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12 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Hmm who do you think this is about?

Let’s hope it’s just some guy that Daemon has gelded during his days as Lord Flea Bottom.

It rather should be Daemon himself. He raped scores of maidens during his youth, apparently. Oh, sorry, he 'deflowered' maidens in brothels.

But not sure the show is going to bother with the mother of some whore, so that seems to be less likely.

Spoiler

If it were Aegon II then marital rape would be my way to go. Alicent arranges the marriage of her children, and afterwards she has to deal with the fact that her daughter isn't into her loser son at all ... but he doesn't care and demands she fulfill her wifely duties.

 

4 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I think that some of the things that happened in Season 8 had to have D&D's doing and were inherently bad ideas. Jaime Lannister NOT being the one to kill Cersei Lannister but going back to her is something that I refuse to believe was actually planned. Not that he doesn't die strangling her, necessarily, but that he doesn't do it (mercy kill perhaps?). I also believe Varys, obviously, has a long and complicated plotline that was utterly shredded. Certainly, Tyrion lost the emotional heart of his story with his now-absent seeking his dead wife as well as descent into misogyny as well as madness until the others pull him out.

But I believe the Daenerys madness plot was always there. However, I feel like presentation is 90% the problem and the rushing through it was what killed the series. If we had Daenerys hallucinating Viserys like in the books as early as Dance, we'd perhaps be easing into the idea Daeny did NOT escape her father's incest madness.

Not for Daenerys. That is too much as a plot. She cannot go to Westeros to save the place from the ice demons while at the same time also getting paranoid about her precious queenship, murdering thousands of innocent for the crime of not being submissive Dany lackeys. Even less so since if she comes to Westeros to help defeat the Others, pretty much nobody is going to offer her much resistance afterwards. It is like the French deciding to start a war with the fucking Americans to drive them out of Europe after they just helped them deal with the Nazis. That would never happen.

It just doesn't fly together. Daenerys as a character is already, well, so beyond the human sphere, so close to the gods the Targaryens presume to be, that she would just not really be insulted or affected by such things. The living god of the Dothraki is not going to get unhinged because the unwashed rabble of KL refuses to worship her. If you have great power then the opinion of lesser people gets less and less signficant. You can afford to be generous and forgiving.

And in no scenario in which she wants to rule Westeros would she burn down the castle and the city Aegon the Conqueror had built. That is the place she wants to get back more than anything else on that foreign continent.

The kind of plot there is in the show is for somebody who is cornered, who has no other place to go, nothing else to do ... but die in a grand gesture. Like Aerys II when Robert and Tywin came knocking. It is for Aegon or Cersei/Euron or whoever else may hold the city when some other force comes knocking. But not for Daenerys ... especially not after the Others have been defeated. Which might not be something Daenerys survives in the books, anyway.

And, of course, the practical logistics make a dragon holocaust of King's Landing utterly impossible in the books. It is winter now, and in the Epilogue it was already snowing. When Dany arrives, KL will be baked in snow. The dragons won't be able to incinerate a single roof, much less burn down an entire city. A wildfire holocaust may be possible, but for that you would have to produce gigantic quantities of the substance, putting jars in nearly every building, because snow and ice and the cold would hamper a fire triggered by that.

Aerys' remaining 'fruits' would be hidden in cellars and the like, explaining why nobody found them so far. Even if there was an accident with some of that, or somebody messed with them intentionally ... it would likely start only a small and limited fire, destroying only the buildings touched by the wildfire. Any other houses would be protected by snow and ice.

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14 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

It rather should be Daemon himself. He raped scores of maidens during his youth, apparently. Oh, sorry, he 'deflowered' maidens in brothels.

But not sure the show is going to bother with the mother of some whore, so that seems to be less likely.

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If it were Aegon II then marital rape would be my way to go. Alicent arranges the marriage of her children, and afterwards she has to deal with the fact that her daughter isn't into her loser son at all ... but he doesn't care and demands she fulfill her wifely duties.

And, of course, the practical logistics make a dragon holocaust of King's Landing utterly impossible in the books. It is winter now, and in the Epilogue it was already snowing. When Dany arrives, KL will be baked in snow. The dragons won't be able to incinerate a single roof, much less burn down an entire city. A wildfire holocaust may be possible, but for that you would have to produce gigantic quantities of the substance, putting jars in nearly every building, because snow and ice and the cold would hamper a fire triggered by that.

Aerys' remaining 'fruits' would be hidden in cellars and the like, explaining why nobody found them so far. Even if there was an accident with some of that, or somebody messed with them intentionally ... it would likely start only a small and limited fire, destroying only the buildings touched by the wildfire. Any other houses would be protected by snow and ice.

Well, it's a wooden city and I expect something will trigger off all that wildfire.  Wooden cities have burned in winter.  People were very fire-conscious in pre-industrial times, keeping large supplies of water on hand to douse fires, but an explosion might kill a household, then rage out of control.  That's what happened during the Great Fire of London, when the fire began at Pudding Lane. Once a fire storm starts sucking in oxygen, snow isn't going to stop the fire from raging.

Unlike the show, however, the dragons aren't big enough to burn the city on their own.

There's nothing to stop Dany form falling victim to a palace coup or Tyrion's jealousy in the wake of victory over the Others.  

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13 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Hmm who do you think this is about?


Potential spoiler:

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There was a rumor on Reddit a few weeks ago that Aegon II is a rapist on the show, but no one ever provided anything to verify that.

Let’s hope it’s just some guy that Daemon has gelded during his days as Lord Flea Bottom.

It has to be Alicent, in my opinion, for the 'mother of perpetrator' thing to make sense.

This is one of Mushroom's most credible accounts:

Quote

The groom was fifteen years of age; a lazy and somewhat sulky boy, Septon Eustace tells us, but possessed of more than healthy appetites, a glutton at table, given to swilling ale and strongwine and pinching and fondling any servant girl who strayed within his reach

[...]

If Mushroom is to believed, he fathered two bastard children the same year as the twins [Jaehaerys and Jaehaera]; a boy on a girl whose maidenhood he won at auction on the Street of Silk and a girl by one of his mother's maidservants.

 

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2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Where did you hear all of this?

D&D wanting to be done became clear by S4, especially when you take it back to the very beginning. They have said over and over, what they wanted to get to was the Red Wedding. That was their stated goal since their interviews in S1. So as soon as that event came to pass (end of S3), they started complaining about time and stress and wanting to end the show. It seems like they just wanted to get to this shocking event to enter the halls of history for 'most shocking events on screen'.

Of course the obvious and best solution to this problem, for both HBO and D&D, would have been for D&D to resign as showrunners and hand the show over to someone else.

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7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Well, it's a wooden city and I expect something will trigger off all that wildfire.

I don't think there is enough left. They have found and burned most of Aerys' fruits, apparently, especially beneath the key places. I guess if there is something like that going to happen then somebody is going to revive the wildfire plot - possibly Jon Connington or Aegon

7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Wooden cities have burned in winter.  People were very fire-conscious in pre-industrial times, keeping large supplies of water on hand to douse fires, but an explosion might kill a household, then rage out of control.  That's what happened during the Great Fire of London, when the fire began at Pudding Lane. Once a fire storm starts sucking in oxygen, snow isn't going to stop the fire from raging.

Yes, but this is going to be a magical winter. Having a city burn while it is snowing and cold as hell would be ... very odd, to say the least.

7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Unlike the show, however, the dragons aren't big enough to burn the city on their own.

I don't think even Balerion etc. could be burn a city in winter when snow is everywhere. Keep in mind how Silverwing fared in the Northern winter ... and how ineffective Meraxes was during the Last Storm or Balerion at the Blackwater. And there it was only raining. To be sure, due to their size and teeth and claws they were still deadly ... but rain in the air really dampens dragonfire, apparently.

7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

There's nothing to stop Dany form falling victim to a palace coup or Tyrion's jealousy in the wake of victory over the Others.  

Sure enough ... and such a murder out of jealousy is certainly something that could happen. But not the mad storming of a city they could easily starve out ... or whose people could be very easily convinced to depose whatever moron is controlling the city. If the savior of mankind is outside the gates then everything else not going to matter all that much.

But I'm really not holding my breath for there being a crucial military campaign after the Others are dealt with. It would be very weird, relying on there actually being successful cynics who thought the Others would be defeated. Even the likes of Littlefinger would likely run to Essos or the Summer Isles at that point, rather than to conquer and hold place X in Westeros which might be quickly overrun by an army of zombies.

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3 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Wow, interesting. Where did you hear all of this?

Mostly around here but in behind the scenes interviews and books (Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon especially) I've been reading on it. The negativity is always downplayed but it's a lot of it. The funny thing is I remember D&D talking about theatrical movies in magazines and being very public about it. Even then I thought, "Isn't HBO a cable company? Why would they want to make movies when they can make series for their subscribers?"

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47 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

It rather should be Daemon himself. He raped scores of maidens during his youth, apparently. Oh, sorry, he 'deflowered' maidens in brothels.

But not sure the show is going to bother with the mother of some whore, so that seems to be less likely.

  Hide contents

If it were Aegon II then marital rape would be my way to go. Alicent arranges the marriage of her children, and afterwards she has to deal with the fact that her daughter isn't into her loser son at all ... but he doesn't care and demands she fulfill her wifely duties.

 

Not for Daenerys. That is too much as a plot. She cannot go to Westeros to save the place from the ice demons while at the same time also getting paranoid about her precious queenship, murdering thousands of innocent for the crime of not being submissive Dany lackeys. Even less so since if she comes to Westeros to help defeat the Others, pretty much nobody is going to offer her much resistance afterwards. It is like the French deciding to start a war with the fucking Americans to drive them out of Europe after they just helped them deal with the Nazis. That would never happen.

It just doesn't fly together. Daenerys as a character is already, well, so beyond the human sphere, so close to the gods the Targaryens presume to be, that she would just not really be insulted or affected by such things. The living god of the Dothraki is not going to get unhinged because the unwashed rabble of KL refuses to worship her. If you have great power then the opinion of lesser people gets less and less signficant. You can afford to be generous and forgiving.

And in no scenario in which she wants to rule Westeros would she burn down the castle and the city Aegon the Conqueror had built. That is the place she wants to get back more than anything else on that foreign continent.

The kind of plot there is in the show is for somebody who is cornered, who has no other place to go, nothing else to do ... but die in a grand gesture. Like Aerys II when Robert and Tywin came knocking. It is for Aegon or Cersei/Euron or whoever else may hold the city when some other force comes knocking. But not for Daenerys ... especially not after the Others have been defeated. Which might not be something Daenerys survives in the books, anyway.

And, of course, the practical logistics make a dragon holocaust of King's Landing utterly impossible in the books. It is winter now, and in the Epilogue it was already snowing. When Dany arrives, KL will be baked in snow. The dragons won't be able to incinerate a single roof, much less burn down an entire city. A wildfire holocaust may be possible, but for that you would have to produce gigantic quantities of the substance, putting jars in nearly every building, because snow and ice and the cold would hamper a fire triggered by that.

Aerys' remaining 'fruits' would be hidden in cellars and the like, explaining why nobody found them so far. Even if there was an accident with some of that, or somebody messed with them intentionally ... it would likely start only a small and limited fire, destroying only the buildings touched by the wildfire. Any other houses would be protected by snow and ice.

Do you really think D&D, who still refuse to answer any questions about RamSan seven years later, would have the balls to turn Daenerys—a pop culture feminist icon with a cult following—into a villain who gets shanked by her boyfriend if it wasn’t George’s idea? (Hell, Sansa was still a fairly unpopular/divisive character at that point, and that still didn’t quell the backlash). Dany combing through the streets burning everyone row by row was probably an exaggeration done to make Jon more morally unambiguous for killing her, but I do not believe that they would have had the guts to do something like that if they didn’t believe there was going to be the same heel-turn in the books.

 

As for doing more seasons, I really don’t think it would have made things any better unless D&D were willing to bring in more writers, which they clearly weren’t. I love George, but it’s been over a decade and there’s still no TWOW, let alone ADOS. They would still have been making up their own stuff, no matter how long the show went on for.

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2 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Do you really think D&D, who still refuse to answer any questions about RamSan seven years later, would have the balls to turn Daenerys—a pop culture feminist icon with a cult following—into a villain who gets shanked by her boyfriend if it wasn’t George’s idea? (Hell, Sansa was still a fairly unpopular/divisive character at that point, and that still didn’t quell the backlash). Dany combing through the streets burning everyone row by row was probably an exaggeration done to make Jon more morally unambiguous for killing her, but I do not believe that they would have had the guts to do something like that if they didn’t believe there was going to be the same heel-turn in the books.

As for doing more seasons, I really don’t think it would have made things any better unless D&D were willing to bring in more writers, which they clearly weren’t. I love George, but it’s been over a decade and there’s still no TWOW, let alone ADOS. They would still have been making up their own stuff, no matter how long the show went on for.

I am envisioning Game of Thrones as basically having a Fire and Blood treatment. George R.R. Martin writing 20-50 pages of the rough number of events that are supposed to happen in the books (before he started expanding things left and right). So I fully expect Bran to be King, Daenerys to die at Jon's hands (the prophecy of AA and his wife), and Jon to be exiled beyond the wall afterward.

D&D were undoubtedly working off this treatment.

It's just they decided to rush through the treatment and not explain how Daenerys, even in her "madness", decided nuking the city after its surrender made sense. I mean, you could have thrown in ANYTHING to justify it but they didn't.

Have Missandrei's corpse paraded in the streets or something.

(I also have the suspicion Cersei is the one who is going to burn King's Landing because--well, the wildfire goes off but it doesn't burn the city down)

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5 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Do you really think D&D, who still refuse to answer any questions about RamSan seven years later, would have the balls to turn Daenerys—a pop culture feminist icon with a cult following—into a villain who gets shanked by her boyfriend if it wasn’t George’s idea? (Hell, Sansa was still a fairly unpopular/divisive character at that point, and that still didn’t quell the backlash)

Random aside, I feel like they did that entire plotline because they were trying to figure out something for Sophie Turner to do without expanding the scope of the storylines. Which is what killed D&D. Sansa would need an entire new set of episodes and plotlines for Vale politics but they want to CUT storylines, not add to them.

Which is how the story started falling apart.

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2 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Do you really think D&D, who still refuse to answer any questions about RamSan seven years later, would have the balls to turn Daenerys—a pop culture feminist icon with a cult following—into a villain who gets shanked by her boyfriend if it wasn’t George’s idea? (Hell, Sansa was still a fairly unpopular/divisive character at that point, and that still didn’t quell the backlash). Dany combing through the streets burning everyone row by row was probably an exaggeration done to make Jon more morally unambiguous for killing her, but I do not believe that they would have had the guts to do something like that if they didn’t believe there was going to be the same heel-turn in the books.

 

As for doing more seasons, I really don’t think it would have made things any better unless D&D were willing to bring in more writers, which they clearly weren’t. I love George, but it’s been over a decade and there’s still no TWOW, let alone ADOS. They would still have been making up their own stuff, no matter how long the show went on for.

The problem for me is that a big fight for Kings Landing makes no sense after the fight against the Others.  If there's a big fight for Kings Landing, it would be beforehand.  

Jon killing Daenerys at Tyrion's urging, in fear for his family, is entirely possible, even probable .  But, I'm  fairly sure that Tyrion's motives would be base ones, probably sexual jealousy.  It wasn't so much Jon they were trying to whitewash as Tyrion.  They had to make Dany look worse, in order to make their self-insert look better. Tyrion was their golden boy, the heroic pacifist who was too good for this cruel world (NB, they did not succeed in whitewashing him).

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1 minute ago, SeanF said:

The problem for me is that a big fight for Kings Landing makes no sense after the fight against the Others.  If there's a big fight for Kings Landing, it would be beforehand.  

Jon killing Daenerys at Tyrion's urging, in fear for his family, is entirely possible, even probable .  But, I'm  fairly sure that Tyrion's motives would be base ones, probably sexual jealousy.  It wasn't so much Jon they were trying to whitewash as Tyrion.  They had to make Dany look worse, in order to make their self-insert look better. Tyrion was their golden boy, the heroic pacifist who was too good for this cruel world (NB, they did not succeed in whitewashing him).

It could make sense for GRRM on a thematic level as a deconstruction of Lord of the Rings, with the battle for King's Landing being a stand-in for the Scouring of the Shire, with the battle for home being mostly inconsequential compared to the battle for existence.

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5 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Random aside, I feel like they did that entire plotline because they were trying to figure out something for Sophie Turner to do without expanding the scope of the storylines. Which is what killed D&D. Sansa would need an entire new set of episodes and plotlines for Vale politics but they want to CUT storylines, not add to them.

Which is how the story started falling apart.

The funny thing is, they said they started thinking about giving Sansa Jeyne’s plot back in S2, before they had their famous endgame meeting with GRRM. So it was always about keeping a plot they liked (Theon in Winterfell) and getting rid of one they didn’t (Sansa in the Vale).

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7 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

It could make sense for GRRM on a thematic level as a deconstruction of Lord of the Rings, with the battle for King's Landing being a stand-in for the Scouring of the Shire, with the battle for home being mostly inconsequential compared to the battle for existence.

Thematically, the scouring of the Shire is totally different.  It's about  how the age when  great heroes and elves walked the earth is drawing to a close, and now, the ordinary folk (who are capable of just as much heroism) must step up to the mark to liberate themselves. 

This would be more like the people of Minas Tirith choosing to be ruled by a usurper, after the fall of Sauron, and Aragorn and the victorious army razing Gondor's capital to the ground.  It would just be ...very weird, and TBH, and most readers would think Minas Tirith had it coming.

 

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7 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

It could make sense for GRRM on a thematic level as a deconstruction of Lord of the Rings, with the battle for King's Landing being a stand-in for the Scouring of the Shire, with the battle for home being mostly inconsequential compared to the battle for existence.

I suppose it depends on what exactly you think the scale of the fight against the Others will be. No, it doesn't make any sense if you think the Others will destroy Westeros and we're getting a Walking Dead and apocalyptic end to the setting. It doesn't make sense if you think all of Westeros' heroes will be dead and their armies annihilated. It makes perfect sense if you think it will be stopped in the North.

Also, it has a kind of bitter appropriateness to it. Cersei as Hitler in her bunker. Daenerys and company are at the doorstep and there's absolutely no way to stop them, triumphant as the saviors of Westeros and invincible. Cersei as the Queen of only King's Landing and a handful of soldiers left as well as zealous fanatics. Aware the prophecy of the Young Queen set to dethrone her is about to come to pass.

So, of course, Cersei will die on HER terms like the Mad King.

"Burn them all."

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2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Thematically, the scouring of the Shire is totally different.  It's about  how the age when  great heroes and elves walked the earth is drawing to a close, and now, the ordinary folk (who are capable of just as much heroism) must step up to the mark to liberate themselves. 

This would be more like the people of Minas Tirith choosing to be ruled by a usurper, after the fall of Sauron, and Aragorn and the victorious army razing Gondor's capital to the ground.  It would just be ...very weird, and TBH, and most readers would think Minas Tirith had it coming.

Actually, I think it'd be perfectly martin-esque if he said, "And as soon as Sauron was defeated, the elves and humans and dwarves immediately fell back into warring against one another."

Because that's a very cynical A Song of Ice and Fire sentiment.

Humanity learns NOTHING from the experience and immediately goes to fighting for the Iron Throne.

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5 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I suppose it depends on what exactly you think the scale of the fight against the Others will be. No, it doesn't make any sense if you think the Others will destroy Westeros and we're getting a Walking Dead and apocalyptic end to the setting. It makes perfect sense if you think it will be stopped in the North.

Also, it has a kind of bitter appropriateness to it. Cersei as Hitler in her bunker. Daenerys and company are at the doorstep and there's absolutely no way to stop them, triumphant as the saviors of Westeros and invincible. Cersei as the Queen of only King's Landing and a handful of soldiers left as well as zealous fanatics. Aware the prophecy of the Young Queen set to dethrone her is about to come to pass.

So, of course, Cersei will die on HER terms like the Mad King.

"Burn them all."

Sure, but in those circumstances, absolutely no one, Dany, Jon, any of the Starks would be expected by their followers to show any more mercy to the city  than the Soviets showed to Berlin in 1945.  A brutal sack would be inevitable, and be considered entirely fitting punishment on the part of the victors. 

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I honestly see no logical reason why King's Landing would be the 'scouring of the Shire'. Dany will have enough troops to try to curbstomp whoever's on the throne when she get there. The reason why she didn't simply decimate Cersei in Season 7 Episode 2 with all her Dothraki, Unsullied, dragons, vs one city with no mass produced scorpions was Tyrion giving her bad advice as D&D wanted to drag out that conflict. It seems like Benioff and Weiss were the ones who wanted to make the battle for the throne the big final battle.

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2 minutes ago, Vaith said:

I honestly see no logical reason why King's Landing would be the 'scouring of the Shire'. Dany will have enough troops to try to curbstomp whoever's on the throne when she get there. The reason why she didn't simply decimate Cersei in Season 7 Episode 2 with all her Dothraki, Unsullied, dragons, vs one city with no mass produced scorpions was Tyrion giving her bad advice as D&D wanted to drag out that conflict. It seems like Benioff and Weiss were the ones who wanted to make the battle for the throne the big final battle.

The two D's had not the slightest clue about military affairs.  No general at any point in history would have hesitated to make straight for the capital, and to storm it, in the event that no surrender was given.

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