short in the show. He should have had a more tragic or at least less important end. The show should have spent more time on resolving this issue.

On 6/19/2019 at 3:26 AM, Count Balerion said:

Show-Jaime starts and ends as an incest addict. But that doesn't mean there's no redemption arc. He begins the series as an incest addict who tosses boys out of windows and is generally obnoxious to everyone. And he killed his king in violation of his oath. After meeting Brienne, he develops some vague sense of honour. [...]  So kind of back to Square One. Not entirely, though, as he isn't throwing kids out of windows now – that we know of.

Jaime's arc is very good and believable. "Things we do for love" does never end, not for Jaime anyway. He had the chance to have a life without incest, with Brienne, with honor. But his incestuous love was too strong. It's a pity, but it is a bittersweet and believable ending. Nothing to moan about it.

The death scene of Jaime/Cersei was great. So human, so small, so anti-climax. I liked it very much.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Kajjo said:

Jaime's arc is very good and believable. "Things we do for love" does never end, not for Jaime anyway. He had the chance to have a life without incest, with Brienne, with honor. But his incestuous love was too strong. It's a pity, but it is a bittersweet and believable ending. Nothing to moan about it.

What about 'To be honest, I never really cared for them, innocent or otherwise'. That's undoing shit that's not even part of his arc; he cared for them before his arc enough to permanently besmirch his honour.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Kajjo said:

There is nothing irrational about being at least sceptical towards Daenerys and not wanting to submit to another ruler. Jon made a mistake. A big one. He should have never bent the knee. Daenerys already accepted the necessity to join forces.

I agree that Sansa's hatred was understandable, but Varys's concerns felt very much like he read the scripts. 'She executes people and wants to participate in warfare, the standard means to challenge a ruler in Westeros, she must be insane' is not good enough. At least Sansa had a reason; Jon just rolled over and gave Northern Independence away to this bint who later goes on to poo-poo Sansa's logistical concerns and implies her dragons will be running roughshod through the North with her 'whatever they want' t-shirt slogan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

What about 'To be honest, I never really cared for them, innocent or otherwise'. That's undoing shit that's not even part of his arc; he cared for them before his arc enough to permanently besmirch his honour.

Yeah, that was a difficult line. Maybe he wanted to justify himself or he wanted to give Brienne a reason to let him go. 

"Not caring about" is a very general phrase. I guess when he killed the Mad King he didn't want to burn down whole King's Landing. Neither the city nor the inhabitant. He did care to a certain degree. But not as much as "he really cared for the people", more in a general way.

27 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

I agree that Sansa's hatred was understandable

Fine, thanks.

28 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

but Varys's concerns felt very much like he read the scripts. 'She executes people and wants to participate in warfare, the standard means to challenge a ruler in Westeros, she must be insane' is not good enough.

Yes, the show was too compressed. They should have shown us some discussions with Daenerys. But anyway we have to assume that there were dialogue between all them and that their main advisors knew that Daenerys was on the brink, was difficult to control and had a violent streak. 

I find it believable for a turning coat as Varys that he turns his favor from Daenerys to Jon. It is very obvious that Jon has the better heart, the better intentions and is appreciated much more by the common people. Varys made the mistake to be too obvious. He knew that it was a high risk to leave Daenerys.

31 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

to this bint who later goes on to poo-poo Sansa's logistical concerns and implies her dragons will be running roughshod through the North with her 'whatever they want' t-shirt slogan

That's right. Sansa's point is very clear. I don't understand why so many people whine about it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Kajjo said:

So far, yes.

No, not really. It is one possibility, but not very likely. But yes, he might have had the greed for power, too, or just thought or known that ruling Westeros is his destiny. His sentence accepting the throne might be about him knowing he has to do it.

There is no indication that he can warg into Drogon. He can just find him by looking into the past scenes.

It would be reasonable to want to kill the last dragon. The dragon will feed himself on very many animals and humans and needs to be killed. It's not at all "sinister" to bring down the last dragon. Drogon is a threat to mankind.

This is a quite unfair, one-sided depiction. "Rather spoilt" doesn't hit the nail. Yes, they are all children of nobility, all the Stark children, Cersei's children and so on. "Lust for vengeance" is too one-sided, too. Up unteil S4 she fights just for survival and learns to protect herself and that killing is necessary to survive. But yes, vengeance is a motiviation for her and a good one. Nothing bad up her killings or motivation up to end of S4. 

In the show all her killings are consistent with revenge and she kills those who wronged her and her family. Her killing Meryn Trant is absolutely understandable and the revenge for the Red Wedding is great. The Red Wedding was a replacement for battle, a coward and simply wrong assassination of Frey/Lannisters against Starks. Arya's revenge is understandable.

After that no further weird killings occur in the show at all. Arya returns without incidents to Winterfell, executes Petyr Baelish, but no more killings. 

Examples? You are just blinded by your hate and shitstorm mentality. Any plot armor before finale?

The only unrealistic plot-armor is surviving the waif's attack. She should have made the knife stab a bit less drastic and the healing phase a bit more complicated. But it is easy enough to imagine that the stab wound was "obviously" not as severe as it looked like during the stabbing.

Further plot-armor examples? Please explain in detail. 

Her erotic interlude was explained well and is believable. Gendry is not an arbitrary choice and was hoped for by millions of fans.

The term Azor Ahai is not mentioned in the show at all. Stop it.

Very many people in King's Landing survive and so does Arya. Yes, she is lucky a few times, but she also swift and sees the danger. I can easily accept that Arya survives the frenzy. 

The Sandor scene was just great, not wasting her life anymore for vengeance is a very nice turn. What so you have to complain about it? Why phrase it so negatively?

She never wanted to be a lady, never wanted the life as woman in nobility. She wanted adventures and she is in a position to fulfill her dreams. Perfect character arc for Arya. 

She gets a ship, a crew with all the knowledge needed and goes on discovery. I don't see why people are moaning and whining about that. It is a  very nice arc and a satisfying ending.

Come on, that is simply unfair and even pure bullshitting. Sansa was very naive but through all the hardships she learned the game. She does not want to bend the knee, she embraces the North after being fed up with the South and her hostility towards Daenerys is almost natural. 

There is nothing irrational about being at least sceptical towards Daenerys and not wanting to submit to another ruler. Jon made a mistake. A big one. He should have never bent the knee. Daenerys already accepted the necessity to join forces.

Jon's arc is from bastard to bastard somehow. Yes, he is the tragic hero. Nothing new to that in drama. It happens in reality much more often than real heroes. 

We can hope that Jon will enjoy the Free folk life. He is admired by them, very well accepted and he has friends there, at least Tormund. The ending is not that bad. It's kind of realistic and a bittersweet ending in the best sense.

Agreed, Tyrion's arc is weird and why he ends up being hand is strange. Maybe just cut too short in the show. He should have had a more tragic or at least less important end. The show should have spent more time on resolving this issue.

Jaime's arc is very good and believable. "Things we do for love" does never end, not for Jaime anyway. He had the chance to have a life without incest, with Brienne, with honor. But his incestuous love was too strong. It's a pity, but it is a bittersweet and believable ending. Nothing to moan about it.

The death scene of Jaime/Cersei was great. So human, so small, so anti-climax. I liked it very much.

 

Isn't there some sort of rule about arguing in the rant and rave threads?

EDIT: Oops, this isn't one. Still, lord this is such a lot of tiresome fanboi-ism, I thought this thread was a refuge where it wouldn't be encountered, at least at such stupefying length. I have no stamina for countering it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...