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FrostedMiniWheats
United States30730 Posts
Even if Dany is killed there's still a big ass dragon floating around as well as an army of Unsullied and Dothraki to contend with if they're thinking of overthrowing her. I really hope it's not something incredibly stupid where Dany dies but Drogon still accepts Jon as his new rider... I think Tyrion is a goner at the beginning of next ep though. It'll probably reach Dany that he freed Jamie. | ||
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PhoenixVoid
Canada32737 Posts
... In so doing, the showrunners moved as far to one end of the plotter/pantser continuum as Martin is to the other. They weren't trying to resolve every character arc or pay off every last bit of world-building. They knew the destination Martin had in mind, they understood the dots they had to connect to get there, and they wanted to maximize fan entertainment along the way. Then, presumably, they asked themselves questions. What big set pieces did they want to deliver? What surprises could rival the greatest twists of the show? Which of the remaining conflicts would yield the best drama, and which onscreen pairings would bring the most emotion? What did they think we, the audience, wanted to finally see before it was all over? It was a Game of Thrones bucket list. And once they had that list, they needed to maneuver the characters into place. That's why Game of Thrones feels different now. A show that had been about our inability to escape the past became about the spectacle of the present. Characters with incredible depth and agency—all the more rope with which to hang themselves—became whatever the moment needed them to be. They took uncharacteristic actions and made uncharacteristically bad decisions so the required events could unfold with the appropriate stakes. Characters were spared the deaths they'd sown so they'd be available for later scenes. Organic consequences gave way to contrivance. Gone was the conflict between complicated people with incompatible goals. Grey morality turned black and white. Characters rushed through their foreshadowed arcs for the thinnest of reasons, or in some cases reversed their arcs entirely. The characters just weren't in charge anymore. The ending was. ... https://www.wired.com/story/game-of-thrones-plotters-vs-pantsers/ | ||
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Redox
Germany24794 Posts
On May 13 2019 11:42 Emnjay808 wrote: I know its ash. But its supposed to be winter in KL, remember? The LONGEST winter that we have been waiting for for 8 seasons. Idk how they can scuff that up. Having the snow at the start of the ep then have it contrast with ashes later wouldve been cool. smh GoT. Just saw this comment and want to point out that already in the opening scene of this show the weather was nonsense when there was snow at the Wall when it was supposed to be summer. :D Dont remember anyone critisizing that. Also, really good episode. Best of this season by a long shot. This thread is the expected shit show of course. | ||
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Aocowns
Norway6070 Posts
On May 18 2019 07:10 Redox wrote: Just saw this comment and want to point out that already in the opening scene of this show the weather was nonsense when there was snow at the Wall when it was supposed to be summer. :D Dont remember anyone critisizing that. Also, really good episode. Best of this season by a long shot. This thread is the expected shit show of course. I sure wonder why the uncharted land north of the wall is called "lands of always winter" They've talked about "summer snows" in the north as though they were a common thing, so yes it fits with the internal logic of the universe that there is snow in the north during summer, especially north of the wall | ||
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Odoakar
Croatia1835 Posts
Geeez... | ||
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sharkie
Austria18311 Posts
On May 18 2019 16:36 Odoakar wrote: I just read e6 scrip leaks. Geeez... Welcome in the club haha | ||
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FreakyDroid
Macedonia2616 Posts
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/ | ||
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Pandain
United States12984 Posts
On May 18 2019 23:48 FreakyDroid wrote: A well written analysis of the writing shift in GoT, worth a read. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/ Like this alot. I mean it wouldn't even be a big deal if there wasn't as much an emphasis on politics since it was the final season, as long as the interactions that did exist were strong. But the problem is just everything about the story and writing is weak. | ||
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solidbebe
Netherlands4921 Posts
On May 18 2019 23:48 FreakyDroid wrote: A well written analysis of the writing shift in GoT, worth a read. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/ A very good article indeed | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23772 Posts
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arbiter_md
Moldova1219 Posts
Nice read, thank for the link. | ||
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FFGenerations
7088 Posts
On May 18 2019 02:55 FreakyDroid wrote: this was so pointless why do people make this stuff wtf edit lol my sides (from reddit): "In S1E1, Jaime Lannister pushes Bran Stark out of a window. This is subtle foreshadowing for S8E5, where eight seasons of Jaime's character development are similarly thrown out the window." (actually i think jamie is very believable but this is funny)( | ||
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iamthedave
England2814 Posts
On May 18 2019 23:48 FreakyDroid wrote: A well written analysis of the writing shift in GoT, worth a read. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/ One issue I did have with an otherwise good article: “every time a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.” That is straight-up and simplistic genetic determinism," It's also canon. That's a quote from the books and the Targs are rarely presented as having 'a reason' to go mad. Yes, Viserys has a bunch of extenuating circumstances (he was said to be nice when he was young), but then so was his dad until he suddenly started going mad as he got older. It's also canon that multiple Targs in history were bonkers as well, for seemingly no reason. Also the books only kill major characters if you don't realise who the major characters are. The plot armour on Dany, Jon, Tyrion and Arya is so thick it belongs on a 40K space marine. Which sounds like a generic gripe but it's not meant to; what I mean by that is that they get away with mistakes and decisions that demonstrably get other characters killed on a regular basis. Which is exactly what happens with characters from the 'other' style of storytelling. It's perhaps more revealing to think of GoT as a story about three or four characters expanded to include a couple of hundred extras who get to have their own side stories that generally end in their horrible deaths to avoid having to kill the actually important characters. One of the big problems with the books is in fact that Dany's one of if not the most important characters in it, to the point that the real story hasn't even really begun until she gets her arse over to Westeros, and compared to the show, the books are much more heavy-handed about making it clear that Dany's super important (she has an entire character whose almost sole purpose is to turn up and occasionally remind us of how important Dany is, the mysterious warlock woman whose name I can't remember; not sure if she was even in the show). In some ways the problem with the books is summed up in that article as well; it's very much chained to a psychological style but it needs to be more sociological. Martin wouldn't have had to write an entire book to 'get the pieces into the right places' (Dance with Dragons) if he could have bumped Dany off and had someone take her place in the story. But she's too important for that to work. | ||
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Rasalased
89 Posts
Episode 5 is super genius. To me, it was surprisingly good. Especially after how mediocre the show had been in season 7 and about how the Night King plot turned out to be a literal Shaggy Dog story. But you only realize how good it is when you see the emotional response of others watching it. Especially those who didn't like the way the story went. It is amazing to me how somehow half the GoT fans forgot what type of story GoT used to be and that they thought the good guys would march into King's Landing, depose Cersei, do a victory lap, cash in on those character archs, get Dany and Jon married, somehow get over all these problems and 'break the wheel' and free the common people and live happily ever after. We all knew that GRRM was no longer involved and the writers had to make up the story by themselves. Season 1 to 3 was really good. Especially because everything was laid out and they could take dialog directly from the book. In the first seasons, battles were entirely skipped, probably because of budget reasons. And it made the show really good. But then the book material ran out. We had this really weak Dorne story line. And Arya in Essos was also pretty bad. People got sick of Daenerys compared to all the Westeros story lines because they were detached from each other and Daenerys was back then what maybe now we would call a 'boring Mary Sue'. But things went off the rails in season 7 when they brought Dany to Westeros, killed off Little Finger, made Tyrion stupid, and had an unconvincing romance between Dany and Jon. The worst part of the show was Jon leading the raiding party beyond the wall to capture a live wight to convince Cersei to join them to stop the Night King. Personally, I thought they were just going to end the show in the safest and most obvious was. Have some big battles with nice cinematics. Have Jon and Dany get a happy ending. To me, this was the most logical thing. The writers tried to be like GRRM, but they clearly failed. All they had to do was tie up the loose ends and have some big battles and give the audience the ending they most desired. Very much not like Game of Thrones. But I was convinced, was what was going to happen. I was disappointed but not surprised by the first 3 episodes. I thought episode 3 was truly pointless. But in hindsight, episode 3 was GRRMs fault. It turned that the White Walkers/Night King was just a complete empty mystery box. The White Walkers worked fine as a menacing mysterious thread in the background. But as the prime villain to be defeated, it was really hard to pull off. Especially since GRRM seems to have almost no answers to all these questions that we have about the Night King, Lord of Light, White Walkers, Children of the forest, Brann, the three eyed raven. The writers decided to just kill that plot completely without answering any questions. Very reminiscent to how Rian Johnson got rid of the Supreme Leader Snoke mystery box dropped off by JJ Abrams in TFA. d&d must have thought long and hard about "What do we do with all this shit." If you look at the fan theories, you can easily see what a convoluted mess it actually is. Anything that d&d could have come up with to answer all these questions would just have led to contradictions or more questions. I think they just decided to bite the bullet and just kill the entire plot, answering nothing. It made episode 3 for me the lowest point of GoT. But I think now they made the right decision. d&d even had a piece of dialogue on it all between Davos and Tyrion where d&d speak directly through the audience, using the voice of Tyrion: Davos: "The Lord of Light. We play his game for him, we fight his war and win. And then... He fucks off. No signs. No blessings. Who knows what he wants?" Tyrion: "I don't imagine thinking about that subject will leave you any happier than before." I was very surprised to see so many people were happy with Episode 3. To me, it was a huge shaggy dog story. The White Walkers appeared in the first scene of episode 1 season 1. And if the show had any moral message at all it was that humans should stop quibbling about who sits on the Iron Throne but unite to face the important challenges. People say it was GRRM commenting on climate change. So now in the show, it turns climate change was a hoax after all and the only thing that really matters is literally who sits on the Iron Throne. So we guess we were all led to believe the wrong thing for 7 seasons. But one cannot deny that the main characters fighting an endless horde of unthinking zombies and magical creatures that apparently embody death itself and have no goals or motivations was very boring. Especially considering how much plot armor they suddenly had. If they had been fighting the NK for the rest of season 8 while giving us answers to our questions that upon deeper inspection don't really made sense, we would be bored and disappointed. I was even more surprised that episode 4 was considered worse than episode 3. But then we got episode 5. To me, this was the most GoT episode in many many seasons. I thought the show had changed and that it would not get the ending GRRM had in mind. Episode 5 is deeply disturbing. But Westeros is a deeply disturbing world and original game of thrones went out of their way to show this to us. So I cannot get over the fact that people think they were all going to King's Landing to do a nice victory lap and watch the heroes celebrate being heroes. When GRRM told them the ending, both d&d and HBO must have known they would get an incredible amount of backlash from at least half of the fans for this ending. Especially after they had to cut their losses on the failed Night King/White Walker plot. But they somehow suddenly had the balls, after cowering out of being GoT for so long, and they literally milked it for all they had. It was obvious to anyone that Daenerys was going to become a villain at some point in the show. But I was sure that d&d had given up on this and had retconned her to be Jon's romantic interest instead. From season 1 and onwards there were tons of hints to Dany turning evil at some point. But it seemed like the writers were playing with it, then decided they didn't dare to, and she suddenly seemed to go back to normal. But still, if you look at the reaction videos online, even the biggest Daenerys fans, who view her as some feminist icon for a strong inspiring female role model, thought that Daenerys was going to burn down King's Landing just while the bells were ringing. These people all had this seed of Dany burning King's Landing planted in their minds. All of them. And now they are raging all over the internet about how d&d ruined her arch and about how absurd and out of character it was. It is amazing. You see people cheer Daenerys on as she burns the bad guys alive, and those people clearly die in a great amount of agony. But the fans cheer her on. And when she starts burning everyone, not just the Lannister soldiers, they don't know how to respond at all. It is like suddenly they are given a huge mirror on what they were cheering for second earlier, and they don't like what they see. So instead of a weak sauce retconned ending, GoT actually gets the ending it was supposed to have. And it flirting with the alternative 'Disney' ending actually made the emotional response even stronger. It should have been very clear to anyone paying attention that when King's Landing gets sieged and sacked, it would be a massacre. But somehow people started believing that their own favourite characters were suddenly literally the 'good guys'. And they were completely outraged when they found out they had fooled themselves and somehow forgot that they were watching GoT. What we saw was a completely disturbing, and completely realistic, image of how a medieval city was sacked after a siege. That, plus an evil dragon relentlessly just burning everything down. I cannot understand how people can realize they are watching GoT, but then be surprised when the Northern soldiers under Jon's command suddenly seem to forget that they are the 'good guys' and they join in with the killing and the rape. And al of this works even better because of Jon himself being such an absurd character. He is supposed to be this messiah figure. Everyone wants him to lead. He has the blood lines. A god even brought him back from the dead because he has to do these important things. But he seems totally detached and unable to lead. People are mad that Jon didn't stand up to Daenerys and that he didn't say anything when she burned Varys. But I think it is fucking genius. Jon got stabbed by his own soldiers for being a bad leader. And now he is back form the dead to give it a second try. And he has literally nothing to say to Varys when Varys asks him to be king instead of Daenerys. And the payoff when you see the look on his face as he stands there in the streets of King's Landing while Daenerys is torching down the entire city and he sees his own men starting to join in the frenzy, raping and killing, completely powerless to control even his own men standing next to him. At that point he realizes that this is what it meant when he said he doesn't want to be king. It is trope breaking, it is 'ruining their arch'. But it is also fucking GoT. It is a real story and not some bullshit stitched together to get the largest payoff from the most common denominator among the audience. GRRM is literally a troll writer. And somehow this biggest tv show in history is getting a bitter troll ending. I never believed this to be possible, to be honest. As bad as season 7 was, as pointless as the Night King was, and whatever happens in the last episode; episode 5 has completely vindicated GoT and in 10 years time people will remember GoT as the show that it was in season 1 to 3 because at it's most crucial moment, GoT returned to what it used to be. To be honest, I think the writers can still mess up a lot in the last season. I will be extremely hard to write a good speech for Daenerys. But they did give the story the proper ending and not some fake crowd pleasing weak sauce ending that I think most people expected. | ||
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RenSC2
United States1039 Posts
Also, I think you're missing the major complaint on Dany. The complaint is not that Dany went crazy. The complaint is that the show writers never showed any signs of her going crazy. Varys claims she's going crazy, but we only see the first real sign and find out that Varys is right after he's already been executed. It's a case of tell, not show. Dany has always been brutal towards her enemies, but not towards innocents. There's a huge distinction there. Pretty much every character in the show has been brutal towards their enemies or people they find "guilty" in some way. Even Jon hanged a young boy for treason in the show. Brutal towards your enemies does not make you crazy in this universe. So I reject episode 5 as anything but sloppy. The final endpoint to episode 5 is interesting (and much more like what GRRM would write than heroes vanquishing evil). The problem was the journey and that has been an utter failure. | ||
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Rasalased
89 Posts
She was always in win-win situations and even then she wanted to burn down cities. Daenerys killed plenty of innocents. Her dragons killed a baby and her solution was to lock up the dragons for a while. She did execute people that were innocent, and her rationalization was that it didn't matter. GoT is a, or was, a subtle show. But the potential of Daenerys to kill innocent people was always waved in front of the audience. Yes, she never before went out and deliberately tried to kill as many common people as possible. No one is denying that. But all these people, including you, that claim it was too sudden; I won't believe you when you say that when the bells started ringing, you weren't considering that she was going to burn the people in the streets. That is all that is needed. If Daenerys was a real person and she always had this desire to burn thousands of people with her dragons, she wouldn't have advertised that to anyone. And people also don't talk about characters in GoT as if they are real. They expect people to act the same way despite circumstances being completely different. Daenerys had nothing left to live for. Everyone in Westeros hated her. She was an unwelcome foreign invader. She desperately wants to be loved by those that she conquered. And then it turns out that what she believed was her destiny was never hers. I don't understand why people seem to miss how absurd of a character she really is. Why would she ever sit on the Iron Throne? She is a foreign conqueror with evil dragons that has shown zero ability to accept that people do not want her to rule. So what do you think is most in line with her character? She realizes she cannot rule Westeros. Would she just talk to Jon and say "Hey, good luck here in Westeros finding a new king. It seems the people here don't want me and now it turns out I was never meant to be queen. I will go back to Essos and rule the people there." Every time she was in a difficult spot, she started talking about absurd levels of violence. Look, we can talk about this as if these were real persons. But the foreshadowing was huge. They must have told the actors around her since season 4 "Act as if she is an evil bitch about to commit genocide." I remember one speech Daenerys gave and you see the actor playing Jorah in the background trying really hard to emote "OMG she is talking mass killings again." You can find lists of 40+ scenes of Daenerys that were only there because the writers knew she was going to burn King's Landing eventually. So it basically comes down that some people either wanted a gradual descent in madness over a sudden one. Or that they wanted it literally spelled out to them rather than foreshadowed, even though this is GoT and things are supposed to be a bit subtle. Not really sure what specifically you are talking about with Jon. But GRRM clearly meant for both of them to be trope-breaking characters. Call it 'subvert your expectations' but that has become an ugly word since Rian Johnson. Both at first glance seem to be the heroes of the story. But both in the end are not what they seem. So yes, expect Jon to kill Dany and Jon then to bugger off and do something silly, like guardian the wall against White Walkers that no longer exist. Don't expect Jon to take up the throne just because everyone demands it, only to get assassinated once more. GRRM wrote both Jon and Dany to be a big disappointment. Both actors have used the word' disappointment' in describing season 8, and I think that will definitely happen. Whatever hope the story will provide will likely come from a character like Sam. | ||
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Sermokala
United States13736 Posts
Subverting expectations isn't a dirty word. GOT became the most popular thing because it was good at subverting expectations. Gotcha moments arn't subverting expectations and thats what rain johnson did. The problem with your take on dany isn't so much that she randomly decided to commit genocide for no reason after having reasons for everything she did beforehand. Its that she was portrayed at least that she went mad because of a spontaneous event involving the surrender bells and seeing her ancestral home. Her reaction in that situation was to burn everyone and destroy everything. Genocide for the sake of genocide isn't evil its just werid and dumb. Even hitler had his justification for killing jews. What dany did was burning everything for the sake of burning everything. Edit: and oh boy am I gona start off money with a rather spicy hot take. | ||
CosmicSpiral
United States15275 Posts
On May 18 2019 23:48 FreakyDroid wrote: A well written analysis of the writing shift in GoT, worth a read. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/ My main quibble is her unfounded assumption - which is stated as unadulterated fact instead of conjecture - that sociological storytelling is superior to psychological storytelling due to its emphasis on incentives and power structures. If anything, sociological storytelling is a strong primer for moral equivocation and individual apathy. When characters are shown to be pawns for immensely complex sociolcultural interactions, "institutional change" becomes a fantasy and the fanbase can cherry-pick reasons to identify with/support any character regardless of their actions (this is one reason why GoT's more reprehensible characters can have deliriously zealous fanbases). It can also backfire when the audience doesn't interpret the worldbuilding as critical: I know many GoT fans who unironically enjoy the setting as either nostalgic or an incessantly detailed mirror of our own. She also has a rather poor understanding of history if she believes that "well-run societies don't need heroes". The record shows that the opposite has always been the case. | ||
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EvilTeletubby
Baltimore, USA22250 Posts
On May 19 2019 10:14 Rasalased wrote: Episode 5 is super genius. That's a hard disagree from me... To me, it was surprisingly good. Especially after how mediocre the show had been in season 7 and about how the Night King plot turned out to be a literal Shaggy Dog story. But you only realize how good it is when you see the emotional response of others watching it. Especially those who didn't like the way the story went. It is amazing to me how somehow half the GoT fans forgot what type of story GoT used to be and that they thought the good guys would march into King's Landing, depose Cersei, do a victory lap, cash in on those character archs, get Dany and Jon married, somehow get over all these problems and 'break the wheel' and free the common people and live happily ever after. Literally no one has complained about the direction of the characters. A lot of people even predicted things like mad queen Dany. We all know there are certain things that GRRM intended to happen, that's fine. The complaints have been about the pacing and lack of logic in getting from point A to point B though. It's been extremely clear to everyone that the writing has been incredibly sup-par, characters are doing things completely out of character with little motivation or reason to do so. You seem to think everyone wants a "happily ever after", I am pretty sure most GoT fans would be disappointed if that happened. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland11916 Posts
In contrast, having Daenerys commit a genocide serves an extremely mundane narrative goal: it allows us to justify having a conflict between Dany and Jon without any of the complexity, just because Dany is now very evil and we don't like evil. And it definitely has a lot of shock value: this person, who we could potentially root for (if we ignored all the colonialist aspect, so probably if we're white but let's face it, we're white), now committed a genocide, isn't that shocking! I don't know exactly how GRRM planned that turn, but if he is faithful to his ways of the first books, it wasn't like this. | ||
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