Even though it's probably a given at this point, I really hope Arya isn't the one to kill Dany. I'm so bored of Arya's character at this point.
(And yes I was down with her shanking the Night King)
Even though it's probably a given at this point, I really hope Arya isn't the one to kill Dany. I'm so bored of Arya's character at this point.
(And yes I was down with her shanking the Night King)
This show kind of feels like Xenogears.
Disc 1 (season 1 through 6) was a full fledged game with exploration.
Disc 2 (season 7 and 8) rotated between text dumps and boss fights.
Most would pretty much agree that the shortened seasons were a colossal mistake. That being said, Xenogears is still pretty damn good.
If you were on board for like 65 of 73 episodes but you're miffed they didn't stick the landing, it's still a pretty good show overall.
People who want to retroactively act like it was "just okay" the whole time are totally disingenuous.
If you want to complain about a dumpster fire you're more than welcome to join me in The Walking Dead thread.
Pointing out Dany's big talk about wanting to save everyone does not change the fact that she has spent every season consistently being as brutal towards anyone who crosses her as every tyrant she claims to be against. And she did not get better about this as the seasons went on. She was consistently just barely held back from her worst tendencies by her trusted advisors and by the end she had none of those left and was blatantly succumbing to her paranoia all season and she'd finally had enough of holding back.
This is as surprising as snow in a Canadian winter (Vancouver not included).
For all those going on about how her advisors betrayed her, I'd say she is betraying her advisors (and people) just as often. The moment she found out that Jon was the true king, she could have done so many things but she simply instead chose to be power hungry and consider people demons for trying to protect the people. I can understand considering Varys sending out letters to let the people know the truth to be a betrayal, but he only did so because she made it clear she would happily burn down the entire city, women and children included, rather than wait a little while for her own forces to be ready for a battle, let alone lay siege. She chose for the fast route and she showed she was not willing to consider helping the people. The moment that happened, she betrayed all the advisors she ever had as far as I'm concerned. She was no longer the queen they had been promised.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
Oh for sure they really didn't betray her, I mean maybe varys. But she THINKS they did. All she's cared about is becoming queen of the iron throne. Jon's claim throws a wrench in that and to question it is to betray her, in her mind.
Her focus has been on her title, not so much the people. The people she's saved have all been a means to an end I think, that end being the rule of the seven kingdoms. I mentioned it before but she's a conqueror, not a ruler.
Yesterday's episode was a huge loss for Cersei fans. It cost her life, her unborn child, it even coster Waldau.
I agree with Psychotic. I'm actually fine with all of the major plot points from last episode; the show has just done an awful job of executing them with good storytelling.
It just felt like Dany needed some other push. A coworker and I were talking about how we expected Jaime and Cersei to pull of some sort of trick, where the bells ringing would only be a pretend surrender/surprise attack. Or just some more time spent on seeing Dany's descent. Or maybe some flashbacks in Dany's mind of Cersei and Missandei or even Jorah (whose death she could emotionally blame on Cersei after she didn't send the promised aid). It just needed something more for the storytelling to pull me in more and make it seem more believable. I agree that this has been set up for a good while; the last execution was just very poor.
Jaime's return-to-form was also just dissatisfying in presentation. Maybe Brienne needed to die in the Battle of Winterfell to trigger this. Or just something more then "I'm going to King's Landing, bye now."
The writing has been pretty terrible this season (particularly the last three episodes) in the show's breakneck pace to finish everything. I think it's a bit more disorienting because that's the exact opposite way most shows die; nowadays, shows tend to drag on forever as long as they're making money, well past their best years. Instead, this last season especially, all development is tossed out the window, and without GRRM scripting all of his trademark brutal slayings, deus ex machina has protected all of the high-end main characters to a ridiculous degree more similar to... well, most other TV.
Honestly I actually find this to.be the most realistic conclusion. I'm assuming most of you have never been in a toxic/abusive relationship or known someone who has. When it came to "my love is going to die" this was a pretty obvious choice to make if you think of jaime like that.
Jaime going back made sense. Jaime fighting stupid euron did not.
Yes I'm sure the quote from revelations 6:8 is entirely a misconception and not where the quote is pulled from. It's a motif throughout history and media. At some point, a pale, white or grey horse becomes synonymous with it. Sorry.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
Wrote this up to explain to a friend on fb. Seems like some of you may need it too :
So she gets to westeros feeling like she's hot trout after all her conquests and is like, let me burn this evil lady's trout down. And all her advisers are like nooooo do it this other way. and by doing it that way, she has lost a majority of said advisors and supporters. Finally, she was like, no i'ma burninate, and it worked in her favor so she's questioning what the hell her advisors even said and learning that burninating is the better option here.
So, Jon goes "hey there are undead" and she goes "okay but cersei wont stop while we deal." So Tyrion says, well it'll work, just do it.
So they go on an adventure to get a wight, and she ends up losing one of her babies
That's okay though because they present it to cersei and cersei agrees to help. Tyrion was right. She deserved to trust his judgment. The death wasn't a useless sacrifice.
Until it is, because she doesn't show up. The first death WAS useless and now she has to fight her undead baby. They nearly all die because they didn't have help. Both her babies NEARLY die. The one person who has supported her and came back each time she got mad and sent him away, dies because of this. So she's mad. This bitch, how dare she. And these northerners? They don't care she just did all this for them. Lost all of this for them. They think jon was the best, even though she saved their asses with her fire breathing dragons and her armies that are mostly gone now. They don't even bother coming to thank her.
So she's like "this bitch, f this bitch, i'ma go back home and f this bi---" and she's caught off guard and this bitch kills her other child and kidnaps her bestie.
So tyrion pleads to her that he can get cersei to stop, so he tries and cersei cuts off her besties head. So now tyrion has failed her twice, managed to help get her children killed, her lead advisor/protector killed, and her bestie with his poor advice over this woman. Then she finds out her other advisor also is conspiring against her and it's implied he was literally trying to poison her at the beginning of the episode.
So Jon comes in and is "i love you" but then doesn't actually show that affection so she's like well smurf it. Everyone hates me so might as well make them really hate me.
So the bells are ringing, she's staring at this red keep. The people are surrendering, just like they did for her father, just like they are doing for cersei. There's no loyalty with them, the people don't care. Jon's claim would still cause people to question. So she decides, well fear it is. Even if he does claim, I've got a dragon and I just showed everyone what happens when you cross me.
So burninate. So in reality it isn't entirely Madness that made her do it, she didn't just snap. She most likely did it knowing full well why she did it. Which honestly, is even more horrendous cause she can't fall back on madness.
In blunt terms, the problem with GOT now is that they have put character beats before character motivation. Since they chose to barrel toward the ending quickly, which more on that in a moment, they basically had to shorthand everything and get every character to their endgame story line. I think the Xenogears metaphor is a great one, since we basically took the entire journey and got very used to the drawn out, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt ways of the plot clicking into place and now, at the end, we're just being read a summary of the plot and seeing the highlights.
For instance, clearly the endgame was for Dany to break bad. However, the motivation behind her choosing to do it in that moment, rather than say, when she lost her second dragon or as soon as Missy was beheaded, makes no sense. In both cases she just gets sad and leaves when frankly both of those called for her to unleash the fire in a more justified way. An obvious change to plot and timing that changes none of the story motivation: what if Rheagal had been killed during the sack of King's Landing, right when the bells ring and everyone stops for a moment. Perhaps some stray guards fired at Rheagal then and kill him when everyone thinks the battle is over, which causes Dany to fly into the rage she does. That to me makes more actual sense in the moment. Or what if she does attack the Red Keep but sees that Cersei has fled and essentially decides to burn the city down trying to find her? Both of those feel more earned than her just snapping NOW after all these other moments when it would have felt more justified.
It also frankly robs Dany of some more nuance, since her flying into a vengeful rage would make sense given all the betrayals in that moment instead of what is now clearly being explained as, "well, craziness runs in her family, so..."
Now, a brief aside, as I do wonder if deep down, the creators of GOT being given the keys to their own Star Wars kingdom perhaps heavily influenced a lot of these late game changes. I know a few of the crew that have worked on the show for a lot of its run and without giving away secrets can say this: they are among the best in the world and have given literally everything for a decade to put this show together for the world. Despite the plotting and writing issues, the scale and spectacle of this show is like nothing I have ever seen before and is jaw-droppingly beautiful and well crafted. (stray Starbucks cup or hand aside). The CleganeBowl was like some sort of video game finale come to life and I mean that in the best way possible.
However, what I can say, is that a lot of the people on the show were a bit burnt out from the constant grind of creating spectacle of this magnitude and while all of us would have preferred more episodes to flesh it out, it sounds like those at the top were ready for it to end. HBO was ready to back the truck up to give them whatever they wanted but their money and power couldn't convince them that a new challenge awaited, perhaps in a galaxy far, far away might prove to be more fun now. I'm not at all saying that their commitment or focus on GOT wavered, but it was no longer the laser it had been for most of the run and perhaps, with an eye toward the skies, the idea of big set pieces over plot gears slowing clicking into place took hold.
In a funny way, the big winner here ends up being GRRM because he got to see his vision come to life in an unbelievable way that still leaves so many wanting more and now he alone will be able to tell it.
Take care all.